The drive to Anaheim is a long one, but Zoe and Avery were total troupers. There was little fussing or whining during our drives (except, of course, from me during traffic jams), and the girls practically had as much fun during our first stop as they did at Disneyland!

-M

Not quite ready to say a final good-bye to Disney, we headed to Downtown Disney on Wed. morning. A pretty, outdoor shopping area attached to the park, it was the perfect place for us to pose for photos, shop, and run around and burn off some steam before making the long drive home.

-M

Almost 16 million people visit Disneyland each year – and this year, we were four of them! I’ve been to Disney World before – but never Disneyland – and Q and I were probably just as excited as the girls when we headed there on Tuesday morning!

The park was extremely crowded (as should be expected this time of year), but it helped that we met up with friends who were familiar with the layout and could guide us to the best spots and quickest lines. We couldn’t possibly hit all (or even close to all) the rides, but among the ones we got on were Autopia, Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (a roller coaster, and one of my favorite rides in the park), It’s a Small World (of course!), Pirates of the Caribbean (another classic), Space Mountain (Zoe’s favorite of the day), The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Captain EO and Toy Story Mania. Zoe also saw a show and got a dance lesson from Snow White and several others during the Disney Princess Fantasy Faire, and she spent much of the day meeting and getting autographs of various characters (including the Evil Queen, one of the few not pictured below).

We’ve taken Zoe to a lot of amusement parks, and I half-wondered before our trip if Disneyland would still feel special to her. Turns out I needn’t have worried: Disney may be an amusement park, but it is much, much more than that – and as cliched as it sounds, it really does feel magical. (And, at least for me, some of the magical feeling stemmed from being able to share with my kids something that was so special to me as a kid. When I heard the refrain of “It’s a Small World” and watched the girls’ eyes light up as they soaked everything up – well, it doesn’t get much better than that.)

-M

Greeting Minnie:

Zooming through Autotopia:

Waiting patiently:

Meeting with Mickey:

Smiling with Alice and Mad Hatter:

Entering It’s a Small World:

“It’s a world of laughter, it’s a world of tears…”

Taking it all in:

Dancing with princesses:

Watching Snow White:

Goofing around with Tigger:

Moping with Eeyore:

Posing with Pooh:

Heading home:

We surprised the girls by driving down to Anaheim and taking them to Disneyland yesterday. (The visit was in honor of Zoe’s recent birthday; thank you, Safta and PopPop, for the tickets!) It was an amazing whirlwind of a trip – and one that our little “Minnies” won’t soon forget!

(More pics soon.)

-M

In honor of the last night of Hanukkah…

-M

When I was putting Zoe to bed the other night, she said she wanted to say a prayer.  I suggested that she thank God for the fun day she had just had, but she took it a step further. “Thank you for my fun day today,” she said. “Thank you for making me and my family and my sister. Thank you, God, for everything.”

-M

Not being with my parents and Sandy today feels weird (Merry Christmas, you guys), but we’re still having fun here at home. Yesterday, for example, we got in the holiday spirit by going to Union Square to watch the shoppers and ice-skaters and to check out the giant tree and menorah.

And what’s the best thing about being in San Francisco at Christmastime – aside from the weather? So few people are here, and parking spots are a-plenty! I had to chuckle in agreement when I came across this quote in the New York Times from someone who lives here:

I love to park and unpark hundreds of times in the Mission District. Nothing is more fun than driving down the street parking — and unparking — in the thousands of open parking spots. I marvel at it every year, as in no one is ‘from’ San Francisco, and all the hipsters empty out to visit family in Cleveland.

-M

A few days before Avery got sick, the two of us went down to Burlingame for a playdate with her friend Natalia. Here are a few pictures from their morning together.

-M

Avery is sick again: She developed a fever Wed. afternoon, and a semi-frantic trip to the doctor late yesterday confirmed an ear infection. I wasn’t feeling well yesterday, either, and there was a rough moment in the afternoon where Avery was crying, Zoe (who was in a bit of a defiant mood) was refusing to stop playing the harmonica, and I was feeling sorry for myself (this is my vacation!) and just wanting to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head. Ah, I thought, so this is what drives parents to drink.

Alas, things are better today. The meds kicked in for Avery, my cold improved, and Zoe and I spent the afternoon at the Stanford Shopping Center, happily running around and making holiday purchases under a blue winter sky. Talk about the ups and downs of life with kids!

-M

Zoe has been counting the days to Hanukkah, and it finally arrived on Tues. evening. Here are a few pics from the girls’ first night.

-M

First it was helping with diapers, now it’s bedtime! For the first time, Zoe put her sister to bed the other night. She read Avery three stories, including one she wrote herself, before tucking her in and giving her a big hug and kiss. (I know because I was peeking through the curtains into Avery’s room.) Avery loved it – so much so that she requested Zoe during naptime the next day. And though Zoe had less success the next time she tried putting Avery to bed (let’s just say there was some hair-pulling, face-squeezing, and crying involved), I can envision a future in which Q and I are relieved of one of our nighttime duties!

