He listens too carefully

Today I said "What the...!" (I stopped myself from finishing the phrase) but Cal filled in "heck!" Uh oh! He wasn't supposed to know that yet...

Lissi's new sounds

Click here to listen to a sample of Lissi's new lingual stop sounds ;)
Lissi's /g/ sound

You'll probably need to watch the movie twice. The first time will be choppy and sound funny while it is buffering. Then re-watch it and it should play just fine in Quicktime or Windows Media Player.

Day out with Thomas

You'll probably need to watch the movie twice. The first time will be choppy and sound funny while it is buffering. Then re-watch it and it should play just fine in Quicktime or Windows Media Player. Click on the following link:
Movie of Cal on the Thomas train




We were able to visit Thomas the train today. Thomas took us on a 3o minute ride (which we nearly missed and I was extremely stressed rushing to get there before the train left) while we listened to Thomas tunes. Then we got Thomas tatoos, a balloon animal, and visited the Thomas gift shop (of course!). We would have done even more activities, but the heat was becoming stifling. Cal got a kick out of the whole thing and want to go again soon. Ummmm...sorry hun. Gotta wait until next year!

Beach babies

Click on the following links to see movies of the kids:
Cal loving the beach

Lissi playing in the water

You'll probably need to watch the movie twice. The first time will be choppy and sound funny while it is buffering. Then re-watch it and it should play just fine in Quicktime or Windows Media Player.






We escaped the 104 degree heat by heading for the beach. It is a 2 hour drive that was made bareable by having both (yes BOTH) kids sleep. Unfortunetely, we had given Cal tons of liquids before we left to help hydrate him and he wet himself during his nap. Then he woke up screaching because he was wet and needed to peep more. I pulled over in a less than safe place on a mountain highway for him to use the potty. We couldn't situate him over the potty and were all yelling at each other in the stress. Also, the "check engine" light kept coming on whenever we were going up a steep stretch of the highway making me very nervous that we were going to breakdown.

The beach was fantastic. Mid 70's. It was the first time I've ever been to the beach in this state and NOT worn long pants. Cal had a blast. He loved every minute of running in the waves, digging in the sand, and throwing sand into the water. This was quite a contrast from last year when he refused to even stick his little toes in the sand because he hated the sand-sensation so much.

Lissi didn't mind the sand at all. In fact, she thought it tasted quite yummy!!! Wink had less than desired kite flying success.

We made it back safely (although we continued to have periodic "check engine" lights come on) and later than we had hoped. We were exhausted and it took some time to get everyone to bed and settled down in the extreme heat. But it sure was fun to play at the beach with my babies! :)

Trying to stay cool

My efforts to actually attend church service today were thwarted again. I got to the service for about 15 minutes and then realized that Cal hadn't used the toliet. I went back to his Sunday School class to take him only to find an extremely frazzled volunteer telling me that 4 kids were crying at once and she needed help. The two volunteers were both dealing with 2 of the criers, but that left 2 more (Cal and the girl he was "interacting" with). I appeased Cal by picking him up and then tried bribing the little girl into calming down with crackers (nope), holding her (no way), art time (success!). I ended up leading art and just stayed the rest of the service.

We had no intention of going home to our 100 degree house so we headed straight to McDonalds and then the mall. We played in the kids playarea, window shopped, and bought a few mommy clothes. We killed about 4 hours in the mall. The highlight for Cal was all the "Cars" paraphanilia in the Disney store. He wanted them ALL. I had to say that maybe someone would buy him some of that for his birthday...but then had to admit that it wouldn't be us since we'd already bought his bike. He didn't like that answer at all. I had to admit that the cars are pretty darn cute.


