Catch-Up

The Christmas season is more than halfway over and I'm both so excited and so sad about it. Excited because it's the first year that Sophie understands and is expecting Santa, and sad for it to soon be over and go back to work in January. But we've really been enjoying this season for so many reasons!

First, we celebrated 5 years married on Friday the 8th. We were originally planning to get away but everything sorta fell through, so we decided to take the girls and do Festival of Lights where we got married. I tried to explain to Sophie what was special about the day but even "it's kinda like the birthday of me and daddy being together" didn't make sense to her, so we gave up.

Our wedding venue!

Where AJ and I did our first look

Don't ask how much that baby shark
balloon was :/

Isn't this the sweetest photo of Sophie??

It was a jar year! See you in another 5 years

Then of course Saturday the 9th was the family Christmas, and I definitely have mixed emotions as I recall balancing a toddler and infant and losing out the high rollers LRC by one dumb roll wahhhhh!

The moment I lost

Our miserably failed attempt at getting
"all the kids together"

In the meantime we've been enjoying Christmas joy around the house with the pets and our weekly evening walk which has become a highlight for Sophie with the annual light tunnel in the neighborhood. I went to the American Ballet Theater's rendition of The Nutcracker at Segerstrom with Iris, and we've been enjoying having Kiwi join us on our walks and trips to the park.

On Tuesday the 12th, Kiwi both turned 1 and Summer turned 4 months! It really as been the fastest month with her, and she has been seeming to get older so much faster than Sophie, but I really think that's because Summer has just been a chill dream and we get good sleep and get to get things done, which wasn't exactly the case the first time around.

On Saturday the 16th, I hit a new level of parenting... or something. I had feels I had never felt before. Firstly, the wait was over. Since I found out I was pregnant with a girl I couldn't wait to take her to dance classes if she would allow it. (For the record, I won't force her to do them or keep it up if she doesn't want to, but I couldn't resist introducing her to it all at least). I was coercing her years ago, but truly all on her own she started talking about dancing, wanting to wear twirly ballerina skirts, turn around, hold her leg up, and imitate the Rockettes from TV, so it was very exciting to tell her we could finally go to dance class!

The class for her age is an hour long combination of tap, ballet and tumbling and despite being in daycare and going to French class, she's never really had a very organized class structure experience so I was quite nervous... but she ended up doing amazing! She didn't quite understand standing in a line, and she is definitely the youngest kid there, but oh, watching her stealthily from the window, both follow instructions in a class, and experience joy in her sloppily innocent dancing made me squirmy with love and excitement.

She is obsessed with the tapping so, sucker that I am... I went out and bought her a pair of tap shoes, which is pretty unnecessary since the school has boxes of them in all sizes that you can borrow and she'll just grow out of them way too fast, but I wanted her to be able to practice at home inbetween classes and I could help show her some things too. (On Saturday evening after her class she started crying because it was "too dark to go to dance class" and she is already asking when she'll be going back.) She'll be getting the tap shoes Christmas morning and my goodness this kid is going to have a Christmas to remember and she better remember it too because we've gotten her a lotttt of stuff!

'Tis the Season

Naturally nothing will compare to Riverside's holiday festivities, but anything to celebrate the season I guess.

This year, Irvine's tree lighting ceremony was moved from City Hall to the Great Park, which was a great idea because they had really outgrown the City Hall location. They could have done a better job, but it was fine, especially for Sophie who is only getting it all this year.

We were pretty late getting there (and it only went to 7p??) because it took forever to get Sophie down for a nap so she slept pretty late, but we got to walk around, get some snacks, ride the carousel (twice!), donate some toys, see the holiday market and get ice cream. They had games and crafts but I was actually relieved we were spared the drama of trying to fight our way up to tables and through those crowds.

Sophie was too intimidated to try to go see Santa, but we got to see him being driven past us on a golf cart while we waited in line for ice cream, so that was something.

In other news, we have a new tradition of exercising before bed, it's been quite entertaining!

I, however, slept wrong last night and am in pretty excruciating pain today in my neck and shoulder, so I'll probably be sitting the next few nights out. What fun it is to be getting old /s

Lessons in Baking: Two More Rounds of Danishes

If I haven't said it before, Summer is an absolute dream baby, and now that I'm feeling much more myself, I've been trying to be a bit more productive during this maternity leave, so last week I decided I wanted to try making danishes again. I really wanted to get better at shaping them and also, the dough was kinda weird.

Well I tried again, also a raspberry cream cheese filling, but the dough turned out the same as last time - thick and almost impossible to shape. I had the exact same experience this time around as well (at least I'm consistent).

I ended up having a lot of the cream cheese filling left over, and it seemed a shame to just throw it away - and it had raw egg in it so it was going to need to be baked in some capacity. So the next day, I decided to try again.

This time, I decided to ditch the generic "sweet dough" I used before, and really looked up how to make danish-specific dough.

This made all the difference. It was still a little difficult to shape and work with, but I also was doing this inbetween cooking a homemade lentil soup and it had been a long day and I was exhausted. They turned out... interesting:

Pre-oven

Post-oven

...but really, I actually was quite happy with them because for one, I could see that if I rolled the dough out thinner, it would be a lot better, and also, the dough was a great success for a first try. It was light and flakey and I felt like it was great progress and I'm looking forward to perfecting it further.

Thanksgiving 2023

Well, family get togethers sure have taken a turn since Sophie and Enzo got to the age of playing together rather than side by side. It used to be poor Luca being bored by himself while moms managed the little toddlers, but now it's just full on chaos since they can all communicate and play together - and Summer isn't even a part of that mix yet!

We drove out to my mom's on Thanksgiving, and Sophie predictably fell asleep on the drive. She woke up just as we were turning into the neighborhood and wasn't even conscious as she sleepily said "I can't wait to see my cousins..."

We had delicious Thanksgiving fare, watched football, played Cock and Bull and tried to maintain our sanity between the circus that the kids became - our 4 plus 2 from Jim's side. At one point they were playing Candy Land and it was so cute watching Luca explain it to Sophie and watch Sophie try to understand. It was her turn for a card and she drew a double yellow (which as we know, a double anything is one of the best cards you could draw) but Sophie just said "Aww I wanted purple!" and believe me there was no strategy in that disappointment.

It was very hard to get Sophie to leave since Luca and Enzo were staying the night there and she just saw us as taking her away from them, but she fell asleep easily in the car and we had a long drive ahead of us.

The next day was our designated Christmas decorating day because I am a purist and there is NO CHRISTMAS UNTIL AFTER THANKSGIVING!! It is such a different experience now that Sophie gets it. She talks about Santa in the North Pole and what she wants him to bring her and it's just so, so exciting now (not that I didn't love Christmas enough already).

It's officially the season of the best holiday!