Misery defined ... and some good news!

Just a quick update on my last post: after about never getting eyedrops into Kaelyn's eyes a little while ago, I was desperate for an easier way to give her the medicine. I decided to try to mix it in some applesauce. I used just enough applesauce that you could barely tell the color difference and hopefully the taste of the medicine wouldn't be that noticeable. Even though Kay likes applesauce at first she didn't want to eat it because she sensed something was up since I was basically "forcing" her to eat it. I started with a bite of regular applesauce, then gave her the other and she ate it all just fine - I'm so thankful! I foresee us eating a lot of applesauce in the next few days but it's better than forcing it down her throat!
And... just in case you think I'm being an overreactive mom...


This is what I call misery defined


She's really being pretty good and trying to be happy
except when it's time for medicine.


And a smile even though she HAS to be feeling
terrible!

Poor Kay-Kay!

I got a sub for today so that I could stay home and take Kay to the doctor. She apparently has a couple of things going on. She DOES have pink eye (according to the doctor) and a cold/ear infection. He said her ears didn't look too badly yet but he prescribed an antibiotic and eye drops. I have only given her one dose (this afternoon) but that about sent us both over the edge. It's like a full out battle to try to get the medicine down her let alone the drops in her eyes. We've tried the "trickery" tactic before with the medicine and nothing seems to work so we have to lay her back and put it down her throat - not fun for anyone - epsecially when she's already not feeling well. On top of that, she was pushing my hands away and the bottle of medicine went flying and about a third of it spilled out. Typically, she gets spanked if she even starts to act like that but when she's already lying around on the couch fussing because she's miserable, I just didn't feel like I should be that hard on her. I'm sure in a day or so the medicine will start working but by early this evening, she looked like she felt even worse. Each day she has just gotten a little worse since last Thursday. I feel so badly for her that when she's crying and I can tell she's miserable, I want to cry for her. Oh well, that's how it goes when you have kids huh? I'm just thankful she's pretty healthy and we don't have to go through this much. (She's had one other ear infection and the stomach flu one time since she was born and both of those were before she was a year old so I really can't complain.) Hope ya'lls week is off to a good start!
86 days till Christmas! (if I did my counting right) :)

What should we do about Nettie Gardner? :)

For those of you who are not my siblings: When we were kids we would occasionally call my sister Lynette "Nettie" mostly just because she hated it so much and we knew it would get under her skin. We were always loving siblings like that. (My mom would always quickly come to her defense by saying there was nothing wrong with that name because she had an Aunt Nettie that had always been a favorite aunt of her's. That never seemed to change Lynette's mind about the nickname.) Thankfully for her I'm sure, the nickname never stuck and she managed to leave the name behind when she reached adulthood - almost. Last year, I gave her a year's subscription to a scrapbooking magazine for Christmas. I decided to put "Nettie Gardner" instead of Lynette as her name just as a little joke. Much to my annoyance, the first magazine was sent to her well before Christmas but it was quite amusing when she e-mailed all of us wanting to know who was the smart-alech who sent a magazine to "Nettie". She was a great sport though and we all had a little laugh and that was that. I really haven't thought about it since then since I'm not the one getting the magazine addressed to Nettie every month or two. However, when we got the mail this evening and I saw this envelope I had to laugh. Here's what it said:

"Tell us what to do about Nettie Gardner by OCT 21"

The way it was worded was funny enough in itself. Most renewal notices will say something to the the effect of "So and So's subscription is about to expire". But with it saying tell us what to do about Nettie it was even funnier to me. So I thought I would ask all of you - "What SHOULD we do about Nettie Gardner?" I thought about writing back and telling them we have never figured out what to do about her (totally kidding Net). :) If you have any ideas about what they should do about her, please respond to me no later than October 21 - I don't know what they do with her after that! :)

I'm sure I have just given all of you a whole new level of sympathy for Lynette for having to put up with a sister like me then and now. But actually (I'm getting paranoid now), I'm making fun of the magazine subscription renewal people not Lynette. I hope everyone figured that out!

