Check That One Off The List! An Epic Mommy Fail.

You know that list that parents have of things that you hope never happen?  Ever had one of those things checked off?  I got to check off the first major one {seemed that way at the time, anyway} on Wednesday morning....

My mother-in-law is out of town and she left us with her car.  This had been nice because we have been a one car and one bike family since The Mister decided to sell his truck months before deployment and has been riding his bike to work every day.

The car has this little quirk where the driver's door doesn't lock/unlock with the electric locks or the key fab.  My guess is the actuator, but what do I know?  Anyway, you basically have to unlock the doors from the passenger side and climb over to the driver's side to lock the driver's door and visa versa for locking it.  Only, if you press the driver's door lock down manually, all of the other doors lock in the car.

Wednesday morning, The Mister left out of here to drive to Louisiana to pick up our oldest daughter, Sandra.  Naturally, he took our car.  It's a lot of miles from North Florida to almost New Orleans, we know that our car is dependable, and then there's the whole thing about insurance or whatever.

The Sophster and I needed to make a quick run to Target, so we got dressed and jumped in Oma's car.  When we got to Target, I went through my usual run down for what we needed to take into the store with us.  Into my purse went keys, phone, water bottle.  Then, I opened the door and thought "Hmm...I wonder if this door will lock from the door switch?"  I flipped the switch up and down a couple of times.  Nothing.  "Oh well", I thought, and shoved the lock down.  Jumped out of the car, closed the door....and immediately realized that I had locked all of the doors...with The Sophster inside the car.

So I locked my kid in the car, in a parking lot.  I mean, who cares about the parking lot, really?!  I LOCKED MY KID IN THE CAR!

I immediately started shaking like a leaf.  What was I going to do???  My purse, phone, keys, and CHILD were locked in this car!!

Thankfully, there was a nice gentleman across the parking lane from me and I very nervously asked for help.  He was very gracious and called the Sheriff's office for me and they were out within just a couple of minutes.

He asked if there was another key and I had no good answer...."No sir, there's not.  This is my mother-in-law's car, she's out of town.  My husband has our one car and is on his way to Louisiana to pick up my step daughter"

....I felt like puking.

I stood by Sophi's window making funny faces at her, praying she wouldn't start wigging out.  She did fine right until probably the last few seconds she was in there.  The officers were able to get into the car quickly and we got her out.  She was a little freaked out by all the policemen standing around and you know, from being locked in the car, so she wouldn't speak to the officers that just rescued her, but she did manage to give them each a high five and they gave her a Sheriff's Office bracelet for being so tough!

Also, that very same night, as The Mister was on his way home, our kitchen sink backed up.  The garbage disposal was clogged and I had a sink full of dishes to wash.  So, there they sat until the next morning when The Mister could fix it....and give me lessons on how to fix it, in case it happened again in the next 8 months.

These are the things that are supposed to happen during deployment!  Maybe they are just getting themselves out of the way before he leaves?  Oh that would be wonderful!  I hope it's not a sign that the worst is yet to come.

Stupid Deployment.  We really can never be friends.

Have you ever locked your kid{s} in the car?  What are some things that you have checked off of the "hope that never happens" list?  How did you handle it?  If you are a military family, what have been some of your toughest deployment/pre-deployment challenges to tackle?

Taking Advantage of the Moment: An Impromptu Photo Op

If you are a parent, then you likely know the feeling of seeing your child wake up one morning and feeling like they have gone from one lifestage to a complete other, over night.  I swear to you guys that last night, I put a chubby faced toddler to bed and what arose this morning was a beautiful little girl!  Not that she isn't alway beautiful...but...you know what I mean, right?

So, after I met her in the hallway for a good morning hug and kiss and we had our usual conversation about how she slept, if she had good dreams, what her dreams were....etc...I did what any normal mom with a blog would do....

I grabbed my camera!

No, the lighting is not perfect and the house is a bit of a mess... but this morning...that didn't matter.  My girl woke up happy and willing to let me take pictures of her {after a little bribery, of course}, so nothing {except my camera} was going to get in between us!

