New talents

I was speaking with my mother the other day and she asked if the girls were trying to climb out of bed yet.  I told her no, but they have been trying to climb into bed.  They have yet to be successful because of the way their cribs are built.

With Julia out of town last week, I prepared the new baby's room.  The crib we have for the new baby is not built the same.  I really didn't give it too much thought as I assumed the girls wouldn't mess with it.

I was in the room with them while they were picking up.  The buzzer on the oven went off, so I went to get my lunch out.  When I walked back in 30 seconds later, I was greeted by this.

They are quicker than I thought.

Actually, this was about five seconds later as I had to grab the camera.  What I saw when I entered the room was Brynne straddling the crossbar.  She said

"Please pull me up sister."

Hadley moved to help her just as she fell into the crib.

Looks like I'll have to turn the crib around or find some way to toddler proof it.

Funny girl

Brynne is starting to display her sense of humor and quick thinking.  Just wanted to share one example of each. 

Humor:

I keep a glass of water on the nightstand at night.  As I sat in the living room the other day, Brynne casually strolled up to me and asked

"Papa, where's your glass of water?"

I told her I didn't know, but I would go look for it.  She instantly started grinning from ear to ear.  As I walked into the bedroom, she trailed me, watching my every move.  The glass was not where it should have been.  Seeing as how it was at least half full about ten minutes earlier, I checked the floor for a trail of water drops.

There were none.

I went into the bathroom to see if she'd emptied it into the sink and left it on the counter as she often does.

This is somewhere between a giggle and full on laughter.  Makes me smile every time.

It was not there.  She giggled behind me.

I asked her where it was and she didn't reply.  She just giggled. 

Upon returning to the bedroom, I noticed the drawer of my nightstand was open slightly and immediately I had flashbacks.

As I walked to the drawer, her giggles became louder.  I sat on the bed and as I reached for the drawer, her giggles became full on laughter.

The drawer pulled open easily, and there was the cup.  It was empty, but the drawer was dry.  As I pulled the cup out and set it on the nightstand she stopped laughing long enough to say

"Papa found it.  Hooray!"

Then she starter to applaud me.  The sink had been dry, the drawer was as well, and the flower next to the nightstand was not newly moist.  Where, pray tell, had the water gone?

She peed about nine times over the next hour and a half.  Mystery solved.

Quick Thinking:

Normally, when we sit down to eat a meal, whatever we serve is their only option.  They don't get to ask for anything they want.

The other morning, I mixed things up a bit and asked them what they wanted for breakfast.  Last time I did this it worked out kinda marvelously, so I thought I'd try again.

Brynne took a few seconds and then said

"Yogurt!"

with quite a bit of enthusiasm.

Yogurt was not an option as we were running a bit short on that.  By "running a bit short" I mean we were out entirely.

I didn't want to tell her we were out of it as that would only make her want it more.  Thinking quickly myself, I told her

"We'll have yogurt for dinner.  What would you like for breakfast?"

It took her another few seconds to reply

"I want dinner."

We do love breakfast for dinner, but dinner for breakfast is a new concept we may need to explore.

Holiday Tips

This is a repeat from a post done last year.  I thought I'd put it out there in advance of the holidays to give people time to prepare themselves.

Ahhh! The holiday season is upon us once again.  In case you've forgotten from last year (and the year before, and the year before, etc.), it's the time of year we all go crazy.  Everything we do is done to excess.  Here are a few things you might want to pay a little more attention to this year - some of them may even save or make you money.

Food - meals

If you need a helmet to eat it's probably too much food.

In my experience, most every family has some sort of large meal on or around Thanksgiving and Christmas (or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, or Festivus).  For most people, these two meals are the largest meals they will consume all year. 

As everyone knows, the best way to get your body to metabolize this gluttonous meal is to sit on the couch and nap.  Having the TV on will only make the process work that much better.  Carbs and starches magically disappear while sleeping, so if at all possible, do not attempt any form of physical exertion.

Since everyone else that comes to eat will be bringing food, don't bother making or buying anything.  Just show up and eat.  Nobody will know you didn't contribute as long as you don't mention it.  If someone asks, tell them you brought cookies and just dumped them on someone else's tray.

Before you leave, don't forget to take leftovers home with you.  Nobody gets tired of eating the same thing day after day after day.  You'll get to it at some point so don't worry about discovering it in the back of the fridge growing mold in a month.  By all means, load up and save on groceries for January.

Food - snacking

Not only do we gorge ourselves at mealtime, but we are constantly eating between meals.  Here are a few tips to keep in mind. 

1 - Chocolate aids in the digestive process of all other foods, especially those high in fat and cholesterol.  Be health conscious and load up on these. 

