Will's best day ever and other highlights from the week

Last week, my Aunt Mary sent us a few boxes of stuff from my grandmother's house. There were some very pretty bits of china and assorted knick-knacks but the highlights for the kids were the boxes and the packing peanuts. It's raining!! Wheeee! Shortly after the fun of sitting in the box wore off, Will got out and dumped the entire box of styrofoam on the floor. After the giant mess they made, I almost packed them up and sent them back to Aunt Mary.

In other fascinating news, I'm still working on my mastery of hair. I think this picture below shows a slight improvement. We think she looks like a bug with antennae. A cute little bug! She's already learned to dislike hair styling and hair combing time. I'm picturing lots of short hair in this girl's future.

So this weekend was quite eventful, but mostly for weird reasons. ***WARNING**** Story with multiple bodily functions straight ahead:

Saturday, we had a golf tournament and bbq with some of my co-workers. At the bbq, I started to feel queasy so we left early. On the long drive home, I realized that I needed to vomit, so we pulled the car over and I did my thing. Will decided that he needed to pee, so Glenn helps him out of the car and he proceeds to urinate on the side of the road with me. Keep in mind, this is a fairly busy, well-traveled road. The people driving by must have seen an eyeful. Will also decides that maybe he needs to throw-up too so he stands there making gagging noises and really not helping my cause. The rest of the way home, he is just fascinated. "Mom, remember when you threw up two times?! I have to throw up too! (insert more gagging noises here.)" I think the next time I have the stomach flu, I'm just going to check into a hotel.

Three year olds?!?

I'm away from home this morning for a quick work trip. It's been a while since I had to travel for work and for the first time in a long time, I actually enjoyed my evening away from the house. I missed the kids and Glenn but I liked having the remote to myself and sleeping in an air-conditioned room .... all by myself. I'm headed back home later today. This morning I sent Glenn an email to see how everything was going. I thought his reply needed to be immortalized on the blog so here you go:

Lucy:

Every thing went smoothly for most of the morning. Both the kids got up early which made things easier. Just as I was about to take everyone to school, I remembered I had not watered last night.

When I was in the back yard watering, Will started playing with the toy stroller and had a fit when I took it away from him. He cried the whole way to way to school (he was complaining about going to school earlier). The teacher was comforting him when I left.

This is the same kid who said he did not want to leave school yesterday and ran away and hid. Three year olds?!?

Glenn

The last blasts of summer

Despite the hot temperatures this weekend, it feels like summer is starting to wind down. The Montessori is closed for a few days (to allow the teachers to get ready for the new school year) so the kids get to spend some extra time with the Pauley Grandparents, who are so generous to come up and stay with them all day. I had planned on taking one of the days off but since I unexpectedly had to take a sick day last week (Reina woke up with a fever after her latest round of immunizations), the kids get a few parent-free days. Tomorrow, they get to venture to Gena's house for a day of fun.

On Saturday, we journeyed up to the State Fair so that I could do some work and the kids could see some animals. I brought my camera but didn't take a single picture, mostly because it was about 900 degrees and everyone looked hot and street urchin-y. On Sunday, we stayed around the house. I set up the kiddie pool for Will in the backyard. His swimming suit was in the washing machine so I told him just to splash around in his shorts. He doesn't like wearing wet clothing so he opted to strip down to ... the nude. It was very French Riviera in our backyard. I'm hoping that the nudity is one of the phases that ends by the time he's 5. Or 18 at least.

Speaking of our backyard, here's a picture of our tomato plants. They are as tall as the hollyhocks this year. We don't get to harvest many tomatoes because a certain 3-yr old eats anything that is slightly red on the vine so very few make it out of the garden. We also have a very lovely pumpkin/zucchini/squash? growing out of compost bin. I don't know how sanitary that is but I need to get a picture of it. Here's the front flower bed. The snapdragons have taken over. They are my favorite flower but they are starting to hide the rose bushes and the clematis. I might have to be more picky in my selection next summer.

Last week, both kids were playing with some boxes that had arrived the day before. I thought, "Hey! What a great photo opportunity!" By the time, I grabbed the camera Will had inexplicably bonked his face on the box and my great photo opportunity was quickly evaporating.
But it was slightly saved when I captured the face of the saddest 3-yr old in all of the world holding an ice pack to his nose? lip? chin?

While the daytime temps have been reaching the 90's (ugh), nighttime has been cooling off so I've pulled some of Will's old jammies out of the bin for Reina. She wears them well, don't you think? It's a little frightening that his current shoes almost fit her feet.

The following message brought to you by the Broccoli Farmers of America

While driving home from picking up Will at Montessori a few days ago, we drove past the high school football team practice. We had the following conversation:

Me: Hey look, they are playing football!
Will: I want to play football.
Me: (silently cheering inside!) Great! You can play football when you are a big boy.
Will: I AM a big boy!
Me: I know you are a big boy. I just meant when you are older, when you go to a bigger school.
Will: I'm a big boy. I'm bigger than (insert list of classmates here). I'm bigger than E. He's small.
Me: Yes, you are taller than E. That's right.
Will: E needs to eat his broccoli. That will make him a big boy.

