Is my house on fire?

I left work today to go deliver some marketing things for my job.  I have been a little low on my caseload and as the weather is getting nicer (sunnier, not warmer) I wanted to get out and enjoy it a bit.  I headed out and headed East, then turned around to head West.  After a couple of miles I look up in the direction of my house and see billowing black smoke.  I start to think, "well my house isn't really that far South, but it's probably close."  I keep on driving, head to a new location then get deeply lost in Oswego.  I finally figure out where I am and find a couple more doctors.  I then turn around and realize that the fire is still going and I'm real sure now it is close to my house.  I was only a couple minutes away so I decided to drive by house.  I mean I was worried especially with the house close to us burning down almost 2 years ago.  As I get closer to the house the smoke is getting larger, and darker.  I turn down the road that runs behind my house and I realize the smoke is close but not as close as my house.  I drive by and see that the house is still standing, the wet lands in the backyard however, were very black.  CONTROL BURN!  I think next time they need to warn the neighborhood before they try to burn down our house.  I'm just saying.

Living with no lines

What is the world coming to?  I went to Walmart today and as I was trying to park realized that there are no lines to park in in the parking lot.  It was like mass chaos.  I mean cars with enough space between the two of them to fit 75% of a car and others with enough space between them for a car to open up the doors wide enough to fit an elephant inside of it.  CRAZY!

As I was walking in I started thinking, "Why is it that where ever you are the dress code for Walmart is always the same?"  You could be in Beverly hills (if they have a Walmart) and you will see people in pajama bottoms and huge hoodies.  You could be in the ghetto, and what do you know, hoodies and pajama bottoms.  Walmart is even awesome because when you go there you don't feel the need to do your hair or even put on nice shoes.  I have seen slippers in Walmart, on the feet of shoppers, not just on the shelves. 

Next time your in Walmart take a look at the dress.  It's also a good place to people watch if your cable ever goes out.

Growing up

These are the days I have been waiting for!  Elijah is fun!  Yeah sure the baby time was "fun" but now he is FUN!  I mean he will play with you for 5-10 minutes before he gets board and needs to do something new.  He is gaining more words everyday and we are able to have way more in depth conversations.  Now days they go more and more like this:


Elijah: Hi mama
Me: Hi Elijah.  How are you?
Elijah: Dood.  Whe Dada?
Me:  I don't know.  Where is Daddy?
Elijah:  Dada air are ooo?
Me: Daddy where are you?
Elijah:  I pooh (as he grabs his butt)
Me: You pooped?
Elijah: Yeah!

I mean how much better can life get.  We play, we read together, we talk about Elijah's poop.  Life is good.

Five years in the making

I can't remember if I have explained to you the reason I still don't have my wedding album.  The short story is that that some of our pictures were lost when our photographers computer crashed.  I went through a slight depression and didn't want to deal with picking out pictures.  A year to a year and a half after the wedding I was ready to start looking at pictures for our wedding, however, our photographer was no where to be found.  And boo to us, we had already paid for our album with him.  When we couldn't find him for a year we were upset again.  Finally for our 4 year anniversary (last august) BJ started talking with a photographer with our church to see if she could help us create an album.  We met with her on Monday and found out it will still cost almost $700 dollars to create it.  After a couple deep breaths we moved on.  However, we still needed to pick out pictures for our album.  We spent Friday night looking at over 1500 pictures from our wedding.  I have no clue how many we narrowed it down, but soon we need to do a second cut because I have a feeling we have a lot of the same picture in different places.  I mean really, how many kissing pictures do we need.  2 sounds good 15 a little to many.

Hopefully by our 5th anniversary we will have $700 and we can pay for our album.  ***SIGH*** Why does it always come down to money.

Who Knew?

Who knew Harry Houdini's birthday was today.  Guess Rescue did, hence her escape artistness over the past few weeks.  If I would have known, I would have saved Tuesday's post for today. 

Who knew 8 cases of water could take up so much room on my desk and be so HEAVY!

Who knew a 4 dollar lamp (bought for $60.00 at Dave and Busters by the Godparents) would be the solution to Elijah sleeping through the night.

Who knew that a pack of fruit snacks would be the solution to getting Elijah out the door in the morning with no tears.

Who knew the only way to get Rescue to eat her food would be to add about 1/4 cup of water to her bowl.

Who knew?

I've been displaced

With BJ's birthday came a personal goal for himself to workout everyday until her turns 30.  Therefore, I need to find a new place to get fat and watch TV while BJ works out.  Now I have to watch TV in bed while BJ makes my living room smell like BO.

