King of the Playground

I love the school year for a multitude of reasons. Especially this year since Calen is in school all day every day, I get some major quality time with Camden which I really appreciate since during the summer one on one with him is completely non-existent.

I also love that all the big kids are away at school all day, completely abandoning the big playground a couple blocks away. I like taking Cam there when there's no one else there so he can have complete and total free reign of the place. Not that I don't like to share, but, I just don't like to share.
Cam got the playground to himself this morning. He even invited his little buddy to come with and indulge in the riches of an empty playground with him.

Camden almost always has to wear a cape it seems. And what could rule the playground better than a caped Darth Vader shirt? Seriously breeding the next supreme ruler, people.

Orphan child faces "PLEASE someone adopt us and untangle the swings and put us in them and push us higher?"

Fall Fest and Apple Pie

These are one of those days were it's pretty cool to be part of a nicer military base. 

Our base throws a pretty fun Fall Festival every year, just three blocks away from our doorstep over where our "big playground" is in housing. They offer lunch, a bounce house, some fun games like tug of war and gunny sack races, a fire truck and "burning" building set up where kids can use the actual fire hose and other such activities.They even created a pumpkin "patch" over in a field on the other side of the neighborhood. They take you there on a hay ride (a couple utility tractors pulling trailers full of haybales) and let kids pick out a pumpkin each. It was a fun way to spend an afternoon, especially when it's free!

The other day we kept up with the fall spirit by making apple pies. Like literally. It's almost kind of simple. Take some larger apples of any kind (I used golden delicious since it's what we had the most of from our apple picking) and core them using a corer. Or if you don't have one (like me) and like doing things the incredibly difficult way, use a knife and somehow attempt to carve out the core without stabbing yourself or destroying the shell of the apple. Then, scoop out as much apple as you can from the inside, and put it in a bowl.

Then, add some cinnamon, brown sugar and vanilla to taste to the apple pieces in the bowl. Stir, and then spoon them back into the hallowed apples.

Oh yeah, in the meantime let your oven preheat to 350.

Cover the apples with premade pie crust. Put the apple pies in a baking dish that has enough water in it to cover the bottom of the dish.

Cover in foil and bake for 45 mins or so. Then take the foil off and let it bake another 15 minutes or so, until it's golden brown and apple is soft. 

Slice and eat! This would be good with some caramel drizzled over the top too. 

Apple pie! Or pie apples. You decide. Either way, delicious

Apple Stamping

Fall is here people!

It started showing itself on Saturday, when it actually dropped below 70 degrees and there was a hint of coldness in the breeze. We took that opportunity to go apple picking at our favorite farm (which I TRIED to blog about but the blog host was being all douchey but if you're lucky to know me in person you saw pictures of on Facebook). Because fall apple picking is NOT acceptable in 80 degree weather, we saw Saturday's cool weather report and planned it in advance. 

Today fall REALLY showed up as it was actually too cold to be outside today without a sweatshirt. Ahh! I will admit that I'm ready for sweater weather. 

And my Scentsy is full of yummy and cozy fall scents that usually involve cinnamon and baked goods. 

I love fall. 

So anyways we went to the apple farm and now we have an abundance of apples in our house. So yesterday the boys and I cut an apple in half, dunked it in some red paint and stamped apples on paper bags, construction paper and also made an apple tree.

Calen loved it. Camden was infuriated that he couldn't take a bite out of the apple dripping with paint. He suddenly has a new found obsession with "appas" since the apple farm day, where he ate two apples the size of cantaloupes single handedly. 

 

The Potty Training Odyssey

Warning: this post is about potty training, which involves alarming subjects such as pee, poop, toilets and underpants. More immature people might not be able to handle this. Reader discretion is advised.  

I started this potty training process thinking I would post updates every day. You know, a sort of day by day adventure into the world of little boys and toilets. 

...but instead, I haven't blogged in like ten days.

And the reason why? Not because I was on vacation, deserted on a tropical island, thrown in prison or eaten by rabid wolverines. 

