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Thursday, January 28, 2010

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Alternative Title: Being a Parent is Stinkin' Hard!!!!

Go ahead, tune out, I'm about to start ranting....

We are looking to switch pediatricians for a number of reasons. Come to find out, because we are delaying our vaccinations til we decide what to do about them, we are going to have a hard time finding a pediatrician. I do not mean that we are having a hard time finding a ped who is accepting of our choices. I don't think I'll find one. But, I have called two large practices that have both refused to take our family on because the kids aren't up to date on their shots. They told me that they follow the AAP guidelines to a 'T' and that we'd have to go elsewhere. What is a parent to do? Just a little bit of research can send you into a tizzy. Both sides have valid-sounding arguments, and both sides produce compelling 'evidence.' The tricky part is sifting through it all to find out what is true, what's not, and what is best for the health of my children. What I do know (from both pro and against vaccination websites) is that:
  • Vaccines are cultured in eggs, monkey kidneys (which have been know to contain diseases), human embryo cells.
  • They can contain mercury, formaldehyde, aluminum, detergents, and many other ingredients that would not be considered safe under any other circumstances.
  • Each child is to receive 38 doses of vaccine by eighteen months of age. (I don't think the flu/H1N1 are counted in this)
  • Pharmaceutical companies stand to profit immensely from the government mandating their vaccines. (So can they be trusted when they say they are safe?)
  • Older girls are now strongly encouraged to get vaccines for STDs (under the guise of 'Cervical Cancer') (babies are also to start the Hep B at birth)
  • And on and on it goes....I won't bore you with it all. (I'm really just venting!!)
It is a hard decision to make either way. We started out mostly following the 'rules,' but after an appointment where James was given EIGHT shots at once, it just seemed a little crazy. Anyway, here we are, me researching like crazy and trying to find a pediatrician. This is not the kind of stuff I'd like to be researching, but alas, here I am....

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

She's Something Else


Its a shame she has no personality! ;)


And here is Tyler and his buddy Armando. They are a little less than four months apart.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

My Stealthy Ninja

Up until very recently, Katie has had a strange habit of refusing to get out of her bed. When she wakes up in the morning, she will talk to herself for a few minutes, or more, and then she starts calling for us. 'Daddy! Daddy! Daaaaddy!' If Jeff doesn't go for her right away, then she busts out the 'Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooommy!' We can call to her, tell her its OK to get up, etc., and she won't do it. As soon as you go in her room and stand by her bed she'll get up. We always kind of chuckled when she would do this because she could just get up if she wanted to and not have to wait, but she wouldn't. That is, until now. The last two or three days, she has decided to get up on her own. The thing of it is, she has dispensed with her early morning chit chat and just gets up. So we think she is asleep and all the sudden, like a stealthy little pink-footie-pajama-wearing blond afro-puff-sporting ninja, she is there at your feet. Yikes!

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Having a girl....


Having a girl to sew for is so much fun! I love to make her clothes and all manner of stuff. And so far, she goes with it. I made this blanket for Katie's room, and she told me 'I wuv my bwanket.' And that pretty much made my day.

And on a totally random note: (I think I should change the blog name to 'This is totally random, but....) Jeff had a business meeting yesterday, to which he rode in style. He rode with the President of his company, whose car is worth significantly more than our house. While it apparently has massage seats, controls for every possible thing imaginable, and lots more, I was disappointed that it couldn't make you a cup of coffee. For that much money, gee whiz! It should at least have a built in cappuccino maker or something! :) Jeff feels confident that that is the nicest car he has or will ever ride in. I think he is probably right.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Little Turkey

Since I started potty training Katie she rarely has an accident. She is pretty darn good at knowing when she's gotta go and can hold it till she gets there. This afternoon, I put Katie down for her nap. She had just gone to the bathroom and not 15 minutes later I hear her yelling 'I need to go!!!' I told her she just went and to go to sleep. (How's that for empathy? ;) She kept at it, finally yelling 'I need to go pooooooop!' Well, why tempt fate? I mean, its easier to take her to the potty than to clean her up later. So, I took her. And there was nothing. And nothing. And nothing. And then she said 'I'm just joking, Mommy. I'm all done.' Little stinker.

Monday, January 18, 2010

A Day in the Life...

The following picture pretty much sums up the average day around here. I have no idea where they get their weirdness from ;)





Here is Katie saying 'Cheeeeeese' with her bear. The shirt I made for Katie, and it didn't fit, so...on the bear it goes! She seems to like the idea of dressing up her bear.

Tyler and Uncle Phil shootin' out the lights

And a little 'snuggwing' time is always good too!

Friday, January 15, 2010

Same Story, Different Day (and a fun thing!)

