Preschooler

Big month for Little T. First she turned 3 and then the next morning, off she marched to preschool wearing a ginormous Lightning McQueen backpack.

She was pretty excited about her first day. She was all smiles (the squinty variety that she saves for official photo ops). I didn't get many photos unfortunately. We were kinda rushed. 

And this one that I took at school turned out to be a video. I'm still getting the hang of my new phone. 

She fell right in line as soon as the whistle blew. She's been getting lots of practice at being a good little student visiting at Kai's school. I've been volunteering there one morning a week and Teia has been my assistant. There were no tears. I was so proud of her. We did a few visits the weeks before and made her a little photo book about her school so she was pretty ready. The second day she was a little more clingy but we made it through. Or maybe she is just saving the drop off fireworks for when Grandma has gone home and I have my hands full and my timelines tight dropping her off first and then Kai. Let's hope not. 

Picking her up has been lots of fun. She is SO happy to see me, all full of hugs and love. And she has been sweetly telling her teachers "I had lots of fun playing with you. I'm going home now. Bye bye!" Then she adds in a dramatic whisper "I have to be quiet so I don't wake up my fwiends" (I pick her up during nap time). 

If you can believe it, there is another Teia in her class (spelled Thea). And the two T-girls seem to have hit it off. Tonight Teia told me she'd be playing with Thea tomorrow. As we walked to the car on Monday she laughed to herself saying "Teia and Thea!"

No more toddlers at our house....sigh....

Happy Birthday T- Girl!

Children's birthdays are exhausting. I am always just wiped out after celebrating one. I guess its all the prep, build up, planning and managing excitement levels so that they're at an optimum, but not too high level. So why am I still up blogging after we've just celebrated T's 3rd birthday? Well last year I think it took me a month or so to find the time to blog her a 2nd birthday post and I just didn't want that to happen again. And its been 6 weeks or so since my last blog, meaning blogging time is just not going to materialize if I just wait for it.

And look at this little face....who wouldn't want to celebrate it til the last hours of her special day?

She had a great day, starting with waking up to her newest animal friend, a ride on horse complete with realistic sound effects. Teia was smitten. She liked him so much she didn't even ask about that real kitten. Then it was off to the mall to visit Build-A-Bear in the hopes of building a pink cat. 

Grandma is here visiting so that made this birthday outing that much more special. 

Success!

Things got a little dicey before nap time when Teia was tired and really ready to open the rest of her presents. She really wanted to get this party started. But somehow I managed to convince her that napping was a good idea. But as soon as she popped up from that nap and her little feet hit the floor she was sprinting to the pile of presents not-so-well concealed in our bedroom. We managed to convince her to wait just a little more so that Daddy could get home and see her open at least one gift on her birthday. The moment he walked in the door she shouted "its Party Time!" (really, she did), and all bets were off. 

Here she sports some of her gifts:

I just love it that she loves her pink glittery cat purse AND her blue angel fighter jet. No pinning this girl down!

For both of our kids, the term "birthday party" really equates to those few short moments of singing Happy Birthday and gazing at the flickering flames of the birthday candles, then EATING CAKE. To them, that is what it is all about. 

Teia couldn't wait and sat at the table decorated to her specifications: cat cupcakes and Dora decor......

Mind you, she hasn't yet eaten one of those homemade (with hidden vegetables) cat cupcakes. She also requested a cake for the candles and singing part and ended up eating that instead. Good thing Kai, Grandma and Daddy were willing to consume my work! (I did have help with the decorating part). 

And here she is waiting for that cake....don't get between a 3 year old and her berfday cake!

And here is a little more photo overkill:

She went to bed a pleased Peach after a happy day. As for me, I'll miss her being 2 (really, I will). But being part of this process of growing her up and watching the little person she is and continues to evolve into is an exciting journey. Happy Birthday Little One xoxoxoxo.....

First Day of Kindergarten

It.went.great!

All the research and school tours, interviews, applications, meetings, sleepless nights and second, third, fourth and fifth guessing...we picked the right school :-)

Kai was confident and excited to go to Kindergarten today. He jumped in there with the other kids, checking out Gingersnap, the class guinea pig. His wonderful teacher told all the families we could make our plans with our kids about when we wanted to leave. We decided that Mommy and Teia would leave when it was time for Kai to sit at circle. So as Miss Morgan called out "Children, please find a space on the rug!" Kai turned and said "its time for Mommy and Teia to leave." So we gave him a kiss and were sent packing.

Teia was a bit bummed about not being able to stay so I treated her to a trip to the Zoo. Once we got back to pick up Kai we heard that he'd had a great morning. He even comforted a friend who was sad b/c his Dad left. Tonight at bed time Kai told us his friend would be brave tomorrow and not scared anymore. In fact, he talked about Kindergarten quite a bit tonight. All signs of a great day! Kai's teacher Miss Morgan was very impressed with how Kai took the first day in his stride. She told me "if the rest of the year is anything like today, the sky is the limit for Kai." We already knew that but now his teacher does too. Yippeee!!!!!!!! doesn't really describe how that makes me feel but will have to do.

We know there'll be bumps along the way this year and challenges to navigate but as Miss Morgan told all the parents "beginnings are very important" and it seems like Kai is off to a good one.

It was a wonderful day but ended on a bit of a challenging note. Kai fell off our hammock and despite our best child proofing efforts, managing to find the part of the metal hammock stand that is not covered in foam with his brow and will be sporting a boxer's shiner to school tomorrow.

And Music Lion went missing.... Kai made an odd comment to me this afternoon that Music Lion had run away. I didn't think much of it until he was nowhere to be seen at bedtime and Kai wasn't too happy about it. He told Greg he hid ML in an orange tree so Greg and I were out in the dark with flashlights combing our front and back yard looking for the irreplaceable, much molested lion (and hoping to avoid any creepy crawlies). We had just about given up when Greg found him in the kitchen recycling. All is well in our little world.

The First Tooth

Almost on the eve of kindergarten, Kai lost his first tooth: left central incisor on the bottom. It was the first tooth he ever cut, on December 30th, 2007 and the first one to go, on August 30, 2012 (his Uncle Meeko's 40th birthday nonetheless!). Yes, I really do have that info recorded in his baby book. My data keeping has slipped over the years and Teia's tooth chart has dates on it that say something like "cut this one sometime in the spring...." Poor second baby.

This afternoon I went outside to call Kai in to get ready for gymnastics and he called over to me "Mommy, my tooth fell out!" At first I didn't believe him. It isn't time for that already is it? I walked over to check and sure enough, there was a tidy little hole where his perfect little baby tooth used to be. Wow. For some reason I was clearly blown away by this little milestone. Maybe b/c it was so unexpected, especially amid all the Kindergarten hubbub and hype.

Then he looked at me earnestly and asked "How old am I now?" It might seem an odd question but you see the universe helped me out here in preparing our little man for what might have been rather traumatic. I had not given any thought to letting him know that one by one his pearly whites were going to dislodge themselves from his mouth. Mostly b/c I still assumed he was way too young. Last week at gymnastics a little girl was proudly showing off the gaping hole in her mouth where she lost one of her front teeth. Kai was very interested so I quickly explained to him that she was 6 and that when he was 6 he'd start to loose his teeth too. Hence, the question. Kai has been excited to turn 6 since about the day after he turned 5. So I had to backpedal and explain that even 5 year olds could lose teeth too!

The next order of business was to find the little tooth which Kai wasn't sure if he had swallowed. Amazingly enough I spotted the tiny little thing in the grass and picked it up. Yes! He'd have something for the tooth fairy and I'd have his first tooth. He carefully laid it under his pillow and we headed to gymnastics with Kai enthusiastically exploring the new little hole in his mouth.

We saw the same little girl who had lost her tooth and showed her Kai's one-tooth-less smile. Her response, "Awesome!" Kids can be so great. She wanted all the gory details so she asked Kai "did you pull it out or did it fall out?" Kai replied, "it wiggled out."

The tooth fairy decided to come early to our house, while Kai was at gymnastics. Knowing our little lad, he would lie awake most of the night waiting for that tooth fairy so we decided to spare him some of the suspense. He came home to find a 5-spot under his pillow. He was quite excited and stuffed it into his piggy bank. I heard $5 is the going rate for first teeth but that the rate goes down as the tooth count goes up. I don't think Kai minded how much it was, he was just pretty excited about this hard evidence that he really is growing up. All of a sudden he does look much older....just in time for kindergarten.

Redefining Adventure

Last week we had a mini-vacation/Fennell adventure. I found myself thinking about how much my concept of "adventure" has changed. Adventures used to involve trips to far away and unfamiliar places, or epic physical challenges often involving the wilderness and sometimes even a little bit of danger. Now a 4 day RV trip with 2 intrepid little travelers feels adventure-ful enough.

You see, I have found parenting to be quite an adventure. Then when you take parenting on the road in a "sort of roughin' it" kind of way it becomes even more so. Brushing teeth is already an adventure with our two, so if you throw in non-potable water, the teeniest little bathroom sink and one hand towel to last all week, you have yourself an adventure.

