Spring Break Part II

For the second part of Spring Break we went to Austin.  We stayed with my good friend, Julie.  Her hubby was out of town but we had tons of fun with Julie and Annie.  I LOVE Austin.  Maybe it is because I only ever am there on vacation, but I just love the feel of it.  It always seems like a much more family focused town than Dallas.  So many more restaurants have playgrounds, lots of outdoor activities, so much more laid back... 



Anyway, the kids were thrilled to arrive at Miss Julie's because they have a great backyard.  They were restored by free play outside- playing with the dog, in the rock box, helping with the garden.  The first morning we met our friend, Jenn, and her daughters for breakfast tacos at Taco Deli. We ate outside and then decided to hike the greenbelt across the street, well, as much as you can call it hiking with 4 big kids and two toddlers. Duch fell and got a bloody lip that swelled up pretty big and knocked a tooth loose. She soldiered on to play with the kids.  The big kids explored all over and we moms got to sit out in the sunshine and chat (and panic every once in awhile when a toddler got close to the edge of a rock!)

Later that afternoon we went to the park and had a great time.

That night Julie went to teach an infant massage class and I watched all the kiddos.  We did baths and played with play doh.  I bathed the little kids first but should have had PJs ready before we got in the tub.  Both kiddos were wrapped in their towels and I hear Huck peeing on the floor- I threw his towel under him to catch it and I heard Annie say "pee pee."   I replied, "yes, he is going pee pee."  Then she replied "Annie pee pee" and sure enough Annie was going pee pee too!  I just laughed and hurried up with the diapers. 

The next morning (Huck's birthday) we went to an environmental center.  It was super cool- they had a little classroom type set up where you can touch and explore all kinds of "found" things in nature- rocks, bones, animal skins, shells, etc.  They had a sign saying "Please DO touch"  and Bubba said "that is pretty much the opposite of everywhere else!"  Then we went outside to dig for "dinosaur bones."  and they also have local wildlife exhibits- raccoons, fox, opossum, snakes, fish, etc.  And so cool, we saw Aunt Sara and the cousins there, too! 

We left and had lunch at a fun restaurant that had a playground.

 

Then we headed home.  We stopped just out side of Waco for some ice cream for the birthday boy!  He has on a birthday shirt that says Birthdays Rock and has a rocket on it.  He refused to have his sweatshirt zipped up all day because it would cover up the rocket!

My Littles

Before I do Spring Break Part II, an update on daily life...

Bubba

  I can see him growing up right before my eyes.  The influence of his peers in showing more and more.  Some good ways, some not so good.  Like Gangum Style.  And You Tube.  I cringe every time I hear any reference to Gangum Style.  He has taken to saying it as a replacement to any exclamation- it can mean "Oh no!" or "Great!" or just randomly uttered with no apparent connection to anything except inside his head.  He asks if he can watch You Tube videos- "I promise they are appropriate, Mom!"  Appropriate in content maybe, but trashy junk as far as I am concerned so "no" is my answer.  Unless it is research of some sort.

 He was invited to a sleep over last weekend.  He had a good time even though they stayed up much too late.  The friend's parents went on and on about what a polite, respectful kid hi is when I picked him up.  I'm not surprised because I agree, but it is still great to hear.

He survived a week of school with a substitute.  By reports, she is not the kindest of ladies out there.  It was a good opportunity for us to discuss persevering with a positive attitude when the circumstances are not the best.  We got his latest reading testing results.  The difference between this time last year and now is remarkable.  He is reading at a 4th-5th grade level.  Why we need to know this exactly, I'm not sure, because to know this they have do test for it.  We know he is reading well, his teacher knows he is reading well, shouldn't that be enough?  But I guess that is a part of public school, thanks Congress and the Texas Legislature.  He does not really have trouble with test taking so I'm not going to worry about it much.  He enjoys the popular books the most, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the Humphrey the Hamster books, A to Z Mysteries, etc. I tried to interest him some more classic books without much success.  But I am not complaining because he is an almost 8 year old boy who is choosing to READ.

He has changed his mind about wanting a hamster!  Instead he wants to use his incentive chart to earn the Skylanders video game...  Peer influence at work again!  You would think I would be bale to tell you more about it since he tells me LOTS about it, but for some reason it all seems to go in one ear and out the other.

