Happy Mother's Day!

Today was my second Mother's Day and it has been really fun so far! We woke up early, dressed Taylor in a cute pink dress that used to be mine (she received LOTS of compliments today), went to church, had a yummy outdoor brunch with Dave, Sarah, and Samuel at Schlafly Bottleworks, and then ran some errands.

Now all my little creatures (well, one big one) are sleeping as I catch up on email and blogs.

Actually, this whole weekend was a celebration for me. Mark's mom came out to help us clean up our yard and break ground on flower gardens. It looks fabulous, though Mark and I have a lot of work yet to do. We set up my new composting bin, my garden hose reel, and have been developing plans for a lovely vegetable garden.

Mark got an early Father's Day present - a charcoal grill - and worked long and hard to prep it for cooking dinner last night. We had salmon fillets, grilled carrots, baked acorn squash, and quinoa, finished off with a tasty strawberry cheesecake from Sam's.

Tonight I think we'll just take it slow and straighten up the house for the work week ahead. Plenty of dishes and laundry and vacuuming to do. Sounds like it's going to rain too... Until later!

Good week so far

The past couple days have been really good and so far today is turning out well too. Taylor has been on a nice sleeping and eating schedule, I've been able to get lots of cleaning done around the house while she's in one of the carriers (above), Mark has started on some projects that he had neglected for a looong time, and Phoebe has been very well behaved while running free in the backyard (now that Mark improved the fence).

Actually, thinking back, the weekend was great too! On Saturday, we went to the St. Louis Brewfest in Forest Park. It was the second time we'd been there. The first was right before I got pregnant and this time around we have a tiny baby to tote along with us - pretty good timing if you ask me. We bought the tickets in advance which was such a good idea because the afternoon time slot was sold out before we even arrived! Mark and I sampled about 26 different beers of the 100+ they had available. I had really missed tasting some of those over this last year of pregnancy! The ground was so muddy and I was grateful we had Taylor in our Beco carrier instead of trying to maneuver a stroller in that crowd (like some people did!). The more I use carriers, the less I can think of situations in which strollers would be better. Taylor slept almost the entire time!

(This is the Earth Day Festival a couple of weeks ago, but we looked pretty much the same)

Afterward, we went to Trader Joe's and picked up a beautiful bouquet of flowers as my first Mother's Day treat. On Sunday, Mark decided to spoil me by taking care of the baby all day while I did whatever I wanted (which was to clean!). He treated me to Einstein Bagels for lunch and India Palace for dinner (mmmmmm!). We tried to find a good movie about mothers on Netflix online, but sadly they didn't have anything. I think most of the movies out there about parenting seem to focus on fathers. Maybe the everyday life of mothers taking care of children isn't interesting enough to film...it's just too real and ordinary. Mothers only make good film fodder when they are neurotic.

Some days I'm probably neurotic enough to star in a film, but most of the time I'm just a regular mom who cleans a whole lot. A good day for me means that I've done most all of the laundry and put all the clean clothes away, I've ironed or steamed Mark's shirts for work, I've managed to find or make something for us to eat for dinner, and I washed all of the dishes before bed. A really good day means I was able to squeeze in some exercise, reading, and message board hopping as well. A fabulous day would be if I could do all of the above AND run an errand out of the house! I don't know if a fabulous day is really possible, but one can always hope.