Unlucky 13

Today Brady and I experienced something that I hope to never ever ever ever ever ever experience again: Our little lady decided that she would bonk her head against the bottom of our bed and make a gash in her head spanning the length of her eyebrow. A good two inches across and 1/4 inch deep cut. Massive. A cut that required thirteen stitches. Yes, thirteen stitches. That was three under the skin and 10 on the surface. Thirteen stitches that took 45 minutes of my poor little lady being held in something that looks like a blue straight jacket. Not good, not good at all. Luckily the doctor seems to think that she will have minimal scarring and the purple popsicle that they gave her at the end made everything right again. Too bad there wasn't something similar for Brady and I...

Tuna

I am not sure if this is the case with all 4 year olds, but when Teigue gets an idea in his head it becomes an obsession. Mangoes, clementines, potatoes that MUST be planted as soon as a tiny sprout forms...it is a topic of conversation at least 4x a day. At least. His newest obsession? Tuna. Why you ask? Brady and I would also like to know the answer to such a question. For the past week or so, Mr. Fox has demanded that we have tuna. We drive past the store, "Can we stop and get some tuna?" Last week I took him to our neighborhood fishmonger to fulfill his wish. They were out. Although they did have clams which has also been an obsession so I bought a pound to share. Teigue ate all but two. We tried a different kind of fish. Not good enough. Then every time we went to school he would ask if Jayno and I could stop at the market to see if they found some during their evening fishing trip. Understood Teigue..you want tuna.

A couple days later I took him to our favorite seafood restaurant. We ordered our tuna and after it was delivered he was not very happy. You see, he did not want cooked, even seared as his was, tuna, no no, my little tuna aficionado wanted it raw. Fine. 

Today Teigue and I went on a date to Zensei Sushi and finally finally were able to have raw tuna. He was so excited about getting it, eating it. His life was complete.

He had two bites. On to the next obsession! 

Candy Land

Apparently Candy Land has some new rules:

• Cards will not be used
• All characters are bad guys and the Fox kids are the Super Heroes that save the town
• You jump across the board according to what color man you possess (if you have the yellow gingerbread boy you only jump on the yellow spaces). Those that do not follow this rule get told over and over and over again.
• Final, and most important rule. You need to eat the most candy. If you are the older player you get all the candy canes and gum drops. This rule is to protect a certain member of the family that gets a tad too coo coo on candy and sugar...even in a make believe land.

Brother and Sister Play Date

I love the imagination that my kids have. I love watching them play together and see the scenarios that they have developed for that day, hour, minute. Sometimes they pretend that they are out in the ocean and a shark is coming, but wait! They are octopus and they can fight the shark! Or they are Spiderman (Teigue) and Iron Man (Jayno) at the ready to save the world at any given moment. Tonight while I was preparing dinner, they amazed me in their play- I so wanted to record some moments of it, but I was having so much fun watching, I didn't want to stop. For one of the first times, it seemed like Stella finally got it. She wasn't just following Teigue and mimicking his moves, she was making up scenes as well. 

It all started when they decided that the cord to the vacuum was a car (complete with seat belts which is why the cord is around the neck area...). They drove and drove and drove so far that they eventually turned into bears and had to make a den (yeah, they drove really far). All the cushions had to come off the couch and were brought into the hallway...I think what really happened was that Stella got tired and went to lay down in the hall. Teigue decided that she needed to get really cozy and made a fort of pillows...which turned into a cave...which then turned them into bears.. But bears have to eat so the cushions went back to the couch, but instead of a cave, they were now some form of meat. Stella seemed to catch on to this part pretty quickly. 

They then turned into monsters that only ate raw tuna (one of Teigue's obsessions right now) so Stella had to go fish for some. After a while they only drank raspberry smoothies while driving in the snow. On and on it went (Santa even made an appearance at the end played by Teigue). It was wonderful to watch them play so wonderfully and have so much fun doing it. They played the whole time I was making dinner...the whole time! I didn't get any requests to help, no little monkeys grabbing at my legs requesting rides on my feet...nothing. They played right up until I called them to the table (it's amazing that they were even hungry after eating all that meat, tuna and smoothies!) and wanted to go back to it afterwards. It looks like a new chapter has opened up in our lives, and I can't wait to see where they go next!

Puddle Professionals

This morning we were woken up by the sound of a torrential downpour that lasted all of 15 minutes. After such a storm the only thing that the Fox Family should do is head out to the zoo to find some massive puddles to splash in. 

During our journey we headed to the aviary. The aviary. The one with the friendliest bird on the planet. The aviary that, since the incident, makes Jayno shake with fear and cling to me the whole time we are in it. But we went because we followed our favorite and very brave little Teentz. And you know what? We conquered our fears (I think we were trying to show how tough we were in front of the Teentz) and discovered that the bird was actually quite nice. So nice that we decided to share some of our treasures with it.

