Ohio

Here are some pictures from Allison's and my trip to Ohio. We had a lot of fun, the weather was nice, and we spent many hours in the pool and playing with the outdoor kitties. Allison mastered the diving rings and we threw them and retrieved them in many combinations of colors or "get all the ones with a "r" sound." Sunday, we took a short hike in Hocking Hills and visited the Columbus Zoo, which was a little more amusement park and a little less "zoo," but still nice.


Allison and Moe - Allison now wants a cat.






Diving ring retrieval.


Andi claims she was on the "low end of the stump," I think maybe I grew.

Parenting - on the fly

Sometimes, at the end of the day, you have to mix it up a little. This is particularly true when the normal list of "consequences" either doesn't make sense or has already been used up. Sometimes, you are forced to get creative. Two wide-eyed children were thus presented with this option: Share that glass of water - or get it dumped on your head.

A note of caution on this approach - be prepared to follow through (though not necessary in this instance).

Freaking out!

Ok - so sometimes you know how you forget things? It seems that I forget more than I remember these days. In fact, I was up the other night remembering many things that I had forgotten about. This morning (at a meeting that my colleague had forgotten about - so I'm not the only one) I was reminded that I am going to have a clicker box in my classroom this fall. What's a clicker box? It's a "student response system" that allows you to poll your students in class using these little remote clickers. That's cool you say (or not), but so what? I forgot this meant redesigning all of my powerpoint presentations for my geology courses this fall. Again - seemed like a better idea in March when I was going to be teaching 2 courses than it does in July when I know I'll have 4 plus hybrid development for spring. So I'm now downloading the software to add to powerpoint and am officially starting to freak out a little bit.

So what will I be doing this afternoon? Playing with the new T-ball thingie we bought this morning after learning that the kids love baseball and I suck at pitching. Why don't they take naps anymore!!!!

Jacob

Jacob went in yesterday for his 3-yr check up (a little late - but getting appointments in the summer is nuts). He weighed in at 35 pounds (80%), and that was an approximation because he REFUSED to stand on the scale and had to be weighed in the baby seat. He was also 38 inches tall (75%).

Jacob's big accomplishment is learning to poop on the potty, so he's now graduated to underwear. Yesterday was the first full day in underwear and he did very well. He even woke me up this morning at 5:45am with a "Mommy, I need to go potty!" and he was in fact still dry. Go Jacob!

Old Leg-humper

I feel like I have so much to catch up on, I don't know where to start. I'll start with Astro. This story begins all the way back in Cincinnati when we first got Astro. First off, he was crated so that he didn't poop in the house. Secondly, we had a friend named Jim and Astro loved to hump Jim's leg. We figured it was a puppy thing and when we moved to Madison and on to Fond du Lac, the leg humping thing seemed to go away. Until, that is, Jim came to visit once when he was on a plant trip to Green Bay. No sooner had Jim sat down that Astro was over giving his leg a little loving. No matter what we said, I'm fairly certain Jim did not believe that Astro hadn't done that in a few years.

But, after Jim's departure, the leg humping went with it. That is, until last night. We had a BBQ with some of Brian's coworkers. One of them happened to be named Jim. No sooner had new Jim sat down that Astro started to get friendly with his leg. What was even funnier is that he kept trying to go back to Jim's leg - no one else. How bizarre.

In other Astro news, he's back in his crate at night and when we are out of the house. After we got back from camping we had a run of 4-5 accidents in the house over the next 10 days. The neighbor kids were supposed to come over to let him out while we were gone (and I assume they did) but I don't know if something else happened to stress him out, but he's crated until further notice.

Biking

Per Grandma's request, here's a picture of Jacob on his bike today. We rode to one of the kids favorite places - the highway overpass.

Spectacled

Here is a picture of Allison in her new glasses. Sometimes she amazes me with how well she adjusts to things like this - (given that basics like hair brushing can be daily battles). It's kindof like the wheat and dairy thing. We tell her that she can't eat something that has wheat in it and she usually doesn't fuss too much. Today, I told her she needed to wear the glasses (like Daddy) and she was pretty Ok with that.

On the wheat and dairy business, we do have an appointment with the pediatrician in August to discuss it. Hopefully, we can start adding things back in. However, I'm worried because whenever it "slides" a little, her runny nose comes back. So, coincidence? Hard to say. But tonight we have concocted a wheat-free, dairy free pizza for dinner. Mom and Dad will opt for standard frozen. Actually, Dad is headed out to be part of an Uno's pizza focus group and Mom is wildly jealous.

