rachel's continued ramblings

yes, i know it's summer. my kids don't seem to though, because it seems that they are still managing to get sick! yesterday layla started coughing like she was going to die and tonight i discovered that shane has a fever. joy. he said he woke up with a headache this morning so i gave him some motrin and he seemed to be better and did normal, lazy, summer stuff (mainly he watched tv, took a really long time doing his chores, and picked on his sister) until wyatt got home and then he went over there and played for awhile. he came home saying he was really cold and i told him to put on a sweatshirt - it's not a particularly nice day. before dinner he said his headache was back and he was particularly unwilling to get up off the couch to come eat. when he finally did get there, he said he felt fine, other than the headache, but he was freezing and he had that kind of doped up look to his eyes so i figured i ought to take his temperature. 101.3. oops. i guess he's sick. layl...

i don't think i'm going to go to a restaurant, or any other public place for that matter, until ALL of my children are shane's age. since i'm sure that pretty much everyone who might happen to read this blog (like all 3 of you) have young children, you can probably relate. i cannot fully express how completely inconvenient and disgusting it is to have to take a little kid to use a public toilet. first of all, let's face it, most public restrooms are dirty and gross. unless i really can't, i hold it. however, when the 3 year old with the pea-sized bladder and a tendency toward leakage has to go, you have to take her. so first of all, the first thing layla does when we walk into a stall is put her hands all over the toilet. 'keep your hands off the toilet.' then she turns and grabs the little garbage receptacle on the wall, invariably sticking her fingers just under the door flap and says, 'what's this.' 'it's a garbage can. don...

...or a cow, pig, chicken, sheep or any number of other farm animals. i've come to this conclusion because at least two of my children (still waiting to see about the 3rd) were apparently BORN IN A BARN! now i don't remember giving birth to any of them in a barn, but the process of childbirth does weird things to you and i've about 'laborland' that people enter while preparing to give birth and perhaps 'laborland' is actually a barn. they exhibit the characteristic behavior - the inability to shut doors. seriously, how hard is it to shut a door? very hard apparently. i couldn't possibly count how many flies are buzzing around in our house at any given time because of this. oh well, what we lack in the absence of disease-carrying insects we make up for in air circulation! right?

my daughter just walked in here with shane's bike helmet strapped onto her butt. what other odd things has she done today? well, other than the screaming fit she had next to the banana display at safeway (i can't even remember what that was about now - something shane was doing, probably)... yes, that's right, i went to the grocery store today. with my kids. and they're still alive. actually, that was the last of a string of errands i had to run, with all 3 kids. i had been dreading it all day, but knew it had to happen. first, i had to go to the library. i had books on hold there for me and i was unable to renew or place any further holds because my account was frozen. apparently, they do that when you owe more than $10 in fines. i see it kind of like paying a membership fee in order to use their books and movies and stuff. so after paying my fines and checking out my books (without any major tantrums or running away episodes, we got back in the car and headed to ta...

so i've noticed something really funny since i added the google ads over there to the right. apparently they feed your sight with ads that are 'relavent' to your personal blog. so it's kind of funny to see what they think is relavent. there was one for alternative treatments of mastitis after my blog about the breast infection. and after the one about my birthday dinner which i had titled 'public restrooms' and a lengthy rant about bathroom stalls without doors, one showed up advertising toilet partition hardware. totally hilarious. i can't wait to see what else shows up! i think i might start giving my entries really outrageous titles just to see what they decide is relavent. so watch out. oh, and click on the ads - a lot. i can get paid for running them if enough people click on them.

i forgot to add this yesterday. this is from dave, while in the shower. "hey. my body wash has the word 'douche' on it."

why, oh why would you make a public restroom and not put doors on the stalls??? last night, dave and i got to go out for my birthday. we had a pretty good dinner at tgifridays... i say 'pretty good' because the service was a little bit lacking (and wasn't improved when our server dropped a tray of beverages on another customer), and my steak sandwich was next to impossible to eat. it was good, but weird and the bread wasn't big enough or strong enough to support what was on it. but i had a really big margarita, so that made up for it. you know, one of those margaritas that comes in a glass that's so big and heavy you have to use a straw or you feel like you're taking a swig out of a fish bowl every time you take a drink. so then we took a stroll through downtown kirkland and checked out the boats and stuff down at the marina. there were a lot of people and "accessory dogs" out. then we stopped off at ben and jerry's for an ice cream cone wh...

... we all want to know what you learned today. if you've got kids + disney channel, you probably recognize this. at the end of every episode, they ask jojo the clown what she learned and as she starts to tell, this song starts and chaos ensues while a stage is set up around her and finally ends as the spotlight shines on her and she tells everyone what she learned that day. so, what did i learn today? 1. rocks don't float in the bathroom sink. but if you put them in a small plastic cup, they do. 2. just when you thought that showering was bad enough as a team sport, it turns into a spectator sport as well. 3. 2 3rd grade boys can put on a pretty funny show in a trampoline. but i still don't know what a "to-a" is. 4. july 19th does not, apparently count as 'early july' to the people renovating the playground at grasslawn park. 5. my oldest son is a spider. 6. my youngest son is a fountain. 7. my daughter's ideal breakfast is coffee and broccoli. 8...

shane and layla on the trampoline... yes, she had to jump in the princess dress. it's more fun that way, apparently. dave and shane in the trampoline... bigger kids get bigger air! layla w/ her new fishing set. she would get impatient if she couldn't catch a fish the right way immediately and she would grab it with her hand, stick it on the end of the fishing pole and then pull it right off again and put it in the bin, followed by, "i caught one!!!" well, sort of... the 2nd hand car my parents found for her? where? i'm not sure. but she likes it. so does shane. he's found a way to play with it even though he's not allowed to drive it. so far he's strapped her tricycle to the top with bungee cords, attached the wagon to the back (also with bungee cords) to make a trailer, loaded up the 'cargo area' with 'stuff they might need', and pushed her all over the yard and neighborhood, calling on neighbors. can we say dennis the menace? shan...

