Weather Or Not

I'm a bit obsessed with the weather.

I have to know what the weather will be like for obvious reasons: Is it going to be nice out? Can we go to the park or do we have to stay inside? What should we wear? Shorts or long pants? Do we need to bring jackets?

I check the weather first thing in the morning both on-line and on TV. I also check it before I go to bed, because it might change. There used to be a weather phone line that you could call to find out the daily forecast (even the marine forecast if you were planning on boating). But sadly the weather line was discontinued last year because apparently no one but me ever called (and I called every day).

We are going on vacation this weekend to Door County, WI. For those of you who don't know it is the thumb of Wisconsin. Since Door County is considered Up North, it is subject to different weather. So I've had to add another search for my daily weather quests. I've checked this weekend's forecast about 10 times so far this week and its only changed about 5 degrees and added in a 40% chance of rain one day. So that is good. But I'll have to check it again tonight and tomorrow morning before we leave, just to be safe.

Now my best friend is married to a meterologist. Perfect. Well when we were planning a trip to the Adirondaks a few years ago, he told us to check the internet for the weather forecast. What?! What's the use of having a professional weather person as a friend if you can't give me a personalized forecast?

I am afraid that my obession with the weather is rubbing off on Bunny. Every morning she runs to the window to "check the weather". That's my girl.

Hotel!

This past weekend was the much hyped, much anticipated family trip to the hotel.

I could care less about staying in a hotel. To me a hotel is a means to an end. Staying in a hotel means you get to go somewhere, hopefully somewhere cool. A room is a room. It doesn't need to be fancy. In fact I've stayed in a hotel where you could close the door and flush the toliet from the bed. But it was in London so it didn't matter.

But this trip was all about the hotel because the hotel has a pool and Bunny is all about the pool. We had a trip to a children's museum planned the first day. It was a very cool museum, a lot nicer than the one in our city. But of course it didn't have a pool so we didn't stay too long before we were off to the hotel.

The first thing Bunny did when we got to our room (before we'd even put the bags down) was take off all of her clothes. She proceded to dance around (naked) and sing a little song about the pool. Well all right, I guess its time to go to the pool (with her bathing suit on of course). Since I am not quite ready to be seen in public in a bathing suit, I took a few pictures of the swimming and then hit the workout room (working out sort of made up for the vacation cheeseburgers but not really).




Now Bunny could have stayed in the pool all day. But her fingers were getting pruny and Bubs was getting tired so it was time to go. This is where the problem with the mini vacation came in. There was nothing really for us to do. It was grey, cool and rainy. Not exactly the weather you want to explore the city in. And other than the aforementioned children's museum, there wasn't a whole lot of stuff for kids to do.

If it had been just Bubs and I, we would have found a local establishment and drank up some of the culture. But that is not appropriate with a toddler in tow. So we sat in the hotel room watching TV. Fun! We had a movie set up for Bunny on her portable DVD player and we watched baseball. More fun!

After dinner we all watched Bolt together. I loved it. Bubs loved it. Bunny liked it I think. It was hard to tell. All I could here was "Can we go to the Pooooool?"

Finally it was time for bed. I shared a bed with Bunny. Well sharing isn't really the right word. There was a small spot for me. I could lay on my back or side. But there was no room to manouver because Bunny had decided to lay perpendicular to me. She had plenty of room. Me, not so much. So I spent the night trying not to get pushed off the bed when she decided to throw her hands over her head. FUN!

All and all it was a nice trip. Not fun, not enjoyable but nice. For Bunny.

Can We Go Now? Not Yet. How About Now?

I have learned recently that you never, under any circumstances, tell a three year old about any plans you may have. Because unless the plans are for right now, you will never, ever, ever, hear the end of it.

I made the mistake of telling Bunny that we were going out of town to stay at a hotel. I told her a full month and a half before we were actually going. Now its all she talks about.

"Can we go swimming at the hotel, momma?" Yes, you can swim at the hotel.

"When are we going to the hotel, momma?" At the end of April. "Is that now, momma?" No sweetie, not for a while. "How long is a while." 16 more days. "Is 16 a long time?" Yes it is.

We've tried marking the days off on the calendar to no avail. She is fixated on the hotel and wants to go right now. "Can we go now, momma." No sweetie, not now. "How about now, momma." No. "Now?" No! "Right now, mommma?" NO! "Now?" Momma then goes in the bathroom, shuts the door and curses herself for ever bringing this up. All the while hearing "Now?" "I wanna go to the hotel momma. Right now." "Why is the door closed, momma? Are you packing for the hotel, momma?

And I only have 16 days left of this nonesense.

