June is my favorite month!

Well.  It would seem that certain teenagers these days have forgotten the age-old adage, "Children are to be seen and not heard."  Said certain teenagers have decided that it is appropriate to post on certain older (yet amazingly youthful in appearance) people's Facebook pages rather bossy messages about how they just "have to" see pictures of their cousins on the blog, using clever language about how beautiful someone's profile picture is to somehow ensure that their photo-viewing needs are met.  I guess certain teenagers are well-aware that loving aunts such as myself, who cannot bear to see one moment of suffering on her beloved niece's face, are easily manipulated.  No Maddie, don't cry.  Mommy can't make you breakfast.  Mommy has to blog so that Caroline will have a good day today.  It's ok.  I guess you can just have a twinkie or something instead of the nutritious, well-balanced meal you are accustomed to.  Twinkies are good for 3 year olds, right, Caroline?

Anyways, it is probably for the best that Caroline has been stalking us, because it finally got me to post these pictures!  June really is my favorite month.  The whole year is really downhill from here.  Ha!  We have been having a great summer.  I am having so much fun gardening in our front and back yards, both of which look so pretty this year, and spending lots of time outside with the kids.  The summer months have brought the discovery that Lucy is just a...a dirt-loving child.  That is what she is.  I change Lucy's clothes 3 times a day.  I go through more bottles of laundry spray than I really care to count.  Part of this is because the Moose refuses to walk.  This week she started standing up on her own, and of course she crawls and cruises like a champ, but thank you so much, Lucy will just pass on the walking.  So while she is chasing Maddie around outside for hours, she is on the ground.  Lucy comes in most days for naptime covered in chalk dust, bubble juice, and...food.  Lucy's  a real "hands on" kind of eater.  She really insists on utensils because she wants to be like Maddie.  She starts throwing food about 2 minutes into every meal.  When she eats outside she crawls across the table to get to Maddie's plate.  In short, Lucy has a really, really funny personality.  She is always suprising us, because Maddie is such a fastidious little kid.  She really hates to be barefoot, she likes to wear pretty dresses every day, and really just prefers to be clean.  Which I of course adore (Lucy, I adore watching your quests for adventure, but I do not adore the laundry that you create, my love.).  It is just so funny to us to see, as Lucy gets older, how different the girls are in their preferences and approach to things.  

Luke has the girls two nights a week while I am working, and this has brought the summer discovery that the Poppish girls love hot dogs.  Like, a lot. Maddie ate her first one and said, "I wike dat hot dog." with utmost seriousness.  We walk over to Broadway to get ice cream cones at Sweet Action and dinner at The Hornet--Lucy eats macaroni and black beans (*such* an unappetizing sight for her fellow diners.  Sorry, folks.), and Maddie prefers a "cheesebooger and fries".  We also have a good pizza place by our house that we take the girls to.  Early next month we are starting swimming lessons with both girls.  Luke found a class at the Washington Park Community Center (just a few blocks from our house) where we can take both girls 2 nights a week and they sort of teach us to teach them to swim.  We'll see how this goes, but we are excited!  Tonight we went to "Jazz in the Park" over in the City Park, and that was really fun.  The jazz wasn't too...jazzy.  So that helped:)  Maddie and Lucy ignored all of the nutritious picnic foods that I packed until they both had the DumDums that were for dessert.  They danced and played around, Luke drank some beer, and a good time was had by all.  Until they crashed from the sugar and Maddie threw a fit in the car the whole way home, leading Luke to tell her to " Tell Mermaid your troubles."  

We have big trips planned this summer, too.  In a few weeks we are off to Maine for a long-awaited visit, and we are all really excited!  It has been just as long since we went to Memphis and we're excited to head there in August, as well as to New Albany and Louisville to see my Grandma and remind her of why I have always been her favorite grandchild.  

Here are some photos from our recent summer fun.  First, here are some really beautiful photos that Deedee took of the girls at school a few weeks ago.  You can see what a fun little world they have over there and how spoiled they are.  Like me, Deedee just leaves Lucy to it and lets her get as messy as her heart desires!  She also indulges Maddie's need for luxury and sends her home with pedicures in the most fashionable shades.  Also I am just jealous that I didn't take these photos myself...Deedee took them on manual!

