Three!

It is hard for me to believe, but Harry is now three years old. Time sure flies! It is amazing the things he can do now and how much comprehension he has gained. On Friday I bought him an Elmo balloon for his birthday. It rather rapidly deflated much to his dismay so I promised that as soon as daddy got home and we had dinner I would go to the store and get him a new one (I returned the old one as it was obviously defective). He was so very calm an mature about the whole ordeal. He was thrilled with his new balloon and calmly accepted that he could not take it to bed with him until he realized that I meant what I had said and then he sobbed like the two year old he still was. That sure beats the almost instant temper tantrum of a toddler, that is for sure.

Harry's birthday cake made by yours truly. It is based on one that I had when I was about his age. Harry had been strongly campaigning for some Elmo cupcakes that they have at Sam's Club, but I did not see the need for 24 icky cupcakes with gross frosting since it was only going to be family. I thought that this would be a fun and much tastier alternative.

My husband had to help with the candle, Harry is still not a very good candle blower outer.

Cookie seems a bit worried about something, I am not sure what though.

Mmmmm.... eyes.

Evan chowing down. He is quite excited for his birthday to come even though it is still months away. He wants an Elmo balloon too.

This is how I often feel, poor momma bear.

Wow!

Picture # 1 was pretty easy to guess. Those are the wee little feet. Picture #2 is the femur. Teh technician tried to get hands and arms but the baby was keeping them tightly crossed and they were hard to get pictures of. Picture #3 is supposedly the baby's face. The technician seemed pretty confident of that, but to me it looks like there is an alien inside me.

I just read this article and all I can say is wow!!!

Baby pictures

Today was rather a crappy day and it was topped off by my destroying dinner thanks to my addled pregnant brain. I forgot to make sure we had the right cheese for the lasagna, I totally forgot to get ricotta cheese and it was too late to ask my husband to pick some up at the store as he was already at the store getting me the mozzarella cheese that I needed (we only have one cell phone and he never remembers to bring it with him) and finally I barely avoided burning the top of the dinner thanks to me forgetting to put the aluminum foil over it. The odd thing is that my lasagna hating kids actually ate it and my husband loved it. I didn't, but I guess I will just be happy that others did.

A part of my grumpiness was that my ultrasound showed that I was actually not as far along as my last menstrual period would suggest. My new due date is May 11th. Sigh! I guess that midwife must have been imagining things when she thought I was measuring bigger. At least the dream that I had that I was having twins was debunked as only one baby showed up in the ultrasound. And before you ask, it was waaay to early to tell what sex the baby is. It was hard enough to even get a very good peek at the baby thanks to the earliness of my pregnancy.

I now present to you the amazing gray blob pictures. See if you can guess what each picture is a picture of. The people that get them all right will get an imaginary prize which will be determined later.

Stop repeating me!

Back in the day a great way to drive your sibling insane was to repeat everything that they said. It was delicious fun that was only ruined when the sibling finally stopped talking altogether. Now I am not laughing. Evan is in one of his phases and this phase is him repeating me. Sometimes it is just the last word I say and sometimes it is the entire sentence.

My patience has been getting quite the workout. I find it quite ironic that part of our job as a parent is to teach our children patience and to do that we have to develop an even greater amount of patience than we had previously. If you had an adult at work following you around repeating everything that you said you would go insane and might even have murderous thoughts. You would have the option of talking to someone with higher authority or even quitting your job if the annoyance was great enough. With your kids a higher level of behavior is needed. You can't just quit on your kids or shut them in the room so that you don't have to hear them. It is a good thing that Evan is so cute and lovable.

My mom hates me

Harry got an early birthday package from my parents today. Of course it had to be ripped open right away. Inside were two Sesame Street DVDs and a musical card. Harry was immediately taken by the card, he laughed so hard that I was worried that he would collapse. At first I was amused and thought the card was kind of cute. After a long afternoon of Harry playing that song over and over again I was convinced that my mother was out to get me. My husband became the mean parent and took the card away after being home only an hour. Apparently he does not have the noise tolerance that I have developed.

