Day 698 - Days Go By (During Playtime)

It's trivia time. 10 points if you can name the song title and artist for the words posted below.

And days go by,

I can feel 'em flyin'

Like a hand out the window in the wind.

The cars go by,

Do you have a guess yet? If one happens to be a fan of country/pop, then they would probably already know that the answer is Keith Urban. 

There is certainly a degree of irony to the fact that I'm quoting Keith Urban lyrics in a #DaddyWrite post. After all, I am the guy who mistakenly wandered onto the stage during a rehearsal for a Keith Urban concert in the old Kemper Arena. True story, I had no idea who the guy was at that time. I just assumed he was an extremely friendly Australian roadie wearing a velour sweatsuit.

Regardless of my utter lack of awareness when it comes to Keith Urban, I currently find those lyrics ringing true when I take stock of my life.

I've written about how fast Ellie is maturing and growing into a mature little girl. It's crazy how by this time next year, she'll be at least a couple of months into her career as a preschool student. On the same token though, it's crazy how fast Ethan is growing up before my very eyes. I really found myself thinking about it this afternoon during my one-on-one play time with Ethan while Ellie was napping.

For the record, this one-on-one time with Ethan is one of his (and my) favorite times of the day. As I type out those words, I know I've written them before. However, I still feel that way and it's even more true as I watch how quickly Ethan is changing.

The first step to any playtime session with Ethan is to carry him down to our family room and block the stairs with a body pillow. I know it seems silly but it honestly keeps him from crawling up the stairs over and over again. If there's anything I know, it's that it can get fairly frustrating chasing a mobile infant up the stairs over and over again. Once the stairs are properly blocked, it means that playtime can really begin.

The first thing Ethan normally wants to do is explore his surroundings. Even though, he's in our family room every day, he still has to make sure nothing has changed. After that, he'll generally pull himself up on our couch and begin to walk along it and our footstool, smiling all the while. Next, Ethan will decide it's time to test his balance. With a wide stance, he'll let go of the footstool, proceeding to stand on his own two feet for a few wobbly seconds before crashing down the ground below. Next on Ethan's list is to play with any and all toys he can find in the toy box. In fact, he's not happy until he's pulled each and every toy out of the box. 

The next thing though is what makes me really happy right now and brings me a ton of joy. It just so happens that Ethan is discovering his voice and is enjoying expressing himself. Obviously he doesn't know words yet but he now has quite the array of sounds he uses to convey his emotions. Ethan will even do his part to carry on a conversation during our playtimes together. He'll respond in turn to anything I say to him directly. In fact, more often than not, he'll even make direct eye contact while "talking" to me. It's the coolest thing!

If I'm being completely honest though, it'll be interesting to see if I still find Ethan talking to me as interesting when he actually is speaking in real sentences. It will probably depend on what he's saying though. Hopefully it's friendly and respectful and not mean and angry. We'll just have to see as days go by. #DaddyWrite

Day 695 - Photos, Weddings, and Dancing the Night Away

Mondays are always a weird time in House Holt. Actually, take out the word, 'weird', and replace it with the word, 'quiet'. That provides a much more realistic take on what Mondays are like around these parts.

Under normal circumstances, Ellie and Ethan are both pretty tired after staying up late to play with college students at the college life group Bethany and I help co-lead. The two are probably a little more tired than normal today, though. That's with them skipping college life group last night to boot!

If I had to guess why both kids are so tired, I think the culprit would be the epically long weekend they had. Not only was the weekend really full with lots to do but Bethany actually spent four straight days at home with them. To say Ellie was in paradise would be putting it lightly. She got all of the time she could ever want with her mommy during that time. She was read to, snuggled with, and played with to her little heart's content. In fact, before we got to our really busy days of Friday and Saturday, one could say Ellie was already tuckered out from all of her fun with Mommy. That being said, there was still lots of fun to be had on Friday and Saturday night.

The event of the evening for Saturday was a quick, little road trip to St. Joseph for family pictures at Mark Youngdahl Park. Now, I realize it seems slightly random for us to take family pictures in St. Joe. The reasons for doing so were twofold. The first being that Bethany simply liked this photographer's work. The second being that it gave us the opportunity to include my parents so that my mother could fulfill her lifelong goal of having a professional photographer take pictures of our family.

While trying to wrangle a three-year-old and an eight-month-old into taking quality pictures may sound miserable, it was actually super fun. For one, it's always fun to see the kids dressed up. Also, it helps that our photographer was awesome and really understood how to get both Ellie and Ethan to smile. We definitely have a ton of cute pictures to choose from. After we finished up with pictures, we made a quick trip to Freddy's for dinner before hitting the road for home. By the time the kids were in bed, it was already close to 8:00 pm.

