Growing a Pumpkin Patch is Hard Work.

Noodiforms

Adam is ready for kindergarten.  We have his backpack, his uniforms, new socks, undershirts, shoes, gym clothes, and a load of Ticonderoga pencils.  He's excited, of course, and so is his sister, who is convinced that she's not starting preschool, but instead will be in pre-first with Brother.  When we try to explain the difference, that she's starting preschool and she'll be with her friends and will have a new tote bag and all that fun stuff, she becomes incensed.  "No!  I don't go to preSCHOOL!  I go to preFIRST!  With BROTHER!"  This should be fun.  She also keeps demanding her "noodiform."  We have some preschool uniform shirts leftover from Adam (his PK4 class was a uniform class) so if she persists, I'll just send her to school in one of those.  Pick your battles, right?

Adam is bursting with pride at his backpack, especially, which is full of his supplies.  Every day, he sets his pack on the floor and starts pulling out his supplies one by one, explaining to Sylvie what each item is for.  I need to get it on tape, it's really adorable.  

In other news, we ate lunch at Twisted Taco today and Adam is now so enamored with the Old West that we've already been to the library to check out some books on the subject, and he's currently running around with a cowboy hat and a "Bowie knife," which is actually the pretend, wooden knife from the kids' Melissa & Doug Slice & Bake Cookie set.  The red and white gingham oven mitts are his calf-roping gloves.  Good times at the Ponderosa, made even more authentic by the fact that the chicken from the meat CSA that we're having for dinner tonight came with its neck still attached.  It's off-putting, to say the least.  I mean, I get where my meat comes from and all that, and I'm happy to Honor The Chicken, but I really do prefer that my chicken come neck-less.

Bowling

So, today we went bowling at the classiest bowling alley I've ever been to - no stale beer or smoke smell, clean, very nice employees, and Adam's world was rocked by a platter of fried cheese sticks.  He'd never had them before today and he's a fried cheese convert.  He had a blast bowling with his friends and cheering for everyone, and we will definitely go back soon.  The fact that the lanes had bumpers definitely helped.  We went to Rock & Bowl a couple of years ago - it was Adam's first time bowling - and they refused to put up the bumpers.  And really, for a preschooler to have anything other than a miserable time bowling, you need to have bumpers.  (Full disclosure: we went back to Rock & Bowl last year in their new location and they were more than happy to put the bumpers up, so yay Mid City Lanes!)

Sylvie liked bowling, too - for two frames.  After that, she took off her completely adorable size 8 velcro bowling shoes, put her Keds on by herself, and declared that she was done bowling.  Then she found a pack of graham crackers somewhere in the bowels of the diaper bag and sat munching crackers for the remaining eight frames.

She is completely adorable, by the way.  She loves to sing along to the radio and she'll surprise me with great big kisses.  She'll also come up to me, pat my hair, and say, "Oh, Mama!  I like your hair!  It is so beautiful - did you take a shower?"  

Last week, we took Adam to his first nighttime Braves game.  He had a ball: he ate a footlong hot dog, some Cracker Jacks, a pint of DIppin' Dots (that shows you what a good mood my husband was in), and a half a bottle of Fanta (that shows you what a good mood I was in).  He made it all the way to the end of the game and through the fireworks that followed the ninth inning.  He fell asleep as soon as we hit the MARTA shuttle - but he always loves MARTA.  Yesterday morning, in fact, he took his MARTA Breeze card and made a tag on which he wrote, "MARTA breeze  TAP HERE -->" just like how you tap you card to get the gates to open to get to the platform.  And he carries his TAP HERE --> with him and we tap it with the used Breeze card when we need to open a door.  Perhaps he can find the cure to what ails Atlanta's regional transportation issues?

Oh, and another cute Syl thing: Chris wears a tie to work pretty much every day, and Syl always says, "Oh, Dada, I like your tie!  It is so beautiful!"  Except yesterday, when Chris came down wearing a bow tie.  "Dada, I do not like that tie."  

Wee wee wee, all the way home

As Adam has commandeered the laptop while he's been recuperating from his tonsillectomy last Thursday, I haven't been online much.  The surgery went well, and his recovery has been about as well as could be expected.  We did have to threaten the poor IV-phobe with a visit to the ER on Sunday when he was toeing the line with his hydration, but once we called the doctor, who asked us if Adam was hard-headed (to which I replied, yes, he's hard-headed, and Adam heard me and bleated, "I'm NOT hard-headed!") and then told us to threaten him with the ER, he started drinking again and was then amazed at how much better he felt once he was properly hydrated.  Amazing how that works.  He's out of school all this week and he's had a low fever, but he's had a steady diet of pudding, ice cream, sherbet, and yogurt, and today he actually ate half of a PBJ, so things are looking up.