This card is not the only noisy thing that has been gifted to my kids by my parents. There have been numerous toys that have earned battery removals. I think the most notable was the Tickle Me Elmo that they gave Harry last Christmas. Elmo is quiet most of the time now, but every so often he gets rediscovered and my day is shot. I think that next time we visit I am going to give each of the boys a musical card to play with at grandma's house. I wonder how long they would last.

Oops

In my flutter over our new computer I forgot to post about my oh so delightful (I am being sarcastic here) OB appointment. It same on top of an already crappy day so I kind of wanted to just avoid the whole thing but went any as I had already blown of the previous appointment thanks to my pregnancy brain.

One of the Midwives in the practice did my exam. It was horribly uncomfortable and the Pap smear part was actually quite painful, which has never happened to me before. Yeah it has been very uncomfortable but never painful. Oddly enough before this one I had only had male doctors doing them on me. You would think that a woman would be more aware of discomfort issues.

The best part of the visit was when I got to hear the heartbeat of the baby. Until the baby is big enough to really make it's presence known it really is hard to internalize that there is a living being existing inside of you. It was nice to be able to hear the proof. I will be getting an ultrasound next week to confirm my dates (my cycles are super wonky and I was feeling big for gestational age) so I may have some blurry gray baby pictures to post. Hopefully it will cooperate and be photogenic. Most of Evan's are of his spine and Harry's are not much better.

Nerd girl

One of the things that both my husband and I have in common is our love for computer games. It is probably the only hobby that we both share which is why my husband wants to set up our old computer so that we have two that are working. Any way the point I am trying to make that is we have both been playing with out new toy and it has been wonderful.

Part of the reason he was so motivated to get the new computer built is so that he could play World of Warcraft like the guys at work are doing (a lot of his hobbies seem to be things that guys in his shop are doing). We have both played and beaten the original Warcraft games and were aware of the existence of WoW, but had not wanted to get sucked in. We recently decided to cave in, after all the monthly subscription cost was probably less than what I have spent on yarn and he did just get a raise.

I must say that it is an amazing game and everything that everyone said it would be. Blizzard is one of the top computer game companies out there and they keep on making winners. The user interface it very intuitive so that you can pick up a lot as you go along playing the games. They do a great job of making the games challenging but not so hard that you give up in frustration.

Don't worry I have not forgotten that I have kids, but it hard to remember that I do have a blog. I think that the fact that the game will only run well on the new computer will be a saving grace. I will be forced to share now and then.

Speedy

We got the computer case yesterday and my husband assembled the whole thing in a few hours. I was surprised at how quickly it went together. He just has to download a few updates and we will have a speedy new computer to blog from.

Yipee!

Today did not start out well. The kids thought it would be fun to wake us up at 5 in the morning. My husband shooed them back into their rooms, but I am pretty sure that no more sleeping was done. I was mean and made them stay contained until 7:30 which is their normal waking time.

The day did get better when my husband unexpectedly got some time off work. We went out to lunch to celebrate his promotion which was made official today. When we got back we found a large package on our doorstep. Evan thought that it had cars in it, he seems to expect cars in every package that we get. What it contained was this:



This is our new computer, neat huh? My husband being the super cool computer guy that he is will be building out new computer himself. We are going to get a much nicer and faster computer than we could hav afforded to buy premade. I can't wait to see what it can do.

Sigh

Well the first cold of the cold and flu season is upon us. My husband seems to be hit the hardest with it but no one has escaped entirely. Evan is especially sensitive to snot dripping down the back of his throat and ended up throwing up this afternoon. My morning sickness (that is really evening sickness for me) is getting better, but the smell was almost more than I could handle and it was all I could do to keep it together. Luckily I only had to deal with Evan and his gross clothing. The bulk of it was on the couch which my husband cleaned up. I am really hoping that this kind of thing does not happen when I am home alone, it might end up being more than my poor stomach can handle.

Awww!

I hope that everyone had a safe and fun Halloween. They boys had a blast and the night was positively balmy. I was walking around the neighborhood in a short sleeved shirt and did not feel the least bit chilly.

