Tag: Kids

Toddlers are like cats

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And now, a change of pace.  I spent my weekend taking care of two sick guys, and Monday night was little different.  But Monday night was when we discovered that sick toddlers are a lot like cats, and if you read on, you’ll find out why.

Cricket came home from daycare Friday night feeling pretty rough.  Thirty-six hours of feverish cuddles had him on the mend, but by Saturday night, he’d managed to share the mystery fever with Thumper.

Time and Tylenol seemed to do the trick, but by the time Monday night rolled around…

Best Monday ever

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IMG_20140125_172459

Two of my favorite comforts after surgery.

So about my surgery…

I had every girl’s favorite doctor appointment at the end of October.  I’ve been having a lot of on-again-off-again cramping since Cricket was born, and Thumper’s arrival only made it worse.  Intimacy has been difficult, to say the least.  When I went to the doctor, they did an ultrasound and found that I had a cyst on my right ovary.  My doctor wanted to keep an eye on it, so I scheduled a follow-up appointment in early December.  That ultrasound showed no cysts.  Yay!

But then a couple days after Christmas, I started cramping again, and it was worse than ever.  I was dizzy from the pain, and sweaty and queasy to boot.  I tried walking, I tried lying still, but nothing eased the pain.  The only reason I got any sleep that night was because I took some Tylenol PM.  I cramped all through the night and most of the next day, then I was sore for two days afterward.  It was miserable.

I managed to get an appointment with my doctor the Monday after Christmas…

“I speak for the trees…”

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IMG_20131202_233702If you had been in my car last night, you’d have heard the following conversation between Cricket and me.  It was just too cute not to share.

C: “Mommy, are the trees mad?”

M: “No, the trees aren’t mad.  Why?”

C: *very earnestly* “Because they are.  They are mad, Mom.  Because I speak for the trees.”

M: “You speak for the trees?”

C: *very somberly* “I do, Mom.  I do.”

I hate to think how many times he watched (or read) The Lorax yesterday for that to spontaneously come out last night – once he starts with something, he wants it endlessly (I am seriously sick of Scooby Doo at this point).  Still, I’m glad he liked it – The Lorax is one of my favorite Dr. Seuss stories. 🙂

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

 

Old home week

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Friends and fun - what could be better? Photo by Kay Kauffman

The house has changed, and so have we.

They say you can’t go home again, and I think they must be right.  My dad lived in the house I grew up in till I was twenty, and I went back after he moved out once.  Once was enough.

The people who bought my house after my dad moved out remodeled it extensively before selling it themselves.  It was after this second sale that I returned – Miss Tadpole was selling Girl Scout cookies, so I took her through my old neighborhood to see how many of my old customers would buy from her.

It was incredibly surreal being the parent in this scenario.  Miss Tadpole was woefully under-prepared when it came to her sales pitch, but I’d been so well-rehearsed at her age that it was easy for me to pick up the slack.  We made a great team.

As we strolled through my old stomping grounds…

Late

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Bubbles the Paddlefoot

Bubbles the Paddlefoot

I know, I know – I’m late again.  It seems to be a thing with me lately.  Our open house was postponed last weekend (sort of), so we’re doing it again today, and it’s thrown my whole weekend off.

I used to always be very punctual; I miss that particular virtue.  Now it seems that no matter what I do, I’m always late, always running behind, and I never catch up.  Just when I think I’m caught up, I realize I’ve forgotten something and I haven’t caught up at all. *sigh*

I think this lateness issue of mine can be traced to my eighteenth Christmas.  I was living with my ex-husband and his parents at the time (we were just dating then), and I was home from college on break.  Things that often happen between consenting adults happened and, lo and behold, some six weeks later, I was late.  You never think it will happen to you, but it can. And it does.

My hidey hole

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When I was little, my sister and I did not get along. At all. We still don’t and I really regret that, but it’s out of my hands now. Anyway, she liked to go through my stuff, so I needed a way to secure it. My bedroom door wouldn’t latch correctly, never mind lock, so I needed a better place to stash things.

Being a big fan of diary-keeping, my diaries were the items I was most concerned with – like government secrets, they could not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands (namely, the hands of my little sister).

But with no way to lock my door, what was I to do?

Fruitful

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In my post from Tuesday (that should have gone up Monday, but was delayed), I talked briefly about all the fruit we have at our new place and how it reminded me of summers at my grandparents’ farm.  I’d intended to get back to that in my post from yesterday (again, delayed), but I ended up going a different direction.  So today, let’s take that trip to Grandpa and Grandma’s house.

My grandparents lived on a farm about half an hour away from us.  My grandmother lived all but six months of her life on that farm, as it had been passed down through the years from one generation to the next.  It’s a century farm, and I’m proud to be part of that tradition, even though the acreage has been sold off and all that’s left now is crop ground.  I’d like to someday buy the acreage back, but so far, no luck (the one time it was up for sale, the timing was just not right and we couldn’t do it *sigh*).

When I was little, the acreage included much more than it does now.  When you turned in the driveway, the house was on the right and the old garage was on the left.  The old garage has now been leveled, but the foundation remains, and the new owners put up a basketball hoop.  Just west of the old garage was a corn crib, which I believe still stands, and to the west of that was a barn.  It was lost in a fire several years ago – the new people had heating lamps in the barn for some animals, and somehow the place caught fire.  If it hadn’t been for a passing fireman, of all people, the whole farm might have burned.

Working vacation

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Well, once again, my post for this challenge is late. We have an open house coming up on Sunday and I spent yesterday painting our bedroom in preparation for it. Two coats of bright white on the ceiling, one coat of some sort of beigey color on the walls. I’ve never used Ralph Lauren paint before, but man, that stuff goes on nice.

I somehow managed ti sand, spot prime, and paint the whole room – including the radiator – in just over nine hours, making going back to work today feel like a vacation. Tadpole and Bubbles got out of school early yesterday and they were huge helps once they got home. Miss Tadpole even begged me to let her paint. I couldn’t argue with that, so I set her to work. 🙂

Once I’d finished painting, I got cleaned up and we went out for supper. When we got home, the plan was to put the bedroom back together and relax (I received a package of custard creams and Tetley tea from a friend in the mail yesterday, so I had every intention of indulging myself). But alas, the best-laid plans of mice and men are often laid to waste…

Bubbles was helping us clean up, and I’d asked him to take the paint pans, brushes, and roller down to the basement and clean them out while I helped Seymour move furniture. Before supper, I’d slid the paint pans into plastic sacks so the paint wouldn’t dry out as fast. One of the pans had more paint in it than the other, and he must have carried the emptier of the two down first and gotten lucky, because all of a sudden I heard…