"Awesome"

My 5-yr old cracks me up. Daily. He just came downstairs for our nightly ritual of "Mom, I'm scared in my room alone" and "I want some company while I fall asleep." Every night. I alternate between "tough, just go to bed" and "you're not alone, we're all in the house."

Tonight I explained to him that his bedroom is directly above my craft room (where my computer is) and so I'm closer than I would be if I were in my bedroom. So we spent a moment explaining where his bed is (from below), where his door is, etc. We decided that his door is right above one of the lights, which got an "Awesome!"

I find it hysterical that my kindergarten kid says "Awesome!" like a skate punk (probably an '80s skate punk, I don't know if they say that anymore). But it's still funny.

Creative Moment

Ok, since I haven't created anything new to post, I'll go with an old picture. These were tins I made as teacher gifts 2 years ago. I covered them with paper, decorated, and then put a bag of nice chocolates inside. As you can tell, I'm especially proud of the soccer one - what do you give a male teacher? He happened to be a soccer coach at the high school, so...

I might do clipboards for Christmas or end-of-year this time. Any thoughts on that?

Better Living through Chemistry

Well, got most of the errands done, the important ones anyway, and got Rachel to the doctor. I switched to a family practice this summer, and I am SO happy I did. This was Rachel's first visit, and we happened to get the doctor I've been seeing, so it was all very chummy and comfortable. Dr. Cavallo asked which ear hurt, and took a look and said, "Wow! Have you looked at this? You should come take a look at this." So after 12 years of being a mother I finally got to look through the otoscope and see a raging case of otitis media. I really like this doctor.

So we have the mandatory bottle of amoxicillan in the fridge, and this batch is orange-flavored, which is Rachel's favorite, and I gave her Advil before bed so we both would sleep. As childhood sicknesses go, this ain't so bad. At least from my point of view. I don't have flaming red in my inner ear.

So they SHOULD all go to school tomorrow, and I SHOULD make cookies for the bake sale at the preschool on Saturday, but no promises. I did get the pie pumpkin that's been on my counter for 3 weeks cut up and steamed and pureed and in the freezer in pumpkin-pie sized batches. Watch out, hubbard squash, you're next (cue Psycho music and large knife shadow).

I shouldn't have said anything...

I jinxed myself. Should have known better than to publicly anticipate a child-free morning. Rachel was up during the night with ear pain, so I'm letting her sleep and we have an afternoon appointment at the doctor's office.

So all those errands? Hopefully she'll be feeling better late morning and we can do them then. Meanwhile, I should continue digging out all our horizontal surfaces. Where does all this stuff come from and why can't I deal with it when it arrives?

Monday, Monday, so good to me

I suppose it's a symptom of being the stay-at-home mom that I actually look forward to Mondays now. Sort of. We've had the usual weekend of soccer, roller hockey, D&D, and last minute dinner with friends, on top of trying to do laundry and clean up a little. Now I'm looking forward to everyone else off to work and school tomorrow and having a little quiet time. Yes, I have a list of errands and we have to get up for the bus, but I don't have to coordinate with anyone else once they're all on their way. It's just a little easier for a couple of hours, then I pick up from school and the bus comes home, and we have chaos again, which is ok. I'm liking the break.

Of course, I keep thinking that if I could keep up with laundry and cleaning during the week, we wouldn't have to "cram" on weekends, but that hasn't happened yet. I seem to need incentive. Having friends over this evening on short notice got the back hall and kitchen cleaned up, when I'd been slowly picking at it all week. So progress was made.

Well, I was going to post all the cards I made for family birthdays this month (hoping they've all arrived!), but I just accidentally deleted 2 of them. You get one - they were all the same style, just different papers and decorations on the tags. This is the Double Pocket fold from Technique Junkies, very easy and fun. Stampin' Up double-sided paper, punch and stamp.

Bad Mom Alert

Ok, we all got to our evening on time and now everyone is in bed. And no, the brownies have still not shown up to make my kitchen magically clean during the night. I must be doing something wrong.

