In the Genes?

Last week both kids fell asleep on the way home from running errands. I brought them both in (thank goodness I have kids who can transfer!) and laid them each on a couch. Later I looked at them and they were both sleeping like this:

Must be in the genes.

Oh, how I long for more days of both kids taking naps. Elizabeth still needs one, but she only gets one on days like this. She won't lay down and go to sleep, and I've never been good at making a child who doesn't want to take a nap take one.

Sleeping babes are SO easy to love!!!

Happy Birthday, Gamma!

I promise, I really did start this post on my Mom's Birthday, May 13th. But it was a Wednesday, which are my crazy days (play group and mutual, with Nate in school until 10:30 PM), plus that day was Harrison's Pre-School Graduation. So, then it got neglected. It was supposed to be a tribute to my mom, because when I asked Harrison what his favorite thing to do with Grandma was, he said, "Cooking." That's my boy.


My mom is a very accomplished baker. She is also a great cook, but baking is her specialty. I am the opposite, because yeast scares me with it's finickiness. Here she is making her delicious dinner rolls with my kids when they were visiting in April.







I'm really glad I got these pictures. I have SO many memories of watching my mom make these rolls. She has her special ways and does it the same every time so they are uniform and perfect. I should have taken a picture of the finished product. Each one is a little masterpiece.

I'm so grateful to have a mom who is a true homemaker. She is such an example to me and tried her darnedest to teach me how to make a house a home. Even though I mostly focus on the things she taught me that involve food, the other lessons are lurking around in my mind, sure to surface one of these days!

I love my mom, Nate loves my mom (and wishes I were a lot more like her in some ways), my kids love my mom. She is great. I hope she has LOTS more birthdays to celebrate and

many more opportunities to cook with my kids!

Glad As I Can Be!

Nate has been gone for 17 days. Except for his 20 hour visit last weekend. So I'm practicing a song for him when he walks through the door in two hours. In my best Marilyn Monroe "Happy Birthday Mr. President" voice, I'll be singing:

I'm so glad when Daddy comes home
Glad as I can be,
Clap my hands and shout for joy
And climb up on his knee
Put my arms around his neck
Hug him tight like this
Pat his cheeks and give him what?
A GREAT BIG KISS!!!

I must admit, at first I mostly missed his help, because when he is actually home (which isn't all that often between working full time, MBA school part time, his church calling and an ENDLESS list of extra-curricular activities) and awake (his busy life wears him out and he loves sleep almost as much as I love food) he is the most helpful husband I've ever heard of. He really is.

But then after a while I really started to miss HIM. I forget how much the adult interaction, daily hugs and kisses, warm body to share the bed with, person to watch TV with, person to get fashion advice from (mostly "does this make me look fat?" kind of stuff, because he's honest, which I appreciate), and lots of other little things really make a difference.
Until they're gone for 16.2 days. And then, believe me, I remember.

I've been feelin' it since 1996: I love Nathan Watabe!

Bellyachin'

Today was supposed to be Harrison's last day of school, which I was quite sad about for several reasons. He loves it. I love it. He's growing up. I'm going to have to grow up and entertain him myself every afternoon, all summer. But then he started crying that his stomach hurt at 9 AM and didn't stop crying about it until noon. Now that's what I call bellyachin'. This is the third time we've dealt with this problem in the last couple of months. The first two times I took him to the Dr., because it's quite alarming to see your child in so much pain. But let me tell you what I learned from those two experiences -- if you want your child to have a miraculous recovery, just schedule a Dr's appointment for him. So this time, I just waited for it to pass, and hoped it would be before school started, because I knew once it passed, he'd be fine, and I wanted him to go and enjoy his last day. We can all remember what a magical day the last day of school is right?

Well, he told me he didn't think it would be a good idea to go to school because he didn't want to get his friends sick (even though I'm pretty sure constipation isn't contagious, and I'm pretty sure it's constipation, although he never did unconstipate himself , and he seemed to make a full recovery). Every time I questioned him on whether or not he really wanted to miss his last day of school he said, "Don't worry mom, I'll get to see all my friends at the picnic on Monday." It's sad when you're 4 year old is more rational about these things than you are.

All that bellyachin' kind of set the tone for the rest of the day and it went a little something like this.

Children watched Toy Story 2. Twice.

Children took baths mostly for entertainment value, which lasted over an hour each (Elizabeth took two of these, actually), so Mother could finish the best book she's read in over a year, The Thirteenth Tale.

Children and Mother ate a delicious and nutritious "Kraft Dinner."

Mother got "dressed" (changed out of lounge pants into jeans, and put on hat to cover dirty hair) at 7:15 PM to go to the grocery store. Also for entertainment value. Kids got to ride in car cart, eat free cookies and ride penny horse. Mother got to replenish chocolate supply that has seriously diminished since singleparenthood began a week ago. (Is he away on business or pleasure you ask? Well he's in Cali where we used to live, spending every spare moment he's not working with his old buddies, so the jury's still out on that one.). Anyway, we don't even have chocolate chips and I swear I only opened that Costco-sized bag a month ago. The good ice cream was on sale for $2.69. Rocky Road or Mint Chip? Let's just get both. Grabbed a bunch of bananas and two mangoes to make myself feel better.

