Heidi Chronicles

This afternoon Grandma Judy and Grandpa Ken took us out to the lake to go for a boat ride.

I was a little concerned about Liam because he’s kind of timid when it comes to anything that he might deem scary – and he did tell me that he wanted to get out of the boat when he first got in – but once we were on our way, all three of us had a fantastic time.  And after a few times honking the horn and helping Grandpa Ken steer, L was even exited to go faster than 5 mph.

The kids ate snacks and took in the view.  It was a gorgeous day.  As you can see, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky

It reminded me of the trips that we used to make to visit my grandparents in Shell Knob, Missouri. They had a horse tank on the back porch where we swam when we weren’t in the lake, but most days we’d load up in the trailer that Gramps pulled behind his lawnmower and head down to the dock where we’d fish or mess in the water.  I’m not much of a fisher woman, but it was fun to see the fish take the bait at the end of our cane poles as they swam in the clear water.

I definitely got spoiled by Table Rock.  I am weary of the murky water most lakes have to offer; I avoid the bottom and try to keep my toes visible at all times…who knows when Nessie might bite off my foot or something.

We really enjoyed swimming off of the dock and we became quite adept at catching crawdads in their mad dash backward to get away we lifted up the rocks under which they were hiding. It was fun to watch them try to get to your fingers with their claws.  If you hold them right behind their head they can’t reach back far enough.  We caught some pretty big ones.  I remember thinking one was a lobster.  I screamed and tried to get my sister to come and see it.  I was certain it couldn’t be a crawdad.  It was blue.  Lobsters can be blue, right?

I also learned to water ski at Table Rock. Now I attribute the sickening pops in my neck to the great number of spills I took trying to jump the wake.  I did it eventually, and in a short amount of time I could even slalom from a dead start (not dropping a ski).

I know…pretty impressive, eh?  The question is, could I do it now???

Yeah, I think so…with the right equipment and a patient driver.

Is that cocky?

Perhaps a bit.

Regardless, it was great to be reminded just how much I enjoy being on a boat.  And I’m glad the kids both got to feel the wind in their hair and see a good wake.

We were busy the rest of the day as well.  The kids had play dates this morning and this afternoon with several generations of my cousins.  My mom took them to her sister’s this morning.  My Aunt Donna keeps one of her grandkids, and all six of her grandchildren live in town, so the house is prime play real estate. All of the kids had a fantastic time. But the best part is that she let me sleep until 10.45.  I felt bad that she had the kids so long, but it felt so great to wake up and not be tired.

This afternoon my youngest cousin, Breckon, came over and messed around with both kiddos.  They had a ball.  The only problem was that L didn’t take a nap, so he was throwing fits.  After struggling through dinner, he went outside to ride the tricycle and lost it completely when Breck took Elena to play on the swing.  He was riding the trike around in his usual figure eight pattern screaming at the top of his lungs, “I WANT TO SWWWIIIINGG.  I.  WAAAAANT.  TO SWWWIIING.

It was that kind of screechy voice you have after yelling too much at a football game.  He’d just had enough.

I took him upstairs at 6.15 for some quiet time, and when I went in around 6.45 he was asleep and hadn’t even touched the leap pad.  Poor, tired kid.

And, like usual, I said I was going to bed early since L will probably be ready for the day by 4, but I didn’t.  However, now E is whining around in the pack and play thinking she needs to nurse, (Oh yes, she’s still getting up in the night.) so I suppose I should call it a night.
Just one more thing.  Our furniture arrived yesterday and A has been unpacking all day today.  Yippee!

I’m ready to skip over the “getting there” and just “be there.”  Well mostly anyway.  I think the reality of being gone is starting to set in and I’ve had a few moments of panic.  (I’m back on a small dosage of Zoloft and it seemed to help today.)

But that’s for another night.  Right now I’m going to get in bed and have Happy Lake dreams and not worry about the big water crossing that we’ll be doing on Tuesday.

It’s been a long time coming, but we finally made it out to the farm.

I used to love to go out to Aunt Betty’s house when I was a kid. We always got to see one kind of baby or another…cows, ducks, puppies, turtles, frogs…you name it and she had it at one point in time.

