Florida, x2

We're hanging out in Florida with my family for a long weekend. We went in the pool today, but mostly it was an excuse to put Molly in her cute bathing suit. She was pretty serious about the whole thing, but not unhappy.

Molly has decided that babies don't need to nap during vacation, so she has been a little sleep deprived (the plane ride here was not fun...). Tucker has decided that he likes to stay up and play after bedtime. Last night he was awake for at least an hour and a half after a later-than-usual bedtime, shining a green light he found all over the room. We found him conked out half on and half off the bed, asleep in the middle of playing.










We went on a boat ride on the Banana River, which is part of the Indian River lagoon system. The whole river is only a few feet deep, and doesn't have a current so we were in a pontoon boat. We saw manatees mating right at the side of the boat. They were oblivious to us and put on an amazing show. We also got good dolphin sitings, though they weren't as much in a mood to play.

Crazy Kiddo Gets Crazier

A few nights ago we checked on Tucker before bed, only to find the lights on in his room and him completely dressed in a new outfit. His pajamas were strewn on the floor and replaced with jeans, three socks on each foot (all mismatching), a yellow sweater base layer with a long sleeve shirt over the sweater. He was totally content and conked out in an utterly ridiculous fashion. (It was easy to get a good picture because the light was on.) This morning he came into our room wearing yet another outfit.

Dancing man

Lots of Videos

We're visiting my mom right now who has a fast internet connection so I can actually post videos without the connection timing out. Here are videos of Molly eating for the first time, wiggling like crazy on one of our first warm days, rolling over, trying desperately to roll over, squealing and generally doing all sorts of good baby things.

My crazy kiddos

Crazy Kiddo #1:

-Emerged from his room during rest time yesterday in a red vest, Mickey Mouse hat and socks on his hands to do something unidentified in the bathroom (ie not using the potty). He saw me in the hall and turned around and ran back to his room. The pic is of his outfit on Saturday. He picked it out himself, if you couldn't tell.

-Came into our room this morning with wet sweatpants. Upon inquiring, he told us that he decided he didn't want to wear a pull-up to bed and took it off after Austin had put him to bed last night and put on different underwear and pajamas. Good show of ingenuity and independence... poor wet bed! (When he doesn't wear a pull-up, we have to wake him up to go potty, which is hard to do when you think he's wearing a pull-up.)

Crazy kiddo #2:

I swear, Molly June is crawling. She motors around her crib like no other. We put her down in one spot and we come back and she has flipped over, rotated 180 degrees, and is at the total opposite end of the crib. How in the world does she do this? Yesterday she managed to do this move-to-the-opposite-end-of-the-crib trick and push herself up against her mobile, which meant she was hitting her head on the plastic. That scared her, so she picked up her head more, which meant she banged it more on the plastic. Not her finest moment. I need to spy on her and see what exactly she's doing to be able to move that much.

A few more pics...

Molly loves it when we put our head on her tummy, so these are pics of Tucker making her happy!







Tucker trying to play the tackle game while Austin tries to watch basketball

Quotes of the Day

"No, Tractor! Go back to the farm, Tractor! Tractors are only supposed to be on the farm!!!" -Tucker, in near hysterics upon passing a tractor in the road yesterday

Unconventional way to answer the phone: "Here I am!" -Tucker [I guess "hello" is so yesterday]

And another one from Sunday...
Tucker: Mama, do you like deer?
Me: Sure, they're fine.
Tucker: I don't like deer. They smoosh cars.
Me: Well, cars only occasionally hit deer.
Tucker: Deer are mean. And angry. Angry mean deer smooshing cars!!!!

Catching up, or at least hanging on

The past month has been a doozy around here. I've been sick for five weeks, no exaggeration. A cold I caught in Florida turned into a lung thing which turned into a sinus infection. Now, two antibiotics later I think I'm turning a corner. I hope. I have new empathy for my father-in-law who has chronic sinus problems. It's awful!

All my energy of late has gone into all of us reaching the end of the day alive, fed and clothed, preferably with the house not on fire. (These seem like lofty goals to me, too!)

But of course, the kids have been anything but static over the past month. Molly especially is changing rapidly. She learned a couple weeks ago how to roll from her back to her front, and she is excited with her new powers. In fact, when she first learned she lost all interest in nursing for several days. I think her thought process was something like this: "I'm so powerful! I can roll over! I no longer am subject to normal human conventions like eating!" She likes to be on her stomach now just because she can do it herself, and she just feels stronger to me. She no longer likes to be in a reclining position, and spends her time in a crunch trying to sit up straight. Her other major accomplishment is trying to grab hold of everything so that she can put it in her mouth. This is a delicate operation because she REALLY wants it in her mouth and if all doesn't go according to plan, I have a passionately frustrated little girl on my hands.

