28Feb2009: Day 278: Belvoir Castle

Today we travelled to Belvoir Castle (pronounced Beaver - no idea why!?). Teri says it has something to do with the people of the time being unable to pronounce it correctly in French. It is about 3 hours away from where we live. It is in the Midlands of England in Leicestershire. It is a beautiful castle over looking lands that stretch for miles and miles of fields. Very secluded. It is the home the Duke and Duchess of Rutland. It has over 300 rooms, 100 of which are open to the public and 200 which are still the private residence of the family. They said most of the rooms are bedrooms as they have a huge number of extended family that regularly visit the castle as well as a large number of fancy friends: Beckham and Posh, Sir Elton John, and numerous others are among their close friends that would regularly visit. It was interesting to walk up the stairs of this grand estate and look over a partition and see paper mache projects and boots as well as a child's truck as there is an area where you can just see over into the private area. I wonder what it would be like to live in a Castle as a child? It is a fairytale of a property.

The walls are covered with expensive and rare paintings, one of which was burned on one side as the castle prior to this one burned to 1/3 its size in the early 1800's. It is actually the fourth castle to be on the same site. So, this castle is relatively new, but it was built in the style of the old Gothic castles with the ornate carvings and intricate archways.

They recently filmed the Young Victoria movie here and they did several of the bedroom scenes in rooms we got to see today. They replaced one of the beds at a cost of 26,000 GBP! The Duke bought it for a fraction of the price after the movie was over and it is still in the room. Apparently, if you get married here you can stay in some of the rooms. So, there are hotel like water heaters for tea around and towels and nice looking bathrooms built in, so they have put in modern conveniences to help their guests enjoy all the old atmosphere. I guess it isn't appropriate to have Beckham and Posh over and ask them to relieve themselves into a hole that drops down into wheel barrow.

So, the movie is coming out here next week and they are giving tours around the castle describing how the movie was filmed here. Apparently, the Queen would not allow them to film in Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle, so they started a 12 week search around England for Castles that match the Victorian period and filmed most of the movie at these location "doubles" of which Belvoir was one. It also was the castle where the rich guy lived in the Davinci Code, but you only saw it for a few seconds. For the Young Victoria Movie, they actually turned the patio into a seaside town with water lapping up to the wall by digitally adding it. The actual Queen Victoria did actually visit here with her husband when she was doing a tour of the midlands. Also, James VI of Scotland (James I of England) stayed here on his trip down from Scotland to take over the throne of England. He was apparently fairly poor when he started down from Scotland but by the time he got to London he was one of the richest people in England. Apparently, Knighthood is actually a purchased title and he knighted 45 people along the trip or more. Even today it is purchased...a little brown envelope with money in it is given to the Sovereign.

It is unfortunate that they don't allow pictures inside the place, but the rooms we saw are quite amazing. The ceiling in the ladies drawing room was all gold and painted with fine works of art. There are famous paintings everywhere. There is a famous painting of Henry VIII by Holbien, which I think everyone who sees it would recognize it. Supposedly, if Duke & Duchess put pictures into public display the inheritance tax goes down, so they rotate the pictures out of the personal area into the public rooms periodically.

The video at the bottom is of Makenna in the nursery that they had in the castle. It had some really old toys, and some newer ones. She especially liked pushing the pram with the baby doll in it, and she kept wanting to get into this really old car. They also had a tea set and oven with cooking pans that she liked. We had to finally tell her that there may be other areas with toys to get her out of there without throwing a major fit.

Makenna was pretty good today, only having a minor breakdown, but the biggest problem we are having with her right now is that she likes to run away. She runs off laughing away and I have to chase her down. We haven't figured out how to stop this behaviour yet.

27Feb2009: Day 277: Guess Who Went on the Potty

If only it was Makenna – alas – it was not. It was Hannah. I watched Hannah and her sister Bethany tonight as their parents were trying to finish packing as they are moving tomorrow. They are actually moving a bit closer to us which will be nice. Chris went over to help them pack the van while I watched the kids for a few hours.

While they were over, I could tell Hannah had to go so I asked her and she said yes and I put out the little training potty that we have for Makenna that she doesn’t use. Makenna got a huge kick out of seeing Hannah go – twice in fact. Makenna actually said she wanted to go but all she wanted to do really is just sit on the potty like Hannah did. Again, whatever gets us moving towards that end goal is fine with me. Makenna now doesn’t want to wipe with the toilet paper but just rip it off the roll and throw it in the toilet to flush. I’m thinking about starting the sticker chart and M&M rewards pretty soon. My fear is that out of frustration I’ll eat the M&Ms. Maybe I’ll by Maltesers which are like malt balls as I don’t care for them too much. I have to think it out a bit more as I might need a reward myself.

Since it was a nice day here I was able to hang out some laundry. Makenna’s room was getting this funky smell about it – kind of like sweat and drool so I washed her sheets, pillow case, duvet cover, and blanket that she sucks/chews on and hung them out to dry. I even pulled up the blinds in her room and opened the window while she was out at nursery. The window is too high for her to get up to but this kid is very resourceful so I felt better about having the window open while she was not home as there’s no screen or anything to keep her from falling out.

One example of her resourcefulness happened today when she decided that she wanted to put a different movie into her player. She took out the movie that was in there, climbed on the couch and found a stack of DVD’s and took off the top one and tried putting it her player. When I came back in the room and saw this strange DVD I couldn’t figure out where she had gotten it from until I looked around and saw the spindle of DVDr’s opened up. I don’t know if the lid wasn’t on their very well or what but I put the movie back and she did it again later after I made sure the lid was on properly. Not that this is any hard thing to open by any means but the fact that she figured it out amazed me. I’ve also had to move the toothpaste up higher in the bathroom as she constantly gets it and takes the top off. Luckily the few times she was successful it was her toothpaste and it has very little fluoride in it so her tasting it and going “Mmm lishous” was no big deal.

One closing comment - Makenna is 28 months old today - two more months and I'll have a 2.5 year old - unbelievable!

26Feb2009: Day 276: My Name is Mommy to you - Not Chris!

I can’t be the only one who is called their husband’s name by their child. At least three times today Makenna came running out to tell me this or that and she yelled, “Chris….” Then whatever it was she had to say. By the third time I said, “My name is mommy to you – not Chris!” It just went over her head. She still talked on about what she needed fixed. Maybe that’s why she was calling me Chris; she thought if it was something that needed fixing that only he can do it. I know that’s not it but I think it’s funny that she just gets so excited and calls whomever Chris.

Before we went to the sing/dance playgroup, we went to ASDA which is Wal-Mart over here. I needed to pick up something that I use to clean that they only seem to have. I think we’ve only been there about three times including today. The last time we were there they were in the process of adding a clothing section to the store. I went today and they actually created a second floor where they put house wares and clothes. What was really cool was how you get up there. They have a shopping cart escalator. It’s like a regular escalator but it doesn’t turn into stairs. It just stays a ramp and you put your shopping cart on it and go up behind it. Not only that, but the cart somehow locks into the grooves on the escalator so it doesn’t slip. I really don’t know how it worked but it was really neat and you couldn’t really push it or pull it, you had to wait until you got to the top for it to release.

Another thing that caught my attention there was paper towels called “Plenty” instead of Bounty. Now, I thought it was weird that it had the same “logo” and thought it was ripping off Bounty or that this was the UK’s version, but then I saw Bounty just below it. I decided to buy “Plenty” and when I got it home I noticed it said on the package that it said, “formerly Bounty.” So my question to you out there is, is Bounty now “Plenty” in the states? I thought this was quite strange when I saw it.

As for my little cherub today, she somehow started to create a back-up of my hard drive on my computer. I walked away to do dishes or take care of something and when I came back she had somehow got a utility up on my computer that creates a back-up and it said it was about to start. Now, I know she can move the mouse a bit but to move it to the start menu and get this program up is not something that I believe she can do. I think there’s “hot keys” as they are called and she somehow has a knack for hitting these keys – whatever they may be. Luckily I was able to cancel it. I just hope there are no “hot keys” to formatting your hard drive or I may be in big trouble one day.

When we got back from the nursery at the gym this afternoon I was putting her down for a nap and we were talking about Kung-Fu Panda. There’s a part near the end where “Master Shefu” seems to be dead but then he says he’s just resting. When I put Makenna down she said, “I’m just resting.” “Okay” I said, “You just rest.” Of course, when I tried to get her up after her nap she said, “no, sleepy bunny.” “Makenna, it’s time to get up for dinner.” “No.” I did get her up.

One last potty update – for some reason when I put her on today and told her to go pee-pee, she just cracked up laughing. She thought I was the funniest thing. I said it again, and got more laughs, but then she was done. The silly things we’ll resort to, to keep your child on the potty.

25Feb2009: Day 275: My Little Fish

Today was another swim day and boy did she do great! I really am glad they changed instructors as this one really tries to get things done and keep it more organized. In fact, we got a letter from the gym today telling us that this instructor is formally taking over for the rest of the swim semester (two weeks left,) and the other one is no longer affiliated with the gym. The girl who said she was going to find out what happened has been unable to, she said everyone is keeping it very hush-hush.

