Lost

We have the tradition of carving our jack o'lanterns the day before Halloween. We can't do it any earlier because they'll get all mushy and gross thanks to the lovely Houston humidity. So Thursday afternoon, I pulled out our carving paraphernalia and began to prep our pumpkin.

I must tell you at this point that I have the habit of putting my wedding and engagement rings in my pocket when I'm in the kitchen. I'm afraid that if I leave them on, they'll get all gunky with whatever I'm working with and I'm afraid they'll fall down the sink drain if I leave them on the counter. So into my pocket they go. It's not the best solution, but up until last Thursday, it worked for me.

So my rings went in my pocket and I began to work on the pumpkin. To avoid having pumpkin guts flung all over the kitchen, I carried it out to the back porch where Sydney and I gutted it while the boys looked on. This basically means Sydney complained about the sliminess, Liam transferred pumpkin seeds into an old dirt lined planter, Evan fussed and I did the actual gutting.

Once the poor pumpkin was sufficiently emptied of its innards, we all hosed down and went back inside. I left the prepped pumpkin on the counter so that Ryan could do the actual carving later and got to work on dinner.

It wasn't until about an hour later when we were filling and rolling our spring roll dinner that I noticed my wedding ring had gone missing. My engagement ring was still in my pocket but my wedding ring was gone. I panicked. I dug through the garbage. I ran outside and dug around the leaves on the back porch. I peered between the slats on the deck thinking that maybe it had fallen out of my pocket while gutting the pumpkin. I crawled around on the floor thinking that maybe it rolled under a cabinet. And the whole time I cried.

Ryan hugged me and said it was OK. He said we could pull up the boards on the deck and look for it. I cried even harder. All I could think was, "What kind of idiot loses their wedding ring?" I was so mad at myself that I would have hit myself if that were possible.

Defeated, I sat down to eat dinner. And then a light bulb went off inside my head. I ran, and I mean ran to our blue recliner. I lifted it up, reclined the back, and ran my hand along the seat. And there it was between the seat and the armrest. Whew! I'd forgotten that I'd sat there to feed Evan in between the pumpkin and dinner prep.

So the ring has been found and all is well. I celebrated by having a glass of wine with dinner and vowed to never leave my rings in my pocket again.

But now I'm trying to figure out what to do with them when I'm in the kitchen (at night they go in my jewelry box). What do you do with your rings? Do you wear them all the time or do you have a special spot for them when you know your hands are going to get dirty?

NaBloPoMo

It's November and time for NaBloPoMo again. I've been falling behind on my blogging (and commenting) lately so I thought NaBloPoMo would give me a chance to get back in the game. I can't promise that all of my posts will be interesting and/or witty, but I'll give it a try.

As we're headed to my niece's 13th birthday party in a few minutes (how is it possible that she is 13?), I don't have much time to write, but I'll leave you with a teaser for tomorrow's post:

I lost my wedding ring last Thursday.

Chew on that until tomorrow!

Trick or Treat!

Last night we trick or treated in our new neighborhood for the very first time. The kids made quite a haul in the candy department. Now if I can just keep myself from eating it all!

Here they are in their Halloween finery.

Sydney as a bride:




Liam as a dragon (the headpiece didn't fit):




Evan as a pumpkin:




And since we let Sydney pick our jack o'lantern pattern this year, I give you Princess Aurora (aka Sleeping Beauty):






I hope everyone else had a fun Halloween!!

No Worries

I was sure that Evan would have to have his tear duct surgically opened; after all, the pediatrician acted like his life depended on it. We took him to a fancy pants pediatric eye specialist at one of the world's most prestigious children's hospitals and he told us it was no big deal, but he would prefer to wait a few more months to do the procedure. Yay. More waiting. In the meantime, Evan will just have goop in his eye twenty fours hours a day. And just so you know, there is very little that freaks me out about parenting, but seeing my baby with his eyes dilated gave me the heebie jeebies.

Then, I started worrying about Liam's lack of speech. I'd chalked it up to the fact that Sydney rarely gives anyone else a chance to speak, but then she went to kindergarten and he still didn't talk. So I called the state agency to evaluate his speech and cognitive abilities. They came this past Monday and he does have a slight speech delay, but he is cognitively right on track and his fine motor skills? Well, let's just say he tested off their charts. No wonder the boy doesn't talk! He's too busy fine tuning his skills by stacking up to nine blocks (and balancing them which amazed the evaluators), drawing circles and stringing half inch beads like a three year old. They think there's nothing to worry about and his speech will just explode one of these days. Then I'll have two kids who won't shut up talk.

