2 Reasons Why Carpet is BAD

Friday night I needed to go into a particular cabinet for a potholder.  This cabinet is not organized as well as it should be, as my extract and food coloring bottles are in front of the potholders - meaning, oftentimes when I reach for a potholder, I knock over a bottle.  That's what happened Friday night.  After I'd picked up the food coloring bottles off the floor, I realized I was holding a green cap but no bottle.  I looked under chairs, in corners, and under the refrigerator, but couldn't find a bottle anywhere so I assumed it had been used up and the cap just hadn't gotten thrown away.

 

*Cue the ominous music*

 

Later, I went in to start the kids' bath.  I was running the tub, which usually makes the kids come running.  A quick head count informed me that only one child had materialized.  Hmmm, where's Natalie?  I thought absentmindedly.  After the tub was full, I went out to find her.  And find her, I did.  In a puddle of green food coloring.  Which was all over my light-blue carpet.  And Natalie's hands.  And Natalie's khaki shorts.  And Natalie's pink shirt.

 

I did what anyone would do in this situation.  I screeched, "What did you do omigod what did you do get in the tub right now omigod" and stripped her clothes off on the way to the bathroom.  I scrubbed her down, best as I could - not easy to do when the bathwater instantly starts to look like it's been hit with a major case of algae bloom.  Then I got to work on the carpet.  A bottle of vinegar, six dishtowels, half a bottle of SpotShot, and an hour later, the carpet was reasonably clean.

 

But this wasn't the end of the carpet fiasco.  Oh no.

 

Saturday morning, a mere 12 hours after the green dye incident, I opened a bottle of grape juice which I'd just bought the day before.  I gave the kids each their usual watered-down serving.  1/4 cup juice to 3/4 cup water - you know, I actually prefer it this way, too.  I think it's much too sweet full-strength.  But I digress.

 

15 minutes later - seriously, only 15 minutes later! - Ron bellered at me from the living room.  "Get in here RIGHT NOW!  I need you!" 

 

Natalie had thrown up her grape juice all over the living room carpet.  Luckily, I still had a few clean dishtowels left and I commenced to scrubbing once more.

 

But what's a little bit scary is that it was evidently because of the grape juice that she threw up.  Because Sam did the same thing 10 minutes later.  And then neither one threw up the rest of the day.  I'm still not sure what I should do - call the store and explain what happened?  I can't imagine them taking the bottles off the shelves because of that one incident.  And the kids didn't really get that sick.  One good barf and they were both right as rain.

 

I think I'm going to get hardwood floors.

Another Manifestation of Spring Fever

While I was trying to upload this picture, Natalie came into the office and demanded "Up".  Her bottom seemed awfully warm & squishy, but I didn't smell anything.  I stuck my finger in the back of her waistband and pulled it out to check the contents, a maneuver well-known to all parents, and was surprised by sticking my finger into a pile of goo that had worked its way all the way up to the top of her diaper.

I slung her over my other arm and kept my icky finger well away from the rest of my body.  As I rushed through the door of the kids' room, I managed to bang Natalie's head on the doorframe.  I had no choice but to let her wail as I apologized over and over again, trying to clean my finger and keep the contents of her diaper from getting all over the bed.

So then.  Now that I've grossed you all out, would you like a frog cupcake to celebrate spring (which I'm told is right around the corner, although the temperature barely cracked zero degrees today)?

Party Preparations

Natalie's birthday party is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I've been struggling to find time to make the decorations. Yesterday afternoon, I decided to take advantage of the nice weather and I moved our craft tub outside so Sammy could make messes to his heart's content, and clean-up would be as easy as spraying off the driveway with the garden hose. It occupied Sammy the whole time I was working. Score!

Note to self: Next time, find similar entertainment for Natalie. You know very well she'll make her own fun otherwise.

Hey, look at that! No, really, look!

That didn't work...uh..ok...then, it wasn't me! It was his fault!

Oh, who am I kidding. Yes, I dug up one of your plants and ate the dirt, but I swear, I had a good reason.

