cheeky monkey central

now coming to you...

2010-07-24T14:55:00.011-04:00

from a brand new desk!!

i had bought this before leaving for iowa, but did not have time to assemble it and "settle in" before hitting the road. i had to dust it all of before beginning the assembly process, it sat around our dusty house for so long... but it's together and it feels nice. the desk is a bit higher than the card table i was using for the computer so it helps my posture. a bonus, i think!

i'm trying to post a picture from ikea's website but blogger ain't having it today. so here's a dandy little link :)

and here's my version. it would look much more organized with some woven baskets hiding all my stuff but those are an extra $16 each so that won't be happening soon.

i haven't even filled up all the cubbies yet!! i stole the lamp from my husband who wasn't really using it anyway (despicable me!) and now the top of my armoire is practically empty.

the rug at the bottom rocks, yes?? i swear i'm NOT 80 years old, but i do have cold toes 90% of the time.

this whole "workstation" (as IKEA terms it) was $119. if i ever decide i hate the desk part, i can disconnect it and still have the cubbies to use either vertically or horizontally.

we live about 5 miles from ikea, this may not be a good thing.

home again! (jiggety jig)

2010-07-21T12:15:00.003-04:00

hello hello!

after 18 days staying with my parents in iowa, we decided they'd had enough and we headed back home to virginia. it was a nice trip, we really had fun. we hit adventureland in altoona, went to the maytag pool in newton (reese went on her first ever water slide ride and LOVED it!), hung out with the relatives around the pool in bussey, and pretty much just had a wonderful time hanging out watching the hummingbirds around my parent's deck.

we managed to plan a 3 day camping trip during the only 90+ degree weather that we had, but there was no where to swim because of the high water central/southern iowa has received this summer. the peters family only lasted 2 days in the tent, then we headed home and left grandma & grandpa in the a/c'ed camper for that night.

i managed to sneak away for a ladies' evening with some high school friends, wish i could have planned another one of those outings. cade had his 6th birthday while we were there and received 3 lego kits, so we might have to purchase another shelf for his room, he's running out of display space.

we just got back last night around 10pm. the kids let me sleep in til 8 and haven't bugged me for lunch yet, so i guess i'll go see what photos we came home with!

summer vacation starts today...

2010-06-18T09:55:00.003-04:00

in approximately 5 hours and 40 minutes.

i have a huge to-do list and can you believe blogging is NOT on it, yet here i am.

i'm so good at procrastinating. hopefully i don't teach the kids that particular skill when we homeschool next year!

speaking of homeschooling, i stayed up til 1:30 this morning playing around with all the kids' books. i must be a bit of a nerd, i want to go through and start filling in the blanks. there's just something about a blank page waiting to be filled out that i just itch to get a pencil and sit down for hours.

however, last night i restrained myself and just organized instead. i also set up a rough calendar for our school, which has yet to earn a name. (yes, we get to NAME our homeschool, isn't that awesome??? one of our friend's school is called 'flying aces academy'.)

we'll be starting early in august, so we can finish in early may (ideally aiming for mid april but i'm trying to be realistic about this first year). that includes a month long trip to iowa through september/october (bringing school with us), a 2 week vacation at christmas, a 4 day break for my birthday in february (maybe we'll head somewhere warm in the middle of the week?), and none of this spring break crap. spring break at this age seems like such a waste of time, parents are ready to power through and just finish the school year which is dragging on and on and on at this point. if we finish soon enough in april, then we'll be able to enjoy the best of virginia's weather in the spring before it gets too hot.

chances are we'll be moving next may anyway, so not worrying about school during that time would be helpful. still no idea where to, rob is thinking either north of seattle, washington or back to southern georgia. i vote for georgia but i know how much rob hates the weather and how much he misses his home state of washington. the real fluke would be if we moved back to connecticut. there's one sub out of groton, CT that will need a skipper when rob finishes training, and rob would love to command a fast attack submarine instead of the 2-crew boomer subs (which would be the WA or GA ports). having 2 crews on a submarine does allow for more family time, however, and i did enjoy our year down in florida when we were there in 2007-2008. all the communities have POOLS! how can you not LOVE that?!?

anyway, back to the list. i only have 5 hours, 20 minutes til summer vacation starts! panic!!

a little jealous of the neighbors

2010-06-12T10:28:00.003-04:00

most folks get jealous of their neighbors when they get a shiny new car or get a new toy that keeps their kids entertained for hours on end (reese has been eyeing the neighbor's trampoline for ages). i'm not alone in that, i admit that i felt a little bit envious of our neighbors up the hill over the last few days

they moved out yesterday.

see??? i'm green over here!!

let me share...
we've been living here northern virginia for the last 23 months. the kids have loved attending school and preschool here, the shopping is plentiful (hello IKEA!!), the neighborhood kids are similar ages and always outside, and the weather is generally pleasant. sounds like heaven to most people.

however, i am ready to MOVE on. this is the longest we've lived in one spot in the last 10 years and i'm over it. i'm tired of the house we've been renting, annoyed with the neighbors & their children, frustrated with traffic, pretty much tired of the whole northern virginia scene.

unfortunately, it will be at least another year before we move. rob will be detaching from his DC job in september and heading off to more training before his next sea duty. we will stay here while he completes elements in DC, in norfolk VA, pearl harbor, and rhode island for the next 7-9 months. the navy will tack on an additional few months of training at the end of that, so i'm thinking we'll be here til at least may 2011.

i think i just get all antsy in the summer, all of our moves have occurred during the summer. part of me just thinks that when the weather changes to hot and muggy, then it's time to start planning and packing.

of course i have more than enough to keep me busy, what the hell am i thinking?!?! we have our first year of homeschooling coming up, so it's probably best that we don't plan a household move any time soon. maybe staying here truly is what we need right now, as opposed to what we want.

a new post??? really???

2010-06-10T10:10:00.009-04:00

yes, really!

laurie posted pictures of parker's tball shots, so i'm going to copy her. cade had a tball game last night and his very last one is on saturday. i'm so thrilled about tball being over i can barely contain it. i really don't know if we'll do tball/baseball again. not sure i can handle volunteer-managed events. i need better management than that.

here's one of cade suiting up to play catcher. i had to edit out the coach's wife's hoochie shoes. who wears heels to a tball game anyway??

cade making a fist at me. you can barely see him but i liked the fence perspective.

cade running to 3rd, and yes, i am too cheap to buy him baseball shoes.

cade seems to attract little girls like lice, this little girl was teasing him and they were goofing around during the game.

reese has 2 more weeks of tap dance before her recital so prepare yourself for more photos and possibly a video of that. the reserved seats were sold out (?!?! the day after tickets went on sale??? seriously???) so we're in the nosebleed section. i'm bringing binoculars and hoping my camera can zoom in that far.

and now: pedicure and trip to the library i think.

going to have to do something about that music

2010-06-04T13:49:00.001-04:00

pretty cheesy, isn't it?!?

off to go edit...

just chitchat

2009-11-09T10:54:00.004-05:00

we're all healthy! hooray!

it took forever but cade & reese are back in school today and elisha is heading back tomorrow. it's been 2 full weeks since she was in her little tues/thurs 3's class at preschool. i'm afraid we're going to have to go through the same separation anxiety that we went through with her in september.

truthfully, i was a little annoyed at the public school schedule. before halloween, my 2 kids missed a total of about 10 days of classroom time because of the flu, and then last week monday and tuesday were teacher workdays/conference days so no school. then on thursday i had to take everyone out of school to go to their dentist appointments i had scheduled 7 months ago. with a little forethought i could have just scheduled them for one of the teacher workdays, but no...i missed that by a few days.

speaking of dentists...my kids totally bombed their appointment. reese had to go through remedial tooth care 101 by the staff, her teeth were pretty funky. i expected this, she's been getting loose teeth and hates to wiggle them and thinks it hurts when she brushes them. i know, she's a wimp. cade did OK, no cavities, and his teeth weren't so bad. elisha, my BABY!, has a cavity. sigh. i blame it on the pushy neighbors that are always giving her treats, we're going t have to have a chat, just mom-to-mom. e will get that filled in january, at a cost of about $60 out of pocket!!

the dentist suggested that we get electric toothbrushes and that would encourage proper brushing. he slipped me some coupons and i went right out and bought a set. what i got was a single charger, 2 rechargable handles, and a total of 4 removable brushes. the brushes have a 2 minute timer to them, and what i like best is that they're really quite small heads on them so maybe they fit a little better inside kids' mouths than your typical toothbrush. i had purchased my own electric toothbrush this past spring and i LOVE it, rob has had his for 7 or 8 years now, so it made sense to try it out on the kids. so far so good, there have been no complaints from the oldest 2 and they have been brushing for the full two minutes.

the best part was the coupons. the package was $90, with a $10 instant coupon from the dentist, then a $15 mail-in rebate. (i have yet to pass up a mail-in rebate, i love those things! you mail them away and forget about it...6-8 weeks later you get a check in the mail! it's like free $$$!) anyway, a total of $65 for two electric brushes that seem to have a very long life (rob uses his twice a day, religiously) sounds like a great deal. cheaper than paying to have those cavities filled i guess.

just another day in the fight

2009-10-29T09:55:00.004-04:00

good morning! i picked a new font, just to be a little crazy. why would i do something crazy, you ask? well...

we're going on day 5 of flu in the house, all 3 kids have had the bug. the germs attacked late friday night and they're still going strong around here. i wipe down all the doorknobs and light switches twice a day but looking at how often my kids put their fingers in their noses, there was no way i could win.

both girls are back to health, although that cough really lingers on, but cade is at home with me on sick day #2. his fever just does not want to go down and he was so restless last night, meaning i feel like i'm hungover this morning. a neighbor gave us some children's tylenol so we're going to piggyback the motrin and tylenol so this boy can get some rest.

i kind of annoyed at all the stuff we've had to miss out on since there seems to be at least one person in the house feeling sick or feverish.

reese was to have attended a girl scout campout over the weekend
2 days of preschool (about $30 worth there)
5 days of school, which might increase since cade is not bouncing back as fast as his older sister
a 30-minute tap dance class, $10

if we have to miss trick or treating on saturday you can bet i'm going to really hold a grudge. against who, i don't know...how could i hate a little germ any more than i already do?

we've been quite lucky to not have any complications pop up though. the kids haven't needed any doctor appointments or prescriptions. it wasn't as easy as it could have been, rob escaped ALL of it by jetting off to seattle for work. he comes home tonight and i think i might start a pool...hourly increments for sale, guessing when rob will start running a fever???

my mom & i have had an interesting discussion over the last few days. i was born in february 1976 and in central iowa at that time there was a flu going around, then it was claimed to be the swine flu. during our hospital stay, my mom started to show flu symptoms and although i don't think she felt all that bad, she still had to wear a hospital mask when she was around me. i was a breastfed baby and now i'm wondering if any immunities were passed along to me. with this flu being as potent as the media says it is, i just don't know how i haven't gotten sick along with the kids. i have a sore throat though, so i guess it could turn worse. i promise i won't come and infect you all if i do show flu-like symptoms. that would be a true computer virus, then, ha!

it's enough to drive you crazy.

2009-09-09T21:07:00.003-04:00

domesticity sucks.

i want a tidy house that doesn't smell bad. no one else in this family gives a shit what the house looks or smells like, so i wipe and wash and repeat the same tasks over and over so i can work toward my utopia...a clean and clean-smelling home.

my husband KNOWS that when the mess gets too deep and too smelly that i'm going to start snipping at him...could he get rid of some of the mess by putting away his 3 pairs of shoes on the front door rug? could he take some recycling over to the bin in the garage a few feet away? take the 3 year olds pee-filled undies & pants down to the laundry room to soak? scrub a toilet? could he do anything AT ALL to help have a cleaner living space?

we all know the answer to that, otherwise i would not be here venting my frustrations about my messy stinky house.

school started 2 days ago, but i could use a vacation already. or a house cleaning service! oooh, baby! wouldn't that be grand???

we couldn't afford activities for the kids (tap & karate), but i would get my clean house every week. wonder if that would make the kids and husband realize how frustrated i get that i get dumped on when it comes to housework. i've tried chore charts but really that just makes more work for me, hassling the kids into their chores and listening to the whining at bedtime that they didn't "have enough time" to finish everything (yeah, but you had enough time to dump every lego in the house into a pile in the middle of the toy room).

i might have to give this serious thought over the next few days. i'm headed to bed here shortly, my power cleaning has left me a little tired.

an odd year

2009-09-01T10:09:00.005-04:00

all our children were born during even years (2002, 2004, and 2006). it's kind of handy to think that if the year is an even year, then the kids will all have even birthdays that year. on the flip side of that, since it's 2009, all 3 children will turn an odd number this year.

yesterday my "baby" turned 3 and hers is the last of the kids' birthdays for the year. as happy as i am to see her grow up healthy and strong and to see her own personality, i get a little shock to my heart when i realize that she is the last.

that the crib won't hold any more of *my* babies.

that i won't have to hang onto those toddler clothes, just in case we can use them again for a younger sibling.

that from here on out, they're all just going to get bigger and heavier and with sharper elbows and knees jabbing me in the tummy and boobs as they try to squeeze onto my lap.

i can see so many changes in all of them over the last year. i'm thinking i never noticed them in my oldest child as she was growing because i was always busy with her younger siblings. so while i'm missing having a cuddly baby, i am relieved.

relieved that all 3 of them can trail after me in the store and i'm not having to carry anyone.

relieved they can pretty much feed themselves.

relieved that everyone is sleeping through the night (and has been for almost the last 2 years).

relieved that we're almost diaper free. (a certain little boy still wears pullups to bed and i don't see that ending anytime soon, unfortunately).

i'm excited to start doing more things as a family, things that aren't baby-friendly...like camping. going to the pool. short hikes in the great outdoors. playgrounds!!

i'm almost a little sad that school will be starting next week, i suddenly want to make plans and show the kids everything i can about this great big world. to see a little bit of wonder on my 7 year old's face, to challenge them a little...

but school is starting in 7 days, so we'll make weekend plans here & there and hope we can squeeze in some fun. just because school is starting doesn't mean the fun has to end...that's a new perspective for me this year. i hope it makes me enjoy these next 10 months a little bit more. last year was long and tedious...and long. did i mention long??

anyway, what i meant to do on this post (before i got all emotional) was to share some pictures of my baby, who's not such a baby anymore.

this is elisha holding up her card from grandma & grandpa. she thought it was pretty cool, getting to open her own mail!

the birthday cake.

i was suprised i got it all done. we got home from the store at 3pm and baking commenced then. it was all decorated, ready to go by 7:30. elisha kept on saying how she wanted a peanut cake and although i would have loved to shape a peanut out of 2 round cake pans, i just didn't want to try it. i really didn't think it would work and frosting it would have been a disaster. so i used a peanut butter cake with peanut butter frosting. as i was frosting it, i realized it was going to like a big pile of brown frosting, so i threw in the orange to give it a little zing. everyone was happy. and it was cheaper and yummier than a storebought cake.

so, now that the kids' birthdays are done for 2009, only 115 days til christmas!

messy houses anonymous

2009-08-31T10:08:00.013-04:00

or at least as anonymous as the internet is these days...

amy requested messy house pictures. these are just a few of our house, there could have been TONS more. i didn't include pictures of rob's "man room", which really could be a post all it's own. (in fact i don't even go in there anymore, his mess frustrates me more than any other mess in the house...it's so full of random memoriabilia and pennies in ziploc bags and piled investment statements that i just cannot handle it. the messes in the rest of the house can easily be classified into laundry, dirty dishes, dusting, vacuuming, picking up, etc. but his room just has too many open-ended categories.)

we begin in the dining room...this picture just looks like it's a big wall with a computer...there's a dining table and 6 chairs. 2 of the chairs have been kidnapped for the computer and the others never get pushed in. the room isn't big enough to show the mess in just one photo so i'll have to maneuver to get the whole messy thing.

above is the stash of booze (for me) and packables for the kids' lunches when school starts. they've been sitting there for 6 weeks. school doesn't start for another 7 days.

a box of school supplies...and the birthday party extras from reese's birthday party back in mid-june. what the hell do i do with a box full of tea hats and fake flowers?!?

this is why there's 2 chairs to the computer...one for me, one for my sidekick. this table was cleared for about the first week i got the computer, now it's a catch all. to the right is a stack of papers to file, to the left is my cereal bowl, phone, a stack of empty steno pads...right in front, my beloved coffee cup. and did you know, habits are hard to b reak?

moving on...the kitchen.

clutter clutter clutter. my idea with cade's sight words might not have been the brightest. those post it notes are driving me crazy. above the cupboards we have what i like to call "sarah's club shopping addiction." i buy big boxes of food but have limited storage space. sigh.

this is the living room. a carseat whose cover is still waiting to be washed (yes the toddler is properly secured in a different carseat in the van)...the collapsible dog kennel which is made to be stored away but the dog loves it too much to put it away...the beach towels on the red recliner...the BACKPACKS that seem to follow my husband home but are not allowed to be put on the floor...ugh.

the basement/playroom. i refuse to call this the playroom but i have to call it something so the kids know what i'm yelling about when the mess gets too deep in here. it's not so bad today...out of focus, but i've seen it lots worse.

moving back upstairs, our bedroom.
oh my.
i'm not sure when this room will recover. i do my best to make my bed at some point during the day, doing anything beyond that is 'extra' in my book. at the foot of the bed we have a twin size box spring from moving the girl's beds around last week. the blue beach bag of swimsuits (remember the beach towels from the living room? they're waiting to come home to the bag after they get washed, dried and carried all the way upstairs)...the bag of crib sheets and mattress pads...ugh.master bedroom continued...dirty clothes, hamper of dirty clothes, rubbermaid container of blankets, crib mattress. i don't even know where to start. well, actually i do. i need to start with laundry, i heard reese saying she was wearing her last pair of underwear today.

this is reese's room. and yes, she made her bed today! yay! the rest is a disaster but the bed is made as good as she can make it. she's 7. i may put her to work on my bed.

this is cade's room. i should have gotten a better angle of the top of his dresser. it's full of lego creations that he refuses to break apart. add in the comforter wadded up in the corner (there was a pee accident that happened a month ago and it *might* have gotten contaminated, i should wash it to be on the safe side but i just haven't yet), the pink waterwing (???), and the assorted trucks i told him to pick up 3 days ago.
all the time that i spent snapping and posting these pictures, i bet i could have picked up quite a bit of the mess. my sudden devotion to this lonely little blog is astounding, but i'll do anything to avoid housework.

just peachy, thanks

2009-08-26T10:29:00.003-04:00

i'm showered, dressed, make-up'ed and blown out...and i have been since 8am. the girls had their beds delivered today from a furniture store and lucky me, the delivery window was from 8am-10am. so at 8:05 while i'm chowing on my kashi cereal, guess who comes knocking on our front door?

the beds were set up by 8:30 so i do have to give the guys kudos for a quick set up. their rooms are all set up and ready for bedtime tonight.

since i got a jump on the morning by showering so early, i even added some perfume to my routine. (hey, i'll be heading out to sam's club and target later today, i might as well smell purty!) my neighbor is an avon lady and i had ordered a new perfume called 'chic in white.' my avon lady, being from afghanistan and maybe not aware of how english has borrowed a lot of words from the french, pronounces this perfume as "chick in white." if you say it fast enough it sounds like "chicken white." it doesn't really smell like chicken though...after wearing it for a bit now, it reminds me a lot of peach schnapps...which makes me want a fuzzy navel...which makes me realize i have no clue even where to buy hard liquor around here. beer & wine are everywhere but i have yet to see the rough stuff for sale. it's probably better for me, i might try to make mojitos or appletinis or something else equally yummy and calorie-licious.

rob hasn't smelled it yet, so i don't have a male's opinion on this scent. so far i'll give it 4 stars out of 5. ok, maybe 4.5 stars b/c my neighbor threw in a bunch of free samples with my order and that always cheers me up. so before we head out to run errands, i'll get to pick out a lipstick sampler. i tried one the other night and damnit, i really liked it. samples really are a good way to hook you. i think sam's club has known that for a while though, my kids are always hoping for snacks when we go there.

blogger envy

2009-08-24T10:33:00.006-04:00

i love the internet.

possibly more than my children. yes, maybe so.

********************************************************
yesterday i saw my husband had commented on one of his friends' pictures on facebook. the picture was of a homemade apron that the woman had just sewn and when i saw it, i immediately thought 'i want one too!'

so i googled the style of apron and i fell in love with it even more. from there i posted my apron-related links and musings on a mommy message board. suprisingly, another mommy posted back that she had just made herself a new apron and gave me MORE links to homemade aprons.

one of those links was to lucy who makes some super neat stuff (including aprons!) and the best part? she has music on her website and her playlist really is awesome. i'm always looking for something new and varied when it comes to music. and lucy doesn't play commercials in her music lineup, definitely a plus :)

i've left that window open for the last 2 days and that's what i've been listening to whenever i'm at the computer. i have a list of about a dozen songs from her playlist that i may add to my itunes. i bookmarked her site, not only for her apron-making abilities but b/c her music choices ROCK!

you won't get that classy treatment around this blog. no sir. instead you get one post in 2 months and some teeny font that makes you squint at the monitor. not to mention the sea green background that looks a bit institutional.

***EDIT***
i've got music now! woohoo! so there's still tiny print and that lovely green background but be patient. just adding music took me at least 2 hours of ignoring the kids, maybe i'll save the background editing for the first day of school!! :) so even though i have music up now, i'll probably still listen to lucy's playlist. i highly recommend it!

wedding gifts suck.

2009-06-25T10:15:00.003-04:00

my cousin is getting married this weekend.

in iowa, of course, where all the rest of my family resides. we're not attending the wedding, mostly because we weren't invited. we didn't make the list for the wedding, just for the reception. (ouch.) the wedding ceremony is going to be held at a covered bridge somewhere in marion county, and there's limited parking so the guest list for the ceremony had to be trimmed significantly...seems the out-of-town cousins get whacked off without a further thought.

even if i sound bitter, i am going to send them a card with some money in it but i'm really puzzled as to how much to enclose.

$25 seems appropriate in my mind, but a little nagging thought pops up and says, 'maybe $50 would be better?' after all, $25 doesn't buy much anymore...a dinner at a restaurant, 1/2 a tank of gas, 1/2 of a cell phone bill...on the other hand, i really don't want to give them $50.

the last family i sent money to never sent me a thank you card and i'm HUGE on proper ettiquette when it comes to thank you cards. in my mind, there's no reason not to send a thank you. everyone knows where the post office is and i print my return address very neatly, so that couldn't have been the issue. it was for a wedding gift for my cousins on the other side of the family, and suprise! the check was cashed on the very day of their wedding. (rolls eyes) this is also the couple who got married in may and their firstborn arrived that december. whatever. you can be damn sure i didn't send them a baby gift.

yes, it's an old-fashioned attitude but along with thank you cards, i'm a big believer in baby announcements. most of my family has email access, why is it so hard to put together a mass email of the actual name of the baby and the birthdate? i like to know these things about the new members of the family.

anyway, enough of my mind wandering. $25 or $50. cheapskate or too much. an oddball amount like $35 seems a little weird.

you know, now that i think about it...both the bride & groom are employed full time, living together, and i haven't even seen my cousin (the groom) in years. $25 sounds about right. shall i enclose a stamped, pre-addressed thank you card as well?

2009-06-24T10:57:00.004-04:00

summer is a little anticlimactic.

we're on day 5 of summer vacation (i had to open up my calendar to actually count the days, they already seem to run together) and i'm over it. as we speak the kids have been camped in front of the TV for the last 48 minutes. at least it's PBS, that's the only effort i'm making lately. they can watch TV all day, as long as it's PBS. but when did PBS start slipping in all the commercials? sure it's a 10 second spot of a product because the company paid for the airing of the show, but isn't that technically a "commercial?" arg. makes me think i should start donating to public broadcasting, but living in northern VA..really i'm unsure who the money should go to. we get (and watch) maryland and virginia broadcasting. maybe alternate year by year? although it seems like maryland's PBSkids is a little bit better.

anyway, those above dilemmas are the silly things that occupy my brain these days.

over the last few days, it's been "i should really sweep and mop the wood floor." which is followed by "but then the kids will just get it dirty again" or "it's supposed to rain tomorrow, then the dog will track in mud and i'll have to scrub it again." however, if the kids and/or dog did happen to get it dirty again, you know i really wouldn't go to all that work and mop it again. clorox wipes are heavily used in this house. i've had to order rob NOT to use them to clean our 2 year olds' hands after a meal. good thing she doesn't wear diapers anymore, i'd be afraid to leave clorox wipes in the house with them.

so...today, we shall head to target. i'm not sure WHEN, since it's already after 11am and it takes me about 45 minutes to shower & get dressed, and that brings us smack into lunch time. lunch truly is its own time suck.

feeding kids really is too much work. there's the work of making a choice, prepping the food, waiting for them to eat (holy crow does it take forever for them to just EAT IT already!), reminding the kids to put their dishes in the dishwasher, and then cleaning 6 hands and 3 faces and the island, the counters, and the table. it annoys me that i have to do this THREE times a day, and it further annoys me that experts recommend that all meals should be sit-down meals at the table and adults should try to carry on meaningful conversations with their kids during this time. really, do i have to?

sigh. we're working on 78 minutes of PBS now, just in case you're keeping track.

the planning begins

2009-05-25T08:43:00.004-04:00

i am a mother to a little girl who will be turning 7 in 21 days.

i am a mother who has given into her daughter's request for a birthday party with friends.

i am a mother who will be throwing a birthday tea party for 8 little girls in 19 days.

i am a mother with a shitload of work to do!!!

apparently, so does reese. she's been keeping her own list of items to get for her party and one of them is "party manners." i had to laugh at that one, reese seems to take after daddy in the manners department.

the part i'm nervous about is having all the moms hanging out during the party. i am NOT good at small talk and even worse at keeping the house clean enough for adult guests (my list at walmart includes ant traps, is that telling enough?).

it should be fun, i just have to stay focused and not let the calendar get away from me. i also need to figure out what the birthday girl will be receiving from us this year. on her birthday list she included: a nerf gun, an ariel head (for hairstyling practice), a pug (!!!), and american girl doll, with 'esesorees' (ahem, accessories), paint and easel, barbies, a webkinz and a computer. there will have to be some brainstorming going on. i would love to get her a trampoline for the backyard but our backyard is so small and hilly that i imagine she'd bounce over the fence and into the woods beyond. we'll have to save that for some other birthday.

for the now, it's time to get some coffee and head to the grocery store. seems un-american to spend memorial day buying food but at least i'm buying SOMETHING and *that* is american. hey, maybe we'll add an american flag to our shopping list. thanks for reminding me, blogger! we have the holder on the porch but no flagpole or flag. seems like a navy family should display a flag every day, not just patriotic holidays. we'll have to get on that!

summer's a comin'...

