I had to ship my laptop off for work last Thursday afternoon. Since it's a wee bit tough to do work without one's work laptop, I decided to take a Mother and Son outing last Friday. Atticus and I decided to visit the Audubon Zoo. According to the weather, it was supposed to be cloudy in the morning with rain and thunderstorms in the afternoon.
We arrived at the zoo just after 10 am (with the tickets that I printed at home) and it started to drizzle. Atticus had chosen to wear his swimsuit to the zoo in case we made it to Cool Zoo. The rain wasn't enough to deter us -- so we started for the front gates. There were several school buses unloading kids and I asked an employee where to go if we had already printed our tickets. He pointed us in a direction and then we just waltzed right into the zoo. No one checked our tickets??? Atti and I wandered around - we saw elephants, we tossed pennies into the fountain, we started off towards other exhibits. The rain started to pick up a bit so we ducked into the Dinosaur gift shop to purchase a couple of rain ponchos. The really nice employee there gave me the 10% member discount too even though I told her we weren't members yet! Nice. I'll take the $1 savings, sure!! The purchase was more for me since I had the iPhone in my pocket and didn't want it getting wet!! Atticus only wore his poncho for a little bit... It was close to the dinosaurs that we caught our first glimpse of the "blue train". We tried chasing the train for a bit and someone riding told us where to catch it. By now, it was time to take a break from the bears, zebras, rhinos etc and grab some lunch. Inside the restaurant, I grabbed a few things and took my tray over to the employee to pay. The employee rung up our bottle of water, the bottle of apple juice and $1 for our small tray of french fries. She didn't charge me for our pizza or cheeseburger! Ummm, ok?!? By this point, I'm starting to think - either this is my lucky day, or something really weird is going on!! So, now we're fed and on our way to find the train depot we found the Cool Zoo and the Carousel. We watched the water park for a bit - but it was completely empty - go figure, it was still drizzling rain!!! Atticus wanted to ride the carousel and since it was his day, we went for it. We bought our ticket and climbed onto a big green alligator. He had a blast. Next up was getting tickets for the train (which we found out wasn't leaving for another 15 minutes or so...). While waiting for the train, we wandered over and watched some monkeys. Awesome! Then the train arrived. Atticus was thrilled. We actually rode the train all around the zoo just over two times. The driver, Devin, was so nice to Atticus and let him sit up front for a bit and toot the train whistle and ring the bell. The train and all of the golf carts may have actually trumped seeing all the animals.
By now it was raining pretty hard and we decided to call it a day. We had seen almost all of the zoo at this point. We missed the Louisiana Swamp -- so we'll have to do that next time, but I think we saw most everything else! It was a tiring day, but lots of fun. We'll definitely have to do it again.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Hmmm. This isn't working.
My big plans to post more often seem to be falling by the wayside. It could be that life has been a wee bit busy -- but I will try (once again) to update those around on the exciting life of the Baden family.
We recently acquired a Craigslist find -- a Little Tikes Sand and Water table. Two weekends ago we made a group outing to Home Depot to pick up a 50 lb bag of play sand. So far, the table has been an absolute hit. $25 spent on the table, sand and toys and the kids are thrilled to pieces! Woot.
Other than the bugs here in NOLA (and there seem to be a lot of them) playing outside still remains a favorite for my kids. I still think it's both a blessing and a curse that neither kid is interested in television. I sometimes think it would be fun to take the kids to one of the arena things with Wiggles, or Sesame or Thomas the Tank -- but they have no clue who the characters are! They've never heard of the Wiggles or the Fresh Beat Band or any other shows! That's a good thing, right?
Lots of other random things to update the world on... but I'm going to do a separate post for this past weekend!!
We recently acquired a Craigslist find -- a Little Tikes Sand and Water table. Two weekends ago we made a group outing to Home Depot to pick up a 50 lb bag of play sand. So far, the table has been an absolute hit. $25 spent on the table, sand and toys and the kids are thrilled to pieces! Woot.
