Friday, March 30, 2007

A Day in the Life

Hi. What a day. No photos to go along with this one, just a peek into this lovely day.

Troy had to go to Moab for work. I was happy for him because he loves Moab and I knew he'd get a chance to ride his bike a bit. When he's gone, I have a bad habit of staying up even later than usual. I'm so crazy (I know we already covered that in the last post, but it must be said.) I am so exhausted, yet sometimes the emotional exhaustion outweighs the physical, and I must stay awake after the kids go to bed to have a little free time. So I stayed up and watched "Stranger Than Fiction," with Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson - I loved it. I went to bed at maybe 12:30. RAP has been sleeping well lately... until last night. 3:30 she wakes up - and is obviously in some sort of discomfort because she can't settle down. She's in bed with me, which usually helps, but she rolls around and sits up and asks for grapes and asks for water and sits on my face and stands up etc. until almost 6:00, where upon I let out an inhuman, yet strangely mother-esque shriek: GO TO SLEEP! Guess what. It worked. She started crying, then lay down and went to sleep. I'm prepared to try this technique again.

I let her sleep until 10:00, figuring I'd just try to make her skip her nap. Wow. Grumpy baby. I of course did not sleep until 10:00, but until 7:30 when CTP got up. Wow. Grumpy mommy. Then this afternoon RAP was running outside and tripped and fell, and of course caught herself on her arm. She came in sobbing and holding onto one wrist with the other hand. Oh dear. I let her cry for about 15 minutes before I decided that Friday at 4:00 was a good time to call the Dr. before it became an evening trip to the ER. I must say, I do love our Dr. Durham. (Hooray for your dad, GHD3.) Luckily, R has no broken bones, just a sprain or a bad soft tissue injury. I was a bit of a bummer to leave the office with her still holding her arm and crying, but at least she was castless. She fell asleep on the way home, had a brief nap, and as soon as she woke up, started acting like nothing had ever happened to her arm. Which is good, right? Troy got home from Moab shortly after. He came home early due to it being too dang cold to do much.

***

Well, now that "today" has become "yesterday," and we've all woken up from a long night of deep sleep, I think we'll be okay. It didn't feel like that at about 4:30 yesterday!

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Rachel's Weird Dreams

Meet Steve. He's the now-retired host of Blue's Clues, which I have watched perhaps more than I should have in the past few weeks. Sorry, but all-day morning sickness can lead to some extra t.v. time. This may be more info than you want to know about me, but I just have to share two crazy dreams that make me laugh every time I think of them. One was that Steve and I were really good buddies, and we headed out to grab some lunch one day. Who should be there but Matt Lauer - host of the Today Show. The three of us sat and had a lovely conversation, enjoying lunch, and then Steve and I gave Matt a ride home. Such nice guys....in my head, anyway.

My other favorite dream concerned me and my new knife. I just got the most wonderful knife - it's a really nice chef's knife that's so sharp it almost seems like magic. Yes, I love it enough that I dreamed about it. I dreamed that I was in charge of planning an entire summer girl's camp with no one's help my but old boss and Matt Damon. (Yeah, I don't know. I'm crazy.) I also had to cook lunch for both of them. I was so discouraged and overwhelmed and kept making horrible mistakes until I realized I had my trusty knife with me. Hooray for the Santoku Knife! With the help of my one dependable sidekick, I saved the day.

I still chuckle when I think of these dreams, though they're certainly only funny to me. Ha ha, anyone who actually read this entry. Sorry about your wasted time! Perhaps I have revealed too much about myself...but now you have proof that I really am crazy.

That's My Boy!

A couple of nights ago CTP and Troy and I were up late, chilling out and watching a little t.v. CTP asked if he could watch his own show. I was expecting a request for Blue's Clues or at least Prehistoric Planet. No, he asked for "the guy with the funny hair and the glasses who is silly and cooks food." It took a moment for us to figure out what he was talking about, and then it dawned on us that he was requesting my favorite cooking show on the Food Network - Good Eats! This is Alton Brown, my food hero, and host of Good Eats. His is the first show I've ever watched that actually teaches WHY food does what it does when you cook. And he's very silly. CTP just giggles when I have it on. He actually asks me to rewind some parts several times. I was so proud! My boy wants to watch cooking shows with me! Troy instantly started searching for some sort of sporting game...just kidding. Troy loves Good Eats too. Half the time we feel like we should be taking notes on all the information. Alton, you've done well!

