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Snicker

I'm so that mama.  You know, the over-the-top, balls-to-the-wall, she-must-have-way-too-much-time-on-her-hands kind of mama that all the other daycare mamas roll their eyes at, but secretly envy for the sheer awesomeness of dedication and creativity.

Because while I certainly don't have way too much time on my hands -- in fact, it's all I can do to get home by 6 p.m., spend an hour with the boy, get him ready for bed, do a little cleaning/laundry/chores, shower and throw something down my gullet before hitting the hay around 10 -- I do have boatloads of determination and creativity.  Which fuel excitement and pride about turning an ordinary assigment into something extraordinary.

Since the boy only goes to school Thursday and Friday, we were the last to sign up last week to bring something for today's Halloween party.  The only thing left?  Finger sandwiches. Who knew what a fierce fire finger sandwiches could light under my butt.

So, after Daddy wondered aloud about making sandwiches in the shapes of ghosts, a lightbulb went off in my head, and the planning began. 

Enter Pampered Chef cookie cutters, a combination of traditional and try-something-new ingredients and a whole lotta this-is-gonna-be-great determination.

The end result?

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A my-kids-party-food-kicks-your-kid's-party-food's-ass platter of friggin FANTASTIC finger sandwiches.  That's right, they're in the shapes of apples, maple leaves and pumpkins.  And they have cute little menu cards, and I found a perfect fall platter for a buck.

I may not have the time stay-at-home moms do, but I have imagination and resourcefullness in spades!

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Sensory Tub: FAIL

So every now and then I check in on this blog, No Time for Flash Cards, to see what kinds of creative arts and crafts I'll be able to do with Cayden when he's a little older.

And the ideas are so, so neat!  But alas, nearly every project involves glue, paint, crayons, play-doh or some other supply I'm confident Cayden would rather consume than use to express his creativity at this point.

But then I found a project the blogger swears is good for little kids, too.  One that involves basic ingredients that are either edible or too large to consume, and the entire projects can be created easily and on the cheap.  So I got excited to try our first home-made crafty kind of activity.

After all, the blogger did it two years in a row with her son -- age not identified, which turns out to be key to my misunderstanding -- so he must have been pretty little last year when she tried it for the first time, right?

Wrong.  So very, very wrong.  The Spooky Sensory Tub is not appropriate for 14.5 month old little boys.

How my husband knew that as soon as he saw my baking pan filled with black beans and orange split peas, I can't tell you, because I had every confidence this would be a productive experience for Cayden.  Yes, that darling hubby of mine washed his hands of our craft and any resulting melee as soon as he saw it.

Aw, hell, it probably was a productive experience for Cayden, as he threw beans and bats and skeletons into the air, giggling as they fell and bounced all around him.  And then when he discovered that if he violently swept his arm from one end of the pan to the other, he could bulldoze out way more beans in a few fell swoops than he could one or two handfuls at a time. 

And it was certainly a productive experience for me, as I learned that the boy is far to young to be presented with thousands of tiny little objects that make entertaining swishing and tinking noises when they crash to the floor and scatter about. 

And finally, it was a productive experience for our kitchen floor, which got a thorough sweeping and scrubbing after this.

I'm feeling quite dejected after our first homestyle craft proved such a failure. 

Seriously, how do his teachers at school get him to participate so neatly and expertly in arts and crafts, when I can't keep from eating his crayons or playing civilly with a pan of beans? 

Screw you, adorable, toddler-painted pumpkin on my front porch; arts and crafts don't count until Mama succeeds at them.

Picture Pages

Fall Family Fun: What a Great Weekend

This weekend was one of those weekends that makes me think there is a little bit of superpower dust in the hormonal and emotional changes that create and sustain a mama. Because somehow, we got to the end of Sunday afternoon and we had accomplished all the mundane gotta-get-it-done stuff we usually have to do on our two days off, plus a boatload more stuff that was just. plain. fun.

