Seth is 2 years, 2 months

Okay, this is four days late, but with my birthday this week, the time just kind of slid by and I have been so lazy lately, too.

Seth’s tantrums have really calmed down a lot.  And he is more mellow … uh, sort of.  Actually, living with Seth is kind of like living with a teenager.  What attitude!  Really, I think he is just a bit more grumpy (especially when he wakes up from a nap) and since he has great speech now (everyone comments on it), the stuff he says is just crazy.  The things he says most – “I am so tired of <insert whatever we are supposed to do here”.  For example, I am tired of going to bed, I am tired of going to the store, I am tired of going home.  Others:  “I am going to hit <insert name>.”  “I hate you.”  “I am going to hurt you” or even worse!  And his all-time favorite “Go away”.  He especially gets this certain grumpy look on his face and utters that to poor like 5 year olds at the playground.  I am hoping this is just a phase and he gets some more social skills, soon.  You better believe I do not let him think this is acceptable behavior.

The rough-housing is also getting out of control.  Seth is usually good unless provoked, but then you better watch out!  Throwing and hitting with various weapons is his favorite.  And everything is a weapon with Seth (this was not the case with Andrew at all).  He especially likes his play saw and other play tools and his magic wand, but almost anything will do in a pinch.  He is especially obsessed with good guys and bad guys.  He pretends to be a bad guy a lot.  As soon as he puts on his sunglasses, he gets this big scowl and then runs around telling me he is a bad guy and he is going to kill me.  Every time we read a story, he needs me to point out which ones are the good guys and which ones are the bad guys.

And generally, Seth is just a rough and tumble kind of kid.  He loves to jump off the couch, the table, anything really.  He likes to do kind of these fall somersaults off the couch or futons and do flip like things.  Crazy boy.  He also runs everywhere!  He has never been a huge stroller boy, but now he pretty much runs everywhere.  He is the fastest of all of us – and now that I am getting along in this pregnancy, there is no way that I can keep up with him.  Thankfully, he usually listens and stops when I tell him.  He is a pretty obedient kid, thank heavens.

Seth is still obsessed with all things sports and will spot them instantly anywhere.  He can differentiate between all the major sports – baseball, soccer, basketball, football, tennis.  He always needs to wear sports clothes, day and nights, but thankfully is being a little more liberal in what he considers appropriate wear.  Most fits are still over clothes though – this morning was trying to convince him that wearing a Cardinals baseball cap was not appropriate attire for sacrament meeting.  He plays soccer and basketball every day and wants to play frisbee with Katsu every day, too.  He gets more coordinated by the day and kicks really well and is starting to even catch frisbees, which seems pretty impressive to me.

Seth still loves to read.  He reads to himself and wants me to read to him a minimum of an hour a day, but he spends much more time than that looking at books.  He also loves his puzzles and is getting not too bad at doing jigsaw puzzles.  He likes building things with the Trio blocks, too.

I totally slacked on potty-training this month.  But he is so ready, so I have to do it.  If he has underwear and I set a timer, he will have no accidents.  And there is no lolly-gagging on the potty.  He sits down when I get him to after the timer goes off, does his business, and is done in a minute.  He doesn’t even want me to help him with taking his clothes on and off.  I really need to do it this month.

Fun things this month:

- Hiking at Power Valley.  The boys were so excited to go hiking, it has been awhile, too difficult in the hot, humid weather.  Seth loved it, though he was pretty worn out by the end.

- Getting pictures taken.  They turned out pretty well.  Seth threw an enormous fit right before because he wanted to wear soccer clothes – the only issue was we didn’t have matching ones that were clean, and I was no taking pictures in ones that didn’t match.  I have to have limits at least on picture day!  So, his eyes are a little puffy in the picture, but they look pretty good.

- A few play dates.  Those are always fun.  Yeah!

- A visit to the zoo.  We did almost the whole thing, and even bought a couple bags of animal crackers (I never buy anything there, usually).  We were so tired!

- Riding bikes and having a picnic in Creve Coeur Park.  Seth had a little bit of a hard time because he wanted to ride the bigger bike and I was freaking out because I was sure he would fall off and break his head (besides the whole fact that he can’t pedal).  But it was fun and nice.

- A few Saturday mornings with Dad.  Seth loves being with Dad and doing special things with him.

- A couple trips to the Botanical Gardens.  We were able to see the tree houses before they left and also play in the Children’s garden which is our favorite.  So glad it is not quite so hot anymore.

