The Cluttered Pantry

How do you review a table that despite perfect styling, excellent accesories and the sustainable path of being able to litterly grow with your children has turned out to mostly be a source for tears and the need to run for ice packs?

The Land of Nod work/play table
The Wee Kahunas and I use this table, [...]

The Cluttered Pantry
I’ll divulge a little too much about myself and tell you that when the world around me starts to press in, starts to feel uncontrollable (I am a self described control freak) I tend to organize my pantry. I’m not speaking in some metaphorical code here, I mean I actually go through [...]

It’s been 5 months since we brought home our two new, adorable, tiny daughters from eastern Siberia. We’re so unbelievably happy to have them in our lives, and we’re even more happy that these two sisters get to stay together. That day in October, when we finally began our 18 hours of air [...]

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. We were just hoping it would be later.
First it was a small thud, then the pitter-patter of tiny feet. We raced up stairs and opened the nursery door and there she was. Zhanna had flung herself out of her crib. The hilarious part is that when [...]

Mark just sent this pic from his iphone to me. I’m at the studio working, and he is in the park with both girls testing gravity. They LOVE the swings so much we sometimes have to bribe them to come back home. We are certain to have to answer for the snowsuits when [...]

Tomorrow, we will have been home with the girls one full month.
Last night we followed our usual routine (sesame street watching after diner, some play time with the many toys downstairs, clean up time which is mostly everyone tossing toys back into the baby jail, potty time, change into PJs, sitting/squirming through Daddy reading [...]

You know that commercial for the Marines-”we do more before 6am than most people do all day…”?
Well, unless they have two toddlers in their care, they are just liars!
Today the girls and I played dress up, chase, slide, pretend cooking, had real breakfast, pretend phone calls, dress up again, read books, ate snacks (real and [...]

Ok, I’ll admit it. The routine being routine is starting to get to me.
The girls are still recovering from ear infections and the weather here in Chicago has been blustery (go figure!) so we have been mostly trapped indoors. And I’m running out of things for us to do.
Don’t get me wrong, shredding up the [...]

To be certain it has been a blur. If that amazingly kind judge in Chita hadn’t waived the ten day wait we would have only been home for a couple of days.
The routine is, well, routine. Bed time, wake time, snack time, lunch time, nap time, bath time, diner time…. All relatively predictable.
What is [...]

They told us the girls would gain weight quickly and make up for lost time. I had no doubt, but never expected the first week to result in so much of a weight gain for each girl! Elena has gained a few ounces more than a pound and Zhanna has gained a pound and [...]

So, we’ve been home for a week now, and the man on man defense we started with works pretty well. Two parents – two children. The next stage of settling in requires the real world transition to a routine that involves Mark back working in the studio. On thursday we realized that with the [...]

Howdy! Boy, you all are a pushy bunch! Emails and calls letting us know we better stop hogging all the time with the girls and better start posting pics and whatnot. . Tee-hee, we get it…following along for ten months warrants the follow through.
So, where do we start?! I’ll go with the [...]

Two toddlin’ girls now the proud owners of US Immigration stamps and paperwork are currently running circles in the hotel room to blow off all that pent up energy we stored up while at the embassy.
We’ve hit a pretty good grove, managed naps and meals and traversed some pretty nasty results of mistakingly thinking that [...]

Wow…and we mean WOW!
The six hour flight lasted seven and a half hours with a delay on the ground then multiple circles around Moscow before finally…finally…finally landing to much applause by the passengers of the plane.
All in all, we did really well. Mark experienced his first diaper change at 30k feet and it was [...]