3,200 miles of Christmas, part one

I wanted to finally get started on the Christmas Trip Blog Post Series (an anthology).  This story begins with the decision to (again) drive half across the country with a small child in tow.  We drive for a variety of reasons- cheaper than flying, we have our own vehicle when we get to the destination, we want to see family and friends in NJ and VA, we want the luxury of not dealing with airports and having to limit our packing because of flying, flexibility on dates in case of inclement weather or ever changing work schedules, and frankly, Kevin and I really like to road trip together...  Funny thing- stick us in a closed vehicle for over twenty hours in two days, and we are at our best.  We are great road trippers, so we need to raise a great road tripper, so we happily jam little Stephanie in a car seat and haul her off to where ever we see fit (Michigan in the summers, east coast over Christmas).  She is turning into an awesome little road tripper, too.  We essentially packed no toys (I was assured that there would be more than enough to play with at Grandma's house), one book, a pack of light sticks, and my Nook for emergencies.  The Nook was used, but surprisingly not all that heavily.  Our first day (3 days later than we originally scheduled) we left a little later than planned (that is SO hard to believe, I know!), but we made it as far as Columbus, OH, where the roads were getting a bit dicey by 10 pm, so we snagged a hotel, and headed out the next morning with promises of snow storms in PA.  The snow storms were apparently just in front of us, so everything was plowed and in good condition for our second day.  We did have the warm welcome of east coast traffic in Philly, but made it to NJ respectably close to dinner time.  We spent 5 days in NJ, and got to do some things we missed out on last year.  We had a chance to visit Kevin's friend Seetha and her family (and it had been so long since he had seen her, he hadn't even met her school aged daughters).  I've never met her, but I really enjoyed the time we got to spend with her and her husband and her girls.  We also got up to Grams (Great-grandma Stephanie) and Aunt Chris's house, where we enjoyed a very nice Grams meal and got to have the Stephanies play together.  Grams' house is FULL of interesting and tiny little breakables, so my anxiety level was a bit high, but Stephanie actually left (mostly) everything alone.  At Kevin's Mom's house, we spent some time at the library (must be well stocked with books at all times with Stephanie), and Kevin worked a bit around the house.  Kevin's Mom cooked lots of delicious meals, and we enjoyed relaxing around the house.  

Aunt Chris and Grams, of course, over did it with gifts for Stephanie, but she enjoyed herself!

Back at Granny Gen's house, Stephanie got to open yet another round of presents.

Coloring with Granny Gen

Even Uncle Dave left presents for Christmas and Birthday-  Her wings are super cool!

I gotch-ya!

Before the holidays, we had some icy rain and I ended up slipping in the driveway while holding Stephanie.  It was a more embarrassing moment than I care to re-live, but let's just say I had been told moments before that the driveway was icy, but I decided to give it a go anyway.  Stephanie now has the occasional fear of me slipping, warning me to be careful whenever conditions appear even a little wet, and even warning Kevin when, at their last orienteering race, Kevin was told by the race coordinators that part of the course was slippery.  She kept telling him, "Go slow, go slow!".  The same day I fell, she was extra sensitive, and actually started crying when I told her we were going out to the store.  She didn't want to go out because she was afraid I would slip.  I got her out of the house, as it was no longer slippery out, and she was fine.  The next day we were headed out, and she said to me, "You can hold my hand Mommy, I gotch-ya."  I guess one non-slippery experience gave her the confidence to keep me up-right all on her own!  Still though, I hear the warnings about not slipping every time it is wet out!

