Puddle Jumping: A Story of Young Children, for Young Children

One rainy day, a little girl and a little boy went for a walk.

She carried the umbrella, since she was bigger.

Quite suddenly, they happened upon a mud puddle.

She marched right in, and he followed.

 They romped, rambled, tramped and marched.

She did lots of splashing; 

he did lots of falling.

They both had lots of fun.

After some time--and quite a bit of mess-making--they went back inside the house to clean up.

They played with bubbles and rubber toys.

They had just as much fun getting clean as they had getting dirty.

And after much scrubbing and rinsing, they were both as clean as before they went puddle jumping.

 

Keeping Busy

You know those days where you think you'll lose your mind if you have to stay cooped up in an 850 sq. ft. apartment with two kids BUT you don't want to actually go on a big trip that requires forethought (partly because this is a spur-of-the-moment feeling) and snacks and diapers and scheduling around nap time? 

I get that feeling about 4 out of 5 days; though, admittedly, Kaleb has gotten better since he's been able to point at things accurately.

So, one day a couple weeks ago (yes, I'm a tad bit behind--that wedding and all) I decided we had to get out, for the safety of everyone who spends most of their time here (can't really say "live" since technically, Kaleb doesn't live here). I have an annual zoo pass, and I guess I could have popped on over to Oakland to take the kids around, but it was like 9 am and I had to get out IMMEDIATELY. No snack-packing for this trip. So I just grabbed my purse, stuck the kids in the car and we left. Our first stop was the cheapest, most kid-friendly zoo on the planet:

PetCo: where the kids go. 

It's perfect. All the animals are kept in small, confined spaces, with nothing to obstruct the view, like trees or caves. They are always visible. 

One of Madie's favorite exhibits: the fish. Seriously, there are a whole bunch of soft, fuzzy little kittens and creatures at the front of the store, but she asks to go see the fish first.

The only drawback is I spend a lot of time keeping Kaleb out of the dog frisbees and balls. Really. A lot of time.

I wasn't quite ready to face going home yet--I had a good hour and a half before nap time, so we went over to Cafe Art. I just wanted something kind of cheap, and I'd been looking for a simple vase recently, so I grabbed this "coffee mug" and Madie and I turned it into a vase while Kaleb pooped his diaper and played with the toys in the corner. It's a miracle how well-behaved they both were. It's a studio filled with messy paint and breakable pottery and I left without buying anything I'd have to glue back together!

Madie, picking at her dry lips--UGH!--while she waits for me to get a paint color. Our blank vase is on the table.

Cleaning off her paintbrush. She loved this so much. And she did a decent job of staying clean!

We picked the finished, fired product up a couple days ago. Here she is showing it off:

It has irises and "Madie and Mum" is signed across the bottom.

Madie helped paint the base coat--a light pinkish-beige. Then, while I painted on the irises, she went all out on the bottom. There is every color on the bottom than was involved on the sides--and then some.

By the time we were done, we'd blown two hours and Kaleb was getting extremely hungry (read that as "cranky;" read that as "annoying"), so we ran home, I stuffed some food in them, and got them both down only a little late for their naps. 

When they got up, we got ready to go out again. This time for a legitimate errand. We were leaving for Utah the next day so I needed to get the oil changed in the car. I ran it downtown and we spent half an hour at the little village green. We got there about five minutes before a horrendous group of elementary school kids arrived and started playing freeze tag. One little girl came up to me after maybe ten minutes and said, "Could you keep your kids over there," and pointed to the fountain. I said, "Sorry. We were here first," and shrugged my shoulders. One of the great things--and possibly the absolute worst thing--about gradeschool children is their sense of justice. She looked at me with a face that said, "Oh, that's true. Lame, but true," before she ran off.

But before any of the raucous kids got there, we were in the green completely alone. A group of 8th or maybe 9th grade girls came up to us carrying oxygen-inflated balloons with stars drawn on and encouraging phrases and asked if they could give the each of the kids one. "Yeah! Oh yeah, they'd love some!" I tried to get a picture of Kaleb with his but he was way to busy to hold still long enough for a clear shot. Anyway, his said, "You're pretty awesome!" Here's Madie's: 

  

Mike and I get a kick out of her face here!

It stayed inflated pretty well for two and a half weeks. I finally cut open the little toad-sized bubble today during nap time and tossed it out. So far she hasn't noticed...let's hope it stays that way.

