I’m not sure exactly why I thought of this today, but I did. And Owen loved it. LOVED IT! He was practically giddy with excitement. Katie liked it, too!
Category Archives: Tom
Katie’s new diagnosis
Well the pediatrician says impetigo or herpes so she’s being treated for both. It’s still contagious, but not as bad as molluscum.
That said, I texted my sister the diagnosis (and of course I didn’t get her text until I left the office) and she said “It’s not herpes if it’s on her finger, too.” Hoo boy. So now I’m leery if these docs don’t even know something that seems basic… But I guess we’re covered either way with the meds (one twice a day for seven days and one five times a day for 10 days).
We were also referred to an ophthalmologist since it’s by her eye so that’s this afternoon.
—
Ugh. That was painful.
Our appointment at the eye doctor was 1:15 and as a new patient I had to be there at 1:00. Fine. We got in about 1:25 so not bad. Then it was AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER by the time the doc came in. Oh, at about an hour someone finally came in and said “He just got back from surgery, he has one quick thing to do, then he’ll be in.”
What? JUST got back? At 2? So why the hell were we scheduled for 1:15? (They didn’t say emergency surgery.) And then it still took another 30 minutes.
The pediatrician didn’t say “Good news, they squeezed you in!” so I assumed we had a normal appointment. Apparently not.
So let me just tell you HOW MUCH FUN it was with an already over-tired baby WAY beyond her nap time and an energetic 4yo cooped up in an exam room. Thank heavens Tom met me there and could help out. I may have lost my mind otherwise.
And the actual doc part? Seriously two minutes. GRRR. One squirt of dye in her eye and a quick look with a blue light to see if there were scratches. Nope, okay, use this ointment. See you in two weeks.
😐
Then Katie was out within two minutes of me starting the drive home.
In the field
I thought it might be interesting to post the pics Tom sent me during his week in the field back at the end of April.
This exercise had 150 marines in the field for a week.
Getting ready to get in the humvees for the convoy.
In the humvee. You must wear a helmet and flak jacket.
The first stage of the convoy.
Close-up of the humvee.
Setting up the COC (command operation center).
The setup, which is built from scratch upon arrival. This is about half of it.
Taking a time out to get a picture of a cool butterfly.
MRE cakes. Yes, full cakes with frosting. Which we now have four of in our garage because Tom thought it would be cool to have them. 🙂 Be warned.
Inventory after the exercise is over. No one can leave until EVERYTHING is accounted for.
The General’s Dinner
A few months ago we went to a USMC charity event called Basket Bingo and a group of us bid on—and won—a five-course dinner at the general’s house. Well, it was tonight.
Our good friends happened to be behind us coming on base—and we were quite early—so we stopped by the water to take some pictures. It was just a little windy.
Karen and Tom
The first couples to arrive.
FIRST COURSE (appetizers on the back deck)
Watermelon tequila shooters
Brie toasts with papaya salad
Chicken satay skewers with chocolate BBQ sauce
Mojitos
Our Hosts, General & Mrs. Lukeman
The table setting.
SECOND COURSE
Plantain soup
THIRD COURSE
Mélange of jumbo lump crab, mango, and avocado in a tropical fruit purée
FOURTH COURSE
Island pork tenderloin with a brown sugar glaze
Coconut shrimp with a mango sauce
Baked green rice
Green bean sautée
FIFTH COURSE
Raspberry sorbet
Layered key lime tart
Molten chocolate cake
The staff from the gourmet club that prepared and served the dinner.
The whole group enjoying post-dinner drinks on the deck.
Then, we got takeaway gifts of a rum cake, spiced nuts, and a packet with ALL the recipes! I will definitely be making the Chocolate BBQ Sauce because it was DIVINE and I could have drank it with a straw!
Overall it was a fun night and a very enjoyable meal…I just wish I hadn’t been running on fumes (zero hours of sleep after our short weekend trip to DC).
Star Trek Patio Party
We headed to DC this weekend for another Patio Party (the last one was in 2008) with the TiVo peeps. The two main events were—obviously—a viewing of the new Star Trek movie and a party on a patio. 🙂
Tom cleaning off the patio:
Me at my first Coke Freestyle machine:
The best seats EVER at a movie theater—electric reclining leather seats (no flash on my self-taken photo because a lady two rows behind us threw a hissy fit that people were using their flashes…before the lights even dimmed and WAY before the movie was even close to starting):
Our group that saw the non-3D version of the movie:
One of our good friends, Andrew:
My obligatory self-portrait pose (taken specifically for Andrew because he gives me grief about taking those pictures):
A recreation of a 2008 Patio Party photo:
And that’s about all the photos. We take a lot less pics now for whatever reason…
The only bad thing about the weekend was that my drink of choice for the evening—vodka and Monster [energy drink]—apparently reacts completely different with my body than it used to and I did not get one wink of sleep Saturday night. 😐 This was NOT the best time or place to have to realize this…away from home with a 6-hour drive ahead of us and nighttime plans once we do get home.
