With Spidey and SuperStar back in school - Babers now runs the show at home again. And he is LOUD!!! He is only one kid - all by himself in the noise making - and yet he can fill the entire house with awful, shrieking noise. He can also fill the house with incredibly loud laughter and giggling. Unfortunately, at the moment, if he is not getting his way he is doing the first set of noises. So we keep ourselves occupied.
Personally I would prefer to set the olders off on the bus and take a bike ride to get my exercise out of the way. Babers doesn't quite see it that way. He sees that for the past 3 months the olders have run the show when it comes to morning TV. As soon as they are on the bus he is demanding "Bear" or "Blue" or "Dora" or "Wiggles". So we watch 30 minutes of TV. Well, he does - I look for emails from you all. Then we barter about exercise. I want to bike. He wants to go to the gym and play with kids. One day I took him biking even though he was chanting "Go to gym - me go to gym" - we were about 2 miles in and he started screaming and bucking like a bronco in a trailer. We started going to the gym and I have decided to keep my biking to F,S & S mornings (our mass is late so I can bike, walk Jake, shower and still make it to mass). He loves the gym. He ignores me some days if they are doing something fun when I come back to get him. The upside is - I can work out for longer then an hour if I really want to. The downside - it gets boring doing the same stuff..........
So we tried biking again. This time I prepared. I got a snack of crackers and a kashi granola type bar, a water bottle (not sippy cup because that isn't as COOL), a few books, a pair of headphones and Spidey's mp3 player. Popped the earphones on, turned on the tunes and he lasted all 7 miles without much complaint - although when he dropped the water bottle on the floor we had to stop. As a reward we stopped to watch the tractors dig up the millionaire guys yard (he is making a pond).
The afternoon is lunch, more demanding for time (so sometimes he takes a bath because then I can do something like sort laundry or clean the bathroom he is in), and then a blissful nap (the bliss is mine, he does NOT like taking a nap, but since he can't figure out how to turn a door knob yet he is totally in his room regardless and he falls asleep).
In all - he totally thinks he is the Boss - even told me once, "I the Boss" - still trying to figure out where that came from. I let him think that - until he is a little older - because as soon as the bus pulls up he is at the window shrieking, "It Ben's bus!! Ansen is home!!". I open the door and he runs down the driveway and hugs whoever is in front. Mr. Coon, our bus driver, loves this and always yells, "Bye Babers!". Probably why Babers loves the bus.
Let the birthday partying begin!! Saturday night we began the first of 3 celebrations (because all birthdays seem to be stretched out - and who can blame a person, it's their birthday!!). This year SuperStar decided to have a Food Fight party. We had it all planned out - the food would easily blend back into the earth and all would be neat and tidy for BigGuy's next mowing. Then SuperStar began to heavily hint that she wanted a new bike for her big 9th bday. We looked at her biking around the neighborhood - all knees around her ears - and realized that her bike really was far too small. As adults we also thought about the cost of a bike and the durability. We wanted to buy a Good bike that would last awhile and our kids are biking a lot. This meant that her bike would be in the $100 range if we caught a good sale (because even we have the common sense not to think a professional bike is needed for a 9 year old - BigGuy wanted to check out the pro bike stores and we did - kids, I mean 5 year old size kid bikes were selling for $500!!! The average price of a kids bike there was around $350!! We love our kids, but that is like paying more then $35 for kids shoes - they outgrow them in 4 months.). We thought about the food fight cost for throw away food and 20 kids worth of food and take home treats. Then we talked to SuperStar. The bike was a big expense and we did want to give it to her, but she had to scale down her party to a few friends, less expense and we would throw in a sleepover. She thought about it for a few days and decided a Swimming Sleepover Party was the way to go. And that was that.
We had a ton of fun on our short trip to Indianapolis! This was the first "our family only" trip we have done since Spidey was 3 years old. Do the math, that would be 4 years. Lots of trip to Iowa for family stuff and recently lots of trip to STL for family stuff and holidays, but nothing that was "just us" and "just fun". We packed everything up, checked into our Holiday Inn WaterPark Hotel and then headed downtown to see what we could find. There were tons of things - we picked biking around the canal - there were gorgeous houses and cute neighborhoods - we had a tasty dinner - we spent the night at the waterpark - then the next day we were at the Children's Museum from open to close (that was 7 hours of exploring a 4 level building - lots of walking) - back to the waterpark and stayed up late watching a movie. Very fun!! We would certainly recommend it (although the waterpark was more the kids kind of fun - BigGuy and I most liked the biking).
