Twilight

I got Twilight at the library today. I'm still debating on if I should watch it or not. I wasn't a huge fan of the books...to much over done teenage romance but I feel like I'd be missing a huge part of pop culture if I don't at least check the first one out. Yes I'm a weirdo.

I Heart Craigslist!

Thanks to Craigslist my kids can once again watch PBS! We scanned the adds a couple of days and even went to look at a TV last Friday. The girl had an earlier person though who said they would pay 75 for the TV if she would hold it. We said no thanks, we didn't want to match or beat. Then Sunday we saw a TV listed for 20 bucks. Thanks to the switch to digital airwaves and flat screen monitors people are willing to say goodbye to good TVs for a lot less. We called up the girl and are now the proud owners of a new to us 27 inch TV. The picture quality is good and we are happy! Craigslist makes it possible to never pay retail again. Hurray.

A Day In The Life...

Dr. J has recently started rotations and so I feel like I've almost entered real life (real life being not school life :) Here is what today looks like

5:00 - The alarm goes off. Dr. J hits snooze. I start nursing Peach.
5:09 - I ask if he is getting up. Yes he says.
5:20 - Peach is moved to her crib so mom and dad can have some alone time.
5:30 - Obviously not a lot of time was needed (TMI I know but this is married life with three kids people). Dr. J hits the shower, I put on work out clothes and go for a quick jog.
5:55 - I come home and pack a quick lunch, Dr. J leaves for the VA Hospital an hour away.
6:00-6:20- I do some light weights.
6:20-6:35 - Shower
6:40 - I crawl back in bed for a twenty minute snooze.
7:00 - Back to nursing Peach.
7:20 - Start yelling at the kids to get out of bed.
7:20-8:10 - Get G Bear, Big E, and Peach dressed, hair done, and teeth brushed.
8:10-8:25 - Feed the kids cinnamon toast, milk, and fruit.
8:25-8:35 - Drive Big E to school. Walk him in since he is still a little wary about the whole thing.
8:40-2:30 - Free time. Wash dishes, mop floor. Read books to G Bear. Organize dresser. Nurse Peach a zillion more times. Check e-mail. Write Blog. Nurse Peach again. Play games with G Bear. Dance to music with G Bear. Make lunch. Load kids into the car to pick up Big E from school.
2:30-3:10 - Drive to school and wait in crazy line with other parents. Unload kids, walk to school doors, pick up E, load kids in car drive home.
3:40-5:30 - Play with E and G. Feed Peach some more.
5:30-6:00 - Start dinner. Dr. J comes home. Wants to go for a bike ride to unwind.
6:00-6:30 - eat
6:30-7:30 - entertain children
7:30-8:30 - Try and wrestle kids into pjs and into bed.
8:30-10:00 - Nurse Peach. Read trashy book. Listen to Dr. J complain about how he can't get anything done because he has to entertain the kids after he gets home (the result of having him watch them Tuesday night while I went to a woman's group).
10 - pass out so I can do it all over again in the morning.

Despite all this I've decided I'm a school mom. I love the schedule. Summer is fun, but you sleep late, you don't eat until nine, don't get dressed until ten, spend all your time at the pool, and never clean your house. School days might be stressful but by 8:35 everyone is dressed, has eaten, and is gone. Chores get done. Meals get made. And you have more time to work on doing cool projects. This week I had some picture printed off. I framed them and hung them up in my living room next to my papyrus of the judgment. They turned out pretty awesome. When I pulled them out at Sam's to check them out, and said, "Cool." The photo lady said, "Oh we loved these. We usually don't make comments about people's pictures, but we all definitely liked these ones." If you are looking for a place to get big prints Sam's is an awesome place to do it. For each 11 by 16 I only paid two dollars and change.

Day 2

Today E gets in the car. I ask him if he talked today. He said, "No." I told him, "Everyone is scared when they go to Kindergarten. Even your friend T said he was scared." He says, "I'm not scared I just don't want to talk." Mom is a basket case.

Kindergarten

Today my oldest went to his first day of kindergarten. Last night Dr. J gave him a beautiful father's blessing. He blessed him that he would love learning, that he would be a good example, and that he would have good experiences and make good friends. We then tucked him into bed. Little E asked his dad to cuddle with him and tell him stories about his first day of kindergarten. Of course Dr. J told him he didn't let his mom walk him in. He also told him that he wrote his name in all capitals and the teacher asked him to write it with lower case letters. At this point little E started shaking. He said, "We need to practice doing that. I don't know how to do that." This is of course not completely true. I originally taught him to write his name that way, but when he learned capitals he never wanted to go back. Anyway back to last night he was shaking and asked his dad to cuddle him. This morning he woke up and put his uniform on. I asked him if he wanted to wear shorts. He told me no. I then asked him to come downstairs for breakfast. He told me he didn't want cereal because it would take to long. He then ate raisin bran. It was one of those mornings. After a quick picture, I loaded him up in the car along with G-bear and Peach. We drove to the school and like his dad 25 years before he just jumped out of the car and walked in the doors. To G-bears distress mom instantly started crying. I pulled it together enough to drive home, where the thought of him at school is enough to tear me up. I'm excited for my son but I'm also nervous for him. It seems like all the anxiety I had as a child is now magnified in my parent state. At one point this morning the school called. The conversation went like this. "Hi Mrs ____, this is so-n-so from _____ school, everything is OK." At which point I'm thinking, why are you calling than. "We just wanted to know if Little E would eat a hamburger for lunch. We've asked him but he isn't talking much." "Is he talking at all," I asked? "Well really not a whole lot. He's being rather shy, but don't worry he will start up soon enough." "Well he should eat a hamburger," I tell him. She says, "Great," and hangs up. I start to cry. Dr. J left this morning at 5:50 for the first day of his internal medicine rotation in a town an hour away. I have to say I'm relieved he isn't here to see how hard it is for me not to hoover.

