On the Red Carpet

My friend Sarah had an Oscar Party during the Academy Awards that was lots of fun. She had a red carpet walk up her sidewalk, awesome decorations, fun Oscar games like Oscar bingo (anyone crying? anyone not wearing a tie? anyone thank their kids?) and of course our own Oscar ballots to see who got the most right. I didn't win, but I made a strong showing.

She also had red carpet pictures set up with props at our disposal to enhance our image. Below is mine. This is the one and only preggo pic that will be posted on here, so enjoy, because I just don't do that. Maybe if I looked like I swallowed an olive like half the people I know look when they are like 8 1/2 months pregnant, I would post more. But instead you can tell why people start asking me if I'm due when I still have months to go...


Until next year...

Four Eyes and Empty Wallets

So you may recall around this time last year when Big J got glasses. In fact, it was the end of February last year when we took him to the eye doctor for the first time. What I have failed to mention is that since then, this has been a recurring expense.

After school started, the nurse did eye exams and sent a note home saying that Big J had failed his eye exam with his glasses on. So we took him back (this was September or October) and sure enough his prescription showed that it had gotten worse by -.75 in both eyes! So we got him new lenses. At some point this past year, he got new frames in there, too, because apparently the kind of frames we got him were not well-suited to rough-and-tumble boys.

Then in January, he broke his frames again, not to the small wrath of his parents. JC was able to do some super Ninja super glue trick to get them to stay on for the time being, so we let them go in the hopes we could pull some more life out of them. We were already talking about how we needed to get him new glasses, when today a basketball to the face made the decision definitive. So after his game, we took him in to get some sturdy, take-a-ball-in-the-face, wrestle-my-brother-freely frames, which means we would need new lenses as well. We were going to just order them off of the prescription we had gotten just 4 months ago, but decided to give him our own little eye test and he FAILED. I couldn't believe it! So into the eye doctor he went....

And sure enough, his prescription has changed AGAIN by -.50 in each eye!!!! Are you kidding me???? So Big J is now on his 3rd pair of glasses within a year. The eye doctor just said it's because he's growing. But I don't know anyone who has bought their kid 3 different eye prescriptions within a calendar year. Do you??

Around the Water Cooler

I've had some totally unrelated things bouncing around in my head, so I am heading to the proverbial water cooler for a little gab-fest. Would you like to join?

Topic 1: TV shows - Last week I was vowing to myself that I was not going to watch American Idol again because they let Tatiana the Mad Giggler through as well as that joke Nick/Norman with the 80s headband. Oh, and that crybaby multi-pierced Drama Queen that happens to be a guy. Seriously, Tatiana epitomized almost everything I can't stand, minus the fact that she probably isn't a child molester. But I acquiesced and watched again last night. But I'm still debating if I have it in me to stick it out the rest of the season because it was almost painful for me last night. Horrible songs. Horrible outfits. However, I did have new respect (or I guess I should say a newly acquired respect since I had none before) for Tatiana and thought she sang better than most of the girls did and actually didn't bug the crap out of me, despite the fact she seemed slightly stoned. I felt bad for her that the judges were like, "What the heck? You can actually sing???"even though I was thinking the same thing. But shouldn't they have known that since they put her through to the final 36? It just emphasized to me that she was put through as a gimicky sidenote good for laughs and ratings and that made me want to go back to my previous sentiment of being done with the show for good.

Now speaking of a good show, I have to put a shout out for 24. It is SO back. I will just say one word about last night's episode - AAAROOOOOOOONNNNN!!!!! Yes!

Topic 2: Little Man seems to be adapting pretty well to not having his paci. At night he sleeps fine, but he has been very spotty on the naps. Before he would faithfully take a 2 - 3 hour nap every day around 1:00. When he was first off the paci, he wouldn't take a nap for that first week at all. I'd leave him in there but he'd either fuss or play around forever and never go to sleep. Even if I completely ignored him and kept him in there for 2 hours, it was like he couldn't wind himself down enough to take a nap. More recently it has been better, but he still is not napping every day. I have also noticed a lot more finger-sucking since the paci was taken away, but overall, I think we are past the worst part.