2009-05-21T09:11:00.004-04:00

preschool is over!

yay! and boo! what am i going to do with cade allllll day??? especially since his favorite activity is picking on elisha whenever possible. the neighbors *might* be hearing more yelling from this house and i just might be the one doing it, as i'm running away from home.

there's one last preschool activity. today the preschool is hosting a family day at a local park. some craft activities for the kids, feeding the ducks, playing in the fresh air...which sounds fine & dandy but it starts in 45 minutes and i'm still working on my first cup of coffee. there's a reason why cade went to school in the afternoons and it's called "momma can't be anywhere before 10:30." my eyes still won't fully open, for god's sake.

the fun part is it's a picnic so we bring our own food to eat in the park so i have to get that all put together too. meanwhile, i just want another cup of coffee and some more computer time.

to do list...

2009-05-13T07:46:00.003-04:00

i woke up today WITHOUT my alarm going off, and yes i am impressed about that. right at 6:45 my eyes popped open and i didn't even think about rolling over and snoozing for a bit longer. instead i thought about what i could do today that would keep me busy.

so far, i'm planning an exciting day of:
1. reese off to school
2. clean & vacuum main level, it's desperately needed!
3. take cade to preK
4. head to walmart and choose some more flowers/plants for our house (isn't it sad how walmart has become the neighborhood greenhouse as well? i have no clue where the closest greenhouse or nursery is, but i can find 3 walmarts no problem.)
5. spend after school time planting some flowers while the kids play

i might throw in a walk for the dog if i really get busy on the house cleaning. i've been making time to walk the dog every day, hoping to aspire to 'pack leader' among all my other job titles. which reminds me, cesar milan is just YUMMY, and it cracks me up to think that south park has added him to their list of popular folks to parody.

ok, off to the bus stop!

sunny sunday

2009-05-11T14:28:00.003-04:00

i click "create post" and after playing quietly for the last 10 minutes, elisha must suddenly speak up and begin whining. how does she have such perfect timing?!?!

we had a wonderful mother's day. the kids let me sleep in til 9:30 and then i came downstairs to be greeted with homemade cards and coffee a la rob. i had wanted for the last few weeks to go on a family hike at one of the local state parks and we finally did that yesterday. it was a 2 mile loop, complete with a view over the potomac river. it was gorgeous weather, and surprisingly no one got a single bug bite! (this could be because i generously applied the avon bug spray, but it was breezy so maybe that helped also.) the 2 year old only needed piggy-backed about 1/5th of the way and everyone agreed that we should do that again. rarely do we get that much agreement about ANYTHING in our family.

to top my weekend off, i stepped on the scale for a 1.6 lb loss this morning. life is going well right now.

coffee loosens the lips

2009-05-09T08:39:00.003-04:00

another saturday, another 6:30am wake up call from a certain 2 year old who was extremely thirsty at bedtime and needed to use the facilities. pottytraining is awesome, except before 7am.

it wouldn't hurt so badly if i would have headed to bed before midnight. it wouldn't have hurt so badly if rob hadn't decided that it was time for a big emotional discussion about our relationship, and we stayed up for another 90 minutes hashing that all up. i have no clue what time i fell asleep but i know i didn't sleep nearly enough.

i have dibs on a nap some time today, even if i have to sit out in the van to hide from the kids.

part of the whole relationship discussion has to do with me and my own little depression.

or it might just be craziness. i'll settle with calling it depression, that sounds a little less scary than crazy. they can treat depression with medication...do they have meds for "crazy?" or do they go straight to electro-shock therapy and padded rooms?

i guess i'll be researching our insurance coverage to find out what they allow...and then trying to figure out how to even get an appointment to get things started. sigh. i've been hoping it will just go away by itself, and it does for a few weeks but then it's followed by a few bad weeks and it's getting harder to come back. there's a song by pam tillis, called "land of the living" and the refrain starts out "hurry back to the land of the living." that's truly how i refer to it in my mind, those days when the fog lifts and i can feel good about myself, i feel like i'm back in the land of the living. during my dark days, i feel content to watch the world go by from my window.

i'm also overeating like crazy, whether that's self-destructive behavior i'm not sure. or was it self-destructive behavior when i was on weight watchers and lost 80 pounds in 4 months? looking back at it, i thought it was awesome but now maybe i enjoyed restricting my eating a little too much? the last few days (now my cloud has lifted once again), i've been strict about my eating again and i feel self-confident, sexy, powerful. i type it out though, and i feel crazy. crazy or not, i'm 10 pounds above where i was when we moved here, arg.

how did i get like this??? media? my parents? high school boyfriend?

i told rob last night that talking about all this with a professional is going to be a lot more difficult than just moving on. i'm not sure i have the energy to go through all this. i don't remember a specific incident that would cause this behavior, so maybe it's just me. maybe it's my maternal grandma smiling down on me from somewhere, having possibly passed her depression on to the next generation.

on a good note, i finally remembered my blogger password so i can share all this uplifting news with the world. (ok, i know no one really reads this, but it's out there so it's possible!! :b)

stupid coffee addiction

2009-04-02T15:18:00.003-04:00

sigh.

i've been faithfully dedicated to my gateway laptop for the last 4 years. it's made 3 moves and even come along on several vacations.

yesterday morning, i spilled a full cup of coffee on the keyboard. so while my laptop may smell like the perfect cup of coffee, it's not working like it should :( my keyboard is fried and when i go to open any window to do anything, it keeps randomly opening more and more windows.

so while i'm sad to say good bye to my old laptop, i'm secretly excited to get a new one. the consumer in me is about ready to pee herself so she can get something NEW! yippee!!

here's another something secret...i think i'm going to give macs a whirl. i've been devoted to PCs forever but rob had to rebuild my laptop about once a year and it ran XP. while i loved XP, i'm not ready to move onto vista, so we'll give apple a shot. if nothing else, they keep their resale value like ca-razy! :)

the 'bobeara gets smart

2009-03-25T10:23:00.005-04:00

i've been having all sorts of deep thoughts lately. i wouldn't call them epiphanies, but for someone who tends toward selfishness (me ;)), they're pretty big.

an example...

after dealing with cade's rotten attitude all day, after cooking and serving and cleaning up a homemade dinner, after bathing all the kids and having at least 2 loads of laundry to look forward to after the kids' bedtime, i was a little touchy. rob knew i was grouchy but pointed out that he had at least read a book to the kids. (wasn't that so thoughtful of him??? i do all the legwork and he gets the cuddles? yeah, i thought so too.)

i started a load of laundry, still angry, then went up to the sofa to read & listen to my ipod. i needed some down time while i stewed in my anger.

after about 5 minutes of not being able to focus on the book b/c of my anger, i realized how thankful i should be that i have all of this work to do. after that little thought popped in my head, my balloon of anger also popped...thankful that my kids are healthy and home in their comfortable warm beds....thankful that my husband was home and ready to read them a book and kiss them goodnight...thankful that we have a working washer and dryer in our basement so that i can sit around and read a book...thankful for this body that can carry loads of laundry up and down the stairs.

my anger disappeared and i enjoyed the rest of the evening with my book. i let rob suffer a little longer however. i apologized for my behavior at bedtime though ;)

usually there are so many times during the day when i think about all that i HAVE to get done, and no one to help me do them. i begin to get resentful, it seems that all my time goes toward chores or encouraging potty time or reminding reminding reminding the kids to finish their chores or pick up their toys. with that teeny thought last night still in my head this morning, i'm going to try to remember that it is with a thankful heart i get to cook a healthy meal for my family, i get to encourage independence in my two year old, i get to teach my children about picking up after themselves and contributing as a member of the family. just one little thought is all it took.

what are you thankful for?

dinner. it's what's for, uh...dinner.

2009-03-23T09:52:00.004-04:00

and it's monday again.

how do weekends go so fast? they go even faster when it's warm & sunny outside. rainy saturdays last FOREVER, it seems.

this weekend i started something that before i had always laughed at, secretly made fun of. when i realized that i could start saving money doing it, i decided to give it a shot.

i'm meal planning!!!

hm, not as exciting as training for a marathon or digging a garden plot but certainly a big change for us.

i'm only planning our suppers for now. i could go crazy and plan lunches, but during the week there's just 2 kids home so i'll just jump in and see where it takes us. before trying this grand experiment, i'd just throw some oven-ready creation in the oven, add a fruit or vegetable and call it dinner. truthfully, that still resembles my meal planning, only now it's on the fridge for everyone to complain about.

i shouldn't say everyone is complaining, just my 4 year old. he's been the main deterrent to meal planning in the past. the fact that he a) hates meat, b) hates most vegetables and c) hates most sauces should let you know why i've put this off for so long. i've realized that if he's going to be a kindergartener in a public school next year, i should start putting new foods under his nose. who knows what those lunch ladies will try to feed him!

so far, not so good.

last night was meatloaf muffins, using this recipe. pretty much just turkey meatloaf (with cheese mixed in, to tempt him...what 4 year old can resist melted cheese???), put into well-sprayed muffin tins, with a spiral of ketchup on top. reese and rob LOVED them, both will be eating them for lunch today as well. i thought they were pretty good too, but i restrained myself with just two. elisha ate about 1/2 of hers, which is normal. cade, however, had to add drama to the meal. crying, screaming, crouching into the fetal position on his chair WHILE crying AND screaming...but eventually he at least took one bite of the meatloaf, and one bite of the mashed potatoes i had fixed on the side. his dinner was: 1/2 an apple (no skin), 1/2 slice of homemade bread (with butter), one bite of meatloaf, one bite of mashed potatoes, and one mini banana chocolate chip muffin. the muffin was the deal maker, obviously. cade will do anything for those yummy things.

anyway, tonight is spaghetti and breadsticks, with broccoli and/or cantelope. cade's meal will be: buttered spaghetti noodles (remember he hates sauces), cantelope, and as many breadsticks as i'll let him have.

i'm actually looking forward to dinners this week. it's almost like since it's on paper, it's there to back me up when cade starts whining about what's being served. i did work in some fun dinners too, it's not all meatloaf and crockpot dishes. wednesday we're having chocolate chip flax pancakes. you KNOW no one will be late for that dinner!

spring is almost here

2009-03-18T10:49:00.003-04:00

and where the heck have i been?!?!? geez.

can you believe that i had to have my blog password reset? i could not remember what it was for the life of me. now i doubt i'll really write in here much more than usual, but at least i can comment on other people's blogs. yay!

it's been a long winter and spring is taking it's own sweet time finally getting here. the crocus & daffodils are blooming but the last 5 days have been cloudy and about 45 degrees. i guess cold days like that make you even more thankful for those blooming bulbs.

the kids are great. our youngest is probably officially pottytrained. she's wearing underwear all day, keeping diapers dry almost every night, and running herself to the potty when she needs to. so now i have almost a full package of pullups leftover. and yes, i'm kind of irritated, those things are $15 a pack and of course i had to rip open the package so she could have the ones with the princesses on the tummy instead of the ones from target with the goofy little girls on them. our neighbor has volunteered to take them off my hands, her 3 year old SON is still in diapers.

rob is traveling more these days. lucky for him he gets to be in washington state for 3/4 of the kids' spring break. he gets back on april 10, the kids go back to school on april 14. and with the jet lag he'll go through, i'm sure he'll be pretty much worthless for 2 of those days. he is only gone for 2 weeks, as opposed to 6+ months, so i'll pipe down on the complaining...but i really think spring break is going to be anything but a break for me :/ it's 3 weeks away anyway, so here i am wasting so much energy dreading it when it's not even til next MONTH. that makes it sound even farther away.

i'll make a better effort this spring to bore you all to death with more frequent posts. sounds like a fun goal for me, for sure!

happy halloween!

2008-10-31T22:46:00.007-04:00

hey look! i made it back, and before a whole month went by! i'm cutting it pretty close, but aren't we all doing that about something???

anyway, this may have made the rounds of the blogging world a long time ago, but i'll post mine anyway :)

from HelloQuizzy

You Are an Audrey!

You are an Audrey -- "I am at peace"

Audreys are receptive, good-natured, and supportive. They seek union with others and the world around them.

How to Get Along with Me

* If you want me to do something, how you ask is important. I especially don't like expectations or pressure
* I like to listen and to be of service, but don't take advantage of this
* Listen until I finish speaking, even though I meander a bit
* Give me time to finish things and make decisions. It's OK to nudge me gently and nonjudgmentally
* Ask me questions to help me get clear
* Tell me when you like how I look. I'm not averse to flattery
* Hug me, show physical affection. It opens me up to my feelings
* I like a good discussion but not a confrontation
* Let me know you like what I've done or said
* Laugh with me and share in my enjoyment of life

What I Like About Being an Audrey

* being nonjudgmental and accepting
* caring for and being concerned about others
* being able to relax and have a good time
* knowing that most people enjoy my company; I'm easy to be around
* my ability to see many different sides of an issue and to be a good mediator and facilitator
* my heightened awareness of sensations, aesthetics, and the here and now
* being able to go with the flow and feel one with the universe

What's Hard About Being an Audrey

* being judged and misunderstood for being placid and/or indecisive
* being critical of myself for lacking initiative and discipline
* being too sensitive to criticism; taking every raised eyebrow and twitch of the mouth personally
* being confused about what I really want
* caring too much about what others will think of me
* not being listened to or taken seriously

Audreys as Children Often

* feel ignored and that their wants, opinions, and feelings are unimportant
* tune out a lot, especially when others argue
* are "good" children: deny anger or keep it to themselves

Audreys as Parents

* are supportive, kind, and warm
* are sometimes overly permissive or nondirective

and my halloween lesson...if twizzlers aren't red, don't eat them, and be a little embarrassed that you handed them out to unsuspecting trick or treaters. oops.

october is...

2008-10-01T10:03:00.004-04:00

fire prevention awareness month! seriously, CHECK YOUR SMOKE DETECTORS!!!

i've been a member of a mommy message board, and although we've changed hosting boards a few times, there's about 40 of us who have been together since october of 2001. we all came together because we were pregnant and due with a child in june of 2002.

last night, one of these wonderful ladies had a fire in her kitchen that raced so quickly through the home that it damaged her 2nd floor. thankfully no one was hurt, the family pets were all rescued, and she managed to grab her purse & laptop (she's in college and a year away from graduating with a teaching degree). however there's a lot of clean up to do, lots of smoke & water damage and the windows were all broken by the firefighters as they were doing their job.

there's so many things to worry about in her situation (financially mostly), but thankfully they are together as a family. her three daughters are safe and her and her husband are healthy.

anyway, october is a busy month. but take 5 minutes and check & replace the batteries in your smoke detectors. make a fire escape plan for your family. teach your children what to do if there's a fire. plan ahead.

round 4...

2008-09-12T11:48:00.003-04:00

i've survived the worst of it i think. i still feel bloated and grumpy but i'm not having to visit the toilet every hour so i'd say that's an improvement. now it's cade's turn, he threw up last night and again this morning so he's the last of us to get it. hopefully rob doesn't get it when he moves up FOR GOOD on monday. (yes, he misses us so much that he's coming up on monday instead of tuesday. i should start lysoling all the doorknobs now, i guess?)

i downloaded my 2nd nina simone album just now. i have a feeling i may have discovered an expensive habit.

i advertised for a babysitter on care.com. i'm looking for someone to come in and watch cade & elisha for a few hours in the mornings so i can help out in reese's classroom. does that sound dumb, paying someone to watch the kids so i can volunteer in reese's 1st grade classroom??? i've never gotten to do this and now cade & elisha are old enough to welcome a care provider, so maybe i should just escape a few mornings while i can.

cade's first week of preschool went well, his tantrums weren't *too* bad when it was time to go home. he's produced worse, what can i say. today will be his first sick day. i'd say poor kid but he is acting fine so i'll say 'poor mom' instead.

he gets thursdays off from preK and he's missing today, so it's going to be a long long weekend. and did i hear it's supposed to be rainy too? i think i did. good times.

maybe i'll just let them wreck the house and let nina keep me company on the nano. reinforcements are on the way!!

short and not that sweet

2008-09-08T10:31:00.003-04:00

it is monday and this monday is rougher than usual.

i've been afraid to leave the house for the last 24 hours and i've spent way too much time on the toilet waiting for the bowel cramping to pass. i don't know what yucky little germ i got into but it really is gross. i have some body aches and nausea but that's manageable with ibuprofen.

the best part is that we could use some groceries, cade starts afternoon preschool this afternoon, and i really need to do some laundry.

just one of those days i wish my husband was in town. one week from today is his detach date!! everyone stand up and do a little dance with me. he will officially be done as executive officer on the submarine and have 2 glorious weeks of leave before shore duty starts.

anyway, i better wrap this up. my innards are starting to gurgle. sigh.

etc and more etc.

2008-09-06T14:45:00.009-04:00

dare i show my face in here? almost 3 months has passed since i last posted. as always, i have EXCUSES for why i haven't had the time to post. well, correction...i've had the time, just not the concentration perhaps.

the move...
we are now residents of northern VA. we moved during the middle of july from a single story 4 bedroom house to a home with 3 levels, 4 bedrooms, and a huge basement. there's a fenced backyard with a good-sized deck, 2 swings for the kids (which will be a source of irritation soon, 2 swings for 3 kids means lots of arguments in the future), and we're on a pipestem off of a cul-de-sac so we have a thick line of trees behind us for a little extra privacy in back. we really love the house. i'm not sure how long it's been a rental but it's probably seen its share of tenants, it's a little beat up here & there...but just enough so that don't have to panic about what our kids might add to it.
we like the area well enough so far. there's lots of shopping available (if that's your thing) and we seem to have moved near a really good school, and it's only a few miles to the nearest target, grocery store, panera & starbucks (all in one PLAZA even, how wonderful!). sometimes it's just a little too much...but that's why i like coming back to this peaceful house, just a few houses down there's a big open common area to use. yeah, it's on a hill but what isn't around here?!?!? :)

the road trip...
i decided we didn't have enough drama in our lives so i packed up the 3 kids, boarded the dog, and hired a petsitter to check on the cat and drove back to iowa for a short visit in early august. we went for the sweet corn, the homegrown tomatoes, to hang with the grandparents, and to check out the iowa state fair.

we had a ball last year at the fair...not so much this year. reese & cade picked that day to become superbrats (and yes, that's brats as in asshole kids, not bratwurts...mmm..bratwrusts...). anyway, i threatened to leave them home when i saw how our day was headed but really, i WANT them to see the fair, like i did when i was a kid. although now everything costs 4x as much and kids today think they're ENTITLED to a dozen rides on the giant slide. when i was a kid, wandering around was the fun part. reese thinks we're just supposed to go from spot to spot so that she can do something at each place, whether it's a ride or eating or buying some tacky, possibly lead-coated toy.
they got the corndogs, the iowa t-shirts, the $25 of giant slide tickets (hell yeah, i went too, that thing is fun!!), some ice cream and they wore me down to buy them toys on our way out the gate that afternoon. i could have stayed longer if it wasn't for their whining. we didn't even make it to the poultry barn. :/

the first day of school...
was fine. we just finished our first week of school and i'm already overwhelmed with the begging for volunteers from the PTO and reese's teacher. i plan to help out, i just have to find a babysitter first. i'm going to volunteer in reese's room, i didn't get to last year (and if i had, i probably would have run away screaming, with 36 5 year olds in one room), but now that cade is doing afternoon preschool, i think finding a babysitter for elisha will be easier. or even a sitter for an hour or 2 in the mornings for both of them.
can you believe i didn't get pictures of reese's first day? we were 1/2 way to the bus stop and i realized i forgot the camera. we had time to go back but rob said to me, 'it's ok, no one else will have their cameras either.' note to self...rob is full of beans. when the bus pulled up there were at least 15 parents, about 20 kids, and 9 cameras beeping and snapping away. sigh.
cade's first afternoon of preschool is on monday, i will be bringing the camera for that.

etc...
i got reese signed up for brownies/girl scouts. the neighborhood troop is really on the ball, i'm a little intimidated. our daisies leader in florida left a lot to improve on, i guess. the girls already have a camping overnight scheduled and a 'warm up' overnighter just down the road at a neighbor's house. i believe there's 16 girls in this group. can you imagine 16 6 year olds "sleeping" at your house?!? and the hostess is the PTO president, i really hope reese keeps her hands out of her nose and butt while she's there. we're going to have to do some intensive training during the next week. also on the brownies schedule: a trip into DC during december to go see the nutcracker ballet. i'm really torn about this. i don't think i'm brave enough to get myself to DC, do i trust 2 women to take 16 kids into the city and have them sit through 2 hours of ballet? i've heard wonderful things about these leaders, but this seriously scares the shit out of me. this might be one of those things that reese skips, i don't think there's a badge involved, it's just a holiday excursion.

why does it seem like so many things get scheduled for the same weekend? the first weekend in oct seems to be that weekend for us. there's a 'light the night' walk that i want to go to on saturday night, and i was planning on taking reese with me but that is the brownies camp out weekend. rob heard about a 5K/fall celebration about an hour away that he's planning to do on saturday morning. i'd really like to stay local in case the campout doesn't turn out well for reese and we need to go pick her up. we'll come up with some solution.

speaking of weekend activities...
the 'step out to fight diabetes' walk is october 18, locally. i'm not sure why, but i feel like i should participate in that as well. what's up with my desire to walk around for sick people?!? i don't know that many people with diabetes or with complications due to diabetes...although it's a disease that is claiming more and more lives. my interest in 'light the night' comes from a blog that was shared by a fellow member of a mommy board. poor poor max. what a brave little boy...and there's so many sick yet brave children out there..and actually both of these organizations help people of all ages, not just children. it can't hurt to go do it, right? it can only help.

more etc...
elisha is now a 2 year old! her birthday was last sunday. she had her 2 year checkup this past week and she's 30 lbs (birthweight was 8.13...a gain of 21 lbs in 2 years) and 35" (birthlength was 21.5"...a gain of 13.5 inches in 2 years). we have to go get Xrays this coming week, she's extremely flexible in her hips and she prefers to "W" sit so the doctor wanted to make sure all was well with her hip joints (esp with my hip pain and my mom's recent hip replacement).

why didn't anyone before now tell me how COOL nina simone is??? i downloaded an album of hers and i could listen to it all day. i'm trying to decide which album of hers to get next.
only 9 more days til rob is done at the base down in georgia!!! yay!!! he hopes to return there for a weekend function in october, but otherwise he'll be living up here soon. he'll take 2 weeks of leave and then start his new job in DC at the end of september.
hummus rocks. red pepper hummus to be exact.

ok, i've dorked enough time away on this post. it's almost scary how long it takes me to compose my thoughts into a semi-logical arrangement on here. if this presentation frightens you, then you definitely don't want to see my kitchen.

and it came from the sea...

