The Puddles

Madie is having fun playing Hens and Hawks in Girl Scouts today.

Mommy and Daddy won’t let me wear my Christmas reindeer antlers with bells on them to school.  AND I AM MAD!

Poor Ainsley was home again today after she still continued to cough so hard that she threw up.  My hope is that she gets to go to school tomorrow.  I fell asleep with her in her bed last night when she threw up again around 3:30am (and I had yet to go to bed at this point because of chores and tummy aches and nightmares from the other two).  She woke me up this morning by throwing up on me.   Chris at least took the other two to school so that Ainsley and I could get some more sleep.  But besides this morning she has been good.  So off to school she goes.

For whatever reason she had it in her head that she was going to Grandma G.’s house today.  I don’t know why she thought that.  But alas, she had it stuck in her head.  “If I have to stay home from school, I can’t go to Grandma’s either??”  “Who said you were going to Grandma’s?” “I need her. We live close now so we can go all the time, Mom.  She has ducks and toys and guns (Ben calls my parents house, the house with the guns because my dad is a hunter.  It has now carried over to the younger child as well).  You know?  I can’t go when I’m sick . . . ” If the last few days have taught me anything, I apparently do not have enough love and attention to give to Ainsley and she is seeking this from others who love her dearly.  So I guess we need to schedule some time with the Grandma with the ducks (see I am trying to change it, so they are not “Papa with the guns” all the time. That just doesn’t sound good.)

So . . . (you can tell I’m tired because I am rambling) Ainsley was saying her prayers tonight and with her sweet words she recited her nightly prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostle’s Creed.  (We are trying to indoctrinate that Lutheran stuff early.) So according to Ainsley she prayed that “he leads us all to temptation”, “we all should descend into hell”, and “the power and the glory for never and never.”   Sweet baby.  When she says it with a group, it will sound just right.  By herself . . . not so good.  At least we are still are working on it.  The good news is that God doesn’t care.  He knows that she is pure of heart!

My family is held together today with snot and hand sanitizer.  Both are flowing plentifully today. The two youngest have had a cough for several days.  Ainsley’s has progressed into something yucky. They both are coughing so hard that they are throwing up.  And then to top it all off I woke up this morning with . . . PINK EYE!  Yuck. Gross.  Why do they share only the icky stuff?

So we made the round of doctors this morning.  First the pediatrician and then to my appointment. So we made it official . . . Everyone is sick, so everyone got a lot of medicine.  I think I needed a separate bag just to take all of the drug printouts home.  Even the pharmacists wanted to know if there was anyone left at home healthy.  Ben probably could have gone to school (Chris wanted to send him). He didn’t want to school to begin with because he wanted to keep sleeping.  So he was already upset about going when he started coughing.  The coughing (and his acid reflux) caused him to throw up. I didn’t want him to go to school and tell everyone that he threw up that morning and that his mom sent him to school anyway.  I don’t need to be “that” mom right now.  And Ainsley was upset today not because she missed school or had to go to the doctor but because she was going to get to see someone special today and that had to get cancelled.  She tried to tell the nurse that she really wasn’t sick (as she hacked and gagged all over the poor nurse).  I probably should have waited to tell Ainsley that information until after the visit . . . hindsight is 20/20.

My prayer for tomorrow is that everyone is healthy enough to go to school.  When I realized my entire day was going to change dramatically and I was going to get nothing done that I had planned, Chris just sighed, said he was sorry and then sprinted towards the car.  He knew when to get the heck out of Dodge.  Smart man.

My poor family is completely broken and needs some mending.  Ainsley just came downstairs and told me that she needs more snuggles.  I guess it is time for me to start mending with some snuggle time with Ainsley.

It doesn’t happen everyday that Madie makes it in the paper.  Our troop was interviewed on Thursday and they made it in today’s paper.

Madie is so proud.

http://www.hcnonline.com/articles/2010/01/17/conroe_courier/lifestyles/cookies011710.txt

See the link above to read the article and look at the pictures!

You never know what will come up for discussion at dinner.  Tonight’s discussion was “If you could be anyone on the movie The Incredibles who would you be?”  This question was posed by Chris of course.  Ben wanted to be Dash. Madie wanted to be Vi (because she had long hair like Madie.) Ben then proceeded to tell Daddy that he had to be Mr. Incredible and then he and Dad agreed that I needed to be Elastigirl.  At this point I said that I didn’t want to be Elastigirl that I wanted to be Dash because I could get my housework done so fast if I was Dash.  That made Ben upset.  He said we all had to be just like the people in the movie.  Ainsley then starts to argue that she doesn’t want to be Jack-Jack (have you seen Jack-Jack?  I don’t blame her.). The discussion continues until Ben is bored by it all and gets up from the dinner table to run around the house like Dash.  Madie then gets up to pretend that she is suddenly invisible like Vi . . . and the whole sitting at the table for dinner as a family breaks down from there.