We did three streets in our neighborhood which took two hours thanks to short little legs. At one house we got there just as the kids and mom were getting back from their trick or treating. Evan saw them going into the house and thought that from then on that he could go into the different houses too.

The boys got a lot of extra candy due to the cuteness factor of little kids. There were not a lot of kids that went around our neighborhood so we have a ton of candy left over thanks to me over buying. Anyone want some Smarties? I will mail them to you!

The boys all decked out in their finery. See those pumpkins down there? They were a nightmare to carve. The warty ones were so tough that we had to get out my husband's power drill to carve them. We are so not getting those kinds of pumpkins again.

Evan and Harry trying to put on their own costumes. They were very eager to get out and get some candy.


Here are the boys at the ward Trunk Or Treat that we attended Wednesday. Evan was ready to go home once we hit all the cars and was miffed when I told him we had to stay until every one had a chance to get some candy.

Neuro

Evan had his first visit with a Neurologist in years. His primary car doctor wanted one so I went along with it even though I did not really thing that it would be helpful.

The doctor made us wait a long time but he did spend a lot of time with us when it was our turn. In the end he did not really have anything to add that I was not already aware of. He was a lot more realistic about Evan's long term prognosis than the Neurologist was that initially saw Evan after the stroke. The first neurologist said that with in a year all signs of stroke would be gone. The new one was clear that there would be likely some effect for the rest of his life. We have to watch out for learning issues which is something that is pretty common for any kid that has gone through as much as Evan has. There is a mild vision deficit on his left side so when he goes to school he should sit in the center of the class room or to the right of the teacher so that he does not loose interest in what is going on because he is not seeing everything that is going on. Sometimes kids with left hemiparesis have troubles with interpersonal relationships but Evan seems to be very adept at flirting his way into getting what he wants, so I am not too worried about that.

I think the best part was that the neurologist did not really see a reason to keep following up with Evan unless something new popped up. There is not much that he could really do since Evan has been neurotically stable for some time now. That is one less specialist on our rather long list.

As far as doctor's appointments for me go, I have officially come down with a bad case of pregnancy brain. My sister is in town for a visit and that threw me so off kilter that I spaced my womanly parts exam (not that I was really all that eager in the first place). I was so mad and frustrated but managed to reschedule it. I am a bit annoyed with the lack of ease in scheduling appointments with this practice. My previous OB seemed a lot more flexible in that regards.

Sunday Cuteness: Church

Today was the Primary program. For those not in the know once a year the children aged 3-11 take over the sermon portion of church and do a special program. It was always a Sunday of torture for me since generally the program runs way longer than the allotted time and the program was never all that exciting in the first place. Every child has a part even the youngest and this year was Evan's first time up there.

It was not quite the disaster that I had feared. Evan did not stay in his seat very well but he also did not make a break for it and try and leave the stage. He was heard to loudly ask when his turn would be and tried to go up a couple of time with another class. He was not the only Sunbeam goofing off though. One little girl kept standing up and waving to her mother and the others were quite restless. When it finally came time for Evan to say his line he spoke loudly (but not too loudly) but mumbled his line. He was supposed to say that one thing he was thankful for was his toys (they let the kids write the lines).

Harry was a bit bereft with out his brother. He kept wanting to stand on the pew so that he could see where Evan was sitting. He would then loudly exclaim "Dere is Eban, I see him!" I can hardly believe that next year Harry will be in Evan's spot.

All in all they made the time rather amusing and the program did not seem quite so long.

Boo At The Zoo

Our local zoo held a Halloween event today and we thought it would be fun to take the boys. They had a lot of fun and got quite a bit of candy. It was strange seeing our normally quiet zoo packed with visitors. I think that someone coughHarrycough touched my lens so the pictures are a bit smeary.

Here are the boys all gussied up standing with our beautiful and warty pumpkins.

The boys in front of the elephant exhibit. I am not sure what the elephant was doing in the background, it looks like she is making out with the rocks.

I tried to get a picture of both the boys with Darth Vader but Harry heard his creepy breathing and was having none of that. He would not even let my husband hold him even remotely close to Darth Vader. Evan was very obviously fascinated.

