Naps are Magical

Nap time is my favorite time of day.  It's absolutely magical.  The quiet silence that follows the kids going down is such a wonderful, peaceful noise.  And, the best part?  I nap too.  I love naps.  I have loved naps since college.

I napped in my dorm in college.  I napped in my car when I waited tables after college.  I napped in the library when I was graduate school.  I napped on Sundays when I was pastor.  I napped when my kids napped ever since they were born.

I love the reset in the middle of the day.  I love the waking up with my mind empty.  I love waking up warm and fuzzy.

I have made such a habit of naps, that I almost need them.  All my close friends and family know about my nap habits.  But, I kind of do need naps.  My doctor says I have insomnia.  Thanks, doc.  I don't really like to admit it.  With my insomnia, I don't stay up all hours of the night watching old reruns or cleaning the house.  I just lay in bed a couple hours before I fall asleep.  It sucks.  It's exhausting.  My sweet doctor offered my a prescription for sleeping pills, but then I wouldn't be able to get up with my kids in the middle of the night.  So, instead, I nap.

Just after lunch is nap time in my house.  My four year old son, is starting to outgrow naps.  Some days he still naps over an hour.  Some days, not at all.  I know my napping days are numbered.  For this reason, I'm really thankful that my husband lets me have a nice, long nap on the weekends.

For Christmas, my sweet husband had the kids give me this shirt that reads: I like to party, and by party I mean take naps.  The is my new favorite shirt.  It totally fits my personality, and my love of naps.

A couple of weeks ago, I started watching a few extra children.  The new girl, she doesn't really nap.  By doesn't really, I mean that she screams during nap time until I go get her.  I was hoping this would only take a week for her to get comfortable.  Nope.  She still screams until I get her, and then, she promptly falls asleep on my chest.

This past week, not only do I long for my own nap, but I long for silence.  My kids napped.  The other kids napped, and if they didn't, they still laid quietly for at least 30 minutes.  I went from a peaceful nap time to just the opposite.

Now, I stare zombie-like as the waking kids watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse before they fully wake up from their own afternoon slumber.

Such is life, but, I love it.  I'm thankful to be home with my kids, and nap when my husband is home.

Winter Cold #765

Lots of mommy blogs are talking about their families' colds and flus.  I thought I'd join in the fun.

I have always gotten every cold that goes around.  Not only do I get every cold, but I have a penchant for getting croup.  This is the barky cough that sounds like an angry seal is in my house.  Sometimes, I get the cough AND laryngitis.  That's fun.  My son also gets croup often.  

Having kids, this means someone in our house is sick almost every week.  Last week's cold wasn't too bad (despite me having laryngitis).  This week's cold, however, is a little ridiculous.  This week, I feel a little run down and I have a stuffy nose.  That's fine with me.  But, these kids are pitiful.

My son doesn't have a bad cough, but he is stuffy, and blowing his nose every  five minutes.  Sometimes, he uses his sleeve, but, for the most part, he blows his nose.  My son is four, and he doesn't really know how to use a tissue.  This means that my bill for tissues is going up this week.   He ends up grabbing two or three tissues, wipes his nose, and tosses them in the trash.  This is great, but he doesn't blow his nose.  Thus, he doesn't actually solve the problem.  My son goes through a box of tissues in roughly five minutes.

My daughter also has the cold.  She looks like a zombie.  She is pale, and her eyes are rimmed red.  Since she is just a toddler, she also looks like a zombie when she walks.  Unlike her brother, she is too young to use tissues.  Instead, her face has the constant glisten from a drippy nose.  And, when I hear her sneeze, I go straight to the tissue box before I check on her because it will be disgusting.  She looks up at me with these sad eyes, and wonders why her face just exploded on her.

This cold, my daughter has a touch of croup.  The cough keeps her and me up all night.  She was even wheezing the other night.  I had to take her in the bathroom, turn the shower on hot, and let it steam up to get her breathing right again.  It's so sad.  She's so pitiful and helpless.

I just hope the colds end quickly, and we don't have to make any midnight runs to the emergency rooms.

Pancake Dinner Disaster

I can cook, but I am not a great pancake cook.  My husband is the pancake cook of the house. The only reason I was cooking pancakes tonight was because Jeff was working late, and the bacon was going to go bad.

Bacon, that I can cook. I am pretty sure I cook a perfect plate of bacon every time. 

See that delicious plate of bacon pictured? I'm pretty sure that's the only thing that went right about this dinner. And, even then, it was a bit burned, which I haven't done in ages.

So, after a long day of being home with the kids, and watching an extra child, I decided to cook.  Since I'm gluten and dairy free, and my family is not, I had to make two batches of pancakes.  That means double the time and double the dishes in the end.  Ugh.

