Tuesday Lovin': Castle Logix

When we went to Ireland in April, I wanted to buy one new toy for T that could hold her attention for a while so we didn't have to drag her whole toybox with us.

I've written about my toy pickiness previously, so you know I didn't want anything that makes noises or lights up, or is drowning in pink plastic and/or "just for girls".  I thought we might bring it out on the plane, so I didn't want a lot of tiny pieces either.

I decided to buy her a puzzle game called Castle Logix which I learned about from Cloud's blog.   It's made of sturdy wood, has just a few large-ish pieces, and best of all, helps kids work on their spatial skills, something I am *sorely* lacking. 

Once I took a horrific engineering aptitude test which had a bunch of pictures of exploded 3-D shapes and I had to choose what they would look like when assembled.  Torture, I tell you.  I'm not sure I got a single one correct.

Castle Logix in action.  In Ireland!

The recommended age range is 3 - 8 years old.  And in fact, we adults had fun with it too.  It's a one-player puzzle, where you look at a photo and combine the blocks and towers to make a castle that looks like the one in the photo.  The puzzles range from easy to 'expert'.  On the expert level, the colors of the blocks aren't specified, only the outlines, so it's even challenging for adults.

I wasn't sure if T was ready for it, and she knocked my socks off.  After a few tries and some coaxing (my girl likes to get things right the first time - something else we need to work on!), she was off and running.  She would play with this toy for 45 minutes straight, a major bonus for any parent with a toddler, right?

Three months later, she still likes it, and will work on it by herself at home.  She is very methodical about the order in which she does the puzzles, and can do most of the ones in the first two sections of the book.  (Starter and Junior levels, I think.) 

It's definitely helping her spatial skills - yesterday we made an American flag out of construction paper and I printed out a photo so she could see what it looked like.  I asked her to tell me where the blue rectangle went, and where the stars and stripes went, and she could place them correctly on her paper based on the photo.  Very cool.  I had no idea a 2 year old could do that!

I also love that this toy will grow with her, and be challenging for more than a few months (as long as she doesn't get sick of it!).  We do rotate the toys we leave out, so after some time "in hiding" it's new again.  Tricky parents!

I love that I found a toy that's educational and fits all my crunchy granola parameters, that T actually likes and plays with.  That's no small feat.

Smart Games is the company that makes it, and they have a TON of other logic games like these, at different age ranges, so I can't wait to explore more of them as T gets older.  A few are already marked for her wish list!

Have you played with this?  What do you think?

Project Life: Ireland Edition

I've been trying to get to the mythical land of "caught up" on Project Life since we returned from Ireland.  I knew I'd get behind on vacation, but didn't anticipate the total lack of interest in the month before we left.

So each week since we returned, I've been doing one "old" week and the current week, so that I can eventually close the gap and just work on one week at a time.  This was hard to do with the vacation photos, because there were SO MANY to go through and then I had to narrow down which ones to use for the album.  I'll probably make a separate photo book with all of our trip pictures (add another thing to the list...).

But finally, last week, I finished the Ireland trip.  Woot!  I made the executive decision to use more than one 2 page spread for each week because even though I was sick, we ended up doing quite a bit of stuff.  So really, it was more work than I anticipated.

I started getting a little more adventurously crafty with the 2x3" spots when I didn't have photos, and for the last week I downloaded some designs for my cool Silhouette die cutting machine to fill in some of the slots.  That was pretty fun and there are a ton of Project Life compatible designs out there.

Click each photo to see a larger version.

In our first week, we settled nicely into our rental house in Kenmare, and wandered around the town.  We took an afternoon trip to Killarney.  Later that week, TJ and T went on a couple of excursions while I stayed home to sleep (thanks, virus).  TJ had his first Guinness on tap in Kenmare, and continued his comparison study whenever we found ourselves at a pub for a meal.

