Vacation - By the Numbers

Well we are home from our week at the beach - oh the fun the family had!

1 - cozy cottage set on top of a dune on the ocean. The house we stayed at was perfect for the kiddos, we don't have to worry about them breaking fancy items and the view...what can you say about waking up and seeing the beautiful sun rise every morning and set every night. Sitting on the back porch lazily swaying back and forth on the swing watching the porpoises swimming in the surf. I LOVE the beach!

2 - little girls who played like crazy on the beach. Piper helped us pick up shells and had to have her own treasure bag by the end of the week. I plan on planting a paperwhite in a hurricane vase and having our collection on display inside for the holidays. Everytime a wave would wash up on Violet she would giggle and splash - so darn cute! We didn't do many sand castles though because Piper lost interest too quickly. Just before low tide there was a wade pool near the house that Piper enjoyed "swimming" in. She also wanted to take a bath immediately upon returning to the house and "swim" in there too.

3 - fun filled hours that our family played like crazy at the Children's Museum of Wilmington. We had never gone to one before and although we had to lead Piper a bit she had a ball! We spent an entire hour just in the campfire room reading books and putting on puppet shows. Piper made a bunch of sandwiches for us at the diner and both girls crawled and climbed in the matted toddler room. If you are ever in the area you should check this place out. After we were done we ate supper at The Reel Cafe with our friends that moved to the area, Lisa and Barry. A walk on the Wilmington boardwalk to see the sights followed and there was some snacking on ice cream and fudge. Such a fabulous day!

4 - cockroaches that we found at the house (eewww!!) - R.I.P. One of them was like 2 inches long - yuck, yuck, yuck!!! We have dogs and cats that kill all sorts of things but something about a cockroach makes me want to crawl out of my skin.

5 - pairs of shoes (excessive I know) that I brought to the beach for Piper and she only wore 1, that is right - her rain boots. I have given up trying to get her to wear anything else, to her relief I am sure. This morning when I went to find a site that sells them for when the day comes that they are outgrown I found that there is highway robbery out there when it comes to a 2 YEAR OLDS rain boots, they are asking $24 a pair. Maybe I am cheap, ok I am cheap, but I got these boots at a consignment sale for $4. Hopefully Mother Nature might see Piper sporting her boots and give us some MUCH needed rain then our oldest will be able to splash around in them 1 time before they are too small.

6 - teeth in the mouth of our baby. Violet left with 5 but now has another one poking through. She is also working on 2 more bottom teeth that should be here anytime now. Thankfully she learned very quickly not to bite Mommy with those toothers, it only has happened twice and I am knocking on wood like crazy over here that it doesn't happen again - OUCH!

7AM - that would be the glorious time that the girls slept in until. Some mornings it was even 7:30! They were both so worn out that they went to bed each night between 7 and 7:30 and slept until morning, well except for Violet who has yet to sleep through the night but that is another story. If only we could keep them as busy and worn out when not on vacation when our days are filled with fun and excitement.

8 - diaper changes (at least) per baby per day using gDiapers. We only had 6 covers for both girls and I would strongly suggest if diapering with this system full time to have at least 6 per child. I would wash the cover and the liner each morning because they were in them for so long and I didn't want stinky dipes so then I was left with only 4 covers to diaper with the entire day. The refills do bunch up a little bit between the legs but with frequent changes doesn't present a problem, at least to us it didn't. The covers do take a very long time to dry and I didn't want to risk putting them in the dryer and having them shrink on us because we had nothing else to fall back on. I won't use them on a daily basis because I love my stash of cloth diapers but will use them again when we go to Ohio for the holidays. All in all - g diapers are really great and it makes me feel better to use a *sposie* like them that will decompose in less than 150 days than clog our landfills with regular disposibles.

9 - times per hour some days that Piper would ask "What's this?". "Oh Oh" has been replaced with an even more fun "What's this?". I am guessing this is a prelude to "Why?". To say the least our daughter is very informed about her surroundings after this past week.

10 - well it is actually over 10 feet (15 feet) of Didy yumminess that came to the beach with us. Tobi was the perfect wrap in our stash to bring to the beach with his beautiful blues and yellows. Violet slept most of her morning naps in a rucksack while Piper ran along the water splashing and Matt and I combed the beach for sharks teeth.

That is our vacaton in a conch shell (hee hee), pictures will filter in as the week goes on- off to work on my mounds of laundry, Happy Monday!

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Labor Day Weekend

While most everyone I know is cooking out and relaxing on their Labor Day Weekend the Zoo is busy working. We have so much stuff we need to do and this extra Monday is a perfect time to do some of it! I have been going through a purging project with the girl's clothes and mine which I am bringing to a women's shelter here in town. Matt's stuff is a whole different ballgame though. He has clothes still from high school - yep serious pack rat! Today he will finish up a project he started in the girl's playroom making them a magnetic chalkboard on one of the walls and hopefully will take some time to go through some of his belongings so I can get them to the AmVets coming tomorrow. Our house is by no means large and by giving the girls a playroom we actually took away their "bedroom" which neither have spent a day in. It was also a storage room for their clothes though and now all of that is going into our closet so our bedroom is very crowded, but if I organize I think it will work and if it does I am going to post a picture b/c it will be something that I am very proud of.

Our town is going on mandatory water restriction tomorrow b/c of the drought that we are experiencing. It is so dry here and the one time that we did get rain last week was only for 10 minutes and came down in buckets so it didn't help us at all. The Zoo's dock is falling apart but aside from that we are getting our own private beach, I should go out there and pick up all the rocks then let the girl's play huh? Anyway, we take water from the lake not the town but in doing our part for the enviroment are only watering our grass 1 time a week and it is holding up so far. Let's all do a rain dance in the Southeast!

Update on my dear little girl Violet - thank goodness that tooth finally came in and the other front is on it's way and should be through any day now. She still wakes at the crack of dawn but is sleeping much better at night and I am getting a 4-5 hour stretch normally - whew mama was getting tired! You should see this little one getting around and pulling herself up on everything, kids this age are so fun to watch aren't they?

Tomorrow will be a rough day for me, I am sending my oldest to preschool a couple of days each week. Matt and I talked about it and decided to get her interacting with some other kiddos without me being there and we landed at a YMCA preschool over at a church near our home. She will go on Tuesdays and Thursdays for 3 hours each day - I think she will do fine but the kid hasn't really ever been away from me like that so who knows. I am going into this with no real expectations but I do hope she will like it but if not we can try again next year and as for this year I will try and find her a tumbling class or something that I can join in on. I am sure that is what I will post about tomorrow so if interested tune in for the continuing saga...

My sweet baby girl

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Oh those darn teeth

My poor youngest daughter is having such a hard time with those 2 front teeth and as for me I am saying "Come in ALREADY!" I never really could tell when Piper was teething because she never really showed any of the signs besides maybe getting up more at night but Violet is a whole other story. She is waking up all night, has a fever, runny nose, and is more clingy than Saran Wrap. She is napping in our Didy right now because she won't even let me put her down in the bed - poor thing. I gave her a frozen bagel this morning to knaw on for awhile and that seemed to help her. I don't know, call me a freaky mama, but I won't give her those frozen teethers after there were some that were recalled when Piper was a baby. We got rid of the ones that we had back then and have never bought them again. When we got up I did however put some water in old nipples and they are in the freezer right now so hopefully they will be done soon. If you don't know about that what you do then is put them in a bottle and the babes can chew on the nipple which has ice in it. I learned that trick from my Super Baby Food Book. Today would be the day that we could really use a Teething Key Ring from Playskool. Maybe we will win that contest before she starts cutting any more.

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