Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a crazy blur of activity this year. My brother and his girlfriend, Lisa, arrived late Wednesday night and thank goodness for that. They were loads of help in cooking and preparing the great Thanksgiving feast. Mike told Lisa to name her price because Tyler just adores her. All we heard all weekend was "Lisa, where are you?" "Come with me Lisa."

No major incidents on Thanksgiving except for the mystery animal that knocked the turkey drippings off of the roof of Mike's car and left little footprints all over his windshield. Lisa and I saw the animal on Friday morning scampering out of the garage and it looked like a white ferret but there have been no sightings since. Tyler quickly adapted to the new reality that "the Turkey" was going to live in the refrigerator and then we were going to eat it. I wonder if he is worried about the fate of Santa Clause and the Reindeer?

Matt and Lisa watched Mia and Tyler on Friday while Mike and I went out for our first date night since Mia was born. Matt, my brother with the weak stomach, got lucky and got to change one of Mia's more impressive diapers. We celebrated Uncle Matt's 27th birthday on Saturday and everyone headed home Sunday morning. Now onto the next holiday!


Mike's first turkey carving. It was all captured on video if you are interested in purchasing the footage for a small fee.

"What do you mean we are eating the Turkey?!"

Mike and our nephew Chase - very reluctantly posing for me


Matt and Tyler "feeding" the turkey


This is Carly, our darling niece


You can see Lisa didn't get a lot of rest this weekend


Mike's dad - the first one to sit down and the last one to get up - and proud of it!

November 20 - Talking Turkey

So it dawned on me the other day that Tyler thinks "the Turkey" we keep talking about is a character like the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. We never really eat turkey during the rest of the year so he doesn't think about it like chicken or meat. He thinks "the Turkey" is coming to visit us on Thanksgiving. When you ask him who is coming to our house on Thanksgiving, he lists all the relatives and "the Turkey". He found a bag of bread stuffing in the pantry and thinks it is food for the turkey. It's these kind of statements that always stump me as a parent. Do I even try to explain what stuffing is and that we are going to be eating the turkey not visiting with it? Or, do I just let it lie and see if he just figures it out on his own. It will be interesting when we go to the butcher tomorrow to pick up the turkey. I think it's going to be a little disappointing..

The picture of Tyler and the dog and is our neighbor's dog. No we did not lose our minds and get Tyler a dog. We have been walking the dog at lunch time while my neighbor is traveling. This gives Tyler his doggy fix and I get to leave the muddy dog at his home at the end of the walk..

Tree decorating went better than pumpkin carving. Tyler loves standing on the chair or step stool and helping mommy and daddy. There are two characters named Dora and Diego. If you have spent any time with Tyler in the last year you know all about them. Dora and Diego are explorers and go on all kinds of rescue missions. Anyway, they have all kinds of tools that help them on their excursions. So one of Tyler's favorite phrases is "I know! step stool will help us." or "Don't worry, sticky tape will help us mommy." Anything that breaks can be fixed with sticky tape..

Most frightening thing heard over the baby monitor this week: "Don't worry Mia, Ty will carry you down the steps."

November 13 - The End of a Long Week

I have great sympathy for stay at home moms whose husbands travel. Mike's trips are usually just a night or two but last week he was gone seven nights which overlapped a weekend and that really makes it feel like a long time. I think you could compare it doing your medical residency. It's like being on-call 24x7. Fortunately, the kids slept well and every time Tyler would misbehave I would remind him that he promised Daddy that he would be mommy's big helper. But before your imagination gets carried away, let me give you an example of Tyler helping:
"Tyler, mommy has a headache so only one story before naptime."
"Oh, mommy. Poor mommy. Ty will make you feel better mommy."
Tyler proceeds to his closet where he purposefully searches for his drum while chanting, "Make mommy feel better. Make mommy feel better."
He starts drumming as loud as he can and then get his maracas and says, "Make mommy feel more better."

He cracks me up. He is such an energetic and vibrant child (I was searching for politically correct synonyms for "wild" and "crazy") but he has moments where I catch a glimpse of his big heart and compassionate nature.

Speaking of compassion... I arose early on Friday morning with an extra spring in my step. Today was the day Mike was returning from his San Diego "business" trip of golfing, drinking and playing poker and I had a great plan of a Keli-centered weekend of shopping, sleeping late and dining at fine resturants.. Ok, I was at least hoping to take a shower without worrying Tyler was going to burn down the house. Then my phone rings while I have both kids at Target, buying new sunglasses because Tyler had somehow misplaced mine. Anyway, it was 9am and we had already dumped an entire bag of popcorn in aisle 5 and my only thought was getting any pair of sunglasses and getting home as soon as possible but I still had a smile on my face because this was the LAST DAY of playing single parent. That was until my cell phone kept urgently ringing. After ignoring it the first 3 times. I pick up and on the phone is Mike telling me he is taking an earlier flight home because he has been sick all night... It these moments where I know that God has a sense of humor and thankfully somehow I was able to have one too (After one small moment of feeling quite sorry for myself). C'est la vie. Sleep, shopping and me-time must be in the plan for next "season" of my life.





Tyler's latest act of independance is dressing himself but it's not going well as you can see. However, as our very patient cleaning lady can tell you, Tyler is quite the helper on cleaning days.





Here is Miss Mia content in her swing. It only took her 3.5 months to start to enjoy it.

