Unofficially Fall
Around here, most people feel that Labor Day marks the end of summer. Officially, fall doesn’t actually begin until the third week of September (September 23rd this year). But for me, it’s the first day of school that marks the end of summer and the beginning of fall. T had a teacher work day on Monday, and his first day with students was Tuesday. So, even though Buba and Tiny don’t start preschool until September 12th, in my mind, fall has begun.
This summer seemed to really fly by for me. We managed to squeeze in two vacations (Iowa and our beach trip), but we only spent two afternoons at the pool and none at the local splash park. It was a busy summer- I was tutoring most mornings while T was on parent duty, and then T was painting and doing little home improvement jobs while I was the parent on duty. We had planned to spend the last two weeks of summer doing more together as a family (the splash park was definitely on our list), but then Buba got hit with the yuckies. He was sick for about 5 days, and just after he seemed to have fully recovered, Tiny got hit with the yuckies, and we started all over again.
I do wish we’d had the time to fit in some more family fun, but I have to admit, I’m not really unhappy to see the summer come to an end. I love fall weather- those cool crisp mornings and temps rising to the mid 60s or so. There are so many things we are looking forward to- apple picking, pumpkin picking, pumpkin carving, trick-or-treating, and jumping in leaf piles- in addition to the start of preschool, the start of new gymnastics classes (one for each kid), and the start of dance lessons (tap/hip-hop combo). So, as fun as the summer was, with vacations, and playdates, and lots and lots of time at the playgrounds, I’m ready to get back into our school-year routines. It’s going to be a great fall. I just know it.
Yuckies
Buba is still sick. He has thrown up every day since Sunday*, and it’s just so heartbreaking to see how miserable he feels. I’m not quite sure how it came about, but our kids refer to vomit as yuckies. Tiny has been telling everyone that her brother is sick because yuckies keep coming up, and we have yucky bins (shallow plastic containers) that we use to attempt to catch the yuckies and save our rugs and furniture; although, unfortunately, our success rate isn’t all that great. As sick as he’s been, Buba really has been a trooper. He HATES when the yuckies come up (who doesn’t?), but he’s always calm and patient in the clean up process that follows (which usually requires a pajama change).
Last night was the first night that Buba had yuckies in the middle of the night. It was about 12:40 am when I heard him whimper. I jumped out of bed and went right in. Tiny, who was also awake and sitting up in her bed, immediately informed me that “Buba has yuckies coming up again.” Of course, that much was clear as soon as I peeked into his crib (yes, still in the crib, but that’s for another post). Buba looked up at me and very sweetly said, “Can you get a paper towel, please?” Bless his heart.
I lifted him out of his crib and quickly inspected him. Fortunately, he didn’t have any yuckies on himself, but his bedding was full of it. He stood quietly while I stripped the sheets and did my best to quickly remake the bed. As I struggled to secure the fitted sheet in only the dim glow of the nightlight, we had this quiet conversation:
Buba: You forgot to bring the yucky bucket.
Me: Do you need it right now?
Buba: No, you forgot to bring the yucky bucket when my yuckies was coming out.
Me: I’m sorry, Bub. But I didn’t know that your yuckies were coming out. I was asleep in my bed.
Buba: Go and get it.
Me: Do you need it?
Buba: No, but keep it up there (pointing to the play kitchen. we had placed the bin on top of it earlier in the day.) so it will be there if I need it.
I finished making the bed and put the yucky bin where Buba had instructed. Fortunately, we didn’t need it again last night. (Unfortunately, it was used several times first thing this morning.) I offered to sit with Buba on the couch for a bit, but he was ready to go back to his bed. So, I tucked him back in, gave kisses and I love yous to both kids, and then starting the clean up process with the bedding.
T slept through all of this. How is that possible?! I came back to bed and he was still sound asleep and snoring. Normally, I would just put in my earplugs, but not this time with Buba being sick and all. I didn’t fall back to sleep until after 2 am and ended up getting only about 5 hours of sleep, because I had an early tutee this morning. I was pretty tired all morning but managed to sneak in a 45 minute nap while the kids napped this afternoon. We’re all hoping for a better night tonight.