Week 1: airport, Kenmare, Killarney

Week 1: Killarney, Staigue Fort, daddy-daughter excursions

Week 1: more daddy-daughter fun, soy milk at Eask Tower

In our second week, I returned to the doctor, which didn't help much either.  I was able to make it to the playground in Kenmare (which TJ and T visited a lot) and an ancient stone circle, which T liked as much as the playground.  TJ also found The Vestry, an old church converted into a house, which he was all set to purchase until he realized the yard had a cemetary (creepy!).  We took a road trip out to Ballinskellig, an old priory built right by the water and had the worst meal of our trip on the way back.  Nice restaurant, horrible (and expensive!) food.  I wanted to visit a city so we went to Cork and wandered about aimlessly.  Next time we'll have a plan.  That weekend, T got to feed a baby lamb with a bottle at the Kissane Sheep Farm close to Kenmare.

I wish someone would invent some kind of tiny (cheap!) flexible screen with a memory chip so you could embed a little video in your scrapbooking pages.  I'm sure this is something that'll come out in the next 10 years, and of course if I did these pages digitally, I could do it now.  But I'm a tactile, pen and paper sort of girl...  Akso, the cute little hexagon card on the last page is from Smitha Katti's free printables on her blog - woot!

Week 2: Ballinskellig, awful meal at Dooleys, Kenmare stone circle and playground

Week 2: Cork, Kissane Sheep Farm

Week 3 was all about us wanting to go home (ie our Vacation Limit had been reached).  I was tired of being sick and not being in my own comfy house and bed.  But the high point was our all-too-short trip to Dublin.  We were there for about a day and a half and resolved to come back when the kids are older because there was so much to see and do and we barely scratched the surface.  I think it was one of my favorite parts of the trip, because I'm a city girl at heart. 

T loved the crowded but super fun playground in St Stephen's Green, TJ and I liked the Guiness Storehouse tour even though it was super-touristy, and we all enjoyed wandering around St. Patrick's Cathedral.  The Hop-on, Hop-off bus tour was an inspired suggestion of TJ's so that we could get a quick tour of the city and not have to deal much with traffic.

Week 3: Dublin - Guinness Storehouse, St Stephen's Green, St Patrick's Cathedral

Week 3: Dublin, funky diner in Farranfore and Heathrow Airport

I did a decent job of keeping ticket stubs and business cards to use for the scrapbook.  One of my favorite slots in Week 3 was the star cutouts from the Silhouette machine, which I backed with crinkled up shiny silver tissue paper.   I'm getting more adventurous about using papers from my stash and making *some* attempt to coordinate colors, or at least color families.  I'm sure I'll get better at it over time.  I'm also becoming ruthless at photo editing and throwing out duplicate photos or those that just aren't that good or interesting.

I  ordered some automatic Instagram prints from my Android phone with Piccaprint, and their quality is great, but they are just too expensive when you figure in shipping from Sweden.  And now that I have a fancy new printer, I can just print them at home.  In fact, most of the week 3 photos were printed at home, and the quality is as good as the ones I got from Target.  Hooray for that.

Now that the vacation pages are done, I can go back to my usual (easier!) 2 pages per week and hopefully crank through the rest of April and the beginning of May in short order.  That's the plan for the next few weeks...

Vacation Limit

We have most certainly reached our "vacation limit", that time when we JUST WANT TO GO HOME now, thankyouverymuch.

I'm starting to be annoyed by all those things that seemed charming about being in a different country:

• The ridiculous number of different Euro coins
• Lukewarm diet Coke that costs 2 Euros for 200ml
• Driving on the WRONG side of the road
• Toilets that sound like 747s taking off when you flush them
• Traffic roundabouts.  GAH.

I think our limit for a long vacation might be 2 weeks.  This time it was about 2.5 weeks before I really started feeling like I was ready to go home, probably because I was so sick for the first 10 days or so.

Even BabyT says she's ready to go home.  Fortunately our flight is early tomorrow, but we've got a 6 hour (!) layover in Heathrow.  Long enough to drive us crazy, but not enough to do anything interesting.

We hit this limit when we were in Las Vegas after our wedding in 2005.  We had gone for 5 days, and by day 4 we were so done.  We vowed any future trips would be 4 days or less. 

I think we need a new rule for other vacations.  2 weeks sounds good.  If we have more vacation to burn, a week at home would be lovely.  I think I'm just not an adventurous world traveler.  I miss my bed, my dogs, and diet Coke.

What about you?  Got a vacation limit?