Photo credit: BR Collective Artistry

Fast forward to Saturday afternoon and you'll find the four of us sitting in a pew in the back of Holy Family Catholic Church to watch one of Bethany's good friends getting married. Now, obviously, this wasn't a big moment for the kids. In fact, I had to take Ethan out of the sanctuary a couple of times to let him crawl around the lobby. However, the wedding reception was a different story.

As soon as we arrived at the venue of Liberty Community Center, the very first thing Ellie noticed was the playground outside. A playground on which she would spend the first part of the evening playing. Once the sun went down, however, Ellie's choice of activity changed greatly. Dancing became the new form of entertainment.

Now, Ellie and I have danced before at weddings. She was less than a year old but it still counts. This time, there was no denying that Ellie was having a great time. Not only could I not pull her off the floor to take the occasional break, but I couldn't even take a break without her dragging me back onto the dance floor. By the time 8:00 rolled around with Ethan already asleep in Bethany's arms, we knew it was time to head home much to Ellie's chagrin. 

As you can see, two late nights coupled with the normal busy events of Sunday definitely contributed to the "quiet" times permeating through House Holt on this cloudy Monday morning. #DaddyWrite

Day 692 - JUMP: The Trampoline Park Tales

Cold weather is coming. It's an unfortunate truth. As any parent knows, cold weather means kids with cabin fever. Kids with cabin fever mean patience is wearing thin. When patience wears thin, it's just a matter of time before a parent starts screaming into a pillow or banging their head against a wall. The parent's head, not the child. 

It's about time to have another Scrubs gif.

This week has been one of those weeks for me on occasion. Therefore, since I wanted to end my work week on a good note, I decided to take action today to insure that's exactly what happened. Lucky for me and the kids, today was Toddler Time at Above All Trampoline Park.

We had never actually been to Above Air before today. However, I have known about it for quite a while and had every intention of taking Ellie. We ran out of time before Ethan was born. Then we ran out of time on Bethany's maternity leave. Then, another six months went by without going. None of that matters any longer as today was the day!

I honestly didn't have much clue what to expect as I parked our Traverse outside a nondescript building in an industrial park in Liberty. From the outside, it certainly wasn't anything too special. As we opened the doors and headed inside, I realized I was mistaken. Ellie too realized there was something to be excited about. I could barely contain her long enough to sign the required waivers and pay her entry fee. I even had to call her back over so that her smiley-face wristband signifying payment could be placed on her wrist.

Unfortunately for me, I felt like I couldn't really take part in the trampoline fun due to Ethan's presence in my arms. Therefore, I stood there, slightly jealous, as I watched my daughter happily bound across the gymnasium as she wandered from one obstacle to another. 

First on her list was a massive section of trampolines, all connected to each other. I kid you not, this thing was probably a football field in length. Starting on the nearest side of the gym, Ellie took off sprinting and bounding her way across the floor until she finally reached the other side. Once there, she turned around, smiled, and came bounding back as fast as her little legs could muster. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the half dozen falls that accompanied these trips. Judging by the enormous smile on her little face, it was definitely all worth it to her.

From there, we continued to wander through the gymnasium. First, we discovered a pair of "dodgeball courts" as well as three basketball hoops. Ellie only spent a few brief moments at each of those two stations before she was ready to see what else she could find. Fortunately for her, "what else she could find" was all she could have ever asked for in a trampoline park.

We climbed a small set of stairs to find an enormous airbag set into the ground, complete with trampolines leading to it. Imagine the kind of thing a stuntman jumps into and you have a good idea of what this looked like. Ellie, fearless as ever, pulled herself up onto the highest jump point and took a brief moment to assess the situation. Then, she ran down the slight incline, bounced briefly on the trampoline at the bottom, and flew through the air, gracelessly crashing onto the airbag below. With a slight laugh and a huge smile, she then clawed her way out of the airbag, clambered back onto the jump point and took off again.

While all of this was going on, Ethan was doing a fantastic job not only entertaining himself, but endearing himself to everyone we came in contact with. Whenever we'd reach an area that I knew we would be staying at for a while, I sat Ethan down on the ground to play a little while we watched Ellie bounce. When he wasn't keeping a keen on his sister, he was keeping a keen ear on the Disney classics playing over the stereo in the gym, smiling and clapping along to the music as it went. 

