I Can't Think of a Title

Sophie's taken to double-pluralizing words.

Yummmm, can I have some eggses?

Look mom, I put my shoeses on!

Momma, I can put the spoonses away!

That last one was when she was 'helping' me unload the dishwasher and proceeded to put all the forks in the knife partition and all the spoons in the aluminum foil drawer.

Thanks, Sophie.

I'm trying to figure out where she picked up this habit, but I can't think of any words that legitimately sound double-pluralized.

Except 'ellipses'.

And I'm pretty sure we don't use that word very often.

Hmmm, there's also 'cheeses'. We do talk about cheese a lot in this house. But we don't talk about cheeses. 'Cheeses' pretty much always implies you are at some swanky dinner party and you're commenting on the fine array of fancy cheeses available for your perusal.

At our house, it's more like, "should I add some cheese to this potato dish? Yes? Okay, cheese it is." and "Boy this glass of wine sure tastes great, how about some cheese and crackers too?" and "Mmmm, cheese in a can is totally awesome."

That last one is solely attributable to Ben, because while I am a cheese-lover extraordinaire, I just can't stomach cheese in a can.

I'm a little off-topic here.

And, since I can't think of a good segue, I'm just gonna jump right into how I picked Noah up from his first day of Preschool, and he was happy and excited and seemed to do a great job. He played on the slide at recess and talked to the other Noah in his class and sang a song about numbers and had pretzels at snack time. He's so cute and little and smart and I'm very proud of him.

He rockses.

PreSchoolers in da Hizzouse

Travis started school today. He's officially a first grader.

We had Preschool meet & greet for Noah this morning, so after we saw Travis on his way to his first-grade classroom, Noah and I headed for his Preschool room, to meet his new teacher and some of his classmates.

I forgot to get any pictures of that part. But above are the boys in the church before school started.

We found Noah's backpack hook, and schoolwork cubby, and the library corner and the puzzle shelf. Noah made up a placemat for snack time, he wrote his name on it in his rudimentary, fist-clutching penmanship. He also drew a picture of a fire wearing a helmet and making S'mores and explained it all to Mrs. Golubski, the teacher's helper in his class, who incidentally was the teacher's helper in Travis's Kindergarten class last year. So she knows all about Noah and remembers him from Wednesdays last year when he always made a big production out of picking Travis up from class.

Speaking of Travis's class, there are no less than 6 children in the Preschool class that are siblings of Travis's 1st-grade classmates. (Of course, that number is impacted dramatically by the triplets, whose older brother Carson has been in Travis's class for the past two years.) At any rate, there was a whole herd of us who dropped our older kids off at Room 5 and marched right down the hall to PreSchool Room 2 with younger siblings in tow.

We're like a gang.

A preschool slash 1st-grader parenting gang.

Watch out, yo. The hallways will never be the same.

Nightmarishly Genius

The other night, Travis came into our bedroom in the wee hours of the morning and said he'd had a bad dream. I asked him to elaborate, but he replied that he really didn't want to talk about it.

We cuddled for a bit, then it was time to wake up. All was fine.

Later in the day, he mentioned it again. That he'd had a bad dream last night. He volunteered a little more information:

If a meteor has a good dream, that means something bad happens.

That's what your bad dream was about?

Yes.

So, in your dream, if a meteor had a good dream, something bad was going to happen?

Yep.

Wow. That is kind of creepy.

But meteors aren't real, right?

Well...yes...meteors are real. But they can't dream. They're just like big rocks.

[giggle] Like my rock collection. And my rocks don't dream!!

Yessir.

I have to admit, I was a little impressed that his little subconscious brain was coming up with nightmares like this. Not just ordinary monsters in the closets for my little brainiac.

Sterling Silver Madness

I have this weird jewelry complex.

I can wear it all day long and not think a thing about it. The minute I get ready to take it off, it feels all constricting-like. As if they are not items of jewelry, but rather torture devices designed to slowly wear at me all day long until I just can't take it anymore.

It's like my earrings suddenly feel too heavy and dangly and itchy, and I can't get them out of my ears fast enough.

