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.