What to do?!?

I knew I was taking a risk by joining Facebook. A lot of my former students are on Facebook and while I liked most of them well enough, I don't know that I want them to know where I live or have access to my kids' pictures.

I set my profile and pics to "private" and have been very careful about who I "friended". I deleted my blog address on my profile and I even chose to not join my high school's group (I taught at the same school I went to).

But one of my students found me through another contact and has requested that I "friend" her. She was a sweet, smart kid and I don't mind having contact with her, but a lot of her friends are my former students, too. Which means they might make the same request. So it's the old snowball effect.......

So do I "friend" her or ignore her? I don't like being mean, but I don't want to have too much contact with my other students, either.

Help!! Advice, anyone?

Letters

Dear Stomach Virus,

Please leave my daughter's body. And while you're at it, leave the rest of us alone, too.

Thanks in advance,
Jana

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Dear Sydney,

If you're too sick to go to school, then you're too sick to watch TV all day. Be prepared to take a nap.

Love,
Mom

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Dear Pharmacy,

If you only have one register open and have seven people waiting in line for that one register, you might want to think about moving the clerk at the completely unused cosmetics register to the second one in the pharmacy. I'm just sayin'.

Thanks,
Jana

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Dear Lady in Line at the Pharmacy,

Socks with high heels? Really? Is there a new trend that I'm unaware of?

Totally out of the fashion loop,
The lady in line behind you

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Dear Liam,

If I survive your toddlerhood without getting any gray hairs, it will be a miracle. I love you more than life itself, but, Dude, the tantrums have got to stop.

Love,
Mommy

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Dear Snotty Moms in my Old Neighborhood,

The world does extend beyond the Loop and even the Beltway. And the world does not revolve around you and your opinions. Get over yourselves.

Sincerely,
Jana

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And lastly, a real/non-sarcastic one:

Dear Ms. School Nurse,

Thank you for being so sweet to my sick little girl and taking care of her for the two hours she was in your office. I hope all of my kids get to have you as their school nurse.

Much appreciation,
Sydney's mom

New Links

I may be taking a bit of a blogging break, but I thought I could at least muster the energy to update my blogroll off to the left. Stop by and take a look at some of my new favorites:


You can find RachelAnn at Life of a Single Girl. She's a real life Carrie Bradshaw who lets me live vicariously through her. She gets to take business trips to NYC and even has her own Mr. Big. I'm quite envious. Of course, the horrible blind date she wrote about today makes me glad that I'm done with dating.

My friend Shiran became a dad six weeks ago (has it really been six weeks already?). You can read about parenthood through a new dad's eyes at hipdad. I love mom blogs, but his perspective really gets me thinking.

You can find Sherri at The Sakson Family. Sherri and her husband, Will, are real-life friends of ours. Their daughter, Zoe, is pals with Sydney. Grab a glass a wine and check out her funny take on life. :)

The "Blog" of Unnecessary Quotation Marks makes fun of signs that use quotation marks all willy nilly. It's a must read if grammatical errors are a pet peeve for you like they are for me.

Cake Wrecks shows pictures of cakes gone wrong. Having created a few bad cakes of my own, I find this one pretty funny. If you're a fan of cupcake cakes, you might not want to follow this one since the author seems to have a personal vendetta against them. Also, some of the cakes are not meant for little eyes, so please be advised.


Anyway, hopefully I'll get some bloggy inspiration soon. Until then, I hope you'll check some of my new reads. Happy reading, everyone!

Blahs

I've had the blogging blahs lately. Several posts have been floating around in my head, but I haven't had the energy or motivation to do anything with them. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's because I've been busy finishing books for my book clubs. Or maybe it's because I'm back to eating healthy to lose those last seven stubborn baby weight pounds and the lack of flavorful food is stifling my creativity.

I thought about writing about how the boys and I have been sick this past week. But everyone else seems to be sick, too, and there's no point complaining about sore throats and runny noses when everyone else has them, too. Plus, I didn't want to gross you all out by discussing Evan's nose that is currently doubling as a snot faucet or Liam's cough that is so violent that it makes him vomit up orange juice smoothie all over my off-white carpet.

