Baby Tuesday

Right now I am sitting at my mom's house and Ransom is the only one here with me, because we had to leave early from dinner at Aurora's house, because he had a full out tantrum. Big time meltdown.

He is of course better here, toddling around and cooing at Wendy the 16 yr old deaf/blind dog, drinking his beloved juice, and asking me to show him photos of helicopters on Flickr.

I can hear him coming for me right now so I can't type very much.\


Feel free to make up your own captions until I can get online again. The computer is in the room where his crib is, and you can see how that might be a problem.


Galleria playground. Beats the Valley Fair playground easily.
Oh, and Baby B fell over. She's a trooper.


See, she's back, no sweat.

Baby Tuesday

Well it's been an intense week since last Tuesday.
Amazingly the kids are letting me have this time to blog.
Ever since we got here, Baby R has been acting odd.
Usually in a bad way, but right now, he asked that I put him in his porta crib
and leave the door open. He's looking at his new favorite book and talking to
himself. And Kid C was eating a plate full of grapes leftover from the memorial.


Here he is, excited to finally be on an airplane, studying the exit


Kid C, also fascinated.


Triple threat in the bathtub!! The ladies were not happy about a tiny naked man crashing their bath party, but I thought he behaved himself, all things considered.


Or not.


Here are the ladies dressed up in sparkley princess/fairy dresses watching Sleeping Beauty.


The sleeping situation is a constant puzzle with these 4 kids, so the night before last I moved Emmitt the pug away from Baby R's room to my bed. But listen to him! Honestly, that's insane! I figured it was better for him to keep me awake than the baby.

Okay, Baby R asked to get out of his crib, and he has done his 3rd poop before 10am this morning. He's got diaper rash and the squirts. Oye.
I'm gonna try to walk us up to the grocery store now for blueberries to counter the bad pH...


UPDATE: I walked up to the Tom Thumb and I was the only non-octogenarian at the place. And there were no soy dogs, the produce guy looked at me like I was speaking Chinese, and there was no fair trade tea. So I just bought mini corn dogs and some random tea that said "all natural" heh. And then we walked home, and again, any one we saw was straight from the cast of Cocoon.

we miss you

quick flight post

In response to Joanne's comment/question, the flight went pretty good. Sandi and bringing the carseat onboard for Baby R was critical. As were the movies on the laptop, but to a lesser degree.

What I didn't anticipate was "re-entry."

Since they didn't sleep on the plane, and it was really late when we got in, they fell asleep in the car, and then when we got home they were *refreshed* and ready to stay up for hours.

Baby R did have a crib in the other room which was pretty good except when Kid C started tripping out about not wanting to sleep, not being tired, and wanting to turn the lights on and play... at 1:30am
...3am
...5am

Yes, 5am, she finally fell asleep after I used up most of my laptop arsenal and one children's Benadryl. She woke up all psycho at like 4am and it took Aurora to come out and help me get her back to sleep.

Oye.

But they are up and cheerful now...

rough

Right now Kid C is screaming at the top of her lungs (really, it's horrible), and she's running around completely naked from getting out of the bath by herself. And that's just at the present, I don't even want to talk about what happened earlier today. It's been a rough afternoon. I have no brain capacity or energy or anything. I'm near-paralyzed now.

But I have my laptop loaded with rented itunes movies, I bought plenty of legos, and puzzles, and drawing boards. Sandi is the most important thing I'm bringing on the plane tomorrow.

And thank you to Joanne who is driving us to the airport tomorrow.

I hope something drops out of the overhead bins and knocks me out once we're in the air, and I don't come to until we touch down at DFW...

I'm sad

There's always something stiff about a lyrics without hearing the song.

But this song is in my head today. It's not making me any less sad, but...

"..I remember you like yesterday, yesterday
I still can't believe you're gone
I remember you like yesterday, yesterday
And until I'm with you, I'll carry on..."

Baby Tuesday

This weeks installment is brought to you by my reconnected-through-Facebook-friend Sky.
We realized our daughters are the same age so we set a playdate.
And whaddya know? He's also a photographer with a really nice camera.




He took a handful of dirt and popped it right in his mouth.
I couldn't believe it. I think I must be denying him some essential minerals or something.


Kid L was a "runner." She would take off and then Kid C was like "huh? where'd you go?!"