Things I've Learned About Ireland

We're enjoying the Kenmare Druid Circle

I'm vaguely uneasy that we're not having the "ideal vacation", whatever that means. I've *still* got a cough and the second round of antibiotics is making me nauseous so I'm not feeling as enthusiastic as I should.

But part of what I wanted to do is just hang out and "absorb" the culture. So that could be as simple as having lunch at the pub (check!), walking around the city of Cork (check!) or wandering through the grocery store and marveling at the box of "man-sized" Kleenex (check!).

First, things are ridiculously expensive here. Everything is in Euros, which is about $1.30. So I see the price and think "oh, that's not too bad" but then realize I am thinking about it in dollars rather than actually converting it. We spent around $70 on *lunch* the other day, and it was just in a pub.

There is no fountain diet Coke here. All diet Coke appears to come out of a bottle or can (usually 200ml, which is not very much), is really expensive, and is served lukewarm, with a few ice cubes if I request them. And of course, there are no free refills. One could argue that I shouldn't be drinking it anyway, since I'm pregnant, but it still makes me sad.

People are kid-neutral, not friendly or actively unfriendly like many places in the US. But there are a lot of little kids everywhere, including at the tables in the pub.

The roads (and cars!) in the country are really, really small. In some places a two-lane, two-way traffic road is about as wide as a one-way street back home. In a few spots, we actually had to pull over to let the other traffic come our way before we could cross the bridge. You also have to watch for sheep that have wandered onto the road. I'm regularly carsick here and that's rarely been an issue at home.

I think I might be the only brown person in all of Kenmare. OK, that's probably not true since there is a combo Indian/Thai takeout place and a fair number of tourists, but I forgot what it's like to be somewhere with so little diversity. Cork had more people speaking different languages and visual diversity, and I suspect Dublin is very different (we'll find out next week).

The countryside is crazily picturesque. It's like driving through a series of postcards. Lots of mountains, forests, bright green fields, cows, horses, sheep, cute houses here and there. And the other day we drove part of the Ring of Kerry and saw amazing bright blue water on the coast. My photography skills are nowhere near good enough to do this justice.

"Hot" salsa is maybe mild, at best. I had a craving for Mexican-ish food so asked TJ to pick up some tortillas and salsa at the grocery store. Which they had, in Old El Paso brand of all things. He bought the HOT salsa and I was worried, but it turns out I shouldn't have been. It's not even remotely spicy. (And I'm a spice lightweight.)


The BBC thinks children should be in bed by 7pm.  They have a kids-only cable channel that T was settling in to watch yesterday, but they stopped programming at 7pm and told everyone it was time for bed (!).  T's Ireland bedtime is around 9pm, and she's still waking at least once at night.  Sigh.

We have a week left, and are planning a visit to a petting farm, and to Dublin as well as exploring the town of Limerick on our last evening.  And there will probably be more Guinness in pubs.

Vacation Hack: Rent a House

Laura Vanderkam had a good list of money-saving hacks on her blog earlier this week, and asked readers for their suggestions.  Since I'm right smack in the middle of executing one of those hacks right now, I figured it would be a good thing to write about.  Also, I'm still sick (gah!).

We haven't traveled much since we had BabyT because baby+airplane still fills me with fear.  But we have gone on a few trips, and the best advice I can give, is to stay in a place with a kitchen/fridge/microwave.

On the few short US trips we've done, we've stayed in a place similar to the Marriott Residence Inn - something that has a kitchenette where we can store T's soy milk and snacks.  Since she needs to eat more frequently and there are only so many times I can feed her fruit leather or graham crackers on the go, we like to have a spot where we can store fresh fruit, yogurt, lunchmeat, etc. 

If we're going to be staying more than one or two nights, we find a place set up more like a "suite" that has a separate bedroom with a door that can be closed.  This allows us to put her down for naps or bedtime and still have space for the grownups to hang out.  Because we don't really need to go to bed at 7:00pm when we're traveling :)

So it wasn't much different when I was looking for a place to stay in Ireland.   I knew we wanted to stay put in one place for the entire 3 weeks, since we were renting a car to do day trips.  (I underestimated how big Ireland is, and how long it takes to get places on the tiny twisty roads, but that's another post.)

