Guilt Trip Friday

Anna has had a callous-thing on her thumb for awhile now. I asked the pediatrician about it at her 15 month appointment and she said that it was either a blister from thumb sucking or that it's a wart--either way, she wasn't concerned. Over the weekend, I noticed a big, juicy white head had formed on the callous. A day or so later, it began to look very irritated and infected. I took her in for an appointment yesterday morning at 8:45am with her pediatrician. Thinking that we'd be heading over there, getting an Rx for antibiotics and then scooting right back home--probably even in time for our usual trip to the park at about 9:30am--I just grabbed her water cup, threw it in my purse and off we went to the pediatrician's office. Well, as I suspected, we ended up with a couple of Rx's for antibiotics, but the doctor also wanted a dermatologist to have a look-see as well and as soon as possible. She called around and got us an immediate appointment with a dermatologist across town. So, we ran to the car and off we went. Unfortunately, this wasn't an actual appointment, but more of a, "we'll 'work you in'" type-of-thing, which we didn't realize until we had gotten there. We were shuffled from waiting room (not kid-friendly waiting rooms, mind you. Newsweek magazines and CNN on the tv does not a happy child make) to non-kid-proofed exam rooms (Um, biohazard trashcans, razor blades and syringes all within toddler reach. Not fun...not fun for Mama, at least.) for the next 2.5 hours (yes, 2.5 hours).

Poor Anna was such a trooper. She didn't truly melt down until about the last 30 min of waiting. By then, I'd already let her take everything out of my purse--including all of the contents of my wallet--and pilfer through it; play with my almost-dead cell phone--she downloaded all sorts of applications on it and possibly called an old boyfriend (kidding); and we had sung every song that we know at least 5 times. She was exhausted, crying and asking for milk and I felt like the dumbest parent alive for not having brought any other provisions at all.

After finally seeing the dermatologist, who only confirmed that it was probably a blister and that what our pediatrician prescribed was just the ticket (nice, goodbye 2.5 hours of my life), we bolted from the office and found a food court in the building that sold milk. My child normally only drinks her milk heated and from a bottle, but yesterday, she was so desperate, she drank (and spilled much of it) directly from the ice cold Borden's bottle.

As a result of our day from hell yesterday, I've been sort of spoiling my girl today. We've set up camp on our ottoman in the family room, with lots of comfy, squishy pillows and she's been watching tv and eating junk food. All of this because I panicked about her thumb and had images of gangrene and amputation in my head. Like Kevin said, "Yeah, it would suck if her turkey in Kindergarten was head-less"--referring to the hand-print turkey that you make in elementary school.

Home Improvements

(and other reasons why I'm so tired after a weekend away from my child)

I worked my butt off this weekend. Kevin took the petite bebe with him to New Braunfels and I stayed home and tackled our house with a gusto that I haven't experienced since I was pregnant and about to give birth (and no, I'm not pregnant again, if that's what you're thinking).

I spent all day Saturday cleaning out closets and organizing and then Sunday was spent painting and painting some more. I'm very proud of all of my hard work and still sort of amazed that I was able to keep the momentum going all weekend, when it would've been really easy to park it on the sofa and watch the "Keeping up with the Kardashians" marathon on E!.

A couple of pictures of my handiwork:

This is our hall closet/pantry. We call it "Mtv 'Cribs'" when I get it all organized like this (if you've ever seen that show, you know that when the celebs show off the inside of their refrigerators, the food and drinks are always lined up like this). On the top shelf, you'll see my beloved Izzy water. Yum. 70% juice, 30% sparkling water. Costco had an awesome coupon so I stocked up--even enlisting the help of friends and their Costco coupons to help make my compulsion a reality.

And, another picture of our guest bath. You can't really see anything different from the last picture that I posted, but the cabinet doors are back on and it's back in commission.

This is our breakfast room that I painted this weekend. It used to be all beige, but I decided to highlight the paneling ("wainscoting-lite") and used my beloved Lettuce Alone paint. It looks very bright, cheery and clean now.

"I'm what you might call a 'child prodigy'"*

On the eve of Anna's 16 month birthday (last night), we made a list of all of the words that Anna can say. This list is independent of words that she understands (but doesn't say) and words that she still signs only. The grand total was....