Evan was in heaven when he saw this display. His loves PT Cruisers and these cars were from a car club that likes to trick out their PT cruisers. There was one there that had a cat face painted on it and it meowed. There was a Hummer further down and Evan did not even look at it twice, but it was hard to pull him away from the PT Cruisers.

"Look there is a spider on this PT Cruiser."

Adding one more picture in: This one was taken by a photographer from the local newspaper. There is a whole gallery of pictures from the event. Evan was very obviously fascinated by the camera. Harry was kind of like "yeah whatever".

Why?

Why do spammers think that I need a new job? Why do they think I need male enhancement or ED drugs? Do they know something that I don't?

Pregnancy update

Today I had my first appointment at my OB's office. I saw a nurse and it was a basic risk assessment history gathering session. I did get to pee in a cup and have my blood drawn. I think the person that drew my blood hit a nerve or something because my arm is sore when I move it.

I love the massive pile of literature that you get every time you have a kid. It seriously doubled the weight of the diaper bad I was carrying. Another amusing thing is that I got my very own urine sample cup to bring with me every time I have an appointment. I am supposed to bring it with me filled, fun huh? You really learn to not be embarrassed by things when you get pregnant. Hopefully I will be able to learn to be casual about carrying around a cup with my own pee in it.

Next week I get my really fun and very personal examination with a NP who will be scrutinizing my womanly parts. Luckily my sister will be in town so I have babysitting already lined up and won't have to drop them off anywhere.

A Very Sincere Pumpkin Patch

We made our annual pumpkin patch trip today. I love going to these kinds of places with the kids because everything is so darn exciting to them. The weather has been rather wet all week so it was a rather muddy trip but we managed to make it through with out loosing any shoes. The weather started out foggy and chilly but once the sun came out it got very nice.

Checking out some carved pumpkins.

"Wook kikens!" said Harry

We were not supposed to take the wheel barrows into the patch. *blushes* We did not notice the signs about that until we were leaving. Harry had a lot of fun pushing it though.

The boys with their spoils. We actually got three pumpkins (my husband wanted one too) but the third one is too short to see.

Evan is this tall.

Harry is this tall.

What happens when you give a kid a camera

I was feeling silly this afternoon and I let Evan play a bit with my camera. Don't worry I made sure he stayed in sight and made sure that he understood to be careful with it. He took some very amusing and random pictures.

A flower pen and a jug of vinegar.

Our salt shaker and Harry's hand.

The not very clean carpet with some little toes peeking into the frame.

A close up of Harry's hand with the refrigerator in the background.

Evan's bum.

A blurry shot of some of our chairs and the dining room table.

A shot of two silly boys.

An Awesome night out

The famed (among knitters any way) author Stephanie Pearl-McPhee came to Kansas City on Monday night and I was able to go see her speak. It was a very fun evening out! I went with some gals from my knitting group, it was nice to be able to chat with them after being MIA from meetings for so long (they meet on the same night that my husband has Scouts so I get to stay home with the kiddos). My queasy body even behaved for the day and I was able to get some knitting in. It was kind of cool being at an event where knitting in pubic was accepted and encouraged.

She mentioned that she was nervous that we might see a water stain on her pants since there were so many knitting bloggers out there. For the record I really truly could not see any water on her pants at all. She did a great job with her speech and was a very amusing speaker. She is also very nice in person and was very good about making sure that everyone got some time with her while they were getting the books signed. All in all it was great to get out with out kids and get some adult conversation in.

Sunday Cuteness- Evan edition

This is Zipper butt Evan. He insists on putting on his pants backwards even though he knows how to put them on correctly.

All the cool kids wear their pants this way.

I have a new name. Evan started out by calling me mommy which recently changed to mom. He delighted in yelling "Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!" when ever he needed (or thought he needed) my help. Now I have a new name. Evan has started calling me Mom Ourlastname. It is rather amusing even though I am not sure what caused the change.

Nemesis

Being a relatively newly pregnant woman food has become my nemesis. I am lucky that I am not a puking pregnant woman but being constantly queasy also wears on you. There are times when I just want to stick my finger down my throat and get it over with already. The thing that stops me is that I know the feeling would not be any better after throwing up and I also really hate throwing up.

