Monday morning I was determined to turn over a new leaf. I spent Sunday evening making homemade cherry muffins for breakfast the next morning. I prepped a lunch for Mark and Jacob to eat during the day. I was going to be organized and we were going to have a nutritious, well-organized morning with no unpleasantness!!
Of course as soon as the alarm went off things started going wrong. Anarosa would NOT get up, because she had gotten to sleep later than usual (because she was busy crying that she was missing all the “fun” - people were coming to our house to pick up campaign signs and she had to go to bed). She finally got up and into the shower, but when she got out she still had a big blob of conditioner in her hair. She insisted that she had rinsed it out already and under no condition would she get back in the shower again! So of course I had to insist (it really was a big blob) and so she finally got back into the shower for a total of five seconds and then got out again. I decided maybe this was the time for natural consequences and stopped pushing the issue.
Next everyone complained about the breakfast. Nobody wanted cherry muffins, and scrambled eggs were just insulting, fresh fruit? - what was I thinking? So two out of three drank their orange juice and nothing else. To top it all off, I realized we had forgotten a math page from Anarosa’s homework packet so she had to sit at the table and finish doing the last page of homework.
Now, it’s really time to get going. Alana decides to throw a fit because she’s NOT taking a bath (she washed her hair last night) and runs around the house refusing to get dressed or brush her hair. Well, I finally catch her and get her dressed. Then Anarosa starts complaining that she can’t find her pants. By this point I’m getting a little exasperated but calmly walk back into her room to help her find pants. There are no pants….period, she has one pair of short shorts in her baskets, but that is it. So… I go downstairs and check the dryer, none there. I check the washer, none there either. I even check the dirty laundry pile, nope, all of her pants were dirty or had been packed up for the daddy-daughter campout this weekend and got dirty because they all got shoved into the same backpack and had dirt all over them.
This morning is not going well. We finally end up rushing everyone into the car. Anarosa wearing her shirt, undies, socks and shoes and drive all the way to Union City to Walmart to buy pants!! Then we had to turn around and drive all the way back to Castro Valley to get them to school!
And to top it all off, I forgot to pack up Mark and Jacob’s lunch so we ended up eating lunch at McDonald’s anyway. And the homework that I had Anarosa finish – was left on the kitchen table….
Adventures in Motherhood
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Tag!
Katie tagged me! So here's my list of 7 things you may not know about me….
1. My favorite food in the whole world is cheesecake (okay, many of you know that about me) At my last job, they knew if I’d had a particularly hard day if I came back from lunch with an entire cheesecake and wasn’t sharing!
2. I used to be an Emergency Medical Technician. I went to Chabot and got my EMT certification. It expired when I was on my mission and I never recertified. I loved it! But they didn’t pay much more than minimum wage. I considered going on to get my paramedic license but got married and had kids instead!
3. I love to read. It was hard when I first had kids, but since I’ve discovered on-line classics I’ve been hooked. Just about anything that is out of copyright you can read free online. I found a site I really liked and started with the A’s. I’m working on the B’s now (including short stories there were over 200 titles starting with A)
4. I ALWAYS get lost. I have been lost in every major city I have ever driven in. (Including the city I grew up in!). I’m getting better, the best thing to come along in a long time is yahoo driving directions, but I still manage to get myself turned around and going in the wrong direction. However, I have always come back, and I find this encouraging.
5. I can never find my keys. I’m forever loosing them and my husband Mark has to find them for me. I always keep on the good side of the maintenance personnel at work because they have to unlock my office for me every time I loose them. Mark and I have an inside joke that I can never leave him….I’d never be able to find my keys to go!
6. I love poetry. Dr. Seuss and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow are my two favorites!
7. I love to do crafts. Having three kids works out well for me because people don’t think I’m nearly as strange when they walk in the house and there is a construction paper rainforest on the living room walls and a paper pirate ship in the hallway! I used to do a different theme with the kids each week, but since we’ve moved out of the apartment and into the house we haven’t done very much. (too many windows, not enough wall space, and well it’s too nice to tape things onto.) So last week, I cleaned out some space in our unfinished basement and now we have a “craft cave” under the house. Woo hoo!!
