It's raining, it's pouring...and I'm running out of ideas of how to entertain the kids!  Never fear, animated books to the rescue!  I stumbled across a list of animated books on YouTube through Confessions of a Homeschooler blog.  The kids think it's SO COOL to "watch" some of their favorite books online. 

 

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is hands down the most popular in this house today.

Our other favorites:

• Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
• The Mixed Up Chameleon by Eric Carle
• The Very Quiet Cricket by Eric Carle
  
• Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
  

Today I'm standing at the sink trying to help Felicity wash her hands,  but instead of washing she is just standing there, staring out into space with the dollop of soap sitting in her hand, while the water is running.  I finally ask, "Felicity?" and she turns to stare at me deadpan and states, "Mama?  This water makes me pee a lot."

Miss Felicity started her first dance class last week -- a combination ballet & tap class through the city.  She was uber shy and clingy and wanted me right next to her during the entire class; the teacher said this wasn't unusual.  But overall she seemed to really enjoy the class -- although I think she just enjoyed wearing her leotard and tap shoes even more than the actual dancing!

Here are some pics from the first two classes.  Here is the shy little Miss checking out the other girls but not quite joining in yet:

And here she is sticking her tongue out and saying, "OKAY MOM I will hold still for a photo already!!"

I just love that she still has her little baby chub and her little round belly still sticks out.  LOVE IT!

Being the proud mama that I am, I wanted to post some videos of dance class on my blog, but apparently I can't embed videos that are marked 'private.'  And understandably, I don't want to make them public.  So you will just have to click on the links to take you to each video!  (Crossing fingers this works.)

Here is my first attempt at taking video with my new point-and-shoot camera.  CLEARLY I needed to read the instruction manual BEFORE going to dance class.  But just get comfy and horizontal on your desk there and enjoy the show, folks.  Click THIS LINK to take you to the video.

So today, the second day of class -- things are looking up.  Felicity is confident enough to join the group circle (even if she is mighty opposed to holding hands with the other girls), and Mama is competent enough to get the camera shooting the right direction.  VIDEO LINKY OF GROUP CIRCLE

Next up, the hula hoop jumping!  I wasn't sure she would actually leave my side long enough to go with the teacher and hold her hand, but she did it!

Jumping is a popular activity here!  We love to jump!

And last, Little Miss dances like a robot.  (If you need a translation, she first says, "It looks like a robot!" and then "Now it's like a dancer!")

I was awakened around midnight on Thursday night by the sound of a loud thump, followed by a loud wail.  Even Jeremy woke up.  (Jeremy, the same guy who five years ago wouldn't open a single eye even after I shook him and said, "Babe, my water broke and I think I'm in labor."  ZZZZZZZZZZ.  So you KNOW this thump was loud if even Jeremy woke up.  Need I say more??) 

Anyhoo, Jeremy and I jump out of bed and he says, "What was that?!?" and I say, "I think Felicity fell out of bed."  We run into her room and, indeed, find her sitting on the floor crying.  I pick her up and hold her while Jeremy looks at her head and says, "We have blood!"  Wha?!?  I look at her face and yes, she has blood trickling down her face.  Okay, well, kids bleed sometimes, so I try not to panic.  I lay her down on her bed to clean up the blood and take a closer look. 

I see a gash above her left eyebrow.  Despite my previous attempts not to panic, I panic.  Jeremy says, "She's going to need stitches."  All I can think about is the time Tate got staples in his head .  And still, to this day, I can hear echoes of his screaming inside my head.  

Fortunately, the bleeding stopped right away.  And Felicity even stopped crying right away and wanted to go right back to sleep.  We kept her up for a while to make sure she didn't have a concussion.  Soon enough, she got her second wind and was up chatting happily until after 2 AM.  

We decided -- thanks to experience and a little internet research -- to wait until morning and then call her pediatrician.  Jeremy got on the computer and determined that there is about a 12 hour window for stitches.  And we knew from past experiences that taking an over-tired child to a sickly ER in the middle of the night only to have them repeatedly poked and prodded isn't always the best course of action.   So we all went back to bed.  Well, they did anyway.  I was awake most of the night worried about what was going to happen to her.  I knew she would be fine physically and it was just a matter of scarring now.  But I was worried about the emotional trauma of stitches.  And I was sad that she will now have a scar on her perfect little baby face skin.  And I kept kicking myself.  She's been fine in her bed without a bed rail; just a few pillows around the perimeter have kept her in bed all this time.  But apparently it wasn't enough and I felt bad about that.

