Compromise

We are having friends over for a BBQ tonight and I foolishly attempted to bribe Samuel with fruit snacks (baby crack around here...) to help pick up the toys in the downstairs. After some rolling around on the floor and whining about how hard it is, he finally told me "Never mind mom, I'll just pretend this drink is a fruit snack."

I think you will go far, my lad!

I don't care about the Olympics

There. I said it, and I feel so much better. Call me un-american if you want, but I just can't muster up any enthusiasm for the event that is apparently keeping the world on the edge of its seat and causing people to stay up way past their bedtimes on work nights. After the Olympics came to Utah, I was one of the 12 people in the entire state who just didn't care, didn't watch the opening ceremonies and didn't attempt to get tickets to any events. The Curling (what the @#$% is Curling, by the way) event was held in Ogden in the Dee Events center, which is located right next to our old apartment! Did I care that I was that I didn't see the event that took place in our own backyard? Nope. Do I regret not moving into our car and getting in on the action of subletting our apartment for a million dollars for out of state Olympic-goers, like everyone else seemed to be doing? You betcha!

So, now that the Olympics are on every channel (and filling up our DVR so fast that it kicked out all the kids shows I recorded to give me much needed breaks from my children), I have managed to catch something about Michael Phelps, the swimmer. I gathered that he has a single mom, used to be bullied and has a body like a fish (which, admittedly, I can see how that might have inspired bullying, but seriously? In your faces, Michael Phelps bullies! Do you think any of them have admitted to their wives or friends that they used to cream the new Olympic hero? Anyway...) As far as I am concerned, he is the only Olympic competitor. I can honestly express admiration for the dedication it takes to get that far, but I still don't want to watch it. If there is no mystery hatch, Jack Bauer isn't saving the world or Dwight isn't doing something stupid, it just can't keep my attention.

My sentiments are mine alone, though. Jay has been in Med.-High Olympic mode. Once, I heard him upstairs clapping (although at the time, I thought he was banging the remote on the headboard. It's been losing battery power and is seriously annoying.) Don't feel sorry for me. I'm okay with this! Besides, I have been far too busy not getting my laundry done or my house cleaned. There are several spots on my kitchen floor that have been needing my attention for several days now. I almost wish I was an Olympic devotee because it might be an acceptable excuse for letting things slip, but I am going to be honest and just admit that I've been lazy. Want to see what we have been doing instead of everything else we are supposed to be doing?

Making Maps

Eating at Thaifoon

Playing in the water

Hangin' with molten chocolate cake (you can't see it, but trust me, it's there...)

Riding (terrorizing?) the new UTA Train that goes to Salt Lake.

A Happy Ending

Samuel was in charge of prayers last night and did pretty well until he concluded with "in the name of Jesus Christ, The End!"

Night, night

the big silver thing by his face is the plastic penny, the rest are probably in his hand...

Unlike his brother, who is the worlds best sleeper, putting Thomas down for a nap is always an interesting experience, and is almost always harder than putting him down for the night. I think he may have clued in that while he has to sleep, the rest of us are partying with play-dough and paint and markers and all the other things he has been banned from playing with because all he can do is make a colossal (usually un-clean-up-able) mess with them. Recently, he has been copying Samuel who is earning quarters for doing small jobs around the house, by asking for "quarneys" (cross between quarters, coins and pennies). We obliged by giving him a few pennies here and there and he won't put his coins in his pocket, but carries them around in his hot little hand. If there is a coin anywhere on the floor, our little truffle pig will find it. Most of the time he is still clutching his quarneys when it is time to sleep and so takes them to bed. I realize that any parent who reads this is probably flinching at the idea of their toddlers tenderly clutching a few pennies before they can go to sleep, but he is determined. I tried to take them away once and the length and volume of the resulting tantrum is not something I am willing to risk again. So far, no pennies have shown up in his diaper, so I am pretty sure that he isn't doing anything but carrying them. We got him some big (6 inch) plastic pennies, but he is not fooled and all that accomplished was that he wants the real pennies as well as the fake ones. I have tried trading him for a flashlight or something more traditional like a teddy bear, but it's the pennies that soothe him to sleep best.

He has recently added a complication to his bedtime routine by insisting on being covered with all the spare baby blankets he found in his room. There is his special green elephant blanket, his buzz/woody blanket, his Nemo blanket and last but not least, topped again by his spare special green elephant blanket (which was actually never supposed to leave the closet unless he lost his first one) in that order. He doesn't care that it's 100 degrees outside, he's comfortable. I hand him his newly filled sippy cup, which promptly hands back with the request for "more." We have learned that walking out into the hall for a moment fools him to thinking we have refilled his sippy in the bathroom sink and he accepts it smugly. Often, while he is distracted between the pennies and his sippy, I can shoot off a quick "I love you" and bolt. The problem is that he drops his pennies and can't find them in all the layers. All will be quiet until I hear hysterical shrieks of "my quarney" coming from his room. Finding his coins involves shaking his blankets and laying him back down and layering him up again. By this time, he thinks he should be done napping and requires more finesse to get him to stay there.

