2 nights with Ralph

I feel like I've been transported back in time. I spent the last two nights up with sick kids. I am tired and I smell like puke. Just not beer and cigarette puke!

Poor kiddos, one by one they both got some weird stomach bug. I usually think this would be food poisoning, but it doesn't make sense to me, with the way it manifested. Wed. night Annika wakes me up at 1am and said she threw up in bed. She is covered in the lovely stuff and her PJs are also covered. So, quick strip the bed (funny thing is Lauren RAN to her room and shut the door; she does not want to even see the offending stuff!) throw the dirty smelly sheets in the laundry (nothing like doing laundry at 1am) and strip me and kiddo so we can wash her hair. I contemplated trying to help Annika shower without hopping in myself, but with her being tired and, well, just being Annika, I figured I'd probably be drier inside the shower than outside. Washing Annika's hair is not an easy job on a normal day, but when she is tired and cranky, it is not a pretty sight.

Finally, all showered and fresh, Annika and I are redress and hop into our (new mattress) bed. Scared that she is going to throw up again, I throw a towel down on the sheets and attempt to sleep. Not much luck; every time she moves I wake her up and ask her if she is feeling OK. Somewhere around 4am she got really mad at me and yelled, "NO! I am not going to be sick again!" Oops, guess I was hovering a bit ... but it was self-preserving hovering. My new and very expensive mattress does not need to reek of puke after only a few months!

Well, fast forward 24 hours, and suddenly it is groundhog day. Only this time Lauren is hovering over me, naked, telling me she threw up. Which is weird, because Lauren has only thrown up three times in her entire life. Up I get and strip the bed (and blankets for this one) and thankfully Bill was awake too and helped rinse the vomit off the sheets. Shower Lauren (I stayed dry this time) and put her back in bed. 15 mins. later I get an instant replay. Strip, rinse, remake bed. Lauren and I lay down in her bed together, convinced that we are almost through with this. Nice thought. The poor girls was up every 15-30mins. the rest of the night, until 9am, when our last visit with Ralph occurred.

So, today I have washed three beds - this includes covers, comforters, sheets, pillows, mattress covers, and in the case of the queen bed where Annika and Lauren were on Wed. night, one mattress scrubbed too. OK, that part is not so much like college. Just the raw eyes and smell of vomit.

The Glamorous life of a mom.....

The Crunchy Crusader

Does the Title Come with a Cape?
I was just called the Crunchy Crusader by a fellow "granola" mom. Huh. Makes me think. Yes, I did help start a group for other moms and others that are less "mainstream" than the typical neighbor. Yes, I do have some idiosyncrasies that Bill teases me about all the time. (Like how we can't buy regular peanut butter, or regular whole wheat bread because of the ingredients.) Yes I refuse to purchase single use products. (Draw the line at toilet paper, but still trying to figure out a good way around that one)

But recently I have discovered that I am much crunchier than I thought. Even others who I thought were more crunchy than I are not quite as crunchy. I am flabbergasted.

Well, let me grab my cape and go make dinner. Crunchy Crusader to the rescue.....

Bill Time

Today Nanna and Poppa have the girls; Bill and I get to shop, look for a new car, and just be together! It is always so nice to spend time alone with him. I don't think we do it enough. I try, but it is so hard to find time alone when we are awake and the kids are "sittable," as in, a good time and place for a babysitter.

Anyway, we get to spend time alone today, just being our wierd selves. Yea!!

What my days have become

I often wonder what happens to my days. I feel as if I should be accomplishing more than I do. OK, so I have spent some time in front of the computer that I could have spent doing something else, but I have mentally budgeted time for this activity. (Kids are all at school, therefore I give me one hour of Kay time!) Anyway, if you take out all the time I spend with the kids during the day, which granted that IS my main job and responsibility now, I still think I should be doing something besides the following time eaters:

Laundry
How can one family generate so much dirty clothing? And to be honest, if I were on top of things in the matter I'd like to be, I'd have even more laundry. (shameful grin here) I do not change our sheets every week, nor do I manage to change all the bath towels as often as I probalby should. Some people do that daily, I do it weekly, or every 10 days ... whatever comes first.

So, I do 1-2 loads a day. Can you imagine much more laundry than that? I guess if you have a large family, but we have 4 people, and two of them are small people still. Geepers, when Lauren is finally "normal" size (which will never happen to that little petite child!) and begins wearing three outfits a day, ok so she sometimes does now, but imagine how much laundry our house will generate then. Good thing she will be doing laundry by then!

