Tales of Summer

If your job was to document the goings on of this house from the hours of 11pm to 6am, you would not be bored.

Some parents tell me they sleep fine, but if you were to ask me to define parenthood in one phrase, I'd probably go with "lack of sleep."  "Sacrifice" is probably more accurate, but at 4:45am, having been woken up once already, "lack of sleep" seems more spot on.

I posted this video about 2 weeks ago on facebook, but Sam's not doing anything too different, and he looks about the same, so here it is again, in case you missed it.

Since Sam has been born, both a lot and a little have occurred.  A lot of small changes, which is what kids growing up is all about, and very few big changes.  Which is probably a good thing, cause who likes change?

The one big change happened yesterday with Beth going back to work.  Ben didn't notice, Julia cried for a while, then went to Grammo's house, and Sam...Sam had a rough day.  He's not a fan of bottles and it's hard to wait for your food to be warmed up when you are on the brink of starvation, so he did a lot of crying yesterday.  Beth had a rough start to the day too.  She was going to take Ben to school, but then got called in to help her resident set up the case, so I had to take Ben to school.  Ben didn't mind, Beth was in tears.  I was able to get Sam to her around lunch though so that she could feed him, so that helped her out and gave Sam at least one good meal for the day.

But aside from that, the summer has been pretty nice, especially with Beth being on maternity leave the whole time.

We did a lot of playing around the house, or going on bike rides to the pool or the park, since Sam was so little, but we did go to the zoo or devil's lake or other small trips here and there.

Our neighbors, who have a 2 year old (also Sam), have been home on maternity leave as well, so we'd visit with them quite a bit.  Sam likes to play with "Ben, Juju, and Joss."  He's a solid little guy.  He's also strange in that he jumped up to 30 pounds by 9 months old and has stayed that weight the whole time.  It might have been 6 months, I get the story confused.  He loves to wrestle, so he'll walk up to Ben real slow with his arms wide and just walk into him, and bear hug him till he falls to the ground.  Ben is very gentle with him and does a great job of wrestling nicely with him.

Our other neighbors, behind us, also have kids.  They are 5 and 3, Tessa and Lauren, so Ben has been playing with them here and there as well.  Julia is not really interested in playing with other kids just yet.

She's also in a beat the crap out of them phase.  If you were 2, Julia would be the last 2 year old you'd want to run into in a dark alley.  She's a beast.  She has no fear, backs down from nothing, and I have every confidence that she could take just about any 4 year old in a fight.

She also is in the testing phase (hence the hitting).  Just about any request Beth or I make has her answering "no", with a thumb in the mouth and a look that says, "So, whatcha gonna do about it?"  Generally the answer is a time out and physically moving her into or out of her car seat.

Ben's summer has revolved largely around finding and keeping toads.  He also had some butterfly's for a while, and they were cool to watch, but the toads have been the central point of interest.  For some reason we had a large influx of toads this summer and we are constantly finding them around the house.  Ben had 5, but left their enclosed bucket, partly filled with water in the sun.  The flies gathered around the bucket led us to the discovery of what happens when you boil a live Toad.  I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with "bed mode."

We took the still living 2 toads (they wisely stayed out of the water) and put them in an open bucket in the shade.  Ben has been finding food for them daily, and I showed him how to change the water and environment of the Toad bucket.

After the first day of school, Ben came home and I asked, "How was school?"  He answered, "Great!  I found 2 crickets!"

Ben had very little trouble starting school and has been doing an excellent job!  The kids get "eagle awards" when they are respectful and listen to the teacher.  So far Ben has gotten no time outs and 2 eagle awards!

Julia misses Ben, but I think she likes the extra time now I have to focus on just her.  We've been building and knocking down block towers and racing cars.  Hopefully we can go some places, but it's tough with Sam being so little.  I'm back to the phase where I need to figure out how to give him food on the go.  You may not notice, but many, many bathrooms don't have hot water.  "Not cold" water is the best they can do, and that doesn't cut it for Sam.  Our kids are historically picky when it comes to milk temperature.

And finally, all of this is a backdrop to my obsession with finding a new electric guitar and amp.  Whenever I'm not playing with the kids, changing a diaper, or making food, I'm either practicing my newly learned pentatonic scales or researching electric guitar and amp types and qualities.  I have high hopes for Christmas.