First Ballet Lesson, Daddy/Daughter Date, and a Day Out with Thomas the Train

Samantha: 39 Months, Week 4
Aedan: Week 20

As I was uploading all of the pictures for this past week onto my computer, I remarked to Ben, "Wow, this all happened in the last week?"  It's been a busy one, full of fun, but also full of sickness and challenges.

Tuesday morning was difficult because Ben is now in a men's Bible study in the morning that meets at 6:15 am.  I am so glad that he's doing it, but it leaves me to get up and get ready myself, Samantha, and Aedan, as well as take our dog out, all by myself.  It was challenging to get all those things taken care of and still get Samantha to preschool by 9:00 am.  It's amazing how long things can take with two little ones to wrangle.  Samantha was having a difficult morning because she didn't like waking up and not having Daddy there.  Then, she knocked her cereal bowl over and spilled milk all over.  She then had an emotional outburst of screaming and crying over that, which gave her a time out because screaming is an automatic time out in our house.  Needless to say, the morning didn't start out the greatest.

Then, to make the morning even more interesting, I got everyone piled into the car, turned the key in the ignition, and the car wouldn't start.  I have a number of another mom of a boy in Samantha's preschool class, so I called her to see if she could come pick up Samantha and take her to preschool for me, even though she lives on the complete opposite side of town.  She willingly accepted, so Samantha, Aedan, and I went back in the house to wait.  Meanwhile, Ben called me back after seeing my message about the car not starting and said he was on his way home from campus so he could take Samantha to preschool.  That would be a faster option than waiting for the other mom, so I called her back and told her we had things taken care of for now.

Ben told me that on the way to preschool Samantha was talking about a boy named Ben from church.  She said, "That is my favorite boy because he has the same name as Daddy."  Aww, that's so sweet.  Samantha certainly does love her Daddy. :)

Aedan and I were going to do our weekly grocery shopping, but since the car wouldn't start, we just had a morning at home, and I was able to put him down in his crib for a nice, morning nap.  After dropping Samantha off at preschool, Ben came back home, and we tried jumping the car to see if we could get it to start.  Luckily, that worked, so Ben took it to get the battery replaced, brought the Santa Fe back home, and then headed back to campus just in time for his second class.  Not exactly how he wanted to spend his morning either.

Here is my smiley little man that morning after a good morning nap, before we left to pick Samantha up from preschool.

 Man, his little face is just too cute.  How can you get more adorable than this?

We had a lot of plans crammed into one day because besides Samantha going to preschool in the morning, Ben had plans to take her on a Daddy/Daughter date to see a Reds game in Cincinnati.  Ever since moving to Oxford, she has asked if we could go to a baseball game.  We thought about going as a family, but we weren't too sure how Aedan would do being out that late.  He likes to stick to his bed time and gets pretty grouchy when he is out late.  Plus, Ben has wanted to take Samantha on a date for quite some time, so this was a perfect opportunity.  

Also, Samantha had her first ballet lesson on Tuesday afternoon from 4:15 to 4:45, so I knew that she would need to take a good nap that afternoon to get her through the rest of her busy day.  She was super tired, but acting silly in her room, playing around, instead of sleeping.  I used her date as bribery, telling her she wouldn't be able to go on the date with Daddy unless she took a nap.  However, that just made her scream and cry because she wanted to go on the date so badly.  So I went back in her room and told her that Daddy would give her one more chance if she could just settle down and take a good nap.  I was trying so hard to get her to take a nap so that she could have a good night with Ben that I was getting way too wrapped up in it all again.  I was letting my anger flare up too much.  I don't like yelling at Samantha.  I don't like making her cry.  I know I have written about this before, but it is something I am really struggling with right now.  How do you deal with defiant behavior without getting overly worked up yourself?  I don't like myself when I let myself get like that.  I pray that God would work on this part of my heart, that he would trim away the roots of anger and replace them with patience, compassion, and mercy for my children.  Nap time is not a big enough issue to get so upset over, and Samantha is only three years old.  This is probably just a way that she is asserting her independence, and I need to keep that in mind.

