week ending may 25, 2008:

Week ending May 25, 2007: This week the kids made English muffin pizza at school and they were really excited about it. “Mom, we made pizza!” led to “but we didn’t make the dough. How do you make dough?” So I found a recipe and we went to the store and bought ingredients. The recipe is supposed to make enough dough for 2 pizzas, so I invited a bunch a relatives over to share in our experiment. The twins loved helping with the measuring and mixing and stretching of the dough, even though the dough was much stickier than it should have been. While the pizza’s were cooking Granddad decided to share the food-grade crickets that he bought at a travel show. Alex, Casey and I wouldn’t have anything to do with them, but Chloe decided that she’d try a leg. She said it didn’t taste very good (it was salt-and-vinegar flavored). A while later when we were telling everyone that Chloe had tried a leg, she realized that eating crickets was a good way to get attention, so she decided to try a body and bit right into one while I photographed her. And to think, I was impressed when Cousin Natalie told her mom not to forget the guacamole on her burrito!! Alex wanted “peanut butter pizza” because he'd seen it on Barney so I tried to talk him into just dough with peanut butter, but because I’d told him he could have “peanut butter pizza” he insisted on having tomato sauce, cheese, pepperoni, and peanut butter all on the same slice. These are the same kids who would ordinarily be called “picky eaters”!

We’ve been making the best of the good weather and doing lots of outdoor activities including bike riding. Chloe took a spill off her bike last fall and since then has insisted on riding only her tricycle, shunning the 2 wheeler (with training wheels). A few weeks ago I finally got her back on the bike if I agreed to hold the handlebars and walk next to her the entire time. Gradually she’s gotten braver until finally this week she’s back on the bike independently.

This week the kids were eating some lollipops and after they were done Chloe decided that she and Alex should pretend that the lollipop sticks were cigarettes. I explained that cigarettes are bad for you and they have chemicals in them that make you sick. Chloe said “I’m going to pretend that my cigarettes have good chemicals”. I didn’t know how big of a deal to make of it since sometimes the forbidden fruit is sweeter.

This week appears to be the all-Chloe-all-the-time blog, but some weeks are bound to be like that. We went to a party on Sunday and someone brought a mini-moon bounce. The kids did great for over 3 hours, managing to not bash into each other too roughly, but then Chloe took a foot to the face. I was on the other side of the yard and didn’t see what happened, all I knew was that there was blood-curdling screaming and by the time I got to the bounce Chloe was climbing out. As she bent her head forward to duck through the doorway a river of blood poured out of her mouth. I swear it looked to me like one of those slow-motion scenes from a boxing movie when the hero takes one on the chin. With as much blood as there was, I worried she’d lost a tooth or bit her tongue. I like to think I’m pretty calm under pressure, but that really shook me up. I carried her up to the house, screamed for Casey and started cleaning her up. Fortunately the bleeding stopped quickly and it turned out the blood in her mouth was all from her nose. She didn’t even get a swollen nose; she’s just one of those people whose nose bleeds easily (she gets nose bleeds in the middle of the night). All told, it wasn’t even a big deal, except in my head for a few minutes.

last day of school 2008:

Last day of preschool 2008: The last day of school was uneventful. Some of the parents pooled resources and got a gift for the teachers which we distributed on the last day of class. It was interesting to watch the kids go through the steps in their day and compare it to how things went just a few months ago at the start of the school year. Playing on the playground was largely the same with the kids having heart-stopping near-misses at high speeds on the tricycles, but that is where the similarities to the start of the year end. Lining up to go back into the school and walking through the hallways was a much more orderly affair. During snack each child poured their own water from a small pitcher, and after snack each child put their own cup and napkin in the trash without being asked. During story time the teacher did not have to stop and ask the kids to sit back down or to stop playing with each other, they just did what they were supposed to do. Other things my kids have learned during this school year include greatly reducing the amount of time it takes to get on their sock/shoes/coat before getting into the car, and most importantly, we’ve all 3 learned that we can survive a few hours a day without each other. Alex’s verbal skills and willingness to use them have increased dramatically and both kids have improved greatly in their writing/drawing skills. These improvements might have occurred even without school, just as a product of growing older, but over-all I think that going to school for 5 hours a week was a nice introduction to a class room situation, and I’m glad they got to meet so many other nice kids. Alex and Chloe would tell the story differently though. Even at the end of the year the kids would still whine and drag their feet when I told them it was time to go to school. Given a choice they would not have gone to school at all, even Chloe who was so popular with the other kids was not enthusiastic at all.

