pony week day 7

We went to the Tom's Cove Visitor's Center this morning so the kids could touch the animals in the touch pool.










In the afternoon we went to the beach. It was 6 month old Aidan's very first visit to the beach. We played in the surf for a very little while and then got attacked by biting black flies. There would be at least a dozen at a time on the kids even after I sprayed them with Cutter. As we walked away from the beach and rinsed off by the car, Alex was screaming like he was being attacked by a chainsaw. We've had a wonderful time on our vacation, but I think we are all ready for some rest and peace and quiet. Maybe they'll have a long nap on the drive home tomorrow.

pony week day 6 - the swim

We weren't sure we'd make to see the swim this morning since it could have been as early as 7am, but we caught a bus at 7:30am and arrived at the park just as the flare was shot to start the swim.












See the ponies that the man in front of me is pointing to? Neither did we. They were on the other side of all those boats and we could see a row of cowboy hats moving ant-like off in the distance, but couldnt really tell when they were in the water. The flesh blob in the picture is CHloe's knee as she was sitting on my shoulders to "see" over the crowd.









AFter the swim the ponies are rested for 45 minutes, then they are herded down the street to the carnival grounds where the auction will be held tomorrow. We were able to walk over to the road in time to get a fairly decent view.

pony week day 5

This morning we went to the Chincoteague Pony Center to pet tame ponies, and then we went to Trimpers Rides in Ocean City. The weather was incredibly agreeable for the end of July, and the kids had a blast. Grammy Carole said it was like Chloe ate springs for breakfast because she just bounced the entire time she was at Trimpers. Alex is really bonding with Granddad. He wants Granddad to hold his hand, and Granddad to go on rides with him, and to ride home in Granddad's car.

pony week day 4

We heard that the ponies from the north end of the island were going to be herded down the beach at dawn and we hadn't intended to go watch, but it just so happened that all of us (kids included) were awake by 6am and Grammy Carole and Granddad got word for a "Saltwater Cowboy" that the herd would be at the beach parking lot at 7:30am, so we decided to go after all. We joined a few thousand other on-lookers in the morning mist at the beach just in time to see the ponies. The cowboys seemed to outnumber the ponies, but we guessed that was necessary to keep the ponies safely away from the crowd on the narrow beach.

Natalie arrived last night, so we took her fishing and to Little Beach. We caught 9 or more fish in less than an hour and then the kids couldn't wait any longer to swim, so we headed to the beach.




The beach looked much different at low tide and there were thousands of these tiny snails.

pony week day 3

When we got to the boat this morning at low tide, the motors were in the sand so we couldn't pull the boat over to the dock to climb aboard. Casey did a tight rope walk to cross over and raise the motors enough for the back end of the boat to float loose.







We caught fish right away, some times 2 at a time since Casey rigged 2 hooks and 2 baits on each reel. The kids LOVE fishing and giggle and squeal when a fish is on the line or in the boat. They wanted to touch the fish, asked a million questions, and said "goodbye" to the ones we threw back. We caught more than a dozen in the first hour and then I stopped counting.








We went to Muller's for ice cream. I used to go to Mullers 30 years ago when I was their age. Chloe got her first ever root beer float and Alex had his usual mint chocolate chip ice cream cone. When offered a world of toppings, Alex just wants ice cream on a cone.

Our haul. 2 croaker, 1 spot, 1 king fishing (or whiting). All told we decided that we had enough fish for fish appetizers and then we'll go out to a restaurant for real dinner, but the kids wanted to eat some of the fish that we worked hard to catch.

pony week day 2

Today we met the local ducks. When we walked out the back door, they came waddling over as a herd assuming that we would feed them. Mostly they stayed out of arm's reach, but there were two bold ones who eventually took crackers out of Grammy Carole's hand.










We saw a pod of dolphin from the boat. They surfaced several times in the few minutes that we trolled past.











We ancored in a shallow spot off of "Little Beach". We could see ponies from the boat and it was shallow enough that even the kids could wade over to the beach. Alex and Chloe shrieked and giggled for quite a while because they were so excited about being able to stand up in the water.

pony week - day 1

Chloe threw up in Easton. By the time we got her cleaned up and got a 1/4 dramamine in her, she was ready for McDonalds! We stopped at the Salisbury zoo and the kids posed with this very cooperative alligator.









After unpacking, setting up beds, and having some dinner, we headed to the beach just to make it feel like we were on vacation.










On the way back from the beach we saw the ponies about as close as they could get. When I was a kid (30 years ago), the ponies were allowed all over the island and people would feed them (despite the signs). Now there is a fence to keep the ponies away from the road and the people. There are two baby ponies in the picture. As with all pictues on blogger, if you click on it, it will open into a larger version of the picture.

week ending july 27, 2008:

Week ending July 27, 2008: An early post this week because we are leaving for our 4th week-long vacation this year. By now I’m sure the kids’ perspectives are totally skewed by all these vacations and next year they are going to wonder why we AREN’T going on 4 vacations! I try to emphasize to the kids that money is finite and that we can’t eat at restaurants every day or we wouldn’t have enough money for groceries and toys and clothes. We can’t buy toys every day or our house would get too full, and we can’t go on vacation every month. They still say things like “when are we going on a cruise again?” I tell them that the cruise was a very special one-time vacation that we probably won’t do again, but once they get jobs after college they can use their own money to go on cruises. Of course they don’t get it yet, but I keep trying. Sometimes I try harder than others. Alex fell in love with a pair of shoes in Sears. Well, actually, he fell in love with the box. On the box was a picture of a cartoon-like figure wearing the sneakers and there were jets of air coming out of the bottom of the sneakers. Alex called the sneakers “blast shoes” and insisted that they would make him fly. I explained that it would be irresponsible and unsafe for a manufacturer to sell shoes that would little boys fly, and anyway, we didn’t know if Alex’s own sneakers still fit since he’d been wearing crocs and sandals all summer. It turns out that Alex’s sneakers were too small, and although (after several days of arguing) I was able to convince Alex that the sneakers wouldn’t make people fly, he still wanted them. JC Penny’s had a great sale “buy one get one for $0.88” on the character sneakers that the kids loved last year, but Alex would not pick any shoes except for the “blast shoes” which weren’t available in his size. I checked on-line and I could get the shoes in his size with free shipping, but they were more than I wanted to spend. I caved and bought them anyway. They had to be shipped from California and Alex said he wished we lived in California so he’d get them faster. I said then we wouldn’t be able to see our friends and family. He said he wished they lived in California too (I love the 4-year-old’s perspective on stuff like this!). The shoes finally arrived, and thank goodness they were in the same box that we’d seen in Sears (the web site didn’t show the box). The shoes are actually called “Airators” by Skechers and they came with a comic book about a short kid who wants to play basketball and he becomes a super hero called Kewl Breeze when he puts on his Airators because they have an air bladder that squeezes cool air between his toes every time he steps. Alex was so happy with the shoes that he wanted to sleep with them on, but settled for sleeping with them on his night stand. Everywhere we went for a couple days Alex would tell sales clerks and random strangers about his Airators (no longer called “blast shoes”). Hopefully Alex is still as enamored with his Airators in a month when he goes back to preschool for orientation so he has something that he wants to show off to his classmates. I'll post a picture of him in the shoes soon.

week ending july 20, 2008:

Week ending July 20, 2008: I’ll start the story with last week when we went to Dutch Wonderland and Chloe’s stomach was too upset to eat breakfast. She really had a miserable morning because of it. I’d been putting off the allergy testing that the doctor recommended because I was hoping that the latest increase in medicine would help her enough that we wouldn’t have to bother. Chloe is really afraid of shots since her last well visit when she got 5 shots, but with the stomach problems starting to interfere with her life, I had to do something, so I called the doctor and asked if we could eliminate some things from her diet instead. She said we could try 4 weeks on no dairy protein and then 4 weeks on no wheat. We went to the grocery store to look for dairy alternatives and bought soy milk and rice milk. We already had some Olivio spread to replace butter, but we couldn’t find a good alternative for cheese or yogurt. In the first day on the diet we had quite a long list of foods that we’d realized that Chloe wouldn’t be allowed to eat including milk, yogurt, grilled cheese sandwiches, pizza, mac-n-cheese, goldfish crackers, waffles, etc, and a pretty short list of foods that she could eat. Every time she complained about the restrictions I told her that she could decide to have the test instead. After just 24 hours she decided that she’d try the test. She cried a little when we first talked about it, but at the actual blood-draw she didn’t cry a bit and said it didn’t hurt. The test they did is called a RAST test and it measures IgE antibodies (which the body produces when exposed to an allergen) in the blood and doesn’t require the skin-scratch test. What we learned was that the only thing that Chloe is having an allergic reaction to is the cat, but that cat allergies don’t upset stomachs, so we are no closer to figuring out why Chloe’s tummy bothers her. She’s been on the increased dose of Prevacid for over 2 months and I don’t see an improvement, and a friend told me that Prevacid upset her stomach and that she did better on Zantac, so I asked the doctor if I should cut Chloe back to the original dose, to which she agreed. So we are back at square one, we have no clue why Chloe’s stomach bothers her. The same friend with the opinion about the Prevacid also had a pediatric gastroenterologist to recommend, so we’ll see if her doctor has any better ideas at our appointment in mid-August. In the mean time Chloe’s been on the ½ dose for about a week and is eating a little more food at breakfast time, especially since I borrowed a page from our friend Lynn’s book and made and froze a double batch of chocolate chip pancakes.

week ending july 13, 2008:

Week ending July 13, 2008:
Chloe asks: Why do people say “Cat got your tongue?”? I googled for some theories and found the usual array of horrifying answers at http://ask.yahoo.com/20061102.html. Luckily Chloe got bored and moved on before I was done with my search.

This week we went to Dutch Wonderland. Usually I report how well behaved my children are at these places while I see children all around me throwing fits. Well, karma caught up with me this time and it was my kids throwing the fits. Chloe got over-hungry twice during the day which led to two long bouts of crying. Alex had two incidents of screaming angrily at the top of his lungs, the first time while pushing his sister and the second time was directed at me. Both times I made him take a break from rides for about 5 minutes. I hate to punish the kids while they are at an amusement park, but I also don’t want to give the message that acting that way is ok. Other than those 4 problem times, the day was great. The kids were really brave about the rides and grinned from ear-to-ear much of the day. Both twins are just over 42 inches tall which put them into a new height category at the park and allowed them to get on some new rides. http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/DutchWonderland2008

Also this week we went to Natalie’s 4th b’day party. There were 21 kids there in the 0-6 year range, but the party was managed very well and went off without a hitch. There was a pirate theme with prizes for pirate costumes in both the adult and child pirate categories. I waited until 8am the day of the party to do anything about costumes. Alex has a pirate costume that he got as a xmas present, but Chloe didn’t have anything, so we dug into our supply of hand-me-downs and rigged a costume. It was so easy to do and the kids had so much fun with it that I was inspired to dig into my own past-their-prime clothing to make my own costume. In the end, I won a bottle of very nice rum for my efforst and Chloe told me she was very proud of me even if I hadn’t won. Since the only pictures I have are the ones I took, I don’t have a picture of my costume yet. http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/NatalieSParty2008

mind in the gutter 2008

Mind in the gutter 2008: Today’s been a particularly strange day for me. Today at lunch Chloe asked “Mom, what is the most sensitive part of the body?”.
“Uhh.. I.. Uhhh….”. I always knew that I’d have to have The Talk someday, but this wasn’t the way I thought it would be brought up. While I stammer Chloe comes back with, “What’s the most sensitive part of the face?”
“Well, inside your mouth is pretty sensitive”
“Your eyes are really sensitive though too, right?”
“Yes”
Now things are starting to make sense. In the last few months we’ve talked a few times about how sensitive the eyes are and how important it is to remember not to poke anyone’s eyes. Just to be sure that’s what we are talking about I say, “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know”
“What got you thinking about what is sensitive?”
Shrug.
Oh well. At least I didn’t have to bite the bullet yet.

Then later in the day Alex says “Mom, can I touch myself?” We are in the waiting room at the Sears Automotive department, and while I’d like the kids to entertain themselves, this isn’t what I had in mind, so I’m completely baffled.
“What do you mean? Where do you want to touch yourself?”
Alex points at his face and says “here”. Now things make sense. I’d just sanitized the kids’ hands so they could eat a snack and the rule is once your hands are sanitized you don’t touch anything or you’ll get more germs on your hands and have to be sanitized again. Poor Alex took that to heart and didn’t know if he was allowed to scratch his face without having to have his hands cleaned again.

