Dr. Gerald von Chuggington III, Ph.D.

Sometimes you can choose your kids nicknames and it will stick.  For example, with Deedle's real name, we knew it would be shortened and we'd call her Addie and it has been.  But with Finn, well, I hoped we'd call him Finn.  I actually wanted to name him Phineas and call him Finn.  His middle name is Phineas.  But we never call him Finn.  Only here on the blog.  The one who has come up with the majority of his names is his adoring sister, Deedsy-girl.  I think the names are hilarious and often they stick.  Here are some of his names:

Meals
Meals on Wheels
Chuggs
Bruisy
Gerald
and, the current favorite:
Dr. Gerald von Chuggington III, Ph.D.

And yes, the kids and Chancho actually call him that entire thing.  Quite often.

Anyway, Chuggs has just grown up like crazy in the past few weeks.  When we got back from our family trip, he was still mostly just army-crawling in a very strange way.  Now, just a few weeks later, he is full-blown crawling all over the place, pulls himself up on things and is walking along the edges of couches and tubs (aaa! not good!).  I think he will be walking fairly soon.  He is also much more grown up with wanting to eat all different kinds of things.  Tonight he was eating some cheerios and string cheese, but looked at the shepherd's pie on my plate and felt he'd rather have that.  So, I started feeding bites of mashed potatoes, ground beef, carrots, and peas to him. He ate about half of my meal for me.  He still likes toys but has also decided that he is beyond most of them now and is constantly opening every single cupboard and drawer, making messes, banging pans, etc.  So, although he is not officially "toddling" yet, he really has passed so much from my baby to a toddler in such a short amount of time!

On top of all that he is physically doing, I gave him a summer haircut and all of his brown, baby hair is gone!  Gone, daddy, gone!  He is now a toe-head (tow-head?) just like his sisters!  And I'm still madly in love with him!

One funny thing that he always does in his carseat is cross his feet.  This would have been cuter with his little toes, but converse all-stars in baby size are pretty dang cute, too!

Something That Makes Me Happy

Does anything in particular stand out to you in these pictures that Deedle colored (or began coloring) at church and school?

I remember that as a child I was always getting miffed because I couldn't find the "peach" crayon.  In Middle School I got a really awesome Prang Coloring Set  the colored pencils had a nice, peachy-flesh colored one.  I used it nearly all the way out.  But not Deedle.  And it makes me so happy.  It honestly wouldn't have dawned on me as a kid to just go ahead and color one of the people with brown skin.  My parents are absolutely not racist and we actually did have probably more experiences than a lot of children in our area with people of varying colored skin playing roles in our lives.  But still...people were always peach-ish to me.

I may have shared this before, but I don't remember.  When Deedle was about 2.5 years and Loumy was 18 months or so, we were driving in the car.  At the time I drove our Jeep Cherokee and had 3 car seats shoved side by side in the back.  One day Deedle was asking me about the different eye colors in our family.  It went something like this:
Deedle:  Mom, do you have blue eyes?
Me:  Nope.  Mine are brown.
Deedle:  Mom has brown eyes.  Loumy has brown eyes.  What about Dad?
Me:  Dad's eyes are blue like yours.
Deedle:  Dad has blue eyes.  I have blue eyes.  SC has blue eyes...(then a long pause...I notice that Deedle is checking out her little, milky-white legs sticking out in front of her in her seat next to Loumy's.  She then says slowly...)....and Loumy has...brown...legs.

Her voice was completely innocent and and interested, too, like this was the very first time she had noticed that they had a different skin color.  Her tone was, "Hm!  Isn't that interesting?!" 

So, that's all.  Just wanted to let you know that it makes me happy that to Deedle skin color is just like eye color or hair color.  And when she's looking for the right marker or crayon, she'll just choose whichever one she thinks might look right for that drawing.  Cool, huh?

Whew...

Well, I'm sure there is more to share about our Disney Land trip but I don't want to and I'm sure any of you reading don't want to be a part of a single moment more of our family vacation.  So, this is the last post.  I will just share a few of our favorite things from Disney Land.

Chancho's favorites were:
* Lucille's Rib Shack with "kids eat free Tuesdays"
* The Tower of Terror
* Watching Loumy do Jedi Training
* Pirates of the Caribbean Ride

My favorites:
* Chile Verde at a local spot our hotel guy directed me to called "Los Sanchez".
* Soaring over California
* Happy children
* Being with my family and not worrying about laundry or dishes or answering emails.

String Cheese's favorites:
* The Tower of Terror
* Space Mountain
* Soaring Over California
* Everything I did on my vacation

Deedle's faves:
* It's a Small World
* Bug's Life Land
* Seeing Tinkerbell at Pixie Hollow
* Splash Mountain
* Dumbo Ride
* Getting my doll
* Half of Space Mountain
* Soaring over California

Loumy's faves:
* Doing Jedi Training
* Tower of Terror
* Dumbo and the Rockets
* Indiana Jones

Finn's faves:
* Standing up on the hotel shuttle to and from D-Land.
* Bath time in different tubs.
* Winnie the Pooh Ride
* It's a Small World
* NOT drinking sour milk

Thank you, Disney Land, for the lovely memories.  We had a wonderful time.  If I never see you again it is only because I want to have new and different vacations with more nature and less everything else.  The End.

