arcade games, candy machines, and coin suckers

So I am going to rant for a minute here.  I just need to vent.  Bear with me or don't read.  But understand I am still pretty upset about this.  Why do stores and movie theaters and who knows what else have all those stupid arcade games, mechanical animals, candy machines, stuffed animal machines or whatever else in their store entry??  I mean seriously.

Don't they know the behavior issues it causes with some kids??

In fact I have not 1 but 2 stories from today. Alone.

1. I go to Walmart with E this morning for milk.  E sees mechanical horse.  Throws a fit till I let her sit on it. I am not in a huge hurry so I oblige her this once and stick her on the horse and she has fun even without me putting in quarters.  As she rides it she sees the candy and stuffed animal machines.  She wants down to play with those.  I try to stick her in the cart and she goes haywire, crazy, again.  I force her in the back of the cart. Count to 10 to calm myself down and then giver her two options, ipod or food from my purse to sit buckled in the front.  She chose ipod and was content for shopping.  

2.  I noticed the dollar theater was playing Madagascar 3 last week and thought it would be fun to take E to the movies again.  We had a pretty good experience with her at The Lorax on her birthday, so thought it would be a fun family event.  We get to the mall early and E is getting cranky.  But when she saw the movie poster and realized what we were watching she was so excited it was adorable.  She kept saying over and over, Lion, Monkeys, Hippo, Giraffe...
D bought the tickets and we start to walk in, but once again she sees the arcade games and freaks out.  We had 20 minutes so we let her pretend to play on them without putting in quarters.  Then I scoop her up 5 minutes before movie starts and tell her its time to see the animals.  She watches the movie, without popcorn, soda, or candy, and loves it.  We are all in a great mood.  We walk out, through the games, and guess what?  Yeah. She flipped out again. But this time we dont stop. So she hollers. And screams. The entire way to the car. 

Guess who went straight to bed?
Guess who has lost ipod and kindle privileges for the weekend?
Guess who pouted really cute-like when daddy chastised her?
Yep.  The stink bug E.

I think we will wait a long time before going to the movies with her again.  And I might just shop at the more expensive store without stupid mechanical animals in front of it for a little while.
I hate marketing towards children. 

E's 1st quiet book

So I got a sewing machine for Christmas.  And just after New Years I found this cool pattern off of Etsy.  This lady has tons of quiet book and other crafty patterns and so I bought a few.  The first one I attempted was the number book.  It took me 8 months. 
If you are a begginer sewer, like me. Don't attempt.. haha
No I mean it took a lot more work than I anticipated. 
And when I was working I had no time to do anything, because by the time I got E into bed, I was too tired to cut out and sew tiny things.

So it isn't perfect and if you look close my stitching is horrible.  But E loves it!

When she opened it up, she said "Oh pretty"

That pretty much gave me the encouragement I needed to start making book number two, Halloween quiet book. 

Of course that one is 17 pages, this one was 12...so it might be ready by Halloween 2013 ;)

 

Regardless the time and effort, I loved working on my sewing skills, and love watching E read it.  She is my little sweet heart and I will make as many quiet books as she will read.  It will just be a slow work in progress

Garden of the Gods

After Pikes Peak, we went back to the Hotel and let E sleep.  When she woke up we went swimming, ate dinner, and went to visit Garden of the Gods.  It was so pretty there. We didn't bring bikes with us, so we opted for the hiking trail that was stroller friendly.

E seemed to be a little bored.  I guess she got tired of Mom always running off to the bathroom. :)

D thought it would be funny to catch me coming out of the bathroom.  I am 23 weeks pregnant here.

All over the park we saw many rock climbers and their fancy gear.  It was crazy, but D said he wanted to do it.  I can barely make it up a rock wall that you pay for let alone a natural wall with no added foot and hand ledges.

Just meandering through the pretty rocks and trees

Our cute little family 

D loved climbing all the rocks and E, of course had to go with him. 

Showing off his height

E is contemplating climbing the rock by herself. She really loved it out there. 

Trying to not fall  

There she goes, she couldn't resist 

Following Dad into a crevice 

Getting more help to get on a rock 

Swinging to the the next rock, she was giggling like crazy, wish I had the video camera

A small college of all the rocks we saw

 

Pikes Peak

To celebrate our 5 year anniversary, David brought E and I up to Colorado Springs.  We did many things, and I will split them up into seperate blogs.  First, we went to Pikes Peak.  We were going to drive, but realized after paying admission on the toll road up and gas, not to mention the wear on my tires and brakes...we decided it was not much more money to take the Cog Train.  Besides E loves trains.
It took an hour and half to get up.  We were squashed in a tiny row and had two large people sitting across from us.  E kept getting out of our laps and wanting to walk around.  I felt bad for the couple across from us, but couldn't do anything about it.  The worst part was being 5 months pregnant.  We were supposed to drink a lot of water, but then there were no bathrooms on the train.  You try drinking a lot, while having a baby on your bladder, and not being able to pee for 1.5 hours....  It wasn't too bad I guess.  The view was amazing. But we couldn't take pictures going up because we were trying to juggle E and keep her from running in the aisle.

Finally we made it to the top.  But imagine if you can, E only wanted to run around and not be held.  So she is really squirmy in these pictures. It was also really smoggy from recent fires in CO.  Kinda ruined our view but it was still really cool.  I think the peak was 14,110 feet high.

When I brought E over to the edge to look out across the view, she simply said "Oh wow, Mountains"

 
She loved commenting on all the mountains and trees...guess what, in Amarillo, it is flat and almost treeless too.  It was a novelty to her.

We grabbed a few donuts and a hot chocolate up there.  E ate most of the donuts. And we let her to keep her quiet.  I know say what you must, but sometimes it is better to have a happy kid than a whiney one.

 

 

E loved being near the train and on it. She just expected more freedom on it, I think

 

 

And finally, today was the day of the annual race up the mountain. 13 miles. 14,000 or so runners. 1st prize went to a guy who has won it for 8 years now.  His time this year was just over 2 hours....all I can say is wow!  I couldn't run 13 miles on flat or even down hill in 2 hours.  D says next year we are going to hike it.  So I guess training will commence soon. Because I am so not in shape for that now.

It was an awesome trip up and down.  Very beautiful!

Reading

E loves to read.  We go to the library at least once a week and come home with a stack of books.  She will just sit there and look at them over and over for a long time.  But she also loves to be read to.

This week I reorganized her room so her reading chair was right next to a box of books that we own.  Not only did she go in her room willingly...(she is scared of "monkeys" in her room and refuses to be in there unless in bed or being held)... But she sat in there and read.


In fact, I was getting ready for the day and realized, "it is quiet, what is she doing?"  So I went to her room and found this scene.  Naturally, I was so surprised I ran to get my camera to capture the moment she wanted to play in her room again!! Or rather, read in her room again.

 

 

I just love how she loves books so much and spent so much time reading books in her room this morning.