Our Kids

Well I think we have been great at picking our battles with the girls.  We don’t fight over trivial things like clothes, shoes, chairs, toothbrushes etc.  We stand firm on things that are dangerous or things we really don’t want them touching, eating etc.  These days the battles seem harder to determine whether we should just give in or stand firm.  For example, when Piper goes down for her nap she wants to have a pretzel or a ginger snap to hold.  Now I don’t like her sleeping with food or setting a bad example but my option is to let her cry herself to sleep because of the pretzel or let her have it.  When she wakes up she still has the pretzel.  I know she does not want to eat it, she just wants to have it and she wants me to give it to her.  Sigh…..I obviously have been giving her the pretzel.  Is that a battle I should fight?  Seems so trivial, a pretzel, I mean come on, what damage can it do.  On the other hand she is protesting napping without a pretzel and insisting I give it to her.  But once she has it she goes to sleep happy as a clam and wakes up happy.  That is really why I do it but does she think she is winning some imaginary battle that I have not agreed to fight?

Ah….to pretzel or not to pretzel.  I think I will go and mop the floors and leave that until tomorrow’s nap.

So I have to say that I have never used one of those public diaper changing stations for the girls.  Lela had never used the public potty either until our recent 7+ hour stay at the airport.  We had purchased her a portable potty that we carried everywhere but she did not want to use that because the bathroom was hopping and from her little portable potty she could see all the feet going by and was too interested.  Being without resources I invented “The Mommy Potty”.  This is where I sit on the potty and then she sits in between my legs.  She feels safe and secure and I can keep the automatic toiley from flushing which scares her to death.  Lucky for me she has never tee teed on me.

With our recent tummy episode the girls got very good at telling me when their tummy hurt, which meant I am going to vomit or poo quickly.  It is nice to finally have warnings.  Today we were shopping and Lela looked at me and said her tummy hurt, then she said she had to potty.  So we ran as quick as we could to the bathroom where the mommy potty went into action.  Lela sat down and started her “action” as well.  Needless to say it was quite savory (read smelly) and messy (read gross) but I stayed clean and her tummy felt better.  Oh the things we do for the girls!

It wasn’t just the early morning yuckies that struck Piper last Thursday.  We had some kind of stomach bug that made its way around the family, skipping Jason as usual.  Although he did not escape unscathed because he had 3 sickies this weekend including me and that left him steering a ship all by his lonesome while trying to watch 8 hours of NASCAR, LOL!

You will be happy to hear that we have all bounced back and are doing okey dokey.  It was a rough weekend for us all but as usual we came through with flying colors and lots and lots of barf rags to be washed.  Just when I thought we were getting back into our routine life threw a curve ball:)

Hey, two posts in one day… we’ll do anything to get our readers back!
Mystique talked about the fun we had at the Zoo… I tell ya, the one day we decide to sign up for breakfast with the elephants we get one of our five days of rain in Phoenix. Too funny. I’ll echo Mystique’s comments — I think the girls really liked it, and honestly Mystique and I just laughed about the rain. I don’t think either of us really thought about leaving, we just decided to sit it out and in the end it turned out great. It’s pretty cool hearing the girls actually remember the red cookies they hid for the elephants. A fun time, that’s for sure.
On a side note… I think we’re getting closer and closer to actual conversations with the girls. The other day Piper actually pointed at my bagel I had set aside for work and said, “Daddy bagel. For work. Car.” Not bad! Both Lela and Piper are pretty solid with , “Daddy sit. Here.” and other smaller sentences like “have it” and “like it”. Lela cracks me up when she says “don’t like it” — she scrunches up her face with a scowl that I think she learned from Mystique. I like finding things she doesn’t like and give them to her just to see that face.

Ok, on to the day that we just tried to push through… we were in San Antonio for a grandparent visit which went very well. Our flight back was scheduled for 4:45pm. As luck would have it, it was raining that day and, as we would soon learn, hailing quite heavily in Dallas/Fort Worth. Since the girls are older than 2 years, they each had their own ticket and we were carrying along car seats for plane. So in total, Mystique and I had Piper, Lela, Piper’s car seat, Lela’s car seat, a rolling bag of goodies for the girls, and Lela’s portable potty plus a small cooler-thing for food. That’s a lot to manage and I was really dreading the whole airport experience… mainly just getting through all the lines. I wasn’t too worried about the flight because we had smartly planned ahead and the girls hadn’t napped all day. We were hoping they’d just fall asleep on the plane and we’d have a nice relaxing trip home.

So we get to the airport and the line outside to the Southwest gate for baggage checking was small, so we just did it there. That worked out well… we didn’t have to wait in line inside, and we were all set to go to the security line.