The Big Three

Stephanie turned 3 (fairly recently)!!!  We had a big day planned, and it mostly went as planned.  We went to see her very first movie in the theater, Frozen.  It was probably a little old for her, but she watched and enjoyed it.  I showed her previews before we left, and she was excited to see the movie with the "snowman".  I rushed us there to be on time, only to fairly quickly realize my mistake.  Trailers were neither interesting nor entirely appropriate for her, and she got a little restless and kept asking where her movie with the snowman was.  Next time, I'll aim for 10 minutes late!  Other than having to switch seats 5 times during the movie, she was actually very happy to sit (or stand or sit in my lap or on the stairs- glad for a low attendance Thursday afternoon movie) and watch.  I thought it would frighten her at times, but she didn't seem to find it scary.  She did get a little upset when one of the sisters started to freeze at the end, but that was it.  After the movie, we rushed over to school to deliver cupcakes to her friends (that we made the night before together).  I did not think I was the kind of parent that brought cupcakes to school, but I had to go in to work to pick up some things, so I thought it would make her feel special to do a little special delivery on campus.  She was so pleased to hand out cupcakes to all of her friends, just grinning from ear to ear.  I made carrot cake, and I also decorated them with little butterflies on toothpicks.  I was worried about the carrot cake going over okay, and didn't consider the toothpicks an issue at all.  When we walked into the room, and I was faced with a group of 3 year old's, I quickly realized that I had 20 cupcakes with 20 little weapons inserted, so I had Stephanie remove them as she handed them out.  It also turns out that carrot cake was not an issue-  put green icing on it, and a group of 3 year old's will inhale them before even tasting them.  In the future, I will be a cupcake parent-  I had no idea how much joy she would find in bringing those to school.  Everyone said "Happy Birthday" and then we stayed for one story and headed to my office, where she got to operate a scan-tron machine, which was fun.  On the way home, she did briefly pass out in the car, but I woke her up when we got in.  Thankfully, Alaina's present had arrived- some very cool magnet tiles and the traditional "God Child" ornament- so I was able to convince Stephanie to wake up and be pleasant.  Unfortunately, I did not think to take pictures because I was worried about getting her in a good mood.  When she opened the tiles, she said "Magna-tiles!".  I thought for an instant that maybe she could read, but then it occurred to me that she must have them at school, which she confirmed.
The last part of her birthday- the "party" if you will, was a moment that I have in every project I do, in which vision and desire don't quite intersect with time and talent.  I had, luckily, mostly decorated the day before, but only actually invited Mary over, and no one else (which is just as well, because that means I don't really have to clean my house- Mary and I are long over that part of our relationship!).  But Mary arrived with a gingertree craft, which was incredibly fascinating to Stephanie.  She concentrated so hard to decorate the tree with icing and candy-  I think her and Mary easily worked on it for an hour.  Kevin made dinner, and I decorated the cake-  and here is where the vision really got lost.  We told Stephanie that it was a Dora birthday cake, and that Dora was going to "Butterfly Mountain".  And sweet Stephanie will tell you to this moment that she had a Dora cake for her birthday, which I find pretty generous because there was no actual evidence of a Dora cake in our house that night!  But she was excited to blow out the candle (note to self, next year face cute number candle towards camera, not child) and when I offered her cake after the candle, she said, "I blow out candle, I open presents now", so we did that first.  Presents are now a big hit, and, luckily for her, she has hit a windfall as Christmas and family visits are now underway (those posts to come!).

The First "Snow" 2013

It doesn't take much snow, apparently, to excite Stephanie (so excited in fact, that she managed to get me to agree to take her out in it before 9 am, and I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about how cold and early it was!). We took just a few pictures to commemorate the occasion.  She actually went upstairs to my closet to request this particular hat... I think because she remembers wearing it in the snow last year.  She used her shovel to shovel snow into the potted mums because the "plants were hungry".  They probably would have been hungry, had they not been very, very frozen.

Two days before, we got word from our in-house meteorologist (i.e., Kevin with a newspaper in hand) that the weather was going to turn ugly very soon-and he was right, because, at this point, it is so cold that even Kevin is willing to admit that it is cold out, but only after the water in his camelback froze in the hose when he was out orienteering on Saturday.   In anticipation of the cold, we got in one more trip to the nature center in town, where we discovered a super fun log!  Additionally, we were discovered by a very sweet neighborhood cat.  I practically tackled him to have a chance to snuggle a cat, but he seemed to prefer to aggressively head butt Stephanie, who did NOT like it.  On the way home, she told me, "I not a big fan of that cat."  I am sure I said that, and she was repeating me from earlier, but it was a very accurate assessment of how she felt.

