How to Write a Novel: Acquire a Toddler

Let me tell you about my daughter. You all know that Katie is a very intelligent, creative kid. Well, her imagination is one to rival the best. So, if you were ever planning to write a novel, here are a few ideas.

*Handing me an outlet cover* "Here Mom, I found the jewel of candor."

*From under an empty plastic bin* "Mom! Mom! Mom! We've been trapped by the Man of Cotasta!"

"Mom. You need to come with me. We need to save the cup of Weselton!"

So, the other day, the lever on the downstairs toilet broke, and we had to replace it. Since I also had a couple of empty pots I wanted to find plants for, we made a family trip to Lowe's. Let me tell you right now, this is officially now our go-to hardware store.

Tell me this isn't the coolest shopping cart you've ever seen. I dare you.

Well, after we got home, Mike went in to replace the lever, and let Katie come in to watch, since she loves learning about anything and everything. And, fortunately, they were successful.

A couple of hours later, after Katie used the aforementioned newly-repaired toilet, she came out of the bathroom bouncing up and down and exclaimed, "Dad! When I pushed the button, it made a noise, and you're a genius!" Katie is so good for our self-esteem.

Other than that, we've had a pretty good week. Most of all, however, it was MY BIRTHDAY!!!!

Yeah, it was pretty chill. We wanted to go out and do something, but not anything too stressful, so we grabbed some snacks and went back to the zoo. Because, let's face it, the zoo is the coolest place any of us has ever heard of.

And now you also know how to find clean water!

I saw some other lady ride the lion with her kids and it just looked awkward.

After the zoo and some sleeping in the car (I plead the 5th) Katie finally let me open my presents. They had all been sitting on the kitchen table for a few days, and I teased her quite a bit about pretending to open them early. She was not happy with me when I did that. I made out like a bandit. Pizza paddles! Bluetooth! More external storage for pictures! A YELLOW BELT! 

You know you're jealous.

And last but not least, Katie and Mike had picked out a rather amazing mousse-filled cake for me from Costco.

Can you tell who really made the decision of which cake to get?

I was not the only one who enjoyed the birthday cake.

Nor was Josh.

Yes, it was a good birthday. I even got free points on my healthy living chart. More on that later.

On . . . one of the other days last week . . . we went to the park! Okay, so that's not very different from normal. But because we live in the windy city, we brought along a kite!

I don't think we have any pictures where she was actually in the frame with the kite.

Peter was probably the best at it. Josh just wanted to throw the spool.

I think the one who had the most fun, though, was Mike. Even after the kids decided they'd rather play on the playground or dig in the dirt, he was trying to get the kite to stay above the trees. It was pretty cute.

Besides that, we've just been kind of being on summer vacation. Mike doesn't go back to school until August 4, so we've got Daddy available for whatever we want to do. Therefore, the kids have been climbing all over him quite a bit. In fact, there has been a significant amount of shenaniganizing going on. Here's some evidence.

I put them in their Boston jumpers at the same time, but they wouldn't  hold still together. In fact, this is the clearest picture of Peter I got that day. Sorry, Abuelo.

Josh had to be tickled to hold even this still.

Katie and Mike went on a Popsicle date to the balcony.

Katie insisted on Daddy showing her what all the pieces of the body were and where they were supposed to go.

New church clothes. Can you say extremely, ridiculously cute?

  

They both have a strange obsession with getting into buckets. They've even gotten stuck before.

This is what having a brother really looks like. I just wish I were fast enough to get pictures when they're sitting on each other's faces.

Don't you just wish you could be here to hold them off of each other and clean up their messes for me? Oh, I do.

Now lastly, I feel obligated to explain the note above about the health challenge. See, Mike and I both want to get into better shape. And, you know, be healthier in general. So we made a health challenge for ourselves, based kind of on a points challenge I did with my sisters-in-law (Hi, Amy and Kliss!) a couple of years ago. Basically, we get points for exercising, eating servings of vegetables, drinking water, and reading our scriptures. And if we eat more than one dessert per day, we lose our veggie points. It's brutal.

BUT. Besides the birthday, which was kind of a binge day for me, I've been really good. I've been doing so much Zumba I don't know how to walk normally anymore, and Mike and I are almost getting competitive about how many servings of fruits or vegetables we get every day. I'm not posting the "before" picture on here, because then I would just get all sad. But if everything goes according to plan, then by Halloween (when the challenge ends) I should be significantly more awesome. And then I'll maybe post the "before and after" pictures. If you're lucky. We'll see.

But if Zumba and my kids don't get me into shape, I have no idea what will.

No-Longer-On-Vacation Post

Yeah, we've been home for about a week and a half. Alas.

Want to hear the best Katie-isms since we've been back? I've got some good ones.

Me: Do you want to go run around Target with me?
Katie: Actually, can we go inside the Target?

Katie (jumping between rugs): I don't want to step on the wood parts. Just the hairy parts.

Katie: What does Jesus look like?
Me: Like a very nice man who loves you very much.
Katie: Well, he has a beard.
Me: Sure, in the pictures he does.
Katie: And he has eyes.
Me: Yep.
Katie: And he has ears.
Me: Yep.
Katie: And he has bones.
Me: That's right.
Katie: And he has guts.
Me: . . . yeah . . .
Katie: And he has pits.
Me: . . .

So I should probably post about what happened the last little bit of vacation (read: AWESOME and also crazy) and also what has happened since (read: not very much).

