Birthday Present in November.

I have THE BEST HUSBAND EVER.   Like, ever ever. 

See those 6 red lights in the middle of the picture?

That's my @ss warmers.  Joel bought me aftermarket seat heaters for my birthday and he finally had a spare moment to work on installing them.  And he got it all done over the weekend.  I really thought my car was going to be half out of commission for like a month, but he managed to pull it all off in just 2 days!  

And let me tell you....it was just in time.  It's *BAD WORD* cold outside.  Best birthday present of all time.  Fitting since it's from the best husband of all time. 

Princess Elsa Tea Party.

While at the grocery story at 6:30am on Saturday (yes, that was early, but when your household wakes up at 5:15 and refuses to go back to sleep, you might as well get something productive done), Lily asked me if we could have a tea party.

So I said, "Sure!  What do we serve at a tea party?"

Lily:  "Uhmm, food and tea!"

So when we got home at 7:30am, I decided it was far to early for a tea party so I stalled the whole thing for a bit while we did laundry and the like.  

At one point, I was making Lily's bed, and she comes in and asks for the 47th time if it was time for the tea party yet.  

Me:  "No, honey, not yet but let's talk about what we're going to have at our tea party while I make your bed."

Lily:  "Tea."

Me:  "Well we don't HAVE to have tea.  We can have something else to drink since you don't like tea."  (Actually, I don't like tea.  I have no idea if she likes tea, but I'm going go out on a limb here and say she doesn't.)

Lily (bursts in to tears):  "But Meme said that I have to at least TRY the tea!"  

 

I busted out laughing.  I don't know if her Meme REALLY told her that, perhaps when she was on vacation in TN, or if Lily made that up.  Either way, her distress over the whole matter was quite amusing.  I told her we didn't have any tea anyways, so we'll just put milk in our tea cups.  She calmed down pretty quick.

At one point, I had a mild stroke of genius and angled to have the tea party at our normally scheduled lunch time.  THEN, I back in to getting Lily to pick lunch appropriate foods to serve at her tea party.  Like mini-PB&J, pretzels and applesauce.  Unfortunately, there was no convincing her that peas or any other vegetable belonged at a tea party.  Oh well, still a pretty big win to get her to eat something besides pepperoni, so I'll take it.

It was also made special enough by drinking milk out of a coffee cup, eating off of "fancy plates" and eating at the little table in the living room.

Finally, you really can't have a tea party without cookies or SOMETHING delicious, so the kiddos were treated to some fresh baked (premade, break apart) chocolate chip cookies once they finished all their other food.

Adventures in Potty Training.

The day started around 5 when Tyler woke up crying in his bed.  He actually stayed in bed until about 5:25 before getting up in search of his Daddy.  But he found me instead, much to his colossal disappointment.

He asked me to change his diaper (which was only pee pee filled) so I did.  Then got him some milk and worked on convincing him it's not wake up time.  We even bought a special "Ok to Wake Up" clock that turns green when it's time to get up.  I showed him it wasn't green yet so not time to get up.  He whined a little, but stayed in bed.

I went ahead and took my shower since it's now only 5 minutes from my normal wake up time.  Upon getting out of the shower, Joel comes in to get me and says, "You got to see this."

There's a 50/50 chance that it's a good thing when he says that.  Today the odds were not in my favor.

I come out of our bedroom to see a couple piles of gooey poo in the hallway, accompanied by poo footprints and Tyler standing in his room with no pants or diaper on.

Tyler:  "I pooped."

Uh, you think?

Not only does Tyler's biological clock wake him up every morning between 4:30 and 5, it's also set to have a bowel movement between 5:30 and 6:00.  We know this.  It's pretty consistent (what I wouldn't give for this kind of consistency!).  So why I didn't have him sit on the potty and try to poop when I changed his diaper at 5:25, I do not know.  I can only say that I was not totally with it and just focused on getting this boy to go back to bed for another half hour.  

Joel said that Tyler came to our door with his pants around his ankles, holding his diaper.  Apparently, Tyler recognized the urge to go to the bathroom and pulled his pants down, removed his diaper (while in his bedroom) and then just didn't make it to the toilet before his bowels betrayed him all over the floor.  

