Sister Time

Today Ron and Peg had the kids so it gave me some time to hang out with Michelle without the kids. It's really great for her to get to spend time with them, but since it can be a little chaotic, it's hard for us to go places. For lunch, we went to Okalahoma Joe's since she hadn't been and she wanted to experience some good Kansas City barbecue. For dinner, we decided to go to Zocalo for some non-Tex-Mex Mexican. We really enjoyed our outings and the chance to chat.

Leaping Lizards!

Today I decided to try a mom's group. They were having a meeting at Leaping Lizards, which is a large storefront in a strip mall filled with a bunch of large inflatables. And they don't charge for adults or under 2s, which is important to me because we can't stay at these kinds of things for much more than an hour so in general it has to be less than $10 for me to feel we could possibly get our money's worth.

It went pretty well. Joshua had a great time and loved climbing on the inflatables and didn't seem at all intimidated by the big kids. Clara wanted to try it, but she was really too little. She and Hannah had fun in the toddler area.

However, I unfortunately stayed about ten minutes longer than I really should have so we left to Joshua and Clara crying, which is always embarrassing and also hard. They just got way too worn out. I also realized that I probably can't really do this mom's group. We are really at the point where we can go places and have it be a positive experience, which is great and an exciting change since last time I had kids that were all this old, I was 9 months pregnant so I didn't want to go anywhere and the time before that was two years ago. So we can really do things, which is fun. But it really does take all my energy and focus to make that happen. I have to be completely engaged with them. I can't just sit on the couch with the other moms who have a one-year-old and a five-year-old and chat about whatever and sip my water. So maybe that's something I'll reconsider in a year or two or possibly find a group that does playgroups in people's homes so the kids are more confined and I can supervise them with less effort. But despite the trip not really ending that well, this was a really great outing for Joshua and overall something I would consider again at some point, especially once school starts if they still have open play during the day.

Fun Times with the Fun One

Jason was in town tonight and the kids took full advantage of that. Jason is definitely the "fun one" as most fathers tend to be. Also very typically, he does a lot more rough-housing with the kids than I do. Partly because he is a lot stronger than me so it's easier for him to hold a 30-pound kid above his head and partly because he enjoys it more. They spent some time today getting to play airplane by riding on his feet with his legs extended up in the air (well at least Clara and Joshua did. I am sure Hannah would have loved it, but she isn't that stable so it's not so safe with her). They also enjoyed climbing on him, both separately and together as you see here. Jason was a very good sport about it even though I am guessing having his stomach jumped on by multiple kids wasn't necessarily his ideal plan for the night.

Sleep Disturbance

All my kids are pretty good sleepers, but lately Joshua hasn't been sleeping as well. This is probably developmental as it is normal for kids to have certain periods where they test sleep rules or don't sleep as well due to growth or whatever. The key is stay consistent which is easier said than done. Today when I woke up, this is what I saw. Joshua had opened his door but not left his room and fell asleep with his blanket covering his face. I am hoping this is a short-lived phase, but it sure was a cute way to start my day.

Spreading the Word

Our Sunday School class at church wanted to do a missions project this summer, so we voted on some options and chose to do a block party for an apartment complex inhabited primarily by low-income, migrant workers.  We had free food, games with prizes, a free garage sale, and a raffle to win cash and gift cards.  I was on the committee that planned the games and prizes, but I ended up switching to the welcome table.  Most of the residents are Hispanic, and many of them speak little or no English, so I helped to translate the pertinent information into Spanish so they could understand it.  One of the pastors from our church was going to give a message (which was translated into Spanish as well) at noon, which was also when we were holding the raffle, so we needed to explain to them the importance of submitting their ticket and sticking around for the raffle and the message.  The weather was great (in the 70s!), and the whole thing went quite well, so it might be something we do in future years too.

A Projectile Project

Today our project wasn't really very much of a project. I made Joshua a wrecking ball by putting a tennis ball into a knee high and told him to build a tower and showed him how to knock it down. He really liked it. If I had to do it over again, I would use a men's dress sock I think. The knee-high was too long and stretchy. He spent some time building towers and knocking them down. But then he moved on to other things.

First he wanted to show Hannah the awesome he held in his hand. But for whatever reason she wasn't that impressed, which seemed to be slightly disappointing to Joshua. Then he spent a lot of time knocking over anything he could find, including one very unfortunate duplo man. Then he spent a lot of time just throwing it through the air and trying to hit things with it, though he didn't get too out-of-hand because I told him I would take it if he was too rough. It was a fun little activity for him.