- Festival of Nations at Tower Grove Park.  We watched a Japanese taiko drum group called Cobu (?).  They were pretty good and we enjoyed it.  We also did some crafts.  We parked pretty far away and walked quite a ways to get there and it was pretty hot so we didn’t stay too long in the end.  We were tired.

Frustrated …

This is a frustrating period in my life, I think.  I always knew I would have a hard time with this whole post-doc period from when I first found out about it, but it’s even less fun than I expected.  So, here’s my venting …

First, this pregnancy is SO frustrating.  I am really starting to feel for people with chronic pain.  Seriously, 3 months of near-constant pelvic pain that shows no signs of abating is awful.  It doesn’t even matter how bad the pain is – I mean, usually it’s more like a 4 or a 5, not so bad, but for it to never go away … sigh.  Who knows if I am going to ever have enough energy to think about having more kids.  I seriously feel like I have been counting down every day of this pregnancy.

Second, we have been really lucky financially because I was always “working” – I mean, that graduate stipend was awesome.  Even though I was really mostly a stay-at-home mom and working every evening and weekend was awful, we never had to really live like students.  Until now, when, ironically, neither of us are students.  It’s hard being a ward and neighborhood with pretty rich people and trying to squeeze 4+ people into a small 2 bedroom apartment.  If we didn’t have a futon, I don’t know if we could do it.  We can barely fit the futons and the crib in our room – in fact, you have to lift up the futons to completely open/shut the door, but it fits.  And our budget is tight … we applied for financial aid at the preschool and with paying for preschool, we have a negative balance every month.  I mean, we have plenty of savings just waiting for the day when we are finally settled and can buy a house, so it’s not really a problem.  But I HATE living like this – just enough money for necessities.  No money for saving for anything, including retirement.  At least it shouldn’t be too much longer ….

And, finally, I still do not like St. Louis.  We like the place itself – lots of festivals, fun free things to do, lots of nice scenery/hiking nearby, etc.  But the people and us are just not a good fit.  We live in a condo at the edge of a neighborhood of pretty rich houses.  I think we have seen like 2-3 kids ever the entire time we have lived here, and we used to go on walks in the neighborhood every day.  The kids usually find someone to play with at the park, but it’s just a one-shot deal, because all of the mothers/fathers/grandparents/nannies are either glued to their smart phones or there with a huge group of other friends and are not up to socialize.  I joined a Washington University association last year in the hopes to make more friends, but mostly it was a whole bunch of Japanese women who did not speak very good English and were so formal it was impossible to get to know them (which is how Japanese people seem to me, in general).  So, that was a fail.  And I can’t really plan the toddler group anymore with a new baby coming, so who knows if I’ll bother going much anymore.

Our ward has also been a very bad fit.  I’ve tried really hard to make friends.  One issue is boundaries – ours are definitely the largest in the metro (ignoring the Spanish ward).  And all the people with preschool children and babies live a good 15-20 minute drive from us, with some a good 30 minute drive away.  It’s frustrating because play dates are hard.  We have done like a handful of playdates the entire time we have lived here.  And I don’t know what is the issue with our ward, but they never have Enrichment.  I think I have gone to like 3 since we moved here – and granted, I didn’t go to many, but still.  I am pretty positive they have had none over the summer, but hard to say, since they don’t make a single announcement in Primary, ever.  Ever.  So, even if there is something, you won’t know until a couple days before when they happen to email it out.  And there is 0 socialization in Primary.  We have separate junior/senior sharing times, so you don’t even seem most of the other Primary teachers either.

So, now, that I am done with my PhD and have more energy (ha ha ha), I decided to run a ward summer play group.  Every week, I picked a park to play at, and purposely picked them all over our ward (which means, most are 15-25 minute drive from us).  The first couple weeks, we had a big showing, but the last 4 weeks or more, we have had only 0-1 people showing.  And the weird thing, I get all these emails/comments saying how wonderful it is I am planning this and trying to fellowship all the young mothers – and all of these people have NEVER come.  I just don’t understand why people are completely uninterested in doing a mom’s group.  I am trying to start up a book club with several other people, so hopefully that has more success.  But, I am really at the point where I give up.  I have never tried to make friends so badly and had so little success.  And I am not a homebody – I really really need social interaction to survive being a stay-at-home mom.  Sigh …

Well, I guess that’s it.

Andrew is 4 years and 3 months old!