Then there's the conversation that Sydney and I had at the dinner table last week. It was a continuation of the birds and bees conversation from last October. She asked me just exactly how God put babies into mommies' tummies. Of course, Ryan was at band practice so I got to field the question all by myself while trying to eat my dinner, feed Evan his dinner and keep Liam from throwing his across the table. She came up with the answer of "magic" which I know is not exactly truthful, but she seemed satisfied and I was too tired to try to deal with the boys and come up with an another answer. Rest assured, she'll get more of the truth as she grows older, but she is only five years old and there's no point confusing her with more than she currently wants to know. She went on to ask how the first person got on earth if there was no mommy to carry him in her tummy. I thought that was pretty profound for a kindergartner. After Liam went to bed, she and I read the Creation story out of her study Bible and she enjoyed it so much that we've been reading her Bible to her each night before bed. She was quite excited when this past Sunday's sermon was on the Creation story as well. For a minute there I became paranoid and thought our church's minister was spying on us or something.

I also thought about telling you how stupid I am for being duped by author William Goldman. See, Santa brought me the 30th anniversary edition of The Princess Bride. Having never read the book, I devoured the forward and then became convinced that Florin was a real place (like many of the small European provinces/principalities that were absorbed by larger, more powerful kingdoms). I was all ready to throw out my dream of spending a week on Santorini so that we could go to the Morgenstern Museum to see Buttercup's wedding dress and Inigo's sword. After doing some googling because I just knew it couldn't be true, I found out that the entire plot surrounding the Princess Bride was fabricated by Goldman. (Just so you know, I already knew that the plot of story itself is fictional, but if you read the book, you'll understand what I mean about the "surrounding story.") The man is quite the storyteller, that's for sure. Ryan said I should suggest the book as a selection for my book club just to see if everyone else gets just as drawn into the story. Judging from the comments on various de-bunking sites, I most definitely was not alone. I feel better knowing that I'm not the only idiot on earth.

But then, I thought about how I could write about my latest dental woes. To put it mildly, I have horrible teeth. I brush, floss, rinse and do everything you're supposed to, but I was just dealt a terrible genetic hand in the dental department. My new dentist did a full work-up on me today and pretty much ordered me to go back to my root canal dentist for another root canal (it would be #5 for me) or something that sounds even worse than a root canal. I'll spare you the details, but it sounds about as much fun as spending time in a Turkish prison. On the upside, if I have to have it done, I won't have a problem losing those last seven baby weight pounds.

So, there you go: four potential posts, none of which is particularly witty or interesting. I'm hoping the blogging blahs dissipate soon, otherwise I just might have to blow my New Year's diet to get the juices flowing again and then I'll never lose those last few pounds.

This Week's Lessons

I learned this week that.....

....toddlers who won't nap at Mother's Day Out will inconveniently fall asleep on the drive home.

....when you tell your spouse there's something wrong with the vehicle, the vehicle will cooperate for the spouse when he checks out the supposed problem.

....infants can sleep sitting up.

....when you feed your infant pureed blueberries, you shouldn't be surprised when his teeny tiny tushie is dyed blue approximately twelve hours later. (Think Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.)

....when you sign up for Face Book, you'll find out that even though only about fifteen people in your graduating class talked to you while you were actually in high school, about fifty of them want to talk to you now.

....you should be grateful that the biggest problem in your new neighborhood is bored kids throwing cans of peas at the siding on nearby houses (I kid you not) when you hear about an armed robbery nine blocks from your old house in the city.

....when you tell people that your infant will crawl "any minute", your infant will decide that crawling is suddenly not interesting and will refuse to do it.

....the apple truly doesn't fall far from the tree when your child gets in trouble for reading a library book during her math lesson at school.

....just when you get the urge to do some major organizing and decorating ($$$), the property tax bill will arrive.

....even though you've already got three of them, you're overwhelmed, tired and pretty sure you can't handle any more, deciding to not have any more kids still makes you sad.

Hair Update & a Nap Dilemma

The haircut went quite well. The salon was cute and clean, the stylist was nice, she cut my hair exactly how I wanted it cut (without having to see a picture) and one of the other stylists played with Evan the whole time so that he wouldn't fuss. And at $25, the price was just right, too. So I think we have a winner in the hair salon department.

I'd show you a picture, but a) I didn't take one because b) it doesn't look all that different. I decided to not do anything drastic until I found a new stylist that I trusted. So maybe next time, OK?

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In other news, Liam decided that his big boy bed wasn't so bad after all. He's slept in it every night for a week, but I'm having problems getting him to nap in it. He keeps getting out of his bed to play even though there is nothing else in his room other than his dresser and glider. His idea of playing includes pulling the door stoppers off, playing with the doorknob and pulling the phone cord out of the wall.

Any ideas on how to keep him in it? At two years old, he still needs a nap and I need some quiet time. We never had this problem with Sydney (once the rail was up, she stayed in bed until we got her up) so I'm at a loss.

Anybody Out There?

Apparently today is National DeLurking Day. I'd post the cute little logo that everyone else is using to announce it, but I'm computer illiterate and can't figure out how.