Topic 3: At some point soon, myself and probably several other people you know if you live locally, will be on Inside Edition. I will make the grand appearance of being in the background on occasional shots, with the added bonus of being seated next to one of the ladies that was interviewed later. I went to a Be CentsAble workshop, which teaches you about slashing your grocery and household expenditures (great information!) and Inside Edition happened to be doing a spot on it. It should be airing this week or next. So if you want to see me in all my pregnant glory copiously taking notes and/or quietly engaged in light conversation in the background of a national TV show, then I will let you know when the big day will be!

The Great Escape

This week the boys had several days off from school due to teacher conferences, and so on Wednesday we decided to surprise them and went to Great Wolf Lodge. It was the first time we had ever been there and we had so much fun. It is a resort place with a big indoor heated waterpark full of all different kinds of slides, pools, a lazy river, water basketball, a big interactive water fort, etc. It was nice to get to have some summer fun during the winter!

Little Man was a little timid at first and wouldn't even take his flip flops off. Then we progressed to him sitting on the edge of one of the pools with his feet in the water. Finally, he warmed up to the idea and there was no going back. He wanted to go on the big innertube rides, but he was too little, although he did go down a medium-sized slide with his dad. The boys were all over the fort and enjoyed all it's "booby traps" as they liked to call them, including the giant bucket of water that would fill and dump periodically with enough force to almost knock your swim trunks off. I don't know how many times they rode the slides!

We stayed in a fun "Kid Kamp" suite where the kids' area was a "tent" with bunkbeds. I admit I didn't get much sleep - I think I woke up every hour at 14 minutes past the hour for some strange reason - but it was fun nonetheless. The resort also had a story time at night for the kids in front of a giant clock where the animals come alive and talk and sing, and other fun things they could do like crafts and a big arcade. We were there for the waterpark, though, so that's what we focused on!

We stayed and played the next day until the kids were water-logged and tired. We had debated when we should leave the next day and decided to stay until the kids were done. I think the defining point came when Little J was curled up in a towel on a chair, Little Man was about to drop but determined to go into the big pool with or without adult supervision, and Big J told us "he puked a little bit in the pool." Good times!

"Hello, I'm Little Man, and I'm an Addict..."

So I took the plunge. I say "I" because I had to mentally gear up for the first transition of many that Little Man will have. Yesterday morning I got rid of his pacis. We had depleted his supply down to two, and yesterday I cut those two and left them for him to find. Then when he did find them, I sympathized profusely with him on how sad it was that his pacis had broken and now we needed to throw them in the trash, which he willingly did. (We have been leading up to this for a while now talking about how he is a big boy and doesn't need his paci and trying to limit it to sleep time as much as possible, etc.)

He's been fine during the day without it, but his sleeping has not been. Yesterday, he was so tired and needed a good nap (because he misses his nap on Sunday since we go at 1:00 now - which sucks, by the way) but he woke up after just a short hour (he usually naps 2 - 3 hours) and wouldn't settle back down. Then last night he woke up at 2:30 and did not fall back to sleep until sometime between 4:30 and 5:00 - and that was in our bed after he screamed and pitched the biggest fit about his paci and I couldn't get him to settle down. I felt bad for him, as I know that is part of his security, but there was nothing I could do about it except ride it out. As I type this, I have laid him down for a nap again and he is not too happy about it.

I know it is just a few days of this to bear and he will be fine and over it, but it's not a fun few days. I've never had to break the addiction this way before. Big J never took a paci, but he sucked his thumb. But as soon as we put him out of diapers, he stopped sucking it because part of his routine with sucking his thumb was pulling on the diaper tab with his other hand. So when that diaper was gone and he couldn't do that, he was mad for a day or two, but stopped sucking his thumb. Little J was a paci boy big time, just like Little Man. But Little J was easy to get off his paci because he lost them when we were out of town (when everyone's sleeping is screwed up anyway) and that was the end of that. So those were easy. Hopefully, we'll all get better sleep soon, though!