…to yours!
Hope you all have a great Halloween.
See you on the other side of the sugar high!
From our Ghouls…
5
Monthly Archives: October 2008
Psst…Hey Bear!
Dear Bear,
Let me let you in on a little secret. Do you really want to get out of the house without making Mama crazy because it is chilly outside, but still be allowed to wear what you want to? Just very sweetly and innocently tell her that you will wear your jacket AND hat. And she will overlook your bare legs and sandals!
Mwah hahaha. Mom really is quite a rookie sometimes.
Love,
The ever-fashionable rocker of the skirt
Create ~ Theme Thursday
Again, good intentions…not enough time. Stacy’s theme today was create, and while I have been busy creating some Halloween costumes, I did not get to create the “art” that I have had floating around in my head for the past month or so.
I use Photoshop and Illustrator nearly every day for my “real job,” so when I want to create for myself I usually gravitate towards tactile, non-computer stuff, like scrapbooking, painting or sewing. I saw a series of prints a few months ago that I wanted to rip-off borrow the idea from and re-create it in Illustrator. So when I saw Stacy’s idea this week, I was psyched. I was finally going to get a chance to sit down and do it. But my own procrastination of all of the other things that needed to get done, simply didn’t leave me with enough time to do it.
However, I am happy to report that all of the Halloween costumes are finished, pressed and anxiously awaiting two little goblins. But, I’m going to save those beauties for Crafty Tuesday next week.
I will leave you a few photos with some creations from Em’s school carnival.
The tyrannical threes
I keep telling myself that “three” was a very hard year for us with Emma, too. I vaguely remember thinking “Wow, the ‘terrible twos’ were NOTHING compared to three.”
So I went on a little scavenger hunt looking for some documentation of the low points of parenting back when Em was a mere three-year old girl. I did a search in my blog for tantrums and I got eight different hits. Hmmm…all of them are tagged with Addison, like this one, or this one, and this one…oh yeah…and THIS one.
So I went back to the old journal, pre-blog days, and still couldn’t find any entries that confirm my suspicions that Em was a three-year old terror, too.
Huh. That Mommy-amnesia is a really powerful thing apparently. Or I just didn’t have time to capture the loveliness of Emma’s temper tantrums?
Seriously though, Addison has become a bit of a little dictator. She wants this food (Alphabet pasta for breakfast, lunch and dinner, please? No? Then I’ll sit here and not eat anything!), this outfit (Only the purple and blue sundress – nooooo, not that skirt! AAAAAHHH! The skirt is searing the skin off of her body, it is not acceptable!), to be carried (I can’t possibly walk another step. I’ll just stand here in the middle of the sidewalk. Will. Not. Walk. Another. Step.) – and if any of these demands are not met? Eardrum shattering screams. Lots of them.
Yesterday we went to try out a little gymnastics class and had 12 minutes to get back home and across the street to pick up Em from school. By the time we pulled into the driveway, we had about 3 minutes to get over to the school.
I said to her, “Ad, put your shoes on and get out of the car, we have to go get Em.” Reasonable request, right? You would have thought that I had asked her to put on shoes that were two sizes too small and run a mile.
“I don’t waaaaant tooooo! I’ll just sit heeeeeere. YOU go get Emmmmmaaa!” The “here” being shoeless in the middle of the driveway.
So I put her shoes on her, dodging the kicking and stomping, and took her by her hand and started to march her across the street.
And then the screaming commenced. Top of her lungs, stop you in your tracks (because surely the child who is screaming like that is being beaten, kidnapped or run over by a car), shrieking like has never been heard before. And it continued the entire way to Em’s school, while I picked up Em, back across the street and up the path to our house, up the stairs (at this point I had let go of her hand and picked her up) and into her room.
And it did not end for 20 minutes.
Emma sat downstairs with her hands over her ears. “Mama, why is Addie screaming like that?”
“Um, I am not really sure, Em. I have to think it is just a matter of stubborn will right now.”
When it was finally quiet I went upstairs and opened the door.
“Addie. Do you have something to say to me?”
“Yes. I don’t want my door shut, Mama!”
“Ok. But when you scream like that you are going to stay in your room until you settle down. Now do you have something to say to me?”
(She really looked like she was searching for the right thing to say.”
“Um. Yes. I really don’t like it when my door is shut, Mama.”
Grrr…she did finally apologize, but the tantrums seem to be more frequent lately and have frayed my already unraveling nerves. And they are just over the silliest things. But, I figure I might as well document it so I can look back and have a good laugh.
I am going to laugh about this one day, right? Right??
Crafty Tuesday
If Tim Gunn* were here and took a wee peek at my Halloween costumes he would place his chin in his hand, purse his lips and shake his head while saying, “This worries me…”
Quite frankly, the costumes – or rather the pieces of costumes spread from my dining room to my living room and back again – “worrries” me as well. And I have two days…TWO DAYS! How in the world did that happen?
Gah…so no photos this week. I’m off to find me a seamripper and to “make it work.”
*Tim Gunn is the mentor on Project Runway – the television delight that Wendy and Jeff turned me on to – for those of you not “in the know.”
Send Bail Money…Quick! ~ BSM
Nothing like seeing your child behind bars. At least the bail was only one carnival ticket and won’t go on her permanent record.
