Quick Update

I was looking at some old pictures and this is from last summer.  I miss my sweet girls long hair and pigtails!

The last couple of weeks have been busy as usual.  I've had a lot more ups and downs as far as my mood goes so my doctor upped my medication.  We'll see how it goes, I was totally wiped out yesterday but that could be from any number of things.

Smallest of All is mobile, I can't believe she's 9 months old!  She'll get up on all fours and rock and she is a pro at low crawling like a soldier avoiding enemy fire.  The middle child turned 3 about 10 days ago, I cannot believe how time is flying by.

I've hit a weight loss plateau.  At my weigh in last Saturday I hadn't lost any that week and the week before I only lost half a pound.  I need to reevaluate my plan and start consistently adding in strength training to the cardio work outs.

There is a lot going on in my head about how I think I want to organize and keep up with my blog.  I really want to see this journey through to its end and be an encouragement to all the other crazy busy mommies out there.  Somehow I want to figure out how to have tabs so I can have section for weight loss, parenting, homeschooling, etc...

Gotta get my little screamer down for a nap.  She keeps going for the dog's bone and the dog keeps following her around looking for spit-up...

My Crazy Weekend

I'm finally enjoying a moment with all the kids sleeping and the poor dog quiet in her crate.  I had her out for awhile and the neurotic pacing was getting to me.  I'm thinking she's just uncomfortable and wants to be confined so she can rest.  Here are some pictures of her leg wound, don't look if you get all weird at stitches and stuff.  I'm telling people this happened while she was frolicking with another dog, she'd be embarrassed if I told everyone it was really the skink/Godzilla getting the best of her...

Here is pathetic Daisy with spooky green eyes.

Nasty cut.

Closer view of nasty cut.

Now moving on from gross out wound pictures I had a couple of parenting successes today.  I'll go ahead and brag about them so that when everything goes to crap tomorrow I'll know why. (insert cutsie winking face)  My sweet almost three year old LOVES her pacifiers.  She also loves to drink, "milk in a glass" (baby bottle) and she drags around Grandma Bear something so loved that the cleaning lady asked if it was a dog toy today.  (Emma was incensed and put that lady in her place by the way.)  The time to give up these things has long passed and I just really haven't felt like going through the process of her going through pacifier and bottle withdrawals.  Today was the day to begin the process and after having milk in her bottle this morning we packed them up in a box and she said goodbye.  The new rule is milk at meals, up to this point she has refused milk in anything but a bottle and that didn't change this evening but there wasn't a fit at bedtime when I told her no more bottles.  Score one for Mommy!  The pacifier is going to be trickier.  We gathered them up and put them in a bowl this morning with the promise that she could have them back tonight at bedtime.  Other than a meltdown around 4 she did really well.  After a few minutes of the freak out I told her we would set the timer for 5 minutes and she could haver her passi until it beeped.  She wasn't thrilled to give it up but she did and the rest of the evening went really well.  Score two for Mommy!  Tomorrow I'm going to have her cut the one off her car seat buckle.

In my adventures making baby food I made absolutely nasty summer squash which Madaline quite literally spat out at me.  (I can't blame her, it tasted like bitter grits.)  She LOVED the mashed mango and bananas that she got instead and tonight the butternut squash was a huge hit.

As busy as this weekend was it had been a couple of days since I'd checked on my garden and I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw!  I'm looking forward to enjoying these veggies soon!

Cute little banana pepper!

Cherry tomatoes.

Not cherry tomatoes.

Itty bitty green beans.

Wax beans, they're almost ready!

Aww, it's just a baby squash!

And last but not least, after this crazy weekend and a pretty good but long day I just didn't want to fight with kids eating their supper.  I did the only reasonable thing, I made pancakes.  And boy, were they ever good.

Daisy v/s Skink: Round 1

This is Daisy. Daisy is pretty much your average Labrador. Loves to play fetch, wants to sit in your lap, sleeps on her back with her legs splayed, and is terrified of dishwashers. So maybe the dishwasher phobia isn't so typical, but I digress. Recently I was giving the kids dinner and I was amused by Daisy out in the yard tearing full tilt around the grill over and over and over and over and over and over. Occasionally she's stop and stick her head under the grill cover only to resume her frenetic racing in circles. Eventually she moved on to do her "I'm looking for something really really hard!" routine around the yard and I went out to investigate. As I came out she refocused her attention on a toy wagon and I noticed a teeny lizard tail sticking out. Yeah, not so much.

What we have here is a full grown male broad-headed skink. The one taking up residence in our yard is easily 7-8 inches long and they can reach lengths of up to a foot. This is what we see when we look at it. I'm pretty sure Daisy sees something more like this.

The kids soon joined me and what ensued involved lots of shrill screaming from Emma, Aiden giving chase, and the skink bolted across the yard all the while avoiding everyone and scampered up the tree. (Who knew they could do that??) While what we saw was pretty much a goofy dog running around looking earnestly for a largish lizard I'm pretty sure how Daisy saw herself was more like this:

Now she and the skink are caught in some sort of twisted cat and mouse game. Daisy is constantly looking for it when she goes outside and I'm pretty sure every now and then it shows it's face and throws insults at her to keep her interested in their epic struggle. I'll let you know how it turns out...

Dog Poop In A Tree

About 2 months ago I was outside with the kids picking up after the dog. Being a typical 5 year old, Aiden took it upon himself to try and fling one of the tied up bags of poop over the fence. I didn't actually witness said flinging I just got the:

"Uh, Mom?"

"What Aiden."

"Well, ummm."

"Aiden, what is it???"

"Yeah, there's dog poop in the tree."

And lo and behold there, three fourths of the way up the oak tree in our back yard, was a bag of dog poop. After a brief moment of disbelief I started laughing, and I mean the cross your legs so you don't pee laugh. This was about a week after I had starting taking Zoloft and it was the first time I'd laughed that hard in ages. I'm sure all of you are wondering what happened then. Not being all that heroic, I simply decided to leave it there, I was fairly certain that the next strong wind would bring it down. It didn't. Several rain storms, windy days and approximately 2 months later my husband looked out the window and said:

"Why is there a bag in the tree?"

"It's the dog poop."

"You didn't get that out!!!!!!?????"

"Nope, it was way high up there."

"What about the BB gun?"

"Go ahead."

So he and Aiden headed out for the man job of shooting the dog poop down. After several hits it remained stubbornly clinging to the branch and Aiden came in to finish his supper, it's hard to believe a single bag of poop had withstood such harassment from the elements and now a small caliber weapon to remain aloft for so long. The following day, yesterday, Aiden was out in the yard for awhile with the dog playing sharpshooter or something along those lines. After about 2o minutes he came in and very calmly said:

"The dog poop fell out of the tree."

"It did??? What did you do with it."

"I flung it over the fence, and I got it WAY BACK THERE this time."