Phew, made it to 15

I don't really have anything to blog about, but I noticed that every month this year I have had 15 blogs and today is the last day of April, so I wanted to be consistent and make April have 15 too. Does that mean I'm a little bit OCD?

Water Balloon fight!

2 years ago, my eldest child,...Braden, filled a large balloon with water and threw it at our next door neighbors kids, starting a mini water balloon fight. The tradition continued last year with an impromptu water balloon fight involving Braden, our next door neighbors and the family that lived across the street. Word got out about it and the other neighborhood kids have been asking Braden when the water balloon fight will be. His answer - "when you least expect it".

To give the kids a fair shot (or really their parents - the ones who actually have to buy, fill and tie all those balloons), he decided to give the neighborhood about 6 hours notice by putting this sign in our yard:

We headed to the Dollar Tree and bought a bunch of water balloons and some regular sized balloons and spent the day filling them up.

Here's Blythe helping Braden:

He was crouched in that position most of the day (resulting in a nasty sunburn on his back).

After Blythe went to take a nap, Ethan came out to help (or really play in the blow up swimming pool we filled up).

The neighborhood kids kept dropping by all day to check progress and report on their own progress and to ask how much longer til 4:30.

We filled small balloons:

Large balloons:

And 2 more buckets of small balloon replacements.

Finally it was drawing near to 4:30 and the kids were so anxious! They had already decided it would be girls vs. boys. We had prepped Blythe that it would be fun and this year she wouldn't cry and tried to get her to practice throwing some. She got in the pool before the fight so she was already a little wet, so she was all geared up. Braden gave the group a list of all the rules, ending with "no crying allowed".

So here's the video of the start of the fight. Notice how Blythe breaks the no crying rule right from the get go. Such a priss!

Here's some additional photos of the action.

After the water balloons ran out, we just switched to buckets.

So everyone had a blast (except Blythe....but who cares?)! Actually, she confined herself over to the side out of the way and had fun just watching. Maybe next year she'll participate.

The next morning as we're at the breakfast table Blythe says, "Daddy and Ethan are boys and Mommy and me are girls. We're a match and Daddy and Ethan are a match." Then out of the blue...."Maybe we should have another baby". Braden and I just started laughing. Maybe I should take this time to just enjoy the 3 children I already have!

As promised...

A computer sounds like a good idea

When we went to Dallas and stayed with my cousin, they had an old laptop that was set up on the kitchen table for my cousin's 3 year old daughter Anna to play with. And I was surprised at how well she did with the computer (and I think the touchpad may have been easier than the mouse for a young child). So anyway, I thought that might be a good idea at our house even though we really have nowhere to put it. I have an old laptop, so I figured I'd just modify it to remove basically all unneeded programs and set up some shortcuts to Nick Jr, Disney, and a few other sites.

So when I say "old laptop", I mean like ancient. I think I got it in 1998. So at the time, it ran the newest and greatest Windows 98. And it's real spiffy with an interchangeable floppy drive and DVD-ROM drive (that's right - it actually does take DVD's). Back then, most internet connections were dial up, so it's got all kinds of telephony set up and basically no network connection wizards. However I do have a Wireless-B notebook card to put in it, so it can pick up wireless connection (albeit very slowly).

It's been a couple of years since I even opened the thing up and I do remember having problems with it in the past. But it did boot up with no issue, though I couldn't initially get the wireless card to work. So I was working on it before dinner and Ethan came in to "help" (hammer the keys with his fist) and it suddenly went black. So probably a good indicator that it won't last long with him around anyway. Or maybe I need to put it up higher so he can't get it. So I stopped messing with it for a while.

I picked it back up after the kids went to bed. Got it to come back on, but it was telling me the wireless card software wasn't installed. So I found the software, put it in, installed it, and also removed some of the other programs on there (Quicken, EPSON printer, etc) and all our old saved documents. Still won't connect to the internet, so I try a reboot. And it comes back with "Operating System not found". That's not good.

