Monday ramblings

Well, nothing new to report here today. The kids were a PIT-you-know-what this morning. And I think that it still has something to do with the stupid time change. They’re waking up a whole our earlier. Princess wakes up at 6 or a little after, and Kapitonas shortly after her. It’s annoying that they don’t go back to sleep, because I can tell they are still sooooo tired and yawning all morning. But if you ask them, they’ll tell you that they’re wide awake. Yeah, right!

They were better in the afternoon, after their naps.

Kapitonas has been really bored lately. He doesn’t tell me that he is, but I can just tell. He’ll just be walking around and look for things he can get into. He loves coloring, water painting, but you can only color so much in one day. So today we went to one of the happiest places on earth – Toys R Us. We wanted to get him another set of Lego’s, as he also loves building things with them, but again, you can only build so much with one set.

If you’re reading this and have a toddler around 4 years of age, what are their favorite things to do? I’m just looking for other ideas to keep him occupied while at home. And since winter is coming, that means rain is coming, that means we’ll be spending more time at home.

Oh, and yes, both kids still have sniffles. Kapitonas is not as bad as Princess is. Poor thing kept wiping her nose all day long. We have one day left until our mini vacation, they need to get better. Now I’m just afraid that we might not be able to go.

Sunday

Well first of all, we had a really really great time visiting old friends in LA yesterday. It was really fun to talk and catch up on things. Can you believe that we stayed there four hours?! With kids?! And that they were very good. I did bring them some stuff to keep them busy – coloring books and crayons, Leapsters and of course cars.

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Today it was such a nice day. It was a little windy outside, but we ended up spending most of the day inside. We cleaned out our pantry. It really needed to be reorganized as we were not finding things in there, and even found some stuff that we didn’t know we had. Now I know what we have and where exactly everything is. It’s nice!

Kids were having a blast playing all day. They were getting along pretty good, and that is always very important. Kapitonas wanted to make a tent in the middle of the room, so we did that and they were having so much fun with it! The only thing is that they didn’t really eat much today. Maybe it’s because they were playing nicely.

Princess woke up with a little runny nose. And she woke up 6 am. I am really hating this time change. Why do they even bother with changing the times?! It just messes everyone up, especially the kids.

I still hope that the kids don’t get sick and that those runny noses will go away by Wednesday. The kids and I will be going away for a few days for a mini vacation with a friend and her daughter. We will be going to Disneyland! My friend got a 2 bedroom with a kitchen time share for free!! And it is just down the street from Disneyland. You can’t beat that!! So I’m really looking forward to it. Now lets just hope we stay all healthy!

There still is hope

Since we’ll be soon heading out for the day, I thought I’d post something.

Kapitonas is feeling better today, still has a little sniffle here and there, but he is very active and being totally normal healthy boy. Which makes me wonder if he is getting some kind of allergies? It has been windy here the last couple days. Hubby gets allergies once in a while. He always gets itchy watery eyes, runny nose and sneezing when around cats. And once in a while he’ll get it from the wind. So there is a chance that Kapitonas might be starting to get them too. Who knows?! I guess we’ll see.

Even if this turns out to be allergies, I still feel the same way about sick people going to the partys. I just don’t understand this and I don’t think that I ever will.

Anyway…. it is gorgeous out here today. No wind, sunny, and temperature is in low 80s. Perfect if you ask me!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone! 

Lets all do each other a favor

Ok?

Here is the deal:

If you or any of your family members are sick, don’t even bother of going to any event where there will be other people around. I’m talking like birthday party’s, play dates, etc. I understand if you need to go to the store and get groceries. Fine. I totally understand that.

But when you come to a kids b-day party and you know you have a cold, I don’t care how much you wanted to get out of the house and take your kids out (even if they’re not sick), just don’t bother going, please! And you know why?! Because you’re passing all your germs to other people, most importantly kids. And I don’t think there is one single parent out there, that would want their kid to get sick. How would you feel if you were to go to a party, there you discover that there is a person who has a cold, and the next thing you know your kids are getting sick?? yeah, I don’t think you would enjoy that. No one would!! So do us (all healthy us) a favor, and just stay home if you have a freaking cold!!

I know, this is probably one of the meanest post from me ever, but I’m really starting to get sick and tired of people showing up to functions with colds or whatever else they have.

I know I always stay home and not go anywhere, because I don’t want other people to get sick, especially kids. Even if I think that I or my kids might be coming down with something, I’ll keep them away from everyone. Just in case.

Tomorrow we’re supposed to go and visit some friends that we haven’t seen for almost 3 years. We are really looking forward on seeing them and I know they do too. They haven’t even seen my daughter yet (she’s 2). So we’re really excited about it. Except there might be a small problem.

