Oops!

Today I finally managed to get some dishes done early in the morning. I got the dishwasher running and went off to do other things. When the cycle was nearly done, I happened to go past the kitchen, and smelled something burning. I came into the kitchen to find smoke as well as steam coming out of the dishwasher vent (it was on the drying cycle). I opened it up and found this:

Apparently this lid came loose from the top and fell all the way through to the bottom and landed on the heating element. By the time I found it, it was obviously way too late. Those spots are bits of plastic that had melted onto the element, burned even more, and were slowly dripping down onto the lid. Fortunately, this was an old lid, not really missed, and there was no other harm done.

Sean's first smile

Sean smiled at me for the first time today. He'd just woken up, and I was holding him. I looked at him and asked if he'd had a good nap. He looked up at me and smiled. I just wish I'd been able to take a picture of that.

Earth Day update

Last Wednesday was Earth Day. Bethany had some sort of lesson about it in preschool, because she came home from school with a pair of thin work gloves in her backpack, and talking about picking up garbage. Maybe they'd planned to do it at school and ran out of time, or something, I'm not sure. But for days afterward, Bethany would get upset because she didn't get any garbage yet. Usually it was while we were driving somewhere and she'd see some on the side of the road. Finally, last night for Family Home Evening, we had a short lesson about the earth, who created it and why we should take care of it. The Bethany, Meagan and I got gloves on and went out for a short walk and picked up garbage along the way (Sean was sleeping, so Nate stayed home with him). I never thought such a mundane chore could be so fun, but Bethany had a blast. Meagan thought it was fun at first, but then got bored and didn't want to do it any more. I had to bribe Bethany with promises of a treat when we got home to get her to stop. Even then, the whole way home she kept seeing more she wanted to pick up.

I do have a life...I thought

Several weeks ago, I noticed that the majority of my posts are about my children and the annoying or funny things they do. I decided to write about my life outside of my children. I was going to take a picture of a blanket I finished a few months ago, (one that took two years to finish), and a scan of a cross-stitch I'm doing for Meagan. It matches one I did for Bethany years ago with her name, birthdate and statistics on it. However, I never took the picture of the blanket, and the cross-stitch only has a few small patches of white done on it (and this after a couple of sessions of conference), and I never even finished writing the post. I've come to the conclusion that I just need to concede defeat and admit that I do not, in fact, have a life. At this point in time, my life is my children. Any spare time I might have goes to housework or church stuff, with a little bit of computer time thrown in there. Unless I hire a nanny, I just have to deal with the fact that my time is not my own right now.

Who knew?

We've lived in Clark county for nearly six years now, and I never knew this little factoid about Clark county and 4H until this wall was built a few months ago as part of an interstate contruction project.

Spring is officially here

Last year, Bethany developed an obsession for what she called "white flowers", i.e. gone-to-seed dandelions. Any time we went outside for any reason, she had so go get one and blow it apart. (Yes, our lawn now has lots of dandelions in it this year, thanks to that behaviour). Bethany was super excited yesterday to find a white flower in our yard, and she had to go pick it right away. She was still asking to go get more when she went to bed last night. So, it's official: spring is now here.

She did what?!!!

So, a couple of months ago, our longtime TV broke. We went out TV shopping, and came home with this 42" monstrosity (it looked a lot smaller in the store, surrounded by all the other humongous TVs). I thought it was maybe a bit extravagent, but we got it all hooked up, and even hooked up the surround sound system that we've had since we lived in OK and have never really used right. The setup looked good, and we were enjoying it. Until yesterday, that is.




Bethany was downstairs playing on the computer and Meagan was watching TV while I was upstairs doing whatever. Meagan came up saying that Bethany had turned off the TV. I went down, and looked. There was still sound, but no picture on the TV, so it wasn't off. I thought maybe someone had changed the channel or something. Then I looked closer, and found this:



Meagan had taken a section of wooden train tracks and either hit the TV or threw it at the TV. I had no idea the things were so fragile. Nate called the store we bought it at. The warranty doesn't cover abuse by children (which we expected), but we didn't expect them to want $150 just to come out and look at the thing. That's not including whatever parts and labor they'd put into fixing it. So, we are out one large, rather expensive TV. Grrrr.


To teach Meagan the consequences of her action (which she doesn't really seem to grasp), she doesn't get to watch TV for the rest of the week, at least (on the miniscule 12" TV we have left). The problem with that is that her punishment punishes me, too. I'm not exactly looking forward to the next several days without the electronic babysitter. Not that they spend all day in front of the TV or anything, but there are parts of the day where I really need some time without interruption to just plain get things done. Otherwise, Meagan is usually glued to my side. Trying to find ways to keep her occupied will be rather draining, I'm thinking. Sigh. At least the sun was out today.

