Monday, March 30, 2009

Don't talk to me about water for at least two days.

You might be wondering what I'm doing at work at 10 p.m. on a Monday night.

It's a super funny story, actually.

See, Matt and I thought we could fix a washing machine by ourselves. What does it matter that we can't get the volume on our remote control to work? A washing machine to repair? In the house we don't even live in? Piece of cake.

It couldn't take more than an hour, right? So we took a lunch break to the condo - the one being rented out by people who own very nice musical equipment - and went to work.

Only? Um. It didn't really go like we imagined.
And basically, all you need to know is that water was flowing out of a hose so fast that it would have flooded the place in about 15 minutes.

So we had to grab buckets and garbage cans to catch it all. I filled buckets, Matt ran them to the bath tub before they overflowed.

As I watched the water run and run I pictured my life going by in slow motion. How I would ruin my condo and not only owe my tenants a place to live, but money for all the damages.

After a very long time of filling buckets and crying on the inside, we finally got the water to turn off. And miraculously, nothing was ruined.

But I obviously didn't get any work done. And I obviously can't get it done now because I'm still so amped up about it. So now that it's written down for the world to see our stupidity, I may be able to finish my article.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Spin Crazy

Ella and I have discovered spinning.

I'll start with me. As this is the year I try to get back in shape, I joined the YMCA, a place with ridiculous amounts of spin classes on its schedule. So, on Monday, I went to my first one.

You need to know that this is a really big deal for me. See, back in 2001, my friend walked out of a spin class, crying in shame because it was harder than she imagined. A friend who was way more in-shape than me. So I always said there was no way I'd ever do that to myself.

But having kids makes your humiliation level rise by many, many notches. Like I wore a jacket to Ensenada that had a chocolate stain on it. And I didn't even care. So walking out of a stupid aerobics class seemed way less daunting than it once did.

Maybe that's why I decided to finally go for it. And I kind of loved it. I think I did. I mean I got up and went to a 6:30 a.m. class this morning. So we'll see.

But even better is Ella's kind of spinning.
She spins in circles for minutes at a time as if it's no big deal. She does it all the time. It's her new favorite thing to do. And of coure, it's always better when she's wearing a green bow on her head.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

I Super Love PJ Harvey

On Monday I went to see PJ Harvey at the El Rey in Los Angeles and this is what it looked like.

I am in there somewhere, not close enough.



I always love what she wears but I am especially crazy about her cabaret style head piece. Don't laugh when you see me wearing one.





Photos by Marie Haddad

Friday, March 20, 2009

Hang Loose

Because I write a column called "The Frugal Shopaholic" I took a trip to Kobey's Swap Meet to see what stylish or off-the-wall things I could find for $10.

This 25 cent keychain was one of them:



I've never been to Hawaii, but something about the keychain's rainbowiness and it's "be chill" message written in soothing script made me love it instantly.

The keys were sitting on the kitchen table during dinner, where Marina noticed the hand and immediately copied the gesture. The following is what happened next:

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

200th Post! And Purim Pictures.

Yay! It's post number 200!
Hold on while I pat myself on the back for actually sticking with something for so long.

OK. Here are belated pictures of Purim (Jewish halloween). We took the girls to watch 8th graders put on a Purim play set to the songs of "High School Musical 3."

Needless to say, the girls loved it.
Matt? He was doing his best in maintaining a polite smile throughout the day. It's working, see!



Marina could not believe they were throwing chocolate coins from the stage. It was pretty much the highlight of her month.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Bento!

I've been bringing lunch to work for about six weeks now and I decided I needed a better place to put all my food than a gross, old Albertson's bag.
So now I'm using a Bento box! Well, it's really an American version of a Bento, and it's also designed for kids, but who cares, it's still cute and inspires me to make fun food.

Take a look at my first attempt:



Back there you see a mozarella and tomato salad with a cute little container that has olive oil in it.
There's also a turkey pita sandwich that I had to cut into small triangles to make it fit, but! The cuteness!
Then there's carrot sticks and hummus and greek yogurt with oranges.

If only the girls ate this stuff, making lunch would be my new favorite thing.

Not-A-Mom Saturday

Over the weekend, I got a much-needed break from motherhood and went on what can best be described as an eating trip through Ensenada with my friends Derrik and Maya.

Here's what we did:

Stop 1: Fruterias Manzana
We got the exact same fruit salad you see in the picture and it was probably my favorite food of the day.

Stop 2: Hussong's
Because it was the most logical place to meet my Dad. By the time he showed up an hour later, we were a Bloody Mary and a Michelada up on him.
Much to my pleasant surprise, my dad didn't have a drink all afternoon.

Stop 3: Not-so-Baja Tacos
Maya took us to a house that tranforms into a taco shop on the weekends. But instead of carne asada, it served food found in deep Mexico, like nopales, goat meat and flor de calabaza quesadillas.

Stop 4: Rincon del Parque
Here's where we sampled a bunch of Ensenada wines, which I would go into detail about if I knew anything about wine. But I don't. And so they all tasted like wine to me.
They also had wonderful pizza. We got one with calamari and tiny octopus tentacles and another one featuring an over-easy egg.

