Finding Meghan

Tonight after I put the kids to bed, I came out of Joshua's room (he was last) and went downstairs to finish cleaning up.  I heard Hannah crying for a few minutes, which she sometimes does, but then it was quiet.  I went back upstairs and expected Meghan to be in our room, but she wasn't.  I noticed she wasn't in the bathroom either.  I figured she must be in our master bedroom closet, but no.  It was completely quiet, so I figured she must have gone down to the basement to get something.  I checked down there, but nothing.  After checking the garage, and verifying that her car was still here, I came to the realization that she must be in Hannah's room, as maybe she went in there to check on her and was rocking her.  I grabbed the camera, wondering if maybe there would be a good photo opp, but Hannah was the only person in there, sleeping in her crib.  I wasn't quite worried, because I knew there had to be a good explanation, but it was starting to get a little weird.  She wouldn't be outside, because it's freezing out there.  I was literally down to the coat closet, the pantry, and Clara's room as the only remaining possibilities.  She's not a weirdo who hangs out in small, dark places, so that meant she must be in Clara's room, even though I hadn't heard Clara crying, and it had been quiet for so long.  Quietly opening the door, I found her with Clara asleep on the love seat, joined by a tired Terrence.  Apparently Clara had been crying (I guess I was busy with Joshua or whatever), and Meghan had gone in there to comfort her and they had all fallen asleep on the couch.  I hadn't been worried, but it was a little uneasy with her not being in any of her normal spots, so I was glad to have everyone accounted for.    

A Family of Scavengers

Today we had a dinner that I didn't really like (I really like shrimp, but there is something about pre-cooked shrimp that at times I just do not want. I think it's texture-related. I much prefer buying raw and cooking it myself, but I had somehow run out of raw shrimp) so I ate my own dinner afterwards. You would think, based on this picture, that we hadn't fed the kids, but they all ate totally sufficient dinners. As did the pugs. But no matter. Anytime I eat anything, it automatically becomes the most desired food in our house. Which can be handy in getting Clara and Hannah to eat veggies since they aren't huge fans, but overall can be a little bit annoying. I had hoped to eat my food in peace since all the kids were happily playing as I cooked it, but the moment I sat down, all their toys were abandoned and they immediately came to "share". So I split my food four ways (sorry pugs. Better luck next time), though I don't feel bad admitting that my share was the largest.

Hooded Girls

Both girls had on hooded outfits today, and I thought it would be cute to get a picture of them together with their hoods up.  But either Clara's is just decorative and not meant to actually go over her head, or the outfit is too small, as it didn't look right. (In one picture that I didn't end up using, she looked like she had the back of her t-shirt pulled up over her head, Cornholio-style.)  So here they are, though at least Hannah's hood fits.

Don't Eat The Toothpaste

As I've recently mentioned, Joshua isn't satisfied with our unreasonable demand that he stay in his own room at night like every other member of our household.  Tonight he again came out of his room, and he decided to explore the craft closet, which is in the small hallway between his and Clara's room.  He made a small mess, but nothing too bad.  But we also keep some spare toothpaste in there, and he reported to us that he drank some.  I found a tiny tube that was mostly consumed and was disappointed to see that it had fluoride in it.  Fluoride is toxic, which is why toothpaste for kids is often fluoride-free, as their little bodies are more susceptible: Half a full-sized tube of regular toothpaste can kill a child.  It was a 0.75 oz tube (a trial size), and he'd only had about 80% of it, but we decided to call Poison Control to be safe.  The lady who answered asked some questions and then told me to give him two Tums and some milk and watch him for an hour, and she'd then call back.  I thought that was a little much for how little he consumed, but I also figured getting sued isn't something she has a strong interest in, so she probably errs on the side of caution.  Here Joshua tiredly drinks his milk while we were hanging out waiting for the hour to pass.  He seemed fine and said his tummy didn't hurt.  When the lady called back I told her he was fine and that I was glad it was only a 0.75 oz tube.  She seemed surprised and said she thought I'd said it was a small 3 oz tube (which I definitely didn't), and said, "Oh, I'm sure he's fine then!"  Yes, I'm sure he is, but maybe improve your listening skills for the future, lady.  There are only two parts of your job: 1. Listen to the scenario.  2. Dispense advice accordingly.  If you're a little shaky on #1, maybe find a new line of work, or you're going to get stuck in the opposite scenario ("Oh, you said he ate 3 tubes of toothpaste?  I thought you said 3 ounces!") and that lawsuit you were hoping to avoid is going to be a sudden reality.  Either way, Joshua is fine, but we've now moved all toothpaste out of that closet.

