Just Ducky

This was the scene from my kitchen window yesterday:

You know you’ve had a lot of rain when ducks start hanging out in your yard. Granted, we have a bird feeder and they parked their waddly little behinds under that for a while, before nibbling on some grass and then having a drink from our pool – I mean, pond, I mean huge puddle of floating muddy mulch at the bottom of the slide. I can see the allure of our yard from a duck’s point of view.

And it was a huge delight for the kids. Baboo squealed for at least an hour when she wasn’t quacking, that is.

Now, I wonder if I can invite them back in a few weeks for the all you can eat slug buffet? Hmmmm.

E. Bunny Hops on Through

Mr. Bunny made his visit yesterday morning, leaving behind his cute eggs, instead of other…. um, bunny leavings. Thankfully. The girls were ecstatic, running around collecting little plastic eggs filled with treats and other goodies. Baboo dragged her basket all over the house, and after each egg she found she said “Tank-um” (which is her slang version of thank you). The hunt took all of 6.3 minutes. Oh well. Next year, E. Bunny will make it a bit harder.

We did do a hunt outside after breakfast as well. MRS Bunny (aka ME) was up at 6, crunching around in my pajamas on the frosty grass to hide the dyed eggs in the back yard, after about 3.5 hours of sleep because of a sick little Baboo. I was just falling back to sleep when Mouse came in at 6:45 to announce VERY LOUDLY that the Easter Bunny had been in her room and left a new basket AND EGGS!

All very exciting. And yes we acted very surprised.

I managed to convince her to lay down with me for about 45 minutes to allow Baboo to sleep a bit longer, but then her anxious, excited wiggling drove us out of bed.

All in all we had a good day. It was quiet for us and involved some yard work, but also included much digging up of dirt (to add some mulch under the slide/swings) and highly successful worm hunting. That makes it a good day at our house.

I have to say how much I enjoy being on the giving end of holidays. I know how excited I used to be when I was a kid, waiting for the magic of Christmas, Easter etc… and I love being able to recreate that for our girls.

To commemorate the day, Mouse made a little book called “Mouse’s Egg Adventure”. She drew a bunch of pictures showing where the eggs were hidden –real and imaginary – including the play structure in the back yard WITH the big mud puddle at the bottom of the slide, and an imaginary “pretty, princess tree”. She signed her name to each page (this cracks me up) and asked me to narrate her story by describing the picture on each page. “Egg under a chair. Egg under the slide. Egg under the pretty princess tree”. She read it to us at bed time. This is beyond precious to me and will put this away in her momentos. It’s just so cute.

Baboo had been sick on Saturday, having a fever and an infected vaccination site on her leg which involved a trip to the local clinic, and now 10 days of antibiotics 4 times a day. Oy. She’s much better, he leg looks 100 times better and she is back to her spunky self.

Yesterday was our respite and today Mouse woke up with a fever and croup. Sigh. It’s a crappy, rainy day so we’re hanging out inside, in our jammies, watching waayyy too much tv and likely recreating the ‘GREAT EGG HUNT OF 2009’ several dozen times.

Hope you all had a happy, healthy Easter!

Egg-cellent

Oh, come on! It’s Easter… surely you expected a cheesy egg-referenced title.

This is what we did yesterday…

I cooked up a few eggs in the afternoon and then Mouse asked me about, oh, 290 times when it would be time to decorate eggs. Finally, after trying to get her to wait for Baboo to get up from her nap, I gave in and let her do some. We did a few with the little wax crayon thing and just dyed some plain. It was fun. And addictive.

Then I felt bad because Baboo didn’t get to do any, and well, I did just buy eggs, so I boiled up some more. And we coloured some more when Baboo got up. It was fun and the girls loved it and they turned out really cute.

According to Mouse, we’re going to leave a note for the Easter Bunny to tell him to hide the beautiful eggs we made OUTSIDE for us to find. This will be the first year that we’ll get to do a hunt outside, provided the weather cooperates. I told her the Easter bunny will take note of that.

And now, I have a dozen brightly coloured eggs, stinking up my fridge. Every time we open the door, we get a waft of sulfur (aka fart) right in the face. Hubster gets nauseas just thinking about going to the fridge. And me, being who I am, can’t bear to just THROW THEM OUT (though it’ll depend on how long they’ll be outside, I guess) because god forbid I waste $0.79 on a dozen eggs. I’ve been trying to think of ways to eat them (egg salad, deviled eggs); and make note that I am the only person who will eat hard boiled eggs in this house, without spiking my already high cholesterol to record heights.

