Monday- Day 21: This was actually a bit of a down day for us. Since we stayed up late to do a beach night the night before, the boys slept in quite a bit. They got really involved with their Legos and with drawing characters from their Richard Scarry's Things That Go book and I couldn't bring myself to interrupt their play. I got a lot of cleaning done around the apartment, made a real dinner, and caught up on blogging about the previous weekend. In the evening we went to a local park that Jon and the boys had found the week before. The playground is by a company we've never seen before so it has some totally new and awesome stuff to play on and the boys were in Heaven. They met a third grade by named Max who they played with all evening. We got to chatting with Max's parents and they were just wonderful people to spend an evening at the park with. They told us that we couldn't live in Burbank without going to this Cuban bakery in town, so we put that on our list of things to do!
Tuesday- Day 22: Tuesday we drove into Beverly Hills to meet some twin friends at Holmby Park. For anyone who follows our blog, you know that when our boys were born I connected with a group of mamas who all had twins in the year 2009. We have stayed connected for the last five years (are all of our twins really turning FIVE you guys?!?!) Over the years some of these girls have become my very best friends and I have been lucky enough to meet with these awesome mamas all over the country... and today we got to meet up with our second set of California friends! Miss Jill, Jack, and Izzy drove up from Orange County to spend a park day with us and we all had a ton of fun. The kids played beautifully and since Jill is a teacher AND twin mama of early fall babies it was nice to chat about some of our thoughts and struggles about kindergarten and school in general. It was hard to say goodbye to our friends knowing we probably won't see them again before we leave, but its such an incredible feeling to have met another mama who I have shared the last five years with! In the evening Jon and the boys ran some errands while I took an hour to myself because I haven't had many breaks since we've been here! When we all got home Jon made the boys exploding Hindenburgs out of Persian cucumbers and sweet bell peppers... because who doesn't want to eat a re-creation of the greatest airship disaster of all time?!
BBC 2009 Twin Friends
Oh the Humanity!!
Wednesday- Day 23: In keeping with our #playwithyourfood theme, I made the boys palm trees for breakfast today. I'm not nearly as crafty as daddy but I think I managed to pull it off! After breakfast the boys and I headed to the Griffith Observatory to see the planetarium show. In all the times we've been up to the Observatory we had never seen a show there so the boys were pretty geeked. The movie was fantastic and of course the boys shouted out the answers to all of the questions that the narrator asked along the way. I was totally blown away when they recalled the names of all of the oceans! We don't really get to take the boys to see movies, so it's extra special for me to have that mommy moment of sitting in a "movie" theater with my little boys :) When the show was done we spent another hour and a half exploring the Observatory. The boys wanted to read everything from the phases of the moon to how the tides work to how the sun compares to the size of other stars in the universe. They became incredibly interested in Betelgeuse, something we had briefly studied about a year ago, and while they were standing there in all of their tininess, asking complicated questions about the red giant, a woman commented "Wow- you must be a homeschooling mom!" and I couldn't help but smile. We finally had to hurry home because we all had to get ready for a big night. A dear friend of mine and the editor of Hollywood Mom Blog asked me to cover an event for the blog while she is out of town, which meant that Jon and I got to go see a pre-screening of a new movie that is coming out! My aunt, uncle, and cousin watched the boys for us so we could both go and enjoy the show... our first real date night in LA, and what a date it was! It's not every night you get to see a movie before it even premiers- and in LA nonetheless! The boys were super excited to go to Aunt Cindy and Uncle Charlie's, especially since cousin Jeffrey was finally home from Israel and coming over to play!!! They asked most of the day if it was time to go yet and that made my heart smile. We have never left the boys with anyone but our parents or my sister, but we were just as excited as the boys were for them to spend some time with our California family. We dropped the boys off just after 5:00 and then drove into the city to catch the show. We had to grab some dinner on the way and while I'm not at all a fan of fast food, Jon insisted that we grab an In and Out Burger since it is kind of a California staple- and it was surprisingly delicious... much more like Five Guys than a regular fast food place. We got to the theater and we were ushered past the crowds into the private screening (with free popcorn to boot!)... it was a really fun experience. The movie was absolutely fantastic but that's about all I can say about that for now... stay tuned!!!! The best part of the night though was returning to my aunt and uncle's house to find out that the boys had had what may have been their best night in LA to date! They were actually quit angry when we got home because they didn't want their night to be over. We are so very lucky to have such incredible family there- THANK YOU guys for helping us out and for meaning so much to all of us!!!!!