It's been a busy few days, with a weekend trip up north to my parents' house, and yesterday spent at the state fair. I'll write more about that later, but for today, just a brief story.

Last night, I needed to make a quick trip to Target for a couple of items. I had some extra time, and Ron was home, so I decided to leave Natalie at home with Ron and ride the bike to the store with Sammy in the bike trailer.

I was amazed at how well Sammy did on the half-hour ride. Normally, he gets bored and cranky at being forced to sit still for so long, but I think the bribes treats I packed helped out a lot in combatting his boredom.

I ended up buying a box of fresh peaches in addition to the things I had gone for. It was a tight squeeze to get everything into the bike trailer, but I managed by putting the box of peaches on the bottom, and stacking everything else on top. I warned Sammy that he wasn't to touch anything, or we'd end up losing some of our things on the road.

The temptation was too much to resist, though, and when we were almost home, he located the peaches (he gets credit for holding some of our things on his lap, rather than knocking them off the trailer, though). He had one peach clutched in his hand, and I was worried he'd decide to toss it but decided it was worth losing one peach if it meant we'd get home in the next few minutes. Then I heard him start arguing with an invisible someone. "That's my peach," he said. "No, it's my peach," he argued. "It's yours." "No, it's yours."

Looks like he won the argument, though, because when we pulled in the driveway, the peach was half gone and his shirt and hands were dripping with fresh peach juice.

Good thing I didn't buy any cookies.

Just Another One of Those Days

Part I: I took the kids to the park for awhile this afternoon. The first half hour, everything went smoothly. Too smoothly. I should have been able to hear the ominous music playing in the background.

Here's where it all went downhill. Sam and Natalie were playing at opposite sides of the playground, and I was sitting on a bench halfway between. Sam suddenly said, "Mommy, what's this on my hand?"

Uh-oh. I said, "I don't know, what does it look like?" as I hurried over as quickly as I could. My flip-flops came off in the deep sand after about two steps. When he answered, "Paint?" I decided to leave the shoes where they were. I could only imagine...would it be bird poop? Gum? Actual wet paint?

One step later, I felt a sharp pain in my foot. I stopped to find a sand burr dug deep into the arch of my foot. After prying it out, I started running again, only to step on another sand burr.

After finally making it across the minefield of sand burrs, I reached Sam to find a purple splotch on his hand, obviously a remnant from an art class at daycare. As I breathed a sigh of relief, Natalie started shrieking from the other end of the playground. Ten sand burrs later, I reached her to find that she had fallen and had a sand burr firmly entrenched in the palm of her hand.

Just then, I smelled something rather foul. I assumed that the culprit was Natalie, since Sam had taken care of business before going to the park. As I was checking her diaper, Sam confessed that it was actually him that was stinky. Luckily, I had brought a couple of diapers and some wipes with, so I looked around for a spot to change him. I wasn't about to lay him down in the sand burrs, so that left the bench as the only option. Not too comfortable, and I knew he'd object, but the only other option was to go home.

(I should add here that this bench was not on the sandy part of the playground. It was on a patch of grass...and dirt.)

Natalie was still very fussy, so before changing him, I made her a bottle. She immediately spit her pacifier out into the dirt. Yeah, great planning there on my part. High-five for me! I used the little bit of water that remained in the bottle and poured it over her pacifier. The resulting mud puddle instantly drew both kids' attention, and before I could react, they were both covered in mud. Not just their hands, because of course, Natalie had to taste it to see what it was, and Sam had to copy her because he thinks that gets him more attention.

At that point, I said, "Enough!" and I tossed them both into the bike trailer, mud, sand burrs, poop, and all, and we high-tailed it home to clean up. By the time we got home, both were fast asleep. In the time that it took me to run in the house to get the camera, both had woken up, so unfortunately I didn't get any documentation as proof that it actually happened.

Part II: After we got home, Sam wanted to help Ron, who was working in the backyard. Evidently, there was a minor accident involving a shovel, so Sam decided to come inside to hang out with me for awhile. Shortly after coming in the house, he got into trouble and had to go into a time-out. I didn't have the patience to keep putting him back into the naughty spot every time he got up, so I decided to sit right beside him and hold onto his arm to "encourage" him to stay put. He hates that. You'd think I was twisting his arm, rather than just lightly holding on to it, to hear him scream and carry on.

