Monday, April 16, 2007

Whoa!


This is Kate's latest favorite expression. That, and 'more' everything. "More binky." "More airplane." More more more. It doesn't mean that she wants more of these things, she just likes to say 'more'. And now she also likes to add 'whoa!' to the mix. It's very cute. She is also beginning to understand counting, and counts her blocks (usually she only makes it to 2, but hey). We got her a Dora potty chair a few weeks ago, and she is wanting to sit on it more and more. I can't believe we might be at the potty training stage already.

McLaren has a touch of the stomach virus that is going around. She has been sleeping like a champ, trying to get over it, but is waking up a bunch at night wanting comfort. She's a happy baby, though, and is smiling through the vomit and upset tummy. Me, I'm trying to smile through the vomit. It's difficult.

I was supposed to talk about Easter in the last post, but was too tired and went to bed instead. Easter was fun; we took the girls to church, which is always challenging since we take them to the service with us instead of putting them in the nursery. I think church should be a family affair, which is why we like to take them in with us, but man is it hard to keep a toddler still for an hour or however long the service is. How do y'all do it? Nursery? Toys in the pew? Please share your secrets.


Ready for church.


We went to a different church for Easter service, mostly because we were running late (as usual) and this other church is closer to us. Holy cow. I have never seen so much livestock in a church before. Instead of a regular service, they put on a near-Broadway-like production of the Easter story. It was really cool, with singing, live horses and sheep, and a Jesus with a southern drawl. The only problem was that the lights went out and suddenly we were in a theater. With a toddler and a baby. And the toddler didn't want to sit still, even when the puppy (horse) with a Roman riding it trotted down the aisle next to us. "More puppy! More puppy!" This was not, of course, a quiet request by said toddler. I did mention everything is 'more', didn't I? So about an hour into it, Tim gave up on trying to get Kate to keep coloring on the church service guide with the pew pencil and took her out of the auditorium. I stayed on with Claire, since she was sleeping fairly soundly. A half hour later, after many glances at my watch and wracking my brain trying to remember when the next service was supposed to start, I left with Claire to go find Tim. I wish we could have seen all of it, and that we knew what it was we were going to be doing at the service, for we would have put the kids in the nursery and enjoyed the show. Next year.

The rest of the week was spent shoveling rock and raking the yard. We are almost done with the rock we have, but will probably have to order more, as I was not spot on when I estimated the size of our yard. Way to go, Jen.

Kate and I colored Easter eggs on Thursday (hey, she had no idea Easter had passed, and we were kinda busy last week). Kate enjoyed it for a short time. I imagine next year she'll be more into it. I have video of her coloring a purple egg, but I cannot get Google video to work for me at the moment.


More spoon.



Red hand, yellow hand, red dots on face.

8 comments:

Katie said...

You are a brave woman for attempting Easter egg dye. I am putting that off for as long as possible! :)

We use the nursery at church and it is usually a bad experience and we are so scarred from it that we don't return to church for a good 3 months after!

Andrea and Ben said...

I love that you let her get all messy in the dye! Cute :0)

Elizabeth said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Elizabeth said...

I love it!!! Catherine was equally stained from her egg dyeing experience (which she did not understand AT ALL). Poor Claire. She seems to have such a happy temperment, though.

I obviously have no advice on the church thing. I think kids should be in the service, too, but it is always during nap time and Catherine is cranky, so we end up taking her to the nursery half-way through the service or just sitting in the cry room. Last week, we heard her screams in the nursery (a different building) from the sanctuary. There has to be a better solution, right?

Julie McCracken said...

Joey doesn’t want to go to Sunday school at all, and would rather sit with me and see “Pastor Nate”. Yes…this can make for a very long service for me. Well…my fix for this when he was younger was a large sucker. Yes it gets messy, but just keep a lot of wet wipes around! It really does by you a lot of time. Now that he is 4, it is gum. Nominate me for Mother of the Year!!! Lol…bribing my son with candy in order to go to church. I thought bribing him to go to church would start around the age of 12!

Jen said...

Aaah, bribes! That's an excellent idea. I'll see if I can get Tim to buy off on it.

Can't wait to see your blog, Jules!

Anonymous said...

The best advice I can give for kids in church is consistancy. We keep ours with us, too, for the same reasons you mentioned and they do learn. We take them out when necessary, but the next week we're back and they're learning again. Eventually, it does take time and patience, they learn to sit still and to make it through. When they're little, we usually do use sippy cups and snacks to help out, too.
I'm glad you tried dying eggs. We've always done it, too. I can remember Mykenzie's hands being totally colored for Easter morning when she was about 18 months old! She got all the eggs out of the cups by sticking in her whole hand and taking them out! But, it's a memory I still have so totally worth it!!

Anonymous said...

I don't know how I ended up as anonymous, but it was me, Carrie!