week wrap up

My mother-in-law is leaving us tomorrow. We worked her, she was either holding Dritte, or feeding him, or changing him, or doing dishes, or trying to corral Mr Grunty & Miss Squeaky. We’ll miss her. Miss S and Mr G even warmed up to her, and would give her either high-five, or a bye-wave when they are going to bed.

The other day, after dinner, I took Mr G & Miss S outside to play, as I’ve been doing since it is staying lighter later. We saw a murder of crows trying to make a hawk go away.

Today I planted potatoes. There were 14 red potatoes that had started sprouting. We’ll see how it goes.

Today I composted a bunch of the acorn squash from last summer. It’s good to know that they mostly lasted to spring time. A few of them were getting soft, or starting to mold. Too bad I really don’t like acorn squash. They were fun to grow.

Today, the toddlers were in boxes, and I pushed them around the living room, making race car noises. Then they put their baby dolls in the boxes and they pushed their babies around.

tonight, we move…

Tonight, right at bedtime, Miss Squeaky and Mr Grunty were very helpful in picking up their wood blocks and putting them in the bag. Then the bag was full. Then Miss S picked up the bag, and dumped the bag out. Then Mr G  and Miss S would pick up a block in each hand, and take turns running to their bedroom and placing the blocks on Miss S’s bed, laughing all the way.

Earlier tonight, bath night. Miss S still hates getting her hair rinsed out, and once she thinks that’s aboot to begin, she frantically climbs out of the tub. When it is time to rinse Mr G’s hair, he just sputters a bit as the water cascades over his face, and then laughs when it’s over.

bad day

nothing like installing child-safety-car-seats to make me feel totally inept….I pray we never have to find out if they work.

tonight

I get home. I open the door and Mr Grunty yells “Daddy!”, and Miss Squeaky comes running over to give me a hug.

Later, Miss S was playing with an infant swing, I think she had her baby-doll in it, pulled it back, let go, it came flying back hit her in the face, and that caused her to flinch back, hitting the back of her head on the table.

Later, Mr Grunty stepped on a small wooden block.

Dritte did not wake up during any of the crying episodes.

Later, we played the crawling game. Dritte looked a little sad that he couldn’t crawl around sing out “Ah-ah AH!!”

Speaking of singing, I was trying to sing the voice “cadenza” from Cowboy Junkies version of “Sweet Jane”…and then Miss Squeaky was singing along with me.

When Miss S says “baby” it sounds like “BAY-bayh”.

Mr G said “brush” tonight, whilst picking up his mommy’s hair brush, and then went around the family, brushing eveyone’s hair. He was also amusing himself by losing a crayon between the couch cushions, and then finding it again.

Well, my most excellent mother-in-law is spending the week with us, I best go do some chores and make it look like I’m helpful.

hiking

Yay! I took the toddlers hiking twice this weekend. We went up to ^Ham-linPark^ which is freakishly under used by the local residents. Yesterday it was just me, MrGrunty & MissSqueaky. Today, MyBetterHalf joined us because her mommy is visiting, so grandma took care of Dritte.

Yesterday, twice, Mr G & Miss S wanted to go opposite directions. The first time, I had to run up the hill after Miss S and bring her back to where Mr G was. (They were only 15 feet away from each other.) The second time, I coaxed Miss S into bringing me her latest rock discovery, and for Mr G to come look at the rock. And we saw lots of BIG dogs…I’m gonna say GreatDanes & IrishWolf hounds. The childrens were very excited to see the dogs, but as the dogs got closer, they saw how big they were and the childrens became more shy of the dogs. All I know, is the dogs we saw were significantly bigger than the awesome Maddie.

Today, Mr G was leading the way, and I few times I had to stop him, ask him, “where’s mommy?”  He would turn around, go back down the trail, see his mommy and squeal with delight and run to give her a hug. Miss S was busy looking for the perfect walking stick. She tried out about 37. It was sprinkling, but we were dry under the forest canopy.

Then we went to the store, and they each got their own car-attached-to-shopping-cart to drive.

