Blue daddy

Calvin is so silly. He's talking so much more now and makes us laugh a lot lately. Dave was wearing a blue shirt today, and around 5:30 we headed out to all go see the elevation progress at the river house. The kids were in the car, I got in the front seat, and Calvin said "Wait daddy! wait daddy!" He was slightly panicked that the van was going to leave with out him, even though I wasn't even in the driver's seat. Dave finished doing whatever he was doing and hopped in the van, and Calvin exclaimed "Dere's blue daddy!" referring to Dave wearing a blue shirt. :D

Last night was not a fun night (van stuck on cottage row)

So yesterday evening after Dave got off work, he said he had to go over to the river house and prep the house for the house movers. That involved removing all three wooden stair cases that are attached (two on the outside, one in the basement) and take down the garage door. I agreed to take the kids to Island Park while he worked. I fed them PBJs for a fast supper and we were off. I let the kids play at the park for a long time, it was quite windy outside and was surprised they were not affected by the gusting wind. I think they were just ecstatic to BE outside and playing somewhere "new" for once. They've been to this park before, but it was close to a year ago. The ground was all sandy from the recent flood, making a very soft walking surface. Violet must have had a streak of bravery at this park. She was climbing up and down slides that were very high, slid her body skillfully down a pole that was very tall, and then proceeded to JUMP off of the playground equipment from way too high for her age (it was close to 6 feet tall I think, right by my head). She landed well, but fell quickly and her knee jammed into her lower cheek upon landing, which looked pretty painful. At first she didn't know how to react until the sting of pain settled in. I held her while she cried for a long time. A bruise quickly developed, and I told her she could have some medicine before going to bed. A little ibuprofen might help. About 2 hours later, it started to get dark, I gave Dave a call on his cell and asked him how the progress was going. He had two stair cases down, 1 to go, and the garage door. He asked me to come by and take a look, so I got the kids packed back in the car and headed for the river house. I didn't let them out of the car - it was just too messy and sandy. I walked around looking at the prep work, amazed this was all happening. Dave had the truck with him there so I decided to head back and get the kids to bed since they were tuckered out from the windy park playing and were whining and acting very tired. It was after 8 pm after all. So I turned the familiar circle around the neighbor's driveway like I always used to do, and all of a sudden, the van collapsed in a heap of sand. I was totally stuck. The flood brought up a ton of sand and the neighbor moved all of it into his driveway in an attempt to "build it up" higher. He did have plans to cover it with gravel, he just hadn't done it yet. It was like a booby-trap! I tried backing out, but all the tires did were spin. Frustrating! Violet immediately freaked out, she knew we were stuck and thought we were never going to get out and never get home. Calvin picked up on her fear and started crying too. I called Dave over, who brought a shovel, but it didn't help. He found a rope on the neighbor's pontoon boat and tried towing me out with the truck, but all the rope did was snap and break. We were both so tired...but we knew what had to happen...a trip to the store. Dave stayed at the river house because he had to finish tearing down the garage door. I put the kids in the truck and drove to Farm and Fleet at 8:30 pm to get a new anchor rope for the neighbor and a tow strap. Nobody was in the store to help me. I had to fish out an employee from a different department to show me where the tow straps were, and when he did, he just left me there to figure out what to get...there seemed to be a million strap options, I didn't know what to get. So I had to go dig out another employee to help me. 30 minutes later, I found the two items I needed, and drove back to the river house. By this time it was close to 9:30. Dave hooked up the van and the truck with the tow strap, and pulled me out with ease. Praise the Lord! I was praying the whole time since the moment I got stuck to grant me patience and calmness knowing from that moment the rest of the night could be stressful...and He did. Violet was scared but remained calm and tried her best to keep Calvin happy, Calvin was overtired but didn't scream like he usually does. Once we got free of the sand pit, Dave had finished with the house, and we both headed out. On the way out of Cottage Row Rd, he pulled over and said "Hey, you wanna go to 4 Queens?" I just smiled and said "Might as well..." So the 4 of us went to get ice cream at 10 pm. Violet perked up immediately when she heard ice cream. She said she wanted a cone instead of a cup this time, and really wanted pink ice cream. She got her wish, and a little pink ice cream cone she got. Calvin ate a little cup of chocolate ice cream. All she wanted was the cone though, and immediately took a bite right out of the bottom of the cone. Dave ate her ice cream quick and she ate the cone. Once we got home, it was "mission-get-these-kids-to-bed-as-soon-as-possible"...so we did...and by 11 pm, they were sleeping. Ughh...what a night. Last nights don't make for the best mornings. And of course, she was awake at 7 am (and had woken Dave up at 5 am because of a nightmare involving shots and doctors). Violet had an unusually horrible day, spent most of her morning in time-out and getting spankings for bad behavior. I guess she's just a normal kid who needs a decent night's sleep to function. Right now both kids are sleeping, and I hope they catch up on sleep by taking loooong naps.

