The Terrible Two's

Not too long Lixi made a comment to me. She said she was really glad to have Bo because Jenna was going through such a terrible phase that sometimes she loved him more. Stupidly I started thinking that Kenna really hadn't hit the "terrible two's" and that since she was 2 and 1/2 , maybe she had just missed that phase all together...WRONG! I now also love Bo more (mostly kidding) and have decided to put a ban on all thinking.

She has started tantruming like crazy and once she starts crying there is absolutely nothing that can calm her down...except Nate. And since he goes to work we are just out of luck once it starts.

The tantrums seem to occur 1-2 times a day over anything and everything. I can't take her to any stores anymore because she tantrums and "just wants to buy a toy stead of clothes/food/whatever" in every store we got to. I don't know when she decided that going to a store meant she got a toy, but apparently she has. I do my best to distract/bribe/avoid the tantrum but once it starts its over. Maybe this is wrong but I just put her in her room and tell her she can come out when she is done crying.

She tantrums over the wrong clothes, the wrong snack, having to wear a jacket, having to take a nap, bedtime and mostly over her daddy. She has become quite the daddy's girl and is devastated when he has to go to work. Most Monday mornings start in a crying fit because Daddy is not home. Today was no different. Let me tell you how it went -

(First you should know that she had decided she will pee-pee on the potty and has transitioned into undies except at night and when she needs to do #2). So this morning she woke up and I went to get her. She asked if we could go see Daddy (uh-oh). I told her he wasn't home and she started tearing up and whimpering. Well I thought I'd distracted her. I promised a show while she ate breakfast but first she needed to use the potty and put undies on. She woke up with a dry diaper which meant she really needed to go. Fine. we go downstairs and I take off her diaper and try to set her on the potty. No good. She burst into tears screaming that she didn't want to go on the potty and that she wanted daddy. I figured she could sit in the bathroom in her diaper and have her tantrum. Well it is hard to get a diaper on a flailing two-year-old and apparently she had to pee so badly that she decided it would be best to dart past me, run into the living room and start peeing everywhere. She was running and peeing at the same time- all over the carpet and blankets/toys/clothes that were on the floor - leaving a trail between the bathroom and living room. Well this did not end the tantrum. She cried for another 40 minutes. Great start to Monday morning huh?

I can say this for her though. Once she calms down she feels bad about what she does and she even told me "Mommy I'm so sorry I pee-peed on duh carpet. Iss okay I still love you." How can you stay mad at that? You can't, at least not until she does it again.

She can still be cute, though the tantrums are starting to out-weigh the cuteness (at least for mom who is home with her all day). Oh and I should point out that she almost never tantrums for Nate so when I complain about it he has no idea what I'm talking about. Judas. But it makes weekends nice!

Here are some of the cute things from this month -

She had discovered "candy-lish" (licorice) and she loves it. At least three times a day I hear, "Mommy can I have some candy-lish?" It works well as bribery and she will eat cauliflower for it.

She is learning more words but doesn't always use them correctly. She uses couple and some juxtaposed in a sentence - "Mommy can I have couple some treat?"

Nate always tells her, "tell mommy how much you love her." She will run up to me, grab my legs and say, "How much I love you Mommy!"

Kenna loves to dress up and wears her cowboy costume and boots or click-clacks almost every day.
Kenna likes to play picnic by raiding the pantry and taking all the food she can reach to the couch where she and her babies eat it.
Mommy take a picture of me and my dollies (named Mommy and Francine)
We have so many cabinets in this house that most of them are empty which makes for great hiding places, especially if she has stickers and a flashlight. I guess she stuck her dog, Patches in the cabinet one day and forgot because one day she opened up a cabinet and I hear her yell, "Oh Patches, hi! Dere you are!"
She can give herself a pedicure.
She LOVES Olivia and has many lines for the episodes memorized. She uses these as scripts for playing and interacting. For example, it is no longer 'little brother', but 'little bother' and she will correct you. She also saw an episode about "spaghetti night' so we had to have one too. After eating I heard her saying, "Mom can we have spaghetti night tomorrow night too? I think that's too soon. The next night? Olivia you wear me out."
She needs a jacket on to drink smoothies.
Don't let the cuteness of the pictures fool you. Next blog I will post only videos of her having a tantrum.

The Wild Life in Texas

Life has been cruising on here in Texas. Here are the goings on. Kenzie has had her hands full with an especially fussy Kenna lately. I am pretty sure that she would sell the child if anyone was dumb enough to pay. However, every night Kenna goes to sleep and we laugh about the cute things she did that day. I don’t actually think that Kenzie is completely ready to sell the child, but if anyone was to want to rent the child for a week I am sure that she would give them a fair price. In addition to mothering a terrible two, she has also been recruited by Alixa to become a ninja. She started a kickboxing class at the gym. Kenz and I have really stepped up the gyming the past 2 months, but this ninja class has pushed her pretty hard. She is in pretty good shape and can climb stairs for an hour straight, but the ninja class left her sore in places that she didn’t know she had. In other good news, she will be able to thwart any physical attacks that I make on her when we argue with a punch, punch, jab, uppercut, knee.

