Martha Stewart

On Tuesday, my mommy friends and I took the train to NYC to be part of the studio audience for the Martha Stewart show. This day they had LL Cool J on as a guest. For some strange reason I never pictured LL Cool J and Martha Stewart kickin it but you never know. Martha was a bit of a drag but just spending the day with friends in NYC was well worth the trip. The weather could have been a lot nicer though (it was raining and very cold). I'm sure all of our hubbys were happy it was cold because we would have been back a lot later had the weather been nice. Lots of love goes out to Sarah for planning this wonderful trip for us!!!

School Fall Festival

Monday morning the kids had their annual Fall Festival. Here are some pictures from their hat parade.


I couldn't get Armani to walk fast enough to get a picture of them from the front. :(




I begged Maya to take that plastic thing from her mouth, to no avail. Oh well!

That is a bat that they painted on the side of Maya's face (which of course she would not let us wash). She had so much fun at school this day. She is still talking about the parade a week later.




Since Armani would only walk if holding my hand, I had a hard time taking his picture. Yep, this is Armani looking up at Mommy. The red marks on his face are not scratches but paint. He had just finished painting his pumpkin at school. Also, notice that he is not wearing a hat (doesn't like hats).

We're Royalty

Lately, Maya has been on this queen and king kick. If she wants something she will tell me that I am the queen (or she will say daddy you're the king) and therefore we have the power to get her whatever she wants. The first time she said this I was so tickled that I got her what she wanted (a few M&M's). But as with everything else once you give in they think it will always work to get their way, so I've been told that I'm the queen quite a bit lately.

Parents weekend at American University

We went to visit Alex today at American University. It was so good to see her. We really miss her around here. She seems to be doing very well in school (showed us an A that she got on one of her paper's) and making lots of new friends. I can't tell you how proud we are of her. Unfortunately, it rained almost the entire day. Not so much fun with two toddlers so we had to cut our visit short. I hope we can see more of the campus on our next visit.

Girls Night Out

Last night I went out with my three sister-in-laws to Moriarty's in downtown Philly. Moriarty's is such a great little bar and an old hangout of my hubby and his sisters. I had an awesome time! I love being with my sister-in-laws. A little too many martini's though (right Olga?). It took me a good two days to recover. Next time we will have to make sure we count those drinks. I'm not as young as I use to be.

I have scheduled a proposal defense date!!

FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY...did I say FINALLY? Yes, I have finally been allowed to schedule a date for my dissertation proposal defense! YEAH! It has only taken me an extra year and a half to get to this point but let me not complain and instead just revel in the great news. So the big day is November 12th.

To catch a few of you up to date, I finished my graduate school coursework the year before Maya was born and then took my preliminary exams. So for the last 4 years, I have been trying to put together a study proposal for my dissertation and form a dissertation committee. I took a lot of time off while I was pregnant with both Maya and Armani, but once I started actively working on the proposal (about two and a half years ago) I had it done within the year. However, trying to form a dissertation committee has been unbelievably difficult; my department wasn’t very willing to work with me after I had taken almost two years off.

So what does all this mean and where do I go from here? It means that I will present my study proposal to the entire department on November 12th and if they accept my proposal I can move forward to conduct my study. This is more of a formality than anything else; they usually don’t let you set a date until they are confident that you will be advanced. So what am I studying? I’m studying acculturation and infant feeding among the Hmong people. The story of Hmong people in the U.S. is truly fascinating (I will post more about the Hmong in the U.S. at a later date). Hmong people are an Asian ethnic group from southern Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar-Burma but most Hmong living in the U.S. came from Laos and Thailand during the late 1970s. They came to the U.S. as refugees after fighting the communist-nationalist Pathet Lao and assisting the U.S. during the Vietnam War. Hmong culture is truly unique and they have a strong sense of independence. Like many refugees and even other immigrant groups, I think that the obstacles the Hmong people have overcome and their resilience are amazing. I’ll post more about my study later. I certainly don’t want to bore you all at once.

About a year ago, I thought I would never get to this point and to be honest I even thought of quitting. I’m so glad I stuck with it. Many thanks go out to my hubby for always believing in me and encouraging me to continue. I LOVE YOU! From here on out things should go relatively smooth and I anticipate being completely done by next October. I CAN’T WAIT!!

Kids in plastic bubbles ....not such a bad idea

So would it be so bad if I put my kids in plastic bubbles to protect them from the world??? This morning I dropped off Maya and Armani at school and as I’m tending to Armani, I see that Maya is standing next to a few of her school friends. She then walks over to a little boy and says hi (I’ll call him J). The next thing I hear is J say to Maya, “I don’t like you, because you are shy”. This just breaks my heart. Obviously, it didn’t have the same affect on Maya since she just turned around and started playing with another child as if he had said nothing to her. But, I’m so not ready for those hearts breaking moments when she comes to me in tears over something someone says to her. I know I can’t always protect my kids but homeschooling is looking better and better.

