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girl time!

Hooray! It's time for another Girl Weekend! This weekend, I will be laying low with the rest of my girfriends at the lake. No kids and no husbands allowed.

Last time, I felt a lot of guilt about going. Part of that was likely because I missed The Babe's homecoming from her first day of school, but most of it was because I didn't want to leave The Kiddos. I felt bad about going. Well.. not so much this time.

A lot has changed since last time. First of all, I have left them a few times this year, and maybe I am just getting used to it. Secondly, now that my husband has a day job, I am solely in charge of The Kiddos for pretty much always. I need a break. I know we just had vacay in Disney, and that was terriffic, but it was not a relaxing kind of trip. There was no break. It was the anti-break, the absolute opposite of "break".

Now, what happens on the lake, stays on the lake, LOL, so don't expect a full recap when I get back... but here are the kinds of things I expect to be doing: eating yummy food that is not necessarily good for me, perhaps drinking some kind of alcoholic beverage (in moderation, dammit, my tolerance is so weak!), playing cards, gossip, beach time, boating, more eating, more drinking, more cards, more gossip, maybe a walk around the lake, oh, and perhaps we'll sleep.

I am dropping The Kiddos off at their Gramma and Grampa J's house on my way to the lake. Do you know how excited The Kiddos are? The Babe and The Boy have asked me several times, just to be sure, that I am just dropping them off - - I am not staying. They giggle with pure glee at the thought of a weekend without Mommy... Perhaps we all need a break, eh?

*swoon*

Tonight as I was finishing up the bed time routine with The Boy, I gave him a goodnight kiss as I always do, and stood up to leave. I got about halfway to the door when he sat up, smiled, and held his arms out; so I walked back over to him and sat on the bed. He gave me a *huge* hug, he squeezed really tight, and then he held my face in both his hands and pulled me in and gave me a kiss. He smiled at me, laid back down, settled in with his babies, and looked so content - sucking his thumb and drifting off to dreamland. *sigh* What a nice little way to say goodnight....

there's no stopping her now....

The Babe learned to ride her bike with no training wheels today. Phew! Can I just say a few things about this? (answer: yes Erika, it's your blog... say whatever you like). Thank you.

#1 - This has been a long time coming. The Babe is 5 and a half years old. She has been asking to learn all this season. We tried in the spring, but she got easily frustrated and discouraged. She went about a month without getting on her bike at all.

#2 - Kids are mean. It's been a few weeks now that some of the kids on the block have been making comments about the fact that The Babe still had her training wheels. Granted, two little girls on the block who are younger than The Babe no longer needed their trainers, but those girls also have older siblings; and we all know how much more quickly the subsequent kids pick up on things. But, I think that distinction was lost on The Babe, and she had really been feeling low, talking about how so-and-so had hurt her feelings, etc. Nothing like a little peer pressure, eh?

#3 - The Babe has been DYING to learn since we got back from Disney. In fact, she was talking about it on the plane ride home so much that we stopped at the bike store on the way home from the airport to buy the pole attachment for Daddy to help her balance.

#4 - Mommy simply would not do. Even though Daddy had a busy work schedule all week, The Babe insisted that it was he that helped her with this. I offered several times, especially during the week as the other kids kept up with their comments, but The Babe preferred to wait all week because she wanted it to be Daddy who helped. She was very patient.

#5 - Today was the perfect day. Not only was the weather great for it, not too hot, not too cold... but the mean kids weren't out. One family went away for the weekend, and the other family had visiting relatives and were otherwise occupied. We had the whole cul-de-sac to ourselves with no one else out looking over our shoulders, making comments, or making The Babe self-conscious.

#6 - Daddy is a very good daddy. They had set today aside for the event, and she has learned. She's a pro.

#7 - The Babe is braver than I thought. After she had learned, pretty much without incident, and was riding on her own, she had two crashes. The first crash happened because our 2 year old neighbor wandered into the street and she had to swerve suddenly to avoid him. I was proud of her, and told her if there ever was a good reason to fall, avoiding a child was up there on the list. The second time I think she just wiped out for no reason, and she got pretty scraped up. She cried a lot, but I was so proud that she got back on the bike and kept on trying.

That's my girl! I am so proud of her. She kept at it, through the frustration, and she was mostly smiles about it all day. She did really well, and she earned a new bike that she can use for a few seasons. The toddler bike has been put away... The Babe is so big... *sigh*

let's do the time warp again!

We've just gotten back from a week long vacation in Disney World. I was very apprehensive about this trip for many reasons.

I do not fly well
I have never flown with the kids
Maybe the kids don't fly well
I haven't spent significant time with my family in years
What if we all blew up at each other on day 2
It's hot in Florida in June
I thought the parks would be crowded
I was worried I wouldn't like the food
What if someone got sick while we were away from home?

