The Fabulous Life of Stefanie

This sums up a lot right now! Since we last spoke 8 days ago, the following things have happened, not in order of occurrence: I ran the Johnny Kelley Half Marathon and accidentally did a PR! It is amazing what happens when you see that there are hot dogs at the finish line before you start the race. I used my GPS watch, kept a good pace and stuck to my plan to sprint the last two miles, when I may or may not have chanted "HOT DOG, HOT DOG" in my head over and over. Then I saw my family waiting for me right by the finish line and managed to not burst into tears as I saw my time and smelled the hot dogs. New bling! My AIL, Maddie, Matty and I had the most perfect post-race Cape day. We swam in the pool (Maddie did awesome and did not want to get out even when she turned blue), had an amazing dinner at the Naked Oyster , rode the carousel and spent as much time together, outside as we could. I love my family. She thinks I bought this for her. Sucker. I attended...

I had my first pang of "holy crap, stop growing up" today as I was leaving a meeting and thinking about how crazy it is that this little baby girl of mine is officially two and a half and now closer to three than to two. She is closer to school days and the grown up world and waaaaaaaaaahhh . But really, I love this stage so, so much and this little lady of mine is just blowing my mind and making my heart explode into a million pieces every single day. Before we had Maddie my exposure to children was pretty limited; not a lot of my friends have kids (especially not in Boston), I babysat a bit when I was really young but usually just babies and for a couple of hours and I had never had siblings or younger family around me. I was probably about as novice as possible and because of this I was scared about how I would feel as she got older. I was literally scared that I would not like my own kiddo. Babies are cute and they don't really do much, and they certa...

I really wanted to come to this space and complain about Monday, because Mondays suck, and every two weeks I have all this stuff due and so they really suck. Sometimes I get this ridiculous Monday blues where I am not sure how I am going to make it to Tuesday, but then I get home Monday and have no obligations and I forget most of my grumpiness. I have this tactic in which I always make sure I have nothing planned on Monday nights. I used to see it as a free night and throw things on the calendar but then I wised up to the fact that all three of us sometimes need an extra day to adjust to life after the weekend, so Mondays are just that. A transition day, if you will. Tuesdays are yoga and Wednesdays are free for plans and Thursdays are family dinner and Fridays are, well Fridays! So Mondays are our (my) day to get my grumps out and process the insane amount of things I have put on my plate for the rest of the week. See, I am already less grumpy just knowing that all I need ...

In addition to writing this extremely popular, internationally followed blog (teehee) I am also a big fan of reading blogs and, like everyone else and their mother (and my mother) I also follow a lot of friends and non-friends on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. A lot of wonderful content is shared there but, let's face it, a lot of it is the bright side of life and we tend to leave the nitty gritty difficult stuff out. We see beautiful smiling babies, dressed up date nights, fun vacation shots but not so much the meltdown in the car seat, the slow nights at home catching up on the DVR or the bank balance that follows a wonderful vacation. There are some people that balance it out, and there are some people that take it waaaaay to the extreme and put their entire life out there, dirty laundry and all, which is sadly sometimes too crazy for me to look away from. I admit, there are some people I stay friends with on Facebook just because their dramatic lives and status updates are ...

I recently blogged about how crazy of a month I have been having and how I am looking forward to getting back to routine, but one look at my iCal will tell you that my life is anything but routine. In fact, some days are so bananas that I can't help but laugh...well, when I get a second to take a breath and think about it. I am by no means complaining; I love being busy and feel incredibly lucky that my life is so rich with activity, but sometimes I wonder when I am going to collapse into a heap (note: that is what our next beach vacation is for). I thought I would start a new series, for your entertainment, where I share a day in the life of me, and what better way to start than today, which was exceptionally holy crap where is my third wind inducing! Enjoy! 4:00am: Alarm clock goes off and scares the bejeezus out of me after a couple of weeks with 5am being my earliest wake up. 4:00-4:44am: Hit snooze too many times, wonder why my late night at yoga and early morning r...

Monday was my dear old young husband's birthday and even though we had just ran a marathon, traveled thousands of miles and had a really good birthday celebration for me, there was no way I was going to let the day go without a little special love for my amazing fella. Our nanny needed to get to class early, and we were both feeling extra tired, which made for the perfect excuse to leave work early and head outside. One of my favorite things about living in Boston is all of the big open areas we have to choose from, and on the top of that list is Castle Island in Southie. The views of the water, the puppy watching and the ice cream from Sullivan's make it the perfect place for our little family to run around and enjoy any beautiful weather that gets thrown at us, so that is exactly where we headed. We had two hours to frolic before our planned little dinner date with friends so we let Maddie run around to her heart's desire, climb the highest ladders at the playgr...

Well hello! I feel like I just climbed the Mount Everest of life and am looking at the world through new eyes, so I thought I should start off by playing catch up on this dear old blog of mine. Last time I checked in I was at the tail end of vacation and having a pretty lovely time, which was how it all wrapped up. We flew home on my birthday, me wearing my brand new Lululemon running capris from my dear husband (who has quite a story about that adventure on his blog ), and got settled back into East Coast mode, only to have me turn around and go to San Diego a few days later while Matty took on full Maddie duties with our nanny on a trip as well. Then I came home and ran a marathon. But let's keep things in order. In the few days before I left again, I had an awesome birthday party with my best friends, an AMAZING dinner at Craigie on Main with my main squeeze, and we visited the MFA to see one of their exhibits that was ending. I used to have a bad habit of really wanting t...