Eating food regularly is really great for controlling my queasy symptoms. the thing that makes this solution hard to keep up with is that I am also a busy mom. Before I know it I realize that I should have eaten something hours ago because I am feeling really yucky. At that point I have to force myself to eat something. Snacking in front of kids is problematic any way. They can hear the rustle of a food package opening from miles around and when they hear it they are suddenly starving and must have some of what you are having. A lot of times mom is the one that hardly eats any of the snack because any time I try and take a bit my kids act like I am robbing them of precious food.

Dinner and the evening are the hardest for me. My queasiness always goes up a notch or two and I have to prepare a dinner while feeling that way. A lot of times I feel so gross by the time I am done that I sneak other food while the kids are not looking and I end up having a separate dinner. The biggest tragedy of the evening being the worst for me (so much for morning sickness) is that I have not been able to do much knitting. I will pick up a project and knit a few rows only to start feeling queasy so I stop. I am trying hard to not associate knitting with the sick feeling. I learned that lesson after I was playing Bejewled online when I was pregnant with Harry. I got so sick that I ended up throwing up and now I can't even look that game with out getting queasy. I am so looking forward to the end of the queasies even if it means that I am merely transitioning to really bad heart burn.

Knocked up

This time it is for real! No April Fool's Joke.

I am feeling queasy but no puking (knock on wood). I run to the bathroom every five seconds and my girls are very tender (which when you have two boys that love to crawl on you means that you get to feel a lot of pain). I am due at the end of April, only a few weeks after my 30th birthday.

By the way I stole this picture from Karen's blog. It really captured me and I am excited that I found an excuse to use it.

Ahh that's better

This weekend is Conference weekend. Every six months we get a chance to hear from the General Authorities, The 12 Apostles and from the First Presidency. There are tons of timely messages and I always end up feeling refreshed.

One of the most exciting things about this weekend was that a temple was announced in my area. I am so excited!!! I hope that we get to stick around long enough to see it being built. I would love to take the boys to the open house and for my husband and I to attend the dedication. Some of my favorite memories from when I was a kid was watching the Portland Temple being built. One of my uncles lived only a few blocks from the building site. Even though we were not super fond of my uncle we would frequently visit him so we could take a look at how things were progressing. I was thrilled that I was just barely old enough to attend the dedication. There are many good memories and feelings that I would love to share with my kids.

Such is life

Sorry I have been so silent. Life has just been crazy of late. We still have no idea if we will be moving yet again this summer or not. We keep hearing conflicting reports on whether we will or not and of course since he has not officially been promoted just yet we are "safe" for now, but it is just a matter of time.

National politics is also frustrating me greatly. I am having a hard time making myself register to vote. I am not fond of either candidate and hate that it will probably be yet another case of the slightly lesser of two evils.

I am also frustrated over the whole credit crisis. People got greedy plain and simple and now that they are in trouble they run to the government with hands out expecting to be saved. People like me who are careful with their money and don't get into excessive debt are the ones that will end up paying for everyone's excess.

My final blah moment for the morning is that my mom left yesterday. Poor Harry did not realize that she was gone until we got back home from the air port. I guess he was too into the Cars movie he was watching in the car to notice that she was gone. He was quite upset when he saw that she was not getting out of the car too. We all miss grandma!

We have two winners!

Random.org spit out numbers 15 and 1 who are Chelle and Midlife Midwife. Congratulations to my winners!!! Email me with your addresses (and in the case of the non knitting Midlife Midwife ideas of what you would like me to knit).

Mixed feelings

Evan has his therapy evaluation today. There was some residual crankiness from the day before but he managed a pretty good showing. One of the questions was if he choked on his food and I answered no unless he crammed his mouth full. During a break between the PT and the doctor that will be coordinating his care coming in to talk to us I gave the boys some peanut butter sandwiches that I had packed ahead. The second that the doctor came in Harry started gagging and choking on his last bite of sandwich. Just as I get Harry all fixed up Evan goes and does it too! You would have thought that he would have learned from the example of his brother, but no he did not.

