It's A Valid Accomplishment

I haven’t cleaned my house for days, done any Christmas decorating, exercised, or even paid attention to my family. I’ve done the least amount of cooking possible to survive. My bed is unmade and my hair is messy. But it’s all worth it, because look what I did:This is a quilt I've been working on for over three years. So you can understand why I'm so excited to share my work. The only thing dampening my excitement is the knowledge that there is still more work to be done before it's finished.

And The Worst Song in the World Is...

I was out running today and listening to the Army Man's iPod when the song "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits came on. As I listened, I thought about how much I love that song. And how much the Army Man loves that song. And how I know we must be at least kind of meant for each other by how much we both love that song. The music is just phenomenal. The song ends gloriously. There's nothing bad about the song. NOTHING.

And then I remembered a few weeks back reading a random person's blog in which she professed her extreme hatred for that wonderful song. On and on she went about how awful "Sultans of Swing" is and how there is nothing good about it. I practically tripped right there in the middle of the street, that's how distraught I was at the memory of those hateful words. But I thought, to be fair, there are a couple of songs that I can't STAND that surely some weirdo out there must love. And I'll try not to judge them too harshly if they do love one of the stupidest songs in the world.

So if you're out there, reading, and you happen to like "Bennie and The Jets" by Elton John, or "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding, that's okay. I'm happy that you like those songs. But don't ever play them within 50 feet of me. I can't be held responsible for how I may react.

And to be fair, I do like basically every other Elton John song there is. So I'm not completely oblivious to awesomeness.

Should I Even Be Surprised?

Those of you who know me won't be surprised that this eventually happened for Laura.
After another weekend full of coughing, throwing up, and waking up all night long, I took Laura off to the doctor today. The diagnosis is asthma, although not officially (yet). That diagnosis can't be given until we use the nebulizer machine for two weeks. So we were sent home with a nebulizer machine, my old standby from childhood. They are much smaller these days though. My first one was the size of a small sewing machine; Laura's is more the size of a can opener.

I feel highly negligent in not recognizing Laura's asthma, since I have suffered my entire life from it. But Laura has never wheezed, gasped for breath, or even remotely acted as though she can't breathe. All she does is cough and wake up at night, constantly. She's been like that since she was born, and I finally accepted it as my lot in life that I just wouldn't be sleeping through the night again until 2022. But apparently coughing is often the number one sign of asthma in children, and wheezing is frequently never even an issue. Who knew? I'm just glad that I got a little push in the right direction today from a good friend, and hopefully Laura's problems will soon be under control. And hopefully when she's older she won't see this blog post and know that I let her suffer for so long!

Just Another Day at the Office

One of the Army Man’s favorite parts about being in the Army is that he gets to jump out of planes. Luckily they give him a parachute, so don’t worry about that. He has been so busy in school that he hasn’t jumped for over a year, so you can understand why he was eager to do so as soon as possible. Saturday was the lucky day. Laura and I drove out to the drop zone to see him jump, something we’ve only done once before, and this time was particularly cool. The plane the soldiers were jumping out of was much smaller than normal, so the jump was handled entirely on the drop zone. The plane would land directly on the drop zone, collect a few soldiers, take off, push them out the door, land, and start over again. So we got to see the Army Man get on the plane, take off, and jump.

As usual he did a great job and even managed not to get injured or fall into a swamp like he occasionally does. Laura was terrified of the noise from the plane (see my previous post about her not liking loud noises) and ran screaming every time the plane landed. Despite dealing with that, I still managed to get a few good pictures. You’ll have to take my word for it that the Army Man is in fact in some of these pictures. My camera zoom is only so powerful.

Here I am with the Army Man before the jump. Isn't he cute?The very small plane.

Getting onto the plane. The Army Man is fifth from the left.

Falling to the ground. The Army Man is on the top right. Coming off the drop zone. And last one: handing his helmet off to Laura.

I'm Here to Pump You Up

So, today started out as a great day. I got woken up by Laura (who was in a great mood for once) and even had my hair combed in bed by my personal hairdresser. Laura and I went out to lunch, and then drove to watch the Army Man do his Army thing (more about that tomorrow). After that though, the day veered from my plans. I had a really rough day on Friday health-wise, and although I felt good this morning, I went downhill quickly in the afternoon. I hemmed and hawed about what I should do until the Army Man told me he had had enough of my whining, and basically, get thee to the Emergency Room. So off I went.

