Conversations with The Sistah, Part II

Today....

J-"So, how ya feelin? What's going on?"
S-"Well, I'm out Christmas shopping and trying to decide if Jack would like K'nex or Batman Legos better...."

Back up!!! Major Point of whatever here...you had surgery less than 3 days ago. It's September 25th, and you're out Christmas shopping????

I Loves it.

Classic Steph.

Conversation with The Sistah, part I

For all intents and purposes, S-Steph, J-Me, or Jen

Yesterday...

J-" So, how ya feeling....?"
S-"Good. Hey, what kind of doctor takes out an appendix?"
J- "uh..."
S- "You know, like, an OB/GYN takes out babies, what is the doctor who takes out an appendix called?"
J- "Let's just call him "SURGEON" ".

We got Us Some Apples

We went apple picking last weekend at the same place we go every year...Jen here is the link...
http://www.royaloakfarmorchard.com/index.htm

Fabulous. Beautiful. It felt weird picking apples in 85 degree weather, but that's better than having to bundle up the babes and worrying about them getting sick.

Nate chooses a prize specimen.

My crew. Gawrsh how I love them all.

Baby girl gets a bite. I love this pic.
Jungle boy.

"Here it is!" She did this every time she picked one!

This is one of my favorite things every year. I've already made fried apples, and am looking forward to apple pie! YUM! I already can't wait for next year!

Soapy Water, for Your Feet of Course

My sister is doing quite well. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers. And for all of you finding out what's going on via text, well, sorry for that (Aunt Eileen?). She WAS on drugs you know....

Here was our conversation tonight. Classic Steph, and truth be told, well, classic John. God I love this man and his legacy.

Me: "So, I heard you had to have mom help you in the shower yesterday?"
S: "Dude, I can't bend over. I couldn't even wash my feet."
Me: "Hah! Well, You know what John would say, riiiiiight?"
S: "I know. You're standing in Soapy water, you don't need to wash your feet. That's all I could think about when mom was helping me."
Me: "Yup. That's about right."

Reiteration: God I love this man and his legacy.....

Filing Fraudelant Claims, Subtitled: Adventures in A Drug Induced Happy Land

Aside from not being able to keep up with blogging due to my out of control schedule which is about to get worse when I add Nate's additional 60 minutes of speech per week (divided into 2x's/wk at 30 minutes each because I don't run around enough), I got this phone call as I was leaving book club Sunday...

"Hi Mom"-That's me answering.
"Hi. I just thought you'd like to know I'm on my way to the hospital to pick up Bryce and then over to Stephanie's to watch Brooke. She is in the ER and they think it's her appendix".
"WTF??" That's me again.

Long story short, my sister wound up having an appendectomy around 4 a.m. yesterday. This follows closely on the heels of delivering a damn near 9 lb. baby sans drugs. And for those of you in the area following the news, the stabbing victim in St. Charles wound up at the same hospital as Steph and she got sent to the back of the triage bus so that he could die on the operating table an hour before they took her in. They're lucky her appendix didn't EXPLODE (sounds more dramatic that 'rupture'). Then I'd have been pissed.

Yesterday morning I got a message around 10 from my sister. Almost verbatim it went like this:
"Dude....I am so awesome. Let me tell you how awesome I am. I am soooo awesome. Call me because I'm bored. Here's my number...."

She was like, 4 hours post op ranting about how awesome she is, so I tried calling her back, but it didn't work because she gave the direct line to the hopital's fraudulant claims hotline. The poor operator thought I was filing a complaint. No buddy, just trying to find my awesome sister. He asked me about 4 times how I even got that number. I kept explaining my awesome sister is in YOUR hospital and she gave it to me, at which point he said he was in a building completely unrelated and practically in another town from said hospital. He finally gave me the right number and I finally got a hold of my sister.

Me: "Sooo...how ya feelin'?"
Awesome Steph: "Dude, this totally sucks. I don't know what's worse, having a baby or this. Probably the baby though, because at least I got drugs for this."
Me: "Uh huh. Soooo, do you know you gave me the fraud hotline number instead of your room?"
AS: "Now way dude! I must've looked at the phone wrong. I AM on drugs you know".
Oh yes sistah...we know....

All jesting aside, she's home and sore and dealing pretty well with having to nurse a 2 week old. My mom took Brooke home with her last night, and everyone keeps saying she's lucky this happened AFTER the baby was born.

True...true..but that's not to say she can't enjoy those painkillers just a little bit for ALL that ails her...stiches here, there and well, you know ladies...everywhere) even though it was ONLY ONE...STILLL)....

Cooking 101

Jenny and I cooked again Sunday. it's been a while, but it needed to be done. 9 hours of preparing marinades, cooking things like meatloafs, salisubury patties, various chicken dishes and so on, and our freezers are FULL. All we have to do is decide on a daily basis what we want for dinner, thaw, and reheat. Sometimes you may add a veggie, sometimes, as in the case of our fabulous Cowboy stew, carrots, potatoes, etc. are already in there.

