Um....

Dear Mom,

This is not what it looks like.

Love,

Ian

Daddy Cross-Cover Blogger - Day 1

Good morning. Daddy is covering the blog for the next four days. Mommy is out on a girl's weekend in phoenix. This of-course means I have the kids for four days straight (gulp). I have no clue how laura does this on a daily basis without drinking heavily. 

Anyway, last night after we dropped off mom we swung by the mall in Charlotte which includes a Disney store. As was anticipated by my wife there was no way I was getting out of there without WALL-E stuff. I'm such a sucker. This is just the beggining of the WALL-E theme. 

Yes, that is a Play-Doh "I-Bot" (Ian talk for WALL-E).

We headed to the Greensboro Childrens Museum this morning, and it was awesome! The

 kids had been there before, I had not. That being said, P wanted to show my the whole museum in about 20 minutes - dashing from section to section. Ian was doing his best to keep up. We went around the whole museum 2.5 times (0.5 includes an extra stop at the train tables.)

We considered many career options at the museum: Nascar driver (Left turn only payton!), Police man, NBA player, Construction & Subsequent Demolition, Rockstar, Dinosaur wrangler, Physicist, and finally doctor (NO!!). 

You got to love

it when one of your children discovers one of Newton's laws. This process was repeated at least 15 times, with medium size green balls hitting the ceiling, floor, the hoop, small children, little old ladies in walkers.....

No this is not a WALL-E made out of FLOAM. 

Don't be silly.

We rounded out the day with a trip to Wal-Mart knowing I forgot something, and dinner at the Mexican Food restaurant I don't remember.

Bring on tommorow!

We love snow!

It snowed again! And this time it started around 4:30 pm Tuesday night, so the kids could see it. The snow started off slow, but then became heavy for a while. We went out several times while it was snowing. Payton did her snow dance and sang, 'We love snow. We love snow' to the tune of Jingle Bells. We also tried catching some flakes on our tongues. And Payton tried to take my picture :)

Then after Daddy came home we all went out to make a snowman. (The snow had stopped by that time.) The eyes and nose seemed to be the hardest part to finishing the snowman. Payton didn't like the goggles. Mommy didn't have any carrots. Daddy found some washers for the eyes and some tool for the nose. But in the end, Payton had to find some leaves to finish the snowman off. Overall we had close to 2 inches on the ground.

I'm glad we went out at night because by the next morning most of the snow was gone. The wind blew it away :( but the snowman still stands, sort of. After the kids went to bed I noticed the bottom ball had rolled down to the driveway and the two top balls were still in the grass. Daddy put it back together but the bottom ball was cracked.

This week has been a trying week for Ian. He is now almost 23 months old and he knows what he wants. When he doesn't get what he wants, he throws a nice little temper tantrum which sometimes ends in someone else getting hit or hair pulled. Unfortunately, Payton or I are usually the victims of this behavior. Payton is not always innocent, of course, but Ian is having a hard time controlling his emotions. Payton was the same way when she approached 2 years old. We have been having a lot of time outs and Ian has lost TV privileges once. At first, he didn't understand 'No TV', but when he grasped the concept, he lost it. Crying, 'I want TV' over and over again was no picnic, but then he surprisingly composed himself enough to play with his trains till Payton was done watching her program.

Don't get me wrong, we still have good moments, if not good days. Payton and Ian really get along well sometimes. The other day Payton was helping Ian decorate a Wall-E picture with stickers. They communicate pretty well.

For those that can't understand Ian, he is saying he wants a 'twinkle star' sticker.

Payton's new addiction is Wall-E pictures. She loves the movie and saw a coloring book at WalMart. We didn't get her the book, but promised to print some pictures off the computer for her to color. Well, one picture or even 5 pictures didn't satisfy her. We now have a Wall-E book we've put together with all her pictures. She got a hold of the camera yesterday and guess what she took pictures of?

Yikes! It's cold (in the house)!

It's been a chilly 36 hours here in the van Poppel home. Sunday night, I noticed that the heater didn't seem to be heating as well as it usually does. The fan was blowing, but the air was not very warm. By 1:30 am Monday morning, the whole heating system didn't work and it was 64 degrees in our house. By 6 am it was 60 degrees. I called our landlord and she called her warranty company. They say that they can't get anyone to our house until the afternoon, between 1 and 5 pm! The kids and I go to the YMCA in the morning, eat lunch out and try not to get home till 1, hoping that the repair man will get to us sooner than later. Understandable the kids didn't want to take naps in their very cold rooms, so we all huddled under the comforter in my bedroom and watched TV. Ian fell asleep and Payton got bored. She went off to play.

