She Says… The Big Boy Room

If you’ve kept up on the news about what went down in Boston last week, you know that Friday was a crazy end to an already crazy week. Though life felt relatively normal for us (we were not part of the lockdown or police searches), behind the “normal” exterior, everything was different. Owen’s school was closed on Friday while we were encouraged to stay in our house during the manhunt for the second bomber, and I struggled to catch headlines and stay up-to-date via my phone so Owen wasn’t hearing/seeing the coverage.

It was stressful. And exhausting. And the second Owen went to bed I was glued to the television. We were so relieved to hear the news of the bomber’s capture late Friday night, and I spent the rest of the weekend almost completely unplugged from all news/social media/email in a sort of backlash against the time I had spent pouring over media during the week.

On a MUCH lighter note, the switch to the big boy bed that I have written/obsessed about far too much happened last Thursday, amidst the craziness. The bed was delivered and assembled while he was at school. It worked out really well because we were able to get everything set up and have a “big reveal” when he got home. I knew it would either be a huge success or a total failure.

The verdict? Huge success.

So far (we’re on night 5 tonight), he has stayed in bed and called for me in the morning. A few early wakeups, mostly due to being excited about the bed and also the fact that my mom was visiting this weekend and he wanted to see her as soon as he woke up. I’m considering that a huge success since I was scared he’d be out of the bed on night 1 and not sleeping at all. So… big boy bed for the win!

The transition also meant that we moved the changing table and the crib into the new baby’s room, and it has gotten me REALLY excited that we’re actually going to have a little person to put into that room very soon. My mom helped me get out all of the boxes of tiny baby clothes and clean out things like swings and baby seats that have been in our attic/basement since we moved. It’s making our NEXT big transition feel a whole lot more real!

Fingers crossed that the big boy bed maintains its allure and Owen continues to believe he really can’t get out on his own. So far, so good.

She Says… It All Adds Up

Project: Big Boy Bed could have been as simple as mattress on the floor. But no, things are never that simple around here. Somehow my brain turned that simple change into a catalyst for making all kinds of bigger changes.

Here’s what I intended to buy:

• Twin bed (Our crib converts to a toddler bed, but since we are planning to use that crib in July for the new baby, I didn’t think it made much sense to transition multiple times. Straight to the twin!)

Here’s what I kind of forgot we had to buy in addition to the things above:

• Mattress
• Box spring
• Duvet cover
• Duvet/comforter
• Twin sheets (x2)
• Waterproof mattress protector (x2)

And then those things made me think of something else…

• Video monitor (We never got one when Owen was a baby, and I’m glad we didn’t because I would have obsessed over it… but now I want to see what he’s up to when that door is shut and he has no crib to confine him! We’ll likely get 2 cameras so we can watch both kiddos on the same screen.)
• Dresser? (Currently Owen’s clothes are all in his changing table. He is very much potty trained at home, but still wears diapers for sleeping, so we also kind of need a place to change him. Unfortunately he loves to climb his current changing table like a little monkey, and even though it’s securely bolted to the wall, I think it will be better if we take it out of his room once he is let loose. Also, we’ll need it for the baby about a million times more often, so it makes sense to put in the nursery. Which means that… now we need a dresser too? Maybe with a changing pad on top?).

And then somehow my brain made the jump that since we’ll be moving the crib and changing table OUT of Owen’s room and INTO the new nursery, we’re eliminating what we have been using as a guest room. Of course we knew that was going to happen, but the actual date (next Thursday) of the bed coming really catapults these changes into reality.

So, naturally, I started meeting with contractors to possibly put a bathroom in our basement to create a guest suite away from children… before the baby comes. Ummm, yeah. Maybe not the best timing, but it certainly would be useful!

I’m trying to convince myself that most of the new things we’re buying for Owen’s room are balanced out by what we DON’T have to buy for the baby’s nursery. And they will also be used for years and years to come (my good, sturdy twin bed lasted me until college!), so we’re investing in solid pieces, rather than something flimsy as a placeholder for the “real deal” when he gets older. Still, this feels like a much bigger chunk of change (in all senses of the word) than I bargained for.

She Says… The April Fool’s Joke That Wasn’t

In general, I think most blog/website April Fool’s Day jokes are kind of lame. Once in a long time there’s one that makes me laugh out loud (this YouTube one was pretty funny), but usually they are so ridiculous that no one gets fooled, but instead are left rolling their eyes.