Other than the bugs here in NOLA (and there seem to be a lot of them) playing outside still remains a favorite for my kids. I still think it's both a blessing and a curse that neither kid is interested in television. I sometimes think it would be fun to take the kids to one of the arena things with Wiggles, or Sesame or Thomas the Tank -- but they have no clue who the characters are! They've never heard of the Wiggles or the Fresh Beat Band or any other shows! That's a good thing, right?
Lots of other random things to update the world on... but I'm going to do a separate post for this past weekend!!
Friday, April 20, 2012
I Mean It This Time
Nicole and I have started a 5 pound challenge. Want to join in?
New Orleans (and all the stress from the past 8 months) have not been kind to me...
Game on wardrobe. You will fit again. I promise. Afterall, I can NOT go to NYC looking like a blob -- if I do that, there's NO WAY I'll get my kids into a decent preschool! :-P
New Orleans (and all the stress from the past 8 months) have not been kind to me...
Game on wardrobe. You will fit again. I promise. Afterall, I can NOT go to NYC looking like a blob -- if I do that, there's NO WAY I'll get my kids into a decent preschool! :-P
Shoes
Wren is still obsessed with shoes. She's worried about the dolls at school that don't have shoes. She wants to look at all the pictures in the stories we read at night to see if the people are wearing shoes. She changes shoes at least 3 times a day...last night, she even insisted that she sleep in her "brown shoes". Perhaps we have the next Christian Louboutin on our hands? Either that or the next Carrie Bradshaw!!
She's almost ready for her size 7s. When she hits 7, she's going to be living the dream. She has a pair of gold glitter shoes (referred to as her Katie shoes), some black patent leather mary janes, some adorable red shoes with hearts from Gymboree, her current Crocs and a new pair of hot pink suede Stride Rites.
I'll have to update this post later with the video I got a couple days ago of Wren walking around in my black flats. She told me she wanted to put on some of Mommy's pretty shoes. If you don't see it up here soon, remind me and I'll update.
She's almost ready for her size 7s. When she hits 7, she's going to be living the dream. She has a pair of gold glitter shoes (referred to as her Katie shoes), some black patent leather mary janes, some adorable red shoes with hearts from Gymboree, her current Crocs and a new pair of hot pink suede Stride Rites.
I'll have to update this post later with the video I got a couple days ago of Wren walking around in my black flats. She told me she wanted to put on some of Mommy's pretty shoes. If you don't see it up here soon, remind me and I'll update.
Sleep, What's That?
I actually went to bed about 11 last night and Atticus picked today to wake up just after 5 am. He'd been doing really well with staying in his room and playing quietly until today. I mean that we've had more good days than not - but seriously, 5 am? If he didn't look just like Greg and I, I'd swear he was someone else's kid. I would bet money that I never work up that early of my own volition after I was about 6 months old!
Mildly related... we need a new mattress. I've been saying that for ages, but perhaps the tax refund will be spent on a new mattress. This of course sounds like a good idea until I start panicking thinking what happens if the apartment/house/flat that we get in NYC can't actually accommodate a king sized bed? Then we'll have to replace both the bed and the mattress. Maybe I can suck it up and live with the current one for a couple months, at least until we know where we're going to be living. Once we fly up to NYC to house hunt, I'll have a better idea on whether or not my big ole king size bed is going to fit!
Mildly related... we need a new mattress. I've been saying that for ages, but perhaps the tax refund will be spent on a new mattress. This of course sounds like a good idea until I start panicking thinking what happens if the apartment/house/flat that we get in NYC can't actually accommodate a king sized bed? Then we'll have to replace both the bed and the mattress. Maybe I can suck it up and live with the current one for a couple months, at least until we know where we're going to be living. Once we fly up to NYC to house hunt, I'll have a better idea on whether or not my big ole king size bed is going to fit!
Work. Lots of Work.
Oracle. Ahhhh Oracle. This launch would have been so much easier if I'd gone to "oracle school" like I joked about so many years ago... Really.
There are a million immediate needs at work right now. It's nuts. Trying to wrap up Q5, start a new fiscal year in a new system including all the re-shuffling, re-orging, re-naming, etc.
