Monday, August 24, 2009

Slumber Party

I don't know how she manages to do it every year, but M always seems to stretch her birthday celebration for days. On her actual birthday I took cupcakes to her class. Later that night we met my in-laws for dinner at a Japanese restaurant where the kids were truly entertained with the chef's tricks. They didn't particularly LOVE the food, but they certainly enjoyed the entertainment and it was a memory made. After dinner M opened up her present from her Gran-re and Grandaddy. They gave her two outfits and as she opened them she squealed with delight and said with a lot of sass, "Oooohhhh...I am SO wearing this one to school tomorrow!"

On Friday night I allowed her to have a couple of girls over to sleep over. Everything went great. We ate pizza, made pillowcases and friendship bracelets, played American Girl, had a dress up party, and ate birthday cake. After they all finished up their cake they washed up and got on their pj's. I popped on the new Hannah Montana movie for their 1st flick of the night around 8:30 or so. About 10 minutes into the movie and once everybody had their choice of topping on their popcorn, the power went out. Joy! No electricity. 3 movies to watch and we can't. A possible minute or two where this mommy could take a breather, but NO, didn't happen. Instead I became entertainer of the year, leading games of charades and pictionary by candlelight. Ghost stories might have come in handy, although I don't know any and UNFORTUNATELY I couldn't Google it because the POWER WAS OUT. All in all, we had a lot of fun playing those games in the dark. The girls settled down and decided to go to bed after getting bored with all of my games, I guess. They went to sleep fine, despite a lot of worry and concern, not to mention the rising temperature in the house. Luckily the next morning we had power, so we all sat around and finished the movie together.

M's birthday officially ended on Saturday around lunchtime when our company found their way home. It was a fun couple of days, I have to admit.


Wednesday, August 19, 2009

9 Years Ago My Life Would Be Changed Forever

It seems like only yesterday, that two very young and nervous people were on their way to the hospital to have their first child.

After only 4 days of teaching the new school year in 2000, I awoke on that Friday morning in August knowing that I wasn't going to make it to work that day to teach many small children, instead I would become a mom that day. Though I struggled through 20 hours of labor, over an hour of pushing, and eventually an emergency c-section, it was all worth it. At 12:14 am our 1st child entered the world...a beautiful baby girl. Weighing in at 8 lbs and 6 oz, she was a healthy and hungry little girl, right from the start. We were finally a FAMILY.

My 1st child, that precious baby girl, is NINE today. I am sitting her trying to wrap my brain around the idea that nine years has gone by in the blink of any eye and hoping that life will slow down somehow.

I now enter a new state of life with my daughter. It's the tween years. The time has come to start growing up a little, learning a little more. It's also a time of insecurities and self-consciousness that we are embarking on. I hope that I will be able to maintain a good relationship with my tween (and teen soon enough). I know that I will often be embarassing, talking too loud, saying the wrong things, not wearing the coolest clothes or shoes. I will be looked at many times that I am mean or unfair through these times, but it will be all out of love for my daughter.

And Mom, if you are reading, let me take the time to apologize for telling you that you chewed to loudly back when I was a young girl. And sorry for walking 25 feet behind you and Dad in the mall because I was too embarrassed of my parents. I am sure I will be paid back very shortly for all of my eye rolling and smart comments. Thanks for sticking with me and loving me anyway during those times, as I will with my daughter.

Happy 9th Birthday M! You are a beautiful girl who is loved so very much!







Tuesday, August 18, 2009

For Your Blogging Pleasure

I am a little delayed in this post, but I wanted to introduce two new blogs that I am following.

After months of persuasion by many of her friends, my neighbor and friend Michelle started a blog and she is too darn funny! She is a mom to four, two of which spend a whole lot of time over here at my house. Her daughter, A, and K play together every single afternoon. They can play Barbies, house, and dress up for hours together. Her experiences with her older two children, that are both in high school, are to my advantage..getting to see what's ahead of me is nice and how she handles the situation. I am taking notes. Check her out over at Lassoing The Chaos.

After months of ME persuading my Dad, who is an excellent writer, to start a blog he finally did with a little help from me. When my Dad moved to Vermont this summer I was even more eager for him to do the blog so that family could keep up with all his adventures. So, I set up is blog spot and told him exactly how to use it. Every day I would check to see if he had yet written anything and was disappointed most days, until one day there was this post and it was the sweetest post about me. I cried and cried reading it. His next post had me in tears laughing! I don't know how often he will write, but I hope more and more. You can find him at Seize The Day.

