…but you’re not already my Facebook friend (because if you were, you’d already have seen this info on my wall)…
Please consider going here and voting for my kids’ school — Upattinas at ZIP code 19343. (You should be able to just plug in the ZIP and find it.) Thanks!!
Hannah left a comment asking if we were alright after the storms that came through last night. We’re fine — we didn’t even lose power this time, for a change. Some friends of ours who live a couple of miles down the road had a tree fall on their new (to them) car, but other than that I didn’t hear of anything too nasty around here. I think the worst of it was north of us.
We’ve had a busy week, with back-to-back special day trips on Tuesday (Philly) and Wednesday (amusement park). Yesterday was a “home” day, and then today we have to catch up on the errands we put off on Tuesday, Wednesday, and yesterday.
Alice’s birthday is in less than three weeks!!!
Alice, from around the corner: *thump* Ow!
Alice, coming into the room: I tried to open the door with my head and it didn’t work.
Me: And what have we learned?
Alice: Ummmm… Hands?
Sammi had her belated* yearly checkup yesterday, and it turns out she’s gained 4 lbs and almost 3 inches in the past year, so yeah.
* Must be nice to be a doctor and just take June off every year… *grumble*
Sammi has recently gotten into watching A Baby Story. My fellow crunchy homebirthing breastfeeding LLL-type mamas will understand how my blood pressure goes up when this show is on, and both of my girls have been finding themselves in all kinds of discussions with me about normal birth, birth interventions, their personal birth stories, etc. since this show started appearing on our TV, but that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is that the show is on in the background right now and I’m trying not to watch it so I don’t get irritated, but I just heard the mother (about to have her first baby, natch) say, “Hopefully things will get easier after the baby comes”. *facepalm* *facepalm* *facepalm* *facepalm* *facepalm* *sigh*
Thus the question that Anthony asked me today. *sigh* I said that everything in my life feels either too big or too small to blog about, and that I can no longer talk with abandon about my kids now that they’re big enough to have opinions on which parts of their lives should be public knowledge. If I want to share a cool link, it’s a hundred times easier to share it on Facebook than it is to post it here. I hate blogging about the blog, but I just don’t know how this thing can keep going. I’d be okay just calling it blogging without obligation except that this thing is set up to display posts from the last 30 days on the main page. The sidebar grows a little with each month that passes, as the Archives section adds another monthly link, and the content part looks worse and worse.
So what’s up? Summer break, that’s what. I’m working hard on balancing the drive to Do Cool Stuff And Not Sit Around All Damn Day, and the desire to indulge in a little R & R now and then. We have plans, big plans, for the rest of break. A day at a local theme park, a trip to the zoo, a day spent bumming around Philly, more visits to the pool, movies watched in the theater and at home… The problem is that we’re so darn tired half the time, and it’s been a monstrously hot summer so far, and I do hate the heat. We’re out and about most days, and are chipping away at our dream list.
Sammi got her palatal expander off. It did hurt, but only for a minute. Now she’s completely appliance-free and eating lots of bubble gum, gummies, and ramen noodles (the long noodles would always squiggle around under the expander and make her gag). Next month she has to go in for another impression, and she was very very very anxious about that because the pre-expander impression was hellacious with much crying and gagging and almost puking. So I asked about this at the expander-removal appointment and they said that they have a really effective numbing spray that they can use on the roof of her mouth that “always helps” with the gagging, and that they will also make sure to have the tech who is the most skilled at impressions do hers. She’s feeling much less worried about the appointment now, thank goodness. The dread was basically killing her excitement for everything, i.e. she wasn’t looking forward to her birthday because that meant it was closer to the appointment with the impression, etc.
Besides that, what else?
Alice turns 15 in one month!!
Sammi had a huge growth spurt in May & June. After almost 2 years in the same shoes, she went up about 3 sizes in a month. She’s incredibly picky about her shoes, so this meant we had to go to about seven different shoe stores to achieve adequate coverage in the new size. Similarly, none of the summer clothes from last year fit her body, and none of the hand-me-downs from her sister fit her style, so we had a lot of shopping to do in June.
I am going crazy waiting for the good peaches to come in locally. All we can get right now are cling peaches without a lot of flavor, but in about two weeks the sweet, sweet freestones will be fully in and I will spend all of August eating a big bowl of peaches with pecans every morning for breakfast.
The squirrels are stealing all of the seed out of our bird feeder. They are quite nervy and acrobatic about it, and we can’t figure out any way to make them stop, so I’m trying to reimagine it as a nature feeder and enjoy the show. *sigh*
The cats are doing soooooo much better. Very healthy, very happy, very affectionate (in their ways). It seems that the combination of the two-pill dewormer course and switching them to a premium food (this one) has cleared up just about all of their issues. I’ve got the litter box situation down to a very good system and it only takes me about 15 easy minutes each week to clean and change them, down from 45 minutes of misery back in the sick-kitty days.
I need to develop a system for clipping the guinea pigs’ nails. They’ve grown too long, but it’s very difficult to trim them, not only because the piggies are squirmy, but also because their nails are black. This makes it pretty much impossible to see through the nail to find the “quick”. If you cut the quick, they cry, and they bleed a lot. It’s not a good thing. I need to either get disciplined (ha, right, like that’ll ever happen) and trim just a little snip to each nail every couple of days, or I need to try something tricky like putting them on a tennis racket to do it.
I still haven’t found a new dentist, after our disastrous visit at the beginning of May. Sammi and I got our regular cleanings at that time, but Alice did not because of the disastrousness. I need to find a new person to go to, someone who will be respectful of all of us, kind, and patient, and who will work with us if there is a problem rather than berating us or worse. I’ve gotten various recommendations from various local friends, but no two people have suggested the same name, so I feel a little overwhelmed about choosing. Do I just pick someone, make an appointment for Alice, and hope that they don’t suck and traumatize her further? Do I act as the front man, going to weekly unneeded cleanings looking for someone I can trust with my kids? Do we request “get to know you” appointments where no one actually touches anyone’s teeth? Do I make phone calls (I hate phone calls), trying to find the “magic question” to ask the receptionist that will reveal to me each dentist’s true nature and dental philosophy? Arrrghh!!
And finally, here are a couple of the links I’ve shared on Facebook recently:
-The Doors Cover ‘Reading Rainbow’
-Why You Should Spiral-Cut Your Wiener
Oh, and did you know that Ze Frank is back? He’s doing A Show now, kind of like the show with zefrank that he did a few years ago, but not daily, so hopefully he won’t end it after a year this time. Anyway, you should be watching it. It’s good.
I just had to reschedule the orthodontist appointment where Sammi is getting her palatal expander out — it’s now been moved up from Monday the 16th to Tuesday the 10th (i.e. a week from tomorrow). You’d think Sammi would be pleased and excited about getting that hunk of metal out of her mouth, reclaiming the full real estate of her oral cavity, and being able to chew gum once again, but instead she is apprehensive and frightened that it will hurt to take the appliance out. Never having had it done to me personally, I can’t speak from experience, but it seems to me that taking it out would hurt less than putting it in. Putting it in was pinchy and uncomfortable, but over in a few minutes, but then when it was done she had the stupid appliance in her mouth, and that sucked. I’d think that taking it out would go faster and pinch less, plus when it’s done she can go eat a giant wad of taffy if she wants, so how about some YAY, but no luck on the YAY so far.
Beanmom blogs about life, food, kids, links, and various random topics of mildly passing interest.
