Letters to Lyla and Lottie

We carved pumpkins early this year because we wanted to make sure and do it when the Daddy was home.  It was so cute, Lyla ran into the store with me to pick them out while Lottie and dad sat in the car.  Lyla insisted on carrying her pumpkin and even having it sit on her lap on the drive home.  Silly girl.  We printed some stencils online and went to work.  Dad and I had a friendly competition.  He followed the directions to the T and I did my own version.  We’ll let you all be the judge but keep in mind mine took half the time (meticulous dad).  Mine is the scary one and his is the silly one.  Lyla just had fun digging the seeds out and watching us. 

This is another fun and simple learning activity.  SPOOOOKY glow in the dark play dough.  Just add fluorescent or glow in the dark paint to any play dough.  We found the best way was to use a black light in the bathroom (darkest room in our house).  Another Halloween twist on the play dough was to use Halloween cookie cutters in it.  Lyla LOVED this.  She is all about cookie cutters I’ve learned.  She loves taking the perfectly shaped product out the play dough and staking them up side by side.  It’s a adorable

Ghosts and Pumpkins…(“Punkin”)

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I finally got brave and took Lyla to Story Time at our Library.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but I think I irrationally thought all the kids would be sitting quietly on a rug listening to an old lady read stories.  Which is why I hadn’t taken Lyla.  Like she’d still still for longer than..mmmm…10 seconds?!  She’s a busy bee that one.  But a friend assured me the kids are all young and wiggly like Lyla.  So we went and have been every Wednesday since.  She has a grand old time!  The “old lady” is slightly old, with saggy boobs (inappropriate?), but so engaging and fun.  After each story she has them dance around the room or sing a song.  Brilliant. Each week has a theme like Autumn or Halloween.  Here’s Lyla dancing around with a streamer. 

Thanks to Pinterest, I’ve been introduced to some amazing ideas for engaging and teaching toddlers. I’ve designated Mondays as Learning Day.  I took like 2 seconds and printed off images from Google and put all the available activities I’ve come across in a binder so that eventually Lyla can pick what she wants to do or that day.  For now I just show her the picture and tell her what we’re going to do.  I’m told this fosters decision making skills.  Anyway, Lyla is a busy little bee, and I love any activity that engages  her, teaches, her, and gives us the opportunity to bond one-on-one.  This is the least-cool of the ideas I’ve come across but I’ll blog them to share!.  I thought it was the least cool because it requires the least prep, but Lyle LOVED it.  And played with it for over an hour.  She loves to pour and mix things.  You basically just fill out a bunch of clear plastic containers with water, and set out the food coloring (brave and wasteful probably but oh well).  I was fascinated to see her know right what to do.  She took the lids off and starting dropping colors into the water.  She would light up when the water could take it’s color.  She mixed all sorts of colors, poured and stirred.  Then we’d dump the water out and start all over.  I’d state each color she used.  Simple, educatory,  fun. 

The daddy had to do some drop offs in Salt Lake, so we made the trip in order to get a little more time with him.  Ya know those weeks where everything goes wrong?  This was one of those weeks.  I should’ve known better than to go on a trip alone with two kids (oxy moron?) during a bad luck week.  We were on our second week with no daddy.  Things had been going well until both kids got sick.  Lottie Lou had a fairly high fever so, due to her history, they had to cath her to rule out UTI.  Would you believe the next day Lyla got a high fever too so we knew it wasn’t a UTI.  Bad luck.  My poor tortured baby.  Both kids took turns waking up all night long for about 3 days.  I was also trying desperately to get in my 12 hours of work for the week, which was sooo hard with arranging family to watch the kids and having had about 2 hours a sleep a night. 

So I was already tired when I finally packed everything up and headed for Provo.

I had a session that ended at 6:30 pm so I left after that.  The kids did relatively well on the drive.  So we checked in around midnight.  It was quite the challenge lugging the kids and the luggage into the room alone.  What's a good strategy for this?  It’s not like I can leave the kids in a sketchy hotel parking lot to bring in the luggage, or leave them in a sketchy hotel room to then bring in the luggage, you know what I mean? 