He plans to continue with dace next year.  Miss Amanda has offered to scholarship him 100% next year.  She gave him several choices of classes and he chose to continue with ballet.  She is very pleased.  She said typically this coming year (8 years old) is there time when boys quit, but if they stick it out they will often continue on for many years.  We'll see!

 

Duchess

  Ah, my girl.  Not a ton of new stuff to report with Duch.  She continues to do well in school.  She is reading great.  It sounds as if she is friends with many of the kids and talks about them all.  Here is a recent conversation that illustrates the difference between the info you get from boys vs girls. 
Duch: Mom, Kate has the same shirt as me.
Mom: Really?
Duch: Yes, and Kate shares a locker with Anna.  They are in Miss Pitcock's class.  Anna is Vivien's sister.  Vivien, Anna and Ruth are cousins.  And I share a locker with Ruth. 
It's like 5 degrees of Duch!

She had one of her art projects selected to be in a district art show.  She had a hard time understanding why she couldn't take her mask (the orange one) home with her when every one else did.  She was so proud when the whole family went to see it on display with projects from the whole district!  We took her out to diner and she got to chose- Red Lobster it was!

She is also continuing with dance.  She dances around the house and walks with her arms held in various dance positions.  She can not wait to get her dance recital costume. 

We went to see Disney On Ice last weekend.  It was a very princess focused show.  The tickets were donated for staff and patient families at work.  It was pretty fun.  Duch loved it best of all, as is to be expected.  The show was about 2 hours long and had Ariel, Merida (Brave), Rapunzel and Belle.  And the horse, Maximus, from Rapunzel.  How do two people actually manage to skate in that costume???  I made it very clear before we went that we were NOT buying any souvenirs.  I did let them get an $11 bag of artificially colored sugar, aka cotton candy.  Duch did not like it but likes the crown that came with it.  The show was over lunch so we also had hotdogs, but surprisingly a kids meal with a drink, hotdog and chips was only $5. 

She has enjoyed playing with the neighbors very much, as have all the kids.  I think it is funny that she still says she had a "play date" with the neighbors even if they just played for 15 minutes when they all happened to be outside at the same time.  I tried to tell her that is not really a play date, it is just "playing outside with the neighbors" but she didn't believe me.  One of the neighbor boys had his birthday party last weekend and they all had a wonderful time!

Huck

 



The busy 2 year old!  He is working very hard on being able to put up 2 fingers to tell you how old he is.  Many times he holds up one finger on each hand to make two.  In just the last month his speech is getting better.  Still not what I would like, but improved.  He is making more sounds and getting closer to the actual word, like "bash" means bath which is more than he was doing a few weeks ago.  We are going to hold off on the speech eval for a little bit and see how he does. 

I have started the process of night weaning him.  I have told him he can have Mama Milk at bedtime and in the morning, but no Mama Milk at nighttime.  I try very hard to get him to go to sleep in his bed.  Usually somewhere between 1-3 AM he'll wake up and come in our room and then I would nurse him back to sleep.  Sunday and Monday he would not go to sleep in his bed and wanted to nurse all night.  This Mama needs some more sleep than that!  So I started on Tuesday.  The first night he cried/fussed/stayed awake for about an hour.  Last night he fussed for about 3 minutes.  Hopefully that will continue, but I'm well aware that it may take much more work than that!  He is in that awkward phase where if he takes a nap during the day he will stay awake until 9:00 at night, but if he doesn't take a nap he is a wreck by 5:00 or so.  If he does nap I won't let him sleep longer than 2 hours or past about 3:30, because then he'll be up until midnight! 





I'm pretty sure that Huck will be the first kid to need stitches or break a bone.  He seems to have no fear.  He will jump off anything!  He LOVED the bounce house at the neighbors party.  The next day he would not believe me that it was gone until I took him and showed him.  Then he just looked heartbroken :-( 

The Bigs:
The Hubby and I decided to take out all the bushes in front of our house.  Some were dead and the others were scraggly looking.  The Hubby worked really hard to get the rusty metal edging out while Bubba and I chopped off  all the branches of the bushes.  We got about 5 of the stumps out, but one side of the house had 20 stumps!  Yesterday the Hubby was out working and a tree service drove by and offered to grind them all out, so thankfully that is all done.  Worth the money to not have to do it ourselves.  Today the plan is to go to the nursery to pick out new shrubs.  We are looking for low maintenance plants as neither of us is super interested in gardening.  I would like some kind of flowering bush, though.    I post some before and after pics later.

