Addicted to Blogging

Tpok a quiz tonight:

81%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Can that be a bad thing?

I do know that it's Sunday night, Nicky's asleep and it's prime blog reading time. AND my Google Reader is empty! I'm subscribed to 77 blog feeds and not a single one has a new post for me to read. Now what am I going to do?

Playdate

We had Nicky's first official playdate today with two babies born within about a month of Nicky. It was one of Nicky's first times getting to play up close with other kids for an extended time and I think all three babies did really well.

We went over to little Evan's house and Evan was great about sharing all his toys. Kyle came too and she was shy at first but quickly warmed up and even let the boys play with her lovey, a stuffed panda named Bobby. We stayed for about 1.5-2 hours and Nicky actually fell asleep on the way home. He had so much fun.

Of course the only thing that would have made it better was if I could have taken PICTURES! Man I miss our camera!

Two Firsts

First poop in the tub:
It's inevitable I suppose. Tonight was the night for us though. Luckily the water had just finished emptying out and Nicky was already up and about to come out. Tom came when I called out "POOP in the TUB!" And he cleaned the tub while I got Nicky into his jammies. Let's hope we can avoid this in the future. Poop in the diaper is gross enough. And thank goodness for daddy. Phew!

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First meme tag:
Well I was tagged for a meme today. Beck tagged me and it seems like an interesting one. My problem with memes (is that the right plural form?) is that I don't mind doing them, I'm just uncomfortable about passing them along. I feel like I'm passing on a chain letter or something. But I'll try. Ok, here's the meme:


INSTRUCTIONS:
1. You have to post these rules before you give the facts.
2. You must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of their middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.
3. When you are tagged, you need to write your own blog post containing your own middle name game facts.
4. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Well my middle name is Kristen, which seems awfully LONG right now, but here goes:

K = Kisses. This morning Nicky was sitting on my lap with one of my earrings in each hand looking back and forth to examine each one. I puckered up and he kissed me right on the lips! My first kiss from my boy! Heavenly!

R = Rich. Something I will NEVER be. I think I'm finally coming to terms with that. Sigh.

I = Insects. I find most insects fascinating and beautiful. Not necessarily in the house though. Oh, and I wish death on all female mosquitoes. And fire ants. Hate them too.

S = SAHD (Stay At Home Dad). This is how our family works. Tom is a wonderful hands-on father who stays home with Nicky and manages the household. I bring home the paycheck and handle the finances.

T = Teaching & Tornadoes. Along with alligators, teaching and tornadoes are two of my most common recurring nightmares.

E = Extrovert. That would be me. I'm definitely an extrovert. That's actually one of the big reasons I can't be a stay at home mom. I actually get depressed when I'm not around lots of people on a regular basis.

N = New Orleans. I've only gone on a plane by myself once and it was to go to present at a conference in New Orleans. I was only there for about 24 hours, but it was during the week before Mardi Gras and it was AMAZING! I had so much fun and the city was so colorful and the flavor was just so different than anything I'd experienced before (being a country and suburb kind of girl). I wanted to go again with Tom for a longer stay, but now after Katrina I don't know if it will ever be the same.


Phew! I did it! And now to figure out who I'm tagging. Problem is I don't think anyone really much reads my blog and the folks I read might not do memes. So instead of being just a "tag" list, these are examples of blogs I have in my feed reader that I really enjoy. I have a lot more, but these start (sort of) with the right letters for the meme. Read and enjoy!

K= Kristen at Motherhood Uncensored: Hillarious blogger. Love her writing and I don't think I've ever seen her do a meme actually.

R= Robyn: She just started her photography blog. We've been buddies online since we were both due to have March 2006 babies. She takes beautiful photos!

I= I Am Bossy: Ok, totally cheating here, but I have no one who actually has a name starting with I that I can think of. But Bossy is very fun to read, and has a killer sense of humor.

S= Sweatpants Mom: I know she's been out and about commenting, but hasn't posted in a while. Maybe this will help. :)

T= Toddler Planet: I've written about her before. She's currently fighting IBC tooth and nail, and winning!

E= Elizabeth: I know, it's totally cheating, but my wonderful sister reads this blog faithfully and can respond with her meme answers in the comments...unless of course she'd like to start her own blog today? Hmmmm?

N= The New Girl: I seriously doubt she had any time for this, and if she does have a moment she probably needs a nap instead of a meme, but her new baby is a DOLL!
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Update: Ok, I totally sucked it up and actually DID leave each person a comment telling them I tagged them. I feel like a freaking criminal! But if you haven't read one or more of the blogs above, do click the link and check them out. I enjoy all of these and more. I really should put up a blogroll someday with all of the blogs I read.

