We didn’t travel or spend the holidays with family or friends. Frankly, the cost of airline travel is ridiculous so we rarely fly. Plus, with young children, travel is pretty stressful so we often avoid it.

However, when we were alerted to a killer deal on flights back to Arizona we were considering the possibilities. Later that weekend, when family members offered to chip in to help cover costs we knew it was something we really needed to do.

Many family members haven’t met Adalyn in person and it has been about 2 years since we’ve been back to Arizona, Everly was just 7 months old when we went last. So, we broke down and bought some plane tickets.

We committed to airline travel, with two small children. *gulp*

It is official a trip back to Arizona is in the cards for us. This is both exciting and kind of daunting at the same time. I am not publishing the dates we are traveling (obviously) but if you want to try hooking up with us get in touch and we’ll share the dates & times privately.

After the excitement of scoring a sweet deal on airline travel we started to realize all the things there are to stress about when traveling with two small children.

Carry ons, checked bags & personal items… Oh my!

Seriously, the various rules, fees and guidelines regarding baggage are enough to make your head spin. Especially when traveling with small children.

Infants can sit on your lap for free but toddlers need a plane ticket. If you want your infant to sit in a car seat you’ll likely need to buy a plane ticket, unless the seat next to you is vacant and unsold. But you’ll have to move the infant if they tell you to.

Ticket holding toddlers can sit in their car seat on the plane and they also get to bring a carry on bag, the car seat is not considered their carry on. Additionally, they can also have a free checked car seat or collapsible stroller.

The infant sitting on your lap gets a free checked car seat or collapsible stroller but no carry on bag. We, the ticketed adults, will each get a free carry on bag as well as a “personal item” we can bring on the plane at no cost. “Personal items” are purses, laptop bags, camera bags, etc.

Then there are the fees a limits to what checked bags ticket holders can bring… and the liquid restrictions… Oh, and don’t bring your pocket knife.

Young kids & routine disruption = HELL

“Of course you can stay with us, we have a guest room all ready!”

Staying with family is great for many reasons. I am sure they’ll all hate us after the first few nights though. Having Adalyn, Everly, Nathan and myself all sleeping in one room should be utter madness. Plus, all the other people in the house will be unfortunate witnesses to the madness.

What is worse is that we’ll have no way to control the madness.

Everly, like most two-year-olds, has issues sleeping in unfamiliar places. When we went to The Farm to wait for Adalyn’s birth it took a solid week to get Everly acclimated to a new room and sleeping at night. When we stay in a hotel she cycles between streaming-crying and running-bouncing off the walls at bed time. Sleep seriously doesn’t not happen, unfortunately. And that was before we had a newborn to throw in the mix.

I have no idea how we will get Everly calm, resting and also keep her that way with Addie waking 2 or 3 times a night for feeds. It is anybody’s guess how all this travel madness will play out…

But I figure if we can survive a cross-country move in a 1977 Winnebago packed with 4 people, 5 cats, 2 rabbits, 1 dog and 2 birds, plus much of our personal property- then we can survive anything right?

Oh and maybe Nathan wont have a bird shit on his head in the airport terminal this time, unlike last time.

I was in a morbid mood when I drafted and titled the post, can you tell? Seriously, aren’t the the joys of comfort toys great? Many kids have the special comfort toy they can’t live without. I know TapThatMom’s son has his crochet/ knit blanket called “baby” that he loves. In our house it is the coveted Blankie Bears.

When Everly was younger these served as simply crib items but now that she’s older she has been insisting on carting them around all day. Especially for cuddly TV time on the couch.

A few nights ago, after a long day of playing with and dirtying up her blankie bears we went to bed. Except, there was no blankie bear in her crib. I fumbled around in the dark after nursing her and getting her tucked in. She asked for her blankie bear and I said I would go find it.

I left the room to hunt for the clean one. You see she stole a candy cane from the Christmas tree and got sticky mess all over one of her blankie bears so I tossed it in the dirty clothes hamper. The other one was nowhere to be found…

Then the hysterics started. I was sprinting through the house looking high and low for the damn thing. Everly thought I’d left her to spend the night alone I guess.

I ended up pulling the candy cane covered thing out of the dirty hamper since the clean one is still missing in action. I really had no idea how dependent she was on the darn blankie bear. We really need to stock up of those suckers.

I wonder what we did to make her so dependent on the toy for cuddling at night, I think this is normal…. Right?

