Sticky Lucky

lily, maya, tony, guillermo at the Museum of Life and Science.

My sister always has her kids hold hands. Maya was on board, Guillermo not so much.

We had a wonderful visit with the Crow kids. 

We saw the Three Pigs opera, decorated cupcakes, played at the Museum of Life and Science, ran around UNC's campus and saw Monsters vs. Aliens. The kids also built a fort out of sticks in the front yard, played bad guys with action figures, space ships, Legos and whatever else they could find, went on a hike in the woods with Will, goofed off at lunch at Foster's Market, had a sword fight with noodles for the pool, colored, and played Leapster. 

Plus, Julie and I stayed up late chatting each night.

I am exhausted, but we miss them so much. 

Everyone got along really well. Lily especially liked Will. 

"I want to marry someone," she told him. 

"Who?" Will asked. 

"You," she replied. 

Maya, meanwhile, wouldn't pull herself from Lily, and Lily was a gracious older cousin who helped take care of Maya. 

Guillermo still loved his Legos best of all, but put them down often enough without a fight to play with the others who aren't as enthralled with them as he is. 

And Tony, silly Tony, repeated the phrase "sticky lucky" all day Saturday and then changed it up a bit on Sunday to "lucky pucky." 

They left today, at 4 a.m. 

We'll see each other again this summer at my parent's house. 

I can't wait.

Cousins

Guillermo and Maya looked like this the last time they saw their cousins, Lily and Tony. 

Maya had just turned one and Guillermo was 3 1/2.

It's been a long time.

But that doesn't matter because they are arriving tonight to spend the weekend here. 

We can't wait. 

Please stop raining.

When I was a baby ...

"When I was a baby, my family hold me," Maya told Sophia. 

The girls, best friends, were sitting on stools at Pat's kitchen counter today at lunchtime. 

"Lemme tell you," Maya said.

Sophia nodded. 

"My mama, my papa, ya ya, grandpa, big papa," Maya said. 

She turned to me.

"Who else hold me when I was a baby?"

Guillermo, I said. 

"Guillermo," she repeated. 

Lita

"Lita"

Jamison

"Jamison"

Melody

"Melody"

Erin

"Erin"

Michelle

"Michelle"

Brad

"Brad"

Pat

"Pat"

Aunt Julie

"Aunt Julie"

Uncle Bill

"Uncle Bill."

"I have an uncle Bill," Sophia piped in. 

"Me too" Maya said. 

And then they ate their lunch.

Rockstars and New York City

My kids likely aren't going to be rock stars when they grow up.
Today, we drove to a coffee shop, Booda Beans, in Apex, about 40 minutes away, because a children's musician was performing and because I have wanted to check out Booda Beans itself after reading about it on trianglemom2mom.com. (It has its own kids play area!) We, of course, were late and walked into the coffee shop about 20 minutes after the musician, Stacy Clearman, had started his show. Guillermo immediately covered his ears. "Too loud," he said and froze. Maya followed her brother's cue and covered her ears, too. I led them to the back to the kid's play area. It has a kitchen, blocks, plastic dinosaurs, a Little People's house, and a long train track, among other toys. They played for awhile while I sat and had coffee, and each time they came to talk to me, they covered their ears.


We stayed at the coffee shop for about an hour and then headed to KidsTowne, a wonderful park in Apex that I had been meaning to check out. The play structure is mainly wooden, with several levels that lead to castle-like towers. It's great for climbing and hiding. Guillermo quickly befriended a girl one month YOUNGER than Maya and they chased each other everywhere. (I don't think he knew she would more likely be Maya's friend because of her age.) Maya was a bit more hesitant but later made friends with a few brothers, one closer to Guillermo's age and the other closer to hers. Once when she couldn't find them, she turned to me and said: "Where are my guys?" Guillermo loved the tire swing, Maya loved climbing. We stayed for two hours before I persuaded them it was time to each lunch.


We drove to downtown Apex (pop. est. 34,807), which seemed to me to have about one block of restaurants and stores. It has a tw0-lane road, with parallel parking on both sides of the street and there were a fair number of people walking outside.
"Wow, I didn't know it was going to be this busy," Guillermo said as we drove past the stores. "It's like New York City." We found a pizza restaurant (and they ordered slices of pineapple pizza) and pretended we were in New York for the next hour. Guillermo asked that we call him Peter Parker. Maya was Mary Jane. I was Aunt Mae.

My Family

One of the bulletin boards in Guillermo's class has this phrase stapled in the middle: "My family is special because ..."

All of the kids  said why their families were special and the teacher wrote it down on individual paper and stapled them on the board.

Guillermo's ending to the sentence above: "when I am with them, I feel all better."

Sigh.

I'm thinking he wasn't at school the day the class did the project so the teacher wrote his herself to use as an example for the class ;)

Treasure, Treasure, We are Finding Treasure

Guillermo, Maya and I had another fun day in this beautiful 80-degree, breezy weather. Today, we went to the North Carolina Botanical Garden and played for four hours. 

We started off at the story time chairs, where we each made up stories. Guillermo likes this part of our visits the best. My story was about a knight who was turned into a frog and croaked like the frogs at the garden. His story was about Spiderman and Venom. Maya attempted a story about a cat named Dog Bone (which isn't really a nice name for a cat) and his friends, Carrots the elephant and Fleagle or Sally the cat.

