Month: April 2015

Flower power: Tips to visit Woodburn’s Tulip Festival

catherinemryan

Planning travel to Oregon with kids this spring? You don’t want to miss a visit to the Woodburn Tulip Festival near Portland. Check out the tips to visit the tulip festival with a toddler below—and have fun!

The combination of Peeper’s interest in nature, our daily trips outside and her gift of gab have made for an ever-expanding botanical vocabulary.

While we were in Mexico, she talked about the three distinct varieties of cacti near our hotel. And now that spring is in full swing, she calls out dandelions, daisies and daffodils by their names. We’re still working on the Latin names, though. (Kidding!)

After two visits to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm’s Tulip Fest outside Woodburn, though, she definitely knows tulips. Woodburn Tulip Festival - Ten Thousand Hour Mama Woodburn Tulip Festival - Ten Thousand Hour Mama Woodburn Tulip Festival - Ten Thousand Hour Mama Read more →

Happy Easter!

catherinemryan

We’re not churchgoing folks in our family, but we spent Easter celebrating in our own way.

Most weekends, Eric and I have to tag team care of Peeper: One of us will take her on an outing while the other gets work done at home. On Sunday, though, we both walked to the nearby park and Peeper played to her heart’s content. Toddler Easter basketLater, I gifted them both their Easter baskets, and the Easter Bunny was practical this year: He filled them with things like socks and a belt—oh, and cheddar bunny-filled plastic eggs for the little one, which was a big hit.

The best part of the holiday was that family and friends visited. Peeper planted some lilies outside with Grandpa Shempy, and Peeper read countless books with her aunt and uncle who visited from Seattle. Toddler planting flowers with grandpa - Ten Thousand Hour mama Reading on your lap - Ten Thousand Hour MamaI guess the holiday made a big impression on our toddler. She was wound up from all the company and festivities so took a long time to settle down for bed. After I set her in the crib, we overheard her saying something through the monitor.

I turned up the receiver’s volume and we listened intently.

“Happppppy Easter! Happppppy Easter!” she was repeating to herself.

However you celebrated—if you celebrated—I hope you and yours had a wonderful Easter! Happy Easter! Ten Thousand Hour Mama

21 months

catherinemryan

A baby’s first months are filled with milestones—first bath, first outing, first smile, first everything. Once she grows into a toddler, those baby book moments become fewer and stretched farther apart.

Peeper’s 21st month turned that pattern on its head.

The last month was filled with new experiences, and this adventurous toddler soaked them up. Most notable was her first trip without Dada. We met my parents in Mexico, where Peeper enjoyed a slew of firsts—tasting her first mole (so huge a hit that she ate it plain and straight from the dish), her first swim in the Pacific Ocean, witnessing her first lightning storm. Peeper in Mexico - Ten Thousand Hour MamaSandy Hands - Ten Thousand Hour MamaEating mole - Ten Thousand Hour Mama Read more →

“Baby in there!”

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Kiwi ultrasound - Ten Thousand Hour Mama“Baby in there!”

From about the time I began to show, Peeper started to talk about how a baby was growing in Mama’s belly. She would point to my bump and sometimes wave to the baby.

One night, when Peeper had eaten a particularly large portion of tuna mac, Eric remarked on how big her belly had gotten.

She looked down at the round drum of her middle. “Maybe baby in there,” she said.

We, of course, were floored.

After that, she got a little confused. “Baby in there!” she’d say of just about everything—Eric’s belly, Finn’s belly and, particularly, my breasts. (That last one was slightly awkward in public.)

Now she makes it a game, naming everywhere the baby isn’t. “Not a baby in there,” she’ll say about everything. “Not a baby teeth. Not a baby mama mole. Not a baby dishes. Not a baby rocking chair.”

So she may not know exactly what’s going on—the details of a growing fetus are a little beyond a 20-month-old’s comprehension—but she well knows where the baby is not growing.

Kiwi feet ultrasound - Ten Thousand Hour Mama

That’s a start.

End of second trimester blues

catherinemryan

Woodburn Tulip Festival - Ten Thousand Hour MamaTaking Peeper to the Tulip Fest outside Woodburn earlier this week was wonderful (more on that later!), but it carried a very unwelcome realization: I’m getting too pregnant to continue doing everything I want to.

When lifting my 20-some-pound toddler off a swing at the festival, I pulled some of the round ligaments in my belly, the muscles that stretch to accommodate my soccer ball-sized uterus. On top of that discomfort, I felt crummy and overextended the rest of the day—a condition not helped by Peeper’s skipped nap. (Ugh, why won’t this child sleep in the car like a normal kid?)

I was utterly spent. The exhaustion I felt by the end of the day plus recalling that I’m mere weeks away from my third trimester overwhelmed me. What’s more, a good friend was recently put on bed rest when her baby tried to make a very early appearance, which pushed me to consider the possibility we could have an early bird, too.

So though I’m still rocking the ease of the second trimester, I need to scale back a bit. That is not easy. Read more →