Wow.  I am so ready for Andrew to go back to preschool.  I am super-duper worn out this pregnancy and the pelvic pain is just getting worse, so maybe I am being less attentive …. but between the tantrums and the messes.  Yikes.  Andrew has so many tantrums whenever he doesn’t get his way.  It is frustrating.  He pushes things down and just causes havoc.  And the messes!  Today, the boys found my makeup in the short time I was vacuuming – thank heavens it smells so bad or I would have had no idea, but I still couldn’t figure out how to get it off the floor – we had no finger nail polish remover (thankfully, Katsu brought home acetone from work).  And they took an old oatmeal container and filled it with water and put it in a bucket in my bedroom.  Earlier this week, Andrew also took an entire jar of tarragon and dumped it on Seth’s head.  And the boys poured like a half to quarter inch of water on the floor in the bathroom before I discovered it.  Arggghhh!!!!  And this week has been cooler, so we can finally go and play at the park.  The last 3 weeks we have pretty much lived inside.  I hate 105-110 heat indices.

Andrew’s shows just keep evolving and evolving … now, he really works the MCing angle.  This week he starts out like “Hello and welcome.  How is everyone doing today?  Good, good.  Now, how would you feel if <insert weird scenario here, like what if a giant came and picked up your house>?  That would feel bad wouldn’t it.  And you might feel angry too.  Are you ready for the show?”.  I don’t think he really gets stage fright.  He doesn’t mind giving talks at Primary, unlike the other Sunbeams.  He wants to do them off of his board set – so we picked the closest story to his talk topic and then I had him tell the story as I gave him pieces.  He is sure a character.

One of Andrew’s favorite games to play right now is creation.  He says we need to pretend to be Heavenly Father and Jesus and then we reenact the creation, but more like this – first came the cars, then the people, etc. etc.  The game seems to be more like throwing all the toys on the floor to me, but it’s still pretty cute.

Andrew is still loving music.  He sings all the time.  He loves the primary songs and likes to sing along.  But he also loves to sing along to the radio.  He likes Katsu’s radio station choices better than mine, generally.  He especially hates classical music, which he calls “Mommy music”.  His favorite thing to do is listen to Katsu’s techno music and music from America’s got Talent from the internet and dance around to it and do flip shows.

Andrew behaved a little better this week at church.  Maybe my evil eye is helping to do the trick.  Maybe.  We made cinnamon rolls to celebrate.

Andrew still loves reading together.  He is starting to read books to Seth.  I swear, he has almost every book memorized, even the books we get from the library.  I am thinking of starting to teach him to read.  I think it might be a fun thing to do together.

Well, I can’t think of anything else to say about this month.

Fun things this month:

- Very hot summer days, so we have spent lots of time indoors building forts.  And planning music.  And otherwise, driving each other crazy.

- A day at the Science Center.  Andrew loves all the transportation parts and seeing the volcano and tornado and the earthquake.  The boys wanted to build the arches over and over.

- Watching his second movie in the movie theater.  It was so hot, so we went to “How to Train Your Dragon” for free.  Andrew was scared and asked questions seriously every minute or two … “What’s happening, Mom?”  “Is this going to be scary?”  The boys liked pretending to play the arcade games beforehand the best.

- Zoo with Mom and Dad!  Andrew enjoyed petting the sting rays (the main reason we came) and loved playing at the Children’s Zoo.  We even saw a children’s animal show there – the first time we had seen one.  Andrew likes seeing most of the animals – except the butterflies and penguins for some reason (maybe because Seth likes them?).

- Two puppet shows.  One at the library.  And one at the mall in Kansas City on our trip.  Andrew thinks they are so funny – he has the cutest, most infectious laugh.

- Our trip to Kansas City!  Andrew loved swimming the most at the hotel pool/waterpark and requested going so much.  He enjoyed the audio headsets at the Truman museum.  He was pretty non-interested in the church sites, though he thought the lady showing him the organ at the Community of Christ temple was pretty cool.  And he was excited to see Liberty Jail.  It must have impressed him because he saw a picture in a book of Liberty Jail (I don’t even know if I would have recognized it) and he started telling me about it.  He loved the train related stuff we saw at Union Station and especially eating at Fritz and waiting to see when the train would bring our food.  He really liked looking into the trenches at the World War I museum.  He liked stamping his passport anywhere at the Hallmark museum and seeing his bow being made.

- Several play dates, yay!  Probably as many as we have had since we moved here.  He is making friends with some of the new boys in the ward which is great. 