By morning, her gash looked a lot better, and we were all hopeful that she could get away with just butterfly tape or that special glue.  Plus she was acting totally fine -- happy, playing -- like nothing even happened!

Tate didn't have school this day (in service day for teachers, or something).  Jeremy, bless his heart, had decided (even before this gash incident) to take Tate to work with him that day and show him what he does all day.  We have been reading Richard Scarry's "What Do People Do All Day?" this week, so this happened to coincide perfectly!  

Meanwhile, I took Little Miss to her pediatrician who said (in a nutshell): "It would only need one stitch and it will probably scar no matter what.  So I recommend we just use a steri strip."  FINE WITH ME!  And yes, Felicity cried when the doctor cleaned her cut and put the steri strip on it, but it was so quick and SO NOT the enormous trauma that Tate had to endure.  I was thankful.  I'm still a little sad about the future scar on her face, but trying to keep the Big Picture in mind and just thankful she is okay.  Several friends have recommended I put Vitamin E oil on her scar daily once it heals, and Mederma at night.    Apparently this makes a HUGE difference in the scarring.

After Felicity's appointment I grabbed Tate from Jeremy (who had a meeting) and drove over to Felicity's Mommy & Me class.  I needed to just drop off a check, but the kids wanted to stay, so I decided to ask the teacher if it was okay that we pop in for just the last 15 minutes of class.  I figured it would just be quiet circle time and songs or felt board activities by this point in class.  But no.  Today they were doing parachute time and running games.  And Dance Around the Chair, which is this activity where a chair is put in the middle of the circle and each child takes a turn, well, dancing around the chair while Mrs. Kathy plays the guitar.  Which, I should mention, is an activity that Felicity has been too shy to participate in ALL YEAR LONG.  Until today of course, when she has a laceration on face.  NOW of course she decides to dance around the chair full bore, not only dancing, but skipping recklessly around the chair, to boot.  I was a nervous wreck the entire class.  Tate, meanwhile, had a BLAST with all the two year olds.   (He took this same class when he was two!)  He was participating, parachuting, singing all the songs...."Good, bye, Cruz..." he sings.  I'm like, you don't even KNOW Cruz!  It was hysterical.  It was actually a really fun way to end the morning, despite my stress about Felicity inadvertently conking her head again.

So there you have it.  Her wound is healing and she is telling everyone she comes across that she rolled out of bed and got a boo boo.  Which, by the way, is healing quite nicely.

We had a really, really fun Sunday at the beach with Grammy & Auntie Jess.  It was the first day in over a week that it wasn't raining or storming or hailing, so being outside was a must.  The weather was AMAZING!

We headed out to Huntington Beach first to eat at Ruby's on the pier.  It seemed like everyone was out at the beach and could not get enough of the gorgeous weather!

Of course nothing can stop the surfers anyway, right?

The kids spotted a pelican on the pier and stopped for a picture, even if they were too afraid to feed it.  (There was a lady with fish there and asked if the kids wanted to feed it.)

It was brisk and we needed our jackets but it was still great to soak up all that fresh air.  Poor Grammy was visiting from snowy, cold Maine and had arrived just in time for the week-long storm.  We were glad she had at least one day of sunny SoCal weather!

Tate hitched a ride from Dada after lunch and we headed back to the car.

Next we drove down to Cabrillo Marine Aquarium where they were having their Whale Fiesta to celebrate the beginning of whale-watching season.  I found out about this through Michelle and her homeschooling group (thanks, Michelle!) and we were thrilled discover such a fun place!  

They had a myriad of marine-related activities, games, arts and crafts, origami.  Here is Miss Felicity getting her face painted...

She loves it!

The kids loved looking at all the different marine creatures, some of which were quite a bit bigger than we were expecting...

Here's what Tate thinks of the GINORMOUS lobster (and no, that's not trick photography...it really was the size of a small toddler):

The highlight though, I think, was the 75-foot sand sculpture of a whale out by the beach.

We got there late in the day so the sand whale had been mostly trampled on by this point.  But that didn't stop Tate from having a blast climbing on it, sliding down it, rebuilding it.

