Changes and random photos

I've been a bad, bad blogger lately. Our weekends have been busy and the sun is shining and Trigger needs exercising and needless to say, there hasn't been much computer time. But bad blogging for me usually means that we are out having fun and that's been the case this month.

Between all of our summer fun, we are getting a few projects down around the house. One of my priorities this month was to move Reina out of the crib. But before we could do that, we had to get Will a new bed so that Reina could have the twin. I've been looking for a bunkbed for ages and just haven't found one that was cute without being dainty, masculine without being bulky and made out of something that could stand up to Will's barrage of swords, metal die-cast cars and millions of lego pieces. As you can imagine, my search has been exhausting! Finally a few weeks ago, I ran into one of our local furniture stores on a whim and found a bunkbed that met all of that peculiar criteria. Voila! We even forked over a few extra bucks to have it delivered and assembled. Glenn and I have had some of our biggest marital arguments errrr, loud discussions because of furniture assembly so I've learned from previous lessons. Back to the room - this is a BIG BOY room! I couldn't bear to take down the quilt with his name on it so he's going to have live with that for a while longer. Sorry for the weird picture, my camera is still on the blink (probably because I haven't actually tried to get it fixed yet, details, details) but you get the gist. Next, we took Will's old bed and moved it into Reina's room. For the first time since March of 2007, my house doesn't have a crib in it. Whimper whimper. But somebody loves her big girl bed, even though she's actually throwing a tantrum in this picture. She's staying put each night and even going to bed without a fight. It's really a bedroom miracle. I tried to let her pick out her own bedding but she kept gravitating to the princess genre and since I'm still not sure where I sit in the whole princess as role model argument, we compromised on princess sheets and pillowcases and a cute owl, barnyard animal, randomness quilt. Yeah, I compromised with a 2-yr old. Imagine that. Actually, I snuck the quilt in the cart when she wasn't looking and presented it as fait accompli when she woke up from her nap in another room.

This is a random photo that I took earlier in the month. Will is super into swords and battles right now. If I remember correctly, he was a king in this picture. King of John Deere apparently. He's such a delightful little goofball right now. The battles and epic adventures that take place in his head are truly legendary.

Finally, I went to North Carolina a few weeks ago for a conference. I was in meetings all day but our hotel was right on the beach, so I took a few walks and jogs next to the water in my free time. I missed the family but I was really able to enjoy having a few nights to myself. I can't wait to take the kids back to the ocean.

The next post will have loads of pictures from our Great Camping Adventure of 2011. Stay tuned!

Old Timey kids

Last month, the kids' preschool offered a 'vintage' photo session for the children. I didn't plan on ordering any prints because I can rarely get a smile out of Will when I'm holding the camera and his current dislike of being told to do well... ANYTHING would result in some pretty weird photos. Yeah, I couldn't have been any more wrong. I love the hand-holding and the barefeet, plus, are they actually smiling at each other? They are? They aren't yelling "no fank you!!" and preparing to slap? It's a photographic miracle! Look at my 1920's baseball player. He's smiling at the camera, his face is relatively clean. He looks lovely! Okay, so this one makes me giggle. He looks more like a 1920's gangster than a baseball player. I think he's about to rattle some skulls with that bat.

Who's this dreamy girl? This angelic face can't be the same person who throws herself down on the floor in a heap of wailing anguish upon hearing that we are all out of cheese sticks? The same girl who takes her diaper off and leaves it lying on the floor but absolutely refuses to use the toilet, even though she was gung-ho about it a few months ago? Not this sweet face - must be someone else!

Yep, this is the picture that sold me on the whole bunch. I'm going to frame this one and gaze at it years from now when they are surly teenagers who can't even stand to be in the same car with each other. Once upon a time, they were a brother and a sister who smiled, held hands and melted their mommy's heart.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to Glenn! I wrote him a mushy card today so I won't repeat everything I told him, but suffice it to say that he's more than a piece of furniture for kids and dog, he's the backbone of our family and we all love him very much.

