where did September go??

I seriously have no idea what happened to September. It flew by in a wave of crazy! Here are some pictures from the last few weeks...

I got a great birthday card from Colin & Ashley. Seriously, so appropriate. 

Love it! (And, I did!)

Caroline went to bed with wet hair, and this is what happened. CURLS!

I am into a new routine now. It's a bit different. If Justin doesn't take Jack to school (he's been too busy at work lately), I take Jack and then go and immediately drop off Caroline at her school. It's taken some getting used to, but let's face it, I'm not complaining! She loves every second of it.

The other day, I was totally distracted. I dropped off Jack, filled out a bunch of paperwork for his school, talked with his teacher, caught another mom in the hall, and was generally just flustered. I ran out to the car and threw Caroline in her carseat so I could get her to school on time.

When I got to her school, I found that I had accidentally strapped her into Jack's big boy booster seat. Seriously, how does that even happen!? And she never "said" a word, just did her usual singing and dancing in the backseat. This really kind of scared me. How could I miss something so important, and literally not even realize it until I went to unstrap her?? Note to self: SLOW DOWN.

She looks like she's 3 here. 

 Justin and I have an ongoing joke(?) about his inability to pick clothes for the proper season. He will wear seersucker shorts in December, pale pink oxfords in October, and just generally not follow any kind of fashion rules. So I did this to his closet. He was not as appreciative as I would have expected!!!! Lol.

One of our 5,689 visits to Chipotle this month. How can I say no when they love it this much?

 Side note: Caroline now has an obsession with using a fork or spoon and feeding herself. While I'm all for teaching her silverware usage and independence, it is SO MESSY, since she can't quite understand that she has to hold the utensil with the food on it straight until it gets into her mouth. And, she now takes approximately 3.4 hours to eat a meal.

We had a string of cooler days, so I got to pull out some of their new Mini Boden pieces.
(Thanks Gigi for the awesome surprises!) I LOVE this mouse dress!

 Caroline has a dirt-eating problem. Well, just an eating problem in general. EVERY.THING. goes into her mouth. It's SO GROSS. (And unsanitary.) But it turns out she's onto something with the dirt thing...

 I saw this on one of the Mommy websites I follow and thought it was amazingly true:

On the 26th, I turned 31 (EEEK!) We had a great day of takeout Chinese food and Baskin Robbins. The kids LOVED it....

I was trying to figure out what made their poop green sometimes.
Guess what it is? Blueberry ice cream. See: her mouth. YUM.

Friday night, the kids had Kids Night Out at our club (so awesome) so Justin took me out for a romantic dinner here. It was very nice to talk to him one-on-one, because we've both been crazy busy. But also...the food and wine were amazing! We had so much fun cooking and eating our own food. It was very relaxing and romantic and a perfect birthday dinner.

We chose to grill our meats. We had Bison and Buffalo. Very adventurous huh?!?

 Saturday we all went to Home Depot and got a bunch of fall flowers to plant. Jack was even willing to make peace with the pots that broke his face (his words, not mine) and helped Justin make them beautiful again...

Jack took these pictures of his handiwork, sorry!

Later that day, Justin had to go into work (sigh) and so I took the kids to the store to buy pumpkins to paint. To say that they had fun is an understatement....

See? Mouth. Yuck. She tasted every "flavor" of paint.

When the pumpkins were done, they moved on to making a mud pit in the yard.

Caroline, was the mud yummy??

MESS.

After we all took a shower AND a bath, we hit Five Guys and Pinkberry for dinner. (What? It's yogurt. Healthy.)

I'm curious...

Caroline is obsessed with her Cozy Coupe and made us drag it into the living room
so that she could drink her bottle and watch TV in it. I TOLD her that drinking & driving was illegal...

We have to put her on a leash now. Yes. Does this even really need
an explanation?

Before I started feeling like crap (more on our sicknesses in a minute),
I ran one of my longest runs. I was really proud of myself. It felt great, little
to no knee pain. I am ready for 11/9!

 Monday morning, Daddy went into work early while Caroline and I wallowed in our own misery. I was getting over a migraine, and I'd had a feverish and restless night, and she woke up with a fever of 102. (I should have known something was wrong when she slept until 9:30!)

Poor girl just laid on the couch and watched Elmo for like an hour.
If you've met her, you know she NEVER EVER sits still. EVER.

So yea, she was sick.

 We had a very very lazy day today. I think we all had baths but only to get vapors into our noses and not because we had any desire to be clean. I finally loaded the kids up when Jack was complaining about being hungry at dinnertime. (Yea, he was fine all day! Go figure.)

