Love

It kind of dawned on me today that Saturday is Valentine’s Day.   Duh.   Casey and I have talked about going out on a date, and yet it never really hit me until just now that it’s Valentine’s Day.   I have nary a card or a gift.   I feel like life has been in fast forward – Christmas, New Year’s, almost buying a house and moving (again), illness and the general “tyranny of the urgent” have won out over my brain.     So short of scoffing at the holiday with “every day is like Valentine’s Day with you, Sweetie!” I’d love to  hear your best ideas for a gift for your husband.   I need some inspiration!

Today was glorious – it hit just shy of 70 degrees and Cooper celebrated by taking two 2-hour-plus naps and Kenny and I celebrated that by taking the monitor outside and running wild in the sun.   It’s a wonder what a little fresh air can do!

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And just for kicks, I went through some baby pictures of Kenny today and found one of him at 7 and a half months – the same age Cooper is now…

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They do look more alike than I thought!

Have You Ever…

Over the weekend I had to make a dessert for a dinner party we were attending, and decided that I needed to use the fabulous min-bundt pans that we got as a wedding gift so long ago.   The pans in question were packed somewhere in the twenty-some-odd boxes that we have still not unpacked from our move and move back this past October.   These boxes are in our garage, up a hill nearly 100 feet from the house.   I looked at Kenny and Cooper playing on the rug.   Hm.   And hm.

“Hey Kenny!   Can you play with Cooper while Mommy goes to the garage to look for something?”

“I want to come with you!”

“Well, if you can play with Cooper the whole time while I’m gone, you can watch Clifford on the computer.”

“Okay!”

So I put Cooper in his little activity chair and gave Kenny very specific instructions (don’t give him any other toys, stand next to him the whole time, etc) and I ran to the garage, Dudley close behind.   I ransacked through three boxes and found the pan and ran back into the house.   I was gone for four minutes.   Kenny and Cooper looked exactly like I left them.   Whew.   Not that I’m going to do that again any time soon, but looking back I guess it is a little risky to ask a three year old to watch a seven month old, even for four minutes, right?

It got me thinking of all the things I do now that three years ago I would have sworn I’d never do.     So play along… have you ever:

Asked a pre-schooler to “watch” a younger sibling for a minute?

Reasoned that cookie dough is no worse than a donut for breakfast?

Let your kids color the shower door with dry erase marker just so you could know where they were when you took a shower?

Wiped spit up off the hardwood floor with your sock and figured that it was just as good as going to get a rag?

Opened a box of cookies in the grocery store just to make it out of there without a munchkin meltdown?

Laughed along with your baby as the dog licked his face, then wiped the slime off with the sleeve of your shirt?

Fallen asleep in bed while trying to put your kid down for a nap?

Fallen asleep on the floor while trying to play with your kid?

Gotten so used to spelling in front of your kid that instead you spell something to your kid in front of your husband?

Wondered if someday there are going to be group therapy sessions for “Children of Mommy Bloggers?”

Ok, readers: tell me your score and write a question for me of your own!

Popular

Back in August I joined Facebook at the suggestion of a high school friend, but never really did anything other than fill in a skeleton profile and then randomly accept friend requests here and there.   But this week I’ve logged in a few times and I’ll admit: I’m wondering if the tentacles of this time-sucking phenomenon is going to pull me in.

I barely have time for blogging, much less searching for friends old and new to link-up with online and constantly thinking of something witty and unique to write in the “what are you doing right now” line.   (To date, I’ve never actually typed anything there, undoubtedly surrendering to “boring” as a description.)   Ok, I barely have time to fold an entire load of laundry in one shot.   For goodness sakes, I haven’t been to the bathroom alone in 40 months.   So thinking of adding another internet addiction to my life seems a little silly.   I did, however, sit Kenny down at the other end of the computer desk this morning with a coloring book so that I could fool around a little on Facebook and see what the hype is all about.  

I found something really amazing: there are actually people on there who have, like 648 friends!   I have, like, 12.   I really thought that “friend” meant people you are actually friends with, or at the very least, were friends with at some point in your life.   But it turns out that it may be closer to “people with whom you may have breathed the same air at one point in your life.”

Why not call it “vague acquaintance request,” or “I think I may have seen that person walking past me 20 years ago” request,” or even, “that name looks familiar somehow request.”   I have gotten these “friend” requests from people who not only was I not friends with, ever, but who were mean to me in high school, shunning me from the cool crowd no doubt due to my Sally Jessie Rapheal red frame glasses and spiral perm.   Why?

I’n not knocking Facebook.   I really do think it’s kind of nifty and a fun way to see where all the old friends of yore ended up, who they married, and if they still have spiral perms of their own.   And of course now that I realize that it’s possible to have a second chance at being popular, I spent a little time tonight spiffing up my profile page, adding links to this blog and uploading a photo or two.   Anyone want to be friends??

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My Three Sons

Ok, I realize that Dudley is not biologically a son, and yes, I know that for all of his quirks, he is far from Human.   But really, he is more work than Cooper and Kenny put together some days, so I have come to accept that a big piece of my daily pie is cut out for The Dog.