Cleaning with toddlers in the house

I hate cleaning! I know, no one really likes to clean house. But every week I set aside a good 6-8 hours just for deep cleaning and every week I have to go through this entire mental exercise to convince myself that it won't be so bad. I remember a time when I didn't feel this bothered with housework. Hmm, let me think was it pre-children?? Could it be the fact that it takes me (now with two toddlers in the house) double the amount of time and sometimes even 3x the amount of time to clean as it did before I had children? And once I finally get the house clean, I spend what's left of my day picking up after them. By gosh, that could be it! Oh the days when I felt a sense of pride after cleaning the house and enjoyed the peace of a clean house for at least 3-5 days. Now I'm lucky if I can keep my house clean for 2 hours.

Let me give you a recent example of some futile cleaning. On Sunday, I spent about 20 minutes cleaning the walls that lead down to our basement, where we have the kids playroom. I was tired of looking at filthy, dingy walls covered with hand prints and scuff marks so I got a wet rag and proceeded to scrub the walls as my kiddos watched TV. When I finally got to the bottom of the stairs (and feeling pretty good about my job I might add) I look up to see my 2 year old boy banging and running his little car all over my freshly cleaned walls. So I say to my little sweetheart, What are you doing??? And all he does is look at me and smile. Okay so he's too cute to be mad at but I do think to myself, why do I bother? When it comes to house cleaning, I can't wait to be done with graduate school, get back to work part-time and pass on the deep cleaning to someone else.

Attending a family wedding

So I have FINALLY joined the blogosphere. It took me a little bit (well maybe a lot) longer than I had anticipated but I'm now up and running (thanks to hubby for helping me design my blog). Babe you're so awesome!

Last night we had our first non-family babysitter come while we attended a family wedding. I was a little nervous especially since I hadn't met this new babysitter before she arrived but she came highly recommended (thanks Jen!) so I took a deep breath and then proceeded to call her every 45 minutes to “check in” on the kids. Oh and I wasn’t even the worst of it, hubby sent me to the bank right before she arrived so he could "interview" her without me around. Poor girl, I'm sure she had no idea what she was getting herself into. Actually she was a wonderful girl and she did a wonderful job. We will certainly use her again and hopefully sooner than later. But Let me get back to the wedding and my embarrassing moment. Well the wedding was my hubby’s cousin’s daughter and it was absolutely beautiful! The ceremony was held outside a restaurant overlooking a beautiful lake and the reception was held at the Philly convention center. It was a pretty traditional American wedding except that when we arrived for the cocktail hour we were greeted by 18 foot giant puppets, live drum music and a Spanish dancing troop. It was really something and as always when I’m with my in laws, I had a wonderful time! I mean I couldn't have married into a more beautiful, loving and fun family even if I had tried. Hubby and I had a great time and danced so much that it took about three hours after the reception before I could completely feel my toes again.

Ok, so about that embarrassing moment I mentioned earlier. This will certainly go down as one of my worst memories. We arrive at the cocktail hour and me and hubby and my in-laws immediately go to the bar for cocktails. I order a glass of red wine (this is important) and I begin to mingle. Hubby and I are next to each other but mingling with others. All of a sudden we both notice the mother and father of the bride and as I'm talking to another woman hubby starts heading over toward them. So I end my conversation and follow him over so that I can give my congratulations. Hubby greats the father of the bride and I begin to greet the mother of the bride with a hug. As I lift my arms to embrace her, hubby turns around to point to something (not knowing I'm behind him) and hits my hand (the one with the wine glass). Yes, you guessed it! Red wine goes flying through the air and lands all over me and the MOTHER OF THE BRIDE!!! Initially I thought it had just spilled on me since it was in my eyes and I couldn’t see but once my eyes stopped burning and I opened them I noticed that the Brides mother was drenched in red wine, it was all over her face and all over her beautiful dress. Ugh!!! It was truly one of those "want to get away" moments. So as hubby wipes my face and as I wipe her face I'm thinking OMG we just ruined one of the most important days of this woman's life. Fortunately for hubby and I she was wearing a reddish pink dress and once the wine dried you really couldn't tell. We were also fortunate in that she was very nice about the entire thing and approached us twice throughout the evening just to say that it was ok. I have to tell you that hubby and I have not been able to get this unfortunate event out of our heads. In fact, we have been lamenting about it all day. Looks like hubby and I made it into the memory of this family's wedding day for good. Not how I would like to be remembered but what can you do?