My Mom

A Great Big Kentucky Post. Y’all.

Posted on by Amy
Last week we went to Kentucky to spend the week with my parents.  I have virtually no internet access there, so I couldn’t post while we were gone.  Somehow we have been home for three days, and I am just now getting around to posting about our fabulous trip.  I would say with all the holiday craziness I haven’t had the time to post.  However, I am a firm believer that you have time for what you make time for.  So.  Sorry, I haven’t made time for this.  But if it makes up for it, I’m posting right now during naptime instead of taking a shower…
Anyway.  Our trip was really wonderful, though it was unfortunately delayed for a day.  Remember how I posted that we had all managed to escape the stomach bug except for Lass’s very brief encounter with it?  I typed too soon.  Friday night, the night before we were supposed to leave, I was up all night sick and ended up going to the emergency department for fluids around 4am, right about the time Miss woke up crying and asking for “new jammies,” meaning of course that she had thrown up all over the ones she was wearing.  So, needless to say, she and I were under the weather for the day that was supposed to be our travel day, and we didn’t make it to Kentucky until Sunday.  But the visit was so worth the trip. My parents rock.  They are so awesome with my girls and give them so much love and attention it just makes my heart melt to watch them together.  I love that my girls are the center of attention with my parents for a whole week.  And they eat it up.  Miss just glows with happiness when playing with my Mom, and Lass got there too, though it took her a bit longer to warm up.  Little girls can just never have too much love and attention from their grandparents.  I only wish my parents lived close, so my girls could have the experience of spending time with them more often.
Here’s a big, huge photo tour of our week in the south:
We went to story time at the library where my Mom is the children’s librarian.  I was so proud of my girls.  Both of them sat nicely and listened to the story, even though there was a good bit of chaos going on around them.

Then Santa showed up…

Miss got all shy and scrambled for my lap

where she clung to me for dear life

until Santa called her name to come up for her present.

She was so shy!

But my shy girl braved giving the big guy a hug.

Lass was surprisingly calm about the process of seeing Santa too.

Probably because I didn’t even attempt to get her any closer than this.

The story time was great.  We colored and had a snack and crafted a paper chain.

All the kids got in a circle with my mom at the end to sing a song, which was very cute.

Then it was time to go.

We did stop upstairs to check out some books, which Miss had fun reading to her baby doll when we got back to my parents’ house.

The day of the story time was also my husband’s birthday.  This year I let Miss pick out a few presents for him in addition to what I got for him.  A couple of weeks ago I took her to the dollar store (the real one where everything costs $1), gave her a $5 bill and told her she could pick five things that she thought her Daddy would like for his birthday.  She walked around the store clutching the $5 bill in her hand, selecting things at her eye level.  It was so fun to watch her make her choices and then to pack them up when we got them home.  In addition to the five presents, she was also allowed to pick a card and a gift bag for him.

And all on her own, she also picked this hat as a must-have for her Daddy.

So what were the gifts?  A Winnie the Pooh chalkboard set,

a pink jumprope, blue safety scissors, and a pen with a bobbling dog on top, set into a suction cup base (not pictured here, but shown above).

My personal favorite?  Floral foam.

Miss had no idea what it was when she saw it at the store, but she thought it was awesome and knew her Daddy would just love it.  It was great to watch her getting so excited about her Daddy’s presents.

We also got to visit with my brother and his family for an afternoon.  We went to their house to do our Christmas with them.

A good time was had by all, I think.

And a great holiday tradition was passed to the next generation during this visit.  Every year my mom and I watch the movie “Heidi” with Shirley Temple.  Some people watch, “Miracle on 34th Street,” maybe even “A Christmas Story” or some other traditional holiday movie.  Our movie is “Heidi.”  We know the dialog by heart.  This year, my girls watched it for the first time.

Okay, so the above photos are a little misleading.  They really only paid attention to the movie for about the first 10 minutes.  But I didn’t expect much more for the first viewing.  This movie takes time to appreciate.  My husband and brother, even my Dad, still don’t quite appreciate it yet.  The girls will get there.  Of that I am sure.

One other movie experience we had while in Kentucky, that Miss did greatly appreciate (to the point that we watched the movie 3 times in 24 hours), was her first viewing of “Snow White.”  I hadn’t seen the movie in many, many years, so I probably enjoyed watching it with her almost as much as she did.

The still photos don’t quite do justice to our enjoyment of the movie.

I’m glad to be home, though I miss my family.  I can’t believe Christmas is already almost here.  Tomorrow is Miss’s school party.  I have way too much gift-wrapping left to do.  This weekend we’ll go to the Farm to “do Christmas” with my husband’s family.   It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Did I Say I Thought Pink Eye Was Yucky?

