You know…I feel like I’m a pretty good mom. I take good care of my kids and I think we have great relationships. They know they can count on me for anything and we have a lot of fun together!
I’ve realized recently that I am a HUGE failure as a parent in at least one area; story telling.
Lately, Cameron has been asking me to tell him super hero stories. He’ll run up to me and say, “Mommy! Please tell me a Batman story!” Then he sits cross-legged on the floor and his big brown eyes gaze up at me with anticipation. My response?
“Once upon a time there was a man named Batman. He was very strong and brave and always saved the day. One day, he saw the bad guys so he chased them and captured them. Finally the city was safe and everyone lived happily ever after. The end.”
For the life of me I can’t make up a good story! Some parents are able weave elaborate tales of princesses and woodland animals and expand upon these stories every night. This, apparently, does not lie within my skill set. I want to be able to come up with creative stories for my kids but my mind just goes blank when faced with this challenge.
Do you make up stories for your kids? What’s your trick?
My youngest child is doing a great job at potty training and my oldest child is taking great joy in drawing potty sticker charts for him (complete with squares numbered 1 - 15).
Slow down time! You’re moving too fast!
The kids have been obsessed with superheroes lately. Lily doesn’t seem to have a clear favorite but Cam is partial to Batman. Apparently, they’ve been watching a Superman show at day care and they are LOVING this. We hear all about the adventures of The Flash (Lily: He’s faster than a CHEETAH, you guys!) and Superman (Cam: Superman DOES fly!) and Hawk Girl (Lily: She has wings AND arms!)
Tonight, Cameron got a pair of new Batman pajamas as a prize for filling up his potty chart with stickers. NOTE: Things seem to be going well on the potty training front! YAY! He’s running around in as Batman and Lily donned her Vidia costume so she could pretend to be Hawk Girl.
“I wanna be Hawk Girl.”
“C’mon Hawk Girl, let’s fly!”
“Cameron, say ‘Hi, Hawk Girl! Wanna fly?’”
“Hey, Hawk Girl! Wanna fly”
“Hawk Girl, I’ll rescue you!”
“I’m Hawk Girl!”
“Look at me as Hawk Girl!”
“Try to catch Hawk Girl!”
“Hawk Girl doesn’t do that!”
“What are you doing Hawk Girl?”
“Hawk Girl, don’t do that!”
All simple chatter from a couple of preschoolers, right? Yeah…but neither of the kids can really nail the ‘k’ sound at the end of Hawk so it sounds like they’re saying HOT girl. The phrases above take a slightly different meaning if you replace Hawk with Hot. Thought I doubt any guy has ever uttered the phrase, “Hot girl, don’t do that!”
1. Lily has been using her big girl booster seat in the car instead of the 5-point car seat. She is completely blissed out about this! As soon as our car is in park she unbuckles the seat belt and hops out of the seat with a huge smile on her face. She also loves that she can lean up and hand us things.
2. Cameron is still getting used to the whole big boy bed thing. Even before the new bed he had started resisting bed time. He tells me, “I tan’t, mama. I tan’t go to sleep. It’s too tricky. I want you sleep wif me.” He’s usually pretty content after a few songs in bed though and we don’t usually see him again until around midnight when he comes groaning into our room. I am going to stand strong and continue to take him back to his room and lay down with him in his bed instead of pulling him into our bed. His bed is actually pretty comfortable as long as there is an extra pillow in there for me to use. So, I take him back to bed and lay with him for awhile until he falls asleep. Sometimes I fall asleep too and then sneak out of his room the next time I wake up. He usually comes back to our room around 5:00 so back across the hall we go until morning. It’s doable. Not perfect, but doable.
3. I am very frustrated with these running injuries that are plaguing me right now. First the shin and now my knee. My left knee was really sore during the last 6 miles of the marathon in January but felt pretty good since then. I ran for the first time since the marathon last Monday and had to stop after 2 miles because of my knee. It started to get stiff at around 1.5 miles and I finally called it quits a half mile later. It was sore for another day but hasn’t felt too terrible since. Dr. Google tells me that I’m suffering from illiotibial band syndrome which is a common runner’s injury. I understand that it’s also a difficult recovery. Super.
4. I’m really itching to do some home improvements. I think my main goal is to plant a tree in our back yard to help with shade in the evenings. Our back yard is like the surface of the sun in the evenings and it really just plain sucks. I want to plant a big ‘ol shade tree back there. Next up would be the kitchen counters and adding hardware to the kitchen cabinets. A new kitchen floor would be nice too. My BIG house project is gutting and renovating our master bath but I’m doubtful that will ever happen.
