Oden Adventures: June 2017

June 2017

Posted by Amy Evelyn Oden , Wednesday, July 12, 2017 11:36 AM

I feel like June has brought us to a really sweet spot with the kiddos. Maybe it's because I love summer, I'm not sure, but general anxieties feel farther off than normal, and everybody's sleeping a bit better than ever before...the kids get up and watch TV while we often linger in bed a bit, then they have breakfast, and then there's this usually-calm period for an hour or two where they're content to play either alone or together, and I can drink my coffee and get some stuff done.

Oliver is racing towards three, but somehow the terrible two tantrums and other manifestations seem to have calmed decidedly. Not nearly as many time-outs and kicking the walls and hitting episodes, and especially this month, a lot more snuggles and silly jokes and kisses and sweet sayings. I'm trying to savor this time, when he says ti-VEE for TV and waw-ner for water and milt for milk and deal for girl, and Wonder Woman's invisible jet is the veezle jet, and all these other cutenesses that I know will likely be gone in a year's time. But who knows? Vianne still says free for three and ignoying for annoying, among other mispronunciations, so maybe it will be awhile longer.

Other cute things Oliver says: He made up his own contraction for will not. He says willn't. And plurals are evolving...currently we have hug-ses (hugs) and ourself-ses (ourselves) and other cutenesses.

Vianne is really into Supergirl and Star Wars right now and Oliver is really into Tom the Tow Truck & friends, Super Why!, and still loves his old favorites Paw Patrol and Creative Galaxy, as well as Wizard of Oz. He likes to ask to watch something and then change his mind about five minutes in, so we change shows a lot. Both kids have been singing a lot lately (which often turns into a battle about who gets to sing first) but they love to sing Beauty and the Beast songs and both have a hilarious rendition of Be Our Guest's lyrics. Vianne often launches into very operatic self-composed songs, which frankly we can't get enough of, and while Oliver often sings bedtime favorites like "He Lives," "Oil In My Lamp," and story time favorites like "Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes," he's also written a few himself, like "Oliver is a boy, boy, boy. Mama is a deal, deal, deal." :-D

I'm still captioning videos like a madwoman, about 20 hours a week, and I'm starting to wonder if the kids really have gotten less needy or what the heck did I do with this 20 hours before? We all know it wasn't cleaning the house, which remains at the same level of perpetual disaster. I was a bit better at keeping up the blog, I know that. I also finished my Paris themed cross-stitch project this month, which was a big deal since I've been working on it during TV in the evenings a few evenings a week for about two years now.

Patrick finished up his spring courses and began a summer course for Fuller, and began the pack up his office on Del Paso and move into our "guest room" as the campus finally surrendered their rented space as the campus moves further toward closing down.

We had quite a heat wave in June and spent a lot of time in & being thankful for the pool & accessories that Grampa sent!

We also revisited our favorite haunt of last summer, the spray parks around town

(but not with the same fervor or frequency as last year, I confess.)

This was also the same day as Vianne's kindergarten tour where she would see Star Academy

for the first time & meet the teachers.

Our local library hosted a puppet troupe who put on a very entertaining version
of The Three Little Pigs. The kids (below in the front row) loved it1

My finished project!

More pool time!

A first this month for Oliver and for me as a parent - a trip to both an urgent care and the ER - and in the same night. We were playing in the backyard about 1/2 hour before bedtime when Oliver slipped and fell straight backwards, and whacked his head so hard on the cement that it really freaked me out. A few minutes later he crawled into my lap and fell asleep, and that freaked me out even more...so it was off to the urgent care. We couldn't rouse him there (more freaking out) and since they didn't have any head-scanning equipment there, the doctor recommended we take him to the ER just be safe.

Since Patrick had an elder board meeting that night, the kids & I headed downtown. Of course, about the time we got there, Oliver livened up and the initial exam didn't show signs of anything serious. But they still wanted to keep an eye on him...so they had us wait for two hours in the waiting room (it was already about 8:30 PM at this point.) Thank God they had coloring books on hand! The whole thing was pretty ridiculous...but better safe than sorry, right?

Another first: Oliver had his first major hair trim. It might have been because it was so hot & his head was super sweaty all the time. It might have been because I tried to trim it with the little trimmer and completely botched his hair. I'll never tell. In any case, he was super brave for the electric trimmer!