Chicken Ticklin'

Mouse had a field trip at a local creamery today and siblings were welcome to come. Baboo was so, so excited to see the cows , it’s all she talked about for days. She kept asking when we were going to see “MY cows”. We’re going through a possessive phase.

The farm was in an area I don’t know very well, and despite mapquest AND the damn GPS in the car, we got lost. Several times. I was frustrated and angry and very disappointed that the girls might miss the greatly anticipated trip to the farm.

As I’m swearing up a storm after I get stuck in the wrong lane behind a truck getting onto the interstate going the WRONG direction and I can’t turn around, Baboo kept asking me “What wong Mama? Where MY cows?” and Mouse sighed dejectedly in the back seat. I think I told them to shut up. Not my finest moment, I’m ashamed to say.

Anyway, a kind parent from Mouse’s class and a sweet waitress at Denny’s helped me get there, and apparently there was a road closure on the route that everyone else used, so the tour started late anyway. We didn’t miss much, thankfully.

We’re walking in the spring sunshine on a beautiful farm, feeling the earth getting ready to explode with life; picturing the farmer’s market specialties that will be available in a few weeks, admiring the calves and taking in the scent of hay and animal. There are a bunch of free range chickens running around (I’m in some kind of chicken heaven, I love chickens) the farm as they have a coop as well, and Baboo keeps trying to catch them. Some of them get close enough for her to touch and she just roars with laughter, which is a bit disruptive to the tour. I took her aside to tell her that she can’t touch the chickens; that they need to just walk around and eat bugs.

She turns to me, very seriously and says “Mama. I don’t want to touch the chickens, I want to tickle them”.

I tried to tell her that chickens don't really want to be tickled, but well, I had a hard time actually saying that because I was too busy cracking up, along with a few other parents around me. Oh well.

Swinging

Mouse has been doggedly working at her independence lately, with a large focus on swinging. She love, love, loves to swing. As a baby, she was happiest in the swing. I almost didn’t buy one because I was sold on the “attachment criticism” of them being “neglect-o-matics”. However, when I learned that I really couldn’t carry her for 23 hours a day without one of us getting hurt, sling or no sling, we broke down and agreed to a swing.

Mouse loved it. She spent a lot of time in it. It was really the only place she would nap and it gave me my 2 hands for a short while in a day. I was paranoid about leaving her in there too long, and so kept checking on her and wringing my hands with worry, but in hindsight, I’m grateful we had it. Swinging has always soothed and calmed her.

When she was old enough to go to the park, she wanted to be in the swing. The whole time. And so we’d go to the park and swing. I spent a lot of time standing at the swing, singing songs, counting, and eventually meeting other swing Mom’s.

After about 4 years of constant pushing on the swing, we made a concerted effort to teach Mouse to pump her legs to swing by herself, especially once we moved to our current house that has a swing set in the back yard. She was so excited to have her own swing that she could play on any time she wanted, but she really didn’t have the coordination/momentum of pumping. When she started school, a few of the kids in her class could pump and get REALLY high. She wanted that so badly… and eventually, it just clicked for her. I remember the day I went out in the back yard to help her swing and lifted her up on to the seat. I pushed her a few times and then she started pumping and making herself go higher. She was just as surprised as I was as she laughed, yelling loudly “MOM! Look at me! I’m doing it! I’m PUMPING!!! Look how HIGH I’m going!”.

Then, learning how to pump just wasn’t enough. She wanted to figure out how to get on the swing by herself (they’re a bit high for her). She worked at it until she could hang onto the chains and hop up on her own. And then she learned how to use momentum to get herself going – entirely by herself. With each achievement, she yelled loudly for all of the surrounding neighbors to hear “MOM! I DID IT MYSELF!!”, followed by a triumphant, gleeful laugh.

Swinging still calms her and when she’s bored or needs to process something, she goes and swings. The swing is almost always the first thing she wants to do at a park or when we’re in the backyard. But right now, I think it’s more than just the act of swinging that’s so enticing. It’s the feelings of pride, independence and freedom that she gets when she asks to go outside and swing. She can go out there on her own, get on the swing on her own, get started on her own, swing as high as she possibly can and know that she’s got the power to do it.

I watch her bright smile under her flying hair shining golden in the sunshine, with a mixture of pride and nostalgia. In the strong, young girl she’s becoming, I see in the little baby nestled into her baby swing, sleeping peacefully.

