A week with the mouse

What happens when you put four Culps in the sun with a mouse and a bunch of people in air-conditioned suits? The family turns into a big puddle and the mouse picks the money out of the wallets left on the ground.
This analogy aside, our trip to Disney World earlier this month was a blast! it was exactly 10 days away from work and every other aspect of real life.
For those days, we parked the Envoy and left it off -- one quick trip to the outlet mall for cheap gifts aside.
We rode the bus to the parks and spent the days trying to stay cool while meeting as many characters as possible and getting their signatures. This actually worked out well because many of the waiting lines for characters were inside in the air conditioning. The trick was to make sure we were waiting in these lines during the hottest part of the day.
We got to ride a lot of wonderful rides -- big sister's favorites were the runaway train roller coaster at the Magic Kingdom and Soarin at Epcot.
Little Sister's favorite ride was Aladdin's Magic Carpet.
We'll have to go back in a few years when Little Sister can enjoy it better.

A new doggie

We got Oakley 9 years ago -- about a year after we got married. The cocker spaniel mix was our first attempt at seeing if we could handle children.
Obviously we decided we could take care of children since we now have two.
Oakley is really pretty easy to take care of, but we do have to trim his fur once a month or so. His hair grows out and he looks kind of fuzzy. I have always trimmed him myself since he tried to eat the first person we took him to. Little dogs are the most vicious you know.
The beautiful wife just shakes her head at my attempts to groom the dog. I make his fur shorter, but it often looks a little choppy.
We're getting ready for vacation and the beautiful wife didn't want to send Oakley to sister-in-law's house without a trim, but she didn't want me to do it.
So, we took him to a groomer, the same one mother-in-law uses. She had done such a good job shaving down Bella, we thought we'd give her a try.
When I dropped Oakley off, she asked how I wanted it. I told her "pretty short."
"The ears too," she asked.
"Sure, why not."
We went away and came back an hour later. Little sister was with me. We pulled up and I was horrified, and just knew the beautiful wife was going to hate the cut as the groomer walked Oakley out to the car.
I just shook my head and paid the lady.
we took him home and the beautiful wife and I of course grumped and grouched about the bad haircut.
Oh, well. It will grow back out right?
We were surprised when, the next day, Little sister looks at the beautiful wife and says, "when are we going to go back and get Oakley? I don't like this new doggie as much."
It took some doing, but we finally convinced her the bald doggie is Oakley.

Put it back

It started about two months ago -- actually about the time I blogged last. Big sister was getting jealous that all of her friends had lost teeth. Some had lost two or three -- and her teeth weren't even loose!
She would come to us every third day or so and ask, "is this tooth loose?"
We'd check it assure her, no, but you will lose one in God's time, not yours.
Finally, on March 23 one of her teeth was actually wiggling just a little.
Tiny bit at time over the last two or three weeks, that tooth got looser and looser.
Then Thursday night she got a bug in her head that the tooth was coming out. Big sister holed herself up in the bathroom in front of the mirror.
We could hear various grunts and groans for about half an hour.
Then ... all of a sudden it was, "Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."
Big sister came running out of the bathroom, blood running down her chin and tooth in hand.
There was a wild scared look in her eyes as she screamed, "PUT IT BAAAACCCKKK ... I DON'T WANT TO GROW UP!!!!"
Through my laughing and the beautiful wife's stifled laughs, we managed to calm her down and get her to bed .., granted it was about an hour late.
All was good the next day when the tooth fairy had left her a note, $2 and a silver whistle with the intials TF emblazoned on the side.
At that point all was good, though, I really don't know where she got the idea for the silver whistle.

What's fair is fair -- I think

MOOOOOOMMMM, he's touching my side of the room!!!!!
I can't tell you how many times I probably yelled that, or conversely my brother or sister screamed the phrase about me.
My mother's reaction was normally pretty consistent. She would pause, shake her head and give a great big old sigh. These days, and as we got a little older, we recognized that sigh as the sign that we had better do what she wanted.
The next step was likely to be something unpleasant.
But my young self wasn't quite so smart. I got the unpleasant consequences many times before I even started to learn. I never understood how she could be so unfair and not always side with me.
I mean, my brother, or sister, was the one who had done it. They deserved what they got.
Now as the parent of two little screamers, I understand a little better that you can't just take the side of one or the other.
Since you can't be in all places at once, you never know what really happened.
Little sister likes to run from one room to the other right yelling, "Big sister pinched me?"
The problem, Big sister is at school.
Big sister will sometimes sit in her room and scream at the top of her lungs until we come running only to discover that Little sister is sitting on the floor looking at her wrong.
It doesn't pay to overreact.
I just sigh, shake my head and hope I don't have to resort to anything unpleasant to get them to mind. (By unpleasant I mean time outs of course. Nothing severe. It's just that it all makes my blood pressure rise.)