The last Saturday of vacation, we decided to have a big family picture. Everybody in Mike's family was there, we all coordinated colors, and the kids were relatively happy (read: bribed). So, naturally, it was raining harder than usual for Washington. We were all set up in the front yard with my in-laws beautiful flowers and such, so we covered up the cute little bench we were using and hid in the garage for half an hour. Or maybe longer. Long enough for the boys to go inside and watch whichever world cup game was going on. Whenever it went from dumping water down to a gentle misting, we hurriedly ran out, uncovered the bench, and stuffed marshmallows into the mouths of all the children. And then when we heard heavy rain coming back, we went back inside. But I think the pictures are going to be really pretty. Stay tuned for the results when we get the pictures back from the photographer.

Besides that, there was a lot of food, a lot of staying up late playing games, a lot of cousins running around barefoot, and a lot of diaper changing. And good times were had by all.

Oh, except for that one time on Sunday morning when I slipped on the stairs and ended up breaking my tail bone. That was pretty cool. Especially because we were flying all day on Monday. Very cool.

But, you know, ibuprofen. I can almost sit down without cussing now.

And then, much to everyone's chagrin, we had to go home. I'm quite put out by this. So, we had to wake up ridiculously early (as far as vacation goes) to get to our flight, but we timed it perfectly. We got to the airport, hugged Grammy goodbye, checked in our bags, waited in line for security, then walked straight from security to the gate, where the flight was just starting to board. And since we're a family with small children, we walked straight up to the front of the line and got on the plane. And Katie watched the Lego movie, and Peter and Josh slept for at least an hour of the long flight, and everything was good. And we had a three-hour layover in Minneapolis, but that's not a big deal. We got some lunch, found the playground, and got to our gate just in time for what we thought would be boarding our flight.

Unfortunately, Chicago weather.

It turns out that there was a giant storm ripping through Chicagoland, and both O'Hare and Midway had a "ground stop," meaning they weren't letting anybody in or out of the airports because of all the crazy wind and lightning. So we had to wait for the news. "We'll be receiving our next update at the top of the hour, but please don't leave the gate area, in case anything changes." Gruaaaaggghghghg.

We ended up carrying our tired, hungry, cranky kids onto the plane rather hurriedly when the captain came and said, "They said we can go! Everybody on right now!" But, you know, three hours after we were supposed to leave. At least we were in rows next to each other and the kids were pretty good.

It took us a long time to land in Chicago because we had to go around this gigantic storm, so thick we almost couldn't see the city. And when we finally got to baggage claim (at 10 o'clock at night, mind you) they said that they couldn't get our bags out right then because they don't allow ground crews out when there's lightning, and there was definitely lightning. They even recommended people get their bags delivered the next day instead of waiting. But, you know, car seats are a little bit necessary. So we found a spot without too many infectious diseases and let our kids relax for a bit (not that they wanted to, the poor tired little munchkins) and hung out with our friend Cindy (who is a saint, by the way), waiting for them to get our bags. Luckily, they were really nice and passed out snacks while we waited, and it only took about an hour before they got the bags out.

So we loaded up, got all the kids, found all the car seats, and started walking to the parking garage. Which, it turns out, is a sadistic method designed by terrorists to drive the poor, unsuspecting American public completely insane. It took us a while to figure out where we were, even though Cindy had written down what level and aisle she parked on.

But we finally found our car, loaded up, took Cindy home, and got into our house at about 1 am Chicago time. Oh man.

The next morning, when Katie woke up in her clothes from the day before, she came into my bedroom and said, "Mom, is this our house?"
"Yes, sweetie, this is our house."
"And we're not on vacation any more?"
"No, vacation's all done. We're home now."
"Can we go on vacation again on Sunday?"

I wish, kid. I wish.

Since then, we haven't done a whole lot. I've re-stocked the kitchen, we've taken a lot of naps, and I reclaimed my garden from my friend. (Thanks, Katy! You're the best!) Oh, and we had a party with aforementioned friend and the sister missionaries for the 4th of July. It was pretty cool. I made this cake.

Inspired by Kliss's lovely baby shower cake. I had to do it.

But wait, there's more.

Oh yeah, that's how cool I am. The inside is a flag.

We had the party for lunch so that everybody could take a nap (on account of a significant amount of people at the party being under the age of four). And then, when it came time for fireworks, all the kids were way too tired to go out to some pretty fireworks show. So we put the boys to bed and took Katie out to do poppers and sparklers. But, turns out, those are less fun when it's all bright and sunshiny. So we pulled out the cars and did sparklers in the garage so it'd be dark.

Katie is the sparkler queen.

 So, you know, that was cool. And successful, I guess. Happy Independence Day.

Since then, what have we done? Hmm. . . the boys had their 15 month check-up. Turns out they've lost weight since they crawled on the scale while I was weighing our luggage to fly home. I think having a nasty stomach bug with explosive diarrhea may have had some negative effects. But Joshy's 22 lbs, 10 oz, and Peter's 18 lbs, 9 oz. Pretty skinny boys, even if it doesn't feel like it when you lift Josh. But they're 32" and 31" tall, so they're not exactly shrimpy. Mike's super tall genes are coming into play, thank heavens.

Besides that, we've not done much. We've changed a lot of poopy diapers, taken some naps while I still have Mike home from school, and tried to be slightly more healthy in our eating habits. Oh, and we went to the zoo today. Surprise.

That's totally Nemo and Dori in that tank right there. I'm not even kidding.

"Dad, can we go see the zebras now? Where are the zebras? NOW can we go see the zebras?"

Emus are hilarious.

And now, some random pictures of my life, for your enjoyment and sympathy.

"No, it's my binky!"

There is no diaper in that pile of wipes. No diaper at all. Little houdini right here.

"Mom, can you please come get the brothers? They're bothering me!"

I know you're jealous. My kids are flippin' adorable. Cheers!