We have prescriptions for therapy which we can fill here in town (thank goodness) but the doctor also wanted to put him in a hand splint and a DAFO. The hand splint was something that Evan's previous PT had talked about trying, but of course the move made us put it off. I was expecting it. The DAFO was another matter entirely, I am not really sure how I feel about it. I am trying to keep an open mind about it and see if it helps him with his walking any. He does tend to foot drag when he gets tired or is not paying attention to how he is walking. The doctor also mentioned Botox as a possible eventual treatment but I am very reluctant to have long needle jabbed into Evan for sometimes questionable and always temporary results.

It seems that more and more people are being added to Evan's list of people that he has to see. We started out with his primary care doctor who added the cardiologist, neurologist and the rehab doctor. The cardiologist added the electro physiologist to keep track of Evan's pacemaker. The rehab doctor added PT, OT and the person that will make sure that his splints fit properly. That is a lot of visits to keep track of, my mind is starting to spin. I miss the simplicity of his previous specalists. I am going to see how it goes and if things look like they are improving I will play along, but if the results are not there then I am going to cut back.

Beat

Have you ever had one of those utterly exhausting days where at the end of the day you are so tired that you can barely function? Well I had one of those today.

Monday I got a call from Evan's cardiologist telling me that they went over his Holter monitor results and that his pacemaker was not pacing properly. They set up an appointment for him to go to the pacemaker doctor and have his pacemaker checked out. The kicker was that the appointment was at 8:30 and we live an hour away. To get there in time I ended up getting up at 6:15 in the morning (and of course because of all the worrying I slept badly the night before).

It was another massive marathon appointment and we did not leave the hospital until around noon. The good news is that the doctor was able to tinker with his settings and get everything working properly. I was worried that they would have to crack his chest again and replace the lead, which of course would have meant hospital time and all that fun stuff that goes with it.

The kicker is that we get to go back to the very same hospital tomorrow morning (at a more civilized time) for Evan's PT evaluation. Apparently the pacemaker could not wait one more day, although I am not really sure that it would have been wise to combine the trips since the boys were uber cranky by the end thanks to the early morning wake up. We also get to go back to the big city one more time on Thursday to pick my mom up from the airport. At least that trip will be all pleasant with no doctor stuff at all. It also brings with it the promise of free babysitting and afternoon naps. I am going to need a mental health day when the doctor stuff is over.

Magic Marker Monday

For my first Magic Marker Monday I thought I would show off some illicit wall art. Somehow Evan got a hold of a pencil and drew this fascinating and rather complex (for him) drawing. I think that maybe the amount of space he had available led him to be more creative. He needs to learn a bit about how not to get into trouble though. When he was done he came up to me and told me that he drawn on the wall. He got a stern lecture about the proper place to draw, but I can't force myself to remove his artwork from the wall. I find it charming and utterly fascinating.

What I Did On My Blogging Vacation Part 1 (With a Contest at the end)

Here is my massive report on all the knitting I did on my blogging vacation. The first day I almost managed to finish two projects (one of which I can't show you) but I was held back from that feat because of the bind off. The second project was a hat and scarf combined and it took fooorrrreeever to bind off. I am pretty pleased at how it turned out though since I did a lot of tweaking to the pattern.

With out further ado the much altered Toasty Topper.

"Don't hate be because I am beautiful!"

When the pattern stated that "one size will fit an infant, toddler or small child." I believed them. What I failed to take into account was that the children of two parents with large heads will have large heads themselves (Harry is in the 90th percentile for head circumference). The hat when knit as written with the exact same yarn that was used by the pattern (which I oddly enough had picked out to use for a hat for Harry before I even found this pattern) was much too small for my large noggined progeny.

I altered the pattern by using only one strand of yarn, used smaller needles (for a tighter fabric as this will go under hoods), did more crown increases, bound off an entirely different number of stitches and added a ton more for the scarf part of the hat. I think I bound off too many stitches since you can see Evan's ears peeking out. I may knit an extension on to that part of the hat so that the ears get better coverage. Over all I am pretty pleased with the hat when I take into account that it was only loosely based on a pattern and mostly it came from my large brain (a big head means a bigger brain.. right?)

