The New Dwarfs

Snow White had seven dwarfs as roommates, but our house has five more that could easily fit in at their little cottage in the woods:

Liam's dwarf name is Wheezy. Poor little guy caught a cold and it moved into his lungs. He woke up Friday morning coughing and wheezing and his shallow little breaths had me worrying. We spent two hours at the pediatrician's office so that he could get examined and have a breathing treatment. He was not fond of that AT ALL. Holding him down reminded me of the time I tried to give my parents' cat a bath: lots of clawing and screaming. He's now on an antibiotic (since his ears didn't look all that great, either) and a steroid inhaler. We're hoping they work and he'll be back to his old self soon.

My dwarf name is Achy. Like most moms, I caught my child's germs. Sore throat, stuffy nose, achy muscles.....I've got it all. I'm tempted to take a couple of puffs of Liam's inhaler, but I guess I shouldn't steal medicine from my child. :)

Ryan's dwarf name is Drowsy (he's cousin to Snow White's Sleepy). A huge project at work kept him out late Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings. He even had to work this morning for a while. You can imagine how tired he is after working 14-15 hour days with very little sleep. I joked that he was apparently giving up his children as his Lenten sacrifice seeing as the kids hardly saw him for a few days.

Sydney's dwarf name is Whiny. She hasn't gotten a whole lot of attention lately due to Liam's illness and Ryan's work schedule and boy has she let us hear about it. Hopefully we'll have some time to dote on her tomorrow.

And Evan? His dwarf name is Smiley. The boy loves to smile. And after the last few days, those smiles are certainly a welcome sight in our house.

Move Over, Thomas Edison

If I were an inventor, these would be my next few projects:

* Chauffeur's windows in minivans so that when the crying/screaming/whining gets to be too much, parents can simply push a button and isolate the noise.

* Teeny-tiny garters to hold up baby socks.

* A fridge lock that a two year old can't figure out and/or break within 24 hours of installment.

* Little screens for the backs of vehicles that display messages like "Quit Tailgating Me!" and "Please Turn Your Blinker Off".

* A school bus GPS tracking/parent alert system that lets parents know exactly when they need to leave the house to get a child off the bus (and thus help them feel less guilty about leaving two napping children in the house while they wait at the corner).

* Diet, caffeine free soda that truly tastes just as good as the real thing.

* A kitchen floor that somehow repels the spills, crumbs and various vegetables that children launch from their plates and bowls.

* A magic potion to stop time so that parents can keep their children in a favorite developmental stage forever.


How about you? Anything you'd like to see invented?

Poor Middle Child

After giving both Sydney and Evan posts of their own last week, I decided that poor middle child Liam needed a post of his own as well.

He's now 27 months old and is such a little boy. He is into absolutely everything and while he is adorable about 85% of the time, the other 15% of each day is the stereotypical terrible twos. I wouldn't be surprised if his first full sentence wasn't "Go to your room" or "Get out of the fridge" seeing as those are the two phrases he hears the most.

His favorite thing to do is to open the refrigerator and either grab his milk or steal a grape or two. We finally put a lock on the fridge after he snuck a handful of raw chopped onion and green pepper that I'd prepared for dinner (boy, was he an unhappy camper after chomping on those for a few seconds). The next day, I caught him pulling his chair over to the fridge and studying the lock. The day after that? The fridge lock was magically broken. So Ryan is installing a baby gate across the kitchen entrance as I type this.

He is also talking a lot more than before. Ryan and I are still the only people who understand most of what he's saying, but he's adding one or two new words to his vocabulary each day and has finally started using the all-important two word phrases that our pediatrician was looking for at his two year appointment back in November. It's so cute to hear him ask, "Where's Daddy?" or "Where's Sydney?" He's also repeating everything Sydney says. Ryan and I find ourselves cracking up throughout dinnertime.

As for potty training.....He's interested in the whole process, but I just don't think he's ready for the all out potty training boot camp yet. So I think we'll wait until summertime to start pushing him a bit in the potty department.

I've had all sorts of fun taking his picture the last couple of months. Here are a few of my favorites:

Flair

To celebrate the 100th day of school, Sydney had to decorate a shirt with 100 pieces of flair. She chose to write 100 numbers on her shirt.

The front:




The back:




A close-up:




100 pieces of flair - take that, TGI Fridays!

Nine Months

Evan turned nine months old yesterday! He is getting to be such a big boy. Well, according to the growth charts (I can't stand those things!), he's really not all that big, but we sure think he is. He's crawling all over the place, pulling up on everything, eating Cheerios and babbling like no one's business. And here he is, all 17 pounds of him, in some pictures I took with my new camera:













It's hard to believe that he'll be one in just a few short months.

Happiness is...

...watching my boys play together and laugh.

...finally getting some much needed rain.

...helping Sydney make her valentines.

...getting an extension to turn in Liam's MDO paperwork.

...buying new clothes for myself.

...hearing Liam say some new words.

...not having to file quarterly business tax returns anymore.

...planning our family's summer vacation.

...listening to my wind chimes.

...watching Evan crawl and pull up.

...playing with my new camera. (pictures coming soon!)


How about you? What's made you happy lately?

Bound to Happen

Well, it happened. I got my first nasty anonymous comment. I got it on yesterday's post about entering the attendance at my church.

Just so you know, Mr. or Ms. Anonymous Nasty Commenter, I was simply venting and I would never ask anyone to follow my silly 8 rules because that's what they were: silly. I'm sorry you took them seriously because I sure didn't. I know that everyone is going to keep signing their name however they want. I'm certainly not stupid. And while, yes, I may be a perfectionist in certain areas of my life, I do realize that not everyone feels the same way and I don't expect them to.