She did end up falling asleep around 2:45, and not long after that, Aedan woke up crying, after only sleeping an hour.  I tried to get him to go back to sleep, but he would just keep waking up.  Aedan has been doing that a lot the last few days.  We will get him to sleep, but he won't stay asleep long, waking up crying instead.

Ben came home from campus early that afternoon so that I could take Samantha to her first ballet lesson.  I had to wake her up from her nap, and she woke up very slowly.  She is never the happiest when you have to wake her up, but I had no choice because we had to get her up and dressed so we could get to ballet on time.  She was very cute in her tights, leotard, skirt, and ballet slippers.  They did some stretches to warm up, learned first position, practiced pointing their toes, and did some other work with movement around the dance floor.  Here are some pictures and videos of Samantha's first ballet lesson.

In the video below, you can see Samantha decided to spin like a ballerina instead of standing in line with the other girls.  She enjoyed watching herself dance in the big, floor-length mirrors.

In this video, Samantha is on the far left of the screen.  She is doing a pretty good job of copying what the teacher is doing.

And in this picture Samantha is on the far right.

Then, at the end of class, they got to use scarves and had time to dance freely to music however they chose.  Samantha, again, liked watching herself dance in the mirror and enjoyed dancing to the music from the movie Rapunzel.  She also copied her teacher towards the end by laying the scarf on the floor and jumping over it.  She made a pretty adorable ballerina.  I hope that she will enjoy her ballet lessons.  I know I have fond memories of being in ballet when I was a little girl.  She loves dressing up and dancing so much at home, that this is right up her alley.

Since Aedan had a rough afternoon with not napping enough, Ben was able to get him to fall asleep for an evening nap in his swing.  Originally, we were planning on meeting at Skyline Chili for dinner before Ben and Samantha left for their date night, but instead, I just bought some for myself and brought it home to eat.  As soon as I got home with Samantha, we got her changed out of her ballet outfit, and her and Daddy left for their date night.  Here are some pictures from Samantha's night out with her Daddy.

They stopped and ate at Skyline Chili together.  On the way to Skyline, Daddy showed Samantha his baseball glove and asked, "What would I need this for?"  And she squealed, "I'm going to a baseball game!"  (She didn't know what Daddy had planned for her for the night.)

Samantha enjoyed walking to the ballpark, standing on the bridge that crossed over the highway and watching the cars drive underneath her, and of course, had to look at the statues of the baseball players outside of the ballpark.  She thought it was really cool to be downtown in a bigger city.

Ben found really good seats in the eighth row behind the dug out, so that way Samantha could see the game up close.

She even got to meet the mascots.  At first she was a little hesitant, but after she realized they weren't going to hurt her, she loved them, giving them hugs, hi-fives, and she even let Daddy take her picture with them.  Then, for the rest of the game she kept her eyes out for them, wondering why they weren't always walking around the field.

 She especially liked Mrs. Red.

Daddy let Samantha get a snack, and she of course chose cotton candy.  And apparently she drank a lot of water as well.  Later in the game, they walked around some and sat in the outfield seats for part of the game to give Samantha a different view and more space to move around.  It was already past her bedtime and she had had a long day, so she was getting pretty tired...

 ...and pretty silly...

 ...and pretty punchy.

Since it was already late and Samantha was losing it a bit, Daddy decided to have them stay through the seventh inning stretch and then head out.

Samantha and Daddy had a wonderful time on their date together. :)

While they were on their date, Aedan and I went grocery shopping since I wasn't able to go that morning.  Since Daddy sent me a picture of Samantha and him, I sent them a picture of Aedan and me.

After having a super busy day on Tuesday, we had a relaxing morning together on Wednesday and then just hung out and played at home.  I don't know if it had anything to do with the stress and busyness of Tuesday, but as Wednesday progressed I started feeling worse and worse throughout the day.  My head was hurting, my nose was stuffy, and my throat was sore.  I definitely felt like I was coming down with something.  It's hard to feel under the weather when staying home with young kids because you can't just go lay down in bed and rest.  Plus, I didn't want to have something contagious and end up getting Samantha or Aedan sick.