He doesn't really start protesting until I get to the door. "Hand?" "Hand?" comes a quivering little voice in between the gaspy breaths left over from the quarney crisis. Reaching for his hand, I will usually oblige with the bedtime song. During the song, he seems to revert a little. He gets a big, goofy smile on his face like he used to when he was a little baby and I sang to him. In reality, he is probably laughing at my lullaby attempts but he does calm down a little. The minute I loosen pressure on his hand to let go, he starts whimpering again. In the past I tried to come up with excuses to give him that required my immediate attention away from the room as that seemed to work better than just walking away.

Me: "Thomas, I have to go find daddy..."

T: "NO!!!"

Me: "Oh, I hear Sam. I'm going to go find Samuel, Okay?"

T: "NO!!!"

Me: "Mama's going to go to bed, okay? Night, night"

T: "NO, NO, NO...etc."

one last ditch effort:

Me: "I think I have to go find the kitty"

T: quivery voiced, yet reluctantly letting go of my hand "OK, Mama"

really?

Apparently he thinks that the cat needs me more than him at any given nap/bedtime and we have a 98% success rate with that excuse. He used to insist on sleeping with his shoes on and his baseball hat (on backwards because it's just more of a challenge, don't you think?) Once I tried to turn it forwards for him so he could lay on it easier, but I got cussed out. I started hiding these items before bed and he has recently stopped. He has pennies stashed all over the house though.

This mostly reminds me that parenting is whole lot of trial and error and figuring out what works for your own kids. Anytime we leave our kids with family or a babysitter, we usually have a ridiculous list of instructions to make the job easier. Often we get the "I've watched/raised kids before" vibe but we genuinely feel you need to know that if baby is fussing and won't take the pacifier, then you need to put it in his hand and let him put it in himself, then turn him at a 3/4 angle and pat his back while swaying back and forth. Or that toddler won't eat his cereal unless he has a blue spoon and won't drink any beverage without a straw. And so on and so forth. We used to call different baby sitters in the ward to spread the work around, but lately we have been sticking with one since it got exhausting trying to explain the random behaviors of our children and also how to work all three remotes for the TV before every gig. This babysitter knows and respects the sippy cup deception and how to work all the remotes. She's a keeper!

Looking back at this it appears that my children have me jumping through way too many hoops. I prefer to see them as battles I am not willing to fight. If you want, I can tell you about the battles everyday with Thomas about the shoes I will not help him put on and take off again every five minutes. Or with Sam when he tries to argue that he is not hungry for eggs, he is "only hungry for brownies MOM!!!" There's plenty more where that came from.

The bedtime ritual is definitely delicate dance that I'm not sure I would trade anyway. It's so very typical of my unique, spunky, determined little Thomas. It would be nice though if the routine transferred to beds other than his own. As it is, we haven't figured out what random order of things will get him to sleep anywhere but home.

So next time I ask any of you to babysit (and you know I will) you will understand the seemingly endless list of things my kids need to function. It's not because I am insanely picky. It's because they are.

I'm doing this for you. You're welcome!

We are going to be so taken care of in our old age...

FUTURE DOCTOR/SCIENTIST

Sam's recent obsession with how the body works led to the purchase of this informative book, which came complete with a skeleton puzzle. Now, every time I turn around I am getting told how my heart works and where my veins are, etc.

FUTURE OLYMPIC ATHLETE

Thomas has been creating his own parallel bars all week. Everytime he hops down he requires applause. He gets it.

Kinsel Family Reunion 2008

Grand Canyon/Sedona, AZ Trip

This year, in an unusual deviation from our normal family vacation (Disneyland in the off season), we travelled south with (sister) Mak and her daughter "princess" to join some of the extended Kinsel family in gorgeous Sedona, Arizona. Along the way, we swung by the North Rim of the Grand Canyon to show Jay just how Grand it really is and to take the first family picture we have had in 20 months (might as well do it right, right?)

Jay was impressed, I was impressed, Dad was impressed and Mak was impressed. When Sam asked where we were going, we had vaguely told him it was a "big hole in the ground". He was pretty excited to "stick his finger in it." When we arrived, he was rather disappointed that the finger sticking wasn't going to be as cut and dried as he thought. He was more impressed with the vast amount of puke that came out of him when we reached the top resulting from the combination of a long, windy road and a snack of string cheese and a capri sun. He is still talking about it. "Princess" kept insisting (while standing in the various lookout points) that she couldn't see the Grand Canyon, and Thomas was just happy to be allowed to throw pebbles off the side (although now that I think of it, that was probably illegal).

The highlight of the Grand Canyon ended up being the pinecones they found and then hucked at trees.

SLIDE ROCK NATIONAL PARK (Day 2)

Hi Mak! Although I am unwilling to post pictures of myself in swim gear, I have no qualms whatsoever about posting your hot bod! Thanks for being the swimsuit model for this section.