Someone better hurry home, or there's going to be a whole lot more bellyachin' around here!

(I just proofread this post and realized the last line could be interpreted to mean that my stomach will hurt if I don't stop eating macaroni and cheese for dinner and two kinds of ice cream for dessert. Which would be an understandable misunderstanding. I meant the kind of bellyachin' my mom used to tell me to stop doing.)

A tEARful and Traumatic Afternoon

Now that Elizabeth is almost 28 months old, I decided I better finally do her 24 month well-baby visit. It was supposed to be a 20 minute appointment. Until the Dr. was looking in her right ear and said, "So she has tubes in this ear." "Um, no," I said slightly confused and alarmed. "Oh, well then she must have a hole in her eardrum." Increasingly alarmed and confused. Then he said, "Actually, I think it's a bead." A little less alarmed, not nearly as confused (this is kind of behavior is very normal for my children.) Then after a long wait for him to finish with another patient, he started to try to get it out. There was much screaming, crying, wailing and flailing, that led to the use of this.

May you never have to experience your child being put into one of these and then poked and prodded at for the next hour (after already being poked and prodded at for an hour), with the ear checker thingie and "alligator forceps" crammed in her tiny little ear hole. All the while a Dr., nurse, and lady with an alligator purse red gingham diaper bag, were hovered over her and holding her down.

She tried everything she could think of to get out of there, "Me all done." "Out of my bed" (the papoos), "I want Daddy," "Ouchie," "Docor poking me," "Heson go Fick-a-Fay with me" (I had promised her Chick-Fil-A when we got the bead out), "I get out five minute?" "Mommy get the bead out," "Mommy lay down with me" (because that's how we originally started, with me on my back and her on her back on top of me - didn't work so well), "Mommy, get me out."

Silent prayers were flying.

So when the Dr. FINALLY got the thing out, we were all so relieved.

Until he checked her ear one more time and said, "Oh Gosh (edited), there's another one." I said, "You're joking." "No." "You are lying," "I wish I was, do you want to see it?" "No, I believe you." Sigh.

So, it's back in the torture device for the poor little girl. Accept, they gave us a little break, in which she fell asleep on my shoulder, so this time we're doing it to an even crankier, grumpier child. Screaming all of the above things and more, "I wanna go sleep on Mommy's shoulder." "Alweady got the bead out." This time, the forceps weren't working, so he tried super gluing a skinny wooden dowel to it and pulling it out. That didn't work either (surprise, surprise.) So he finally decided to go with the nurses original suggestion (that I had expressed being most in favor of because it was the least intrusive) of irrigating it. So we unstrapped her, covered her and me in plastic, the nurse pumped some water into her ear and out it came. Now, why the heck didn't we try that in the first place? (Well, he had not wanted to do that because if it didn't work then we couldn't do the super glue thing because it would be too wet to adhere. But really did anyone have that much hope in the super glue idea?) Next time, let's just listen to the womenfolk in the first place. The whole thing could have been so much faster and so much less traumatic.

Then, just to make sure she would never, ever want to go back to the Doctor, they gave her a Hepititis vaccine. And after 2 1/2 hours, we finally got to leave.

She was asleep in minutes. I spent the whole drive home thinking, "I can understand why people drink in situations like this, and why the nurse came back from one of the "breaks" smelling like cigarette smoke." Instead I came home, cut myself a large piece of chocolate cake and watched a little Oprah, while taking lots of deep breaths, and telling myslef we'd go to Chick-Fil-A as soon as she woke up (really that bribe was as much for me as it was her).

Harrison (who Mina was thankfully able to pick up from school and take to her house until the whole ordeal was over) was quite concerned about the whole thing. We talked about it for a little while and then he went upstairs. It was awfully quiet and I started to wonder what was going on, so I went up to find him in bed with her. He said he wanted to take a nap with her. It really warmed my heart that he was worried about his little sissie and wanted to be near her.

She woke up pretty ornery and insistent on going to Fick-A-Fay (like I would have forgotten).

6 nuggets, a small fry, and several diet lemonades later, I was feeling much better, and so was she.

Until several children frantically came out of the play place telling me my daughter was stuck at the top and they couldn't get her to come down. I tried my darnedest to coax her down, the kids tried to help her down, Harrison tried to get her to come down the slide. But she was having none of it. Seriously, how much trauma can one 2 year old handle in a day? So, I climbed on up in there and rescued her. Let me tell you, those things are not made for people of my height, weight, or lack of flexibility. And it totally smelled like pee.

So, that was our crazy day. I told my mom, it made my top 5 list of traumatic experiences.

(wrecking my car and having the airbag explode in my face, childbirth #1, childbirth #2, Harrison's visit to the ER when he was 15 months old, Elizabeth's beads in the ear extraction)

The experience with Harrison was similar, in that they were trying to work on his head, he wouldn't hold still, he was screaming bloody murder, three of us were hovering and holding down, they tried lots of different things, it took forever, and I said lots of silent prayers. Different in that, he had a really high fever, so they were putting an IV in his head to give him antibiotics, we had no papoos (would have been really helpful), he wasn't old enough to verbalize any heartbreaking words, and the medical "professionals" were swearing under their breath. Oh, and that I had even worse skin than I do now.

