If I Die in Raleigh At Least I Will Die Free

When we were dating in college, I always went to visit Johnny in North Carolina for the Fourth of July.  We thought we'd continue the tradition and take the girls to visit Grammie and Grampie this year.  Now, for some odd reason there are no direct flights from Kansas City to Raleigh, so we had a connection in Baltimore.  Not a big deal, thought we.  

We got to the Kansas City airport around 10:30am for our noon flight.  Got a nice coffee, a blueberry muffin.  You know, just living the life.  I will interrupt here and say that Johnny told me Olive was dressed like a clown for this flight.

We arrived in Baltimore around 3:00, preparing to get on the quick 45 minute flight around 5:30pm.  Lila and I decided to stand in line at the airport Chipotle while Johnny and Olive held down a table for us, making friends with an elderly couple going to visit their grandkids in California.  While in line, Lila informed me, "Dat yady yooks pretty in her hair brush."  I translated for the woman, "My daughter thinks your hair is pretty."  We ate our dinner, and checked the departure monitors, noticing that our flight was delayed an hour.  Bummer, but no big deal.  We went to find our gate and settled down for a bit.  At this point, it started hailing really hard.  I suppose that should have been a red flag.

Rumors started floating around the gate area that there was a bad hurricane along the East Coast. Fabulous.  Before we knew it, the flight was no longer delayed until 6:30 but was now 8:30.  A girl sitting near us was growing angry and decided that she was going to go rent a car and drive to Raleigh.  "Anyone who wants to can join!" she declared. Johnny and I thought about it briefly, but then decided the five hour drive wasn't worth it; our flight would get in around the same time anyway. Ba ha ha! It's funny, now.

So about three hours into our layover, Lila was really doing an excellent job.  She traded off her time between playing on the iPad, pretending with her Disney princess dolls, watching cartoons, and running around in circles.  Johnny decided to take Olive on a walk to see if he could get her to take a nap.  While he was gone, Lila was squatting on the floor, looking at something, and then whined to me, "I have to go tinkle!"  Now this was odd because Lila is not totally/anywhere near being potty trained yet, and she had a diaper on.  So I kind of said, "Ok well just go," but I looked at her and realized that she had just gone and it had somehow come out the side of her diaper and completely soaked her leg.

I asked some nice ladies to watch our stuff, and I ran Lila into the bathroom.  Johnny had taken the diaper bag and the stroller, so I literally had nothing to cover Lila's butt with.  I stripped her down and held her as covered as a could and waited at the entrance of the bathroom in order to flag Johnny down.  He showed up pretty quickly and handed off a new Pull-Up.  Unfortunately, all of Lila's clothes were in a checked bag getting rained on outside (Fast-forward: I'm OCD about packing and put all of the girls clothes in labeled Ziploc gallon bags, so even though their suitcase was COMPLETELY soaked, all of their clothes were dry.  Take that Southwest...and the hurricane.), so Lila had no clothes.  Johnny then went on another walk around the airport with the new mission of finding child pants.

Meanwhile, Lila ran around the airport in just a Pull-Up.

After about 30 minutes, Johnny finally returned with the only child pants in the entire airport.

"Crabby in the Morning"

Though happy with our new pants, our happiness was soon dashed when we realized that our flight was being pushed back to 10:30 and then 11:00.  We continued to hang out at our gate which was conveniently located by one of the airport bars.  This location provided interesting companionship in the form of old people who had had too much to drink.  Remember the old couple from dinner?  Well that man sauntered over from his Bud Light at one point to check on Olive and actually kissed her on the head.  Now I'm not overprotective of my kids with strangers, but I think that might have been a step too far.  There was also an older woman who insisted on holding Olive for a few minutes while regaling Johnny with tales of her bad back and bronchitis. 

By 10:00, we had one diaper left between the two girls, Olive still hadn't slept, and I was entertaining Lila by walking up one moving walkway and back on the other one ("Tick tock it's yike a clock Mama!").  It was at this point we realized that if we had rented a car at 4:30 we would have been in Raleigh already.

