Today matches my mood much more than yesterday. Yesterday we missed the beautiful sunny weather on the account of being sick! We did make it outside, but it was pretty short lived. Today's pouring down rain is much better. ;P Actually, I want to dedicate this post to Hallee. She is so stinkin' cute! I've already mentioned how much she loves to be looking out in the world, and that's why she hates all these carriers I guess. It is adorable to watch her being so ingrossed in what's going on around her. She loves the kids getting up in her face and trying to make her laugh. She'll always give them a smile. She's started pulling at her hair while she's playing on her back. I don't remember the those kids doing that very much, but they probably did. Sorry I didn't feel like rotating the photo above.
The closest Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream shop to us is about an hour away in Eugene. Of course I wasn't going to let that stop me from enjoying "Free Ice Cream Cone" day yesterday! I planned a day in Eugene and threw the kids in the car first thing in the morning. We went to the mall for a little shopping. I was looking for a certain bookstore and it wasn't there anymore actually, but we had fun in Borders. Then we had lunch in the car (feeding kids and getting fed upon- what I do the largest percentage of the day) while the day warmed up to be beautiful and sunny. Ben and Jerry's was no disappointment! Last time I went to one of these, we waited in line for close to an hour I think. So I got there 10 minutes before they even started, hping to get in the fron to fhe line. The kids were so excited to have their own ice cream cone. The line wasn't bad at all, which was nice. The kids steaked out their table and waited patiently while I stood in line. I got two chocolate ice cream cones and handed them to the kids. While I was getting my scoop, I looked back at the kids at the table just in time to see them yell, "Cheers!" and bump their ice cream cones together! Honestly! What a crew! The mom at the table next to us started cracking up. It took about an hour to eat the ice cream. Willie was so excited he just sat there talking about it for the first 10 minutes. Look how proud he is of his cone. Lucy gets the award for the messiest. They didn't have any napkins there (the owner was talking to me and saying how they don't put any effort into this day because it's so crazy, they just scoop. I guess I understand.) Next stop was the Science Factory, which was fun but I was surprised to learn that it's actually quite a bit smaller than I imagined. We circled the exhibits probably three times and spent a large majority fot he time in the Tot Spot, this small little corner with a boat, crane, all pit, and some other ocean things. Baby Hallee made her first attempt at sitting in the stroller. She's probably still too young to sit up in it, but she loved being able to see out. She has not liked being strapped into anything, and she's hated all the carriers I have. She didn't mind the stroller too bad, but it had to be moving to keep her really content.
This is my 100th post on this blog. I will celebrate with (yet another) random rambling. No, honestly. This post will be the most random rambling I can get done in 15 minutes or less, because that's all the time I want to spend. :)
My Lucy has grown up this week. I'm talking radical change. Her speech, her thoughts, her interests. I'm scared. I wrote about the incident at the pizza place that happened just three days ago. Now, today, similar story, perhaps more serious. Or not since the boy seemed much more harmless, he was only 3 (not 5!), but they were married! We ventured to a park which was very happenin' in the mom scene. Lots of mamas there. Lucy was playing with some good friends of ours, who were also playing with some other good friends of theirs. So, the game was house again, and it developed into Prince and Princesses game. The play structure was the castle- we even caught the moment where Lucy was laying "dead" asleep (as in Sleeping Beauty) in the 'castle' while all the princes were scaling the walls to save her (there were two princes). Ultimately Lucy was to be "married" to Gabe, and Will to Sophia. Then, twist of events, Will decides he wants to marry Lucy. Lucy agreed, so they took each other's hands and started to walk off. Holding hands, people!! At 3 years old!! How did this happen?! (ummm, disney movies...duh) Well, it was too much for Sophia that her prince had left her, so she started a melt down and plopped herself down at the base of a nearby tree. Were talking a pretty big crying fit. All because my daughter is marrying both princes- the little fox! This is the point where the moms came in to round everyone up to go home and found out the whole storyline of their playtime. And this little three year old Will, repeatedly insisted that he and Lucy were going to get married. I tried to just ignore the little Romeo and get the kids out to the car. Turns out we were parked right next to these people, and on the way to his car, Will stopped by to make sure I knew I had to come back to 'this park' to play because he was married to Lucy. What a guy. aye yai yai. I'm really being melodramatic if you couldn't tell. I don't hold anything against Will. He was a sweet boy and I'd totally love to have a playdate with those guys again. Just after I have a little talk with my girl. I still don't like that five year old though...
