Dec 31, 2008

Catching Up (again)

I have been seriously lacking in the blog-writing department. Here's my attempt to catch up:

My momma came to visit after V was born and it was FABULOUS to have her around. I cried when she went home. Luckily she and two of my sisters came Christmas night. :) They were left stranded in Salt Lake for a few hours d/t a snow storm, but they got here eventually.
Christmas was AWESOME. We loved watching S help everyone open their presents. He loved everything and we had a blast this entire month telling him about Baby Jesus and the Christmas Story. We haven't talked about Santa at all, except to give a name to the man in the red suit who stands next to the "Noman".

He is very excited about going down the slide "Santa" brought. I am NOT looking forward to putting Christmas away, which is why we didn't decorate the tree until the 22nd...
S flew home with my mom after Christmas and V and I drove to Spanish Fork that same day. It took 15 hours. The next day we drove to Twin Falls and it was so wonderful to see my boy I nearly cried. (The crying could be due to hormones...)
Lots else has happened, but thems the highlights.

Nov 27, 2008

The Night G Was Born

M and S the night G was born. He's soooo tired! (and confused)

M and G the night she was born. As you can see, she's a spitting image of baby S. Need further proof? Just look at S's baby pic at the top of the blog.
Thanks to Ken for taking pictures! We didn't have a camera with us, because we didn't know we were going to have a baby that day.

For those of you who missed out on the drama, here's the short version.
I thought my gallbladder was having fits, so M took me to the ER to get checked out (it hurt REALLY bad.) The ER wouldn't see us, sent us to OB triage, and they kept us all day because the OB and the parinatologist told us we needed to take the baby out NOW and I wouldn't do it without a GI consult because I was fairly convinced the pain wasn't baby related. It turns out the doctors were right (first time for everything, huh?) It was NOT my gallbladder or my pancreas. It was my (cue scary music) LIVER. Which had decided to shred my blood cells and swell for who knows what reason, but as soon as they cut the baby out, my pain went away. YAY! So we have a baby that surprised us coming and ...coming. I wonder what else she has up her sleeves? And that folks, is how we ended up with a non-elective c-section the day before Thanksgiving.















Nov 21, 2008

Cookie Monster

So The Boy and I stopped at the Quick Trip on our way home from playing to get gas and something to drink. For two seconds I took my eyes off The Boy, and when I found him again, he was eating a giant cookie from the bakery case. So we also bought a cookie. He didn't know it was wrong, and I had no idea how to broach the situation so I remained silent. Ideas from more experienced momma's?
Frankly I'll take this situation over yesterday's (nuggets in the bathtub...).

Nov 20, 2008

21 Months

My baby is 21 months today. Here are some of his favorite things:
Toys: Vacuum, cars, Elmo, toy stroller
Book: Goodnight Moon, The Story of the Creation from the book of Moses (awesome pictures)
Words: Car, Truck, Airplane, Moon, Star, Light, Hi!
Phrase: Up high!
Movie/Show: CARS, Elmo
Food: Cheese, apple juice, goldfish, corn dog/hot dog, grapes, apples
Animal: cow-hands down. The kitty is a distant second
Article of clothing: shoes
Off limits item: the laptop, toilet, followed by the Garmin and cell phones
Place to be: Outside
Friend: Ella

Nov 16, 2008

Going to the Lake

We took Sam to the lake Saturday, and of COURSE I forgot the camera. I did remember the important things like cheese sticks and apples...
Sam was fascinated with the ducks. "qu-ack! qu-ACK!" A few minutes after we got to the pier, another family came to toss cereal at the ducks (don't know why I didn't think to bring duck food). The mom kindly gave Sam a baggie of Trix to throw for the ducks. He had a pretty good time thowing one peice at a time, until he thought to taste the cereal himself... We convinced him that it was duck food, not little boy food. In the end he just dumped the whole bag in the water, which is when IT happened...
These MASSIVE carp, we're talking 5 footers easy, came to the surface, stuck thier lips out of the water and started fighting the ducks for Trix. It was amazing to wittness. Sam kept saying "FEESH FEESH!"
We wandered over to the docks and looked at the boats and Sam REALLY wanted to go swimming. We had to explain that though the lake LOOKED like a giant bathtub, the water was cold and really really deep. I'm not sure he got it, since he kept saying "baff! baff! DRINK!" (That's Sammy for bath and water, respectively.)
I was surpised at how close the lake was to our house, I think it only took 40 minutes to get there. We will be going again, as it's free entertainment and free is one of my favorite words.

