Batchelor's Funniest Home Videos

Ride 'Em Cowboy

Exercising

Two-Year Check-up

Still a Big Boy

34 pounds - 96%

35 3/4 inches - 83%

50 1/2 centimeters (head) - 90%

(I'm thinking running back...)

My Little Man

Yesterday was so crazy that today I wanted to take a minute to reflect on our "little" Jalen and the blessing he is to us. He is such a fun kid. He is full of sass and life and goes 100 miles an hour. He does everything with gusto, whether it's singing, laughing, throwing a tantrum, dancing or eating - he does it with all of his emotions. He is so cuddly and affectionate. He loves to give and receive hugs. He adores his sister and does everything she does. He's her little shadow. He keeps us laughing all the time.

Jalen's funny because at home he's the life of the party, but in public it's hard to get him to crack a smile. Many people think he's somber or anti-social. Even David and I can't get him to smile if he doesn't want to. At home he is singing all the time, but when we go to our weekly music class, he won't sing at all.

I love this little boy with all my heart. He is the son I always wanted. He brings me more joy than I ever thought possible. He is such a blessing and I'm so grateful to have shared these two years of his life with him.

Happy Birthday, JJ!

Today was Jalen's 2nd birthday. It feels like we have always been together and the past two years have just flown by. He had a great birthday. Unfortunately, my camera had dead batteries, so the pictures we got didn't turn out as well as we had hoped.

Jalen has been riding a little toy broom for a while, so we got him a "real" horse.

He got a notebook with his own picture on it.

He rocked out on his new guitar.

But his favorite present was his Harley. He's an official Easy Rider!

He had a barnyard cake that slightly resembled the original.

And Baylie made (and ate) some of her own creations.

Jalen was happy with it.

 He rubbed his belly and said, "Yummy!"

We're especially glad that Grammy and Grandad could be here on their way to their mission in North Carolina. After all, without them, these two little children would not be part of our family.  

I love my family - so much more than words can say!

Mitt Mania

Tonight I went to my very first political rally. I had no idea what to expect.

We were advised to get there really early and we were some of the first ones there. The rally was scheduled to start at 7 p.m. and we arrived at 6 p.m. We held on to our front-row seat.

It was exciting at first.

But by 7:45, we were getting tired and a little impatient.

We were very excited when Mitt finally arrived.

I had heard he wasn't very personable, but I didn't find that at all. I thought he was great.

 And so was his wife.

He'd been speaking for about 20 minutes when Baylie said, "When is Mitt Romney gonna be here?" I told her that the guy up there was Mitt Romney. Then she said, "Yay, Mitt Romney!"

Baylie's photo with Ann Romney.

Baylie's photo with Mitt Romney.

Apparently Jalen is voting for Obama.

Big Sister Syndrome

My siblings say I suffer from "big sister syndrome." Apparently this is a condition where you get in the habit of sitting on the couch and asking a younger sibling to get something for you. I remember the first time I realized that this was a real thing. I was in my 30's and in a meeting, sitting at a table with my back to the door. Another woman sitting across from me got up, walked around the table and shut the door. I was caught of guard and pointed out that she must not be the oldest child in her family. Turns out she was the youngest. You see, an oldest child would have asked the person across the table - the one closest to the door - to close it.

So today I wasn't sure whether or not to laugh when Baylie stood up, handed her water bottle to Jalen and said, "Put this back for me." Where did she learn that?! And I was shocked to see that he did her bidding without batting an eye.

And here are more examples of how the big sister truly does rule the roost.

 What do real men wear under their tutus?

Nothing!

"Organdizing"

I am a definite Type A personality. One of the hardest things for me about living in an apartment is that we have zero space. It drives me crazy, especially knowing that we have a cute little three-bedroom home in Houston that someone else is living in.

I couldn't find a good picture of our house, so this will have to do.

I decided that we needed to organize the kids room to start off the New Year. Initially, all I wanted to do was buy a big blue tub with rope handles (see below) to use as a toy box. I tried Wal Mart and Target, but neither one had them. I was excited to see they had them at lowes.com. So I checked Home Depot

I saw the picture below on their home page. That's when the "organidizing" vision exploded.

We had a bookcase kind of like that in our front room. I decided to move that bookcase (or rather have David move that bookcase) to the kids' room and get all the kid toys and books out of the living room. Thank goodness David is a good sport!

There's not a lot we can do to a room since we're renting, but I'm happy with the results.

 

Last year we had taken Baylie's dresser and painted a stove top on it.

And now our living room has a lot more space (check out that dinosaur of a t.v.).

Enough space, in fact, to do yoga.

Missionaries

Today my parents entered the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, where they will spend five intense days preparing to be missionaries for our church. They will serve in the Charlotte, North Carolina, mission for 18 months. Charlotte is only 1 1/2 hours from us, but my parents will actually be living in Yanceyville, North Carolina, which is four hours away. Still a lot closer than Utah!

