Twilight Tuesday

During the month of July, the local zoo offers Twilight Tuesdays. You get free admission to the zoo from 6:00pm to 8:00pm.

We've been meaning to go to the zoo all summer, but it seemed like we just never had time or when we did, it was 900 degrees outside. The last time we took Tommy to the zoo, he puked because he was so hot (NOT something I want to relive!).

So when I heard about Twilight Tuesdays, I jumped on it! Evening time is SO much cooler and it was free, which made it even better!

My mom brought the kids to Wichita so Nick and I could just meet them at the zoo as soon as we were done with work.

It was so much fun! The kids are at such a great age to enjoy that kind of stuff. They had a blast looking at all the animals.

I was glad the animals were still out and moving around. We were afraid it would be boring and they'd all be tucking in for the night (do animals do that?!?), but they were still very active!

Even though it was later in the evening, it was still super hot. Luckily, they had misters going all over the zoo, so we stayed semi-cool. Tessa was drenched the whole time :)

They weren't too sure about the petting zoo. It was a little too up close and personal for their taste!

Tessa was SO not into having her picture taken. I kept getting the "no" hand.......

Tommy was really into the penguins and snakes. I HATE the building with all the frogs and snakes, but him and Nick stopped at each little station to find the snakes in their cages. Yuck.

We had a great time! I love that the zoo has a night that's free and will definitely remember it for next year!

Purple Princess Party

I somehow missed writing about Tessa's birthday party! For about 3 months before her birthday, she had her mind set on a purple princess party. So that's what she got!

 

We had lots of good food and I made "princess wands" for favors (chocolate covered pretzels with sprinkles).


 This was her purple cupcake cake that was supposed to be in the shape of a princess dress! It was kind of last minute, but I think people got the gist of what it was supposed to be :) Tessa loved it, so that's all that really matters! I for some reason ALWAYS procrastinate on their cakes, so I was trying to turn the white frosting purple shortly before all the guests arrived. It ended up more grayish, but that was the best I could get it! At least it still tasted yummy!

Tessa turns into a total solemn faced little girl whenever she's the center of attention in a crowd. It's hilarious. At events that are supposed to be SO fun (like a 2 year old birthday party), she gets very serious and won't talk to anyone or smile. Which is SO unlike her! So at her party, she hardly cracked a smile during presents (or any other part of it, for that matter). This was her birthday wish list:

NO idea where some of that came from!

This was as close as we got..............

She got TONS of fun presents! Purses, dolls, legos, art supplies.....you name it, she got it! She's one blessed little girl. We got her what we thought was going to be an EPIC present........

....Instead, it was an epic fail! This picture was the first and last time she's gotten on it! But I'm hoping at some point, she'll warm up to it. It took Tommy a year to ride his (what is it with my kids not wanting these awesome toys?!? I would've killed for some Hot Wheels when I was younger!). So maybe by her 3rd birthday, she'll be all over it!

This was Tessa AFTER everybody left and she was no longer the center of attention--

It's truly crazy how different of a kid she is when nobody else is around! She LOVED all her presents (except the one we got her)!! Especially her purses!

For her actual birthday, she woke up to a roomful of balloons (a tradition I started with Tommy). She takes awhile to wake up in the mornings, so she didn't really know how to act!

Then it was time to blow out some candles.....

\

I had to work for a half day, so I got the birthday girl ready and then headed to work.

That's her "cheese" face. Too cute :)

 I got off in time for lunch and we met Brooke, Tommy, Alex and Essie to eat at Ciao's. It was delicious! After that, we brought all the kids back to my house and let them play in the sprinkler and eat popsicles.

And of course, there were more cupcakes involved....

After they played, it was NAP time! They napped until Daddy came home. Then we all went to dinner and did a little shopping. Then we came home and opened some presents.

She was WORN OUT by the end of the day and so ready for bed. We got our sweet 2 year old girl all tucked in and she was out in no time! 

Overall, we had a great time celebrating our precious girl! We love you so much, Tessa Grace!

The stats...

Tessa, at 2 years old, you are:

*right around 26 lbs and 36 inches.


*wearing size 24 month and 2t clothes.

*in a size SEVEN shoe, quickly moving to a size 8. What?!? You completely skipped size 6!

*saying all your colors pretty well. You get them wrong occasionally, but do pretty good overall! You say purple is your favorite, but until recently, I don't think you even knew for sure what color purple was.