It also went on to say that next semester is going to be at a different time, which I’m not too happy about. Due to having a hard time finding an instructor to teach, they are only offering it Thursday afternoon at 2:30pm for Makenna’s age group. Unfortunately, this is about the time she’s down for a nap most days. Wednesday’s are after 3 due to play group and if I have an afternoon gym appointment then she usually gets a nap at 3pm. The problem is that I’ll have to keep her active and awake until the swim class. I think I’ll probably still sign up and hope that she’ll have the stamina to take the class without getting too grouchy. I’m sure afterwards she’ll be incredibly cranky as she usually is at after class now and class is at 10:30am – 11:00am.

But based on how well she enjoys it and how far she is coming, I feel I have to give it a try. When we first got to class today she tried going straight for the toys but I told her we had to get in the pool first. I was already in, and she just leaped/lept right in. I was there to catch her so don’t fret. Today’s big accomplishment was going under water. The teacher said to count to three and then either put her under or go under with her, and then come up smiling to let her know it’s a fun thing. I was very nervous that she wouldn’t close her mouth and take in a whole bunch of water. I told her to close her mouth and that we were going under. I counted and took her under with me and came up smiling. She was like, “oh, oh, oh,” but she didn’t mind it and she wasn’t choking. We did this about five more times throughout the swim class.

The teacher also had us have them sit on a water noodle and Makenna didn’t want to, of course, but I was able to get her to by bouncing her up and down on it. Then the teacher wanted them to put their arms out to move them around. I told Makenna to act like an airplane and that worked. I was holding her on the noodle as I knew she wouldn’t be able to float on her own.

I had to keep her distracted the best I could throughout the class from wanting the toys but she eventually got the watering can, which is what she really wanted from the beginning. While having the watering can, I was able to slip on some water floats onto her arms and then she really took off. She was a bit nervous but floated pretty well and really kicked her feet under water. After all of this, I actually had a really hard time getting her out of the water.

At afternoon playgroup they had the kids finger-painting. I tried to get Makenna to do it, and had to actually put her fingers in the paint and then rub it on the paper they provided. She didn’t like it. Other kids had fists full of paint and were globing it on the paper but not Makenna. I wonder if I instilled this clean-hand syndrome. She just wanted to get up and wash her hands.

On the bathroom-front, as I was cooking dinner, she came up to me and told to change her diaper. I was impressed that she told me and it's still another indicator that she’s getting closer. Before her bath I did get her to sit on the potty seat again for close to five seconds. I asked her to go pee-pee but she was done. Of course, after flushing the toilet, she started to go pee-pee on the floor. Oh well, we’ll get there.

One last thing she’s been doing a lot of is screaming. Whether it’s because she’s mad and frustrated or because she thinks it’s funny. So while she was taking her bath tonight, she started screaming and I asked, “Why are you screaming for?” She replied about a minute later, “I love screaming.” Oh, well, that explains it.

24Feb2009: Day 274: Oh, That's Okay

I somehow completely forgot to blog that Makenna has made a bit more progress in potty training. It happened last night while Chris was getting her ready for bedtime. I wrote a couple days ago about how she likes to flush the toilet so Chris has devised a plan to make her sit on the potty before she flushes. She’d still only sit about two seconds and then get up to flush. Well last night, I came up and found her sitting on the toilet seat (training potty seat,) and asking for “tissue” (toilet paper,) so she could wipe. She then wiped, put it in the toilet and flushed.

Now, she didn’t really go but she sat on their longer than two seconds and I was amazed. But of course today, when I tried this whole process with her, I barely got her to sit and all she wanted was the “tissue” so she could throw it in the toilet to flush. She didn’t even want to wipe. So I’ve told Chris that since she seems to respond to his direction better in potty training and that since I have changed 97% of the diapers in her life thus far, he can handle the potty training. Of course, this will be quite hard since he’s not home 97% of the time. He’s usually only home after 7pm and leaves most morning anywhere from 6:30am – 8:30am depending on where he needs to be for the day. But I figure since she’s still taking very small steps, I can continue to try and reinforce what Chris seems to be able to accomplish at night with her. Then of course, tonight she takes a step backwards as she didn’t want to sit on the potty at first, but then did for all of two seconds and just wanted the “tissue” to throw in the toilet. Oh well, we’ll take what we can get as we get it I suppose.

Makenna continues to ask questions that she wants us to ask her. Today after I picked her up from nursery I was trying to ask her if she had fun with the kids and playing, like I usually do and she turns it around and says, “Did you play with kids?” I then repeat the question and she gives me answers. Then she continued, “Did you sit and read stories?” So I say, “oh, did you read stories?” She says, “Did you sing songs?” “Oh, did you sing songs?” It’s like I need to ask the proper questions that she wants to answer and if I don’t she’ll be sure and prompt me to the correct questions to ask.

More sayings that she’s picked up and says frequently is “Oh, that’s okay,” when she drops things. Or another one she’s been saying is, “you stay here, I be right back.” Then she starts to head up the stairs or today, even tried to go outside. One of these times, she may very well get herself out the door as she says, “you stay here, I be right back.” Probably hear this a lot more when she’s a teenager I’m sure.

One thing I have noticed that she has stopped – thank goodness – is banging her head when she’s mad or upset. But she has picked up the habit again of choking herself with her fingers down her throat. She did it yesterday and again today. Not sure if it’s because she’s getting a cold, yet again and the feeling in her throat is weird and this is how she deals with it or if she just forgot the sensation and found it again to be new and different. Hopefully she’ll stop doing this again as quickly as she picked it back up, until then, “Oh, that’s okay.”

23Feb2009: Day 273: The World's.....

There is a documentary show over here that I’ve been watching called, “The World’s….” and every week it’s something different. One week it was “The World’s largest chest” – that was very weird. This guy from Britain searched out women who claimed to have the world’s biggest chest. He found that the women were trying to be known for it whether it was for money through websites or through Guinness records. Then one week it was “The World’s Smallest Man.” This week it’s “The World’s Strongest Child.” It’s just freaky to see a young kid with “ripped” muscles. It seems that in most of these shows that it’s the parents or spouses that push the person to be what it is they are which is mostly exploited.

This one guy from Russia in this show is pushing his kids to be strong so that they can have their traveling show act. His one daughter is about to start college so he’s now training is three old daughter four hours a day seven days a week to lift weights. Even more than what she weighs. It’s just sad to see how some of these kids, even from the “smallest” show is exploited for money for the family. A lot of times they come from poor communities so this is their way to make money.

This guy seems to not just find the kids but tries to get the back story so we can better understand why the person chooses what they do or what pushes them to do what it is he’s showing. Again, 90% of the time its family that starts it and the journalist of the show then goes on to show what makes the parent’s push the child or family member.

I guess why I write about this, besides the fact that our day was very uninteresting, was it makes me appreciate the normalcy that we have—that we’re not in a position to exploit our child for money. As much as you want your child to be successful I’d rather they be successful in a normal career. Even the thought of Makenna being an actress would scare me. There’s too much pressure to conform.

I guess we’ll just have to see what the future holds for our budding little one.

22Feb2009: Day 272: Potty Training and Skin Tight Jeans

Makenna is obviously associating staying in a hotel with giving a gift. When we woke up yesterday at the hotel, she started saying “gift, gift.” It’s hard to explain that not every hotel stay is a gift day. I can’t believe that she actually remembers from about three weeks ago at Chris’s birthday how we gave him a gift. Then we went to church today and gave Hannah a gift for her birthday which was last Wednesday. So that will probably really confuse her. I had Makenna give Hannah the gift, which she just threw over the pew at her and then Hannah came over and handed it to Makenna. I had to tell Hannah that it was her gift.

At church today, we were the “cool parents.” Hannah sat with me and Makenna was with Chris. Then Amber and Xander came over and was playing with our stuff and eating some of the Cheerios and other snacks. Amber is I believe nine or ten months old and Xander is 2 ½. Amber was blowing raspberries which made Makenna blow them. But what was really funny was that Amber was trying to get back towards her mom so Chris picked her up and her legs spread apart and she blew a raspberry. It was quite funny to all of us around. Makenna was really well behaved which I was really excited about. She was quite tired towards the last 10 minutes and was lying down on my shoulder.

I wish she was that good the rest of the night. When Chris left for his church she started up again. She was hitting, pinching and kicking me. So after a sit on the steps and taking away her movies for the night, she finally calmed down. I’m not sure what starts her up on these tirades. I think part of it was trying to get my attention. I was working on yesterday’s blog and I guess she was feeling ignored.

We were able to get a little farther, and I mean little, on potty training. Chris figured out that Makenna likes to flush the toilet so before letting her flush, he had her sit on the potty. All about two seconds again, but he got her to sit a few times. I then tried it tonight and it’s still like getting a wood board to bend to get her to sit on it. But at least I got her to sit on it a couple of times before letting her flush. Not that she did anything but it’s just trying to get her comfortable and used to the idea of sitting on it. When I was putting on her pj’s I noticed red marks on the back of her legs, I think that’s where the potty seat rubbed up against her when she was in “stiff” mode and I was trying to get her to sit. Madonna also took Makenna with her to the potty when she was taking Hannah so Makenna got to watch Hannah go. Then before Sacrament meeting I was going to change Makenna and Hannah was again in there going potty, so she saw her again. Hopefully some of this will start to sink in.