1. My favorite food in the whole world is cheesecake (okay, many of you know that about me) At my last job, they knew if I’d had a particularly hard day if I came back from lunch with an entire cheesecake and wasn’t sharing!
2. I used to be an Emergency Medical Technician. I went to Chabot and got my EMT certification. It expired when I was on my mission and I never recertified. I loved it! But they didn’t pay much more than minimum wage. I considered going on to get my paramedic license but got married and had kids instead!
3. I love to read. It was hard when I first had kids, but since I’ve discovered on-line classics I’ve been hooked. Just about anything that is out of copyright you can read free online. I found a site I really liked and started with the A’s. I’m working on the B’s now (including short stories there were over 200 titles starting with A)
4. I ALWAYS get lost. I have been lost in every major city I have ever driven in. (Including the city I grew up in!). I’m getting better, the best thing to come along in a long time is yahoo driving directions, but I still manage to get myself turned around and going in the wrong direction. However, I have always come back, and I find this encouraging.
5. I can never find my keys. I’m forever loosing them and my husband Mark has to find them for me. I always keep on the good side of the maintenance personnel at work because they have to unlock my office for me every time I loose them. Mark and I have an inside joke that I can never leave him….I’d never be able to find my keys to go!
6. I love poetry. Dr. Seuss and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow are my two favorites!
7. I love to do crafts. Having three kids works out well for me because people don’t think I’m nearly as strange when they walk in the house and there is a construction paper rainforest on the living room walls and a paper pirate ship in the hallway! I used to do a different theme with the kids each week, but since we’ve moved out of the apartment and into the house we haven’t done very much. (too many windows, not enough wall space, and well it’s too nice to tape things onto.) So last week, I cleaned out some space in our unfinished basement and now we have a “craft cave” under the house. Woo hoo!!
Monday, October 13, 2008
A Matter of Semantics
Alana has been in a persnickety mood today, and arguing about every little thing. So, today when she and Anarosa were coloring with markers, she looks over at Anarosa’s drawing and asks her what it is. When Anarosa tells her it’s a pumpkin Alana says “that pumpkin is soooo unprofessional.” (Normally this is where Anarosa gets upset and tattles on Alana) But she just looked up from her picture and said “It’s not unprofessional it’s unique.”
They argued back and forth about it until Alana finally pulled me aside to ask me what “unique” meant. After that she let the matter drop!
They argued back and forth about it until Alana finally pulled me aside to ask me what “unique” meant. After that she let the matter drop!
Saturday, October 11, 2008
The Emergency Room
It was our normal Thursday afternoon. I had just gotten back from work, and we were all trooping in the front door. Jacob had to sit in the naughty chair because he wouldn’t hold my hand in the parking lot. During all the commotion of getting everyone in the door and sitting down to do homework, Jacob was flailing around in his chair (mind you a child-sized chair) and fell off of it. He started to scream and I walked over with the intention of telling him to knock it off and just sit still, when I noticed the blood.
Well, he somehow managed to cut his ear while falling off the chair (I still can’t figure out exactly how, but there was nothing but him the chair and the wall). And now he is bleeding at a steady gush from the top of his left ear and I’m not quite certain but it may have cut through. Well I grabbed a kitchen towel and scooped up the screaming Jacob. Ran outside and stopped Mark from driving to work, jumped in with Jacob and drove to the emergency room.
(At this point please note what I did not do. I did not calmly pack a bag with snacks, crayons, books and other assorted distractions. This is important because it comes up later.)
It just so happens that this is a busy Thursday afternoon at my local Kaiser emergency room. It’s only a mile and a half away so we get there relatively quickly. Once Jacob calmed down enough to know where we were going, he emphatically declared he did NOT want to go to see the doctor (we’ve been to the emergency room before). Well, the parking lot was full so we had to go park in the parking garage and then walk through the other side of the hospital with a kitchen towel on his head to get to the emergency room. By this time he isn’t screaming, but he isn’t happy. We get to the front desk and they take his card and tell us to have a seat.
So then the waiting begins. The two and a half hours of waiting. Jacob tries whining. Surely I will feel sorry for him and take him home. Then he tries to reason with me. Then the fun begins.