We'd be thinking about taking Cal to the movie "Cars" when we were visiting family and could have someone watch Lissi. But we decided not to wait until our vacation and just go today. So arrived early for the movie, bought $13 worth of drinks and popcorn (this was more than we paid to see the movie since the kids were free) and sat for over 30 minutes in the theatre. It turns out that the rest of the family population on this side of town had the same idea so it was very good that we got there early and got great seats with no one in front of us and next to an aisle. This was Cal's first big screen movie experience and we didn't know how he would do. Overall he did great. The huge bag of popcorn certainly helped. Two times he had to leave the theatre with me because he was scared (whenever there were night time scenes he was scared even when nothing scary was happening). The last 30 minutes we spent sitting on the aisle steps while he played with his toy train. Lissi didn't do too badly. Wink held her the whole time and tried to keep her entertained. What she really wanted to do was play so most of the noises she made were "talking" noises and not crying sounds. He spent a great deal of time holding her on the side of the theatre. Eventually she passed out on him and he sat down again for the last 45 minutes of the show. It was a very cute movie and I'm sure it's one we'll want to own. I wouldn't mind a few paraphanilia movie items either! ;)

Hot hot hot

We did our traditional Saturday morning coffee walk this morning. Cal whined a good portion of the way and Lissi slept. After she awoke and the entire ride back she hollered for her bottle, Cheerios, etc. So every 10 steps I had to stop to feed her somthing or otherwise placate her. Cal tried sometimes to help the situation, but mostly he just wanted to eat her Cheerios. I got home exhausted only to discover that Cal had dropped his hat somewhere along the walk. As I prepare to take him back out to look for the hat, I realize that Target charged me for some sunscreen but then did not put it in my bag (I realized this when I went to put it on Cal). Frustrated and hungry I postposed the hat-search until we had something to eat. Then I pushed him in the stroller and walked and walked and walked. We couldn't find the stroller. Cal announced 15 minutes into the walk that, "I have to go peep really bad." So I call Wink and tell him to jump in the car and bring the inflate-a-potty. Ah, the inflate-a-potty! The best $15 blow-up plastic item ever! We keep walking and looking for the hat. Wink meets us 5 minutes later and Cal relieves himself (hurray! he held it that long!). We drive home and Lissi falls asleep in the car. Rather than waking her up, we decide to go back to Target and get the sunscreen that never appeared in the shopping bag along with a new hat for Cal.

Later in the afternoon (after Cal does not take a nap) we load up to head to Cal's friend's birthday party. It's about a 20 minute drive, and 15 minutes into it they both are asleep. It is blazing hot today since a heat wave has just come into town. So we sit in the parking lot of the park for almost 30 minutes with the engine running and the AC on so that we don't pass out. In spite of our AC efforts, Cal is dripping sweat from his head and arms. When we are 30 minutes late for the party, we started to get moving and Cal wakes up (in a BAD mood) and we start looking for the festivities. We ate some food and watched the birthday boy open some cool gifts (much to Cal's envy).

Boy it is hot! Today was 94. My computer weather forecast says that the next 2 days will be 100. 100!!! The only AC we have is in our car since this area is usually very mild and we have no AC in our home. Either we'll be driving all day long (horrible for the environment on these hot days) or we'll have to camp out in the mall. Oh boy.

He's giving himself time-outs

I think it's in an effort to get out of bed. Cal is getting out of bed, then disciplining himself by putting himself in the hall for a timeout. All without telling us. After we were somewhat impressed by this self-restraint, he did it again within a few minutes. Then we realized that he's got to be up to something. Clever boy.

Kickboxing, zoo, roofs, and kimchi

My gym had a sign up about a new cardio kick-boxing class on Friday mornings. I decided to try it out...but almost changed my mind when I saw that there was only one person in the class besides the teacher. I was afraid that I would feel way too self-concious but dragged myself into the class just to test it out. It turns out that I WAS very self-concious. The other "student" was pretty buff and in pretty good shape and had an angry, agressive look. She really put her heart into those punches and kicks and even did loud screams and grunts during the high aeroibic periods. Then there was a little pale me in my goofiest workout shorts (green-plaid flannel boxers that I've been using since college) and my wimpy little punches. I wasn't even red in the face and she was dripping sweat. Eventually it felt fun and I was getting the hang of things. This class was certainly not like the step-class I am taking full of 60-some year olds.

We rushed home (we meaning sad Cal and I) and packed everything up to go to the zoo. We got there around noon and discovered that the rest of the city arrived there at the same time. We circled and circled and circled for parking. We had just about decided to change our plans when the 2nd closest spot to the zoo opened up. Wow. These are the spots that I don't even bother looking for. We spent almost 30 minutes in line waiting for a ticket (we ARE members but the members line was just as slow as all the other lines). We were so hungry that we just started eating while we stood there. We spent the majority of the time at the zoo eating while we walked and placating Lissi. After we left we realized that we had hardly even seen any animals.