We FINALLY got on the plane at 11:00 and took off around 11:30.  Both girls slept on the short flight, thankfully, and I was patting myself on the back for surviving a harrowing layover without a single meltdown, Lila or Mommy.  As we landed and I was pridefully unclipping my little angel from her carseat, Lila totally lost it.  I mean went bananas. It was almost one in the morning, and she was completely hysterical.  She sobbed from the airplane to the baggage claim to the car, "I don't want to get in dat white car! No fank you! No fank you!", to Grammie and Grampie's house.  It was almost two in the morning by the time I got her in her bed.  At this point Johnny and I are whisper yelling at each other about where the other one put the diaper bag and so on.

Long story short: we survived.  So if you ever have a two year old and a baby on a flight that connects in Baltimore, I suggest you bring an extra pair of pants.

Gecko Green

When we lived in Philadelphia, we owned a cute little row house with an open floor plan.  All the walls had to be painted the same color, so I went out on a preppy limb and chose Gecko Green.  Put a sample on the wall? Please, why would we do that.  We just looked at the paint chip and then went out and bought three gallons of the stuff.  As Johnny is painting it, he's loudly grumbling that I better like it since we just spent $140 on the paint.  Oops.  We stubbornly kept it and wore sunglasses inside.  My students loved it.  They said it reminded them of the Rainforest Cafe.  Classy.

Annnnnnyway, fast forward to Kansas a few years later, and we are now getting ready to do a DIY redo of the kitchen.  I'm planning to paint the cabinets white in a few weeks and put in a breakfast nook, and I've decided that I'm just not happy with the current color.  Enter Johnny's heart attack, stage right.

HG-TV Magazine had a picture of a room with the exact same wood paneling as ours where the designer used Asparagus Green by Olympic.  It just looked so cute with the white trim and brown furniture.  So the green on the right is Asparagus by Olympic.  The green on the left is Asparagus by Valspar that the Home Depot guy accidentally gave me.  Geeze.

I'm thinking with the white trim and white cabinets it could look really cute, but I don't want people to come over and be blinded.  Am I crazy?

Das Boot

One of the fun presents that we got for being in Aunt Suzanne's wedding was a Das Boot beer glass for Johnny.  He's thoroughly enjoyed drinking his home brew from this stylish vessel.  Apparently he's not the only one to find it so appealing because while he was drinking out of it the other day, Lila brought one of her rain boots over to him and asked, "I have some?"

How To Get Four Firemen to Carry You Out of Your House

WARNING: Reader discretion advised. This post definitely will fall into the category of "Too Much Information" for some most people.

Wednesday night as I am going to bed, I notice that my post postpartum bleeding has quickly and severely increased from what is normal.  Luckily, Johnny's mom, who's a nurse practitioner, is staying with us, so we call her upstairs.  She seems pretty concerned and wants me to call my doctor.  At this point, I feel completely fine. I get on the phone with my doctor's office, and they say to give it another thirty minutes, and if it continues to come in to the hospital.  After I hang up, the bleeding picks up some more, so Johnny wants to get me up and take me to the hospital.  I stand up and almost immediately feel light headed.  I remember asking Johnny for some water, taking a sip, and then kneeling down on the floor.  

The next thing I remember is shaking and waking up to being dragged across my bedroom floor by my husband and hearing my mother in law giving our address to somebody on the phone.  Two minutes later, Johnny is throwing pants on me while a bunch of firemen and EMTs invade my bedroom.  One EMT tries for a few minutes to get an IV going but can't find a vein that will work.  I remember him saying, "Here we'll let [insert name here] try it. He's a nurse," and I remember thinking, "Umm and what qualifications do you have then, sir?"  

Anyway, I have weird veins and apparently losing large amounts of blood makes your veins flatten out, so they aren't able to get an IV going.  They roll me onto some kind of tarp and cover me up with a bunch of blankets.  One guy almost put a blanket over my face, and I told him that I wasn't dead yet.  Everyone gets a corner of the tarp, and they drag me down the stairs to the garage where the stretcher thingamajig is set up.  They put me on that and wheel me out to the extremely embarrassing light show of ambulance and firetruck in front of my house.  As we were getting in the ambulance, they complimented Johnny for being the first person all day to have shoveled the driveway. I was so proud.

