Year: 2014
I always said I wouldn’t color my gray…
But just a little wouldn’t hurt, right?! I know I have some gray, but when I looked at this pic I snapped today, I have to admit I was a little shocked.
Facebook comments:
- Kristin—I don’t mind my gray either, but my hairdresser seems to. She owns my hair, so I get what I get. 🙂
- Jean—Love graying hair! Don’t change it.
- Tommy—If you color, go crazy. A magenta or blue streak ought to look good there.
- Brad—Hair color questions aside, this is a very good picture of you. You could do what I do and get a “tint” – I’ve got a little less natural gray than what I see in your picture, but when I went to my new style a few years ago, my wife convinced me to try the tint as well. The analogy my stylist uses is that the tint is like stain or varnish on wood; it’s translucent and lets the underlying product show through, albeit with a slightly different color, whereas an actual dye job is more like paint. I’m probably going to get hate mail from this, but since you asked: Knowing about what age you are, I’d cover it a little, whether tint or the full works. Strictly my opinion. 🙂
- Me—I’m not hiding my age: I turned 40 this year. 🙂
- Kelly—You’re pretty.
- Eddy—Just remember, you earned that gray hair!
- Kristin—Eddy, that’s how I look at it. I earned it. And Kelly, you’re completely correct.
- Katherine—I dye mine every 4-6 weeks. I will NOT go gray without a fight. At least not until I’m a grandmother.
- Tom—What happened??? I have only been gone six months!
- Me—I told you it’s been rough.
- Wendy—Time to hit the (dye) bottle.
- Elizabeth—I may have earned my gray hair but I def don’t want to see it! (at least not until I’m older) 🙂 Dye that up!
- Me—FYI Tom said he liked it but I can color it if I want.
- Wendy—Tom said that because he is a very wise man. He knows there is no other answer.
- Ruth—YOU LOOK GORGEOUS! I wouldn’t color it!
Good little waiting girl
I had an oil change this morning, and Katie was awesome. Pulled out the chairs at the kid table and drank her milk and ate her crackers.
She did play with the iPad, wander a bit, and “talk” to some of the other customers, but she was very cute (and quiet) so no one was annoyed with her. Most actually stopped to chat with her!
Alphabet homework
He did a great job tracing this morning! With zero assistance or prodding from me!
This seems somewhat appropriate after today.
Today might have been my roughest day ever with Owen.
He was a complete pain in the ass from the minute we pulled into the driveway (after coming home from the playground after school): yelling, screeching, stomping, throwing things, hitting things, hitting me and Katie, being completely defiant, being rude…
In all, he had four time outs, TV and video games taken away, early bedtime given (twice!), and eventually a few precious toys taken away which resulted in him screaming and crying. (I even had to interrupt writing the draft of this post to jump up and yell at him for smacking Katie in the face because he was pissed at her. That got him sent to his room.) And I was even ignoring a lot of his more minor events. He even had his B (which I thought would be comforting) but he was even throwing that around and saying he didn’t want it. I asked if he wanted to go up to his room to be alone and he grouched at me about that, too (before he got sent there).
It was exhausting.
When I take something away for, say, him being cranky, he seems to think that if he apologizes right away and says he won’t be cranky anymore…that he’ll get whatever I just took away (like TV). Nope, kid, that’s not how it works. You get a warning (sometimes two) and if you keep on, you get the punishment—and at that point it’s too late to recover from the punishment. And I’ve told him this REPEATEDLY and I NEVER give in so it’s not like he’s thinking I did it once so I’ll do it again. And he apparently hasn’t fully caught on that when I say NO TV, I mean NO TV. Sometimes it’s just one show he loses. But today was full on TV. But he kept asking every half hour or so—and when I kept telling him no, that would set him off again (even though I kept asking him if he remembered WHY he lost TV and he did—he would tell me because he was cranky, etc.). So then he throws a toy or throws a B or hits Katie (which are all obviously not allowed) and it just escalates. He’s actually pretty good about sitting in his time out—and we go through the whole Super Nanny thing of me telling him I love him, me asking him what he did wrong (he always knows), him apologizing—and 10 minutes later he’d be back in another time out after being warned.
Lather, rinse, repeat…for a good three hours.
I actually thought he recovered after a pizza dinner and a bath (two of his favorite things, during which he was his normal, happy self!) but then he got cranked up again while getting ready for bed (he was upset that he missed a few chore chart items—he definitely lost Show Respect today, as well as Pick Up Toys and Share) and therefore lost his snack so he was NOT happy.
WHAT. THE. HELL?!
As I was saying good night, I told him tomorrow was a new day and it would be a better day…and he said “Yes! No more throwing things, hitting mama or Katie, and being grouchy.” So we’ll see…
At the playground
My busy shutterbug
P.S. In a hand-me-down sweater from…I think friend Angie!
Iron Man and his robots
An 8 B night
Of course since I had Gramma Jean sew a bunch of Baby Bs into blankets for Katie, now she likes the singles. She asks for one at naptime and bedtime—but tonight she wanted the 4B blanket PLUS the other single Bs that were floating around. You can’t clearly see them all, but she’s laying on them all and loving it!
Old MacDonald + fun with wipes
She loves playing with wipes. 🙂
I’m guessing Owen sang Old MacDonald at school today… And listen to what he says for Katie on the farm. 🙂
My diagnosis.
