Daycare Halloween Parade

We got to do a little dry run of Halloween at daycare today.... Maggie had a blast:


I made her that snail costume and just PRAYED she wouldn't start walking before Halloween:

Can you stand the knitted eyeballs? They crack me up. (Hat pattern here and eyeballs here)

Cameron, on the other hand, was not very happy with the whole costume thing.

I'm really glad I took a friends advice when I was about to embark upon making a complicated costume for him. She said - 'Just take my son's from last year - it will kill you when he won't put on the hat - those take the longest to make and kids hate them'. In the above picture, Cam is FREAKING out because I'm trying to put the hat on.

The school was doing a little parade around the outside of the building, so I convinced him to put the hat on the way I convince him to put all hats on. I told him his ears would fall off if he didn't.

Then he got into it. "Grrrr Mommy!"

And then all smiles as he had fun walking around with all his friends:
Well, I think Sunday is going to be hilarious.

Spirograph

So. I kind of hate dealing with birthday presents. Mostly because I never have any idea as to what to get. Next week is our niece's 7 birthday - she is the daughter of the brother that isn't speaking to us. That makes it even harder. I want her to know that we still think of her, but also am totally NOT going to call up and ask what they think she wants as a present.

On a completely unrelated note, I got my daily sale email from Zulily, (which has some really great deals on fancy kid stuff) and there was some really neat winter outerwear with spriograph designs on it!

Light bulb!

I can totally remember the HOURS I would spend playing with my spirograph. I freaking loved that thing. Turns out they don't really make it anymore, but there are a few options available. I ended up picking this one - because it was the one with least sucky reviews. Then, I called my mom to see if she still have my original spirograph kit, and she did! Woot! I can't wait to play with it again!

Soup crazed and baby torture

I like soup. A lot. Thanks to NCLW, I found the blog A Half Baked Life - and became obsessed with her soup recipes! I made 4 batches of soup on Sunday afternoon! Now I have bags and bags of soup frozen for lunches throughout the winter! Hurrah.

Last night, Aaron put Cameron to bed. He was playing with a pinwheel upstairs (I forgot how much fun those are). This morning, Maggie and I got up first, I got her all ready and then we went and got Cam. Sometimes, Cam gets VERY upset with Maggie in his room, yelling MINE MINE as she crawls around doing her thing while I dress him. So, this morning he was FLIPPING out and pointing at his train. I was turned it on, because he does love the train... but he kept yelling MINE and pointing at the damn train. I told him if he didn't stop, I was going to turn off the train. He stopped, but his little chin was quivering and watching the train the whole time I was dressing him. I finally put him down, turn around, and notice that Aaron has put the pinwheel IN the train. Whoops.

Poor Cameron. I apologized, handed him the pinwheel. He hugged it, whispered 'mine', and ran down the hallway. Sigh.

Another easy yummy recipe and a thanks

Last night, I made Swiss Chicken. Damn that really is a good, easy dinner. I saw my mom this weekend, and she made this apple dessert that was something I knew that Aaron would love. She gave me the recipe, I made it last night, it worked great with the chicken because I was able to cook them in the same oven. It was easy and tasty.

Swedish Apple Pie

1 egg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup flour
1 cup apples (I peeled and cut them into chunks)
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup chopped nuts (I used walnuts)
1/4 tsp salt

Beat egg until lemon colored and forms a ribbon. (I didn't know what the hell that meant so I just beat the crap out of it)
Blend in remaining ingredients
Spoon into a greased (I used pam) 9 inch pie pan
Bake at 350 for 30 minutes

*ETA - This looks really weird and lumpy before you bake it. For me, it barely covered the bottom of the pan. It spreads out during baking.

I'm going to do the tattoo on inside of my right ankle! Now to decide exactly what it's going to look like. Thanks for all your feedback - I'm definitely going to get it a little bigger (don't want it to turn into a blob). And also thanks for agreeing with me that it's a good idea.

Let's talk tattoos

Somebody mentioned a while back that they got their babies footprints as a tattoo. I thought that was such a cool idea that I told Aaron - who LOVED it. Nora's footprint is one of the few things we have of her. We only have a handful of pictures, the outfit she came home in - it just seems right. He is planning on getting all three babies footprints (taken from when they were born) tattooed life sized up the back of his calf (like they are walking up his leg). He's going to do order of birth, so Cam's right foot, Nora's left, and then Maggie's right. He is still deciding if he'll put names under each footprint or in it or whatever.