The entire two minutes, he screamed at the top of his lungs, "I don't like this don't hold onto me Mommy leave me alone I want to get up", etc. When he got to the part about "scary monsters", I started feeling the laughter coming. I know it sounds mean to hear me say that I wanted to laugh, but I figured out awhile ago that he's not really scared of monsters. He's just figured out that's an all-purpose excuse to get out of things.

I made it until two seconds before the timer went off, and then I couldn't hold it in anymore. The absurdity of the tantrum, and his ramblings, was just too much for me. I had to leave the room and come back when my fit of laughter had passed.

Amazingly, he was still sitting in the naughty spot when I returned, and I went through the whole routine, "Do you know why you were in timeout?" followed by a hug and a kiss. He was still a little worked up from his tantrum, so afterwards he still couldn't stop talking but the words just wouldn't come out right. "I was in timeout--I threw Mommy--I hit a toy--I throw a toy and Mommy--I throw a toy and hit Mommy..."

In the meantime, I was removing his shoes, which were still sandy from the playground. He continued on, "I throw a toy and....someone was in the sandbox today!!" (This as the shoes came off and poured sand all over the living room carpet. Oops.)

The End.

Not the Best Idea I've Ever Had

This weekend, we took the kids camping for the first time. We went to a state park in the southwestern part of the state, about a two-hour drive.

In the days leading up to our trip, I suggested making reservations half a dozen times. With an $8.50 non-refundable registration fee, Ron balked at the thought. "We don't need reservations," Ron said. "I'm sure the campsite won't be full," he said.

We pull in at 5:30 p.m., to find that there are only two campsites available, both in the "rustic" campground. This means no running water and no flush toilets. That wouldn't have mattered much to me before having kids, but I wasn't looking forward to the thought of changing diapers without being able to wash up afterwards, or having to drag a kid with me into the filthy outhouse. But we didn't have much choice, so we took one of the sites and pulled in to our spot--which was right on the corner of a triangle of roads, and very cozily next to another campsite. Meaning, no privacy at all, and constant worries about the kids going onto one of the roads.

Ron and Sammy got back into the van and went back to see if we could still get the other spot, which was more secluded. We were lucky enough to be able to switch campsites, so we got set up in our new home.

The ground was very muddy in the patches where the grass had worn away. The kids were both covered in mud from head to toe before we'd even been there for 15 minutes. And with no running water, clean-up wasn't too easy. We went through a lot of baby wipes, in an attempt to keep the dirt under control. And both kids had poopy diapers within fifteen minutes of being at the campsite. Thank goodness I remembered to bring some antibacterial hand gel, since there was NO RUNNING WATER.

Around 8:00, we started to get the kids ready for bed. Natalie went to sleep pretty easily, but it was after 10:00 when Sammy finally settled down and went to sleep. Then, for the next hour, I got to listen to a kid in a nearby campsite wail and scream. I get enough of that at home, thank-you-very-much. I didn't need to drive two hours to hear someone else's kid throw a tantrum for an hour because he was over-tired and needed to get to bed. So much for the park's "quiet time", which was supposed to start at 10:00 p.m.

But the next morning, we were on the other end of it. Every other time I've been camping, it's been in much more secluded areas than this particular campsite, so I hadn't worried about our kids' early wake-up time disturbing anybody else. As usual, the kids woke up around 5:30 and for the next hour, I did my best to keep them quiet, but I'm sure we still managed to wake up half the campground. As soon as it was obvious that other people were starting to get up and move around, we packed up our tent and left. We were all too tired and cranky to do any of the fun things we had planned on, like swimming in the sandy-bottomed swimming pool in the park, or the nearby caves which we had thought about touring.