2008-06-17T08:23:00.007-04:00

greetings! we're back from our little vacation and it is just lovely to be home. our hotel was truly awesome but anytime you go overnight with 3 kids, it's ALWAYS good to come home. when we got back last night, the kids played for hours with the toys they hadn't seen for a day and a half. they introduced their new toys to their old toys. and they stayed up until 10pm since they all had a 3 hour nap on the way home. *yawn*

sunday afternoon was spent at the mall of florida.

i bought myself some new oakley sunglasses. they look better in action ;)

we visited m&m world...and bought $9 of m&m's, priced conservatively at 10.99 a lb. why did we need such expensive m&m's? i have no clue. they tasted EXACTLY like the ones in a bag that you can get for 60 cents at walmart. i told the kids we weren't going to buy very many, then rob comes over with a big bagfull. he told me he got all the colors you can't get in the store. okaaaaay. whatever. then last night i gave them to him as we were unpacking and he says, "what should i do with these?" EAT THEM, dude. you spent $8 on them, eat them.

luckily the pictures out front were free.
another interesting tidbit...on sunday we were all wearing green. i don't know how that happened. cade picked out his own shirt, rob bought himself a new green t-shirt that he had to promptly change into (and no, he didn't turn green like my mother always told me would happen if you didn't wash your new clothes before wearing them), and then i changed into a green tank top later.

since it was reese's birthday we stopped by the build-a-bear workshop and reese made herself a new friend. she picked a husky and named it 'rosie.' awwww. she really wanted to buy clothes for it but i drew the line there. instead we chose a happy birthday hat and noisemaker instead, since rosie & reese now share a birthday.

after the mall we found our hotel and it was just wonderful. i had picked it on travelocity, based on the pool pictures. and ironically enough after we arrived it sprinkled and thundered and turned too cool to swim. the pool was still pretty from the lobby though. i was very impressed with it in general, it truly made our weekend feel like a vacation. if we had chosen a super 8 or the like, i would have been stressing about how clean or how dirty the floor or the bathtub was, but instead i just relaxed. the room was spotless and wasn't damp at all (as most hotel rooms in florida seem to be). if you're looking for a hotel in orlando, choose this one.

we had hoped to find a japanese restaurant for dinner, but the one that advertised a kid's menu was impossible to find. and once i teased rob about chicken fried steak, he had to have some. so we had supper at denny's. the kids had pancakes and rob had his steak. then we went and played mini-putt. we hadn't played since before we had kids, and we had a fabulous time. it had been a while since i had laughed so hard.

and this is afterward, walking back to the car. rob was happy that he beat me by 5 strokes.

we spent all of monday at seaworld, well until we all got tired of each other so we left at 3:30. 6 hours in an amusement park in orlando heat is probably the best we could have hoped for. we skipped all the shows. even though those are the biggest attraction, we skipped them because they were the biggest attraction. 45 minutes of standing in line with all 3 kids? i don't think so. just standing in line with rob alone would have been enough to make me go crazy, let alone with the kids who are hot and have been told there's roller coasters in the park somewhere.

this was cade's favorite part of the day:
he could have stayed in the arcade for at least another hour, and that's with no quarters or tokens in his pocket to spend.

they both went on the kids' roller coaster, the shamu express. rob and i took turns going with them. cade only went once but reese went 3 times, she loved it. then cade lost himself for about 7 minutes. he took off to the upper levels of their huge playscape without telling me where he was headed. after searching for 3 minutes, i went right to guest services for help. i was so surprised he turned up all the way on the top level of that thing. i really thought he would stay on the lowest level. he didn't seem that excited about the playscape when we first got to that area of the park.

i didn't bother bringing swimsuits into the park, thinking all the water play was across the street in a new waterpark. however, there was a big splash area for kids to play in. i think we could have stayed another hour if the kids had gotten cooled off. let me rephrase...if ROB had gotten cooled off. he was getting tired of the crowds and the heat and the whiny kids, so we started making our way toward the exit. we were steps away from leaving the park when it started raining. i had brought 4 umbrellas with us but we took cover under a storefront. it poured for at least 10 minutes, then lightened up enough so we could make a run to the car.

it rained and stormed all the way through orlando and actually we had rain almost all the way til daytona beach. so maybe rob's attitude is related to the weather? like the lower the barometer, the more unpleasant he makes life so you'd rather just head for cover in the car? i don't know. might be something to study during future road trips.

speaking of, we have another one coming up! we're heading to the DC area to go house hunting next week! should be loads of fun. (notice the sarcasm there???)

happy anniversary to me...

2008-06-15T08:28:00.004-04:00

8:06 am.
june 15, 2002.
a hospital in new london, connecticut

a baby is born.

that baby is a healthy 7 lbs, 10 oz and is quiet for the first few minutes after birth, then lets 'er rip. the noise hasn't stopped since.

this should read 'happy birthday reese', but it's my blog so i get titling rights. :)

off to seaworld for 2 days to celebrate us surviving for 6 years.

30,000 miles and counting

2008-06-12T09:15:00.003-04:00

listening to: 'take me there' by rascal flatts, interrupted here & there by today's episode of 'the backyardigans'
reading: 'the good earth' by pearl buck
drinking: dunkin donuts french vanilla with a shot of hazlenut biscotti creamer. yum.

i just finished reading my book. i stayed up til almost 1am reading, and only went to bed when my eyes started blurring and i had to stop and think about who wang lung was. (he's the main character, by the way.)

excellent book. i see why oprah chose it as one of her book club selections. oh, and of course why it won the pulitzer prize in 1935. i think i'll be looking for more of her work when we go to the library today. i'm going to get the kids a few more books, whether they like it or not. reese and i read her junie b. jones book together a few days ago and i'm thinking we're not going to get anymore of them. there's a lot of name-calling in her stories, which i really don't think is an OK thing to model to beginning readers.

yesterday i took the car in and finally got the oil changed. and miraculously, the odometer read 30071, which meant it was a perfect time to get my 30K service (i got a laugh that about 40 of those miles i drove to GET to the dealership in the first place, but whatever). at first i was annoyed i would have to pay an extra $160 for the extra services as well as spend an extra hour or two with all 3 kids as the minutes ticked by toward lunchtime. but then i realized it was actually excellent timing, better than making an extra trip anyway. there were 2 other children in the kid's area at the dealership and they played with my kids and before i knew it, the car was done. we were out of there by 12:30pm.

we would have to drive past the zoo to get home from the dealership and it had been ages since we had been so we made a short detour. we have an annual membership to the zoo that expires in august so we might as well use it as much as we can. we ate lunch near the jaguars and we headed straight for the snake house as it started to sprinkle. for the next half hour we hung out in there as the rain came down. it was air conditioned and all the critters were behind glass, so i felt pretty fortunate.

when we ventured out after the worst of it, there were some monstrous puddles here and there
so i think the zoo must have gotten at least an inch or more in that short time. i was wearing my leather reef sandals though, and those got soaked. i still have orange feet from the dye/oils from wearing them when they were wet.

we finished our short tour of the zoo (it was getting close to 3pm and elisha had barely had a nap in the car earlier and cade was starting to lag behind), hit the gift shop, and headed home.

it was pretty fun, rain or not, and i think most of the fun came from the spontaneity of our zoo visit. the kids were wonderfully behaved and were more than happy to have cereal for dinner. now THAT'S a good day.

wordless wednesday

2008-06-11T08:30:00.002-04:00

summer lovin'...

2008-06-10T09:00:00.008-04:00

school is out for the summer! last thursday was reese's very last day of kindergarten. she wowed the teacher and managed to get herself promoted to first grade. i showed up for the awards "ceremony" on wednesday afternoon and got to see reese receive an award for her end of the year tests. mrs. reeves was very surprised to see that reese got perfect scores on both her math and her reading tests! she said she's never had that happen in all her years of teaching! wow! both rob & i thought that was pretty cool. after the awards, the kids were treated to sundaes. Seems like this school and JUNK food go hand in hand. throughout the year i was really surprised and disappointed to see the crap food that was included in their school parties. in fact, most of the time the entire party revolved around eating junk food together. i know they had a huge class (36 kids!!!) but surely they could have had a fruit salad or graham crackers for a treat? maybe i'm just a little touchy on this subject, but really, reese came home with so many foods that she would not have gotten if she was homeschooled.

but reese enjoyed her ice cream and since cade and elisha were with me, they were treated as well, and of course they loved it.

so far so good as far as sumer vacations go. we've gone to the pool a few times, gone to the library, gone to target, gone to mcd's, gone to home depot (twice). today i plan on getting an oil change in preparation for SEAWORLD! woohoo! this is a birthday trip for reese, she'll turn 6 on father's day. i remember she was born on the saturday before father's day, at 8:06 in the morning. she's always been a morning girl and i'm thinking names really do influence the person. reese is welsh and means "enthusiastic" and that is my first-born to a T.

the enthusiastic one has been playing with elisha a lot since school has let out. during school, elisha didn't see much of reese, just a few hours after school and during dinner time, then on the weekends. but now reese is enjoying her little mommy role, trying to teach her new words and all about animals. and elisha enjoys running off with reese's stuff...mainly her goggles.

we went to the library on the first day of summer vacation, how's that for LAME. at least we slept in a bit to celebrate summer. :) the kids picked out some books, 4 each. i picked out 3 for myself and i'm starting to rethink this reading thing. i chose 'the good earth' by pearl buck and i'm 100 pages in and i'm not sure if i want to finish it. it's so damn sad, i don't know if i can handle that much more sadness. in case you haven't read it, the plot involves a chinese farmer and his wife 120+ years ago and follows them as they have good years and bad years, even to the point where they consider selling their children as slaves in order to survive. the thought of being put in that position as a mother makes my stomach hurt and my shoulders sag. sure, it was a completely different time, but in extremely rural parts of this world, i'm not sure things are that different. there's still starving children all over, in all corners of this earth. i know i should finish the story, i'm a big believer in "finish what you start" and i really want to see this farmer's life improve. but in the mean time i'm working in some stephen king to make myself feel better. i'm 33 pages into "duma key" and it's helping.

rob was talking to some friends the other day and they mentioned that they read my blog (hi chris & kim :) how's the baby doing?). after hearing that i went back and read some of my earlier posts and holy cow...was i a freaking psycho or what? oh my. some of what i had to say about rob was just unbelievably mean. i'm convinced that during some of my pregnancies or post-partum months i should have been on mood-altering drugs. for some reason, as i wrote these old entries, every problem seemed to be HIS fault. reading them really makes me want to start this blog over. i mean he has his faults (as do i...no, really, i do) but i was just really out of line to bitch and moan that much. so in line with that, i'm trying to focus on the positive.

1. he's gone to the pool TWICE with us in the last week. the man hates swimming in chlorinated pools and hates being around strangers' children even more, but he's taught reese how to submerge her head underwater and he's been taking cade on piggyback rides around the pool.

2. he scrubbed the hell out of my kitchen sink for me. we have a stainless steel sink and i use bar keeper's friend (ooh look a free sample!!) on it but it really hurts my fingers to have to do the actual scrubbing part. he's strong enough that he gets it twice as shiny as i do.

3. he let me sleep in on saturday morning. of course i had to TELL him i was not getting up, but he handled it well. he and cade even invented a new game called "damage ball." i think it involved hitting a wiffle ball with a lincoln log and then tackling someone?

4. he hasn't batted an eye when i told him i bought a new dyson vacuum (only i got it for $20 cheaper than that link) or a new stroller. hey, what's a nuke bonus for, other than keeping the wife happy?

5. he's taking us to SEAWORLD! i know it's for the kids but i can't wait to see shamu!

see? he's a good man :) so i just need to keep my mouth shut and start keeping the positives closer to my heart. besides, our anniversary is coming up and i've been hinting about how much i'd like an eco-drive watch.

squeezing in some fun where we can

2008-05-27T09:42:00.005-04:00

so the submarine is back. i think.

rob worked so much this weekend that it's almost like homecoming never happened. the only way i know he's back for sure, is that our bedroom has that special submarine smell, from all his seabags being unpacked.

saturday he was gone from 7am til 4pm, sunday was about the same. then yesterday we ran a few errands and intended on going to the beach in the afternoon. cade fell asleep, then rob fell asleep, then i fell asleep and we finally arrived at the beach around 6pm. we squeezed a little bit of memorial day fun in there, after all.

really, after an hour at the beach, i'm ready to go home anyway. by this time reese gets all kinds of sand in her swimsuit (from doing 'sand angels', the tropical version of a snow angel) and elisha has gotten bold enough to chase the waves as they roll back...just to get knocked off her feet with the next incoming wave. cade is actually pretty good at the beach, he brings a shovel and he'd be content to dig til his little tykes shovel breaks. anyway, within an hour you know someone is going to get hungry or thirsty or have to pee, so we plan short excursions. i can't wait for the day when i can go to the beach to relax or snooze in the sunshine or just people watch, uninterrupted.

today is tuesday and i would have sworn that rob said he'd get a few days off this week. i'm not holding my breath. :/

the wait is over

2008-05-23T08:43:00.005-04:00

he's HOME! yay! :) the tennessee was gone for 67 days but they're back now, and that's the most important part, in my mind. they had a great patrol and it sounds like all inspections went well. rob even got the news that he was selected for commander (to put on the rank in july '09) and best of all, the captain seems pleased with the world right now.

however, being back home means the sailors are put back into the same domestic squabbles they left 2 months ago. rob fully expects his workload to increase as young sailors learn their lessons the hard way. we've all been 20-something, but i wish there was some way to save these people from themselves. DRAMA seems to be the word of the day!

homecoming activities went well. there's no pictures though :/

i raced to the beach to try to get a picture of the submarine floating upriver toward kingsbay, but *surprise* the sub was early! i had heard they'd be by at 11am, we left home at 10:20 to drive the 10 miles to the beach. i thought we'd be plenty early (all my experiences with the sub coming home, it's been late every single time), but we got stuck behind some bicyclists who would not share the road! finally we got to the beach where i could see the tug boats floating by from the car...meaning the sub was just passing by. i didn't even have time to get the camera out. i was so disappointed, this could possibly rob's last patrol if he doesn't make commanding officer, and of course, cameras are not allowed near the pier for homecoming.

i watched the boat on by and realized that WOOHOO, my man was inside there and would be waiting on the pier in a few hours so what the hell was i doing here??? i got back in the van (hadn't even had time to unbuckle the kids out of the car, and elisha slept through the whole thing) and headed home to go change into something pretty. i wish we could have gotten some pictures, i think we all looked pretty good. but there was no time to waste...by now i was in a rush to get there!

we made the 30 minute drive to the base, debated an extra 10 minutes about if this was the right gate or if that was the right gate and finally picked a gate and breathed a sigh of relief that we had chosen correctly. (the closer you get to the submarines, the tighter the security and the bigger the guns in the hands of the marines standing next to the gate.)

we stood for about 10 minutes, chatting with the other wives and seeing the sailors drift off the sub one by one. we couldn't really even see the sub which was a disappointment. all we could see was the sail, it seems the piers at this subase are set quite high. at the subase in connecticut, the piers are low enough that you can really see the sub and get an idea of it. i'm not even sure reese or cade could tell where the submarine really was yesterday. there were some HUGE overhead cranes though, elisha was very taken with their movements. (so was i, i'm turning into my father...we both enjoy studying how things are done and then discussing the ins and outs of the process.)

the officers wear tan cotton uniforms and from far away they all look alike...i guess that's why they wear the uniforms in the first place?? :) all men were wearing their hard hats, due to the cranes, so about the only way you can tell them apart (aside from obvious differences like height and belly shape) is their stride. i saw one tall guy and thought it might be rob...the long stride was about right...then as he got closer, i saw his big old eyebrows and realized it was my husband. i whispered to reese, "hey, who is that guy, reese?" she recognized him right away and sounded the alarm... "DADDYYYYYYYY!"

she would have raced toward them but a street divided the pier from our grassy location, and i had told the kids that they needed to stay on the grass for safety so she patiently waited for daddy to walk on over. she was ALL over him, hugging and jumping and giggling and trying to tell him all about the last 2 months in the first few minutes. cade was excited as well, only there was less hugging because of his shoulder and rob didn't want to hurt him. elisha, however, would not even come near him, and instead just gave him a frown. toddlers do not forgive long absences easily.

he looked good. food on the submarine is pretty good and rob usually is not one to deprive himself if it tastes good, so i had expected him to get chubby here and there but he really looks great. tasty even ;) he did look a little pale, but if he had come back with a suntan i would wonder just what they were doing out there. one thing i have noticed is that his hair on top is getting thinner, i think he's getting his dad's hair pattern. but really, it doesn't even phase me. he still looks yummy. :)

the families were all corralled in one area, and i'm an avid people-watcher so i did enjoy the emotions as husbands were greeted. the wives all try to look nice, some try to look sexy, but i think we all agonize over what to wear. i know i did, even so far as to post picture on a private mommy board to get feedback (thank you, juniverse!!). whatever the choice is, a wife should really make sure it's appropriate and it fits. one woman was wearing a pink satin-y shirt and tan short-shorts. she definitely should have picked a bigger size as well as a longer rise on the shorts...when she threw her arms up around her husbands neck, all the wives got a good shot of her butt crack because her shirt rode up and her shorts weren't big enough. is it sad that *that* is what stands out in my mind about homecoming? :/

we stood around chatting/hugging/smooching for about 20 minutes and then some of the crew had to go back and finish up for the afternoon...that included rob :/ we left and came back home. actually i had left quite a bit of cleaning to fill the hours between when we left base and when we had to go back and pick him up. we made a welcome home cake, hung up some welcome back signs on the front of the house, cleaned up the kitchen a little bit, and suddenly the phone was ringing and it was time to go pick him up.

our evening was fun, i wish we would have put the kids to bed at around 7pm so rob and i could have had more time to talk. when the kids went to bed at 8 he was already sound asleep on the sofa. hopefully he can stay awake a little later tonight so we can have some grown up conversation. or, maybe a little less conversation and a little more action ;)

waiting...waiting...waiting

2008-05-15T09:03:00.005-04:00

it's strange, i spend a lot of my time WAITING for things. waiting for naptime, waiting for reese to get off the bus, waiting for bedtime. waiting for rob to get back. waiting for school to be out for the summer. waiting for us to move to DC.

i'm tired of waiting, let's just get on with it already!!! especially the part where rob comes back! :) i haven't heard any bad reports from the tennessee so i guess that's good news. we have a family group meeting tonight, so hopefully we'll learn a bit more. i can't share it here of course.

it will be good to have him home. i think.

i've finally gotten used to sleeping alone in my bed though. and i've gotten used to having the whole bathroom to myself. and to having a tidy vanity in the bathroom (the man loves clutter around his sink! arg!). and i really don't miss doing all the extra laundry...although my kids have been so messy the last week that i have a lot of laundry ANYWAY. which reminds me, i need to add oxyclean to my shopping list.

i think the best part of having him home will be that daddy is back. the kids love rough-housing with him and that's something that i just don't do well. i'm one of those people who bruise easily ;) and i'm so excited to get some time to myself. not so much time alone but just so i'm not the only one in charge. i really miss going out for a bike ride with just one of the kids, or just taking the dog for a walk. i've been kind of a lump, really, when it comes to exercise during this separation. my one option for serious cardio is to do a program on the treadmill out in the garage, after the kids go to sleep for the night. i've been able to do that once in the last 2 months. ONCE.

what usually happens is that after they're finally tucked in, i'm too exhausted to do the treadmill. or 2 of the kiddos go right to sleep but then one of them is stubborn and stays up for another hour. i'm one of those people who hates to get interrupted when i'm focused on something (aren't we all like that to some extent?) so i need to know that they're all asleep and won't come creeping out to the garage to bug me.

and since i'm really good at coming up with excuse NOT to exercise, let me add that i have 2 blisters on my pinky toe this week. for some reason the sandals that i've worn for the last year decided to rub my toe the wrong way. and of course my kids step on my feet half as much as they step on their own, so my poor toe is feeling pretty abused. i didn't want to aggravate him further.

i don't know what excuse i'll use when my toe heals up. what excuses have you used to avoid exercise?

bumps and bruises and fractures, oh my...

2008-05-10T11:47:00.004-04:00

why is it that i sit down to put in a post and the kids immediately start BOTHERING ME??? apparently it's lunch time and they're starving.

i'm letting them eat one cookie, just so i can do this. elisha is asleep and i have a fullish battery on the laptop so here we go...

the trip to tampa was good. as good as it could be for a mom trapped in the car with 3 kids for over 3 hours...one way. everything worked out well for the most part. we didn't get lost, our hotel room was ready & waiting for us, our friends were just lovely, and no one died. so i'd say it was a very good trip.

something scary happened, however, and i'm so relieved that i was surrounded by friends who are also mommies. elisha was sitting at the kitchen table in steph's house and i was feeding her sliced grapes as dinner was being prepared. elisha sat down into the chair from a kneeling position and her butt and body slid right through the chair (the chair's design had 2 horizontal slats at the top of the back but it was open space from the lowest slat to the seat of the chair) and flat onto steph's ceramic tile floor. elisha opened her mouth to scream and took such a deep breath that she passed out as i picked her up. her eyes rolled back in her head and i immediately thought concussion.

she came to a minute later and then she really began screaming. she had had the wind knocked out of her; my other friend, misti, said she landed back first and not head first as i had thought. but that didn't keep elisha from screaming herself to sleep, then waking up to vomit all over herself during our evening meal, which is concussion-like behavior i think. elisha continued to improve and return to her old self over the next hour, and since misti is practically certified in head trauma in children, we skipped an ER visit. all seems to be back to normal for miss elisha...she's actually started adding quite a few words into her vocabulary that weren't there before tampa. now she says "stuck", "down", and she barks like a dog when she sees one.

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and since rob is still deployed, of course, one of the other children must get injured as well.

cade fell out of bed overnight thursday night. when he woke up whining & crying & refusing to eat, i knew a doctor's appointment would be in the works. with it being friday, i did not want to go all weekend without knowing what was ailing him. thankfully we got him into the doctor's early and the nurse practictioner sent us to a jacksonville hospital for xrays, she suspected a fractured or broken clavicle (collarbone). turns out it was fractured and the next stop was to go get a brace or splint from a medical supply store and bring it back to the local doc's office to get him fitted.

here's where i started getting annoyed. the medical supply store was about 5 miles beyond the doctor's office, through heavy fast traffic. the first brace they sold us was a shoulder immobilizer and we had to go all the way to the doc's office to find that out that it was not the right one. so, back to the medical supply store where one of the salesladies was the most worthless lump i had ever seen. she didn't know anything about anything. the other saleslady was a lot more knowledgeable and managed to find an extra small adult clavicle brace that would fit cade. and it was even $4 cheaper than the immobilizer. :)

so back to the doctor's to check the fit, and after more stickers and suckers for cade & elisha, we were done and home we went. reese had been picked up at the bus stop by a neighbor, so we stopped & got her and then went home to collapse. i was about in tears at several points during the day, just frustrated with having to make so many different stops to get what we needed. cade was just wonderful all day. he didn't complain about the pain or having to go see all these new strange places, he just collected the stickers as he went. the final tally at the end of the day: 6 big ones!

monday afternoon we have an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon for more specialized information. hopefully they'll have a child-sized brace, b/c the one that cade has keeps slipping off. he's supposed to sleep in it but he whines that it's uncomfortable so last night i let him go without.

turns out he'll always have a bump in his collarbone from this adventure. apparently it never mends perfectly no matter how much milk you drink. and the collarbone is one of the easiest bones to break. the nurse practitioner said that his injury was one that is common in newborn babies, when they are squeezed through the birth canal.

so now reese is due for some kind of injury, i'm just suprised that it hasn't happened yet.

or it could be me who's next. i'm already sporting a big yellow bruise on my forehead (from bumping my head on the cart at walmart while loading the lower rack) and a huge lumpy bruise on my shin from walking right into the playscape at the local playground.

it's probably good that active duty military gets such complete health care coverage. we will probably need it a lot.

wake up blogger.

2008-04-30T08:54:00.003-04:00

i tried clicking the "create" button in order to share my delightful thoughts with you all, but instead i got an error message, complete with an alphanumeric code. wtf? i guess blogger hasn't had it's coffee and fiber for the day? it was a quick fix, i love that little back button (i wish life had a BACK button!) and so now here we are...

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i'm reading "the poisonwood bible" by barbara kingsolver and i really like it. the first 10 pages were a little longwinded but now i'm enjoying this story of a baptist missionary in the congo in 1960. in fact, i wish my kids would leave me alone so i could read a bit more, but i frequently wish that no matter what i'm doing. i should try to pace myself, however. i sat down to read last night after the kids were tucked in and quiet. i woke up 3 hours later, my glasses still on my face and my book on the floor, closed. i was most annoyed that i had lost my page.

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is it summer break yet?

i had to carry reese to the bus stop and stuff her onto the bus. the whole thing started when she couldn't find a small plastic bunny that she's been carrying everywhere for the last few days. she decided to bring it to school moments before we had to go to the bus stop, but then she couldn't find it. it turned into tears, sitting defiantly on the sidewalk, me dragging her 2 houses down and then finally carrying her the last 50 feet to the waiting bus. i haven't had a call from the bus driver or her teacher so hopefully she's over it. the bunny has been found (under her bed, of course) and is waiting for reese's arrival home. and i've realized i need to stop feeding her, that girl is heavy.

seriously though. i'm over the drama. she fell and scraped her knee last night. she was running at top speed and fell full length onto the sidewalk. i'm lucky she only got her knee, really...it could have been a lot worse (i'm thinking knocked out or broken teeth!). she proceeded to cry for a few minutes and then limped all around the house for the next hour. i'm almost sure a skinned knee doesn't hurt that badly. have i just gotten used to working through my own physical pains that i don't allow anyone permission to hurt? with rob working so much, i pop some ibuprofen if it really hurts but otherwise i suffer through it.

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i'm heading to tampa on friday! road trip! i know road trips are usually on the spur of the moment, but a week's notice is pretty spur of the moment when you've got 3 kids and 2 pets. we'll be back home on sunday, so the cat is staying home and the dog is going to the local kennel. we'll be staying at a hotel and hanging out with some wonderful people from a mommy board and checking out the tampa zoo as well. i'm excited! i try to plan some little adventure like this when rob is gone, it seems to make time go by a little faster.

the weather forecasts are interesting, however. in northern florida, we're getting highs of 75-80 with a nice breeze. it's still cool enough to leave our windows open during the day (too bad i have to close those windows at night for security's sake, seems like the house gets so stuffy overnight). this weekend tampa is predicting highs around 88 and above. that will be a preview for jacksonville weather in the next month.