RIP TV

Our children killed out TV. First they put high power magnets on it. That pulled the color and we ended up with two huge circles that only had the color green on the screen. For three weeks we've been watching it like that. Then they killed the attached VCR. We think they got a movie stuck and tried to pull it out. The VCR now thinks there is a movie in but when it won't play it shuts the TV off after about ten seconds. It is dead. I remember when we got that TV seven years ago. We'd just gotten married and didn't have a TV. At the time we really didn't need one. With school, work, and a new marriage we were plenty busy :) One weekend though our father in law came into town and asked what sports my husband had watched lately. Dr. J said well not a whole lot, we don't have a TV. Papa Bryant called us from the road the next day to tell us he'd left us a little gift at his sisters. We went by and it was the TV. Since then it has become a part of our family. With our income dates are few and far between but we got a netflix subscription and we have a weekly date night on the couch. Need a Sunday nap, put on a veggie tales and veg out on the couch next the kids. So it was a sad day. What activities can you do without a TV?

Lots of reading. Thank goodness for the library.
Bike rides.
Play at the playground.
Art projects, although this ended in a door covered in stick people when mom had to go nurse the baby.
Dancing to music.
Dress up.
Playing with toys. I don't know why but our kid just don't like their own toys.

It has been ok, although there was one point where Little E wanted to watch a movie and kept screaming, "Plug it in. Plug it in." I have friends that never watch TV but I'll fully admit I miss it. I miss having a second to get something done while the kids watch a movie. I also miss the extra noise. I told Dr. J cleaning the living room up isn't nearly so fun when I don't have some background noise :) Plus there goes our weekend movie night. We watched "Taken" on our portable DVD player last night. Let's just say thrillers aren't nearly so thrilling on nine inches of screen. I think it is time to check out Craigslist.

Jealous

I have to admit I'm totally jealous. When I was a kid I had this list of things I wanted to do in my life...one involved being in an article in National Geographic. My awesome little sister happens to be down in Peru right now working digging out mummies for a professor at her school. This morning she sent me this.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090714-peru-chotuna-video-ap.html

She is the one in the brown t-shirt. It isn't an article but it is pretty darn close! Congrats Jo-Jo!

Harry Potter

The sixth Harry Potter movie is out today. I'm trying to figure out if I can sneak a viewing in. I wonder what my baby sitter would think of being stuck with my five week old. Shoot!

Inkheart and the neighbor

We watched the movie Inkheart tonight with our children. It was ok, not great, but good enough. Last winter I read the book in preparation for the movie coming out. At the time I remember thinking, "What a fabulous idea. It is to bad someone else didn't write it." So great idea, so/so story. Halfway through the movie there was a knock on the door. It was our old neighbor, the one who used to watch our coming and goings through the window with a scowl on her face, the neighbor who never smiled or returned a hi, the neighbor who complained to the office about our "excessive" kid noises, the neighbor who actually pounded on our wall one night when she thought Jason and I were talking to loudly in bed. She is part of the reason we moved. Her negativity was stressing me out. She had come by the invite me to a Mary Kay party. I'll admit I was half way tempted to go, just to see here in another element, but the fact that there is absolutely no way I'd buy anything which would probably hamper our relationship even more makes me think it is probably not a good idea.

Family Bed

I have a daughter who does not like to sleep in her own bed. Said daughter is currently attached to my left "nibble" while I type away. She could care less that the laptop is burning my knees and perched precariously close to her head. She doesn't seem to mind that after having her fall asleep five times only to wake up seconds after I carefully snuck her into her bed that I'm feeling a little on edge. She wants to co-sleep. It is who she is. If she can't feel moms flesh on her face she gets distressed. Such is her commitment that she will grab a fist full of my shirt in order to gauge when I'm going to try and lay her down. Any sudden moves and she, even in deep sleep, will grab even tighter, twisting the fabric in between her baby fingers. I feel like a prisoner chained to the warden. Some might ask, "Well Crys, why do you mind having her in your bed. If she sleeps so well there, why not just leave her?" The truth is that mother does not sleep well having her there. Most nights I just can't sleep soundly knowing she is floating around somewhere in the sheets between mother and father. On the chance I do sleep soundly something horrible happens to remind me of why I shouldn't. Last night in exhaustion I passed out with her on my breast. At five I woke up to find her wedged head first between me and her father. In a panic I pulled her from between us by the leg. She started screaming, I started freaking out, neither of us was happy. Of course father didn't rouse for a second. One more reason I worry about having such a small feeble thing in bed with two huge monsters. And so I wonder how will I get her into her crib on the sixth try.