The ambulance ride was fairly uneventful.  I just focused on this button on the wall and kept telling myself not to pass out again.  This would also be the first of many times that I ask for a drink of water and am denied it. Jerks.

We pull into this garage thing at St. Luke's, and I go straight up to the mother/baby ward where one of the doctors from my practice is waiting for me.  After about fifteen minutes of trying, they finally get an IV in my arm, and I instantly feel better.  They still won't give me any water, though. Jerks.

At this point, the bleeding is really bad, and they prep me for a DNC.  To my understanding, a DNC is basically surgery where they clean out your uterus.  You could need one if you miscarry later on in a pregnancy or if some placenta is left after delivery or for various other reasons.  They scoot me into one of the freezing cold surgery rooms and transfer me to the operating table.  I'm serious about this room being freezing cold. I know I was colder than the average person because of blood loss, but even my doctor was walking around with one of those warmed hospital blankets around her shoulders.  I do the whole "breathe into the mask thing" and go right to sleep.

Waking up from the anesthesia was extremely difficult.  I remember feeling like I was reeling and not being able to focus on anything. I just kept asking Johnny what happened, telling him I wanted to go home, declaring that I did not feel well, and crying that I wanted Olive and Lila.  Johnny just kept repeating his answers to my questions, and I kept saying, "Ok. Ok. Ok."  I finally calmed down and got back to reality, and the doctor came in and told me that they didn't find any placenta and that they were able to avoid damaging my uterus for future pregnancies (yeah I'm good thanks).  They inserted a balloon full of fluid into my uterus to stop the bleeding and told me that they wanted to keep an eye on my hemoglobin count (red blood cells) to see if I needed a blood transfusion since I had lost about a liter of blood.  And no, they still would not give me any water.

Thursday morning now passes.  I am allowed to eat and drink around lunchtime, and they keep drawing blood to test my hemoglobin count. Around 3:00, my hemoglobin count has dropped to a 7 (normal is 12), so they decide that they need to give me two transfusions to get me caught up.  Throughout this whole experience all the nurses and doctors keep telling me how pale I look, and at one point Johnny and I both mutter something about how this is just how I normally look.

While I'm sleeping Thursday night, I get two bags of blood.  Johnny inspects the first bag they give me to see if it has the donor's name on it.  Unfortunately it does not, so that's one less thank you note I'll be writing.

Finally on Friday, they unplug me from everything, and I'm allowed to get up and move around.  I'm able to function fairly well, so they send me on my merry way back home.

I'm very thankful to be doing a lot better.  Johnny's mom pointed out to me how fortunate I was that I was awake when the bleeding started; if I had been asleep and hadn't noticed it, I might have had a very different outcome.  So thank you to everyone for all the prayers and meals and visits; we really appreciate it.  Hopefully I'll be back to normal in a little while.

Costco Crazies

I decided to make my last pre-baby trip to Costco today with our three kiddos.  I really didn't need anything from Costco specifically, but they have big carts and cheap milk, so that's where we decided to go.

Now, I'm going to illustrate this for you with words since the government does not allow me to post pictures of my foster kids.  Thanks Obama Care.  Picture this, Little Sister, a two and a half year old African American little girl with twists in her hair and purple leopard pants, is sitting in the basket portion of the cart, covered in Costco-sized groceries.  Her ten month old little brother and his four inch tall afro are sitting in the seat next to Lila, my white, runny-nosed, twenty-three month old daughter.  We have completed our shopping and are waiting in line for what ends up being nine huge pieces of pizza.  I'm still not really sure how that happened.  Anyway, as I am navigating the cart and the three plates of pizza to find a place to sit down, an older woman stops me and says, "They're so cute! Are they twins?"  I'm still not exactly sure which two she was talking about, but she seemed to be referring to my 32 pound vanilla daughter and my 15 pound chocolate foster son.  I kind of smiled at her and said, "No...they're not twins," and started cutting up pizza.

