Perspective

At this time of year when we're all gaining weight and feeling fat, seeing this can help keep things in perspective.  If only those ducks weighed a little more.....

A Tale of Two Vaccinations

Late last month my husband was out of town and I found myself facing a dual round of vaccinations for my kids.  That's right, BOTH of my children were getting shots on the same day AND I had to deal with it alone.  I knew this was a bad idea, but I didn't have much choice.  For the record, I strenuously recommend against having more than one child vaccinated at a time if you can at possibly avoid it.  It was an awful experience.

I do enjoy a good spreadsheet, so I made one in honor of the occasion.  Can you guess which child is high-strung like Mommy and which one is laid-back?

Something that was not on that spreadsheet, but is definitely worth mentioning is how Katherine refused to walk anywhere for two whole days after her shots.  She dragged herself around the floor, moaning, carrying whatever toy she had in her teeth.  (Sorry, I don't have photos of this; I was a little too annoyed to be taking pictures)  She also peed her bed that night because she wouldn't get out of bed and walk to the bathroom.

Both my kids reacted exactly as they have reacted in the past (minus the bed-peeing and in the past I was able to coerce Katherine into walking sooner), but the equation didn't work out to be:

Logan x grumpy from shots + Katherine x grumpy from shots = frazzled Mom from two grumpy kids

It was more like:

Logan x grumpy from shots + Katherine x grumpy from shots = Mom with no sleep, no food and no shower who is trying desperately to remember that she loves her children and does not actually want to murder them or their father

So I have learned a valuable lesson.  Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever have both kids get shots at the same time, and especially Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever do it when Daddy is out of town.

These Mashed Potatoes Are So Creamy

I was visiting my parents recently.  We have an interesting conversation style, which my husband refers to as "everybody talks and nobody listens."  It makes him crazy because he is used to having only one person talk at a time.  But we don't do that at my house.  We all talk to each other at the same time and you'll have several conversations going on at once.  This is what happened at dinner the other night.

My Mom:  What are we going to do together on your father's day off?

My Dad:  Pass the butter.  Let's all go to a park or something.  You looking for something Kirsten?

Kirsten:  I just need the Tabasco sauce.

Katherine: Look at me everybody! I have stickers in my hair!


meanwhile.....


Kirsten:  Oooh! I put too much Tabasco sauce in my soup!  Somebody pass me the water!

My Sister:  That'll hurt coming out.*

Everybody else:  What??



*My sister was talking to Katherine, but to me and everyone else, it sounded like she was talking to me.  I think it took about 5 minutes before everybody calmed down.

Shameless Plug

Mostly I talk about my family, my hot, talented husband, my brilliant, talented children and all the funny/interesting stuff they do and say.  But today, I am talking about me.  This is my favorite subject (Look at me!!  Look at me!!)  I have a friend who has a recipe blog and I begged her to let me contribute to it.  So, now I am.  It's Barker Baking and Tasting with the occasional addition from me. 

You think food.com and allrecipes.com are fabulous?  Well, you haven't seen anything yet!  You should totally check it out if you don't know what to eat for dinner.  The recipes have all been tested by at least one of us and are guaranteed delicious and not too hard.  And there are no weird ingredients that you can only find at the international outdoor market from the vendor in the back corner every third Tuesday and only if you give him the secret handshake.  All the ingredients can be found at a regular grocery store and don't cost an arm or a leg or any other body part.

Bon Appetit!

Posterity

Katherine is learning about family relationships.  I've been telling her about uncles and aunts, grandparents, etc.

Me:  When you have kids, you will be the mom, and I will be the grandma.

Katherine:  Just like Grandma is my grandma and you're my mom!

Me: yup!

Katherine:  I'm gonna have ten kids!  And you're gonna be the grandmother!

Me:  What are you going to name them?

Katherine:  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and Tinkerbell and Curious George and Sid!

Ch-Ch-Changes

Life is a mess for us here at my house.  So many things going on.  Katherine has this weird rash on the skin next to her lip that won't go away, Logan is protesting breastfeeding and I'm losing ground to the bottle.  But the thing that has shaken us up the most is Casey's new job.  Now, because this is a public blog and anyone can read it, I'm not going to say anything about it except that it involves a move across two time zones.

Casey left for this new job last week and I have been handling all rest of the stuff.  Our condo is on the market, so I have to keep this place spotlessly clean all the time, which is no small task when raising two tiny tornadoes.  I have no help at all with these tornadoes, so if they're both flipping out at the same time (and this happens pretty much everyday), I have to pick the one who is yelling the loudest and pray the other one doesn't hate me too much.  I feel like Bill Cosby's wife who was attractive and intelligent before the children, but started losing it after the kids were born.
I seriously have no idea how single parents do it.  By 6 o'clock each night, I start fantasizing about drugging my kids with Nyquil (I would NEVER actually do this of course).  Maybe that's the secret of single parenting, Nyquil and nannies.  But honestly, my children are beautiful and sweet and generally well-behaved.  It's just all the other stuff I have to take care of is wearing me down, so every tiny thing that usually doesn't bother me begins to bother me INTENSELY.