The Lines

Despite not having a lot of crowds, we still spent some time waiting around or waiting in lines.  For rides that Finn couldn't get on, we would get a stroller pass.  This would mean that Chancho or I would wait with Finn while the other rode with the three "big" kids.  Then directly upon exiting the ride, the one of us who was waiting, would get the stroller pass and could get right onto the ride and take one of the kids with us (so they each got to take turns going twice on rides and it was a lot of fun to have some alone time with each child).

Finn was a real trooper.  Sometimes he got grumpy.

 But mostly he was good.

The longest line of the trip was to visit Tinker Bell.  It wasn't even a ride.  Just a line to see her and a fairy named "Silver Mist".  Deedle had been begging and we acquiesced.  It was close to an hour.  Loumy and String Cheese weren't too happy about it. 

 I thought it was kind of lovely.  See the duckling?

Deedle didn't seem to mind at all.

The Rides

Because the lines were short and because they are very lax on letting babies get on rides that don't have height restrictions, we all were able to ride a bunch and have a great time. 

Conquering the Dark Side

When we arrived at D-Land we received a little paper that had a schedule of different attractions.  One said, "Jedi Training".  In case I haven't mentioned, Loumy is quite the little Star Wars aficionado so we decided we'd better check it out.  We found a show time and realized what was happening almost too late.  There was a big stage and on the ground in front were crowds of children with hopes of being chosen for the "training".  I quickly found a spot for Loumy to sit and squished in beside some other parents off to the side. 

Soon a jedi appeared and began to do some fancy light sabre moves.  He announced that he was going to begin choosing some children out of the crowd to do the training.  Loumy looked at me with eyes full of hope.  I gave him a big smile and a thumbs up.  He stood up and began waving his hand around.  The Jedi began picking out kids and completely passed over Loumy.  I felt L's angst growing as the Jedi made another sweep past him.  I suddenly turned into "crazy mom who embarrasses husband and children.".  I began shouting as loud as I could and pointing at Loumy, "RIGHT THERE!  BOY IN THE CAMO SHORTS!  CHOOSE HIM!  BOY IN THE BLUE SHIRT AND CAMO SHORTS!  CHOOSE HIM! RIGHT THERE!  COME ON!  CHOOSE HIM!"   And, finally he was chosen.  We all gave a sigh of relief.  Except for Loumy, who was relieved to be chosen, but very, VERY serious about the events which were about to take place.  

To see his face, you might have thought he was not enjoying this.  But I think it was one of the most memorable experience's of his life.

Training was going fine until some Clone Troopers arrived, followed by Darth Vader AND Darth Maul!  Darth Vader tried to convince the children to join the dark side, but Loumy fought bravely.






































































































































Before long, the dark side had been conquered, "for now", and Loumy was receiving his official certificate for having completed the training.   It was really enjoyable for all of us.

The following day, SC (a closet Star Wars lover) decided that she really wanted in on the action.  We decided to go again.  There was much discussion about whether or not Loumy should raise his hand and if, in doing so, SC's chances of being chosen would be lessened.  Eventually we decided they would stand side-by-side holding hands and then would both raise their hands.  Loumy was chosen immediately.  He glanced, sadly at Grace. We all held out hope that she would be chosen.  But, alas, she was passed over.  This time Loumy was chosen to stand on the stage.  As he looked at me and Grace, it broke my heart. He is the sweetest boy in the world and I know he would have given his spot for her to have it in a second.  He still did well, but you could tell there was a damper in the excitement for him.  Afterwards, the first thing he said to me when he came over was, "I shouldn't have raised my hand!"

Here SC and Loumy wait in excited anticipation.

 Loumy looks on with much worry as SC continues to raise her hand in hope.

Loumy still fought Darth Vader valiantly, but his heart just wasn't in it.

I don't know if another five-year-old exists with as much compassion, empathy, and concern for others as Loumy--nor one with such mad light sabre skills.   I feel so blessed the Lord has entrusted this boy to my care!

FV Part IV - DISNEY LAND - Characters

We arrived at Disney Land bright and early on Wednesday morning.  Our hotel, the Ayres Inn, was lovely.  There were really no huge crowds at all.  We were well prepared to use the Fast Pass system and get to certain rides early before the crowds hit, but, to our delight, found we didn't even need to.  Many people said they'd never seen it so empty.  Lucky us!  Disney Land really is a happy and a magical place if you don't let it overwhelm you.  Thank goodness Jana prepared me so well!

One of the things she helped me with was knowing about autograph books.--otherwise we would have missed out on the joy of some of these moments.  Thanks to her advice, I ran to Target the day before we left.  There just happened to be some really cute, little, black "scrap books" in their dollar section. I got one for each of the kids as well as some stickers.  I let them decorate their books while in the car on the way to California from Zac and Nat's house.  The kids were SO excited about their little books and we kept them ready at all times!  Here are some of the characters we were able to meet:

This is Tinkerbell's lovely friend "Silver Mist".

I had a face off with Darth Maul.  Wasn't scared.

Perhaps the most exciting meeting of all, though, was this one!  Stay tuned for details.