Week in pictures

1. Blythe and Ethan riding the caterpiller ride at the "Got to be NC" Festival at the fairgrounds.  Ethan said this was his favorite ride.
2. Ethan after a (semi-successful) trip to Walmart.  Hey - he's still smiling, so can't be that bad.
3. Grams and Peep chillin in a raft on Lake Keowee during our trip to Cashiers
4. Juni wears a toddler size 5 shoe and a 2T shirt (in case you need to know)
5. Art!  Painting the plates used to hold the paint.
6. Before they painted the plates, we painted pig noses.  Aren't they the cutest little pigs?
7. The boats at Pullen Park
8.  Happy Birthday to Brynn!  Ready to open some presents!
9.  Look at my sandy hands!  Sand castle building at Lake Keowee.

Brynn is 2!

Hard to believe, but my baby is 2 years old.  She should be starting her terrible 2 tantrums any day now.  Kidding actually, she started those suckers at least 3 months ago.

Sorry, Brynn, but maybe because you are the 3rd child, or maybe just the circumstances this year, but you didn't really get a party.  We had Doug, Lynette, Ada, and Harper over on Brynn's birthday.  Ethan, Ada, and Brynn helped me bake a cake earlier in the day that we decorated with sprinkles.  We had no balloons. No streamers.  No theme.  Just some cake and some leftover birthday napkins from Blythe's party.  I did buy ice cream, but forgot to get it out for everyone to eat.  But she's 2 and she doesn't care.  The only part she cares about is singing Happy Birthday and blowing out the candles.  And she gets to do that 3 times for her birthday. Because we spent last weekend with Grams and Peep and they got cupcakes and we sang Happy Birthday.  This Wednesday we'll celebrate with Gommy, Poppa, and Laura.  So it's all good.

At 2, Brynn is not such an easy child.  She still gets pissed if I try to leave her sight.  Put her in her high chair with some food while I try to run into the office to check email?  Nope.  Pisses her off.  I'm hoping this subsides in the near future.  Maybe now that I'm home with her all day, she'll get sick of seeing me all the time.  Although, I'd say she's quite the fan of the new arrangement.  And she's been pretty good too.  Most things I say (like "Want to take a nap?") get answered with "Tay" (her version of "K").  She's talking up a storm these days and even has several sentences that she says.  Of course, sometimes I'm the only one who can understand her.  Like when she says "Deedan es fi-in".  Translation - Ethan is crying.  She's got the whole punch buggy routine down.  "Mommy!  Pu Muggy!  Gimme ya hand"  Then she hits me on the hand.

At the doctor, she was 26 pounds and 36 inches tall.  Pretty sure that 36 inches is off though by at least an inch.  They weren't exactly scientific about it.  She wears size 6 shoe and 2T clothes.  So far this season she loves the baby pool, but not a fan of the big pool.  I'm sure she'll get over that quickly.

We also started potty training today as soon as we got back from our trip.  She went probably 2-3 hours without peeing at all then went through 2 pairs of underwear.  She did pee in the potty though right before bedtime, so that was a success!   Should be a fun week around here.

So, happy birthday to Brynn!

Week in pictures

Trying this out.  It's from last week's pictures (which I didn't resolve to taking more photos until mid-week).

1. Pedicure on my day off before my adventures with the kiddos began
2. Ethan scored 5 goals at his last soccer games!
3. Fun on the tire swing at Laurel Hills park
4. These boots were made for walkin
5. Brynn on the swing at the park (and kind of sucking her thumb, which she's started lately).
6. The note the tooth fairy left
7. Ethan's soccer team.  Braden was the coach, but he was out of town for the last game.
8. Fun at the Durham Bulls game!
9. Brynn likes jelly beans more than baseball

A farming we will go

I've come up with a different theme for each week basically to make it easier for me to come up with art projects, stories to read, activities, etc.  So this first week the theme is "Farms".  So the best way to kick off the week?  Head to a farm!  We headed out to a farm in north Durham on Saturday for a one hour tour.  Probably wasn't worth the 45 minute trip to get there, but hopefully the kids learned something about life on a farm.  When we first arrived (we were early), they were in process of artificially inseminating 3 cows.  Not exactly what I wanted to get out of the farm experience, but I guess even Braden and I saw something we'd never seen.

During the tour, the kids got to run around with goats and sheep, chickens, puppies, and kittens.  We also saw a mommy emu, a daddy, and 3 baby emus.  The emus didn't want to be touched though.  We pet some sweet horses and found the herd of cows.  Had to do a special call to get them to come into the field with us.  Goes a little something like this...."Here cows! (clap, clap, clap)".  Seriously.  And actually it works.  Who'd a thought.

