And then we ate apple pie

Today, I had a new "first" as a mother.  I chaperoned my first field trip!  I love that I am able, as a stay-at-home-mom to do things like this, and I love that Emily still WANTS me to do things like this, so when I heard about the trip to the apple farm I signed up immediately.  I even got my car detailed last week because there was a possibility that some of her classmates might need a ride and I didn't want them to get stuck to a seat by the powerfully sticky mix of dried juice and bunny cracker powder that usually coats the entire interior of my van.  It turned out that we didn't need to give anyone a ride (much to Emily's disappointment), but her spirits lifted once we got there.

The weather was quite ominous, but the rain held off long enough for us to get in our hay ride and apple picking.

Hayless Hayride

Overcast, but still pretty

Lining up for an apple picking lesson

Twist, THEN pull

This is harder than it looks

Success!

Emmy and Mommy headed back

It was damp and chilly, therefore the walk-in fridge was NOT a hit...

Let me out of here!

...although it DID make it feel wamer outside in comparison.

Finally, the playground!

In an effort to avoid buying one of the delicious but incredibly unhealthy pies they were baking and selling at the orchard, I bought a box of seconds apples and promised Emily we'd make our own (secretly healthier) pie when we got home.  The problem is, I've only ever made about 2 pies in my life, and it has been years since I made those.  If you've ever made pie before you'll know that pie crust dough is tempermental in the best of circumstances and here I was trying to make our pies healthier by using whole wheat flour (I may have even accidentally used rye flour, I'm not positive since I have about 10 unlabeled bags of various types of flour in my pantry).  My helper was a little girl who had not had much lunch and had spent the whole morning exhausting herself running around an apple orchard.  There were many tears and once she spotted me trying to take pictures there was even some angry flour-throwing, but dang it, I wanted to document our wholesome and educational activity.

No pictures Mommy!

Stop it!

Once Emily realized the crust dough was tasty and didn't have raw eggs in it she focused on stealing and eating pieces of that for awhile.  With her blood sugar levels thus raised I was able to calm her down and we got to work.

Aaaaaaaand she's back!

Any story that ends with "And then they ate apple pie" is a happy story in my book.

Phew

An Open Letter to Payless (Shoe Source!)

Dear Payless,

I appreciate that you offer low-cost shoe options for those of us who enjoy shoe quantity over quality.  I also appreciate that you offer site-to-store shipping for those of us who are too cheap to pay shipping costs.  These services led me to believe that you understand your target customer demographic.  However, over the course of my last 2 orders I have come to realize that you must not fully understand your customers, because we differ a bit in the ways we define certain business practices.

-When my order arrives and some of the shoes are missing, as with the first order I placed a year ago, I call that sloppy.

-When my order confirmation email this time around says "Shipping Method: Ship To Local Payless Store (14-17 days)" and then it turns out those 14-17 days are from the time my order leaves the warehouse, not from the time my order is placed, I call that annoying, but understandable.  I'll take the blame for that one for not reading the fine print hidden on your website.

-When YOUR associate calls ME to say my order is in, and then it turns out my order is not, in fact, anywhere to be found in the store, I call that careless.

-When I call 18 days after my shoes have left your warehouse to try to find out where they are and you tell me that those 14-17 days are actually business days, even though I cannot find anywhere on your website that actually SAYS you mean business days, I call that just plain lying to get me off your back.  And I call THAT insulting, not to mention terrible customer service.

-When you cannot get a pair of shoes from your warehouse to one of your stores within a MONTH of the time they are ordered, I call that pathetic.  With a supply chain like that, how did you ever expand to almost 4,500 stores worldwide?


So now that we're on the same page, I would like my shoes.  The shoes I ordered and paid for OVER A MONTH AGO.  The shoes I ordered because I wanted to, you know, own them and wear them, preferably before the end of the season.  Or if they are, as I suspect, lost somewhere (which we won't know until the absolute longest amount of time you can stretch "14-17 days" to has passed and you decide to actually help me locate my order) I'll take a refund.  There are plenty of other cute and painful shoes in the sea.

