I'm the entertainer

C had musical camp this week and his troupe performed "The Little Red Hen."  Despite his masterful singing, dancing, and stealing in the role of a fox, he is not the entertainer.  The show was stolen by Lil E, who would loudly cheer "Yay!" at the end of each of the numerous songs.  After the first few times, the audience would laugh after each of Lil E's cheers and the kids on stage would giggle and comment to each other.  Big brother, of course, was on stage egging her on.  Sly fox that he is.  First the hens would sing, inviting the other farm animals to help in a task.  Lil E cheers.  Then the cows would sing that they wouldn't help.  Lil E cheers.  Then the cats would sing that they wouldn't help.  Lil E cheers. Crowd laughs.  Then the pigs would sing that they wouldn't help. Lil E cheers. Crowd laughs.  E & T are laughing so hard they are crying.  M tries to climb over a chair.  Then the foxes would sing that they would steal the hen's food.  Lil E cheers. Crowd laughs.  Then on to the next task and the next round of animal responses...  At the end, T admitted that it was probably her genes triggering the public displays.  I replied that at least Lil E was cheering at the proper time. 

Before the show, a girl next to C provided entertainment by continually trying to kiss him.  C's response was to try to get a camp counselor to intervene to protect C from the mad kissing bandit (ironic twist, since he was dubbed the "Vietnamese Valentino" during our stay in Hanoi).  Note that he didn't leave and get another seat by the boys (with whom he was sitting earlier).  I pointed out the amusing scene to T, who then added fuel to the fire by running over with a camera to record C and his girlfriend (the one to his left).

C has had a summer full of camps.  At Discovery Place, he's attended Dr. Seuss camp, Dinosaur camp, Lego camp, and has done lots of creative projects.  Right after school, he attended Cub Scout camp where he got to go fishing (catching one fish), canoeing, BB gun shooting, archery, etc. 

Thanks to T wanting to learn a second language, Lil E has become intrigued by Baby Signing Time videos over the last few weeks and is learning some signs (as are C and M).  She's also increasing her spoken words, best illustrated a few days ago during breakfast when she instructed me to "Get up!" to get some food for her.  She now calls M "Me-Me".  She loves to try to pet "Beh-Beh" and will chase our 16 year old, geriatric feline around the downstairs. C, alas, is still called "Ma Ma." She also loves to see the rabbit that frequents the backyard.  She'll sit on the potty frequently and often goes.  One of the potty seats has Sesame Street characters--including her favorite, Elmo--so we've figured out that when she says "Elmo" she wants to sit on the potty.  She frequently requests to go outside to blow "Ba-buhs."

Lil E's still not eating much; therefore, T is still nursing to provide her with much needed calories and nutrition. Nursing a toddler is quite a show, in itself - involving twisting acts of contortionism, black belt worthy karate kicks, poses that would make a yogi master proud. T is a "card carrying member" of the FTNC (Freaky Toddler Nursing Club).

M enjoyed swimming so much at Shawnee, she frequently asks to go.  In fact, she has dubbed herself "Water girl."  Another upside of our upcoming move is access to the community pool.  She is very interested in family relationships, checking to make sure that I am Mommy's husband rather than her father.  She constantly asks who my father is, who my mother is, etc., etc (asking T the same questions).  She is doing extremely well with potty training and rarely has accidents in her pullups.  In fact, it has been quite a while since she has wet her diaper at night. She is in "I'll do it myself.  I don't need your help" mode, particularly when it comes to putting on shoes and getting buckled in the car sheet.  Any button or switch on any devise will be pushed, especially light switches (and in the opposite way of your actual need).

Since returning from Shawnee, E or T have been alternating days at home with the girls (while C is off to camp).  Most of the time, the girls play well together. However, there are times when M unlocks her inner WWF warrior princess mode and attempts to use finishing moves that would make Jake the Snake, Hulk Hogan, Rick Flair, the Rock, or Stone Cold proud. Fortunately, our "Nature Girl" can hold her own against her big sister.

Shawnee 2012

Our vacation in pictoral review. I'm sure E will post his travelogue soon! Let's just say a fun time was had by all (and we have the pictures to prove it!).

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Red, White, and Blue Gills

This past week found us receiving a visit from Opa and Oma. Their visit made for a great week, indeed.  (Yes, if we know you're reading our blog, we'll shamelessly pander to you too.)  The kids had lots of fun playing inside and outside, going for walks and to the park, reading, "picnicing" on the floor because we didn't have enough chairs...  

