Have you seen Photos that Changed the World? Wow. Check it out.

Also, do you want to learn to do 100 pushups or 200 situps in six weeks? Because apparently this is possible, no matter what your current limit is. They have this plan…er…it’s supposed to increase the number of reps gradually…but I…well……….BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Because SERIOUSLY?  One hundred is a lot of pushups! I can do like 8 girly pushups. But the hubby and I are going to try the program. It seems simple enough. You do an initial test to see how many reps you can currently do and then based on that, it suggests a program that increases day by day.  I don’t see myself being able to build up as fast as the program wants me to do. But we’ll see what happens. It seems like a reasonable idea. Still, I’ll likely be begging for mercy before the end of the week. Hold me! 

I’d say I’m going to update on our progress, but I probably won’t, because SWEET MOTHER OF MERCY TWO HUNDRED BLESSED SITUPS!!!! Let’s never speak of this again. Forget I said anything.

good stuff, links | 3 Comments »

So, as I mentioned, things were busy this past week. Some of our activities were more fun (read: less insane) than others. 

For example, going to the Boston Children’s Museum the week of winter vacation? Not smart. It seems that all of New England came out to visit the museum the same day we did and I have to say that I have a hard time enjoying these places when other peoples’ obnoxious kids are tearing around shrieking loud enough to shatter glass. Still, it’s a cool place and the kids had tonnes of fun, despite my bad attitude.

As a side note, I’ve decided that I need to chill the hell out and stop being so uptight when it comes to bubbles. In the past the kids are so excited about bubble blowing but I’ve been the bubble bottle nazi, holding the bottle for them and trying to keep them from getting soaked with soapy water. Because OMG SOAPY WATER ON THEIR CLOTHES!?!?!?! THE HORROR!!! I know, right? What kind of mother is so completely anal about soap??? This summer I’m going to complete the first in an ongoing series of de-anal-izing Lose Weight Exercises and make a huge tub of bubble water and let them go crazy with it outside. Because seriously? They could have stayed in the bubble room at the children’s museum all freaking day and if it would entertain them for a fraction of that time this summer, it would be worth it!

I also mentioned that we made the trek to the closest Rainforest Cafe with the kids last week. What I didn’t realize is that, like the children’s museum, the Rainforest Cafe is the destination du jour around here during vacation week. We arrived at the mall a couple of hours before lunch and spent some time shopping. When we finally got around to the restaurant we were told the wait was TWO AND HALF HOURS, which, I’m sorry, is just too long to wait with kids who are already tired and hungry. But the result of telling a tired and hungry 5 year old that her patience, which had been garnered only with promises of an exciting lunch-time experience, was all for naught, was…well…heartbreaking. She is such a good girl, my daughter. She didn’t throw a tantrum. There was no screaming or throwing herself to the floor. But the tears welled up and her disappointment was just so genuine. I totally understood her feelings and I can’t even say how incredibly stupid I felt for not putting our name on the damn list the second we walked INTO the mall, several hours before. We ended up eating elsewhere and promising to come back another time.

The other major destination of the week was Disney on Ice which was performing in Boston, again, over the school break. After our foray into the children’s museum I was a bit concerned about being confined to a seat for several hours, surrounded by other people’s annoying children, all hyped up on sugar and whipped into a trademarked-character-inspired frenzy. But fate was kind to us and we had pretty good seats and were surrounded by reasonably well-behaved children and parents. Watching my kids experience a show like this for the first time was truly magical and I enjoyed every minute. Seeing the show from their perspective, and their uncomplicated delight at each unexpected costume change or flying character. Misdirection totally fulfills its potential when the audience is mostly children and not cynical adults. 

So that’s what we’ve been up to. Now that we’re all caught up, tell me what you did last week.

Boston, catch up, kids | 2 Comments »

Hi there! Remember me? The so-called author of this little blog? Ring a bell? 

So yeah. I’ve been AWOL for a bit doing all kinds of things. Things like eating out at a restaurant where both my kids punctured holes in their styrofoam cups with their straws within half an hour and created geysers of milk all over the table (Dear Texas Roadhouse, Please invest in plastic cups. ASAP.).

We’ve been busy getting over strep throat and colds and, apparently, brewing up a new batch of colds, too.

