The Huebner blog is back!

 

Where do I start after the lovely 3 month sabbatical. . .

 

Kinsley is growing up every day. She’s still a squirt, she was about 7% as far as height at her 9 month appointment, but she can really get around.  She started getting herself to standing up back on September 10 and started crawling September 20.  She now is in full bore mobile mode, she can get pretty much anywhere fast and is working on walking a little whereby she can stand for 5 or so seconds without support.  She’s a great eater, and is currently loving meats of all kinds.  Thanksgiving was a bit rough as she threw up as we were preparing to leave for iowa and being away from home with a sick infant is less than ideal.  Kinsley still is not a night owl, most of the time is in bed by 6:30.  She still doesn’t have nearly as much hair as emma did at that age, but she has a fair amount.  She is however following in emma’s footsteps and hates naps.  We love that she is a great sleeper at night and would take that over being a napper, but couldn’t we get both with one?  Hopefully she’ll get the hang of it as she moves into the next room at school when they go to 1 nap a day.

 

Emma is, well unique.  She continues to be hilarious at least part of the time, she has a nack for saying things that make us burst into laughing.  Lela loves to cook as I may have previously mentioned and emma has really gotten into helping her with that.  Oh and emma tried soccer this fall.  It was okay.  Emma was the youngest on her team and never seemed to get comfortable.  She seemed to do well when she was trying, but most Saturdays became a power struggle whereby Emma would whine for a snack or space out in protest.  There was probably some "holy crap these kids are bigger and knocking people down" in there, but mostly power struggle, which would end with Emma crying on the way home because she didn't try.  Sigh.  Emma's a good kid, but she just pushes every limit ever, so some nights its good that we don't have a waiver wire for her :)  Sometimes we need to go to our respective corners and take a nap (I am very pro-nap for adults also).  Gymnastics is up next, we shall see how that goes!

 

Emma has been going through quite a phase the last month or 2, whereby she is a handful at home.  By most accounts it sounds like she is doing well at daycare, but when she comes home, sass is to the max.  While 2s weren’t all sunshine and roses, 3 is proving to be even harder.  Emma did have a great time over thanksgiving with her cousins.  The three of them go off and play together for hours, which is a nice break but also great to see.

 

We will be updating more often

 

First soccer day

Still a proud hawkeye every friday at school, because that's how we roll

Love the costco carts

trip to the pumpkin patch, well played going with white pants on a muddy day Emma

Emma is serious about her soccer apparently

The Kinsley face as  Emma likes to call it

The neighborhood fall party

Our zebra and owl for halloween

Emma's not sure about bowling

Santa's helpers!

Cursed

So one of the harder things about being a parent is travelling for work.  On one hand you get a bit of a break, and sometimes get to go to decent locales, like Miami and San jose- my last 2 destinations.  You generally get some good cuisine and nights where you don’t have to have the usual 4 pm “Who is picking up the kids/what are we having for dinner/how the heck are we going to get food ready to avoid a meltdown/should I go home and start dinner and you pick up or vise versa/etc” conversation.  You don’t have to chase emma around to try to convince her that in fact staying up all night wouldn’t be a good idea for anyone.  You get to come  back to a hotel, watch whatever you want.  You have nice white sheets and other people clean up after you when you decide to be a mess, you know hypothetically if you are that type of person. Your workout requires an elevator ride, you get to have starbucks every morning.  Wait what was my point?  Oh yeah, that traveling as a parent can be overrated.  But there is so much you miss.  You miss Emma eating large amounts of cantaloupe that a hippo would scoff at.  You miss Emma screaming “Daddy” as she runs at you in the almost scary voice I have mentioned before. You miss praying for every teacher in Emma’s daycare per Emma’s request.   You miss the homemade iced coffee brew Lela and I have perfected.  You miss having more than 5 min to talk about what’s going on in your wife’s day.  And you miss having a dvr, which I have determined is now essential to living.  I hate having to stay next to the tv to see when the Today show is going to get around to interviewing various Olympic athletes, I want to see it when I want to see it and if I happen to be shaving for 2 minutes.  Oh and then there’s the actual physical traveling.