Family fun in a way we’ve never experienced before, because we’ve never had a rough-and-tumble, now-prefers-walking-to-crawling 14.5 month old before.

Saturday saw a visit to the church for the annual fall chicken barbeque and to check out the recently revamped church nursery. Which is really, really neat. Cayden loved the new-to-him toys, although he did drive Mama nuts by removing the shelf liner from every toy cubby before sitting down to play with any toys.

Then came the chicken. Mmmm, the chicken. Cayden ate more of my lunch than I did, right down to sucking the bones clean of meat. And then he got a special treat: a pumpkin, chocolate chip cookie for dessert. Although he was decidedly unhappy when lunch and dessert were over, and he threw a back-arching tantrum right in Fellowship Hall, insistent we shove more food down his gullet. But since he had eaten half a baked potato, 4 oz. of applesauce, part of a bun and an entire quarter of a chicken before his cookie, we decided to endure his tantrum and remove him from the table so as to avoid the overeating vomit we are sometimes blessed with, when too much dinner is consumed too quickly, then we’re not quite careful enough when removing the porker from the bathtub and consequently bend his legs too far at the hips and he pukes all over his bath towel.

I know, the joys of parenting a good eater.

Then Saturday afternoon saw Brian fishing and me scrapping, before we visited with Lauren and Jeff after Cayden’s bedtime to watch the Phillies.

Since the weather couldn’t be more perfect Sunday, we decided to daytrip it – to State College! Shorty’s first trip to Penn State.

First stop, Nittany Lion Shrine. For a few shots so that I have options from which to choose when Cayden is the coordinator of the class gift during his senior year at Penn State, and the Penn Stater alumni magazine features a message from him to alumni, along with a photo of him as a senior, posing with the Nittany Lion. Because there’s always a “my first photo with the Nittany Lion!” insert on those photos. Phew, now we’re prepared for that scenario.

Then we walked around downtown and on campus, doing as a family the things we never have time to do on football weekends. Checked out the Hintz Family Alumni Center, which unfortunately was closed, since there was no football game this weekend. But the brick walk and the grounds are be-you-ti-ful! Gorgeous flower gardens featuring every color of the rainbow – even in October! – and the absolute best part of our day: a water pond with super-dooper friendly ducks! OK, maybe they were just super-dooper hungry, but whatever. Those things gobbled up half of Cayden’s penguin crackers (cannibals), and gave us all a ton of laughs and squeals.

And then on to Old Main, for some leaf-playing, sidewalk-walking and stair-climbing. And then some more back arching tantrums, when I wouldn’t let Cayden re-scale all the granite steps to the front doors of Old Main, after he had done it once already. What can I say, we were late for lunch, and we were fighting a losing battle with a hungry kid.

Only wrinkle in our PSU daytrip was leaving Cayden’s lunch on the counter in the laundry room, so we had to improvise when we got to The Deli. He did great with his kids-cup of water and ribbed plastic straw, but Mama and Daddy kind of shit the bed in ordering lunch for Junior. The retards we are, we searched all over the regular menu for kids options, not finding any. So we ordered him a $6 bowl of matzo ball soup, which had far less carrots, chicken and flavor than the menu promised. Our college kid waiter must have thought we were nuts. The noodles were a hit for Shorty, but they didn’t suffice, so again he ate a good portion of my lunch, a chicken quesadilla.

Oh, and then we found the kids menu. You know, at the top of the placemat provided to Cayden along with a handful of crayons for coloring on said PLACEMAT MENU. Hello, first-time parents who don’t take their child out to restaurants for fear of public tantrums or food-throwing. What a rip, once we realized that for $4 we could have gotten Cayden a much better lunch: mini cheeseburger, mini fish-n-chips, mini soft tacos, pasta or grilled cheese, each with a side of apple slices. Oh well, live and learn.