Oh and that other stuff!  The constant cleaning, the last minute errands that I can't put off because I won't be here to do them later, trying to figure out how to fly a cat across the country, the broken TV.  Yes, the broken TV.  When Casey left, I thought, "At least the TV will keep the kids out of my hair if I start to lose my cool."  But the day before Casey left, the converter box on our TV died.  Now, I am generally not a person who uses the TV as a babysitter, but when your husband doesn't come home at night anymore, Sesame Street can be a link to sanity.  AND, the kids are getting vaccinated the day after tomorrow...That'll be fun.

I just really hope the movers get here soon and I don't go completely loopy.  Oh, and Casey, if you are reading this, I want diamonds for Christmas....big ones.

A Bit of Advice For All You New Parents Out There

I wish I could claim credit on this, but I can't.

Fortune

We went out for Chinese last night with Grandma and Grandpa. It was a tasty meal and, as always is the case with Chinese food, I overate. Also always the case was the presentation of fortune cookies.

This was mine: "You'd rather be approached than do the approaching." Not really a fortune, but pretty accurate since I'm not a very outgoing person naturally.

This was Casey's: "You are only starting on your path to success." Interesting since Casey just got a job, so hopefully this one will turn out.

This was Katherine's: "A romantic mystery will soon add interest to your life." Yeah.......

I Want to Ride My Bicycle, I Want to Ride my Bike

Yeah, we broke down and bought Katherine a bike. We have a little extra money these days and her birthday is coming up, so we decided to get her a bike before it gets too cold to ride it.

We took her to Wal-Mart and had her try out a few bikes. And being Katherine, she chose the Disney Princess bike with the purse and the water bottle and the tassels and the pink sparkle paint. She wanted a bell, but we thought it was a bit much. You know, we don't want to spoil her.

She's pretty much a natural, except she can't pedal, she can't steer, she doesn't watch where she's going ("Oh look! A bug!"), she can't stop and she can't stay upright, even with the training wheels. She also does NOT appreciate it when you try to help her, until she tips over or wants to move. But as soon as she's upright and moving it's, "hands off!" until that pesky bush has the nerve to jump in front of her and make her crash. But still I can tell that there's an innate bicycling ability there.

Look out Lance Armstrong!

Pottygate Revisited

I have what you would call a potty-training resistant child. I have been trying off and on for about a year and a half to get Katherine to use the toilet and without much success. She has excellent bladder control, the ability to follow directions, and interest in the goings-on in the bathroom and all the other clues to make a mom think that her child is ready to be potty trained. She just didn't despise the wet bum feeling enough to switch to underwear.

I tried everything you can think of to get her potty trained. I tried using reward systems with stickers, sticker charts, m&ms, Cheetos and finally Easter candy. I had hoped that I would hit on something Katherine liked enough to try using the potty. No dice.

I read Toddlerwise and tried the suggestions there, which were feeding your kid lots of juice and salty snacks to encourage lots of "need to go to the bathroom" situations and just practicing to death. That didn't work either.

My final attempt was cold turkey potty training where I took away the diapers and said, "Sink or swim." She could soil herself or use the potty. Four days of soiling herself (and the carpet and me and...) and not even trying to make it to the potty told me that at 3 1/2, Katherine just wasn't ready.

After Logan was born I decided that I needed to take a break for a while. I just couldn't handle the new challenges of raising 2 kids and then potty training on top of it. So, I waited till the end of the summer.

At the beginning of September, Casey and I decided that we had had enough and that we were going to get Katherine potty trained or die in the attempt. Since none of the previous ideas had worked, I thought I would try blending all of them together. I went out and bought some beads and m&ms and made sure I had plenty of carpet cleaner.

We put Katherine in underwear and I followed her around all day, waiting for the pee-pee dance, then we'd run to the potty and sit and read stories and sing. If she went, she got a bead for a potty necklace. If she didn't go, she got a few m&ms just for sitting and not flipping out. After she had successfully used the potty enough to complete the necklace, she would receive a Cinderella doll which I bought a year ago when I tried the bribing thing. She would also have a lovely piece of fashion jewelry that she made herself.

Finally finally Katherine decided that getting the beads and m&ms was worth using the potty. We had some messy days and some floods in her bed. Some of her stuffed animals needed a bath and the bathroom smelled a little funny for a while. But I am proud to announce that today--six days before her 4th birthday--Katherine got her Cinderella doll. She nearly peed her pants from excitement, but she didn't because she is POTTY TRAINED!!!!!!!

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think Katherine is pretty pleased to be a "big girl" now too.

Yes, I'm a Natural Blue

So Katherine and I were eating lunch today and we were talking about one of her favorite subjects: hair.....

Kirsten: What color is Betsy's* hair?

Katherine: It's orange!

Kirsten: Yup. People with orange hair sometimes call it strawberry blond. Her hair is a little bit red and a little bit blond. Your hair is all blond.

Katherine: Yeah! My hair is lemon blond! And your hair is brownie blond.....and Dad's hair is blackberry blond!

* Name has been changed to protect me in case my friend doesn't want her child or her child's hair mentioned on my blog.

The Most Exciting New Gameshow

Name That Baby!!

with your host.....me!

You can win fabulous prizes and the adoration and respect of your peers if you can tell the difference between my kids at Age 3-4 months. Ready? Here we go....

Category 1: Flash Shock

Category 2: Tummy Time Turned Naptime

Category 3: Changing Pad Poses

Category 4: Nekkid Babies!

Answer: For each category Katherine was pictured first followed by Logan.

