Doubling up

Somehow over the last week we have evolved into the girls sleeping together! I think they skipped Monday night, but every other night and day Mollie has slept in Sydney's room! Sydney has finally decided that she really will sleep on the top bunk since she is 5 and that it's not so bad having her sister in there with her on the bottom bunk:)

I'm not sure what our next plan of action is. I don't think we really have one right now, haha. We need to recover from our Christmas and Disney expenses to buy new bedding and paint!

All of Mollie's stuff and clothes are still in her room. Eventually we will move them to the office/guest room and I am getting really excited about making their current room into a big playroom! I love having our playroom on the main level actually. But that room upstairs is almost twice as big and they have a lot of large things like the computer desk, baby doll equipment, vanity, huge amount of dress up stuff, not to mention shelf for books and other toys.

Here is Mollie napping today:

my confession and public service announcement

I send my kids to drop in child care.

I used to say, "Oh my gosh, who would do that?" "I would never send them to a place like that, you don't even KNOW them and they're watching your kids!" "gasp"

I'm really happy with it:) So I'm just telling everyone in case it might be something you'd like to do but are scared.

I started to look into this one in Apex after I heard about it from some other people around town. I had seen info about it and coupons in the Neighborhood Saver. It's called My Play Place.
When I decided to go back to work part time I was afraid to be left in the position of no care. Now, one of the reasons I did go back was b/c I wouldn't have to worry much about child care issues. If I do, it's not worth it to me. Phil drops off at preschool on M/W and I am there to pick up on time. On Fridays our regular babysitter Krystina takes Sydney to school, hangs out with Mollie, and picks Sydney back up. I get home right after they do.
But because I work only 3 days a week that means my kids who need help only get seen 3 days and week and if I'm out it's only 2 or 1! And that makes me feel guilty. I can't help it if my kids get sick, I took off when we went to Disney, etc. But I wanted to eliminate child care as one more obstacle that might make my services unreliable.
Oh, and sometimes I have to switch the days I work so like this week I didn't work Monday b/c it was a teacher work day. I don't have enough to plan for to sit there for 2.5 hours with no kids there and don't even have my own space. I share an office. So I worked today so that my kids would be seen 3 days this week instead of 2. Especially since we were on vacation last week.

I have lots of friends who are willing to help me out in a pinch, but I can't expect them to be available at the last minute and they may not have enough car seats! I've realized since having children that car seats cause all sorts of logistical issues, haha.

So because I feel like the girls are independent and old enough and can talk really well and are potty trained (these may have been reasons before as to not want to leave her with someone I didn't know as well), I took Sydney one day to My Play Place and we went for a visit. The owner is almost always there. In fact I've only taken them in the mornings and she always has been there so far. Along with another lady who has been consistent every week also. Karen. She's crazy;) Sydney loves her. They let me look all around, explained a lot of stuff, Sydney got to play, I just hung around and talked to the owner a little. Then I ended up filling out paper work and they told me where I could get some coupons.
They were so nice. I ended up buying a package of hours because it was so much cheaper that way and using a coupon for a 10% discount off a package. It works out to be $10 an hour for me total. They have been 4 times. I packed their lunches the first few times, but now Sydney likes to eat lunch there so I let them. I pay $3 and they get Papa Johns pizza. And they give them fruit. They have a few other options, but I never get past the pizza with Sydney.

Anyway, today I picked them up, they were happy, didn't want to leave, full of lunch and I didn't have to make them anything or clean it up when we got home. I have 21 hours left, they always give me the total when I check out. I feel more comfortable leaving them there than I do at the gym day care where there is a different worker there every day and I am actually in the building. I feel like there they just keep them alive for an hour, haha.

I have asked some friends to watch them still for appts. and such b/c I would rather them get to play with their friends if they can! But it sure if a good reliable back up plan if I need to use it.