68

Just to clarify, this list also includes animal sounds that she knows (which probably don't technically count as words) and people's names that she says. But still...we're pretty impressed. This is what Babycenter says about a 16 month old's language development: "Your 16-month-old may be able to say as many as seven words — or even more — clearly". Maybe "clearly" is the stipulation here because, while Anna does say 68 words, many to most of them are only comprehended by Kevin and myself. For instance, we know that waffles and water both sound like "Wa Wa"...it just depends on the time of day that she says "Wa Wa" as to which meaning we assign and of course, there's the infamous, "Huzzah!" which we all know by now means, "Psyche!".

Anyway, we're proud of her.

She has also learned to dance and loves to stop what she's doing, when she hears music and start doing her deep-knee bend-style dancing. Here's a picture of her from the weekend. She was playing with her sand table and suddenly decided to break into a dance sequence.

*Hi Hattie! Guess your dream was a premonition after all!

Our Weekend: In Pictures

So that I could work on re-doing our guest bathroom, Kevin took Anna to the zoo on Saturday.

Then, on Sunday, while I was still stripping wallpaper, he put together her new sand/water table.

After hours of playing with the new toy, a nap in the grass was in order.

And finally...the finished (almost) product of my hard weekend's work. The cabinets still need to be put back on, but it looks so much better (please disregard Molly's tail in the picture. Girlfriend loves to sneak into pictures). You might've had to have seen "Steel Magnolias: The Bathroom" before to appreciate, but trust me, this is so much more crisp and clean. I no longer fear what lurks in this bathroom.

Steel Magnolias

I got a wild hair yesterday and decided that I was ready to tackle the oh-so-"South'en" wallpaper in our guest bathroom. It never bothered me too badly. I mean, I like magnolias. They're a beautiful flower. And the colors in the wallpaper weren't bad--khaki, white, green--it could've been much, much worse. Considering that we bought this house when I was in my second trimester, the guest bathroom just wasn't a priority in my nesting, so now that the dust has begun to settle a little around here, I was ready to attack.

I used the entire 4 hours that Anna's babysitter was here yesterday to pick at the wallpaper. It was like pealing a sunburn--once you start, you can't stop. For every 15 dime-sized pieces that I pulled off, there was one or two big, foot long pieces that kept me going. A friend of mine (Hi A!) told me that it would be either "very therapeutic or extremely frustrating". I'm going to say that it was very therapeutically frustrating.

I have lofty plans for this bathroom. My vision is cool, clean and crisp, with almost a beach-y feel. I've also decided to never, ever install wallpaper in any house, unless I plan to never be the poor schmo to have to remove it. Wallpaper is the handy work of the devil.

Discovery Green

We have a new park in downtown Houston called Discovery Green. We went to check it out this weekend. It's very cool--they have lots of do and fun events daily (there was Yoga in the Park while we were there as well as some Art Cars on display, in celebration of the Art Car Parade this weekend). Anna enjoyed the playground but not so much the water feature.

Strange, ladder-slide. Interesting concept, but most of the kids there didn't quite understand it (nor did some of the parents)

The water feature was fine when there wasn't any water spraying...

But Anna kept a safe distance once the water started (in her defense, it was strong blasts of water)

Anna makes a snarky face while enjoying the butterfly garden. Shortly after this picture was taken, Anna hit paydirt when we came upon a group of friendly grandmothers, also enjoying the butterfly garden. She turned on her own special brand of charm and was quite the social butterfly of the garden.

Funny thing is...

Funny things happen everyday. Maybe it's a matter of recognizing the humor in everyday life. Maybe it's a coping strategy for a stay-at-home-mom. Here's a re-cap of some recent, funny things that have happened in my life.

Yesterday, I went to a Heights Kids mom's house to pick up some toys that I bought from her, via our online "marketplace" (to which I have a bit of an addiction). She told me to come by at 10am, as they'd just be getting home from swim lessons at that time. The mom (whom I'd never met) opened their door, dressed still in her swim suit with a towel wrapped around her. "Oh hi! We just walked in the door from swim lessons!" she said. Then she called to her son, who was in the back of the house somewhere, "Go and get the toys that we're getting rid of, please". A few seconds later, a buck-naked 2-ish year old boy comes running into the living room with toys in hand, and his tally-wacker flying all over the place. My reaction was <internally> "Wow, I didn't know that little boys' bits and pieces could be that big...and that dangly" and <externally> "Wow! Looks like you just got done swimming!".

