Snow Day

Last night I was in bed watching TV and the caller ID on the TV popped up with Name Unavailable at 9:45.  I do love that feature since the phone was on the other side and ringer was turned off.  My immediate irritation turned softer when I found out it was our high tech school with an automated call informing everyone that school was out for today.  Remember the days when you'd huddle around the radio hoping and praying they'd say the name of your school so you could go back to bed and then later wake up and play in the snow?   Yippee.  Sleeping late, playing in the snow, hot chocolate!  Right?

I still got up at 7:00 with Aidan.  Kate didn't sleep past 7:15, Daniel went to work anyway so I can't play out in the snow with Kate since Aidan doesn't have a snow suit and I have yet to have hot chocolate.  Now I'm sitting here in my PJ's watching my over- achiever but super nice neighbors already out shoveling their driveways.  In the words of Alicia Silverstone in the movie Clueless, "As if!"  But Kate had fun for a while and it's still coming down.  Too bad we live in too flat Kansas and there's absolutely NO WHERE to go sledding.  That and the minor problem of not owning a sled.    

One for the future wife to see

When my brother was little we dressed him up in much worse.  It's only fair the tradition continues.  He does seem to be enjoying himself.  

Family Reunion

The weekend before last we made the trek down to Oklahoma to my parent's house to see my brother and his wife who were visiting from Seattle.  The visit was short but it was nice to have everyone together.  Before we left we went over by a pond in their neighborhood to get a few pictures since for some reason when we're all together we never take any pictures.  So here we all are are enjoying a warmish day in January.

Kate outside my Mom & Dad's house

The whole gang

Our little family.  My husband refused to smile anymore due to the sun in his eyes.  Poor sport.

Mom and Dad

Mimi and Dude and finally a smile from Aidan

Susan and Jonathan

Here they are again

Aunt Susan with Aidan

One more of my parents

For my parents

My Mom and Dad check every day to see if I've posted anything on my blog.  When I go long periods of time between posting it's mostly because I really don't have anything I want to say.  Or maybe I have something to say but don't take the time to put it down on paper so to speak.  The last couple months have been draining to me for lots of reasons and my days are kind of on the boring and monotonous side. Who wants to read about how I changed diapers, fed Aidan some toast for the first time, and managed to get both of us dressed and ready to take a trip around the mall?  But never the less I'll take this moment before nap time is over to give you some random things I've been twirling around in my mind...

Aidan is 9 months today.  Sometimes I take how beautiful and amazing it is to have theses 2 little miracles in my life for granted.  Sometimes I have to try really hard to cherish the little things and the seemingly insignificant moments in my never ending tiredness and frustration.  It all changes so unbelievably fast.  Just yesterday Kate was reading this little book to us and I realized a year ago she didn't even recognize all her letters.  Now she's putting them together and actually reading.  It's kind of amazing.  Not to be outdone, Aidan figured out how to climb the stairs and drink out of one of his sippy cups.

Speaking of him crawling up the stairs... Oh boy!  My living room is starting to look like an obstacle course.  Turns out the traditional gates won't work very well on our stairs.  But the ottoman for now is perfect!  Too bad he can now climb under the table and get to the computer again.  I'll post a video later.

I'm totally over winter.  I'm ready for the warm weather.  Unfortunately last April we got 18 inches of snow.  Looks like it's going to be a while.  Anyone want to fund a trip for me to somewhere warm?

Part of my irritation as of late just got worse.  I'm probably not supposed to talk much about it but I'll just say if you're going to go from having no people reporting to you to now having 7 people report to you- you should probably get, Oh I don't know... a little bit of a raise.  Maybe I'm being ridiculous.  Just thinking about it makes me livid.  But just think of the prestige involved. :-)

What's up with baby socks and baby shoes.  Enough said.

Have I ever mentioned that I'm not a particularly big fan of where I live?

All I feel like doing is taking a bubble bath, napping and griping.  I don't even think chocolate would make me feel better. Aidan and Kate laughs do help though.  Maybe a bubble bath with chocolate while I got to gripe followed by a big session of making them laugh would be OK.

Sales at the mall are deceptive.  It's not really much of a sale if it's always 40% off and it's now 50% off.

Well there's your Debbie downer report for the day.  I'm thinking tonight might be a good night to rent a movie and force myself to cheer up.

So Big!

Aidan loves this book that features babies with arms raised with the words "How big is baby?  So big!"  So here's our little baby showing how big he is.  Happy 9 months Aidan!  I can't believe time has flown by so fast!  