We’ve also been hanging out with one of our dearest friends from home who is out visiting us. We’ve been having fun of all kinds including getting up too early, staying up too late, eating loads of sugar, flashing lights, hordes of shrieking children and driving 45 minutes to take the kids to the Rainforest Cafe where there was a two and a half hour wait which we were not prepared for, resulting in one totally devastated little girl who did her mama proud when she didn’t loseWeight Exercise her shit when we walked away and ate elsewhere.

It’s been rainbows and unicorns, people. Rainbows and unicorns. More to come! Tune in tomorrow (or some time soon) for pictures.

catch up | 2 Comments »

Won’t you be my [freaky] valentine?

May you always have someone to cheer you on…

…and enough sparkle in your life to keep things interesting!

quirky kids, valentine's day | 3 Comments »

So what’s been going on around here lately? Well, besides all of us doing multiple daily shots of penicillin, we’ve been all over the napping and kleenex scenes. Because that’s just how we roll.

My daughter has recently become obsessed with the idea of having long hair and can frequently be found with her head tilted back at an impossible angle, trying to create the feeling of locks that reach down her back. The problem is, what she is imagining is this:

But what she’ll likely end up with, if she grows it out, will be more like this:

The reason I know this is because her hair is just like mine and as much as I’ve always wanted thick, long, supermodel hair, wishing just doesn’t make it so. However, I understand that it will likely take experience with thin and stringy long hair before she is actually ready to accept this fact, so I’m trying to prepare myself for dealing with the funny-looking hair for a few years if she really does follow through with this.

She has also decided that it’s well past time for her 5 and a half year old self to be shedding her baby teeth. She has been walking around wiggling them so vigourously that if they weren’t loose before, they WILL BE SOON. What she will do when she has a mouthful of loose teeth from constant wiggling, or NO TEETH when they all fall out, I don’t know!

Also, my son woke up from his nap today wearing his socks on his hands like mittens. He’s done it a couple of times before and I suspect he put them on his hands before falling asleep and it’s just all kinds of adorable. I suspect it will be less so if he does it when he becomes a bigger and smellier boy with much stinkier socks.

On the home front, there is enough sludge growing in my toilets to execute a hostile takeover of our home and enough dustbunnies in the corners to eat the children. The result of several weeks of sickness. I plan to give my husband clean toilets for Valentine’s Day because I’m romantic that way.

And now, a short rant: Avery’s class has a strict no-food party policy. We are not allowed to send in treats for birthdays or holidays. Some people feel this is excessive but frankly, I find it refreshing. It takes off a lot of pressure for parents and especially for those in the class who maybe can’t afford to bring in treats. Also our kids don’t get pumped full of sugar on a weekly basis at school. But apparently Valentine’s Day doesn’t qualify because despite the rule, Avery came home with a veritable bucket full of chocolate and candy received from classmates for V-Day. I guess the rule-follower in me just can’t handle the mass mutiny against the kindergarten rule of law. Also, is it really a common practice for people to buy gifts for teachers on Valentine’s Day? Because I love teachers as much as the next parent, hell, both my parents are teachers! But I’m just not willing to shell out the cash for gifts beyond Christmas and the end of the school year. Guess I’m just a cheap shmuck.

We are now coming to the end of our daily disjointed blog post. Please wait until the rambling has come to a full stop before exiting the blog. Have a nice day folks.

catch up, quirky kids | 9 Comments »

Daryl tagged me to blab all about myself on the internet and a few people tagged me on Facebook as well. So let’s kill a couple birds with one stone!

1. I believe that I am a person who causes Street Light Interference. Street lights go out while I walk or drive underneath them very frequently. More than can reasonably attributed to chance. 

2. I love old black and white pictures. I collect and frame pictures of both my husband’s and my own ancestors and I plan to post about that at some point in future.

3. I have a heart murmur. They can be quite serious but mine isn’t and it always freaks physicians out when they hear it for the first time and anxiously ask me if I know that I have a heart murmur.

4. I never thought I’d want to live by the ocean but I’ve fallen in love with the view from my bedroom window.

5. Right now I can see people walking out on that rocky outcropping.

6. Most of those rocks are covered during high tide.

7. I hope those people get back before the tide comes in. Apparently people don’t always make it in time and get stranded way out at the end where it doesn’t get covered by high tide.