5. Hey! It’s Friday! Date night with my hubby tonight and then it looks like it’s not going to be absolutely freezing all weekend!
Yeah…more Disney stuff. I KNOW! You’re thrilled!
I finally had a few minutes to work on the photos from our Disney Photo Pass. {You know my evenings are SO busy lately with cleaning the house volunteer work exercise sitting on the couch eating cookies and watching the Olympics that I only just NOW got a few spare minutes.}
I think we got about 200 pictures from the Photo Pass folks at Disney. Some of my favorites are below.
Buzz and Woody
Mug Shot
She looks so grown up here
Stitch!
Pixie Hollow! These characters were amazing! They really interacted with the kids and spent a lot of time with us!
Damn crane behind the castle…and my damn gray sweatshirt that I’m wearing in 90% of our pictures from this trip.
Princess and the Frog. Notice Lily’s shirt: yeah…I’m that mom.
Camera man at Animal Kingdom totally punked me on this one. He told us to all make a ‘ROAR’ but he snapped the picture so fast that I, with my cat like reflexes, was the only one doing it. Fantastic. So instead of looking like a pack of fierce lions we look like three normal people with a crazy lady.
This is one of my favorites. Not because it’s with a great character (Flick from A Bug’s Life) or because it’s a super-cute picture of the kids. I love it because of the spoon Cameron is holding. He carried that spoon, I mean, SWORD around all. day. long.
Baby Simba
Belles
Apparently I’m a sucker for the special effects pics
Traditional castle picture
Obligatory Mickey picture
May the Force be with you in your new big boy bed, Cameron.
and if that Force could somehow keep you in your bed until at least 6:30 every morning that would be swell.
We are done.
Having kids, that is.
Jason had the ol’ snip snip, the Big V, the {insert other humorous euphemism for vasectomy here} this week. He seems to be doing pretty well after a couple of days off work. When we met with the doctor for the pre-surgery consult he said he recommends people have the procedure done on a Friday so they have the weekend to recover (and drive your wife to insanity while she tries to handle both kids by herself all weekend). The Friday idea was quickly nixed and he opted for a Tuesday afternoon time slot so he could have a couple of days to recover in the empty house while the kids and I were at school and work. Much better for everyone, I think.
The decision to not have any more kids did not come easily to me. Right after Lily was born I knew that I wanted to have two more kids. I still felt that way after Cameron was born. I remember feeling like there was someone (another boy) still missing from our family. Jason and I had MANY discussions about having another child and very few of them went well. When Cam was about 9 months old we decided that we wouldn’t do anything permanent until he was at least 18 months old. 18 months came and went and there were more discussions and more frustrations on both sides.
As time went on and Cam got older the longing I was feeling for another child started to fade ever so slightly. I would be lying if I said that the feeling that someone is missing is completely gone but I’m OK with the way things have worked out. I have two fantastic kids! What’s not to love about that? Over the past several months I’ve created a sort of pros/cons list of not having any more kids.
CONS
*No more of the awesome pregnancy things: feeling baby kicks, seeing baby on the ultrasound, general pregnancy excitement!
*No more getting to know the new person you created. Who does he look like? What kind of personality will she have?
*No more nursing another baby.
*I think it would be fun to have a bigger than ‘normal’ family.
*Lily and Cameron have a great brother/sister relationship with each other but neither of them will know what a sister/sister or brother/brother relationship is like.
*Cameron doesn’t get to experience being an older sibling or the excitement of a new baby. I suppose this is kind of a silly train of thought because it would go on for infinity if every child needed to be an older sibling.
*I feel like the ‘having babies’ part of my life just flew by. I got pregnant for the first time in November 2004 and gave birth for the last time in September 2007. In some ways I’m not ready for that phase of my life to be over.
PROS
*No more of the yucky pregnancy things: morning sickness, worrying about the baby, aches and pains, gaining weight.
*No worrying about actually giving birth again: what if something goes wrong, the pain, etc.
*As the kids are getting bigger we can do more things as a whole family. Goofy’s Barnstormer at Disney, for example. Fewer cases of Jason and Lily doing a ‘big kid’ thing while Cameron and I sit it out. And with just four of us it’s easy to split up in groups of two. With five people someone would have to ride roller coasters solo and that’s no fun.
*Everyone pretty much sleeps through the night now.
*We don’t have to adjust our lifestyle to another family member. For the most part things went pretty smoothly after Cameron arrived but I can remember thinking, “What have we done? We had such a nice dynamic with just the three of us and now we’ve gone and screwed that up.” Obviously, things have worked out but it was an adjustment early on.
