Painted-On Tattoos

I finished this page over the course of a few nights. I think I started it this weekend? I finished it last night to unwind a little. These pictures were taken in July '07 at a park nearby. Our church had a summer rally - they had hot dogs and games, they did some dramas, and best of all, there was face painting. The boys decided they wanted 'tattoos' instead of having their faces painted. Sebastian picked a crab (LOL - Sebastian the crab! It's still following him around!), and Isaac picked a fish (which turned out to look a lot more like a shark, so we called it a shark).

Right about now, I am REALLY missing the warm weather of July!!!!

Practicing the Parent Poker-Face

Twice tonight I had to keep a straight from something each of the boys said. The first happened while I was making dinner. Meagan decided she wanted to watch Dora, so she turned the TV on. The TV, however, was set to DVD input, so when she turned it on, the screen was black. Sebastian came barrelling into the kitchen, proclaiming the world's largest emergency ever. "Mom!! I think there's an emergency! Meagan turned the TV on, and it was all black! I think the satellite fell off of the roof!! You have to go check!" A smile started to sneak out, but I held it back, and calmly told him it I could fix it in a minute.

That was a funny moment...But wait....it gets better. Although the setting and the background story are quite sad, my friend Kim and I actually had quite a good belly-laugh from this instant Isaac classic...

There is a family in our community with a little boy who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Sadly, Sunday the little boy passed away. The viewing was tonight, and Kim and I went together to pay our respects. Well, Lucas took Sebastian to wrestling practice tonight, which meant Isaac and Meagan had to go with me to the viewing. Before we left, I prepared them for what they would see. I reminded them of a family funeral we had gone to not long ago, and told Isaac it would be kind of like that, except it was a little boy who had died. He seemed to understand, or so I thought. While Kim and I spoke with the parents, Isaac and Meagan sat off to the side and colored. When it was time to go, I told the kids how well they had done - they were very well-behaved the whole time - and we went out into the entryway to get our coats. As we were putting our coats on, I could tell Isaac was thinking something over that he wanted to say. I asked him if everything was okay. He stopped and looked at me and said (with the most mystified tone of voice and confused look on his face), "But Mom....we didn't even see anybody die?" NOT what I was expecting to hear. I bit the inside of my cheek, and said quietly, "Let's talk about it in the van." Then we left...as quickly as possible (I was praying the whole time he wouldn't say anything else about it to where someone might overhear him). I glanced at Kim, and she looked like she too was trying to keep from laughing. We made it to the van and almost out of the parking lot before we both busted up laughing. The poor little guy obviously didn't understand quite what we were doing at the funeral home after all, and I think he was just plain confused. I know it was a sad evening, but leave it to my kids to bring some comic relief.

Aren't we cute!

We've had our family pictures back for about a month now, but I keep forgetting to post them. In the last week, I've had a few people ask me about them, so here there are!

What about Second Breakfast?

Well, Sebastian returned to school today, still itching a bit from his *hives?* but, all in all, feeling much better.

As he was heading out the door this morning to get on the bus, I reminded him that he was buying lunch today.
"And I do need more lunch money, Mom," he said, as though he had told me this at least 20 times before.
"Why would you need more money? Did you give your teacher the money I sent at the beginning of the month?"
"Yes."
"Then why do you need more money?"
"I don't know. Ms. Kelly just keeps telling me I need to bring more lunch money."
"That doesn't make sense. I sent plenty for the whole month. I'll call and see what's going on."
"Okay. Bye Mom."

As soon as he got on the bus, I called the school to figure out how he could possibly be low on lunch funds already. Lo and behold, my dear, darling, lovely six-year-old has been buying breakfast and lunch every day since the beginning of November. !!! No wonder I keep getting statements from the school saying his funds are getting low. I'm only paying them enough for lunch! LOL! So, he's eating breakfast at home every morning, and then going off to school to eat a second breakfast! I'm raising a hobbit!!! ("What about second breakfast?" any Lord of the Rings fans out there?) *LOL* So, I told the lady at the school to put a breakfast block on his account for now to limit the amount he's spending.

