Halloween 2010

For me, October is the official holiday kick-off month. We start the month strong, celebrating the birth of my dear old dad, and end the month with Halloween (otherwise known as "Dentist Appreciation Day"). In between are plenty of other great holidays to bring the festive spirit (I hope you all did something nice for "Visit-Your-Cousin-In-Prison Day" this year - October 4 can can be a lonely day for many people).

Kate's birthday is near the beginning of the month. This year she told us she only wanted one thing. Of course, she told us that about 150 times over the last year, naming at least 140 different items. I guess she wanted to give us a lot of options.

The thing she was probably the most excited about was the trip to the nail salon. Jaime promised to take Kate and her friend Liv to the nail salon for a birthday pedicure.

Kate gets a "pedicure"

Liv gets the "mani and pedi" treatment

Little Girl Heaven

The finished product

The girls got to choose their polish color and were really pampered. According to Jaime, Kate loved every second of it.

Due to some scheduling conflicts, about a week after Kate's birthday we finally were able to have her party. Jaime's parents and three of her sisters and their kids came by for the bouncy house, the cake and ice cream, and the "traditional" pinata that Jaime has convinced Kate must be part of her birthday celebration. Needless to say, none of the kids had enough fuerza to break the pinata. It actually took me several swings with the Fat Bat to knock Mr. Pinata's head off and send the candy flying.

If only Davis would swing at the pinata like he swings at the furniture...

Jaime and her sister took the kids to the pumpkin patch one day while I was at work, so I placed all my trust in Jaime to select the family pumpkin. As a true jack-o-lantern Michelangelo, I won't carve just any pumpkin - I require a carefully selected pumpkin of ideal size and shape. Jaime came through with flying colors. Unfortunately my masterpiece carving (which ended up looking somewhat like a cat) lasted only a few days and ended up as a wet pile of sludge on our entryway table yesterday morning.


My parents sent some fun Halloween pajamas for the kids, which they loved.

The best part about them was that when they went to bed and turned off the light, the bones glowed and they didn't need a night light.

This year Kate has known for months that she wanted to be a ladybug for Halloween. Of course, we assumed that Davis (otherwise known as "the child who will not sit still") wouldn't keep any Halloween costume on for longer than a minute. We had already tried both an elephant suit and a lion costume; he started removing them both the second they were on.

To our pleasant surprise, when the kids came into my office on Friday to show off their costumes, his fear at being around so many people he didn't know overcame his natural desires to shed all of his clothes. So he stood silently against the wall in his lion outfit, and everyone (mistakenly) concluded that he was well behaved.

I think for future events I may hire a group of strangers to follow us around and keep Davis slightly nervous. He seems to behave better that way.

Yesterday morning we took the kids to another pumpkin patch (I'm realizing that, for my newly-learned parenting technique to continue working, you actually have to pay up on some of the bribes). While Kate loved it, Davis wasn't enjoying the festivities nearly as much:

And when this kid's not having a good day, he lets you know it. Note the grip on the rock in his right hand - I won't tell you where that rock ended up. At this rate, I'm starting to worry that some of his cousins may need to learn to celebrate October 4 (see above) and that this is an image that they'll grow accustomed to seeing:

Daddy in Charge (Take 2)

The kids and I survived another weekend without Jaime, who was in Reno this weekend for her Grandma Kerr's 90th birthday celebration. I hope I'm going as strong as Grandma Kerr when I hit 90. Heck, I wouldn't mind having her golf game right now (which probably tells you something about both my game and hers).

This time was much simpler than the last time I tried this, which you may remember was less than successful. The difference was that, in the six months since my last weekend debacle, I have learned the secret to successful parenting. I may even write a book about the topic. The secret, which seems at once both simple and profound: bribery.

Trouble getting the kids to take their naps? Bribe them with something fun to do when they wake up. Kids won't eat their dinner? Bribe them with dessert. Kids won't listen to what you're asking them to do? Bribe them with injury avoidance (some call this last one a "threat" but I think I'm just more creative than those people).

Both Kate and Davis have been Mommy's Little Klingons since our Costa Rica trip (and by Klingon, I mean they cling on to her whenever I'm trying to get them to do anything with me). I was rather nervous for this weekend, assuming that I'd get hours of "But I want MOMMY to put me to bed!" from Kate and repeated cries of "MAAA-MAAAA . . . MAAAAA-MAAAAA . . . !" from Davis. But I started the bribery the night before Jaime left by telling Kate that, if she was a good girl the next morning, I'd take her to the doughnut shop after breakfast. Pink icing and sprinkles were never such a good friend to me. Promising a trip to the "train mall" got her to take her afternoon nap, so after naps we headed to the outdoor mall to ride on the mechanical train. Later, some behavioral problems quickly disappeared when I offered up Hotdog on a Stick (which, admittedly, was my own first choice for dinner). I dealt with the post-dinner whining by pulling the kids into a photo booth for some pics with dear old Dad, and Kate's bath that night went smoothly when I offered to let her stay up a bit later and watch football with me.

I'm sure this plan will backfire in a few years when the cost of the bribes starts to skyrocket, but who wants to think that far down the road?

One thing for which I count myself lucky is that my kids love watching sports on TV. Davis's favorite to watch is football - when he sees a game on a TV, he makes a beeline for it (we could barely pull him away from the bar in Famous Dave's BBQ restaurant the other night - he saw a college game on the big screen and was much more interested in the game than in his chicken dinner. When we went to the park yesterday morning, he just wanted to watch the guys playing soccer.

This kid is fascinated by anything with a ball

Davis has always had a strong arm, but his aim is getting better, too. Today in church he threw a Stretch Armstrong toy several pews forward and nailed a guy right in the back of the head. I probably looked embarrassed as I apologized, but secretly I was impressed.

I guess its time to do the evaluation of his strengths and weaknesses and get him in an Olympic development and training program. Kate was already well into her strength and conditioning program at this age.