Babyproofing

Well, "babyproofing" is taking on a whole new definition with these two newly-one-year-olds of mine.  I just found Ally crawling around with something long and sharp dangling from her mouth.  It was a doorstopper, which she had somehow managed to unscrew from the wall.

Sometimes things just happen

When the kids accidentally bump heads or something happens, I'll often say, "It's okay, sometimes things just happen."

A couple weeks ago, my mom and dad were watching the kids when Anna explained to them, "Sometimes things just happen."

A moment later, they saw Anna with the hose spraying water at everything in sight.

Clearwater Beach is for the birds

One of the things I find most fascinating about Clearwater Beach, where we went on vacation, is the birds.  They have more than their share of seagulls, but that's to be expected, being right on the gulf.  But, these seagulls are positively audacious!  All the restaurants offer outdoor seating, and the seagulls swoop down the moment anyone steps away from their plate, scavenging for leftovers.  What's especially disturbing, is that the birds will do this when someone steps away, even if everyone else is still at the table.  We quickly learned to cover plates with napkins while Dave or I took the girls on trips to the bathroom.  This didn't work every time, however; one particularly bold gull pulled a napkin off.

In addition to the seagulls, our hotel had another bird that frequented its restaurant.  I'm not positive what kind of bird it was.  It may have been an egret.  It was a tall white bird with a long neck; it was taller than the tables even when its neck was stretched up.  It walked around among the tables, waiting for a vacant plate off which it could snatch food.

One morning we were having breakfast at the hotel.  I'd gotten Kate a small bowl of syrup to dip her cut up pancakes in.  Since Kate wasn't eating her pancakes yet, Dave let Anna use the bowl of syrup.

After a while, Dave told Kate to eat her pancakes.  Kate said, in her five-going-on-thirteen voice, "I would, but someone took my syrup."

Anna perked up and said, as if she had a possible answer to a mystery, "Maybe it was a bird with a really long neck."

End of an era

Today was the last day before my babies become one-year-olds.  I can't believe it!

Memories

I'm making a picture CD for Ally and Luke's birthday.  Anna was watching me flip through the pictures, and she commented on some of them:

"That's Ally crying."

"That's Luke in his Exersaucer."

"That's Ally and Luke sleeping."

"That's us in our itchy shirts."

She hated that darn sweater.

An understanding sister

At breakfast, Kate and I were discussing when she was going to practice piano today.  I reminded her that yesterday she hadn't wanted to practice after breakfast.  She'd told me she was going to practice a little bit after both lunch and dinner, but she'd forgotten to do so.  She explained why she'd forgotten, and I said, "Okay, but today, you'll practice after breakfast."  She let out a little groan.

Anna was very empathetic, explaining, "When I was Kate, I didn't like playing piano either."

A bad vacation day

We just got back from spending a week in Clearwater Beach, Florida.  It was fun in many ways.  It was wonderful to have so much time as a family, to have Dave around the whole time, to have time with the kids without the usual distractions, and to be able to go the beach and the pool, but it was also a lot of work.  Air travel, including layovers, with a couple of almost-one-year-olds, an often defiant pre-schooler, and a five-year-old is challenging.  Taking those same kids out to eat for almost every meal is exhausting.  And trying to sleep two parents and four little kids in one room doesn't make for good sleep for anyone.

Thursday, our third day of vacation, was a particularly hard day.  We let Luke and Ally get overtired at the beach.  I dragged them back to the room only to have them both scream and cry the whole time I tried to clean them up, get them into dry diapers, and try to nurse them.  I couldn't console them.  I finally got them down for a nap and finished tidying up just as Dave, Kate, and Anna returned.  I was exhausted, and I was getting discouraged with the vacation.  We ate leftovers in the room for lunch and got Anna down for her nap.

Dave and Kate went to the pool and I was going to get some rest.  Just as I lay down, Ally woke up.  I nursed her and played with her.  When Luke woke up, he had a particularly bad poopy diaper.  I changed him, and then I put Ally on a towel on the floor (since we didn't have a high chair) with some bunny crackers to snack on and some toys to play with, so I could nurse Luke.  I needed to relax, so I checked my email and Facebook on my phone as I nursed Luke, distractedly listening to Ally play with her toys and smack away as she ate her crackers.  I remember thinking that Luke was either pooping again or passing gas, because he stunk.

A few minutes later Anna yelled for me.  I yelled that I was nursing, that she could come join us.  She came in and immediately said, "Ewwww."

I assumed she meant the smell, so I absently said, "It's stinky, huh?"

She said, "Yuck.  Yucky!  YUCK!"

"What, Anna??" I asked.

"Ally is playing with poop," she explained.

I jumped to action, taking Luke off my breast and plopping him down on the floor as I looked at Ally.

She was covered in poop, arms, legs, hands, face.  Oh, my God, she is eating the poop.  I pulled her poop covered hand out of her mouth and scooped her up to run her into the bathroom sink.

Then I reconsidered and plopped her back down, just long enough to move Luke farther away from the poop smeared carpeting.

