So for whatever reason, Blogspot won't let me upload videos so you will have to click on the links below to view the videos on Flickr. Note you might want to turn up the volume on your computers.
La petite artiste #1 (T explains her bird art)
La petite artiste #2 (T explains her banana, self portrait and the blue painting)
La petite artiste #3 (T explains her banana artwork in further detail, including how one might eat it)
La petite artiste #4 (T explains her school bus and her portrait in great detail) Note this clip seems to have been cut off because after I asked her what colour her nose was, I got a "MOMMA!"
La petite artiste #5 (T becomes a f;ustered artist and stomps off set)
La petite artiste #6 (T explains the bird craft at length)
La petite artiste #7 (T explains the big red apple)
La petite artiste #8 (T explains the hippo puppet she made at zoo camp)
Look out Lance Armstrong/Biking in the garage (T has greatly improved since these where filmed; I move the car to the driveway and she has free rein to toodle around the garage at break neck speeds on her bike).
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
My growing boy!
Its all how you look at it.
Yes, my kids are small. I accepted that months ago. The medical community still seem to expect my children to be huge. Neither of them started off that way so why should be now?
Doctors seem to want kids to be in the higher percentiles until they start school. Then after that if they continue to be bigger than average, they are overweight. Seriously? I give up.
R had his 4 month well baby visit. Yes, technically he is 5 months old as of today at 9pm, however he was 5 weeks early. I like to think of him more as 4 months old than 5. He's pretty close to where T was developmentally at 5 months but I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt.
He weighted in at 14lbs. That's nearly triple his birth weight. Triple! But that didn't stop the doctor (whom I do adore) from joking that he's still quite small. He was 5 lbs when he was born, that's 9 lbs in 5 months! He weighs nearly half of T for pete's sake! I'm beyond thrilled! He wears 3-6 month clothes! Yay! Scoff if you want but I'm over the moon.
Sure, he's short. So is T. He has a big head like T did. Most of the boys in T's preschool who are her age are not much taller than she is!
As for his kidney condition, we will get it rescanned in December and see if he is any better, worse or the same. For now we will stick with his preventative meds and keep feeding him. Age and growth often helps to lessen the inflammation. There is usually a vein that is pushing the uter out of the proper position which causes the inflammation so growth helps to straighten things out. The meds just help protect against any kidney infections that might develop because of hydronephrosis.
I will send out a post and maybe a video or two this afternoon if I get a chance. I got T to do some little videos explaining her crafts from class. They are uber cute.
Must run, his royal fussiness wants to eat!
Yes, my kids are small. I accepted that months ago. The medical community still seem to expect my children to be huge. Neither of them started off that way so why should be now?
Doctors seem to want kids to be in the higher percentiles until they start school. Then after that if they continue to be bigger than average, they are overweight. Seriously? I give up.
R had his 4 month well baby visit. Yes, technically he is 5 months old as of today at 9pm, however he was 5 weeks early. I like to think of him more as 4 months old than 5. He's pretty close to where T was developmentally at 5 months but I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt.
He weighted in at 14lbs. That's nearly triple his birth weight. Triple! But that didn't stop the doctor (whom I do adore) from joking that he's still quite small. He was 5 lbs when he was born, that's 9 lbs in 5 months! He weighs nearly half of T for pete's sake! I'm beyond thrilled! He wears 3-6 month clothes! Yay! Scoff if you want but I'm over the moon.
Sure, he's short. So is T. He has a big head like T did. Most of the boys in T's preschool who are her age are not much taller than she is!
As for his kidney condition, we will get it rescanned in December and see if he is any better, worse or the same. For now we will stick with his preventative meds and keep feeding him. Age and growth often helps to lessen the inflammation. There is usually a vein that is pushing the uter out of the proper position which causes the inflammation so growth helps to straighten things out. The meds just help protect against any kidney infections that might develop because of hydronephrosis.
I will send out a post and maybe a video or two this afternoon if I get a chance. I got T to do some little videos explaining her crafts from class. They are uber cute.
Must run, his royal fussiness wants to eat!
Monday, October 18, 2010
It was so a Monday....
If I'm having a bad day, I don't have even have to check the calendar. I just know its a Monday. How do I know its a Monday? Something always goes wrong.
