Eh, It was Alright

As the weather cools off, then gets blazing hot, it becomes possible to enjoy the outdoors again. St. Louis has its issues, as any city does, but it has some amazing qualities and attractions too. If, for example, you wanted to exhaust your small children so there might be a faint possibility of them sleeping in on the weekend, it is easily accomplished. We attempted this over the weekend, with moderate success, 50% of the time.

L has started soccer, so our Saturdays now must involve a soccer game at some point. This weekend it was mid-day. L & M woke up bright and early around 7am because it was Saturday and not Monday-Friday when they sleep like little logs. They deemed it to be a waffle morning, so M and I headed down to start breakfast. There are few things in this world better than an agreeable 2 and 4 year old.

M cracked the egg for the waffles herself, significantly increasing the amount of calcium and crunch in our waffles...

L and Dad came down a bit later and started on the eggs and bacon. L filled up on eggs and waffles so she would have the energy her muscles needed to play in her game. For someone that spends a fair amount of the game literally twirling round the field, she takes her pregame nutrition very seriously. (I LOVE her game twirling, I'm not being critical at all, it is adorable). After breakfast we headed out for our day.

The soccer game was first and L did amazingly well. To quote her coach, "L actually RAN today!" She needs time to take it all in, by the end of the season, she'll be in the herd with the rest of the kids, maybe. We left the game and headed to a neighborhood festival to grab some lunch and check out the festivities. There were a lot of festivities and awesome (free) crafts. Unfortunately, between the game and the early wake up, L passed out pretty quick.

L was out cold for lunch, she was none too pleased with us when we woke her up.

We ended up at a veggie/vegan restaurant, which is a little outside our normal dining fare but we were hungry so, eat or starve. They had a kids menu, it had nuggets on it, Moose was thrilled. We decided not to inform her they were cauliflower nuggets, maybe she wouldn't notice? Turns out she didn't, that kid loves cauliflower nuggets. Half of me was thrilled she was eating a vegetable, and the other half realized she'd just discovered a lower calorie, lower fat, lower protein alternative to one of three foods she will eat. I tried to celebrate the first half.

We finally woke L up so she could eat. We figured she would be fine with the nuggets, if M ate them surely L would be ok with it. Not a chance. She didn't want the nuggets, she didn't want tater tots she didn't want anything, maybe to go back to sleep. But, since we had awakened her, there was no chance of that.

We finished out our day with a St Louis FC game. It was the last home game of the season so there were fireworks afterwards. With cousins and other kids there it was a pretty awesome way to end our day. As we were loading the girls into the car that night, I asked L if she had enjoyed her day. Her response, "Eh, it was alright. What can we do tomorrow?" The bar has been raised...

Less is More

The first full week of school and day care is one day away from being in the books (aka its Thursday night, finally). We have embraced the idea of not overbooking our children, which has been fairly easy up to this point. L is only 4, there just aren't that many options for 3 and under. With the school year beginning, L is suddenly doing swim lessons, soccer practice, soccer games and violin lessons. To be fair, violin lessons are during school hours so they probably don't count, and soccer games don't even start for a few more weeks. Basically we have two nights dedicated to kids events and that will soon change to two nights and a weekend day. I think team sports and swimming and music are all valuable experiences, I just think I don't want to venture down this wormhole this early.

My first run at retrieving both girls from both different locations after work/school took almost an hour and a half. That's about 45 minutes too long. Unless I start leaving work at 3:30 everyday, we will not be making it to our scheduled events. I'm sure as road construction projects end and I learn the process for two different pick ups, we can shave some time off our new routine, hopefully. Today though, was not that magical time in the future where I'm suddenly the organized, non-frazzled mother that effortlessly gets all this stuff done; today was the harsh reality that you can't fit 60 minutes of stuff into 15 minutes of actual time.

Obviously, since I haven't mastered picking the girls up from school yet, I didn't have a nutritious, delicious and amazing dinner prepped for tonight either. After 60 minutes in 98 degree weather watching L watch her teammates, my husband nixed my vote for pizza and suggested Panera, if M would eat something there. M agreed to a PB&J with the one condition that nary a molecule of jelly even think of touching her sandwich. We agreed.

I'm not sure if it was the white bread, the not natural peanut butter, the non-organic yogurt, or the three potato chips they each negotiated away from their father, but tonight, those girls ate. L even ate the crust of her sandwich, M ate all the way to the crust. M has this unnatural ability to separate, with almost surgical precision, her food from its crust. They even had a few bites of my apple. It was one of those family dinners you see on tv that makes you roll your eyes because never has an actual dinner been eaten by real people that goes that well. We had two delightfully happy and chatty little people eating their dinners with little to no threatening or bribing. I don't know what happened but I do know I plan on eating dinner at Panera, in that booth, every single night until the magic stops or they kick us out.

If you recognize this booth, stay away, the magic is all mine.