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*T took Buba to the pediatrician’s office Wednesday morning, where he was seen by a nurse practitioner. She did a pretty thorough exam and found nothing out of the ordinary. In previous situations, the kids have only had vomiting for a day or two, but she said it could last up to seven days depending on how log it takes the virus to run it’s course. And so we wait. Buba was completely exhausted today and slept quite a bit. We’re hoping we might finally be at the tail end of this thing. Fingers crossed…
Prepping For Preschool
The following is a post I wrote for How Do You Do It. Due to some technical difficulties, I was unable to post it myself. So, I’ve decided to cross post it here.
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We are now just under four weeks away from Tiny and Buba’s first day of preschool. T and I chose to send them to a local co-op school that strives to build a strong connection between the child’s home and the school. As a result, we’ve already spent a good amount of time on the school grounds, connecting with other classmates and their parents, and talking about what it will be like when they start preschool this fall.
Back in mid-June, we received the kids’ class list noting which days each student will attend. All 20 kids in the class have schedules that allow them to know all the other children in the class, even though only 12 kids attend on any given day (meaning, their schedules all overlap at some point in the week). To help them all get to know each other, optional playdates were set for Monday afternoons and Friday mornings from late June until the week just before school begins. The playdates take place on the school’s playground, helping them become familiar with the school grounds as well.
Recently, each family received a welcome letter from the teachers. The letter included photos of the two teachers to post on our refrigerator for the kids to view and talk about. The teachers are currently in the process of setting up a home visit to each family, where they’ll talk and play with their incoming students and get to know a little more about them.
Similar to many preschools in our area, Buba and Tiny will have a visiting day prior to the real first day of school. On this day parents come into the classroom and stay as the kids get their first introduction to the school and their classroom. The visiting session is just one hour long and only three other students and their parents will be with us (five kids attend each one hour time slot throughout the visiting day). The following Monday, the children begin attending school on their own, but just for two hours each day. It isn’t until the following week that the full schedule of three hours a day, three days a week kicks in.
Tiny is naturally confident and independent, and I’m sure she will have no trouble transitioning to preschool this fall. But for Buba, who has a harder time separating from T and me and who takes longer to warm up in new situations, I’m so, so glad he’s had all of these opportunities to ease into the whole preschool thing. He already knows and looks forward to seeing a handful of his classmates, and he’s confident enough now to explore different areas of the school grounds (there are four different play areas) without me right by his side. He was very shy when we happened to meet his teachers during one of the playdates, but I’m hoping the home visit will help him become a bit more comfortable with them.
Fingers crossed that all this leads to an easy and smooth transition once that first day of school finally rolls around!
Don’t Even Think It
It was just last week when a tiny, little thought popped up in my mind- Neither Tiny nor Buba had been sick in quite a while.
After last winter, where it seemed to be just one illness after another, we were fortunate to have months (months!) of good health in our house. Until last night. When Buba threw up during dinner. We hoped a good night’s sleep might end it all, but he’s had trouble keeping much of anything down all day. Poor kid.
Of course, I know it’s my fault. I should know better than to even think jinxy thoughts like that. From now on, I plan to be much more careful.
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And the winner of a copy of The Kissing Hand (selected by the random number generator at random.org) is Andrea of The Mays Twins! I hope you, Luke, and Molly will all enjoy this book as much as we do!
Hoarders
This morning, we bought a Play Hut tent for $3.00 at a yard sale. Both Buba and Tiny were super excited and eager to try it out as soon as we got it home. T and I envisioned that they might take some pillows and books inside the tent and use it as a cozy, quiet reading space. But Buba and Tiny had other ideas.
They placed all the couch pillows on the floor of the tent, and then filled up one side with as many toys as they could.
And after all that work, they decided that they needed to take a little rest.
