Camp Paula - Last Day

Guest Post: Auntie Paula recounts her week with Ava

After making it through the stomach bug, Ava was full of energy and Paula was relieved! We decided to take it easy by shopping at Kohls. Among the clothes that Ava picked out, she found a purple Hello Kitty tutu dress. Several attempts were made by Paula to redirect Ava's attention away from this dress. However, the moment Ava saw the dress her mind was made up - it was HER dress! (Editor's note: This outfit became Ava's summer uniform. She wore it EVERY day it wasn't in the laundry hamper.)

After Kohls, we went home for lunch, quiet time and then arts & crafts. While crafting, Ava and I divided up some stickers to use as we saw fit while making our art. Paula got one sticker and Ava got the rest! When trying to negotiate for a second sticker, Ava exclaimed to Paula "Hey! But we made a plan!" Immediately after that she shared all of the remaining stickers.

Joe returned from his trip and we had dinner together followed by several hours of Candy Land, Chutes & Ladders, Hide-and-Seek and reading books. It was a great night!

Camp Paula - Day Four

Guest Post: Auntie Paula recounts her week with Ava

Day Four of Camp Ava/Paula can be summed up pretty quickly - Strawberry Pedialyte!

During the night of Ava getting sick and the two of periodically napping, Ava mentioned that Strawberry Pedialyte would make her feel better. After confirming this with Helen, I contacted the local pharmacy and placed an order for the magic elixir, saltines and applesauce. Since Joe was still on his business trip, the pharmacy was gracious enough to bring these items to the drive through for us to pick up. I wrapped Ava up in a blanket and carried her out to the car with a bucket in case she got sick during our trip to and from the pharmacy.

As advertised, the Strawberry Pedialyte worked! Upon returning home, we set up a little bed in the basement for Ava. She slowly drank the medicine, napped, watched a couple of videos and we read some books. Rather than jump on the mini trampoline, we journaled and did some arts and crafts. Rice for dinner and then we both went to bed early. Feeling much better than when the day started!

Camp Paula - Day Three

Guest Post: Auntie Paula recounts her week with Ava

Day Three of Camp Ava/Paula started off well. Joe was home for most of the day. We had waffles for breakfast and then packed a picnic lunch for later in the day when we went to the community park and playground. Before going to the play ground, Ava and Paula worked on the Hello Kitty puzzles and played Candy Land.

Then we went to the park were we had fun exploring every square inch of the playground, blowing bubbles as well as playing drive thru restaurant. However after a couple of hours, Ava started to lose her pep and asked to go home. Once home, Ava went to her room and decided to take a nap. When she woke up a couple of hours later, Ava told me that she didn't feel well. We both laid in her room, read some books and watched a couple of short videos on the computer.

Joe left for a business trip while Ava and I were relaxing in her room. Had he not booked this trip several weeks in advance, I would have found his departure a bit suspect given the timing of Ava getting sick! Since Ava wasn't feeling well, she and I decided to go to bed early. I asked Ava if it would be ok if I slept in her room since she wasn't feeling well and she thought that was a good idea. After a three hour nap, I woke up to Ava running to the bathroom to get sick. We were up pretty much the rest of the night. Poor thing - how awful to be so sick when you are supposed to be on vacation. She handled it much better than I did .... every time she was sick, I would cry for her. We were quite the team!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Camp Paula - Day Two

Guest Post: Auntie Paula recounts her week with Ava

We felt blessed to have Ava visiting and every day with her was great, but Day Two of Camp Ava/Paula was perhaps the best day! Ava and I packed a picnic lunch and took Lily to the National Zoo. About three-fourths of the way to the zoo, Ava decided that perhaps going to the zoo was not what she wanted to do. Since I live about 40 miles away from the zoo, turning around and going home wasn't as appealing to me as it was to Ava. We compromised and decided to have lunch at the zoo and then head home if Ava didn't want to stay!

Upon entering the zoo and looking for a place to have a picnic, Ava was quite excited to discover a chipmunk. He was behind a fence and appeared to have his own habitat for viewing. However, much to our surprise, he was able to get through the fence and move about the zoo just as we did! After our picnic lunch, Ava decided she wanted to stay. First stop - the Asian Trial and Giant Pandas. We were able to watch Mei Xiang enjoy her lunch. Little did we know that Mei Xiang was pregnant when we saw her. She gave birth to a girl on August 23rd! As we wandered through the panda habitat, we tried to find Tian Tian, the male panda. Although he seemed to be hiding that day, Ava did find a cute statute to pose with.

