Every few months I like to write down another day-in-the-life post - because I love to look back over them and marvel at how quickly life changes. If this kind of post bores you, come back tomorrow!
Today I woke up about 6:45 - I had to pee, then couldn’t get back to sleep. That’s pretty typical for me these days. So I hopped on the computer for half an hour and watched the Buffalo Escapes From Lion video that’s hot on YouTube (and is featured in the latest National Geographic special this weekend). It was fascinating - a group of lions catches a buffalo calf, drags it into the water to eat it, a crocodile comes and tries to snatch the calf away, the buffalo herd comes back and chases the lions away, the calf survives. Even more fascinating since it was filmed by a group of tourists in Kruger - and someday, maybe a year or two down the line, we’ll be a group of tourists in Kruger when we go to visit my Dad! Exciting.
The alarm went off at 7:15 for PisecoDad to get up, and since BabyGirl always winds up sleeping curled up next to him, she gets up when he does. He took a shower and BabyGirl asked to use the potty, but wound up just sitting there chatting with her dad. PisecoDad and I talked a bit - about road construction and yesterday’s primaries - and he helped me fold the load of king sheets that weren’t quite dry at bedtime last night. Since both JediBoy and PisecoDad have severe dust and mite allergies, we have to pack away our sheets in airtight plastic after washing them in hot water. If we just piled them in the closet or the dresser, they’d be mite-y again by the time we wanted to use them.
PisecoDad left at 8:00 and I folded the towels that were dry at bedtime last night but I didn’t feel like folding then. I pressed the sheets and pillowcases into plastic bags and took them upstairs to the closet. JediBoy was just waking - in his own bed. That’s something to note, because ever since we brought BabyGirl home almost 7 months ago, JediBoy has wanted to be in the family bed too. The last three weeks, when we’ve been taking turns being sick, I have rotated between sleeping on the couch downstairs and JediBoy’s bed upstairs, because I absolutely cannot sleep next to JediBoy when he’s sick - every cough sends my heart racing, and all I can do is lie awake and watch him sleep. Last night, I asked him to try his own bed so I could sleep in my own bed again, and he was willing but a little nervous. We put on a story cd for him (Pappy and Nita reading a variety of knight and pirate stories), put it on repeat and left it on all night. It worked!
JediBoy was waking up around 8:15 when I went up, but seemed sad and said his whole body ached. I left him in bed with his inhalers and a few books, and he wandered downstairs about half an hour later, when BabyGirl and I were having breakfast - bananas and cereal. He had a little cereal too. Both kids got their morning antibiotics. JediBoy started telling me how much his body ached and trying to talk me into watching movies all day. I said that I’d really rather do something more interesting, and he said, “Let’s do experimenting!”
He wanted to try mixing water, milk, baking soda and vinegar. He said he knew that baking soda and vinegar would fizz, but he didn’t know what the milk and water would do. We headed outside around 9:00 with a bowl, various scoops, the end of an old half gallon of milk, a jug of vinegar and a box of baking soda. It was pretty neat, actually, because having the milk added in helped stabilize the foam and we got a big foamy head sloshing out of the bowl. JediBoy kept adding ingredients in various amounts, and at one point had me scoop baking soda into his hand and then pour the vinegar over that. He thought that feeling was delightful! He and BabyGirl poked and scooped the foam and the leftover solution, stomped and splashed and played in it.
JediBoy told me, as I was taking pictures of the fizz, “If you want to blog about this, make sure you say this was [JediBoy]’s idea. Tell the people they need baking soda, vinegar, water, and fat-free organic milk in the blue box.”
Then I moved some of our Little Tikes climbers around in the backyard - our lawnmower is not working properly so last weekend PisecoDad was only able to mow about the middle third of the backyard before the oil burned out. I pulled the two big climbers and the baby slide into the mown section so the kids could play there. We interrupted a line of ants on the big climber, and JediBoy realized they were carrying larvae! We tried to get some into a critter keeper but they were too small and quick for us. We did get one larvae, that was dropped, so that we could explore it up close.
After watching and discussing the ants for about fifteen minutes, the kids went on to playing. BabyGirl is too small to get onto the platform of the big climber, but she can do the smaller one on her own now. She also loves our little (dirty!) playhouse. We stayed outside until about 10:15, then BabyGirl was waving and saying “buh-buh” and trying to leave - obviously, she was done with the yard. JediBoy stayed out a few minutes longer but then came in too.
I really wanted to do a big jigsaw puzzle today, but I couldn’t find the one I wanted to do, which was a solar system puzzle I thought would be too hard for JediBoy without me, but not so impossible that we couldn’t do it together. It must have been mis-piled in the basement. JediBoy talked me out of being disappointed by saying, “You know what’s like a puzzle? A game is almost the same thing as a puzzle! Let’s play a board game.” So around 10:30 we sat down to play a round of the Rose Art game called Pirate’s Cove - a simple kids’ game not to be confused with the grown-up Days of Wonder game also called Pirate’s Cove.
