Smokers don't walk up the escalators

Just something I've noticed over the past few months.

In my office, there are escalators that run just inside one of the main smokers' areas for our building. I have to use these escalators everday. Generally speaking, everyone in our office walks up and down the escalators and considers it to be rude if you stand on the escalator, preventing everyone else from making a speedy floor-change.

But I always look forward to the times when I get behind a smoker on the escalator so that I can stand behind them and be lazy - I have yet to see a smoker who will walk up the escalators. It's nice... except for the nasty smokey smell that you have to deal with being down-wind from them. It's best to stay about 5 steps behind them.

Death warmed over

Spent yesterday feeling like death warmed over. Which was actually better than my husband, who was feeling like death... period. He couldn't move and could barely get out of bed. At one point in the afternoon, I came downstairs to find him laying on the hardwood floors outside the bathroom. He apparently got too light-headed to make it back to the couch or back into the bathroom to try to throw up.

To top it off, I had jury duty yesterday. I got up with a pain in my stomach, thinking that it must just be hunger, I showered, got ready and attempted to eat a bowl of cereal. The pain didn't seem to get much better. After sitting in the jury assembly room all morning and luckily not getting put on a jury selection panel - during which time wave after wave of nausea came over me - I realized that there must be something wrong with me.

I ate half a banana during naptime for the kids, hoping that it would stay down and what little energy it afforded me might get me through the evening with both kids, basically on my own, since hubby was a puddle of pain on the couch all afternoon/night. I actually managed to cook our traditional Tuesday night fish sticks and mac-n-cheese, choked down 4 fish sticks and saved all the remaining mac-n-cheese for 2 lunches for the kids and had an extra bowl remaning. It's amazing how much is left over when neither my husband nor I eat. I guess that should tell us something about our serving size...

I'm feeling better today, but still not quite well. I keep making the mistake of trying to eat or drink something and then getting a sharp, shooting pain through my stomach.

I will say this, though. It sucks being sick and having to take care of kids. I don't care who in the super-mommy world says that you just need to suck it up and deal with it. I want my Mommy.

My son, the philosopher

Every night before we put baby boy to bed, we brush teeth, read a book or two, and try to wind down before eventually turning off the lights and putting him into bed. One of the books we've been reading lately is called "Baby's First Bible". He got this as a gift when he was first born and we dug it out recently. It's pretty cool - it condenses the bible down into about 9 different stories!

The first story in the book is about Genesis and everything that God made, then it goes on to the next story about Moses being found in a basket as a baby, David in the Lion's den, baby Jesus being born, Jesus walking on water, and then Jesus rising from the grave. That's about all that's important in the bible, right?!

So, the other night, when we opened the book, baby boy says, "What made God?" (he mistakenly (?) switched the words "made" and "God")

We didn't have an answer for him.

Fire Ants

As you may recall from my previous post about the bugs in Houston, fire ants are a problem around here. They're not super bad here inside the city, but definitely out in the 'burbs, it's a constant battle with the little suckers.

Well, baby boy had his first run-in with them this past weekend. We were at a one-year-old birthday party out in the 'burbs and baby boy had the misfortune of standing for however short a period of time in a fire ant hill.

For those of you not familiar with fire ants, they're quite amazing little creatures. When we lived out in the 'burbs ourselves, I used to actually like to find ant hills and poke them to watch the ants. The amazing thing is that when you touch their ant hill, they almost literally explode out of the ground. If there's anything on top of that hill, it will immediately be covered in ants and once they reach a certain height on that object, they send out a signal to all the other ants to start biting.

Now, what was equally as amazing to see as the fire ants all over him, was the response of all the adults around him! Within seconds, there were 3 or 4 adults on top of him, as well, stripping off his shoes, socks, and shorts to get the fire ants off of him. I was actually not one of those adults. I was in a different area of the playground with baby girl and it just about killed me to not go over and help, but I knew that I needed to keep baby girl away from there and out of harm's way.

Baby boy ended up getting about 30 bites all over his ankles, but never fear, there were no less than 3 pharmacists in attendence with dosing information and Benadryl at the ready.

We kept cortizone cream on the bites for the next few days, but oddly enough, as with mosquito bites, the ant bites never seemed to bother baby boy. Kind of makes me wonder if his skin doesn't have nerve endings in it!...

Baby Girl's doctor visit

We took baby girl to the doctor on Friday for her one-year checkup and once again, she had an ear infection that we didn't know about! The last time we took her to the doctor for a checkup, she had an ear infection, too. He's going to think that we're either the most uncaring parents ever, or that we are horrible sadists that don't care about our children's welfare.

