Joy

Ah. The joy of 2 kids. Other parents have been warning me that the time will come when Bear and Chipmunk won't be like this...but rather fighting over toys, over food, over everything.

Let's just enjoy this for the time being. I'll deal with the fighting when it comes.

San Diego 2008

Apparently this is becoming an annual thing.

On to the picture show...

After feeling like we were never going to get there (big, bad accident - jammed for 20 miles) we finally arrived, a little frazzled sitting in a car with one complaining toddler and one crying baby. Thus our weekend began.

The zoo was our first stop.





It was a little chaotic traveling with about 13 kids, but somehow we made it around the zoo. If you ask Bear about her favorite part of the zoo she will probably tell you about the "Pah-das (Pandas)" or the "Jee-raffs (Giraffes)."

My favorite part was visiting the Security office, asking to use the phone, and leaving Matt a message that sounded like this, "Hi, uh, I don't know where you are, my phone is dead, and I'm in the security office with Chipmunk who pooped, by the way, and needs a new change of clothes." Matt came to our rescue 20 minutes later. As we were changing Chipmunk, a couple of women walked by, pointed at our naked baby and laughed saying, "oh my gosh, that looks like the baby in the email!" It's unfortunate that I knew which email they were talking about.

The next day, I stupidly forgot the camera, but had a blast with some good friends who live in San Diego (Thanks again!). Matt on the other hand spent his day elsewhere.

Sunday we went to Sea World. Bear was excited because all week we told her how we were going to have breakfast with Elmo. She seemed a little nervous when we got there though.



She was okay in the beginning...



But after a while, those larger than life characters started to freak her out.



Here's Bear climbing up onto the table to avoid getting hugged back by Elmo.



With some tears, but okay with Zoe.



Not too happy with Grover.



Absolutely unhappy with Ernie.



Chipmunk on the other hand was quite happy.



He was a little annoyed though that Daddy wouldn't share his food with him.

Bear was fine once all the characters took their leave. So the rest of the day she was happily telling us all about dolphins and whales that "Spyash." We made sure to visit the turtles more than once (because she kept asking to see them) and cooled off in the Polar Bear exhibit (Boy was it hot that day!). Chipmunk decided to take a 2 hour nap in the wrap sling while Bear played in the kids play area.

We closed our weekend the way it began (stuck in traffic - listening to crying and complaining) and now we are home and all excited about sleeping in our own beds again. Until next year!

The 2nd Floor is Always Better...

I don't remember who (it might have been my mom) told me that 2nd floor apartments are always better. As I've lived in various places, I'm beginning to see why.

1) The 2nd floor is SAFER. It's mostly the apartments on the bottom floor that get burglarized. One time while living in San Diego a neighbor was telling my roommate and I about how some random guy broke into their livingroom window (on the 1st floor)and walked upstairs into their bedroom in the middle of the night. They woke up, the husband yelled and the guy fled. They theorized that he was looking for some apartments with females(scary!)...we always made sure our livingroom window was closed and locked after that.

2) The 2nd floor has LESS WILDLIFE. During college I lived on the 5th floor of our on-campus apartments. The only wildlife we had in our apartment was Cocoa, the hamster who liked to escape and greet us at the door. It was much too high for ants and mice. Meanwhile, downstairs on the 1st floor my future husband was setting up glue traps and spraying bugs that would crawl in from the nearby canyon.

3) The 2nd floor (if it's the top floor) has LESS NOISE. When you live below you tend to hear a lot more noise. Living on an upper floor, you forget how much the people below you can hear. Our 5th floor apartment during 2nd year of college was smack dab below a bunch of rowdy boys. Their bathroom was right above our bedroom...sometimes in the middle of the night, my roommate and I could hear things we really didn't want to hear...Gave new meaning to Eine Kleine NachtMusik.

4) The 2nd floor has GRAVITY. Okay, so all apartments have gravity, but when you have a leak on the 2nd floor, it runs downstairs. Case in point.