Or as if my watch is too tight around my wrist and feels all sticky and sweaty and it is making my skin crawl to even have it on.

Or as if my necklace is actually strangling me and I may very well choke to death if I don't get it off this very second and oh-my-god-the-clasp-is-sticking-and-my-fingers-are-all-fumbly-and-I-can't-get-it-unhooked-and-I-feel-like-this-thing-is-getting-tighter-around-my-throat-every-SECOND-AND-WHY-CAN'T-I-GET-THIS-DANG-NECKLACE-OFF-ME-HOLY-CRAP-I'M-GOING-TO-PASS-OUT-AND....whew.

It's quite a strange sensation. It's like a mini-panic-attack that appears for those few seconds between when I've decided to take my jewelry off and when I've actually removed said jewelry.

Then I'm back to normal.

Or, at least, back to whatever it is I am when I'm not totally crazy.

That rug really tied the room together.

Well, I've sunk to that level.

I'm about to write a blog post about potty training.

Consider yourself warned.

The thing is, I was all poised for Sophie to be a piece of cake to potty train. I mean, she had everything going for her.

She's a girl, and everyone keeps telling me girls are easier to potty train than boys.

She has two older brothers that go on the potty all the time, she's supposed to be eager to emulate them. 

She's our third kid, so we should be semi-pros at this by now.

So, I've been doing what I did with the other kids, where I spend a day with them pants-less, and regularly ask them if they need to potty, and repeatedly take them to sit on the potty even if they say they don't need to.

Sophie's response?

She pooped on the carpet.

This episode has happened TWICE.

I mean, at first she gets all excited about using the potty, and we sit, and nothing happens, and we do that about three times, and nothing is happening, and then two minutes later, while I am pouring Travis a glass of milk, she comes into the kitchen and tugs on my pants leg and says, "Momma! I pooped!" and by now I am smart enough to know this is NOT something I should be excited about, and I say in a somewhat suspicious tone, "really....show me where" and she takes my hand and leads me to the dining room and says "right here, and look, poop on the butterfly" because of course she also managed to soil whatever toys she had been playing with at the time.

And then I sigh and get to work cleaning it up, simultaneously thanking the Lord that Ben is not home right now because he just can't handle this stuff and cursing that Ben is not home right now because I am tired of always being the one on poop duty.

I refuse to be the person that spends weeks obsessing about potty training, so once I encounter a setback like this, I pretty much wash my hands of the whole thing (pun fully intended).

We're back to diapers.

I'm quite certain Sophie is insanely confused by the whole thing.

I don't much care. She's not pooping on my carpet anymore and right now, that is my primary concern.

Priorities, right?

Not screaming, but still creepy

My shins have been feeling dramatically better. (Thank you Zensah! I heart you!) My hips are all but completely rehabilitated.

Awesome, right?

Now......I've got a bum knee.

I'm not talking about just sore knees....I'm used to that and can deal with that well enough. Nope, I've got myself a Gee I think I'm just gonna totally give out in a sharp spasm of pain so you can't put any weight on me, hee hee problem knee.

I can't say for sure how it happened. The first time I was making an awkward step over a pile of clean laundry (yeah, that's right, I haven't put away my laundry from last week yet, what of it?) and felt a sharp pain and weakness in my right knee. It was gone as quickly as it appeared.

Since then, this short burst of misery has reared it's ugly head regularly, multiple times a day, and at the most inopportune times. Like when I'm relying on my knee. To support me. In standing. Or, heaven forbid, walking.

Each time, the severe pain is fleeting, and I'm left with only a lingering weakness that sort of pokes at me, like my knee is taunting me.

I could totally give out on you at any moment!! Hee hee! Are those stairs?? Hee hee, let's just see how far you make it down THOSE. Oh, the suspense is just killing me!

Today, I ran three miles on the treadmill. My knee did great. I was literally opening the locker room door after I'd showered and was heading back to work, thinking to myself, "I'm so glad my knee held out, if it can do a 3-mile run, surely it's just been some kind of flukey strain and nothing serious, hopefully it won't cause me any more troub-----"

And at that very moment, a sharp pain shot through my knee and it buckled underneath me. I had to limp/hobble my way to a table in the gym lobby, my face contorted in an awkward "I'm totally trying not to scream out in pain, I'm succeeding in that but I'm still creeping everybody out," sort of look.