Tucker's favorite thing right now is playing a tackle game where he finds an unsuspecting parent to sit on the rug so he can run over and tackle us to the ground. The other day he had a stomach bug and the first thing he said in the morning when I walked into his room was "I don't want to play the tackle game" (not that there was any chance of me wanting to play the tackle game at 6:30 am with a sinus infection after spending the night cleaning up vomit....) It was like telling me in flashing neon lights "I feel sick, Mommy."

One of the other highlights from the last month was a concert that Tucker participated in at the Bible study we go to. It was ridiculously cute. Tucker did the University of Florida gator chomp throughout most of the songs, and was quite the little wiggly-dancing-singing enthusiast. He had a lot of the audience laughing out loud. It's funny; Tucker will be too shy to hold hands with the other leaders in our little prayer circle beforehand, but he can be the absolute center of attention on the stage and think that is the best thing since sliced bread.

Another milestone in my little boy's left happened yesterday: he climbed his first tree, much to the delight of our 86 year-old neighbor, Althea. He also filled out his first NCAA basketball bracket yesterday, with a little help. I told him yesterday morning we needed to fill it out ASAP if he wanted to be in our extended family pool. He promptly got down from the breakfast table and ran to get his football helmet, and to get me a ridiculous hat shaped like a birthday cake. Apparently, picking a tournament bracket is predicated on the proper headwear. Who did he pick to win it all? Notre Dame. Why? I told him their mascot was like a leprechaun. Other favorite teams were Michigan State because they wear green, Richmond because they are the spiders and Aunt Liz went there, and Washington because that's where Uncle Mike lives.

There is, of course, much more I could add, if I could think of it. It's even possible that one day all my brain cells will collect in one place and I'll start speaking in complete sentences again. :)

Quote of the Day

"Daddy is marching home right now to tackle us. He will also tackle a deer. And he will tackle a fish for a bear."
-Tucker, on when Austin will return from a Bible study at church

Quote of the Day

"Molly's looking like a dragon and she's twins with me. I love that! And I'm twins with you, and with Benny." -Tucker

Obviously.

Quote of the Day

Tucker: I don't like white sugar, I like chocolate sugar.
Me: Chocolate sugar?
Tucker: Yes, the brown kind.

Pictures

When we were in Florida, my mom and I took the kids to Sears to get their pictures taken. It would've been a horrible experience if I had been the sole adult, but with two of us it worked nicely. Unfortunately, Molly was tired so it was tough getting good pictures of her. But the photographer was amazing (if you're ever in Cocoa Beach, go to Sears and ask for Roni!).

My Baby is Four Months Old

Little Molly is already four months old. Time is certainly flying in our house. She was 15 lbs, 10 oz at the doctor's this week--90th percentile (75th in height)! Tucker was a pound and a half bigger than her at this point, but she seems plenty big to me. She is already wearing some 9 month clothes--in fact she's grown out of some 9 months outfits that run small! It's hard not to miss outfits, we've already missed a couple that ran smaller than advertised.

She continues to be an amazing sleeper. She goes to sleep at 6 pm and usually sleeps to about 6 am, with one dream feed before I go to bed. She is alert enough to make sleeping when we're out and about difficult, which means she usually doesn't get a good morning nap. She makes up for it in the afternoon, though, with often a 3 hour nap (today it was over 4 hours when we finally woke her up).

She seems very interested in food. She leans towards our forks and drools when we hold her while eating, so I decided to give her solids this week for the first time. She is not quite sure what exactly they are, but is very enthusiastic. She opens her mouth and leans towards the spoon, though she hasn't quite mastered swallowing versus letting it all dribble out. She is much better than her brother about eating from a bottle, though she prefers nursing.



Her favorite activities are jumping in the doorway jumper and watching her big brother. The easiest way to make her smile is to repeatedly kiss her chubby cheeks. At Bible study the other day she was mad because she was tired but wouldn't sleep. All it took for her to calm down was to find another 3 year-old boy for her to watch (Tucker was at preschool so he was not available) and she instantly quieted. She also loves music. The week before at the same Bible study she was mad because she was tired and wouldn't sleep. All it took then was for someone to turn on a CD and she immediately relaxed and chilled for the whole song--and then fussed as soon as it was turned off. Not that her fusses are really all that bad--she remains an amazingly relaxed little one.

Sometimes you get what you pay for

Case Study: batteries

Our smoke detectors are always beeping about low batteries. It drives us nuts. They beep intermittently so it's hard to locate the beeping detector until it's 2 am and you can't get back to sleep because a smoke detector somewhere is beeping.

I devised a new system to thwart our battery problems: I would change all the batteries on the same regular schedule, which I decided would be New Year's and the Fourth of July (everything says to replace smoke detector batteries every 6 months). I dutifully replaced all the batteries on New Year's... only to find that one by one they have all started beeping again in the past two weeks.

What does that mean? Our batteries are lousy! They should have lasted at least three times as long as they did.

From now on, as much as it pains me, I'm not going to buy store brand batteries anymore.

