Locked Out.

Today we set out for June's weekly gymnastics class. Or perhaps I should say June's/Rudolph's/Fluffy the Dog/Huey the Hippo/Figaro the Cat's gymnastics class, thankyouverymuch. I helped June put her leotard on, braided her hair and pushed the girls into the garage to get into the car. The car was locked, and I turned around to go back into the house to get my keys. The door to the house was locked too. What? I still don't know how this happened. I don't know how I locked the door in the garage without my key. At this point, that feeling sank in. You know, the "locked out of the house" feeling. It's quite similar to the "dropped my phone in the toilet" feeling, yet not quite as severe as the "showed up to the airport without my wallet" feeling. I think some people call it "hopeless doom."

I ran to the front of the house. Locked. I ran to the side of the house and assessed the fence situation. Not open-able from the outside. I dragged a chair from the garage (that we realllly need to take back to the church at some point) and set it up outside the fence so I could jump over it. In a dress. The chair sank 4 inches into the ground under my weight (which just added to my overall awesome feeling), and there was just no way that was a viable option.

Dan has a temple recommend interview tonight, and he was planning on working late to finish a project and then go straight to the interview from work. I knew that he would come home at any point if I asked him to, but I didn't want to ask that. It's really hard for him to have an open evening to schedule an appointment as it is, and I knew he didn't have another open night for several weeks.

I wanted to ask a neighbor to come help me, but nobody was home. I even thought about asking one of the neighbors waaay down the street that I haven't met yet, but I didn't know how that would go over. "Hi, you haven't met me but I promise I live nearby. Will you help me break into my house?"

So I made a plan. First, I called the gymnastics center and told them June wouldn't be coming. I'm pretty sure her teacher is throwing a party for the next several days in honor of this occasion.

Then I decided that the girls and I would walk to the park. Where we would die.

A bit pessimistic perhaps, but it was HOT outside. I was sweating like crazy. I figured we could go to the park for an hour and then walk about a mile down the road to a Walgreens or Subway for dinner/drinks/bathroom. And then hopefully a neighbor would be home. I knew that there and back was a lot of walking for the girls, but it's all I knew to do.

We started on the trek for the park. I didn't mention to June that we weren't going to gymnastics anymore, and she didn't seem to notice. Sometimes her oblivion really pays off.

On our way, a man working on someone's lawn stopped me. "Are you Mrs. Johnson?" he asked. I told him no, I wasn't. He explained to me that he was doing a job for her but hadn't met her yet. I explained to him that we were on our way to the park because we were locked out of house. And then he told me he used to be a locksmith and had some tools in his truck. And so we went back to the house, and he started working.

You can barely see what is happening here, but I didn't want him to feel weird with me taking a picture.

He didn't have all of his tools and our lock was tricky, he told us. He had been working for about 20 minutes when I told him, "I know you have another job to do. Don't worry about this. We will figure something out."

And then he told me, "Honey, I have all the time in the world to help people."

Man alive. Tears sprang right to my eyes, but more importantly, those words stung my heart. Stung, I say, because I rush too much. Helping people can seem a nuisance to me. 

It was about this time that he noticed that the hinges to the door were on the outside. "WHY DIDN'T I NOTICE THAT BEFORE?" he exclaimed. He ran to his truck, got out a few tools, and we were inside in 10 more minutes.

I feel like the Lord is really aware of my little family. We are pretty much a huge mess and rather consistently contentious and disorganized and whiny, but the Lord helps us every single day.

In other news, my girls continue to be nutso, in the good way.

June:

I did this twisty hairstyle on June one day last week and have never been able to emulate it since. I have made several attempts, but they have all been duds. I loved this first one though.

June had a pajama day at her school this week. She was very excited about her "pajama party", and I was so jealous that I managed to stay in my jammies a good part of the day as well. 

Gwen:

Gwen is SPUNKY. She's a definite daredevil and HATES being inside. And the average outside temp is 86 with tons of humidity. Ugh. We still manage to go to the park several times a week, usually first thing in the morning after taking June to school. She throws a fit every time we start to head back home.

