Thanksgiving coma

Here we are, Black Friday, and I have elected to sleep in rather than get up at possibly 3am to drive an hour into town and wait an hour in line and shop for the elusive deal. No thanks, it's cold out. Some crazies have been camped in actual tents in front of Best Buy since Tuesday. I figure with the money they could have made from Tuesday to Friday at a JOB they could have purchased whatever it was they were waiting for at full price, slept in a bed, pooped in a real toilet, showered and NOT miss Thanksgiving with their family. Seriously, people!!

Anyway, Thursday was nice, and as unplanned as ever. We survived the in-laws nicely, after a quick go-round and accusations of guilt tripping, dinner was wonderful. JC was nice enough to sleep through the entire dinner and I ate hot food for the first time in a while.

My largest disappointment was by far the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Well, not so much the parade as the coverage of it. I was excited to let the kids watch it this year because they would actually take an interest in the floats and balloons and bands. I was SO frustrated at these announcers who wouldn't SHUT UP long enough to focus on the parade as we watch numerous interesting pieces drift by behind them!!! WHO THE HECK CARES what the chick from Guiding Light makes for dinner???!?!? Shut your yappers and get back to the parade!! Between the crappy unfunny announcers and the stupid off-street musical acts, there were about 3 floats shown in one hour. The most interesting things were the comments about the history of the parade that popped up right before each commercial break. Had I known another station was also airing the parade, I would have changed it. Alas, we needed to leave to the in-laws. After that it was all football. Maybe next year, in the mean time pass the turkey leftovers!

New look (again)

I was having a little fun with backgrounds this morning. I love playing with photoshop. Since I chose a new background, I needed a new header to match...I think it looks pretty good if I do say so myself :) I crammed a few more photos on there as well, but they're so tiny its hard to see. As I type MD and PM are chasing eachother around the living room. It's nice to see MD playing with PM rather than finding things that piss her off and continuing to do them. I hope they will some day get along as well as AM and MD do....

As the weeks go by

Oops, a week goes by pretty quickly. I can't believe November is almost over. I've been taking so many pictures and making Christmas cards that I really haven't had time to post this week. You'll have to go to my studio blog and check out the super cute photos of other people's kids. Of course MD and PM always want to jump in and take a turn...as a result I usually have a few shots of my kids mixed in any given session...like this:

or this:
or this:

MD started gymnastics last week. He loves it, he doesn't stop moving the entire session. He said his favorite part is hanging from the bars. AM wasn't too happy having to sit on the side and watch. She really wants to participate, too. I may have to give in and let her join as well, although I think she'd be better at Tae Kwon Do. I want to find a gym she and I can join TKD together. I miss martial arts and would like to get back into it. I loved competing, too. I think AM would really enjoy it.

There's not much else going on this week. MD has all of the last week of November off for Thanksgiving from pre-school, AM only has Thursday and Friday. We start cleaning I guess. We're hoping to have Daddy's parents here for food Thursday. Maybe if I can't get the house scrubbed by then we can talk them into a buffet :)

Flunked

So much for NaBloPoMo, I made it a week before I skipped posting... Apparently we can join any month, November is just the "big" month. My excuse is that I worked for the first time this weekend since having JC. It was nice to get back to work, a lot of things have changed in 8 weeks. And a lot have not. I got very little sleep, due to poor planning on my part, but I was ultimately on call Sunday night anyway, so I have almost caught up. Because I work nights, I took just the baby with me and left Daddy with the big kids. I had homes lined up for him and they all said he did well. At least as well as I hoped he would. One time up at night, feed and sleep. I still went to church Sunday, did my thing, and tried to get home quickly. After last week's fiasco, I was early. I had nothing go hugely wrong, and my pastor even came back before the service and apologized for the comment about the noise. He said he didn't know it was my kids and that they're great. He was sure it was another troublemaker and the comment was actually directed at them. That was nice of him! More people than usual did offer to help with the kids this week, though! I forgot to pack regular clothes, so I also went to church in my scrubs. No one said a thing.



It's my wonderful Husband's birthday today. Happy b-day, hon, even though you said its no longer yours. It's MD's birthday today, too. Legos are the coolest gift this year. Instead of cookies or cake, we sent him to school with Batman fruit roll-ups. Happy 5th Birthday, Buddy!!

MD's Lego penguin.