When he got home from school today, I asked him if he's been eating breakfast at school. At first, he started to say 'no' but then stopped himself and changed his answer (hallelujah! the child is finally figuring out that we often already know the answers to the questions we ask!) I told him that that was why he was running out of lunch money - because he was spending his lunch money on breakfast instead of lunch. I don't think he realized it was costing money every time he got breakfast. They don't actually exchange money for food - it's all done on account, so he would really have no way of knowing how much he was 'spending' at each meal. He told me he was sorry and he didn't mean to use up his money. No big deal - how can I be upset when he never knew, and I never told him. All that's left to do is to pay off the $15 deficit I owe the school at the moment...and apparently I'm going to have to start feeding the child more at home before he leaves for school!

Holy Moly Batman, You're covered in red spots!

It started yesterday around 3:30, when I got a call at work from Nicole saying Meagan was running a 102.6 fever and was complaining of being dizzy (I didn't even know she knew what dizzy meant, but apparently so!) and saying her thumb hurt really badly. So, I packed up and left work earlier than planned. When I got to Nicole's the kids were having snack, and Meagan seemed to be acting fairly normal, other than when she would get up to walk she was a little woozy, and she screamed like a maniac if anyone even looked at her thumb. We examined her poor little thumb, but it was so black/blue/purple and ugly that we couldn't see anything because of how dark her skin was around the opening. As a precaution, I called and made an appointment with our family doctor for this morning at 8:30. And that was that...for a while.

When we left Nicole's I loaded the kids up in the van and made a bank run. On our way back home, about a block from our house, Meagan says, 'I have a full tummy.' I figured she was full because she had a pretty big snack of pretzels and apple slices, and I didn't think much of it...that is, until we walked into our house and she threw up all over the kitchen floor. 'I spit out on the floor!!!!!' she wailed! I took her coat of (yes, she threw up down the inside of her coat...lovely, isn't it?) and got her into the bathroom and got her cleaned up. So now I'm thinking, is this because of a bug, or is her thumb infected and that's what's causing it. Still, I didn't see anything overly alarming about her thumb, so I decided to wait it out and see how the evening went.

Her fever fluctuated quite a bit through the evening, spiking up but coming back down to a reasonable level with Tylenol. She didn't each anything at all for dinner, but she was drinking fine, so I didn't push the issue. She laid on her Dora beanbag couch (thanks Grandma & Grandpa!!) and watched TV most of the evening. Occasionally she got up and attempted to play with the boys, but she kept finding her way back to Dora...I could tell she wasn't feeling too well. Around 7:30, I went into the living room to check on her, and she had fallen asleep on her Dora couch. When we put the boys to bed at 8:00, we just left her where she was and let her sleep.

When Lucas and I went up to bed around 10:00, she woke up. So, we drug her Dora couch and her blanket up into our room and let her sleep on the floor in our room (we figured she was inevitably going to wind up in our room at some time during the night anyway, so we may as well be proactive and just stick her in there to start with *LOL*). She watched American Idol with us, and eventually fell asleep. She had a rough night, waking up every half hour or so, so I didn't get a lot of sleep, but no worries...I had already braced myself for lots of interrupted sleep.

I was surprised though, when a noise woke me up around 1:30 or so. I figured it was Meagan again, but when I peeked down at her, she was sound asleep. Then I realized our bathroom light was on (funny how things take a minute to register when you're tired). It was Sebastian. He had come into our bedroom - probably to tell me he wasn't feeling well - and ended up in our bathroom getting sick. Poor guy. But any suspicions that Meagan's thumb was causing her sickness went right out the window...now that 2 kids are at it, it's more than likely a bug.