As time went on though, Ethan got a little bored just listening to music. Instead, he desired to be more of an active part of what was happening. As I hadn't bought my son a ticket, he couldn't actually play on the trampolines. However, that didn't stop him from cheering on his sister. In fact, during quite a few of her daredevil jumps onto the airbag, Ethan was standing there, hands on the jump point, gleefully looking up at Ellie as she prepared for her next stunt. He would even follow her with his eyes as she executed said stunt, laughing happily as she crashed into the airbag below.

Ellie? What are you doing up there?

Unfortunately for all of us, our hour at Above All came and went a little too quickly. Lucky for Ellie, she has plenty more opportunities ahead of her for similar experiences in her future career as a professional stunt woman.  You can expect to see her in whatever the inevitable summer Marvel movie is in 2041. She'll be the one diving off the impossibly high structure, gleefully defying death all the way down. #DaddyWrite

Day 690 - One-on-One

There are a lot of great things about social media. For one, it enables us to stay in contact with friends and acquaintances we might have otherwise drifted away from. For another, it gives us an endless amount of useless stuff to fill our minds when we could be doing literally anything else. If you dispute that point, allow me to remind you of that meme about cats and/or dogs and/or babies you shared last week. 

Exhibit A, your honor...

One of my favorite things about social media has to be that it can help provide me with topics for what to write about when I otherwise wouldn't know. For those that can't read between the lines, that's exactly what is about to happen courtesy of our friend, Sara. And I quote, "Here's the truth: I really love when the boys take a nap at the same time..hello productivity or nap for mama!! But I also really love when only one is napping and I get one-on-one time with the other."

That quote got me thinking a little bit. Sure, there are things that need to be corrected if I'm applying it to me. For example, the productivity thing is never applicable. Also, I will never refer to myself as "mama". "Daddy", "Dad", "Dada", or "Batman" will do just fine. However, the rest of it is fairly applicable to my current life.

I've taken great pride in my ability to successfully put both kids down for a nap at the same time each day. It was great because I was guaranteed to have a couple of hours to myself in what is an otherwise busy day. Notice how I used past tense in that sentence; that's very important.

Recently, Ethan has decided that unlike his morning nap, he's perfectly content with only napping for an hour to an hour and a half. In other words, my couple of hours to myself has diminished in time. At first, if I'm being completely honest, I saw this as a personal attack and massive inconvenience. Doesn't he know that I'd rather be napping instead of playing right now?

Thinking back, the first time this occurred, I begrudgingly marched up to Ethan's room, sprung him from his crib, and raced back downstairs to our family room. There I sat Ethan on the floor to play while I casted the newest episode of NFL Live to our television. After all, I had Chiefs highlights and fantasy-relevant news to watch. 

It didn't take me long to realize that my priorities were very askew. Without Ellie's constant intervention, that time provided me with a great opportunity for one-on-one play that we don't otherwise receive. In fact, that short window of time has quickly become my favorite time of each day. 

With our body pillow barricading the  stairs, Ethan isn't tempted to start climbing. Instead, we spend time wrestling and playing with toys. It also provides Ethan with time to practice cruising along furniture to his little heart's content. If I'm being completely honest, I also think this time is one of Ethan's favorite parts of the day. I see more smiles and laughs from my little dude in that time frame than in the rest of the day combined.

I'm not good about taking pictures during our bro-down time so this will have to do.

For the record, NFL Live is still going in the background almost every day. I'm proud to stay that the amount of time I spend paying attention to it is very minimal. After all, I've got a baby to play with! 

Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time to post this to social media. Good way to bring things full circle, right? #DaddyWrite

Day 685 - We're a Travelin' Fam

Imagine yourself as a baby. Ok, good. Now, imagine yourself as a baby forcibly strapped into a car seat for seven hours as you traverse a couple of states while riding in, wait for it, a Traverse. Still with me? Good.

If you're not following along, I'll break it down. This weekend marked Ethan's first long-range trip as the four of us loaded up the Traverse and headed out to Illinois for a weekend of fun with Bethany's brother, Ryan.

Friday marked our first "fun-filled" day of travel as we loaded up the kids and everything that goes along with that and set out on our journey at 8:00 am sharp. With Ryan's home outside Bloomington, IL being six hours away if one drives straight through, we knew we had quite the journey on our hands. That thought was made further evident when we heard a tiny voice in our back seat exclaiming, "Mommy, I need to go potty" less than ten minutes after leaving home. After a short break in Liberty, we were back on I-35 heading towards Cameron. 