I have been completely and totally and utterly consumed by absolute potty training hell. 

I started full blown potty training the first day of Calen's school. On purpose of course, because Cam wouldn't have big brother to distract him, and I wouldn't have Calen to distract me. I was ready. Bring on the little underwears, the lack of diapers and wipes taking over my house, the overload of juice to get Cam to pee every five minutes to get the concept of going in the potty. Bring. it. on. 

Two years ago, Calen was SO easy to potty train. One day, he flopped himself on the floor and announced "I poop. I need changed." and I decided that was it, it was time to train him. It took a mere four days to train him. Four days. And since that fourth day, I can count on one hand the amount of accidents he's had (mostly while on long car rides, since he has a bad habit of not telling us he has to pee until the LAST SECOND POSSIBLE). For some ridiculous reason, I thought that Camden, sharing the same DNA as Calen and all, would be comparably easy to train. 

Oh, how wrong I was. 

The first day started off promising. Only a handful of accidents, and by the middle of the second day, he was telling me when he had to go "A-Poh-Eee!" I thought hell, this kid is just as easy as Calen. By the end of the week we'll be accident free. 

Or NOT. 

We are now on day 10. Day 10 of intense, exhausting potty training. Following him around wherever he goes and not letting him out of my sight for a single second. Forcing him to go sit on the toilet every twenty minutes or so. Not leaving the house for literally ten days (seriously). And the kid hasn't worn clothes (other than underpants) for a week and a half. 

This has been what my life has been the last ten days. Nothing but this.

The thing is, he knows how to hold it. And at this point, he holds it about 80% of the time and stays dry until he sits on the potty. And every once in a while, he will even go to the potty on his own volition, without me drilling his case about it. 

Here's the problem(s):

1. He's stubborn. And he likes to do things when he wants, how he wants it, period. And if you tell him to do something, he'll instantly put his feet down and refuse. This is just Cam. Which means that if I tell Cam to stop playing and go potty, he gets mad, and you have to drag his kicking body to the toilet. Which he'll usually go after, but by now he should be doing this on his own. This feeds into our number two problem:

2. He ALWAYS has accidents outside. Playing outside is his most favorite thing, ever. So if we're out in the back yard and I say "hey, let's go potty real quick", the idea of removing him from his favorite place to go do something as stupid (to him) as peeing on the potty is infuriating. And he definitely won't tell you he has to go when he's outside. So usually, he manages to escape my eyes for half a second, hiding under the slide or in the play house or behind the big tree and have a so-called "accident." And he knows it's bad, because he'll look down at his pants and go "Ewwww. Stinky. No no NO!" Finally, our third and hugest problem:

3. He will NOT poop in the toilet. Period, at all, ever. In ten days, he has managed to outsmart and trick us into pooping in his pull-up/underwear/floor. Every.single.day. A few times outside, but mostly, in the late evenings, when we think he's asleep in his room but he's actually doing his business in his nightly pull-up. Last night, Brad even kept him on the toilet late in the evening for half an hour to get him to do his thing. Which he didn't, and when Brad went downstairs for probably 90 seconds to get a sippy cup, he came back to poopy underpants. 

Eye-twitch. This is a nightly occurrence. 

The poop-issue aside, it does seem like we're making progress, slowly, SLOWLY, but surely. We now average maybe one accident a day (not counting nap and nighttime, which we aren't expecting anything at this point), which really isn't that bad for a less than 2.5 year old. And though it's taking three times longer than I ever expected (this is not how I planned on spending half of my September), I am happy to announce that we ARE diaper free for the entire day that Cam is awake. And that friends, is quite possibly the best milestone, ever. 

P.S. we actually ventured out of the house today. We took a pretty long drive to the mall (40 minutes) wearing a Pull-Up (Cam, not me) and he arrived dry, peed in a public restroom, and remained dry the entire time at the mall AND all the way home. Major, MAJOR milestone.