Circumcision or Not?

For a variety of reasons when my son was born we choose not to have him circumcised. At the time we thought we were being fairly progressive putting off the chains of tradition and we had three grandmothers who mainly because of the traumatized feelings they felt watching their sons circumcised were pushing us that direction as well. The first three years were not a problem but the last two we've been battling it out with recurrent foreskin infections. We've taught our son proper hygiene in the bath and when going to the bathroom. My sister often laughs at me because when she comes out to visit she is always hearing me yell, "E pull your foreskin back." Reminders and help are not always enough though. As our son has gotten older he has become more and more resistant to our advice and our meddling with his "personal space". This all came to a head with the recent birth of our third child. While mom was in the hospital and out of commission dad was in charge. Somehow the boy managed to avoid taking a shower for about a week. That is all the bacteria needed. By the time E mentioned that his foreskin was red he was in the mist of a full blown infection. Oral antibiotics had to be procured. Since then we've been particularly vigilant about making sure he bathes everyday but then yesterday he informed me he had another infection. I spoke with the doctor today to try and figure out how such a clean child could possibly be getting another infection. She told me that if by chance he'd not rinsed all the soap from under the foreskin that irritation could have led to another infections. Good grief. So today I left the doctor's with a referral in hand for a urologist. I'm not saying we are going to do anything drastic but we are certainly going to talk it out with someone who knows more than us and weigh all of our options. At this moment I'm kicking myself for not having him circumcised when he was born. Of course circumcision isn't always the peachy path. A friend recently had to take her son in for reconstructive surgery to fix a botched circumcision. Here is something to keep in mind though. Not circumcising your child raises the chances of getting infections 10 times. It makes you wonder what the point of that little piece of skin is.

Just for clarification:
A) My son is one of those lucky kids who has a fully retractable foreskin. We didn't force it back when he was a baby we left it alone, as instructed by the doctor, the same doctor who now tells me he should pull back his foreskin to urinate and when he bathes. We let it do it's own thing, after a while the skin cells just separated out. My guess it the fact that he has a retractable foreskin is the reason for this. The doctor probably doesn't want pee getting in there and staying in between the two separate layers of skin. He is very pro foreskin so I don't think he's trying to sabotage me.
B) While I agree the cleaning regiment is excessive and may have been the cause of the more recent red irritation, the raw meat horribly swollen infection three weeks I'm positive was the result of skipping bathes for a week and a half. Most of his infections have been the direct result of similar situations although never before has he managed to get out of bathing for so long. Keeping under the foreskin clean is something we were told to do by the doctor and is the practice my hubby has been doing for 31 years. He's never had any problems with infections like this. Maybe I'm just the lucky mom to get to deal with it :)

I never knew people felt so passionately about this. Thanks for all the comments and advice on foreskin care.

Accessories

In my house it is all about accessories. Both my older kids love to dress up, although as shown below dressing up does not necessarily involve clothing! My only problem is when the dress ups start to hinder regular life. You will often see little E at the store in a race care driver costume or G bear riding her trike in high heels. Today I had to draw the line. We were going to fireworks and G bear wanted to wear these ridiculous high heels. I knew we'd be walking and tromping over a field with bugs and told her she had to wear socks and regular shoes. She cried for ten minutes, holding her high heels squealing, "My shoes, my pretty shoes!"

Our Other Additions

So I realize I've been a little behind on my posting. Several factors have contributed, none of them interesting at all. But here are three more new additions we've taken on in the last few months.
Our patio garden. I knew this year I wouldn't be able to manage a huge garden so I bought this little baby at Sam's. It was missing one of the poles so I got it for half price. I then called the company and they shipped me out the pole. Brilliant! We have seven tomato plants and one cucumber coming out the bottom. We also have four pepper plants and lettuce growing at the top. We've already harvested three peppers and have tons more coming as well as lots of green tomatoes. The only downside...you have to water often. With so many plants counting on such a small area of soil for water, they get droopy fast.

Our minivan! I drove a minivan my senior year of high school. At the time I found the experience exceptionally embarrassing. Now I'm a mom with three kids and I love it. We actually bought this one used from my father-n-law's dealership and he drove it out to us. I absolutely love this car. It has tons of go, comfy seats, plenty of room for all of our car seats, and a stow-n-go rear seat (my favorite option). The first time my friend Deane saw me flip the seat at a garage sale she declared me the new garage sale driver. We've used this feature to bring home a much larger dining room table and a really nice dresser. It isn't a truck, but it is a more comfortable next best thing! I should point out this is the same car my younger sister bought last year...yes I totally copied her.
Our dishwasher. My friend Jess sold us her portable dishwasher when she moved out of town. It is nice to have, especially when we have guest but oddly enough I still prefer to wash dishes by hand. I guess that is what seven years of dish washing by hand will get you. I do still love it for disinfecting things though...especially baby bottles or binkies that baby peaches siblings will not leave alone!