And then my hives came back in full force. I had them all over - in my ears, on my eyelids - you name a body part and it had hives. I was certain that my pregnancy with Evan caused them. I've had hives after each of my pregnancies and I was told that the huge hormonal change can make your body suddenly react to allergens that didn't bother you before. I gave myself allergy injections for three years after I had Sydney because allergy testing revealed two dozen things that I was allergic to (but had no idea). To avoid the long drive to the old allergist, I went to a new one in The Land of Fruit and was retested last week. Turns out I'm not allergic to the things the other doctor said I was because he did the test all wrong. I've been avoiding chocolate because of what I was told by my former allergist. Chocolate! The new allergist did admit that my years of allergy injections probably did build up my immunity to various pollens, but I probably never was allergic to the foods I was told to avoid. Needless to say, I've been indulging in those foods the last few days.

So I did all that worrying for nothing. Just goes to show that worrying gets you absolutely nowhere.

Now if I can just remind myself of that from now on.....

Pass the Kleenex, Please

I've been crying a lot in the last week.

No, nothing terrible happened. A lot of good things happened and as someone who cries at everything, I just couldn't help myself.

Sydney attempted to ride her bike without the training wheels for the first time. The bike is a bit small so it didn't quite work out, but she tried and for my reluctant five year old this is a big deal.




She also started reading this week. She's been reading small words for a while, but yesterday she picked up a book and just started reading it. Here she is with her free pizza for reading twelve books in October (OK, we read them to her, but that still counts in kindergarten):




And who stole my baby and replaced it with one that rolls over both ways




AND sits up?




Liam wasn't about to be outdone by his siblings. He started saying several words this past week and, sniff, got his first real haircut. We knew it was getting too long when Sydney started putting it up in a pigtail:




So he got a haircut. Here's the before:




And the after:






He did fine during the haircut. Me? Not so much. Bawled like a baby. My sweet baby boy is now a big boy.

Someone please tell me how to keep them little for awhile longer. I don't think my tear ducts can take much more.

********

P.S. Thanks to everyone for your responses to our birds & bees dilemma - we feel armed and ready for the next time we get "the" question.

Oops and Uh-Oh

The Oops: I didn't mean to get everyone's hopes up about Ryan's birthday present! (We actually had someone call to wish Ryan a happy birthday and ask what he got after reading this.) We just usually don't get each other much so I was excited about buying him something he didn't specifically ask for. Unfortunately, for you, and perhaps for Ryan, it was not anything spectacular like a flat screen TV or a new iPod to replace his dying one. It was one of these. See? Not all that exciting. But he's mentioned getting one for a couple of years now (especially after painful dental cleanings) and it's something I didn't think he'd go out and buy for himself.

So now you know that we're really old. Because who buys a toothbrush for someone's birthday unless they are really old?


The Uh-Oh: The following conversation took place the other evening while I was putting the finishing touches on dinner. The whole family decided to join me in the kitchen and this ensued:

Sydney: "Mommy, you know how you had me and Liam and Evan in your tummy?"

Me: "Yes."

Sydney: "Well, how do you make a person? How did a baby get in there?"

Liam: "Ba la la ma pa la la la la la ya ya ya ya!"

Me: "Liam, hush. What?!?"

Sydney: "How do you make a person?"

Me to Ryan: "You wanna field this one, Mr. Biology Major?"

Ryan to me: "Not particularly. I'll let you handle this one."

Me to Ryan: "Oh, come on. You have a degree in this."

Ryan to me: "I didn't learn this in college. I learned it in elementary school."

Me to Ryan: "But not from a teacher. From your friends. This is Texas, after all. There is no class on this in Texas."

Ryan to me: "True."

And then Sydney wandered off, tired of waiting for us to give her an answer.

You'd think we'd have come up with an answer for this by now, seeing as she's old enough to remember both of her brothers being in utero. But, like the stereotypical ostrich, we've had our heads stuck in the sand hoping that she'd never ask.

I guess I should come up with some sort of age appropriate answer, but I have no idea what that will be. We don't want to overwhelm her with too much information or scare her or whatever, but we also don't want to lie to her.

Help? Anyone?

Happy Birthday!

Today is Ryan's birthday. I won't tell you how old he is, but he's five months older than me, so if you know how old I am, well, you can do the math.

Tonight we'll be having steak for dinner and cheesecake for dessert to celebrate. Sadly, I don't know how to cook/grill steak, so Ryan will have to make his own birthday dinner. But, I did make the cheesecake, so I'm not all that terrible of a wife.

And he'll be getting a surprise present from all of us, too. We usually don't get each other much for our birthdays (the adults, that is) and if we do, it's usually something we've asked for so there is very little element of surprise on the birthday front. But he has no idea what he's getting this year and since I bought it while Sydney was at school, he can't grill her for information. I guess he could try to get it out of Liam or Evan, but I think they'll keep my secret safe.

Anyway, in honor of my super old husband, here are a few pictures of him being the great dad he is. These were taken at Sydney's school carnival a few weekends ago:













And here's a few without him, just because I think my kids are so cute:










Happy Birthday, Ryan!!!