5) And finally, the 2nd floor is FARTHER FROM THE GROUND...and farther from sewage leaks! I know, yuck, right? Apparently, gallons and gallons of sewage have been blocked and pooling underneath our apartment. Ugh. They cleared the blockage and the sewage has moved on, but the smell still lingers a little. Ew! Perhaps I shouldn't have been so quick to complain about the crazy van man and his incense. We could use that sandalwood smell right about now.

***Update: So the plumber came back and poured bleach all over the place. The sewage smell is gone, but man, the bleach smell is overpowering. I've got the world's worst headache right now from the fumes. That can't be good.

Sibling Love

This picture sums up the relationship between Chipmunk and Bear these days. Bear has this proud "little mama" look like she's actually helping her brother out by patting his head and telling him in a high pitched voice, "good boy, little baby!" Chipmunk just looks like he can't wait for the day where he can do unto his sis what his sis has done to him. Ah, sibling love. Ain't it grand?

Lessons Learned

Curiosity is a good thing, right? I've been trying to tell myself that even though in the back of my mind I know what happened to the cat.

Bear has been quite curious lately...she's apparently following too closely after her television idol, Curious George. I find myself putting out fires (metaphorical, not real, thank goodness) and surveying the damage to make sure that (1) no one needs to be rushed to the hospital and (2) the damage isn't permanent. It's getting exhausting.

Some of Bear's curiosities:

- Finding out what happens when you stick things in keyholes. I've had to pry a few things out.

- Finding out what happens when you take things apart...like our camera tripod...she managed to unscrew a few pieces where it just fell apart when I picked it up one day. We're still looking for some pieces...

- Finding out what happens when you push buttons...anywhere. We all know what happened to our DVD player. She's also been leaving lights on in our car, turning on the vacuum unplugged (so when you plug it in...), reprogramming alarm clocks to go off in the middle of the night, recording random things on TiVo, and changing preferences on Matt's computer.

These are all relatively, minor though. Some more recent occurrences have had me a little more on edge lately.

- Climbing onto unsturdy boxes in order to explore what's hanging out where she can't see. I tend to hear the aftermath of things crashing to the ground (Lesson Learned! It hurts when you fall and things fall on top of you).

- Putting cds and dvds into the vcr and frustratedly ramming them in while yelling, "don't work!" (Lesson Learned! Breaking the VCR and the DVDs isn't a good thing)

- Climbing under our car in order to get to the other side (Lesson Learned! You get your clothes all dirty and mommy freaks out when she finds out where you were).

- And this morning...coming up to me with a gaping hole in her pajama shirt, of which she announced, "cut scissors...fix it!" (Thankfully, she only cut the shirt and not anything else...phew!...although she was a little sad because it was her favorite shirt - Lesson Learned! Don't play with scissors because sometimes the damage can't be fixed!)

Of course, when all of this happens I always ask myself, where was I when all of this happened? She's so sneaky. She actually waits until my back is turned, when I've stepped away a couple of minutes, or looked in the other direction before she runs for some forbidden object. Even when I put things away, she watches me to see where I put it and comes for it later.

Diabolical, I tell you. Or just curious...

Utterly Incapable

Today I hit my breaking point...literally.

I broke my 7th dish since Chipmunk was born.

I've been saying we needed to make more room in our cupboards, but this is not what I meant.

It's things like this that make me feel so utterly incapable.

Apparently, parenthood just has a way of doing that.

Sigh.

Summer Breezes

Summer is hot. Summer is fun. Summer is busy...

Summer continues to breeze on by...

Bear has been taking an art class. Her favorite pastime in class is using the scissors. Perhaps it's because we don't own any kiddie scissors at home so she's been deprived that she makes a bee line for those colorful plastic cutters. Occasionally she'll glue, but most of her artwork just has this fringe around the outside where she went scissors happy.



Well, except the windsock which was supposed to have fringe...which she happily snip-snipped.

July 4th we spent the day with some of my longtime friends (minus one who we missed terribly)...We tried to get some good pictures of the kids together...but if you know anything about taking pictures of multiple kids...it just never works out...especially with five of them...

At night we went to view the fireworks. Bear enjoyed her corn...



...and Chipmunk was a little fussy, at least until the fireworks started and then he was mesmerized for the whole half hour show.



Until next post...summer will continue to breeze on by.