The Flip Side

This has been an eventful week in home...Daddy left for a work conference on Monday morning and I received a call around 10:30 from Kendall's daycare revealing her 3 bouts of poopies that morning and that I needed to come get her. Whatever bug she had was brutal - not just from the poopy situation - but it made her extremely fussy and needy.

Monday continues with no more bathroom incidents, so Tuesday morning I prepare her for preschool, sadly relieved because she was being so high maintenance and I have been struggling with some sort of sinus infection/cold that hasn't left me in the most patient of moods. We walk into her classroom and her teacher says "Kendall can't come back for at least 24 hours."

I almost cried...that's how bad you know it's become, when you'd rather work than stay at home. So I take her back home and we wash all the yuckiness out of the house from the previous day and make it to the store to pick up some pedialyte and other necessities...I felt really grumpy for about an hour...I'd invisioned how this day was supposed to go down, and this was NOT IT...but then something miraculous happened...I prayed about the situation and really got over it...Kendall had a gloriously long nap and I had the chance to continue my study of Proverbs in the merciful afternoon sun...this all again showed me that just because I plan something doesn't mean that 1) it's going to happen or 2) that I can ever have the best plan...because in this case, it was such a blessing that I ended up staying home that day. I had the chance to snuggle with my sick baby, mop up the pieces of my home, and give my sanity a much needed rest.

More from the Book of Kendall

A typical morning conversation between Kendall and myself...

Kendall: "Mucky, Mommy" (translation = milk)
Me: "What do you say?" (trying to ease manners into every day life)
Kendall: "Warm it up!"

We'll keep working on that one...

Stay-cation here we 'go'?

This past week (and a half, for part timers like me) was vacation time for our little family. I think the last real break we had was our mini-vacation to College Station over Memorial weekend 2009, since I refuse to count maternity leave as vacation. We have a trip scheduled for July but neither of us could stand to wait that long, so we decided to try out the 'stay-cation' and booked a couple nights at Great Wolf Lodge.

I will say this...the trip to Great Wolf (as with the rest of the time off) was fun but definitely not relaxing...I think the day of the relaxing vacation is on hiatus for awhile, unless we can budget in a few nannies here and there. My dad described it best - if you take the kids, you have the stress of the kids...but if you leave the kids, you miss the kids...not sure what the solution is yet, but we have another decade or so to figure it out.

So we stayed a couple nights at Great Wolf early on in the week and I would definitely recommend it. Loved the water park. The rooms are super clean and safe. A little pricey, but considering it took us 10 minutes to get there, it had an automatic advantage, plus what vacation is not expensive? Kendall was a little apprehensive but she tried (aka we pushed her) down one of the baby slides a couple times. Trenton and I had a blast on the adult rides, particularly on the day my sister and her daughter Rachel were able to join us. I have never been a huge water park fan ever since I got a bloody nose from going down one of the slides at Wet 'n Wild and park security 'tracked me down', but I think I may be reconsidering...

Each evening the hotel has a story time, complete with singing and dancing trees and forest creatures. We only caught story time the 2nd night, of which I only saw about 5 minutes before I heard a gurgle gurgle and suddenly saw the explosion rise up on Leah's shirt. Trenton said that Kendall enjoyed it and even took a picture with "Wylie," although instead of howling at him, like the rest of the children were instructed to do, she did her classic "funny face" which I'll have to detail down below...the rest of the evening she talked about Wylie...when we asked her where he was, she explained that he was 'outside the door' but when we offered to let him in, she was no longer such a big fan.

For those of you who know me well...my feet were horribly bruised from the rides, but sadly I did not photograph the injuries as I usually do...strange since I photograph most things these days...but I didn't have much time to dawdle on the injury before we were unpacking from the trip (from which we had an obscene amount of baggage for only 1 full day) and moving the furniture around for the carpet cleaners to come Friday.

Pan to Saturday, Rangers baseball day! Yes, we did take both children and no, we won't make that mistake ever again. Oddly, Kendall was fine and it was baby Leah that put up all the fuss. I think the poor child is teething horribly and she cried for probably about 2 hours on the outing. I think I got to see a few innings, but the rest of the time was spent walking her back and forth outside the stands.

Trenton, Kendall, and Wylie

The Water Park

Blessed Easter

I love Easter more as an adult than I ever did as a child. Partly I think this is because many of my Easter memories were with my mom and sister solo with my dad on a trip somewhere. I find that slightly odd because even though, as a pilot, my dad was typically gone 3 to 4 days out of every week, I don't remember him being gone much. My dad was always great about being involved the whole days he was at home.

But returning back to Easter, for some reason I have memories of my dad being away, my sister (almost 6 years older) away at some friend's house, and my mother and I alone at home. I really don't recall many egg hunts, in fact the most noteable Easter memory may have been the one time it snowed that year and my chinese uncle Jack and a neighborhood friend walked the whole mile to the local Kroger for marshmallow eggs and jelly beans. That frigid walk felt like the longest mile of my life, at 7 years of age. In fact, I think Uncle Jack had to run home and drive to pick us up - we were that cold.

