The Y

The weekend is almost here. Guess what that means. We will go to the pool, likely both days. And I will probably take more pictures.

I'm issuing a challenge to myself: Don't put pool pictures on the blog next week. Now. Let's see how I do.

Since next week has no bearing on today, I am about to share with you yet another set of pool pictures. But this is a different pool! One you haven't seen yet! We went to the YMCA pool with my cousin Lesley, her husband and their kids last weekend.

Lesley and I were very close growing up, considering that we didn't live in the same city and saw each other only on the occasional weekend and several times each Summer. We grew even closer when she was in college at Alabama and I was at Samford, and as adults have reached a whole new level in our friendship. We arrange for our families to get together as often as possible -- which still isn't as often as we'd like -- but with each of our kids only about 8 months apart, we always have a lot of fun.

Back to the Y: This pool has quite the reputation in our house, because it has slides! Two of them! One blue and one yellow! This is all very exciting and worthy of exaggerated punctuation marks if you are between the ages of 3 and 9!

As usual, we packed drinks and snacks in our trusty cooler and headed over to the pool to meet Branum:

George Emory:

And John Bart.

It's the South, you know, so sometimes even the boys have double names.

On the first pool break, we broke out the flavored water and snacks (We take bottled water and add Great Value -- Wal-Mart brand -- flavoring packets to it. For the ultra-curious, our favorite is cherry limeade.) It's delicious but does tend to temporarily stain the teeth.

One thing's for sure: you can't tell my kids need haircuts, can you?

SCRAGGLY.

While the kids spent some time jumping in the pool and swimming around, the Aforementioned Big Draw was the slide area.

We didn't think they'd let Jake do it since he can't swim yet, but he wanted to do it so badly that one of the guards said she'd catch him at the bottom. Winning!

They each must have gone down the slides 20 times. George Emory had never been to this pool before, and he had a great time.

Jake slid down so quickly that he lost his balance almost every time and came out crooked.

Did it diminish his enjoyment one iota?

NO IT DID NOT.

Nathaniel would fling himself down, trying to get as much speed as possible for each run.

His tactics worked quite well.

George E saw Nathaniel's technique and decided to test it out himself.

It worked well for him, too.

Nicholas wasn't about to be left behind.

Every time he popped out of the chute, he was paddling over to the side to jump back in line and figure out how to do it faster and with EVEN MORE FLAIR.

It was a terrific afternoon and one we hope to repeat soon ... we love those boys!

More than you want to know

Many times I feel like the title of this post should be the title of this BLOG. However, that's likely never going to stop me from finding great questions to answer and then answering them here.

I assume that you are all aware of the superpower known as "skimming," and I expect you to use it should you get bored before you reach the end of this post. The site markandangel.com posted a list of 365 questions recently, and I think a lot of them are worth answering. And for the record, if YOU want to answer them on your blog, please do. And then let me know so I can come read all about it.

I'm not going to answer them all, not today and not another day. Many of them I don't have good answers for, so I'm picking and choosing which ones I'm going to share with you. So now that I think about it, I've already sort of "skimmed" it for you. But I'll try to answer a bunch of them over the next few months, just for fun. And to give you a break from pictures of my kids at the pool.

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
I think about this one a lot, simply because I can't ever remember how old I am. In my head, I'm 28. Which is a full decade younger than I actually am. I generally FEEL younger than I am, and it's astonishing to me that I'm closer to 50 than to 20. I am unceremoniously reminded of my "advanced maternal age" when I'm around much younger moms. Which is about to happen to me a LOT more often. I can hardly even THINK about the fact that when our daughter starts Kindergarten, I'll be 44 ... and I bet there'll be some 26-year-old moms there.

You’re having lunch with three people you respect and admire.  They all start criticizing a close friend of yours, not knowing she is your friend.  The criticism is distasteful and unjustified.  What do you do?
This is the kind of situation I just despise. I would absolutely defend my friend. No question about it. I don't care if it's business associates or mutual friends ... I will speak up for someone who's not there, and I don't mind making the gossipers feel bad about it, either. 

Do you push the elevator button more than once? Do you really believe it makes the elevator faster?
I did when I was younger, like in my 20s. These days when I'm riding an elevator, it's usually at work. And I'm not usually in that big of a hurry to get where I'm going when I'm at work. HA!  