Binkies and Birthmarks

I have been trying and have run the gamut of pacifiers. None of my other kids took one, I don't know why I expect JC to take one. He manages to get a little thumby in his mouth once in a while and I'd rather stop that before it starts. (but its oh so cute) You can take away a pacifier.... So I've tried half a dozen different shapes and sizes. He sort of likes the hospital Soothie, but still gets ticked off when there's nothing coming out of it. He'd rather nurse/bottle feed until he literally explodes, gushing goo everywhere. Then he takes a nap.
Tonight I tried the Playtex version of the Binky with the flat top ("most like mothers' breast" - huh? also, it appears to be ribbed for his pleasure). He will grudgingly accept it. He actually whines and sucks at the same time as if to let me know he'll take it for now, but he's not fooled. Mmmm-mm0mmm-gwaa-mmm-mmumm-gwaa-mum-mmmgwaa!





I've also been keeping tabs on his little birthmark. It has become more red and defined, but it is still not raised. I had one on the side of my nose, it took years, but did disappear. JC's cousin has a larger hemangioma that is raised. She's now almost 7 and I guess its slowly going away. I understand they can run in families. I'm not too concerned, its in an easy-to-conceal spot, and he's a boy.

To My Husband on Veteran's Day

I never really had the chance to tell my husband upon his return from Afghanistan "Thank You". Perhaps he knows I meant it, but that's not the same. So, thank you. Thank you for sacrificing not only yourself but everything you hold important in you life to do what you feel it is your responsibility as a citizen and soldier to do. Thank you for giving up sleep, comfort and often health to protect us, your family and your nation. Thank you for coming home to us even though you left friends behind. Thank you for waiting two months to meet your little girl for the first time. Thank you for changing yourself forever to stand up for our country. Thank you for being a hero in your families eyes, your children's eyes, and in the eyes of those whom you've never met. Thank you for doing what you could to make this a safer world for people you may never see again. Thank you for your continued love and faith to me. I know that what you've experienced may never let you be the person you were before. Thank you for being willing to accept those changes, good and bad, on our behalf. I love you, now and always.
Mel

Homecoming Day 2007

zOMG....what will not be on my kids' Christmas list

I saw this commercial last week on Nickelodeon several times. This week it was mentioned on The Soup. Holy crap, here come Tini Pupinis. Seriously, are parents actually buying this crap for their little girls?? Its bad enough your eleven-year-old dresses like a prostitute, but her puppy?? I swear they actually say "you're such a ho!" at 22 seconds....listen!!



I was truly stunned by these toys. My mouth hung open *gasp*. Is this what we have come to?? Slutty dogs for kids to play with? Yes, please, lets dress innocent dogs up like ho-bags. Really? I thought the Bratz dolls were bad enough. I have fortunately missed this boat as Aria wants nothing to do with dolls or Barbies, never has. Dinosaurs, dragons and legos are way cooler.

Why do Sundays drive me insane??

First, a story. Yesterday Daddy heard MD kicking the screen door (from the outside, so he was in effect kicking it more closed) a habit he learned from us as we have to kick it open when the moisture swells the door frame. MD could not get in. Daddy opened the door to find MD in full snow gear playing outside and now ready to come in. He also found PM. PM had on bare feet in AM's large shoes, pants and a sweatshirt. She was freezing and crying. We have no idea how long she'd already been out and we assume she followed MD when he went out to play. It was about 32 degrees. Had MD not been kicking the door we could have left her out there for hours. As it was her hand was bright red and ice cold. Her left hand was in the clam-shell thingy so it stayed warmer. Her toes were pretty icy also. I wrapped her in a blanket and sat next to the space heater while she cried that her hand hurt as it warmed up. I am scared to think what would have happened if Daddy had not heard MD. I see how easily something like this happens, we are by no means negligent parents! Last winter a 2-year-old from the area was found frozen to death just outside his parent's home. They figure he got up at night and managed to let himself out. It's terribly sad, heartbreaking. PM was fine, but 10 more minutes would probably have meant frost bite on those little fingers.

They look pretty benign, right?

