Friday Flashback (Finally)

I'll try to post about our weekend later - I had an old friend in town and she really did wonders to lift my spirits. But first I wanted to continue the Friday Flashback theme. Here are the cowgirls of Halloween '06, and some bumpy pumpkin carving at James & Sabrina's house.

















For some reason, I only have a few pics from 2006 on my computer. I can't figure it out - I have a bunch of 2005, and zillions of 2007, but I'm missing a whole year. I think they're probably somewhere on my hard drive but they must have gotten put in an odd location when I changed computers. Oh well. No slide show tonight.

Abby's Aldridge Gardens Field Trip

First, for my devoted readers (all 5 of you!) who have been wondering why I haven't been posting much, let me apologize. I'm having a cruddy week, and I just haven't felt like posting. Don't ask me what's wrong; it's really a whole bunch of little things that have come together and put me in a funk. But it will pass. And yesterday's field trip with Abby helped a bit.

We went to Aldridge Gardens - Sarah's class goes next week, and I'll get to spend some one-on-one time with Sarah then. But yesterday was all about Abby. I even rode the bus with her. It was a gorgeous day to be outside, and our tour guide was really great. We learned about the trees: deciduous trees and coniferous trees; broad-leaf and needle-leaf; evergreen; and even a "butterfly tree." I really learned a lot, and so did Abby. They even had some fun games for the kids to play throughout the tour. We ended the morning with a really nice picnic under the shade trees. Here's a slide show-

Surprise!

We went home to Mobile this weekend to surprise Emily for her 9th birthday. It was a quick trip, but we had a great time. We got there around 6:15 and went to Mimi's house for dessert...Emily was SHOCKED to see us, and the three girls had such a great time together all weekend. They played and danced and shopped and got manicures and had two slumber parties. Whew - they really packed it into a short amount of time! Here's a cute pic -

Friday Flashbacks

Staying with the Halloween theme-

Here's Halloween in 2005. Such beautiful fairies. I really loved these costumes, and so did they. In fact, we still have the wings and the skirts! This year there were no tears, because they really understood the concept of going door-to-door and getting candy. As you can see, though, Abby couldn't wait to take the paper off before eating the candy!

I found too many cute pics when I was looking for Halloween pics. So, I had to create a slide show. Here's a little walk down memory lane. I left the captions in because some of them have dates.

Someday she'll do great things...

I think Abby is destined for greatness, because she has more hours in a day to accomplish things than most people do! I woke up at 4:45am to a noise in the house, and Bailey growling. Not good, especially since Perry is out of town, and has been all week...
I decide that either 1) someone has broken in and is in the basement, 2) Ellie is doing something and making noise, or 3) Abby is up. I calm myself down and realize that #1 is unlikely, #2 isn't possible because Ellie is outside, so it must be #3. I very slowly tiptoed upstairs so she wouldn't hear me coming, and I opened Abby's door...she was sitting in her bed, surrounded by about 20 stuffed animals and even more books. No telling how long she'd been up.
I made her lay back down but she didn't go back to sleep. Neither did I - it's been a long day.

Science

Sarah's teacher loves science, and today she had a "guest scientist" (the principal) come do the Diet Coke/Mentos experiment for a few classes. It was a good explosion, and when he was done the kids chanted "drink it, drink it, drink it," and he replied "no way, no way, no way."


This was sweet Sarah's prayer tonight:
"Dear God, please help Dr. R to be a wonderful principal, and thank you for letting him come do a science experiment with us today. Amen"

The View (DDM)

This picture was taken by Perry today - it's the view from his hotel room, on the beach in Santa Monica. I'm jealous. Very, very jealous. My only consolation is that we'll all be out there next month.
Perry adding a post here....By the way, I added the subtitle DDM which is an acronym for Dumb Daddy Move. I'm famous, as are most Daddys, for those.

You would think that after six years of traveling to nice hotels in beautiful locales for work meetings that I would know better than to send home a picture like this one. I recall one trip in particular when I was in Scottsdale, AZ and the girls were 6 months old, and I phoned home to talk to J. One of my grizzled veteran colleagues heard my end of the conversation which was a reply to J's question asking me what I was doing..."just sitting by the pool, having a burger and a Corona. It's beautiful here." He pulled me aside afterward and and told me I had a lot to learn so he gave me some standard answers: "Food's not too good; it's overcast, I haven't seen the sun in two days; Nothing but boring meetings, training, work, work. " I guess I still haven't learned.

Bloggable Moments

This post will be all over the place, because I just uploaded the pics from my camera and found a lot of great photos that I want to post.

