this way to butterflies.

as part of intentionally parenting with wild freedom, i am trying to say yes. yes to extra trick-or-treating. yes to hanging out with our neighbors. yes to spur of the moment play dates. on saturday my friend ashley texted me saying that she and her son were headed over to the butterfly preserve and would we want to join them? yes. we actually didn't end up overlapping at the preserve for more than a few minutes because of naptimes and trying to wrangle two children into clothes, but i am so glad we said yes!

it was closest to perfect you could imagine. my little boy walked up every steep hill on his own, scrambled over big logs, and took off running in the woods like the best little adverturer you could dream of. we kept choosing to wander down paths that took us deeper and deeper into the woods, stopping to find butterflies and listen to the wind stir the eucalyptus trees. it was warm with just an undercurrent of cool ocean breeze. i stretched my arms wide wide wide because God is so good and His creation so beautiful and He made my children to be so precious and i just can't dare keep that kind of praise to myself. 

instatober

here's what we were up to in october... at least according to instagram...
xoxo/becca

^^ lolo and i took a bunch of selfies. after our first all-nighter//embracing fall style//wearing chevron  (cruz: why is everyone wearing pointy stripes?)

^^ in things that can't possibly have happened news, cruz turned three in october. this year he really got it and loved his birthday. we spent about a week singing "happy birthday" and practicing blowing out candles and then he rocked it at the party. (ps: would you like a post on how to plan your child's birthday without pinterest? wild and free, baby)

^^ soccer player. ballerina. curious george. come back soon, halloween!

^^ i've stepped it up in the arts & crafts department. we've been painting, "chalking," and decorating pumpkins with glitter. it's been so fun to watch cruz draw with purpose-- a road for his cars, the sun and moon, our family (we all have very heavy eyebrows in his pictures and also in real life).

^^ cruz is equal parts tovi (awesome ball skills) and me (great satisfaction in completing paperwork)

^^ babies helping me with work

^^ who's the cutest sitting in a bumbo? london rae, that's who.

halloween just got a little bit cooler

listen, i've just never been a halloween person. i grew up in the pacific northwest where our halloweens consistently occurred in the rain. there's an awesome costume under all this rain gear kind of affairs. then we moved out near uc santa barbara where halloween gets taken to the next level, but not in a good way. our local grocery store piles pallets of cheap beer in the aisles in the few days before halloween weekend and students stream through our neighborhood in costumes both small (and tight and risque) and scary. it's gotten better over the years, but it felt yucky and dark and turned me off of halloween for a long time.

but this year we took the kids trick or treating and it all turned around.

tovi has been planning matching costumes for him and cruz for a looong time. wanna see??

curious george and the man with the yellow hat!! can you even??
we started trick or treating at ghost village road in montecito. the costumes were cute and creative. we felt like celebrities because everywhere we went someone would yell, "hey, it's the man with the yellow hat!" and tween girls would coo, "look at that george. he is sooooo cuuuuute!" the first time someone recognized cruz as george you would have thought he'd burst open with the pride of it all.

after about an hour, cruz and london got tired and hot and full enough of candy and ice cream (um, yes. ice cream trick or treating for the win!), so we headed home. we still wanted to go out in our neighborhood, so we convinced cruz to go on a walk with us to look at jack-o-lanterns. and we happened to bring his candy bucket just in case.
i don't know if our first trip out had served as a practice run or if the evening light made him more comfortable, but trick or treating around the neighborhood was the stuff dreams are made of. cruz was so bold walking up to each door for candy. he wouldn't say trick or treat, but he did say thank you, which i like even better. it was dusk and there was just something magical in the air. the neighborhood felt so safe and so friendly. we chatted with neighbors and rang doorbells of people we had never talked to before. all around us you could hear people laughing and calling out "see you later!" and "happy halloween!" our neighborhood felt like a community. we went to bed with happy hearts and tummies full of candy we stole from cruz's bucket. i think i could like this holiday.

a day in the life

as a blog reader, i love day-in-the-life posts. it's partly voyeuristic, like peeking into someone's purse or medicine cabinet. growing up as the daughter of a sociologist, i'm well-versed in the art of people-watching. and knowing how someone else spends their day makes me feel good; it pulls back the curtain on "how does she do it all?" my friend robin wrote a cracker jack post on how she's balancing her schedule as a working mom, and then invited others to write their own day-in-the-life posts. i got to spend all day truly thinking about how i was spending my time... and it felt great!

of course writing down what i'm doing with my day doesn't quite capture everything. you can't schedule cheering for a friend who had a great ultrasound, sneaking cruz's halloween candy while he naps, or covering london's face in kisses while we wait for cruz to finish his snack. but this is my life and my day and it made me feel satisfied to take a good look at how it all balances out.

so here's what i did.

5:45am. tovi's alarm goes off for his first client at 6am. i get up right after he does, brush my teeth, and head downstairs. i pour myself a glass of water and drink it while i read my devotional (currently i'm reading this one) and pray. i spend the next 45 minutes working on stuff for mops. mops is one of my favorite things to invest my time and energy in, and i give it the best part of my day.