Ethan got to hold a chicken, so that was cool.

Brynn likes petting the sheep.  This particular guy loved being pet and will actually knock you down if you don't pet him when he wants to be pet.

They also got to hold some eggs that had just been laid.

We continued the farm theme all the way through the weekend with a trip to the "Got to be NC" festival at the fairgrounds.  Okay, so maybe we spent most of the time riding rides and eating snowcones, but there were lots of tractors there, a really loud tractor pull contest going on, and we did go through the petting zoo area, so it counts, right?  Here's Blythe and Doug about to tackle the free-fall ride.  

Good weekend prep for (hopefully) a good farm-themed week.

Off to greener pastures

Well, this is it.  My last day working full-time.  I've been working full-time for the same company for 10 years (my 10 year anniversary was May 6th).  It hasn't been all that rewarding, especially in recent years.  They blamed the economy for freezes in merit increases.  Laid off people that were good workers.  Claimed they cared so much about their employees.  But there are more than 30,000 people who work for this company, so really everyone is just an employee number and an email address.  People at the top have gotten quite greedy as our company is doing well and yet still there are meager (if any) merit increases.  The work has been challenging though and keeps my brain in tip-top shape.  And I work with some really great people (even if I have had 4 different bosses in the last 2 years).  Plus I work from home, so that's always been the draw that keeps me here.

So I'm hoping my next full-time job (stay-at-home-mom) is more rewarding than this last one.  Brynn and Ethan  have their last day at school tomorrow and then they'll be home with me next week.  Blythe has school until June 7 and then the real challenge begins...me and ALL 3 kids.  Ethan says he's happy that he won't have to go to school anymore, but I don't think he gets that he won't see his friends anymore.  Wonder how long it will take before he's asking to go back.

I'm excited about this very big change in my life, but also very nervous about it.  Will I have the patience to deal with them all day every day?  Will they listen to ANYTHING I say?  Of course all the images in my mind are of us having fabulous days with lots of learning opportunities, but I know they won't be like that.  I've spent many hours working on themes for each week and coming up with learning opportunities, field trips, projects, etc.  But will Ethan be begging to watch TV all day and Brynn asking for snacks all day?  Probably at the start since that's how our weekends go.  Hopefully I can change that.  It hasn't really sunk in though that I will have almost NO time to myself.  I want to be able to spend a lot of quality time with the kids without having to worry about other things, but there is grocery shopping to do, house cleaning to be done, errands, exercising, and holding down 2 part-time jobs (swim camp administrator...which takes up more time than you'd think, and working for my current company which I've committed 10 hours a week to work).   Guess we'll figure it all out as we go along.

Somehow I'm hoping to blog more.  Or at least take more pictures.  Lynette - I'm planning to copy your "My week in pictures" so my goal is to take at least 9 pictures a week :)

So anyway, stay tuned for changes ahead and wish me luck!

Blythe lost her first tooth

On Thursday last week, Blythe's teacher sent me an email in the morning telling me Blythe had lost her first tooth!  I was pretty shocked considering I wasn't even aware she had a loose tooth.  Appears it probably wasn't all that loose, but during snack she couldn't get her tupperware container open, so she used her teeth and out came a tooth.  By the time she got around to telling her teacher, it was nowhere to be found.  She said she had it in her hand, but it must have fallen out.  They looked and looked, but couldn't find it.  Blythe wanted her teacher to email me right away so that I could tell the toothfairy to come even though she lost her tooth.

Later she asked me if I told the tooth fairy and I said "yes".  Still later she asked HOW I told the tooth fairy.  Wasn't quite prepared for that one, but I told her I sent the tooth fairy an email.

Anyway, Blythe was SO excited about losing a tooth.  Everyone in her class except Blythe and her friend Ariel had already lost a tooth, so now she joins the ranks of the other kindergartners.

She was also very excited to go to bed that night in anticipation of the tooth fairy coming.  Apparently one of the boys in her class said his tooth fairy brought him 4 dollars.  I made sure to tell Blythe there are LOTS of tooth fairies and each one does something different.  So, Blythe's tooth fairy isn't quite as wealthy as that boy's, but might make up for in style or friendliness (if we were ever to meet her).  This is what she left under Blythe's pillow along with 1 dollar.

Maybe our tooth fairy should have a name??

Loaded with sand

What?  Not everyone plays fat-kid-in-the-sandbox?