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i went to a wives' group meeting last night. we discussed homecoming plans! whoopee! now keep in mind that all this preparation takes time, but it's just nice to see that plans are being made! the end is in sight :)

so that's what they look like...

2008-04-28T12:44:00.006-04:00

i was in the shower and had just finished using my mesh sponge when i saw the cord was all tangled up. i couldn't just hang it up like that, things need to be squared away in my world, so i untangled the cord and the whole thing fell apart. crap.

but i put a positive spin on my mishap, and turned it into a learning experience. did you know that those things are one long strip of circular netting? seems like it should be useful for something. i don't know what....any suggestions on how to reuse that?

the whole thing is about 7 feet long in the bottom picture, it would probably stretch to 8.5 feet if it was taut.

we went on an emergency run to target (ha! emergency my ass, i came home with 3 pairs of shorts, one top for myself, one bra--also for myself, a big box of diapers--not for me, and some cookies and snacks for the kids) where i purchased a new purple "puff". i shall try to resist untangling any future knots in the cord.

what are they called anyway? do they have a formal name? i've heard puffs, boofahs, mesh sponges...what do you call yours? and what color is it?

Family Look-alike Meter

2008-04-26T08:11:00.001-04:00

MyHeritage: Look-alike Meter - Family web site - Family tree research

filch it friday...filched to perfection

2008-04-25T15:30:00.002-04:00

it is friday again! exciting for some but not really for me, it just means a whole 64 hours until reese gets on the bus again monday morning. did i do my math correctly? who knows. who cares.

aaaaaanyway. this topic seems to have been well filched, i found it at miss magpie and then found it at isis who filched it from jarrett who has more info over there if you're in the mood to trace it further. i'm too exhausted to do so. just tracking it that far has really done me in.

the good news: NONE of my music is exactly 2:42. out of 2260 songs, apparently i have not yet found the perfect pop song. if rob was home i'd check his ipod, he loves to spend money at the itunes store. i'll have to remember to do that when he comes back.

filching done. carry on.

is it friday yet? is it june yet?

2008-04-24T08:40:00.005-04:00

rob has officially been gone for a month and 3 days. i don't miss him as much right now, i guess i've gone into survival mode and have stopped thinking about him so often. it sounds heartless and i'm actually sad that he's not on my mind more, it seems like he should be all i'm thinking about. however, as always, life interrupts my love affair with my husband ;) the kids and the pets, the laundry, the lawn, etc.

tomorrow my oldest is going on her final field trip of the her kindergarten year...the zoo! who knew a teacher could whip out so many worksheets on zoo animals?!? some of the worksheets seem so simple, though. i'm wondering why the teacher isn't challenging them more? i also notice that a lot of the art projects are simplified, i think it's purely for the teacher's benefit. reese recently brought home a 'spring hat', covered in cutouts of springy things (guess what the last unit was covering...SPRING!). all the spring things had either been cut out by a teacher or else had been ordered from somewhere that way, all uniform and prepared. so pretty much all reese had to do was pick out 6 things and use a glue stick to attach them to her hat. not exactly a challenge at this point in the year. i think the teachers are just getting tired. i don't blame them, so am i :)

we have plans to head to tampa the first weekend in may. i'm really excited, we'll be hanging out with friends and having some girl talk if the kids will let us. we're also going to be going here and staying at a hotel in the area. i hope the youngest is a happy camper during this trip. in the car she used to be a gem but then over the last few months, she's gotten so grumpy whenever she's in that carseat. even just for a trip to the store, she's back there cussing me out in her toddler-jabber. maybe she just doesn't like looking at cade, she's still rear facing. (if i turn her facing forward, then she doesn't have any one to watch, just the back of my head...not too exciting.)
she's used to sleeping and napping in her crib and nap times and bedtimes are pretty well scheduled. so we'll see how napping in a stroller and sleeping in a hotel bed with me can disrupt her life. the good news is that tampa is about 3 hours away so at least she'll get a good nap at some point during the trip, probably after she screams herself hoarse. hope the kids bring their earplugs.
the bad news is that we'll be missing out on this. sigh. tampa better be good.

everyone keep this girl in your thoughts. she's been going through a tough time and every financial challenge you can imagine has been thrown her way. hugs for you, lola. believe it or not i miss all your pictures, imagine making me hunt you down for them!

better than the home depot paint section

2008-04-20T14:12:00.003-04:00

anyone else play with their blog colors a little too often?

i know i do, i'll try to wait a few weeks before i do that again.

reflections of a saturday

2008-04-20T13:47:00.003-04:00

not much to report on today. yesterday sucked. really sucked. it was one of those days when you're counting the seconds until bedtime.

a lot it was my fault. i should have taken the kids out to play but the bugs were biting and i really thought it would start pouring any second, so we stayed inside. the kids pestered me for food and uno games all afternoon. i started supper early just to get the whole bedtime process over a bit faster. the kids were tucked in and quiet by 8:15. thank god.

i've realized that even when i don't feel like it, i NEED to get these kids outside everyday, otherwise they will drive me crazy. even on a good day, i've about had it by bathtime but last night i just wanted to hose them down and throw them into bed, dripping and screaming.

after they were in bed, i medicated myself with ice cream and a movie. then i felt guilty about eating way too much ice cream, i turned to fitTV and found they were showing namaste yoga so i tried that. it was really quite fun; i didn't feel enlightened or reborn but i did feel refreshed. and i don't think i'm as flexible as i thought i was. my hamstrings were quite stubborn. anyway, i'm going to try and make it a nightly thing. if nothing else, i might sleep better.

it's friday!

2008-04-18T18:25:00.004-04:00

my morning started off just lovely.

i finally got out of bed at 6:38 and hustled reese along a bit and she was out the door by 6:49, just in time to catch the bus at 6:55. as i was repeatedly hitting the snooze button, i was accepting the fact that i'd have to drive her to school today, but when i heard the toilet flush and realized she was already awake, i got my hustle on. in our house, it really does help to pick out clothes the night before.

on my 2nd cup of coffee this morning, i burnt my tongue. sigh. how annoying. and painful.

i made some bread and it turned out beautifully. we ate almost a 2 whole mini-loaves for our afternoon snack. fresh wheat bread with strawberry jam is the yummiest thing in the world. some day i'm sure i'll go 100% crunchy and make my own jam. but not anytime soon, since we'll be moving in july. funny, how i consider something like homemade strawberry preserves something too "valuable" to trust to the movers. computers and TVs, no problem. but something that i CREATED, then i'd have to pack it in the van & drive it up.
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i read this on simplynutmeg today and wanted to try it out...

The rules are simple: Hit shuffle on your iPod, then answer each question by hitting next. NO CHEATING!!!

Q: What does next year have in store for you?
A: The Girlfriend of the Whirling Dervish (instrumental with chorus) from "For the Boys"

oh my.

Q: What does your love life look like next year?
A: Play Me by Neil Diamond

Q: What do you say when life gets hard?
A: In the Ghetto by Elvis Presley

Q: Song that reminds you of good times?
A: Release by Timbaland, feat. Justin Timberlake

Q: What do you think when you get up in the morning?
A: Let's Get Retarded by the Black Eyed Peas. how ironic, really that is what i was thinking this morning.

Q: What song will you dance to at your wedding?
A: I'd Die Without You by P.M. Dawn

awwwww :)

Q: Song that reminds you of your first kiss?
A: What's on your Mind? by John Denver

Q: Your favorite saying?
A: February Song by Josh Groban

Q: Favorite place?
A: Ode to My Family by The Cranberries

sentimental but not true. favorite place would be as far away from my noisy family as possible.

Q: Most Missed Memory?
A: Tailor Made by Colbie Caillat

Q: What song describes your best friend?
A: Got It Right This Time by Keith Urban

Q: What song describes your ex?
A: Winter Wonderland by Jason Mraz

Q: Where would you go on a first date?
A: Stranger in My House by Tamia

um, not my house. that's not safe.

Q: Drug of choice?
A: The Cat Came Back by Laurie Berkener

i put some kids' music on my ipod...purely for travel purposes! i swear!

Q: What song describes yourself?
A: Something Bad from the Wicked soundtrack

i disagree!

Q: What is the thing you like doing most?
A: Henry the Octopus by the Wiggles

i get off on guys in plaid outfits.

Q: The song that best describes the President?
A: Voulez Vous by ABBA

anyone speak french? is this something that would describe Clinton better?

Q: Where will you be in 10 years?
A: Track 09. which is something by Air Supply, iTunes didn't download the album info.

Q: Your love life right now?
A: One Day You'll Be Mine by Usher

this is actually cute, since rob's on deployment :)

Q: What is your state of mind like at the moment?
A: Born to Lose by Ray Charles

when you're outnumbered by kids 3 to 1, of course you're going to lose.

Q: How will you die?
A: In Pace by Andrea Bocelli

ok. i can live with that.

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notice i used some capital letters up there? classy, eh?

2008-04-17T12:34:00.003-04:00

i really apologize. i'm a horrible blogger but it's been almost 6 weeks since i last wrote in here. that is just inexcusable. of course, i don't have a huge fanclub, but just in case someone is out there, i'm back.

rob is gone, however. he's out 'on patrol' on the USS tennessee, so let's everyone think good thoughts for them. the tennessee doesn't have the best reputation among submarines but let's just hope they don't screw up too badly. they have improved in the last year, hopefully rob and the current commanding officer are partially responsible. there's so much gossip about the downfall of the tennessee, there should probably be a book written. it's pretty juicy. sex, lies & videotape & all that.

he'll be back before school is out for the summer. reese's birthday is june 15 and we have plans to head to seaworld as a family for her birthday, so he better be back by then. i really don't want to go without him.

everyone is doing well. my parents just finished a LONG visit and arrived safely back in iowa yesterday. they stayed for almost 2 weeks. i'm used to about 8 or 9 days. i did enjoy the free babysitting though, so i should just shut up. it is nice to have the house to ourselves again. maybe i'm becoming anti-social but i just could not make conversation for squat during their visit. and my parents are getting to the age where they're repeating their stories. yeeeeeah. good times.

reese is getting tested for the gifted program at her school. i can't believe it's come to my mind so often today, wondering if it was hard for her or if she got really frustrated or what. she loves school so much, so i'm sure she thought it was a blast to get to go with a new teacher to do new things. the note she brought home said that she has to have a score of 130 in order to continue the testing. i'll keep you posted, unless she scored a 5. then i'll just drop it and you can just assume the whole thing was a bust.

a close game

2008-03-03T12:47:00.004-05:00

that it was. those germs almost had us but then we whipped out our secret weapon from the ER and they didn't stand a chance.

the last 2 weeks of my life have been horrible. my 5 year old had a sinus infection. the 3 year old had pinkeye (in BOTH eyes) and an ear infection. the 18 month old had something they didn't put a name on but antibiotics have helped clear that up. i had bronchitis and (i think) a bit of a sinus infection...bronchitis doesn't really produce that much snot does it!?!? rob thinks he had the same thing as me but i say no way. i was much sicker than he was.

for about 3 days, all i did was lay on the sofa. between my 102 degree fever and the snot pouring from my nose, i could do nothing but struggle to breathe.

that is why i'm still catching up on housework, laundry, and cooking. i took my last dose of zithromax today so hopefully that was enough to do the dirty work on those germs. the girls are still finishing their antibiotics, elisha has about another 3 days and reese another week. i've been squirting their doses into jello and it really goes against my dietary habits to give them jello for breakfast, even if it is laced with their meds. but to have the excesses of snot disappear from my house, i'll do it.

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i borrowed this from kate, who got tagged by someone else. i'm not cool enough to get tagged, but i post this anyway. it's my little tiny corner of the internet, i can do what i want in it.

The rules are simple. Look up from the computer, look around the room where you're sitting and pick up the closest book. And closest really means closest. No cheating by running upstairs to unearth your pink-highlighted college copy of The Critique of Pure Reason or the Prolegomena. Open the book, turn to page 123, count down to the fifth sentence on that page, and then post the next three sentences.

i'm reading "dawn on a distant shore" by sara donati. i've started this book at least 3 different times and have lost it once and now bought it twice. arg. here goes, uppercase letters and all:

He muttered a question in Pepin's direction and got a brief word in reply. The escape plans seemed to have brought about an uneasy truce between them, but Nathaniel intended to keep a sharp eye on the butcher. "Any sign of Runs-from-Bears?" asked Robbie, putting voice to the question that kept Nathaniel awake night after night.

just some jabber

2008-01-27T09:56:00.000-05:00

some miscellaneous items...

my mom had hip replacement surgery a few weeks ago. she has been suffering with arthritis in her right hip for the last 20 years and this last year had been horrible for her. when she and dad came down for christmas, she was walking with 2 canes and it seemed like she was having a hard time managing her pain with pills.

the surgery went ok, but when the new joint was put in, her femur shattered so it was necessary for the surgeon to band her femur around the prosthesis with additional metal wraps. it means she cannot put any weight at all on that foot for another 6 weeks. she'll have to go in for a bone density scan, turns out osteoporosis has begun and that is why her femur was so weak. so, i went out and bought myself the eco-size of viactive calcium chews and i'm taking them faithfully so far. (follow the link and print out the coupon!!!)

if she's going to go through the pain & suffering, i can at least learn from her experience and try to avoid it.

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this is reese. isn't she cute? she's been growing out her hair for the last 6 months and now she thinks she wants a haircut.

this is the haircut she wants to go back to. this is from june of '07 when she turned 5. she's had the bob since she turned 3. it was adorable when she was 3 and 4, but now she's getting older and i'm not sure i can go back.

she's getting tired of the hair in her face and having me pull her hair back every morning. does she realize that she'll have to get her bangs trimmed all the time? and that means more money out of my pocket and another appointment to keep?

i'm kind of undecided on it. maybe i'll braid her hair and see what she thinks about it.
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rob has become a running fool. he's training for this and thinks that we'll be using the shuttle buses to see him cross the finish line.

keep in mind that that the shuttles run from 5am til 7am. and none of the locations are anywhere close to us. did i mention i have 3 kids??? 3 kids before 7am in the cold just so we can see a sweaty rob finish his race. he's only doing the 1/2 marathon (which is impressive, i'm not knocking that) but i think i'd rather have dental work performed on me than do this.

but to actually tell him i don't want to go would really hurt his feelings. so i'm hoping for a stomach flu to visit our house that weekend.

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i'm still resisting re-joining weight watchers. i feel like i'm eating all the time and most of the time i do it when i'm stressed. so it's purely by luck that i've only gained about 2 lbs in the last 3 months that i've been off the program. i'm trying sparkpeople, maybe hoping that having to track it all will slow me down.

unfortunately, those damn ready to bake cookies always get me. ugh...why does my body want those???

my jeans are feeling a little tight in the thighs & butt. still wearable, just a little tight. so i need to get out & get moving as well as stop eating crap.

i don't know how i resisted chocolate for so long. hm.

happy new year!

2008-01-26T23:05:00.001-05:00

it's still january, i'm not *that* late.

can i just say how COOL the blogger is getting? i know some people hate it and look down their noses at it, but for those of us who are clueless about web design (and sure as hell don't even know what HTML stands for?!?), it's kind of neat having some more choices. i managed to spend over an hour playing with my colors on here and this is what came out.

impressive, eh?

anyway, i need to get back to playing scrabulous with my husband. he signed up for a facebook account, just so we could play scrabble on our laptops. yes, we're sitting on the same sofa, just a foot or 2 apart, playing this game on our computers while our poor old scrabble board sits neglected in the armoire in the other room.

oh...and to top it off, we're both listening to our own individual ipods as we hem & haw over our word selections. we're dorks. i admit it now.

"santa" relents...

2007-12-04T20:09:00.000-05:00

the last week has been really tough with reese. lots of talking back, beating on cade, and lots of poor decision-making. of course, this is only at home. apparently at school she is the best behaved little girl in class.

but today she brought this home:

reese said the entire class had to write these, so i'm thinking that everyone has been really having a hard time at school OR the teacher has her contacts in santa's crew.

when i saw this today, my heart just melted. santa will be stopping by after all, i suppose.

only 20 days til christmas!!!

and god bless the school bus drivers, right tiny tim?

2007-11-16T07:38:00.000-05:00

today was the first day EVER that i put a sobbing, wailing reese on the bus. i hope her day improves from here, in her little 5-year-old mind i don't know if it could get worse.

she came home from school yesterday wearing an indian headband, which in kindergarten terms is a strip of white paper, decorated and stapled around a child's head, with a teeny neon feather glued at the rear. yesterday was also the school's thanksgiving meal and the kids got to be 'indians' during their meal. i asked if there were any pilgrims at the meal and reese said 'no' and then returned to her narration of their meal. i guess they don't learn about pilgrims til 1st grade then?

anyway, the headband was on her head almost continuously yesterday after she got home and little miss reese thought that she'd wear it back to school today. and me, being the wonderful mother i am, could not let her go to school looking like a dork (for lack of a better word! i wish i had taken a picture so you could see just how dorky --in a cute way!!--she looked in that headband). so i told her no, the headband needed to stay home today but she could wear it for supper tonight and even for our thanksgiving meal next thursday.

she didn't buy it.

cue instant tears and pity party. i didn't know this headband was tied into her popularity at school; she started going on about how no one will like her and no one will play with her. and everyone makes fun of her. and kids yell at her. and they blame her for everything.

sometimes i think we should have given her the middle name of drama. she has the personality of my husband but with the sudden sadness of my own school years. usually she's better after talking about it and after a kiss & hug from me but today wasn't one of those lucky days.

so that's why reese got to sit up front and spill her guts to the bus driver this morning. miss kathy is just an angel of a bus driver. i'm going to have to find something special for her christmas gift.

should i have called her teacher to let her know that reese was mopey? chances are that if i did that, reese would show up at school in a perfectly normal mood. so we'll let the school call me if there's any problems.
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i've broken out the christmas music. and i ordered rob's present. i hope he likes it. and just b/c i have my blog bookmarked on my computer, i won't be sharing that particular secret here. even as often as i shoo him off my computer, i still find open windows to ESPN when i hop on the laptop in the morning.
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elisha is teething or something. i thought we were done with this for a while but i guess not. she's almost 15 months old and has gotten 7 teeth in the last 3 months. no wonder i have these huge bags under my eyes!

since rob has been out at sea for the last 10 days, it's like musical beds around here overnight. elisha usually comes into my bed around 1am so i can get some sleep...cade fell asleep in my bed last night and elisha was so fussy that when she woke up in her crib i just took her out to the futon with me. pretty much, reese is the only one who stays in her bed all night and doesn't wake up at all.

i made the mistake of watching the 5th & 6th disc of heroes: season 1 last night. i couldn't stay awake for the final episode though. i went to bed at 1:30 and reese was up at 5:30. today will be painful...and full of suspense, i must know how the day after election day goes but i don't want the interruptions of the kids so i'll wait til after bedtime. only 11 hours left!

yet another reason 'dallas' is the shit.

2007-11-09T09:12:00.000-05:00

has anyone else noticed what the most common prop is on TV? what almost every TV character is carrying around at some point during the show?

a coffeehouse-type disposable coffee cup. next time you watch a prime time show, keep track of how many coffee cups make their appearance. better yet, keep track of how many times the characters set down the cups and you hear a hollow 'thunk'. at least they could fill them up with water for a realistic sound when they're put down. drives me crazy.

if you're ever cruising the soapnet channel around 11am eastern, watch a bit of 'dallas.' those were the good old days when actors used real brown water in their coffee cups. there's a thousand reasons why 'dallas' rocks and that's just one of them.

happy birthday honey!

2007-10-29T10:50:00.000-04:00

35 years ago today, a little japanese woman named sachiko gave birth to a 10 lb baby whom she named robert. who would have thought he'd grow up and be where he is today? married to a white woman with 3 kids, a mortgage, 2 cars, and a cat and a dog. ha! happy birthday, rob!

in honor of his birthday we decided to purchase a george foreman grill. i wanted one that could be used outside because i hate the smell of cooking meat in the house, seems like that greasy smell lingers forever indoors. this arrived on friday and i talked rob into opening it on saturday. i couldn't wait for his birthday today. we christened the grill yesterday. i had a turkey burger (with the bun! i'm weaning myself off of weight watchers.) and rob had filet mignon. my parents had shipped him an order of omaha steaks last week for his birthday. i know i don't feed him enough meat so he has to dose himself occasionally. *rolleyes*

anyway, it worked well and rob didn't smell like a big charcoal briquette afterward..always a plus. the turkey burger turned out yummy, too. i really want to find some salmon steaks and try those out on there. i LOVE salmon, but i haven't been shopping in a store with a seafood counter lately. and the one superwalmart i was in that had one, smelled like someone left a dead fish out. i didn't think it was safe to get seafood from such a stinky place. ugh. i also want to try doing veggies on there too. i think maybe i bought the grill for rob so i could eat healthier. hm. oh well. kind of funny that i bought him a little dirt devil vacuum that is used for computers, keyboards, and the tight spots of a car. seems like we'll both be able to use that too.

and a little update on cade...after talking with a college friend who went through the same things with their 3 year old son, i think i'm going to research preschools/daycares for cade. i'm thinking just 3 mornings a week? i haven't gotten any further on research other than telling myself that it might be ok if i let him out of my sight. funny how on the day i decide this, he's having a pretty good day behavior-wise.

and of course, since we're decided to take on this extra expense, now is the time for a neighbor to invite me to an arbonne party. i've never tried arbonne before but it seems that my dark circles and bags under my eyes get a little worse looking everyday. so this party is coming at a time when i'm feeling a little old & desperate. and yes, i'm only 31 but these kids have run me so ragged that i think i look about 41. i'm overdue for a cut & color too. and an eyebrow wax and pedicure. maybe i won't need a costume for halloween after all!

mommy confessional...

2007-10-18T09:01:00.000-04:00

what to do, what to do...

over the last few days i'm realizing how my son and i do not get along. i know i've been pretty touchy lately, but i've been noticing that his favorite activities consist of: bothering elisha, bothering me, bothering the cat or dog, and bothering reese.

he floats from person to person, taking away toys or generally interfering with whatever they're doing at that time. he makes requests right when i'm in the middle of something (which i'm used to, kids don't always know to wait). he refuses to share, even though his older sister shares with him all the time, she's a really excellent model, imo. i hear "MINE" from him at least 20 times a day. he cries loudly and whines when he doesn't get his way (almost theatrically so, big huge tears and all).

it's almost impossible to discipline him when we're in public. i have been letting things slide though...not following through on my threats because i want to finish my errand instead of having a wasted trip. nothing frustrates me more than going somewhere to get something done and not completing the task. if we did use that approach, i'm afraid that i'd really be too hard on him because i'd be personally disappointed that the errand was left undone.

on the other hand, if cade has a game plan for the day, then he's completely happy. he's helpful with assigned chores and if he has a task, he follows through. he helps with the dishwasher, laundry, vacuuming, sweeping the sidewalk, anything! if i let him i'm sure he'd try and scrub the toilets and cook the meals. (hm, not a bad thought...)

it's to the point though, where i feel like i don't challenge him enough. he loves his ABCs and counting and games but i cannot keep him busy enough to keep him out of trouble. i've thought about homeschooling him in preschool but if he went to real preschool next year then he'd be really bored and apt to get into trouble there. he's only 3 years and 3 months old. if he went to a private preschool right now, i think it would be good for him, even for a few hours a week. but then what would i do with just elisha and me????

and then the thought comes...am i just pawning off my behavior issues on someone else? reese was a really good 3 year old. she was very obedient and didn't talk back very much. cade is just the opposite. it's to the point where i don't even like being around him b/c everything we do is met with a 'NO' from him. horrible things for a mother to say, i'm afraid. and really, i've had a difficult time with his childhood so far. for some reason i don't even remember his first year of life. i doubt my memory has been reprogrammed 'total recall' style, so what's up with that? he was a fine baby, as i remember. nursed fine for 13 months, had the same sleeping habits as reese, walked a bit early at 11 months...i don't know why i feel this block with him. ???

assorted topics

2007-10-12T09:53:00.000-04:00

i think i'm all ready for the baby shower. i haven't picked up a gift for the mommies, but i'm thinking of going with gift cards to local restaurants that deliver. for one mom, this is her 4th baby and for the other mom, it's her 3rd. so i think they would come in handy for before their babies come or after.

i just need to clean clean clean. favors are assembled, crafts are ready for the kids, i'm going to make the dip & pumpkin cheesecake bars tomorrow (in btwn cleaning sprees)....i do need to print out the baby games i've selected though. i'm doing pumpkin trivia, baby Michelangelo, and one other...i think charades would be fun but maybe too 80s for everyone. everyone that is coming is a mom already so we'll have a fun time.

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our neighbors are putting up a fence. i'm not sure why. they had their house for sale last month and since then they've started getting chemlawn service and now the fence. i have to think it's not us, we're barely in the backyard and if our dog starts barking we bring him inside. they don't have any kids and their dog is so teeny that he couldn't navigate the grass even if they let him outside.

maybe it's because the lot behind their house has sold and so house construction will be starting soon. no better time to put up fences than before the neighbors move in. that's what our neighbors in connecticut did. jerks.

