2 Days into summer...

... and Ryan is lamenting the loss of his friends and his desk and his schoolwork. If I have to hear any more complaining about how much he misses school I'm going to have to lock myself in the closet.


...Claire keeps asking if it's ballet day. And that would be a big fat NO. I explained the whole concept of summer vacation and how Miss Anne is on vacation and we looked at the calendar and saw how many pages there are until September. And in 5 minutes, she asks if it's ballet day. Hmmph.


...Katie has been hired as the new ballet teacher for summer session.

with a side of compost...

It is a weird thing of mine, I never order anything on the menu that comes with a "compote." The first thing that leaps to mind is "compost" and all I can think about is some filthy steaming pile of manure sitting on my plate and I wouldn't be able to enjoy the meal. There have been some dishes that sound heavenly, until they're ruined by the "warm blueberry compote" or whatever.

The other night I was waffling between 3 dishes, one with a roasted pineapple compote, one with a corn and black bean compote, and the third, which is what I ended up eating, which had no compost whatsoever. We were at Carrol's Creek Cafe, right on the docks of Annapolis, my new absolute favorite place. I should have taken a picture of my meal when it was brought out to me. Now I love to blog and keep documentation of everything cute my kids do or say, but I am not yet at the point where I can whip out my camera and take a picture of a plate of food in a crowded restaurant. But it was a delicious layer of sundried tomato risotto, topped with a macadamia encrusted mahi mahi, with creamed spinach on top. Looked a little Christmassy come to think of it with the reds and greens. It was melt-in-your-mouth amazement. Tim had a steak, the best steak of his entire life. He is still talking about this steak, days later. And we had crab cakes for an appetizer and Tim doesn't even like crab cakes but was raving about this one!

The best part was that we had to take a water taxi to get to this place, how cool is that?! And we watched the sunset right behind our table. And Tim had flowers delivered to the restaurant, they were waiting on our table as everyone around us wondered who's getting the special treatment. And then commenting on how we both look far, far too young to be celebrating our 12th anniversary.

We can't wait to go back to Annapolis! Tim wants to bring the kids and our parents, but I want to save it just for us. There is an overnight sailboat package with breakfast that I'm all over for the next time.

The Trouble with Potty Training

Potty training is so much fun. You get to learn where all the public bathrooms are. And having a potty training toddler on your hands can save you lots of money because you're afraid to take any shopping trips lest you find out the hard way that all the bathrooms are too far away. Or too dirty. Or both.

The most fun you can possibly have while potty training happened to me today. We had to go to the store. Restocking the fridge and pantry. We were out of everything, even syrup. And we buy like 3 gallons of Costco syrup so it's very rare to run out of it.

So we're walking into the store talking about how we're going to stop at the bathroom on the way in to try to go pee pee so we can stay dry like a big girl. I plop Claire on the potty, and she immediately puts her hands on her thighs proudly pointing out how she's not touching anything, as her training has been adament on this point. She squints, indicating how hard she's trying to squeeze out something... but... alas, nothing this time.

About 10 minutes later, we'd gotten through the food line and were sitting down for a quick lunch before we tended to the list. Two bites into her chicken tenders she leans over to me and whispers, "I have to go potty." Oh, you have got to be kidding me right now. I think I may have said that out loud.

Have you ever seen a crazy lady bringing a tray full of food into the bathroom?
Well, that was probably me.

Food

Does your son ever come home from school and eat 2 corndogs for an afterschool snack and then have a huge chicken cesar salad and 2 slices of pepperoni pizza for dinner a few hours later?

Someone is GROWING!!

Either that, or maybe he has a tapeworm, we'll have wait and see.

Look, he's almost as tall as Granny!

Sassy Mouth

Combine being the baby of the family with some super cute bouncy blonde curls framing an adorably pouty mouth and dimpled cheeks and you really can go far in life! Let's just say Claire is used to getting things her way.

But we've been putting up some resistance lately. Maybe it's a little late for that, but we're trying.

She wanted a piece of cheese. Actually, she pulled her wrap apart to pick the cheese slices out of it and toss the rest off the side of her plate. Tim stopped her and reassembled her wrap and told her what we always tell her when she tries to eat nothing but cheese for every meal... too much cheese isn't good for you. And Claire came back in his face yelling, "It's yummy and healthy, what's the deal with you?!"

***********

Sometimes Claire likes to play by herself. She will be upstairs quietly playing with her dolls or changing her clothes or rearranging her stuffed animals or flossing, or who knows what else. When I call to her, I just want her to acknowledge that she hears me, a little reassurance that she hasn't left the house, since those childproofing doorknobs are soooooo effective.

So one day I was calling and calling and calling her name, starting to get worried that she wasn't answering me. I opened the door to the basement and hollered down there just in case she had slipped down there, and called up to the loft, and checked the pantry where she can sometimes be found sneaking granola bars or chocolate chips. She suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs with a really annoyed look on her face like it was soooo inconvenient to answer me. "I'm playing up here, what's the problem?" She asked, in a tone that matched the look on her face.

Oh we're in trouble with this one.

Something I learned

I learned something new today. Or last night. Whenever.
Here is what it was. Cleaning vomit off the top bunk is very hard and gross.
That is all.

Sibling Rivalry

We had a little bug ripping through the family. Ryan was very sick all night and a couple days later Katie started up with the vomiting. After several trips to the bathroom, I warned her that after Ryan had thrown up all day he then had a pretty bad bout of diarrea and she should be on the lookout for that to start up. Just in case. Well, Claire popped in from around the corner saying, "I want diarrea too!" Not a clue what diarrea is, but if her brother and sister are getting it, she better not be left out!

Waffle Glasses

When Ryan was one, he bent the frames of Tim's glasses, and they have sat crookedly on his face ever since. Very cute. At one point duct tape has held the frame intact. Most recently a piece of scotch tape held a lens in place.

Maybe Tim should have gotten a new pair of glasses in the last 7 years... but he hates to wear glasses! He only wears them on the rare occasion that he would lose a contact and not have a spare.

Last summer on our family cruise Katie asked him why he brought his waffle glasses on vacation... was he planning on making some waffles? It was then that I realized the only time she had ever seen Tim wearing glasses was on Saturday mornings when he made waffles for breakfast.

We bid a sad farewell to Tim's waffle glasses.
The did not survive the camping trip.

Camping

THIS... is why we should never go camping EVER AGAIN!!!

This is clothing and gear for a one night camping experience. Not including the tent, cooler, and 2 huge sleeping bags. What in the world were we thinking? It was August hot during the day and down to the 40s at night so we had to bring winter and summer stuff. It's still not all completely unpacked. And notice the potty seat... was I really expecting to work on potty training at the campsite? Really?

Beside our tent was a huge bristly bush. Wrestling around between the branches was either a serial killer, or it may have been a bunny. Either way, it totally freaked me out. Between that and the 50 million little cactuses the kids kept stepping on, we were not very comfortable in our surroundings. We did manage to grill a delicious meal, and I'd packed some random leftover paper plates to use up on the trip. As I served Claire her dinner she announced, "Happy St. Patrick's Day!!" when she saw her green shamrock plate. We roasted an entire bag of marshmallows and made countless s'mores. The optimum roasting time for Claire's marshmallows is approximately 4 seconds. She out-ate all of us.
Shhhh. Don't tell her she's not actually blowing up the tent. She wanted to be soooo helpful!

We had a fun time. Kind of. The problem was that we went to the same campsite last year for a night and had such a great time we thought we could replicate the same experience. We should have known that wouldn't work out very well. We found a different campground that we're going to try next year. Yes, we're such gluttons for punishment it's not even funny.

Napping

Claire has never been a very good napper. For her entire life we've had a weird pick up/drop off school schedule for Ryan and Katie and never a solid chunk of time at home in the afternoons for a good quality nap. So she has always just caught a few moments of rest in the car here and there, when I didn't have any errands to run. She also doesn't want to miss out on anything exciting exciting that the older kids might be doing. So she fights sleep at night too, clutching tightly to my shirt or hair or bra strap (we went from nursing to groping). I lay in her bed for an hour or more each night trying to get her to relax and let sleep take her. And although she's the last one to fall asleep at night, of course she's the first one awake in the morning. She just doesn't seem to need as much sleep as the other kids. Or me.

So it was very odd that she just told that she was feeling tired and wanted to lay down. What? It's 2:00 in the afternoon and she's admitting that she is tired. Finally! I finally wore her out!

Ok, so I just realized I have no pictures of Claire sleeping in her sweet little big girl bed. Seems I've been too busy trying to get her to fall asleep and stay asleep in the bed and haven't had a chance to document the event. Maybe that's because she hasn't actually stayed in her bed for a full night yet. But here she is getting some big brother cuddle time, which is just as sweet as can be!