Is it possible...

...that this sweet, innocent baby:


is the same girl that told me yesterday that when
"Avy bigger"
she wants a
"bra"
for her
"own tummy" ???
Is she seriously capable of not only saying that,
but showing interest in supportive underclothing already?

Broken Promises. Tsk, tsk.

Things I promised I would NEVER do as a parent.

And how easily I've broken them.

pre-kid:

I would NEVER feed my child Dino-nuggets. I abstain from trendy, tot-marketed products & will never give in to the advertising crowd.

post-kid:

How many today, Avy? 3 or 4? Yes ketchup, or no ketchup?

pre-kid:

My spawn will NEVER lose thier imaginations & creativity to the laziness of a portable DVD player. Long road trips were made for memories & quality family bonding time.

post-kid:

What could be more imagination building than 13 hours straight of Barney & the backyard gang?

Thank you, my dear purple dinosaur. Thank you.

pre-kid:

My child will NEVER be one of those green-runny-nosed kids whose mother doesn't care enough to wipe their nose.

post-kid:

It just doesn't stop. When the tot has the runs o' the nose, there's no keeping it clean.

No matter how hard I try to teach her to use her shirt, it's a lost cause.

It's better to just let it run it's course & clean up at the end of the day.

pre-kid:

My child will NEVER eat macaroni & cheese from a box. That nuclear, fake food just has no place in the perfect bowels of my daughter.

post-kid:

It's not really that bad. Cheese is dairy. Noodles are grains. Throw some canned green beans & canned peaches on the side &, well what do you know?

We've made the food guide pyramid proud!

pre-kid:

I could NEVER think of putting the DVD on the "play continuously" mode. What kind of a horrible parent would you have to be to do such a thing?

post-kid:

"Avy, we have a 5 hour drive ahead of us. Would you like to watch Melanie & Barney 2 times, or would you like to watch Princess Zulee & Barney 2 times?"

Bless the play continuously option

pre-kid:

My child will always have matching clothes & NEVER look like a rag-a-muffin.

post-kid:

Note the inside-out & backward-ness of the orange velour pants.

pre-kid:

Sugary snacks are completely UNNECESSARY for my child.

post-kid:

There is no better bribery tool than "ponies" at our house.

& not to mention I loaded up when they were $1 a box.

Pink or Blue???

I'm ready to change zip codes.

If the Tat Atwood family up and disappears, you can look us up in Maui.

This is where we'll be living out the rest of our days.

So here's the thing, I've seen some cool places in the world in my 26 years of life:

Italy

Tahiti

Mexico

various parts of the US of A

& after every trip I've ever been on, I can legitimately say after about 1 week I'm ready to return to my normal home & life. That's just me. I like to travel, but I also love my daily life & miss it after about 7 days.

However, the past week we spent in Hawaii was magical.

Sounds corny, but it seriously was. I know it's not an unknown, un-touristy place to visit, but it was one of those places & vacations that just worked so well for our family.

Leaving to go to the airport yesterday was honestly a sad thing for me. Possibly I was so bothered about leaving b/c I'm preg & get a little oddly emotional about things, but no, I think it was really b/c we had such a perfect time.

The fact that I even got Tat to agree to return many, many more times says a lot. He generally likes to try new things & go different places, but he even said it couldn't have been a more perfect little trippy.

I'll break it down into 2 categories:

1-activities

2-highlights

ACTIVITIES

Maui Ocean Center

-It was cool, priced higher than it was worth, & not as cool as the Aquarium I had just seen in Long Beach a month ago. But Avycakes loved it & the tropical fish were pretty sweet.

Maui Tropical Plantation

-Very neat. Got to trolley ride along a huge farm & check out all the local crops grown on Maui. Saw a chica husk open a coconut & saw a Bouganvillea farm...my faves!

Made hala bracelets & leis

-I love orchids so this was especially fun for me.

Hiked in the Iao Valley State Park

-Breathtaking. When you visit, you HAVE to go. It rains all the time, but is so refreshing & so amazingly gorgeous. We saw locals jumping off the bridge into the water. Made me nervous but Tat encouraged it. Grrr...

Took a Sunday drive out past Wailea

-Amazing. Saw fields & fields of lava rocks. I still need to look up the history of that place b/c it was really a sight.

Luau

-Delicious food & of course fabulous entertainment on the beach. I'd highly recommend the Royal Lahaina Luau.

The Plantation Restaurant

-Tat & I left Avykins & my sister Brooklyn one night & headed up to Kapalua for a romantic little dinner. It was to die for. We almost didn't want to eat it just b/c we didn't want it to be gone. The view was of course breathtaking.

Cruised around Lahaina

-Always fun to visit local shops & eat some good ice-cream. Avy loved all the big statues around & kept informing us that they were all, "Nice Pirates."

Swimming

-Of course you can't visit Hawaii w/o soaking up the sun EVERY WAKING MINUTE. I couldn't believe how much Avy loved the water. She would go down for her naps & bedtime saying,

"Wake-up...Swimming?" & she would wake up saying, "Carry...Avy...Ocean."