Weekend highlights and a blast from the past

We had another busy weekend! Do I ever start a post with the words, "It was a quiet and boring weekend at the Pauley household?" Oh well, maybe this winter. On Saturday, we crammed in the Race for the Cure (Lucy), six hours at work (Glenn), canning (Lucy and Vicky), two birthday parties (Will and Reina) and two dunks in the pond at the Children's Garden (Will). We had to leave the first birthday party slightly early because someone waded into the koi poind and was chest deep in pond water. That someone was pretty excited to drive home naked. Here's a blurry example of my first experience with canning. Vicky and I tried canning peaches for the first time with mixed results. It's fun but I still have a lot to learn. We're trying green beans and pickles later this month. Should be interesting...

I was looking at the Race for Cure website today to see if I could find race times from previous years so that I could compare this year's time (competitive much, Lucy?). I didn't find the race results but did find this picture of a familiar toddler and a familiar aunt running last year's race. Will looks bored but he had a good time talking to us. Vicky was the trooper and pushed the stroller the whole time so that I could focus on staying upright. Neither one of us attempted to push the kids in the stroller this year. Between both of them, it's about 65+ pounds of kid. No thanks!

Reina - 18 months old

Yesterday was Reina's 18-month birthday and I thought it should be commemorated on the blog. She's moving so quickly out of babyhood and into toddlerhood. She's been walking for over a month but she's also moved on to running. She's quite fast, especially if she's heading somewhere she's not supposed to go.

Glenn wants me to record that she has a sweet, but also very stubborn and demanding personality. He's right. She can go from snuggly and smiley to red-faced angry in about 3 1/2 seconds if the situation requires it. She's also getting better about making her demands known through repeated "chew! chew! chew!" (chupee = pacifier) "out! out! out!" (I would like to go outside, Mother)

Reina's vocal skills have improved this summer. She's adding more words to her vocab every day. She'll say horse, hot (but always whispered, I don't know why...), owie, the occasional bobo (brother?) and both my parents thought they heard her say "grampa" this weekend. I think she calls herself ReeRee. She says it a lot but I'm not 100% sure of the context.

Reina's sleeping so much better lately. Both kids are in fact. I realized I've just jinxed us and tonight is sure to be short and sleepless but it's an amazing concept for our family to put kiddos to bed at 8:15ish and have everyone wake up in the morning. I feel so rested! Well, not exactly rested yet, but I can string a few words together and demonstrate more mental capacity than I have in a while.

We love our Reina girl and look forward to all of the new milestones and developments that will occur in the next 18 months.

Garage sales, petting zoos, demolition derbies and Water World!

What a weekend! After hosting our second garage sale of the season (and Will didn't pee on the driveway - yahoo!), the kids and I headed down to Brighton for the weekend so that Glenn could get a lot of work in without worrying about helping out at home. The Larimer (CO.) County Fair was this weekend so my parents and I took the kids there Saturday evening. There were lots of activities for everyone. Right off the bat, we saw a firetruck and Firefighter Will was in his element. He used to be content to sit in the seats but now he has to look for all of the different equipment and point out the extinguishers, hoses, alarms, etc. Is there such thing as a firefighter savant? The Fair had a petting zoo so we had to take Reina there. She was a little more cautious around the animals than I thought she would be but she was definitely interested! She didn't want to just pat the animals, she had to squat down and peer in the faces. She's the Sheep Whisperer! There was an antique tractor display and the kids could have a ride on? in? a barrel being pulled by the tractor. The adrenaline junky Will loves anything with a motor so he happily took a lap around the fairgrounds. We ended the evening with a demolition derby. Yeah, I don't really know what to add to that. If you've never seen a demolition derby, it's at least worth the price of admission. To sum it up in words from Will, "I want to see cars crashing each other." Will was really excited about having a "sleepover" at Grandpa's house. I was less excited because I knew it would result in the picture below. Co-sleeping with Will and Reina is not exactly restful. BUT, we hit the ground running on Sunday morning and headed to.... WATER WORLD! Or as I'll be encouraging them to change their name to WILL'S WORLD! This is pretty much the only decent picture I have of Will at Water World because he spent the rest of the time running around, splashing and water-sliding. All with a huge grin plastered to his face. When we first arrived, we found a pool area for kids his age and he was practically apoplectic. He would stand at the top of the water slide and make all these robot gestures before flinging himself down the slide. We had to forcibly remove him to get him to eat or take a break. Removals which always resulted in giant meltdowns. Let's just say that he's a big fan of Water World. Reina, on the other hand, was a little less impressed with the aquatic activities. She submerged herself within a few minutes of arriving there and from that point on, she was happy to splash around in very small depths but she was also happy to sit on the towel in the sun. I made Reina go with me down a small water slide and she did not like it one bit. Later I was splashing with her in the water and I asked her if she wanted to go down the slide with me again. She immediately turned and reached up for her Pop-pop. Message received, Reina.