My sweet, easy shopping partner has been replaced by this maniac who won't sit in the cart. She tries to jump out every chance she gets, or she tries for the oh-so-comfortable arms around Mommy's neck while still standing in the cart and while Mom somehow blindly pushes the cart around the store. She has recently discovered that she can ride on the outside of the cart but gives no warning when she is done with this position. She'll just jump down at any moment, seconds away from being run over by a cart. It's an exhilarating experience, complete with many disapproving looks from strangers who apparently just moved here from a planet where kids don't exist.

She also takes great pride in dressing herself.

Dan:

Dan has been spending a ton of time cleaning our crazy yard. We're in that awkward place where we don't want to be the junky neighbors on the street (though that's going to be a hard title for us to shake) but we also don't want to put a ton of money into our grass-less yard in a house that we don't own. We have raked about 40 bags of leaves so far, and Dan has done most of the work.

Me:

I'm really enjoying life in Jacksonville. I miss my Tampa peeps, and I really miss the warmer beach experience the gulf provides as opposed to the ocean. But my life here is calmer since I don't have to work so much. Plus, my husband is just the type of guy who likes making me happy. I don't know how this grouch won him over, but my Mother's Day was spent being pampered. I had so much yummy food and after church, I spent most of the day reading a book in bed. It. Was. Awesome.

Quotables.

Real quotes from the past couple of weeks:

June: Mom! Poop smells GOOOOD!

June, on repeat, for 50 straight minutes at gymnastics (you know, while all of the other kids are actually participating): I'M RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER!

Me: June, should we march out to the car?

June: Yes! March! March! March! March! March Twenty Six! (her birthday)

It's been awhile. It's mostly due to the fact that I've been pondering many deep subjects about which I wish to execute a pensive, thought-provoking discussion. It's an election year, you know. Much to discuss. Like why Gwen is constantly covered in welts, scratches, snot and stinky diapers.

Little girl played in the backyard a loooong time yesterday while I caught up on important reading (catalogs that had come in the mail from which I took pictures of everything I don't want for Mother's Day and sent them to Heidi, so we could mock them) and when I looked up, I would find her and June filling up old plastic Easter eggs with rain water that had pooled in the back of her plastic car and trying to drink them, chasing her "pet" lizards, gathering sticks and throwing them across the yard and other festivities. This girl is a wild one. This morning when she got up, she had a few huge bug bites on her hands and legs and a puffy eye that got better as the day went on. And after throwing a caterpillar in the garage at me, she was just as happy and scrappy as could be.

I don't know if you can see how swollen her already-chubby little hand is, but that's a bug bite there.

In other Gwen news, it's always a delight taking her to wait with me during June's gymnastics class. Gwen climbs all over everything, trying to have her own gymnastics class, but we won't call it that in case they charge us more.

My face and attitude each week quickly descend from happy to frazzled to downright frustrated within the hour time frame. And then we have to leave, which involves my dragging two limp 25-pound noodles across the parking lot.

She's definitely not a baby anymore and can even sport a ponytail. So cute for my scrappy little Scout-like (To Kill A Mockingbird) girl.

Speaking of hair (I did forewarn you about the deep nature of this post), June insists on "doggie ears" or "Rudolph ears" or "horse ears" almost every single day. They are the same style but the name transitions with whichever role she is taking on for the day.

In character as a dog at the library

She looks adorable, but I only wish she would let me take the hair down and wear the curls from time to time.

Darling, right? I feel a bribe coming on. I should really write a parenting book called "Bribes and More Bribes: Success from Potty Training to College Graduation."

Except it would be a lie on the potty training front. Yes, June did have that ONE successful experience, but after 10 consecutive days of potty training with no other successes, I finally waved the white diaper of surrender. I think Gwen was especially grateful as she had been the victim of a major potty accident the day before. I had June sit on the potty for around 30 minutes, all the while she was insisting she didn't have to go. After the half hour was up, I put her panties back on her and she went to the kitchen to get a snack. Not one minute later, she peed all over the kitchen floor. This was how potty training looked every day with June, but this time was especially bad and the pee was everywhere. Two seconds later, Gwen came running into the kitchen, slid on the pee, and went flying across the floor until she crashed against the fridge. Her hair, back and everything else was covered in pee. I didn't even know what to start cleaning first--June, Gwen or the deathtrap floor.