I haven’t written very specifically about Dudley in a while, so for my newer readers out there, he is an almost 5-year-old,  85 pound weimaraner.   For those of you who know nothing about weimaraners, imagine a sleek gray Tasmanian devil who truly believes that your bed is his bed and your lap is his lap and any food left unattended for more than .5 seconds is truly his food.   Kenny is mighty in love with him, and I realized today that Cooper is following fast:   while he calls me, Casey and Kenny “Dada!” indiscriminately, this morning he looked at Dudley and shouted, “Dud-la!”   I wasn’t buying until it ensued throughout the day – quite distinctively different from the generic “Dada” I swear, though occasionally morphing into “Dud-ee!” and “Dag-dee!”   Lucky dog.

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Though often very bad, Dudley tries hard to be a good boy, and is nearly always a good sport to most any game Kenny rallies him into.   Today I ran upstairs to get Cooper up from his nap, and came down not three minutes later to this scene:

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“Dudley’s hiding, Mama!” crowed Kenny.   Indeed.

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While Dudley enjoyed some relative anonymity, Kenny decided to play “painter” with Cooper, proving that Cooper, too, is game for just about anything his big brother suggests.

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You Aim Too, Please

I could write another post about the respiratory illness plaguing our house, but I am so bored with it all.   Truly.   Done.

When I was in middle school, my best friends were a set of twins who were the daughters of our church pastor.   Their family was boisterous, big and loving, and the jokes would fly whenever you were invited over.   I adored going to their house – the parsonage next door to the church – every chance I could.    They had this funny little plaque in the powder room above the toilet that read, “Here, we aim to please.   You aim too, please.”   I remember thinking that it was mildly funny and an interesting play on words.   But as a girl with no brothers, it really didn’t mean anything to me.

I remembered that little jingle this afternoon when I was cleaning the bathroom.   I clean the toilets a lot.   Kenny is fantastically potty-trained, and a pretty good aim most of the time, but his mind does wander sometimes when he lets it rip.   There was pee on nearly every surface of the toilet, on the floor behind the toilet, in the trashcan next to the toilet, and on the wall beside the toilet.   And I cleaned this bathroom four days ago.   To be fair, I don’t hold the little guy entirely responsible,as Casey has been known to send intense emails on his blackberry from the confines of the water closet.   Let’s leave it at that.

Speaking of peeing, with the past week of middle-of-the-night nebulizers and medications, Cooper has gotten used to the 3 am feeding again.   And with it has come a rash of 4 am wake-ups because he has completely soaked through his onesie, pjs and blanket sleeper and is lying in a puddle   of freezing cold wee wee.   Oui, oui.   I went out and bought him some overnight pampers today, and fed him as much as he would take in this evening, so my fingers are crossed both for a full night’s rest and a dry baby in the morning.   Ah, could we all just sleep until sunrise??

And speaking of sunrise, we had a series of very grey days this past week and yesterday the sun rose in it’s glory to reveal a really, really dirty house.   How on earth can my house get so dirty, when all I feel like I do is clean?   And when, for goodnesss sakes, am I supposed to clean with a baby and a pre-schooler who no longer naps and begs me to play with him every second the baby is napping?

Speaking of “goodness sakes,” I must learn to curb  my tongue, and quickly.   I don’t swear as a rule, but I do say “Oh gosh!” and “Darnit!” all the time.   And now so  does Kenny.   I apparently also say “dammit” every now and again, because today Kenny dropped his  water cup and shouted, “Oh dammit, look at  this mess!”   I handed him a paper towel and he responded with, “Darnit-barnit, Mama.”   We talked for awhile about how Mommy shouldn’t say those things any more, and neither should a little boy, and we settled on saying, “Pickles!” and “Muskrat!” instead.   No offense to any muskrat fans out there.

Speaking of Kenny’s word-play fascination, tonight at dinner he asked me, “Mama?   Remember that guy who’s our new president?   Barak Obama?   Is his name kind of like ‘Bar-occoli?'”  

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Tired, still.   Stop.  

Add an ear infection to Cooper’s roster; Giant Pharmacy running promotion for free antibiotics for the month of January; Pharmacist joked today that our family is making them broke;  Ha. Ha ha ha, can I punch you even if you’re wearing a lab coat?   Stop.

Kenny finally sick, too.   Croup.   Rx for Prednisone.   Oh my gracious.   The only thing worse than giving a three-year-old prednisone is giving it to a weimaraner.   Yes, and we did that once, too.   Stop.

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Sleep is For the Weak

I am turning into a zombie.   Between holding Cooper much of the day and rocking him to sleep for naps (I can’t bear to make him cry when it drives him into a coughing fit!), I have also been sleeping in the room with him in Kenny’s bed so that I can listen to  him breath and get up  to do his nebulizer in the middle of the night.   The last two nights he’s slept straight through the treatment, only to wake an hour later with boogers sealing his nose shut,  cranky and wanting to nurse back to sleep.     His breathing sounded worse today, but the doctor did say that he may get a little worse before he gets better.   We have a follow-up on Friday and I’m crossing my fingers that we are going uphill from here on.

