Parker's Two!

How do I love you, let me count the ways. I love the way you shrug your shoulders to really add extra cuteness to your already amazing grin. I love the way you look up to your big sister, and how you know how to push her buttons like no one else. I love that when I come in to get you out of your bed in the morning two weeks after your birthday party you still tell me "Thank you mommy for Mickey Mouse Cake" each day. I love how you say "beech" when you beg to go to the beach. I love that you beg for candy each day, even though you know we're not going to give it to you. I love that when I come home from work at night you and your sister come running at me to give me hugs and kisses. I love that you can count to ten, and love listening to you counting to yourself throughout the day. I love how you can run like the wind, and even when you fall down, you jump up and keep going. I love you at two!

Parker, you're a total firecracker, sassy and sweet in perfect balance. You totally crack me up with your latest displays of attitude. When you don't like the answer you've been given(usually "NO") you will either wag your finger at me and say "NO, MOMMY, NO!", you'll tell me to "BE NICE" or you'll say nothing at all and just bat your eyes and stick out your bottom lip - this is HYSTERICAL, but when I laugh you look at me crushed. This of course makes me realize how cruel I am, because sometimes I forget, these little things that you want to do really mean the world to you. On the sweet side, you are always ready with a quick snuggle or a thank you for anything we give you. Makes me so happy and so proud. You love to snuggle with me, daddy and Payton, especially if we can all do it together! Your grin is a gift within itself, completely lights up a room, and we're blessed that you give them out often.

Each day you learn more and more words, and we all love this! One of my favorites is to hear you talk to Payton, or Paypay as you call her. The two of you are best friends and she sometimes has to translate for us to understand you. You spent a few weeks at Allie Gator School before we started having Rachel come to the house. In those few weeks you started learning to count to ten. It is the cutest thing in the world to hear you walking around the house, or hanging out in your crib counting your little heart out. Of course you do it best on your own, and when we try to get you to count on cue for video, you won't say a word. Totally Parker.

You are my mischievous child, and this may mean you're going to be in your crib until you're 18. You have inspired me in the last two weeks to put baby locks on more and more bathroom cabinets, and even to seek out a lock for the pantry. I've found you on the sofa drawing on yourself with a highlighter, walking around with lip gloss, open containers of bronzer splashed throughout the house, and then there was the childproof bottle of allergy medicine that daddy found you with spread all around you on the bedroom floor. Last straw there. There was the day I found you trying to climb Payton's bookcase or the time you were reaching for something on the kitchen bar from the kitchen table and the chair fell, thankfully landing against the bar. Daddy is constantly on your case for turning on every light in the house. If there is trouble to find, you are my #1 player. And each time you get into trouble, you lay your head on my shoulder and say "I sowwy" and think that's going to make it all better. At least I can be thankful that you're polite. Your daredevil side means that at any given time you have at least 4 bumps, scratches or bruises on your body. Currently a crack on your chin, bruised shins, scraped elbow and torn open toe. I know how the elbow happened, no idea on the rest.

what else should I cover? At this point you're still a pretty good eater, but I see you getting more and more selective. You're a bit bashful and don't care for large parties, but usually warm up to people pretty quickly. You are ready to start swimming, but since we haven't started swimming lessons you are pretty dependent on us in the water. As far as sleep, you are still taking a nap in the afternoon and go to bed around 8 at night. You hardly ever fall asleep right away, you kick and talk and play forever, but at least you're in your bed with your kitty and your blankie. You love Mickey Mouse and beg Daddy to play it on his phone any chance you get. You are an amazing child and I look forward to the next year!

Hugs and kisses sweetheart!

2 Year Check Up

The following story is pure Parker. When it's not her way, it's not going to happen.

I took you in for your two year check up this morning. I've always been the one to take you girls to the doctor and other than the moment of shots, it's always been a friendly happy place for you. Until today. Today was horrid. Today was terrible. Today was exhausting for everyone. We arrived at the office and you were happy to play in the waiting room, spread books around and drink/play with the water fountain. Then the nurse called us back, and it all went downhill quick. You would not stand on the scale so we moved on and figured we could come back to that. You were fine while she asked me questions about your development, including "Does she have tantrums/fits?" to which I answered "yes." Then she needed to listen to your heart, and your response was to scream, cry and flail. She tried and tried, but there was no chance. So, we moved on to taking your temp, which somehow we did get done. Back to the heart, no way. So we tried to lay you on the table to measure you. I don't know what number she came up with, but with the three lines above your head and the scraggly one at your foot, it couldn't have been right. The end of the line seemed to be your head circumference. NO WAY were you having it! Eventually we had to get you on the scale, and since you wouldn't stand on the big girl scale I had to get your clothes off to use the baby one. Have I mentioned that you were kicking and screaming?? Well, you were. The nurse took you from me and told me to go into the room while she tried to weigh you. I have no idea if she actually weighed you or if she made it up since no one was watching, but there's a number in your file and it's over so I don't care. She determined that her numbers, other than weight, were off so she sent the doctor in to try. We got to do it all over again! Fun! I have to tell you that you are one lucky kid, because Dr Foley and her staff are all saints. They never got frustrated with you (or at least didn't show it), and may have even given you a little sympathy. At some point in your fit you broke open the scab on your arm and had blood dripping everywhere. So, we had to wrestle with you to get a band aid to cover that and to wipe blood off of you and me. Dr Foley got some numbers down that she could live with and we moved on. Finally it was time to take a drip of blood for a hemoglobin test and give you your one shot that was due. We all braced ourselves and you for the worst. I held you down, Payton cowered behind me very very concerned over the whole ordeal, and the nurse started jabbing. I'm not sure who started crying first, you or your sister, but I do know who cried longer - PAYTON. As soon as the nurse pulled away from you you were over it. Payton was not. So now I'm trying to console you and Payton and get you dressed and escape this evil place, while keeping all of your bleeding parts off of my white t-shirt. We did make it out of there and you did live, but I'm not really sure how or if we'll ever be able to go back. I'm not sure that I can live that experience again.