Here's a video of it. It's actually supposed to be for my brother but you can all see it:



Stop 5: The presidential heads
Amazingly, we didn't eat anything during our touristy stop here. But we did buy a ticket to the giant, inflatable slide. Five rides for 15 pesos was a bit too many rides for me.

Stop 6: Muelle Tres
It killed me to walk by so many cheapie fish taco stands only to wind up at a nice restaurant. But I did have some really good swordfish, along with pillows of shrimp and tuna croquettes. If I was a fancy food person I would have loved it, but at this point all I wanted was a messy taco from a street somewhere.
Derrik promised that the taqueria next to his house in Tijuana would be perfect.

Stop 7: Starbucks
For the ride home. They had a Cajeta Latte that was so amazing.

Stop 8: Art show
Before going home, we went to a gallery by the border that featured a lot of interactive art, including this fun project:



That's me and Derrik taking hundreds of pictures of ourselves via a joystick camera.

Stop 9: Derrik's House
Where Taco Jazz was closed!

Stop 10: Jack in the Box
The San Ysidro Jack in the Box is also known as the place all us dumb-asses with no Sentri passes sit and wait for our friends who do have it.

The End!

Friday, March 13, 2009

Heart to heart

Dear Ella,

While it's super sweet the way you fall asleep on my shoulder these days, it's getting to be a bit of a problem.

This is why you have, like, 12 pacifiers in your crib even though you are too old to be using them.
When you wake up at 1 a.m., rather than scream MOMMY! DADDY! AAAA! and wake up your sister and cause a midnight toddler frenzy, you're supposed to grab one of those pacifiers and go back to sleep.

I know it's not as fun as being sung to and rocked for an hour by your dad. Or as soothing as me rubbing your back. But I promise it will make for way more pleasant parents in the morning.

Just think about it.

Love, Mom.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Toddler time

Marina: Dad, will you stay tonight?
Dad: I will stay for a little bit before you go to sleep.
Marina: I want you to stay for four bits.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Costume recap

Yesterday was Purim, which is pretty much like Jewish Halloween.

I'm a terrible mother and did not take pictures of the girls in their costumes, but you have to trust me when I say they were too cute for their own good.

Rather than photos, however, I do have the second best thing: the girls talking about their costumes on this video:


Tia Patty Bath Time from Nina Hall on Vimeo.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Chocolate Ban

One night, as a reward for Marina eating more than just condiments and loose mozarella cheese, I gave her chocolate-covered pretzels for dessert.

Ella, however, did not eat as well and I thought I had to make the difference in dessert-getting way super obvious. So Ella got one chocolate pretzel while Marina got three. Right before bedtime.

An hour later Marina was not sound asleep like her sister, but SCREAMING. And then, she woke up, like, four times that night. And while it may seem obvious to all you health freaks, it finally became clear that chocolate turns my kids into lunatics.

So now there's a chocolate ban in this house - at least after 3 p.m.

I was all proud of myself that we left my grandmother's house last week - a place with mini M&M tubes and candy bars and brownies- without eating a single piece of it. I don't know how I did it, but I convinced them that apples and strawberries were SO YUMMY and that was that.

But today I was all, yay! Birthday party! And the first thing they said was, "Yay! Cake!" And then they brought out this Carvel (Hi, Alex) ice cream cake with a crumbly chocolate bottom. At 5 p.m.!

Marina sat in her little chair and ate the entire piece that was meant to be shared with her sister. She only stopped to say things like, "mmm, cake" and "I love cake."

I think you can guess how things ended. But you're wrong. This time, Marina fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Stupid chocolate thinks it can win its way back into this family but it's going to have to try harder than that.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Sharing

A rare moment of sisterly love.

The tall gene

Ella had her check up this week and they told us she's 80 percent taller than all other 15-month-olds out there.

I don't really understand how this is possible, given that 80 percent of 2-year-olds are taller than Marina and it's safe to say that 75 percent of 35-year-olds are taller than me.

But yeah. I'll take it, even if I'm already jealous.

Monday, March 2, 2009

The new routine

So.

I guess there's no way to sugar coat it. I have become one of those moms the Super Nanny would raise her eyebrows at. I'm one of those moms even I've silently judged on TV.

But. Ha ha. Jokes on me.

Marina, who once had the title of best sleeper in all babyland, refuses to go to bed without someone in the room. And stop saying to let her cry it out. Because when we do, we find her naked on her bare mattress covered in pee and tears and snot.

So now she lays down in her crib, while I get settled on her "big girl bed."
She falls asleep to the glow of my reading light. Oh, how I wish I had saved the Twilight series for now because I probably would have looked forward to my hour of quiet time.
But instead, I started out reading Sense and Sensibility, a book that was way too proper and stifling for a toddler room. So I switched to Anna Karenina, which gets kind of awkward when she asks me about the train tracks on the cover.

As great as an hour of reading may sound, it doesn't always have a happy ending.
Not that I'm not caught up in the lives of Kitty and Anna, but I often end up falling asleep in Marina's room and that means I am missing the entire season of Housewives of NYC.