But the horses were ALWAYS my favorite. They’re so curious…and their demeanor is really that of a big puppy. Besides, there’s nothing quite like riding a horse bareback through a field of tall prairie grass – especially when said horse decides he wants to run.

Today we were lucky and we got to see five-day old puppies and a five-month old colt – in addition to the five other dogs and, if my count is correct, five other horses.

These are a few of my faves, but he goodness is in the captions, so check out the slide show.

Scooby on his picnic table

Dog Train

Horse Tongue

Dixie and her babes

Fairy Ring (and a pretty view)

Milk crates for the dogs to ride on the tractor. (This may very well be the same tractor that Betty used when she had to come and pull Dad’s truck out of the mud at Uncle Tom’s house.)

Reluctant Four Wheelin’

Token picture of Elena

I think this is Copper.

Go HERE for the rest of the story.

*************************************************

We also had a visit from Great Grandma KT. E played peek-a-boo.

.

The kids did pretty well today. I’ve been trying to get everything lined out for my trip back to KC before we leave next Tuesday (NEXT TUESDAY!!!) and I haven’t been a stellar mom the last few days.

Oh well, I bribed L into bed with videos of oil wells. He’s particularly fond of this one and this one, in case you’re interested in what he finds fascinating these days…aside from cell phone towers.

Many of you know that I’m not a Wal-mart shopper. I avoid it if at all possible because they treat everyone they come into contact with like shit.  But when it comes down to brass tacks, if I need something and it’s the only place I can go, I suck it up and make the trip.

Such is the case where my parents live. So today we loaded everyone in the car with the stroller and headed out.

Yes, we took the stroller.  You know why?

It’s sick and wrong, but when I’m in town and we go out to the Forbidden City, I’m there for as long as the children can stand it. I can spend a good two hours just pooping around checking out all of the stuff I’m not supposed to be buying…and then I usually buy stuff.

I don’t know if it’s the act of doing something I know I shouldn’t or if it’s just because there are a few things I really like about Wally World (Yes, I know this is disgusting.), but whenever I come to stay with my parents, I go hog wild and stock up on everything that I’m “not allowed” to get when we’re in KC.  I can’t help myself…it’s justso cheap.
Anyway, today it was a couple of outfits and a pair of shoes for E, a sweater vest for L, and a sweet pair of shoes for me. I’m a complete sucker for the George line of clothing and now they have this Metro line that had me drooling over shoes.

AT WAL-MART people.  What is wrong with this picture?

Oh well…what’s done is done, right.

The funniest part of the whole trip was walking back out to the car after listening to L yell that he wanted Grammy to push him in the cart for an hour and a half and seeing that he had left the back door of the Taxi WIDE open.  Not just a crack…we’re talking open like if the car next to us had tried to leave someone would have had to close it in order not to take off their rear view mirror.

Ironically, I had made sure that I locked the car – twice – as we walked into the store upon arrival.  I just never checked to make sure that all of the doors were closed.  Fortunately the fam lives in a small town where people are nice and when a door is open in a parking lot they just ignore it.  (If it were me, I’d close it for the idiot who left it open.  But that’s just me.)

The car started and nothing was missing, so we just headed home – after I told L he could either sit in his car seat or he could get out of the car so the rest of us wearing our seat belts could go home and have lunch.

He’s starting to take his choices a little more seriously.  I whipped out a great one at nap time…either he was quiet and still while laying in bed with me or he could go downstairs in the dark bedroom with the door shut and be awake.  It didn’t take much time spent in the dark bedroom for him to determine that he’d rather sleep with me.

And I did nap today.  I needed it.  E has been up every couple of hours the last couple nights and I’ve been sleepy during the day.  I had been chalking it up to teething, but this afternoon she had a fever.

I don’t want to risk taking an ear pained child on an airplane in a week, so I’m taking her to the doctor tomorrow morning. Seriously…if she has another ear infection I’m going to disown Aaron. He’s the one who had to have tubes when he was a kid. My ear genes certainly aren’t defective.