Minutes later, it was back to normal with just that nagging twinge of weakness left in it's wake.

If you know me, you know I'm not likely to go to the doctor about this. I'm hoping and praying it is just some kind of ligament strain that will heal on its own.

I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, if you see me hobbling around looking deep in agonized thought and / or possibly constipated, you'll know what's going on.

Some Random Thoughts

• I'm quite pleased that my kids, thanks to the magic of Netflix on the Wii, are falling in love with old Inspector Gadget cartoons. That is quality entertainment, my friends.

• We've gotten through our month of multi-vacations, with our New York trip, and camping, and Canada. The trips were all terrific, but pre-vacation always turns me into a ball of stress. I decided that I'm pretty much the Charlie Sheen of vacationing, and by that I mean when I'm actually on my vacation, I'm pretty good at it and it all goes well, but behind the scenes and during all the prep work I'm a total loon.

• I promised the doctor at the Urban Adventure medic tent that I would go to my regular doctor to get my stitches removed, but by the time Sunday night rolled around, I decided that was a gigantic waste of time and money, and utterly unnecessary. So, I went to Wal-Mart and bought some tiny, sharp sewing scissors and snipped them myself in the bathroom mirror.

• I bought a one-thousand-piece puzzle when we were in Canada and spent the evenings and kids' nap times putting it together. With some help from Ben, Travis, Noah, Mac & Jody. I finished 998 pieces of it. The other two pieces were either not in the box (who knows what quality control is like in Canada) (just kidding, Canada! I heart you!), or Sophie dropped them down the cracks on the front deck, or fed them to the lake trout or something. I scoured the cabin from top to bottom and never found them. It was extremely frustrating.

• Sophie's going through a spitting phase. I've had to reprimand her three times this evening to not spit on the iPad, or the dog, or her dinner.

• I forgot to mention that we won the Urban Adventure Video Contest, which was announced at the awards ceremony after the race, and were able to take home a new iPod Touch and iPod Nano as our winnings. They have made themselves at home among the myriad of other Apple gadgets in our house, and are quite pleasant additions to our family.

• Speaking of Apple products, I'm very nearly fully converted to an Apple disciple. I never thought I'd say that. Certainly, I still use Windows at work, but as I type this blog from the MacBook at home, listening to my new Nano, downloading alphabet games on the Touch for Sophie, while the boys play Uno on the iPad, I consider myself pretty well won-over.

• The other day, Ben seemed genuinely surprised that I knew what an Allen wrench was. I'm no Bob Vila, but I was pretty insulted.

There. That's all the crap that's been swirling around in my brain for the last day or two. You're welcome.

We spent last week at a lovely little camp in Ontario, Canada. Ben's family has frequented this camp many times over the years, and our trip this year did not disappoint. My in-laws were there as well -- Ben's parents as well as his brother and family. The kids had a terrific time on the beach with all of Ute's cool water toys, we discovered Noah is a champion fisherman, we went hiking and boating and fishing and sunbathing, played cards and read books and put puzzles together, and were generally off the grid with little to no cell phone and internet access for the week.

Now that is a vacation.

Limberlost Lodge from above

My home for the week, Cottage #3. Mac & Jody and the boys were in the next cabin over, and Ben's parents were just up the hill.

(Above pictures courtesy of Limberlost Lodge)

Chillin' in the water

Ben and Mac on the Hydro-bikes. These things were pretty neat. And, as Mac liked to point out to me throughout the week, virtually impossible to fall off of to the point of requiring stitches.

Sophie became a baseball fan in honor of the Cubs' winning streak.

Ben and I kayaked with the kids to a tiny little beach on the other side of the lake.

Travis constantly searched for treasures.

Beach combing

Happy kids

We wore this one out daily. I would put her down for a nap each day, but she was so excited she kept getting up and out of bed to play around the cabin. I routinely found her collapsed asleep at random places. Here, on the wood floor in front of the stove. Totally normal.