*obsessed with popsicles! You want them all. The. TIME. You say, "A pah-seeckle, mommy? Me have one?" When I say no, you say, "Please!!! Pitty, pitty please!" You think adding the "pitty, pitty" will make me say yes :)

*singing a lot! It's so funny! You can't really match the words, but you try hard!

*getting a little pickier about what you eat. You have definitely entered the toddler eating stage--you don't eat much and when you do, it's things like mac and cheese or crackers.

*learning what time out is. It seems like since you hit the two year old mark, you've spent a majority of your two year old life in timeout. Sigh. It HAS to get better, right?

*talking up a storm! You say tons and TONS of sentences and words and can pretty much repeat anything we say (which has backfired a few times).

*sporting some CRAZY bedhead! Your hair is getting so long and curly and is often out of control! And it's so blond now!

*interested in going potty on the big girl potty. You get bothered when you're wet and ask me to change your diaper, so I think we'll start that adventure pretty quickly!

*obsessed with the kitty. Like, to the point it scares me that you're going to accidentally squish him to death one day.

You're getting so big, Tess! 

The Day Black Betty Betrayed Me

It was a dark day. A dark day, indeed. Black Betty betrayed me.....turned her back on me in my time of need.

A few Saturdays ago (when it was hotter than hades outside--like 100+ degrees), my niece had a birthday party at noon at a park. It was super fun, but SUPER hot. Nick had just sold his car the day before (he had a junker that he drove back on forth so he didn't have to put miles and hundreds of dollars in gas in his truck) and we decided to go look at a slightly newer/nicer car to replace his junker right after my niece's party. My mom volunteered to take the kids to our house so she could put them down for a nap (and I didn't realize until later what a Godsend that was!). We left the party, hot and sweaty, and went to the south side of Wichita.

The guy we were buying from lived in a nice, clean neighborhood. Nick drove the car for about 20 minutes and really liked it. It drove great, the air conditioner was cold and it got decent gas mileage. He decided to buy it, so we drove to get the title (which was straight into the middle of ghetto Wichita) and then went our separate ways to head home.

Now....Black Betty is only ONE YEAR OLD. But that day.......that hot, sweaty, horrible day.....she died on me. We had a code blue. On Broadway. In the middle of a stoplight. "BETTY!!!," I yelled! "HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!?" I cussed a little and spanked her on her dashboard. Then I prayed that God would bring her back to life--at least long enough to get me out of the intersection. I turned the key and she started back up. I screamed for joy and then drove another block.......and she died again. I full on beat the crap out of her this time. I was slamming her on the steering wheel, spitting on her dashboard, cursing the day she was manufactured conceived. How could a one year old car (that I paid a LOT of money for in order to avoid getting a car that left me STRANDED on the side of the road) do this to me?

I got her to start one more time and sputtered my way into a parking lot, where she died one last time. I called Nick and begged him to come rescue me. He was almost to the turnpike already, so I had to wait about 20 minutes for him to come. Now, Black Betty is.......black. And a black car in a barren parking lot with no shade is FREAKIN hot. I sat in my car-turned-sauna and sweated off 20 pounds until my hero showed up to rescue me in his sort-of-new car. He called Ford for me and they said they would send a tow truck that would be there quickly. They gave us the option of leaving the key under the mat for them or waiting for them to show up. Given the neighborhood we were in, we decided to wait. And wait........and wait. For 45 minutes. And they still weren't there. So we finally put a key under the mat (after I had a meltdown or two) and got in Nick's car to leave. "F-you, Black Betty." I said in my mind as I crawled into Nick's silverish, cool new car. I shut the door and Nick started the car.

Or tried to. It didn't start. The new one. That he had JUST bought. Ohhhhhh, man. I cried a LOT. To the point where I think Nick was ready to shove me in the Black Betty sauna and let the towing guys deal with me. He finally got it to start and we got on the highway so we could get on the turnpike. We made it all the way to within about 1 foot of the turnpike exit and it died again. So there we were--betrayed by Black Betty, betrayed by the Silver Bullet and sitting with our tail end sticking out into the Kellogg traffic at 5pm on a Saturday evening. Awesome.

