Riley and Avery

We got Riley's school pictures in yesterday. This is the one that the photographer chose for us. He actually took forty pictures of each child. He has all of them on his website. You can see them here and here and here. There are some cute ones and silly ones. I'm pleased with the one that he picked for the package.

So Avery is 23.5 pounds now, and 31 inches. Still under the third percentile for height and weight, according to American growth charts with formula-feeding considered the norm. I can't seem to find any growth charts for breastfed children, only for those up to 12 months. Perhaps I'm not trying hard enough. Just going through my occasional cycle when I feel that Avery is malnourished...It's not like we take her to the doctor anymore...

Just a quick one in order to relay an ingenious idea that I heard from West Side Moms. So, we all hate that our children get so much candy on Halloween and eat it all seeming at at once. It kind of erases the healthy choices they've made throughout the year. So, one lady told us that she uses the Switch Witch. The story goes that the Switch Witch has children of her own who only eat candy and her children are hungry (and unhealthy) and she goes around while children sleep Halloween night and if human children leave their candy out for her, she will switch it for a really good gift.

And the best part...who gets to eat all the candy? Hmm, making you think, huh?

Just thought I'd share a quick story today....

Last night as I was trying to get Avery and Riley to sleep, Avery sits up and starts kneading my tummy. I ask her what she's doing, and she said "roll playdough!" I'm like, thanks a lot for pointing out that I have a flabby stomach!! And then to add insult to injury, the last three times I went to school, she has refused to kiss me! And Rudi took them to snuggle-up story time at the library last night, where they come in their pajamas with stuffed animals and such and get read bedtime stories for 30 minutes. Anyway, when I get home, Avery wants nothing to so with me, she just continues to sit on Rudi's lap. I asked her "Avery, did you miss me?" she said "no, Riley." I said, "Riley missed me?" and Avery said "yes." Little turd...

So here it is, the story about Courtney and Caitlynn's birthday party. Another neighbor, Candace, was there with her one-year-old son, and two daughters about seven and eleven, or so. So, this woman who I barely know, starts telling me that I should beat my children. I kid you not. She said that she sympathizes with me about what I'm going through with Riley (what? I don't know this woman!). She proceeds to tell me that she beats her children with belts, and the one time she left a mark, someone at her daughter's school called child protective services on her. She maintains that she does not abuse her children, but it's her house, her rules, and they better follow the rules and behave or else. I'm thinking, what if her children grow up to be stay-at-home moms and their husbands decide to beat them because it's their house, their money, their rules? I don't want my children to get used to being beaten "because they deserve it." I'm sitting here being told that I need to lock them in their rooms (like they have one) and let them scream. I want my children to be able to (respectfully) question authority, toe the line, test the limits, and stand up to people acting unjustly (including myself). Yeah, sure, beat your children into submission and they'll behave for you, but they'll grow up to be nobodies. Just another member of the masses, a minion, a yes-man (or woman)...

Oh, and this is rich...A few months ago (in open-window weather) Avery was waking up during the night with really painful gas, screaming and screaming, and I could do nothing but try to massage her tummy and hold her. It was literally the middle of the night, and happened over and over, and if my mind had been functioning, I would have realized that the window was open and would have closed it. So yesterday Candace tells me that Avery woke her up that night, and she was concerned so she went out to find out what was going on and she told me that she was about to call child protective services (this was before she "knew" me). She's telling me this and I'm standing there flabbergasted, not believing that a woman who beats her children with a belt was going to call CPS on a gassy child!

This is what greets me after realizing that he girls have been playing quietly together (a rarity) for a while, while I was talking to Mom on the telephone. And don't think that the rest of Avery's body didn't match. Her tummy was painted, her hands, arms, legs, her feet. Oh, yay!

We had snow yesterday morning. Riley was thrilled, Avery not so much. Avery thought the snow was a good idea in theory. She wouldn't leave the porch.

We went to Boo at the Zoo on Saturday. Riley loved it so much and said that she wished that she lived at the zoo. What, you mean we don't live in a zoo already? It was cool seeing the zoo at night, lights in the trees and jack-o-lanterns lining the walk-ways. We went into a haunted house that Riley was probably a year or two too young for. She was pretty scared. We took the free shuttle from a nearby shopping center into the zoo, since it was crazy crowded. On the way back to the car, Avery and Riley are clutching their bags of candy and eating carrot sticks that I brought. Avery wouldn't put on her costume. She kept shaking her head, saying "LIKE it!" which means that she doesn't like it. We ran into a few people that we knew, so that was fun.

