Western Gateway Park and the Pappajohn Sculpture Park

You might be surprised at how kid-friendly a sculpture park can be. It doesn't hurt that the Pappajohn Sculpture Park is packed with Pokespots for the game PokemonGo. Here in Des Moines, it's quite the hot spot for PokemonGo players, and the park is always busy, busy!

But before I get into the fun of the sculpture park, let me talk about the park that's right across the street from there: Western Gateway Park. 

There's a man-made creek called a water runnel that runs through Western Gateway Park. It smells chlorinated, and it's meant for people to play in. Dogs play in there, too! 

Minecraft Creepers & Minion Pudding for Valentine's Day (or "Friendship" Day)

Somehow, we're more than halfway through the school year. Oliver celebrated his 100th day at school last week, and now we're planning for Valentine's Day parties at school today & tomorrow.

Last year, I got to craft the valentines I liked best since the kids had no opinion on the matter (remember these?). This year, Oliver asked for Minecraft valentines. That sounds like a simple request, but, alas, stores don't seem to sell them. I appreciate a challenge, so I took to Pinterest to find an idea. This is what we came up with:

Andrew found some Creeper images online and adapted them so they could be printed and folded over a fun-sized Kit-Kat bar.

These are the tags I made (with a little help from Andrew). They aren't the greatest, but I don't pretend to be an expert at photoshop:

Then it was time for Jo's valentines. She loves Minions, and I'd seen some creative Minion ideas on Pinterest that involved making minions out of pudding cups. They looked cool, but I'm pretty busy these days and was spending enough time making those Minecraft valentines.

So, I decided just to get some simple store-bought valentines. Jo loves so many different cartoons and candies that it would be easy. Right? Seriously, that's easier said than done. The small grocery store by my house doesn't even sell children's valentines. I planned a trip to the bigger grocery store, but whatever they had was mostly gone when I finally got there last night (That's what I get for waiting until the last minute). I was looking for anything Jo would love: Frozen, Minions, Doc McStuffins, Peppa Pig, even Peg+Cat. Nope. The only things they had left were superheroes and My Little Pony.

What happened next is either serendipitous or just a flat-out lie for dramatic effect. I then stumbled into a sign from the mighty Valentine's Day gods (Cupid, I guess?). A big Price Chopper display of pudding snack packs: 99 cents for a 4-pack. So, I bought the stupid pudding to make minions. 

Now, my husband and I don't fight. We just don't. But after juggling the kids and going to ballet, finding time for school work, and prepping for the "Friendship Day" craft that I'd signed up to host at Jo's preschool, I now needed to run out to the craft store to buy supplies to make minions. Let's just say I was a little testy, and my children are going to grow up with issues related to Valentine's Day. But I got to Michael's, and I bought a package of googly eyes, a 70 cent sheet of silver paper, and some thin black tape to make some minions. (If you're reading this to actually do this craft yourself, make sure you also have a hot glue gun!)

I found something round in my house to trace 12 silver circles (one for each pudding) and cut those out. 

I stuck a piece of black tape around each, and then I hot-glued a googly eye onto a silver circle and glued that to the black band. Note that I accidentally bought glitter tape, and these minions are actually shedding glitter all over the table. I imagine they probably shed into the pudding as well, making these some sort of bio-hazard, I'm sure.

But they're cute, right? Maybe that was worth all the driving around. I kind of thought so. Andrew and I hugged and made-up, and I swore I'd buy store-bought valentines next year.

Then, this morning, I got to Jo's party. I swear to you, there was a table display of pudding robots set up by a parent of one of the students.

I called my husband and told him that these robots put my minions to shame. They have juice box bodies, lollipop arms, pudding heads, two googly eyes, and chocolate shoes & hair.

Bonus photo of Jo wearing the necklace she'd made at her friendship party. At least that went over well!

One kid gave the other kids a tub of Play-Doh. That was Jo's favorite (better than the Minion pudding, for sure). She made a robot out of it because the robot Valentine made such an impression on her.

Happy Friendship Day!

Kindergarten Registration

Well, we did it. Oliver is registered for kindergarten!

I have been more emotional about this than I would have expected. It's weird! When the kids were infants, it was hard for me. I wasn't good at the middle-of-the-night wake-ups, I stressed over them not napping and not getting enough sleep, and I yearned for more physical space in between all their nursings. I wanted them to get bigger and run around and play. And they did. The toddler years have been my favorite. I love these times with the kids. Jo has been building things out of LEGOs with Oliver. Here are Jo's LEGO creations (a school and a house). Pretty amazing creations for a 3 year old!

I also love how they play little games and sing songs to their stuffed animals. They help me in the kitchen and with anything else I need. They get so excited over everything. Just going outside is something to get happy about! They constantly make me laugh, and I think I drive them crazy with telling them how adorable they are and all the hugs I give them as they do hilariously cute things.

