Leave My Straw Alone!

Does anyone have a straw biter? I have several, and one in particular. I also have a brand new water bottle with teeth marks after letting said straw annihilator share on the way home from bible study since there wasn't a water bottle in the car for her. I also hate chewed stuff, especially my previously smooth and unblemished straw that's attached to the bottle. This is why I don't like to share. There should be rules that Mama doesn't have to follow.

Miss Skinny Pants

So you've got above average height children who are way below average weight and a husband who is very particular about pant length. What do you do? You realize how amazing and versatile grosgrain ribbon is.

What's Up?

the front

how it should sit


the whole thing that
my wonderful neighbour
Kim modeled for me.

the back with pocket

Well, ClaireBeth went to her first non-family sleep over. Vee started counting down on me. Zoe's decided she wants to be a trumpet playing skater, Eric bought his birthday present seven weeks early and I can't find ANYTHING in this house.

ClaireBeth went to a birthday party for a friend from church. Riah turned six and has a really fun mom and two really fun older sisters. So we dropped her off (ran Ziggy back in to use the potty) and left our baby at someone else's house. It felt a little odd to me, but I survived. Then Eric missed the exit. He turned around and there was no on-ramp for 94 W, so we went to the next exit, same thing. Thankfully it was Market and we were able to take it all the way down, and thankfully we'd been to enough games at Petco that we knew how to get home from there. Except Eric got on the wrong freeway because no one from work will leave him alone. He's got two people under him who are learning a lot and can answer most questions. Just no one ever calls them. So we ended up by church! Eventually we got home, but it was hilarious to see Eric do this stuff because it's what I always do. I went to pick her up this morning and she's got blue and pink nail polish with jewels and glitter makeup everywhere! I meant to take a picture. For parties right now it's okay, but my poor mother-in-law thinks I'm nuts because I didn't want the girls to have make-up when we went to her house. We compromised. The girls got the lip gloss and the other stuff went to a niece. We also only do pale pink or clear nail polish (I have horrible memories of me with green and black and blue nail polish), so this was a real treat for ClaireBeth.
We take Eric dinner when he has duty. Every so often we're there to hear the music signaling that it's time to take down the flag. Ziggy heard it and wanted to know if it was a trumpet. Sure, trumpet bugle, same principle. So she decided that she wanted me to buy her a trumpet right then and there. She got mad that we didn't go to the store and buy her one. Add this to her wanting to be a skater girl (I even showed her girls skateboarding on YouTube, which she thought was really cool), she's going to be the most well-rounded or the most ostracized teenager who actually does activities ever.

Then there's Vee. We count backwards from three instead of forwards. It just seems more defined. So I told Vee "Three". To which she promptly responds "Two". So now she's trying to get me in trouble and she can only count backwards. Great. Well the backwards thing I can blame on the microwave at least.

On to Eric. Mr iPod. That was his birthday gift this year. I was going to get him a Wii sports pack with the ping-pong paddle and pool cue and all that and the Play game that uses all that stuff, but he decided this is what he wanted. Oh well, at least I don't have to wrap anything.

Then on to me. I finally finished a nursing cover. I have three more slings to make and I still haven't made the diaper bag or recovered my chair. But the nursing cover came out well. It's bigger than the two "commercial" ones I've seen, but they seem skimpy, so it's okay. I did it in Winnie the Pooh (not my pick) and it is rather cute. But before I got it done, I had to search for the ribbon. While I was looking for the ribbon I lost the boning (for the sophomoric type, that's the plastic piece that gives the neck it's shape). Then I almost went nuts trying to sew it. But it's finished. Whew! On to my next project.

I was wrong

Now I feel awful again. Why can't colds just come in, work and leave, why do they have to linger and make you think you're getting better?

Thanks!

I feel a good bit better. Thanks for the prayers from those who did. No thanks to the internet woman. For some reason, whenever I get sick I end up having to clean the house because something breaks. So yesterday it was for AT&T. But the downstairs is clean-minus the bathroom and laundry room, oh, and the coat closet. Ugh. Stupid shoes. Upstairs I still have laundry from at least a month ago that needs to be hung up and put away. My wonderful husband is one of those that will put it on the bed hoping I'll do something with it. When he goes to bed before I do (which is always) he puts it on the floor. I've cleaned around the pile at least three times, I just never cleaned up the pile. Then the bathrooms upstairs. What's with bathrooms. If I hired a maid, it would be to clean the bathrooms, scrub the kitchen floor and wash the walls (I can't stand dirty walls, which with three kids I have tons of). Oh well, at least soon all the girls will be able to help. Five years is soon, right?

