Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!  The Peanut went as a strawberry this year :)  Her preschool class had a costume parade (loaded the kids into buggies and pushed them around the school into other classrooms so the "big kids" could see them) and then a class party.  Here are some pictures from Leah's Halloween festivities.  

Peanut in all her strawberry glory ...

Other costumes in the 1-year-old classroom included a peanut, two lions, Tigger, a hamburger, a dragon, two cowgirls, and various superheros.  As you would expect, it was adorable.

But this is how our day started ...

"I hate Tuesdays"

But things started to improve once we arrived at preschool and loaded up the buggies for the parade.

"Wheeeeeee, this is fun!"

And then the party started ...  (the kid in the background looks ready to get his groove on)

The kids chatted it up before the food was brought out ...

Leah: "I just heard that they are going to start limiting our goldfish intake at snack time to one handful?!?!"
Leah's Dragon Friend: "I'm stunned!"

Leah has acquired a new "activity" at her preschool mealtimes, where after she finishes her snack, she'll graze around the table trying to partake in her friends' leftovers.  For some reason, my 25th-percentile-for-weight child has the biggest appetite in her class.

Here she is having her first course (her snack) ...

Now, soliciting leftovers from her classmates ...

And .......  success. 

Happy Halloween!

All's well when Dad's here.

Easter Weekend

On Saturday we went out for brunch in Studio City with our friends Emily and Kenley.  As usual, Leah provided excellent entertainment by flirting with the other patrons in the restaurant.  She was content to look around and check everything out for a while, and then when she grew bored of that, we just passed her around among the 4 adults.  Leah was so well behaved the whole time.

After brunch we decided to cross off one more item on our L.A. bucket list.  So we drove 15 minutes east to Pasadena.  Can you guess what this is?

This totally made my week!  The "Father of the Bride" House! 

Then, like the last-minute-mom that I am, I went out and bought Leah's Easter Basket.  That's right, I waited until the night before.  I had really good intentions of doing this earlier, I swear.  But after a week-long intensive class that required me to be at campus by 8 a.m. and sometimes stay until 8 p.m. I just plain ran out of time and energy.  So I went to Target at 5:30 p.m. with the rest of the loser-moms on a Saturday night to pick through the remains of the Easter display.  It's amazing how easy shopping is without a baby in tow.  Normally I dread going to Target, but I found my Easter goodies, plus a few essentials for the week, and was back home within 1 hour. 

Here's the Peanut's first Easter basket.  The Easter Bunny brought Leah a bottle of Aquaphor (for baby's dry skin) and organic fruit puffs along with the standard chocolate bunny and jelly beans. 

For Easter church we went to a service at the Malibu bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  The Malibu Presbyterian Church holds this special Easter service each year.  It was held in this giant tent and they had a contemporary band that sounded like a professional rock band.  It was pretty loud but lots of fun and the weather was absolutely perfect for an outdoor service.  Leah was pretty-in-pink in an embroidered dress, a gift from her Nana.

Family picture taken by a nice stranger at church.

Waiting for the service to begin and checking out the other babies.

Time for a quick diaper change in the back of the Jeep.

And then we changed Leah out of her Easter finest, and went to lunch at our favorite Bar-B-Q spot, Wood Ranch.  Happy Easter everyone!

A Change of Heart

Well Valentine's Day has come and gone.  I never liked Valentine's Day.  I thought it was an over-commercialized,  non-holiday, it didn't come with any time off from school or work, so what was the point.  But I've had a change of heart.  This year, I really enjoyed Valentine's Day.  I made Valentine's cards for her daycare classmates and peanut butter chocolate chip cookies for the parents and teachers.  And I was excited about this!

In fact, since Leah arrived, I've started to like the smaller holidays more and the bigger holidays less.   She'll be wearing shamrocks for St. Patty's day and I'm even looking forward to the Fourth of July because of its potential for back-yard bar-b-ques and Leah in a bathing suit.  I think having a baby gives me an excuse to celebrate those "little" holidays when I wouldn't have bothered before. 