You know those families where the oldest child is the model and each subsequent child looks like a smaller version of the preceding child? Everybody knows at least one family like that. Well, I guess I have one of those families.

Fun Summer Recipe: Neapolitan Sunburn

Ingredients:

1 pasty pale arm
1 tube sunblock
2 shirts with different sleeve lengths
2 weekend outings

Method:

1.) Wear the shirt with the longer sleeve and take the pasty pale arm out into the sun.
2.) Let the arm get good and sunburned.
3.) Wait two weeks till the burn fades to a righteous farmer's tan.
4.) Wear the other shirt with the shorter sleeve.
5.) Decide to avoid a second sunburn and rub the sunblock on the farmer's tan arm up to the point where the tan stops and the pasty pale skin starts.
6.) Rub sunblock over a random blotchy piece of pasty skin.
7.) Let the arm get good and sunburned again.




Voila! Neapolitan Sunburn!





Here's a better view. The straight line marks the end of the tan and the beginning of the sunburn. The circle indicates the funny blotch of pasty pale skin that didn't get burned. The photo just doesn't do it justice. In real life, it was much more dramatic.



Moral of the story: Pay attention to your sunblock application.

You Heard It Here First

Katherine was grousing about something completely unimportant the other day....

Katherine: I am whining and complaining about something that doesn't matter and I'm riding Mommy's last nerve.

Kirsten: Katherine, you are such a drama queen!

Katherine: No I'm not!!! I'm a drama princess!

Bring on the cake!

It's my birthday! I am 29 years old today and in honor of today, I am revealing one of my weaknesses. It's time I let the cat out of the bag....

I LOVE CAKE!


I mean, as a dessert I can take it or leave it. If you really want to wow me, I'm all about the ice cream and fudge and brownies. But the reason I love cake is because of all the cool things you can do to it. Cake can look like pretty much anything if the right person is involved. See?

Don't believe me? Here's an "In progress" picture

But I didn't always feel this way. Back a hundred years ago when I got married, I didn't really care too much about my wedding cake. I just wanted it to taste good and not look like a shapeless mass. I think my parents spent less than $150 on my wedding cake and it was a pretty standard, not too exciting cake visually, but it tasted good! And that is what mattered to me. I actually thought all those fancy-schmancy cakes with the fondant and crazy colors were awful. I was of the opinion that cake should look like what it is--food--and that any unusual decoration was just a waste of time and money. But I have since changed my mind.

Shortly before Logan was born, I learned that a friend of mine is a budding cake decorator. She created a number of beautiful cakes for a party I attended. At the party I talked to her about her creations (which were beautiful AND tasty, by the way) and she taught me about the usefulness of fondant and that there was a whole subculture of people that decorate cakes to look like non-cake. My interested was piqued. But being pregnant and tired, I never really researched it.

A month or so later, Logan was born and I got to stay in the hospital for a few days. While I was recovering, I became acquainted with a TV show called "Cake Boss." We don't have cable at our house so I had never heard of this show or this guy who made cakes look like buildings on fire and aquariums with turtles and coral. But seeing as how I was recovering from surgery and had nothing better to do, I watched A LOT of "Cake Boss." I came to appreciate the beauty and just sheer awesomeness of these crazy cakes he bakes every episode. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Then shortly after I got home from the hospital I was acquainted with a website called Cakewrecks (http://www.cakewrecks.blogspot.com/ ). I learned that there are lots of people who claim to be professional bakers and cake decorators, but have virtually no idea how to decorate a cake. This website makes fun of the cake disasters that people pay for and some of them are pretty funny. But apart from the cake wrecks, the author of the website occasionally showcases the work of some genuinely talented decorators. Here are some classic wrecks:

So it seems the universe has conspired against me in the last few months by bombarding me with cakey prettiness and more or less guaranteeing that I eat my words, so to speak. But at least in this case my words are red velvet with cream cheese filling and they look like a snuggly baby giraffe.

Triple Flip--ing out

Katherine got very interested in ice skating during the Olympics and has been pestering me to take her skating since February. Seeing as I was pregnant at the time and Casey would rather have his molars pulled without anesthetic than go ice/roller skating, poor Katherine did not get to go right away. Last weekend, Katherine's ice princess dreams were realized when I finally took her ice skating.

So, umm....yeah, it didn't really go as well as we would have hoped.

Pretty much as soon as she got on the ice, she was begging and crying and screaming to get off and go home. When she wasn't clinging to the wall for dear life, she was clinging to my leg for dear life. I thought if she gave it a few minutes, she'd relax a bit and start enjoying herself.

Boy, I was WAY off!

She never did stop crying long enough to see how well she was doing. Once I got her to let go of the wall and just hold my hand, she skated really well. She didn't lose her balance or fall at all. But she was too busy hollering to realize this. We made two laps around the rink and then we quit. I decided it's not nice to torture your child in the name of fun.

This is Katherine's near-hysteria AFTER she got her skates off. So, maybe we'll try it again in a few years, you know, or not...

Bedtime Conversations

When it's my turn to put Katherine to bed, we often have very interesting and very random conversations. This was part of tonight's chat. We started out talking about what we're going to do tomorrow and as usual, the conversation went in a completely unrelated direction...

Me: Kitties and doggies don't usually get along so that's why Grandma and Grandpa don't bring Sophie (their dog) to our house (we have a cat).