Spring Break

Thanks to The Hubby, I should be able to do some more blogging.  See, I am sitting at the kitchen desk at our fancy new computer!  One of the things that kept me from blogging as much as I'd like is how time consuming it was to upload pictures before... and let's face it, that is what makes it much more interesting.  So now my only excuses are a house that needs cleaning, dishes that need washing and a toddler who is demanding my attention- so, we'll see.

To backtrack a little bit, Spring Break!  Spring Break started for Bubba with an invitation to a birthday party at Great Wolf Lodge.  It was an invitation to spend the night!  We have never been there, but from what I knew about it there is a great, big indoor water park and some type of game called MagiQuest where the kids run all over the hotel on a quest for something.  There were going to be just 3 other boys along with the birthday boy and his family.  He had a wonderful time and could not stop talking about MagiQuest for days (weeks?). 

Meanwhile, those of us at home dropped The Hubby off at the airport Saturday morning to go to Florida for Hanks Open and his Grandma's memorial service.  We came back home and I started some laundry, jumped in the shower and sat down at the dining room table to make a list of what to pack.  Huck came wandering in with his hands and feet soaking in water.  He lead me to the kitchen where there was water all over the floor.  Poor Huck, I blamed him for the mess thinking he had poured water from a cup on the floor (as he has been known to do.)  But the spill kept getting bigger and bigger until I realized the water was coming out from under the laundry room door.  The washing machine had overflowed.  I was pretty sure the waste water pipe out of the house was blocked because it has happened before.  I called a plumber who could come in 3-4 hours.  We took care of a few errands then the plumber came, he rooter-ed out the drain and I could finish laundry.  I got the call to go pick up Bubba, we walked out the door and found my van had a flat tire!  We took the Husband's car to get Bubba.  I called AAA to come put my spare tire on.  It was dusk when the AAA man got here.  I went to throw something away in the outside trashcan and there was a opossum in the trashcan!  The AAA man chased him away for me.  Geesh!  We got the tire patched Sunday morning and finally were able to get on out way.


We headed to San Antonio where we were meeting my sister-in-law and nephews.  The drive went pretty well and we got there just about 6:00 ish I think.  Sara had the great idea to order pizza to the hotel room.  We were staying at a Residence Inn in a 2 bedroom suite, which was great because there was plenty of room for everyone and still a chance for some quiet-ish space. 

 

 

The next morning we got and headed to Sea World!  The weather was cool but sunny.  We saw the dolphins, sharks, and rays.

 

 

 

 

We also saw the show Aquatica.  It is kinda a Cirq de Sole type show with beluga whales, dolphins, birds and people diving a sky dancing.  It was cool. 

 

 

 

Then we went to the Bay of Play area.  It is a giant play area with climbing and tunnels and the like.  It was so obviously NOT designed with any parent input.  It was impossible to keep up with you kids and there were many exits so that your kid could end up wandering off into the park.  Even the toddler area has 2 exits on opposite sides of the play area.  The kids had fun, the moms- not so much...

 

After that we planned to leave the park, get some lunch and go back to the hotel to try to let the little boys nap.  The little boys, however, had other plans.  Since they were not going to nap, we decided to go swimming.  Everyone got changed, we walked down to the pool and it was closed!  Such disappointment! So we decided to take the kids to the Alamo.  They were not thrilled...

 

at the Alamo

We had dinner on the Riverwalk, which was fun but stressful as the kids were tired and finding a place to eat that did not have a long wait was difficult. 

 

The next day we started the morning out by swimming at the hotel pool. 

 

We then packed everything up and checked out of the hotel.  We returned to Sea World for more fun.  We saw the penguins and alligators. 

 

 We saw another show and then Sara and her boys headed back to Austin.  My kids and I headed over to see the Shamu show, which we just missed.  So we feed so flamingos and ducks, did some shopping, ate a late lunch and then saw the next show.  It was great.  Huck had a hard time because by this time he was tired, but it was still worth staying longer for. 

 

 

 We left about 5 and headed up to Austin for part 2 of the trip.  

 

I'll post part two another time.  I have jinxed myself and Blogger is not making it easy to post pictures after all.  Plus I have a house to clean and a toddler who wants my attention...







