Back home

We made it back just fine from Myrtle Beach. About 5 and a half hours again. What's significant is that on the way there and on the way back, we never stopped. No potty breaks. No food breaks. No doggy potty breaks. Straight on through. That's because Blythe has a bladder of steel. I'm sure once Ethan is potty trained (no we have not started...a ways off from there), he'll probably have a wimpy bladder and those trips will take us twice as long.

So it was back to school and work today. I missed the kids today, remembering the good times we had. Then when they got home from school, they were back to their old whiny selves and so I'm once again grateful for day care.

Myrtle Beach Part 6

Well, we headed over to Dick's Last Resort last night for dinner. Not quite as fun with the kiddos around as the waiters are quite toned down as are the comments on the condom hats. We still had fun though. We explained to Blythe about the atmosphere at Dick's before we got there and she kept repeating it, "the waiters are mean, but they are sposed to be cuz it's funny".

Here's Blythe and Braden with their condom hats:

Blythe's says "Future Hooters Reject". Okay, so that's probably true.

Braden's says "Who knew something so small could actually make 2 kids?"

And here's Ethan and I with our hats:

Mine says "I should have taken the Pill"

Ethan's says "Sandbox Pimp". He wore his hat only for the picture, then off it came. He also didn't want to wear his bib. Funny, the only one of us who normally wears a bib while eating refused to wear it.

Anyway, we had a good time, then walked around Barefoot Landing and bought nothing. Saw some tigers though. They had an area with 3 large caged tigers and a bunch of baby ones. You could pay $59 to have your picture taken with a baby tiger. Um, no. Blythe said, "tigers bite", then Braden said, "no, they just swallow". Today she tells me that tigers don't bite. I said yes they do, she says, "no, they just swallow". So I said, "first they bite your head off, then they swallow". I don't think she'll be wanting to go near tigers for a while.

Where we're staying is right near the Apache Pier in Myrtle Beach. Apparently it's the longest wooden pier on the East Coast (about 1/4 mile long). Learned that today when we decided to walk over to the pier and walk down it and have lunch. They also have an arcade, so we did that first then walked all the way down the pier and back. Ethan fell asleep on Braden's shoulders during the walk, so we had to wake him for lunch. All the swimming and sun really tires these guys out.

We'll be heading home tomorrow and then it's back to the real world. Boo. Will be quite a while before we're on vacation again. It's been a blast and we had a lot of fun spending the whole week with our kids. Back home I feel like they don't get enough of our attention with the grind of daily life, so I'm really thankful for times like this. Adios Myrtle Beach.

Myrtle Beach part 5

Not much to report on for today, but the grandmothers will get mad if I don't post something. I have taken no new pictures since the last post. We headed back to the beach yesterday after nap where we attempted to dig a really big hole, but just like Ethan won't let us build castles, he also won't let us dig a hole. What he wants to do is sit in the hole and then he loves for us to bury him with sand. Because he's a boy and he loves to be dirty.

More pool and beach time this morning and today after nap we'll head over to Barefoot Landing and have dinner at Dick's Last Resort. I'll be sure to bring my camera there in case they decide to make us some condom hats. If you've never been, you have no idea what I'm talking about and you're completely missing out.

Myrtle Beach Part 4

This morning we took a break from the beach and the sun and headed back over to Broadway at the Beach to visit the aquarium. It was a pretty neat aquarium, definitely not my favorite one though. Not that you care about my list of favorite aquariums, but my favorite is Chicago, then Charleston, then maybe Atlanta. Atlanta was quite crowded and not stroller-friendly. I heard the one in Chattanooga is pretty good, and amazingly even though we lived there for a year, we never went. There were just SO many other things to do...NOT. Anyway, getting off subject here.

They did have a neat exhibit of babies with little tiny seahorses and even a display of chickens in process of hatching. They had a cool tunnel with moving walkway similar to Atlanta's. Anyway, some pics from the aquarium:

Here's Blythe trying to escape this bubble.

And here's Ethan and Braden INSIDE an aquarium.

After the aquarium, we decided to head over to a different area of Broadway at the Beach with more kiddie rides. However, Blythe established she was hungry on the way there, so we had lunch at Johnny Rockets at 11:20am. We left there $40 poorer after a meal of just burgers, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and a grilled cheese sandwich. Not even a milkshake! On the way to the rides, we got a short random rain shower, so we ducked into this cowboy store and had a little fun with hats.

We finished up our Broadway at the Beach experience with some more kiddie rides - airplanes, NASCAR racers, a train, a carousel, and a ferris wheel.