And by the way we are going to another hotel next month, but its going to be a surprise. I don't think she'll even know until we are in the car on our way there. That is a much better idea.

Wanna Bet?

I love my husband. He is a wonderful man, a doting father and a loving husband. You can't ask for anyone better than him.

But he is also completely nuts.

He recently ordered some books. Everyday he'd come home from work and ask "Did my books come yet?" He looked just like a little boy waiting for Santa to come. Everyday I'd have to tell him that his books did not arrive. His face fell and he looked like I'd run over his pet.

But then his books arrived. He ran to the box, ripped it open, and hugged the books. He stared lovingly at their covers. "Look at these, aren't they wonderful?" Umm, honestly no. Then he opened one of the books and began to read "It says this guy has a WHIP of X and a . . ." I'm sure he continued talking but I blacked out for a moment because he was reading me baseball statistics.

Yes the books he ordered were for his upcoming fantasy baseball leagues. Leagues plural because there are two. Sigh.

Coupled with his strange obsession with fantasy sports is his extreme competitive nature. He pours over the stats looking for an advantage. He must win. He must beat his friends, especially Martin and David.

But apparently that is not enough for him. He also likes to challenge me. We bet on all sorts of things. Whose alma mater is going to beat the other's in football and basketball. (Usually its me but unfortunately this was a bad year for the Badgers). Who can correctly pick the most football games. Tonight we will see who gets the most Oscar winners. And so on.

He likes to make up games to compete at too: "I'm going to give you a hint and you have to guess the answer". My answer is usually I don't know or care, why don't you just tell me. Which, by the way, is not the correct answer.

One day he came home with one of those facebook notes on how well do you know your spouse. He said "Wouldn't it be fun if we wrote down what our answers would be and then the other had to guess what we wrote? We could see who got the most right. It be like the Newlywed Game." Sure, fun for you.

The only upside to this behavior is there is usually a prize involved - dinner or date night of the winner's choice. And the dinner or date is usually attended by the loving husband, not the crazy one. So I put up with it and I even try to win now and then.

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Or should I say Dinohouse.

Bunny received a lovely doll house for Christmas. It has 4 rooms, furniture and a little doll family. While she has in the past stated that "dolls are no fun" she has appeared to change her tune when it comes to doll houses. Everytime we see a doll house at a store or someone's house, she stops to play with it. She plays with the occupants of the house and seems to enjoy it.

So when Santa offered a doll house for Christmas, I agreed. Maybe my little girl would play with dolls after all.

I should have known better. After all, the residents of the zoo, barn, fairy house, plane and bus have all been displaced. These animals and people no longer reside in their original homes but in a big plastic bin. The dinos have taken over everything and with 31 dinos they need a lot of space.

And they took over the doll house as well. It was mass chaos in the doll house yesterday morning. The furniture was turned over and at times ejected from the house as the dinos took over. The poor family took to cowering under the staircase so they wouldn't be trampled. The dinos hung out the windows, lounged in the beds and ripped the roof right off the house. And Bunny could not have been more pleased.

When asked where the people were going to live. She looked around the room and said "the shopping cart". But when she got to the cart she realized that was where the lizard family lived. Hmm, maybe in the pink bin? No that was where the instruments are. The doll stroller? That would make sense. No. The stroller was currently occupied with a ball of yarn stolen from Mommy.

With no logical place to put the doll family, they were uncerimoniously dumped out of the house. They are no laying in a corner looking stunned and forelorn. Sorry dolls, I'm sure you are a nice family. Its just that dinos rule the roost here.

Shoo

We have an unwanted visitor in our home that is slowly driving us all insane. A fly has found its way inside and has been tormenting us all for the past few days.

As I may have mentioned before I am not a fan of bugs. And my budding entimologist hates flying insects. So it hasn't been fun.

At any given moment during the day you are likely to stumble upon the following scene in our house:

"Momma a fly. I don't like flies. Go away fly." While uttering these words Bunny will sprint towards me grab my leg and bury her head into my knee. Of course I am clutching a rolled up magazine looking to go all Carl Spackler on the fly. So there I am hunting the fly with a crazed wild look in my eyes while dragging a 30 lb. toddler on my leg.

Needless to say that doesn't work. The fly continues to buzz happily around our house while "I'm All Right" plays in the background.

Hoping that a different tactic would work, Bubs got all zen like a Fly Whisperer this morning. He tracked the fly to the back stairway. He calmly asked the fly to fly closer to the door. "I'm going to open the door and you are going to fly outside," he told the fly, expecting it to listen.

It did not listen. Why would it want to go outside into the cold when it could stay in our nice warm house.