So, if you're a reader, please post a comment to let me know you're here. It's nice to know who my audience is.

Thanks!

The End of an Era

I never thought I'd be a cheater. Loyalty is one of my strong suits and once someone becomes part of my life, I remain loyal to them for years, decades even. The fact that some of my current closest friends attended high school with me and that I married someone I met in fourth grade proves that I tend to keep people close to me for long periods of time. But next week that will change.

I've been in a relationship with a particular person since I was twelve years old. Twenty years is a long time to know someone. I don't see them very often (every other month or so), but they've watched me go from high school to college to teaching to parenting. And except for one minor incident in college (because don't we all go a little wild in college?), I've remained loyal to this person.

But, next Tuesday I will be cheating on this person. Actually, I'm breaking up with this person and I feel terrible about it, especially since they don't know that I'm abandoning our relationship. However, the distance between us has increased and we've just grown apart.

Yes, folks, next week I'm going to be cheating on my hairdresser.

I think she knows my hair better than I do and cuts it exactly how I ask for it to be cut every single time. And she knows me so well that she can predict when I'm going to march in and say, "Cut it all off!" She fixed my hair for prom. She fixed the bad haircut I got when I cheated on her while in college. She got up early and fixed my hair for my 11 am wedding for free. (Don't worry, she was well tipped) After Sydney was born, she called my mom to check on me. She gave both Sydney and Liam their first haircuts. I love her.

But now that we live in The Land of Fruit, her salon is 40 miles away (remember - Houston is a very spread out city) and I just can't make the drive anymore. It takes an hour to get there and an hour to get back, I have to pay $7 in tolls, use half a tank of gas and I have to find sitters for the kids for that time. It's just too much.

So I'm trying someone new next week. I hope it works out. She could be my hairdresser for the next twenty years.

Whew!

When Sydney was sick back in December, she had a terrible case of tonsillitis. Her fever spiked to 103.6F and one tonsil was so swollen that the pediatrician sent us to the Medical Center* for an emergency consult with a pediatric ENT (talk about the longest day ever). We were warned that her tonsils might have to come out.

We went back to the ENT today for a tonsil re-check and to discuss the "procedure." It turns out that one tonsil is still larger than the other, but he is not pushing for removal just yet. We're going to monitor the situation and go back for another check in 6 months.

Sydney was happy to hear that she wouldn't have to have them removed. But she did admit that she still wanted to have the ice cream that we'd promised her. :)


* If you haven't heard of it, the Medical Center is a basically an entire city of hospitals within Houston. There are thirteen hospitals, two medical schools, four nursing schools, hundreds of doctor's offices and what seems like fewer than 15 parking spots for the 80,000 people who pass through it daily. And while I'm glad to have such a wonderful resource nearby, it's a nightmare to navigate.

Holiday Wrap-up and Randomness

* Thanks to split families and traveling relatives, we had no fewer than four Christmas celebrations this year. That's a lot of presents and food. And, to Sydney's dismay, a lot of thank you cards. One of my favorite gifts this year was this apron from Ryan. Fits me to a T and cracks me up every time I look at it.

* One of the funnier moments this Christmas was when we sang "Happy Birthday" to Jesus on Christmas morning. My mom had placed two candles in our coffee cake and Liam thought we were singing to him. After all, it was just a little over a month ago when we put two candles in a cake and sang to him. Poor little guy was so disappointed when Sydney blew out the candles; we re-lit them and let him blow them out, too.

* One of the saddest moments this Christmas was when my camera officially died on Christmas Eve. My mom has loaned me hers for the time being, but it will have to be returned soon. That little camera recorded a lot of big moments for us.

* I came to the realization that we are, in fact, old and boring people. Our New Year's Eve was spent on the road home from New Orleans. We put the kids to bed as usual and tried to stay up until midnight, but wound up going to bed at 11 pm. How sad is that?

* Evan is thisclose to crawling. Any minute now, really. I'm proud, but a little sad at the same time.

* We set up Liam's big boy bed yesterday. It's actually the shorter trundle bed that goes under Sydney's twin bed, but we figured it's a good starter bed for him. We've been giving him the choice of sleeping in it or his crib. Last night he chose the bed, but kept getting out of it, so we put him back in his crib. For nap time today, he chose his bed, but five minutes later was trying to climb into his crib after having thrown his lovey and quilt into it. Guess he's just not quite ready yet.

* I think meteorologists have no idea what they're talking about. For months we heard that this winter was going to be the coldest, wettest winter in years. Liars. I've been wearing shorts and t-shirts for a week now. Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy and cold. We'll see.