I started upping my running regiment for some reason. I am not really sure why, but I figured I needed to get in shape and running would do it. Last month I ran 60 miles and last week I ran my fastest set yet with a 8:03 mile for 5 miles. I am definitely faster than I have ever been in my life which is sad though because I don’t have anyone to run from. Maybe if Kenzie becomes a really good ninja she will start attacking me and I can run from her…

Back to the wild life. We took advantage of the terrible climate of Texas and went down to visit Cyle and Athena in Fort Hood. We enjoyed beautiful 65 degree weather and a guided tour of all the Adair’s have to offer. We ate pintresting food and drank pintresting drinks and had pintresting cookies. If any husbands have not introduced Pinterest to their wives, DO IT NOW. When Kenzie found Pintrest 2 months ago, our meals increased in flavor and frequency. It has been awesome. I still don’t get what it is or why it is cool, but it is a good thing. Athena uses it, so we ate awesome food all weekend.

I keep getting side tracked.... moving on. Cyle and Athena are not used to our 25 pound alarm clock going off at 7am, so I took Kenna out to Chick Fila on Saturday morning so that she wouldn't wake up everyone in the house. This was the best visit ever! We were going to drive through, but she asked if she could go in and play on the playground. I didn't bring the diaper bag, but thought she could go in and play for a few minutes without needing anything. So we went in. She had a blast playing for an hour and then informed me that she needed to poop. I didn't have any back up diapers and so I tried to convince her to use the potty like a grown up. No deal. I will spare you all the terrible details but there were lots of paper towels involved and my blood pressure rose about 20 points trying to take care of something like that in the confined space of a mens bathroom in a fast food joint. I have mad respect for all moms out there that deal with these mind blowing brain teasers every day. Of course no trip to Chick Fila is complete without a ten minute visit with the cow.

We had a fun time hanging out with Cyle and Athena and they were gracious enough to take us on a tour of some boondocks zoo they have down there. It is one of those ones where you drive around and the animals come up to your car. As you can see, these animals have some issues with personal space.

Life is good. We like Texas more and more and it really is feeling like home. It is crazy to think it has only been 3 and a half months since we moved here. Thanks to Cyle and Athena for a fantastic weekend! Oh yeah, and here is our attempt at a family picture. Fail..

Mommys Takin' us to the Zoo Tomorrow!

Kenna has had a fun couple of weeks. As if all the excitement of Christmas wasn't enough, Grandma and Grandpa came for a visit right after. Grandma flew in on Monday. This visit was much better than Grandma's last visit since I stopped with the whole potty training fiasco and decided that Kenna can stay in diapers indefinitely. We managed to have a good time and Kenna was in a pretty good mood. We went to go see Olivia again and got some popcorn and fries. We also rode the carousel, got some candy and watched the ice skapers. Kenna had a blast.
My dad flew in on Thursday just in the zoo! The weather was really nice, and even a little hot in the sun. Kenna got to ride the carousel (which is strategically placed right inside the entrance so that the kid didn't want to do anything except ride the carousel) first thing.
The first animals Kenna saw were talking parrots. They said, 'hello,' 'goodbye', and 'howdy' (even the Texan parrots are crazy). One even waved as it said goodbye. Kenna thought this was very cool and we had to drag her away after about 10 minutes of waving.

Then we headed to the kid's zoo where there were slides and animals you could touch. We went to feed the birds. She was a little hesitant at first but we got her in there. It was scary, then fun, then terrifying! She was enjoying herself until a bird landed on her head. She screamed, burst into tears, and dove for mommy (who lovingly snapped a picture and laughed).

right after the bird flew off (I was a half second too slow!)

After recovering from that she got to ride a horse and a camel and we got to see the rest of the zoo. She thought the elephants and giraffes were cool, but really liked the lions. They kept yawning and she would get so excited and yawn back at them, laughing the whole time.
There is also a tram that takes you around some exhibits so I got to use my new zoom lens.
One penguin came up to the glass and followed your finger around which made up for the fact that none of them would get in the water like Kenna was yelling for them to do.
The next day was the BYU (or buy-you as Kenna calls it) game. Grandma was nice enough to stay with Kenna while the rest of us went. Again, it was scorching in the sun but the game was fun. I got to hang out with Athena and eat Dippin' Dots and Nate got to see Cyle and watch football. And then there was my dad who got to hang out with the Chick-fil-a cow.
The game was the armed forces bowl and so they had paratroopers dive in before the game and dedicated each quarter and the halftime to a different branch of service. It was very patriotic and there was even a group of very elderly gentlemen who came out for the game and stood and were recognized during their allotted quarter. It was a nice way to celebrate and say 'thank you.'

We brought home some souvenirs for Kenna and she was happy.
We had a fun visit and it was nice to have a long weekend together.

Before Christmas we went to Ikea to get some shelves for our living room as a Christmas present to Nate. Kenna thought Ikea was really cool. She found lots of hiding places. We considered getting a door for the shelf just so she'd have one to play in but then realized that was ridiculous.
The weather here has been nice for January. It is actually supposed to be 70 today. Kenna has had fun being at the park again and is especially happy when Jenna joins us. There are these three slides right in a row and then both try to scamper up them and end up sliding back down while laughing hysterically.
The other day Kenna decided to finally name her dolls. They are Francine (from Olivia) and Mommy (because...?). She put them on the bed next to her (which she was pretending was a boat) and said, "Mommy, take a picture of us!" It was pretty funny. While I'm on the subject, we have been working on pretending and I think Kenna finally has it because when I took her over to Lixi's house yesterday for my doctor appointment, Kenna insisted on taking a towel (which she was carrying around because it was santa) and her jump rope (his reindeer). It was really funny. She wanted to play Santa and asked, "Mom, where's Santa." I pointed, thinking he was just invisible, but apparently she thought he was the towel. Lix was a little surprised when Kenna showed up with a towel, but oh well.