Why I Don't Cook

As I write this, someone is on their bed throwing a massive fit. There were many things that escalated it to this point, but the real problem was the absolute refusal to finish the last of 3 bites of meatloaf. I haven't cooked much lately, and I felt like I really should, and even wanted to tonight. So I did meatloaf (a very tasty one), mashed potatoes, and salad. Two of my four children will not eat mashed potatoes anyway, but I figured that they could at least try the meatloaf. Two of them whined and made faces, but ate it, and survived with no injuries. We might as well have been trying to kill the third. (Shawn still eats most things) I get so tired of the fight that happens when I stray outside the "easy" foods that include pasta of some sort, tacos/burros, and breakfast foods. It's seriously ridiculous. I'm so over it.

In happier news, we've had a good week. We went to Riverview's splash pad on Monday. The kids always enjoy that, and play happily for quite a while. Katy got her haircut (that I gave her a few months ago) fixed, thanks to Andrea. It was her first non-mom/non-grandma hair cut. :) It doesn't look much different, but I feel so much better knowing I'm not going to keep seeing uneven spots anymore. Who sends their kid to school for the first time like that? Haha.

Shawn and Katy had doctor's appointments. I have issues with making appointments and not having something go wrong right before them, so it's been about 10 months since Shawn was in...) and at 19 months he is 32.5 inches (43%) and just over 26 lbs (50%). It was a double appt with Katy's 5-year well-check (she's 40th percentile for both and passed her sight and hearing - all ready for kindergarten!) and even though she had a low fever (see, something always tries to derail my plans) it was a great visit and everything went smoothly. We love Dr. Noel and the whole office at Agave Pediatrics South! So worth the drive to Scottsdale. Thankfully, Sophie watched the older kids then, too, so we weren't chaos in a cup. 

 My birthday was last week, and I got flowers, my gym membership, and some hours to myself (including a work out first thing, which made me enjoy the cheesecake Jeremy made me later much more). All very much appreciated! Sophie watched our kids and Jeremy and I went to Joe's Farm Grill and got dinner, accompanied by a few friends. It was laid back and nice, for the most part.

Thursday I took them all swimming for several hours in the morning, and Friday morning we went to the AZ Science Center, just for a few hours. It's a bit of a drive, and since it doesn't open until 10, and Shawn really needs to nap by 12, there isn't a lot of morning time we can spend there. It was still fun, though, and thankfully not nearly as crowded as when we went Saturday afternoons the last few times. I was a little nervous about crowd control with my four without Jeremy, but we were fine.

Friday night we attempted some family pictures at our friend's house. It was kind of a fail (mostly because her camera suddenly refused to work with the light on hand all of a sudden) but we did end up with some cute ones. Pictures are so stressful for me. Trying to get clothes all together that go together and get everyone looking cute and not-messed up all at the very same time and ALSO getting everyone to cooperate? Oh my goodness, no. Here are some outtakes:

Saturday morning I watched a friend's toddler for several hours while she and her husband went to Sunsplash. Reilly was also at Sunsplash with a birthday friend, and Jeremy was mostly working. Shawn is at a very territorial stage, and was a tiny bit difficult about me holding this other baby, but thankfully she's enough smaller than him that he mostly played pretty nicely with her and didn't see her as an adversary. That afternoon my parents dropped by to visit since they were in town, and somehow we ended up sending the girls home with them overnight since they had been wanting to do that, and since Jeremy's sister was coming back the next evening and had room to bring them home. By the time Reilly got home from Sunsplash they were gone, but he wasn't upset. He felt that it was fair that they got to go, since he got to play at the water park all day. And he is always kind of happy for a break from his sisters. We celebrated by using Jeremy's free-burger coupon at Red Robin that evening. Shawn is getting harder and harder to dine out with right now. Not a big deal, since we don't do it often, but he can be so impatient!

Nursery isn't going that great yet either. He won't let us leave him in there for more than a few minutes without melting down. I guess it's good that I teach Relief Society once a month right now, or I would never get to go. But we've done this before, and eventually it works out and we get to go to all our own classes. After church was so calm and nice with only two kids. I even got a little nap, which I've done more in the last year than I did in the last 10 years, I think. Guess I'm getting old. :) Reilly was excited because we played Monopoly with him (which he is always begging for) and Jeremy also got out some of his old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and other toys. Both boys enjoyed that. The girls got home pretty late that night (for them - about 9) but had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa.

Monday was the big day they had been looking forward to for a while. Sunsplash day! We had one visit to Sunsplash on our POGO passes, and were able to coordinate with Ashley and Chloe to go together before school starts and it closes for the season soon. The kids had a blast. Jaina was pretty scared of some of the slides, but anything we made/convinced her to go on, she ended up loving. Chloe even went on a few slides, as did Katy, in a double tube. They loved the lazy river, the wave pool, and the kids' areas. We left Shawn with Sophie (thank you!!) so we could do slides and stuff, and so he could nap, then picked him up a couple hours before close. He probably would have been fine not going at all, but he seemed to enjoy parts of it. They played and played all day long, and Katy threw a fit when it was time to leave after 6 hours (because the park was closing, and because we just missed a last ride on the lazy river). We managed to avoid most sunburn (just a little on some cheeks/noses and Jeremy's feet). I'm pretty sure that wouldn't have happened for me, except I finally found a swim shirt my size (that wasn't too expensive) and wore that 90% of the time we were there. The kids all wore swim shirts too, and we stopped halfway through to eat, dry off, and apply more sunscreen. They've all been asking when we get to go back, but I think we're going to try Mesquite Grove Aquatic Center (a smaller, much cheaper version) in the next few weeks instead.