Ok, time's up. I'm going to throw a couple St. Patrick's day pics on here though. We went letterboxing downtown and had a lot of fun. Some friends came and we went to four businesses that had letterboxes hidden in the store. So fun. We made it into a treasure hunt, left by a leprechaun. It ended at American Dream pizza and we found the leprechaun's hat filled with treasure. Then we had lunch. I also made rainbow cupcakes for a dinner we had with my sister. She had made a corned beef brisket dinner. I brought these for dessert. They are quite fun because they're so colorful, but a little labor intensive. I'll try anything once though.
It was such a bummer not to get to talk with Jeremy today. I needed it today, I think, for a few reasons- so while you were out, just wanted to let you know I had one of those scary moments of parenting today.
It was a beautiful sunny day. We went out and picked up some things at the store, and went to Avery park, and then spent lunch playing at Papa's Pizza. Papa's pizza was a nice break from the McDonald's routine. It was, however, the location of (scary music here... duh, duh, duh) of one of my all time top WORST PARENTING FIRSTS!!
The place was pretty empty being a Monday lunchtime. We were the only ones in the play area for the first twenty minutes. Then a mom came with her daughter and two boys she was sitting (she came to tell me). The thing that troubled me was the oldest boy who was five attached really quickly to Lucy. They were all playing well together and it wasn't any thing. But then Lucy and this boy, Damian, were playing in this dark tunnel area that has a few open rooms and a passageway. I started suggesting for them to come out and play suchandsuch, you know, something else. Lucy tells me they are playing house. And the little boy sticks his head out and tells me that Lucy is his girlfriend! And I may be over-reacting, but he had a seriousness and deviancy to him. So, then I started 'harassing' the kids, pretending I was a monster and would reach through the little holes to try and get them, making a game of it. They would scream and laugh and run away. But it was all too dark and I couldn't tell what was going on, so pretty soon I just demanded Lucy and Willie to get out because it was time to go home (Willie had joined them in the play place when I started doing the 'monster game').
Man, I almost wanted to smack that kid. I was terrified that something had happened that I didn't see. And I don't know how to talk to Lucy about it exactly. And I'm half wondering is this an appropriate age to talk to her about birds and bees. How much to talk about? What exactly to warn her about? If this opens up any suggestions, I'd love to have them my way. Suggestions for good resources?
This afternoon, while we were home reading some books. I tried to casually start talking about the boy and what did they do while they played together. Her answers didn't cause any alarm in me, but I still wonder as she's still learning how to give details with her language.
Given this story, as if this picture is going to help our fears... But since we're on the subject of growing up too fast... I mentioned this on the phone, but here's a pic I snapped when Lucy found my make-up. I had given her a shower and Willie was still in his nap and I didn't have any clean clothes out for her, so I put her in my robe. She was playing with the my earrings while I was braiding her hair because the drawer was open. Then, she found some bronzing powder while I was turned away, and surprisingly put it on exactly right, in fact, better than I would have ever done. I kind of had to laugh at her good skill, and I played along and put eye make-up on and lipstick. Lately, she's been saying how she wants to "be like mommy" and she'll try to do everything that seems grown-up and like mommy does. Aye-yai-yai.