One thing that caught my attention at yesterday’s castle was this guy—but not in a good way. He was wearing super tight jeans but then had them pulled down to show us his boxers. Is this a new fashion trend? The baggy, hanging droopy drawers are now skin tight but still pulled down enough for me to view the boxers below? I have to say, I don’t care for it this way either. The thing that was really surprising is that the guy sporting this fashion statement seemed to be around 26 or so. I could be off but he definitely was not a teenager. Chris just naturally does the baggy jeans thing sans showing the boxers but that’s just because his jeans don’t fit him properly. Maybe we’ll have to look into the skin-tight look for him so that we fit in. Yeah right – don’t think so.

21Feb2009: Day 271: Bolsover Castle

Yes another castle day. This was only about an hour and a half away from the hotel and there were lots of other things around it to see. The castle and grounds itself actually took quite a bit of time.

“Bozer castle” as it was pronounced by the people at that time was granted as a reward by King Edward VI in 1553 to George Talbot who was the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury. It eventually fell into the hands of the Cavendish family and most what you see today is due to them. About four years after Charles Cavendish started to build the “Little Castle,” he died and his son William then owned the castle and grounds.

The grounds consist of riding house and stable, and a terrace range which is in ruins, and the “little castle” as it’s called. The terrace range had a lot of rooms when it was all together. It consisted of an entrance hall, a great hall, and bedrooms, dressing rooms, and even a long gallery. The audio tour of this area gave you a great description of what the rooms used to look like and the view from here was really neat. I’m not sure what caused them to go into ruins.

The “Little Castle” was very interesting and very different compared to other castles we’ve been in. It’s the oldest of the buildings at Bolsover and it has very interesting paintings on the actual stone. In the hall, there are paintings of Hercules and in another room there are paintings of the five senses. Another interesting thing was the fireplaces. A lot of them are carved from different marbles; pink alabaster, speckled cockleshell, & black ‘touch’. Most of the castles we go to the fireplaces are just hollowed out stone in the wall and these were nicely done. Of course, this castle was more of a living space than a place of defense.

Makenna was really well behaved as she had many rooms and steps that she could wander around. Plus the grounds gave her plenty of opportunity to run around too. She really liked the dragon in the shop and kept calling it a dinosaur. She also took the rubber swords and while Chris and I were looking for another place to visit close by, she was shoving them into the pushcart. Luckily we realized before we walked out with about five swords unpaid for. She wasn’t too happy that we were leaving before eating food as she thought we were going to eat there. So did I so I understood her frustration but we decided that we’d go to the next place and get something along the way.

The next place we attempted to go was called Hardwick Old Hall. It was only about 15 minutes away. We did get there but the Old Hall was closed and the New Hall was all booked up and you could only go through it by a tour. We were allowed to go on the grounds and to the café. The café was okay but a bit disappointing. It was only 2:30pm and they had a menu that said they served certain foods until 3pm but when we tried to order they said they were no longer serving them. I brought up the point that it wasn’t 3pm yet and the waiter said that they stop around 2:30pm. So we ordered a salad that was supposed to have Roast Beef and potato salad but he came back and said it had to be ham. When it came there was coleslaw, which I can’t stand, instead of potato salad. Makenna just ate some of my roll that came with the salad.

We then walked around on the grounds a bit and took pictures of the Hardwick Old Hall which is in ruins. The Old Hall had some interesting plaster on the walls that still survive and I’d be interested in why they think it still is there as it’s exposed to the elements and what happened to the old hall and why instead of renovating the old hall, they just built a new one. I’d love an opportunity to go back and do both so we can learn more about them but we only have maybe 12 weekends left and still so much to see as more is going to be opening up come March.

20Feb2009: Day 270: Chris! My Gosh

Happy birthday to Makenna's cousin Elijah who is the big ONE years old today. Wish we could be there to celebrate and watch you eat your birthday cake~

Well, today was another day of frustration for me. Just when I thought I learned to let the little things go, they all seemed to pile up on me to create a huge wall that topples on top of me and I have to claw my way out of the rubble. In my clawing, everything and everyone is a target for my wrath.

I was trying to get Makenna and myself ready to take a trip up to see Chris as he’s been gone all week (hence the foundation to my wall). As I’m trying to get things into the car, Makenna is furiously going around and pulling things out and all over. So the toys are now all around (only about five or six toys really,) and the movies from under the tv stand were all around. Then I asked Makenna to do something or stop doing something, I can’t even remember but she didn’t listen and ended up on the naughty step. After about 10 – 12 minutes of waiting for her to say “sorry” she finally got up and helped me pick up the movies. Then when I was trying to get her in the car she was fighting me. I realized a lot of this has to do with her being tired. In fact, I had to stop to get gas and by the time I filled the car, and paid, she was asleep.

The trip up took about 30 minutes longer than it should have. Traffic at a couple of spots are really horrible. One place is about two miles before a tunnel. This is always crowded as everyone is trying to cram into the toll booths. The second place was for no apparent reason. All of a sudden the traffic just stops. Then after 20 minutes it picks up again and people just start flying. I just don’t understand it. It’s like people must stop and stare at the sky or something and then decide to go. It’s extremely frustrating. There’s no accident (which is good,) and no construction. Just occasionally another lane is merging in but they’re merging onto a four lane motorway so this shouldn’t make everyone stop. I guess maybe there was an accident and it was all cleaned up by the time I got to it but I have no idea. And of course, I’m trying to weave into lanes that seem to go faster but that lane all of a sudden decides to stop dead cold. It is only me this happens to? I swear it seems that way.

We finally got to Millbrook which is the place Chris was at and we picked him up and went to dinner. It was actually a pretty decent dinner. I only wish the rest of the night had gone better. We got to our hotel room and the bed for Makenna wasn’t made up. We called housekeeping and they came and fixed it. It was actually quite early, but we decided to try and go to bed as we were all tired. That didn’t work out too well. Makenna was not willing to stay in bed. She kept crying so Chris and I kept taking turns lying down with her but every time we got up she’d cry again. Then at around midnight, we lost power to half of the room so the heater went out. Chris tried fixing it but had to call housekeeping again. If I hadn’t forgotten Makenna’s blanket I think she would’ve slept better, and if I hadn’t forgotten my pillow I would’ve slept better. Makenna usually doesn’t give us a problem at these places once we turn the light off so I have to think that it was her blanket that was the key.

One funny thing that happened when we first got to the hotel was another saying from Makenna. Chris had forgotten the key to the room (this was the room he had been staying in all week,) so he had to go up front to get another one. Makenna didn’t follow him at first but then took off running after him and started yelling, “CHRIS!” and then she muttered, “My gosh!” as if in exasperation for not waiting for her. She said the same thing again as she continued to run after him. I guess that’s another thing I can say she probably learned from me.

19Feb2009: Day 269: Snack Time!

I had a bit of a rough patch with Makenna this morning. After we got back from the gym, I decided to do a bit of painting with her. I had bought these Crayola hand paints (little paints that fit in your hand,) a while back and we only used them a couple of times. I got down the packing paper, put it on the kitchen floor and brought them out along with some crayons. She eventually grew tired of it and was getting up to leave so I started to put them away. She screamed “paint!” I told her to sit down and paint then if she wanted. She sat for a couple of minutes then got up so I started to put them away again. This cycle went on about four times when I finally said, “Enough, I’m putting it away.” She really screamed and then hit me. I then blew up and yelled and made her sit on the step. I was upset that I yelled.

I think that lead to my semi-break down while watching a movie. It was while she was napping and I just cried. It felt a bit cathartic but stupid at the same time. Nothing like a child to make you feel very inadequate. It makes me question how could I handle having another one if I can’t handle this one? Oh well, never mind that bit.

The rest of the day was good. I had an “enrichment” meeting at the church tonight. It was about visiting teaching which is where the women go out once a month to visit other women in the church. You give a bit of a spiritual lesson and make sure that they are doing all right and see if there’s a need, whether they tell you or not. The meeting tonight was to talk about the importance of the program and to also give out new assignments. So you got a new partner to go out with and new women to go visit.

The meeting itself was okay. I had done some research and found a cute song and a skit that we performed tonight in the first part. The second part was okay. It was making a refrigerator magnet to show you or remind you if you’ve done your visiting teaching or not. The problem is not all the parts came together. I brought what I was supposed to but unfortunately the other girl couldn’t find all she needed as she just moved the previous week and couldn’t find everything she needed.

Plus, there are a couple of women who, in my opinion, need some growing up to do, and one is much older than me. Without going into specifics all I can think is that something more must be going on than what happened on Sunday to cause these two to be at odds with each other. These two just sat at opposite ends of the room and one was saying things under her breath about the other. Then the one older lady just rolls her eyes when people show up with kids. I had to bring Makenna as Chris is working and this other girl practically always brings hers as her husband doesn’t make it home on time either. I don’t think they’re listening to the lessons about taking offense very well.