On another note, I'm home today with Natalie, who woke up with a 101+ degree fever this morning. She's had some other symptoms for the past week, which I'd attributed to teething, but when she developed the fever, I thought I'd better have her checked out. The doctor thought the fever was just some random virus, and she agreed that the rest of it is probably teething. Poor Natalie is cutting six teeth, all at once, and it's been rough on her. Not to mention the rest of us.

I keep a spray bottle of water on the bathroom sink for taming my hair in the morning. Since the water sits in the bottle for a few days at a time, I don't allow Sammy to drink it, although he has to try at least once a day. This morning, he'd only been awake for a few minutes when he crept into the bathroom, quickly snatched the bottle, and made a run for it. I followed and caught up with him in the living room, where he had already unscrewed the top and was just about to take a big swig. When he saw me coming, he dumped the water all over the living room floor, evidently deciding that was a good way to hide the evidence. Unfortunately, he miscalculated my position and I witnessed the whole thing. Today's accomplishment: he set a new personal record for quickest wake-up-to-first-time-out-of-the-day. And I got to mop up water from the living room carpet at 5:30 a.m.

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When I left for work, I slipped on my shoes and noticed that one felt a little strange. And the heel felt lower than the other one. Oddly, I jumped to the conclusion that my shoes were wearing unevenly. It wasn't until I was in the garage that I noticed I was wearing two different shoes. Worse yet, they were both for the left foot.

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Lastly, we are now in week 6 of a nursing strike. I've been putting forth my best effort at pumping to maintain my supply, but it is just not possible to pump in the afternoon and evenings, when both kids are awake, so Natalie has been having a lot of formula lately and my supply has been crashing. I've been very disappointed that our nursing relationship seems to be coming to an end already, but had decided that it would be okay. After all, I've been nursing most of the past 2 1/2 years, and it would be nice to no longer have to worry about what I eat and drink, or what medications or herbs I might take. Then last night, I had to deal with constipation (Natalie) for the first time ever. Now I am torn again over my decision. I've decided to put forth one last effort to regain my supply and today I'm popping fenugreek pills like candy. I know that there's nothing wrong with formula, and lots of kids have thrived on it, but I feel very disappointed at the thought of not making it to my one-year goal with Natalie. And since Sammy nursed until he was 16 months old, I feel guilty over not doing the same for her. Wish me luck.

The Great Artist

On Sunday, we drove to my grandparents' house for the day. Two of my young cousins were there, much to Sammy's delight. Even though they are my cousins, they are much closer in age to Sammy than me, so the boys always have a lot of fun playing together.

It was a pretty nice day, so we were all outside, and the boys were riding their bikes/trikes and playing nicely together. At one point, Ron made a comment to me about how great it was, now that Sammy is older, to not have to really worry about him so much and what he might be getting into. I have no idea what possessed him to say that, since we know things always go downhill from that point.

A few minutes later, I noticed the driver's side door to our minivan was open. I asked Ron to go shoo the kids out of there, figuring that he'd find them playing with some of the many toys that we keep inside for long car trips.

Then I noticed the driver's side window. Huh. It doesn't usually look all....filmy like that. A second later, Ron said to me, "You need to come see this."

I still wasn't quite prepared for what I found. Sammy had located a bottle of sunscreen, and had painted every exposed surface of the inside with that now-empty bottle. It was quite artistic, and might have been beautiful if it was with a different medium. And a different canvas.

I'm grateful for one small thing, though. It was Ron's bottle of sunscreen, and not the chemical-free (read: expensive) suncreen that I use for myself and the kids.

Ah...sweet silence. Natalie is down for a nap, and the boys are at the park. Life is good. =)

First, some random pictures.

Getting her daily dose of Vitamin D.

Sadly, I had just picked up 5 minutes before taking this picture.

I'm not sure why I bother.

Mom...cut it out.

Blurry picture of the kids bundled up for a bike ride.