Woe is me

I hate colds. They're really not that bad compared to other things, but how often do you get bird flu or dengue fever compared to a cold? ClaireBeth is over hers, Ziggy doesn't seem to have it and Vee had a runny nose but is now fine. So why do I get it so bad? My head hurts, I feel fuzzy (light-headed and dizzy), I'm all stuffed up and dripping, my teeth itch and my muscles ache. Why do the girls never get it like this? Probably because they eat and drink a lot healthier than I do and don't weigh more than they should. Ugh, I'm either going to get a vanilla coke and go back to bed or I'm just going back to bed. Either way it includes getting up from the computer and I don't think I have the energy.

Vocabulary of Vee

daydu-thank you
uma-come on
ooo-shoe
peed-please
tay?-are you okay (usually after she hurts you somehow)
tupit-stop it
eeeee-eat
wawa-water
cwacwa-cracker
papo-popcorn
apu-apple
mol-milk
boble-buckle (meaning carseat, stroller or shopping cart)
boo-book
nana-banana
boppy-potty
no-yes
wewee-movie
There are more, I just can't get her to say them right now.

ClaireBeth still says aminal and Ziggy's just hilarious with how grown up she is already.

Daily Verse-Replaced, Revised and Driving Me Nuts!

'Kay, it's working now. Yea! And it gives a different verse every time. I've actually found a few I didn't know that are very useful today.

And now I'll have to change it again. The verse it gave out is "No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.", which is John 1:18. Luke 19:10 is "for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” A good verse, but still. It helps to have the reference match the verse. So I may be out of luck.

Now it's white. The blue one was too big and you had to scroll over. Way too much of a pain so no one would have read it, which rather defeats the purpose of having it here in the first place.

Okay, can anyone see the daily verse? All I see is computer talk. I don't know if it's 'cause it's my page or what. I had a poll that I took off simply because it was all computer junk. My friend has the daily verse on hers and I can read it. So let me know in the comments if you can read it, whether or not you actually want to read it!

Miss Vee

So here's Miss Vee with her baby sling. This is the first time she's put it on, but already she's a pro. Eric made ClaireBeth and Ziggy one each last year (he sews better than I do) and as you can see Vee's already making off with their stuff. I can't wait until I have three teenage girls that all wear the same size in one house.

The simple things

So the house is destroyed, the girls are cranky and if I hear anymore crying I'm going to scream. But my cornbread came out very well. Eric's grandpa let me have the cast iron skillet since he had bought two for his daughter and she didn't want both. He picked them up at an auction. So I put it in my suitcase and it flew from Ohio to California. This is the first time I've used it. The bread was moist, the bottom nice and smooth and it came very easily out of the pan. I need to work on my recipe, but that's because my grandmother told me what she usually puts in hers and I've been playing around with it. She didn't even tell me a temperature or time! Thank goodness for the internet. For some reason my paper said shortening, so I put it in the batch for my friend to whom I took dinner. Apparently I need to cross that out. I made a batch without it and it came out a lot better. But I also didn't make hers in the cast iron because I didn't know how it would go. So sorry Sarah! I always look at that and try to remember if I'm supposed to put it in there. Now I know and hopefully I'll remember! I also always forget to use buttermilk instead of milk. I'll try to remember that.

But oh, the simple things in life. They're usually far better than the supposedly super-important or super-special. If indoor plumbing and air conditioning had been invented, I think it would have been nice to live a long time ago. To have what you do matter, a woman was allowed to be a woman without being told she should not nurse and she should work. Children were expected to do chores and people didn't look at you like you were the worst mother because your kids had work to do. Kids were politer because society hadn't embraced a "ME FIRST" attitude and passed it down the line. There was no road rage or traffic (we'll ignore the highway men-this is a list of good things back then). There was less junk in our lives so the house was easier to keep clean. There were also more people to help keep it that way because you could have more kids without worrying about over-population, college costs and cars being big enough. So here's to the old days. Maybe I'll try to convince Eric to move to the boonies and we can go back to pioneer times, with a few modifications, of course.