Elevating the river house

Today begins the work on 1726 Cottage Row Rd. The house movers are elevating the entire house up 40 inches. Prep work was done by them and us over the last few days. Dave removed all three wooden staircases from the house, he ripped off the garage door, and the house movers smashed huge holes in 8 spots (2 on each side of the house) in the cinder block foundation where the long red steel I-beams will enter the house. Its just crazy that this is happening! I drove over there this morning to look at the work, and with in a couple hours of working, they had all the steel beams in place. He said they'd have it raised up by the end of work day today or for sure by tomorrow morning. They are communicating with the brick people who are going to come in and lay the extra 40 inches of brick foundation so they can lay the house back down. I'll post pics later when the process is more complete.

"Big Mess" house

That's what we've always called the river house when we talk to our kids about it. Violet seems to be processing the information very accurately though. She talks about how the house got flooded, the water made a mess, and it the inside had to get torn apart. She some times still calls it "home" when we pull up there to look at it or do something there. The other day we were at Gateway Park and a little tiny house that had gotten flooded was in the process of being torn down by a big piece of machinery. Violet wanted our house to be torn down in the same fashion as this one they were watching being torn to the ground. Dave went over there today to open up some windows and air it out since cleaning the basement after the last flood a couple weeks ago. He noticed that two of the basement windows had been broken, and it had to have happened yesterday evening, because the windows weren't broken when he was there cleaning it out yesterday afternoon. That rattles us a little. Who would want to either vandalize the house or break in??? A lot of work needs to be done to that property. I want to host a cleaning party or something...the entire driveway needs to be power-washed, sticks and leaves need to be picked up all over the property, and the yard just needs some TLC. Since we plan to put it on the market and sell it after it gets elevated this week or next, we both want it looking its best.

