How to Get Your Child to Eat Oatmeal in Five Steps or Less

1. Make a nice warm bowl and offer to child. If child says no, proceed to step two.
2. Listen as your child whines about cereal while you try to explain that the milk is "all gone" at least ten times. (You must really be out of milk for this to work.)
3. Out of desperation invent "milk" by diluting yogurt with water and pour into cereal bowl.
4. Watch as your child promptly spits out the cereal and "milk" the second it hits her taste buds.
5. Offer the oatmeal again, and watch as child eats up without complaint.

Works like a charm! Trust me, I've tried it. :)

We're Ba--ack!

We are home from our trip to CA and add in a visit from my parents and Ben the week before, so it feels like we've been gone a month! We got home late Sunday night but I didn't finish Breaking Dawn until this morning, so only can I start getting back to real life. So we'll start with a slide show of pictures from the visit to Houston and hopefully later this week I'll write up our California va-cay. I am sure everyone is just dying to hear the update. Right? Right?

My Husband is Left Handed

I've heard that lefties are more creative and this definitely holds true for Ryan. It is so fun to be married to him because he plans awesome birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries. He also plans very fun date nights, although they come around a lot less often then they used too. But this week my parents came into town (pics and details to come later) and he had time to pre-mediate and execute a very fun date night. We left home around 6:30 and headed to Barnes and Noble. First off we gathered large coffee table type books and then sat down to look through them. Ryan told me to mark my favorite pictures which I found a little hard to do since I knew he something up his sleeve. After looking at a few of his selections I had a better idea and started choosing pictures. After about a half an hour the photos were selected and the plan was revealed. We were to re-create the scenes in the pictures to the best of our abilities. There were no rules or time limits, we just had to get creative with locations and props. We took stealthy pictures of the photos with our camera and then headed out to stage our photo shoots. We had a great time sneaking around stores, hiding from clerks, turning ordinary things like barbecue tongs into machetes, and basically acting like teenagers. Here are the results of the night I loaded the picture from the book and then our creation. The last one is my favorite...you'll see why!

What 'Chou Talking About??

Marielle and I are communicating a lot more with each other these days. I no longer have to repeat all phrases at least twice as communication with my daughter. Now my questions are answered with "yeah" or "no!". Even though we are making great strides, we still have a lot of gaps. Like yesterday when I walked in the bathroom and found my liquid foundation all over the tile floor. I called Marielle in and pointed at the ground and asked her what happened. She did her best to explain. I didn't understand a single word she said but she was definitely trying to tell me something. She jabbered on and on, using hand gestures and voice inflection. Although I'll never really know her true plea of innocence, I think the gist was "things just got a little out of control mom, before I knew it that pink stuff was everywhere!"

Later in the afternoon we went to the mall. Living in Houston, we can't just go to the park in the summer, so we hit up the playplace at our mall. But seeing it was four o'clock that place was crawling with kids, most of them way taller than height requirement, and leaping off tall bridges, trucks and waterfalls. Poor Marielle didn't stand a chance. She played for about 20 minutes and then sought safety by sitting with mom on the bench. I wasn't ready to head home yet, so we went off in search of other mall adventures. I let her walk at her own pace and she wandered in and out of stores. She loved the computers at Build a Bear and the Pet Store seemed like a regular zoo with birds, bunnies and puppies just a window pane away. (The funniest part was Marielle wagging her finger and telling the puppies "No, no!" when they nipped and crawled all over each other.) After a nice afternoon of air conditioned playing, we headed back to our car. On the way there Marielle saw a Backyard Jungle Gym on display. I knew it was trouble the moment she yelled "park!" and started running. I caught up to her hanging on the fence next to the sign "Display Only -- No Climbing!" We sat down and I tried to explain to her that this was a park where children don't play (I was too tired to try and drag her away at this point). As I continued to explain the unimaginable to a toddler, I could see Marielle was having the same experience I had had this morning with the liquid foundation mess. She didn't understand a word I said, but the gist was "you ain't playing here baby!" I saw some colorful brochures and Marielle took one home with us as a very distant second to actually playing at the "park." And so mom and daughter carry on. Not really understanding each other, but nodding and smiling a lot and looking forward to the day when Marielle can talk.

Mom Baby

I'm not sure what happened. Somewhere in the past week my cute, smiling, easy-loving baby girl got lost in the time stream and replaced by a temperamental, no-need-for-Dad, wants-only-Mom baby. I'm tempted to buy/steal a flux capacitor so that I can go back in time to find my daughter that doesn't cry every time she sees me, but then I'd have two Marielles. One of which who still doesn't like me, and the other who would become that way in a week. And from what I've heard, having 2 babies is so much easier than 1 it can hardly be called Parenting anymore. (Right, Alex?) Mix that all in with the scientific research presented by Napoleon Dynamite and Marty McFly on time travel, and I think it's all just a little too risky.


We just need to ramp up the Daddy-Daughter one-on-one time so Marielle realizes I am not the bad guy. Accordingly, yesterday when I got home from work, Mary Karlee had packed as some sandwiches, and we went off to the park. I quickly learned that MK had been neglecting our daughter's education because she didn't even know how to make explosion sounds. I taught her to drop a pebble down the ladder chute and say "Bombs away! and then "Brrgggghhhh!" when it hit the ground.