Fortunately I have my trusty Windows 98 CDROM that was with all this old computer stuff so I stick that in and choose to reboot from the CDROM to reload Windows 98. Then it comes back with "Can't continue with Windows 98 setup because the computer has no hard disk or there is a problem with the hard disk". Piece of crap. It just worked like 5 minutes ago.

I try a few more times, but same old junk. So that's the end of the story. No computer for the kids because I don't want to deal with this piece of shit. Apparently notebook computers really aren't meant to last 11 years. I'm going to let Braden smash it and I'll try to get it on video to share with you all.

Blythe can swim! (kind of)

Blythe has made great progress during her last 17 swim lessons. One more to go and then we're ready for the beach (and the house with it's own pool!). Check out her skills (and her awesome goggles):

And our little motor boat with a kickboard:

There is hope that she might one day be an excellent swimmer! Now we need to get Ethan back in so he's ready for the beach too...

Time to open a can of whoop ass

Ethan got in a fight at school yesterday and has some battle wounds from it:

You should have seen the other kid though. Ethan gave her a total ass-whoopin.

Just kidding. Ethan did get "beat up" at school yesterday though (I'm not sure by a boy or a girl). I'm pretty sure he just cried and didn't fight back. Completely unacceptable. We ain't gonna raise no sissy. Time for some baby boxing classes.

Dance Revolution

This is what Braden and Blythe do in their spare time.

A new mop!

Yesterday was a pretty uneventful day. We did go to Home Depot though (woo hoo!). And I got a new bucket and a new mop. And I was the slightest bit excited about it. Seriously - I need to get out more.

Earth Day party

Today we had Blythe's little best friend Ashley over all day. Nowadays I guess "Ashley" has become too long for Blythe to say so it's now shortened to just "Ash". Except Blythe's not all that good with the "sh" sound, so instead it comes out as "Ass". So it's like this:

"Hey, Ass, wanna see my baby?" "Ass, let's play in the sandbox" "Hey Ass...Ass....Ass...wanna play barbies?" I kind of cringe every time, but it's well-intended, so whatever.

Anyway, we went to gymnastics first thing this morning. Getting 3 kids to gymnastics is certainly harder than 2, but at least the weather was nice so we didn't have to run. Plus Braden was able to take Ethan in the backpack and coach practice with him while I took the girls to class.

After a short stint at home after gymnastics, we went to a "flyball" tournament for dogs to check out the action. We thought it would be outside, but instead it was inside so we couldn't enjoy the nice weather and it was really loud in there. It was interesting to watch though. It's like dog relays and some of those dogs are very fast! Here's Blythe cheering them on, though instead of saying "Go dogs! Go!" she says "Cheer Dogs! Cheer!"

After some more playing at home and some nice naps (thank goodness!), we headed out to a neighborhood "Earth Day" party. Earth Day is actually next week on Wednesday. "Earth Day" party sounds a lot like "birthday party", so even though I tried to explain to the girls where we were going, they were quite confused. Regardless, they were happy just to be wearing similar outfits, so they could look like "twins".

Basically it was a neighborhood gathering near the creek behind our house to learn about recycling, pick up trash, clean up the creek, and have a potluck dinner (oh, and play in the dirt, roll in the grass, and generally just get really dirty). Initially my priss daughter and her equally priss friend wanted no part in touching trash or getting dirty, but eventually I convinced them to pick up some trash.

Don't they look thrilled about it?

Blythe actually did give me a cute pose, which is rare:

And, though I didn't get any photos, Ethan was there too. He rode in the backpack for a while and then got down to beg for brownies, cookies, or anything else he could get his hands on.