Some photos:

Partially messy kitchen.
AFTER the self cleaning oven caught our drippngs on fire and set off the smoke alarms. I'm not sure how to clean that up, because it's on there pretty thickly. Maybe a shop vac?

Like a volcanic eruption.

Mmmm....ashes.

Messy kitchen...some of our supplies.

More supplies.
Ummmm. We just refer to this as the "Pizza situation."
See, we wound up with 16 cups of this really yummy pizza sauce. And you're supposed to roll out some dough, and then jelly roll it after the sauce goes on. Problem is, it all oozes out. It tasted fine, but was a disaster.

So, we tried to make hot pockety type things. That didn't work either. The end result is SUPPOSED to be like those pinwheels you see on the bottom left, but it didn't really work. Not to mention, when it's that thin, the sauce dries out a bit. So, we made lemonade. We bagged the sauce and froze it, and used the remaing dough for Monkey Bread. John had never heard of monkey bread, or cinnamon toast for that matter. Jenny and I both thought that was weird. What kid has never eaten homemade cinnamon toast before?
Ugh...it reminds me of that gross thing from that Spaceballs movie, Pizza the Hut. NASTY!

Ironically, it did taste GOOD. Oh well. We know for next time. And we've already planned our next time for right before Thanksgiving, to get us through the holiday season.

I'd rather be baking cookies than having a Pizza Situation any day.

Yum!

The Good, the Bad, and The Just Plain Crazy

I've always been told to start off things on a positive note, and then digress, so here is a brief listing, based on what our lives have entailed lately at the Crazy Ranch that I actually have been granted 5 minutes to sit down and write about.

Cute:
After I put Maddie down for her nap, and started working on Nate's speech with him I heard her thumping around in Jack's room. Apparently she got out of her crib, so I put her back in bed. Then it was Nate's turn, and he found one of her dollies in his bed, all covered up. I checked Jack's room, same thing. She was putting her babies to bed.

Not so Cute:
Nate pinched a kid on the back of the head at school today. Why? "Charwie was in my way mom". Really? I'm going to try that next time I'm in line at the grocery store. Outta my way, or I'm gonna pinch.

Cute:
Nate coming in every morning to snuggle with me in bed.

Not so Cute:
The boys chasing each other around the house at 6:30 a.m. with their new Chuck E Cheese lazer pistols. Oh the things your tickets can get you!!! Thanks Chuck E!!

Cute:
Maddie sitting on the floor of her bedroom with a book open. Reading it.

Not So cute:
The boys and their tendency to accidentally rip pages out of books.

Cute:
Jack sounding everything out. Carrying around of notebook and trying really hard to write words. The ones he's not writing he's copying, from movie boxes, cereal boxes, etc.

Not so cute:
Nate tells people when they fart (ie; Maddie) that their penis is growing. Farts make penises grow. Who knew? And WHO told him that?

Times up. Time to do laundry, or pick up the doll house Maddie got for her birthday that Nate keeps ramming cars into.

Apparently he gets his driving skills from his mother.

Time Makes me Bolder, as My Children Get Older

I've been avoiding posting these, because, well, maybe Madders is the youngest in the fam., but Nate is totally my baby. He's just that kind of guy.

This is him on his first day of preschool last week.
"And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills...."
So happy. Recognize that shirt Cheryl?
"Oh. mirror in the sky, what is love? Can the child within my heart rise above?"
"Can I sail thru the changing ocean tides?"
"Can I handle the seasons of my life?"

"I've been afraid of changing because I've built my life around you. But time makes you bolder, children get older"

And sadly, I am getting older too.

I hope I've given them enough love to climb mountains, or do whatever they want to do.

Hidden Talents

Unbeknownst to me, I have acquired the skill of mastering a foreign language, or at the very least speaking in random tongues. This is not to be confused with the fact that I speak some Spanish, understand more than a little, and also have a preschooler's working vocabulary in sign language.

No, no. I've got some new skills. For example, when I say, "Boys, Stop fighting!" I think it comes out like this: "Boys...keep fighting because when someone gets hurt it will be fun to haul your sorry bums to the ER".

When I say, "It's time to get ready to leave" it comes out like "wouernehohglnrkeroj" gobbledy gook because apparently not one of my children understands a word that comes out of my mouth any longer.

