Love

Weekend Snapshots: Big Days And Bouncy Castles Edition

You know how they say that mothers get all nostalgic and weepy and fall into little my-baby’s-growing-up-too-fast emotional pieces during the first haircut?

Nah.

I mean, trust me: I have plenty of weepy my-baby’s-growing-up-too-fast moments. Plenty.

This just wasn’t one of them; I was more or less thrilled that we made it through the entire experience without tears or, you know…stab wounds caused by contact between a flailing baby head and an errant pair of scissors.

The constant presence of snacks and iPad helped.

This is called ‘Hiding from the stylists while Mom pays and hoping from the depths of my soul that it is all over.”

Here’s the finished product. A fairly major improvement over my own efforts last September, I’d say.

And as a plus, now he can see. Which I bet is nice.

Another big switch-up that happened this weekend: I bought a faux cowhide rug, for no other reason than that I have always, always, always wanted a cowhide rug and I found one on a flash sale site for a fairly unbelievable price. (I went for the faux rather than the real one because I figured it would be easier to clean in the inevitable event of a dog- or baby-related mishap. …Maybe?)

I moved the chevron rug up to our guest bedroom, and am pretty happy about the whole deal. Like Alexis said, the room needed a couple more offbeat touches, and I think this addition is another step in the right direction (more color is coming; I have plans).

Next stop: the mall to pick up some things we need for our trip to the Dominican Republic (next week! eeee). Of course there were pit stops for water discoveries and escalator obsessions.

Not every single part of a weekend can be lovely and photogenic, but that doesn’t make the annual winter-to-summer-clothing-switchover any less crucial (or annoying). I have a post coming up on how I handle the organizational challenges of living in a very old colonial with very tiny closets, but one major thing I do is store everything that’s out-of-season in 116-gallon plastic storage bins with titanium latches (these) that I stack in the scary part of the basement.

I’m also, as you can see, planning a yard sale. Pretty excited about that.

On Sunday, we headed over the Tappan Zee to Nyack for their annual Springfest. The town is one of our favorite day-trip spots…so the addition of bouncy castles to a place that I already adore was almost too much for me to handle.

When you grow up in New York City, there aren’t tons of bouncy castles in your life, so I distinctly recall thinking of them as THE MOST EXCITING PLACES ON THE PLANET, EVEN MORE EXCITING THAN BASKIN ROBBINS (and Baskin Robbins is pretty exciting).

Indy was a little nervous at first, but once I climbed in there with him (oh, if you insist), all was well. Kidding aside: I completely understand why it’s an intimidating place to just throw yourself into. It’s a whole lot of kids, and they’re all yelling and falling and running into each other, and the way my son reacted…it just about broke my heart, mostly because I recognized it so much. You know how there are those children who just go catapulting into unfamiliar places and go crazy? I was never one of those kids: I was a little shy, a little wary, and definitely liked to take a minute to figure out what was going on before even beginning to involve myself in the action.

And watching my son watch the other kids, then sort of tentatively approach them, trying to imitate them with mini-versions of their laughing and yelling and jumping…

I just recognized it, that’s all.

In short: I cannot wait for Disneyworld.

These Nine West boots (sold out, but these are similar) are my favorites at the moment, and what I wore all through my Colorado trip, and then all weekend long. Speaking of Nine West, they’re doing a very cool program at the moment called Gangs For Good that I thought might be of interest: if you create a video showing how you and your friends help out in your community and upload it here, you’ll have a chance to win a weekend trip to NYC and a $5,000 donation from Nine West to the charity that you support. (Click here for more info.)

Back to the Springfest: we ate fresh guacamole (at Casa Del Sol)…

…and bought pretty things that I’m going to try very hard to keep alive for more than five days.

Sunday night Mom and Dad drove up for dinner, so I made Chinese Chicken Salad: a dish that I used to make all the time a few years ago, but had totally forgotten about. I won’t make that mistake again, though, because it is good. (Recipe coming up on RG this week.)

This is my happy place.

Hope you had a lovely weekend as well!

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