Day #32-#38: Roadtripping to NYC

Where, oh where, do I begin this post? We have just returned from a week long family "vacation" to Philadelphia and New York City (note to self: vacation is NOT roadtripping with the little people; it is a beach.without kids.and a margarita.) Here are the high points though:

- Staying in a historic hotel in Philadelphia where the parking garage was several blocks away. Tyson has now banned us from staying anywhere unless there is on site parking. Apparently hauling the travel crib several blocks through Philly was unpleasant.

- Luke decided to choose this week to begin climbing out of his travel crib.

- Savannah started saying, "holy crack" (holy crap). I should probably stop saying that. But she was also told by her great aunt Claudia that "pouty's not pretty" and she now says that throughout the day to herself.

- Luke entered the pre-terrible -twos and threw FULL.OUT.TANTRUMS. complete with kicking, screaming, and hitting. He did this DURING my sister-in-laws graduation from the Merchant Marine Academy and at EVERY meal we had with family. I wanted to leave him in NYC. Seriously.

- I have a vague memory of being on a booze cruise and then walking barefoot through NYC.  Then passing out sleeping on the train ride home. Not my finest moment.

- Going to bed at 8:30pm because we were all in a hotel room together and my children need complete darkness and silence to sleep. Also, I now have to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Cruisin (the song Gwyneth Paltrow and Huey Lewis sing together in Duets) each night to Savannah. I'm not sure why that was the first song that came to mind when Savannah asked me to sing...

- Did you know that 4 year olds and 21 month olds DO NOT appreciate bus tours of NYC? They also do not care about times square, the statue of liberty, or ground zero. Imagine my surprise. Imagine it. They did like the subway though.

- P.S. My baby fever has vanished! Poof! Between tantrums, potty stops, walking blocks (and blocks and blocks and blocks) pushing a stroller in NYC, sleeping in hotel rooms with my little people...suddenly I have no desire for another baby. At least not anytime soon.

Day #31: Holy heat wave (thanks Amy for my catchy title)

   It was hot today. So hot. The kind of hot where we filled up the baby pool, turned on the sprinklers, and stripped down to the least amount of appropriate clothing possible. For Luke that meant a diaper half of the afternoon and complete nudity the other half. Boys like that being naked and running around thing. I made Tyson keep his shorts on though. It was also the first night in over two weeks that we did not eat outside for dinner. And of course, to top it off, my upstairs AC is not working properly. It's like 80 degrees up there, and I definitely keep it around 74 degrees at night. My air went out last year on July 4th. Apparently the AC must stop working when it's super hot outside. I mean, why can't it break when it's in the 70's and 80's so we could just sleep with our windows open? I'm thinking the guest room on the first floor is calling my name tonight.

Day #30: Life is a beach

   Tyson has been home from work everyday for the past week by noon. It's wonderful. Most of the time. It's feast or famine over here; he's either gone to another country for 6 months or home ALL. THE. TIME.  I seem to be less productive when he is home though, I act like it's Saturday everyday. I've been doing things like forgetting about all the laundry piling up (although I loathe laundry, so maybe I'm just using this as an excuse), not thawing out meat for dinner (which leads to ordering pizza), taking afternoon catnaps. Having a glass of wine every night with dinner. Today we went to the beach. On a Wednesday at 3PM. We also brought our bikes because yes, I have been riding my bike lately (and Tyson bought me a HUGE comfy seat for the bike so it's akin to sitting in a Lazy boy recliner while biking. And I look a little like a grandma, but for the sake of comfort, I don't care!). We also recently invested in a Schwinn kid buggy that attaches to Tyson's bike. So we played at the beach, built sand castles, got in the water, and snacked on watermelon. We then went back to the car, hooked up the buggy to the bikes, got the the kids snacks (again, because my children eat constantly) and went riding down the VB boardwalk as a family unit, little people in tow, giggling the entire time. It was seriously the best Wednesday EVER. Ever. Everyone remained happy throughout the afternoon; no meltdowns, no demands. Did aliens abduct my little people and replace them with look alike robots? Possibly. But either way, me, Tyson, and the robots kids had a blast.

Day #29: Baby fever

   I have it. Baby fever. Officially. But then I have afternoons like today and I think, "there is no way in HELL I could throw a baby into the mix and still keep my semi-sane status". The kids aren't doing anything out of the ordinary or particularly irritating; but the combination of me PMSing and them being a 1 year old (whose favorite word is "no!") and a 4 year old (who talks incessantly) is enough for today. And it's hot outside, like really hot. You know the murder rate goes up in the summer months? Yeah, just an FYI. People are easily bothered and looking for a fight. But no, I'm not planning on killing anyone just in case you were wondering. At least not today. But the heat does add to the irritation.
  But back to the issue at hand. Babies. Have you noticed that EVERYONE is pregnant? I have. I even know three girls pregnant with TWINS! And not just the humans are preggo. The geese in our pond have multiple families of baby geese wandering the neighborhood and it takes all I have to not goosenap one, swaddle it, and bring it home. Adding to the fever is that my baby Luke got a big boy haircut on base this weekend and now looks like a 15 year old marine rather than my sweet 20 month old Luke, which is not helping the baby situation. Then I rented Babies (the documentary). Why, why did I do that? Because I have baby fever, that's why! Japanese, Mongolian, and Kenyan babies are just as cute, no wait, cuter than, American babies. And I want one.
   I think I need to go hang out with a pregnant mom friend who is hot and miserable and then move on to a mother of a newborn, you know, the mom who is like a zombie, completely sleep deprived and feeling like a human milk machine? Then maybe my fever will be cured. If not I may need to explore other alternatives...like actually having another baby. I mean, I do already have a minivan.
  