Water park weekend

I mentioned in an earlier post about taking a trip to Dubuque, IA. We went Thurs afternoon through Saturday afternoon. Dave's brother Josh suggested meeting up at a hotel that has a big water park that is well suited to little kids. They were making the weekend trip partly in celebration for their son Austin's 5th birthday and thought it would be fun for us to join them. It wasn't exactly in the middle between our houses, we drove about an hour and a half, they drove about 3 hours. Overall the weekend was really fun. It was definitely nice to catch up with Josh and Carrie and see their kids. Violet, Austin, Renee and Calvin had so much fun playing together. Baby Wesley is 4 1/2 months old, and stayed in the arms of an adult most of the weekend. He got in the water once. I didn't swim at all...I just didn't feel up for it with such a large belly and nothing comfortable to wear in the water. I don't own a maternity suit...so I mostly took care of baby Wesley while everybody else swam and went down slides. It worked out pretty well, actually. We met up Thursday evening and both arrived at the hotel (Grand Harbor Resort) around 6 pm. We fed the kids some Easy Mac in our hotel room so they could get a little something in their bellies before hitting the water park. Violet was SO anxious once we arrived to get her suit on as fast as possible and make a mad dash to the pool...(I can SOO relate, I used to be "that kid" begging my parents to go swimming at any hotel we ever stayed at! Just the smell of chlorine in the hotel was so tempting!). She paused for enough time to snarf down some noodles and then we all headed down to the water. Both kids had life jackets on the whole time, which gave Violet free reign of almost the entire pool. There was a huge structure the kids climbed on most of the time that had 2 very long and twisty water slides. I think Violet spent 90% of her time going up and down slides. The end of the slides didn't end in a large pool either, which was nice...it ended in a few inches of water...like the slide itself tapered off slowly. Dave had his hands full keeping track of V and C at the same time. Calvin was pretty scared of everything at first. The big climbing structure that had the slides on it also had an enormous bucket of water that occasionally dumped its contents of water over the whole thing and made the loudest crash sound...Calvin got scared every time that water dumped out. Thursday night was really late. All of us adults were really hungry after letting the kids play so late in the water, so we went to the hotel restaurant and eventually finished dinner by 10 pm. All the kids were wiped...and fell asleep very quickly once we got back to our hotel rooms. We spent an hour or two in J&C's hotel room that night talking, but once the clock hit 1:30 am we had to call it a night...all of us were exhausted. Too bad all the kids woke up at 7 am the next morning!! Ughhh...why don't kids sleep in when put to bed so late? I'll never understand that. :P The morning was a little rough...and the moment we woke up we vowed to take naps when the kids did. We had brought along some cold cereal so for breakfast, we ordered a big glass of milk and let the kids eat cereal for breakfast. Dave was still full from the big dinner the night before, and I was craving protein, so I got a 2-egg omelet from room service off the kid's menu. Of course we headed down to the water park again that morning. For the next three hours the kids completely wore themselves out, and were starving by the time we got them out of the water. Josh ordered a couple large pizzas for everybody and they were gone in about 10 minutes flat. Violet ate 4 pieces of pizza, Calvin had almost three. Nap time came next...and for some reason, Calvin started screaming 45 minutes after he fell asleep. Dave drug his crib into the bathroom and shut the door so it was dark, and coaxed him to go back to sleep. He did fall asleep for another hour or so, which was a huge blessing. Violet, Dave and I all slept for awhile. We scouted out a public park location by the recommendation of the hotel's concierge service - he recommended a park called Cleveland Park. We all thought it would be a good idea to do something else than the water park again that day, and hit it in the morning before we left on Saturday. The park he suggested was only a couple miles away, and it was really nice. It had nice equipment, a view of the Mississippi being way high up on a bluff, and the weather was just barely warm enough to enjoy an hour of park play. We headed out to dinner after that - we went to a little place Josh and Carrie knew about called the Shot Tower restaurant, or something like that. Very casual and dark, order-at-the-window kind of place and stay as long as you want. Carrie and I were determined to eat healthy, so both of us got grilled chicken salads. Josh, Dave, and Violet were chowing down fried cheese balls!! A rare greasy treat that we never get a home, that is for sure. The kids played a bunch by pretending to play video games in the corner of the restaurant. Calvin and Renee ran endless circles around a pole in the middle of the room. I'm not really sure how it all happened but we thought for sure we'd get the kids to bed at a decent time by going out to eat before 6:30 pm...but they didn't get tucked in until 9:45 pm. We stopped at a grocery store after the restaurant and picked up another box of cereal, 1/2 gal of milk, and some bowls for breakfast. Another late night! But it was much, much nicer. Both slept better, and everybody woke up at 8 am. Ahhh...we sort of breathed a sigh of relief. At one point (some time between 6 and 7 am) Calvin did cry in the middle of the night, so Dave moved his crib into our room (it was a 2-room hotel room with a door separating the rooms) so he wouldn't disturb Violet...and another miracle occured...Calvin fell asleep for that last hour so we could all sleep more. I am feeling redundant here, but we went to the water park again Saturday morning. Calvin was well acclimated (finally) to the pool so he had the most fun this morning kicking and splashing in the water, being brave enough to go down the tiny baby slide. He's such an athletic, agile guy, but very sensitive and cautious at the same time. Violet disappeared in the maze structure of climbing and sliding, I watched the baby, and everybody else had fun. Violet threw a major fit when we told her it was time to leave. It took her about an hour to change her attitude...it almost wrecked our lunch plans. She finally came around and got happy. We got the kids bathed, packed up our stuff, and checked out by noon. We met Josh and Carrie for lunch at A&W...and called it a day, and went our separate ways. The cousins did lots of hugging and kissing goodbye - good thing everybody is healthy! Our drive home was short...but just long enough for them both to fall asleep. We put them in their beds when we got home and Calvin was the only one who fell asleep once put in his crib. Violet did not take to sleeping in her bed and kept getting up to adjust her baby, blankets, teddy bear, and saying she had to pee...so her nap was very little. All in all, the trip was really great. Of course, there were times it was stressful and all of us parents would look at each other over 5 little screaming and whining heads all in one place and say "Are we having fun yet!?" with exasperated looks...but those moments pass. It brings parents so much joy to see their kids having SOO much fun. The looks on their faces doing something new and daring is so great, especially seeing Violet enjoy so much independence. I could tell she was so proud of herself for not needing help with hardly anything. Seeing how far she's come in the last two years, being so afraid of everything to being really brave and bold was a big difference to me. Her confidence rubbed off on Renee who just turned 3 to try some things on her own too. Austin has always played that role for Violet. Their ages this trip: Austin-5, Violet-4, Renee-3, Calvin-2, Wesley-4 months. Soon to be another newborn in the mix!!