Slide rock is a series of natural sandstone waterslides that are really fun if you can keep the overeager 10 year old behind you from coming too close and slamming his heavily treaded swim shoes clad feet into your back. Also, if you can keep your bum from getting stuck in some of the, er, narrower passages as you are going down, that's great too. Surprisingly, the water was absolutely freezing. We made our way into the water inch by squeaking, gasping, chattering inch. It was definitely not what I expected from Arizona in 100 degree heat. There were some minor cliffs for jumping, which were far too much of a challenge for me, as well as some more major cliffs (60+ feet) which were barely enough to challenge my 14 year old cousin. It isn't that I am a total coward around heights, I just have a more healthy respect for the edges of cliffs.

Day 2 ended with steak cooked by dad, potatoes cooked by me, macaroni salad cooked by Albertsons, and a massive temper tantrum cooked up by both my darlings. After a great slide show put on by dad, in which we all discovered that young Aunt Lisa looked like Marsha Brady and young grandpa looks like a cross between young Jack Nicholson and Popeye, we packed it up for the night.

In the 3 minutes it took to get back to our hotel, Samuel had zonked out. I carried him up the stairs and tried to set him on his feet to dig out the key and open the door. He slumped to the ground, still asleep and stayed there. Thomas was very concerned about him and wouldn't come inside until Sam did.

While the three of us were doing this.....

...Thomas was still doing this!

THE NAVAJO EXHIBIT (DAY 3)

It would not be a vacation with my dad if there were not some kind of museum or exhibit included. In this case, there was a navajo exhibit at the Museum of Northern Arizona. Although it was difficult to keep 20 sticky little fingers away from the tables of beautiful and hideously expensive Navajo jewelry and pottery, they kids liked watching the puppet show and making crafts at the kids table. We all had (what else?) Navajo tacos for lunch (except Princess, who ate a navajo hot dog and Sam who had a navajo ham sandwich) and crossed our fingers that the kids would all fall asleep on the 45 minute drive home. They had all been promised a dip in the pool if they were good. When we got home, we woke them up, suited them up, lotioned them up and trotted them over to the pool where we had the pleasure of getting wet for 5 minutes before the black storm clouds rolled in and we were chased back inside by a thunderstorm, the likes of which I had never seen in my sheltered utah valleys. Needless to say, the squall kept up until about five minutes after we all decided we were tired of waiting around in wet swimsuits.

Instead, we spent the afternoon playing a game called Wise and Otherwise, which I completely rocked at (it's not because I'm a nerd mak, it's because I am amazing). That evening we ditched our little energizer bunny with Grandpa and took Sam out on a dinner date night with us. Aunt Lisa had drawn a little face on his leg earlier and he named it "Tamuel." A little pair of glasses from the Mr. Potato Head set was the right size to fit on his leg over the "eyes" and he consulted "Tamuel" about everything for the next several days. For dinner that night, Tamuel thought the chicken strips and root beer from a bottle sounded good to them and they enjoyed it immensely.

Anyone recognize the background? Apparently Walt Disney used to live in Sedona and the mountain in the background is called Thunder Mountain. Recognize it now?

As I picked pictures to post, I realized I don't have many of the extended family. I saw mak running around with her far more superior camera and fingured I would just get them from her (so, sorry to those of you who didn't get to go. Mak will probably post them?) For the record, everyone is pretty much the same except Javan, who grew about 7 feet since I last saw him, and Morgan, who didn't exist yet at the last get together ten years ago.

As is always the case when I see family for the first time in a long while, I wish we saw them more often. It was a bummer we had to keep our trip so short, but it was a great reunion. It was definitely worth the 10 million rounds of the "animal game" it took to get there with minimal tantrums (no matter what animal we were describing, Thomas always guessed "crocadiddle" which made it kind of easy). We want to shoot for Orgeon in the next year or two. If we only have reunions every 10 years, I will be 40 for the next one. Too wierd. Your turn Mak...

Par-Tay!

Thomas turned two at the beginning of July and for the last year I have had an elaborate bug-themed swimming party planned. When the end of July crept up, we copped out and settled for having a few family members join us at Jungle Jim's (a cooler, less crowded version of Chuck E. Cheese) for pizza. We did have bug shaped cupcakes though...

Sam thought the game tokens were real money and felt pretty rich having a pocketful of change. At the end of the night, after $10 in tokens, he took his handful of tickets (100) up to the prize counter and walked away with...one package of poprocks. I hope he had a whole lot of fun actually playing the games, because I could probably buy him a $10 package of poprocks anytime.

Thomas just wanted to play anything that involved throwing balls. He was absolutely in the right place for that.

Little neice Birdie amused herself a different way. I'm thinking about installing one of these at home for the next kid. She crawled up and down it for the longest time!

At one point in the evening (oh, all right, it was the third time) we noticed that none of us had Thomas. The place wasn't very crowded and he was usually to be found around the games. This time, after a frantic search, we found him here.

Apparently, if you send your two year old into the game to get the balls out, you don't have to put a token in to get them.

That's my boy! Happy belated birthday T!

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