First are a couple of pictures of Abby in a box. She was playing upstairs last week, and she came down and asked for a pair of scissors. I gave her a pair, and a few minutes later she came back and said the scissors weren't sharp enough; she needed a knife. At that point I had to ask what she was doing. She said she was trying to cut holes in a box. She brought the box to me and told me what she was doing and where she needed the holes. I wielded the knife (which is almost as scary as Abby doing it, because I don't have a great track record with sharp objects) and made the cuts for her. This is her creation. Entirely her idea.

Next is a pic of Sarah eating lunch last Thursday. This was the second day she was home sick from school, and the first time she'd eaten since Tuesday night. As you can tell, she was getting quite comfortable and enjoying her time home with mom.

This pic of Abby is probably going to be one of my all-time favorites. It is SOOOO Abby! A flowing pink dance costume, brown Skechers tennis shoes, band-aids and bruises all over, running fast. All girl, but so tough.



This is a pic of Abby at naptime yesterday. I went to wake her up so we could go to Daisies, and found her under a parachute fort with books all around. I'm guessing she didn't get much sleep.


And finally, a pic from our first Daisy meeting. The girls planted a garden and learned about working together. It's an awesome group of little girls and we had a great time.

A Hole in Her Head

Perry and I have been laughing all day about my Flashback. Debbie says the fact that I still have that document PROVES that I'm still OCD. She might be right, especially since I've changed computers since then. She also said that the one thing I didn't tell her, the one piece of information that might have been really helpful, was that you weren't supposed to get the girls out of their bath seats until all the water was out of the tub. Abby's hysterical screams evidently confounded them all, until Emily said "You're supposed to leave them in the tub until all the water drains out." Oh.
One of my favorite parts is "Dangers - Not Childproofed", and the first item is the nightlight in their room. Huh? Watch out for those dangerous nightlights!

Anyway, on to my day. I sent Sarah to school. She did have a few coughing fits last night, but she needed to go back. She was clingy, and she was really milking the whole "sick" thing. So it was time. I dropped them off and went off to run all the errands that I hadn't been able to run all week. At 11am my phone rang and I recognized the school number. Drat - Sarah must still be sick. It was the school nurse, but she was calling about Abby, not Sarah. Abby fell on the playground and hit her head. The nurse tried to describe the injury, and I literally started laughing. I just couldn't picture what she was telling me. "She has a hole in her forehead. It's not very big, but it's bleeding, and it's not just a cut, it really is a hole, and I just thought you'd want to know." It cracked me up - she was very calm so I knew it wasn't a crisis, but I knew I needed to see it myself. And she was right - it was a hole. Not a big one, but it's just above her eyebrow so I decided to take her to the doctor. He glued it closed, no problem.
Maybe next week I'll be able to get those errands done.

Friday Flashback

I am loving my blog. Visitor stats? Daily hits? Don't know, don't care. I'm just so excited about the memories I'm preserving. I remember so little from my childhood, and I have very few pictures (despite the fact that my dad was EVP at a local photo business!). Sarah and Abby will probably criticize me for the VOLUME of pictures I've taken in their lives, but I hope they will thank me for recording the events, both big and small. My only regret is that I didn't start sooner. Which is why I'm starting Friday Flashback. I'm going to go back and post about some of the things that happened BB (Before Blog).
These posts will not be in chronological order. I'll just post a memory as I think about it. Starting today, with some Halloween pictures that I adore. They were 16 months old, and Perry and I had gone to Hawaii for a week in September, so I bought these grass skirts and coconut tops. Abby screamed most of the night, and Sarah's belly was quite prominent at that age. Priceless pics. And don't worry - once the costumes came off, they started opening candy and quickly realized that Halloween is a very cool holiday.



And, as long as I'm going to tell you that I left my girls for a week (me, the woman who has trouble leaving them for an hour, much less a week), let me entertain you with the document that I left my poor mom and sisters so that they would be able to take care of my girls. Yes, I am a freak. But this document, this three-page Word document complete with bullet points, well, it's a classic. Welcome to my dark side.