For the record, the rest of the driving portion of our trip was relatively stress-free with only a few more stops sprinkled in. There was Marceline for Ethan to eat, Hannibal for the rest of us to eat, and one final potty break in Lincoln, IL. Right around the 3:00 hour, we reached our destination, the world headquarters of State Farm Insurance in Bloomington, IL. For the record, that is where Ryan works, not where he lives.

While Bethany had seen Ryan's office before, I had not. Ditto for the kids. Therefore, since his office had undergone significant remodels, there was no better time than the present for Ryan to treat us to a tour of his office. Meeting us at the front gate, Ryan helped us get our visitors' badges and we headed inside. We first wandered upstairs to check out the awesome dining hall before heading back downstairs to Ryan's wing. By the way, I can say 'awesome' because it features a Chick-Fil-A. Once our tour ended, it was time to hop back in the car and head to Ryan's home in Ellsworth.

Yes, while I forgot to write about roasting hot dogs and s'mores on Friday night, rest assured that it did happen.

Our second day at Uncle Ryan's was when our itinerary got really busy with Rader Family Farms on the docket. In case you're wondering what exactly Rader Family Farms consists of, I think their mission statement says it best: "Illinois Agritaninment at Its Finest." The Farm was chock full of all kinds of entertaining things for kids to do without straying too far from the core purpose of agriculture. Some examples include the combine slides, corn bins, rat rollers, and straw castle.

If pressed, I would have to say Ellie's and my absolute favorite activity was the duck races. These aren't real life duck races though. Once again, I liberally steal from Rader Family Farms with their description of the duck races, "Hand pump the lever to move your (rubber) duck through the water trough and win the race." It was seriously all kinds of fun. By the time we left, we had probably taken advantage of the duck races on five or six different occasions. 

I. Love. This. Collage.

Once we left Rader Family Farms, it was time for us to return to Ryan's so everyone could take naps and/or watch college football. Once those goals had been sufficiently accomplished, we loaded everyone back up in the Traverse and drove to a nearby farm celebrating 'Alpaca Days'. Ah yes, the majestic alpaca. Upon our arrival, we were shepherded into a small barn where we found ourselves surrounded by alpacas on each side. There, while receiving ample opportunities to pet and rub the animals, we were taught everything there is to know about raising alpacas. Following that, we were directed to the farm store where we were taught everything there is to know about buying goods made from alpaca hair. For the record, we didn't actually buy any alpaca swag; we just browsed. 

With that, we headed back to Ryan's where Ellie and her uncle spent some quality time playing outside together before dinner. After several exhausting minutes of throwing frisbees, playing catch, and wrestling in the lawn, Ellie and Ryan came running back inside the house for chili and cinnamon rolls. Following dinner, Ellie and Ethan got to spend about an hour playing before it was time for bed as Sunday was going to be a busy day.

"Here's looking at ewe, kid."

On Sunday morning, we didn't have to hit the ground with our feet running since Ryan's church didn't actually start until 10 am. Therefore, we could take our time and relax a little in the morning before heading to nearby Lexington. Church was definitely a different experience for Ellie as she got to actually be in the main sanctuary with us for worship before being whisked away for children's church just prior to the sermon. 

I'd be lying if I said Bethany and I had high hopes for her making it through an entire church service in a new place without some kind of incident. The joke was on us as she nearly made it and would have if not for falling into a picket fence decoration in the children's classroom with minutes to go in the service. In fact, she was so distressed about the scrape on her arm that she was delivered back to us in her teacher's arms. No worries though.

Once we arrived back at Ryan's, it was time for a quick breakfast/lunch of pancakes and eggs before naptime arrived for the kids. While I probably should have taken a good nap given what awaited us that evening, I instead found myself desiring to watch the Chiefs-Lions game while taking a short nap at halftime. 

While I spent the afternoon watching the game with Ryan, Ellie and Bethany spent time outdoors enjoying the three Clydesdales being temporarily housed at Ryan's place. In a new experience for both Ellie and Bethany, they got to watch as Ed, the owner of the horses hitched them up to a wagon and gave them practice walking around Ryan's estate. Following that, the horses got a nice bath with soap and everything.

This is Kate. Or Kat. I don't remember which.

Before we knew it, our time at Ryan's was dwindling to a close. Bethany and I had made the decision to leave Illinois at 6 pm so that Ellie and Ethan could sleep on the way home. That decision would also result in fewer stops for us on the way home; a decision that was probably very detrimental to my bladder seeing as how we made one, single, solitary stop on the journey home. Our very sleepy crew finally pulled into the driveway at our house a little after 12:30 in the morning. With that, we all retreated to our beds and called it a night...and the official end to our weekend at Uncle Ryan's. #DaddyWrite