And, clearly, in my case, the classic “I’m pregnant!” farce is not funny… ’cause it’s true.

However, I giggled a little when Benjamin told me about an idea he had. You know how I’ve been shocked at how big I am already with this pregnancy as compared to how I was with Owen (which was still very big for a 1st baby bump)? He thought I could tell you all that we finally found out why: That I’m having twins!

Kinda funny, right?

…Bueller?

Ok, maybe not.

In other news, I have been quietly avoiding the topic of switching Owen into a big boy bed since introducing the idea back in February, but that is about to change. I’m resisting this transition for many reasons, but Owen not being ready for it is not one of them (they’re all MY issues, not his).

• I’m worried about losing the control that I have when he is in his crib
• I’m stressed about upsetting/changing our peaceful and happy routine that has been the same since he was about 4 months old
• And although I love the person he is growing into, I don’t want to admit that he’s not a baby anymore

Still, if we ARE going to make this transition before Baby #2 comes, I’ve heard from many sources that we should do so at least 3 months before the baby arrives so that Owen doesn’t feel pushed out or like the baby “stole” the crib from him. Given that he’s already totally jazzed about the big boy bed and has been asking for it for weeks (months?), I don’t think we’re going to have that problem. In any case, it seems like now is about the right time, a little over 3 months before baby brother arrives.

Benjamin is gently encouraging me to just bite the freaking bullet and move on.

So… the bed is ordered. It’s being delivered on April 18th. I have 2 weeks to get over my reservations so Owen doesn’t sense my doubt (the kid senses everything). On the bright side, that also means I have 2 weeks to pick out the fun stuff like sheets and comforters to turn his nursery into a real, live big boy room.

I’m 99.9% sure this is going to be a total non-issue, despite my incessant blogging about it.

Fingers are crossed.

She Says… Names, Nurseries and Nesting

Let me start off by saying that I am crazy. I know I am crazy. I do not have to be thinking about this stuff so early, and there are probably lots more pressing things that should be on my To Do list. But hey. Everyone has their things that they love to do. That they love to go overboard on. For me, right now, it’s dreaming aimlessly about the baby.

NAMES
I hesitate to even say this because I know it’s not the case for most couples, but Benjamin and I are nearly 100% on the same page when it comes to baby names. Before we found out if Owen was a boy or girl, we had a boy name and a girl name (first and middle names) all picked out. No fighting, no convincing, no stress. We just… agreed.

We kept Owen’s name a secret until he was born, even from our families. I loved the idea of the surprise when we first introduced him to the world, and I hated the idea of anyone other than Benjamin talking to my stomach like it was a person. Ew. We definitely plan to do the same for this baby.

Last night we agreed on the new baby’s name. It feels so exciting to begin to think about him as a little person instead of just an idea. I wrote the name out a few times like a teenage girl practicing her signature if she married her high school boyfriend. Except in this case, I was thinking about possible things that could be wrong with it. Too long, too short, would people misspell it, do the initials spell anything strange, how does it look and sound with our last name, and on and on. Crazy. I know. Even though I did the same for Owen I did not realize until the day he was born that his first two initials are O.J. (Owen James). Yuck. Now I’m just banking on the fact that when he grows up, people won’t really talk about O.J. Simpson much!

While I am so, so, so excited for Owen to have a brother, thinking about names makes me feel a twinge of sadness that we may never get to use the girls’ names that we love so much. I guess we’ll just have to have a few more babies…

NURSERIES
Ah, the nursery. Yet another thing that I do not need to figure out immediately, but can’t stop thinking about. I remember having a yearning to plan Owen’s nursery when we found out he was a boy, and it was one of the most fun things we did to prepare for his arrival. Now that I’ve been through this baby thing once before, I know that you don’t really need things like matching bedding sets or even a crib in the early days, necessarily… but still, the process of creating a space just for this little baby is something that makes me so happy and builds the excitement for him to join us. So I’m going to do it anyway.

A while ago I started a Pinterest board with baby things I loved (after Owen was through this stage). This has become a great starting place for the new nursery plans. It’s fun to pin things that I like and then look at them all together and see that I already seem to have a design plan I’m drawn to, even though I hadn’t thought about it that way. So far it’s looking like gray and white with pops of orange. We’re reusing Owen’s crib and changing table (which I still adore) and perhaps even the rocking chair (though unfortunately I feel like the rocking chair was the only thing I picked “wrong” the first time around… it’s not terribly comfortable, which is incredibly important, especially if breastfeeding works out this time!). Any tips on choosing gliders, particularly for short people?

