Car Conversation

we are driving to the zoo. (the zoo near the in laws house also has a light display and grandma wanted to take the kids.) suddenly bean blurts out this...

"i think i want to be a teacher when i grow up."

huh?
"oh yeah?" i respond.

"yeah, or..... maybe a football player."

what?!? really??
"a football player?"

"yes" (long pause) "but i really wish to be a teacher."

"well, i'm sure you'll be a very good teacher," i say

(longer pause)

"mommy?" she says.

"what baby?" i reply.

"i'm just not sure what i want to be when i grow up!"

(i must admit i snickered to myself at this point- i mean she is three and seemed truly worried about what she is going to be when she grows up! how amusing!)
"oh you have tons of time to figure that out sweetie. TONS of time. there are lots of jobs out there. some you probably haven't even heard of yet."

she smiles and looks out the window. i think the conversation is over and i turn back to start talking to my mother in law again. just as i start to speak she says:
"oh! maybe i could be a ballerina. i think i would like to be a ballerina... or a baseball player... or a golf player... or a soccer player..."

"oh you must really like sports," i say.

and she replies, "no, not really. (pause) i guess i'll just be a ballerina."

hmmmmm. ok.
"you'll make a beautiful ballerina," i tell her.

"yep" is her reply.

:)

For the Love of Pete!

why is it that when sprout finally starts acting like himself again he begins to get more teeth?? did i really need to go from sick to teething with no time in between??

sigh. life can be a little unfair sometimes.

Finally

i think the sprout man is finally getting better. yesterday was his first day with no "bad poopy". he is starting to eat more. he is less clingy.

his schedule is completely messed up. knowing when he needs to eat and sleep has become a big challenge- he doesn't even know himself. we are all very tired.

i'll be back soon. i just need to catch up on, well, just about everything!

Merry Christmas Little Buddy...

...i know you always wanted to go to the e.r. for christmas!

yeah, i spent several hours last night in the e.r. with the sprout man because he began to refuse all fluids again. i also realized that he only had one wet diaper the entire day and it was only a tiny bit wet. not wanting to be that mom who waited a little too long to take her kid in we left the house just before midnight.
the doctor said sprouty looked good but he wanted him to get some fluids in him so he ordered iv fluids for him and some blood tests to rule out any really nasty things. the tests came back fine. he did well getting the iv. he was more screaming angry about being held down than he was howling in pain over being stuck with a needle. you know, he even may have reacted more strongly to the tape being removed after the whole ordeal was over than to the actual sticking. he has taken a small bottle of pedialyte this morning so things are looking up for us right now. hopfully we won't need to see any more doctors the holiday season.

the inlaws on the other hand....
yeah, there must be a two day incubation period for this virus. in the past 12 hours we've taken out at least two family members with our disease.
ummmmm...... sorry guys. we really had NO idea sprout was sick when we came here.

Double Ugh!

thanks for the wishes. sadly they didn't work. my symptoms keep coming and going and sprout has been sick for 2 days now and isn't looking any better. seeing a 8 month old throw up is a sad, sad thing. they look scared and confused and pathetic. its just awful.

we had thought everyone was ok so we trucked off to the first of our family christmases. so this first part of christmas is something i'm glad sprout will never remember. i had to open all his gifts while he was rocked. he is in pain from the bad diaper rash he has (from the "bad poopy", as bean would tell you). he is probably a little dehydrated from all that has come out of him and he has become reluctant to eat or drink. i'm worried about our little man. he is usually all smiles and joy and the past two days we have seen little of either.

bean appears to be fine. she has had no issues at all. daddy says he feels a little under the weather but nothing too bad. the rest of the family we are with has shown no signs of infection either which is good.

keep little sprout in your thoughts. pray that he gets well enough that we can go to the rest of our christmas celebrations! i want to have some happy memories of his first christmas.

Ugh

remember how last christmas i had that horrible stomach virus?

yeah, i got it again. i feel like i'm going to die and i have to take care of TWO kids this time.

can we all say a prayer that the kids do NOT get it this time. please and thank you.

