Finally . . The Disney Pics

These are all labeled, so no real story is necessary. As I see them I may continue to recount individual stories that stand out, but my hope with these is that you just enjoy!

The Toddler Bed Experiment

My little Beanie is getting all growns up. Potty training, as I've mentioned, is essentially complete. It was hard, frustrating, agonizing, and nowhere near as simple as I'd hoped. I expected her early independence to translate into a desire to outgrow pull-ups, but that was not the case. She took her time, albeit nearly a year's less time than Avery took. That said, we're seeing nights with no wetting, a virtually nonexistent accident rate, and overall we're happy. But like they say, there's no rest for the weary.

When we returned from Disney, we made some changes to the house. We rearranged the play room . . not out of any necessity, more just so that I didn't go postal one day and napalm the entire thing. It's a lot less messy now on a daily basis, and the train set Santa brought got moved in there. We also disassembled Lily's crib and bought her a toddler bed for her room. A funny aside about the toddler bed . . about 6 months after Mandi and I started dating we were preparing for Avery's third Christmas. Mandi made a big deal out of the "Tyler Bed" she was getting for her, and I played along as though I knew what she was talking about. I understood that it was more of a bed than the current crib, but knew not why it was called "Tyler". Maybe it was some relevant brand name. What did I know, I didn't have kids at that point, so all of their accessories were foreign to me. Christmas came around and I assembled the new bed for Avery, all the while wondering why it was so named. Once we gave it to Ave, we just called it her "Big Girl Bed", but my curiosity lingered. So one day, I asked Mandi why it was called a Tyler Bed. Her look, which I've seen many times since, could only mean one thing. I was an idiot, and I'd just let words escape my mouth that I'd always want to take back. You see, she'd been saying "toddler bed" the whole time, but apparently that particular phrase invoked more of her native accent than other words did. She clowned me mercilessly, and to this day I joke of the "Tyler Bed" in a more-than-mildly self-deprecating way when the topic comes up.

But I digress. I put Lily's new bed together last week and we surprised her with it after her nap. She'd done pretty well in her blow-up bed while we were on vacation, so we expected a pretty smooth transition now that we were home. Needless to say, those expectations were not met.


Night number one was a struggle, requiring multiple attempts at putting her to bed, and eventually inflating the blow-up bed for her to sleep in instead. The next afternoon, we received a red herring in the form of a really good nap in the new bed. That night, unfortunately, required twice as many put-backs as the previous one, as well as the addition of a baby gate to her doorway and multiple threats of being vanquished to the pack-and-play. Subsequent nights have included ventures into our room, switching into the blow-up bed in the middle of the night, and a lot more of the difficult moments putting her to sleep.

Last night, however, takes the cake. The Beaner skipped her nap yesterday, as I'm preparing myself for her to do more and more often. The positive part of that is that she's a lot sleepier at bed time, and last night she went to bed with no problems. I checked on her before Mandi and I retired, and she was sound asleep on her back in her bed. Then, at around 12:45 I heard her abruptly start crying. This was not drama-queen crying, it was genuinely scared or hurt crying. I rushed in to the room and was dumbfounded. I could still hear the crying, but for the life of me I could not locate its source. I turned on the light, but the fog of my recent sleep kept me from truly comprehending what was going on. I honestly started questioning the existence of ghosts. Then it clicked. I got down on my stomach and peered under the bed, and there was Lily, arguably still sound asleep but crying nonetheless. I lifted up the bed, told her to crawl out, and did my best to calm her down. Once she got her bearings, she calmed down and seemed ready to be put back to bed. I listened in on the monitor for a few minutes, and when I was certain the crisis had been averted I went back to sleep.

Fast forward to this morning. Mandi and I are finishing our breakfast at around 5:30 and we hear a loud "THUD" from upstairs. The monitor was turned down, so it was unclear which child's room was the source of the noise. We turned the monitor up and didn't hear Lily stirring, so we brushed it off as possibly a cup falling out of her bed or even Avery's remote control hitting the floor. We would soon have all of our questions answered. We cleaned up, and as Mandi finished packing her suitcase-sized lunch I escaped to the restroom. When I emerged, Lily was waiting at the door to greet me with her story. Proudly, and without so much as a "good morning", she told me "Daddy, I fell out of my big girl bed and got a boo boo!"

"Where, Lily?"

With a quizzical look she replied, "On the floor Daddy".

"No Lil, where on your body did you get the boo boo?".

Her answer was non-verbal, and it's best described not by words, but by the following photo. Unfortunately I did not capture this in real time, as I am not in the habit of taking the camera to the bathroom. So this photo, while posed, is the most accurate representation of the actual events I could attain.

Here's Your Sign

I hate to be a catch-phrase poacher, but nothing really matches what I wanted to say to the following two individuals more than that. If you're not familiar with the "Here's your sign" bits, just Google it, or Bill Engvall from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour with Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, and Ron White. It's one of the most commonly uttered phrases by Mandi and I when we're people-watching.

I know I haven't posted enough pictures of the trip to Disney, and you're all expecting some really cute ones of the girls. Be patient. This is funnier and definitely warrants being posted first.

So our second day of theme parks was spent at Epcot. We got there early, and the lines were still pretty short. We headed straight for the Finding Nemo ride, as we'd heard it was a "don't miss" attraction. We waited 20 minutes in the deceptively long line, endured Lily's bellyaching about the dark tunnels, and emerged ready to go to our next stop. Then, as if it were being handed to me on a silver platter, what you're about to see next appeared before me.

Seriously dude? Not only did you braid the mullet, but red-white-and-blue beads too? Here's your sign.

The second incident occurred today at the gym. Now I usually won't make fun of someone who's in the gym workin' on their fitness, no matter how atrocious their attire. Well, I did call out body-odor guy a while back, but that was just ridiculous. I believe firmly that spandex is not made for overweight people, but if you're exercising at least you've got a part of an excuse. Loose clothing is dangerous around moving pieces of equipment. Sometimes though, the whole package just exceeds the limits of decency. Nearing the end of my workout today, I made my way back toward the abdominal equipment. As I approached, I noticed someone I'd never seen before on the machine I generally use first. No worries, I'll start one machine over. It wasn't until my 3rd or 4th rep that I looked that direction again, only to find the most abhorrent gym outfit ever assembled.

For starters, the woman's hair was unruly to the point that I wondered if she'd been electrocuted. I mean would a comb kill you? From my vantage point, the next thing I noticed (as I attempted to look down to avoid staring) was that her feet were bare. I think I stopped exercising at that point, as I just could not fathom what I was witnessing. She got down from the machine, slipped on her (I'm not making this up) rose petal patterned bedroom shoes and walked to the next station. Once I wrapped my head around the slippers thing, I noticed the rest of the outfit. The black spandex pants, when viewed from my vantage point (thankfully she was walking away from me, otherwise I would certainly have been caught staring), outlined what can only be described as an ass the size of a hippo's. Seriously. And they were pulled up as far as they could go to try to contain the ginormous belly she was no doubt exercising to eliminate.

The most outrageous part, unfortunately, was still to come. As I shook my head to break Medusa's spell, I managed to observe the shirt. Now remember, the bedroom slippers had rose petals on them. This top was a tank-style shirt, which was great because sleeves would have concealed her queen-of-hearts tattoo that covered all of her right shoulder and triceps. In its current form, it was not even able to cover the straps of her undergarment, which was futilely attempting to create a distinction between her breasts and the aforementioned belly. It was completely impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. Picture the worst-dressed Weeble you've ever seen. The best part about the shirt, however, I saved for last. The pattern, you ask? Yeah, it was leopard print. I only wish I was clever enough to make that up. Too bad cameras are banned in the gym, that one would've been a great photo. Lady, here's your sign.

"She Shoots, She Scores!"

I almost wish that title was just my poor attempt at vulgar toilet humor. While this post does concern the potty, the title is correctly placed in quotation marks.

Without jinxing myself, I am proud to announce that Lily is now 99% potty trained. She's only had two accidents in the last two weeks or so, both within an hour of each other. That was an interesting day at the Wyndham Fairfield resort, but there's a much funnier part of that story that must be reserved for its own separate post. I won't keep you waiting long, I assure you.