On our last full day, we took the kids for a hiking trip up Rock Candy Mountain. It was about a 1,000-foot trek to the top and took us roughly two hours to go both up and down. A nice hike that the kids could do without too much difficulty, although there was a lot of Sophie-carrying involved.

Excited for the adventure

We're hiking!!

Sophie was a daddy's girl for most of the trip

View from our first stop...not quite at the top yet. We stopped here for goldfish crackers and pb&j.

For some reason the camera got a little swirly at the bottom left corner. Maybe the mountain is haunted.

Here we are at the top.

And now Ben, since he wasn't in the family picture above. We didn't mess with the timer on the camera because Sophie was running around too much and Noah was burying his head in the rocks and it wasn't worth it to me to risk one of them tumbling down the face of the mountain just to get a family photo of the five of us at once.

Naturally, we brought candy to eat at the top of the mountain. Noah had been disappointed that there wasn't candy growing on the mountain. He finally came to the conclusion that candy used to grow there years ago and that's why they named it that way.

Water break. The kids loved drinking from Dad's "magic water backpack"

Hiking is hard work, mom. Now give me some water and carry me back down.

Super Team Awesome....crossed the finish line, at least.

Third Annual Urban Adventure results are in. We finished all checkpoints despite some speed bumps, so to speak. We came in 45th out of 116 co-ed teams, but of course we really weren't competing for time.

The race started off with race officials handing out the course maps half an hour prior to start time, so strategy could be developed. The map showed you where the checkpoints were located, but did not tell you what was involved at each checkpoint. You were to bike to each checkpoint; you could complete the checkpoints in any order. One team member (me) wore a wristband, which was scanned upon completion of each checkpoint.

Here is our map, there were 23 total checkpoints located throughout downtown, Notre Dame/Holy Cross, and other surrounding areas.

We didn't get many pictures again this year, but below is a description of our race.

1. Farmer's Market: This checkpoint has been consistent in each running of the race, so we knew what to expect. We were given a list of grocery items to buy, which we then turned into the checkpoint officials. All purchased items were donated to a local charity.

2. Veteran's Memorial Park: gigantic inflatable bouncy slide.

3. Potawatomi Park Pool: Each team was given an inner tube, and teammates had to stand on opposite sides of the pool. The first team member would swim the length of the pool, the second team member would swim back. You had to have your body touching the inner tube the entire way. Yes, we had to jump in fully clothed, but it was a nice refreshing start to a hot day.

4. Howard Park: Slip 'n' Slide. More water, again, a good thing for the 90-degree temperature that was forecasted for the day.

5. East Race: Another staple of the Urban Adventure -- rafting down the river.

6. Colfax Bridge over the river: Zip line. They had four lines going this year, so in general, teams were able to go across simultaneously.

7. College Football Hall of Fame Gridiron: Pick up two large weights, run them down the gridiron to your waiting teammate, who ran them back.

8. LePeep Restaurant: Pour a pitcher of water into three glasses on a tray, carry the tray to your teammate at another table, teammate brings tray back and pours water back into pitchers.

9. Fiddler's Hearth Restaurant: Both teammates don kilts, then carry a caber (a long wooden pole....it's a Scottish thing) down the sidewalk, around the Scottish flag at the corner, and then back.

10. Morris Plaza: Teammates get their legs tied together, then kick a coconut around orange cones.

11. South Bend Civic Theatre: Act out a scene provided to you at the checkpoint, while wearing capes and velvet crowns.

This is where things went slightly awry for us. We had completed the downtown area, so were headed up north to Notre Dame. I was following Ben and was kind of distracted, not paying enough attention to the road. We hit a red light but were going pretty fast -- Ben stopped, but I hadn't noticed the red light, slammed on my brakes at the last moment and went skidding across the pavement.

I was pretty disoriented at first, hopped off from the middle of the road (thankfully didn't get hit by any cars) and went straight for the first aid kit in my bag. I was dripping blood but wasn't actually sure at that point how or where I was hurt. I thrust some band-aids at Ben and told him to get me patched up so we could keep going.