My Monday mornings are filled with making a lunch for T then packing her and R up in the car for the very short trip over to her kids program. Sounds easy enough, right?I drop her off and then run errands before briefly touching down at home to fed R and me before picking her up again. I have four straight hours with just one kid but those four hours seem to just fly by....way too quickly I might add.
My Monday mornings are filled with productive errands. Its the Monday afternoons that seem to be a challenge. Not only is T exhausted when she gets home but the 'powers that be' seem to think its funny to throw monkey wrenches into my plans.
Last week it was T putting a DVD into the player and having it jam up the machine.
I had to first take the DVD disc player apart. Then I had to take the 5 disc carousel apart to rescue a precious Wiggles DVD that had jammed up the gears.
After 45 minutes of removing screws, getting out the tweezers, extracting the DVD then trying to figure out where the screws where supposed to go, it was all fixed. Ever notice that no matter how hard you try, you always end up with more screws than you seem to have holes that they fit into?
As I replaced the player into its slot in the entertainment centre, the cat purred a You go girl!, R gurgled a congrats and a very grateful 3 year old promised to never touch the DVD player again.
This week?
Well, let me start with the fact that I hadn't planned on running errands this AM. It was going to be a quick drop off for T and then home.
Why? R is teething and is very cranky. Yesterday's trip to the pumpkin patch was interspersed with my very grumpy boy's very verbal complaints that he didn't care to participate in selecting pumpkins thank you very much. He just wanted to nap in the quiet of his room. Truth be told, I could have done without the crowds too.
But a quiet morning at home was not in the cards this week.
No, I had to get formula at Target. And well, a trip to Target wouldn't be complete without scanning the clearance racks in the kids clothing department. I was after all already in the kids section to get formula, right? Then there was the DVD display with the new release of a movie T had mentioned she'd like. It was bundled with the both the DVD and Blu Ray edition. Makes sense to plan ahead for Christmas, right?
Then it was off to a local lumber yard to track down corner trim pieces. That involved two stops. One to the original store to pick up 6 pieces, then one to their storage yard down the road to pick up 6 more pieces that were at the warehouse.
I swear I was the only XX chromosome in either of the lumber places. At least I didn't get "Well, hi there little lady, what can we help you with today?" That would have been very bad.
Then it was time to return home for a quiet morning of house cleaning...yeah right. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I got a couple of items ticked off my list before I discovered my laptop had been attacked by gremlins.
By gremlins, I mean it wouldn't start. Not. At. All. Apparently a .dll file had gone missing.
Missing DLLs have been going missing on my laptop for sometime now. I guess the gremlins have found a new food source!
This time however it wasn't just a dialog box, alerting me that I needed to do something. No, it completely prevented even the login screen from coming up. It just sat there, staring at me., going Nana Nana Boo Boo, too bad for you! R napped in his seat so I had time to try to find a solution.
I knew the day was coming that I would have to reimage my laptop so I knew exactly where the boot and install disks where located. But that didn't mean I remembered how to do a reinstall. Its been a while.
Truth be told, I've never been a hands-on PC tech. Basic troubleshooting is about as far as I get without Google. And only having acces to Google, on my smart phone just wasn't cutting it.
Then R needed to eat. The clock ticked closer to the time I needed to be leaving to pickup T.
No, re-imaging my computer wasn't in the cards for this morning, thank you very much. No, I had other plans. Au contraire, ma cherie, but it was. One thing I learned from last time was to store all things important on the D drive otherwise you lose them when you have to reinstall everything. That was the only smart thing I did in preparation for today.
After several attempts to get the boot disk to work, I figured out what I was doing wrong. The system BIOS isn't the most explicit in explaining how to do this (nor where the instructions from the manufacturer that came with the boot disk).
And in my defense, I've only had to do a full install a handful of times in my life so I'm cutting myself some slack on how long things took. I even debated on spending 50$ to get the local geeks to look at it.
After I got the initial re-image done, it was off to pick up T. That went relatively well, all things considered.
Upon returning home, the laptop had to take a back seat to T's need to eat (since she didn't eat her lunch while she was out), R's need to nap/eat and then T's absolute need to ride her bike.
