real-life mermaid... and other very short stories

madi decided to be a mermaid for the afternoon...

(what you can't see is my mom, unable to stop giggling)

actually, we both got quite a chuckle out of it... madison stuck both her legs in the same pants leg after her diaper change, and the way she stuck her feet out, wiggled them and observed the hilarity of it all with a calm, yet slightly bemused look on her face... well, it was quite comical!

see? she's a mermaid!

and mermaids, obviously, love the water.

she's a feisty one... i didn't think mermaids splashed QUITE so much!

~

anyway, the kids and i went to mom and dad's again last weekend to spend some time with sarah. she was supposed to fly in to appleton friday night, but she was flying stand-by, and since it was spring break weekend, the airports were insane, flights were overbooked, and she didn't get in until sunday morning.

cole rode in "gweat-gah-mah's" "stroller".

he enjoyed it thoroughly, and something tells me his great-grandma didn't mind it.

cole talked to daddy sunday night.

(his 'conversations' with his kelvin are cute... one big, long, 5-minute sentence about whatever comes to mind or catches his eye at the moment!)

cole also hit a small milestone: he learned to somersault!

he did it kind of by accident, so nobody showed him how it was done. after the first one, though, he really had a blast!

"woah-ho-ho-ho-ho!!!"

(that's the best i can do, but imagine, if you will, his excited chortle as he went head-over-heels)

auntie "sah-wah" was here on tuesday when the kids woke up!

she came the night before, but they were already in bed.

having sarah here was awesome... for once, i wasn't alone after putting the kids down, so we logged in as much stay-up-late-and-talk-sister-talk time as we could.

cole got to horse around with his "sah-wah"....

... but madi wasn't too keen on the rough-housing.

(she was feeling a bit owly and would rather have been a mama's girl that day)

*

sarah also modeled a new item for the green*vanilla baby shop for me. it's been finished for awhile, but i never got around to taking photos. i DO have another mama's-only item i'm working on, but it's still in the making. watch for them to debut soon... :)

i was hoping to have my new flash for the little modeling session, but there was an issue with payment verification. maybe it was meant to be, because before my sweet hubby could re-order it, i found something a little better. hopefully within a week, i'll finally have a good flash! goodness knows how harsh those little onboard flashes are... grr.

big brother

cole has been taking

his big brother

roll

VERY

("more please?")

seriously.

*

sweet, huh?

melts my heart, too!

weekend hijinx

with kelvin being out of town, it's wonderful to have great parents who let us all come stay with them for the weekend. i get a little help with the kids, and the kids get quality-time with "gah-pa" and "gah-ma".

but first, i got kisses from the wee ones!
madi's too quick for the camera, so that one didn't turn out well.

cole, on the other hand, can be quite the little romeo and we can catch his kisses on camera!

the kids had a blast climbing "gah-pa" on friday night.
it wasn't so very long ago (or that's how it seems, anyway) that us kids were climbing all over dad.

madi preferred to sit on "gah-pa's" face.

you know things are getting serious when dad has to take off his glasses!

it was the funniest thing- once those glasses came off, madi wasn't so sure it was the same guy she was climbing on; she got a pretty confused look (which eventually turned to reproachful curiosity) and scrambled back to me.

but she got over it once the glasses were put back on... that kiss for "gah-pa" is proof that all ended well!

madison took cole and "gah-ma" for a walk....

... and after a good night's sleep, cole learned to set the table.

he was concentrating pretty hard and got the general idea...

way to go, coley!!

(this is just the beginning of "chores", buddy!)

cole got story-time saturday night- he started on the couch with "gah-ma", moved to the floor with a pillow to be like "gah-pa" and after an insistent "gah-ma c'mere!!!", he was nestled in the middle, finishing the story.

smarty.

george came with us for the weekend (of course!), but the poor guy spent most of his time either in bed or in the stroller.

*

"here's lookin' at you, kid"

cole learned something new: he can wink!

yes, on command.

either he winked at her wrong or she's mad that she can't do it yet.

(*actually, it's because she's teething. she gets a canker sore-type thing on her gum above the tooth that's about to pop... it's a painful process for our princess!!*)

"it's been one week

since you looked at me..."

