Flutterby

Yesterday we went to the Brookfield Zoo and did the Butterfly House. 
To describe it as magical would not do it justice. 

And of course we visited the polar bear. I actually got lost inside the bear exhibit. It was a little terrifying. Not because I am afraid of bears, but because crowds make me twitchy. 
Milo REALLY wanted a butterfly to land of him, but it didn't happen. Hey-for four bucks we can go try another day. 
I am off to get dressed and to go to Target for some Easy Mac and something coral. Not sure what. But something. 

What I Wore Wednesday

I've been meaning to link this up for awhile now. I just realized that I don't usually remember to take a photo of my outfit for the day, only because it is usually something horrendus. 
And isn't that the dang idea of WIWW???? To keep us out of hoorendou clothing?


I do generally stay in a strange combo of workout pants and a tank top for the beginning of the day, unless I am up super early alone and have time to shower before the kid wakes. 
Eeenyways....

Heeeey, look! A comfy tee and yoga pants! And my nearly ever-present Sally mug of coffee!

I look REALLY bloated.

Off to do laundry at mom's.

Blush and bangs. Much better. Joe's Jeans, boatneck sweater from Gap. This was Monday , I was off to class with Milo. 


There you go. Nice to see you, WIWW peeps!!!

Peep. Peep peep. And maybe a spoiler, but you shouldn't care.

Just because I don't have loads to talk about...
I'm following Elizabeth at White Lightning on her NYC Fashion Week adventures. 
She's got an amusing sense of humor...


psssttt,can I tell you something? c'mere. it is 7 in the morning and there are some weird loud women across the courtyard. in another townhouse. like, diagonally across the courtyard-so...pretty far away. and i can hear them. what the heck are they talking about? i can only hear women. i'll pretend that there is a new baby over there and the women of a tribe have gathered to clean the new mother's house, fold her laundry and rock the baby while she showers and sleeps. 




Whew. Sorry. Had to get that tangent out. This is why I am one set of binocs away from being a full Peeping Tom. 


someone just bleated over there. i am not kidding. now yelling! whattheheck is going ON OVER THERE??? maybe it is an old-friend slumber party and the girlies didn't sleep and now they are awake having coffee.


I am totally trying not to go get the binoculars that are in the diaper bag. I need to stop peeking out the window. If I can see them they can PROBABLY see me. Sheesh


ANYHOO....the Mr. and I watched the movie Kickass....?Yeah. 
WORST MOVIE EVER
If you are considering watching it, please save yourself the time and don't. Or don't save yourself the time, and read a book. Or draw a picture or write a story. 
I thought that it was supposed to be funny. The premise seemed to beg for it. Nerdy kid becomes superhero to emulate his comic book heroes and salve his bleeding heart. RIGHT? That's cool, RIGHT? I heart comic books! People that read comics are generally cool!


GAWD. Now, I know we can't expect much from Nicholas Cage at this point, but ... I was just...and then Brian was...and we were both...just...


I think the scene where the adult male villan is beating the crap out of the adorable young female heroine was what turned it for me. This after she watches her father die. It sucked. It made me mourn the demise of the film industry and weep for the AIDS/Cancer/Choose a charity that could have used the money that funded that piece of crap. Pieces of crap are actually BETTER, literally BETTER than that movie. 

So I'll leave you with a cute photo of a boy and his cat. 
PEACE!

Promises, promises

I have a new boss at work. I met her for the first time on Sunday evening, and she seems really cool.She has/wants purple hair.  Tonight will be my first time working with her. 
Last night I dreamt we got into a fist fight at work. 
What the fuck?
Last night was a WEIRD night for me. Custies were bizarre and I kept hearing of massively life-changing personal events (for other people, not me). 
Weird. 
Anyways, I promised cute pics of Milo flossing.
Et voila:

...stammer...

I love the show Sesame Street. I have even moved from the 'Elmo sucks' camp to the 'Elmo is actually pretty cool' camp. 
I naturally prefer the Sesame Street of my youth, though. The Sesame Street where Snuffleupagus could still only be seen by Big Bird (and us, of course...I loved being in on that), and Oscar had a Brooklyn accent. Mr Hooper's store!!!! Come ON!!!!
I wanted to live on Sesame Street. 
Imagine my happiness when my darling hubby queued ALL the oldschool Sesame Street that Netflix had and loaded them onto our AppleTV. He's good at stuff like that. 

