Vive la France!

Vive la France! 

We finally made it to Normandy, after a beer-and-frites- laden stop in Brussels and a longer than anticipated drive in our rented Fiat Talento. (Google it. Then feel sorry for yours truly, driving that beast around traffic circles and careening down cobblestones alleys.) 

We are staying in the carriage house of an actual castle, and it has a trampoline and a playground. Not to mention, a moat. F+F are in heaven. The weather is terrible. Grandma and Grandpa are loving their first European adventure- or so they say. Normandy cidre is not half bad. French cheese is very stinky. The D-Day beaches await.

Happy Monday from the land of long lunches and lazy afternoons.

(Photos flatly refuse to upload. Tons when home.) 

A Super Crazy Two Weeks



I can't remember the last time I skipped an entire blog week, and think I even wrote a quick note the first week I had both kids home from the hospital. But boy are we in the thick of things at the moment, and moving at warp speed. Last week, after five days of drinking from a fire hose in the new job, I left both kids for the first time since I had Ford. The weeklong SJA Course in Charlottesville was both mandatory and helpful- a rare thing in the Army- and a sort of "welcome to the big leagues" announcement by way of "a whole lot of information you really, really need to have if you don't want to get yourself or your boss fired immediately." So I drank way less beer and took way more notes than I'm accustomed to when at the JAG school.

I did get in a couple earlllyyy morning (class started at 0730) trail runs in one of my favorite places, though, and on my one night with no mandatory evening social event, Nicole drove up from Raleigh to have dinner and a glass (or two) of wine at my favorite South African restaurant. I was thrilled to get to see her, and our Residence Inn sleepover (she drove back the next day) was the absolute best part of the trip.

It was really, really hard to leave F+F though, and I would've been beside myself if I hadn't known they were having a great time with Ana & Ata. (Also, Seth would've had a pretty rough week.) This is the four amigos doing the wave as I valiantly fought off tears backing out of the driveway.





But the tiny terrorists had a much better week than I did, and from what I could tell didn't miss me at all.

I got back just in time to ruin bedtime Friday night, after a loonnnggggg drive home, and made the giant mistake of giving Finley the "working Mom guilt" present she requested:

Worst. Idea. Ever. She loves them but they're a real death trap.

Mom and Dad stuck around Saturday so I got to see a little bit of them. Mom and I snuck in a quick hike up Poplopen Torne, and they spent the rest of the day helping us get ready to tackle a crazy week ahead after we realized that we leave for France on Friday! (I'm so overwhelmed with all things related to the new office plus our transition to a two-real-job-household that I haven't even considered packing. It is likely that we'll show up in Europe with a couple of toothbrushes, a coloring book, and the wrong sized diapers.)

Because "why not?"... Saturday also included an ER trip for Ford (who is fine, just a little under the weather). But what a welcome home. Being a working Mom is hard, y'all.

So with all of those balls in the air, naturally Sunday- after the very sad morning departure of Ana & Ata- we ended up hosting a Father's Day BBQ for 16. Seth cooked absurd amounts of meat, and the unusually warm evening devolved into one of makeshift water slides, naked kids, lots of clothing changes, plenty of hilarity, more than a few tears, and a ton of beer. Kind of a perfect way to celebrate father's day. I'm beyond thankful for my Dad, who always comes through for us even when it means a long and painful cross country drive, and for Seth, who revels in the chaos and belly laughs that is parenting our twounderthree. And for good friends in the trenches with us.

That photo is a real keeper. Two other faves are this screenshot of a cousin facetime, with Finley- who had to wear a Sheriff Callie costume to dinner- telling Tyler to "look at my tail!"

And of a gleeful "sword" fight on Sunday morning.

Now here goes nothing! on a quick and crazy short week before we head across the pond.

One Last Weekend, and the Return to the Rat Race.

I usually try to update this blog on Monday, Tuesday at the latest, and consider Wednesday a "break glass if needed" option. It's been a long time since I didn't get around to it until Friday afternoon. But here we find ourselves, for the first time since before we were married, both with job jobs. We've been so lucky to have a couple years during which somebody was always on a school schedule, to get our fearsome foursome started.


And we thought that was tough. Now we've officially joined the ranks of the harried two-crazy-job parents, conducting high level negotiations over daycare dropoff and pickup, drawing straws to see who gets the "good" workout slot- and it should tell you something that this is the 5am one- and sometimes having to go back to work (or pull out the work computer) after the kids are in bed. It's definitely not glamorous, and this week especially we are really living on the edge. We gratefully accepted a dinner invitation from friends on Wednesday when we found we had nothing to feed the kids for dinner besides beer and spaghetti noodles.

Knowing our kids, they would've been delighted, but we considered this pretty rock bottom.


Naturally before we re-entered the rat race, we had one last hurrah. Seth finally got time off to go to Walter Reed to have prosthetic work done Thursday, and I jumped at the chance to take a weekend road trip to meet him in our old stomping grounds. First, Ford had surgery to put tubes in his ears, and was a real champ about it.