To make matters worse, apparently, the satin border is a deal breaker in the blankie bear world. Everly’s first baby blanket was a Lilitah baby blanket with a soft satin border, then when she got older the blankie bears went in to the crib. I think that is how she became hooked.

I think I might have had a sort of comfort toy as a child… This skunk looking hand puppet (it was black and white, that is all I remember) that I named Paco. One day it blew off my hand and out the car window on the freeway in Arizona. My parents didn’t stop to retrieve it so that was the end of Paco for me… I missed him for soooooo long afterward.

So, does (or did) your child have a comfort toy? This is common right?

It is almost 10 am and Everly has already been a busy, crazy girl! You see she woke at like 6:30 am while N was getting ready for work, thanks to the cats. Normally on N’s work days she doesn’t wake until 8 or 9am but because a cat was tearing through the house post ass droppage, Everly awoke early. So she’s had an early morning of destruction, of course.

Do your cats tear around the place after dumping a steaming pile of crap? It is like our’s are celebrating intestinal liberation or something.

I digress. Anyway, back to Everly… First she almost consumed plastic craft beads. I dozed off on the couch for a few minutes while she played. What? She woke at 1 am and then again at 6:30am. I have a reason to be tired!!

She woke me with plastic craft beads in hand, loose ones. She had this strong string craft necklace we made up for her. Somehow she managed to untie the knots and the beads came off the string.

So, I managed to keep her from eating or shoving those beads up her nose. Yay! Luckily she’s and honest girl, she always brings us the questionable or possibly dangerous things before doing anything bad with them. I don’t imagine that will last much longer but it sure has already saved us from lots of potential bad situations.

Right now she has spread the kitchen floor crumbs around swept the floor with the sweeper, she’s pulled out several pots, a few baking pans, all the chocolate chips. She’s placed herself in the roasting pan and garnished herself with the bags of chocolate chips. This is much like the time she put herself inside the bread machine.

She’s tried operating the steam mop, she colored on the fridge, tried to throw non-trash items in the kitchen garbage…

Did I mention my Intak water bottle is missing? I bet it ended up in the kitchen trash but haven’t actually gotten around to looking in there for it. Before the trash bag gets changed out we will search for it, definitely.

My little baby is a stinking toddler now. Life as a parent is a trip… and that doesn’t even include all the other life madness.

- brain dump & reflection time is over… now it is time to clean up the wreckage while E sleeps, then it all can begin again.

This odd looking creature has taken over the Pyracantha bush out back. Upon first glance I thought the leaves on the plant were just curling up and dying and I wasn’t to worried since the Pyracantha is a massive, decorative bush in the corner of one of our flower beds.

Upon closer inspection I realized the rolled leaf looking things we actually little cocoon/ shell type things for these caterpillars. They were moving and munching and just having a grand ole time killing my bush.

So we plucked one off and cut open the mixture of silk cocoon and leaf to find this guy living inside:

Don’t worry the persistent little bugger used his silk to close the little cocoon back up and then he hung himself on the inside of the jar we’ve got him in. Lovely, just lovely.

Normally we would just do away with all of these without a second thought, but N thought they might be some kind of butterfly or that it is a beneficial insect. This is why we’ve photographed, inspected and made of video of these. We thought someone on the Internets would be able to identify them.

Parenthood is one crazy, jumbled-full-of-emotions experience that is impossible to fully explain in words. Looking back at how our life used to be just amazes me because it’s all kind clicked in to place perfectly and I never imagined how content we’d be and how perfect everything would work out.

I mean two years ago (June 2008) our precious Everly was only a faint glimmer in the eye. We were preparing to leave our home state behind in search of more opportunities and a chance of settling down. We tried to have kids but hadn’t been successful, and weren’t given much hope for future success.

With N’s career opportunities opening up (aka his contract ending) we took a leap and planned to see what life had in store for us. We had no idea we were about complete our cross country move and end up with a surprise pregnancy just over one month after settling in Indiana.

One year ago (June 2009) we were just trying to get our barrings as parents and it was an emotional time with newborn E and these first time parents. Sleepless nights, childbirth recovery and trying to figure out the needs and wants of our newest family member wore on us. At the time it seemed like we would never get the hang of things and that we were in for some rough roads ahead.

Now we have this perfect little angel that I am so in tune (and in love) with. She sleeps through most nights, is getting good at telling us what she needs, she’s motoring around the house doing her thing and the three of us fit together like a puzzle. I never dreamed we’d be a couple of competent, confidant and happy parents with such an adorable little blessing.

