an outing with Kylie

Today my former roommate Kylie came up to visit us. We haven't seen each other in at least 6 years, but have kept in touch mostly through our blogs. She's always been gorgeous, but she really looks better than ever. It was great to finally meet her little daughter Leah, who I've "known" forever but had never actually met. She's almost 2 and just the nicest little girl. (Girl! I want one!) She was SO sweet, giving all my boys hug after hug. They were all cranky, as is usually the case when I really want them to be good. I'd spent the morning cleaning up and was probably more high strung than I should have been about it, resulting in cranky children.

Still. It was wonderful to catch up with Kylie. She is the one who taught me that it's not okay to wear a brown shirt with black shoes, that shoes and belts need to coordinate and many other bits of fashion wisdom. We saw each other through some low points in dating and college life. I remember crying to her when my first kiss was not all that I had hoped it would be, again when some other girl was rubbing it in my face that she was trying to hook up with my ex-boyfriend (what? why did I care?), again when I got the worst haircut of my life. Really. It was bad. I ran to her apartment, burst in, and said something like "help me not hate my hair!" then went to shambles and cried. She whipped out the clippies and hairspray and drastically improved my outlook on life. Oh my...

And now here we are, married and mothers. We went to IKEA and had lunch there, which was something I hadn't done before. It was good. The kids had fun. On our way in we tried fitting all the kids into one cart, which was hilarious. Kylie made the whole adventure easy and I wish she lived closer. We chatted about old friends and married life and family. She brought me a classy little binkie clip she made for Austin (though Taylor has been wearing it for the past 2 hours and I'm not sure he'll ever give it up without a fight. and he doesn't even use binkies.) She runs a successful online baby boutique that makes me want a girl even more.

My favorite comment of the day: "you're not nearly as frazzled as you sound on your blog." Ha ha! that made me happy. Some days I am, some days I'm not. It was a really fun day.

Jack just said to Taylor:
"I won't put you to bed or cut you because I love you and you're my brother"