Next, we were off to see the elephants in their new habitat. Although we were able to see one of the elephants, we were on the opposite side of the habitat from where they seemed to be hanging out. Ava and I decided to walk to the other side for a closer view. However, along the way Ava decided that having a snow cone and doing some people-watching may be more exciting than seeing the elephants up close. So, for the next hour and a half, we sat on a bench and watched the people at the zoo! After that, we packed up and returned home. Upon leaving, Ava decided that her favorite part of visiting the zoo was seeing the chipmunk!

On our way home, Ava did something I was told she rarely does anymore - she napped the entire way home. While driving home, I started thinking this nap thing was a great idea. I would join her when we were safely home. That was quickly thwarted as we pulled into the garage and Ava said "wow, I took a nap. I guess this means I don't need my quiet time this afternoon!" 

Once home, Ava and I decided to journal and then paint our nails in preparation for meeting Joe and Chick-Fil-A for dinner. Ava Lily, and I arrived a little early so that she could hang out in the Chick-Fil-A playground. When Joe arrived, we ordered dinner and then ate outside in the picnic area. Ava and her charm were on fire this evening. The Manager was a sweet lady who became Ava's buddy while we waited in line for a Hello Kitty sparkle tattoo. The Manager even offered us a free ice cream cone as well as coupons for dinner later in the week - although we didn't take advantage of this kind offer, we thought it was quite nice that Ava's good behavior was finding such favor with the Manager!

By the way, Ava felt that Joe was better suited than I for taking care of Lily while she got her tattoo! Joe felt quite honored and I felt quite relieved! Next stop - Swirlies for dessert. After enjoying our ice cream, Ava and Joe ran around and checked out the theater park area, playing tag and looking for treasures in a conduit. Ava was certain there was a mouse in the conduit and shared this discovery with Joe! We were having so much fun at Swirlies, that Ava found the owners and declared "Swirlies is the best!" This nearly brought tears to the owners' eyes as they are striving to create a fun and family friendly place for kids to develop cherished childhood memories. A couple of moments after making this proclamation, the owners presented Ava with a tie-died Swirlies t-shirt! 

After that we went home for a couple of rounds of Candy Land. What a full and fun day!

Camp Paula - Day One

 

Guest Post: Auntie Paula recounts her week with Ava

After having breakfast with Brian and sending him off on his business trip, Ava and I officially kicked off Camp Ava/Paula with a trip to Target. Our mission was simple. The shopping list was short. Ava needed a new toothbrush and we were going to make a special dinner for Joe. Ava was quick and decisive in selecting her Hello Kitty toothbrush and toothpaste! Ava selected spaghetti with meatballs and salad for Joe's special dinner and Funfetti cupcakes for dessert.

This was looking to be one of the quickest shopping trips to Target...but then we entered the toy department! Hello Kitty items were everywhere. Puzzles, coloring books, games, and stuffed animals. Initially, Ava had a difficult time narrowing down what to get. However, that quickly changed the moment Ava turned down the baby doll aisle. Hello Kitty who? After spending nearly an hour becoming acquainted with each and every one of the baby doll options, Ava selected Lily, some baby accessories for Lily and four Hello Kitty puzzles to work on while Lily would nap!

Once home, we had lunch on the patio and then both had some quiet time. After resting, I "helped" make the cupcakes by placing them in and taking them out of the oven. As you can see from the pictures, Ava is a professional baker! We wrote in our journals and played Candy Land until Joe came home from work. After dinner, the three of us played Candy Land, Chutes & Ladders as well as Hide-n-Seek in the basement.

Day One - sweet success!

 

 

 

 

June 2013

June began with a work trip to D.C. for Brian, with Ava joining along to attend Camp Paula. There, she spent five full days without either of us (definitely a first) as Auntie Paula and Uncle Joe kept her happy as a clam. That is until the nighttime came and she decided that maybe she was just a little bit homesick :(  Perhaps in a self-fulfilling prophecy, she then got a 24-hour stomach bug, which derailed some of the fun they were having. Despite the vomit-filled visits to the Walgreen's drive-thru, Paula and Ava made it through the untimely illness and are still two peas in a pod. Stay tuned for Paula's guest-post, coming up soon.

The rest of the month was quite celebratory, with Father's Day and Nana's (Sue) birthday.  For Father's Day we had a picnic on Mt. Tabor, with Ava keeping us on our toes with some shockingly fast bike riding, sans braking skills (still working on that!).  We spent the afternoon at Sue and Rod's for Sue's birthday and played Ava's new favorite game "telephone." Ava LOVES whispering but hasn't quite mastered the art. She has two volumes: on and off, but more likely off.  So the game of telephone involves her breathing hot silent air into your ear drum, and then lots of giggling and wide-eyed looks of anticipation as she waits for everyone else to have their turn. It's pretty precious.

