Miss Sassy Pants

Landon in his life vest on the boat
Tossing sand at the beach
Sloan at the world’s shortest St. Patty’s Day Parade
All three kids at the condo

1.) When a four year old shoves a two year old so hard that her feet leave the ground and she thumps onto her back, it doesn’t hurt…as long as they are standing in the sand. When she hits the tile floor, however, it does seem to sting a bit.
2.) When said two year old is pushed, she is quick to seek revenge, generally in the form of hitting or pinching.
3.) A day at the beach when the winds are whipping up to 40 miles per hour is not a lot of fun.
4.) A restaurant located right on the beach so the kids can play in the sand while you wait for your food is pure genius!
5.) Kids do get sick in Florida. Rachel Hyser, you were right! But, I think Sloan brought his illness with him to St. Louis, so I’m still holding out some hope that perhaps Florida is a sick free zone. Which brings me to my next point…
6.)Kids still get scarlet fever. Are you kidding me? Scarlet fever? The image conjured up in my mind when I first heard scarlet fever was Doc Baker from Little House on the Prairie packing Half-Pint in a tub of ice to bring down her fever. I truly had no idea people still got scarlet fever. But guess what? My kid got it! Which brings me to my next point…
7.) It really is a small world after all. This was evident when the doctor at the Pediatric Urgent Care center we visited in the middle of nowhere told us he moved to FL from Chesterfield three years ago and he lived just down the road from my parents. Weird.
8.) Travelling on an airplane with three kids is stressful no matter how good they are.
9.) Florida on a bad March day is still waaaay better than St. Louis on a decent March day. I mean, seriously, no matter what you get to go to the beach. Is their really any comparison?
10.) A neon pink swimsuit, though designed to be immersed in water, still fades. It will indeed turn her skin so vibrant pink that you will think she was sunburned severely, but no, it’s just dye…in her skin. Nice.

We had such a wonderful and fun trip. The kids did great, but we are glad to be home. I’m thrilled to see some of my plants starting to bud and the grass looking a little greener. It’s made coming home a little less depressing. I’ll post pictures later.

So we are three days into our Florida vacation and I thought I’d just document how much I love this state. I was born here, so I honestly think my blood is just a little salty. Too much time away from the beach and I think my ph balance gets all out of wac (wack?). That’s just a hypothesis, it’s not scientific or anything. Every other year growing up my parents would rent a condo in Florida for a month and we would come down here and live. All of our family would visit us at the condo, so most of my fondest memories with aunts, uncles and cousins are playing at the beach and swimming in the pool. I get a little emotional when I look at my own kids now and realize that they are forming some of the same memories that I have as a kid. I think we are going to come down here for a month in July and hopefully my cousins and their kids will come over and play with us. What fun!
I love that my kids are totally into the beach. Sloan absolutely loves being down here. He made his first trip when he was 10 weeks old. Tia was four months the first time she came and Landon is three months. This is their second home and that warms my heart.
I love being on a boat. My parents recently bought a boat down here and we spent the day on it yesterday. What a wonderful way to spend time as a family. There is nothing more relaxing than being on the water, even with three kids. Oh, and I must brag on how awesome my kids have been down here. The airport and plane ride were down right relaxing. All three kids were angels and travelled so well. Sloan has been fighting off some kind of fever and sore throat (*update…he actually has scarlet fever/strep throat, which I know because we just returned from the Urgent Care Center – awesome), yet he’s been a joy to be around(seriously, he’s been so awesome despite being so sick!). Tia, who is our wild child, has been very sweet and adaptable and has just done amazing. And I swear that Landon is teething early, but despite his obvious discomfort he’s been so sweet and fun. He slept the whole boat ride and has just adapted to whatever crazy situation we put him in. My kids rock! Anyway, despite the fact that the weather hasn’t been ideal, we’re having a wonderful trip so far. This is one of my favorite places in the world!

We’re leaving for the airport to fly to Florida in one hour! Whoop! (Did I just type whoop?!?) Since yesterday I’ve been cleaning and preparing like a mad woman. You see, there are only two things that truly motivate me to deep down clean my house. Having a party and going out of town. I hate leaving a dirty house. And the bigger and longer the trip, the deeper I clean. I have mopped, vaccuumed, cleaned bathrooms (including toilets and showers) and washed every item of laundry in this house. So, the way I see it is we just need to travel more so my house will stay this clean. I’m just sayin’…

For those of you that have spent time around my kids recently, you know that while they do love one another, they fight like cats and dogs. Literally, they make each other bleed! So this morning when they were playing in the basement and I heard them laughing and giggling for a good fifteen minutes without any screams, tears or fights, I had to peek and see what was up. This is what I found them doing. They were having a ball.