So since I have started at QTS I have now travelled twice, again once to Miami and once to San Jose.  Again in theory playing a Will Smith song and looking for the Zuchster in Silicon Valley seems great.  But getting back from said destinations haven’t worked out for me very well.  In March, we headed to Miami to go to a NAREIT conference, or as I like to refer to it, “The National gather of mostly men who where sport coats and likely think they are significantly more important than they are.”  Anyway, on our way back, our flight had mechanical problems which were going to cause us to miss our connection.  What resulted was getting to fly through the ATL, whereby we had to run to another terminal to try to catch a connection on standby only to discover that it was spring break weekend and standby was 8 deep.   Subsequently we had to fly into Springfield MO and drive from there.  My boss and I.  It was a long day and night, only helped by the fact that we had XM and could listen to the NCAA tourney.  Fast forward to August.  After putting up with insane heat for many months, I got to head to Silicon Valley and enjoy some lovely temperate California weather, hang out with many Asiatic people (note I like to use the term Asiatic now after watching Hangover II, its grown on me and I find it funny to the point where I will likely say it past the point of it being annoying), and feel good about hanging out near Mr. Zucherberg.  Everything seemed to be going okay, other than the fact that Cali’s roads lack sufficient signage and are hella complicated which resulted in a scramble to get to the airport.  Got on the flight in time and seemed like I’d make my connection in the DEN with ease.  Then as we approached the runway, the plane turned around.  Then some dude got off the plane and all of a sudden there were police around and everybody got the joy of deboarding, going through some secret back hall in the airport, going through security again and waiting for 2 hrs while we watched them search the bags we had to gate check, which resulted in returning home 5 hrs later than originally anticipated.  Good times.  I am boycotting travel with my current employer indefinitely.

Kinsley is continuing to work on backing that thing up, one of these days she’ll start moving forward.  Its exciting/scary times because we all know that once you go mobile you don’t go back.  I am interested to see how her interaction with Emma changes when Kinsley can move and can start taking her stuff from her.  Emma is continuing to be her full of personality self.  We as a family have enjoyed the Olympics and every once in awhile we’ll show Emma some gymnastics and she seems to enjoy it, it’s only a matter of time before I am convinced that Emma is the next great gymnast to bring home the all around gold in 2028.  Yes, I did the math, that’s when she’ll be 19 as she won’t be eligible at 2024 because she’ll be 15 and you have to turn 16 in the Olympic year, thus she’ll be the mature leader of the team who helps keep the team focused.  We should have planned her birth year better as that’s not ideal, Kinsley will be much better set up to be a 16 year old in the same Olympics.  Huebner sisters leading the US to the gold?  I like the sound of that.  Of course if Emma goes the more conventional sport route, say basketball or soccer as she’s currently projecting in the Mike has unreasonably high expectations and is trying to not  be an overbearing parent scale, then she’ll be more of a 2032 or 2036 participant.  She could actually perhaps do both, and transition at age 20, good idea self.   Sometimes being an overbearing parent with unrealistic expectations is just too easy, you should try it.

Only 2 weeks til football starts and I can pin my mood for entire weekends on 19 year olds, so I am already preparing my mind for our children to be there . Can’t wait!

Emma has 2 things that are important to her right now.  Spelling and matching.  We have to match everything, and we have hit the lovely stage where she wants to pick out her clothes, which obviously doesn't result in any tantrums ever or anything.  And Emma has really been working on how to spell her name and a few others.  When we drive by any sign with an E, M, or A, she yells "That's an Emma" and can mostly spell her name, get 5 or so letters of Kinsley's, and I am BIDDY, which makes me feel a little Sean Puffy Combs.  She is also getting really good at coloring, to the point where she stays in the lines 90% or so of the time!

My only pick this week is of us in front of Union Station after the Race for the Cure.  See below

More about 3

I think every child is unique and Emma is no different.  She is they type of girl who will wrestle around with me and is adventurous where she feels comfortable, all the while if something new comes across her she is shy and hesitant.   She loves to be the center of attention and to be a bit of a mother hen per her daycare teachers, but if she doesn't know people around her very well she is fine with blending in.  She is the most stubborn person I know, even outdoing both Lela and I.  But she has a knack for making us smile and will literally tell you the same story 5 times in 2 minutes, but somehow its not annoying. . .well not too annoying.  She loves puzzles and can sit for a long time and do fairly advanced puzzles, but is just as happy running around (walking doesn't seem to be an option ever).  We can't say enough about her, she struts around, is her own person, and we hope she stays that way.  Well except for when that results in her laying on the ground in protest about how she wanted put on a different shirt than was laid out for her, but the individual who is okay with who she is and doesn't want to be any different unless she decides she should. 