If you won a million dollars, would you quit your job?
You BETCHA! I'm not saying I'd become a Lady of Leisure, although that sounds very appealing right about now.  But I'd love to have the chance to do more of the things I love and be pulled less into things (like work) that HAVE to be done. 

Would you be willing to reduce your life expectancy by 10 years to become extremely attractive or famous?
Nope. Not even a little bit. I already know that I want to live as long as I have good quality of life so that I can enjoy my kids, their kids, and their grandkids, for as long as possible.  Ten years is a lot of life to give up, especially when you're talking about exchanging them for two things that are fleeting AND hinge on the expectations, judgments and whims of the general public.

Girl stuff! Girl stuff!

My friends Laura and Meg have shared this pregnancy with me, since they're both expecting, too. Actually, Laura just had her sixth baby yesterday!

Our mutual friends (our Bunko group) threw a joint shower for us a few weeks ago, and it was a lot of fun. It was SURREAL to open girly stuff! When I originally mentioned the shower (I think I Tweeted something about it), several people asked to see some of the gifts I received ... this isn't comprehensive coverage, but here are pictures of many of the outfits I opened that night.

This one is from one of my favorite catalogs, Hanna Andersson. The boys wore lots of Hannas when they were little. (And they're having a 50%-off sale right now!)

I love the colors in this outfit ... it's from my friend Lisa, and she bought the top and leggings at two different stores. Would you have guessed? (I had no idea.)

You can't tell from this picture, but this outfit, top and pants combined, is about 12 inches long. When I opened it, I thought it must be a preemie outfit! It's not ... it's newborn, but our babies have been 7-4, 8-3 and 8-6, so I'm not too familiar with little tiny babies!

Since we don't have a name yet, my friend Holli gave us a bib monogrammed with H for our last name. Her first personalized item! Cute, practical, and I love the color combination.

This next set is just too cute for words. Here's the front ...

... and here's the back! I. die.

Apparently several of my friends have me pegged as a polka dot slut. They are correct.

It carried over to the blankets. I have about 85 blankets. Do you know how many of them have pink on them? None. Until these.

I mentioned opening ruffled things sometime, and this is an example. Ordinarily this might strike me as too feminine for my taste, but for some reason I think this is just adorable. AND it has matching bloomers.

And speaking of ruffles:

No, truly, SPEAKING OF RUFFLES.

Here's a close-up in case you missed them. On her bottom.

It's a whole new world! Can't wait to see our sweet baby in these clothes!

It was fine, and then everything changed. HAWT.

Last night about 10 minutes after I left the office, I was driving down the highway when BOOM. (Not literally BOOM, but figuratively BOOM.) The air conditioning went out.

It was so sudden and so shocking -- because it was 100 degrees outside and that air immediately started feeding through the vents -- that I thought the car was blowing up. Sirrusly.

I rolled the windows down and continued on to pick the big boys up from daycare so that we could go on to swim lessons. It was only 15 minutes farther to school, but by the time I got there, I felt like I was going to pass out. I'm hot-natured anyway, and pregnancy only magnifies my discomfort in extreme heat.

GAH.

The poor boys didn't have it any easier when they got in the back seat, and they suffered all the way to swim lessons. Their lessons were in the indoor pool, and I kept stomping my feet because I thought a fly was landing on my toes. No, it was just the sweat running down my legs and pooling between my toes. YOU. GUYS.

After their lessons, we got back in The Toaster I Call a Car, and we toasted ourselves all the way home. When we got in the kitchen, we hung out with Grayson and Jake for a bit, and eventually I said, "Huh. Something stinks and it's making me feel sick." Then I kind of bent down and sniffed my arm.

Y'all.

I said to Grayson, "Blech. I think it might be ME."

And Grayson, who was standing 10 feet away from me, said, "It IS you."

Well. We all need someone who will speak truth into our lives, don't we. I BELIEVE I'VE FOUND MY KNIGHT IN SHINING CANDOR.

Memorial Day. What.

Don't look at me that way. It's only been a week since Memorial Day.

While we've already been back to the pool twice since I took these pictures, let's not focus on that. Let's focus on the long, hawt day that was Memorial Day.

Remember it? It was one day after the ballgame, the perfect day to cap off our Weekend of Excessive Amounts of Activity.

