Friday, June 30, 2006

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Hedgehog Love

After reading Emma her nightly bedtime story from a book called "Love Is...", I asked her what things she loved.

Emma: "I love jellybeans."

Me: "I love jelly beans, too."

Emma: "The purple the green the blue and the orange. Not the red. That's for you."

Me: "Oh! I love the red! What else do you love?"

Emma: "Ummmmmm, I love my big girl room'"

Me (preening): "Really? What else do you love?"

Emma: "I love hedgehogs."

"Hedgehogs? What?"

"Hedgehogs, Mama. I love hedgehogs." This was said with a surrender in her voice, a complete statement that could not be argued with once you REALLY knew what a hedgehog was. Kind of like saying, "It was meant to be!" with that particular lilt to your voice.

"Emma, I don't know what you mean." Maybe I misunderstood. Emma put her little hands delicately on either side of my face and leaned in, to the point where my eyes could hardly refocus to see her face clearly.

"HEDGE. HOGS. That's all. Hedgehogs."

"Oh," I said, convincingly, "I see." Emma was totally unconvinced and told me,

"I'll show you." She jumped off of her bed and rummaged through her books until she found a particular book called The Hat by Jan Brett.

"See, Mama? A hedgehog. I LOVE hedgehogs."

After that amazing revelation by my daughter I tucked her in and kissed her goodnight. Then I had a strong glass of wine. Since when do 3 year olds think about hedgehogs and their admirable qualities? It is nearly too much for my heart to bear.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Friday, June 09, 2006

Randomness

I tried to post some pictures earlier from my phone, which got a reply from blogger that they were successful but they have not shown up. I am wondering if they ended up on someone else's blog, or else they are floating around in the general aether. It worries me that Mary may be lost somewhere in cyberspace, but I am not dwelling on it.

IKEA Canton opened this Wednesday. My friend Karla and I stopped by Tuesday night after yoga to see people who would camp out for 3 days for ugly chairs IN CANTON NO LESS! You can see pictures if you scroll down. The picture of the IKEA sign has Karla in front, if a bit blurry. The picture of me with two ladies and a strange green floral couch is actually (from left to right) the fourth person in line, the first person in line, and me, who was not in line at all and may wait until September sometime to wander in and see what all of the fuss was about. I really had no right being there. IKEA gave her the ugly green floral couch for being first in line. I have no comment about that.

Husband has been in Ghana all week. The girls have been awful without him and sob at night, calling "DADDY! DADDY". This trip wasn't very much fun over here. My Mom came and stayed most of the week and even with two of us they were nearly too stressful to handle. I was glad I had some help, because by Tuesday morning at 8 I was sobbing on the phone that I could not understand why my children were so difficult. It was generally a bad week for that. But I did get a lot of things done while my Mom was here, including planting the rest of my annual flowers. I searched all of the bushes, just in case my nemesis was stalking me since I knew he was in town, but I did not find him behind the hydrangeas in any case. He didn't call either, so I am thinking he is a REALLY good stalker. He's probably back home now.

There have been a couple of random child related happenings that are not cohesive in any way but should be recorded here.

The other day, Emma made it to the guest bathroom before I did. I have to lock all of the bathrooms, since Emma likes to irritate me by experimenting with water and whatever else she can find in there. I had neglected to lock his one and she was in and out before I could get to her. When I got in there, everything was perfectly in place, but it smelled. This wasn't a bathroom smell; it was a CLEANSER smell. So I asked Emma what she had done with a cleaner. She replied, "I cleaned the toilet". I looked in the toilet and it had evidence of bubbles from a cleaner in it. Then I looked under the sink and saw the Tilex sitting there. No harm done, but a bad precedence. I said to Emma, "Only Mommy cleans toilets." She immediately corrected me in the very specific way she has and said, "No you don't. Mama, the toilet was dirty and *I* had to clean it." Unfortunately, she was right.

Emma has taken to jumping everywhere. It began with a series of jumps to get across a street or a parking lot, which was painstaking but tolerable. Then it escalated to jumping to get off of things. Mostly harmless, but not a good thing to encourage. Finally it pinnacled to climbing up to greater heights to jump off just for the fun of it. This is bad. Sometimes it was a normal sort of jumping, such as off of a chair or a stool. More recently, we have gone to jumping off of the toilet when done using it. Then Emma decided that the bookcase in the nursery was climbable, therefore required jumping off of. She did this a couple of times and quickly learned that bookcase jumping was something best done when Mommy or Daddy were not in sight. Wednesday she ran upstairs after Mary's nap when Mary woke up. Immediately after that, there was a ceiling-shattering bang from the area where the bookcase lives. I walked upstairs calmly and asked Emma what happened. She denied everything, even direct questions (Note to self: old enough to lie). Mary, however, was happy to rat her out when I asked her what Emma had jumped off of. Note to Emma: welcome to siblinghood.