Ethan fell asleep almost instantly after we got in the car. Blythe was tired too, but waited til we got back to take a nap.

Myrtle Beach part 3

We headed over to Broadway at the Beach last night. It was a lot bigger than it was the last time I was there...in college...um, like 10 years ago. Right away we found one of the ride areas and bought our 9 tickets for $20. Total rip, but we are on vacation so whatever. So 9 tickets means 4 rides (with 2 riders each) and 1 single. First up was the cars. In this video Blythe is being the spastic driver, but actually Ethan was more the spaz than Blythe.

Next up was the tea cups. Ethan wasn't big enough to ride by himself and I would have puked on him if I had to ride, so Braden rode with him (Braden didn't need a ticket though). After a while Ethan looked like he might puke, but I still think he liked it. And of course Blythe loved it.

Let's see, next up was the carousel. Nothing all that exciting about it, pretty standard. We tried to convince Blythe to ride the one that looked like Juni, but she wanted the horse with the pink ribbon. Such a girl.

Then Blythe really wanted to ride the caterpillar. It was really fast and went round and round, so again I punted to Braden. He did have to use a ticket this time though. Check out how fast.

After they went round and round for a while, it stopped and then went BACKWARDS round and round just as fast. Blythe loved it!

So we had just one ticket left. Ethan got to ride the boats by himself.

We finished up the evening with dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, which is really more about the atmosphere than the food. The really nice thing about this trip is that it's not crowded anywhere. We're past prime season, school has started in a lot of places, so we have not-so-crowded beaches, no wait at the Hard Rock, and rides we're riding by ourselves. Only one more year that we get to go on vacation the first week of school. Then Blythe will start kindergarten...ah! getting ahead of myself!

Myrtle Beach Part 2

We did get that kite out yesterday late in the day. Kind of a pain, it was an inflatable kind with Elmo on it. Got it all ready and the wind was going pretty well. Braden got it up in the sky fairly easily, but the kids had about zero interest in it. They were more interested in it while we were filling it up. Oh well. So we had more beach and more pool time.

If you really want to wear your kids out, still them in the sun most of the day and have them swim and build sand castles and run on the beach. Then they sleep GREAT!

I was a little worried about going on vacation with just us as there is no one else to help with the kids, but so far it's been very nice. Cooking dinner last night with 2 tired children was a little rough, but overall not so bad. We're planning to have several dinners out with the kids so we don't have to cook every night. Today after nap, we'll be heading to Broadway at the Beach for dinner and entertainment. We'll be targeting the overpriced kiddie rides. I'll take some pics and let you know how it goes. For now, here's a few more beach pics from this morning.

Look! Ethan hasn't knocked over the sand castle yet!

Blythe's trying to escape the sun...

Myrtle Beach vacation part 1

We made it safely to Myrtle Beach yesterday and are enjoying the BEAUTIFUL, sunny (not raining) beach weather. Took us about 5 and a half hours of driving. We timed it so we would eat lunch, then get in the car and go so the kids would nap for a large portion of the drive. Ethan fell asleep almost instantly. Took Blythe about an hour before she fell asleep, which was about the time Ethan woke up. Because he can’t be quiet for more than 2.5 seconds in the car, Blythe only got about a 20 minute nap in. But she’s easy in the car. It was Ethan who drove us all nuts with his constant “Eh” “Eh, eh” “Mommy, mommy” (imagine that for 4.5 hours in the most

whiny voice you can think of). So the trip itself was not all that fun.

Braden unloaded and then took the kids to the beach while I put stuff away. As is now the tradition every time we go to the beach, the kids didn’t put their swimsuits on, but came back wet and sandy.

We also brought the dogs on this trip. Braden woke up early this morning and took Juni to the beach so she could swim in the ocean. The saltwater didn’t seem to phase her one bit and apparently she even gathered herself an audience pretty quickly.

Later in the morning Braden, the kids, and I headed to the ocean. Well, actually the beach. Hurricane Bill is causing some rip tides along the east coast, so no swimming allowed today. So instead we built sand “castles”. We can only fill one bucket, flip it over, and then Ethan knocks it down instantly. That’s his favorite thing to do. Well, that and throw sand.

Then we went to the pool for a while and then nap time. Ahhh! I have a feeling this will be our regular morning routine for the next 7 days. Fine by me!

Supposed to be breezy later…maybe we’ll get to fly the kite we didn’t get to fly down in Hilton Head.

Our visit to Baton Rouge

Our trip to Baton Rouge ended up being really nice. We did a lot of swimming in the warm pool (which Blythe loved!), ate some really great food, and got to see just about all of Braden's extended family.