I now present you with...Houdini Dog

I have always said I wanted to give Rescue to the traveling Gypsies, however, I never actually expected her to unhook herself and go looking for them herself. 

We recently switched Rescues outdoor lead to a new flexable one.  The new one has a much larger clip and it is a bit longer.  Now with the warmer weather Rescue wants to be outside ALL the time.  So we let her.  She can't reach the sidewalk and she keeps the riff raff on the other side of the street.  The problem is though that the other day BJ looked out the back door and noticed Rescue was wandering around...not attached to the lead.  Hmmm.  Tonight, Resuce had been outside for almost 20 minutes.  BJ had just gotten home and as I was finishing up dinner I had just seen Rescue at the back door.  I had asked BJ to bring Rescue in.  As he turned to realized the dog was not at the back door the doorbell rang and I thought, "did I bring her in and I just forgot about it?"  As I answered the door it was our neighbor asking if that was our dog hanging out in the front yard, not attached to anything.  Okaaaaay????  Apparently she had found our dog sitting in front of the neighbors house trying to see if their dog wanted to come out and play. 

Oh Rescue, what are we going to do with you? 

Let's all sing!

Happy Birthday to you!  Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear BJ, happy birthday to YOOOOOU!

Today was the first day of the last year of BJ's 20's.  We had a great day togeather.  He opened his gifts, we sent Elijah to daycare, we headed off to meet with our financial planner, stopped by Barnes and Nobels, met with a photographer to plan our wedding album, drooled on a Cobra Mustang, went out to lunch at the Tilted Kilt, got some cleaning done and went out to dinner with the neighbors at Portillos. 

The only down fall to the day, we found out we need to be saving a rediculus amount of money over the next 3 years.  Boo to that but wahoo life goals. 

Happy birthday dear.  I love you!  Good luck to your year of fitness, who knows in the next 3 months I too might catch the fever to get in shape before I turn 30!

Learning

I went to a wonderful feeding course yesterday and today and learned a ton!  However, all the wonderfulness came with having to give up my Saturday.  As I rolled out of bed at 5:00 am I was very bitter towards this class.  At 6:15 am I was cursing the fact that the rest of my family was sound asleep in bed and I was not.  At 6:30 I was pulling out of the garage and driving toward the beautiful full moon as it was setting.  It had turned a lovely shade of Orange.  As I drove a little further I began noticing all the things that are wonderful about 6:30 am.  So to keep me in a good mood I started making a mental list of all the wonderful things. 

• Fog over an open field at dawn but before the sun is up
• The moon as it sets
• The lightly frosted/dew covered grass.
• Green lights
• No traffic
• Watching the sun rise over the city.
• No traffic
• Quiet in the world
• A hot tea.
• No traffic

Happy St. Patricks Day

Kelly and I are really not to keen on Corned Beef and Cabbage so we always struggle to find something Irish to eat on this holiday.  Tonight we decided that instead of eating Irish food, we would eat "Irish food".  The pictures below show how we decided to dine tonight.

Peas, Cottage Cheese and Macaroni and Cheese!!!

HAPPY ST. PATTIES DAY!!!

Rule of 3

Have you ever heard of the rule of 3.  Well maybe it's not 3, maybe it's just a general principle.  I think I first heard of this when I was watching American Pie (I know great movie).  For those of you that haven't seen it or don't know what I am talking about, here is the general principal.  Generally when you ask a man how many "partners" he has had, he typically multiplies the real number by 3 to give you the final answer.  When you ask a woman the same question she typically divides her real number by 3 to give you her final answer.  The reason I started to think about this is because I also think it pertains to some children's parents when asked about carry-over and homework.  However, it doesn't go male/female, instead it kind of goes spoiled children, not spoiled children. 

For example, you have Susie Q. who was referred by their doctor to get therapy, however, parents are not really sure they "agree" with the need.  They won't do their homework, but heaven forbid they actually tell that to the therapist.  Instead, every week when you ask how they did with therapy the take the # of times they really did their homework and multiply it by 3 maybe 4.  These parents put on a really GREAT show initially.  They say they are on board but after 6 months you are not seeing any progress.  However, you also get the parents that are truly on board and when you ask them how they are doing with their homework at home, and they always down play it.   (Typically they divide by 3.)  However, these are the kids that after 3 months they are ready for discharge and you can't really figure out why.  Then it dawns on you.  The parents that say, well we are not getting as much practice in as we should, are still doing more than double the practice the ones that say they are but really are not. 

Just goes to show you practice makes perfect.  It also gets you out of therapy quickly as well.