On a side note though: Working 3 days a week, no matter what the hours, is trickier than I thought it would be. I don't miss my free time as much as the drive bothers me more now and the preparation for the day. It's about 20-25 min. to school. I think if my 20% was one day or 2-4 hour days it would be better. I enjoy my work with the kids.
I admit that I did like not working better:) I need to get closer to home next time!

All good things must come to an end...

I think this is the first vacation where I can honestly say that I didn't want to come back. After most vacations I am looking forward to getting back to the normal routine. Um, not this one. Although I do have to say that it was exhausting and a lot of work. But well worth it. The girls had so much fun:) They were so happy. And one thing I realized is that I don't expect as much excitement from Sydney. She can get really silly and wild when she's tired or around other kids that she feeds off of, but she usually is kind of shy and subdued. She has never liked new things very much or costumes or characters, etc. I expected Mollie to be openly excited about EVERYTHING and just be wowed by everything. It was kind of the opposite. I'm so happy that I was able to SEE Sydney get so, so excited and have such a good time. This was the perfect trip for her. Now, she would have been happier to be 2-4 inches b/c she could have ridden more rides that she became obsessed with:) But she was awesome. She even started loving most of the characters and was tackling them with hugs by the time we went to Chef Mickey's on Friday night. Mollie was not feeling that great and was a little cranky. And not to harp on Mollie as an eater, haha, but at our character meals she wanted to eat! If she had ice cream or ravioli she was eating, she really didn't care if Pluto was near by. Good girl. Sydney actually ate really well the whole time also. And they both slept great. Ahh...it was just great:)

Anyway, here is a quick run down on the rest of our week:
Thursday morning:
*met Billy at Hollywood Studios to get our tickets then took the bus to Animal Kingdom. Made plans for dinner that night with he and his family.
Got to Animal Kingdom, got right to business with all the popular things first. No lines really, one fo the kiddie rides was closed and Sydney was too short for the roller coasters. Lots of tears and whining. Had lunch, did the Finding Nemo musical, the safari ride that was really awesome, saw lots of cool animals. The girls were melting down again. We left around 4. Mollie still had a cold, but was feeling okay.
*met Billy and his wife and daughter at House of Blues for dinner in Downtown Disney. I had never met his family. Had a great time. Mollie had a coughing fit right after dinner standing outside the restaurant. Then she threw up all over me. And her, mostly me. Cleaned up as fast as we could and took a cab back to the hotel instead of catching our bus. One crappy thing about relying on the Disney transportation. Have to wait for up to 30 min. for the bus.
Did laundry that night for the 2nd time for the 2nd puking after coughing incident. Lovely. It's a good things she's cute;)
*Friday we ate a big breakfast at our hotel for the first time. It was yum. Mickey Mouse waffles are the BEST! They must have them at all the Disney related restaurants. Billy's wife met us at Epcot to let us in. I told them we could pay for our tickets for one day...but they insisted. Epcot was fun. Could have stayed there a little longer. Sydney rode Test Track there, a fast car ride! She's a thrill machine now. We're going to need a lot of ride tickets at the fair this year, haha.
*We left at 6 to head to the Contemporary Resort for our Chef Mickey's dinner buffet with the characters. It was fun:) The girls loved it. The character meals were really fun. I had scheduled 3 and then David ended up getting us the extra one on Monday at Hollywood Studios. So most of our money that we did spend went to food. But the food was damn good:) They're just a great way to see and get quality time with characters without waiting in line. We got lots of autographs for the girls' autograph book!

Saturday we flew home. The girls both slept the whole way from Atlanta to Raleigh. Luckily we were in a 3x3 plane with the 2 inner seats on each side. No one showed up for the window seats on our row, phew. So they both stretched out with heads on our laps and snoozed.

Back to preschool for the girls tomorrow. I actually have a teacher work day but am not working it so that I can see my kids 3 days this week after missing last week. So I'll work Th. instead of Mon. That also buys me some great time in the morning to myself! And to clean my house which needs it terribly. And possibly squeeze in a pedicure. My legs could use a massage!
Oh, and I have loaded all the pics to Shutterfly. I'm going to make a Shutterfly photo book. I've never done one before. But I am a year and a half behind on scrapbooking and can not possibly tackle Disney!

can't resist

Fun, Cold Days!