- Hiking at Power Valley.  The boys were so excited to go hiking, it has been awhile, too difficult in the hot, humid weather.  Andrew loved it, until he started complaining about being out of energy about halfway through.  But he was very attentive and saw deer all by himself.

- Getting pictures taken.  They turned out pretty well, even though Andrew spilled water on his shirt just before they were taken.  When I was trying to choose what portraits to get, he started crying when he heard we weren’t going to get the CD.  I was so focused on trying to overcome the pushy sales person, I didn’t even realize until we left that he thought it was a music CD.  Silly boy.

Trip to Kansas City: Day 3

We woke up, had breakfast, and spent some last time in the pool, before grabbing some more breakfast, packing up and getting in the car.  Then, we headed over to Liberty Jail.  The boys were excited to see Liberty Jail – even Seth was talking about Joseph Smith and how mean people were in Missouri.  We had to wait a little while because there was a big bus tour before us, so we entertained the boys with the camera and video camera.  Andrew took some interesting videos.

I really really enjoyed the sister missionary who gave our tour.  After the Independence Visitor Center, I figured it would behoove me to read a bit more about Liberty before going, so I read the Missouri chapters in the Church History Institute manual.  But this sister told us lots of history – about the jail itself (it went on to become an icehouse, which just goes to show how cold it was that winter), about all the people who were involved, about the history of the church at that time period in Missouri.  Between that and my reading I feel like I have a much more solid grasp of this part of Church history now.  After talking for awhile (poor Katsu missed half of it because Seth would just not behave), we then went into see the reconstructed Liberty Jail.  I didn’t realize that they used the foundation and part of the original stones, nor that the church had used it to house missionaries and help Sacrament meetings in it before restoring it to the original jail.  And that the reason that they could restore it so well was that a Church historian had seen it back in the last 1800s and recorded lots of information about it, enough details to figure out how to rebuild it.  The sister told us so much about each of the men jailed there and the trials they went through.  It was really inspiring and inspired us all to handle our trials better and trust in the Lord and really gave more meaning to those sections of the D&C received there.  I have to say this was my favorite church history site I have visited, I think.  Seth fell asleep during the presentation, so it was even relatively quiet.

We decided we didn’t have enough time to see all the church history sites, but we wanted to stop in Richmond on the way back, where the prophet was originally jailed and also where there were tombstones of 2 of the 3 witnesses.  Turns out that the map the church gave us wasn’t as great as we thought.  We drove right past all the sites in Richmond – turns out they were on Business highway 10 not highway 10.  The only reason we turned around was because the highway was flooded and the only way back to the main highway was to go back through Richmond again.  After some trial and error, we finally found the sites.  Thankfully, the boys were both napping this whole time, so there weren’t any complaints from them.

We enjoyed the little cemetery in Richmond and the monument.  It was definitely worth seeing and the boys woke up and “explored” with us.

We went to a nearby McDonalds for lunch.  It took forever, but the boys loved it.  It is always the highlight of the trip – plus, I told them we could go to McDonald’s on our vacation when they have been begging for it this last month.  Then, we stopped at McDonald’s seriously like 15 minutes later because Andrew had to go again.  Lucky for him, we were close, because before that there was only fields and fields of corn and soy beans and nothing else.  After stopping at Walmart for some snacks, we finally made our way back to highway 70 and drove the whole way home.  What a trip!

Trip to Kansas City: Day 2

We originally weren’t sure what else we wanted to see in Kansas City.  I had talked to a couple friends from church who have lived in Kansas City and people who have been there before and the general consensus was there is not much “must-see” sites there.  But, of course, I refused to go to Kansas City and not see it (of course, we never made it over to Kansas, actually, but we did see Kansas City, MO).  So, after scouring tour books and the internet, I think we had a great day in Kansas City.

We left the hotel and drove downtown along kind of an alternate route (fearing some heard-of construction), but it drove us right along the river and then straight into downtown and it was pretty scenic.  Kansas City seemed to have a nice downtown.  Both Detroit and St. Louis kind of have a dead downtown.  St. Louis has some nice parts, of course, but most of the city itself just seems like miles and miles of … nothing.  And Detroit really is dead.  But Kansas City seemed to have a nice vibe to it.  Surprisingly, Kansas City has tons of fountains (I think second only to somewhere in Italy) and we kept our eyes peeled – there were a lot of nice fountains.  Some of the architecture was really nice, too.  I especially liked the convention center and Union Station.  We got a lot of nice pictures of the city later.

