Laowai

recent posts

  • GRAY DAY

    So the weather today is matching my mood. We had a bad night with Bea. She is not the best sleeper. I feel like she’s so inconsistent that I can’t even figure out what to do about it or what might be causing it. 

    We woke up and I fed Bea some breakfast and soon she was having a meltdown for no apparent reason. So we decided we needed to get out of the house and do something out of the ordinary. We drove down to the Ukrainian Village neighborhood of Chicago. We started out at a restaurant for brunch. Brian and I were on eggshells thinking that she would launch into a fit again. But she did OK and we had a nice meal and sipped our coffee. Then we decided to go out for a little walk to see some Ukrainian churches and check out a store I had read about. She did OK for a while but it was cold and she was tired and she lost it again. So we hustled back to the car and I just felt spent and I didn’t feel like talking the whole ride back.

    Now, thankfully, she’s having a nice long nap and I’ve been doing some mindless blog reading with a warm cup of hot chocolate. The Bears are playing on TV and they just showed that it is snowing at Soldier Field. It feels like winter and I could sit here and be cosy on the couch all day long. Brian by the way is out for a bike ride – that just shows how we deal with stress – I sit around and do nothing and he goes out into the 35 degree, windy weather to ride miles and miles on his bike.

    Here are a few photos from our little excursion:







  • A BOB

    Well – I decided to attempt (again) to do something about Bea’s mop of a hairdo on Friday. This is what we ended up with.

    I bribed her with candy and her favorite yogurt drink. And I let her hold some useless kids scissors. In my haste to cut it quickly while she calmly wolfed down her half-jelly beans I cut it a wee bit shorter than I intended. 

    >

    I had a moment of “oh my goodness, I just cut my baby’s sweet soft baby hair – boo hoo” but it was really only a moment. I was worried what Brian would think but he was OK with it and said she looks like a little girl. I don’t mind cutting her hair myself but I think I need to get a pro to do it once in a while. So there it is – it’s done – I think it’s an improvement – if you don’t look too closely.

  • SHOULD I PROCLAIM MY LOVE ON A BIG ROCK?


    Bea and I went for a walk along Lake Michigan this morning. The area that is part of the Northwestern University campus has a bunch of these paintings on old pieces of concrete. I like to look at them. 









    Makes me wonder if those girls said yes to marriage and prom. 


  • I VOTED!

  • TWO LITTLE MONKEYS

    First board game:

    First board game

    Serious kitchen play:

    Serious kitchen

    Building:

    Building a pool

    Jumping in the leaves with Jenna and Jennifer:

    Jenna jennifer in leaves

    Jenna in leaves

    A little cheerleader and a little pirate sample some candy:

    Halloween 1

    Halloween 2

    Two little monkeys jumping on the bed:

    Jumping on the bed 1

    Jumping on the bed 2

    Jumping on the bed 3

  • BOO!

  • CHEAP THRILLS

    We had a low key weekend. 

    Starting on Friday – spur of the moment I decided to take Bea to get her hair cut. It’s bugging me and I just wanted a professional to clean it up a little. So I took her to a special kids haircut place. It looked like a toy store when we walked in. They had miniature cars and boats that kids could sit in while getting their hair cut. And you could pick a movie to watch while getting your coif. It should have felt like a happy wonderland to Bea. But it didn’t, she clung to my neck with a death grip and would not stop crying. I tried walking around with her, showing her all the toys and balloons for about 10 or 15 minutes but it didn’t help. So we ended up leaving with no haircut. OK, so maybe this part of the weekend was not really a thrill but at least it was cheap. I just gave the poor woman a little tip for wasting her time.
    Saturday morning I went to a rummage sale at a big church near our house. Look at all the loot I got for four dollars. An airtane (that’s airplane to you), some little Pyrex storage jars, a metal serving dish and a cool little Danish dish. Even if I hadn’t found anything it was very entertaining to walk around the rabbit warren of basement rooms in the church and see the over-eager people rummaging. Plus, it’s always thrilling when I get to go out and do some shopping all by myself. Then later on Saturday we did some Christmas shopping at an outlet place in Wisconsin – wow there were lots of sales. That was thrilling. Sunday, I was sick in the morning but my super-hero husband took such good care of me that it was almost a thrill to stay in bed… almost. I was feeling better by the evening and so it was time to carve pumpkins. Bea started crying in horror when I cut open the first pumpkin and she glimpsed her first pumpkin guts. She perked up later and enjoyed watching me make a mess. I really wanted a family photo with the pumpkins – so we went outside and just as Brian was setting up the camera it started snowing. We decided this one photo was good enough and dashed back inside. After dinner I lit one of the pumpkins and we turned off all the lights. Bea and I sat down to gaze at the glowing pumpkin and she promptly tucked her head under my chin and fell asleep. Sigh.

  • NEW BROOM AND NEW COAT




  • OLD PHOTOS

    Here’s a fun tool to make your photos look like they came out of a dusty crusty box in your attic.



    They started out like this:



  • PUMPKIN FARM





    Bea decided to get her groove on. Warning: this might make you dizzy.