Ready for Spring
Honestly, if you asked me which was my least favorite season, I'd say spring. Most people love spring. While I do love those first glorious days of warm weather after the winter, I tend to associate spring with lots of rain, unpredictable weather patterns and the nuicance of having a day start off requiring an overcoat and gloves only to end with the need for a t-shirt. Thus, I usually spend much of the spring either over- or under-dressed.
That said, though, I love when stores start featuring spring clothes and this is because my mind starts fast forwarding to summer. All of a sudden, the clothes are so much more colorful. This year, Banana Republic has been featuring a shade of green that I'm so in love with, I would consider leaving my husband for it. Behold
this,
this and
this. The online photos don't even do the color justice.
I love it so much that I'm actually considering getting
that first top I mentioned, even though it's silk and I usually avoid silk like the plague. Also, I wish I had somewhere to wear
the dress, even though that cut doesn't usually flatter me.
But there are other great colors too, ones that would look amazing with white pants, and yet. Yet, I can't really pull off a white pant. Or, I should say, I have yet to find a white pant that doesn't make me self-conscious that the world can, in fact, see my panties. But tops like
this and
this inspire me to search yet again for the substantially lined white pant.
What fashion are you craving these days?
Labels: style
Nuh and New
So
Rolo is becoming quite the little talker and like most kids his age, "no" is his favorite word. And like his father, he's developing some
bizarro accent for no apparent reason. When he's being dismissive,
Rolo pronounces "no" as "
nuh" and sounds much like a Russian fisherman. When he's being whiny, "no" becomes "
neeeeewwww" and he sounds like I've just asked him to give up one of his kidneys.
Last night, after he dumped his dinner on the floor (ahem), I shook my finger at him and said sternly "That's not nice! You don't throw food on the floor. We don't waste food!"
Rolo proceeded to think for a minute (at this age, you can practically see the wheels in their head turning) and instead of doing his incredibly fake crying that he does when I correct him, he lifted one finger at me, looked me in the eye and said "
Dat. Nah. Nice." Which, translated, just in case you can't follow along, was him repeating "That's not nice" back to me. I had to turn my back to him so he couldn't see me laugh.
That story sort of sums up where we are with
Rolo these days. He's started forming small sentences and given that he wasn't really saying more than a handful of words two months ago, I'd call it significant progress. One of his favorite sentences is "he's crying" complete with him pretending to wipe his eye. Interestingly, he never uses this sentence referring to himself, but he comments on other people he sees crying in real life or on TV. Just in the last week,
Rolo's taken to making up stories. The other night in the tub, his
fireboat bath toy capsized and
Rolo proceeded to tell me that the ejected firefighter was crying as a result. Yesterday, a passing helicopter was crying as it flew away. I could go on.
Speaking of helicopters,
Rolo is completely OBSESSED with them. He can say "
hellacopper", and is constantly searching the sky for them (thank God our apartment has sliding glass doors with a skyline view). However, he does not understand that it is not within my power to make
hellacoppers spontaneously appear and this has lead to more than one meltdown. So I personally have a love/hate relationship with
hellacoppers.
As part of this story-telling phase,
Rolo will also speak to you
earnestly at length, mostly in complete gibberish, but with a word or two in passable English thrown in for good measure. There are usually hand gestures involved. And if you act interested, and say "Really? Is that so?"
Rolo will nod excited and say "Uh oh, he's crying."
I'm not sure if there's a direct correlation, or if it was just a timing thing, but Rolo's language exploded just after he started his new school. There are pros and cons to this new school, but overall, I'm pleased and have no desire to bring him back to his old one. Regardless whether his language skills are directly attributable to the new school, I have noticed a general change in my son. He likes being there. He gets to do a ton of activities. He's understanding more complex concepts now. Best of all, I don't feel bad about leaving him at school. In fact, I'd venture to say that he has a good deal more fun at school than at home.
I can't say there are significant challenges as he furthers into toddlerdom. Now that he's talking and knows he
can communicate, he gets even more frustrated when he can't get across what he wants. Just this morning, I was ready to sell him to a band of gypsies because EVERYTHING in Rolo's world today was just not up to his standards. Apparently. But for all the tandrums and times I'm pulling my hair out, it's still pretty fun to see how much he enjoys learning new things. We've been working on colors and he's got about a 25% percent success rate, since he always guesses either "buhue" or "ornange" first when asked what color something is. And man, when that something is actually "ornange" and I tell him he's right, you could solve the world's energy crisis with the light beaming from his face.