Darling Hubby

I was pleased; because while the current incarnation of Sesame Street focuses on relationships, kindness, fairies and technology (among other things), the past one focuses on reading and numbers and playing outside. 
Milo watched an oldschool episode today, and there was a disclaimer at the beginning. A DISF*CKINGCLAIMER. Apparently someone decided that an educational show (that I grew up with) from the early 80s 'might not be sufficient for today's preschooler.'






Really? Re-eaaaaaally? I disagree. I DO think that a LOT of the programming (eerie term, no) out there for preschoolers is WAAAAAY overstimulating. 
Team Umizoomi, anyone? Sheesh. What the heck is wrong with 'One of These Things is Not Like the Other?'??????????

We don't think anything is wrong with it. 

I Love My Grocery Store

It is called Valli Produce, and for those of you in the area, it is on the corner-ish of Roselle and Higgins roads. 
I suppose it is part of a small chain of Italian/other ethnicities stores, as there are a few in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago. I don't know why I capitalized that. Seemed right at the time. 
Okay, so they always have an amazing selection of produce... 
           freaking LOOK AT THIS

yeah baby, that's red bell peppers at 99 CENTS A POUND, PEOPLE; baby bok choy, leeks, cilantro, green onions, limes at TEN FOR A DOLLAR!!!!
 fresh French baguettes, and their prices on lunch meat CANNOT be beat. The cashiers are ALWAYS friendly. The gorgeous woman who checked me out complimented my hair-she was sweet. The staff looks and sounds mostly Latina. Not as though that matters at ALL, but I've found that they (meaning Mexicans, Ecuadorians, El Salvadorians, et al) are extremely hard working and friendly. 
It is nice to shop in a place where they play opera in the morning and your cashier knows to NOT bag bread and raw chicken together. 
I just...I'm so fond of this place. Just GET THERE BEFORE 9 AM. Seriously, after 9 it is a shithouse in there. I think they made the aisles like one inch too narrow or something. 
So...two posts in one day. I uploaded some other photos and I really like this one:

its pretty blurry but i like Milo's face. 

I heart iPhoto

This is probably going to be my last post until Monday, as this will be a crazy wedding weekend!!!


I'll be flying around doing random things like:


Making this:

It is called Texas Caviar or something like that. Its basically canned, rinsed black beans and chickpeas with chopped celery, bell pepper, onion, cilantro and a can of corn. Oh, and 8 oz of Italian dressing. I thought that was a bit much, but this is supposed to chill overnight. I made it early this morning and won't be serving it until 6 or 7 tonight, so I think we'll be fine. It is meant to be eaten as a dip with tortilla chips. I'm bringing it to my future sister-in-law's house for Megan and Justin's rehearsal dinner. 

Wait. She's Justin's sister. Justin is marrying MY sister. I don't know if that makes Justin's sister anything to me. 

I don't know. I don't even think I pluralized that correctly. Ah well.

Doing this:

Catastrophe Cosmetic mask from Lush.It has blueberries in it and smells divine. I love iPhoto because I had a blueberry under my nose in this photo and it looked like a booger. But I edited it out! Sweet!  I actually did this one yesterday. I'll do Ayesha tonight with my sisters. 

And maybe letting Milo finish watching Harry Potter:

He very much likes the train to Hogwarts, and the Enchanted Car. I hope we can read the books together when he's older. I tried to get into the books in order to understand the movies, but it never really happened. I do think whatserface is a pretty good storyteller, though. And I am happy she is now a gazillionbrazillionpraskillionaire. 

I like how he has his feet kicked up behind him in this one. 

Have a great weekend to the two (three?) people who read this~~~pray for good weather on Saturday!!!!

The Mammals with Whom I live

Earlier this month, I took Milo to see the farmers' market in the parking lot of Mr. Smith's office. I had been told that there was a kiddie train that Milo might like.

Unfortunately, when we arrived there was no train. 