Ethan's tantrums

Ethan has a new favorite pastime. Any time he gets even the slightest bit annoyed, he enjoys throwing his head back, arching his back, and screaming until you pick him up and walk around with him. If you leave him on the floor, he then flails about while screaming and throwing a nice tantrum. It's great fun and he enjoys doing it quite often these days. It started when he was sick last week, so I thought he would stop when he felt better, but no such luck. I'm only documenting this because as I was explaining his new found joy to the day care workers on Monday, I found myself saying, "hopefully it's just a temporary phase he's going through" and immediately thought to myself, "I've said that before...pretty sure about this exact same thing...but with Blythe...and I swear she was older than this". So in case I need to know later, he's 13 months. Let's see how "temporary" it becomes.

Blythe had a breakthrough swim lesson on Monday I would say. She can now swim by herself. She can go about 8 feet probably, but she still needs someone to help her get all the way to the surface to take a breath. I meant to bring my camera to yesterday's swim lesson, but I was watching LOST online (because I missed last week's episode) and had to run out the door as soon as it was over and so I forgot. Hopefully I will remember on Monday.

And as I side note, only one month until our vacation at the beach! Good God, I can hardly wait!

Our trip to Dallas for Easter

Been a while again since I posted since we just got back from vacation. I was going to try to post a "13 month update" for Ethan last Tuesday before we left but he ended up being home sick AGAIN. Talk about stressful...trying to pack and work and all that stuff while having him home sick. I wanted to rip my hair out! And it probably would have been a good idea to send him to the doctor with Blythe on Tuesday (since I had set it up to have her staple removed so we wouldn't have to go to the doctor in Texas). But I wasn't thinking real clearly and quite honestly figured it was just another virus that would go away soon.

We left Wednesday at the bright and beautiful hour of 4am to head to the airport. For those of you thinking it might be a good idea, I wouldn't recommend it. Especially since that was 3am at our final destination. Ethan looked like death, but we gave him some nightime childrens cold medicine so he'd sleep on the plane. It worked until the landings (2 planes to get there - one to Detroit and one to Dallas...you know, because Detroit is right there on the way to Dallas). Ethan screamed and screamed during the landings. We made it to my cousin Amy's and he was just pathetic - only wanted to be held - poor thing.

Poor Ethan could hardly breathe through the night and had his daily morning throw up of mucus and milk. So we decided he definitely needed to go to the doctor. Fortunately in my search for Blythe's staple removal, I had already called my insurance to get the nearest urgent care facility, so we took him there. Come to find out he had a cold (or likely bronchitis since that seems to be what I picked up), and also an ear infection and a sinus infection. Dr. Lee didn't really speak English, but he was skilled in hand gestures so eventually I think I understood everything he said. He prescribed Zithromax to knock out the infections quickly (so maybe he wouldn't be in so much pain on the way home!). I gave him half the medicine dosage and he immediately threw up. Later I gave him the other half, which he kept down for a few hours. The next day we gave him his medicine again and he immediately threw up. So this wasn't doing us much good - he wasn't even getting the antibiotics to clear up his infections! The doctor thought maybe he was gagging on it, so we should try mixing it with juice. I thought maybe he was allergic to it since I am too. But I was willing to try mixing it first. So we did and he kept it down. Until nighttime when he must have thrown up everywhere in his bed and then slept in it. Oh, that sounds like no fun at all. So that confirmed the allergy. We got him a new prescription and was able to get a few doses before we had to leave on Sunday. I think his ears felt better, but I don't think he much cares for the confined spaces of an airplane so he felt inclined to scream (and I mean like really scream non-stop, barely taking a breath) for a while until we took off and then again after we landed and had to wait for another plane to move from our gate. Fortunately flight #2 on the way home he slept the whole way. So he's feeling much better now, though he's got this new tantrum he likes to throw by arching his back and throwing his head back and crying. He does it quite often. Fun times. When he did it this morning, I did look in his mouth and noticed he's cutting at least 2 molars. I'm sure that's not fun either.

