Huge tummy

Evan (pulling up Kendra's shirt to look at her tummy after supper): Look at your tummy! It's so huge. It's awesome!

While I don't ever want someone doing this to me, he was actually complimenting her about having eaten her supper so well.

Picture lessons

While taking month pictures of our kids, we have learned a lot of things. Specifically, while taking 18-month pictures, we have learned a lot of things.

We have learned that an 18-month old can be too busy for a picture.

We have learned that an 18-month-old can be too distracted for a picture.

We have learned that an 18-month-old can leave the designated picture-taking area with breath-taking speed.

We have learned that an 18-month-old can give an adorable smile for a picture.

We have learned that an 18-month-old's concentration can allow for a very nice picture.

We have learned that, occasionally, this is the best picture you can get of an 18-month-old.

We have also learned that an 18-month-old can go to sleep on her own for a nap (with her skirt hiked up) with no less than 3 crocs to snuggle with.

And we have learned that carefully removing the crocs and fixing the skirt can allow for an endearing picture of a sleeping 18-month-old.
We have also learned that no young child can resist the temptation of being in someone else's picture.
And, finally, we have learned that letting a 3-year-old take over an 18-month-old's photo session can result in an adorable, impromptu 3-year picture.

Vacation: Zoo day

Since we were getting such an extraordinary hotel room while we were in Fort Worth, we decided to stay an extra day to do something vacation-y. On Sunday, we went to the Fort Worth Zoo. The kids first trip to a zoo. My first trip to a zoo. Chad's not-even-close-to-first trip to a zoo. Below, I've chronicled the highlights of the day.

We arrived at the zoo, spent inordinate amounts of money on parking and admission, and then dropped $9 more so we could have a double stroller to hold children, the diaper bag, and apparently the umbrella stroller we did have with us.

The picture above shows how Kendra (who gets mentioned a lot in this post) spent the first half-hour of our time at the zoo . When she wasn't crying or yelling, "I want to move!" Apparently, Kendra has a fear of animals. Even animals that are behind bars, down a hill, and past a moat. Specifically, she's afraid of rhinoceroses. And monkeys. And elephants. And hippopotamuses. And big birds like owls, condors, vultures, and eagles. And monitor lizards that "pounce" her (from behind their glass) when she finally gets brave enough to watch them. But mostly rhinoceroses.

After several agonizing minutes at the zoo, we took a potty break. Kendra and I had a talk about why she wanted to keep moving, and that the rest of us wanted to see the animals, and that she felt safe if she was in the stroller, and that she didn't want to look at the animals or have the animals look at her, and that I would try to park her facing away from the animals when the rest of us stopped to look at something, and that if there were animals on both sides of us, I would park her facing the smaller of the two kinds of animals. It was a good talk. No, really, it was. I felt like I understood her problem at least a little bit and could maybe do something to minimize her fear. So we left the bathroom and proceeded to see the zoo.

The first thing Kendra decided to get out of the stroller to see was ... the tigers! Not a small, calm animal. But the tigers. Because they were sleeping. She wanted to see sleeping animals.

She was also quite happy watching the lions, which were worked up about a kid swinging on a tree. The mama kept pacing without ever taking her eyes off the kid, and she even roared at him. But this was all fine with Kendra because there were "baby" lions, and she wanted to see baby animals. For Chad and me, it was fun watching the lions being so active. Until we thought about the fact that we were standing there (like idiots) watching 5 lions that were getting upset.

We did not get a good picture of our whole family at the zoo, but we did at least get pictures of each member of our family. Here are Chad, Kendra, Laura, and Evan's ear and hands by the kangaroo statue.

And here's me, holding Evan and Laura to look at some animal that had terrified Kendra so Chad had to keep moving, while snapping a picture of us as he took Kendra away. (I told you she gets mentioned a lot in this post.)

The elephants weren't anything spectacular, but I thought Chad got a nice picture so I'm putting it in here.

Actually, Chad got a lot of really nice pictures, but I didn't think I should put all of them in. So I'll stick with pictures of our favorite zoo animals for a while.

Chad's favorite animal at the zoo was the mountain lion. He (the mountain lion, not Chad) was crouched in his hut watching everyone go by.

My favorite was the otters. I didn't know I had a fondness for otters, but I could have stood there watching them for hours. Maybe. But we had to keep moving. So, while I stood there and watched them for several minutes, my wonderful husband took a video of them so I would be able to watch them again later. (He's great!)

Kendra's first animal she was really excited about and watched happily for a long time was the little blue and yellow birds (yes, I know there was some subject-verb agreement issues in this sentence). We did not get brave enough to go in the bird area, but we did watch for quite a while from the outside.

When we asked Kendra after leaving the zoo what her favorite animals were, she consistently answered "the kangaroos and penguins".

Evan's favorite animal, before he ever saw it, was the lion.
The shark is the animal he demanded a picture of (which is very difficult to get by the way).

And he was sad that we had missed the giraffes (in our rush to get past the rhinos with the crying Kendra), so we had to go back past them before leaving.

We all enjoyed watching the cute, little black bear lumber around his area.

Until he stood up to scratch his back and we realized that the "cute, little black bear" was still 7 feet tall.

Chad wanted a picture of the tarantula, and this was my one redeeming photo from our day at the zoo. When Chad saw the picture, he said, "what'd you do, put the camera on the glass?". "Yep."