The bright side?  While he may not have made it to the bathroom, he did make it to the hallway and off the carpeting making clean up a lot easier.  

The other bright side?  Potty training him might be pretty easy.  God or ruler of the toddler universe or whoever is in charge here, please don't punish me for saying that and string out potty training for a year. He clearly understands his body and knows what it feels like to need to potty.  It's just training him to recognize it a little sooner or hold it a little longer. 

Potty Training For Real.

Tyler's class has started potty training in earnest this past week.  Which is nice because Joel and  I decided about a week ago that we were going to get serious about potty training now that we are done with crazy work and weekend travel.  

During our hotel stay this weekend, in the morning while we were waiting for the water park to open, I asked Tyler if he had to go potty.  He normally poops every morning and hadn't yet done that.  I was mostly being selfish in asking him to poopie because I really didn't want to clean up poop from a wet swim diaper.

So Tyler says he does have to go potty and makes a bee line for the bathroom.  He's very big about "I do it myself" to take his pants down and undo his diaper.  Joel perched him up on the potty and a few seconds later we hear some grunting coming from the bathroom.  

Me:  "Tyler, are you pooping in there?"

Tyler:  "YEAH.  UHHHHHHHNNNNN!"

Me:  "Are you done?"

Tyler:  "NO!  UUUUUUUHHHNN!"

Joel gets up to investigate and sure enough Tyler's crapped a bowlful (Joel's words).  "Hurry up and come see this!  Quick!  He already flushed so you have to hurry!"  It was disgusting and I was SO EXCITED that I didn't have to clean that up from a wet swim diaper!

Since returning from our trip, we've been trying to remember to put Tyler on the potty at least once an hour.  So far so good.  A few dribbles in the pull up here and there but no soaking and he's going almost every time.  

So proud of this little guy!  He just might get underwear for Christmas.  What a lucky dude!

The Polar Express and Big Splash Adventure.

Back in September, Joel found out about the Polar Express train ride in French Lick from one of his coworkers.  I immediately got on the website and the whole thing was nearly sold out.  There were only a couple dates left with availability so I promptly booked it.

We also had tickets to the Big Splash Adventure water park in French Lick so we decided to make it an overnight trip.

The week of our trip, we had the kids watch The Polar Express movie - Lily watched it pretty intently but Tyler wasn't too interested.  These days, if it's not Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, he doesn't really want any part of it.

We also read the book.

We were prepared and ready to go!

The train ride was at 5:30 on Friday, two hours away in French Lick so we ended up taking some vacation time so we could get on the road after lunch and not have to rush too much.  We arrived in plenty of time to check into the hotel, change in to our jammies and get a little something to eat for the kids before heading to the train station.

There was an activity tent set up where the kiddos created letters to Santa.  Lily asked for a microphone (as if she needs any help with the volume of her voice), Elsa, and Baby Elsa.  Tyler just stamped all over his paper.  No intel gathered as to what he wants for Christmas.

They also left a message for Santa on a huge dry erase board.  Actually, I think they sabotaged a bunch of other kids' messages to Santa.

There was a Thomas The Train set up and the kids played with that a little.  Tyler got one of these sets for his birthday from Meme and Papaw and he loves it!

It was getting close to time to board the train.  The kids were getting super excited (and SUPER IMPATIENT).  I told Lily she had to try to potty before the train and she completely melted down and threw a fit about that.  One of these days, she's gonna trust me when I say it's better to pee pee now than to wait.  She'll probably be 21 years old before that happens, but it'll happen.

Then we went to stand in line for the train.  That.  Was.  Torture.  If I said it once, I said it 347 times:  "Guys, it's not time to get on the train yet."  "We have to wait until the conductor says it's time."  "We have to wait our turn."  "Just a few more minutes."  "Please be patient."

Then FINALLY.  It was time.  We were greeted by Santa's elves.  But according to Lily:  "They aren't REALLY REAL elves.  They are just kids dressed up."  Yeah, I kid you not.  She called them out.

