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Tuesday, October 30, 2012

It's time.

Last week on the way home from school, Peter asked, "Mom?  You know how your have to be married to have a baby?"

Here we go, I thought. I really don't want to do this right now.  Not in the car.  On the way home from school.  With Sarah in the backseat.

"Yes," I said cautiously.

"Well, how does your body know if you're married or not?" he quetioned.

Smart boy!  But, ugh.

"Well, technically, you don't have to be married to have a baby but God wants you to be married."

"Why?"

"Because he knows raising a baby is very hard work and it helps if you have two people splitting all that work." 

"Oh," was his reply as we pulled into the driveway.  He hopped out of the car and I breathed a sigh of relief.

The next day, in the car, on the way home from school, with Sarah right beside him, he asked me point blank what it's called when......

I can't even bring myself to type it but basically he was asking me what it's called when a certain male body part does a certain thing that only a certain male body part can do.

shudder

I froze.  I am not talking about that in the car, on the way home from school, with Sarah sitting right beside him.  I need to be sitting down with a stiff drink in my hand. Or at least a strong cup of coffee.

"Why don't you ask your father," was my brilliant reply.

"Ask Dad!?!?!?!"  Why would I ask him!?!?  That would be embarrassing!" he exclaimed laughingly.

My husband laughed too when I relayed the story and said, "Looks like this one is all you!"

And yesterday, in the car, on the way home from school, with Sarah right beside him he asked me, "What are the birds and the bees?"

"Where did you hear that expression?"

"I don't know."

"Well, I'll be glad to explain it to you after you do your homework."

"You mean it's not just like birds and bees?"

"No honey it's a little more than that. I'll explain it to you"

"Oh," he said as he hopped out of the car.  "Maybe later."

In addition to all of that, one day last week, I found THE BOOK that I thought I had hidden so well on the bookshelf in the office, laying on the floor beside the bookshelf in the office while he and his friend Colton were playing on the computer.

"Where did this come from????" I questioned with a panicked tone.  Because if we are going to do this, it is not going to be with any friends present.  I started sweating at the mere thought of having to explain it to two 9-year-old boys.

"I don't know," he shrugged.

I immediately grabbed the book, found a better hiding spot and realized, It's Time To Have THE TALK.

Sarah and Dan are heading to a Father-Daughter Dance at school in two weeks so I guess Peter and I will be having a Mother-Daughter Talk that same night.

And my husband thought he was dreading the Father-Daughter Dance.

Image from shirtoid.com

Friday, October 26, 2012

7 Quick Takes Friday


--- 1 ---
Even though I try to run about 12 miles a week, I am starting to pudge out.  The jeans I wore last year are a little too tight for my taste and I'm just not excited about buying new clothes because the thought of seeing myself in a dressing room mirror is enough to make me want to eat a doughnut and some ice cream out of sheer depression and that would be totally the wrong thing to do.

My metabolism is definitely slowing down and I think my body has gotten used to running so even though I may be burning calories, things are flabby and shaking and poking out in ways that I wish they weren't. So I'm starting the 30 Day Shred again.   I've decided to do that for a while and then alternate between running and the Shred.  Take that old flabby pokey shaky body!
--- 2 ---
We have early voting here in N.C. and I cast my vote yesterday. I appreciate being able to vote early - it gives me more flexibility. My husband on the other hand is very much against early voting.  He prefers to do it on election day.
--- 3 ---
Peter has finally moved to the maintenance phase of his allergy shots. We now only have to go every 4 weeks.  Is it just me or do y'all hear the Hallelujah Chorus too?
--- 4 ---
Peter had to get new sneakers because the ones we got him at the beginning of school had a large hole in them.  I am very annoyed with Puma.  I knew we should have gone with the Nikes but that's what Peter wanted so we went with them.

When we got to the kids section Peter told me he wanted to be left alone.  Sarah and I checked out the ladies shoes and 10 minutes later we went back to check on Peter.  He decided on a pair of Nikes and luckily they had a size 5 1/2.  They felt good so we made the purchase.  These better last through the end of the year.  And now I'm trying to decide if I should contact Puma to see if they can help us out since their shoes barely made it two months.  I guess it couldn't hurt.
--- 5 ---
I'm getting excited about Halloween. Hey - somebody's got to eat all of Peter's Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. And better me than Dan or Sarah.
--- 6 ---
And I wonder why I'm getting flabby, pokey and shaky!!
--- 7 ---
This Frankenstorm they are calling for on the East Coast sounds like bad news to me.  I hope everyone stays safe.
For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at Conversion Diary!

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

We carved our pumpkins on Sunday night after returning from the beach.

Everyone has their own roles.  The kids get to take all the seeds out of the pumpkins.  Dan gets to carve the pumpkin with one or both of the kids looking on.  And I get to cook up the pumpkin seeds.  (They turned out great this year, by the way.  Dan told me to keep that recipe!)











Tuesday, October 23, 2012

A weekend at the beach is good for the soul!

We had a great time at the beach!  The weather was fabulous - upper 70s and sunny.  It was a little cloudy on Friday so we decided to head to Wilmington and ended up taking a cruise on the Cape Fear River.  And we also spent a lot of time playing on the beach and in the water.























And later today or maybe tomorrow, I'll show you what we did as soon as we got home from the beach on Sunday evening....

Ooohhhh....the suspense.  I know it's killing you!

Friday, October 19, 2012

7 Quick Takes Friday


--- 1 ---
We are at the beach for a long weekend of R&R.  The weather should be decent - sunny for most of the weekend with the highs in the low 70s.  The kids and Dan will most likely be swimming in the ocean but I'll be parked on the beach.  I prefer to do my ocean swimming when we are in the upper 80s or lower 90s.
--- 2 ---
Sarah has complained since Monday about some ear pain.  The pain seemed to come and go but finally Wednesday night she said she really wanted to go to the doctor and I didn't want her to wake up at the beach on Friday sick as a dog so I took her yesterday.  She is prone to ear infections (in fact her last one was in July) so I was expecting that as the diagnosis.  The doctor said she had a lot of fluid in her ears and it could potentially turn into an infection.  He thinks her allergies are causing it so told me to give her some Claritin D 12-hour pills.

I hauled to the drug store to get some but mistakenly got the 24 hour slow release version.  I didn't realize this until I was in the parking lot getting ready to give Sarah one and realized they were the size of a horse pill.  I went back inside to get the correct ones but of course, because these are controlled and have to be signed for I wasn't allowed to get the 12 hour pills.  I told the pharmacist that perhaps I would just break them up and she said, "Nope!  Sorry! You can't break the time released pills up because of the whozee whatzits and the blazedee blahs they are made of."

But never fear because my girl swallowed that giant pill.  She totally rocks! 
--- 3 ---
One stop voting started in our state yesterday.  As soon as I get back from the beach I will be casting my ballot.  I'm excited to do it early because as a mom, you never know what's going to come up on the day of the election.  I want to make sure I get it done because if I don't I know I will have a sick kid home all day and not be able to get out to the polls.  (Most likely it will be Sarah with a horrible ear infection...)

--- 4 ---
We get a 90-day trial subscription to Sirius radio with the car.  Yesterday I found the "Hair Nation" station.  Nothing but 80's hair band's.  I felt like I was back in college as I drove to pick the kids up from school.  Except, of course, back in college I didn't have kids.  But other than that - it felt exactly the same.
--- 5 ---
I had to bake a cake for the Cake Walk at the Fall Festival at the kid's school.  The festival is tonight and we are at the beach so we won't even get to go.  But I was a good mom and made a cake anyway.  I made Chocolate Chip Ooey Gooey Butter Bars.  I hope they taste okay.  I really wanted to cut a piece to test if before I dropped it off at school but I figured that wouldn't be cool so I'm just keeping my fingers crossed it tastes okay. 
--- 6 ---
By the way, if you give you daughter a 24-hour Claritin D and are proud because she can swallow the whole big pill.  Don't be. Because the 24-hour Claritin D has double the medicine of the 12-hour Claritin D the doctor prescribed.  And when you pick her up from school she will be very drowsy and complain for several hours that she doesn't feel well. 
--- 7 ---

Looks like I'm out of the running for Mother of the Year.  Again.
 
For more Quick Takes and much better mothering, visit Jen at Conversion Diary!

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Easy Way to Remove Ear Wax

 
Are you growing carrots in there is a question my husband frequently laughingly asks my son whenever he can see earwax in his ears.

I had never heard that expression before but apparently my husband's father used to ask him the same thing and it always makes me look at the carrots we are struggling to grow in our garden and wonder if perhaps we should be growing them in earwax instead of dirt...

It is a constant struggle to keep the ear wax from oozing out of my son's ears.  I know that sounds gross but I think he produces more than the rest of us.

And he hates it when I come at him with a Q-tip but if I didn't, it would be dripping out of his ears.

I have found a way that is a little bit easier than just going at it with a plain Q-tip.

Dip the Q-tip in a little hydrogen peroxide first and then wipe the wax out of the ear canal.  Dip the other end in more hydrogen peroxide and wipe the rest of the ear clean.  

The hydrogen peroxide really helps loosen up the wax and makes the job a little quicker which my son appreciates.  And I like to think that if there really are any carrots (or other things!) growing in there, the hyrdrogen peroxide helps kill them which I really appreciate!

For more tips, visit Kristen at Works For Me Wednesday!


Tuesday, October 16, 2012

DOOMED to make a book jacket.

Sarah is a very independant child.  Except when she wants me to play with her but other than that, she prefers to do things by herself.

Like homework projects.

She has a book project due in the middle of November.  The choices for the project include diorama, book cover, Who Am I?, dress up like the main character and tell about the book, etc.  There were 8 projects to choose from and the kids had to get the book and the project choice approved by the teacher at the beginning of October.  Which left 6 weeks to read the book and complete the project.

Sarah has chosen Ivy and Bean: Doomed to Dance as her book and a book cover as her project.

It was no surprise to me that she choose to do a book cover because my sweet little girl has a book cover collection.  Yes, I know that sounds odd but she has taken every book jacket off every book she has that came with one and keeps them together in her collection. 

This is fine, that she calls this a collection, because technically it is a collection.  However, it was a little embarrassing when Sarah was "Star Student of the Week" a few weeks ago and chose to take a book cover to school and tell about her "collection". I can only imagine what her teacher thought about Dan and I as parents and Sarah's homelife when this is what type of collection she has.  She might as well have a grocery bag collection or a toilet paper tube collection. 

Sarah's best friend at school apprently turned in her project yesterday -  4 weeks early. (Parents that have it together really annoy me.) According to Sarah it was a diorama of Charlotte's web that included Charlotte, the fence post and a really cool spider web. (Creative parents that have it together really, really annoy me.)

This spurred Sarah to action and yesterday when she completed her homework she informed me she was going into her room to work on her book cover.  I was folding laundry at the time and said, "That's nice honey," not really thinking about what she had just said and not really remembering that even the book cover project had 9 different requirements that had to be fulfilled - author blurb including very specific info about the author, paragraph on back to entice someone to want to read the book, summary of the book inside the front flap, made from the large construction paper, etc.

30 minutes later, Sarah emerged from her room with two pieces of typing paper stapled together and a drawing of one of the main characters as a skeleton dressed in a tutu.

"How does this look, Mom?" she excitedly asked expecting my answer to be full of high praise.

"Um...not too good honey," I began cautiously knowing that this was going to end with Sarah screaming, crying and locked in her room.  And how to I know this?  I haven't mothered this child for 8 years without knowing a little bit about how things are going to go down.

"What's wrong with it?"  she questioned. "Look, I even made a spine on it."  She had cut a strip of manilla folder and stapled/glued/some how made it stay onto the cover right where the book spine would be.  (I really didn't have the heart at this point to tell her that a book jacket doesn't have a spine because I knew it was going to get really ugly pretty fast without having to point that out.)

"Well for starters, it's not very neat.  And why is there a skeleton wearing a tutu on here?"  I knew there was no skeleton in the story.

"Because they are DOOMED to dance," she said in her you-don't-know-anything voice. 

I told her this would be a good start, a rough (very rough draft) perhaps, but she would not be able to turn that in.

Then the crying and door slamming began.  I let the hystrionics go on for a few minutes before I fished out the instruction sheet from a giant pile of school papers I keep piled up organized on the top of the refrigerator and began reading the requirements of the project to her.

She finally calmed down, especially when I started tickling her, and she said, "But I made a spine for the cover.  Can I least keep the spine?"

"Yes, honey, you can keep the spine," I told her.  Because seriously, if she wants her book jacket to have a spine, who am I to stop her?

After all, she is a book jacket collector. 


As I was tucking her in bed last night, I looked around on her bed.  Piled on top of her comforter were several old Halloween books she pulled off her book shelf.  The books were laid open to pages with pictures of skeletons.  Y'all my heart just melted. She had done a little skeleton research to make sure she got the skeleton drawn correctly.  

Monday, October 15, 2012

Big Red

We got it!  The kids have named her Big Red and we couldn't be happier. 



She's a 2009 Explorer.  She has less than 24,000 miles on her.  She has only a few tiny scratches on the exterior and did I mention? She's red!

Is it annoying that I keep calling her a she?  Probably.  Just for you then, I will do my best to refer to all cars in this post as "it" instead of "she" so as not to be annoying.

I have always loved a red car.  When my dad got me my first car at the age of 16, I told him, "Get me anything as long as it's not brown or green."  And I was secretly hoping for red.  And guess what he came home with?

Yep.  A brown car.  Technically, it was a copper-colored 1980 Honda Accord. (This was in 1986). My heart sank when I saw it was brown but I quickly got over my 16-year-old self myself when I realized - I HAD A CAR! 

My friends and I named it the Copper Penny.  And let me tell you, that car was a good one until we sold it in 1993. I had just gotten my first real job out of college and bought myself a two door Saturn SC2.  And guess what color it was? 

It was red.  Oh how I loved that car!  I sold that car in 2002 when we bought the Explorer.  And while I loved the black Explorer I secretly missed having a red car. 

Now I just have to make sure the kids don't scratch it with their bikes, get dirt on the interior, eat anything in it and... Who am I kidding?  It will probably be full of mismatched shoes, used Kleenex, and missing homework assignments by the end of the week.

Oh well... at least she's RED!!!!

Friday, October 12, 2012

7 Quick Takes Friday


--- 1 ---
I'm going to test drive the new used car either this afternoon or tomorrow morning. I hope I like it because not having a car all week has been a huge pain.  And not even a pain for me...a pain for my parents who have let me borrow theirs all week while my husband's car has been sitting the airport in Charlotte waiting on him to arrive home from Germany.

If you are scratching your head wondering why I didn't just use his car and take him to the airport, it's because the airport is over an hour away and in order to get him there and pick him up from there, lots of schedules would have to have been rearranged and more help requested of my parents and it was just easier this way.  Sort of.  Anyway, car problems are a huge hassle and I am thankful that I have my parents next door and I am thankful that they don't seem to mind me borrowing their car. Although I bet they are keeping their fingers crossed that I like the car I'm going to test drive.
--- 2 ---
Since my husband has been gone all week, I have had to take the kids to school in the morning.  I much prefer getting them out the door with waves and kisses and immediately going for a run over driving them all the way to school and then driving all the way back and then starting my run when I am normally done with it.  So if anyone asks why my house is dirtier than normal and why very few items got checked off my to-do list this week, I'm blaming it on that.  Totally blaming it on that.
--- 3 ---
I'm signing both kids up for community basketball next week.  This should be interesting.  Sarah has played for the last three years and still really doesn't seem to understand what's going on.  I'm hoping that it all finally clicks this season. Peter has never played basketball but he wants to give community ball a shot this season so he can try out for the school basketball team next year.  The problem with this big plan however, is that once Peter gets home from school it is like prying white off rice to get him to go anywhere else for the evening.  I'm already dreading practices. Although his best friend is playing too so I'm hoping that will spur him more happily and more readily to practice.  Fingers. Crossed. 
--- 4 ---
This week Peter has been working on his Pentatonic Block Scale.  It sounds really cool and if I was a real spiffy blogger, I would film it and put the clip on ye old blog so you could hear it.  But, I'm a lazy blogger so you'll just have to imagine a piano scale only way cooler because it's on the guitar.

--- 5 ---
Sarah let a toot on the way to school this morning and I said (like I always do), "You better go to the bathroom when you get to school."  And the kids said, (like they always do), "Why do you always think that just because someone toots they have to go to the bathroom?"  Um, because they always do. 

Of course, this happened just as we were pulling into the school.  I felt really bad for the poor teacher that opened the car door and got bombarded with that stink.  But I felt worse for me because, HOW EMBARRASSING!
--- 6 ---
Speaking of odors, I have noticed an odor coming from upstairs all week.  It was a stale, old, foot smell.  I sniffed around and thought it was coming from Sarah's room but I never could quite pinpoint it.  Until I realized that I wore these on our hike on Saturday and mistakenly put them in my upstairs closet. 
--- 7 ---
And speaking of running shoes, aren't my new ones adorbs? 

 Is it pathetic when a 43-year-old woman uses cutesy abrevs?  Probably.  But whatevs.

For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at Conversion Diary!

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Pilot Mountain (Or Mount Pilot if you are a fan of the Andy Griffith Show)

On Saturday morning we headed out bright and early for a hike with Peter's Cub Scout Den.  The thing I hate about bright and early on a Saturday is that it's so bright and early. Immediately after I packed the picnic lunch into the car, we headed to Sheetz for a large cup of coffee and then caravaned to Pilot Mountain with the rest of the families.

Here are a few shots from the morning:












I discovered that the nice thing about heading out bright and early on a Saturday morning is that you still have plenty of time to do other exciting things - like housework!