Now I have been asked all kinds of things by strangers about my motley crew, "Are they all yours?" "Is their father around?" but never before have I been asked if two of them are twins.  There's a first time for everything, I suppose.

Why I Haven't Been Blogging

**This entry is not for the faint of heart.  You have been warned.**

October seems to be a difficult month for blogging.  I haven't been blogging for two reasons: 1. The girls are moving into twin beds in Lila's old room, so all of my free time has been spent making new duvets for the twin beds along with three Halloween costumes and the beginnings of Christmas presents.  2. My days are ridiculously ridiculous.

Here is an example of how our morning went.

Today was picture day at Little Sister's preschool.  So right after I get the girls up, I get them dressed in the last two acceptable outfits that are in their closet.  Little Sister has been fighting a cold and likes to cough excessively, and I mean excessively, when she has a cold, so she's hacking and hacking all throughout breakfast.  Now Little Sister also has an extremely strong gag reflex, so I'm keeping an eye on her all throughout breakfast, just waiting for the coughing to engage the gag reflex and her breakfast to appear all over the floor.

Because I am always right, about two minutes after Little Sister is done with breakfast, she coughs one last cough and proceeds to throw up breakfast all over her picture day outfit.  Johnny takes charge of standing next to her and asking, "Are you done?" to which she always responds, "Yes," and then proceeds to barf more.  And like the loving daddy Johnny is, he waits until she's done and cleans up the mess.  I, meanwhile, am deciding whether I should take off Lila's clothes and give them to Little Sister or just go put something together from the leftovers in their room.  I decide to go with leftovers.

After I redress Little Sister, I notice that Little Guy (who's been jumping in his JumpeRoo this entire time) probably needs a diaper change.  I pick him up, and sure enough he is soaking wet.  I lie him down, take off his pants, and go to remove his onesie when I somehow stick my hand into a huge pile of poop that is not in his diaper but is all over his legs.  I yell for Johnny that I'm about to vomit, and my wonderful husband comes and cleans up his second disgusting mess of the morning.  I might add that it's not 8:30 yet.

So far Lila seems to be the only one not causing any problems, but as I am pretty much shoving everyone down the stairs to get to preschool because it is over my dead body that we are missing picture day after all of that, I realize that Lila is eating a clementine...



...that I have not peeled for her.  My plan for tomorrow is to just not get out of bed in the morning and see what happens.

Good Morning!

We had a very full weekend.  With actuarial exam number four and my friend Sarah's fabulous wedding, the absolute first thing we wanted to do on Sunday morning was wake up at 5:00 am to one of our seven fire alarms chirping.

I am sure you can imagine what happened.  Johnny would get out of bed, take one off the ceiling, take out the batteries, listen for a minute and then get back in bed only to hear another chirp 10 seconds later.  This continued for, I kid you not, thirty minutes.  Our bedroom quickly became a graveyard of fire alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.



Johnny finally narrowed the chirping down to the fire alarm in the girls' room.  He managed to get in and out without causing too much of a disturbance.  As I was drifting between sleep and giving much wanted advice on what Johnny should do, I had distinct memories of my own father storming into my room in the middle of the night, cursing under his breath, trying to make my fire alarm shut up.

When I told my dad about this on Sunday night, he informed me that the reason fire alarms always run out of batteries at night (aka worst time ever) is because heat keeps batteries going longer, thus they are more likely to die in the cold air of the night.  Who knew?

Sad Goodbyes

My family has owned my Camry for ten years. Johnny and I decided to celebrate the end of this decade by selling it.  He posted it on craigslist Saturday morning and had a buyer by the end of the evening.  I wasn't prepared to say goodbye so quickly.



This is the car I drove to Happy Dragon for the buffet on my 16th birthday and probably ate my body weight in crab rangoon.  It's also the car that I road tripped in to the Missouri state fair in order to see Sister Hazel, and then we got there and they had cancelled so I convinced the state fair people to give us our money back but not before we saw a blow up slide that looked like the Titanic sinking. Missouri, always classy.  In this car Johnny and I drove to Wheaton after our honeymoon for our final semester of college.  We took this car to Philadelphia, and it survived five parking tickets as well as the window being broken and Garmin being stolen.  We took our daughter home from the hospital in this car after waiting thirty minutes in the wheelchair while Johnny and the hospital dude jumped the battery because we left the lights on throughout our delivery.  We also brought our first foster son and daughter home in this car and then continued to stuff all three children in the backseat.