That bottom stripe was supposed to look less subtle. I tried to do a slip stitch rib, but it did not stand out as much as I would have liked.

Evan the monkey toed little boy

Saturday I did a lot of yarn dyeing. I found a great article that had several ways to get variegated yarn when using food coloring to dye with. I am practicing my techniques for some socks that my mom wants me to knit for her. I am very happy with how my yarn turned out. I used the hot pour method and it was super easy. I ended up with a lot fewer white spots than the author of the article, I think in part because I have a wider and shallower crock pot. That let the dye to get to more of the yarn.

My first batch I used more orange Kool-aid and less yellow. The colors seem a bit more pastel than the second skein.

I could not resist knitting up a swatch just to see how the colors looked together.

I like the colors of the second skein better. They seemed to saturate better. I used more yellow and cut back on the orange. I know it is hard to tell the subtle differences from my pictures due to my sucky camera, but trust me they are there.




I had been planning on trying the cold pour method where you pour the dye directly on to the yarn, but I chickened out due to the mess factor. I will give it a try when I can be sure that my kids will not be around to "help" me. I shudder to think of what this would do to my carpets if I spilled some of the dye.

I also managed to make good starts on two different socks, one to start a pair and one to finish a pair. No pictures again because the recipients are readers of this blog.

Now it is contest time!!! If you would like to win one of these skeins of yarn just leave a comment. Stealing from the book Emma you will have to tell me three dull things or two moderately amusing things or one very amusing thing. I will pick two winners (you have a week to enter) and if you are not a knitter, I may be able to be convinced to knit it up into something simple.... if you twist my arm hard enough and don't expect it to be a rush job. Good luck!

Kid stuff

I promise pictures of my crafting soon (cross my heart hope to die). But until I get the chance to take them with good light I am going to share some of the awesomeness of my kids.

Yesterday Evan had to have some blood drawn for some routine tests (part of having a new doctor). He amazed me! He was so good and held so still for the blood draw. He did not even cry! I think Harry was more upset about it than Evan was.

Evan has not had his blood drawn for almost 2 years (I can't believe that it has been so long!) and after it was done he asked them for juice which is something that they gave to him after he got it drawn at his other hospital. I am so amazed that he remembered that detail after such a long time.

Harry is becoming more and more amusing every day. Lately he has started saying "excuse me" which sounds more like "quse me" We were grocery shopping the other day when he turned around and yelled "excuse me!" loudly at an older man that was blocking the way. I had to try hard to keep from laughing.

Another new Harry thing is him telling you to stop something. If we are in the middle of a tickle session he will randomly tell me to stop, which I will. Then he will take my hands and put them back on his stomach for more tickling. This morning he was telling the commercials that go on before Sesame Street to "stop" sadly that did not work at all.

Eye of the storm?

The Sunday before last we had an interesting Relief Society lesson about dealing with tough times. Different kinds of trials were compared to different natural disasters. Evan's birth and the discovery of his heart defect was like an earth quake, sudden and not something that you could really anticipate or prepare for. Our recent move was like a hurricane, something that you could see looming over the horizon and something that can be very life altering. Right now we are in the process of discovering if the point in time we are at right now is the end of the storm or merely the eye of the storm.

While I was on my blog break we found out that the long anticipated promotion that my husband had been working for and hoping to get before the move had gone through and before the end of the year he would be moving up in rank. The problem is that this assignment is for his current rank and there are no slots for the rank up. That means we may have to move yet again next summer. There are some options that are too complicated to explain here so there is a chance that we will be staying. The idea that we could be moving again almost makes me physically ill.

Another stressful thing that happened today was that we finally had an appointment with Evan's new cardiologist. She is nice but it was a seriously long appointment. I had not been really prepared for the length of time that we ended up spending there. We got there on time for the 10:00 appointment (which means we were 15 min early) and did not leave until 12:45. They did an echo and she decided she wanted him to have a Holter monitor on (so I get the fun of trying to keep him from pulling off his leads for 24 hours) and we have to go back and get some blood work done. Both boys were generally well behaved, but by the end we were all going nuts.

