Frozen Weekend

We decided at the last minute to buy two tickets to go see Disney On Ice Presents Frozen. We'd actually been talking about it for months--we thought about getting Zuzu tickets for Christmas. But we never pulled the trigger (the prices seemed really high to me) and there was the question of whether we would get a sitter for Coco so we could both go or whether one of us would stay home and instead of figuring it out, we just didn't do anything.

But then one of David's co-workers mentioned she might have extra tickets, and then my friend K saw the show and said Zuzu would love it, and then Zuzu started performing "Let It Go" with such emotional authenticity that it really seemed like we had to buy tickets.

Sunday morning David snagged two tickets and we decided that I would go and take Zuzu while he stayed home with the baby. Zuzu has been such a daddy's girl lately, but I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that Coco is a mommy's girl milk fiend so I haven't gotten much one-on-one time with Zuzu at all lately.

And after Coco got me up EVERY TWO HOURS last night, I was ready to kiss her sweet chubby cheeks good-bye and go see Frozen with the Zuzy-Q.

Those cheeks require hourly maintenance, or so she would have you believe.

So David bought tickets and went outside to shovel snow and I nursed the baby and then realized that I hadn't heard anything out of Zuzu in several minutes. I went downstairs to find that she was rifling through my purse--this is a favorite past-time of hers and annoys me to no end. I usually try to put my purse up high where she can't reach it, but had obviously neglected to do so.

I paid for this oversight big time, because Zuzu found a green dry-erase marker in my bag and scribbled all over the little fabric cube ottoman that holds blankets in the TV room.

Let me tell you--if we hadn't already bought the tickets, we wouldn't have gotten them after that. I was so pissed. The thing is, she had colored over this ottoman before and gotten in big trouble, but that was with a washable marker. This green is not coming out, even after blotting with rubbing alcohol. Little menace.

Fortunately, we both enjoyed the show--she was totally into it from the very beginning and her attention didn't waver. I had underestimated how much fun it would be for me to see her having such a good time. I guess that's kind of silly, since Disney has made billions on the idea that parents freaking love to see their kids having fun. But honestly, I got teary-eyed when Zuzu was just belting out "Let It Go" and waving to Minnie Mouse.

It was just so sweet and special for us to have a Mommy-Zuzu date, and to see her enjoy herself so much. She had her "listening ears on" (I think this is something they say at school because she mentioned it a few times and I started using the phrase and she responds very well to it and even acts like she is putting on special ears, which is really cute) so she was well-behaved and held my hand and didn't touch the stall or the toilet when we went to the bathroom (she also said, "Good job, Mommy!" when I went, which was nice positive reinforcement for me). David dropped us off so I didn't have to mess with parking, and then we walked to meet him afterward and she was a good sport about all the walking, too. We really had a nice day (colored ottoman aside).

The rest of our weekend wasn't half bad, either. My friend Erin came over for dinner Friday night. The girls adore her and I feel lucky to have a friend I work with all week and still want to hang out with on the weekends. She also saved us from calamity by showing up with beer and organic apples.

The above picture was Zuzu's reaction when I told her we didn't have any more apples. She has been on such an apple kick. She requests them multiple times a day. There was seriously one day when I heard myself encouraging her to eat a Valentine cookie instead of a third apple. This is a fairly new obsession, but it cracks me up because when I was pregnant with her, I craved apple everything. I ate chunky apple sauce, I drank apple juice, I slurped apple cider, I salivated over apple pie, and, yes, I ate lots of apples. I never had such strong or specific cravings with Eliza or Coco, but my first two trimesters with Zuzu were an apple-fest.

Anyway, we were out of apples, and Zuzu was melting into a pool of toddler disappointment but a quick text to Erin saved the day (since she was stopping at the grocery store anyway).

Saturday was my Grandpa V's birthday, and it's a family tradition that we all eat ice cream in memory of Grandpa each year on his birthday. Snow was coming down pretty good by the time Zuzu got up from her (late) nap, but we bundled up the girls and headed out to Dairy Queen.

I got a butterfinger blizzard in a waffle cone, David got a M&M milkshake, and we ordered a strawberry sundae for Zuzu since she seems to prefer fruit over anything else at this point.

Well, she heard "strawberry" and didn't know what a sundae was, and ended up being confused and disappointed that she wasn't actually getting an actual strawberry (she ate an enormous quantity of strawberries the other night--I had washed a container of them and had them sitting in a bowl on the counter to slice and Zuzu ATE ALL BUT TWO OF THEM). I tried to explain that the sauce had strawberries in it, but she had one bite of ice cream and then asked me for an apple.

Gpa V would not even know what to do with this girl.

I also managed to get some work done this weekend--I'm not quite caught up on grading, but close enough that I didn't feel bad about watching Downton Abbey this afternoon. I'm not caught up on the season yet, but I'm sort of savoring it by spacing it out instead of binging.

I read this thing a few days ago about how you should clean out your closet and only keep items that "spark joy." I'm holding off on a big closet clean out until I'm finished nursing and holding steady at one size again, but I decided to tackle my sock drawer and underwear drawer. Socks may not seem like much of a "joy-sparking" item, but the truth is that I definitely have my favorite pairs that get worn again and again, and I figured I might as well clean out and organize the drawer. I ended up getting rid of several pairs of socks and rediscovering some I'd forgotten about that I actually really like. It's the little things, right?

My underwear drawer was a sorry mess--I had told myself after I quit nursing Zuzu that I was going to splurge on new bras and underwear. But then I got pregnant again and just kept wearing the old, stretched out pairs I'd had forever. I sorted through a ridiculous number of undies and ended up throwing away FIFTEEN pairs of underwear--some of which were more than ten years old. Seriously. Who needs that many pairs of underwear? And why was I still wearing the pairs I don't like when I have plenty of pairs I DO like?

So those two small things made me feel ready to start the week. We've got a lot going on, and David and I both have some late nights scheduled for work, so it's going to be one of those weeks that feels long and goes by fast.