She has this wild, beautiful hair.  It's so perfect even when she first wakes up in the morning.  Her cheeks are always pink and warm from spending the night nestled into her pillow and blankets.  This morning, you can also see a smudge of chocolate just below her mouth.  She has gotten so great about waking up and going to the potty and we are on the m&m system here at the Casa de Sophster.

You can't tell in these pictures, but this morning I noticed she is starting to get a few very tiny freckles right across the bridge of her nose, like mommy has.  Her features seem to have become more defined over night!

So there you have it, our little beauty's impromptu photo session with mommy.   I'm so glad that I took the time to start our morning out like this, because it was a fun start to a great day!  It's so easy sometimes, as busy grown ups and parents, to let those special little moments slip by, unnoticed, but I encourage you to slow down today and soak up those moments!  You never know when you will wake up one morning and have a different kid than you did the one you kissed and tucked in the night before. 

Happy Weekend!

Mommy Fail: How Often I Under-Estimate My Child {Big Girl Bed Transition}

I've noticed lately, that, without realizing it, I under-estimate Sophi, a lot. This really makes me feel pretty crappy. I mean, it makes me happy and so so proud when she exceeds my expectations of her, but for a second, I feel like a pretty bad mom for not giving her the benefit of a doubt. Let me just give the two most recent examples.

Bears.


I was doing an early morning search on Amazon one morning, trying to look for a specific Melissa & Doug alphabet puzzle, when I found the M&D Wooden Bear Family Dress Up Puzzle. At first, I wasn't going to get it. I just knew that Sophi wouldn't be into it right now. She hardly pays attention to puzzles and I thought that this would just be too involved, that she would dump the pieces all over the floor, play with them for 5 minutes and then move on. So, I just added it to her Amazon wish list and added the alphabet and the number puzzles, into my cart, because those were the ones I knew she would love.

I try really hard not to be a compulsive shopper, so I sat with those items in my cart for a couple of days before deciding to go ahead and give the bears a shot. It was only $12 and she would eventually like it, right??

The day that the puzzles came, the UPS man rang the doorbell during nap time {like always...grrrr} and I rushed to open the box of goodies. I like to have new stuff opened and displayed on the coffee table when she wakes up from her nap. I do this even when we are just doing a tot school activity. I love to let her come out and discover whatever is out for her to play with. That time of day is always best, also, because she is fresh from her nap and there's not much of a chance of the crank-a-pottomus showing it's ugly head. Anyway, so she wakes up and she immediately goes to the number puzzle. We went over a few numbers and she was over it. Then, she spotted the bears! She RAN over to the other side of the table and then, like magic, she was glued to those bears! She played with them for THREE hours, when I had to pull her away for dinner, and then she was right back on them again after dinner. The child is obsessed with the puzzle. I love that she can create stories with the different outfits and facial expressions of the Mama, Papa, and Baby bear. She is also learning to recognize the different expressions and their meanings. If you have a toddler at home, I cannot recommend this puzzle enough. By the way, she has hardly touched the two puzzles that I was so sure she would love. Oh well!



Big.Girl.BED!

This one makes me haz a sad. Ok, well, really it makes me very proud, but sad in that "Wahh! My baby is growing up!", kind of way. I have been asking Sophi for months if she is ready for her big girl bed {we bought the bedding like two months ago}, and her answer has always been a resounding "NO! I want CRIB!" This weekend, without Mitch on my side, I decided to take matters into my own hands. This girl has got to learn how to sleep in a bed that is not a crib. So, early Saturday morning, I disassembled her crib, took the front rail off, put her new bedding on and prepared myself for the hell that was going to come once she realized that she wasn't confined anymore!

I positioned myself in the corner of her room, called her in for the surprise, and this is what happened:



...not exactly the reaction I was hoping for.

