thelittlezoo.com

Five years ago today we were still eagerly awaiting your arrival.  We had already been waiting for you for four and a half years, and finally knowing we were about to meet you was exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time.  What would you be like?  What would having a baby be like?  Would we know what to do?  Or would we mess things up completely?

Today you are beautiful, smart, funny, aggravating, pestiferous, sweet, loving, gentle, rough-housing, a girly-girl, a princess, a tom-boy…  You make us laugh, you make us cry, you make us angry, you touch us with your kindness.

How many other 5 year olds out there would ask for vegetables for their birthday dinner?  Yeah.  Vegetables.  I asked what kind of vegetables she wanted and she replied, “You know.  Broccoli, carrots, tomatoes, with ranch!”  A veggie tray?  My kid wants a veggie tray for dinner on her 5th birthday.   Go figure.

Thank you, Hannah, for being the one to “break us in” as parents and being such a joy, an answer to many prayers.  Our little miracle.

What a whirlwind the summer is turning into!  We’ve been having lots of fun, lots of projects, lots of work and lots of just being busy!  Mom & Dad Little were here for about 10 days - they headed south for home yesterday.  We sure enjoy having them come to see us.  During that time, we had a birthday party for the girls, we went to the Britt Children’s Festival, went rafting on the Rogue River, went, went, went…  we’re constantly on the go when we have house guests!

I’ve also started watching a couple of kids for one of the receptionists at the medical clinic I work for.  Kaitlin is 5, just a few weeks older than Hannah, while Kole is 10 years old.  Kaitlin and Hannah were instantly fast-friends, practically joined at the hip.  The three girls spend most of their days sliding into and jumping in and out of the little pool I posted about recently.  Thank goodness for high quality sunscreen.  I have to make them wait until it warms up past 75° to let them go out there.  We don’t have much in the way of entertainment for a 10-year-old, but the PS2 has definitely gotten a lot of use the past few days!  I’ve only had them three days so far, but it’s working out well, and I’m still able to get my work done.

Rafting on the river was awesome! It was a trip planned by the social committee at church, so we had about 25 people there, split into three rafts.  We couldn’t have asked for better weather!  Blue skies, warm but not blazing hot, puffy white cotton-ball clouds here and there…  the water was cold, as usual, but it’s such an easy section of the river, we only got splashed a few times.  I think we got wetter during the water fights with one of the other rafts than we did from the few rough spots we managed to cowboy our way through.  The girls were on their best behavior, and both did so well!  I was so proud of them.  Neither one of them were whiny, they didn’t jump around the raft, they listened when they were asked to do something…  wow!  They had a great time, too, and every time we hit the rougher sections, they squealed and laughed, and wanted to go back and do it again.  It was really neat to see an Osprey swoop down and snag something out of the river, and later to see a nest way up in the top of a tree with a couple of baby Osprey heads poking out the top, shouting for some lunch.

Today is the first weekday we don’t have Kaitlin and Kole here since I started watching them, and the girls have asked over and over when Kaitlin is coming over.  I keep telling them she’ll be here tomorrow after lunch, yet they keep going and looking out the window, as if they don’t believe me.  I’m welcoming the break, such as it is, even though it really isn’t much more work having them than my own two.  Kole is so self-entertained, and the girls pretty much entertain each other.

Tomorrow we’re finally going in for birthday portraits for the girls.  Can’t wait to see them!

We don’t go out for Chinese food too often - I think the last time we went out there was a year ago.  I quit feeding Hannah ramen noodles last year sometime because I had noticed a trend.  She had a tummy bug, and when I thought she should be about over it, she’d continue throwing up, especially after eating ramen noodles.  I kept giving them to her, thinking that they’re nice and soft, they should be easy on her tummy.  Then she’d get sick again.  Finally, about the third day, I made the correlation that eating ramen = vomiting within the hour.  Quit feeding her ramen, and sure enough, she quit getting sick.  Slow mommy!!  I read the ingredients on the seasoning package, and whattya know, there it was.  Monosodium glutamate.

Fast forward to last night.  I happened to mention to Charlie that I wanted him to make his egg foo young, and potstickers and such, when his parents are here next week.  Somehow that translated to him saying let’s just go get Chinese tonight.  Had a delicious meal - egg foo young (which didn’t hold a candle to the foo that Charlie makes!),  spicy green beans, vegetable fried rice, some kind of vegetable dish, a noodle & vegetable dish, egg flower soup and wontons.

About 2 a.m., I was getting ready to shut down the computer and go to bed (yeah, I got distracted), when Hannah came out of the room and told me her tummy hurt.  I’m glad I’d been distracted so I wasn’t bolted awake by her need to puke, but it’s still no fun.  The adrenalin kept me awake until after 3:30, yuck!  So much for hitting Curves at 7:00 a.m.

At least she seems to be fine today - got it out of her system and is feeling good, I guess.  But no more Chinese food unless it can be made without the MSG, that’s for sure!

My baby is three years old today. It seems like just yesterday when we were bringing her home from the hospital. She’s so funny and sweet and aggravating and bossy and stubborn and cute. She cracks me up at the same time as she is driving me crazy.

Last night we went to Cold Stone Creamery because we had a coupon to get her a free ice cream. The servers sang to her, and she loved it. Afterward, Charlie took the girls to the grocery store while I ran over to Target to pick up her birthday gift from Mommy & Daddy. They bought cupcakes to have tonight after dinner, and Charlie told me later that the girls were really chatting it up with the cashier and told her that it was Sarah’s birthday. The cashier said that was neat, and then Sarah looks up at her expectantly and says “Sing happy birthday to me.”