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i hate the appliances that are in this house. i don't know why ANYONE would choose such cheap-ass items for a new house.

the stove is electric with old-fashioned burners. it's all dial-controlled, NOT self-cleaning, and the heat from the oven comes up through the burners...enough heat so that you cannot rest anything on the burners as you're baking. the outside of the oven door gets hot enough that i need to keep they kids away from touching it. i don't think they'll get burned but it does get warm enough to be uncomfortable.

the microwave is such an aggravation as well. it won't defrost any given weight, only weight in .5 increments. rob tried to defrost a breakfast sandwich at .4 of a lb and it just sat there & beeped at him. and if you use the pre-programmed buttons (like for popcorn) it won't let you push the 'add a minute' button. and there is no quick-cook button (like a 30 second button).

i *might* have gotten spoiled with our appliances in our CT house, they were very nice. however, these are convenience features that in the long run aren't that much more expensive to purchase.

i think i'm just annoyed because the owners told us that they were building this house to move into, but the husband will be transferred soon. (they had been trying to sell the house without much success.) if they were going to move into the house, why would they buy such shitty appliances???? they sure don't help the resale value of the house...in fact the whole house is pretty standard...no wonder they couldn't sell it. people are looking for upgrades where possible.

personally, what i think happened with the owners is that they signed the papers on this house and when it was completed realized they couldn't afford to live here so they had to sell it. just on our street there are 4 or 5 houses for sale. and that's just in a 2 block distance. on the cul-de-sac 3 out of the 4 houses are for sale. then there's one that i think was forclosed on. i'm thinking the housing boom around here is slowing down a bit. enough griping about the house...it's a roof over our heads and we don't have to pay FL hurricane insurance on it, so it's all good.

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elisha has started sleeping through the night! it's hit & miss, usually just a few times a week but last night she did it, sleeping from 8:45 til 5 this morning. i kinda like getting some sleep. the best part is that she's sleeping in her own crib! not in our bed. so not only am i getting sleep but i'm getting plenty of space...well, except for the husband and the cat. but they won't cry if i push them back. :)

what have i done?

2007-10-05T10:08:00.001-04:00

i am just not a party person. i'll attend them to be polite, bring a dish or whatever the hostess requests, help tidy up afterward...but i hate hosting them. i worry way too much about what people think of my choices.

well, i've really stepped in it now. in order to get the captain's wife off my back about my non-attendance at family group meetings (blush), i offered to host a baby shower for 2 of the junior officer's wives. eek. it's just a few hours on a sunday afternoon, and hopefully i can talk rob into taking cade & elisha out so they're out of my hair. having them out of the house really reduces my stress.

but like any good hostess, i stress anyway. i have no clue what to do. guests are bringing a dessert/sweet treat to share. so i guess i just need to plan on some punch and other drinks, and maybe a few back up sweet dishes just in case.

i should prep some party games, organize some gift ideas, oh and of course start cleaning. some of the wives are bringing their older children so reese will be here to play with them, however i guess i'll have to scoop some pooch poop out of our backyard too, in case the weather is nice enough to boot them outside. we've been a little lazy about poop patrol.

and the ironic part? the captain's wife won't even be here, she's hosting her own little birthday for her middle son at that same time. ha!

how much will old age suck?

2007-10-02T08:43:00.000-04:00

i see all the troubles my mom is going through and it really makes me dread getting old. hip problems, knee problems (my dad has them too), and a family history of back problems are on my horizon. high cholesterol and high blood pressure are thrown in there too. oh, and the joys of menopause. although the current joys of menstruation are too numerous to be mentioned here, too. at times i think the best part of my life was before 5th grade when i had to start wearing a bra. it all went downhill from there.

i'm feeling pretty good these days, ironically. with the weight gone, i'm being a little activity junkie...dancing around the house, jumping on the trampoline, roller blading down the street with reese next to me on her bike (which was really a nice mommy-daughter moment last night), running the 2 blocks back from the bus stop in the morning, chasing the kids around the backyard...it just feels good to be moving. a year ago i thought i was too old (or too fat) to enjoy moving. how sad is that? my daily amount of exercise included walking around the house, going up & down the stairs, and getting fired up about cade's tantrums (although that surely burned about 300 calories per tantrum :)). i can't believe i wasted so much time being sedentary. :(

my knees still creak & pop and my hips hurt here & there though. so i guess that's something to mention to my doctor at my next exam, to see if there's anything she suggests for prevention. some wonder vitamin or supplement, maybe. i don't want to be where my mother is in 29 years. maybe that's the most valuable lesson she's taught me? i hate to put it like that, but i don't want to take my health for granted any more. and i don't want to be facing hip replacement surgery at age 50 (she's been in hip pain for the last 10 years).

----------------------------------------------

on recommendation from some ladies on my mommy board, i downloaded an album by colbie caillat (which rhymes with "ballet", i just saw that!). i feel like i'm listening to the full soundtrack of 'greys anatomy' but i like it. nice soothing stuff with one or 2 songs that are a little more angry. the perfect soundtrack for a grey day like today, i think.

right now i'm listening to 'taking you home' by don henley. i recall downloading that when i was pregnant with my first child, in 2002. listening to the lyrics, i sobbed and sobbed, imaging how i would feel with a newborn in my arms, the pain of labor already a memory. i have no clue what the song truly was written about but i think it could apply to childbirth.

Taking you home -
(don henley/stan lynch/stuart brawley)

I had a good life
Before you came
I had my friends and my freedom
I had my name
Still there was sorrow and emptiness
til you made me glad
Oh, in this love I found strength I never knew I had

1st chorus:
And this love
Is like nothing I have ever known
Take my hand, love
Im taking you home
Taking you home

There were days, lonely days
When the world, wouldnt throw me a crumb, no no
But I kept on believing
That this day would come

And this love
Is like nothing I have ever known, no no baby
Take my hand love
Im taking you home
Im taking you, home
Where we can be with the ones who really care
Home, where we can grow together
Keep you in, my heart forever

Instrumental (keyboard)

2nd chorus:
Oh and this love
Is like nothing I have ever known, oh no no baby
Take my hand love
Im taking you home

3rd chorus:
Oh this love
Is like nothing I have ever known, no no baby
Take my hand.
I'm taking you home
I'm taking you, home
Yes I am, mm, mm, mm, hey baby, hey baby
Taking you home

Short instrumental w/background vocals

Im taking you home baby
Im taking you home.

and now my ipod has moved onto 'never smile at a crocodile.' which is good advice.

more yaddah from me

2007-09-27T07:54:00.000-04:00

or is it yadda? no clue. yaddah isn't some old yiddish word is it? no clue. if rob were here he'd tell me to wikipedia it.

anyway, yep my morning sucks. cade just had a 20 minute tantrum because i told him to go let the dog out of his kennel. cade wouldn't do it so i turned off the TV. then he went into full tantrum mode. i carried him to his bedroom to cry, but within minutes i was back in there because he was kicking the walls.

after 10 minutes of screaming & crying he finally sat for his 3 minute time out (for kicking the walls). all that just because i asked him to let the dog out.

now he's cleaning random things with a clorox wipe. staying busy by sucking up i guess.

-------------------------------------

i have a friend named 'lola'. she takes wonderful pictures, they truly are artwork. she captures the most amazing sides of people. and the best part? she shares her work online with friends and strangers alike. however, some people have 'borrowed' her son's pictures as some sort of internet scavenger hunt. okaaaaaayyyyyy. hm. it seems they don't ruin the pictures, they just collect them and see how many they can collect. sounds weird, most of these kids are in foreign countries...that explains it all, right? they way i understand it, it's like a foreign myspace called orkut.com.

you can see by her website her photog skills are awesome, and her kids are the cutest (well, except for MY kids, haha). so sign this petition to get orkut shut down. the biggest complaint lola has with orkut is that her watermark ("property of" stamp) on the pictures is missing, so it shows no ownership of the pictures.

i signed it b/c lola is a friend, and i hate to see her beautiful pictures misused in any fashion. this might be harmless but the whole 'collection' aspect gives me the creeps.

------------------------------------

why can i not get started on anything?
--laundry
--planning a baby shower, to be held in 2 weeks (haven't sent invites out yet!)
--pick a room and clean it

laundry is really the priority today. cade is out of shorts and i'm out of shorts too. maybe i should just make a target run instead. if it weren't so damn warm down here in FL, then i wouldn't need to wear shorts all the dang time. global warming and all that crap.

-----------------------------------------

i have several friends on a mommy board that have had babies this month or are about to. dana is due any day, but hopes to hold out til monday so she can have an october baby. i tried to do the same thing dana, but elisha was born on 8/31, 16 hours shy of being a september baby. this is her 5th child, so you'd think she'd just be happy for babygirl to be born, instead of being picky about the dates :) i'd link her blog but like i said she has 4 kids, she doesn't have time to blog. i imagine the last time she posted on it was 3 years ago before baby #3 was born :)

so we're on baby watch for the next few days.

i have another friend who is in my thoughts on an almost constant basis. she is pregnant with her 4th and i wish her all the best baby-vibes i can muster.

and considering rob just got his vasectomy, i have babies on the brain. i'm throwing a baby shower in 2 weeks...our board just had 2 babies born last week...more babies in the future...the grandma & grandpa at walmart yesterday with the 3 month old twin girls...ack! they're everywhere!

today might suck.

2007-09-27T06:24:00.000-04:00

cade was up at 5:30 today, eating breakfast with rob.

usually when he's up that early, he's a real jerk. talking back, whiny, demanding, tired but refusing to sleep...

we're all awake but elisha is still sleeping on the futon, how cute is that? we moved out there about 2am b/c she was restless in our bed. right now she's on her belly and looks so comfy. i wish today was a weekend so i could turn on a movie for the kids and go back to sleep with her. :( one of the drawbacks of kids starting school, i guess. you get rid of them for 8 hours a day but sleeping in and being lazy must wait for saturday and sunday. when is summer vacation???

did i mention...?

2007-09-26T07:46:00.001-04:00

that i was doing weight watchers during these last 7 months? i'm not sure i blogged about it, for fear that i would fail. failure is easier to handle when the whole world doesn't know what a flop you are ;)

surprisingly, i haven't failed. from march 1 to date i have lost 76 pounds. 5 pants sizes. over 20 inches on my body have melted away. i can see muscles, abs, and veins where i couldn't before. who knew they were under all that skin? i'm not sure how much more i want to lose, i'm getting to the point mentally where i'm tired of analyzing and counting everything i put in my mouth.

weight watchers is a bit of a family joke for us. my grandmother and a few aunts have been on WW together and their weight really yo-yo'ed whenever they were on plan. i really don't want to be a yo-yo'er. i know i have TONS more energy right now and i love moving around...dancing around the house, bouncing on the kids' trampoline, going for spontaneous walks with the dog (which i'm trying to fit in as often as possible), playing soccer in the backyard...i'm just enjoying life in my body for once.

i'm actually about 20 lbs lighter than i was on my wedding day. rob says my hips/butt are smaller now than then...funny, i didn't think that would be the case after 3 kids! and the part that i really love? my bra size has gone down. i've been a C cup since high school, after babies up to a 40D and now i'm wearing a 36B. some women love their C cup boobies but i really enjoy this smaller size. with the dieting AND elisha nursing less, they've shrunk to a more manageable size. i look at the B size bras and get a kick of how they look like teenager bras, the cups are so little.

anyway, that's me tooting my own horn. toot toot!

a bit of bad news

2007-09-24T08:23:00.000-04:00

maybe i shouldn't call home too often. i just worry about my aging parents.

i talked to my mom yesterday and found out the results of her latest doctor appointment. she visited an orthopedic something-or-other on friday and was told she'd need back sugery. she's been dealing with a pinched nerve in her lower back for the last few weeks. it's bad enough that she's has some numbness in her legs. her doctor diagnosed her with spinal stenosis and said that back surgery would fix 'er up. however, my mother is at least 80 lbs overweight and that creates some problems. she's going to work on losing about 50 lbs and in the meantime she'll have an epidural pain system put in place on october 10. (yeah, 2 weeks from now. arg. i guess this clinic is up to it's neck in people suffering pain, that was the first available appointment. maybe i should look into a job in anesthesiology...i have to learn how to spell it first, though. thank goodness for spell check.)

so after her weight loss (which may take up to a year? she's not very mobile so she won't be able to exercise it off) and recovery from back surgery, then she can plan on a hip & knee replacement, which is the primary reason she's been in & out of doctor offices for the last 9 months. she took a nasty fall in january and hurt her knee and her limping around on a sore knee was enough to irritate her hip. she's known that she should get a hip replacement, she's been having problems with her hips for the last 15 years. her frame of mind is that you don't go to a doctor unless you're bleeding or in horrible pain, so she's been trying prescription drugs to deal with the pain from her hips. she was able to put it off long enough that everything needed fixed at once. and i'm about 1300 miles away from being able to help her.

i asked mom if she had a plan for losing weight and she said that my dad was going to do it with her (he's also overweight, at least 80 lbs). so at least they have some support from each other. and i plan on calling her daily to harass her. i mean, um, give her diet tips. :)

my mom also told me about my sister-in-law, sharon. she was in the hospital over the weekend. she was visiting a friend and was walking down the stairs at the apartment complex...she missed the last few stairs and ended up hyper-extending her knee. sharon is really overweight, she should probably lose at least 150 lbs and the skin on her knee kind of "burst" with that kind of stress. there was no bone damage though, it was all skin & muscle tears. i believe there were several layers of stitches and a few days' stay in the hospital. she'll be coming home today and then out of work for a few weeks. my brother works 4 day weekends, so he'll be able to take care of her this week without losing out on his paycheck.

and my cousin, mark, is still on the heart transplant list. he had a massive heart attack in 2005 the damage done to his heart required that he have a pacemaker. now his pacemaker cannot keep up with his heart problems, so onto the list he goes. he & his wife have 2 girls, i think about 11 and 9.

i really don't know what i could do for my mom if we went to iowa for a visit. reese is in K 5 days a week, other than that we don't really have any commitments. i could homeschool reese for kindergarten and go to iowa for an extended time. i just don't know how much good i could do, i'd feel better for being there but i don't think having 3 kids around would help my mom much.

so i guess we make plans to go there for christmas? does my mom need the hassle of having house guests at christmas? we invited them down here for christmas, but i doubt my mom can travel that long.

so how's that for a monday morning waker-upper? :) maybe you have some misery of your own to keep mine company?

it's been a while. get over it.

2007-09-22T08:40:00.001-04:00

it's been a while.

a long while.

but we're all still alive. we've all survived the move.

we stayed in the apartment in georgia for about a month and then we found a house to rent in northern florida. i think we're all settled in the house, but we have about a dozen boxes in the garage that i don't think will ever be unpacked. rob has conveniently stacked them up against the far wall and then shoved more stuff up against it, so i guess we're all unpacked now. there's still a few things i haven't found yet...like our rugs from the kitchen. those are the only things that come to mind. rob thinks he's lost a few things but those were just victims of me 'organizing' in the days before our move.

reese has started K and she's doing really well. she enjoys school but i have some reservations about her teacher. i think her teacher is doing the minimum and i guess i got used to reese's pre-K teacher who did way more than the minimum. all the K classes at reese's school are way over on teacher-student ratio and they have enough students to create TWO more K classes. (wow. that's a lot of 5 year olds!) so i volunteered reese to move to one of the new classes. i hope that i'm not moving her to someone who is a worse choice than mrs. R.

elisha is now mobile. she's WALKING...even though she doesn't like to broadcast it. if we're going the same direction in the house, she always looks to me for 2 hands to help her. she just started this a few weeks ago and i have to say she's the laziest walking baby i've ever seen. she's still decided that crawling is faster so that's the preferred mode i guess. she's also calling for me, which i'm already tired of. i hear 'ma!' 'ma!' 'ma!' until she sees me. and she does this cute shrug thing with her hands when i ask 'where's daddy?' i'm trying to get video of it and she's resisting me.

cade is still being a shit. it's better since he's turned 3 but he's still a shit. elisha is already learning to stand up for herself. when he takes a toy from her she screeches and smacks him. they really do love each other, i just wish he wasn't so hands on with her. he loves to rub her head or hug her, but i don't think he knows his own strength. i guess it's ok, elisha doesn't have bruises on her, right?

the newest development concerns my husband. yesterday was his appointment for a vasectomy. both of us were a little bummed but we realize that 3 kids is really ALL we need (and then some!). i've told rob that i think the reason i'm a little sad is because we're no longer in 'having babies' mode, we're in 'raising babies' mode. and i'm fine with it b/c i was a miserable pregnant woman and a witch as a new mother (to all but the baby of course ;)). so it's probably safest for all mankind to stop having babies now. so rob is hobbling around a bit, but he's already feeling better. he's feeling good enough to go hang out and play playstation, anyway.

we're starting daisy scouts this morning. so i better go hop in the shower for that. i haven't shaved my legs all week and what kind of mom would i be if i showed up with my legs all stubbly? actually, they'd probably volunteer me for camping with the girls if i showed up all stubbly!

our last week in this house...

2007-06-06T09:45:00.000-04:00

hard to believe our move is finally happening. it's something i'm dreading yet i'm excited for the process to start. our family has been geographically separated for 5 full months, and i know it will be another month until we're all together again...and that was only with a short deployment included. the patrols on the tennessee are only 3 months long, but each day really stretches on when i can't at least talk to rob at the end of it.

the movers will be here next monday and tuesday, packing up our belongings and then loading them on the truck on wednesday. too bad for cade, they won't be using a semi-trailer...our streets & corners are too narrow to accomodate it. i'm sure he'll love the excitement though. staying at home with me while reese goes off to preschool has surely become monotonous for him...and me. (i keep thinking that maybe it would be good to get him involved in a preschoolish daycare next year. he's making progress learning letter sounds, counting, & all that but i have my worries about his maturity and selfishness. maybe that's how boys are???)

and now elisha is awake. dang. off to go be super mommy...

a bit of a revelation

2007-05-13T09:45:00.000-04:00

i was driving home from walmart yesterday and i realized that i am happy. really.

this may not sound that huge to anyone else but to me it's big. i've spent a lot of my life wishing i could be like someone else or look like someone else or just BE someone else.

i am happy with my children, happy with my spouse (for now, i'm sure he'll do something dumb soon though), happy with all the choices i've made or am making, and happy with my body.

then we got home and reese threw a huge bratty fit and i mopped the kitchen and vacuumed the carpet. life returns to normal, even after you realize you love your life.

one month from today...

2007-05-11T09:37:00.000-04:00

looks like we might have a renter for our home here in CT. we don't have a contract set up yet, i'm waiting to hear painting estimates (and time estimates for the painting) before we come up with a date just yet. the movers will be here june 11, 12 and 13, so hopefully painting can begin right after that. give me a day to tidy the house up and then the renters can have it. oh, and i need to have the carpets shampooed. add that in too.

i'm flying my dad here so that he can help us drive to georgia. if it was just the kids, i *think* i could handle it, but we're dealing with 3 kids, one cat, and one dog. and traveling down 95 sounds a little scary so my dad & i might head off the beaten track. i've never seen the appalachians before so seeing a few of those might be neat. of course, after we've been on the road 3 days, i might change my mind and just try to get there ASAP. i'm looking forward to the move, believe it or not.

rob will be gone when we arrive, he's deploying soon. the good news is that this "deployment" is insanely short. while he's gone, i'll be house hunting and hopefully we'll have somewhere to call home by august 1st. he is renting an apartment locally right now, so we have some where to hang out. a total bachelor pad, which will be why i'll be house hunting!

i counted it up the other day and rob's been gone for 4 months. he left in early january and then came back for a visit or 2. the last time we saw him was 5 weeks ago. he's going to be so surprised by how much elisha has grown. i'm surprised at how much she has grown.

it will be work to be a family again, but it will be worth it.

the ultimate challenge

2007-05-04T14:47:00.000-04:00

my children hate me. they know that when i was younger (and skinnier and smarter) i loved sleeping. on weekends, i wouldn't get up til at least 10am...during the week, waking around 8 was early for me.

during the last week, reese & cade have both been up around 5:45 am. and if they're awake, you KNOW they're going to wake the baby. i honestly feel like this is some sort of competition...who can last longest with the least amount of sleep. the worst part is that after i tuck them into bed each evening, i seem to get my second wind and often end up staying awake til at least 11pm. add in several interruptions each night from elisha (who is still sleeping in bed with me) and the kids are in danger of winning this one.

just another reason we need to get our asses moved down to georgia...i can't hold on much longer.

updates and more updates

2007-05-03T11:33:00.000-04:00

i've been forced to assimilate my blogger acccount with a google account. i have no clue what i have done but it wouldn't let me into my blog without me doing it. and we all know how VITAL it is that i get in here. i mean, my audience would really miss me. right? right???

this time THREE months have passed since my last post. wow. that's not very good at all. i guess i've been busy...

here's elisha's update:

she is crawling.
she is also pulling up on stuff.
she just climbed a box yesterday.
and she clapped
and she has 2 teeth that she loves to bite with! ouch!
she says 'mama'
when she wants me, she chases me down and head butts my leg til i pick her up
she's still sleeping with me and scared of the crib (or scared of being alone, i'm sure that's really what it is. she's used to having 2 older entertainers around constantly.)

here's cade's update:

he's almost pottytrained! yee haw!!! he wears undies during the day and pullup at night. he's usually dry in the morning but i have a lot of pullups left over so we're going to use them.
he's singing. some people may not be excited about this, but i remember reese doing it and i love that he's singing and remembering words and was paying attention to me when i sang to him all those times.
he's now sharing a room with reese and bedtime is so much easier. for me. maybe not for reese. she takes the role of little mommy and makes sure he stays in bed.

here's reese's update:

she's about 6 weeks away from turning 5. wow. a 1/2 decade. she's getting so old.
she has started giving back what i give her. sometimes i am too impatient with her and tell her to hurry up. she fires right back with 'i'm BUSY, mommy.' so i guess she's learning to stand up for herself???
she's also about 6 weeks from finishing her year of preschool
i *think* she's reading. or else she has a photographic memory. the books she brings home from school are simple but she's reading them. and then talking like them. these books drive me crazy because they'e so simple...."i like you. you like me. here we go, up up up." etc.

and my update:

i've been doing weight watchers since march 1st and have lost about 30 pounds. this is huge for me. i was growing out of my size 20 pants and now i'm fitting comfortably in 18s and a few 16s. i have about another 30 lbs to go until i reach what i weighed when i got married.
major diet changes...no high fructose corn syrup (or at least in very limited amounts), low sugar, high fiber, low fat. my mood swings have really stopped...i can't believe how hfcs can really affect a person's moods. i'm doing similar things for the kids' diets (except the low fat part, i know they still need fats for good physical & mental development).
the house *might* be rented out very soon. a couple came and looked at it, loved it and are submitting the paperwork to the property manager for approval. we might be moving very soon! hopefully after reese finishes preschool though.

so those are our updates. see you in another 3 months. :b

snot city

2007-02-04T09:18:00.000-05:00

we were all healthy for about 3 days. then i think the 2 youngest picked up some bug from a walmart cart. reese and i are fine, but elisha has discovered that she hates the snot sucker. i hate it too, it usually turns into a struggle with elisha so i don't jab her in the eye. and since he refuses to blow his nose, cade's sleeves are crisscrossed with dried snot. rob is coming up for a visit this week, so we'll see if he gets any of our germs.

my saturday night was spent at youtube. for about 20 minutes i enjoyed clips from robot chicken until i fell asleep sitting at the kitchen table. you know you're tired when there's funny stuff on the computer but you fall asleep while sitting in the most uncomfortable chairs in the house. robot chicken was very entertaining, you have to have the right kind of mindset and since i'm a mom of 3, i totally get it. i sent a few of my favorite links to my husband and he enjoyed them too. i'm glad we have something in common other than 3 kids.

btw...the clips aren't appropriate for kids. so wait til they're glued to playhouse disney, then watch all you want. there's lots :)

mirror mirror on the wall...who's the sickest one of all?

2007-01-20T14:18:00.000-05:00

hammer gave me a laugh today. i'm not sure which i am, but i will not be sharing pictures of my child's poop. i've seen it done before on other blogs and it's not pretty.

did i mention it hurts to laugh? i don't think i have a sinus infection, but my sinuses are just pounding. when i laugh, when i cough, when i sneeze (double ow!), when i bend over to pick something up, my head feels like it's caught in a vise.

however, life doesn't stop just because i'm sick. rob is in georgia, preparing for his next tour of sea duty. i've been playing the role of single mom (with a generous paycheck in the bank) for the last 2 1/2 weeks. we've had all sorts of germs visiting while rob has been gone...reese had a viral respiratory thing (a fancy name the doctor gave her persistent cough), cade had pinkeye, and now i have this head thing. elisha has her own thing going on...she's not sick but she's teething for real now. she's not sleeping well at all and she's biting. not what a breastfeeding 4 month old should be doing to a tired mommy! but she is cute. so i'll let it slide for a while longer.

i'm supposed to be getting this house ready to rent out so then we can move down to a rented house in georgia. we have a few superficial things to fix before i call the property manager to have her list it as available. however, with all these germs waging warfare on us, i really don't feel like leaving the house to get any of the supplies i need to do the work. i'm going to call her on monday and see if she has a handyman and a paint crew at the ready so i can just hand it all off to them. i surrender.

in the year...