Within 30 seconds of our car dying, a random stranger pulls up in a huge white pick up, yells at us in a mix of Spanish and English and we get the hint that he wants to push our car with his truck until it's out of the intersection. Nick put the car in neutral, the guy gives us a gentle nudge and we slide forward enough to get the car completely out of the way. Whew! At least THAT went right for us. Nick put the car in park and turned it off, thinking our little Mexican angel was done. But nooooooo, that guy wanted to keep pushing us. I yelled at Nick that he was still pushing us and Nick hurridly put the car back in neutral so our gears wouldn't get screwed up. But since he had turned the car off (since there was NO point in us being pushed any further than we were), the steering wheel was locked in position. So the guy was pushing us and we had no way to steer the car. This proceeded in us rolling up on a curve on the right side of the road, the car rolling down the curb and veering to the left and us rolling across 4 lanes of rush hour traffic. It happened so fast that I didn't have time to do anything but scream out for God's help and wave my hands at oncoming traffic to stop. I'm sure they thought we were crazy because it looked like we were just flipping a big u-turn. By the grace of God, we didn't get hit and bounced off the curb on the other side of the highway. The guy that pushed us drove up in the lane behind us and blocked traffic with his truck. He helped us push the car until it was facing the right direction and then somehow, the car started and ran long enough for us to get it off the highway and into another deserted parking lot (anyone seeing a theme in this story?).

I called my mom (and I MIGHT have been sobbing hysterically because we now had TWO broken down cars, had just spent a small chunk of money on one of them and had almost had a legit near death experience). She came and got me (while my cousin watched the kids) to take me to Ford so I could get a loaner car while my POS Black Betty was being worked on. Nick's friend came and helped him tow home POS Silver Bullet.When I got to Ford to pick up my loaner, some douche bag in a bright pink shirt sauntered his way over to me and my mom.

"Hi, ladies! How are you today?" he said.

Fool. Um, could his eyes SEE me?!? I'm sure I was the exact picture of a pissed off customer who had spent FOUR HOURS in the blinding heat waiting for her TWO CRAPPY CARS to get her where she needed to be. I smelled like death, my shirt was damp and my hair was a huge friz-ball. My eyes were bloodshot and I had makeup smeared across my face from all the crying. And he wanted to ask me how I was?! Ha!

I stared at him with my resting-bitch face and then turned around and walked away. He pursued me (who IS this idiot?!) and said, "What's the matter, ma'am?"

"What's the matter? The MATTER is that my brand new 2013 Ford Focus that I spent a LOT of money on just broke down and left me stranded in the middle of Wichita and now I have to come to YOUR facility to get it fixed and Ford is the LAST place I want to be right now seeing as how YOUR company is the one that made my car........that left me STRANDED! THAT'S what's the matter, sir!"

He said,"I'm sorry to hear that! But why are you mad at me?"

I just rolled my eyes and walked away again. Then my mom said the most epic thing ever--

"She's probably mad at you because you're wearing that PINK shirt."

Ha!

Four days later, Ford called me to let me know that they couldn't find anything wrong with Black Betty--she must have just gotten overheated. Yeah. Because that makes for a really reliable car. I'm giving Black Betty one more chance to prove herself to me and then we're breaking up if she does it again.

You hear that, Black Betty?! Don't fail me, little lady.

My 2 year old daughter

Tessa Grace--

You are two!! How is that possible?! I still remember the day I found out we were having a girl. It seems like just yesterday. And now, here you are, my sweet little blond haired, gray eyed girl that walks and talks and has turned into such a little adult!

You are absolutely cracking us up every day with the things you do and say. Your sense of humor is so quirky! You'll say, "Mommy! Mommy--look at me!" And when I look, you're doing something totally random, like standing on one foot. YOU think it's hilarious! And so do I, but just because you get so tickled pink with the things you do! You "tickle" us by scratching us to death and saying, "Teeckle, teeckle, TEECKLE!!"

You are so determined and focused to do things for yourself. Some days it's funny and some days, it drives me absolutely batty. Your favorite thing to say is, "Me do it!" If you wanted to do something yourself, but we're already done it for you, you go back and do it again. Like if you want to put away a book, but we already have, you get the book out again and put it back up yourself. SO stubborn!

You are SO sassy. You've really gotten into purses and lipstick and perfume and sunglasses lately. It's SO fun to watch! Every time I turn around, you're taking your chapstic out of your purse and putting it all over your face. We've had to hide it from you because it seems to go everywhere EXCEPT your lips. You put change in your purse and try to pay for everything when we go shopping! It's pretty stinkin cute!