Wow, apparently yesterday and today we have been experiencing unseasonably COLD temps here in Orlando!
Let's see, I'm mostly doing this for myself, but I know some of you Disney fans like to read what we've been doing...

Monday: Hollywood Studios
Lots of fun shows. Got to see Mickey and get an autograph (had to buy a book) and pictures. David got us reservations on Sunday night for lunch at 11:10 at Hollywood and Vine restaurant for the Playhouse Disney character lunch. Leo and June from the Little Einsteins and JoJo and Goliath from JoJo's Circus were there. Plus a lot of Playhouse Disney songs with dancing. I love the Hot Dog song at the end of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse so Mollie and I went up to dance to that one. David told them it was Sydney's birthday so they brought her a card, cupcake, and birthday button. It was very cool. Great food. I really enjoyed this park. It was mostly show type things, but it was nice I thought. Mollie's started to really get a bad cold. She fell asleep right before we went into the Playhouse Disney Live show. Phil stayed out with her while the rest of us went in so she could sleep in the stroller. Well, she was sleeping face down. She woke up right before we walked out of the show freaking out. I know she was disoriented. It's hard to wake up in a strange place. But she started crying and coughing. B/c she was really mucousy from her cold she ended up choking and gagging. Eventually thowing up all over my shoulder. Gross. But I didn't mind b/c she was so sad. And so upset. So Phil went to buy her a new shirt that matched her leggings she actually had on. He did a great job. I really was never worried about her having a stomach thing, it was pretty obvious what it was. I was going to buy a new shirt, but ended up just putting my jacket back on. I didn't want to pay $30 for a shirt I didn't really like and may never wear again. We asked her if she wanted to go see the Ariel show and she was immediately cured:) It was a beautiful day!!! But it started to get cold as it near dark. We probably left around 5 or so. Phil and David did get to do the big roller coaster they wanted to do and David and Emma went on the Tower of Terror thing. I can't believe she did that! She's 5, almost 6!

Tuesday (yesterday) we ended up taking the day off. Mollie's cough was getting pretty bad, she felt a little warm at bed time. We had been going STRONG since early Sat. morning. It felt great to just rest. We watched the Inauguration on TV, Mollie watched cartoons on the other TV, they both played around a lot with some of their new stuff, and watched DVD's on the laptop. They both ended up napping! Sydney hasn't taken a nap in a long time, but she said she wanted to. We had to wake her up at 4 to go to Downtown Disney for dinner! We went over there to the Rainforest Cafe. Very disappointing. The food and service were not good. The atmosphere was unbelievably cool, and I guess that's what you pay for. I would have preferred good food at that point in the day:) Anyway, the weather was very cold and very windy so it was the perfect day to lay low and let Mollie rest.

