The Small Space, The Cake and The Run

This no nap thing is working fairly well, but there are some drawbacks.  For instance, we had a birthday party to attend yesterday at four o'clock and as soon as we put the two children in the car they fell straight asleep.   Twenty minutes later, we arrive at the party with two cranky children who don't want to wake up, be pleasant or even walk at first.

They did manage to come around in a few minutes when they saw friends, food and new toys.  The  party went until six o'clock, ending with cake and ice cream.  The cake was chocolaty with lots of icing and the ice cream was an added bonus on their plates.  Both children ate as much as they could shove in.

Then, Elle, who's party it was, opened her presents.  It was at about this point that our two children couldn't manage to stay still.  My husband and I each took one and tried to help them focus on the present opening across the room.  I thought they were ready to go or that they wanted to open presents or be involved in some way.  I realized later though that it was the small space in that crowded room and the surge of sugar they were getting from the cake and ice cream.  They just needed to move.

After the presents, we depart and my husband says he needs to stop in at Best Buy to get something and do I want to stay in the car with the children or should we all go in together?  I said let's bring them in because we still had time before bedtime and we might as well spend some of it in a large retail store with lots of colors and lights.

And that's where we found out how much energy they had bottled up.  We held hands across the parking lot and all walked in.  Then...they were gone.  They ran.  They ran fast.  They ran far.  We had to literally run to keep up with them as they took turns down aisles, ran all the way to the back of the store, headed back to the front and dashed through several other departments along the way.  

They didn't seem to be getting tired at all.  We didn't need to worry too much about losing them or them causing trouble.  They were mostly into running inside the store.  They had no interest in merchandise, or leaving the store of colors and a hundred televisions.

Finally, they stopped running and we found our item.  But by then we had decided to run them out.  We chased them around and had them hold on to carts while we pushed them along.  They left with a lot of cake burned out of their systems and they fell asleep easily.


The Big Boy Update:  Success in remote parenting.  The consistency is paying off.  Today, the children were down at the swing set while I swept leaves off the deck.  My son was trying to control both the red and the blue swings and my daughter wasn't happy that her swing was taken away from her.  I told him he had to give it back and he did, even though I was relatively far away couldn't physically enforce my request. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "I want my hat."  I told her she could go outside if she put her coat on.  She got to the coat drawer and decided she didn't care about the hat so much as the hat.  She put on the hat, pulled it down almost over her eyes, and then ran into the wall trying to get out the back door. 

Fitness Update:  It's never good when our trainer asks us how much longer we have and when we tell him, he laughs at us.  Although it was a fun day at the gym.  I had a rib out of alignment and some lower sacrum tightness, so it wasn't the most comfortable workout, but the chiropractor straightened things out later in the day.  All in all, he's been rougher on us on Monday's in the past.