2007-01-20T09:34:00.000-05:00

thanks for the idea, hammer :)

In 1976 (the year you were born)

Gerald Ford is president of the US

The US celebrates its bicentennial, marking the 200th anniversary of its independence

The Viking II sets down on Mars' Utopia Plains

Promising, "I will never lie to you," Jimmy Carter is elected president of the United States

Israeli commandos rescue hostages from Entebbe, Uganda

The Concorde begins flights from New York to Europe

George W. Bush is arrested and fined for driving under the influence of alcohol

Cray-1, the first commercially developed supercomputer, is invented by Seymour Cray

Freddie Prinze Jr., Reese Witherspoon, Colin Farrell, 50 Cent, Fred Savage, and Shannon Elizabeth are born

Cincinnati Reds win the World Series

Pittsburgh Steelers win Superbowl X

Montreal Canadiens win the Stanley Cup

Rocky is the top grossing film

Filming begins on George Lucas' Star Wars

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is published

The Eagles Their Greatest Hits compilation becomes the first album in history to be certified platinum

"Tonight's The Night" by Rod Stewart spends the most time at the top of the US chart

Charlie's Angels and The Muppet Show premiere

What Happened the Year You Were Born?

happy new year...bleh.

2007-01-06T19:13:00.000-05:00

once again, i've fallen into my poor blogging habits. i made dedicated entries for about a week but suddenly my free time is no longer my own.

elisha has decided that it's too entertaining to watch the world around her. this leads to catnapping, and just poor napping in general. getting her to sleep for an hour when the other 2 are awake is a major achievement. even getting her to sleep for an hour while the other 2 are already asleep is an achievement. maybe she's just busy growing synapses or something, because she is amazing me.

while we were in iowa, she discovered she could roll over and over and over and actually get somewhere. so if you put her on a blanket in the middle of the room and give her 5 minutes, you'll find her in a corner or up against the baseboard heater (which isn't even being used lately, it feels springier than spring outside!). she's also started using her voice more, just kind of blabbing to herself. and the last few days she has started blowing big juicy raspberries. it's so adorable, even if she leaves my shoulder wet all the time. she's really amazing me, i don't remember all this rolling over for at least another month with the other 2. (elisha just turned 4 months.) oh, and baby girl is also trying to sit up. when she's reclining in her carseat, it looks like she's doing little crunches because she's lifting her head up off the seat.

so christmas in iowa was a time of exploration for elisha. for the rest of us, it was a time of sickness. ugh. the 22nd i came down with the stomach flu (although i never threw up, i have such a strong gag reflex...or is that a weak gag reflex?? hmmm) but i felt any second like i could have thrown up. i made frequent trips to the toilet anyway, being struck with the diarrhea bug too. i stayed in bed for a whole day, something i haven't done since before i had kids. i was so weak, i couldn't have walked anyway.

rob had the diarrhea side of the sickness so he was in charge of the kids while i was sick. he brought me elisha every 2 or 3 hours to nurse and thankfully she did not get it. it was a short illness and i felt better around 10pm that night, but then who came into our room around midnight saying that she threw up in her bed? reese. :/

she had the bug the 23rd but was better in time for christmas. we thought we were all healthy so we left iowa on the 26th and who threw up in the hotel the morning of the 27th? cade :/ his first tummy bug :( i snagged the hotel's ice bucket and managed to catch most of it. the rest of the trip was a blur, between him throwing up AND having the nastiest diapers i've ever seen. i guess he really got screwed over.

we also had my initiation into the 'my child's just thrown up on your floor' club. cade nailed the floor in a mcdonald's in NY state. i added it to his baby book. :)

but we're all healthy again, just in time to hear of the meningitis scares in nearby rhode island. i hope all the decontamination they're doing in the schools there does the job. children shouldn't die from germs picked up in school.

on the road...

2006-12-16T08:06:00.000-05:00

we're heading out in a few hours to spend christmas in iowa. the weather looks clear and the kids slept like crap last night so i'm sure they'll crash nicely once we're on the road.

merry christmas to all you out in bloggerland!

why hallmark and the postal service love me

2006-12-15T00:47:00.000-05:00

we've been getting more and more christmas 'cards' in the mail, since the holiday is approaching rapidly. i call them 'cards' because what people have been sending is barely worth the 39 cent stamp on the envelope.

apparently the 'in' (or acceptable) thing to do is to put a picture of the kids or family onto a picture postcard, add in a lovey greeting and then stuff in an envelope with computer-generated labels stuck on the front. what they end up sending out is something that is as unpersonal as you get. the only thing special is the picture, when the real reason i open the envelope is to see the card they chose...the greetings they used...the signatures of my friends and family.

i think letter writing is a dying art. not in a sense of communication, that will continue through email or other electronic means (although the thought of texting honestly makes me cringe). i mean, putting your thoughts on paper in a semi-organized form, with legible penmanship, a loving closing, and flowy signature...spending the 39 cents or more, putting it in the mailbox, and imagining the recipient's excitement at opening mail. i love getting REAL mail. there's not much of it these days btwn the bills and the credit card offers. i consider the time that i put into a letter a gift of its own.

that is why all 70 of the cards i sent out were:

hand addressed (return address too)
a personal greeting and signature in each card
a family signature on our xmas letters that were included (and YES, the letters were off the computer...i do have 3 kids after all!)

upon receiving a photo card from people who i thought of as dear friends, it makes me question the relationship btwn myself and the sender. for example, i've known 'monica' since 2nd grade. we were best friends from about 5th grade on. we grew apart during college and rarely talk now, but i still send her a chatty card for christmas and usually a card for her birthday. today in the mail i got a picture of her two boys in the normal computer-generated format. nothing special at all included to show to me that i was more than just another name in her address book, another checkmark on her card list.

another couple, the husband used to work with rob, sent the most boring printed letter ever, having stuffed it into an envelope with computer printed labels. they didn't even sign the letter. the only PERSONAL touch was a picture of the couple on the address label. i really feel like christmas mailings are all about who can take the most shortcuts with their computer these days.

as long as i can still hold a pen and find a post office, i will do it my way. which we all know is the right way, right? right.

arg.

2006-12-09T11:02:00.000-05:00

my husband is trying to waterproof a jacket. he's spraying this scotchguard/waterproofing agent on his jacket...while still inside.

does he read the part of the can that says do this in a VENTILATED area??? the man is a college graduate, he has 2 degrees, why does he not follow directions???

his excuse? it's too cold outside to do it out there. so instead he's going to expose all of us to these wonderfully toxic fumes. arg.

i am...

2006-12-07T12:52:00.000-05:00

i am a diet pepsi whore. so is rob. the bottles are mine, the cans are his.

i am also the family bottle redemption clerk so i get to take these back to walmart and feed the machines to get our deposit money back. i hate it when the machines are full or the scary looking people with garbage bags full of cans are there. my mother used to work customer service at a grocery store where they would accept pop cans at the counter in back. she has lots of tales of people bringing in garbage bags FULL of cans, not necessarily in clean condition...and sometimes with a dead mouse or live spiders way down in the bottom of the bag. people would just leave the bags out in their garage and bring them in 'when they got around to it.' my mother was transferred to another part of the store long before the redemption machines put in an appearance. these days, i think there should be a limit on how many garbage bags one person can redeem at once. it's not unusual to see a person with 3 bags at the machines. i'm wondering if they use that money to supplement their welfare checks or what. it has to take forever to empty those bags.

************************************************************

i am mentally reviewing my purchases for the kids' christmas presents and i believe i have NOT bought any gifts which require batteries. i believe this is the first christmas as a mom that that has happened! we're going the puzzle and dollhouse route this season. while other parents are looking at the new game systems, we're going granola. (i personally don't understand why parents buy these systems for their kids. rob compared it to his parents buying him an original atari when he was 9. point for rob, but ataris were/are cool. and there was not a lot of blood or cursing on an atari game. the most you had to be worried about was a white square shooting blocks at your yellow square.) it seems like kids don't get enough fresh air or exercise, why would you buy a gaming system to encourage this? rob might use the excuse how it teaches hand/eye coordination. he may be right, but dammit, can't we get a pingpong table to do that instead? or a game of jacks? or a good old fashioned acorn fight every fall? (i'm reliving my childhood here...my brother and i would have acorn fights, the perfect place to launch an attack was from the bed of my dad's pickup truck. it was always parked right under an oaktree.)

i am guilty of keeping the kids inside too much. before elisha was born we played outside a lot, mostly it was cade helping me garden and reese running laps around the house (she likes to run...don't know how she could be MY daughter). but with a tiny baby, it's a little hard to orchestrate outside playtime. it's almost 55 outside and sunny today, we should be out there right now. the sun sets in about 3 hours (rolling eyes here, i hate short winter days).

i am wondering if winter days will last a bit longer when we move to georgia? it's further south, but not quite the bahamas.

and now the baby has woken up. damn.

i am outta here.

a bit of craziness

2006-12-07T10:51:00.000-05:00

things i've accomplished this week:

far too much laundry...3 loads of kids' clothes ALONE. am i buying them too many clothes? i'm so tired of folding little clothes...ugh. if we had more closet space, i'd hang them all.
gotten rid of 2 sleeping bags and an old carseat through freecycle. i love freecycle, otherwise i'd feel really guilty for throwing all that away. we already produce the most garbage on our block...how do the other families get by with just one big bag of garbage a week?!?!? i'm sure that with 2 in diapers, our trash is also the most fragrant.
finally vacuumed upstairs. i've been wanting to do this for the last week...so it REALLY needed done. and it's finished just in time for me to vacuum downstairs again. sigh. i would love to have a central vacuum. (yes, i just wished for a big vacuum.)
almost done with our xmas letter that goes in our card. we got some pictures of the kids last night that MIGHT work to go into the card, too. i'm going to take a few more shots tonight if everyone is happy and we'll make the final decision. then i'll send rob to the local kodak machine to make many many prints. at least all the envelopes are addressed. i did that yesterday.

that's really about all i've done. hmmm. feels like more.

the last few days have been rough for me, mentally. if it's not postpartum depression, it's something similar. i've found myself thinking about throwing myself down the stairs, and then cursing the same stairs for not being long enough to break my neck if i did go down them. also passing through my thoughts: my kids would be better off without me. i've had a dark few days, apparently. i haven't even told rob the thoughts that have gone through my head. i should but i'm scared to death of actually seeking help...i worry about mental evaluations following me in my medical record.

anyway, i've been feeling better the last 24 hours. i think i was just at a low point, maybe brought on by holiday stress. damn holidays. that's the reason i'm crazy. heh heh.

it also helps that elisha slept really well last night. she only woke up once last night, around 4am. she nursed and went right back to sleep. she's such an angel.

better go get some more stuff done...only an hour til reese gets home.

happy december! (otherwise titled '24 days to go!')

2006-12-01T09:42:00.000-05:00

it's december! hooray!

i celebrated by having a bagel instead of my normal raisin bran. it's a yummy cranberry bagel, ones that only come out at christmas time. delicious :)

elisha's first tooth is ready to pop through any time. it's weird to see a teeny baby chewing on her hands, usually at this age they're just discovering they HAVE hands and watching them quietly or sometimes sucking a finger when it gets too close to their mouth. but elisha is cramming her whole fist in her mouth. we have pictures but they're on my husbands camera and i have no clue where the cord is to upload the evidence. so you'll have to wait.

she's also gotten a her first cold. it's a real 'juicy' one, lots of mucas and congestion. so we're using the snot-sucker as needed, and we even have one upstairs and one downstairs for our own convenience. reese brought this cold home from school about 3 weeks ago and it's taking forever to get over...averaging about a week per child, but they all still have a nasty sounding cough. so i just give them some more orange juice and hope it goes away soon. i'm sure it will, just in time for the next round of sickies.

i think i'm passing on the flu shot for the kids this year. according to our pediatrician, we SHOULD get it, since elisha is so tiny but we've gotten the flu shot every year since we started having babies in the house and i think it's just useless. after joining a parenting board, i'm more worried than ever about vaccines and their side effects. i think it's absurd that the chicken pox vaccine (varicella) is required for entrance into preschool or kindergarten. unfortunately, for reese to attend preschool, she had to have it; seems that the school district is telling ME how to care for my child's health. since cade is not in daycare, he won't have it until he has to enter school...same with elisha. i just don't see what is the benefit of the varicella vaccine....is it just so kids won't miss a week or more of classes with chicken pox? so it won't wipe out a whole class for a week or more?

i had the pox (how medieval sounding!) when i was a baby, under 2 years of age. i frightened my mom with my high fever and febrile seizures, but i think that's pretty uncommon to have with the chicken pox. i don't remember any of it. i think the vaccine needs to be studied more before it becomes school policy. too late for many districts though.

we're heading to iowa for christmas. this is really turning into a national lampoon's road trip. 3 kids and a dog in a minivan....add in a dad that stops for every starbucks and a mom that continually tells the dad to slow down and that would be us. how, in 5 short years, did i go from newlywed to mother of 3? from 0 to frumpy in 5 years flat. speaking of, this month marks when elisha was conceived (i think pearl harbor day was the big day...let's just say our sex life is pretty easy to track) and december 30th marks when i found out i was pregnant with her. the last year has just ZOOMED past. how does time go so fast???

when it comes to christmas music, i'm pretty traditional. i found a double cd set in bath & body works that i bought on a whim (for $10, and a $1 of that goes to a charity of some sort...i figured what the heck). it's a pretty good album with some big names (they could have left off the pussycat dolls...do they belong on a christmas album? no.). for some non-traditional christmas music, i recommend it.

the true meaning of christmas...

2006-11-27T14:51:00.000-05:00

my pets have the christmas spirit already. which is "share or i'll scratch you." poley is a short-hair dog, he should be thankful for a kitty to warm his arse!

a post in which the bobeara gets philosophical...

2006-11-27T14:21:00.000-05:00

i'm trying to be a dedicated blogger. all of my kids are asleep but here i am typing as fast as i possibly can. i KNOW that within 30 seconds someone is going to wake up. it works that way whenever i start typing on the computer or i fall asleep. like murphy's law, only maybe call it the mommy law.

i've spent quite a bit of time trying to put some christmas music on my ipod. for some reason my computer is really slow at importing everything. it used to be pretty fast but then i upgraded to itunes who-knows-what-version and now it takes forever. but the neat part is that i'm listening to the nutcracker ballet (courtesy of the philadelphia orchestra :)) and i had forgotten how much i love it.

the last few days i've had a bit of a stuggle. i'm not really religous...i never was required to go to church as a child and don't really understand how someone can just have blind faith that the whole god thing really exists. however, now i'm a mom and it's amazing how helpless i feel at times raising these kids. when reese is at school or on the bus, i'm constantly hoping that if the teachers/bus drivers aren't watching out for her welfare, then somebody of a higher power hopefully is. and at least 5x a day, i'm thankful for our health..and the health of our family. but i really don't know who i'm thanking...all the religious types would immediately answer with 'god', but i hate to actually say that yes, i'm praying/thanking a god whom i've never really worshipped. it's like i'm asking for his/her care without putting any real effort into it.

ANYWAY, now that it's the christmas season, reese wants to know what all these christmas songs are about. not just rudolph and frosty, those she can figure out on her own. i'm talking about 'away in a manger' and 'silent night.' one of the christmas books i bought her the other day had a version of the birth of jesus in it (it was actually ok with me, seemed appropriate for her age, maybe a little older). but i just cringe everytime jesus or god might come up in conversation with her. maybe by not talking more about it, i'm doing more harm than not. i guess i'm raising her to be a good person, period. i don't think you have to be a devout bible-thumping person to have a good afterlife.

weird that i'm thinking about this. it's all because of silvia browne. she's really got me thinking...enough so that i've programmed my tivo to record montel on wednesdays. that and i've been unbelievably fortunate to have ignored this issue for so long, all of my friends and family are healthy and still walking around.

i really need to discuss this with rob. rob is even less religious than me, his mother was buddhist and his dad was...um...from st. louis. i have no clue what his dad impressed upon him as far as religion. i think rob is of the same opinion as me, that just being a good person and a KIND person is enough to make a good life.

holy moly, i got more than 30 seconds there, didn't i? although i hear baby elisha starting to wake. she's an angel, by the way. she's gotten so she's only waking up around 3 or 4am, nursing and going back to sleep. i wish my boobs would accept this new schedule though, i've woken up the last few nights really engorged.

anyway, here's a shot of the tree this year. and yes, it's huge. like huge enough that it's a pain in the ass. but those little white lights make me feel all warm inside.

my shopping has been started. reese is done, my mom is 1/2 done. i still have my dad, my bro & sis in law, rob, and cade. and elisha. but does a 4 month old really need presents? i bought a peanut shell sling to tote her around and i think that may be her xmas present. she's the one getting a free ride, after all.

and i'm working on cards already...bought letter paper and stamps today. i'm mentally composing the christmas letter already. it's been a busy year!

holiday blather

2006-11-26T11:06:00.000-05:00

welcome to the christmas season. the OFFICIAL christmas season. it is after thanksgiving and now the world has my approval to start decorating and shopping and being christmasy. it was hard to hold out, with us having a 4 year old who asks at least once a day when christmas will be, but we made it.

we put up the tree the day after thanksgiving. it was a 7pm affair, meaning the baby cried the whole time, cade was whiney & tired, and reese was hyperactive and bouncing around (i think she thought that since the tree was going up, the big day was soon to follow). so we put up the tree, turned on the twinkle lights and then started bathtime. i was not going to put up all those glass ornaments with kids whining and crying and bouncing around me.

we had to rearrange our entire living room. with all the baby stuff, floor space is really getting tight, and i think our tree is just TOO DAMN BIG. we bought a new tree last year and of course we had to get a BIG tree. we chose a 7.5 foot prelit tree (made in china, of course. i just found the tag on the tree yesterday and snipped it off!) from home depot. now i'm wishing we would have gotten a charlie brown style tree instead. not only is this tree tall but it's wide. thank god we're leaving for christmas, i don't think our house could hold the tree AND presents under it.

i wasn't sure i wanted to even put up the tree at all, since we are going to my parents' house for the holiday. one of those 'more trouble than it's worth' things. but then all that turkey on thanksgiving kind of put me in the holiday mood. and now the tree has it's own half of the living room :)

the ornaments went up saturday morning, while daddy & cade were gone. elisha was snoozing and so it was just reese & me. reese was still bouncing around, does she ever stop?? but we got all the ornaments up...and in more than one part of the tree. reese was trying to hang every ornament i gave her on the same branch. this is the first year that she's really been allowed to even touch the ornaments, so it's a learning experience for her. but next year, she better remember to space them out evenly, dangit.

i think thanksgiving dinner went really well. it was just us, but i went ahead and got a turkey and all the side dishes that go along with it. the turkey was delicious (thank you butterball!) and my pie turned out beautifully (thank you pilsbury roll out dough!). the stuffing wasn't so good, in fact i may just not make it next year. it doesn't stay warm and no one eats it (sorry, stove top). we had corn this year because my husband refuses to eat vegetables except corn and he's passed this preferece to our children. i would have loved to have some fattening green bean casserole, but i know i would have had the whole dish to myself...and even that *might* be too much green bean casserole for one person. my rolls were perfect (thank you better homes & garden cookbook!) and my cranberry jello salad was yummy (thank you allrecipes.com).

the best part: i bought a big turkey just so we could have leftovers...which rob refuses to eat, so they're ALL mine! woohoo! the experts say that all leftovers should be consumed or thrown away within 3-4 days after thanksgiving, and we're right on schedule. everything is gone except for the turkey and i'm due to have yet another yummy turkey sandwich (extra mustard) for lunch today.

my to do list for today:

put some holiday music on my ipod
figure out why our humidifier isn't working (both cade & elisha have the 'crud'...lots of snot and lots of phlegmy coughing :( thank god for vapo-rub!)
fold the 3 loads of laundry that are waiting for me. sigh. they're all baby/kid clothes and those loads take forever to fold. actually, i should be doing that right now while elisha is dozing. ooops
hit walmart (milk & maybe a new humidifier), linens & things (yankee candle plug ins, i can't handle the yankee candle outlet today), and bath & body works (looking for a gift for a friend)
wait for elisha to have a blowout. she didn't have a dirty diaper yesterday so i know it's just a matter of time. i even dressed her in another sleeper this morning so it'd be easier to clean up.

that's about it. oh, and think about holiday cards. i haven't bought them, written or thought about the holiday letters, tried to take pictures of the kids to include in them, bought stamps for them, printed off return address labels for them...geez, i should probably start thinking more about them! christmas is exactly a month away!

a nap you say?

2006-11-12T23:15:00.000-05:00

greetings!

first things first...yes, the baby has arrived. whew! if not, that would be the world's longest pregnancy!

elisha brooke was born on the very last day of august. officially 6 days overdue by the ultrasound's dating, right on time for fertility friend dating, and one day early for my own dating. i had hoped for a september baby for some reason.

my water broke around 8pm on the 30th of august, just as we were tucking the kids into bed. rob was convinced i needed to go to the hospital as soon as possible, which meant dragging the kids along with us. i was having very few contractions so the doc was ok with me staying at home. if i hadn't gone before then, she wanted us at the hospital at 7am.

so the kids went to bed and i called grandma & grandpa, who were still on the road. they had left a few days earlier to make the trek from iowa to connecticut in order to be here when the baby arrived. g&g were still in NY state and were looking for a place to stop for the night. when i told them that my water broke, they got back on the interstate and drove as fast as 2 old farts can drive that late at night.

meanwhile, i tried to relax and get some rest but i had a few contractions coming here & there and it was more comfortable to be up and moving around. and since it was such a surprise to have my water break, of course the house was a mess. so i spent an hour cleaning it, mostly the kitchen...and then cleaning up 'drips' on the floor where my towels leaked through. the smell of amniotic fluid is one that you don't forget. wierd.

g&g arrived around 12:30am, bleary but here. whew. now we had childcare secured and i could at least not worry about that. i know that when we were sitting around talking, my contractions really started hurting a bit. maybe b/c i could relax now that g&g were here?

i showed grandma around a little upstairs so she would be familiar in the morning with where stuff was (we had switched the kids' rooms since their last visit). reese woke up mid-tour and gave grandma some hugs, then she went back to sleep.

then we all settled in for some sleep around 2am, g&g on the airmattress in the living room and rob and i in bed...with a garbage bag and some towels under me. i think i used up all the spare towels we had.

i was actually able to get some rest, but woke up around 4am, with contrax a little more painful. i took a shower and got cade back to sleep, then woke rob up at 6 so we could be at the hospital by 7. reese woke up to tell us goodbye, but cade woke up right before we were leaving and i didn't see any alternative but to sneak out the back door. i was starting to be in real pain (stopping in order to deal with contrax) and i didn't want to deal with his meltdown when he saw us drive away. (turns out he went back to sleep in our bed after whining a bit, then came down later and was a perfect angel! no way!)

for some reason rob thought we were taking his low-riding acura to the hospital, and started to load up the trunk. but i was intent on the minivan. no way did i want to struggle out of the acura when we got to the hospital. so after a brief squabble, we were on our way. i wish men could experience just 10 minutes of active labor...they would understand what we mean when we say SLOW DOWN and NO BUMPS. sudden turns and potholes and short stops just irritate the hell out of me when i'm in excruiciating pain. go figure. :/

we made it to the hospital and we walked up to the maternity ward. they had a room waiting for us and my doc was already there, which was a relief. i didn't have to go to triage or wait for anything. (i have a feeling that this delivery was one my doc's first ones, she seemed to be a young ob/gyn and she was new at the practice, maybe that's why she was there before i was...either way, it was reassuring!)

i got changed into the lovely hospital gown and the belly belt and then went back into our room. they hooked up the monitors to my belly (i didn't remember this, i had to ask rob if they had monitors on me at all) and checked me. i was at 6 cm and it was about 7:15am.

with it being just after 7am, we were dealing with the nurse's shift change. add to the fact that it was a really busy morning in the ward, and things were a little hectic. my first nurse was anne and i can just say how thankful i am that she got reassigned to another patient. i remember she had really strong perfume, and a poor bedside manner (trying to find a vein for an IV during a contrax and telling me to 'relax my hand'...not going to work, honey. bah!), and a mustache. i shit you not, she had to have been grooming that thing. it was way too long to NOT see when she looked in the mirror.

thank goodness she was sent somewhere else and we got a new nurse, whose name i've suddenly blanked on. but she was such a blessing...quiet voice, had tons of advice for helping deal with the pain, and she really made the experience special.

i decided i wanted to go with an epidural, the pain was so bad at this point i didn't even want to open my eyes. so they got the doc in to do that and by the time they had gone over all the possible things that could go wrong, i had the nurse check me one more time and i was at 9cm.

i really thought it was too late for an epi, so i sent the epi doc on his way. i felt bad for wasting his time and opening all those sterile-wrapped packages but i really didn't think i could sit still enough to have them insert the needle...or that it would take effect in time. maybe it would have and i could have had a more controlled birth...or a birth that i remember more about. who knows.

so i knew when the epi guy left that i was going natural. it wasn't long after he left that i started wimpering with contrax. right after that started happening, both the nurse and doc said that i could push with a contrax if i wanted to. at that point, i did want to, it felt better than just laying there in pain.

rob was there, but i don't even remember him while i was pushing. no clue what he said during contrax or even what he said when elisha was born. i think i pushed for 10 or 15 minutes? it didn't seem like long at all, but geez, the pain seemed worse than with cade. at one point (i think when she was crowning), i remember throwing my head back in my pillows and yelling, 'i can't breathe, i can't breathe.' but rob said that the doctor just told me 'now sarah, take a deep breath and push.' and i did. and then elisha was born. 8:32am on 8/31 (a thursday). funny, both of my girls were born in the early morning...reese was 8:06 on a saturday.

when they put her on my belly, i just remember saying over and over 'thank you, thank you, thank you.' not sure who i was thanking...as non-religious as i like to think i am, i think i was thanking god...for giving me this baby and for making the pain STOP.

