Chicken Nuggets

I noticed that most posts tend to be more focused on Ben and I apologize, but Sofia is at more of the "silent movie" stage of her existence where as Ben has something to say to everything and he has a hard time not talking. Well, to make all of the Fia fans in the world happy, we have another Sofia story...

Lunch time on Friday was like any other lunch time. Ben wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, because that's what Ben likes, and Sofia, the carnivore, wanted meat. The easy cure for a meat craving in our house is the Mickey Mouse chicken nuggets from Costco which I plug because they are cheap, and they make me feel like a good mom because they have whole grain breading. (I know, who am I kidding, right?) So I make Sofia a sensible portion of nuggets, 3, which she eats with ketchup for dip and a giant scoop of cottage cheese. I will also add that she ate a banana about an hour before this. Three nuggets down and Ben asks for nuggets. When I get the bag out of the freezer Sofia points and says, "more plate." Which means she wants more nuggets on her plate. (I think it's obvious what she means, but I don't want you to be confused dear reader.) 2 more nuggets on a paper towel and she seems happy. I got to put the nuggets away and I hear, "more plate." Where the heck did the last 2 go. I scan the floor for the dog and utter something to myself, it probably does not bear repeating. 2 more nuggets in the microwave and I leave the bag out. I go and tell Charles that his daughter is eating nuggets number 6 and 7. I come back and the next two go in the microwave. I am seriously questioning her ability to eat all of this food. So after nugget number 8 is down and number 9 is missing an ear, I put the nuggets away and tell her I am cutting her off. I think she could have eaten 11, maybe 13, but I REALLY don't want to see what nugget puke looks like. All in all, Sofia amazes us with her ladylike appetite and the way she burps during a meal to make more room for meat!

Washable Markers

So most of you know we are gearing up for another move. Hooray, really, but I HATE to pack. I also hate to unpack and I know that this time around is going to be messy since we have had things in boxes for the last 10 months and we've managed to survive. BUT, that is not the point of this entry. Since we're moving, I've been trying to pack a box or two a day on the days that I am not super busy. Thankfully, today was one of those days. I figured, since I was at the kitchen table I could pack a box and let Ben and Sofia draw on the windows with the AWESOME window markers their Grandma and Papa Jackson gave them. I could hear the gentle squeak of marker on glass and wasn't worried when I hear Ben shriek, "Mom, Fia's coloring herself!" And indeed she was. She had eaten half the tip of the marker, so her lips were a vibrant purple color, and she had managed to get a good coat of crayola purple on her belly and both arms. Me, being the picture of motherhood, took her out to the car to get the camera rather than washing it off. We did eventually make it into the bath where all of the evidence easily soaked away, but it made for an interesting morning. I promise to post the evidence this weekend. For now, I'm off to bed.



'Night.

Happy Birthday Dear Benjamin!

Can I just tell you how much I love my little boy?!?! I see so much of what I like about people bundled up in one little person. Don't get me wrong, Ben has more than his share of "moments" when he would rather die than share, can absolutely not be reasoned with that ice cream or gum are not breakfast items, REFUSAL to even think about going poop in the same room as a potty, but then I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that Ben:

1) Dresses up his sister in jerseys and uniforms so she can look like a real athlete.
2) Calls Sofia, "my fia."
3) ONLY gives kisses on your lips, not cheeks.
4) Would eat peanut butter and jelly every day if he could.
5) Watches "yo, gabba gabba" and jumps around saying, "my name is Benjamin, I like to dance."
6) Can make a game to play with any ball.
7) wears jerseys to play in and to sleep in.
8) Knows most of the NHL teams by their logos.
9) answers, "sure, sure, sure," when I ask for help with anything.
10) Cuddles in bed with me every morning.
11) Rubs my back when I hug him.
12) Calls his Daddy "Charles" when he wants to get his attention.
13) Could sit and read every minute that he isn't playing sports.
14) Gets excited about going to the mall. (it does have a carousel after all)
15) Sings songs even if it is just the chorus over and over and over again.
16) Grows and grows and grows everyday and I get to watch.
17) Likes going to the ball store almost as much as going to Disneyland.
18) Gives his stuffed animals voices and they talk to him and to each other.
19) cares so much about animals - especially dogs.
20) Cherishes his friends and family so much, even at his young age.

Benjamin was worth the wait. We love you so much sweet boy. Thank you for all that you do to bring fun and love into our lives.

xo

A perfect Disneyland day!

Saturday was designated a Disney day way back in January when we realized our annual passes would soon be expiring. We splurged for Ben's second birthday and decided to take advantage of the fact that neither kid would need a pass or a ticket for a whole year, so $500 later we had two little pieces of plastic in my wallet. Another $59 on top of that and we would get "free" parking. Awesome.

Our last Disney day of the year started out looking a little depressing. It was POURING rain here, so we wore warm clothes and figured we'd do what we could. The drive was miserable, can't see in front of you, speeding down the freeway kinda scary and we arrived at Disneyland with hardly a sprinkle in the sky and so few cars we thought the place must have been closed. The kids were great in the car, we ran through "Mickey and Friends," and Ben announced the first ride he wanted to go on was a bus. Wahoo! So we rode the tram to the front gates, towed our umbrellas, stayed dry amidst the drizzle and packed them away before we left Main Street. We rode on Buzz, Dumbo, the Carousel, the Storybook Land train, Autopia, Pirate's of the Caribbean, the Winnie the Pooh ride and saw Tiana, Mickey and the Tiki Room before heading to dinner and returning for the Pixar Play Parade and a trip on Toy Story Mania and the under sea carousel. Charles and I both got to ride Screamin' before we picked out a treat and headed for home. We pulled out of the parking structure to POURING rain. We stopped in San Juan for AWESOME burritos, got home, put the kids in bed and then collapsed.

Seriously. Almost no lines, no rain, no tantrums... a PERFECT Disney day.

I'll post pictures as soon as I find the adapter for the camera. It might take awhile. I have a feeling a golden-haired girl might have put it in a "purse" and tucked it away for safe keeping.

Can Ben read????

Many of you know that Ben has an aversion to clothing in general, but for some reason in particular he HATES wearing underpants. So a trip to our recent Target resulted in the purchase of MANY different styles and sizes of underpants. We got the "Go, Diego, Go" briefs that he picked out, some plaid cotton boxers, some knit boxers with guitars on them and some spiderman boxer briefs. He only paid attention to the Diego ones and that was ok. But then the other day he grabs the spiderman undies, still in the package, and says, "Mom, these Spiderman ones glow in the dark!"

My question to you is this?? How does he know????

No one fessed up to telling him this awesome detail, he didn't see them in the package in the dark... there is a sticker on the front proclaiming "Glow-in-the-Dark," so.... can Ben read?

Another one bites the dust

Ha ha, well, we're already 20% done with 2010 and this is post number two. Officially the kids have conceeded and decided that it is really time for a family blog, so you'll get plenty of Ben and Fia updates here, but this time from Mom's perspective which is usually a lot less innocent.

Our adventures in the last year have primarily been house-sitting and house-hunting. After LOTS of prayer, and I mean LOTS, we decided to stop hunting in North County and start hunting in South Riverside county - specifically Temecula and Murrieta. I spoke to some friends who bought up there in September and she had a lot of the same concerns and hesitations that I did, and they love it, so I at least felt like we were finally on the right track. Then, in true socal fashion, we learned that the further away from San Diego you went, the cheaper the houses got. We went so far as looking in Romoland - Charles came up with a really embarassing and classy and not too creative name for it and it was soon off our list. We began looking in Menifee and learned that the smell of a dairy travels further than you'd think and that it isn't a smell either of us care to smell. SO... after months and months of being picky, then not picky (we saw some of the most disgusting homes EVER), to being picky again.... Finally, we are in escrow. Things are moving along on a great house in Menifee on the west side just below Canyon Lake and North of Quail Valley. This means absolutely nothing to most of you, I know, but to us it means we are close to shopping and an elementary school and far enough away they we don't smell the dairy. Oh, and we are only an hour away from family.

The kids are big and drive us crazy and make us laugh and make us love like we never have before. Look for a few posts soon about their more crazy antics. Ben is constantly updating his birthday wish list. You won't believe it, but everything he wants is hockey related: he wants a hockey helmet, a penguins jersey, a REAL penguins puck - as opposed to all of the fake ones he comes across, and of course, a Stanley Cup. He has LOVED hearing about and watching hockey during the Winter Olympics. He cheers for Canada and the USA, mostly his favorite players. He is baffled that there is a Jack Johnson who sings and a Jack Johnson who plays hockey, but he knows that the Jack Johnson who plays hockey is an LA King who is on team USA and that Jack Johnson sings the songs in the Curious George movie. So all in all, he is a happy boy. Lately we struggle with listening and with being the Sofia police. It's all just a phase though, right?

Sofia, our darling girl and Ben's Fia is growing up so fast! Her last molars are coming in and she says "nooooo," when we ask if they hurt. She was born with more hair on the back of her head and she has gone from a full-blown mullet to being in that awkward "my bangs are too short to do anything with and too long to let me see" phase. Her vocabulary is increasing daily and LOVES Dora the Explorer, whom she calls Dory. She can count to 5 and instead of saying yes, she says "Si." Both kids do an awesome version of the "we did it" dance from the Dora show. It cracks me up. Both of the kiddos love to play outside and go for walks to find all kinds of treasures like pine cones and the spikey things from the trees, I don't know what they are called but Ben calls them specks because they are the things that knocked the speck off of the flower at the beginning of the Horton movie. Can you tell the kids watch way too much tv? Peter Pan is a new favorite movie and we like to play following the leader.

Otherwise life is really kind of boring. We hang out with ourselves most of the time and try to get out to see little bits of the world and to play tourist in San Diego because we know how much we are going to miss it when we move away. Our Disneyland passes expire next week so we are taking one last trip there on Saturday and then we'll go later in the year when we get our "Give a Day, Get a Day" passes. So life is always busy to us and I think other people look at us and wonder what it is we do exactly. Oh well.

I'm going to try and get better at this so my posts can be shorter and you can find out more about our lives rather than just yearly updates. Both kids are in bed, it is 8:20 and I am about to experience parental bliss - you know, when it's quiet and you know there isn't anything mischevious going on.

xo
H

What a year!

So 2009 has just begun and already there is so much to report! We traveled to Roswell, New Mexico for Sarayah's baptism - we left in 2008, but came back in 2009, so it spanned both years and, in true McClellan style my Mom rung in the new year with an injury. Trying to avoid a binky on the kitchen floor at my brother's house she trips, rolls, tucks and breaks her leg. It shouldn't be funny, but she was dying her hair and had plastic wrap on her head and a salon cape over her shoulders. She looked like a freakishly uncoordinated super-hero. I got to do her cream rinse before she went to the E.R.

So we concluded our vacation, came home to enjoy some peace and quiet figuring it would take a few days to get the kids back into their routine... we JUST got them back on track thanks to two colds, a double ear infection and a toddler who took 2 naps over a one-week period of time.

The double ear infection has been the worst. Neither of the kiddos have ever been on antibiotics before, so I didn't know what to expect. After three days of poop that went from runny and not so frequent to explosive and too frequent for my liking, I called the doctor and found out that over time antibiotics kill the bad and the good bacteria in the body. We went to a local pharmacy and found this probiotic stuff called Florastor. I HIGHLY recommend this if you ever have a child on antibiotics. Because it is a probiotic mixed into active yeast it starts working within a HALF HOUR. So now Sofia's diaper rash is almost completely gone, she isn't screaming during diaper changes and she is pooping once a day again. So we have 5 more days of antibiotics and it looks like we will survive them. Phew.

On another note, Benjamin took a nap on his own today. I was cutting his hair - going for clippers and ease this time instead of trying to taper and cut with the scissors. He grabbed his head, said no more hair and opted to go into his crib and sleep rather than deal with a finished haircut. I will get it done though. For my own sanity and so he doesn't go out in public looking like THAT kid who couldn't sit still for the whole haircut. Really though, he is THAT kid. Everytime he has gotten his haircut it has been in stages. Oh well.

Gotta go and get some real work done. We are bad bloggers, so we'll see how this goes.