You see, Kapitonas woke up this morning with a runny/stuffy nose. I was hoping that it would be nothing. But unfortunately, as the day went on he got a little fever. Nothing really big, about 99.8. But still. I have a feeling he might be coming down with something big. Lucky me! NOT!!!

So lets all have an agreement, ok? If you’re sick, stay home, and I’ll do the same. With an exception of getting food and some might have to work, because I know some companies don’t give their employees sick days.

Sleep in, please!

I knew that with this time change the kids will be waking up earlier. This morning they got up a little after 6 am. Thank goodness Hubby was home. As usual, Sunday morning he gets them and lets me sleep in.

Now I’m just dreading tomorrow. We put them down an hour later, which makes it same time according to this new time. I’m hoping they don’t get up at 6 tomorrow!

This is the first year that I didn’t start the time transitioning earlier. Usually in the past, I’ll start about a week or more before the actual time change, and start putting them down like 15 minutes later each day until I reach a good time for them to go down. Gosh, I hope this all makes sense!!

Hanging in there

I’m still here. Haven’t really been in the mood to write anything lately. This is also our third weekend that we are spending home. Actually that I am spending home, nubby and kids did get out today.

Two weekends ago Kapitonas came down with some cold virus. Was coughing a lot and wasn’t feeling good for almost a week. Then when he was started feeling better, I though wow nobody else is going to get what he had. Well guess what?! I spoke to soon! As we were getting ready to go out for a little last Saturday, Princess started coughing and when I felt her she was warm. Took her temperature and sure enough, she had fever. So we spend a second weekend staying home.

By middle of this week she was doing better, but still had that cough. Actually both kids still have it. Nut I thought no big deal, everybody is coughing everywhere we go. So we were making some plans to go out this weekend.

Wednesday night I felt like I was coming down with something. Went to bed early, thinking that might help. Wrong! Woke up Thursday morning with a soar throat and a stuffy nose. Blah!! So I’ve been pretty much out on Thursday, Friday and today-Saturday. Today actually is the worst. My nose is so stuffy that I have a hard time breathing unless I’m sitting. Which makes it really hard to sleep. But being it Saturday and hinny home, at least I can stay in bed and rest, even if it is half ways sitting up.

Hubby took the kids out today. I think they went to the park, drove around and then McDonalds. They brought some for me too.

Anyway, just a little update on us.

A Day at IKEA

After checking out NBC studios, we went and had lunch at In-N-Out. After we headed to IKEA. One of my favorite stores in the world! And my hubby’s least favorite store.  

We went for basically two reasons: 1. pick and get a bed for the kids; 2. Look at some futons/couches. We kept some french fries from In-N-Out in the bag, thinking that would occupy the kids for a while. As much as I like walking around and looking at stuff, with two toddlers it’s just impossible! Seriously, even if they behaved good the first half hour (which they didn’t), then they would be all over the place later on.

We put the kids in the shopping cart and give them some juice. Right away Princess starts throwing a fit that she doesn’t want to sit there. The juice didn’t help. Then came the fries and she even pushed those to the side. So we go into elevator, because we want to go straight to the children’s furniture, and taking the elevator was the closets and fastest way of getting there. She calmed down in the elevator. Was even pretty excited to be there.

Once on the second floor, we head straight to the bed that we were thinking about getting them, but just wanted to look at it one more time. And that’s where it really all began. OMG!! That child has lungs!! As soon as we stop by the bed, she starts climbing out of the cart, screaming and not letting us to even touch her. All the people are looking at us. All of them. It was so freaking embarrassing!! I usually don’t get embarrassed or even pay attention to other people if my kid is whining or crying or whatever, but this time it was just different. So I’m trying not to pay any attention to the people, I write down the number of the aisle, where we can pick up the bed.

We start walking down to where the couches are and Princess crying and whining, but not as loud. So we almost get there when an IKEA worker comes up from behind me, taps on my sholder and says:

“Mom, here are a couple free frozen yogurt coupons for your kids”.

I was like oh ok, thank you! And thinking to myself that that was really really nice!

Kapitonas was behaving very well. We’ve already promised him a bookstore after IKEA, so he was just sitting there and waiting for us to be done. Getting a frozen yogurt was a big bonus for him!

Not sure about other IKEA’s, but ours have a food court on the second floor. And then on the first floor right by the exit, they have hot dogs, pretzels, some other things and frozen yogurt. Did you get that? Frozen yogurt is downstairs. by. the. exit. You know what that means, right?!

We have to go almost all around the circle to get to the elevator, then walk pass the area where all the furniture is, then pass the registers (which means we’d have to check out) and only then get to frozen yogurt. Hmmmm, makes me wonder why that guy gave me those coupons. Yes, it was nice, but I think he had another idea behind it. To get that crying kid out of the store!

So we did, we went all the way down, picked up the bed for the kids, checked out and then got the frozen yogurt. Although when we were picking up the bed, Princess was calm, she was just standing in the cart and looking around. So we could’ve went back up and looked at more things, but we were all the way by the exit already. Didn’t really feel like going back up.