Let's do a quick update on everyone listed in that picture -

Trigger: Calming down ever so slightly. Glenn's been working with almost daily and Trigger shows a lot of potential as a bird dog. When I take him on walks, he points at robins, doves, ceramic rabbits in the neighbor's yard, a lump of oddly shaped grass clippings and one time, a cat. Even though he can be a furniture chewing, diaper-destroying terror when he's a wild mood, he's still a sweet dog and a nice companion around the house.

Reina: This girl is talking a mile a minute. She's very curious about everything and we have many conversations that involve the following:

R: Mommy, what's that?
Me: That's a flower pot.
R: Flower pot?
Me: Yes, flower pot.
R: Mommy, what's that thing?
Me: That's a wheelbarrow.
R: Wheelbarrow?
etc. etc. etc.

It's like introducing the English language to a non-native speaker. Or an alien. A very inquisitive alien who wants to know what everything is and repeats it in the sweetest little voice you've ever heard. Unless that voice is shrieking "I do it MYSELF!" for the 90th time that day.

So yes, she's curious, independent and very sweet. Last weekend we took the kids camping for a quick overnight in our new camper. We were all having a great time and then after dinner, Reina started to get clingy and droopy at the same time. She went to bed very early and that was a slight warning bell. She woke up a few hours later and when Glenn picked her up, he remarked that she was burning up. Since I hadn't though to pack the thermometer in our camping stuff (rookie mistake), I watched her sleep for a little while and then we decided that I would drive her back to town and the boys would camp out until morning. Reina and I drove home in the middle of the night. While her fever wasn't dangerously high, it hit 102.5 the next morning and I was glad we were home. After we brought Will and Glenn back to town, Will started acting droopy that afternoon and the same weird summer virus hit him. Long story short, we all had an abbreviated work/school week and everyone is feeling fine today.

Will: He's still in the sword-toting, gun-carrying, weapon-obsessed phase that's lasted a little while now. He doesn't necessarily seem to want to harm anyone, he just wants to be prepared. While he's not studying to be a mercenary, he's finally interested in learning how to write his name. He's thisclose to writing it by himself. If I help hold his hand steady (not Ouija-board style mind you), he can write his first name. I was feeling sorry for him having to learn the "W" with it's peaks and valleys and ups and downs but then I realized that the next three letters are just straight lines with a dot thrown in there so I no longer feel sympathetic to his plight. It's very gratifying to see him interested in learning something that might actually come in useful one of these days. Not that the weaponry won't....

Glenn: Besides being the best dad on the block, Glenn's been working very hard with Trigger and teaching him all sorts of hunting commands. We've enjoyed getting the family out on camping trips and Glenn has an amazing ability to back the truck up to the camper and get it hooked up in one attempt. This has done wonders for reducing conflict in our marriage because I'm usually the one giving the backing-up directions.

So despite the time were spending fighting off summer germs and keeping Will from running away to join a roving gang of ninjas, we are enjoying our summer. We hope you are too!

A little about Will

Will spent the weekend with Pop-pop and Grandma Hansen a few weeks ago, while Reina was recovering from her tonsil surgery. We thought it would be a win-win-win situation for everyone - Will gets to hang out with fun people, Reina gets to recover on the couch without having to watch Bobo's movies and mom and dad get to focus on one kid. It worked out well. Will had a blast and as I've previously mentioned, cried in our driveway when he realized that he was coming back home. Pop-pop took a few pictures of Will's adventure so I'll immortalize those here:

Before the Great Haircut of 2011. Arts and crafts time with Grandma... Just being a boy in the backyard.... With the new sword that Grandma made tucked into his shirt and a BB gun that is (probably) not loaded, Will is armed to the teeth.
I really have no idea what's going on here. That's clearly a golf basket on his head and I'm sure the golf bag on his back is being utilized more as a quiver than a carrier for sports equipment. I clearly need to change the name of this blog to "Tales of a Mercenary."

We're still here....