He declares quite loudly that he has to go to the bathroom. We get up and go to the bathroom in the emergency room, but he doesn’t want that bathroom, he wants to go down the hall and find one “someplace else”. No. (We have to be here when they call his name or we go back to the bottom of the not-very-important list.)
Then he wants to go for a walk. No we can’t do that either.
Now, you have to understand that Jacob only has one volume setting and it’s loud. So all of the following conversations EVERYBODY in the crowded emergency room can hear.
“If you don’t take me home, I’m going to call the police and they will come and put you in jail.”
“hmm jail huh?, well if I’m in jail who is going go cook your food?”
“Daddy will. He can make ice cream and stuff”
“Oh, well, okay, but who will do the laundry?”
“Oh Anarosa can reach, she’ll do it.”
“Well you seem to have this all figured out.”
“Yes, so go to jail!”
When that didn’t work, he decided to very loudly discuss all of the private parts that he happens to know the correct names of, and everyone he knows who has one!
Next, we try the bathroom excuse again and again, until people in the “audience” actually start to giggle every time he declares he has to “go.”
We discuss me selling him to pirates and whether or not he would enjoy swabbing the decks or walking the planks.
He found a blond girl to talk to and actually broke down in tears when her mother returned and sat next to her.
My favorite person of the whole night was the fifty-something-year-old man, who actually got down on the floor and blew little pieces of paper with Jacob, across the floor in a race.
After about an hour and a half Jacob actually stood up on his chair, put his hands on his hips and yelled “I WANT TO GO HOME NOW!” to which several people in the waiting room answered back “me too”.
Once we finally get to see the triage nurse, she is totally unimpressed with his cut ear. She doesn’t really think he’ll need stitches, well maybe one, but if I really want to, she can get me an appointment in two hours at the minor injury clinic. By this time Jacob is as uncooperative as he can be and will not for love or money or stickers let her take his blood pressure and temperature.
So we drive back home, still covered in blood to wait an additional two hours to go back. I however, use this time to feed Mr. Grumpy and pack a diaper bag with about two hours worth of super hero toys, snacks, crayons and even considered taking the dvd player (just in case). We get back to the hospital and get in to see the minor injury doctor. Who was totally not impressed with the ER nurse, who didn’t think we would need stitches. He did need stitches, three of them to be exact. (not his personal record) But we had to wrap him up and hold him down to get the stitches in. He was in a much better mood for the second visit, but was not very pleased with getting the stitches in. And after all this we had to stop on the way out to get him an antibiotic, because that cough and cold he had was really an ear infection.
So we survived our latest trip to the ER. But I seriously think it’s Mark’s turn to do this next time one of the kids has to go!
Well, he somehow managed to cut his ear while falling off the chair (I still can’t figure out exactly how, but there was nothing but him the chair and the wall). And now he is bleeding at a steady gush from the top of his left ear and I’m not quite certain but it may have cut through. Well I grabbed a kitchen towel and scooped up the screaming Jacob. Ran outside and stopped Mark from driving to work, jumped in with Jacob and drove to the emergency room.
(At this point please note what I did not do. I did not calmly pack a bag with snacks, crayons, books and other assorted distractions. This is important because it comes up later.)
It just so happens that this is a busy Thursday afternoon at my local Kaiser emergency room. It’s only a mile and a half away so we get there relatively quickly. Once Jacob calmed down enough to know where we were going, he emphatically declared he did NOT want to go to see the doctor (we’ve been to the emergency room before). Well, the parking lot was full so we had to go park in the parking garage and then walk through the other side of the hospital with a kitchen towel on his head to get to the emergency room. By this time he isn’t screaming, but he isn’t happy. We get to the front desk and they take his card and tell us to have a seat.
So then the waiting begins. The two and a half hours of waiting. Jacob tries whining. Surely I will feel sorry for him and take him home. Then he tries to reason with me. Then the fun begins.
He declares quite loudly that he has to go to the bathroom. We get up and go to the bathroom in the emergency room, but he doesn’t want that bathroom, he wants to go down the hall and find one “someplace else”. No. (We have to be here when they call his name or we go back to the bottom of the not-very-important list.)
Then he wants to go for a walk. No we can’t do that either.
Now, you have to understand that Jacob only has one volume setting and it’s loud. So all of the following conversations EVERYBODY in the crowded emergency room can hear.