On our walk back toward the zoo entrance, we stood for a long time and watched "the zoo guy" talk to the hippos and get them to open their mouths. By this point, Kendra was no longer afraid of the hippopotomasus, and she enjoyed watching them interact also.

We obviously saw many, many more animals than what I've posted about here. We regretably did not get any pictures from the large primate section of the zoo, but we were rather preoccupied with Kendra and her animal-phobia at that point. Kendra did overcome her fear quite nicely though and ended her day with a nap in the van that continued on into our hotel room. And, yes, she is sleeping soundly with her eyes not quite shut all the way, which I find disturbing.

(Note: I refrained from including the above picture in my hotel room post. But you have to notice the pillow/blankie/Care Bears arrangement above Kendra's head. When the maid service people would come in to clean up our room, they would arrange the kids' "love" on the bed instead of just throwing it in the corner. I thought it was a very nice, personal touch!)

Another note: You may have thought I'd do a post entitled Vacation: Wedding day or Vacation: Rehearsal Dinner. But you'd be wrong. You may think that I'm not doing those posts because I forgot to take the camera to the rehearsal dinner and wedding. But you'd be wrong. You may think I'm not doing those posts because I took the camera but forgot to get it out of the diaper bag to take any pictures. But you'd be wrong. You may think I'm not doing any of those posts because I took the camera, remembered to take it out of the diaper bag, took a few pictures of the kids while they were waiting for cake, but forgot to take a single, solitary picture of either the bride or groom. And you'd be right. Very, very right. Sadly, you'd be exactly right. Sorry, Andrew and Kathryn!

This concludes our vacation posts. We will now go back to our regular, everyday nonsensical posts.

Vacation accommodations

And now back to our regularly scheduled vacation posts. Finally. And this is taking great restraint on my part because I'm really into the book I'm reading and would love to be reading instead of blogging, but I'd like to get our vacation posts done. Finally.

While in Fort Worth, we stayed in the on-campus "hotel" at the seminary where the wedding was (in case you've forgotten, we went to Fort Worth for the wedding of a college friend). This was by far the most amazing "hotel" I'd ever seen. I've seen nice hotels. But not for this price. I kind of wish I had counted how many times Chad and I said "Wow!" in the first half-hour or so we were in our room. But I'll quit blathering about it and show you a video of it. Yes, it was video-worthy.


When I got done taking the video, Chad said, "you forgot the kitchen." Ya know, because all hotel rooms have a kitchen. Right? What, you say they don't all have kitchens? Oh yeah, that's why I said this room (where "room" means "stinkin' huge, awesome suite that was actually 5 rooms and close to the size of the main floor of our house") was amazing! I did take a second, shorter video of the kitchen, but I'll just share a picture with you instead of another video.Yep, told you it was awesome.

Since those of you who know me, know that I'm a cheap tightwad, I'll share with you how and why we justified this enormous suite.
1). We were spending 4 days in the van together. We wanted some room to "spread out" while we were in Texas.
2). With the kitchen and fridge, we could eat some meals in our room instead of having to go to restaurants for every meal.
3). Breakfast was included with our room. But there wasn't a "breakfast area" like most hotels. Nope, they delivered a breakfast basket to our room each day for the next morning!
4). The kids would have room to run and play and work off some pent up energy.
5). Did I mention that we could spread out from each other? That one was important.
6). Since the "hotel" is on-campus, they don't charge tax. At all. The rate is a flat-rate, no hidden fees. Which, if you stay in hotels often, you know is a big deal.
7). The price. The price was what sealed the deal on staying there. I'll give you a minute to watch the video again if you need to. Did you see the 2 bedrooms? The living room with the pull-out couch? The 4 closets? The enormous bathroom? The kitchen? The dining area? Did you see all of that? Yes? Good. Because we got all of that for $135/night. With no tax. Can you say, "SWEET!"? Or, if you'd prefer not to say "SWEET!", you can just walk around saying "Wow!" under your breath every few seconds like we did!

Note: Before you get too jealous of our "room" in Fort Worth, let me tell you a bit about our room in Wichita on the way to Texas. It was not a suite. It did not have 5 rooms. It did not have 4 closets. Or any closets. It did have 2 beds. They did provide a hotel crib. The hotel crib could only go on place in the room. Straight in the door, all the way against the heat/air thing with one end, with one side touching the bathroom wall, and the other side smashed up against the foot of our bed. That left the fourth side of the hotel crib extending past a third of the bathroom door. There was nowhere else it could go because there was not room to turn it. Had we had to use our pack-n-play, Laura would have had to sleep in the van because there was not a space big enough in the room for it. The night in Wichita did not put the mommy in a very good mood. Or the daddy. Or the kids. Luckily, everyone did sleep well (I think it's because there wasn't enough oxygen in that size room for 5 people and we all passed out), so we started out the next morning feeling refreshed and ready to get back into the roomy van. Because, yes, the hotel room was small enough that the van full of all our stuff for the week felt roomy afterwards.

What inspires

Every spring when it gets warm enough for shorts weather, my children discover anew the birthmark on the back of my leg. We usually spend weeks discussing it and relearning how to say "birthmark". (Exciting stuff, I tell ya what!)

Today, I was sitting on the couch, in shorts, with my knees up. Laura walked up and had a perfect view of my birthmark. She touched it. She poked it. I told her it was a birthmark. She walked off. And returned promptly with a LeapFrog Leappad so she could use the pen to "draw" on my birthmark.

Really, what inspires kids to do the things they do?