(pardon the bare-naked ladies lyrics... i'm drawing a blank. except for that. it kind of filled itself in... sigh).

actually, it's been a week and a day, but who's counting?

it's been sort of a crazy month already, and it's only half over. maybe the rest of it will just chill.

madison wears her brother's shoes on her feet.

constantly.

it's kind of a cute little obsession for her- and since mommy's a germophobe, the shoes were put away rather quickly when it became evident that this was going to be a habit.

i know, moms ruin all the fun, right?

(in mom's defense, if you'd have seen where those shoes have been...)

yeah. see, they get a little to close to the "chew zone".

yuck.

not to be left out of the "let's put footwear on our fingers" hoopla, cole joined in with his curious george socks.
he got the giggles after this for some reason. i just didn't photo-doc it.

big stuff!

the kids LOVED having daddy home for a few days!

so did mommy.

except for date-night.

it started out good- we dropped the kids off at kelvin's parents' house with their overnight bags, then headed to appleton for olive garden and then were anticipating a nice, relaxing night with no kids, bedtimes, whatever. the steak kelvin had for supper wasn't hip on the idea and decided to make an unwelcomed reappearance.

what a buzz-kill.

he's fine now- felt better saturday afternoon already.

we spent part of the day at my mom and dad's- they wanted to see the kids, too, so kelvin just laid low for the morning in mom and dad's recliner, then felt quite a bit peppier by the afternoon.

whew.

(by the way, what are the odds of both of us getting food poisoning in a 7-day span? if it was a bug, i'd have gotten it too, since he'd been home since wednesday night. crazy!)

the kids said their goodbye's to daddy on saturday night, and kelvin left early sunday morning for tulsa. he's there now- got down there fine, feels back to 100% (he did on sunday already) and has eased well into working 12-hour nightshifts.

and we, well, we have gotten back into our little routine too!

the kids looked at a book together sunday night.

without fighting.

yes, they fight.

madison's the loudest, fyi.

that book? it's a real page-turner...

... and cole, having already turned all the pages, went on to bigger and better things.

i did NOT show him this, he figured it out on his own.

(i made him pick it up on his own too. again with the mean mommy!!)

"you say 'gasp!', i say 'i dunno.'"

the whole arm-crossing thing is a gas.

makes me giggle every time he does it because it's more cute than obstinant.

he DOES try though- it's just hard to portray the attitude when your little toddler arms don't cross all the way, ya know?

~

and that's been our week!
(oh- we did take a walk yesterday since it was sunny and w-a-r-m... cole walked for an entire hour, had a blast watching the river and about had a coronary over the two real-life school buses that drove past, mere feet from him. wow. that was big!)

and the winners are...

... you'll see!

how to pick the winners posed a dilemma... in a perfect world, everyone would win, right? i thought about that too- just picking everyone. maybe next time.

anyway, drawing names out of a hat is easy, but i wanted to do something a tad bit different. my attempts at making a spinning arrow failed miserably, so that was out.

we found a new use for cole's flash cards: he randomly chose from the numbers 1-8, and that's how each person got their number.

your chances were in this little man's hands...

literally!

winner #1...

winner #2.

proud to help, he was!

congrats to elissa and aleigh!

when i decide just what it is that you win (because i think it would be fun for the prize to suit the winner), i will send it out to you! lucky for you girls, i will be in appleton this week, therefore getting the opportunity to poke around a little and find the right something.

thanks to everyone who entered- it was fun! and i DO mean it when i say that i would love to pick everyone... i hate "leaving" people out!

toodles for now- hope everyone has a great monday!

taking a shot in the dark

alrighty, so only two of these are really shots in the dark, but you get the point.

madi was watching supper bake tuesday night... she got so excited when i turned the oven light on and the kitchen light off. oh, the things that make babies happy... if only the rest of life were that simple, huh?

