" 'Fro a me"

No nap, running on magic toddler fuel (part Froot Loops, part banana)....Hutch ran wild outside playing frisbee with daddy. He ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran and ran...and then fell asleep on the lawn (just kidding).  

A clean dismount!

A seamless transition from dining room table to the couch...

Toddler 1, Mommy 1

Patience and spaghetti dinner prevail...

 

How could you get mad at a face like this?

No nap + 2 years old = Utter defiance
Time out, ineffective. Swatted tail, ineffective. Hutch even put himself in time out, but to no avail. Toddler 1, Mommy 0...for now

 

Zzzzzzzzz

Playing at the beach is hard work. Hutch drifted off to sleep asking for more hotdog.

I see you

Does it matter if they're upside-down? Nah. 

Mmmmmm...English muffins

What else would a pregnant woman do at 3 AM besides having a PB&J on a toasted English muffin? Update the blog of course!

A toasted English muffin is really the perfect vehicle for peanut butter and jelly. It provides the perfect warm, crusty palette for just the right amount pb & j. My husband and I differ on this ratio, he prefers more of a drippy, messy jelly overload with minimal peanut butter, whereas I like to slather the peanut butter on both sides to prevent the oozing of a small amount of jelly through the bread. How will this difference affect our son?? I digress... Also, notice in the picture...I prefer the "Hearty Grains Honey Wheat" flavor, you know, for gift ideas for any upcoming holidays, like Memorial Day.

Perhaps now that I've rehydrated with about a quart of water and enjoyed my divine little snack I can get back to sleep. I must also remember to get the recipe for those excellent oatmeal cookies they served at lunch yesterday too...mmmmmm....fooood....

Evenin'

What's better on a warm spring evening than sittin' out front in yer rockin' cher with a "popkickle"? 

L.A. Story

I flew into LA on Sunday afternoon and headed out to Pasadena in my rental F150. As I drove through downtown LA, I was listening to Green Day, and the lyrics were quite appropriate for what I always feel when I arrive here:

City of the dead

At the end of another lost highway

Signs misleading to nowhere

City of the damned

Lost children with dirty faces today

No one really seems to care

This town has always seemed depressing to me. Everything is concrete, but not like New York. Everything here is new and disposable, it seems. Tired of your car? Leave it on the side of the road. Need a new office complex? Another one is sprouting up just down the road. The clouds that roll in every morning seem to suffocate any hope when you awaken. I cannot see how anyone can love something or someone in this city.

Every monument you see in this city is a shrine to the almighty car, or that which makes up 60% of every human on this planet: water. From the air, you see viaduct and highways, canals and overpasses, spillways and offramps. In my most depressed times, I wonder which will cause this country more harm: the international wars over oil, or the inevitable internal war over water.

We're staying in Pasadena near the old downtown area. There's a lot of local restaurants here that are just terrific, and then you look across the street at a Cheesecake Factory........and you wonder why you're the only diner in a mom & pop italian joint, and there's a line around the building at that abomination across from you. Oh well.

Man, I've got to stop reading Ann Rice and listening to Bauhaus.....

On a brighter note, the Audi RS 4 is about the most amazing sedan I have ever driven. I always felt that the E34 BMW M5 was the greatest all-around car ever made. Sorry, the RS 4 just took that title. 420 HP out of a 4.2 V8 that revs to 8250 rpm, quattro all wheel drive, drool................ Maybe if I moved to LA and opened a Starbucks...........

Deep Thoughts

 

Here's Hutch contemplating the fate of a roly-poly bug on the sidewalk below. He's become very much of a bug-o-phobic child. Lee was able to introduce him to the roly-poly but in Hutch's excitement he petted the bug a little too hard and thus the bug was returned to his earthly home with some light front-end damage.