Just a quick rant to ease some frustration. I went to Country Club Car Wash today to have my nasty car washed. It was one of those that guide your car along, which I hate and I didn’t know that until I’d already purchased the car wash or I wouldn’t have done it. Anyway, I’m driving into the car wash and all of the sudden, my left front hub cap breaks in half from the dumb guider thing. This lady comes running out and motions for me to roll my window down then says in this snotty, condescending voice, “You’re not supposed to steer. You just broke your tire. You have to read the sign!” I then ask, “Uhh, what sign?” She points. Oh, you mean that tiny little sign on the sidewalk to my left? Gee, I’m sorry, I was staring at the giant flashing green sign in front of me that said Drive forward. Silly me for not craning my neck to the side to check for further instructions. So what does this lady do? She picks up my broken pieces of hub cap and hands them back to me and tells me to be more careful! I was so pissed off. So now I have a barely clean car and a broken wheel. Nice. I mean, I know it was technically my fault. I get that. But the lady was so obnoxious about it that it made me even madder. Okay, I was hoping that ranting here would make me feel better. It didn’t. I’m still annoyed…

So Lee had a special business program/dinner last night that I went to with him. Before we left I tried on my size 8 Gap slacks and they fit! They weren’t loose by any means, but they fit comfortably enough that I could move around and even sit without splitting them. I was so thrilled that I decided to wear them to dinner. Mistake number one. Because, you see, all I’d had to eat for lunch was a Slim Fast (which are nasty, by the way, but apparently they are working) so of course my pants fit well. By the time I finished my salad, however, I was miserable. I’m in a room of 17 doctors listening to a presentation and all I can think is the button on my pants is going to pop off and embed itself into someone’s forehead. Finally, knowing there was no way I’d be able to eat my steak when it came, I discreetly unbottoned my pants, mistake number two as now it would be impossible to discreetly button them back up since they were so dang tight. After dinner, Lee calls me to come over and meet one of the doctors. I panic slightly before deciding to just go for the buttoning and hope no one notices. Luckily I was sitting by two women that I know well and am friends with so they were the only ones that saw me and we all enjoyed a good laugh. So, now we know. Just because they fit, doesn’t mean you need to wear them out. I think I’ll give myself a little more time before I wear those pants again.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le_mnuyUFes]

Here is Sloan’s YouTube debut. He loves to “play” American Idol. Note that the words to the song should be “Deep WAY Down” not Deep Where Down. The kid knows just what to do with a microphone. I have no idea where he gets that! A few desclaimers: First, he always wants me to be Simon and I do a horrible British accent. Please do forgive! Second, for some reason he wanted me to “introduce” him as Krut Stuart. I have no idea why. Third, I was feeding Landon a bottle while taping so you can hear Landon grunting in the background and that’s why the video is a little shaky. Finally, for some reason he wanted to change Ryan Seacrest’s name to Brad. Again, I don’t know why. But you don’t argue with a four year old about such matters. Anyway, enjoy this video of our little ham!

I thought of a few more Sloan stories that I wanted to document. Perhaps some of my fondest, and most embarrassing, moments, have been with Sloan learning the names of body parts. Let’s start with when he learned the name of his own body part. For all you psychologists out there who say it’s best to teach the proper names for bady parts – umm, do any of you actually have children that you have to take in public? Because my kid went through a phase where he loved to say penis everywhere he went. No matter how hard I tried to get him to understand tht we didn’t use that word in public, he still managed to shout it out at least once a day in public, usually at the grocery store or Target. One day, while he was sitting in the cart at the store he turned his head slightly and looked at me with a devilish grin, then grabbed himself and said, “Oh wook. Heeeere’s my peeeenis!” The two women beside me cracked up. I blushed and tried not to encourage him with laughter. That day I came up with the solution that we would only be allowed to use that word in the bathroom. That worked well until we were in a public bathroom and he yelled it at the top of his lungs. That was the day that we made it a bathroom word only at home. Sheesh.
The next great Sloan story, and most of you have heard this but I have to document it for later so I can humiliate him, was his obsession with women’s chests. Only he didn’t call it a chest, he called it a “nest.” Everywhere we went, he commented on women’s nests. “Ooooh mommy, look. That lady has a huge nest!” Or, “Mommy that lady’s nest was really small.” Or, “Look, that lady has flowers on her nest!” He would point and comment constantly. The only thing that kept this from being entirely mortifying was that usually people didn’t know what he was talking about. While I was horrified at this obsession, Lee found it hilarious. His response the first time I told him about it? “At least he’s not gay!” which he emphasized by thrusting his hands into the air. Apparently there was some concern…

My last story is probably one of my favorite. When we went to the Bahamas this summer we had to make a stopover in Miami. All day, Lee kept telling Sloan that we had to spend th night in Miami before we would get to the Bahamas. When we finally arrived I asked Sloan what he thought of Miami. Looking very serious he said, “No mommy, it’s daddy’s Ami. It’s his Ami.” He thought Lee had been saying we were going to MY-Ami. Those are my favorite Sloan stories so far. I am sure we’ll add many more to those over the years.