bugs

poor ada had a stomach bug this weekend which meant cleaning up lots of vomit and diarrhea. it was sad. sadder because she would never tell me that she felt bad or that her stomach was upset, she was just embarrassed. so, we just hung around the house saturday and sunday took her for a ride on the carousel. the full two minutes on the horse she dreams she is in mary poppins (her fav!) and is in pure bliss.

elias didn't mind ada being sick at all. it meant he got to spend plenty of time playing outside in the yard while ada mended. he is trying to walk more and more. here is a quick clip of our drunken sailor this morning.

meanwhile, the excitements of my day included running into an entourage of famous fancy actors at the local grocer and removing a lizard from the kids bathroom. shreveport keeps you on your toes. anyone wanna visit?

milestone

this morning while i was ever so diligently checking email, my son devoured his sister's homemade chocolate chip cookie. you may be wondering why his sister had a cookie at a such an hour (it was 6:30am) but that is beside the point. the point is, this precious milestone of savouring his first chocolate, which i was saving for his first birthday, is now gone. and he devoured it like an animal leaving remnants all over our shaggy brown rug. did he like it? you can guess.

oh, and did i mention that he then polished off her sippy cup of one percent milk. yep, milestone two for the morning.

drizzle drizzle

How can you resist those eyes!

Ada on her way to school this morning. Super extra gorgeous.

have i mentioned that it is still raining. drizzling. sprinkling. whatever you prefer to call it, it is wet. we have thoroughly enjoyed the moments outside when the rain has taken a brief hiatus though. good friends gave us a little slide for the yard which was very exciting. we may look like white trash with all the toys in the yard, but we sure have fun!

i lost a battle this morning, and ada went to school in true princess form. super extra gorgeous is what she called it. she looked like cinderella (aside from the cardigan i forced her to wear to tone down the sparkle) and she felt like cinderella too. as she walked into class she turned to me and said "see mama, everyone is jealous." little miss confident.

and, once again, here is more footage of mr. lias on two feet. it is hard to take a video of him walking since i am usually trying to catch him! enjoy!

Domestication

Sunday's family trip to the grocery store.

Shreveport is kind of like having your mom tell you to eat your Brussels sprouts, you know they are probably good for you, but they are pretty darn yucky. Shreveport is teaching us to be domestic. no good take out, no great weekend road trips. it is what it is and more and more we realize that simply spending time at home with our family is the most fun thing to do.

Saturday we attempted a fun family outing to Jefferson, Texas. It was voted in some magazine as a "great place to retire". hmmmm. We finally got on the highway (Shreveport is filming a movie right now and the highway was closed. I thought there was a huge accident since there was smoke everywhere, but instead the film set was there, and there were crashed helicopters, cars on fire, you name it.) Only in Shreveport can you close the major highway running through town with no marked detours. As soon as we got to Jefferson Ada said, "Let's get outta here! I wanna go home!" Reza and I looked at each other, she had taken the words straight out of our mouths. We did stick around long enough to have grilled cheese sandwiches, play on a playground, and buy candy necklaces, then headed home.

So, Sunday we decided just to hang out on Linden Street. A trip to the grocery store, the bookstore. Aside from Ada finding a copy of Little Red Riding Hood with ever-so-accurate pictures, there we very few disasters.

Ada swinging Elias

Our Picnic dinner

The Butterfly

Ada dressed up just like Pinkilicious in hopes that the butterfly would land on her. Many tears were shed after this did not happen. (If you don't know who Pinkilicious is, deem yourself lucky.)

and finally, our dinner entertainment.

a favor.

if anyone is friends with mother nature, would you please ask her to stop the rain at 460 linden street? it has now been raining for 7 days straight. the mist was light enough for us to walk to school this morning without messing up ada's super fancy hair (it was PICTURE day!), but now it is full on raining again. shreveport is not filled with spectacular indoor activities, so we would really appreciate the sun coming out.

on a different note, mr. lias took his first (in the past few weeks) longer-than-40-minute nap this morning. hip hip hooray! ada was at school and it was a full 80 minutes of bliss. so blissful that i actually did all the dishes, unloaded the dishwasher, vacuumed all the rugs, swiffered, wet swiffered and cleaned the windows on all the glass doors to the patio. is that lame-- no, it was wonderful because i did it all by myself.

i have no cute pictures for this post, well, because my children have mostly been monsters lately. monsters that reza and i created so i take full responsibility. but monsters none the less. like i said, send the sunshine our way.

first day of ballet

ada and evian at dance class.

ada had her first ballet class yesterday! she, of course, told me that she already knew how to do ballet just perfectly, but was willing to go to class anyway. she loved it! they danced and marched and even did tap too (the teacher graciously lent us tap shoes since we were unprepared).

and for elias' sake, here is a snip of video of him trying to walk. he is so proud of himself!

a rainy weekend

ada loves the rain! (she really just loves getting to use her umbrella for something other than a weapon)
this ended in a small disaster. you can imagine.

it rained all weekend here in shreveport. this means only two things, lots of time pondering our next move in life and many trips to starbucks.

elias had his first meal of pasta with red sauce. i should mention that "red" sauce was actually "vodka" sauce. he loved it and i will continue to feed it to him until social services knocks on my door. he even used his hands to eat it instead of eating it directly of the tray of his high chair.

test run

so, maybe i am desperately in need of a hobby, or maybe it is the fact that not a single page in the baby books has been filled out, but this morning i felt the need to create a blog. just a simple documentation of our life, together, as a big happy family. it is amazing that just over five years ago, reza and i got married. now, we have created two of the most amazing and intriguing creatures on the planet (that would be ada and elias). we have moved from chapel hill, nc to boston, ma to shreveport, la all so my ever-so-loving husband could fulfill his dream of becoming a colon and rectal surgeon (is that embarassing to say?) our life has been filled with adventures at every turn, and now i am ready to try to remember them and share them at the same time.

enjoy!