Texting Julie

Joshua likes to do what the grown-ups do.  He knows that sometimes we text on our phones.  He doesn't have a phone, but he does get to use Meghan's tablet quite a bit.  One of the apps on it is a calculator app.  We are happy for him to use it, because there's nothing he can do to cause problems (as opposed to, say, an e-mail app from which he could theoretically send a confusing e-mail to people at our jobs, for example).  He likes it because he can press buttons and make things change on the screen in front of him.  Tonight before bed he was using the calculator app (with a diaper on; he's not as naked as he appears in the picture), and I asked him what he was doing, and he said, "I texting Julie."  I don't know if he was pretending, or since he doesn't really know what texting entails if he really thought he was, but either way it was cute.  

Date Day at the Gym

Today was my date day with Clara. We started out with lunch at Chili's. She insisted she wanted a hamburger, which I was skeptical of because she isn't much of a carnivore. But she did actually eat an entire half a burger, which is a lot of food for her. She also really enjoyed the coloring portion of our meal.

After lunch we ran some errands, but then it was time for our main attraction: open play at a local gym. We hadn't been to this facility before so I wasn't sure what to expect, but she really had a lot of fun. They had a lot of different things set up that were perfect for her age group. Her favorite was the long trampoline. For older kids you could swing off a rope from the trampoline to the foam pit, but she was content jumping and running back and forth on the trampoline for a really long time. She also liked some of the toys they had set up and also the little obstacle course. I would definitely go back to this gym because it was very geared towards little kids.

We wrapped our fun time out with a sucker from the gym, which she enjoyed very much. We had a fun time and she fell asleep really quickly once we got home after running and jumping so much.

Conquering the Dirty Icy Snow Pile

Joshua pretty much loves snow and ice. We recently had a brief warm-ish period in the middle of the ice age that is this winter, so most of the snow is gone. But every time he sees a remaining pile, he wants to kick it or walk on it or do something to it. After soccer today there was a pile of snow in the corner of the parking lot that he seemingly couldn't resist.  We had a few minutes to spare, so I let him spend some time on it.  He loved it.  He walked on it, kicked it, dug in it with his lollipop stick (they get lollipops at the end of each soccer session), and ended up spending 10 or 15 minutes before I told him we had to go, which he did not take well.  But given this stupid winter, it'll probably still be there next Saturday, and probably for many Saturdays at this rate, so he'll probably have another chance.

Jump!

Hannah is becoming a little more adventurous as she gets older, relatively anyway. Her favorite game right now is to get on the ottoman (well she can't get up there by herself yet, so with assistance) and then "jumping" into my arms. She has always liked being thrown and falling so I think this is a similar thing, but she gets to propel herself. It's really cute because she stands by the ottoman and says "Jump. Jump." until I pick her up. The only problem is she has flung herself into me a couple times when I was just sitting on the couch and not really watching for her so I didn't catch her. But she didn't seem traumatized by it so I guess it's fine.