The $100 Tootsie Roll

One year and two months ago, roughly, Stephanie had to have general anesthesia to fix a chipped tooth.  Tuesday, we were back in the office to replace the crown, as it cracked off that morning in an unfortunate tootsie roll incident (though Alaina did suggest that I tell everyone it was a carrot, which I may consider doing for my more public persona).  Spoiler alert:  In case you don't want to read the entire post, here's what is about to happen... I am going to go through lots of details about the day, trying to stick to the funniest ones, and then I am going to spend several sentences in the "she's growing up so fast" vein.  There will be no pictures, but plenty of charming anecdotes, so please, if you would like, read on...
The morning started with a ton of errands, so many in fact, that I was having anxiety dreams about it the night before in which I could not find the chicken broth at the grocery store.  We successfully navigated the longest grocery trip first thing in the morning, leaving only picking up Kevin's car battery, Target, Checkers (our very favorite grocery store for produce!), and the bank, when I handed Stephanie a tootsie roll as requested.  With a "crunch" from the backseat, I glanced in the mirror and I could clearly see her tooth was missing the crown.  In a surprising moment of non-panic (sad regret, yes, but no actual panic), I reached back, dug out the pieces of tooth from her mouth, and made a right hand turn from the stop sign at which I sat to head home.  She was pretty upset at first, but I told her we would go to the dentist and that it would be fine.  If you have followed my previous posts, then you know how she feels about the dentist, so she pulled it together while I ran groceries inside and called the dentist.  They needed to talk to the dentist and call me back, and I decided to try to trooper on through the errands when I saw that she really wasn't too upset.  She had already been promised a toy (love the "One Spot"!) from Target for being "good" (read, not a heinous mess) at the grocery store, so I went straight for the gold and reminded her of the toy.  In reality, I wanted to go get the battery first because that made so much more sense geographically.  I offered that we could go to Target first and get her toy, or we could go get Daddy's car battery first and then Target.  She sniffled a bit and said, "We get Daddy's battery first, his car no working".  Side note:  The car not working and the battery thing has been interesting to her this week.  We watched Kevin take it out of the car, and then he went to the battery store.  He left the battery there to be charged, and she was a little curious about why he had to leave it and did not bring it home.  At Best Buy the next day, she got super excited, and bee-lined away from me to go find him to drag him across the store to show him that she had found batteries for his car.  In this case, an entire display of AA, AAA and D batteries, all of which, I am fairly certain, will not work in his car, but ridiculously funny and cute.  Back to tooth day-  We picked up the battery, and headed to Target, at which point I realized it made more sense to go to Checkers before Target, so I suckered her into that too.  Then off to Target for real, where I ended up getting her 5 puzzles-  a little guilt plus the fact that I kind of love doing puzzles with her, and she is Ah-mazing to watch working on a puzzle.  She can do a 24 piece by herself, and we just watch in awe.  And, she will spend a solid 20 minutes with a puzzle, and not many activities last that long.  By then, we have a dentist appointment, and I realize that there will be no nap today, as the timing is just not going to work.
At the dentist, I quickly realize this is not the crisis I had imagined.  As soon as they lay her back, I can see the white filling in her tooth, and it occurs to me that the tooth was cleaned and packed last time, and all that has happened is that the crown has broken off, so this particular tootsie roll only cost us $100 as opposed to the $1000 trip and fall (though, to be fair, it would have been more like $500 without dental insurance this time, and the first time daycare insurance mostly paid).  And it was about then that I also realized how much has changed in a year and a few months.  The first time we were there, she had to be held by us and was clearly nervous the entire time.  This time, she climbed up in the dentist chair, answered the hygienist's questions, and, here was where I was totally shocked-  when they needed to X-ray her to make sure the root was sound, she went with the technician, climbed into a huge chair, wore the lead apron, and just sat still while the hygienist did the X-ray, with me in the other room- a far cry from Kevin having to bear hug her still last time.  If you asked me what she was like a year ago, I don't really remember... we are just constantly living life now, and what she was doing or not doing a year ago isn't really pertinent, but sitting in the same place a year later really reminded me of how FAST she is growing up, which, by the way, if you ask something like "When did you get so heavy?", she will respond, "I growing up so fast.".  Yes, Stephanie, you clearly are.
In terms of the tooth, they were able to fix it that day.  Kevin had planned on leaving work to come to the procedure, but they scheduled things pretty quickly and Kevin can only bike across town so fast, so I told him we were okay.  In fact, they gave us just enough time to walk across the street to the bank (that's right, Mom and Stephanie actually did ALL the day's errands, even with a little unplanned dental work!) and do a little coloring in the waiting room.  I think Kevin felt a little bad that he wasn't going to make it... Perhaps he was thinking of the last visit and had no idea that we were happily coloring waiting to be seen again, and I was not stuck managing an anxious baby/toddler on my own.
During the procedure, they gave her a little nitrous and sent me out of the room.  About 20 minutes later, they delivered her to the waiting room to me, where she did quiz me for several minutes as to why I left the room, but otherwise seemed fine.  The tooth looks great, and I have since thoroughly inspected the rest of the Halloween candy for any tootsie rolls or Baby Ruths.  Oh, and I actually lied, I do have a picture (and if you have read this far, you deserve one)!  When I realized Kevin wasn't going to make it, I snapped a few shots of the tooth so that he could see it pre-repair.  She was more than happy to show it off.  I am skipping the shot where you can see the tooth, as it is not very flattering, but this one shows that she was more than happy to have a few photos of her sad little tooth before we could fix it.

