Tag Archives: kids

Sister in Training

Ivy has already put Clara in training, which is only right, she is the big sister after all.

Some of the things Ivy has been training Clara to do I could do without: high pitched squeaking at the dinner table, yelling nonsense words in the backseat of the truck, and Clara really didn’t need her sister telling her that dog food is delicious.

With other things it seems like Ivy might be trying to help. The best example of this is trying to teach Clara sign language. We taught Ivy signs when she was a baby, loved the results and so are trying to do so again with Clara. The trouble is that Ivy is “helping.”  Sometimes she helps by giving Clara what ever it is she wants, without being like mean ol’mom who waits for a sign. But perhaps most frustrating is her tendency to make up random hand motions for Clara and pretend they are signs.  I’m hoping Clara will be able to pull something useful out of the whole experience but my hopes are dimming as time goes on.

Of course there are other things that Ivy is training Clara in that are truly helpful. Ivy teaches her how to play somewhere else while I’m cooking dinner, they are working on how to walk, and like every good Tom Sawyer Ivy is teaching her about her new job.

Ivy loves it when Clara comes out to check on the sheep with her, and because she is with her big sister Clara loves it too!

Sometimes looking up to your big sister is a literal sort of thing.

Ivy’s only disappointment with Clara’s training so far is that she hasn’t yet managed to teach her how to climb the fence, fortunately Clara is just happy to be out counting sheep with her sister!

So given all the training Clara’s had recently I shouldn’t have been surprised when I realized throughout the day that the “BAAS”  Clara was producing weren’t at all random…… she was looking for sheep!

You Know Your Kid Spends Too Much Time With The Dog When…

…they start sharing food.

I caught Ivy munching on Storms food this morning when she was supposed to be helping feed the dogs. Ivy wouldn’t give Storm all her food (it’s in the jar) right away because she insisted that they were sharing.  I’d like to say that my explanation of why we don’t eat dog food went over well or that this was an isolated incident, but I don’t like to lie…

Everyone’s a Specialist

Here is what we did the other day playing outside. It turns out Clara is a bit of a specialist…

I made Ivy a “helicopter” with some duck feathers and she ran all over throwing it around.

Clara ate a feather.

Ivy did somersaults.

Clara ate a water hose.

True confession time:  This is actually a picture of what happens when Clara is eating a water hose while Ivy is doing somersaults and my inattentive self is just sitting in the shade taking pictures.  Ivy unnoticed by me grabbed part of the hose, and was just starting to rip it out of Clara’s mouth as the picture was taken. Oops!

Ivy threw her feather some more.

Clara ate dirt. Then Ivy joined Clara and showed her how to pretend to be a dog and dig in the dirt.

The dirt that I had finally used to fill holes Storm dug as a puppy over two years ago.

I let them dig, I thought my little specialist could use to expand her horizons.

Then Clara ate more dirt.

I gave up on horizon expanding and we went inside for  nap time.

Delicious!…?

For dinner tonight we had shiskabobs with sweet potato, apples from our own apple tree, ham from our own pig, zucchini from next door, and pineapple. Served with our own sweet corn and brown rice.

Delicious!

Well,it could have been…

The epic badness I called dinner started around 4:30 while mixing everything up in the bag of marinade.  As I mushed and mixed my bag exploded spewing juice and chunks all over me and the floor. Of course a dog came running, and since I had no extras of any of the ingredients on hand I shoved the dog away, while frantically scooping everything up into a strainer and then attempted to wash it off in the sink. It was one of those times where you’d like to throw a fit and cry but since you are the mom nobody is going to help anyway so you might as well just swear a few times and get on with it.

So I did. Rinsed off, re-bagged, re-marinated, refrigerated, and well cursed, only a few hairs were left when it was time to make the skewers. Already dinner was not looking as delicious but I still had hope. Then John was late. This was a problem because clearly shiskabobs go on the grill, and clearly I have no business going anywhere near a grill. In fact I’m pretty sure the last time I tried I was 21 in collage and drinking enough beer that it didn’t matter how my brats (in buns!) turned out.  As John was delayed later and later I decided to bite the bullet and do it myself. It’s a grill, its charcoal, how hard can it be right? I can start fires, I can cook over fires, Ivy says she’ll help.

Turns out Ivy is no help.

I finally figured out how to get the charcoal lit with the help of the chimney thingy and get my skewers on, I’m so proud I take a picture.