Happy Birthday, Huck

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The above was contributed by guest blogger, Huck, age 2

I can't beleive my baby is two years old!  If you ask him, he is NOT a baby nor is he a big boy.  He is a Toddler!  And he is very much so. How to describe my boy... hmmm..

Perhaps some vital satistics?  At his 2 year old checkup he was 27.7 pounds, 35 inches tall and his head was 50.17 cm.  Which makes him lean, tall and big-headed :-)  He is a healthy boy, although he has had a run of ear infections this year.  He does have some new eczema on his legs that I am not sure of the cause.  I suspect diet since when we were on our Spring Break trip and eating junk it was much worse.  Or perhaps the car seat, like my nephew, since we spent a lot of time in the car?   He had a finger poke for some blood work and 1 shot.  We used the Buzzy Bee www.buzzy4shots.com for both and he did not even make a peep.  The nurse was amazed at how well it worked and was telling everyone in the office. 

He is very busy all the time!  He climb anything and has recently mastered climbing down out of things, like the playhouse in the backyard.  He runs, jumps, crawls, gallops...  Lately he has been enjoying wodden puzzles.  He is quite good at them.  He likes the shape sorter as well.  He like zippering up his jacket/ PJs.  We are seeing some emerging pretend play as well.  He plays with his brother and sister and is a little mimic.  Duch and Huck have been playing together more and more and often enjoy each others company.  The one area of concern in regards to development is his expressive language.  I don't have concerns about his receptive language as he understands everything easily.  He follows commands, he points to pictures, knows the parts of his body and appropriatly answers questions.  However, he uses mostly sounds as opposed to words.  He has only maybe 10 words that a stranger would recognize.  We are going to take him for a speech evaluation as I would prefer to intervene sooner rather than later. 

He is a pretty good eater.  He will eat a variety of foods.  Some favorites are bananas, oranges, mac and cheese, steak and any and all sweets.  He will flip out for fruit snacks, which is why I won't buy them.  The Hubby, however, has no problem buying them...  He is nursing several times a day, mostly before naps, at night and after a fall of some sort.  He does not show any signs of self-weaning. 

He goes to sleep at night in his toddler bed in is room, but wakes up and comes to my bed at some point during the night.  He can open the door from the inside now so I hear him rattling the door knob for a bit before he wanders in to ask for Mama Milk.  He takes a nap when I am home, usually for 2 hours or so, but does not nap when home with the Hubby (unless it is in the car.) 

He is more shy around strangers and takes a little bit to warm up.  He will stick close to my side or climb into my lap and put his chin down on his chest until he is more comfortable.  Once he warms up he is free with smiles and waves.  

He loves to play with balls, coins, blocks, puzzles, computers and the play kitchen.  He loves Mickey Mouse and still loves Veggie Tales.  He does appear a bit more interested in TV these days as his attention span is growing. 

He can be very stronged willed at times.  He will NOT share his food with his brother or sister, even if he is finished with it.  He would rather throw it in the trash than let one of them eat it!  Sometimes he will set his mind to something random and there is no changing it! 

We got to celebrate his birthday with Uncle Mike, Aunt Sara, William and Dillon which was great fun.  We were still on our Spring Break trip on his actual birthday so we celebrated a few days later when we were all back together.  He is a blessing to us!

Ear Infections and the Beach

|Right now the kids and I are at home in Dallas and it is 34 degrees outside at 11:00 in the morning.  The Hubby is in Playa del Carmen, Mexico where is it 70 and cloudy.  My mom is in Panama City Beach, Florida where it is 50 and sunny.  Neither of them have perfect beach weather but I'd still rather be there than here!  At least it is sunny here.  The Hubby had to go to Mexico for work.  His boss owns another bar there and the woman who runs it was going to be gone, so the Hubby was sent down to look after it.  My mom's friend asked her if she would like to go to the beach, so they packed up the car and drove to Florida for an undetermined amount of time. They plan to read books, look out at the ocean and do some shopping. I hope that when I am retired I can do things like that. 

Both Duchess and Huckleberry have had ear infections the past two weeks.  I got paged at work from the school nurse telling me Duch was in the clinic complaining of an ear ache.  I took her to the doctor and sure enough it was infected.  That makes her 4th ear infection in 12 months.  She had 1 the first 5 years of her life and suddenly she is having trouble.  The pedi was concerned because she said she should not be doing that since she had her tonsils and adenoids out.  So we may be in for another trip to the ENT. 


