Ism of the Week

"Mom, what is stuffing?"

"Do you mean the filling inside a pillow, or the kind of stuffing that we eat at Thanksgiving?"

"The food kind."

"Oh, it's so good, and you've had it before.  Stuffing is small bread cubes that are seasoned and then cooked inside the turkey.  That's my favorite part of Thanksgiving."

"How do they get the bread inside the turkey?"

"Well, when you buy a turkey in the store, all of the insides have been taken out, so it is hollow."

"But do you put the stuffing in the turkey's mouth?"

"No, not exactly."

"Where, Mom?"

"It sort of goes in the other end of the turkey."

Stuffed turkey photo that I shamelessly stole from Google Images.

"So let me get this straight--" (Cael's new favorite line) "--you want me to eat pieces of bread that you put inside a dead, empty bird, through his butt?"

"Yeah, but try not to think of it that way."

"I don't think I can think about anything else."

Breaking the News

If you happened to miss Monday's announcement, we are now expecting our third child.  And our current two are super excited.

Well, one is.  The other isn't quite sure.

But one thing is for certain-- I won't be taking name advice from Cael or Graham any time soon.

 

(Sound quality isn't great.  You may need to turn up your speakers.  I promise there is no digital ghoul ready to jump out at you.)

Random Facts of Information

If you are on Facebook, you have probably seen the timelines of your friends inundated with the "Random Facts" challenge.  A friend lists facts about themselves, and if you "like" their post, you get assigned a number, and you are encouraged to list that many obscure facts about yourself as well.

At the time when I "liked" the posts of three of my friends, however, I didn't realize that I was getting myself involved.  So in the course of one afternoon, I was messaged that I received a six and two sevens. 

You want thingamabobs?  I've got twenty.

1.  Since becoming pregnant, I cannot eat mushrooms of any kind.  My stomach simply won't allow it, even though portobellos were a favorite of mine before.

2.  I have a serious phobia of any insect in the bee family.  I have never been stung, which I credit to my rapid flight instinct when one of those striped terrorists are around.  Once, while working at my high school job as a cashier at Walgreens, our automatic door got stuck open and several wasps from a nearby hive made it in the store.  When I saw one land on my shoulder, I fainted in the middle of scanning a woman's purchases.

3.  I am hopelessly addicted to nail polish.  I have dozen of bottles, and during the summer, I will remove and repaint my nails nearly every day.

4.  I believe that there are three foods worth eating even to the point of sickness:  Thanksgiving stuffing, fresh crab, and sautéed morel mushrooms.

5.  When I was twelve years old, I was home alone before school when a severe windstorm knocked a massive oak tree over onto my house.  There was a huge crack in the ceiling above my head, and the tree punched through the wall in my bedroom.

6.  Joel and I met at college before classes even started, and dated until December of our freshman year.  At that time, thanks to my 18 year old self likely being a bit clingy, he broke up with me.  The following March, he asked me to take him back and I responded with a prepared list of "The Reasons Why You And I Will NEVER Work."  Guess the joke was on me.

7.  Contrary to what many people think about me, I am very introverted.  I crave time alone, and sometimes find it difficult to fake interest in conversations, especially with people I don't know very closely.

8.  I am categorically against Kindles, Nooks or any other e-reader.  I love my iPad, but I feel that reading a book is an experience, and I am unwilling to give up the smell of the paper, or the sound the pages make as they turn.

9.  I had heart surgery when I was 16 years old.

10.  I have seen every episode of Whose Line is it Anyway? from all three incarnations of the show, and can quote entire episodes of the US version with Drew Carey.

11.  When Cael was a baby, I made all of his baby food myself.  While cutting a butternut squash to bake for him, I put my brand new Kitchen Aid chef's knife through my left hand.  I still have nerve damage and limited motion because of the incident.

12.  I am not a natural redhead.  I was instructed to dye my hair red for a high school musical and never went back.

13.  My dream job is to have either my own restaurant or a syndicated newspaper/magazine column.

14.  Other than Canada and the Bahamas, I have never left the United States.  I would love to visit France, Italy, Scotland or Spain before I die.

15.  I am a bit of a grammar Nazi.  While I make certain exceptions myself, like starting a sentence with, "and" or "but", I have no patience for people who say "I could care less".  Think about it, people.  That means you care.

16.  Born into a very musical family, I was always singing and performed in at least one vocal ensemble from when I was five until I graduated college.  It has been 8 years since I sang in a choir and I miss it terribly.

17.  I've lived my entire life in Iowa, but I have never touched a cow, horse, pig or chicken.

18.  When I was in elementary school, I was given a Styrofoam cup with one pumpkin seed in it as part of a Sunday school lesson.  After the plant had outgrown the cup, we planted it in a large pot, and eventually had to transplant it into our family's garden.  With the only available space being near the compost pile, my one pumpkin seed grew into over 30 pumpkins of varying sizes that supplied the neighborhood kids that fall.

19.  I have recurring dreams about my teeth falling out, or pulling them out myself.

20.  I talk to my dog like he is a human.  Whenever I leave the house for more than an hour, I explain to Oscar where I am going and when I plan to be back. 


...And that's twenty facts.  I did it!

I hope you're not bored to tears with that overload of information, because now it's your turn!  I'd love for you to comment below with something random about yourself so we can get to know each other better.  Ready, go!

Our Latest Project

You know what I realized over the weekend?  I skipped not one but two posts last week, and I'm very sorry because I am in no way abandoning my little corner of the internet. 

