Pregnancy Week

It’s Pregnancy Week at Scottsdale Moms Blog! There’s something in the writing around here as 5 of the contributors are expecting! This week is filled with fun and funny pregnancy related posts including today’s by Kristin that is a total crack up (and sooo true about the coffee). And Friday is the big reveal of Baylor and Mr.Man’s room – get excited.

In the mean time, I’ve got a million pictures from our annual pilgrimage to Coronado this past weekend to share and stories to tell. It was an amazing trip…it’s hard to be back to reality this morning.

Mini Horse Hands

A few months ago I got a flyer from the Zoo about their equestrian programs. They have a class called Mini Horse Hands and it’s designed for 3-5 year olds. The stables at the zoo are really nice and the price was right so Peter and Bay ventured to the zoo every Saturday morning in July to the class.

The good news is that she LOVED IT. She was an amazing listener, brave and had a great time. The bad news is that most of the kids (and their parents oddly) were terrified of horses (please let me know if you understand why someone would sign their kids up for horse class if the kids and they are terrified of horses – because I cannot for the life of me figure out why). So there was a lot of standing around waiting for the other kiddos to warm up to take their turn. Needless to say, we won’t be signing up for another round of classes, but we will definitely be looking for a stable for her to take some more lessons!

Grooming “Rolly” Neapolitan

Feeding Midnight

Ready to ride!

Ridding Penny

First Day of School

Last week marked Baylor’s second year at preschool. I can’t believe how much bigger she is this year than last year!  She landed in a great classroom with several of her buddies including the infamous Ms. Morgan. She has three teachers, two who have been been teaching since forever and one who is only a few years out of college – it’s the perfect mix!

August 9th, 2012

Baylorisms – Part 5

I keep saying that I need to keep a list of the funny things B says – because by the time I get to my computer, I forget half of them! She is now at the point where she knows she’s not saying something right and has begun to say “Do you know what I’m talking bout? Does that make sense??” trying to convey her thoughts. Such a crack up and getting smarter by the minute.

Zanya – The name she gives a lot of her stuffed animals. I have no idea where it came from or what it means.

Nayday – Her horse’s name, the only one not named Zanya.

Hanitizer – The combination of Hand Sanitizer

Rondry room – Laundry room. She can say L’s, but for some reason that doesn’t translate to the laundry room.

Loyal-ler – Lawyer. As in “you don’t look like a loyal-ler when you where cowboy boots to work, Daddy”. Jury is still out on whether this is a good or bad thing.

Scoops – the arm motion that goes along with freestyle swim stroke. While watching the Olympics, she announce “oooh, look at her scoops!!”.

Big Girls Don’t Cry

We have been on a mission to turn Bay’s room into a shared room for her and her soon to be brother. It has been quite the process. What should have been just moving some furniture, a new bed and some bedding, has turned into a multiple weekend project.

First, the garage needed to be cleaned out and reorganized to be able to hold the extra desk from the office and other odds and ends. Next the kitchen set and table and chairs from B’s room moved to the office. Finally the changing table and bookshelf had to be emptied and moved around in the bedroom so that the crib could be moved and then the big girl bed assembled.  Then the furniture didn’t fit in the room so there was another rearrangement. Then there was a discrepancy in the color of a few items so there was spray paint involved. Countless trips to Lowes, Home Depot and Target….And trust me, this is the short and sweet version. There were many arguments, coercion of friends to help move furniture, a few tears, a lot of cleaning and the realization that we have far too many hobbies and crap in general.

In the midst of all the chaos, Bay was transitioning to her new bed. Part of the reason this is all going on now was that I wanted her to have lots of time to move into her bed when she was comfortable. It turns out, she not only was ok with sleeping in her new bed, she insisted on it. She loves her new bed. As we were putting the sheets on it, PW began giving me puppy dog sad eyes. When I asked what was wrong, he responded that she’s a big girl who doesn’t need her crib anymore. I laughed a little because he gave me the business when I got upset about deconstructing her room a few weeks ago in preparation of the furniture move. It wasn’t until I reached into the crib to take the sheets off that I realized that the soft pink sheets are never going back on.

We stood outside her door that night looking at her room and fighting off the urge to snuggle her and cry “you’re our BABY!! You can’t grow up yet!!”. We checked on her a few hours later and were happy to see that she was tiny in her giant twin bed – it made my heart happy to see that at least for now, she’s still little.

Here’s a sneak peek of the room – the final results will be up on Scottsdale Moms Blog for Pregnancy Week (5 contributing writers are currently pregnant!) at the end of August.

 

 

Stranger Danger?

I am a paranoid person – not a tin foil on my head, no Face Book page, off the grid kind of paranoid…but I am convinced that there is danger around every corner. I’ve roped PW into my insanity too and my mom feeds it as she is also convinced of the constant danger around us. Therefore it’s natural and B is picking up on a little of it – I’m not teaching her that the aliens are coming, but I do try to temper being friendly to people with being aware of strangers. More than once I have said that she can’t stay in the car by herself, play out in our front yard alone or talk to adults she doesn’t know without Mommy there because there are people who do steal kids. I’m not trying to freak her out, but I would rather her be overly cautious and come home at night than be concerned with offending someone she doesn’t know and never being heard from again.