As a kid I never cared much for Thanksgiving, but now, the idea of eating delicious food and spending time with family really appeals to me.  It's easily become my favorite fall holiday, inching out Halloween, with Christmas coming in dead last.  Growing up I loved Christmas.  Christmas meant time off from school and getting presents.  And in college, Christmas was about seeing my family and hanging out with old high school friends.  Now I kind of dread Christmas.

I do love the religious side of Christmas - going to church on Christmas eve, the decorations, singing carols, and spending time with family.  But I hate the commercial side of Christmas and the obligations that come with it.  We were so fortunate this year to have my mom and sister come to visit us (thanks guys!!!), but usually it's BA and I traveling to see family.  We spend massive amounts of money and time to get back east and the whole process is just stressful.  Driving around trying to see everyone and never feeling like we spent enough time with the right people.  And presents - ugh.  If I had it my way, we'd never exchange presents again.  I don't care for them because I spend several weeks leading up to Christmas stressing over whether or not I got the right things for everyone, and making sure to get an equal number of presents for each member of the family.  And I really don't want people to feel obligated to spend their hard-earned money on me either.  I am a firm believer in the saying, "it's more fun to give, than to get."  But I'd rather just cut the whole thing out.  Let's all save our money and do something else with it.  I have a friend in law school whose entire family - brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents - takes a vacation to Aruba for Christmas.  They've done this for 8 years now.  They don't buy any presents, they just all go on a sunny beach vacation together.  This sounds perfect to me.  And for a while now, my side of the family has been trying to do something like this but we've never been able to pull it off.  Maybe this year we'll finally do it. 

Last week I found out that an acquaintance of mine has leukemia.  She is only 28 and was living a normal young adult life in D.C. until she came down with a flu that wouldn't go away.  Less than 2 months later she checked into the hospital and started chemotherapy.  That was a year ago.  Now the cancer is still in her bone marrow and has spread to her brain and spinal fluid.  This is the same cancer that killed my uncle 20 years ago.  It is a terrible, awful disease, and it's not fair.

When I heard about this acquaintance of mine, my heart dropped.  I just wanted to snuggle with Leah and thank God that everyone in my family is healthy.  I thought back to Scary Doctor and how much they tormented me.  I thought about how wrong Scary Doctor was and how lucky I am to have a healthy, happy, baby girl.  I was reminded of what's really important in life; the only thing that is important in life ... spending time with the ones you love, and letting those people who you can't spend time with know that you love them, too.  And that's why the "little" holidays are so great for me now.  They don't come with stress, or presents, or travel, or obligations.  They just come with family, and close friends.  And Leah.

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day - from our littlest Valentine to you.

Peanut is wearing my red velvet overalls that I wore for my first Valentine's Day, 30 years ago.

