Sip This It Will Sweat and Relax You

Sip this, it will sweat and relax you. She said it twice, which is good because I didn't quite catch it the first time. The other thing I didn't quite catch was, "Take off your towel and get in the tub." I'm sorry, what did you say to do with my towel? "Take it off and get in the tub." Wait, what?

I'll start at the beginning. While we were vacationing in Hot Springs, Arkansas,


also known as the Hometown of Bill Clinton,

I decided to partake of the thermal baths. I like little slices of Americana Pie, so if Al Capone and Babe Ruth have sought the healing powers of the thermal baths, then I should try it too. I later learned that Al Capone may have been trying to cure syphilis, but I was just trying to relax.

People have been seeking the healing powers of the Hot Springs for thousands of years. Or something like that, I think the National Park Brochure is in Luke's room, and the website seems to start with the white people in the 1700's. Anywho, Hot Springs had it's heyday in the late 1800's early 1900's. We stayed in the Historic Arlington Hotel,

which was reviewed highly by Family Fun Magazine. It had a gorgeous lobby, and I guess George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Yoko Ono, and Barbara Streisand have stayed there. Possibly in the presidential suite? , but probably not in our room, which was very historic. But it had a pretty view.

Know this though: Reserving a crib in advance, and then calling again in advance to make sure you have a crib is a waste of time. Also, asking for a crib 3 more times will get you nowhere. But if you say that you have asked for a crib 6 times, then a manager will call you half an hour later and ask if you have a crib yet, and if you say no, then you will soon get a crib. On the second day of your visit.

But back to the bath! So I read a review in Family Fun magazine about a mom and daughter who went and had the hot springs bath plus a massage for $60.00. And the whole thing takes 90 minutes. I thought it sounded great. Then at the family reunion, a few days before our trip to Hot Springs, someone who had been there said something about how they rub you to get your circulation going. That sounded a little odd. But then I was looking at a brochure for the Buckstaff Bath House and the attendants looked like my grandma, and therefore nice and business-like. And here is a picture from the Buckstaff brochure:
See? So modest! Of course, I went to the Arlington, not the Buckstaff. (And the ladies I met in the sauna said the Arlington is the best.) Baths and massages can be booked 4 months in advance, but when you wait until 20 minutes before you want one, you end up with an appointment at 7:30 am the next day. Jack had been getting me up around 6:30 every day, so this was no problem for me. I checked in, and the people were really nice and they gave me the impression that someone would be there to guide me through every step, etc. I went through the big door and looked around for the attendant. After a while, I found her napping on a couch, so I just wandered around trying to figure out what to do next until she woke up. She handed me a towel with velcro around the top to change into, and a key for a locker. I would classify myself as medium sized, but when I tried to wrap the towel around me, there was only a tiny bit of overlapping velcro. I had to wrap it loosely to get the velcro to stick. I guess the average bather is a lot bigger? Thermal baths are supposed to be a treatment for obesity, so maybe. Then I went to the bath section where I met the bath house attendant, whose name I forgot but she was the Bath House Employee of the Year. (Per her name tag, which I obviously only partially memorized.) I am going to call her Susan. She said, "Head down to tub number 5, take your towel off, leave your key on your wrist." That is where the confusion started with me not really understanding what she said to do with the towel. The baths were in a little private room, and I went in there and was staring at the tub trying to work out the logistics of where to put the towel and how to get in gracefully, since it was pretty deep, and really early in the morning. The next thing I knew, Susan was in there. "Take your towel off and get in." The rest of our conversations were pretty one sided with me either saying "OK." Or "Yes." It helped that she was pretty bossy and business like.

"Drink this it will sweat and relax you." (Hot Mineral Water.)
"Drink this it will sweat and relax you."
"How you feel? You feel good."
"How you feel? You feel good."
"Lift your leg."
"Other leg."
"Left your arm."
"Other arm."
Wait, you are really scrubbing me with a loofah? Weird. At least it will be only my arms and legs. Oh, and my stomach. Hmm.
"How you feel, you feel good?"
At this point I got to put my towel back on and keep it on until the massage. Modesty, restored!
Then it was off to the sauna, where I met three other really nice ladies, one of whom was on the far other end of the towel fitting spectrum.
"How you feel, you feel good?"
Then I laid on a cot and Susan wrapped hot towels around my legs, arms, body, and head and put a cold towel on my face. She continued to replace the cold towels until I cooled off from the bath and sauna. Then off for a massage. I liked Susan, and I really recommend her, assuming that is her name. Just ask for the employee of the year, 2007.

Long story longer, we also went to the Alligator Farm and Petting Zoo,

a Mineral Water museum,

shopping, out on Lake Hamilton,

and Luke went horse back riding. So, so fun. Then we toured the historic bath house and National Park visitor center, which was eerily similar to the actual bathhouse that I had experienced. I was sort of glad that I did the tour last.


There was lots of sweating and relaxing. What more could you ask of a family vacation?

Oh. No.

So much to write about, so little desire to sit in front of a computer during vacation. Alas, I think I start in reverse order and write about our vacation last, Dave's birthday second last, and first I'll write about the total insanity that transpired at our house today. And by "write about" I mean, "post pictures" and comment with lots of exclamation points!!!

I had an inkling this would happen, so I was able to catch it on film! But I wasn't quite fast enough. Jack went from this:

To this:

faster than I could snap a photo and still get his whole head in the picture!!! All my attempts to thwart his progress towards crawling have caused the sublimation of his mild desire to crawl into a burning desire to stand up and walk. Time to baby proof. For reals! For reals. (As Luke would say.)

