the no good, very bad month...

This month has been a frenzied blur of runny noses, fevers, childrens meds, copayments, record amounts of laundry, sleepless nights, and sippy cups filled with gatorade. In February, between my 3 kiddos we have had strep throat four times, eight courses of antibiotics, 2 weeks of daily fevers, 3 ear infections, one bout of pneumonia and a trip to the ER for a brain CT (bet you can't guess who that was). So if you run into me waiting in line at the pharmacy and I seem a little haggard, you know why. If everybody can feel decent by the weekend we may have to get out of town. We are all a little stir crazy.

I took some time one morning to capture all 3 of their little, sick bedheads.





Movies and my DVR have been the constant noise in the house while the kids layed around like little, sick slugs. We've managed to read a little, play a little with play dough and a little with building sets, but I'm not going to lie...our TV has put in some overtime. All the vegging about made me think of this poem that I love...it makes me laugh, feel guilty and feel validated all at the same time. ???

Television

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set --
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink --
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it's Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There's Mr. Rate and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.

Ronald Dahl

a little allegory on life

Once again...so close, but not quite good enough!

is it really that bad?

I was tired of my tangled drawer of necklaces, so in a rare creative moment, I made this! I used an old frame from the basement, covered buttons and some beautiful fabric from Mrs. Guppy's. I was a happy girl. I loved getting some of my jewelry out of the reach of my children and in a spot where I could quickly grab what I wanted. It felt good to get my creative juices going and actually finish something. Yeah for me! Well, my enthusiam over this project was quickly swallowed up when Dave returned home.

He said that my lovely creation belonged in a Lesbian Master Bedroom. What? I explained that this level of craftiness would be wasted on most lesbians...even the non butch ones, but still he persisted. Dave's protest was mainly with the location. According to Dave, any place where a MAN might want to sleep or lie in bed and look at this on the wall was the wrong one. In my defense, I hung this behind the door into our room, so it wouldn't be prominently on display (after all these necklaces are no treasures...mostly buy one get one 1/2 off at Maurices), but I'm afraid any amount of "craft" is too much for my Dave. I have complied with nearly all of his craft paranoia. The walls of our home bear no witty catch phrases. I don't do toll painting or make him use his router to cut out hundreds of wooden easter eggs or witch hats or stockings. There are no dried flower sprays with rafia bows on our mantle. I have nothing that is bedazzled, or covered in buttons or ribbon. Our home is a Martha Stewart wasteland of sorts.

I think I will make something new to annoy him. Maybe a cute, fabric cover for his gun safe or some kind of a wooden animal to hang on our bathroom wall with a pouch for his toothbrush and razor.

it's a nacho world....and we're just living in it

First of all, I pray this picture is not of a real human being. Secondly, sorry about any nightmares it might cause.

Anyway...the term nacho is one that I hold dear to my heart. I first heard it used by my little sis to refer to someone's enjoyably fake hair. Let me explain. If a lady comes walking by with a giant wad of non hair stuck to her head in some fashion...it's nacho hair. It's.....not....your....hair, or more precisely not...cho...hair! Nacho hair can take the form of a weave, a wig, a clip on ponytail, spray on color for bald men, or even a bump it. Anything that you attempt to make look like hair, but is not hair...that's nacho hair.

Lately I've been using nacho to refer to other fake phenomenons. I'm surprised how often the term can be applied. Nacho boobs, nacho eyelashes, nacho hair color, nacho fingernails, nacho lips, nacho body (Spanx). I'm not much of a nacho girl (mostly out of laziness) not that there is anything wrong with it. I do, however, have a nacho tooth. A little porcelain tooth that covers one of my teeth that God meant to give to a wolverine. This undersized, pointy fang was thankfully and compassionately covered up during my years of teenage angst. I haven't missed it. It's got me thinking, though, about what parts of me are really me and what are just...well not. I believe I will die, and someday get my body back. Am I going to get to keep my Nacho tooth? Or will I be back to looking like a feline? I am told I inherited this tooth from my Grandma Bingham. I think she would enjoy a shiny, new nacho tooth as well....as would all of our progenitors who painfully carried the pointed tooth up the family tree. What about everyone's beautiful, straight teeth thanks to braces? Do we get to keep the alignement or will the choirs in heaven be filled with a bunch of snaggle teeth? You would think God would let Dentristy continue, or those"problems" would just be done away with. Certainly there will not be a need for plastic surgeons, so that's gonna be a bummer for a few husbands out there. But where will the line be drawn? Anyway, these are the workings of my delinquent brain....things that keep me up for a minute or two at night, until I take out my bump it, climb under the covers and fall asleep!

birthday bonanza (light on content...heavy on pictures)

Hooray! it is with great relief and a little sigh of joy that i can say...all the birthdays are over! Jacob is 5, Edison is 3, Saren is 1 and I am timeless and suspiciously pale skinned. We have had lots of parties and cakes and gifts exchanged in the last few weeks.

Jacob woke up the day after Christmas and said "I can't believe it's my birthday TODAY!" I had to agree. We had a quiet, little birthday lunch at Chucky Cheese. Jacob may have a future as a skee ball olympian.

Then, off to Grandma Nelson's house for more Christmas partying. Jacob made this cute face when we sang to him.

We had the annual Christmas "gift" (I use that word loosely) exchange...


...and a fun, new tradition - ghetto pinata!