This is my blog and if you don't like what I write or my personality or whatever then do everyone a favor and please stop reading.

Thank you.

8 Simple Rules

As someone who volunteers to enter Sunday's attendance for a very large church, I find myself bewildered at the number of members who cannot be identified in the church's database. And while I wish the following rules (that I made up today after another morning of frustration) could be plastered inside the attendance books, I know I'll just have to be happy venting here. So if you go to a large church, please heed the following requests:

1. Please print your name legibly. If you write in cursive, you tend to just sign your name like you would any other document and while the enlarged first letter of your last name is legible, the other six or seven letters that have been turned into a squiggle or straight line are not. I cannot stress the importance of this; in fact, most of my problems would be solved if everyone followed just this one rule.

2. If you have a very common name, please write your address or some other type of identifying information along with your name. Our church has 8,000 members. Do you know how many John Smiths and Nancy Andersons we have on our rolls?

3. On that same note, please don't write "The Taylor Family" and expect me to know which of the ten Taylor families pertains to yours. Adding an address or first name would be a great help.

4. Please write down your first and last names. Writing "Ivy" or "Porter" is not helpful. Who do you think you are? Cher? Madonna?

5. For the elderly ladies: I understand that you were raised to always think of yourselves as wives instead of individuals, but the database does not list you as "Mrs. Bob Dawson." It lists you as "Edith Dawson" and I have a very hard time finding you. If you're embarrassed by the Christian name your parents gave you, please don't be. After several years of teaching, very few first names shock me. Besides, Eunice, Agatha and Mildred are all lovely names. Please use them.

6. On the other end of the age spectrum, please do not allow children who do not write legibly to be the sole attendance recorder for your family. I understand that children want to practice their writing skills (having a five year old who insists on recording her own attendance), but I would ask you to check their work and either fix it or rewrite whatever it is that they attempted to record in the book.

7. I realize that I attend a very WASPy church, but would it kill you to name your children something other than Robert White IV or Charles Brown III? Don't you think they'd like a name of their own, instead of spending their entire lives explaining that they are not Charles Brown Sr. or Charles Brown Jr., but Charles Brown III? And giving them cutsie nicknames like Deuce, Trey or Tripp doesn't really help me, either.

8. And finally, the nicknames. If you go by an unusual nickname, please write your given name along with the unusual name. I'm a pretty smart person, but please tell me how I'm supposed to know that "Mack Jenkins" is actually "Joseph Jenkins"? I can understand Joe, Joey and even Seph as nicknames for Joseph. But "Mack"? Really?

Thank you for following the guidelines. You just made a volunteer's life much easier.

25 Things

RachelAnn over at Life of a Single Girl awarded me the "I Love Your Blog" Award AND tagged me for a 25 Random Things About Me meme. I'd post the award but I don't know how. (I guess I ought to figure those kinds of things out, huh?) A big "thank you" for the award, Rachel, and without further ado, here are my 25 random things. (Sorry it took so long, but I just did something similar on Facebook and it took me a while to come up with 25 more things!)

1. I worry about money way too much.
2. I can't stand to listen to people eat.
3. My eyes are blue.
4. I think "Friday Night Lights" is one of the most underrated shows on TV. And if that doesn't get you to watch it, I will remind you that cutie pie Kyle Chandler is one of the stars of it. Sigh.
5. I played the French Horn and trumpet in high school.
6. I don't really like the color pink, but it looks good on me so I wear it.
7. I'm allergic to olives.
8. I really regret not traveling abroad while in college.
9. My first car was my parents' old Camry wagon. I loved that car.
10. I enjoy the idea of skiing more than actually skiing.
11. I have a degree in history, but I don't like American history.
12. I am completely frazzled by trying to plan a wedding shower in three weeks.
13. After having a laptop for several years, I never want to go back to a desktop computer.
14. I enjoy washing the dishes after dinner. No one wants to help me so washing dishes gives me 20 minutes of alone time.
15. I'm a Christian and I'm often ashamed of how other Christians act.
16. I used to drink Dr. Pepper all the time and now I think it's too sweet.
17. I enjoy searching for new recipes and using my family as guinea pigs.
18. I'd love to try out for "Jeopardy!" but I'm way too shy.
19. I found a cute pair of black shoes last week, but they were Hannah Montana brand and I couldn't bring myself to buy them.
20. I like reading bumper stickers on other people's cars, but I won't put them on my cars.
21. I have reading glasses. I'm old.
22. I think cottage cheese is gross.
23. I don't like dogs at all. Not one bit. Go ahead, you can hate me now.
24. When I read for fun, I only read fiction. I got enough non-fiction in college.
25. I'm excited about getting a new digital camera for my birthday next month!

Tag! You're it! Write 25 random things about yourself and tag others to do the same. It's a lot of fun.

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P.S. Thanks to everyone for the advice on my student's friend request on Facebook. I ignored the request and I figure if she ever sends me a message to ask why, I'll be honest with her. Better safe than sorry, right?

My Tiny Teenager

Three verbal gems from Sydney this past week:


"Is that what you're wearing to the bus stop?"

Apparently you can embarrass your children well before they hit adolescence.



"Mommy, you're old. You have lines on your forehead."

Solution? A new wrinkle cream. Also: muzzle for child. (Just kidding about the muzzle. Maybe.)



"Whoa, those are big jeans."

Gee, thanks. Now I have motivation to get exercising again.