Deanna Rose Day

Today was not quite as beautiful as yesterday because we are expecting rain so it was a little sticky, but it was still pretty moderate outside so I decided we should go out and enjoy it. We hadn't yet been to Deanna Rose this year, which is one of the very best things for little kids this area has to offer and it's free, so I decided we should go. We had a lot of fun.

We started out at one of the little-kid playgrounds. But Joshua saw the sand pit and was immediately more interested in that. They had built-in diggers that were quite hard for a toddler to use (probably more geared towards elementary kids), but he was able to do it with help and he loved it. Clara hates sand and she wasn't too sure about this playground thing so at first she stayed in the stroller, but later she decided to play. She stayed far away from the sand the whole time. That girl hates sand. Hannah stayed in the stroller, but I guess the heat motivated her to drink some water because this is the first time ever she has been willing to drink out of anything besides a bottle, which has been super infuriating. I am not sure if it makes me feel any better now that I know it was just because she didn't want to, but at least I feel better about removing all bottles from her life in a month or two.

Next we looked at some animals. Because I am not a kid, I prefer not to actually feed them, but Joshua really wanted to so we fed the goats. I would have liked to take him in the goat pen, but I can't take a stroller in there so it wasn't really feasible and he got scared at how much they wanted the food so he was probably happier with a fence between him and the goats anyhow. We also saw various other farm animals, including bison. We enjoyed walking around in the butterfly garden too, and there were several butterflies there. They were the yellow ones, so nothing really exotic, but the kids were excited anyhow. I had never walked through that area before and there were some cute little features that were great for little kids like bridges and windows.

I had really wanted to do the pedal tractors because I was curious what Joshua would do with those. But it was getting close to lunch and we were all kind of hot so I decided to save that for another time. So we called it a day and got some sno-cones which, besides being totally delicious, are also dairy free. Since I try to avoid my car being totally trashed, I got them vanilla. They definitely got it all over their clothes, but I think it wasn't on the carseats all that much. (Or if it was, I couldn't see it. It's the beauty of vanilla) It was a fun day and I definitely want to go back next time we have another temperate day.

Saying Good-Bye For Now

Joanna came home for a week or so after Benjamin was born, and she's been staying with Mom and Ron.  This has worked out great, as she's been able to help with watching the kids a few different times.  She really cherishes the time she gets to spend with them, and they love seeing her, so it works out all around.  Today is Wednesday, so the kids were over there as they normally are on Wednesdays.  She's leaving tomorrow, so that gave her one last chance to see them again.  Meghan was busy tonight, but I was available to join everyone at their house, as Ron grilled steaks as sort of a farewell dinner for Joanna.  It was nice for me, because although I try to make sure she gets time with the kids, it's also important to me to be able to hang out with my littlest sister when I get the chance, so we were able to do that tonight.  Here we managed to wrangle all the kids into one last picture with their Aunt Josie before she heads back to Texas.

Kids of Walmart

Today I took all three kids big grocery shopping at Walmart. I am kind of proud of it. Walmart is not ideal for that because they just have regular carts so I can only put one kid in it. But I needed enough non-food items that I knew no other store would have everything I needed. I normally try to shop on Wednesdays, when Ron and Peg have the kids, but even though I have cut out pretty much every non-productive part of my Wednesdays (much to my dismay, I miss my time to read), I still struggle to get everything I need to do done. And grocery shopping is something I can do with the kids, unlike some of my more-involved cleaning tasks or running in and out of several places which would take twice as long with kids. They did a really great job, especially Joshua who walked and didn't touch too many things and was happy carrying his ear of corn through the store (he has past experience in this area). I am not sure they really realize that you can buy things from Walmart because they didn't really ask for anything, but I did buy them suckers at the end for a treat since they did such a great job. They made a huge sticky mess with them and enjoyed every minute of it. Until they passed out from exhaustion and possibly the sugar.

A Room Of Her Own

My original sleep plan with Hannah was to move her into Clara's room around 6-ish months. That didn't happen, mostly because Clara sleeps a lot and, though Hannah has slept through the night for a very long time now, that doesn't mean she sleeps as long as Clara. And Clara is pretty much a nightmare when she doesn't get enough sleep so I am pretty hesitant to jeopardize her sleep in any way. So then Plan B was that closer to when she turned one, Hannah would be sleeping longer and then we could move her in there. Now I realize that isn't going to happen either. Hannah sleeps maybe ten hours a night at most and only naps two or maybe three hours in the afternoon. That is way less than Clara. In the meantime, Hannah has been sleeping in her Pack 'n Play in the living room which actually works pretty well except if she sees a grown-up awake at bedtime and then she wants to hang out. So I decided that for now I am going to put her in the guest room and get her used to sleeping in the crib in a non-public room. In a couple weeks (before my sister comes to stay with us), I am going to move her in with Joshua. Joshua doesn't need that much sleep anymore so their schedules are really similar. I think that it will work really well. I still plan to eventually have Hannah and Clara share due to gender, but I am not sure when. It will depend when Clara drops her naps. In the meantime, Hannah is not exactly thrilled with anything involving sleep because she wants to stay up and hang out, not take a boring nap (or go to boring bed). But she seems just as fine with it as she did the Pack 'n Play and didn't have any problem falling asleep.

