Category Archives: kids

3 year old stream of consciousness

All of these in about 4 minutes. 

“What color is this?” (Pointing to his foot)

“What does two plus two make?”

“How old is Imogen?”

“Who is this?” (Points to the cover of a book.)

“Squirrel!” (Really — he spotted a squirrel in the tree outside.)
(Spots me typing) “Can I see a video?”

Easter candy conundrum

I’m not a very permissive parent when it comes to sugar. I mean, I’m not a Puritan — my kids eat processed foods and sugary treats from time to time — but we don’t have a “candy bowl” household in which there’s cookies and candy available anytime someone under 4′ has a sweet craving. We have instituted “dessert days” — Monday and Friday — wherein if you finish your dinner, you may have a dessert. Usually this is a scoop of ice cream or something small. The kids are obsessive about dessert days.

But it was Easter this weekend (did you notice?), which my kids recognize as basically-Christmas-with-candy-but-no-gifts. And candy they got. We let them eat 5 or 6 pieces over the whole day, and now we’re observing Halloween Rules, which is 1-2 pieces a day until it’s gone. Luckily they’re not into counting the pieces in their stashes, so for the nonce I can still “help” run down the supply before cavities really start setting in. 

Except. This year, Amelia actually seems to have eaten enough candy to give herself a tummy ache. I honestly thought that was apocryphal, even though I’ve used the dreadful prediction myself. Sunday night she couldn’t eat dinner because of her tum, and tonight right after her allotted two candies, she succumbed again to belly pain before bed. It’s giving her a really hard time, and I think I’m going to have to prohibit candy for a while until she can tolerate it again. But what do I do about Baxter? Giving one child candy while the other watches, candy-less, is clearly outlawed by the Geneva Convention. But it’s not his fault that his sis has a weak belly at eastertime, is it? These are the conundrums that drive parents mad. 

We booked our camp sites!

Yep, that’s right — we’re headed to the Oregon Coast in August for 6 nights of camping! Two nights at Fort Stevens, 2 nights at Nehalem State Park, and 2 nights at Beverly Beach. We thought about hitting Champoeg on the way back to Portland, but with two little kids in tow, I’m fairly sure we’re going to run out of clean clothes on Wednesday. 😉  Pickings are a little slim, but all the good sites are NOT booked up 100% yet, shew!

Now we can plan more carefully what we want to do when we’re not on the beach — which will probably not be a lot of the time, unless the weather is just stinking. Currently I’m pretty excited about historical reenactors at Fort Clatsop. Looking forward to getting my Lewis and Clark on this summer! Maybe I’ll start researching lighthouses too, otherwise known as the “how far up the narrow stairs will Amelia start whining that her legs are tired” game. 

We were going to do Tillicum instead of Beverly Beach near Newport, but realized just in time that it had no showers. For days 5 & 6 of camping on the coast, I think I require hot showers. We’ll see about the kids. 😉 We camped at a Beverly Beach when Baxter was quite little (just for one night), and we really liked how forested it was, so close to the beach.  Our campsite this year is right next to the playground, yay!

In Newport we plan to see the aquarium at least, and we may or may not see the Sea Lion Caves. My dad says it’s not worth it, but we’ll see. Maybe we’ll go super touristy, maybe we’ll stay on the sand every moment possible. Speaking of, should I get Tom a wetsuit?