Mah Nah Ma Nah

My kids are really obsessed lately, with this:

Mud Brothers

Small Miracles

I had thought that when AJ learned to ride his tricycle, that Owen would want to keep up with his little brother and decide to learn to ride his bike too. Alas, I was wrong.
Owen does NOT care about keeping up with others.
Owen does NOT care that AJ can ride a bike and he cannot.
Owen is quite content to ride in the wagon when we go for a walk, as AJ charges ahead on his tricycle.
Owen is NOT athletic. At all.
Owen does NOT give in to bribes to ride his bike.

Just last week, I tried to get Owen to ride his bike to the end of the driveway and back to which he promptly replied "no thank you".
I countered with, "What if I took you to the movie store and rented you a movie? THEN would you ride your bike a little?"
"No thank you. We can watch a movie another time"
"Not even if we rented Air Buddies?"
"Air Buddies??" he replied, perking up.
"Yeah! Air Buddies!! You ride your bike a little, and I'll help you, and then we'll go rent Air Buddies!! OK??!"
"No. No Air Buddies today"
Rats. Foiled again.

So Saturday we're out riding around, going for walks in the neighborhood, etc. etc. I was tired of pulling Owen in the wagon (rolling eyes) so I said I was taking a break, but AJ and Steve-o kept riding on up the street. Once again, I tried to get Owen to try to ride his bike.
"Owen, wanna ride your bike a little?"
"No. We'll just sit"
"But I don't want to sit. I want to ride bikes"
"No. You sit here with me mama"
***Lightbulb goes off****
"You know Owen, if you practice riding your bike, pretty soon we could ride bikes down to Jordan's house".
(Jordan is the 6 yr. old son of friends of ours - they live around the corner and Owen absolutely WORSHIPS the ground that Jordan walks on).
Owen says, "To Jordan's house?" a little skeptically.
"Yeah" I said. "If you practice riding your bike for a few days I bet you could learn to ride it well enough that maybe next weekend we could ride to Jordan's house"
"Oh! Okay! Come on! Let's ride the bike mama!"

After he thoroughly checked the stability of his training wheels to make sure he wouldn't tip over, he was game to ride his bike and was just climbing on when Steve and AJ got back. With an inordinate amount of praise from Steve and I both he was glowing at his accomplishment. He's still wobbly, still not very good, falters quite a bit, but he got on the seat. He pedaled. He even went about 4 feet all by himself. And that, for us, is a victory. :)

The Polliwog Project

Saturday afternoon was spent enjoying the sunshine and riding bikes up and down our street. Owen was not too keen on the idea of learning to ride his bike (no surprise there) so he and I took a breather in the front yard by pestering some ant hills while Steve and AJ went bike-riding some more.

15 minutes later Steve-o and AJ come back hollering about needing a jar because we had to "save the tadpoles".
Up the block from our house, and around the corner we have a retention pond which the boys had decided to go and have a look at. With all the rain from the tornado stuff the other day, the pond had overflowed a little, then receded back, leaving in its wake a few small puddles with quite a few stranded tadpoles inside.

I grabbed a tupperware container from the house and we all took a walk back up to the retention pond on our "mission" to save the tadpoles.
AJ was singing the Wonderpets theme song along the way. "Wonderpets, wonderpets, we're on our way! To rescue baby tadpoles and save the day! We're not too big but we're really tough and when we work together we've got the right stuff! Gooooooooo Wonderpets! Yay!"
Sorry, it's a preschool thing.

Anyway, we spent the next half hour plucking squirmy tadpoles from the puddles and throwing them back (or chucking them back in, if AJ was doing it) into the pond. We couldn't save them all, because some of them would burrow under the grass/sand/weeds/algae and we couldn't get them out, but we probably saved about 25 of them or so.

