reviving the family blog
ok, i am reviving the family blog without any snarky comments about how much i suck at keeping up with the family blog.
other than that sideways one.
it is officially summer here and our winter blahs MUST be over, because i am feeling the need to redecorate, mostly outside.
tomorrow i am off, and i am going to celebrate the revival of the family blog by doing a photopictorial “day in the life”!
also, i hope that by sending this link around to family members again that your comments let me know that you are reading, which will inspire me to post regularly and keep us all in touch with each other in this small way.
whoa!!
holy craptastic blogging skills, batmama. it has been five whole weeks, that is ridiculous. so much has gone on that it is a little intimidating to try and catch up, which is what is stopping me actually these last few times i thought, “go update the family blog, mama…”
so there is no better way than to just jump right in with some major moments. here we go…
vincent turned four. yep.
making the cake, actual birthday.
until dada puts a mosaic over his bits and pieces, i can’t post any more “baking the cake” pictures because, as he is often these days, vincent was naked while we were doing this.
wait, how old are you today??
oh, right. that many.
here is the birthday boy making a wish on his cake “on the day”, which was wednesday.
make a wish baby!
after his bath, he got into killer pajamas from his grandma, because his grandma kicks ass. we totally missed her being here this year. vincent didn’t stop asking when she was coming “from the beach”…she treated us to a week at the beach last summer and now vincent is convinced that “grandma lives at the beach”. yeah, kiddo, i bet she wishes that too!
monster pjs, one of several gifts from grandma.
things to remember about this day…
vincent had so much fun making his cake with me, made me write “happy birthday vincent” on it in red, and then dumped 20 pounds of jimmies on top, totally obscuring the message. hilarious.
the cake was lemon with pink frosting, he picked these.
sitting around the table, just the three of us, singing happy birthday to him. i don’t think we ever did this before. it was sweet beyond measure and i will remember it forever.
ok, i gotta go. coming soon…
vincent’s party
jonah arrives
christmas tree
damien thorn has moved into my house.
see the resemblance?
but wow.
i created this blog to remember more about these times in our family, and we do occasionally do things other than redecorate, so here is a post about the past three or four weeks.
those of you that know me, that know my son, know that he has been mellow most of his life. he was a mellow newborn, i mean, he cried, don’t get me wrong, but he was fairly easily soothed by nursing or going outside, and granted, i spent the first year of his life exhausted from the effort (oh yeah, and starting grad school and finding out that my gestational diabetes had not gone away, and all that). but he was not “high needs” or anything like that. he would sleep in his sling or stroller anytime, really. i could go anywhere with him, he was my little sidekick.
this continued for a long time. well, really until about a month ago. he is almost four. will be four in a matter of DAYS, actually. and last month a lot of things changed. he lost some important aspects of his routine, mostly his mondays with geneva and her family. it was bound to happen, i say this only because it was entirely too perfect to last. and it didn’t. nothing perfect lasts. perfection is a myth! haha.
an aside about geneva, my amazing, dynamic, tireless, organic, unschooling, homebirthing, inspiring friend, who has been the only non-family member to keep my child for me with any regularity since his birth, and has done so for the past two years. she has him right now, actually. she just needed a break from the every monday structure and i respect that. but really, if i could afford to offer her $100 an hour to be my only childcare, i would. that is it. she is awesome and her kids are awesome (all three of them!) and vincent is so happy and safe with her. geneva, such a good friend and mama.
anyway, vincent has been having temper tantrums. for the first time. we had no terrible twos, no trying threes. i know that these fits are very age-appropriate, and they will pass, and they are all about his new levels of independence and the inconsistency of our family schedule…(our schedules are the same every week, but not every day. this is hard for a four year old to get. mondays we do this, tuesdays we do that…a week is a long time for them. they are like goldfish.)
i need to fall back and regroup.
all of that, on a monday, and to top it off, literally, my cowlick won’t quit! gimme a break.
cow. lick.
on an up note, the trip to IKEA with the remnants of last year’s gift cards was FRUITFUL and AWESOME, and wednesday morning, i am going to get to work on the last part of the playroom redesign. SO excited.
Home improvement, Hurtado style
Normally, “Hurtado-style” home improvement would require 7 half-done projects that look very wrong and at least one trip to the hospital. Luckily, my wife has taught me to be a little more careful than my forebearers. Today I got the following done:
Put the clock back up in the living room. This is very important as we have been constantly looking back toward a blank wall to see what time it is.
Replaced the drapes and curtain rod over the French doors. We’re using the same ones that were up before, only measuring more accurately and being far more careful about where we drill, since we just spent 3 days painting the playroom/den. It looks pretty good, and I think I’ve conquered the practical issues regarding opening the doors with the drapes in the way, though I’ll defer to the judgement of the inspector later.
Put up a shelf in the cabinet that holds all of our most used casserole dishes, strainers, etc… This was something we should have done LONG ago. This morning we just had 1000 things piled on top of one another. Now there are more, smaller piles organized by their usefullness. More useful and used items are on the bottom, the more specialized things are on the top. I did pretty well. The shelf itself is unfinished, so it ain’t going in Modern Architecture magazine, but it works. All of the supplies for that little venture cost about $7. I was pretty happy with that.
There are more things to do, mainly in our autonomous spaces of the house, but the playroom/den is shaping up nicely.
Dada Day
Well, I thought is this was a family blog that I should get to write in it a
s well, so here I am. Today is Thursday, Dada Day. We’ve got plentiful plans that hopefully will end up with us at the park before the day is through. Vincent is flexing his creative muscle right now with his Playdoh Octopus, he cooked some Play Doh fish for us to eat, but I will try and redirect him to the awesome Japanese Lemon Chicken his Mama made. To this end, I’ll have to cheapen her beautiful creation by calling it “chicken nuggets”. Sad, I know, he’ll appreciate it someday. As soon as I get a little more laundry done, at least the bed sheets and spread, we’re going to the bank to grab this month’s Grocery budget and then to the Evil Empire (Wal-Mart) for a few supplies for the week, including a broom to replace the one that died in battle with thatwhichshallnotbenamed last night. Perhaps a surprise or two for later in the evening as well. It all depends on time.
welcome to the hurtado family blog
which will be all things hurtado family, for all to read and for us to document this awsome family that is growing and changing every day.
of course, we are…
christene-wife, mama…
yeah, that is right.
josh…husband, dada…
what did i do?
and vincent…son and center of the universe…
life is good.
i don’t have a picture of the dog or the fish handy, that must be tomorrow’s post.
today vincent and i are home, we are heading out to the mall later to look for some pants for vincent, who, since he last wore pants, has grown a good three or four inches in the legs. josh is at work and my mom is at the hospital waiting for pathology reports from my dad’s colon surgery on monday. we are all on pins and needles about this. so, retail therapy is in order.
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