The Crying

I am really losing my mind over Leah these days.  Since we are trying to transition her off the sleeping wedge and into sleeping flat in her crib we have not had a peaceful night.  She really hates sleeping alone in her crib.  The wedge became a substitute for her parent's arms and she would sleep pretty well on it - waking once or twice a night to feed (since she was born she has never slept through the night; she went 7 hours once but that still included a 9:00 p.m. feeding and a 4:00 a.m. feeding - in other words, our standards for a "peaceful night" are extremely low).  It was predictable and manageable.  But since we've moved her off the wedge she is not shy about telling us how much she hates this idea.  She is still in our room because we had company over the holidays and we have more company coming, so this is a small part of the problem because when she cries it is at full volume and no matter how hard I press my hands over my ears I cannot dim the noise.  It is so loud in there my ear drums start hurting.  Last night she woke up crying at 9:30 p.m.  So I tried to feed her thinking she didn't get enough during the day, but when I tried to give her a bottle she turned away.  So I changed her diaper and put her back in her crib where she slept until about midnight.  Then she woke up screaming at the top of her lungs and did not stop for an hour.  There is no logical reason for all the night waking.  I know this because the minute we picked her up from her crib, the crying ceased, and she started smiling at us - like she was thinking "gotcha!"  I am so frustrated with this.  She cannot, or will not, calm herself down in her crib.  This has been going on for too long.  And at this rate, I don't feel sorry for her - I feel sorry for me.  I cannot take this anymore.  Plus, after she cries for an hour in the middle of the night I cannot calm myself down.  By that point I have so much anxious energy over the crying that I am literally unable to fall back asleep because I am just waiting for her to start crying again in 10 minutes and wake me up again.  So I lay in bed with butterflies in my stomach over this.  I didn't fall back asleep until 3 a.m. after her hour of screaming at midnight.  BA is being much more patient about the whole thing but even he is cracking.  She woke up again at 4:00 a.m. last night, this time just fussy and whining, but BA was able to ignore it until 6 a.m. when he got up to feed her.  There just seems to be no break in sight for us.  Every time I think we are turning a corner we relapse.  It's just so hard right now.

But, let's think back to happier times ...  We did so much over the break that I couldn't blog about everything at the time, so here's another one of our adventures from the holidays.  

My mother has been watching the Rose Parade every year for as long as I can remember.  So this year, during her visit, we decided to attend the float decorating that is open to the public in the days leading up to the Parade.  It was so cool to see how they are assembled.  The floats must all be covered in some sort of natural, organic material and even though it takes over 6 months to build the floats, people work round-the-clock to decorate them in a matter of days just before the parade so the flowers don't die. 

A sample of some of the organic materials used to cover the floats

Check out the path made of potatoes

Taking a break with Grandma

Yay for the Rose Parade!

Christmas 2011 - Better Late than Never

Better late than never.  It's not that I forgot about Christmas, it's that we've been so busy doing other things that I haven't had time to stop and blog about it.  So here is the re-cap.  Christmas morning, we made my family's traditional eggnog pancakes - it's my Dad's recipe and during Christmas time he would substitute eggnog (sans the booze) for the usual buttermilk the recipe calls for.  My mom flew in from Florida later that morning and we opened presents that afternoon.  Leah got a ton of presents.  She was by far the most popular family member this year.  And Santa even stopped by and brought her a new high chair!

Santa Leah just waking up - Peanut had several "costume changes" throughout the day as you will see

Discovering her new highchair

Grandma has arrived!

Merry Christmas from Baby Leah!  She's now changed into her present-opening outfit from her Nana

Even babies have to take a break from the excitment

BA had an especially wonderful surprise gift for me.  It was a personalized book he made online called "A Story for Leah" and it was all about Leah's first 5 months with us and our first 5 months as her parents.  It was almost 50 pages of our photos and it was just beautiful. 

We wrapped up the day opening our stockings.  Peanut got a second Wabanub (pacifier with a stuffed animal attached) a bottle of Ajax, some baby spoons, and a case of formula!  The rest of us got the traditional goodies, candy, notepads, little gifts.

And BA and I gave each other a night out on the town.  A few days after Christmas we went to dinner on Rodeo drive at McCormick and Schmick's (thanks Dad for the gift card!) and then we went to a Cirque Du Soliel at the Kodak theatre in Hollywood. That's the same theatre where they host the Oscars. Grandma and Aunt Haley babysat Leah and BA and I had a wonderful time.  It was a great holiday season.

Beyond Christmas

Most years I'm just a little depressed after Christmas ends.  The excitement of the season is over, there's nothing to look forward to.  But not this year.  This year I'm looking forward to what comes after Christmas.  Partly because there are so many exciting events coming up in just the next few months.  In just 7 months I will have graduated from law school, moved from California to Georgia, studied and taken the Bar exam.  We are going on vacation to Hawaii with BA's parents in March, Leah turns one in July, and there's a good chance BA and I will trade my old '99 Toyota for a "new" used car.