It was my chin that was banged up, and Ben was kind of unsure, trying to decide whether to take me to get stitches or not.

I'm fine, I'm sure I don't need stitches, let's just go.

Diane, we're literally right next to the hospital. Let's just go and get you cleaned up.

No, we are NOT not finishing this race, we delayed our Canada vacation for this, we've only done 11 checkpoints and this year we are GOING to get all the checkpoints done so help me God. Our race is not ending with me bleeding on the sidewalk.

I'm pretty sure you need stitches. If we wait until after the race to go to the hospital it will take forever and we'll be even later leaving for Canada.

Whatever, Ben, I have decided, we are not going to the hospital, just put this band-aid on my chin already and let's go. We'll stop by the medic tent at the finish line and maybe they can take care of me there. I probably don't need stitches anyway.

So, Ben gave in, he applied the band aid, which barely worked but at least kept my gaping wound mildly covered and appeared to stop the bleeding, and we were on our way.

12. Irish Green: Large wooden US maps were set up, with holes at various destination cities. We were to make paper airplanes and get them through one of the holes.

The funny part about this is that I was still a little dazed at this point, so much so that I could NOT figure out how to make a paper airplane. I folded the paper a bit, sure, but it looked more like a sad origami attempt at a block of wood than anything that would actually fly through the air. Ben kind of snorted at me and sadly shook his head, then took his super amazing paper flying machine and made it through the hole handily.

13. Hot Box Pizza - we had to take a pizza box and deliver it around the corner and down the street.

14. Innovation Park - we had to draw two pieces of paper from a bowl, each containing a word. Using those two words, we had to come up with a new product idea, and pitch the idea to one of the checkpoint officials. We drew "seed" and "putty", and Ben sold the idea of a grass-growing putty that you spread on your lawn which drops grass seed and then disintegrates.

15. Notre Dame Football Stadium: run a lap around the inside of the stadium. This was more my thing and I was pretty much feeling back to normal by this point. They also had a fire engine waiting at this checkpoint, spraying water for a quick cool-down.

16. St. Mary's gym: One teammate (Ben) had to bounce ping pong balls to the other teammate, who had to catch them in a little megaphone.

17. Holy Cross: Giant inflatable obstacle course. Tore up my chin a little bit again going through this one. Had to take a slight pit stop to clean up and re-apply bandages.

18. Holy Cross gym: Make a free throw. Right up Ben's alley.

19. St. Joseph's High School: Salmon toss. They had coolers of salmon that teammates had to throw back and forth to each other from 10 feet apart. They were stinky and heavy. If you dropped it you had to go back to the end of the line. Ben and I are expert fish-handlers, thankfully, and caught both on the first attempt.

20. Mystery Photo Checkpoint: Our race packet included a picture of a city landmark, the City Cemetery. The checkpoint was not shown on the map, but teams were to find the checkpoint from the photo. I suspected it was on Washington St and we got confirming directions from another team.

21. Salvation Army Kroc Center: Count the number of exterior doors on the new Kroc center building (currently under construction). I was back to being confused by this point, or maybe just tired, because I couldn't figure it out and thought the answer was 13. Ben correctly counted the 17 doors, no thanks to me.

22. United Beverage Warehouse: Unstack 12 kegs on pallets, load them onto handcarts, run them to the other side of the warehouse and re-stack them.

(They were empty kegs, by the way. We're not super-human, after all.)

23. Finish line!!

Straight to the medic tent for us, where the very nice physician there debated about whether to give me stitches or not, then decided it was necessary because of the amount of movement in that part of my chin. (Maybe she thought I talked too much.) I told her my dilemma that we intended to leave for Canada straight from the race and really didn't have time for an ER visit; she debated some more and then conceded that she could give me stitches right there on the tiny bench under the tent at Coveleski Stadium.

Not one of my finest moments.

This year, they had about 320 two-person teams among all divisions (Elite, Open, Family, and Junior). Race results can be found here.

Mark your calendars for Urban Adventure 2012, July 28th.

Click here for pictures from Urban Adventure's Facebook page.