By then it was about time for Cayden’s afternoon nap, so we returned to the car and headed home for an afternoon of more walking and exploring around the yard and newly finished deck!

And on top of all that excitement, somehow laundry and diapers and winter squash roasting and carrot steaming and floor swiffing and carpet vacuuming and baseboard dusting and lunch-making and work-week-wardrobe preparing and grocery buying were accomplished, to boot.

See, I told you it was superhero dust.

Sick still sucks

This time, for Mama.  As in sick like I haven't been sick in years.  Head throbbing, bones aching, skin chilling, tears bursting, elephant-sitting-on-my-chest and coughing-so-hard-I-pee-a-little-even-when-I-bend-over-to-avoid-it sick.

And a dumb doctor, to top it off, who didn't give me the prescription he promised, even after I went through the whole story on Cayden's amoxil rash and asked the doc to make sure what he prescribed for me would be safe for the boy, considering our morning and evening nursing sessions.  Conclusion?  My prescription should be the same drug Cayden is on, the Z-pack.  So I fill the prescription on Saturday, after the fever and seriously-I-dont-know-if-I-can-get-out-of-bed body aches set in hard-core.  And I realize the prescription is for blasted amoxicillan.  Damn. Dumb. Doctor.  So even though I took off work Friday afternoon to see the doc and get some meds, I didn't get the meds I need until this morning. 

So it was a pretty miserable long weekend, spent largely in bed, convinced my head would explode or my lungs collapse. 

But there was a bright spot.  Chicken picked out three pumpkins from the Boy Scout Troop 10 annual Apple Pumpkin Festival.  Oh, and the military truck in the parking lot was a big hit for him.

Much props to Daddy for stepping up to the plate this weekend.  The thought of lifting a 30-pound toddler made me cringe all weekend long, and I was only forced to experience the resultant  mind-blowing body aches (seriously, they made me cry) a couple of times because that man of mine took on all kinds of extra baby duty.

Seriously now, enough is enough

Sinus infection combined with ear infection.

Compounded by two molars, working their miserable ways through.

Punctuated by a fall down an entire second-floor-to-first-floor, hardwood staircase.  Yeah, that's this week's first new development.

And just for shits and giggles, this.

This pretty rash is spreading all over his body, including his face.

Doc Baker's diagnosis?  A measles-like amoxil rash, which is way, way better than measles itself. 

Speaking of which, while informational sites like Babycenter.com are great and wonderful resources at times, no good can come from things like the "Visual Guide to Rashes", which offers a picture of measles presenting EXACTLY AS ABOVE without cautioning that amoxil rash is a common and far more plausible diagnosis for a 14-month-old who has been on amoxicillin for a week.

But good old Wikipedia has a great description and series of pictures here.  Which is fantastic, since after hearing , "no, it's really unlikely to be measles and I'll give you a note saying he's fine for daycare tomorrow", this Mama resumed chasing her semi-ambulatory boy around the examination room, failing to absorb anything more than "not really an allergic reaction, more like a pre-allergic reaction ... blah blah blah medical mumbo jumbo I can't follow and didn't have a free hand to jot down blah blah blah ... don't give him any more amoxicillin and it should be gone in two weeks."

Apparently my boy isn't quite ready for the wonder-drug my brother and I THRIVED ON for so many years.  We'll avoid it for a while and maybe return to it after time, since many kids outgrow this disgustingly nasty and completely terrifying rash reaction.

So now we have a new prescription to fight the sinus and ear infections the rest of the way, a purple goose egg on the head (from the summersault down the stairs) and a lot of 'splainin to do tomorrow morning, so Miss Rose and Miss Steph will let my poor little boy into the Bears' classroom.

Really, I have a lot of positive catching up to do, including  more scrap pages and happy memory documentation.  And I'll get to it eventually, once emergency doctors appointments and last-minute unbelievably huge work projects die down.

But for tonight, seriously now, enough is enough.