A MUCH BETTER BLOG

Bianca sweeping and saying thank you

Crazy stroller ride

Brielle taking baby kitty for a walk on a leash

Brielle dressing Bianca up (like Fancy Nancy)

Bianca making a phone call

Bianca making animal noises

Bianca meowing and saying Bye

Bianca playing with Blackers

Bianca and her favorite Elmo slippers

Daddy and Bianca making music

“Drinking” coffee out of mommy’s cup

Dress up and Home Depot run

Dorothy playing mommy with Blackers (who is the most patient cat in history)

Bianca at Rainforest Cafe

Brielle all dressed up to see Sesame Street Live. She just loves live shows but she didn’t realize this was for kids.

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Blackers wont stay out of our Christmas tree

Naked tree decorating

Getting a tree from the tree farm with Jim and the boys

Poor Bianca NEVER cries and this pony scared the bejeesus out of her.

Bianca looks so big to me here

Getting a shoulder ride with explanations from daddy

They are the same height when Brielle is kneeling

My daughter the comedian. (It really does crack me right up)

Bianca loves to wear necklaces

Snuggle time (I love this one)

Brielle (aka animal whisperer) taking the cat for a walk on a leash

Brielle reminds me SO much of myself at that age in this picture.

Matching jams -too freaking cute!

I can’t believe this is November

They are really starting to be able to have a lot of fun together

First fort was a big hit

As the weather got cooler and jackets started coming out of storage, I came up with the bright idea to build a coat hook system to manage all the coats/sweatshirts/jackets/raincoats/hats/mittens etc for the two girls.

Originally I just wanted to take two blocks of wood (one for each girl) and screw a few hooks in it and install a shelf above that. It morphed into a bigger, more decorative project after Jim cut fancy wood bases for the racks and grandma contributed decorations.

Brielle decorated her own and I worked on Bianca’s. Bianca’s looks much more bland because I was trying to leave room at the bottom for hooks. Brielle didn’t care and decorated with abandon.

In the end we decided they were too pretty to cover with coats and we will probably hang them in Brielle’s room or near the front door. Now of course I still don’t know how to keep all their winter gear straight.

Tomorrow….what we did with the leftover decorations.

Las Vegas was fantastic. We got back two weeks ago but I have been so incredibly busy that this is the first chance I have had to post about it.

The flight out was a nightmare. Brielle has always been a great traveler and travel companion. She navigates airports with ease, can find the right gate and likes to chill out and people watch with me at airport restaurants. She used to either fall asleep during the flights or look out the window and enjoy the adventure.

For some reason she missed her nap the two days preceding this trip and so the flight was pretty much as horrible as it could have possibly been. It was also an evening flight that cut into her bedtime. Neither girl slept, there was a lot of crying and some screaming and tantrums involved. You get the idea. It took everything that my mom and I had in our arsenals just to make it in one piece.

We had trouble getting a cab at the airport because we did not travel with an infant carseat and then our hotel gave us a dumpster view with no wireless internet access. By the time we switched to a decent room with a pool view and wireless, it was 3am our time and the girls still hadn’t slept at all. It was really heinous. I had assumed they would sleep on the trip and I will never make that assumption again.

Everything was just great after that. The ABC Expo was wonderful. I found more organic, natural and unique products for the store than I can stock in a year. I met some of the suppliers that I currently work with and got to meet about a hundred other people.

My mom and the girls went to the entire Expo with me. Bianca had to nurse throughout the day and Brielle still just wasn’t herself. It took too long to get back and forth to the hotel so it was easier for everyone to stay close to mom (and the boo). My mom is very familiar with my product lines so she was a great resource to have along to help spot products and gather information.

The girls just loved it which really surprised me because I thought they would be bored. Since it was a convention for babies and kids, the show was a million square feet of toys, stuffed animals, kids furniture and samples. The vendors were super patient with the girls since most of them are parents themselves. They were delighted to have built in testers/models using their products for the other passerbys to see.

Bianca was a hit. Everyone loved her. She spent most of the show riding on my hip in a baby carrier but she also spent time testing products and making friends. I can’t even tell you how many vendors snapped her picture while she was using their products. We even had a photographer on the first plane ask permission to take her picture because she was being super cute.