Monday, March 19, 2007

Told Ya it was Funny....

For a long time I've been trying to get a photo and/or movie of RAP doing my two favorite signs she does, and I finally got them:


"Cold"



"Scared"

Here's the video:



Other than that, not much exciting has been going on. We're just enjoying some beautiful early spring weather here, getting outside a lot. It's amazing how much easier the days are when we can just open up the back door and let the kids wander.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Dancing Queen

Tonight we were invited to attend a play at the local elementary school to see my sister Margaret's daughter K do some serious singing and dancing and puppeteering. It was quite a show. I took both kids, hoping we'd get a chance to see at least some of the show before RAP made it absolutely clear she was leaving the building (kind of like church) (or any other setting requiring holding still and listening.)

Much to my surprise, once the singing started, R was glued. We were sitting on the floor just in front of all the seating and though C made a few "I'm bored" type comments and mostly just rolled around on the floor, R sat in my lap and avidly soaked it in. Every time a song ended she applauded wildly and then turned to me, signing for more music.

Within a couple of songs, she couldn't contain herself any longer and with every song she'd leap out of my lap and twirl furiously in front of me, bouncing her little bum, swirling her arms and basically dancing her little heart out. I SO wish I had my camera there. I did have a flashback to the Steve Martin movie "Parenthood" in which his toddler escapes on to the stage of the school play and basically destroys the whole thing before they can grab him. Luckily R kept back from the actual performance enough to not be too much of a distraction, but I did catch one dad aiming his camera at her as she danced for a few moments. I felt that that was permission enough to let the dancing go on.

Oh, the joyous moments of parenthood we enjoy when we're not too tired to notice what's going on. Here's a shot of R helping me make our "once was alive but is now dead" (see previous post) chicken we had for dinner. Salad, anyone?

Mousecapades

We have been invaded by two teeny tiny thieves. Two little mice - the tiniest I've ever seen - have taken up residence in our house. They don't seem to be very shy since they tend to come out and keep us company (especially when I have friends over) and I know they are light-weight since I have seen them sitting on the traps eating peanut butter without disturbing the snapping mechanism. After a couple of days of this, we decided to maybe try something else, so we put a little D-con under a drawer where we figured the hideout was. CTP wasn't really into the poison idea - he was stalking the mice with a pair of tongs claiming he wanted to squish them to death. Nice.

Of course yesterday while I had two friends and their combined four children over for lunch the mice made their usual appearances. Due to their rather NOT shy nature I decided to just trap one, which I easily did. Of course, once CTP saw the tiny creature his attitude of being the bearer of horribly painful death changed into, "Can we keep him?" I tried to explain about wild mice bringing filth and sickness into our home but he didn't much care. He came unglued when I tried to talk about other means of extermination or even letting it go. So we waited for a few hours, C periodically checking in on our new pet.

By the end of the day, it had become obvious that the mouse had eaten some poison and was very sick. I talked C into letting it go so it wouldn't get more sick....I couldn't think of anything else to tell him. We took it to the very back of our yard and let it go where I could see it was in dire straights. C wanted to make a sandwich for it. Hey, a sandwich always picks me up when I'm down.

Well, I got him distracted enough to come in (and WASH HANDS) and do our evening stuff and go to bed. I had forgotten about it - I figured the other mouse had/would suffer the same fate as the first (minus four hours in a Tupperware container) and let it go. That was until today when C was playing outside and came to me with the dead mouse IN HIS HAND (AHHHHHHHHHH!) - actually, that's what I really said. I scared him so bad he threw the mouse on the floor and burst into tears, which he was close to anyhow due to his pet's discovered death.....man. Sometimes I seriously need a parenting manual. After further hand washing we did some talking about the passing of animals into the Heavenly Realms and he seemed to feel better. Sweetly, he did mention that Alex wasn't ever going to die. This I take as a good sign of C's affection for Alex, which isn't always clear. Mostly C likes to torment him or ignore him. Lately he has taken to feeding him his toast crusts - yes, he's realizing the true purpose of dog ownership. I hope their relationship continues to blossom.

Anyhow, as a final note of C's new contemplations regarding the circle of life, tonight for dinner as I gave him a piece of chicken, he asked, "Mom, is this the part of the used-to-be-alive and now-is-dead chicken?" Pause. "Yes." What else could I say?