Trick or Treat

So, we are officially three weeks into November, and I have not yet posted any Halloween pictures-  time to correct that!

This was essentially our first Halloween with Stephanie, as she hasn't really been interested until this year. Typically, dressing up isn't actually all that interesting to her, but she was pretty excited to get her jack-o'-lantern costume out and the chance to collect a bag full of candy was irresistible.  I dressed up too and was feeling like a cool Mom.  But, as over enthusiastic for Halloween as Kevin is, he definitely won the cool parent in costume award.  Multiple houses offered him candy in addition to Stephanie, which I think he probably should have accepted :)

Kids in our neighborhood weren't out until 6:30, and it was quite chilly.  Stephanie started out swaggering down the sidewalk, but stopped short at the driveway of the first house, refusing to go up to the door.  We coerced her, tried to get a "Trick or Treat" or "Thank you", but nothing.  Kevin carried her up to the next few houses, and then she got a grip as to what exactly was happening and was fully on board.  No matter how far we walked, she would say, "I go to 'nother house" and she ended up with a ton of candy, which is currently being eaten at a rate of one piece a day...  

I gave up at 7:30 and went home to hand out candy, of which I had bought a ton, imagining that Stephanie would go to a few houses and then be back home.  There weren't as many kids out as normal, and we live on the non-sidewalk side of the street (parents with the cute little kids in wagons don't typically drop by), and it was getting dark and late and even colder at that point, so I mostly got teenagers in well-thought out costumes like Chief's jerseys.  While I was disappointed in the trick or treaters I had, I like to think that our little Stephanie brightened lots of doorways.  

One of our neighbors really really likes Halloween.  This was our third or fourth house, so Kevin was still hauling her up to the door to beg for candy!

Counter Offer

Like any nearly 3 year old worth her salt, Stephanie is learning the fine art of negotiation.  It started this summer, actually, but her skills then were limited to always negotiating for 4 of anything.  That's a fine tactic when talking about M&Ms and chicken nuggets, but it served her less well when, at the playground, I would say, "10 more minutes Stephanie" and she would say, "4 more minutes!".  Sure, you got it, kid!  Lately, though, she has really stepped up her game, and I have a few prime examples of her sharp negotiation tactics, all taking place in less than 36 hours.
It has been my habit in the last few months to have a squeeze yogurt available in the car for our commute home.  This involves me remembering to freeze squeeze yogurts, transport them to my office fridge, and then remembering to bring one with me when I leave my office, so occasionally, I don't have one, but that is fairly unusual.  Except on Monday, when I did forget to grab one from my office on my way out.  I picked her up from school, we headed out to the car, where she asked, before getting in the car, "Did you bring one or two squeeze yogurts?"  I told her I didn't bring any.  This was not well received and demands were made to go to my office to get one, which I allowed because it wasn't worth her being upset over and she had me laughing that her starting point was to ask for up to two yogurts.
Bringing us to Tuesday morning.  I had an 8:30 appointment and left the house at 8:25.  Stephanie promptly woke up at 8:28, leaving Kevin in the undesirable position of explaining that Mom was not home and no chance that I would be back for at least 35 minutes.  This is very atypical, and bound to end badly, so Kevin responded to a few rounds of "I want my Mommy!" with "Mommy isn't here, but I have been authorized to make you a very lucrative offer.  You could watch an episode of Dora or George." at which point she sniffled a bit and said, "And I want a cheese stick."  One episode of Dora and a cheese stick later, Mom was home to a drama free house, so I think that negotiation went well for everyone.
Bringing us to Tuesday night.  Stephanie has come to the realization that candy is delicious.  When we were potty training, we used M&Ms as incentives, and it worked well.  I was worried about the long term impact, but she did eventually forget about getting one after potty.  She would occasionally ask for one, and I normally would give her one, as it is unusual for her to make the request. At one point, I temporarily ran out of M&Ms, and introduced Hershey Kisses to her instead.  Lately, the request is more common, so we do say no after one or two requests in a day, but who can blame her for asking!  After a potty break last night, she asked Kevin for 2 Kisses.  Kevin said, "No, we started that with M&Ms, so you can have 2 M&Ms or 1 Kiss."  She gave this a little thought, and said, "I want one of each."  Kevin acquiesced, as one M&M in addition to the 1 Kiss he had already offered was small beans, and she had taken us a little by surprise at her compromise offer.
The part that is comical and disturbing is that this seems to all have started happening in a matter of days, even though I'm sure she was occasionally doing it for months.  She has suddenly, it would seem, realized the power of negotiation, we have, just as suddenly, realized we need to keep up with our little lawyer as we negotiate this new phase.