Time Flies

Since the last time I posted:
I've been to 2 other states.
Both of my daughters have broken bones (different times, places, people responsible).
One of my daughters had surgery.
My best friend had a baby.
I've been vomited upon about 6 times.
I've had 2 severe migraines.
My brother got married.
My husband became a partner in his medical practice.
Our 150-year-old tree was diagnosed with a fungal infection that renders it dangerous.
I've hired someone to cut it down.
My husband and I bought a new refrigerator and microwave.
My sister broke up with her boyfriend.

The Author Who Shall Not Be Named

Recently, I've been reading novels by a local Louisville author who writes well-constructed romantic thrillers - good love stories with a serial killer or rapist or spy thrown in. I enjoy them and get the romance experience without the guilt of reading a trashy, slutty romance novel that has no real plot. Somehow the existence of the cops and robbers part gives the books some dignity. And they don't have mostly naked people on the cover that I'd have to try to hide in public.
So when I found some other books written by her (ages ago) at a nearby used book store, I snatched them up - all 15 or so. (I am one of their best customers.) As I've noticed with many authors, she definitely is a better writer today than she was at the beginning of her career, but still much better than the average romance author.
What I don't understand is what on earth, as a woman, she was thinking writing about young (usually 17 or so) girls who fall in love with criminals or men who RAPE them (but they really liked it). And most of them -men and women- are married and cheating (but that's okay because the spouse paid for their abduction or the spouse is really an evil person who is only interested in their fortune...). How can a female person write about rape as a romantic thing?!?!?!
I love her recent books. She is an excellent writer. But I cannot give her name here and send her the publicity in good conscience.

I do not want to have 4 kids

I now have experience with having 4 children. Not actually bearing them, of course, but taking care of them for 3 hours. And my conclusion is it makes me tired even remembering the experience.
A friend moved this weekend. Just across town, but moving is always a huge endeavor, so I offered to babysit for an afternoon while she got a chance to pack. So, for 3 hours on Friday I had 2 extra daughters, both almost the exact same ages as my girls - which makes the whole job easier as each has a playmate. We decided to go on a walk. Okay, I decided we should go on a walk - I figured it would make the time pass more quickly.
I got out our double stroller and put the two one-year-olds in it. The three-and-a-half-year-olds had to walk. We headed out with the destination of our ice cream store about 5 blocks up and one over. We got there, ate a child's cup each and headed home. The 3-yr-olds set the pace with their slow feet. And they were worn out when we got back. The whole thing took an hour and 25 minutes.
We were about half way home when I realized we were missing a sandal for the one-year-old guest. I backtracked to the last place we'd turned and looked back down that street, but no luck. Knowing we had already exhausted the older girls and I was going to be blessed to make it home without carrying someone, I did not turn back. I called in reinforcements - my mother-in-law drove the route and recovered the sandal just before my friend was leaving my house with her girls.
I really needed a nap. Too bad there is some law of the universe that if you have more than one child, they will not nap on the same schedule (or the older one will give up naps entirely). I think the law of the universe related to having 4 or more children ... well, it must be pretty scary and I don't want to know.

Childhood Milestones

This has been a big milestone week for my younger daughter, Diana 1.0. First, her fifth tooth popped through. Then she had her first reaction to a vaccination (big rash and fever). Then on Friday she took her first steps. She also had her first ice cream; yes, it was vanilla.

Have a Snack, Mommy?

I was singing a hymn in church on Sunday and holding Diana (her first birthday is tomorrow!). She was playing with my necklace - once you have kids, jewelry is mostly worn for the entertainment value you can get out of it. She is a very curious, experimental little girl whose favorite new tricks involve putting shapes through similarly shaped holes and then getting them out and repeating the exercise.
I guess my mouth looked like a good shape hole or I looked hungry; she reached up and stuck my pendant into my mouth as I sang!

Innocent Children's Songs

Once you become a parent and your child reaches 2 or 3 years old, say goodbye to listening to your personal preference in music. :-)
In the car, we have an entire CD case of selections for our listening pleasure(?), all consisting of kids' songs. Raffi, Wiggleworms, Philadelphia Chickens, Ralph's World, Dr. Seuss recordings, .... They are not too bad at first, but since they are relatively short songs, you quickly find yourself listening to the same songs for the second and third times.
Some of the songs are original and are actually entertaining. And then there are the albums of all the songs you have known forever like "Mary Had a Little Lamb", etc. In fact, we have one just titled Childrens' Favorites Sing-A-Long. It contains the basic fare of songs like "She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain," "This Old Man Played Knick-Knack," "London Bridges", and others. Seems like a very innocent CD, sung by a children's choir in very impressive harmony and with good enunciation. The words, for a group, are very clear. And this is one where they've really researched and have multiple verses to songs that most of us have only ever heard one verse.
So it all seems innocuous enough until we get into "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." The words to the second verse are as follows:
Rip, Rip, Rip your pants,
Gently down the seams,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Hear the Ladies scream.
What???!! And, of course, the best part is that I reacted with considerable surprise to this, resulting in the immediate memorization of every word of the song by Rebecca 3.8 (that means 3 years, 8 months old, a convention borrowed from my favorite blog for entertaining reading: dubiousquality.blogspot.com).
She sings along with it and cackles in amusement every time that song plays. For the second and third and gazillionth time.