We went straight from the zoo to a roofing show roof to look at roof colors. We chose a color and signed a contract for the roofer. Luckily our tax refund had been earmarked for this heavy financial strain.

We came home close to 4pm and stuck Cal in his room for some rest time. I did not expect him to sleep at all. Since we were meeting people for a 5:30 dinner I had counted on him not sleeping. But lo and behold, the boy falls asleep at 4:45. Fabulous. He was practically impossible to wake up 30 minutes later. We tickled him, talked to him, rubbed his nose, etc. He was dragged out of bed 5 minutes later and we jumped in the car to meet friends (and some new faces) for dinner at our favorite Korean restaurant. Yummy. It was neat to meet some out-of-town friends from my bulletin board in person (instead of just on the computer screen).

Of course, Korean food isn't complete without a trip to Ben and Jerry's. So we filled ourselves with sweet yummy ice cream to top off the day.

It was an EXHAUSTING day...

She's making "d" and "g" sounds

She's finally using that crazy tongue of hers to make some sounds. Hallelujah! :) Daddy is delighted since she will hopefully start babbling "dadadada" to go along with her "mamama" sounds.

Movies!

Wink registered a website for me and says that I can now link to movies on this site! I hope this works.... :)

Thanks Wink!

Note: the little bar under the movie shows you how much has loaded. For best results, wait until the bar has reached the far right side of the picture before playing the movie.

You'll probably need to watch the movie twice. The first time will be choppy and sound funny while it is buffering. Then re-watch it and it should play just fine in Quicktime or Windows Media Player.

My little rock star: http://cokkieoffortune.com/vid/MOV04022.MPG

Being pushed back to the car after Cal's bike broke: cookieoffortune.com/vid/MOV04049.MPG

Lissi doing her Ariel raspberry while blowing her bangs: cookieoffortune.com/vid/MOV04076.MPG

2nd Post Placement visit

Our Social Worker came over for our 2nd post-placement visit today. During that time, Lissi was sleeping in the beginning. Then she was up and very upset at the world. Cal was showing off and acting like a hyper-goof until he started rubbing his eyes constantly. The kids were certainly NOT in their best behavior. But it certainly could have been worse. We have one more post-placement visit to go (in approximately 3 months) and then we can finalize Lissi's adoption! :)

A plus for the day: Cal's nap strike is over! He took a one hour nap this afternoon!

1st workday of summer break

I decided to try out a step-aerobics class at the gym we just joined (now that I have some time to actually go). I left sleeping Lissi at home with sleeping daddy and dropped Cal off at the gym's kids club. I entered the class and was very surprised to find that at least half of the class was over age 60. I wondered if I had accidentally stepped into "stretch for your health" or something of the like. But no, it was the right class and everyone participated in the step class (some did quite well too!). When the class was finished and my face was smoking, I peeked into the kids club window and saw that Cal was being carried around, but wasn't crying. So I decided to go into the locker room and take my shower. When I came out of the locker room to pick him up, I found him bawling and soaking wet. He had just had a HUGE accident--his first accident while awake in more than a month. He drenched every single piece of clothing. Although we had more clothes in the car, I soaked myself carrying him out there.

We had a playdate with the twins, which is always fun. Cal loved the sandbox in their yard, but didn't love having sand on his feet coming home (mommy's little boy!). In spite of the active day, he refused to nap in the afternoon. This makes 3 days in a row nap-free of the three days since school ended. I think this lack of nappage was planned to correlate with my vacation. Grrrrrr. I, on the other hand, was exhausted and took an hour long nap. Extremely unusual for me and I even wondered if I was coming down with something. But I think I'm okay. Lissi on the otherhand has been on and off inconsolable so we're wondering if she is fighting a bug. :(

Father's Day

We spent Father's Day as the proud leaders of the 2 year old Sunday School class (as I did for Mother's Day). Because we don't want to leave Lissi in the nursery yet, it meant that she was on Wink's back while we chased 2 year olds around the room and attempted sand art (which turned out great!). After being in the room 30 minutes past when the next volunteers should have arrived, I dragged Wink out to the lobby to find the slide show of dads in the church displayed on a laptop. I had submitted apprximately 5 pictures and was proud to show Wink off to the congregation. I wanted to see which picture(s) were chosen--only to wait through the entire slide show and find that none of my pics were in there. :(

After church we got some meat buns from the Chinese bakery (to the tune of "da na na na na na na na MEAT BUNS!"--think the Batman song), rushed home for a few items, and went straight to the rose garden. We picniced at the rose garden and took a few great pics of the kids. Our family self-portrait was quite amusing since every time the self-timer went off one more of us was looking at the camera. 4 tries later we were all looking!

For dinner we went to Wink's sister's home. There was a entourage of families with 3.5+ children there (makes our family look very small) and lots of action. We have been transitioning Lissi to primarily table food and she is SO excited about this change. She proved to us that she is quite ready to eat whatever we are eating by grabbing two fists full of Cal's carrot cake and shoving them into her mouth! My little girl! :)
Cal ended the evening in a total meltdown because he (yet again) would not take an afternoon nap.

If I haven't made it clear before, I want to do so now that my husband is clearly a natural father and incredible man. It takes a lot of energy, patience, and love to be a stay-at-home-dad and he is just incredible! I know that he is helping our kids grow wiser and showing them pieces of God's love just by being with them every day. Thank you Wink!

Doing addition

Without prompts today, Cal told daddy that "There were 3 kids there [at kidsclub]. And...there was Lissi and me. So...there were 5 kids."

Holy cow! The kid can add!

They're gone!

The kids are gone! Woo hoo!!! Celebrate summer. I still have to finish up the day today and use tomorrow as a work day. I will help friends and co-workers pack up. Summer is so close that I can taste it!

Book Review- In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

Another fabulous book by Alexander McCall Smith. This is part of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. I have listened to all of the books on tape because the narrator (Lisette Lecat) is wonderful. This is very light reading but continues to keep your interest throughout the story. This book revolves around the central theme of stealing, honesty, and integrity of relationships. On my thumbs up scale, I would give it a 2 thumbs up. :)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/140007570X/sr=8-1/qid=1150338677/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-4086246-7986307?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Letter to Lissi on her 9 month birthday

Dear Lissi,

My big girl is getting so, so big! You are getting taller and stronger every day. Your hair is so long that it totally covers your eyes when not clipped up (and between dady not wanted to clip it and you pulling at your hair it is rarely up!).

You are pulling to a stand on everything you see. Just in the last 2 days you have started to use the push-walker to walk across the room. You're getting pretty good at it too. You are an expert sitter now and can even sit in the bath tub independently now (mommy doesn't need to bathe with you any more). You are very good at self-feeding now and rarely miss your mouth. You love finger foods and are starting to reject baby food. Your finger foods choices are diced tofu, cheese shreds, Cheerios, Rice Krispies, and chopped noodles. You have 6 teeth--4 on top and 2 on the bottom.

You love to babble and say "mama" whenever I enter the room (of couse, you say it many other times too!). You still love to screech and make a variety of vowel sounds. You play with your tongue a lot and we have hundreds of pictures of you twisting your tongue or sticking it out. We practice sign with you, but you haven't caught on yet. You are starting to understand more and more language. You usually stop when told "no" or "not for you" and you may understand our names. You definitely respond to your own name.

Your favorite toys and games include your new Leap Frog Standing table, balls, your new push-walker, your stuffed hippo, and any plastic toy you can put in your mouth. You crawl all over your big brother and love to "chase" him around the room (he loves it too!). You are obviously very smitten with your brother.

You have attached so well to us in the last month. You are easily comforted by mommy and daddy and love to be held. But you also do a great job when you are put down to play. You go to the babysitter at the gym with a little fuss but are usually okay for about an hour. Then you get fussy and lunge for daddy when he comes to get you. You are a happy little girl and give everyone huge smiles and laughs. You are usually pretty mellow and it is very fun to play with you.

We still think you are amazingly beautiful and can't wait to see the woman that you grow into.

Happy 3 months home! Happy 9 months old!

Love, Mommy and Daddy

Countdown-4 more days of work

Including today! The kids are getting crazier and crazier.

