Highs and Lows of the week- June 14th

Highs:

1. Took another road trip this week.   Medman had a conference in Madison, Wisconsin and since there are some tempting job opportunities in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Northern Iowa, we all climbed into the car and went along.  Children were angelic again.  It was almost creepy.  We let them room together again and they were complete chuckle-heads all night long, but all day while we drove (and we drove a LOT) they did things like sing Old MacDonald Had a Farm together.  I'm not kidding.  It was weird.  Like maybe there's a small carbon monoxide leak into the car or something.  Of course, if there is it's obviously not fatal and it just seems to be making everyone really happy, so I'm not going to worry about it.  
2. Went to the Madison zoo.  It was FREE and since we have young kids and only had a couple hours to kill, its tiny, sort of pathetic zoo-ness was perfect.  We saw lions, tigers, giraffes, flamingos, grizzly bears and bison.  Oh, and a weird little prairie dog colony that I'm fairly sure wasn't supposed to be an exhibit, but since they had moved into the zoo the zoo keepers just stuck up an educational sign by their dirt and pretended they wanted them there.
3. It was a cool, cloudy day when we went to the zoo and I've never seen animals so active. The lion cub wrestled with his mom.  The big bad male lion roared loudly and impressively (ok, once he sounded like he was trying to cough up a fur ball, but besides that it was impressive), the tiger roared back and all the commotion made the giraffes run around kicking up their feet in skittishness. 
4. Feeling remarkably knowledgeable as a parent.   Not because I'm doing any better job at it than normal, but my sister and her husband have just been licensed to be foster parents and got their first kiddos.  THREE kids ages ONE, TWO and THREE!  Medman snorted an evil sort of snort when he heard that and said, "They're so screwed!"  So in comparison to people who have never had children but just got 3 toddlers dropped into their house, I realize that I have, in fact, learned quite a bit about children over the past 5 years.  Not that I display any of that competency on a daily basis as I mother them, but the knowledge is tucked away in my brain somewhere.   And actually the three foster kids are really sweet and well-behaved.  My kids had fun playing with them yesterday.  Besides convincing the one year old that sleeping is better than screaming at bed time (yes, all you parents can wince in sympathy at that situation) things seem to be going well.
5. Only 9 weeks of pregnancy left! 

 
  Lows:

1. Still have NINE WEEKS of pregnancy left.  NINE!  58 days, to be exact.  Ugg.  C'mon baby.  Let's finish up this stage so I can at least have different things to complain to my husband about.
2. It took Belle 2 years and 3 weeks to do what we've known she would always do: climb out of her crib.  She seems determined to be taller than she is, so climbs absolutely everything. The other night we heard distraught crying and Medman went in first.  When I got there I was surprised to see him holding a little girl with blood streaming down her chin!  Eww!  Really, with climbing out of a crib and falling twice your height to the floor, just biting your tongue so badly that there are 4 clear holes matching your teeth isn't the worst injury she could have suffered.  And apparently a very painful tongue was a good learning tool.  A couple nights later she looked at me and said very seriously, "Mommy?  When I climbed out of my crib....it was NOT good."   True fact, honey

And a couple pictures of D:

Already WAY better at xbox than I am.

Our little maestro at his violin recital last month.  (Yes that's a one TENTH size violin. It's adorable.)

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