-M

Two-and-a-half today, and time for another update. The biggest change since our last one: Avery’s a preschooler now! And while her first few days were a little rocky, she quickly adapted. These days, she’s especially excited about school: She’s eager to go into the classroom to start her day in the morning (no long, drawn-out good-byes for her) and when I pick her up in the afternoon, she usually gives me long (though often not entirely decipherable) descriptions of what she did. She also enjoys a game in which she names off her teachers and classmates; she especially likes it when I throw in a random name and ask if she knows that person. (“No Penelope in my class!” she’ll say with a big laugh.)

Another big development is her verbal skills. She talks more than ever before – and in longer, multi-word sentences (though her favorite phrase for the past few months has been the monosyllabic “Why?”). She talks and asks a lot about where people are (“Daddy at work?”) and what they’re doing (“Is Zoe awake?” “Mommy going to eat that?”) She also likes commenting on Zoe’s behavior: “Zoe not listening?” and “Zoe’s crying again,” for example. And she loves going around saying “Zoe’s five, I two” while holding up the appropriate fingers. She started saying “Love you, too!” in response to “I love you” a few months ago; because she knows how much I love it, the comment is usually accompanied by a tilt of the head and a fluttering of eyelashes, to maximize the cuteness. (She has definitely picked up on how proud we are of her newly honed communication skills; often after saying a new word or phrase she’ll flash us a proud, aren’t-I-cute smile.)

And then there’s her recent shift in personality: She’s way less shy/tentative around other people now. She’s friendlier to others at playdates, and she doesn’t do as much clinging to me and her dad in social situations. At Zoe’s recent birthday party, I watched in excitement/awe as Avery looked around the room looking for Aunt Jenny, walked up to her and put up her hands to be held – and my mom practically melted a few weeks ago when Avery stepped out of our car, saw her across the parking lot and started running to her with a joyful “Grandma!” (I don’t think Avery would have done these things as recently as two or three months ago.)

Avery loves playing – with her babies, with little figurines and animals (including a mini stuffed dog she recently named Holly), with various items in her kitchen – and she also loves doing whatever her sister is doing (like putting on shows). She is often singing – her favorites remain Happy Birthday; Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star; and the Hamotzi – and about a month ago she busted out a mash-up of Old MacDonald Had a Farm and Bingo. And as established here before, she’s a big fan of playing the guitar.

Other fun/funny stuff: She calls cakes and cupcakes “happy birthdays.” She still loves (and sleeps with) her two little babies, whom she calls Baby and Other Baby. She is a parrot – in the past few weeks, especially, she has been repeating almost everything her sister says/does. (For example, she has adopted Zoe’s love of playing school and pretending she’s the teacher: Just last week, Avery demanded that I sit down for a “meeting,” like at school, and proceeded to “read” to me like I was her student). If you call her something other than Avery, like “pumpkin,” she’ll usually say, “No – I Avery!” She likes being silly – like pretending she is Zoe or Daddy or Mommy – and her newest thing is to put her hands together at the top of her hand (think the safety signal in football) and twirl around. It’s her dreidel dance.

The not-so-fun stuff: Our tough little cookie can be defiant and tempermental, and she’ll occasionally throw objects in anger. (“Torry, torry,” she’ll say – her way of pronouncing sorry – as her dad or I carry her away to be disciplined.) If you do something she doesn’t like (such as tuck her hair behind her ears – a real pet peeve of hers), she’ll likely yell out, “No do that!” Within the last few weeks she started fibbing about her sister – saying Zoe hit her when she didn’t, for example. But hopefully that’s a short-lived phase.

And some other random things/milestones: She moved to a toddler bed in Sept., and I’m happy to report she hasn’t yet gotten out of her bed without being given permission. (And bedtime with her remains an easy thing.) We started a bit of potty-training in the fall, and she’s well on her way at this point. And people say with increasing frequency that she looks like her sister did at this age – mostly, I think, because Avery’s hair is now full and curly. (Her first hair-cut was last month.)

-M

The four of us were invited to a party at Zoe’s friend Leo’s house yesterday afternoon. And guess who was excited to rock her new purple-and-gold dress and matching knee socks?

-M

Though it’s not always easy to capture on camera, the girls can be very loving (and hug-y) when they want to be. Here was the scene in our living room after school the other day…

-M

With some very real exceptions (like when one of the girls is sick or when work is exceptionally busy/stressful), I usually feel pretty okay about juggling the demands of work and family. I always miss my girls (of course), I sometimes feel guilty about missing time with them, and I’m often quite tired at the end of the day – but I’m not sure I would really change much (anything?) given the chance. And so I was interested both in the results of a recent study showing that working moms are generally healthy and happy, and in the thoughts of a busy mom that I recently came across in a magazine:

I’m writing this at the end of a very long week on a very late worknight that still doesn’t want to end. Honestly, these are the moments when I know that work-life balance is a myth – in fact, I don’t even like that phrase. For me, it’s instead about life-work satisfaction.

Am I satisfied that I’m still at work? That the kids had to come to the office today because they had some days off school and my husband covered the last one? That I also had to take them both to the dentist this morning? No, not really. Not at this moment. But once I get some sleep and have a moment to myself (!), I will be satisfied – satisfied with the choices I’ve made as a working mother, some purposefully and thoughtfully, some on the fly and quite imperfectly.

I agree that “satisfied” is a way better way way to describe things than “balanced,” so I can totally relate to this mom. But with that said, today marks my first day off of work for awhile (I have a 2.5-week winter break!) – and I must admit to being more than satisfied about that!

-M