Then There Were Three

It was a beautiful Sunday evening. The heat wave that sometimes seemed oppressive released its grip and allowed cool breezes to ruffle trees and muss hair. Wanting to hold on to this blessed weather, Tom and I leashed Adler and took her for her second long walk of the day. We headed out the front door. Me, Tom and Adler. No Bugaboo stroller. No child asking for lollipops. Just me able to hold my husband's hand as he held Adler's leash. It was just the three of us again.

It's been so long since it was just three of us that my mind really has to think back and conjure up some memories from those days. Of course all I tend to remember is Adler pulling me along the icy sidewalks when I was about 9 months pregnant while I chastised her for going too fast. Or, the time she made me drop a full cup of just-purchased hot chocolate because something suddenly got her attention. Of course Adler is about 2 1/2 years older now and probably a much more mellow dog so this evening the three of us enjoyed our walk - running around chasing each other in the park and pretending Adler was a prize jumper as she leapt over park benches.

Austen has been on vacation at Grandma's house for three days now, but I don't think Adler has missed him at all. And, why would she? She gets to sleep later, gets all of our undivided attention and doesn't always have to have her eyes peeled for toy cars ready to run her over or Austen's broom that's swinging too close to her head.

What I'm sure she does miss though is the freebies. There hasn't been waffles from Austen during breakfast or hot dogs designated for "Abbie" from dinner. In fact, I'm sure she's lost a pound or two these last three days.

Not to worry, Adler, chicken nuggets are on the menu for tonight and Austen will be home in plenty of time to feed them to you.

Water

When it rains, one splashes in the puddles it makes on the sidewalks. The other avoids these pools of water like they are acid and will burn.

One loves taking baths and runs to the tub when we mention the word. The other has to be forced to bathe.

One loves oceans, lakes and pools. The other dips a limb in testing the waters and chickening out before the cool water can envelope her.


One is Austen. The other is Adler.
Austen has always liked the water. Adler has not.

But, so far this summer, Austen's love for water seems to have grown.

Yesterday morning at breakfast, he matter of factly states, "I want to go to the beach!"

Tom and I could barely contain our laughter as we said in unison, "So do we but we have to go to work and you have to go to school!"

And, the other day, on the way home from school, he blurts out "I want to go to the pool with grandma!" (She must take him to the pool now, I hope she knows, since she's been promising him this).

We have to be careful when we mention bath time because Austen runs to the tub and starts the water and begins taking off his clothes. We have to keep a close eye on him as he grabs his stool and tries to climb into the tub by himself. Forget playing in his room, this kid wants to have his play time in the tub.

Austen's love for water carries over to his day at school where they feed his water habit with outings to the local spray park. Check out my little guy just before he runs into the sprays!

The Kleenex Box

The light sneaks through the closed blinds in Austen’s room making it seem like it’s noon rather than 7:30pm. I’m beginning to dislike daylight savings time now that my 2½ year-old can tell the difference between day and night and refuses to go to bed. I read him books, rub his back and sing him songs until I see the clock approaching 7:45pm, then I leave.

Austen wails loudly, “I have to go pee pee!” I return and assist him to the bathroom where he somehow convinces himself to pee even though he already peed not 15minutes earlier. “Now I have to go poo poo,” he informs me. I plop him down on the toilet and wait for him to tell me “bye,” which he does when he has to go number two. I pace in the hallway, waiting for him to call me for assistance so I can put him back in bed. After five minutes, there’s no progress on his bathroom adventure. “Okay, you’re done,” I tell him as I realize that he doesn’t have to go but is merely avoiding his bedtime.

He returns to his room, grabs his blue blanket and proceeds to sing to himself but not before telling me I need to be on the computer outside his room. I pretend to work there. After about five minutes I retire to our lower level to watch some TV and listen to him try to put himself to sleep on the monitor. After about 30 minutes, I still hear movement in his room. By now it’s almost 8:30pm and the sky has long since grown dark. I trudge upstairs and peek in his room. Austen is sitting up in bed, an empty Kleenex box in his hands and his floor covered in balled up tissues.