Havin' a little fun

I have debated and debated whether to post these video clips for fear of someone thinking I'm a horrible mother. A few weeks ago, the Brown's kids were hanging out down here with Kay-Kay and I. Zach had brought his skateboard out and was riding it down the sloping carport next door. I stood by the road the whole time to watch and make sure cars weren't coming. He decided to put their dog on the skateboard and let it ride down. The dog didn't seem bothered at all and never once did it try to jump off. Even our neighbor came out and was laughing and laughing - the dog was hysterical. Kaelyn giggled and giggled everytime anyone would go down and though I was a bit hesitant to let her try, she wasn't about to be left out. She did actually fall off once but she was going slow enough that she just got up and wasn't even bothered. On the clip of her going down, you can here her say, "Yeah for Kay-Kay!" as she goes by me. The video clips are fuzzy but you still get the idea. The kids all took turns and would even ride down together sometimes. I put three short clips on one smilebox so once one finishes, it just goes to the next one and starts playing. It will keep looping the three clips so you will have to stop it.

Here is a picture of Kay-Kay and Zach riding down together.

More brown hat pictures

I was not planning on doing a photoshoot of Kay-Kay when I got her dressed this morning and even when I got my camera out I was just going to try to get one or two pictures but she was cooperating so well that I decided to try to push my luck. She loves her little table and chairs so I thought maybe I could get her to sit still for a couple of shots if I moved one of the chairs in a corner and had her sit in it. I couldn't believe that she was actually [sort of] staying the way I would pose her (at least for a few seconds)! They definitely don't look like professional pictures but I thought that several of them turned out kind of cute. I caught her in a fairly good mood. (She has quite a cold with a runny nose and eye and so she is a little grouchy and clingy.)
I'm not trying to be obssessed with slideshows but when I uploaded the pictures to my computer, I had more than I realized so I just put them in a slideshow. I also realize that I use this particular slideshow template a lot but that is because very few of them will orient the slides to whatever way your picture is. Most of them are all horizontal so they're always cutting off part of the picture and you have to try to move the picture around so that you're not cutting off heads. It's just easier to use this one and have the whole picture show.

(These are a couple of my favorites - I put all of the pics. we took in the slideshow)

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Fall

I love fall! You would think that after living in Florida for the past 11 years I would just be used to not having fall here but every year I moan and groan about it because I miss it so much. As a matter of fact, I was thrilled to death and I even went out and bought caramel apples and apple cider when I heard on the radio that it was going to be cooler Thursday and Friday. We were supposed to wake up to it being in the sixties this morning though I'm not sure it ever got down quite that cool. It was a bit chilly riding bike this morning with the wind blowing on us but other than that, it's been nothing to speak of. So *sigh* I'll sit here and wait till I can walk outside one day then jubilantly turn around and go back into the house to grab my jacket.
In the meantime, we try to make the best of it and do "fallish" things despite what the weather is like. I decided to do a slideshow of our past couple years at pumpkin patches. I'm sure in a few weeks I'll have new (recent) pictures of the pumpkin patch from this year to post.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Nothing clever

Kevin was just looking at my blog a few minutes ago and he said, "You haven't posted since Sunday!? that's terrible!" Like I told him, I have had several things (thoughts) I wanted to post in the past couple of days but by the time I had a chance to sit down and post them I talked myself out of it 'cause I decided probably no one else would think it was interesting let alone funny or clever . So, I'm just going to start posting and we'll see how far I go with them (posts).
Something has been wrong with one of Kay-Kay's eyes. Since Thursday morning, her one eye has been puffy and oozing. I decided to give it 24 hours before taking her to a doctor. It seemed to be a little bit better today. I was trying to decide whether it was pink eye but it hasn't spread to the other eye and it doesn't seem to be bothering her very much. We have been washing our hands like crazy but it seems nearly impossible to keep her from having her hands around her eyes. She wasn't very perky today either but I thought she was just tired. However, when I got her up from her nap this evening she felt very warm. She had a fever of 102. She had only eaten a few bites of cereal and one chicken nugget all day long but she didn't want any dinner. She pretty much just wanted to be held for much of the evening. It was very weird though - we hadn't attempted to give her any medicine yet but after she had been up for about and hour and a half, she seemed to perk up. She hardly had any more fever and she ate a little bit and now she's acting mostly normal so I'm not sure what is going on with her. You might notice the puffiness of her eye in the first 2 pictures though that was not why I was taking the picture.