8:35am. by the time i get home from cruz's daycare drop-off, london is up and hanging out with tovi. i nurse her, and then spend some time on work that won't require me to be on the phone. we lay on the floor together and i chat to her while i enter data. i'm glad we get to spend this time together, although sometimes i wish our one-on-one time would be more about playing with her than just keeping her occupied.

9:45am. london's back down for a nap, and i launch myself into work calls. my time is limited, so i try to be as careful about it as possible. i tell myself that i'll take a shower at 11:15 and i barrel through the next hour and a half.

12:20pm. cruz is home from daycare and i unleash him on the backyard. we play basketball for awhile, and then i put london down for her second nap. cruz vacillates between making layups and chalk drawings, wanting to play together or wanting to play by himself. this is his time to get really worn out, so i follow his lead.

1:30pm. my boss (who's also my neighbor and a friend) asks if she can drop by later in the afternoon. i get cruz down for a "quiet time" after we read a few books and do a quick clean of our downstairs. rugs get vacuumed, all the sports equipment is returned to their home outside. i get more work done and eat a quesedilla with goat cheese (thanks to bread and wine, i've learned that goat cheese is always the right answer). it's delicious and i savor my time alone... until lolo wakes up at 2:15. i get a little annoyed that her afternoon nap wasn't too long, but as i'm getting ready to feed her, i figure out the answer-- two front teeth are popping through! i cut her some slack; she's been surprisingly unfussy.

3pm. cruz gets released from his naptime jail. he has taken all the books off his shelves and lined them up along the floor. "it's slippery!" he tells me, delighted. for his birthday, our friends adam and leah bought him berenstein bears: the trouble with chores and now he's obsessed with doing chores, so he cleans up the room as soon as i ask him to (thanks, questads!). since we potty trained him, cruz has been resistant to wearing pants, so after naps are usually a good time check him out in his undies. we have a snack. we read some books. london is a little fussy, so i put her in the carrier for awhile. "put london in the ergo, not the moby," cruz instructs. ah, bossy and a modern toddler!

4pm. rachael stops by for a chat and brings cake. that's my favorite kind of pop-in.

5pm. it's been a goal of mine to get to know our neighbors better. one way i'm trying to do that is by encouraging us to play in our cul de sac more often. we head out front with our chalk and our neighbors are also out riding bikes. there are few things that make me feel more like a real mom than helping to supervise pre-dinner cul de sac playtime.

6pm. tovi steps in quickly, transitioning between soccer practice and one last client. i feed cruz his dinner and then send him into the studio for a few minutes. my sweet, tired london is ready for bed. i feed her and she falls asleep quickly.

7pm. tovi and i chat when he comes in from the studio, but we end up talking too long and it's past cruz's bedtime. he starts to melt down, and i carry him upstairs with less grace than i'd like. his screaming actually wakes london up, which is a bummer. i settle her back down and then trick cruz into brushing his teeth and putting on his jammies. i don't remember what happened after that... did we read a book? did we say prayers? did tovi take over bedtime and i fed london again? i think that's what happened. anyhow... he's asleep!

8pm. we eat bagel sandwiches and a salad-- we keep it classy around here. look, this is how i get it "all" done. there's just no such thing as "all" anymore. something always has to give and i'm trying to give myself the freedom to let a couple of things slide from day to day. today i cleaned. maybe tomorrow we'll eat a real dinner. when you're balancing work and taking care of littles, something will always have to give. we watch two episodes of friday night lights because it's awesome and so that tovi can have that extra coach-taylor power boost as the team heads into their last games of the regular season.

10:30pm. i type up this post in bed, feed london one more time, read a couple pages in my new book, and finally turn off the lights.

i'd love to see what your day looks like! i'm linking up with robin here... and you can too!

what we wore on wednesday

some days you write relevatory blog posts... and some days you just want everyone in cute outfits. ladies, ammiright?

^^ cruz decided that it was a "green day." green dino jams, green undies, green crocs it is! i mean, you know i love a good theme.

^^ we call this one our little bunny, so these striped bunny jams are pretty perfect for her. we get all kinds of squealy when she has them on. there is something so sweet and soft and lovable about her... just a sweet little bunny.

^^ i've been dying for her to wear this romper from tea collection. i bought it in august, thinking she would wear it in the spring. because it's for one year olds. but how super darling is it????

^^ i was pretty proud of this outfit. actually, so proud that this is the second day in a row that i wore it! the first time was out on a date with tovi, and i liked it so much that i put it back on the next morning. and that's how we roll.

^^ we continued with our green day!

^^ me: cruz, what's on your shorts?!!??
    cruz: some crusher. let's take these off.
    {we take them off. let him run around in undies for a minute. he runs back over to me}
    cruz: cruz needs new shorts. but not crusher-y shorts this time.

   bahahaha. love that kid.

^^ unfortunately, london didn't stay in her cute romper for long. just as we were about to leave the house to have dinner with friends.... outfit change time!

and that was wednesday!