Scene: Alasdair and I return from a friend's baby shower, to which I brought her a baby bathtub and some other bathtime accoutrements.
Michaela: How was the baby shower?
Me: Good!
Michaela: Did Alasdair have to get in the baby bathtub?
Me: No, why would he?
Michaela: Well, why do they call it a Baby Shower?
Totally. :)
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
O, Pie Pocket, How I Hate Thee
From your scary little face to your obscenely small feet, I do loathe thee. Your tiny rubber clothes are impossible to get on and off, especially if you're under the age of 4 or over the age of 10. Your miniscule shoes are lost in my brown shag carpet and have been sucked into the oblivion of my vacuum cleaner bag. Your accessories are gone forever in the bottom of the toy box.
Why, O why do our kids love you so? How many times a day must I put on and take off the same outfit? Mrs. Pie Pocket must hate doing your laundry. As I remove your little plastic leggings for the 17th time today, I curse you, Pie Pocket. And Princess Pie Pocket, how creepy is your removable HAIR? Alas, the kiddies love you and you are here to stay.
Why, O why do our kids love you so? How many times a day must I put on and take off the same outfit? Mrs. Pie Pocket must hate doing your laundry. As I remove your little plastic leggings for the 17th time today, I curse you, Pie Pocket. And Princess Pie Pocket, how creepy is your removable HAIR? Alas, the kiddies love you and you are here to stay.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
My poor babysitter
My friend Tina watches my kids for me on Thursdays and Fridays when I have to go into the office for work. I have to say, she's a trooper. Last year it wasn't so bad. Both of her kids were at home those days, so she just had to take care of my younger two and pick Michaela up from school. But this year, it's a different story altogether. Here's a rough sketch of her day when she watches my kids:
1. Come get Maeve and Doodie from my house at 7:30.
2. Drive Chloe (her oldest) to her old daycare so she can take the bus down the road to Kindergarten.
3. After the bus picks up Chloe, she drives Brynn (her youngest) to preschool. Now it's 9:00.
4. Back to her place with my kids for about an hour and a half.
5. Loads my kids back in her car and picks up Brynn from school.
6. Back to her place for a quick lunch and nap for the three kids.
7. Wake kids up at 2:00, load them back in the car to go pick up Michaela from school in Everett.
8. Back to Marysville to give the kids a snack and let them play at Chloe's school until 3:00 when she's out.
9. Load all the kids back up and bring them to my place until Mike gets home.
10. Back home to Marysville!
Good Lord. :)
THANKS TINA!
1. Come get Maeve and Doodie from my house at 7:30.
2. Drive Chloe (her oldest) to her old daycare so she can take the bus down the road to Kindergarten.
3. After the bus picks up Chloe, she drives Brynn (her youngest) to preschool. Now it's 9:00.
4. Back to her place with my kids for about an hour and a half.
5. Loads my kids back in her car and picks up Brynn from school.
6. Back to her place for a quick lunch and nap for the three kids.
7. Wake kids up at 2:00, load them back in the car to go pick up Michaela from school in Everett.
8. Back to Marysville to give the kids a snack and let them play at Chloe's school until 3:00 when she's out.
9. Load all the kids back up and bring them to my place until Mike gets home.
10. Back home to Marysville!
Good Lord. :)
THANKS TINA!
Friday, August 29, 2008
Mommy Moment
I’m digging around in my wallet to clean out all the silver change and leave it in my desk drawer before my kids can throw it into some random fountain at the closest Mall or Park they can find. But what’s this? There’s not just change in my wallet?
No.
There’s also a used Sesame Street Band-Aid wadded up in there too.
Gotta love being a Mom.
No.
There’s also a used Sesame Street Band-Aid wadded up in there too.
Gotta love being a Mom.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Some days I'm not sure how my kids survive...
So, today I took the kids to get their pictures done at our local photo studio. They had matchy-matchy outfits and brand new bows for their hair. We headed out this morning armed with clean clothes, groomed hair and all my coupons in tow. To start our outing, we were late. Of course. Taking these kids anywhere by myself when we HAVE to be somewhere means we WILL be late. We got to the studio and started the photo shoot. The group photos were first. Here's basically what happened for the entire 40 minutes:
Michaela: bouncing around like a maniac and getting in the way of everyone elses photos. Oh, and NOT looking at the camera.
