Taking the Scenic Route

Fixing the Car, again.

Yesterday we noticed a serious amount of black smoke rolling out of our car and, of course, called my Dad.  He came up today to look at the car.  Zane got so excited when he sees Grandpa out there fixing the car.  He quickly went over to help.  You can see little grease smudges all over him..lol. 

After Dad fixed the car, we went to Fazolis (fast food Italian) and Zane carefully ate his entire kid’s serving of Fettuccini Alfredo with his fork.  It was so sweet to see him concentrating so hard trying to get the noodles to stay on the fork.  We normally just order a Papa Murphy’s pizza (take and bake yourself) because it is really cheap, but Dad thought it would be a good idea to give him another opportunity to behave well and see that if he behaves appropriatly, he gets to stay and join the fun.  It seemed to work…at least he behaved.  Thank goodness all went well.

We gave mom one Italian charm we finished for the shop, and she gave us 3 more to do, and there are two more on their way in the mail.  WooHoo!  Business is picking up for us.

That’s Grandpa out there!

Let’s check this out

Grandpa’s helper

Fixing the tire (check out the little grease smudges. hee hee)

He brought the rachet wrench to Grandma, had her hold it, and used his screwdrivers like drumsticks on the wrench. 

Yesterday we had a ball making paper hats.  I saw him trying to fold paper up and jumped on the opportunity to show him how to make a hat.  Except for the part where you turn over the hat to fold the last rim up, he pretty much had the process down after a pretty short period of time.  He had fun putting hats on me and himself for a while.  I then pulled out the markers and he had fun decorating the hats too. 

My apologies to anybody that has instant update to my site the last day or so.  I finally have access to all my photos and have been adding them back in on some previous dates.  (Sort of like George Lucas and the Star Wars movies.  – sorry, lame attempt at humor) Until now, I just posted without being able to add the photos I wanted, but we have stuff hooked up different now.  I didn’t even think about the fact that every time I did that people might get an update until some comments on my most recent posts and I feel like an idiot.  Sorry!

Also, I changed a bunch of political posts to protected and added all of my subscribers to my protected list.   If you would rather not see political posts, just ask me to remove you.  So, if you can see this, you are on the list. 

I add the photos because I blog in place of scrapbooking,  If you like seeing photos, there are new ones from my first week of blogging on.  Other than photos, there is only a little new material and would probably bore the living daylights out of people. 

Again, sorry if I annoyed anybody.

My “little” brother’s birthday celebration

Steve and Joy

The oh-so-embarrasing birthday song

We went to Carrabbas for Steve’s birthday celebration.  It was not one of Zane’s better moments.  He was a few steps beyond wiggly and was actively fighting sitting, even in Grandma’s lap, which was really unusual.  He was so out of control.  I took him out to walk around a bit and he kept doing the thing where he just drops deadweight and refuse to move, or leans his whole body weight trying to lunge out into the parking lot or just generally where ever I wasn’t wanting him to go.  He cried and whined, and I realized that he was not going to calm down.  I went inside and got Zach, who promptly took him home.  The rest of us stayed.  The food and service was great.  It was a little weird for me to eat without Zane there…I can count on one hand how often I have eaten without Zane there. …. actually, I can count on one finger.  lol.  It only happened this last spring when mom watched him and we went out for a date night for the first time since he had been born.  It was the first time I have eaten without both Zach and Zane though. 

Zach, on the other hand, got to witness a full blown dramatic tantrum.  Zane got upset upon leaving the building.  When he realized he was they were gong to the car, he lost it.  He was so very, very upset all the way home, only distracted for the short bit when Zach got a burger at Spangles.  When he got inside he trugged, screaming, into the house, making it to the hallway, where he dramatically threw himself onto the floor in an all out kicking screaming tantrum.  Zach had fun.  Natural consequences suck for the parents sometimes!

Sillyness in our house tonight

Update on Robert & Dori:

She stabilized and was moved to a regular room.  The girl’s name is Eilysh Anastasia.

Robert and Dori are now parents of 3 children.  Their last child, a daughter, was born this morning via planned c-section.  She has an enormous blood-filled fibroid that blocked a vaginal birth.  This evening, about 10 hours after delivery, she is starting to stabilize a bit, but is not yet out of the woods because she has been continuing to bleed.  If her 9pm check shows continued blood loss, she will be back in surgery tonight for a hysterectomy.  She has not yet been moved out of the surgical recovery area from her 7am surgery.  She had her tubes tied after delivery, so is not dealing with the unexpected loss of fertility, but she would be facing several more hours of surgery.  Breastfeeding hasn’t been going all the well either, but she is a big breastfeeding advocate and breast fed both of her boys, so I know she will do whatever it takes to get Mama’s milk into her babe.