Later, we went on a hike at the garden nature trails and ended up on the banks of creek for nearly an hour. I'm not sure we were supposed to be there, but Guillermo and Maya had so much fun. First, they tried to make boats out of sticks, and when that mostly failed, they found leaves and sent them sailing down the water. Later, they threw rocks in the creek. They were the cannons and I was the cannon loader. Last, we built a sand castle and a "government," both surrounded by moats. Maya was pretty happy, singing "Treasure, treasure, we are finding treasure" on the beach. Later, she discovered that the creek water "helps make sure my hands don't get dirty" and would run her hands in the sand and then wash them off, over and over and over again. 

We finally hiked the rest of the trail. When we came to a huge hill of steps, I tried to convince them we were explorers, hiking up the stairs to pyramids. Guillermo had a better idea. We were secret agents, he said, and once we were armed with our weapons (each of us carried a stick) we were to talk only in hushed voices. I love that game!

Llama Llama, Mad at Mama

Chasing llamas

A nearby goat farm opened its doors to the public today and we went to check it out. It was a perfect day, too. 80 degrees and just a little windy.

On the way there, Maya was so excited for the chance to see the baby goats, but she found a new favorite animal instead: Chickens. She chased chickens all over the farm today, and had a great time doing it. She even got close enough to pet them, and once even tried to pick one up. There were a lot of baby goats, and they kids petted them as well. And, finally in another field stood a group of llamas. Maya had no fear, and went chasing after them. Guillermo followed behind for a bit. The llamas stood still for awhile but they took off running when she got close. I think she chased them out of sight for the rest of the day. 

We ran into Guillermo's friend and his father, so Guillermo had a great time, too. The boys played on the rope swing and swung around croquet mallets. The kids fell asleep on the way home and for dinner we had goat cheese omelettes. Yummm.

Hey Hey

Guillermo's soccer team is the monkees.

Guillermo had his first soccer game of the season today. He did great. Well, he did well. I think he has gained my noncompetitive spirit, which is good and bad. He is great on defense and stopped a lot of goals. But on offense, well, he has some work to do. He can take the ball away from someone but isn't focused enough to get it to the other end of the field. The main thing, though, he had fun. A lot of fun, and he looked like he knew what he was doing. 

I smiled this afternoon as we were playing in our yard. He was still wearing the teal soccer shirt from this morning, and I know he'll be wearing it all day every Saturday for the next few months. 

What's Number 3

Maya was in a crabby mood when we got home from Guillermo's swim lessons this afternoon. 

She really wanted to play "lights," which is a game where we turn off all the lights in the house and she runs around with her glow-in-the-dark bouncy eyeball. (Yeah, I know. She got it sometime around Halloween). She loves the game.  Guillermo wanted to play Star Wars with Will and turned on a light in the living room. Maya was irate, crying and bouncing around the room. I suggested calmly to her that we could play in the bedrooms, where it was still dark. She wanted nothing to do with it and continued her tantrum. At the same time, she was doing the "I have to go to the bathroom" dance that little kids do so I calmly suggested she take a bathroom break and said I would help her. 

She followed me into the bathroom but screamed when I tried to help her with her pants. "I no have to go potty!" she said, as she danced around in a circle away from me. 

"Maya, why don't you just try," I said. 

"I no have to go potty," she screamed. 

"Are you sure you don't have to go?" 

"YES." 

A few second later "I have to go potty." 

By the time I got her on the toilet, she was nearly finished going, and her pants were soaking wet. 

She sat on the toilet until she calmed down and then I told her we needed to talk. 

 

Number one, I said, and then told her that this was her second accident today because she wasn't paying attention to her body or to me. 

Number two, I said, "I do not like your tantrums." I went on to tell her that it was OK to be upset about something, but a tantrum wasn't going to help get her anything. I'm sure I went on for a bit, as I tend to do, and then I asked if she was feeling better and told her she could play after she took her dirty clothes to the laundry room. 

"What is number three, mama?" she asked sweetly. 

Huh? I gave her a puzzled look. 

"What is number three?" she asked again. 

"Oh," I said as the lightbulb went on. "I don't have a number 3." 

"OK," she said and got off the chair happily.

Snow Day

We woke up to a beautiful snowfall this morning. Well, I actually woke up to Guillermo saying: "Mom, look outside." I was exhausted from last week's lack of sleep and my head was stuffed up from a cold he gave me. I put on my best face and looked out the window anyway. It was perfect. The ground was blanketed with soft snow, while fluffy clouds of snow covered the tree branches in the forest behind our house. 

"Let's go play," Guillermo whispered. 

"Are you kidding?" I thought as I looked at my clock, 6:37 a.m. 

We finally made it outside around 9 a.m. It was beautiful, but that was about it. Getting my kids dressed  to play in the snow is not fun, especially when we don't have the proper gear. I made them both wear two pairs of mittens because we don't have any waterproof pairs. Guillermo, who is 5, forced himself into a pair of size 3T snow pants, but only for the second time we went outside. I forgot we had them when we went out in the morning and thought Guillermo would be fine in just a pair of fleece pants (I was wrong!) We don't have snow boots so they wore their rain boots. I wore an oversized fleece jacket (I can't believe I ever thought this coat fit me!) and a pair of rain boots I bought in Texas when I was covering floods. Despite the gear (or lack thereof) we stayed out for an hour in the morning and went back out in the afternoon for another hour or so and the kids had fun. We had a snowball fight and then I pulled them around the house in their sled. We went to the park and played for awhile and then headed back in when the cold suddenly and instantly became too much for Guillermo in the morning and his friend, Charlie, in the afternoon. 

I've resolved that next year, despite the fact that we get snow usually just once a year, and this year twice, and that it lasts no more than a few days, I will buy snow pants and waterproof gloves for my kids. And, maybe, just maybe if I can find them on sale, I will buy them winter boots. 

And watch, it won't snow at all.