Nov 8, 2008

New Fun Sammy Pics

A Favorite Past time-light switching. We got tired of holding him up to lights, so we got out the step ladder and let him do it himself.
Here's our Bucket Head Boy. Recently he's taken to getting out a sauce pan and sticking it on his head a la Johnny Apple Seed. When he does that I call him my little pot head.




We're calling this one "Stroller Boy". He LOVES pushing around the stroller, frequently with things like Mommy's phone or Elmo or a sippy going along for the ride. We're not sure how he did this (or why) but I couldn't help but take a picture because he's SO miserable. :)

Nov 7, 2008

Nearly Busted for Pot (really)

So I decided to try acupuncture this week in an attempt to flip my errant daughter into a more birth-friendly position. The acupuncturist was great, but that's a subject for another post.
Upon insertion of the final needle she literally flipped. Luckily she was already transverse, or the movement would likely have knocked me off the table, given her size (a healthy 7lbs by now).
After I spent some time with needles sticking out all over my feet and hands the acupuncturist took me outside to burn moxa by certain points. He explained that he's not allowed to do it in the building, since he's renting from some insurance people and they really aren't into that. Plus, moxa smells an awful lot like pot (don't ask).
So we're sitting outside and nearly done with the 20 minute treatment when a nurse from the doctor's office two doors down comes over. She says, "Our patient that just left is an off-duty cop. He said because he's off-duty he can't do anything, but he was pretty sure he smelled pot over here." The acupuncturist just laughed. Told her what it was and gave the clinical name (Artemisia vulgaris). The entire episode was tres humorous.
Then he told me that the school he went to shared a building with a law firm which naturally had cops in and out of it all the time. Since they were burning moxa in the school, the cops would come back to investigate the smell. Eventually the school posted signs explaining the burning herb was NOT pot, but part of traditional chinese medicine.
So that's the closest I've ever come to being busted for pot which is interesting because I've been around actual marijuana before and never come close. (No Mom, I never smoked it.)

Nov 5, 2008

Fascist America

Let me be the first to welcome you all to Fascist America! Yay! (Or at the very least, Socialist America.)
So I was thinking, we probably won't move to Canada, but it's becoming more clear that we will probably need to home school. Assuming it's still legal.
I don't want my kids to learn that it's OK to take handouts or that mediocrity is good enough, because it's not. No trophies for 18th place in this house! We will be teaching hard work, perseverance and endurance.
It's reaffirmed my goal to be the best possible example for my children of what a person can achieve through hard work. (Thank you Mom and Dad for your stellar portrayals of hardworking, loving, Christ-like and principled individuals.)

Nov 4, 2008

Voting Day

We heard the polls would be least crowded from 9am to 11am and again in the early afternoon. Having a prior engagement in the afternoon, Sam and I went to the polls at 9am. We waited 45 minutes in line. Once we got into the building Sam was starting to be fussy (nap time) and one poll worker overheard me say to someone else all that standing was causing contractions. (I was one person away from actually voting at this point) She offered me a chair and I'm thinking "That's government efficiency for you. They are only able to accommodate AFTER your past the point of needing accommodation". That folks, is why I'm a conservative.

Catching Up

Well folks, I am again guilty of blog neglect. In an effort to catch you up here are the major events that have occurred: Becky finished college (YAY!) Becky and Sam moved to Arizona. We moved into our new house. The new baby continues to grow. She's almost done baking. Matt loves his job, the economy went to Hell in a hand basket but life still goes on. The End. :)

Jul 9, 2008

English Paper on Anthropogenic Global Warming

OK. I've been accused of neglecting the blog. Because I've been so busy with school, the only thing I have to offer in the way of new content is my Research Paper. Enjoy!