The rest of the day was pretty lazy.  I haven’t had the gumption to get anything of consequence done.  I even bailed on our plans to go to Target (in another town, obviously) this morning.  I just couldn’t function.

This evening the kids played outside in buckets of water after L thought he tricked me into it by saying that he needed to go see how his tricycle was doing.  It didn’t take long for Mr. Tricycle to end up in Toy Time Out.   It seems that Mr. T has a mind of his own and ran into Elena “all by itself” as told by Liam, who happened to be sitting on said Trike during said incident.

That said, L has really had a good day today.  I feel like he’s finally settling down.  He went down easily for nap after threatening him with the dark room, and this evening he went right to sleep at bed time.  He’s been very sweet and full of hugs, kisses and “I love yous.”  And, I’ve noticed that he hasn’t been attached at the hip to Milo, Taggie and Special Blanket.  I think he’s feeling a little more secure that I’m not going to leave him here.  (He should.  I’ve played with both of my kids more in the last four days than I have in two months.  It’s been really fun.)  He’s finally calm and its making me rethink my plan for going back to KC for the weekend before we leave on the 2nd.  Dealing with him and the transitions just wears me out.  I really want to see everyone again, so I’m just going to have to decide if it’s worth messing with him again.  It’s just so hard on all of us.

Luckily, if we don’t head back much before we leave, I’ve greatly enjoyed the time here with Mom and Dad.  Mom and I have been working on Peppernuts since I won’t be around to do it in November.  They take forever to make, but we’ve been laughing our asses off as we work.  It feels really good to laugh about completely ridiculous things.

AND, Heather is going to be here tomorrow with Ethan.  Em is staying with Brian.  I’m so glad I get to see them again before we leave.  Hopefully E will feel better and we’ll all be able to enjoy a quiet weekend…with many nights of good rest.

Oh, and one more item of note for the record.  I have cut back my meds to 300mg of Wellbutrin/day (from 450mg) and I haven’t had Zoloft (200mg) in three days.  I seem to be handling everything fairly well, I think.  But don’t worry, I have my mom keeping an eye on me so if things do get out of hand she’ll tell me and I’ll reevaluate.

It’s way past my bedtime and E is going to wake up in a few hours in need of some more numbing ear drops, so I should get to bed.

Boooorring.

• AJ’s computer is dead.
• My new computer keeps telling me I have a hardware malfunction.
• E is pissy because she has two teeth barely poking through and two more on the horizon.
• L threw a huge fit about taking a nap. I felt it ramping up when I asked him to sit and read with me. He wasn’t thrilled about that, but he finally did choose a book when I asked him which one of us was going to choose it. Unfortunately he didn’t make very good decisions (even though I gave him EVERY OPPORTUNITY POSSIBLE) and I ended up carrying him upstairs after his answer to every question I asked him was, “I want to stay downstairs” and his reaction to my suggestion of walking upstairs with me was to run into the kitchen and ask Grammy to “hold [him] up.” After about 45 minutes, I sent Grammy up there to have a talk with him and even she couldn’t get him to go to sleep. She pretended to be asleep and I could hear him up there incessantly talking to her…”Grammy? Are you asleep, Grammy?” I found out later that he was poking her and giving her kisses and putting his crocs on her. Nice, Liam. I finally told him that he didn’t have to sleep, but he was going to stay in the room until I came to get him. He went to sleep. But it sounds like I wasn’t the only one with a child behaving like a monster…Heath said Em was being a snot head (I was thinking much worse words in terms of Liam, so snot head seems tame to me), and Julianne drew a mean picture of Jen (I won’t go into details, but I really hope that she will in the comments section. It was just such a kid thing to do.) So, what has your kid done lately?
• The kids have clearly been sucking up every minute of my time and I haven’t been able to sit down and figure out what I’m supposed to be doing. I just need a solid half-hour. What’s a girl to do?

Honestly, my title is a little exaggerated…it’s not all bad.