On Saturday, we spent the entire day at the NC Zoo. They had a special exhibit on dinosaurs. They were "robot dinosaurs" that moved a bit and growled. A couple of them "spit" water which (obviously) was hugely entertaining. C also enjoyed a big pit where he could dig for fossils. M and Lil E enjoyed being picked up so they could see the animals. They'd laugh and point and ooh and ahh. We were lucky that many of the big animals were up and moving about when we visited: the giraffes, zebras, elephants, rhinos, a gorilla, the lions. The otters were (ahem) very frisky (well, the male anyway). The kids enjoyed getting ice cream and slushies. And so did the rest of us as it was hot. We also appreciated the shade throughout most of the park.

Sunday was confirmation. Pr. Ward used our family's story to describe how God adopts us all into one family. He had used our adoption story before with the confirmation class but this was the first he had used it for the whole congregation. Despite knowing the story pretty well, hearing it in that venue made T and me weepy. It's a good story and well worth sharing.

On Memorial Day, C FINALLY got to go fishing w Opa.  Earlier, they had practiced casting out in the parking lot.  C was much more patient than I ever was.  He fished for 3.5 hours.  Several other nearby fishers caught multiple fish in the morning so that was a bit challenging to explain why they were catching and he wasn't.  Once one party left, he shifted into their spot (which probably helped).  What helped the most was another boy who befriended C and gave him live worms to use as bait.  The right bait made all the difference, C caught 3 blue gills--all in the last 20 minutes.  Each was about 8 inches long (hereby recorded to ruin more robust tellings in future years...)  We returned them to the pond.  After wanting to go fishing for more than a year, I was very relieved that he wasn't disappointed by his first trip.

In other news, M is making progress on the potty front. She has had the opportunity to wear "big girl panties" and even has had three consecutive days of "going poopy on the potty." It's fun to see how big she smiles and how proud she is of herself when she has potty success. Her alter ego, Madison, also comes out to play (usually in times of mischief...). She announces her presence by saying, "I no M, I Madison." T is relieved that M has finally agreed in wearing her sleep cap at night (success, in part, after T found a satin HOT PINK pillowcase for M's pillow).

Lil E made Oma proud by eating foods, including mac 'n  cheese, croutons, croissants, and Nutella (carb girl, for sure!). Lil E loves sitting on our laps and having books read to her, while she turns the pages. She loves climbing up (and down) the stairs. Also to T's relief, Lil E now loves sleeping with the blanket T knitted and has no difficulty falling asleep in her crib (staying asleep, that's another story...). We'll take any victory in the sleep front, no matter how small!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Peanut!

M (aka Peanut) had birthday number 3 today.  T brought cup cakes to preschool for her class to celebrate.  For dinner, M ordered hot dogs and french fries; then changed her order to chicken nuggets.  So, we had both.  C celebrated by eating 6 (!) granola bars before dinner thus was unsurprisingly not hungry for dinner.  M took birthday calls from Oma and Opa and Aunt Julie and Cousins A and H.  M enjoyed talking w/ Oma and Opa so much that she kept chattering away on the phone even after they told her they were hanging up to get dinner...  And any time Lil E sees someone on the phone, she wants to use it too.  She especially likes to talk to Mommy while Mommy is leaving work. 

When we got home from school, C found a princesses gift bag on the dining room table and ran out to the car to tell M.  He then helped M open the card and the gifts.  M was very excited to find a Rapunzel doll, Rapunzel shoes, Rapunzel (see a trend?) and Ariel plates, and Ariel fork and spoon.  The card contained Dora stickers which were immediately affixed to anything nearby--including at least 3 in Daddy's hair. 

C and I went camping with his Cub Scout pack during the last weekend of April.  The weather wasn't as warm as predicted but it only rained at night.  And the Walmart tent we borrowed from Scouter Tim was up to the task.  C got to train with a Revolutionary War infantry unit.  They got to march, do manuvers, hold pretend guns (sticks).  On one charge, boys from another pack kept charging...across the road, across the field..finally the tree line stopped them.  The boys especially liked when the soldiers shot the cannon.  In the afternoon, they got to shoot BBs, shoot bow and arrow, roll hoops, sign the Meck Dec, and use a compass.  In the evening, the boys went on a long hike to help get fire wood (and carried it all the way back to camp!) and then made smores in the fire.  His pack has their end-of-the-year picnic on Saturday where C will receive his Tiger Cub badge.

In final news for the blog entry, M is fixated and insists on watching the movie Hairspray (the one w/ Zaf Efron) every time she rides in the van. She likes to tell Ms Lucy and Ms Ashly (her preschool teachers) all about the escapades of Tracy, Seaweed, and the mean girl and mean mommy. Tonight, before bed, she asked to hear "You Can't Stop the Beat" and danced "like a big girl."

Birthday hijinks with big brother

Sitting in the chair, all by herself, getting her hair done!

Big smiles from Lil E!

