Playing with perspective

[I am reposting this from my old blog. It was originally posted in May. While I retained the original posting date for most of my transferred posts, I decided to let this one be current. I really like it and wanted to share with the many new readers I have since my move. Oh, and no photoshopping was involved, other than cropping.]







What did YOU do this weekend?

What do YOU think...

of "Bone Chokers"?

Haircuts and toddler weirdness

I took Jo and Beth to get haircuts this morning. They both wanted to go shorter than what they had been wearing for the past year or so. This was a HUGE relief to me with Jo, as brushing her long curly hair was becoming increasingly irritating, what with all the screaming because of the tangles. HOWEVER, cutting curly hair is DANGEROUS, as it springs up much shorter than you would expect. So after emphasizing repeatedly that we wanted shoulder-length WHEN IT WAS DRY, I let the stylist have at it. I did talk Jo out of going back to bangs. She wanted to because Meg had gone back to bangs about a month ago and had a really cute haircut. I couldn't help but think that it would be a mistake and then we'd have to go through the HELL of growing them out again. Anyway, she ended up with a really cute haircut:



It actually doesn't look very curly in the picture; you'll just have to trust me on that.

Beth has the exact OPPOSITE of curly hair. She decided to get a little bob, but has also decided that it is TIME FOR ME TO EXPERIENCE BANG-GROWING HELL YET AGAIN, so though her hair was cut, her bangs were not, leaving her looking a bit... unfinished, but still cute:



Amy decided that she MUST WEAR SWIMMING GOGGLES today. Everywhere. So she wore them to get the other girls' haircuts, where I must've said, "Yeah, she won't take them off," a million times in response to "cute goggles" comments. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture, as she DID finally take them off when we got home, but here is a picture of what she insisted on wearing all day a couple of days ago:

Letters and numbers

We have a big bucket full of those plastic magnetic letters and numbers. There are both upper-case and lower-case letters and the numbers from zero to nine. Amy, my 20-month-old, loves to play with them. She dumps them on the floor and then picks them up one at a time and drops them back in the bucket. So, about three weeks ago, give or take a couple days, I walked into my kitchen and found her doing something that left me a little stunned. She was sitting in front of a big pile of the plastic letters and numbers, picking them up one by one, NAMING EACH ONE CORRECTLY, and dropping it into the bucket. This is the same child who didn't even speak two words as of her 18-month check-up. She talks a blue-streak now, but two months ago there was nothing. Anyway, I was stunned. I sat down on the floor with her and slowly determined that she knew ALL of the upper-case letters and some (not many) of the lower-case. She also knew ALL the numbers from one through nine (calls zero "Oh"). So I'm asking you: who says TV is bad for kids?

I tried for the last few weeks to get it on video, but whenever she sees me pull the camera out, she runs over to see the little screen, so I've been unsuccessful.

And totally apropos of nothing, here's a picture of our cat. His name is Milo.

Swamp thing invades ER

Jess posted today about her ER experience yesterday with her fiance, and asked about ours. My comment was getting way too long, so I made it a post:

I've been to the ER more times than I can count, for myself and/or my kids. The best story, I guess, was when I had to go in the middle of the night one night for chicken pox.

As a kid and teen, I was immune to chicken pox. This was chalked up to the fact that my mother had contracted chicken pox when I was 6 weeks old, and though I never broke out, they figured I had had it as well. But (and this is the reason why the vaccine now has a booster for an older child), a mild case that doesn't cause actual pox does not provide sufficient immunity to last throughout adulthood. So when my oldest got the chicken pox around age 3, so did I.

Since I was sick, Meg's dad (we were divorced) kept her. I got sicker and sicker (chicken pox is NOT something you want to have as an adult). My face looked like something out of some kind of swamp monster movie, red and puffy and oozing green pus. It was truly nasty. But what finally drove me to the ER was the fact that I could not swallow ANYTHING, not even water, without debilitating pain, and I knew I was getting severely dehydrated.

I couldn't talk, so I wrote a note to show to the guy at the ER entrance (they don't normally let you park right there; it's for drop-off only. I was going to grad school at the university affiliated with the hospital, so I was very familiar with it). When I pulled up and the guy walked over to my car window, he literally RECOILED at the sight of me. As in jumped back and obviously considered running away. When he crept back over close enough to read my note, he let me park right there and go right in.

They took me right back because I had a contagious disease, but really I think it was because they didn't want anyone in the waiting room to see me. The only room available had one of those short OB/GYN tables in it, so I crawled up on that and they gave me an IV with fluids and pain medication. The only thing I remember anyone saying is a nurse saying to the doctor, "It's too late for Zovirax, huh?" which pissed me off because I had called the doctor's office at the first sign of the bumps on my torso, told them I had chicken pox and they said I just had to ride it out. I didn't realize there was MEDICATION that would make the case MILDER. I fell asleep and spent the night on the OB/GYN table, with my feet in the stirrups. When I woke up, a nurse came in to tell me they had done a little research on me and found out that my mom worked upstairs in Cardiology, so they had called her and were sending me home with her. Yes, they called my mommy. I was 26 years old! But at this point, I was relieved to have someone else taking care of me. I went home with my mom and spent two days lying in bed and sucking on popsicles. It took much longer than that for me to decide against going to the doctor's office and demanding the rolling of heads.

Reality TV contestant

I was going to save this question for my MEGA MEGA MEGA PiF contest coming up soon, but I want to go ahead and ask. If you could be on a Reality TV show (of the competition variety), which one would it be?

I am DYING to be on The Mole. I want to be the actual mole, not just a contestant on the show. I'd be good at it. I have a trustworthy face. A lawyer once told me that I had the kind of face and personality she liked to put on the stand because people would believe whatever came out of my mouth. People just don't see me as underhanded. So I could totally do it.

Another show I'd like to try is "The Amazing Race." That just looks FUN. I'd need a partner, though. My husband couldn't handle the zip lining across the canyon of death type stuff. He's not a fan of heights and/or roller-coaster type thingies. I, on the other hand LOVE and ADORE roller-coaster type thingies. So who wants to partner up? Under our names, they could put "Blog buddies."

Move outta the way, I'm jumping too!

Okay, so everyone's twittering was confusing the hell out of me because it all seemed like one-sided conversations. Like eavesdropping on a phone call and you can only hear the person in the other room and not the person in the other location, when what you REALLY want to do is pick up the handset and listen to everything. So I PICKED UP THE FRICKIN' HANDSET PEOPLE! Shoot me now.