I got Sebastian straightened out, cleaned up, and back into bed (on a blanket on the floor so he could get to the bathroom faster if he needed to). After that, for the most part, the night was pretty uneventful.

We woke up late this morning for the doctor's appointment, so we were kind of rushing around to get dressed and ready. I was in my room looking for clothes for Meagan (because all of our clean kid laundry is in baskets in my room right now), when Sebastian came in. "Mom, my back is really itchy. It's driving me crazy!" I figured he had dry skin, like he often does. I told him to turn around so I could check it out, but I was not expecting what I saw when he picked up his shirt. His entire back, neck, sides, and lower torso, as well as forehead and hairline were covered in red spots all over. My first thought was CHICKEN POX. But at closer look, the spots didn't look like I remembered chicken pox looking. Thankfully, we were heading to the doctor.

Well, as I ultimately suspected, Meagan's thumb was not the trouble. She has a bug that seems to be going around...so does Sebastian. But Sebastian also has some other upper respiratory junk that he had to have an antibiotic for. And what's the deal with the rash? Our doctor said it's an immune system reaction to something his body is fighting off...how getting an itchy rash is supposed to help your body, I have no idea. But he gave him a steroid to treat it. So, obviously, no school for Sebastian today. No church for anyone tonight, and tomorrow is yet to be determined. I guess I'll spend today cleaning the house since I can't really get much work done from home right now. We'll just go with it, and I'll try to get our house germ-free so we can be done with all the yucks! Keep us in your prayers!

Modern version of soap in the mouth

Today was interesting. Pretty normal for the most part, really, except there was no school. So I left work early to go get the kids from Nicole's so we could spend the afternoon together. When I got there, though, she said she was having a language issue with my darling first-born. He decided today to experiment with using naughty words - in particular the a** word. I asked him about it, and he admitted that he had said it. I told him if he wasn't a big enough boy to choose his words better than that, he was going to take a nap like a baby.

When we walked in the house, Lucas was home, so Sebastian had to explain to his dad why he had to take a nap. He got a second round of scolding (and rightly so), then was sent to bed. All was well for a moment. It wasn't long before I went upstairs to check on Meagan, and I caught Sebastian in the middle of his room playing. Hmm...he got himself in some big trouble for that. When Lucas heard that he had disobeyed and gotten out of bed, Lucas went upstairs to have a chat with him. 'Since taking a nap is obviously too easy of a punishment for you and you're not taking it seriously, I guess we'll have to give you something else to do.' So he gave Sebastian the task of cleaning up the entire basement all on his own...while Isaac sat down there and played play station. Ouch. That hurts. It took Sebastian about an hour and a half or so to clean it up...there were a LOT of toys to put away. Not once did he complain. And only once or twice did I have to prompt him to stop watching his brother play and finish his work. All in all, I got a clean basement out of the deal, and I'm pretty sure Sebastian got the point. Let's hope he thinks twice before trying out ugly words again.

Sweet Girls

Here's a layout I finished last night. I had a whole series of pictures of Meagan and Keylee (our neighbor) that I hadn't done anything with yet. A lot of the pictures were blurred because the girls were playing on the swing set, but some of them turned out really cute. Aren't they pretty girls?! I love the sun hitting their blond hair(s) *lol*.

Itty Bitty

I started this layout a few nights ago. I went back and looked at it again last night and decided to totally ditch what I had done and start over...not out anything but time, right?! Tonight I got my 2007 bank accounts reconciled for work, so, to celebrate, I figured I should do some scrapbooking!


This picture is old (LOL)! Sebastian was 5 days old when this was taken. So many things about this picture brought back memories - especially about that house. Sometimes I miss that house - it had cool character (that's code for drafty windows and peeling paint - LOL). But what I remember most from looking at this picture is the rough ride we went through trying to adjust to being parents. For some reason, I had had it in my head that it wasn't going to be as difficult as everyone said. In some ways, it really wasn't. But in many ways, I WAY underestimated the power of the itty bitty baby. I still have to laugh at myself for calling the hospital the night we brought him home! I was freaked out because he kept throwing up on absolutely everything...he just wouldn't stop! I thought I had done something wrong. I mean, he didn't puke like that in the hospital, so why was he doing it now?! But we managed to get our bearings and muddle our way through until we kinda sorta figured out what we were doing.


