I’m always posting pictures of my girls because, well, they’re cute. And family members and friends do occasionally visit this blog for no other reason than to read about the girls and what they’re up to.

I thought I would share some of Caitlin’s less photogenic moments from her first year, seeing as we’re approaching her big 4th birthday. These may come in handy when boys come a callin’.

Mommy took too much pain medication again.

Mommy feeds me ice cream!

Dreaming of Aunt Jemima and Napoleon.

Isn’t it better to realize that your 14-month-old was trying to snack on a nugget of dog kibble, and not a small brown pebble, like you originally thought? I mean dog kibble will eventually soften…

Speaking of dogs, you haven’t seen true filth until you’ve thoroughly cleaned a dog door that hasn’t been cleaned in a long time. I guess all these months I’ve ignored the fact that it’s really not supposed to be brown. Thanks to a good scrubbing and Charlie’s Soap, it looks almost new. Yes, it’s been a thrill a minute this holiday weekend.

If you want a good laugh, tell your almost 4-year-old that a friend is getting a Shih Tzu dog and see what kind of reaction you get… “Uncle Brad is getting a sh*t dog?” Yes, we kept the proverbial parenting poker face because if we let on that she’d said something inappropriate, Caitlin would be broadcasting her funny new four-letter word on the playground at daycare tomorrow.

One can never have enough ice cold beverages or wine or margaritas over the course of a holiday weekend spent at home with two children under the age of 4 (the youngest of whom woke up at 4 a.m. coughing her poor little head off).

Speaking of beer and to be filed in the “why didn’t I think of that category,” this is hilarious.. I was thinking it would really just work for men, but then I read about the woman who wore a belly full of Cosmos on a cross-country flight to New York. If beer’s not your thing, it’s good for water, ice tea, lemonade or whatever your beverage of choice happens to be, but a spare tire full of sweet tea just doesn’t seem right.

We took a long neighborhood walk yesterday and I noticed how tan Caitlin is already just from playing in the backyard this weekend. She has that golden California girl skin that tans so well (unlike mine, which eventually turns into one giant freckle). I told her she was “brown as a berry,” an expression from my mom and grandma, and the hubby commented that she was “brown as a nut.” She looked up at him and said, very matter of factly, “I’m not a nut…I’m just an old stump!” Bonus points to anyone who knows what children’s book the line “I am just an old stump” comes from.

We’ve been making plans for Caitlin’s 4th birthday party next Saturday. Ever since we celebrated Amelia’s first birthday in March, Caitlin has been asking about her birthday. There will be pizza. There will be a Dora-theme birthday cake. There will be presents and you can bet your backpack that at least a couple of them will be Dora related. And because her actual birthday falls on a weekday, there will also be cupcakes at daycare.

We’re putting up a small inflatable pool in the backyard this weekend and I’ve been looking back at Caitlin’s old summer pictures. Here she is at about 14 months old in August 2003 playing on our back patio in her first baby pool from Uncle Jimmy (she still had her strawberry birthmark on her tummy, which you can barely see on her left side). She was still very much into her paci and just look at those sweet fat rolls! The next photo was taken last summer at age 3 just as we were getting ready to go swimming at a friend’s pool. Sometimes it’s hard to remember baby Caitlin and then other times I’ll catch a glimpse of her and I just have to smile.

The hubby and I went out for a celebratory dinner earlier this month. A rare night out on the town! Time to squeeze into my favorite jeans and blouse…a sleeveless silk top in a brown funky print (love TJ Maxx.) My mother-in-law snapped a few photos of us and when I saw them I didn’t look as cool and hip as I’d envisioned. The top I was wearing is a bit “blousy” in the front, so the souvenir pounds I have from pregnancy really make a difference between blousy and, er, bloated, seeing as I’m barely 5 feet 2 inches tall. Cafeteria ladies wearing hair nets are barely 5 feet 2. Sweet, blue-haired grannies are barely 5 feet 2. Twelve-year-olds are barely 5 feet 2.

Thank God for digital cameras and the easy edit option of photos I hate of myself. Delete!

I’m fortunate that I can still barely squeeze into my pre-pregnancy clothes and that’s contributed to my laziness. But with summer around the corner and the mere thought of putting on a bathing suit pushing my mental panic button like a game of Whac-a-Mole, I must get off my lazy tush and get physical. And lifting the girls into the bathtub and blog surfing don’t count. I had just started kickboxing when I got pregnant with Amelia in the summer of 2004. The teacher was an amazing woman…40 and a mom of FOUR. I felt empowered punching and kicking to AC/DC’s Thunder Struck and I sweated more in that hour than I had possibly sweated my entire life. I was sweating out my toenails and hair follicles. Once I made it through the first class without having a heart attack, I was hooked. But I quit the classes when I found out I was pregnant and it was a slow downward spiral into “make any excuse to not exercise.” These days when I step on the dreaded scale I am reminded that I weigh a bit more than I did last summer just a few months AFTER GIVING BIRTH. And that is depressing. I’m someone who is lucky enough to have never had to diet or really exercise much. I blame my recent weight gain on sheer laziness, my love for chocolate and cheese and anything sandwiched into a burrito, and the fact that I weaned Amelia during the holidays. Not a smart move.
(Read on …)

What is it with recent celebrity baby names? First there was Gwyneth Paltrow’s Apple, now there is Ginger Spice Geri Halliwell’s baby girl, Bluebell Madonna, and now there’s Cherri Pie, courtesy of none other than Anna Nicole Smith, the fabulously ditzy former Guess girl and Playboy playmate who’s back in her skinny jeans thanks to TrimSpa.