Riley had a birthday party on Sunday for a girl in her school who was turning six. The party was at their house way way way far out in the country. Oh, it was so far away. All the other children were also from Riley's school, and all the parents stayed versus driving so far to go somewhere else and then coming back. I mean, come on, they live on a dirt road. For the love of pete, they get coyotes there! All in all it was a lot of fun. The girl's father recently split with her mother, from what I can tell. So he's a single father. And he's from Billings, Montana. So I guess the homesteading mentality is natural to them. He's a general contractor and has added onto their house and manages to selvage quite a lot from the properties he works on and is saving the materials up in his barn to build a brand new house on the land. I wouldn't sleep in a TENT that Rudi had put up himself, much less a whole darn house.

When we got home from the birthday party, we went right over Kelly's house for Courtney and Caitlynn's birthday party, but that is a whole 'nuther story that deserves its own post...

So I took Riley in for a much-needed professional styling. We went to Child Styles here in the Springs, which came highly recommended in my mothering group. Riley sat in an old-fashioned car with working pedals and steering wheel. She got to pick a movie to watch while getting her hair cut (she chose Brother Bear 2, or something like that). She sat really still and moved her head the way the hairdresser asked her to. I'm really pleased with the hair cut. People ask us wherever we go where we got her hair cut. So I guess it turned out well. She has such straight hair that it really needs to be professionally cut. Every scissor cut shows up on her hair. I noticed when we went to get her portraits taken that her hair was flat and lifeless. She had just had a bath, though, so perhaps that's why her hair was so flat and "ugh." She did not like getting her hair blow-dried and Riley has put me on notice that next time we go there I am to tell the lady not to dry her hair. Avery got a little trim-up but was not too happy about the whole ordeal, and especially not the blow-dry.

I had to get this one off my chest, so no time for pictures. Besides, my camera batteries are currently inside the girls' train set, so I'll have to re-charge them.

So, I took Riley and Avery in to Target Portrait Studio to get their portraits taken. I wanted pictures of them together and of each of them separately. Well, it was an absolute fiasco. The girls weren't the problem. They acted their ages. No biggie, right? Well, we got there at 10:20 for a 10:30 appointment. We waited for over half and hour to be taken back to the studio. And after a few shots, the photographer proceeded to yell at my children and complain about them in front of them!! Many photographers tend to be over-zealous and this frightens some children. She made some half-hearted attempts at getting a photo of the girls together. Then when she was photographing Avery, she gave Avery a teddy bear which she was very interested in. Avery was more interested in examining the new bear (sorry, my kid's not stupid, she likes to observe new objects. They're not Target Portrait Studio for Retarded Children Only, so I though she could have given her a minute! Sheesh!) The lady started saying "Avery! Avery! Avery!" to get her attention and quickly escalated into full-blown yelling at her "AVERY! AVERY! AVERY! (insert big nasty exasperated exhale) OH MY GOD, SHE IS JUST TOTALLY IGNORING ME!!!!" There was a sad little picture of Avery resulting from this which captured her blue eyes nicely. One of the sales girls who wasn't in the studio for the sitting remarked that it was a serious picture and looked like she was going to cry, and I'm like "Lady, she was about to cry! She was being abused!" Then it was Riley's turn for individual shots. She has an admittedly aggravating habit of pointing her face at the camera with her eyeballs elsewhere. So the lady was like "look in the camera, Riley, can you look in the camera? RILEY! YOU KNOW WHERE TO LOOK, NOW LOOK IN THE CAMERA!" She kept making those snotty little exhales throughout the whole experience.

So we wait for more than an hour to have our pictures brought up on the computer so that I can look at them. None of them are worth anything. One of Riley was passable. I'm looking through them to find the best of the worst and since we'd been there for over two hours, the girls start complaining about being hungry, thirsty, etc. And it's about Avery's naptime. The photographer apparently gets a break from her stressful job and says to me "is there a place where you can dump them off and come back without them?" What? Excuse me? I was flabbergasted! So I went home and I am ashamed to admit that I was so stressed out by the whole thing that I was short with the girls.

So I called customer service and it turns out that this lady is the manager of the location, has been there a long time, and has a good record. But they said that they absolutely didn't doubt that this happened to me, etc. and that they really wanted me to give the studio another chance and is giving me the package of the one picture that was okay and sending coupons for three pages free (big whoop). I told them that there is no way that we will go back when that lady is there, even if she's not the photographer. My children don't need to see her again. They were really nice on that end and really apologetic. I think I'll take the girls back separately and get the $7.99 package for each since they'll be separate visits and it will be a lot less stressful that way. If there happens to be another pose that I like I'll use one of the coupons.