elisha weighed in at 8 lbs, 13 oz and 21.5". she was quiet at birth, just like reese, but then started crying after a few moments (cade was a screamer...and still is a screamer). amazing how similar the girls are, even their baby pictures look so much alike. i had a 2nd degree tear and the doc didn't numb me up enough for those stitches, but i survived.

we didn't decide on her name til right before we left the hospital the next day. we had to wait around for the birth certificate lady before we could be discharged, so elisha brooke it was. with reese & cade we've chosen their names for family relevance, or background of the name. with elisha...there's no good reason for her name, other than that we like it. and reese has told us several times what a good name that is for a baby :)

we only stayed in the hospital one night and came home around 5pm the day after she was born. frankly, i was bored in the hospital. the first few nights weren't easy, but i didn't expect them to be. rob had 2 weeks off from work (wow, pretty generous for the navy!) and g&g stayed for another week. nursing was rough here & there but now it's all routine. she still gets picky about her latch but she's gaining just fine, averaging about a lb a month and growing an inch a month.

her first round of shots at 2 months of age were rough on me, but she had no reactions at all during the following days...and i *think* she's teething, can you believe it? she's chewing on her hands constantly and she has little bumps on her lower gums. she hates tummy time, she'll barely lift her head 1/2 an inch off the ground, she prefers to turn her head to suck on her hands. but she loves to sit up and look around, that's probably when she's most alert. even when she's up on my shoulder, she kind of slumps into my shoulder most of the time. maybe she's just going to be a cuddly girl.

the older 2 are doing ok. reese has preschool to distract her from issues at home and cade's new hobby is throwing tantrums anytime mommy tries to tell him what to do. arg. i sure hope he grows out of this...it's getting worse and worse every day it seems. i think today he had 2 tantrums before breakfast.

rob is gone right now too, that doesn't make it any easier. october was spent with him working from around 6am til 8pm at night, in training and studying. and right before halloween he went on an underway to complete the onboard section of the course. he'll be home on the 21st, only 8 more days.

i can't wait til he gets home, i am prioritizing some time for myself. i want to paint my toenails, finish my book, and take a NAP. even if it's with elisha, i want a NAP. can't wait for my NAP. wonder if i can get a NAP wrapped up for christmas and put it under the tree for myself? hmmmm...

just a check in

2006-08-15T08:50:00.000-04:00

still here.
still pregant.
still no name for jane doe.

rob is working late this week. yesterday he went to a friend's house and played cards for a few hours. the kids & i were invited along but i'm to the point where no clothing fits, i really don't want to be around anyone who can't handle being yelled at for no reason, and my pelvis really hurts. can't wait to see how 'happy' i am to see rob when he gets home at 8pm tonight, wed and thurs! ;)

favorite outfits these days:
cut off sweatpants and a maternity tshirt from old navy...however even those tshirts are starting to get tight in the tummy. and suddenly they're showing an inch or 2 of skin at the bottom hem. when did that happen? and i don't know if my back fat is increasing or my boobs are getting bigger or sinking or what but suddenly, these favorite tshirts of mine are fitting tight through the shoulders and boobs. throw in a pair of flipflops and you have sarah on any given day. don't forget the huge circles under my eyes (restless nights here & there) and my hair in a ponytail anytime i'm vertical.

favorite sayings:
'are you listening to me?'
'what did mommy say?'
'CADE!'
'CADE, stop it!'
'don't talk to me.'
'i'm not listening.'
'leave me alone.'
'god, it's hot in here.'
and of course, random yelling at the dog...i'm sure the neighbors are getting a kick out of watching the expanding belly and the ever-shortening fuse. i'm just a huge ball of fun these days.

favorite foods:

chocolate milk
chocolate ice cream
drinkable yogurts (i haven't gagged on them yet, i always thought i would if i tried them)
tortilla chips & bean dip with sour cream on top. (that would explain my gas pains, huh?)
the little mini rubies hamburgers at ruby tuesday restaurants. those things are worth the heartburn.
peaches, blueberries, cherries...probably all the fruit that is worthless in vitamins or fiber.
raisin bran...for obvious reasons (blush).

i really hope i get happy again when the baby arrives. i'd hate to think this pre-partum crankiness could get any worse with post-partum depression. my family might move me out into the hut out in back.

august? now? already?

2006-08-04T08:24:00.000-04:00

somehow it's august already? how did that happen?

today marks 37 weeks of pregnancy. and i'm finally starting to feel it. i'm getting little stabbing pains in my lower abdomen whenever i bend over too far and pretty much too pissy to be around. the weather is not helping. although who ever heard of an august when it was nice and cool? just part of my pennance for not planning this pregnancy, i guess. if i had to do it again, i would plan on giving birth in late may/early june. not too many months of summer, but you can still wear most of your non-maternity winter clothes.

because of the 100 degree weather this week, we've pretty much spent the whole week inside. no wonder i'm going crazy! btwn the kids and having to stare at this mess (which refuses to clean itself), i'm lucky i haven't locked myself in the bathroom for a few hours of peace & quiet. the kids are at least napping daily...even reese. so i do get some quiet time. my husband tells me to go somewhere and he'll watch the kids, but that really doesn't sound like an improvement. i'll go somewhere, stuck among annoying strangers (who i shouldn't yell at, even though they're in MY way), i'll spend some $$$ on something we don't really need, and then have to haul it in the house when i get home. oh, and who knows what condition the house will be in when i return. my husband's version of 'watching the kids' is let them ransack the house while he watches baseball and surfs the internet. men really don't get it, do they?

we've come up with a name for the baby...jane doe. honestly. this really might be her name. we are unable to agree on anything these days, much less a name for our 3rd. i still like naomi. and using jean or lynn/lin would be cool. i also told him to pick something japanese for a middle name to honor his mom's memory/history. but still nothing. i have a feeling the baby name book will be coming with us to the hospital. first time EVER, by the way.

not really sure how our birth plan is going to work. birth plan, meaning "what we're going to do with the other 2" when i'm in labor. my due date is 8/25. reese was 2 weeks overdue and cade was 6 days overdue. so this one will be what...4 days overdue? my parents, who have been in town for each birth so far, aren't leaving til 8/29. (my mom feels like she must be there to do some part of job, arg.) it's usually a 2 or 3 day trip for them so hopefully they can get here by 8/31. and i'm telling my uterus that we're holding out for 9/1. no offense to anyone with august birthdays but i prefer the sapphire to what is it...aquamarine? peridot? yellow-greenish stone i think. a petty reason, i know.

however, the doc's wheel is always wrong for me anyway. even though she was 2 weeks late, reese was a normal size and she was still covered in vernix, which i don't think she would have had if she was really 2 weeks late. cade was huge for 6 days late...but i think he would have been huge anyway. he's just a big chubby kid (and i love him to pieces). so who knows. it's all a crap shoot, i guess. i'm just hoping that my water breaks and i don't have to make the decision to go to the hospital. last time that happened i showed up at the hosptial at 8 cms. with cade, my water broke at 5am and it was kind of calming, knowing that the baby WOULD arrive on that day.

so anyway, enough baby stuff. which means i have nothing else to talk about for now. :)

is there a return policy?

2006-07-12T09:09:00.000-04:00

hi all!

the husband has returned. he got back on june 30th which was a few days earlier than i had planned. the reason was that he was unable to complete the course. he made an error that jeopardized the safety of the crew and it meant that he was done and would not be given a 2nd chance to complete the course. sigh. he was only days from finishing too...his error was made on tues june 27th and the course ended for the graduates on sunday the 2nd of july. the interesting part is he lasted a day longer than a dutch student...which i think is pretty good, considering the dutch navy was hosting this course and they were on a dutch submarine. for the dutch student, it means the end of his career in submarines; he can still continue in surface ships in their navy. for rob, it just means that he was unable to finish the course. it won't be a strike against him when it comes to promotions, but it would have been a plus if he had finished.

he flew into boston on june 30th, a week ahead of his scheduled return. rob bought his own ticket and is expecting some recompensation on his travel claim for the ticket. we'll be out about $400 but at least we get to claim the mileage to & from boston. $400 is worth it for having him back a week earlier.

so we road tripped up to boston on the friday afternoon before the 4th of july weekend and maneuvered through the big dig. we arrived safely and only had to wait about 45 minutes before rob found us. the kids were eating their lunch (a donut & strawberry milk...the international arrivals area does not have anything better to offer :/) and i was keeping an eye on the door, looking for rob. i was also scarfing a blueberry muffin and apple juice (courtesy dunkin donuts :)). suddenly i hear reese say, 'daddy!' and rob is standing there on my right side, when i had been staring at the door to the left. i was praying i didn't have blueberry muffin junk in my teeth!

it was good to see him. reese was excited, cade was just watchful...or maybe he was just intent on finishing his donut (the boy knows to take advantage of donuts for lunch when he can!). he already had all his luggage so we finished our lunch and headed for the van.

we motored home without any problems, and before i could even get the kids out of the van, rob was already inside the house checking things out. so much for the presentation of the poster i had hung up. pizza for dinner and the kids didn't get to bed til at least 10. talk about tiring for a fat pg lady.

he had all weekend off, which seemed to really drag by. being fat & pg, i want to minimize the time i spend outside (away from a/c) so we stayed close to home. we saw the 4th of july fireworks from our bedroom windows, so that was a bonus...no bug bites! :)

now he's back to the work schedule and helping at subschool...offering his opinion when he feels it's necessary (all the time) and shooting the bull with coworkers. reese loves having daddy home and is finally accepting discipline from him. cade is another story...rob thinks that just b/c he's the daddy he should have instant credibility with cade. i keep trying to tell him that 2 year olds just don't offer out respect to everyone...you have to EARN it. you just can't hammer down on him suddenly and expect him to obey. if he obeys, it's a lucky thing, in my opinion.

rob has also finally started helping out around the house. the first few days were full of dirty dishes on the counter (close to the sink), dirty laundry no where close to the basket, and random stuff left where ever it was dropped. he finally got the hint and is now doing the dishwasher once in a while and at least picking up after himself. the best part is him taking the kids and dog outside to play after dinner. i can clean up at my leisure while hearing 'inside edition.' :)

i'm still adjusting. i'm used to sharing the bed, i think. not so much on sharing the bathroom, i like my vanity space i guess. i don't really like sharing the kitchen though. with our island eating up so much of the space and my tummy eating up what's left, if i'm in there, stay the hell out. you'll just be in MY way.

so i guess we're in love. or as much as you can love a pg woman in the middle of july.

can time go any slower?

2006-06-25T10:19:00.000-04:00

welcome to my weekend.

i absolutely hate weekends when rob is gone. i can feel each second passing and each one is more and more painful. most people love weekends, they tidy up the house or spend lots of quality time with their friends and family. well, my house is tidy enough for my low standards and i'm about up to here with quality time with my own family.

i believe we're down to 11 days til rob gets back. honestly though it feels like forever...i have today (sunday) and then another weekend to go through, and (bonus!) a 4th of july to survive. i should plan some fun outing on the 4th, after all, i'll have a husband to put up with again soon. but i'm to the point in this pregnancy where i just feel like hiding indoors where it's cooler, less humid, and fewer neighbors to see my underwear when i bend over.

i do have a few things i'd like to do...
1. make a poster for rob...i have a cheapy 'welcome home' banner but i want to find some paper rolls and write 'daddy' on there. if it's not raining we might even hang it over the front door. although the thought of me balanced on a stepstool on the front step would just give the neighbors something to laugh themselves silly over. maybe we'll just get 2 sheets of posterboard and staple them together. probably cheaper.
2. go to the furniture store...i want to buy a recliner to put on our main level. i remember coming home from the hospital with cade, that first night all i wanted was a recliner to relax in. our sofa and overstuffed chair were too upright (my poor nether-regions :( ) and i wanted to put my swollen feet up. i wasn't ready to share a bed with rob AND cade yet, so i held cade most of the night...waking up at his every little twitch and sometimes just waking myself up b/c i was sure i had let go of him as i slept. and now that i think of it, my first night with reese was similar. rob had the bed b/c he had to work the next day so i took reese out to the sofa and we cuddled (? worried?) all night. neither of these nights resulted in much sleep for me, so i think a $600+ recliner would maybe allow me to drift off in comfort. and i need to buy another dresser. reese will be sharing a room with the baby and cade will be in a room by himself. the new dresser will be for reese, hopefully i can find something that goes with whatever headboard we might buy her in the future.
3. pick out new bedding for our bed. the cat threw up on our quilt and i have been unable to get the stains out. arg. plus our sheets have faded here & there from some strange facial creams that i used in the past. i can't believe i was putting something on my face that bleached the color of my sheets...i think it might have been the clearasil a few years ago. the sheets were a lilac color, matching some little flowers on the quilt. i'd love to find something similar, but i've kind of fallen in love with this minty teal color that i'm suddenly seeing everywhere. unfortunately, i'm seeing it in the LUXURY section of the bedding...i'm not paying $200 for a comforter and 2 shams. sorry folks. good thing it's summer and we don't need a quilt yet anyway. i doubt i'll be wearing clothes to bed here in a few weeks, that cool breeze from the ceiling fan feels pretty good on a fat belly.
4. edit some stuffed animal toys. reese has a big laundry basket in her closet full of stuffed animals. there's another box on the main level of stuffed animals. she plays with about 10-15 of them on a regular basis. so i'm thiking it might be safe to get rid of some? i mean, we have a dog & a cat in the house, do we really need these stuffed animals at all???

i've also added 'find a baby name' to my unofficial list of things to do. we have the 35,000 baby names book, and i've added it to my bedtime reading. i'm only to the Cs (i started this quest last night...rob is usually the vetoer for my names so i better have a long list ready) but i already really like 'ashlin.' does that sound like a boy's name? maybe i'm thinking ashton for a boy's name...but honestly, we have a girl named reese and a boy named cade, do we care? maybe we should name this girl william or michael and just dare people to look at us funny.

so, add ashlin, belinda, and brenna to my list. not sure about belinda...i have a cousin belinda but last night at 11pm, it sounded pretty.

***holy crap, i forgot another thing to add to the list...baby announcements! i still like to send out announcements to friends and family when babies are born. that way it's not MY fault that they don't know my kids' names at family reunions. it's their own fault for not reading the baby announcement! one of my cousins has 7 kids but truthfully, i only knew about 2 or 3 of their births. those were the kids that were born when my grandma was alive and grandma was the family phone tree caller. anyway, postage is 39 cents but i will be sending out announcements. there's more hope of presents then ;)

still hanging in there

2006-06-20T07:34:00.000-04:00

i'm still here. just busy turning into a sweaty mess. i need to tie a fan with a battery pack onto me so i have airflow around me at all times. the temperature isn't too bad, it's the damn humidity. weatherbug and weather.com HAVE to be wrong when they say it's 45% humidity yet you can see a haze over the town. this is just the first few days of heat...i really hope i survive august. actually i hope my family survives august. i'm telling you now that it won't be pretty.

other than sweating and stinking up the place, life is going well. rob has just 15 days left before he heads home (to his 'hot' wife ;)) and the kids haven't killed each other yet, nor have i lost one of them at the mall. truthfully, that is one of my worries. that i'll turn around and one of them will have vanished and i'll have to call rob and say, 'i lost one of them.' he would be quite disappointed, esp b/c i'm not having anymore babies after this one. closed for business.

reese had her birthday last thursday. she's 4 now and it's amazing some of the things that come out of her mouth. she leaves me laughing 1/2 the time and shocked the other 1/2 of the time. just the other day i had to run downstairs and get some bras that had been hang-drying in the laundry closet. i came back upstairs to where the kids were and reese asked, 'did you have to go get your boobs, mom?' nope, the boobs i take with me everywhere, babe. i just told her i had to go get my bras and had a good laugh.

and i'm so proud of her. reese can wipe her own butt! woohoo! i think my child rearing duties are about done with her...she can feed herself, take her dishes to the sink, and wipe her butt...she's ready to move out. :)

cade's birthday is in about 3 weeks. he'll be 2 and i think he's responsible for most of my new grey hair that have popped up since rob has been gone. the problem with 2 year olds is that they get away with a lot, b/c they're so damn cute. i caught him crayoning on the walls yesterday and i was laughing too hard to be mad. ??? it was my own fault for dozing off during 'aladdin' while crayons were available to him. these kids really make life interesting...and profitable for my hair stylist. i plan on making an appt for the day after rob gets back.

crappy day or crappy mood...

2006-06-10T22:20:00.000-04:00

i'm not sure which.

i know i'm highly emotional right now, and usually that comes across by being highly pissy with everyone. mostly my kids i'm ashamed to say. but it's starting to come across more and more.

things that have bugged me in the past 24 hours:

that smokers hang out right outside entrances/exits of buildings. can you step aside so some of us can CONTINUE breathing fresh air??? they're everywhere...walmart, the grocery store, the damn LIBRARY...hell, a grandpa was sitting in the pickup lane at my daughter's school SMOKING a cigarette on school property. i really hope the dumbass didn't litter too after he was done consuming his carcinogens. and i can't forget the lady who smoked a quick one in the supermarket bathroom and we were the next people to use it. you don't realize how strong and disgusting cigarette smoke is until you're pregnant. this is the SAME lady we saw finishing a cigarette outside the store about 7 minutes before.
that after spending almost $80 at subway for a sandwich platter and a wrap platter (and our dinner), i can't get a little assistance taking these big damn platters to my car. they see i'm pregnant with 2 annoying kids, yet they set the platters on the counter and say thank you and then walk away. how much would i have to spend to get some goddamn customer service?!?!? at least ASK if i need help. i probably would have refused, but at least ASK.
the kooky family at subway in front of me. a mom, dad and a 17-ish year old son. the line was ridiculously long (as always, arg) and the mom was standing next to me. suddenly she loses her balance, SMACKS ME IN MY UTERUS as she's trying to stop from falling, and ends up on her ass in front of me. i guess she just was stupid and fell down? whatever, but she didn't even realize she hit me (guess she thought it was the pop cooler behind me?!? you know how warm and squishy those are.) and therefore i got no apology from her. i almost started crying right there in subway b/c i was just so upset. but did i have the balls to say, 'hey, you hit me in the stomach, where's my apology?' i just took it. so i guess if you WANT an apology these days you have to ASK for it. is that just CRAP??? am i alone in thinking this? arg.
i'm taking everything PERSONALLY. on a parenting board that i've been a part of for almost 5 years, i'm seeing little comments directed at me. maybe it's time to step back from the boards before i say too much back...b/c honestly, they're just DIRECTED. i have a feeling it's all in my pissy little head. and that feeling makes me want to cry b/c then it's just proof that i'm loony. and stressed. did i say i'm stressed? i am.
the rest of my bitching pretty much just concerns people who are overly concerned about themselves and people who are in my way. there's a lot of people in both category...most of them are everyone at walmart.

and the worst part? i don't even have a husband to complain to. waaaaah. he's still gone. when we got home from the tummy smacking at subway, i had 2 messages on voice mail. i prepared myself, expecting to hear a message from rob saying that he'll be home on monday or something, that he failed the course. no, it was just subway telling me my fucking platters were done. i don't know how the hell i would have survived an 18 month deployment with rob gone.

but the bright spot in this day is that after worrying so much after the uterus-smacking, baby girl is busy rearranging herself. so she must be ok. and i have one more donut to finish off and maybe i'll be a little more ok.

did you miss me?

2006-06-08T22:24:00.000-04:00

probably not.

oh well. i'm going to tell you all about what i've been doing since my last entry.

gardening:
i've been spending quite a bit of time outside, which surprises even myself. i moved our tomato patch to the other side of our yard (not an easy task, do you know how damn many rocks there are in connecticut?!?) and got those in the ground. i put a fancy planting around a utility pole that was in our yard (emphasis on WAS...2 weeks after finishing the planting, the city came & removed the damn pole...now i just have a circle in my yard...and the damn seeds aren't even growing into daisies like they were supposed to. arg).
i've been working on planting things around the house, to hide our foundation. it wasn't too long ago that i didn't even know that was the main purpose of putting plants around a house. i really thought it was a personal preference, either people wanted shit around their house or they preferred to see the concrete. now that i know BETTER, i've decided to plant some shit around our house. i'm pretty much planting whatever our elderly neighbor brings over. probably not a good idea since she spends a lot of her spring cutting back and pruning these plants. however, these plants are FREE. do you know how much plants cost these days?!?!? not cheap, my friend. even at walmart, they're not cheap. so now i have some mums, some lilly of the valley, some iris, and some kind of bush thing with yellow & green leaves (not a hosta, i know what those look like) taking root in the crappy rocky dirt around our house. good thing i have a big damn bag of mulch...it's not a 'planting' in my book til you can smell the cedar mulch.

growing a baby:
baby girl #2 is doing just fine so far. she's getting kind of lazy though, she usually doesn't wake up in the mornings til after i've eaten breakfast and she prefers long naps that tend to worry me. but usually i'm too busy dealing with the house or the kids to stop and think about the last time i felt movement from her. bedtime is still her favorite time to get active (of course).
at the ultrasound at the end of may, she was measuring just under 28 weeks (i was 26 weeks at the time) and was estimated at 2 lbs, 6 oz. she looks a lot like cade in the u/s pictures and is 100% girl. whew, so now i can pass along cade's baby stuff to some other deserving little boys. i wish i could keep it all though. going through reese's baby clothes in preparation for this baby, i remembered so much about every little outfit...even the ones where she had those 'up the back poop explosions'. sigh. but i'd rather see the clothes go to someone i know than end up being pawed through at goodwill. and yes, i am a control freak!
still no names yet for this baby. reese came up with the following names though, in case we needed some help. she added: vanilla, expert, kevin, and duchess. i hope rob & i can come up with something a bit more mainstream...if we end up with a vanilla peters, you'll know who dreamed it up.

killing the car:
rob's acura has bitten the dust. only for a short period though. why is it that i cannot keep a car's battery alive for more than 4 months? when rob was gone for his 6 month deployment, my task was to start up his jetta every so often. i would have driven it but sarah doesn't do stick. (ha ha.) by the time rob got back, the battery was dead and it had to be towed to the dealership to be recoded & etc. i don't remember how much it cost, but it was more expensive than learning how to drive stick shift would have been.
i had been taking rob's acura out every week, usually driving it down to the mall b/c it's so fun on the interstate. last time we drove it, one of the kids didn't shut the back door tightly enough to cancel the interior dome light. and i didn't double check on the kids. i wondered why the automatic lock on the key fob wouldn't lock the damn car...turned out the battery was already dead by then. oops. and the doors were locked and so now i can't even UNLOCK the back door to relock it and shut the door more firmly.
so this means the acura will have to be towed a further distance than the jetta was in order to make a trip to the dealer. and i believe this car has more crap to it than the jetta did, so i'm sure it will be expensive. arg.
rob handled it well when i told him over the phone. i had turned into a blubbering mess, so frustrated at myself for not double checking the doors and not being able to take care of his car while he was gone (and this was an automatic, i thought taking care of the acura would be FUN...not just starting up the car in the driveway for 10 minutes once a week). but no, i failed on this task. sigh.
but at least the kids and cat and dog are still alive! whew.

computer issues:
do not ever put norton 'goback' on your computer. it was part of a norton package i purchased and it downloaded itself with an internal error which proved to be FATAL for my hard drive. arg. i was sans internet for 10 days. do you know how hard it is to go w/o internet COLD TURKEY???? but i learned a lot of things.

always make system backup disks. rob is going to teach me this when he returns. he doesn't know it yet, but he is.
the techs at gateway are AWESOME. i love them. i wish i could keep one around the house with me at all times.
i spend way too much time on the computer. i got a lot of gardening & reading done when my computer died. i stopped drinking general foods international 'coffee' and tried tea instead (not too bad). i drank more water. i drank less pop. i snacked less. i ate meals with the kids. think i'm a little addicted? :/

it's been sooooooo long!

2006-04-30T09:07:00.000-04:00

it's almost been 2 months since my last post. but not quite, i got in right under the wire, so i don't feel too bad...it's not officially 2 months til tomorrow. whew!

hmmmm...some updates:

1. baby #3 is growing right along. i had an ultrasound a month ago and everything was measuring perfectly and the tech thinks it's a girl. the baby was wiggling its legs too much to be sure. at my ob appt a few days ago, the midwife ordered another u/s in a month to check growth and to get a due date narrowed down (right now it's pretty much the latter 1/2 of august). so hopefully i can get a 100% on the gender. it wasn't until after the first u/s tech said, 'but i wouldn't go out & buy anything yet' that i started 2nd guessing my own mommy intuition. i still really think girl though.

2. cade and reese are doing great. reese is getting mouthy and i think she's venturing into stretching the truth here & there, i can't believe her 4th birthday is about 2 months away! cade is doing good too, he's finally getting taller. he's still chubby and cuddly but i don't have to roll up his 18-24 month pants anymore. he'll be 2 in july, hard to believe 2 years have gone by that quickly. i still see him as the baby, i think b/c he's so cuddly. he's been talking a lot. i've been trying to write down all the words i hear him using and so far i have 17, but i think there's about 5 or 6 i'm forgetting. i think his favorite word is 'money'. is that cute or what?

3. rob is still in holland. sigh. we're 1/2 way done, just about 9 weeks left til he comes back. and boy am i tired. i like to do things MY way, but this is just too much of sarah in charge. especially since now i'm having lawn mower problems. i wish i was the kind of person to beg for help from my neighbors :/ but like i said, i like doing things my way which is sometimes the hard way.