Violet is usually very helpful, with the exception of one morning

I think it was yesterday, I can't really remember that well. It could have been the day before. Violet woke me up early before 7 am and told me she got the house all ready. She had gone downstairs and turned every single light on she could reach the switch for. I think she reached 7 or 8 lights. It was SO bright downstairs. The sun was even streaming in the windows. I asked her to turn them all off and go back upstairs. I got in the shower and she got my toothbrush ready...and squirted face cream on my toothbrush. Even though she was so proud of herself for getting my toothbrush all ready, I was annoyed because that face stuff is very concentrated, expensive, and she used a ton of it. I showed her which toothpaste I like to use...and said she could only get it ready if she used what I told her she could use. She did the same thing this morning, got my toothbrush ready for me, and accidentally used the expensive face cream again. Once I straightened her out with which toothpaste I like, she headed downstairs and tried to pour herself a glass of water from the gallon of cold water I keep in the fridge. It was completely full, very heavy, and she had spilled water all over the table. I could tell she felt bad about it so I helped her clean it up hiding my frustration with the way the morning had gone. I have a lot of errands to run with Calvin while Violet is at school this morning. I have an appointment in North Liberty for a baby-check and then we are heading to Dubuque to meet up with Josh and Carrie. We're staying in a waterpark hotel for a couple nights (heading back on Saturday morning) and helping Austin celebrate his 5th birthday, which was the 23rd of March. The cousins love to get together so we hope they have a blast and create some fun memories. It will be a nice time to see Josh and Carrie too, time with them is precious as its tough to travel with little kids...soon there will be six kids between all of us. I am hoping night times when the kids are in bed will be good times to reconnect and play some games or something. I haven't packed up yet, and the family has to leave by noon!

New words for Calvin

He now says "pee-pee butter" for peanut butter, "Dora", "ippo" for hippo, and "da-da, da-da, loo-LOO!" for cock-a-doodle-doo. Today we had another successful event on the toilet with Calvin. He said "poopy now" and had gone a little in his diaper. I asked him if he wanted to go sit on his Elmo potty seat and he enthusiastically said "yeah!" and headed for the upstairs bathroom. I put it on the toilet, he sat down, and I tried Violet's tactic of telling him to push it out like a fart. He successfully finished poo-ing on the potty! He was happy to flush on his own, and was really interested in the fact that the poo disappeared as he watched the flush and said "down dere! down dere!" while pointing down the toilet. I don't really know what this means...I am certainly not mentally ready to potty train him so I guess I'll just follow his lead if he keeps acting interested.

Everything is 4 on me!

A few things Violet said lately made me record them on paper before I forgot to blog about them. She's very keen on the fact that she's four, and notices how old everybody else is, and frequently talks about things she used to do when she was three, or two, or one. She was sitting at the table last night coloring or something and said "Everything is 4 on me! My forehead, my tummy, my pajamas, nail polish, even my nose is four!" And this morning when she saw what I dressed Calvin in, she said "Mom! That shirt with the blue, gray, orange and brown is SO cute on Calvin! I didn't know he was wearing that! Its amazing! The airplane matches his pants! Gray and gray." Her enthusiasm about such tiny things is so precious!