May 2013

It was an active May for us. While Helen sometimes has trouble making it past the front porch with both kids, on two separate occasions Brian packed the kids up and went on some impressive mini-adventures. Once to the coast so they could imagine how nice it would be to play in the ocean if we lived in a different state where that was possible.  And another day-trip to the forest to climb on stumps and throw rocks into streams. We also hit the zoo, the children's museum, and then went strawberry picking (or, more accurately, "strawberry snacking") on Sauvie's Island.

Not pictured is Mother's Day, which, disheartened by the antics of the children, Helen spent alone at a Cafe. I'm recording this fact here so that someday we might remember it and use it to shame the children (Kidding! Sort of.) It's not all fairy dust and butterflies over here.

What is pictured is the parenting blunder of the month, where Helen told Ava, "I'll catch you!" as she jumped off her cozy coop car and then didn't at all catch her. Instead Ava did a head-first, un-cushioned, swan dive onto the ground.  After shaking it off with some good old-fashioned tears and whimpers, she offered only a confused look, asking, "Why didn't you catch me?" Good question!

Rubber to the Road

This girl can really GO.

STOP...not so much.

Pop goes the...

That lion gets him every time.

18 Things About James

James is now 18 months old. Wha?! Here are 18 fascinating facts about him.

1. James hugs a lot. We haven't done an official count, but he's probably averaging 20 head-on-your-chest hugs a day.
2. James continues to be an oddly large child. At his 15-month check-up, he was still off the charts for height (almost 35 inches) and newly off the charts for weight (just shy of 30 pounds). As Ava likes to point out, however, he is still one pound lighter and a few inches shorter than her.
3. Jamesie-pooh is CRAZY about going outside right now and would never come inside if he didn't need to eat at semi-regular intervals.
4. Eating with James is maddening. He's fairly picky at this point, but will repeatedly yelp for "more" if he sees any food nearby, no matter how much of that item he has on his tray.
5. A favorite word of James's right now is "baloobaloo", or balloon. He systematically goes through all the books containing balloons and points out the balloons on each page and then moves on to the next one. It's kind of shocking how many children's books contain balloons. Perhaps he's not the first with this obsession.
6. James is particularly fond of kitchen activities. He still loves to prepare meals for us in his kitchen, but he's equally at home in our Tupperware drawer, which gets ransacked on a daily basis.
7. James trots with very stiff legs.
8. There are very few things that can get James as angry as a diaper change. As if cleaning someone else's poop could get any worse, now we have a huge wriggly, screaming toddler as our diaper-change partner.
9. James loves watering cans, which he uses to water his feet and the driveway.
10. James has 14 teeth.
11. Our 30-pound child generally demands to be carried at all times. If you refuse, he falls to the floor and pounds his fists and wails. Just today we had a breakthrough and walked halfway to the store holding hands. Baby steps, as they say.
12. James likes wagon rides so much that he will retrieve the wagon and just sit in it until someone takes him somewhere.
13. James is mesmerized by cats (his favorite), dogs, and birds. He uses his best animal calls whenever he sees one.
14. We keep a harmonica in James's car seat at all times so that he can play us some sweet tunes while we drive around town.
15. We have to reprogram the stereo several times a day. It's one of his favorite toys.
16. If James is able to lift an object, he will throw it across the room. We spend a good deal of time telling him, "If you'd like to throw something, you can throw a ball." Then he replies, "ball!" and gets a ball to throw.
17. James really likes waving and has a stiff-arm beauty-queen wave.
18. Whenever James sees something that looks like a phone, he puts it against his ear and says hello, then giggles.

April 2013

At the beginning of April we welcomed a new Edwards into the family! Leo is Tom and Emily's third child in so many years (we kid you not...their oldest is 3 1/2), which has landed Tom and Emily into the "certifiable" category in our eyes. We can say that because we know without a doubt they won't have time to read this blog post. Thus far, we have only Skyped with the young man, but we will be meeting Leo for reals when we go on a big ole Edwards vacation to the Cape in July. We can't wait.

Next to bringing life into this world, I suppose our April was comparatively uneventful. The entire family got a week-long stomach bug and for the first time both Helen and Brian were sick at precisely the same moment which made caring for the other two sick humans in our house quite miserable. It's times like those that we long for the days when being sick meant a relaxing day off of work watching Ellen and The Price Is Right.

