The Kindness of Strangers

It doesn't take much to convince me to travel, so when one of my friends was having a 1st birthday party for her little girl, I was all over it. What's better then getting to see someone else's city, sleep in a hotel room where you don't have to make the beds, ordering pizza for supper and leaving the boxes sit on the counter waiting for some one else to clean up after you? That's right, I love me some hotel time every now and again.

It's the one place where I don't have to play the maid.

While I didn't take any pictures, I promise you, most of the time Kyra's facial expressions mimicked this:

Andy Lydia's was somewhere along the lines of this, but a bit more toothier:

And although these picture were taken a week ago at our own town fair, the girls were just as stoked to be coo'd at by different strangers while attending someone else's town fair.

Ya know what's more awesome about attending another child's birthday party? You still get to enjoy the cake even though you don't have to clean up after that mess either! Ahh... this whole mom gig can be really fun...

Except when a 5-6 hour drive ends up taking you 8 hours. Both ways.

Except when most people stand around staring at someone who needs a bit of help instead of offering.

Except when you do this drive, alone, with two children, one of which has the cuteness of a pair of chipmunk cheeks and the demanding tone (read: scream) of a queen bee.

Except when you need 18 more hands every once in a while and God only gave you two.

At least, every once in a while, one caring person would lend me two of her hands in an effort to help me out by offering to hold Lydia and keep an eye on Kyra while I carried our luggage to the second floor of a no elevator hotel or while I made Kyra a plate of food during the party.

It seems those times when I start to stress the most, some kind person I've never met or barely know is always there to lend a hand. Or two. And then brings me and the girls a small batch of no bake cookies to enjoy on the ride home.

One of the woman I met for no more then 5 minutes on Saturday not only offered to lend me a helping hand during the party Sunday but brought me chocolate cookies to boot. Seriously? Oh! She won her way into my favorite people of the year book.

We all know the quickest way to my heart is to bring me yummy food.

Its the kindness of those strangers that made a crazy, what the hell was I thinking traveling with two kids by myself? weekend, another (almost) perfect weekend.

It totally would have been a perfect weekend if Jer had the weekend off and had been there to help me. But, hey, make do with what God gives you, right? And God gave me a birthday parting to attend and helping hands through strangers. Can't complain.

To Baby Gate, Or NOT To Baby Gate

I've come to find that the second child isn't so much as neglected as your elders would have us younger generation of mothers to believe. At least, not in the early stages of parenting I'm currently residing.

I have just as many pictures of Lydia as I did with Kyra. However, ALL of Lydia's pictures are stored on the computer, and not a single one has ever been printed for show around our house. Kyra's pictures were all taken on a 35mm camera, and thus, to see the pics I had to develop the film.

With Kyra I used organic baby food. It wasn't until she was closer to a year that I started to experiment with non-organic foods. Even still, if there is a product that I can find affordable in an "organic" form, I shell out the extra pennies for my baby's well being. Now that Lydia is starting to eat solids, she, too, is on all organic baby foods. The way I see it, they have MANY more years to fill their bodies with crap, why do I want to start them out that way.

With Kyra, I went through several baby gates before I found the combination that worked best for us. It's safe to say she fell down the stairs at least 4 separate occasions, all of which I was standing right there to catch her and couldn't manage it. Now that Lydia is starting to explore in more then a 5 foot radius around my feet, I find myself contemplating the baby gate issue again.

Our problem is that our upstairs has two slightly decorative and uneven banisters. Banisters that a "renter" probably shouldn't be drilling holes in to install a gate unless we'd like to buy our landlord new ones when we move out. And banisters that don't accommodate a pressurized gate.

We could go buy this stairway gate instillation kit for roughly $33, per side. That's $66 for no more then 12 months of "safe guarding" the stairs. Something I could also accomplish for free by just.... wait for it.... keeping an eye on my kid and teaching her NOT to play on the stairs.

Now I'm aware it only takes one millisecond for a kid to run to the stairs of death and hurl themselves to their doom, but I'm a positive thinker. I'd like to think that, even though Lydia is the EXACT opposite of Krya in EVERYTHING she does, I can still manage to make Lydia behave in a cooperative manner that I seemed to teach Kyra with. If I told Kyra not to do something, she'd walk away, come back to it later and try it again. This would go on for 3-4 more times (unless we're talking about jumping on the bed, then that's a whole 'nuther can of worms) but she'd quickly get the idea and leave well enough alone. I'm fairly confident that if I never put baby gates up for Kyra, I still wouldn't have had much of an issue with her wanting to play on the stairs.

So, going with that thought, I think Jer and I have decided that we will not be paying $66 for customized do-hickies to baby proof our house. Instead we're going to use the "Lydia, we DO NOT play on the stairs. If you want to walk up or down, ask for Mommy or Daddy to help you." I'm well aware that at the tender age of 7 or so months, when this is sure to start coming into play, Lydia will have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. But I'm also confident that she's a quick learner and will soon figure out what the words "No, Ma'am" mean when she starts inching towards all our no-no areas in the house, the "chemical" cabinet under the sink that's not latched and wasn't latched with Kyra either, the DVD case that is not dangerous yet is still not to be touched.