I remember taking this picture. It was a non-puking, uneventful, peaceful, quiet moment. I grabbed my camera (like always) because it was just so cute the way Sebastian fit so snuggly and perfect in Lucas' lap. Wasn't he cute? Hard to believe he was once that teeny tiny. Man, time flies.


Journaling: Five days into parenthood, we still had lots to learn. But Lucas had already learned all he needed to know...that his lap was the perfect fit for his sleepy, itty bitty baby boy. When you have that figured out, what else could possibly matter more?

The Macaroni Rules

Macaroni and cheese has been the source of much drama in our home for several months now, and last night's dinner was no different. We had the good-ol' mac n cheese standby for dinner, and you would have thought Isaac was going to die from it! He was sent to his room 3 different times to calm down before he ever even took his first bite, and then he was sent a fourth time for throwing a fit because it was cold by then. Sheesh.

I'm not sure what brought about this drastic change in taste. He used to gobble the stuff up, but now it may as well be poison. However, he does have some exceptions to his total macaroni boycott. The rules of macaroni engagement are as follows:

1. Kraft macaroni & cheese is unacceptable. If it's boxed macaroni, with the little skinny noodles, the only hope of cooperation is if it's Meijer Brand. Go figure.
2. Absolutely NO shaped noodles - no cartoons, no seashells, no spirals - especially no spirals! UNLESS....
3. Shapes can be mixed, and then the macaroni is the best food on earth. But only if the combination of shapes includes one box of cartoon shapes and one box of spirals. All other combinations are out of the question.
4. The best hope for macaroni consumption is fat macaroni. By this I mean something like KFC or Bob Evans or Stouffers. Fat macaroni is obviously of a much higher quality, and therefore is more acceptable for his delicate taste buds (or whatever)!

So basically the problem with dinner last night is that I broke all the rules. I served Kraft. No shape combinations. Definitely not fat macaroni. As a result, he went all drama on us, and dinner was one of those dinner-times that we struggled to get to the end of. Poor kid - if he only realized how many dinner-time stand-off's I've endured with Sebastian, maybe he would also realize he would be much better off to just accept his fate and eat the macaroni.

OUCH!

Tuesday was an interesting day. The morning started out great - everyone was listening well, and playing together well, and getting along well....that is, until tooth-brushing time. After Meagan brushed her teeth, something went sour between she and Isaac. They started arguing - I think she was being a pesty little sister and invading his space on the step stool and so forth. I tried to distract her and get her to follow me into my room while he finished up, but my plan didn't work as I'd hoped. I went, but she didn't follow. The next thing I realized, I heard the door shut, and Meagan start crying. I figured he had gotten her out of the bathroom somehow and shut the door and made her mad. But quickly the scream escalated to a shriek, and I knew there was something more to it than she was mad.

I walked back around the corner to find the door shut on her thumb...I mean all the way shut. So, I tried to open the door...it was LOCKED. So now we have Meagan screaming and trying to rip her thumb out of the door, I'm pounding on the door trying to scream louder than Meagan so Isaac can hear me, but he has his head in the sink with the water running. I pounded on the door and yelled for Isaac to open it, to which he responded, 'I'm brushing my teeth, just a minute.' 'OPEN THE DOOR NOW OR I'LL KICK IT IN!' He opened the door, and her thumb was freed.

She looked at her thumb, then looked at me and said, 'Mom, I think I need a band-aid!!!' Then she stuck her hand up over her head (so, the blood was gushing in her hair...ew). So, we got gathered up and ready. I took Isaac to Nicole's and Meagan and I headed to the ER.