So instead of doing that, we went to a fancy restaurant in Wheeling called Tramonto's. It is inside the Westin Hotel, and man is it ever nice. This is the type of restaurant that I used to go to BEFORE I had a kid.

But, now I have one and we go to places like Steak N Shake. 

Regardless, this is a rare occurrence and only happened because Mr. Smith had a gift certificate-hooray for village golf outings! (I was also overly excited about the large bottle of Hidden Valley Ranch dressing he got in his goody bag. Inexplicable, but that shit is YUM.)

I didn't recognize the name of the place, but it is a steak and seafood place developed by Rick Tramonto, who is like...the MAN of steak. 

Or something. 

We sat right behind the bar, which was separated from the rest of the place by a glass wall of cascading water. Of course Milo was thrilled. 

I didn't take photos of the food because I ate it too fast. The shrimp tempura appetizer was incredible. Perfectly cooked but could have used a BIT more spice. I will say that I wolfed it down. Shocked that I used a fork and napkin. I ordered the chopped salad as an entree and Mr. Smith ordered the roast beef sandwich with crispy onions and horseradish cream with fries. 

We told the server we were going to share-purplosely NOT using the term 'split'. Sometimes restaurants will charge you up to $5 to split an entree onto 2 plates. Kind of bullhonky, but whatever. Just eat off the same plate. 

But they split them for us, even bringing the salad before the sandwich. It is little things like this that make a restaurant visit memorable. 

And! I ate a few grape tomato halves! Anyone who knows me knows that raw, undressed tomatoes generally sicken me. As my palate has matured, I almost wish they didn't. The way people talk about them is nearly convincing. Then I see the gooshy, slimy interiors and I gag. 

Anyways, I figured that TRYING some in this AMAZING salad wouldn't kill me. And it didn't. 

We ordered a fancy drink for Milo. He liked it, as you can see.

Cheese!!!

We also introduced Milo to Play Doh. He loves it, especially through the garlic press.

And for the final photo in this post, I give you:

Our two cats, Squishface (on the left) and Mona. Squishface was Mr. Smith's alarm clock for over a year. Now that we have moved and Mr. Smith has switched jobs, he no longer needs Squishy. But if we are not out of bed by 7:30 am, we are awakened by this cat. Because, you know...its actually HIS bed that he so graciously shares with us. 

Mona is just lazy. 

Well, now I have to go exfoliate and apply self-tanner. Can't really pull off a tangerine bridesmaid dress when you are white as a sheet. (ghost? paper? white as...white?)

Water Heater Tales

Sometimes in the morning Mr. Smith takes a shower before work. He likes to take a long time in the shower because he really likes the steam affect. So he uses a lot of hot water. 


And for some silly reason our water heater doesn't like to heat back up in time for me (Mrs. Smith, of course) to get a shower  before the goo starts shouting for MOMEEEEEEEEEEE. 


I have gotten pretty fast at showering, which I find amusing because I used to really take my time in the shower. When I worked at Aveda (years ago) , my best friend would come over to use my shower stuff. Legendary. 


*random side note* Do police cars and ambulances and fire trucks all have different siren selections inside? We live by a fire station and hear a really lot of them. And I just heard one that I have never heard before. Leads me to wonder...


Anyways. I am waiting for the water heater to fill back up or heat back up or whatever it does so I don't have to take an entirely freezing shower. 

This is what I look at most of the time. 

This is a pretty rad Milo self-portrait. 

This is fruit salad that Milo did not want. 

This is the pear carcass that he DID want. 

This is me trying to photograph the two of us. 

This is a photograph from a day when we got REALLY dressed up and went to a church and then had a really big party with all our family and friends. 

See? FANCY!!!!

Now I am off to take my hopefully-not-entirely-freezing-cold shower. And then I get to go have lunch with a new friend. Yay!!!!

Bread Baking and Funny Face

Welcome to my very first blog post. I intend that this be a place of my own that holds my photos and thoughts on my life as a mother, wife, and part-time Lush SA.

I like to bake bread for my family. In my humble opinion, making bread by hand is far superior to a machine or even a stand mixer. Or maybe I just like to knead and punch bread dough.

So, a few weeks ago I had Milo give me some assistance. This is the evidence.