While we're doing this, Steve-o and I had the grand idea to bring a few of them home and see if we couldn't grow us our own little frog family, so we kept 3 of them, scooped up some of their nasty pond water and brought them home. They wriggled around in the tupperware container while we did a little internet research on the care and keeping of tadpoles and then we went out and purchased a small fish tank.

Some tidbits about raising tadpoles, in case you ever care to do it yourselves:
*Tadpoles cannot live in tap water or they'll die. If you DO use tap water, you have to let it sit out 4-5 days so all the chemicals and other stuff in it are null before you put your tadpoles in the water. We just keep them in pond water.
*Tadpoles like lettuce or spinach leaves. But you have to boil or freeze it first.
*Tadpoles also thrive on fish food.
*Tadpoles are slimy and squirmy
*Tadpoles do not survive well when a small child accidentally steps in their puddle, and thus, on them. AJ learned this lesson in the first 5 minutes we were at the pond.

Anyway, 3 days in and the tadpoles are still alive and (seemingly) well.
We'll keep you posted if they make it to full frog-dom.
And let me know if you want some tadpoles of your own. We've got PLENTY down at the pond.

Oh, and their names?? Fish.
All of them.
Are named Fish.

So says Owen.

Go Buy This Book. Right Now.

Just finished reading Rob Bell's newest book, SexGod.

It was outstanding. Not exactly what I thought it would be, but better - which wasn't surprising.
I breezed through it so quickly that I'm going to go back and read it again and hopefully retain more this time around. Steve-o and I are going to read it together.

Single? Married? Sexually active? Not?
Doesn't matter. It applies to you.

Go.
Buy It.
Read It.
Be Changed.

Pregnancy Woes Take 1

Incidentally, I could title this post "Pregnancy Woes Take 7", if I were to take into consideration the past-withstanding woes I've had up until now: nausea, frequent headaches, being tired, moodiness, and a few other things that you don't even WANT to know about. Seriously, you don't want to know.

It's been impossible to not notice the ever-increasing frequency of my need to pee lately, so I've been pondering the topic for the last few days. I first considered about how often, pre-pregnancy, I would have to go to the bathroom in a given day. I questioned others - "On average, how often do you go to the bathroom in one 24-hour period?" I got several answers, (and several strange looks), the average being 4 - which I conclude is about average (pre-pregnancy) for me too. Once in the morning, once before bed, and about twice during the day -- sound about right?

Yeah, well -- upon noticing that I spend a great deal of time in various bathrooms throughout the day, I decided to do a little experiment. I put a piece of paper and a pencil in each of our bathrooms so that I could actually COUNT the number of times that I would pee in a 24-hour period. Yesterday morning 6:30 am - my experiment began as I diligently ticked off each time I set foot into the bathroom. Considering the 3 cups of java that I consumed yesterday morning, I had a busy morning in the latrine -- No sooner had I swallowed that delicious joe when I would be shuffling towards the bathroom to let it all out.
I also had to remember my out-of-the house trips to the john so I had to keep in my mind the bathrooms at the gym, Target, Starbucks, and the hospital last night (long story). The verdict??

6:30 am Thursday --> 6:30 am Friday
Went to bathroom ELEVEN times.

That's a lot of pee, people. That's a lot of toilet paper. That's a lot of time.
Maybe tomorrow I'll calculate actual TIME spent in the bathroom in one day.
Or maybe I'll get a hobby.

Woe is me.

For Amy and Katie

GROUND SQUIRREL

Ground Squirrels live all over the world. The American red squirrel lives in evergreen forests in North and Central America. Arctic squirrels live on the tundra. Mohave ground squirrels live in the Mojave Desert of California. These are only a few of the kinds of ground squirrels there are in the world.
Ground squirrels and tree squirrels are different. You can tell the difference this way. Ground squirrels will run to their burrow in the ground if they are scared. Tree squirrels will climb a tree or high building.
They are about 7-8 inches long and weigh about 8-14 ounces. They most often make their home in the northern plains of North America.