Once everyone was fed and watered, I returned to restoring my PC. There were about 37 Microsoft updates, programs to reinstall, favourites to import and of course laundry to be done.
Wait, why was there laundry to do? I just did a major load of kids clothes yesterday. We should be all caught up right? RIGHT?
Oh no. T got paint on her new (albeit cheap) shirt and R, well he decided to add a little laundry of his own.
R had gone down for a nap but decided that he wasn't too into sleeping or playing. So I did the thing that always works in this situation, put him in his swing. TO add a little spice to his day, he has taken to leaning in his swing on a 45 degree angle. He's tied in and normally, this isn't too much of an issue, I just prop him back up and all is good.
However, today was Monday and that just won't do. No, I didn't noticed his position until I heard that sound that every parent dreads. The "thunder from down under" could be clearly heard across the room. I chuckled to myself when I heard it that it was going to be bad.
My worst nightmare did not come close. Within seconds of checking on R in the swing, I could see that I was in for yet another load laundry.
There was poop EVERYWHERE. Little boys seem to have a habit of shooting it straight up their backs and out of their diapers. But this time it was a little more than up the back...it was out the side, down the leg and all over the swing's cover...charming.
Ah yes, it was Monday. Go big or go home, baby! My boy went big.
If I happened to have missed the constant gnawing on his thumb, the crankiness or the burgeoning white buds on his gums, I couldn't miss the crazy bad poopy diapers that accompany my children's teething.
R had to have a bath. R's dislike of the bath tub or any form of bathing rivals the cats'. In fact, the cats take to having baths better than R. I have to say that the howling does get to you after a while.
If the howling wasn't enough, T wanted to help. Apparently Scooby Doo just wasn't as interesting as R covered in poop!
So here I sit at nearly 12am at night, still trying to get things back to 'normal' on my computer. Everything of value has been backup-ed, just in case when I go to turn on my laptop tomorrow, it really does decide to finally go bust.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Oh Mom, those are just love thumps
I've written often about the feline curmudgeon I live with. His name is Gryffin and he is not fond of small children. In particular a loud 3 year old who lives with me too.
Yes, Gryffin now tolerates T, he always has but he gives her a wide birth. Because of this, I always know when T gets up in the morning, even before she opens her door.
Gryffin likes to sit quietly on my lap as I enjoy those last few moments of solitude and sip my coffee, soaking up any attention he can get. Without warning, he stops purring, tenses and his ears perk. That's the first sign that T is moving around in her room. I can't hear any noise but those feline ears can, despite his age.
With R, Gryffin has been different. Gryffin seems to have taken a shining to the boy. He makes a beeline for R's room the minute I go to put him down for a nap. He even sits in there after I've put R down for a nap.
In fairness to my feline friend, he did this too with T, however it didn't happen until she was nearly 2 years old. R is only 4 or so months old. T was equally as quiet as R at the same age, so it can't be it.
Tonight, as I fed R his last bit of formula, I rocked R in our rocking chair. I wasn't seated more than a minute when the door was pushed open and a little grey furry body made its way into the dimly lit room. Gryffin proceeded to make room on my lap for both R and him.
At one point, he turned his head opposite R's (after I might add, Gryffin gave R some love nudges with his nose) and thumped him with his tail. You know, love thumps. I think Gryffin figures that R is supposed to pet him. R was too tired to care or to comment.
The tail love thumps are what Gryffin does to us adults when he wants attention. He stands quietly by our legs and whacks us with his tail kinda like "Hello, I'm here therefore you must pet me. Now." He can be rather passive aggressive when he wants to be, unlike Phenix who is right there up your face when she wants attention.
I shouldn't complain though, at least Gryffin likes one of the kids. I think the reason he comes in when its nap or bedtime is that the kids are usually quieter and he can snuggle right along with us.
No pain, no gain seems to be his motto with the junior set. He wants attention and he will tolerate the kids to get it. Or maybe he is just mellowing with age.
For whatever his reason is, I don't care, its just nice to have everyone together.
Yes, Gryffin now tolerates T, he always has but he gives her a wide birth. Because of this, I always know when T gets up in the morning, even before she opens her door.