Deedee changes Lucy into "messy clothes" everyday before she goes outside.  I finally had to start dressing her in shorts and tee-shirts because she gets so dirty.  This was really hard for me to do!  It's always funny to see how differently I dress the girls because Lucy is such a human tornado!

Look at those sweet dirty feet!

Crawling away!

Too cool for school.  I love this photo!

Maddie does some painting, which clearly she is taking very seriously!  They spend almost everyday at Deedee's doing *everything* outside.  They love it so much and it's so good for them!

She's loving this!

So, I bought each girl her own little pool thinking they would want to go back and forth from one to the other.  No.  That would be too easy, Mer.  They both have to be in the same tiny pool at all times.

The girls spend most of the day in the backyard right now.  It really hasn't gotten too hot  yet which has made things so easy for me!

Maddie loves to go to the pool, and she does love playing in the backyard, but even in her swimsuit she's just not into the barefoot thing!  you can see her here gamely picking her way around things!

Miss June, Maddie Poppish, models the latest styles from Gymboree.

You know, girls, I could have just gotten one, bigger pool.  Lesson learned!

The sad, neglected red pool.  I should note that thanks to Luke's hard work, our grass is now looking much better than this pic would indicate!  I just want to make sure Luke gets credit for the smooth, green carpet that is the Poppish lawn.  People come from miles around.  You have no idea.

Snack time.  For the 5 seconds it took me to take this photo, Lucy was actually sitting, and not standing, in the chair.

Mondays and Wednesdays we eat dinner out back.  Notice that we've completely given up on clothing for Lucy, but Maddie's over there dressed like Pollyanna!  lol!  Both girls *love* an ice cream cone!

I had to sneak in one photo of my calla lilies!  I have 3 kinds this year, these are the mini-ones from my back garden.  We did renovate the kitchen finally!  Sue and Dave and Emily came to help us paint.  We *just* finished the last few things this weekend, so I just need to get it together to take a few photos to put up.

This is what I typically see when I look out the back window to see what the girls are doing while they eat their lunch.  Sometimes Lucy's up on the table before I can catch her.

Something suspicious is obviously happening as Madelyn has her plate up by her face in both hands.

You seriously have never seen a kid love watermelon the way Maddie does.  This photo just reminds me of how much I really do love summer.

Laughing at some horrible thing her sister is likely doing.

Maddie likes to tell you what kind of "face" she has while she's eating.  Like, "Hey Mommy!  I have a ketchup face!"  This can get pretty complicated at times.  "Hey Mommy!  I have a ketchup and watermelon and yogurt pizza face!"  

So, Maddie and I went for a walk the other morning, and I loved all of these pictures so much I just couldn't exclude any of them. She was being so funny, and so herself!  Here she is "getting the mail" at the newspaper box down the block from our house.  This can go on.  For.  Hours.

I so love the way Maddie lets me dress her up!  

Maddie runs EVERYWHERE!  And she has such a funny little run.

Picking flowers.

So here we had to run, run, run until Maddie said "FREEZE"!  And then, you guessed it, we both froze.  It took us a long time to get around the block.

"Come on, Mom!"

She liked these red ones.  Our neighborhood is my favorite place to be in the summer.  The gardens are just so beautiful.

Here we are at the zoo.  Both girls love it there!  Lucy laughs at all of the animals.  Luke had the idea to get this cart to pull them around in... best idea ever.  They loved it.

Lucy pointing at the lions.  She really "notices" the animals in a way that Maddie didn't at this age.   Another one of those differences!

For the first time EVER we have a few good pictures of me with the girls!  I couldn't decide which one I liked best.

Lucy, the world's biggest daddy's girl.  She still SCREAMS at the top of her lungs, with pure  joy, when Luke gets home from work everyday.

Luke took the girls on the carousel.  Huge hit!

Later that day we went over to the playground.  Lucy was just not.  In.  The mood.  But I took her picture anyway.  Let us take time to consider, in the next few shots, the darker side of the 15 month old child.

Half-drumming, half-crying.

"Yes, I know this would be the coolest photo ever if I didn't have this constipated look on my face.  I'm still not giving in."