The past couple of mornings, we have gone biking before
Kevin had to go to work. This morning Kevin woke me up
at 7:20 (I ususally sleep in on my days off) and he said, "It's
early enough that we can go all the way up North Beach
Road (on Jupiter Island) and back instead of just to the
beach." I was like, "That isn't that great of a motivater for
getting me up to tell me we can ride farther this morning!"


We left Kay-Kay in her sock monkey pjs so she was
quite a sight first thing in the morning.


I've gotten quite a lot accomplished today and even
did some of the things that we normally have to do
Saturday like grocery shopping and most of the laundry.
I was so tired of my pantry being a mess that I took
EVERYTHING out and re-organized it.


Things were so dis-organized that I have bought doubles
of a few things because I didn't know we already had them
and we had some things that just needed pitched. For
instance, I threw out some ramen noodles that were
"best if used by Sep. of 2006". I'm sure we had bought
them for hurricane preparedness and never needed them
and trust me, unless we have a hurricane, we are not going
to have a sudden urge to eat some ramen noodles!


I'm sure it won't stay this way forever but for now I
have nice, neat rows of [non-expired] things. :)

A new brown hat.

We saw this brown hat last week when we were at the mall. Kaelyn wasn't interested in trying it on at all until we went back by a mirror and she saw it on herself. Then she got all excited that it was brown - not sure why but anyway - and wanted to go show Kevin. She said, "Okay, let's go tell Daddy for brown hat" , which meant she wanted him to see it. I decided that if it were just about two and a half dollars cheaper I would buy it. Why that was the magic number I'm not sure but anyway. So this Saturday Kay-Kay and I were back at the mall for something else and I ran into the store to check it out (though I didn't really expect it to be any cheaper since it was with the girl's fall clothes). Well, believe it or not, it was actually THREE and a half dollars cheaper so I bought it even though it still probably cost more than it should.
I debated whether to even post these pictures because none of them are very good. For one thing, Kaelyn looks like a little rag-a-muffin and in the first couple of pictures, she is in front of a dark wall so you can hardly see it but I decided to go ahead and do the post and maybe I'll get some better pictures later.


Kay-Kay and I at Ruby Tuesday's. She has the hat
on backwards here. She prefers her hats backwards
though I'm not sure why.


We were trying to get a decent pic. of her
with the hat on the right way but we were
lucky just to get her to look up at the camera -
not so lucky with the expression.


We decided to use one of the carts with two
seats on it this time when we went grocery
shopping at Wal-mart and it actually was
perfect because she could sit on the one seat
and stand her toys on the other seat.


We hardly heard a peep out of her the whole
time because she was entertaining herself, which
usually doesn't happen. Think we'll try to find
one of these carts again in the future.


I had run down an aisle to grab a couple of things so
she stood up and was playing (we didn't let her ride
like that).

Congratulations HSBR Insurance!

This past week, Kevin and Rod's insurance agency reached one of the production goals they had set for themselves. They wanted to write a certain amount of business within their first year and they did it. To celebrate, they ordered a cake for all of the office staff Friday. They invited Kay-Kay and I to go down to the office for lunch/cake to help them celebrate. I'm so proud of Kevin and the business and how it has grown in the past year!


The cake - chocolate raspberry - was absolutely
delicious! (Banbury bakery makes THE BEST cakes!)


The staff of HSBR.


The owners (and wives) of HSBR.