Okay, enough with the mushy musings of a whipped parent. Ha, ha!

Here are the photos of Everly’s 1st birthday cake I promised:

I’ve come across something that is a very good idea for the world of social media and the internet that I’ve not been able to find done elsewhere. I am kind of excited about it and have purchased several related domain names. Hint: it is calendar related.

I am searching high and low for web based, multi-user calendar scripts. I’d love to find one that works with wordpress (or is stand alone), one with sidebar functionality, I want calendar data stored via database like wordpress blog data is. The site will just be a calendar with user submitted data (possibly moderated) that serves as a resource for visitors.

The wheels are a turning and I can’t wait to unveil my creation and begin working to grow it. This could be very good stuff. Exciting!

Wheels are a turning for Miss Everly too. She got herself in to the kitchen chasing after me yesterday. It’s the first time she’s left the living room without one of us transporting her. It took her a while to wiggle-worm there but she was dead set on doing it.

When she succeeded I scooped her up and kissed her and was promptly horrified by the lint, dirt and loads of crap covering the front of her white onesie all thanks to the apparent condition of the floors, that I was sure were mostly clean.

I vacuum the darn carpet every day, now it looks like sweeping and moping the kitchen is another daily thing I’ll need to find the energy and time to squeeze in. Obviously she managed to pick up all that mess on her clothes after, oh-say one minute of crawling on the kitchen floor.

Speaking of dirty floors, remember the shower curtain lined cat room? You can go read about it in: The score- Cats: 1986358 – People: 1 (possibly) if you missed it.

Well I didn’t win. They shredded the shower curtain and pissed everywhere still. I just finished dealing with that madness. Mopped up the river of cat piss and ripped the shower curtain out of there while my bath was filling. After the bath I cleaned the covered cat box, did away with the uncovered one and got the cat room re-situated…

Don’t worry, it’s not all bad housekeeping and disgust around here though. We do have pretty spring bulbs in the garden that offset the nastiness.

The whirlwind that is Winter Guard ends tomorrow with our 2010 Championship performance. It’s been a totally different experience this year teaching in a new part of the country and working with much younger kids. The thing is in the end it’s all the same, good kids, hard work, good inspiration, lots of time invested and at championships I am always proud.

With competitive arts it is super easy to get all caught up in winning and there is always the rush to teach, finish and then fine tune the show. We bust our butts have stressful days and try our darnedest to get as close to perfection as possible. Sometimes we forget about savoring the journey but I never forget to look back at where we came from.

My group of kiddos are so young and most had zero experience before I got my hands on them. They’ve been so eager to learn and while they are too hyper and often lack focus in rehearsals they sure have come much farther than most kids in their shoes could ever dream of.

They never let their inexperience keep them from trying all the far-fetched things I asked them to do. Their willingness to try everything I’ve thrown at them has allowed them to grow much more than most would expect from such a young, new group.

Is the show perfect and 100% clean? Nope. There are sure things that still need work and there always will be, with any Winter Guard. Nobody is EVER 100% perfect, not even the best of the best.

Am I proud and even amazed at what we have managed to accomplish? You bet!

Each group of students I teach has a different style and drive. Some are hard core at certain things others aren’t. Some really have to be coerced in to trying my crazy ideas, others never question them or think they are impossible.

This year my kiddos are defined by their eagerness to learn and their bravery in doing new things. They’ve really absorbed all I shown them and they look like they should have much more training than the honestly have. They looks more experienced than they are, this is both to their advantage and disadvantage.

Good news is we’ve come such a long way this season. Next season will be cake in comparison and it will be time for us to really master the ins and outs of technique and basic exercises. It has been a successful season, I think. Much growth and learning has taken place. I am proud of where we are and hope the kids are too.

I’ve used and ENTIRE roll of toilet paper on just my nose blowing today and it hasn’t even been a full day yet! I used up all the Puffs tissue and grabbed a roll of TP this morning.

Basically I am just crazy congested today. The throat soreness has passed and no new symptoms have surfaced so now I am trying to “clear my head”, literally.

Been trying to used the Neti Pot but I am so plugged up the solution wont go into my sinus passages at all. I feel more plugged up now than I did before the Neti pot and what is worse is I have water in my ear now and can’t seems to relieve the pressure or get things to drain.