Quote of the Day - On the Danger of Driving to Church

"I bet we'll pass a giant deer that will eat us and our car and Willis [Tucker's stuffed dog] and ducky. That would be sad."
-Tucker

Quote of the Day

Tucker accompanied his daddy on a business trip earlier in the week to Maryland. He played with his grandparents while Austin was working, and I got over a cold at home.

When it was rest time at the Blue House (Henny and Papa's), Tucker authoritatively instructed David that he didn't like the room he was sleeping in and that he would sleep in Daddy's room. David obligingly let him switch rooms. Then Tucker instructed David that he needed to sleep with Tucker. David even humored that request. He sat in the easy chair in the room "sleeping." But Tucker still wasn't satisfied and told David that he needed to sleep in the bed. David said no.

Tucker, shocked that Papa might not allow every one of his whims, ran to the stairs and yelled to Henny, "Henny, Papa's not listening to me! You come upstairs and make him listen!"

What I know about you

I realized the other day that Blogger keeps track of this blog's stats, so I looked into them for the first time.

What I learned was...
*The favorite post, by far, was on 6/10/09 about "Hail the Size of Half Dollars"... apparently this comes up when people search on the term "hail"
*I've gotten numerous hits from 9 other countries besides the US
*In the Mac vs PC world, the PCs are winning--2/3 of my readers use Windows and only 25% use Macs (the rest are blackberrys and other devices)
*I get more than 800 page views a month now, and almost 20,000 page views total, which seems like

The things you learn!

Disney World

The kids and I are visiting my mom in Cocoa Beach this week. Austin is having man time in Virginia with a veritable home improvement frenzy. Flying here with the two of them alone was a bit daunting, but we didn't hit any major snags and arrived more or less in one piece (well, three pieces if you consider that there are three of us).

Our big adventure of the trip was yesterday: going to Disney World. Austin told me on Monday night that he would rather fly with the kids (he considers being trapped on an airplane with his two children akin to a small form of torture) than go to Disney World with them. He was wrong, of course, because we had an absolutely fabulous time. I'm not sure how it could have gone better. The key: don't stand in any line longer than 10 minutes. This eliminates a lot of the possible rides, but there are no rides that are worth standing in a line with a 3 year-old longer than 10 minutes.

We rode Dumbo first thing in the morning before the line got long. Tucker had never been on a high-flying ride like that before, and I wondered how he would do. He loved it. He ate it all up. The only hitch was we didn't get a green elephant and he wanted the green one. He seemed satisfied enough when I called the teal one we were on "green."

Next we went to find Mickey. On our way, we stumbled on Goofy's airplane ride and I sent Tucker and my mom on that one. Once they entered the line, I turned to look at the rest of the ride and was shocked to discover that what I thought was a little kiddie ride actually was a medium-sized roller coaster. I frantically tried to call to them not to go, concerned my sensitive little boy would be scarred for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, Tucker's heart was already set on it so they went. He loved it. (The only tears of the day came late in the afternoon when he begged to go on it again.) My mom, though, was scarred from the ride and wants the record to reflect that I sent her as the sacrificial adult on that one. Oops.


After soaking in Goofy's thrills, we wandered into Mickey's house. It wasn't very exciting, but it spit us out in a line that was for some sort of Mickey show, we thought. It wasn't a long line, and there were old Mickey cartoons playing so Tucker was rapt and we just stayed not quite sure where it would lead. It turns out that the line was for a private audience with Mickey. When Tucker got up-close-and-personal with his favorite rodent, he just melted in awe to the ground. He couldn't even look up he was so excited and overwhelmed. It might've been a little cute.



We then had a sit-down lunch with Winnie the Pooh and friends, which was a much-needed break in the middle of the day. Arranging that lunch was a great call. Surprisingly, the Winnie the Pooh lunch wasn't ridiculously priced... only about double what you'd spend on a lunch of hot dogs and fries at a cafeteria in Disney World, and the buffet actually had good food. Of course, it also included large furry friends and Tucker got into the hang of the character thing and started giving them all big hugs.









Other highlights that day: seeing the Mickey show in the middle of the park, the Parade in the afternoon, riding the train around the park, and going on rides.





The very best part of our afternoon was: Winnie the Pooh's house. Tucker loved Pooh's tree. He spent ages hugging Pooh's honey pots, protecting them from bees, eating the honey, and doing it all again, and again and again. It was ridiculous. The only way we were able to get him out of there was that we had tickets to ride in Winnie's honey pot on a ride.





These are some videos of Tucker's playing with the honey:


Molly was a star all day, basically just hanging out and being easy. She specializes in eating quickly so I didn't have to nurse her all the time in random places. She napped in her car seat, snuggled and enjoyed meeting the characters (Mickey and Minnie especially loved her). She also went on the Winnie the Pooh ride and screamed for the part of it in the dark (but the music was loud so no one could here her).


When we got to the car, we were all exhausted. But then Tucker rallied into pure hysteria on the way home, wanting to play his version of peek-a-boo and "break the pickle--tickle, tickle!" for approximately an hour. I don't blame him; it was a pretty exciting day.