Ethan's first haircut

I took the kids to SuperCuts yesterday, which isn't SuperCheap, but I took Blythe there for her first haircut and they fill out a nice "first haircut" certificate with some of the hair for the baby book, so I figured we'd go there for Ethan's first haircut experience. We tried to get him in the chair first, but he wasn't having it. So Blythe went first to show him how easy it is (not that she's an old pro - since it was only her 3rd haircut). Then after that he was okay with sitting in the chair too.

Blythe brought him cars to play with while sitting in the chair.

And even with Ethan turning his head this way and that, the stylist managed to give him a cute little boy haircut.

A doggy dilemma

I took my dogs to the vet the other day for their routine annual visit. You know, just like a rabies shot, kennel cough vaccine, and an exam to make sure they're all good. I walked out of there $465 poorer. Mostly because I had to get heartworm prevention and flea/tick prevention. But seriously? $465 on dogs? I can think of many many things I'd like to buy with that $465.

And it doesn't stop there.

Juni, our lab, is abnormal in that she doesn't like to chew. Well, she did when she was a puppy (thus the huge bill we had to replace the carpet in a house we rented due to chewing a big hole in the middle of the living room carpet). But nowadays she won't chew at all, no rawhides, not even a big nice ham bone. What this means is that she has terrible teeth. She's 5 years old and they are very bad, so she needs to get them cleaned. Which means general anesthesia, which of course equates to dollars.

Okay, simple enough. Pay money so Juni can get her teeth cleaned. But actually, not that simple. You see, this year in her exam they discovered a heart murmur. A level 2 on a scale of 6. So not bad, just something to watch out for. But they won't give her anesthesia for teeth cleaning unless she has an echo cardiogram by a vet cardiologist.

So fortunately Virginia Tech has a vet school, so a vet cardiologist is right here in town. But I'll have to shell out a few hundred for the echo cardiogram, which I'm sure will show that her heart is doing okay and that she can get her teeth cleaned. Either that, I guess, or they'll say she can't get anesthesia in which case she can't get her teeth cleaned and will add on another health risk. I'm not exactly seeing the silver lining here.

The thing is, we all like Juni more than Bogie (good thing dogs can't read blogs) and I've never really envisioned a world where we had only Bogie and no Juni. So I'd like to do what I can to prevent that. If only money grew on trees...

RIP Michael Jackson

If only I had pictures to scan from my sister's Thriller birthday party she had when she was 6 or 7 and she and I looked so cool in our knee socks (pulled up to our knees of course. In Texas. Because it's so cold in the summer you need fabric covering the lower half of your leg.) and velcro shoes, and really short shorts. We were the coolest. And my sister was the BIGGEST Michael Jackson fan all growing up. If I had to hear one more thing about Michael's monkey Bubbles, I was going to lose it! She always had posters of him in her room and pretty much knew everything about him. And that was before internet, so it wasn't exactly easy to obtain the information.

Or if I had a video of the dance my brother and I made up (along with our friends) to the song "Black and White", except not only was it a dance video, it was actually a whole new song named "Dumb or Smart". I still know some of the lyrics. If only....

Then you might know how cool I really was back in the day.

Alas, my children will never really know the awesomeness of Michael Jackson, but they will certainly hear his music. I still love listening to his songs. I think I burned a Michael Jackson CD in college, and it was the first CD I had ever burned. Pretty sure I downloaded the songs off of Napster, before it was illegal to "share" songs. Ah the memories...

We will miss you Michael Jackson.

Goodbye 20's...hello 30's!

Well, as I'm writing this, I'm enjoying my last 10 minutes of my twenty-somethings. I thought it was official at 1:15pm today, but then I realized I was born in CENTRAL time. Ha! I bought myself a whole other hour. Nothing fancy today...woke up to Ethan talking in bed earlier than I wanted to, changed a poopy diaper, got the kids up and ready for school, took the dogs for a walk, started work, went to step aerobics at lunchtime, and now I'm writing my blog. So far, a great day! Not as great as my weekend though!

What I thought was happening last weekend was that my parents and sister were coming in town so they could babysit while Braden and I went out to eat. I thought Doug and Ada were coming in town Friday night, basically because Lynette was shooting a wedding on Saturday so Doug had nothing better to do :) So I figured we'd hit up the pool on Saturday, grill out Saturday night and call it a weekend. But Braden had done well and made secret plans. Doug magically showed up earlier than expected and as I was getting ready for dinner, so was everyone else and then 2 of our regular babysitters showed up. So we all went out to eat, and at dinner my great friends Emily and Amy joined us. A really nice surprise! We had a VERY nice dinner then hit up a local bar for some drinks afterward. Emily had also gotten to the dinner early to decorate a bit and my parents gave me a gorgeous "I'm 30" baseball cap. You're so jealous...

