Rebound At The Children's Museum

It hasn't been an easy 48 hours for the Melder household (and particularly me being the mom, this is not an easy job!). Thankfully Doug's bug was definitely just a 12 hour illness and then 32 hours of recuperation after that rough time. As Doug was regaining strength (but still under quarantine), I was laying the boys down. They were in good spirits and I was exhausted, but things went well. After Koen went to bed though the drama ensued. I had decided that I should clean all the bathrooms again to keep the germs away and so I would feel a little more comfortable in my own house (I hate, hate stomach bugs, just gross me out!). So I just get everything cleaned and Koen calls me that he has to go to the bathroom. Thankfully he didn't have a bug, but he definitely had to "run" to the bathroom (get my drift?) all night long. I started with just replying to his calls, but that was so exhausting by 10pm and we were on our 6th trip up and down. I made a bed for him in my room, right close to the bathroom. Unfortunately just as he was finally relaxing and going to sleep (it was so obnoxious because I felt bad he was troubled by this, but at the same time he was so bright and cheery like he thought it was quite a lot of fun), Tavin then woke up crying and started screaming for me. I figured he was probably sick or something, but thankfully it was a total fluke and I just comforted him that once and he slept the rest of the night. So back down to Koen, a few more trips to the bathroom for him and finally I think I fell asleep at midnight. My original hope was to go to bed at 9pm. Oh well! I think Koen and I had about 4 hours of solid sleep and maybe 2 more hours of interrupted sleep. Good times. I was thankful though for sleep at all and that Koen really wasn't sick to his stomach at all, very odd, but he was fine after 7am. Never complained all night of a stomach ache or anything. I let him veg a little after we got up together (of course once I was up he wanted to be up). And I decided that since he was having no more bathroom trips, had a good appetite at breakfast and still no complaints of aches and pains we would continue with our plan for today...the Children's Museum with playgroup!

Unfortunately the tiredness hit Koen in the form of total lack of listening and obedience skills on the way out the door. And since I was so tired I can admit I definitely did not have the best response. I've been trying to work on that so much too that I just again felt like such a defeated failure. I got the boys and our stuff out to the car and then cried the whole way to the museum.

Thankfully things improved once we got to the museum. It was exactly what we needed, a perfect distraction. They actually had changed much of the first floor since the last time we visited and it was very interesting to Koen especially. Thank goodness! You can see our exploration of the first floor through the pictures below (we never made it to another floor we had so much fun with it all)...

Tavin was a little moody, but would find things here and there that would really grab his attention. He liked this pole that made lots of noise when the washers fall down it. Big surprise. You should have heard the silly, loud noise the boys created on the way to the museum in the car.Koen was completely acting like himself and had his normal energy. Here he is on the maze.Koen cut out some neat shapes out of cardboard using this die-cast saw.This was probably my favorite element of the first room we visited. Kyndal and I actually dove right in and I think we enjoyed the project just as much as the boys. There were nuts and bolts, pieces of frame and other materials to construct and add to the little construction already created. Koen and Kaiser loved it.Porter and Tavin joined in a little bit. Tavin thought he was helping I think.Next stop was a fun kaleidoscope exhibit. The boys at first had fun making designs with different shapes, colors and fabrics. Then Koen thought he'd put his face in (with his tongue hanging out in a silly face of course). You can see about 20 Koen's on the screen (that would be way too many to handle!) and Kasier thinks it is hilarious!Another shot so you can see Koen's lovely face.Now onto the Garage Works room. We always enjoy this room and it was even better today due to the remodeling and revamping the museum has done recently. Tavin spent most of the time in the Smart Car they have on display. This face is because he can see Kaiser is up to something...And sure enough Kaiser was filling up the gas!Later Tavin evacuated the driver seat so that he could be in charge of the radio controls (he claps his hands pretending there is music) and Kaiser took the wheel.
Tavin also enjoyed racing cars down ramps (although he definitely says "mine" the whole time the car goes down as if to warn anyone from taking it when it reaches the bottom - so generous).Koen drove the car a little too and took Harlow for a drive.She was so happy about it that she leaned in to give Koen some loves.We stayed at the Garage Workshop for a long time, but then headed into the special exhibit..."How People Make Things." Such a great exhibit for inquiring minds of little boys! Here is Koen pretending to sculpt wood (actually wax).Tavin loved the trolleys. They were build-your-own though, so he got a little frustrated that the pieces came apart. Koen also loved this activity. He made about 10 trolleys while we were there.This is why Koen got so excited about the trolley-making. He watched every move of the robotic arm display that assembled and disassembled trolleys. Tavin liked watching it too.Here's the Koen robot getting the job done.And Tavin found another car (and see brother is still making trolleys in the background!).After a long time in this area as well, we headed to the lunch room with our friends. It was a really nice visit to the museum. If you have a membership or haven't been in awhile, you should definitely go. I love all the changes they've made! And Grampa, I think you and Koen should go while you are here. Your engineering mind would take these displays and exhibits to a whole new level for Koen (plus I think you would love it!). Thanks for turning our day around playgroup friends and The Children's Museum of Pittsburgh!!!