Since I admitted defeat, June has continued to show very little interest in the potty. Yesterday, however, while we were running late to something, she announced she wanted to go. So I retrieved the potty, and she and Gwen began to both try to sit on it. It was quite the fight. And then five minutes later, June got up from the potty, announced she was done (leaving a completely empty pot) and we went on our way.

I've been trying to introduce fun craft activities more often so that tv is not such a prevalent presence in our lives, but I must admit: I stink at it. However, we did recently do something the girls really enjoyed.

The girls really enjoyed putting together this scene for the wall in our kitchen. I made most of it, taking direction from my two executive decision makers. Some of the stuff I made was not up to snuff, however. June would say, "Well that looks different" when I taped many of my creations to the wall.

Speaking of different, we made this school bus out of an old oatmeal container. It does not look like a school bus at all. Did I mention I stink at this?

It's supposed to be a side view.

We had Stake Conference on Sunday, and our Stake Center is a very old building with a cry room. It was so lucky for us because we spent the entire time there. The girls loved the space, and I listened much more than I would have.

We have been continuing our tradition of watching a musical every Sunday. Recently, we watched Sound of Music and West Side Story. I must admit that we cut West Side Story short because the first half is fun and the second half is so depressing!!

Can I please be Baroness Schraeder when I grow up?

I know I'm getting older. I cry at everything. I cried during totally non-cry worthy moments in both of these movies. I cried at the dance scene at the gym in West Side Story. You know, when they are trying to out dance each other. I kept thinking--they are such good dancers, and then I started crying. I'm losing it! All I ask for is a room with a view one day, folks.

And that's a wrap.

Friends and Family

I've been sick. I haven't had a voice in 6 days. Daniel has seemed a bit perkier as a result, but I'm so over it by now. I trudged along in sickness for the first several days because I had commitments with YW and other things, but yesterday vomit was added to the mix from both June and me. Vomit is the next level, right? Dan came home from work yesterday to find me lying on the bathroom floor, begging for mercy from the stomach gods. I had also been cleaning up June's mess in between my own issues, and I couldn't take another minute of it. I have tried so much to be the strong, independent wife a husband who works and goes to school full-time needs, but when Dan talked about getting off early the next day to come help me, I broke. "Please," I pleaded. "Please do not leave me alone with them!" I said, my eyes darting between Gwen, who was taking each dvd out of its case and throwing it on the floor and June, who wasn't sure if she should let herself throw up or try to swallow it back down. I must have looked pretty frightened because Dan immediately emailed his boss and explained the situation and was able to stay home with us today. I took two glorious naps in the middle of the day and finally feel a little better.

Dan is a great nurse. He pampers. He goes to the store and gets your favorite movies. He buys multiple types of medicine to "see which one works best." He cooks, he cleans.

I am a terrible nurse. I don't like being around sick people. I'm documenting this scene of Dan taking care of me today so that I can remind myself for the next time he's sick. Because whenever anyone in my family is sick, it really throws off my schedule and I get annoyed. Incredulous statements such as,  "Well maybe just go to school/work, and see if you feel better" and then "you're still feeling sick? but it's been THREE hours!!" have been known to fly out of my mouth.

In the midst of my sickness, however, I was able to keep some priorities straight, i.e. discuss a fave home reno blog with my sister.

The sign of true friendship is the ability to carry on multiple conversations, ranging from serious to trivial, at any given time.

Speaking of friends, my friend Cherilee and her friend Danielle came to Jacksonville last week. We watched conference together and were able to hit up the beach with Gwen while June was at school.

We were doing some calculating and realized that Cher and I have known each other for thirteen years. I moved into her apartment, hardly knowing anyone when I was a mere 18 year old baby at BYU. Now we are both old crotchety ladies who like to go to bed early. It's nice to have someone who understands that about you.

My sister also visited us this week. I have ONE picture from the visit. And here it is: four cousins in the bathtub after 5 hours of beaching it up together. We had a great time, and my kids like nothing more than to be with their cousins. End of story.

Gwen is the cutest and crankiest baby. This pic sums it all up.

June started two activities up this week: swimming lessons and gymnastics. We're hoping these activities will help her in the physical coordination and development department. She still can't jump with two feet off the ground and land on her feet. She has a lot of other issues in that department too, and we're trying to figure it out.