My stomach clenches every time I watch her body hop out of the seat a bit as she reaches the top of the swing; worried that she might be swinging too high; that she might fall. My heart stops a little each time as I picture my little girl, growing up, swinging through life, soaring to new heights, right before my eyes; all the while praying she doesn’t fall.

Potty Training Casualties

So, the update on Baboo’s potty training progress is mostly positive. Despite today being not such a great day, ok, the worst day so far with regards to accidents, overall, she’s doing pretty well. We do have some accidents and we do have to remind her to go, but overall, she seems able to hold it longer and will initiate going on her own most of the time. She’s really only in pull ups at nap time or if I know she’s really really tired during the day and know that our accident probability increases. She’s in a diaper over night, but only because we’ve got them and want to use them up.

I was in cleaning out mode while we were on spring “break” and have put a few of Baboo's things away. I’m not overly sad to see the change pad go as we haven’t used it in a while and it’s looking old and tired. I have put away the cloth diapers for now, but will likely switch over to those for night time once coverage once we’re finished with this round of disposables. I’ve also put away the diaper pails and I’m definitely glad not to have those out. Though, I know we’ll need one back eventually if we switch back to cloth at night.

Baboo’s crib has been converted to a toddler bed and so the bumper pad is away. I know that it will only be a matter of time before she won’t need the rocking chair in her room any more either. (ok, this makes me a bit sad).

The things that I’m very sad to see go are the overalls. Sigh. I love little kids in overalls. I’ve been fortunate to have had some really cute ones. And though my dryer seems to want to eat them (we’ve had to repair a few straps because the dryer just destroys them), they were my favorite clothing choice for the girls. I loved them as a kid and they were my FAVORITE thing to wear. Always. I called them Farmer Joes. My girls loved them too. But well, despite their cuteness factor, they are not practical for potty training. Buckles and bibs and straps. They’re just too complicated for little hands and tiny bladders. Sigh.

And so, with a sad heart, I bid good bye to the overalls. Sniff.

Exploring My Level of Overstimulation

This past week was spring “break” for us. I use the term loosely because it had not been very “breakish”. We’ve been very busy all week. Not that that is a bad thing, but we are very tired. We ended up having something to do just about every day, doctor’s appointments, play dates, trips to local attractions – you name it.

For the first time, I bit the bullet and took the girls to meet some friends at Chuck E Cheese. The one and only other time I’d been in one was when I was about 11. I was away on a soccer tournament and my billet (do people still do this??) hosts took us there. It was dark, smelled bad, the food was nasty and the everything had a sticky slime on it. Disgusting.

So, I reluctantly agreed to go this week. A friend and her kids wanted us to join them, and so we did. It was bright, generally clean and over all ok. Not as grungy and nasty as that time 20-something years ago. The food was below mediocre, but disturbingly, the girls ate it. I’m hoping it was just that they were hungry and therefore would eat poop on a stick if it was all that was offered, but not because it really was their preference. The girls seemed to enjoy the games and rides and loved that they could do most of it themselves. Overall we had a pretty good time. I won’t be rushing back, because really, this isn't my thing, but it was ok.

I did notice, not unexpectedly, was that the girls were wired by the time we left. There was a huge change in their behavior - more whining than normal, a wild look in their eyes and verging on meltdowns, so naturally, I suspected that they were over stimulated. What surprised me was just how easily *I* am over stimulated.

Well, I guess most people get over stimulated in a noisy bright place like CEC, but well, for me, I was over my limit after about 11 minutes. I got a head ache, cranky, panicky, and just wanted OUT OF THERE. The noise of the stupid mouse thing badly lipsyncing 80’s pop songs clashing with the noise from the games, rides and all the kids was just too much for me. And then, checking out with the ridiculous tickets to choose a bunch of crapola?! Good grief! What a pain in the ass. I wish that my girls weren’t told that you could turn in your tickets for stuff. I would have just ditched the tickets and left.

I spent the rest of the day recuperating from that experience. I felt like every nerve had been jangled and any noise (which is hard to avoid with a 5 and 2 year old) was like a jack hammer on my system.A nap and some alone time was out of the question, so the end result was that I was short tempered and cranky. Not fun.

I was surprised to learn just how sensitive I am to this. I knew that crowds and enclosed spaces (like museums with lots of people) bothered me, but I seriously did not know how strongly this affected me.

Fortunately, the girls seemed to recover pretty easily, but I’ll definitely think twice before doing this again.