Onto real events, Emma had quite the lead up coming to her birthday party.  My sister and fam came down (aka Emma's mega fun cousins) Wednesday night and we spent Thursday and Friday doing a lot.  Thursday we started by going to Deanna Rose.  It was hot and we got there literally as they were opening the doors.  it was great, we even had 10 minutes or so where it seemed like just us.  We checked out the new Leawood Oklahoma Joes and then the afternoon was time for the family pics (I will post those later).  After dinner all of us headed to the neighborhood pool.  We are really blessed to have a great pool with a slide that the kids love.  Emma even started going down the slide with us because she saw Julia doing it (more on Emma and the pool later).  Friday we got up and went to Legoland.  The kids loved it, next year we'll have to hit up the aquarium.  finally Saturday came the party.  We had a pinata, which was at least 30 minutes of entertainment and a few other things which didn't entertain for nearly as long.  When it was all over and it was nap time, Emma was aglow.  She couldn't get herself to sleep for her nap for well over an hour as I heard her in her room talking and singing.  All that made everything worth it.  It now took us at least 2 weeks to catch up on life.  i am only partly kidding.

As for the pool, again, Emma is a child that has to decide she wants to do something herself.  We entered her into swimming lessons a few weeks ago and it was very clear that she didn't yet want to do it.  As in she spent the first 2 sessions crying. . .for 30 minutes straight.  She literally wouldn't do anything.  Then came the bday weekend and we both went to the pool a lot and she got to see her cousins playing in the pool.  It then all clicked and now Emma really seems to like it.  As getting out of the house with an infant and a cranky toddler isn't what I would call fun, it has really enticed us to go to the pool more.

Kinsley is moving on up too.  she started eating baby food about a month ago and really seems to like everything so far.  She loves to just sit and play, and mobilization may be around the corner as she has started pushing herself backwards.  She still smiles a lot and makes some crazy faces, even more than i remember Emma doing. 

3!

I will write up a blog later detailing what's going down in the Huebner house, but here are some questions I saw on other blogs that I used both Emma's answers for as well as some from us as she turned 3.

Some of these answers are Emma’s, some of her answers were so random that I just interjected my interpretations of her day to day life

1. What is your favorite color? Depends on the day, Daddy’s pushing for yellow

2. What is your favorite toy? My baby

3. What is your favorite fruit? Rasberries and watermelon

4. What is your favorite tv show? N/A, Emma doesn’t really like tv, which is good and bad

5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? Chipotle (Daddy is proud)

6. What is your favorite outfit? Anything with a Hawkeye on it and whatever is not what Daddy picked out

7. What is your favorite game? Swinging on my tire swing

8. What is your favorite snack? Watermelon and granola bars

9. What is your favorite animal? Elephant

10. What is your favorite song? “Little Bit of Poo Poo. . if you don’t listen in one minute, I’m going to turn you into a goon”  Those are the portions of the song she sings over and over, it’s a much longer song with different words I believe.

11. What is your favorite book? Changes daily, we have a lot to choose from

12. Who is your best friend? Clinton and KeeNON (that’s how Emma pronounces his name)

13. What is your favorite cereal? Mommy cereal (mini wheats)

14. What is your favorite thing to do outside? Tire Swing

15. What is your favorite drink? Milk

16. What do you like to take to bed with you at night? Elephant, Blanket and 8 other stuffed animals

17. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Muffin

18. What is your favorite hair style? Braids

A few thoughts from Daddy

1. What is your favorite personality trait? Emma’s laugh.  It can stop a room because it is the best sound in the world.  Well that and she will shout Go Hawkeyes on command.
2. What is your favorite memory this year? Going to Adventureland with her cousins and watching them all have so much fun
3. What is your favorite book to read together? I am a fan of all Sandra Boynton, but it’s pretty much guaranteed that the one I choose will be the one shot down.
4. What is your favorite activity to do together? Kick the soccer ball around and run errands.  Emma is pretty entertaining when she is out and about, singing and talking to people.
5. What is the most difficult part of parenting this year? Leading Emma to correct decisions without pushing her.  She is extremely, extremely strong willed so bed time and just getting her out the door sometimes can drive one mad, so the key is to lead her without letting her know she is being led and without pulling your hair out.
6. What is the best part of parenting this year? Getting to interact with Emma more and hearing her responses to questions or random things she says.  Emma remembers everything, she remembers events from over 6 months ago in details that we barely remember until she says it.  And now she can interact where if I ask her questions she usually has an answer, albeit very random at times.
7. What is your favorite song Emma sings? Emma makes up a lot of songs and sings them to tunes of other songs like Twinkle Twinkle.  So there isn’t a favorite song, its just getting to hear what random made up song Emma will sing next.

