Science Saturday, Public Potty Meltdown, the Noah Whisperer

Daniel is a pretty funny kid.  He was telling Aaron and me that he knows how to speak baby talk.  We asked him how he knew baby talk and he told us that he saw Noah was eating a pop tart and started wandering into the living room.  (At our house we try to limit the food to only the kitchen).  Daniel saw Noah in the living room and he told us he talked to Noah saying, "Blah blah goo goo."  Daniel had to translate that for us which translated into go back into the kitchen--according to Daniel anyway.  We  just took Daniel's word for that.  After Noah heard Daniel's baby talk he turned around and went back into the kitchen to finish his pop tart.  Daniel was so serious it was a little difficult for Aaron and me not to crack up laughing while Daniel was telling us about this baby talk episode.  What a funny kid!!  We have secretly started calling Daniel The Noah Whisperer.  Maybe I can try and get Daniel (aka the Noah Whisperer) to tell Noah to start picking up his toys in baby talk....

The other day Daniel came up to me and gave me a folded up note.  As you can see the top of the note said, "To Mom From Daniel".  

As he gave it to me he told me to open it up.  I opened it up to and it said, "Mom wa rouowes be my mom."  I had a little trouble reading it so Daniel told me it said, "Mom will you always be my mom?"  I told him yes, but that wasn't good enough.  He made me write down my answer.  He then took his note and finished writing something on it below my written 'yes'.  He wrote, "WLIL AV you".  He had to translate that as well which said, "I will always love you."

 I love kids at this age (most the time, of course) because they can be so sweet and they love to show off their new found writing skills.  Daniel can be quite the charmer when he wants to be.

The other day I didn't ever get around to making dinner, but I knew that Smith's grocery store was having a special on their rotisserie chickens including some sides.  I sent Aaron out to pick it up with the one stipulation to only pick it up if everything was Daniel friendly.  He checked over all the ingredients and deemed them Daniel friendly so he bought it and brought them home where he had me double check them just to make sure.  I checked them over and deemed them Daniel friendly, too.  We all sat down to eat for a little later than usual dinner.  Afterward Daniel was a little wheezy, but that's not all that unusual since we have to occasionally give him breathing treatments every so often.  Before we sent Daniel to bed he got a quick breathing treatment for his wheeziness.  Aaron and I cleaned up dinner and I headed over to the gym.  When I got back from the gym I went downstairs to check on Daniel to make sure everything was ok.  Well it wasn't.  Daniel was really wheezy, coughing, his lips were swollen, his nose was so swollen he couldn't even breath out of it, and he was covered from head to toe in hives as you can kind of see in this not very good picture of his hive covered back:

When I saw that, I about peed my pants.  I grabbed Daniel and brought him upstairs.  I gave him a huge megadose of Benadryl while Aaron called the pediatrician's office.  As soon as he took the Benadryl and got his shoes on we were off to the pediatrician's office.  When we got there, they got us right back and seen right away.  About this time the Benadryl had started kicking in so the hives were starting to go away, but they gave Daniel some steroids to take for the next five days to reduce and calm the allergic reaction.  That is one of the worst reactions he's had in years.  Luckily, we didn't have to use the Epi pen this time, but it came close!!

Friday the kids had the day off of school.  We decided to go to a friend's house for lunch and to let our kids play together.  Now Sarah has been doing pretty well with the pee part of potty training, but I cannot get her to go #2 AT ALL.  She waits until she has her sleeping underwear on before she takes care of that.  It can be quite frustrating.  However, sometimes she can't always wait until she gets her sleeping underwear on as evidence by some 'streaking' in her undies.  Now when we got to our friend's house the kids were all playing really well.  I decided I had better take her potty to make sure she didn't pee her pants.  I took her back into the bathroom only to find big streaks in her undies.  I sat her down on the potty and started to try and clean her up.  While she was sitting on the potty she went #1 and patiently sat there while I cleaned her up and got her some clean new undies to wear.  That's when I heard a big "plop" in the toilet.  I got so excited for Sarah and started cheering for her since she finally went #2--or so I thought.  That's when I took a look inside the toilet only to see that her hair bow had fallen in the toilet and that was the "plop" I had heard.  Ewwww!  I had to fish it out amongst the pee toilet water which was gross.  **Sigh** someday hopefully she will learn how to go #2 in the potty...someday hopefully before she starts kindergarten in two years!!  At naptime later that day, with her sleeping underwear on, is when she took care of the rest of her #2.  ** Sigh**