in case you've somehow missed this in the past, i found it and figured i ought to post it here. make sure you're sitting on a towel (or a toilet) while you're reading this - especially if you've had a kid or two ;-). http://mom2my6pack.blogspot.com/2007/08/adventures-in-grocery-shopping.html

i ran across this just now and i have to say that it's got to be the best baby poop/parenting crisis story i've heard so far. at least it puts all my stories to shame. http://thesmocklady.com/blog/poop-talk_175/

and everyone else's is too... with the exception of holly who just had a baby, so that's exciting in and of itself. so you'll notice i've taken to posting links to blogs of people i don't even know. i don't know what it is right now. it's like i have nothing interesting to say... at least not when i have a chance to sit and post it. i'll be walking around thinking about stuff i should write about, but then i can never remember it. so... i guess i'll do a brief update. my boob is just fine now, thanks. layla's party went off without a hitch. had a ton of people and little kids here on sunday afternoon, although we spent a small fortune on food and decorations. i did end up cutting layla's hair... like 4 inches or something. yes, it was traumatic (for me), but she didn't mind a bit and doesn't scream nearly as much as she did when it's time to brush it. and i'm willing to admit that it does look pretty cute. micah is 9 months ol...

this is my advice to everyone out there who has the possibility of more children in their future... don't have your kids in the same month! spread them out throughout the year! holy cow. we are one party down, one to go... and for some insane reason, i volunteered to host a playgroup on my birthday. not so bad, except that it has wound up that shane's party is the very next day. i've seriously considered chickening out on that, but am undecided. i think after this, we'll alternate years that shane and layla have parties. at least big to-do parties. oh, and we forgot to go get the slurpees. :-( i think i'm going back to bed. the kids are all still asleep!

ahh. it's that time of year again. birthday season! 3/5 of our family was born in july. today is layla's birthday - tomorrow is shane's. and then mine's in a week or so, but who cares about that! this whole back-to-back birthday thing is quite the ordeal. and we're not actually even having parties on the actual birthdays! layla's party is on sunday which means that poor shane is going to have to deal with us running around and picking up supplies and cleaning up on his birthday. so fun! not to mention, we're such pathetic procrastinators, neither of the kids' presents will be here on their birthdays because we flaked on getting them ordered in time. actually, i thought i could find layla's in a store, but found out yesterday that that wasn't possible... so had to buy it online. grr... next year we'll be on top of it! (yeah, right.) we're off at some point today to pick up our free slurpees at 7-11. at least that's one ...

you know how every now and then, you're reminded that someone's looking out for you? it happened to me this morning and i had to laugh. last night, i threw a load of clothes in the washer before bed, as is my usual habit. this morning, as i was transferring them to the dryer, i found an empty package of dried fruit in the washer with the clothes. this isn't unusual for me, i have kids, so i find wrappers for all sorts of random things in the washer that i didn't manage to fish out of a pocket (usually shane's) but fortunately, everything is wrapped in plastic these days so stuff doesn't disintegrate in the wash. i pulled it out and didn't think much of it, and continued to put clothes in the dryer. about 2/3 of the way through the load, i noticed something stuck to the side of the washer, pulled it off and realized it was a rather re-hydrated chunk of dried fruit. upon pulling more clothes out of the washer, it became clear to me that this had not been and e...

oh yes, woo hoo, i have a breast infection! joy of joys, it seems that i somehow managed to come up with a clogged milk duct that rapidly became infected. it all happened rather quickly. on wednesday, i noticed a little minor soreness kind of under my left armpit, but didn't think much of it. thursday afternoon, while micah was napping, i felt a sore spot on said left side, this time, not so much in the armpit. within an hour, it had progressed from sore to excruciating and when micah woke up and i nursed him i wanted to scream. so by evening, dave told me to call our midwife - who else would we call. so long story short, this led to a trip to pcc, a dip in the tub, a couple of near vomiting episodes, a fever, chills, an eventual 3 hour trip to the ER in the middle of the night, 10 minutes with the doctor, and a prescription for antibiotics. i'll also mention that all three kids decided to wake up at 6:30 the next morning. so that pretty much took care of any 4th of july pl...

very hard i guess. and i knew this. it's the same with purses and diaper bags. for some reason, i can never find exactly the right one. maybe it's because i don't exactly know what is exactly right. i spent at least 30 minutes today in borders, looking at calendars, and came home empty handed - finally giving up when my kids got bored with the extra huge selection of books on motorcycles, classic airplanes and muscle cars they had parked themselves in front of. (although layla had managed to keep herself fairly well entertained by the pocket guide to the kelley blue book... so if you want advice on buying or selling a used car, just ask her.) so what is it i want? well, in all honesty, i want something that will instantly fix all the disorganized facets of my life. or basically, i want a miracle divided into months and weeks and days. well, since it doesn't seem that God sells a calendar, my options seem to be limited to that which i have to implement myself. so do i w...

can it be considered child abuse to keep your kid's hair long and have to brush it out while they are screaming and crying every day? i wonder this because, although i totally love layla's beautiful long hair, it's really hard to put her through something that is obviously not to her liking for what seems like a silly reason. it's not like she seems to have an opinion on the matter... other than she hates to have her hair combed. i don't think she is even aware that there could be another option, except maybe if i would just leave her the heck alone. i guess this is kind of a rhetorical question, and somewhat irrelevant since it seems i already know the answer to my query. i just hate to cut it.