year one: check

just like that, the first year of nate's mba program is done. i had no idea it would go by so quickly, but with fall break, christmas break, spring break, and snow days, i'm not complaining. we see nate a lot more than i expected. 

we're moving in two weeks (and we're homeless by the way. anyone have an empty apartment in san francisco? an empty room? an empty garage where we can pitch a tent?) for the summer, and nate's finishing his last final tonight. 

we had a brunch with all the lds families, one last durham bulls baseball game with the second years, one last girl's night out, one last date night with matt and belize at lantern, and we're capping off the year with a beach vacation at the outer banks next week.

i'm really loving durham right now. it took me awhile to settle in, but i like it here.

growing up

being a mom is hard for me. i thought life was a little (or a lot) hard when i was pregnant, employed by teach for america, teaching school, and going to graduate classes at night, with a husband working in asia. not a chance! being a mom has been a particular shade of hard lately, and especially because these are my kids. everything is on the line and depends on me. yet, i realize that not everyone even has or wants a chance to take on this role too. i need little moments--like watching excited sagie wear a paper graduation hat i hot glued together this morning--to remind me how grateful i am to be a mother.

we've been doing a preschool co-op with some of our mba friends and sage has adored seeing these kids every week. she has no idea they'll be scattering to different states soon! we'll miss these cute kiddos and i'll miss their mamas a lot.

almost three

sage is two months shy of three. three! not a baby at all anymore.

i am so exhausted...kind of all the time. i laid down for a few minutes and sage quickly woke me up, "mom! puhlease! i need you to be my sous chef!" (she was preparing something very important in her wooden kitchen).

when i ask what she's doing with nora, "i'm just hanging with my sister out."

it's a whole new experience when you have a parrot around. i'm becoming very self aware, and very selective of what i choose to expose sage to. she repeats everything. even those phrases no one ever remembers from disney movies. even what i tell my mom on the phone. even things she heard months ago.

music is her love language. she constantly asks for music, and i find it pretty amusing that she has the entire imagine dragons song "radioactive" memorized. she hums, dances, and puts on concerts for nora. and did i mention she has quite the strong opinion on her outfits?

i have a feeling i'm in for a lot of fun and sass with this girl. what would we do without sagie?

nj at five months

"noah chain," as sage affectionately calls her sister, is growing up. she's not a delicate, flimsy newborn anymore and it makes me excited and mournful. she still needs to take "sleep through the night 101" from sage, but couldn't be more thrilled about bathing. i can always calm her down with a bath. in my sink. in my sink accented by hunter green laminate counter tops. 

nora would not fall asleep the other night, so we just played with her instead. wait, that's what the sleep books say to do, right? nate got her to laugh so hard. in those moments, it's clear she has our hearts. 

 she is attentive and smiley. she instantly calms down with music. she rolls with the punches and lets sage drape necklaces on her, "hug" (smother) her, and recite things mama says to her ("nora, we don't whine. please be kind.").

 

stay little, nora jane. 

because of him

easter was a pretty stark difference from last year...when my mom came to visit us in singapore and we hunted for eggs on the 31st floor of our condo building. but again, my mom made easter so fun for us. her packages are like christmas on your doorstep--everything wrapped beautifully and thoughtfully put together. i can only aspire to be the package queen that she is.

the girls had beautiful matching outfits, and we snapped a few pictures before church on easter sunday.

we had an easter dinner with our mba friends and a little egg hunt for the kids at duke. sage was thrilled to have her same easter basket ("purse") from last year. so thrilled, in fact, that she was quite distracted during the egg hunt and we ended up tossing some eggs into her basket for her so she had something in there.
 she seemed content to just watch all the other kids running in every direction. i wondered if she even realized there was candy in the eggs, but that question was answered real quick when we got home and most of her eggs were mysteriously empty...and a wad of skittles was mysteriously in her mouth.

it's because of him that i get to be with my people forever, that i get to start anew every day, that i have hope. i love celebrating the true meaning of easter (in full disclosure, i also love scotchmallow eggs).

sodu in the spring

i learned a new vocab word here in north carolina. sodu = south durham (my hood). and let me tell you, i am converted to spring in sodu. it's been three years since we've had spring and i forgot how glorious it is. sweater weather, brown instantly turning to green, flowers popping up in our previously ugly landscaping, "popcorn" blossoms erupting out of the trees that line our street.

nate finally convinced sage to go on a scooter ride. we have one car, so nate scoots to school. don't worry, i've cracked every dumb and dumber joke that exists. you just can't beat scooter parking though. and yes, sage is wearing pajamas at three p.m.

 

we moved to north carolina in august, the month of mosquitoes. but in april? our backyard is a dream. we spent saturday afternoon laying on a blanket listening to general conference.

we "camped" at jordan lake with friends, meaning we made s'mores, set up our camping chair for a few hours, and drove home to our own beds. sage's fractured leg was still healing.

we've picnicked in the sarah p. duke gardens twice because the weather is so perfect and the tulips are in bloom. my pollen allergies are crazy, but i can't stay inside missing all this beauty. 
 