Her swim teacher is a dream. June's first week she was the only kid in her class, and I loved the one-on-one aspect (without paying for the one-on-one aspect). The teacher quickly saw how hard it is to carry on a conversation with June and asked me for some thoughts along the way. She summed up June with the following sentence. "This girl is a character, but I bet she wins over a lot of hearts wherever she goes." Yep. Yep.

And from her primary teacher this week, "Do you know how hard it is to take a picture of June?? Really hard!!" Yep. Yep. So while I admit to taking horrible photos, June gets to share a little in the blame of the constant blurriness.

Other miscellany:

Working for a grocery store has its perks. Dan brings home sample items vendors bring into the headquarters quite often, which has only been increased by the fact that his company is moving to a different office across town. They are trying to get rid of everything, and we've had multiple dinners where we just have taste testings.

This is how June prefers to ride a cart at the store, and you know what I say--no problem!! Gwen is in jammies because we have all been sick.

Spring pictures. Too many comments. Another piece of evidence that June might be the hardest kid to photograph in the entire world.

That is a grape on her eye. The whole thing has a "Clarice" feel to it, don't ya think?

Happy Tuesday! And don't you forget it.

I'm going to stop writing now because I'm obviously sick and totally unfunny but wanted to keep the ol' blog updated.

Supplement.

As if my last post wasn't long enough, I forgot to add some things to it.

First off, June received amazing presents from her grandparents for her birthday. I don't really buy my kids any presents for their birthdays (yet). They are little, and the presents they receive from their grandparents are more than enough. Plus, I want to set the bar low for number of presents so that I can easily match it every year.

My kids really lucked out in the grandparents department. My mom always finds the cutest dresses and sends them my way.

She also sent June a hoodie and a couple of interactive books. June and Gwen both have been carrying the books around everywhere we go.

My mother-in-law Kristi is crafty. You might call me the Anti-Craft. So I feel super fortunate to have her in my life. This year, she made June some puppets.

And June loves to cook with me every night, and so Kristi made her her very own apron.

SO cute.

And some Easter thoughts:

My Easter was super chaotic. At church, I was running June to sit on the potty (for no reason) every few minutes. I missed half of the musical numbers and the one musical number I played, my nerves were shot because it was from Handel's Messiah with four sharps and rather difficult.

After church, the glaze burning/smoke detector/Gwen hitting her head/egg hunt downpour happened, and while everything turned out great, I didn't feel like I got to really think about Easter the way I wanted.

Monday morning, I sat at my piano and played and sang Easter songs to myself. Easter is my favorite holiday, and it shows in my piano music. I think I have one Christmas song in my collection and about 5 Easter songs. I would love to be in charge of an Easter program one day (but not until my kids are all potty trained, so 50 years). Anyway, I spent a lot of time singing the words of one in particular, called "Did You See Him in the Garden?"

The lyrics are as follows:

Did you see him in the garden when he bled from every pore?

Did you feel his lonely anguish when he asked to drink no more?

Did you see his three disciples as they slept through his great pain?

Did you hear his footsteps coming, taking up the cross for men?

Did you watch him through the courtyards, did you hear their angry lies?

Did you feel the lash upon you, did you follow by his side?

Were you there when they condemned him, and they nailed him to a cross?

Did you hear him then forgive them as his loved one mourned their loss?

Then the last verse, with a key change:

Did you see him in his glory when the stone was rolled away?

Did you feel the hope of all men when his ransomed life was paid?

Will you know him when you see him once again on heavenly throne?

Will he say to you in pure love: Come to me, thou art mine own?"

"Come to me, thou art mine own!

Tears were flowing down my cheeks in a steady stream, my voice cracking and choking as I sang the lyrics. I sobbed afterward for awhile on the piano bench and then turned around to where June and Gwen had stopped playing with blocks and were just silently watching me. You could tell they thought their mother had really lost her mind.

I was grateful for that Easter moment I was able to have, even if it wasn't on Easter Sunday. I felt like it was a tender mercy from a Father who knew I needed that moment. I am grateful for my knowledge that Christ is Risen. He gave the gift of his life so that we can be forgiven and be more than we are. He was resurrected, and He still lives!

