Kiersten’s Blog

I have never been one for pets.  Neither has Taylor.  We’ve been married for 7 years and never even had a fish.  The only pets we have are unwanted pests, but we won’t talk about that here or now.  Anyway, London has been asking for a pet.  Our neighbors have two dogs that my kids love to visit, but only when the dogs are behind the fence.  Both kids are terrified of them, but they love them from a distance.  Ashton knows their names and has to go visit them every day.  London even told me while we were on vacation that she missed “her” dogs.  She’s been bugging me more and more lately about getting a pet.  She really wants a dog (even though they scare her and she won’t admit it) but I’m sure she would settle for anything.  That brings me to yesterday.  We had just arrived home from somewhere and we found a black fuzzy caterpillar in our garage.  London promptly picked it up and told me that it was her pet.  She carried it into the house and I convinced her to take it into the back yard.  On a shelf, she built a make-shift home, complete with leaves and such.

She put “Catty” in his home and got a little upset that he wasn’t staying there.  Catty ended up on the ground, but that was okay with her.  She was so excited to have a pet and kept saying, “My first pet!  Catty is my first pet!”

looks like Catty got stuck in a spider web

We got up this morning and London’s first order of business was to go downstairs and check on Catty.  At first she couldn’t find him, but then she spotted him on the grass and was happy he had found a nice place to hang out.  Later she couldn’t find him again and exclaimed, “My first pet and I already lost him!”  Taylor told her that Catty was probably moving into his chrysalis and would soon be a butterfly.  That calmed her down and now she’s keeping her eyes out for any chrysalis-looking objects.  Maybe in a couple of weeks we’ll run across Catty again, but instead of calling him Catty, she’ll have to call him “Butty.”

We were lucky enough to have Taylor’s spring break fall on the same week as London’s (and my mom’s) so we could take a trip together!  When we realized that it would work out, we decided on the Grand Canyon and Zion.  We found out later that it was fee free week.  Bonus!  My aunt was kind enough to take care of my grandma for the week so we could spend the vacation with my parents.  They left on Saturday and hit a couple of other national and state parks in Utah before meeting up with us.  We left from Hemet on Tuesday and headed toward the south rim of the Grand Canyon, stopping in Lake Havasu for lunch.

We had a picnic under the London bridge.  London was quite excited to be there.

It was a nice break in the drive.

We didn’t stop long, and continued our drive toward the big hole.  We made it to the hotel before my parents and geared up for the prospect of a fun day the next day.

Until now, bed time at our house has been pretty routine.  Annoying, but routine.  Just today I was talking with some friends about putting my kids to bed at 7.  They were shocked that I could get them to go to sleep so early.  That has been their bed time since Ashton was born and London stopped napping.  We read books, read scriptures, brush teeth, say prayers, and go to bed.  Pretty straight forward.  The kids did well with the routine.  London has typically been more demanding with her routine.  As soon as she’s in bed, she needs music on.  Then once we leave her in bed, she yells for us to come back and rub her back.  Annoying, but it only takes 30 seconds or so before she’s okay with us leaving.  Of course, she calls us back frequently.  Really annoying.  But it’s nothing compared with today.

This afternoon, Ashton refused to nap.  A week ago I took the side off of his crib.  He has been sleeping mostly on the floor since then because that seems to be what he likes.  But he has been in his room and he has stuck to his routine.  Until today.  Right now (at 8:24, again his bedtime is 7) he is at my locked door screaming because I won’t stay in his room until he falls asleep.  He was bothering London because she refuses to sleep with her door closed so he just goes in there.  Now she won’t go to sleep and is crying because he’s screaming.  Oh, and she’s yelling at me to rub her back.  And as for me, I think I’m going to go insane.  I’m not kidding.  I want to cry and scream and pull my hair out at the same time.  This better not be an ongoing thing.  Tomorrow I’m buying a doorknob cover for Ashton’s door.  At least then he wouldn’t be able to get out of his room.  And now she’s yelling at me to turn her music back on.  I just told them that I’m locking myself in my room and am not coming out until everybody is asleep.  I think I’ll probably be the first one.  And now I have two screaming kids at my door.  Lovely.  And just because you wanted a play-by-play, London is now telling me that she needs to go to the bathroom.  Good night.