And because we're housebound, I decided, why not potty train Sylvie? I AM FULL OF GOOD IDEAS.

We're on Day 3. We've gone from wetting through underpants and then saying, "I go poo poo!" on Day 1 to grabbing her crotch and saying, "I need to go pee pee!" followed by a race to the toilet where nothing would happen, followed by getting up off the potty and peeing in her underpants two minutes later. I figured out that rhythm this afternoon and tonight, at the end of Day 3, when I was about to give up and try again in a couple of months, she said she had to go, we raced to the potty, I gave her the iPhone to mess with while we waited, and then, by golly, she peed in the potty! So we'll see what happens with Day 4. Thank god the Easter Bunny left a whole lot of Easter candy corn, because that's the pee reward.

While Sylvie is pretty much ready for potty training, best we can tell, we may be a wee bit early (ha!), but I figured I'd jump on it, because when else will we every have 10 days at home with nothing to do?  Initially, I figured that if it didn't work, no biggie, I'll try again in a few months.  But now that I've invested 3 days, I'm ready to see this thing through to its (wet, wet) finish.  

And while Adam has been a little on the whiny side (understandable, yet - I'll be honest - grating), yesterday Sylvie did, hands-down, the cutest thing any child has ever done (in my biased opinion): we were outside on the back porch and the carpenter bees were buzzing around and Syl walked up to one that hovered a few inches from her face and exclaimed, "Hello, my buzzy friend!"

...right in the middle of her forehead.

...right in the middle of her forehead.
Originally uploaded by tanulewicz

I really love this photo. I feel like it's a glimpse of what she'll look like when she's grown. I know I'm biased, but she's such a beauty.

Last night, I told a group of colleagues that for the next two weeks, I'd be spread a little thinner than I usually am.  Sylvie is scheduled to have tubes put in her ears on Thursday morning, and tomorrow morning we have the pre-op visit for Adam, who is scheduled for a tonsillectomy next Thursday morning.  In the meantime, Chris is in court for the at least the next week.  So far, it looks like the trial will be done by early next week, at the latest, but there's a reasonable chance that the trial will overlap with Adam's surgery date.

We'd prefer not to reschedule, though - the reason we want to have the surgery on Thursday is because Adam's already missed a lot of school due to strep, and his school doesn't have class on the Thursday and Friday before Easter, or the Monday after Easter.  Plus, it's the county school system's spring break the week after Easter, so soccer's cancelled.  I know it looks like we're overthinking this - I mean, the kid is 5 and this is preschool we're talking about - but Adam really hates missing school and soccer, so timing the surgery and his subsequent recover over the Easter holiday makes a lot of sense, schedule-wise.  

In the meantime, Adam's excited about getting all the ice cream and screen time he wants, and for a kid who is truly needle-phobic, he's doesn't seem at all concerned about the surgical aspect of the tonsillectomy.  He is worried about candy, though - specifically, his Easter candy.  At 5:45 Monday morning, he crawled into bed next to me to ask me if the Easter Bunny would know that he couldn't have regular candy because of how he's, in his words, "having his tonsils pulled out" (I've explained that they won't actually be "pulled" out, but he seems to like the drama of that verb).  Answer: we will leave the Easter Bunny a note asking for pudding packs and jello in lieu of jellybeans and gummy bears.  (And Reece's eggs.  It is simply amazing how the Easter Bunny always knows to leave lots and lots of Reece's eggs, even in Syl's basket...when she was 8 days old.)

The EB has also been stockpiling Elephant & Piggie books and little toys, and this morning, the EB scored a Melissa & Doug U.S. Presidents floor puzzle for $6 at TJ Maxx.  It's even a recent Presidential puzzle, with Obama - it's not some TJ Maxx expired second.  I meant to hide the puzzle in the bowels of the Mazda, but I forgot about it and as soon as Adam hopped in the car after school, he said, "Hey! Is that President puzzle for ME?"

Easter Bunny FAIL.