8. What is your favorite Emma’ism? When Kinsley is crying and Emma tries to calm her down, she says “KIIIINSLEY” in a really high pitched voice over and over and can sometimes get Kins to crack a smile.  It’ll be fun to see how the sisterhood grows and hopefully we don’t have too many battles in the future.
9. What is one parenting trait you wish to improve. Patience. Again, Emma is very strong willed and we hope that comes with benefits when she’s older, but when she is younger it can make her a bear.  A crazy wasian gangsta bear.

10. Any last thoughts? Emma has raised the bar on fun in our house.  I can’t imagine our house without all the laughter she brings, and can’t wait to see what the next year will bring out in here

 

A few thoughts from Mommy

1. What is your favorite personality trait? Emma’s playfulness.  She is such a goofy girl and I love her free spirited nature– she doesn’t care that she like cars, puzzles and things that are more typical “boy” activities.  On the flip side, she also loves to take care of her baby which is adorable to watch – sometimes she will project conversations on her baby telling her “I will not drop you in the water, have I ever dropped you??” after Daddy took her to the pool. 

2. What is your favorite memory this year? Talking with Emma about her birthday party – it’s the first time she’s old enough to anticipate it and get excited.  She also has had many other “firsts” – her first ride at Adventureland (which she LOVED), first pony ride, etc. 

3. What is your favorite book to read together? I agree with daddy that we love the Sandra Boynton books but I love to read any book where Emma can recite some of the words from memory.  It’s hilarious. 

4. What is your favorite activity to do together? Arts & crafts (coloring, frosting cookies) and “exercising” –doing summersaults (“swimersuits” as she calls them) and doing “yoga”. 

5. What is the most difficult part of parenting this year? It’s a challenge dealing with Emma’s stubborn streak – Emma likes to do things on her own terms and we do not always have the time to negotiate on EVERYTHING so this can be frustrating at times.  Asking her to be our helper and leading her to make good decisions is a challenge.  We love her dearly and appreciate that she is an individual but at times we just want her to comply! J

6. What is the best part of parenting this year? Watching Emma become a “little person” and seeing how great she is with her little sister.  When Kinsley gets upset in the mornings, sometimes Emma will hand her one of her own toys and say “Kinsley, it’s okay….it’s okay, mommy has to go to work, it’s okay…” So sweet and we’re so proud of how she tries to calm her down and is generally very sweet to her baby sis. 

7. What is your favorite song Emma sings? Twinkle, Twinkle Dinosaur and Mommy, mommy, I love you…yes I yes I yes I do… As daddy says, she does make up lots of interesting songs too. 

8. What is your favorite Emma’ism? Emma just says things that crack us up….she’ll take something she’s heard us say like “ I need to act like I am 3” (usually when we think she is acting like a baby J) or “when I was a baby, I pooped ALL of the time!”  and also says to Kinsley “KIIIIINSLEY….do you like me???” in a high pitched voice.  Too funny. 
9. What is one parenting trait you wish to improve. Patience and setting a good example for Emma

10. Any last thoughts? It is such a joy to be a mommy to Emma – we love her so much and can’t imagine what life was like without such a crazy little girl.  I can’t imagine the fun new Emma-isms to come! It is so nice to be able to talk to her about her day and about things we are doing.  I know this will improve as she enters year 3 J

This is a smile, I promise

Jacoby lent a hand as Emma clearly froze

We are going to work on Emma's swing. .

The kids icing cookies

LEGOLAND!

The infamous pinata

Emma's Lightning McQueen Balloon

To commemorate my third father’s day as a father, I thought I would put on paper (or internet) the ever growing list of things I have learned to this point.  By learned I don’t mean adjusted my behavior for necessarily, more so observed and tried to not act uponJ  And to be clear my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek, and being a father is one of the greatest gifts one can receive.