Right now, I'm trading emails back and forth with a big boss out on the west coast. I know conceptually what he wants, I just cant figure out how to get my cube to report it the way I want. Quite frustrating.
Then there's the documentation.... of what you ask? You don't want to know. Really, I won't bore you. It's a great report and process that I'm trying to get down on paper. The problem is that I've never done formal documentation and I don't think I'm all that great at it. I used to say reporting was my forte -- but after the past few hours trying to do this other report, maybe I need to go back to the drawing board? Anywho - I've had to postpone my documentation meeting for a few days because I've been up to my eyeballs trying to get folks staffed to Oracle and working on a few reports for the execs. I thought I'd have time to work on the process flow stuff tonight - but then there was a snafu with the report - and here it is almost 1 am and I STILL need to add swim lanes to my Visio and make some edits that were discussed earlier in the week for my 8 am call.
I just venting a bit. So much to do that it's hard to know where to start...
There are a million immediate needs at work right now. It's nuts. Trying to wrap up Q5, start a new fiscal year in a new system including all the re-shuffling, re-orging, re-naming, etc.
Right now, I'm trading emails back and forth with a big boss out on the west coast. I know conceptually what he wants, I just cant figure out how to get my cube to report it the way I want. Quite frustrating.
Then there's the documentation.... of what you ask? You don't want to know. Really, I won't bore you. It's a great report and process that I'm trying to get down on paper. The problem is that I've never done formal documentation and I don't think I'm all that great at it. I used to say reporting was my forte -- but after the past few hours trying to do this other report, maybe I need to go back to the drawing board? Anywho - I've had to postpone my documentation meeting for a few days because I've been up to my eyeballs trying to get folks staffed to Oracle and working on a few reports for the execs. I thought I'd have time to work on the process flow stuff tonight - but then there was a snafu with the report - and here it is almost 1 am and I STILL need to add swim lanes to my Visio and make some edits that were discussed earlier in the week for my 8 am call.
I just venting a bit. So much to do that it's hard to know where to start...
Monday, April 9, 2012
April, Are You Kidding Me?
Let's see if I can even come up with a short list of all the things going on in the Baden house right now...
In no particular order (I know - I'm normally at least somewhat organized, but this is sort of stream of consciousness writing...)
We've been living it up at Danneel Park. There is a new swingset and some new climby things for the younger crowd that has become a big weekend hit.
I brought back a pair of Crocs for the kids from my last trip to Dallas and both Wren and Atticus are over the moon. :) Wren got some aqua blue t-strap/Mary Jane types with a Minnie Mouse jibbitz thingy and Atticus is rocking some lemon yellow crocs with a bright red Mater. err -- we're calling it Mater, but I think it's actually Red, the fire engine.
We dyed "Easter" eggs in the backyard a week ago. Atticus had fun, Wren wasn't all that interested.
Atticus graduated from OT. He's now age level for all his gross and fine motor skills. We still have a few things to work on - alternating feet going down stairs and working on some sensory obstacles, but overall, he's made great progress with Miss Trenice. He's going to be very sad not to work with her anymore, but he's already asked if we could stop by to say hi and bring her cupcakes. What a good kid, eh?
We've decided to wait until next fall (2013) for Atticus to enroll in preschool. The whole process is so trying and "trying" to work the system from New Orleans just makes everything that much more complicated! So, once we have a start date for Greg, we'll worry about finding a place to live and arranging daycare for the kids. Then... once we're up in the NYC area, I'll start all over again with the open houses, applications, blah blah blah. I'm still holding out hope that he can attend Rodeph next year. In my heart, that just felt like the right spot for Atticus. We'll see.
I've been traveling to Dallas quite a bit for work lately. On the upside, I've seen my family more than I would have otherwise. On the downside, it's been stressful for the kids and Greg. This past week however, my trip coincided with the start of Passover. Nicole and her family were up for the weekend and we had fun night hosted by Jessica and James. Nothing like a a bottle of wine per person to kick start a holiday weekend. Brad did a great job touching on the high points in the Haggadah (you know -- the wine, the singing and the eating!).