This car has survived one small accident, Johnny ripping the door handles off twice, me spilling latex paint in the backseat and the trunk, two years of Philadelphia scratches, and lots and lots of baby screams.  It will definitely be missed.

The Hutsons Shop for Smartphones

Johnny and I will recognize that we are a bit behind the times when it comes to technology.  The only reason we have an iPad is because his parents bought it for us so that they could Facetime with Lila.  I mean we were still using his desktop from college up until about a month ago.  Our phones were similarly as old.  Mine was at least a slidey phone with a keypad.  Johnny's had been washed in the washing machine by some unknown woman in our house who does the laundry, so he decided to replace it with the flip phone he had TWO PHONES AGO.

Part of this refusal to move into the modern era (and by "modern era" I mean "post post modern era"...let's be accurate here) is our contentedness with what we have and our lack of desire to spend money, especially with monthly payments on data plans.  But for my birthday this year, Johnny decided that we'd bite the bullet and upgrade our phones.  He did all kinds of research on the best plans and the best phones and the best deals and finally decided on the Nokia Lumina from T Mobile. It's only $130 when you buy it from Wal-Mart, so we decide to take out Saturday morning with the entire clan and look at our potential phones.

The only Wal Mart around us that carries this particular model is a Wal Mart that I have never even heard of.  It almost makes the South Philly Wal Mart look nice...almost.  By the way, if you're going to Philadelphia in the near future and you want to contract a disease, I suggest you go to the South Philly Wal Mart.  Anyway, we get to Wal Mart.  Little Guy in the Baby Bjorn, Lila in the cart seat, Little Sister in the actual cart.  We travel to the furthest corner of Wal Mart where the phones are located and quickly realize that all the phones on display are fake.  You can't try any of them.  Fabulous.  Johnny tries to ask the extremely uninformed worker where we could find this phone, finally suggesting himself that perhaps Best Buy might have it.  The worker man says, "Oh yeah it's on 95th and Metcalf."  I roll my eyes in my head because all good Overland Parkers know that Best Buy is on 119th and Metcalf.  Duh.

Out of the Wal-Mart with all children accounted for plus some additional light bulbs and baby formula.  We get in the car and as we're driving away, we get Aunt Suzanne on the phone to congratulate her on her engagement.  It is amid this speaker phone conversation that I realize that not only is one child not buckled in but that Johnny is not a good Overland Parker and is heading for 95th and Metcalf to the non-existent Best Buy.  I may or may not have said good-bye to Suzanne before hanging up the phone, redirecting the car and climbing in the back to buckle in the unbuckled child.

We arrive at Best Buy, put Little Guy in the Baby Bjorn and decide to let the girls walk instead of going in the cart.  I mean, what could happen?  Unfortunately, Little Sister has no shoes in the car which is surprising because she usually has a large collection of five or six shoes in the backseat. The only shoes in the car are some rain boots that are about two sizes two big for her.  "Put 'em on!" we say, and our merry band slowly, very very slowly ("Yes I know that's the sky. You are very good at identifying the sky every time we go outside.") makes its way into Best Buy.  

I take on the task of putting back all of the phone cases that the girls pull off the shelves while Johnny walks around and talks to the people about phones.  Of course, Best Buy does not have the phone that we wanted to look at.  At this point, while chasing after Lila and the $68 phone case she's refusing to give up, I look at Johnny and say, "If we had smart phones we could have checked in the car whether they had it or not."  He promptly agrees and asks Best Buy man where the closest T Mobile store is.  This man seems a little more informed than Wal-Mart man because he actually looks it up on a computer and tells us where the T Mobile store is (135th and Metcalf if you're not a good Overland Parker or if you don't have a smart phone).

