Even though I was the one that bought the paint, I really hadn’t been looking forward to it at all (because…mess!) but then I read this article on Facebook: Why You Must Let Your Kids Jump In Muddy Puddles (about the Muddy Puddles Project) and I instantly knew what we were doing today. If you read the article, get your tissues handy.
And a few close-ups of some of the drawings (taken the next day after they were completely dry):
Welcome to my world. I see stuff like this on a daily—and sometimes hourly—basis.
A bunch of Owen’s Legos migrated to the kitchen counter… He said they were having a battle.
She can finally—most of the time—make it up the tube herself!
Owen showing Katie what she looked like with her new headband.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEisMIDvWyQ<
Sometimes I catch a glimpse of Owen and he looks so old.
Katie doesn’t like to cuddle when she’s sick, which has both good and bad points. So when she wanted to sit with me on Day 3 of being sick, I let her.
Otherwise, this is pretty much what she looked like for two straight days:
What freaks me out the most is her fever. This is her first time being sick sick (maybe she had a touch of fever when she was a baby but I don’t recall). Her fever has increased slightly (99 this morning…to 100…to 101.5 now) so of course I was worried and paranoid. She just looks so small and pathetic. 🙁
I have the baby monitor set up in her room and at least she was quiet…until just now when I started hearing little whimpers. I hate to hear her cry, but she honestly looks dead on the monitor (it’s about 18″ away from her face) so I like any sign she’s alive.
I don’t anticipate sleeping much tonight. The only positive is that we preemptively barf- protected her room.
It’s been three days since Owen was sick (he also missed a day of school!) so I was hoping she missed it but apparently she didn’t. At least my laziness paid off—I still had the towels on the couch and the floor from when Owen was sick so it saved me a bunch of cleanup.
She still has a little bit of attitude as you can see. 🙂
She pretty much lived on the beanbag and thankfully kept drinking water (which wasn’t too bad to clean up when it eventually came back up).
I’d say 90% of the time, she has to wear a tutu to bed. 🙂
As soon as he walked in the door…
This was a totally new set of puzzles. I showed her how one set matched and she did the rest with very little help. (Sorry about the beeping in the background.)
He actually missed the first practice since we were on vacation, but this was HIS first practice. He was VERY excited.
Running the bases before practice!
The ages of the team are 5/6 but Owen is honestly a full foot taller than most of them! Most of the kids are about the size of Katie!! (I think there’s another age 5/6 team but it’s for kids that have previous experience.)
Katie was a great cheerleader! “Owen, good job practicing. Keep practicing with daddy! Good practicing!”
Throwing drill:
Katie does whatever her big brother does—she was throwing pine cones at the fence just like Owen was throwing balls at the fence!
Getting their team hats and shirts! They’re the Raptors!
She puts so much water on that I always hear “Mooom! My paper ripped!” And shortly after: “Mom! I need more water!”
Owen had said his belly hurt after dinner but we didn’t think much of it since he says that now and again and it’s never anything.
So I forgot all about it and went to bed excited (though late), thinking there’s nothing like falling asleep at midnight planning on your first, nice, deep, uninterrupted sleep in nine days (post-vacation)…only to be awoken at 12:30 by a kid crying in your doorway saying they’ve puked and need help cleaning up.
Holy hell.
It was everywhere. And it was some of the worst I’ve smelled. I knew right away there was no way I could handle it all by myself, so I had him wait there while I quickly went to wake up Tom. Between the two of us, it still took a good 30 minutes to clean up.
We had put a huge bowl next to his bed (“just in case”) but there was no point as he had obviously just puked and then rolled over the edge of the bed and puked again. There was puke covering about a 4′ square section of carpet, he was covered (hair, PJs, face), all of his bedding (including bed skirt!) had to be removed…and it had even started soaking through the mattress protector. We had to clean the carpet as best we could without getting out the Rug Doctor (which would surely have woken Katie up) and we had to get out (and blow up) the air mattress (since I wasn’t going to put him back in bed without a barf-proof mattress pad cover). Then we covered the floor with towels and started a load of laundry. And hoped that would be our only wakeup call.
The only thing I could think was “At least we were at home and not at the condo or in a hotel or in the car.”
Except our trip also had nice weather and grandparents!
But seriously, it was fun overall and I’m glad we got the chance to go. That said, it would have obviously been a lot better if Tom hadn’t been sick for most of it. He spent probably the first two full days between the bed and—TMI—bathroom. Neither of us got much sleep, as I woke up every time he got up (the first night there, we were both up from about midnight to 5am). Then he got to sleep all the next day while I had to function with the kids (and deal with the beach and sand and baths, etc.). But the weather was gorgeous, the kids had a great time (which is the most important part), and it was wonderful spending the week with the grandparents!
For someone who rarely naps, he had a good nap, too—just under two hours!
“I have got to stop wearing blue and yellow!” (Grannie Lin had kept teasing him about wearing blue and yellow instead of green and white.)
This was the first (and only!) time of the whole road trip she napped! But it was a good nap, lasting over two hours!
They do pretty well sleeping together… Katie usually ends up glued to Owen’s side, but at least they start out apart. 🙂
We stopped to see our good friends in Atlanta. It was actually Bodi’s 6th birthday weekend, so they had a bounce house set up for the party the next day and the kids had fun in that! (It was also a Ninja Turtle-themed party, so that’s what the masks and weapons are for.)
But first, the boys about 4.5 years ago (November 2010):
And today…
We had a short first day driving as we stopped in Atlanta to visit with a friend. The kids always enjoy stopping at a hotel!