Rolling With The Punches

After such a fun evening with Koen, I was in good spirits and headed to bed a little early. Ahhhh. Unfortunately, Doug came home super sick with a stomach bug shortly thereafter. I hate stomach bugs. Therefore I lay in bed with my stomach in knots much of the night worried about catching it, thinking about poor Doug and what if we all get it. This is just after Tav is finally on the mend and we were all relatively healthy for 24 hours. Oh well, at least we seem to only get minor illnesses most of the time. We have much to be thankful for.

Needless to say I spent my morning before the boys got up disinfecting the 1st floor since Doug slept down there (he moved to the office pull-out couch to quarantine when I woke up). Then I got the boys up, fed, dressed and out the door so that we could take Koen to nursery school. I had no desire to go back home and the germs (although I feel I did quite a sufficient job on the 1st floor), so Tavin and I went to Giant Eagle for some groceries including Gatorade, ginger ale and crackers for poor Doug. Here's Tavin enjoying a car cart (a treat I rarely indulge in because they are so hard to push!).Then I took Tavin to the Squirrel Hill library. It was so fun. I haven't actually ever been there because we love our library in East Liberty, but it was fun to go somewhere different. Tavin loved checking out the different toys and roaming through the book stacks. It was refreshing for me to peruse all the different books available. I think I checked out over 20 books (I think we already have close to that many at home).

After our stay there we headed back home for a brief stop-in to drop-off the supplies for Doug, get a snack for Koen and switch to the stroller. It was getting in the upper 30's and I needed some fresh air to burn off my anxiety. It was a really nice walk and the boys were in good spirits for it too. Koen was super excited to hear about the new library books and after a yummy lunch we headed up to naptime and we read for a long time both enjoying the new stories.

Well, keep us in your prayers. That Doug will feel better (thankfully it does seem to be a 24 hour bug) and that Koen, Tavin and I will be spared this yucky illness! Thanks!!

Christmas Cookie Making

Today we again made Christmas cookies. We had shared and eaten through the batch we made a week and a half ago, so I figured it would make another fun activity time with the boys (primarily Koen). We ended up saving the task for after naptime due to time constraints and behavioral issues this morning before church (ugh, 4 year olds and their sidekicks!!). Thankfully after church and after naptime Koen was much more the 4 year old I enjoy spending time with and working with so the cookie-making project was going to be a perfect activity. Unfortunately, Tavin woke up super early from his nap coughing and it was apparent quite early on into our project that he was very cranky. Here he is before the meltdown pretending with his own mixing bowl and spoon.Koen has become quite the helper in the kitchen. Last year I would've had to watch his every move with the bowl, but this year he actually gets things mixed together quite well and I just have to do some good strokes to finish it off.Koen loves cutting out the shapes. He has learned that the rolling out the dough part is for Mommy to do which is a relief because that task is not easy to share with a 4 year old. Tavin wanted to do some cut-outs too. I wish I could've gotten a picture, but it's tough to hold a child, guide the cut-out shape and hold a camera, so you will just have to imagine it. Right after that though he got bored with the cookie-making and totally lost it. He cried on and off between trying to play until dinner was ready (amazingly I multi-tasked the cookie-making overseeing and making dinner for the boys and myself...it's a good thing Koen is getting so good with baking!). I eventually had to just put Tavin in his highchair and he drank milk and sucked his thumb. He was so tired he was stumbling and bumbling around Koen and I. I felt terrible for him because I knew our project was over his head, but I also knew that his crankiness was totally due to lack of sleep and normally he would play well while we did something like this. Poor guy. After we got the cookies in the oven we sat down to dinner and I think Tavin getting some food in his system helped. Koen and I took a break from our project until after we laid Tavin down as we knew he wouldn't enjoy the slow decorating process.

Koen, on the other hand, is quite the decorator this year! I'm so impressed with his attention to detail, his use of symmetry and his good judgement on not overdoing the decor. This time we used melted milk chocolate out of nozzled plastic bottles to decorate our cookie cut-outs. Koen loved this activity! He even said he liked it better than icing cookies.My bottle of chocolate took quite awhile to warm up and melt, so Koen got a head start on the cookies and he did an amazing job. He probably did 2/3 of the cookies himself. In these pictures you can probably see which you think are mine and which are his, but I was so impressed with his designs and careful use of the chocolate.We enjoyed our handiwork before heading up to bed. Yum. Delicious! Oh yes, I meant to mention that this recipe is a whole wheat cut-out cookie from allrecipes.com. This is the 2nd or 3rd year I've used it and we love it. Very simple recipe and is very easy to roll out. My only FYI is to watch out as you add the water as you probably don't need as much as it calls for. Here's a link to the recipe.http://allrecipes.com/recipe/whole-wheat-cut-out-cookies/detail.aspx

North Way Oakland Family Christmas Party 2011

Today was the North Way Oakland Family Christmas Party. Yesterday before Tavin's turnaround I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to go. I love this event. The whole sanctuary is just packed with families, fun activities, Christmas lights and yummy food. Such a great atmosphere of fellowship and fun for the kids and the parents. I was so excited that Tavin had a great night's sleep last night and we could go as one big happy family today.