That said, these conversations came to a head last week. We were at the grocery store and a little old couple was everywhere I needed to be. They were in front of the onions, blocking the corn and man handling every banana. Every time I turned around, one of them or their cart was in my way. I was hustling so I parked the cart with Baylor in the seat and made a bee-line for the strawberries when I saw an opening. The cart was no more than 4 feet from me, but B’s guard instantly went up and when the lady of the couple asked Baylor “Hi there. What’s your name?” B lowered her chin and looked straight at the woman with a don’t-mess-with-me face and said “Don’t try to steal me”.

I heard the entire transaction and was completely unable to stop myself from laughing out loud. The little old lady did not think it was funny so I quickly countered by letting Bay know it was ok to answer nicely since I was with her. Thankfully the woman and her hubby hurried off and kept their distance from us. Which lead to B and I giggling for the rest of the trip. Two problems solved; old people out of our way and lesson learned that even nice looking old people are potential kidnappers.

I mean really. It doesn’t get more intimidating than this….

Zip It or the Doll Gets It

I was woken up early Tuesday morning by loud shouts for Mommy. As soon as my heart started again, I realized the shouts were demands for me to come to Baylor’s room and help her favorite doll, New Baby, put on her hat and find her pacifier. I ignored the first shout, but the second one infuriated me (Momma doesn’t like being woken up, even more so to help out inanimate objects). I marched to her room declaring either New Baby comes out of the crib or her accessories do, but either way, waking Mommy and Daddy up to dress a doll at 2 freaking am was completely unacceptable. There was more shouting, crying, a brief tug of war and then finally an agreement which lead to everyone except for me going back to sleep.

I laid awake for the next two hours unable to get comfortable and also thinking about when Mr. Man is here and he is sharing a room with Bay. What am I going to do when she pulls something like that and wakes the real baby? Or vise versa? Which is why I tossed and turned for the rest of the night leaving me oh-so-friendly on Tuesday morning.

The end result is that New Baby either gets put to sleep in her own bed OR her accessories do not go to sleep with her. Either way, the doll’s on notice.

That’s right New Baby, I’d sleep with one eye open too…

Happy Birthday Baylor!

Phew, what a weekend! We spent the entire weekend celebrating Baylor and the amazing fact that she is now three years old!

The festivities kicked off with some presents from mom and dad – Dr. Barbie, Hello Kitty everything and pancakes for breakfast. The morning quickly ran into her party for her buddies. PW and I are suckers for backyard shin digs – when we remodeled our house, the phrase “oh, that would be so awesome for a party” came up many, many times. Therefore we spent the last few weeks planning the best splash party any kid without a pool could ever ask for. I started a Pinterest board and had a blast collecting ideas. The best one though was the Kid Car Wash. Peter was pumped for a new hands on project and his creation was amazing. There was also our (ghetto) water slide that consisted of a small pool at the bottom of the swing set slide. Add in some big buckets of water (which turned out to be a hit all on their own), some water balloons and giant squirt guns and we had a hit on our hands!

Sunday afternoon was the family get together which consisted of actual family and also our close friends who we consider family. It was so nice to catch up with all of them, eat Baylor’s favorite food – quesadillas and open presents. All in all, it was amazing and totally exhausting – everything a birthday should be!

Pancakes and Dr.Barbie

Either craftyness is contagious, or PW’s been holding out on me. I showed him this free printable website and he nixed it as being too much work – then surprised us with this Saturday morning!

The Amazing Kid Car Wash – complete with bubble machine. Even the parents were considering a run.

Splash down!

Serious squirt guns.

When buckets become fun…

It’s official when the candles are blown out.

Momma and her girl.

Ready to blow out the candles, again.

Finally a picture of the three of us!

Eating her cake in her new “doll” high chair. Thankfully Grandma thought ahead and bought a sturdy one!

Bear was so tired, his butt didn’t make it all the way into bed.

Pig or People?

Last night we tried out a new baby sitter who cousin Zoe just loves. Her name is Olivia and we tried to build up the fact that she was coming – we find if we make it  really exciting, there’s no melt down when we leave.

So yesterday morning PW asked B if she was excited about Olivia coming and she responded “oh yes. I just loooove Olivia”. Confused, we looked at each other and then back at the kid and told her that she’s not met Olivia so how does she know she looooves her? B was quiet a minute and then said “oh I know her”. I went back to making breakfast and then it hit me – she thinks Olivia the Piglet is coming to baby sit.

So I mentioned to her that Olivia was not a pig but a nice girl and she seemed a little bummed. And the rest of the day she asked “is Oliva a girl or a boy?”. When I would respond that she was a girl, I could see the wheels turning in her head thinking ‘Olivia the piglet is a girl too….”. Thankfully, despite Olivia being people and not piglet, they got along famously as Olivia let B go through her purse, stay up late and she “believed” Baylor when she told her that she got two M&M’s before bed.

Schooool’s Out For Summa

Holy moly. It has been one jam packed school year and yet it’s hard to believe that it’s over! And my how much B has grown this year – just look. Here’s her first day of school:

All chubby cheeks and finally getting some hair!

And on the last day (btw, it’s pajama day at school):

Look at how long she is! And finally hair!

It’s hard to believe in just a 9 months how fast she’s gone from “being able to get her point across ” to talking like a teenager, hand gestures and all. The chubby cheeks have thinned out and her hair can no longer be described as baby curls… I know that the teachers have a present for the parents that is a collection of pictures from over the school year…I’m getting my box of tissues ready now. What am I going to do when she’s graduating high school?!