Happy New Year

After a really great Christmas for the girls, we last minute (the day before) decided to get together with some friends, two other couples with young kids, for a low-key dinner to get together, celebrate East Coast New Year's, and be in bed by 10. It worked out great, and we all had such a nice time.

Sophie ended up having so much fun and going so crazy with Penelope, Scarlett and Ethan that she was pretty inconsolable when everyone had to leave. It probably helped that one friend brought over a small bounce house for the kids, and that got them overtired, and they were screeching and running around playing hide and seek too. This has been a new development of Sophie's because she recently learned what it was, and to her, "hiding" is sometimes just throwing a blanket over her head, burying her face behind a chair, or laying down on a floor and calling out "I'm over here!" when someone misses her. It's been so cute to watch.

Just Summer being her usual very
happy self

They also decorated gingerbread men and sugar cookies, and all the parents sorta took turns supervising kids so others could sit down for a minute.

Adults toasted with champagne and the kids had noisemakers and said happy new year, and everything was cleaned up and done by about 10 or 10:30, although I had had a nap that day so AJ and I both still stayed up until midnight to welcome in the new year.

New Year's Day was also nice. We made waffles with Sophie's new mini heart-shaped waffle maker from Great Aunt Dawn and had the Rose Parade on. We didn't have any plans for the day, but last minute we had Iris, David and Landon over for a short while to help him jump himself tired on the bounce house.

Otherwise, we enjoyed staying in with Sophie and Summer, and Sophie used that bounce house until bedtime. I got Summer's daycare bag all ready, because she started at daycare today with Sophie. It was emotional for me, but Summer didn't cry, so that was very helpful. And it's why I've had a free second to write this. I go back to work next Wednesday, January 10. The last vestiges of maternity leave and adjusting to a family of four are upon us.

Welcome, 2024!

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.