If you're familiar with our rental RV record, you'll also appreciate how adventurous we were to try it yet again. We have one scraped side panel and one flood to our credit so far. We were hoping this would be third time a charm. And it pretty much was, although I think there was some RV karma going on. More on that in a moment.

We had a slow start to our trip. As our somewhat questionable RV rental place decided to tell us at the last minute that an insurance rider was required. This was our first clue that you get what you pay for. So we didn't get on the road until late. The kids did a great job of waiting. They were just so excited. Nothing was going to rain on their parade, even a 3 pm departure time heading north, right into LA traffic. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, I guess.

We tried to avoid traffic a little bit by looping East and then back toward the ocean as we headed north. We did avoid some of the traffic but not 107 degree heat. The RV was beeping at us in an unsettling kind of way periodically during our trip but managed not to break down. We stopped at a gas station along the way where Teia (who is in the process of potty training) decided for the first time that she would like to use a big toilet instead of her potty that we had packed along for these occasions. Up until this point she'd been a potty-only girl and had no interest even in using the toilets in our house. But here she was at a gas station insisting on using the men's toilet (b/c the women's was out of order). I did say it was an adventure! 

After a short stay on a very hot beach at Pt. Mugu we continued north. Our next stop was Morro Bay where we stayed for 2 nights and had a very welcome day w/o driving. 

Morro Bay was lovely and cool and misty. Something we haven't experienced in awhile. It even rained a little our first night. I have become so unaccustomed to rain that I actually lay awake the first night trying to figure out what the sound was! And then I swore I felt at least 5 or 6 tremors while lying awake with my little sleeping Teia curled up beside me. Teia and I got the back bed while Daddy and Kai scored the upper bunk. Teia was quite envious though and climbed up to visit whenever she could.  

We banked on our RV having a functional battery and dry camped our first 3 nights. Well, we were out of power faster than you can say ZAP! So we had to run the noisy generator more than we would have liked. Eventually that thing stopped working too. But despite some RV inconveniences, the kids really enjoyed camping. They loved the fire and they loved helping with the camping chores, like getting water. Teia was very vocal about how much fun she was having "I'm so excited to be...(insert whatever we happened to be doing at that moment)." Kai was similarly enthralled with the whole experience and we loved listening to (and trying to answer) all the questions he asked us on the trip...about crickets, sparks escaping from the fire, how the RV worked. 

Here Daddy and Teia do a little clamming. It was unsuccessful but they had fun anyway. And got messy. Little kids like to get dirty but Teia seems to have a particular affinity for it. And seeing as she is kind of afraid of showers, she wasn't keen on washing up during our week away. Let's just say it made for pretty brown bath water the night we got home!

For the last leg of our trip we headed back South which was a bit of a bummer. I had really enjoyed the change in scenery (and weather) as we had begun to encroach on Northern California (my internal compass definitely seems to point north). We headed inland to stay at Lake Casitas, up in the mountains SE of Santa Barbara, very hot but with a water park for the kids. Our trip there was not without adventure as our RV decided a few times that it was tired and wanted to slow down, in traffic and with Greg's foot pressed to the floor. We discovered that pulling over and turning it off and on rectified the problem. A least until the next time it got tired. Recall the RV karma. But we made it to the campsite, parked it, hooked up to an electrical outlet and fired up the A/C (we were back in 100 degree heat). Greg had been on serious resource management the entire trip so it was nice for him to be able to relax and let the thing suck up the juice it needed. Kai was fascinated by the various ways that this nifty little house on wheels could procure power. 

So we finished up our camping trip with fun in the water park, another campfire with marshmallows (which the kids definitively prefer cold), crickets, and a morning bike ride before braving traffic yet again for the long, long, long drive home. Oh, and the RV did get us back safely. It just made us sweat it a bit...karma. 

Animal Lover

Our little Teia bean has not yet fallen prey to princesses and tutus, although I know it can still happen. She seems to prefer cars, trucks, airplanes, trains and most of all, animals. This girl loves her animals. Lucky for her our trip to Canada provided many opportunities for Teia to commune with her animal friends. She got to be a dog walker. Which was pretty cool for Teia b/c she often reminds us "Mommy, we walk dogs and we carry cats." She has yet to carry a cat but walking a dog was a pretty big thrill for her.

And she rode horses:

A couple times!

Teia has ridden a few times before but riding in a real field with ups and downs and even a little trotting was quite exciting for her. She is a real natural in the saddle already. I wonder if we should start the horse fund now. 

Daddy even got to ride! I think he is a natural too. I rode for the first time in years and remembered why I was a horse nut as a young person. I am looking forward to when Teia is old enough to take riding lessons cause I think I'll take them with her. Maybe Buds will join us too. 