Meeting Benjamin

Today we went to Ron and Peg's for a family gathering. While there, we had the opportunity to meet sweet baby Benjamin, who is our very first nephew/cousin on either side and just 10 days old. Joanna is also in town right now (not coincidentally) so we also got to hang out with her and see everyone else as well. We weren't able to stay a super long time, but it was nice to see everyone and meet our newest family member.

A Late-Night TV Party

Meghan and I rarely have the opportunity to watch TV together at this point.  We have a few shows that we try to watch, but we are always way behind.  The Amazing Race is a show that we've followed over the past several years.  We'd missed the last season or two, but we picked it up again this season.  We can never watch anything live, so we just DVR it.  Even though this season ended a couple months ago, we still have a few episodes left.  Tonight we had some time, so we thought we'd watch an episode.  Normally Hannah goes to bed by 10 or so.  Sometimes she needs one last partial bottle, and sometimes not.  Usually when she does, that pretty much puts her to sleep.  Tonight she seemed a little hungry, so I thought I'd feed her while we started the show and then she'd fall asleep and we could watch the rest of the show uninterrupted.  Instead, it was as if I used Red Bull instead of water to mix it.  That girl wanted no part of sleeping.  She was ready to party.  We watched it in our room, and Hannah just crawled around the bed, on us, over us, and babbled most of the time.  Sometimes she didn't quite block our view, but other times she totally eclipsed the TV with her happy little baby head.  It was still fun, and we still got to see the show, it was just augmented by the running babbling commentary of a wide-awake little girl.

Fabulous Date Night

Tonight Ron and Peg watched the kids to let us have a fun date night. We ate Mexican at a restaurant we hadn't tried before: Zocalo on the plaza. I was hesitant to go that far away because I hate driving, but Jason convinced me there was no reason not to and I am really glad I agreed to it. The food was pretty good. It was not really heavy and cheesy TexMex like many Mexican restaurants around here and we both enjoyed our meals. The margaritas were also excellent and not mixy. After dinner, since we were in the area, we went to Foo's Fabulous Frozen Custard for dessert, a Brookside institution. We enjoyed the custard on the warm evening and had a really fun evening out.

A Hat-Loving Welcoming Committee

After eight long days in California, I finally arrived home today.  Part of the time was in San Mateo and part in Los Angeles, with an eight-hour bus ride in between.  It was actually quite a productive trip, as we learned a lot of new things to help us prepare for the new sales year.  Additionally, it was a chance for me to see some of my coworkers who I don't get to see very often, including Steve and Kevin, two of my best friends who have since moved away from the Kansas City office, and others who I only get to see at this event each year.  Still, eight days is a long time to be away from my family, so I was very happy to arrive home this evening and have Meghan and all the kids (and animals) there to greet me.  We decided to take a picture on the couch.  It was already informal, as Joshua was just wearing his underwear due to his potty training, but then he also wanted to wear a hat, so he grabbed his K-State baseball cap.  Soon Clara thought that was unfair and wanted to wear a hat too, so she grabbed a knitted hat.  Hannah started reaching for it, so we put it on her and then gave Clara a stocking cap.  So in the end, we had a picture of me with all three kids, all wearing hats.  In July.  I missed all of these crazy guys (including those not pictured) and am very glad to be home with all of them again.

Super Daniel/Joshua

Joshua has been waking up a bit earlier of late. Nothing ridiculous, but more towards 8ish and now he can open his own door so that means he actually gets up at that time. I have a plan to train him to stay in his room until 9, but since we are doing potty training right now, I am waiting because I don't want to work on too many things at once. Anyhow, so even though we went to Ron and Peg's today, he had some time to play before Clara got up since she still sleeps until a more civilized hour. Daniel Tiger is his favorite show and Daniel pretends to be "Super Daniel" sometimes. Joshua has no idea what a super hero is, but he knows he wants to play Super Daniel just like Daniel Tiger (I tried to tell him he was Super Joshua, but he was pretty skeptical about that and kept telling me he was Super Daniel). I helped him tie the blanket and he ran back and forth yelling "Blast Off" and "Super Daniel" for quite some time. I believe "Blast Off" is also courtesy of Daniel Tiger. It was super cute. I might sew him a cape for his birthday so he can put it on himself.