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Pigtails

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

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People camping out @ IKEA

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The front of the line for IKEA's opening tomorrow.

Monday, June 05, 2006

Update on Free Cell

I now officially HATE Free Cell. Don't try it if you haven't already.

The Good, the Bad, and the Sticky

The first day of a trip of Hubby's is always the worst day with the kids. I guess that one could say, "Well, that means it can only get better!" But that would be like telling George Washington during the depths of the Valley Forge winter that things could only go up from there. So today, as promised from past trips, was awful. I won't even go into details. Just let it be said that I had to bathe the kids and put them to bed at the earliest possible moment. And I try to avoid baths when I am by myself, since the two of them can create quite a bit of havoc when you add water. Tonight, however, Emma had 4 of the 5 mLs of her cold medicine mucking up her hair and causing it to acquire interesting additions that should not normally be found in hair. I should explain. Emma has had a cold and she is on the tail end of it. Right before nap time I wanted to give her some medicine to help her rest a little and clear up some remaining congestion that was bothering her. She is normally great about taking medicine. Today, while I cradled her in my arms to give it to her (this particular flavor is not her favorite and she has to be coaxed to take it), she spit the first bit back out all over me and then the rest she pushed out of her mouth and it ran down he side of her face into her hair. This stuff would not clean off with a wipe, which is my usual way of attacking sticky things from toddlers. I had to wash my arm and face off with soap to get the stickiness off. So you can imagine what Emma's hair looked like by the end of the day. So, that required baths. Now the girls are clean and snuggly and (theoretically) in bed. THANK GOD.

On another note, I have just discovered Free Cell. I think I am probably the last person with a computer who has not played it. So I have just sat down at the computer with the high ambition of playing 2 hours of free cell before I go to bed. I might make some popcorn to go with that.

And, I would like to say I am sad that no one has commented about my new arbor. Please, gush at will!!!

Sunday, June 04, 2006

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My new arbor

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The cottage at Sam's Club. For 1687.00 your kids can have a dream house in plastic!

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Bye, bye, baby

I managed to sell the following items:


  • Crib
  • Pack and Play playpen
  • 2 kid scooter cars
  • Clothes (including bags of tights, socks, and t-shirts)
  • Stroller (not the baby carrier and bases)
  • Some random hardcover books
  • Other miscellaneous items

Didn't sell everything I would have liked to, but sold a good amount of the large things. Lochmoor Mom, that bumper and crib skirt will be coming at you, along with a couple of coats you may be able to use. And does ANYONE need a bath seat? Why don't people know these are a necessity?? So I hauled off most of the remaining things to the resale shop, who is entirely too picky and would not even look at the baby carriers (like there are no babies to carry in cars??) and the paltry remains are yet to be distributed to a few other places. I am amazed at how hard it is to get rid of baby items.

Now my children are tucked in and I have some remaining post-garage sale cleanup to tend to.

Friday, June 02, 2006

Thursday, June 01, 2006

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Snack time

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Garage sale fodder

To Do List

Things I should do today:


  1. Empty garage of random things
  2. Wash garage floor off with hose and sweep out water
  3. Wash car seat covers for old car seats12:30
  4. Fold 100,000 small children clothes
  5. Bring up from basement following items: high chair, pack and play, old crib, baby carrier, baby rocker/infant seat, corresponding linens, mobile, crib skirt and bumpers for crib, 3 containers of gently used toys
  6. Set up tables in garage
  7. label/price EVERYTHING I OWN
  8. Set up for subdivision garage sale and prepare to get rid of all traces of babies
  9. Wash 4 sets of sheets that Mary puked on yesterday 10:15
  10. Fold 2 loads of kid laundry 2:20
  11. Do 4 loads of adult laundry, fold, set in baskets on the floor for 2 weeks in hopes that the laundry fairies put it away when I am not looking2:00
  12. Bathe children so Mary doesn't smell funky from last night's epic vomiting10:30


Yeah, that should be enough to make the day go by. And to think it is nearly 10 AM already and I haven't done anything on that list except put the pukey sheets in the washing machine. Yep, it's looking like a classic stay at home Mommy day.