A Day in the Life of Sarah and Abby
Ramblings of an O.C. Mom

5am
Lately, Abby has been waking up around 5am. I don’t know why, and (more importantly) I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve tried going in and laying her back down (she screams louder), rocking her (no way), dancing with her (nope), laying her down in bed with me (ha ha), letting her cry it out (30 minutes is my record so far)…nothing has worked. Usually I let her cry until it’s close to 5:30, then I get her up and bring her back to bed with me or sit with her on the couch, giving her “quiet toys” to keep her relatively calm until it’s close to 6am. Then I change her (which makes her cry and wakes up Sarah, if Sarah wasn’t already awake) and start the day.
6am Milk, Cheerios
Alarm: xxxx Off. Abby usually wakes first. If you’re lucky, she’ll wake up happy and just talk for awhile, which gives you a few minutes to get some things done before you go in there. I try not to get up before 6am, unless one of them is really crying, then I give up. But I can typically put them off until at least 6am. I go in, change one and then the other, leaving one in the crib with some stuffed animals. They might cry, but what can you do?! Then I take one at a time into the kitchen and put them in their high chairs with milk cups and some Cheerios. I go get the papers, then try to read and have a cup of coffee while keeping them occupied with milk and Cheerios. When they get fussy, I make sure all the gates are up in the kitchen and all the locks are on the cabinets, then I get them down and put the cups back in the fridge. Then I have my cereal. About 45 minutes to an hour after they got up, I start making their breakfast:
7am Cereal
I make two bowls, about ¼ cup of oatmeal cereal in each mixed with milk, to about an oatmeal consistency. Then I add about a tablespoon of applesauce and a teaspoon of wheat germ. Lately I’ve also been adding about ½ teaspoon of karo syrup to help with constipation. Cook together for 30 seconds, then mix in 1ml of vitamins in each, and put ½ container of fruit baby food (usu. Prunes w/ apples) in each. I feed S&A together, out of 1 bowl and then out of the other. They like it when I sing – it doesn’t matter what, although they love “The Lord said to Noah, there’s gonna be a floody floody” with the gestures.
Play time
After a quick clean up/wipe down, I move to the play room (I don’t care where you play, obviously, but this is easiest for me). I gate off the bathroom and the hall and shut their bedroom door. They usually play pretty well on their own and I can finish reading the paper, have another cup of coffee, etc., as long as I’m in the room with them. They’ll let me know when they’re tired and ready for a nap, usually around 8:30. You definitely don’t want to put them down before 8. On MDO days, I put them down around 8.
8:30 nap
When I see the signs, I just say “are your ready for night night? Do you want to take a nap?”, and they’ll usually go to their bedroom door. I open that door and let them go in while I go get their pacis. I let them wander and explore their room for a few minutes and then put on their CD and put them in their beds. They usually go right to sleep. If they cry for more than a minute or two, they might be dirty (usually Abby) or crying for a paci (Sarah).
10am Yogurt
They’ll get up between 9:30 and 10. I try to make it till 10 if possible. While they sleep, I shower, get dressed, empty the dishwasher, etc. When they get up, I take them into the kitchen for yogurt. They split 1 container. I offer them juice, then take them back to the playroom to change them and get them dressed. Then we usually have an outing. Target, Hobby Lobby, Home Depot, WalMart, Winn Dixie, the mall (if I’m feeling ambitious), Big Mama’s (Thursdays when Mimi is there in the a.m.). I take their juice with me, and also some crackers or Cheerios. I usually push the stroller and pull a cart, but sometimes I’ll be brave and put them both in a cart.