When we first got there, Braden's Uncle Jon was there and was able to spend one night with us and hang out for a while on Thursday. The kids loved hanging out with Jon and showing him all their tricks in the pool.

Here's Blythe going down the "now completely illegal for any home swimming pool" 14 foot high waterslide.


And Ethan decided to give it a try too. Over the course of the trip, Ethan went down many times and Blythe even went down head first.

We were sad to say goodbye to Uncle Jon.

But the next day, we had the rest of the extended family over, including Blythe and Ethan's great grandmother, Mommee.

The kids also got to hang out with other kids! We had Braden's second (or third?) cousin Hunter and Tyler (who flew in from Boston with his parents).

Blythe tried to keep up with Hunter's crazy tricks on the diving board, and although he was 2 years older, she did a pretty good job!

Saturday the guys played golf and the kids and I relaxed some more by the pool. Sunday it was time to head home, which unfortunately didn't go as smoothly as the trip down there thanks to some thunderstorms in the Charlotte area. Sorry to the full plane of passengers who had to listen to Ethan scream for an hour. He was tired and hungry, so what can I say?

Anyhoo, it was a really nice trip. Here are some more photos to recap:

Trip down to Baton Rouge

I'm a big girl. I can admit when I'm wrong. Ethan has croup. So, it really was a good thing day care was proactive so he couldn't go to school on Tuesday. We didn't send him Wednesday either even though he had no fever. He had a cough, but it wasn't the tell-tale croup cough until Wednesday at naptime. So someone infected him, but hopefully he didn't infect others.

We flew down to Louisiana last night. Drove all the way to Charlotte, then flew to New Orleans, then drove to Baton Rouge. The kids were exhausted! But considering how long it took us to get here, they did great. Both were good on the ride to Charlotte, Ethan slept on the plane (after a brief episode of trying to fight the sleep), Blythe watched a movie on the plane, then both slept on the car ride to Baton Rouge. Then no trouble at all getting them to go back to sleep in beds. Nice!

Ethan feels a little better today. Though no one really likes the hot and humid weather of Louisiana during August, the humidity certainly helps with the coughing.

They both swam in the pool this morning and Blythe went off the diving board. Actually Ethan went off too (or really I just lowered him down into the pool). Then it came to an end after Ethan was walking around and got stung by a wasp on the top of his foot. Ouch! Poor kid can't catch a break!

Looking forward to some fresh fish tonight for dinner...yum!

Eating is so tiring

Ethan is home today "sick". He hasn't had a fever, but has been a little cranky. Apparently he doesn't like it when I try to sit in front of the computer and ignore him. Fortunately I have great next door neighbors who took him for about an hour while I had a meeting. I picked him up and fed him some lunch and then my plan was to put him down for a nap around 1:30 so I could make it through my next 2 meetings while he was asleep. But apparently he couldn't wait that long.

I should buy stock in Tylenol

Ok, seriously, how come I can never catch a break when trying to prepare to go out of town!!??

We're flying down to Louisiana on Wednesday with the kiddos to visit with the grandparents. So OF COURSE that means I have to get my whole week's worth of work done in just 2.5 days. And as most of you know, I hate leaving the house if it's messy or dirty. So, you know, that means a lot to get done.

But as is the case EVERY FREAKIN TIME we are about to head out, I had a sick child home from school today. Blythe started up with a high fever again yesterday (because it had been all of 4 days since that had happened before...ugh!). She woke us up at 4am still not feeling well. After her antsy self wouldn't fall back asleep in our bed, I made her go back to her own bed, where she slept until 10am this morning. She felt better today, so she should be able to go to school tomorrow. Fortunately, she's easy to have at home and I was able to get most of my work done. Ethan is the hard one. And onto my second part of the story.

He started getting hoarse yesterday, which sounded funny since he can't say a whole lot of words anyway. I kind of expected him to get a high fever too, but he didn't and felt fine this morning and ate lots for breakfast. He went to school and I got no calls all day. Yay! But when I went to pick him up at 5pm, they said "oh, we JUST took his temperature and he was 101.2". Funny - 101 is the threshold for having to stay home for 24 hours. And why the hell would they take his temp at 5pm when I was on my way there to get him anyway? It wasn't like he was acting lethargic or anything. He was covered in sand from the sandbox when I got there for god's sake! Besides, if he was going to infect anyone else, he already did it today. So now I'll have Ethan home tomorrow even if he wakes up feeling just fine. So, yep, I'm pissed. They better both be at day care on Wednesday so I can pack in peace before picking them up in the afternoon to head out. Bah humbug.