I’ll do a separate game post about the Rose Art Pirate’s Cove Game
After the game, around 10:50, I decided to put in another load of laundry (this is one of those weeks when the laundry seems absolutely endless) so I could wash JediBoy’s muddy pants from this morning and his markered-on pants from last night. JediBoy helped me gather the clothes and helped me load up the washer. Then he picked a playset from the treasure trove of plastic toys that is our basement and brought it upstairs to play with. It’s an old Fisher-Price set from the Old West, and JediBoy decided to populate it with Pokemon. He graciously let his little sister play too, with the Pokemon he doesn’t like.
A few minutes after 11:00, BabyGirl was looking sleepy, so I gave her a fresh sippy cup of water and she snuggled down on the office couch and was asleep by 11:15. JediBoy played in his playroom - mostly Legos, from the sounds I could hear. I took the chance to check my email and GoogleReader and type up a bit of our day so far.
BabyGirl woke up at 11:45 - that was a short nap - and was hungry for lunch. The three of us sat down to turkey and cheese slices and carrots for lunch. After lunch I tried a new approach with reviewing some addition facts with JediBoy. Several months ago he’d nearly mastered the basic 100 facts (0-9) using Math U See to learn them. But he’s a seasonal learner, and just when I thought he was on a roll with an interest in math, he decided he wasn’t so interested. I let it go.
A week or two ago, an addition fact (8+7, maybe?) came up in the context of a board game and he couldn’t remember what the sum was, and was having a hard time figuring out how to approach it. I reminded him, “What does 8 need to make 10?” and that was enough of a trigger for him. After that day, I’ve been trying to review/drill the facts, just to help cement them in his growing brain. Obviously, drilling math facts can be one of the most boring things on Earth, so I made three giant sheets of paper, covering all 100 facts. I promised him I would only ask him to do the sheets once a day, and we’ve done them inside and outside, standing up and lying down. But even that was starting to get old, he was starting to lose interest and daydream when I pulled them out, and he isn’t completely firm on the 7’s and 8’s yet. I told him we’d start a new challenge - going against the timer. It got him a little overexcited today but he did do all 100 facts in 8 minutes 59 seconds after lunch. (In case you’re wondering, BabyGirl was more than content to continue eating in her high chair for those 8 minutes and 59 seconds!)
When we were done with his addition, he asked to play another game. BabyGirl sat on one side of me and we looked at board books. She likes to meow at the cats in Touch and Feel: Home
When we finished the two games a few minutes before 1:00, changing BabyGirl’s cloth diaper reminded me that I’d put some laundry in, oh, two hours ago, and that surely the washer was done by now! While I was in the basement, I heard a thud overhead. It was JediBoy, who had slipped on a cereal box in the hallway (blame his sister for that debris) and landed hard on one knee. He’s been feeling very vulnerable lately, and a spill that two months ago he could have shrugged off had him in tears. I’m not sure exactly what kind of growth and change is going on inside him that’s got him feeling so fragile, but I’m doing my best to help him through it.
We went upstairs and BabyGirl played in the nursery with trains and blocks and books while JediBoy got in bed with an ice pack (okay, a baggie of frozen grapes) on his knee. I read the fantastic Jan Pienkowski book The Fairy Tales
We finished that book a little after 2:00, and JediBoy got out of bed to look at some other books. He read a little of Shrek: The Complete Guide aloud to us and then was inspired to put on the Shrek soundtrack. The kids danced to a few songs and then let the music continue while they got out dolls and strollers and played all around the upstairs rooms.
We all came back downstairs around 2:45 and JediBoy headed back to the playroom for more Lego time. I hopped on the computer again and BabyGirl had a snack and then wandered the house, wreaking havoc. She likes to undo bookshelves and dump toy baskets or boxes of cereal.
About 3:30 I caught BabyGirl rubbing her eyes, so I took her upstairs, hoping that she’d nap better in the cosleeper.
At 3:45, I went back up to put her down for her nap again.
At 4:00, I went back up to put her down for her nap again.
After that, I could hear her rolling around and talking but she didn’t get out of bed and she didn’t cry, so I left her there and I think she fell asleep sometime between 4:30 and 4:45.
I was puzzled, and very frustrated, that she wouldn’t get to sleep. She’s usually a good napper and if her belly is full and I bundle her, she’ll most often settle right down. I thought she would take a good long nap, especially since she only slept for half an hour this morning.
It didn’t help my frustration that JediBoy wanted my attention, wanted to play more games or read me jokes (I think he read me every single joke out of the Shrek Joke Book by the end of the afternoon, and those are bad jokes), and I was tired and just wanted a moment to myself. It’s the time of day that I lose all my steam and want to send him outside to play, but today he just wanted to be by my side constantly.
But we struggled through, and by about 5:00 things felt better. BabyGirl was sleeping by then, the joke book had ended, I’d been able to go out and get the mail (review copy of a new book about American History, yay!) and talk JediBoy into looking at books without reading them aloud to me.
We don’t always have this late afternoon struggle. In fact, it’s usually the time when she sleeps, he watches a movie and I zone out with the computer, a novel or my hanjie puzzles. But today she wouldn’t sleep, and he didn’t want to watch a movie (after begging for them this morning) and I felt frazzled.
So that’s our day. PisecoDad came home a little late because his boss kept him there discussing a case from his team, and then he stopped at the comic store to pick up the new Buffy and Angel comics that came out today, and now we try to find our equilibrium for the evening. How was your day?
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