A new hobby

Bethany has been having great fun playing with my camera lately. It made me a little nervous at first--I didn't know what she'd do to it--but she's been surprisingly good with it. Today I let her play around with it to keep her occupied for at least a few minutes while I was trying to get Sean to sleep. She actually managed to get a few good shots in with all the bad ones.

And here are a few of the not-so-good ones. I'm assuming she'll get better in time.

The minds of children

Sometimes I wish I could see into the minds of my children, to understand why they say and do some of the things they do. Even if I haven't a clue where some of these things come from, it's still quite funny at times.

Take Meagan. Yesterday as I was driving back from taking Bethany to school, I heard her talking in a stern voice to one of her legs, chastising it for bumping the other one. Then in a soothing voice, she said to the other one, "There, there, it's okay," over and over. It was really hard not to just start laughing at her.

Nate also told me something funny she did when he took her to a fish store last Saturday. He held up in front of a tank of crayfish, and when she asked, he told her what they were. She said, "Crayfish are scary." So he tried to take her away to look at something else, but she refused to budge. She just wanted to look at the crayfish, all the while repeating that they were scary. Strange.

Bethany's come up with a few fun ideas lately, too. Okay, not really fun for me, but they had a blast. Yesterday, they fought so much during the day, that I was getting really frustrated with them. Between that and Sean fussing, I was having a hard time getting anything done. By the time I was trying to cook dinner, I was pretty wiped out. Fortunately, they disappeared in their room and finally quit fighting. I heard all sorts of bangings and crashes and other assorted noised coming from the room, but since no one was screaming in pain, I just ignored it to work on dinner. Nate came home, dinner was ready, and I called them to the table. Bethany came bounding down the hall, proudly proclaiming, "It's a big party! I made a big party!" Out of curiousity, I went to see what her 'big party' was. They'd emptied almost every toy from the various drawers and shelves in their room and piled them all on Meagan's bed. The mound was so big, there's no way Meagan could've gone to bed even if she'd wanted to. Hmm...maybe this means they have too many toys. Whatever. It was a big mess, but at least it was all contained on the bed, and not strewn everywhere, and it kept them happily occupied until dinnertime.

On Sunday, we pulled up to the church, and Bethany declared, "It's snowing!" I looked up at the sunny sky, and couldn't figure out what she was talking about, until I looked forward. The pear tree in front of the van was shedding petals from its myriad blossoms, so much so that it did really look like it was snowing. It took Bethany getting out of the car and looking at the tree close up to believe me that it wasn't snowing, though.

Oh, speaking of Bethany and Meagan fighting, they've had some really interesting ones lately. They've entered the "nuh-uh" and "yuh-huh" phase. The thing is, though, that I wonder if Meagan really understands what those words mean, because sometimes she says them back to back in the middle of an argument. Anyway, the other day at breakfast, Bethany burped and said "Excuse me." Meagan thought it was funny and fake burped, just so she could say it, too. So Bethany hollers, "Not you, me!" "Nuh-uh, yuh-huh!" "No, me!" It was a very silly argument.

Bethany also insists that she's a boy and yesterday she told me she was going to fly. At least she's also saying that she wants Sean to "live at our house all of the time" now, instead of wanting him to go back to the doctor.

Yes, I wish I could see inside their minds.

Sleep...what's that?

Yesterday was the first day in ten days that we haven't had houseguests. I totally crashed. We wanted to make the most of our time with everyone, since we weren't going to see any of them again any time soon, and so we stayed up until 12:00-1:00am every night guests were here. Add 3:00 and 6:00 Sean feedings to the mix, and you can see why I got tired. So yesterday I didn't get much accomplished at all, because to top it off, Sean was really fussy. He hardly slept all day long, and fussed a lot. I'm not really sure what his problem was, but he finally settled down about 11:00pm. I slept out in our recliner with him until 3:00 when he woke up and ate. He fell back asleep, but wouldn't stay asleep in his bed. Nate ended up out in the recliner with him for the rest of the night, and I got to sleep in my own bed. Nice. I felt a lot better this morning. Sean seems to be better too, because he's slept most of the day. I just hope this doesn't mean he won't sleep tonight.

First kiss

Bethany kissed her first boy today (outside of family). Her teacher told me that during a filmstrip today, she leaned over and pecked the cheek of the boy sitting by her, Carsen. I wish I knew what she was thinking at the time.

Happy Easter!

