Categories
Kids

Alison the photographer

I don’t know how it goes in anyone else’s household, but I am the designated picture-taker around here.  I don’t mind at all, except that there are never any pictures of me with my kids or husband, other than those ones where I hold my arm out and we’re all close-up.  Which would be fine, really, if my nostrils weren’t already disproportionately large.  Who wants their life chronicled by photos of the underside of their nose?

Luckily for me, though, Alison has taken quite an interest in the camera.  When she was younger I’d let her use up the remains of disposables, but now she’s able to manage the digital camera with more skill than her dad.  She’ll have photo-taking binges and I love uploading a full memory card and being surprised by the photos that pop up on the screen.

Also, it’s wonderful that I’m being included in the photo history of our family, occasionally WITHOUT my nostrils.  Take a look at the most recent uploads:

        

Are we detecting a trend here, people? 

Categories
Parenting

Miss Diane

We have a new friend, Miss Diane.  She gets paid to play with kids and have fun, which Alison thinks is about the coolest job on the planet.  She’s going to be hanging out with Alison and Blythe on Tuesdays and Thursdays for about 5 hours while I work in the office.  That way, my mom isn’t overworked and can actually enjoy her time with the kids rather than being a babysitter.  And I can avoid a stay in the loony bin for just a little while longer!

Blythe is absolutely in love with Miss Diane’s feet.  She likes feet and shoes anyway, but the girl couldn’t take her eyes off of Miss Diane’s. 

See how she’s all poised and ready to pounce?  Also, if you can see her teeny-tiny feet, you’ll notice they are bare, as usual.  Did I mention she loves shoes and feet?  But not together.

Categories
Entertainment

Snow

This is ancient history now, but way back two weeks ago, just before the sickness struck, we took the girls up to Butte Meadows, where our friends Rick & Natasha have a cabin.  It was our first snow trip of the season, and Blythe’s first snow experience ever.  In a lot of ways the trip was absolutely miserable for me, but since a little time has passed, now I can write about it without crying and just focus on the fun stuff.  Because even in the worst situations, a little fun can be had.

While Blythe took a nap, Alison and I climbed on top of the roof and made slides with our butts.  The neighbor’s dog, Dingo, and the random dog that hangs around, Bear, thought it looked fun so they joined us.  
                        
See the pure bliss on Alison’s face?  Here are Dingo, Jamie (Alison’s “new friend”), Alison and Bear on the roof.

Alison and I slept together two nights in a row, and the last night Blythe even slept between us once it got so cold in the room it felt like we were sleeping outside.  Ever since, Alison has been asking to “stay overnight” with me.  But not Daddy, because he snores.  Which is why he had to sleep on the couch at the cabin – she refused to let him into bed with us.  Not that the four of us could have fit into a one bed, anyway.  When Blythe fussed and woke Alison about half way through the night, Alison sat up and said, “Mom.  She’s ruining my sleep.”  And then passed out.

Natasha and I made bisquick pancakes for everyone on Sunday morning, using the huge gridle on the cabin stove.  We put chocolate chips in ours!

Here they are, all bundled up and ready for some snowy fun.
 
            

Categories
Food

Blackberry Cobbler

The other day, as I was perusing my cookbooks in search of the week’s menu, I found a yummy-looking recipe for peach cobbler. 
“Peach cobbler!” I said, “Yum!” and set about writing down the ingredients on my grocery list. 
“Actually, you know what sounds good?” replied my loving husband, “Blackberry cobbler.  Yum!”. 
So I looked for a recipe for blackberry cobbler.  It has strange (read: icky sounding) ingredients, and you’re supposed to cook it in a slow cooker.  Yea, I know, right?  
So today, after I put Blythe down for her afternoon nap, Alison and I got to cookin’.  We had ripped open approximately 10 packets of sugar-in-the-raw trying to come up with 3/4 cup of ‘granulated sugar’ before I thought I’d better check.  Because I thought, if it was regular sugar it would just say, “sugar” right?  But what is granulated sugar?  So I googled it, and duh.  “Granulated sugar” is just plain table sugar.  Why didn’t they just SAY so?  Alison made it through the “bottom layer”, which is mixing the berries with the (plain old regular) sugar and instant tapioca pudding (what?), before I had to send her to the other room.  For eating sugar under the guise of “smoothing it out”.  And then claiming the sugar around her lips got there by accident while she stirred.
(Does this look oddly like bugs to anyone else?)

So then came the top layer, which involved flour, brown sugar, nutmeg and some other stuff.  I had to open a new package to get the amount of sug’ I needed, and has anyone else noticed that packaging is getting harder and harder to open all the time?
(How on earth am I going to reseal THAT?)
The recipe says it takes 15 minutes of prep time, 4 hours of slow-cooker cook time before you can enjoy your blackberry cobbler.  But maybe leaving the laptop open on the stove was a mistake.

Length of prep time when reading your favorite daily blogs while you stir: approximately the length of a 10-month-old’s afternoon nap (an hour, give or take).


There’s the crock pot, all full of cobbler.  And Alison, in heaven.

So how did it taste, you ask?  Honestly?  Kinda icky.  Just like I thought.

Categories
Motherhood and Pregnancy

The sickness

I was doing so well there for a bit, updating my blog every few days.  And then every person in this house got sick (and possibly even the cats, they do seem to have left a few more vomit piles for me to step in lately). 

How many illnesses can co-exist in the same household at the same time?  I don’t know the answer to that, but it seems to be quite a few.  Luckily there has been no FLU, and no VOMIT (other than the cats) and for that I am grateful. 

Although, Alison is still keeping me informed about the consistency of her poo (“not wet” for a few days, hooray).  But oh, to have a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.  It makes me pine for the days when Blythe predictably woke to nurse 2-3 times per night, and then immediately returned to sleep.  Rather than wake up coughing, and decide that it’s time to PLAY for 2 HOURS and scream BLOODY MURDER if I leave the room. 

But, to her credit, in the past few weeks she has been plagued by one ailment after another.  First, she caught a cold from her sister.  No surprise there, Alison is in preschool where snot abounds, and she has no concept of “personal space” when it comes to Blythe.  That turned into bronchitis, which was accompanied by an ear infection.  Shortly thereafter came a horrible cold (which I’m pretty sure we all caught from someone claiming “allergies”) followed by some nasty cough, much worse than the bronchitis, followed by 4 teeth in 3 days, which coincided with a NEW COLD, which apparently involved a really ITCHY nose, which caused her to rub SNOT INTO HER EYES which caused her to have conjunctivitis (fancy word, meaning: pink eye). 

The cure for the pink eye was special antibiotic eye drops, and here are the instructions:
Two drops in each eye, four times per day, for seven days.   For best results, place one drop in each eye, wait a moment, and repeat.

What, an infant is going to allow you to drip things into her eyes and then let you wait a moment, and repeat?  Four times a day, for seven days?  I can’t even get her to stay on her back long enough to wipe her butt, much less put a bunch of drops in her eyes.  She has become such a pro at squeezing her eyes shut, she’s started doing it for fun throughout the day.