Preparing food
Lauren is in school all day. Bill goes to work. Annika and I are the only ones home during the day, yet I feel as if I am constantly preparing food for one reason or another. Or shopping for food to prepare. Breakfast, OK, Bill takes care of the majority of that. But Annika usually has something to eat in the morning, and I do have to clean up after everyone. Snack. Lunch. Snack. After school snack. Dinner. And then I usually have my own snack, sans kiddos : ) after they go to bed. Really, did you count the number of times I am in the kitchen scrounging for food?? I repeat, I am not a vending machine!

Cleaning
Yea, this I do, but not as often as I should. My goal is one room a day. Not sure I really make that goal, but I do sweep and vacuum and pick up pick up pick up pick up ....

I believe in dog hair and dust bunnies as a perfectly acceptable decor theme. Need I say more?


There you have it!
My days and life have been boiled down to approximately 4 activities. Laundry, food prep, cleaning, & kid nurturing. Somewhere in there I squeeze in Bill, unfortunately it does seem like squeezing too. Shame, because he is soooo much fun to be with :) I think I used to be, but now I seem to be obsessed with the above items. sigh. Well, gotta go get Annika from school. ...and make her lunch .... and do a load of laundry ... and probably clean some ... and then make a snack .... Hey Bill - wanna go out and play?

Christmas Cards and $100 Christmas

So, the other day I heard about this movement called the $100 Christmas. No matter how large or small your family is, you pledge to spend only one hundred dollars this Christmas. The idea is to move away from such consumerism and to make the gifts you do give be truly meaningful. I loved it! Who needs yet another stuffed dog in our house? Is there anything my parents and grandparents really need? Not really. And, what a great way to help teach the girls about giving rather than receiving. I am ready to sign up for this movement!

Not Bill. While he loves the idea of not spending obscene amounts of money on everyone, he just cannot fathom the idea of limited quantity of gifts at Christmas. So, I am still working on him and ways to incorporate this idea into our holiday season. And I came upon Christmas Cards as a good start.

It all started out by looking for something to do with the girls. It was the weekend and they were getting bored and wanted to turn to the TV for entertainment. Suddenly I decided that we would make our own cards this holiday. We do it for Valentines Day, and everyone loves it, so why not another card giving holiday.

Now, I realize some people go way out and do stamping, color coordinating, scrapbooking, etc... But not us. I purchase cheap blank cards with envelopes, some foam shapes, and lots of glue and construction paper. The four of us sit at the kitchen table for an hour or so and get creative. I do not put any limits on what they can and cannot do. They are free to use whatever materials we have out. It is always interesting to see what a 4yr old creates with no guidance.

Lately Annika has been really into cutting. So, she cut her cards. And then stapled them together. You can't see what she drew on them, but they are stapled all nicely together. Some she stapled and then cut some more. Interesting technique; I think she lost sight of the end product. And I was very relieved when we ran out of staples. It only took about 3 cards and 30 staples to run out.

This year if you get a Christmas card from us (realize that I still have cards from the past three years that I have not mailed out. I am BAD about this process!!) don't be surprised if it is a little different. We're trying to make meaning, and not consume so much "stuff."

I'm Not A Vending Machine!!

What is it about kids that make them think Mom is a vending machine? Lauren gets off the buss and the first thing she says (literally) is, "I'm hungry!" Annika will be riding in the car and suddenly announce, "Hungry!" Like I have a little button on me that I push and food just spits out.

"Do you see any food with me?" I ask.

"But I'm hungry!"

Frustrated sigh from me, "I'm not a vending machine! You'll have to wait until I can fix a snack."

"Don't you have an apple"

"No."

"Yogurt?"

Trying not to sound as frustrated as I feel, I inform her, "No, I do not have any food with me."

"But you should. You should always have food with you!"

Again, "I'm not a vending machine; you should be OK for a short while." And why should I always have food with me??!! Good grief child, I fix you three meals a day and two healthy snacks; I spend a good deal of effort to balance veggies, whole grains, proteins and calcium products to ensure you have a healthy diet full of nutritious foods and not empty calories. Children in Africa literally are starving, while you eat 5-6 times A DAY! You are NOT hungry! Trust me.

Bill worries about them eating all the time. I assure him that 95% of the food they do eat is nutrient dense and not loaded with empty calories. But his doubt has ebbed into my brain, and now I doubt my own instincts. And, maybe Annika is eating a little more than she should. Maybe. So I visit the food pyramid web site and play a little game to see how many calories they have consumed.

Maybe they are hungry after all. Turns out my non-stop eating kids only eat about 1200-1400 calories a day, and they should be eating about 16000. Well, basically I trust them to know when they are hungry for food (not junk) and I offer them healthy, growing food when they are hungry.

But, geeeees, don't ask for food while I am driving in the car. I am not a vending machine!!