Oh shucks, and as of right now I am officially 30. Well, cheers to hopefully a great decade!

Anyhoo, the next day we did hit up the pool. My other great friends (Blythe's godparents) Sue and Richard were supposed to surprise me at the pool, but Emily let it slip before they got there. Oops! Oh well, still great surprise to have them come in town!

Ethan, Blythe, and Ada had a good time swimming in the pool and were all pretty exhausted afterward.

So while they napped, we got out the Dairy Queen Blizzard ice cream cake (so we didn't have to share with them).

Mmm....mmm. So good, I ate the leftovers for dinner last night :) Braden said that Target didn't have a "0" and Walmart didn't have a "3", too bad he didn't look in our drawer at home as we already had both!

I opened my gifts and my family did quite well in their choice of gifts (since I'm a hard person to shop for...hey, at least I admit it). They gave me large canvas photos of 2 of the great pics Lynette took at the beach. I think I'm going to hang them in my office (at home) so I can see them all day long!

We grilled out, drank wine, played some games, and then called it a night. Great day!

Sunday was Father's Day, so to celebrate we let the oldest father here (my dad) pay for lunch :) Thanks Dad! It was a beautiful day, so we ate out where we could sit outside and enjoy. Later that afternoon, everyone left and Braden started swim camp. The kids napped and I enjoyed reading a magazine outside. Ahh - blissful.

Blythe also started swim lessons (again) yesterday, which go for 4 straight days, so we'll head back there this evening. The first one didn't go so well, but afterwards she was swimming by herself again (so far this summer she had yet to). So Emily - hopefully she'll be doing still on July 4th so you will owe her whatever it was you promised her (ice cream?).

There's no crying in...

Golf...

Times were happy before this picture. Blythe was playing golf too and we thought, "maybe we'll take the kids to play miniature golf after dinner". Then Ethan started crying. And would. not. stop.

Well, he stopped long enough to eat a whole hot dog and the rest of his dinner, then picked right back up and continued to have the worst toddler tantrum known to man. Imagine the worst tantrum you can and it was probably worse than that. Screaming. Arching of the back. Rolling on the ground. Kicking his feet. Flailing his arms. It didn't matter if he was held or we were walking around or trying to rock with him. There was no stopping it. And so it progressed for at least an hour before I forced him into his jammies, changed his diaper, and dumped in his crib where he continued his awful tantrum until he cried himself to sleep about 30 minutes later. I have no idea what his deal was, but hopefully that monster doesn't come back anytime soon!

A little trick we learned from Ms. Britney Spears

Taken to the next level

Crap, I better watch my language

Now that Ethan is starting to say a few more words, Blythe likes to tell me what he is or is not saying. Example:
Ethan points at his empty cup and then to the apple juice to tell me he wants more. So I poor him some, then I say, "Say 'Thank you'". And Ethan says "duh duh". And I say "Good!" (because you know, he said 2 syllables, so that counts for something).

So then Blythe will say, "Mom, Ethan didn't say 'thank you'." Either that or she'll cut me off earlier and say, "Ethan doesn't know how to say that". It's no wonder he doesn't say a lot since he has his own personal translator!

Then sometimes she will point out when Ethan does say something, like when we were on our way to the doctor and Ethan said 'doctor'. So yesterday we were in the car and Ethan said "Cah (like Cat, but without the 't'). Blythe says, "Mom...Ethan said 'crap'". Mental note - need to watch what I'm saying. So I say, "No he didn't". She says, "Yes, he did. He said 'CRAP!'". Again, I say no, he didn't. So then I think she senses that maybe she shouldn't say that, so she starts back peddling and saying he said 'cap', then she says he said 'cat' (trying to get back to her sweet, innocent self). Alas, she said her first bad word, but it certainly could have been worse. That day, I'm sure, will come and will likely be really loud and in a public place. Yikes.

Vacation Bible School

Blythe and I are halfway through with Vacation Bible School. It's basically a camp that's from 5:30-8:00pm for 4 days. We eat dinner first, then learn the day's lesson/focus point, watch a skit, then the kids get in their groups and go around to 3 different 20-25 minute activities. Then we group back up for 10 minutes of closing (including one song and dance we do each day).