(Kay-Kay was very excited about the "happy birthday
cake" and she kept singing "Happy Birthday" over
and over.)

I love my daughter!

So Thursday afternoon, Rach and I were sitting at the dining room table scrapping away while Kaelyn played in the living room. She had her various disney toys and she played and played so nicely at the coffee table - or so I thought. Later in the afternoon she was playing out in the kitchen while I took care of clean dishes and folded a load of laundry. I left just long enough to go straighten up a few things in the living room. When I walked over by the coffee table I discovered this:


The bad news - she scribbled all over the coffee table;
the good news - it was a bathtub crayon so all it took
was a damp paper towel to get it off.


...And the carpet, which also came clean fairly easily.


When I walked out to the kitchen to get something
to clean the crayon off with, I discovered this...


The little stinker had decided for some reason that she
wanted her toys to be able to play in the edge of the dryer.
She had opened the door, which stopped the dryer, then
she pulled all the clothes out and had thrown them all over
the kitchen floor. I was like, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
I couldn't believe it - she has never done that before. I
made her pick all the clothes up. I told Kevin that I am
going to have to watch her a little better when I have the
dryer on if she is out there because I don't want her to
try climbing in, though I doubt she would be able to get
the door shut behind her.

Jesus loves the little children

Here is another post of Kaelyn singing - sorry for those of you who are tired of these. This is mainly for grandparents and family that are interested in hearing her. (As always, luckily for you, you don't have to watch it!) This is more amusing to me than anything because there are so many of the words that she doesn't know so for instance "red, brown, yellow, black, and white gets sung as "nu-nu-nu-nu black and white". When I got the camera out to record her, she decided she needed to climb up on the coffee table again.

Games, Poo Boxes, and Wendy's

I have pictures of several different things posted below so I will just write underneath them rather than posting a long paragraph here.


Kevin was playing a game and Kay was very interested in
what he was doing. She would say, "Is that tunnel? Look,
it's trees! Is that snow?" etc.



Okay, so I'm resorting to potty humor here but Kevin
and I were quite amused when we got our new "Enter-
tainment" book (coupons) and it was addressed to
Poo Box 1065. I know, I know! but I am around 9 & 10
year olds all day and then come home to a 3 year old so
you have to cut me a little slack over my seemingly im-
mature sense of humor.


This afternoon we went to Wendy's for a late lunch and
then we went to the park in town. (Kay-Kay has a new
"Mickey Mouse clubhouse; come inside, it's fun inside"
hat)

They always get a kick out of her in there because she
walks right up to the counter and says, "Um, yeah, I
would like a 5 piece chicken nuggets, a small fries, and
a value sprite please." Today we used up what was left
of a Wendy's gift card she had got last Christmas.


After I gave Kay-Kay a bath tonight, I let her
stay in the tub and play while I did some other
things. When she got out, she came out and
said, "Brrr it's cold. May I please have monkey?"
She loves this monkey towel Lynette's family
gave her for Christmas.


When we walked into her bedroom, she saw
it laying there and said, "Yah, there it is! There
it is monkey!


I wanted her to duck her head just a little
so I could get the head of the monkey a little
better but I ended up with the monkey head
but no Kaelyn head. Oh well, you get the idea.

See ya' soon

Hi everyone! I DO have one or maybe two things to post but I am going to do that later today. As much as I would rather just sit here blogging I decided that I should do something fun with Kay-Kay so I think we will go to the park, then stop by Circle K and get a lifesaver's popsicle or something. After all, I didn't switch to part time so that I would have more computer time (though that is nice). I was actually going to get up and tear into the house today (cleaning) but decided even that could wait. So, check back later and I might have some new, unexciting, perfectly pointless things posted.