NESTING
The nursery planning is the beginning of the nesting I’m feeling, but yesterday I ventured up into our attic to find a book and saw the boxes of baby stuff I had put away after Owen was born. Now all I can think about is getting back up there to bring the boxes down and sort, wash, organize, etc. I know. I’m crazy.

Did you and your partner agree on names, or were you unsure until the baby was born? Was the nursery an important part of your “nesting” and prepping for the new arrival?

She Says… Snowpacolypse 2013

The way the meteorologists talked up last Friday’s snowstorm, you would have thought they were predicting the end of the world. “Stay inside your homes!” “Stock up on supplies!” “Expect the worse!”.

Though their drama was probably unnecessary, the weather maps along were enough to tell me that a biiiiig snowstorm was on the way, it was probably going to take more than a day or two to get everyone shoveled out and back to normal, and there was a high likelihood of power outages due to heavy snow on branches and power lines.

The storm was crazy. And by crazy, I mean crazy fun. I absolutely loved watching the snow fall so hard and fast that I could barely see out the window. The accumulation grew inch by inch until we measured nearly 30″ in our backyard! It was so gorgeous to see the whole neighborhood white and silent.

Shoveling out was another story (read: NOT as fun!), but I still loved how the snowstorm dictated that everyone hunker down at home. There was literally nothing you could do except sit and wait and watch. It was lovely.

And then when the snow stopped? We spent just about every waking moment playing outside in it. The snow was nearly as tall as Owen, so just taking a walk was a hilarious adventure.

Here we are 3 days later and the roads are still a mess. I can’t say that I mind. It’s been so much fun! (And, we’ve had power the whole time. If I were dealing with this storm sans electricity I would have a VERY different mindset.).

Hope everyone stayed safe and warm!

She Says… Best. Day. Ever

THIS is happening today.

I think I’m almost more excited than Owen will be when he comes home.

The only problem is… it’s ALSO Halloween. Aka the day we were going to pick Owen up early from school and feed him a quick dinner so he could get out trick-or-treating before bedtime. If he sees the swingset? All bets are off.

So here’s our plan…

HIDE THE SWINGSET.

Yes, we are going to attempt to keep Owen in the dark that a huge wooden and plastic monstrosity created specifically for climbing and jumping and swinging and all of his favorite outdoor activities (we got a rock wall, y’all) exists. Despite the fact that you can see the top over our fence.

Cross your fingers.

Worst case scenario, though, is that he sees it and it trumps trick-or-treating. Not the end of the world. But ideally he gets to enjoy both, at different times.

Happy Halloween! Pics of the pumpkin costume to come tomorrow.

She Says… Still Shaking

The beginning of one of my worst nightmares came true two nights ago.

Benjamin was traveling. Owen was sleeping peacefully in his room. Schnitzel was curled up in a ball on my bedroom floor. All of a sudden, I was jolted awake by our alarm system blaring at 2:46am.

In the year that we’ve lived in our house, I’ve never heard the alarm go off on its own. Sure, I’ve forgotten to turn it off a couple of times and jumped out of my skin when it went off as I opened the door to let the dog out, but I’ve never felt that moment where your blood runs cold and you have to consider the fact that someone may have actually just broken a door or a window and may be in your house. RIGHT NOW.

Especially not while I was home “alone”.

We live in a very safe neighborhood and very close to our neighbors. Still, I always keep the doors locked, and it’s hard not to feel a little vulnerable when Benjamin is traveling. That’s the main reason I never write about it on the blog until he’s home. I am a very level-headed person most of the time, but the thought of someone stepping foot in my house while I am home with Owen unnerves me to no end. It’s my nightmare.

So the alarm is blaring. I leap out of bed (I don’t think I actually woke up until I was already running down the stairs to the wall unit to turn it off). I can’t see a darn thing without my glasses, but I just kept running. I know this is the wrong thing to do. Now. In retrospect. But I wasn’t thinking rationally at the time. I ran to turn it off and then the severity of what I had done hit me like a ton of bricks. Here I was, now downstairs from my sleeping baby. The alarm was quiet, as if nothing had happened at all. The house was dark except for a few night lights, and I couldn’t see very far in front of me because my stupid glasses were upstairs on my bedside table.