Katherine: Like Morris Stegosaurus and Alvin Allosaurus? (reference to a favorite TV show, Dinosaur Train...check your local PBS schedule)

Me: Yup.

Katherine: Mom, stegosaurus eats plants.

Me: That's right. Do you know what allosaurus eats?

Katherine: No...

Me: Allosaurus eats stegosaurus!

Katherine: what??

Me: Yep! It's true! Do you eat stegosaurus?

Katherine: No! Yuck! We eat healthy food.......we eat pizza and ice cream!

Soapbox

Generally, I like to keep my blog a happy place, free from inflammatory opinions, political commentary and other stuff that people might find offensive. But sometimes I come across something that I feel so strongly about that I have to get up on my soapbox and preach.

A week or so ago I heard about an outbreak of pertussis (whooping cough) in California. Pertussis is a bacterial disease that is characterized by violent coughing spells where the sick person makes a "whooping" sound as they struggle to breathe in during the coughing fit. The last numbers I saw were somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 known cases and 4 or 5 deaths of infants in CA. This is amazingly sad, especially since pertussis is a completely preventable disease. All you have to do is get your children vaccinated. That's all!

It's beyond me that some parents don't vaccinate their kids. I know there are celebrities that swear on their Botox that vaccinations cause Autism, but there is absolutely no basis in fact. Granted, there was ONE study done that found a correlation between the MMR vaccine and Autism, but that study was later discredited when the guy who published the study was found to have acted unethically while conducting the study. (see http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/02/lancet.retraction.autism/index.html) I have to say that if you are raising your kids based on what some former Playboy model says (she's NOT a doctor, people! She has NO clue what she's talking about!), then you should have your head examined. If you're going to risk the lives of your children, please do your own research.

Then there are the parents who worry about Guillain-Barre syndrome. This is an adverse reaction to flu vaccines where the person receiving the vaccine experiences paralysis, starting at the feet and working its way up the body over the course of a few hours to a few days. In the most severe cases (about 30% of the time), the person may stop breathing, and require a ventilator until the reaction subsides and they can breathe on their own again. Eighty percent of people with Guillain-Barre recover completely. Now, Guillain-Barre is an actual thing that can happen if you get a flu vaccine, but it only happens to one person in a million. To give you an idea of how this works out in real life, there are about 8 million people living in New York City, the largest city in the US. If every single person got his/her flu shot, that would mean 8 people would suffer some degree of Guillain-Barre syndrome and 3 of those would need a ventilator.

I know there is also a movement in the US toward organic, green, more natural living, reducing your carbon footprint and all those other buzzwords. I'm totally fine with free-range eggs and conflict-free diamonds, and whole-wheat socks. I would love to be able to afford food with a philosophy! But please don't take it so far that you become afraid or morally opposed to all modern science. I understand and respect the choices of people who are into herbal supplements. I know there are things that modern medicine misses and some prescription drugs can be more brutal on your system than natural alternatives, but vaccinations work and they save lives! Just because our ancestors died from whooping cough doesn't mean we have to!

To me, the choice seems clear. Yes, there are some weird, rare side effects and yes, we don't actually know what causes Autism (maybe it really is the MMR shot, who knows?), and yes, we can do a lot for our health by eating good food and getting plenty of sunshine. But from the information I have, the risks are minimal compared to the benefit of knowing that my kids won't be one of those 900 in California who got whooping cough. They also won't get polio or diphtheria or Hepatitis B.

I love my children so I choose to vaccinate them.

Just Because I Think It's Funny When My Kids Cry....

doesn't mean I'm an abusive parent, does it?

I love the funny noises he makes when he's attacking his pacifier.

Logan's First Smile

A couple of weeks ago, Logan smiled for the first time while he was conscious. He'd been doing the sleep-smiling thing almost since birth, but his first official on-purpose smile was two weeks ago, give or take. This is the story of that momentous smile.

I had been feeding Logan and was doing my best to coax a burp out of him. Somewhere during the middle of having his back slapped, Logan shifted positions so his face was not on the burp cloth slung over my shoulder. In fact, if he had been anyone else, Casey would have been very unhappy about where he was looking and would have broken his legs (Logan was looking right down my shirt). At that particular moment he released a juicy burp laced with about 2 tablespoons of spit-up. All the lovely nutrative spit-up went right down my shirt and soaked all the underwear and skin in there. The actual shirt remained dry. I yelled at the shock of having my unmentionables puked on and Casey came to relieve me of Logan while I went to change.

While I was in the bedroom, Casey told me that Logan was smiling. And it was a dazzling smile that would have blinded anyone who gazed upon him except he didn't have any teeth yet to dazzle and blind them with. But it proves that Logan has inherited his father's vicious sense of humor and that he enjoys a good practical joke at his mother's expense. Little stinker.....

I don't have a picture of Logan smiling his first smile because I was mopping throw-up off my bra, but here's a photo of him which is equally cute.

This kid is gonna have to beat the girls off with a stick, seriously!

You might be the mom of a newborn if....

1.) You can now sleep through a nuclear war in your bedroom, but if the baby so much as sniffles, you are out of bed and over to that bassinet before you're fully conscious.

2.) You find yourself rocking back and forth, even if you're not holding your baby.

3.) It is a GOOD day if you get a shower.

4.) It is a BETTER day if you shower and blow dry your hair.