I spent four and a half hours there, but it was totally worth it. I got three breathing treatments, three steroids, and a doctor hitting on me. I left with more steroids, some other random medications, and the ability to breathe. Not too shabby. The Army Man and I even managed to squeeze in a quick date by going out to dinner after I got home. The only downside to all the medication is a very jittery feeling and the desire to go lift some weights.

The Pilgrims Are Coming to Celebrate

Well it was the Army Man to the rescue last night! My computer is fixed and now I can post a picture from Laura's Thanksgiving feast. Too bad when I promised a picture I didn't realize that all of the pictures I took turned out horribly. I guess the lighting was bad or something. But I figured I'd post the best one anyway, so you can see Laura in her feather headdress and the shirt she decorated. Each child got to choose a Native American name, and thus Laura became "Princess Flower". I thought it was pretty appropriate. Her class learned a short song which they sang for the parents. And by sang, I mean they all stood there and whispered, looking shy. I don't think Laura said a single word. Which is interesting, since her teacher told me after the feast that Laura is her most dramatic kid, and provides most of the daily classroom drama. I guess that just doesn't translate into stage ability.I got to hear the song (very loudly) all day long after we left school, so there was no question that she actually did know it. We reenacted the song this morning, which I caught a clip of. Of course, the second I turned on the camera, the singing became much quieter. Turn up your volume a tiny bit and enjoy Laura's singing!

Woe Is Me

Today I planned on treating you all to a wonderful post all about the Thanksgiving feast that I went to at Laura's preschool. Instead I am sick and dealing with a broken computer. Luckily the Army Man has a laptop, which I am secretly using right now. He's very generous to ignore me while I sneakily log on right in front of him. But I like my computer, and I miss it. I don't know how to load photos onto this one, so it would be pointless to write about the feast without including a picture.

How is it that in this day and age of computers that can practically tie your shoes for you, did I manage to buy one back in July and have to deal with it breaking already? Especially when it was gone most of October getting a new hard drive put in since that broke? And especially when it broke again about two weeks after it came home? It just doesn't seem fair. But I guess this should all make sense to me, since we are currently dealing with problems in both of our cars, a recently broken oven, a digital camera that broke (although I did drop it), and the Army Man's defective cell phone. Luckily the toaster still works.

V-22 Osprey

On our run yesterday, the Army Man and I got a real treat: we saw a V-22 Osprey flying overhead. This tilt-rotor aircraft can essentially be flown as a helicopter or airplane and is currently used by the Marines. No ideas as to why one was out our way, but it was flying pretty low and was very impressive looking. Unfortunately we didn't have our camera on the run, but I'm including a picture from the Internet for those who don't know what they look like.

Momentary Relief

Can you believe what you are seeing here? Gas for $1.88??? It is such a relief to be able to fill up my car and not pay over $50. Now keep in mind that I drive a mid-size sedan, not an SUV or anything. This entire summer it just boggled my mind that it would cost around $55 just to fill up my car! But before you get too jealous of these low prices, keep in mind that those of us here in the Southeast had to deal with a lot this summer: high prices due to Hurricane Ike, long lines at gas stations, gas shortages, and even outages. Unleaded gas abandoned us for about 5 days. Some of us even got yelled at by crazy people at the gas station. Gas was well over $4 for quite a while, going as high as $5.49 at one station (although they later received a fine for price gouging). So this momentary relief is much appreciated. Photo Credit: The Army Man (who I forced to take this picture)

The Art of Camouflage

The Army Man doesn't takes naps like a regular person. He is camouflaged while doing it. It's almost as if there is no one on the couch!

She Just Doesn't Like Loud Noises

We had a really big storm last night, complete with thunder, lightning, and torrential rain. I could tell it was a big storm because the Army Man woke up, something which usually requires me jumping up and down on him to accomplish. He went downstairs to check everything out so I figured I would go check on Laura. She was wide awake, curled up in a tiny little ball; face down on her pillow with her fingers in her ears. Poor little thing! She informed me that she just doesn’t like loud noises. Now there’s an understatement. She was so pathetic that she came to sleep in our bed for a while, something virtually unheard of in this house.