“If you don’t take me home, I’m going to call the police and they will come and put you in jail.”
“hmm jail huh?, well if I’m in jail who is going go cook your food?”
“Daddy will. He can make ice cream and stuff”
“Oh, well, okay, but who will do the laundry?”
“Oh Anarosa can reach, she’ll do it.”
“Well you seem to have this all figured out.”
“Yes, so go to jail!”
When that didn’t work, he decided to very loudly discuss all of the private parts that he happens to know the correct names of, and everyone he knows who has one!
Next, we try the bathroom excuse again and again, until people in the “audience” actually start to giggle every time he declares he has to “go.”
We discuss me selling him to pirates and whether or not he would enjoy swabbing the decks or walking the planks.
He found a blond girl to talk to and actually broke down in tears when her mother returned and sat next to her.
My favorite person of the whole night was the fifty-something-year-old man, who actually got down on the floor and blew little pieces of paper with Jacob, across the floor in a race.
After about an hour and a half Jacob actually stood up on his chair, put his hands on his hips and yelled “I WANT TO GO HOME NOW!” to which several people in the waiting room answered back “me too”.
Once we finally get to see the triage nurse, she is totally unimpressed with his cut ear. She doesn’t really think he’ll need stitches, well maybe one, but if I really want to, she can get me an appointment in two hours at the minor injury clinic. By this time Jacob is as uncooperative as he can be and will not for love or money or stickers let her take his blood pressure and temperature.
So we drive back home, still covered in blood to wait an additional two hours to go back. I however, use this time to feed Mr. Grumpy and pack a diaper bag with about two hours worth of super hero toys, snacks, crayons and even considered taking the dvd player (just in case). We get back to the hospital and get in to see the minor injury doctor. Who was totally not impressed with the ER nurse, who didn’t think we would need stitches. He did need stitches, three of them to be exact. (not his personal record) But we had to wrap him up and hold him down to get the stitches in. He was in a much better mood for the second visit, but was not very pleased with getting the stitches in. And after all this we had to stop on the way out to get him an antibiotic, because that cough and cold he had was really an ear infection.
So we survived our latest trip to the ER. But I seriously think it’s Mark’s turn to do this next time one of the kids has to go!
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
October 1st
Well, this week has been fun. I am having a crazy time at work. We are moving offices and September 30 is the end of our grant’s fiscal year. So all of the fiscal reports are due about this time. Mark has been called into court the next three Tuesdays (which is always a challenge for us since we have two school kids on different schedules, the court date, my work and only one car!!)
Jacob wasn’t feeling well yesterday. He’s usually a pretty accommodating little guy, but he gets grumpy when he’s not feeling well. Apparently he yelled at Danny (the guy who does the maintenance at the apartment complex) Luckily Danny has four kids of his own, so he understood sick little boys. By the time I picked him up to drop Daddy off at court he was warm and of course he threw up in the car on the way to pick up Anarosa from school!! When we got home I took his temperature and it was 103!! So he spent most of the rest of the day in bed (which was just fine with him!) I tried to give him something to take the edge off of his fever, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with it, so I just let him sleep it off. He woke up this morning feeling great!
Anarosa was cute this morning. She asked me what day it was, and I told her “Wednesday”
and she said “No, what DAY is it??”
“October 1st.”
“Oh, I knew it was something special”
So to everyone out there, Happy First Day of October!
Jacob wasn’t feeling well yesterday. He’s usually a pretty accommodating little guy, but he gets grumpy when he’s not feeling well. Apparently he yelled at Danny (the guy who does the maintenance at the apartment complex) Luckily Danny has four kids of his own, so he understood sick little boys. By the time I picked him up to drop Daddy off at court he was warm and of course he threw up in the car on the way to pick up Anarosa from school!! When we got home I took his temperature and it was 103!! So he spent most of the rest of the day in bed (which was just fine with him!) I tried to give him something to take the edge off of his fever, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with it, so I just let him sleep it off. He woke up this morning feeling great!
Anarosa was cute this morning. She asked me what day it was, and I told her “Wednesday”
and she said “No, what DAY is it??”
“October 1st.”
“Oh, I knew it was something special”
So to everyone out there, Happy First Day of October!
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