On to Edison. In the mother of all random requests, Eddie had his little heart set on a "Master Crane" cake. I know, right? Could you pick any character more annoyingly obscure? Templeton maybe? Master Crane is a character from "Kung Fu Panda", although in Crane's defense he is surprisingly Bad A. I tried to dissuade Eddie by describing a cool a "Hot Wheels"cake. He would have none of that. Master Crane could not be moved from Eddie's Kung Fu grip. And so, I made this sorry cake. The picture doesn't do it justice...it was much uglier in real life. It was the best I could do. Ace of Cakes, I'm sorry.

Eddie tried his best not to like it, as he is determined to be contrary at all times, but I know he was excited. Edison spent the rest of the day trying to keep Jacob from running off with his birthday gifts and the rest of the week singing "Happy Birthday to Eddie" with me so he could re-enact blowing out the candles. He has grown up a lot since last year, when the fire on his birthday cake sent him into a terrified cry.

Saren was her laid back self. "Ok, let's go out for dinner! Presents...sure I'll rip the paper off. Everyone is singing to me...I'll smile. Cake...yeah I'll eat some. You want this new toy Eddie? Here you go!".

Jacob spent much of the afternoon making little gift tags for all of Saren's presents and taping them in place.
I can't believe she is 1!
Since Saren hated this (being stuffed in a gift bag), we didn't repeat it on her birthday. This picture cracks me up.

And I went on a date with Dave for my birthday. So wierd and lovely to be alone. It was fun anticipating a night out all week, I only wish I would have had time for primping like I used to before a date. But I wear my hair much smaller these days and I have forgotten how to fix it anyway.

Ho ho ho...

This blog has been edited for content...topics that were deliberately excluded from this post to make our Christmas memories more jolly are as follows:

1) Mom being on call and having non stop phone and house calls on Christmas day.
2) Dad's near hospitalization for pneumonia.
3) Vomit palooza in Grandma Bingham's master bath.
4) 104 degree fevers during the night.
5) Eddie drinking the water in Grandma Nelson's denture cup and then throwing the "rest" in the garbage.


Having said that...

Christmas vacation this year has been lovely. Honest it was! We had a nice FHE Christmas week and made little paper angels for the tree where we each wrote down something we would work on to be better. I said I would be patient all the time! Jacob wrote that he would share. We voted on Eddie's behalf and said that he would not yell. Saren would smile a lot. Done. Dave wrote...I will quote the angel he made directly "Daddy...stop talking nasty, no yelling, a lot of patience, mind out of gutter". It was a moving little activity.

Later in the week, we had a fun visit with Aunt Annie, who is here every weekend, and Aunt Merrilyn, who is visiting from North Carolina. My kids love their aunts, especially these two.

Christmas Eve we took a picture of Eddie's 2 year old mustache with this lovely Christmas backdrop.

I wondered if I would need to put Saren's hair in some kind of tail before Christmas morning pictures. I did.

Christmas morning, Jacob took a lot of prompting to get out of bed before he remembered what day it was. Then we did a lot of this....

(opening presents)

And a lot of this...

(posing by our loot).

Santa brought a lot of things, but most beloved was a package of fruit snacks (which Mom never buys) and had the kids in a complete frenzy of joy. Eddie has never posed so nicely for a picture.

And, after tucking the kids in bed Christmas night, I was up late making a Spiderman birthday cake. Birthdays are a Christmas tradition in our family too. Merry Christmas!

i'm feeling a little regret

I'm in a pickle. I recently ordered some Christmas cards online. It was a relief to get them done, until I started really stressing about the content of the brief, obligatory letter I included. This little note, recapping our year, is being printed right on our card...so it's all or nothing. I can't censor content for the elderly, the holy ones or the easily offended on our Christmas card list. This now has me worried. What I thought was a cute comment about "bodily fluids", now seems an inappropriate reference in poor taste for a Christmas Card. Oh, I need a redo but I'm not going to get it, they are paid for and on their way to my door.

Dave was no help at the time I placed the order..."Whatever honey" was all he said when I asked him if the bodily fluids reference was OK or not. But, a mere hour later he suddenly exclaims, "Great! I guess I can't mail one to my mission President because you had to talk about bodily fluids in our Christmas card!". Thanks a lot honey! This got me thinking of all the other people whose homes I should probably not disgrace with our card. In our extreme narcisism, we ordered a few extra because Dave said, "I can give them to some of my patients". Great! Not anymore. I could cost him his career with my little comment. Also, there are some of my Aunts and Uncles who likely only know me as Lynda's daughter...and are probably not aware of my wicked rhetoric and sarcasm. They will now think of me as a bratty, wise acre.

A hopeful thought crossed my mind that maybe the lettering would be too small for some older people to notice the reference. Or maybe, people won't bother reading the whole note. I'm reaching aren't I? These are the ramblings of a desperate woman, I know. On my blog I can pretty much be myself. No one over 65 years old has ever seen it, so that eliminates most of the people I would worry about offending. I was feeling a little too much creative freedom while I wrote the Christmas card, I guess. It's so hard for me to write just a nice letter...the smirky comments just pour out of me. I can't help it. It feels so disingenuous, until I include a little smut. It's like asking Eddie to walk down the hallway without tripping or running into a wall...can it be done by someone? Yes! Can he do it? Not likely!

So, I apologize if after receiving my card...you find me immature and lacking in tact. You are probably right, but it was bound to come out eventually.