I also have a much greater appreciation of God's sacrifice - as a mother, but most importantly as a wretched sinner that has no business being anywhere near the glory of God. However, in some miracle of events that we can never fully thank Him enough for "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." I would post a few pictures, but I have so many that I love I decided to put together a slide show. Maybe it's the beautifully colored dresses, or the looks of genuine joy as the kids find 'candy gold', but I always end up with so many precious pictures that I can never decide which ones to include...

Kiss?

Kendall definitely has her super sweet moments...today at work I had an unfortunate accident...on the way into the bathroom, I somehow caught my pointer finger in the door.  It actually didn't hurt that bad, really surprised me more than anything, but suddenly I started to feel dizzy.  I head back to my desk, barely able to keep from falling over and put my head on my desk.  I sat there for probably 15 minutes - completely freaking out my two coworkers next to me...my ears were ringing, I had tunnel vision, I felt sick to my stomach, and sweat started to pour down my face and neck.  Finally the feeling passed, but the rest of the day my finger has felt numb and I get flashes of pain at the tip.

But that is actually not the point of this blog entry...I pick up the girls, we head to the park and then home for dinner.  As we are sitting down to play, almost more to myself than anyone, I say "Mommy has an ouchie."  The next thing I see is Kendall's head poking around the play house saying "kiss?"  I nod my head and she runs over and gives me the sweetest little kiss on the end of my finger asking "all better?"

This moment ties with another last week when she threw her arms around my neck and said "Bee miss you."

Thomas the Train

This post is a little delayed, but the 'lock out' incident of last week took precidence over this one at the time...a couple weeks ago we visited "Thomas the Train" at the railroad station in Grapevine.  It was a little chilly with the very strong wind, but the sun made it more pleasant.  I don't recall ever being on a train, so I found it interesting loading up into the old-fashioned car...the trip wasn't terribly long (it was carting mostly 2 year olds) as it moved in one direction for about 15 minutes, then reversed directions and came back.

Kendall wasn't hugely aware of Thomas the Train prior to the trip, other than that her cousin Jake is a giant fan...but after being pulled by him and now checking out his website, she can scream "THOMAS!!!!" with the best of them.

Here are some shots of the day:

Our Fam - minus Jake, who was next to me

but too short for the pic

Jake, Pa, Maili, Ella -

with Thomas watching in the background

They had a small petting zoo near by...Kendall just loved the animals, although you'll notice the "blur" of her hand "petting" aka "smacking" the poor bunny upon my request to touch the poor dear...

Bee and "Rosie"

Tread these waters carefully...Toddler on the loose!

I find Kendall to be intensely facinating...she is pint-sized but packs a punch of contradiction and extremity.  What can possess a child's mind to lovingly pat her crying baby sister one minute and then steal her pacifier the next?  Or give Mommy a 'Bee Hug' followed up by screaming 'No Mommy!'

Today was again a prime day for observing Kendall's greatness...this morning, Kendall and I were out back picking up 4, possibly 5, months of accumulated doggy doodie...or should I rephrase, I was picking up doggy doodie and Kendall was trying to shove the dogs in her playhouse, jump on my back, climb on the patio furniture, and dump bubbles all over her tricycle...so as I am thinking two things:

1. Picking up Doggie Poopie is like an Easter Egg Hunt without any of the candy reward

and

2.  How ridiculous is it that I have to buy oodles for dog food and also have to pick up the by-products from it?

I realize that the backyard has become ominously quiet...for my 2 year old daughter has gone in the house and...just like daddy...locked me out!  So I start peering through the screens of our back windows - trying to spot the little squirt and hope that she can remember how to unlock, not just lock - but the child is no where to be seen.  I run around the side of the house to try and catch Trenton's attention, who is mowing the front lawn, but he can't hear me.  The gate to the front of the house is locked - which I've silently (and sometimes not so silently - sorry neighbors) cursed numerous times from being locked out by Daddy - and now by Kendall.  I run back to the house and try banging again on the door and windows.  I start to get nervous - fortunately Leah is fast asleep in her bed - but Kendall being on the loose unsupervised can be horribly scary.

I realize then that Kendall is standing right by the window now - probably laughing and pointing her little chubby fingers at me the whole time - and I try to coax aka BRIBE her to open the door with candy and cookies...whatever will work faster...but she can't figure out the lock and tells me it's 'boken' through the window.

Finally I flag down Trenton over the fence and he comes to my rescue...little stinker.

I'll conclude with my Kendall laugh of the day...I had taken the girls in the double stroller on a run to the park while Trenton was 'de-thatching' our yard (what this functionally does, I do not know)...at any rate, on the way back from the park Kendall wanted to run herself and kept telling me "no talking - we running" over and over...