Sincerely,

An extremely irritated customer

The Busy World of Sara Randall

We've had a jam-packed few days, luckily it has all been fun social engagements, which definitely makes extreme busyness easier. I had brunch to catch up with my friend Kim who has been in Italy for 3 weeks and whose husband Brad (who was one of the best men in my wedding) is currently hiking Mt. Killimanjaro. On Saturday we did the gym as usual, then Will did a relay for the opening ceremonies "tapping of the keg" at Oktoberfest (which I thought was a running relay, but which actually turned out to be a beer-chugging relay).

Yeah

In the meantime, I was home, sending Emily off with our neighbor to go see The Lion King in 3D.  That was a weird feeling.  I've never handed off Emily and her carseat to anyone outside the family and watched her drive away, and she's only ever been to the movie theater once before.  Luckily she did a good job behaving herself (according to our neighbor), even though she did return sucking on a 20+ oz cup of sugar dye juice.  She spent the next 30 minutes hopped up on sugar manically pacing the floor, then it was time to go to my friend Wendy's house for a Mary Kay party.  Emily and my friend's daughter Sam spent their time dressing up as Snow White and eating marshmallows (Snow White's favorite) while Wendy and I put about 16 layers of various creams and sera (The plural of "serum".  I looked it up.) on our faces.  Then it was home to host Chris (Will's friend from work), Beth and their daughter Nora for dinner, playdate and beer-tasting. Well, some of us played, and others of us tasted beer anyway.  When they headed home Will left too to go to ANOTHER friend's house for the evening, and I crashed gratefully into bed at the end of my long day, pleased that we hadn't had to cancel any of our engagements like we usually tend to have to do on super-busy days, and even MORE pleased that neither of the girls had melted down over the course of the day.  Will came home around midnight, fell right asleep, and all was quiet.

Until we awoke at 2:30AM to the alarming sound of a seal barking Emily coughing in a suspiciously croup-like manner at the foot of our bed.  Time to set up the vaporizer, procure some honey tea, and stand in a steamy shower with my coughing, crying girl.  Emily, for the record, is a terrible patient.  Depsite my excellent Google skills and 30 years of experience with being sick myself and watching my younger sisters go through croup, strep (x1000), slapcheek, chicken pox, and even scarlet fever (and no, we did not grow up in the 1800's) Emily is extremely mistrustful of any relief-giving measure I offer.  She is very fond of waking me up in the middle of the night to treat me like crap as I try to help her, and that tendency is doubled when she's sick.  So I spent the rest of the night with a night light in my face having my covers stolen by a girl who would emit an earth-shaking cough, then sit bolt upright in panic and have to be calmed back down every half hour or so.

Today she's ok-ish.  Nothing being confined to the couch with juice and a constant stream of My Little Pony won't fix.  I am lucky my kids are generally very healthy, and even though I was up most of the night, I am still feeling happy today.  Happy that these up all night marathons are few and far between now that my kids aren't teething, breastfeeding infants anymore.  Happy that they're old enough now that Will and I can start getting back into having a social life.  And especially happy that I am not yet into the up all night waiting for my teenage daughter to come home phase.  Kids are incredibly effective sleep-thieves, but despite last night I feel like we are in the good years.

Now I am going to go join Emily on the couch for a nap.

Potty time

There is once again a potty sitting in my living room

Photographic evidence

A couple weeks ago we decided Emily was old enough to handle the responsibility of getting herself to an actual bathroom in the middle of the night instead of keeping a little potty in her room for her to use. Having the potty in her room was easier for her at first, and easier for us to just give her a water bottle and a potty, tuck her in and say "You cannot, unless you are injured, come out of your room at night until your clock turns green". Now she's old enough to use a full-sized potty with ease, and she understands "Ok, you can come out of your room when your clock is not yet green but ONLY to potty, then go right back to bed". I moved the potty from her room to the downstairs bathroom and figured I'd just leave it there until Charlotte starts to potty train.

Charlotte was not showing any interest at all, until Sunday night. She had diaper rash something fierce, so we were letting her have "naked time" to help her heal. Right before her bedtime she accompanied me into the bathroom, and then just sat down and used that little potty. We fell all over ourselves praising her and applauding and she was pretty pleased. I figured it was a fluke, slapped a diaper on her and put her to bed.

The next morning, after breakfast she pulled off her diaper and used the potty again. Huh.

So I bought some pull-ups, and decided we'd give it a shot. I bought generic pull-ups because they were discontinued and pretty cheap (score!), but it turns out they are kind of confusing and awesome. At least I know now why they were discontinued.