The majority of April was gloriously warm and sunny so we shook off the winter blues and spent pretty much every day outside, or "ow-dide," as some call it.

Life in Balance

I was going to make all sorts of (likely hilarious) jokes about our lives being totally balanced right now--which is most assuredly not the case--but really this video just makes me giggle. Even though they are the same age, Griffin is so much heavier than Ava we actually had to move the seesaw along a notch so that Ava and Griffin could even attempt to seesaw together. And here's the result:

Gymnastics

Ava has finally made her long-anticipated entrance into the world of gymnastics. She's so excited she even allows her hair to be put in pigtails. The Children's Gym doesn't mess around though--by the second class she'd tried her hand at the rings, beam, vault, bars, and (her favorite) the trampoline. 

Warming up with the other athletes

What they don't tell you in the brochure is that viewing the Tiny Tumblers class is a wildly inappropriate pastime for an 18-month old. I'm not sure what I was thinking but I assumed there would be some sort of a barrier between the spectators and the "athletes." Instead, they have a few chairs set up right next to the mats so that your curious 18-month old can take a running start and then a flying leap into a tumbling pass. In fact, a relentlessly curious 18-month old can continuously take a flying leap into a tumbling pass for a full hour, until the class ends. Had I known, I certainly wouldn't have scheduled Ava's class on a weekday during work hours, thereby requiring the pursuit  and containment of said 18-month old to be a one-person job.

While gymnastics seems to be in the Rabold blood, it most certainly is not in the Edwards', so this could be a short-lived endeavor.

March 2013

This month, our trip to Chicago afforded Ava some fun time in the snow, and she was all, "Yay! Let's make snowmen!" James was not quite as impressed and he was all, "Why are you doing this to me? So cold!"

Development-wise, James is now using words in combination with yelps to get across a point. He has a vocabulary of 25 words which all sound a little like "mah," "bah," and "pah." You really have to analyze the context to decipher the meaning of his babbles.  When in doubt, we rely on his nods.  One VERY slow nod up and down for yes and a bobble-head shake back and forth combined with an "uh-uh" for no.  It's far from an exact science.  We wish the famed 18-month language explosion would just go ahead and explode already so we can figure out what's on this boy's mind.

As for Ava, she's become quite the character. To give this character positive labels, we might say that she is "opinionated," "assertive," "curious," and "dramatic." This has left us "at our wit's end" and "struggling to adhere to our positive parenting techniques." Y'all be nice to Ava. She'll be your boss some day.

And here's the month in pictures:

This Is 40

At the beginning of March we packed the whole family up and headed to Chicago to surprise Brian's sister, Brooke, for her 40th birthday. And by surprise, we really mean surprise.  Helen, Brian, James, Ava, Paula, Joe, Layne, and Gary all showed up on her doorstep to celebrate and shacked up for the weekend at Brooke and Tony's house.  Though surprised, Brooke was a gracious host and we all had a great time taking over their home for a few days.

Happy Birthday, Brooke. You don't look a day over 20.

Hello!

When they're not pulling each other's hair out (one of James's new tricks!), our children are doing this:

James Loves Him Some Animal Noises

February 2013

In the interest of just catching up, here's our February album, sans commentary.

I Know a Rhino

Ava drew you a picture of a rhino.

 

January 2013

Slowly but surely we're catching up on blog posts. At least we're into 2013, so that's something. Sadly, Brian was out of town for three out of four weeks in January, and our camera was at the repair shop, so it is slim pickins for January photos.

   

The biggest news, of course, was Ava's fourth birthday. She asked for a lollipop. Ava is fairly sugar deprived and she still tells the story of the lollipop she had one year ago at her friend Cormac's birthday party. For her birthday we gave her the biggest lollipop around and then she took two licks--apparently that's all she needed--and threw it in the trash. She's put in her request for a lollipop for her 5th birthday and talks to James about it every time we pass the display in the grocery store.

As for James, he's turned into a big steamroller of a toddler. He runs, he screams, he laughs with his whole body. He loves to read (by himself just as much as with others) and gasps, squeals, and drops his jaw in mock surprise with every turn of the page. He happily joins Ava in her pretend play and spends much of his time serving the family dinner and rocking his stuffed animals to sleep. After a 2-year hiatus, we've returned to music class. While the magic of Music Together seems to have run its course with Ava, James couldn't be more excited. He hums the songs throughout the day and will sing notes and wait for someone to copy him, just like in class.