So that's Ethan's story, which was the not-so-fun part of our trip. Otherwise, we had a GREAT time! Thanks so much to our gracious hosts Mik and Amy and their girls Anna and Mia. We were hoping on Thursday to go to the Dallas Arboretum with the kids and pack a lunch and stuff, but that was Ethan's day at the doctor, which also happened to be the only day Blythe took a nap, so maybe it was better we just stayed at the house and "relaxed". Might as well never make plans anyway when traveling with small children. Braden and I were able to have a nice dinner date out since Mik and Amy babysat one night. Friday we all headed to Ga Ga's house (my grandmother) to hang out for the day. My mom, dad, sister, brother, sister-in-law, and niece all headed down to Dallas too, so we all met up there. The weather was beautiful, so we just hung out outside for a good part of the day. My cousin's son Kole and my uncle Dave taught Blythe how to play baseball. Here's a clip:

Friday night, we took the party to Mik and Amy's where we had pizza and stromboli and drank wine and beer and then played with the breathalyzer Mik and Amy had. "Okay, I've had 3 glasses of wine...wonder what I'll blow". 0.03 for those of you wondering. I had a lot of pizza and stromboli.

Then Saturday was the BIG Easter egg hunt down in Red Oak, Texas at my aunt Rose's house. This was the 30th year of the egg hunt there and those of us who were at the 1st one got green t-shirts. I was less than 1 at the first hunt, but I was there! Those who were not (like Rose's daughters, my brother Doug, and our husbands, wives, and kids), purchased yellow t-shirts from my cousin Sarah that said, "I may not have been at Easter 1980, but I got here as soon as I could!". Cute.

It was an amazing day of great weather, great family, great food, great music, and great fun. Blythe didn't win the Easter egg hunt, but she did find 17 eggs, which was a lot. The winner found 32. Our tradition is to dye empty (real) eggs, fill them with confetti, and put tissue paper over the hole. So after we find all the eggs, we crack them on people's heads. Here's my mom getting Lynette pretty good!

I'm really hoping we can make it down there on a much more regular basis for Easter, as it is so much fun. Hopefully the next time we'll all be healthy! Here's a few more pics from the trip for your enjoyment.

Anna and Blythe playing in the bathtub:

Blythe, Mia, and Anna on the swing at Ga Ga's.

Blythe playing in a band:

Ethan in one of his better moments:

Ethan home sick...again

So I'm on vacation this week from Wednesday through Friday, which means I have a week's worth of work to do in 2 days. Oh, and also I have to do the laundry so we can pack for our trip to Texas, attempt to somewhat clean the house (because I HATE coming home to a messy house after a trip), find dog sitters, take Blythe to swim lessons, get my mom a birthday present (she'll be 60 on Saturday...can you believe it? Just kidding, she'll only be 57), put together some Easter baskets for the kids (so we can be "shocked" that the Easter bunny visited our house while we fly home on Easter), and find a doctor who can remove Blythe's staple from her head (more on that later).

A lot to do in 2 days (especially the paid work part). Good thing the kids have day care.

Whoa! Nothing like a little monkey wrench in the plans...like Ethan home sick today. Ugh! A fever yesterday, diarrhea today, and the poor guy has the worst runny nose and just looks pathetic. I've been using Purel like a madwoman because I SO don't want to get sick on my vacation. Cousin Amy - I give big apologies if we end up being virus carrying houst guests coming to invade. Dear God I hope not.

