MOVING 40 YEARS OF MEMORIES....

I moved to Boston in July 2004, which, at the time did not seem like a far away move from California.  After all, my prior move was to Africa for 3 years.  At least Boston was on the same continent, and still in the USA.  No, not far at all.

Fast forward almost 10 years, 3 kids, a graduation, a career, and one house later.... that distance has become increasingly far, and harder to endure.... especially as the kids grow up.  I had begun advising my mom to think about moving out here, but she would always throw me a vague answer of "sometime soon", most likely just to shut me up.

Well I almost dropped the phone in March when my mom phoned to tell me, "Lisa, guess what.  I called the realtor".  I couldn't believe it, I was totally shocked.  Both Mike and I had already assumed she'd never come out here... too far... and she has too many years and memories in California.  Not to mention it's a big job to clean out a house that you've been in for 40 years.

Anyway, I was barely over the shock of just hearing my mom had called the realtor, and then she proceeds to tell me that a couple have already come to see the house, twice, and they love it.  To make a short story even shorter, she sold the house and will be on a flight to Boston June 10th!

I flew out to LA a few weekends ago to help her out on the moving process, but she has done an amazing job packing up so far.  40 years of collected stuff.  I was pulling out boxes from cupboards of which I'd never even seen before.  Unfolding and opening things I could not identify.  My favorite "don't bring that" item came from one of my mom's Christmas boxes. Amongst other stuff I've never seen, there was a rug of some sort that had red felt edging (hence the Christmas box?).  As I unfolded the 'rug'... I realized it was some sort of skin of an animal.

Now before I go on to describe the story that I received from my mom, I have to warn you that folks from the Alps of Switzerland often times (or used to) save the skins of animals to make rugs.  I remember growing up and we'd take trips to Davos, and my Aunts houses would have rows of goat skulls and horns up and down the hallways and stairwells. Mainly things that were sport hunted.  A few cow skins here and there.  Well it turns out that my family was also into making rugs out of the family dogs once they passed away.  A nice way to remember the family friend perhaps?  So anyway, as it goes, I was holding the red felt fringed skin of Bella - the family dog when my mom was 10.  As I held her fur up, my mom told me how Bella came to end up as a dog rug.  She said when she was 10, the family had a house keeper who never liked Bella and always threatened to take her to the butcher.  This was apparently because Bella kept having too many puppies.  Then I got the side note story that the family always secretly thought this housekeeper, who came from Vienna, had the personality of a Nazi and had at some point worked in the prison/concentration camps during WW2.  So the family goes away for a couple days on vacation, and when they got back, Bella had been 'taken care of' by the Nazi house keeper!  So my Nana fired her, and went and had Bella immortalized in rug form.  My mom tells me just wait for this summer, she'll have a chance to show us the Gino rug when we all visit Davos!

After realizing I was not much help with packing (she couldn't handle not knowing what was packed in which box-as if she'd even remember), I spent the rest of the weekend mostly on the phone trying to organize movers, moving dates, car moving dates, services to discontinue... etc. It was a bittersweet visit, and as much as I am happy that my mother will be so close to us, I am just as sad at the feeling of losing my childhood home.  I haven't actually lived in that house for several years, but thinking of strangers living in it, trampling over all our memories, changing things from the way my mom had it. Taking away the dozens of garden gnomes that my mother has collected over the years....

-I'll miss my neighborhood so much, with all the families around us that I grew up with.  I really have several families that helped raise me.

all my moms from Sheridan Rd. 

-I'll miss the crazy cement mushroom outside the front of our house, so glad I snapped a picture of Vince and Zoë sitting on it the last time we were there.

 Gina and I wanted one last picture on the mushroom. We used to sit together on the sidewalk into the long hours of warm summer nights, chatting about all the things we thought we knew about life...... sometimes interrupted by my Godfather Jim, who'd yell over at us asking if we were watching the side walk grow.  Oh if that sidewalk could talk..... it would unlock all the secrets it has, and stories of how it watched all of us grow up.  

 Then we tried to get my mom to take a photo on the mushroom, but she did what she usually does for photos, grumbled about not wanting to be in it.... so I ended up snapping her picture just as she turned her back on our address inscribed mushroom, showing her just walking away.  Sort of appropriate for my last visit to that house....while it's still hers.

So bring on the van full of fake plants, complete with inches thick dust from years of neglect, it's time for a new chapter of memories to begin... ones that my kids will be able to create and remember, with their grandma. 

Easter??.... That Was Years Ago!

Um, hello dear diary of mine.... I do so very strongly wish I could keep you up to date with stories and adventures in my life, but there's always so much happening.... that before I've begun to process my day, or my week.... it's full speed into the next set of tasks on the list.  I came to the blog today and got depressed about how I hadn't posted anything since before Easter!  It seems like that was last year now.

Here's a quick overview way back from Easter.  The short story goes like this: all the kids loved their candy-ALOT

And Zoë starred in her first dance video, The Easter Shake

She's the little one in the yellow dress and Fedora hat that doesn't really know what's going on or

what she's supposed to be doing..... but at least she falls down at the end with everyone else!