On Climate Porn

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food

production—with serious political implications for just about every nation on

Earth… The evidence in support of these predictions had now begun to

accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard pressed to keep up with it.

The above quote from a Newsweek article isn’t from this year, or even this decade. It’s from 1975. And the article isn’t talking about global warming, quite the opposite actually--the article is entitled “The Cooling World”. Throughout the last century we have been taught to worry by newsmen from every media source about the impending climate doom we are sure to experience “just around the corner”.

In the last 100 years there have been four distinct and separate climate scares, sometimes overlapping each other and vacillating between imminent global meltdowns and impending ice ages. In 1895, an article from the New York Times claims, “Geologists Think the World May be Frozen Up Again” (qtd. in Inhofe). In 1939, Time Magazine shouts this enlightened rhetoric: “Those who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right…weathermen have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer”. That’s right, nine years before the birth of Al Gore, Time Magazine was running articles on a looming global warming panic. Then Time Magazine switched bandwagons again and started proclaiming global cooling in 1951, pointing to melting permafrost in Russia as corroboration (Inhofe).

I don’t know if we can blame these news outlets for following their own edict of “If it bleeds, it leads”. That is, after all, how newspapers are sold. One does begin to wonder about current “impartial” television meteorologists and anchormen, though. In the last two decades any time a town was hit with a heat wave, they would point to anthropogenic, or human-caused, global warming as the likely culprit. You would think by now they would be used to the phenomenon of changing seasons (Robbins 33). Whatever their reasons, it’s clear that the media is skewing current scientific data for their own purposes. To be generous we could point to their desire to sell papers. A slightly more sinister view would be to advance the cause of global government. As then French President Jacque Chirac said in 2000, “[the Kyoto Protocol Treaty represents] the first component of an authentic global governance” (Cihak 70).

Another of the readily available examples of the media skewing scientific reports can be found with the dying camels in Africa. An article appearing in Science Daily on Oct. 10, 2007 talks about the dying dromedaries. They list possible causes as food poisoning or mineral deficiencies. No mention of global warming. On December 24, 2007 the San Francisco Sentinel runs the story, but points the finger toward global warming causing the increase in numbers of the virus that “may possibly” be killing the camels. On December 25, 2007 the How to Offset Carbon blog flatly accuses global warming of causing the dromedary deaths when it states, "Global warming responsible for camel deaths in North Africa" (Nelson). The evolution of the story is incredible. The original scientists say nothing of the impact of global warming, and yet, two months later according the media, it is a major factor in the deaths of the camels.

But the media aren’t the only culprits slanting stories for effect. Some scientists purposely twist their data, with the end result being contrived for a certain purpose. According to Ross McKitrick, in the famous example of the “Hockey Stick” Climate Index, Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes created a graph published in 1998 using funding provided by the US National Science Foundation. The graph showed significant warming in the 1990’s with 1998 being the warmest year in the last 1,000 years, according to data they’d collected and collated. Unfortunately they purposely skewed the data to show the results they were after, and no one, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, carried out due diligence to vet the data even while insinuating that they had. It was then used in numerous countries around the world and by the media to push the Kyoto Protocol and set government policies.

In Canada, a mineral speculator by the name of Stephen McIntyre saw the graph and recognized the hockey stick shape of the graph as a marketing tool used to show expected profit margins. Intrigued, he decided that since he had some time between jobs he would try to recreate the graph using Mann, Bradley and Hughes’ proxy series. After contacting Mann for the HTP site on which the series could be found, Mann said there wasn’t a HTP for the series, but McIntyre did eventually obtain a .txt file from another scientist working on the project. The end result of three years of research was that Mann, et al. had done some unethical things with their data to get the results they wanted, including leaving out data points they didn’t like, and using unorthodox math.

McIntyre completely disproved the Hockey Stick Graph the media was hyping as proof positive man was causing global warming. McIntyre was proved right a year later by an independent statistician (paraphrased from McKitrick). In 2006 Al Gore decided it didn’t matter if the graph was real or not, and used it in his movie anyway.