Storage wars

If I had a different kind of free time, I wouldn't mind buying storage units.  I would also want money to spend on the units.  It's a huge gamble, you could pay $300 and end up with an empty box.  But on the other hand you could pay $50 and end up with thousand, and thousands of dollars of collectible items.  I would also need a larger basement so I could sort, organize, photograph, sell and store items that came out of large units. 

I think it would be fun, dirty, but fun.  Who knows maybe some of my dirt issues would be resolved if I constantly was up in my elbows to it. 

I can't sleep

The new bedroom plan is really throwing me off.  I can't sleep.  I don't know if it is because I now look directly into our crazy blah closets.  I started planning out the new closet system and I am now crazy about it.  Every hour that I don't have something to do, I am thinking about the way I want my closets to look.  So now I'm obsessing over it to the quarter of an inch. 

The other problem I seem to be having, after 2-3 days of organizing and reorganizing the stuff in drawers and in closets, I now cannot find any of my clothing.  GRRR.  It takes me a bit longer to get dressed now. 

Under Constructuion

Our bedroom that is.  Since December BJ has been traveling to IKEA 2-3 times a week looking in the as is department (aka clearance/40% off) looking for our preferred bedroom set. At Christmas we got our two night stands, then several weeks ago we got our first large piece.  It was a tall dresser.  We then decided that we would need our bed next due to the space and set up that we had.  Well on Thursday our long dresser was available and we snatched it up, however, we desperately needed our bed to make our room fit.  So Friday BJ bought our bed and we borrowed his bosses trailer to move our old bedroom set to my father's.  Friday night BJ and Brian started putting together our bed.  I would have helped but I was stuffy and didn't feel well, as well as BJ and I figured out back in the day there are just things we don't do together.  Building large pieces of furniture is one of those things so I just sat back and watched the process.  It was going along great until BJ figured out he forgot one of the pieces that were important to finish the job.  It was the center support brace.  Ooops!  Therefore, this is how we slept Friday night. 

I lost my pillow to the excess of Rescue that was hiding behind our bed once or twice, and when Elijah woke up at 5:00 am fell into the closet. 

Saturday we got the rest of our bed, however, I fell asleep once we got home and BJ couldn't do the bed.  By 5 we had the bed done but we had to make it and get the rest of the room back together.  It's taken a while, however, this is now what our bedroom looks like.  We are still in need of a mirror over our dresser and a wall mount for our T.V. so it is across from our bed and we need two more curtains for our small windows.  But doesn't it look great. (Can you find the dog?  There is a reason we have a black comforter.  Rescue is that reason.)

411: How to Adjust Quickly to Daylight Savings

I dread this time of year.  Both going forward and going back.  It takes my body 2 or 3 days but all the children take 1-2 weeks to get in a new sleep system.  Now that I have my own child I dread this time even more because I am the one trying to get the child to sleep when it is 6:30 to them instead of the 7:30, which the clock says.  Then again wake them up when they are soooo not ready, eat when they are not hungry, and so on and so forth. 

This year, however, I seem to have found a solution to my problem.  Get sick.  A cold, the flu something that you feel the need to sleep 10-12 additional hours during the day.  That way your sleep cycle is already thrown off and in a day or two when you are ready to sleep, eat and do all  your other daily things you can jump right into it.  I slept an additional 2 hours yesterday from 3-4:30 and today Elijah took a 3 hour nap from 2-5 then went to bed at 8 which is typical for him during the week.  Go me.  My child is adjusted, now I have 20 other children this week that I have to deal with that are not.  However, it's only 45 minutes each and for the most part they don't mind coming in early so much as the waking up early or in the fall coming in when it is past their bedtime. 

Sick Elijah?

Over the last week and a half poor little Elijah has been under some major stress.  I don't know why but he hasn't been sleeping through the night, hasn't been separating nicely from anyone, and he has been feistier than ever.  We have had more tantrums, no's and down right opposite actions from our requests these past few days it was driving me up the wall.  The last time he was like this he had an ear infection.  I waited 2 days to see if things got better from when they hit there worst before I finally broke down and took him to the doctor on Friday.  We looked in he ears, listened to his lungs, checked his throat; nothing was wrong.  He was healthy as an ox. 

The doctor said he could be having nightmares or night terrors and that could be the issue that we have been having during the nights.  I am thinking what in the world does a 20 month old child have nightmares about?  He is just starting to gain imagination skills so monsters and scary animals are still minimal to him.  Apparently toddlers have nightmares about losing their parents.  This makes sense seeing as he has been extra clingy at daycare and when we get home.  He gives the worlds best hugs but never wants to let go.  But it is so hard to know if this is Elijah's real deal or if it is something else.  He just doesn't have the language to let me know yet. 