*It’s cheaper to only have two kids.
*I’m not getting any younger so it may be harder to bounce back from another pregnancy.
So, there you have it. I started getting rid of baby things a few months ago. All of the outgrown clothes and toys have been sold or given away. I do have a bag of a few things (clothes, toys, slings) that I won’t be parting with. We’ve moved out strollers, car seats, pack ‘n plays, you name it. We’re planning to get Cameron a new bed this weekend so it will be time to pass along the crib and changing table as we change his room from a baby’s room to a big boy’s room. Time marches on.
I gave my parents a good laugh a couple of weeks ago when I asked them a parenting question.
“So, how did you deal with 4-year old me bossing everyone around all the time?”
Apparently, I was quite the little director in my youth and took great pleasure in scripting the lives of those around me. Let’s just say the apple doesn’t fall too far from the Bossy Tree.
Lily: Mommy, I’m going to put my baby down for a nap and then you say, “Oh, what a sweet baby” and then I’ll walk away and then my baby will wake up and then you pick her up and then I’ll come back and say, “Hey, where’s my baby?” and then you say, “I picked her up because she was crying” and then I’ll say, “Oh thank you!” and then my baby will toot and then you’ll laugh but not like, “Ha Ha” like “Hee Hee Hoo Hoo.”
Me: *blank stare*
Lily: OK Mommy?
Me: Wait, what?
Lily: *UUUUUGGGGGHHHHH*
Me: Just tell me again what I’m supposed to do.
Lily: *sigh* OK, I’m going to put my baby down for a nap…
Now that Cameron is in a toddler bed and knows how to open his door he has made a habit out of coming to our room at some point during the night. Sometimes it’s 5 a.m., sometimes it’s 1 a.m. I hear his door shut over the monitor and then 4.2 seconds later I hear our door open and then shut. Three seconds later I hear, “gggrrrrroooooooaaaaaannnn” and open my eyes to see a fuzzy headed boy standing next to the bed sleepily clutching his blankie and Mickey. I reach out and pull him on to the bed where he settles in between me and Jason and quickly drifts back to sleep. Sometimes he snuggles me a little too close for comfort. Sometimes he digs his toes in Jason’s back.
So, you ask, where’s this silver lining? If Cam was still sleeping in his crib he would still wake up at unfortunate hours and he would still wake me up. The difference? Now that he just helps himself to our room I don’t have to leave the comfort of my warm bed. Sweet nighttime bliss.
A sinus infection is kicking my ass this week so I’ll take advantage of this down time to wrap up our vacation recap.
We spent Tuesday at Animal Kingdom but apparently we didn’t take many pictures. Animal Kingdom tends to be more of a half day park for us. I know we were headed back to the resort by about 3:00 or so. Highlights of the day were the Nemo and Lion King shows which are both fantastic! The safari was fun as usual and I got to ride the Dinosaur ride with Lily (which she did NOT enjoy). I actually kind of wish we had purchased the ride photo for Dinosaur. Picture Lily huddled over in my lap while I hover over her trying to quiet her screams. Yeah…
The kids were cracking us up when we got there by pretending that Cameron was Baby Cooper and he was scared of elephants so Lily was holding his hand to make him feel better.
On the bus back to the resort Cam was really restless and cried almost the entire time. Very unlike him but he seemed happier once we got back to the room. I was starting to feel a little punky though. I thought I just had an upset stomach from scarfing down some Honey Chicken earlier in the day. Next thing we know, Cameron is puking on the floor between the beds. Nasty. Shortly after I found myself in the bathroom chucking my lunch. Not fun. We had to have someone come to clean the carpet in the room and Cameron and I turned in really early that night after he threw up two more times.
Wednesday morning we had reservations for a princess breakfast at Akershus at Epcot. Cameron seemed to be feeling better and I tried to rally as best I could. The breakfast was nice and everyone enjoyed the food. Lily was thrilled to finally be able to wear her princess dress!
We didn’t go too crazy at Epcot that day but made sure to get on the Figment ride. My kids LOVE that ride! Figment and Spaceship Earth are their ‘musts’ at Epcot. We also walked through the different countries and got to meet Mulan and Jasmine and Aladdin.
On Thursday we actually had warm-ish weather for the Magic Kingdom…
…and decided to check out Fantasmic at Hollywood Studios that night.
We headed back to the Magic Kingdom on Friday for a whirl-wind couple of hours before leaving for the airport.
We’re already looking forward to our next trip which will be after Cam is at least 40″ tall. I’m really excited about the idea of going sans stroller and being able to do most of the rides together as a family!