And on that note, just re-iterate what a mean mom I really am, yesterday London said to me, “Mom, you’re not a bad guy, you’re just mean, right?”

London didn’t have school today so I told her to choose something that she wanted to do and we would do it.  She chose the zoo.

Paleontologists

When Ashton is around, we can’t say the word “zoo” or he starts going crazy, wondering when we are going.  Needless to say, he was excited this morning when we told him where we were going.  He dug through his drawer to find his Madagascar t-shirt and proceeded to ask us about all of the animals we would see, namely the ducks.  Yes, my son goes to the San Diego Zoo so that he can see ducks.  They are his favorite of all the animals.  I guess I don’t need to buy a zoo membership (or ask for one for Christmas) next year because it seems I would get the same response from him by just driving over to the lake with a loaf of bread.  Even so, we had a great time.

I can't stop laughing when I look at this one!

I was surprised at how well-behaved my children were.  It was a beautiful day and we had a fun time together.  Of course, Ashton’s favorite part was seeing the ducks, and I will say that I was pretty excited to see all of these baby ducks.

I’m waiting for the day that giraffe delivers her baby.  She’s 2 weeks overdue, poor thing.  There was a baby hippo born about a month ago, which we weren’t able to see, and we saw baby monkeys too.  Spring is in the air!  I hope our next outing is this fun, and I hope my kids don’t come home next time as cranky as they were when we got home today!

We made it home just in time for London’s dance recital this evening.  I promised her that I would let her wear make-up, which she has been more than excited about ever since I told her.  I put her hair up and started on her makeup.  Apparently I don’t have the right stuff because she was pretty mad that she couldn’t see the glitter.  I used shimmer, what can I say?  After she had a bit of eyeshadow on (which, to her, wasn’t nearly enough) I added some mascara.  I thought she would like it.  I was wrong.  She cried and cried and whined and whined that her eyelashes were too long.  I’m pretty sure I won’t hear that complaint in 10 years from now when she wants them to be longer.  I knew she had long beautiful eyelashes, but I had forgotten how gorgeous they really are!  So, lesson learned: buy glitter eyeshadow and never use mascara on your 5-year-old again.

As for the recital, it was fun!  London did great, although she still has a ways to go as dancing is definitely not her strong point.  She does love it, though.  They danced to Working Song from Enchanted, which I thought was ironic because we saw Amy Adams at Disneyland today.  Weird.

Yesterday on our way to pick up Taylor from work, London and I had the following conversation:

London:  Mom, I want to go to Disneyland tomorrow.

Me:  You have a dance recital tomorrow.

London:  We can go after dance.

Me:  It will be too late.

London:  Okay, we can go before dance.

Me:  You have school.

London:  Mrs. Bradshaw and Danica are both going to Disneyland tomorrow.  I really want to go!

Me:  Are they going after school?  Because remember, you have a dance recital after school.

London:  I don’t know if they’ll be at school tomorrow.  But they’re going to California Adventure to watch World of Color and have a picnic with the princesses.

Me:  World of Color is at night and you have a dance recital at night.

London:  Maybe we can go during the day.

Me:  You have school.

London:  We can miss school.  I really want to go to Disneyland tomorrow.  Please can we go to Disneyland tomorrow?

Me:  (Laughing)

London:  Don’t make fun of me!

Me:  I’m not making fun of you.  I just think you’re cute, that’s all.

London:  But Mom, you didn’t answer my question.  Can we please go to Disneyland tomorrow?

Me:  Okay.