She was terrified. Wouldn't even come into her room! I thought for a second about what I could do to get her comfortable enough to at least come sit and try it out. So, I hopped in the bed and slowly coaxed her into coming in with me. I showed her how excited her "babies" were to be in a big bed, I showed her how she could scoot to the edge and dangle her feet off, and best of all, how she could get in and out all by herself! After a few minutes, we couldn't get her out of that bed! We played in it most of the morning.



Then came the first true test. Nap time. We held our breath and crossed our fingers when we put her down. Not only did she go down without a single problem, she slept for TWO HOURS! We actually ended up going in a waking her up because it was 4:00 and we knew that if she slept longer, she wouldn't go to bed that night. You want to talk about one seriously proud mama?! Yeah, I'm that girl. All afternoon I just kept saying, "I can't believe Sophi slept in her big girl bed!".



That night, she begged to get into her "big bed" after story time. She ran over and jumped in without even the first request for a hug or a kiss goodnight! She slept straight through the night and woke up around 7:30 the next morning, and instead of immediately crying out for me, she just laid there in her bed and talked and sang songs and played with her babies until almost 8:00. WOW! I sold my kid short. We didn't think she was ready at all for this transition. I thought for sure that we would be putting the front rail back up on her crib before bed Saturday night. Boy were we WRONG. She's pretty cool. And she LOVES her big girl bed! I've also taken like, 100 pictures of her sleeping in her bed. Maybe I'm just a little proud of our girl!




Next stop, POTTY LEARNING!

Have you recently gone through any big transitions with your littles? Which ones? How did you/your little handle the transition?

Easter

It's only a week past Easter so it's not too late to blog about it, right? Even though I had full intention on writing this a week ago. Oops! What can I say? The weather has been SO awesome lately that I just haven't felt like sitting at the computer. SO! We had a really fun Easter! Mitch and I were really excited because, even though this was actually the Sophster's third Easter, it was the first one where we have felt that she could get involved with the fun of the holiday...and we went all out! We did several tot school activities throughout the week and FOUR egg hunts! I'll show you the tot school activities that we did this week, first.

Easter School Activities

My iPhoto program kind of crapped out on me last weekend and I, sadly, lost a lot of pics. Mitch was able to get most of them back {that man is a God sent!}, but needless to say, I was an emotional wreck the night that it happened. I am still finding more and more that have been lost. I'm saying this here because, a lot of the missing pics are pics that I took of the Sophster with her school activities. {sad face}

This week was either a complete hit or a complete miss for Soph, and that's ok. We're both still trying to feel different things out. This is only the beginning. :)

The first thing I did was {get really super excited about my new laminator, and} printed out this egg themed, shape matching game. I found the idea on Pinterest but for the life of me, I can't find it now! Anyway, the big sheet has one big shape on each egg, and the individual eggs have multiple small shapes on them. Sophi figured this out pretty quickly. I kind of knew that she would BUT what I especially love about this activity is that it got her saying names of two shapes that she hadn't named before, rectangle and oval. Cool! Oh, I ended up gluing some of that no skid shelf liner to the backs of the eggs because they weren't staying in place well and she was getting frustrated. That worked out perfect. Fun for days!




Another thing that I did was just gave her two bowls, put several of her Easter eggs in one bowl, and gave her a spoon. Then, I encouraged her to scoop the eggs up onto the spoon and transfer them to the other bowl. Yeah...she couldn't have cared less about this. She wanted to break all of the eggs open and then put them in the other bowl. After a few minutes, though, she DID start scooping the egg halves and moving them from bowl to bowl. Success! Her interest was not held for long on this activity, though.



The third thing I did was printed out a large b/w Easter egg, laminated it and let her color it with her dry-erase markers. She loved this! We are big fans of coloring around here! She also loved that mommy could just wash it off and she could start all over again. I presented this to her, along with the next thing, after her nap one day.


The other thing that got rolled out was a picture of the Easter Bunny that was printed 5 times, in progressive sizes. The goal here was to get her to sort them from largest - smallest or visa versa. She didn't get it at first. She was VERY excited when she saw it. She ran over and started pointing and yelling "Easter Bunny Easter Bunny Easter Bunny!!!", which eventually turned into, "One, two, three, four, five! Five Easter Bunnies, mommy!", which EVENTUALLY turned into her stacking them with largest bunny on the bottom up to the smallest bunny on top. So, even though it didn't work out as I had planned, she definitely got a few lessons from this and it wasn't an idea wasted. :)




The Fun Stuff!