So much for the quiet reading space idea.
Cry Babies
I’m a bit late, but linking up with Marcia from 123 blog and her Cry Baby Linky post. I don’t have a ton of photos of Tiny and Buba crying. I don’t tend to take photos when they’re crying, or I end up deleting them because they’re not so cute. But I do have two recent photos that I just couldn’t part with. And thanks to Marcia, I have a reason to share them with you!
This one was taken at our family reunion in Iowa just last month. T was off helping my uncle take down the bouncy house, and Buba was a little upset that his daddy wasn’t available to play with him. I scooped Buba up and told him that he could play or snuggle with me. Buba’s response: “But I love Daddy much more better.” Thanks, Bub.
This next one was taken just a few weeks ago during our trip to Cape Cod. It was our last day there, and the waves were really big due to a storm coming in. The ocean was just too much for the kids, so we headed up to the hotel’s indoor pool. T was playing around with Tiny and somehow she got some water splashed in her face (possibly from some bigger kids playing nearby). You would have thought she’d just been shot.
I probably won’t change my ways and begin taking all kinds of crying photos anytime soon (although it would certainly be easy enough to do), but these two are definitely keepers.
reanbean at HDYDI
I’ve got a post up today over at How Do You Do It? and I’d love for you to head over and take a look. I know, it’s been a long time. Sorry. But I’m back on the schedule, so look for me there again later this month during Back to Preschool week.
There are lots of new writers at HDYDI, so be sure to check out all of the recent posts. It’s good stuff, I promise.
p.s. There’s still time to win a copy of my new favorite book. Don’t forget to enter!
Hand Kisses
My mother was a working mom, so I went to daycare for as far back as I can remember. I was always in an in-home daycare, and as much as I can remember, I always loved it. The woman who took care of me had a daughter just one year older than I, and we were best friends for a long, long time.
Still, I remember going through a period of time when I was maybe four or five years old, where I would get very sad when my mother dropped me off. I knew that I was going to have fun, but I also knew that I was going to miss my mom. That’s when my mom started the hand kisses. Right before she left, she opened both of my hands, put three kisses into each one, and then closed them up tight. She told me that if I started to feel sad after she left, I could just open my hands and put her kisses on my face and know that she loved me even though she couldn’t be with me.
I remember that for the first few minutes after she’d left, I’d sit quietly somewhere in the house with my hands closed up tight, not wanting to let the kisses get away. But then my friend would come by with a doll or a game, and I would quickly smother my face with the imaginary kisses and then run off to play.
Years later when I was in the first term of my first year of college, I became very, very homesick. I was struggling with my assignments in a way I never had in high school, AND I was 1100 miles away from home trying to deal with it all as best as I could. In tears, I called my mom and begged her to come and get me. I don’t remember what she said to me during that phone call, but I do remember that just two or three days later, my mother sent me a care package. It was full of little treats to cheer me up, but on top of it all was a child-sized handprint card (hinged at the pinky fingers). It had a picture of my mother and me (at about age five) on the front and the inside was full of Xs (kisses, of course). I called my mom to tell her that I had received the package, and she asked if I knew what the card was. I responded that I had known instantly.
I had always thought that these hand kisses were something very special between just my mother and me. So imagine my surprise when I sat down with Tiny and Buba on Sunday morning to hear the new Barnes & Noble online story, The Kissing Hand. In this story, a little raccoon is nervous about going off to school, and his mother places a kiss in his hand. She tells him that if he is feeling lonely, he can place the kiss on his cheek and know that his mother loves him. But what was really, really interesting to me is that the mother tells her son that this ritual is a very old secret- one that she learned from her mother and that her mother learned from hers. I’ll never know for sure how my mother learned to give me hand kisses, but after sharing both The Kissing Hand and my own story with Buba and Tiny we all agreed that The Kissing Hand is a book that we need to have in our collection.
So, I’ll soon be off to pick up a copy for our home, and I would love to send a reanbean reader a copy for your home too. To enter my Kissing Hand giveaway, here’s what you do:
1) Leave me a comment on this post.
