Play dates and Aunt Katie

This past week we went to the library to check out more books and have G's Summer Reading Challenge card punched.We are totally killing that challenge, or rather I am.

G would not have anything to do with a Clifford selfie.

We lunched at Panera

and then shared a cupcake.

We went home and napped only to wake up for her daily after work snack with her father.  

She accomplished all of that while dressed as a Starlite mint.

Sweet Jenny hosted a pool party for all of my teacher pals and their children.

BFF Marinda was very attentive to Lady G, and cut up all of her food into li'l bitty baby bites.

Camille and Walker (ages 8 and 11) were fine to hang in the hot tub, allowing their mother uninterrupted toddler time.  

Special K and I have really been living it up on the screened in porch lately.  

We hang and cuddle while I drink my coffee and we savor our 15 minutes that is void of all rabid toddler antics.  

It's like old times.

Except we're not in credit card debt and we have a screened in porch now.

I remind her that it has been advantageous for both of us that I was taken as a wife. 

Genevieve had a play date with Margo and Rosie, Jenny's daughters.   

I have decided that you can only have play dates with your own besties.  You spend a lot of time saying awkward things like "we share" and "she can play with that.  I'll find you another doll." 

If I wasn't such good pals with Jenny I would find it incredibly exhausting.  Not that Genevieve has any friends that have called to invite her over.  Should I be worried?

On Saturday morning Aunt Katie arrived for an overnight visit.  She came solo to visit me and her friends.

Mostly just her friends.  She totally tricked G by waking her up from her nap.  In G's stupor we think she thought Katie was YaYa. That's an easy mistake, since they are the same person.

Genevieve let Aunt Katie hold her, change her diaper and kiss all over her.  

You may have noticed I just said diaper.  I mentioned potty training at some point.  What a fool I was.  I devoted an entire day to that ordeal and the only person who used that dinky little potty was me.  

Oh, for shame.

That is a true statement.  As I teacher I know that I must model appropriate expectations for my student, therefore I squatted on that cereal bowl sized portable toilet.

My child did not use the potty.  

Gosh I hate that word.

 No accidents, but my toddler held her bladder and bowels ALL DAY except for her nap when she went in her diaper.  

I learned two things that day:

1.  My kid possesses the physical ability to be potty trained since she can control herself.

2.  Ain't nobody got time for that.

At 22 months, she is still on the young side, so I'll wait a little longer and try again.

That's code for "I'll let the daycare ladies do it."

We picked up Allison and went to the blow-dry bar up in Carmel.  As Annie Lenox and Aretha once said, we were "Sisters  doing it for themselves."

Oh no we weren't.  

We paid someone to do it for us.  

Jamie then joined us and we paid a lot of attention to the stuff behind the curtain at the Nordstrom Anniversary sale.  

We met Robby and Meghan at Ocean Prime for dinner.  

Here I was happy in the bar.

That smile and sleek hair quickly faded as the minute ticked past our 7:30 reservation.

The smile, not the hair.

That still looked great.

I continued to harass the modelesque hostesses and when I was promptly ignored by a manager I decided to bid a rather loud adieu to those fools.

My face got all red as I announced I was starving and leaving since it was 8:30 and "that man ignored me" as I pointed out the guy like he was in a line up.

The head dude manager then came to my aid, and we were quickly seated with free shrimp cocktails.   I don't usually cluck at people, but I did pull out a bit of 7th grade attitude, and it was effective.

The food was great, but I shan't be returning.  

I mean, seriously Ocean Prime people.

My sister lives in Mayberry, TN and rarely enjoys an adults- only dinner at a restaurant with cloth napkins.  Thanks for ruining it.

Thanks for the visit, Kate.

More Summer and the 4th of July

The summer has been rolling by quite quickly.  I have a list of things to do on my fridge with G before I go back to school, and visiting a splash park/pad was one of them.

Gee whiz, sounds like fun, right?

Not if you're my child.

I have never seen a bigger display of wussiness in my entire life.  

She never cried, but she was not interested.

There was water everywhere and big buckets of it that would dump down at unexpected times.

You all probably know this.

However, I'm a splash park/pad novice.

I don't even know what it's technically called.

Genevieve maintained the perimeter, if you know what I mean.  She was like the weird kid sitting on the sidelines watching the cheerleaders practice.

Until she spied a little pole where there was a tiny hole.  The water came out with about the same amount of force that water is ejected from a water fountain.

In an elementary school built in 1923 that is about to be torn down.  

Then she was in heaven.  

We spent most of our time at the slide at the park that was located about 10 feet away.

My ever cautious Myrtle continuously slapped the slide and stated emphatically "slide hot, Momma!"  

As if she was on some type of toddler safety patrol team.

I learned later that my mother had taught her touch the slide with her hands before sliding to avoid 3rd degree burns.

Thanks Mom.  

We rounded out that big day with a trip to Mrs. Curl, an old little ice cream spot.  

Later in the week we had a play date with Charlotte and Liam.  We walked on the Monon to the fire station, and my sassy lady refused to get in her stroller.

Liam was no dummy.

He hopped right in for the free ride.  

We toured the fire house, which mostly involved climbing all over the trucks.  

We had an early dinner at Bazbeaux and then walked across the street for Huddles frozen yogurt.  

G seems more smitten with ice cream than cake!

On the 4th of July we spent the day and night with my parents.  

YaYa gave Genevieve a little flag, also known as an eye impaler.  