So, now all I have to do is figure out why my mind goes where it goes when the kids are so obviously innocent.

obx 2008 day 7

OBX day 7: Check out was at 10am, but we were in the car by 9:15. A little bit of traffic turned the 5.5 hour drive into 6 hours on the road. The kids took a nap before lunch and then after lunch Chloe interrogated us for what seemed like an hour about what kind of pet she could have and when, and what she’d have to do to get a new pet. We talked about the responsibility of feeding and cleaning up after animals. I complimented Chloe for going outside to pet and play with Walt Disney every day and said that if she starts to feed him every day she’d be closer to being ready for a pet. Alex was largely silent on the way home. I think he may have been enjoying the relative quiet after a week in a house with 7 other kids.

obx 2008 day 6

OBX day 6: Today is the 4th of July, but we didn’t tell the kids that. They’ve been getting up every day just after 6am, so we figured they needed to get to sleep by 8p, before the fireworks started. At lunchtime we finished up the beer competition. Most people agreed that the winning beer was not their favorite, but was the least offensive. I think it maybe a metaphor for the coming elections. One family brought their bounce house and we were able to set it up in the living room to entertain the kids while we started packing for home. Pictures are of the Final Four, Top Two and the couple who brought the winning beer.

obx 2008 day 5

OBX day 5: Today 3 families went to Festival Island Park to see the Elizabeth II sailing ship, the Roanoke Island Adventure Museum, a mock settlement colony, and Paul Miller of Flow Circus (a one-man vaudeville style juggling act). We arrived just as Flow Circus was starting so we decided to watch. The kids seemed to be enjoying the show and when Paul asked for volunteers they both raised their hands. The packed theater seated maybe 400 people so we were surprised when Chloe was picked to come up on stage to help with a plate spinning act! Chloe was much smaller than the other volunteers and didn’t really “get” what she was supposed to do, but the juggler must have been whispering to her off-mic because when she came back to sit with us she grinned from ear-to-ear and said “I did a GREAT job!”. We all told her that yes, she had done a great job.

obx day 4

OBX day 4: Today the whole group went to Jockey’s Ridge (the largest sand dune on the US East coast) to fly kites. There was a great cool breeze off of the sound and the kites flew well. The picture is of 15 of the 16 of us from the house (I’m absent because I was taking the picture). After lunch Casey and Chloe and one of the other families headed back to the pool and Alex and I went to the Wright Brother’s Museum. Alex and I arrived just as they were starting a 25 min movie about the 1st manned flights and immediately after the movie the park rangers did a kids program in which they taught the kids how to make and fly 3 different kinds of paper airplanes. Alex said the movie is his favorite movie and has asked several times since when we can go back to the museum. He really loved it!

obx 2008 day 3

OBX day 3: Another early morning, 2 hours on the beach before lunch and a couple hours in the pool after lunch. The picture on the beach is of all 8 kids who are staying in the house with us aged 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 4, 5 and 9. The other pictures are of our “grownup” activity for the week. One of the Moms read a Washington Post article about a beer tasting contest set up in brackets like the March Madness basketball games, so she suggested “Beer Madness”. Each of the 4 couples in the house brought 4 six packs of unusual beer for a total of 16 beers. We divided the brackets over 5 days and for the tastings we’d compare two beers in a blind taste test by giving each person a two 1 oz samples. There was lots of good natured ribbing about who’d brought the loser beers and many of the comments were of the nature “that was VILE!” or “I can’t believe I put that in my mouth!”.

obx day 2

OBX day 2: After going to bed over an hour late last night, the kids got up just after 6 am this morning. We hit the beach (an easy walk across the street) before 9am and came back to the house for lunch. The twins played nicely with the other kids and for the first time in history, Casey and I got to sit down in our beach chairs while at the beach with the kids. Each year the kids get a bit more independent and each year Casey and I have more and more time for “grownup” stuff. After lunch we all hit the private pool in our back yard. I brought 6 squirt guns and the kids and grownups alike enjoyed squirting each other.

obx 2008 - day 1

Uneventful drive down. Left home at 9am, got to the rental office in Kitty Hawk at 4pm, exactly check-in time (with 2 stops on the way, and about a 1/2 hour of beach traffic getting onto the island). The house is very nice, much larger than we've had in the last 2 group vacations. This time there are 4 families consisting of 8 parents and 8 kids. While we unloaded the cars the girls found the princess dresses we brought down and I convinced them to pose for me. Usually we dine in, but this time we went out to dinner at Mako Mikes. The kids were a little rowdy from the long car ride and they ran laps around the table. Fortunately the restaurant wasn't crowded and the waiter was very understanding. He really earned his tip!