5.) You find yourself alternately busier than you have ever been and bored out of your skull.

6.) Instead of being drudgery, trips to Wal-Mart or the grocery store now become exciting excursions. ANYTHING to get me out of this house!

7.) You spend half your life looking for that blasted pacifier.

8.) Have stopped showering alone. You KNOW that as soon as you turn on that water, baby is going to start screaming, so it's better if he screams where you can reach him and plug that pacifier back in. Wait, where is that blasted pacifier?!?

9.) The news-worthy events you post on facebook include how many hours of sleep you got the night before and how many poo-poos you've changed. 5 and 8, how 'bout you?

10.) You begin to realize all the sacrifices your own mother made to raise you.

The Perils of Having a Son

That's right folks, I have officially joined the Tinkle Club, an exclusive group of parents who have been peed on by their son during a diaper change. It took me three and a half weeks, but finally I have succeeded in having my pants soaked by baby urine. That's not to say that Logan hasn't "leaked" during diaper changes until now. That is definitely not the case. In fact, the day we got Logan home from the hospital, he soiled 6 outfits in a 24 hour period. Some of these got wet from him doing his business and missing the diaper completely, but some of them were from the diaper changes where we weren't fast enough. Luckily, each time his aim was off, saving me or Casey from having to change our clothes.

I actually thought I might be spared from joining the Tinkle Club, since I have been getting pretty good at changing diapers at lightning speed and have also discovered the usefulness of wipes as a shield. But I guess it was inevitable that I experience this particular joy of motherhood.

When Casey and I announced the impending birth of our son, we got several comments to the effect of, "Boys are different from girls, so be prepared." Be prepared for what exactly? Now I know. It's the golden arch* I have to be prepared for.



*For those who haven't read it in a while, this is a reference to To Kill A Mockingbird. So, I'm not being graphic, I'm just showing you how well-read I am :)

It All Started Two Weeks Ago.....

So I have had a pretty eventful two weeks. It all started last last last Friday when we welcomed Logan into our family a month earlier than we expected. I went in for a routine exam where my doctor decided that Logan wasn't doing a good enough job growing inside me, so he sent me downstairs to Labor and Delivery to wait around for 5 hours before he went in and got him. It makes no sense to me but apparently babies who are lazy bums about growing inside mom tend to be less lazy about it if they have to fend for themselves (sink or swim, kid. Time to cut the cord, I guess :) ). Anyway, one c-section later, I doubled the number of children I have and reduced my gross hours of nightly sleep by 75%.

Logan joined the family on April 23 at 5:21 pm local time clocking in at a whopping 4 lb 11 oz and 18 inches. He is giving Katherine a run for her money by threatening to overtake her as the cutest child on the planet. Once he fills out a bit and starts looking less like an undercooked roast, we'll see if Katherine retains her title as "Fairest in the Land." But for an undercooked roast, Logan is pretty stinkin' cute!

See!!

Katherine likes him pretty well too

But this is not all. Two weeks after Logan made his debut, Casey graduated from college for what I sincerely hope is the final time. He walked across the stage and received his diploma cover and hood for a PhD in Math (I know, what a smarty, huh?) that he will actually complete in a few months. Casey was a good sport and walked for me. If it had been up to him, Casey would have spent last Friday holed up in his office thinking mathy thoughts and completely ignoring the fact that the building next door was filled with his colleagues wearing funny hats and dresses and marching around to "Pomp and Circumstance" while their adoring families looked on. But luckily my husband thinks I'm cute and can't resist my eyelash-batting, so I got to be one of those adoring family members. Proof of the power of eyelash-batting can be found below:

This is Casey being hooded by a professor who is on his defense committee

A little explanation of this picture is required. Again, it's all about the eyelash-batting. I wanted a photo of Casey showing off his hood a la blushing bride showing off her train and he obliged, quite convincingly too. You can't even tell that there was much eye rolling mere nanoseconds before the shutter snapped. Seriously, if you are a wife and you want your husband to do something, just bat your eyes and smile. Works every time!

But this is still not all. Seriously, more momentous stuff happened to me in the last two weeks, but I will only add one more thing because this entry is already WAaaaayy too long. A couple of nights ago, I suffered my second stab wound by a steak knife. Oddly enough my sister was indirectly involved in both stabbings. The first time, I was eight and I got stabbed in the leg which required 50-ish stitches, but I won't bore you with the details. The second time was on Saturday.

I was minding my own business in the kitchen and grating cheese to put on top of a cassarole, when my sister walked by and accidentally (at least that's what she says....) knocked a steak knife off the counter. This knife landed on/in my foot causing severe lascerations requiring a trip to the couch and a couple of those dot bandaids and a kiss from Katherine. Fortunately there are no photos of my injuries. My foot is so mangled, it would make you sick, or more likely you wouldn't be able to find the scratches since they're pretty much healed. Still, I have to wonder about that sister of mine.....

Wonders of the Internet

185 people who have never met forming a virtual choir and sounding pretty good!

Adventures in Digital Piano Surgery

Katherine is a talented, beautiful, smart, funny, mostly obedient and all around awesome kid. But there are days, like today that she suffers from what Bill Cosby refers to as childhood brain damage. Today my otherwise amazing daughter decided that forcing a straw into the belly of my digital piano would be a good idea. Somehow the straw lodged itself in there in such a way that I couldn't open the piano anymore.