After, snapping this picture, I calmly collect the tissues, stuff them back into the box and set them out of his reach. I tell Austen one last time it’s time for bed and walk out the door trying not to let him see me smile.

Then, I thank my lucky stars that I have a boy. A girl would have found the scissors and probably cut her hair.

Best Friends or Siblings?

I can't figure out if Adler and Austen act more like best friends or siblings. Lately they have been having a lot of fun playing together but it inevitably ends in Austen crying or whining because Adler thinking that Austen is still playing, steals back her toy that Austen wants for himself.

Sometimes it even ends with poor Adler taking it on the nose from a less than pleased Austen. Of course this results in a swift timeout on the steps. No one hits my dog including Austen!

Decide for yourselves... do A & A act more like best friends or siblings?!

The Way Home

After a week in the Outerbanks, we were tan and relaxed, and reluctantly ready to leave the sandy beaches, warm days and lazy lifestyle of OBX for work and routine. That and we were a bit tired of eating out.

So we loaded up our SUV for the long trek home. We weren’t sure how it would go. Coming out we had essentially broken our trip into three days since we made a detour to Sesame Street Place. Now we had only two days to get home before we were expected back at the office. That meant long days in the car for Austen and Adler.

Adler, used to many long road trips, was the dream passenger. Quiet and easy – in fact, you hardly knew she was back there. Austen was surprisingly good too. For the first hour of the trip, we kept him entertained by pointing out things that we wanted him to see as we drove by – boats, tractors, trucks, etc. Then he watched a video. Austen isn’t a big TV person (kind of like his mom; there’s too many other things you could be doing) so on the way out he only watched about an hour of a DVD but on the way home, he must’ve realized that there was nothing better to do so he watched the same two DVDs over and over. He napped too and we played games.

In fact, I taught Austen how to get trucks to beep their horns by pumping his arm in the air. I’m not sure this was a good thing. Even after I wanted to stop playing, Austen would spy another truck and yell “Mommy, another one!” and frantically pump is arm up and down!

Austen was so good on the way home that we almost ran out of gas in the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia. He didn’t have to pee and he wasn’t asking to get out of the car, so I told Tom to keep driving until Austen got antsy. Of course, we needed to pay attention to the gas gage too. Knowing we had at least 50 miles worth of fuel, we ventured on, thinking we’d find a gas station within the next 30 miles or so. No such luck. At 20 miles with nothing but trees in sight, we shut off the air to preserve gas (sorry, Adler) – it was 80 degrees outside. Then Tom started taking his foot off the gas and coasting downhill. When we got to 5 miles, I saw Tom getting very nervous as he envisioned having to hike miles to a gas station leaving Austen, Adler and I to fend for ourselves in the mountains. At 0 miles we started to pray. There wasn’t much else we could do at that point besides look at it as an adventure. We drove at 0 for at least three miles and coasted into a gas station. We exhaled.

We ventured on to Charleston, West Virginia, for the evening and took a walk around the state capitol building with Adler and Austen to stretch our legs. We found a playground and let Austen play for awhile. Then it was back to the hotel to rest up for our long stretch home in the morning. The next day was much the same. Adler was perfect. Austen was great. One of the roads Google Maps said we should take was closed so that caused us to backtrack about 20 minutes but we were home and back to reality by 7pm on Monday.

Great trip. Good times. Better memories.

I'm already planning our next vacation.

OBX

OBX is short for Outerbanks. That's the Outerbanks of North Carolina. After we left Sesame Street Place, we headed south for about six hours until we arrived in Kitty Hawk, NC. You know the place - famous for the Wright Brothers. Who knew they were actually from Ohio but chose Kitty Hawk as their place to take their first flight?

Anyway, it's awesome in OBX. Weather is great. Think miles of beach houses and lots of beach accesses. We spent more than a few lazy days lying on the beach. Okay, that's not exactly true since we have a 2 1/2 year old so it was more like playing in the sand, frolicking in the waves and looking for shells on the beach.

