Tom in the newspaper

For those of you interested in learning more about what Tom has been up to this summer for his internship,  here is an article in the New Haven Register highlighting the program that Tom has helped to establish.

Nap Time

Ever since we moved to New Haven and put Joey in a twin bed nap time has always been a curious topic. Bed time is just fine. He may whine and cry at times, but that's no different than before. But nap time. I just have no idea what to expect when nap time rolls around. Typically I put the boys down around 1pm. This used to mean that they went to sleep at 1pm. Rarely does that ever happen anymore. Now that Joey can climb out of bed, they often don't actually fall asleep until 2 or later (in today's case, 3:30). The coin toss is whether he'll be upset or content about being locked in his room. Half the time, he whines "I want to wake up!" and consistently tries to break out of the room. The other half, he's happy to just play and run around the room until he gets tired. Poor Moses, no matter what his mood, he's stuck being awake until Joey decides that he's had enough.

There are two perks to this arrangement:
1) I get SOOO much more time to myself (read: my nap time) because I get the pre-nap time PLUS the nap time afterwards. That's like 4 hours, sometimes more!
2) It's REALLY funny to peak in their room once they've finally conked out and see what kinds of mischief Joey has been up to. Here's a list of some of the silliest things I've seen:

•  diapers (clean, don't worry) scattered across the floor so that not an inch of carpet could be seen
• hampers emptied and dirty clothes scattered like the diapers
• clothing drawers emptied as above
• any combination of the above 3
• 5 packs of baby wipes (the ones from costco-HUGE) in Moses' crib (?)
• the sheets taken off both Joey AND Moses' beds and properly placed in the hamper (boys sleeping on plain mattresses)
• one day a whole shelf from a bookshelf was missing

Today I was sure that they weren't going to ever fall asleep because I kept hearing noises through the wall up until 3:30. I was in and out of sleep during that period but once silence finally came, I feared that the silence came from trouble rather than sleep and was startled out of bed only to find them sound asleep on sheetless mattresses. Silly boys. 

Plymouth and Cape Cod

More weekend adventures for the Arnett family. On Saturday we woke up at 6am to head out to Plymouth. The whole day probably wouldn't have happened had Tom not purchased the tickets for our trolley tour the night before. I'm not exactly a morning person so when I have to wake up earlier than usual I protest and battle with any excuse I can possibly come up with. I'm confident I would have been able to come up with something to postpone the trip for another time just so I could sleep an extra hour or two. But I digress.

To start, let's talk about Tom. At BYU, there is a random statue of a Native American at BYU and his name is Chief Massasoit. When we moved to Kansas City, we were driving downtown and spotted the exact same statue. After some research, Tom learned that there are 5 or 6 scattered across the country and he was then determined to get a picture with each one. So, he found an old picture he took with it at BYU for a photo scavenger hunt...

and then he took a picture with the Kansas City fellow...

and then yesterday he was able to add to his collection with the Plymouth statue.

Mission Accomplished.

We also visited Plymouth Rock. For those of you who happen to be as ignorant of historical facts as I am, it turns out that Plymouth Rock is exactly that. A rock. Not a huge boulder plunging out into the coast line. Just a rock. Highly anti-climactic. 

Tom then took Joey on the Mayflower II (a replica they made in the 1950s and sailed from England to Plymouth) while Moses and I waited outside (I'm not big on boats and Moses was a wee bit cranky at the time so we figured we'd save the $10)

It turns out that New England fish and chips is the best way to get your children to smile on a vacation. 

After lunch, we tried to drive over to the Plimouth Plantation but the boys conked out on the way over and we knew that it would just be a disaster if we tried to wake them up so we decided to take advantage of nap time and drove up to Cape Cod for the rest of the day.

We found a canoe rental place on a cute little pond/river and played in the water for an hour or so. Our one main problem was that we hadn't planned for water when we left in the morning so we didn't have swimsuits, swim diapers or towels. We improvised by purchasing new suits for Tom and me (we were due anyway) and just leaving the boys in their regular diapers and some shorts.


We had only packed rompers for Moses so he was stuck with just a diaper.

Joey ended up loving being in the boat and "helping" paddle. 

After our time in the pond, we figured that we'd come all the way out to Cape Cod so we would definitely need to stop by the actual ocean. To access the beach we found we had to go down a ginormous dune. Not so hard going down, REALLY difficult coming back up with two kids that insisted on walking but really couldn't. 

Tom tried to go swimming in the waves but found that it was rather painful with the ginormous rocks that rolled around under the water. This was the first handful he brought me. 

This was the second.

After the beach we headed to get some pizza and then drove home. We got home around 12:30 and were all exhausted. Needless to say, Sunday was a bit of a struggle with 2 overly-tired toddlers trying to make it through church but we made it.