As quickly as I had gotten down there, I bolted back up, with Schnitzel following on my heels. I ripped the phone charger out of my phone and dialed Benjamin’s number. My whole body was shaking and my breathing was jagged as I stood outside Owen’s room, watching our front hall for any movement, ready to go in his nursery and lock the door at the first sign of an intruder.

Of course I know should have called 911 first. Now. In retrospect. But I just needed Benjamin. He picked up immediately and I can’t imagine what it must have felt like for him to receive this call. “The alarm just went off. I’m outside Owen’s room. We’re ok. What do I do?”.

More shaking. More breathing. My feet were glued to the floor outside of Owen’s room. I couldn’t move. Schnitzel stood in front of me, poised, watching with me. I knew at that moment that if someone had been in the house, Schnitzel would have been my first line of defense. He would have protected us.

Right at that moment the alarm company called Benjamin to see if this was a real emergency. As he switched lines to pick up the call, I croaked out, “Send the police. Send them now.”

He stayed on the phone with me while I shook and breathed some more, and in a matter of minutes (2? 3? an eternity? a second?) the police arrived. I walked, jelly-legged, downstairs to meet them. They checked out the basement (where the alarm was triggered) and the rest of the house and looked around outside. No evidence that anyone had been there or tried to break in, so they suggested it could have been a battery dying in our motion sensor or a system issue.

After all of that, a stupid alarm system issue. But still, I had no way of knowing that until after the fact.

And you can bet that no matter how much I reasoned with my rational side, I couldn’t stop imagining the alternative. That someone could have gotten in the house. That someone could have gotten to Owen’s room. To my room.

After the police left I called Benjamin back and tried to breathe normally again. My stomach wouldn’t unclench. I was more awake at 3am than I have ever been. I reset the alarm, minus the sensor that went off, in case it was a battery issue. I laid in bed, clutching my phone to my chest, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling and listening to every little creak and croak and click and cringing with every one.

I stayed that way until 6am, when I finally felt the light of day taking my fear away. I nodded off just as Owen woke up, completely oblivious to the drama of the night.

Do you have a plan for what you would do if you thought there was an intruder in your house? Have you ever been in this situation? My plan was to run into Owen’s room and lock the door. Or run out the front door to our neighbor’s house. But what do you do when you have multiple kids? Thankfully, in this case, Owen slept through the whole event. But what would it have been like to have screaming kids? I can’t even begin to imagine.

She Says… Burn it Off

Gone are the days of spending my days running errands or getting “my” stuff done while simultaneously hanging out with Owen. Sure, sometimes I still have to make a quick Target run or hit up the grocery store, but in general, Owen and I are BOTH much, much happier if the day can be structured around Owen’s favorite activities. I imagine once he gets older his portability will increase again, but I think right now we’re in the midst of the “we have an active toddler so YES we go to the playground every day and NO I can’t do things that require him to sit quietly in a chair.” It’s just not fair to him. The kid’s body needs activity and his neurons are firing a mile a minute. I want to encourage him to learn and grow and sharpen those motor skills and learn how to climb and jump and explore without fear. So to the playground we go.

We have a relatively small backyard and we are lucky to live very close to some awesome playgrounds, so generally every afternoon is spent at the playground. Our favorite one (intended for kids aged 8-12, of course, my little daredevil child only likes the “big kid” playplaces with huge slides and dangerous open spaces) is about 1 mile away, so at least once a day, unless it’s pouring, we walk the dog over there and he waits under a tree while Owen climbs and swings and chatters away to new friends and explores the trees and rolls down the hill and climbs and swings some more.

It’s a great way to spend the day. Fresh air, exercise, the whole nine yards.

But sometimes I would LOVE to be able to just skip the walking a mile. Or skip the whole “getting ready for the playground, make sure we have enough time before dinner, plan it all out” rigamaroll. I would love to be able to just open up our back door and play for 15 minutes. Or, even better, when Owen gets a little older, tell him to “go play outside” and not have to accompany him.

Right now we have a smattering of toys in the backyard. Trucks, a chalkboard easel, a tiny baby slide, a little tricycle I found on the side of the road with a “Free” sign on it. Between those things and a few dog toys, we’re usually good to go. But I can sense Owen getting a little bored with that selection, and I can’t blame him. Our playtimes out there don’t last for more than 10 minutes, usually. The kid needs to MOVE HIS BODY, and the baby slide isn’t cutting it.