When we arrived the boys jumped right into coloring before the "show" began.A friend offered to take our picture since she saw me trying to get one of the boys. The picture didn't exactly turn out great of the boys, but Doug and I are smiling!The music started shortly thereafter. The volunteers, interns and staff are so enthusiastic and just make the music, hand motions and theme contagious. I'm so thankful for these people that are so passionate about our kids.Kyndal got a hilarious action shot of Koen and Doug playing air guitar. Oh, boys!More fun music from the Kidz team...They announced the virtue of the month, Generosity, during the program today. During one part of the skit when one of the people were talking about how he wanted everything for himself Koen leaned over to me and said, "Mommy, he's really greedy." He was getting it! It's so fun to see him growing up and starting to grasp these things.Had to include a picture of the elf. So thankful Doug didn't have to dress up as anything embarrassing this year. Actually because we have more staff at Oakland this year, Doug actually had no responsibilities for this event this year and we got to attend simply as a family in the community. So great. Thanks, team!!Koen was transfixed during a clip of Linus reciting Luke 2 from "Charlie Brown's Christmas".Tavin was a little pouty this morning. He wanted to be with me every second and he was asking to go home in his car seat (he has made up a word for it and points at his back end when he says it, that's how you know what he's talking about). He kept saying, "bye, bye." I guess he'll appreciate it all more next year.He did love the Frosty Toss. That kept him busy for quite some time.They had an area where they took family pictures and then printed out a copy. Doug made us dress up in hats and the boys held candy canes. Not my favorite pic of us, but Tavin's face is priceless. Look at Koen's weird forced smile!Great job to everyone involved in making this party a success. We really enjoyed our morning with the community and celebrating Christmas with our boys. Thanks for serving us!

Melder Christmas Tree 2011, Part 2

As promised, here is another post on our Christmas tree. This has been such a fun Christmas season (already) because Koen is just so excited about all the traditions. I love it! He took a great nap, played in his room for awhile and then at 5pm we got him up and brought him down to help me decorate the tree. Doug had done the lights during naptime, I think it'll be a few more years before that's something we include him in (it's one of Doug's least favorite jobs, so having an inquisitive helper would probably just make it worse). First, Koen helped me go down to the basement and get all the decorations. I was impressed that he was actually very helpful and we got everything in two trips instead of me having to make four trips on my own.

As quickly as possible we moved on to decorating. Koen could barely wait another second. Last year he had a hard time getting the little strings at the top of ornaments on the tree branches. This year he was a pro. He was very thoughtful in his placement and design.After only a few minutes it was quite obvious that we needed to encourage him to spread them out around the tree, up, down, side to side. We basically had about 20 in a 2 feet square area. I didn't care though, I loved that he was enjoying the process (and I can always fix things when he's not looking).Look at the concentration!Doug tried to get some photos of us working together, but we were both so into our task that we didn't really catch many good shots of us both hanging at the same time in the same place. You can see Koen going back for more ornaments in this shot.Doug had us pose for a quick moment. Koen wanted to get right back to it though, so his "cheese" is quite distracted.In this shot you can see Tavin was also awake by a little after 5pm. It was amazing. During his nap yesterday he would cough and wake up screaming, then I would console him and he fell back asleep. I think I did that 4 times. I knew he wasn't feeling good that he would actually go back to sleep so easily. But then magically at 5pm when he woke up at the end of his nap he was happily talking to himself and playing in his crib. Doug went up to get him and brought him down to join us. He was his usual self (with some extra snot). It was such a relief to see him turn the corner and the fever was gone!
Tavin played a little on his own, but when he realized I had the camera out he kept following me around and saying, "cheese." He was so persistent that I could barely do any decorating with Koen. I said to Doug, "babe, can you play with Tavin, this is getting a little old." And Koen says, "yeah, Daddy, Tavin's getting old." Oops!
Here are the adorable pictures I "had" to take of Tavin to appease him. He kept putting the drum on to get me to take the pictures because of the fact I was camera happy about the drums when we made them the other day.I guess you can see that Tavin was back to his normal self personality-wise last night. So thankful! He was perplexed by the decorations a little bit. He couldn't seem to understand why Koen and I were having so much fun with this process of hanging little things on a spikey plant.Doug made the boys Christmas pasta for dinner. Here's my hungry helper digging in...Koen and I returned to work on the tree after his dinner. He really did a great job keeping focused and listening to instructions and just enjoying the whole process. I loved it. Here's the finished product (I forgot to take a pic last night, so here's one from today).Good job, Koen! Thanks for all your help. Looking forward to enjoying the rest of the season with all my Melder boys.