entertaining kids

that title is meant to be an adjective and a noun.  not a verb and a noun.  it's not an activity, it's how i view my children.

anyways...

hallelujah my honey is home!  spiders, if you must make an appearance in the next few days, make it between 7pm and 7am and i will have someone close by to quickly escort you out of our home.  mi casa no es su casa.  (that's what two years of high school spanish got me.)

highlights from tonight were...
a few especially funny stories from my honey.
seeing him come home completely exhausted but still in a good mood.
my honey planting himself down by abigail's new dollhouse so she can show him everything about it.l
not being terrified of seeing spiders, knowing i don't have to call a neighbor or friend about it.

my day was pretty slow.  normally when my christopher is out of town, i'm super productive with organizing projects and cleaning and stuff.  today was the complete opposite because i was still spooked about spiders.  so i would just plant myself somewhere to play or read books with abigail and not move for an hour.  at 1:30 i was still in my pajamas and had heard "let's go downstairs and get you dressed" at least 30 times.  literally at least 30.  granted, there were some variations like "i will get you dressed and then  we can go outside, okay?  that's how it works.  i will get you dressed and we can go outside."  i just kept wanting to say "just let me be a bum!  i want to stay in my pj's all day!  i don't want to get dressed yet!"  but how do you tell that to the kid when at least five days of the week you play that exact situation in reverse order.  my bribe is always that eventually it will be time to sleep again and the butterfly pjs will still be there!  anyways, i eventually took a shower and put on real clothes (i did that just for honey.  so he wouldn't come home to a bum.  and because after waking up at 5am and having a million meetings and almost missing his flight, the least i can do is look like i was a good mom and try to make a hot meal, right?!) and blow dried my hair.  no makeup because honestly, he can't tell if i'm not wearing makeup and therefore doesn't appreciate when i do.  but even without makeup... i was looking like a wife that had her life together.  and baby girl didn't even spill the beans that she spent 4 hours of her childhood this morning trying to get her mom to get dressed.  she really is wise beyond her years.

also, when we were at the beach, we found a horseshoe crab.  don't know what that is?  i didn't either.  but i would have if i had paid attention to A Beach Tail a little better.  before we went to the beach, we checked out some beach related books so i could prep baby girl and get her pumped.  and we still have those books and she loves them because now she's extra familiar with the beach because it's so fresh in her mind.  well we were reading this afternoon and i heard myself say "horseshoe crab" and i looked down and sure enough!  there it was!  exactly what we saw at the beach!  so i showed baby girl a picture of the real thing and she was all excited "it matches!  it matches!"  i'm a nerd but i thought it was the coolest thing.  books are just so educational like that.

and baby girl thought this was so cool that they were at the monster show like she went to a monster show with daddy.

also, when we were reading, we were cuddled up on the little loveseat in her bedroom and we read a book that was dedicated to "all the parents curled up reading with their kids" or something like that.  it almost made me tear up because i was so grateful to be in that moment.  and if i had seen that when i had been working in the daycare it probably would have made me tear up but more in a suicidal sort of fashion.  so if i ever author a children's book, that probably won't be who i dedicate it to.  but i probably won't author a kids book because i too frequently end my sentences with prepositions even when i know it is incorrect grammar.

brady has been crazy sleepy lately.  he used to have a happy wake time of 2 hours but lately he just seems soooooo exhausted after an hour.  in the mornings he more often than not has NO waketime (just nurses and goes back to sleep as if it was the middle of the night) at all.  it's a pretty extreme regression (i know that's not the right word right there) and i'm curious as to the cause of it.  would a growth spurt cause that?  or hitting a developmental milestone?  it's happened since we've gotten back from the beach which is when he's started sitting up.  that's the only major milestone i've been noticing as of late.  if we're out, i can keep him up longer... maybe just because there are interesting things going on... but if we're at home, he's just rubbing his eyes so violently like he might die if i don't put him down for a nap asap.  kids.  always a mystery.

i am absolutely loving both of my kids these days.  and my husband (but i try to limit that sort of talk on the blog because he's less of an oversharer than i am ... who isn't?! and who really wants to hear about that sort of stuff?!).  but seriously, brady is so smiley and laughs more easily than any baby i've ever met.  and abigail is all sorts of sweet and hilarious and helpful.  she's not just helpful when i have my hands full and i need another person, she's helpful when i'm too lazy or selfish to do something and i know she'll just do it for me.
right now my favorite things that she does are
1. throw away all diapers without asking and either saying "thank you" because i allowed her that privilege or giving me the most welcome "you're welcome!" of her life.
2. hanging out with brady when he wakes up but before i go up to get him.  sometimes i'm just really enjoying my lunch or my shower or my words with friends RIGHT WHEN BRADY CRIES for me to come get him out of his crib.  this is horribly inconvient for me because i am both lazy and selfish in my parenting.  when i ask abigail to go help him, she drops what she's doing and runs up the stairs as fast as she can saying "BRADY!  I"M COMING!" and then she turns on his light and hangs out and entertains him until i come to take over.  this is going to be amazing for future children when she will actually be big enough to physically to do more.
3. being completely self sufficient.  for a while she was in that somewhat annoying "i want to do it all by myself!" phase.  right now she's in the awesome just-goes-ahead-and-does-it phase.  i went to get her up the other morning and i was holding brady so i just one armed, lifted her out of her crib.  i could smell that she had pooped in her diaper so i told her to just wait for me while i turned on the bath water.  well, when i came back, she was completely naked.  she had taken off her shirt and pj pants and managed to carefully remove her diaper, get a wipe and wiped herself, and when i walked in, she was rolling up the diaper with the wipe neatly inside.  that's pretty impressive if you ask me.  so then ten minutes later i took brady out of the bath to get him dressed and told abigail i would be right back to help her out of the bath.  but then i saw her with her towel wrapped around her as she tip toed into brady's room to tell me she was actually all done already.  and then, she went to her room and got herself completely dressed.  underwear, shirt, capris.  they were the clothes she had worn the day before (and obviously not cleaned up) but i didn't have the heart to make her change.  i was just so dang proud of her independence!  parenting is so rewarding.

getting home and putting away her shoes without being asked.

also, somewhat difficult at times, i actually love when she tells me "it's okay."  she said something about "our bed"  and i asked her "your bed or my bed?" and her response was "but it's okay i can share with you."  or "it's okay we can go outside" or "it's okay we can share a treat right now."  she's big into sharing.  also, she likes to start sentences with "but" and often combines that with contradicting herself and/or not making sense  "but i want the pink binky but it's purple but it's not purple but i can."  she combines a million thoughts or just says the same thought in five different ways that she can easily string together 20-30 words (probably more but i always lose count) in a single breath without coming up for air.  or so it seems to me.  but really (maybe that's where she gets it from?), hearing thirty something words in a row from a kid that barely turned 3?  i'm wondering when i won't think it's so awesome and cool.  because, once again, i find this kid insanely impressive.

and now it's time to go to sleep.  why do i have to be such a night owl?!