Dreaming of the future, in which she will become quite rich and famous for something scholarly, and immediately insist on paying for our Caribbean retirement.  Thanks, Moose.

"I HATE green grass and sunshine and shiny red balls."

Happy Anniversary to Luke and I!  We met nine years ago (feels like 20, as Luke would say.  He's SO funny.), and got married in Maine 6 years ago.  We also celebrated Father's Day today and had the best day celebrating with Luke.  We are so lucky to have him and only wish we didn't make him so crazy:)

We hope you all have a great month and that we get to see everyone soon!

Finally it's SPRING!

Hello everyone!  Today was the day I moved all of the winter coats into the basement, so I am ready to celebrate finally being 100% over winter!  In Denver we count on the last frost being on May 1st, so I always wait until then to do all of my spring planting and getting rid of those dumb coats.  I always plant a few things way too early, and start buying summer clothes for the kids WAY to early, but hey, at least I'm prepared when the good weather hits!  It makes Luke nuts when I fill their closets with sundresses in early March, though...I can literally feel him biting his tongue about it all.  Hopefully he can also feel me rolling my eyes at his back while I load up the closets with pretty princess clothes:) I have always hated the winter cold, but never so much as once we had kids...my life is SO much easier in summer!  Going outside in winter involves coats, hats, gloves, socks, you name it.  The dumb snow gets all over my floors (we don't have a mudroom, sigh.), and the girls are always sick with something.  Always.  But in summer everything's so easy...sundress, sandals, sun hat, DONE!   I don't have to run the humidifiers at night in the summer because their little noses dry right up, too...one less thing to do!  That's right, everyone...everything's coming up roses.  Now, as I type all this it's a chilly 50 degrees outside and Maddie and I both have strep throat (for the second time this month), but I'm trying to think positively.

Just like all of our months, April was crazy busy.  I have been to the doctor with the kids more times than I care to mention, and this eats a) all of my money ($30-$40/visit adds up when you're going 2-3 times per week!) and b) all of my time.  As a provider I always try really, really hard to run on-time for my patients, and for myself--I have no interest in being in the clinic an hour late every night if I can avoid it, and I know that there is nothing worse than sitting in a closet of a room with 2 or 3 toddlers waiting for an hour for your provider to show up.  Sadly, it would appear that I am the ONLY MEDICAL SUPERSTAR IN DENVER. THE ONLY ONE.  I love our pediatrician's office, but I wait an hour every.  Single.  Time.  So it basically eats up the whole morning or afternoon every time you go.  The worst part is the wait at the pharmacy after all of that waiting in the office.  God help me, I think they should write a prescription for a *big* glass of red wine for all the moms who drag those kids into the clinic for visits.  And if that glass of red wine should occur right at 5pm, well, it's medically indicated, right?  I'm not asking questions if you're not.  

In any case, I am relieved and grateful to report that, despite all of these visits, both girls are totally healthy and now doing fine.  Lucy had a real rough patch after her transition to whole milk, and we've since made the switch to soy.  Her allergy testing was all negative, but they do think she has a true lactose intolerance, so no milk for the Moose.  It's rare at her age but it does happen.  She has done so much better since the switch, I can't even describe it.  She hasn't puked in a month, which is a huge record for her.  She's mostly sleeping through the night (WHY am I typing that?  I'm sure I'll be up all night, now.), and back to her cheery self now that some molars have finally broken through.  Her left leg is about 1cm longer than her right, and the orthopedist assures me that this is normal, and has nothing to do with why she is not walking (Lucy=Lazy, apparently:)).  Maddie is horribly allergic to dogs and cats, the allergist said she hadn't seen a reaction that severe in a long time, but she has no food allergies and no big environmental allergies, so they think her asthma is just reactive airway disease and will resolve over the next few years, which is of course a huge relief!  So even though the doctor visits make me NUTS, we are so grateful that the girls are both healthy.  I would take them every day if I had to, just to hear those words!

We've finished renovating our downstairs bathroom and start on the kitchen in a few weeks.  That will leave only the upstairs bathroom to do, and we are SO excited to be finished with all of this!  We also want to expand our deck this summer but I am wondering if that is just going to have to wait until next year...we are exhausted and from where I sit our deck looks juuusssttt fine!