A prayer request

Those who know me know I never do this, but I think we can make an exception here.

A wonderful woman who I met on the internet is right now going through something no one should have to go through. Her son Evan, who is just precious, is having a brain tumor removed in a few hours time. He's the second youngest person to ever have this surgery at only 9 months old. But the surgery will cure him of the seizures he's been having and improve his life considerably.

Please take a moment to visit her blog, see Evan and leave a prayer for his safe surgery and recovery.

Thank you!

Forced Exercise

Sunday we moved all the furniture around and now the computers and the tv are in the den past the baby gate. Nicky's got the run of the living room and the hallway right now, and once we have his bedroom all safe for him he'll have the run of that room too. The living room is all nice, but the den is a wreck right now since we don't spend any time in there except after Nicky goes to bed. But it's nice to have some adult space in the house where we don't have to worry about Nicky getting hurt with anything.

Of course he's mad about not being able to go in there, and he's discovered a fun new game, throwing his toys through the baby gate into the den and into the kitchen with the dogs. The den doesn't bother me too much, but the kitchen is a problem since the dogs might chew up whatever gets thrown in there. We're working on "no." I think he knows what it means, but just doesn't really care at the moment. But we'll get there. Enough redirection and moving him away from the "no" thing and he'll get it...right?

Tom and I have enjoyed two evenings of playing EQ2 together so far. We have our little gnome characters: Missgnomer and Mistergnomer. We're clever like that. :)
I'll have to take a picture for you (since I can actually take a still shot of the game while I still CAN'T take a photo in real life. I miss my camera!!!)

This is a very tight two weeks until the end of the month, and so to save money I'm driving myself to work. Sigh. It's hotter than hell here and often rainy in the afternoons, but I have to save on gas and so I'm doing it. That means a 15 minute walk in the morning and another one in the afternoon. Ick. Too much like exercise! But yet better than taking the bus...which I might end up having to do if I can't make this 3/4 of a tank stretch till the 30th at least. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. I would take the bus all the time if it was a straight shot, but there's an exchange downtown and I'm not a city-girl; I have no clue how to work the bus system. Shocking to some I'm sure. :)

Well I woke up an hour early today with a backache, but I have to work a desk shift today till 6pm so going in early wasn't going to help me leave any sooner today. Bummer. I've already painted my nails and blogged. Maybe I'll go eat some breakfast at a speed slower than "wolf" for a change.

Now we're cooking with gas!

Today my Mom and sister Liz came to visit for the weekend. And guess what! They gave Tom a router for his graduation gift! AND Tom got it hooked up, AND he's on the desktop playing Everquest2 (as usual) AND I'm on the laptop on the internet too! (Ok, that's the exciting part folks, so be amazed.)

So now we can both be on the internet at the same time. I'm very excited! Soon we'll hook up the other desktop and be able to play Everquest2 together after Nicky goes to sleep in the evenings. (We don't get out much and it's our fun thing to do.)

Tomorrow we're going to move around the living room and den. I want to put both computers, the TV, the wood-frame sofa, the coffee table and the baker's rack in the den where it can be gated off. Then I'll have the rocker-recliner, the reclining loveseat and Nicky's Toys in the living room.

I think it will work out really nicely. And it will be safer to limit Nicky's time around all the stuff we'll have in the den. He's too close to being able to climb on top of the TV, pull off the heavy CD rack from the wall and play with (break) the blinds in the windows. And really, he hates being in there now. He's spent so much time in there it's boring for him. He likes the living room where he can run down the hall and play with the dogs through the baby gate in front of the kitchen.

Hopefully it will all get done tomorrow. Because the next project after that will be to swap the bedrooms around! YAY! That will probably be a while though. Maybe after I finish refinishing Nicky's bedroom furniture.

Well, I'm off to read blogs until Tom and I go off to sleep. I can't believe we're both on the net at the same time. It's AWESOME!

We're still alive over here with no TV

But it's been exhausting! Tom's had the brunt of it of course, but over the weekend and during the evenings I try to step-up and take over a lot. And I can now say: talking is hard work.

For me I mean! Just tonight I was cooking dinner and Nicky was in his seat. I finally realized that while I was singing to him (a variation of my favorite "Mommy is a cannibal" tune) I could actually be using that time to talk about cooking and what I was doing instead. I sing all the time, mostly made up songs, but don't talk much I guess. (Which is kind of funny since anyone who knows me KNOWS I can talk your ear right off.)