Yesterday, I went to a Blood Born Pathogen review and was told in very definite terms by the nurse that I should be wearing safety glasses when working with students that spit at me (quite a few of the LS kids and some of my Kindergarten kids when I am working on speech sounds). She said that EVERY time a child spits in my eye I should be washing for 10 minutes and contacting the response team service--which could cost thousands of dollars. I get small amounts of spit in my eye weekly so this is a definite issue. I emailed my director and principal to tell them this information. Today I got a reply that the district would order them for everyone in my position. Unfortunetly, that means some uncomforatable cheapo things. I was really hoping for a nice frame with just clear lenses that I would buy myself and get reimbursed for later. Bummer. I may have to spend my own money for a pair of glasses that I'll actually wear. Today I got spit on again and now all I can do is worry. Yuck!

Just WHOSE birthday was it?

As part of my birthday celebration today I suggested that we go to the great bike path by the river. We could let Cal ride like the wind on his bicycle while we walked behind him. I made sure to bring the long handle bar that lets the parent push/direct the bike just in case he got tired and didn't want to peddle back to the car. He was riding and riding and doing great, but the handle bars kept getting misaligned with the tire. In order to go straight he had to "steer" all the way to the right. I fixed the alignment four or five times. We figured we'd have to pull out the wrenches when we got home in order to fix the problem permenantly. Then, we were telling Cal it was time to stop and turn around (and he was whining that he didn't want to stop) something very strange happend. Very strange. The entire front part of the bike fell off. Wink looked at the bike collapse and said he had a bad feeling that this was not an easy repair.


So...using the parent bar, Wink tilted Cal backwards and pushed him all the way back to the car. An extremely amusing, but exhausting trip back. We drove straight to the bike shop and got the bad news...the bike is not fixable. They had one trike in the entire store and Cal started test driving it right away. It is a "roadster" tricycle that looks like a low-rider, hot rod 50s style bike. Cal looked hilarious with his surfboard shirt riding this bike. It looked like he just needed a white ponytail coming out from his head and classic Beach Boys music playing in the background.

I really wasn't into the look of the bike at all, and I figured that Lissi wouldn't love the bike when she's older. But, he loves to ride his bike so much that the thought of looking all over for another bike (similar to our old one) seemed sad. I caved and agreed to the purchase since this bike was on sale and only a little bit more money new than Cal's bike was when I bought it used.


So the big birthday present of the day was Cal's new shiny "vroomy" red trike. His birthday is one month from today. I hope he remembers that his gift came very early this year! And my gift from all of this? Seeing him race around the block at twice the speed he was able to do on his old bike--wow!

Rose Festival

Fabulous day! It started gray and questionable, but the sun was out and the temperature perfect by 11am.

We went on a new sort of adventure today. Parades. Big parades. The Grand Floral Festival Parade. We've never been able to participate in the Rose Festival in the past, but our friends Alan and Lisa invited us to watch the parade with them today. So we followed them to search for parking, and then walked onto the bridge. We were walking up the middle of the bridge and sat down near the curb. How cool! Cal took over an hour to warm up to this strange turn of events (I'm sure he heard "never go in the street!" over and over in his confused head). The police were giving out stickers and riding around on motorcycles. When the parade started it came in full force: horses, bands (loud bands!), cheerleaders, cars, more horses, amusing pooper scoopers, more bands, more horses, more pooper scoopers, floats, floats, floats! The parade kept going and going and going for more than an hour.

What a fun tradition and way to build memories!

After the parade we drove to the mall. Both kids fell asleep in the car so we went through the McDonald's drive through and then sat in the car until they awoke. We went to Nordstrom's to buy a day-early birthday pair of shoes. I'd seen these sandals on my co-worker yesterday and had to check them out. They felt wonderful. But then I was compelled to go into Gymboree and see their sales. And, thanks to my friend Carrie, I am now a Gymboree addict. I wish they had clothes that cute for me! I'd totally buy a large size of some of these girl outfits. :)

We drove home and Lissi fell asleep in the car again so we transferred her straight to bed. then I went to try out my new gym membership (thanks mom!) while Wink watched the kids. When I returned, Wink went to the gym.

What a fabulous day! Even if my birthday tomorrow doesn't turn out as perfect as I'd like, I'll at least have great memories of the weekend!