Will and Reina fell asleep before I barely drove out of the Water World parking lot and went to bed at almost record-breaking early times tonight so I will take advantage of it and go to bed myself. One last note, however, for posterity I feel the need to preserve these examples of Glenn's amazing sidewalk art. It's Woody and Buzz! Greeting everyone on our front steps!

Mom and Reina's day of fun!*

*Okay, not really day-of-fun, more day of trying to fight off the bug that both kids gave me while also trying to get Reina to take it easy so that she could fully recover the from the bug that she was in the process of giving me and also do some laundry and catch up on work email.


As I predicted on Sunday, Will and Reina stayed home from school on Monday because they both had fevers and general ickiness. I can't get them to share a single toy ... but germs? viruses? No problem! By Tuesday morning, Will was fine (despite his protestations that "I'm sick too!") but Reina still had a fever and needed another day at home. I decided to take Will back to school so that I could (hopefully) rest and fight off the virus that they both so generously shared with me. Whenever I opt to take one or both to school so that I can stay home by myself, I always feel loads and loads of mommy guilt because THEY SHOULD BE WITH ME but I reasoned that it was better for Will to be at school so that mommy could feel better and not succumb to the evil virus that manifests itself in tiredness/crankiness/short-temperedness.

Wow. This is the blog post of run-on sentences.


So back at the house, Reina and I tried to get to feeling better and I have to say that it's now become one of my favorite memories from this summer. It's been a few months since Reina and I had some time to ourselves. She loved playing with all of the toys that she normally as to share and I think she probably liked having me all to herself, too. At one point in the morning, she was acting sleepy (actually, she climbed up the stairs into the living room and curled up on one of the clean pee pads we use for Canyon's middle-of-the-night potty adventures. Grandparents, I stress that it was a CLEAN pad, no dog urine present) so I brought her back downstairs in the hopes of getting her to doze off on the sofa with me. I made the mistake of turning the station to the Animal Planet that was featuring a show on cats. For the next half hour or so, my attempts at napping were interrupted by the shrieks of KIT-TY, AHHHHH, DAT DAT DAT followed by lots of pointing, gesturing, hands clasped on side of face and general enthusiasm for all things feline. We are obviously going to end up owning a cat sometime in the future. As soon as this kid is old enough to clearly enunciate her preferences, all we are going to hear is "I WANT A CAT."


The rest of the day was pretty nice too. Reina is learning how to play with toys and she kept bringing me glasses of tea to drink and food to pretend to eat and then spit out. she become really interested in my bare feet and examined my toes for a long time. As I sat there imagining Dr. Reina the podiatrist, she grabbed my big toe and tried to stuff it in her mouth. Yup, she's still a baby.

Carnivals and birthday parties

What a week! There's been a lot to blog about but not a lot of time to blog. With Frontier Days in town, we had carnivals to attend and parades to watch. There were also birthday parties and lots of fun stuff going on. It's no surprise that both kids are upstairs sleeping with runny noses and fevers. It's looking like my weekend will end being of the 3-day variety. But back to the fun stuff.

I took both kids to the carnival on Wednesday. Will had a blast on the rides. There was actually quite a bit that a 38-inch, 3-year-old could ride. He's fairly adventurous and loved the ones where he could "drive" himself. He wasn't a fan of the merry-go-round so unfortunately I have no cute pictures of him riding old fashioned carousel horses.

His first ride was on the train. It was slow and just went around in a small oval so he was a little nonplussed. He perked up when he saw the motorcycles and speedboats further down the line.
On a four-wheeler! It might be glittery but it's a four-wheeler! Recently Will has become obsessed with boy v. girl things. "Reina can't play with my blue hammer because it's a boy toy." He's also very concerned about baby vs. big boy toys, activities, privileges, but at this point, gender is the main issue. He told us the other morning that boys are the only ones who can be bosses. Hmmm. On Saturday, both kids attended a birthday party at a local park. The birthday girl was a classmate at Montessori who used to be in Will's class (before he moved up to the preschool level) and is now in Reina's class. Will's an old hand at birthday parties but Reina was pretty excited to be part of the gang. When they were handing out birthday hats, I didn't think that she would be a fan but she happily kept it on. It came off at one point and she came running over to me holding her hat and patting her head frantically like "Put my hat back on! Everyone else has one and I HAVE TO HAVE IT ON TOO!" Cake. That's all there is to say.

Today, Reina walked over to Glenn and carefully said "ourrrtttt siiiiiide" (outside) because she wanted to play in the front yard. She's trying to communicate more and more and she's adding new words to her vocabulary every week. She still gets frustrated and shrieks when she's trying to tell you something and you are too dumb to figure it out but she's making progress.

I know that there are a dozen other antidotes that I must record for posterity but it's getting late and I foresee a rough night ahead of me. Cross your fingers that everybody wakes up bright-eyed and fever-free.