As I scooped Ally back up, I gave Anna strict instructions to stay away from the poop and play with Luke.  For once, Anna looked more than happy to comply.

It smelled, oh, it smelled bad.  But that wasn't what bothered me.  It was the thought, the thought of her eating Luke's poop.  I began to gag.  I took a washcloth and tried to wipe the poop out of her mouth, but... but, how much had she swallowed?  I gagged more until I could taste bile in my mouth.  I tried to think of other things, but the thoughts weren't any more comforting.  What kind of mother lets her daughter eat her son's poop?  Will this make her sick?  E-coli!  Do I have to call Poison Control...  Call Poison Control... for the third time in as many weeks?  I just want to go home!

I scrubbed Ally down, head to toe, and inside her mouth.

I put her in the crib with some safe but exciting things like a plastic cup and sand shovel and dialed Poison Control as I began to wipe poop off the floor.  Every time I'd think I'd wiped up most of the poop, I'd step in more.  It was clinging in small chunks to my feet as I tried to explain to the lady at Poison Control what happened.  I told her how my daughter had crawled to the wastebasket and gotten my son's poopy diaper and then eaten his poop, and I just began to cry.  Luckily, the woman on the other end of the phone was amazing.  She acted like it happened all the time.  I still can't imagine that to be true, but I'll try to believe it, just so that I don't have to think I'm the only mom letting her baby snack on human feces.

The producer, Mommy, and the consumer

Epilogue
Saturday (two days later) Anna, out of nowhere, got this huge smile on her face.  Then she looked at me, laughing at the memory, asked, "Wemember that one time when Ally was eating her diaper with poop in it!?!"

Kate put her shoes on

It's hot.  It's in the mid-nineties.

After Kate's swim lessons, we came home and Kate and Anna stripped off their wet suits and we immediately made some mint sweet tea.  The girls had asked if they had to get dressed, and I told them not to worry about it right then.  Even with the air on, it's hot.

We drank the tea as Luke and Ally ate their lunch.  The girls loved it and asked for more.  I figured it was good for them to stay hydrated, so I agreed we could make more after lunch but commented that we'd need more mint.  

As I fed the babies and made some sandwiches for the girls and me, Kate and Anna ran to get more mint.  I heard Kate say, "I'm going to put my shoes on," and shortly after that, I heard the door shut.

That's when I thought, Shoes...  Are they wearing... anything else?

Did I call them back in like a good mother?  Nope, I grabbed the camera and followed them out.

The moment

Kate's peacefully blowing bubbles.

Anna is washing the car.

And here's the moment it all changes:

Anna's vitamins

We got a new kind of children's vitamins a couple weeks ago.  Because we could only occasionally convince Anna to take the ones we had, this time we got Tinkerbell vitamins, because Anna loves Tinkerbell.  Except now, despite a variety of tactics, Anna has refused to ever take even one.

Today, I resorted to threatened starvation.  I put a piece of her favorite pizza on her plate, and told Anna she could have it only after she tried half a vitamin.

Anna refused, screaming for her pizza, yelling that the vitamin was "yuck," and finally declaring she wasn't hungry for the pizza anyway.

Kate decided to help, "Anna, you've never even tried the Tinkerbell vitamins, so how do you know you don't like them?"

Anna answered, "Because I'm really smart."

One summer day

Clean up time

He's got three sisters, and we have one shower.  He may as well get used to it.

Two awkward teenage girls

I was at the park with the kids today.  We were the only ones there until a girl in her early teens arrived on her bike.  She approached the swings where I was swinging with Ally on my lap.  She didn't look up at us.  She just went straight for the swing, listening to some music I could vaguely hear through her ear buds. As I played with the kids for the next 15 minutes, I casually observed her swinging occasionally, thinking the poor girl looked pretty awkward with her pink glasses, pink shirt, and pink shorts, and an unfortunate haircut.  I remember wondering, Did those sides of her hair used to be bangs?  Is she growing them out or something?  She was in every way reminiscent of a 14-year-old me, not something anyone wants to shoot for.

As I was pushing the stroller over to another part of the playground, the girl came up to me and slightly manically inquired, "Can I ask you a quick question?"

I smiled and said, "Of course."

"Do you know a lot about guys?"

I didn't understand what she'd asked.  I hadn't expected that, so I wasn't processing the word right.  Gihz... is that the name of the area around the park? A shop nearby?  Hmmm?

"About what?" I asked.

"About guys."

Well, how was I supposed to answer that?  I married one, but I was never really good with them.  I never figured them out.  I smiled a little more and replied, "Uh... um... maybe."

That must have given me enough credentials, because she proceeded.  "What does it mean when a guy says he has mixed feelings about you?"

Okay.  Yeah.  That one I know.

That one I've lived.

Repeatedly.

That one sucks.

I didn't know this girl, but I've been this girl. And just hearing that line made me feel slightly sick, immediately, just like that.

What should I have said?  I didn't handle it in the best way.  Although, hours later, as I sit here contemplating the odd situation, I still don't know what "the best way" would have been.