The other reason why I'm anxious to get back to our regularly scheduled programing is that Leah has been kind of exhausting recently.  I am constantly trying to keep her either entertained or asleep, and failing miserably at both.  She so desperately wants to sit up and can't quite do it yet.  So gone are the days where she will play happily on her back or tummy for any extended period of time.  Leah has also been extremely fussy in the early evening; we are speculating that it is due to teething, but it's also probably due to the fact that she doesn't take long naps during the day and by 5 p.m. she is over-tired and very grumpy.  We usually put her to sleep at 7 p.m. so we are stuck in no-man's land from 5:00-6:30 p.m. where it's too early to feed her and put her to bed, but she desperately needs to take a nap.  The only thing that remotely keeps her happy at that time of night is if someone is holding her and walking around.  Not sitting - Mussolini won't let you sit, you must be moving around and holding her upright, otherwise she wails.  It's exhausting.  So I'm feeling pretty defeated.  And I need a break.  I am used to spending Christmas break relaxing, reading for fun, visiting family, going out with friends, etc.  There has been very little of that this year.  There has been no laying around reading books or watching TV.  I know this is an adjustment that comes with being a first-time parent.  I just didn't expect it to feel like so much work.

Christmas Time is Here

A very Merry Christmas to you. 

On Christmas eve we recruited Aunt Haley (who flew in from Washington, D.C. for the holidays) to take some family photos of us at the Beverly Hills sign.  We snapped a few of Aunt Haley too while we were there because the lighting was so good.

Lighting check - Beautiful 70 degree weather in L.A. on Christmas eve

Finally, a family photo by the sign (Leah's birthplace)

Leah is absolutely obsessed with her Aunt Haley.  She spends most of the day just staring at her and ignoring BA and me.  It's possible that she is trying to figure out why this person looks so much like her Mommy, or it's possible that she somehow recognizes that she met Haley before.  In any case, she loves Haley and can't get enough of her.

After our photo session we went home and got ready for church.  Leah wore her fancy Christmas dress and she looked adorable.

Later, BA told me that going to church was the highlight of the season for him.  He had been looking forward to walking into church as a family.  And Leah was a perfect little angel; she just sat contentedly on our laps and stared at the other people around us.  They all smiled and laughed back at her throughout the entire service.  She made it 45 minutes with only two tiny squeaks and then BA took her out to the baby room to feed her.

Lest you thought our celebrity sightings were over for 2011, we have another one for you.  We saw Pink.  At Church!  That's right, Pink the pop star was at our suburban Methodist church in Westlake Village with her baby.  She and her husband/boyfriend (not sure) just walked in like everyone else and sat in the pew with family members.  BA spotted her walking in and between the three adults we quickly confirmed that yes, Pink did have a baby recently, and yes, Pink did have a tattoo on the back of her neck, so obviously this was Pink in person.  She even got up to take her baby to the cry room right as BA was getting up to take Leah to the cry room to feed her.  And just to confirm our sighting, we walked out of church behind her and noticed that the soles of her black high heels were, in fact, pink.

After church we returned home to get Leah ready for bed.  We even put out cookies and milk for Santa. 

Once Leah was in bed we prepared our traditional Christmas feast of crab legs.  My family started eating crab legs (either snow or king) on Christmas when I was in high school.  It's become our tradition and it's one that I want to carry on with my kids.  The food was delicious, but the company was even better!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

The Aaron Family - Christmas 2011

First Day of Christmas Break

Well I finished my finals. And now the Christmas season can officially begin for me.  Since this is my last Christmas with an official break where I don't have any work responsibilities to worry about, I've decided to make the most of it.  So, I spent my first day of vacation at the jail, and riding in an elevator with a convicted felon.  Gasp.  Okay, I'll stop being so dramatic.  The jail was to get fingerprinted for the Bar Exam, and the felon wasn't even at the jail - he was at the doctor's office - and I only know he's a felon because he's also a celebrity.