Poor girl was unhappy for even the 5 minute car ride.

She went to bed early but has been up on and off. So far it's only the fever and the lethargy. She even took a good 6oz of formula before bed, and I finally got a good dose of ibuprofen into her. So hopefully she will get some decent sleep (and I will too!) She will be so sad if she can't go to school tomorrow.

Jack is restless and ready to get back to his routine tomorrow. Yay school! And yay rest time for me. I feel a little better tonight but not much. I could use another day of taking it easy! If I have to cuddle that sweet girl all day tomorrow, I definitely won't mind.

Love all of you...more later. And happy October! As Jack would ask, "is it Halloween yet?!?!"

Contact...the kids.

It's 2013, and my kids have been born into an entirely different world than the one in which I grew up. It's now not only fun, but actually important and valuable, to have a strong (and classy) online presence.  

With that being said, we went ahead and set up email addresses for each kid now, just in case their name is "taken" by the time they are ready to set up their own. Call it preserving the future. I know they will probably start using email as soon as they can type...

but you better believe that I will know their passwords and be monitoring every word until they are 35. (I'm almost kidding.) 

If you would like to send anything to the kids, you can write to them here:

jackderrycrosby@gmail.com

carolinesuecrosby@gmail.com

I've also been doing a lot of thinking about Jack's funny quotes that I put on Facebook. A ton of people have said "you should write a book!" While I'm not quite ready for that yet, I am going to start a totally Jack-centric Twitter account. I forget or miss so much of his hilarity because I don't record it right away. This way, I can keep it open on my phone and instantly update with the crazy stuff that comes out of his mouth. Be on the lookout! I'll let everyone know in a few days.

iOS7

So in case you were sleeping under a rock yesterday, iOS 7 was released. My phone basically said, "GAAAHHHHHHH I will eat all of your pictures forever if you don't clear them off before you update me!" (or, it said this:)

so I said, "okay." Here are a bunch of pictures from recently off my phone... now, my new spiffy beautiful phone...ta da!

First. Running. Dang, it kind of hurts. It's been really hard on my body, but I'm in the best shape I've been in in years, so it's a catch-22. And I actually kind of enjoy it (shh, don't tell anyone.) 

I've been having some knee trouble so I went to see my sports medicine doctor, who referred me to a physical therapist. She was amazing. I had my first appointment on Tuesday and she gave me lots of stretches and strengthening exercises to help. I have super tight quads and hamstrings, I'm really inflexible, and I also run like a duck (hahahaha! I laughed when she said that!) When I get tired and try to correct the placement of my feet mentally, I start to pull my kneecap out of alignment...leading to sharp pain and rubbing of all the good stuff inside my knee- my kneecap, cartilage, etc. 

The best part of the whole appointment was telling her my history - swimming, having kids, my body changing...and then I pulled out my phone to check my log. I got to proudly say "...and, I've lost 42 pounds since January 1." She kind of stopped and said, "no WAY!" Yes, way! 42! I cannot believe it. 

Anyway, I've been doing lots of runs - 3 or 4 miles a day on the treadmill at the gym, or if I can get outside, I run a trail here near our house that is around 5 miles. Today I did 2 back-to-back 5K's. (Justin said, "Um. Isn't that just a 10K?" Yes...but saying it my way sounds more impressive in my head!) Afterwards, it's lots of icing...

A lot of blisters (like this blood blister on the outside of my foot, oww):

And this super pretty tape that the physical therapist did for me! It was amazing. Pain-free while I was wearing it!

So I feel like I'm pretty well prepared for my half marathon in November. I hope I can run the whole thing (or most of it.) And just finish. That's my goal!

Okay, other than that, what else is going on??

The kids and I trapped a TON of Yellow Jackets in our backyard.

Caroline played with cars. 

Jack wore his PJ's to the park, and was afraid that the police
would come and get him for it.

Caroline got tired.

We had some Chipotle.

Daddy made us fun pancakes for breakfast :)

I took the kids to Happy Hollow...

I'm pretty sure she's yelling bad words at other drivers.

Yup, she still hates the Granny Bugs.

Some sibling love was had.

We watched Dave Matthews and Grover sing over and over on Sesame Street's
season premiere.

A big, big girl started her first day of play school...

Outside her classroom door. She LOVES it.

She had so much fun her first day that she fell asleep drinking her bottle
at naptime.

Caroline watched about 15 straight minutes of Honey Boo Boo. I'm disturbed.

So yea, other than all that craziness, things are going smoothly here :) It's my 31st birthday next week...eeeeek! Old! Well...old enough to have two kids in school anyway, right??

Til next time.