It was Austen's first time in the ocean so at first he was scared of the waves that were pummeling the shore (there's some strong riptides out there.) But once he got used to the sand and the surf, we couldn't keep him out of there. He especially liked planting his feet in the sand as the undertow swept everything else back out to sea. At first he would hold our hands tight as the waves engulfed him up to his knees, then his belly button and sometimes his chest as he got a little braver. Later he had the courage to let go and run in the seaspray by himself sometimes falling down, laughing and then getting right back up. He loved chasing the birds (seagulls) and was especially attracted to the ATVs (all terrain vehicles) that were partrolling the beach. (Austen now says ATV.)

One morning, we all (including Adler) got to watch the beautiful dolphins swimming in the Atlantic as we walked on the beach. We saw many pelicans too - boy they are amazing creatures who will fly so close to the water in packs of four or five straight as an arrow. Austen called them choo choo trains because they looked like them in this formation. There were also sand crabs to be seen. If you were sitting on the beach and were keeping your eyes peeled you may notice little crabs popping up from the sand and scurrying along the beach. These sand crabs were in abundance and freaked Tom out a time or two as he was building Austen a sandcastle.

Days spent on the beach remind me of my youth as I remembered swimming with my brothers on the Jersey Shore and many Mass. beaches. My favorite vacation was the one we spent at Long Beach Island. I was 9. My brothers were 11 and 6. My older brother pulled my younger brother and me around about half of the week in an inflatable raft battling the big waves. Unfortunately that raft popped about half way through the week and my parents decided to buy us each our own boogie boards. Mark's was blue, mine was yellow and Mike's was orange. I remember how much fun we had on those things and how the days would fly by swimming in the ocean. That's one thing I miss about the Midwest. There's no reason to own a boogie board. I wonder what happened to mine.

Road Trip to Elmo’s House

For the last few weeks we’ve been preparing Austen for our Memorial Day excursion. We decided to take him to what we’ve been calling “Elmo’s House” but is really Sesame Street Place or Sesame Place as they call it. It’s an amusement park, water park, playground and theater all rolled into one just north of Philadelphia.

So Friday, we picked him up from school early and started our trek toward Philly with Adler in toe. For dinner we had a picnic at a rest area with Adler (too hot to leave her in the car while we ate inside) and Austen fell asleep to his Merry Music Makers CD while Tom and I drove on for a few hours more.

We decided to stop in Pittsburgh – mostly because it was about the amount of time we wanted to be on the road and also because we found a decent pet friendly hotel there. Despite the very confusing signs that you couldn’t see we managed to arrive at Station Square in Pittsburgh about midnight eastern time. While we were impressed by Pittsburgh and maybe would have wanted to spend more time exploring the city than just what we drove past, the next morning we had another five hour drive to Sesame Street Place and we wanted to be sure to have enough time at the park that day so we were up and off early.

Austen did great in the car on Friday and most of Saturday even letting us know when he had to go to the bathroom so we could pull over and he could pee on the side of the road (a definite advantage of having a boy) when we couldn’t make it until the next rest stop. But his impressive behavior was marred when he refused to take a nap. Knowing this was going to be a very long day for him, I was adamant in my request that he lie back and go to sleep. This was met by about a 45-minute temper tantrum where he tried to extract himself from his car seat. Needless to say about 30 minutes prior to our arrival at Sesame Street Place, he fell asleep.

As well rested as could be, and after we checked Adler into our hotel (where she was grateful for more than her 5x5 space, we headed over to see Elmo. Austen liked the amusement rides but what he really loved were the water rides. Now keep in mind, Sesame Street Place is catered to those under 5 so he could go on almost every ride. He did a tube slide and went down a big water slide on a raft for 8 people (with a life jacket on both times). He also loved the water play area where he could go down the slides you’d find at the playground and careen into the two feet of water at the bottom. He couldn’t stop laughing. He even liked when the big bucket of water was poured over everyone’s heads! I was amazed. We ended the evening with a live show featuring Elmo, Mr. Noodle and his goldfish Dorothy and before we could leave the park, Austen had to take his dad climbing through the rope course that was suspended high above the park. Talk about no fear.

I think Austen enjoyed himself. And, while he was a trooper, I would be remiss if I did not mention Adler. Perfect, perfect dog that she is – rode beautifully the whole way, adapted to two hotel rooms and did whatever we asked of her. She’s so easy. If only raising kids could be as easy!