We're not really in a financial situation to pay someone from Yamaha to come dig out a straw and charge me some hundreds of dollars to do it nor are we in a position to just wait it out until we can afford it. I am the pianist (heaven only knows why I agreed to this since I can barely play) in my ward's Relief Society and I practice several hours a week to be able to fumble my way through the songs.

So, out of desperation or stupidity I embarked on my first adventure in digital piano surgery. I started out by giving Katherine a ridiculously long time out and threatened to take her Barbie away if I ever caught her feeding the piano sticky notes or straws or toys again. Then I did an online search to see if anyone else had a child like mine and managed to figure out a way to get the piano apart. No real luck there. I found a couple of blogs (courtesy of my super-helpful sister who heard the whole straw-in-the-piano-mom-freak-out over the phone) but they were all written by men who had nothing better to do with their time than to dismantle their digital pianos for fun. They contained no real information other than a few photos of the mess created by taking their pianos apart. Once guy even sustained some injuries because he tried to pry some of the parts apart, which the piano didn't like and retaliated.

Next, I posted a question on Yahoo! Answers which very occasionally gets a real response. Mostly it's bored twelve year olds posting crap. The only response I got from there was someone suggesting I take a hammer to the piano. Thanks! I think I'll try that!

Finally, I decided I would just try and figure it out myself and if I couldn't do it, then I'd suck it up and call Yamaha. Amazingly, I managed to get the straw out and a few other goodies Katherine had stuck in there which I wasn't aware of. I had to more or less dismantle the paino, but I succeeded where others just got scratched up or spent hours dissecting their pianos. Now I feel all feminist and stuff.

Grrr! I'm a tough lady who managed to outsmart a piece of electronic equipment with nothing but my brain and a phillips head screw driver. *flexes muscles and grimaces* I am freakin' awesome! PS: I'm pregnant too, which makes me even more awesome, you know, or stupid...whatever.

So, for anyone on the internet who may do a google search for dismantling your piano without destroying it or wasting time, here is my piano surgery procedure:

I have a Yamaha Clavinova CLP 220

Step 0: Punish whatever child jammed junk onto your piano.

Step 1: Unplug everything! This includes the wires that connect the top of the piano to the bottom ie: the one for the pedal and the one for the wall. You don't want wires tangling everything up.

Step 2: Using a phillips head screw driver, unscrew the main body of the piano (the part that presumably has something stuck in there) from the legs. Put the screws someplace safe so you don't lose them.

Step 3: Get a friend to help you lift the top of the piano off the legs. It's not real heavy but it's pretty unwieldy. Put this part of the piano either on the piano bench or on the floor.

Step 4: Using the same phillips screwdriver, remove the screws from the back of the piano. There should be four or five. Again, store the screws somewhere safe.

Step 5: At this point you should be able to slide the top of the piano off (this being the part that has the music holder thingy). There's a tongue in groove-type thing (that's not really what it is, but I'm not sure what this little dealie is called, so just go with it) on the lid so that it doesn't just lift off. You'll have to slide it forward to get the lid off.

Step 6: Take out whatever foreign object found its way into your piano. I'm pretty sure there are capacitors and stuff inside so be careful what you touch. I wouldn't want you getting shocked.

Step 7: Repeat Steps 1 through 5 in reverse order and you should have a happy piano.

Pregnancy Carol

O Swelly Feet (sung to "O Christmas Tree")

O Swelly Feet O Swelly Feet
I cannot get my shoes on

My toes look like sausages you know,
They just need some Grey Poupon

My shoes don't fit, but it's ok
I couldn't reach them anyway

O Swelly Feet O Swelly Feet
I guess I'll just wear flip flops


I couldn't sleep last night so my sleep-deprived brain made this up while I was tossing and turning. Maybe I'll write another one about baby kicking your vital organs in the middle of the night when you're trying to sleep.

PS: Those aren't actually my feet. My feet are not that pretty, even on their best non-puffy day.

April Fools'!

So, Mother Nature decided that a funny prank on April Fools' Day would be to dump a bunch of snow on us. But, Katherine and I got her back! We thumbed our noses at Mother Nature by enjoying the spring snow and building Katherine's first-ever snowman.

PS: Katherine informed me that the snow-blob she is holding is a baby snowman, which she made all by herself.

PPS: I looked it up on Wikipedia; the apostrophe goes after the "s" in April Fools', you know, in case you were wondering.

PPPS: I'm glad that there won't be much more snow here. It's HARD to bend over and build a snowman with 33 weeks worth of pregnant belly in the way.

Fun with Kitty

Katherine loves Loves LOVES to play dress-up. Most days it's a battle to get her into regular clothes. Then it's a battle to keep them on her. But my smarty little kid found a way around this constant battle......just dress up the cat instead!

Happy Birthday Blog!

My blog is officially one year old today. Aren't you so excited? (yeah, me neither) In honor of this auspicious day, here's one of my favorite Victor Borge routines.




And if you feel like it, here's the other half

Just Call Me Donna Reed

I cook gourmet dinners with nothing but green Jell-O and instant mashed potatoes; I vacuum in high heels and pearls; I crochet my own toilet paper out of dryer lint. I am a modern, frugal woman!