By now we have been on the road for over an hour with the three kids, which is really pushing it.  But we are so close that we just can't bear to turn back now.  I do some problem solving and decide that the kids will probably last just enough longer if we stop at Five Guys for lunch.  We have never taken all three kids out to a restaurant before, even a restaurant with peanuts on the floor.  In fact, before we had so many kids we had many conversations about how we would never take all of our children out to eat.  I am very concerned, but we are in desperate need of hamburgers, so really my hands are tied.

We walk in and order our food, and wouldn't you know it, our kids sit quietly the entire time and enjoy their lunch!  Little Guy moves around just enough in his infant carrier that he rocks himself throughout the meal, and the girls chow down on their burger and fries.  They don't even lick the ketchup off their fries...delightful!  The only downside is that I realize that Little Guy will need to eat soon and all I have is an old bottle.  I go into the Five Guys bathroom and attempt to clean out the bottle with paper towels and hand soap.  I'm going to assume that this has happened to most of you with kids and that I'm not the only absentminded mother out there.  Thank you for letting me assume that.

We get out of Five Guys and back into the car for the third time and head to the T Mobile store.  Getting into the car, by the way, is like a small military mission.  Johnny and I are yelling over the car to each other about who has whom and who's hand needs to hold on to our pants and who needs to stop lying on the ground and who shouldn't eat rocks.  Just like the Army.

We finally arrive at the T Mobile store, and Johnny being the good husband decides to go in this time to make sure they have what we want before we all get out of the car.  They do, hallelujah, and we all get out of the car.  I decide to mix things up this time and put Lila in the umbrella stroller and allow Little Sister to push her around the store; everybody wins.  It is very clear at this point that someone has pooped and that Little Guy is VERY ready for a nap.  While I deal with the girls, Johnny feeds a screaming Little Guy while intently listening to the stammering and overwhelmed T Mobile man tell him about the phone and the optional plans.  We try out the phone and decide that it's the one for us, but of course we're not going to buy it from the T Mobile man, psh that would be too easy and more expensive.

Johnny gets the job of putting Little Guy in the car while I wrangle the girls.  At this point, Little Sister becomes extremely upset that she can't do something with the stroller.  I don't even remember what it is that she wants to do that she can't do.  She begins a full on tantrum while Lila relaxes in the stroller, probably rubbing her belly button and sucking her thumb.  Now tantrums really put a bee in my bonnet, so I stick Little Sister in timeout in the corner of the T Mobile store.  This is not a new thing to the girls.  I have put them in timeout at Wal Mart, Trader Joe's, other people's houses, the list goes on.  Little Sister finally calms down, but I decide that I really want to drive the point home, so I explain to her that this is not her house and she is not in charge.  This is the T Mobile people's house, and they do not like her yelling and screaming in their house.  Then I make her walk over to the T Mobile people and apologize for her behavior.  A very quiet and snot filled "Rorry" comes out, and the T Mobile people look at me oddly and mumble something like "It's ok," and we walk out the door and get back into the car.

It's only when we get home (you get her, I'll get him, then you come back and get the other one while I get him a bottle, and then you change her diaper) that I realize how horribly this entire trip could have gone.  If I had known what we were going to end up doing, I probably would have just sent Johnny off on his own, but it ended up being a really enjoyable time with our entire family, and enjoyable times with our entire family out in public can be very hard to come by.

Socks

Lila found a sock in the living room yesterday and begged me to put it on her foot.  Because it was one of Little Guy's, I told her that I would go get her one of her own pairs of socks to wear.  Being the smart mom that I am, while getting a pair for Lila, I also got a pair for Little Sister thus avoiding a major screaming match of, "Mine! Mine! Mine!"  Actually girls, Daddy bought these, so they technically belong to him.  I digress.



Anyway, the girls haven't really worn socks since maybe April or May, and once I put them on, it was like they had no idea what these foot coverings were.  They were slowly and tenderly walking around the first floor, pointing to their feet and laughing to themselves about these ridiculous "ocks."

I wonder how they'll feel about pants.