I do believe that I am about as sleep deprived today as I have ever been. Tyler has a cold thanks to his generous older siblings and was u many times during the night shrieking and crying. This comes after a week or two (its all so hazy) of him waking up too many times for no apparent reason. So, I am in a fog, AGAIN. Right now, everyone is asleep, or supposed to be, and I am going to take a nap myself.

On a different subject, Rachel (my sis) and I decided to chronicle all our crafty endeavors on a blog together, so if you are interested you can click here or on my sidebar. There aren't a ton of posts yet but we are crafting away so I am sure there will be lots more to come! Maybe we'll even get Mom to guest post over there :)

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Monday, January 11, 2010

Uhhhh....

Again, I find myself incredibly short on sleep. Tyler is getting up non-stop for some reason, and Katie has been waking up crying (which is not normal for her). So, I feel rather out to lunch. Fortunately, Rach called this morning and had us over to the 'rents for a morning of fun. (They are currently living at Mom and Dad's between now and when Phil starts his new job.) It was a nice way to spend the morning, and I even got a few sewing projects cut out. And speaking of sewing projects, stay tuned because Rach and I are making ourselves a new crafty blog to post our projects. Should be fun! (If only for the two of us ;). I'll post the link as soon as we have some real content over there. Now I am off to go lay down with a cup of tea and a good book.

Friday, January 08, 2010

I have this friend....

I have this friend. Her name is, uh, Sandy. Sandy has a funny story to tell, but she is too mortified to blog about it so I told her I would. You see, Sandy was in need of some unmentionables. She went to the store, and found that they were out of the kind she normally got. Considering that Sandy has three little kids (pure coincidence), she did not feel like traipsing them all over God's green earth trying to find the right kind. Besides, low cut briefs shouldn't be bad, Sandy thought. Almost like the kind she normally buys. Sandy took them home and threw them in the wash without paying much attention. When Sandy pulled her new skivvies out of the dryer, she gasped! If these were low cut briefs, she didn't dare want to know what the regular briefs looked like! They might come up to one's armpits, she guessed. Sandy sighed. They had already taken a ride through the wash, and there was no returning her full-coverage girdles of greatness. Oh well, she'll just have to resign them to the 'when I have no clean laundry left to wear' category. I, of course, never run out of clean clothes to wear because I keep up on my laundry like the government keeps up on collecting my taxes. ;)

Thursday, January 07, 2010

I Drive Myself, Like, Nuts

Spending my teenage years in the 90's has left me with an annoying tendency to throw the word 'like' into sentences where it, like, doesn't belong. Although it does not reach anywhere close to 'Valley Girl'-like proportions, I wish I didn't say it at all. Case in point: James was telling me about when we went swimming in Colorado. He said 'remember when I fell into the water and I was like 'crud,' I fell in.' Yes, he said 'like' and 'crud' in the same sentence. And both of those words he got from me. Help me! I need to, like, STOP!!!!

Monday, January 04, 2010

Motherly Menace and Other Orders of Business

I am convinced that 92% of the time, when Tyler sees Katie coming at him he sees something along the lines of Dennis the Menace, the Mommy version. He loves Katie, and smiles and laughs at her....but...she is so loving and motherly and nurturing to him that sometimes I think she just might nurture him to death. She brings him toys, blankets, pats his hand, gives him kisses, spins his toys for him, tickles him, and otherwise tries to make him comfortable. The only problem that a two-year-old mother hen is not exactly the most gentle of kiss-givers, or anything else for that matter. While she tries to be nice, it sometimes doesn't go over very well. I am sure glad Tyler is getting to the stage where he doesn't seem quite so fragile, but still, I would like to protect him from having his eye poked out by a well-meaning sister bringing him Tinker Toys to play with.

Some new (unfortunate) news here is that Jeff has two bulging discs in his lower back. His pain level fluctuates, and it can go from a low level to really bad in no time flat. Today he is in really bad pain (which for Jeff equates to severing a limb or something). So, right now they said that if it doesn't go away, he'll need physical therapy. Regardless, this is something that is going to continue to flare up (as we know from experience...he also has a herniated disc in his neck, but it is not as painful).

And last but not least, here are a few pictures of our Christmas celebrations. I believe I failed to mention that James went shopping for the fam and picked out some fantastically goofy gifts. His choices were as follows:

Chappy: a flashlight (one of two appropriate gifts)
Grammy: purple pom-poms
Uncle Nate: a ceramic baseball-shaped air freshener
Aunt Nikia: a spatula (the other appropriate gift)
Uncle Phil: a plastic hat complete with stars (see photo below)
Auntie Rach: plastic craft beads
Daddy: a jump rope
Katie: a craft kit to make herself a necklace
Tyler: a fuzzy Christmas stocking)