Last night I tried some spicy tomato tea it sure is hot. So hot it made me violently cough and almost throw up. Did get things draining but didn’t help my ear issue or totally clean out my sinuses.

I broke down and took some Phenylephrine to see if that helps. Normally I’d take Pseudoephedrine but I’ve read about how it can decrease milk supply. I really don’t want to get an ear infection on top of this cold/ sinus thing so I am trying the medicine just this one time to see how things go.

Everly is congested and miserable too. She’s just been cuddling with us, reading stories, crocheting stuff and blowing snot bubbles.

Did I tell you she’s got the hang of the “yes” and “no” head nods and she understands them? She’s showing her displeasure at nap time and snot wiping time by shaking her head “no” and even slapping hands away from her nose. She’s already a feisty one, lol.

She’s still getting my attention and giving some warning before she has to poop, this means I’ve been successful at poop aiming still. Three of her four poops this week have been in the potty which is awesome.

We are dragging our butts out of the house today to take care of some business despite how crappy we feel and it looks like we’ll get our mail delivered & picked up today.

After leaving a note for the neighbor and getting no response we broke down and called the Sheriff. The Sheriff also left a notice about the “abandoned vehicle” on said neighbors door. Amazingly it’s now been moved from in front of our house/ mailbox which means we’ll actually get our darn mail after almost a week of refused delivery.

Yeah, I know it’s all going to bills and junk mail but we are adults and we do need to be taking care of those bills and junk. Can’t go weeks without getting or answering our mail just because someone needed to abandon their car in front of our mailbox.

These days my brain is total mush! Last night I rammed a box in to N mistakenly. I’ve been dizzy with blurred vision, am dead exhausted all the time and can’t seem to think or speak coherently these days.

I am pretty sure it is the result of over four months of only sleeping like 3 hours (or less) at a time. Every 3 hours E is up and nursing. Sure she goes back to sleep fairly easily most of the time but I believe the sleep pattern is killing my brain or something.

Most days there isn’t time to sit down and blog, those few times that I do find the time I can’t seem to produce anything worthy of your time. Shoot the stuff I come up with isn’t even worthy of MY time. LOL!

The last few nights we’ve tried solving the sleep issue. We’ve had E sleeping in her own room so that her whimpering and frequent sleepy waking doesn’t keep us up. You see she is like talking and whimpering in her sleep with her eyes closed as she sucks her thumb. Sometimes while nursing she does this same thing.

Her sounds aren’t that loud and she eventually does fall fast asleep. We just can’t seem to sleep though it and ignore it while she’s right there in our room doing it.

Last night was a great success. She went down at 7pm and slept pretty solid. At 10pm we had to go pick N up from work and I fed her before laying her back down at 11pm. Then I had to wake her for a feed at about 6:45 am when I woke to leaking, rock hard boobs. She almost stayed asleep during the feed and then went back to sleep until about 10am.

I can’t even explain how amazing it is to sleep 7 hours straight as opposed to 3 hours. I feel good but I am worried about the boobs, my milk supply and E’s eating habits. Plus, she’s not supposed to go longer than about 6 hours through the night between feeds if we want to use breastfeeding as natural birth control (LAM).

Anyway, the night before she only woke twice while we were sleeping, once at 4am and again at 6am. This is a huge improvement from the normal waking 5 times a night every 2 hours!

It seems sleeping in her room is working out well for all three of us for now. Whatever works is fine by me as long as she’s safe. It’s super lonely not having her in our room with us though. That first night sure was hard. She’s growing up and gaining her independence so darn fast!

Here are the other updates in a nutshell:

The house appraisal came back:
The appraiser valued the house as about $7000 less than the agreed upon purchase price. We informed the seller and were given the okay to draw up an amendment to the purchase terms that dropped the purchase price. Our closing is probably gonna be delayed but we are still on track to close before the end of the year. Yay!

My students performed over the weekend:
We have another two weeks of marching season then a nice break from performing until after the holidays. The band did great over the weekend and were named Grand Champions of the contest. They had a great show:

We enjoyed the fall colors:
The tree colors are amazing around here right now! Last year when we first moved here Hurricane Ike kind of ruined our fall leaves enjoyment as most of the trees were left without leaves. We had good fun with the camera and some outdoor time together as a family.

We’ve had some possible car drama, it’s been pouring rain (still). Everly is still teething, our photo proofs are done and all kinds of other stuff. It’s been busy times around here… Oh and can you believe the holidays are just around the corner.