Six

Today is Kailin's sixth birthday. Six. She is SIX years old today. HOW did that happen?! I could wax poetic for many lines about how wonderful she is, but I just did that for her Family Day, so instead I'm going to put together a short list of fun "six facts" about my darling daughter and a list of six things that make me love her more than words could ever possibly express. In no particular order....

1. Kailin has lost six teeth between her fifth and sixth birthdays. She's got a seventh that's pretty wiggly, but I was rooting for it to hang on til after today. Thanks, little tooth!

2. Our wait for Kailin's referral was supposed to be six months, but it was ten. If it had been six months, she'd have been too young to be referred and our lives would be completely different now. All in His time...

3. My doting six year old is 3.5 years older than her youngest brother. That's the same age difference between my sister and me. I hope that they are as close as Katie and I are!

I only got to three with the "six facts". It would be more interesting if there were six of them, but there aren't. To quote myself, "you get what you get and you don't throw a fit..."

This next piece should be much easier...six things I love about my daughter:

1. As much as it often makes me insane, I love that she is so fiery and emotional. I love that for better or worse, she feels life and that she shares it all with me.

2. I love the way her eye sparkle and arch when she smiles a real smile.

3. I love when she mumbles ridiculous nothings in the night.

4. I love it when she gets excited about something new she's learned or seen and just bubbles over trying to tell me.

5. I love when she shares a memory she has with me. Sometimes I learn that things I took as commonplace were special to her.

6. I love when she tells me that she loves me and I love that she does it often.

We had a laid back day today since Steve and Colby are a little under the weather. It didn't seem to be a problem for Kailin, though - after a donut breakfast she got to watch both Cinderella II and III, played with her new toys, and played several rounds of "Guess Who?" I'm pretty sure it was a fun birthday for her.

dinner and a show

Getting back to our camping adventure...

We dined that evening at the Hut of Pizza. I'm sure it was quite a show for all of the locals as the four adults in the center of the tables attempted to reach food for, thwart food throwing efforts of, remove projectiles in the reach of, and maintain a reasonable volume of seven children ten and under. We did fairly well until the very end when the smallest made pizza crust soup and in the hullabaloo of trying to get everyone to the bathroom and ready to go, no one noticed him dumping said soup onto the floor. Good times!! Fast exits!! Ha ha.

Back at the campsite, we declared our kids were headed for bed and put them there directly. There was commotion in the campsite as Uncle Eric scurried around with the PVC pipe he'd cut while we were owning the slow earlier in the day. The kids were clearly not sleeping in the tent and when Uncle Eric pulled us aside and divulged that he'd intended to build an outdoor movie screen with the PVC and a sheet and was planning to screen Harry Potter, we rousted them right back up out of bed. I mean seriously - how cool is that?! Our own outdoor theater?! The bugs were HORRIBLE and some of us ended up watching the movie from the comfort of the screen tent (comfort being a relative term given that we were sitting on a hard picnic bench), but it was an experience not to be forgotten. Kailin sure was right when she said, "Uncle Eric always makes the fun!"

running around

Colby was seriously tired tonight. Tired and hysterically giddy. First he was attempting to surreptitiously help himself to more chips at supper, but was continually knocking over the ketchup bottle, his cup...we were laughing SO hard that 'kamikaze Colby' couldn't sneak up on anyone ever! We were joking about him sneaking in after curfew and accidentally slamming the door or tripping on something on the floor.

He asked for a cookie for dessert and I said he could have one if he promised to go right upstairs then and go to sleep. No rolling around this time. He said, "I can't help it. I keep trying to get my dream out of my head (and he's moving all around in his seat and rolling his head all over), but it just keeps running around and running around in there! So I have to roll all over!" It's difficult to describe, but comments like this from him - deep ones, I guess you'd say, are rare. It always takes me by surprise to learn just how much is going on in his head!

After dinner, I called him over and pulled him into my lap. I got him all snuggly and comfortable and then I tickled the living daylights out of him. I tickled him until he wasn't even laughing audibly and then made a comment to Steve that I love it when he gets to that point. He's got an adorable little grin on his face and his eyes are usually bright and twinkling. I didn't realize he was even processing what I was saying, but the next time I let him up for a breath he said, "Why do you like it when I get to the crying part?" I was curious to know that he equates that part with crying - it was an interesting description of the sound for sure.

He giggled his way into bed and is there now dreaming, I presume. I hope. I better check on him....

flabbergasted

I'm interrupting my camping chronicle yet again. It's my blog. It's my prerogative. Oh and now I have a bad 80's (or was that the 90's?!) song in my head. Drat. Anyway....