Party at the DMV

So on Thursday I got stopped by a police officer because the registration on my car was a month overdue.  I pulled the whole "Thank you so much for telling me! My husband usually takes care of it, but he's in the National Guard and is gone for two weeks." shtick and didn't get a ticket.  That did mean, though, that early Friday morning the whole Hutson clan had to go to the DMV.

When we got there, I realized that not only did I not have our double stroller, but Lila did not have any shoes on.  So I strapped Little Guy into the Baby Bjorn, put Lila in the umbrella stroller, and had Little Sister walk alongside me.  It didn't take long, however, for Little Sister to decide that she was going to be in charge of pushing Lila around the DMV.



They were the hit of the DMV.  All the workers were laughing at them, and Little Sister was dancing along to the oldies music playing while Lila sucked her thumb and rubbed her belly button.  The best part of the whole situation was when Little Sister wheeled Lila into the middle of the room and then ran away, stranding her.  Unfortunately for Little Sister, we could not leave Lila at the DMV and had to take her home with us.

Chocolate Cupcake Brain Decay

I made chocolate cupcakes a few days ago, and I never got around to storing them in anything.  Instead of putting them in a Tupperware container, Johnny and I would just stick them back in the oven at night.  I'm sure you can see where this is going.



I not once, not twice, but thrice, have preheated the oven to very high temperatures, forgetting about the cupcakes, and not remembering them until I wonder why the kitchen smells like chocolate.  Seriously people, three days in a row.  And I still put them in the oven every night.  They aren't even cupcakes anymore...they're just formerly known as cupcakes.

Sharing Means Caring

The girls got in trouble yesterday because they wouldn't share any of their bristle blocks with Little Guy.

So then this happened.

 

"What's In Their Hair?"

I typically get up around 6:30 with the girls every morning while Johnny sleeps in with Little Guy because he does the night feeding.  I was up a lot with Little Guy last night, however, so Johnny got up with the girls while I slept a bit more.  Lila climbed into bed with me this morning after I woke up, and upon first glance, I noticed that her hair seemed really greasy.

 First idea:
"Johnny, did Lila have yogurt this morning and rub it in her hair?"  Nope.



I started looking all around the first floor for an open tube of ointment or some clue as to what Lila had put in her hair.

Second idea:
"Maybe Lila got a hold of Little Sister's brush and got some of the product in her hair." Nope.

It only took me a few minutes to find the measuring cup to the empty bottle of laundry detergent, which I had put in the recycling last night, lying in the middle of the kitchen floor.

Third idea:
"Ohhhhh." Yup.

I didn't panic until I went outside with the girls to water the plants, and in the sun, I noticed that Little Sister's hair had a slightly purple tint to it.  Apparently she had gotten into it too, and I flipped out, imagining chunks of afro falling off her scalp.

Needless to say, they both got into the bath immediately.  They were very pleased with the extra bubbles in the water.

The Nail Polish Removal Problem

In a desperate attempt to keep Lila entertained while I fed a screaming Little Guy, I allowed her to carry two bottles of nail polish down to the first floor from my room.  I'm sure you can surmise what happened.



It took about 25 seconds for her to drop and break an entire bottle of red, sparkly nail polish all over the tile in my front hallway.  The cute thing was that she immediately went and got the broom to help.



After about thirty minutes and an entire bottle of nail polish remover, I was able to get most of it up.  But if you stand at the right spot with the lights on, you can see a nice glittery sheen covering the middle four tiles.

The Usual Morning Line-up

Johnny came home from work yesterday saying that he had a song stuck in his head, and he wasn't sure what it was.  He hummed a bit of it for me, and I started laughing because it was "When Will My Life Begin?" from Tangled, the Disney movie ("Then, after lunch, it's puzzles and darts and baking, paper-mache, a bit of ballet, and chess...").

Johnny's life as a dad has officially begun.

Cinderelly Cinderelly

When I cleaned out my costume closet last weekend, there were a few things that I was excited to bring home for Lila to play with.  One of them was this Cinderella music box that I had when I was little.

