Sometimes you just can't win...

A few years ago, moms across America learned that plastics numbered 3, 6 or 7 were the new 666 and that BPA basically stood for "keep as far away as possible from my kids". We threw out our plastic Nalgene bottles and went around checking the bottoms of Tupperware containers. Then we went out in large numbers and made Sigg a household name. I have a whole cabinet dedicated to Sigg bottles. Large, medium, small, blue, red, decorated with Hello Kitty or Zebras... you name it, we have it. I started giving them as Christmas gifts to relatives who still drank from plastic water bottles, feeling I was being both environmentally-friendly and health-conscious. The girls bring Sigg bottles to school instead of a juicebox everyday, helping to reduce school waste by drinking clean water out of their reusable bottles. Oh, and I continued to buy them even after I realized that they are pain to clean and the tops are easily lost.

All of this is why, this article (http://gearjunkie.com/sigg-bottles-bpa) came as a very unpleasant surprise. It's one thing to inadvertantly give your kids BPA, but when you've gone out of your way and spent extra money not to? Pretty frustrating. It looks like I'll be writing some letters to try to return our Sigg bottles. But in the meantime, how do I know that we really can trust the next recommended BPA-free bottle? Sigh. Sometimes it feels like a challenge to keep my family healthy and safe.

Next up: Why organic food is bad for your brain.

Heaven

The other day, we were driving and Lucy asked about my wedding.

Lucy:Where were Evie and I during your wedding?
Evie: We weren't born yet.
Lucy: I know we weren't, but where were we?
Evie: Heaven
Lucy: Oh, yeah. I think we were playing checkers up there.
Evie: You and me? I think you're right! I think I won the first game.
Lucy: I won the second.
Evie: We tied the third. Then I had to go.
Lucy: Go where?
Evie: You know, to be born.
Lucy: Ohhh, yeah. Then I started playing with Noni. I mean, until I had to go too. Then Noni kept playing with [her friend] Ethan.

Why not, right? It's as good a theory as any I've heard...

Speaking of friends' blogs...

How did I not know that Mike was posting a great song to listen to every day?
Check out his blog: http://ilikethissong.com/
Happy listening!

Friends' Blogs

I love it when my friends have blogs. Probably because I live way too far away from everyone, but I think it's a great way to keep in touch. Talking on the phone has proven pretty much impossible for me given the number of interruptions I always seem to have. (The girls have some sort of must-talk-to-Mommmy-while-she's-on-the-phone radar.) Facebook allows me to feel like I have some idea what is going on in a friend's life by looking at photos or hearing random short thoughts, but a blog allows more time to delve into what someone is thinking on any given day - about politics or music or her child not sleeping through the night or whatever. It's a far cry from a long talk over a cup of coffee or glass of wine, but given that most of my friends live in Maryland, D.C., New York, Florida, California, North Carolina, Maine, and other various places that are a plane ride away from Colorado (or a very loooong car ride with three kids away), it's a nice subsitute.

I have a list of friends' blogs along the side of my blog (let me know if you have one and aren't on there!), and am happy to add another one today. Diana, one of my best friends from college, now has a recipe blog.
Check it out: http://dinnerwithmybaby.blogspot.com/
Happy reading!

Panic

If you ever catch on fire, try to avoid seeing yourself in the mirror, because I bet that's what REALLY throws you into a panic. - Jack Handy


If you were sitting in a hotel room and an alarm suddenly blared through the intercom announcing "BEEP...BEEP...BEEP...Attention, this is an emergency. Do NOT use the elevators or the stairways at this time. BEEP...BEEP...BEEP...Attention, this is an emergency..." over and over again, would you:

A) Sit calmly in your chair, ignore the announcement and continue reading the paper

B) Feeling a little concerned, despite the other person in the room remaining extremely calm, open the door and look down the hall to check if anyone else was looking around the hall to figure out what was going on

C) Panic, grab your kids, turn off the lights, and hide in the bathroom, trying not to hyperventilate while imagining that a murderer has taken over the lobby and your life is in danger

D) Panic, call your sister, find out that your sister is in the bathroom with the lights off, drag your screaming kids into the bathroom, imagine that the hotel is under a terrorist attack and poisonous gas is probably about to enter your lungs any minute, tell your kids over and over that you love them until your oldest daughter says, "Why do you keep saying that? Isn't that what people say right before they die?"