Levi and Raquel's Wedding

Madie did so well on our drive out. Thank you Apple for making the ipod touch. Unlimited Pooh Bear was a real hit.

Notice the chapstick to the left of MariLou? This was just the beginning of the chapstick...

Madie and Elvis got reacquainted real quick. Madie loved throwing the ball and watching Elvis chase it. She also loved how soft, or "foft" he was. 

Madie even referred to Elvis as "sweetheart" a couple of times. She would say "Come here, sweetheart."

After the wedding ceremony at the Bountiful Temple in Utah, we waited for Levi and Raquel to come out.

Madie thought it was loud.

Sam & Ez.

Congrats Levi & Raquel.

We went to an Indian restaurant after the wedding.

Exchanged rings.

Madie found some more friends, AND a swing.

Madie found some sugar packets and the salt/pepper shakers.

On Sunday, we headed down to Orem to visit my Grandma Clark and Grandpa Watkins. We were glad we could see both of them. Madie loved being at Grandma's.

Madie has been going through a Chapstick phase right now. She especially loves applying her Chapstick to handpicked victims. Grampy was a good sport to let Madie do her business.

Overall, a great trip! We squeezed a lot into three (+/-) days. Most of all, we are happy for Levi and Raquel.

Officially An Eagle Scout

Cheesy smile anyone?

Well, it's official everybody. I am now an Eagle Scout. The other day I was at work and got a random 'urgent' voice mail on my work phone. A woman named Vicki from the BSA office in San Jose left me a message trying to track down a Michael Watkins from Morgan Hill, CA that earned the award back in 2002. I was perplexed when I heard this...why would they be calling me now? And how did they find my work number? It's not like you can just Google an employee phone directory for a national laboratory. Anyways, I gave her a call back and I confirmed my identity. She couldn't believe it was me. She said that they had a certificate, badge and medals sitting in their office since 2002 when I originally earned the award. She said she would mail these to me ASAP. Well my friends, they came in the mail today. And I am officially an Eagle Scout!

Declarations and Reviews

I went to look up last year's new year's resolutions to review how I did, and I realized I posted it on the 10th last year! I'll need to look up the year before, just to see if there's another coincidence--at which point it might stop being a coincidence and start being a message from the universe.

It's good for me to report on here what I accomplished and what I hope to accomplish. I feel more accountable. Not to mention it's easier to find and harder to lose.

Anyway, here's what 2011 looked like:

~Cracking my knuckles: soooo...I did really well for about three months. Then fell back into again. There goes the theory that it take 28 days to break a habit. That's something I'm going to have to keep an eye on that one.

~Writing every day: That one I was also doing pretty well on, but again, I let it go. (I should really be reviewing these in July or August. Hmmmm...)

~Reading the books on my 2011 List: I did pretty good--10 out of 17. And I would have read them all, but then I was asked to be in a book club, so I ended up reading books from that list. I've also read some books not on either list. But the point of this resolution was achieved, namely I didn't want to have big gaps of time in between reading because I didn't know what I wanted to read next. Since last year, I've also expanded my list. Basically what I'm saying is, I'm counting this one done.

~Get the blog background working: Done, and done. Although I do need to update it.

As for this year, I split them into categories, which maybe I did last year but just didn't write the categories down. Either way, I'm doing so here.

~Spiritual/Gospel: I really want to read and study Daughters in My Kingdom every Sunday. I have read parts of it, but I really want to study it in depth. And if I'm done with that sooner rather than later, I'll move on to studying from the Ensign every week--which I should be doing anyway, but I'm not.

~Skill: I'm not a master at knitting, but I've definitely gotten the hang of it, and now I want to try crocheting. I remember my grammy trying to teach me to crochet when I was maybe 8 or 9 but I also remember being bored out of my mind. I think it was largely due to age and also to the fact that she started out the way everyone does when they're teaching someone to crochet: "Here's how you make a chain." Boooooring. But that's the tradition. I plan to spend no more than 1 minute learning how to make a chain then get on with it. Bring on the blankets! Crocheted afghans are so beautiful!

~Experience: I really want to go cross-country skiing in Yosemite with Mike. If we get snow relatively soon, I can go in the next month or so before I start getting really big and uncomfortable. If not, we may need to wait until next winter. But I've never been cross-country skiing and I've never seen Yosemite in the winter. What better way to get both done at once?!