We had a less than stellar day here today. That's an understatement. It was terrible. It was no good, very bad, and awful all rolled into one. The kids were horribly behaved. I was horribly behaved. It didn't mix well and I'm expecting my "mother of the year" award in the mail next week. By the time 4:00 rolled around, I was frazzled beyond my last nerve. My nerves were actually raw and exposed and my children were dancing around me with salt shakers throwing more and more salt in my wounds. I had every single intention of running upstairs to my bedroom and closing and barricading the door the moment Steve walked in.

But I didn't. Instead I decided that the badly behaved children were going to bed early tonight and that meant that I needed to get a move on supper. Having already heard enough children's music to more than sate my medium sized children's music appetite, I put on some YoYo Ma and settled into my cooking. Steve sat down to pay the bills. About 15 minutes before I finished the meal prep, I realized that my children had been playing amiably together for quite some time. They'd set up a game of bowling using large duplo blocks and a heavy red rubber dog ball. It wasn't even all that loud. They were treating each other well on top of the game playing and being kind and considerate. 10 minutes out from supper I asked them to clean up. Not only did they clean up the bowling game without another word from me, they went on to clean up the rest of the living room. I walked in and asked Steve if he'd seen just who had dropped these lovely children off because I wanted to thank them immediately and profusely! I asked Colby to clean up his crayon mess and he said he wanted to finish the Potato Heads first. I said that was fine, but before I could even finish my sentence, Kailin piped in and said that she would gladly clean up the crayons!

You can bet that I praised those kids up one side and down the other and gave them chocolate pudding for dessert. They earned several marbles a piece for their efforts and I told them that I just loved the way they'd played together so nicely and how I only had to ask once for them to clean up. It was exactly what I needed at the end of a day like today and I'm so very thankful for that shining moment! I couldn't let it pass me by without putting it in writing - both to remember and to prove that it actually happened!

strike up the band!

Back to our camping adventure...

Our second day of camping saw us off to a slow start (fully owning the slow!) and we packed a lunch off to a park near a bridge we were looking to explore. The kids had a lot of fun playing at the park and then we made it out to the middle of the bridge and even saw some pelicans before we headed back to the cars. We declared it too warm to do much outdoor exploration, but we found a great nature center and we had fun for almost two hours exploring its displays and its fantastic education room. We stopped for some fine Mexican cuisine at Taco Bell on our way back to the campsite and rounded out the evening with a campfire and s'mores. We sent the sugared up children to bed and had some euchre time before we fogies turned in ourselves.

The next day we were planning a big trip to the Appleton Children's Museum (interestingly dubbed "The Building"). The slow kicked in and we once again found ourselves at a park eating lunch before we actually made it anywhere further than 10 minutes from the campsite. It was okay, though - the kids burned off some energy and then we hit the museum. It was fantastic! There was a multi-level tree house, fire engine replica, working crane (with which you could pick up and move metal marbles), water room, art center, convenience store and baby nursery mock-ups....and my personal favorite - a room with a ton of pneumatic tubes into which you could stuff balls which then traveled through the tubes to a hopper overhead. A light went off when it was about to dump them all out. It was really fun to play with some of the tube configurations to see just where the ball would go before it reached the hopper. Colby became a grade A duck hoarder in the water room and both kids played there for a very long time. None of the kids were ready to leave when the museum closed, so I'm sure we'll be back again.and were definitely not ready to leave!

As we came out of the museum, our group got split up across an intersection. There was a group of drummers having a jam session across the road and the first half of our group stood around to watch them as they waited for us. Kailin grew impatient while we waited for the traffic. I told her that there was nothing to be done about it and that sometimes you just have to be patient. By the time the light changed again, the group had handed out instruments to all the kids as well as Eric and Katie! When we showed up, I grabbed my video camera as they handed instruments to Kailin and Colby. Before I knew it, they had struck up the band and everyone was playing their part. Colby was right on the beat the whole time. I've always suspected he will be musical - we'll have to see if I'm right. Kailin wasn't on the beat, but it added an interesting element to the song. Afterward, I took the time to point out to her that if the whole group had made it across the intersection at once, we might never have stopped to play. That experience was a true gift, and it was a great lesson for her - and me - about seeing the good in everything - even a stop at a traffic light.

The rest of our day is worthy of another post, so I'll save that for another day. I'd love to say "tomorrow" but I don't want to set myself up for disappointment. Ha ha.

We interrupt...