Calvin lately...age 2 yrs 3 mo

...is changing so much lately. His vocabulary is increasing, he seems to learn a new word or two every day. Violet and Calvin can keep up a conversation pretty well now, even if his consists of one or two words, she can still make sense of what he's talking about. Their most common conversations are actually fights. An example would be: Calvin picks up a sippy cup which she knows is full of water. He will say "apple joo" and she will correct him saying "No, Calvin, that is not apple juice, it is water." And he'll say "Mo, Lala, apple joo." (No, Violet, apple juice) and insist it is something else just to pick a fight. She hasn't learned this leads to nothing but more yelling. He absolutely loves to look at the sky and point out airplanes. If he's outside he's continually monitoring the sky looking for them. If he sees one, moving slowly wayyyy high up in the sky, he will know its an airplane and point it out. Another thing he likes is the moon. We walked to meeting tonight and on the way home, a sliver of the moon was brightly shining. He says "Moom! White moom!" Dave, of course, jokes with him and says "Are you sure it isn't purple?" And to our surprise, Calvin responded by saying "Mo daddy, mo purple moom, white moom." He runs really fast, his hair is growing longer, blonder, and crazier every day. He hasn't had a hair cut yet...and for now we're not cutting it. Dave seems to love how crazy it is starting to look, I really don't mind it. He loves to climb and jump off things. He is extremely ticklish and most of the time I can turn a grumpy attitude around by tickling him. He has excellent balance and the ability to land on his feet most of the time he jumps off things. He still loves his little white meow and special blanket, and has completely forgotten about his pacifier. At least we think so, he never mentions it or asks for it, and doesn't seem to want other kids' pacifiers if he sees another kid or baby with one in their mouth. One thing he's started to do lately is play macho. Or at least act like it at times. If Dave plays around with him and wants to make him laugh, he some times tries as hard as he can NOT to smile. He gets this little tiny smirk on his face and walks away so nobody can see his effort not to show emotion. Silly little kid. He is gaining confidence in public with people who talk to him. Lots of people say hi to him if he's sitting up in the shopping cart near me, and he (well, most of the time) happily waves and says hi. Of course there is another side to Calvin I haven't mentioned yet. He can be the complete opposite of sweet and silly. He knows how to scream really loud, throw fits when things don't go his way, push Violet's buttons quietly and calmly and sits back and watches his work while she freaks out (his favorite seems to be running his fingers over her dry-erase board art creations to "ruin" them but he does so when she's not watching and waits for her to notice), and be disobedient. He seems so agreeable at times when we ask him not to do something. He'll quickly respond to a request like "Calvin, do not lock the door" or "stop throwing your food on the floor" with a quick "o-tay mommy" or "o-tay daddy" but 2 seconds later, he'll lock the door or throw something on the floor. Whenever I catch him in the act of disobedience he gets a slap or spank, and sitting in his time out chair until he calms down. That usually works...but like a typical 2 yr old...just keeps on doing it. Working with him on obedience will come with time and consistency.

Double date night

We had such a fun night yesterday. I love doing things "on the fly"...which made yesterday so fun because its hard to plan things last minute with little kids. Earlier in the afternoon, our good friends Dennis and Selena asked Dave for some help cutting down a big tree that was in danger of falling on their house, so he went over there for a few hours to help. Dennis was so thankful for his help that he wanted to treat us to a night out (thank you again Hemmers!!). We made last minute plans by asking Alex W. and her friend Grace to babysit, got them to our house, and all 5 of our kids played together. Violet was soooo excited that her friends and favorite babysitter were ALL coming over to her house all at the same time. It was almost more than she could handle. She wasn't excited to see me when I got home, because that meant the night of fun came to and end. Our date night was relaxing - we got the babysitters and kids settled with a couple pizzas for supper, said our goodbyes (though the kids were all too excited and already playing together so intently they hardly noticed we left), packed our friends into the back row of our LaMarche-mobile and drove together to a new restaurant called Roux Orleans downtown Waterloo. Dennis recommended the crawfish binettes (which are deep fried, yum) for an appetizer. I got cajun-seasoned pork tenderloin with garlic mashed potatoes. Dave had catfish, Dennis got steak, and Selena got chicken parmesan. The meal was also served with cornbread muffins topped with a seasoned honey butter. The food was great, the conversation was great, and the time was relaxing. We topped off the evening sitting around some lattes at Starbucks. We were only gone for three hours from 6:30-9:30. The sitters did a great job, kids were all happy, and toys were picked up. Violet's friend Ivy said to her "Violet, I am going to miss you when I leave your house!" What a sweet girl. They didn't realize that after a short night of sleep they could spend more time together in Sunday School class the next morning. Calvin gave me a running hug when he saw me. Even though Violet wasn't all that happy to see me at first, both kids freaked out screaming "mommyyyyy!!!" and melting down when they saw me walk back out the door so I could drive the two babysitters back home. I was still home in time to kiss/hug them before bed. They didn't get to bed til close to 10 pm...which made for a less-than-pleasant morning. Calvin seems to weather less sleep better than Violet. He seemed cheerful most of the day. Violet had a pretty testy morning...so let's hope she catches up on sleep tonight and the rest of the week.