So really it's Blythe's first experience in a camp. Although she does take direction each day at day care (or so I'm led to believe), this is different because she doesn't know the people who are leading her around and telling her what to do. So the first day she was quite clueless about what was going on. But I think she had a good time. She did crafts, games, and playground (the preschool group does playground each day as one of their activities because who are we kidding...you can't hold a preschooler's attention for a full hour and there's 19 of them so who would want to!). Then yesterday after I picked her up from day care, we went back for Day 2. She clued in a little more yesterday and I think enjoyed it more. Her activities were Science/Sensory, Music, and - you guessed it - playground.

I had previously volunteered to run the games activity. So we have 2 games each day for 3 different groups of kids to play. So that's 8 different games each modified 3 different ways so preschoolers through 6th grade can all play them. It gets a little exhausting, but overall it's been fun. Plus I haven't had to worry about what to cook for dinner!

So while Blythe and I are there, Braden and Ethan have had some bonding time. Sunday they went to Walmart for groceries (the ultimate male bonding experience). Yesterday they played with chalk outside and had a hot dog dinner that they ate on the floor. Fun times!

Hey, that's a nice alarm clock!

Yesterday I awoke to the sound of Ethan on the monitor. And Blythe. Both playing in Ethan's crib. They were having a good time too. Apparently Blythe got up and completely bypassed my room and went straight to Ethan's, turned on the light, opened the blinds, and climbed into his crib. They played while I went about my business of getting dressed, brushing my teeth, combing my hair, etc. They've really played well together the last few weeks, so I think we've hit a new "chapter" where I have children that play together! And fight. But we'll focus on the positives.

We spent most of the day at the pool yesterday, so one might think we'd had enough of the pool and wouldn't want to go back today. But when you have 2 parents who were both swimmers all the way through college, clearly going to the pool never gets old. So we went back today too. And Blythe brought her friend Ashley along. And they were twins with their matching swimsuits.

They also had matching yellow flip-flops. How cute.

They bounced back and forth between the sand at the playground and the pool while Ethan stayed in the pool pretty much the whole time. Anyway, pretty uneventful. No poop episodes, though I did catch Blythe standing in a corner near our table peeing on the pool deck while standing. Mental note - must teach her how to pee in the pool.

I smell poop

So my week of chaos continued into today. I have a project going live today on the west coast, so I'm probably still not done for the week. But the kids have to be picked up from day care by 5:30, so there's not much else I can do but leave my computer, go get the kids, and attempt to function the rest of the evening by blackberry. Braden is out of town for a swim meet, so really, there are no other alternatives.

So anyway, during the summer in Blacksburg on Friday evenings they have a free summer concert. The music is usually mediocre at best, but the kids get to run around with other kids and enjoy being outside. It was cancelled the last 2 weeks due to rain, but today it was beautiful - partly cloudy and about 75 degrees. So we packed a picnic dinner to take with us. Of course the kids begged for all of the food I was putting in the cooler as I was putting it in, so I held them off with a few snacks (while dreaming of a nice big glass of wine for myself). FINALLY we were about ready to go.

Then I smelled poop.

Of course Ethan has to poop every time we're just about to go somewhere. But I guess that's better than waiting until we get somewhere that's not home. So after a 2 minute argument with him, I finally get him to lay down to change him. And then of course, Blythe says she needs to go to the bathroom. We'll never get out of the house!

Anyway, I was surprised to find Ethan's hadn't pooped. Man, he can have some stinky farts. But I change him anyway and yell at Blythe to hurry up. That's when I hear her crying in the bathroom.

So I go in there and the first thing I see is that the toilet is FULL of toilet paper. Coming out the sides. Everywhere. Ugh! Then I notice she's standing next to the toilet with her underwear around her ankles and it's full of poop. "Mommy! I pooped in my pants!" she's crying. "It's on my legs!" There's small specs of poop on her legs, but apparently she doesn't care about the mass of poop still stuck to her butt. I help her get her shoes off so we can carefully remove the underwear without getting poop everywhere. Then I try to remove some of the toilet paper from the toilet so MAYBE it will flush. It did. Thank goodness! About this time, Ethan comes in and is showing quite the interest in the poopy underwear. So I'm yelling at him to get out. And Blythe's crying that she still has poop on her legs. And I have this underwear in my hands that's full of poop. And I think I saw that Bogie peed a little just outside of the bathroom. What to do first?

I throw away the underwear. I'll be damned if I'm going to clean that out. Not worth it. Then I clean the potty area so Ethan doesn't touch poop. Then I clean up Bogie's mess (which turned out not to be pee...probably was apple juice). Then I make it around to having to clean up Blythe. And as I do I realize she must have pooped well before she ever went to the bathroom. I had thought she just couldn't get her clothes off fast enough, but now I'm confused. So it's really stuck on there pretty good. Have to use like at least 10 wipes. Oh, incredibly disgusting! I run upstairs to get Blythe some new clothes, leaving both kids crying at the baby gate at the bottom because I won't let them come up with me. Blythe gets her new clothes on, we get our shoes on, and FINALLY make it to the car.

