Lessons Learned This Week
This week we learned…
– Gwen Stefani knows how best to a call a baby and teaching Gideon to say it too is awesome.
– Your mouth makes the shape of the letter O when you say the letter O.
– Dressing up like a fireman is something we will be doing every day until we outgrow those boots. So that’s like next week.
– Babies who think they can walk love to scream when they actually cannot walk.
– Piper is so much like her Mama. She loves cheerios. And club crackers (and I am surmising, all carbohydrates, way too much).
– If you want to get a lollipop, simply suggest going to the bank.
– Mom-mom will put money in your mother’s hand if you tilt your head down, ever so slightly and then declare that you ‘need chick nuggs, french fries and chamburgers.’ Sucka!
– Hiding all evidence of late night milkshake runs is necessary if you do not want to attempt to explain what is in the trash can to a two year old. His first words about it will always be “uh-oh”. Playing dumb will not get you out of interrogation.
– When you put drops in your ear sometimes it sounds like bubbles.
– Mama wouldn’t trade these days learning together for any amount of money in the world.
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Festing
Tonight is our church’s annual non-halloween-(but totally halloween)-night. We lovingly call it the Fall Festival and it has been a staple in my life nearly every year I’ve lived in Omaha.
Somehow, I only distinctly remember a few of the costumes I’ve worn to the event. There was the year I was a punk rocker (technically, this was the year before the Fall Festival entered my life. It was highly reminiscent of my kindergarten career day outfit when I went to school as Cyndi Lauper (I did not want to be just any punk rocker. I wanted to be HER. Genius). And then everything gets foggy until sixth or seventh grade when I was an old lady. There were about five girls who came as babies. We had our picture taken together and it is somewhere in the bowels of the church building now. And then it’s all fuzzy again. And then I stopped wearing costumes. I’m not entirely sure why, but I’m guessing it had something to do with time and effort.
Last year we threw a costume party (also non-halloween-[but totally halloween]) and I went as Angelina Jolie. I was pregnant with Piper, had a black dress I could still fit into and a bunch of baby dolls of various ethnicities shoved into the baby sling on my back. If I’d taken a picture of it, I’d show you now, but I was only behind the camera that night.
(Oh, look! Pictures of other people from that night!)
Mac & PC
Gift Card Winners - Mail Lady and Penguin
He was closing a deal. It's what salesmen do. The best salesmen.
The Fall Festival is tonight. We’ll be hauling the kiddos up for some games and fun.
Gideon will be re-inacting this (but hopefully with more enthusiasm):
Piper will be re-inacting this (but hopefully with less vomiting):
I haven’t even asked Jud if he was planning on dressing up. He likes to be really different and typically something that nobody else is. Maybe he’ll be a Husker Fan with hope. I haven’t seen any of them around lately.
I was hoping to go as a younger, leaner, more sanctified version of myself, but when I woke up this morning, my costume had not yet arrived. Maybe next year!
Read MoreThe Battle Rages On
Our master bathroom sink asked for it. I am bringing it.
I noticed a few months ago that it wasn’t draining as fast as it should (you know, like super fast, as in there is nothing blocking this sink’s only purpose, which is to allow water to flow through it and leave my presence immediately). I pulled out the little stopper thing and noticed some calcification from our hard water. I cleaned it off and, ever so naively, put it back. I was both pleased with myself, as if I was a plumber, and apprehensive that anything had been solved.
Obviously, it didn’t work. A few weeks later, I was letting the water heat up before I washed my face when I looked down and noticed that the water was backing up pretty quickly. It was hot enough so I got my job done before there was a real problem. I tossed some kind of statement over to Jud like “we should do something about this sink.” He agreed. I agreed. We both promptly left the sink issue right where it had been, which is to say no where.
On cleaning day two weeks ago I decided to pour a bunch of this down the drain:
Once again with the pride and the apprehension.
And once again it did not work. Not at all. And it was the GEL kind. Shouldn’t that count for something? It’s fancy! But, no. The water was still slowly filling in the sink while I brushed my teeth, while I let it get hot at night, while I washed my face. Fill. Fill. Fill.
And then, a couple of days ago, it started to stink. It smells funky. Kind of sulphury. Kind of stale. Just the way you’d imagine a clogged drain might smell. And ever since I got pregnant that very first time, I have had over active olfactory sensors. I can smell all sorts of things that you wish you couldn’t smell. I can smell people’s breath in crowds. I can smell when Piper has a dirty diaper before I go into her room when the door is closed. I can smell you right now. It’s that crazy. So now that drain is taunting me. It’s like it knows that I can smell it while I’m in bed at night. In fact, I blame it for the nightmare I had last night where the nurse at the pediatricians office was trying to kill me with a sharpened one of these by shoving it up my nose:
Today I poured some bleach and boiling water down the hole and was greeted with a skunky scent. I’m not sure that’s better than the sulphur. I am positive that the problem is not solved. But it will be.
Soon.
Right after you tell me what to do.
Read MoreWas It You?
While sitting in the doctor’s office this morning a really lovely mother walked over to where I was sitting with the two munchkins and started talking to me. It was crazy. Crazy nice. Crazy awesome. She was just so friendly. Her two little boys were being as pleasant as my two (one of those rare times when Piper was completely content to sit in her car seat and Gideon wanted to read the same book over and over again. Much MUCH different than the night before behavior that primarily involved each of them screaming at all hours so that I would walk directly from one child’s room to the next without ever getting back into my much loved, heavily blanketed bed). We were mostly chatting about our two babies.
Hers was seven months, born just one week before Pipes. She asked about teeth. Piper has two…those shiny little jagged bottom ones right in the front. Her Desmond (you know I wanted to ask if she was a Lost fan but didn’t risk the offense) has none yet, just puddles of drool and anger. I asked about crawling and he isn’t there yet, just rocking back and forth. Piper readily joined the ranks of the mobile a few weeks back and has recently jumped into the ‘cruiser’ field as well (pulls herself up and walks along furniture as long as she can keep one hand firmly on something stable, she can get anywhere). The very nice woman was reveling in her sons lack of mobility and me? I was torn. I love watching my kids hit milestones but the crawling, walking, scaling all things with ledges and slightly available hand holds? I vacillate. I’ll get back to you as soon as she figures out how to sit down after pulling herself up. In the meantime, I’ll be somewhere just behind her waiting for the blood curdling screams for help.
This is trouble.