This morning after Sarah got up, I came out and gave her a hug and kiss, telling her Happy Birthday. She said “It’s not my birthday yet.” I guess we’ve been telling her that for so many days she’s just gotten accustomed to saying that. I told her yes, it is. “It IS?” Yes, you’re three years old today. “I’m THREE?” It was awfully cute.

I went back to bed because I’d been up late, and I could hear Sarah talking to Charlie. She kept complaining that I hadn’t sung Happy Birthday to her before I went back to bed. He reassured her that I would sing when I got up, and of course, I did. She loves music, and having a special song just for her really made her day. She was really excited when Auntie Rhondi and the rest of the family called and sang to her this afternoon, too.

I had asked Sarah what she wanted for dinner tonight - we’re making that a birthday tradition here. Birthday girl (or Daddy) gets to choose the dinner meal. When she finally came around to a decision, it was that she wanted corn for dinner. I asked what kind of corn, even though I knew she meant she wanted Daddy to put corn-on-the-cob on the grill. Her answer was just what I was after - “corn on a KNOB!”.

So, sweet Sarah, happy birthday. Thank you for being so sweet, funny, bossy, aggravating, stubborn and just so darn cute. I can’t wait to see who you become as you grow up.

I belong to a couple local groups for recycling, re-purposing or reusing items that you no longer need. One of them is Freecycle, the other is the ReUseIt Network. Both groups are dedicated to keeping stuff out of the landfills. You have a set of dishes you don’t want anymore? Kids have outgrown their toddler sized picnic table? Offer it on your local group! People will see your message and respond to you, and you can choose to whom you will gift your no-longer-needed items. In addition, if you are in need of something, you can ask for it, and if you’re fortunate, blessed, lucky, whatever you want to call it, someone might have one and your message will remind them that “hey, I had one of those and I never use it anymore… I should give it to them, since they can use it!”

Today we were blessed with a nice piece of carpet, large enough for our guest room! It came with padding, and even tack strips! It’s in good shape, hardly worn at all; it was only removed because the couple is redoing their living room in laminate wood flooring. It’s lighter than the carpet in the rest of the house, but so what! It’s clean, good quality, in good shape, and best of all, FREE!

Edit:
I forgot to mention how nice the couple that gave us the carpet was! They let the girls play with their puppy, running all over the back yard. The Mr. showed Charlie around in the garage and they yakked about “guy things”, while the Mrs. took me in the house to show off the new laminate flooring, showed me around the whole house when I commented on how much I liked that her kitchen had a wall painted red, gave the girls grapes to nibble on, and just chatted away for several minutes. When we left, she even put two frosted sugar cookies in a baggy for the girls to enjoy after supper at home! A very sweet retired couple, and a very happy occasion for us to have met them.

And Sarah can tell you that for sure.  Yesterday and today I doused the kids in 45 spf before letting them out to play in their little pool.  Even so, Sarah was a little pink on the shoulders and upper arms yesterday.  I made sure to cover her well with sunscreen again today, but noticed that she was getting pinker, on her back and shoulders, as she played today.  So I gave her a second coating, with spf 50.  She’s not burnt to a crisp, but she’s definitely pink.  Her face and chest are fine, and her back isn’t too bad.  The shoulders and upper arms are the worst, but I don’t think she’ll peel if I keep her slathered in aloe.  She isn’t complaining about it hurting either, so hopefully she won’t be too worse for the wear.

Hannah, on the other hand, with just the one coating of sunscreen, isn’t pink at all.  I’m thinking she’s taking after her auntie Cathie and both her Grandpas, with the more olive-toned skin that tans instead of burning.  Poor Sarah got her Daddy’s and Grandma Shaver’s fair skin.  If I wasn’t being nice, I’d say pasty-white.  *giggles*

On the way back from California after Memorial Day, we stopped by a Wal-mart in Lodi to pick something up, and happened to see this pool.

We picked one up because it looked fun, and it was a pretty good price. I pulled it out of the box just before noon today and started blowing it up. What a fiasco that was! The cordless pump didn’t want to blow air very fast because it wasn’t completely charged, and it was already pushing 90 degrees out, so I was hot and frustrated. Add to that the kids asking every 20 seconds if the pool was ready, if they could go swimming yet, if I could find their swimsuits… can you imagine the frustration? I let the pump run until it seemed it wasn’t really putting any more air into the pool, brought the pump in to charge for a bit, went back out to put more air in… finally there was enough of a side on the pool to let me put some water in to start warming up so they wouldn’t get too cold, even though it was so hot out.

About 2:00 this afternoon, there was finally enough air in the tree “trunks” and everything that I could let the kids get in. Slathered ‘em up with sunscreen, got their suits put on, and sent them out to go “swimming”. Sarah kept whining every couple of minutes about grass in the water, but pretty soon they settled in to playing together nicely and having a grand time. They were disappointed that the rain function didn’t really work very well, because the weight of the water would tip the tree trunks over sideways. When Charlie gets home, I’ll have him rig it up somehow to keep it up straight and hold it in place even with some water in the top to make it rain.

I don’t think they came into the house more than a couple minutes at a time for a couple of potty breaks and a snack break until just now - 6:20 p.m.  They were just having too much fun!