So I made an effort to talk about what I was cooking and what all the things on the table were as I made his little burrito. And then he promptly unfolded his burrito and threw all the components in the air.

Well at least the dogs had a nice dinner. After a while I called Daddy in to take Nicky off for a bath and sat my butt down to catch up on some blog reading.

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And what did I learn today? I learned about this:

Yep, that's it over on the right side of the blog. It's basically a button that indicates that folks who leave comments on my blog with a link to their blog will get "credit" for having a link to their blog and will therefore be able to increase their pagerank by leaving me comments. Of course icky spammy comments might come along with folks trying to increase their evil spammy sites, but I'll delete those and I'm not too worried about it yet.

But don't worry, if none of that really means anything to you it changes nothing about how my page works, how the comments work and how cute Nicky is so it's no biggie.

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But that reminds me! Donna is going to check her camera to see if she has some photos of Nicky's top teeth on there. If so (and if they're not blurry beyond recognition) she's going to email them to me. And then I can put them up here! YAY! I miss having a camera!

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Health update:
I'm nearly over my bronchitis. Still coughing some, but not hardly anything compared to how it's been. Tom and Nicky are doing pretty well too. Nicky's still got a runny nose, which is lots of fun. But we're getting lots of nose blowing practice. Although mostly it's me chasing him around grabbing his nose with a kleenex and saying "BLOW!" Lot's of fun.

New rule: No TV when Nicky is in the room

Ok, while I do really consider myself pretty laid back about most things parental I am completely freaked out by this article.

So until someone can show me something countering this, there will be no more TV on while Nicky's in the room. You can watch it while he's asleep or napping or off in another room playing with someone else. No exceptions until he's at least 2. Tom said he's ok with enforcing that too which makes me feel less like a reactionary idiot better.

Maybe I wouldn't feel so horrible if Nicky was some kind of language genius and speaking in sentences or something, but he's not. I've been getting more and more concerned about his language development actually, although I'm really trying to keep in mind that all kids develop at their own speed, etc. etc. The facts are that other kids his age are talking a lot more, and while he says mama, dada, hi, hello, bye, and light pretty consistently there really isn't anything else he's saying regularly and in context. And the guidelines are that he should be saying about 40 words by now. (Ok, REALLY should not have googled that. I thought it was more like 15 words, and now I'm even more freaked out.)

So for the next 6 months if your visiting please just humor me and leave off the TV around Nicky. Really, he's pretty darn entertaining without it.

Our next pediatric visit seems REALLY far away right now.

Baby's First Shiner

Well I managed to get a few photos of Nicky's first black eye. It's three days old now since he got it on Saturday. He of course was only interested in grabbing the cellphone while I was trying to take his picture.



It doesn't seem to bother him at all, but I feel so bad for him! Wish I could say "you should see the other guy" but really the nightstand looks just fine.

Get your mind out of the gutter

I just had to share this idea. What a great way to create bookshelves! I'm thinking this might be a project for us to try soon. Nicky's got so many books, and the bookshelves that face out are really expensive.

Surprise Surprise

I'm sure everyone who knows me is just shocked to hear I have bronchitis. NOT. I get this every single time it seems. Tom and Nicky are both getting better from the cold, but of course mine has taken up permanent residency in my lungs. I finally called the doctor and got an appointment for this afternoon. Yep, acute bronchitis. He gave me a script for a cough suppressant with sudafed and codeine in it. Yum. Why oh why are all cough meds in liquid form? Could someone PLEASE invent a PILL?! Well at least I think it's working. I just took my second dose and now hopefully will be able to fall asleep for longer than an hour.

Poor Nicky looks like he's been punched in the eye. I still haven't gotten a picture of it yet. Poor kid. I'm sure the folks at the doctor's office were wondering how it happened. I didn't make eye contact with anyone though, just in case they were glaring at me. He was very good at the doctor's office and said "Hi" over and over to everyone. He was very interested in the blood pressure cuff and watching the doctor listen to mommy's lungs with the stethoscope. While we waited for the pharmacy to fill the script we ate dinner at Sonny's. Nicky had so much fun smiling at everyone and saying "Hi" some more. It's funny because he'll just do it over and over again. Hopefully he'll add a few more words to his repertoire soon. Maybe he'll start saying "Hi, how you doing?" (Just like Joey on "Friends" of course.)

Well, that's about all the updates I have for you. Oh, did I tell you that Tom and his mom did a LOT of work on the kitchen? They finished stripping the upper cabinets, painted them, put on new hardware, installed one new base cabinet and replaced the countertop. All this is on the stove side of the kitchen. We still have to replace the rest of the base cabinets on that side, but it looks SOOOO nice! My cabinets have DOORS! It's awesome. Oh, AND Tom got the electricity fixed in the wall, installed a new outlet by the stove and installed the range hood and task lighting. He's awesome.