For 3 weeks, I wanted more space for us.  Since T sleeps a lot, I figured we'd be spending a lot of time in the house.  I hadn't even thought about what actually happened with me being REALLY sick.  We've spent the majority of our vacation at home so far and are not ready to poke each other in the eye, which is pretty awesome. 

I poked around on VRBO.com, which is a site where owners of vacation properties list their rentals.  I pretty quickly realized that we didn't want to rent an apartment or condo where we'd have to worry about T being quiet most of the time, so I focused on houses and cottages.

I entered some search criteria to narrow down our list - I wanted Wi-Fi, a washer/dryer in the unit, and kid-friendly (whatever that means, but you can search on it).  The search function's not great, so I had to keep notes offline to track the places I was interested in.

When I narrowed it down to a few, I contacted the owners to find out rates.  Most had posted rates for a few nights or a week, but I figured we might be able to get a better deal for 3 weeks in a row, and we're also traveling before the heavy tourist season starts. 

I was right - most of them offered a pretty significant discount for such a long stay.  Some I eliminated because they were on the high end of what we wanted to pay.  Others I eliminated because they were *too* remote - T's gotta have her soymilk, right?

I was worried about dealing directly with the owner, and having no recourse if we showed up and the place was crappy or non-existent.   VRBO doesn't take any responsibility for this.  So here are the steps I took:

1.  Found a place that was advertised on a few different sites.  TripAdvisor.com also has a sister site that does vacation rentals, and I looked at the reviews/description there as well.

2.  Looked at the reviews.  Discarded any options that had no reviews at all.  I know it doesn't mean much, but it gave me a tiny bit of peace of mind.

3.  Did a little creative Googling.  The owner listed his name on the place I was considering, and I found out that he also owns the pub in town (which is excellent by the way!) and several other vacation rentals.  I figured he was less likely to be sketchy than someone who didn't list their name at all, or had only one listing online.  I also found pictures of the property online on several different sites, so it looked like it was real...

4.  Emailed the owner a few times.  I wanted to make sure he'd respond, he'd answer specific questions about the town and property, and that he didn't have a shady vibe.  Again, not fool-proof but made me feel better.

5.  Confirmed payment via credit card. I knew our card would protect us from outright fraud.

I held my breath and booked the place.  I emailed him the week before our trip and was relieved to get a response, and he was ready for us. 

We got here, and it's been FANTASTIC.  The house is 3 bedrooms, with a kitchen larger than our own at home, a great (but tiny) washer/dryer, 2.5 baths, decent Wi-Fi, and cable TV with lots of interesting (European) options. 

Even better, we're paying FAR less per night than we would even for the not-fancy B&Bs in the area, and we're very close to the grocery store, so we stocked up.  We eat most meals at home, which has saved us a ton of cash.  EVERYTHING is expensive here, especially meals out. 

We've done our own laundry (and can leave it in the washer/dryer rather than shlepping to a laundromat) which enabled us to bring less clothing overall.  We've spent a ton of time in the house but don't feel like we're on top of each other, which we would at a B&B or regular hotel room.  T doesn't need to be particularly quiet, which is nice, because it's her vacation too.

We're not *trying* to be super-frugal, but this was one huge area where we could save some money, and it wouldn't cost us in enjoyment of our trip. 

So if you can take the leap of faith to do a vacation rental, it may be worth it.  There are probably agencies you can work with to reduce the risk factor a bit, too.  I've heard there are lots of people selling timeshare weeks at vacation condos online as well, so if you're going to a popular destination, that may be a good way to get a deal.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to make myself a nice cup of tea.  Cheers!

Releasing expectations

I am really lucky that TJ and I have similar vacation styles, because he would be thoroughly fed up with me by now.  It's Friday (Happy Good Friday!) and I'm STILL sick.  As of last night I still had a fever, puked again, and went to bed at 7:30pm and slept (sort of) until 10 this morning.  I'm the worst vacation buddy ever.

Even worse because he's had to pick up 90% of the kid duties, including adjusting to T's new schedule which seems to be:

• Nap normally (1.5-3 hours around 1pm)
• Go to bed between 8-9pm (so far, so good)
• Sleep exactly 4 hours then awake and ready to rock
• Go back to sleep between 2-3am and sleep until 10:30am (this we can live with)

We've tried waking her up from naps if they're longer than 3 hours, putting her to bed earlier, putting her to bed later, and they all result in her waking up exactly 4-5 hours after we put her down.  It doesn't really correlate with the time back in Seattle and she's getting the same *amount* of sleep.  Sigh.