What was funny was that when I first got there with Makenna, I was waiting for the girl who runs the thing to show, and when she did, she went out to get tables to set up. She comes in with a table and Makenna immediately says, “Snack time!” I laughed at that. They had one of the girls watch the kids in the nursery and as soon as Makenna came back in, she again said, “snack time.” I finally had to ask someone about having a blessing on the food so that I could give Makenna some. There were different things to pick from and Makenna picked the one chocolate thing. She thought it was a brownie. It was actually a chocolate cake-like thing.

When we got home – late – I noticed a reddish circle on her arm. It looked like a bite mark. I kept trying to ask her if one of the kids bit her. I asked, “Did the baby bite you? Or did Xander bite you?” She was like, “ummm, no.” Then she kept saying, “bite with teeth.” I then asked her again, over and over but she just kept saying no. Then she would say, “dancer” instead of Xander, which I again thought was funny. Since it was only a mark, and no broken skin I didn’t worry about it too much.

Here’s hoping tomorrow is a better day – and a final Happy Birthday to Chris’s dad who celebrates his……. Birthday today (we’ll leave the age blank to protect the innocent).

18Feb2009: Day 268: What Need?

In a nutshell, our day was me vacuuming the house, doing three loads of laundry, taking Makenna swimming, and giving her a bath. Of course, there were little things here and there in between all of that.

Swimming was interesting. The instructor that we had is no longer teaching. The new instructor could only say that she’s filling in for four weeks and then she doesn’t know what’s going to happen. All she knew about the previous instructor is that she’s no longer teaching any classes. Everyone started speculating. My guess is that they realize she wasn’t really testing properly and they found out. I guess another woman knows her or knows someone who knows her and said she’ll find out what happened.

This instructor did try to fit a lot in to the class, which I liked, as it was different. I think a couple of problems arose, at least in my mind. One was that she’s hard to hear over all the kids. Another problem is that the kids are all at different levels so what may work or interest one child definitely doesn’t apply or work for another. I guess that would hold true even if they were at the same level. Makenna actually did pretty well with her arms today. She moved them a bit more than usual. The problem was that this teacher brought out play watering cans. A lot of the kids, like Makenna, only wanted to play with these and do nothing else. So I had to do a lot of finagling to get her to follow the instructor and get the watering can as a prize.

When I gave Makenna a bath tonight, she saw me looking around and asked me, “what need?” As if to ask what is it that I need. I guess I must have asked her this before and she’s now mimicking it back to me. I felt like saying, "well, a spa day would be nice, thanks for asking."

We also had another bout of kicking and hitting mommy today. It was put to rest pretty quickly after sitting on the naughty step and a continuation to sit when she wouldn’t apologize, for another six minutes. Plus, she had her movie taken away. I think that ended the fists of fury…for today.

17Feb2009: Day 267: Mmm Lish-us

My lovely little one decided to wake up at 6:30am for some reason. Maybe it’s because I put started to put her down at 8:30pm. It takes about twenty minutes to a half hour to get her to bed. Between brushing her teeth, filling the humidifier, changing her into pj’s, reading stories and doing prayers, and her dawdling in the process I figured I’d try and get her started a little bit earlier. Well, that obviously didn’t work out to my advantage. That didn’t stop me from trying to do it again tonight though. I guess we’ll see if she wakes up early again. I’m still lucky in that 99% of the time when she wakes up on her own, she just chats or sings. She hardly ever cries, again, when she wakes up on her own. So this morning, I just let her chat for about a half hour until I was ready to get up. I was hoping that she’d talk herself to sleep – she’s done it before. No luck this time.

After lunch we finally went to pick up our car. I again had a hard time finding the darn rental place. What I thought was the way, wasn’t. I ended up down a road that I ended up driving the wrong way. It was a one way street but I had no choice but to drive down it in order to turn around. I eventually got there and we now have a Ford S-Max Zetec. Have no idea what this car is. I have to actually look it up on-line as it was supposed to come with latches for the child seat and we could not find them and he book on the car wasn’t in the glove compartment. It’s kind of weird as the seat seems high, or the steering wheel low, but I can’t fix either that I could find. It doesn’t have a switch to bring in the side mirrors either, and it seems like a wider car. So I’ll have to really pray every day I pull in and out of the driveway not to scrape the mirrors. I’m actually thinking about rolling down my window and pulling the mirror in on my side as I back out.

When we got back we played with the play-doh again. She just wanted me to roll it into a ball so she could throw it around. We used the cookie cutters again but she just tore the shapes into small bits again. Then I decided to let her color on the paper. Unfortunately I didn’t think about the fact that we were on a rug. Needless to say, the rug got colored more than the paper. She liked the fact that when she pressed really hard on the paper with the crayon, it ripped it. Next time I’ll have to move to a harder surface.

After her nap, when I went up to get my chatty girl, she was chewing on her blanket. She looked up at me and said, “mmm lish-us.” I said, “oh, that’s delicious?” She then said, “tastes good.” Matter of opinion I thought. She was trying to offer me a taste – No thanks!

I wish I could say the whole day was a joy. For some reason, Makenna was really into hitting me today. She’s been doing this on and off for a while, along with the kicking as I change her diaper. But today, she really stepped up her hitting. I was of course not too happy with this. She was threatened in many different ways if she continued, such as no play-doh, or no movie. This of course makes her scream for whatever I said would be stopped or she would not get. Or she would actually hit me again. She at least wasn’t as stubborn as the past couple of times in saying sorry. This would re-instate her to my graces, until she would hit me again. It’s really frustrating in trying to find ways to tell her that this hurts people. She’s not yet figured out empathy completely. Short of hitting her back which I felt like doing some times, threatening to take away things is the only way I know how to handle this behavior. Plus, I realize that hitting her back would be confusing as I am telling her not to hit. Nothing like a child to bring out the child in you – not always in a good way.

16Feb2009: Day 266: Take That Out of Your Mouth

Today I branched out and let Makenna play with Play Doh after lunch. I put down packing paper (from our move here) on the floor in the dining room and got out some utensils and some cookie cutters. She was happier to pull everything I made into tiny bits. She seems to do that – If I make a tower of three blocks – down they come. If I create something out of play-doh, it appears into small tiny pieces. Makes you wonder what type of job this type of behavior indicates? Splitting atoms?

I didn’t do it for too long as we were supposed to go pick up another car rental and turn this one in and I hadn’t yet taken a shower. Plus, as surprising as this might be to people back at work, making a mess of play-doh all over makes me nervous. It was slowly expanding beyond the paper I put down. I didn’t want it to get ground into the carpet. She liked it when I made a ball out of the play-doh and then threw it up in the air and caught it with a measuring cup. This then became her game of throwing the ball every where. She really laughed and even said, “oh, I still laughing.” Hopefully I’ll loosen up a bit and allow the mess.

We never got the car because when I called the car rental place, the car they were supposed to give us was damaged by the previous person so they were trying to find us another one. Hopefully tomorrow as I filled up the tank with gas assuming I’d be turning it in today.

Makenna has also lately been taking strings that hang from clothing and putting them in the person’s mouth. Today she took the strings from my sweatshirt hood and stuck them in my mouth. After she put it in my mouth she said, “Take that out…dirty.” I knew she could understand me!

She also had that pathetic pouty lip tonight. I think she pinched her finger in a toy. The face just kills me. She could get away with almost anything with that face. Let’s hope she doesn’t continue to use it as she gets into her teens.

15Feb2009: Day 265: Cuts Snails

Yesterday, Makenna found a pair of nail clippers and started saying, “cuts snails.” I of course chided Chris in letting her have the clippers but since they were closed, he didn’t feel it a danger. It was cute to hear her saying “cuts snails” though. He then scolded me today as I left her alone with yogurt and "pennies" and he found her putting them in her yogurt.

Makenna is also getting this whimper face when she is either scolded, wants something that we’re saying “No” to, or hurt. It’s a cute, but pathetic looking face. I’ll have to try and capture it on the camera some time. She did it tonight when we were putting her to bed and we were trying to say prayers and she was trying to climb over me to get a book. You see this big lower lip sticking out and sad eyes. It’s so cute you have to laugh but it breaks your heart at the same time. She must practice that in the mirror.

She’s also getting very demanding when the phone rings that she talks. Tonight our friend Walter called (Happy Birthday yesterday Walter,) and she was insistent that she had to talk. I finally let her talk and she walked off with the phone! I can’t wait until she’s thirteen - that should make life interesting. Of course, as Walter says, she’ll probably have her own phone by the time she’s six.

This past week Makenna has been in a habit of eating a big lunch and then nothing for dinner. Yesterday was an exception because she didn’t really eat much of her lunch, so she was willing to eat dinner. The problem with this is that as it gets closer to her bed time, she starts asking for junk food. “Snacks, chockit chips,” are a few of the words that she’s saying right now. She also tries “ice cream and popcorn,” as part of her begging for food. I allow her a yogurt or fruit and some water or juice.

She was pretty good during church as I cooked some noodles and took them for her to eat for lunch. Plus, Hannah wasn’t there. She did get a bit antsy and at one point kept yelling out, “Did you poop?” She asks us questions that we’re supposed to ask her.

Chris also got her to start yelling, “Teri” instead of “Chris.” So yesterday morning I hear, “Teri” and some jabbering, with Chris standing behind her with a big smile. Wait until he starts hearing, “Chris I need money to go out and buy some clothes or new ring tones for my phone,” from her. Then we’ll see how big his smile is.