~Mental: Write every day. Seriously this time. And I'm putting a reminder in my phone for July to check over these and renew my resolve!

~Emotional/Physical: Plan, plant, and actually grow a potted garden on my patio. The thing is, we don't get direct sunlight ever on the patio--we get bright indirect sunlight. There are plenty of plants that grow well in that condition, I just need to find ones that do well in pots. Any suggestions?

New Years in Aptos

 For New Years, we were invited by the Atheys to Shaine's family beach house in Aptos, CA. There were some other friends from the ward there as well, which made it fun for games, chatting, etc. We stayed for two nights, but wish we could have stayed another because apparently we missed some humpback whales that came within 20 yards of shore! Still jealous about that...but what a great getaway weekend. Thank you again Atheys!

I got to test out my new camera some more to be sure I want to keep it. I was able to get up and make it onto the beach right at sunrise our first morning. It was pretty chilly out.

The sand pipers were enjoying breakfast in full-force.

Madie was thrilled to have her own little table at breakfast.

Enjoying coffee cake with fresh fruit with Kevin and Shaine.

We took Maggie out for a walk. The coast felt so warm. I'm going to let you in on a little secret; the winter is the best time to visit the coast in Northern California.

Madie was kind of freaked out by the waves at first, which is how she reacted in Saipan and when we went beach camping for Labor Day. She finally warmed up to it when we got some water buckets and shoves to dig around the sand with. Also helped having Rion and Amelia to play with.

Bethany and Mal.

More photography...this just shows you the fog rolling in at sunset.

Sunset.

The crew decided to come out for the sunset. Madie kindly dismissed me by saying "Bye bye Dadda. Go away" multiple times. I didn't think I would embarrass her in front of her friends this early in life!

For this one, I simply said "Show me your bellies." They both happily obliged.

This high chair was a hot commodity for Madie. She was pretty jealous if anyone looked at it.

Water was spilled three or four times at this dinner alone.

What would a New Years be without sparklers of some sort?

Happy New Year! We are excited for 2012!

Christmas Joy

On Friday, the day before Christmas Eve, we decided to go ice skating. My work let everyone out two hours early, so we decided to make the most of it. Luckily there is a rink 15 minutes away. One thing about introducing new things to Madie is you have to break her in slowly. She wasn't immediately sold on the idea of putting on these weird 'special boots' (as we called them) and walking around on the ice. So, we started out slow. I took her out and held her as I took a few laps. She was watching some of the other girls wearing pink while ice-skating (very impressionable). After two minutes, she was willing to let me put her down so she could walk next to me while I skated slowly. She took a couple of laps around, was still watching the girls in pink with 'special boots', and then pronounced "Otay, special boots Dadda?" YES! So we went back to the changing area, put on her special boots, and headed out on the ice. The rest is history, she was sold on it. Mal and I took turns holding her hand or arms, letting her get a sense of balance and how the skates work. She cried when we had to leave.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house...Poor Madie was sick with a stomach aroused. She had a 24-hour flu bug, for lack of a better rhyming word. She actually woke up on Christmas Eve morning with it. I'll spare you the details, but we did wash her pillow case and sleeping bag two times that day. It lasted through the night of Christmas Eve. I ended up camping out with her in the living room, and she actually ended up sleeping very well the rest of the night. Thankfully, it was gone by the morning. 

We were going to open presents after our 9:00 am, one-hour church meeting, but at about 5:15 am Madie whispered to me "Dadda, water." She repeated it a few times in a really soft voice until I fell out of my coma and got her a water bottle. After that, we were up! I figured, why not just open them now? I mean, Santa obviously came! So we got Mal up and had a lot of fun opening presents with Madie. Christmas is so much more fun with kids. Madie has been so obsessed with Frosty the Snowman, Santa Clause, reindeer, etc. It's been a really fun season. Madie got some rain boots, ornaments, coloring books, princess attire, a new doll...needless to say she was very pleased. She loved opening presents. She did almost refuse to open her other presents once she pulled the doll out of her stocking though. Mal got a Martha Stewart encyclopedia, fleece, and some jewelry. I got a camera for Christmas, which I am having a lot of fun with! I wish I could have had it for December though, especially with the fun things we did leading up to Christmas. Grateful for it either way.