Terra & Van

Sorry about the delay in this post! I was out of town this past weekend at a fabulous "My Far Lady" bridal shower/ Dirty 30 weekend (literally dirt - lots of it!).  But I wanted to share about Terra (our 5 year old Puggle) and Van.

Terra, is one of those dogs with a lot of personality and a very expressive face, which usually means to can tell exactly what she is thinking.  Van and Terra have "met" before, obviously, but it's always been at my brother's house and for small bursts of time.  Last week, they seemed to have a love/hate relationship with each other.

On Van's side, within 2 minutes of us getting to the house he was already yelling at Terra (he knows her name VERY well).  Terra was sniffing his bags and toys that we had brought in and immediately he began yelling "No Terra! Mine Terra!" However being very mercurial at 3 (50 Shades of Grey fans anybody on the vocabulary?), within the next 10 minutes he found her bone and would carry it around telling her to "Get it Terra! Get it Terra! Here Terra!" as he threw it occasionally.  This was much better after I explained that you weren't suppose to throw it AT the dog.  All of this happened off and on throughout the week - yelling at Terra one minute, "No Terra!", "Get Down Terra", to finding her bone and wanting her to get it.  He would also tell us, on his own without asking, when Terra could come with us and when she could not. More-often than not, she was not allowed to come with us, "Terra has to say."

On Terra's side, she is a pretty low maintenance dog. She is use to a quite, semi-calm house. She is a dog who likes to sleep under blankets on the couches.....Van is a child who likes to jump on couches. To say she was a little stressed or anxious throughout the week is a sight understatement. On Monday, she followed me around the apartment everywhere and cried at the door every-time we left the house. Tuesday and Wednesday, she was fighting for attention. If Van was cuddled with me on the couch, she tried to sit between us. When I had her move, she just moved to my lap. She began a very needy puppy! She was dying for attention!  With all of this said... Terra is an extremely food obsessed dog and she KNEW Van was the key to extra food. When he was eating (which was often) she looked at him like he was the leprechaun at the end of the rainbow holding a bottomless gold-bowl of treats in one hand and a genie lamp in the other. If Van was sitting on the floor, Terra would start out staring about a foot away. Then she "stretches out" and every few minutes re-stretches, all the while getting closer and closer until her paw is resting on Van's foot. Smart, sneaky dog.  There were a couple of times where Van was eating on the floor or couch when we needed to rush to the bathroom. Upon our return, Terra was over the food trying to scarf down as much as she could before I forced her away.

Van and Terra in a rare moment

Van had just had a glow-stick bath and fell asleep holding his glow-sticks. Terra was terrified of the fireworks outside.

Week With Van.... Day 2

I am sure you noticed that this post is happening on day 3.... raise your hand if you are surprised that I didn't blog last night. Yep, fell asleep with Van when I was reading him his story :)  With no delay, here is day 2.

We woke up at a much more reasonable 6:30. I knew it was going to be a better day when I walked in and Van said "HI! What are you doing?"  This means the normal, happy Van was back! I think waking up at 4:30 the day before in a panic put us both in a weird mood yesterday. Today ended up being our 4 of July celebration and many of Van's 1st's in Wilmington eateries.

We left the house around 9 to head to the beach (Fort Fisher is typically where we go), but on the way we stopped by the Carolina Beach Boardwalk to pick up Britt's Donuts - a must for anybody visiting Carolina Beach during the summer.  As we get out of the car and walk towards the store, Van paused, awe-struck, and whispered "Beautiful. Beautiful." - all the buildings on the boardwalk are painted a different bright color and he loved it! After a few minute wait for our donuts, we grabbed them and headed for the beach!

Let me tell ya.... this little guy is so much fun to take to the beach!!! He loved jumping the small waves that came at him then later he used his "super powers" against them! He would throw his spider web at them as they approached or karate chop and kick them as they hit him! He LOVED it!!  We stayed a couple of hours before we had to go - that's when the true experience occurred. 