Noon lunch
Lunch is usually a sandwich (mayo, a little Dijon, swiss cheese, and sandwich meat cut in bite-size pieces), tomato pieces, fruit from a jar, and milk. For a real treat, they love fast food cheeseburgers (who doesn’t?!).
1:30 nap
After lunch, more play. This is pretty interactive time usually – I play ball with them, or read, or just play with their toys. I try to make it at least 3 ½ hours since they woke up, aiming for 1:30 naptime. Again, I just ask (encourage) a nap, and they usually head for the door.
3:00 juice, snack
Many times they’ll wake up WAYYYY too early after this nap, like 2:30. Bummer! Sometimes I’ll just hang out in their room with them, maybe switch their stereo to radio and dance with them. If we’re not going anywhere, I’ll take them in the kitchen and offer them a snack and juice (Ritz, cheerios, Nutragrain, cookies, whatever). Then we play and pray that Mimi and Pop get there soon! If I know that Mimi is at Big Mama’s, I’ll try to get there around 3:30 and leave around 4:15. Take juice and crackers with you to entertain.
5:00 dinner
They eat whatever. Just cut into small pieces, and give them a small fork. Give them fruit too (from jar). If it’s nice outside, go for a walk or play outside for a little while.
6:45 milk
They won’t drink much usually, but I always offer it.
7:00 bath
Start the bath water. Careful, our water is REALLY hot. I fill the tub pretty high, almost to the ring on their seats. While it’s filling, close that door to keep them out, and go get 3 pacis each and put in their beds. Get their PJs out of the 3rd drawer. I bathe and wash hair every night. …I just kneel on the floor and wash one and then the other. Their toothbrushes are in the tub; if you hand them a brush and tell them “Brusha brusha brusha (to the tune of “Ring around the rosies”), they’ll brush their teeth (yes, I KNOW that I’m a freak!). I give 1 baby to Mimi to dry and dress on the changing table, and I get on the floor with the other. Lotion on both; if Sarah’s ankles look bad, use a little Elidel. (just a tiny bit, smaller than the tip of an eraser). Comb hair.
7:30 bed
We read Goodnight Moon in the dark (memorized!) sitting on the daybed (many times they’ll start crying as soon as we sit down, so we skip the book and just put them to bed), then carry them to their beds, lay them down, put a paci in the mouth (and Sarah will put one in each hand) and a rag over the face, raise the rail (make sure you raise it and pull out on the bottom), and leave. Very very rarely this fails – maybe 1 in 100. If they cry, you can check and reassure, but I wouldn’t get them out of the bed unless you think you have to.
Bedtime! Yea!
I get things cleaned up and run the dishwasher. Run the dishwasher every night or you won’t have enough cups. They might cry during the night, but it’s usually short. I have a five-minute rule, and rarely do they cry more than 2-3. Honestly, if I ignore them, it usually ends quickly, but if I go in there, it can last 2 hours. So I don’t go in unless it seems like something is really wrong (very rare).
Secret Weapons
· Baby Einstein
· Barney (10am), Teletubbies (11am) on channel 2
· Go somewhere. Anywhere.
· Build a tower out of something – they think that’s great.
· There are 2 good toys in the closet in the playroom that I’ve been hiding until they’re needed – the LeapFrog table and the piano. I think they’ll be excited to see those again.
Dangers not child-proofed:
· Nightlight in their room
· Chest of drawers in their room. I’m afraid they’ll pull it over, or pull a drawer all the way out.
· Very hot water
· Corner shelf in foyer
· Silver tray in dining room
· Rails on their cribs. You have to be sure that the bottom pulls out when you pull it up, so it locks.
· Their seats in the van: if for some reason you tilt it forward (maybe to let someone in the back seat), MAKE SURE that the van seat locks back in place. I’m speaking from experience, and it’s very scary: if that seat doesn’t lock into place, it will fly forward the first time you hit the brakes, slamming a baby into the front seat. Yikes.
Misc ramblings
· They’re both still struggling a little with constipation. If either of them has a “slow” day, without a good movement, I give prunes or prunes with apples as the fruit with the morning cereal. I also feed them straight baby food prunes with the afternoon snack if I think they need it. The Karo syrup seems to be doing the trick.
· Sarah’s pacis are white with yellow rings. Abby is everything else. You have to boil them or wash in dishwasher after each use.
· Pacis in the pot. They only get their pacis in bed. Sarah likes to collect them in the morning – often she’ll have 5-6 in her hands. When you carry them to the kitchen, tell them “put your pacis in the pot” while you stand by the pot on the stove. Usually they’ll just drop them in. Sometimes you have to do it for them.
· If you want to set the house alarm, it’s xxxx Stay (or Away if you’re leaving), and then xxxx Off to disarm.
· Dr. Cxxxxx– Children’s Medical Group – 639-xxxx. Our insurance covers all the Mobile hospitals except Providence Hospital (which unfortunately is the closest). Obviously if time is critical, take them to Providence, but if it’s not urgent, go to any of the others.
· They both have colds. They can have PediaCare and/or Tylenol. Abby can have up to 1.6 every 4 hours, and Sarah can have 1.2.
Tuesday and Friday - Mom’s Day Out
This is your call – you can take them or not, whatever you’re comfortable with. If you do take them, don’t leave them too long – plan on no more than 2 hours. MDO starts at 9am, but I just take them whenever they wake up. We usually get there about 10. I put them down for that morning nap a little earlier, say 8 or 8:15, and when they wake up, I take their juice and their clothes into their room and change them in the crib (both in the same crib) while they drink. I take the juice in the car with me, but not into school. Don’t dress them in identical outfits on Tuesdays; their teachers can’t tell them apart! Building A, Room 105
Wednesday – Storytime
I signed them up for Storytime at the library. It’s 10am on Wednesdays, and we haven’t been yet (last week was the first week). If you want to go, it’s in the room off the children’s room on the first floor of the West Mobile Library on Grelot. I think it sounds like fun.

Oh boy. Will you believe me if I tell you that I'm no longer OCD? I promise, I'm really not.