Please tell me I won't have to go through an experience like this with every one of my children.

Actually, if this is the worst we have to deal with, bring it on.

Nothin' a little chocolate and Chick-Fil-A can't cure!

Call Me Crazy

So I really thought I was losing my mind today. Harrison was home sick from school AGAIN (apparently it's becoming a Monday tradition). At least there wasn't any more barfing. My kids have the uncanny ability to barf in their sleep. So when I went up to go to bed at 10 PM on Saturday and smelled that awful smell, I knew we were in trouble. An hour and a half later I had finished damage control and Nate finally got home from watching UFC at a co-worker's house. My husband has the uncanny ability to be gone when the kids barf in their sleep.

I digress. So we were stuck at home and I was going about my day in lazy-mode. Pajama bottoms, tee shirt, leftover hair and makeup from yesterday. Except I'm coming off of a lazy, snowed-in weekend. DVR caught up? Check. Blog caught up? Check. (Meaning, reading other people's. Not writing my own, of course. That's too labor intensive for a lazy day.) So we read books, and ate, read magazines, and ate, comforted Elizabeth after she electrocuted herself (really, she's fine), and ate, called my mom way too many times to count, and ate. Every few hours, I'd check my blog to see if anyone had updated and every time no one had. Seriously, no one? Not even CJane or Megan? They are the ones I can usually count on for a little hit when I need one. It really started to get to me. I thought, "Okay, I guess everyone else I know (and even people I don't know, but whose blogs I religiously read) has more of a life than I do. None of them are as addicted to their blogs as I am. They must be much more productive than I am. Why don't I use my time more wisely? Why don't I go clean something? I really think I need to check into a 12 step program."

Finally, once I got the kids to bed (extra early, because on a day like today, I just want to watch Dancing With the Stars, go to bed, and get on with the next day which will surely be more exciting.) I thought, "Fine, if no one is going to contribute to my blogging happiness, I guess I'll have to do it myself. Heaven knows, I have a lot of catching up to do. I'll go do a post, and hopefully remind a few people out there that they enjoy reading a post now and then and that maybe they ought to post, for crying out loud."

Then I remembered that my blog has been acting up. When I hit "New Post," it won't let me. So I have to hit the little pencil on an old post and then make a new post that way. That made me wonder if it was acting up in other ways. So I typed in my blog address instead of going through my blogger account and sure enough -- my girls had been there for me all along. My blogger was just holding out on me. I'm not the only one addicted to this stuff. (I'm sure that's what druggies and porn addicts tell themselves all the time). After catching up on the goings-on of all my friends and wannabe friends, I thought "That's better. Oh so much better." (To quote my sister Katy from a gas station bathroom stall after a much needed pit stop on our way to the beach. That's really how going a whole day without any new posts to read felt.)

So forget my other "problems" (laziness, procrastination, food addiction, blog addiction, parenthesis addiction (cuz seriously, I have that too)) just tell me how to fix my blogger.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

It started snowing yesterday morning and just barely stopped about an hour ago (it's 5:30 on Saturday). The crazy thing is that we had a really mild winter and had lots of 70 degree weather the first three months of the year, and now this. The other crazy thing is that it's supposed to be in the 70's again by Wednesday.

The mild winter made me question the necessity of owning one of these. . .

Yes, that is a Snuggie. Nate got it for me for Christmas after I pestered him incessantly. Once I saw the commercial, I kept noticing situations where it would come in handy, and wondered how I ever lived without it. So, yesterday I was very glad that I finally got some good use out of it!

After Nate took the kids sledding, and I caught up on all of my blogging and DVRing, we had some nice family bonding time in the living room. Complete with a fire in the fireplace, hot chocolate,

putting the puzzle together (again) (we're getting faster), listening to music, Daddy Daughter Dancing,

and a sing-along with Nate at the guitar. (I took a video, but it's way too long and I'm singing way too loud. Unless anyone knows how to edit the thing, I'll spare you from having to watch it!)

Today brought more sledding.

Yes, Mommy even joined in on the fun this time, because my friend Shauna was going with her family, so I caved to the positive peer pressure.

In typical Michelle fashion, I went down a few runs (just enough to be able to tell the kids that I went sledding with them -- this is my 3rd time going sledding this winter bytheway), took a few pictures, and then used the freezing cold, miserable little one pictured below as a good excuse to go sit in the car and read a book for the next hour and half while everyone else kept sledding.

The place is 5 minutes from our house, and I could have just left and then come back for Nate and Harrison, but I really hate driving in the snow.

It was worth the wait to go to 5 Guys Burgers and Fries (just opened right by our house) after.

It's been a fun weekend. I love the weather here. You never get bored with it and it keeps you on your toes! Plus, a good excuse to drop everything and hang out with the family all weekend is always appreciated.