Everyone always asks me “so, what do you do with your spare time now that the kids are in school?” My plans were to do some projects around the house, and to start doing some research into potential careers since I only had 2 years left until the kids go to school full time. I did manage to paint a few rooms, but other than that, I got nowhere on my plans. I mostly ended up scrubbing toilets, vacuuming, mowing the lawn, and generally doing whatever chores or errands were easier with the kids not around. 2 hours to myself twice a week just didn’t turn out to be as much time as it sounded like it would be. Next year I’ll have 2 hours to myself three times a week, so maybe I’ll do better!

Smithsonian Environmental Research Center Open House 2008:

I think the pictures explain the story of our visit to http://www.serc.si.edu/, from their 1st school bus ride, to several festival activities. The beads are UV detectors and are bright colors in the bright sunshine and turn totally white when in an interior room of our house. Chloe's favorite part was the belly dancers, Alex's favorite part was painting the rubber fish to make prints, and my favorite part was the all-female all-drum band.

week ending may 18, 2008:

Week ending May 18, 2008: Sometimes conversations with 4 year olds are pretty strange:
Chloe: “Why is the candy label blue?”
“Because that is what the marketing department decided.”
Chloe: “Did they all have to agree?”
“I don’t think so”
Chloe: “I hope so. I hope they did have to agree.” I find it amusing that she was more concerned that the marketing department agreed than to actually ask what a marketing department IS.

Alex: Mom, is Florida still warm without us?
Yes.
Alex: Why?
Florida didn’t change its temperature for us.

I’m getting good at twenty questions:
Alex: Mom, will the brown thing go into the white thing?
Me: (We are in the living room, 1st thing in the morning, no brown things and white things in sight) “Will what brown thing go into what white thing?”
Alex: “the little brown thing into the big white thing?”
Me: “Where are they, in the kitchen?” (Wild guess)
Alex: “yes”
Me: “What do you use them for?”
Alex: “My rocket”
Me: “Oh, will the brown engine go into your white rocket?”
Alex: “Yes”
Me: “Yes, it will”
Alex: “How?”
Me: “There is a little metal holder”Alex: “Where?”
Me: “I don’t know”

Sometimes I just don’t know what planet my children are from:
Alex: MOM! Chloe SPAT on my dessert (I look over and see Chloe still poised over his plate and the offending spit, complete with bubbles, in a pool on top of his dessert)
Me: Chloe, WHY did you spit on your brother’s dessert?
Chloe: I don’t know.
Me: Well it was a really bad idea! It is really rude to spit on people’s food. How would you feel if Alex spat on your dessert?!
Chloe: Well you can clean it off.
Me: NO! That does NOT make it ok to be very rude to your brother!

Sometimes they are so cute I could eat them up:
Alex: I think Grammy Barb will be very excited to see us.

Bay Day 2008

Bay Day 2008: Alex and Chloe’s school hosts a festival at Sandy Point State Park and they call it Bay Day. I was a bit worried about going to an event with 100 or more preschoolers, but it turned out to be a nice morning. There are no buses, so each family had to drive their own child(ren) and stay to chaperone. The teachers were assigned “stations” to run such as face painting, digging for treasure, bean bag toss, sand castle building etc. There were enough stations that there was never much of a line for any one station and the beach had plenty of room for the crowd. The station where the kids spent the most time was the touch pool, which didn’t even have any prizes. One of the faculty, Mr Morehead, had filled a wading pool with bay water and blue crabs, bait fish, an oyster, a muscle, and a horseshoe crab. Mr. Morehead had put rubber bands on the crabs’ pinchers. At first Alex and Chloe didn’t want to touch anything, but they watched the other kids, and they watched Mr. Morehead as he held animals and talked about them. After a while they each got brave enough to hold a crab, and then they started sticking their hands into the pool and picking up whatever they could grab. After a while I had to drag them away to do something else. We ran into several kids from their class and Chloe was excited to see them. One little girl named Meredith dragged her mother over to introduce Chloe. Meredith is not in Alex and Chloe’s class, but sees Chloe in the hall while they wait to be picked up at the end of the day and apparently talks about Chloe all the time. Lately Alex has been saying that he doesn’t like going to school, doesn’t have friends at school, and is lonely at school. We’ve been talking to Alex and his teacher about this, but haven’t managed to improve the situation yet and since there is only one week of school left, I don’t suspect we will. Oh well, there is always next year.