My sister Brenda was here with her kids this weekend (as well as my mom and littlest sister, Gloria) for Easter, and to see Sean blessed on Sunday. All the kids had a great time playing together. On Saturday, they had an Easter egg hunt in the backyard. We color-coded each kid's eggs, so we could hide the older kids' eggs in harder places, and also this ensured that all the kids had an even number of eggs. Meagan's eggs were pink and Bethany's were orange. They loved it. They also loved coming inside right after and devouring most of the candy.









On Sunday, Sean was blessed. I was really not up to making any kind of outfit for him, so I was going to borrow Cedric's blessing outfit from Brenda. When she got it out, though, she said it was stained, so she made one for him. It's so cute, especially with the little bowtie.


Bethany and Meagan in their Easter dresses.

After church, the kids dyed eggs. Bethany wore an old t-shirt of mine, so she wouldn't get her clothes yucky. She has a bad habit of wiping her hands on her clothes, especially at mealtimes. Anyway, the kids had a blast with the eggs. I think my mom had a great time helping Meagan with hers, too.

Meagan's eggs before.

Meagan's eggs after. Bethany's eggs after. Note the stickers she chose. No fluffy bunnies or cutsie butterflies for her.

Shopping with an infant, a toddler and a preschooler...am I crazy?

My mom and littlest sister, Gloria, arrived Thursday. It's been great having them here. Besides just catching up with them, it's really nice having a few extra hands to help take care of kids and help out in general.

Today we went to the mall. I don't have many clothes that fit me right now. I'm still going down in weight since Sean was born, but I still have a ways to go, and so I'm kind of wardrobe impaired right now. So my mom decided to take me shopping for my birthday. I'd been out with just Sean a couple of time already, but those were quick trips, and I wasn't really trying on clothes or anything. This trip was different. I fed Sean before we left, but he fell asleep while eating, and so he didn't get as much as he normally does, so of course he started to fuss just minutes after we got inside the mall. I decided to try to feed him again. Mom and Gloria took Bethany and Gloria to the playground by the food court while I tried to find somewhere to feed Sean. There wasn't a place in Sears, but he was crying so much I just took him out of his carseat. I noticed his diaper was wet, so I changed him. He calmed after that, so I just met up with everyone else and we went to JC Penny's. I found a few things to try on, and then Sean started fussing again, so I sat in the fitting room and fed him. Of course, he messed in his diaper while I was feeding him, and the bathroom was all the way upstairs. So I left the girls with my mom and sister again, while they kept browsing through the clothes, and went up to change Sean again. He has a bit of diaper rash and I forgot his cream, making me feel bad when he cried. Sigh. After that I met up with my family for the third time, and finally looked a few things, between refereeing fights between Bethany and Meagan. I ending up taking Bethany with me to the fitting room to try on the things I'd picked up. It must be prom season, because there were several young girls trying on formal dresses, and the line was reallly looong. We finally made it to the front of the line, and Bethany kept telling me she had to go to the bathroom. I was afraid she'd have an accident, so we left the line, and trekked back upstairs to the bathroom for Bethany. By the time we finished and came back down, the lady who'd been right behind me was still waiting in line for the fitting rooms, so we found another fitting room instead. I did find a couple of things to buy, but the whole trip was a bit of a pain. I think I spent more time dealing with kids than actually looking at clothes. If my mom and sister hadn't been there, I think I would've packed up and gone home when Sean first started crying. I don't think I could've handled it on my own, and I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to look at anything, let alone try it on.

Dam the leaks!

Sean leaks. All the time. Well, he did, anyway. I was getting so frustrated, because all his diapers leaked, everytime he was wet. I'd been given a bunch of diapers at a shower, so I was using four or five different brands, and all of them leaked. My sister-in-law told me that little boys needed to be "pointed", so I tried that out with no results. I was going through seven or eight outfits a day, not to mention the blankets he leaked on. Finally, today, I figured it out. I'd been told to put vaseline in his diaper, until his circumcision healed, so he wouldn't stick. Maybe I got a little overeager with the vaseline, but that's what the problem was. It wasn't letting the diaper absorb like it was supposed to. Sean had his two week checkup today, and was cleared to stop the vaseline, and we haven't had any more leaks. Yeah!

P.S. He's now 8lbs 13ozs, so he's definitely getting enough to eat!

Settling in and a very full house

I suppose we're slowly settling into a routine with Sean. He's not on an exact schedule yet, but close enough. He has been sleeping long periods at night already, though, which is really great. Usually it's 4-5 hours at a stretch, but last night he slept almost seven hours. Of course, he didn't fall asleep until 1:00am, but, hey, he let me sleep the rest of the night, so that has to count for something, doesn't it.