Junior Olympic Fan

Jason really likes watching the Olympics. I am not as big on it, especially the winter, but we right now the Sochi Olympics are ongoing, and we have been watching a fair amount of it during the evenings since Jason is such a fan. Clara has been really disappointed by this and pretty much throws a fit and asks for Sesame Street or Veggie Tales. But Joshua really likes it and asks about it frequently. He really likes more of the adventure-type activities like skiing with jumps or snowboarding. Today there was figure-skating on, though skiing came on later. He is not a figure skating fan. He keeps saying, "Maybe they fall?" with some hopefulness in his voice. It's like that's the only way to make it exciting enough for him. He really liked skiing though. He actually said he wanted to go skiing. I have only been once and I hated it so I doubt we will be taking any family ski trips in the near future, but maybe sometime in the next couple of years he can go to Snow Creek with Jason (who likes skiing).

A Fun New Way to Play

Joshua has been a little bit slow to develop into imaginative play. Clara already is very excited to play with her babies and talk about how they are hungry or whatever, but Joshua hasn't been all that interested in stuff like that, whether it's babies, trucks, or anything else. But recently he has gotten really into it in a lot of different ways. Above you can see him pretending to be 'Super Grover'. Clara of course wants to participate and I haven't made her a cape yet so we have been using her apron as a cape. They like running around the kitchen island and pretending to fly. 

Another thing Joshua really likes to do is act out scenes from one of his favorite Veggie Tales, "Dave and the Giant Pickle", which is a retelling of David and Goliath. Sometimes he likes to be Dave and sometimes he is the giant pickle. Here you can see him with the helmet (for when he is the giant pickle) and his sling that he repurposed from Hannah's purse set (for when he is Dave). The way he plays is Dave gets five smooth stones and then hits the giant pickle in the head with the sling and then the giant pickle falls down. I kind of wish the Bible had less violence, but at least Veggie Tales uses euphemisms for death (falling down in the case of Dave, getting sent 'up the river', being sent to the island of perpetual tickling, and others in different episodes) that I feel aren't entirely age-inappropriate. It's really cute how he plays and we have fun watching this new developmental phase of his.

Grandparents' Day in February

Grandparents' Day is officially in September, but for whatever reason Joshua's school celebrates it in the winter. It was supposed to be a couple weeks ago, but school was closed due to snow. But luckily Peg and Ron could still attend the make-up day which was today. They had a good time having breakfast and seeing Joshua's school and teacher and friends.

Fixers

Today was a holiday for Jason and I don't work on Mondays so it was a nice three-day weekend for us. Jason took advantage of the time and worked on fixing our toilet. It was a bit hard to diagnose because it wasn't super broken, it just wasn't quite right. He also had an assistant who was happy to hold a light, but may or may not have made the whole process a little longer. It is adorable to see how excited Joshua gets to fix things. He just loves it, especially when he gets to help Jason on a real repair project.

While Jason and Joshua worked on that, Clara mostly made a nuisance of herself by constantly trying to play in the water in the bathroom. But Hannah worked on her walking skills, which she is very proud of. She also took advantage of Clara being distracted and got to play with Clara's "Pumpkin Pie" (this is what Clara has decided the jack o' lantern is called, despite repeated explanation, though it's pretty cute so we have mostly stopped correcting her and now Joshua also calls it a pumpkin pie), which Clara is normally quite possessive of. When you're the smallest kid, you have to take advantage of these opportunities.

Our Blue-Eyed Princess

Joshua likes talking about the eye-color of people in our family so we talk a lot about how Joshua and Mama and Hannah have brown eyes and Clara and Daddy have blue eyes. Because of her eye and skin color, Clara looks very nice in the color blue. Today we debuted a dress we got as a hand-me-down from a friend and she looked so nice in it.

Kicking and Not Listening

We enrolled Joshua in soccer for this session.  We skipped the fall session, as we had too much going on, but this winter session is working well for us.  This year he's old enough that we parents are only semi-involved, where before we helped them with each activity.  We just sort of hang back and watch and encourage, though we are still on the field.  There are also some activities that directly involve the parents.