Shrek princesses...neat-o

The first pull-up we selected was just fine

Yep, those sure are Shrek princesses

But then things got weird

Yep, those sure are...NOT Shrek princesses. 

 

 

 

 

 

Cinderella?  Ok, I'll take your word for it

 

Why does Snow White look like an Indian Goddess?

I think I've seen this tattooed on a guy's arm at the gym

Aaaand, that's it.  I don't know where the other three princesses in the picture are.  I don't know WHO the other three princesses in the picture are.  What I DO know though is that they work, so I guess that is good enough for me.  Maybe I should keep them and they'll be worth something one day, like first-edition books with typos.

Anyway, back to potty training.  I have been through the ringer before, and it is bittersweet. Sweet because, well duh, once your kids are fully potty trained you don't have to deal with their poop on a daily basis anymore (hopefully). Bitter because it is MONTHS and YEARS and gallons of pee to clean up off the floor of Toys R Us and four star restaurants and floor model playgrounds and HOURS of squatting on the floor of public bathrooms balancing an indecisive toddler on the nasty toilet before your kid is ACTUALLY self-reliant enough to use the bathroom all on their own. I'm not mentally prepared, I thought I'd have 6 more months of being able to drive somewhere without pulling over 3 times for my kid to pretend to pee!  This time around I had decided to be all zen and give it plenty of time and let things happen when they happened. They're just happening a lot earlier than I had thought.  I started potty training Emily at 27 months at the pediatrician's recommendation, and here's Charlotte now at 20 months using the potty all on her own and having very few accidents...it'd be pretty dumb to not take advantage of all her interest.  This girl never ceases to amaze me.

The only problem is that while she is perfectly able to run to the potty and use it while naked or while wearing just a dress, she doesn't have the motor skills yet to pull her pants/undies/pull-ups up and down by herself. That makes gym daycare-type situations very tough. I am guessing it's just going to take longer to get Charlotte fully trained. Which kinda sucks because potty training was long and arduous enough with an older child last time around, I have no wish to make it take even longer. We'll just have to rely on pull-ups more this time around, I suppose.

So I guess I need to go get some more packages of the multi-ethnic NOT Shrek princess pull-ups before they run out.  Trying to use anything else after experiencing these babies would just be boring!

First-ish

We've had lots of things going on lately that were KIND of firsts. There was Emily's first day of preschool, which was kind of also not a first since she went to the same preschool with the same teachers last year.

Also Emily had her first-ish dentist appointment last week. The first one she made it all the way through anyway. We tried over a year ago but I had to carry her out screaming uncontrollably when she had a complete meltdown before they could even look in her mouth.
Everything was going so well...

The most recent dentist appointment was also harrowing, and Emily took a good 10 minutes of convincing before she'd let the hygenist brush even one tooth. She hates being tickled, and she was afraid the tooth brushing was going to tickle. She also spit on the floor (there was no sink!) and hosed down the tools area with the sprayer, but we made it through and she now agrees that it wasn't so bad.
More mature, but still a goofball

Will and I went to our first wine festival in a long time. We used to go fairly often, but mobile kids and wine festivals don't really mix so we've been out of the scene for awhile. I was AMAZED at what has happened to the wine-making industry in Maryland since the last time we went to this festival 5 years ago. There used to be about 8 wineries that came to the MD wine festivals, only 2 of which were any good at making anything other than really sweet wine. This time there were almost 40 wineries! I sampled about 9 (holy crap, it didn't feel like that many!) and was very impressed with some of them! There were even some Rosés that were decent, and it's really tough to pull those off in the best of circumstances, let alone in chilly Maryland. The development of the Traminette grape in the last couple of years really seems to have helped MD's wineries because it grows well around here and makes a tasty wine. In any case, it was worth coming out in the rain, and Will and I had fun on our wine festival date!
Dry wines on a wet day

Ok, yeah, it does look like I tasted 9 wineries

Then came Emily's second first dance class. We started her in dance classes a year ago at Little Gym, but after the excitement of the first couple weeks had worn off she'd just sit there and cry the whole class. After we finished out the semester we stopped because a little girl wearing a tutu just sitting in the corner and crying is super-depressing. Since my sister showed her an episode of So You Think You Can Dance at the beach this summer, Emily's dearest wish has been to learn to dance, so we've started her back up at dance classes, this time at a "real" dance studio. This place is more expensive, but you pay by the month instead of by the semester, so hopefully this time we can stick it out. Also it turns out her teacher is the same woman to used to teach ME tap back when I was 9 years old who now has her own studio, so that's all very neat and leaves me humming "Circle of Life" under my breath. I did not take a picture of her this time, because it seemed silly to take a picture just because it was her first class at a NEW dance studio, so instead here is a picture of her a year ago before her FIRST first dance class:
Didn't I say in my last post that she hadn't changed much in the past year? I take that back. Look at the little BAYBEEEEEE!


