Fang Inspection

We went to the dentist last week for Stephanie's biannual check-up, and I was happy to learn that her teeth look great.  This is gratifying, as a lot of time and energy in this house is spent chasing her around twice a day with a toothbrush.  A little positive reinforcement usually goes a long way for good cooperation- I should probably consider buying stock in light sticks.  I also learned that she had gotten six (that's right SIX) new teeth since her last visit 6 months ago.  I knew about exactly zero of these teeth- a reminder that I'm not gifted with a strong power of observation (those of you who know me well should not feel bad about nodding your head right now:))
The dentist told me (and I knew she would, but until she did, I was avoiding it like the plague) that it was time to start using toothpaste with fluoride.  That means I have to get her to stand, brush her teeth and immediately spit in the sink.  Stephanie, of course, got a new toothbrush and they gave her a travel size "sparkle" toothpaste that smells suspiciously not mint (in addition to my problems with observation, I also lack a strong sense of smell).  I have purposely avoided kid's flavors, and was using a very minty non-fluoride toothpaste before.  Turns out, the change in tooth brushing routine has been magical.  I don't know if it is just the cool little toothpaste tube, the sparkle, the non-mint flavor, the new toothbrush or the spitting, but she now demands tooth brushing and, if we are home all day, we have to do it three times.  It is the highlight of each morning and night, and I, for one, am relieved.
As for the visit to the dentist, she did great.  She was a little hesitant at first, but they showed her how the chair worked and then she realized there was a television above the chair and she could wear headphones and watch Dora the Explorer, and she was in.  There were children older than her crying (which I realize might be her one day), but for this visit, she was such a trooper!

She is holding the dentist's tiger-  his mouth opens and you can brush his teeth.

One last little funny moment to share from the dentist office.  Another patient was ahead of us checking out, so I suggested we go to the bathroom.  I said, "You haven't gone since we left the house, and I could stand to go too."  Stephanie says, "Mommy, you can't stand!  You have to sit."  As always, the talking just kills me!

Flag Hunt Season

Excellent news, everyone!  It is flag hunt season again!  Stephanie L-O-V-E-S orienteering, and the Orienteer Kansas (OK) club has become very active in the last few years, so there are lots of races in Lawrence.  If you are unfamiliar with orienteering, it is essentially a scavenger hunt.  You choose a course, sometimes designated by color- I'm a big fan of white, because I can usually smoke the 7 year old kids that also often choose white, or they are sometimes just called "long" or "short" (at which point Mary will inevitably say, "Let's do the long course" and I stupidly agree).  You get a map, with points marked and you have to go to each point in order and "punch in".  OK uses something called e-punch, so each point can be checked into with a little key fob.  This is always Stephanie's job, and she takes it very seriously.  This weekend OK hosted an event on campus at KU, so of course we all attended.  Mary and I "raced" by ourselves, and Kevin took Stephanie in the backpack.  He claims that she is getting a little too heavy and that he is not sure that he can run with her on his back for many more races.  That being said, I think I should probably note that he finished in half the time that it took Mary and I, as we treat the word race as optional, preferring to walk and laugh and chat while finding points.  When Kevin and Stephanie finished the race, Stephanie got to indulge in cookies, raisins and pretzels provided by the club (she told me later she had "seven cookies".  Kevin said that seemed about right).  When she and Kevin finished, she asked him "What was your favorite part?".  Apparently her favorite part was dropping the e-punch key, which only happened once and she stopped him to pick it up.  There is a great picture of her using the fob on OK's website, under Sept 22 on the main page of the site: http://www.orienteerkansas.com/

Showing off her e-punch before the race

Found a cool stick after the race!

One from the archives-  This was Steph's first race-  Less than three months old-she's in the green bundle there, and Whitney carried her the whole way in the cold February air!

Back when she was small enough that I actually raced with her.