The flag flipping was vigorous.  

Robby was on grill duty again.  

I'm not sure where or when my once helpless brother learned his way around a grill and kitchen, but he's quite a talent now.  

On Saturday Genevieve was treated to a visit with the "yee haws" at Teri and Ken's house.  

Saturday was just beautiful in TH, so we pooled it at the Country Club.

The 4th of July pool games at the Country Club was once my mother's annual summer project.

She and Teri and several other women organized the whole day's events.  

We participated in swimming races, diving board competitions and egg tosses on the front lawn.

It was the greatest summer spectacle ever created until the infamous summer of '92.

 I nearly drowned while competing against a group of overzealous teenage boys in the watermelon game.

The "game" consisted of  a greased watermelon in the middle of the deep end and there were two opposing teams that swam towards it from opposite sides of the pool.  You had to work with your team to drag the watermelon to your side and actually hoist it up on the pool deck. 

It got brutal.

I was 13 or 14.  

A lovely chap named Brian ( who I would totally kick in the nuts to this day)

got a little rough.

He held my head under the water nowhere near the watermelon brawl.

I believe Jane blew the whistle, about drug him out of the pool by his hair, and had a verbal altercation with his mother.

Good times.

Jane promptly retired from her post that year, eloquently stating:

"let them go out there and kill each other.  Bob, our kids are out."

Sadly, mother did not go on to pen The Hunger Games, although she had the original idea.  

All of those great memories aside, I took my toddler in the pool with nary a watermelon in sight.  Oh, and I so get the mother bear complex now that I have a child.  I applaud my mother for her restraint.  I nearly smacked a kid for squirting water in my baby's face.  

Sweet G longed for the diving board.

We finished up our raucous week with some mint smelling on the patio.

Happy 4th!

Family Vacation 2014

We left Charlotte on Saturday morning and drove down to Isle of Palms.  I am the self-appointed family vacation planner.  I pride myself on choosing the best vacation houses.  I have some high standards, friends.  When we arrived I was thrilled to see that the house was just as lovely as the photos online.  

My little crew was the first to arrive, since the rest of the fam had stopped to tour the Biltmore Estate in Asheville.  I do love that place, but I've already been there twice.  Two bouts of extreme jealousy are about all I can take.  That place is amazing.

As soon as we arrived, we spend some time in our pool.  

Trinity's pal Josh lives in Mount Pleasant, which is only about 20 minutes from where we were staying.  He and his wife Heather delivered Mexican food to us on our first evening.  We had a great time catching up and introducing our children to one another.  

The girls were fast friends and engaged in some Monkeys Jumping on the Bed playtime.  Peyton is 3 1/2, and Lorelei was born 3 days after Genevieve.  

The rest of the family arrived around 8:00 on Saturday.  We drove into Charleston on Sunday to do the touristy carriage ride.  My family had done this years ago when Kate and I were in college and Robby was still in high school.  We stayed on Kiawah Island and Mom and Dad let Katie and I take our college boyfriends.  Now they shared a room, so Jane and Bob weren't that liberal, but still!

It makes me chuckle now that I'm a parent myself.

We fueled up for the carriage with some fudge and pralines.

This candy guy was just enamored with my daughter.

It was so cute.

Maybe he was just trying to sell more pralines.

Yes, well his plan was a success.

I filled my bag with those brown sugary slabs of heaven.  

We had to wait for our ride.  Genevieve busied herself by eating Cheezits whilst sitting on the sidewalk.

Such a southern belle.

I will toot my kid's horn now.  She was great on the hour tour.  She listened to the guide and would randomly scream "yee-haw" and point to the horse.  It was pretty cute.  She was just so excited.

Mom snapped this picture as she turned to the rest of the family to scream "yee-haw."  

For some reason this picture makes me think of my favorite scene in What about Bob? when Bill Murray keeps screaming, "I'm sailing!   I'm sailing!"  Then the camera pans out and he's tethered to the mast of the sailboat. Or maybe the starboard.  I don't know my boat parts.  I just find that scene hysterical.  

We spent some time on the beach and this year G got along better with the sand.  Less screaming and more slinging.  

This may be my new favorite family picture.  

YaYa and Bob took the girls to the aquarium in Charleston one morning.  Katie and I decided to dress them as twinsies, because we're like that.

I called them Arnold and Danny, since they are about the same size difference as those two stellar actors in Twins.  

I'll cease with the 80s/90s movies references.

Those pants made them like chameleons at the aquarium.  They blended right in with the water.  

That's a river otter.

One evening YaYa and I hung around while the rest of the family went to a baseball game in Charleston.  

The Charleston Riverdogs played the Savannah Sand Gnats in a stellar minor league baseball game.  They had fun but said they were about as good as watching a high school baseball game.

Trinity and I went to WholeFoods (my happy place) and bought Caroline a cake.  She was so helpful and attentive to Lady G.  

This stair step selfie was Sista Katie's idea.

She's always whining about the size of her forehead, which I totally understand.  I have a fivehead too.

When she sent this I nearly fell over.  

This didn't exactly help her cause.

Snarf.

Mom and Dad took their grandchildren to the beach to fly kites one evening.  

We had such a wonderful time, as we do every year together!

In case you were worried about the geriatric feline, your concerns are unfounded.  

She spent the week with our darling Ashleigh!

 A single attentive adult must have been like Club Med for our curmudgeon of a cat!