As for Sundays. Grrr... I have a job at church. I run a computer in the back that displays slideshow style lyrics for hymns and stuff during the service. This post has recently fallen entirely into my lap as my friend who worked it with me has decided to leave the church. With no trainees I can't be late or miss a service. This morning I was late. Well, not actually late, but close enough to not allow for things to go wrong, which they did. As I displayed lyrics to songs full of misspelled words (ugh! how embarrassing when everyone knows its me back there alone, no one to blame) my 3 biggest kids are tipping crap over behind me and whispering to me as loudly as they can. The pastor even made a comment about the disturbances, although I'm not entirely sure it was aimed at me and the kids or at all the people who ignored us and should have helped me out. I can't run this show by myself and wrangle 3 kids at the same time. My husband works nights and hasn't been to church in ages...just me and the kids. I could feel my face burning with embarrassment as I displayed poorly spelled words and tried to pretend the computer was slow when I didn't change the slides on time..... I am so crabby by noon its all I can do to load the kids in the van and go home without leaving them along the roadside. I had a beer when I got home. It's noon, right?

Stinky Baby

I missed my chance to sign up for NaBloPoMo this month. The rules are to post every day in the month, but being the slacker I am its already day 8 and I should have looked into it earlier. So I will try to finish out the month in preparation for next year.



It turns out JC is still a crappy breastfeeder. I have never bottle fed a breastfed baby so much. It's all breast milk, mind you. Perhaps I am just making it worse, but the kid will not starve under my watch! I stuck it out the first week, nursing him around the clock, barely sleeping. He never acted satisfied and it seemed my milk took longer than usual to come in. In reality, I think he just doesn't have a good enough suck, and he's lazy. I can STILL let him nurse for 1-2 hours, then pump 4-6 ounces and bottle feed. I'm a big ol' pacifier!! I've been offering him the breast every day, but he's still not getting it out. I am sure his latch, positioning, tongue are all correct. I've breastfed 3 others, I help new moms at work all the time. I'm stumped. In the mean time, the bottle arrangement seems to work. My Medela Pump in Style is worth its weight in gold....gold sheets, that I can sleep on due to a well fed baby.

Halloween and beyond..

Halloween was so nice it was sort of surreal. Who trick-or-treats in 60-ish degree weather in ND?? My entire childhood we made costumes specifically designed to fit over a snowsuit and boots. IF you were lucky. The unlucky kids wore their costume underneath and then wondered why they bothered dressing up in the first place. I imagine those people opening the door and handing out candy wondered the same, or perhaps assumed there really was no costume on anyway. They didn't care it turns out, they just wanted to hurry up and shut the door again before their furnace kicked in for the ump-teenth time that evening. The last time I remember a Halloween this nice was when I was in high school. A group of us, in an effort to save the world one penny at a time, trick-or-treated for UNICEF. We wore sweatshirts and rollerblades and went door to door asking for spare change. Some people believed we were hustling them (even though we had the official UNICEF cardboard change boxed), others were nice and gave us not only paper money, but candy for our efforts.


It was P.M.'s first time out and about. She did well and caught on faster than M,D., who still is more interested in checking out the carved pumpkins and Halloween decor than actually knocking on doors for free candy. We went with another family with whom A.M. has a best friend. The big kids were usually a block and a half ahead of us, while M.D., P.M. and I brought up the rear, occasionally skipping houses to keep up. Another thing....who lets the kids pick from the bowl??? Speed it up and hand it out!! M.D. takes ten minutes deciding which morsel of chocolate is best to his liking at each stop. Usually he takes something, then changes his mind and ALSO takes the other thing. Sneaky. Maybe this is intentional...

We carved pumpkins the night before with our neighbors. Her family has a big garden with pumpkins that do not cost $3.99 each. I did not purchase any, stupid stores!!! We had fun scooping pumpkin guts out on to paper lining the floor. I was tempted to place J.C. INSIDE a pumpkin for a picture, but the thought of cleaning orange guts off his cute outfit changed my mind.





On another note:

Sunday.....heard from the back seat of the car screamed quietly in mock fear from a plastic robot:"Ahhh, we're going to crash into the Bowflex store and the pumpkins are attacking the tomatoes and I'm sick of this Imperial March song!!!!" some day I will write a book of all I hear from the driver's seat.

On one more note:

I voted. I am unhappy with the outcome. I will say I told you so later.

Helping A Friend

To all my friends and family, please join us in helping our friend Cole. His mom, Leanna, has opened an account for Cole through iGive. It costs you absolutely nothing to join and over 700 online vendors participate in donating to Cole's special needs school fund. I was amazed at the list of vendors I know I'll shop online at (even LEGOS.com!!) especially with Christmas coming.

Go to Cole's site to learn more: http://caringforcole.blogspot.com/

I really hope you'll help out!


Mel