Mother's Day 2008:

Mother’s Day 2008: Casey got up with Alex at 6:30am and I went back to sleep. The kids made me hand-drawn cards and each gave me a grilling tool that was on my wish list (I cook on the grill almost every day, even in the winter). I decided that I wanted to go out in the canoe since it has been a lawn fixture for almost a year and we’ve never used it. A quick google found a ramp at Truxton Park where we could launch and off we went. It was about 60F and overcast, which turned out to be perfect weather since even with two of us paddling the 4 of us in one canoe, it was enough exercise to keep me warm. We paddled down to the Eastport bridge and could see some of the taller landmarks of downtown Annapolis like the State House. When were back in the smaller creeks, people would greet us from their docks with friendly hellos and wishes for a happy Mother’s Day. One mom voted us the cutest thing on the water. For lunch we went to the same Thai restaurant that we we’d gone to the previous 2 years. The kids sucked down the satay but weren’t enthusiastic about the pad thai noodles. Chloe ate most of the fried green beans and all of the shredded carrot garnish. Then we headed to Grammy Carole’s for a party for Great Granddad’s 86th birthday. The kids played very nicely with Natalie and we got to show off our usual 100 pictures from the trip. Their youngest cousin Aidan is 4 months old and loves watching the big kids and giggling when they giggle. He’s quite a ham! When we got home Chloe informed me that she needs a new lamp because her lamp that I bought to go with the nursery furniture is “for babies” and she’s “a kid now”. I’d say she’s right! I'll download the pictures later. I've been at this for over 2 hours tonight!

Florida day 7: We started packing up and hit the pool one last time. Then we went to MomMom’s 88th birthday dinner at Benihana. The kids LOVED watching the cooking. Blade must have said 4 times “This is AWESOME!”, Skye wanted to take the cook home with her and Alex and Chloe were mesmerized. All the kids loved the onion volcano and Alex ate his ice cream with chop sticks. Best of all, they actually ate the food and I got to eat mine in relative peace.

Florida day 8: Uneventful trip home. The kids were torn about whether they missed home or whether they wanted to stay in Florida forever. Mostly they wanted to stay. Alex asked if we could buy the “rentable house” (as he called it) and live there.

Florida 2008 day 6:

Florida day 6: We went to Clearwater Beach for some swimming and sand castle building. The sand and water there are beautiful and we had a great day. Our excitement-of-the-day came when the seagulls dive-bombed Blade and Skye who were eating lunch on the beach. One bird knocked the sandwich out of Skye’s hand and another took a french-fry out of Blade’s hand as it was on the way to his mouth! Casey, his sistser Trish, and his Mom are pictured.

Florida 2008 day 5:

Florida day 5: Back to Walt Disney World. We went back and forth about whether to try Animal Kingdom on our 2nd day, but decided that there was enough left in Disney that we hadn’t done yet. This time we knew exactly how much time to allow to get to the park and we arrived just as the pre-show started. The lines were super-short all day and we saw over 12 attractions, some of them twice. Many rides had only 5-10 min waits and some rides we walked right on (no line at all). The kids were very brave and wanted to try all the big kid stuff. We had read that the haunted mansion is really more silly than scary so when the kids said they wanted to try it, we said ok. We walked in the door and they heard the 1st scary noise and bolted for the door. I don’t think we lasted 5 seconds in there! They also tried Big Thunder Mountain which is more of a mid-sized roller coaster. After we got off Alex said “I’m going to tell Grammy Barb that ride is WILD!” They were very proud of themselves for riding it, but at the end of the day when we’d done everything and offered to let them ride Big Thunder Mountain again, they both said “no thank you”. Chloe’s favorite ride was the spinning tea cups and Alex rode Buzz Lightyear twice because each rider gets his own gun to shoot bad guys. Again, the kids were very well behaved and we didn’t have any tantrums. We went to Margaritaville for dinner, an annual tradition. The kids had been asking “When do we get to go the restaurant where we get to yell ‘Salt! Salt! Salt!’?”

Florida 2008 day 4:

Florida day 4: We took the day off the parks and decided to go to Downtown Disney (a shopping and restaurant venue) in the morning and the pool in the afternoon. At Downtown Disney we went to the Lego Land store which is a huge store of all Legos. Alex was in heaven and spent some more of his souvenir money from MomMom. Then we rented a 17 foot motor boat (with a 9.9hp engine) and drove around the lake for a half hour. Except for the occasional ferry, there was no other boat traffic, so we let Alex and Chloe take turns driving the boat. The console on Casey’s boat is so tall they’d have to stand on a cooler to drive, and the boat traffic is so heavy at home on the weekends, that we’ve never tried it. They loved getting to decide where to go and steering in that direction (which was mostly in circles).

Florida 2008 day 3:

Florida day 3: We planned to get to the park before “rope drop” because all the travel guides advise that the ride lines are shortest in the morning. Well, we over shot and got to the park FOURTY minutes before the park opened. We parked in the very first row closest to the park. No matter though. We put on our sunscreen while we waited and Disney World does a show starting 10 minutes before the park opens in which all the characters arrive at the park entrance via steam engine and do a song-and-dance routine complete with confetti and streamers. The day went great and we rode all the rides that we had planned to and some that we hadn’t. Chloe spent all her souvenir money from MomMom on a Princess Jasmine costume (Aladin’s wife). After she put the costume on she said “Daddy, you are supposed to bow when you see a princess!”. Everywhere we went the park all the employees greeted her with “Hello Princess!”. Grammy Barb sprang for lunch in Cinderella’s castle that has to be booked exactly 180 days in advance. Chloe loved meeting the princesses there and Alex loved the sword that they gave him. The kids were very brave on most of the rides except that Chloe didn’t like the dark on the Buzz Lightyear ride and neither kid liked the thunderstorm and hefalumps and woozles on the Winnie the Pooh ride. Alex didn’t want to get on the very small Barnstormer roller coaster until after Chloe had already been waiting in line for about 10 minutes, so I told him he’d have to wait until she was done and then we’d talk to Daddy about where Chloe was going next. It turned out that Chloe loved the coaster so much that she wanted to go on in again, so we all 4 went on the next time. Except for while Alex was over-hungry waiting for lunch, we didn’t any of the usual over-stimulated rotten-child behavior that we saw from other kids all over the park. All told, it was a great day.

Florida 2008 day 2:

Florida vacation day 2: Uncle Bill’s cereal box has Speed Racer on it and Alex talks non-stop about Speed Racer until we go to the grocery store and let him spend his souvenir money from Grammy Carole on a Speed Racer toy. After lunch it was plenty warm enough for the pool and the kids jumped right in. At home the kids have been doing well “swimming” with their coast-guard-approved life jackets on, but the last time they tried swimming with the less-bulky intended-for-pool swim aids, they couldn’t keep their lips far enough out of the water to be comfortable (a few months ago). I decided to try the less-bulky aids again and the kids were a little panicky at first and were dog-paddling for all they were worth to keep their heads up, but neither one of them whined or complained or even mentioned giving up. Chloe in particular seemed very determined and kept doing short swims with her father close behind in case she got in trouble. By the end of the afternoon both kids were swimming independently with the vests and I watched both of them from the side of the pool. Their cousins Blade and Skye arrived in the afternoon and although Blade is 10 and Alex is 4, they bonded right away and played together quite a lot. Blade was very conscious of not splashing the twins and not doing anything to cause them to tip under the water although he nearly constantly intentionally aggravated his 8 year old sister. I was impressed that, a few small reminders aside, no one had to tell Blade to be careful around the twins.

Florida 2008 day 1:

Florida vacation day 1: Uneventful trip. Alex was pretty quiet on the plane and Chloe tapped my shoulder every 5 seconds saying “Mom…” I tried to amuse her with dot-to-dots and her new $5 Barbies, but I’m just not good at Barbies. Because Chloe has always had a twin to play with, she doesn’t know how to play by herself at all. The kids liked the play area and the tram at the Tampa airport. At the condo they got to play at the playground while we grilled some burgers for dinner, but we didn’t have time for swimming in the pool. Fortunately we’d warned them in advance that we weren’t going to have time for anything fun on the travel day.

week ending may 4, 2008:

Week ending May 4, 2008: An early entry this week since we are off to Florida, and a condo with no WIFI (the horror!). Chloe started ballet this week and says she likes it. I’ll have to take her word for it as there is no observation glass in her classroom and no room for 12 parents to sit in there and watch. Poor Alex gets to sit in the lobby with me and 11 other moms and 11 other siblings. He doesn’t seem to mind though. Chloe says she is learning “French Ballet” because the words like “plie”, “releve” etc are French.

The kids are having a bad day today because our cat Wanda died. Actually I had her euthanized, but all they know is that she died at the vet’s office. When I explained that I was taking Wanda to the vet because she was very sick and very old they asked “why?” and I said her stomach isn’t working right, she throws up all the time, and her body isn’t getting enough nutrients from her food so she’s getting very skinny (“nutrients” is a word with which the kids are familiar). Chloe said maybe she has bacteria in her tummy and Alex said her white blood cells need to fight. They wanted to pet her to see if she was ok. I found her in her usual closet hideout and pulled her down so they could pet her. When I came home from the vet, Chloe ran over to the car and asked if Wanda was home. I explained that Wanda died at the vet. “Why?” Her heart stopped beating and she stopped breathing. Oh. “That means we have to go to the pet store and get another pet?” Not today. I suggested we say a prayer. We thanked God for our time with Wanda, and wished her a happy after life. It was several minutes later when it seemed to hit both kids. Chloe flopped in a pile on the steps and whined “I MISS Wanda!”. I pulled her onto my lap and we cuddled for a while. Alex came over and told me he had been singing a song about Wanda dying. I asked if he’d like to sing it for me to hear. He said we’d have to go outside to sing it. He paced back and forth across the front lawn and sang “Wanda have died. God is this nice? No!” over and over. I guess everyone deals with sorrow in their own ways. Just for an extra kick-in-the-pants, I later discovered that Wanda had peed on Alex’s bed before I’d taken her to the vet. Anyway, hopefully we’ll have a nice trip next week to distract us.