Charlotte got her first-ish ice cream cone at the fair this week. We make banana "ice cream" at home all the time by jamming bananas through the vitamix and scooping it into cones, but this was the first REAL ice cream cone she's ever had, and I ate most of it :-)
The ice cream scoopers don't know what "just a little bit" means

The fair is so big and so arduous to do with kids, we ended up going twice last week, once to have dinner and do the animals, and again later for Emily to do a couple rides.
Peeking at the duckies

Love the ducky slide

Cute chicken!

Mean chicken

Zhyoonicorns love to drive lawn mowers

Charlotte's ready to go

But then she decides riding is better

Fall is the time for firsts and first-ishes, I suppose, which is part of the reason I love it! Now if only we could get rid of this hot, humid, rainy weather then I could start enjoying the other part of the reason I love Fall!

First day of Preschool, round 2!

Emily's first day of preschool this year:

And just for fun, Emily's first day of preschool last year:

Yes, I love dressing my daughter in plaid skirts.

Emily does not seem to have changed much. I am starting to think she is going to be like my sister, whose face still looks almost exactly the same as when she was 3. Charlotte has certainly changed though! She's been training hard this past year, growing and getting stronger so she can endure all the enthusiastic sister love...

...and looking up to her big sister

The first day of preschool went well. We reconnected with kids from her class last year, and she seems ok that she gets to SEE her two best friends on the way to class but not be in the same class as them, since Emily's going 5 days a week and their parents opted for the 3 day a week program. It appears that they get to play together on the playground on Monday Wednesday and Friday though, so that's kinda cool.

There were tears from some of the kids, and tears from some parents out in the parking lot. I was once again surprised at how calm I felt about it all. I realized once I got back out to the parking lot and saw some crying parents that I was supposed to be feeling sad too, but mostly it just felt like we never even left for the summer. I'll save my tears for next year, when she'll be at school ALL DAY EVERY DAY, at the same school as FIFTH GRADERS.

That one will be tough.

Charlotte was pretty sad to be leaving her sister behind though. She wasn't old enough to notice last year (or maybe she did notice but wasn't old enough to express herself) and I guess by the time she WAS old enough it was just the routine. But now, after having her buddy Emmy home with her all the time, I heard a lot of mournful mentions of "Emmy!" on the way to the gym.

Saying goodbye to the sister


Being a "second year mom" is also pretty neat. I already know all the teachers and the director, and several of the moms of Emily's classmates. I even know moms walking by to go pick their kids up from different classes. Now by "know", I mean "know their names and the names of their kids so I can ask how they're all doing", not "know and am good friends with", but still, I am able to put up a good show having small talk with lots of people who walk by. I am a fairly outgoing person, but not at first. I am quite shy about approaching new people, but once I have gotten to know them a bit, then I lose my shyness and can chat with the best of them. So having acquaintances from years before is helpful for me. Maybe this year I'll finally gather the courage to invite some kids over for a play date.

Maybe.

Pre Preschool

As I was hurrying everyone out the door yesterday evening and speeding us all to the church where Emily goes to preschool for her Meet The Teachers night I was hit with deja vu. Not surprising, since that's exactly what I did 3 out of 5 weekdays all last year (complete with the lateness part). I realized I've missed having Emily in preschool...not that I don't miss her when she's gone, but I miss the structure that school gives our lives. I am really awful at instituting structure myself. When Will isn't around to enforce a bedtime I tend to just wander around the house until 1AM or so accomplishing nothing and then fall asleep wherever, waking with the girls at 7 to curse myself for not going to bed earlier. I am appreciative of anything that forces me to be structured.