As I'm sure is the case with most toddlers, number two has been a lot more difficult hurdle to overcome for Lily than number one. There were days where I swore the kid was going to get sepsis from having so much poop backed up in her bowel. We thought we had turned the corner when one afternoon she went successfully in her little potty, and we poured on the praise like we know we're supposed to do. The next day, however, we were back to square one. We poked and prodded and kept "poop" top-of-mind, and eventually we persevered.

Fast forward to this afternoon, when after stripping herself down in the play room Lily announced that she had to "go poopy". We of course ran to the bathroom where I hoisted her up and she proceeded to successfully complete her mission. What came next, though, is what makes Lily who she is. As I reached for the toilet paper, she bent over at the waist as if to peer down between her legs in to the potty, at which point she declared her victory by shouting "She shoots, she scores!" You sure did Lil' Bean, it was a slam dunk!

Birding Without Actually Birding

The number of times I raised binoculars to my eyes while in Orlando this week totals less than five. Most of those were from our condo's balcony, checking out the cormorants and mallards in the pond. Still though, Florida generally provides more opportunities to see certain birds than any other place in the country, and I was not going to let a little thing like a family vacation get in the way of bumping the total on my Big Year list.

Far and away, the most common birds in and around Orlando are grackles and House Sparrows. The Boat-tailed Grackle is a very distinctive bird with an obnoxious voice and an unmistakable appearance. They dwarf the Common Grackles that are just as prevalent in the area, and their voice is considerably different. That was the first new bird I identified on the trip, actually encountering them in a gas station parking lot a few hours before we arrived.

I saw most of the water birds I expected to add, including the Wood Stork and Little Blue Heron. The Glossy Ibis continues to elude me, as I still have never laid eyes on one. I also did not see Cattle Egrets, Sandhill Cranes, or Tricolored Herons. I did not count birds seen in captivity for the list, but the outdoor ponds at the parks were fair game, which is where I saw the Wood Duck and the White-cheeked Pintail.

Tuesday, as we were coming home from the park I saw what could only have been a Swallow-tailed Kite, a relatively uncommon raptor, being chased by a crow. We were in the car in the condo parking lot when I saw it, and while I was certain of my sighting, I was hesitant to add it to the list without verification. Well Wednesday morning as we were leaving the park we spotted it again, with even Mandi being sure of the ID this time. That's a lifer that I'd be surprised to ever see again outside of captivity.

The rest of the list from the trip includes the Eurasian Collared Dove, Double-crested Cormorant, Brown Pelican, White Ibis, Fish Crow, Great Egret, Purple Martin, and Ruby-throated Hummingbird. Overall I'd call it a good trip, with a few of the additions just preempting my eventual sightings here at home, but a few of them are undoubtedly only to be seen in Florida. So the list now numbers 91 species, and I hope to spend some time this week searching out the latest migrants to our area.

Home Again, Home Again

Well, we're back from vacation, and I've finally managed to sequester myself for a few minutes to post. Problem is, it's 6:30 in the morning, I'm only a third of the way through my first cup of coffee, and it seems like Disney was last month instead of earlier this week. Don't worry though, I'm confident all of the funny stories will come back to me in time. For now though, I'll leave you with some of our favorite photos from the trip.

T-Minus 39 Hours

Approximately half of the bags are packed. The laundry is almost finished. When Avery comes home in the next ten minutes, she'll have 6 more hours left of school until the big moment arrives. That moment, of course, is when we'll be leaving for Orlando to go visit the big Mouse House. Right around 5 a.m. Friday morning the Mommybus will pull out of the driveway and head South toward the Sunshine State, leaving a rippled wake of morning air in its path. It's our one "big" vacation of the year, the one everybody's been dying to go on for the three months since Christmas passed and we decided to go. You can count on a daily post from the road, as our laptop will be accompanying us on the trip. We'll include tons of pictures of the girls having a blast, and we expect numerous comments detailing your unbearable jealousy. So wish us a safe journey, we'll update you when we get there!