"But It Hurts When I Think, When I Let It Sink In. Watching You Sleep, It Hurts A Lot"

Ok, so it wasn't 4 in the morning...
it was 2 in the morning. close enough.

The screaming began. Piercing the dead of night air like a smoke alarm.
I shot out of bed and was by her side before I even had feeling in my legs yet (thanks, baby)

"Mommy, my ear hurts!"

If I had a nickel for every time I've heard that sentence, I would be so flippin' loaded I'd just buy all my kids new ears.

Ears that do not get infected.

Reese at 3 months (2005) double ear infection, pneumonia, and RSV

My poor children.
Half the time they have no symptom other than ThE CrAzIEs.
Because CrAzInESs IS a symptom.
At least in our house it is.

CrAzY irritable all weekend + kid awake at 2am = trip to doctor.

That's all it takes for us. No fever, no runny nose, no waxy ear, no lacking appetite or cold symptoms that would indicate an ear infection. Around here an ear infection means one psychotic, irrational, screaming, grouchy kid that is impossible to please.

So feeling like one of those Munchhausen mothers, I lugged 1 Cinderella and 1 Tinkerbell to the pediatrician this morning, only to have them look at my (currently angelic, well behaved and perfectly polite) children in their "darling little dresses" and respond to my claims that there "must be SOMEthing wrong with her" with skepticism and look at me like I actually am one of those Munchhausen/hypochondriac mothers.

Until the ear in question was examined.

And what's behind the red curtain? A red ear.
Infected. Very infected. AGAIN.

Lucky for us, (well...lucky for YOU actually if your kid plays with my kid) ear infections are not contagious, especially with none of the accompanying symptoms of a typical ear infection (runny nose, cough, fever) present. Yay for that.

And Yay for medicine that will hopefully do it's exorcist thing and bring back my happy little girl in the next 24 hours, so I can get some sleep.
And because you all see recent photos of Reese on a daily basis, why not throw in some baby pics for old time's sake? This was Reese at 4 months (2005), after throwing up her antibiotics (a blessing, since it turns out she was horribly allergic to it) from her second ear infection.

"I'm Just So Fresh and Clean..."

On Christmas morning, once presents had been opened, and breakfast had been eaten, I rushed around the house in a hurry to finish getting the last minute items packed for our trip.

I opened the dryer to retrieve the finally-dry laundry waiting to be stuffed into a bag and discovered a mysterious pink waxy substance smeared on everything.
Once you become a mother, something happens in the stain-identification dept, and you go from guessing games and assumptions to going right in for the sniff. (ex: are these socks clean? sniff. No. they're not)

Sniff. Sniff.
Sparkly Bubble Gum Scented Lip gloss.
ALL OVER MY WHITES. I now have sparkly pink smeared, bubble gum scented underwear.

How did this happen?
We all know how it happened.
Reese, owner, lover, and leaver around the hous-er of the lipgloss is how it happened.

I was totally irritated that MY laundry had been violated, rather than this happening to hers. Besides, new socks and underwear are totally not as fun to replace.
I already LOATHE the chore of laundry, so my Christmas Day Suprise was less than humorous at the time, so to make myself feel better about my ruined clothes, I lectured both children that all lip gloss is to remain clear of the laundry baskets. (like they were even listening with new barbies AND replacement lip gloss in hand.) AND I add (because this is the SECOND TIME I have had a lip gloss in the laundry incident) that if I FIND any lip gloss in the laundry baskets, I will confiscate it for a week.
SO THERE.
Reese responds with an annoyed "mmmhmmm" and doesn't. even. CARE.
I become even MORE irritated with her, but it's Christmas so I decide to just let it go.
Fast forward to my 20 week ultrasound last week...

"Make-up" is a new discovery for my children and now that they know it exists, they are obsessed with it.
Lip gloss seemed like a happy compromise.

We started out with chapstick, but then Q ate it, and that's just nasty (it was flavored.)
We upgraded to lipgloss, because it rolls on and therefore cannot have bites taken out of it.

This is us in the waiting room at the OB's office.

This is us doing everything we can to keep the kids entertained for like 2 hours while we wait.
and wait and wait and wait.

This is Quincy as she drops the lip gloss through the holes in the basket into the pile of laundry.

What's with my kids' need to unite lipgloss with laundry?

Q whines over the "loss" and tries to figure out how to retreive the imprisoned lipgloss from it's white plastic cage.
Q whines some more and requests the help of Reese, who throws her an "I told you so/look how well behaved I'M being" rejection.
Aaron tells Meg to retrieve the lipgloss from the basket and give it back to now-screaming Quincy.

Meg reminds Aaron of the "new rule" and the Christmas morning lip gloss in laundry episode.

Aaron rolls his eyes, and says to "just give it to her" to keep her quiet because we're all going a little crazy after being cooped up in this tiny room, and it's just not worth it.

Meg informs Aaron that this is the laundry basket where the nurse puts the dirty sheets after she's given a pelvic exam. The white sheets in that basket have had naked lady parts on them.