Tonight at home, they were running around the living room, laughing, and squealing with delight when their paths would cross. I love watching them play.

songs of the now

a few “new” songs that I really appreciate these days… I’m trying to use legit sites for the links, so that the artist gets their fraction on a penny. Most of the time the videos don’t really enhance the song for me, by the way.

“Cath” by Death Cab for Cutie…very pretty and very sad.

Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” is very sweet and happy and funny/witty lyrics that are fun to sing along with. It does seem like he wanted to sound like Iz.

Another love song…by Plain White Ts “1, 2, 3, 4“. A very happy tune, and this video is very sweet. This song will be my exception to the “No counting in songs” rule that I got from my brother. He hates it when lyrics are lists, or counting, or the A-B-C… yeah, after I heard him say his rule, it made me doubt the Police’s “Murder by numbers”. I guess my other exception to his rule is “Kiss Off” by the Violent Femmes.

“Say Hey, (I love you)” by Micheal Franti & Spearhead is very fun, and I wish it got more airplay, but pro’lly it doesn’t fit a format/genre…so the radio don’t know what to do.   “…mama told me don’t lose you, because the best luck I had was you” – I can relate to that!

…ya know, I pro’lly said it before, most the time I prefer the female voice, but the songs above are by boys. But don’t worry, I still like the ladies:

Marie Digby (the song is on her MySpace) “Bring me love” …and I do like her accoustic version of “Umberella“, which makes me think that it’s a good song, since I like the dance version by Rihanna .

And sorry to make you go to MySpace again…but that’s the best place to see Metric’s “Help, I’m still alive”… I really like her singing out “beating like a hammer!”

On the ComcastOnDemand…been watching some U2 videos. And I may be the only one in the world, but I like the song “Lemon“. And watching the baby version of U2  “I will follow” video is very cute. Larry Mullen looked very nervous. Their latest,”Get on your boots” has a nice riff, I like it. I like how the Edge uses string muting to make his guitar a percsion instrument on the verse.  But sadly, it’s been awhile since U2 has put out an album where I like all the songs.

hey, remember me??

The childrens (which in this case refers to Mr Grunty & Miss Squeaky) really like the outdoors. Every morning when we leave the house, they have to play in the yard before loading into the car to go to daycare. There’s a couple of small bushes they go over and hit, a couple of plastic jars they might pick up and throw, but mostly they just wander around and look at stuff in the yard. Sometimes, they make piles of beauty bark on front steps, showing me the biggest pieces they have found.

Sometimes I can coax them into go over to the car and getting in. Other times, I have to use brute strength, and pick up a yelling and kicking children to strap into their  car seats.

When we get home. They will excitedly squeal when they see their mommy. But they don’t want to go in. They want to play outside. And since we have a bit more time, we go to the back yard. They have found a milk crate that for some reason I was storing rocks in. So they started putting a few rocks in it to. Hey, their doing chores for fun! They’ll show me the cool rocks, and ask, “what’s that?”

There’s a couple of beach balls they play with. Mr G hearts the purple one and will scream if Miss S gets it. Usually she’s nice and gives it to him. They’ll either roll the ball down the ramp on one side of the deck, and then go get it, or bounce it down the steps on the other side of the deck, and point to me to go get it for them.

Right now, me and Dritte are hanging out. He’s in the BabyBjorn, so he’s happy to be snuggled up against papa’s chest.

Today, since it was the first day of spring, I shaved most of my beard, and got a 75% reduction hair cut. When I went to the daycare to pick the toddlers up, they did not run over to me. But looked at me funny, were a bit wary, and slowly walked towards me. Mr G recognized me first. It took Miss S a while, I think by the time we were home and playing in the back yard, by then she accepted it was her papa.

sunshine

we’ve had some sunshine in the past few days.

So, believing the childrens need their vitamin D, we’ve played in the yard. I pulled out the toddler-slide-yard-toy. They are much better at climbing up it. I got both of them to say “weee!” when going down the slide.