With all this new information in mind we approached bedtime differently tonight.  We talked about how just because we can't see each other doesn't mean I'm not here.  We also discussed that I wouldn't leave him in the house by himself and I would always leave him with someone to protect him.  The hard part will be discussing this at 2, 3, or 4 AM when we wake up screaming.  **Sigh** the life of a Mommy and Daddy. 

As one of my client's parents once told me, "always remember that everything is short lived."  At first I thought he was another person telling to to enjoy every moment because they grow up fast but what he really met was the sleepless nights, midnight feedings, terrible two's (and three's) will go by quickly and eventually you will be able to sleep, and go back to a "normal" life.  Although normal now is no where near the normal we had 30+ months ago. 

That feels weird

I graduated from Grad school in May of 2006.  I created my resume and got a job.  I worked there for 4 years, then switched jobs without doing much of an interview or handing in a new resume or doing much else.  Now 6 months into my job I am going to do a course review for a feeding course and need to give them my resume so I officially review the course.  But let me tell you, it is difficult to update your resume when you are not wanting a new job.  Interesting. 

On a side note.  Little man is sick with something and I pray that we can make it through the night and I can get him into the doctor tomorrow.  If we are up again at 1:00 am like we were last night, we might be visiting the ER. 

Brain fart= Word vomit

Do you ever have those moments in your life where you wish you could erase but you can't so your only choice is to move forward and try to make a smooth recovery.  Had that moment today.  Now every time it pops in my head I start laughing so hard I start crying.  Already writing this far I have started laughing 3 times.  It's a good one today.  Let me set the scene for you. 

I just finished 3 back to back kid therapy sessions and kid number 4 was waiting in the waiting room.  I poked my head around the corner and in my nice kid voice said, "Johnny, I'll be right back."  I then proceeded to walk into the office to file a chart and my note.  In the office was our office manager, my boss and my bosses boss.  They were all talking and I didn't want to interrupt to say hi to my bosses boss.  Then out of the blue my bosses boss says, "Hello Kelly."  My response, get ready for it, in my best nice kid voice responded, "Hello Mister, Mister Rick."  At that moment I wanted to grab all my words, shove them back in my mouth and start over.  I knew I was in trouble as soon as Mister left my lips.  Mister really?  Really?  Then to add the kid voice on top of that?  What the heck!  Who does that.  Who talks to their boss in a kid voice and calls him Mister.  WHO DOES THAT?  Oh right me.

The rest of the day any time I saw the office manager she would say, "Hello Mister."  Yeah it is going to be a while before I live that one down.  At least we all get a great laugh at it.  Laughing raises your spirits.  HAHA 

A night at the Oscars

(Sorry this was supposed to be posted yesterday, however, there was a baby screaming for almost 2 hours for no reason so this didn't get done.)

First we needed to walk the red carpet.  Wave to your fans!!

Yeah, I know what you are thinking. 1. How did that kid get so cute!  He must have the the most beautiful parents in the whole wide world.  Well that you are right about.  2.  That is the most beautiful dress in the whole wide world.  Yeah I know, that's thanks to my wonderful sister.

They even served us diner.  As Katie pointed out this was much more like the Golden Globes.  Oh, we can't forget how awesome the Gregersen's look.  I mean DAMN  look at them they clean up NICELY!

Don't forget our beautiful family. 

I know right?  Those really are the most awesome shoes.  (Sara your wedding is going to rock)

We really tried to make Elijah a star.

We needed a couple of movement and play breaks.  But That is easy to find when you are surrounded by loved ones and toys.

We had a great night and surprisingly we didn't buy that much.  BJ and Jon's boxes went for almost $180 which is great.  And the youth did an awesome job. 

Good Friends, Good Neighbors

BJ and I are very opposite in our lives. He is an extrovert and I am a very big introvert. Over the last several years BJ has helped me come out of my shell and I have helped him be better at being okay with being by himself. When we moved into our home I would have been perfectly happy staying in my home and quietly entertaining myself. However, BJ had different plans and met ALL of the neighbors. Over the past 4 years the acquaintances that we had made initially have become really great friends. When I was in high school my great friends were my team mates. In College it was my roommates and my classmates, more or less the people who I was around ALL the time. After my first year of marriage the only people I was really close with were my coworkers and my hubby, however, I was also minimally depressed because I didn't have the connection with girls as I did in high school or college. Now I have my driveway crew. Girls I can wave to, say hey to, hang with for hours drinking wine or sit in our garage and drink wine. I love my neighbors. Thanks guys for being awesome.