Joshua does well in a lot of areas, but he somewhat struggles with listening.  He's generally been fine during soccer, but today they played Red Light / Green Light.  At one point, as you can see on the left, all kids were on the wall.  After being told to the instructions, they started the game.  After a minute, everyone was on the other side.  Except one guy, who was still absent-mindedly standing by the wall.  Yep, that was our little Joshua.

But he did well overall.  In particular, he's great with kicking.  He wasn't great at it last year, but he suddenly started consistently kicking with his left foot, and now he has great accuracy and power with his kicks.  Here is is showing that off during the activity where they stack cones and then kick the ball at the tower.

Happy Valentine's Day!

 Now that we have kids, Valentine's Day isn't really as much of a romantic holiday, though we do exchange cards. But it's more of a day celebrating family love as well. We were never super into it anyway, but finding child care and then spending a lot of money on dinner in over-crowded restaurants just isn't our scene so we prefer to stay at home and do a date night later in the month. So we celebrated today at home and started our festivities with treats (fruit gummies for the kids, Nerds for the grownups)

 Then we had our kid-friendly dinner of heart-shaped pizza and garlic rolls and red-beet hummus with pita chips. Tomorrow we are having our more grown-up menu of steaks, blackberry salad with goat cheese, and risotto, but we started with the heart-shaped stuff first.

 For dessert, I made red velvet ice cream sandwiches and I did them in heart-shapes. I had some store-bought raspberry sherbet leftover from forever ago, so we also had one raspberry one. It was nowhere near as good, but somewhat less stainy so I gave it to the kids.

 They aren't ice cream connoisseurs, so they loved it even though it wasn't as good as the red velvet.

We finished off the evening with cards and a new Veggie Tales. The girls aren't really old enough to appreciate cards, but Joshua is and he really loved the robot card that lights up that Jason got him. He didn't really understand the concept of showing the card to the camera, so this is the best we got. Though it wasn't super romantic, it was a good and happy day and we had fun.

Trains and Ice Skating at Crown Center

I was supposed to have a date day with Joshua in January.  The way our rotation has worked out, I've pretty much always had great weather on my date days, including a beautiful day on the first one we ever had last January.  This January was not so great.  So my January date day with Joshua got pushed to today.  Meghan at one point suggested taking Joshua ice skating.  I thought that was a great idea and knew of the outdoor ice skating rink at Crown Center and thought that would be perfect.  But before that, we started with lunch at Fritz's.  It's a train-themed restaurant where you order you food from the phone at your table and then a little train on an overhead track delivers it to a platform above your table, and it's hydraulically lowered down to you. Joshua was pretty excited to look up and watch the trains run around the track.  There were also other non-food-delivering model trains around the restaurant, including one on the other side of the glass at our table.

We were given paper engineer hats (I was mildly amused at the fact that I'm an engineer of a different type than the engineer hat indicates), and Joshua was excited to wear his "choo choo hat".

We then walked over to the skating rink.  Unfortunately, apparently because of snow melting off the canopy and falling on the ice surface, the rink wasn't going to open until 4:30, even though it should have been open all day.  I decided the 45-minute wait was worth it, and Joshua didn't mind at all, because he found a snowbank that he enjoyed repeatedly kicking.  He also found a straw on the ground and had fun beating the snowbank with it, slowly chipping away the icy snow.

Finally we were able to get our skates and head out to the ice.  I wasn't sure how Joshua would do with balancing, but he had no problem at all when we practiced by walking on the mats.

I hadn't ice skated in probably 19 or 20 years, but it came back to me with no problem.  Joshua had never skated before, so I wasn't sure how it would go, but he came through like a champ.  We went around quite a few times, and I held his hand for most of it, and he skated along great.  He would sometimes lose his balance, but I made sure he didn't have any big falls.  Several times I let him skate on his own, and he actually did better that way, maybe because he wasn't overly relying on my hand for balance.  He went very slowly, but he could go maybe 10 feet without falling.  I was very impressed, and I hope this is something we can do again in the future as he gets older, and I'm sure Clara and Hannah will eventually want to join in too.