2 - Make sure you grab a handful (or two) of whatever salty snack is sitting out all month long every time you walk by the bowl.  Salt is good for you!  It can raise your blood pressure, which makes your heart have to work that much harder, which means your heart is getting stronger.  This additional labor can only continue as long as you feed calories into your body, so keep on cramming food into your gullet.  The only time you should stop is when you lose consciousness fall asleep.

If you find a bowl of something sitting out with no salt, don't immediately blame your host.  Nobody in their right mind buys unsalted foods at this time of year.  The simple explanation is this:  some child got hold of the snack and sucked off all the salt.  They are learning good nutritional habits at a young age, so don't chastise them.  Just grab a salt shaker and reapply.  If you've discovered the problem in time, the treat may still be moist enough to allow the new salt to stick.  Bonus!

3 - Doctors recommend drinking a lot of water, but water has no nutritional value.  Soda (aka pop, coke, soft drinks, colas, soda pops) is made from water - and has other added nutrients.  Don't waste precious cargo space on just water alone, make sure you have some additional artificially-occurring substance blended in with it.  And don't do the diet drinks; everyone knows the sweeteners used to make them cause cancer.

It still counts as one glass in my book

4 - In the spirit of combining things, make sure your soda has plenty of booze in it.  If you're not a booze person, do what you like.  Red wine is actually good for you.  If one glass is good, two has to be better.  The theory holds true - as long as you can hold your wine down.

Americans make or buy more treats during December than the other 11 months combined!  (I made that up, but it sounds good). 

Financials

Feel free to run up your credit card debt to buy as much stuff as possible.  Since housing prices always go up and mortgage rates always go down, you can always roll your credit card debt into a new mortgage and get a lower rate.  A win-win scenario! 

Once you discover all the crap you bought is no longer being used, typically within two weeks, you can start preparing for a garage sale.  No self-respecting garage sale shopper will try to haggle you down on pricing and most will pay more than face value for a semi-used toy with missing parts.  In effect, you have turned a profit on the holiday and can use those funds to buy more decorations as they should now be on sale! 

Win-win-win for team Griswold!

To quote my wife, "Looks like Christmas threw up on their house".

While we're on shopping, don't buy on-line.  Make sure you go stand in lines for hours on end to save the extra $1.47 you would have spent at an e-tailer.  Everything related to the Internet is a scam.  All those sites are doing is getting your credit card information and planning on stealing your money.  While you're at it, better cancel all credit cards, just to be safe.  Take your money out of the bank and only use cash.

Better safe than sorry.

If you're not much of a shopper, just get gift cards.  Everyone appreciates a $20 card to somewhere they'd never eat or to a regional store that doesn't exist where they live.  Nothing says "I cherish our relationship so much that I spent 12 seconds thinking about what to get you this year" quite like a prepaid Visa card.  And don't bother with wrapping it.  Any old envelope will do.  The best are reply envelopes which are typically enclosed in credit card offers.  Even though you won't be getting a credit card, you can still use the envelope and save some more cash.
 
Scheduling

You can make anything work if you try.  Visiting three different locations in one day is easy.  Not only do you get to buy gifts for three sets of people (and therefore get three sets in return to resell), you get to eat three times the amount of food and take home three times the amount of leftovers! 

Aside from family gatherings you can also plan on attending office parties, fundraisers, children's performances, get togethers with friends, and any other number of events you can either get invited to or invite yourself to.  Make sure you go to everything!  You simply cannot miss anything. 

You have the rest of the year to just hang out with your own family and enjoy them, so go ahead and sacrifice now.  You'll be thanking me for it later.

I hope this helps!  I look forward to hearing your success stories in the weeks and months to come!

I can't hear you, or anything else

Hadley usually does a good job of keeping her voice to a reasonable level.  In the middle of the night she'll whisper.  During the day she's at the normal level, unless she's trying to be heard over her sister.

Brynne, on the other hand, only seems to have one level.

Like Spinal Tap, Brynne turns it to 11, but she keeps it there.

She can walk up to me and request the most mundane thing.  If she happens to be right in front of me when she speaks I feel as though my hair is being blown back.

We very nearly lost a 50 year old oak tree when Brynne spoke at it.

I wasn't surprised the other day when she informed me about something she had just done.

"Me went poop on the potty!"

It just might have been more appropriate to use her quiet voice at this particular point - seeing as wee had about a dozen people over at the time and I was standing in the middle of them.

Oh well.  At least she wasn't cursing.

Same old same old

When trying to come up with dinner plans for your family, or even just for yourself, do you ever feel like you're in a rut?  Like you have the same thing to eat every week? 