Posted on by Amy
Yes, I did.  When Miss first started school I typed this post, which I stupidly titled, “Bring on the Ickies” (why would I ever type such a statement?).  At the time I was grossed out because I thought she had pink eye, which she actually didn’t have, by the way.  I was writing about how I knew she would bring home lots of germs now that she had started school and blah, blah, blah.  Yesterday I got a much better sense of the truly icky.  Picture it.  I wake up at 4 AM to Lass’s crying.  It was a “something’s wrong” kind of cry, so I went in to get her thinking maybe she’d had a bad dream or something, and I’d just rock her for a bit.  Instead I found that Lass had puked all over herself, her bed, her floor, and then me as soon as I picked her up.  Okay.  I got it all cleaned up, put both of us in clean jammies, and began rocking her to try to get her back to sleep.  Naturally, she puked all over both of us again before I managed to run her to the bathroom and get her over the sink.  Again, I get it cleaned up and go back to rocking her.  And that’s not even the really icky part…
Rewind about 8 hours to Wednesday night.  I had received a text message from a babysitter telling me that her roommate had just found out she has scabies.  Oh yes.  I thought pink eye was gross?  No.  No, scabies is gross.  Gross as in make-my-skin-crawl-give-me-the-crazy-heebie-jeebies kind of gross.  Unfortunately this babysitter had been to my house three times in three days, including Wednesday afternoon for a little while while I took Miss to gymnastics.  At first I wasn’t too worried about it, since this babysitter didn’t even know if she actually had it, and I hadn’t seen any signs that my girls did, but still.  I did vacuum every room where this babysitter would have been, rugs and furniture.  And then as I was sitting there at 4-something AM, rocking Lass again after changing both of our clothes for the second time, I couldn’t help but imagine a little bit what yesterday might have had in store for me.  I pictured two puking girls, perhaps being sick myself, and needing to scour and sanitize my house and medicate my girls to get rid of little tiny mites that had burrowed under their skin and gotten into all of our clothing, bedding, furniture, carpets…  Perhaps this was a bit melodramatic, but I was sleepy and my mind was wandering on it’s own.  And really it wasn’t really too far fetched to imagine that could have been my day.
Amazingly, Lass went back to sleep (though I never did – see thoughts running through my head, above) for a little while and when she woke up she had no additional symptoms of a stomach bug.  She kept down everything I gave her to drink and eat and was her cheerful happy self all day long.  Miss never got sick, nor did I.  Score 1 for Mama!
Unfortunately, I did get a text later in the morning that my babysitter does in fact have scabies.  Even more unfortunately, I couldn’t get a doctor’s appointment until 4:30 in the afternoon to find out if my girls or I had it.  So, though I tried not to worry about it, I was kind of freaking out that we were infested.  There were no real signs that any of us had it, but I started imagining that every little red spot on my girls or any itch I felt myself was a little mite trying to find a home.  I started stripping sheets and doing laundry.  And then I did the most appropriate and merciful thing yesterday afternoon.  I let my girls watch a rare bit of afternoon TV and I called my mom to whine.
 TV Glaze

It was quite therapeutic.  My mom did what all good moms do.  She listened.  She sympathized.  She made me laugh.  What more could a girl ask for (other than having said mom living nearby so she could have come over to help with the laundry, which my mom would have happily done, of course…).

And to make a very long story short, the girls napped, we went to the doctor, and we found out that we do not have scabies.  And I learned a lot about scabies that made me feel better all around, like that scabies can’t live long at all in clothing, furniture, etc.  That washing every article of clothing and bedding in our house wasn’t really necessary, though I did it anyway.  That scabies show up fast and move fast and itch like crazy.  In other words, if you have scabies, you know it.  Since we didn’t have it and our poor babysitter had not been around for a while, the likelihood that we would get it was nil.  Score 2 for Mama!

And, since we did not have scabies, our other babysitter, whom we had scheduled to come over so my hubby and I could get out for dinner, was still happy to come.  So we had a nice dinner out and relaxed away the craziness of the day.  Score 3!!  I am still a little bit shocked when I think about how crummy yesterday could have been and then about how relatively not-so-bad it really was.  I feel like I dodged a major bullet!

And to top it all off, since we don’t have scabies and my testimony for this morning got postponed (thankfully, because I wouldn’t have had a babysitter!), we got to go to a much-looked-forward-to play date with some great friends.  My friend had a Christmas cookie decorating play date at her house this morning, and it was a blast.  Lass mostly just ate a cookie and played in the frosting.

Miss had lots of fun decorating the cookies and eating them.  She had a little bit of a hard time though with the idea that she could only eat one of the cookies she decorated and the rest we had to just decorate and save to take home.

Miss made a special cookie for her Daddy.

A good time was had by all.  Hooray for no scabies!

Tomorrow we go to my parent’s house for a week.  I am so thrilled to spend the week with my Mom and Dad.  But, that likely means there will be very little blogging from this girl until we get back, as my parents live in an internet black hole.  I’ll be back in about a week!

Grease 2

Posted on by Amy

No, I’m not referring to the bad movie from the 80s. Though as bad as the movie was, I did think Michelle Pfeifer was so cool. But anyway, this is about the update on my hair.

The solution? Dish soap! “Dawn gets grease out of your way.” Yes, it really does. I didn’t have Dawn brand dish soap, but the stuff I have worked just wonderfully! This was another suggestion from my mom. She’s super smart. Thanks Mom!!