The horse rides were courtesy of my old friend Dan. Teia managed to find chickens to play with at his house too. She was quite excited to take home some eggs for lunch. 

At Auntie Karen's house Teia got in some more Doggy time. 

And our trip ended with Teia hanging out with a little lost bird at the San Diego airport. 

One day we will get a pet for the kidlets but for now our little animal lover will have to make do with all of her stuffy animal friends. I dug out my ol' childhood friend Easter Sunday, a stuffed donkey hand made by my mom. Teia was thrilled and now "rides" Easter Sunday into the crib for all naps and bedtime (ala mom or Dad lifts Teia atop the stuffed donkey into her crib -must get a video of that!) Unfortunately, Easter Sunday is nearly as old as I am and he has lost a few body parts since becoming a resident of Teia's crib. Now I know when I hear shrieks from her room to go grab a needle and thread!

Revisiting Childhood

More on our trip to Canada (it was pretty jam packed with adventures!) While we were staying at Granddad's house we visited a few of my childhood haunts, places I haven't been to in a very long time. It is pretty cool to experience these places again through the eyes of your children. And to have the interesting perspective of your parents and see why they took you there so much!

Our first few days in Ontario were unseasonably cool but it was perfect weather for a visit to Bronte Creek Provincial Park. This is a pretty awesome place, with everything from animals and a play barn, some history, hiking trails, and a man-made lake for swimming to skating, sledding and skiing in the winter. We spent many fun filled days there as kids: collecting frog spawn in the river and then raising our own tadpoles, trying to catch garter snakes in the forest, visiting the Belgian horses who used to like rubbing noses with our dog Chimo, taking Chimo for long walks on the Trillium Trail, swimming, skating and sledding in the winter, playing in the barn and petting the animals, having family get togethers and BBQs there. The place is a virtual buffet of happy childhood memories for me. So when Granddad mentioned taking the Littles there I jumped at the chance.

It was pretty cool to see the old red play barn had stood the test of time and looked exactly as I remembered it. That was, until we stepped inside. Gone were the piles of hay that Mike, Karen and I jumped into from the rafters and the ropes we used to fly around the barn on. Now it is carpeted with mats instead of hay and all the jumping places are safely fenced in with the exception of one or two designated areas, oh and they had wifi. Times have sure changed. But Kai and Teia didn't know how it used to be and they loved it as is.

They couldn't get enough of the suspended bridges and I think they would have stayed all day if we'd had the time. Too bad we didn't b/c we pretty much had the place to ourselves. It was so nice to have a break from the crowds we've grown used to the last few years. 

Granddad had fun too!

Pretty cool to get some photos on the old red tractor that we used to play on as kids. Granddad tells me there is a photo somewhere of us kids with one of our Nans on this tractor. I will have to scan and post it if we can find it. There is something really reassuring about some things not changing and still being there 30+ years later when you go home to visit. Even if it is just an old red tractor and an old red barn :-)

After our lovely day at Bronte Creek we went to Canada's Wonderland. Now that is a place that has changed since my last visit. Wonderland is a place I grew up with. First going with my family and riding the tamer rides and then getting the keys to the car and spending long days there with friends riding every crazy, adrenaline-rush ride we could wait in line for and then staying after dark for the concerts and fireworks too. Lots of great memories. The Wonderland of 2012 is the Wonderland of the early 90's (when I last visited) on some major steroids. I could not get over how many ginormous roller coasters they have now. The sound of them was almost deafening. "Wonder Mountain" as its called used to be a fairly impressive feature of the park. Now it is hardly noticeable for all the enormous structures surrounding it. 

Little Kai buddy was a little intimated as we made our way to KidVille, with the calmest rides for the littlest visitors. He told us several times "I don't want to ride that!" But once in KidVille, our kidlets had quite a good time. 

Kai may look terrified riding "Taxi-Jam" but in fact, he had the biggest grin when it was over and was handing out knuckles all round. And he rode it a second time. So don't let the photo deceive you! He also rode the Ghoster Coaster, one I remember riding as a kid. Granddad admitted to being scared himself and Kai was not so interested in a second time on that one. So I think we'll stick to the smaller thrills for now. 

The old cars were a major hit, especially b/c it was quiet enough for T and K to get their own cars and wave madly at each other whenever they passed by. Teia's favorite ride of the day was, by far, the carousel. She was able to indulge her horse-love and wave like the Queen.

Maybe next time Greg and I will leave the Littles with Granddad and try out some of the more psychotic looking rides ourselves...I'm sure I've still got it in me!