I don’t think we ever recovered the children from that discussion.  They all started to go around the house pretending to be one hero or another until we shuttled them up the stairs and to bed.  I can only imagine what tomorrow’s dinner time discussion will be.  Let’s hope that at least it keeps us all sitting at the table until dinner is over!

We have a busy day today.  There are lots of things to do and many places to be.  Most importantly Madie needs to walk the neighborhood and sell cookies.  Chris is home and offered to help relieve some of the stress that I was dealing with.  I said, “You can either help Madie walk door-to-door selling cookies or you can take Ben and Ainsley to ToysR’Us to buy a birthday present and then drive Ben to the birthday party.”  Chris turns to me and says, “Are you kidding me? That’s my choice?”  He didn’t want to do either one.  He said that they both were worse than purgatory.  But my husband is fabulous and a terrific father, so he  said he would take Madie around to sell cookies.

So we settle in to the day both getting ready to go into the world to do our duty as parents, when I walk by the office and see my husband searching for an iphone app to help him sell cookies.  He wanted an app that would allow him to just give the iphone to the customer and let them type in their order.  Each order would then have a GPS location attached to them. Then when it was time to deliver he would just tell the app to map out his best course to deliver the cookies.  I have told him, “No, you can’t do that.”  Girl Scouts wants it done a certain way.  They have a reputation to protect.  He was a determined soul.  Ben, Ainsley, and I left before they did, so I don’t know what the final decision was.  But I am going to guess that some kind of computer device will be used today.  This is the same man who wanted to put a computer in Madie’s room when she was born to track her dirty and wet diaper count.  Practical? No. Fun? Yes.   He may come up with some crazy ideas sometimes about computers but he has also created websites for almost every church we have belonged to, networked multiple schools and churches, created an alarm system that let us know when a child was trying to go down the basement stairs, helped bring many computers back to life for both my family and parishoners in the churches we have been in, and on and on and on.  Thank God that Chris is who he is.  And most importantly . . .  that he is the type of father who is willing to walk for hours in the cold wet weather to help his daughter sell Girl Scouts cookies.

20 minutes.  That’s all. 20 minutes.

That’s how long it takes for my children to create chaos.  Ainsley dumped out all of the toys in the playroom into the middle of the floor.  Ben was outside in the chilly rainy weather without shoes (his feet were red from walking around outside on the cold wet ground). And Madie was playing inside the large outside trash can.  Nasty!  Did I mention we have somewhere to go tonight that requires us to be clean and ready to go?  No? It’s true.

Someone was here at the house and I was enjoying a nice chat with her.  I was also appreciating how the children were being so quiet while I talked with her.  Sweet, sweet children.  My mommy radar should have popped up and sent out a red alert.  “Why is it so quiet? Where are the children?” The children were causing havac.

I should have known better.  I am not new at this.  One day I will learn.

I swear Madie could sell ice to eskimos. A newspaper report came to our Girl Scout meeting today.  We even had a visiting Girl Scout come to our meeting in order to speak with the reporter.  She (the one in the green vest)sold over 1000+ boxes last year.  Now Madie has upped her goal for selling cookies.  Does she realize that I have to deliver all of those cookies?  Not wanting to be someone who stands in her way when she makes a goal . . . I guess we will be walking the streets of our neighborhood this weekend  selling cookies.

Most of my girls tried selling cookies to the reporter.  The reporter was amazed that my second graders (the girls sitting around the table in the first picture) were telling them about which cookies were low-fat and which ones were good for diets and which cookies were the tastiest.  And did you know that you can freeze Girl Scout cookies in order to eat later?  I’m not kidding.  My girls are amazing.

Remember if you need any cookies . . . you know who to ask!

I was walking around the house a few weeks ago taking pictures of every one here and there.  Feeling aimless.  Chris turns to me (after this last photo) and accused me of taking pictures in order to feed the blog.  What does that mean?  Upon further  explanation, I realized that yes  . . . he was right.  I was trying to take cute adorable pictures of my beloved children in order to share my children with friends and family. So shoot me.