Goodbye Briarthorne Drive

Closing was today; or our part of closing was today.  The buyers' loan hasn't come through yet so they should sign the documents sometime next week.  We moved Tues after some intense packing during the previous two weekends.  Wed night and Thurs were cleaning.  As I was at the kitchen sink rinsing the cleaning rags on Thurs afternoon, the hawk swooped in and landed on a tree branch in the backyard.  He only appears every 6 months or so and I was only at the sink for a few minutes, so the timing was quite a coincidence.  You know that birds don't come to say goodbye (except in Disney movies when they can literally say "goodbye"), but it sure seemed that way...If he shows up at the new house to welcome us, that will really be spooky.

Most of our stuff is in storage, so finding the key stuff to unbox at John and Wendy's townhome hasn't been hard.  Unpacking a little each day.  C and M are adjusting to sleeping in the same room--on the same futon.  "She has her legs on me."  "He won't move his pillow."  "I want Mommy to stay."  "I want Daddy to stay."  At least they agree that jumping on Mommy and Daddy's matress is a temptation that is too difficult to resist (over and over) and appearently well worth losing privileges to do.

Ellie has started communicating yes and no by shaking her head--usually emphatically.  She understands quite a bit as you can tell her to do something--she particularly likes to deliver objects to C or M--and she does it with a big smile.  She has talking jags a couple of times a day where she'll jabber enthusiastically and if you talk back, will do a call and response with you for a while.  She won't eat much of anything at pre-school.  She won't eat baby food for them at all but usually doesn't eat Gerber toddler food or much adult food either.  She likes milk and that's about it.  She'll usually eat some baby food for me once we get home.  Sleeping is still a problem as she often wakes up several times a night and will have trouble falling back asleep at least one of those times.

My favorite Briarthorne memories: 
*proposing to Tracy on the couch in the living room (no, it's not really about tax-free school supplies !)
*C's first days at his new home:  marching around the downstairs circle with Opa tapping boxes on the floor; hammering nails on the back porch; playing in the leaves and helping me rake
*C greeting us at the laundry room door when we returned home with M
*M on the swing set
*M riding tricycle, big wheels and bikes like a natural
*All the neighborhood kids (Jordon, Jayna, Kayla, & Jamal, Will, CJ) playing outside in the street in the evenings and weekend afternoons
*winter snow storms, complete with snowmen
*the huge oak tree in the backyard; its magnificent demise onto the swing set on Good Friday evening 2011 (Brittany saying, "Wanted to let you know that everything's okay" when we called to check on the kids.)
*T waving a little stick at me in the bathroom, "Two lines means positive...You know what this means, don't you?"  Well, actually, no... But I was quite surprised and pleased to find out!

I bought the place about 6 months after T and I started dating, so it's been home during our adventures in creating a family.  Now our adventures take us elsewhere.  Onward and upward...

Oh, the places you'll go...

Lil E is now walking a bit more--always when she decides to do so rather than at an adult's instigation.  Even better, we now have the video evidence:

A few small steps for Ellie, many upcoming leaps for parentkind

Ellie took several small steps on her own this afternoon.  First, she stood up on her own and walked a few steps to stand over by C.  The next time, I was able to count and she took 7 steps before sitting down.  Of course, once C and I tried to get her to walk from one to the other, she would have no part of it.

In other news, C has finished his God and Me award for Cub Scouts.  They'll award it sometime after Easter at the University City United Methodist Church.  He also had a starring role as "the young preacher"in "Miss Fannie's Hat" in last Sunday's youth service.  He dressed in a suit to look like a preacher and spoke out so everyone could hear his lines.  This Wed, he has to do an oral report in class on Frederick Douglass.  The words are big for that (Tuchahoe, Maryland; President Abraham Lincoln), so we've been practicing...

 

Pinewood derby and more

Today was the Pinewood Derby and the Blue and Gold luncheon.  C and I "finished" his car last night by attaching the wheels.  Fortunately, the pack had two workshops to work on the cars... with other people supplying the saws, paint, and other key equip..or we would have never gotten that far.  We weighed in when we arrived and the car was only half the required weight.  Again, the pack bailed us out by having extra weights.  I apparently used the wrong glue, as it took forever to dry--and wasn't much better than tacky when we finally were the last ones to check in our cars.  C ended up 7th out of 11 in his den.  Not too bad given our car construction skills.  He seemed happy with the car though which is all that matters.  I felt a bit guilty knowing how much my dad always helped me with my car and how C was getting royally ripped off by my minimal abilities.  At least the wheels stayed on until after the race!  And next year, we'll know about the need for weights...  C also helped clean up afterwards and did quite a lot without being asked or being bribed with incentives.  When the other boys who were "helping" started to fight over brooms, mops, etc., C stuck to his job and stayed out of the bellyaching.  I was very proud of him.

