Woolsey Family Chronicles

After watching the movie Julie and Julia one week ago today I had such good intentions to do my blog writing more often in a week and to cook more delicious meals for my family. Instead, I seem to be stuck just writing my once a week blog because this is what my life dictates that I do. I cannot possibly find the time or the subject matter to fill more than one blog a week at this point, and that is just fine. The cooking on the other hand is a disappointment. I discovered in a week that I think I only cooked two home cooked meals. Ava eats almost nothing I prepare for dinner, as I have previously blogged ("oh mom, we're having this!" in her most disgusted voice) and the babies have taken to throwing more food on the ground than in their mouths. Sometimes I even get the fake out - I'm going to throw it on the ground hand gesture to the ground motion. . . no, I am going to eat it hand gesture to the mouth. . . just kidding, I am going to really throw it on the ground with food flying in all directions. I have found food on my blinds and all over my walls. My point being I feel that my cooking is underappreciated and sometimes I wonder if it is at all worth my time. But Ava hating dinner and the babies throwing food is merely an excuse not to take the time -- oh so much time - to plan, shop and prepare meals. On Friday night Chris had cereal and I had popcorn for dinner. Pathetic.

Anyway, I have been seriously strugging with some changes from my year long routine that I have come to cherish more than I knew until it was gone. Ava is no longer out of the house and in school in the mornings, but instead she is in school in the afternoons. Preston has decided against the morning nap which usually puts all the babies back in bed by 8:30 or 9am until around 11am. Last year this gave me a whopping 2 hours of alone time to catch up on housework, read, write my blog, get myself a mocha or just do whatever I pleased in the morning hours. Now I find myself the morning entertainment for Ava who is certifiably high maintenance and Preston who is high maintenance only on account of the fact that he is only 18 months old. My nannies don't come until 10am and that is a long stretch of rigorous activity from the time we are up at 6:30am until relief arrives. Just before I was about to either run away or end it all, Chris came up with a simple solution: shift the nanny to earlier the morning and leaving earlier in the day. Superb. He saw that the mothership was about to sink and he figured out a way to bucket the water out just in the nick of time. The new plan goes into effect this coming week and I am currently working on a new schedule to occupy the kids in the awake hours throughout the day.

I have posted below some pictures from Ava's 5th birthday party at Cake Stuff today. Ava and her friends decorated cookies to take home with them and then they had ice cream sundaes. Ava had lots of fun and so did her friends. Ava's real birthday is on Tuesday and although she doesn't care much about asking for presents or what she is getting for presents on her birthday, she did want to make sure that I had the house decorated with a Happy Birthday banner ON her ACTUAL birthday and that I had birthday cake.

I would like to note that there is a picture of the back of Preston's head because what the &%$# is up with that weird frizz head? And then the random picture of Violet is there to display what her hair is becoming . . . more mullet folks. Chris stated tonight she could possibly win the bad hair of the year award with her persistently thick shaggy mullet. I hereby refuse to cut either one of these heads of hair because I am curious as to what these strange heads of hair are going to amount to month to month. The color, lovely. The texture, frizzy. The style, manely atrocious.

The birthday girl and the chosen one just moments before departure Ronin enjoying the partay
Ava very much enjoying her sundae