My kids have no problem creating mini tornadoes of Barbies, matchbox cars, blocks, Little People, and colored pencils throughout the house. But for some reason they insist on eating Rice Krispy treats with a fork so they don't get their fingers sticky.

Pregnant Hypochondriac

Slap my hand for skipping a whole week! But you see the problem was that I was suffering an acute case of hypochondria. This past week I have had lymphoma, tonsillitis or tonsil cancer (one or the other), bumps on my tongue (circumvallate papillae), kidney disease, and an ectopic pregnancy. But seriously, the last one I was really worried about that I actually called my doctor. Last night in bed at about 4:00 am I had a sharp pain in my lower left abdomen and I couldn't think it to be anything else but an egg burrowed in my fallopian tube. I saw the doctor at 2:30PM, the ultrasound looked normal with a cute little yolk sac and my urine was normal. He said perhaps a cyst burst in my ovary. I looked at him and said, "Uh, that's not bad? Can you explain what that means?" Apparently we develop these so called cysts each month during our cycle and this one supposedly might have been larger than normal which was causing my discomfort when it burst instead of atrophied. I also mentioned to my doctor that I had been experiencing some anxiety and asked if there was anything I could take to calm myself during my first trimester. He regrettably said, "Not safely." But later after the exam when I asked for reassurance that everything was normal and told him I was diagnosing myself with a different disease every day , he commented, "I really wish there was something I could give you for that anxiety." I assured him that I would be fine and that it was probably the preparations for my cross country airplane trip with my five kids that was triggering my anxiety. He bid me farewell with words of comfort and now I seem to be a healthy, but nauseaus 30 year old pregnant female anxious for her trip. Tonight I am going to go straight to bed and doze off to sleep while reading my People magazine. I'm not going to stay up watching viewer discretioned Discovery Health Channel trauma shows until four in the morning or I might wake up believing I have a perforated instestine, shattered spine and a bullet in my jaw.

The kids and I watched Leave it to Beaver this afternoon. Unaccustomed to black and white television, Bradley asked, "Mommy, why is it gray?" I told him that it's called black and white and that's how they used to watch TV a long time ago. After the commercial break he asked, "Mommy, where did all the colors go?"

Bradley asked me when we were going to go to the pool again. I told him maybe this weekend. After a moment of thought he said, "After two tomorrows?"

David and I were outside in the yard digging spots for some stepping stones. I had left baby Jason inside roaming the house on his belly. I thought he was safer in there than outside eating chemically treated grass. I asked Bradley to go check on him and he reported back that Jason was fine. I asked, "What is Jason doing?"
Bradley replied, "He's under the table eating food off the floor."

I'm really into this slide show thing. I have now made it up to Jason for his 6 month birthday.

I feel bad that I haven't taken Jason's picture on his monthly birthdays like my first three kids. So I created this to make it up to him:

Jason got a tooth today, or least today marks the day that I noticed the tooth. I didn't even think to check his gums for teeth considering his next of kin sibling got her first tooth just four months ago at age 18 months. I'll bet he willed that tooth to poke through to earn a spot at the dinner table and not have to scavenge the floor for dropped cupcake crumbs and stray rotini. I guess tomorrow we will play some musical chairs and graduate Sarah to a big chair <fade out with Pomp and Circumstance>

Anole Acrobats

Attack of the Green Anoles

Bradley didn't change his clothes after church today. But he went to bed shirtless because the hand-me-down pajamas he was wearing were size 6 and 4 year olds only wear size 4T.

Bradley has not worn a shirt for the past three days despite the fact that there are eight clean ones in his dresser drawer. He claims that he has been waiting for me to wash his "officer shirt", a shirt with an emblem patch in the shape of a police badge. He loves that shirt. I'm sure he will be very pleased when he sees it neatly folded in his drawer tomorrow afternoon when he goes to change his clothes after church.

I'll have the Chow Mein, hold the trendy, please.

Tonight was date night. There's this Chinese restaurant that I've been wanting to go to in a nearby neighboring town. I see commercials for it all the time on TV and I've been wanting a nostalgic taste of my childhood upbringing in heavily Asian populated Southern California. The commercials have enticing scenes of happy people eating delicious authentic food in a great atmosphere. What more could you want? So we got there and the place was nicely decked out in ornate Asian decor. The patrons looked happy and experienced. We sat down at a nice table with cloth napkins folded like a fan, non disposable wooden chopsticks held together by a pretty, red embroidered flower, and two large, puffy, leather clad, multi page, heavy duty cardstock menus. I was excited. It took a moment to decipher the mei fun, ho fun, dim sun, etc. The Caucasian waiter brought David a Diet Coke and me a water with a nicely cut slice of lemon on the rim. I asked him to give us a few more moments and I politely requested a straw. I diligently searched the menu for a dish that I recognized, but couldn't find the traditional dishes that I remembered as a child at the Mandarin Wok. When he returned he brought one straw and we placed our orders. When he asked me if I wanted Joy White Rice or (something) fried rice, I became confused at the trendiness and changed my order to an entree called Pineapple Fried Rice (no options.) The meal came quickly and was garnished with a cleverly sliced section of cucumber. David's had a cleverly twisted slice of carrot. But when I looked at the mound of rice, vegetables and pineapple tidbits I had a difficult time enjoying my $9 meal knowing I could have made the same thing on my electric smooth cooktop range for about $0.79. However, my last few fork bites did reveal a nice Dragon Palace emblem in the center of the plate, a pleasure I would not have experienced at home. I didn't bother with chopsticks because they looked completely cosmetic. When our plates appeared to be licked clean, a Caucasian waitress took away our plates and our waiter brought the bill tray void of almond and fortune cookies. He said, "Do you care for any dessert such as fried ice cream?" Fried ice cream? How about some churros? We generously left him a 14.25% tip (he neglected to offer a beverage refill.) I was a bit disappointed with the lack of fulfillment to my commercial induced expectations. As we grabbed our free fortune cookies from the big jar on the way out, I thought to myself, our part of the country definitely needs a larger dose of Chinese immigrants to bring in some MSG laden beef and brocolli, cashew chicken, and almond cookies wrapped in wax paper. Now that's Chinese!