They’ve played with beach balls on the deck. Miss Squeaky, when she first sees the ball will giggle & squeal with delight. Mr Grunty will sometimes get frustrated when the ball rolls in an unexpected direction, and then I remind him, “you can go get it”, and he chases it down. One of their favorite games is to throw the balls down the ramp, chase it down, then bring it back up onto the deck.

That reminds me, the other night, me, Mr G & Miss S where playing catch. We were in a triangle, and were passing the ball to each other. I was very happy they would pass to each other, and take turns chasing it down, but eventually the triangle got smaller and smaller, and the game was over.

BTW…Dritte likes to cuddle. We think he likes the warmth of sleeping on a parental’s chest.

how it’s been?

It hasn’t all been cats, kids & moms making ruckus.

Tuesday 3/3, around 2AM. I was sick. Sick like I haven’t been in a long, long time.  I thought that someone had put a Mark of Justice on me and I had just murdered a kobold – explaination here, NSFWS – Not Safe For Weak Stomaches.

I was very grateful I made it to the bathroom. I was also thanking God that my mom was there to help MyBetterHalf take care of the childrens, that took a load of worry off my quaking shoulders.Then I slept…I slept most of Tuesday, I got hung out with the childrens for about 30 minutes before they went to bed. Then I went back to bed and slept until…

7AM Wednesday (3/4), when I was told that Mr Grunty just threw up on his breakfast. He stayed home, Miss Squeaky went to daycare, where, around 4pm she threw up at daycare. Wednesday night, they both threw up in their beds. MissS is freaked out by the event, tenses up, tries to fight it, wants to be held, tries to stop it.  MrG just lets it happen.

We watched them carefully, tried to give them plenty of water, made sure that they were still peeing… (TMI warning: which can be difficult to tell if a child has diariah) …because we really don’t want them to get dehydrated. We’ve been instructed to take them to the ER if they go more than 8 hours without a pee diaper.

Thursday, (March 5th) since I’m disorganized, untrusting, and have a hyper-inflated sense of self worth to the company, I went in to work to do a few quick projects. Bitterkat asked when my mom would be heading home.

Well, Thursday ~8pm, my mom was SICK.  I took her home right away. I suddenly felt like we were under siege from some stupid little virus.

Yesterday, March 8th, I was thinking everyone was better. Except, last night, more throwing up from the toddlers.

how it’s gonna be?

every now and then, you get events that make you think, “so…this is how it’s gonna be. Interesting.”

Soon after bringing MyBetterHalf & Dritte home, one moring, I was sleeping in the loft with Dritte. That way, if he was hungry in the night, I could fix him a bottle of breast milk, and wouldn’t have to wake MyBetterHalf. We’ve been trying to give him bottles of breast milk at night, because he drinks those more efficiently, and, as a result, stays full longer.

Side note… I remember, being very excited when Miss Squeaky and Mr Grunty drank double digits of mL from bottles. Not an issue for Dritte. I think his first bottle he drank down 2 ounces…which is like 60 mL. Maybe it’s because he was born full term, and weighed 2 lbs more than Mr G.

That morning, I was awoken to the sound of a crash, two toddlers screaming, a cat yelping, and two very excited adults trying to calm everyone down. My thought process:

1. Where’s Dritte? With me. That’s good.
2. Screaming? Both toddlers, so they have plenty of oxygen.
3. Adults? MyBetterHalf & my Mom…OK, I think they can handle most everything.
4. So, this is how it’s gonna be? I pro’lly should go check and see what the ruckus is aboot.

Recently, Miss S and Mr G have learned how to “close” (they don’t understand “shut”) the toddler gates. This particular morning, Miss Sophie-kittie was in the way, and got the gate shut on her neck. That freaked her out. Which freaked out Oliver. Which freaked out the toddlers. Which freaked out the adults who were trying to calm everyone and open the gate the proper way to let Sophie-kitty escape.

Sophie ran off to hide. Which was good, because she could run. A bit later, I went to check on her. She was in the closet, and was easily coaxed out of the closet with some tasty kitty treats which she scarfed down. So, she had normal interest in food.