I said, "Well... it's probably not good.  He doesn't like you as much as you like him.  And, it probably is not going to change.  You should stop wasting your time with him.  You should move on and find someone who really likes you as much as you like him..."

Yeah, I did that.

I don't know what came over me.  Who the heck did I think I was talking to?  What did I think I was accomplishing?  Did I think I was really going to save her the next five plus years of misery?  Did I think I was somehow going to save myself?

She interrupted my diatribe arguing, "You don't understand."

I said nothing to that.  Of course, I understood.  I understood so much more than she understood, but she wasn't going to understand.  And she isn't meant to understand.

After looking at me in anger a moment, she continued, "I've liked him for so long.  I've liked him since seventh grade.  I'm a freshman!"

I nodded sympathetically.  I know.

She continued, "You don't know him.  You'd just have to know him."  Then she turned to leave.

As she stormed off I said, "I hope it works out, honey.  I really hope it works out for you."

Pirate princess

Dave recently noticed Anna's eyes weren't lining up.  Since he has a history of being occassionally paranoid about our kids, I told him he was imagining it.  

Unfortunately, an eye doctor confirmed his diagnosis yesterday.  Anna has exotropia, also known as a "wandering eye."  About a third of kids with this condition get better on their own, a third stay the same, and a third get worse.  If it doesn't get better, it requires surgery.

For now we're trying to teach her brain to use the other eye by patching Anna's "good" eye every day for two hours. This morning it took nearly two hours of pleading, arguing, bribing, and attempting to manipulate her before we even got the patch on, but I don't think that time counts.

Anna, with her new pirate sword,
holding her beloved Nemo (whose eye is also patched)
watching Jake and the Neverland Pirates.

Adventure in Parenting

Call the Vatican, because it must be a certified miracle my kids have survived so long with me as their mother.

Let's just say the last couple weeks have been an absolute Adventure in Parenting!

My poor Ally has been hardest hit, for sure.  The downhill spiral began when I had to call Poison Control after she got into the Vaseline and I found her licking it off her fingers.  A few days after that was the incident where she was dangling upside down by her swing.  And then the most recent tops them both:  After scouring the playroom for anything that could be dangerous, I left Luke and Ally playing in there while I made dinner.  When I checked on them a few minutes later, I found Ally sitting in a pile of diaper crystals.  Her diaper had gotten so full it exploded.  In case that wasn't enough to make me feel inadequate as a mom, I then realized she was shoving her face with fists full of the pee soaked crystals.  I pulled her hands away from her mouth and scooped finger fulls of pellets out of her mouth.  This inevitably led to me making my second call to poison control in ten days, and that just doesn't seem like something a good mom would need to do!

Thank you, Ben Franklin!

Just how dependent I am on electricity became obvious last Friday when the power went out.
It was a hot morning and it was going to get hotter.  I hadn't turned on the air conditioning, though, because we were going to spend the day playing in the backyard with the slip and slide, sprinkler, and blow up pool and swimming at the city pool.  I was evidently one of the only people who didn't turned on my air, however, because the power went out around 10 am.

Since it was already so hot, I figured I'd get the babies down for their naps and then get the backyard set up.  The babies are used to sleeping with white noise from their sound machines which are electric, so I left them with my iPhone which has an app for white noise.  (There really is "an app for that"!)  After I got them down, I headed out to the (detached) garage to get out the pool, slip and slide, and sprinkler.  I pressed the garage door opener on the way out, but then realized it wouldn't work without power.  So, I reached for my keys to open the side door.  They weren't there.  I remembered I'd left them in the stroller after returning from the pool the day before, and the stroller was... in the garage.   Okay, I thought, I'll use the spare.  But, we keep the spare key in the garage, which we can access with the code that opens the garage door... except, that, of course, the garage door is electric.  It was a circle, a circle that kept coming back around to the fact that I couldn't get in the garage.

It was so hot.  I really wanted to let the kids play in the water.  I decided I'd call Dave; if he wasn't busy, he could buzz over and open the side door with his keys.  I picked up the phone.  It's a cordless, which of course doesn't work without power.  Well, maybe, we can just go to the pool once the babies wake up.  Nope, the stroller is in the garage.  Okay, so we'll play downstairs where it's cool... and dark!  Darn it!  Well, maybe I'll just get something done.  I popped soap in the dishwasher, and nearly pressed the button.  Well, I could start that load of laund...

So... we improvised.  Who needs a pool when you have a wok?  Who needs a slip and slide when you've got a hose and a slide?  And, nothing beats water balloons on a hot day!

But, I can only be creative (and hot!) for so long.  I was very grateful when the power came back on a couple hours later, and I've joined the legions of the air conditioned and am sitting in cool comfort as I write this.

Snapshots from our Fourth of July weekend

 Sunday we had an all-American cookout with Dave's family.

Monday we sported our tie dyes to walk/ride in the village parade,

and then headed to Miller Park to watch baseball from the comfort of a generous friend's suite!

Luke and Ally even enjoyed their first stadium hotdogs