The "old" way of punching the map, before everything got cool and electronic

The Commandments of Relocating Oneself Across Campus

As part of our back to school routine, I discovered that Stephanie LOVES my office.  Mostly, I think, because I keep yogurt in the fridge at all times, and she is given unlimited access to tape and permission to attach as many periodic tables to my walls, windows, desk, and file cabinet as she would like.  I get extra time to work, she has fun, it's a win-win.  The walk to my office from daycare is the real adventure.  It takes me nine minutes at a leisurely pace alone door to door.  The return trip with Stephanie takes 20 minutes.  How does one more than double the walk time?  If you have to ask yourself that, you haven't recently walked anywhere with a toddler so allow me to fill you in.  First and foremost, items from nature shall be collected, even at the peril of collecting in the middle of the road.  Rocks, acorns, pine cones and leaves are the most coveted, and they shall be collected in triplicate ("One for Mommy, one for Daddy and one for Stephie").  We shall stop a minimum of five times to exchange items, as turns shall be taken as to the person that is permitted to carry the stuffed animal, the blanket and the artwork from school.  In the event that any litterbugs have preceded us, do not worry, as all trash shall be removed from the path and placed in the proper receptacle.  And then, of course, the series of benches outside of my building shall be used as a series of balance beams.  And finally we arrive at my building.  Before we can actually go into my office, we shall cross Turtle River (if you are unfamiliar with Turtle River, may I recommend you check out the Dora the Explorer book series from your local library?).  Turtle River is the long bench in front of my office.  One shall sit on the bench, put on a life jacket, remove shoes (as shoes are apparently not required in a boat), and scoot the length of the bench until reaching my office (at the very end of the very long bench... excuse me, I mean Turtle River).  And, finally, arrival in my office.  At which point, the potty is required, which involves re-locking the office and heading down the hallway (fortunately, at least, in the opposite direction of Turtle River).  Once we are back to my office, however, she will make herself useful by removing my trash and recycling from my office and placing them into the proper bins in the hall way, wipe down my desk with a wet cloth, and then get to work eating all of my yogurt and taping up periodic tables.  In the mean time, I get to grade and email and clear my desk for the day, and she is happy to run to the printer for me in the event that I print something.  Win-win office time, with the adventure to get there to boot.      

Dad of the year?

When Kevin and I have our less fine parenting moments, we like to joke that we are looking forward to our nominations for parents/dad/mom of the year award.  Most of those moments are not actually poor parenting, but circumstances that may be perceived by others as poor parenting.  Like chasing a crying toddler down Ohio Street whom also happened to be naked.  The circumstances that led up to that particular instant weren't all that terrible (we had gone to the pool, parked a few blocks away in the shade and were changing her out of her swimsuit when she got upset and took off down the sidewalk), but regardless of how we got there, surely those passing by probably weren't admiring our parenting skills.  Which brings us to Kevin's dad of the year nomination on Saturday.  I had to go in on Saturday for a lab this weekend, so Kevin had Stephanie to himself all day.  He had planned a fun and active day for them, complete with a hike in the woods and a trip to the pool.  She was to be in the carrier for the duration of the hike, so Kevin didn't argue with her on her clothing choice- a [dirty] Jayhawks onesie- size 12 months- you can imagine the wedgie-tastic fit on that one. She also was not wearing shoes, as she was not walking, and when you carry her on your back, it is easier to not have to keep track of shoes.  Just that morning, she had scraped her hand on the sidewalk and, as a person upset at the sight of wounds, she wanted to cover it up.  It really wasn't in a band-aid-able spot, so she elected to wear a mitten on one hand, as to not have to see the offensive cut.  And off they went on their hike.  The day had gotten quite warm, and Kevin hiked around the woods with over 30 pounds on his back.  Sometime later, he emerges, drenched in sweat, and what luck! Stephanie spots the playground.  "I go on slide", she informs him.  He tried to dissuade her, but to no avail.  So, sweaty Kevin and partially dressed Stephanie in no shoes and one mitten joined a well dressed family at the slides.  I like to think that any family witnessing our parent of the year moments laugh as they remember their own, and even if they don't, it really doesn't matter, but I for one got a great laugh when I read the saga by email while I was stuck at work all day.