We finally got all settled, but of course the kids weren’t tired because they slept most of the drive.  So I spent a good 3 hours trying to get them to quiet down, so we didn’t get kicked out. Todd was supposed to meet us there around 1am but he kept pushing back his ETA, not sure of his whereabouts.  I was nursing Lottie when Lyla pulled a fairly large night table over on top of herself.  I was right there, but I didn’t stop her because she was just opening the drawer to see the bible.  Cheap table just fell right on top of her.  And she cried.  And scream.  Her hand had gotten caught up in the drawer and was black and blue, and swollen and bloody.  I couldn’t get Lyla to bend her fingers.  She was crying so hard she could barely breath.  She kept holding it out for me to kiss it but my magic kisses weren’t helping.  It was so sad how bad it clearly hurt her that I just started bawling with her.  Of course this upset Lottie so she was screaming relentlessly as well.  After awhile I decided I better take her to the E.R.  So packed the kids BACK up, and headed to the Utah Valley Hospital.  BOTH of them screaming bloody murder.  When I pulled into the parking lot, Lyla instantly stopped crying and fell asleep.  After sitting and contemplating for awhile, I decided to go back to the hotel room.  If she woke up, I’d bring her back, but I figured the pain must not be bad anymore (I had luckily brought Tylenol so I gave her some of that before).  So I lug both the kids back into the room, get Lyla laid down and Lottie starts crying. ..

I still have no idea what was wrong with her.  Todd finally showed up around 3am.  Lottie continued to scream.  I kept her in the bathroom to try not to wake up Lyla.  I nursed her, changed her, and bounced and paced for an hour.  She was just screaming relentlessly.  I finally decided to take her for a drive so I got her all strapped in and started for the car, when she stopped crying.  Finally.  You would think such a late night would mean some sleeping in right?  Nope.  they woke up at 8am.  That was a short night and I was barely functioning.  Todd had to leave right away to do the drop off so I was left rounding up the stuff and heading into SLC to have some much deserved fun.

I blame the sleep deprivation for what happened next.  I went to flying J to gas up, and decided I would lock the kids in the car and run in to get lyla her milk.  I felt they’d be safe since I could see them the whole time.  And I was just too tired to unstrap and strap them both again.  Only problem, I left the keys in the ignition when I hit lock and shut the door.  I wanted to cry.  Scream.  Give up.  So I called 911.  The phone timer said it had been 6 minutes when I finally hung up because no one answered.  So I googled Springville PD.  They said they’d send someone as soon as possible.  Lyla was screaming.  I was playing peekabo and singing to her, giving the fellow gaser-upers something to stare at.  I was relieved to see a cop pull in about 10 minutes later.  What a sweet guy.  2 minutes and they were out.  I hugged Lyla and reassured her everything was okay and we were on our way to SLC.  Then 911 called me back to see if I was okay.  Note to self and others: if you’re being robbed or murdered, don’t bother calling 911.  You will be broke or dead by the time they get to you.  Or make sure you have a smart phone.  lol. 

I’m happy to report that the trip improved significantly from there.  We had the day to burn while dad worked.  Lyla’s hand looked better and she was bending everything.  It was still swollen and black and blue thought We went shopping and then went to the Living Planet Aquarium.  I was so impressed this this Aquarium and we’ve even been to the fancy Atlanta Georgia one.  The outside looked so geto but it’s amazing!  We had a ball.  Callie came and took Jenny’s kids because she was in a meeting up there.  I love watching Lyla take in new environments.  This time she was scared of the Sting Rays (versus 3 months ago when she was squeezing them in CA), but LOVED the big fish and especially the Penguins.  We spent a good half hour watching them waddle around and dive into he water.    My favorite was the dwarf sea horses that were literally the size of a finger tip.  I think Lottie liked the jelly fish because it was in a dark room and they looked electric.  So cool. 

After that we swam in the Grand America Pool (where my mom was staying).  The daddy finally got done and I stated that I NEEDED a dinner alone with him  It’s quite honestly the first time since I became a mom that I wanted to be alone from my kids.  Is that horrible?  I wanted to eat (something I rarely do when the daddy’s gone anyway), without one kid on my lap and the other bouncing on my leg.  I wanted to be served.  And I wanted to talk to the daddy.  So even though the BYU game was starting, we went to Cheesecake Factory (my favorite).  It’s funny, the wait was awhile so we had time to chat.  By the time we were seated I already felt renewed and was ready to go back to the kids.  Lol.  But dinner was great.  After that we got the kids and went to see Shauna and Todd’s mom who came down too.  That night the kids slept a little better.  That next morning we went to the mall and did Build-A-Bear.  This was my favorite stop of the trip.  Oh my goodness, Lyla LOVED picking out her stuffed animal and seeing it come to life.  She picked the cutest little monkey who we named “Monk” because that’s what she calls it.  She loved the process so much that we let her make another one for Lottie.  We named this one, Ava, since that’s what we almost named Lottie.  Lyla LOVES her animals and carries them around wrapped up in blankets.  All in all, it was a fun, stressful, chaotic and tiring trip