Happy Mother’s Day to all the mamas out there!

I really enjoyed my first Mother’s Day last year, but this year was even better. Maybe it’s just that with all the other insanity going on in my life these days I appreciate the complete awesome that is my family much, much more. Team Reeve is pretty great, and I love our life together more and more each day. Man, that was such a greeting card sentiment, but it’s actually true. I couldn’t stop smiling all day, I was just loving the celebration of this whole motherhood business so much.

I got my Spongebob Squarepants Mother’s Day card and gift certificates for Barnes & Noble and the Fat Quarter Shop first thing this morning. Best gifts, simple and no fuss! The Spanish F1 Grand Prix was this morning, so clearly that is becoming a bit of a Mother’s Day tradition. We got up to watch it live at 7:30am, and Hannah and I hung out on the couch while Adam made waffles. Perfection.

After a very chill morning we stopped in at my brother’s new house for a quick visit with my mom, sister-in-law, and nephew CJ. They just moved in YESTERDAY, and now they’re 20 minutes away instead of an hour. So the babies played with their Nana while we got the tour of their beautiful new house. Then, we headed to the Upper West Side in Manhattan for some fun times.

I can’t really deal with the whole holiday restaurant experience. Valentine’s Day dinners, Mother’s Day brunches, I just…nothing feels less celebratory to me than being herded through a packed restaurant on a prix fixe menu. So my idea of a perfect Mother’s Day lunch was…the Recession Special at Gray’s Papaya.

Adam hates when I put photos of him on here, but he was a huge part of why today was killer. So I’m breaking the rule today. This October will mark a decade since he moved here from the UK, and somehow in nearly 10 years I had never gotten him to a Gray’s Papaya. We don’t even know how that happened, but today I was inspired to fix that. Inspiration was rewarded with a happily napping baby and an empty counter. And hot dogs.

We walked over to Central Park with the rest of the city to take in the gorgeous weather. It was packed, and allergy season was so heightened we felt like we were snorting pollen. But, still gorgeous.

Dancers, stairs. The crowds on the stairs reminded me of the Spanish Steps in Rome.

It was actually Japan Day in the park. There was a very cool concert of traditional drummers and modern dancers and music. Hannah LOVED this, even though this was as close to the stage as we could get. There were origami stations, a HUGE line to have kabuki makeup applied, all kinds of cool stuff.

And then…we stopped to get ice cream. And Hannah had her first taste of summer.

She loved it.

A lot.

Adam drove home, and the baby and I passed out in the living room until bedtime. Hannah woke up, had dinner and a bath, and went straight back to sleep. Lots of fresh air and happy excitement today. I’m still smiling.

Remember this?

Last year we took Hannah to this festival, and she slept the entire time.

This year’s festival was the last weekend in April, and she was pretty different.

And she stayed awake the whole time!

She still wasn’t very interested in the sheep, though. Or the giant pig. One of these years.

The Reeve clan headed up to my mom’s neck of the woods a few weeks ago to take in the annual Cherry Blossom Festival in Newark’s Branch Brook Park. This is down the road from where I grew up, and I hadn’t been since I was a kid. We were there on April 13th, and it was still pretty chilly. Most of the blossoms were still closed since it hadn’t really warmed up for the season yet. But it is a lovely walk. Now that I see all the blossoms in our neighborhood finally opening I want to go back and take more pictures.

It’s that time of year again, that most joyous of seasons, when I start my Mo Willems author study with the kindergarten classes! We started today with the Pigeon books, and I am pretty elated.

Mo Willems Season doesn’t fall on the calendar at the same time every year, but every Mo Willems Season is like Second Christmas to me. Everyone seems a little nicer during Mo Willems Season; a little wittier, a little more delightfully absurd. There’s an extra spring in my step the week I teach the kids how to draw The Pigeon. I am almost deliriously cheerful the week a new crop of kindergartners is introduced to Reginald Von Hoobie-Doobie. And I always need to take a moment to collect myself during Knuffle Bunny Week, when Knuffle is passed on to the next generation. Elephant and Piggie, Cat the Cat, Leonardo, Amanda, Goldilocks. This year I have decided to extend the festivities into June.

What makes this year’s Mo Willems Season even more awesome is the fact that April is the 10th anniversary of the publication of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, Mr. Willems’ first book. I know I’m down to the wire here with one day of April left, but I am still celebrating the start of the festive season during anniversary month. And there are some pretty great ways for anyone to be celebrating the big anniversary.

Like this new anniversary set, with smaller editions of 3 Pigeon books in their own bus box:

How cool is that? The books are perfectly Hannah-sized, and since the Pigeon was her very first read aloud, and her collection of autographed books began with The Pigeon, I thought she should have a set.

There was also last week’s release of the latest Willems adventure, That Is Not a Good Idea.

And really, the thing I am truly geeking out over this April is the release of Cloud9′s collection of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus fabrics! I cannot believe this is really a thing!

I have been stalking fabric sites all month anxiously awaiting the release of this fabric. Since tomorrow is the end of April, I’m guessing it will go into May before I can order some. But when I can, look out…I have already warned Adam that my fabric budget will be blown on this collection. A Pigeon sundress for Hannah? Another lift-the-flap quilt? A bag for me? All of the above.

It’s the (second) most wonderful time of the year!

The last stop on our week-long, whirlwind spring break road trip through New England was Vermont. We were only there for 1 night, and we stopped in Montpelier before heading up to Stowe to see how the other half lives.

We basically stopped in Montpelier for maple syrup and fabric. I’d read about Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks in our guidebook, and I really wanted to get my hands on some syrup to bring home. Sugaring season kicks off in March, so we were just in time. Morse Farm is one of the oldest there is, going back 200 years.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from the sugaring experience, but Morse Farm was basically a very muddy parking lot with a few small buildings and a store. Seriously, do not wear your good shoes if ever you find yourself there. You could stand at the edge of the farm and see all the trees tapped together, leading down from the forest and into the processing building. But there were no tours or real explanations of what was going on. It was almost a little voyeuristic; the family just going about their farm lives while tourists stared at them and shopped in the (surprisingly awesome) store.

But maybe since we were there on a Thursday we didn’t get the full tour experience. There was an ancient TV and VCR set up in a corner of the store with a couple of folding chairs, and you could help yourself to watching a video of the long-deceased patriarch in his heyday. That was kind of worth the trip just for the anecdotes because that man, who passed away in 1999, was not PC. Much discussion of Arabs and the Japanese, but he was so darn homespun and delightful that you almost didn’t know where to look or whether to laugh. We definitely felt like city folk.

However strange the farm itself was, I’m in love with the store. We left with syrup. Oh, boy, we left with syrup.

This was the first time Adam and I got to sample different grades of maple syrup, and it was definitely interesting to see what we each preferred. How could you not love a store with friendly honor system signs like this?

We also bought some of that maple cream on the left, btw. Heaven in a jar.

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