As Laura laid there in bed with us, kicking me in the back and reminding me why she never sleeps in our bed, I started thinking about her and how weird it feels to finally understand parts of her personality. Laura is very sensitive, something which took a while to figure out. I’m not talking about emotionally sensitive, although Laura definitely is, but sensitive physically. I’m sure plenty of parents deal with what we do, and I feel for them. Laura is such a sweet girl but can be very challenging in an unconventional sense. Trying to be patient as she freaks out over wearing a certain shirt because it “hurts” her is hard. Tags in clothes are an absolute disaster. Constantly searching for her three lost pairs of sunglasses because the sun is “attacking” her eyes is hard. Eating is a struggle too-lots of foods taste weird or feel funny in her mouth. Her hair is always in her eyes “bothering” her. She refuses to see movies in the theaters because it’s too loud. If anything smells remotely weird-well forget it, because that’s a disaster too and will ruin her day. If she is in trouble and told in a firm voice to go upstairs, she collapses in a sobbing heap. She always seems to get hurt and it always seems to hurt "really bad". The hardest part for me with all of this is that it is very difficult to calm her down and get her to move on when she has gotten worked up over something. Most days include several catastrophes that involve her screaming and crying and me trying to remain calm. That usually doesn't work out.

About two years ago, I read a book about challenging children because I really had no idea what was going on with Laura and why she just never seemed happy and why I was always frustrated with her. There was a section about “Highly Sensitive” children and reading it was as if someone wrote a book about just Laura. It talked about how some children (and adults) have senses that are much more heightened than a normal person and that it doesn’t help that these people are often emotionally sensitive too. I’m not going to claim that reading that book helped me figure out how to be a perfect mother to Laura. In fact, I don’t know if it helped me at all. Maybe I should go read it again. But it is such a relief to know that occasionally, when Laura says, “I just don’t like loud noises,” I can take her into my bed, snuggle her, calm her down, and feel like maybe I’m not such a bad Mommy after all.

Summertime and the Living Was Easy

Having a blog is a lot of pressure! I have already proven to myself what I knew to be true: my life is boring. I don’t really mind; I keep busy and have a lot to do, but not a lot of it merits being written about, much less posted for everyone to read. In a way having this blog is nice. I’ve tried to spice up my life a bit so I can have things to write about! But today won’t be one of those days. I’m stuck at home waiting for the oven repair man to arrive and tell me that my oven needs a new heating element since my current heating element is broken. I have a pretty good feeling the part will need to be ordered. Perhaps it will even be on back-order. Who knows? Exciting stuff, I tell you!

So I decided that such a dreary, boring day like today was a good day to find a cute picture from this summer and post it so we can all feel summery and warm, and remember the good ol’ days when my oven wasn’t broken and I could make whatever I wanted for dinner.

Look at that cute little girl! And that green, green grass. And those beautiful zinnias! I feel better already.

I Made You Say Underwear!!

Laura learned a new joke from the Army Man last night. Listening to her try to tell it is hysterical. The joke goes like this:

“Where are the presents?”
“I don’t know. Where are they?”
“Under there!”
“Under where?”
“Ha Ha, I made you say underwear!!”

Of course since Laura is 4 the underwear part is the best part and she always rushes the joke trying to get to that part. In fact, she usually just skips the middle part and jumps straight to saying “underwear!” even though she was trying to get Daddy to say it. I guess she is just too excited to let the joke play out. I tried to record her and I think she was a little self-conscious in this video, but you get the point.

My Non-Curtains

Most of you have probably already seen the pictures of my kitchen window makeover, but I figured I would share them again. Back in July I was inspired by The Nester to "mistreat" my windows. This doesn't involve abuse, or even harsh words. You can read all about it here. She has a wonderful website which is constantly trying to convince me that things don't have to be perfect to be beautiful. With that in mind, I took some beautiful Amy Butler fabric I had recently purchased and cut it, hemmed it a tiny amount, and tacked it above my kitchen window with decorative tacks. Yes, it really was that easy. I'm not going to claim that it looks professional, but it adds a nice touch to the room, and it makes me happy when I look at my window.

I'd say these don't really even qualify as curtains. But whatever they are, they are super cute. And to prove that things don't have to be perfect, you can see in this picture they aren't even straight. Although me being me, I couldn't live with that and did end up fixing them. But no matter! I happily provide these pictures as proof that anyone can do something easy and quick to pretty up their home.

Would You Like Some Cookies With That Punch?

Eavesdropping on little kids is one of the best things in the world. I love to listen to Laura talk to her dolls, or read a story, or even better, play with somebody. Last night I was listening to Laura and Daddy playing “Punch”, which is just what it sounds like-they punch each other. Laura created this game which usually starts out with Laura saying, “Hey Daddy, let’s play Punch” and then punching him without any warning. Luckily he is the Army Man and he can take it. For some reason though, he never seems to be able to punch Laura back which she just loves. Last night’s game seemed pretty tame compared to past versions and I was listening to Laura laughing and jumping until Daddy accidentally bonked Laura. She stopped him and said, “Daddy, I am supposed to punch hard and you are supposed to punch gently”. I see she has it all figured out.