Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Changes

You might notice that it looks a little different around here. You might also notice that it’s almost Valentine’s Day and it took me this long to get rid of the Christmas layout.  Judging by that timetable, I decided against the Valentine’s or even Spring layout, since it would probably be the 4th of July before I took it down.

So you get the generic.

It’s supposed to snow here Thursday.  I don’t mind the snow itself, but I do mind the way the whole city shuts down because of it.  We probably won’t have Mother’s Day Out because people are too afraid to drive in those “hazardous weather conditions.”

This morning it was 29° when I dropped the kids off and I kid you not, people were slowing down to 5 mph to go over a 3-foot patch of ice in the road.  The straight, flat, road, I might add.

Speaking of ice and snow, we’re seriously considering moving to Alaska.  Yeah, I know.  We’re probably insane.

If all goes according to plan, we would arrive in Homer, Alaska by the beginning of April and stay for at least a year.  There are a lot of factors that the move is dependent on, though.  For instance, we need to rent our current house out for a 1-year term at close to the same price that we’ll be paying for the rental house in Alaska.  Does anybody need a 4 bedroom house with a game room, media room, study, and sun room?  If so, let us know!

There’s also the matter of actually GETTING to Alaska.  We’ll have to drive, because we will need to take some of our belongings, but there’s no way the kids, pets or our current vehicles could survive a 7-day road trip through the desolate mountains of Canada.  So we have to figure out some way to fly the kids and pets there, in addition to trading in our current vehicles for something that has low mileage and 4WD.  I never thought I would drive a Hummer, but it might come to that.

So IF we get the house rented and IF we scrape together the funds to make the drive and flights, THEN there’s the pre-move yard sales, boxing up everything that’s left, and putting it into storage.

Chances are, we’re going to be very busy over the next couple of months.  If you don’t hear from us, that’s probably why.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas…

Why yes, it DOES look different around here…

Jens has this thing about not starting the “Christmas Season” until after his birthday, which is usually a couple of days after Thanksgiving.

Up until this point, I’ve been pretty accommodating… but this year?

My Christmas blog design is going up early.

I AM SUCH A REBEL.

It’s been a while since I’ve put together a blog design in Expression Engine.  I hope the entries still show up in everyone’s feed reader.  That’s the thing about EE - it’s highly customizable but it seems that everything you do affects everything else.

So anyway, let me know if you see anything wonky going on.

Also, I bought Kaelin a Christmas tree for her room.  We’ll see how long before the big tree gets put up in the living room.  She’s on my side now

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Catching Up

Ok, guys.  I’ve given you a few things to chew on for a couple of days so you can stop nagging me about updating this site.

Instead, you can start nagging me about finishing Koren’s Halloween costume, which has to be done by, let’s see, oh yes, SATURDAY.  And which I have yet to start.  So if all the Halloween pictures are of Kaelin, you’ll know why.

But now it’s after 10pm, so I’m outta here!

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Filling Space

I know it’s been a little quiet around here lately.  I don’t like that.  Because as much as I love and adore you beautiful people and it warms my heart to read your caring and funny comments, the truth is that I do this blogging thing for me. 

For my own ridiculously deficient memory so that later I can look back and relive all those moments I would otherwise have forgotten.

For all those nostalgic moments when I see my kids growing up entirely too fast and wish I could hold onto those pieces of their youth just a little tighter, for just a little longer.

And for my children, so that when they’re older they can look back and see what it was like to be their mother - the milestones, the incredible highs, and yes, even the lows.

So when I don’t get around to posting frequently, it amounts to lost time.  A wider gap that will probably never be filled in. 

It’s not that every moment needs to be chronicled - I’m not under the illusion that our lives are that important or interesting.  But I find that a lot of the moments I treasure in retrospect are not necessarily things I think are that momentous at the time.

[insert subject change]

I took Koren to the ENT today, and it looks as though our dear little boy will be getting tubes.  This has been a long time coming and can’t happen soon enough, IMHO.  He’s been on a steady stream of antibiotics since January, which bothers me on a couple of levels - not the least of which being that they haven’t actually helped.  He STILL has ear infections.  Because antibiotics just keep bacteria at bay, but they don’t help the root of the problem, which is the mass of fluid buildup that he just can’t get rid of.

He has made some improvement over the last week after a particularly strong dose of antibiotics (the shots, I don’t recall what they’re called), and he is no longer doing the incessant Nazgul shriek that had me clawing at my own ears.  And despite the still-infected ears, he’s a generally happy little guy, which tells you that they must have been REALLY painful before ("puss" is not a term you want to hear when the doctor is describing your child’s inner ear).

So on that front, it looks like we’re heading toward the light at the end of the tunnel.  And not a moment too soon.

All in all, the timing of the ear infections was pretty rotten because we had JUST gotten him to start sleeping through the night.  But with ear infections and illness, teething, crawling and the general 8-Month Sleep Regression upon us, it pretty much created the perfect storm of CRAP NIGHTS.  As in, Child Can’t Sleep AT ALL Unless Mom is Holding Him in the Rocking Chair nights.

There is nothing that throws my own frailty in my face like losing sleep.  I mean seriously, I know people who are dealing with cancer, ailing parents, financial horrors, and children diagnosed with debilitating diseases.  And here I am, crippled into a sobbing nervous wreck because ONE of my otherwise healthy children has an ear infection and I’ve lost some sleep.

Thankfully, I have a pretty stellar husband who, when I finally asked for some help because I could not handle another night of it without throwing myself down the stairs, took over and let me get a full night in peace.  I woke up a new person, with a clear head and a greater appreciation for this partnership called marriage.

The sleeping thing?  It’s still not great, but it’s getting better.  As I type this, Koren has been asleep in his own bed without assistance for almost 3 hours.  And now I’m going to shut up about it before I jinx it and mess up a possible night’s sleep.  Ciao!