Sunday, September 30, 2007

name that movie

sexual chocolate

quote of the day

"i gave the kids the little flashlight from your car and somehow they managed to remove parts of the anodized aluminum and coat it in marshmellow."

aaron just informed me of this.


hmmmm. he just showed me the flashlight too and indeed there are parts of the metal that are coming off. aaron says he has no idea how they did it since it's pretty much molecularly bonded to the maglite. and i don't know about the marshmellow part but one entire end of it is covered in that sticker residue stuff that occurs when you remove those pesky price labels from store items. yet another problem with getting things home from the store and then wrestling with said item and spending far too long getting it ready for use (see last post). don't get me started.

anyway, i was compelled to share.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

on the mend

ugh. andie is getting over pink eye in both eyes and is nearly better, kieran has a persistent cough, and today i was sick all day with a combination of a migraine and all-over achiness and sore throat head-cold thingy. not fun. i finally took something this evening and am just now feeling okay with light and sound and moving. so that's nice.

but we did get our regular weekend project done. okay, aaron did. come to think of it, he also executed last week's weekend project of re-doing our bathroom. and the brick alongside the driveway. so, today he ran a gas line outside for the gas grill we acquired from a friend a year ago. now that it's ready to go we decided to scrap the old thing and wait for some sweet getting-rid-of-grills deals at the home improvement stores. oh, and speaking of home improvement stores, did i mention that Home Depot is andie's favorite store? yeah, not at all what we expected but the girl loves it. after running a couple errands this morning i was fading fast and needed to head home to rest, kieran decided to hang out with me. aaron asks andie if she wants to go to the store with him, "can we go to Home Depot?" lucky girl, she was in luck. she would come home later, merrily announcing to me "we went to Home Depot!" last week after the bathroom re-do she bragged about getting the faucet with daddy. i suddenly flash to andie as a perky, blonde 20-something jackhammering out concrete in someone's basement, working as aaron's apprentice.

also today, andie got a Barbie type doll. don't get me wrong, she's still totally into the power rangers and cars and trucks, but we happened to be at a toy store and she held both a pregnant Midge doll holding a baby and a creepy looking Hillary Duff figure. she opted for the pregnant doll. we got the thing home and forgot about it for several hours. then, as i was feeling like the living dead and andie was getting restless and aaron was working on the gas line, i remembered the doll and began the process of extricating her from her plastic and wire twisty-tie prison. for the love of pete, children's toys are IMPOSSIBLE to remove from their packaging! why oh why do these things have to be so challenging??? there is nothing worse than on christmas and birthdays when the kids have a million new toys and they have to play with each one right now and mom and dad spend the next two hours sweating, cursing, breaking nails, and cursing some more just to get the stupid things out! anyway, we got the Midge doll out. a bit unnerving though, her big pregnant removable belly, barely contained by her trendy denim mini dress. her tiny pregnant feet in bright pink stilettos. actually, that sounds like every Barbie doll doesn't it? why would a pregnant one wear flats and jeans with a big, giant maternity panel. that would just be silly.

***

a lovely morning glory:

the whole porch covered in 'em. don't look at the dead mum in the basket. or the drooping hanging baskets. ...or the bad lawn. but hey, check out those morning glories!
i kid you not, andie got into her little jeep and chirped to me, "i'm going to Home Depot!"
another andie shot-like her new haircut?
i love this smile. what a great boy.
with grandpa :)
awww, poor kid, look at those eyes. i know this is black and white, but i can assure you the eyes were definitely pink.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

all quiet on the midwestern front

praise the lord, my baby has a pulse! ...and by "baby" i mean "laptop", and by "has a pulse" i mean "has a new cord". anyway, it's been hard getting by without it, i was having some withdrawal symptoms. i'd find my fingers "air-typing", if you will, pretending to log into my e-mail. i'd dream of various fonts and double click in my sleep. i can't believe how much i've missed this little ole machine! what on earth did we do before laptops and cell phones??

so anyway, i am just absolutely swell. i've been hating the 90 degree weather recently, i can't believe how much better i feel when it's cooler out. 68 degrees is just perfect if you ask me. being hot just puts me on edge, i've never been a big summer girl. but fall, now i am all over that. the slight chill in the air, the leaves starting to change, the pumpkins, harvesting the fields, bonfires. love it, love it, love it. i think things are supposed to start cooling off again, so that's good.