Stupid Thieves

I think that is an oxymoron. It is never an intelligent thing to steal. I get a kick out of stories that tell of the low IQ of thieves.
Today's example: A few days ago I read a story on CNN of 2 men finding treasure buried in their yard. During some yard work (three weeks ago), Barry Billcliff, 27, and Timothy Crebase, 22, were digging up a tree and hit a wooden box containing bank notes and bills dated back to the early 1900's. After having a local coin shop appraise the find, they were ecstatic to discover it was worth $50-75 thousand dollars. The story was no big thriller, just caught my eye and generated a, "Cool." Who wouldn't want to find a lost, buried treasure in their back yard? But I went on with my life and never would have thought of the event again except a headline caught my eye this morning.
"Men who claimed to find buried treasure arrested"
I guess they couldn't get their story straight, and police got interested. Turns out they supposedly stole the bank notes from a house they were roofing. CNN reports:
The men's stories, though, prompted some suspicions because of discrepancies. The depth of the buried crate, for example, ranged from 9 inches to 2 feet.
The men also gave conflicting reasons for digging in the yard of the house Crebase rents.
They told one reporter they were digging a hole to plant a tree.
In other reports, they said they were trying to remove a small tree or dig up the roots of a shrub that was damaging the home's foundation.
How hard would it be to talk for 60 seconds and decide what the story was going to be? Planting a tree or digging one up - simple choice, but very different options. Just pick one!
Stupid!

Powerless

There is nothing that makes me feel more out of control than when a child is sick with some illness that includes vomiting. It is this great unknown, unseen, waiting to pounce evil that nothing can control.
When Becca (now 3 yrs and 8 months) was 2 yrs and 7 months, we were on a vacation to St. Louis to visit friends when she threw up all over the blocks at the Magic House (children's science museum). We surmise now that it was food poisoning, but in any case, for the following 8 or 9 hours, she vomited every hour or so. We were staying in a hotel and soon went through all the towels and linens provided in the room plus a few more the staff kindly supplied. It was a long, sleepless night [Did I mention that I was 7 months pregnant at the time?]. My husband found the laundry facility and ran a few loads including her light-up tennis shoes that never lit up after their vomit bath that day. We left for home the next morning even though our vacation was only half over.
It really is a sad and painful memory today. But the absolutely worst part was that each time she began to throw up and we rushed her sagging little body to the toilet, she somehow thought that we were causing her to vomit. She would push the bowl away and say, "No, I don't want to throw up again!!" In her mind, being put over the toilet caused the retching. I have never felt so powerless to help my baby in my life. Her weak little protests just tore at my heart.
So, Becca is again sick and threw up last night. A kind of terror seizes me and makes me feel powerless. I'm so sorry, Baby!

Modern day Titanic

A cruise ship just reached New York City after being hit by a 70-foot wave in the middle of the night on its way back from the Bahamas. It flooded cabins, broke windows, tossed furniture, knocked hot tubs overboard. Wow!!
You would never get me back on a cruise ship.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TRAVEL/04/18/ship.diverted.ap/index.html

Chartreuse pee update

Ok, so this game continues. It isn't having any great impact - Becca wets her pants more than she makes it to the toilet dry, but that is a different issue. Today, we learned how three-yr-old games can backfire on you.
We were eating dinner at Olive Garden and my husband Dan needed to use the restroom. He asked Becca if she needed to pee (we offer, send, beg, carry her to the potty whenever an opportunity is presented to us). She said no, but she would come along and call out characters for him. He declined, but she was insistent.
The men's room was empty when they arrived, and Dan breathed a sigh of relief. Too soon. Just as he was finishing and Becca announced, "You peed on Joey!" the door opened and in came others needing the restroom. Dan was very embarrassed. Ok, he is correcting me - that should read a little embarrassed.

Now he is trying to convince me to rewrite that. ;-)

Our deliverypersons do not carry change for more than $20!!!

Last night, my baby brother (age 24) was attacked while he was delivering pizzas. He said he walked past a weird looking man and then heard some rustling a moment before a baseball bat connected with his skull just below his ear. The people in the apartment for whom the pizza was destined heard the crack of that first hit and opened their door. As the men (there were 2 of them) proceeded to hit him several more times in the shoulder and head and knee, the apartment's residents phoned 911 and police arrived.
I guess my brother should thank God that he has a hard head. First, it made a loud enough crack to alert help and second, after a cat scan showed no permanent damage, we know it was hard enough to protect him. I thank God he is, or at least will be, okay. Praise You, Lord!
He says he will continue to deliver pizzas because it pays very well. I know I would not be able to do it.

You peed on chartreuse!

When you have a 3-year-old, you have to be very creative. You have to make her believe that she wants to do something, or she won't do it.
When Rebecca started delaying her trips to the bathroom until she'd begun to leak EVERY SINGLE TIME, and we were going through 5 or 6 pairs of panties a day, we had to invent a way to get her to go of her own free will. So was born the Race to See What You'd Pee On. Her father said, "Can you beat me to the potty? I'm going to get there first." When the novelty wore off it became, "Becca, I am going to call out numbers and see how fast you can pee!" And when that grew old, "I'll call out colors. See what color you're on when you pee.... Blue! Red! Purple! Chartreuse! .... You peed on chartreuse!" Later versions involved types of dogs, Winnie-the-Pooh characters, colors in foreign languages, DragonTales characters, etc.
"You peed on Tigger!"
"You peed on amarillo!"
"You peed on turquoise!"
And Rebecca began to develop favorites. If it was colors, she wanted to pee on chartreuse. If it was Pooh characters, she wanted it to be Lumpy (the heffalump from the newest movie). And sometimes we have to guess correctly and time that character for the instant after we hear the toilet lid hit the tank.
She really likes the color chartreuse. So one day she said she just wanted us to call that color. So... "Chartreuse! Chartreuse! Chartreuse! ...." until she peed and then, "You peed on chartreuse! Yea!" We were having a race just like this one. She requested an all-chartreuse dash to the potty. She took off towards the bathroom and my husband was screaming out "Chartreuse!" over and over. We heard the lid hit the tank and the following explosion of urine like the sound of Niagara Falls and then, "But I wanted to pee on Orange!"