How to get sap off of skin

So we have these big tree stumps in our yard and one of them happens to be for a large pine. This morning Jason was home, working on the back garage and I and the kids went out to talk to him. Well, I wasn't really watching Abby closely as I was talking briefly to Jason, but I knew she was near us. After a few minutes Abby walked over to me and held out her hands. They looked like they had been dipped in corn syrup. Both hands. Her entire hands, front and back were covered with a thick, sticky goo. I would have been very lucky had she managed to get her hands full of corn syrup while playing the backyard as it turned out she had gotten her hands covered in sap.

My first thought was, Don't get it in her hair! So I grabbed her hands. Big mistake. I should have grabbed her wrists, because now we both had hands full of sap. And in case you were wondering, sap doesn't just wash off. I had a bucket of water that the kids had been playing with and went over to it and dipped our hands in it, rubbing them (as well as they could be rubbed as basically when they were put together they just stuck and didn't rub). And nothing happened except the sap turned white. Hmmm. What to do? I clearly can't google (as I can't touch anything) how to get sap off. So I then call Jason over to me and ask him to watch Abby while I run inside to get some Lava soap. So then he grabs her hands and gets sap all over his hands.

I get the Lava soap and we work and work and work and I get a dish scouring pad and work and work and work. And then I start scraping the sap off with my fingernails, one little scrape at a time and work and work and work. And after about 20 minutes of work, Jason had cleaned his hands enough to go google how to remove sap from skin and I had most of one of Abby's hands clean and part of one of my own.

So he found out that sap can be removed by using rubbing alcohol. So we got the rubbing alcohol, getting our door knobs sappy in the process of going into the house and began to work on Abby's and our own hands with rubbing alcohol. Oh yeah, as we're working on Abby and ourselves, Sam comes over and says his hands are sticky. Somehow he had touched something that Jason or I or Abby had touched and got sappy too. So we worked and worked and worked and after about 10 minutes with the rubbing alcohol, we had everyone's hands pretty well cleaned up.

And that's how to remove sap from skin. And keep Abby away from pine trees.

Potty training?

So I really have no intention of potty training Abby this summer. However, the other night before bath she was doing a little dance outside of the tub before I got a chance to get her in. Then she peed on the floor (she usually pees upon getting in the tub). So then the next night when it was bath time I saw her doing the little dance again and I asked her if she had to potty and she replied "Yes". So I got out the seat which sits on top of the toilet and sat her on it and then she peed. In the toilet. So then the next night before bath I sat her on the toilet again and she peed again and clapped for herself. I don't know where this will go (she's only 19 months old!), but I guess we'll be getting the froggy potty chairs out again and see what happens.

What we've been up to

Jason chopped and moved a bunch of wood. We cut down three large, rotting (but still living) trees in the backyard and had a bunch, and I mean a bunch of wood to move. What you see in the picture is probably around 20% of the wood that Jason took to the dump. He's been busy...

On Tuesday, when it was 95, we went to a nice shaded playground. Abby climbed on the benches and Matthew and Sam preferred the "ship" (the play structure was shaped like a ship). The boys played "shark spotting" and would look through the play binoculars and spyglass and spot various sharks in the surrounding sand, um, ocean.

 Later in the week when I was trying to think of something to do, I decided that we hadn't washed our vehicles lately. Matthew and Sam took the task very seriously.

Doctor's visit

Matthew and Abby had a check up last week to mark Matthew's 3rd year and Abby being 1 1/2. Matthew seems to have really turned a corner in his doctor's visits as he didn't cry at all. He even had to read the eye chart (with shapes) and have a hearing test and he actually complied and did what he was supposed to. The nurse said that kids don't often cooperate at age 3, but Matthew really did pretty well (and we know he has good eyesight and hearing).

Abby did pretty well too other than she was so squirmy and did not want to be restrained at all. She wanted to climb on the benches and chairs in the exam room and shrieked when I tried to get her to sit down and hold her. She is one opinionated girl! And she is growing and healthy too. Here are the kids' stats:

Abby:
Height: 33.25" (90th percentile)
Weight: 24 lb (50th percentile)

Matthew:
Height: 39" (90th percentile)
Weight: 36 lb (80th percentile)

On another note, today the boys were ready to go outside and I told Matthew to go upstairs and get some socks. He was taking quite a long time (which is not totally unusual for him as he often gets, um, distracted), so I went up to check on him. At the top of the stairs I saw an empty laundry basket which had been filled with clean and folded kids' clothes. I called out to Matthew and he proudly came out of his room and said, "I put clothes in the rooms! I'm being helpful!" I was a bit puzzled, but walked into his room. There was a stream of clean clothes on the floor in his room, from the door to his chest of drawers. Sam's clothes were in his room, in a 4' diameter pile near his door. Abby's clothes were in a similar state in her room. Awww. I told Matthew thank you and said that he was indeed being helpful. Then I told the boys to put their clothes in their drawers and put Abby's pile away. The clothes weren't really folded anymore, but really, some things just aren't that important. I don't know why I fold the kids' clothes anyway, as the boys just pull all sorts of shirts and pants out of their drawers when getting dressed and then stuff them back in when I tell them to pick up. Some things just aren't that important.