It’s not just the rogue scientists that put forth erroneous and biased data. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an arm of the United Nations, created in 1986 with the specific purpose of looking for and publishing science that proves human destruction of the environment. Its leaders and scientists are appointed by governments, and its reports are used by governments to set policy. Governments pay not only for the research, but also for cushy yearly trips to exotic locations where they stay in fancy hotels, again paid for by tax dollars. By their own admission, the role of the IPCC “is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the latest scientific, technical and socio-economic literature produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change, its observed and projected impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation (emphasis added)” (qtd. in Singer et al).

The IPCC by its very nature is political, not scientific. The thousands of scientists who contribute to these reports have no direct say in how the information they produce will be used. A few very powerful activists reflecting the thinking of their governments write the Summary for Policymakers at the end of each conference. The IPCC ignores peer-reviewed articles showing evidence opposing anthropogenic global warming. A good percentage of what the media bleats about anthropogenic global warming comes from the IPCC. The now debunked Hockey Stick figure played a prominent role in their 1997 Summary for Policymakers, which caused several countries to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Then there are the scientists told to keep quiet. Senator Inhofe revealed the following in 2006: “David Deming, assistant professor at University of Oklahoma’s Colleges of Geosciences, …was welcomed into the close-knit group of global warming believers after he published a paper in 1995 that noted some warming in the 20th century. Deming said he was subsequently contacted by a prominent global warming alarmist and told point blank ‘We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.’” (The Medieval Warm Period occurred from about 950-1100A.D. and was as warm or warmer than temperatures today.)

In September 2006 the vice president of London’s Royal Society sent a memo to all the media outlets, telling them to suppress data coming from dissenters of anthropogenic global warming (Inhofe).

The scientists researching anthropogenic global warming are almost unilaterally funded by governments and environmental agencies looking for more ways to control policy, commerce and consumers. Scientists researching natural causes for climate change receive a large portion of their funding from private entities looking to discredit the madness that threatens the world economy. One of the most prominent of these scientists, S. Fred Singer, distinguished research professor at George Mason University and professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, says that a tiny fraction of one percent of his operating budget comes from big oil (about $10,000) dispensing with yet another fallacy put out by extremists: that only big oil is interested in disproving anthropogenic global warming.

Luckily, there are scientists not funded by special interest groups or funded by governments who are also researching the phenomenon of global warming. The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change is just such a group. Their stated purpose is as follows:

Seeing science clearly misused to shape public policies that have the potential to inflict severe economic harm, particularly on low-income groups, we choose to speak up for science at a time when too few people outside the scientific community know what is happening, and too few scientists who know the truth have the will or platforms to speak out against the IPCC. (vi)

The group, headed by Singer, has uncovered some illuminating and largely ignored conclusions. They show that Climate Models aren’t reliable, citing evidence of models missing several very real significant recent climate changes in the ocean and predicting things that never happened (12). They also point out that “melting glaciers and disappearing sea ice, while interesting, are entirely irrelevant to illuminating the causes of global warming. Any significant warming, whether anthropogenic or natural, will melt ice” (2). They also do what many scientists can or will not: differentiate between correlation and causation. Falling trees do not cause wind, but the two are unarguably correlated. The NIPCC also takes into consideration the effects of the sun on the warming planet, a thing the IPCC categorically refuses to do.

No matter one’s political bent, it is clear that just as we get a second opinion before major surgery, the citizens of the world need a second opinion on anthropogenic global warming. We must quit relying on the proven bias of the mainstream media for all of our information on this topic and search out the true science of the subject from vetted and respected individuals and groups in the geoclimate community.

We must understand the threat to our freedom as Americans and our economic wellbeing as individuals and as a nation if we let the politicians and their lackey scientists choose for us the truth we will believe. We can demand transparency in funding of scientific calculations that set governmental policy. We can demand that our leaders listen to both sides of the anthropogenic story before making up their mind. Any criminal is allowed the same right, why not any science? We can protest those media outlets determined to change public opinion with one-sided arguments and we can elect officials who promise to make decisions based on research rather than feelings, funding and computer printouts.