I've been wondering recently if the girls were getting tired of eating virtually the same foods over and over again.  Mama does a great job of planning their meals, and ours, to provide lots of variety, but when it's my turn to do it, I just can't get too creative.

My entree staples for them are:

peanut butter and honey
hot dogs
bratwursts
chicken
salami (their all time favorite)
meatballs
pasta
breakfast foods (eggs, waffles, french toast, etc)

I was trying to rack my brain for something new the other day and I just happened to ask Hadley, who was helping me be creative, what she wanted to eat.

"Bratwurst"

Mmmmm, bratwurst.

I wasn't really sure if  she meant that, or was just talking, but I went ahead and got some out and started to prepare dinner.

I asked her about a side dish, and she replied with her all time favorite

"Chips"

Easy enough. 

With dinner prepared we sat down to eat.  My two little ones barely touched their food.  Only eating a total of:

3 bratwursts
1 apple
1 orange
4 handfuls (mine, not theirs) of chips
2 yogurt cups
3 glasses of milk
1 glass of water

Yes, I was being sarcastic when I said they barely touched their food.

After all this disappeared, Brynne informed me

"Me want something else to eat."

They got a few M&Ms, usually reserved for potty training treats, and that seemed to top them off. 

What did we do?

Here is a list of items we gathered together for an activity we did when I took a vacation day last week:

Large knife
Tablecloth
2 painting smocks/Mama's t-shirts
Empty bowl
Roll of paper towels
Wet wipes
Pumpkin we picked a few days earlier

Can you guess what we did?

Made the girls' first Jack-o'-lantern!

I had to lay out a few rules:

1 - No touching the knife.
2 - No eating the pumpkin guts.
3 - No touching anything other than the pumpkin until we were done.
4 - Go potty before we start so you don't violate rule number 3.
5 - Don't rip the bottom tooth off the pumpkin (actually, this is a new rule for next year based on this year's actions).

Brynne was apprehensive about cleaning the inside of the pumpkin, and let us know it was "slimy".  Hadley, on the other hand, literally dove right in.  She was a bit disappointed when we were done with this step, but she quickly got over it.

I carved the first eye and pushed it inward.  Then Hadley went elbow deep to dig it out.

I carved the second eye and pushed it inward.  Brynne semi-reluctantly dove in after it, but was pleased to show off her haul.

I carved the mouth, after them telling me the pumpkin should have two teeth.  I made three, but as you can see from rule #5, they only wanted two, and so two is what they got.

Hadley was eager to pull the pumpkin's tooth.  We'll see how long that lasts after she loses her first tooth.

I thought three teeth would look better, so as they were cleaning up I widened the pumpkin's grin and added the bottom tooth back.

Notice something different?  Wider smile (on the pumpkin), and the third tooth has been restored.

 

Haunted House?

Early this morning, at about 4:30 AM, I was roused from a wonderful dream by Hadley's voice coming through the toddler monitor.  Calling it a baby monitor just isn't appropriate as they are now "big girls".  She let me know she had to go potty.  I stumbled into her room, half awake, scooped her up, and headed to her "big girl potty" in her bathroom. 

When I scoop her up in the middle of the night she is almost always overly clingy.  Maybe she's cold, or maybe she just wants to be close in the dark.  Either way, she's like a little backpack hanging on the front of me with her arms wrapped tightly around my neck.

As I carried her in front of me I was suddenly stopped.  Actually, I was bounced back a bit and almost fell.  I wasn't initially sure what was going on.  In my semi-conscious state I assumed my progress was being halted by a supernatural force.  Some evil spirit or sinister demon was preventing me from taking her to the potty.  I imagined this mean spirited poltergeist was trying to get me soaked with urine.

Vomit is worse than urine.  I can attest to that.

I reached my free hand out to see if I could push through the resistance that way.  I could not.

The apparition was unlike anything I'd ever heard or read about.  It was solid.  It was everywhere in front of me, blocking my progress.  It was also smooth.  Almost too smooth.  I couldn't feel any difference no matter where I moved my hand.  No lumps.  No cracks.  Not even a wrinkle.  The resistance was the same no matter where I touched.

Then, my hand brushed against something that was different.

It was small and round.  It fit into my hand very easily.  It felt familiar.

Had I grabbed a hold of this handle I think I would have soiled myself.

And why shouldn't it?  It was a doorknob.  I shut the door to their bathroom earlier in the night, something I don't ever do - obviously for good reason.

There was no unexpected visitor, but I had managed to soften the blow of walking into a door in the middle of the night by using a Hadley bumper.  Poor girl got squished between me and the door.

"Sorry for running you into the door, Hadley.  I didn't realize it was shut."

Her reply:

"That's OK, Papa.  You didn't mean to.  I'm fine."