So I call our family doctor this morning and talk to the receptionist and tell her about Blythe's injury and ask about getting the staple out. There are 2 doctors at the practice, but technically we are patients of one of them. I already know what the hospital said about needing to get it taken out in 5-7 days, but to check with our family doctor about an exact date. Problem is, the time frame falls during our visit to Texas. Anyway, I start to explain about us being out of town and she cuts me off saying Dr. Freeman is only in today this week. So I say, well today's probably too early since it's only been 3 days, blah, blah. She puts me on hold to ask the doctor and comes back and says, "It needs to be 5 days". So I start back in to my story about going out of town, can it wait until we get back..." She cuts me off again...."5 DAYS!". Jeesh. Bitch. Fine...I'll find a doctor in Texas then. Well that turned out not to be too easy. To see a regular doctor, I'd have to pay a new patient fee. Or I could go to an urgent care place, but that's a pain because you have to wait a while (last thing I want to do on a day off). So I decide later in the day to call my doctor back and see if maybe the other doctor there will at least take a look at Blythe's head and see if they can take it out tomorrow (even though it's only 4 days). If not, I'll go to the urgent care place. I know right? What a concept! Fortunately I got a nicer receptionist. Unfortunately, the only available time was 1:20pm, which is during nap at daycare, which means I'll have to pick her up after lunch and she'll be home a while and either she'll then come home and nap or there will be no nap at all. I'm leaning towards the latter since we have to leave our house at 4 FREAKING 15 in the morning Wednesday to catch our flight (no nap = early bedtime tomorrow).

Anyway, that's my venting for the day. Hopefully I'll find a little time tomorrow to give Ethan's 13 month update as my blog post.

Head wound update

Blythe did well last night sleeping on her head wound. We had to clean it before bed with hydrogen peroxide and neosporin. She would only let Daddy do it...not me. Anyway, this morning we went to check it and Braden said he couldn't see the staple. He said when he cleaned it last night it seemed high. I went to look at it and couldn't see the staple either. I saw a small puncture that looked like that's where the staple had been. But the wound seemed to be scabbing over, so I guess we were okay. There was a lot of matted hair in it though, so I worried about pulling the hair away and opening the wound. I tried wetting the hair around it, but she just screams anytime I try to get near it.

So during breakfast, Daddy went to clean it with the hydrogen peroxide. He really doused it good and tried pulling some hairs off of it a little at a time. So then we finally got down to it and realized the staple was still there. Phew! As I'm watching him do all of this to Blythe's head, apparently Ethan decides it would be fun to play with the steak knife I was using to cut his breakfast up. I look over at him and he is literally stabbing his tray over and over. Thank goodness he was smart enough to only grab the plastic end.

So I'm really working hard on my "Mommy of the Year" award this weekend. Pretty sure it's only going to get tougher to keep up with these youngin's!

A trip to the emergency room

Based on the title, I'm sure you'd like to get to the meat of the story, but I'll set it up for you anyway. Today started like most Saturdays, STRUGGLING to make it to gymnastics on time. Fortunately, there were all kinds of parking spaces this morning. What gives? Braden was running practice across the hall from the gymnastics room, so I gave him Ethan in the backpack to carry around while Blythe went to gymnastics. Although she did get a bit of whiplash jumping off of the balance beam, that is not where the emergency occurred.

We headed home and hung out for a few minutes before getting back in the car to head to an Easter egg hunt. This one church in Blacksburg puts on a free egg hunt each year and they also have moon bouncers, free cotton candy, popcorn, and prizes. I'd like to say it was practice for the Easter egg hunt we're headed to next weekend in Dallas (can't wait!), but this egg hunt has SO MANY eggs that there really is no hunting. There are tons just everywhere and the kids go in, pick them all up, then they come out with even more "replacements". They literally just turned a giant box over and dumped them out. Once those were gone, they tried distributing another box, but the kids just followed them around taking them directly out of the box. They're all filled with candy too, so we have quite a bit of candy too. Although the kids struggled to stay standing in the hurricane force winds we were having, this was not where the emergency happened. Here are some pics from the Easter egg hunt:

After all the eggs were found, we headed out. Blythe tried to get us to let her jump in the moonbouncers, but Braden wanted to stop by the International Festival on campus since one of his swimmers was working a tent and he said we'd drop by.