I don't know if you can tell in the pictures, but we have this really awesome beach pop up tent. I think we bought it a couple of years ago when we wanted to begin taking Terra (the dog) with us to the beach more often. It is really cool. It's collapsable so it's easy to carry, it has pockets on the side to weigh it down with sand which makes it really easy to move and adjust the shade throughout the day, and it has an open bottom which means Van can still play in the sand and be in the shade. The thing is...I have never been the one to fold it up. Every time we go the beach Paul and I have a system - he folds it, while I get the case for it ready. Well, it was just me.  I am sure I was entertaining all the patrons of the beach that day as I struggled to get it folded up correctly. After several minutes, I smelled something funny (by funny I mean really really bad!)  Apparently, I had put one of the edged in dog poop when I set it up and since I had been messing with it for  several, several minutes, I had not only spread it on the tent, but also my hands.  At this point, I decided to throw in the towel. I got our bag, cooler, trash, and blanket together; then folded the tent enough to grab it and carry it, very awkwardly, off the beach. (Thank goodness Van was an angel during this time!)  As we are very slowly walking toward the car (an exhausted 3 year old and hot sand makes slow going) I feel something wet on my leg.  I am thinking that all the stuff squeezed against me, must be extra water from my bathing suit....but  a few minutes later it was still coming. I look down at it was white liquid; the milk from our donut earlier was leaking out of the trash bag down my left side. Since I have a tent ready to pop open at any second in my left hand a 3 year old on my right hand, there was nothing to do but keep walking.  Once we got to the car, Van climbed into his seat, I slammed the tent into the trunk, and we finally made it home where Van took a good 2.5 hour nap!!

Since this is already a long post I will quickly run through the rest of the day with pictures :)

Once Paul came home Van found his super powers and began to wrestle and attack him. (It's really the cutest thing! Van would reach into the air, grab his power, pull it to his stomach, make sure it went down to his feet, then hands, and then run and jump on Paul ) :D

Van had his first trip to Flaming Amy's

In order to avoid the craziness that is downtown Wilmington on July 4th, we went to Carolina Beach to enjoy fireworks a day early.  We grab ice cream at Squigley's and sat on their grass to enjoy the firework show! By the way, you have not seen a firework show until you have seen it with Van. This is the happiest, most excited child every. For the first 10-15 minutes of the show he was yelling, clapping, and cheering! He loved to yell out the colors of the fireworks as he saw them. He was the most excited child there by far! :)

I would say Day 2 was a great success!
(Ignoring  a few splinters from where he stepped on a pine-cone the day before) 

Week With Van.... Day 1

So, when I knew that I was going to be off the month of July, I called my sister-in-law to let her know I wanted to steal her son. Naturally, as a mother, she replied "take him!"  Now, I haven't spent a significant amount of time alone with Van and it's always been with experienced back-up not far away, so to say that this week is a learning experience is an understatement! So this week, I am posting my adventures with my wonderful, 3 year old nephew!


So, this morning started at 4:30 AM... that is correct... 4:30 AM! I heard Van talking from the other room and went I went to check on him he was wide awake and asking for mommy and daddy...persistently.  I think he woke-up because he needed to use the bathroom, realized he wasn't at home, panicked, and wet the bed. Not sure. All I know is that I had a very alert 3 year old wide awake very, very early. (500 points Van)

So, Ginger had sent his DVD case of all his DVD's. He wanted to watch Monster's INC.  The disc that was in the case was disc 2 with all the special features, NOT the actual movie (10 points parents).  After, what felt like hours, we finally settled in to The Incredibles.

(Paul is a much better morning personal than I am!)

After that until about 9:30 is a blur. I know we went outside for a while, then came in and watched some PBS I think.  Around 9:30, I was changing him so we could go to the train museum for story time at 10:30. While I was changing this shorts and underwear, I felt something wet on my arm. That's right.... I just got peed on. (10,000 points Van)  Great!

We finally made it to the train museum downtown, which was awesome! Van was not interested in the story, but I can't say I blame him as there was just too many awesome things to look at! They had tons of working model trains set up everywhere! They had green buttons that you would push to get some started, some you could "steer" by pressing the buttons.. just really, really neat place. They also had a play area with lots of toys and train tables set-up. You can see a couple of our pictures below!

After the train museum, we went to grab a cupcake! (By the way, Hot Pink Cupcake Stand sells a box fully of day old cupcakes for $15! Very awesome and something I did not know about until today!) 

Next up was the pool! Van is a water baby! Not only does he love it; he has no fear! As long as his swimmers are on he will jump in the pool then climb out and do it all over again. With each jump and climb he did internally the wicked witch side of me was coming out going "Yees! Yeees!"  We were at the pool at least an hour with him moving and swimming the whole time!! (10 points for the parents who packed spray sunscreen that doesn't spray!)

After a short popsicle break at the apartment, we put in a movie which eventually led to this:

(I must admit, when Paul came home we were both asleep leaning against each other. In fact, this position came after I had tried to wake him up twice which no prevail and just gave up.)

After I finally got him awake so that I could feed him, we went outside one more time before bath, books, and bed.

After my favorite part of the day, major snuggling during bedtime :), I have now prepared fruits, veggies, and sandwiches for our day at the beach tomorrow! 

Day 1 down; Van:298  Karen:10