Happy 7th Months Jason!

(I used to take my first 3 children to Walmart Portrait studio on their month birthdays for the first year. Now all the 5th child gets is a pictureless shout out in my blog.)

Bradley was reading me a story. There was a sentence with the word Egypt. I automatically pronounced the word for him, assuming he would not recognize it and ask for help. But it ended up we said it simultaneously, then he paused, looked at me and said with a tad bit of annoyance, "Mommy, I know that word. Egypt is on my map in my room." He then continued to confidently read the story.

Deja Vu

These two videos are both taken two days before Wendy and Jason's 7 month birthdays.

January 30, 2006


May 8, 2007

He says pə-jä'mə. I say pə-jăm'ə. He orders mashed potatoes. I order sweet potatoes. He drives with the windows down. I drive with the windows up. He watches Heroes. I watch the Bachelor. (But I know he loves to secretly watch it from his peripheral vision as he sits in the kitchen working on his laptop. He can't fool me!)

Poor Amber! She doesn't get her chance at the next failed Bachelor relationship. She took a risk to put her heart on the line to get it broken. And now back to Sugarland, TX to be welcomed by her parents and a big fat, "I told you so!"

Priorities

Every Sunday when we get home from church David and I go upstairs to change our clothes. Today as I lay on my bed talking to David as he hung his suit, I could hear Wendy crying downstairs. I assumed it was a reaction to some My Little Pony sibling snatching or the like. My usual reaction to an incident like that is to let the kids work it out on their own. She cried for several minutes and as I was approaching the door to go downstairs, I saw her walking down the hall with snotty, tear diluted blood dripping from her mouth. Naturally I picked her up and held her a foot in front of me not allowing her to lay her bloody face on my brand new Target white cable knit, short sleeved sweater. She was trying so hard to force her little traumatized head on me for some comfort and I wasn't giving it to her. I put her on my bed face up and wiped her clean. Apparently she had fallen and bitten her upper lip and we never did figure out how she fell because there were suspiciously no witnesses to the incident. I gave her a kiss.

There is something about bloody kids and my white cable knit sweaters because Jason was born while I was wearing my brand new Gap maternity white cable knit sweater. When the ER nurse asked if I wanted to hold my brand new baby boy. I told her "no" because I didn't want to wreck my new sweater. I said, "Cut the cord, clean him up and bring him back wrapped in a blanket." She understood.

Later that evening when Wendy fell off her high chair and thumped her face on the tile floor. I immediately swooped her up and allowed her to lay her head on my shoulder. This time I had already changed into an Old Navy clearanced Valentine's Day T-shirt before eating my spaghetti dinner.

I don't like to say the word "hate", but I HATE cockroaches! HATE, HATE, HATE, HATE HATE them. Last night as I was getting ready for bed, there was a nasty 2 inch flying one in my bedroom. The sucker barely responded to the Raid spray. Finally I sucked him up with the vacuum cleaner and drowned him in Raid in the removable vacuum compartment and flushed him down the toilet. I had very unrestful sleep last night. It's not fair. Roaches are terrorists. There should be a war on roaches. They should be eliminated from the earth.

The Drama

Emily had a friend over to play today and this is their drama.

Piano, guitar, and singing come to a sudden halt. Emily runs into the family room and buries her head in the couch and pretends to cry. Her friend comes to console her.

FRIEND: It's ok. It's going to snow really hard tomorrow and the power is going to go out for 100 years."

EMILY: No, 1000 years ... or ... 1269 years."

FRIEND: Yeah, 1260 years. So we can't have band practice tomorrow.

It's morning. They run through the house screaming, "Snow everywhere! It's so cold! Get blankets!"

Bradley (standing strong in the middle of the room ): I never get cold.

More screaming and running.

EMILY: I'm going to get frozen!

FRIEND: Come on, we've got to get away from this lava!

EMILY: Pretend I am stuck in the woods. Bradley, stand there and pretend you're a tree and I am going to grab onto you.

Emily loses grip of the tree and as a result more screaming.

EMILY: A walking tree!

More running and screaming and pitter patter of footsteps upstairs.
A few moments later they all come into the kitchen.

EMILY: Mommy, can we watch a movie?

The drama is over.

Have you ever slept with a 2 liter bottle?

As I lovingly gazed at my six month old baby in his crib last night I noticed he was cuddling with his delicious bottle of formula. I realized how large it was against his cute little petite body and it made me think how odd, or perhaps delightful, it would be to doze off to sleep nuzzled up to a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke.

We took the kids to the pool for the first time this season after David got home from work. After I put my bathing suit on, I noticed my bikini line had been severely neglected during the months of winter hibernation. I got out the electric clippers and as I started shaving away Bradley walked in and said, "Mommy, what are you doing?"
I replied, "Shaving my pubes."
"What are pubes?"
Concentrating on my task I briefly answered, "Pubic hairs or hair on your crotch."
Bored with the conversation, Bradley walked away. Then Emily walked in and said, "Mommy, what are you doing?"
"Shaving my pubes."
"Why?"
"Well, it's much prettier when the hair is shaved. When you get older you will have hair too and you will understand. However, Europeans don't seem to mind."
A little confused Emily asked, "My o-pee-ins? What's that?"