4. we spent almost 3 weeks in iowa and had a great time. the kids didn't sleep much, but they got to play outside every day and we visited the zoo, some buffalo, lots of relatives, and the build a bear workshop. pretty memorable vacation :) it's going to be a while before we go back to iowa. traveling over christmas would mean traveling with a 3 month old and i'm not sure i'm up to it. plus with the friction btwn my mom and her family last christmas, i'm not sure she's interested in going yet...no guilty parties have stepped forward with apologies yet. so maybe grandma & grandpa will come out here for christmas. who knows.

5. rob will be attending prospective executive officer training in september. which means that by june or july we'll know where he's going to be going for sea duty for the next 2 years. eeek. i'm so nervous about this already. i wouldn't mind staying here, now that reese is starting to get into the school system. i wouldn't mind moving, although it would mean selling a house and looking for a new house with 3 kids, a cat, and a dog...and with limited help from rob since he'll have his own training to do. anywhere we move would be long distance, the only exception would be norfolk VA...that's just down the coast. however, it would be a complete household move. :/

so anyway, that's what's been going on the last 2 months. i feel like i only come here to update what's been happening. not exactly what a blog is for, but feel lucky it wasn't a full 2 months since my last entry. waiting that extra day would have been tough for you, i'm sure :)

where the hell is spring?

2006-03-01T22:12:00.000-05:00

ok, i surrender. here's my little white flag. winter you win, now let spring warm us up a bit.

i'm freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezing. this last week has been a long cold one and i don't think it's going to end soon. we're supposed to get SNOW on thursday afternoon. where the hell was all this snow during christmas and january? now it's march...there are no more winter clothes left for sale in stores, i hope that my kids can last another 2 months in their long sleeved shirts because it seems we'll be wearing them into threads. right now i have on a long sleeved tshirt, a sweatshirt over that, sweatpants, thick socks, and slippers. and my hands are freezing because they are exposed to the freezing air. my nose is cold too. and you know, my eyes are a little chilly.

it's just such a slap in the face to go to target and see all these tshirts and capris and little skirts for my daughter and if i should buy them, have them sit in her closet for 2 months. and with the CT shoppers, you KNOW all the cute spring wear will be gone within 2 weeks. hoarders! leave some for us realists! and since i am the most real of the realists, i bought myself a new pair of sweatpants and a bag of potato chips. gotta keep my furnace going!

we're on day 13 of rob being gone. he'll be gone 127 more days. which is a long time to be stuck with 2 kids. wish we had a bigger house and a nanny. but if i try to look at teh positive side, i'll still be pregnant when rob gets back. hooray. it will be early july by then and boy will i be a bitch. being alone with 2 children while he's off tooting around europe??? the man better brush up on how to suck up. we're talking massage gift certificates here. pedicures. chocolate...the GOOD stuff. him volunteering to sleep on the futon if his snoring or bodily functions annoy me. can you see where i'm going here? if i'm THIS bitchy now, just wait 127 more days.

to the airport we go

2006-02-16T08:09:00.000-05:00

we're taking rob to the airport this morning. he is headed back to holland (the netherlands? with all the olympic coverage, i have no clue really what to call this little country...). he is due to return july6th, the day before our 5th anniversary.

and i have to say, and i hope it's just my pregnant hormones talking here, i'm kind of glad he's going. i can put away the coffee maker (ugh, i hate coffee), stop buying egg whites (who the hell just eats egg whites? i need a little yolk in my egg), and know that when i go to bed at night there will be no more dirty dishes on the table or on the sink waiting to greet me in the am.

on the other hand there will be no one to prewarm the bed for me (the dog must follow me EVERYWHERE), no one to guilt into checking out creepy noises for me (although i hope the dog would be brave enough to at least bark threateningly), and no one to grab subway on the way home from work. sigh. how will i survive??? funny how the dog can replace a man so easily though.

snow snow and a bit more snow

2006-02-12T10:57:00.000-05:00

even though it's a snowy day and i'm worried about losing power because of the wind gusts, i am in heaven. i'm munching on rold gold cheddar pretzels. they are just too freakin' good. i thought i was buying honey mustard ones but these are much better! too bad reese loves them too! she keeps snitching from my dish.

i have a friend, marlayna, who lives in southern california. she rarely gets to see snow and she's always tickled to see snow pics...let's see if i can indulge her today.

this is the view out our sidedoor. i shoveled the steps and made an area where the dog can do his business. heaven forbid he get his feet too snowy. although it's so windy today that he came back in as a white dog last time.

this is a shot of the blowing snow. you can see the reflection of our dining area lights in the window. :)

more snow in the air.

and christ, what a frustrating process it is to put pictures in this damn thing. with the kids refusing to budge more than 2" away from me and the dog farting, it's a miracle they're up. i had 2 more i wanted to post but they're just not going to cooperate. arg. i need more space to see what i'm doing than just a narrow little frame to work in.

oh well. you get the idea, it's pretty damn snowy outside! rob is wondering if the base will be closed tomorrow (it's not supposed to stop snowing until close to dark tonight, not sure about winds). i don't know if i can handle him at home for 3 days in a row. if we're all going to be housebound together than i need to make a hideout room.

reese's day at school

2006-02-10T17:00:00.000-05:00

reese went to school today and i have mixed feelings about her day.

reese had a potty accident at school. i think i'm more upset about it than she is and if i'd quit bugging her for details, she' probably forget it ever happened. her 'version' of it is that she just didn't make it to the bathroom in time. she does do that, put off going to the bathroom until the last possible minute and then if she has problems with the buttons/zippers on her pants, it becomes an emergency situation. i imagine that that is what happened today. it's her only potty accident at school and so that's 5 months accident free. we've rarely had accidents at home (in fact she'll be pottytrained for 1 year next month!). i guess the part i'm bummed about was that she was *maybe* embarrassed at school.

and i know i'm making too much of it. the more attention i focus on it then she'll think it was a horrible event. but at least she's not in diapers. i know of 2 kids in her class that are still in diapers! (pullups, whatever...)

anyway, they baked valentine's cookies at school and they put reese's loosely-tied-in-a-plastic-bag potty clothes in the same part of her backpack with the napkin-wrapped cookie. ugh. and of course that's the first thing reese started talking about when she got home. no way was i going to let her eat that thing. so i had to do some fast talking and give her some hot cocoa and teddy grahams. and the first thing she told rob when he walked in the door tonight: 'mommy threw away my cookie' (add fake tears here).

the reason reese goes to school is for speech help. it's a playgroup format, based on a preschool format (they do circle time, etc) with a little bit of work on speech sounds. i see a huge improvement in her, but i'm not sure how much of this is her school and how much is just reese growing up. technically she is involved in special ed, she has an IEP.

now in her back pack i found a handout about the local title 1 preschool. reese would be the correct age to go this coming school year (2006-07) and it's 5 days a week, morning or afternoon. i assume that since it's through the school district there is no cost. it wasn't mentioned on the handout. what i do want to know is the kind of kids that will be attending. if these kids are severely handicapped, i'm not sure if it would be appropriate for reese. (do i sound like a snob? probably. :/)

i guess i'm just worried about reese being further behind than i'm aware of and this is the school district's way of telling me to get her more help. i'm paranoid, i guess. i need to talk to her teachers about if there will be formal testing done when she's is done with the group she's in now. and if her entrance to the title 1 preschool is approved/denied based on those tests.

my feelings aren't really a direct result of anything the school did today. hell, for all i know it could be hormonally based.

speaking of, we've been thinking of names. already, i have a feeling it's a boy. one of our names when i was pg with cade was sean robert. i still really like that name. rob is kind of so-so on it. the reason i think it's a boy is b/c no girl names appeal to me at all. it was that way with cade, i just couldn't settle on a girl name. although i will be looking. i already have our baby name book off the bookcase. :)

what i do on friday nights...

2006-02-09T08:18:00.000-05:00

greetings :)

tracy, you're awesome. i love that you post comments and let me know that *someone* is peeking at my ramblings. since i'm sure rob will be a dud on valentine's day, will you be my valentine??? and i want you to know that the next time i'm at target i'm going to splurge and try some of the olay regenerist that you raved about. who knows, maybe after i use it i'll get mistaken for....hm....um anyone but me would be fine.

anyway, on to the rambling...

my newest friday night addiction is thanks to the travel channel. they run this show from great britian called 'most haunted.' this team of folks goes into some of the most reportedly haunted places in england. the part that i find most amazing is that some of these structures are intact although they were built in the 1200s. that just blows my mind, being an american and all. over here if anything is over 200 years old it should be locked up behind glass and velvet ropes. i'm not sure how things survive for a thousand years over there. they don't have tornados, earthquakes, huge brush fires, hurricanes, or really any natural disasters. i think their main enemy is mold b/c it's so damp over there. but just to see these that these places are still inhabited is just amazing to me.

anyway, the team consists of a blonde (sometimes redheaded) female host, a medium (derek, he's the shit, let me tell you!), and phil, the parapsychologist that does all the 'baseline readings.' (i love that phrase, 'baseline readings.' say it and you sound knowledgeable about anything.) what i love is that derek can tell so many things about the previous residents of a place and he's not told anything about the location; according to the show, he's not even told WHERE they're going. not sure if they blindfold him and throw him in the trunk or what. but he can tell you with about 80% accuracy about the history of a location.

then it's fun just watching the blonde host get scared out of her wits. they give her a camera and send her somewhere in the house that it's pitch black and let her mind work overtime. i admit, i would be the same exact way. no way could they get me to go in some of these places with the lights off.

i think the creepiest place they went was an underground prison. i was just flabbergasted that such a place had even existed. it wasn't a prison exactly, more like a holding place before prisoners were sent off to be tried or punished i think. after the place was no longer used for that purpose, the town built a street over it and put up some swanky buildings and now it looks totally respectable. amazing how they just build stuff on top of stuff over there. i wish they had shown more from that location, they had some 'evil' spirits chasing the team around and derek would not let the ladies be by themselves. but it is an hour show, the spooks can only have so much time before the commercials gotta pay the bills. it's a cool show for any one who likes to get a bit scared, and i'm afraid i'm looking forward to it a bit too much. if for some reason it wasn't on, i would be disappointed. then i'd have to actually do something productive instead. (like watch 'dallas' reruns...but that's a future post.)

so that is what my tivo is recording on friday nights. that and 'ghost whisperer.' this is one of the few dramas that i enjoy on tv anymore. (oh, and i watched some of 'grey's anatomy' last sunday, i might just have to add that to my tivo to do list!)

cade was up at 6ish this morning, whining/crying in his crib. he's put himself back to sleep before so i just dozed through it. then reese came in at 6:45 b/c he had woken her up and i realize he's still crying and i was SLEEPING THROUGH IT. what kind of a mommy am i? eek. but the crying obviously didn't get louder, and it was more whine than cry. and he was happy to see me when i went into his room, so i guess he's not holding a grudge. but the good news is a guaranteed nap time today. yay! i really hope reese cooperates with operation shuteye.

what to do today...sleep. survive. gestate baby. make sure the dog doesn't yak on the carpet (the linoleum is ok though, it's easier to clean). entertain the kids.

i guess that's it. better get started ;)

it's hump day!

2006-02-08T08:15:00.000-05:00

geez, it's been a while. in case there is anyone out there checking in, sorry!

my last post in here was just before rob returned from holland. how ironic that he'll be leaving in a week or so to go back there for 4 months. please pray for my sanity and health while he's gone. my mind has started worrying about 'what happens if i fall in the shower?', 'what if i fall down the stairs and break my neck?', 'what if i just don't wake up?' and in all these scenarios i worry about when my children would be found, starving and penned. i image reese would be desperately trying to figure out the tivo remote, refusing to use the toilet (since i'm not there to stand in the doorway). she might have tried to get cade out of the crib but i think he'd still be stuck in there for who knows how long. i close the gate at the top of the stairs every night so reese can't wander downstairs as i snooze, but i realize more and more that maybe this is a fire hazard...or could be dangerous in an emergency. can you tell i have way too much time to ponder such things?!?!

maybe my mind wanders this way b/c this pregnancy is progressing well....pregnant women are quite good at visualizing the worst of any situation. i rented a doppler and found the heartbeat and that was a huge relief. if i had any smarts i'd try and link a sound file. wonder if i have that much time to devote to something that wouldn't work anyway. when i let rob listen, he was amazed. i keep forgetting that he never really got to all the short doc appts when i was pregnant with reese or cade, so listening to the heartbeat is amazing technology for him. i'm not showing that much, but my uterus seems to be pushing up all my belly fat so i'm just 2x as chubby. i did buy some maternity tshirts at old navy and i seem to be looking pg in them already. keep in mind i'm only 11 weeks on thursday! i have a feeling that my butt is eating up all the extra room in the shirts. i guess i'll need a buttectomy asap. if only. why doesn't medical science work on the breakthroughs that really matter???

speaking of medical science, i still am not in the care of an ob/gyn. i still haven't even gone on base for the referral yet. since i've already ordered teh doppler, i'm on prenatal vitamins, and doing daily weigh-ins, i'm thinking i'm pretty qualified to have this baby myself. maybe i'll opt for homebirth and tell rob to get out, i can do this myself. heh heh. (and yes, he BETTER be home by the end of august...he's scheduled to be home july 6th-ish.) anyway, i need to review the list of ob/gyns that my insurance will accept. i don't want to use the docs that delievered reese...i ended up with an episiotomy and i hated waiting for 45 minutes for a 5 minute appt. with cade, we started off with a practice in new hampshire and i loved them. it was mostly female midwives & docs and they were so nice, making EYE CONTACT with me, wondering how i was really doing (emotionally too). then we moved to connecticut and the local practice was ok, but even though i went into labor on a friday (the day the midwife was rumored to be on duty), a doc still delivered me. ??? i don't think they really let her catch any babies, probably b/c of insurance. :/

it would be nice to go to someone local, just b/c of childcare issues (hey, why don't ob/gyns offer childcare during appts??? if a grocery store can do it, why not the doctor's office???). i barely remember the doc who delivered cade, and i know i couldn't spell his name. he was the only doctor that i hadn't gotten around to seeing in an appt and his name honestly looked like 'frankenstein' on the birth paperwork. however, i just had a tiny tear with cade and the birth went smoothly. the cocky part of me thinks that's b/c i'm just a healthy person with wide hips...the docs really don't do much except clamp the cord and make sure the baby doesn't hit the floor.

anyway, enough about baby talk.

we're headed for groceries today. you can bet that miniature peanut butter cups are going to be in my cart. i might just hide them til rob leaves next week.

day 8 of the hostage crisis...

2006-01-19T09:50:00.000-05:00

no wonder i have so many grey hairs. i've never spent this much time with both kids!

rob has been gone for 8 days and last night at bedtime they just about made me cry. cade was screaming at me from the crib (screaming as in nasty, mean-sounding, demanding screams). reese refused to stay in bed. she had her nightlight taken away and almost lost her 2 stuffed animals that she chose for bed. she had 3 drinks, 2 potty trips, 4 songs, and almost a spanking. when i saw her come out of the bedroom that 6th time i almost broke down. i just needed some mommy-time dammit!

she finally crashed and it was only 8:40. good thing i started the process early. i told her that she was taking a nap today b/c i was tired of the attitude. i don't know if that will change her behavior but at least i'll get a break in the middle of the day.

i haven't heard from rob since sunday, but he's been a busy boy. we got a package delivered from nhl.com...i opened it up and there was ANOTHER damn coat that rob bought. i think this is the 5th one since september. this one is for the philly team...not sure what they are, they flyers? he buys these coats and then he doesn't wear them. he bought a satin raiders one off ebay that is older (maybe antique in the sports world?) but does he wear it? no. the man doesn't realize that we DON'T HAVE THE ROOM to just buy crap that we don't use. if he wanted to invest less $$$, then we could afford a bigger home to store his crap. but in the meantime, i wish he'd STOP BUYING CRAP. arg.

i'm thinking about emailing him this: "hi honey! the mailman tried to deliver a package for you from NHL.com but i refused to accept it. i knew that since you were out of the country, there was no way he could have purchased anything online and it must have been a mistake." it'd be a lie. i opened it 3 minutes after the mailman brought it up :)

oh and he's also been busy at the atm. the day before he left he withdrew $120 for travel money. then at the aiport, he withdrew another $100 at a foreign atm (ack! more $$$ down the drain). he'll be in the netherlands for 10 days, what does he need $220 for??? he better stay away from those amsterdam prostitutes! just kidding. although he is a sailor, i hope he values his marriage vows more than that.

the good news is that he should be home on tuesday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

thank god. i don't know how i'm going to handle this for 4 months. my parents invited me out to iowa and i'm thinking about taking them up on it. my dad would fly out, help me close up the house & pack, and then we'd all drive (the cat & dog, too...my parents invited them too! wow!) out to iowa, then my dad would help me drive back after the visit, and then fly home. sounds like a good plan, and i think we could drive it in one stretch, we wouldn't have to do a hotel room one night like we did when we went to iowa for xmas.

if i did go out to iowa, it would be for most of april. b/c of spring break & good friday, reese has almost a month off of school. but i'd be worried that i'd feel way too trapped in iowa. i could always visit family when i'm bored though. however, my parents only have dialup. is it sad that that is the downside to this plan? and the fact that my parents house is NOT childproofed. most of it is ok, but they have this wine rack in the living room, full of bottles that i would hate to see cade try to climb. oh, and the fact that they only have satellite on the downstairs tv. the other tvs are antenna and pbs is the only kid-friendly station. i'd have to bring lots of vhs videos with me :) or else put them out in the van to watch a dvd while i take a shower.

but it would break up the time and the kids would have fun. we'd just be sitting around here anyway. maybe i'll check it out. the only thing i'd worry about would be prenatal care. during april i'll be 19-22 weeks...nothing much happens there except for the big ultrasound. my worry would be if this turns into a high risk pregnancy for some unknown reason.

anyway, plenty of time to research and plan. heck, i haven't even scheduled my first doc appt at the ob/gyn yet. oops! :)

it has been a while...

2006-01-16T08:07:00.000-05:00

time is passing slowly at the bobeara household, yet i still manage to avoid updating the blog. am i good or what?

so here you go, here's the goods...

rob is no longer going to iraq. the detailer worked his mojo and now rob will be in the netherlands for 4 months. this is definitely an improvement...i'll take dutch people in a war free zone any day! rob will be a student in the dutch perisher course. all i can equate it to is like a foreign exchange student program for submariners. he goes over there and is immersed in how they run their subs. they use diesel subs so it should be quite interesting for rob. in fact, he's over there now doing the introduction to the course. i hope to be picking him up at the airport in 8 days. then he'll leave again ON MY BIRTHDAY (! ack! what horrible timing the navy has!) to start the actual course. gradution is set for july 5th so he should be home by our anniversary (july 7th). all i can say is that i better get a damn good anniversary present!

and speaking of horrible timing...we've recently found out we'll be adding another bobeara to our family! this was very unexpected, we were planning on trying for #3 in a year or 18 months. i'm still enjoying sleeping through the night so the knowledge that i'll have to give that up in the next 9 months just hurts. really hurts. and another pain...i still recall how much it hurt to be in labor with cade. so i guess i didn't wait long enough between babies. usually women have forgotten all that pain by the next time they get pregnant.

baby #3 is due 8/31/06 but with my cervix of steel i would expect him on about 9/4/06. i refuse to even try to hold out til my dad's birthday (9/9). i have been thinking about the positives with this baby. this baby will be born when cade is 25-26 months old, which is the same age span btwn reese and cade. so we'll have had a baby every 25 months. and we'll have had a baby in '02, '04, and '06. if this child is born in august, we'll have birthdays in june, july and august. and this will be the last child. so all our kids will be young together and rob & i can move on to being married with children...instead of being married and getting pregnant all the time. (i sound like i hate children. i really don't. what i hate is being pregnant. i hate the nausea i'm going through, the fact that i'm going to have to squeeze into maternity clothes...i'm just going to hate being all uncomfortable and hormonal and short-tempered...especially during july and august.) the best part: rob is getting snipped for his birthday. is that sweet revenge for carrying 3 of his big-headed kids or what?

on another front, we're getting settled in with our new dog. after almost 2 weeks of indecision we've come up with napoleon. he's a small dog but he tries to make up for it with his bark. we call him 'poley'. it was either that or nappy. he's still trying to make friends with the cat, and if he didn't chase the damn cat all over the place he'd make more progress. he's a lab mix but he's only about 30 lbs. i don't know what he's mixed with...i'd think terrier but he's completely black. i would think that some brown from the terrier would have come through. he does have short hair like a rat terrier though. no house training accidents yet, just some vomiting here and there. he wants to play too soon after eating and just urps on the floor. but even that is not so common as the first few days he was here. he's good with the kids, except he gets excited and uses them as footstools to jump off of. he's pushed cade down 3 or 4 times. cade's just going to have to either fight back or turn his back.

here he is 'eating' breakfast with the kids this morning. this was after he had gotten the rest of cade's mini-bagel.

as i type poley is trying to share the kitchen chair with me. he has his head on my leg and since cade is on my other leg, the dog is leaning on my back. he keeps on collapsing b/c he's falling asleep but he won't just go sleep on the floor. in fact, the dog has just succeeded in pushing cade off my lap. cade is not happy about the turn of events. since i suppose cade is 'of my loins' i should give him priority to my lap.

anyway, that's the update around here for now. it's taken a while to get it, but i'm sure it was worth the wait!

woohoo! i got tagged!

2006-01-06T16:04:00.000-05:00

funny thing to be excited about, but hey, i'm a stay-at-home mom. the next exciting thing on my list is when the mail comes.

Four jobs you've had in your life:
1. grocery store clerk/cashier
2. teacher at sylvan learning center
3. test center administrator at what used to be a sylvan testing center (they give GRE, GMAT, etc.)
4. worked retail at a younkers in omaha. like the midwest version of dillards/macy's.

Four movies you would watch over and over:
1. Grease
2. Sound of Music
3. Titanic
4. Cousins

Four places you have lived:
1. Iowa
2. Nebraska
3. Connecticut
4. New Hampshire

Four TV shows you love to watch:
1. Amazing Race
2. American Idol
3. Commander-in-Chief
4. Ghost Hunters (on scifi)

Four places you have been on vacation:
1. Mexico City
2. Cedar Point in Sandusky OH
3. Tahiti
4. Sweden

Four websites you visit daily:
1. my email (yahoo)
2. sheknows message boards
3. local newspaper online
4. mis tit's blog...and other assorted blogs too :)

Four of your favorite foods:
1. mexican (does taco bell qualify as mexican? hope so!)
2. ice cream
3. potatoes
4. grilled salmon

Four places you would rather be right now:
1. in bed
2. somewhere sunny & warm where fat people aren't stared at on the beach
3. anywhere with child care
4. a closet where i can lock myself in with my laptop

surprise!

2005-12-29T23:23:00.000-05:00

one last post for 2005...

rob has received some news from his detailer. he won't be going to iraq! yay! rob doesn't have official orders yet though, and he won't fully relax until he does have them in hand. (although even then, orders can be 'modified' without much notice.) according to the detailer, rob will be attending XO training in either april or july. the guy mentioned january, but i don't think they can get things together THAT fast. (january's and july's will be held in pearl harbor, april's session will be held locally in CT.)

the person who is replacing him is from the local base. rob's going to be in contact with him over the next few days. rob feels horribly guilty about this. i do too. i hope this guy's family can handle it.

so anyway, we've returned from iowa. we all survived and enjoyed a merry xmas. wasn't as merry as it should have been. a practical 'joke' on my mom at our xmas eve family gathering was more hurtful than funny. actually, considering it was all family attending, it was pretty damn discouraging. i still can't believe someone did that to her. it really makes me consider not coming back for next year. we've invited my parents to CT for next xmas...it would be nice to have them here and not have to travel. our poor xmas tree has never actually had presents under it. poor guy.

we had a decent xmas. spent too much $$$ and received a lot of stuff that i have no clue where to put it all. the kids have just way too much stuff. we could have gotten rid of all of their toys and just let them play with their xmas presents and they would be completely oblivious that they were even missing anything. i think i'll be cleaning out the toys soon. most of them are on our main floor, since that's where the kids spend the most time. i hate having toys in their rooms b/c then i find them playing with toys when they should be sleeping.

here's the big news: i finally got invited over to my brother's new house. they've been in it just over 8 months and it took 2 visits to iowa before i received an invitation. pooh on them. :/ and actually, if rob hadn't fixed their computer for them, i doubt we would have been invited.

it's a cute house...cozy. but you could really tell they're not very clean people. ugh. messy is ok. clean is not. and sharon (sis in law) had 5 candles burning and a febreeze scentstories thing going in her 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom house...maybe 1200 feet total. i'm wondering if she just really likes a smelly house or if she's just trying to cover up some totally horrible stench.

we did get to visit their dog, who has become an angel since i last saw him. his name is bear (he's a black lab mix, but looks 100% lab) and he visited about 6 months with my parents out in the country. sharon's sister was unable to care for him due to some reason and mom & dad had 4 acres going to waste...he was tied up with no kids around and not a lot of attention given to him. i never went near him when we visited b/c he was so wild i knew he would just knock the kids over if we got too close.

but now he's an inside dog with chris & sharon (in their tiny, candleful house) and he is the best behaved dog i've ever seen. he was so good around the kids. i can only hope that our dog-to-be is 1/2 that good.

time to go to sleep. how did i stay up this long?