You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2010.
Back in April, toward the end of a long day, the kids decided they wanted to play in their water table, which is out on the deck. It’s a small, round, plastic table sectioned off into wells of different depths. I wiped out the empty wells, and went back into the kitchen to get water. As I headed into the laundry room to drop off the pollen-caked rag I had just wiped the table off with, I heard Carina say, “Climb up there, Callen.” Five seconds later I heard a crash and a wail. I ran out to the deck in time to see Callen stand up and start crying. As soon as I hugged him he stopped crying, and at first I thought he had a small leaf stuck to his eyebrow. On closer inspection, I realized he had gashed open his eye, but it wasn’t really bleeding.
After 15 minutes of staring at the gash, trying to decide if it needed stitches while also trying to clean it and ice it (which brought bigger wails from Callen than the actual injury), I called Craig for a phone consult. After no conclusion was drawn, I suggested taking a picture and sending it to Craig for analysis.
Craig deemed that he would indeed need a stitch or two. I loaded the kids up in the truck and drove in to the hospital, where we met Craig at the front entrance. Callen was SO EXCITED to get to go with daddy to his work. While I packed a few toys and diapers into his backpack, Callen beamed, pumped his fists, and said, “Mama, I go with Daddy to see the DOCTOR!” Meanwhile Carina bawled because she had to stay with me. Six hours later, around midnight, Callen and Craig came home. Apparently the boys had a grand old time at the ER, and Cal was proud to show off his three stitches the next day.
That's tomato soup, in case you're wondering.
A couple weeks later, his stitches were completely gone. If you get an owie, he now asks if you fell off the water table. He still has a red mark that is fading slowly, but I imagine he will always have a scar there. Notice the title of this post is “Callen’s First Stitches”. I have a feeling they won’t be the last.
Carina’s birthday is coming up soon. Since about the day after her last birthday, she has been asking to have a “piggy bank birthday” this year. She is still steadfast in this request. Right now the plan is to have a few piggy banks and collect donations for a couple charities. We’ll also probably play pin the tail on the piggy, and of course, there will be a piggy bank birthday cake.
When I was looking through some old pictures, I came across this picture from Carina’s baby shower.
That’s a piggy bank holding the balloons down and acting as a centerpiece. I had completely forgotten that we decorated with piggy banks. So, Carina has sort of technically already had a piggy bank birthday party. Too bad we used the piggy banks as prizes for the shower games we played.
May was a fun month for us. The temperatures really warmed up, our garden started to produce veggies that we like, and we did some cool things.
May 5 – Our garden has been giving us radishes for a while now. Although they are not our favorite to eat, we still love to water them, pick them, and learn about how they grow!
May 10 – Daddy and Mommy took us to a park we had never visited before. It had a climbing wall!
It was really windy and we almost lost Callen on the way back to the car! Luckily he found a tree to hold on to.
May 18th – Carina is starting to dress herself and pick out her hairstyle. She loves to write and draw. Here she has settled into a corner to do some “work”. Too bad mommy’s camera wouldn’t cooperate with her to take a good picture.
May 22nd – We competed in our first 5k race! That’s 3.1 miles! Well, actually mommy pushed us in the double jog stroller while she ran in the stroller division of the Dino Dash. Afterward, we got to have our faces painted for the first time ever. Callen got a dinosaur and Carina got a butterfly. We also got to eat popsicles, play in sand, and get tatoos. Talk about some seriously dirty fun!
May 26 – Some other new tricks we learned this month: Carina has been practicing chewing gum without swallowing it, and Callen has been toying with the idea of peeing in the big potty!
And finally, we got to eat something from our garden that we actually like. Green Beans!
Carina's first class picture - not sure where the other five boys were!
Carina is finishing up her first semester as a preschooler. It has been very interesting to watch her grow and adapt to preschool life. She brings home art almost every day, learns new tunes in music class, and gets stamps on her hands on the days she gets to go to creative movement class. When she started in January, she was the only girl in a class of 10 boys. Now there is another girl, but Carina’s teacher reports that Carina still prefers to play with the boys. One boy is particularly fond of Carina, and we get daily reports of whether Brady was a “good guy” or “bad guy”. On days when Brady is a “bad guy”, he might dump mulch in her hair at recess or push her at story time. I explained to Carina that when a boy makes a girl scream, it’s just because he likes her. (Brady is the one in the sweater vest in the front row in the picture above)
Last week, I had the opportunity to visit Carina’s classroom for a Mother’s Day tea. It was fun to see Carina and all her classmates interact with each other. (I giggled when I heard Brady tell Carina he loved her – I think he was a little jealous of me being there.) Carina was very excited to have me in her classroom, and was equally excited to have pink lemonade and cookies for a snack. Carina’s teachers, Miss Katie and Miss Lisa, had decorated the kids’ tables with flowers, a table cloth and colorful plates and napkins. Each mom received a gift – an apron with our child’s hand prints and our initial at the top – it was the perfect mothers day gift, as Craig had just informed me the day before that he does not like the apron I’ve been using. Unfortunately, the camera battery went dead, so I didn’t get any pictures of this special day, but I’ll always remember my first Mother’s Day tea!
We’ve already had our first stint of 85+ degree weather here, so it seems like a good time to post the pictures from back in February, when we enjoyed not one, but two fairly heavy snow falls here in the mid-south.
We nearly missed the first blanket of snow (which was really more ice, and actually fell at the end of January), because we were on vacation in Florida. By the time we got home and got around to taking some pictures, all that was left was a patch of ice on the deck. However, Carina very badly wanted to make a snowman because she had seen the ones that her friend Amelie had in her yard. So, we did our best.
This picture makes me laugh, because Carina is saying, “Hurry up, Mom, we’re freezing our booties off,” and Callen is eating what was originally meant to be the snowman’s nose. Oddly enough, the final version of the snowman’s face was fashioned out of things that I found in my coat pocket. Actually, it’s kind of gross the more I think about it.
Here the kids are digging in the “snow” with shovels and buckets that were digging in sand the week before. I remember that the irony was physically painful.
Then, on February 8, the real fun began. The big, wet flakes fell and fell and fell. The snow was so heavy that it collapsed the awning/tent thingy we had over our patio table and tossed it to the ground below.
So, we bundled up and headed out to make a big, wet snowman.
And then, all of a sudden, Carina realized that she was cold, and wet, and ready to go inside. And she was sad, despite her amazing “snow goggles”.
And Callen nearly got lost in the wintery wonder-land.
So we finished up our grand snow-man, who lasted nearly a week, and headed inside to get warm and dry. (you should really click the picture below to enlarge it so you can see Callen’s facial expression)
So, there you go. When the mercury starts to rise this summer, feel free to head on over to this post to cool off.
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