As much fun as it was, I am happy to report Jeremy's graduation from boot camp!! This news is a couple weeks old I guess, but I thought I should post a little recap from my trip out there. It was the most _____ trip ever(I'm not sure the right word here, hasn't come to me yet...maybe 'unsettled'); so many things were changing right and left up to the last minute and even throughout the trip. I will ultimately spare you all details on logistics- and how I spent 4 hours begging to priceline to change my flight and give me a refund (which they did)- and get on with posting about the trip. ;) It was a great trip and I'm so glad I went. Hallee did great on the flights overall. It never ceases to amaze me how random acts of kindness have steadily come since joining the army. At least it seems that way. Well, the day spent traveling to South Carolina was full of these acts from the beginning of the day all the way until I hit the pillow at 2am that night. Those traveling around me were super nice, the airline and airport people all helpful. I had a man ask if he could pay for my lunch at Wendy's. He said he was bumped to 1st class and would have free food and wanted to make up for it by buying someone else's lunch. Even if it was just so he could take the receipt to get reimbursed from work, it was a thoughtful and kind thing to do. The woman sitting next to me on the last leg of my trip asked me to eat her sandwich she had bought but didn't want. So lunch and dinner were taken care of that day, I didn't spend any money on food the whole day. It was really neat to be involved in things going on at the base. There were about 1300 soldiers graduating!! Where do all these soldiers come from!?! I staid at a hotel about 10 minutes from the base. I had got in around 2am and then got up early to go to "Family Day." They sit all the families in this grandstand, listen to a few people, then have the soldiers all run out (amid smoke bombs and blank shots), and then send the families to go meet them down on the field. It sounded pretty cool, but I didn't see it as I was sitting in the car with Hallee. She was a little bit of a pain because she didn't want to sit in her carrier. But it was cold out too. I wasn't totally prepared for how cold it was (despite the sun brightly shining) and so we sat in the car for half of that orientation. Hallee sacked out and I carried her down to meet Jeremy. It was somewhat chaos, as you can imagine, with families of 1300 soldiers walking around. With help, I managed to find Jeremy's group and meet up. Jeremy was so excited to hold Hallee. One of the drill sergeants came up to us and said, "Mrs. Van Tress?" and I answered. "I wanted you to know that Jeremy owes me something. And I'll let him tell you about it, but he owes me." It's kind of a long story, but I found out later that basically Jeremy owed the drill sergeant a bunch of push-ups/sit-ups because he should have been smoked for having a dirty gun, but the drill sergeant said he wanted to have Jeremy's wife administer the smoking. I also found out later, that this was the same drill sergeant that received my valentine in the package that I wrote about earlier. Jeremy didn't tell me that until too late... I wish I would have had a chance to razz the drill sgt a little more (wink, wink, hehehee). Jeremy could spend the whole day on the base with us. We went on a bus tour of Fort Jackson, which was neat. We ate lots of food (of course), hung out in the overcrowded PX (which is like the only store on the base, so everyone was there), had a fiasco and all the girls had to change clothes ;), visited the open house at the church to meet members of his ward, and then had to send him back to the barracks for the night. Jeremy's mom drove down for the graduation. She unfortunately didn't get to Fort Jackson in time to see Jeremy that day, on Family Day, she was about 5 minutes late. :P But graduation was the next day. Graduation was awesome to see. Jeremy was in the Honor Guard which means he was in this top group that was honored and announced during the program. It also meant that his family got "the good seats" in the bleachers. It was great actually, thank you Jeremy for being fast. He was honored for being the top physical fitness soldier in his company. There were 24 soldiers in the honor guard. The honor guard also got to have a special post-graduation meeting with the General where he gave them each a coin of commemorative value- I don't know, you know, I didn't even look closely at it. The talks at graduation were very touching and inspiring. I cried. In the post-meeting with the General the general said, "Well, that [Graduation] made me want to join the army." But I couldn't agree more. I had the same feeling of pride and desire to join this cause after hearing and seeing graduation. I thought it was really neat.
