Thirsty Monkey

Our little Maya decided she was thirsty and attempted to get the orange water bottle on the cupboard. She climbed up on the oven drawer handle, but soon found that she was stuck. She started to call out to get someone to help her down. We were more than willing to help, but just after we snapped a few photos.

Bye bye!!!

Our poor Maya has developed some allergies. Unfortunately, those allergies were triggered by our dog, Belle. While Belle has been an energetic, happy part of our family, we needed to put Maya's needs first.

Sadly, yesterday we sent Belle to live with someone else. A lady in Pennsylvania has a ranch and a soft spot for Scottish Terriers. So now Belle is off barking at horses and playing with other dogs.

Ethan is taking the news quite well. He said good bye to her without tears. He later asked if we could go visit Belle. (I hate those moments when you feel like you should lie to your kids.) I told him no, she's not our dog anymore. Besides, I don't know where in Pennsylvania or the name of the lady as our vet acted as an intermediary.

Maya might be more upset if she were not already distressed about 2 new teeth coming in. Poor princess. I found them this morning and realized that was the cause of her decreased appetite and slightly less cheerful demeanor.

What a Strange URL!!!!

Okay, so we've been catching some flack about the address to this blog. Yes, we love our two little ones with all our hearts. I may be a bit biased, but I think they are two of the most beautiful children I've ever seen. And yes, sometimes we get frustrated in parenting. If you've found a parent that doesn't, please introduce me to them so I can find out all their secrets.

But really, the name came from a little bit of an inside joke with some of our friends. One of our good friends, Cathi, is actually decendent from gypsies. No joke. That is her lineage. So, as is common with her friends and family, we joke that we will sell the kids to the gypsies, or ship them off to Cathi's for a while.

But we all know that it is an empty threat. As she has 3 daughters whom my children adore, it would be more of a reward than punishment to send them to her house for a day.

Our Princess is Walking, Kind Of

Yes, Maya is taking steps around the house, unassisted. She has been doing it for about a month. (Sorry I didn't update sooner.) She is still unstable though.

Often, she decides that it is just easier to scoot, so she drops to the floor and resumes her unique hobbling. She learned to stabilize herself on our wood floors when going to both knees resulted in a few face plants. Ouch!! So she started putting her right leg forward, using her arms and dragging the left leg a bit behind her.

This is also apparent in her walking. She tends to drag the left foot when she takes steps. So we're still working on the whole walking concept.

In other news, we've found that playing hide and seek can be quite dangerous for mommy. Maya and I were hiding under a blanket while Ethan did his Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum bit. Maya gets very excited when he does this. She launched herself backward and planted the back of her head against the bridge of my nose. Crunch!!!

Oh, the pain. Not just the instant watering of the eyes from the stinging, which I'm sure most parents have experienced. No, it takes quite a bit of pain to actually make me cry, and tears were running down my cheeks.

Maya was upset at seeing me cry so, being the sweetheart she is, she kept kissing me to try to help me feel better while I applied ice, lied down and tried to minimize bleeding and swelling. So two days out, I've got some bruising across the bridge of my nose, congestion, unrelated to allergies, and the constant throbbing pain through the sinuses. I still don't know if my nose was actually broken, as I was too cheap to pay $30 over the weekend to get it x-rayed, but it's not crooked, no leaking cerebral fluid or gray matter, so I figure why bother.

I'll just have to remember to place my face a bit more strategically in the future, or at least make sure it happens on a weekday.

Utter Disappointment

Poor Ethan!!! He has been so excited to see Wall-E ever since he saw a preview on the Playhouse Disney website. He has been asking to go see it for months, trying to save money, reminding us it was almost time, etc...

So, finally, the family loads in the car and drives to a local theatre. We fork out $30 for matinee tickets, a small popcorn and a drink. Of course the line is huge, but Ethan is so excited he can hardly sit still. We get seats and sit through some previews.

Next up, the short film. We laughed the whole way through, as it is one of the best short films I've seen from pixar. Ethan was laughing so hard we almost needed to shush him.

Then Wall-E starts. Ethan was a little confused by the setting, but got to see all of his favorite parts within the first 20 minutes of the movie. Then wham, the political message hit and continued through the rest of the show. Ethan was not very interested in the show anymore and asked repeatedly to go home.

I can't blame him one bit. Most of the humor is adult humor. Little kids don't pick up on the small nuances in love and attraction. While animated, it is not meant for small children, even less so than Ratatouille. But even Ethan couldn't miss that Earth was messed up, and wrong.

That brings me to the political statement. Okay, obviously I should have done a little more research about what the show was about. But I hate, repeat, hate being force fed a political message, whether or not I agree with it, especially after spending $30 of my own money to do so. We wanted to be entertained, not preached to.

We left with a bad taste in our mouths, and it wasn't from the popcorn. We all agreed that it was one pixar show that we would not be buying.

I feel especially bad for my poor four year old boy. This is one of the largest disappointments he has had to face and survived it with just a few minor meltdowns. Next time we will have to read all the reviews and spoilers to be sure that we don't waste our time, money or disappoint our little ones.

Power Outage Blues

Luckily, we live far enough east that we are not getting the full force of the vicious storms raging through the midwest. But, we do get some pretty big storms all the same. Our area has had 4 major power outages in the last 3 weeks.

One of these power outages lasted several days during 100 degree weather. Luckily we had a friend whose home did not lose power and they had an extra room. We got to escape the heat. Ethan enjoyed getting out of the heat but was a little more enthusiastic about the visit than I thought.

The latest of these power outages was earlier this week. The power had been out for over 20 hours and we left to run errands. When we returned, we were lucky enough to have power restored. I was excited to have air conditioning and a working refrigerator. Ethan was less than enthusiastic.

Ethan, aren't you glad that we have power again.

No, I wanted to go to Heather's house.

Lawyer in the making?

Ethan has been developing his negotion skills quite well. As most children do, he tries to manipulate the situation to his liking. His latest venture has been with items that we use as rewards and incentives.

Rather than just asking if he can play on the game cube or have a piece of candy, he's learned to phrase it in a way that sets him in the advantage.

"Mom, have I been good enough to get a peanut butter candy?"

"Mom, I helped you do laundry, can I play on the TV (game cube).

"Dad, I helped in the yard, can I play on the computer."

When he actually has been good, it is extremely difficult to tell him no.