• L is going to the bathroom now when I tell him I’m going to go first. He screams that he’s going to go first and runs into the bathroom. Sometimes I actually have to act like I’m getting up to go, but generally the threat is enough to get him off his butt. However, I seem to have started something because when he and Jules went to the bathroom he informed her that HE ALWAYS GOES FIRST. Luckily she was cool with that anyway. However she was NOT cool with him saying that she poops outside; she sobbed. I know it was only because L had a Potty Emergency the other day and peed by the side of the road. He’s all about the wilderness excretion. I’m pretty sure he would have worshiped the ground she pooped on had Jules actually done the deed outside.
• E is starting to talk a lot more. She holds the phone (and my headset) to her ear and says, “hiiiiiieeeeee!” She also says “eye” and “heh-woh.” And that million dollar grin she flashes right before the laughter rolls? It makes me melt.
• I had a couple of really great days with friends last week. We went out to dinner sans kids and the last night before Alexis flew back to CA, we had a slumber party. The kids all went down without a fight and we drank wine, ate a variety of cheeses and Duck Liver Pate with Truffles c/o The Better Cheddar, gave ourselves pedicures, and watched way too much “What Not To Wear.” It was the most relaxed I’ve been since we found out we were moving…and perhaps even longer than that. I have to say, though…the pate we had was great, but it tastes a lot like the Braunschweiger (recipe in case you’re interested) that I used to eat as a kid. If I remember correctly, the Braunschweiger didn’t cost quite as much either. But then again, it didn’t have truffles in it.
• Since we arrived at Mom and Dad’s I’ve actually gotten to spend some QT with both of the kiddos. It feels like we’re getting to know one another again. Now, if I could just get E to drink from a cup so I could spend some QT with myself we’d be in business.
• It feels good to be back reading everyone’s blogs. I’ve missed you all.

Had a great post written and saved, but for some reason it didn’t stick. Now I don’t feel like rewriting it. Grrr.

Basically it was quiet and for the first time in months, I was alone listening to the background buzz that is silence. E was asleep and L was awake, but he was with my mom at work. The dogs were basking in the bright squares beneath the windows formed by the sun coming in from the south. I read a bit, but eventually my thoughts turned to what I have left to do.

• Change addresses, cancel bills, coordinate air conditioner repairs and carpet laying, slit my wrists when the house doesn’t sell by October, etc.
• I’ve managed to delegate several tasks along with locating someone to mow the lawn and people seem to be taking it in stride. I knew my friends were cool, but this is over the top.

As far as everyone else goes,

• Am done working on the house – I hope. If I have to go back, I will burn it down.  I’m trying to take some time to relax and I actually did have one great evening before we left KC.  It was all. about.  me.  I felt a little guilty about it since I probably should have been packing, but I enjoyed it thoroughly and the feelings of guilt dissipated with the ingestion of wine, cheese, and pate.  (I think pate tastes like braunschweiger.  And just in case you’re curious, here’s a recipe.)  Interestingly, I read Skinny Bitch and now I’m most likely headed toward vegetarianism, if not veganism.  What a pain in the ass.
• Liam freaks out whenever I leave his sight. He yells, “Mama! I want to go wif you! MAMA!!!” Some variations include: “I want to put pants on so I can go wif you,” and “I want to act appwopwiatwy so I can go wif you, Mama!”  Poor guy.  I don’t go anywhere any more without explaining, in detail, how it’s going to go down.  The meltdowns are wearing me out.
• Elena learned how to go up and down the stairs out of sheer frustration. She’s not getting all that much practice because just as she gets partway down I run by her going up. She actually waits a moment to see if I’m going to be back before finally heading up.  She’s also getting molars and has been up the last two nights, so even though I’ve been going to bed early, I’m exhausted.
• AJ is pining away as he waits for us. Email him if you want to know what he’s up to. He has a blog and he’s funnyl
• Murphy is concerned he is going to get left. As soon as he sees me moving suitcases around, he heads for the car to wait there.  He has no idea how cushy his life will be with Bill.  The sheets are yours for the licking, Murphy.  Seriously.
• Mace is taking the whole thing in stride.  She can’t wait to live with Riley.  I wonder if they will stop licking each other once the newness wears off and he realizes that she is going to live with him for three moths.

I’m done posting now because it’s 10 and Liam is waiting impatiently for me to come to bed.  I’m not complaining, though.  I can hardly keep my eyes open.