Fun day with the kids

You're right Mom - probably won't be able to take Ethan down the mask aisle at Target around Halloween time. Seeing as how he was afraid of this puppet today at Target:

Okay, so maybe it is a bit scary. Even Blythe wouldn't let me pretend to bite her finger off. And she LOVES the mask aisle at Halloween.

I was feeling generous, so we went to Target so they could each get one new toy. It's been quite a while since we actually bought a toy. All the toys they acquired over Christmas and birthdays are no longer seeming very new. So the other thing I bought at Target was more plastic bins so I can renew my "toy vault" so they aren't all out all the time.

This morning the kids and I headed over to "Steppin Out", an annual street fair in Blacksburg. It was a nice way to kill about an hour as we got there right at the beginning of the day, so it wasn't too crowded yet. They both got balloons and a free stuffed animal (SO needed more of those...not). Then Blythe wanted to try a hula hoop but was failing miserably. The guy selling them tried to give her a personal lesson, but no luck. Maybe next year. I did spend 1 dollar so Blythe could jump in a bounce house for 5 minutes. Then both of them decorated (and then ate) a sugar cookie. Then we left and I had only spent the one dollar. Nice.

A bit later we headed to the pool with the Freel's. Blythe had a great time playing with her best bud Ashley.

Unfortunately the water was quite cold (they had just put in a lot of new water) and Blythe and cold water don't mix all that well. She swam, but not nearly what she normally does.

Ethan is quickly becoming friends with Luke (Ashley's brother who is 6 months older than Ethan). They are in the same class at day care, but with 6 months between them it took until about this age before they were able to actually play together. They had fun at the pool together too.

So even though it never did become sunny today like it was supposed to be (shocker), it was still a very fun day with the kids.

Ethan 17 month update

Ethan is 17 months old today and he is quite fun these days.


I'm not so much a fan of the 10-16 month age range. There are lots of firsts (like walking, climbing, etc) but they are so accident prone that you literally have to watch them every second and combined with the separation anxiety during that time, it's just not a lot of fun sometimes. But 17 months is another story. He's now more aware of being up high on something and the potential that he could fall, so he's much more careful and usually able to lower himself down. Same goes for stairs (though we still always watch him on the stairs).

He's also starting to get past the separation anxiety. All week this week I've dropped him off at day care, he's given me a hug and off he went to play with no tears when I left. Great!

I don't know his stats right now, but here's some other tidbits:

• He's starting to say lots more words these days and is much more capable of repeating back (or trying to) the things we say. His current favorite word to say is "alligator"

• His favorite book is the Bogie book (a book about a dog named Fergus that looks exactly like our dog Bogie)
• He's still biting kids at school, but not as much. Hopefully the phase is passing. He got bit the other day and we were probably the only parents to be happy their child got bit so he would feel what it's like and then maybe stop.
• He just about has all of his teeth, except the 2 year molars. A few have just broken through but aren't full grown
• He's recently learned how to throw a ball pretty well and he's currently working on his jump shot for basketball
• He likes trying to play golf. He lines up his club pretty well, but the follow-thru just isn't there yet
• He's doing much better at eating with a spoon. See here:

• He plays with Blythe a lot more now and they also fight all the time. He knows exactly what to do to piss her off. And it drives me crazy.
• He's pretty good about sharing his toys with Blythe but does not like to share his Mommy. There's the "who gets to sit in Mommy's lap" argument daily.
• He's just starting to grow out of his 12-18 month clothes and is also starting to get too big for his size 5 shoes.

Going to see Adle

Braden and I each have a bedtime/naptime story we made up that Blythe loves to hear us recite. Mine is about a tiny frog named Buster that longs to be bigger. He has to get to a magic growing potion that a giant on top of a beanstalk has. To get there, he flies on a bird's back because it's far, far away. Fortunately his Mommy lives near the beanstalk because the frog is too small to climb up it. So he has to go to his Mommy's house to get stairs to climb up it (Blythe made that part up). He finally makes it up there and drinks a drop of the magic potion and becomes the biggest frog in the land and is so happy. The end.

Braden's story is about a frog too (I think...or maybe a turtle). Named Marvin. Who is red with blue polka dots (or maybe blue with red polka dots). Anyway, I'm not exactly sure how his story goes, but apparently Marvin is all buddy-buddy with Santa Claus and reports back to him if Blythe is being good or bad.