 

i love being a mom of girls. nora's bows seem to get bigger the longer we live in the south.

chitown

chicago can do no wrong in my mind. 

forget those terrrrible winters or the screeching el train or the grumpy bus drivers. i feel so happy walking down those streets and i'm always flooded with memories of our years there...our little apartment that overlooked navy pier and millennium park where we brought our first baby home, how those cold streets turn magical with all the christmas decorations in december, those cute kids i taught in south shore, and of course all of our favorite restaurants.

nate attended an mba conference that just so happened to be in chicago, so we tagged along. we arrived bright and early and decided to check something off the list we'd never done: the sears tower! i refuse to call it the willis tower--it will always be the sears tower to me. completely touristy, but it was cool to sit in the glass box that hangs 103 stories above ground. sage conked out in the stroller while nora soaked in the people watching and the views. we grabbed lunch at xoco first though. apparently two kids was the tipping point because i didn't have it in me to lug around my big camera. phone photos it is!

 

the ultimate time-out spot, no?  

we met hannah and greta at lincoln park zoo for the afternoon. S and G were born six months apart and will be lifelong friends. i never did chicago with kids, and uh, it's trickier than i'd imagined. hannah showed me how to wrangle my double stroller onto the bus. in our ten minutes of riding, two passengers told me what i was doing wrong with my children and no one smiled at us. we weren't in singapore anymore, that's for sure.

kylee and rodney couldn't come to the conference, but kylee is the foodiest of all my friends. of course she made restaurant reservations months in advance. someone had to go in their place. date night! we tried RPM italian, giuliana rancic's restaurant, with adam and hannah. no celeb sightings, but the shaved brussel sprout salad and tartufo (kylee's rec) were definitely noteworthy. 

 

tartufo (tahr-too-foh) // noun // hazelnut gelato, chocolate shell.

while nate attended the conference on saturday, the girls and i wandered michigan avenue and gold coast. it was nice to know my way around this city since most of our travel in the last few years has been a mad dash to figure out the language and lay of the land.

sage was so sad to wear her leg brace. when i accidentally bumped her broken leg while grabbing tissues at walgreen's, i felt bad and gave in to her one request: this "happy birthday" balloon on a stick. i'd say $1.99 was worth her happiness for the day. she loved watching the boats on the river.

 when nate finished, we all went to dinner at the purple pig, my very favorite restaurant of all. a walk to the bean after dinner made for a good ending.

nate told the waiter to surprise us with the last dish and now i want to do that at every restaurant. the dish he brought us was possibly the best of the night. 

it was a treat to hang with the bryans and to spend a weekend in one of our favorite cities.

wedding bells in youuuutah!

my cute cousin married nico in the salt lake temple, so we flew out for the occasion. my whole family also flew out, and i relished those short days with them. we live on the same continent as family now, but it still takes us a whole day of traveling to get across the country. someday we'll live a little closer to all those people we love.

aunt claudia and uncle kevin live in south africa, so we loved seeing them for the first time in years. the theme of our utah trips is always not enough time. wish i had more time with my cousins, more time with friends, more time for another cafe rio salad.

our one little hiccup was that sage fractured her leg on a trampoline the day before our trip. she was happy to be strollered around and carried everywhere, but i felt so sad when she would try to limp to keep up with the gang. after a few weeks of wearing a brace and laying low, she's just fine.

i didn't bring a camera, but i do want to remember these moments...

 nora was so over the shoulders picture thing. i think sage can just own that pose. we'll have to think up a good one for nate and nora.

 cousin pounds.

 my grandmother has 24 grandkids and 24 great grandkids. every single great grandkid was here for the wedding! somehow we managed this chaotic picture when 80% of those being photographed wanted to be napping. 

 the balkman girls. we went to women's conference together at the tabernacle.

 brooke's wedding reception was a sans children affair. it made me sweat bullets to leave little N behind, but i'll admit i loved having no responsibility and dancing the night away. i mean, my 80 year-old grandma was cutting a rug (what does that even mean?), so i had to get out there.

i picked these dresses out at my favorite french clothing shop in singapore. it's ridiculous how happy matching children's dresses make me.

 sage is really into jesus and why he had "owies" on his feet.

 and just to keep things classy, nora pooped evvveeerrryyywwwhheeerrreee while we were at church. nate especially loved the splotches down his suit since he was the lucky guy holding her during the unfortunate event. we didn't have any extra clothes for her, so we toted our naked baby around temple square for an hour.

 we spent our last day with the lawler clan, with this sunset as our backdrop. i remember being so frustrated with utah's bipolar spring weather when i lived there, but wow, there is so much beauty.

a snapshot

nora is almost five months old and i still consider her a newborn. time is so fleeting these days. 

i just want to remember this little moment today. almost three year-old sage might be my favorite ever.

afternoons in our little house are filled with light. i love this time of day.

our one treasure is this balinese suar wood table we hand-picked in indonesia and had shipped across the world. i love that it's our gathering place. 

hydrangeas on our table from a baby shower i threw for my sweet friend. 

bitty baby is sage's treasure and always nearby.

sage wears two dresses in rotation right now. "they're in the laundry" is the only excuse she'll take for not being able to wear them.

i still cling dearly to nap time and sage still needs to sleep. when she wakes up, i make her a snack plate...a fancy way of getting her to eat tidbits of everything on an old school lunch tray.

sage calls ears "earrings" and any chair a "high chair"

lucky me that i get to spend my days with such pure souls entrusted in my care (even if i look haggard by 30 because i don't sleep).