He was way more upset about Friday traffic on 95, and he and Finley eventually demanded a break from car exhaust and Disney fumes. I felt the same way, so we took a long one and played in a creek at a park in Delaware.

 By which I mean, everyone got muddy and wet.

We eventually made it, having been reminded by the Capital Beltway what we don't miss about DC, and spent the rest of the weekend enjoying the things we do.

We had a picnic at the newly renovated Walter Reed USO, and reflected that WRNMMC is not nearly so terrible when you're not a hostage there.

We got to see the Taylor fam, and Finley got her first haircut from Ha (a tradition).

Finley showed Ford her favorite splashpark.

We made pilgrimages to Redwood and Georgetown Cupcake, and to the Lincoln Memorial, where Seth and I had one of our first dates and later got engaged. We thought it was really special. Naturally, Finley and Ford flung themselves on the ground at Lincoln's feet and cried. (Literally, over spilled milk.)

and we stopped by the Siriwardenes' to pee in their fabulous pool on our way out of town.

 We stayed so late that the kids and I didn't get home until 3am (Seth's legs weren't done until Tuesday), so I started my first day of the new (crazy) job solo parenting on 3 hours of sleep. Nowhere to go but up, right...?

Finley often hogs the photos of the week, so this week's are two of Ford. "Smoking" a candy cigarette at the Siriwardenes', which cracked us all up,

and caught wreaking havoc on the toilet paper rolls at the new Navy Lodge.

Anniversary in the Berkshires, lots of dates, and even more poop.

My grandmother had a houseful of knick knacks, as grandmothers do, and one of them was an old trivet emblazoned with the phrase "the hurrier I go, the behinder I get." For some reason, that phrase comes to mind as the end of my all-too-brief post-school break comes to a close. Somehow, my week and a half without working was busier than ever, and I felt like I was running through the to-do list at breakneck speed only to watch it get longer and longer.

It didn't help that my car suffered a Series of Unfortunate Events, by which I mean finding every scrap of available metal or tire shred in the road all at once after years and years of incident-less commuting, and needed multiple trips to the shop to fix flats. Or that Ford's little ears need tubes. Or that May-graduation month- is lunacy at West Point, or that the Student Detachment still hasn't managed to cut my orders, or that Seth finally found time to go to Walter Reed for prosthetic work, or that it's freaking spring turkey season... the list goes on and on. It's been total chaos.

We had lots to celebrate anyway, and- after a terrific date night in the city seeing "Book of Mormon" and checking another vaunted steakhouse off the list-

Seth talked me into skipping the big USMA graduation ceremony (reportedly a mess) for a spontaneous trip to the Berkshires for our anniversary weekend. Naturally, this is because turkeys were still in season just across the border in Vermont. Also naturally, I jumped on any chance to go somewhere I've never been.

So it was perfectly "us."

Seth went turkey hunting, and although the elusive little bast**ds weren't feeling as celebratory as we were, he enjoyed his time in the woods. I got to run up Mount Greylock, the highest mountain in Massachusetts, with views of five states.

Finley and Ford scored a hotel room with a hot tub

and a pool. Ford is a miniature Michael Phelps.

Finley is not.

We ate beautiful dinners outside,

got creative in Stockbridge at the Norman Rockwell museum,

 ate our respective body weights in chocolate cake,

and passed out early.

Oh, and Ford pooped on Finley's travel bed.

It was an epic and laughter-filled anniversary weekend. Hard to believe it's only our fourth.

This week has been nuts, and Seth's at Walter Reed right now. Our harebrained scheme is for me to meet him tomorrow after Ford's surgery, having driven down in Friday traffic with both kids. What could go wrong?

But in the meantime, I took today to finish one of my favorite things about my abbreviated leave. I took Ford on our date day, a week after Finley's "Mom & Me" trip to the philharmonic to see the "biolins" and eat tacos in "our fanciest dresses" (her request.)

We also visited the Disney store for the first time (no doubt the beginning of a beautiful- and expensive- relationship) and- thanks to pouring rain- an indoor playground, for which we were ever-so-slightly overdressed.

Today it was gorgeous out, and Ford and I explored Governor's Island, an old Army and later Coast Guard post in the middle of the New York harbor. It's a ten minute, $2 ferry ride from Manhattan and has been converted into playgrounds, splash parks, a hammock grove, and bike trails. It's by far the coolest (and least publicized) thing to do in the city with kids, and we enjoyed every idyllic minute.

 Afterwards, we stopped by the World's Best Bar (no kidding) for bangers and mash (Ford) and a beer (me.) 

There are lots of things from the to-do list I didn't get to on leave, but I'm so glad I took a day to spend alone with each kid. It was a unique and special way to focus on the interesting little people they're each becoming in their own right, and I hope we can make it a tradition.

Although ask me how "interesting" and "special" I think they are after the long Friday haul to DC with them in tow... (downloads Disney movies frantically.)

I have tons of favorites from this week, but love this one especially, of everybody wanting in on Seth's anniversary present. Not to be outdone, they went and got their own headphones.