It's neither, really - we're just clueless! When it comes to baby girl and her illnesses, nothing seems to bother her all that much. When she gets a cold, her nose runs and she coughs and that's about it. (apparently she also gets an ear infection) She doesn't run a fever, or have any more trouble than usual with sleeping, and she doesn't pull at her ears or anything that would actually lead one to think, "Hmm. Baby girl must have an ear infection."

Oh well. The visit was uneventful otherwise. She weighed 18.5 lbs and was 30 inches long - that equates to tall and skinny for those of you who are interested. About the 75th percentile in height and 25th in weight. She got her shots and screamed a bunch and then fell asleep in the car on the 2 minute trip home. Poor baby.

But, the most important thing about her these days is that she's started saying, in a nice southern accent (which I will eradicate later, but now it's cute), "Bahy, bahy!" when she waves. She's really starting to try to say words now and we're sure that she said "fish" while we were in the doctor's waiting room after we pointed out all the pictures of fish on the walls. :)

At a loss

I'm at a complete loss as to what to post on my blog today, but I feel that I should write something since I've been absent lately.

I've been busy at work this week, trying to update 55 drawings with approximately 130 different comments that were given to us in a meeting last week. It's been a Herculean task and one that I accomplished with the level of detail of (is there some greek god that was known for lack of detail?). Which means that I finished the job in the time allotted by the schedule, but will require endless more hours to actually fix what I've haphazardly done. But, the schedule is king and long live the king!!

In other news, we're finally getting our landscaping done! We first met with the landscape architect back in May and fast as a whippet, they're actually getting the work done in October. (Whippet reference especially for my mother, who was a Minden Whippet!) We're getting cobbles put in our back "yard" and more cobbles and some supposedly "low-maintenance" plants in our front courtyard. After dreaming about this for 5 months, I still can't believe it's finally going to happen - I'll believe it when I see it.

And on a final note, I thought I'd share a portion of a really cute e-mail that I got from a friend the other day:

A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds, "What does love mean?" The answers they got were broader and deeper than they imagined:

"When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love."
Rebecca- age 8

"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth."
Billy - age 4

"Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs."
Chrissy - age 6

"Love is what makes you smile when you're tired."
Terri - age 4

"Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK."
Danny - age 7

"Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen."
Bobby - age 7

"If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,"
Nikka - age 6 (we need a few more Nikkas)

"Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well."
Tommy - age 6

"You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget."
Jessica - age 8


Love to you all!!

Baby Girl turns One

Today is Baby Girl's birthday! It's hard to believe that she's already one year old. She's really turning into a little person these days and it's so much fun to watch.

My whole family has been here since Thursday last week and they're leaving today. Baby Boy is going to be very upset that they're leaving him. He has so much fun with Grandma 'Braska (grandma from Nebraska), Grandpa, Uncle and "Buddy" (what he calls my brother's girlfriend, for some reason!).

We had a party at the Zoo on Saturday and then went to the beach on Sunday. I thought it was going to be a little cold at the beach, but it turned out to be pretty nice!

Anyway, it's now time for me to "come down" off my high and get back to the real life. What joy. :)

Interesting Post

I stumbled upon this quite interesting post today:

Is a Civil War Coming?

I only just now began to wonder what view of the country our children will have as they grow up. I guess it's going to be a whole lot different than mine.

I'm so proud

Baby girl has several new "tricks" as of late. Not only does she walk, eat un-pureed food, and go up and down stairs, but she's beginning to understand different peoples' names.

When you ask her where Daddy is, she sometimes points to him, but without fail, when you ask her where Mommy is, she puts her hand up to her ear, as if she's talking on the phone. I'm so proud.

I love this place...

Neither my husband nor I really enjoy living in Houston very much. Most of it stems from the Houston weather - it just never cools off here! As I write this, it is 93F and it's the first day of October. And last week, there were heat advisories because it was 104F in our neighborhood for four days straight. Ugh.

Another fact of living in Houston is dealing with bugs. Tree roaches are the worst. They grow to about 1.5 inches long and fly straight at your face. (or so it seems) We moved into our house, which was newly built, about 8 years ago. But from the very beginning, we had a quarterly insect treatment plan because neither of us like living with other critters. Still, we find dead and dying roaches too many times for our taste. (at least they're dead and dying)

Anyway, you can imagine our chagrin when the following conversation took place between my husband and baby boy:
"Look, Daddy! Dead roach!"
"No, Baby Boy, that's just a burned french fry."

Over the last couple of weeks, everything he sees that is blackish brown is a dead roach. Nice. And I used to dream about spending time laying on the ground with him picking out shapes in the clouds. With my luck, he'd be pointing out dead roaches in those, too. No, wait, I forgot we'll never be able to do that, either, because the fire ants would attack us and bite the crap out of us if we were to lay in the grass. I love this place...