At this point I’m still hoping that John will swoop in and save us, but it seems to be going OK… and going and going and going… then I realize that I am slow cooking my shiskabobs.

In case that didn’t make you gag, let me just let you know right now that slow cook shiskabobs that include ham are not good, not good at all. The girls and I are hungry so we eat it some anyway.  Ivy eats very little, then feeds the rest of hers to Storm while I am not looking. It’s bad enough I don’t even have the heart to yell at her for it.

All of a sudden I realized it was 7:00 (Clara’s bed time) I had more to grill, Clara seriously need a bath, food was out on the picnic table where the dog would grab it if I didn’t put it away, Ivy wanted to play in her sprinkler and John still wasn’t home.

So, I…

-stripped my filthy dirty daughter Clara naked

-brought food inside

-found Ivy’s swim suit

-put rest of dinner on grill (still assuming John will show up any moment)

-set up sprinkler

-moved Clara over to play in sprinkler with Ivy

-flipped kabobs

-finished cleaning up dishes from outside

-took dinner off grill, stashed in microwave so the dogs wouldn’t get it

-went to go get Clara for her shower (and mine too, don’t forget the spewing bag incident)

When I reached the girls Ivy looked at me and asked “Mom, what’s on your shorts?” After a flurry of questions, answers and running around the yard  I confirmed that Clara had pooped near the picnic table and I had carried her over to the sprinkler with out noticing, getting poop on my shorts, shirt, legs…

John got home while I was upstairs putting Clara down to bed. As soon as I got downstairs I told him that while dinner was in the microwave he might want to be careful, since in addition throwing it on the floor, and  slow cooking it I also had probably moved it around two different times with poop on my hands, but that I had only touched the wooden skewers so if he was feeling brave he could probably cut the food off instead of sliding it off, discard the end pieces and still salvage some of dinner.

Part way through my explanation John got a funny look on his face…I guess he was hungry when he got home.

John went and had a shot of Scotch, and I re-gave up grilling.

Bobble Head Girl

Today while running errands we all ended up at Farm and Fleet. Ivy and I left John and Clara to finish buying tires and headed off across the store to start on the rest of our list. I wasn’t two aisles past where we left them before I realized that I was missing Ivy.

In my world this is not a cause for alarm.

You see if Ivy is missing in a store all you have to do is stop and listen it’ll take about 5 seconds before you hear her talking. If you don’t hear talking, you’ll hear feet running, and if you don’t hear that you’ll hear her ask someone “You know where my Mom is?”.   So I stopped, listened and immediately heard something that sounded like Ivy…but not quite.

I soon found the source of the muffled noises when I realized my daughter had transformed herself into a walking bobble head.

Bobble head Ivy was dressed in her favorite pink stripy dress, purple flip flops, and black, adult size large, full face, motorcycle helmet. She was following me, walking a bit crooked from the restricted vision, with the helmet bobbing around on her head, chatting all the while.

Who knew that you needed a camera at Farm and Fleet?

One Hundred and Seventy Seven

One hundred and seventy seven questions asked of me, from Ivy, from the time she got up from her afternoon nap until she went to bed.

That was over a period of two and a half hours.

Which puts her questioning rate just above one question per minute.

Then you realize that I didn’t actually talk to her for two and a half hours straight (because clearly my head would have exploded).  It was more like many minutes of blissful silence while Ivy was otherwise occupied followed by rapid fire questions as soon as she caught me again. At one point I counted seven questions in one minute. SEVEN in a minute, I’m not even sure how she manages to breathe.

Then she got back out of bed, and went to the bathroom and between hearing about the “mama poop” and the “baby poops” and getting her back into bed I had another 31 fired off at me.

That’s right a grand total of TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHT since five o’clock.

Yes, I know, learning, development, blah, blah, blah…

Just don’t come over here and ask me any questions, I’m not guaranteeing what the response will be.

She’s Goin’ Up!

P.S. Pretend you can hear this song while you look at the pictures, I’m not computer savoy enough to make it happen so you’ll have to use your imagination, I give up!

P.P.S. Forget it I can’t even get a link to work tonight! Only a handful of you would get it anyway, you guys can go put your Road Rage album on,  the rest of you sorry, just enjoy the pictures.  I’m going to bed!