Next will be the sink side of the kitchen. That's probably going to have to wait till the next tax refund though since we have to replace the sink cabinet and probably move the plumbing around. Donna is giving us her old dishwasher if Tom can get it working and we'll have to figure out how to fit it in there. Can you imagine? A dishwasher! (I mean, other than the two-legged kind.)

If I had a working camera I'd show you a picture of the new 1/2 kitchen. But I still don't have one! That might be waiting for tax refund time too. Or maybe Christmas. Santa might be good to us this year.

Ok, I've gone a whole 3 minutes without coughing. Maybe I can actually sleep tonight! In a bed! Lying down! One can hope...

The House of Plague

Well, Tom came down with the cold on Friday. I called my mom and told her and we agreed it's probably a good idea to put off their visit. So Tom, Nicky and I are all miserable together. Tom and I have been taking turns on Nicky-duty so we could alternate on our naps. I actually did get about 4 hours of sleep this morning finally and then another 2-3 hours throughout the day. So far it's still just a head cold for Tom and Nicky and I sincerely hope it stays that way. For me it's all in my lungs and even the new albuterol inhaler Tom picked up from the pharmacy for me isn't helping much. I hate being sick! GRRR!

Oh, and to top it all off, We had Nicky in our room playing on the bed while Tom was napping and I was taking meds. Nicky tried to crawl over onto my nightstand to reach something, but his hand missed the nightstand and he landed right on his face on the corner of it. OW! He's got a nice big purple bruise on his poor cheekbone. I wanted to call the pediatrician on call, but Tom insisted Nicky was fine. He was happy, playing and eating so I guess he's alright, but he would not let me put any ice on his cheek. At least I was right there when it happened. If I'd been farther away I'd feel guilty, but as it is I was right there and he still managed to hurt himself. I guess you can't protect them from everything. I still don't have the camera, but I do have the cellphone camera and so I'll try to get a pic of his poor cheek tomorrow.

Haven't fallen off the planet, just sick

Well it's three am on a weeknight, and I'm up. Can't lie down without coughing, so I might as well update everyone on what's up in Mottsville. I came down with a stupid cold last Sunday. Braved work Monday, stayed home in bed Tuesday and Wednesday, made it to work Thursday and now I can already tell I'm staying home Friday. Hopefully I'll be well by Monday and I can get back into the swing of things at work. I hate being sick.

But more than that, I hate NICKY being sick! Thursday morning at 5am I woke up and went to check on Nicky. He was soaking wet and running a fever. I got Tom up, changed Nicky while Tom changed his bedding and then we gave him some tylenol. He was so sleepy he went right back to sleep. He's running a temp on and off and has a runny nose, but hopefully he'll shake this faster than I am. And don't even get me started about Tom. I can't bear to think of him getting this too. I hate it when he's sick too. I feel so awful leaving him home to take care of Nicky and especially with how bad I felt Tuesday and Wednesday, I could NOT have been in charge of Nicky by myself in that condition. I don't think I have enough sick time to stay home anymore though, so hopefully Tom will beat out this germ and not come down with it too. So far so good.

Speaking of Tom though, his diploma finally came in the mail! It's official- he's a college graduate from the University of Florida with a bachelors in History! I'm so proud of him! This is something he worked so hard for! We'll have a nice dinner this weekend when my mom and sister come visit and next weekend too when his mom comes. This is the kind of thing that needs multiple celebrations. ;)

I miss taking movies of Nicky for you all! And photos too. I've got to do something about that camera! Grr! Nicky was being so cute at dinner Wednesday. Tom made burritos, and fixed one for Nicky. He held it and Nicky was taking bites out of it. Of course about halfway thru Nicky wanted to do it all himself and ended up with a big pile of burrito fillings in front of him while chewing on the tortilla, but he had a ball! He's really able to eat just about everything now I guess. His top four teeth are all coming in very nicely and they're huge compared to his two little bottom teeth. He's acting like he's getting more in any moment, but I don't see anything yet. I wonder how long the next ones will take to come in. He's already 16 months old and only has 6 teeth. Hopefully the old wives tale about "the slower the teeth come in the stronger they are" is true!

Well darn, here it is early in the morning, I'm completely exhausted and can't lie down to sleep! Guess I'll go sit in the recliner with some hot tea and tissues and try to read. It's better than watching TV anyway. I hate being sick!