The cats are no help either. When they were younger, they would have at least tried to catch the fly. There would have been flying leaps off of furniture at the fly. You would have seen them standing on their hind paws stretching up to pluck the fly out of the air. But alas they are in their golden years and they are content to lay in front of the heater curled in a ball while the fly buzzes around their ears.

So now I am developing a nervous tic. I imagine the fly is everywhere. I can hear his buzzing but I cannot catch him. Bunny is no better. She stops what she is doing every so often to scream "go away fly" and duck her head.

Go away indeed. We can't take much more of this.

Note: That sound of manical laughter you hear is me. The fly is no more. Ding dong the fly is dead.

The Way of the Gunn

Tim Gunn that is.

Now this may be interesting to no one but me, but yesterday I got to see Tim Gunn. I may have mentioned this before but I love him. So this glimpse of the man made my week.

Squeeee

That's the sound of me unleashing my inner fan girl because Project Runway is back. Tim Gunn, Heidi Klum, pure joy.

I started watching it while Bunny was still awake. She came running into my room and climbed into bed with me. "What are you watching?" "Project Runway." "What are they doing?" "The designers are making clothes out of items from a grocery store." "Oh." And then she settled into watch until bedtime. It was nice to have someone to watch with even if she was only 2 1/2.

It was the first episode where you get to meet all the designers. However, it was all sort of a jumble and you don't really get to know anyone.

But here are my first impressions:
Blayne - annoying, kinda creepy looking, butt ugly outfit, but he's kinda crazy so he'll be around for a while
Jerry - that was one ugly, uggggly dress / raincoat (a raincoat? really?) bye,bye
Daniel - cute in a Daniel V kinda way, loved the plastic cup dress
The Bang Sisters - three girls with dark hair and bangs, I can't really tell them apart yet, but they are cute and made cute dresses
Kelly - yet another girl with bangs but she's blond and has tatoos, loved her dress and she totally deserved to win

Project Runway always gets me in a creative mood. So hopefully that will lead to more jewerly designs. Who knows I may even add more to my store

Good Parenting or Enabling

I may have mentioned, once or twice, that my daughter is obsessed with dinosaurs. She has, at last count, 1,000,000 dinos or something like that. She knows their names and she knows whether they are plant or meat eaters. Its kind of scary.

So I decided to take a look at all of the dino paraphernalia that she has. At our house she has 5 unidentified bath/pool toy dinos, a dino puzzle with seven pieces and 8 plastic dinos (I could give you a who's who but you really don't want to know). Not too bad. She also has 3 dino books. A recording of the movie Dinosaur, which is watched in some part at least once a day. And at least two dinos are carried in her little red purse everytime we leave the house.



At my mom's house she has the same bath/pool dinos, a one armed T-Rex (according to her his arm will grow back), several other unidentified dinos, 5 finger puppet dinos and 5 wind-up dinos. She also has (on loan from my mom's library at school) 10 books on various dinos, including Megalodon, Apatosaurus and Velociraptors. She practically has the books memorized and always wants to see the skeleton pictures at the end.



And now its gotten to the point that if I see a dinosaur, I'll buy it for her. Whenever I'm at Target, I rummage through the bins to see if I can find a new one she doesn't already have (last time I scored a Gigantosaurus). They have a mini-dino set with 15 dinos and fake palm trees that I totally want to buy but I am afraid it will contain repeats of what we already have. And yesterday when I was buying a new shredder at an office supply store, I seriously considered buying a Stegosaurus calculator. But then I realized she can't do math yet so I skipped it. This time.

Maybe we've got a budding palentologist on our hands. Or maybe not. But for right now Bunny's dinos are like dolls to her. Yesterday we put on some tunes and had a good old fashion dino bash. Bunny served refreshments of chocolate cookies and vanilla juice. (Which if you didn't know is made by sticking a cardboard tube into a teapot. Its very tasty)




Parasaurolophus and Spinosaurus where having a dance party. They tried to start a dino mosh pit but Gigantosaurus was having none of that. So then they started pogo bouncing on their tails. Well that got the crowd going and soon Stegasaurus, Brachiosaurus and Triceratops joined in. And T-Rex accompanied us on the trumpet. It was a kick ass party and a good time was has by most. Except for Euoplocephalus (or as Bunny calls him Minmi, which is a similar looking but different dino) who decided to take a nap.

So I may chill out on buying new dinos for the time being. But I'm going to revel in the dino mania for as long as it lasts

What are you eating?

Lately Bunny has become obsessed with eating. Not so much by what she is eating (unless its ice cream) but by what everyone and everything else is eating.