I'm so happy that I'm a SKINNY overweight person!! :)

I met the most wonderful saleswomen this evening at the mall. They have been building on to our mall and the last time we were up that way, I discovered that one of the new stores was going to be a Christopher & Banks and the C & B plus size store. Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about but some of you may not because we haven't had one anywhere around here that I know of. I was so excited even though I will probably rarely actually be able to afford to buy things from there. Anyway... we walked out to see if they were open and sure enough, they were. The sign on the first store said "C. W. Banks - for women sizes... ummm... well my size and up" so in we went. We just barely got in the door when this super, wonderful, nice saleslady comes walking up and kind of looks me up and down (not exactly comfortable) and says, "I think that these sizes are WAY too big for you." I gave some brilliant response like, "Huu, huu, huu [polite fake laugh] really?" Then the other super, wonderful, nice saleslady walked up behind her and started agreeing. I finally said, "I don't know, it IS my size" to which wonderful saleslady 2 says, "Yeah, but these are WOMEN'S sizes of those sizes." Saleslady 1 was already taking a pair of pants off of a hangar to show me "just how big they are" while Saleslady 2 pointed out how wide the legs of the pants were and started explaining how there was a skinny size __ and a woman's size __ (not her exact words). Then they pointed out the sleeves of some of the shirts which I did have to admit looked like I could fit both of my arms in - okay, maybe one and a half arms. I felt my confidence rising for each millisecond they talked. They both emphatically agreed that I should go next door where they ALSO carried my size but in a (?) skinnier version. By this time, I was practically floating back toward the door as one of the women facetiously said, "I hope we didn't ruin your day or anything!" Kevin turned back and said, "How much do I owe you?" Those ladies really do deserve a raise I tell ya'!
So... I confidently marched into the "smaller women" store and announced loudly, "I belong in here in case you were wondering!" Naw, of course I'm joking about that part. I found LOTS of things I loved and the COOLEST teacher shirt ever but sadly, I had to leave empty handed - it was better than leaving empty walleted though. I must say though, I was so inspired by those two super, wonderful, nice ladies that I went power walking all over the rest of the mall!
On a little more serious note, I decided to really try to cut back on some of my soda consumption this week. The amount I drank this week was still too much but I did much better and I even had a couple of "dry" days. :) I know that sounds horrible to say it's good because I went two days without soda but you don't understand what kind of close relationship Pepsi and I have. I also tried to do a little better about "portion control" with food and we biked or walked 3 or 4 evenings - not huge progress but a little step toward healthier habits. I owe it to my health whether it affects my weight or not.
If you see me walking around in the plus size sections of every clothing store around though, you'll know what I'm up to - just getting my positive motivation for my attempts at weight loss.

"Accessorizing" like Mommy

Kaelyn has just recently (in the last couple of weeks) gotten to the place where she is interested in wearing hats. We had long ago given up on the idea so when she found a Pooh cap in her closet that she had never worn before and wanted help putting it on, we were quite shocked. She has worn it around a couple of times since then. Well, when we were getting ready to leave for our Saturday outing, I went and grabbed a favorite visor. We were amused when we got ready to walk out the door and saw Kaelyn in her room trying to put HER hat on - the way she had it on sideways, she looked more like a wanna-be punk. We got the camera out so Kevin could get a picture of the two of us and we were trying to show her how to grin at the camera. I couldn't believe how lucky we were to get the picture of the two of us without Kay squirming to get down or trying to see the picture on the camera or any other number of things that normally happen when we try to get a decent picture.




Kevin was trying to get one more of Kaelyn
by herself so this was part of the "lesson" on
"grinning at Daddy". I'm sure someday it will
be annoying when she does this on purpose but
it was pretty funny and perfect this time!


Kay-Kay fell asleep in the car almost instantly and was
out of it for a good bit of our outing. We went to
Cheeburger-Cheeburger at the mall. We used one of
our by one burger and drink get one free and shared
a small fries. It was so much cheaper than when we
normally eat in there. (Kay was asleep in the stroller
the whole time we ate.)