I want to get the same thing, yet smaller - and not on my calf. Now - this is where I need help. Opinions? Remember that I'm not small - and there are rather unfortunate stretch marks on my belly from bearing 3 children in 2 years. I was thinking right over my heart.... but then I'm not sure. I already have one tattoo on my hip. I'm a bit hesitant on putting it somewhere it'll be seen every day - but I'm considering it.

Help?

ETA: For tattoo size - I'm thinking SMALL like smaller than a quarter, same idea as Aaron's (each child's footprint like they are walking). Now I'm leaning towards wrist or ankle.....

Housekeeping Woes

So. We aren't the best housekeepers here at Casa de Childbearinghips. The house is clean(ish) but we have cleaning ladies. Having a crawling child has forced me (yet again) to do more floor cleaning than I have in the past, but we are pretty lax about things around here. We don't sort laundry by colors/whites, after washing them we will keep then in the baskets for a long while before putting them away, I don't iron clothes or cloth napkins (or sheets! I didn't even know people DID that until my Aunt mentioned that she did. I was shocked.). I will often leave the dishes for the following morning, I use Dream Dinners for about 75% of our meals, and we often eat dinner on the couch instead of in the dining room. I have random stacks of mail around the house. I often depend on the dogs for cleaning up after baby dinner time. I do admit to learning a lot about stain removal since the children have arrived, though.

It's not awful - I'm certainly not embarrassed to have people drop in without calling first.... but I do make a big effort to clean when people like my mother or Aaron's grandmother visits. It's not a showcase house by any stretch of the imagination.

This system has worked fine for us - I tidy up/put away things every other week before the cleaning ladies come, and we do laundry when we feel like it.

We have had 3 cleaning crisis in the last week and they are somewhat related.

Crisis 1: When Abby went to the vet a long while back, they suggested that we put the dogs on fish oil. A few squirts in their food. Seemed like a good idea, but it made both dogs throw up everywhere so we stopped (boxers have weird stomach issues). Someone left the bottle on the downstairs changing area. It got knocked over onto the changing table counter (unfinished wood). The whole bathroom smelled like fish oil. I threw away the oil, and the smell lessened. A week passes, the smell is still there. I pick up the changing pad, and there is fish oil soaked into the changing pad. I throw it out and put the cover upstairs to wash. I used all the cleaners I have int he house (clorox green surface cleaner and some other lame green cleaner). It's been another week, and the awful fish oil smell is still in the bathroom. Jen? Any ideas?

You may ask 'Unfinished Wood? For a changing table?' and to that I answer - it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Crisis 2. I went away this weekend with a girlfriend, and Aaron, thinking he was being very helpful, did a bunch of laundry. Before I left, I had done a load of hand wash only hand knit sweaters. I didn't take them out of the washer. They were little baby sweaters, he didn't even notice them, threw in jeans and towels and now they are felted into little tiny sweaters. Little tiny sweaters that took me many many MANY hours to knit. I still get sad thinking of it. I cried when I saw them.

Crisis 3. The final bit of laundry that Aaron did involved the fish oil changing pad cover. I assume he started this load on Sunday. I opened up the washer this morning (minimum of three days marinating in the washer) and was assaulted by fish oil smell. It was disgusting. I threw the stuff in the dryer (bad move - but I did add extra dyer sheets? Hoping that would help!?) and then was greeted at the end of the cycle with HOT fish oil smell. I did a load of laundry after that, so the good news is that the smell isn't in the washer/dryer - any clothes NOT in that load smell ok - but it seems that I have a whole load of laundry that now smells like fish oil. I just did another load with presoak/heavy duty/extra rinse.... but still smell fish oil. Again, Jen? Ideas?

So - I'm wishing a little bit that I was a Susie Homemaker and maybe wouldn't have had these things occur to begin with (you know, since I wouldn't have had open containers of fish oil hanging around and all laundry would be sorted and not left in the washing machine). But I'm not. Wah.