We get inside and the security line is really long. I was thinking to myself, “and so it begins…”, as we walked up to the line. But the day got better when a TSA fella noticed us and asked us if we were ready with IDs, tickets, etc… I said “yes” and he took us over to a special baggage screening room with barely a line! Woot! We skipped the whole line, thanks to the girls.

After a quick run through screening, we grabbed all our gear and started heading towards the gate. The girls, of course, we’re doing great… Piper was “helping” Mystique with the rolling bag and Lela was “helping” me with her car seat.

Right when we get to our gate we noticed that it was still showing the 1pm flight. And it was 3:30pm. Hmm…. there were also a lot of people sitting on the floor staring at the gate and the departure monitors. Then we noticed our flight was listed as delayed an hour until 5:50pm.

Ok, not too bad… we had plenty of stuff for the girls to do, so an extra hour? No problem. Then we hear that any flight coming from DFW was delayed indefinitely. Whew… DFW? Who cares.

Ahh… but DFW is Southwest’s hub, so most planes come from there. Including planes bound for other destinations… such as Phoenix. Uh oh.

To make a really, really, really long story short… our flight was incrementally delayed from 4:45pm to 5:50pm to 6:45pm to 9pm to 9:50pm. And we got there at 3:30pm. And the girls hadn’t had a nap. Oh. My. Goodness.

In the end, the girls were as great as you could expect, all things considered. We had a few meltdowns, lots of running around playing, a few walks up and down the terminal, and more than a few trips to the potty for Mystique and Lela. The girls sat in their car seats, watched a little bit of a movie, ran around a mostly-deserted section of the terminal, and watched for planes. We took off our shoes, put them back on, took them back off, etc…

Finally, around 9:50pm or so, the plane arrived from DFW. As I was waiting with our stuff to board (Mystique and the girls were back to plane-watching), one fella came over, slapped me on the back and said, “You guys did really well. My wife and I were watching all afternoon and were glad we left our two kids at home.” Hah. I punched him. Just kidding.

The plane took off and Lela zonked out almost instantaneously (after kicking the person in front of her a few times for leaning her seat back). Piper wanted to watch some DVD and it was the cutest thing seeing her across the aisle at the window just kicking back in her car seat, DVD in front of her, munching on some cheerios. She fell asleep in a bit, and then we landed. It took some time getting to the car and putting in the car seats, which the girls weren’t too pleased with, but we all powered through it and got home around 11:30pm or so. We took the girls to their cribs, unloaded the car, and flopped into bed vowing never to fly again. RV dealer, here we come.

Now that we have lost all our faithful readers we have returned.  It was a long visit to Texas and it took me quite some time to get back into the swing of things.  My flickr account changed and it set me all a fluster.  Rest assured we are going to be updating again and entertaining you with the boring stories of our days.

Yesterday we had quite an adventure.  We went to the zoo to have breakfast with the elephants, a special activity that you can sign up for.  We had to get there early, 745AM, so we were rushing in the morning. I was actually surprised and impressed with myself (my first mistake) that it went off without a hitch and we were in the car and on our way by 715AM.  All was going well until we hit a bump in traffic, of course I started to get antsy but we pushed on.  Just then I look back and Piper has started to projectile vomit all her breakfast and she kept going and going and going.  So this upset Lela and she started to cry.  So while I was navigating the stop and go traffic  I was also piling on paper napkins to sop up some of the upchuck.  After all the upchucking Piper felt better but was covered in the stuff.  Now there have only been about two times in 2 years that I have needed a change of clothes and of course both of THOSE times I did not have one.

We get to the zoo 15 min late and I wrap Piper in my sweatshirt, toss her in the jogger and rush over to the entrance.  We checked in and started into the zoo for the breakfast.  Just then it starts to rain, and then rain and then downpour.  So we are getting soaked, Jason, the girls and me.  We rush to the nearest shelter and wait wondering if our breakfast is kaput.  But never fear we are going through with the breakfast in the rain.  HA!  So we trudge into the giant elephant yard and our shoes are quickly becoming platforms from all the mud.  Jason and I have the jogger, thank goodness, which covers the terrain nicely.  The rain stops and the kids get to hide elephant biscuits all over the elephant yard.  Jason and I carry the girls so they don’t get muddy and help them hide the biscuits, they really liked it.  Then we went to get our breakfast and do crafts relating to elephants.  I went to the gift shop and got some tshirts for the girls so that Piper could get out of her vomit clothes.

All in all the breakfast went well but the day at the zoo was a bit of a bust.  Jason went to work and the girls and tried to stick around but got soaked again and finally gave up at 1030AM.  The girls got a stuffed elephant to remember their day and this morning they told us how elephants ate cookies and they fed their little elephants cheerios.  It was really cute so it was all worth it in the end.