Parker's Party

Another great Schiering bash to celebrate Parker turning 2. It started off a bit rocky, Parker of course wasn't certain about all of the commotion surrounding her. I tried to get her into the swing, but she spent the first 1 1/2 hours pretty much clinging to Grandma Barb, well, there are certainly worse ways to go.

Finally the food was ready and I was certain this would bring her out of her shell. What I didn't count on was her new found fear, RAGING fear of flies. Yep, flies. I have a little idea where this came from as Payton had been talking about them a few days earlier, but have no idea how it became so traumatic. Seeing her one would think I'd dropped her into a tank of copperhead snakes, but instead I tried to get her to sit in her booster, in the house while a fly (or two) flew by her tray. I will admit there were an insane number of flies in the house, but only a few taking interest in her. At first I tried to laugh it off with her, then I tried to be stern, but in the end I had to take pity on the poor kid because she was honestly terrified! So, instead of eating she clung to me for dear life and cried into my chest. Eventually we moved on, and now I realize, that girl never did have any dinner!

As the party moved on, she finally found her happy place. That place was with the guys on the side of the house playing a game of bags (our friends version of horseshoes or boccie ball). She was in heaven, watching her made me think of David Cox and all of my own dad's friends from my childhood. I'm so glad that my girls will also have such great men in their lives. And of course I find it a bit humorous that like her mom, she'd rather hang with the guys than a bunch of screaming girls. Can't blame her for that!

Yep, MOMMY made a Mickey Mouse cake! I had to laugh because before the two year old Parker even had a chance to figure out the blowing part of it, our friend Kaitlyn had taken care of it for her.


By 10 or so Parker had enough looking at the pretty packages, and broke in!

Growing Up Without a Cell Phone, and other things you'll never experience!

Grandpa Mark just forwarded the following to me in an email, and it is so much a letter I could write to you that I thought I should save it for you. What better place than your blog!

Growing up without a cell phone If you are 40 , or older, you might think this is hilarious!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning... Uphill... Barefoot.... BOTH ways… yadda, yadda, yadda.

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a Utopia!

And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it!

When I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!

There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!

Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our butts! Nowhere was safe!

There were no MP3's or Napsters or iTunes! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself!

Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and screw it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished, and then the tape would come undone rendering it useless. Cause, hey, that's how we rolled, Baby! Dig?

We didn't have fancy stuff like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that's it!

There weren't any freakin' cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends." OH MY GOD !!! When you HAD to make a call, you used a pay phone. Think of the horror... not being in touch with someone 24/7!!! And then there's TEXTING. Yeah, right. Please! You kids have no idea how annoying you are.

And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your parents, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, the collection agent... you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'. Your screen guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen... Forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your butt and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!! NO REMOTES!!!

There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons!

And not many of us had microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! Imagine that!

And our parents told us to stay outside and play... all day long. Oh, no, no electronics to soothe and comfort. And if you came back inside... you were doing chores!

And car seats and seat belts - oh, please! Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung on. If you were lucky, you got the "safety arm" across the chest at the last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for calling "shot gun" in the first place!

See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or any time before!

Goodbye Snow

Last week we lost a family member, Grandma Jackie's cat, Snow. It happened the day before Payton's birthday and we held off telling her until this week, didn't want to taint her birthday with such bad news. This is the first time we've had to address death with her and we had no idea how she would take it, nor did we really know what to say to her. A few months ago we had a preview when it was explained to her that Grandma Joan's husband, her great grandfather, had died years ago. She was upset by the whole concept then and so I feared this would be traumatic for her.

We waited until Parker went to bed and Payton snuggled in with me. We tried to keep it very simple, since she is only days into being 4. We told her we had some bad news, that Snow had died last week. He was sick and he died. I expected tears, but instead her eyes got really big and the first thing she said was "Grandma Jackie's gonna be so SAD!!!" She was so worried about Grandma, we told her that yes, Grandma's sad, but it she be okay. We also tried to tell her that he was really sick, but that just because someone is sick doesn't mean they will die, and reminded her about Oliver being sick recently and that he's okay. I asked her if she had any questions and she really didn't seem to. We talked about Snow being buried in the back yard, and tried to reiterate that he wasn't alive anymore. She was uncomfortable by the whole talk, and snuggled in a little deeper for a few minutes. Then she had a question, I was ready for anything. "Can I have some grapes?" Stunned, we got her grapes and assumed we'd moved on. A few minutes later she had another question, something along the lines of, "Can he walk around?". Apparently she's not really getting it. We gave it one last shot, no honey, he's dead, he doesn't do anything anymore.

It's been a day since we had the talk and I'm surprised, but she hasn't brought it up again. I am sure that someday soon, out of the blue, we'll be having this talk again, but for now the bad news is delivered and we can mark this off of the list of terrible things a parent has to do. We're so sorry for the loss of our girls dear friend Snow.