No, we didn’t get to look at the couches or futons or anything else.

But we did get the bed which the kids are loving it!

Ellen and George

So as I mentioned it before, last Saturday we drove over to Burbank to see Ellen DeGeneres studios.

If you’re not familiar with Ellen DeGeneres, check out her website. She has a show called “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” that airs every day, Monday-Friday at 4pm on NBC. (you can find out what time her show is on where you live here) I love her show and I love her.

Well recently she started having a “George Watch ‘08″. Where she tries all the ways possible to catch George. Her studio is right next to George’s bungalow, so you’d think it’d be easy, but it’s not! So in a lot of the episodes she does something or send someone by his door in hopes of catching him. But with no luck. She will even make some kind of traps to catch George, but with no such luck. In fact, she gets stuck in her own traps. LOL

If you drive down the street (sorry, can’t remember the name of it) there are many big billboards on the building, advertising the shows, and one of the billboards is of The Ellen Show. One day, in hopes of getting George, Ellen had to put on a big huge poster of “George Watch ‘08″ over her billboard. (ah, and I can’t find a video clip for you to see it  , I will though, I promise!)

Now back to my original post. Since we were in the area, we decided to drive down to the studios and see if the poster of “George Watch ‘08″ was really still there, and if it was done only for the show. And my friends, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that huge poster of George Watch was gone. But!! I was able to get a picture of The Ellen Show billboard. Yeah, I know, I’m a dork.

A cloudy and a rainy day

Wow, it was actually cold and wet on Saturday. I think the highest it got was 71F, and that was in Los Angeles.

I woke up on Saturday morning and it was really dark and cloudy. Looked out the window, it was wet. When the weather is like that, I like staying home. But we had plans to go out. As we were getting ready to leave, these darker clouds rolled in and it started drizzling. We let the kids out before we grabbed last minute things from the house, and they were having so much fun. Too bad I didn’t take any pictures. Princess was just hilarious. The faces she was making, the hood from her sweatshirt that she was trying to put on, the way she was standing and telling me that it’s raining, it’s wet, it was just all too funny!

Then on the way to the car she had to step in to every little puddle she passed. And I’m talking about little tiny puddles, like her foot was bigger then a puddle. There was barely any water in there, but she had fun splashing. The reason I was letting her splash, because there was barely any water in there.

We were off to Los Angeles. On the way there we had some really strong rain storms. Not sure if I would call them storms as they were only lasting for about 5-10 minutes. It was more like someone was pouring water out of their bucket.

We made it to LA where they had Lithuanian Fair. You won’t believe this. This year was the first year in 15 year that we didn’t go. 1. the weather was cloudy and didn’t want to be stuck there in case it rained; 2. it’s just not the same going there without my parents. Even though we went there last year and the year before without them, we just weren’t really up for it this year. Maybe next year.

Instead we drove around my old hood, drove by my old apartment, my high school (sniff sniff), the stores where I used to go all the time. It was kind of sad.

Then we decided to stop by the LA Zoo. I know I know, in a cloudy and almost rainy weather. We are crazy. Since we have the passes we thought we’ll just walk around, see some animals and if it starts raining, leave. We saw quiet a few animals, but the best were gorillas. I’ve never seen them be so active and walk all over the place. The baby one was playing, jumping on the branches, eating them. It was really cute to see and the kids loved it.

 

And there are a few others:

 

It did start to rain after a while. Kids again had fun walking in the rain, until we had to go up one of the little hills. THey decided that they were too tired and wanted to be carried. Kapitonas loves sitting on Daddy’s sholders, and the Princess just likes to be carried. So yeah, we both were carrying them.

After the zoo we decided to go by Burbank NBC Studios and Ikea. Which I will blog about those later.

Have you realized…

… that there are less then 100 days left until Christmas? Eighty-six to be exact. Wow!! Where did the year go?!

I know I know, it is way too early to be thinking about Christmas, but how can you not think about it where all the stores already have some Cristmasy stuff. Crazy, I tell you. We still have a month left until Halloween.

Anyway, I kind of started thinking about it. But mostly it’s because the kids are older this year and will be more into to it. They, or at least Kapitonas, will really understand what’s going on. He already knew things last year, but this year it will be more fun. I can’t wait to experience all the things with him this year.

I’ve also started thinking about the gifts. We will be going very light this year. We already have a few things for the kids that we picked up in WA, and I have an idea for a couple more. I’m just having a hard time with all the nieces and nephews. Since they all live so far away, I think gift card might have to do it this year.

Anyway, I was just thinking about it this morning. The only thing I don’t like about Christmas is the bad weather. Not that we get a bad weather here in CA, but still, you just never know when that crazy wind or the rain will come in.