Sea World is Magical!

About to leave....success!

Isabel meets Zoe!

Watching Sesame Street show.


Watching the sea lion show.

Enormous walrus.

Jumping and playing at the 'Bay of Play'

Shamu and her baby!

Opening the show.

Logan is mesmerized.

And they're off!

Sea World 09.25.11

I woke up this morning and had coffee and the Sunday paper in bed (thanks Brian and Isabel) and saw on the back of one of the sections a little blurb about Sea World. It said that if you buy a ticket this year you'll be able to go until 1/6/2013 for FREE! Since children under 3 are free I was pretty excited about this deal. It was still $60/ticket for me and Brian, but still, we can go for over a year for FREE! Parking was $15 though. Stupid.

Anyway, it was AWESOME! Both Logan and Izzy were pretty good on the drive up (a slight miracle for Logan) and even though we got there right at Logan's nap time, it was great! We headed over to the Shamu show first. After some snacks we went to the 'splash zone' section and waited 15 years for the show to start. It was really only 20 minutes, but it seamed like forever. Brian walked Logan around outside while Isabel and I watched the whales swim around. The show finally started with a giant Shamu flip right in front of us. It totally startled Logan, who jumped, but he didn't cry and was seriously mesmerized the entire time. His eyes were as big as saucers. He clapped and danced and had a great time. Isabel was pretty impressed with the show too. I was fully expecting to have to take Logan outside and walk with him, but he surprised us and loved the show. As I was watching Isabel and Logan enjoying the show so much I thought about how much Viv would have loved seeing the whales. After getting teary-eyed I told myself to buck up for the kids and put on a happy face. After leaving the show I saw a huge dragonfly and was reminded that Viv is always with us.

After Shamu we ate some seriously crappy food for lunch. I have no words for how bad it was. At least they had these nut/egg/milk-free cookies that were pretty good.

After lunch we headed over to the Sesame Street 'Bay of Play' area. Isabel got to meet and hug Elmo and Abby. She loved it, but I think she was a little overwhelmed as she was rendered speechless after giving them a huge 'HI ELMO!' She didn't say another word for a while. I kept Logan in the stroller because I knew he would be a little freaked out. Sure enough, Abby came over to try and say hi to him and he shut his eyes and put his balled fists over them trying to make them go away. I really wanted to tell Abby to leave, but didn't. When he opened his eyes and saw her still standing over him he totally freaked out. Luckily she left and I was able to calm him down relatively easily (for him).

There was a giant climbing structure thing that was a little too big for Izzy to play with, a playground, some under 3 stuff that we didn't see until we were leaving, and a big water/splash area. Isabel and Brian had fun getting wet and cooling off in the splash area. After that we headed over to see the sea lion show. Once again Logan and Isabel did fantastic and really seemed to enjoy the show. After seeing the baby sea lion pups we changed everyone and made the dicey decision to stay for the 3pm Sesame Street character show, since I knew everyone was getting super tired and it was one hundred and freaking four degrees. No joke. 104 degrees on September 25th.

The character show was short and sweet. Perfect. There were some songs and dancing and that was about it. Isabel worked up the courage to go to the stage and dance and the show ended. It was ok though, because she got to meet Cookie Monster and Zoe.

We packed up and headed back to Austin. Logan freaked the eff out in the car on the way home. Jesus that kid can scream. We stopped to get gas and Brian got in the back with him to try and calm him down. I guess no naps and lots of stimulation finally caught up with Logan. After dinner, bath, and 1/3 of 'Cars' Brian took Logan to bed and he said Logan actually clapped when he put him in the crib. Sweet boy.

I seriously would have laughed out loud if you told me that I would have gone to San Antonio today to Sea World and had a great time without any meltdowns. Amazing!

Oh yeah, and active military personnel and their families get in free. How cool is that?! They had active and retired military peeps stand and be recognized at the Shamu show. High five Sea World!

Please please please don't give up the nap!

I think Isabel is trying to give up her nap. I'm crossing my fingers that this isn't that case and that it's just been an anomaly these past few days. She's been really fighting going down for her nap. She now needs water, baby, baby blankie and hammie-hammie in her crib. When I put her down she asks for hug, kiss and back rub. Ok, no problem. Then she asks again. and again. and again. I used to go in repeatedly, but it made it worse. Brian and I now will go through the routine 2x's before we tell her no more and leave. Then the screaming starts. It lasts a long time. When she finally goes to sleep (around 3:45pm) I have to wake her up by 5:30pm and then she's a total cranky pants and usually cries the rest of the night. Bedtime is a repeat of the same thing. Screaming and more screaming. Last night she didn't go to sleep until almost 11pm and then was up at 7am. 8 hours of sleep in a day. GREAT! So, if this keeps up I think I'm going to have to let her give up the napping and get her to bed earlier. :-( It's my only kid-free hour of the day and I cherish it. Since I only get 5-6 hours of sleep at night my 30 minute nap during the day is pretty much a necessity. I shudder to think what it'll be like without a nap.

Potty 'm&m's' are like crack for babies

Picnic for dinner.

