wordless wednesday {finger lickin'}

today

so i'm all excited this morning that my kids decided to sleep in until 8:15, right. 

i get out of bed thinking to myself, "hey, this is going to be a fantastic day!"

it took me five minutes to change my mind.

why, you ask?

because i went to get my kids out of their room for breakfast and couldn't open the door.

tennyson had accidentally locked it from the inside.

honestly, for the first couple minutes, i wasn't super panicked.
it's one of those doors where you should be able to stick a paper clip in and it'll unlock.

except for it didn't.

it took me half an hour, two tear filled phone calls to my parents, one paper clip, one bobby pin, a knife, and three different screwdrivers to get me into their room.

seriously, it was the worst.

there was a period of about five minutes where i thought i'd either have to break down the door or call a locksmith. although i may have been overreacting a bit in the moment.

the funniest part was hearing tennyson on the other side of the door.

"uh oh! stuck!!"

yeah, buddy, you are stuck. and it's kind of your fault.

just look at the poor kid's face when i opened the door.

i had told him to find a shirt in order to get him to stop crying during the whole ordeal.

and as soon as i opened the door, there he was holding the buzz shirt he so desperately wanted on.

the rest of the day went much smoother.

we spent most of the afternoon at the mall, playing on the train table at the bookstore and eating cookies.

both kids fell asleep on the way home and tennyson spent the rest of the afternoon acting out scenes from toy story 3 with his new figurine set that he found at the store.

then dinner time rolled around.

remember that episode in friends where ross tells rachel "i grew up with monica... if you didn't eat fast, you didn't eat!" ?

yeah, i think about that every night as i feed my kids.

tonight, maggie polished off two of tennyson's dinners before he even got in so much as two bites.

i finally made him take his third dinner in the other room and shut the door, just so he'd have a fighting chance.

now the kids are in bed. i should be cleaning my house, but i'm neglecting it for the night.

i'm thinking i'll curl up in a blanket, watch a couple of episodes of the mindy project, and eat the cookies i saved from the mall.

overall (and despite a traumatic start) it's been a good day.

best part? tomorrow mike gets home again.

that means i survived another week on my own.

i'd say i'm doing pretty well,

but then i remember my kids were locked in their own room this morning.

c'est la vie.

wordless wednesday {rain}

talent

tennyson has a talent for imitation.
he's been acting out movies since he was a little boy.

really, it's adorable.

cute story:
tonight he was playing with his woody and buzz and he made them high five just like andy does.
then he said "oh no!" and put woody up on the shelf, because his arm was imaginary ripped.

anyway.
it's a pretty fun talent.

also, i love to see my kids get older.
it's a big reason why i do the monthly pictures for the first year.

tonight, i decided that we'd do what most people can't.
we'd get a comparison video.
(p.s. i am aware that the videos are in different formats. blogger was being a bully tonight and not letting me do what i wanted to do.)

from last year...

to this year...

enjoy!

cake smash

i think the best part about turning one is the cake.

i mean, it's like the only thing that you really have to do.

the smash.

maggie got two!

that lucky duck.

we had one a week and a half ago that was a little premature.

it was a mini smash. just a cupcake.

grammy and appa were out for a visit and we couldn't let them leave without seeing at least one kid covered in sweets.

and a couple days after her birthday we pulled out the full cake.

we still had it sitting around because we weren't about to do a cake smash on the beach.

you should see the mess from that second one. it spreads halfway across our kitchen. no joke.

plus there is a lovely cake crumb trail to our bathroom,

and poor mike doesn't even have any leftover cake to enjoy.

---

so that's it.

that's the end of our birthday posts.

i feel like every other post for the past two or three weeks has been birthday related.

but our cake today signals the end of birthday-palooza.

at least until next year, which i'm sure is going to come way too fast.

beach

i don't know if it is second kid syndrome, or if it is just how busy my april was, or what, but i've been having a hard time coming up with a good way to celebrate maggie's first birthday.

mostly, i guess, i was just too lazy to throw a big party like i've done in years past.

eventually, i came up with a plan.

we'd spend a day at the beach.

so the night before maggie's big day, we packed up the car, pulled out our bathing suits and sunscreen, and early the next morning we headed to south haven, michigan.

