We're Moving Again

Don't worry, you can put down the packing tape and boxes, this time it's virtual.

 

 If you were thinking that having a blog titled OJB in the City wasn't fair to the new OVB in the City, we couldn't agree with you more, which is why we are pleased to announce our new blog.

Our apologies for the lack of posts over the past couple of weeks, but we have been busy getting our new place nice and pretty before we invited you over.

So without further ado, you can visit our new blog at www.olinandodette.com (and good news, we packed up all of our archived posts from ojbinthecity and moved them to the new site too!)  

See you over at the new place!

A Home Day

Our weeks are now divided into two types of days, school days and home days thanks to Olin's new teachers and their end of day ritual when they discuss with the children where they will be the following day.  And Friday was yet another home day which meant that Odette and I got to spend the entire day with Olin.

We started the day at Whole Foods for one of Olin's current favorite activities - helping mommy grocery shop (no complaints here!).  And then we came home with enough time to make apple cake together, eat lunch, get cozy in sweatpants and watch 'a little Elf'' before his nap.

After his nap, I took Olin to our favorite Le Pain Quotidien for their amazing hot chocolate.  The presentation is half the fun because they serve you steamed milk with a small pitcher of melted Belgian chocolate to pour in yourself to make your hot chocolate exactly how you like it (in Olin's case it was the entire pitcher of chocolate).  Since pouring is one of Olin's favorite activities and chocolate is one of his favorite foods, this little guy was in heaven.

After several minutes of drinking and stirring and drinking and stirring we had to get Olin's remaining hot chocolate to go because Odette was getting hungry and Olin would have nursed his drink for another hour if we had the time.  He was so cute carrying it down the street.  He kept calling it his coffee while carefully taking a sip every few steps.   And as we got to our street, he lost his grip and the cup fell to the ground where a few drops spilled out from the lid.  He looked down at it, pointing to the spot and said "Oh no!" and then quickly recovered with "That's okay, a bird will eat it" and immediately corrected himself "A bird will drink it".

Oh, he makes me laugh.  The trajectory of his learning curve is so incredible right now that I just love to be with him to watch everything that he does and listen to everything that he says.  He honestly amazes me every day and never ceases to make me smile.

Here's to many more home days! 

Five Months

I think this might have felt like the fastest month yet.  Josh and I both often have the lyrics to a Taylor Swift song running through our heads (please don't judge us!) which are "Oh darling don't you ever grow up, don't you ever grow up, just stay this little "  We honestly sing it all the time because it is so appropriate in our house right now.  

 

Although I know we have so many fun experiences with these little ones ahead of us, oh I wish we could freeze time and just stay in this moment forever.

Alas, that's not an option so we will have to preserve this special time with our hundreds (who am I kidding, thousands) of photos.

We love you more than all the numbers, Odette!

Afternoon Tea with My Little Lady

Rather than our typical dinner out to celebrate my birthday, this year I requested afternoon tea at my favorite place, the St. Regis, with Odette.  I cannot express how long I have dreamed about taking my daughter to tea so this really was a birthday dream come true!  Luckily for me though, I think that little boy of ours is going to be just like his daddy and also love afternoon tea so in our case, I don't think the ritual will be limited to us girls, but will be a frequent family event instead!

 

Olin stayed home this time though because we didn't think we should start him off with afternoon tea at the St. Regis - he is only 3 after all and they have a harpist for goodness sake!  I don't think he minded in the least bit though because we had one of his favorite babysitters come over to watch him and because of that, I think that he might have been looking forward to the afternoon more than me!

 

Odette slept the entire time and we had to wake her up at the end so that we could get some photos of her at her first tea!

 

{As always, I know it's an excessive amount of photos below, but we wanted to get plenty of her in this dress.  When we found out that we were having a girl, we went a little crazy at Sak's after-Christmas sale and purchased a few wildly impractical things for her, this dress being on of them, that she has nearly outgrown and still not worn.  So here she is in all her ruffled glory.}

 

Having fun with her dress at home after tea...

And then we lost her in ruffles.







Birthday Afternoon

As promised, here are the last of the pictures from Olin's big third birthday!  See earlier posts here and here.

Lucky for us, Josh took last Monday (for my birthday) and Tuesday (for Olin's birthday) off from work, which meant that we were able to do a lot of fun special family things for our birthdays,  And even though we didn't have a party for little mister this year, he did have the opportunity to celebrate his big day with all of his friends at school when Josh and I brought cupcakes to Olin's class and Josh read the class one of Olin's favorite books, But No Elephants, which was my book when I was little!

I think if you were to ask Olin the highlight of his day, he would say eating "puccakes" at school. He talked about bringing them for days leading up to his birthday.  I can't say I blame him though because they were from our very favorite bakery Two Little Red Hens and arguably the best cupcakes you can buy!

{I wasn't going to include the 2nd photo below, but it was the best I got of Josh reading and it documents a current "bad habit" we have been dealing with the past couple of weeks!}

After school, Olin took about a twenty minute nap.  Just enough time to recoup and enjoy some more cake!  This one Josh and I made all by ourselves that morning when he was in school!

The cake provided just enough sugar to energize him to open his gifts from mommy and daddy (a guitar because he fell in love with his music teacher, Ms. Liben's, guitar at school and a toy picnic set, one of his latest favorite "pretend" scenarios) and from Odette (a toy double decker bus just like the ones that go by our building down Fifth Avenue).

After presents (and a shirt change necessitated by all that chocolate frosting), we burned off some of the many grams of sugar consumed through the day in Central Park...

And then returned home to open presents from the grandparents!

We ended the day with a family dinner consisting of one of Olin's new favorite foods... ham, cheese and spinach crepes.  And yes, we did put a candle in those too (it wasn't easy, but Josh managed to do it)!  It was the perfect end to a very wonderful day!

One last happy birthday to our sweet little boy!  We love you, Olin!