Sisters

For the past 23 years I have had a sibling.  For the last 21 years I have had a sister.  It wasn't until about 3 or 4 years ago that my sister was old enough to actually have a conversation with that didn't feeling like I was talking to a kid.  Then on Friday I finally had the sister sibling experience that I feel everyone else in the world has growing up.  **Side note** In the past 23 years I have had siblings but they have never been full siblings, always half.  For me I have viewed them as my whole siblings but not one of my siblings in the past 23 years has had the same experiences as I have had.  And two of my siblings never, really knew my other brother and vise verse.  So it's just been me living two parallel lives in two separate families that sometimes crossed paths in the best possible way.

So on Friday my sister came over and brought with her all of her dresses from her High School days for me to try on.  On Sunday I needed a fancy dress to go to an Oscar party (I know a weekend late but you will see later).  The only problem was that since I have been in high school 10 years have passed and I have had a child so none of my dresses had fit me hence why I brought in my sister.  So in comes my sister with 8-9 dresses.  I definitely fit into them waist wise, height wise was a different story.  She had a couple of short ones but the thought of my legs being shown off to the whole world was a bit scary.  Therefore we picked a long dress, however, Megan is about 6 inches taller than me and most likely wore heals with her dresses.  Thank goodness Sara had picked out some fantastic pink heels that matched one of the dresses. 

Thanks to two very important people in my life I looked like a million bucks tonight.  Look for pictures to come.  And I look forward to having more fantastic moments with my sister.  After all she is the only sibling that I have left close by and neither of them look to be moving home anytime soon.

Leg vs. Leg vs. Leg

Who made the English Language so difficult?  Especially when the children have so many other difficulties.  The other day I was trying to teach a child about parts of an object, specifically a chair and a table.  We got stuck when we hit the legs.  Poor kid, I kept trying to tell him the table has legs, he would then touch his legs.  I would tell him, no look table legs and touch the table leg.  He would then touch the leg of the table with his leg.  We then moved to the chair and touch the chair legs, then we drew pictures of animals and counted there legs.  (We were very limited to a bird and one animal with four legs, all my dogs, cows, horses and other animals look the same.)  We then talked about if trees have legs, or water or fish.  Then we walked the clinic looking for legs.  People legs, dino legs, stuffed puppy legs, table legs, chair legs.  By the end of the session anytime I said something, the child would respond by saying "legs."  I think I broke him.  Just wait until next week when we discuss chair arms, and backs.  Oh help us all.

White Collar

Have I every told you how much I enjoy USA's show line up?  I have to say White Collar is one of my favorite shows, as well as Royal Pains.  I used to love Monk before it ended.  I think the shows are cute, not to intense, not to hard to follow, and they have good looking characters. 

Short post tonight, sorry.  Brain isn't being creative today.

Resolution update.

New Years Resolution update!!  Let's see how I am doing so far.  I know there is still many area's that need improvement and I'm not giving up on them until at least June. 

Blog more (than 2010): So far so good.  I have more blog post in both January and February of 2011 than I did in 2010 for each of the months.  Starting out strong!!!
Eat less (sugar): Yeah, about this...How about we just move on to the next one.
Clean more (during the week): Um... keep moving.
Watch TV less (decrease # of shows I follow): This one I think will start more once the summer comes and the weekly shows we watch go away.  BJ and I are also looking to change our cable provider to save us over $50 a month on our phone, Internet, and TV and we would get a DVR.  In my head I would then watch less TV because I would record the shows that I would really want to see and instead of starting a new show when nothing else was on I would watch one that was recorded at a time that I could not sit down and watch it.
Save more ($$): Yeah, Nope.  BUUUUUUT we recently just bought some new furniture for practically free.  I have recently decided that all our credit card points are going toward things that I want to save.  Therefore, once our bedroom set is complete I will put the money in saving for a vacation or our next house or who knows. 
Weigh less (than ???): Alright who's idea was this, I guess I'm not doing as well as I had thought towards my resolutions.
Work hard (at work): Doing great.  I love my job, I love making a difference in the kids lives but also helping the company grow.
Play harder (at home and on the weekend): Doing well with this too.  Just hang out with my son, he will show you how we play for a while he will show you what he has learned.  BJ and I have also been out and about around town doing fun things with family and friends as well. 
Read more (books): It is starting to  ramp back up.  I am making more time to reading and getting in to a book now and I think I will re-read the Harry Potter books next, before July when the movie is finally out.
Clean car (inside and out): Yeah no.

In summary:  I have made progress toward the goals that I have made for 2011, such as reading, working, playing, and blogging.  There continues to be areas in my life that I continue to need to place focus on for the next 10 months such as eating less, weighing less, cleaning more, and watching less TV.  If in about 2 months time we check in again this will keep me in check and hopefully have met most of my goals by 2012.