The thing that I loved most about this moment was that the mom didn't admonish or otherwise even mention the fact that her son was buck-ass-naked. I really, really, really want to be the mom that lets her kids feel comfortable and doesn't call them out for doing things that adults don't see as "socially appropriate". He's just a kid. And, I suppose that she wouldn't have let him run naked into the living room if an encyclopedia salesman (yeah, I'm so sure that there's still such an occupation) stopped by. She knew that I was a mom too and was used to seeing small, naked little humans.

This next vignette wasn't so funny at the time, but it's funny now:

Kevin took Monday off from work. He used this day to give his car a much-needed day of beauty. He made an appointment to take the car in, first thing in the morning, to the service station to get some work done. As soon as I got Anna out of bed, we were going to follow him in the Jeep and pick him up from the service station. Keep in mind: Monday morning, about 8am, a terrible storm blew through here. Heavy winds, rain, tornado warnings, etc. Ok, so as I was getting Anna out of bed, Kevin went ahead and left--the plan being, Anna and I would be shortly behind him. I packed up a bottle of milk for the road and was looking for my keys. I always, always, always hang them (when not in use) on a little key/letter holder in our kitchen. They weren't there. You should also know that my keychain also houses a wallet, where I keep my driver's license, credit cards, etc. I couldn't find my keys anywhere. I wondered if maybe Kevin had somehow accidentally grabbed them on his way out and took them with him. So, that's ok, I thought, I'll just grab the extra set of car keys that we keep on the key/letter holder. Nope. They weren't there either. In a panic, I started tearing the house apart, looking for either set of keys. I decided that I'd better call Kevin on his cell phone, to let him know that I was delayed at home, looking for the keys. I called his phone--it rang and rang and then went to voicemail (grumble, grumble). I'm leaving a message for him, while storming through the house, looking for the keys. I walk into our bathroom, while explaining the situation to his voicemail, only to see his cell phone, sitting right there on the bathroom counter (New Call, it said). My message sounded something like this: "I can't find either set of keys, so I'm not sure what to do....oh, crap*, your cell phone is right here, so you're not even going to get this damn* message, are you?".

My next course of action was to call the service station and tell them to have Kevin call home when he got there. Luckily, right after I called them, Kevin came back, barrelling down the driveway in the blinding rain. Turns out? Both sets of keys were on the BACK OF HIS CAR, as he sped down Ella Blvd, in the pouring rain, toward the service station. Luckily, someone pulled up next to him at a light and told him that he had something on the back of his car. How the keys didn't fly off the back of the car and into oblivion, I'll never know.

Apparently, the night before, Kevin had grabbed both sets of keys (my set and then the extra set, by mistake) as he went to the garage to do something in my car...in case the car was locked, he'd taken the keys with him. Upon learning that my car wasn't, in fact, locked, he'd set the keys on the trunk of his car, while he did whatever it was he went to do to my car. They stayed there all night and I guess he didn't see them there then next morning, before getting into his car to take it in. In the course of all of this madness, we both managed to get soaked the bone, from all of the back and forth, in the rain.

Also funny: Messy eaters

Yogurt

Yogurt Pedicure
(fancy spa treatment, apparently)

Frozen Blueberries. Very messy.
Also, doesn't come out of clothing.
New Rule: No eating frozen blueberries unless you're naked and/or in the bathtub

Funny things happen all the time, you just have to choose to see the humor.


*I may or may not have used those exact, PG-13 expletives

What bird?

We have an interesting bird in our little neighborhood. He or she returns every year about this time. It is usually in the ditches in front of our house or sometimes in the big ditch at the back of the neighborhood. I was curious to know what kind of bird it is and had scoured my handy, dandy bird watching book, trying to identify it, with no luck.

I found www.whatbird.com and it's so easy to use and informative. According to What Bird, this is what we have: Tricolor Heron

Cat Freaks

Do not (I repeat!)--Do not even begin to watch this video unless you're a bonafide cat freak. It's long, probably boring to a lot of people and you really have to know and love cats to appreciate it. I, personally, think it's one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time.

In bloom!

We go through about 30lbs of bird seed every 2 weeks around here. This is our first sunflower--which means that the birds and squirrels are eating about 4,566,321 sunflower seeds every week. No wonder we have morbidly obese wildlife in our yard.

Gardenias in full-bloom. Our backyard smells like heaven.

Cucumbers in our new veggie garden (grow, baby, grow!)

Kevin has taught Anna how to pull weeds. She's very good at pulling only the clover.

*By the way: I haven't forgotten about parts 3 & 4 of my Things Worth Doing series. I think that I blew my wad on the first two parts and lost some inspiration, but I'll finish it--don't worry