An Iraqi war veteran speaks up

My apologies if you have already seen this from a bunch of other people. I've seen it a couple of times now and finally decided I would post it anyways even though maybe all of you HAVE already seen it because I think it is so worth posting. Interestingly enough, the person who posted it on youtube said that there had been hundreds of comments. He had promised the guy's father that he would not allow any comments that were disrespectful and he didn't. He said about 75% of them were respectful and supportive, about 15% disagreed but we're still respectful, and 10% were just downright rude. There were so many comments posted that he had to remove them all to have space for other things. Also, this was not paid for nor sponsored by McCain's campaign; it was just a couple of guys trying to show their support.

Entertainment for this evening provided by Kaelyn

Kaelyn just wanted to remind you all that God has EVERYBODY in the world in His hands, including all you brudders, stisters, and the will, bee, babies!

Cool dude

Here are a couple of snapshots to end off the (our) weekend. This is my Wed. week so I will be teaching for the next three days. I may or may not get a chance to blog during that time so for now, ya'll have a great week until we "chat" again. :)


Sleep tight my little "cool dude"! (This mommy thought
this was about the cutest!)

She fell asleep on the way back from Rach & John's
Sunday evening.

Reunited

I really, honestly promised myself that I wasn't going to take pictures of the "reviving" of Mickey Mouse (the plumbing job) because I knew neither Rod nor Kevin were looking forward to doing it and Rod was so nice to come down and help us out that I really thought I shouldn't take pictures. However... after completely unhooking the commode, Rod came to the conclusion that Mickey was still up in the "piping" (excuse my lack of plumbing knowledge) of the commode itself. So they decided to take the whole commode outside to the garden hose and see if they could "flush" it out with the hose. (Rod didn't originally think a plumbing snake would get it out besides it was 8:30 in the eve.) When they came carrying the toilet out of the bathroom through the house, I knew I just HAD to get a picture when they came back inside with it. After all, it's not every day you see two guys walking through your house carrying your toilet! :) Well, amusing though it was, it worked and we now have a perfectly functioning commode and Mickey is back. We are quite relieved (no pun intended). :) Having that toilet not working seems to have messed Kaelyn up as far as the potty thing. I know it doesn't make sense because she will go to the bathroom in other "strange" places as long as she has her little potty seat "adapter" (for lack of a better word) but because of some of her issues, when something like that changes it just seems to put her whole little world out of whack. Of course to us it just seemed like a very minor deal to have her go in our bathroom and though she would tell us and go some she has had 4 or 5 accidents in the last couple of days and that is about more than she has had the whole time since she was first potty trained. The only thing we could figure out about it (the accidents) is because she doesn't go in our bathroom hardly ever anymore.
Anyway, I did get a couple of pictures. Kevin soaked Mickey in bleach for awhile and cleaned him off. Kaelyn was SO excited to see him again! She kept saying, "Yook! It's Mickey Mouse club house, come inside it's fun inside!" The MM clubhouse theme song says, "It's the Mickey Mouse clubhouse, come inside it's fun inside" so ususally that's what she calls her various Mickey characters - except the one that has brown shoes on - she calls him Mickey Mouse Brown and it took me MONTHS to figure out why she calls him that. Actually, Mickey Mouse Brown is a cross dressing Mickey. John won "him" from the crane game at Wal-mart and Kay instantly claimed him/it. See, it's actually Minnie but a couple of months into her life, she lost her bow that was on her head and her dress is RED - it was a Christmas Minnie. Most of the Minnie's Kay was used to seeing wear pink (on the Mickey Mouse club house show) so without the bow and with the red dress and brown shoes, it somehow became Mickey to her and we can not convince her otherwise. You want to talk about an identity crisis. Anyway... she was and is just thrilled at having her little Mickey back and she instantly sat down with him and his other friends and started playing with them. (The friends were kind enough not to make jokes about Mickey smelling like a sewer when he re-joined them.) :)

This is what you call port-a-pottie :)


Kevin showing the Mickey toy



This was when Kevin first gave it back to her.


She was running all over the house saying, "Your welcome,
your welcome Mickey Mouse club house!"


Reunited with the gang




I included a picture of the cross dressing "Mickey
Mouse Brown"