Some other phrases that lately are translated to "I don't understand what the hell mom is saying so let's keep just doing whatever it is we're not supposed to" are as follows:

"I said no videogames right now."
"No, you can't go outside and play in the rain, stop asking"
"Jack, GET OUT OF THE STREET WITH THAT BIKE!!!"
"Stop hitting each other with shovels."
"Stop playing with your penis."
"No, you can not ask that old man why he has no teeth."
"Stop pushing each other off the top of the outside playhouse."
"Stop dumping water from the roof of the outside playhouse on your sisters head when all she wants to do is play house."
"Do NOT aggravate your sister."
"No, you can not put the worm in the bug box and keep it for a pet".
"Stop licking rocks"
"Stop eating the leaves from what is a potentially poisonous tree."
"No, you cannot sneak out of the house at 6:15 a.m. Stop ringing the doorbell".
"No, No No fruitsnacks for breakfast. That goes for marshmallows and tootsie rolls too."
"Just because you bathed yesterday doen't mean you're not dirty today".

And the list goes on and on and on.

Anyone else speaking a foreign language out there?

I HAVE A NEPHEW!!!

Bear with me on the lack of photos, because it's only 5:30 a.m. BUT I HAVE A NEWPHEW!!! It's about time too, I've been waiting my whole life for one.

Deets:
Bryce Matthew was born at 3:48 a.m, and due to the fact that she got to the hospital at 3 a.m. at a 7 and progressed rather quickly she birhted au natural. For some reason she's overly proud of this (okay wonderwoman), I'm more upset he has hair. Not as much as his sister, but still.

Weight: 8lbs 10 oz

Length 20 inches

Yay! I'm an Auntie for the Second time!!!

Love it!

Juh...Juh...Juh...J is For Jina (Rhymes with Dinah)

Since school began a week ago, Jack has been proving his phonetic prowess. If I say, "Jack, get everyone a fork for the dinner table" he'll say "Fuh, Fuh Fork. Starts with F". He does it with a lot of words. It's kind of fun to hear him understanding this fun beginning stage of reading.

Now, on to my story. It's a good one. Disclaimer: I sincerely believe in teaching kids the correct names of ALL parts of their anatomy. I think it's silly to have pet names for private parts, and am hoping to reduce snickers and discomfort come 5th grade and sex ed. That being said....

The Scene:
The kids getting into the bath. Actually, just the little ones, Jack showers himself.

John was getting Maddie in the tub, and she said she had to go "pee pee potty". She usually does before bathtime, and as soon as we get into the swing of things with school schedules, I'm going to start potty training.

Anywho....she peed. John was in the bathroom and said, "Okay, now, uh, wipe your uh, stuff." This from the same dad who about 32 thousand times a day is heard yelling loud and clear various catch phrases such as, "Stop playing with your penis!", or "Leave your Penis alone", or "Your going to hurt your penis", or "If you yank on your penis one more time...".

I informed him that Maddie calls "her stuff" her "Jiney". I'll let it slide, since she's still kinda learning to talk and vagina is hard for her. Jack heard me saying "Just tell her to wipe her jina for crying out loud!" and followed up with "Juh...Juh...Juh Jina! It starts with a J, just like my name..Juh Juh Juh Jack!"

Juh Juh Juh John gave me "the look" and said when a note comes home from the teacher I have to handle it.

I don't mind at all. Really, for crying out loud, it's just the human body. Sheesh!

First Day Jitters Exposed

I have been asked how Jack's first day at school went, and all I can say is I feel robbed. Totally and completely, because I didn't even get to acknowledge the sadness. I saw one of his classmates' parents when we did the first day drop off, and she had a fantastic case of the sniffles as she watched her daughter exit the bus. I was not so lucky.

We started out the day happy, excited, and wanting to leave by 10 a.m. for school that started at 12:45. It was raining early on, a pure reflection of my mood.

Here we are to begin our day.


Showing off our new Jedi backpack.

Throwing down some signs. He dressed himself in a nice polo and khaki shorts, just like daddy wears to work.
Don't the little ones look thrilled? Nate got dressed up because he thought he got to go to school too.

Uh oh. Here it is. Notice the face. This is in the hallway waiting to go in to his class. This is about 3 seconds before he lost it. HE WAS THE ONLY FREAKING KID WHO CRIED! It was really sad too because it was just a total release of pentup emotion. Thus, my feeling I was robbed, because I HAD to hold it together, or it would have been ten times worse. I hugged him for about a minute, and then sent him on his merry way with the aide who had to literally pry him off of me. It was horrible.

Here's the progression: Moments before sitting and getting into the above fiercely trying to hold in emotion pose.

Look! Moments before getting into the builiding. Running. Happy.

Moments before running into the building...smiling outside by the sign. Sigh...


The conclusion to the story is a good one though. He left happy, and went eagerly into school the following day, so he's over his jitters. I was also lucky enough to be able to check on him during the first day because Nate had a speech eval ten minutes after school started and I had to walk right past the kindergarten rooms. Jack was fine.

Today is day three for Jack, meet the teacher for Nate. Nate cried when I left him at Sunday School yesterday. Let's keep our fingers crossed for him this week, shall we?