On the bright side, she decided all by herself that she wants to sleep in the Big Girl Bed instead of the port-a-crib.  So the first night she just switched and (fingers crossed!) hasn't fallen out yet.  She agreed at home that she would give her crib to The Baby in Mama's Belly, so that may be easier than I thought.

We did venture out for a bit yesterday, because I couldn't stand it anymore.  We drove up to Killarney, the next big town, about 30 km away (see how I deal in kilometers now!).  That may have been a mistake because the drive is on a steep, narrow, winding road that would have been fantastic on a motorcycle but in a compact car was a bit nauseating. 

We got to the town and couldn't find the cathedral we were looking for but wandered around and stopped in a pub for a bit, where I heard the original version of Over the Hills and Far Away by Gary Moore, which totally made my day.  It's the little things.

The landscape here isn't as green as I expected; in fact, the road to Killarney (good old vomitous N71) is surrounded by scrub and mountains that looks remarkably like Southern Arizona, minus the cacti.  We saw a LOT of sheep, this time with hot pink stripes, so we dubbed them Fashion Model Punk Rock Sheep.  Sometimes they escape through holes in the fence and wander across the road, but TJ wouldn't let me get out and hug a baby lamb.  (Probably just as well.)

I've taken less than 10 photos on this trip (aagh!) and really hope to get it together in the next couple of days.  Please send virus-fighting thoughts!

Ill on holiday

Townhouses we're staying in

See how I used words in the title I wouldn't normally use?  Yeah, that's because I'm in Ireland :)  I have to get my "local flavor" somehow because I've been essentially trapped in the house for 2 days with a second showing of last week's cough, now starring Fever and Vomiting.  Sigh.

I went to the doctor today and it was actually quite a pleasant experience.  I had no appointment but they said they could squeeze me in, and I waited about 30 minutes, during which the receptionist *and* the doctor apologized 3 times for how long I had to wait.  When does that *ever* happen at home?!

I went downstairs to pick up my prescription at McSweeney's Pharmacy (sadly, not called a "Chemist") and they filled it immediately. And it cost $7.  Crazy.  No wandering around the store for 40 minutes while hoping it might be done soon.  I'm talking about you Target and Bartell's Pharmacy...

TJ and BabyT took a drive yesterday to see a stone circle and some sheep, which T is still talking about.  She says the sheep she saw were "black and white and purple" and "there was a baby sheep who got lost and his dad had to call him back".  I took another nap while they were out.

We did visit a pub on Monday for a late lunch and TJ got his pint of Guinness.  It is AMAZING how much better it tastes here.  (And no it's not just psychological - it's actually different - very smooth and almost sweet...)  It's probably a good thing I can't drink now.

I'm hoping the antibiotics kick in soon (and actually help!).  I'm ready to start my vacation outside of our rental house!

Every gambler knows the secret to surviving

After 24-ish grueling hours, we are settled into our rental house in Kenmare Ireland.  A small and tired woot to that.  Also, it's 9:30pm Seattle time and 5:30am Ireland time and BabyT and I have been awake for  about an hour and a half now.  I'm not sure this is even jet lag.  It's just confusion.

The flight from Seattle to London was not as horrible as it could have been, though my best case scenario of "it's at T's bedtime, so she'll probably sleep through most of it" did not materialize.  She could not get comfortable in her car seat, and only slept maybe 90 minutes total.  Which meant she was a MESS by the time we landed in Heathrow, though to her credit, she seemed to understand that people around her did not want to hear crying and could she please use her words.

And TJ wisely did NOT tell me that the guy in front of him (who reclined his seat right into TJ's lap as soon as we took off) complained to the flight attendant about us.  I would have unleashed the Whoop Ass on him because T was not any more disruptive than that guy's teenage kid who kept coughing and left his TV screen on super-bright in the completely dark cabin.

Fortunately for us, there were other unhappy babies and toddlers on the flight so we weren't "those people" by any stretch of the imagination.  In the end, T watched HOURS of the in flight TV, which was some sort of odd British Teletubbies-like show.  I'm fully ok with that since it kept her (mostly) occupied.