We had the complete opposite of a relaxing weekend. It was as fully packed as two days can possibly get. I’m exhausted and praying for a nice, easy work week.
I’m going to pop over to Tracey’s to maybe catch up on some calm, relaxing photos.
Happy Birthday, Uncle Deej!
Welcome to the 30 club!
Hope you have a great day and a fantastic year! (It was a bit hard to find a photo of you from our trip. You’d think we have five beautiful girls running around to photograph instead or something! But I do like this one of you and the ever-elusive Steve!)
Happy Birthday!
Love you,
J, C, E & A
As Good As New
Addie is back to her own sweet self.
{Ahem.}
Well, I think she is feeling better, at the very least. Thanks for all of your well wishes. The doctor said she did have a start of a little ear infection, but we are going to wait it out a day or two before starting the antibiotics. It is always a little weird when your kids start to actually tell you what is wrong and you don’t have to make random guesses or stabs in the dark.
When she started complaining of her ear hurting and I caught her holding it a few times yesterday, I got a little paranoid. I was worried the high fever from Monday was due to an ear infection and it was raging a war on her little eardrum.
Oh well, better safe than sorry. And the good thing is we found an AMAZING ER. I kid you not. From the moment we walked into the door, to the minute the doctor walked in to take a look at her ear could not have been more than 8 minutes. It was crazy.
So even after wrestling her down, (She suddenly will not take any medicine!) nearly drowning her trying to get her to take the Motrin (with the help of two nurses, mind you!), and consequently wearing pretty much the entire dose of Motrin on my white shirt, (At least I smelled orange-y and yummy.) which then resulted in the nurses using some Tylenol suppositories (Did you know these things exist?? Do you know how they administer them?!) on her, and returning home with my exhausted little Addie – I wasn’t even gone 45 minutes, I don’t think. Clearly a new record, and no I’m not telling which ER it is. I am keeping that little secret safe, thanks.
Here are some photos I found of happier times last week at the park. I almost forgot to post them. But since I’m on my way out the door for date night, this may be what you get to look at for the weekend. And I don’t want to leave you with the vision of Tylenol suppositories. And where they go.
So here is a prettier vision. Have a good weekend, all!
Rocks…rule!
Wicked-crazy, flexible, shoeless, hillbilly baby.
She is one sweet kid – even if she does look like she is always up to something!
Storytelling ~ Theme Thursday
I haven’t had a spare minute to go out and shoot photos for this week’s Theme Thursday which was storyteller. I did have the perfect photo in mind, though. And I will get it shot, but between a little ER visit for Addie (she is doing much better – just a start of an ear infection, now) and the chaos that is our life over here, the photo might not get taken until sometime early spring!
So to stretch the theme a little, I’ll tell a little story with the Pumpkin Patch photos from last weekend. Make sure to stop over to Stacy’s for some other fun stories.
Enjoy!
Not So Wordless Wednesday
I have only taken two photos this week due to the illness that has taken over the house. I forgot how pretty much the whole world just stops when one of your kids gets really, really sick.
We have been having some wee morning struggles with Addie since Nena left. Before Nena and Bill came to visit we converted Addie’s toddler bed to the full-size bed so that we could use it for company. So she slept wonderfully on the trundle in Em’s room while they were here, but now that she is back in her room? Not so much. Every night about 2:20am she sneaks into my room and tries to get me to “just sleep with me, Mama.”
So Monday morning when she was still sleeping at 7:48am, I was rejoicing. Trying to figure out how to get Em to school (J. had to leave early) – should I just run over there and let Ad sleep – but I was rejoicing nonetheless. Addie was sleeping!
She got up about 2 minutes before Em had to be to school, so I threw a dress on her and she walked over with us. And then I got the bright idea to do my workout. So I packed her up into the stroller with cereal, milk, pollys, blanket, bear and a big blanket to snuggle her all in – and went for a run. She seemed completely fine, chattering away about everything like always. It was a pretty uneventful run.
When we got home she curled up on the sofa while I did my strength DVD. I had opened a window because I was so hot, and I peeked up at Addie and she was sitting on the sofa, literally shivering.
I scooped her up and realized that she was really warm, took her temperature and proceeded to feel like the crummiest Mom ever. She had a serious fever. In my defense, I don’t think she had it when i was tucking her into the stroller, but I can’t help but feel crappy if she had it while I was out trying to squeeze a run in.
So I went into caregiver mode and tried to “baby” her all day long. It didn’t help that she refused to take any sort of medicine for the crazy fever. Every little bit I did manage to get into her, she promptly puked back up.
Mostly she just slept. Off and on, all day long. So I cleaned around her and took photos of her. Because even sick and demanding, she is so very sweet.
And another…
Yep. She is on a totally different sofa (the other one was being fumigated!) with totally different jammies (the others were being burned).
Tuesday when she woke up she was a little warm – her fever was gone but I wanted to make sure, so I kept her home from school another day. She was really not happy with the decision. And by 10am when she was running around like a little banshee, clearly feeling fine, I was cursing the decision as well. But, thankfully, she is feeling better.
Now please pray it doesn’t go through the whole household.