After all that sun, and climbing, and hauling tubes, I was pretty worn out. We did a whole lot of nothing on Tuesday, which was nice, since Shawn decided to sleep in until 8:45 (he's usually up about 6:45) and then took a 3.5 hour nap (usual is 2-2.5 hrs). He wasn't feeling good when he was awake, and was sad about his mouth, it seemed. I suspect 2-year molars already.
This week it was also Reilly and Jaina's turn for well-child checks, and thankfully they also went smoothly. Reilly is 48 inches and like 57 lbs (4th and 30th percentile) and Jaina is 49 (yes, taller) inches and 52 lbs. (right in the 40th percentile). They were a little concerned about Reilly's height, but mostly because at his last appt there (2 years ago) they had mistakenly written down that he was 48 inches already, so it looked like he hadn't grown at all. He is growing on his normal curve though, and hopefully he'll have a height spurt at some point!

early May

May was a beautiful month, with "cool" temperatures for Arizona. The kids spent so much time outside in May, whether we were at splash pads, or just playing outside with all their little neighborhood friends. I have a little weight loss group I'm part of, and we usually meet at different parks across the valley that I would never go to otherwise, so that has been fun.

Reilly and Jaina actually had their school "end of the year" concert very early in May, which was nice to get done before the rest of the month got pretty crazy. It was also nice because the 1st and 2nd grade sang all their songs together, so we got to see them both perform at once. They did a really nice job. They really like their music teacher, Mr. Burr. He does a great job with the kids and has so much enthusiasm. They still sometimes sing a few of their two-part songs here and there.

One of Jeremy's friends and part of his study group at Palmer was named Maureen. She was about our mom's age, and managed to get her doctorate before she turned 50. She is actually the one who watched Reilly and Jaina overnight for us when we had Katy in Iowa. Anyway, she lives and practices in Ireland now, and she came back to the U.S. in May and married Brendan, who is Irish. When they told us they were coming through AZ as part of their little honeymoon before they headed back, (she has a grandbaby in this area) we were excited to go see them. They invited us to their nice resort to swim in the pool. Of course this ended up being one of the very "mild" days, and it wasn't really all that hot outside when we finally got there (about a 40 minute drive) around 4 pm. And guess what we forgot in Mesa. The bag with all our swimming stuff, including all the kids' suits. Seriously? Our community pool still hadn't opened at this point, so they were very eager to swim, and I knew their little hearts would be broken if they didn't get to. So I drove very quickly over to a JCPenney (because we had a coupon, but a Wal-mart would have been a better idea in retrospect) and found semi-reasonable suits for them. You know, to add to the 3 other suits they each already had. Sigh. But they enjoyed two different pools that evening, though they were slightly freezing. The second one we went to was especially exciting, with fun splash areas and a couple of water slides that Reilly tried and Jaina couldn't get enough of (as long as I went down just before her to catch her at the bottom).

We were starving by the time we left, and it was almost bedtime. We had snacks, but we knew there would be way less complaining or sadness on the way home if we filled their little tummies, so we stopped at In-N-Out and everyone got some burger and fries. Shawn even got his own little tray to hold with hamburger bites and french fries. He was happy the whole way home, even though we headed home about 7, which is when he usually goes to bed.

One funny-ish thing that happened in early May is that Jaina went in to clean off the bathroom counters, she suddenly called me to come in there. I went in and saw Jeremy's portable USB speaker with water standing inside it. Not good. I immediately knew that Katy was responsible. When I asked her why she did it (while she was holding a blow dryer on the inner part of the speaker) she said, "I was trying to wash it!" "Why would you do that?" "Because it looked dirty." Sigh.

It actually did work again just fine, which was nice, since one listing for it said it was waterproof, but everyone said it was actually just "splash-proof," which definitely doesn't mean it can survive a few hours with water sitting inside it...

The other noteworthy thing that happened early that month was that after much last-minute scurrying, Reilly managed to fulfill all the requirements for his Wolf in Cub Scouting. The program was changing after the end of May, and since he was so close, we made a few things happen and got in under the wire. Much thanks to his scout leaders, the Shoemakers, because there really wasn't that much that we had to finish up with him. They have been amazing! He had to "wolf" down strawberries and whipped cream, which wasn't really his style, but at least he said it was yummy. :) (extra picture of Reilly and his Lego obsession because I don't get many pictures of him for some reason.)

Oh, and the other thing that happened is that I finally got my hair cut after cutting it myself for like a full year. Which was fine, except I didn't really have the option of straightening it during that time, since you would have been able to tell that -I- had cut it. It wasn't amazing timing since it's almost too hot to straighten it for a few months now, but I have really missed straight hair, at least sometimes.