I kept the oven on most of the afternoon because it usually helps warm up the kitchen. It didn't seem to help as much as I had hoped. Everyone was still dressed in a couple layers of clothing. I told Payton that we should bake something since the oven was on. She got all excited and retrieved 'her cookbook' from the shelf and started thumbing through the pages. She asked if we could make a football field cake. I had a cake mix, so I decided why not. The picture in the book had teddy bears for football players. We didn't have any on hand, so we used animal crackers instead. Payton helped with a lot of the decorations. She took the cake to school today :)

Anyway, the repairman got to our house around 4:15 p and said that the part he needed wasn't on the truck, so someone would have to come out tomorrow (but not him). I was pretty deflated after he said that. Facing another cold night did not sound too fun to me. Scott went to the store and got some space heaters for the kids' rooms. We all weathered the night remarkably well even though it was 57 degrees in the house when we got up this morning! I was so ready to get out of the house to take Payton to school and didn't want to go home. I had to stay close to home, of course, because we didn't know when the next repairman would get to our house. I went to a friend's house for about an hour and finally the repairman called. He was at our house at 10:40a and we finally got the heat back at 1:30p!

Evidently the first repairman was Jr. repairman. The second repairman was Sr. repairman. Jr. repairman didn't know what was going on. Sr. repairman saw Jr. repairman's work in the heating unit and just shook his head. He never said anything directly, but I got the just of Sr. repairman's frustration. When all was said and done, there were 4 things wrong with the heater: a bad connector,a blown transformer, a burned wire to the compressor, and a burnt out heating coil. Jr. Repairman just thought it was something called a sequencer. Ah, well, it doesn't matter anymore anyway because we have heat. And tonight I'm enjoying my nice and toasty 70 degree house.

During quiet time today Payton decided to put on some 'fancy clothes'. Her idea of 'fancy' was a bathing suit inside out and backwards, a pair of pajama shorts, two mismatched socks, and a frilly red velvet hat. I guess after having the house so cold, it felt downright hot to her. I don't get it, but I'm not three and a half.

Payton

Yesterday, Ian and I went to Payton's field trip to SciWorks (a children's science museum). The children seemed to have a good time. We went to the planetarium first. The kids have never been in one. Ian flipped out a bit at first, and then he fell asleep during the show. Payton enjoyed the show. She can tell you all about constellations now - 'they make pictures out of stars'. Go Payton, saying her four syllable word. How many of us say that we can say a word that has more syllables than our age?

 

I'm glad Ian fell asleep because a 45 minute show for an active 2 year old must seem like forever. As it was, the 30- 3 and 4 year olds were pretty antsy by the time we left. After the planetarium, we only had half an hour to explore the museum until lunch. Payton's class left after lunch, but we stayed a little longer.

Today at lunch, Ian, Payton and I are sitting there eating away when I hear Payton say, 'STOP!' I looked at Payton and asked what was the matter. She was kicking her chair and it was making noise, so she was telling her feet to stop and be quiet :) And then she would kick her chair some more. I told her that people usually don't talk to their appendages. She just grinned at me. 

By then Ian was done with his food that he had inhaled and he said, 'Mommy, all done. I want to go play with my truck.'  Ian's not 2 yet. He might end up being more talkative than Payton. Only time will tell.

It's the end of quiet time and Payton is chanting, 'I want to get up! I want to get up!' She'll probably want some juice, a snack and her favorite episode of the Backyardigans right now entitled 'Garbage Trek' (which we've watched now about 20 times in the last 2 weeks).

Snow Day!

The call came from the school at 5:48 am. 'Due to current weather conditions and forecast, there will be no school today' Yeah! - for Payton who was still sleeping soundly. I peeked outside, sure enough - SNOW!  By the time Payton woke up at 7:20 the snowing had stopped, but we still had a nice dusting of it. After breakfast, we went out to explore. Immediately, Payton was excited about making footprints. Ian ran around making footprints, but then they didn't know what else to do with themselves. Like last time, there wasn't enough to do much with. The greatest accumulation of snow was on our deck. I gathered some of the snow up and made a little snowman. Payton complained, 'Mommy, I want to make a big snowman!' That wasn't going to happen, so I tried to get the kids to scoop some snow together to make little balls. I yelled, 'Snow fight!' and there one of the little balls of snow at Ian's chest. He gave me the most confused/incredulous look like, 'How dare you, Mommy?! You're not suppose to throw things at me!' I threw one at Payton and she giggled. Ian finally giggled a little and we had a little snow fight. Well, that was about it. The kids got bored and cold so we went inside. I made them some hot chocolate and we all sat down at the table to warm up. The kids thought it was pretty cool for about 3 sips and then they both said they were done and went to play.