a stroll in the city before a move to the suburbs

On Memorial Day, we had a new baby and a big move looming only days ahead of us, so being 9 months pregnant on a regularly hot and humid DC day, we did the obvious thing to do—got on the metro and strolled the National Mall with the kiddos.

Jon and I thought it would be fun to take the kids in one last time while it was so close, and they loved it. We hadn't been up close to the monuments for some time, so they were pretty excited about seeing how big they were in person (probably not remembering that they've seen them all before). Although I have to admit...the only monuments we made it to were the Washington and WWII, because it was crazy hot. And I was crazy pregnant. And the kids only wanted to play in the dirt and run around like wild people anyway.

We were actually hoping to catch some Rolling Thunder while we were there (the veteran's motorcycle parade, etc, that happens every Memorial Day weekend), but of course most of the festivities were held on Saturday and Sunday...so we got there just in time for most of the excitement to be over. I think we saw a dozen motorcycles, literally. BIG disappointment for the kids. Pretty pathetic, fruitless, 10-block-walk for the {sweaty} grown-ups. (You can imagine us walking around pushing 2 kids in a stroller with pink faces from the heat, me looking like I could give birth at any moment, and us asking random people, "Are there any motorcycles left? Have you seen any motorcycles around here?" You'd think we would know this by our 7th summer here. Fail!

But as always, the kids seemed to not notice too much that our plans ended up not being plans at all. I'm sure we gave them both a popsicle when we got home and all hard feelings were forgotten. Childhood is blissful like that.

 

 

portraits by Van

 

   

I mean...wow. That's some belly. Straight out. Waaaaaayyyy out. No wonder I could hardly breathe!

 

After the Washington Monument, we were off to the WWII Memorial to get some relief from the sweltering heat. You're totally not supposed to get in the water at all, but everyone still sticks their feet in. Especially on a day like that. Or you could do what Lila did, and just walk on into the water until you fall in face first, about 5 seconds after entering the water. Our kids didn't just wade, they swam. Rule breakers. My only disappointment is that I wasn't taking pictures when it happened, so the glory of the moment will have to live on in our memories. Shame. Seriously, it was awesome.

 

 

She looks sweet, but the Lila's sassy side is pretty evident without looking too hard.

Yes, she's unloading a mouthful of water from her sippy cup right into Van's hair. Not my idea. We specialize in manners and class. Let me know if you ever want any tips. 

 

 I adore this shot.

 A normal day with the crazies.

easter (without the bunny)

Jon and I hesitate in doing outrageous things for our kids for holidays and birthdays, mostly since they're not old enough to care that much or to remember any fabulous plans we come up with. We get somewhat stuck trying to find a balance between over-the-top gift giving and nothing at all (which seems lest wasteful to us), hoping to come up with something tasteful, simple, and meaningful, but feeling like that takes a lot of creativity and effort that we haven't struck into just yet. (If you have any tips, we'd love to hear them!) So some things may or may not go somewhat uncelebrated in the Smith home—at least compared to what we imagine many other families doing.

Easter this year was one of those. We did try to teach Van about to real meaning of Easter, and ended up kind of getting ourselves into a mess trying to explain death and realizing that to our 3-year-old, life and death all sounds like a very casual thing with no emotional implications whatsoever. So if our son happens to say anything insensitive to you regarding death or dying, we apologize in advance. We're working on that concept. :)

But when it comes to the Easter bunny and baskets and treasures, our children are virtually clueless. Our non-religious Easter celebration consisted of attending the ward Easter egg hunt on Saturday morning...and that's it. They loved it, and I saw this as no problem for now since our kids are still so little, until Sunday at church when I was dropping off Van in Primary. As Van got to his chair, one of the older kids sitting behind him (a kid Van idolizes, of course), asked Van what he got from the Easter bunny. You can imagine my embarrassment when poor Van didn't say a word and looked at me in confusion, with eyes begging me to explain what his friend was talking about. I tried to cover for Van by saying yes, he got Easter eggs with candy in his basket, but the older child called my bluff and said, "You mean just from the church party yesterday?" I must not have been very convincing, because in my attempts to make it sound like everyone else's Easter morning, the child questioned again, "Well did he get anything from the Easter bunny? Did he? Did he?!?!" Poor Van never said a word, and I learned that it seems we'll have to act on our plans to find a healthy compromise between normal holiday traditions and what we feel is appropriate sooner than I had thought.

Thankfully, for now it seems Van has been totally unaffected by the exchange and he hasn't even mentioned it since. Or maybe that means he was traumatized. Either way, we'll most likely be jumping on a more conventional Easter celebration next year. But for now, the ward Easter egg hunt seemed to be fulfilling enough for our two kiddos. :) They look happy to me! Not to mention cute as ever...

with love, from the smiths

Happy heart day!

Sending all sorts of happy love wishes from the boy,


the girl,


and the bump. (And yes, there's definitely a bump.)


We probably shouldn't have given them the suckers, but when Valentines come in the mail fully equipped with treats from cute little cousins across the country, who are we to say no?