But they keep getting bigger. I am so sad about the idea of Oliver being in school full time this fall. I mean, I don't want my kids to not grow up and be independent and happy and have their own lives. I absolutely want them to. It just seems like it's happened so fast. That's such a cliche, but it's also true. I've been so lucky to have these years at home with my kids, and it feels like a punch to the gut that it's coming to an end. For a (very) brief moment, I even considered homeschooling, but I realized I'd be doing that for purely selfish reasons. I know Oliver is ready for this next challenge. I just can't believe that time is almost here.

I hope I love this next stage, too. The next decade is going to be so busy with sports and after-school activities and friends and play dates. In the mean time, I just have to say, "Poor Joanna." I have a feeling she's going to be babied a lot over the next couple years.

Photos with Santa at Bass Pro Shops

I love how Oliver gets happier over the years, but little Jo is still pretty upset about seeing the jolly man in red. 

Last year, Jo requested her fox, which we hadn't brought with to the mall. The little fox puppet was in the car, so I handed her that. I'm still kind of disappointed the picture isn't of her with her beloved fox. Oh well! This year, they each brought their favorite stuffed friend with them. We went to Bass Pro Shops up in Northfield (Denver). They had free photos with Santa and free carousel rides. The kids had an excellent time. I think so many people had built up how great Bass Pro Shops is for the kiddos at Christmas that I expected something grand. It wasn't. It was simple and fun and free. 

Happy Third Birthday, Jo!

Our little Joanna Banana is 3. How did that happen?! Seriously, I just can't believe how big our kids are getting.

Jo is a little ball of sunshine. I think she should be a sitcom because she runs around and does hilarious things and often speaks in catch phrases. When I take a moment to stop and think of her, I always picture her with her messy bedhead that she has in the morning, reaching up with her pudgy little baby hand, and brushing the hair out of her eyes. She runs almost everywhere. She often thinks out loud, so we always know what she's going to do next. Also, she is extremely independent. I mean, sometimes I think the only problem she'll ever have in school is that she won't want to do whatever the group is doing because she'd rather do her own thing. She likes to sit in her room and play with her stuffed animals or sit and play with her dollhouse or sit with the iPad and play "Subway Surfer" or watch videos on YouTube (one of her favorites is a Russian cartoon called "Masha and the Bear" that is actually super fun to watch, and she also loves Peppa Pig). She loves being outside, but she usually wanders off to stomp through the flowers or play with rocks. She's aware what everyone else is doing and is socially aware, but she'd just rather do her thing.

She finished potty training back in May, so she was almost exactly 2-and-a-half. She loves singing songs; she sings dozens of songs and nursery rhymes. She memorizes books and videos. She loves dirt, rocks, leaves, and water. She likes monsters and lady bugs and trains, but she also likes princesses and queens. She's starting to like it when I do her hair. Mostly, she loves her stuffed fox.

Another big thing in Jo's life is that she's temporarily going to "preschool!" While I do my school practicum, Jo is going to the 2 year old room at school. The teachers say she doesn't talk much at all to them, but that she is so easy going and easy to care for. If they have room next semester, I might continue taking her for a couple hours once a week because I think it's good for her.

Now, as easy-going as she is, Joanna doesn't listen as well as her brother always has. If we tell her something, she'll try to just wait until she thinks we're not paying attention. If we ever catch her doing something she's not supposed to, she ducks her head and always says, "Sorry Mommy," or "Sorry Daddy," and then runs away. It's kind of funny. I'm pretty sure that she can get away with anything because she's just so adorable all the time. It's probably bad, but what is a parent to do?

Here's a collection of some of my favorite Jo-ments (Jo moments) over this past year:

Beggar's Night 2014

So, in Des Moines, kids don't trick-or-treat on Halloween. They trick-or-treat on Beggar's Night, which is usually the night before Halloween! Plus, kids don't get candy simply for saying trick-or-treat. They are expected to tell a joke to get candy. Kids go door-to-door, and when they say, "Trick or treat!" the neighbors ask, "Do you have a joke for me?"

Oliver and I went through some possible jokes online. He liked two. One is "What do witches put in their hair? SCARE spray!" The other was, "What do ghosts eat for dessert? I SCREAM!" I also read a few others to him, one of which he remembered and retold to some neighbors but a bit incorrectly. The joked asked, "What do ghosts drink at breakfast? Coffee with sugar and SCREAM." Oliver would ask some neighbors, "What do ghosts drink at breakfast? Ice cream with sugar." Hehe. It was really cute! At our house, he heard a kid tell a joke about a spider liking to use the computer because he could browse the web, and Oliver told that joke to a lot of neighbors, too. He kept rotating his four jokes, which I thought was super cute!