8. My sisters are identical twins. Because I know how annoyed they often got by no one being able to tell them apart, I always try to find a way to distinguish between twins when I meet them.

9. I almost never take my jewelry off. I wear my wedding/engagement rings and a ring that belonged to my grandmother and a pendant that my husband gave me a few years ago. It’s too annoying to take them off and put them on daily. I change my necklace if I want to wear something different for the rare occasion. But mostly it’s just the same old, same old. 

10. I’m kind of a hugger. At least with people I know are huggers like me. I like hugs. But if I know people are uncomfortable I try not to do it.

11. I bake bread for my family. Mostly because all the whole wheat bread in the states has high fructose corn syrup in it and the stuff that doesn’t costs like $5/loaf. At least around where I live. It makes me feel good to be able to make something that’s such a staple in our diet.

12. I love buffalo chicken sandwiches. If a restaurant has a buffalo chicken sandwich on the menu I have a really hard time not ordering it. Strangely, I am not a huge fan of buffalo chicken wings. Except if they are boneless. I’m a big fan of what seems to be the latest craze – boneless wings. But I’ll happily order just about any other flavour of bone-in wings. Just not buffalo.

13. I’m not a real crafty person, but it’s not for lack of desire. The crafts I do ok at usually involved cutting and pasting paper together.  I’m reasonably good at copying ideas I have found online.

14. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for adoption. The hubby and I are planning to add a third child to our family via adoption, hopefully within the next few years.

15. I had an extremely strong aversion to salsa during my entire first pregnancy. It was milder in my second pregnancy, but certainly not a favourite food. I quite like salsa normally.

16. I can see the Graves Light from my living room window.

17. I’m a huge believer in that Better is Better.

18. I kill (or fail to protect) houseplants, even when I try not to.

19. I have a lot of freckles, but not the delicate and cute, tiny ones. The big ugly splotchy ones. I look like I was spattered by mud. Particularly on my arms.

20. I don’t own a raincoat. I really need a raincoat.

21. The hubby and I were given five coolers for wedding gifts. We returned three.

22. My dad is a big joker. Once when I was a kid I went with him to his school (he’s a teacher) and he must have made a joking comment while disarming the alarm system about there being dogs that would attack if he didn’t press the buttons quick enough. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I made the realization that there couldn’t possibly be a pack of ferocious dogs in cages beneath the floors of a local elementary school, just waiting to tear intruders to pieces. But every time I went there with my dad I felt anxious until he had punched in his code to turn off the alarm.

23. My biggest baby weighed 10 pounds 12 ounces. I thought that was big. But since delivering him I’ve met mothers of bigger babies who delivered naturally (I delivered via c-section). I’m SO GLAD I had him via c-section!!!

24. My kitchen/dining room is currently a disaster because every piece of clothing my kids have worn from birth until those they have most recently outgrown is strewn about. I am in the midst of organizing, sorting, washing ironing and photographing them so that I can sell them on craigslist. This is proving to be a frickin’ HUGE task. Post to come about this as well.

25. While working on this list I have experienced fever, chills, severe aching in my joints, swollen glands and a throat that feels like it’s on fire. Yet, according to the rapid strep test I had at the doctor today I do not have strep throat, even though both my kids have strep and have been breathing, sneezing, coughing and drooling all over me all week.

narcissism | 4 Comments »

When it comes to health issues it appears that my daughter is a friggin’ episode of House on account of the fact that she refuses to be a textbook case of – well – anything.

As a newborn, Avery encountered a number of issues including jaundice, thrush, difficulty breastfeeding and colic. Any one of those could have been responsible for a baby that cried all the effing time a lot. After six weeks of this we threw up our hands in despair.  We made countless trips to our doctor’s office and three ER visits before we finally got a diagnosis of a raging urinary tract infection. Why was this missed on the previous visits? Because the child never, not once, developed a fever of any kind. Fever being one of the most important indicators of an infection, particularly in a tiny little infant, it takes special threats persistence to get doctors to listen to you when you have a baby that cries a lot but has no fever. She spent two weeks on oral antibiotics was still sick. And still had no fever. A week on IV antibiotics eventually cleared up the infection. But her temperature never went up one fraction of a degree.

In the years following she had her share of ear infections and other illnesses. The only thing that ever caused her to run a fever was teething and an occasional benign virus.  Never the more serious stuff where fever is supposed to indicate a problem.