We interrupt this regularly scheduled chronicle of our recent camping trip to give you....CARTER! We got updated photos of our little guy today and OH MY! He has grown so much, but you can tell it's him clear as day. He's got an impish grin and he's stolen my heart. I can't wait to go and bring him home!! We got some updated measurements that put him in the 75% for height and ~50% for weight. Short or tall, I just want to hold him!

Owning the slow

As I said in my last post, we were camping with friends last week. Not just any friends. Our dearest, love us warts and all, let it all hang out friends. Four adults and seven children camping for five days. It could be a recipe for disaster and yet it's not. We are great traveling companions as we've vowed to "own the slow".

We never seem to make it out of the campsite before noon, at which time we have to decide whether to hit a park first to eat lunch, or if it's more expeditious to eat at the campsite. By the time we finally get to the point of doing the activity we set out to do, sometimes we find that we don't have enough time to do it at all. And no one cares. We own the slow.

We embrace the lifestyle that evolves when you have young children - when things frequently don't go as planned. Neither family can always accomplish this alone, but when we're camping together somehow our coping abilities unite and form a force so strong that we are invincible. We do not yield to the urge to be annoyed that one child or another (or four) still needs the bathroom AGAIN or didn't go when we asked them to or can't find his or her shoes. We say poo-poo to feelings of urgency when looking at the clock and realizing that once again it's nearly 11am and we're just starting to gather the troops. And we're better for it. We're better parents and we're happier parents and we're fantastic travel partners. We share food and share jokes and laugh at the slow like we never would in our home setting. We OWN the slow.

Kids say the darndest things....

We went camping with our dearest friends this past week. I'm planning on doing several blog posts about our adventures as I can find the time this week. One thing I need to get in writing before it disappears from my mind is a quote from Colby that is beyond priceless. He and I were swaying gently on the hammock as I battled a migraine and he battled exhaustion. We were waiting for our friends to return to the campground after a stop at the grocery store. We were gazing up at the tree canopy above us and Colby said, "I tooted. I toot on campin'! I hope my stink stays here so Uncle Ewic can smell it later!" After we swayed awhile longer, he flipped onto his belly and ran his nose up and down the hammock. "Nope," he said, "it's already gone." He's alllllll boy, that one!

Boxers or briefs?

Colby and I were out shopping today at Kohl's. The whole family needed socks and he needed underwear as well. As we were walking around, we passed a gentleman sitting on a bench in the garden department (which is adjacent to the boys' department in our Kohl's.). He was wearing a sling. Colby (loudly of course!) inquired about why he had the sling on. I told him that the man had probably hurt his arm somehow. I would guess the guy was in his mid 50's and he looked up when he heard us talking, gave us a smile, and called Colby over. "I was in an accident and I hurt my fingers," he said. He showed Colby his banded together, bruised and swollen fingers. Colby oohed and ahhed. The man said, "thanks for your concern, buddy." Colby said, "no problem." and we wandered off down the aisle to return a shirt.

I'd forgotten about the underwear, but there was a display in the middle of the aisle and Colby was immediately smitten with the large variety of character emblazoned underwear. That, of course, reminded me that he did actually need underwear so we stopped. In my opinion, Colby's body type suits him better to boxer briefs, but he does have some regular old briefs and I wasn't really sure which he preferred. I got down on Colby's eye level and asked him if he wanted underwear that went down onto his legs (boxer briefs) or underwear like his Nemo and Cars underwear (briefs). He said he wanted the Lego StarWars underwear, not Nemo or Cars. I tried again and said, "let's pretend that all the underwear is plain...." "what's plain?" "Just a color. No characters." "I want Lego StarWars." "Okay, you can have whatever character you want (which was kind of a lie - boxer briefs with characters are harder to come by), but please look at mommy and not the underwear. Listen to my words. Do you want underwear that comes down onto your legs like your green underwear at home or do you want underwear that comes to the top of your legs at home like the Nemo and Cars underwear you already have?" "I want Lego StarWars." "I know you do. But do you want the Lego Starwars underwear to come down on your leg or end right up here?" "Oh. I want it to end up here." "Are you sure?" "Yep." "Great! Put these in the cart!"

At that point, the gentleman commented to me (I didn't realize he'd heard our whole conversation!), "I really wish I had a transcript of that conversation. You did an amazing job. You were SO patient. I didn't think he was ever going to understand what you were trying to ask. I never thought about trying to explain underwear options to someone who had no idea what the differences were. That was priceless!" I bet I was a topic of discussion at that guy's dinner table tonight!