If you can't see the video below, click HERE

And now that it's 10:30 at night and I'm totally exhausted, I still can't even finish updating my life past Easter.  Good night....

We're Soo Ready for Easter!

This week I somehow found a burst of motivation and energy to help the kids make these super cute deviled egg chicks that I saw somewhere.  I was hoping that all this work would encourage the kids to actually eat the deviled eggs afterwards, but no!  They just played with them and then Daddy and I ate them, they were good:

Zoë's is on the left, and Vince's is on the right.

Hard At Work

Zoë was very proud of her deviled egg chick 

Ok Easter Bunny!  We hope you come to our house tonight!!

Celebrating His One Year Anniversary of Breaking Out of the Big House

On this day last year we brought our baby boy home from the hospital after having spent 10 weeks in the NICU.... we love you Luca!  That's a whole bunch of months I'd rather forget about.  I actually had to be reminded by my 11 year old neighbor that today was the anniversary of bringing Luca home haha!  See!!.... we're so darn busy and exhausted we need 11 year olds to remind us of our own children's milestones!!  Thank you Mary, we do love you too ;)

Lack of Sleep is a Form of Torture.....

I don't know how two humans can survive on such little sleep.  I'm talking about Mike and me.  It was hard when we had one offspring.  And two.... well that was a little harder but we had expected the worst, so in Zoë's 1st year we thought we had it good.  Now with three...... Well, let me tell you about the number three.  You're outnumbered in a big way. It's the tipping point.   It's the point where my line has been drawn.  It's the Twilight Zone of never ending sleepless nights, picturing myself wandering around in a personal hell where I'm exhausted but can't find anywhere to lay down, and the floor is covered with little spines so even the hard floor is not an option.  I remember wondering how we'd possibly get through interrupted nights with Vince waking up once or twice.  Now I look back on that time when we only had one little person to upset our sleep, and I laugh pathetically, before it turns into a cry.... and I look in the mirror and notice the ever deepening wrinkles and dark circles around my eyes.

Let me paint a picture of our typical sleep/wake cycle: First we have Vince-who has always been an early riser, coming into our room anywhere from 5am onwards, regardless of the f*$&ing stop light clock still being red, orange, or any other color on Earth.  There's no amount of candy/rewards/stickers that will keep that boy in bed until that light turns green.  Now, because Vince gets up so early, he's generally easy to get to bed.... walking himself into bed, practically begging for it around 7-7:30 each night.  Great, off he goes, that was easy.  But then we turn around..... and there she is, little miss spit fire.  Her hair standing up in the overly dry and electric filled air, looking at us with those fiery eyes, staring us down, with this grin on her face as if she's saying "game on Mom and Dad, mmuuuaaaahhahhaa!!!".
She instantly screams that she wants to run around naked, whining that she then needs milk, or needs to find that special baby doll, or just plain doesn't want to go to bed.  We close in on her, we're about to make the capture, and she quickly darts to the book shelf in a frantic last effort that maybe we'll fall for the "I want you to read me a book" routine again.  I admit it, this one gets me.  How can you say no to reading to your little girl... even if I know she'll slip away from your side about 2 pages into it and go take a few victory laps around the house, screaming like a banshee, while then moving on to a second set of whining about something.  Never to return to the book again. Eventually, we're able to corner her and trick her into getting a piggy back ride-of which we ride her straight to her crib and dump her in.  And it truly feels like unloading a weight.
The whole thing can take upwards of an hour sometimes.  Meanwhile there's poor little Luca, just trying to survive, eating old cheerios and raisins off the kitchen floor cause we probably forgot to feed him earlier that night.  He's still pretty easy to get to sleep, but he still wakes up pretty regularly through the night.  1 or 2 times is all it takes, after dealing with Zoë and knowing that Vince will speed through his red light clock in the morning when he beelines it to our bed and smiles at me about 1/2 inch away from my face and makes noise until I wake up and see him.  This combination is bad, and it's taking its toll on us.

Luckily our kids are ridiculously cute, and there's enough amazing moments with them that make all of this worth while.  Right now I'm just too tired to keep this blog going the way I want too!

Here's a set of pictures I've put aside to eventually put on the blog, and right now I can't even remember when this happened, how pathetic!  I remember it was a kids concert sometime back in Feb I think, or maybe January, and it was at the Coolidge Corner Theater.  Who knows what kids band it was.  I remember Zoë LOVING the idea of dancing in the aisles with the other kids.... while Vince watched curiously in his seat, but did surrender to the music once in a while and actually clapped his hands and sang along to "Flying Purple People Eater".  As for remembering anything else about it, forget it.  I don't even remember if Luca was there.  I don't think he was, but I couldn't even tell you who was watching him or where he was during this!

 favorite picture of Zoë dancing in the aisle

Luca turned 1 January 9th, and I've been meaning to do my yearly picture with our kids in an adult t-shirt.....watching them grow into it every year.  I finally got around to doing Luca's 1st birthday photo in Daddy's t-shirt.  It's only a month or two late....  poor Luca is definitely the victim of 3rd kid syndrome, he's lucky he has any pictures at all.  I do still plan however, to do a baby book for him.  Hopefully he'll get it by the time he's 30.