High/Low

So, if I were to do a high/low for yesterday, it would go as follows:

Low: Adam coming down with a stomach bug - the kind that involves both ends - on top of the strep he's had since Sunday.  Last night, he vomited everywhere in the Jack & Jill bathroom that he and Syl share except the toilet.  He was understandably upset, and when Syl ran in to see what all the fuss was about, she slipped and fell in the vomit, leaving me with two hysterical children, one bathroom full of vomit, and one husband at work.  

I kept myself from freaking out/getting sick, then I assessed and triaged.  I stripped Adam and Syl down, cleaned their feet with baby wipes, and confined them to Sylvie's room so I could clean up the mess.  Adam was actually feeling better at this point - prior to getting sick all over the place, he'd been miserable, so he read stories to Syl and kept her entertained.  I cleaned everything up, put the kids in the bath, and then Chris came home and put them both to bed while I dealt with washing all the bathmats.  And then I drank wine!  Which is kind of a...

High: Yesterday was the long-awaited ENT visit for both kids.  He reviewed my handy chart outlining the THIRTEEN ear infections Syl has had since December, 2008 (she had several prior to December, 2008, but the pediatrician and I just gave him a year's snapshot of the agony) and said that we should definitely get her on the calendar for a set of tubes.  Yay!  The ear infections - her left ear was mildly infected at the appointment yesterday - are a low, but getting a light at the end of the tunnel is certainly a high.

As for Adam, who has had strep twice in five weeks, the ENT said he is definitely a candidate for a tonsillectomy, but that he didn't think it was an absolute necessity.  Then he commented on how clearly awful Adam was feeling - Adam was sprawled out on Chris barely able to keep his eyes open - and asked if he was always this debilitated even after two days on the antibiotics.  We said that this was totally de regueur - when Adam has strep, it always means that he's laid out for at least five days.  The doctor's trepidation about having the surgery was because he didn't want Adam to be laid out for 6-10 days unnecessarily, but when he saw that Adam had been out for at least 10 days this month because of strep, he recommended that we go ahead with the surgery before he starts kindergarten this fall, which is the same thing we were thinking.  So now we just need to determine if we want to do the surgery now, and have him miss another week of school, or wait until the summer, and miss a week of summer camp, the pool, and generally being outside.

...and if there were a gold star award for Most Supportive Trial Attorney's Wife, I would totally get it for yesterday's vomit extravaganza, because as awful as it was, I never called Chris to demand that he get home right that instant.  He's in the middle of trial prep for a huge case that goes to trial in a week, and besides, he wouldn't have gotten home for at least 20 minutes and I would have had it all cleaned up by then, anyway.  Gold star for me!

Oil Change

I am a generous wife and last week I took Chris's SUV to the nasty Chevy dealership for some long-overdue service.  That meant that Syl and I had to hang in the nasty pit of a waiting room at the nasty Chevy dealership.  There is a bright, shiny, happy Chevy dealership, but it's way up in, like, Acworth, about a 40-minute drive from my house.  I opted for the nasty place that's 5 minutes from home.  What can I say?  It was nasty, and Syl kept futzing with the nasty M&M dispenser, and then with the nasty vending machine, and the whole experience was just nasty.  

And then today I had to take my car to the slightly-less-nasty Mazda dealership for an oil change.  It's really not nasty at all - it's just a car dealership that - I am guessing - was designed by men who didn't think that maybe women would be spending time there waiting for their car to be serviced, and maybe those women would be there with a kid or two in tow.  And one of those kids ($1 to whoever guesses which kid it was - hint: the one who's already had a skull fracture) would try to climb up the rail on the balcony that overlooks the showroom, and also try to jam her hand up in the vending machine because her cruel, heartless mother wouldn't spring for any animal crackers.

So you know what I did?  I took both kids down to the showroom, which was empty because no one is out car shopping on a nasty, snowy, cold day.  And I let the kids pile into the back of a Mazda 5.  Then I slid the doors closed and let them play in the car while I leaned on the side of the car and played Bejeweled 2 on my iPhone.  

Yes, I am That Person.  But at least we left the dealership with both kids intact!  

Birthdays

I just finished designing the invitation for Sylvie's birthday party next month.  "Design" is probably an overstatement.  Syl loves Brown Bear, Brown Bear, so we're doing an Eric Carle theme.  For the invitation, I scanned some Brown Bear fabric and sort of took it from there, no doubt violating many copyrights along the way.  (Hi, Eric Carle's attorneys!  We're super big fans!)  I had the fabric because I'm making her a reversible Brown Bear pinafore that she can wear at the party.  Because, like I always say, if you're going to have a theme, have a theme.