Rumors are swirling that Anna Nicole has a bun in the oven. Personally, I’m ready for someone to step in and take the pressure off of Britney Spears. One of Anna Nicole’s toy pooches is named Sugar Pie so if the fruit of her loins is named Cherri Pie, I give her an F for originality. (Which would probably match her cup size…) Anna Nicole as a new mom would be absolutely fabulous tabloid and/or reality show fodder. We need this comic relief, people, what with the recent birth of Scientology’s most famous baby, Suri TomKat, and the impending birth of the Who Knew Saving the World Could Look So Sexy Celebrity Baby (Brangelina’s creation).

Cue up Warrant’s “She’s My Cherry Pie,” because here are my candidates for worst fictional baby names based on desserts.

Twinkie
Tiramisu
Sorbet
Nutty Buddy
Brownie
Parfait
Eclair
Lady Fingers
Snicker Doodle

And my favorite…Bourbon Balls.

I could stomach Cherri Pie, no pun intended, if it was shortened to Cherri. But the “Pie” is the icing on the cake. All I can think of is a really bad Warrant video.

p.s. On another related Anna Nicole note, I find it humorous that her lawyer’s name is Howard Stern.

One of Amelia’s many nicknames is Fat Bug. We also call her Mewa Gwace or just Mewa for short, which are probably nicknames that will “stick.” I mean what teenage girl wants her parents cheering her on the sidelines with a rousing “GO FAT BUG!” at her soccer game or high school graduation?

When we took Amelia to the pediatrician for her 2-week appointment she weighed in at a solid 9 pounds. She weighed 7 pounds 13 ounces at birth and had lost the usual few ounces by the time we checked out at the hospital, so I couldn’t believe how much she’d gained in just two weeks. I busted out laughing when the nurse handed her back to me and told us how much she weighed (and I’ll admit that I was quite the proud mama because she was being exclusively breastfed at that time). When I called my mother after the checkup and told her that Amelia nearly broke a record as far as 2-week weigh-in among our pediatrician’s patients, my mother replied, “Why…she’s a fat bug!” Speaking of fat, Amelia weighed 22 pounds even last week when I took her to the pediatrician for an ear infection. And she’s moved up to a size 4 diaper. Of course, Caitlin weighed nearly 25 pounds at a year. She was the poster child for fat rolls.

Amelia has been talking quite a bit lately, although she’s still not sold on walking as her primary mode of transportation. She will take five or six steps at a time and then plonk her little diapered bottom down as if to say “OK! That’s enough…I’m crawling!” She was playing with Caitlin’s Disney Princess ball the other day and started saying “ball” just as plain as day. She also says mama and dada fairly regularly. She called my dad Papa on Easter Sunday and I thought he was going to burst with pride. She’s also said bye bye, thank you, Bailey, Jack, and flower. But then at her age everything essentially sounds the same.

The hubby watched her for me Thursday while I went in to the office and when I came home, he had taken this photo of her demolishing our DVD collection:

The other afternoon I left her for a minute downstairs (our garage in our ranch style house has been finished into a regular room and we use it as a bonus/computer/dog room) with Caitlin. Any way, when I came back downstairs, she had climbed on to the glasstop coffee table and was sitting there, flipping through a book:

She may be more docile than big sister, but she’s just as sneaky.

My fairy blogmother recently e-mailed me about reviewing the new Seabreeze Naturals line. Because fairy blogmothers have e-mail, you know. Any way, I am a girly girl and although I don’t consider myself high maintenance, (couldn’t tell you the last time I had a professional manicure) I’m all about the maintenance. Does that make sense? Let’s just say that at any given moment I could have a day spa thing going on in my bathroom, all with products found within our small bathroom cabinet. It’s just hard to pull that off when your children assume all running bath water is meant for them. It’s also hard to pull off when you are surrounded by bath toys and baby wash and your heiney is resting on no-slip suction cup frog decals on the bottom of the tub. Kind of detracts from the day spa ambience. Just a wee bit.

So, it’s time for beauty routine confessions. I’m not typically faithful to brands. Yes, I cheat on brands and I am easily swayed by a nice package (and a sale). So it was a treat to receive a box of the latest line by Seabreeze–Seabreeze Naturals. I’ve been using their two types of facial cleansers as well as the moisturizer and astringent and my problem area (aka my entire face) has really cleared up, and especially my second problem area (aka my forehead). All the Seabreeze Naturals products have a wonderful clean scent. I’m a longtime traditional Seabreeze kind of gal (since high school in the 80s!), but this new line doesn’t have that strong astringent smell. The entire line is reasonably priced at $5.99 and you get quite a bit in the packaging, especially the moisturizer, which is a bonus when you’re busy and you don’t want to be repurchasing products often. The moisturizer does not include an SPF, which is the only negative I found. I’ll be 37 this summer so SPFs are of interest to me. The Seabreeze Naturals line can be found at CVS and Wal-Mart and other stores that are open 24/7 because you just never know when you need to buy a can of honey roasted peanuts or a lawn chair or a bottle of St. John’s Wort, which I could use with all this ever lovin’ rain we’ve been having.

p.s. Nope, I didn’t get paid to do this review, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tickled to receive an entire box of skincare products all from THE SAME LINE.

p.p.s. Do you use the same line of facial products, or, like me, do you sleep around with whoever has the best deal?