If you answered A, then, like my dad, you are probably someone who can remain completely calm in the face of a storm.

If you answered B, then, like Diane, you are probably pretty normal. You feel slightly alarmed in potentially unnerving situations, but you don't panic.

If you answered C (Mollie) or D (me) then you are a total basketcase and have a far too overactive imagination. You probably should have never been allowed to be a lifeguard or to be in any other position that requires you to remain calm in the face of real disaster.

Oh, and the reason for the announcement? Someone pulled the fire alarm. Addis (whose parents were vegan for nine years and whose mom sports three tattoos) guessed that it was probably a "drunk hippie".

Movin' Right Along

On July 29th, about 18 hours after finding out we were moving, we packed up the mini-van and began our journey to Boulder. I've driven cross country several times before and I've always loved the feeling of hitting the open road, seeing places I've never seen before. However, I've never had three wiggly kids strapped down in the back of the car on my prior road trips and suddenly had visions of myself having a complete mental breakdown on a desert road somewhere. Fortunately, my mom agreed on very short notice - as in "can you meet us there in twelve hours?" - to book a flight to Vegas and meet us for the drive. (I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have made it without her and am eternally grateful for her flexibility and willingness to help out.)

Our journey began in record heat through the Mojave National Preserve, where we stepped out of the car for a minute and could barely breathe. Noni accurately announced that she was "burning hot" and we got back into the car until we arrived in Vegas. In case you're wondering if Vegas offers the same sort of over-the-top decadence for children as it does for adults, the answer is absolutely. The girls ate dinner to the sound of gorillas pounding their chests at the Rainforest Cafe, explored all four stories of the M&M store (which sells everything from M&M underwear to M&M racecars to just plain old M&Ms), and splashed in one of the many pools at the MGM Grande. They had fun but, as is always the way with Vegas, by morning we were all ready to get out of there.

The second day of our trip was mostly spent in Utah. To break up the monotony of driving, we stopped at the Rosenbruch Wildlife Museum after our Cracker Barrel lunch, where you could "experience over 300 species!" in a "real looking setting!" Given Evie's passion for both science and animals, this seems like it would've been a perfect place for her, right? We walked into the room with those 300 taxidermied animals staring at us, and Evie burst into hysterics. My mom, Lucy and I spent the half hour walk through the musuem trying to console a screaming Evie and Noni and occasionally allowing ourselves a second to marvel at the animals.

That evening, we ate dinner at a quaint diner in Sevier county in Utah (County motto: "What happens in Sevier County, you can tell your friends about"). After all five of us had eaten our three course dinners (and I paid the whopping $34 bill - fortunately with a generous tip since our waitress later had to send me my lost cell phone....), we hit the road again, determined to make it to Green River.

By day three, the girls were over the excitement about a car trip and started going crazy in the back of the car. It was around this time that I began regretting not buying a dvd player to keep them entertained. By the time we finally arrived in Boulder, Evie and Lucy were covered in markers and Noni had screamed herself hoarse. But, we had made it! We hopped out of the car at the first hotel, only to find that the town had been taken over by both Phish Fans and Promise Keepers (an interesting mix). Four hotels later, we finally found a place to spend the night.

Mission accomplished: We made it to Boulder with our sanity reasonably intact. It was a crazy whirlwind of a trip, but when we found a house two days later, we knew it was all worth it. Tomorrow we head back to Boulder. The girls will start school on time on Thursday after waking up in their new home. (A home, by the way, with plenty of room for visitors...)