Once we got on the road and grabbed a quick hot breakfast at Panera, it was off to Ikea for a quick visit to pick up Owen’s present (he always gets a present when we come back).
So overall it was a good—though short—weekend!
I wanna do it, too!
Katie HAS to be next to Owen or seeing what he’s doing… Tom took these while I was out getting my hair done.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Owen told me “Happy Mother’s Day” when I woke up—and I got a hug! Then, Tom gave me this…Owen actually colored some of it (!) and signed his name.
Then Tom made my breakfast request: Bisquick pancakes (they aren’t his favorite so we don’t have them all the time) with sausage links.
Then Owen decided to give me a very special mother’s day present by pooping in his underwear. 😐 He has been SOOOOO good with pooping in the potty…letting us know when he has to go, coming in from playing to go poop, not even needing the balloon, etc…so we’re not exactly sure what happened today. And then it happened again, later. GRRRR.
Then we ended up having friends over for dinner, so half of my day was spent cleaning up and making dinner…but it ended with a good time with friends.
So overall it was a nice mother’s day!
Prepping for the new deck
Step 1: Remove overgrown bushes.
I anticipated that being hard, but apparently they have very shallow roots and Tom pretty much just pulled them out without much digging.
Step 2: Get bushes ready to burn in the fire pit.
Yes, I agree—we need a bigger fire pit. 🙂
Step 3: Remove and move bricks.
Owen helping daddy: “Keep ’em coming!”
The old bricks will be used to “embiggen and fancify” the fire pit. 🙂
That’s all for today.
Road trip shopping!
We went to Wilmington today. Owen helped us load some material in the car…
Then enjoyed sitting next to his sister at Costco!
Then ate an ice cream sandwich in the car after lunch and Trader Joes… You can’t see it very well but his face was covered in chocolate.
Then immediately fell asleep.
(Katie was sleeping, too, but I can’t get a good photo even from the passenger seat.)
Fun in the dead pool
The top inflated pool ring gave out a few days ago—I was upstairs in the office when I heard GUSHING water so I ran to the window to see that the side of the pool collapsed. I ran downstairs and stopped it, and we decided that it was probably just overfilled (we had been trying to regulate the salt levels) and the pool ring probably had another hole in it or was just not strong enough and gave way—so in the end we opted to just get a new pool (actually the cheapest part of the whole deal). It came today, so we had to get rid of the old one. The fastest and easiest way? Slit the side. It emptied so FAST that Owen barely got in in time to enjoy the last foot of water. When it got down to a few inches, I let Katie splash around as well and they both had a ball.
Then it was nekkid baby time as it was still plenty warm enough and Tom was getting the new pool set up.
And do you see what’s in that second to last pic? Tooth number five!
And last but not least…she loves spending time with her daddy!
He had to try it on.
Tom was getting ready for his gas chamber exercise and of course Owen wanted to try on the mask.
Our little eating machine.
Tonight, we learned that Katie likes steamed broccoli, croissants, strawberry shortcake, and limes.
Plus she ate chicken from my pot pie, some of Owen’s French fries, and her brought-from-home peas, green beans, dried fruit, and puffs. She was an eating machine…literally shoving her mouth full as fast as I cut up pieces.
Eagle eyes. Or owl eyes.
I swear Owen has eagle eyes. We were waiting for Tom when he says “Mom! Look! An owl!”
Huh? Owl?
See it?
By Jove, there was. It’s fake, but still.
And we have a playset!
We weren’t really planning on getting a big playset, but once I saw Owen playing on his little Step 2 playset and saw that he had really outgrown it…I looked on the local Yard Sales board and found exactly what we wanted, emailed the lady, and made plans to go look at it (it was 45 minutes away). I was excited because most of these types of sets are SUPER expensive and have too many things that Owen wouldn’t really use, but this one was actually quite reasonable and had things Owen would like (towers, ladders, a rock wall, and a tunnel!). We looked at it, Owen played on it and loved it, so we left a deposit last weekend and made plans to get it this weekend (Tom was in the field all last week).
I thought the process would take ALL day, possibly requiring two trips (and since it was 45m one way, two trips would have been dreadful)—even with our friend’s big trailer—because Tom had no one able to help him. But thankfully at the last minute I managed to get a friend’s husband to help (the ones buying our old playset!) and then one of our best friends was also able to help…and he also offered his big truck (which ended up being critical) and the whole thing was done in like two hours, not counting drive time! They had it apart and loaded on the trailer and truck in under an hour (the lady texted me to tell me and we were both amazed) and I think it took about the same to unload and put it together. YAY!
“Mom! The number one!”
“Mom! Look! It’s the letter A!”
Testing out the bench.