Maeve: tantrum. On the floor, head down, bawling. The only words she would say were "No. No! NO!" She wouldn't sit, stand, jump, twirl, nothing.
Alasdair: Walking. Anywhere. He wouldn't sit still to save his life. And he wouldn't smile.
The strange thing is that when we were all done and looking at the photos, Maeve's turned out the best! We didn't get nearly as many of her of course. But I always aim to get an individual shot of each kid and at least one group picture of them. With Maeve there were like 5 of her individual shots that I wanted to take home! But I knew the husband would kill me if I brought home eight 8x10s of our kids. :)
We finally arrive home, and Dude is asleep. Michaela gets out and I ask her to unlock the front door so that i can get the baby in to his crib for his nap without waking him. So she runs to do that. I grab my bag and take the cardboard envelope with the shiny new photos in them and hand it to Maeve, open side UP and ask her to carry it into the house. All the while I'm arguing with Michaela because she has forgotten how door locks work, even though she used to unlock ours every day. So, frustrated I go open the door and when I come back down the stairs Maeve is holding the envelope at me and saying "all gone!". WHAT?? So I panic and look in the envelope. Sure enough, it's empty. So I freak out thinking that maybe they fell out somewhere at the mall or something. I asked Maeve where they were and she points to the stairs. Nuh-uh. I go and look. There they are. Our four new 8x10s slid underneath the porch.
Now our porch is enclosed. There's no way to get underneath it really. I contemplated pulling up a stair board, but that would be a pain. I could wait for my husband to get home, but it could rain. We are in Washington, after all. So I go get his long BBQ tongs, clean them off and reach underneath the porch from the side. Success!! I was able to get them out without damaging them or without them getting nasty and dirty.
But I was seriously about to break out my whoop ass on my kids. How do they make it through the day??
Michaela: bouncing around like a maniac and getting in the way of everyone elses photos. Oh, and NOT looking at the camera.
Maeve: tantrum. On the floor, head down, bawling. The only words she would say were "No. No! NO!" She wouldn't sit, stand, jump, twirl, nothing.
Alasdair: Walking. Anywhere. He wouldn't sit still to save his life. And he wouldn't smile.
The strange thing is that when we were all done and looking at the photos, Maeve's turned out the best! We didn't get nearly as many of her of course. But I always aim to get an individual shot of each kid and at least one group picture of them. With Maeve there were like 5 of her individual shots that I wanted to take home! But I knew the husband would kill me if I brought home eight 8x10s of our kids. :)
We finally arrive home, and Dude is asleep. Michaela gets out and I ask her to unlock the front door so that i can get the baby in to his crib for his nap without waking him. So she runs to do that. I grab my bag and take the cardboard envelope with the shiny new photos in them and hand it to Maeve, open side UP and ask her to carry it into the house. All the while I'm arguing with Michaela because she has forgotten how door locks work, even though she used to unlock ours every day. So, frustrated I go open the door and when I come back down the stairs Maeve is holding the envelope at me and saying "all gone!". WHAT?? So I panic and look in the envelope. Sure enough, it's empty. So I freak out thinking that maybe they fell out somewhere at the mall or something. I asked Maeve where they were and she points to the stairs. Nuh-uh. I go and look. There they are. Our four new 8x10s slid underneath the porch.
Now our porch is enclosed. There's no way to get underneath it really. I contemplated pulling up a stair board, but that would be a pain. I could wait for my husband to get home, but it could rain. We are in Washington, after all. So I go get his long BBQ tongs, clean them off and reach underneath the porch from the side. Success!! I was able to get them out without damaging them or without them getting nasty and dirty.
But I was seriously about to break out my whoop ass on my kids. How do they make it through the day??
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Sweet Home
We just got back from our second of three "vacations" this year, the first being our trip to Disneyland in May and the next one being the 13th annual Good Lovin' camping trip in about 10 days.