Today (Wednesday) we went back to Magic Kingdom. We got a late start (cold again) and took the 10:30 out of the hotel, met Billy, got to MK a little before noon. We got to see a big show in front of Cinderella's castle while Phil ran to Space Mountain to get fast pass tickets:) That was neat. It was really freakin' cold. I can't tell you how cold it was. Our lunch at Cinderella's Royal Table restaurant at Cinderella's castle was at 12:20 so we went got there and changed the girls into their dresses while we waited for our pictures with Cinderella! I had put white turtlenecks and pants on them with something warmer over that and coats and mittens. So we just had to pretty much take off the top layer and threw their dresses on over their turtlenecks and pants. But you won't believe who froze up and not do the picture with her favorite princess! Mollie! The attendants and Cinderella herself were very gracious and so sweet telling us to not push it to just come back during our meal or even after if we had to to try again. Sydney did great! So we went upstairs and while we waited for our food we somehow convinced them to do it again, haha. A picture package with Cinderella was included with our meal and it was really darn pricey!! Like upper $30's a meal for adults and $20something for kids. We were getting our pictures! It went fine thank God. Someone also came around and gave the girls wishing stars and magic wands that said Cinderella's Royal Table. They did a cute little Bibbity Bobbity Boo chant. OH, while we were gone to do the picture redo our food came. The waiter was very concerned about my food being hot when I came back so he told Phil that he would bring me a new plate if it got cold. I sat down to eat my pork tenderloin and it was luke warm, but fine. I'm not too picky about things like that. Well here he came with a new plate. He said, you are not eating that princess!! That is not warm enough! It was really hot and really even more delicious. The girls got ice cream sundaes with crown shaped chocolate pieces on top. So cute. They had a great time. They got to see Belle, Jasmine, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty up in the ball room and had pictures of each. We got a picture package of each girl that is basially a folder with a large picture of the castle on the left, a large picture of them with Cinderella on the right, and an envelope stuck inside with 4-4x6 pictures of them with her. So sweet. Mollie elected to wear her Sleeping Beauty dress all day. Sydney took her Cinderella dress off.
Mollie ended up taking over an hour and a half nap in the stroller! Yay! She seemed to be feeling better, but can I repeat how cold it was? The high today was like 48 I think and slight wind. Where are we again? FL? My friend Billy said it hadn't ever been this cold here since he's lived here. Nice, had to happen when we were here. BUT it ended up being an awesome afternoon b/c a lot of people apparently left and we ended up walking right on to fabulous rides like Pirates of the Carribean, It's a Small World, the Haunted Mansion, Snow White's Scary Adventures, Dumbo...and we waited 20 min. for Peter Pan's Flight. Sydney rode the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster twice with Phil, David, Olivia and Emma! A big roller coaster! She loved it. I was shocked. She has really surprised me this week with how daring she's been and how much more at ease with characters she seems---hugging and high fives! She's still deathly afraid of fireworks apparently though b/c we had to leave at 7:30 before they started at 8. No amount of cousin peer pressure was going to break through that. She was out of there in no time flat, haha.
Anyway, I hope Mollie doesn't wake up sicker tomorrow, but she was awesome after not feeling so hot before. Of course we're keeping her high on cough medicine and ibuprofen:)

I forgot to say that the Dreams Come True parade was so, so cool. Sydney was about to freak out:) Mollie unfortunately slept through it.

Tomorrow is Animal Kingdom, dinner tomorrow night with Billy and family at Downtown Disney, Friday is Epcot and then dinner at Chef Mickeys! Saturday we journey back home.

pictures

While I'm on here in our hotel suite I forgot to mention something. If you haven't seen them already, haha, (I'm such a pusher) go to my shutterfly link to the right and look at our new pictures we had done by my friend Melissa last weekend! I got them on Friday. It took probably most of the night Friday night for them to load.
I love them, she did an awesome job!

Magical Meltdowns

We are at Disney and loving it!
It cracks me up though, that at a place so "magical" and geared toward kids, there are so many screaming, tired children!
No pain, no gain!
Mollie has had more meltdowns and fits than I have ever seen about anything ever. But she's loved what we've done. Sydney is stuck to my niece Olivia like glue.
So, in case I didn't mention it before, I think I did, but Phil's brother David, his wife Angela, her mom, and their 2 kids are here also. Their suite is right next to ours! We spent all day with them today. It's been nice.