We stopped first at the National World War I Museum.  I was a bit skeptical at first – no one I know had been there.  And why in Kansas City?  But I had recently read Fall of Giants by Ken Follett about the first world war, so it has been on my mind.  And I’m a sucker for museums.  So, we decided to try it out.  It was great.  There is a very large monument there.  Apparently, it was built shortly after WWI because KC residents raised $2.5 mil in just 10 days in 1919 to put it up – that to me is astounding.  So, that is why it is in KC.  Recently, the WW1 museum was built below the monument and the monument was restored.  So, the museum is really new and really nice. 

First, we explored the grounds until the museum opened.  They had a film and then the exhibits.  On one half of the museum, the side of the exhibits showed examples of trenches from the different countries and you could peek in.  The boys LOVED the trenches.  In fact, today they played war all day and built their own trenches (I am not so sure how I feel about that).  The whole time we were wandering around the museum Andrew kept saying “It’s so sad that all these people were killed”, so at least he gets that perspective of war, too.  They also had really high tech exhibits.  The boys loved parts that had holograms or moving pictures or the area where you could use little light clickers to move things around on the screen and learn about the war.  You should have seen the propaganda poster that  Andrew made – the busiest thing ever.

Afterwards, we took an elevator and then climbed the last 45 steps up to the top of the memorial to see the views of KC (shown before).  Me and the boys were a little scared of the wind – it felt so exposed – so Katsu stuck around a little longer by himself and took some pictures.

Afterwards, we went to Crown Centre, a nearby mall, that seemed like it had some fun stuff to see and was most importantly indoors.  We arrived just in time to see the puppet show.

Then, I had read about the coolest restaurant to eat, Fritz Railroad restaurant.  To reduce staffing needs, the owner developed a little train that actually brings the food directly to your table.  I knew it was a must.  The food is the typical burger fare – pretty small servings, but very cheap, and the line was pretty long, but it moved fast.  The boys got railroad caps, and loved watching the trains – both the ones that deliver the food, and the model trains that run around the restaurant.  You even order your food by telephone.  It was fun!

Luckily, the mall is connected in the air by walkways to Union Station, so we decided to check it out.  We wanted Seth to fall asleep in his stroller, but he wanted to run.  We finally acquiesed.  The boys loved running around.  But they also loved the train exhibit there about Union Station when it was really up and running – it kind of reminded me of St. Louis’ transportation museum, but indoors.  And they really loved the model train exhibit – best part, they were both free.

We “ran” (okay, mostly just Seth, and then Andrew & Katsu when they were running to the bathroom) back to the mall and tried some ice cream concrete (yummy!) while watching some fountains and explored a Rainforest exploration exhibit (way too crowded) and watched fudge being made and got some licks off the spoon.  Then, we went to the Hallmark Visitor’s Center (the headquarters are also at the mall).  The boys liked watching how embossed cards are made, stamping passports at each of the 6 stations, and seeing bows being made (and getting their own).  We even got a Hallmark book free to bring home.  At this point we were tired, so we headed back to the hotel, the boys took a nap on the way home, and then we relaxed, went to eat at Olive Garden (needed something less greasy), and spent time at the pool before going to bed.  Katsu mostly dealt with the boys – I think I overextended myself a little bit and was either having stomach cramps or contractions.  But after water and resting, I felt much better.   We went to bed with the boys on this trip – late for them, but early for us, so we were sleeping 10 hours a night!  What a relaxing trip.

Trip to Kansas City: Day 1

We took a quick little trip to Kansas City this last weekend.  Katsu has spent the last couple months working like a maniac on grants.  Just when I finished my PhD and stopped working at nights, Katsu has been staying up to 12 or later almost every night.  One night, he worked his full 8+ hour work day and then worked again from 8p-4a at home on his grants.  Insane.  Anyways, we needed to get out of town for a bit and we can’t afford much more than a weekend road trip. 

Plus, it has been HOT here (and the whole rest of the country I know), but seriously, we are starting our second week on a excessive heat advisory because everyday our heat index is 105-115.  And seeing that our actual temperature almost never hits 100, the humidity is BAD.  Very bad.  Very bad for pregnant lazy me who is already tired always.  We basically have been house hermits.  So, while we stayed indoors as much as possible on our trip (it’s hot in Kansas City, too), it was nice to have a change of scenery.