After x-rays and lots of people peeking and examining, they determined that there was nothing broken or dislocated internally. Externally was a different story - NASTY. The doctor wanted to stitch the cut, but he said the tissue was too soft and torn, and stitches would pull through the skin - YUCK! They had to burn a hole in her fingernail to relieve pressure and then put a gauze splint on her thumb. Let me tell you, she didn't appreciate having a hole burnt in her finger! She yelled at the doctor, 'I DON'T LIKE THAT HOT THIIIIIIING!' And every time someone would look at it but not fix it, she would say, 'IT'S NOT ALL BETTER YET! YOU HAVE TO FIX IT!' The doctor just laughed and said, 'Wow, she has an opinion about things, doesn't she?' That doctor has no idea (LOL).

When we got back, Isaac gave her a big hug and apologized. She said, 'That's okay Isaac. It just hurts.' What a goofball she is.

We went back today for a follow-up at our family doctor. He took the splint off and checked it out. She's healing fine, although it looks ugly! Then he just put 2 band-aids on it (she finally got her band-aid). She still refuses to use her right hand for anything, but I'd say she'll be just fine.

Oh Mut Pun

Meagan is still hanging on to Christmas, and she's doing it in the form of Jingle Bells. She walks around the house singing it. She sits at the dinner table and sings it. She commands the rest of us to join in. She is a Jingle Bell maniac.

I have to admit, Jingle Bells is not one of my favorite Christmas songs to begin with, so under normal circumstances, I would have grown quite tired of hearing it sung over and over by now. But I have to forgive her, and, I even sometimes encourage her to sing it, because when she sings it it's funny. Her version is, 'Jingle Bells, jingle bells, jingle a du bay. Oh mut pun it is to ride in a [mumble mumble] horse say. HEY!'

I gotta say, OH MUT PUN gets me every time!

Did I hear a 'Roger' in there?

Aah, the sounds of morning at our house...wake up on a Sunday morning, to the peaceful sound of ....

BEEEEEEEEEEEP....'(crackle crackle) I'm upstairs playing Legos. What are you doing? (crackle crackle)'

'(static, crackle) Roger. I'm in the basement. Over.'

BEEEEP... 'Roger that. Are you having fun? Over.'

And the conversation went on for several minutes in much the same fashion...a normal conversation being held in the midst of static and Rogers and Overs. I laid there and listened to them for a minute, smiling to myself. Then I rolled over, and opened my eyes a crack, only to find Lucas looking back at me. 'Did I hear a Roger in there?' We both cracked up laughing. What a classic moment in raising boys. Gotta love waking up to the sound of walkie-talkies!

Put it in perspective

Well, I thought I was having a bad day yesterday...until I got a call from Nicole saying that Sebastian was covered in puke, and could I please come get him so he could change his clothes. That's all it took to change my perspective - apparently my day wasn't going so badly after all. I guess he was on the bus and a little girl nearby just sort of lost it...in Sebastian's general direction. It got on his coat, his pants, and a little speck (that he completely had a cow about) on his lunchbox. So I rushed home to rescue him and spent part of my evening washing someone else's kid's throw-up...eww. But all in all, relatively speaking anyway, my day wasn't so bad after all.

Old School

What a funny way to spend the evening. We had some running around to do yesterday, so after dinner, we all loaded into the van and headed out. We stopped at Meijer for a few errands...get the boring stuff out of the way. Then we headed to Wal-Mart for some shopping with Christmas money. Meagan picked out another set of furniture for her doll house, and Lucas bought 2000 wii points (I looked at stuff for my ipod but couldn't make up my mind, so I decided to wait). When we got home, we used the wii points to download games - OLD SCHOOL games, like from the very first Nintendo system that we had when we were kids! Lucas picked Legend of Zelda, and I picked Super Mario 3....I LOVE that game! Erica and I used to spend hours in front of the tv playing 2-player Super Mario.

