Friday, February 19, 2010

My Husband, Some Hotshot

He's such a smarty pants, and it's hilarious.

Last week I made a faux-pas. We have a favorite beverage and keep a case of them around at all times to ward off the afternoon 'snackies.' Gotta love the black cherry and citrus Fresca. My faux-pas was major. I thought I had put a can of Fresca in the fridge to chill for later. Later, I took it out and drank it. Apparently Troy had put a can in the fridge too and I drank his. I swear I put one in too, but the point is that when Troy came down to fetch his frosty and refreshing beverage there were none to be had. And I was in trouble. I begged for mercy, insisting that I really had put one in there, and then mentioned that perhaps he should write his name on his or something.

Cheeky. When I next went to the case to get a can, what do you think I found?


Funny guy.



The New Dynasty


Bitty loves to play pretend, as I have discussed in past posts; here and here. These trends have not slacked off in the slightest. If she can catch me holding still for more than 5 seconds she's all over me with "Mom, pretend you see a penguin in your kitchen and pretend penguins are your favorite animal and....." She gives herself the same name in every game she plays. For a long time she was "Ash." Then she saw the movie Matilda, and we were calling her Matilda for months. That name strangely morphed into the name "Makilla." Don't know where that one came from. She'd say, "Call me 'Killa' for short." Not my favorite, I'll confess. Next was "Mariposa," which is Spanish for butterfly. She got the name from a Barbie doll. I hang my head in shame.

So the next dynasty is upon is. Bitty's favorite name is now Caroline. It's cracking me up because this time she has named herself after an actual person. She doesn't have too many friends in the neighborhood - all the daughters of my local friends are older than she is. They're very sweet with her, but her one friend that was her same age and whom she got along with beautifully (most of the time...) moved to Millcreek. Luckily my friend Emily has had Bitty on her mind. Her boys play with some other boys who happen to have a 4-year-old sister going to kindergarten at Bitty's same school next year. Emily has been trying to set her up with Bitty for months. We finally had our blind date a couple of weeks ago, and they've played twice more since then. There were a couple of rocky moments at the start but pretty much the girls clicked instantly. She is Caroline, and Bitty is somewhat enamored of her. I call Bitty Caroline more these days than I call her by her real name. So funny. I was nervous about what would happen at the next playdate after she started calling her self by her friend's name. The real Caroline was fine with it - she had me start calling her Lisa! Little girls are so funny. And wonderful.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Cookies, Eggs and Socks

That has a ring to it, doesn't it? I mean, when don't cookies, eggs and socks go together?

Friday afternoon my mom invited over me and the kids for a little afternoon playdate. She kept the big kids busy making a few cookies while I let Bundle play with their fabulous collection of Russian eggs. And I finished the socks I've been working on. For a year. Yes, the most expensive socks on the block, I'd say. The yarn was like $18 or something, plus a year of actually knitting them makes me wonder if I should even wear them or just frame them and look at them. They're very thick and cozy; I love them already. Just remind me to wait a while before I knit anything on size 1 needles again, and especially not when I'm going to be having a baby. Because those two factors kind of quintupled the time until they were finished.


Bundle spent her time stirring the eggs in the basket:




And the big kids took over the kitchen in a cloud of flour and very sticky dough that made for better picking at than actual cookies:


An afternoon well spent, I'd say....until the kids got into the valentines chocolate....and started climbing the furniture and whooping like gibbons at the zoo....then it was time to leave.

Monday, February 08, 2010

The Things We Cling To

I just have to make a quick observation here. Sometimes motherhood is about grabbing on to whatever thread you have available and hanging on for dear life. Take, for example, the email I received from The Becky this evening. "James ate 15 bites of fried rice!" Perhaps to you, this may seem completely mundane, but trust me, in the world of The Becky, it is major. The child who doesn't eat actually ate. And he ate what Becky made for dinner. Even the other kids wouldn't touch it! For me today, my thread was that Bundle, who's sleeping habits have continued to nose dive, was put to sleep in her crib not completely asleep and she stayed asleep for two hours. Again, for the general public, this might not be of any consequence. In fact, it might even be considered a negative. But for me, it's the best she's done in weeks! Yay! Of course there were many celebrations today - can I just say, at the close of a long day, that I love my kids? Tonight Bitty burst into spontaneous prayer when she had a concern about her dad. So cute. And poor Stomper, who seems pretty wiped out by this whole illness thing, put himself to sleep at 7:30 after a frustrating evening, which frustrations included the fact that I wasn't prepared to get him gloves with claws on them. Maybe tomorrow, honey.

Sunday, February 07, 2010

Quarantined

Remember that old primary song about Oh What Do You Do in the Summertime? Well, I reworded it a little.