I forget what was so funny.
If you look in the background you can see Baby R trying to make peace with another little kid on the playground.


She's making a crazy face here, but I thought I'd include it anyway.


"Now that I've eaten dirt, now I'll have a stick to chase it down."
He's teething those 2 yr molars. :/


Kid L taught Kid C to log-roll. It's a valuable kid-skill.


Sky thought it was really funny that right after Baby R had eaten dirt and chewed on a stick, he demanded hand sanitizer. I don't use it alot, only when handwashing isn't an option. But he fished it out of my purse and insisted.


Drooly and muddy, that's my tiny guy.

I think I might ask Sky to take our family portraits one of these days. I like how some of these came out. And he wasn't even really trying.


In other news, it's time to register for fall preschool classes and this morning I realized that I can't have Kid C just go for 2 mornings a week when she's 4 (!!!)
I have to have her in at least 3 mornings a week at her current school which is another 140 bucks on top of the 240 they already squeeze out of us.
Ugh!!
380 a month for 3 mornings of preschool, omg, I don't want to pay that!
But I don't want to switch schools, I like her school.

I'm at a loss.

A friend of mine homeschools her son, but I really like the system we have now. She's always trying to sell me on it, but the thought of doing it makes me sweaty and tense. At this point, I think I'd rather work a night shift at a 24 hr restaurant once a week, to be able to afford real preschool instead of doing that.

I really don't know what we're going to do. It may come down to us taking her out and putting her in another class at the rec center while she's 4. She could be in dance class, and maybe an art class as well? Or swimming? That's something, right?

Because she's gonna have to be in preschool when she's 5 too, so maybe we'll revisit an actual preschool then. Oye.

peru young life shirt

One of the missionaries we support down in Peru, Christen, hosts teams to help with her ministry there.

She asked me to design the shirts for her teams to wear and here's what I came up with.

I took the ideas she had for what she wanted on there and tweaked it a little bit.

land of goats

This is how you know Christians are the minority in the Bay Area:

HILLSONG UNITED is coming to California for 4 nights of worship.

April 16 - SACRAMENTO
April 17 - BAKERSFIELD
April 20 - LOS ANGELES
April 21 - SAN DIEGO

I don't even like Hillsong, I just thought it was funny.

I mean, even Bakersfield gets a show. Wow.

Baby Tuesday

This morning, Baby R was that kid, which makes me that mom.

You know, the 2 year old boy who is a complete maniac in public, that the mom has to pull a wrestling move to hold on to him and dive out the door of the library/restuarant/bank/store for common courtesy's sake.

The kid that has the snotty boogery nose and a shirt with big drool/food stains.

Yes, it's happened. And I'm a little depressed about it. I hope it only lasts until he's 3. I can deal with it for a year.

Kid C didn't really have terrible-twos. She has always been on the difficult side since she was born, so I didn't notice a distinct change in behavior when she turned 2.
Baby R is no longer the teddy bear he once was. I love him just the same, but he can turn on "wacko" now like nobody's business.

My mom and I are considering going to Disneyland while she's here in about a month. And I'm up for it, as long as I just bring Kid C. Baby R is a Disneyland powder keg. It depends on whether Rich feels up to it, and if Kevin is willing to use his gardening-vacation-days to tend his son as well.

And as of 8am this morning, I scored Baby R's birthday gift on eBay. I like the tiny n' tuff megabloks sets. This can kinda connect to the one he already has.


Camera phone pics, because I'm too lazy to charge the batteries for the real camera.
This is my viewpoint in most of Baby R's waking hours.
Couple this shot with the sound of "uppa uppa uppa!"


This is also pretty common. It's fighting and whining.


he's saying "cheese!"


Here is Kid C as mayor of Crazy Town


Lotta love fo' the Olive



I know this is a random shot, but we went to the Great Mall a couple of weeks ago, with his little friend Baby CB to go to the H&M there. We have an H&M here in Sockswithsandalsland, but it's only women's clothes. The Great Mall one has kids clothes! Baby CB got some boy skinny jeans, tre chic, and Baby R got a sweet snap shirt and Kid C got some Hello Kitty skivies.

Okay, gotta go, Baby R has stripped himself naked and is hitting the projection screen with a magnadoodle board...