 

School Buses and Batman Underpants

First of all, my big man had his first day of real big boy elementary school. Pre-K at Cape May Elementary School is the real deal. Full day schedule, school bus to and from, the works. 

This ain't your mama's Pre-K. 

Calen of course thrives on it. The only thing he didn't like about his 1st year of preschool last year was that it was only 3 days a week and half days. He wanted to be there all day, every day. So this is right up his alley. 

I'll admit I was more than a little anxious about my 4.5 year old riding a big school bus ALL the way to school (which is a whopping mile away. Maybe a mile and a half, people). What if he can't figure out the seat belt (welcome to the new age folks, where school buses have seat belts. They clearly didn't care as much about our well being when we were kids)? What if he forgets his backpack on the bus? What if he can't figure out where the hell to go once he gets off the bus? WHAT IF.....

But luckily, some other "What If" thinker upper figured it all out for me. The kids are escorted off the bus and walked directly to the cafeteria (and from there to their classrooms), and vice versa in the afternoons. And my neighbor friend recruited her two older experienced girls to help Calen on and off the bus (and keep track of that backpack). I didn't really have a reason to not let him ride the bus. Besides, he was begging to ride the bus. BEGGING. 

Besides, riding the bus meant I didn't have to drag Camden with me. Those who had to witness me taking him with me to drop and pick up Calen at the little preschool last year will remember the incredible joy Cam had running inside the classroom, followed by the violent fits of rage as I had to drag his literally kicking and screaming carcass back home. The kid wants to go to school, people, whether he's old enough or not. 

So anyways, I let him ride the bus. I would talk more about how his first day of school went today, except I don't know, because all he would talk about is his bus ride. He really likes riding the bus. 

Also, his first words off the bus:

"Hi mom! I'm BACK! I rode the school bus from school!" 

I thought it was pretty cute. 

Not even off the bus and he's shouting at me about his bus ride.

Meanwhile, it was the first day of "school" for Camden. I swore all summer that as soon as Calen was gone all day at school I was going to dedicate myself to finally potty training the short diapered monster in my house. 

Day #1 went exceptionally well. He went naked-baby all day, and I stuffed his face with juice and sent him to the bathroom every 7-10 minutes. It was completely and totally exhausting for both of us, but we made it with only three accidents in a nine hour training period. Even a poop! (sorry people). I consider it a runaway success. We'll see if tomorrow works out as good. 

1st day wearing underpants discovery: Butts are accessible to scratch now.

 

The Last Day of Summer

Today is the last day of summer. 

Okay, okay, so the Powers That Be say that the end of summer is actually like the third week of September or something. But really, does anyone see the day after Labor Day (and all days following) summer? Or fall? Very, very fall to me. 

The Powers That Be should have hired me to coordinate the global calendar. 

So anyways it's the last day of summer in MY world and the last day of summer vacation for the mini-people that live in this community. I wanted to do something fun, go out in style, end with a bang that kind of stuff. You know me. 

Well the weather was questionable and there was NO WAY I was going to dare leave my house on the biggest tourist weekend of this teeny, tiny barrier island. So, I got creative. 

This time of year is state fair time in my home state. Carnival rides, barns full of farm animals, pig races, food---FOOD!!! Deep fried amazing goodness. South Jersey doesn't have fairs. Like, they don't exist. At all. Naturally I want what I can't have and the entire month of August I've been craving some good fair food. 

So I decided that we would end our summer with a dinner of delicious unhealthy goodness. I made some typical eats - hot dogs (though I dressed one up fancy with bbq sauce and bbq chips on top) and corn on the cob. Then I made a Northwest fair staple: Fisher scones. The real deal people, I had a box of official Fisher scones in my pantry, waiting for a special occasion. Brad even bought some fancy raspberry jam for them. 

