I remember as I embarked on parenthood, child birthday parties were one of the things I dreaded. But I've come to embrace them, and even enjoy them. Someone else provides food, friends and entertainment for my kid while I get to visit with the adults? Sounds great to me!
Sunday's party was for Alice's new friend Rye, who turned five. Her party was held at the science museum, and I was keen to go since we had looked into this option and were very close to doing it for Alice's birthday.
From an efficiency perspective, the party was amazing. The two museum employees running the show had a good system developed where each activity lasted only 5-10 minutes, moved the kids back and forth between the floor and the work table, and while the kids did one activity, the next one was being set up. All the activities were interactive and virtually pointless, but they had the veneer of being educational, so that was neat.
When the kids first walked in, there were puzzles for them to work on laid around a table, and also a plastic volcano with with plastic dinosaurs for the kids to play with while they waited for everyone to arrive.
One of the activities had them dig for a dinosaur fossil.
After they found one, they had to use tools to chip away at the blob until they extracted the plastic dinosaur inside. It was fantastic.
For another activity, they got to touch a baby crocodile, a snake, a cockroach (Alice passed on that one) and a salamander.
After all the activities were done, there was cake, juice, and ice-cream.
Alice was completely bonkers after the party due to the influx of sugar and the fact that it was naptime. She bounced around the museum for a while, then passed out in the car on the drive home.
My friend Laura got the kids some hot-wheels sets as a little gift when she came at the beginning of the summer. The trucker, trailer, and speedboat from the set have become Simon's favorites. He has developed his fine motor skills enough to attach the trailer himself, load the boat onto it, and drive around his bowl and cup.
We use it as the current method of providing him with a distraction while we shovel food into his face. This kid has required distraction while eating almost from the very beginning when he first started on the pureed jar food. He's getting better and better at eating, but we still use toys as a crutch.
I'm documenting this in hopes that it will one day be a distant memory that I will have forgotten all about, because he will finally consistently feed himself entire meals.
A friend of mine at work who has a kid that refused to eat to the extent that she had a feeding tube, took her to some intensive (and expensive) therapy program, and she said distraction while eating was one the main methods they used, so I feel quite justified in using these tools. We're keeping Simon off the feeding tube and out of the therapy program we couldn't afford.
The rain began on Thursday evening, and it was predicted to be a rainy weekend. Since the weather was still warm, and the kids had been kept inside all day at school, we decided to go out and take a walk in the rain after supper Friday.
It's interesting to have kids at two different stages. Simon got the biggest kick out of jumping in every puddle we encountered on the walk, but Alice is already growing out of it. Or maybe she just wasn't in the mood today, but she certainly wasn't relishing jumping in puddles as she once did. Somehow I had imagined she would always get the biggest thrill out of splashing in the puddles, so it was a bit shocking to have her be a bit "meh" about it.
Alice wanted a pickle to finish off her bedtime snack, so we gave one to Simon too. He kept making the funniest faces, but he also kept eating the pickle. I think he just couldn't figure out what was going on.
This little guy appeared briefly on our front porch. I'm assuming it's some sort of caterpillar.
Update: Zac managed to figure out that this is a Papilio troilus larva and will become a Spicebush Swallowtail butterfly. It uses mimicry as a defense, and, according to Wikipedia, is brown to look like poop, so it doesn't get eaten. I still think it's adorable.
It always amazes me how quickly the house can become a total mess.
Of course, it's not that upsetting because it all cleans up pretty quickly. Although, sometimes I go through a phase where I can't clean up because I want to sort and organize the toys, and the impossibility of it paralyzes me. But then Zac reminds me of his mantra, "The toybox holds all" and we just throw all the crap into the boxes so we can have a clean floor for a few hours in the evening. It's just that it never stays clean once the children are awake, so we don't clean up that often. Plus, the kids play with stuff in really creative ways and are less bored when there's a big mess.
Saturday was beautiful so we went to the arboretum with our friends Rob and Kate for a picnic. We walked around for a while first, and Zac tried to get some good photos of the kids.
We got off to a bit of a rough start with Alice, as she had some trouble following instructions, but she soon came around. The other problem was that every five minutes she would ask to have the picnic, which we had planned to do at the end right before going home.
"Alice, don't touch that cactus."
"Alice, if we tell you to stop messing up the gravel, you need to stop right away, not after doing it three more times."
After walking around the little arboretum for a while, we finally settled down for a picnic. The kids barely ate, and were soon wandering around playing with the stomp rocket and frisbee.
But the highlight of the excursion was Simon playing a game where he put a bucket on his head and walked around.
All in all, it was a good morning. Back at home, after naps, there were still a few photogenic moments left.
If Alice does a good job eating her breakfast without us having to feed her or cajole her too much, she gets a dinosaur tattoo. We usually give one to Simon as well, but his are of "twinkle twinkle little stars." Here, Alice is running the tattoo parlor, and applies the damp washcloth to Simon's arm.
The kids are pretty cute in the van on the way to school with their sunglasses on.