Standing tall

It had been going on two weeks since Natalie's last blowout. Now she's had three in the past two days. Making up for lost time, I guess. Last night, I was trying to get her to sleep and she wasn't having any part of it. Normally, she's a very easy baby to get to sleep, so I knew something was up, but it took me awhile to figure it out. Every time she wiggled and squirmed, I smelled coffee, and I kept sniffing her hair to try to figure out where the smell was coming from (no, I don't know why I thought her hair was the logical answer, but that's how my mind works). Finally, after about half an hour, I got the brilliant idea to sniff a little lower, and yup - major blowout. No wonder the poor girl didn't want to go to sleep. And why her poo smelled like coffee is still a mystery. Much like the chicken noodle soup mystery.

She's been fighting a little diaper rash, so I decided to leave her undiapered while I made a quick dash across the hall for a clean onesie and sleeper. Big mistake. I came back in the room to find her happily bouncing on the bed in a puddle of her own pee. All I could do is laugh. The sheets needed to be changed anyway.

And the last random story took place over the weekend. I found a recipe online for the cinnamon & cream cheese sauces that IHOP uses for their Cinn-A-Stacks (very yummy, by the way). The recipe calls for brown sugar, and when Sammy saw the clear canister of brown sugar on the counter, he said, "You playing with dirt, Mommy?" I thought it was funny, so I played along for awhile, but then I realized that probably wasn't such a great idea. He liked the "dirt sauce" a lot - what do you think the odds are he's going to make his own "dirt sauce" outside later this week? Oops.

Let's factor this math equation: 1 energetic toddler + no nap x 1 energetic toddler + too short of a nap = trouble².

On Sunday, we had a get-together with my husband's family. There's a little boy on that side of the family who's almost exactly Sammy's age. Only 2 1/2 weeks younger, to be exact. I'm going to call him William, to protect the not-so-innocent.

This get-together was at 1:00 p.m. Anyone with a toddler on a one-nap schedule may now gasp in horror. This is naptime in the toddler world.

William arrived, having taken a too-short nap. We tried to convince Sammy to take an early nap, but had no success, so he was already starting to fade by the time we arrived.

Now, my sister-in-law had been so kind and thoughtful as to put out a bowl of Cheerios for all of the young'uns to snack on. About 5:00, things were starting to go downhill, so I should have seen this coming, but I didn't. Sammy walked up to the bowl of Cheerios, put both hands in and grabbed handfuls of cereal, which he then threw onto the carpet. While I was reprimanding him, William's father made the comment, "I'm just so glad it wasn't my kid this time." As if on cue, William walked up, picked up the bowl of Cheerios, and dumped it in its entirety on the carpet.

And to think - pretty soon, I'm going to have two toddlers running around, causing trouble.

Caught Red-Handed White-Faced

No, I was most definitely not in the baby powder.

Uh-uh, wasn't me. I'm afraid you're mistaken.

The two's, they can be oh-so-trying. Yesterday, Sammy was in rare form. From the moment we got home, he was throwing things, knocking all of his letter magnets off the fridge, and just generally being a pain in the patootie. After numerous time-outs, I finally banished him to his room and told him not to come out until he felt better.

I was surprised he stayed in there, but he did. I could hear him kicking his walls and jumping on the bed. After about ten minutes, he came out and happily announced, "I feel better now!" And wouldn't you know, that was the last problem I had with him all night. I think maybe he just needed to blow off some steam.

Last Friday was a work holiday, and I decided to keep the kids home from daycare. When I picked them up on Thursday afternoon, I mentioned that they wouldn't be in the next day. One of the infant teachers said, "Oh! Then we need to quick paint Natalie's hands before you go." (It was for an Easter art project - a ducky whose wings were the kids' handprints.) I had already picked up Natalie - who always gets so wiggly with excitement when she sees me - and had to put her in the high chair so they could finish up her project. Her face crumpled, and it was plain to see that her little heart was broken at the thought that I wasn't taking her home with me after all. Man, I'm going to miss this stage. No one else gets that excited to see me.

Then Friday morning, I took the kids along to do errands. Remind me never to do that again. Taking one with is no big deal, but the two of them together makes it very complicated. First of all, it was snowing hard and the parking lots were a mess. Before we even got to the first store, Natalie had fallen asleep in her carseat, and I didn't want to wake her, so I took the seat into the store. Those carseats weigh about 20 pounds, even without a baby in them. Then because the parking lot was so slick, I carried Sammy in my other arm. So that was about 60 pounds of kids plus accessories to lug through the slushy, slippery parking lot.