the kids are great, kieran's loving kindergarten, lots of new friends, new activities, fun teacher. i help assemble folders every friday. the start time is insanely early, if you ask me, 7:45am, but we're making it work. this friday is his school's walk-a-thon, i'm so happy that the year he started school is the same year they decided to surrender the previous fundraisers there were doing--you know the soliciting neighbors to buy magazine subscriptions and candy--in lieu of donations for a walk-a-thon. yaa haw! those sales-y once are soooooo challenging! i know lots of schools do them, and i was all geared up to hit up the friends and relatives for it but it's a relief to just ask for donations.

and andie is doing very well at mother's morning out, she walks right in, washes her hands and waves happily at me "bye mommy!" she and a little boy named aiden are apparently two peas in a pod and it's adorable to see them greet each other. the center director recently told me again "andie just cracks me up! do you just laugh all day, does she crack you guys up?" andie is a little chatterbox, i pick her up and she just goes on and on, "mommy, i painted at school, i had a fun time! there's an aiden at my school! he's my friend! i bet he's there tomorrow!" she's started used this phrase "i bet", very cute. and she's known for picking out socks of two different colors.

so, that's us in a nutshell. keep your fingers crossed for that lovely fall weather :)

Sunday, September 23, 2007

all is well

boy, it's been quite a while since my last post. everything's fine, although my laptop quite working out of the blue last week. turns out the AC adaptor, whatever that is, is totally dead so I'm waiting for a new cord. the machine itself is fine, thank god.

i'll post a few pictures of other people kids and i'll try to return in the near future with more to say. i'm completely boring right now.







Wednesday, September 12, 2007

pics from before IKEA

out goofballs hanging out, smiling, eating, kieran doing homework. just a regular day :)








Monday, September 10, 2007

note to self : don't bring kids to IKEA next time

went to IKEA yesterday. and don't get me wrong, the kids were amazing, several car hours and then shopping for several more, not their #1 favorite thing to do on a sunday.

and even though they were great, one would still wander off to look at something, one would stand up in the cart, one would jump and skip alongside an isle filled with glass items, one would laugh maniacally (how do you spell that??) and disturb other shoppers (actually, both kids do that-it's hard shushing your kids when they're laughing but it's frequently high-pitched and shrill). so they were just being kids, but on an hours-long drive, then an hours-long shopping trip all our nerves were fried and we were so ready to return home.

oh, and did i mention the inaccurate directions (curse you google maps, aaron's idea--we will both be rekindling our romance with mapquest, with our tails between our legs, shamed for having cheated), several bathroom stops, directions requests, traffic halt for parade. oh crazy day.

aaron and i are trying to get organized. we've been talking about getting a dumpster and throwing a ton of junk from our basement in there, we have sooooooo much junk to get rid of. but in the meantime we want to get organized and ran to IKEA to buy more junk. but it's organizational junk.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

labor day





















we had a really nice labor day, we went to my parents' lakehouse a little south of here with a few friends. it was a fun impromptu trip, the kids (& aaron) played in the water quite a bit, we grilled, the kids fished, it was a great time.

Sunday, September 02, 2007

soccer

kieran and a couple of his friends have started soccer on friday nights. it's crazy-an hour and half long! man! after working through his first week of kindergarten and getting up way early, the poor kid was nearly falling down by the end of soccer! it was really cute though, all these little kids running in all directions, sometimes actually making contact with the ball.

ready for advice from the coach:

our boy in the lead, yay! only....upon closer inspection, it seems that kieran is oblivious to the fallen boy next to him, as well as the ball behind him and continues running ahead. running to the wrong goal, something he did for about half the game. but most of these little tykes were aiming for the wrong goal, so who's counting?

dad and kier:

andie is incredibly bored by the soccer:

another bored soccer sibling, our buddy julia:

soccer sibling #3, oscar, or"baby oxer"-as andie calls him:

the little ox:

my poor "arm"

**well, i'm going to avoid posting my usual warning for mr.b, i'm thinking that in this post if i need to use the word "uterus" i'll write the word arm instead. clever, huh? let's hope it makes sense....