May 7, 2008

House Work

Today we painted the garage door. By "we" I mean "I".
It's amazing how much better it looks. The rain held off until nearly midnight, so I think it had enough time to dry. Sam only dipped his hands in the paint once (which I label a success).
Tomorrow a young couple is coming to look at the house. We are crossing our fingers and praying that they like the house and that they BUY IT. Our Arizona house closes tomorrow.
Also tomorrow we are painting the porch railing. Working on that curb appeal thing everyone talks about.

You know, I don't really feel pregnant, other than I want to eat everything in sight and sleep all day, but other than that...Matt says its real for him now. I think it could be because I've started asking for corn dogs again. Maybe the baby is a boy. :( I need to keep thinking pink thoughts. I hear that works.

Really looking forward to graduation Saturday. I would ask Matt if I can skip it and stay home to sleep, but I think that would hurt his feelings. Plus, I would have to keep Sam and then there would be no actual sleep, since Sam no longer believes in Mommy Naps. Seriously though, and I am so happy for Matt and ready for this phase of our lives to be over. I was starting to get comfortable in the perpetual student mode.

May 5, 2008

Confessions

OK, so maybe I don't want to move. Tonight we had a bon fire in the backyard. You can't do that in Arizona. Ever.
I will miss my friends, I will miss my baby doctor, and mostly, I will miss my mom.
I can't help thinking that my momma needs us more than Matt's momma. After all, my mom will only have two kids in town after this summer, and one of them will be busy being a newlywed.
See? My momma does need us more.

But then I go back to how easy it was for Matt to get this job. Nobody gets a job that easy without divine intervention.
Maybe I should move home, and Matt can go to AZ by himself. I can learn to fly planes and make lots of visits. Especially in the winter.
It's weird, but the older I get, the less I want to be away from my mom. I thought it was supposed to work the other way around? When I was 18, I couldn't wait to get the heck out of town, but that wasn't so much a drive to get away from family as it was a drive to prove I could do life on my own. Now I know better; nobody does life alone. We're not supposed to operate that way.
I know my place is with Matt, I just don't like it when what's right feels wrong in my heart.
Usually I'm the one gunning for change, but I can tell my heart isn't in it because I did not pack one single thing this entire day, and I only have a week left to get it all done.
I'm going to blame it on being so tired from growing a baby, and not on being morose.

If I'm totally honest, I'm also nervous about living so close to Matt's family. They've all been together for ages and have each other figured out. It feels like moving to a new school half way through the year. Matt says this is part his fault because his family doesn't really know who he is, so they have a hard time figuring me out. I think it's just because I'm so weird

I will like some things about moving: Being near Christina, and Di and Steph, fresh citrus, NO FREAKING SNOW, excellent ethnic dining, meeting new people and making new friends, having a real paycheck with an actual salary and being able to do fun things with it on occasion, family babysitters we can trust, fixing up a new house-we've done about all that can be done to this one without major structural changes.
OK, so now that you know how I really feel, what do you think?

Apr 29, 2008

The Big News

Well,
Lots has happened in the last month. Matt got a job in Arizona, we bought a house in Mesa, and yes, to make life that much more complicated, we're expecting a baby in early December. (I know)
To be completely honest, we thought it would take longer. It took 2.5 years of TRYING to get the Sam. After we decided to start trying again this time... 2 weeks. I think God plays these jokes on me on purpose. I really do. I have all kinds of plans and things are starting to work out, then BAM! He changes my plans for me.
Oh well. This one's a girl, you can quote me.
We still haven't sold our house. Know anyone looking to buy in Idaho Falls? We reduced the price another 3K this week, and NOTHING. Not even a showing.
Packing like crazy, though.
Every time I stop to reconsider whether or not we should really move, it snows.

So Sam's latest cute thing is he says, "No NO!" right before he does something naughty. It's kind of like an early detection warning system. "No NO!" (throws momma's good dish towels in the garbage) "No NO!" (throws momma's good dish towels in the toilet) you get the picture. He also loves sweeping. If he sees you get out the broom, and you don't let him "help" then a major tantrum is coming your way. That's also new, the tantrums. He gets all limp and sort of flops onto his back, with no previous thought as to what will cushion that giant head of his until after it hits the ground. I've learned to just ignore them, they stop faster. I'm hoping it's a phase that ends with talking.
We've developed our own little form of communicating. I ask a series of questions to which he answers yes or no via head nodding until we get to what he wants. This works fairly well, unless he gets to excited about nodding "no" and he never nods yes for changing a poopy diaper, but he will complain about having one. It must be a toddler thing.