We make it to campus, park, set up camp, then find out there is no band. No music.

Well, I packed a picnic dammit, and we actually made it here. So we had our picnic and enjoyed the nice weather while I answered work phone calls non-stop at 7:30 at night. What a lovely Friday!

My world is spinning out of control!

Oh, I'm having one of those weeks where my attempts to be the perfect mother, wife, employee, pet-owner, maid, volunteer, and friend are failing!

First to go by the wayside is probably my "perfection" at being a maid (as if I were ever even close). Currently living in filth (by my standards). One of these days I will get around to cleaning (likely before my mother comes to visit next weekend). Second to fall by the wayside would probably be personal hygiene. I'm not exactly thrilled by the way I look (or smell) at the moment. Showering and drying my hair takes so much time! But it's not as if I've been all that sweaty since my workout routine has also been pretty terrible this week.

And I'm pretty sure my dogs want me to disown them about now. I didn't take them on a walk today or yesterday or the day before (or maybe I did...I can't remember). I think I fed them...better go check.

This all stems from my overload of work and my 2 over-needy clients who won't leave me alone. This whole working full-time thing is really cramping my style. I did manage to make it to Ethan's field trip yesterday and Blythe's field trip today, but probably at the expense of the projects I'm working on. Oh well.

I hate feeling stressed like this. It messes up my brain. I finally had a few minutes today to balance my checkbook (aka update Quicken) and I was shocked to find I had $56 in my checking account. Because I thought I transferred money in when I really transferred money out. Seriously. Losing it.

Anyway, can't blog for long as I have minutes to do for our homeowners association and games to plan for Vacation Bible School which starts this weekend. As I have the complete inability to say "No!" when someone asks me to do something. Is there a help group for people like me? Did I mention I'm no longer just a room mom at daycare, but the parent-teacher council coordinator? Where did I think I would find the time?

There's something fishy going on...

Cute jammies provided by Blythe's godmother, Sue. Thanks Sue!!! Here's a rear view...

And Braden has now decided he wants to direct and act in horror films. Here's his first amateur attempt...

And lastly, in this completely random blog post, Ethan had another field trip today. They decided to be ambitious and load up the 14 toddlers and take them to a duck pond to feed ducks (or actually mean, hissing geese), then across the street to a playground. Then load and unload them all again to go to Dairy Queen for lunch and ice cream. Dairy Queen has 2 high chairs, so it was interesting. But they piled a lot of them in one long booth, sat some older ones in chairs, and the youngest in the high chairs. There were probably more french fries, chicken nuggets, and milk on the floor than in bellies, but they surpassed my expectations. Ethan, like the pig that he is, ate ALL of his chicken, ALL of his ice cream cone, and most of his french fries.

Here's how they were seated (notice the adults just standing there watching):

And a couple more pics of Ethan on his trip:

Ethan 15 month update

Yesterday Ethan turned 15 months old.






To celebrate, I took him to the doctor today to get 3 shots. He wasn't exactly celebrating...



Anyway, here are his stats:
24 lbs (50th percentile)
32 inches long (75th percentile)
18.75 inch head circumference (about 35th percentile)



All is A-okay with him, except his never-ending case of eczema on his butt. Poor guy got his weird eczema skin from me.



So here's what he's doing these days:

• He can now run. Pretty much falls every time he does this, but loves doing it anyway.


• He's trying to jump. On the couch. One day very soon he will fall off (hopefully not near the brick fireplace).


• He loves balls (golf balls, basketballs, soccer balls, you name it). And his current favorite toy is the Little Tikes basketball goal.


• He loves to get dirty. Tonight he threw sand all over his face and his hair and his clothes and then found a muddy puddle to play in.


• He likes playing with cars and trucks and is starting to make the "vrooom" sound when playing with them.


• So he is very much a boy. Talking has been of a lesser priority, but he has made vast improvements this month in that category. His favorite word to say is "Daddy". He says it all happy and loving. On the other hand, when he says "Mama", it's when he needs or wants something and not exactly in the happy and loving way.


• Other words he's starting to say: ball (shocker), go, bye-bye, hi, eye (anything that rhymes with "I"), car, truck, dis, dat, and his favorite..dah (which can mean doggie, bird, wagon, or anything else he can't say).