Did we find puddles? Sure we found some teeny tiny little pools throughout the zoo, but they were puddles that would have been fine with just normal sneakers on. But we had rain boots on. We needed a real puddle. A small lake kind of puddle to jump in and splash anyone (and by anyone, I do mean anyone. Sorry lady with the fancy shoes and designer jeans on...) puddle. Did we find one? 

Of course we did! We are puddle professionals after all!

Teigue Gets In The Olympic Spirit

With a spot on interpreation of the gold medal performance by Evan Lysacek, Teigue may very well be our hope for gold in the 2022 Olympic games.

 "Look Mom! I'm doing it just like him!"

Just Some Pictures

Swim Lesson Update

Sorry East Coasters...

...we had a beach day today. After having a month of winter here in San Diego, the clouds have left and the bright warm sun and San Diego blue sky has returned. 

The kids even went into the water...

and quickly realized that the water was freezing and wasn't such a great idea to go in to. Well Jayno, anyway...check out her face. Teigue of course had no problems with the temperature and would have gone swimming if I had let him. 

We dug for buried treasure, but unfortunately did not find any.

And finally, after being tucked away for 5 months, the Beach Bah De Dah has returned.

Sun and warmth- although it was fun seeing you today and I really did enjoy having all the windows and doors open, could you please ask Winter to return? We really like the cooler temperatures and the chance of snow out east here in the Fox household. You can come back in April.

Bowling

For the last few weeks or so, my little man has been sort of begging me to take him bowling. He wakes up and asks if we can go. Last thing he asks before falling asleep is if we can go bowling the next day. After swim lessons? Perfect for Teigue. After school? Wonderful idea! Today I decided to fullfill his everlasting wish and take my sweet little bowler to Kearny Mesa Bowl. Was he excited? As we pulled into the parking  lot, Teigue exclaimed, "I'm so excited I almost peed my pants!". He was until he realized that the pins and ball didn't work quite like they do in Wii Sports. Thankfully, this only lasted a minute and the almost peeing his pants excitement returned rather quickly.

Connecticut.

Did we really just spend two weeks in Connecticut? Why does it seem like we never left?

We spent our nights at our lovely Auntie Jeanie's bed and breakfast. Oh, I mean house. Waking up to homemade scones, a yard full of sticks and woods that needed to be explored, rocks begging to be jumped off of- we never wanted to leave. One of our favorite things to do? Scare and make Aunt Jean truly believe that there was a ghost in her house moving her furniture around. Did it work? I think so, even though she helped make the scary costume. 

See, Aunt Jean- it was just Teigue and Stella! Silly, silly Aunt Jean!

On the second morning that we were there, I looked out the kitchen window and saw snow, glorious snow, falling. I was so excited- it has been years since I have seen snow fall. I wanted to wake the kids right away- it wasn't supposed to snow, there was no snow in the extended forecast and there was no telling how long this would last. Being from San Diego, they had never before seen snow fall. Sure they played in it during our month in Bend, but to see it come from the sky? Never. What if they never got the chance again? Well, I suppose that when we move to Bend they will but... This was a first! I decided to go against the old saying of never waking sleeping children and woke my little man.  

I was expecting him to be all excited and run around the yard trying to catch snowflakes. Instead, he just sat on the porch and stared. I thought maybe he was still sleeping and was really tired from travel, and that was why he was not overly excited. Actually, it was just the opposite. He was just concentrating on watching the snow fall. I mean- what else would one do when one sees snow fall for the very first time in their lives?

Did they enjoy it? I think Teigue would have stayed outside all day. Jayno decided she had enough after an hour- but that was only because her little hands got a teensy bit cold. Oh, and after playing in the snow, Mr. Fox has decided that the move to Bend might not be such a bad idea after all, since it snows there all the time.

We also discovered how much fun frozen ponds are and what a blast one can have attempting to crack the ice. 

We had a wonderful trip to NYC where we hung out with Uncle Kev, our new favorite person in the whole wide world Kelly, some old T Rex bones, slept through Times Square and a crazy Toys R Us complete with ferris wheel and braved the crazy and so much fun subway.

But the best part of the trip? The part that can not be recreated in San Diego, Bend or anywhere else that we may travel? Spending time with our family and seeing the kids just so enjoy being with their cousins, aunts and uncles, and Grandma and Grandpa. It truly is amazing how they may not see their cousins very often, but it seems as no time has passed when they do.

Introducing Lil to the wonderful world of Treasures.

We discovered that Finn loves to dance to "Ain't Nothing Wrong With That" just as much as we do...if not a tad bit more.

And finally, to close out our two weeks worth of adventure, the littlest members of the Fox family joined the exclusive Rock Society.