Zac came out to the kitchen after putting the last kid to bed and noticed this tableau of an abandoned ketchuped hotdog, stabbed by a fork emerging from an overturned cup, with a cop car in the background. He thought it was hilarious, so he documented it.
The real reason Zac is so tired when he comes home every day:
Actually, this was part of an employee appreciation event at NC State. And Zac made it across the third time, but this video is the most fun to watch. Again, and again and again.
We'd been wanting to wean Simon off of his pacifier for a while now. We probably would have let him keep it until he was two-and-a-half like we did with Alice, but the problem was that he wanted them all the time and wasn't content to just have them in his bed at night. He would cry and beg and whine for bos, until we would let him have one because it was better than listening to him whine.
As his addiction increased, so did our resolve to break him of the habit. We toyed with the idea off and on all summer, but there was always some little trip or event coming up where we thought it might be handy to be able to give Simon his pacifier to help him sleep or deal with long car rides.
But, our trip to the beach marked the last of our summer adventures, so we made a plan that when we came back from the beach, we would cut Simon off. We'd been debating if we should just cut him off cold-turkey, or poke holes in the bo (a strategy I'd read on the internet) rendering it ineffective.
Zac said he just wanted to see what would happen if we poked holes in it, so we decided to go that route. Zac took a pin and poked several holes in it. But when I tested it (because I'm the scientist in this relationship), it still worked just fine. I suggested that Zac poke a hole in it with a knife.
Zac, overcompensating for the measly pinpricks, essentially cut a slice off the tip, making a large hole. Then, he gave it to Simon. Oh, how I wish we had a video of this moment! Simon was happy to have his bo, but then when he tried to suck on it, it fell right out of his mouth and on to the floor. He did this three times, utterly surprised each time. After the third time, he picked up the bo and examined it. Then he declared, "Bo got a hole in it! I can't eat it!" This was repeated many times throughout the day and in the days to come, as he worked through his trauma.
This was on Monday afternoon. We had removed all bos except this one with a hole in it. Simon kept looking at it and squeezing it and talking about how it had a hole in it. He seemed more surprised and betrayed than upset.
And then it was time for bed. This was the part we worried about most. Simon has always been so easy to put to bed. After reading some books, we would turn out the light and rock him a few times, then he would lift his head up, say, "Go night-night" and we would chuck him in his crib, which was littered with about five bos.
So on the first night, when he was put in the crib, he realized that there was only the bo with the hole in it. He stood up and cried and said he wanted to go eat breakfast. Zac took him to the kitchen, gave him a bunch more food, then put him back down without any problems.
Then, on the second night, he looked at the crib, saw the lack of functional bos, clung to me, and said he wanted breakfast. I took him out to the kitchen, he ate a little bit, but then still refused to go to bed. He clung to me and cried whenever I tried to put him in his barren crib. I spent about a half-hour trying to get him to go down, then I gave up and let Zac try. Zac eventually got him to go down.
On the and third and fourth and fifth nights, no matter how many times he protested, saying, "It's morning time! I want go eat breakfast! No, mommy, it's not night time, it's morning!" or "Where's one, two, three bos?" we held him for a few extra minutes, then just put him down and let him cry it out. I should add, here, that it probably didn't help that he had a cold this week, and was likely more uncomfortable than usual.
At some point in the week, we convinced him to put his broken bo in the trash can. We thought it would be helpful if he did it himself. At some point we also put some toy trains in his bed, thinking if he had something else to fiddle with, it might help distract him.
On Saturday, the sixth day, we had to face our first nap time without the bo (he naps at school without it every day). He cried for twenty minutes. Well, maybe slightly less than that, but it felt like forever.
An then, magically, on Saturday night, he went to sleep without crying. He has had no problems since then. So we are officially bo-free.
This video is from Tuesday, the second day of his bo-less life. He was talking all about losing the bo, but then when I started recording it, he stopped. But it's still cute to watch as he tries to wipe his face off.
Here's a partial transcript of the first part (Simon's lines only--I'm assuming you can understand what I'm saying).
-Bo's got a hole
-What happened to bo?
-It fall down. Mommy, it fall down!
-Where's the owl?
-Where's Alice?
-Can I get out and play?
-No, it's not bathtime....it's bathtime!
-Play with toys in the bath?...I play with toys in the living room!
Alice has been begging for a playdate with her new friend Rye for a long time. One morning she even declared, upon waking, that she had a playdate with Rye at the Science Museum, so we'd better hurry up and get ready. I had to disappoint her and explain that no such thing had been arranged. Eventually, I did bump into Rye's mom at daycare, and she said that Rye had also been begging her for a playdate with Alice, so we exchanged contact information, realized we were alternately busy for the next three weekends, and tentatively planned something for the second weekend in September.
A few e-mails later (seriously, maintaining Alice's social life is at least a part-time job), we'd arranged for Rye and her mom, Megan, to come over on Saturday morning.
The kids had a ton of fun, and of course, an added side benefit is that Zac and I get to visit with another adult while the kids are playing. Rye's mom Megan was really nice and we had a good visit.
Rye went home after lunch, and our kids took naps and then played happily the rest of the afternoon.