So here are our pictures from this month...we had a great Easter with Mimi and are looking forward to a visit from Sue, Dave and Emily this month!

I loved these photos of Maddie with her chocolate popsicle...it was one of our first warm days and she loved being outside, even more so since she had some chocolate!

Lucy and Maddie playing with Luke in the afternoon.  This was before Lucy was off the bottle.  I don't want anyone to think we have a Suri Cruise situation going on, here.  She's off the bottle, albeit reluctantly!

Lucy is *such* a daddy's girl.  Luke can do no wrong!  She's  doing so many funny things lately, standing on her own more and more, waving bye bye, talking away, and eating everything she can get her hands on since we took her off dairy!

Laughing at Luke.

Maddie and Mimi making pink cupcakes.  As you can see, Maddie is hardly enjoying herself at all.

Enjoying the beautiful weather while waiting for the cupcakes to cool off.

Still waiting.  As soon as the first cupcake was iced, Maddie was  done with the whole enterprise.  She wanted to eat, and she left the rest of the icing to us!

Maddie in her sweet Easter apron from Mimi and Gaki Mike.  She had so much fun doing all of her little kitchen projects with mom.

At the mall playground, working off some of that sugar.  Lucy was teething in the worst way for mom's whole visit...she was not feeling very playful a the mall this day!  Of course, the day after mom left she snapped right out of it.

"One pink cupcake and I can fly!"

The moose really only wants to climb up the slides.  The other kids totally, totally love this.  They love it so much they're always trying to kick her in the face as they come careening down the slide.  Lucy could care less.  She's trouble, this one.

You can see how bad her poor little teeth are hurting her.  The pain did  not stop her from trying to climb up another slide.

On the move.  She usually just crawls around the whole area, screaming at the top of her lungs and looking at all the big kids with crazy eyes.

Darn teeth.

She will go up and down these stairs.  Eight.  Thousand.  Times.

Cutie pie!

What a haul!  Mom and Dad sent beautiful baskets full of candy that Luke and I very much enjoyed stealing (I JUST lost my "Easter weight" back).  Sue and Dave sent GIANT baskets full of the cutest clothes, shoes, and stickers!  I won't have to buy shoes for the girls all summer!  

Apparently mom and dad were saving all of the really GOOD candy for their grandkids.  Where the crap was my Williams Sonoma candy when I was a kid?  None of those damn Peeps in this basket.  Also, you wouldn't BELIEVE how much dinner you can get a 3 year old to eat if you promise a "chocolate eggie" at the end of the meal.  I'm such a huge believer in the bribe.   I honestly don't know how parenting would work without it.  I knew it was for me when I heard my friend Martina reigning in her 4 year old's behavior by gravely stating that "the Christmas elves are watching you".  Toddlers take note: Apparently Christmas Elves will seriously limit your Christmas haul if you don't watch your smart talk with your mom.  I can hardly wait for the holidays to try this one out myself.  

Maddie loved opening all of her new clothes, and Lucy loved throwing all of her new shoes!  The baskets were a huge success, Grammie and Pops!

She's only smiling because she's coming for my camera.

Aunt Karyn brought Moosie some dairy-free Easter cookies.  I think the look on her face says it all!

Opening their baskets.  

Easter playground time!  It was cooold on Easter this year, but we didn't let that stop us!  Like all kids I guess, Maddie loves the playground, and we don't go as much as we should.  It was fun to get to take her with mom!  I got some GREAT pictures of the girls, so I was glad we went!

Love this!

Maddie had a ball.  You'd have thought it was 70 and sunny.  It wasn't.  Trust me.

Mid-giggle:)

She was at the top of the slide playing peek-a-boo with me.  These were the best shots of the day, I think!

Love my little Moose!

Lucy truly is so mischievous.  I think you can see it a little in this one.   

Doing her war cry.  She's quite fierce for a baby.

"5 more minutes, ok mom?"

We hope you're all having a wonderful spring, too!  I know everyone is looking forward to my posting about my garden this year, because who doesn't like to look at a million pictures of flowers?  Don't answer that.