As we are preparing for our upcoming Colorado trip, Brett has been doing some training for hiking. We borrowed a hiking backpack that Hannah can ride in. At first, she was hesitant of the new device and was not willing to be put inside. But just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down – I got out a cookie and told her that she could have it when she was sitting in the backpack. (bribery with sugar is not our normal parenting style, but I decided it was okay since hiking backpacks are only a short-term part of our life) This worked very well. She happily got in the backpack and munched on her cookie while Brett walked around the block a couple times.

So daily walks are now an easy thing, thanks to a little help from the cookies. Hannah is very excited about hiking and periodically during the day will grab the backpack and utter earnest pleas which clearly include “hiking,” “backpack,” “in! in!” and, yes, “cookie.”

Part of having a blog is turning little things into “events.” This morning I grabbed my camera to capture a little event.

We will be spending some time in Colorado this summer, and we are talking about the trip with Hannah so that maybe she’ll have some idea of what’s going on when it happens. This morning I went through our postcard collection to find any of “Rado” or any picture that included mountains.

10:39 AM: Setting them out on the coffee table, I let her look at the pictures.

10:40 AM: This was fun until Fern jumped up on the table and decided to sit right in front of the camera (she’s kind of a diva). My photo op wasn’t going as planned, but this is real life so I kept shooting. Also in this period of seconds, Hannah apparently got bored and found some crossword puzzle books and a pen.

10:41 AM: Hannah decided crossword puzzles were not a good activity due to her lack of knowledge of the alphabet. She then realized there were other postcards in the basket and started going through the rest. Fern is still posing conspicuously.

10:42 AM: There were so many that she decided to turn the basket upside down and bang it on the table to remove the rest. This scared Fern off the table.

10:43 AM: She found one of a toucan that she really liked.

And that’s real life. I wanted a sweet picture of Hannah gazing dreamily at mountain landscapes. Instead, I have a diva cat, crossword puzzles, and a toucan.

My sister is one of my favorite people. She has a blog that I enjoy reading. She’s much funnier than I am, and she rips off a lot of my recipes, but I’m okay with that.

This week our church is having VBS. They are great and have childcare for the little ones whose moms are volunteering. I figured Hannah would be in her normal room where they basically just play and sometimes go for a ride on the mega-stroller. But this week she was bumped up to the 2’s class, and it is a big switch. They have a special snack, go to large group music time, do crafts, and play outside.

Headed to VBS

I was initially concerned that Hannah wouldn’t be able to handle all these activities. She’s too little, right? Maybe she doesn’t belong with these “big kids.” I told her teacher that I had no qualms about putting her back into the younger class if things didn’t work out.

I decided to peek at her in the large group time to see how she was doing. What a surprise! My baby was staying with her class, dancing to the music, doing the song motions, watching the videos, pointing at the people on stage – totally engaged and behaved. My heart hurt a little; my baby is growing up. She’s exceeding my expectations and adjusting to big new experiences that I didn’t think she was ready for. Turns out, maybe I was the one not ready for them.

Though with getting up early and her full morning at VBS, she comes home exhausted and doesn’t even nap well. I’m looking forward to getting back to our regular routine. But I’m glad she’s enjoying her new adventure. At random times in the afternoon, she’ll grab her bag, go to the door and say, “Friends. Church.”

We have three pets, two dogs and a cat. They take up more of our budget than we would like. To cut back the pet section of our monthly expenditures, I decided to forego the monthly flea and tick prevention drops. With three pets, it can add up quickly, and I felt the chance of them actually getting fleas was quite small anyway. Even when we’d gotten the prevention drops in the past, I never remembered to use them.

Unfortunately, our cheap and lazy selves sent our dogs to the kennel in April with no flea protection. Days after coming home, we realized we had unwelcome visitors.

We looked online for tips on flea treatment and followed all of them. We called the vet’s office and followed their suggestions. The websites said our battle could last up to a month. That seemed like a long time. Little did we know, a month into the battle we’d be seeing very little improvement! We’d gotten every product and followed all suggestions with little progress.

We are in Week 10 of the battle and are breathing more freely. Based on the last week, I think we have finally beaten them. Though as we are looking at receipts, we are painfully aware of the cost of the “cheap option” of foregoing monthly flea prevention. Here’s an approximate breakdown of the products and treatments we have purchased in the last ten weeks:

• Cheap flea drops – $13
• Carpet powder – $26
• Natural pet sprays – $29
• Carpet spray – $13
• Flea repellant – $15
• Frontline drops- $76
• Capstar pills – $135
• Flea drops for cat – $16
• Capstar pills for cat – $41
• Yard sprays – $45
• Nematodes for yard – $92
• K9 Advantix drops – $59
• Boric acid – $5
• Vacuum bags – $30

All this plus tax comes to over $600.  Granted, that includes flea protection drops for two more months, but still… ouch. We also threw out all the dog beds so will need to purchase new ones – another $50.

I was previously unfamiliar with Capstar products. They are pills that claim to kill all live fleas on the animal within four hours. I don’t think it worked quite that well for us, but there was a noticeable effect which was more than I could say for most of the other products. We used them in conjunction with the flea drops because the Capstar only kills live fleas, it does not repel fleas or kill flea eggs.

Luckily, the fleas seemed to stay on the animals, and we did not seem to have issues with them in the house or biting us. But I have put several years’ worth of use on our brand new vacuum cleaner in the last couple months.

So the moral of the story – if you have pets, don’t think that skipping monthly flea prevention will save you money. We tried that theory; it doesn’t work.

This girl is talking so much! I thought about making a list of all the words she knows, but that would take too long and there are always new ones.

Lately she has been learning names and likes to introduce herself to new people as “Nana.” She has a few mysteries of pronunciation, however. Her M’s and B’s are randomly interchanged.  For example, Uncle Michael is “Batu” and our friend Meghan is “Bidden.” A banana is “manana” and Bingley is “Minny.” But sometimes she will use the correct sound, like Aunt Mindy is “Minny” and Aunt Melody is “Mennenny.” (Aunt Kristen comes out sounding something like her word for chicken.)

She has also started understanding possession. Thankfully, she has not entered the world of “mine!” yet, but she will point at things and say “Mommy’s” or “Daddy’s.” But the understanding of possession has made her less willing to share her toys, and we have had lots of reminders about taking turns.

It’s really nice that she can often ask for what she wants – a specific snack, a toy, an activity, a friend. Recent favorites, respectively, would be “fishies,” “tent,” “dudder” (color), and “Bidden.” 

She tells us to pray a lot during meals but will often offer a premature “Men!” before the person has actually stopped praying. 

Of course we hear a lot of the toddler staple “no,” but we also hear “yeah” a lot. It’s really cute. Now when can we teach her “y’all”?