Queen of the declarative sentence

"I don't like you daddy!"
Life with my 2-year-old means hearing this phrase almost hourly. I really have to laugh, because within minutes of saying it, Little sister can turn around with the longest eyelashes known to man and bat away all the hard feelings.
It's funny, because she doesn't say it to the Beautiful wife hardly at all. Big sister was the opposite. She and her mom had, and still have, some real knock down, drag out screaming fests.
But Big sister tends to be pretty good for me.
All bets, however, are off if Grandma is anywhere within hearing distance. Then, both sisters like only grandma and everyone else is chopped liver.
Grandma is the cure for all hate with those two.
Little sister has picked up a few other choice phrases as well:
"Fix my TV!" She says this every 15 minutes when Sponge Bob advertises or 30 minutes for Diego.
"I want my mommy (daddy)" she says this to whomever is trying to put her in the car. If it's me, she wants mommy, if it's mommy, she wants daddy. Frankly, I think she is just stalling because she hates being buckled in the car seat.
"I want to talk." This phrase come out whenver the phone rings and is repeated at increasing volumes until you give in. Imagine the confusion of the phone salesman when I hand the phone over to the babbler.
"Get back!" Big sister has this phrase screamed at her constantly because there is some sort of magnet in little sister's back that makes her sister want to push her on the ground, or pick her up.
And finally, "I want my milk!" She says this often, because she would drink milk from sunup to sundown if we'd let her and never eat a morsel of food. So she only gets milk when she gets up or goes to bed.

Superman lives in my shower

We do our best when we buy new toys to get both girls the same thing or similar things so as to reduce fights.
It doesn't work.
No matter what we do, Little sister always wants what Big sister has -- even if it is identical to her own. Little sister also tends to be the more aggressive of my two children.
Though she is half Big sister's size, Little Sister is a bully.
Little sister will start screaming and we'll run to see what is wrong, she normally has Big sister in a corner -- pinching her, hitting her or otherwise subduing her.
To her credit, Big sister doesn't pick back.
The fighting is normally over a toy -- again, even if it is the exact same one as the one she owns.
So, at Christmas I decided I would buy a present for Little Sister and and Little Sister alone.
It was a Superman punching bag. You know, the kind you punch and it bounces right back up.
I thought maybe she could get some of her aggressions out on something that is meant to be punched.
Of course she doesn't punch the punching bag -- she dances with it. She twirls and dips and even does throws. She loves Superman.
But like all good toys, there will eventually be a fight when Big sister wants to play and Little sister isn't finished.
So I did what I always do. I took it away for a week.
There is no where in the house really big enough to keep Superman, so he now lives in my shower.
Of course it is a little crowded in the mornings -- but it's better than screaming girls.

Here today ... melted tommorow

It was gone in less than a day.
14 inches of snow practically immobilized our entire area for nearly three days and blanketed the town for more than at week.
But just one day of warm weather and it was all gone. it's a shame too.
Big sister had been waiting for a snow even half that big for two years. It was two years ago the last time we had a snow big enough to go sledding and make a snowman. So we were due.
The came down on a Tuesday night into Wednesday. I wouldn't have even gotten to work if we didn't have a 4x4 vehicle. I came home early and right away we went to the hill at the park to sled.
It was little sister's first real experience sledding. It wasn't a big hit for her. She went down once and stayed down with the beautiful wife. Big sister and I went three more times before the snow started to melt.
The last time we went, Little Sister did get brave and went down a couple of times with me. She really had fun once she realized we could start half way down the hill.
there was one thing little sister really wanted to do though -- she wanted to make a snowman.
Problem is, the snow was too dry. So, we waited a couple of days.
When we finally got around to trying again -- the snow was too wet.
We managed anyway -- but it wasn't the traditional snowman. Rather than making a snowball and rolling it bigger and bigger, we had to pile snow and try to shape into something resembling a snowman.
We didn't do half bad if I must say so myself. But now it's gone -- just three days after we made it and Little sister looked out the door this morning and said, "where did the snowman go?"
Until next year -- or maybe the year after ... she'll have to wait.