So anyway, Braden was leaving today to go to Seattle to recruit at the US Open meet. He told Blythe this morning at breakfast that he was going to Seattle and that Marvin was going to be there so he could then chat with Marvin about whether Blythe was being good or not. She was pretty excited Braden was going to see Marvin because she's anxious for Santa Claus to hear how good she's been. She never questioned who "Adle" was though. She just accepted that Daddy was going to go see "Adle" and have a nice chat with Marvin. Oh, and apparently this Adle person lives far, far away.

The pirate pic

Forgot to post the picture of Blythe as the pirate at Chick-fil-a. Nice one, eh?

Arghh!

Holy cow!

Yesterday was like the longest day ever for work (seriously...worked until 12:15am) so I don't know why I was thinking today was Monday when we went to Chick-fil-a for dinner. It wasn't until we got there and I saw the big cow mascot dressed up and walking around that I realized it was Tuesday which was kids night. Not to worry - not that many kids there. We actually drove all the way over there because I had a coupon for a free milkshake. Totally worth the $2.34 gallon of gas there and back for the $2.50 milkshake. It was Cookies and Cream, so really it was worth it.

Anyway, as soon as Blythe saw that cow mascot she instantly became his (or her?) stalker. "COW! Give me a hug!" "I touched the cow's tail!" "COW! Give me a high five!" "take a picture with me cow!" "COW! I love you COW!" it was totally ridiculous and eventually I had to make her stop before he pressed charges.

Ethan on the other hand was deathly afraid of the cow. He nearly tore my shoulder out of it's socket trying to hide himself from the cow when the cow even looked in his direction. He may as well have thought the cow would pull a dagger from it's utter and attack him. At one point when we were seated and the cow started to walk kind of near our table, he started screaming.

So weird how kids are like that. They really either LOVE mascots or they are so afraid of them. And I have the 2 polar extremes.

Oh yeah, and Blythe was extra cool in Chick-fil-a because she was wearing her pirate eye patch that she got in her goody bag at the birthday party on Sunday night. She would walk around saying "Arghhh!" and Ethan then would say it too. I, on the other hand, was not allowed to since apparently I'm not a pirate.

Gommy visits

Gommy came to visit over the weekend (actually Saturday evening through this morning). Took her a while to get here due to a traffic incident on the interstate that had it backed up for 15 miles! Unfortunately it was pouring down rain Sunday morning (story of my life...or at least my summer). I had a 30% off coupon at gap outlet, but on Sunday's they don't open until noon, so we filled time with an early lunch then off to the little mall. Afterwards the girls (Blythe, Gommy, and I) went to the movies to see "G-Force" (the movie about the special agent guinea pigs). Figured Blythe would enjoy it since they have a guinea pig at school named Happy Feet. Problem was that I guess Blythe really wanted nap time that day, so although she made it through the whole movie, she was SO tired. Maybe we should have sprung for the $5.75 SMALL popcorn just to keep her awake. That popcorn costs probably 8 cents to make. What a rip!

Anyway, the movie was about as good as you would expect a Guinea Pig secret spy agent FBI movie to be.

We got home and Blythe went right down for a nap. Which was a good thing because we had a pool party birthday to go to from 7:30-9:30 at night (which we made it to the end of!). We swam for a while and then it got too cold. Here's Blythe bundled up with Gommy:

And Ethan all bundled up with me:

Since it was so late, we didn't bother with bathing the kids to remove the sand they were covered in or the chlorine which threatens to turn Blythe's hair green at any second. So we bathed them this morning before school. Here's some fun in the tub photos:

Ethan has a red mark on his forehead from falling face first onto the concrete at the pool. Ouch.

The bike buggy

Our next door neighbors gave us a new toy. It's a bike buggy that can also be a double stroller and it's actually really nice and hardly been used. I had to go online to find the manual that goes with it so I would know how to attach it to the bike, but it was easy enough to find and very easy to attach to the bike too.

The hard part was actually riding the bike. It actually wasn't as hard as I thought pulling around both kids, but there are no flat areas around where we live, so while it's great fun to go downhill, it always means there will be an uphill somewhere. So I took them 3 laps around our neighborhood and Braden took them 1 lap. Here's a little video clip. As we pass our house, we're on a downward slant, so check out our super-fastness.

The kids wanted to keep going, but the adults were too tired, so we'll try again maybe today.

We've had a lot of rain, so just before bathtime, the kids were outside finding puddles of water on the deck and playing in them. Then Blythe started getting water and putting it in Ethan's hair and giving him mohawks and crazy hairdo's. Which she called "hairdudes". Probably not a bad term for male hairdo's actually.