The boys and I took a long road trip back to the bay area last week (what was I thinking?!) for my friend Jen's baby shower.  She's having a baby boy! Woohoo!

We had soooo much fun.  It was totally worth the trip, but its going to take a while for me to gather all the photos and my thoughts so unfortunately I'm going to need some more time for that post.

In the meantime, know that we are back safe and sound.  Already missing our friends and family but happy to be back home.

There always seems to be an adjustment period after we do a long trip where the boys just completely loose it.  Sunday and Monday were a bit rough, but I think we're coming off of that now.

We were supposed to start the letter "E" a couple weeks ago. However, with everything going on, we didn't have a chance to get to it, so we started yesterday with some letter tracing and "E" words and some elephant masks.

Rowan opted out of the letter tracing activity  but Cid seemed to enjoy it.  He even cut the words/pictures out very methodically and glued them all on top of each other on construction paper (I cut out the letters...obvs).

The masks were a hit.  We mounted them on popsicle sticks rather than tying string.  It was Rowan's suggestion and I was happy with that idea since I have no clue where any string is in our piles of boxes.

I asked the boys if I could take a photo of them with their masks. The photos didn't come out that great thanks to poor lighting, moving boys, and being stuck with my phone camera for now, but immediately after I snapped this shot, I was kind of flabbergasted.  I mean, look at Rowan!  He's always been big for his age but he looks freaking old!!  What the bleep happened?!


Sometimes it takes a photo to see how much  your kids have grown.  Thank goodness for some other moments (far too few,though) that remind me that he's just a little 4 year old in a big kid's body.

~Sarah

Portland - it's like San Francisco and Humboldt County met up to share craft beers and a joint and reminisce about the 90's.

Admittedly, I haven't seen a lot of Portland yet.  This was our first real family trip to the city and since we didn't know where to start, we just started at the Portland Saturday Market in the South Waterfront district of Portland, which I knew about because a girl who grew up in Petrolia, (Ryan), sets up a booth here. Apparently this was a good choice.  According to our super awesome upstairs neighbors, this is the south waterfront is where all the action happens.


The Portland Saturday Market smells of incense and weed, and henna.  And the booths are filled with batik overalls, hand-made hobo bags, and the like.  I don't mean these things in a bad way.  It actually felt familiar and relaxing, even with the large crowd on this gorgeous day.

It was 81 deg., but we didn't know there would be a water feature so we had no water clothes for the boys. Once we saw the water feature fountains and all the other kids splashing, there there was no escaping it. The boys wanted in.

After a quick trip to the HoneyBucket (port-a-potty) and a race through the maze of booths, we came back to the water feature, grabbed some ice cream, fish & chips,and delicious orange-lemon juice and let the boys cool off in the water.

Cid stayed PC for all of 5 minutes with his shorts on, but soon stripped down to his onderbroek, which, even though there were swarms of people, seemed like no big deal.

We're looking forward to exploring more of the city itself. Unfortunately, that's something we never really took the time to do while we were near San Francisco.  It's more fun to explore now that the boys are old enough to enjoy it with us. By the way, we didn't see Ryan's booth.  There was just too much going on to search it out on this trip. Maybe next time.

We also heard there's a drive-in movie theater in Newberg (not too far away).  Can't wait to check THAT out!!

~Sarah

Yesterday was Monday and Mondays are my least favorite days because I have a call in meeting from 11-ish am to 12-ish am.  It doesn't seem like it would be such an intrusion on our day, but it means some extra prep time to get the boys ready to watch cartoons, quietly, while I wait for my call, proceed with the meeting, and then take care of work business for an hour or two afterwards.

It means we miss the library playdate and we don't get to go on fun excursions with the other moms and kids.

It means I rush to get everyone ready to take Domino for a jog, then rush to get everything ready for my meeting, then continue in a sort of weird semi-work state that keeps us from enjoying most of the day.

It means we often sit inside almost all day on the sunniest day of the week (why is it that the weather always seems sunny when we're at work?)

So on Mondays, I take a deep breath, and remind myself that it's ok for us to not do all those other fun things ONE day of the week, and try to enjoy the little moments that just happen with the boys throughout the day.

While I juggled making prepping for dinner with checking work messages, Rowan and Cid were pretending that Cid was a kitty and Rowan was taking care of him.  They had been playing so well all day it was easy to ignore them and I was very grateful for that as bad as it sounds.  I looked over to where they were and saw Rowan drawing a picture on the dry erase board.  I knew it was going to be a cat by the ears and head.  I told him "Great drawing, Ro." and continued about my own to do.  The next time I looked up, I saw this:

Besides being an amazing drawing of a striped cat, off to the left, Rowan had written, "Rowan heart Cid".


Some days feel like a disaster and some days feel like we nailed it.  This day just felt strange, until I saw Rowan's drawing and realized just how awesome my guys had been all day.  They had shut off the tv on their own and entertained themselves for hours with very little demands of me the entire time.

I set what I was doing aside and spent the rest of the evening cuddling and playing with these two awesome little people who make even the worst day of the week a special day.



~Sarah

Today, I merged our previous blog, One Ring Short of a Circus, into this blog. 

Dear {9 mos old} Cid,

The first night with you in the hospital, I thought I was in for it.  You cried and cried and I thought you were going to be a fussy one.  Boy, was I wrong!  I don't think there is, or ever has been a more mellow guy on this planet.