After searching for a parking space for a while, we finally found one. Blythe asked to get on my shoulders while Braden got Ethan in his backpack. He needed a little help situating Ethan onto his back, so I tried to help with one hand while holding Blythe on with the other, but she wiggled free of my grip and fell backwards off of my shoulders, head first onto the asphalt below. Immediately she started screaming and I immediately picked her up. I looked briefly for scrapes, but didn't see any. Then Braden said I had blood all over my cheek, so she must have been bleeding from somewhere. I checked and she was bleeding from a small, but deep wound on the back of her head. So we quickly got back in the car and headed for the emergency room. Me in the back putting pressure on the wound and Blythe continuing to scream the whole way there.

She continued to scream in the waiting room. The few minutes we had to wait seemed like forever. Though this one guy did come in after us looking REALLY rough, like he might vomit all over the place and fortunately they took him back first. So we got called back, they examined her and said she'd need one staple. The cut was clean, nothing inside, and the radiation from a CAT scan would be more detrimental than it was worth (and since she never blacked out, they didn't feel it necessary). Since it was only one staple, it would have been just as bad to get a numbing shot and then the staple than to just get the staple. So, one staple in the head with no numbing. We had a lot of screaming.

Here's a picture of the head wound. She wouldn't hold still for my picture, so you can just maybe barely see the staple there.

She did calm down and after a lot of waiting on paperwork, we were able to leave. As we were leaving the hospital, she asks Braden, "can I get on your shoulders?". So at least she's not scarred for life (mentally that is).

If only we had just let her jump on those damn moonbouncers.

A rough trip home

I finally made it back from New Jersey yesterday morning after a ridiculously awful experience getting home. I was supposed to fly from Newark to Philadelphia to Roanoke starting at 5:45pm. It was raining, so there were delays. Initially they said no connections were in jeopardy but since our plane hadn't even taken off to get to Newark yet, my chances of making my Phili connection were dwindling and there was only one more way to get back to Roanoke that night (through Charlotte). So I got switched to that flight and headed to Charlotte. I had to sit way in the back, apparently in the "English as a second language" section (or "don't speak English at all" section). Whatever. I had my computer and countless hours of work to do, so the time went by quickly. I got to Charlotte and had a leisurely dinner and headed to my Roanoke gate. Got back on my computer and waited for my 10:15pm flight. Then they called everyone who was on the Roanoke flight up to the gate counter. Flight cancelled due to maintenance. And of course it's the last flight out to Roanoke, so my choices were to fly to Lynchburg (which is 50 miles from Roanoke) or stay in Charlotte and fly out the next morning. I really wanted to get home and Braden had to work early the next morning, but getting to Lynchburg would do me no good if my car was in Roanoke. I asked if I could get a rental car and drive instead. The guy next to me said he'd split it with me and the girl behind me suggested we get to Lynchburg and get a rental from there. The Lynchburg flight was leaving in a few minutes and it was conveniently at the same gate the Roanoke flight was at, so I agreed to do that. I got my ticket and called Braden to let him know. That's when I finally looked at my ticket and realized I was actually on the NEXT Lynchburg flight, to leave an hour later out of a far away gate. Geez. So I headed to the far away gate and the guy that said he'd split the rental was already on the phone trying to find a rental in Lynchburg. We found one with Avis. We never saw the other girl again who said she'd split it, so it was just the two of us. Fortunately I checked no bags, but the other guy had and they said they wouldn't make them to Lynchburg, so he'd have to pick them up in Roanoke the next day (which was fine since he also couldn't turn in the rental car in Roanoke that late). So we get to Lynchburg and started driving. About 6 miles down the road, he gets a call from Lynchburg telling him his bags are there. So we turn around. What's another 20 minute delay? So anyway, we finally get to Roanoke, I get my car and drive home and go to bed (at about 3:00am). Then up at 7:00 with the kids. Fun times!

To protect the identities of those involved, I won't mention the airline name (I may or may not have family who work for that airline).

The house was actually pretty clean and Braden had even gotten some painting done while I was gone. He did tell me, "I'm not gonna lie....this house was a WRECK at 9:00pm last night. Toys EVERYWHERE!". At least I didn't have to come to that!