Babies, Brownies and Blessings

We have several rules in our house. One that I'm the most stickler on is no toys in the kitchen. No toys in MY kitchen. Over and over again I remind the boys to keep their toys out of my space. Off the hot stovetop. Don't scratch the stainless steel! There has been an exception to this rule the last few days. It's a lizard. Multicolored. Missing it's tail. Sitting on my kitchen floor. I've almost picked it up several times but can't bring myself to. Because every time I look at it I realize that one day there will be no offending critters on my floor. I won't be yelling at the boys to remove their toys. One day they will grow out of plastic lizards. And I'm going to miss it...

Ahh, I feel like a new woman. Finally, a night without hourly wakings, or a few hours of watching cartoons during the night. No, that's not a usual part of our sleeping routine but we've been fighting a bug. One that's kept our whole family up too many nights with coughing that won't stop (hence the "Curious George" marathons during the wee hours) and fevers that burned long into the night. The virus moved through our house, toppling us like a row of dominoes. One after the other until it knocked us all down. I'm not sure who it started with because Caleb and Claire had another little bug a couple weeks ago. About a week ago Bri and Caleb started with the sniffling, snorting, coughing, cranking cold. Add aches to Bri's symptoms, fever to Caleb's. I joined in the mix with sinus pressure and most of their symptoms along with a kickin' case of the orneries. Next in line was Sam. His most significant symptom was...wait for it...laying on the co...

Our lives changed. "We" went from two to three. A lifelong dream was fulfilled. 9 months of misery was finally over. Deer hunting opener was missed. And every cliche I'd ever heard about children rang true. You haven't known love until you've known the love a parent has for their child. It's like an extension of you, outside your body. You hurt when they hurt, you laugh when they laugh... You're going to miss this. This, too, shall pass. 5 years of growing...  5 years of unparalleled joy love challenge humility excitement learning adapting frustration achievement happiness wonder (oh, did I mention LOVE?!) Happy 5th birthday, Sammy Boy. We are so blessed that God gave us you. *In the usual nature of my day, I yelled at Sam all the way through this accolade for him (to GO TO SLEEP). Isn't parenting something?? 

BabyGirl has had a butt rash. Not just a little red. We're talking a MAJOR breakout. Her whole bottom was pretty mad looking. We are using cloth diapers this time around and I LOVE them. I'll have to do a posting on that one of these days. Anyways, we haven't had to deal with diaper rashes at all in the 5 months of BabyGirl's life. Isn't that something?? But I worked the weekend a few weeks back so we used disposables. I just knew I couldn't get the dipes washed up in a timely manner. Unfortunately between the disposables and a poop that I didn't know about for a few hours, we got a nasty rash. So I tried Desitin. It ALWAYS worked with the boys. I mean ALWAYS. Needless to say I was surprised and bummed to find that it wasn't healing up her bum. So I pulled out Aquaphor. And Boudreaux's Butt Paste. And Watkin's Salve. Heck, I even tried nipple cream! Her butt just wouldn't heal up. I ran low on my tube of Desitin so I grabbed an...

It's a good thing I don't write for a living. I have an amazing case of writer's block. (and a heck of a head cold) In light of that, I've decided to steal some material from my children. They are full of mentionable conversations. Just now I yelled at Caleb for saying to Sam, "Let's have a scissors fight!" Umm, let's not.   Yesterday Sam told Caleb to come and check out Claire. "I want to pet her, or smell her... she smells like...pretty. Come smell her, Caleb." Aww... Sam had a friend over the other day and here are snippets of their conversations: "When you die, you go to heaven" "I don't want to go to heaven alone" "Your whole family will go to heaven together!" (I walked downstairs for a minute and when I returned...) "You should just get a rocket pack!" "Or maybe just a leash." I can only speculate how the conversation went that direction but it certainly made me chu...