To the trip:

The kids woke up early, so we were on the road by about 7:40 am and drove pretty much straight through to Independence.  We stopped and ate at Gates BBQ, KC is well known for BBQ.  The food was very good – I liked it much better than the last bbq place I went to in Texas.  The meat was much less sauced, less sweet, and less fatty.  The kids weren’t too impressed with the food (the sausage especially was too spicy), but liked the fries and ate some of the sandwiches.  The main problem was the dining area did not appear to be airconditioned and it was HOT.  I was starting to go a little crazy at the end.

Then, we went to Truman’s Presidential Museum.  I did not know much about Truman before visiting the museum, and like all the presidential museums I have been to, I really liked it.  Truman really seemed like a guy who just feel into being the president (the president FDR died, so he as vice president became president; but seriously, he had only met with the president 2 times before the president died!).  And he had hard decisions to make – bombing of Hiroshima, how to end and ease out of WWII without killing the economy, the cold war, lots of stuff.  He had a ton of great ideas, which unfortunately didn’t all get implemented.  He even wanted national health care as part of the end of WWII Fair Deal.  Too bad that didn’t go through.  Anyways, we loved the museum.  The kids did really well.  There were lots of headsets where you could listen to people from the time talking about the time period or speeches or stuff like that.  The kids loved it.  The downstairs also had more kid-oriented activities like making campaign buttons.  It was a lot of fun.

Next, we went to the Community of Christ temple.  They were having an organ recital at 3:30 that we thought might be nice.  We toured the temple first (way smaller than I remember as a kid), and then were the only guests for the organ recital.  The organist talked to us for awhile and then played away.  The organ is very nice and definitely the most impressive part of the temple.  Afterwards, she let the boys come up and see how the organ works and all the different stops and pedals and registers.  The boys were pretty fascinated with it.  Then, we took a few quick pictures outside in the blazing heat.

Next, we went to see the temple lot.  Pretty small and anticlimatic, but I had read online that if you go the Church of Christ (temple lot), you can see the original corner stones, so we went in for the tour.  Kudos to this church for having toys for kids to play with while we got the whole spiel.  There was already a couple there before us, and I think the tour guide person was kind of antagonistic to them, because he kept saying “Well, if you read in the Bible and Book of Mormon, you will see that this is really true …”.  I actually thought this church was WAY more consistent than the Community of Christ.  But pretty much, they are a pretty tiny church with the main claim to fame that they own the temple lot and the cornerstones.

Then, we finally went to our church’s visitor center.  I really liked the displays at the top – the kids loved the videos you could select and watch from the Book of Mormon – and I had never seen them either.  I thought they were well done.  Downstairs, though, we had to take a guided tour, typical to most church history sites – talk a bit and watch a little video, “How did that make you feel”, awkward pause, continue to the next station.  The kids were loud and didn’t want to sit still and honestly, I only heard about half of it.  I was really surprised about the lack of history that they told about the church members in Independence (granted they were only there for like 2 years) and also how much they downplayed the physical concept of Zion (especially considering that at least as I understand it, this site is supposed to be Zion and the New Jerusalem).  But thankfully, they had a really area for the kids to play at the end – hooray!  And they had a “good” brochure to show were all the other church sites were.

 

The boys both fell asleep in the car, even though it was like 5:30 pm, sigh.  We found a Little Ceasars for pizza for our movie night (after quite a bit of being lost) and then headed to Liberty where our hotel was.  I found the best hotel and we even had a gift card we got for using our credit card during Christmas for a hotel that helped defray part of the cost.  It had an indoor water park.  A small one, but still WAY better than an outdoor pool and better than an indoor pool.  It had one slide that only Katsu could go on – boy it went fast – I was afraid he would fly out and he splashed water everywhere when he went down.  But there was a little kid slide and also things that were spraying water everywhere (the kids actually weren’t too fond of that).  That area was only 1 foot deep – hooray!  And the rest was only 3 foot deep, so it was really easy to watch the boys in.  And the décor was cute.  The water was a little cold (Seth’s lips kept turning blue), but the boys loved it and we went swimming on each of the 3 days.  The room was nice, too.  We had a king bed with a foldout couch and the boys slept on that and it worked really well.  It was really nice, classy décor.  And the shower, wow – instead of Miami which just had a swinging door, this shower had NO door.  Seriously, it just kind of turned a corner and that was it.  But, it was really nice.  Better than the cheapest-hotel-we-could-find that we usually stay in.  It was a fun, but hot day.