Twelve Days of Christmas Katherine-Style

Even though Christmas is way way over, I had to share this gem.

And in case you don't get the subtle references, here's some help.



You can skip to the last minute or so on this one.

Playing Catch-up

We've been in our new (and.....oh let's say "Quirky") apartment for about a month and a half.  I have successfully survived Thanksgiving, Christmas and unpacking.  So, now it's time to do all the other stuff I've been meaning to do, including update ye olde bloge.

If you're not into looking at pictures of other people's kids who are probably not as awesome as they claim they are, you can go ahead and skip pretty much this whole thing (except this time, you'd be wrong because MY children are at least twice as awesome as I let on).


Back before we moved we took a little trip to visit some of Casey's family.  We ended the weekend with a birthday gathering (I say gathering because there were no hats....It's not a party unless there are hats.  There are also no other sugared-up four year-olds, which is also a requirement.)  at Great Grandma's house for Miss Katherine who is now a whopping four years old!  Here we have a selection of photos from that momentous occasion. 
 

 The drive was a little long for Katherine.   That wood thing is an extremely beautiful chess board Casey's brother gave him, but you're looking at the bottom.

I don't want to bore you with all the presents that she got, so I'm just putting in the important ones:  The Grandma presents!  Casey's Mom gave Katherine the embroidered pillow which Katherine now sleeps with every night.

 My mom gave Katherine this one.  Strawberry Shortcake is now best friends with tiny Cinderella and tiny Sleeping Beauty.

Birthday girl decided I wasn't taking enough pictures, I guess, so she took this one of me.

 And this one....

and this lovely self-portrait.

Oh, and this is a still life of Great Grandma's ceiling.

Casey's mom and dad were here, but they had to leave early, so they missed out on the whole family picture.  And I am a complete moron because I didn't take any photos of them while we were there.  I'm just so used to seeing them whenever we want that I didn't even think to take pictures *Smacks forehead*  So, whenever it is that we save up the money to fly all of us out there, we will be taking photos......lots of them.

....

Next up, Logan's first "real" food.  It's not exactly real, since no self-respecting grown-up would eat that slop, but it's a step in the right direction.  Casey said feeding Logan that first time was like applying joint compound to our recently-repaired wall.  Same shlocky texture, same procedure: apply compound/cereal, wipe away excess, apply compound/cereal, wipe.....

....

And now I present you with Halloween!  Casey had left for his new job by this point, so the kids and I had Halloween by ourselves.  Too bad, because I FINALLY convinced Casey to dress up this year.  He was going to be his evil twin.  Anyway.....

 Presenting Her Majesty of the Realm of the Living Room, Princess Katherine Sleeping Beauty!  She will be signing autographs in the kitchen following the evening's celebrations.

And here we have Logey the caterpillar.  Don't let his sedentary appearance throw you.  This guy can eat through a one piece of chocolate cake, one ice-cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon.

 

Here we are at the church's Halloween party.  That's my lame attempt at a butterfly costume.  Butterfly, caterpillar, get it?  I know!  I'm so totally clever, right?

And that brings us up to the end of October.  Tune in next time for whatever it is that I feel like posting.

Joint Compound is the Handyman's Other Secret Weapon

Once upon a time there was a crack in our living room wall.  It was just a little crack.   We didn't pay much attention to it.  We assumed the building had just settled at some point and the previous owners just did a poor job of patching the crack.

When we painted the living room, we patched the crack ourselves and thought it was over.  But no, that crack would never EVER really go away.  Over the years that crack reappeared numerous times and eventually reproduced, so that a 18 inch-wide expanse of our wall from floor to ceiling was a series of interlaced cracks.  The cracks also appeared in a similar pattern on the adjacent wall in the kitchen.  The paint started flaking away and both sides of our wall was looking pretty horrible.  We had no idea what was causing it.

This is the "crack" in the kitchen

And here is the "crack" in the living room

We had a few possible explanations: 1) the dryer (which was on one of the damaged walls) was shaking the crap out of the wall and making it crack and lose paint, 2) the enormous cottonwood tree outside had somehow burrowed its roots under our building and was pushing up on the foundation, causing the cracks, 3) aliens, 4) some other thing we hadn't thought of.

After much hand-wringing and fretting, I decided that I had had enough of that ugly, flaky wall.  I put on my tough lady hat--which I also wore when I fixed our digital piano--and decided to figure out what was causing it and fix the darn thing once and for all.  I called upon all the powers of physics, math, architecture, sudoku and a little divination to solve the problem.  Actually, what happened was that I put my hand on the wall while the dryer was running one day.  The wall was unusually hot.  It turned out that it was the dryer after all, but not in the way we thought.  At some point in the history of our condo, the dryer duct had come apart inside the wall/floor and the dryer was venting into the wall instead of though the duct to the outside.  Casey confirmed this by sticking his arm in the wall and taking a few photos.

  (That would be the disconnected dryer duct choked with lint)

(This is the duct under the floor also disconnected and choked with eons of lint.  Good news though.....lots of insulation!)

Casey's parents quickly came to the rescue, bringing their van and arsenal of tools with them.  Casey's dad has a background in construction so we knew we were in safe hands.  He taught us how to fix the cracks in the wall with a putty knife, joint compound, a wet rag and lots and lots of scraping. 

 Dad in-law assessing the problem

 

 After scraping off all the old flaky paint

Look at that handsome, handy husband of mine!

Then Casey and his dad attacked the problem of the dryer duct.  They created a trapdoor into the floor and reattached the pieces of the duct, securing it with......duct tape!  That's what duct tape is actually for!  I didn't know that!  I always thought it was for tricking out your car!

The trapdoor

All this happened with just a few casualties.  My in-laws' NEW van suffered a primer spill in the back and the blade of my dad in-law's jigsaw broke.  The primer was (mostly) cleaned up with our steamer vac (I guess it can be handy to have a kid who regularly pukes on the carpet).  The jigsaw though was a total loss.  Apparently the size or style of blades the saw needed were no longer made.  But the main thing is that nobody lost any fingers.  We also discovered stratification of our kitchen floor and found evidence of an earlier, groovier civilization.

By the end of the weekend, most of the work was done, but our kitchen was virtually unusable.  Having tools and supplies covering the counters and a major appliance blocking your sink and dishwasher will do that.  But somehow my mother in-law managed to wash dishes anyway.  I didn't see her do it, but I'm pretty sure she went to Hogwarts and is hiding it from us.

After my in-laws went back home, all that was left was to finish the walls.  When it came to re-texturing the wall, Casey's confidence wavered, so I did that part.  I had a pretty good time smearing and splatting (is that a word?) joint compound on the wall to match the original smears and splats.  Then we primed and repainted.  We discovered that our white kitchen was not exactly the same as the white paint we bought so we ended up painting the entire wall, and that required moving our fridge out of the way.

Look at that professional-looking splatting!

All done!  I should totally become a wall plastic surgeon!

 So, I guess the moral of this story is beware of little cracks.  They can be a huge pain to fix.  I think the worst part of this whole experience is that Casey and I don't really get to enjoy the fruits of our labors, since our condo is up for sale and we don't live there anymore.  Speaking of which......Anyone want to buy my newly spiffed-up condo?  You know you do.  Blog readers get a discount!

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!