The Disease Part III The Sleep Crawler

By now you are perhaps wondering what did prompt me to move Clara into her unfinished room. I mean really, I’d held out for nine months and have written two long posts about how I thought it was a bad idea, why did I cave? I’ll tell you why, because she’s a sleep crawler, that’s why. Here is the whole story:

Clara started out sleeping in bed with us, then as she became mobile she took naps and started the night out sleeping in her own crib in our room. Inevitably she ended up in bed with us by morning. This is because I nursed her, and there is no point in staying awake when you could be sleeping, and so therefore she ate, I slept and she was still there in the morning.

This worked great for many months until Clara started doing this crazy thing where she crawls around in bed with her eyes closed then flops down when her head hits something and lays where she falls sleeping. Sleep crawling? I don’t know, but whatever it is it is not conducive to co-sleeping.  She would finish nursing then lurch around the bed between John and I like a really drunken sailor.  I would start awake when she would move, watch her flop down against John, immediately fall back asleep only to be woken up to her lurching back toward me and flopping on top of me instead.  For awhile I tried to just get up and put her back in her crib. This was difficult for two reasons. The first, I had to get up. The other was that once Clara was back in her crib  she did her crazy sleep crawling in there instead.  John and I are much softer to land on than crib rails so she would bang her head on the side which would wake her all the way up, then see us and want to come back in bed.   Back in bed it never improved. Once I woke up as she crashed into my knees, multiple times I grabbed her as she was headed for the edge. Our happy co-sleeping set up was suddenly missing the the oh so important sleeping portion of co-sleeping. Clara had to go. The girl needed bars, she needed walls, she needed her own room. So last Monday after an especially bad night because of the nighttime crawler I moved her into her own room lack of baseboards and all.

After a few nights of squawking  Clara settled in and sleep has more or less  returned for everyone. Some nights I still wake up and her her rustling around and then a distinct thump as she hits the side of her crib but she almost always goes right back to sleep.

In addition to all the of advantages that come from having a baby free bedroom we have also gained the peephole advantage. At some point someone replaced the door knob on Clara’s door with one that wasn’t the same and left a hole in the door. I purposely set the crib up opposite and now I have a perfect little spy hole to watch and see what she is doing when she is supposed to be sleeping. I can watch this: Turn into this, and so I’m conceding that moving her into her almost finished room was the right thing to do. I just hope the sleep crawler does not turn into a sleep walker or nights or going to get really interesting when she graduates to a bed!

I know in the picture above it looks like there are baseboards on the wall, but it’s just propped up behind the furniture!

Diet Coke Saves the Day… Again.

This week John has had to make up for being on vacation last week and so has been working long days. Long days as in he has not seen Clara other than at 2:00AM all week. Long days like Ivy has been watching for him to come home starting in the morning because she misses him. Long days as in I am having trouble remember to miss him instead of wanting to kick him in the shins (shins because I wouldn’t actually want to damage him because then I’d still be taking care of the house and girls by myself!) when he gets home because he’s been gone so long. And today, well today is Friday, Day Five, Day I Hope Your Dad Is Ready To Watch You All Weekend Because, “I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!”

Here is a conversation between Ivy and I this morning.

Me:” Ivy please don’t put your feet on me while I’m changing a poopy diaper.”

Ivy puts feet back on me.

Me: “Ivy get your feet off me.”

Ivy takes feet off and says: “Be QUIET!”

Me:…. (gladly shutting up it’d been one of those mornings, and I was currently winning this battle)

Ivy “Mom don’t talk any more.”

Me:….

Ivy “Mom I said be quiet”

Me:…

Ivy: “Be QUIET”

Me….

Ivy “Mom don’t talk to me!”

Me…

Ivy: “MOM DON”T TALK TO ME!”

Me: “OK! I won’t talk to you.” (even though it has become very obvious that more attention is what she is looking for not less)

Ivy puts feet back on me.

Then I grabbed another Diet Coke becuase in the words of my friend Sarah:

“Diet Coke helps me not want to strangle my kids.”

So we have arrived at nap (‘NO MOM, NOT NAP REST!!!”) time with two live children, and multiple dead Diet Cokes. It’s not a perfect solution, I’m running low on Diet Coke and I’ve had a few more bathroom breaks than normal today but it aught to get us all through ’till Saturday!

Note: Diet Coke consumed today has been out of regular cans. This cutie next to my little desk gargoyle is, well,  cute, and good for pictures, not for maintaining sanity!