the lit-up palm tree in our living room now has kind of a special meaning for me...
this is what i saw this morning at about 1.30 when i finally dragged myself to bed. i had left the lights unplugged all day yesterday so it threw me for a loop when i saw them all lit up.
let me start at the beginning: yesterday was nice... nothing unusual, but everyone was perky and all. late in the afternoon, less than an hour after having a snackwrap from mcdonald's for a late lunch, i started feeling pretty gross. my first though was (and still is) food poisoning- it came on SO fast, was violent and ended just as abruptly. now, it could be the same stomach bug madi got (she puked in the night wednesday night and has had some pretty nasty diapers ever since, but her appetite is normal, so that's great), but there's really no way of telling. i knew it wasn't going to be a fleeting case of nausea, so i called kelvin's parents... his dad came and got the kids and they had a sleepover at grandpa dan and grandma ruby's house.
literally.
they all camped out on mattresses.
but i digress.
it was a nasty something-or-other, confining me to the bathroom until the wee hours of the morning. at one point, i considered calling 911 because the stomach cramps were beyond anything i'd ever had before. i literally couldn't breathe enough because of the pain, so i was hyperventilating on top of everything else. anyway, i got to the point where i knew it was over and headed upstairs to bed. i saw light in the living room, which was strange, because i hadn't turned any lights on and the kids had been gone for hours. apparently, cole had plugged in the lights on the tree before he left... which, of course, made me miss him even more. it was sweet- i like to think it was his way of making sure mommy was safe.
so... after talking to an on-call nurse, it was decided that we should have plenty of pedialyte in the house for madi and cole. well... i knew i didn't have the strength to bundle both kids up, take them to the store, risk someone puking or having a super-messy diaper while we were out, so i called our wonderful neighbor to see if, by any chance, she'd be able to pick some up for us. she said "lucky you, i'm at the grocery store right now!"... we're so lucky to have some super-special people next door! and for the record, i don't make requests like that unless i have no other options. i prefer to be independent and resilient. unfortunately, that does not apply when forceful vomiting is involved.
now if you'll excuse me, i'm going to keep us on the mend...

oh, and if you haven't already done so, feel free to leave a comment on the previous post to enter the "pay it forward" gift giveaway! you have till noon on monday... good luck!

pay it forward!!

big thank-you to amber... she drew my name during her "pay if forward" gift giveaway.

not only do i LOVE ikea, i also have been using paper towel squares off the roll in place of napkins for, oh, eight years now?

totally awesome... thanks again, amber!!

now it's my turn:

here are the rules for the giveaway:

1: you must be willing to give me your address so i can send your gift.

2: you have to be willing to post your own "pay it forward" giveaway after you receive your gift. along with your post, you may tell about your gift and link back to my blog, if you want.

3: play along! send your two lucky winners their gift. it doesn't have to be anything big or

expensive, maybe a favorite or yours, or something that would make their ordinary day a little less ordinary.

alrighty, friends!! if you want a chance to join in the fun, please leave a comment (any old comment will do). you don't have to do it right away- you have until 12 noon on monday, march 8 to comment for your chance at the draw. this is a fun... comment away! :)

(ps- if i post again before the week is out, i WILL leave a link so you can still enter!)

cowkids and fridges

after almost 8 years of waiting, we FINALLY got a new fridge!!

we used an old one from mom and dad... it was older than we are, and it worked. sure, we never kept ice cream on hand because it never got cold enough in the freezer to keep it any harder than "moosh", and the seals were bad so there was a persistant mildew issue, but it did the trick. (oh- for the record, the mildew was on the seals, not actually inside the fridge...)

then it started making sounds when it ran. or rather, when the 'run' phase of the cycle ended.

that in itself was probably not a big deal, just something loose in the motor or some such deal.

looking at the situation from all angles, the general consensus was that a new fridge was needed. oh, the old frigidaire served us well, and in a sense, i was sad to see it go...

... but this little number keeps our frozen juice FROZEN!!!

and there's so much room!

and no, cole can't open the freezer by himself. yet. it's harder to pull out when there's stuff inside.

i love the french door. sure, we could have gone with a single door, but if you have ever been in our kitchen, you'd know that there's no way a single door of that width would open all the way without hitting the sad excuse of a countertop opposite the fridge. yup... good enough reason for us to go with the french doors. there's one more thing you should know: kelvin picked out the fridge. i just approved it.

anyway, we're loving it... and the best part (besides the $75 cash-for-clunkers appliance refund)? the energy tag says it only takes about $50 worth of juice to run. per year.

wheeeee!

yesterday both the kids wore their boots to meeting. madi got hers from uncle logan, auntie elissa and cousins coy and bentley for her birthday this year. they're a good bit big, but they do stay on and she seems to really like them, so she and cole were decked out in their western kicks.

this was pretty much the only way i could get cole to sit for a decent photo... he kept running away and saying "no more, mama!".

guess i need to take it easy with the camera?

anyway, i asked him if i could take a photo if he and madi sat on the couch.

he seemed to think that was a fine idea.

my sweet cowkids!!