Meg THEN describes some of da "ladies" she often sees in the waiting room at the OB's office, AND possible reasons THEY might be getting a pelvic exam (rash, growth, mysterious lady goo) just to provide Aaron with a better mental image of what he is not only asking Meg to reach her hand into, but what he wants to allow his daughter to rub all over her mouth.

Aaron opts to abandon lipgloss retreival request and takes the girls out in the hall for fruit snacks and a walk instead.

Good bye lip gloss. You will be replaced.
And my apologies to the women at LifeSpring that will soon find Grape Scented Sparkly lipgloss smeared all over your clean white laundry.

The After Christmas Party

This morning, Aaron and I pulled the kids up onto the bed with us for some extra snuggles (mostly because I was too tired after staying up waaaaay too late for a girls chick flick fest the night before, while Aaron had gone to dinner and bowling with his old team from Sam's).

Together we read, The After-Christmas Tree by Linda Wagner Tyler.

It's a cute story about a family that is sad that Christmas is over. They talk about how much fun they had during the season while they put away their decorations, and then think of a way to make the season of giving last just a little bit longer. They invite friends over for an "After Christmas Party" where they go ice skating and collect pine cones. Then they make bird feeders from the pine cones, and string popcorn and cranberries. Then they haul their dead Christmas tree outside and "redecorate" it with the bird feeders and popcorn garlands, and sprinkle nuts around the base of the tree. They go back inside for hot cocoa, and watch through the window as the "party" continues outside when the birds and squirrels come to enjoy the tree's second season of giving.

We decided to have an After Christmas party of our own today! We tried to go ice skating (horray for me, I am no longer on "pelvic rest"...at least for the time being so long as I "take it easy") but unfortunately, there was an ice hockey tournament going on at the rink! We were bummed, but we're going to reserve tickets and go a different weekend.

Instead, we decided to make an After-Christmas Tree out of the Dogwood outside our kitchen window.

Aaron and Q popped popcorn (and ate a little too) while Reese and I gathered pinecones from the backyard.

I'm sure every person in America has made these before, but just in case you haven't, all you do is roll the pinecone in peanut butter
(Quin did NOT like the feel of sticky peanut butter on her fingers, and REALLY did not like the taste of the pinecone she tried to eat.)
They did enjoy the part where you drop the sticky pinecone into a plastic cup that is 1/2 filled with bird seed and "shakey-shakey" the cup.They were sure to get bird seed ALL OVER the kitchen floor, to make sure their mother had plenty of opportunities to "just have fun and let the mess go" like she's trying really hard to do this year. (actually, Aaron made Reese Swivel Sweep (clickety) the floor when we were done, win-win.)
Aren't they cute? We only had tiny pine cones in the yard, so we made about 15 of these little "bird ornaments". Reese was pretty sad when we took down our tree, but LOVED the idea of giving an After-Christmas to the animals in our yard.
I even had a "pointless" plastic needle threaded for Q to "make" a popcorn strand with, but she was more interested in eating it.
Reese had a hard time time, at first, using a real needle and thread. She kept poking herself, and her thread kept getting tangled, but eventually got the hang of it and after that she was a popcorn-stringing machine and even came up with the idea to add a blueberry every 10 inches or so.

Camera-shy Aaron tied fishing line to the pine cones and when everyone is up from naps we are going to go decorate our very first After-Christmas Tree and come inside for hot cocoa while we enjoy the bird party in the yard. Our neighbors are quite the bird watchers and already have attracted families of cardinals, finches, woodpeckers, bluebirds, and orioles to our properties with their zillions of bird feeders, so hopefully, a few feathered friends will make their way over to our tree so we can watch them enjoy their "party".

We had a lot of fun doing this and are going to make it a January tradition.
Do something to have an After-Christmas Party of your own this week, and 'enjoy a second season of giving'.

"There's A Camera Rolling On Her Back, On Her Back..."

I plugged in the camera to upload new pics to the laptop.
Among the few pictures I intended to upload, I discovered these photos:










ok, clearly one of the children has been playing with my camera. But which child?

Ah Hah! The older child! I should have known. But when did she do this?

Clearly, when Daddy was talking on the phone, and not paying attention to what his children were up to.

I'm actually pretty impressed with her photography skillz. They're better than mine.

"Big Willy Style's All In It...Gettin' Jiggy Wit It!"

Preggo Meggo at 19 weeks

My Doctor actually said, "WHOA, that's one big penis!" when this image instantly came up on the ultrasound screen.
Then he printed the ultrasound pictures and showed them off to the nurses in the hallway, who also made exclamations over Baby Willy's Willie.