While I made certain I had the absolute perfect gate for Kyra's well being, it's not that I'm skimping out on Lydia because she's my second child. I'm skimping out on her because I'm more confident with my mothering and teaching abilities. I think it's the confidence level a mother has with her second child that makes the biggest difference in going from one child to two, not so much the lack of time or concern.

I'll concern myself with more pressing matters, like making sure I have enough outlet covers since the builder of this house went a little crazy and placed them every 2.35 feet apart.

We'll see how many times it takes Lydia to fall down the stairs before we change our minds...**




**that's right, haters, I said that.

Lydia's Big Day

This weekend we took this:
Added a little bit of this:

Celebrated with a little bit of that:

And along with these people:

We had Lydia baptised.

Welcome to the Catholic faith, Lydia. I hope it warms your heart the way it does mine.

And to Think, She's the One Who Put Most of Them There

Kyra: Mommy, you have wrinkles in your hair.
Me: Wrinkles? Where?
Kyra: See? All those white things? You have wrinkles in your hair.

This is What You Get When...

You take the kids putt putt golfing with a couple of friends,
and at the end of the game Jeremy and Kyra pick out the prizes.

At least she makes a pretty darn cute pirate.

Sweet Cheeks

If you ever want to know how Lydia got those fat, chipmunk cheeks,
Its not like we feed her anything out of the ordinary.

She consumes all the same kind of foods any other 6 month old would munch on.

But her cheeks?

They still look like we stuffed them with marshmallows or the fluffiest white cake you've ever laid eyes on.

Don't you just want to devour her? I sure do.

Looking at those cheeks makes some people have the overwhelming urge to pinch them. For me, it makes me want to go back for seconds at the dessert table.

Maybe that's why I haven't lost the baby weight, yet?

As Luck Would Have It

Both girls are not under my feet at this very minute.

Lydia is peacefully asleep in her crib while Kyra is peacefully listening to her nursery rhyme book/cd in her own room.

This leaves me with an unknown amount of time by myself and, well, I'm just not sure what to do with myself.

It's not that often anymore that Kyra actually goes down for a nap. Something that seems to have changed almost overnight. While I'm glad to give up the fighting over when and where she will go to sleep, some days, though fewer and fewer, we still end up fighting by the evening over Kyra's attitude or frank unpleasantness. I've started to implement "quiet time". A thing of which I've held off as long as possible. But here we are. And it's working for us much better then the last 18,000 times we tried it before. And for that, I will not complain.

As luck would have it, I had a free moment to sit and blog.

As luck would have it, I had a free moment to gather my thoughts.

As luck would have it, I have managed to keep my sanity despite one child leaving a nap behind and another child leaving colic behind.

As luck would have it... I'm a happy Mommy. And I still wouldn't mind adding one more babe to the chaos.

Wounder what Jer's take on THAT would be!

Life...

It gets in the way of blogging some times.

Sunshine and reasonable temperatures drag us outside. Though the scattered showers pop on through every day.

Husband had his first day back to work in what seemed like ages on the 4th. There is nothing more distracting in life then having Jeremy home. He's like this planet for which our entire family orbits around when he's here. We follow him from room to room, each seeking our own attention. Guess that's what happens when he's not always home. Though, this "vacation" was brought on by sickness. A sickness where he was actually sick, but, yet, I couldn't stop poking fun and mocking his patheticness all over the house. Some days it's the only way to get my jollies.

School. A few posts ago, I mentioned picking up some school books for Kyra at Target. Well, the next day, we started home schooling. Kyra was and still is beyond thrilled to start school every day. We started out working for only 15 to 20 minutes at a time. But as the days wear on, Kyra shouts MORE! MORE! because she wants to do another page of this or start on that book. I never knew school could be so fun. I hated my school days, but maybe, Kyra will have a much brighter outlook on school then I did.

Lydia. She's now crawling. Like, on all fours all the time. Each day getting faster and faster. And not only is she crawling, she can now sit for a time on her own. She's trying desperately to put herself in that position but isn't quite there yes. She's also eating solid foods, now. We had to start giving her actual pieces of sliced peaches, whole strawberries and bites of banana to get her to this point. We went with the whole, if it's in her hand she'll stick it in her mouth, technique. Before then she refused to eat anything that didn't come through a bottle. It's worked wonderfully!

And, lastly, Lydie Kate turned 6 months last week and I think I nearly lost it. How can it be 6 months already? I remember when Kyra turned 6 months it seemed like an eternity had passed by. For Lydia? I can still recount the vivid details of her day to day existence, like it all just happened last week.

Life. It's busy even when it's slow.