Hope you'll check them out!

Monday, August 17, 2009

3 Women, A Mattress and a Kitty

Last week did not disappoint in the craziness factor. Just as the week before had drama with the road rash event, this week had to find it's own random and completely crazy events, however it all happened on one day...Thursday.

My sister has recently relocated here from Texas. She has spent time cleaning and fixing up a little rental house and she was sleeping on an air mattress until last Thursday. On that day, she and I borrowed our uncles truck, a huge Ford F250 and drove about an hour away to my mother in law's house to retrieve a mattress and box springs for her. After my sister and I had a nice lunch with my mother in law we loaded up our goods onto the truck. Because my uncles truck had a tool box on the back, the mattress wouldn't lay flat so we had to prop it up a little on the box. This meant no visibility through my rear view mirror and to top it off his side view mirror on the passenger's side was already missing. This left me with my one driver's side view mirror. As we left the neighborhood and my mother in law was following behind in her car, I suddenly got nervous. I asked my sister if she thought the mattress would be ok and not fly out. She assured me that it was too heavy and I trusted that, but I did warn my mother in law behind me to watch for any movement. Not too long of being on a busy highway at lunch hour, I looked out my one and only side view mirror and there behind me, in the middle of the road was our big pink mattress. My mother in law had stopped about 3 inches behind it. PANIC! TRAFFIC! MATTRESS! As I backed up the truck my (very sophisticated and well dressed) mother in law was pulling that mattress to the side of the road all by herself with traffic rushing by. We hopped out and helped her, loaded back up the mattress and much to our surprise a good Samaritan stopped (WITH BUNGEE CORDS) and proceeded to secure our mattress to our truck. This man even put himself in harms way, standing on the side of the truck closest to the other lane and the traffic. He didn't let us pay him or anything, he just accepted our gratitude and we were on our way. It's really nice to know that there are still many kind people in the world, willing to help someone in need. We are still laughing at ourselves for this, thinking that's what we get...3 women doing a man's job.

Later that evening, after arriving safely home, my kids heard a strange noise outside around our cars. It was obvious it was coming from my husband's Cherokee, but what was it? After some careful listening, my husband says, "I know EXACTLY what it is! It's a cat!" He explained that earlier that morning he was driving through town and he saw this little black puddle in the road, but upon getting closer he noticed it was a cat that wasn't moving. He swerved around it carefully, got out of his car and went to check on it, but it wasn't there anymore. He looked to the sides of the road but he saw no cat running away. He recalls getting out of his car he heard a small "thump" but thought nothing of it. Apparently, cat had hitched a ride and rode around with my husband all day and eventually home with him that evening. We finally located the cat underneath his car. You could see the little cat by looking above his rear wheel and it was sitting on his gas tank underneath. We tried to lure the cat out with tuna, cheese and many "Here kitty, kitties" but nothing worked. Finally, my husband brought out the MAGIC GLOVE, that has been known to help abandoned animals in the past. With the glove my husband, the hero, was able to get the cat..only, it was a kitty. A tiny, solid black kitty with little green eyes. Needless to say, my girls were absolutely thrilled at this hitch-hiker kitty telling their Daddy that "We have to keep her because she obviously wanted to come home with you."



The next morning I took "kitty" to the vet to get checked and she is in great health, not a flea on her, not hurt and she weighs about 1.5 lbs. She is just about 6 weeks old. We are letting the kitty stay for a while, until she can take up residence with another family member. She sure is cute and I think all of us are quickly becoming more and more attached to her.

Our main concern and why we don't want to keep her permanently is because of J, our 2 yr old. He has given the kitty the name, "Mau Mau" (pronounced like now, but with an M instead of an N) That's his version of Meow, Meow. J is wanting to play in the kitty litter and carry her by the neck.


Pretty soon, Mau Mau herself might look into getting out and start hitch-hiking again, just to get away from him. In the meantime we are enjoying our new little friend.

I wonder what this week has in store for me!



Monday, August 10, 2009

One Week Down

Last week it was back to school and back to routine. Everything went pretty good, although there were some occasional resistance to going to bed before it was even dark and having to come in early from playing to get baths. It was an adjustment for all of us.