As I mentioned before, this is the first year that we have involved Sophi in any kind of Easter egg hunt or Easter activities. The first thing we did was a glow in the dark egg hunt! I found the idea on Pinterest, originally posted by Play at Home Mom, and could not WAIT to do this!! So, I got on Amazon and ordered a bunch of these finger lights {wow, they're like $4 cheaper now!}, threw those babies in some eggs, waited for it to get semi-dark out so that the light wouldn't come in the blinds too bad, and hid them while Mitch distracted the nosy toddler with food. ;) I was nervous about how this would turn out, since she had never hunted eggs. As usual, I was nervous for no reason. Not only did she "get it", she LOVED IT! It was SUCH a huge hit! Then, the lights went to hang out with my little brother, who did a night time outside egg hunt for my nephew, who also begged to do it over and over again!




We colored eggs

Well, Sophi "painted" eggs. I got the cups all out and set up all nice and pretty, laid a towel down underneath, came prepared with dippers....c'mon lady, you're working with a two year old, here! LOL!! We showed her the "right way" and then she did it her way. She grabbed an egg, plopped it onto the towel in front of her, dunked her tiny little hands into the colored water, and painted those eggs! She was so proud of herself and asked to do it again for days after. We were pretty proud of her, too. :)



Yeah, we may have slammed one or two into the glasses and busted some shells. Oops!

Egg Hunt #2

Our first outdoor egg hunt was the Friday before Easter. There was an egg hunt over at Sophi's Oma's condo. So I got our little pretty all dolled up in one of her Easter dresses and we headed over. The weather could not have been more perfect. It was the first perfect day of the season, I think. Absolutely gorgeous! Sophi had a blast. She didn't get a whole lot of eggs because instead of grabbing the egg, throwing it in the basket, and moving on, she has to open every egg that she finds....right then. Oh well, she didn't care how many eggs she got so neither did we! Here are a few of my favorites from that day.



Easter Festival

Saturday, the day before Easter, my little brother and nephew drove out to join us for the Easter festival near our place. The kids had an egg hunt but it was kind of a joke. So many grown people were snatching up eggs and throwing them in their little's {3 and under} basket and Jaiden and Sophi only got a couple of eggs a piece. No biggie, though. Why? Because they had a train! And free popsicles! We stayed for a few hours and had a great time. Sophi is completely obsessed with her cousin. She is always wanting to hold his hand or hug and kiss him. She asks about him every day. I hope that when they grow up, that he will be like the protective big brother that she doesn't have. :)



Easter Morning :)

The Easter Bunny came Saturday night and left Sophi a trail of jelly beans leading from her room to her very first Easter basket on the coffee table! This was a HUGE hit! She woke up and we went in to get her, told her that the Easter bunny had come and had left some surprises for her. Once she woke up and got all of her snuggles out {oh how we love that part!}, she was off to explore! She stopped as soon as she saw the jelly beans and proclaimed "JELLY BEANS!!", then stooped down to eat one. We actually had to encourage her to follow the trail, and not sit and eat every one along the way. LOL! She had a blast going through her basket and discovering the goodies inside. After that excitement had calmed some, we gave her breakfast and I hid the eggs in our front yard while she ate. Then we headed out and let her hunt! She had a great time. We all did. It was an awesome Easter. She still asks to see the Easter Bunny {whom she refused to see while he was around} every night before bed. Silly girl, maybe you'll be ready for him next year. :)




Aaaand last but not least, our attempt at a family selfie on Easter morning. I looooove Sophi's bed head and how I look like I just rolled out of bed but I have that "I am one seriously proud mama!" look on my face. Because, well, I am.




How did you spend your Easter? Do anything special with the people you love? Whatever you did, I hope you all had a fantastic weekend!