I made the pancake batters while the bacon was cooking.  My batter was a little thick, so I added a little extra water to thin it out.  I made everyone else's pancake batter in a separate bowl.  My daughter has an egg allergy, so I tried out my new box of Egg-Replacer for the pancakes.  I stirred the batter and it was very springy, more like biscuits.  So, I added more water.

After the bacon was cooked to perfection, I started making the kids' pancakes.  I poured one ladle of batter on the griddle.  It was way too thick.  Now, I'm frustrated.  I added more water to the batter.

About this time, my son had an accident.  Really?  Were you just playing too hard?  I got him some new pants, and he decided that he would rather put back on his pee pants.  Nice. All I could think of was that scene from the movie Talladega Nights where the kid made his teacher mad by peeing in his pants.  At the dinner table he recounted the story to his parents and proclaimed, "And I'm still wearing my pee pants right now."  My son, however, wised up and changed into the dry pants within five minutes.  Great, because I was too busy trying to man the extra thick pancakes I was whipping up.

Every time my husband and I cook pancakes we always try to make a Mickey Mouse pancake for our son.  He loves it.  Today, his pancake looked nothing like Mickey, and I had to reattach his ears on the plate.

My son didn't even notice.  It might be because his is 4 and was hungry, or it might be because the pancakes looked nothing like Mickey Mouse this time.

I fed the kids, and then made my pancakes.  I sit at the table with my gross, gluten free pancakes (they weren't that bad, but I didn't like the flavor of the flours in the brand I used this time).  We ate together.  My son ate about 5 pancakes.  I look over, and my daughter hasn't eaten any.  She's feeding hers to the dog.  Really?   I'm so glad I made them egg-free so that she could eat them.  

A little while later, my husband gets home and uses the rest of the batter to make his pancakes.  They were still a little thick, so he waters them down a little more.  When he cooks them, they look a little more like crepes than my super thick things that I made.  He takes a couple bites, looks at me, and says, "Alisha..."

"Are they horrible?  What did I do wrong?" I said.  I don't know how they taste; mine were the gluten free ones.  Jeff told me that they tasted like biscuits.  I told him that would make sense when I was stirring the batter because it stirred like biscuits.  I grabbed the Bisquick mix from the pantry and showed him exactly what I had done.  We then looked at the adjacent recipe for biscuits.  It was nearly the same, except it didn't have egg.  At this point, I'm beginning to realize that the Egg-Replacer I used, so that my daughter could have egg-free pancakes, didn't really work.  Not quite sure how all that food chemistry works, but real eggs are key ingredients for Bisquick pancakes, otherwise you have biscuits.  

At least, by this time, the kids were in bed and I could relax little, and let my frustration over a ruined pancake dinner (that was supposed to be easy) go.  

The Annoying Fours

Every age has it's phase.  It's part of life, and part of growing up.  The first year is considered the hardest, and, I think, that's due to all the transitions to a new baby, new routines, and lack of sleep.  But, every year brings it own set of unique phases.

The first year the baby does a lot of crying.  Baby takes so much of your time because he wants to be changed, cuddled, eat, and sleep.  There's the night feedings that cause you to lose sleep at night and drag through the days.  It also makes things so much more difficult if, as a mom, you suffer from postpartum depression.  And, colicky babies bring another unique set of challenges.  It seems like the entire first year you take care of baby because he can't take care of himself.  But, it's totally worth it because they are just so sweet, cuddly, they smell good, and give you sweet smiles.  They also spend most of the year immobile, so they don't get into too much trouble.

Then, we have the second year.  This is my favorite age, and what my daughter is right now.  They learn to walk. They are exploring everything.  Everything is new and exciting.  There isn't as much crying, and it's so easy to get this age to smile.  H is a joy right now.  I love just watching her explore new things.  She has started throwing tantrums, which is fun.  She is so sweet, and sensitive too.  I guess girls are a little more sensitive than boys.  I say, "no no" and she puts her head down, and doesn't look at you, or dissolves into tears.

Next, the age between 2-3 is generally classified as the terrible twos, even though it really starts around 18 months.  The child is really into everything, especially if you have a climber.  They are very opinionated.  These kids don't like the fact that the earth no longer revolves around them, and they will let you know.  They might start hitting, pushing or biting.  And, they really learn the art of tantrum throwing, including, but not limited to, screaming at the top of their lungs and collapsing on the floor.