Apr 3, 2008

Fun With Baby

Someone has discovered his belly button. I bet you nearly never think about your belly button now, but trust me, it's funny. A concave (usually) bowl of tight flesh wrinkles. Who thought of this? Another question: When very young babies are burned severely, the wounds almost always heal in such a way that you can't tell the child was ever burned, so why don't our belly buttons heal smoothly? Curious, don't you think?
In Other Boy Related News, we have a new game. The required elements are a Mom and a bed. Mom hides on one side of the bed and pops her head up to say, "Boo!" to baby. Baby (tries to) RUN around the bed to catch mom. Mom LEAPS over the bed to the other side. Rinse and repeat until Mom is out of breath. Baby will continue with the most adorable baby giggle throughout the game. Variation: Put baby ON the bed, and Mom army crawls around the base of the bed, randomly popping up to say, "Boo!" This is best done with a Daddy on the bed, so Baby doesn't get so excited he falls off.
The Boy is doing a better job walking. He prefers it to crawling now, but still needs something on which to pull himself up. He can wave hello and goodbye. If you tell him it's time to go bye-bye, he will automatically wave. (Tres cute) He says; no-no, ni-ni (night-night?) hi!, mum-mum, da, uh-huh! (yes) and some other things we haven't been able to decipher. He answers in the affirmative appropriately to questions like, "Do you love Mommy?" He's a smart boy.
We will post new pictures soon. We've been a little crazy around here trying to sell our house. :)

Mar 11, 2008

Trapped!

The Boy trapped himself in the bathroom this morning. Talk about a petrifying experience. I came THIS CLOSE to calling the Fire Department, and that's no lie.
The Boy crawled into the bathroom, closed the door and opened one of the drawers, effectively blocking the door. The hinges for the door are on the inside of the bathroom. I couldn't get my knuckles through the gap in the door to work the drawer closed. The Boy was screaming. The toilet lid was up. The entire situation couldn't have been worse.
I grabbed a paint stirring stick to wedge through the open door and tried to work the drawer closed. It almost worked, but then The Boy would open the drawer again, and this entire time he's screaming. I finally did manage to get the drawer closed enough to open the door and The Boy was rescued. Sigh of relief.
Now the big question: How do I keep The Boy safe? I'm for locking him up in the protective circle of my arms and never letting him go.
The next question is how does the mom survive toddler hood without going completely insane?

Mar 5, 2008

Washing the Cat

Before today, I wouldn't have been able to come up with a scenario wherein "wash the cat" would be on my "to do" list. A skunk changed that.
Rocky was sprayed by a skunk yesterday. When Matt brought him in yesterday night, he detected an odor, and sent the cat back outside. A few seconds later I smelled skunk. I said, "Our cat was sprayed by a skunk". Matt said, "No, he just has gas". Ha.
Today I asked Matt to smell the cat. He still smelled like skunk. We did think this through a bit before we corralled the cat. I found some tomato juice and Coban (vet rap) and we cleared the bathroom. Then we found the cat.
Our cat is kind of dumb. This is why he got sprayed by a skunk.
Rocky let us hog tie him with Coban AND put him in the sink. He filled our bathroom sink: I mean COMPLETELY filled it. I commenced with the poring of tomato juice while Matt held the cat. He didn't complain at all...until I got to his head. At this point we ran into trouble. You see, because our cat filled the sink, he was awfully hard to rinse, so we picked him up, covered in tomato juice, and transfered him to the tub. THEN he really started to complain. It sounded like he was saying, "No! No! No!" in a really pitiful voice. We got him all rinsed off and towel dried. I whipped out the hair dryer, because I didn't want "wet-cat" smell all over my house, it's right up there near skunk on the "Gross-O-Meter". He submitted to a few minutes of that, but in the end we let him leave the bathroom without being all dry.
I may have mentioned this cat is kind of dumb. Any self-respecting four-legged creature would have run from us and hid. Not our cat. As soon as he was clear of the bathroom door, he stopped in the hall to begin kitty ablutions. Our bathroom looks like a chain saw killer hacked someone up in the tub. There's watered down tomato juice EVERYWHERE. Poor cat. Poor Becky's bathroom rug. (I said we thought it through a bit, not the whole way.)