Fisher scones

And then, I really got adventurous and decided to make elephant ears. This is what a normal elephant ear looks like at the fair: 

Deep fried amazingness

 This is what my (smaller) elephant ears ended up looking like:

I had a heavy hand when applying the sugar and the cinnamon

They're not quite as good as the fair, but they were definitely a nice consolation prize. They're very easy to make:

2 tubes of Grands biscuits
vegetable oil
sugar and cinnamon

Heat some veggie oil in a pan (maybe 1/2 an inch deep), but not TOO hot.

Take an individual biscuit out of the tube, put in between two pieces of wax paper. Roll with rolling pin until as flat and thin as possible.

Set in hot oil, fry for maybe a minute on each side (or until golden brown). Pat dry with paper towel, rub sugar and cinnamon on top. Serve warm. Done. 


It was a delicious meal. I mean who wouldn't want to eat all this?

Umm, yum.

It was a big hit for kids and adults alike. I could have eaten that every day. 


We ended our summer with an evening of play in the back yard. I'm still kind of in shock that Calen is old enough to ride the bus and go to Pre-K at the elementary school tomorrow. Wow. Time flies. 

Necessary outdoor headware

Toads

Last night my neighbor and I took our dogs for a walk around the neighborhood. As we're walking, Juno suddenly attacks something in the grass, throwing her feet forward 900 times per second trying to stomp on it. It was dark and I could see was something small and hopping (I figured it was a cricket). Then I realized it was a tiny toad and snatched it up like any normal human being. All I could think of was "the kids will fricken LOVE this!" but soon realized that they were all in bed. Poo. 

But instead of releasing it, I carried it, cupped in my hands, all the way back to the house and tossed it in a mason jar (Daddy nailed some holes in the lid for me). I threw in some grass and a little water, and then put it in outside in our tomato planter to hang out happily (or not) until tomorrow morning. 

So this morning I checked to see if the damn thing was alive (it was) and then brought my kids and my neighbor's three girls out to the back yard to check out the toad. Calen and Sydney got to hold him, her older sister Hailey was NOT interested in touching him and we didn't let Cam hold it because he probably would have POPPED the damn thing (Calen was close to anyways). But he did crouch down and looked at it and then giggled. 

After ten minutes or so I decided to free the toad before he got stepped on/squished/popped/stressed to death. So we put him back in the jar and took a field trip around the fence to the neighboring yard (coincidentally where we found the injured heron in the tree last month) and let it loose. 

And that was that. The kids loved it. I should start my own nature camp. 

Sydney holding the toad and Cam crouching down to get a closer look

Toad. I like the sound of the word "toad."

 

Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better

Camden has suddenly become this little shadow to Calen. Not that he hasn't followed him around and copycatted for the last year, but in the last week or so he's really been doing more dare-devil "big boy" stuff if he sees Calen doing it. Like jumping off the toy box. And trying to drive the 4 wheeler ALONE (he is incapable of steering and it is quite alarming). 

He's also finally figured out his little scooter (to follow big brother on his scooter with, of course). He probably goes no faster than a morbidly obese ant crawling on the sidewalk, but he has the movements down.

His "I got this" face

For well over a year now Calen's favorite thing involving the pool is climbing onto the picnic chair and leaping off into the water. Usually this is far too high/scary/alarming/out of his league for Camden. But suddenly today, Camden decided he was big enough. He crawled up on the chair, jumped straight up in the air, stuck his legs straight out and landed on his butt. Which he thought was awesome. And repeated it. Over. And over. And over. 

Air.

And THEN, he watched Calen run across the lawn and leap head first into the pool. So Cam did too. I figured he'd cry when the water hit his face. But he didn't. He laughed and did it again. And again. 

This one is going to keep us guessing. 

Captain America Strong Bands

Calen has been wearing these arm bands for two days straight. He eats with them, sleeps with them, refuses to take them off. He calls them his "Captain America Strong Bands" and claims that they make him super strong. 

And that's the excitement we have had around here lately.

Shenanigans

The boys have been into mischief lately. Specifically, a few days ago.