My kids are awesome

What the hell, let's bullet point it:

• First point - I forget to include the SWISS cheese as an ingredient in the SWISS Chicken. I fixed the recipe
• Both kids got flu shots on Saturday morning - not a tear. Not one. Cam cried when we entered the exam room, but stopped crying after the gift of a sticker, and never cried again.
• Then, we got home, Maggie took a two hour nap, and Cam helped us do fall cleanup outside. Nothing is cuter than watching Cam rake. And I got to trim all the crap in the front gardens to a more manageable level.
• Maggie woke up just in time for me to take her with me to my Block of the Month class - she had to see her adoring fans, of course.
• When I got home, Cam was up from HIS nap (and Maggie went down for her second) and helped us wash my car. Also crazy cute.
• Sunday we had Aaron's company picnic at Kimball's - Cam did mini-golf. Here is a picture of that:


He was more into holding the ball and the club then using it - but he had a blast.

Then on Monday (Aaron went to spend a couple days with friends,so I was on my own), we went to Nini Bambini for an AWESOME open house! Music, crafts, and new shoes for Cam (Creature Shoes from EMU) :

• Cam was kind of nervous with all the people, but Maggie was all over the place - and had a blast.

Phew! That is the weekend in a nutshell! Lots of fun, and one tired Mama!

Super easy tasty chicken

Tonight I made something yummy and super easy - figured I should share with you all (and get that sad post off the top...)

Swiss Baked Chicken
3 chicken breasts
3 slices swiss cheese
1/2 cup mushroom soup
1/2 cup white cooking wine
1 cup seasoned croutons
2 Tbsp olive oil

Spray baking pan with non-stick spray
place chicken breasts in pan
Top each chicken breast with a slice of cheese
Mix soup and wine, pour over chicken
Put croutons on top of chicken
Drizzle olive oil over croutons

Bake at 350 covered for 45 minutes, uncovered for another 20

Yum! I served over rice with broccoli!

Faking it until I make it....

That is my usual theory. If things are bad, you just pretend that they are AWESOME, and eventually they are. So. Nora died. I wasn't really able to fake it so I looked like things are awesome, but at least passable for a long time. I then was able to feel happy, but with this nagging undercurrent of sad. Of loss. Of missing something.

I've been reliving that night over and over when I go to bed this past week - and when I saw my therapist yesterday, we talked about why that is. I guess I figured that eventually, I would be 'ok' with Nora's death. And I try. I tell myself that it was something we couldn't have prevented, and that Nora lives on in my heart.... but seriously, BLAH BLAH BLAH. I came to the realization that the undercurrent of sadness may NOT go away. It may lessen over time, but losing a baby isn't something that you just 'get over' or certainly forget about. That somehow kind of made the hurt lose it's edge. Maybe because I was hoping it would just go away. But now that I realize it's with me for the long haul, I'll just let it live there in my heart and let it remind me of that sweet baby I cuddled with for 5 days.

Maggie's first ear infection

: (

Poor little girl woke up from her nap at daycare yesterday and it took them a good 45 minutes to calm her down. No fever, thank god - but just a little ear infection that we hopefully caught nice and early. Doesn't surprise me, as she's had a cold for over 3 weeks now! And, I have to say, catching an ear infection in the early stages is a nice change from Cameron, whose ears could be falling off but he'd never let us know. Anyway, it was good to see the doc, as we just had that whole 'Maggie turned blue when crying' episode last week and she was happy to see us. She said that although babies turn blue from crying - she maybe gets a call from a parent once every month or so - so not SUPER common. She was so sorry it happened to us, and assured us that she was fine. And was happy to hear that it hasn't happened again. So little Maggie is on antibiotics and is in that "I'm sick and need to be cuddled' phase of illness which I love. She was cuddled up with me for 45 minutes last night... we were both holding each other close (she gives little hugs now, too sweet). I of course want her to feel better... but don't mind that she needs me a bit!

This was such a crazy weekend... Saturday we had a church fair with a bounce house that had a SLIDE. Cameron was in it for almost an hour. The next day, we had Aaron's family over for a visit (a surprise visit) which was nice. This is Aaron's brother - he has a daughter Cameron's age and they had a blast playing. It was so nice to have them make the trip, somehow we are always going there. And after that, I hosted a block party in our front yard! It was a complete success! All the kids were playing in our driveway and our backyard - just having a blast. Cameron was running with the pack... and all the kids were very sweet with him. Maggie got passed around to all the mom's who miss little babies... and we all got to know each other a little better. I'll definitely do that again soon.

This upcoming weekend will be a much more low key - thank god! This past weekend was fun, but I felt like I needed Monday at work to recover!