So we’re getting him a BIIIIIIIG present for his upcoming 2nd birthday. A swingset.

Yes, I see plenty of skinned knees and boo boos in our future. But hey, we get them anyway; at least now we can be closer to home sometimes when they happen. I figure the earlier we buy this piece of equipment, the longer we can get use out of it. So, now seems like as good a time as ever!

After frequenting so many different playgrounds, I feel like I know exactly what he would like in one of his very own. But I also need to think about how this investment will grow with our family. And, you know, we have to be able to afford it.

I started Googling last night and found myself overwhelmed by:
- prices
- options
- installation/construction

So I need your help.

Does anyone have experience with buying swingsets? Where did you start? What did you get? Did you put it together yourself or have someone do it for you? Was it the company or a third party builder?

What parts of your swingset did/do your kids love? Which ones could they do without?

 

She Says… Beepin’

Last week, while Benjamin was traveling, things got a little overwhelming. I was running a training event at work which meant that instead of working from home, as I do most days, I was schlepping to and from the office in rush hour. Since Benjamin was gone, I was also responsible for daycare pickup, drop off, making breakfast, lunch and dinner, and keeping up on things like laundry and dishes. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — I don’t know how single parents do it. It’s A LOT.

Anyway, on the last day before Benjamin was coming home, my schedule was particularly tight. No matter how I sliced it, I was going to be late to work, even if I dropped Owen off at daycare the minute they opened, and I was going to be late to pick Owen up even if I left my last work event early. And late I was. On both counts. And if you know me, you know that being late is one of the things that drives me CRAZY. “Better late than never” isn’t necessarily true in my book. And never wasn’t an option.

So I left work, late, and knew I was going to hit nasty traffic on my way to get Owen. Unfortunately, I also got in the car to see this:

While sitting in traffic I debated long and hard about just how many miles are actually left in the gas tank when it says empty and could I just make it to daycare first and then find a gas station. Blah blah blah. All terrible ideas. Especially for someone who has run out of gas 2 times already in her relatively short life. I was pretty much already running on fumes and was going less than 5 miles an hour in traffic. I was going to be a whole lot later if I ran out of gas in the middle of the road, so I pulled off at a random exit and went on the search for gas and a non-highway route to Owen’s daycare.

It took me 1.5 hours. He was the last kid there. Thankfully, miraculously, I was still a few minutes shy of the actual closing time, so I didn’t have to pay any late fees. But we were so late for dinner and the dog hadn’t gone out to pee since 7am; I felt guilty enough without paying, believe me.

So we got home. I kicked off my heels and rushed around and let the dog out and threw dinner on the stove and tried to read Owen a book all at the same time. Not surprisingly, I got distracted while cooking and the pan started smoking and our fire alarms started BLARING.

Owen froze. He stared at me with wide eyes, glistening with tears. I jumped up, opened all of the doors and windows, grabbed a counter stool and stood on it, waving a dishtowel at the smoke detector. It would stop for a minute and then start beeping again, just as I had gotten down and started to tell Owen it was all over. I was ready to rip the darn thing out of the ceiling, but they are hard-wired into our new house and I was too short, even standing on a stool. So I hopped back up on the stool and kept waving that stupid towel. As I’m teetering on the stool, crying toddler at my feet, neighbors start coming out of their houses, one by one, to see what the noise is. Since all of the doors and windows were open, they just stood there. Watching me. One or two of them waved at me, and I waved back, embarrassed. One even gave me a thumbs up. ARE YOU KIDDING ME, MISTER? THIS IS NOT A THUMBS UP SITUATION. I think they didn’t know whether they should come in and help, or if that would make me even more embarrassed… because, there isn’t really much you can do at that point except clear the air, and I was doing all that I could to do that on my own.

But still, people. Standing in the road and watching me look like a fool DOES NOT HELP.

Finally our next door neighbors who are very close friends came over. After also trying to rip the alarms out of the ceiling (impossible, apparently), we realized that it was the smoke detectors in the UPSTAIRS hallway that were causing the alarm to keep going back on. I had opened all of the windows and doors on the first floor, but apparently the smoke (what LITTLE there was… this was not the major kitchen catastrophe that it sounds like!) had traveled upstairs, where all of the windows were shut.

