Happy birthday! We bought you a house.

Well, we didn't really. But we did move out of our condo (sniff), moved in with my parents (!), and closed on a house a week later. In that week Rory turned one, and on his birthday he stayed up way too late and mushed his cupcake. Which I then had to stuff some in his mouth. We also had lobster & corn, and he liked petting the lobsters and carrying around the corn--very tactile!

Two-plus months later, we are still at my parents' house while we renovate. From doing a redo of the bathroom to a total gut of the bathroom, kitchen, and replacing the window in the dining room with a sliding door and covering up the back door. Sounds easy, right? This is in combination with redoing the septic system (taking a few trees out in the process) and replacing the roof, which revealed some rotted siding that also needed replacing. Covering up the back door revealed--surprise!--more rot and a badly flashed porch attachments, so that came down too. (To our inspector's credit, he did say that we'd want to reinforce the deck, and there's no way he could have known about the siding.) Why not replace the bathroom and kitchen windows while we're at it? It's hard not to spiral into replacing A LOT of stuff.  I keep telling myself it'll be worth the wait, and soon it will be over.

Another year

"Every year unfolds like a petal inside all the years that preceded it." –Naomi Shihab Nye

Oh, yeah, I had a birthday! Since we were in NYC, we met friends in Hoboken for lunch, went to the cray-cray Toys R' Us in Times Sq. with the indoor Ferris Wheel. While we were tromping around looking for a Disney store, I saw a pair of Tokidoki rubber rain boots and got an immediate case of the "I wants."* Then some solo shopping to The Point Knitting Cafe, Purl, and Uniqlo. Followed by pizza, cake (strawberry shortcake), and lambic. Owen went to sleep fairly quickly, followed by a drunken evening at Tom & Jerry's.

Remember: beer before liquor, never been sicker. And lambic *is* beer. You'd think I'd be old enough to know this, but older is not always wiser.

Being righteously hung over did not stop me from eating my two-day-old red velvet cupcake from The Point (which I think is really from Magnolia's) that survived intact the train ride home. The cupcake was smartly "packaged" in an upside-down coffee cup & lid. Sure, it looked like a Glade air freshener, but it worked! Oh, and I can thank my mother-in-law's still-warm and homemade omusubi, rice balls wrapped in seaweed.

*I did get the boots as my present to myself, but thought about it for a week first.

almost 5 years ago to the minute

Owen was born!

Today is not only Owen's birthday, but also his graduation from Preschool (although he'll be attending over the summer since it's also a daycare center.. It's going to be a big change next year!

a very merry unbirthday

Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone! And happy new year, too. 

I worked on my birthday. (Work is still crazy.) We had a mellow family dinner, courtesy of Tak & Teriyaki House. My dad was funny, and said it was the best Chinese food he ever had. And cake, of course. Owen was sick (ear infection), but he still managed to jam a huge piece into his mouth. 

One of the Dig cover artists Tak uses/knows, Daniel Lim, aka Fawn Fruits, is doing a project of 1000 drawings. Tak sent him my photos to use, and lo--there's my birthday present, #47 "Sweeter." 

Very cool.