My options

It's safe to say that our plan of presenting two acceptable options ("would you like apples or oranges?") and giving the kids a choice has come back to haunt us. Jacob informed me today that I could "play Monty with me here or play Monty with me outside. Those are your options."

In other news - Jacob decided a trip to Piggly Wiggly was the opportune time to start telling me when he needed to pee in the potty. I was standing there thinking 'can't you just go in your diaper?' but then in the end took a trip to the bathroom where he did in fact go pee. Go Jacob!

camping weekend

We had a good holiday weekend. Jillyn, Mike, Aidan and Paddy came up on Friday and we went camping on Saturday night at Hartman Creek in Waupaca, WI. We hiked a little (but never made it to the beach), roasted marshmallows, and spend Sunday morning kayaking around some little lakes. All in all a good time.

We were wakened in the middle of the night by VERY loud rustling, munching, slurping, and rummaging, as a raccoon was raiding our campsite for trash and goldfish crackers. If someone had been around, they would have been amused by us peering out of a slit in the tent window, shining a cell phone light in an attempt to scare away what we thought must have been a bear (given the amount of noise it was making). Crazy city folk.

kayaking

We finally got lifejackets and roof holders to take the kayaks out on the water. I didn't take the camera out on the lake (as I was unsure of how wet we would get), but here is us getting started and getting back. We all had a lot of fun, even though the water was rougher than we'd expected. I learned that there is an art to kayaking back in through the breakers.

Glasses

Well, I'll have to post a picture when we get them in next week, but Allison is getting glasses. We visited the eye doctor yesterday (now Allison has seen an eye doctor exactly the same number of times that her mom has - once). She is a little farsighted. I guess all kids are farsighted, but most grow out of it about when they start school. The reasons the doctor recommended glasses for her were two-fold. One, her vision was slightly uneven and I guess if you don't outgrow the farsightedness then one eye can start to compensate and that could (in a worst case scenario) lead to a lazy eye. Secondly, she has difficulty focusing on near things, even with the corrected prescription - which is kindof a habit of hers. I probably cannot explain this as clearly, but rather than waiting for near things to come into focus - she just looks away so that the pathways between her vision and her brain are not getting totally in sync. So the doctor actually gave her a prescription for less than she "needed" in the hopes that her eyes would continue to develop and she might grow out of them, but still helped near things come into focus better. We go back again in October to check them again.

But, we also learned that Allison is resourceful. The set-up in the office was that you read the letters in a mirror so that the screen with the letter on it was behind the chair. Whenever the letter got out of focus, Allison would just turn and take a quick peak behind her and read the letters backwards.

So, the glasses should arrive next week. Getting her to wear them may be another trick entirely.

sigh

This may end up being a long day. It began innocently enough - Allison was up early and stayed in her room until her digital clock read 6:xx. Then Jacob also got up and the kids were playing together upstairs as I was trying to drag myself out of bed. Then I hear this from Jacob: "Allison, why are you drawing on the wall?"

Ok - out of bed I jump (every morning needs just the right motivation). Allison had drawn us a mural on the office wall - one that was uncovered by our recent cleaning event. Serves us right - if the whole house were a disaster area, she'd never be able to find the walls. Of course, the medium of choice was a sharpie pen. Again - why we haven't rid the house of sharpie pens is another mystery to ponder. Allison most certainly has an affinity for them.

Allison was banished to her bedroom "until I'm not mad anymore" who knew how long that would take. I got out the wonder of wonders "Magic eraser" which has in the past saved us from sharpie on the computer screen, the kitchen cabinets, and a variety of other messes. Unfortunately, the eraser took the paint off the wall and didn't clean the marker very well (damn texture!), so it looks like the office will be getting a new coat of paint.

The "until I'm not mad anymore" period lasted between 30-45 minutes at which point I ventured into Allison's room. In the end she punishment was the loss of her bicycle. I would have had her clean it up - but as it doesn't clean off, she had to clean her room instead.

So all was moderately well until the Don't Break the Ice game came out. Let me start by saying that I HATE that game. First off - it's a pain to set up for like 30 seconds of game. Secondly, the kids fight over it all the time (i.e. who gets what hammer, who gets to play when, who goes first). The details of the DBTI fight this morning are unimportant, but resulted in two children hitting each other and one child crying. DBTI is now headed to the Outagamie County landfill.