Next time, and there will be a next:), we will plan a more low key park for our first day here.
Yesterday was just really tiring traveling. We had booked a direct Delta flight. It got changed to a layover in Atlanta and then the times changed about 8 times. And there was nothing we could do about it b/c we had paid for it back in June. Should have waited for the Southwest schedule to come out and done direct! In the time it took us to arrive at RDU yesterday morning and arrive at our hotel we could have driven. And I *might* have jumped out of a moving vehicle 1/2 way here, but still.
Now, that said, the girls did awesome on the planes and it was such an adventure for them:) It was fun. But I have never been so tired in my life. Seriously, I don't know what it was. Maybe the excitement from last week and Sydney's birthday coupled with getting 5 hours of sleep the night before we left, and the traveling....we were all dead tired. Mollie pretty much cried from the airport to the hotel. She wanted our car, she was confused by the taxi. She wanted to go home. I have seen more meltdowns from her in the last 2 days than ever. Sydney was AWESOME!! Literally, almost perfect all day. Who can blame Mollie though? She is 3! And was stretched to the max.

I think this morning we weren't quite recovered from yesterday and left at 8:30am to catch our shuttle to get to the Grand Floridian hotel for our 1900 Park Fare breakfast with Mary Poppins, Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter, Tigger, and Pooh. It was AWESOME. Well worth it. It was not stressful at all, we actually got there early and were sat early. The food was delicious. That's one thing I have to say about Disney. The food is really very high quality fresh food. My wonderful friend Billy met us at the hotel, rode the monorail with us to Magic Kingdom, got the 4 of us in for FREE, wanted to wait and see the girls' reaction to Cinderella's castle (so sweet) and then just went home. He could care less about Disney b/c he works here, haha. He is a fabric buyer for all of Disney World, the cruises, and stores.
Anyway, we got to do a lot today for how crowded it was! Mollie was pretty stressed about not seeing Cinderella right away. We eventually got to Toon Town and found where you line up to see the Princesses and it was only a 30 minute wait so we did it. Someone in line told us it would be 3 princesses and you wouldn't know which 3 until you got up there. It just happened to be Cinderella, Belle, and Aurora (Sleeping Beauty)!!!! Couldn't have been more perfect!! The girls loved it and we got some great pictures. Mollie was in Heaven. Sydney is kind of shy about things like that, but her favorite is Sleeping Beauty so she was happy. Anyway, it's hard to recap all we did, but we didn't even get 1/2 way through the park. We're def. going back Wed. when we have our lunch at Cinderella's Royal Table at the castle.

Tomorrow we are going to Hollywood Studios. Billy's office is based at this park and he'll meet us at the gate to get us in again. The other days even if we're going somewhere else we'll have to meet him there so he can get us in and then we can park hop. It is so awesome of him to do this for us, it's saving us probably... $1,000 in tickets if we were to buy 5 day park hoppers? Not sure exactly how much. Ahhh... you know my husband is in Heaven also to get a free hotel with his Hilton points and free admission, LOL. It's great:)

Happy Birthday Sydney!

I just can't tell you how bittersweet this is! I love that she is growing up, but 5 just seems so OLD! It really makes me feel that --more than ever--every decision we make around her/for her will shape those teenage years I am so afraid of!
The pressure:)
I am going to get together some pictures later of her to maybe put into a little slide show.