Is it just me, or is she all the sudden not a baby anymore? We could eat her little blonde pigtails right up!












Sometimes our kids do things they shouldn't do. Or maybe most times. Like climb onto tiny ledges like it's no big deal (we have no windowsills, just the frame around the window, and they love it there). At least they do all their crazy things together though...these two are such little buddies!

p.s. happy valentine's day from our little love bugs

We're just oozing with love around here.

Well Jon and I are. And Lila is. And Van has his moments. :) Luckily, this was one of his lovey moments, and we were fortunate enough to document it—a hint of our attempt to regularly take out the camera at home again. It's about time! These two aren't getting any smaller! Lila's little big-eyes, tight-lipped, drooly-chin face cracks me up. So does Van's cheeser smile with squinty eyes. We could eat them right up!!

happy love day!

quite possibly the greatest santa photos. ever.

If not the greatest, probably the funniest Santa photos I've ever seen. Kids are supposed to cry when they sit on his lap, and Van did that perfectly. He was absolutely terrified. But I've never seen a Santa performing synchronized screaming with the crying kid. Or laughing a very large eyes-shut-tight Santa belly laugh, or whatever it is he was doing. Nor have I seen Santa asleep in his photo, but Lila does have that lulling effect on all of us, so I can't really blame the man. We totally had no idea Santa was doing that when they were taking the pictures, we laughed so hard when we opened these up!

(taken Dec. 20, 2010 @ Santa's Workshop in front of the National Christmas Tree)

*we love Lila's stylish white hammer pants hanging out under her sweater. Most people dress their kids up for Santa...we put them in pjs and stick regular clothes on top because it was FREEZING!

accidentally patriotic {MLK Day 2010}

He had a dream.

We knew he'd had a dream. We hadn't forgotten his dream, but we may or may not have forgotten we live so close to where he gave a speech sharing that very dream, and that should we venture out on a bike ride on the day honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, we might stumble onto his monument (or at least his engraved quote at the top of the stairs of someone else's monument). Of course. Welcome to the convenience of Arlington. (Potential visitors, that was a plug for you!)

As a free day to have Jon with us at will, we plotted and planned a bike ride since it's been much too long since our last (darn the January sub-twenties phase we've been having. We left Logan for a reason! This is not what we bargained for!!), and decided it would be a route of Van's choice. Not that he's fluent in English or anything, but were we to ask him what he likes, he would either soar his pointer finger through the sky with an appropriate airplane engine sound, pump his arm while sounding the imaginary train whistle with his "too too!" train sound, or flap his fingers to his palms and say "duck! duck!"

In that case, our course was set. Load up the bikes and start the party at Gravelly Point. Where all airplane sighting dreams come true, ducks can be regularly spotted, and if you're lucky, you can even catch a metro passing overhead while you're cruising on the trail.

And we're happy to report, Gravelly did not disappoint. Van was pretty stoked to see that things he'd only seen (or could only remember seeing) in books were actually real. He rocked our parental world with his appropriate self-sign-language responses to everything he saw, accompanied by his perfect sound effects and sheer joy for having recognized each thing.

We like ducks.


And airplanes.


And we LOVE bike rides. Clearly. {see joy below}. And tell me you love the fact that I have a sippy cup in my pocket. The mommy staple. It turns out I can handle losing a little pride for the sake of his happiness.




Happy to be on his own feet with the freedom of ridiculous amounts of open air.


"more? more?"


Taking on the stairs at the Lincoln.



Walking with dad. His hero.








Work it, dude. Love the tongue.


Dance and rock on. Jon was so proud to see his son pull off the rock sign. He's been teaching him long and hard.


As luck would have it, we even happened upon the MLK Day presentation by the National Park Service, including the playing of a recording of Dr. King's speech, which took place from the very place the rangers were standing. Really cool idea until they realized no one had charged the stereo battery the night before—cue park ranger #2 to read the speech out loud to the crowd. Really cool opportunity for us until we missed it all thanks to the maniac...oh how we love our crazy man.




The face of mischievousness we've come to know all too well. This was when he was trying to sabotage the ranger's big moment.


Plan B: let him roam wild and free in the Lincoln.






The classic lesson never learned by parents: trying to pose your kid where and when the last thing he wants is to be posed. In public. Shamelessly. It's official—we've joined the big leagues.





Fearless of man and beast alike.


I absolutely love the way Van's looking up at the officer in the second photo below. Like he's the coolest thing ever because he's sitting on that huge animal. Van's totally jealous.


And he's off!


We heart long shadows.




Still watching for airplanes.
















This was the greatest part of the day...

The unbelievable happened. He fell asleep on his face while riding in the beach cruiser. Completely unaffected by bumps on the path, roaring airplanes overhead, and his parents stopping repeatedly to capture the perfect picture of his nose being squished just so. Seriously, it was possibly the cutest thing we'd ever seen.




Still sleeping...








Bikes loaded, airplanes passing, strapped in the carseat...and he was still sleeping. He gets those mad sleeping skills straight from his parents.


Enough of our "sleeping in funny places" story...what about you? Do share. :)