I put Sammy in the seat of the cart, and Natalie's carrier in the cart basket. That didn't leave much room for groceries, so I had to get creative with piling things in and around the kids. By the time we got to the checkout, Natalie had woken up and was voicing her unhappiness at being stuck in the carseat. I could barely hear the cashier over her protests.

Stop number two - Kohl's. They have a different type of cart there - like a stroller with a basket attached to the back. Now I know they have double strollers there, but I couldn't find one. So that meant I could only have one kid in the stroller at a time. I could see that was going to be trouble. Natalie started off in the seat while Sammy wandered off walked on his own. It's really hard to look at clothes when you are trying to track a moving toddler, so after about 10 minutes I gave up and decided to come back another time, ALONE. One cute thing happened at the store, though. Sammy found a friendly older lady and started chatting her up. He walked back to the stroller, patted Natalie on the head, and said to the lady, "This is my sister."

Stop number three - the library. I knew Natalie was probably hungry by now, so in the parking lot, I got her out of her seat to feed her before we went inside. That's when I smelled that old familiar smell. Sure enough - she had a blowout. And I had no spare outfit for her. I should know better by now, than to leave the house without a spare outfit for the baby. Last week, I took her to the chiropractor (three minutes away!) for a quick adjustment, and she had a blowout on the way. This morning, she had a blowout on the way to daycare and Ron had to drop her off with poop all over her clothes. Um, come to think of it, maybe I won't miss this stage too much, after all. It is nice to move past the constant fear of a blowout at the worst possible time.

That was my Friday. I did eventually get all my errands done, but by the time we got home, all three of us were crabby and tired. Nothing is simple when you have two young children.

You Might Not Want to Eat While Reading This One

Gross item #1: While eating supper last night, Ron and I were talking about something. As usual, Sammy started talking about something, and I ignored him at first. Slowly, what he was saying started to seep into my consciousness. “I got cake! I got cake!”

I was puzzled for a few seconds, then I realized where he had just come from. The laundry room. Where the garbage is located. Where I had just thrown out the remnants of a two-week-old chocolate cake. Eww.

Gross item #2: Last night was bath night. I took Natalie into the bathroom to start running the water, and sent Sam to his room to take his pants off. He’s not too good at taking his shirt off yet (his arm always comes out the neck hole), but he can take his pants off like a pro. I walk into the bedroom to see this scene: Sammy, naked from the waist down, crouching over his diaper and staring with intense interest at its contents. I had a sinking feeling and knew what I was going to find. “Were you poopy?” I said with hesitation. “A wittle bit,” he said nonchalantly.

Yep, that was fun to clean up.

The moral of these stories? Toddlers don’t devote a lot of time to worrying about hygiene.

Yesterday, Ron and I both got our turn with the stomach bug. It was brutal, to say the least. It didn't seem to affect the kids as much - they would throw up one minute and be smiling and laughing the next minute, but there wasn't much smiling and laughing going on around here yesterday. We could hardly drag our butts out of bed. The kids both seemed to be healthy, and no one had thrown up since Thursday morning, so we sent them to daycare so we could try to get some rest. After lunch, Sammy's teacher called and said he had thrown up. Boy, did I feel guilty for deciding to send him. His teacher said he had acted fine all morning, though, and ate all his lunch, so she wouldn't have guessed he was sick either. That eased my guilt a little bit.

Aside from getting presents and cards today, it was pretty much a day like any other. My day started at 5 a.m. when Sammy came charging into our room. We tried to convince him to climb into bed with us and rest some more, but when he started asking for milk, I didn't have the heart to say no. He hadn't eatenkept anything down since Tuesday, so I figured he needed the nutrition and calories. I staggered out into the kitchen to make him his oatmeal (his favorite breakfast! we're raising a little Bert) and pour him a glass of milk. He started whining when I turned on the kitchen light because it was "too bright". It was all I could do to keep from grumbling, "well, if you didn't get up so darn early..."