Kenny is also ready for Cooper to get well, as he is not enjoying the fact that Cooper has currently been getting top billing for Mommy-attention.   Couple that with an ice storm today and no end in sight to the cold weather, and we are feeling house-bound and irritable.  

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What I wouldn’t give for a day warm enough to take a walk!   Dudley agrees, and was quite the rascal today in his frustration, attempted to garner attention first by pulling nearly all the stuffing out of his bed, then by randomly selecting toys to prance around the house with, staying just out of reach and drooling all over them as he mocked me for my inability to reclaim them.

With the drama surrounding Cooper’s illness, I didn’t mention in my last post that prior to Coop’s pediatrician appointment, we traipsed off to the dentist for checkups.   Kenny has his first cavity!   I am so bummed, as we are pretty fanatic about brushing his teeth.   Not only that, but I found out that two of my teeth are cracked.   I have no idea when it happened.   So we have matching appointments again in a few weeks for fillings.   Can I express that I am not looking forward to this??

I also was remiss to mention that we did not get our coveted house downtown.   The contract fell through and we are on the hunt once again.   I know that there is a better house out there, but the wait is getting to me.

So it would seem that we’ve got the winter blues.   Truly, if the sun was out and the temperature was somewhere in the 70’s, none of this would seem so dreary.   As it stands, though, I’m ready to go to a tanning salon, if for nothing else than to lift my spirits with some concentrated UV light.   Um, and it would be nice to be tan.

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Snowed Under

Yes, it’s snowing out, but our house-bound state started before a single flake hit the ground.

Cooper woke up a little punky on Sunday and started coughing… again.   The kid had a cough for 10 weeks straight, but the past week he had been completely well, so when the cough started again, I did little more than sigh.   But Sunday night he was up half the night screaming, and I figured a trip to the doctor was in order – only ear infections make him screech like that.   Turns out, though, it’s not his ears.   My sweet little guy has RSV and the resulting bronchiolitis.  

When the pediatrician said “RSV,” the only reference I had was scary – I know that many infants are hospitalized with it, and my heart hit my stomach.   She calmed me, though, admitting that though it is a serious diagnosis, and one we need to watch carefully, Cooper was a old enough to be in less danger.   She sent us home with a nebulizer and told us what to watch for.   So every 4 to 6 hours for the next ten days, round the clock, Cooper has to breath into a tiny little air mask and suck up all the medicated mist he can.

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He may not feel good, but he sure is a looker!

Anyway, I have my hands full with a sick one and a wild-stuck-in-the-house-because-Coop’s-too-sick-to-be-out one…   more to come on that…

Runner-Up Recipes

As promised, here are the “runner-up” recipes for the Super Bowl recipe contest!

from Kirsten:

Chicken Enchilada Casserole

1 rotisserie chicken shredder (or 4-5 left over chicken breasts, shredded)
2 can cream of chicken soup
2 cans rotel tomatoes (mild or hot depending on your taste) We like hot!
4-5 cups shredded cheese
8 corn tortillas

1) Blend soup and rotel tomatoes in blender
2) Spray 8 1/2 by 11 (or so) baking dish with pam
3) Start layering, 2 tortillas(side by side to cover pan), 1/4 of chicken, a
thin layer of the soup/tomato mixture, and 1/4 of the cheese….do this 4
times! End with a good portion of cheese on top!
4) Bake at 350 degrees for about 30-45 minutes. Let stand for about 10-15
minutes before slicing/serving

“All measurements are approximate. This recipe is very easy and I really don’t
measure anything! We hope you love the way it tastes as much as how simple it
is!”

 

from Julie:


Cheesy Cheddar Bacon Dip

Mix with hand mixer:
8 oz block of cream cheese softened
1 cup of sour cream
1 cup of shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 cup bacon bits (I like to use real ones)
1 clove garlic minced
3 green onions sliced thinly

After mixing ingredients together, bake inside a hollow bread bowl for 30
minutes on 350.   Serve with bread cubes or crackers.

from Angela:
Super Party Pretzels              

1 cup vegetable oil
1 envelope (1 oz) powdered ranch salad dressing mix
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste
1 bag (15 oz) thin pretzels

Preheat oven to 200 degrees.   Pour the oil into a 2-cup glass measure.   Add the
ranch dressing mix, garlic powder and cayenne pepper.   Whisk until thoroughly
mixed.Pour bag of pretzels into an ungreased 15-by-10 inch baking pan.   Pour the oil
mixture over the pan.   (Use a spatula to get all of the oil mixture into the
pan.)   Stir gently until all of the pretzels are coated with the oil mixture.

Bake, uncovered, 90 minutes, stirring and turning every 20 minutes or so.
Remove pan from the oven and cool completely, about 30 minutes.   Store in an
airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 weeks.