For the past two weeks the girl has been fighting one hell of a virus with the accompanying fever and other fun but generic cold symptoms. The past week she stopped eating food and after enough days of that some mothers might get a little anxious and rush to the ER make a doctor’s appointment. Both our doctor and his supervisor examined her thoroughly. One of their first questions was if strep had been going around at school. But upon examining her throat they found very little redness and swelling and she insisted her throat was not sore. Those symptoms being the major indicators of strep, both doctors agreed she likely didn’t have it. After ruling out a variety of other illnesses they declared her healthy and suffering from a nasty virus. But just to be sure, they ran the swab and test for strep. 

She tested positive.

All of us were baffled but sure enough, after a couple of doses of antibiotics she’s well on her way to being her energetic and ravenous self.  Awesome. So next time I’ll just ask for a team of top-notch diagnosticians to examine and test my daughter and her mysterious-illnesses-that-turn-out-to-be-straightforward-problems-with-unusual-presentations.

Avery, medical, sick | No Comments »

I’m playing Inside the Blogger’s Studio with Beth from So the Fish Said. Below are the questions she offered up for her readers to answer. If you want to play, follow these instructions and I’ll (eventually) send you some questions to answer on your blog.

The rules:

1. Leave me a comment saying you want to be interviewed. 
2. I’ll email you five questions of my choosing.
3. You update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. They will answer these questions. If they don’t, you can post naked pictures of them on the internet. (I can help with the Photoshopping.)

*****************************************************

1.  Remember the movie Brewster’s Millions? That happens to you, except on a smaller scale.  You receive a million dollars that you must spend in 30 days.  However, you cannot have any assets to show for the money at the end of the month (and you can’t buy something and then destroy it), you cannot waste the money, you cannot give it away, and you cannot tell anyone what you are doing.  How do you ditch the dough in a month or less?

• I’d lie. I’d lie and tell family and friends that I won some kind of contest or lottery and spend the money on travelling in style for the duration of the month and taking as many of the people I love along with me as I could.

2.  You are locked in a toy store overnight, with no way out until it reopens in the morning.  What do you play with all night?

• Am I a child in this scenario? Because as an adult I could see myself getting bored kind of fast.  If I was a kid I would have been all over the dolls, barbies, and dress up clothes. Probably paper dolls, stuffed animals and books, too. I was a girly girl. As an adult, I’d build a huge pile of stuffed animals and go to sleep. Because at least I’d be guaranteed an uninterrupted night’s sleep!

3.  If you could have a dinner party with any three famous people, living or dead, you would be wasting your supernatural powers on hosting dinner parties.  What would you do instead?

• My super powers would likely involve cleaning my house without lifting a finger. Because the world would be a better place if my toilets were less grungy and if I didn’t hear crunching when I walk across my floors.

4.  What’s the best thing since sliced bread?  Now, sliced bread ain’t all that impressive, so what’s the best mediocre, hum-drum improvement or advancement that has made modern life just ever so slightly more convenient for humanity, along the lines of saving yourself five seconds every time you want a piece of bread.

• I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Dustbusters. Dustbusters are absolutely the best thing since sliced bread!

5.  What’s your best quality?  The response to this question must be a simple declarative statement.  You may elaborate on that statement, provided that your elaboration does not include the words “but,” “however,” or “although,” or any other hedging, equivocating, back-sliding, gerrymandering (which is not at all appropriate in this context, but I think it should be, don’t you?) or any other type of backing down from the simple declarative statement with which you began your response.

• It’s hard to say. I think my best quality is loyalty. I work hard to maintain friendships and I am devoted to the people with whom I have good relationships. I am caring and encouraging and invest my time and energy in my close relationships. (Oooh it’s hard not to add ‘but” or ‘although’!!!)

narcissism | 5 Comments »

My son is a masochist. There’s no denying it. During a visit to the doctor’s office this week he was more than a little disappointed by the fact that he didn’t receive a shot. He was only somewhat placated by having his temperature taken. Rectally.

Dear Son,

Sorry about discussing your hind quarters on the internet. Call it a momentary lapse in judgement that keeps on giving for the rest of life as you know it.

Your loving mother

Kieran, quirky kids | 1 Comment »