L.A. Guns

Every year at our Kickoff meeting, we have one main party. In 2009, it was a biker-themed party (it's too bad that was the year before we started our blog, so I don't have a post and pictures for it), and in 2010 it was on a boat in the San Francisco Bay. We didn't have Kickoff in 2011, and in 2012 it was a non-themed party. This year they had a theme again, and it was a "Wear your best beach gear" theme.  The theme wasn't properly communicated ahead of time, so some of us (including me) hadn't packed anything specifically for the party.  But I had packed my swimsuit and shirt that I wear to the pool in case we went swimming at the hotel pool.  You can also swim at a beach, I rationalized, so that became my outfit for the party.  It actually paid off, because it was held at The Strand House in Manhattan Beach, which is right by the ocean, so several of us went down to the water, and I conveniently was appropriately attired for the situation. There were two others who went with the sleeveless approach, my good friend Michael (in the Florida shirt), who's also from KC, and my friend C.J. (in the red and white striped shirt), who clearly needs to put in some work to try to tone up those flabby arms.  Or not.  I'm pretty sure he was well aware of the theme and intentionally planned to wear that shirt, which if I had those biceps, I probably would too.

Movie Night

Since I want us to have a fun time even though Jason is away, one thing I thought the kids might enjoy is watching some movies. We have done three over the course of several days: Shrek, Cars, and Despicable Me. Shrek wasn't part of my plan, but then I realized we inexplicably own it. Maybe Jason remembers why because I vaguely remember that I used to have a life with enough free time to watch the occasional movie, but I am not sure we have ever watched any non-holiday movie more than once and I have no idea why we would buy a movie, much less an animated one. The kids didn't like Cars and did enjoy Shrek, but Despicable Me was definitely their favorite as well as mine and that's the one we did tonight. We also got Papa John's, which had a meal deal. I need that because Clara can't have dairy so gets breadsticks, Joshua prefers pizza, and Hannah loves chicken so it worked out really well and we had a fun evening.

Not Just A Walk in the Park

When Jason is gone during the week, it isn't the best because we miss him and it's tiring for me to have to do everything, but it's very doable. Since he has a job, he's gone all day anyway even when he's in town so it's just a little different. However, when he is gone on the weekend, it's much different than normal and it is definitely a hardship. Besides my selfish problems of never getting any kind of break ever and not having another grownup to talk to, it's hard to make the weekend special because without Jason it feels like just another weekday. So I decided we should try to do something fun and today that meant going to a new park.I was a little intimidated to take all three kids out on my own in an unenclosed place, but I decided to just do it because I hate not doing things just because they might be hard. I feel like letting fear control your actions feels worse than any stress of actually doing it, plus not doing something fun just because it's easier to stay home is not the kind of mom I want to be, so off we went.

This was a great park and we had a lot of fun and I am really glad we went. They had several play areas including one that was sized for toddlers, though we didn't stay on it that long because it was not shaded and it was hot.

The best thing about this park was definitely the water feature, which was kind of like a little super shallow creek for wading. It had a little water fall as the source, allowing Joshua to realize his lifelong dream of touching a waterfall. Peg and Ron have a beautiful entrance to their subdivision with a waterfall and everytime we talk about it (which is every single time we go to their house because he really likes it), Joshua and I talk about what it would feel like if we could touch it and what it would taste like if he could drink it. He couldn't drink this, but both kids really enjoyed it. If this weren't my first time to the park, we definitely would have done the water last, because it was hard to get them out of it, but I didn't plan our circuit with that in mind.

Joshua really wanted to play in the sand next, but Clara freaks out in sand so we couldn't do that. Sometime we'll come here as a family and let Joshua play in the sand box while Clara does something else. They also had a natural play area with stumps and logs. I thought the kids would be really into it, but they weren't all that thrilled with it. Joshua liked it for awhile and somewhat enjoyed walking on the logs and Clara jumped off stumps a few times, so I think maybe they would have enjoyed it more if it were before the water. Finally, we went back to the car and enjoyed some cold water and a snack. Hannah was with us too, but I was wearing her so she isn't in any pictures.

This park is only about ten minutes from our house, so I think we will come back again for sure. Especially in the summer when the water is on. It would be a great place to have a picnic because there is another part of the park with a bunch of picnic shelters with views of the lake.