November 6 - Growing Up Too Fast

I remember when Tyler was a baby I was always so anxious for him to hit all his milestones but with Mia it is a completely different story. Mike and I are pretty certain that we are done having babies so the time can't go slow enough for me. I was telling one of my closest friends, Heather, that I could just hold Mia all day and all night and never grow tired of it. I have kept Mia in the bassinet, beside my bed, as long as possible but when I came in to get her after her nap yesterday she had pulled herself up and was peeking out the side. So that's the end of that. I don't know how she is so strong but she has been holding her head up since the day she was born and when you hold her she just has such a grip and you can feel how strong all her muscles are. ..It is gut-wrenching for me to have her sleep in her crib and her room is literally just steps from my bed. I am having a hard letting her grow up and she only 3 months old, can you imagine what it is going to be like when she wants to start dating? Between having Tyler as a big brother and Mike and I as parents she is going to go crazy. Anyway, she is already trying to sit up. If I sit her up she will put her arms down in front of her to hold herself up. Tyler always likes to be part of the picture as you can tell.






I had two wonderful moments with Tyler today. We were playing with blocks and doing puzzles and he came over to me, gave me a big hug and said, "I love you, Mom." Just a spontaneous I love you. And then we had finished dinner and were reading books and Tyler says to me, "let's pray." Tyler has a really cute way of praying, where he bows his head and covers his eyes. So we prayed for daddy, who is in San Diego all week and we prayed for Mia and Draddy (Tyler's name for both grandmas) and ended with a big "Amen!"WOW! Those are the kind of moments that just make you realize how you love your kids more and more with each passing day - an irrational and unexplainable love, a kind of love that they will never be able to understand until they are parents..

November 3-4

It was a beautiful Autumn weekend. We live about 2 minutes from a nature trail so we have been taking the kids on walks to look for leaves, caterpillars, squirrels - when you are two years old everything is fascinating so these walks are usually short in distance and long in time. It take us forever to get ready now that we have two kids. It felt downright cold out so I dressed Mia in a onesie, fleece sleeper, coat with hood, hat, covered her with a blanket and slathered her face with Aquaphor. This is my first time having a baby in a cold weather climate and I am always cold so this seemed appropriate. We got in the car and looked at the thermometer and it was 50 degrees. So my question is, what the heck am I going to dress her in when it is -35 windchill? I literally can hardly get her in the carseat and she can't move her body she is so bundled up. This winter should be interesting..

I am convinced Tyler is going to be a professional athlete. You are probably thinking that I am one of those parents boasting of my child's superior athletic abilities at a young age but no my prediction is based on Tyler speaking about himself in the third person such as: "Mommy, Ty will do it." or "Ty will sing the song, not mommy," or as I heard today while I was nursing Mia, after a disturbing amount of silence . "Ty is helping mommy cut Maria's toe nails." Now if that won't get you off the couch in a hurry, I don't know what will. Thankfully, we really do have the most mellow cat ever. Tyler had her pinned down on the steps and was attempting to cut her back nails with his nail clippers and she was just calmly sitting there wagging her tail.

My last musing for the evening - "Do you think the person who invented Daylight Savings Time had children." Mike and I don't think so. "Falling Back" is a cruel joke played on parents around the United States (except for Arizona). There was no extra hour of sleep last night for us. In fact, I kept Tyler up an extra hour and he still woke up at 6am and Mia woke up at 5am. The three of us sat on the couch, a bleary-eyed mother and two little ones who didn't get the notice that this weekend had arbitrarily been chosen as the morning to sleep an extra hour, watching the news anchor giddily extol the extra hour of sleep the rest of the population was enjoying..

October 31 - The Problem with Raisins

We had a wonderful Halloween. Tyler was a dragon (or dinosaur) he didn't care what people thought he was and Mia was a pink leopard because that was the warmest costume I could find. This was the second time Tyler was a dragon but I showed him a catalog of costumes and told him he could be anything he wanted and he chose the Dora the Explorer costume. I asked him what his second choice was and it was unequivocally a dragon.
This was the first year Tyler really got into the whole trick or treating thing. . Mike was marveling that this is already his 3rd Halloween. The first Halloween we were living in AZ and I had strep. It was just too hot to take him out dressed in a dragon costume and I felt too sick anyway. The second Halloween we were here in IL and we kept wondering why Tyler, dressed as a scarecrow this time, was so lackluster about trick or treating, when we got him home that night he had a 103 fever. Finally, this Halloween, everyone was healthy. We started the afternoon trick or treating at Safety Town and then met Mike at home to go around our neighborhood. All the houses in our neighborhood have big lots so we drove around in the car (while most of the kids in our neighborhood drove around in golf carts. Things have really changed since I was a kid) and Tyler would jump out of the car run up to the door and say "trick or treat" and then proceed to walk right into the house. We are going to have to work on stranger danger. Mike and I had a very proud parenting moment because Tyler very consistently said "thank you" at every house. However this is the same child that will look at me and say " I am sorry Mommy" and continue to do whatever it is he is not supposed to be doing but I will take what I can get...
And for the Tyler moment of the day. I was cleaning up the dishes from lunch and Tyler was sitting at the table munching on raisins and watching Go Diego Go when I noticed that it looked like he was smelling the raisins. This is how the conversation went:
"Tyler, what are you doing? You aren't putting raisins up your nose, are you?"
"Yes mommy.
"We don't put raisins in our noses.Tyler, did you put a raisin up your nose?"
"Mommy, my nose hurts."
"TYLER, DID YOU REALLY PUT A RAISIN UP YOUR NOSE. Oh Tyler.."
Now at this point I am trying to look up his nose and I don't see anything so I think he probably didn't actually put anything up his nose.
"Tyler, blow through your nose really hard."
And, out fly two raisins... They went really far and Tyler just thought it was the funniest thing ever. And now you know why I was the only mother hoping my son didn't get raisins for Halloween. Bring on the candy bars...












This picture is not great quality but this perfectly captures Tyler's excitement. It was so fun for me and Mike to see him so excited.