14Feb2009: Day 264: Kenwood House

It's getting really hard to find places to go that aren't too far away and that are interesting and open this time of year. Unfortunately, today's trek was a bit of a bust, in my opinion. We had originally planned on going to this other place but when we looked on the website, it was closed due to bad weather - which must've been from Thursday night as that's when we got some snow. Even though our snow had pretty much already melted by Friday morning, this place must be in a bit of a higher elevation I’m guessing.

Anyways, the only other place we could find was Kenwood House. It’s located in part of London, but a part that we could drive to. This house is known for all of the paintings it has that were given to the British nation in the 20th century. A lot of the collection was formed by Edward Cecil Guinness, chairman of the brewery, back in 1890.

The rooms themselves were okay to look at and they had a little leaflet telling you about some of the paintings or pieces of furniture but not much on the room itself. We couldn’t take pictures or video inside so we basically walked through it fairly quickly. They did have this one exhibition on a freelance photographer, John Gay, who took a lot of pictures of England from 1936 – 1996. They were definitely good pictures. I thought of Chris’s niece Brittanie as she’s a photography student. This guy had some really interesting photos of simple every day things. One was of a plowed field and I really liked it. I would never have seen the beauty in that just to look at it myself to take a picture. Not my talent.

So this place was basically a big house show casing paintings. I like paintings, but I can’t get too much into them especially with a child that was just un-agreeable practically all day. That was most likely due to her late night. She got up at her usual time which meant she didn’t get her full night of sleep. She just whined and cried through most everything. We walked around the grounds a bit but it was a bit cold and wet.

We went back to the car and found a ticket for 30 pounds. We forgot, I guess I forgot, to tell Chris that it was a pay-and-display parking area. He didn’t see it when we drove in and I had forgotten as we sat and ate lunch in the car when we first got there. He wasn’t too happy to say the least. We just headed home as it actually takes about 20-25 minutes just to get out of this area of London and back on the motor way.

13Feb2009: Day 263: Sigh

This morning was absolutely side-splitting. Chris told Makenna that he was off to work and she put her face into her hands and sighed. Another thing I guess she probably picked up from me.

She must also be hearing some certain phrases from nursery quite a bit. When I picked her up and asked her how nursery went, she came out with, "you hap to share." Usually she tells us "you hap to share with baby," her being baby as she forcefully takes what it is that she's insisting you share. The bad news (somewhat,) I heard as I picked up Makenna was that next week is half-term. This means that kids are out of school for the week and it also means that there’s no playgroup next Wednesday afternoon, nor nursery. So now I have to scramble to see if I can get Makenna into the gym nursery those couple of days – or at least one of them. I probably can, but in the afternoon—Sigh.

Another new word she came out with today was Hella-copper. We were sitting eating lunch in the dining room and I heard a helicopter. I told Makenna that’s what we were hearing, instead of an airplane, something we typically hear, and she copied what I said but much cuter sounding “hella-copper.”

During lunch she also started singing “Monkeys jumping on the Bed.” It was absolutely adorable. Another moment when I wish I had the camera. This was a bit of how it went, “Three monkey’s jumpin’ on bed, one fell off ‘n bump head, mommy …….(something unintelligible,) NO MORE MONKEYS JUMPIN’ ON BED!” She said that last part really sternly. She would then start again with “Three monkey’s…,” what was funny was that she sung it at least three times and each time started with three monkeys.

Well, as far as romance and Valentine’s Day, my husband falls short in that department, unfortunately (sigh). Since I know this, I planned a night out for us. I got a lady from the church to watch Makenna so that he and I could go out to dinner and a movie. I was grateful that Makenna took to her right away. Makenna has seen her at church but never really had extensive time with her in any way.

Chris and I went to a Mexican restaurant which luckily had an opening. They usually take reservations, and one other time we tried in the past to eat there, we were turned away. I couldn’t remember the name of the place nor could I find it on the internet so we just took a chance. I REFUSED to go to the Chinese place if we couldn’t get in, so thankfully we did get in. I had a quesadilla and it was pretty good. Their spicy sauce was lacking so I added more hot sauce to it. We had also gotten tortillas and salsa as an appetizer. Not very many chips and they were not very tasty. The salsa was more tomato than sauce but not bad. Chris had some chorizo, chicken, and pasta bake. It looked good but was actually very greasy. He said it was okay and I had a small bight but was not too impressed. Glad I didn’t order it. I would still go back there again though. The price wasn’t bad and definitely better than Chinese, more flavor.

We then went to see, “Slumdog Millionaire.” It just received a bunch of BAFTA awards here in England this past Sunday. I was a bit nervous that it would really be good. The last time Chris and I went to a movie here, I picked a really bad one which I won’t name. We were both really pleased with the movie though. It was good and I always like movies that give me a chance to really appreciate what I have. This really did that as it shows scenes of growing up in Mumbai India.

What’s still interesting about the movie theaters here, or at least the one in this town, is that it’s assigned seating. When you buy tickets, you can pick what seats you’d like. It’s not like anyone really checks if you’re sitting in the correct seat, and when the movie started, no one moved to a different, open seat. The ads are the other interesting thing. About 10 – 15 minutes of ads – not even movie trailers. I hope it’s not getting that bad in the states. Some of the ads are just downright horrible. This one car company had three ads and all the commercials were probably less than 30 seconds and all stupid.

Makenna was awake when we got home at about 10:45pm – as I expected. I took the babysitter home and Chris got Makenna off to bed. We got a good report so hopefully she’d be willing to watch Makenna again sometime. Plus, she’s free. She refuses payment – Yeah!~

12Feb2009: Day 262: TB Boppers

Makenna and I went to the sing/song playgroup this morning. It’s called Teeny Boppers but Makenna calls it TB Boppers, like some kind of illness that you need to be inoculated against. Makenna is really singing a lot of different songs that it all runs together. She may start out singing hokey cokey, or hokey donkey as she calls it, then go into wheels on the bus, then in to Baa Baa black sheep. There are other songs that she can throw in there to mix it up. She’s like a DJ with her own singing mix.

She also surprised me during lunch by doing a run down of our day so far. She said how she dropped a cookie at playgroup, how we then went to the park and she went down the slide and how she’s supposed to hold hands in the parking lot. I love hearing her reiterate what she remembers from the day. It just shows how much she’s grown and how much I can understand her.

At night, I was running a bath for her and let her put her various toys into the tub while I stepped out to get a couple of towels, a diaper, and her pj’s. While I was doing this, she came out and said very clearly, “What’s going on? It’s bath time!” It was a very definitive statement clearly telling me that I should be in the bathroom helping her to get into the bath. I got a good chuckle out of that one. Near the end of the bath, to show off for daddy, she started doing something that I had forgotten that I used to love to do when I was young. That’s slide up and down the tub by pushing off one end with your feet and then sliding back down and doing it over again. It’s amazing how little kids can bring you back to your own childhood at times.

Then she made me laugh when she was done with her bath, yelled down the stairs, “Chris? Do you have poopy butt, need wipes?” She was again copying what Chris had said to her last night. Again, another example about everything you say that can be used against you in the mouth of Makenna.

11Feb2009: Day 261: Okay Here it goes

Tonight before putting Makenna to bed, she had the camera and kept saying, "okay, here it goes...cheese," and giving her cheesy smile that I love. The one where her eyes close into small slits.

Today was another day of frustration! It wasn't until ten minutes before we were supposed to be at swimming that I realized that Chris had yet again left with the keys to the car. He of course said, "call a taxi." This seemed futile to me because by the time I found a number to call, got a taxi to the house, and to the gym, the class would've had maybe fifteen minutes left. Probably less. I then also realized that the pushcart was in the car so that I would have to walk with Makenna to playgroup - more like carry. Chris called back and said that our neighbor across the street whom he works with, was coming back this way and would drop off the keys.

Since I had already resigned myself that I would be walking, and since I needed some sort of exercise, I decided to still walk to playgroup. I was going to take the little bike that has a handle to push her but I figured she would not be willing to sit on the bike the whole way. At least now I had the pushcart. Since the weather was decent - a bit chilly but not too bad, we left early so she could play at the park first.

She did pretty well with climbing the inclined steps to the slides. She asked to go on the swings a couple of times and really enjoyed it but then would ask within twenty seconds to be let down. That was frustrating. So when she asked a third time, I refused to put her in. It was time to go anyways. At playgroup she again mimicked "us" as she got into her favorite car and as soon as she got in said, "come on stupid thing." I swear I don't say it as much as she seems to. I guess I'll have to really watch myself when I say it. I must say it more that I realize and I don't think I'm the only one in the house who says it.

Of course, when we left playgroup, it was raining. Luckily it wasn't too hard. It's about a fifteen to twenty minute walk one way. As we passed the park, she again wanted to go down the slides and play. I had to repeatedly tell her it was too wet and not to mention nap time. When we got home she wanted her usual yogurt. Why is it that when you feel like you're in a hurry, that the child takes the longest time to do something? I wanted to get her into a nap and she was eating her yogurt with the other side of the spoon. It was making the process excruciatingly long. I had to realize it's no big deal she could do what she wants. I just knew that if she didn't have her full nap she would be a major grouch later.