it's a quaint little town with a lot of gorgeous beach,

a little lighthouse,

and to top it off, it was a perfect 70 degree day.

the beach was heaven.

when we first arrived, we were one of three groups of people on the entire beach. by the time we left, there were only about ten groups of people.

there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

the water was a bit cold, but there was endless shoreline for us to play on, and we had it almost entirely to ourselves.

heaven.

maggie had the same reaction to the sand as she had to grass the first time around.

the longer she sat on it, the higher up her arms and legs came trying to escape until we finally pulled her onto a blanket.

she spent a lot of the day on that blanket. eating animal crackers and watching everyone play.

that's her idea of a perfect day.

and tennyson. tennyson makes me laugh.

he's our kid who has a meltdown every single time a tiny drop of water gets near him, or a tiny crumb lands on his lap, but get him to the beach, and he's transforms.

transforms into a beast covered in sand from head to toe.

seriously, the whole day was perfect.

we had a picnic lunch,

played on the playground,

built sandcastles,

put our toes in the water,

threw sand everywhere,

did water experiments,

and celebrated one year with our little girl.

once we had filled our pants and hair and shoes and just about everything else with sand, we decided it was time to pack up and wash off.

we stopped at a local mcdonald's where tennyson got "frufries" and some "shicka" and we got some shakes.

and after that, we were nice and cooled down and we went and walked around the little shops they had downtown. and spent money that we didn't intend to spend. is anyone able to go into boutique shops in a cute little downtown area and not walk out with at least one thing?

at one point, we walked into a bakery that had cookies for sixty cents a piece, and it was a really hard offer to turn down. they had a huge case with all different types of cookies out, and we let tennyson choose the cookie he wanted.

he choose the "pretty cookie". 

it was small and topped with sprinkles and we walked out with one for him, and one for maggie (and a couple peanut butter chocolate chip cookies for us).

have i mentioned that if maggie even hears the word "cookie" she starts crying because she wants one so bad?

we had dinner at a little restaurant there,

and maggie got birthday ice cream.

she had three different people giving her ice cream at once.

it was her little heaven.

she was giggling and bouncing in her high chair the entire time.

one of the best parts? 

since the beach was halfway to my parent's house, they were able to come up and celebrate with us.

i still can't believe my little girl is one.

why do kids have to grow up so fast?

one

miss maggie jane is one today.

isn't it crazy how fast they grow and how much they change in that first year?

like, only twelve short months ago, she was this tiny little thing.

now she's a toddler.

she's crawling around,

standing on her own for a minute or so at a time,

cruising around the furniture,

climbing up stairs,

chatting with us in her own little language,

sleeping for longer stretches of time,

eating big kid food,

no longer using a bottle,

clapping, waving, pointing.

but at the same time, a lot has stayed the same.

she still can't keep that tongue in,

still eats more than should be possible,

still is attached to her mommy,

still never stops moving.

when maggie was four months old, i wrote that i was guessing she was going to run us ragged.

even still, this girl is always on the go.

now that she is older, there are days that i'm sure that maggie's sole purpose and reason for being on the earth is to terrorize her big brother.

she tackles him and steals his toys and gets into his food. she constantly asks for trouble.

but it's because she loves him. i mean, she really loves him... grab his face and plant a wet one type of love.

maggie loves cheese.

she loves mickey mouse and dancing.

she is generous with her smiles.

she loves her binky and her milk.

if we put a hat on her, she immediately pulls it off and then she gets mad because she wants it back on.

she wants to be eating whatever it is we are eating, even if she doesn't really like it.

we lovingly call her maggie beast and maggie doodle, and we really just can't wait to see the girl she turns into. because if she's anything like she is now, she's going to be a blast.

like i said earlier, it's crazy to me how much she's grown over the past year.
the more she grows, the more we get to see and hear that big personality she's always had.

happy birthday, maggie.

you are simply the greatest.

the grandparents

we were blessed this last weekend to have a visit from mike's parents.

aren't grandparents just the best?

it's like they never get tired of playing with you.

(moms and dads don't have that kind of endurance.)

and grandparents never hesitate to spoil you.

or smother you in hugs and kisses.

yeah. grandparents are the best.

ps. maggie turns one soon.

and we couldn't let the grandparents leave without a little celebration.

but i'll have more to say on that later.