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Thursday, November 30, 2006

What's that smell?

To begin this story, I really have to start at the beginning of my day. I woke up this morning, dreading having to teach Joy School, especially since I hadn't even begun to prepare for the Kindergarten prep part yet. I got Andi and Dylan their breakfast, and was working on making their lunches, and had Peyton happily playing on the floor. He loves to pull diapers out of their original package, so that's what he was doing. All of a sudden, I hear him cry. Turns out, he had gotten ahold of the Desitin Creamy, and apparently didn't care for the taste. Now, this is a normal occurance at our house. I believe that every one of my kids has eaten a tube of diaper rash cream at one point or another, but as anyone would know, once your kids has eaten it, they seem to carry the scent with them until their next bath (which I wasn't prepared to give him yet, since he just had one) since it seems to get in crevices that you can't always find with a baby wipe. Anyway, so I was sitting on my bed nursing him, trying to get him to fall asleep (Oh yeah, due to inclement weather, Joy School was canceled, so I got to nurse without 4 extra preschoolers watching!). Well, I kept smelling something flowery, and almost disgustingly overwhelming. I kept thinking it was Peyton, and his Desitin, but when I put my nose closer to him, I stopped smelling this stink. I decided to go investigate after putting Peyton down for a nap. I found both kids upstairs, happily watching the Disney Channel, and not playing with anything out the ordinary. The smell kept getting stronger and softer every so often, but the whole house REAKED! I asked Andi was smelled, and she said: "Um, Dylan was playing with that blue thing." For the life of me, I couldn't place the smell. I looked under the sink and found all cleaning products present and accounted for. Finally I figured out where I smelled it before. The night Dylan vomited in our hallway, we bought some Febreze-like stuff to neutralize the odor. I went in the laundry room and found the bottle mostly empty, but there. I laughed to myself, and lectured Dylan about not touching things that aren't his, especially in the laundry room. I figured the smell would eventually dissipate, and life would go on. Well, shortly after I sat down and started writing this entry, I heard Andi screaming from the living room, and Dylan laughing. You guessed it... Dylan was chasing Andi around the room with the bottle of Odor Neutralizer, and laughing. I freaked out! I had just barely told him not to, and he did it again within 5 minutes! I had to strip his clothes off because he had the liquid all up the arms of his shirt, and he stunk to high heavens. I don't know what I'm going to do with that boy, but I can't wait 'til his father gets home! I guess I should be glad he didn't get ahold of something that suds up, or stains.

Monday, November 27, 2006


Well it's not the slickest looking, but the lights are up on our house. I may put some stuff on the right side of the house some day, but for now I'm calling it good.

Monday, November 20, 2006

At least she's honest...

I guess the best place to start is the beginning... Earlier today, I was upstairs with the kids. Andi and Dylan were fighting over whether to watch the Disney Channel or Cars, and since Andi is older, she won. Peyton was happily playing on the floor, only fussing when a toy he was playing with rolled just out of his reach. Andi responded to this by saying: "Mommy, Peyton is sad, I think he wants to sit in my Princess chair, here I will help him." I calmly explained to her (for about the four billionth time) that she is too little to "help" Peyton move anywhere. I told her not to try to move him, that only mommy or daddy could do that. She seemed to accept it, and she sat in the chair herself.
A short while later, I noticed it was time to make lunch. The kids had requested Mac and Cheese, so I opted to leave a happy Peyton upstairs, so I wouldn't have to worry about him around the stove. Before lunch was ready Dylan came downstairs to "help" me set the table, but all he was doing was pulling random utensils out of the silverware drawer. When lunch was ready, I called Andi down, and while waiting for her, I decided to sweep the "kitchen" part of the floor, since I don't do it as often as the "dining room" part. Andi came down, and I casually asked her what Peyton was doing. I expected a response such as: "He's pwaying on da fwoor", or "He's sweeping." But instead, she said very frankly: "He's sitting in my princess chair, and wearing my tinker bell hat." I asked her again, with the same response, so I did what any good mother would do. I grabbed the camera, and headed upstairs to see what I would find. Here is what I found when I reached the gameroom:




Yeah, so she didn't listen when I told her not to put Peyton in the chair...at least she's honest about it. I was also too busy laughing to discipline her. Sometimes being a mom is, well, interesting. I hope he survives into adulthood!

Is your house on fire, Clark?

Since everybody else is doing it, we decided to put our Christmas lights up on Saturday. We have never had a need for exterior lights before, so we had to buy some. (I swear I should just give all of my pay check that isn’t used on bills to Wal-Mart.) We picked out a set of lights that looked pretty slick and headed home.

