September Life Lately - The Glorious Mundane

As September draws to a close and fall rolls in, I love looking back and seeing all the memories we made in this past season. Some of these pictures don’t accurately describe everything that has happened in our life lately, but I’d say they do a pretty great job summing it up!

Tera and Kiah went through a stage where they were best friends…and then that stage kind of passed. Now they fight almost constantly and yet will not play more than 2 feet away from one another. I have to keep reminding myself how to gently walk them through conflict resolution (not killing each other) and remind myself that this is a stage and one day we will wake up and they will be friends again (and then one day we will wake up and they probably won’t lol).

While the weather has been hot during September, we have soaked up every single bit of summer that we can! One of our favorite things to do as a family is go on bike rides! We found this covered bridge and it was fun exploring it!

For Labor Day weekend, we were so excited that Theo had the day off (it just so happened to fall on his day off). We decided to head down to Cincinnati to watch the fireworks from the river. We’ve been a few times, and it’s a spectacular show that we always enjoy and get front row seats for. I packed up a picnic, we made the drive down…and realized the fireworks had actually been the night before.

WOMP WOMP WOMP.

On top of that, the picnic food I had grabbed from the freezer was stale and just did not taste good. I had a good cry and then we decided to get some pizza and walk around the purple people bridge. And we were treated to this gorgeous sunset!

We found the Kentucky/Ohio line!

Me in one state, my baby in another!

This past month, Kiah also graduated from his high chair to the table! We were so excited to have everyone at the big table. And then he decided that he wanted to stand all the time in his booster and he got demoted to the high chair again. It was fun while it lasted, little man!

We’ve really gotten into our homeschool/preschool routine. Tera and I love it, and Kiah loves scribbling on everything that he shouldn’t be scribbling on.

Some days are super fun and we both love it, and some days … not so much. It’s been a fantastic learning experience for both me and her! I have a few blog posts about our preschool routines planned, so stay tuned!

Part of preschool is heading to story time at the library!

And making fun fruit loop necklaces (Kiah really appreciated this activity).

And rainy day painting/apple crafts.

We’ve had some rainy days, and there is no way I’m staying cooped up inside with my two. So out to the puddles we go! Also, everyone moved up a size in rain jackets since the Spring, so Kiah-man is stuck with Tera’s pink anchored rain jacket…for now. Lol.

I have so many pictures of my kids just playing in their playroom this month. Which is funny, because I kind of feel like my kids just cried and whined and couldn’t find anything to do. Hm. It’s amazing how perspective can change, because as I look back on these pictures I see that my kids have played so creatively with their toys lately!

Kiah was evaluated for his speech this month, and the results came back. He is exactly on track for every stage of development– except two. He is about 13 months AHEAD in gross motor skills and about 10 months behind in his expressive speech (talking). This means that he qualified for speech therapy and we will be working with a speech therapist to get him to the stage where he can actually talk!

Another big thing that we did was canceling our Hulu and Netflix accounts! After our vacation last month we decided that spending money on those services was just not a good use of money for our family. So we canceled them for a year, and with the money that we saved….we bought a zoo membership!

With three trips to the zoo, our membership cost would be covered, so we decided it was completely worth it, even though the zoo is an hour away.

My kids favorite part were these brass statues. Lol.

I felt like I resembled this sea cow.

Kiah loved this turtle and followed it all along the length of the tank!

Tera got some magazine subscriptions for her birthday, and we have been really enjoying them!

Also- those pilot wings on her shirt? We had a Delta pilot stay in our Airbnb as a guest, and he left those wings for the kids! How fun is that? They have been LOVING them and so proud to wear them!

On September 11th, our favorite cupcake place thanked first responders by giving them a free cupcake. Its easy to forget the sacrifice of so many on that day. It’s easy to forget that some people run TOWARDS the danger instead of away. I’m thankful that my husband is one of those men, and that he can get a free cupcake every once in a while.

The next big exciting thing to happen this month was my fiasco with a stray kitten. Too bad I didn’t know it was a stray kitten at the time.