Oh no, not again.
So we had another follow-up appointment with Owen’s pediatric GI this morning. He asked me how it was going and when I said “About the same—lots of poopy undies even after almost-weekly clean outs…” he felt Owen’s abdomen and told me he would definitely suggest another hospitalized clean out (he can still feel poop up too far). He basically said “What are you doing this weekend?” And I was honestly like a deer in the headlights because I DID NOT expect that.
I asked how that could be since I’ve been much more aggressive with the clean-outs—doing them more frequently and REALLY making sure he’s cleaned out (i.e. waiting until we get multiple instances of very watery diarrhea)—and he said I probably AM cleaning him out to a certain extent, but that there’s just too much in there so I’m getting (say) the first “chunk” (so to speak) but not the rest. So, if I KEPT going, I’d likely get more. Also, the doc said that since I’m still letting Owen eat during these clean-outs, that just adds more…
So…I said that this weekend really wouldn’t work because it’s hard to get a sitter. The doc suggested Owen was old enough to stay by himself—but sorry, even though we’ve been there once and he wouldn’t be unfamiliar with everything, there’s NO WAY I am leaving him in the hospital by himself. I told him Tom was coming home in a few weeks and asked if we couldn’t wait until then and he said that was fine—it took a year to get to this point, another few weeks isn’t going to make a big difference.
Owen didn’t seem to freak out at the thought of having to go again, but when I asked if he wanted to try a no-food clean-out at home to try and avoid going to the hospital, he said yes. Now, I’m sure it SOUNDS good, but when the time comes for him to only have juice and NOTHING else, he might be singing another tune. (He can have popsicles and broth, but he doesn’t like either of those.) He was concerned about what TYPE of juice he could have and when I told him he could have apple juice, he was happy. So we’ll see. I can call the doc’s office at any time to tell them we’re ready for the hospital…and in the meantime, I have to keep doing the same clean outs to keep him as cleaned out as possible.
Good times.
Fun with Alno and brother
I found these jammies while I was looking for something else—I swear I had pics of Owen in them but I can’t find any…
ALNO!!!
“Hello!”
Post-snack sibling fun
I was scurrying around after the kids’ [post-school] snack and heard lots of giggling. I came in to see this:
The warm before the storm
It was a balmy 66° when we were out this morning running errands…before it’s supposed to be 0° or below 0° tomorrow.
Nerd parenting!
I just told Owen there was a new Star Wars Mythbusters and he was positively gleeful.
My friend called it “Nerd parenting at its best!”
Peek!
She loves hiding behind the tree and peeking out!
Charlie and daddy!
“CHARLIE!”
“DADDY!”
She knows what a phone is!
Half the time I give her my phone for “Alno” she does this instead:
Peace!
I was trying to get a picture of the outfit (more of Beson’s hand-me-downs) but she wasn’t cooperating like usual. 🙂
Escapee!
I just turned on Katie’s monitor to see if she was asleep yet…and I swear I heard walking-around noises. Owen knows not to go in…so I keep watching and…yep, there she was…the little shit got out of her crib! I had been in the shower so didn’t hear anything and Owen says he didn’t hear anything, either. Egads.
I’m not ready for this. She HAS to wait until Tom is home—I really don’t want to deal with taking apart her crib and buying a bed (even though friends have offered to help me get a bed home and/or dismantle the crib and/or put together a new bed). But honestly…I’m just really not ready for the Super-Nannying I’ll surely have to do to keep her in her bed/room…
All her toys will come out tonight so she has nothing to stand on. (I was too gobsmacked just now to take them out plus I watched her until she fell asleep.) I’ll give it another day or two of watching like a hawk before I make any major decisions (which I fully understand could come back to bite me in the ass).
Can you find her?
Pizza play date!
One of my mommy group friends invited us over for a play date and pizza dinner. I really needed to get out of the house so I eagerly agreed!
The kids (but mostly Katie) were mesmerized by the BIG TV at their level.
Enjoying cupcakes after playing and dinner!
And after we put Katie’s high chair on the floor, she had to sit in it—and she tried to buckle herself in.
Skyping with some cousins
Doug and Marie and the kids are at Gramma Jean’s house so we all Skyped. Owen had to show them lots of his Christmas presents and Katie was a bit of a whiny mess…though Robert got her laughing with a few rounds of peek-a-boo!
Katie’s first time-out.
No, she didn’t do anything terribly wrong, but I figure she’s gotta start learning sooner or later…so when she didn’t do something simple I asked her (after I counted—and she understands the counting!) she got a time out. She was a little perplexed.
Also note her new (hand-me-down) Elmo slippers! She LOVES them and didn’t even try to take them off!
Someone lost granola bar privileges
Some days Katie can mostly cleanly eat a granola bar.
Not today.
I left her alone for 10 minutes or so and came back and it was gone so I figured cool, she ate it.
Ha.
HAHA.
Owen is 4 years 11 months old today!
Pantsless
Owen: Mom! I saw Katie pulling at her diaper.
Me: Is it off?
Owen: No. Just her pants.
Yep, he was right.
Someone has a tail!
I could NOT resist these PJs when I saw them on Amazon…and when Owen saw them he said “I’M GOING TO BE A DINOSAUR!”
