Day 1,153 - 1,155 - The One Where Mom Went Away

This weekend was an unusual time in House Holt. On most weekends, I know my place is pretty much to back off and let the kids enjoy all of the time that they can with Bethany. However, on this weekend, Bethany found herself heading to Branson for a women's retreat leaving me and the kids all alone.

There's an old saying that seems quite appropriate in this case. When Mom's away, the kids (and Dad) will play. I realize that's probably the rule of thumb in most homes. It's true that in our home, I do most of the "house-running" stuff on a day-to-day basis. However, when Bethany is out of town like she was this weekend, I'm definitely going to go out of my way to make sure it's a fun and special weekend for the kids.

Those fun and special times began on Friday night when Ethan and I picked Ellie up from school. We promptly headed to Sam's Club to pick up a big, freshly-prepared, take-and-bake pizza. After we spent about twenty minutes wandering around the store with no pizza to show for our trouble, I finally resorted to asking an employee for help. Imagine my surprise when she let me know that Sam's no long sold those pizzas. With that sad news, we left the store without our prize.

Never fear though for I am a man of great resourcefulness. While sitting in the Sam's parking lot, I promptly went to Casey's website to order a pizza only to find that the wait time was far too long. Therefore, I instead checked Pizza Hut only to learn the same. Finally, I decided to try Domino's only to find that our pizza would be ready in ten minutes. Success! About 15 minutes later, we were home with a hot-and-fresh ham, pineapple, and green pepper pizza all our very own. As one can probably guess, the kids were absolutely stoked to have a special treat and it slightly made up for the fact that Bethany was gone.

On Day 2, our original plans changed slightly but it wasn't all bad. We started the day with a trip to see my parents in Savannah. My mom had purchased a new TV stand for the living room and needed help unhooking everything in the original stand and re-hooking everything up in the new one. For me, this was a slight unfortunate job as I found myself without some of the necessary cords and connectors to complete the job and ended up having to make two trips to town to stock up.

For their part though, Ellie and Ethan certainly enjoyed their time at my parents' house. For one thing, the two of them are largely able to run free since my parents live in the country. There's also always lots of four-wheeler rides from my dad and plenty of pushes on the swing. My dad even loaded both kids up and drove them over to the fields to watch harvest.

We ended up leaving Savannah right after lunch to head home for Ethan to take a much-needed nap so that he would have enough energy for the second treat of the day. Earlier in the week, I had promised the kids that we would have a movie night on the projector in the basement since Mom was gone. The movie of choice on this night was Cars.

Now, Ethan has been slightly obsessed with Lightning McQueen since we purchased his "new" bike a few weeks ago. Taking that into account, I felt confident that Ethan would love to see the actual movie. Right I was. Accompanied by a big bowl of popcorn, Ellie and Ethan spent close to two hours being entertained by the denizens of Radiator Springs. While Ellie has seen Cars multiple times, the story was new to Ethan. However, that didn't stop him from grasping every important plot point. In fact, when Bethany later quizzed him about the movie, he was able to share a ton of details about it. The one unfortunate thing about movie night was that Ethan cried when it was over because that meant it was time for bed. Fortunately for him, there is a Cars 2 and a Cars 3 to enjoy at some point down the road.

Fast forward to Sunday and our last day sans Bethany. Of course, we started the day at church. This Sunday was special though as I asked Ellie to sit with me since the sermon was over baptism. She's been really curious about the concept lately so I wanted her to have the opportunity to ask any questions that she had. While there were a few, she mostly just had fun coloring and reading books. That's ok though because it was still awesome to get to sit next to her during church.

As far as the rest of the day, it went fairly fast. After getting home from church, we ate a quick lunch of breakfast burritos before the kids headed to their respective quiet time and nap a little before noon. That gave me time to watch some of the Chiefs game (UGH!) before Bethany got home. Once Bethany got home, we spent some time talking about her weekend before the kids finally joined us. Once that happened, it was time for the last highlight of the weekend: Pumpkin carving!

While we had picked out a pumpkin a couple of weeks prior, we hadn't actually carved it yet although Ellie had picked out her dream design of stars and the moon. After tracing it on the pumpkin, it was time to do some cutting. We actually embraced a new method of pumpkin carving this year. Instead of using a knife exclusively, we used a drill to put holes in our pattern and then simply used a knife to connect said holes. Not only was it a little more precise but the actual cutting went so much faster as a result!

While it goes without saying that we definitely missed Bethany during her weekend away, it's indisputable that we had a great time as a trio despite her absence! As anyone can definitely see, it's certainly true that when Mom was away, the kids (and Dad) did play! #DaddyWrite

 P.S. - I just realized that I completely forgot that Ethan and I joined our friends, the Blackwells and the Thomanns, at the Kansas City Zoo on Friday morning for some zoo-time fun. You know it was a crazy weekend if I forgot all about that!

Day 1,145 - The Human Embodiment of Fall

Every so often, someone becomes the human embodiment of something. For example, I wouldn't find it farfetched to refer to Tom Brady as the human embodiment of destiny. After all, any time he finds himself in a Super Bowl, it's likely that he's going to win it. Believe you me, as a Chiefs fan, I know that better than most. Of course, people can be the human embodiment of many things. For example, per one Kevin McAdam, the Holts are the human embodiment of fall!