And Emily misses preschool too, especially her teachers, who it just so happens are her teachers again this year! When they were introduced at the little info session Emily started clapping wildly, and as soon as we went to her new classroom to check things out she positioned herself right between them and just spent some time gazing adoringly up at her heroes.

On the way home she asked if we could invite her teachers over to our house. I love that she loves them, and I love knowing that my daughter is spending 2.5 hours a day in a place she enjoys and benefits from so much.

So tomorrow, weeks it seems after everyone else has gone back to school, I will send my daughter back as well. And I will know that in the end, despite several years of freaking out about the "which preschool" decision, it appears I made the right one for her.

Gorham-it

When Will and I were about 24 and 23 respectively, we went to Peru. We each had 1 backpack for a 10 day trip, and I, even though I am a meticulous planner even left the end of our trip unplanned so that we could try flying by the seats of our pants. That didn't go so well, as Will got violently ill and I had to argue in my extremely limited Spanish to get us a desperate 24 hour long cross-country bus ride to Lima so we could make our flight home. However, I still remember sitting in an outdoor cafe one evening in Aguas Caillentes and watching a blonde-headed 3 year old European girl play quietly in the walkway while her young, hip parents enjoyed their dinner. Will and I were encouraged by the little family, and agreed that once we had kids we would get them used to traveling so that becoming parents wouldn't stop us from continuing to travel the world.

Now that I am actually in possession of those hypothetical kids we were talking about, the thought of figuring out how to fly them to and control them in a 3rd world country puts me in a cold sweat. I realize this is completely my fault; we haven't practiced traveling with them as much as we should, plus I am easily overwhelmed. There's also the fact that it's just plain difficult to provide for your childrens' needs in an unfamiliar environment while also trying to shield the rest of the world from their loud exuberance and fondness for knocking things over. Add in the pressure of doing all this while simultaneously shepherding them from activity to activity in order to make "precious memories" and it's a wonder we ever come back from vacation alive.

We spent the last week of August in the Adirondacks at YMCA Camp Gorham again, and it did not go nearly as well as it did last time. I had thought that NOT being pregnant and having a husband who was NOT currently in the middle of a 2-year long bout of "wasting disease" would make up for the fact that we had 2 kids this time, but apparently not. Part of the problem was that it is designed as a sleep-away camp for kids 6 and older, and it's only the last week of the summer that whole families are allowed to all go together. However many of the rules that are in place for the 6 year olds who are there on their own remain in place even when the parents are present, which results in ridiculously regimented activities. Many of the activities (horseback riding, zipline) were very attractive to little kids but had age limits for participation, and those that didn't have age limits were only available for random short periods of time. The girls desperately wanted to swim in the lake, but kids were only allowed to swim in certain areas for 2ish hours a day which would sometimes be in the middle of their extremely necessary nap time, or while Emily's favorite activity (the bouncing pillow) was open. When you DID swim, you had to wear a life vest (or "PFD") NOT water wings, which the kids were not used to and didn't like. So we spent a lot of time and patience getting the kids TO an activity we thought they'd enjoy only to leave with crying, disappointed girls despite our best efforts. Flexibility is so essential when you're traveling with young children, and all the rules about how we could do activities with our own children took pretty much every bit of flexibility away.

It's especially frustrating for Will because he has such good memories of camp from his childhood, but as adults we had no time to do anything WE wanted to do because it took 2+ adults to tend the always exhausted, usually disappointed kids at all times. The food was not quite as good this time either (lunch one day was chicken patties and french fries) and eating in a dining hall, while it was nice that I didn't have to make meals or do dishes, was kind of like going to a restaurant with the girls 3x a day for a week. Yuck.

The accommodations, which is what I was MOST worried about ahead of time, turned out to be fantastic. We were in a lodge that was just opened this year, and we had several showers and toilets (in stalls for privacy!) attached to our room, a separate room for the girls (totally key) and easy access to a full kitchen, which was great for keeping Will's ice pack for his back frozen and providing a quick and easy place for Emily to realize her dream of roasting marshmallows (on the gas stove, since having a campfire did not work out. AT CAMP.)

So we've decided with equal measures of sadness and relief that we won't be going to Camp Gorham for the next couple years. We'll try again when the girls are old enough to do more of the activities, but for now it's unfortunately more hassle and exhaustion than it's worth. I hold out hope that one day we can go back and enjoy it as it's meant to be enjoyed.

Some pics from the trip: