Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Uncanny ability for prediction

I am sometimes amazed at my uncanny ability to predict how things will work out.

For instance, remember when I was talking about the container garden that I attempted to start back in March/April? And I kind of made a joke about how I would end up with only 2 vegetables from my endeavors?

Well...

Shown here with one of our favorite wines. (credit goes to my husband for the artistic picture!)

I tried one of the cucumbers and it was actually really sour tasting! Of course, upon seeing the look on my face as I was eating it, my husband asked me what was wrong. And when I told him that it was sour, he said, "Congratulations! You've managed to grow a pickle!" Thanks.

Shortly after I picked those two cucumbers, the plants seem to have given up their purpose in life...

Friday, August 25, 2006

Beautiful post

No, not this one. This one.

I have to say, I think this is just about the most beautiful thing I've ever read:

"And because of this, one day he will know, without my having to tell him:

That I am your sanctuary, my son. Where you find your mother, you will find a home. No matter what your age, you can come back to me. You can lay your head on my chest, and you will feel me smoothe your hair.

I will always be ready for your embrace.
"

I want my children to know that same thing someday. And it's exactly the way I feel about my mother...

The hazards of having a physics professor for a friend

So, last night we went on family bike ride night and right as we were leaving, our good friend "Squared" came walking by our house after finishing a run.

I suppose I should explain why his name is "Squared". Well, he was my husband's college roommate. We went to an all-engineering college. Both his first name and his last name start with K. Therefore, K-squared. Or just "Squared", as he's known to our kids.

(I imagine our kids suddenly coming to a great realization in 7th or 8th grade algebra - n-squared... n*n... hey, wait a minute... Uncle K-squared... I get it now!!!!)

Anyway, our friend now happens to be a professor in physics at a local college here in town. So, tonight the kids learned about parametric oscillators (from the article's 4th paragraph, you'll see why we were discussing parametric oscillators) and inertia.

I can hardly wait to hear what they're going to learn about next week. :)

Thursday, August 24, 2006

And in the calm...

And in the calm of the evening, the husband decides to look at the Office Depot catalog.

"I love office supplies."

"You love office supplies?" (thinking, "wtf"?)

"Yeah! Come on, they have drafting supplies and an exacto knife! I mean look at that, isn't that awesome?!"

"Uh..."

----------
Husband here...then wife states...

"A Pentel mechanical pencil....I would kill for one of those!"

:)

And a great calm descended

The boy pooped on the toilet tonight.
And a great calm descended on the household...

Our "Spirited" Child

So, in my previous post, I mentioned that I bought a book called "Raising your Spirited Child".

When I initially heard about the book, I thought the "spirited" part referred to the energy level of the child. And based on that alone, I thought it might be a book worth reading, since our little boy never stops moving. Not even when he's sitting down. He's always got to be moving something.

Occasionally, in a vain attempt to get him to take naps, I'll actually try to hold his little legs still so that he can't move. That usually only works for about 5 seconds before he throws me off. (at which point, I usually consider if I might do any severe physical or psychological damage by actually laying on top of him...)

Anyway, I've only read the first part of the book, but it turns out that the author was trying to come up with some word to use other than "difficult" or "problem". Which is even more fitting for our sweet little boy!! :)

I've only read through the beginning of the book where you're supposed to answer a bunch of questions and determine what type of temperament your child has - is he calm and laid-back, or is he very intense. About everything. The boy falls into the "intense" group in pretty much everything.

So, I'm interested to see what types of coping mechanisms she suggests. Besides drinking. Heavily. (but that seems to be doing the trick so far, so why mess with a good thing?...)

Monday, August 21, 2006

Where ya been?

In case you're wondering where I've been, I've been busy!

Thursday afternoon, my mom arrived and all the fun of "grandma" came with her. :)

So, sorry, but my usually witty and wonderfully discriptive writing (HA!) will now be reduced to mere bullet-points in order to sum up my extended weekend:
  • Thursday: The boy pooped in his pants again in the morning and I was on poop-duty. So, I dutifully showed up at the pre-school, changed his underwear and cleaned him up, and then ended up taking him home because he didn't want to stay anymore. Then I came back to work to finish packing up my office in preparation for the move that was to take place after lunch. I went home for lunch because I didn't have anything to eat here at work, then came back to work to see if my stuff had been moved (it hadn't), then left to go pick up my mom from the airport. I dropped her off at home and returned to work to find that my stuff, this time, had been miraculously moved while I was gone, so I spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking and trying to figure out what exactly I'm supposed to be doing for this new project. When I left from work Thursday afternoon, I couldn't find my car because I had gone and come back so many times from work that I couldn't remember where I'd been able to find a spot the last time. (seriously - it took me almost 5 minutes of near-panic and feeling really stupid to find the car!)
  • Friday morning: Took the boy to school and then all us girls went to Target and loaded up on shorts for the boy. We're hoping that maybe a larger sized waistband will help him to pull down his shorts more easily - you know, for when he pees in his pants and then has to change his shorts and underwear by himself. (because this is one of the rules of the pre-school - it's supposed to encourage independence. I hope it does...)
  • Friday afternoon: Went out to eat with grandma and the kids, at which point, the boy decided to take the opportunity to finally poop in his pants (he hadn't gone while he was at school that morning). I managed to get him to take a nap on Friday afternoon and after naptime, we all went swimming at the local swimming pool.
  • Friday night: Ate at home, gave the kids their bath, and got them to bed at a somewhat decent hour.
  • Saturday morning: Went to the Butterfly Exhibit at the Museum of Natural Science, which is designed to mimic a rainforest. Thought my mom (being from Nebraska and not accustomed to extreme humidity) was going to literally melt away...
  • Saturday lunch: No weekend is complete for us unless we go to Chick-fil-A, so we had lunch there on Saturday. Fearing that the boy would poop in his pants if we stayed there too long, we packed everyone up not too long after the kids started playing in the playground area. This caused the boy to go into a full-blown tantrum and scream, cry, and kick the entire way home. (As an aside, at lunchtime today I went and invested in a book called Raising Your Spirited Child - I'm hoping maybe there will be some potty-training tips in there, too. Ha!)
  • Saturday afternoon: Luckily, the screaming tantrum wore the boy out just enough to make naptime OK. I laid down with him and he went to sleep in only about 15 minutes or so. A record!
  • Saturday evening: Right before we left to go out to eat, the boy announced that he needed to go poop and wanted grandma to help him. (going poop once a week in the toilet is good, right?...) After this momentous event, we went out to eat at an Indian restaurant and only had to take the kids outside to play after I was actually done eating. This was considered a huge success. (Did I mention that i just went and bought a book called, Raising Your Spirited Child?)
  • Sunday morning: We had to take grandma to the airport to catch her plane. Afterwards, we stopped by Starbuck's and got some coffee and coffee cake before heading off to the park to play. The boy pooped in his pants while we were at the park.
  • Sunday afternoon: During lunchtime, the boy pooped in his pants again. Then he refused to take a nap during naptime and he pooped in his pants again. We decided to go on a bike ride after the girl was awakened prematurely from her nap, so right before loading up on the bikes, we asked the boy if he needed to go pee-pee. His response? "No, I peed in my pants." Sure enough, he'd just peed in his pants about 1 minute beforehand. So, I took him upstairs and put a pull-up on him. Neither the husband nor I could put up with any more of the pooping and peeing.
  • Sunday evening: The boy fell asleep on our 2-hour bike ride (thank goodness) and when we got home, we ate supper and then headed upstairs for bathtime. At which point, we discovered that the boy had pooped in his pull-up. Four times in one day. Good times.
So, there you have it. A fun-filled weekend! (Really, besides the poop, it was a very good weekend!) :)

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

First Day of Pre-School

Well, I've just come back to work after seeing our little boy off at his first day of pre-school.

There were many tears of both joy and sadness as we said our good-byes...

Not in the slightest! The boy couldn't have gotten rid of us more quickly. He already knew the school from visiting several times and one of his little friends that he made this summer is in the 4-year-old class, so he was happy to see us go. He didn't even look back as he rode away on his tricycle to join the fun in the sandbox. We did manage to take a couple of pictures before he shoved us out the door, so at least that was nice. :)

I am anxious, however, to see how the morning is going to go. He's only there for 3 hours, so we left him two sets of underwear and shorts - I'm hoping he won't pee more than that.