Day #28: what is really important

  So I watched 20/20 last night (something I had on my DVR from who knows when), and bawled my freakin eyes out. Yes I did. Now, there were a number of factors contributing to said sobfest, but it was in fact a very good reminder of what life is really about and how much I take for granted. From all the little things I fret over- my body, my hair, my wardrobe to the really important things I take for granted- a husband who loves me, my home, my family's health.

 She too is a blogging mommy, check out her blog and be reminded of how good you have it or go to abc.com to watch her full story.
http://nieniedialogues.blogspot.com/

Day #27: banned from the gym

    My husband has banned me from the gym for the next two weeks. This is the equivalent of a time-out for my one- year old, or not letting Savannah have fruit snacks for the day (holy cow that is about the worst punishment around here!), or taking away her t.v privileges. This. is. BIG. The reason being, my sweet Luke now has Strep throat! In efforts to get him well and keep him well, all contact with other children has been banned, which includes, but is not limited to, the gym. I must say, I agree too. The boy has had a double ear infection, pink eye, two seizures, Hand Foot and Mouth, and now Strep- all in a 2 month period. Each time he gets better, we return to our normal schedule of the gym, playdates, etc. Not this time though! We are going to try to get him 200% better and healthy! To add to all the fun of staying home, Savannah had her last day of school on Friday, so I now have both of my children home all day with me and nothing.on.the.calendar.nothing. This calls for some big time creativity on my part.
    I just ordered How to Teach your child to Read in twenty Easy Lessons. Yeah right like it's going to be easy. And I can just about swear on my life it will be longer than twenty lessons. Call me crazy. I figure it will give her a leg up before going into real preschool this Fall. So that should occupy a total of 20 minutes every day..... I do have big plans, I just don't know how realistic they are. I tend to get preoccupied with my to-do lists. Laundry, gym, grocery store. Although I stay at home with the kids, I feel like I sometimes don't give them the attention and time they deserve. So the next two weeks I am really going to make an effort to put them first, rather than fitting them in at the end of the day when my energy is dwindling and my patience is low. I mean, I am literally going to put activities on the calendar to do with them everyday. Along with reading, Savannah loves to help me cook. So I think I will have her help me cook dinner every night and master setting the table. These are life skills that she is old enough to accomplish. She also enjoys painting but I rarely let her do it because it is just so dang messy. But heck, I apparently now have all the time in the world, so I'm going to get a cheap shower curtain liner to cover the table and let her have at it.
   As the second child, Luke does not get as much of my time as Savannah did at his age. He has about three hundred books (no I'm not kidding! Thank you grandma for being a book lover!) so I'm thinking this is the week to start sitting down and reading with him daily. He is also starting "preschool" in the Fall, so this is a good opportunity to start working on sitting still and listening to instruction. ha. Like I said, I have BIG plans for my little people! He can start working on his colors too. He loves balls and food, so I'm thinking if we can round up all the balls in this house, we will have every color, and then throw in a bag of Skittles...I'm confident we will have our colors down in no time!
  As for me, I have a few plans for myself too. I want to branch out and try some new recipes, which I rarely do because it takes extra time and effort, both of which I sometimes always lack.  Also, Tyson has been wanting me to get into bike riding (not like the biker shorts, shave my body, crazy kind- just regular get- on- a -bike- and -ride -it kind) an activity the whole family can do together. He has been working on my bike lately and I'm thinking I will get over my bike issues (so, when I was fifteen my parents for some reason thought it would be fun for our whole family to ride bikes in Colorado. in the summer. for 30 miles. And FYI, there are mountains there. Now I know its been 12 years, but the emotional scars left behind are vast), find a bike trailer on Craigslist for the kids, and maybe hit up a bike path this weekend!
   I will have to update my blog to let you know what actually gets accomplished. It might just be that I read to Luke, Savannah paints, and we do some bike riding. But I'll aim high and hope for the best!

Day # 26: waking up too early: an epidemic

So I had to get up at 4:30AM to get Chel (my little sister) to the airport for her 6AM flight. I was going to make her take a cab, but I'm not that mean. I got back in bed at 5:20AM, Tyson's alarm went off at 5:45AM. Needless to say, I was awake and was not going back to sleep. So I decided to be productive, do a little bit of cleaning and laundry since I was up and unable to sleep. Well my children just know when I am up, it doesn't seem to matter what time it is or how quiet I am. They can hear me. For a while I was setting my alarm for 6AM, having some down time and coffee before the little people were up; well that lasted all of a week because although Luke typically does not start making noise until 6:45AM he started fussing the minute I swung my legs out of bed to get up. Plus, I have a rule that I do NOT get Luke out of bed until 7AM. It doesn't matter if I am awake, it doesn't matter if he has been making noise for an hour, 7AM is when I go in his room to get him up. Apparently I didn't pass this rule on to Tyson who brought Luke down at 6:20AM this morning- then left for work! I was slightly peeved not so happy about that, he claims he did not know the 7AM rule. Well then Savannah heard us all downstairs and came down at 6:45AM- she's been sleeping until almost 8AM every morning. People, let me call it now, there will be a mandatory nap time today at noon...if we can even make it until then. Honestly, I'm already grumpy and I'm pretty much ready for a nap now.