Yesterday was Science Saturday up at Weber State University so we decided to go.  Since Science Saturday didn't start until noon we stopped off at Costco beforehand to pick up a few things to have a cheap lunch for everyone.  You just can't beat a $1.50 for a hot dog and a drink!  After doing our shopping we stopped off at the cafe to grab a hot dog for everyone.  As always the cafe was pretty busy.  We finally got a table and Aaron got the food.  As soon as the kids saw the food was ready, all heck broke loose.  Everyone wanted everything all at once.  While we were trying to get everyone settled and happy (and quiet) another older couple came by and asked if they could share a table with us.  Aaron and I looked at each other secretly wondering why anyone in their right mind would want to share a table with 5 very loud and rambunctious kids and two frazzled parents.  Aaron told them they were more than welcome to share a table with us if they didn't mind all the screaming, fighting and noise.  They assured us they didn't mind.  During lunch they talked to us, mostly to Aaron because I was sitting on the opposite end of the table and couldn't hear most of the conversation over the loud kids.  After they finished their lunch, they asked the kids if they ever liked going to the Children's Treehouse Museum.  Thankfully the kids said that they did like going there.  That's when the couple told us thanks for sharing and table with them and pulled out Treehouse Museum passes for everyone and told us that she was the Chairman of the Museum.  It was a very nice and pleasant surprise.  I can't wait to use them in the next couple weeks--WAHOO!!  Hopefully they enjoyed their not so quiet lunch as much as we will enjoy the passes!

After lunch we headed over to Science Saturday.  It was fun and we learned a lot.  However, Sarah had guzzled her drink during lunch so I had to take her potty a few times.  In between potty trips the kids had fun learning all kinds of stuff.  Here they were learning about sound waves:

 Aaron found it interesting, too, so he tried to listen in as well:

 We went to a few other classes, but as time went on Sarah and Noah got more and more restless.  At one class instead of listening, Sarah decided to try sitting in all the seats while everyone else was gathered around the table watching the experiments.

As you can see Daniel likes to be part of the discussion even though he doesn't have quite the knowledge base as everyone else.  The teacher kept asking questions and Daniel's hand would be the first one up.  The teacher would call on Daniel to answer the question only to have Daniel say, "Oh.....I forgot."  Here's Daniel's hand up just waiting to be called on so he can 'forget' his answer.

There was still more to see, but Sarah had had enough.  I took her potty.  She did her thing and hopped off the potty and tried to flush it with her hands.  Ewww!  I hurried and flushed it before she could reach it and she came UNGLUED!  She was very angry that she didn't flush the toilet and went into full tantrum mode throwing herself on the public bathroom floor---Ewwww again!!  I had to scoop her up and carry her kicking and screaming over to the sink to wash her hands.  She crossed her hands over her chest and wouldn't let me wash her hands.  I finally pried her hands to the sink and quickly washed them while she was kicking and screaming the whole time.  I carried her out of the bathroom kicking and screaming some more and Aaron and I decided it was time for us to leave. Aaron grabbed her out of my hands because I was done wrestling with her.  She SCREAMED all the way back out to the car.  She was really MAD as you can see:

She ended up screaming a lot of the way home before she fell asleep--which didn't come as much of a surprise.  You could tell she was getting tired because her stubbornness and whininess was getting progressively worse as the day went on.  Even with the full on tantrum, I still would have flushed the toilet anyway instead of letting her because that's just gross!!

In other happenings Daniel is teaching Noah the way of fencing.  Noah is turning out to be very BOYISH even though his closest sibling is a girl.  Aaron is breathing a sigh of relief over that.  Noah is loving the foam swords.

Daniel learns all kinds of songs at school that he likes to come home and sing for me.  He even set the video up to record himself singing.  Sarah wanted to be part of the music video and kept sticking her head in the movie.  It is pretty funny to watch.

It was so nice to have everyone well enough to go out and have some fun this weekend.  After a month of being couped up inside the house we all were getting cabin fever and needed to get out.  Hopefully all of us will stay well  and healthy for a while!!  I am keeping my fingers crossed!!