C and I also finished the Dinosaur Lego set we got him for Xmas.  He did almost all the work himself, I mostly just identified the pieces that were needed next and handed them to him.  And by the end, he was finding the right pieces too. 

Our excitement this evening is T and M going to the hospital.  M has something shiny up her right nostril.  T couldn't get it out.  The dr's office advised us that only a pediatric emergency room would have the right equip to get it out and we needed to do it asap before it got lodged in further or got sucked back into a lung.  She stuck a bead up her nose in preschool a few weeks ago.  Fortunately, they saw her do it and were able to get it out with a tweezer.  It's unclear how long this object has been up there.  I thought I saw something earlier in the week but forgot to mention it to T...

Lil E is walking holding onto fingers.  Sometimes she'll do it holding onto one hand only.  And she'll stand for a few seconds on her on.  But if you try to get her to move between Mommy and Daddy, she'll just sit down.  She's still keeping us up quite a bit at night which is a partial rationale for our lack of energy to update the blog frequently (ie, never getting around to posting Xmas pictures).  Argh.  Otherwise, she's doing well.  She adjusted to preschool well; within a week and a half had stopped crying when we dropped her off and now seems fine with being handed over to her teachers.

Lil E's getting tired of sitting on my lap as I type so I'll try to put her to bed. 

10:50 update.  T called to say she and M are on their way home.  It was another bead, fortunately, rather than the screw we had feared.  M got through it just fine and kept the nurses entertained with her questions.

A Unique Birthday

Having four b-days parties--one with our family (per C's insistance), one with Oma and Opa, one with the Fay clan, and one with the Allen clan--is unique (or perhaps, quadrique).  That apparently is the benefit of having a b-day near Thanksgiving and traveling to visit all available relatives (and having your mom demand each one of them make --or buy-- a cake for you...). 

Also unique is having your sister eat part of the candle.  In all fairness, it had icing on the bottom and it was the same color as the candle.  And once you start to eat something sweet and yummy, you just want to keep going...even though we paid enough for the icing and cake to have a different density and taste from the candle. 

As part of southern tradition, E had a cake of her own at the Allen b-day celebration (a "smash cake").  It was decorated with a lady bug--her costume for Halloween.  The red and black icing also make for extra festive messiness when the child smears icing all over herself.  Initially, E disappointed mommy and Aunt Kiki by not smashing and smearing her cake with sufficient gusto.  So mommy took E's hands and showed her how to mash her cake.  She then got into the swing of eating it off her hands, wiping it in her hair, balancing a chunk on her ear, nearly dumping the cake onto Dad, and all of fun things that babies do with cakes that justifies the ironclad southern tradition of giving babies their own cake so as to amuse their guests at the party and provide their parents opportunity to make videos with which to embarrass them in their teenage years.

E is celebrating her one year anniversary with teeth--two bottom teeth and now one on the top.  She's been a bit fussier lately because of it and is less interested in eating solid foods, even fruits.  She's also starting to walk holding onto our fingers.  She seems to get a kick out of it.  Walking shouldn't be too far away.  She still wakes up once or twice a night for feeding and often takes a while to go back to sleep.  Or maybe she just likes rocking or pacing the hall with daddy.

Aside from eating candles, M is phasing out of naps.  That is, after about two weeks of using her nap time to dump bottles of hair goop on the carpet (or into her shoes), and/or dump all her toys, clothes, hair bows, etc., on the floor (but doing it like a stealth ninja), Dad decided it was better to find alternative uses of our afternoons.  She's very talkative, likes to dance (in her phraseology, "shake my booty"), and likes to take off her clothes and diaper and dance.  Tracy has asked a friend who is a retired ballerina when dance lessons start.  The lessons start at three but require pants or poofy dresses.

M likes to ask about cousins A and H and ask where Oma and Opa are.  She likes to inform us earnestly that A and H got time outs for riding scooters in the house and not listening (which happened while we were on the phone with them a few weeks ago).  She also tells us that A and H call her "Mena-Beana" but that "Julie, Oma, Opa" don't.  In the car, she likes to ask what the driver is doing.  After hearing the answer, "I'm driving" 749 times, she will now update the question to "Are you driving?"  When asked what she is doing, she'll reply enthusiastically, "I'm sitting in my seat!"

C is doing very well in math at school and is doing better in reading and writing.  He got perfect scores on his two projects:  one on the wolf and his Thanksgiving project on the turkey who dressed up as a Christmas tree to escape being Thanksgiving dinner.  As C observantly wrote, "People like Christmas trees.  They don't eat them."  He also received his Bobcat badge in Scouts.

Eric is coming to the conclusion of his foray into his alter ego, "Mr. Mom." Life will be interesting as 2012 begins, as both Eric and Tracy both will be working full-time at their universities. Which means E will join her big sister at preschool. Miss Annette may want to wear earplugs on January 2nd...