We're Back!

We are back from our trip to Arkansas! Did you miss me? I scheduled a bunch of posts to appear while we were gone to keep things interesting. I have lots of fodder for future posts, but for now I'll just say that we had a great time, and our road trip went very well. I have lots of great pictures and I even located the card reader, but alas, I can't find the camera. (This picture of Luke is Aunt Audrey's*.)

But, I will just share these two big milestones:
Luke rode a horse!
Jack got a tooth!

(Aunt Audrey is actually cousin Audrey, but since she was Aunt Audrey even in her own internal dialog this week, I'll just go with it.)

Now and Then

Sometimes when I am taking pictures of Jack, I try to recreate poses that I took of Luke. I feel very proud of myself for remembering those old pictures so well. Then after I have taken the pictures I go back and compare. Hmm, not exactly the same. It's funny to see that chubby little face and all that drool though.

Jack:


Luke:

Don't Mess With Me and My Cheerios

Fake Cry

Don't feel bad, he is just practicing his fake cry. It's pretty cute and effective, right? I'm onto you. Jack!

Finally, Some Focus on My Oldest Child

Tired of all the focus on Jack eating in his highchair? So was Bean. "It's baby this and baby that. What about poor Bean? You'd think no one ever ate mashed, strained food before. Oh, now he gets cheerios, whoop de fricken doo. Ooooh. Finally. There is something in this for Me."

Creative Dinner Solutions

I think my day can be summed up like this: I fed Luke dinner at the grocery store while I was shopping. He had most of a chicken tender, a slice of cheese, and lollipop. We had had appetizers at the park that included carrots and apple juice, but I would have to say this may be a new low. And even though I said, "This will be a fun adventure, what do you think we'll find to eat for dinner?" he still said, "What's for dinner?" when we got home. So I made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

(The photo is of Luke, probably around 6 months.)

L'eggo My Lego

This morning, it was my turn to do the day care drop off, and before Dave left he helped me make sure everyone was dressed, sunscreened, fed and ready for school. Then as he was leaving he noticed we only cleared half the dinner dishes. From the front porch. Classy! This is important to the story because I think some baby food dripped onto the floor when he was bringing dishes in. I hope it was baby food at least.

Dave was out the door on his bike, and I was making the first trip out to the garage to load up my bike. Pump, lunch, bottles, attach trailer to bike. On my way out the door I heard, "Ewww! Yuck! Ewww! What is that?! Eww!" It looked like a tiny drip of baby food. It was brown and gooey, so let's just all agree that it was baby food. I said I would wipe it up in a second after I got back in from the garage because my hands were full.

Before I could finish attaching the trailer to the bike, Luke was at the door sobbing. "He ate it! Bean ate it!" The baby food? Sweet, problem solved. "NO! He ate my green lego! He ate it, and it's gone and now I will never, ever, ever be able to make the castle again! I want you to get it out of him!" Hmm, well, yeah I can't do that. I do suspect that the lego must have had baby food on it too, because Bean doesn't really eat plastic unless it is wrapped around cheese, chocolate, tortillas, cookies, any other type of food, or garbage. And the baby food spot on the floor had disappeared too so at least I didn't have to clean that up. But the really bad part was that I have been reading Parents magazine (aka 1001 ways your kids could die magazine) in the lactation room, so instead of saying, "That is what you get for not putting your toys away" or even "Hey, maybe leaving your legos on the floor is a bad idea!" I had to say, "Wow, I bet you are really sad that Bean ate your lego. I understand how you feel. I don't like it when Bean eats my things either." This was supposed to calm him down.

It didn't work, of course and when we were 3 blocks away he mentioned that his teeth were covered in boogers from all the sobbing. I contemplated my options but I didn't see any soft leaves around, and I didn't want to use my shirt to clean him up, so I road home to get kleenex. Which he used to wipe the boogers off his teeth. Off. His. Teeth. I just threw up a little thinking about it.

Then we rode another block and I started trying to cheer him up by mentioning that today was field trip day! Yea! Field trip day! And that is when I remembered that I forgot the car seat. So I turned around and got the car seat. And then we rode the rest of the way to school and work and I got there sometime just slightly before lunch.

Dun de dun duh, Dun de DAH!

Jack had his first non friend/relative babysitter on Saturday. (Milestone for Mommy.) OK, we hired one of the teachers from the daycare, so it's sort of cheating since she is a professional. Dave and I had dinner, drinks and we saw a movie. I was thinking I could do one of those mastercard, or visa or whatever "Priceless" commercials. But first of all, that has been done to death. And secondly, I can only mentally add up some of the cost without thinking maybe it would have been better spent paying for a year of Jack's college tuition.

Then I keep reminding myself about how I didn't see the 3rd Indiana Jones because I went to the theater at the Great Northern Mall with my friend Kristen, and when we found out that ticket prices had gone up from $5.00 to $5.50, we just couldn't justify that extra 50 cents. That was 19 years ago. If I had seen the movie I am sure I would remember how good it was. Instead I am thinking about all the interest I have earned off those 2 quarters. (At 4% compounded annually for 19 years, it's $1.05, or approximately enough to pay a babysitter for just slightly more than 6 minutes.)

But enough about how cheap I am.

We saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and it was awesome! At first I was thinking it was sort of cheesy, but then Dave reminded me that Indiana Jones is very, awesomely cheesy. I really wish I would have saved that poster I had of Harrison Ford in my room for all those years. Sadly, I was not able to find a replica in 30 seconds of internet searching. OK, I searched for another 30 seconds. I don't think this was it exactly, but it's close.