We spoke with his teacher on Monday about our potty-training battles. She told us that it usually becomes a "social" thing to do while the kids are there, so hopefully that will spur him into more action. And I'm guessing he won't poop for the three hours he's there, however, if he does, the teachers won't clean it up - they call the parents to come clean it up. This should be interesting...

UPDATE: At 10:45, my husband got the call. The boy pooped his pants, so hubby is off to clean him up. Man, we didn't even make it one day.

Monday, August 14, 2006

That new car smell

So, we broke down and finally traded in our little car (with a back seat, but not a big enough back seat for carseats) for a larger car.

And we finally took posession of it on Thursday, Aug. 3rd. (yeah, I know, it's been a long time since I've updated the blog - I was busy last week!)

I won't go into the gory details of the two-week car-buying experience, but it finally ended on Thursday when the sales guy called the trucking company and told them that if they didn't deliver the car that day, he was going to call it in stolen.

Surprise, we got the car that day. After more than a week of it being "somewhere" on a truck. ???

Anyway, being very excited to try out the new car with the back seat appropriately sized for carseats, I forced the husband to transfer the carseats to the new car that night (at 9pm) so we could all go for a test-drive.

Forty-five minutes later, we were all loaded up in the car with at least 20 mosquitoes also in attendance.

And we spent the rest of the weekend trying out the car, attending little kids' birthday parties, and generally having fun zipping around in our new car!

The aforementioned birthday parties were both on Sunday morning and they actually over-lapped. So, we went to the first party, held at one of those Bounce U places, and left right before they served the cake.

The second party was a pool-party, at which we arrived just in time to eat a little pizza and then play in the pool a little while before the cake was served.

Now, I'm sure this will come as a surprise to you, but the boy, in addition to having issues going to sleep and issues with potty training, is a rather finicky eater. So he won't eat pizza. Or the "cake" part of birthday cake. His diet, then, that fateful morning consisted of 2 juice boxes, the frosting off of two pieces of cake, and about half a bowl of Doritos.

Can you guess what happened on the way home from the second birthday party?

Yep, he threw up. In the new car. And as he was throwing up, I was struck with conflicting thoughts: "Oh, poor little boy..."
"Oh no! The car!"
"Ew, Doritos."
"Yep, there it goes, dripping down onto the seat of the new car!"
"Wow, how much did he eat?!"
"Good Lord! Make it stop!"

We spent the next 2 hours trying to clean everything up once we got home. Luckily, most of it was contained in his carseat and only a little bit oozed down onto the seat of the car. Also luckily, we got the leather seats in the car, so that was fairly easily cleaned.

So, we actually got off fairly unscathed. It will be awhile before I eat any Doritos, however.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Sometimes you feel like a nut

Sometimes you don't!

Courtney did this "Celtic Horoscope" which is based only on your birthdate (no year). She thought it came out appropriate for her. So I tried it. Here's what I got:

You Are A Walnut Tree

You are strange and full of contrasts... the oddball of your group.
You are unrelenting and you have unlimited ambition.
Not always liked but always admired, you are more infamous than famous.
You are aggressive and spontaneous, and your reactions are often unexpected.
A jealous and passionate person, you are difficult in romantic relationships.

Ok, other people probably know better how I project myself, but I must admit that I don't think this really describes me very well. Besides the "oddball" part...

(I mean come on, unrelenting and ambitious? infamous? jealous and passionate? I'm just not seein' it.)

Monday, August 07, 2006

Not everything is bad

Ok, If you've been following the pooping saga, you may think that the only things I can say about the boy are bad. I'm going to try to rectify that situation now.

Our little boy is the sweetest little guy! His favorite toy is still his baby doll, whom he will tell you almost continuously is "three months old. Isn't she cute?" And then he pulls her close and kisses her on the cheek or on the head. It's very nice.

One night this week, however, when I got home, I saw that he had put her into one of our clear plastic shoe boxes in which we keep some of their toys. And he had the lid on it.

Recently, I've been reading the news coverage about the bombing in Qana and I got a little worried when I saw that the boy had put his baby doll into something that looked like a coffin. I wondered if he had somehow seen something on the news about all the children that were killed.