London:  REALLY?!  YAY!!!

What London didn’t know (and why I thought the conversation was so funny) is that I had just decided that morning that I would take the kids to Disneyland today.  She had no clue I was even considering it, but Bree (my BFF from high school) called me last week and told me that they were planning a last minute trip to Disneyland this weekend and wanted to know if we could join them.  I didn’t think we would be able to, but that was before I knew that they opened at 8:00 this morning.  Getting there early gave us time to play and make it home in time for dance.  So we went and had a great time!

I had a conversation with London’s speech pathologist today.  She showed the video of London’s naso-endoscopy to a couple of different surgeons and they both said that her nasality is not severe enough that they will operate.  They’ll keep an eye on it and I’m sure we’ll have to go back in the future for another naso-endoscopy, but for now, she’s okay.  Hopefully everything will continue to grow with her and she will never need another surgery, but we won’t know that until she’s fully grown.  For now, she can keep going to speech therapy and we don’t have to worry about another surgery any time soon!

London has spent the better part of her weekend working on paper clothes for some paper animals.  I guess she’s kind of making her own paper dolls, except she can’t change their clothes because she glued them on.  She came home from school on Friday with a bunch of little pictures of animals that she cut out, then decided to dress because their “nibbles” were showing — I mean because they weren’t modest.

She drew, cut out, and glued on little clothes for all of them.  Apparently there was a bride and a groom so there are hats with veils, some crowns, and some dresses that say love on them.  She’s such a creative little girl.

On another note, today she said to me (when she was mad at me for not getting what she wanted), “Someday you’re going to be someone’s grandma and you’re going to be a mean someone’s grandma.  But only if they whine.”  That’s right.  I’m only mean if you whine.  And there has been a lot of whining around our house lately.  She got quite hurt at school on Thursday.  They were on their first field trip to a puppet show at Balboa Park.  After the show, they ate their lunches and played on the playground.  She tripped on some stairs and bit through her bottom lip.  I can imagine that would hurt quite a bit.  It was pretty gnarly that day and she couldn’t really open her mouth at all to eat or anything.  It really was sad.  It’s still a little swollen on the inside but healing up quite well.  Anyway, I think her pain has contributed to her whiney-ness lately.  Although she was in such a sad state on Thursday it was kind of nice to have a bit of silence.  If you know London at all, you know that she does not stop talking.  Ever.  Except Thursday.  She couldn’t talk.  Yeah, that’s not an issue at all anymore.

And one more thing, today I was busy with some things.  I walked into London’s room and found this:

Please excuse the unmade bed.

After telling London to not stick her head between the the bars in the bannister, she asked why.  This is how our conversation went:

Me: Your head could get stuck and then you could hang by your head and die and I wouldn’t want that to happen because I love you very much and want you to be around for a very long time.

London: And I want you to be around for a very long time and you’re almost 40 and when you’re 40, that means you’re getting old.  But Papa is 50 so he’s older than you.

*I’m only 32.

Taylor was gone Friday night so I let London stay up late and watch a movie with me after Ashton went to bed.  I told her we were going to watch the “real” Alice in Wonderland (you know, the one with Johnny Depp).  She loves the cartoon one so I thought she would like it.  I had never seen it either.  I was right, she loved it.  It was fun to spend some one-on-one fun time with just her.  She was so excited about it that she went into her room and came out dressed as Alice, head to tow (she told me she didn’t have a black bow so she had to wear the red one).

On another note, today London was telling me that there are three kinds of “twos.”  She’s right.  There’s too, two, and to.  I was amazed to know that she knew how to spell each one and knew exactly what each one meant.  She told me she didn’t learn that at school.  I have no idea where she did learn it.  Did she just pick it up somewhere?  She is one smart, smart little girl.  Even now, she’ll probably get your and you’re more correct than most people.  (It drives me nuts that people use your all the time instead of you’re, but maybe that’s just me.)