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.

Day 1,138 - A Salsa-Making, Salsa-Eating, Potty Training Machine

At first glance, only two of those descriptors seem to actually be related and it's probably the ones referring to salsa. However, it goes without saying that if I can find any possible way to tie seemingly unrelated things together, I'm going to make it happen. 

I'll lead with the somewhat obvious fact that we are currently working on potty training Ethan. A part of me wishes that we had already been able to do so. However, he simply didn't have much interest. This week has been a different story. After Bethany spent time over the weekend working with him, Ethan suddenly had the desire to learn. Therefore, on an otherwise routine Walmart run, we picked up some brand-new underwear for Ethan.

Actually, that Walmart run is a story in itself. While we led with a relatively normal package of no frills underwear, Ethan became enamored by a package of Paw Patrol-themed boxer briefs. The problem was that the Paw Patrol underwear was more than double the price of the no-frills stuff with less pairs to boot. However, given his palpable excitement, Bethany decided to make a deal. We agreed to buy the Paw Patrol underwear in addition to the no-frills stuff with the provision that he couldn't wear the Paw Patrol underwear until he stayed dry for an entire day.

That brings us to current day. While Ethan hasn't yet reached his goal of dry underwear for an entire day, we're making serious progress with the help of the timer on my phone. Every 20 to 30 minutes, the time will blare and Ethan and I will make a beeline for the bathroom. There he'll hop up onto the toilet and let 'er rip. When he's done, he's rewarded with a nice, soft, chewy marshmallow for a job well done. Of course, a marshmallow alone isn't enough to keep potty training moving. No, the real trick is keeping Ethan hydrated. That brings us to the salsa.

Now, I know that salsa really provides no assistance whatsoever when it comes to rehydrating oneself. However, if it has enough spice content, then the water consumed to offset said spice content will do the trick. Lucky for us, that's exactly the case with our current batch of homemade salsa.

Before this week, I can't say that I've ever actually made salsa before. For one thing, I've never actually had any inkling to do so. For another, I didn't have a recipe or an excessive amount of tomatoes. Between the bountiful harvest of our tomato plants and a recipe courtesy of our friend, Amy, those issues were no longer a problem. Therefore, on Tuesday, Ethan and I got to work making some salsa.

For his part, Ethan was pretty much convinced that watching the food processor do its thing was the most amazing thing he had ever experienced. Before we knew it, our concoction of tomatoes, onion, jalapeño, and cilantro had been pulverized into a tasty blend. The thing about our tasty blend though is that it did have a little kick to it. That didn't stop Ethan though as he kept asking for more and more. Along with the salsa though, he needed milk or water to counteract that little kick. Therefore, that definitely aided our cause of keeping potty training going.

I think what all of my previous rambling shows is that there are definitely non-traditional aids that parents can use when potty training their kids and apparently homemade salsa is one of those aids. Who knew? #DaddyWrite

Day 1,128 - "I do not like the cone of shame."

I'm not trying to give myself a big head or anything BUT I have to say that I think I'm fairly decent at being a stay-at-home parent. The kids are fed, clothed, and washed on a semi-regular basis. They only play in the street when I'm watching and it's been at least two months since anyone tried to eat a rock. That being said though, I am not infallible.

There are those times when the most miniscule thing will slip my mind. It can happen to anyone. Well, it just so happens that I recently had a couple of miniscule things slip my mind on back-to-back days. Unfortunately those miniscule things were necessary for Ellie's day at school. It's not like the things I forgot would cause my children to be removed from my care permanently. Instead, it just meant I probably deserved whatever the human version of the "cone of shame" from Up would be.

I'm going to make the argument that the first day of forgetfulness can be explained away due to circumstances being out of the ordinary. What does that mean? Well, it means that the thing I forgot isn't a daily necessity for Ellie to take to school. What is that item? Well, it was Ellie's lunch box, complete with her lunch.

I know on the surface that sounds bad but I assure it's not. The simple fact of the matter is that Ellie's school currently offers free school lunches. As a result, we have been taking advantage of that more often than not. The only reason we packed Ellie's lunch on this day was because she didn't really like the idea of eating Nachos Supreme for lunch. At least I think it was Nachos Supreme. I don't remember and it doesn't really matter. Regardless, the lovingly packed lunch Bethany made for Ellie consisting of a PBJ, carrots, and fruit was left hanging out in the fridge next to our pitcher of water. 

Not going to lie, I felt pretty bad once I saw this.

Ellie, for her part, didn't notice that her lunch was missing until lunchtime. Once she noticed though, the sadness kicked in. Ellie's teacher stepped in though and reminded Ellie that in addition to the hot meal options, she could also get the cold meal consisting of a PBJ with vegetable and fruit. While it wasn't lovingly packed by Bethany, at least Ellie was able to enjoy a similar meal to what she had expected. That's something, right?

On day two, I probably can't make as good of a case for the item I forgot to send with her. That's because the thing I forgot to send was a mask. You know, the very thing we have to wear on our faces anytime we go in public right now. Good work, me! The really sad thing about forgetting Ellie's mask was that Bethany sent me a checklist reminding me of everything I needed to make sure Ellie had for school that day which definitely included "mask". Fortunately, the school stepped in again and provided Ellie with a disposable mask she could wear for the day. Although, I do feel the urge to state that Ellie did have an emergency cloth mask in her backpack so maybe that mistake is a little less egregious considering that info.