I started putting our lights up on the roof that covers the porch. Luckily our neighbors had a ladder that they let us borrow. That was pretty helpful, since I’m not 9 feet tall. It turned out to be pretty easy. We found these hook things that you can stick under the shingles so you don’t have to staple the lights up. I don’t know if sticking things under your shingles is a bad idea or not, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt. If it messed it up, it’s nothing that a roll of duct tape wouldn’t fix. I got it all finished and took a step back to admire my work. Cool.

Since we have a two story house, just doing the porch roof wasn’t enough. I needed to do the roof of the house too. The ladder we had was 7 feet tall, and the roof is . . . really high, so I couldn’t exactly reach it on my tip toes. I had to get up on the porch roof. (Roof is a funny word. Roof. Ha ha.) This would have been no problem for me when I was younger. When I was a kid, I’d always climb up on our house to retrieve balls or whatever, and I’d just get off with no problem. I’m a little older than that now. I have acquired a fear of heights, death, paralyzation, impalement, broken limbs, sprained appendages, and boo boos. Eventually I got up the courage to get up on the roof.

Once I was up there, I realized it wasn’t so bad. That is after I got over the fear of the roof caving with me on it, tripping, and . . . pretty much anything. It was easier to put these lights up lights up because they were at eye level so I didn’t have to reach up to get the hooks in and then get the wire in the hooks. However, it took longer since I was using one hand to cling to anything I could get a hold of just in case the roof gave way. Maybe I’ve become too paranoid in my old age. Eventually I finished getting the lights on the roof. One problem was, I was still on the roof.

I would have just slept up on the roof, but Sam said something about hypothermia and rolling over and falling off the roof. I had to get down somehow. I considered my options, and eventually figured getting back on the ladder would be the best way to get down. Most people would have figured that out as common sense. I however do not have that sense, so I had to figure the ladder thing out by process of elimination. I took a look at scooting to the edge and jumping. Them I remembered that I’m old and I’d probably break something. So I pondered laying on my belly and sliding down slowly and just dropping down when I got far enough off the edge. (Yeah nothing could go wrong there.) I was really just being a pansy about the whole ladder thing because it was like two or three feet from the top of the roof. I eventually just got down on the ladder and made it safely to the ground.

I think I may have overcome my fear of heights. Getting on the roof doesn’t seem so bad now. That’ll be put to test before too long because we didn’t get enough lights, so I’ll need to put more on the roof.

I'll post some pictures when we're finished.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

In Flight Entertainment

Our plane ride home from Boise on Sunday was a little more exciting than Sam and I had hopes for. The kids got sick due to a food poisoning incident from the lunch we had before we left. Most people who ate chicken got sick, except for me, because I am indestructible like Wolverine. Ouch, I think I just got a paper cut. Dang that is going to hurt.

Before the kids started getting sick, they provided a little in flight entertainment for the people sitting around us. We were in the plane at Boise waiting to taxi to the runway. I had the pleasure of sitting next to our darling two oldest children. Of course they started fighting over something stupid for a few minutes. Andi was the instigator of the little skirmish, so I told her to knock it off. Did she listen to me? She’s almost 4, of course she didn’t. The fight continues, so I told her again to stop fighting with her brother. She kind of looked at me for a few seconds, and then kept on fighting.

I was pretty annoyed at this point because we hadn’t even taken off yet, and here the kids were already being obnoxious and noisy. So I pushed Andi away from Dylan (since she was sitting on his seat) and again told her to stop fighting.

To give you a little background on what happened next, Andi has been going to Joy School, which is a preschool that a group of moms get together and take turns teaching. They have rules to Joy School, which is probably a good idea because it’ll keep the kids from making shanks and starting riots and that sort of thing. I’m not exactly sure how it goes down, but the rules to Joy School are set to music, including the rules that “We never hit or kick or push” and the kids sing the rules when they’re at Joy School.

Since I had just pushed Andi, I had violated one of the Joy School rules. Apparently Andi thought my push counted as a hit, so she loudly said “Daddy! You hit me!” on the plane full of strangers. I quickly corrected her and said “I didn’t hit you. I lightly pushed you.” Her reply to that was “Daddy, we never push. Don’t ever push me” and then she started breaking out in the Joy School rules song “We never hit or kick or push, we never hit or kick or push ...” She kept singing that over and over again, mixed with “Daddy, don’t ever hit me, OK!”

Don't mess with the enforcer.