TLE

Stephanie recently had a TLE (Traumatic Llama Experience).  Only it wasn't a llama, it was a camel.  Actually, it was just a guy dressed as a cartoon camel, but it was a traumatic experience.  We went up to Michigan to visit Kevin's brother and his family last week, and Dave got everyone tickets to a minor league baseball game.  At the game, we saw a llama (okay, camel) wearing a baseball jersey for the home team interacting with the crowd (interestingly, I should note that the local team's mascot is Lou E Loon, a bird, so the whole camel connection to the team is really unclear to me).  Kevin and I were pretty excited to run into a llama (still had not noticed that his jersey read "camel" at this point), and Kevin enthusiastically rushed Stephanie over to say hello.  She was sitting (in a prime position to be targeted by a llama, as it turns out) on Kevin's shoulders.  Kevin approaches llama from behind.  Llama turns and spies Stephanie.  Enthusiastic to meet his fans, llama makes a play grab at Stephanie.  Stephanie's sense of self-preservation kicks in, and she screams and slings herself back as hard as she can (and I still consider it a miracle that Kevin kept a grip on her- he told me later that she squirms so much that he always has a tight grip on her, but who knew he needed it in the event of an unlikely pack animal attack).  It was quite a panicked few minutes for her, and she was fairly traumatized but recovered once we got to the on-site playground.  She had a terrific time at the playground there, watched a little of the game, enjoyed a hot dog and then more playground.  Back at home, we told Stephanie that we would take her to another ball game, but we would make sure there weren't any llamas.  She must have mulled it over all night, because the first words out of her mouth the next morning were "I go to 'nother baseball game, n-yum.  Not any llamas there scare me."  She then launched into rainman mode, repeating it over and over again, even talking about it again the following morning.  She must be dreaming each night of a llama-free baseball experience.  As an additional note, we had a great time in Michigan.  It was about a 13.5 hour trip each way, but we timed it out so that we left as Stephanie was needing a nap, and drove into the wee hours so she also fell asleep for the night in the car.  It helped reduce her length of time awake in the car and wasn't terribly hard on us.  It was really fun to see Dave and Katie and "Baby Alaina".  Alaina is just over one now, so she was really funny and interactive.  She liked to follow Stephanie around, and we got to imagine what nice play mates they will be in another year or two.  Dave and Katie, were, as always, super hosts with great food and fun plans.  Stephanie has always taken to Uncle Dave really well, and this trip was no exception, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't even associate him with the TLE, and I don't think that it would matter if she did.  

Sure, it was raining, but I did insist on posing with the cheese.

Dug this one out from the 2008 archives...

Stephanie and Alaina on an in-house wagon ride.

Fuzzles enjoyed the playground at the ballgame as well.

Umpire must have made a bad call...

Nurse, we need cheese, STAT

When injured, most of Stephanie's responses are very toddler typical.  Look of surprise.  Look to Mom to see if she is okay (who is no doubt grimacing because that really looked like it would hurt).  Realization that it does indeed hurt.  Face wrinkle, burst into sobby scream, run for Mom.  And here's where it takes a unique Stephanie turn.  When she starts to pull it together, she will inevitably gulp out, "I... want.... cheese..."  One to three slices of nearly any variety is the typical dosage, and it normally kicks in right away. Now, the question is, would our HSA cover it if I got a prescription and can anyone recommend a doctor that will prescribe cheese PRN?

Name Guilt

You know the fun of bringing home a pet and naming it?  Sometimes it's easy.  When I was 16ish, I told Mom that whenever we got another pet, I was going to name it Gizmo- fish, cat, dog, I didn't care.  Shortly after this declaration, we got to the river house, and there was a little orange cat in the yard.  It was clearly our Gizmo, who went on to live a long and happy life on the farm.  The name worked for her, and I never questioned it.  Years later, I brought Boston home.  I had him for several days before I could come up with a name.  I tried Lazlo, a la Real Genius, but it just didn't stick.  Finally, I came up with Boston because he was black and white and so annoyingly dog-like.  A few months later after I started dating Kevin, Kevin said that he thought Boston's real name was Pork Chop, which did seem right, but the name ship had sailed.  All of this to say that I think we really missed the boat on naming our most recent pet, Fatty.  Fatty was a small caterpillar that Kevin found in the garden for Stephanie.  She helped him capture Fatty and put him in a jar with fennel.  They covered the top of the jar with a very porous fabric, and periodically freshened his food.  I named him Fatty right away because he was, as promised in that wonderful book, a very hungry caterpillar.  Within a handful of days, he turned into a chrysalis, which, as far as I can tell, is a fancy man word for cocoon that is harder to spell and harder to pronounce correctly, thus making it the preferred term.  The name Fatty was still working for me, though.  Well, this morning, Kevin called upstairs that Fatty was a butterfly.  He rushed the jar upstairs to us, and we told Stephanie that we were going to set him free.  She thought to go out onto the deck of our bedroom and not back downstairs, which was really funny to me, because I forget that deck exists, and she came up with the idea just seconds ahead of Kevin.  At first, Fatty the butterfly (and this is where I am having a hard time with the name Fatty) looked a little deflated and unsure about flying, and we were afraid he/she wasn't going to make it  Stephanie was nonplussed, she merely said "I get new Fatty".  Fortunately, with a little rest, Fatty took off flying just wonderfully.  I hope Fatty has a good life, and maybe doesn't hate us for such an inappropriate moniker.

The first day with Fatty

A few days later, really living up to his/her name

The chrysalis is attached to the fabric on top

Fatty, the beautiful butterfly

Not looking so lively here, but was fine several minutes later