We went to visit my sister-in-law and her family in Ralph, Alabama. Yeah, it's as exciting as it sounds. And boy was it HOT. But they took us on a road trip down to the Gulf in the city of Orange Beach. It was absolutely beautiful. The warm water, the white sand, the dolphins, the sun. Wonderful. Oh, and the sunburns. Not so wonderful. But we all had fun regardless.
We ate at some really neat restaurants there too. One was called the "Hangout", and it was just this huge beach themed restaurant. Wood picnic tables, open to the outside with sand piles and pits for the kids to play in. At night they have a stage and live music. While we were there having lunch they had a hippety-hop ball racing contest and Michaela made it to the final round! She's awesome at that thing! She lost to the other girl who was like 14 and a Cheater!! But she had fun and we bought her an extra special thing for being so awesome (she also ate ALL her fish and chips!). She picked out this pair of sunglasses with the "Camerican flag" on them. :)
The other neat restaurant was called Lamberts. It was very crowded and very loud and very awesome. You order your food from the menu and your drinks come in these half gallon mugs. As you wait for your food to come, they bring out balloons for all the kiddos and they have staff wandering around the restaurant dishing out the "passing dishes". One has fried okra, one has fried tomatoes and onions, one has black eyed peas, one has sorghum molasses and apple butter to put on your rolls!! Oh, yeah. The throwed rolls. So there are a couple of guys wandering around with trays of hot fresh sorghum rolls. They are huge and they are delicious. And they literally throwed them at you from across the room. Maeve got to catch her own and it took two tries, but she loved it. We made sure to take some home for breakfast the next day.
We also took a trip to the CHOM in Tuscaloosa to let the kiddos play around there. It was a really nice hands on museum, better than the ones we have around here. And my SIL took me to her mom's group meeting made up of some very nice southern conservative Catholic women. It was fun to sit and listen to them talk about Catholic school politics, many of the issues the same as we have here at our school, and other get-togethers they were planning for the next few weeks. They were a very nice group of ladies. She is lucky to have a group like that. It's something I've wanted for a while, but I have a hard time not being shy and quiet in new groups of people. The few times I have tried to join various mom's groups it just hasn't worked out. Of course, in the south they are NOT shy. I think I'd have fit in well with them. :)
The plane rides were semi-nightmarish and I'm positive that we made some unknown enemies out there, with their behind-my-back stink-eye because my kids wouldn't stop screaming or crying. Whatever. Shut up. My kids are actually relatively good on planes and it was a long trip for us all. We came home pretty close to 1:00 am our time this morning and took nice long naps this afternoon.
We're already back to normal. Alasdair is cranky, Maeve is screaming and Michaela is whining.
Ahhh, it's good to be home.
We went to visit my sister-in-law and her family in Ralph, Alabama. Yeah, it's as exciting as it sounds. And boy was it HOT. But they took us on a road trip down to the Gulf in the city of Orange Beach. It was absolutely beautiful. The warm water, the white sand, the dolphins, the sun. Wonderful. Oh, and the sunburns. Not so wonderful. But we all had fun regardless.
We ate at some really neat restaurants there too. One was called the "Hangout", and it was just this huge beach themed restaurant. Wood picnic tables, open to the outside with sand piles and pits for the kids to play in. At night they have a stage and live music. While we were there having lunch they had a hippety-hop ball racing contest and Michaela made it to the final round! She's awesome at that thing! She lost to the other girl who was like 14 and a Cheater!! But she had fun and we bought her an extra special thing for being so awesome (she also ate ALL her fish and chips!). She picked out this pair of sunglasses with the "Camerican flag" on them. :)
The other neat restaurant was called Lamberts. It was very crowded and very loud and very awesome. You order your food from the menu and your drinks come in these half gallon mugs. As you wait for your food to come, they bring out balloons for all the kiddos and they have staff wandering around the restaurant dishing out the "passing dishes". One has fried okra, one has fried tomatoes and onions, one has black eyed peas, one has sorghum molasses and apple butter to put on your rolls!! Oh, yeah. The throwed rolls. So there are a couple of guys wandering around with trays of hot fresh sorghum rolls. They are huge and they are delicious. And they literally throwed them at you from across the room. Maeve got to catch her own and it took two tries, but she loved it. We made sure to take some home for breakfast the next day.