Both kids went to sleep pretty easily on Wednesday afternoon, but Aedan had a rough afternoon again.  Just like the day before, he woke up screaming and crying after only an hour of sleeping.  I got him back to sleep several times, but he just kept waking up.  He had a bit of a cough, so maybe that was bothering him, and I decided that it might be a good idea to give him some medicine before bed that night, just in case him waking up a lot had anything to do with teething pain, or even a sore throat like mine.

I know I take a lot of pictures of Aedan on his floor gym, but he's just too cute, I can't resist.  I have a picture of Samantha that is similar to the one below where it looks like she is reading a book.  I love to see how strong he is getting, and how alert and attentive he is to the world around him.

Wednesday night was a rough night all around.  I was definitely coming down with something and felt really crummy.  Even though Ben was busy all day on campus, he lovingly came home and took over taking care of the kids and giving them baths so I could rest on the couch.  I was so hoping for a good night's sleep, hoping that Aedan would sleep well so that I could sleep well.  Well, Aedan wasn't the problem that night.  We had a cold front coming through, bringing some storms.  The wind and rain wasn't even that bad, but for some reason it knocked out our power.  It flickered a few times and then turned off.  We had our air conditioning on due to the humidity outside, and we really couldn't open the windows because the rain would then blow inside.  However, we are so used to sleeping with the noise and air from our fans in each bedroom, that it was so strange to have complete silence.  You could hear every little noise.  Roscoe was acting weird because of the power being off, pacing around the room, sniffing the carpet, and making all kinds of noise.  I had intentions of getting to bed early and getting some good rest in hopes I would feel better the next day, but I could not sleep with all the noise he was making.  I felt so crummy and so tired that I almost started crying over the whole situation.  Ben told me to just go sleep downstairs on the couch so that way Roscoe wouldn't bother me and I could get some sleep.  I did that, and I just kept hoping that the power would turn back on at any moment.  I was afraid that the lack of noise from the fans and the stuffiness of the house would start bothering our kids and wake them up.  Aedan had an okay night, much better than nap time was that day.  Neither of them seemed to notice that anything was different.  The power eventually turned back on around 4:30 in the morning, after being out for a good five hours.  

However, after the craziness of the night and with the lack of sleep, I really didn't feel very good Thursday morning.  Ben left for his class, and I went through the motions of getting Samantha and Aedan ready for the day, the whole time having the chills, my head felt swollen and puffy, the outside of my neck was sore and stiff, and my throat was really red.  I even noticed a few white spots in the back of my throat when I looked in the mirror.  I thought that I may be coming down with strep throat.  I decided that I wanted to go to the Miami health center that day to get it checked out.  I didn't want to have strep and be contagious, unknowingly passing it on to Samantha or Aedan.  Tylenol helped me to feel better temporarily, and I took advantage of Samantha being at preschool and Aedan taking his morning nap, to lay on the couch and take a nap myself.  Luckily, since I am the spouse of an employee, I can go to the health center for free, so I decided it would be a good idea to get checked out.  I scheduled an appointment for 1:45, and Ben lovingly came home early from campus so that I could go to the doctor while the kids were napping.  They did a strep test and it came back negative.  The doctor said I had a sinus infection and that all I really could do was continue taking Tylenol and throat drops to help the soreness of my throat.  I was glad it wasn't strep, but I also felt discouraged because at least if it was strep I could have gotten an antibiotic and started feeling better a lot faster.  Now, I would just have to wait for the sinus infection to clear up and there was little I could do to make myself feel better.

I continued to lay low and rest that evening.  Lately, Samantha has enjoyed pulling dresses out of her closet and wearing them around the house.  Sometimes she will change dresses multiple times in one day.  She will get her step stool from the bathroom so she can reach the hangers and will put the dress on all by herself.  Here is Samantha putting on a "fashion show" for us that night.  She is such a silly, fun-loving little girl.

I am part of an Oxford Moms Facebook group, and someone posted about an event called "A Day Out with Thomas."  It is held at a local train station, and you can buy tickets to take a twenty-five minute train ride on a train pulled by a life-size Thomas engine.  They also have other Thomas the Train activities that children can participate in.  I thought Samantha would really enjoy this, so we decided to go on Friday to potentially beat more of a crowd on Saturday.  Plus, the weather was going to be beautiful.

