Toast 2 Mom

Hair Accessory Improvising

The hair is growing in, but slowwwwwly. Cheekers sees her big sister with pretty bows and clips in her long golden locks every day. Tired of waiting (and in typical Cheekers fashion), Cheekers solves her own fashion dilemmas and creates a hair accessory look of her own...

 

The Turkey Farm

We have been living the life of obvious questions here lately. I'll explain. Sydney will be holding her Ariel doll and say to me, "Mommy, who is this?" Or we'll be inside the grocery store and she'll say, "Mommy, where are we?"  Or I'll explain to her multiple times where we're going, then we get in Vanna (the van), drive down the road and she'll say, "Mommy, where are we going?"

I have a feeling this is payback for the first two years of her life where all we did was say, "Sydney, what's this, what's that, who's this, where's the circle, what color is this, where is the number four, where's the tree???????" When during all of those questions we asked, she was thinking, "ummm, shouldn't you know the answers to these questions and quit asking me!"

But now that she knows the answers to these questions and then has a whole new set of answers of her own, I believe the land of obvious questions is just her form of entertainment. Mommy turned it into her form of entertainment too....and now we play "the turkey farm" game. It's not a complicated game, anyone can play, any number of people can participate! It goes like this...

Daddy walks out the door for work for the day, as he does every day....Ten minutes passes by....

"Mommy, where's Daddy?"
"Umm, yeah, Sydney, Daddy went to the turkey farm."
"Nooooo, Mommy, he went to work!"
"Nope, Syd, I'm pretty sure he's working at the turkey farm today."
"Noooo, he's at his office!"
"Oh, that's right he just works with turkeys in his office."
"Nooo, he works with people and on a computer at his office."
"Ohh, that's right Syd....he's just going out with turkeys for lunch."
"No, Mommy, he's having lunch with his friends."
"Hmmm, well maybe he'll eat a turkey sandwich, then?"
"Maybe Mommy....hey, you're a turkey."
"No Sydney....you're a turkey!"

So as you can see, the turkey farm game is pretty easy! Just simply answer all obvious questions with "the turkey farm!" Who know a turkey farm could be so fun!

Flower Envy

The flower girl spirit is still carrying forward in our household; though it's not so much with the girl who was the flower girl but with the girl who longs to be a flower girl...and ultimately show that anything her sister can do, she can do too! 

Though it may have been her big sister with the special-made dress and designated basket, make no mistake that Cheekers was using her spirit to be in the spotlight too. At the wedding, during photo time with the bride and the flower girls, Cheekers decided there was no need to stand back and watch the photos being taken, she wanted to be in them.

 

And even though Cheekers is not lined up to be a flower girl in the near future, there's no reason she shouldn't practice.

 

Getting there is the...easy part

I feel like I have this whole vacation destination via highway thing down. We just returned last night from Van-a-thon '09 Part II. This time we headed up to Nebraska for our niece's wedding. This was the first time the girls and I had been back since our move down south in December.

To make our thirteen plus hour drive, I know exactly now how to load the van and what to put in it. I know what kind of snacks to pack, what to put in the cooler, what to have handy right by my feet, what to have for potty stops and meal stops in my bag. I know what kind of entertainment to have in the girls' backpacks and how to easily access the stuff while heading down the highway. The girls ride like a dream and help pass the time marvelously. Yes, getting there is the easy part...

The hard part is getting them to acclimate and be "themselves" once we're there. I realize acclimate is the wrong word. I feel like expecting my one year old and three year old to happily and completely adjust to a foreign environment in four days time is a bit unfair. You see, leading up to our trip, though, I had all of these visions, hopes really, of how certain interactions and activities would unfold. I was always fully aware that these were high expectations...but yet, I had the visions anyway.

One of our stops in Nebraska was back at the girls' old day care. I was so eager to see the teachers and Sydney's old friends. I had a "vision" of Sydney joining her friends for a snack and Natalie seeing her old teachers and laughing and smiling. The reality was my girls drove in a van the entire day before, skipped a nap, played hard with their cousins the night before, slept eight hours at night versus a normal ten to twelve hours a night, woke up, hopped back in the van and went back to the place where I used to drop them off so I could head to work. Soooo, was their snack time and laughs and giggles, um, no. Pretty much the opposite, actually. Such is life. I did enjoy my visit, though.

Then there was the main chapter of the weekend - the wedding. I think I mentioned before I left how Sydney had two things in mind about this wedding, cake and dancing with Daddy. Well as time went on, and less naps and less sleep at night took place, I had to go to a bad place. I finally had to tell Sydney that if she did not take a nap prior to the wedding that there would be no cake and no dancing....the evil Mommy threat mode. It wasn't that I was actually going to not let her eat cake or dance with Daddy; but we were reaching such a stage of cranky, that I didn't see how she could possibly stay awake long enough in the evening to get them.

So even in my most desperate of attempts to keep my girls happy and polite, as they most often days are, there was only a fraction of a nap. It was at this stage that all I could do was hold out for adrenaline to push us to the finish line.

As luck would have it, though, even with minimal naps, even with lacking sleep at night, even with lots of play time with cousins, buried deep there was just enough energy in the day for a successful flower girl walk, some cake and yes, some dancing...

So while acclimate may not be the word or expectation of my girls for their big wedding weekend, I think they managed to successfully "pace themselves". And all in all, it was a lot of fun.

Here are a few more photos from the wedding...

 

Flower Power

We've returned from our trip to the north for a wedding. Our girl did a fantastic job and took the job very (very) seriously. Even during the rehearsal, it was hard to pry the basket away from her fingers. Here are just a couple photos. More updates and photos tomorrow....

Rehearsing for the big day...

 

The big moment...