I let her play with it for awhile.  She watched Cinderella turn around while "So This is Love" played, and then she would close the box, open the box, close the box, open the box and so on.  I let her play with it and did a little cleaning.

When I came back and looked at the music box, this is what I saw.



Poor Cinderelly.  Headless.  I looked all over the floor for her head and couldn't find it anywhere.  Lila acted like she didn't know what I was talking about when I asked her where it was.  All I know is I'm not going through any poop to find the rest of Cinderella.

And All That Jazz!

There comes a time in every young woman's life when she is forced to clean out her costume closet at her parents' house.

That day came for me today.  My mom wants to put some of my grandmother's things in the closet formerly known as my costume closet, so my things have to skeedaddle.  As I was clearing it out with my dad, I looked at him and said, "You know, at some point in my life, you spent money on all this stuff."  I have a feeling that Lila might be my payback...and I don't mean a financial payback.

 If you happen to need black character shoes, black tap shoes, black jazz shoes, tan character shoes, or tan character shoes with taps in a size 8, let me know.  I might know someone who has some.

I thought I might give you a general overview of the types of ensembles you could put together upon perusing my costume closet.

Now this is a nice combination of sparkly top hat and gold embellished vest.  The vest was actually a vest that my mother used to wear.  Very lovely.

There is certainly no lack of sparkle in this closet.  This jacket I wore as a gangster in one of my dance recitals.  I am not sure what type of gangster I was supposed to be.  The next year I was a gangster too, but I wore maroon velour pants and a maroon pleather jacket that year.  The graduation cap from 2005 is a nice finishing touch.

My mother wore this lovely little number as a bridesmaid in a wedding.  I thought about paring it with a beret, but I think it holds its own very nicely.

This dress I actually really do like and wore to many a 70s day at school.  I found it in my grandmother's basement after she passed away.  I also found a fabulous black Breakfast at Tiffany's style dress that my sister wore to one of her high school dances.  

This is really just the tip of the iceberg, folks.  I'm holding on to all of it because I loved playing dress up in my mom's old clothes, and I'm hoping that Lila will enjoy it with mine.  My circle of friends also has an exponentially larger amount of costume parties than anyone else that I know.  Just wait for Lila's upcoming first birthday.

Snow Ice Cream

Last night, we bought some ice cream at the store, and I made the mistake of putting it on the floor of the car next to the heat.  By the time we got home, the side of the ice cream carton was warm...never a good sign.  After a little deliberation, we decided that the snow in our backyard was probably colder than the freezer, so I stuck the ice cream in the backyard.



I tried looking up the temperature of snow vs. the temperature of the average freezer and failed.  Anyone know, was I correct?

Plumbing Problems

Johnny thought that I had officially gone off the Costco deep end when he saw the size of the bag of baking soda that I bought yesterday.  Yes I know that you only need one teaspoon for most recipes...but it was such a good deal!  Actually, I've been using it to attempt to unclog my drains.  People have been raving all over Pinterest at how baking soda and vinegar unclogs drains.  So I tried it out, and that combined with some plunging unclogged two of my more pesky drains.  The peskiest has yet to be beat.



After doing this little science experiment, I had to run hot water through all the drains.  And as I was running around my upstairs turning on all of the faucets, I couldn't help but think of a prank that was pulled on my roommates and me freshman year of college.

I answered our room phone one night around nine, you know when professionals usually call dorms, and on the other end was someone from the janitorial department of Wheaton College.  Apparently there was a large clog in one of the pipes, and they needed everyone on our floor to turn on all the sinks and showers at the same time.  I hung up the phone and was skeptical, but who was I to question the authorities?  We decided as a room that we had nothing to lose, so we turned on both sinks and the shower and flushed the toilet a few times for good measure.  We later found out that the call was from Matt Jantzen, who was not a plumbing professional but a fellow Crusader Thunder Thunderie student.  Who would have thought?

There was also a time that my apartment's toilet was clogged, so I called my boyfriend to bring a plunger so that we could unclog it.  After I called him, I looked at my roommate Elizabeth and said, "I bet you $5 that Johnny walks the whole 15 minutes here carrying the plunger in his hand."  She owed me $5.