So of course her highness' wishes were granted & we spent LOTS of time at beaches & in the pool.

Snorkeling

-Tatty pants went on a snorkel cruise all day Monday & had a great time. I opted out thanks to the fact you had to ride a boat for a while, & that just seems a bit unsettling for my motion sickness right now. But he liked it & did a little bit more back at the resort. (Since he went solo on this little excuursion, we have no pics. Him in his "whale-training outfit" as Brooklyn & I like to call it, will have to suffice).

HIGHLIGHTS

Such a mom thing to say, I know, but watching Avy embrace a new environment & grow so much in just 1 week was the icing on the cake. She was saying all sorts of funny stuff we'd never heard before & braving the water like I couldn't believe. With the aid of her dorky tie-die floaty swimsuit, she was able to swim all by herself & just thought she was the cats meeee-oowww. She would jump off the sides of the pool only to quickly shout out, "MORE! MORE!"

-Having our own washer & dryer in our place while on vacation was a bite of Heaven.

-Realizing that I TRULY was the whitest one on the island was a great accomplishment. This isn't a joke. I embrace my white skin & have never been bothered by it. But when I saw ladies with triple the cellulite that I have & they look much hotter b/c their fat is brown & mine is white, that's when I realized I will DEFINITELY be hitting the spray tan factory before our next trip.

-Saving hundreds of dollars thanks to our full kitchen in the condo was also a great feeling. Food was SO expensive there, & we were able to feed 4 folks (Tat, myself, sister Brooklym & Avy) for the whole week on $120. That's a highlight in Tat's eyes. (Of course that doesn't count our nice dinner out & the Luau).

-Having an awkward conversation with a lady on the airplane.

Her: "I think your daughter needs her diaper changed."

Me: "Oh, I think she's okay. I just changed her a few minutes ago."

(Literally, I had JUST changed her.)

Her: "Really? I think she has something there."

Me, now annoyed at this chatty cathy, checking in Avy's diaper for anything unusual: "Nope. She's clean. She must just have some bad gas."

Her: "Hmmm. I thought I smelled something."

Me, appalled that she would tell me how to properly care for my child: "She's clean, but maybe you need a change. A filter change that is."

Kidding, obviously I didn't say that, but I thought it was so strange that she INSISTED I change my child when she wasn't even stinky!

-Tyler rushing to be the first bag on the bus to get our rental car. By the time he returned to get the rest of our luggage, people had filed onto the bus, filling it up, & the bus took off with our bag & w/o us. No worries, we found it at the rental car joint, but it was kind of funny.

-Getting LOTS of sleep & naps. Lovely.

-The tropical smell of the island every morning we'd wake up & open the doors & windows.

-Avy waking up at 3:30am, ready for the day the first 2 days. Kidding, that WASN'T a highlight. But she actually did do pretty well with the small time change.

-The beautiful Koi pond near the lobby of our place. Avy loved "feeding" the fish with whatever she could find to throw in the pond.

-And in true Tat fashion, after arriving at the airport in Maui, I see him running past me with a bunch of luggage carts. Naturally, I wonder what he's doing since we would NEVER be that family to pay money for luggage carts. Why pay $ when you have a pregnant wife that's capable of hauling around another 60+ lbs of bags & 30 lbs of a toddler?
So I go ask Brooklyn what he's doing & amidst her laughing, she tells me,
"He's returning all the carts he can to make some money."
I don't know whether to be proud or embarrassed when he glowingly returns with 50 cents in his hand. Ahhh...you gotta love the boy.

Good times in Maui. If you are planning on going in the next few hours, call me before I unpack & we'll figure out airport transportation.

Country, meet City.

We just returned from a lovely vacation to our beloved home-lands of Utah & Idaho.

We currently call California our home-land, which we love too.

There are just a few, minor differences between Utah/Idaho & California.

Here you have it:

U/I: people play with toy guns & even haul REAL guns around in their trucks

Cali: dare I say the 3-letter word near another human, I will soon be under investigation

U/I: we heard & saw freight trains all throughout the day

Cali: we hear & see sirens all throughout the day

U/I: we went swimming & I was NOT the whitest lady in the pool

Cali: we went swimming a couple weeks ago & I WAS the whitest lady in the pool

U/I: I saw about 15 gals, my age or younger, walking their children in strollers within a 15-minute span

Cali: I see 15 different folks walking their dogs within a 15-minute span

U/I: our nephew ran around in a hat that read "NRA"

Cali: you better hope you have a bodyguard if you say those 3 letters in that order

U/I: I took Avy to the playground at a baseball game. NONE of the other children had parents nearby. At all.

Cali: CPS will likely be alerted if you are more than 20 feet from your child.

U/I: Tyler went fishing, fixed sprinklers, worked on tractors, golfed, rode 4-wheelers...

Cali: the only outdoor hobby he can muster around here involves climbing our brick wall in the backyard,

scaling the massive tree behind the brick wall,

& sawing down some tree branches.

Oh, let's not forget the branches got caught in telephone/electric wires and he had to shake them to get the branches to fall.

That's totally safe.....right?