Other passengers were amused by my chastisement coming from the sweet little voice of my innocent daughter. I couldn’t help but laugh because she was being so animated (and loud) at explaining the rules that I had just broken. I guess it's not everyday you hear an almost four year old putting her father in his place. I sure learned my lesson. ♪We never hit or kick or push.♪

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Keeping up with the . . . those people

On our street, there are now two houses that have their Christmas lights put up. It's November 8th. Let us at least finsih off our Halloween candy before you start throwing that whole Christmas season stuff on us.

We're getting ready to go on a flight to Boise tomorrow for my brother-in-law's wedding. We leave DFW at 8:00, and get to San Fransisco(???) nearly 4 hours later. Why are we going through SF? I have no idea. It just seems cruel. 4 hours on a plane with my kids? Sometimes we are lucky to make it 4 hours in our house with the kids. And it's not like we have a really long layover so we can catch our breath, no no. Our connecting flight leaves for Boise 50 minutes after we're supposed to land. IS there any chance we'll miss our connection? No way, flights never get delayed. At least when we get there we're just going to be able to relax and enjoy ourselves. Oh wait, we're going to a wedding. No we won't.

"Lost" is starting to tick me off. The "Fall Season Finale" was on tonight. I've never heard of a fall season finale before. If you haven't heard about it before, let me tell you what it is. Your show is not going to have any more new episodes until February. That's right, "Lost" left us with a freakin cliff hanger that is going to last until February. Whoever had this idea should have to sit next to our kids on the 4 hour long plane ride. At least when they come back in February they'll air 16 new episodes in a row. It still irritates me. If they're going to do that, why don't they wait to air everything until January, like they do with "24". Do I care too much about a TV show? Possibly.

Hey, I need to go to sleep. Why? Because my 4 hour long plane ride with my kids leaves at 8:00 A.M. and we need to leave here like at 2:00 A.M. to be able to get through security in time to get on our plane. Brandon should have eloped. I would have sent him a $20 gift certificate to Taco Bell. You missed out on that one, pal.

Monday, November 06, 2006

Missing my baby

Cameron has been telling me for a couple weeks now that it's "high time that boy had his own room", in reference to Peyton. You see, since we moved into our house, Peyton's crib has been set up in our bedroom to avoid the need for Cameron to go trapesing up the stairs at 2 in the morning. So, yesterday he put action behind his threats. Well, I didn't think I would be so emotional about my baby moving all the way upstairs, but it has been really hard for me. I look at the empty space where his crib was, and it makes me feel a little guilty. To make matters worse, last night we had a major thunderstorm. You know, the kind that makes your walls shake when it thunders? So, instead of Cameron being sensitive and understanding, he does the exact opposite. He laughs at me for sighing at the baby monitor, and makes comments like "Poor baby, all alone upstairs in the dark room. He probably doesn't know where he is." Yeah, that helps. Well, we all survived last night, and Peyton seems surprisingly unscathed, but I must admit that I have half a mind to stick Cameron in the crib, and bring Peyton to sleep with me! That'll teach him!

Sunday, November 05, 2006

A little help from the siblings

Today, since Peyton has gotten really good at sitting by himself, I decided to leave him upstairs to play with toys while I went to help Cameron re-setup the crib (that's a whole other story). I came back out of the baby's room to check on some crying, and I find Peyton standing, holding onto the couch, and looking terrified. Andi was sitting close by, so I inquired what had happened. She proudly told me that she had picked him up, and that he liked it. Sometimes I wonder how much he likes the things that she says he does. For another example, Cameron and I were making dinner this evening, and I hear an ear peircing scream come from Peyton. I go to investigate, and find Dylan standing over him with a water bottle. Peyton was completely soaked from the top of his head to his waist. I guess the baby was thirsty.
Cameron tried to think a few steps ahead, and told Andi that Peyton is too little to go down the stairs, to prevent her trying anything. I fear he may have just given her ideas. I guess it's about time to baby proof the stairs! How my little sister (#3 in the family) lived to be a teenager, I'll never know. At this rate, Peyton will be lucky to see age 3.

Our little guy is growing

Peyton seems to be getting bigger every day. All of the sudden, he's sitting up. He now has two teeth, and he's eating rice cereal. So tonight, we thought it would be a good opportunity to get the camera and take some embarrassing pictures of him eating and getting messy. Before too long Sam will be saying "we don't have a baby any more" to which I will reply "No we don't!"



Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Bathroom Makeover

Over the weekend, Cameron and I re decorated our upstairs bathroom. We decided to go with a duckie theme, since it is the bathroom our kids use. It turned out pretty well, if we do say so ourselves, but you can be the judge. Here are some before and after pictures for your viewing pleasure. I must say, we are looking forward to doing a non bathroom for our next project. We originally planned to do tile on the bottom part, then realized how involved that was, and opted to go with just paint instead. So, without further adieu: