The last couple of days have been the type of days where things have moved fast. Projects and work things are happening, just like that. Not that anything is ever set in stone, but suddenly the rest of the year is mapped. The memories of summer are fading fast. I wore a jacket out to dinner last night even though it got rather warm during the day and today, Sunday morning, is cool and drizzly.

We haven’t spent a weekend in Brooklyn in over a month. Saturday was our first spent in the neighborhood in ages (and a return to the Flea for Mark) and I was reminded again why we live here. You know the kind of day where you just plan on doing a quick errand, but end up staying out all day? Mia started soccer early in the morning in the field across the street from our house and instead of coming home as planned, we met new and old friends at the playground and hung out with neighbors on the stoop all day – all without ever leaving our block. It was too pretty out to go inside.

This week, school starts in earnest. Last week was like a trial. NYC public schools had only 1 day of school because of the Jewish holidays. Talk about disorienting, not to mention just plain weird and odd in terms of scheduling. They should have just started this week (seriously, does that make sense to anyone?). And so…first grade begins for real, second week of preschool starts. I have a good feeling for Miss C. There was no crying on Thursday. On the walk home from school she gushed over how much she loved her teachers (“I LOVE them. No, like I really really love them, oh my god”).

…and nothing really to say, but no one can resist kitty photos. These cuties, who we first met just a day after they were born when we landed in Washington, are 14 days old in these photos. They started looking more like fuzzy kittens.

The mother cat kept moving her kittens around the house, to protect her babies I guess from all the unfamiliar people (uh, Mia and Claudine). The girls were really respectful though, but never got to pet the tiny kittens before we left for home. The night we came back to my mother in law’s house after a week in Seattle, the mother cat had moved them again after the girls and I watched them for a while, but this time she hid them well. It was our last night and the kittens were nowhere to be found. Even the mother cat seemed confused. We looked everywhere…but no kitties. It was a mystery! We didn’t see them for 6 hours and we were worried that they were getting hungry. Could they have gotten outside? Is it possible that the mother cat had…killed…them?? We had no idea! Where were they???

Right before we went to bed for a 4:30am wake up call to head to the airport, we conducted another search around the house. This time I dug around more thoroughly in one of the closets and finally saw some movement deep in the mess of wrapping paper rolls. It made me jump back, but there they were! I got to hold and play with them and we were hoping that the girls would be able to hold them before we left, but by morning the mother had hid them again.

We’ve been seeing some updates of the kitties on Facebook, videos and stuff. The cuteness is killing me. They’re really interacting and playing now. Too bad the girls never got to pet or hold them. To satisfy their kitty urges, they played with a small stuffed kitty doll about the size of the newborns that they happened to bring from home, pretending that it was one of the babies. Gotta make do with what you have, huh?

I think I’ve finally reassimilated to life back home. It took a week. I knew it would. I’m not so great at coming home from a long vacation. It’s hard for me to just snap back, but I am there, finally. It helps that school has started this week (btw, after just 5 or so minutes of crying after we left, Claudine had a GREAT day at school yesterday and talked about it all day afterwards, but this morning we had to drag her all the way there and she cried again. This school stuff is going to take awhile). It helps that Fall, my favorite time of year in the city, is on the verge of making its appearance. After today, the last day as far as I can tell of mid-80s temperatures, it will feel like it’s here. Apple picking. Crisp cool days in jackets and scarves. Pulling out the boots and sweaters. Halloween. The crunch of leaves. It’s all good.

I’ve been making dates to see lots of friends. I know that I have to find work soon, but I’ve given myself permission to take some time off to figure stuff out. So far, I am not worrying, yet. The last week has been full of adjustments for the family so it seemed like a good decision until things settle. I woke up last Thursday thinking about all the things I wanted to get done since it was a babysitting day, but quickly remembered that we don’t have a nanny anymore. CRAP! Changes for us all, changes all around.

Anyone else going through some changes this Fall?

By the time some of you will read this, Claudine will have started her first day at school. She’s familiar with the building and familiar with the rooms and the general curriculum. After all she’s gone with us to drop off and pick up Mia since she was a newborn and has taken classes there herself for the past 2 years. This, however, has not made the anxiety of starting school any less stressful for any of us. She’s not used to being dropped off and she won’t be familiar with the new teachers.

I don’t know if you can tell what kind of personality MIss C has through the stories and photos from this blog, but I capture her at her purest, most comfortable and chatty self. In reality though, if you were to meet her in the street, she would probably hide behind my legs, cover her face and not acknowledge you, not because she is being rude, but because she is really shy. Although I’ve seen improvements over the past year, it takes a while for Claudine to warm up to new people, and it becomes an even greater challenge if you happen to be a guy. You have to earn her trust, but when you do, you will be rewarded with the silliest faces, some of the wittiest banter from a 3 year old that you will ever hear and a personality with equal parts charm and goofiness (I believe she’s now the goofiest person in the house).

That said, we are not expecting the morning to be easy at all. We’re not really sure what to expect.

ps. a blog reader commented that she thought Claudine was much older, like 5, not 3 years old. She’s a super tall kid, taller than anyone else her age we know and even taller than some 4 year olds. She’s also very verbal and draws like a kid much older than herself. Also, she has a very big head. Seriously, that kid has the roundest head I’ve ever seen. I know it’s because their head shapes are very different (Mia’s head is a lot more narrow), but Mia’s bike helmet won’t even fit on Claudine. Like not even close.

update: she totally cried when we left. She ran for the door. Mark and the teachers had to carry her back to the room. We could hear her crying loudly all the way downstairs from the front door. I wonder if she’s still crying…waaaah, sniff.

Oh, hello there, baby Claudine. See? Big, round head. (baby c photo credit: chardean)

Hard to believe that a week ago today, we were enjoying our last dinner in Seattle with family and friends. Isn’t that the way vacation goes? Upon your return you feel like you’ve been away so very long, but just 3 days in (or thereabouts) you feel like you never left.

It’s sort of fitting that our last dinner was at Delancey, the pizza restaurant, perhaps not unlike Franny’s here in Brooklyn, that was opened a year ago by Molly from Orangette and her husband, Brandon. I know that when we begin to think about the store more seriously sometime after the holidays, I’ll be going back and re-reading those entries leading up to the opening day. There are other similarities, like cross county moves but in opposite coasts, and Mark, like Brandon, was a music composition major who decided to focus on food.

Now, we don’t plan on opening a restaurant or even anything with table service, but it was really nice to sit in their wonderfully minimalist dining room, feasting on delicious pizza and feeling the buzz of happy customers. Dreams, a vision, hard work, and maybe a sprinkle of fairy tale magic do pay off.

One last thing I want to say about our trip. It’s really interesting to see a space, a home, and a view that you’re used to seeing in photos, with your own eyes. I’m not sure how many photos throughout the seasons I’ve seen of Lecia’s boys out on their street, taking a walk after dinner or headed down to the beach. Now I have one with my kids now too.

My friend Sara Jensen jokingly made fun of me for tweeting from a hike that we went on last Sunday, just north of Seattle. But I wasn’t ready for a hike because I thought we were just going to the playground. We decided to hike down to the water on a whim when we saw there were multiple trails. If you passed me on the trail you would have totally laughed. I hiked a moderately difficult trail (so the sign said) in ballet flats and a fairly dressy drop waist silk tunic over jeans (we were going out to dinner that evening). Ridiculous! Soooo not Pacific Northwest. But whatever. I haven’t gone on a hike in awhile, but even when I was doing some serious hiking many years ago, with heavy packs for camping no less, I didn’t own hiking boots back then either.

This hike, on the other hand, was the girls’ first. For being 3 years old with little legs and wearing sandals over socks, Claudine did quite well on that narrow, steep-ish trail. We got through the hike on the way back from Lake Union by pretending to get on and off the “hiking bus” and discovering fun things like that fungus? unidentifiable green thing? above that I told the girls was a pointy hat that a gnome left there. I don’t know if they bought it, but I’d like to think that it was true.

And so is this blog. You knew I had many more photos to share, right? Besides, we’re still on vacation time, although Mark is getting ready to do his first epic 14 hour night shift tonight (I guess he really isn’t on vacation time then with this rude awakening…welcome home!). It made us realize that 2 full weeks is really a long time to be off on vacation and now he’s playing catch-up with all our retailers. Throughout our trip I kept thinking how taking 2 weeks off to go hang out in Seattle or anywhere else would be really difficult/downright impossible once we have a store. People don’t close down stores for 2 weeks at a time, do they? When we’re gone from our business it’s tough enough as it is, but we aren’t necessarily losing money right now because we aren’t paying any rent anywhere, we’re just not making any money when we’re closed.

It’s this loss of freedom that I lament the most, even though I’ve come around to really embracing the idea of a store. We even scouted out some Northwest goodies to carry in the store, including coffee. Although our own products in the store* will be very much about Brooklyn, we’d like to offer some items from the NW as a connection to Mark’s hometown. It’s stuff like this that gets us excited (also Three Potato Four’s new store which is fab).

I’m hoping to push out of these post-vacation doldrums soon before I waste September away (yes, it is indeed September!!). But for now, my mind is still on vacation, hazy from good times spent with our family and our friends. Coming back hasn’t been easy because there is a lot of uncertainty in our future and it was nice to not have to deal with reality for a bit.

But I will, once the fog lifts away.

*don’t get too excited about the store. There still are no concrete store plans yet, nor any space scouting. The whole thing is still ridiculously daunting.

**oh man, Mark left at midnight after 2 hours of sleep to go bake. He won’t be back till 3 or 4 the next afternoon. We may have to reconsider this strategy. Madness!

Because I’m not. This one was taken at Golden Gardens, Seattle on Saturday night.

We’re actually back home after a long, tedious day of travel. It’s a million degrees in New York. We got in at 6pm and I surprised myself by unpacking. I loathe unpacking, but this time around I wanted to get it over with instead of letting it sit around for days (of which I have done many times). But the first thing I did when we got in the door was mop the floor. After putting in a load of laundry.

Don’t get fooled by this productivity because I’m totally out of sorts. It’s really weird to come home after being away for 2 full weeks. It’s familiar but it’s also not and I found myself checking to see if things were as we left them. We haven’t seen our stuff in so long.

We got up in the morning at 4:30 am to head to the airport. I figured with the early wake up call, we’d all be tired earlier and it’d cancel out the jet lag so we’d go to sleep at a reasonable NY hour. That only worked on 2 of us.