By 6 a.m., Natalie was up, too. Since we were all present and accounted for, I decided we may as well beat the rush and get the grocery shopping done. Ron came with, too - a rare occurrence, but greatly appreciated. Wrangling two kids, while trying to do the grocery shopping and keep my coupons straight, is not much different than a circus act. I'm sure my kids have convinced more than one teenage checker at the grocery store that birth control is a GOOD thing.

In the dairy aisle, Ron said, "Natalie smells like chicken soup. Do you smell that?" Gamely, I came over to take a whiff, and thought I did smell chicken soup on her socks. We'd had chicken noodle soup for supper the night before, so while it was a mystery how it got onto her socks, I didn't waste too much mental energy thinking about it. Later, when we got home, we discovered she'd had a massive blowout, unlike any we'd ever had to deal with before. I don't think we'll ever eat chicken noodle soup again, without associating it with the smell of that diaper.

The day was redeemed, however. Sammy took a 4-hour nap, and I slept two of those hours (can I get an AMEN!). Then later, the two kids were playing together in a blanket on the floor, when out of the blue, Sammy said, "I love Natalie" and gave her a big hug and a kiss. He has been really good with her lately, bringing her toys, asking to hold her, and giving her hugs and kisses. MUCH preferable to the phase we went through when he listed his favorite pasttime as "chucking hard objects at Natalie's head".

Oh, and last but not least - Ron and the kids bought me "Dancing with the Stars" for the Wii. I haven't had a lot of time to play it yet, but so far, I'm loving it! I have no idea how he knew that I wanted that game. Okay, actually I do. A couple of days ago, he asked what I wanted for my birthday. I mentioned that game, and about half an hour later, he decided he was going to "take Sammy to Target". Seeing how he never does that, I can only assume he wanted to go get my present before he forgot.

This morning, Ron called me at work, and started off by saying, "Guess what Sammy did this morning." My response was, "What?" immediately followed by, "Never mind - I'm not sure I really want to know."

Turns out that Ron was a little busy with Natalie this morning, and Sammy was feeling neglected. I should mention here that she's had a bad cough for a couple of days, which turned into a full-blown cold last night, and we brought her in to Urgent Care because she wasn't acting like herself. And...she has her first ear infection. Big surprise there. But I digress.

While Ron was busy with Natalie, Sammy decided he wanted more orange juice and he was going to take matters into his own hands. Ron walked out into the kitchen to see this layout on the floor in front of the refrigerator: orange juice container (sans cap), Sammy's sippy cup (sans cap), and Sammy, poised to pick up the orange juice. All I could think was, good thing Ron hadn't waited another 30 seconds to walk out there to check on him. I'd still have been finding sticky puddles of dried orange juice under the refrigerator months from now.

Not one of my proudest parenting moments

Back around Thanksgiving, Sammy decided to crawl around with his face planted in the carpet. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. Needless to say, he ended up with a nasty case of carpet burn. Maybe he thought it would make him look like a tough guy.

It's hard to look tough when you're playing in your little sister's exersaucer.

I know that's not a great picture, but you get the idea. A few days after it happened, his nose scabbed over and looked just awful. It must have itched too because he wouldn't leave it alone, and I could see the scab starting to come off, so I kept getting after him to leave it alone. Sure enough, he ended up pulling off the whole scab, and it started gushing blood everywhere. He was trying to wipe his nose off with the sleeve of his light-colored shirt, and since I had Natalie sitting in my lap, I was having a hard time trying contain the blood and gore without dropping her. Without thinking, I said "dammit" and right away, realized what I'd done but it was too late to take it back. In between his sobs, he started saying "dammit", *sob*, "dammit, *sob*, *sniffle*, "dammit". Yay me, teaching my child his first cuss word.

Then the next day, he was trying to put a blanket over his head and was having a hard time getting it just right. I heard a muffled "dammit" come from under the blanket. What can I say - at least he understands the correct usage of the word.