When we first got there, we picked up our tickets, used the restroom, and then took Samantha's picture with Thomas while waiting for our turn to board the train.  We had tickets for the 11:00 train ride.

Samantha was unsure about getting her picture taken at first because she was paranoid that the train would leave without her, and she didn't want to miss the ride.  Here we all are on the train.

I don't think Aedan was too impressed by the ride, and about five minutes into the trip, Samantha asked when we were going to be going back, but once we started pointing things out to her out the window and talking and interacting with her, she got more engaged in what we were doing.

After the train ride, we went back to the car to change Aedan's diaper, deposit the stroller, and put him in the Ergo in hopes he would take a little nap as he was tired and getting a bit fussy.  They had several stations for kids to do different activities.  They had a bounce house, a place where you could watch Thomas the Train shows, men on stilts making balloon animals, bubbles, and even a hay maze.

Samantha's favorite activity was probably the hay maze.  It was very small and simple, but she loved going back and forth in it.  She climbed on top the haystacks and even offered out her hand to help a little boy down when he was stuck on the top of a hay stack.  She has such a caring, considerate heart.  I love how she notices others and wants to help.

You can see in these pictures that she is carrying around her blue butterfly balloon animal.  Well, sometime in the midst of walking around in the maze, a little boy accidentally stepped on it and popped it, making Samantha burst into tears.  Once we got her to calm down and breathe, we told her that we could get another butterfly made on our way back to the car.  That made her much happier, but she continued to talk about the little boy that stepped on her balloon.

We had a great day out with Thomas.  It was a bit of a racket, but it was really fun.  Samantha definitely enjoyed herself.  Aedan took a nap in the Ergo and otherwise just hung out and watched everything going on around him.  It was a great family day.  I love doing things like this together.  It was definitely a unique experience.

Throughout this week, we have been struggling with Aedan waking up more after we get him to sleep, both during his afternoon nap and at night.  He will fall asleep when nursing or being rocked, be totally zonked out, and stay asleep when we lay him down.  But then sometimes within fifteen minutes or even an hour or so later, he will wake up crying.  We always give him some time to see if he'll settle himself down, but we usually have to go back into his room, give him his pacifier and lay our hand on his chest, or even pick him up and rock him back to sleep.  It's hard to know what to do.  It could be teething pain, it could be the cold that he is struggling with, or it could be us enabling him to not be able to fall back asleep without us near him.  Who knows.  It's so hard to know what to do with babies sometimes.  I nursed Samantha to sleep every night until she stopped nursing just before eighteen months, and she goes to sleep fine on her own.  I don't think my nursing her to sleep damaged her sleep habits in any way.  Plus, we have tried just laying Aedan down when he is drowsy but not totally asleep, and he will just wake right back up and start crying, starting the whole process over again.  It's a fine balance between just doing whatever needs to be done to maximize sleep for everyone, and trying to establish boundaries and routines, or even letting him cry for awhile until he learns how to self-soothe and fall back asleep on his own.  Is a four and a half month old ready for that anyways?  Plus, there is such a narrow window of time that one gets to snuggle with, rock, and hold a sleeping baby, before they grow bigger and don't like that anymore.  I think for now I will embrace the fact that my son needs me and wants to be held and rocked.  Any thoughts from other moms out there?

Since Ben skipped out on going to campus on Friday to enable us to go to the Day Out with Thomas as a family, he took Saturday as a day to work.  Our week was so busy with many activities, so the rest of us just took it easy on Saturday, playing at home.  I enjoyed some time playing with just Samantha while Aedan was napping.  I feel like I don't get as much time with just her by myself, so I like to take this opportunity when it presents itself.  We played with her toys, painted, and drew on her easel.

If you can't tell, in the above picture Samantha is painting in just her underwear and her smock.  She did have on the pink dress you can see in the picture below, but she didn't want to get paint on it, so she decided to take it off while she painted.  Daddy was working at the kitchen table and didn't know Samantha was dressed like this.  When she was done painting, she ran across the kitchen to the bathroom to wash her hands, and Daddy saw her little body dressed just in her underwear and smock, and he just burst into laughter.  It was just a hilarious sight to see!