I woke up on Friday expecting to clean the entire house.  Did not happen.  Instead I played with Peanut, picked up lunch for BA and me (yummy BLT's with avocado), and wrapped presents.  I did normal Christmas stuff that I'd been dying to do all during finals and could finally enjoy now that finals are over.  Then in the afternoon we went to a doctor's appointment for BA.

As we were walking into the medical building, there was a black Cadillac Escalade idling at the entrance.  I hate when people just park their cars in the middle of the road, as if they are too important to be bothered to use the parking lot.  I'm a lady with a stroller, let's move it, folks!  The passengers had just gotten out of the car and the driver wasn't moving out of the way fast enough for me.  So I glared into the drivers window to make my irritation known and looking back at me was this young guy with a huge handlebar mustache.  That struck me as odd, what kind of chauffer has a handlebar mustache, but I was so focused on making it to the appointment on time that I didn't bother to see who got out of the car.

We followed the passengers into the lobby and waited for the elevator.  At this point BA was already thinking that the man might be someone famous.  I guess I'm desensitized to L.A. celebrities because all I remember seeing was a guy with baggy grey jeans, boots, a huge silver chain and cross around his neck, and tattoos on his arms.  No big deal - millions of regular people look like that out here.  Well, as it turns out, he was the rapper and actor DMX.  The elevator came and since it was such a small elevator and there were 4 people in front of us, including DMX, I was planning on waiting on the next elevator.  DMX turned around, looked at us, and said, "come on in, there's plenty of room."  BA said at that point, when he heard DMX's voice, he had pretty much figured out who he was (never mind the fact that my husband is able to recognize rap stars from the late '90's).  I didn't think anything of it, except that it was nice for that man to insist that we get on the first elevator and that it was indeed a small elevator.  I actually didn't know it was him and it wasn't until we arrived in the doctor's office lobby that BA said to me, "was that DMX?"  I said, "who?"  BA said, "he's a rapper and he sings, 'ya'll gon' make me lose my mind, up in here, up in here..."  I said, "oh yes, of course I know that song.  That was him?"  A quick Google search on our phone confirmed that it was.

Anyway, what I can say is that DMX was very nice and polite, and he looked exactly like he does in pictures online.  Turns out DMX has several convictions for various felonies and is probably on probation right now.  Whoo-hoo!  Needless to say his music or his past are not exactly family friendly, but Leah made friends regardless.  She always does :)

After our little celebrity run-in, we went to the jail.  Where you would expect to see convicted criminals.  But didn't.  And that's it for my jail story. 

So that is how I spent my first day of vacation.  Today we did our final Christmas shopping of the season and mailed a bunch of packages.  Leah had a teething episode this afternoon which quickly turned into being over-tired and she's spent a good deal of the past hour screaming her pretty little head off.  Poor baby.  But I'm not in school, not taking finals, Christmas is a week away, and there is a bottle of wine with my name on it, and an automated baby swing with Leah's tushy in it, so we'll make it through.  

Leah's response upon hearing that she met DMX, "DM who???"

Peanut's Post: My Great Aunt Joanne

Peanut here.  I have a great aunt, named Aunt Joanne.  I say she's great for 2 reasons. #1: she's actually my mommy's aunt, and #2: she really is great!  My Aunt Joanne came to visit me last weekend and I just had to share some pictures. 

I was so excited when Aunt Joanne arrived

We did all sorts of fun activities.  We read books ...

We picked out a Christmas tree ...

I selected the tree - isn't it GREAT!

This was the moment when I expressed my dismay that such a
beautiful tree had to ride home atop a car with only 3 hubcaps.

We opened presents ...

This was an ornament from my Granny D. that Aunt Joanne brought with her.

Oh and one last exciting thing happened during Aunt Joanne's visit ... this is REALLY cool, so listen up.  I discovered my TOES!

Thanks for the visit Aunt Joanne!



Love, Peanut.