melted smoosh

to borrow a phrase from one of my favourite podcasters, Kendra Adachi from the Lazy Genius Collective, here are some things that are saving my life right now! I'd absolutely love to hear yours. we can all use some more genius moments in our days!  1) the OXO grape cutter . this was a gift from Cecilia's godparents when Elizabeth was born, and it is such a game-changer for the one- to four-year-old crowd. not only does it quarter 2 grapes and cherry tomatoes in half the time it would take to quarter one using a knife, it's also actually quite fun and satisfying to see the perfect fourths shoot out onto the plate. 2) the Libby app . these days, I'm using my library card predominantly to borrow e-books and digital audiobooks. I used to go to the library website on my phone, search through the catalog, download what I wanted and then follow the links to download books to my Kindle app and audiobooks to Overdrive. now I can do everything directly through Libby, including l

I'm slowly catching up on travelogues from Fall 2019 through Spring 2020. for continuity's sake, the posts are back-dated to stay in order with contemporaneous posts from that timeframe, but I'm also going to be linking them here in real time so they don't get buried in the archives!  in October 2019, Rebecca flew across the pond again to join us in more Italian adventures (as well as branching off on several solo trips)! somehow she was not too traumatized by the experiences of her previous visit in October 2018, which included but were not limited to  missing connections  due to lack of cell service,  torrential rainstorms , too many  bus snafus  to count, and  the most infamous calamity of all  when we missed our special guided tour of the Colosseum. doesn't Italy sound like fun?!  this second trip was a bit of vindication, however. we knew our way around the city better and we also had fewer moving parts to our planned itinerary for her visit! as it happened, we

  1) Baby Four on the way!  I just realized that although our family and friends have known for a while, I never made an official blog announcement. we are expecting another baby this July! and in February, we found out that baby is... another girl! Nick predicted this from the moment I had a positive pregnancy test. I had no intuition one way or the other, and the girls were convinced the baby was a boy. their initial reaction to finding out they are not, in fact, getting a brother, was incredulous disappointment, but by the next day, they were happily suggesting names for their newest baby sister.  Elizabeth, at 15 months, of course has no idea what's coming. she and the new baby will be 19 months apart, which is by far our closest spacing. I'm equal parts excited and terrified ;) but after all the ups and downs of secondary infertility we have experienced, I'm mostly just so grateful for the absolute gift of this little life. I'm also glad Elizabeth will have a buddy

Cecilia turned 6 in November, and she still comes out with hilarious one liners and observations on the world! after I created a list of their morning responsibilities so they could just follow the steps: "oh, so this is like a vacation from you telling us what to do!" "I'm doing jumpkin jacks!" using her booklight from Auntie Kris as a music stand light while playing mass while trying to stump her with spelling words at her request: "I can't spell 'through'. Give me a short word, like 'Cinderella'."  when I told her to clean up after dinner: "I can't. I'm as tired as a sloth who's been up all night." "having the tiny Elizabeth is better than getting Kona ice, because after you eat the ice, it's gone!" talking about ancient history, as in when Jesus was born: "you mean like the 1960s?" posing with a toy she wants to add to her next birthday list "what's a discount?" (i expl