I'm proud to say though that since those rough days last week, I have been successful in remembering everything that Ellie needed for her day at school each day. Now, will that continue to be the case? Unlikely. After all, I'm only human...and a dad. #DaddyWrite

 

Day 1,121 - My very own shadow

For what seems like most of the past five years, I found myself feeling a little jealous of Bethany. Not because she goes to work and gets paid or because she gets a daily break from child rearing. No, I'm a little jealous of the special bond she and Ellie share.

I'm guessing this is probably pretty normal for mothers and daughters but Ellie wants to be exactly like Bethany. She wants to dress like her, talk like her, and just do whatever she is doing at any given moment. While there's no problem with Ellie loving her mommy, there are those occasional moments where I get a little upset about it. For example, on nights and weekends, I am not allowed to do anything for Ellie. That edict comes straight FROM Ellie so you know there's no disputing it.

It's definitely not easy having a child that seemingly doesn't want to include you as part of her life. However, it's getting much easier seeing as how I recently realized how I'm gaining my own little shadow and his name happens to be Ethan.

This revelation has been a long time coming. For quite a while, Ethan has wanted to be wherever I am and to do exactly what I'm doing. However, I didn't realize just how true that statement is until a couple of days ago and then again today. Flashback to Wednesday with me for a moment. I had been putting off mowing the lawn for nearly two weeks due to the combination of heat and precipitation. However, things finally got so bad that I knew it was time. Therefore, I begrudgingly dragged the mower out of the garage and began making laps.

It didn't take long for Ethan to join in on the fun, pushing his toy mower around the lawn while staying right in my footprints. That's fairly normal though so I didn't think anything of it until he suddenly disappeared. When he reappeared, he did so with his Royals hat firmly planted on his head. According to Bethany, Ethan had come inside the house and informed her that since I was wearing an old trucker hat to mow, he needed his Royals hat on while he "mowed" so that he could be just like Daddy.

Fast forward to today. With me going out of town on a guys' trip this weekend, I decided to clean the house so that Bethany and the kids would have a nice, clean house to relax in. That includes vacuuming, dusting, and cleaning the bathrooms. I had already finished some of those tasks throughout the week but had left vacuuming for today.

When it was time to begin, I headed to our living room closet, took out the vacuum, and plugged it in. Before I could start vacuuming though, Ethan ran to the kitchen and grabbed our dust buster off its charger and brought it into the living room alongside me. When I looked down and asked him what was going on, he responded with "Daddy is big man so he needs big vacuum. I little man so I need little vacuum." With that, Ethan proceeded to follow me all over the house with his dust buster, being sure to get anything I might have missed.

I must say that it's been kind of nice having a little shadow over the past few weeks. I've always been a little jealous of Ellie wanting to be exactly like Bethany and now I'm excited to experience that with Ethan. While it might become a little exhausting at some point, I'm going to do my best to enjoy this phase of life with a son for as long as I can! #DaddyWrite

Day 1,115 - Screaming child...dentist office...What?

Four days in to Ellie's kindergarten career and things are going pretty well (unless you count the fact that Ethan just accidentally spilled his bowl of animal crackers on the couch). Ellie seems to be thriving. She even got awarded three good citizenship points by her teacher yesterday! If she makes it to 100, she can wear her pajamas to school. By the time 4:00 pm rolls around each day, Ethan and I are super excited to get to hear everything about her day. Of course, there's the mild inconvenience of having to wait in the car line for about 30 minutes before Ellie can finally climb inside the Traverse. That can't really be helped though.

In between Ellie going to school and Ethan and me picking her up, there's plenty of excitement to be had. While the past several days have included park trips and the ever-exciting trip to a thrift store, today reached a new level of excitement. That's right, today we went to the dentist's office! I'm willing to concede that a dentist visit isn't exactly the thing to help someone break out of the doldrums. However, this was definitely an out of the ordinary visit for several reason.

 

The first reason this was a different visit to the dentist was that this would be my first time having a check-up with Ethan in tow. Ellie was near Ethan's age the first time she accompanied me to a dentist appointment and it went fantastic. She patiently waited in a kid-sized camping chair while my teeth were cleaned. She even rubbed my hand to make sure I wasn't scared before finally hopping up in the chair to get her very own "check-up".

For Ethan's first visit, things went very, very differently. While the visit started simply enough with Ethan excitedly staring at the giant fish tank in the waiting room, it was a different story once we retreated back to the exam room. The first thing my hygienist did was bring Ethan a kid-sized camping chair. While that seems like an innocent gesture, it was anything but to Ethan. To him, it was a declaration of war and an indictment upon his independence. The first thing he did was start screaming. Then, he angrily threw the camping chair on the floor. Then, for his coup de grace, he flung himself down onto the floor and began kicking and screaming.

At this point, I had pretty much resigned myself to finding a new dentist because I doubted we would ever be allowed back in Zone Rosa, let alone the dentist's office. However, before leaving in shame, I first attempted to calm Ethan. I figured out pretty quickly that the reason for his anger was that he wasn't allowed to get the camping chair he was meant to sit in on his own. Once the egregious camping chair left the room, Ethan began to calm slightly. Then, when I offered him my phone to watch "Cocomelon" on during my exam, he calmed even more. Finally, he was willing to climb onto a spare stool in the corner of the exam room for the duration of my appointment. There he sat, watching "Cocomelon" while my teeth were cleaned.

One thing that did help. As we were leaving, rather than shame me for being an abject failure as a parent, my hygienist instead complimented me on being able to figure out what was going on with Ethan and for getting him calmed down. While it hardly fixed the embarrassment of what had occurred, it definitely did make me feel as if I'll be welcomed back. However, we'll have to see once March gets here if I am indeed allowed to return to Zona Rosa Dental or if I'll be in the market for a new dentist. Time will ultimately tell.

#DaddyWrite