Oh what do you on the Sabbath Day when everyone is ill? ...

Oh forget it. I thought I could be all clever and rewrite the whole song to fit our day, but since I started this post at 8:00 p.m. and it is now 10:30, I have decided to bag that idea. Perhaps another day.

Basically, last night I spent the night listening to the oh-so peaceful and slumber-inspring (not!) cacophany of coughing coming from myself and my two older children. By the time 6 a.m. rolled around (WHY can't they sleep IN on weekends and get UP on school days?) they were up and begging for movies and snacks. I figured that sounded pretty good and we should just sit the day out at home. No one at church wants to listen to the entire Preslar family coughing their brains out for three hours, right? So what did we do? Actually, amazingly enough and despite the pit of dread I felt at the thought of an entire unscheduled day stuck inside, the day went pretty well. I had to be on my toes, which is not where I wanted to be when I was one of the patients too, but it worked out.

Some of our activities? Making muffin-tin lunches...


...which were to be eaten in our duo of forts erected in the living room:


We got out every toy we could find, spread it evenly around the living room and set Bundle down right in the middle. She was pretty happy about it!


We also went outside (yes!!!!!!) and walked up to the park for a very brief and chilly run around and scream session. We watched movies, of course, and I played a LOT of 'dragon' with Bitty. "Pretend you see a dragon in the living room." "Okay, I see a dragon in the living room." We colored and cut up magazines (Stomper's bed is now bedecked with tiny cutouts of all the new legos he wants as found in the lego "magazine" we got. Way to get out more advertising, Lego!) We even made cookies. Well, cookie. I actually despise making cookies, and I think it's because I hate washing 3 cookie sheets, and all the tedium of getting the cookies in and out of the oven every 10 minutes. You're stuck in the kitchen for like 40 minutes while the place just gets messier and messier. (Bah humbug to you too.) So we just made one big cookie on a jelly roll pan, and it turned out great. The kids ate theirs with chopsticks.


All in all, I'm happy to say that we survived the day. No one had any major meltdowns, including myself, and the kids were pretty happy and cute. We didn't get much Superbowl watching done, but that's okay. There will be another one next year, and I dare say that there isn't much chance I'll care about either of those teams either! I did catch the Oprah/Dave/Jay commercial that was about 15 seconds long and hilarious, though. I like that Dave.

Okay, well, here's to a better week this week - may we all overcome the illness that has been living at our house for a couple of weeks now. The kids are sleeping quietly, which I take as a good sign. Now let's see if I can do the same.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

8 Months and Miserable

I was hoping to post some really cute happy jolly pictures of our little Bundle to celebrate the completion of her 8th month today, but alas, those pictures will have to wait. Happy and jolly she is not. As I predicted, she was unable to avoid catching the Preslar cold and is now so sad looking that she actually made Bitty cry in the car today on the way to ballet class. Bitty looked over at her little sister, sitting there so pathetically, her mouth and nose and eyes dripping and puffy and red, and said, "Mom, she looks really sick!" and started crying. I nearly cried myself. I know a cold is no big thing and we'll be recovered in a day or two, but until then I think we'll all be a little miserable. Having a sick baby is the worst! Observe:


Sad, right? In fact, I think I need to post a picture I took a couple of days ago when she looked more like herself. She was cheerfully spreading food all over her high-chair tray. I'm having such a time getting this kid to eat! She will not touch baby food, and I'm having trouble finding things that are not just 100% carbs to feed her. So I mixed sweet potatoes with ramen noodles. Kind of icky, but she got into them and a few even got into her!


Awwww. I remember that happy little bright eyed babe of mine. She's great at sitting up, great at rolling over onto her tummy, but can't get anywhere from there but really irritated and upset. No where near crawling, I'd say. No worries. As soon as she can crawl I'm in real trouble!



Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Pathetic Pile of Preslars


That's what went through my mind this morning at 6:30 when I woke up, coughing and ailing and snorting and hacking. Baby Bundle was next to me sporting a pair of goopy eyes - she hasn't begun her round of goopy nose yet, but I feel certain she will shortly, dang it. Also part of our pathetic pile were Stomper and Bitty, who had spent the night coughing and boogering as well. Missing from our party was Daddy, who was upstairs on our spare bed, snoring away as happens when you are on high levels of Nyquil. We missed him but I don't think the bed could have held one more ounce of snot. The kids' eyes were red and puffy and very sad looking. I was just bleary. It was a little miserable and so far has not improved much. As I always say, the family that is sick together is ... sick together.

And THAT is why I have not been blogging for a whole week. I've been too busy blowing my nose, blowing Stomper's nose, blowing Bitty's nose and staying out of the way when Troy blows his.