Putting her down for a nap almost turned into a nightmare too. She had a bit of a messy diaper and I didn't realize it as it was only a little bit. So I was unprepared with no wipes. I couldn't find anything sharp around - go figure - to open up the box of wipes we had bought. I again told myself, "well, it's a good thing you can't find anything sharp as Makenna would've already found it by now." She thoroughly enjoyed running around naked as I was looking. I of course was not too happy. I was like, "just don't fall, or rub up against anything!" She was yelling, "poopy butt, poopy butt, droopy drawers, " and laughing. I'm glad she could laugh about it.

I feel this week, so far, I've been really good about not letting things like this get to me. I've realized by really letting things go - it's made me happier at night feeling like I've been a good mom in the sense that I haven't been a mean old grouch constantly reprimanding her for everything. I hope I can keep it up - maybe by saying to myself every morning, "okay...here it goes...cheese!"

10Feb2009: Day 260: Growl

When kids are picked up at nursery, they all run to their mothers or dads with open arms, all excited to see them. Not Makenna. She runs out all excited to see me but then takes an immediate detour to show me all the things she played with that day. Today was no exception. She ran out, pointed to this big table of mucky water and started saying, “oh no, no, no, no touch.” Since she was wearing a different shirt than the one she came in, which was a long-sleeved turtleneck and this was a short sleeved shirt, I assumed she was reenacting something that was told to her earlier.

Sure enough, I went around looking for her shirt and one of the workers brought it to me off of a heater. She had dove into the water, arms and all to play. Another worker came out stating how much she loves playing in the water. In fact, when they were trying to find her another shirt, she went in again. Makenna was also very friendly as we left, waving bye to everyone and saying bye. She even specifically stopped and waved and said goodbye to this one little boy (older than her though,) as he sat in his pushcart.

I had to get groceries after picking her up so I came prepared and brought some cereal in a small container. Unfortunately, half way through shopping she bumped my hand and they went flying everywhere. I felt bad, but I was like, “oh well, it goes with the spilled sugar on the floor” – not from us though.

At nap time, Makenna requested her dolly. So I got it out from behind the TV cabinet, where she had put it, and she gave it a big hug. She mentioned that it needed to brush teeth and change nappy. I said that dolly didn’t have to have her nappy changed as she goes on the potty. When we got to the bathroom, she almost literally put the doll in the toilet. I luckily grabbed it quickly enough and told her that it goes on the little potty. I then put the doll on the little potty and Makenna actually made a growl type noise, grabbed her off the potty and said, “No.” Then she pushed the potty back under the sink where I had gotten it from. She got up on her step and said, “Brush teeth.” I guess she spoke her mind about that whole idea.

9Feb2009: Day 259: I Laughing

All day today Makenna has been watching different things, laughing, and then coming up to me saying, "I laughing." Sometimes she'll add, "I laughing, that's funny." She's mostly been laughing at the new rental we have "Kung Fu Panda." She calls it "Ku Panda." I think it's cute that she recognizes the act of what she's doing. I also have been thinking about how much she can understand and communicate with us from even just four months ago. Of course we can't always understand her or she doesn't always express what she needs without whining.

She also had her first taste of lamb tonight. That whole Lamb Tikka recipe wasn't going to work out, at this time, as we need a food processor. Since we have to borrow one from someone, we just ended up cooking the lamb tonight. She actually liked it, but of course she had it with A1 sauce.

She's on the phone right now with her Grandma Jones wishing her a Happy Birthday! She took the phone and walked away, and is chatting up a storm. We decided to Skype so they could see her and as Chris was trying to set up the video camera on our end the battery died. Chris mentioned the battery died and Makenna goes, "oh, battery." Chris got up to get another one and said not to touch the computer. Makenna then looked at me, pointed to the computer and said, "don't touch, daddy." I knew she meant not to touch daddy's computer but I just thought it was funny how it came out. She's parroting everything that Chris is saying right now.

Tonight when I was putting her to bed, I was reading her "Thank You God For All the Animals." I usually read the "Thank You God for All The..." and have her fill in the animal on the page. Then I have her tell me what the animal says. Tonight, she added her own twist. The first page says "Thank You God for Sheep." Makenna said sheep but then when I asked her what sheep say, she said, "Hello, Hello, Hello." I said, "Sheep don't say hello, what do sheep say?" She then responded appropriately with "Baa." The next page is of a horse and again when I asked what does a horse say, she responded with hello. When we got to the cow instead of hello she said, "bye." She then said "drink" as the book says that cows give us milk to drink. She took the book herself and started reading the pages and again mentioned cows give us drink.

One last congrats to go out today...to my dad...who is now engaged to his girlfriend Lori! Congratulations!

8Feb2009: Day 258: Fo Fight

Church as usual today. Makenna was happy that she could finally get her bread. She started speaking very loudly, “bread, it’s coming, it’s coming.” Hannah’s mom had quite a chuckle about it. Makenna also started singing Hokey Pokey again but her “ooh hokey donkey.” That had me laughing.

Speaking of Hannah, her parents are close to having her potty trained and I have to say, it’s 10 days until Hannah’s second birthday and I’m a bit jealous. They brought a training potty with them to church today and her dad mentioned how much money they’re saving on “nappies” (diapers) now. There are accidents but they are getting it done.

Makenna saw, and I mentioned, how Hannah was going potty and all of a sudden Makenna needed a “nappy change.” I had just changed her about five minutes prior so I knew darn well she didn’t need one. Hopefully, this will get her thinking more about it. I did again try and get her to sit on the potty before her bath this morning but shrieks of “no, no, no” is all I heard, so I didn’t force her. Oh well, in time. I’ll just keep working on it by talking to her about it and getting her pulling her pants down and up.

Makenna still likes me to read her nursery rhymes at night and one that she likes is “inky doe doe” (Yankee Doodle Dandy). She also has this thing now where she’s constantly saying, “share, share,” as she takes away the thing from you that she wants. So she wants you to share with her but not vice versa. In fact, she got quite upset when I let Hannah look at a book of hers, so I then let Makenna have it and gave Hannah another one, then Makenna was upset with that.

Yesterday at the observatory as Chris was looking around and I was keeping an eye on Makenna there was a clock behind a wooden box. It showed all the gears and workings with explanations on the door flaps that you could open on the box. Makenna started opening the doors and for some reason thought there should be a horse in their. So she kept saying, “where’s horsey? No horsey.” She did pretty well over all as she could pretty much run around where she wanted at these different places. She of course constantly headed for the stairs at the Queen’s house so we had to keep rein on her their. Chris kept threatening that he would put her in the pushcart if she didn’t stay with us. I finally told him to just put her in a corner of the room we were in and have her sit. She was good about staying put when he did that.

Back on Monday when we were in Scotland, Makenna really enjoyed throwing snow at daddy. She talked about it for days afterwards. This video below is of Makenna throwing snow at daddy – or having a “fo fight” – snowball fight. She really enjoys him being hit with snow.

Another thing I had forgotten about our trip was on Chris’s birthday and the next two to three days after. On Sunday, Chris’s birthday, we gave him a card from each of us and a couple of presents. The next morning, Makenna woke up saying, “present time,” and did this for the next couple of days. I had to keep breaking it to her that not every morning is “present time.” Wouldn’t it be great if it was though?

7Feb2009: Day 257: Royal Observatory and Queen's House

Let me start of by saying that a long time member of Good Shepherd (my home church) died today, Jeanette Ricker. I gave her rides to Church back when she could still go, so we were quite close then. She was an extremely nice lady and I will miss her greatly. She had been up in a nursing home in Albany for the last what must be close to 2 years since she fell and broke her neck. Her husband Charlie taught my brother and me how to tie our ties one Christmas Eve service back when we were kids. Here is a picture of her from back at Christmas that Fr. Matt at Good Shepherd sent out after she received a care package from the women at Church. I'm sure she is happy to be back with Charlie in heaven. Good Bye Jeanette, I will miss you!

Today we went to the Royal Observatory and Queen's House in Greenwich. It is part of the National Maritime Museum, but we didn't go into that as Teri doesn't like that stuff and Makenna really is no fun in Museums, unless she is asleep.

It was only an hour away from home, so it was a relatively easy driving day, which is nice. I've been doing a lot of driving lately, so it was good to take it more easy today.

We went into the Queen's house first and it was really just a place they hang pictures. Apparently, King Henry VIII was born there or something. It was a Tudor palace that over the years had been a the home for various kings and supporters. It eventually became a hospital for a time. Makenna enjoyed running away from us and getting into trouble there and we soon left.

We headed up the back which was a long slope up to the Royal Observatory, which has been a museum since the mid-1950's. This is the place where the Prime meridian goes through. They have a laser that shoots out of one room that travels for 15 miles that draws the line in the sky. They have this metal line and statue that laid along the line as well. This is one of several places that over the years was called zero longitude. But, they finally agreed on the Greenwich line. So, that is why we call it Greenich Mean Time from which all other time in the world is based.

There was a lot of old telescopes and such there. But what was the most interesting part was the story of how the solved the "longitudinal problem". Apparently, they had a big problem with ships running aground and many ships were lost because didn't have a good way of knowing their longitude. There was one example of the path a captain took looking for land because he was lost after he crossed around the bottom of south America. It was crazy how close he came to land only to turn around and head back out to sea.

They could measure their lattitude easily enough by measuring the angle from the horizon to the sun when it was noon. But, the longitude is not as easy. The way it had to be done was to acurately know your time at your "home" position and compare it to the time at your current location. Fifteen Degrees of Longitude is equal to one hour of time difference. So the problem was to make an accurate time piece such that you could always know your "home" time to compare against. King Charles II issued a reward of £20,000 to the first person to solve the problem. He started the Royal Observatory to chart the position of the stars with respect to the moon to attempt to solve the problem such that sailors could compare the moons position relative to stars and get an estimate of their time difference. But, what the really needed was an accurate clock that would work on a ship. Unfortunately, the accurate clocks were pendulum clocks which must remain still to be accurate and the rocking of the ship would throw it off.

John Harrison was a joiner who became interested in the workings of clocks and had various attempts at making a clock that would work on ships, his 4th attempt in 35 years finally won him the £20,000 prize (worth over £1,000,000 in today's money). He died 3 years later.

We saw a planetarium show while we were there about all the observers that have travelled to Mars. It wasn't really a planetarium show as it really didn't have the stars and such...it was just a movie on a cieling, so I was a bit dissappointed. I hope they actually do a start show some day, like they have at Roberson's back in Binghamton. I didn't even see one of those star projectors there, so it was a little ridiculous, but it was an interesting movie.

6Feb2009: Day 256: Early Learning Goals Report

We got a progress report on Makenna today from nursery. They do what’s called Early Learning Goals to help develop a child’s Personal, Social & Emotional Well-being, Language & Communication, Reading & Writing, Problem Solving, Reasoning & Numeracy, Knowledge & Understanding, Physical Development, and Creative Development. They basically keep a small journal on her activities at different times and what goals she’s achieved. We then get to read this journal every so often and make comments about what they’ve written and about the goals achieved so far.

Since we don’t get to keep these journals, I’m going to include a brief synopsis of what was said in the journal.

On Nov 25th, 2008: It was Makenna’s first day at the nursery and she settled down well and wasn’t too upset when “mummy” left. She walked around the room on her own looking at all the different activities. She pushed the “pram” around with a doll in it and then took the doll out and put it back in. She saw kids playing on the computer with a Dora game and pointed it and started saying, “Dora, Dora,” and sat down watched the screen.

Dec 9th, 2008: Makenna walked around exploring the different activities and watched other children with interest. She saw Dora on the computer and pointed saying, “Dora.” She sat with another child and watched them used the mouse. When she got upset she came to her key worker for comfort. After a cuddle & some comforting words, she went off to play again.

Dec 12th, 2008: Makenna showed pleasure by facial expression when being pushed around in the trolley. (They had a picture of her in a gray bin with another child being pushed by her key worker).

Dec 16th, 2008: They had pictures of Makenna dressed as an angel for the Christmas nativity play.

Dec 19th, 2008: They had a picture of me with Makenna at the Christmas party stating, “With a little help from mummy, Makenna collects her present from Father Christmas.”

Jan 13th, 2009: Makenna indicated that she wanted to do a “gluing.” She spread glue onto a paper using a spatula. Makenna then went over to an easel and picked up a brush. Her key worker reminded her that she needed an apron to protect her clothes. She used only the water so her key worker showed her how to dip the brush into the water & then into the dry powder paint. Makenna smiled as the paint color showed up on the paper. She then brought a spatula form the glue pot over to the easel, spreading the glue on the paint and picked out a letter from the craft box and stuck it onto her picture. When a piece of paper became stuck to her finger, she turned to her key worker and said, “stuck.” When she finished, she went to wash her hands, looking into the sink she could see sand all around it and said to her key worker, “dirty, dirty.” She also pointed to the cold tap and said, “Cold.” She went to the cloakroom & looked at the coats saying, “Coat” while pointing at them. Her key worker got her coat down & Makenna smiled, and said, “Scarf” and “chilly.” She then went off to play outside. When she came back in, she went over to the hair dressers role play area & picked up a brush and brushed her hair (still wearing a hat,) and while looking in the mirror at herself. She then picked up the hair dryer, again putting it up to her head. Her key worker took off her coat, hat, & scarf so that she could brush her hair properly. Makenna said, “Brush hair.” Later, she returned to the painting easel saying “ellow” as she brushed on the yellow paint. (They had pictures of her painting and at the hairdresser station).

Jan 16th, 2009: Makenna was interested in the computer displaying a picture of Dora but the program wasn’t working and it then displayed a picture of a dog. Makenna pointed to the dog’s paw and said, “Puppy foot.” Outside, Makenna played in a car. Her key worker pushed her and then another child began to push her. After a while she got out and pushed a doll & pram around the path before finding another car she could ride in. (They had a picture of her in the car).

Jan 20th, 2009: Outside Makenna balanced with support from her key worker on a large log and smiled. She went over to the dinosaur pictures on the fence and pointed to them and sang a song which she made up as she went along. Makenna played with the wooden doll house & dolls. During phonics circle time, she joined in with heads, shoulders, knees, and toes, pointing to the correct part of the body. She also joined in with the nursery rhymes being sung. (They had a picture of her playing with the doll house).

What I think is interesting about some of what was written above has to do with her playing with the hair dressing stuff. Especially the part about putting a hair dryer up to her head. She had, at that point, never seen me put a hair dryer to my head as I don’t use one typically. I think she got it from watching other women at the gym locker room. I have started using one on Wednesday’s after swim class to take the dampness out of my hair before leaving the gym. Also, the fact that she said “ellow” for yellow surprised me. We don’t focus on colors too much with her as we do with numbers and the letters but we do occasionally talk about colors of her clothes or of other things.

The other thing I found very interesting was the pictures I had given the nursery to put in her book. I’ve included one of the pictures here. When I gave them the picture, I didn’t think much about it, I just thought it was really cute. When I looked at it this time in her book, I couldn’t believe how small she seemed compared to now. I was utterly amazed to see the growth difference alone! Here’s a more recent picture of her. This one with her Reindeer hat was taken back in December on our boat trip over to the Isle of Wight. So she's probably grown even more now. Whereas the other one was taken back on June 21st.

She also had a couple of cute things that she said today. One was of her singing “Bob the Builder...Can we Fix It?” She sang it, “Bob the Builder…Can we Biscuit.” Yesterday she had said something about swimming suit. She usually says it correctly but I couldn’t remember what she had said until today which was “swimming soup.” The other thing she did was with her dolly. She wanted to take it up at nap time with her to brush its teeth and wash its face. So I let her brush its teeth after she was done, and we skipped washing its face as it’s a cloth doll. She then took it to bed, and gave it her blanket to chew/suck on. She’s offered me this blanket too but I pass on the pleasant opportunity to indulge in this delicacy. I’ve said before this is the blanket she’s had since a newborn that my girlfriend Julie made.

I had the opportunity to go to the London temple again tonight with some people from church. I sat in the car and couldn’t understand much of the different conversations going on from the accents and words that I don’t know/follow. Plus they’d talk about people that I didn’t really know. I did talk to them about the snow again and the whole cleaning of the sidewalks. They said something that Chris and just told me earlier tonight which is that if you clean the sidewalks and someone falls, you are then liable for not cleaning it well enough. But if you leave it be, and someone falls, then it’s considered an “act of God.” Hmm, I wonder if God would agree with that line of thinking.

5Feb2009: Day 255: Funny Goings On

Makenna lately has been saying the word “scared.” Usually she’ll make a growling sound, say it’s a tiger and that he’s scared. I wish I could give a phonetic of how she’s saying it. It sounds so very cute. I’ll have to try and record it at some time and post it.

She also was saying “teethpaste” instead of toothpaste. She was all excited that I bought some toothpaste today. Later though, she bit her tongue while eating lunch. It was pretty bad as it started bleeding. Luckily I know that the tongue is the quickest to heal. Another saying was “a marshal” for commercial.

I also bought some apples as she was eating them like a fiend at the nursery at the gym when I went to pick her up. She was upset I was taking her away from eating them. I told her we could buy more at the grocery store. I was buying them when we first got here but I stopped because she wasn’t eating them. I asked the gym what specific kind they were and they just said red apples. When I got to the grocery store I did actually find “red apples.” She did eat some for lunch and after dinner snack, so that made me happy.

She’s still testing her limits by kicking us as we change her diaper and get her dressed, and spitting out drinks when we specifically tell her not to. Tonight she was going to put my water bottle into the dirty clothes hamper. I was saying, “no, no, no, no” and as I was going towards her, she dropped it in, laughed and ran away. I went and got it out and said, “aargghh, child you frustrate me.” She then went, “aargghh, frustrate.” I had to laugh at that. I also laughed when I heard her singing hokey pokey and she was saying “ooohh donkey” instead of hokey pokey. She was also smelling Chris’s shoe inserts and saying, “smells pretty.” I was like, “really?”

She is edging closer to being potty trained, I think. She’s constantly telling me “diaper change” or “nappy change.” Sometimes I think it’s just to be able to go wash her hands. She seems to want to see the sinks or bathrooms and wash her hands wherever we go. After she had a dirty diaper tonight, she came right to me and told me. I keep hoping that she’ll just tell me one day to go on the potty.