Then, there is age 3.  Terrible twos do not end, my friends.  Nope, it just changes names.  I asked my son's pediatrician about this, and she calls it the whiny threes.  Very true.  Now, my son might be more sensitive than some, but oh the tears this last year has brought.  T seems to cry over everything.  He screams and he cries.  He pitches inconsolable tantrums.  For a couple of weeks I couldn't take him to the store because he would lose his mind every time.  Of course, this made H cry.  I almost left the store once from the crying, but it was my only chance to get out to Wal-Mart that week.

T cries when he is too tired.  He cries because he wants to nap, or not nap.  He cries when his sister takes his toys or wrecks a building.  He cries when friends take his toys.  He cries when he doesn't get what he want for dinner.  He cries to visit people, and cries when we leave.  Oh the tears!  I was worried I was going to drown in them for a while.

Now, T is four.  I've seen other four year olds. This is the matter-of-fact year.  The year of your child being Captain Obvious.  One child came over to my house, and told me that my house was messy, and T needed to pick up the toys.  Ha!  The same child very calmly tells me what he eats and doesn't eat.  Once, when T went over to his house to play, he told T and me that T had to be good because the Elf on the Shelf was watching, and he would tell Santa if T was bad.  (Don't get me started on that Elf, and don't tell my son about it.  He doesn't hang out at my house, yet.)

If your four year old hasn't embarrassed you in public yet, it will happen.  My son points out every obvious characteristic.  "Why she have pink hair, Daddy?"  "That man have no hair!  Why that man have no hair, Mommy?"  "He has a big head."  "She crying."  And the most recent happened while we were traveling.

The family had stopped to grab lunch at McDonald's.  I spotted a woman clearly going through cancer treatments; she had no hair.  I was planning what to say when T would inevitably point this woman out.  I was just hoping she wouldn't hear.  I see her get up to walk towards the restroom.  I tried not to make eye contact, because I knew what was about to happen.   Before I knew it, T was loudly asking "Why that woman have no hair?" I saw a smile from the woman's lips, so it was okay, but just barely.  I tried to explain that not everyone has hair, and that's okay.  My husband said, "T!  We do not say things like that!  You cannot just say what you're thinking."  Jeff, my husband, turns to me and says, "was that as loud as it sounded?  Do you think she heard?"  Yes and Yes.

But, the most embarrassing: T pointed out a woman with no eye to me at the grocery store.  She was older, and I don't think she heard.  The first time.  But, I was at the pharmacy and left my debit card at home.  I was on the phone with Jeff, and before I knew it, T was asking this woman what happened to her eye.  Oh. My. Gosh.  I wanted to die.  The lady saw my embarrassment as I tried to apologize.  She told me it was okay, because kids are so innocent.  She went on to explain to my son that when she was a little girl, she was in a car that got hit by a train.

Wait, what?  Now I had questions, but I'm not four, so I didn't ask.  Like, why was the car on the tracks?  Why didn't the adult shove you out of the car?  What happened to the driver?  And so on.

The moral of this story is that kids have all different kind of phases.  Some are adorable, and some are downright infuriating (stalling at bedtime is another blog for another day).  If you can learn to love your kids through all of them and not lose your patience, you are a saint.

What kind of phases are your kids going through right now?

Aging Gracefully

Let's just get it out there. I'm 34 years old.  I'm older than my husband, by 3 months, but still.  I have two kids and two degrees. I also have 3 gray hairs.

Now, I don't really feel my age, and neither does my husband. I'm pretty sure we still think we are about 27 years old, except when we hurt our backs from picking up toys. Just today he referred to an "older" lady who might have been 35.   We are almost 35.  35.  We don't really feel like it though.  

I mean, sometimes I feel old, like this New Years Eve. Do I have to stay up until midnight?  After all, the next is my day to get up with the kids, who will still get up at 6:30. 

I also felt old this morning when I looked in the mirror this morning and found 3 gray hairs.  Really, gray hairs?  Where did that come from?  I used to highlight my hair, but then, I had a second kid and really couldn't find the time to get it done.  Seeing this gray in my hair really inspires me get my hair highlighted again, or, at least, make a meeting with Ms. Clairol.  I'll keep you posted.

Putting together this torturous trampoline Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas!

This Christmas I wanted to be a little more organized.  Last year, I felt like we spent Christmas morning cutting through the boxes that held the children's toys all while trying not to sever an artery.  So, this year, to prepare for Christmas Eve, I spent several evenings getting the toys out of the boxes and putting batteries in the toys that needed it.  This way, we wouldn't have stay up all hours of the night, or have our kids cry in frustration waiting to have their toys opened the next day.

Christmas Eve arrives.  After we deal with our son, T, getting out of bed 50 times, we bring the toys downstairs.  All we have to do is wrap a few a put together this trampoline.  I think we might actually be able to get in bed at a decent time.  My husband, Jeff, is in charge of the assembly, and I wrap the gifts.