At the doctor

I let her stay home from school, looks real sick, right?

While we were there she looked in Huck's ears and they were clear.  That was a Tuesday.  Thursday night I knew Huck had an ear infection.  He couldn't sleep and was hitting his ear.  I thought I would try to wait it out and see if it would clear up on it's own.  Friday he was okay but then Sat afternoon he woke up from his nap with a fever of 104.1.  So off to the doctor's we went Sunday morning.  Thankfully our pediatricians has Sunday hours in the winter.  He had an infection in each ear.  That make 7 ear infections for him in the past year!  So both of them were put on Omnicef.  We may be in for an ENT consult for him as well.  I'm more concerned for him because that is a lot of antibiotics for one little guy's gut.  He does take probiotics each time, but still.  I am also getting concerned about his speech.  He has no problems with his receptive speech but his expressive language is made up of about 4-5 sounds.  He imitates syllables and intonation, but most things sound the same.  I think he is very good at communicating, he just doesn't use understandable words.  I am self-referring him to ECI for a speech evaluation.  I'd rather do it sooner than later and I understand the process can take some time.  It could be that some ear tubes will help, we'll see. 

Now this poor baby looks sick :-(

Bubba, thankfully, has stayed healthy.  Just a little bit of congestion.  I am so grateful that we have (at least so far) avoided the flu.  Knock on wood!!!! 

I put some baby clothes and baby equipment in a consignment sale this weekend.  I was kinda sad to see all those sweet baby clothes leaving the house, but we do not anticipate another kiddo in out house needing them.  This sale has a cool on-line system where I can see what sold so I know I made about $100.  I chose not to discount or donate the things that did not sell.  I'll try again next time, maybe lower the price or maybe not.  As a consignor I got to shop the pre-sale.  I got Duch 5 or 6 outfits, a few shirts and a pair of jeans for Bubba and 1 outfit for Huck for $60. 

Sweet baby clothes...

Bubba is going through books so fast we can't keep enough in the house for him.  He loved the Ready Freddy series and just finished The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Clary.  I love that he loves the books that I read as a kid :-)  I wonder if he'd be interested in Ramona Quimby, Aged Eight?  We need to take a trip to the library.  He made a chart to earn a hamster.  He is doing extra chores to earn each check mark and once he has 20 he will earn his hamster and everything that goes with it.  We told him he has to wait until at least after Spring Break so that we won't need to find a hamster sitter.

We are going to San Antonio and Austin for Spring Break.  We will meet Aunt Sara and the cousins in San Antonio.  We plan to go to Sea World, the Alamo and the Riverwalk.  We may be crazy for the 2 of us to take 5 kids to Sea World during Spring Break, but we up for the challenge!  Then we'll head up to Austin where we'll stay with a friend for a night or two and see some other friends there.  The Hubby will be in Florida for Hank's Open and Grandma K's memorial service. 

Update on our Healthy Eating Challenge: 

Make Your Own Pizza!  The kiddos made these when we had a friend over to play.  I made the whole wheat pizza crust from scratch and the kids liked it. 

 

 

I think we are doing pretty well.  The kids are more aware of what we are eating and frequently ask if something is healthy.  There has been some complaining about "never getting anything yummy anymore" like the donuts they wanted at the store yesterday.  I am so aware of artificial colors- they are everywhere!  I can't look at things the same way anymore.  Duch was invited to a birthday party where the mom made a gorgeous rainbow cake where each layer of cake was a different color of the rainbow.  My first thought was "Wow, that is cool!" but it was quickly followed by an internal cringe at all the sugar and dyes...

 I have slacked off a little on the fruit at breakfast, so I need to focus on that more.  I have cooked more whole wheat goods.  Some were a hit, some were not.  Whole wheat waffles- hit.  Whole wheat mac and cheese- miss.  I think that I did not get the roux creamy enough with the mac and cheese, or maybe I need a different cheese.  I'm not giving up on that one yet.  Whole wheat biscuits- big hit.  Whole wheat pancakes- ehh, kinda in the middle.  I also made mini egg casseroles which were a bit hit.

Round Breakfast- home made biscuits, egg casseroles and clementines

 But on the flip side, I also let the kids buy lunch 3 times last week.  I just didn't get everything together in time.  And we ate out after ballet and had pizza and pasta which was full of white flour.  I blame it on The Hubby for going out of town!