Serving a mission is a privilege in our religion. David (Italy) and I (Argentina) both served. My siblings (Taiwan, Japan, New Hampshire and Philadelphia) have served. My dad served in New York City at the World's Fair when he was younger. Both sets of my grandparents (Guatemala and NYC) served when I was a pre-teen and their example has stayed with me all my life. My grandad served in Brazil in his youth, leaving his new bride who gave birth to a daughter who died after only a few hours while he was gone (husbands no longer leave their wives to serve missions). That bride, my granny, even served a mission without my grandad when she was in her 60's. It was hard for her and I have always been humbled by that sacrifice.

I know it will be hard for my parents to leave their home, friends, life and especially their grandkids. The littlest ones will be completely different 18 months from now. But I also know that their example will serve as a benchmark for generations to come.

I love you Mom and Dad!

How to Spend 12 Hours in an Airport Without Losing Your Mind (and other myths)

I love my flight benefits. It's great to be able to hop on a flight and go anywhere I want, whenever I want - that is, when it works. Every now and then a trip evolves into a nightmare. We were supposed to return home from Austin on Friday. I looked at the flight loads and decided it would be better to wait until Saturday when the flights had several open seats and it looked like we would for sure make it. Turns out we would have made it on Friday. I hate it when that happens.

We got up a little before 5 a.m. and started the drive from Austin to Houston. We had to drive because on the way to Austin, we got bumped in Houston. We ended up renting a car and driving the rest of the way. It was cheaper to keep the car all week and drive it back to Houston rather than drop it off in Austin. We got to the Houston airport around 9 a.m. for our 10:20 a.m. departure.

As fate would have it, a heavy fog rolled in Saturday morning, covering a huge hunk of Texas, including everything between Austin and the Houston Intercontinental Airport (making the drive a little scary). Thanks to the new rule that fines airlines if they spend too much time on the tarmac, airlines now just cancel flights to avoid the fines. (As for me, I'd rather sit on the runway for a couple of hours and get where I'm trying to go rather than have my flight cancelled altogether. I agree there have been some extreme cases that were handled incorrectly, but the legislation has created more problems rather than addressing a few isolated incidents.) Our flight was cancelled. The next flight wasn't until a little after 3 p.m. Sigh.

So what to do ...

We exited back through security and headed downstairs in Terminal B.

Terminal B has an open area downstairs by baggage claim that is usually empty since it's basically just a big hallway. It's filled with beautiful mosaics and is open and light. It was a great place for the kids to be noisy and able to  move around without bothering anyone.

Daddy and Baylie played a few rounds of princess slap jack.

Baylie kissed a frog.

We made our voices echo under the domed ceiling.

There is a little tram that runs around the entire airport. Now that there is a monorail connecting the terminals, few people use the tram. I would hazard a guess that most passengers don't even know it's there. (The tram runs outside of security and the monorail runs inside security.) We rode it around for awhile, pretending we were on a Disney ride.

There is a walkway by the tram track. We ran around that...

...until we dropped from exhaustion.

We played the giant matching game in Terminal E. (Note: Terminal E is the best place to eat and is much less depressing in the gate area than Terminal B, which is dark, hot and gross.)

We ate some fruit...

...and some vegetables.

We had several potty breaks.

Baylie especially liked the "princess throne" in this stall.

We rode the monorail...

...several times.

Everyone but me slept, but I neglected to get a picture of that. Too bad because it looked pretty funny.

The 3:00 flight ended up being delayed until around 9 p.m. or so. We were told our crew had been at the airport for an hour, but no one could find them. When they finally showed up, David was able to get the last seat on the plane with Jalen on his lap. They sat on the plane for five minutes, after which the flight was cancelled because the crew timed out. (This means the crew had met the maximum amount of time they are allowed to work based on FAA regulations. Kind of made us wonder where they had spent the hour wandering around the airport...)

So we met up again and realized we would have to spend the night in Houston.

We spent 30 minutes waiting for our bags, then headed to our hotel. We got to the hotel at about 10:30 p.m. At least we were able to watch the ball drop at midnight.

In the end, we flew to Greenville-Spartanburg Sunday morning and rented a car to get home to Columbia. Flying for "free" is relative when you end up paying for two car rentals, a hotel and airport food, but it's still cheaper than paying for three tickets. Thank goodness my kids are good travelers.

At least we're home now, and so happy to be here! Let's hope the rest of 2012 goes a little more smoothly!

A note to my airline friends: We could have boarded a United flight with seats available, but the gate agent - and a red coat - refused to board us saying early out employees couldn't fly UA. So annoying when airport personnel aren't up to date on current policy! I've found a copy of the Employee Travel Bulletin issued back in June and will now carry it with me.