I did not forget that I promised to reveal more websites that sell quality baby/kid stuff at discounted prices. Most of the sites are similar in how they work. They have one or more discounted products per day. There is a limited quantity offered. So when they're gone, they're gone. One that I LOVE is http://www.zulily.com/ They offer at least five deals a day, 5 days a week. They have everything from baby clothes to mom clothes to toys to wall art. One day they even had Phil&Teds strollers on there! (You can imagine how fast those went.) Everything is discounted around 30-70% off retail. The only downside is you have to sign up to enter the site. I've been following this site for a few months now and have never received spam from them. I bought one of these hats for BabyGirl from Zulily. It's my fave! So, if you're intrigued, click here  and you'll get to a page saying that I invited you. From there you sign up and start browsing their...

A few weeks ago we were heading to the MN Zoo and I forgot my phone. After asking Bri to search my purse to make sure it wasn't in there I turned around to go get it. We were stopped at a stoplight when a big semi truck came zooming around the corner. He didn't take the corner wide enough. In a brief moment of clear thinking I put the van in reverse and started backing out of his way. If I hadn't he would have taken out the front end of our vehicle. He never slowed down. Didn't even notice. He was too busy making sure he didn't get stuck at a stoplight. I was FLAMING mad! My whole family was in that van and while he wasn't going at a speed that would have killed us, the potential for injury was there. It took everything in me not to follow him and tell him what he had almost done. What would have happened if I hadn't moved out of his way even though I was exactly where I should've been? My 3 month old baby could've been hurt. My boys ...

I'm a tea girl. Coffee...blech. LOVE the smell, the taste? Not so much. Tastes like burnt marshmellows to me. And I like my marshmellows a golden brown. In college I learned to like black tea with cream and sugar. Needed something that would keep me awake to study because Chemistry put me right to sleep . Bonus that I could get a bottomless cup at Perkins. Ten years later I still drink tea. With cream and sugar. In my fave tea cup. My folks got me a set of mugs for my HS graduation. I used to have four. I'm down to one. It's the perfect mug. Fits nicely in my hands. Holds the right amount of tea. It's yellow (which just makes me happy)... I've also found a black tea that I love. It's made by Good Earth and is called Tropical Peach Black Tea. I can't even taste the peach but I think it takes away some of the bitterness. It can be hard to find so I tend to hoard it. BUT if you come have tea with me, I'll share. :) Oh, and the world's BEST travel...

Trick or treating is getting to be big business around our house. The boys were so excited and have asked daily since if they can go again! Bri's folks have a great little neighborhood to walk around so every year we go there and get our fill of candy. It's great, the kids do all the work and I reap the benefits! (because I don't want my kids to get cavities, you know...) Looking over pictures I realized that I'm not good at taking the "usual" photos everyone does. Like a picture of everyone together in their costumes. A separate picture of each. When we had Claire we didn't even get the standard "family on the hospital bed with the new baby" picture. Or the "baby's going home in her carseat" picture. Oops. Anyways, we did get some pics and I thought I'd share. Sam and Caleb were "Octimus Brine" (Optimus Prime) the Transformer. Claire was a cute little butterfly! I went as "mom who worked all weekend and didn...

I love bacon. It is the perfect food. Crunchy. Salty. A bit greasy. It brings out the potential in other foods. Take brocolli for example. I don't like it unless it's well-hidden in something else. But throw it in with some grapes, green onion, almonds, a little mayo, sugar and BACON and you get an AWESOME salad! I do need bacon in every bite, though. Brunch is my favorite meal. Because of bacon. It's perfect; someone else makes the mess and I get to eat all of the salty little strips of pig that I want. Have you ever had deviled eggs with bacon in them? Mmm, it's the perfect combo. I like bacon-wrapped steak. Bacon in my salad. Any sandwich that's made with bacon. Ooo, ooo, ooo, bacon on pizza is to die for! AND just plain old bacon can't be beat. (and now that I've typed "bacon" about 20 times the word itself is starting to look weird. Ever experience that?) Jim Gaffigan did a little comedy spot on bacon. It's hilarious. And OH...