See? See all those reasons to be worried? Well, phooey on them, because we had a great time. I actually flew really well, the best I have in years. All I can figure is that I was so focused on The Kiddos that I did not leave myself room to worry. The Kiddos flew well, too. They were very excited. The family concern was a non-issue. In fact, I wish I had seen them a bit more. We generally rode the bus to each park together in the mornings, but then we split up. We saw each other at a few prearranged functions, but mostly did not. There was one regrettable altercation, but that was it. Not too shabby. The weather was hot, no getting around that, but it wasn't unbearable (mostly). We drank lots of water and the hotel had a pool, so we managed. The parks were crowded, but it could have been a lot worse. Plus, the fastpass options on the rides means you hardly wait in line for most things these days. It's really nice, especially with small children. The food was fine. It took me a day or two to get over my phobia of different foods, but the food was good and there was plenty of it. No one got sick.

We had a great time. So much so that I am motivated to make a scrapbook, which is really not very much like something I would do... but I feel a need to commemorate the trip, to remember it always.

As we were on the shuttle bus leaving the hotel and going to the airport to fly home, The Babe said to me that she wished we could go home and start the week all over. *sigh* Me too. The one thing I hate about vacations is how they exist in a vacuum. There is so much anticipation and planning, so much fun during, and then you get home and it's like it never existed... everything just falls back into place and it's as though you never left. It's a bit depressing, and is a big part of why I want to make a scrapbook, I want to remember it while it's fresh.

I'm with The Babe on this one... let's have a time warp! We'll start vacation over and have all the fun again! Or at least be able to remember it always....

flashback? flashforward?

In December, 2003, while I was pregnant with The Boy, my husband and I signed all the paperwork and contracted to build a new house in a town about 40 minutes from where we were living at the time. We had done all the proper research on the new town: school districts, demographics, park district, taxes, etc... but we weren't very familiar with the town itself. The new house was slated to be ready in August 2004.

That spring and early summer, when we needed to get out of the old house so our realtor could have open houses or what-have-you, we very often drove to the new town. We checked on the progress being made on the construction of our new home, and we explored our new downtown area. The Babe was about 2.5 years old, and The Boy was about 2-5 months old.

Many, many, many times as we explored the downtown, The Boy would need to eat. I had found a little breezeway between two buildings that acted as a pathway between a parking lot and the main shopping section. This breezeway had a nice bench, was shaded from the sun, and was not very widely used. I sat there so many times nursing The Boy on countless different trips.

Flashforward 3 years. The Boy and I are downtown having a date today, just the two of us at the Starbucks while The Babe is in a class. We are just killing time until it is time to go pick her up. As we're sitting, bored, in the Starbucks, The Boy announces he wants to go sit outside. I say OK, there are benches just at the corner. We get to those benches, and they're right in the sun. It's super hot today and I was not interested in that. And then I had the lightbulb moment... and I took The Boy to our little breezeway bench in the shade.

He was tired. He laid on the bench with his head in my lap, sucking his thumb and clinging to his babies. I wished we had thought of it sooner, as we only had a few minutes to sit before we had to go for The Babe.

It was nice to sit there with him. It's kind of sweet that we have a little place of our own, our quiet little spot, right in the middle of the downtown shopping hustle. I know The Boy doesn't remember all the other times we've sat there, just the two of us, but I'll never be able to walk past it without feeling all mushy inside ever again.

acceptance

Recently, a friend of mine blogged about the need to be careful what we tell our little ones. They are so easily accepting of our explanations of the world. She could not be more right.

A long time ago, I told The Babe that if she was awakened by a nightmare in the middle of the night, the best thing for her to do was to go tinkle. I explained that when you tinkle, all the bad thoughts and scary monsters go away with the tinkle and get flushed down the potty. I figured that I had killed two birds with one stone there: 1.) She believes she got rid of the bad dream and will go back to sleep with very little fuss 2.) She has tinkled, thereby lessening the chance that she would have an accident during the night (we were potty training at the time).

I don't have an explanation for why I made up such a story, and I really have no idea where it came from. All I can say in my defense is that it is very likely I was in a 2:00am haze when I said it. But, however silly it seems, it has worked like a charm, and to this day The Babe believes that if she just tinkles, all the bad thoughts go away.

Tonight was a killer night at work (look at the time I am posting this!), and The Babe was up a couple of times as I was still working. The first time she woke up was around 1:00am. She came to my office to tell me that she had lost her covers during the night. On our way back to her room, I told her she should stop to tinkle. That's another rule of mine, not related to nightmares, that if you are up in the middle of the night, you tinkle (you can tell we had our fair share of night time accidents, can't you?). So, we stopped, she went, and I tucked her back in to bed. But, at around 1:30, she was up again; this time due to a nightmare. Uh-oh.

She had just tinkled the equivalent of Niagra Falls not 30 minutes before. As I am leading her back to her room to tuck her in, she stops me. "Wait mommy! I want to tinkle it out!" So, I'm scrambling... I warned her that she might not have any tinkle left, but never fear! If there is a lack of tinkle, I can tinkle for her! That still counts! OMG, I roped myself into the ridiculous 'tinkle eliminates monsters' theory. Lucky for me she was able to go a bit herself... but I bet she remembers that my tinkle can be called upon during some future midnight tinkle shortage.

*sigh* Yes, we do need to be careful what we tell them... quite careful.