Toward the end of the week sweet K didn't want to get out of bed in the mornings. As a matter of fact on Friday morning as I woke her up she declared that she didn't want to go to school and she had decided she didn't like it anymore. She proceeded to pull the covers back over her head and I told her she must, in fact, go to school.
"Why?" she asked in a very cranky tone.
In which I replied, "So that you can learn things, be smart, and grow up to be anthing that you want to be."
"I don't WANT to be ANYTHING," she came back with quickly.
Brief Silence/Pause
and then she said, "On second thought, I do want to be something. I want to be a SLEEPER!" With that she once again pulled the comforter back over her head as I laughed out loud at her response.
If only you got paid for sleeping, because I want to change jobs if that's the case!

On Wednesday afternoon we visited cousins in their new neighborhood. M and her cousin were playing on the scooters outside and M took a dive on the pavement and has a pretty serious injury from it. She basically has road rash and the top layer of skin peeled away from her leg. Ewwwww...I KNOW! After a trip (or four) to CVS and about $75 later I now could run a small infirmary. Not really, because I have to use all that to clean her wound and change her bandage twice a day!
(A small diversion here....Why in the world when I was at Ga Southern preparing for nursing school did I have to take Field Biology? Seriously...No amount of bird watching or bug collecting prepared me for anything nurse related! And I must say that I am so glad that I decided to go in to teaching instead of nursing because if this wasn't my daughter then I would pass out at the sight of this leg! )
The wound seems to be healing rather nicely, but having to change the bandage on it in the mornings before school means we have to wake up 10 minutes earlier and I'm not a big fan of losing my one and only snooze!

Hopefully this week, the second week of school, will be free from injuries and we will get a better sense of our new sleeping routine. Here's to being a mommy!

And here are pictures of the road rash
(I have to say that it looks a lot better on this picture than in person!)


And my excellent bandage..Aren't you proud?

Everytime I have changed M's bandage, she has looked at me and said, "Mommy, I love you."
It's always nice to know someone is there to care for you, isn't it?

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Little Devil

I should have known when he looked so good wearing this outfit at 1 month old:


Little boys should come with a warning label! All but one of these my son has done in less than 24 hours:

-Gotten into big sister's book bag, opened a brand new pack of markers,colored his hands and tried to eat the tips off of them.



-Gotten into my mascara (this was a few weeks ago):



-Gotten a pot from big sister's play kitchen, retrieved water in it FROM THE POTTY, and proceeded to drink it before I caught him.

(No picture for this one...I was so grossed out by that event and in a desperate attempt to wash his hands and his mouth out with dial soap, I didn't bother to get my camera for any documentation..you'll just have to trust me on that one.)

-Gotten my coffee creamer from my kitchen counter and did this:


(And I had only had ONE cup of coffee before he dumped the entire container out on my rug, which forced me to use milk in my second cup and I hate that!)

I promise I do try to watch my son and take necessary precautions so that he does not get into these items. For example we close every door to all bathrooms and bedrooms so that he can't be destructive, but it is inevitable that someone forgets to do it and we all suffer the consequences. He has dumped out cans of fish food multiple times in K's room, dumped out M's container with all of her little-bitty earrings, has eaten our toothpaste, soap, chap stick and so much more!

Now that the girls are back in school I am left with only my set of eyes and my two hands to contain little J and that's a full time job!

Any suggestions, short of a leash or a cage?

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

And a Fourth Grader

Not only can I not believe that I have sweet K in kindergarten, but my precious M started her FOURTH GRADE year! How insane is that!? I am not old enough to have a 4th grader, am I? On second thought, don't answer that.

Here is M on her 1st day of Fourth Grade:



My mother-in-law is infamous for giving the girls stylish clothes, or as they call it, "Fashionable". Yesterday she surprised the girls with a few new clothes and this was Madelyn's favorite:



4th grade, but looks like her senior year! Really scary!

Monday, August 3, 2009

Kindergarten!

Today I will choke back my tears all day. Today I will miss my chance to sit and hug on you whenever I feel like it. Today I will miss fixing your lunch. Today I will miss hearing you and your little brother play. Today I will miss being asked 1.000 totally random questions. Today I will miss the frequent interruptions while I work. Today I will miss my sweet, black-haired angel. Today is your first day of kindergarten.

I left you so excited at school this morning ready to take on the world, make new friends, and learn so much. You have become so very independent lately and have seem to have grown a foot over the summer alone! I am so happy that you are so excited about going to kindergarten, even though I will miss you being here with me all day.

Today you will be missed, but I am excited about your new adventure sweet K!