I wanted to include the pictures of her drawing with her chalk because her ability to draw people is really coming along.  She knows to draw a circle for the head, a long line for the body, and two little lines for the legs.  The rough squiggles you can see around the person is supposed to be hair and clothes.  This is a picture of Daddy, and she was so proud to show it to him when she was finished.

Since I've shown you what Samantha was up to that morning, here is what Aedan was up to.  He was very tired and ended up taking a nap for a couple hours in his swing while Samantha and I played in the play room.  He's so peaceful and content, and almost too big for his swing!

And of course, he had some time to play on the floor gym.  He still doesn't show too much interest in rolling over, but he certainly can scoot himself around and is very active.  I always lay him straight underneath it, like with his head at three o'clock in the picture below, but he wiggles around so much that he scoots himself around in different directions.  He loves to reach for and bat at the toys.  And he loves to make lots of noise.  He is a very vocal little baby.  (Taking after his sister?)

I forget if I've written about this or not, but as you can see in the picture above, we are using cloth diapers on Aedan full time now.  We decided to purchase a set ourselves, and we went with bumGenius.  I got some second hand through another mom in Oxford and some I ordered brand new from a local Diaper Parties rep.  We are using Kawaii at nighttime for extra wetness protection.  It is going really well, and I'm so glad that we jumped all in on the cloth diaper wagon.  They are really easy to use, not that difficult to get clean, and are going to save us a ton of money in the long run.  Plus, so far, they seem to be living up to their reputation and Aedan has hardly had any diaper rashes, which is a wonderful thing not to have to deal with!

Saturday evening, we went over to a friend's house, a colleague of Ben's from Miami that he met through InterVarsity meetings.  They invited a few families over for root beer floats, and time to just hang out and get to know one another better.  It was a rough time of night, not starting until 7:00, when around 7:30 is when Aedan starts getting fussy and ready for bed.  Plus, both kids' bedtimes are around 8:00 anyways.  However, there were other kids there for Samantha to play with and she had a blast running around with the boys in the basement.  Ben and I had a good time talking with the other parents.  Getting some adult social time was good for me considering I am mostly around Samantha and Aedan all day, every day.  As the evening went on, Samantha kept getting hurt which is usually a sign that she is getting too tired and can no longer control her own body or actions.  It was close to 9:00, so we decided it was time to get home and get our kids (and ourselves) to bed.

However, on the way home, Ben and I were talking about how great it is that he has been feeling good the last few months since his surgery.  In fact, it was two months ago that he was in the hospital with the post surgical infection.  Samantha talked to us from the back seat about how "when she was a little sister and daddy got sick."  She said now we are lucky because "we have a real daddy" after his surgery was over.  Ben remarked, "Apparently I was a fake until I had eighteen inches of my colon taken out."  Kids (especially Samantha) say the funniest things!

Sunday morning we decided to go to the second service so that Aedan could get a morning nap in before church, maximizing our chance of having a happy baby in the nursery and allowing both Ben and me to stay in the service together.  Since Aedan enjoys standing up and using his legs so much, Ben put together the exersaucer for him, and this was his first time ever in it.  He loved it!  He moved around, bounced up and down, and explored all the toys on the exersaucer.  This will definitely be a fun toy for him as he gets stronger every day.

Sometimes I look at Samantha and think that she just looks so grown up.  She looks so beautiful in this picture below.  She loves to wear dresses, and loves her brother so much.  She is such a precious little girl to me, and I hope I always make her feel that way.

Sunday was such a beautiful day that after nap time and dinner time, we just had to go play outside for awhile.  We loaded everyone up and went to Hanover Park, which is just a few minutes away from our house.  On the way there, we were practicing Samantha's memory verse from church.  Here she is reciting it for us.  I love that she is learning so much from her preschool class at church.  I love that memorizing Scripture is a priority there, even with the little children.  What a great verse to have hidden in her heart at such a young age!