Actually, I'm more like Donna Reed's less famous, lazier little sister. We do have green Jell-O and instant mashed potatoes, but it tastes pretty gross; when I do vacuum, I'm usually wearing pajamas; and we only use dryer lint if I forget to buy TP, which is sadly frequently.* BUT, I do have some nifty products I have discovered by being the mommy of a small child. These things have made my life easier and slightly less embarrassing because at least I can say I am clever by discovering them.

1.) Chucks, also known as underpads. I love these things. They're normally used in hospitals or nursing homes to keep beds/sheets clean in case of accidents or oozy wounds. I use them as disposable changing pads. They're huge (like 2 feet by 3 feet) so little cutie never has to touch one of those nasty changing tables at Wal-Mart. Plus, if the changing table at Wal-Mart is broken, which it always is, you can just use the floor! Plus plus if cutie decides to go potty mid-diaper change, you can just throw the thing away. Plus plus plus they have a plastic backing so any mess doesn't soak through to whatever is underneath (ie: grandma's bed). Plus plus plus plus they're like $5 for 20 of them and you can get them at Wal-Mart or Target.

2.) Bag Balm. In ancient days of yore when people got their milk from the family cow instead of the grocery store, the poor cows used to get chapped udders sometimes from all that milking (ouch!) Bag Balm was invented to be used like cow chapstick to help Bossy feel better. But it's modern times, and I use it as diaper rash cream. It comes in pints or in little travel size tins and it sticks to sore red bums better than regular diaper cream. I switched when baby Katherine had a diaper rash for over a week that was so icky, it was actually oozing. Some lady at the check-out heard me lamenting to the cashier about Katherine's persistent rash and told me about it. Two days later, the diaper rash from H-E- double toothpicks was gone and Katherine had a nice, happy heinie again. This lovely product can be bought at pharmacies like Rite Aid or probably Wal-Mart/Target, but you gotta ask the pharmacist. For some weird reason, they keep it behind the counter.

3.) Zout. This is the most amazing stain remover I have ever used. It gets pretty much everything out. It has only failed me once, when Casey got dry erase marker on his shirt (your guess is as good as mine how he managed that one, seeing as how the marker was on his back). It gets yucky, orange baby poop out perfectly, although it does need a couple of washings sometimes. I have even used it to get old stains out, you know the ones that you don't notice until your shirt has gone through the dryer. I have also successfully used this to clean cat poop stains out of my carpet. I have only ever found this stuff at Target, but it's not expensive, so good news!

So, I may not be Donna Reed or Martha Stewart or even Mrs. Jones down the street who makes the best snickerdoodles and has a gorgeous lawn, but I do have a few tricks up my sleeve and I can live with that.

* I'm actually kidding about all this, except the vacuuming thing.

Baby Wants Salt

I cannot seem to get enough sodium, which is completely weird for me. I am a chocoholic, so I would say that I have a sweet/fat tooth rather than a salt tooth. Normally, I have to fight the urge to snag a candy bar at the grocery store checkout. Normally, I can walk down the deli meat/cheese/chip aisle at the grocery store and just just buy meat and cheese, but no longer. It takes all the will power I have to not load up on Ranch Doritos and Salt and Vinegar Lays (just typing that is making me drool...man, I have problems). I blame this recent phenomenon on the child currently doing the backstroke inside me.

It started shortly before Christmas when I had an overpowering craving for....wait for it.....vegetable juice. Yuck, right? But I drove to the store and bought a can of V8, and let me tell you, it was the most heavenly thing I have ever tasted. They didn't have anything but the spicy variety, but I didn't care. I just chugged it down and followed it up with a bunch of Tums. Since then, I have been buying 64 oz bottles of vegetable juice and enjoying every drop. I figured I just wasn't getting enough of some vitamin, but apparently vegetable juice is quite high in salt (20% of your daily sodium allowance in ONE glass).

Then came the other salty cravings: pickles, chips, ummm, well that's it really. Pickles and chips and V8. There was even a day when Casey bought a bag of kettle chips to see what they were like and I ate half the bag (that's like 9 million percent of my sodium for the day) in one sitting. And then there were the imported Mexican chili-flavored tortilla chips that Casey found at a Mexican market...and again I completely pigged out (Tums is making a killing off of me, I swear.)

I think I'm giving myself hypertension and that I'm destined for self-induced preeclampsia (which, for those of you who don't know is a condition in pregnancy characterized by elevated blood pressure and can be harmful to you and your unborn baby). But here I am, typing away and drinking a lovely glass of vegetable juice and contemplating a pickle to go with it. I very much hope that my salty preferences will go away once Baby Brother gets here. In the mean time, my chocolate tooth is still as active as always so I am extra-avoiding the chocolate covered pretzels because I might just die.

PS: If you're thinking of getting me something for the impending birth of my son and don't have a budget that allows for toys or clothes, you can just get me some pickles or a bag of Ruffles.

My New Favorite Song

This is the most soulful rendition I have ever heard. It changed my life!

Here Come the Littles

So there has been a bunch of stuff that has disappeared from our house lately. I am missing my one-cup dry cup measure. Katherine is missing her Cinderella doll and a hairbrush for her panda family. There are also a number of other not so important things that have vanished (hair ties and stuff) which I swear I put right there but when I go to find them, they're gone, never to be seen again.