Am I a bad mom to hope for rain so we don't have to get up for soccer in the morning? I sign my children up for sports, they enjoy playing, I enjoy watching, but halfway through the season I get excited at cloudy skies and the prospect of a day off. Especially those nights when we have multiple activities. I suppose I could avoid the whole issue by cutting out all activities, but that seems worse, somehow.

Ok, since I am still hoping for rain, I can make back points by actually cleaning up the kitchen BEFORE morning, right?

Busy Busy Busy

But not as bad as some. Just when I think , "oh yeah, i can totally keep up with posting every day" I completely miss one. Yesterday was farm day - a friend talked me into joining a Community-supported organic farm with her, so every week one of us has to drive 25 miles to pick up our share of the produce. In NJ, 25 miles equals 45 minutes if you're lucky, and I was not yesterday. SOMETHING happened on Route 206 yesterday and they had both directions closed for I don't know how long. Not so bad, as there was a reasonably short detour, but traffic tends to pile up around here anyway, so it added a good 45 minutes or more to the trip, so by the time I got home it was time to pick up the youngest, then everyone else gets home and we had the fire drill of school project due tomorrow.

I'm just hoping that if I say, "why don't you work on your project NOW before it's due" enough times, it will eventually sink in. I'm still hoping, but we did get it done.

And yet today, I baked two apple pies, delivered one to the middle school for the German Club "Oktoberfest", had lunch with a friend, went grocery shopping, got 90% of the groceries put away, got the kitchen mostly cleaned up after the pies, and fetched everyone from their various activities on time. Good day.

But now I'm wasting time with this when I should be making dinner - we all have to be somewhere at 7. Off to go cook something with all this lovely produce. Any ideas for a rutabaga?

Still Kicking (and biting and scratching...)

Just got back from taking our elderly cat to the vet. I was not entirely sure if I would be bringing her home again, which I did. In fact, it was a much better experience than I anticipated.

This is our 16-yr old, grossly overweight (22 lbs), arthritic and probably diabetic cat that I "rescued" from friends when she was a very young kitten. I had stopped taking her to the vet because
a) I was tired of getting yelled at that she was so fat, and that I should get her more exercise
b) she's an indoor-only cat who fought tooth and nail when being put in the carrier, so if she didn't get her rabies shot it made little difference and saved me some blood.

However, she's now clearly uncomfortable and seemed to be failing, so I realized I could no longer put it off. So, at a new vet's office, I learned that she
a) may be healthier than I think and need a higher protein diet to loose some of the weight
b) may perk up considerably with arthritis medicine
c) still has quite the attitude (bit the vet, hissed at the office cat, and yet still purred when I put her back in the carrier)

So we're waiting on blood work, and trying some new food. If the blood work shows her liver, kidneys, etc. are ok, we'll put her on the meds and new diet and see what happens. If not, well, we'll cross that bridge and I'll feel like I've tried at least a little. And the new vet did not give me any guilt about level of care, for which I am profoundly grateful.

Introducing Me

Now I've done it. I've created a blog. Don't know if I have anything interesting to say, but since I enjoy reading other blogs, I'll try to return the favor.

I am currently a stay-at-home mom with three kids, ages 12, 9, and 5. Right now I volunteer at our church and my children's schools, avoid housework as much as I can, spend way too much time in the car, and when I can, paper craft and rubber stamp. My background is in engineering, Materials Science and Engineering to be exact, and I have a BS degree and an MS degree. This does give me a certain advantage when helping my kids with homework, but is otherwise not currently useful.

I discovered rubber stamping about 8 years ago, and having always had a weakness for a beautiful sheet of paper, was a natural to get sucked into the world of papercrafting. Now that my youngest is in full-time Kindergarten, I keep hoping I will spend a little more time creating and have something to post here. In reality, so far anyway, I'm always in the car and rarely spend the day at home. I'll keep trying. But I do have a sympathy card I just made and haven't mailed yet. It uses the Scor-It Faux grid technique from the Technique Junkies newsletter.

The name of my blog comes from a sheet of rubber stamps I found some years ago. It has a woman with a word bubble, then a variety of sayings to go in the bubble. My favorite is, "What does she do with all those stamps?"