My fears turned out to be unfounded when I asked (trying to sound nonchalant), "Whatcha doin' with your baby?"

"She's in her Bissonnet." And no matter how many times I tried to get him to call it a "bassinet", he insisted that it was her Bissonnet. (which just happens to be a street here in Houston that we drive on fairly frequently!)

He's very sweet to his baby sister, too. He's pretty rough with her most of the time, but usually when she gets hurt, he'll hug her and kiss her and tell her that he's sorry.

It also never ceases to make me laugh to hear the things that he comes up with. For instance, during our vacation this past February, when we were taking turns skiing, the parent not skiing would take the kids to a sledding park.

The park also happened to be the place that lots of people would bring their dogs to play and many of them would use those thrower-things to throw tennis balls for their dogs to "fetch".

So, after we got back to Houston, we happened to be somewhere that the boy found a tennis ball. And he got really excited. "Look!! A dog ball! Now all we need is one of those thrower-things.... .... .... and a dog!"

Most recently, my favorite thing that he says is "lasterday". I think it means yesterday, depending on the context. :)

So, there you have it. A nice post about my baby boy. But just wait, I'm sure I can come up with something bad soon...

Friday, August 04, 2006

Of course

There was no mention of the flag shirt this morning and so it and the two other plain white shirts I bought yesterday are still sitting in the dryer from washing them last night.

I knew I should have just waited it out a little longer...

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Our patriotic little girl

The girl has developed a fascination over the last week with her Old Navy "Flag Tee" - you know, the ones that Old Navy sells every year for the 4th of July for $5?

Everyone in the family got one for the 4th this year, but last Thursday, the girl wanted to wear her flag tee again. And on Friday... And actually for the last 8 days, that's the only thing she wants to wear. She asks for it immediately when she wakes up in the morning. She even wore it to bed one night over her PJ's!

Last night on our bike ride, she pointed out every American Flag to us. "THERE A FLAG SHIRT!!" (We're working on shortening that to just "flag"...)

Anyway, we're getting a little tired of washing the thing every night, so I've been on a mission this morning to search the internet for any more American Flag T-shirts. No dice. Sure, there are lots of shirts, but they're almost all only in adult sizes. And in Youth sizes, they only go down to "small", which is not small enough for an almost-two-year-old.

So, I've found some American Flag clipart designed to be iron-transferred to T-shirts and I went out at lunch today and found a couple of white T-shirts I may experiment with tonight. This should be good... :)

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

My cat has fleas

Ugh. The cat has fleas!!

The other night, my husband was sitting on the couch with the cat when he suddenly exclaimed, "Oh crap! I think I just saw a flea run across Midas' face!!!" (Midas is the cat, by the way.)

I really hate fleas. When we first moved down here to Texas after college, we moved in with my husband's parents. They had a cat that had always had fleas. But when we introduced our two cats to the household, there was a flea explosion. It was disgusting.

From that point on, I swore we'd never have flea-ridden cats again. When we moved out, we took the cats to be "dipped" and then took them straight to our new place. And we never saw another flea. Until last night.

Hoping that my husband's eyes were deceiving him, I got out the flea comb last night and started searching. Sure enough, I found at least 10 fleas on him. Yuk!!

How can a cat who has not seen the light of day since we moved into the house eight years ago (except for annual trips to the vet, of course) get fleas?! The only thing I can figure is that either he picked them up at the vet a year ago (because I seem to recall seeing some there and thinking, "My cat better not end up with fleas from coming to the vet's office!!"), or the kids brought one or two back from their friend's house - they have a dog. Either way, I'm mad!

Now I'm off to call the vet and make an appointment for his check-up (it was time anyway) and getting some kind of super-duper flea medication...

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Room with a view

Today I watched a guy get dressed in his hotel room.

My office looks out onto the "plaza" of this complex and there is a hotel across the plaza from our building.

So, this guy goes over right next to his window - he was wearing a shirt and underwear. He put on his pants, then took off his shirt and put on a different shirt.

It would have been better if there wasn't a guy sitting in my office with me - he kept distracting me from the show. :)