We got up early and were at the pool to save chairs in the shade BEFORE THE POOL ACTUALLY OPENED.

Since it was the big Memorial Day cookout, they'd warned us that chairs would go quickly. We took them at their word.

We staked out our spot and sunscreened everyone to within an inch of their lives.

(My friend is a dermatologist! We sunscreen with SPF 50! And we act like we like it!)

And then we got down to the business of jumping in the pool.

 How much, exactly, is TOO much jumping in the pool?

We're the wrong people to ask.

How long do you spend at the pool when you take your kids?

Two hours? Three?

I ask this because we usually go for five to six hours.

We take a cooler full of drinks, snacks and occasionally a full meal.

And people tell me we're out of our minds.

It actually doesn't occur to me to go for a couple of hours and then nonchalantly say, "Well, boys, it's time to go home."

That's a lot of work to do for just a couple of hours of fun.

Plus, we only get to go on Saturdays and Sundays, whereas my SAHM friends go all during the week.

We have to fit it all in over two days.

I must say, they love it so very much, it's totally worth all the trouble it takes to go.

Dare I say, it's ALMOST worth it even when I have to change two poopy swim diapers while we're there.

ALMOST.

Oreo separator

All I want to know is:

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE?

via Book of Joe

I saw 'Bridesmaids'

Last night I went with my friends Melanie and Shelly to see Bridesmaids. Here are my foremost thoughts:

1. Blonde Kristen Wiig looks a LOT like Felicity Huffman. All through the movie, I kept thinking, "Is that Felicity or Kristen? Felicity or Kristen?" I never had that issue when Kristen had brown hair.

2. Explosive diarrhea is funny. I'm sorry. It just is.

3. I know that actresses always win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for roles in dramas. Therefore, in 2012, there should be a new category introduced: Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy. And Melissa McCarthy should be the only actress in the category. Period. Stole every single scene she was in.

4. Competition within female friendships has always bothered me. Why do women feel like they need to be the only best friend? The one who knows all the secrets? The one who has to one-up all the other women with the best "remember when" story? This film took that concept to a whole new level, and of course calamity after calamity ensued. I have always been firmly in the "Can't we all just get along?" camp, and I still rest there.

5. Wilson Phillips singing at the wedding. I have no words. Hold On. Perfection.

Have you seen it? What did you think?

June 2 is an exceptionally bad day for thinking of clever blog post titles

So night before last, I had a migraine and couldn't blog ... I spent the whole evening in bed. And then last night So You Think You Can Dance auditions were on, and you don't mess with SYTYCD nights. You just don't.

But I was like, "Can I go another day without a post?" And this was how I pictured your faces when you clicked over this morning to find nothing, again:

(I KNOW. Cutest coffee of all time, right?)

I DO have some original content about my family coming up, just as soon as I have a chance to look at some more pictures I took over the weekend. Because the weekend didn't end on Sunday at the ballpark ... noooo, it didn't. We still had Monday yet to go. But since I haven't gotten to weed through them yet, they will have to wait another day.

My friend Walt recently said, as I was lamenting how much I'd relied on outside content lately, "Don't worry about it. I really like when you share what you've found elsewhere." I really appreciated that, because time is precious and energy is scarce these days. And I promise I will eventually get back to you with some pictures of my boys, who so many of you kindly want to sop up with a biscuit, just like I do.

For today, though, please allow me to leave you with a couple of notes from other people's kids that cracked me up. This first one (via Passive Aggressive Notes) was written by a little girl who was asked to write an acrostic about her sister, meaning she took each letter in the word "sister" and assigned an attribute to it.

That, my friends, is nothing short of brutally honest. And hilarious. And eerily similar to one I could have written for my sister when we were 7 and 10. N'est-ce pas, Sarah Ellen?

The second one is almost word-for-word what Nathaniel would write if he were writing to the Tooth Fairy:

And then there's just one more thing I wanted to mention. In answer to questions from several of you -- as well as from almost everyone I know in real life -- no, we still don't have a name for our baby girl. We're not keeping it a secret ... we just haven't agreed on a name yet. So when I saw this on Parents Shouldn't Text, I thought it was hilarious:

Because Grayson is known for his name suggestions which have a snowball's chance in he** of ever being used on any of our children. Ignatio? Dagny? Tariq? No. I'm not kidding. He's suggested all of those.

I DON'T THINK SO.