You seem to be a bit of a leader and I don't think you know it yet. Granted, you don't always take the best route to get people to follow your lead (let's just say you've pulled some hair, pushed a few kids around and gotten more than one time out in the process!). But especially with your brother......he very much follows your lead and looks to you to see how you react in situations. I'm hoping you learn this is a gift and use the appropriate means in the future!

You have a tough girl exterior--when you fall and get hurt, you don't want anybody to touch your or comfort you for a few minutes. When you're in trouble, you cross your arms and when you're asked to apologize, you say, "Uh-uh!" and choose to stay in time out for a few extra minutes until you soften up a bit. But on the inside...........you're a totally mushy momma's girl. As soon as you're done crying over your boo-boos, you run to me and ask me to kiss it. After you give up on being stubborn in time out, you come give the biggest hugs and kisses and say, "Sowwy, Mommy." You cry when your feelings are hurt and are very passionate about EVERY feeling you have--good or bad!

You are VERY shy. Whenever we're in a new situation or around a lot of people, you get super quiet and SUPER unfriendly. You won't talk to anyone (even the people you know) and either stay off the the side by yourself or hang on for dear life to a familiar face! I hope you grow out of it, because I remember being painfully shy and I feel like it held me back from so many things! And you have such a fun personality that I want people to get to know the little girl I get to know! It's funny because people spend a lot of time trying to get you to talk and you absolutely refuse. But the second they leave, you start jabbering away about that person and saying their name and talking about them! You are SO ornery!

 My sweet girl---You are everything I didn't know our family needed. I love everything about you--your sweet and your spice, your naughty and nice, your happy and sad, your good and your bad. All of it. You challenge me in a way your brother never did with your attitude and sensitivity. I feel like I learn something new about you every day! You constantly keep us on our toes and fill our hearts with love (and anxiety!). I've enjoyed watching you grow up so much, but am really sad that you're moving out of the cuddly, sweet, calm phase and into the active, independent TWO YEAR old phase! It's hard, but awesome at the same time!

We love you, Gracie girl! Happy 2nd birthday!

Just a moment

It only lasted for a moment.......his cheek on mine.

Moments before, he had creeked open my bedroom door and peeked around to see if I was awake. I was, of course, but only because I had heard his tip-toeing across the kitchen floor.

He whispers into the dark--"Mommy?"

I motioned for him to come in and he didn't hesitate for a second, lest I change my mind and send him back to his own bed. He ran to my bed and climbed up and over me. He always wants to snuggle. Or more like lay directly beside me with at least one arm over me and one leg on top of mine. He tries to get as close as possible--until I can't tell where he ends and I begin. Which is natural for mother and child , because after all, that's how we started.

I could tell he was trying to stay awake because oh, how this child hates to miss any moment of life, but his eyelids got droopy and his breathing got quiet.

I gently moved him away from me after he fell asleep because as much as I love the cuddling, he's a horrible person to share a bed with. I sometimes cringe when I hear him coming before the alarm clock goes off because he always kicks and turns and tosses and ends up upside down and backwards from where he started. That morning....in the quiet stillness....he rustled a little bit and I thought, "Here it comes....the moving around.....I won't get a moment of sleep from here on out...". But I was wrong.

All while with his eyes closed, he felt around the bed until he found me, lifted his hand to my face and put his cheek on mine. It only lasted a moment.......but what a moment it was. My face was squished and his morning breath tickled my nose, but my heart was so happy that even in his sleep, my son could find his way to his momma and rest with me.

I could've cried for the joy I felt....a simple thing, but none the less, one of the things that make life worth living.

So for anyone that knows me........

.........you'll be shocked.

We got a cat. 

No, you didn't read that wrong. I, Brady Wilhelm, participated in picking out and bringing home a kitten. And I liked it. 

And these silly kids were ECSTATIC!

I'm not a huge animal fan, but don't mind them when they're outdoor animals. And that's exactly what we got this kitten for! He's going to live outside and hopefully keep mice away from our house. But I have to admit that he's VERY cute and VERY cuddly. I miiiiiight have held him.......several times.

His name is Socks because his feet are all white. The kids are over the moon, of course! They kept arguing over who got to hold him...poor kitty. I think he got "hugged" to death--which we all know in toddler terms means he was almost choked and carried by the neck. 

Here's to hoping he's a good mouse-catching cat!!