Felicity was a little too afraid to climb up the whale by herself, so she spent her time building her own sand castles nearby.  Here she is saying, "Yook!  Sand!"

All in all, it was a FANTASTIC day.  Makes me realize that we need to take advantage of living so close to the beach and go more often.  The kids never get tired of playing in sand!

My kids are cracking me up today, this sixth day of storms we've had in a row.  So of course I must share.

As we walk in the rain to pick up Tate from school, Felicity starts jumping in puddles and singing, "Mary had a little boat, little boat, little boat..."

Later, Tate asks if we can go to the library to check out more of his latest craze, Amelia Bedelia books.  (That in itself is a riot -- to hear them pronounce "Amelia Bedelia."  Tate says "Ah-deal-ya Ah-deal-ya" and Felicity pronounces it "Mee-ya Dee-ya."  Cracks me up!)  Anyhoo, so he asks about the library and, at that particular moment it's raining and hailing, HARD."  So I say, "Tate, I'm not sure I want to walk across a big parking lot with two kids plus library books in this kind of storm."  Tate pauses for a moment and then replies, "Well can't we just do drive-thru?"  

Love those kids. : ) 

It is a rare, rare day that I log into my Google Weather page and see:

This for New York:

This for Beijing:

This for London:

And THIS, for Los Angeles:

To which I must reply, "WTF, Weather Gods?!?"

Me:  "Tate, do you know who Martin Luther King, Jr. is?"

Tate: "Yes."

Me:  "Who is he?"

Tate: "He is the one who made up the Rules."

Me: "The rules?"

Tate: "Yes.  The Skin Rules."

Me: "What are the Skin Rules?"

Tate: "Like, when white people could eat at a restaurant but black people couldn't.  And that was bad."

Me:  "Ah, I see.  What else do you know about Martin Luther King?"

Tate: "He made a speech.  And then there was a parade for him.  And then he got shot."

Me: "Wow, Tate, you know more about MLK than some grown-ups!"

Tate: (smiles)

First conversation out of bed this morning:

Me: "Kids, Grammy is coming to visit today!"

Felicity: "Today?"

Me: "Yes, her plane arrives at 11:00 AM."

beat

Felicity: "When it's morning-er?"

 

Why does that totally make sense?!?

So I'm trying out this new diet for the new year called the "Paleo diet ."  It basically consists of eating lean meats, seafood, vegetables, fruits and nuts.   That's it.  No soda (easy), no sweets (doable), and no grains.  Wait, back up a minute.  No grains?  What the hell does that mean?  Grains, like, what farm animals eat?  Um, no.  "Grains" meaning bread, pasta, cereal, crackers, muffins, bagels, chips.  And I can't have ANY of it.  This diet, to put it mildly, SUCKS ASS.

Never in my life have I gone without bread.  Bread is what makes life worth living.  What's the point of having breakfast if you can't have toast!  The reason why I love sandwiches so much is because of the bread; who cares what's in the middle??  So this diet, basically, is an exercise in extreme self-discipline.  Like tolerating the Chinese water torture without ripping out your own hair.

Why am I doing this, you ask?  I don't know; I'm kinda asking myself the same exasperated question right about now.   But Jeremy is doing it and I thought I would join him in solidarity.  I'm also sick and tired of carrying around this residual baby weight, which isn't so much about losing "weight" as it is about losing "skinny fat."  And I am ready to lose the fat!!!  

The proponents of Paleo also swear that I will feel better, mentally & physically, as a result of this new way of eating.  Well it's been three days AND I DON'T BELIEVE THEM.  I feel like crap because I can't eat bread.  I would sacrifice my left arm if it meant I could have a single Ritz cracker.  I'm on edge all the time.  I find myself eating *more* of whatever it is I'm allowed to have (meat, fruit, etc.) just to make up for the emotional void that has been created by the lack of bread.  I'm anxious and cranky.  I told Jeremy I was hungry last night at 10p.m. and he suggested I have a piece of fruit.  "I ALREADY HAD FRUIT!!!!!"  I screamed at him.  Sheesh.  Talk about not being able to hold it together.  The only silver lining is that this diet is an excuse for my bitchiness.

I wonder how long I can keep this up and if it's even worth it in the long run.  Once I reach my first "free" meal (eat whatever I want once a week), I fear I will go hog wild and end up eating 4 times my body weight in french fries.  Like, for reals.  

Why am I doing this again?