How I Unintentionally Marsha Brady-d My Son

Do you remember this episode of the Brady bunch? Marsha is a freshman, and in her rush to do high school right and fit in she signs up for every single club. She ends up overextended, stressed out, and doing a lot of stuff she really didn't want to do.

Well, I inadvertently did the same this to Tate this fall. A lot of his other 3-year-old friends started preschool, but he didn't seem totally ready back at application time, wasn't potty trained, plus did you know preschool in Chicago costs like a bazillion dollars? So with the words of warning from other mothers echoing in my ears---he'd be behind if he doesn't start preschool at 3! what about socialization?--I overscheduled the hell out of him.

And now a Pinterest-inspired project that didn't cause me to lose my mind

When we first moved into this place this is what our kitchen wall looked like:

We would offer to repaint it back to this color when we leave, but I'm not sure if Benjamin Moore still carries or can color-match Kind-of-Peestained-Looking White.

If you don't have a bad neighbor it might be because you ARE the bad neighbor...

Photo via williampaid.com

Are you a good neighbor? Everyone likes to  think they are, right? In fact, I would pretty much have always answered "yes" to this question, but looking back I'm pretty sure our condo neighbors didn't appreciate when, as newlyweds, Brad and I would regularly come home tipsy at 2 a.m. and engage in a good hour of living room karaoke (and no, that isn't a euphemism....we really did come home late and night and belt out a few off-key sets). The duet of  "Islands in the Stream" was a crowd-pleaser, I'm sure. But other than that I thought we were good neighbors, until we had two sets of downstairs neighbors move out of our two-flat in the last nine months.

See Your Folks

Have you heard of seeyourfolks.com? You go to the site, enter a few snippets of information about your parents ages and how often you see them, and it lets you know how many more times you'll see them before they die. Wahhh!  I still don't know the answer since I never pressed enter because I really can't handle seeing the result. But based on Tate seeing us with a frequency of "every day" (presumably forever, but that jibes well with my plan to move into his dorm room), he will see Brad and me over 12,000 more times. Not bad, considering we are older parents.

Many glasses of wine were killed to make this rug (or, how to make an upcycled braided t-shirt rug that takes a boatload of time and costs more than buying a ready-made one)

This project literally drove me to drink.

Quick and Easy Dinner #1: Tortellini with Black Beans and Tomatoes

In the pre-Tate days if we wanted a quick and easy weeknight meal we'd order Thai and call it a night. In the pre-Brad days (meaning I had no witnesses) I'd often come home from work exhausted and have a nice big bagel (or two) or a bowl of cereal for dinner. But now that we have Tate and we're trying to eat better, save money by not ordering takeout, blah blah blah, no matter how tired or busy we are I feel compelled to give him something a little more nutritious than a piece of toast for dinner (at least most nights). So here is one of my super-fast favorites.

You need:

frozen or refrigerated tortellini
1 can of black beans, rinsed
cherry or grape tomatoes, diced
parmesan cheese, grated
butter (or olive oil)

Prepare the tortellini as directed on the package. Add black beans, tomatoes, cheese, and butter. Voila, dinner is served!

I'll be back later with an update on what we've been up to lately. Hint: it involves a lot of half-finished Pinterest projects for our new place.

And now back to Tater

So while I've been ranting about other life events, my baby turned into a toddler and then a 2.5-year-old little boy. Today he took a shower for the first time by himself. Supervised, of course, but how did this happen? His speech has jumped right into sentences, colors, counting to ten (one, two, three, four, five, eightnineten). He even does a Sesame Street Count laugh at the end...AH ha ha. He knows a few shapes and an occasional letter. My favorite of his color words are yellow (yeddow) and purple (purtle). Adorable. Tate still has a ball obsession. We like to talk about ball, play ball, read books with balls in them, draw pictures of balls... Brad is taking him to a park district basketball class on Saturdays. We missed a lot of the session since we were out of town, but he got to go back today and was over the moon. Next session is T ball, which I know he is going to love.