Mar 1, 2008

Toothbrush Addict

The Boy has a toothbrush fixation. I thought this might just be because the extra toothbrushes at our house are in a drawer The Boy can reach. He takes out the ones still in packages looking for the few that have lost their wrappers. Then he bangs on the wall with them and after they are thoroughly banged, he puts them in his mouth and crawls away. I find toothbrushes in the living room, the kitchen and the floor of our room.
Friday I started to suspect a deeper toothbrush addiction. The Boy and I attended a function with a friend. The three of us were in the bathroom and my friend's makeup kit was open. The Boy LUNGED for the barely visible toothbrush, and promptly popped it in his mouth. I was mortified. This is the first instance wherein I've been embarrassed by my son, I'm sure it's the first of many. Do they have AA meetings for toothbrush addicts?

Feb 27, 2008

High Speed Chase

Matt nearly got in the middle of a high speed chase tonight. Think about that a minute, and then you will be a fraction of the "scared out of your mind" I was when I heard it.
On the news tonight they said the three people in the vehicle crashed their car, broke into a house and stole the keys to a truck from ACTUAL PEOPLE, hit a pedestrian, and shot at police. Two cruisers are totaled. One of thee idiots is dead, one is in the hospital, and the last is on the loose in town. Needless to say, I'll be triple checking the locks tonight. Apparently they were being pulled over for outstanding warrants, and bolted.
Stuff like this doesn't happen here!
Interestingly, in all Matt's years living in Arizona, he never saw a high speed chase. Nope, had to come to little old Idaho Falls for that.

Feb 25, 2008

Talking Baby

Today we drove to my mom's and on the way Sam got a little bored. I handed him a "Little People" to play with, totally expecting him to gnaw on it and throw it on the floor, but no.
Instead he bounced the little guy on his lap and "talked" to it. He said, "aby gaga a boo za ga", which roughly translated means, "My mom tied me to a chair for three hours, and the only thing she's given me to play with is a molded plastic figurine shaped like a missionary, but hey! I'm barely 12 months old, so I'm good!" And THEN he threw it on the floor.

Feb 14, 2008

What Can Happen In a Year?

It turns out, quite a lot. Three days after my last post I had a baby via c-section (Not a good time, don't recommend it). Find out I don't actually want to be a working mother, quit working, go back to work part time, get a dog, give the dog away, sleep approximately two hours a night (new baby) and manage to function during the day. (Thank you Pepsi Cola)
Go to Disneyland and Yellowstone and Phoenix twice in 30 days. Paint the house (twice), scoop approximately 30 million shovels full of snow, change 18 million diapers, give 365 baths. Learn that grape juice, even in a sippy, is a very BAD idea if your child is wearing any clothing at all, and an ESPECIALLY bad idea if that clothing is yellow. Install two different kinds of car seats, buy millions of dollars worth of useless baby equipment. Take half of it back to the store. Read "Good Night Moon" enough to memorize it, then read it 50 million more times. Sing "Rock-a-bye Baby" until you're hoarse and then sing it ONE MORE TIME. Read 30 baby books, all telling you approximately the same thing (you know, the thing that doesn't work?).
Call the doctor in the middle of the night 10 times, 9 of which were not necessary. Call poison control and 911 at least once each.
Spend an infinite amount of time online searching out mysterious rashes and treatments for sleepless nights (ear plugs).
Replace the batteries in the lullaby CD player, camera and baby swing every third day. Take the batteries OUT of all the baby toys and the remote control.
Spend another million dollars on beauty products in an attempt to "recapture" your youth, just to discover that all you really need is sleep. Resign yourself to looking old.
Yes, it's been quite the year, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.