Whenever we have lunch together, unless we are eating the exact same thing, she has to eat whatever I am eating. If I have a different kind of sandwich, if I have a frozen dinner, even if I have a salad, she has to eat it. In evitably she will like what I am eating more than what she is eating and want it. But if I start off giving it to her she probably won't eat it. Sigh.

She is especially interested if she sees you snacking on something. Probably because she knows its chips or something sweet. She will follow you around hoping to get some. We don't really have anything in our house she can't eat so its usually not a big deal. But sometimes Mommy buys chocolate that is just for her, so I've had to learn to save it for nap time.

Bunny is also obsessed with what animals eat. She has taken it upon herself to help daddy feed the cats every morning and night. She carries their plates of food and gently (or no so gently) places them on the floor. She then yells for them to eat but they really don't want to eat when she's around. Something about a screaming toddler that makes them a bit skittish, I don't know what it could be.

She also forced us to get a bird feeder. Well not forced, but she constantly talked about the bird feeders at my parents house until I gave in and bought one for her. She loves to "help" me fill the feeder and tells me that its okay if we spill because birds like to eat off the floor. She has even found a terracotta dish from an old planter and converted it into a bird feeder too. She carries that one around hollering for birds to come and eat. But again birds eating and yelling toddlers don't really mix. She is also totally mad that the squirrel in our yard has figured out how to eat out of the bird feeder and yells at him a lot.

Finally she is obsessed with the food the animals at the zoo eat. We usually get there first thing in the morning when all the animals have their food. In the bird house she doesn't care about the actual birds but wants to make sure they are eating. Which of course is usually accompanied by yelling at them to eat. She has also discovered the cart the zookeepers bring around with all the food. She loves to see what is on it - the fruit, the veggies, the live worms and insects, the dead mice. She is fascinated, while I'm totally grossed out at the last part.

Her interest carries over into the monkey house. She knows they eat vegetables, including lettuce and the other veggies we pretend they eat like broccoli and green beans just to get her to eat them. She knows they eat monkey chow too and thinks that is hilarious. She wanted to know if there was people chow or little girl chow.

Now if only I could get her as interested in her own food or at least something that is not ice cream. Hmmm, maybe I could make up something and call it little girl chow . . .

Things overheard in my house over the weekend

"No pants, pants too scary!"

Now I've heard of sassy pants, liar liar pants on fire, and even kitty pants (Tabasco's nickname - he's a tuxedo cat), but I have never heard of scary pants. In fact I am pretty sure that pants would never intentionally scare anyone.

So what was the problem? Who knows? Bunny had a little accident which necessitated new pants. So we got new pants out and the screaming commenced. Did she not like the pants we had picked out? Probably. Did she not want to wear pants at all? Likely.

This problem has cropped up on more than one occasion, even when she gets to pick out the pants herself. It seems that she preferrs to run around in just a diaper and shirt. She has even refused to take a nap wearing pants. She will just start yelling "Pants off, pants off" until you remove the offending article of clothing No problem when we are in the house but big problem if we are trying to leave. You see we live in Wisconsin and even though it is spring, it is still way to cold to go without pants. Plus people will look at you funny if your toddler is just wearing a diaper.

Since we were headed to my parents house for dinner, we needed to get some sort of pant or other leg covering on her. Luckily she agreed to wear a dress and tights, so the crisis was averted for a day. But who knows what it will be like today.

Dinosaur Roar

Bunny is a bit obsessed with dinosaurs. It first started when my parents had a rubber T-Rex at their house. She loved to play with it every time we went there. The T-Rex will even sit at the dinner table and "eat" the occasional green bean. My mom also had a puzzle book with other dinosaurs. Bunny could say Iguanadon before she was two.

So I got her a dino puzzle of her own. She loves to take the wooden pieces out and play with them. They were toys rather than puzzle pieces to her. Given this interest in dinosaurs, I found a few books. I got her My First Dinosaur Board Book. She loves it. There are tons of pictures of dinos - most of which I didn't even know existed with names I can't pronounce. But Bunny knows most of their names. In fact if I show her a picture of a certain dino she will say "that's Coelophysis" so matter of factly as if I should have known. Silly mommy.

While shopping without Bunny yesterday I found some toy dinos - a T-Rex, a stegosaurus, a triceratops and a brachiosaurus (although it could be a barosaurus but Bunny calls it a brachiosaurus so that is what it is). The first thing Bunny did when she saw them is take them to meet their wooden counterparts. She lined them all up next to eachother and introduced them. Too cute.

So today Daddy has the day off and we are taking Bunny and the new dinos to the museum to meet their life sized counterparts.