Robert is understandably beside himself with worry.  He has problems with panic attacks and anxiety anyway, so this is a really long terrible day for him.  Their marriage has been pretty rocky the last few years which is really compounding the emotional load.  He doesn’t even sound like himself on the phone.

Prayers for the family would be welcome.

eta:  The daughter has an unusual name, but I am not sure how to spell it, so I hesitate to write it.   It sounds like Eye-lish, middle name is  Anastasia, but I know the first name is not spelled like that.  I think it is a Celtic name.

I think Zane might have a bit of hayfever.  I noticed last fall that he seemed to be just a little congested all fall and kept thinking that he was on the verge of being sick, but didn’t get sick.  I gave him a little Benadryl and will see how that works.  Right now he is napping (when he is supposed to nap, probably not a result of Benadryl), but I am going to watch and see if it helps.  If it doesn’t, then maybe all three of us are on the verge of some cold, but Zach and I both feel like our symptoms are just hayfever.  (now, if we would suck it up and take some meds, maybe we would feel better too…lol.)

You know what ticks me off though?  The practice of not putting dosages on kid’s medicine packaging for kids under 6.  The medicine is meant for kids over 1, but they don’t put dosages for any age or weight from 1 to 6.  grrrr.  They just put “consult a physician” on the package and, inevitably, the drs office is closed when you want to give them medicine.  To make it worse, when you go on the internet to various Children’s Hospital sites who have dosage information, the dosage recommendations vary so you still have to make an educated guess at what the correct dosage is.

If anybody out there knows of a natural remedy for hayfever that works, let me know.  I am not real thrilled with giving him any medicine, but he is obviously not feeling well because he has become whiny, clingy, and wants to nurse like a newborn.  We are also having a huge spike in behavioral problems and I think it is simply because he doesn’t feel well.  I don’t mind short bursts of him being like that, it is to be expected, but I remember last fall it never went away until early winter….a pretty good indication that it is hayfever.

Tonights chalk drawings by Zane

Zach drew the circle and ears in an attempt to get Zane interested in drawing instead of dancing on a chair.  So, the head shape isn’t his, but what I thought was pretty cool is the nose.  Instead of drawing a circle, he is starting to attempt a more realistic nose, drawing the sides of the nose.  He also has started to draw mouths instead of just a line sometimes.  He still does just a line, as you will see in one of the below pictures, but he is starting to move toward a more representational mouth.

Tonights mystery drawing.  We aren’t even sure what the orientation is on this (which way is up).  Hairdryer?  Airplane?

eta:  For those who don’t read comments, my Mom said it looks like the planter/bench area he was playing on today when she was watching him, so mystery solved!

And, finally, the one that made me grab the camera in the first place.  A person with a body and legs.  Yeah, you have to use your imagination a little bit, and he is sort of a cone head, but I thought it was pretty cool. 

Today didn’t turn out quite like we planned it, but it was still very good.  Mom met us at the Old Navy Outlet to help watch Zane while we debated over his winter wardrobe.  I gotta tell you, that is such a blessing because it gives us time to make good decisions instead of just throwing things into a cart, which we really can’t afford to do.  She also surprised us by pitching in a significant portion of the money for our purchases.  We did find fleece pants…thank goodness.  I was dreading having to sew part of his wardrobe and now I don’t have that stress on me.  (I have never been great at sewing and it is almost painful for me)  So, he now has a pair of overalls, a pair of jeans, a pair of courdorys for church, 1 sweater for church, and a few thermal and normal long sleve t-shirts.  yeah!  I did actually purchase one shirt with a pattern…a colorful striped shirt.  I love Old Navy…you can get decent stuff with no logos and no screen prints or anything…yeah!  I really dislike “stuff” on shirts.  We also got a halloween costume on sale.  I wasn’t planning on doing that, but when I saw that part of the costume was basically a blanket sleeper in a big enough size, in fleece, I was all for getting the costume.  lol.  Carters doesn’t make big enough blanket sleepers and that costume was cheaper than the few blanket sleepers I have seen in his size….I sort of doubt that most people pick costumes for that reason though.  hee hee.

As we left the mall we debated whether or not it was worth going to the fair.  We decided it would probably be very frustrating and Zane would “get it” a lot better next year.  It seemed like an expensive way to spend an evening frustrated, so we opted for a dinner out instead.  It was a good decision.  We had a lot of fun.  Zane snuggled in Grandma’s lap most of the meal, demonstrating his skills with silverware.  He also feed Grandma some of the food she gave him to eat.  lol. 

It was a good day.