But see, I have a hypothesis. I think that we have the Littles living in our walls and they've been swiping my stuff. For those of you who weren't born in the days of yore, "The Littles" is a Saturday morning cartoon about tiny people with tails who live in a kid's house and get chased a lot by cats and stuff. They drive a rollerskate and use other thingies from around the house to make their hole-in-the-wall home more comfortable.

So, I am making a plea to Grandpa, Dinky and the whole gang: Please please please give me back my cup measure. I'm sure it makes a nifty bathtub, but I need it! I'll even give you one of my tupperwares which will make an even better tub. And Katherine would sure love her Cinderella doll back.

Know Thyself

Last night Katherine was suffering from a case of the Nighttime Crazies. I always sort of thought that that particular condition struck mainly cats, but apparently, little kids can get it too. Anyway, she was running around at full speed, laughing like a maniac and jumping on just about everything she saw. Then she started in on the comedy routine, pulling faces and telling jokes...at least I think that's what they were. So, here's what I said:

Kirsten: Katherine, you're such a nerd.

Katherine: (looking completely scandalized). I am NOT a nerd, Mommy. I'm a geek!

Kirsten: Are you sure? You look like a nerd to me.

Katherine: I....Am.....A......Geeeeeeeeeek! (she leaned forward on "Geeeeeeek" to emphasize it)

Kirsten: Huh. OK, so does that mean I'm a nerd?

Katherine: No, you're a dork.

Kirsten: So, does that mean Daddy's a nerd?

Katherine: No, Daddy's a psycho.

Pregnancy Brain Strikes Again

Pregnancy Brain is one of my least favorite parts about being pregnant. Not only am I already overly-emotional (thanks hormones), but now I'm a flake, too. I miss appointments, forget to call people and space out on things I have to do, like yesterday when Katherine went to church having done her own hair because I just forgot. But last night I outdid myself.

I decided to make snickerdoodles. After I made the dough, I put it in the fridge for an hour, like the recipe said. But an hour and a half later, the dough was still really sticky. It was getting late so I just did my best and rolled the sticky dough blobs in the cinnamon sugar and baked them anyway.

This was the outcome

Yep, those are my snickerdoodles. They completely melted in the oven and I couldn't get them off the cookie sheet. Casey and I examined the recipe and figured out that I had added 2 sticks of butter instead of just one. Whoops! But the good news is, my ugly duckling cookies still taste ok.

I miss my brain!

Our (Kind of ) Vacation

A few weeks ago, Casey and I went to San Francisco for a math conference. The conference was four days long, so rather than leave me at home to pine for him, my sweet husband took me along and we did some fun stuff while we were there. Katherine's saintly grandparents watched her (for which we are eternally grateful!) while we were away and it sounds like she had about as much fun as we did.

I hadn't planned on posting anything about our trip because it wasn't that exciting (no Elvis sightings or anything), but interest from my family prompted me to post some of the photos. So Enjoy, you know or whatever.

Here we are, totally lost in the Magowan's Infinite Mirror Maze on Pier 39. Totally worth the $5!

Arr! I'm a scary Alcatraz criminal. I got thrown in the joint when I failed to turn in my audio tour headset after I was done. Actually they're really serious about that. They have what looks like a metal detector on the dock that you have to pass through before you get on the boat so they know you didn't steal the MP3 player thingy. And you know that cool old movie with Clint Eastwood, "Escape from Alcatraz"? You know the one where they make papier mache heads and escape through the ventilation system. Well, apparently it was based on an actual escape. I always thought it was fiction. Except in real life, they're not sure what happened to the escapees. No one ever saw them again.

Some of the last remaining sea lions at Pier 39. There used to be hundreds of them everyday, but a few weeks before we got there, they decided that they'd had enough of the area and just left. No one can figure out why. The weather's been normal this year and there's nothing wrong with their food supply either. Weird.....

At the Exploratorium. Casey said it was a little weird and gross to drink out of a toilet, but he's a good sport and did it for the camera.

At the Exploratorium again. Casey created an icosahedron out of Velcro triangles and is showing off his masterpiece. I made a something out of pentagons, I think it was a dodecahedron, but I can't remember my high school geometry.

Outside the Exploratorium. Apparently the building was built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition and then later (1969) turned into an interactive science museum that resembles a giant Mr. Wizard lab.

A submarine at Fisherman's Wharf. It wasn't very large but that thing used to hold 80-ish crew members during WWII. Sorry Dad, I don't remember what the vessel was called.

Lombard Street. Lots of swanky houses and squealing tires...and tourists.

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There were some other things we did that I failed to photograph. We ate some good food, saw a free magic show, saw Golden Gate Bridge from the beach and from Alcatraz, ate WAY too much taffy, rode a trolley, rode a circular escalator (I really should have taken pictures of that one), bought hairspray at THE CREEPIEST convenience store I have ever been in, and visited the Musee Mechanique, which is more or less a really old-fashioned arcade. We watched a carnival diorama come to life, listened to old old old music boxes, played baseball and had the kiss-o-matic tell us if it was true love (according to that reliable device, we were "cold fish" or something...sad!)

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Word of warning: I found one of those old view finder things that said "Secrets of the Unknown--For Adults Only" or something like that. I thought it was a joke and expected corny old photos of 5 legged donkeys and stuff, but that is NOT what is was. They weren't kidding about that adults only thing. Just do yourself a favor and don't go near that one. Shudder....

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was our trip to San Francisco. The end.