2) If you’re a regular reader (and I know who you are), leave me a separate comment telling me that you’re a regular.
3) If you’re a lurker or a first time reanbean reader, leave comments on two other fairly recent posts (anything from June, July, or August will do), and then leave another comment on this post letting me know that you’ve done so.
That’s it. That’s all you need to do for a chance or two to win a copy of The Kissing Hand for your own little one(s). All comments must be posted by midnight (Eastern Standard Time) Sunday, August 14th. I’ll be using random.org to select the winner, and will let you all know who the lucky reader is on Monday, August 15th.
Family Time field trips Tiny & Buba: Jordan's Furniture puddle jumping rainy day
by reanbean
3 comments
Downpour
After quite a few days of nice, sunny weather, we woke up this morning to find nothing but gray skies and steady rain. This is never a good thing for Tiny and Buba, as staying home, inside the house all day, usually leads to crankiness and fighting. T and I needed to come up with a plan to get us all out of the house and hopefully out to something fun.
So, we headed up the highway to Target. Not the most fun destination, but we needed some storage bins, and our kids usually enjoy walking around the store (for a limited time, of course). However, not 5 minutes after we got on the road, the steady rain turned into a torrential downpour. Traffic slowed to about 35 miles per hour, and I couldn’t wait to get off the road. We pulled into the Target parking lot, but realized that even if we ran, we’d all be soaking wet by the time we got to the doors. And worse, anything we purchased would be soaked too when it came time to load up the van, unless the rain let up while we were in the store. So, we waited a bit to see if it would let up. When it didn’t we moved onto the next part of our plan- a trip to Jordan’s.
We had absolutely no plans to purchase any furniture, but anyone who has been to the northern MA store, knows that you don’t need to be in the market for furniture to have a good time at Jordan’s. There’s a water/light show next to the ice cream parlor and trapeze school. And there are escalators to ride and long corridors to walk or stroll. We did it all. After filling our bellies with burgers and ice cream, we headed home for nap time. Unfortunately, it was still raining quite hard.
But, miraculously, just an hour and a half later, the rain had stopped and the streets were nearly dry. Buba and Tiny saw the sun shining and knew they needed to get outside before the weather had a chance to change. So, we put on rain boots and got right to it.
Buba wasted no time getting down to puddle jumping business.
He was all about the big, BIG splashes.
And figured out that you could make a really, really big splash if you took a running start.
Tiny was much more cautious in her approach, perhaps remembering the unfortunate puddle stomping event from last summer.
She started out with some little splashes.
But eventually worked her way up to some big ones.
Needless to say, they were both soaking wet and filthy by the time we headed inside for dinner. Nothing a warm shower couldn’t fix.
Beach Vacation
Neither T nor I are big beach people. Having grown up in Iowa, I didn’t grow up spending time at the beach, so it doesn’t often occur to me to make a trip to one even though it’s a fairly simple thing to do out here in the greater Boston area. T, being very fair skinned, burns easily. So, a day at the beach is not listed in his top ten things to do list either.
But when Grammy (T’s mother) invited us all to come to the Cape for a long weekend, it just felt like something we had to do. Tiny and Buba had recently read Ladybug Girl at the Beach and were very excited to know that they too could build sand castles and play in the waves. T and I were not nearly as excited, but we were both in agreement- this was all about the kids and giving them a fun beach experience.
So we went.
And we went crab hunting with Daddy,
swam in the ocean with Puddle Jumpers,
filled a bucket with water and then dumped it on the dry sand,
stood at the water’s edge and let the little waves tickle our toes,
buried our feet in the sand,
found a walking stick,
sailed the sea (with goggles on),
and tried to build sand castles (unfortunately the sand/water ratio was a bit off, and they always crumbled).
It was awesome!
So, the two non-beach-going parents are now contemplating making just such a beach trip an annual thing. But next time, we’ll definitely need at least a week.