We give Isabel a potty m&m (used to be m&m's, but they 'may contain peanuts,' so now they are jelly beans) when she goes potty on the big girl potty. This plan has completely back fired and I'm really regretting the whole potty=reward potty training system. Basically Isabel goes potty when she wants candy. Logan has realized where the potty m&m's are kept and will go over to the oven and stand and point to the cabinet where we keep them grunting until he gets one. Isabel now needs her potty m&m and a 'match.' She's been playing a memory game and gets all excited about matching, so matching jelly beans is a must. Jelly beans are way more economical than the SIXTY SIX FREAKING DOLLAR nut-free m&m's I purchased online. Brian will never let me forget that moment of weakness (but my child must never be denied the pleasure of m&m's. It's child abuse!). Vermont Nut Free Chocolates-fool me once, etc etc.

This weekend Grammy and Papaw came into town. It was originally supposed to help us out watching the kids while we car shopped. Since we bought a car last weekend we didn't need to go on any test drives. Papaw was kind enough to drive Brian's car back to Austin and Grammy got stuck driving by herself in downtown H-town traffic on Friday afternoon to come visit. Uncle Matt took Brian's car to Houston a couple of weeks ago when he was in town and the water pump went out on his way back to Austin. The car was stuck in Houston for repairs.

Since we didn't have to car shop we headed to Jester King Brewery for a tour and some beers. It was really a fun atmosphere with great craft beer. We all know how much of a beer snob Brian is, so he was especially excited to hit the brewery. We also managed to catch a movie. 'Contagion' was good, but I thought it was sort of like an immunology for dummies class. I did appreciate that it was very real and that they didn't try to make it all Hollywood with car chases and things getting blown up. We could be very very close to something like that happening. I don't know how many people realize how close we are. I have face masks in my pantry. I could go on and on about the movie and my thoughts about it and vaccines, but I won't.

I realized that we didn't even take 1 picture this weekend while Grammy and Papaw were here. Logan has been incredibly high maintenance these past few months and it takes so much energy just to make sure his needs are somewhat being met. Thankfully Isabel is becoming more helpful and is biting much less. She's started pushing Logan, but I'll take that over biting any day. Pushing is still not acceptable (obviously), but I'm not constantly worried that she'll take a chunk out of Logan's arm 24/7. She's still working on self control, but it's getting better. Her vocabulary has exploded and she's talking in sentences and is expressing herself very well.

Logan likes to go over to the pantry and knock on the door for a snack. He's definitely figured out where the food in the house is kept. He needs almost constant interaction, so that's been challenging for me. Washing dishes, getting meals ready, doing laundry, etc are all huge challenges for me since it's play with Logan or hear screaming. I'm hoping that this is a short phase. He's back to napping 2x's a day regularly, so that's been very nice.

Christening the new car

We bought a new car on Saturday. Today the kids took their first ride in it and Isabel puked. Everywhere. I was on my way up to Brian's office this morning because during the transfer of the crap from the Forester to the CX-9 I forgot to get my wallet. It usually wouldn't be a big deal, but today is pizza day at Isabel's preschool. Pizza day is a big deal and costs $. It's 20 freaking dollars for a 5 pizza day punch card. It's apparently one of their 'fundraisers.' Pizza day at Bannokburn was $1/slice. I could have just packed her a lunch, but we've been talking about pizza day all week and I could just picture her sitting there at lunch with her sandwich while everyone else was eating pizza. Anyway, I didn't have $20 in the house and needed my wallet.

I packed everyone up and we headed up north at 8:15am. Yes, right in traffic. Around 8:45am Isabel spits up a bit and then full-on pukes. I made it to Brian's office and he had a towel from the gym and helped me clean Isabel up and try to clean out the carseat and car some. Logan was screaming, so I let him out to run around a bit. I only had extra pants for Izzy in the diaper bag because I used the shirt to clean up spilled milk last week and forgot to replace it. So here we are at Brian's office with Logan running around like a crazy person and Izzy following him topless. Brian is cleaning out the car and we have about 5000 wipes, Izzy's clothes, waffles from the morning and a puke towel on the concrete next to the car. Hello Brian's coworkers! Nice to meet you!

Needless to say, we didn't make it to pizza day.

Somersaults and School

A little apprehensive.



Warming up.

Ready to play.

Logan makes some dinner.

Isabel checks her email.

Isabel started doing somersaults by herself a few weeks ago. So fun. Now she tries to 'help' Logan out with his gymnastics abilities too. Izzy seems to really like school and we haven't had any tears yet. Isabel is exploring her singing voice. Unfortunately she's come equipped with our vocal abilities....none. She loves to sing the ABC's at top volume and Row Row Row Your Boat is becoming a favorite. She can count to 19 and loves to count her way down the steps every time.

Logan is so excited to be able to play with anything he wants on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. He's very fun to be around when he's not constantly on guard for bites and pushes. He's mimicking more and more sounds and frequently knows and uses 'mama, milk, dada, uh-oh' and is starting to understand us a lot more and follow commands.