Joanna had the time of her life trick-or-treating. Her happiest moment came when we walked up to a house, and a lady answered the door with a bowl full of packages of crackers. One of them were Angry Birds graham crackers. Jo was so excited, but she's also very shy. She closed her eyes and buried her face in her hands. I wasn't sure what was wrong, so I bent down to her level. She whispered to me, "Angry Birds crackers." It was adorable. She held them proudly in her hand until we got home, and then she gobbled them up.

Here are some pictures of the kids on their big night out. Oliver was Lord Business, and Jo got to be a warm monster, thanks to a neighbor who gave us a really cool hand-me-down costume!

Oliver & Jo's Birthday Party, 2014!

This year, I asked Oliver what kind of a birthday party he'd like. "Thomas!" he said. I later asked him if we could have a "Spooky Thomas" birthday party because I love having all of the kids come together in their costumes. Here are the kids in their costumes. Oliver is Lord Business, but his hat is falling off in the picture. It was so warm out (72 degrees!) that he ended up taking off the hat in no time, followed by the chest piece, and then he changed from his sweatshirt to a T-shirt. Joanna was going to be a monster for the party, but the costume is fleece, so we put her in a back-up costume: her Minnie Mouse dress! (She refused to wear the ears, though). So much for kids being in costume ;-)

I combined Thomas the Train AND Halloween! Not an easy feat ;-)

We turned the kids' play house into a "not-so haunted house." A sign by the front door read, "Joanna's not-so haunted house," and I hung pumpkin garland and a smiling bat inside. In the garden, where I pulled out all of the old cucumber vines, Andrew posted a sign that read, "Oliver's pumpkin patch." We filled it with 12 small pumpkins to be part of the party favors.

I found a Thomas train that pulls a "Happy Halloween!" train, and so the Halloween train is being pulled around the Halloween cake. Oliver liked the ghost! I'd also made ghost cake balls and deviled eggs (some with black olive "spiders" on top), and Andrew made mummy dogs (pigs in a blanket).

The birthday kids are ready to blow out candles!

Birthday gift time! The kids received lots of wonderful gifts from friends & family.

Happy Birthday, kids!

Another parenting fail, and how Jo grabbed a light bulb

Last night, after bed time, Jo wandered into Oliver's room and emerged crying and screaming. It was hard to get any information out of either of them. Jo was inconsolable for over an hour and took a long time to fall asleep. She kept rubbing her hand on us and on her fox. One finger had what looked like a pinch mark, so we thought maybe Oliver had bit her, even though he said he didn't. After repeated questioning, he finally said he'd "kicked her because she was screaming." When I asked him where he'd kicked her, he said he didn't know, but then he said her head. I asked him if he kicked her hand, and he said yes. He lost his new bike (an early birthday gift from Grandma Colleen) for a while. I wasn't sure if her head was hurt or not. I wasn't sure if her hand rubbing was a sign of a head injury or hand injury. We gave Jo some baby Motrin and a band-aid (she loves band-aids) to try to help her feel better. We called my mother-in-law, a PA, to ask about head injuries. None of Jo's symptoms seemed to fit (she was speaking and moving all of her limbs). So, I just held her for a long time until she calmed down and finally fell asleep. She seemed so upset about whatever happened that I decided to sleep in her room last night. To put that in perspective, I've never slept in her room before! She was really, really upset.

Today, she's back to her normal, happy self. We examined her hand after she got up for the day. There were three blisters on her ring finger. Andrew wondered if she somehow burned herself, and it clicked: Oliver's room has a wall sconce with an exposed bulb. It's the only light in his room (no ceiling light), so it's on frequently in the evenings. Of course, it gets hot, but we taught Oliver not to touch it. I made a mental note to get a cover for it but never did. I could kick myself for not having gotten a cover for it yet. Jo must have wandered into his room and grabbed the bulb. I feel like I failed both of our kids. I had punished Oliver for his sister's injury, and I hadn't treated Jo's hand properly (a band-aid? Ouch!). Her hand doesn't look too bad, and she doesn't seem to be in any more pain. Good grief. I feel so awful. Seriously, she was in so much pain last night, and now it all makes sense. I wish I'd realized what happened last night so I could have cooled her hand off and properly treated her.

Happy girl again today:

A poor photo of her injured finger (it's hard to take a picture of a two-year-old's hand):

Learn from my mistake. Replace light bulbs in reach of little kiddos with LED bulbs and get a good protective cover that doesn't transfer a lot of heat. My poor baby girl, and my poor little guy. I hate that I blamed him. Ack! It's going to take a while to forgive myself.

What Happened?

The answer is: Jo. 

Ripe Raspberries

The last owner of our house must have loved raspberries. There are three different raspberry bushes planted along the fence, and they have gone crazy! The one in the middle has ripened first and seems to be some sort of black raspberry. The kids love eating them. No joke, Joanna has probably eaten close to a 1/2 cup of raspberries each day for the last few days. I keep telling her she's going to turn into a raspberry.