Will you forgive me?

I guess I've been apologizing to Violet lately for things (probably "I'm sorry for yelling at you, will you forgive me?" type of thing)...I learn this by listening to her talk because I can't remember very well. She repeats everything I say. This morning, she finished breakfast, and about 5 minutes after she got down from the table, I noticed she still had a piece of egg yolk on her cheek. I said "Violet, you still have egg on your cheek!" which of course made her giggle and she wanted to see it in the mirror. I showed her, and she said, "I'm sorry mom, will you forgive me?"

baby faith

This morning Violet was chattering away about making another big cupcake. She got an enormous cupcake silicone baking pan for her birthday (the kind that takes two cake mixes worth of batter to fill up!), and a couple weeks ago we attempted to make our first one, but unfortunately, it was a flop. The top "muffin top" part of the cupcake had too much batter in it and didn't bake all the way through. So we made the best of the cake with the bottom cupcake part that baked just fine that we could. It was supposed to be a small group treat...so tonight we are going to try again. While she was eating breakfast this morning, she said "I think we should pray about the cupcake that it won't be a mess this time." So she prayed for the cupcake to turn out and be pretty. We'll see how it bakes this time, as soon as I'm done writing we are going to start attempt #2 with less batter in the top part.

Pregnancy update

Tomorrow I'll be 31 weeks...and next week will be the 7 month mark. This is flying by soo fast! Baby is really, really active. The other day I felt so uncomfortable, I think baby was flipping over there was so much movement. Violet enjoys feeling the baby kick a lot, she is excited every time she feels movement. We are not decided on names yet...we gotta get serious about it at some point. A recent pic:

Potty fluke

So, the short story is that Calvin pooped on the toilet the other day. I think it was totally a fluke. I went to change his diaper in the middle of the day and happened to notice that something was about to happen, so I stuck him on the toilet, and read him a few books. I was betting my chances of success were going to be pretty much zilch, but to my surprise, he didn't freak out like I thought he would, so I went with it. Violet came running over to the bathroom and was surprised to see Calvin sitting there. She asked him if he was going poop and he said "yeah!" But nothing happened. She said to him, "Calvin, just push it out like a big fart!" And he did exactly that, and emptied his system. I bet that won't happen again for a very long time!

Unexpected morning walk

This morning turned out a little different than my usual Tuesday morning routine. Dave left the house early to go downtown Waterloo to serve on jury duty. He decided to drive the van because he didn't want to deal with parking the enormous truck on the street by the parking meters. That left me with the truck to take Violet to preschool with. I got them packed in the truck about 8:50 and tried starting it, but it wouldn't start. I noticed that the dome light switch was turned on...which must have killed the battery. I said to the kids "well, I guess we're taking the stroller this morning!" So I quickly got them bundled up and myself, and walked Violet to school. She can't walk as fast as I was walking so she happily rode in the stroller. I was in such a hurry that I forgot to buckle Calvin in the front of the stroller seat (I took the double stroller...the sit n stand). Neither of us noticed, he stayed put and didn't try to move. He was so bundled in layers of his coat that I don't think he could even move. It felt like a really cold morning so they both had on a lot of layers. It was only a 7 block walk, but by the time I got there, I was sweating. Violet was excited to show Mrs. A her new shoes. She told me that Mrs. A has shoes just like hers, with a pink part on the back part of the heel of the shoe. That girl is SO observant. The walk back to the house was much easier, I think its because on the way, the entire walk is uphill, and the way back was downhill, felt much more relaxed and I wasn't in such a rush to get her there on time. She only got there 8 minutes late. I enjoyed the quick burst of energy this morning, I'll get to do it again when I go pick her up from school today at 11:30.