Labels: parenting, Rolo
Heart On My Sleeve
I watched an episode of
CSI last night. Or, more correctly, I stopped watching an episode of
CSI last night once I started to cry.
There was an incident, a shooting with many casualties. A man, anguished, held his dead child, refusing to let the medical examiners take him. A CSI agent explaining what the man already knew, that his son was no longer with him, and promising the man they would take good care of his son. Regardless, the man did not want to let go.
I've seen that moment in real life, the moment when a parent has to hand over their dead child, knowing they'll never hold him again. No matter if you believe in God, or heaven, you still don't want to let go.
I turned off the television and prayed for the thousandth time that I never have to be near that moment again.
Labels: Living, random
Queen of the World
Look, I was pretty surprised by the whole
Rihanna/Chris Brown thing and even more surprised that
Rihanna would go back to him. Because you figure, it's hard to be any hotter or any richer than
Rihanna, so why would she need a dirtball who (allegedly) hits her? You are
RIHANNA. You are fierce. You do not need him.
But who I am to judge such things? Especially when
Oprah is out there casting her judgements?
Labels: society
Denial
About a month ago, while getting ready for work, I bent over to pick something up and the lining in the seat of my pants ripped. How embarrassing. Thankfully, I was home and it was only the inside lining of the pants and not the outer fabric. A week later, the same thing happened again, different pants. Although both pairs were from Ann Taylor and I've had them for a few years. "Huh," I thought to myself, "I must be sending these to the dry cleaners too often. The fabric must be becoming thread-bare or something." I brought both pairs to the tailor and resolved to look into hand-washing my dress pants. I mean, it's probably better for the environment anyway, right?
Then about week after that, I put on a pair of freshly washed jeans. Except, funny, they wouldn't button. Even my fail-safe measure crouching up and down to stretch them out didn't work. I mean, these weren't even close to buttoning. Strange. I could have sworn they fit just last week. Maybe I need to shorten the amount of time my jeans are in the dryer?
Later that day, wearing a different pair of jeans, I couldn't help to notice that they were kind of uncomfortable. Like, they didn't fit well. And then I got to thinking about how there were other pants that I had recently stopped wearing because they were uncomfortable as well. My mind floated back to the jeans that would not button and then, suddenly, to the dress pants with the split seams. A lightbulb went off.
It may seem absurd, but until that moment it didn't occur to me that all these things were related. That the problem was not that my clothes were magically shrinking. My ass was getting big.
I've gained weight before, but I swear I've never split pants open before. I got on a scale. Oh yeah. Right there in black and white. Twenty pounds up from my ideal weight, 15 pounds up from
my post-baby weight. Sweet Jesus.
I mean, I know, I haven't really been trying. Not working out, not eating well. What exactly did I expect to happen? The alarming part is that I didn't really notice this expansion.
So, I finally started going to yoga practice. It's only been two weeks so far, but it's a start. Ron and I bought an exercise bike. We assembled it over the weekend but have yet to ride it. It was Ron's idea to buy it. My thoughts were originally that it would become an oversized clothes hanger. I have yet to meet a person who has purchased in-house exercise equipment and actually uses it.
I'm realizing now though that we have no choice. Ron's gained more weight than I have and so exercise is becoming crucial. Diet alone is not going to be enough. Ron is rapidly approaching 40 and has a family history of heart problems. Actually, I have a family history of heart problems too. Plus, I'm vain. Plus, if I am ever to have another baby (something that's being postponed for awhile, but that's another story), it certainly is not going to help to be 20 pounds overweight from the start. All vanity aside though, I don't want our weight issue to become a medical issue. So exercise we must.
Inertia is a funny thing. I know, in my heart, that exercising will make me feel better, and yet, laziness has a firm grasp on me right now. Someone who used to exercise twice a day, back at square one. After my first yoga practice, Ron and Rolo met me at the Starbucks across the street. Ron asked me how the class was, and I replied, "It's the first time I've felt like myself in a year and a half." "I'm glad," he said as he smiled. By the look in his eyes, I could tell he knew that by getting me the yoga classes, he was buying back pieces of his wife.
So back to square one. Ron and I allowed our lives to be railroaded over the last year. Time to get back on track.
Labels: fitness, Living