Nate started paternity leave last Wednesday, and it goes until this Friday. It's been really great having him at home, especially since we've had a house full of guests since last Thursday. Nate's sister, Tanya, lived just down the street from us. Her husband, Brandon, just finished medical school, and they're moving to Portsmouth, OH for his residency. They packed up their house on Thursday, loaded the truck and stayed with us Thursday night, and were supposed to go to Portsmouth and close on their new house on Friday. Their realtor called Thursday and said it wasn't going to happen. We're not really sure who's at fault, but there is a big paperwork jam, and it's holding off their closing until at least Wednesday this week (today's Monday). So, since they had nowhere else to go, they've been staying here. The girls, all four of them, have been having a lot of fun playing together. We've had some nice weather that they got to go out and play in, so that's been good. It's been really stressful for Tanya and Brandon, not knowing what really is going on or when they can close and having all their stuff in a Uhaul on the street. The plan right now is for them to close on Wednesday. I think they'll head down to Portsmouth one way or another on Wednesday, anyway, since their realtor offered to get a hotel room for them. I don't want to kick them out or anything, but it's going to be kind of necessary because my mom and littlest sister are arriving on Wednesday. It's my mom's spring break, so she's flying out to see the new baby. My sister Brenda is coming with her kids on Saturday. We'll do a few Easter things together (dyeing eggs, etc.) and then everyone's leaving on Sunday. I just need a bigger house.

Sunday meltdown

Why do the meltdowns always happen at conference time? Is it some scheme to keep us from listening? Last conference, we tried to go for a walk between sessions. Meagan insisted on being carried, and carried by me, which I couldn't do, being pregnant. So she had a major tantrum. We'd only gone a block and a half or so, and turned around and went home. I went outside and talked to some of my siblings on the phone, and left Meagan screaming in the house. When I came back inside, she was still screaming and rolling on the floor, kicking her legs. Silly girl.

So this time it was Bethany's turn. Sunday is a hard day to keep children entertained, especially ones like today, where they don't even have church to go to. Bethany hasn't been getting enough sleep lately, and I think she's a bit stressed with all the guests we've had this weekend, all of which resulted in a major meltdown this morning, over something stupid like her memory game. It was a sunny day, if a bit cold, so I made her go outside with me and go for a walk. She wanted to take her tricycle, so we went. She didn't want to go at first, but once we got going, she had a lot of fun. Her trike has a little basket on the back, so she had fun filling it with stuff as we went. We picked up some little pine cones and lots of dandelion heads (of course--she loves 'yellow flowers'). After a bit we saw a guy riding a mini motorcycle with what looked like his son in front of him. Bethany was fascinated, especially when he popped a wheelie, all down a parking lot. She stood up and picked up the front end of her trike and said, "He's going like this! Can you do that, please?" So she sat back down, and I held up the front end of her trike while she pedaled down the sidewalk. My daughter, the crazy biker!

Kindergarten, here I come

So I registered Bethany for kindergarten today. It was kind of a surreal experience--I suddenly felt like a little girl playing dress-up. How could I possibly have a kid old enough to be starting school? I suppose I'm technically old enough to have a teenager (shudder), so it shouldn't feel so weird, especially since Bethany's been going to preschool since last fall, but it did.

The brief glimpse I got of the school while I was there didn't really impress me much, I'll have to say. The building itself is really old, and there were old desks and filing cabinets in the hallway. I'm glad it's unlikely that Bethany will have more than one year of school at that school. When we moved here, we didn't have any children at all, and never expected to be here long enough for any kids we might have to go to school here, so we didn't consider the schools at all when looking for a house. The neighboring school disctrict is supposed to be even worse, though, so I guess we mostly lucked out.

The thought of Bethany going to school scares me a little. I'm going to be one of those nervous moms that hovers, and worries about their child finding the way or getting lost on the way to class. I like preschool, because I walk her right to the door of the classroom, and see that she's in her class before I leave. I'm going to worry the first time she gets on the bus that she won't know where to go, or freak out because everything is strange to her. We're supposed to have an open house the day before school starts, and I will probably drive her to school the first week or so, until I'm sure she's okay. I'm sure I'm going overboard, but for my own peace of mind, I'm going to do it anyway.

On a completely different topic now, I gave Sean his first bath today. Let's just say that he wasn't a fan. He wasn't screaming bloody murder or anything, but he was definitely not happy with the situation. He really needed one, though. His hair was starting to get a little greasy, and his skin was peeling, so I wanted to put some lotion on. Also, freshly washed babies just smell good. His hair got really fuzzy afterward, and looked a little more red than usual. If he's anything like Bethany, he'll love bathtime in no time.