Bunk Buddies

My parents are wonderful. Every weekend they take one of the children for a grandparent sleepover and bonding night. Occasionally, they take both children. They've been doing this since Michael was born, and so they had a crib at their house donated by a neighbor.

Michael outgrew the crib first. He would sleep in a little travel tent we got for trips that we keep at my parents house in between trips. Or, he could also choose to sleep in my old full-size bed in the room they now use as a guest bedroom.

Ava, until last night, was still sleeping in the crib. At 3 1/2 it was time for another solution and my mom and I have been brainstorming options for several weeks. We thought about pulling the crib mattress onto the floor and surrounding it with pillows as a makeshift "daybed", but we weren't really in love with the idea. We thought about buying a toddler bed since that would allow us to continue to use the crib mattress, but that seemed like a temporary solution that would have to be replaced with something new in another couple of years.

My mom found a bunk bed on craigslist that came with two twin size mattresses. My husband picked it up, brought it over to her house, disassembled the crib, and assembled the bunk beds. Meanwhile, my mom picked the kids up from school and took them to Wal-mart to choose their own sheet sets for the new bunk beds. She also mediated the discussion of who would get the top and who would get the bottom bunk.

Last night, my husband and I got this picture from her in an email.

Somehow, watching your children sleep (or seeing it in a picture) always raises the most intense feelings of love in a parent's heart. And watching them both sleep together, in their new beds with their new sheets is incredibly special. It'll be an amazing treat for them to be bunk buddies at their grandparents house. I hope it is something they remember fondly when they grow up. Kudos to my mom and my husband for all the work they put into getting this set up.

Hair

I've been having fun fixing Ava's hair for school. I bribe her to sit still with a little tv in the morning and we end up with a cute hair style that will last through nap and still look nice in the evening. It also keeps the hair back off her face.

She has very fine, thin hair though, and so finding hairstyles that will work has been challenging. Did you know there are entire blogs devoted to little girl hairstyles? I found one that has hairstyles that work for Ava and I've been doing a different one each day to try them out. I don't always get a picture, but here are a few we've tried since school started a couple of weeks ago.

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Welcome to September and enjoy your holiday weekend!

The Weekly Review: Week 75

SLP Preview of the Week

Stay tuned. Next week I'll be telling you all about a set of /s/ resources that I've been working on putting in printable ebook format. The rough draft is completely done except for a cover. I'll be asking for volunteer proofreaders and some other feedback next week.

Ava this Week

Ava is discovering movement. The other three members of her family are drawn towards somewhat sedentary pursuits. We like to read, play computer games, build with legos or other construction toys, sew, do art projects, etc. Lately, it is becoming apparent to me that Ava likes all of those things, but she is drawn towards active pursuits as well. She wants to kick a ball, bop a balloon, play ping pong (she can actually serve a ping pong ball - she's only 3), swing a bat, climb a climbing wall, run as fast as she can, and slide over and over. She loves the activity and the movement. I need to find a way to build more active activities into our schedule. It fights against my nature and inclination a little, but she's worth it. And the activity would be good for all of us anyway.

Weekly Michael

Michael, as a contrast to his sister, has completely fallen in addictive love with his first real computer game. His father installed a game called Minecraft on his computer. It is an open-ended building game that involves placing a wide variety of cubes into a 3-D environment. There are landscape blocks (grass, dirt, bricks, trees, glass, lava, snow, etc), industrial blocks (dynamite, levers, buttons, train tracks, etc), and animals and people. He loves it. It is the last thing he thinks about before bed and the first thing he thinks about in the morning. He wants to know if the day is a "home" day or a "school" day primarily because he wants to know if he's going to get to play his game. As a parent of a preschooler I'm somewhat terrified of the addictive power of the computer screen. As someone who has had her fair share of gaming addictions, I'm enjoying watching him find his first gaming love.

Weekly Weight Loss

This week I'm up 0.7. It was hard to maintain the calorie tracking with guests in town. I also think last week weigh-in registered a little low and this week is registering a little high. C'est la vie. Next week is a new week.

Last Week's Special Event

We had an amazing visit with my in-laws. The children are in love. Grandma played ping pong and "bat the ball" with Ava every time she asked. Grandpa pretended to be a bear and chased giggling children all over the back yard.

The highlight of the visit was a trip to an extraordinary children's museum here in town that is essentially an indoor/outdoor playground created from recycled stuff for adults and children to play in together. They take donations from all kinds of companies and turn ordinary things into an extraordinary playground. They have a bus hanging half off their roof and you can climb into it (we did). They have airplanes suspended around a courtyard connected by wire tunnels and you climb around from one to another. They have castle turrets and a maze of concrete tunnels, slides, and stairs under the floor of one of the rooms. It is a place where you can explore, push boundaries of fear a little, and get a ton of amazing exercise. My fitbit told me I had climbed the equivalent of 31 flights of stairs by the time we left. I didn't take many pictures because I was too busy chasing children into scary places. Here's one I caught of my husband, son, and a friend at the top of a wire tower (at least three stories up) and another a friend caught of me following her daughter and my children up one of those wire tunnels to an airplane. I wish I had more. The place is amazing.