• Today on the way to the doctor, he actually said "doctor". I was pretty sure he said it and then Blythe says "Ethan said 'doctor'", so that confirmed it.

When Blythe turned 15 months is when I felt like she was more a kid and less a baby. And I think the same way about Ethan now at 15 months.

On a side note, while I was out of town Braden went to the mall with kids and bought Blythe a dress at Gap Outlet. Look at how good he did!

Such a cute dress, don't ya think?

Girls weekend update

I'm back from my girls weekend and I'm happy to report it was a LOVELY weekend (as if there were any chance I'd actually say it wasn't great). We ate at some great restaurants, went shopping (and I actually bought things for myself instead of everything for the kids), had great conversation, and drank too much wine (but who cares! because I got to sleep until 9 this morning and then lay around and be lazy). Even though I grew up in Charlotte, the place has completely changed since I lived there. People actually go out at night in downtown now. So last night we went to the "Epicentre", which is an area with a bunch of bars and restaurants and where they have happy hour events during the week. Basically we went to people watch because my friend said we would be amazed at how skanky the women dress at these places. I guess we got there too early because at first we didn't see much of it. But the longer we stayed, the more the skankiness factor increased. Am I really getting that old where I find joy in judging others by their bad choice in attire? Yes. But it made for some fun times for us!

Today we headed over to the Taste of Charlotte. Kind of like the Taste of Chicago, but scaled down by at least a factor of 10. It was fun though. $20 paid for the 3 of us to have lunch and ice cream basically. And it was nice to walk through a different part of downtown. We realized we had no pictures from our weekend, so I asked the 11 year old girl across from us (when she wasn't busy texting on her blackberry...WTF?) to take our picture.

Braden had a weekend at home with the kids and they had no fun at all, as you can clearly see from their photobooth pictures at the mall:

Here's a close-up:

Actually, they had a fun weekend spent mostly at the pool. They were there until 2 yesterday and then until 3 today. I'm shocked Ethan made it that late before passing out. You'd think Blythe would be pretty tired too, but when Braden tried to make her take a nap today, she just wanted to play. He tried going into her room several times to make her go to sleep, but she wouldn't. So he told her she could come downstairs and hang with him and have quiet time, but she had to watch golf on TV. Worked like a charm as she was snoring on the couch when I got home. Smart thinking Braden!

I asked Blythe if she had fun during her weekend with Daddy and she said she did. I asked her what was her favorite thing she did over the weekend and she said, "sleeping".

Girls weekend - T minus 1 day

I'm SO excited....I finally get a real girls weekend and it starts tomorrow! I'm heading down to Charlotte to spend the weekend with 2 of my best friends so we can talk girl talk, drink wine, go out to eat, go shopping, get pedicures, and have fun! It's all to celebrate our 30th birthdays, which are spread out over about 10 months. I can't wait!

And I only have to pack the things that I need instead of packing for 3 people and dogs. So I think I'll wait until tomorrow to pack. You know, live on the wild side.

And Braden will be here with the kids. I think the weather will be nice, so a trip or two to the pool will probably be in order. I'm sure there will be some stories to share on Sunday evening.

So anyway, signing off for now. Will be back in touch on Sunday or Monday. Later!

Blythe's field trip

Today I drove over the longest arch bridge in the Western hemisphere (aka the New River Gorge). Twice. On my way to Gassaway, West Virginia (and then back). And no, that isn't a made up place. It's a booming metropolis of probably at least 1100 or 1200 people about smack dab in the middle of the state of West Virginia. I had the pleasure of going out there to meet up with a client and gather project requirements, look at cool bank stuff, and other very important tasks I'm sure you're very jealous about. Not really. It's about a 2 hour and 45 minute drive, so there and back meant I was in the car quite a bit today.

So preparing for that trip was the reason I didn't blog yesterday about Blythe's school field trip to the park. Rather than driving Blythe to the field trip (and then having to take her back to school and have to say goodbye again), I just decided to meet them there. Yes, I'm THAT mom who always goes to the field trips. But my job is flexible enough so I usually can, and so I probably will continue to go on as many as I can even though they are chaotic and probably more stressful than working.

At least with Blythe's age, I'm not worried about them falling off of the playground equipment every 3 seconds. So I was able to take a few pics.

It always amazes me the power those preschool teachers have over the kids. They call them all and tell them to line up and within seconds, there's a line of 22 preschoolers.

Takes me at least 5 minutes to round up just one (10 minutes to round up 2). But anyway, they had a fun time. They're building a bike path inside the playground area at daycare, so they can't use the playground there this week. So it was nice they were able to play anyway!