Of course.

FINALLY we opened the windows, stopped the beeping, and found something to feed Owen for dinner.

Crisis averted.

Except that now Owen is terrified of the smoke alarms and won’t stop talking about them. Every morning he wakes up, points to them in the ceiling and says, “Beepin! LOUD! ‘Hmoke! Owen ‘cared.”.

Waaaaaaaaah. I’ve scarred my kid for life.

She Says… Dinner

I’m sure you’ve read the studies that say things like

the more often families eat together, the less likely kids are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide, and the more likely they are to do well in school, delay having sex, eat their vegetables, learn big words and know which fork to use. – Time Magazine

Eating dinner around the table as a family is important. It’s extremely important to me, mostly because the majority of my fondest memories occurred around the dinner table. And not just on Thanksgiving or Easter. I mean the regular, old, gather-up-all-the-kids, put-away-the-homework, turn-off-the-tv, sit-around-the-table, everyday, weeknight dinner. Eat together. Laugh together. Share your day together.

But here’s the thing. As much as Benjamin and I enjoy cooking and preparing lovely meals, we usually eat them in front of the tv. We’re together, and we’re doing something we both enjoy, and after a long day of working and taking care of Owen, it’s how we decompress. Not going to apologize for it or  say “Wah, I wish we didn’t do this”. It’s nice. We enjoy it. And I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. But we always said, as soon as we had kids, we would do family dinners right.

Even though we had a kid 18 months ago, family dinner is only now beginning to become a reality. Since Owen was 4 months old he’s been going to bed between 6pm and 7pm, so “dinner together” with enough time for Owen to digest before bed would have meant an afternoon snack for us, really. Benjamin and I much preferred to put Owen to bed early and then have a little time to ourselves, cooking, eating, watching tv. It was our time. And “dinner” with Owen, for many months, involved a parent sitting and feeding and watching and playing defense when the food was thrown on the floor, etc. It wasn’t exactly that calm, winding-down, enjoying-our-food kind of experience we wanted for our dinnertime.

But in the last few weeks there has been a transformation. It has been slow and almost imperceptible, but something is afoot. I can feel it.

1. Owen wants to chat with us. He wants to engage with us. Sitting eye to eye. He wants to use words.
2. The food throwing days are (maybe?) behind us. At least for the time being. Sometimes food still ends up on the floor, and once in awhile it is not quite an accident, but gone are the days (KNOCK ON WOOD) of mindlessly throwing entire bowls of food on the floor.
3. Utensils are Owen’s best friend. He still prefers his fingers most of the time, and still needs a little help stabbing things with a fork (especially the dull, toddler forks), but he will sit pretty quietly and eat an entire plate of food without needing us to feed him anymore.
4. He is a SPONGE. He copies everything from me choosing my clothes in the morning (now he’ll stand in front of my closet and point to different dresses and skirts and say, “Dis?”) to how I dry my hands to how I stand in front of the refrigerator. The kid misses nothing. And he is an astonishingly excellent copycat. If he’s soaking up our habits around food, I don’t want them to be that we grab a granola bar and run out the door all of the time. Sure, that’s inevitable sometimes, but I want him to soak up dinnertime. Sitting. With the family. Talking. Laughing. And enjoying that time.

So we’ve been trying to do dinner as a family.

At least on weekends.

So far, it’s going great (when I have a simple and quick dinner planned). Owen loves to help me prepare it (thanks to our learning tower) and then we all sit down around 5:30pm and eat. In the dining room. For half an hour. We ask Owen about his day and talk about the things we did. We sing, sometimes, since that seems to help him eat his food. We talk about the food we’re eating, and we all eat the same things. Sometimes I let him use an adult fork. He goes crazy for an adult fork.

When it works, it is the happiest time of my day. And the best part? While I finish Owen’s bedtime routine around 7:00pm, Benjamin has done the dishes. Which means that at 7:00pm Benjamin and I can sit in front of the television and put our feet up. Dinner’s done. Kitchen’s clean. Owen’s asleep. BLISS.

We usually have to follow up with a small snack of cereal or something right before bed, because hey, we ate dinner like we live in an old folks’ home. But that’s totally worth it.

Do you do family dinners? What age did you start? What’s your favorite meal to make that the whole family can eat?