He had to run and get some cars…
Are you done screwing the slide in so I can use it?
Wheeee!
Tunnel!!
Uncle Tom! (A great picture that I’m ticked ended up blurry! I had an in-focus one but you couldn’t see Owen’s face.)
The workers!
Katie’s first swing!
Also, as a bonus, we didn’t have to use any money from the savings account for the cost of the thing (which was not inconsequential). We had our stash of Craigslist/LejeuneYardSales cash from a few recent sales for the deposit last weekend, then I sold a bunch of stuff this week to finish out the rest of the payment. YAY!
Poooooooooolllllllll!!
Oh my goodness he was SO excited watching Tom get it ready and start filling it up…
I love the feet here.
And the face here.
Tentative first step…
Hey, this is fun!
Posing for mom’s request.
More splashing around.
“Can I take my shorts off?”
“I have to go potty!”
I tried to get a cute shot of his face with his butt blurry in the background…but for as scary smart as he is sometimes, he could NOT grasp that I wanted him to move his legs around. 🙂
Tom working on the walkway.
She LOVED the water and wanted to GO GO GO!
When she first got in, it was pretty shallow so she could kinda crawl/float around…and boy did she scoot quickly!
But since it was filling as we were in it, it obviously kept getting deeper…
…and she started taking on water!
And of course big brother was RIGHT there the whole time. He wanted to play with her SO badly!! And we taught him that if he sees Katie go under, the first thing he has to do is pull her up then scream for us if we’re not right there. 🙂
I sense a very wet summer for me…
On a sidenote, we’re trying a saltwater system
NEW CONTENT:
Pool Prep, Stage 2: Filling!
A great day to be outside!
Wow. Just wow.
Today was one of those rare North Carolina days where the weather is perfect, there’s a nice breeze, there’s no bugs, and it’s perfectly glorious to be outside…so we took full advantage of it!
I got out the kid enclosure our friends loaned us to put Katie on the deck under the umbrella (so I didn’t have to worry about sun) and she didn’t mind it too much.
And then he climbed in with Katie.
Meanwhile I was catching up on some of my big ol’ stack o’ magazines.
And Owen was running around playing with/snapping his Indiana Jones whip (something he’s not allowed to do inside), running around the yard, climbing on his playset, and playing with his army men* that he earned this morning for pooping. 🙂
And here you can see him in all his adorable action:
We came inside for a little bit because after her nap, Katie was NOT having it…but when daddy got home, we decided to eat dinner outside!! By then it was a little cooler but still definitely worth staying out to enjoy it.
Ahhh, spring!
* The army men were an unplanned surprise. They were a gift from Grandma Marsha probably two years ago (in a Diego backpack) that we just tucked away until he was old enough to play with them. And I had kinda forgotten about them as they were in Katie’s closet (Owen’s old closet). But today, Owen happened to be in her room with us and the closet doors were open and his inquisitive eyes glommed on to Diego RIGHT away: “What is this?!” 🙂 Then he opened it and found the army men…which I then immediately used as a potty training bribe!
I love that Tom can still make me laugh.
Maggie vs. the rototiller
Turns out Maggie has a beef with the rototiller. I haven’t heard her bark this much in ages.
MSU Game Day
Well, technically, a televised scrimmage. But it was MSU and it was TV so we all wore our green and white!
Road trip naps!
Katie napping on the way to Wilmington:
And on the way home:
Ticklemania!
Kids having fun
Sometimes Owen scares us. In a good way.
So just now, we see Owen d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g the play house from the play room into the foyer. Then there’s some scurrying around and we hear music but don’t think anything of it because their toys are always playing music. And then he says “Mama! Daddy! It’s the same!”
Huh? What?
We listened more closely…and one of the songs the house plays is the EXACT song the baby MP3 player plays…and he figured it out and started them both at the same time.
Just wow.
EDITED 4/17 TO ADD:
Katie’s Dinner Chat
She’s quite good at copying sounds…and being cute. 🙂
Getting the garden started!
An unexpected find… 😯
Wavy Tube Man Ice Cream
After driving by Wavy Tube Man (at the local ice cream place) many, many times, Owen finally got to stop and meet him. Of course, he’s loud…so this was as close as he got. 🙂
Then he had some ice cream.
And Katie loved Tom’s shake.
She LOVES ice cream! (And she ate rolls, green beans, tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, and roasted chicken for dinner so she deserves a little treat!)
And the poster I created on my phone just playing around:
Three month haircut!
It only took three months for Owen’s hair to grow out from the buzz cut he had last. Three months! Egads.
Katie was just hanging out while we were waiting…
Tom got this during…
And I completely spaced on getting a post-haircut photo. 😐
Baby in a box
A new gun…
Technically it’s a toy for Maggie…but of course it’s really for Owen. Or at least that’s what HE thinks! 🙂