Gryffin likes to sit quietly on my lap as I enjoy those last few moments of solitude and sip my coffee, soaking up any attention he can get. Without warning, he stops purring, tenses and his ears perk. That's the first sign that T is moving around in her room. I can't hear any noise but those feline ears can, despite his age.
With R, Gryffin has been different. Gryffin seems to have taken a shining to the boy. He makes a beeline for R's room the minute I go to put him down for a nap. He even sits in there after I've put R down for a nap.
In fairness to my feline friend, he did this too with T, however it didn't happen until she was nearly 2 years old. R is only 4 or so months old. T was equally as quiet as R at the same age, so it can't be it.
Tonight, as I fed R his last bit of formula, I rocked R in our rocking chair. I wasn't seated more than a minute when the door was pushed open and a little grey furry body made its way into the dimly lit room. Gryffin proceeded to make room on my lap for both R and him.
At one point, he turned his head opposite R's (after I might add, Gryffin gave R some love nudges with his nose) and thumped him with his tail. You know, love thumps. I think Gryffin figures that R is supposed to pet him. R was too tired to care or to comment.
The tail love thumps are what Gryffin does to us adults when he wants attention. He stands quietly by our legs and whacks us with his tail kinda like "Hello, I'm here therefore you must pet me. Now." He can be rather passive aggressive when he wants to be, unlike Phenix who is right there up your face when she wants attention.
I shouldn't complain though, at least Gryffin likes one of the kids. I think the reason he comes in when its nap or bedtime is that the kids are usually quieter and he can snuggle right along with us.
No pain, no gain seems to be his motto with the junior set. He wants attention and he will tolerate the kids to get it. Or maybe he is just mellowing with age.
For whatever his reason is, I don't care, its just nice to have everyone together.
Tickling the Butterflies!
One thing you find in Kansas aside from loads of Wizard of Oz references, tornadoes and lots of wind, is grass.
Grass comes in all shapes and sizes. Some are thin, some are tall, some have tassel like ends, and some have bushy tails. Personally, I find it all fascinating. Yes, I know its just grass but it's just kinda interesting. You don't find a lot of interesting things on the prairie so you have to take what you can get.
The later, the ones with the bushy tails (it resembles a fox's tail) is the kind that has taken up root in my front garden. Let's just say I almost needed a machete to hack through the front garden this afternoon when for the first time since April, it got weeded. Apparently it was a good year for weeds.
Talia too has taken a liking to the bushy tail variety.
I have a huge blanket flower plant in the front garden that resides next to the fox tailed grass. I just I bought this year and it has taken over one side of my front garden.
Its a sea of yellow blossoms save for one splash of red from a petunia plant that grew there all on its own. The Kansas wind does its best to leave little surprises to my garden by depositing seedlings when I'm not looking.
The butterflies and moths seem to like the yellow blanket flowers too. T seems to like the bushy grass next to the yellow blanket flowers. She likes the grass not for any aesthetic reason but just because its great for 'tickling'.
Her father taught her this on a few walks we've taken around the neighbourhood. S grabs some stray grass and points it at T and goes 'tickle, tickle, tickle!' The game starts, T squeals and S runs away. Think a game of tag with a piece of grass. The game continues until they both get tired of it.
Oh what fun, right?! Not if you are a butterfly or moth.
T likes to use the fox tailed grass 'tickle' the butterflies and moths. Let's just say, the butterflies and moths are not so fond of being tickled.
As I start to pull the fox tailed grass, T squeals and says "Oh there my tickle grass!"...Oh dear look out bugs. As I pull weeds, I hear 'tickle, tickle, tickle' coming from my right.
She flops the head of the bushy grass on top of the butterflies and moths perched on the yellow blanket flowers. She squeals 'Tickle, tickle!' as she does.
As one can expect, the flying critters don't stay long after Ms Thing starts with the tickling. Its a good thing they don't have stingers or T would be in trouble.
The conversation that follows goes something like this:
T - "Awwwww! Where'd they all go Momma? I want to tickle them!"
Me - "I'm afraid my dear girl, they don't want to be tickled."
T - "But why?"
Fair question but how do you explain why butterflies don't want to be tickled to a curious 3 year old.
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