But you know what?  I have a really good excuse.

I'm learning that it takes a lot to keep up with a full-time student, a part-time preschooler, an over-time music teacher and husband (especially during musical and All-State season), three steady day care kids, a dog, a cat, a blog and a serious addiction to salted chocolate popcorn.  I've been working myself ragged on a particular project, feeling sheer exhaustion at every turn and been plagued with a bout of persistent nausea that has, at times, made even that popcorn sound less than appealing.

I asked my doctor about it and he said not to worry.  It should all sort itself out by mid June.

Ultrasound taken at 7 weeks.

As for me, I'm very excited about this little project, but exceedingly anxious that I won't have any stamina or stomach lining left come presentation time. 

I'm also hoping that it has my brown eyes.

I'm off to take a nap... it might be the last one I get for quite some time.

Say What?

I think we may have a bit of speech therapy in our future.  Graham, who is scarily smart and already beginning reading skills, is still having a hard time making certain consonant sounds.  At his age, Cael followed a similar pattern, but by the time he was four he had realized that the letter "R" shouldn't sounds like "W". (Check out the video below to hear his unique pronunciation.)



The problem is that we are so used to Graham's linguistic quirks that I hardly notice his mistakes anymore.  When he replaces the "G" sound with a "D", some part of my brain knows it is incorrect, but the other part simply giggles (or diddles) at my son pronouncing his own name as "Dram".  Similarly, because "C" and "K" sound like "T", our older son is "Tail" rather than "Cael", and I coudn't have chosen a more appropriate or humorous nickname for him myself.

But I've noticed lately that Dram has been replacing his trouble letters with other unrelated ones that don't follow his typical pattern.  The first time I heard him refer to a baby I watch as "Helen" rather than "Kellen", we got a chuckle out of it until Tail alerted me to the fact that his brother has been starting many more of his words with the letter "H".

"Mom, he does that a lot.  When I talk to him, lots of his words start with "H".  Stuff like 'hat' and 'house' and 'hammer'."

I think I am going to do some calling this week to gather some information about speech therapy for Graham.

And maybe some listening therapy for Cael.

Homework Headaches

Remember a few weeks ago when I begged and pleaded for help with my son who, despite being generally amiable at home, was in constant trouble for behaving foolishly at school?  That was an unbelievably challenging time, but as I look back on it with 20/20 vision, I realize that I was the fool.  During that difficult time, why wasn't I knocking on wood and thanking my lucky stars that, at the very least, I didn't have to deal with it myself?

But I didn't knock.  I didn't, and I'm paying for it now.

On Friday, Cael proudly handed me his smiley face chart chronicling his massive achievement and ability to control himself when needed, making sure to add, "Take that, Mom." 

Why didn't I knock?

There's been a great deal of snottiness in the air at my house lately, which is one of my biggest pet peeves and something I will not tolerate, so its continued presence has been as irritating, if not more so, than the Boxelder bugs that weaseled their way into my house through the same cracks that Cael and Graham's respect for me used to make a hasty escape.

But I finally hit my boiling point last night.  I was already on edge from a trying weekend and a frantic morning searching outside for various pieces of winter gear.  I didn't even have a chance to post yesterday, because every free moment I had was filled with "but Moms" and "no fairs".  We didn't even get to Cael's one and only piece of homework the night before, a blank coloring page of "Tom the Turkey", which we were urged to creatively disguise in order to save him from an untimely death as someone's Thanksgiving turkey.

I was very grateful that said turkey wasn't due until Tuesday, allowing me an additional 24 hours to help Cael conjure up some clever disguises other than "poop" and "a turkey-shaped booger".  But yesterday afternoon, when we finally sat down to disguise Tom as Superman SuperTom, Cael saw me send a day care child home with a paper that he mistakenly thought belonged to him.

There were tears.  There was screaming.  I briefly thought of checking behind his ears for the telltale 666 until he hauled off and kicked me. 

Kicked me.  I stared at him, slack-jawed, until I snapped into action and barely controlled anger as I put him in a time-out and mentally planned my barely coherent lecture about turkey gizzards and smiley faces and never, ever hitting or kicking me.  Ever.

 Meanwhile, as Cael thought about his behavior, another child I watch commandeered the crayons and made the executive decision that SuperTom would look better in various shades of red and purple, scribbling at random over our only copy of the cartoon image.  When Cael emerged from time-out, reluctantly apologizing, he threw himself into another fit upon realizing that his paper had been destroyed.  I tried to salvage the teachable moment by pointing out that had he controlled himself rather than kicking me, his paper would have remained untouched and Tom could have realized his destiny as the hero of the turkey population.

Later, after we'd all calmed down, eaten supper and grabbed some supplies at the grocery store, we did our best to fix Tom's colorful visage and disguise him in some strategically placed brush.  The irony wasn't lost on me that our "creative" disguise for Tom was, in fact, what a real turkey would actually do to disguise itself, but I was still reeling from the irony that what began as a celebration for good behavior ended in evidence that we still have some work to do.

This time when I see progress, I'll knock on wood.  Or turkey.

Autumn Leaves

I apologize for having nothing witty to contribute this morning, but after four days of cold and grey skies, I thought we could all use a dose of sunshine.

Every year, before the weather truly shifts and we all get the sense that the change is irreversible, we are blessed with one last beautiful day to last us through the cold days of winter.  Last Sunday was that day, and boy, did we make the most of it.

I hope that my boys' smiles have helped to warm your day just as they warm our lives!  And hey, it could be worse, right?