"I Have a Pwesent For You!"

Six words that simultaneously send shivers up my spine and pull at my heartstrings. You just never know what you're going to get, almost like a box of chocolates. Now THAT would be a gift I'd gladly accept. Unfortunately, more often than not it's random junk she's collected from around the house, stuffed into her Dora backpack and presented as something wonderful.

It really is adorable, and it warms my heart that she thinks of others and wants to make them happy. Even if she thinks an assortment of the magnetic letters from the magnet board will do that. It takes a great deal of acting for me to pretend that the splitting up and potential loss of some letters of the alphabet does indeed make me happy instead of pushing me one step closer to a nervous breakdown.

After a particularly long and trying day, I decided to plan an activity for the following day and sit her down to do a craft. A Froot Loop necklace that I quickly found out would need to be a bracelet unless it was intended for one of Teagan's dolls. As soon as I handed her the Froot Loops and the pipe cleaner, she came up with the idea of giving it to Daddy. There was some serious concentration and some intense focus that went into this spectacular "pwesent" and above all, love. She was so excited to give it to him i melted my heart.

Needless to say, Daddy was very gracious and excited about his jewelry. Since then, more often than not Brandon comes home to some sort of surprise gift. We have more cards covered in stickers than I know what to do with. We hide every day when we hear the clattering of the garage opening and closing and the squeal of the brakes and "surprise him". Now in addition we surprise him with random gifts that she hides in places significantly less obvious than under a large blanket on the living room floor (one of our go to's.) I let her hide a card once and we couldn't find it for the better part of an hour, so now I take a more active role in the game.

It really is darling the way that she gifts things and tries to make us happy (not that we're teaching her that happiness revolves around gifts) but she certainly enjoys the giving part of it...so far.

One is the Easiest Number.

"I forgot how easy one kid is!" That's what I saw on Facebook this week. And THIS is what I was dealing with.

While I was too shy to voice my opinion and opted instead for a passive-aggressive joke, I need to use Teagan's blog to vent my frustrations with this comment.

I think instead it should read: "I didn't realize how easy one kid was!" or better yet "One kid was hard, but two is harder."

Hatty Birday.

There's a chance I may need to clarify for Teagan how often birthdays actually occur. Perhaps when she understands the concept of time in days, months and years. We're currently celebrating birthdays several times a week, sometimes multiple times a day. She's taken to making birthday cakes with her play food and they are a sight to behold. Not to mention delicious. I, myself, had never thought to make a birthday cake 1/3 pizza, or top it with grapes, eggs, oranges, onions and fish but it was visually stimulating, to say the very least.

She sings Happy Birthday all. the. time. It's one part darling, the other part maddening. Because I always have to be paying attention so I can blow out the candles at the end.

 A little more abstract are her Play-Doh birthday cakes with toothpick candles. She throws quite a party.

Wet 'n' Wild 'n' Walloped.

This summer, the biggest water park in Nevada opened up precisely 4 miles from our house. A dream come true, right? We hemmed and hawed about getting season passes, since I'm large and charge these days and there wasn't much for Teagan to do. But she was free and we figured we'd get a whole lotta use out of the passes. Especially since they were open until 8:00 on weeknights. With Brandon getting home between 5 & 6, we thought we'd head up there a couple of nights a week after he got home and wear Teagan out just before bedtime. And what with me not having a car, I wouldn't be able to go during the day unless a friend invited us, and who's to say that our kids will want to do the same things? A brilliant plan on our part to get plenty of use out of it, we thought. 

We were out of town as the park opened but as soon as we got back, I told Teagan we were going to a water park and although she didn't really know what that meant, she caught the excitement. We were dressed, packed and sunscreened anxiously awaiting Brandon getting home from work, ready to execute our foolproof plan.

 

Except that the powers that be changed the hours of the park without updating their website. So we found ourselves all sunscreened up with nowhere to go at 5:45 PM when they turned us away. I don't know if you've ever promised a 2 year old something, gotten them dressed for said something, made it out of the car all the way to the gates of something and had to turn back. Not an easy task. She handled it much better than I thought she would, but as a mother, I couldn't bear disappointing her so - the girl is a fish and the prospect of swimming is always exciting for her. So I started going through my mental rolodex (also no easy feat these days) of our friends that had access to swimming pools. After a few attempts, we got through to my friend Amy who told us we were more than welcome to swim at her community's pool. Hallelujah! Teagan loves the water and loves pretending. She clung to the pole on the steps claiming that she was "Just like Diego!" I say "You can take the girl out of Vegas..."

 

Love him.

I love watching my little girl "swimming" so confidently. I love even more watching her swim towards her daddy.

 

 Who needs the rides at a water park? Isn't that what dads are for?

We swam all by ourselves for quite some time. What, I ask could be better than having a pool to yourself? Having some of your favourite people arrive unexpectedly to swim as well. Our friends, The Statens and The Wilsons came to swim and Teagan loved playing with their little girls. We swam for a couple of hours and thoroughly enjoyed the after-effects of Teagan sleeping in until the 8 o'clock hour. Granted, she toddled into our room in the middle of the night and never left, but nevertheless, bliss.

We did make it to Wet 'n' Wild enough to get our money's worth, mostly Teagan and I tagging along with friends, but we decided to make a night of it as a family one Friday night. Hearing that it hadn't been crowded on Friday nights, we thought we were in the clear. But it happened to be a Dive In Movie night, so there were more people there than I was comfortable with. But we braved the Wave Pool, which Teagan LOVES. Particularly when her Daddy is there, because he takes her all the way to the deep end. She's so brave. We did a few rounds on the Lazy River, where she insists on swimming by herself, so Brandon and I float in our tubes and do our best to hold onto her lifejacket (which she detests.) Then we thought we'd head to Paradise Cove, the "kiddie area" that is a little too advanced for Teagan. The water is freezing and she'd never shown an interest. Until now. And she'll never show an interest again. She waded into the water and was having a great time and then a crowd started to gather. Brandon and I looked up at the very moment the infamous 300 gallon bucket of water began to lean ominously. We glanced at eachother briefly, apparently not long enough for me to effectively convey my message of "GET HER NOW." There were so many people congregating that Brandon couldn't quite reach her before all 300 gallons pummeled our baby into the ground, completely leveling her. I'm not being dramatic, she was in the worst possible place at the worst possible time and she took the brunt of it. Broke my heart. Brandon scooped her up from her hands and knees and she cuddled with him for the better part of an hour while we sat and peoplewatched until she was cold enough to want to go home. Not exactly the way we envisioned our family night going, but it ended very sweetly with out-of-character snuggles.
Next year we may just stick with community pools. Take that, Wet 'n' Wild!

{Post date: 8.9/2013}

Bedtime Stories

We have a solid bedtime routine going, and have for some time now. We struggled through a tough spot a few months ago and I decided to consult some friends, and of course, the world wide web. What I came up with was that the key to a bedtime routine is ROUTINE. Laying it out so kids know exactly what will be happening. A few photoshoots, trips to the craft section and borrowed time on a friend's laminator later, I had Teagan's bedtime routine diagrammed.

My friend, Natalie, gave me the inspired idea to take pictures of Teagan herself doing the things we do at bedtime, instead of browsing stock photos. Regardless of whether it works, I thought, I've got some darling pictures out of it.

I strung them all together and tried to come up with a good way to get Teagan involved in the checking-off process, whether it be moving them, stickers, and then it came to me. Velcro. Severely underutilized and absolutely perfect for this scenario. So, the idea is that she puts a happy face on each of the items on the list as she completes them. So far the happy face is enough motivation, I'm not sure what to do when she decides she needs more incentive - sticker chart? Ideas welcome.

A while back, I had Brandon putting her to bed on his own, since I was spending so much of the day with her, but now that she's older, it felt right to have both of us involved. I'm not sure if it will always be that way - what with Junior on his way and all - but for now, this works and she seems to enjoy it. The other day she asked for Daddy to be the one to snuggle her and it melted my heart...and got me off the hook.