Content as can be, except you wish you could do all the things your brother can.  But of course, you will. You've got an intense determination that drives you. If I can snap you out of it for a second or two, I might get a huge one-toothed smile.   I LOVE your smile!  It reminds me of a cornered badger. All hissy and big!  And you're kind of grumpy like a badger too.  Grumpy might be a bit harsh.  We'll call it, reserved.

Right now, you're cruising around every possible support structure in our house, trying to get a good enough footing to let go...just for a fraction of a second.  And you pound Cheerios like we starve you. But at a healthy 23.5 lbs, you're far from starving!

I love you, my Little Duck.

Love,
Mom

We had a HUGE potty training breakthrough today with Cid.

I'm attributing it to the potty chart we started about a week ago (and I just posted on here).

Didn't use a single diaper today, not counting nighttime....that's  a whole 'nother ball game.  And he let me know every.single.time he had to go.

This was such an achievement, it warranted Frozen Yogurt, oh yea!!

In other news, Cid is sick (yep, we did Froyo anyway.  He deserved it), Rowan is going through a little rough patch with his attitude, and we're on our way to OMSI memberships thanks to Groupon!!

I don't know if its the bug Cid has, or the bug up Rowan's butt, or just a general lack of sleep the last few nights that's put me in a less than stellar mood.  Oh, and the fact that my camera battery died and I don't know where the charger is, hence, no new photos of the boys, and the fuel gage on my car broke, and we are not having much luck finding a new homestead.....

yeah, I'm in a funk.

I'm trying to work myself out of it. I mean, really, my life pretty much rocks, but we all have our lower moments.  And I think this is especially bound to happen with my adjustment to staying at home even though we get out and socialize quite often.

Getting the jogging stroller back in service (tires were too flat to use) and taking a 2 mile jog today helped and so did a fun package from our wonderful California friends, the Ballous.  We miss you guys!!

Any funk-snuffing advice from the pro stay at home moms out there??

~Sarah

As I've mentioned before, Cid has been aloof to potty training.  He just doesn't give a sh*t.

Since I'm home, I've gotten to give him more time in undies and we've continued to soak through many many pairs.

A couple weeks ago I was looking through my Pinterest boards and found an idea that
I pinned a looooong time ago, which I had completely forgotten about. (Who looks at pins after the initial pinning anyway?)

It was a potty chart.

Why I didn't think to try this before, I dunno.

So I got a big piece of cardstock from the dollar store and Cid and I worked on his chart together while Rowan was at school.

So far, it's been a major success.  We've still had quite a few accidents, but less complaints about trying to go on the potty since starting.

The prizes are mostly dollar store type items, or games like "Cooties" that I pick up from Goodwill. He's pretty stoked on all of them so far.

I still mostly have to ask him to go at intervals throughout the day, but today I saw him squirming a little and asked what was going on and he told me, "My pee is wiggling my penis"

Haha. Time to go on the potty!  Maybe he's starting to catch on to the feeling of having to go pee.

Woohoo! I'm thrilled to have found something that seems to work for this guy.

Rowan really liked the chart too.  Of course, he was a little jealous of Cid getting prizes so he asked if he could have his own potty chart.

I explained to him that he could have his own chart but that going potty was a challenge for Cid and we had to think of something that was more challenging for Rowan.  He came up with the idea of reading books by himself. Uh, great idea, little dude! I couldn't have thought of something better myself. We did make a rule that he has to read two books all by himself to get a sticker though and he can't just flip the pages.  Otherwise, It  would be a bit too easy.

Happy Dance!

Busy week.

Our schedule is getting full! I can't even believe that's happened, but thanks to the recommendations from our long time friends and the welcoming arms of the great people that we've met since being here, we are really not spending a lot of down time.

Our upstairs neighbor invited us on a group trip to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, or if you don't want to sound like you're not local, just call it OMSI.

It's similar to the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose, (which actually does not charge those who can't afford to pay the entrance fee...I think that's pretty cool.  Don't know if OMSI has the same policy).

At OMSI, we stuck mainly to their free-for-all playroom.  It was pretty great, especially since my two guys like to run opposite directions.  This place is fairly safely enclosed.  You still will have to keep an eye on them and I did have sit down talk with the boys about not leaving the room without me and checking in often, but at least you don't have to worry about them falling into the tiger pit or the bear lair if you turn your head for a second.




They had a blast checking out the water works, sandbox, climbing structure with bean bag pulley, and animal information area.

After a little lunch in the snack corner, we headed to the maze exhibit.  Super cool, but a little overwhelming trying to keep tabs on the kiddos as they're running through the mazes.  The smaller one was great (cuz it was clear), but the bigger one was scary at times. Luckily we had a few sets of parent eyes, and Rowan's light up shoes made it easier too!


Cid spent a long time building marble mazes.  The woman volunteering there told me he was going to be an engineer ;)

On Thursday, Rowan had an extra long day at preschool since he had soccer class aftward and Cid just wasn't having a nap.  Cid gets the short end of the stick when it comes to learning activities.  He always has.  So I thought I should come up with an activity for him and this is what I came up with:

Pom Pom Pattern Caterpillars.



All you need for this is pom poms (small, like 1/2" size), glue, and the printables that I attached.

It's super easy to just draw your own caterpillars too for more patterns.

Pom Pom Pattern Caterpillar Printable 1

Pom Pom Pattern Caterpillar Printable 2