Oh What Lungs Hath She!

Earilier this week Bridget and I made the decision to turn off the television for one whole entire day in an effort to break the t.v. addiction in our 2-year-0ld. It seems insane that a 2-year-old can be addicted to anything, but she really is. Only I had no idea how badly things had gotten out of control with her.

In the one day detox, Meric learned to play! The child literally had not been playing and I had no idea!!! She likes to put figurines in vehicles and make the "go". She LOVES Potato Heads and she even pretended to care about a baby doll. These are all activities that I have not seen her do with any kind of interest or for any recognizable length of time. I'm really pleased with our decision to cut the screen time. Now we're letting the kids watch two shows a day. Typically this means they each get to pick one. I've set the limit to one in the morning and one after nap time. The best part is that they haven't asked to see as much t.v. and they're really only getting in one video a day. This is a huge improvement. But, back to what I eluded to earlier, we had no idea how bad things were with Meric and her addiciton.

In addition to television, Meric also LOVES to go to bed with her brother's Leapster handheld game. I've not thought much about it until last night when she crawled in bed with us in the middle of the night and brought the game with her. I woke up to her playing the frickin game!!! I think she played the game all night. Has she been doing this for weeks?! Is that why she's so off schedule and tired!? What kind of mothers are we!? So we decided to get the Leapster out of Meric's site so that it didn't become an issue at night. Who wants a head-on opposition struggle at bed time, right? Well, Breck was playing the game and Meric wanted a turn (all right before bed time). They each have a turn but Meric refuses to cough up the machine when it's time to go upstairs to bed. When I took the game from her and hid it, she threw a massive tantrum which we both expected. Meric has a screem that could be bottled and sold for the movies. When she let out her usual blood curling scream of frustration, she actually set off the glass break detectors on our alarm system and had it blaring across the neighborhood. That's 0ur girl! Oh what lungs she has!

Power Tools for Treefory???

Finally, it’s my turn to blog! Holcomb is our primary blogger. I’ll make a guest appearance every once in while just to keep a balanced perspective going.

I want to start by applauding all parents who stay at home and tend to small children, including my own spouse who has kept our kids at home during her summer break. You have my ultimate respect and admiration! One evening this week, I was unexpectantly left at home with our 2 munchkins, and well… I completely lost control of the whole household. It just amazes me how quickly a normal, loving parent can lose control over their own 4- and 2-year olds. Obviously, I have not spent enough alone time with our children to be conditioned to handle these moments. On this particular evening, I finally was at a point where I needed a “shock-value” activity, so I took them outside in the front yard and let them “trim” the over-grown bushes with the electric bush trimmer. It did work as far as briefly entertaining them, especially for Breck who loves tools and anything that might be considered a real “guy thing”.

Yeah, I know… who gives their kids power tools as a playtime activity? That whole evening has certainly made me question my parental patience and skills. Most troublesome for me is the fact that I have let our household discussions move toward having another child. Could I manage additional children by myself? What would those home-alone-with-3-kids-evenings be like?

This whole 3rd child syndrome is running rampant in our house, and it’s my fault. We had our friends, Meredith and Jess, over for dinner a couple of weeks ago along with their 2 adorable daughters. Their youngest, Layne, and I had a bonding moment where we were playing with some decorative deer statues… she giggled, gave me a big-ole smile and completely melted my heart. “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice to have another little baby.”

Later, I shared this experience with Holcomb and that’s all it took for the flood waters to pour …. oh, she already has a name if it’s a girl…. oh, when is the best time for her to get pregnant again (no one will allow me to be pregnant… apparently, I wasn’t a very good pregnant lady the first time)…. oh, this is so exciting… oh, she has always wanted a house full of kids… oh, she says I get to name a boy baby! Even Breck has gotten into the hulla-ba-loo! He not only wants a new baby, but he wants 2 new babies and he wants them named Markory (the boy baby) and Treefory (the girl baby). If for some reason we can only get one baby he wants Treefory.

Really!? I never realized that I was the huge barrier to our family feeling complete. I knew Holcomb would be overjoyed with another child, but we always felt so fortunate to have the 2 beautiful kids that we have. Will more children mess up our relationships with the 2 we have? Will Breck be ok if he isn’t the only alpha-male in the house? Will Meric feel forgotten as the middle child? Will a new baby be able to keep up with all our plans of adventures to exotic places?