No doubt about it,
We are HAVING A BOY!
So for those of you who don't spend a lot of time looking at ultrasound pictures...you are basically looking at a butt print of our baby..like he's sitting on the photos. The legs are (clearly) spread apart to reveal his gender, and knees are bent to hide the feet and bottom half of the legs. The large black spot is baby's bladder.
Our little guy is proud of his junk. I guess he should be. My doctor said that this is probably the biggest penis he's ever seen on a fetus. I have another ultrasound in 2 weeks with the ultrasound tech. Apparently, she's been looking at ultrasounds for 30 years. Hopefully then, we'll have some good pics of other body parts to show off.
Poor baby. What a way to start your life. Pictures of your crotch all over the internet, and you're not even making money off it.

Waiting...
Guesses...

Reese: A Boy Baby
Aaron: A Girl
Meg: A Boy
Quincy: Daddy, Open dis 'lipslick'? Pwease? Open dis? (she couldn't care less, and doesn't have a clue what's going on, aside from the fact that she's been stuck in a tiny waiting room for TWO HOURS! Seriously, it was 6:30pm when I had my ultrasound tonight.)

I own a total of TWO baby boy outfits...think I have some shopping to do...

A Perfectly Imperfect Afternoon

Because sometimes, a cold, cloudy day is just right for eating lunch under a fort in the living room with your best friends.

On Being Prepared...

Last year, one of my resolutions was to have a 1 year supply of food storage for my family, updated 72 hour kits, and build up a three month supply to rotate. I spent months figuring out all the details, buying items in bulk, building up our food supply, canning many of the items myself, and then figuring out how to store it all!

Then we were struck by the bugs. Weevils, Pantry moths, gross gross gross. My 3 month supply and everything that was not canned or sealed in airtight containers went into the trash. What a waste. I cried. (remember this post?)
So this year, I am building my 3 month supply back up (it is lacking in several departments), and putting everything in airtight containers. In 2009, I will focus on USING and ROTATING the food I have stored. I also want to be prepared for an emergency in other ways, like building up a good stock of firewood, flashlights, have all of our important documents copied and stored properly, get sleeping bags, use my wheat grinder more often and get back to baking my own bread. (I used to bake all of our bread when we lived in Green Bay, but since we've moved here, I haven't because my old recipe doesn't turn out well here. Any suggestions? Email me your whole wheat recipes.) add more fruits, vegetables, diapers, and more paper products (more toilet paper, tampons, paper towels) to our storage, and have a more successful garden (dang the enormous bugs here...they attack everything I grow...at least we managed to get a decent squash and tomato crop last year).

We have a good start, thanks to last year's goals, but there are so many areas to improve. I'm going to attempt to focus on one area to improve each month.

My focus in January is Water Storage.


It is recommended that families store about 14 gallons of drinking water per person. With a baby on the way, I want to store more than that, because even though I plan to nurse again...in an emergency, we would need a great deal of water to mix formula for the baby.
A new 55 gallon water storage barrel costs about $80 on average. (plus the cost of shipping if you order online, and the cost of water to fill it!)
I purchased two 50 gallon barrels, through a friend, from a nearby bakery that once held corn syrup for the bakery. They are white, rather than blue, but other than that, and the fact that they were previously used, they are identical to the water storage barrels currently on the market. They've been washed out, so all I have to do is rinse and sanitize them with some bleach.
I purchased mine for $4 each, saving myself a grand total of... $152 woop!

The large water barrels would be for drinking water (and preparing food) in the event of an emergency.
But what if the water gets shut off in an emergency. Next to drinking water, my numero uno priority would be the ability to flush my toilet and wash my hands.
Sooo...that's where these come in. I've been saving (and collecting from friends) 2 liter bottles. I wash them out, and refill them with water and 4 drops of bleach per quart to purify the water and keep anything from growing in the bottles. We could drink the water, or use it to flush toilets, etc.
I have 12 more, waiting to be refilled. It is also good to have drinkable water stored in some smaller containers in case we had to evacuate our home. Once those 5o gallon drums are full, they will weigh over 400lbs each! The 2 liters could easily be thrown in the trunk of our car with the 72 hour kits and go with us in a moments notice. When it's time to change the water out, we'll use it to water our garden in the spring, fill the kiddie pool in the summer, wash the cars, vinyl siding on the house, etc.

What to do with empty dish soap bottles? Don't throw them out, or even wash them out. Just add water to the already soapy container, and store the soapy water for washing dishes and hands. Brilliant! A friend of mine aslo suggested doing this with shampoo bottles, for hair and body washing in an emergency.

It could be costly to fill the large barrels, but I figure January is a good month to fill them, because we were out of town for a week and therefore didn't use any water then. If I fill them this month, there shouldn't be a significant difference in my water bill.

Why do this?
Because I'm the Mama Bird in this nest. I am responsible for me. I share responsibility for my husband and children. With the uncertain times that always lie ahead, it feels good to know that I am trying to do everything I can, and everything I've been commanded to do, to provide for and protect my family. Hurricane Katrina taught us a lot about what can happen when we are unprepared, under-informed, unprotected, and left unable to take care of ourselves in the event of an emergency. And because the Mama Bird sleeps better at night knowing her chicks are in a reinforced nest. That's why.

So that's January.