
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Puppet Theatre

Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Math is bad for your health
Then I start watching ridiculous shows on TLC like "I'm pregnant and so is my daughter" and before I know it, it's 1 a.m. and I'm wide awake.
The obvious answer to that issue is to not watch TV, so over the last few weeks I've made an effort to go lay in bed at bedtime, even if I don't think I'm tired. I assumed my "insomnia" was self induced vs. real and if I just relaxed I'd go right to sleep.
I assumed wrong.
There's a LOT of noises that happen in a house at night when you are trying to sleep. Is it the cat hiding his mouse from the other cat, or a burglar coming in to kill me? Is it a kid coughing, or a kid about to barf? Did I lock the windows? Is the garage shut? I know better than to wake Jay up for most of those, so usually I just lay there and try to drown out the sounds coming from the house.
There's one issue. The sound keeping me up last week was my own heart beat, and shutting that off was kind of hard. It was SO LOUD... Like pounding out of my chest... And no matter how I rested, I couldn't get it to quiet down. Finally I sat up, grabbed the iPad, and Googled "pounding heartbeat."
It suggested I take my resting heart rate, so I did. I set the stopwatch on the iPad, located my heartbeat, and 20 seconds later did the calculations to see my heart rate was.... 130?
That seemed pretty high, considering I was laying down and not jogging in place, so I took it again. 135 this time, which I guessed was due to panic. And the panic was easy to come by, because according to Google, "A healthy adult heart beats 60 to 100 times per minute when at rest. Anything over 100 beats per minute consistently is considered as having a high heart rate (tachycardia). Tachycardia can seriously disrupt normal heart function, increase the risk of stroke, or cause sudden cardiac arrest or death."
Um... so not only was I missing the season finale of Hoarders, but I was going to die?
I tried to relax and slow my breathing, which seemed harder because my heart didn't feel that fast to begin with. Finally after debating whether I should wake Jay up to tell him I was going to die or just drive myself to the nearest fire station, I was able to fall asleep.
The next morning I woke up and was thankful to not hear my heartbeat, so I went ahead and took my resting heart rate again so I had a baseline for the call I was definitely going to have to make to my doctor later that day. And my resting heart rate after a full nights' rest was.... 115?
I decided to take it one more time before panicking Jay. I set the stop watch for 20 seconds, counted how many times my heart beat, then multiplied by 5, just like I had each time before.
Then I realized that 20 times 5 is 100, which is NOT the number of seconds in a minute. Once I multiplied 23 by THREE, I ended up with a much more reasonable, non-life-threatening number.
And this is why I don't do math for a living.

Thursday, September 4, 2014
Liar, Liar
That is how life is with Samantha and summer camp. We are needing to wash the rest of the bad attitude and sassiness right out of that girl's hair. Most of the summer things were fine, but the last few weeks we started noticing a little different stench exuding out of her.
A little more attitude
a little more back talk
a "shut up" here and a white lie there
just a little too big for her britches.
Now, do I blame daycare? Nope. They were awesome. But, she spent a lot of time with older kids (including her sister), she had basically no bedtime and we really didn't keep them on a schedule. It's just part of the glamour of being a working family - it takes a village to keep them out of prison and sometimes it's not all rainbows.
The sassiness and the attitude I could deal with (Addi has given us loads of practice there) but I did start to get a little more concerned about the lying. None of it has been over anything big, but little lies popping up here and there. She "can't remember" who filled a cup up with water and grass and left it on the table... She doesn't remember how she got sunblock all over Jay's new truck (after embellishing his old one with a rock down the side)... She apparently lost her memory as well as her mind this summer.
I am hoping we have caught this early and with some stiff punishments we can hold off on juvie for a while. But, I do think from now on when I catch her in a lie I'll sing to her this song I just made up (to the tune of "Girl on Fire" by Alicia Keyes). Not only will I have ruined her favorite song but she'll have to listen to me sing off key. KILLER.
"Pants On Fire"
She's just a girl with pants on fire
Sent to her room, lonely like a highway
She's a liar, liar pants on fire
Blaming her sister for everything, but she knows she can't get away
Ohhhh oh oh oh oh
She just slammed the door
After being sent to her room
Ohhhh oh oh oh oh
She got tears on her face
And her life's all doom and gloom
Her pants are on fire...
Her pants are on fire...
She's walking on fire...
Her pants are on fire...

Wednesday, September 3, 2014
The dogs are barking
I'm home doing what I do every other Wednesday evening - cleaning up for the cleaning lady to come tomorrow. I'm more picking up - not cleaning anything - just putting things where they belong so Mary can do her thang, and so we can actually find stuff when she leaves. She's amazing at cleaning and apparently even better at putting things away SO WELL we can't find them for weeks.
I realized I do something I GUARENTEE doesn't happen when Jay picks up. I see a row of very carefully placed toilet paper squares all around Sam's room, and instead of tossing them in the trash I evaluate the level of anger that will arise from said child when she sees I've destroyed her "very special thing."
Here are my levels:
1 - 4 level = minimal tears and quick to recover; also see "blame it on daddy".
5 - 8 = high pitch screeches that make the neighbor dogs bark and usually result in yelling, sobbing, and "you just don't understand".
9 - 10: Sonic. Boom.
I'll let you know what happens next. Fingers crossed I can blame it on the cat.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
First day
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One of the new found skills Sam has brought to first grade is
photobombing. She taught the cat to do it too, and the proof is right here |
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Per tradition, the girls had one of their grandparents here to drop them off on their first day |
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Samantha's first grade desk - she lasted less than a week before having to be moved due to too much talking |
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Ms. White, 3rd grade teacher - she currently wears the same size shoes as Addi |
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Addi's desk - she looks way too grown up here for me |
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Samantha's teacher, Sister Christiana |
New technology
She said, "The waiting is killing me! I wish she'd hit send! The anticipation is overwhelming!"
It was cute. It was fun to watch. And it made me see that when she asks me for her first phone, I am TOTALLY saying no.
