The New Children's Museum

We got a membership to The New Children's Museum that is in downtown San Diego. It's an art museum for kids. They have tons of cool stuff for the kids to play around with -- dress up stuff, paint, clay, paper, making designs on the walls with colored tape, blocks. The kids both really like the jumpy tube best. It's a nice thing to be able to do with the kids during the week.

I think he's pretty AMAZING myself.

Making Butter

It's pretty easy. You definitely don't need a churn. All you need is a small jar, some heavy cream and a couple of kids with a lot of wiggly shaking energy. We did a lot of shaking!





Max and Lia both had fun shaking the jar to make butter. It didn't even take that long. I thought it might take too long and they would lose interest. But it was great! I had a very small jar and I think that helped.



The butter was really good, too. We made cinnamon toast when we were done and it was delicious. I think you could make a lot of homemade butter in a blender or Kitchenaid but the jar is way more fun.

Lia + Elmo = Love

It's true. Lia loves Elmo. She thinks he's cute. "He's cuuuute mama!!" She screams like a tween when she sees his picture on the window at Party City. She wears Elmo slippers around the house and carries all her Elmos everywhere. She's also a big fan of Spiderman and Tinkerbell. But Elmo will win every time.







Which is why I'm not exactly sure how poor Elmo ended up like this.

Pirates are still cool...

Just in case you were wondering. Pirates are in fact still totally awesome in our house. And shockingly (or not) he still fits into that same pirate costume his Grammie got him last year.



One afternoon while we were strolling along La Jolla Cove we saw some kind of boat out in the water. Of course any boat in the water is a pirate ship, so Max made me take a picture of him with my phone (luckily he was wearing his pirate shirt) and email it to the pirates. Totally his idea, email and all.


(Max and his pirate face)

Poor Sick Baby

That's our little Lia. Okay, so she's not that sick. But still. Lia was born with acid reflux and a pretty nasty version. When she was a newborn she would eat and eat and eat and then throw it all up, scream and cry and arch her little back. It was so sad. We put her on Prilosec pretty quickly and it helped tremendously. When she turned one we (Tyler and I and the Pediatrician) figured she had outgrown it as most kids do by that age. We took her off the Prilosec and she started throwing up her food again, crying and acting miserable. We determined it was her reflux and she had not outgrown. And then it led us to lots of tests and a surgery. Lia had a barium study done which was no big deal at all.



She laid on a table, I squirted white dye into her mouth with a syringe because she wanted nothing to do with that stupid baby bottle they gave her (it had been like 6 months since she gave up bottles) and they took a live x-ray of her esophagus. Everything came back normal.





So our next stop was was an endoscopy and biopsy of her stomach and esophagus to make sure everything was okay on that end. And of course it was. But it didn't negate the fact that my poor baby had to be put under anesthesia and poked with needles and suffer a sore throat for a few days. And I know on a scale of kids with sicknesses Lia's is like at the way WAY bottom and this little routine procedure is like NO big deal at all (she doesn't have cancer or a brain tumor or some other much scarier more traumatic thing) but still, I was nervous for her. I was scared at how she'd take to the anesthesia. I was nervous she'd hate us for making her actually do it because I couldn't really explain to her what was going on and why she'd hurt when she woke up. I knew they wouldn't find anything wrong with her. And they determined she just has reflux (like me) and will be on meds for a while. I was still nervous for her.



But as expected, she was TOTALLY fine for the whole thing. Within about half an hour of coming out of anesthesia she was dancing on the floor. So I'm guessing we have nothing to worry about there. She of course refused the popsicles they gave her in the recovery room (because our kids are cool that way) but she finally drank some water when we gave her a straw and definitely preferred to be held by her daddy for a little while.




That night we were eating at In N Out.


Oh, and we got this cool picture of her esophagus and stomach. How many of you have a picture like this of your baby?

Dudes

My kids think they are pretty cool kids. On Max's school days Lia and I pick him up and they each get a special lunch I pack in a tupperware for them. Max always (every single day) eats a peanut butter sandwich and Lia usually has cheese and crackers and maybe some ham or turkey and apple slices. They also like wearing their shades while they eat.





Some pretty cool dudes.

Quirky Max #47

Actually, I'm not sure how many quirky posts I've done of my boy but let's start there. It sounds like a good number. I love how Max is not afraid to express his "dress-up" side. Nothing wrong with donning a construction worker vest and goggles to push your Tonka truck around the yard.


Or when he requests a pink monkey from the balloon lady at Ruby's Diner.


Or when he wears his orange goggles EVERYWHERE for the whole day just because it makes him feel like a scuba diver with super sonic eye sight.


Or when he comes out of his room wearing a little CAL jacket that actually belongs to a teddy bear.


Or when he refuses to wear anything but his CAL shirt and hat and eats noodles with his chopsticks.


Or when he dresses up like Batman with a red cape and his Spiderman underwear.


Or when he does the plank on the couch in his underwear (the kid likes his underwear).


Nothing wrong with any of that!

Strawberry Picking

Despite Max saying for hours before we went that we were going apple picking, we indeed donned our old too-small clothes and went strawberry picking up in Carlsbad again this year. It was very fun, nice and muddy and full of delicious strawberries.





Last year Lia spent her time sucking on strawberries in the baby bjorn, happy as a clam. This year she was all over the place, running in the mud and eating as many strawberries as she could fit in her mouth, hands, arms, pockets, shirt, etc. The girl was wild about those berries! She probably ate around 50 of her own while we were there (which help us off-set the price of the two styrofoam buckets we filled in about 5 minutes) and she didn't really discriminate against the unripe green ones either.













Max had a great time picking and filling his bucket. But he didn't try a single one. He didn't even lick one. Days later, after the strawberries had been used for waffles, jam and strawberry shortcake he decided he wanted to try one only to be told that they had been eaten. Tears ensued and a trip to the grocery store later and he finally took a mouse-sized nibble out of one. And liked it! Go Max!





We had a great time picking strawberries this year. We even got to see lots of mutant berries (my personal favorites). We got nice and messy and came home and took nice long naps. Perfection!

Three of my favorite little people...

I'm so glad I did this with the three of them when Mattie was visiting. I sure do love these three (even when it seems impossible to get them to all look at the camera at the same time).





























And here's a perfect example of Lia's new smile.