Makenna did pretty well in the hotels with the sleeping arrangements. All our rooms had a double bed with another pullout bed. She usually wouldn’t settle down until we turned off all the lights. It was too tempting to get out and run around. There was one night though where she basically laid there and I watched her gradually drift off to sleep. I think it was Monday night that she freaked us out. For some reason woke up in the middle of the night, hopped out of bed and came over to me and said, “mommy, mommy?” I responded that she should be in bed. She then asked about daddy and went over to where he was. Not sure why she woke up, if she was dreaming or what but I was glad she had the presence of mind to know we were right there and not at home in a different room.


I also wanted to include this taken at Edinburgh Castle when Makenna was asleep. We wanted to make sure she was warm as the wind was blowing so we covered her with the blanket but all you could see really was her hat - which made it look cute with the eyes, nose and antlers sticking out from the blanket.

The sidewalks and parking lots are still quite bad. The snow starts to melt in the warmer weather but doesn’t completely before the cold sets back in and refreezes it or makes it worse as now its spread out more. One guy was pushing his kid in a stroller in the street – that has to tell you how bad it is. We’re just as guilty as we don’t have a shovel or salt to clear our sidewalk either. I just hope nobody falls out there.

So now we're all caught up - sorry again about the long posts but we did a lot that we're going to want to remember. Hopefully we'll have more to come!

4Feb2009: Day 254: Shovel!

Laundry, Laundry, and more laundry. I did at least five loads today and have at least 5 more to do albeit, not today. It was actually fairly warm which is good so that some of the remaining snow could melt.

It so amazes me that no one shovels their walks or parking lots. It’s like taking your life into your own hands. Walking from the car to the gym was nerve-wracking as I had Makenna. I was saying a quick silent prayer that I wouldn’t fall with her in my arms. I had done that back when she was about 7 or 8 months old in a parking lot and I really didn’t want to repeat that! Luckily we made it but I just want to say to the people, you’re so worried about law suits yet you don’t shovel!?!? In fact, one of the places we ate in York for lunch made us sign a waiver to take the rest of the fries that Makenna didn’t eat saying we wouldn’t sue them if we even as much as reheated them and she got sick. That was a first.

I was so tired that my workout was a bit lame, in my opinion but at least I did something. Makenna wasn’t much for paying attention to the swim instructions today nor did she want the arm bands on today whatsoever. So after fighting with her 20 minutes into the lesson, I gave up and we got out. She wanted to get out anyways. In the beginning she was all excited, before the lessons, as she was literally jumping into my arms from the steps. In fact, one time she jumped before I was there and got a bit of a shock as she started to go under, but she handled it well. She kept trying to find the “crock-a-dider” again too.

We went to the afternoon playgroup, sans Hannah and her sister and mom, and I asked some of the other mom’s there how much snow had actually fallen in the area. They all said at least three inches if not six. I then asked if a lot of snow had melted yesterday as this was really nothing to us. They did seem to say yes, that the sun was out and melted quite a bit of it. For some reason though, it doesn’t seem to melt it on the sidewalks or parking lots.


Something else that was interesting in York Cathedral was this one statue that had two right feet! I guess the story is that the master carver did a right foot and then he went off and told the apprentice to do one just like it - so he did - literally. Guess it's a good story to be careful what you ask for.

3Feb2009: Day 253: York

Not much snow in this area which made getting around the city of York easy. We did hear that Scotland got hit pretty hard with snow and that a lot of schools were closed around England. Not to mention that over 6 million people in England (London alone I believe,) did not go into work on Monday because of the weather. They had shut down the transit system in London – the airport, busses, and underground. So London pretty much came to a stand still. In Kent alone, on Monday they closed 50 schools, which wasn’t very many really, but on Tuesday I think I heard 500 were closed. We were a bit nervous about what we’d be coming home to as we heard that they got from 6-8 inches and it was the worse snow they’d seen in 18 years. They’re not equipped to handle that type of snow here at all!

We headed out to see as much as we could here. We started at Clifford’s Tower which is what’s left of the York Castle. The castle had first been built by William the Conqueror. A century later, in 1190, the Jews of York took refuge from a murderous mob in the tower that now remains. Unfortunately, in the fear of being killed, they decided to commit suicide. Not sure if some killed themselves in some form of manner or if they all died by the fire that was set. They wanted to destroy the tower and cremate their bodies so that they wouldn’t be dismembered. Pretty gruesome I’d say. The tower happened to be made of timber at that time. Richard I ordered the damage to be repaired and it was rebuilt in timber again. It wasn’t until Henry III that the castle was rebuilt in stone. Like I said, the tower is all that really remains of the castle, and that is basically a shell.

We then headed over to the castle museum which was across the street. Surprisingly, it was not about castles. It was about everyday life in Britain. It shows how people used to live by recreating rooms from different time periods such as a Victorian parlor, an 1850s Moorland cottage, Jacobean and Georgian dining rooms, a 1940s kitchen and a 1950s front room. I have to include this one picture as Chris says it reminds him of our kitchen back in the states and that it just proves that we need to update our kitchen since it’s back from the 1980’s and in a museum. The museum also is known for it’s recreated Victorian street, Kirkgate, which combines real shop fittings and stock with modern sound and light effects, to evoke an atmosphere of Victorian Britain.

It’s here that I told Chris I was stopping off for a bathroom break and left Makenna in his care. When I returned, she was gone and he said that he thought she was with me. He didn’t “register” that I said I was going to the bathroom. So we then had a frantic five minute search (probably less but it felt long,) for Makenna. I started to ask some of the people who had seen her with us if they had seen where she’d gone. Chris finally back-tracked and as he was yelling her name, heard a giggle coming from the stairs. I think I mentioned in a previous blog how she has an affinity for stairs. She constantly wants to go up or down stairs, or ramps, wherever we go. He got her and we tried in our best calm voices to tell her how that was very naughty (not tee as she says it,) and that she needs to stay with us.

After touring some more of the museum, we headed to lunch and then on to another museum of sorts. It was called “Jorvik Viking Centre.” It gives the history of the Vikings in England. The Viking age was from around 800 AD to 1050 AD. As it happened, in 1976, archaeologists were beginning to excavate prior to a proposed redevelopment in the area. While doing so, they found Viking-age buildings, some even at shoulder height. These were surrounded by moist, spongy layers which meant that things had been preserved in these conditions.

They also found over 40,000 objects, of which some came from their rubbish (garbage,) pits—garbage that was over 1000 years old. One thing that I had a good laugh at was a piece of poop that they found and some how knew that 1) it was poop and 2) that it was from a Viking. When I asked one of the “Vikings” standing around, how they knew it was poop, as it looked like a piece of drift wood to me, he admitted that at first they didn’t know it was poop but since they found it in a bathroom type area they had an idea that it might be. It was much later that they decided to take a piece of it and examine it closer. What fun! They found different thing in it like worms and seeds, etc. that let them know that it was poop and because of the things in it, that it was from a Vikings diet.

They also had a ride that took you through different areas of a Viking town which included the “smells” that one would experience. It was kind of funny. It definitely had smells. It was kind of hokey but It kept Makenna entertained.

From there we drove to York Minster which is a gothic cathedral. On our walk over from the parking lot, Makenna fell asleep in the pushcart making our experience at the cathedral, one of peace. Unfortunately, we thought too late about getting a guide to take us around the cathedral and tell us of the different aspects so we just looked around on our own. The site that the cathedral is on has been occupied for almost 2000 years. The building that’s currently there was started in 1220 and took over 250 years to complete.

I thought that the chapter house was the most interesting part to see. It had a lot of neat stone carvings in the canopies of which around 80% are original carvings from 1270-1280. They were mostly of faces but of all types – some laughing, some being attacked by animals, and more. A lot of them have specific stories that go with them but sadly, I don’t know the stories. Although, I did hear one tour guide tell some people about a dog near a decapitated head was that of his master’s head that had been cut off and he was guarding it.

What was also very interesting here was in the undercroft below the church. While they were trying to shore up the present minster from falling apart and crumbling to the ground, as they started to see cracks in the masonry, they went underneath the present church and found a Roman fortress. They found that it was army headquarters founded in 71 AD and it was here that Constantine was hailed as Caesar. They also discovered foundations of a Norman Cathedral of Thomas Bayeux. The undercroft was a tour taking you through time from the Roman finds to the present day minster. It amazes me to see how people find and know how these things used to be. I mean, how would they know about Constantine becoming Caesar here at this spot? I can understand they can figure out how the building used to be laid out with what remains and some things about their life from excavated materials but more specifics is beyond me.

Just as we were finishing up, Makenna started to wake and we decided it was time to head home. It was a long trip back home, (about 5 hours including an hour stop for dinner) but we certainly enjoyed Chris taking time off of work to travel a bit. We didn’t know what type of weather we would be getting into as we headed home, as I stated in the beginning, but there was barely any snow at the house when we got there – maybe an inch. We were shocked! I was like there’s no way this is all there was for them to make such a big fuss and close everything down. I guess I’ll have to check with other people as to how much snow was really here.