We also took a trip to the CHOM in Tuscaloosa to let the kiddos play around there. It was a really nice hands on museum, better than the ones we have around here. And my SIL took me to her mom's group meeting made up of some very nice southern conservative Catholic women. It was fun to sit and listen to them talk about Catholic school politics, many of the issues the same as we have here at our school, and other get-togethers they were planning for the next few weeks. They were a very nice group of ladies. She is lucky to have a group like that. It's something I've wanted for a while, but I have a hard time not being shy and quiet in new groups of people. The few times I have tried to join various mom's groups it just hasn't worked out. Of course, in the south they are NOT shy. I think I'd have fit in well with them. :)
The plane rides were semi-nightmarish and I'm positive that we made some unknown enemies out there, with their behind-my-back stink-eye because my kids wouldn't stop screaming or crying. Whatever. Shut up. My kids are actually relatively good on planes and it was a long trip for us all. We came home pretty close to 1:00 am our time this morning and took nice long naps this afternoon.
We're already back to normal. Alasdair is cranky, Maeve is screaming and Michaela is whining.
Ahhh, it's good to be home.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Salon of Shame
So, I got to go out last night with some friends and leave the rest of the fam at home. We went to a show called the Salon of Shame. It's freakin' hilarious. For an $8 admission fee you get to go have drinks and listen to other thirty-somethings read from their adolescent journals. You get short stories, poetry, journal entries, love letters, just about anything you can imagine, and it is GREAT. If you're in the Seattle area, I highly recommend it. On their website they have links to other Shame-type shows in other areas of the country.
After the show my bus home ended up being almost 40 minutes late. I got home just after midnight, tucked my babies tighter into their beds and hit the sack.
After the show my bus home ended up being almost 40 minutes late. I got home just after midnight, tucked my babies tighter into their beds and hit the sack.
Wednesday Funny
Scene: I’m getting a bowl of green grapes for Michaela’s immediately-post-huge-lunch snack…
Me: “Do you like green grapes or red grapes better?”
Michaela: “Well, sometimes I like [green grapes] better because when they aren’t very ripe and I put them in my mouth I get blasty.”
Me: “Do you like green grapes or red grapes better?”
Michaela: “Well, sometimes I like [green grapes] better because when they aren’t very ripe and I put them in my mouth I get blasty.”
Friday, June 13, 2008
Introduction
It seems that nowadays everyone is hooked on this "blogging" thing. I'm not a great writer, I'm not terribly witty, and I'm not terribly consistent, but I figure that my life is probably a lot like other peoples, so why not put it all out there?
I am married with three beautiful kids: 6, 2 and 1. The baby was born with Hirschsprung's Disease. You can learn more about it here. We've been very lucky so far with his recovery and his prognosis looks really good. I'm always searching for groups that might have information about how to cope with the challenges that this disease presents.
Family life is crazy around here with the two little ones at home all day with me while I'm trying to work, and it's summer vacation now so my 6 year old will be pestering us all too. I'll spend the summer toting everyone around to dance class, swimming lessons and soccer while trying to make sure everyone stays fed, clean and napped. Hopefully we'll have enough of those "moments" that are worthy to write about now and again that will amuse someone other than me!
I am married with three beautiful kids: 6, 2 and 1. The baby was born with Hirschsprung's Disease. You can learn more about it here. We've been very lucky so far with his recovery and his prognosis looks really good. I'm always searching for groups that might have information about how to cope with the challenges that this disease presents.
Family life is crazy around here with the two little ones at home all day with me while I'm trying to work, and it's summer vacation now so my 6 year old will be pestering us all too. I'll spend the summer toting everyone around to dance class, swimming lessons and soccer while trying to make sure everyone stays fed, clean and napped. Hopefully we'll have enough of those "moments" that are worthy to write about now and again that will amuse someone other than me!
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