We are not planning to attempt any flights to say, Australia, anytime soon.  That might have been the longest 9 hours of my recent life.

T fell asleep at Heathrow about 30 min before we had to board our flight to Shannon Ireland.  Aer Lingus informed us we could not bring her car seat on board, which made me NOT happy but we were too tired to argue.  They claimed the plane was "too small" when in fact, it's a freakin' Airbus A320.  On which we've installed that seat several times.  Sigh.

The Shannon airport is pretty tiny so we thankfully got out of there quickly, and the only downside was finding out that the online rental car insurance we paid for is not accepted here, and we had to pay for insurance at 24 Euros per day (!!!).  Which I think costs more than the actual car rental.

T slept during the entire 2.5 hour drive, while TJ reminded himself to stay on the left and I tried to navigate the baffling series of roundabouts using only the rental car map.

But we made it.

And we're in Ireland!

Which looks kind of like Seattle, with less cars and people and more sheep and cows.

I'm digging it already.

I've always wanted a penguin

BabyT's new thing is penguins.  She likes to tell me she's a penguin.  She likes to draw "penguins" on her chalkboard easel.  I love the randomness that is 2 years old.

So far 2012 has been ridiculously awesome for me.  Back on the Paleo wagon with no insane carb cravings or  resentment.  The aforementioned Bead Trends thing.  Sick days reset so I don't have to take vacation when I'm sick.   A handful of orders from friends to work on One Little Word pendants.  Discovered that I can send photos from Smugmug to be printed at Target, which makes Project Life easier.   People are reading my blog (thank you!!).

Today was one bright shining Star of Awesomeness.  It was the perfect Mama Day.  T woke up later than usual, which means I got to sleep till 7:45.  She got a bath and we ate breakfast and got ready.  We dropped off some unwanted stuff at Goodwill.  (Reduce, remember??) 

We went to The Little Gym, where T was more active than I've ever seen her.  She walked across the balance beam herself, unprompted.  She climbed on EVERYTHING.  She hung from the big bars BY HERSELF for several seconds.  We usually have to cajole her into doing stuff there, but today, she was ALL OVER IT.

And while she napped, one of my lifelong dreams came true.  OK, that's a bit overly dramatic.  But I am so freakin' excited to say I booked us tickets to Ireland!!!  Actual, honest to God plane tickets, with our names and real dates. If that weren't amazing enough, I got all three tickets for $425 total, by using our Chase credit card points which we've been hoarding for years.  To the airport we want, on a good airline with a decent schedule. I can't believe it.  It's actually going to happen.

Why the dream about Ireland?  I think it's because I started reading Maeve Binchy books when I was 10, and plowed through nearly everything she's written.  I still love them.  Somehow Ireland became this "thing" for me.  I have to see it. 

And not only will I see it, but we'll do it the way WE want to.  We're renting a house in one spot the whole time.  We'll take day trips to the Big City and wherever else we want to go.  Maybe a couple of overnights if we go far.  But no pressure to SEE EVERYTHING.  No crazy agenda to see all of the UK/British Isles/whatever that area is correctly called.  Just hanging out with my peeps, experiencing local culture, and having some true downtime. 

Just that would have been enough to make today AWESOME.  Then I got a call from the optician saying T's glasses were ready.  So when she got up from her nap, we went to pick them up.  I talked them up a lot, said we had to take lots of pictures, and she insisted on bringing Man, the guy who came with her Duplos.  Yes, that's his name.  Man. 

T was wiggly with excitement over the idea of getting her glasses.  The optician remembered us from Saturday's visit to pick them out.  T grabbed them, put them on, and said "I look pretty!"  Why yes, baby doll, you do.

I love that the optician talked directly to T about caring for her glasses.  T listened to her very seriously and repeated back the part about "if your glasses aren't on your face, they should be in the case".   We took lots of pictures to celebrate, and then went over to Agave for a girls-only dinner, where she proceeded to eat an entire bowl of salsa, all the while chattering about her new glasses, penguins, cacti, and pinatas.

She happily kept those glasses on until she went to bed.  This could not have been a better day.