It’s been a long time since my last post, but mostly for good reasons. We had a really busy weekend with a garage sale, a picnic up at one of our favorite spots, and a Sunday spent pulling out the new camper and playing around with it while also completing a boatload of house chores. I left on Monday for a work trip to Wilmington, NC. While I missed the kids and Glenn terribly, I have to admit that it was nice to spend a few days at a conference on the beach. It’s easier for me to travel these days because the kids are in such good hands with their dad and I can talk to them on the phone at night for a few minutes. Well, I use the term “talk” pretty loosely. Will and I can talk but it mostly involves such questions from him as “where are you?” “did you get me a present yet?” “what is it?” I can still find out a few snippets from him about his day but he ultimately gets distracted, puts the phone down on the table and runs off. Reina’s conversations are a little more difficult at this age. I’ll get a cheerful, “hi mama” and then several unintelligible phrases followed by a lot of heavy breathing. I”ll talk to her and then tell her to give the phone back to daddy, which she rarely does. Thank goodness for unlimited nights and weekends on the ol’ cell phone.

I did have a really nice 'mommy' moment after I arrived home last night. I had a long day of meetings and then air travel that seriously did not look like it would ever end. After driving home from the airport, I checked in on everyone and then fell asleep. I woke up several hours later by Glenn bringing Reina into our room. She rolled on the bed, discovered I was there and said in a too-loud-for-3 a.m.-voice, "Mommy's here!!" We snuggled for a few minutes and then she attempted to talk to me for the next two hours. True story. She ask a bunch of non-English questions and then she'd launch into our game of 'list every member and ask where/what they are doing at that moment in time.' Frankly, it's a pretty easy game for me at 3:00 a.m. "Where's Pop-pop?" "He's sleeping." "Where's Wicky?" "She's sleeping." etc. etc. etc. Will was happy to see me at the respectable hour of 6:15 a.m. but he demand to know what I brought him back and he was not impressed with his new tshirt.

In the last month, we’ve really started to notice Will’s independence more and more. During those weeks that Reina was recovering from her tonsillectomy, I’d often let Will stay home from preschool or pick him up early so that he’d have the afternoon at home. He’d play for a while and then he’d inform me that he just wanted to play in his room by himself. I don’t think Reina gets in his stuff as much as he likes to just do his own thing and be independent. He’s starting to really pay attention to what he wears and he’ll often pick out his own outfit for school. This is a great development but the only problem is that he can’t reach the clothes hanging in his closet so when he comes out of his room fully dressed in the morning (like he did while I was gone), you can be darn sure that that outfit was pulled out of the dirty clothes basket. Ah well, details details. We are going to just be happy that he’s figuring this stuff out and I’m buying him a stepstool this weekend so he can reach the clean stuff.

As I mentioned, we headed up to Vedauwoo for a picnic last weekend. Our fearless kids and crazy puppy had a great time. We picked pinecones....

Sold tickets to the 'gun show'.....Demonstrated a serious need for a haircut and intense face scrubbing... but managed to still look cute while doing it.... Climbed and climbed and climbed and climbed.... Looked cute and taught Will how to pee on the fire, a skill which will surely serve him his whole life. Reina wanted to help too and we didn't quite know how to handle that situation, other than to physically remove her from the fire all the while explaining that 'girls don't really do that blah blah blah..." We have some nice weather on tap for the weekend and we plan to get out there and enjoy it again!

Recovered!

The holiday weekend can be summed up in the following bullet points:

• the weather was rotten


• we were basically housebound


• Reina didn't feel well for long stretches of time


• we watched lots of movies


• did I mention the weather?

But it is a new week and the sun is shining! The trees are blooming, the birds are laying eggs in the Christmas wreath that is still hanging on our garage and Reina is feeling so much better. She finally turned the corner on Sunday and while she's still taking a little bit of pain medicine every now and then, the sparkle is back in her eyes and she's getting back to her normal self. We are all very happy about that.

P.S. We did manage to get out a little bit this weekend. We had a windy and chilly bbq with our friends the A's and their two adorable girl A and A (very easy to remember!). The kids all go to Montessori together and have a pretty good time running around the yard, even if its only 50 degrees. Let's hope those cold temps are behind us!