The adventerous chipmunk

When Kate was a baby we knew it was a possibility she'd put things in her mouth.  That's what babies do right?  We watched and were careful and maybe on occasion pulled something potentially dangerous out of her mouth.  But for the most part she wasn't all that intrigued with using her mouth as a hiding place for little treasures.  As she got older she preferred using her pockets.  She still enjoys that sort of thing and my washing machine thanks her.

But Aidan... Aidan is a totally different story.  You can vacuum every day.  You can get down on the floor and scout around for things he shouldn't have but it doesn't seem to matter.  You see our little monkey is mobile.  Verrry mobile.  He can roll, he can crawl incredibly fast, he can pull up, and has no fear or belief that if he lets go anything bad might happen.  We actually had to invest in those super ugly padded corner things for our coffee table.  If he could get them off he'd at the very least chew on them.  This kid is all boy.  He keeps me on my toes in a way I never knew with Kate. You could leave the room and walk in the kitchen when she was almost 9 months and she'd still be there happily playing with real baby toys when you got back.  Not Aidan.  In 1 minute he'll have found a tiny scrap of paper, put it in his mouth and be chasing a cat under the chair across the room.

Aidan prefers anything that isn't a real toy too.  But don't kid yourself into thinking he wants the old remote that no longer works.  If you hand it to him that's code for: This is an approved toy and you may play with it. He wants none of that nonsense.  He has to find it, decide it's dangerous or at the very least not exactly child friendly, and he's happy.

But it's the putting things in his mouth that gets me.  In the last week alone we've pulled out a sticker, a plastic sticker thing that Kate kept forgetting to take upstairs, a piece of grout that chipped off the kitchen floor, a piece of crusted up chicken from the day before that I swear I saw and put in the trash right before finding it in his  mouth (eww I KNOW!), a leftover pine needle, and a little foil piece that covers caps of medicine, shampoo, etc.  Before that there was the quarter and the teeny tiny piece of star garland.  He's making me a nervous wreck.

I haven't even mentioned the obstacle courses we have to put up to keep him corralled.  This house simply isn't big enough.  We have road blocks up to the dining room, the computer, the bathroom, the laundry room, the floor lamp, and a table under the window that he thinks is a perfect place to play.  He's just recently learned how to crawl under chairs and over storage boxes.  If he just tried again he'd be headed up the stairs.

But... Am I mad?  Naw.  Tired?  Yes.  Occasionally frustrated?  Occasionally.  OK more than I should be.  But I wouldn't trade it.  How could you get irritated when you remember this little cutie pie is so excited about the simplest things.  Is that a cheerio lying discarded on the floor?!  Jackpot!  Just look how excited he is to be standing up.

No my Christmas tree isn't still up.  This was taken New Year's Day.

Still happy with a slightly devilish grin

It only took 1 year, 4 months, and 11 days

I would have told this little story way back before Christmas if I hadn't been consumed with the joy of the season and too joyful stressed to deal with it.  So here goes...

Before Kate's 4th birthday she had expressed interest in getting her ears pierced.  Having gone with my own Mother at age 4 to get my ears pierced I thought it was a perfect idea.  Daniel was more on the fence or if you ask him: totally against it.  We explained to Kate that it would hurt but just briefly.  We explained that we'd have to clean them and take care of her ears.  She was on board.  So on her 4th birthday we trekked over to the local Claire's and she sat stoically as they prepared to pierce her ears.

At impact her face contorted briefly and then she went back to her brave stone expression .  She never cried, later admitted that it had indeed hurt, and spent the rest of the day enjoying her birthday.  The 6 weeks of daily cleaning were OK.  She resisted some but since we weren't trying to remove the earrings she was fine.

So for Christmas that year I thought a perfect stocking stuffer would be some new earrings.  In theory she thought this was a great idea.  She regularly enjoyed perusing Claire's for earrings and had decided on butterflies and cherries.  Let's just say after Christmas the earrings were traded for a dog calendar.  That was safer.

She told us she'd do it tomorrow, or next week, or next month so many times I eventually just gave up.  She swore when she turned 5 she'd do it.  She swore for Halloween she'd get new earrings to go with her genie costume.  She swore she's do it for this Christmas.  At times she said she was just going to wait until she was 16 and at times I was OK with that.  But every time we even went near her ears she'd freak out, flail her arms all about, start screaming and more or less convince us that this was one battle we weren't going to win.  I was somewhat convinced she might need a child therapist to help her deal with what must certainly be Post-traumatic stress disorder from having a hole shot through her ears.

So for whatever reason, perhaps it was the stress of the holidays or I'd just had a bad day and wanted to make it more fun, I decided that 1 year, 4 months, and 11 days of not taking her earrings out was long enough!  We tried sympathizing, we tried letting her help, we tried letting her put earrings in and take them out of my ears.  We bargained with letting her get a Chihuahua if it hurt (among many other things that were NEVER going to happen)  But in the end it took Daniel holding her down, her screaming, and me as quickly as possible removing those blasted things.