Prison Break, aka Spring Break

We are quickly discovering that Duval County is a "go big or go home" sort of place. It is made up of one city, Jacksonville. Did you know that Jacksonville is the biggest city by area in the contiguous United States? 'Tis true!! There are about a million trillion kids at June's elementary school, and I think the only way they can convince people to work there is by offering generous breaks. June had 11 days off for Spring Break.

The first day, I let the girls chill, which is right up June's alley. She will make a great senior citizen traveling through Europe someday.

On day 2, we went to Tampa for a couple of days so I could retrieve the infamous package I sent to my neighbor when we first moved here. It was so fun to see our favorite Tampons. I dreaded coming back because I knew what I had to do with the remaining several days of Spring Break.

Potty.

Training.

Oof. Two seemingly innocent words that cut me to the very core. June is quite the Stubborn Sally and has shown 00000 interest in using the potty. She has done it a few times, but just doesn't want to. Before you leave your comment with your suggestions of a sticker chart, toy bribe, skittles-every-time-you-sit-down method, please know that all theories have been attempted. It doesn't matter much when your child does not care one bit about any of those things.

Anyway, at my last IEP meeting with her teacher, Mrs. Spann said it was time. You know, since June turned 4 on Saturday, and all of her friends were potty trained when they were 2.

So I let June run around nekked and free as a jail bird, bribing her with the ipad every time she would sit on the potty. And on the potty she sat. And held it.

She held it all day until Dan came home and I went to mutual. When I got home, I found out that his night had been horrendous, with June both peeing and throwing up everywhere. Poor girl. But really, poor Dan.

The next day started out great. June went on the potty twice. That was around 10:30 a.m. Then she proceeded to hold it until after lunch the next day. It pained me to watch her. I begged her to use the potty. I was shocked when her bed wasn't wet when she woke up. She cried. I cried. She put a piece of tape "down there" as a band-aid because "i hurt". She threw up again.

Finally she went. In the potty. Sweet victory.

She has made it through the night dry ever since. But has pretty much stopped caring about being wet and gross. I have her sit on the potty first thing every morning and she refuses to go. Then I put on her panties, and one minute later she is wet. Luckily, I've been super patient and loving during this whole process. Notttttttt.

Honestly, Gwen shows more interest in using the potty than June.

We stayed at home a ton over Spring Break, which is not my favorite. But we needed to be close to the potty so that June could choose not to use it. I was going a bit stir crazy, but one day we had fun painting.

June paints two things: 1. blobs of color until they turn brown and 2. the sun.

"Brown: A Color Study."

2. "The Sun. I Once Put A Band-Aid Where The Sun Don't Shine."

June's 4th birthday was also over Spring Break, and it was a nice reprieve from the potty training. I had not left the house in three days and decided to brave it by taking June out to brunch with my visiting teachers. Let's just say that June really left her mark at Panera. Later that day, she went to see her first movie in a theater, "Zootopia."

The endless sugary baked goods for her birthday proved all too much just before dinnertime.

Have you read the Berenstain Bears book, Too Much Birthday? There was a bit of that going on around here. Turns out you can still be put in time out on your birthday.

By the time we were ready to serve June's birthday dinner of choice, hamburgers, I found her like this.

Happy Birthday, June. You are my match in stubbornness and also the funnest girl in the room at any given moment (except for maybe this one).

Easter was the next day, and I wanted to celebrate it with our closest friends here in Jacksonville, the Spragues. They have a large family (9 of the coolest kids you'll meet) and so we decided to take dinner to our neighborhood park.

About an hour before, I was warming the ham and making the glaze, when June had an accident and needed help. I changed her pants when the smoke alarms went off, and smoke filled the entire house. The glaze was burned to where it was just ashes. The whole house stank so badly. The commotion freaked Gwen out, who ran into the garage and slipped and fell on some oil and hit her head. After which, June had another accident in her pants. Needless to say, I was feeling very relaxed when it was meal time. Dan left a few minutes before I did with all of the eggs for the hunt. He had them hidden just in time when the Spragues and the girls and I showed up. We set out all of the food and the kids started their hunt, just as it started to POUR rain. We collected as many eggs as we could, plus the food, plus 11 kids and headed to my smoke-smelling house and ate on the floor like the drowned rats that we were. And my ham was really dry.

You know you have found the right kind of friends when they don't blink an eye at something like that.