The rest of that day, we tried to see a little bit of Columbus (Jeremy could go off base), but mostly just wanted to relax and be together. We visited a national park, and the USC campus. We also went to Outback where all the soldiers were eating dinner that night. ;) Again, everyone is really cordial and respectful to military though. I couldn't get over the people down there actually, how they all use the "Sir and Ma'am". I got called Ma'am so many times. And everyone was over my age for sure, quite polite. And that was the end of my trip really. Jeremy staid with me in the hotel because he was going to drive with his mom over to his next station, which was in Georgia (for Officer school), a 5 and half hour drive, the next day. I actually left before they did, as I had to leave at 3am to get to an early returning flight. My sister was sweet and picked me up from the airport and we went directly to a music conference going on in Portland, which was really fun. Then I made it back to the kids who were in Grandma's care. Grandma did a great job with the kids having them for 4 days! I had arranged for the kids to be at friend's houses for 2 of the days while mom had work to get done, but they both ended up getting a little sick, so grandma just kept them home. Grandmas are so awesome!!! Especially ours! :) The kids didn't even miss me, they barely waved then they saw me.
I'll tell you right now, upfront, that unless you are Jeremy, you will probably think this post is totally boring. That's okay, it's mostly for Daddy anyways. I've been meaning to do a lot more posting- like a journaling blog- so Dad can keep up with what the family is up to everyday and feel a part of things even when he can't physically be a part of things. I guess I didn't really worry about it when he was in Basic training, but now that he can have internet access, I feel like it would be beneficial to do. So, I want to ramble a little bit each day about our children's lives and my life. And hopefully it's those things that are insignificant enough you wouldn't hear in conversation but you just had to be there- a part of the family. Today was a cleaning day- Saturday chores. It always feels good to clean. And i love how the kids get wild when the vacuum comes on and they want to help so they start pulling out every broom they can find. The moment of tenderness and bonding came though as I was just finishing up vacuuming the upstairs. I turned off the vacuum and so I could actually hear what the kids were saying while they were playing alongside me. I caught on to their game of pretend- Lucy was some grown up and Willie was being her puppy. Lucy explained that the puppy's name was Pulley. (lol.) I can't remember how the pretending game developed exactly, but I remember suggesting to Lucy to find a ball so she could play fetch with her puppy. I thought it would be funny to see Willie run after a ball like a dog, so I stared to help her ook for a ball. Not finding one very quickly, I suggested to use a squeaky, rubber duck. I took the first threw and told Pulley to Go Fetch. My inclination was confirmed, as it was super cute to watch Willie bark, and scamper on all fours off to fetch the duck. What surprised me was what was next. I assumed he would just get to the duck, pick it up and bring it back (try and throw it back to us actually, is something I thought he would try to do). But I watched him down next to the ground struggling to do something. Then I realized what he was dong when he turned around. He was trying to pick up the duck with his teeth. How cute he was bringing the duck back, still on all fours, with the toy in his mouth, just like a dog. Good puppy! ;) Well, I didn't do a good job remembering any other fun stories from today- this is my first day trying to remember to remember these little things. ;) So, that's your story for today. And here's a picture, I'll try and include one picture. I remember Lucy talking on the phone with you about all three of us dressing up as fairies. I know you had a hard time understanding her, and I had to explain what she was talking about. Well, here is a picture from that day that she was referencing to in her brain as she talked to you.
I have a daughter who is totally into the whole frilly, pink, princess everything toddler scene. Totally into it. Although I went through an anti-pink phase in younger years, I've come to embrace the femininity of that world, even love it. But being an athlete for years, I like to think I'm a very tough pink girlie. I know some consider running as barely even a sport (which I totally disagree with), we got those comments all the time from other teams, but that's an argument I won't carry out here. Anyway, getting to the point, when a friend mentioned this book that her relative is publishing, I thought it was totally cute and very creative. It's about Sport Princesses. Go check it out and look at the cute characters. I might also add, wanting to publish books myself someday, I was totally inspired and awed (and envious! jk ;) of this great success. You go girlfriend!