The Lovely Bones - my book review

Ramblings related to the Lovely Bones:
I really enjoyed the way the author used a dead person to tell a story. It was written in first person (my preference) but read like a third person story. Intriguing methodology. OK, I guess actually the "main character" (now deceased) was the narrator of the story. But the way she wrote this novel brought a very different feeling than simply a narrator.

That whole thing aside, I enjoyed the book. I loved the way the parents each dealt with their grief differently, and the effect of their grief and ways to deal with it had on their relationships with the rest of the family. Some of the mother's actions and feelings did feel contrived, but it is a story, so I didn't dwell on it. I read this book in a weeks time, maybe two. Which is good for me! Especially considering I was also reading three other books at that time too. (one for each bathroom, and one by the bed. Gotta cover all bases!!)

5:53 am

So, what time zone is this blog opperating under? I jut noticed that my most recent post is reported to have been published at 5:53 am. And in what universe would I be up and writing at that time??? It is 9:30 ish right now and I am still bleary-eyed! Those that know me know that I do not do mornings!!

5:53am indeed! HAR!

Fruit Flies

I do not understand it, but for some reason our house is a gigantic fruit fly magnet. OK, we do consume a huge quantity of fruit, and I do tend to frequently have a bowl full of fruit out for little snackers to self-serve from. But normally you remove the fruit and the pesty flies remove themselves too. Not in our house!

Last week it got so bad that Bill actually took duct tape and tried to fashion some sort of fly trap! (It didn't work; the flies did not stick for long. But good effort!) So, our dear house is full of fruit flies. Annika likes to run around with a fly swatter and randomly swat anything and everything! Frustrated beyond belief, the other day I grabbed every possible offending item I could think of (my homemade bread (which they LOVE) candy, fruit, veggies, my kefir) and put it all in plastic bags. OK, now I have removed the offending items, those pesky critters should leave town, right? Nope.

Bill and I have been into wine lately, and we opened a new bottle. Neither one of us was impressed (I'm hard to impress, since I am only a minor fan of wines) so we corked it up and put it back on the counter. Wait, this is about fruit flies, not wine; why do I bring this up you ask? Well, those damn flies LOVED the wine! So I put a small amount in Bill's UGLY coffee cup (I really hate that stupid mug that he loves so much!) and set it in the microwave with the door open. Soon about 25 flies were in the microwave and on the mug. SLAM! I shut the door and turned on the microwave. Expecting to see popping and sizzling flies, I stood back and waited. 30 seconds, 45 seconds, one full minute, minute 30 seconds, two minutes .... finally I smelled burning smells, but saw flying and crawling flies! WOW! Those are hardy buggers! Turns out I sizzled the living daylights out of the wine - it was a crusty burnt little blob in the bottom of the glass - but half the fruit flies survived!

So the next day Bill had a glass of wine again. The remaining flies were all over his glass and the cork of the bottle. Bill reached his limit, and made the sacrifice of the remaining wine. Off went the cork, and in went the remaining fruit flies! By the next morning we had a little sludge of wine and carcasses in our bottle.

And now we are free of those pesky fruit flies.

The moral here? If you get fruit flies, buy a cheep bottle of wine, have a glass or two, and give the rest to the flies! If you like you can buy a good bottle or two, drink it up, and then you wont care if you have flies or not! BTW, I tried it with beer, and it doesn't seem to work quite as well. They must be of french heritage, not german.

Time Alone

Ahhhhh! Annika is off at preschool, Lauren is at school, Bill is at work, and I am home with no other committments! I finished off a load of laundry and now I am set to play at my computer. Notice I called it my computer - well I guess it is the family's, as the girls would say - to emphasise that it has to be shared - but I monopolize it! I have "given" the one downstairs to Bill :) so he can play Age of Empires. (insert sound effect here, trumpets blowing a small charge doo-do-dooo) So this little dude (referring to the computer) and his oh-so-wonderful high speed internet is my little connection to the real world. Who'd a thought that I would be so into a silly little box and screen. But, like I said, it is my connection with the rest of the world, and my creative outlet.

Well, time is almost up & I need to gather up my library books. Annika and I are going off to the library today. I actually do not have much to look for there. What an oddity! My love affair with paperback swap has supplied me with more than enough books to last well into the winter months! I believe that I have exhausted their solar system books for Annika. Maybe I should get a few easy reader books for Lauren now - the early chapter books are perfect for her veracious appite.

Well, I'll finish with a photo of a good memory. Bill and the girls at Grand Haven during the Kite Festivle. Excuse the finger in the photo ....

Its all about me, now.

I just couldnt have all the focus be on my family, husband and kids! I just had to shout out for MEEEE!