Then we got all situated and tried to take some pictures.  Neither kid really wanted to cooperate on this.  Family selfie is a classic.  I think I'll blow it up and hang it in our living room.  It so accurately paints a portrait of what our lives are like.

The train got rolling and the conductor came by to punch our tickets.  He did it like in the movie, sort of, and punched a bazillion holes in the kids' tickets.

Lily was so excited.  Look at this face.  

Then they came through the train car with hot chocolate and cookies.  The kiddos thought that was great.  Once again, Lily called out the elves.  "Those are the same girls but except now they have on cooker clothes."

After the cookies and hot chocolate, there was a lot of dancing and singing in the aisle.  Lily was all about it.  As soon as the elves started dancing, she immediately jumped up and wanted to know if she could dance too.

And then we got to the "turn around" point - aka, the North Pole (which was a few sheds decorated with Christmas lights).  We saw Santa standing out there, waving.  Then we started the trip back.  And Santa was not with us.  And Lily was acting sooooo disappointed.  "Where's Santa?  Are we not going to see Santa on this train?"  Joel and I were confused because we thought we were going to see Santa on the train.  But then a few minutes later, he made his appearance.

And oh my goodness.  I don't think it was disappointment we were seeing before from Lily.  I think she was anxious about Santa coming on the train and that's why she was asking questions.  Because this is what happened when she saw him.

And Tyler wasn't much better.  Big tears.  Instantly.

So when Santa got to our seats, Joel and I got our picture with him.  (Hey, we paid $129 for this ride and by golly we were getting our money's worth!)

The kiddos got their sleigh bells and sat stiff as a board in their seats for another 10 minutes until Santa was off the train.  And then they immediately returned to singing and dancing the aisles.  It was literally like a light switch event.

After the train ride concluded, we headed off to get dinner for the big people.  We went to a local place called 33 Brick Street and had the most amazing hamburger I've had in a very, very long time.

After dinner, the kiddos walked down the side walk hand in hand.  Ahh, these are the moments.  They stopped in front of a musical Christmas light display for a little oohing, ahhing and dancing.

Then back to the hotel for the night.  It was pretty late at this point - almost 9:00 - so we had only a little trouble getting the kids to settle down and go to sleep.  But did that late hour mean the kids slept in in the morning?  Uh, no.  Tyler was up at 5:00.  God love him, but we have GOT to figure out how to reset his biological clock for a more acceptable wake up time.

It's a long time from 5:00am to 7:30am when breakfast opens...and a long time from 7:30am to 9:30am when the water park opens.  By the time we got to the water park, I think Tyler was ready for a nap.

The kiddos scattered in two different directions (and Joel wasn't with us yet because he was taking our overnight stuff to the car) and I thought I might lose my mind in the first 10 seconds.  I didn't have the lay of the land yet and it made me a nervous wreck!  But I got it under control, Joel showed back up and we each took a kid.

Tyler lasted about an hour and then he went in to total meltdown mode.  He was freezing and tired and that was not a good combination.  That water was none too warm.  I was expecting it to be a lot warmer or even humid inside and it wasn't at all.  I saw lots of blue-lipped kiddos.  Joel was cold and kind of over it too so he took Tyler.  They dried off and sat on the side while Lily and I continued to play.  You had to be 42" to ride the "big slides" and Lily is EXACTLY 42".  She was a a real trooper and tried 3 out of the 4 big slides.  I was surprise by her adventurous nature.  She's not usually like that.

After a couple more hours, Tyler was so tired and hungry he was melting down big time and it was time to go.  Lily was so disappointed.  I think she could have easily stayed and played another couple hours.

So we headed on back home.  Tyler was passed out in the car before ever got out of the parking lot.  We got some drive through and tried to wake Tyler up to eat it but he wasn't having it.  He took two sips of milk and then promptly passed back out.  Lily ate her lunch and swore up and down she wasn't tired.  10 minutes later she was snoring.  Both kids slept hard all the way until we pulled in the driveway.

What a fun time!