so, i should make sure to mention that no, i'm not expecting-no babies-but way to pay attention to me babble in the last post! i threw that "have a baby" remark in there after i'd written it and thought it might even go unnoticed.

but it's hard not to think about babies, sheesh, seems like there are a ton of them these days! i'm a baby person, i just love a squishy little newborn! but i've been enjoying my kids getting older and more independent lately and andie was...how should i put this...a non-napping, cranky, stubborn baby that didn't sleep through the night until she was over two years of age. we're so happy to have made it here!

unfortunately, my "arm" isn't doing too well. it seems that there just isn't much more to do for it with the exception of, ahem, "amputation" (on second thought, i don't think the whole arm thing is going to work out, i just can't keep up with the analogies). anyway, it's been a challenging year and at this point i have had surgery, taken everything out that shouldn't be there, tried three different pills, and a month ago started injections to stop hormone production and induce an artificial menopause for the second time in a year. i have bled and cramped my way through all of them, and astonishingly, through this injection as well, which i've never heard of anyone doing.

weeks ago found me in the doctor's office yet again, this time i cried and told my gay, male doctor who has never had a menstrual cramp in his life nor does he live with anyone who has, that my quality of life is diminished and that my pain, bleeding, headaches, and hormone imbalance were creating a situation that makes it hard to even care for my children some days. he was sweet, sympathetic, and listened intently as always, and basically told me i am out of options. all they can do is try different hormone combinations and try to numb the pain, but it's not working and there's nothing else they can do until i say i'm done. the burden of saying enough is enough is on me, i'm the only one who can determine how much pain and discomfort is enough. and unfortunately, i'm getting there.....

so, i always thought we would have three children, but i also always thought that because i was young when we started our family, we had the luxury of waiting until kieran and andie got a bit older to see if we wanted to start over with a baby again. but we will probably need to speed things up a bit and move toward that hysterectomy in the near future. the tentative plan is to think about having a baby in the even nearer future. i would hate to sterilize myself and then have regrets about not even trying to have a third child.

we'll see how all this goes, i'm planning to not go in for my next lupron injection this week, which in and of itself is not without complications--hot flashes, migraines, increased risk of osteoporosis. wish me luck going au natural! on the bright side, it couldn't be any worse!

i have been so lucky to have such wonderful family and friends who have helped with the kids at a moment's notice when i'm not well. i can't wait to feel "normal" and hope that pregnancy or hysterectomy, whichever comes first, will get me there!

Saturday, September 01, 2007

it's a new day


well, it's been a good week. kieran and andie are both doing really well at their new schools. kieran's a trouper, getting up an hour earlier than he used to for preschool (6:30am, yikes!), learning the new expectations, eating lunch away from home each day, making new friends, becoming more independent. it's awesome. our only glitch is the drop off, but this isn't new for us, kieran has a hard time with goodbyes and he gets upset when we leave but as soon as mom or dad is out the door he is always fine immediately and tells us what a good day he had. and andie is a typical second kid, goes into her room, hugs us goodbye and proceeds to play with playdough, wash her hands a thousand times, paint, play with friends, have a snack, walk outside with her class. after one day in her two year old class we found out they were going to promote her to the three year old class--we're so proud, we have to brag a little! the director said she "cracks the teachers up" and "she talks in paragraphs"-very chatty and fun. so she's doing really well in the new big kid class, there are fewer kids, fewer meldowns, more painting-yay!

and mommy had time to get work done and time to go to target-ALONE!-for the first time in years! while i'm tempted to say i don't know what i'm going to do with myself, i don't dare-there are soooooooo many things i've been waiting to do during this time! first and foremost, photo editing that i'm incredibly behind in doing, but also regular gym visits, catching up with my scrapbooking, or at least printing out recent family photos, painting bookcases and bedframes i haven't had time to paint, organizing and throwing out old toys, purchasing and hanging new artwork, grocery shopping sans kids, researching new cell phone plans, learning to quilt, have a baby, read new books, taking adult ed classes, cleaning the carpets (okay, maybe i'll make aaron do this one).

kids in school, mom gets a break-it's win/win :)


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