A birthday party is probably overkill for a two-year-old, but we had one for Adam's second birthday, so it doesn't seem fair to deny poor second-born, baby book-less Syl the pleasure of her own.  Plus, Sylvie loves birthday parties.  Just loves them.  Every time she attends one (most of Adam's friends are still at the age where birthday parties are a whole family affair), she runs around singing "Happy day to you!" and babbles about the "happy day cake."  She loves parties, and I can't deny the girl a birthday party.  Plus, I like throwing parties.  Themes!

Chris's birthday was last week.  Sylvie was mainly excited about singing "Happy day to you!" but Adam was beside himself with the surprises we'd planned.  He is into celebrating holidays, and January and February have a boatload: MLK Day, Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, President's Day, Mardi Gras, George Washington's birthday...  So Adam was beside himself about Chris's birthday falling in the middle of the holiday frenzy.  

In the past, I've always ordered barbecue from different parts of the country for Chris's birthday dinner.  We've had Memphis, Austin, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kansas City, and two kinds of Georgia barbecue, but this year Adam wanted to pick a restaurant for the birthday dinner.  He went with his favorite: Buffalo*!  Because eating out on a weeknight is always fraught, we needed Chris to meet us at the mall, but Adam did not want Chris to know where we were going.  I told him that we'd tell Chris we were going to Chick-fil-A (which is probably Adam's second-favorite restaurant), but then we'd surprise him with Buffalo.  We parked the car and were walking to the mall entrance and I asked Adam how he was going to let Chris know we weren't going to CFA.  

I asked, "So, you'll run up and say, 'Surprise! We're really going to Buffalo!', right?" Adam was aghast.

"NO! That would ruin the surprise! I will tell him to close his eyes and then we will walk him to Buffalo and walk in and say, 'Surprise! We're at Buffalo!'"

A subtle difference, indeed.

So, Chris turned 39, complete with pie, ice cream, presents, and a big surprise for dinner.

*Buffalo = Ted's Montana Grill.  Adam has always called it Buffalo because, at least at the one we visit, there's a big stuffed buffalo head on the wall.

Redux

When Adam was little, he liked to rock.  Thankfully, that phase didn't last too long.  Flash to this year, where poor Sylvie's sleep has suffered because of her recurrent ear infections (as of this week, she's had 13 since December 2008.  We visit the ENT in early March.).  This week, she's been waking up around 5:30.  To keep her from waking Adam with her predawn shenanigans, one of us will go in there to change her diaper and rock her for a little while, and this morning when I went in there, she plopped her head on my shoulder as soon as I picked her up from the crib and moaned, "I want to rock!  Want to rock!"  

Another thing that Adam did when he was little, but hasn't done in a while, is demand that Chris remove his jacket as soon as he entered the house in the evenings.  We quickly deduced that Adam had figured that jacket off = Dada is home and intends to stay put.  A week or so ago, Chris came in from work and Syl ran up to him squealing, "Jacket off!  Jacket off!"  I get it, too - probably because I go to a lot more meetings now than I did when Adam was small.  It gets tricky, though, when I'm wearing a cardigan over a camisole and Sylvie demands that I remove my jacket.  She doesn't really get the whole point of cardigans yet, I guess.  I should probably take her on a field trip to Talbot's.

Yesh

Sylvie has gotten the hang of "yes" and "no."  Like, if she has a stinky diaper, she'll come tell me there's poop or pee (this blog is about little kids; you can handle it).  It used to be that if she did this, I'd ask her if she wanted a clean diaper and she'd say, "Dipe!"  Starting in the past few days, though, if I ask her if she wants a fresh diaper, she'll look up, nod her head, and say, "Yesh!"  

"Syl, would you like an apple?"

"Yesh!"

"Do you want to go outside?"

"YESH! YESH!"

Alternatively, if I ask her if she wants to take a nap, she'll shake her head and say, "No no no no no."  But she's polite about it, at least.

And you'd better believe I'm capitalizing on this new diaper awareness.  I pulled the little potties out of the basement a week or so ago and she loves to sit on the potty before her bath and after her naps.  She wakes up from her nap dry most of the time (which I'm taking as another early sign of readiness), so I put her on the potty after her nap, too.  So far, we've had no success, but I'm really not expecting much to happen for another six months at the earliest.  But I figure, if she knows she's going to the bathroom, there's no harm in associating that with the potty, and if there's a patron saint of potties out there who decides that Syl's moment is now, I won't be disappointed.