So Riley and Avery took short naps when we got home, and when Riley woke up I apologized for being impatient with her. I told her that the picture lady was mean to her for no reason and that Riley did nothing wrong, nothing to deserve it, etc. I told her that the picture lady made me angry and instead of being angry at the picture lady like I should have, I got angry at Riley, so on and so forth. We discussed how it's okay to be angry as long as we're angry at the right person, blah, blah, blah...I told Riley that when we go back I'll make sure that lady isn't there and promised that if she smiled really nice I would let her take a funny face picture and I'd buy it.

Just had to vent.

So the girls ran their first running race on Sunday. Some runner's group here sponsored an adult race (3 1/2 miles on a trail, 1/4 mile down the middler of a river, complete with obstacles) and free kiddie races. I thought the race for Riley's age group (0-3) was a little short for Riley, about 50 yards, but was great for Avery. It's a four-race series, one every two weeks in a different part with increasingly longer runs. It's not like anyone won the toddler race, since most of the children were closer to Avery's age or younger and the parents were running with them. It was like a buffalo stampede. Kelly, our neighbor, came with us. Her girls were in the 7-10 age group and ran 8/10ths of a mile. Poor Caitlynn is asthmatic and had a hard time with the run. Three women that I know from West Side Moms were running the adult race. As soon as we pulled up and parked I saw Maida run by, followed by Paige, and then Candy. We waved and cheered. I think perhaps this may be something that I would be interested in participating in next year. You know, the strange thing is that I don't really like running, but like an Alzheimer's patient, I keep returning to it for some reason. I think that road races are not very interesting, but perhaps a trail run in our gorgeous Colorado would be more fun. The girls got a ribbon for their participation, which they quickly forgot about, which means that they're scrapbook fodder for sure. They get a "large" trophy if they complete all four races, but I didn't tell them that since I only want them to participate if they enjoy the participation.

A group of mothers from West Side Moms has gotten together and formed a preschool homeschooling group, mostly for participating in field trips together. On Tuesday, while Riley was in school, I took Avery to the Fire Station for a tour. It was really great to get out and do something just Mommy and Avery. All the kids were around Avwery's age, so that was nice for her. For some reason, I was the one volunteered to try on the firefighter's outfit. The fireman said that I made him feel fat, since the pant hung off me like a clown costume. I tried the hat on Avery, who slowly tipped over backwards under the weight, but I caught her in him. Next week's field trip is to the pumpkin patch, but I think that I better not exclude Riley from that, and probably won't be able to squeeze it in between dropping Riley off at school and picking her up.

I took Riley in to the doctor's today because of her cold (Rudi insisted) and got the usual rest and fluids recommendation. The up-side is that I got the much-coveted referral to the developmental pediatrician. The appointment isn't until January 7th, the soonest they had available, and it's a two hour appointment. Now that I think about it, I'm regretting not scheduling it for a day when Rudi can either come with us or stay home with Avery. I went to a new doctor who I wasn't really fond of. First, the immunization posters were all over the place, as well as shelves full of formula. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. And even a poster for Gardasil, which neither of my girls will never ever ever get. Ever. And the doctor was a relatively young woman who was socially awkward and shy and withdrawn. I feel bad critiquing her,and I have no reason to doubt her medical ability, but a parent should have confidence in the abilities of the pediatrician, and that's not what I got at all. And the receptionist was about as incompetent as they come. After the appointment, I was standing at her window while she was making labels on a label maker (important work, I know) and after a few minutes she asked me if I needed something. No, lady, standing at this window is just a fun way of passing my day and watching you make labels spices up the monotony of my day-to-day existence! I tried to make a payment, and she refused (too lazy to figure out how much I owe, since I owe a percentage not a flat rate). She told me to wait for the bill. Then I asked to make an appointment to see Dr. Sayers and she gave me a card and told me to call and make an appointment. Dr. Sayers is located in the same practice as the doctor we saw today, so it's not like he's in a different office or different practice. Geesh. It was like Medicaid central in there. So the search is still on for an acceptable pediatrician who participates with our insurance. Mission impossible.

Oh, what else is going on? Hmmm...I'm sure there's something...

Having problems uploading photos...

Oh, yesterday I was making pork and sauerkraut for dinner and Riley was playing in the front yard and our door was wide open. The smell of the sauerkraut began to waft outside, and Riley runs in with her hand over her nose, "Mommy, mommy! There's a terrible smell outside! Oh no, it's coming in our house! Quick, shut the door!" Ah, when the smell of your cooking causes such panic in your children!

Most have already heard this story, but I'm recording it here for posterity. I told Riley that it was possible to make our own playdough. Riley says "Hmmm...or, we could just let the people in the factory make it and we can buy it at Walmart." Doh! And she hasn't been to Walmart in months. Rudi likes watching that show "How It's Made" and I think that's where Riley gets her factory information.