I blame it on a lack of "summer" this summer. Grey cloudy days where the temperature doesn't go above 75 (in which East Coast -accustomed Calen claims is "cold"). And RAIN that keeps us inside. Being trapped inside means shenanigans are inevitable. 

It started on Friday. 

We have a walk through baby gate in the upstairs hallway. This is there because the boys wake up at o'dark thirty, a time in which I deem illegal and evil and the equivalent of basically the worst thing ever. I don't exist at o'dark thirty. I refuse to exist. So I let the boys play in Calens room and sleep happily in my bed until a time of morning that I deem acceptable to exist, like 8am. The gate keeps the boys from going downstairs and thus involving themselves in shenanigans.

On Friday, the gate got opened. Somehow. I assumed that I had left it open. When I woke up, the boys were in Calens room with lollipops in their mouths, and no less than SEVEN eaten lollipop sticks on the ground in his room. I went downstairs to find the step stool pushed up against the counter and the candy jar open. Shenanigans.

Well fool me once. I put the candy jar up high. On the alcohol shelf. Try to reach that you misfits. Sunday night I was absolutely POSITIVE I closed the baby gate. Positive. I checked twice.

Monday morning I wake up to the sound of the baby gate clanging shut. I jumped up like my mattress was on fire, half asleep, shouting to myself "OHMYGOD the KIDS are DOWNSTAIRS" and wondering just how the hell they got the gate open, and what the hell they got into, all while still midair from jumping out out bed.

I dove into Calens room. He was watching Cars, on his floor, with the entire Costco box of graham crackers beside him (a Costco box holds FOUR standard sized boxes of graham crackers). Half of an entire standard sized box was GONE. It was unopened the night before. Scattered throughout his room were teeny tiny pieces of cracker wrapper, cut carefully into a thousand pieces by Calen using ADULT scissors that he STOLE from the junk drawer. Beside the graham crackers was a cereal bowl with a few leftover pieces of Lucky Charms. Beside THAT was a souvenir sized cup full of lemonade. 

I'm staring at his room dumbfounded, wanting to scream or yell or just go back to bed and pretend it hadn't happened. I wanted to make some kind of amazing riot act about STEALING food SEALED SHUT from the pantry and SNEAKING it upstairs and USING SCISSORS to open it and eating HALF A BOX OF GRAHAM CRACKERS and why in the hell didn't they just wake me up and say "hey Mom I'm hungry"? But all I could mutter was "WHERE is your brother??" because Camden was suspiciously MIA.

"Over there." Calen said very nonchalantly, munching on graham cracker, As if he didn't realize that his little life as he knew it was about to end. Violently. 

Camden was hiding under Calen's desk, with a graham cracker in each hand. I think he was more aware of the trouble they were into than Calen was. 

Then, I went downstairs to assess the situation. It was almost as bad as I feared.

The pantry door was wide open (regardless of the child lock on the handle). On the kitchen floor was an empty Pop Tart box, which most definitely wasn't empty the night before. Next to that was a bottle of apple juice, cold from the fridge, but not opened (it was sealed and apparently childproof). Also there was the lid to the lemonade pitcher. Following the trail of debris into the dining room, I found THREE empty Poptart wrappers (so six Poptarts total were eaten), the now empty-that-was-full-last-night pitcher sitting in a puddle of what once was lemonade. Next to it was a container of Lucky Charms that was 1/4 empty. I bought those the night before. 

Did I miss anything? I don't think I did.

SHENANIGANS.

I went back upstairs to annihilate the kids but tripped over Calens scooter in his room. Calens scooter...in his room? Which means he CLUNKED that metal thing all the way up the wood stairs.

How in the HELL hard was I sleeping??

AND THEN Calen asked for breakfast! Umm, NO? You just ate the entire house. You're not having breakfast. OR LUNCH.

Okay so maybe I did feed him lunch later.

The kids got the floor mopped with them, but I still have no idea how they got the gate open. Daddy did something to "fix" it that night. I should have known that the worst mischief my kids would get into would involve food.