We played a little. Then we let the boys have a turn - I think the 2-D threw them off. Maybe the games were so simple they were complicated? When the kids went to bed, Lucas and I played 2-player Mario for about 2 hours. We didn't get very far, and we kept having to hit continue (especially for Lucas) because we kept running out of lives. But it was lots of fun! We laughed quite a bit. It's funny, I played so much when I was little that I still kind of remember where the secrets are almost twenty years later. I had forgotten how much I used to enjoy playing Mario. Aah, childhood memories...LOL! Gotta love old school games! Now I'm just waiting for paperboy! LOL!

Night off

What a nice husband I have! Last night he bought dinner (Rally's just opened here in town - I hadn't had Rally's for a LONG time), he put away laundry, he did the dishwasher, and he swept the kitchen floor...and put the kids to bed (after which he crashed, since he was home sick yesterday, and all that work wore him out). And because he did all of that, I was able to talk to my mom on the phone for a while, make two mii's on wii (making mii's is my new addiction by the way), and then come down to the basement to scrapbook. (Wow, this post is making me sound like such a bad wife - LOL!) It was definitely relaxing to have the night off! Here's what I did with my time:


I guess the picture probably looks pretty familiar, since I just posted it yesterday! It's Sebastian playing in the snow on New Year's Day. I adore the look of pure joy on his face. He's such a cutie!

New Year's Day

A few days late, I know, but HAPPY NEW YEAR! We spent New Year's Day just hanging out and enjoying life. Lucas went out to clear the driveway and sidewalks, and we all followed him out to play in the snow. I got the kids all bundled up, handed them some buckets, grabbed my camera (of course), and out the door we went.

They tried to build a snow fort, or a snow man (either one would have done fine for them), but neither one worked. Not quite the right kind of snow for building. It almost stayed together, but then crumbled in the end. Oh well. They were more than happy to resort to snow angels (or snow belly-flops as Isaac's version goes). They hid in the tree 'snow fort', which was basically a low-hanging branch of one of our pine trees that was weighed down with snow. They even attempted snow balls (which really didn't work so well, for the same reason the snow man and snow fort didn't work, but they still had fun trying). And they made a big game out of making a million tracks in the snow.

I'd say we were out for about an hour. When we finally headed inside (once my camera battery died LOL, and Lucas was done with the snow blowing), we had homemade apple pie and hot chocolate to warm up. Other than that, we played wii, and just hung out. We had a great New Year. I hope you all enjoyed the holidays - and Dad, I hope you had a happy birthday - sorry I missed you when I called.

Tomorrow is the last weekday of Sebastian's school break. Monday he heads back to school, and we have to work to get back to our 'normal' schedule, whatever that is. I'm not working tomorrow, so I'm thinking we'll head to motor development in the morning, and maybe the library in the afternoon before nap. (Maybe the library will be pushing it? We'll see).

Not a resolution...more like an 'I'd like to"

I have to laugh at myself. I was reading some old blog posts, just looking back over the year 2007, and I read one that indicated I felt really bad about missing ONE day of blogging! LOL! Now I think I'm doing great if I get something posted every couple of days! My how times change...actually I think it might have something to do with the projects going on at work that seem to be commanding quite a bit of my attention for the last few months. The good news is I can see the light - I really truly expect it to level off within the next month-ish. Keeping my fingers crossed and plugging along until I get there.

I'm definitely not making any promises, but I really would LIKE to get back to posting more often. I think when I blog it forces me to rethink the day, and the little things that have happened that I might otherwise forget about. Like I was just rereading a post from last Feb. when I got my grocery cart stuck in the snow. I had totally forgotten about it, but when I read that post again, it all came back to me...that was a pretty funny experience actually.

I'm not one for resolutions for the new year, but this will be one of my goals for the year - to post at least 14 posts each month...think I can do it? I hope! I'll try...