The practice seems nice enough, it is great that she had clinic so close to our house. Something that gives me pause is that they don't have anyone in the practice that does heart catheterizations. We are also being sent to another cardiologist that specializes in pacemakers. It really was nice to have the one stop shopping of Evan's previous Cardiologist. There was someone that did the cath lab and his cardiologist was able to take care of his basic pacemaker needs.

All this has drained me a bit. I will post all my exciting crafting pictures later, even though I did not get as much done as I had wanted. Most of my knitting will not be posted due to the fact that the recipiants are readers of my blog, which is a shame because that is where I made the most progress.

Crafting break

I have decided to take a week off of blogging to spend the time that I would spend on the internet making really fun crafts. Chelle got me hooked on the idea of felt food (I knew it was out there, but I never realized how easy it would be to make) and I am going to attempt my own. I also have some knitting projects that I want to finish up and I have some yarn that I want to dye, so I think I will manage to keep busy. Oh, and my husband's 30th birthday is this Saturday and I have to plan for that as well.

When I come back I am going to have some fun things to give away!

I heart garage sales

Here in Kansas garage sales are hard core. You can find plenty of them starting as early as Thursday. I haven't been to too many, I am trying to keep the amount of clutter in our house to a minimum, but I still can't resist going to Craig's List and scoping out the yard sales for the week. This week I found something that I had been wanting to get for my boys for some time now.

Yes I got my boys a play kitchen for a mere $5. I had been eyeing a really nice wooden one at Target, but they girled it up and changed the color scheme from neutral to pink. In fact most of the previously gender neutral play food there was pinked up. That makes me rather grumpy!

"Look maw I am playing in a gender neutral kitchen!"

"I love my kitchen!"

Now all I need to do I get them some fun wooden or felt play food and wee dishes. Maybe that is a job for grandparents for Christmas ... hint hint.

Awwww

Sometimes it is pretty easy to get ground under with all the thankless stuff that you have to do as a parent. Today I actually got a bit of appreciation.

I was making the kids lunch and had made them stay downstairs so that they would not harass me while I was working in the kitchen. Part way through the lunch preparation I hear Evan say "Good job making lunch Mommy" and then later he actually thanked me for making him lunch. This was repeated at dinner time.

I replied with a "You are welcome" but it also made me feel a bit bad that I had been kind of grumpy with him. He can be such a trying child at times and sometimes I would love to sell him just so I could have a few moments of peace. When he is not annoying the crap out of me, he is a very sweet and loving child. I feel so lucky to be his mom.

Woah!

I can't believe that it is already Friday! Having a three day weekend really messes with my perception of time.

Do you have anything fun planned for the weekend? We don't have much but I am excited that my husband will (fingers crossed) be installing a plant shelf in our dining room. I am tired of the kids picking the leaves off my plants (the little monkeys are getting way too tall). I have a grow light (hee hee!) that I will also be installing so that my plants will be able to have the amount of light that they need to actually thrive. I will post pictures when it is done.

I ain't lion

Harry was quite a hit with the lions at the zoo today. I really am kicking myself for not bringing my camera.

It is quite chilly today so I thought it would be fun to get out and make out weekly zoo trip. I hate going when it is super hot so I usually schedule it on a cloudy day. Today we had to wear pants and jackets!

The animals were much more active this morning. Usually they sit there listlessly ignoring the puny humans that are peering at them. The lion display has a see through fence and a path that leads to a cave where you can look at the lions through thick glass. There were some older kids running from one part of the display to another and the male lion was running along side them. He stopped and stared when he saw Harry who was wearing a red jacket.

When we went to the cave there was a female lion near the window and she got quite excited when she saw Harry. She started pawing at the window right where Harry was standing to look in. The male lion came by a bit later and started doing the same thing.

One of the moms there asked me if I was freaked out that my son seemed so attractive to the lions. I just shrugged. I would have been more worried if Harry had been upset by all the attention, but he thought it was funny that they were trying to get to him. I also felt that the zoo would not want to get sued so they would make darn sure that the animal enclosures were up to snuff.