While it may seem like a long routine, most of the items don't take that long - we usually sing while we're getting her changed and dressed to make the whole thing more pleasant. But bedtime stories. Those are a mixed bag. Right after the prayer, she runs over to the bookcase and we ask her to fetch the scriptures. To which she always responds, "The blue one?" Yes, we're trying to read The Book of Mormon together as a family, each reading a verse. She has really taken to it and has fun repeating the verses when we prompt her. It's been an absolute delight to hear words and phrases like, "it came to pass", "concerning", "Jerusalem", "obedient", "steadfast and immovable" and "murmur" cross those tiny, perfect little lips.

Once we're finished with "the blue one", she runs it back to her bookshelf and chooses two stories, then instructs us as to who will read first. Usually the books are fairly well matched, either from the same series or just about the same length. On good days, where all has been going smoothly, she chooses smaller books - more pictures, less words. On those dreadful days when bedtime can't seem to come soon enough for us, she inevitably chooses her books accordingly.

Like the other night when she hadn't napped and had been awake since the wee hours, and was misbehaving to the point where she earned herself a 6:45 PM bedtime. She decided on these:

Yes, you read that right - 75 Fables for Living, Loving, & Learning. Nice try. So I had her choose one such fable...that went on for what seemed like an eternity. Pages and pages of words. I'm fairly certain she checked out two pages in, but to save face, feigned interest in the novel. She hasn't chosen that particular book since. Although this evening - an awake since 5:30 without a nap sort of a day - we couldn't wait to get her to sleep and we both cringed as she returned from the bookshelf with two early readers. Two 64-page early readers. That's 128 pages of bedtime story on a night when a single line seemed like too much. Brandon was reading so fast he started to trip over the words of The Big Honey Hunt. He slowed it down and we all had a good laugh at Papa Bear's misadventures.

She chose to "snuggle a Daddy tonight" to which I eagerly agreed and I'm told she was fast asleep within minutes. Almost worth the agony that was the last several hours.

There was no ice cream.

I spent a majority of our dinnertime together staring at Teagan. Rewind a few hours of whining, crying, hitting and arguing and you'll understand why. 

SO many people tell me to cherish this time, because it only gets harder from here. I know they're trying to be helpful, but these conversations leave me more depressed than encouraged.

So I sat and watched her, trying to imagine the seemingly impossible moment in the unforeseeable future that I would look back on this day and miss her chewing up broccoli and spitting it out, balling up her roll and pushing it around the table and flinging her spaghetti everywhere. We went back and forth about ice cream and the fact that she was required to eat 3 vegetables first. She moved the veggies around on her plate and demanded ice cream, to which I calmly responded (I was oh-so-proud of myself for keeping my cool) that she needed to eat her veggies first. We repeated this conversation at least 10 times, the only difference being the volume of her voice and the clenching of her fists.

I wanted to explode, I wanted to scream, I wanted to fast forward to a time where instead of talking at me incessantly ("Mummy" must escape her lips hundreds of times a day) she could actually function on her own for more than a few minutes.

Instead, I started to think about her driving off in a car for the first time and going on her first date and I really began to believe that I could indeed cherish days like today.

And then she threw a balled-up roll at my face.

There was no ice cream.

Reverting

I've been digging out baby things lately, as part of my nesting phase. Most of my nesting has involved tearing every room in the house apart and laying down on the couch because I don't have the energy to put things back together. On more occasions than I care to count, I've had to rescue Teagan from the exersaucer. I keep telling her that she is too big and that it's for brother, but she keeps proving me wrong. I stumbled upon her in it the other day, muttering "goo goo, ga ga!" When she saw me, she looked up and said "See, Mummy? I not too big." She's reverting.

All this talk of becoming a big sister must be putting too much pressure on her because she seems to be reliving her infancy. She gets out the playmat and paws at the hanging toys and hums along with the tinkling music. Heaven knows what will happen when her brother is actually using these things.