I was also able to spend some time with Nicole which was a welcomed treat. I really miss living close to friends. Not to say I haven't met some great people all across the states with our moves, but there's something about just hanging out and laughing with your best friend that's good for the soul. I feel soooo much better. (With the exception of a sore nose from where Nic tried to help me while I was falling off some crazy platform shoes and she managed to whack me in the nose with the shoe she was holding!!)
Wren is entering the tantrum phase. If you tell her no, she will full force throw herself on the floor, wailing and scooting and kicking and thrashing for approximately 2-3 minutes. She will then sit up, grab her woobie, let out a big sigh and come to sit in my lap. I try not to laugh, but it's kinda funny.
We've instituted a behavior chart for Atticus and so far it's working wonders. If he can stay in his room and play quietly in the morning without waking Wren or the parents, he gets to color in a gold star on his chart. Once he fills in all the stars, we'll go pick out a prize. I'm thinking he'll get a quarter and get to pick out something from the vending "machines" at the entrance to WalMart.
Oh... and I've also posted a ton of pictures up to Picasa. Finally. Let me know if you need the links.
In no particular order (I know - I'm normally at least somewhat organized, but this is sort of stream of consciousness writing...)
We've been living it up at Danneel Park. There is a new swingset and some new climby things for the younger crowd that has become a big weekend hit.
I brought back a pair of Crocs for the kids from my last trip to Dallas and both Wren and Atticus are over the moon. :) Wren got some aqua blue t-strap/Mary Jane types with a Minnie Mouse jibbitz thingy and Atticus is rocking some lemon yellow crocs with a bright red Mater. err -- we're calling it Mater, but I think it's actually Red, the fire engine.
We dyed "Easter" eggs in the backyard a week ago. Atticus had fun, Wren wasn't all that interested.
Atticus graduated from OT. He's now age level for all his gross and fine motor skills. We still have a few things to work on - alternating feet going down stairs and working on some sensory obstacles, but overall, he's made great progress with Miss Trenice. He's going to be very sad not to work with her anymore, but he's already asked if we could stop by to say hi and bring her cupcakes. What a good kid, eh?
We've decided to wait until next fall (2013) for Atticus to enroll in preschool. The whole process is so trying and "trying" to work the system from New Orleans just makes everything that much more complicated! So, once we have a start date for Greg, we'll worry about finding a place to live and arranging daycare for the kids. Then... once we're up in the NYC area, I'll start all over again with the open houses, applications, blah blah blah. I'm still holding out hope that he can attend Rodeph next year. In my heart, that just felt like the right spot for Atticus. We'll see.
I've been traveling to Dallas quite a bit for work lately. On the upside, I've seen my family more than I would have otherwise. On the downside, it's been stressful for the kids and Greg. This past week however, my trip coincided with the start of Passover. Nicole and her family were up for the weekend and we had fun night hosted by Jessica and James. Nothing like a a bottle of wine per person to kick start a holiday weekend. Brad did a great job touching on the high points in the Haggadah (you know -- the wine, the singing and the eating!).
I was also able to spend some time with Nicole which was a welcomed treat. I really miss living close to friends. Not to say I haven't met some great people all across the states with our moves, but there's something about just hanging out and laughing with your best friend that's good for the soul. I feel soooo much better. (With the exception of a sore nose from where Nic tried to help me while I was falling off some crazy platform shoes and she managed to whack me in the nose with the shoe she was holding!!)
Wren is entering the tantrum phase. If you tell her no, she will full force throw herself on the floor, wailing and scooting and kicking and thrashing for approximately 2-3 minutes. She will then sit up, grab her woobie, let out a big sigh and come to sit in my lap. I try not to laugh, but it's kinda funny.
We've instituted a behavior chart for Atticus and so far it's working wonders. If he can stay in his room and play quietly in the morning without waking Wren or the parents, he gets to color in a gold star on his chart. Once he fills in all the stars, we'll go pick out a prize. I'm thinking he'll get a quarter and get to pick out something from the vending "machines" at the entrance to WalMart.
Oh... and I've also posted a ton of pictures up to Picasa. Finally. Let me know if you need the links.
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