1)      Patience with children is different than regular patience.  Its one thing to be able to keep your calm at work while someone is driving you crazy.  It’s another thing to keep your cool while you have a screaming and kicking toddler laying on the floor in front (possibly spitting on you) of you who has been a pill all day because she refused to take a good nap and is about as likely to surrender as Mel Gibson in Braveheart, on a day when you have also had a cranky infant who doesn’t like the earth or being on it, and possibly when its like 100 or 0 outside.  That’s called Megapatience.  And on some days you need Megapatience, and most days its hard to find.  I struggle with it more than I should.

2)      You didn’t know what laughter was before.  I mean we all have those days where our faces hurt from laughing – usually its probably that one time you hung out with me or for me it’s the day when I was left to my thoughts and cracked myself up because of how witty I am (hopefully you understand I am being very sarcastic with those comments), but sitting at the dinner table and conversing with Emma about pretty much anything is funny, and in a whole different and new way that you can’t replicate.  Yes that was one sentence, I am too lazy to revise it to be better grammar.

3)      Public displays of potty are common.  We all ask where the restroom is sometimes.  But with Emma (and most toddlers) it’s usually followed by her telling the waitress/cashier/other random person that she is going to go potty or poopoo and  possibly followed by telling said person some details after the fact.  Its usually followed by awkward laughter by the counterpart.  What would the world be like if you told your waiter you had to go potty really badly?  Try it sometime.

4)      Naptime is no longer a happy place.  Naptime is now the time when you work your tail off to get something done before naptime is over.  Remember the good old days when nap time meant YOU got to take a nap while watching golf, which would be followed by 30 min of spacing out and trying to get motivated to run to chipotle for your second meal of the day there?  Well maybe you don’t, but I do.

5)      Bedtime is now a glorious time.  Kids are great, but 8pm CST is a lovely time in our house.  The kids are in bed, the 85 million bottle parts from the day of feeding/pumping are washed, you can sit down and just chill and watch Modern family while your wife tries (unfortunately too successfully) to draw parallels between you and Phil while you admire Cam’s shirts and “flare” (in a totally masculine way) and hope that you don’t have a daughter like Haley.

6)      Leaving work is like leaving the earth to head to the moon.  At work, at least for we cube surfers, you live in this nice quiet place with clean bathrooms, white noise, everybody walking, and air conditioning.  You arrive at a place of controlled chaos where your daughter screams “DADDY’s HERE!!!” which is great and makes you happy, only there’s a small twinge of crazy in her voice so you are afraid that she may be using that as a signal to other toddlers to signal the toddler revolution.  You eventually arrive home which is a dance of preparing food and providing food to keep anger subdued (sometimes for mom, dad, and daughters) then run around, play on the playset (and sweat) take a bath, fight the bedtime battle, and then hit the aforementioned 8pm its time for gloriousness barrier.  I am certain that paragraph reads as complaining,  that time is great, but if it extended too much longer there would be casualties.

7)      Bed time also has new meaning.  Your bedtime as a father is irrelevant, toddler bedtime is like a hyper exaggeration of basically everything above.  There is laughter, which sometimes turns into crazy laughter, which sometimes morphs into having to show patience, but then sometimes morphs into laying next to your daughter and singing the Iowa Fight song and a hug.  Its fun, its scary, its hard, its so many things in a 30-45 min timeframe that is always being pushed by said toddler.

8)      We live in 1 volume level –LOUD.  If Kinsley goes to bed first we try to keep the volume level down so she doesn’t wake up.  Which doesn’t work.   At all.  Emma is loud, there is no getting around it, sometimes between the number of words she says and the volume of words said its amazing that ears don’t bleed.

9)      I have a new boss.  I used to think, wow, our lives revolve around Emma, its sort of like she is our boss without knowing it.  Now I know that Emma is our boss, she likes to tell us what to do at a high volume (see previous item) and is very, very particular.

10)   Daughter #2 seems quiet.Daughter #2 loves her big sister and laughs at her all the time, but you notice much more when she makes sound after Daughter #1 is in bed.  Kinsley is happy go lucky, but when Emma is in bed and Kinsley is up its like her time to shine.  It will be interesting to see whether she defers to emma when get gets older.

11)   Wait, we have a 2^nd daughter?  Not that she gets completely ignored but because she is so easy and basically just needs to be held and fed, sometimes we almost forget about her.  

Miscellaneous pics from a father's day trip to Deanna Rose with Dylan and company