I know we likely won’t go backwards on this 3rd child movement. I do have to get to a point where I am comfortable with multi-tasking, multi-kids. In the mean time, I think I will schedule more date nights with just me and the kids.

-B

A Day at the Lake

We spent a long day at Lake DeGray with Bridget's dad, and sister's family. We got some really great pictures. Our nephew, Luca, made his first efforts to ski and did a great job! Ike (nephew) ate food under the picnic table, Meric fell over in the boat and bruised her face. Breck played "pirate falling off the boat" for a long, long time in the water and Bird (nephew) was content to just be in the water as much as possible. I think almost everyone took a turn hanging out in the hammock. The burgers were great and the company was even better. What a great summer day.
Meric came out of the water at one point bare bottomed. I asked her what happened to her underwear and she told me, "I knee know", completely baffled. Then she shouted out really loudly, "Punna-wear! Are you?"





Breck expended a LOT of energy at the lake. He was asleep before we pulled away!







The cousins enjoyed a day together.








If Ike wasn't eating today, he was swimming. Often he was trying both at the same time.

Oh Crepe!

Even though there has only been one other post on this blog to date, Bridget and I have a new quote that gets said a lot, but not necessarily acted upon: "That' SO going on the blog!" Well, this is SO going on the blog now. The other night...Wednesday to be exact, the stars were not lined up for us to get along. It was a pretty stupid argument in retrospect. I wanted to go to the pool, Bridget didn't, the kids had been begging. I wanted us to go as a family, Bridget somehow thought I didn't and a lot of feelings were hurt during the block of miscommunication. I had the children suited for the pool when I get a phone call to return home so we could "visit"...feelings had already been hurt apparantly. Not wanting to miss the prime time for swimming, we turn back around from the daycare and head home...to "visit". Ultimately, after many appologies, it was decided that we would go to the pool. Now starts the fun!

We have these crepe myrtle trees that line the curb in front of our house. We hate them. We love crepe myrtles, but these are really in the way. They block our view, it messes up the parking because you end up IN the trees. We really, really hate them. When we got ready to go to the pool, I had already packed dinner and everything...towels, toys, pool bags etc. When I had to come back to the house, Bridget had already parked in the driveway. (We have to park one behind the other...mostly because of the fricking crepe myrtles.) I parked behind her. She loaded the children into her vehicle, rather than mine. It infuriated me. Now I had to move my car into the crepe myrtle parking lot AND UNLOAD EVERYTHING I HAD JUST PACKED! Why didn't we just go in MY car? In my fit of rage where I'm upset about having to come back to the house, make appologies, reload the children (no easy feat), AND unload my car and then MOVE IT, I drove into the doggone trees! Even after getting back from our snowcone frolic, I was in a much better disposition, because of how I had parked my car originally, I took out a HUGE portion of one of the crepe myrtles. While neither of us is pleased that my car is scratched up I can't help but feel that Bridget sort of smirks inwardly as she sees what a lesson on managing my temper I must have learned. Whatever. I am ticked that I scratched up my car, but I'm not sorry I tore up the tree.

To Blog or Not to Blog...

Well, I guess "to blog" since here I am looking at my first ever blogging experience. The kids are with their grandparents and we spent the evening discussing whether or not to blog. Stupid, I know.

So what's a parent to do when her kids are out of the house/hair for the night? Not as easy as one would think! First of all my parents were supposed to pick the kids up from the t-ball party at the local pizza joint at 6:30. At 6:50 they pull up....ahhh...Dad's driving. You would think this would be okay. Only it makes my partner and me have instant, spontaneous, explosive diarhea. Why? My dad can't drive. There's a story in there about a trip home from the airport when he nearly ran someone off the road, had no idea why they would honk at him and didn't believe us when we told him he had caused it. I had to talk us both down out of a frenzy of worry by pointing out that it was probably good that my mom wasn't driving becuase my dad would at least tune the kids out and my mom would be playing and interacting with the kids all the way home....she would do this if she were driving too, so by not driving they were probably safer. We still worry though, because my mom has that gene where no matter what, some freak accident occurs. I pray that this time no one is seriously injured. The last time she came over to our house she sat down in a chair with Meric and somehow threw her out of the chair and over a lamp and couldn't figure out how it had happened. There was also the time when we "lost" Meric at my mom's house only to find her fully clothed running hot water into the swimming pool-sized bathtub. Oh yes! A night without the kids. This should be fun and relaxing.