I spent the next hour wrapping and watching It's a Wonderful Life.  I looked over and watched my husband struggle with various stages of assembly on this forsaken trampoline.  I tried to help him put the little noodle things through the holes during one break (please see the picture for reference).  Nearly impossible.  So, I continued with what I was doing.  After I was finished I made a comment about how much I had gotten done while he seemingly did nothing.  Not smart on my part.  He said that I did not understand his level of frustration right then.

I decided to be a good wife and help my husband with this trampoline.  We spent the next TWO HOURS putting together this stupid trampoline.  Trying to hold the metal pieces stable and fit the bolt through proved near impossible.  The trampoline nearly beat us.  I was ready to either put the trampoline away or leave a note saying that Mommy and Daddy would have to finish putting this toy together at a later date because Santa and Elves broke it.  After, two hours in to the assembly we have the jumpy part of the trampoline together and only on corner of the stand together, thanks to me.

Every time we had to get the bolt through the metal hole, we had to use super human strength to push it through.  Later we chose a hammer or some other tool nearby.  At one point, my husband grabbed the closest thing to him, and he banged the bolt with a rubber, squeaky dog toy.  I nearly died laughing.  Several times during assembly, I was sure one of us was going to end up in the ER with a severed finger.

We kept trying new ways of fitting the parts together, but it required the strength of an Olympian, or, at least, the strength of someone who works out.  After about an hour of getting almost nowhere, we turned to the internet.  By this point we still only had one side together and bent bolt.  The reviews were showing this product was fun and great for kids, but a "little" difficult to put together.  That was an understatement.

While Jeff was looking up new ways to enlarge a metal hole without the proper tools, or straighten a bolt without a vice, I used the rubber band in my hair to hold together one side of the trampoline.  I felt like a genius. While I did this, Jeff somehow managed to straighten the bent bolt.

We hemmed and hawed over this last corner for an eternity.  Brute strength and our tools weren't working Finally, my husband used his belt to tighten the pieces together and fit the final (bent) bolt in.  We both felt like we should have honorary engineering degrees from some redneck school, and we felt like the best parents alive.  We were still debating if this whole toy was worth the three hours to assemble as we sat trying to unwind before we went to bed.

The next morning we dragged ourselves from bed to see what Santa had brought the kids. The trampoline was the first thing T decided to play with.  H, my daughter, loves it too.  I'm so glad they both love the trampoline.  Our struggles of the assembly are slowly fading from my mind, but it was worth it in the end.  Although, if you purchased this I would recommend finding someone else to do the assembly.

My hatred of all things glitter

I think my hatred of glitter began when my mom starting working at a local gift shop.  During Christmas time this store received hundreds of ornaments.  From the time these ornaments were unloaded until the after Christmas sale glitter was everywhere.  (This began when I was home from college, and has not ended.)  Glitter was on tabletops and all over the floor.  Worst of all, glitter was on my mom's face.  All.  The.  Time.  

Now, glitter isn't something you can just brush off.  No, you have to get in the shower, or find some industrial strength tape to remove it from your skin.  I hated always seeing glitter sparkle on my mom's face.  Don't know why, but I do.  And, it wasn't just her face.  It's like a contagious disease.  She brought it home from work and got on everyone who set foot in the house.  Now, it is Christmastime again.  Though I don't see my mom everyday, I know there's glitter on her face.  

And, then, I have friends.  Nice, but, these friends send me Christmas cards covered in glitter.  I know they just like the cards.  Maybe they like glitter.  I'm sure after some of my family and friends read this, they will deliberately sent my glitter cards next year.  But, I digress.  As I open the Christmas card and see the specks of glitter trickle out of the envelope I shift into glitter mode.  I grab the card with my two longest fingernails, open the card to see who it's from, and then place it in the cardholder.  I wipe the glitter from my tabletop and wash my hands.  

It's like a form of torture for me.  Really, just cover me in glitter and I will hate my life.  Cover my children in glitter, and I might consider putting them up for adoption.  

Although it's not a problem now, I'm sure it will be in the future.  I have a daughter.  She is almost one and half.  I'm not stupid.  I've seen the shoes, clothes, and floor of the Disney store.  Glitter is going to happen.  My daughter will want some dress up costume, or shirt, or skirt, or shoes that are covered in glitter.  And, because I love her to death I will probably get them for her and hate my life.  Or, I will pat myself on the back congratulating myself and narrowly missing that one glitter trap.  

For now, I just dread the Christmas cards and their tiny flecks of glitter that stick to every surface in my house.  And, now I won't post a picture of my glitter cards. I don't want to call anyone out.  More importantly, I don't want to have to touch the cards and get glitter on my hands and face.