Now, we did not set out to become the human embodiment of fall. I don't think anyone does. However, when one family takes on three fall-related activities in three days, it really can't be disputed. It started  simply enough on Friday as the kids and I joined a group of stay-at-home moms from church for an outing at the Weston Apple Orchard. Yes, you read that correctly; I did say "kids" due to the fact that Ellie was out of school for the day.

Now, I should state that we didn't go to Weston Apple Orchard to pick apples. Instead, we went to partake in all the fun fall activities offered  there including the likes of a giant bouncing pillow (for lack of a better term), corn crib, a kid-sized birdhouse-themed playground, and a hay-ride. It's actually that last one that leaves us with a story to tell.

During the course of the morning, the kids started getting tired and grouchy. In an effort to curb those feelings, I agreed to take the kids out to the car to grab their water bottles that I had packed for lunch. When we returned though, we discovered that our friends had all hopped on the hayride without us. It goes without saying that the kids were disappointed. In fact, they were so disappointed that I attempted to get them on said hayride once the rest of our group left. Unfortunately it was shut down for the day. It's ok though as we had a great time burying each other in the corn crib instead.

 

Fast forward to day 2 of us being the human embodiment of fall. On this day though, Team Holt would be represented solely by Bethany and me. Once every other month, we schedule a date night for ourselves sans kids. On this occasion, we decided to take the opportunity to conquer the Liberty Corn Maze.

Before we had kids, the Liberty Corn Maze was a favorite fall tradition for us. However, it's not really suited for youngsters as the maze actually consists of four large mazes ranging from 0.5 to 3.9 miles in length. Over the course of an hour and a half, Bethany and I totaled well over three miles in our successful quest to locate all 24 check points contained within the maze.

 

Fast forward to Sunday and our family outing to Pumpkins Etc. with our friends, the McAdams. While we had never actually been to Pumpkins Etc. before, doing so is actually a fall tradition for the McAdam family. When we first arrived, the first thing we saw was a maze constructed of large hay bales. It didn't take long for Ellie and her friends to climb on top and start happily traversing across the top of the bales. From there, we headed into the corn maze and eventually wandered our way to the pumpkin patch where we braved burrs and broken/rotten pumpkins in our search for the perfect pumpkin. Finally, we decided on what was actually the first pumpkin Ellie picked up.

After about two and a half hours at Pumpkins Etc. with our friends, it was time to call it a day. However, we couldn't do so before having the five kids pose for a picture atop some hay bales sitting in an old pickup. We also had to pet some really cute kittens. Oh, and buy Butterfinger-flavored fudge. All were totally essential. Especially the fudge.

Looking back at the weekend as a whole and carefully considering all of the fall-themed activities we took part in, I can see how an argument can be made that the Holt family are indeed the human embodiment of fall. However, I'm sure there's someone out there who could and would dispute the title. Until that time comes though, I'll happily claim possession of said title. #DaddyWrite

Day 1,143 - Let's just all agree that potty training is the worst!

Learning new things can always be hard. It doesn't matter if you're 2, 5, or 35. The struggle will always be real. It's not that people are incapable of learning. That's not it at all. However, there is something to be said for the difficulty involved in rewiring our brain to remember new information while also deleting the information we've long held that we thought was correct.

For Ethan, that difficulty in rewiring his brain is pretty evident when looking at the process of potty training. There's definitely been some good days this week with nary a piece of wet clothing to be had. However, yesterday was pretty much the worst day of potty training that one can imagine. It all began within twenty minutes of Bethany leaving for work when Ethan saw fit to drop an enormous load in his underwear. In case anyone is wondering, that was not fun to clean up at all!

While one pair of poop-filled underwear wouldn't be the end of the world, it definitely continued to get worse. A little around lunchtime, Ethan suffered from another accidental bowel movement. This one stood out because he filled his underwear AND had some escape into his pants. If you're keeping track, that means Ethan is now on his second pair of pants of the day. 

The rest of the afternoon went fairly well. However, the second Bethany got home from work, things began to go south very, very quickly. It all started when Ethan suddenly disappeared out to the garage to play in Bethany's car. This is a fairly ordinary activity in our house with Ethan doing so every afternoon when his mom gets home from work. On this occasion though he was only outside for a few minutes before he wandered inside with an ashamed look on his face. When we asked what was wrong, he responded with, "I went potty in Mommy's car." With that we looked down and saw that his pants were totally soaked. Never fear though, Bethany checked her car seats and everything was still dry so we don't exactly know what happened but no harm was done.

At this point, it's dinner time and one would think that we would be done with accidents for the day. I'm sorry to say that whoever thinks that is wrong. First of all, dinner time wasn't super enjoyable to begin with as Ethan was continually throwing food and water on the ground. However, when we finally got him to settle down and eat, he only took about four bites before he looked as us and said those words, "I'm wet." Sure enough, he had soaked through yet another pair of underwear and pants. In case anyone lost track, that made four pairs of underwear and three pairs of pants for the day.

It's hard to remind myself that Ethan is trying to rewrite his brain into knowing that he shouldn't urinate or defecate in his underwear. After all, he's spent two years wearing diapers and not knowing any different. That being said, he certainly has made progress this week. The important thing to remember is that I can guarantee I won't have to clean up his messes forever. Eventually, if he's still having accidents, he'll be old enough to clean up his own pants and change his own underwear. That's good, right? #DaddyWrite

Potty-training sure does make one tired.