Winds of Change

"The winds of change will blow into your life this month" - fortune cookie at Kung Pao

I've been thinking about the name of my blog recently. Just over a year ago, I started this blog to document our family's move to Los Angeles. It was challenging and emotional for me to pick up and leave a place that truly felt like home to our family, and I felt like a blog would be a good outlet for my feelings as I dealt with our move. I quickly named the blog "three girls move west", since I was consumed with thoughts about how our move would affect our three daughters, having no idea that sixteen months later, with boxes long since unpacked (and then nested in by a family of mice) I would still be writing and that, well, people would actually be reading the blog. Nor did I have any idea that we'd be moving again. Only east. Well, east-ish. But in that direction anyway. So what to do about the name?

At this point, you may actually be thinking, "Who cares about the name? What are you talking about?!" So here it is: We're moving to Boulder, Colorado! And when I say we're moving, I mean like, now. Like holy-crap-pack-the-bags-we-have-to-find-a-house-this-week. Like tomorrow. I truly, truly wish we had more time to say goodbye to our friends here. And our neighbors will probably think we're in the witness protection program for leaving so quickly, but we're actually just on a tight schedule with a pre-planned trip back east and then school starting right after that and so, if we're going to do it, we just have to go.

Perhaps the next question is, "Why Boulder?" And that's a good one because Boulder isn't a lot of things. It isn't Los Angeles, which means leaving friends (we'll miss you guys!!!) and prying our children once again from their home and moving them somewhere new, just when they (and we) were starting to get settled. And it isn't Frederick, despite our belief when we left that we would return one day in the not-too-distant future. And, most troubling to us, it isn't back east, which is where all of our family lives.

Because of all I listed, it isn't perfect, but it is a lot of things we are looking for - and because of that, I am really excited about our move. For a city with a population of just over 100,000 people, Boulder has a surprisingly strong tech scene. It's not the Silicon valley, but Boulder is home to between 150 and 170 start ups. Since Toby and Mike will be starting up a company when we move, a thriving tech scene was essential in picking a realistic location. We were also looking for a more outdoor-oriented city than Los Angeles. In the San Fernando Valley, home to over 5 million people and surrounded by mountains, there isn't a single REI or outdoor (non-surfing) sports store. It's been nice to have the trails and camping sites to ourselves for a year, but the Vermont girl in me is really looking forward to living in a town again where people have ski racks on their cars and dirty hiking boots in their closets. Boulder is nestled in the mountains, with numerous hiking, biking and skiing trails - and over 300 sunny days a year to enjoy them. Really good public schools were another key ingredient in our decision. And, a huge plus - both Boulder and Denver are home to some of our favorite people in the whole world and I am so excited at the idea of living near them again! Lastly, but most importantly, Mike and Diane were open to moving to Denver, making our move possible.

Of course, I could add a lot more to the lists of what Boulder "is" and "isn't", but when you move somewhere new, the real list is "what we have no idea about". When we moved to Frederick, I was concerned about who was living in a small town so far from D.C., and then the people turned out to be the town's greatest asset. I'm sure that there will be both good and bad things about living in Boulder that are on neither of the lists, but we have no way of predicting what those will be. And that "what we have no idea about" list is part of the adventure and the excitement about living somewhere new.

It is because of the "what we have no idea about" list that I have decided not to change the name of my blog after all. When I think about it, "moving west" is about more than just heading a certain direction. To me, it evokes images of families packing up their wagons and heading into unchartered territory. Of course our journey to Boulder will be in the comfort of our mini-van, with all of our belongings following us in a gas-powered moving truck. And Colorado is hardly "unchartered territory" at this point. But I think some of the spirit is the same - the idea of bringing our family somewhere new and embracing the adventure of the journey.

In my first blog post, I mentioned my dad's toast at our wedding to me and Toby for a "lifetime of adventure together." Once again, as I am packing up bags and saying goodbye to friends, I am reminded of his words. There are so many thoughts swirling around my head: Will we like Boulder? Will Toby and Mike's company be successful? Will we have to move again? Is this the right decision for our family? But when I think back to that moment ten years ago, when a room full of people we love raised their glasses to us setting off on an adventure together, I can't help but smile about the journey ahead of us and think, "Cheers!"