You want to know what kept her from clawing my eyes out?  The promise that she could get ice cream and  wear these little gems I had leftover from Halloween.

She proudly wore them that night as we went back to Claire's.  This time we actually walked out with a pair of dangly pink stars.

She's still skittish.  She still gets that look of sheer panic in her eyes when we're changing her earrings.  Just yesterday it was a battle to get her to put some in after a battle involving me sitting on her the night before to get them out (she was actually laughing this time).  But it's progress.  Maybe when she's 16 and  all her friends are wanting to get their eyebrows or bellybuttons pierced she'll remember this experience and say, "Nah.  I think I'll do it when I'm 21."

Ahh Internet, how I love thee

Ever since we moved here our Internet has been seriously lacking in speed.  We apparently were paying for higher speed but just weren't getting it.  My dear husband complained often in the past abut this but in true fashion refused to do anything about it.  He apparently thought that was my department.  The second people start talking about upload/download speeds, megabytes and the like I start to tune out.   I'm fairly computer literate but that isn't something I've ever cared to learn more about.  So it finally took the Internet being virtually non existent at times for a week before he took control.  Yay for him!  Turns out it wasn't just the ridiculously cold weather that was causing it to go down for the better part of the day, it was a defective modem.  So now it's all better, we're actually getting what we're paying for, and I can blog again!

Visit to Tulsa

Quick!  Someone is no longer amused with any of his toys.  Never mind- Just needed a new diaper.  It's the little things that make other people happy.  Like not having to sit anymore in your own poop.  Anyway...

Our little man in Tulsa who really honed his crawling skills the week of Christmas, is now a crawling pro, and also has learned to pull up on everything including the stairs.  We already have one baby gate.  I see another in our future.

Miss Kate

Miss Caroline

Miss Ava

Trying to get a group shot.  Aidan didn't care for his reindeer antlers.

The birthday girl ready for her ballerina party

Ava and her Uncle Daniel

Grammy with both babies who both ended up falling asleep and napping on her.  

Christmas catch-up

Now that we're not dealing with gifts, blizzards, shopping, traveling, ice, birthdays or sickness (much anyway) and my husband is back to work, child #1 is at school, and child #2 is napping I can play blog catch-up.

We headed down to Oklahoma to my Parent's house and amazingly were able to leave in less than an hour after Kate got out of school.  Yes she had school Monday and Tuesday of the week of Christmas which was kind of dumb and they didn't even officially have a class Christmas party... also kinda dumb if you ask me.  They made up for it I guess by having these 2 days be goof-off days and had a day a week earlier where they did a bunch of Christmas crafts and a different day where they got to decorate gingerbread houses.  I was kind of bummed because up here we were supposed to get Christmas Eve and Christmas day snow and they were even talking blizzard warnings and I thought we were going to miss out.  At the time in Oklahoma they were just expecting a slight chance of some rain and possibly a little snow.  Be careful what you wish for.

Apparently the snow moved a little farther south and this is what we got on Christmas Eve...

Looking out into the back yard

Middle of the day Christmas Eve

Better shot Christmas day of the trampoline that flew 2 houses down to meet its end on top of a swing set

Snow starting to drift up by our car

More snow drifts

So we ended up staying an extra day with my parents and then made a somewhat dicey drive to see Daniel's family where we celebrated Christmas with them and celebrated our niece Caroline's 3rd birthday.  When we finally made it home Aidan who had been sick and super grumpy most of the trip ended up in the Dr's office on New Years Eve with a "really, really, really bad" ear infection.  Antibiotics have helped his little demeanor considerably.  Because I have the back to "work" blues after the holidays and am feeling lazy I'll just post some pics and promise to be a better blogger in 2010!

Here are more Christmas pics from our visit with my Mom and Dad.  I'll post Tulsa and Daniel's family pics separately just because.

Kate decorated a gingerbread house with my Mom during the great Oklahoma Blizzard of 09'

Me playing with my early Christmas present (an iphone) which I love, love, love and Aidan trying to get to the fire or the light up Santa- either one wouldn't be good

Aidan in his Christmas monkey PJ's

Kate in her Christmas monkey PJ pants

Aidan with his "dog chew toy" or french giraffe teether

Kate and her heart locket that was one of the few things she asked for

 My Mom and Dad who might not like being put on the Internet in their pajamas

Daniel holding his new multi-pack of earrings.  He btw came out on Christmas morning fully-dressed which is a no-no in the Christmas code and compromised by putting on sweatpants with his button down shirt.