I was innocently making dinner in my kitchen when I heard meowing out in the back yard, so I went out to investigate. Two sweet little kittens came running right up to me, so I picked one up. And that thing when absolutely INSANE. INSANE. It hissed and clawed and bit down so hard on my finger….several times.

I thought it was no big deal until it dawned on me that the kittens were strays and they might possibly have rabies. Now, there has not been rabies in a cat in Ohio in YEARS and the chances of it actually having rabies was very low, but I decided to not play around with this fatal disease and get a rabies vaccine.

The mongrels came back, but when we tried to catch them, they ran away and hid.

So the next morning at 6am I took myself to the ER for a rabies vaccine. I was so naive thinking that a rabies vaccine was a shot in the arm! I enjoyed my down time without kids in this quiet space feeling perfectly fine (I rated my pain from the bite a 1 or 2 at that point)

My male nurse winced and told me that rabies shots are comparable to labor in the pain scale. I literally laughed. HA. I’ve had two unmedicated labors, there ain’t no way a little shot could hurt that much.

Well, turns out I had to get FIVE vials of the vaccine injected in or around the bite (my finger). I have NEVER felt pain that intense. We got two vials in and I was eating my laughter, fully agreeing that this pain was comparable to labor. My finger was so swollen and in so much burning pain that I begged them to not do any more vials in my finger. It swelled up so much from the injection that it started to turn purple on the tip from lack of blood flow! Y’all…THE PAIN.

In the end, the nurse agreed that there was no way we were getting three more vials of injection into my finger, and they did one in the arm and two in the butt. I also had to get a tetanus shot and the rabies vaccine in my arm, for a total of 7 injections. I walked into the ER perfectly healthy with a pain score of 2 (max) and walked out of the ER hobbling and wincing from pain with a pain score at an 8. Turns out I had to go back for one more injection at Day 3 and then I finished off the series since I was already pre-vaccinated when I was 5. I will say, though…the injections in the arm and the butt were uncomfortable and led to some pain, but was NOTHING compared to the finger shots. Sooo, if you are going to get bit by a wild animal and need a rabies vaccine, make sure they bite you in a large, fleshy area.

Thankfully, I was able to go on a Mom’s Night Out after that nightmare morning in the ER! Our Dayton Mom’s Blog team spent some sponsored time on the Dayton Pedal Wagon! We had a BLAST! It’s hard to explain what it is…basically it’s a vehicle that has pedals (and it also has a motor) and you just pedal around your city having fun with a group friends. They encourage bringing drinks and listening to music while on board, and then you stop at several locations throughout the city for a drink or a bite to eat. It was a blast! I highly recommend Dayton Pedal Wagon, even if you aren’t much a of a drinker.

One of the places we stopped had this incredible charcuterie board! Most of it wasn’t pregnancy approved, but I enjoyed it anyways!

Some of our Dayton Mom’s Blog team!

Moms Night Out! Much needed!

And…back to Momming. Tera set up these cows and then said that they were Uncle Dan, Aunt Kelly and her twin cousins Levi and Everett.

I was feeling exhausted, and hot, and pregnant, and grumpy that Theo was working on a beautiful Saturday, but I decided to take the kids out for a hike anyways. I think they had fought no less than 58696 times that morning and I was nervous they would continue this trend on our hike.

But nope. It was the most beautiful, wild and wonderful hike I’ve had with my kids in a long time. They didn’t fight or scream once. I almost cried tears of absolute relief.

My kids love being outside even more than I do…and that is saying something!

We came across this stream that is usually full up to the banks. On this day, it was just trickling on by, and I practically threw the kids in the stream myself! It was PERFECT to wade in and Tera even decided to get fully soaked and take a little swim.

How. perfect. is. this?

Theo and I also dropped our kids off at a friends house once this past month and went on a bike ride without the kiddos! It was a blast, even getting caught in a downpour.

We tried out Rapid Fired Pizza for the first time and I really loved it!

And we were treated to a rainbow!

We also took our annual trip to the sunflower field!! The sunflowers are much shorter this year, and one of the news stations posted about them, so the entire population of the greater Dayton area seemed to be there. It was hot and kids wanted NOTHING to do with pictures, but somehow we always seem to get some good ones!