Breakfast, California style
Betelgeuse
Exploring the Observatory
Silly moon boys
Thursday- Day 24: Another big day! No wonder the week was flying by! The boys slept in again after getting home late- again! Normally Jon and I consider ourselves sleep Nazis. We have always been overly protective of the boys sleep and I'm proud of that. But something has happened with the boys in the last year or so- I thought we had escaped this "wonderful" trait of giftedness as the boys have always been decent sleepers- but over the last year the amount of sleep they need has drastically decreased. Though we still put them to bed at 8:00 or 8:30 at the latest, they are still up and chatting and acting and singing in their room until 10:00 or even 10:30 at night. The tough thing is that they are always just fine the next morning. They aren't fussy or crabby even into the next evening. They just don't seem to need as much sleep. (I, on the other hand, get very fussy and crabby if they do not sleep enough!) Since Jon is working here in LA and doesn't get home until 4:45is each afternoon, we've let the boys stay up some nights so we can still cram in a full evening of family time here... and last night was one of those nights!!! Once they finally woke up this morning, we had to scramble to get ready because I had to drop the boys off at Jon's school in Pasadena then boogey back down to Beverly Hills where I had to do a few interviews at the Four Seasons Hotel! It was a bit of a scramble, but the boys were excited to get to go to daddy's school so they were quite cooperative with getting ready to go. Thank goodness!
My interviews were an incredible experience (and probably the only time I will ever set foot in the Four Seasons!). I would have loved to stick around a bit longer for lunch but after both of my interviews I had to run back to Pasadena to rescue Jon and his students from the boys! I did manage to grab another cup of coffee to go because it was the best coffee I'd had since we've been in LA! I tried to enjoy the peace and quiet (and coffee) of my drive back to Pasadena while not panicking too much about how the boys had behaved at "school". Imagine my surprise when I walked up to the outside door of Jon's classroom to see the boys each seated at a desk amongst the other students, taking "notes" while Jon was showing the boys' favorite video of the Hindenburg explosion! It was quite possible the cutest thing I have ever seen- that is, until Jon told me about the boys' "notes". He said that when he started lecturing on the timeline of the history of aviation, the boys kept asking the kid next to them for more paper. And more paper. And even more paper. When he finally walked over to see what on earth they were doing, he found that they had drawn pictures of every point on the timeline that Jon had lectured about. They were quite literally taking their own notes in the only way they knew how!!! And Jon said all of his students were amazed that they could totally identify all of the drawings they had done! The boys then proceeded to teach the class about the Hindenburg and how and why it marked the end of airship aviation before I scooted them out the door so Jon could finish his day. Once again, the boys were quite upset that they had to leave- but the school had done us a huge favor in letting them come at all so I couldn't just leave them there even though there was only a half an hour left in the school day! On one hand, it was exciting to see how much the boys enjoyed "school" and that they actually managed to sit (well, not sit per say- but being that it was a class of gifted fourth grade boys, no one really "sat") and listen. On the other hand, I fear that if we do send the boys to school part time in the fall, they will be sorely disappointed when their kindergarten class doesn't build trebuchets and explore the physics of aviation.
As if we hadn't packed in enough today, we weren't done just yet! We told the boys we'd take them out for a treat for being so well behaved while mommy had her writing assignment this week- so we decided to check out the bakery we had heard so much about! We drove into downtown Burbank to go to Porto's Bakery and OMG we were NOT disappointed!!! This will be a must-stop spot every time we are ever back in LA! We were told to get a few potato balls and despite not knowing exactly what a potato ball was, it turned out to be one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten. The boys each chose a chocolate cupcake, Jon and I split a piece of cake of some sort, and they were handing out samples of the most incredible bread I've ever tasted! After that we went back to the awesome playground we were at earlier in the week where Jon continued to teach the boys the finer points of bull riding- because what mother doesn't think that's a good idea?!- and the boys found a couple of eight and nine year old girls to play with for the evening. There is something about older kids who are about 8 to 10 years old- the boys somehow manage to walk up to such kids, introduce themselves, and engage in the most wonderfully rich play. They played hide and seek and tag for a long while and Jon and I were able to sit back and remind ourselves that the boys' social skills are just fine, which is a breath of fresh air sometimes when everything can feel so asynchronous and mixed up and well, not fine. All in all, it was an incredibly busy day filled with so many wonderful opportunities and learning opportunities for all of us! And I can't wait to go back to Porto's one more time before we leave!!!
Porto's Bakery... decisions, decisions, decisions!
A special treat
The boys love to use this see-saw to practice their bull riding... ?!?!
Matthew
Caleb
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