Not only did Bianca make friends at the show, in the hotel and in every casino and on the street, but she just went nuts on the planes. The photographer on the first flight was just the beginning. Apparently she loves people and they dig her too. On the way back the women in the row in front of me asked to hold her because she kept peeking over the seat. Then, right before we landed she kept pulling away from me and looking back down the aisle toward the back of the plane. I could see the guy across the aisle a row behind me, making goo goo eyes at her. A few minutes later I glanced back and saw everyone from both sides of the plane all the way back to the bathroom leaning out making eyes at her and smiling these goofy baby smiles. She was literally working half the plane. Is she destined to be a celebrity or a politician? I was actually embarrassed (and I don’t embarrass easily) when I saw all those people looking at her. It was really shocking.

Needless to say the flight back was a dream come true. The girls played nicely, took turns having a nap and were just pleasant as could be. The only regret I have is not spending more time with Brielle at the pool and not having a better convention strategy mapped out in advance. I am already planning on attending next year so I will make sure to make some quality pool time with the girls every day.

I did not spend one penny on gambling. That was almost as notable for me as not partying till dawn. Sigh. I did listen to the music of the casino a little wistfully as we walked through the casino to find child friendly entertainment and I felt the old pull of the nightlife when darkness fell and attire suddenly changed around us. We could barely grab a bite to eat before the tantrums started kicking in though. Not this trip but someday, somehow I will get dressed up and go out again…. (and probably have a spin or two at the roulette table too)

Vegas (ABC Kids Expo) Slideshow or see ALL our Vegas pics here

I just had to enter my girls in the Gap Casting Call Modeling Contest. I didn’t enter them because I think they should be supermodels (even though I see them that way) but because the winner of the “fan votes” gets to go on a nice fancy trip to someplace warm and tropical. Fan votes, incidentally, means getting all your friends, relatives and total strangers to vote for your kids.

Then I realized that there are kids and babies getting 100 votes A DAY. Um…yeah. Even if I pull together all of Facebook, Twitter, my website and my blog I wouldn’t come close to that.

So….if you think I should go somewhere warm (and I should) then go ahead and register and vote for my little girls. I can’t even remember to vote every day so I don’t expect you will either. If you are feeling SUPER ambitious then register your own little ones and harness the power of the internet to try to beat the Alpha moms who are more determined than I am to go somewhere warm and wonderful.

As we all know, kids have a remarkable ability to delight in things that most of us would consider mundane or not worth noticing. This quick list is a mixture of miscellaneous things that have thrilled me and/or the girls in the last week or so.

The most notable thrill of all is that Bianca took her first two steps tonight!!! If I hadn’t screamed for her dad to come see then she probably would have taken two more. I am on cloud 9.

I let the girls play in the downspout during a rainstorm the other day. They acted like they were spending the day at Wet N Wild.

We got a new couch and loveseat which is apparently 100x better if the cushions are on the floor. The girls just go nuts on the cushions and the cushionless couch for some reason.

I was moving the summer clothes out to make room for fall clothes and I realized that Brielle’s 4T capris make absolutely perfect sized pants for Bianca’s chunky little body.

Bianca can put a necklace (elastic) on herself, make cat, monkey and dog noises, use a fork, attempt to use TP, say “duck” “thank you” (which is really ‘duck oo’) and “bye bye”.

Brielle has been stringing a rope through my parent’s kitchen and then she crouches in the corner and plays ‘spider’. She waits for my dad (aka the fly victim) to fly into her web and then she scoots over and wraps him up. (see video at the end of the post).

Sticking with the Halloween and spider theme, I got a nasty thrill when a huge spider crawled up my shirt sleeve when I was trying to read a magazine on the couch. It was one of the rare moments when I try to forget about work and relax. My shirt was off in about .00002 seconds. Not a good thrill but a cheap (and comical) one for sure.

I bought Brielle an eyepatch at the pharmacy today (a real one, not a Halloween one) for $2.50 so she could play “Aye Aye Captain”. She was thrilled.