This time 5 years ago I was waiting for 8am to call my dr. Wait! That was a Friday also!!! Her birthday is on Friday again! Anyway, I had been having contrax since late Wed. night., didn't sleep all night long, went to work b/c I didn't want to be bored (really?), had about 9 bad ones all day. Phil drove me and picked me up. I just figured really, I was with great people, closer to the hospital, it kept me busy, etc. It wasn't like scary bad like all of my little kindergarteners would crawl under the table or be scarred for life. They just weren't picking up.
I remember that night we went to eat with Ricky and April at Red, Hot and Blue and it did get bad. I remember being mad b/c they kept asking me if I was okay and I kept giving them dirty looks. This was at like 7pm. We came home around 9, more contrax, another sleepless night, the contrax would just not get consistent enough. I'm not sure why I was so calm about this lasting forever. Looking back on it it pisses me off. That was a lot of "prelabor" that didn't get me very far. (Sorry Laura, it wasn't really that bad, don't be scared;)
Finally at 8am after watching Phil sleep for 2 nights while I was AWAKE I called my dr. and was like, what is the deal? I need this baby out! And Friday was really convenient for my family and friends, haha.
They had me come in the office, checked me out, "did some things" and whoa, it got rolling. They sent me to check into Labor and Delivery, we called all of our family (this takes a while). I guess we got in a room and all hooked up around 12. I think my contrax were 3 min. apart, or 2-3. I got my epidural pretty soon, it was not fun. Maybe at like 1:30 or something. They broke my water at 3 b/c it was not getting me far. Oh and then I had Pitocin, whoa. Thank God for drugs. She was finally born at 9:15pm after a lot of work by me, Phil, the nurse, my mom, and my friend Laurin. They really all worked very hard. They whisked her away to the corner so the special care nursery could check her out b/c she had mecomium in her fluid. Poor girl. She was fine and I finally got to hold her and was really, really tired.
When they wheeled me out into the hall and down to my post partum room an hour later there were 14 people there in the hall waiting to see us! I was a deer caught in the headlights. The nurse said "do you want me to keep going?" I waved and said "YES!" See you tomorrow!
My sisters and parents, maybe my other friend Lauren all came to the room briefly and then left.
She was 7lb. 1oz!! Think back to Mollie's b-day post of 9lbs! I sure do love my Sydney!!!! ;)
Kidding, the recovery with Mollie was way easier!

things

Thought I'd throw a blog together, it's been a while:)

Mollie decided not to nap today. She did this once a few weeks ago. I hope this is not a pattern. She usually sleeps 2-3 hours a day! Guess she'll have to go to bed early tonight. This does however make me feel a little more flexible about Disney. I'm not srue at this point I want to come back to the hotel every day for her to nap. Might just have to play it by ear. We are taking our sit and stand stroller so maybe she'll fall asleep in that.

Sydney is having a playdate right now. Cute little girl from her class!

So we leave on Sat. for Disney! I'm so very excited. It will be the first time flying with the girls. And I'm not really much of a seasoned flier myself. I have only flown 3 times and all 3 times it was on USAir from Charlotte to 1)Grand Cayman 2) Cancun 3) Bahamas.
We actually have to layover in Atlanta. Our original flight was direct, but our flight plan has changed 8 times! For real!

We're brining the girls' Leapsters and our laptops. I think they'll do fine.
We found a transportation service that will pick us up at the airport and provide carseats for us, take us by the grocery store, then to our hotel. We're staying at the Doubletree Lake Buena Vista right next to Downtown Disney. The whole week is free with Phil's hotel points. It's nice to get a benefit from his travels! My friend Billy works at Disney and is going to get us in free!
And Phil's brother and his family are all coming with us also so the girls will have their cousins there! Hopefully our suites will be close together in the hotel.

We're doing a Mary Poppins/ Alice in Wonderland breakfast on Sunday, lunch at Cinderella's castle on Wed. and dinner at Chef Mickeys on Friday night. Then we come back Sat the 24th.
I just can't wait to see the girls' excitement.

So now I'm rambling. We'll be celebrating Sydney's birthday Friday evening with cake and pizza with the whole family. We're having a little Mickey and Minnie party:)


I guess considering that I have packed like 2 things I better get crackin'!

*******5********

In 9 days Sydney will be 5. I'm not quite ready for that ;(
Boo hoo!


But in 10 days we go to Disney World. I am ready for that!!!

kiki

Kiki is Mollie's new pet rock. We have lots of pebbles in the yard at the beach house. Mollie loves to give people rocks. She carried Kiki (she named it, have no idea where it came from) around for 2 or 3 days. She slept with it. Gramma gave her a small box with a lid for Kiki to have as a home. It's hilarious. Nancy and Courtney probably were sore from laughing so much at she and Kiki's adventures at the beach. Especially Mollie putting "her" in a sock and kissing her goodnight. Kiki went to school the next day. She's been on the counter all day today so maybe she's been forgotten. But I had to record our Kiki memories:)