Christmas Beanism

bean is INSISTING that baby jesus lives in an "activity scene" instead of a "nativity scene".

she will NOT listen to what i have to say.
she is sure she is right.
absolutely sure.
she actually screamed at me that she was right and i was wrong.

so, fyi: if you come to the house of blueberry make sure you compliment bean on her lovely activity scene, unless you want to see her come unglued!

Making Christmas Cookies

there are several simple steps one needs to follow in order to have delicious christmas cookies.

step 1: roll dough. it seems to help if you make a face.

step 2: cut out cookies with assorted cookie cutters. once again it appears that face making is essential.

step 3: give assorted large plastic cutters to infant child to distract him from the fact that he is still stuck in that damn chair.

step 4: eat as many dough scraps as you can get away with. (this one seems to be key!)

step 5: invite friends over to decorate said cookies.

step 6: enjoy the beauty of the creation.lovely, ain't it! ;)

Best Shot Monday

last monday we went here:

oh, you don't know where there is, do you? well, it is the zoo christmas light display, of course. they put up millions of lights- some are even set to music. it is very beautiful... and cold.

but when we first got there we had to stop and look at the trains:

bean loves the model train set up. i don't think it was as cool as it was in past years (they moved it to a smaller building) but bean didn't seem to mind. she loves watching the trains go by. they have buttons the kids can press that animate things around the trains too- figure skaters on a pond, the fire engine comes out of the fire station, etc. we finally had to drag her back out into the cold so that we can see the lights! :)

i figured sprout would fall asleep and/or not pay much attention to what was going on but i was wrong. he stayed awake the whole time, looking and watching carefully. i think he was kinda enjoying the lights (especially the ones that moved!)
i made sure daddy took a shot of me and the kids. it ain't the best, but it'll do. ;)
bean really liked these balls of lights hanging from the trees. i must say i thought they were pretty cool too.
and that is that. life has been running in fast forward this past week and isn't looking to slow down anytime soon! i love the holidays but man do they wear me out!! it was nice to go some place like this and just slowly walk around sipping a cup of hot chocolate to relax and get some christmas spirit.

have a great week and be sure to visit tracey to see more best shots. :)

Teeth

sprout has two new teeth. two teeth in two days..... last night was F-U-N.

so, he got his two bottom middle teeth in august. you would think that the next teeth he would get would be the top middle teeth. nope, not my son. he got the top side teeth.

when they come in farther i know it is going to make me giggle because he will have this big gap.

i'm thinking i need to buy him a hockey jersey.
a little tiny hockey player with his two front teeth knocked out. how funny would that be!!

Bean's lastest question...

bean was invited to come to pre-school today. she doesn't normally go on wednesdays but santa was coming today and they were making a yummy edible craft and the teachers didn't want her to feel left out. (have i mentioned before how much i love this school!)

anyways, bean was VERY excited, santa was coming to school for goodness sake! she couldn't wait to get there. was it time to go yet? was santa going to be there when we got there? was he going to be in her classroom? the questions never seemed to stop. i just kept saying i didn't know, that we'd have to wait 'til we got there to find out.

then she gets this excited look on her face and blurts out this:

"will santa's sleigh be in the parking lot when we get to school?!?!?!"

uh.

thankfully my mommy brain was working this morning! we decided that santa couldn't bring his sleigh today because the reindeer had to rest up for their trip christmas eve.

i thought that was going to be good enough.

then she says, "then how will he get there?"

oh.

well, once again with the quick thinking- lack of sleep must agree with me or something. ;) i had her convinced that he was probably coming by airplane. then someone would drive him from the airport. (this worked because we often pick up family members from the airport.)

phew!

it ended up being a great day. she got to shake santa's hand when he came to her classroom! (OMG) i didn't pay for a picture with santa since we had already done that so i think she was a little disappointed about that part. but she still got a candy cane from him so that erased all disappointment. candy has a way of doing that.

edible crafts do to. here is a picture of what she made. cute, huh?

she wants you all to know that it was delicious. mmmmmmm, candy and frosting and ice cream cone. now there's a sugar rush waiting to happen! ;)

Trying to be Crafty Tuesday

so, i had this fabric. it was given to me. i didn't know what to do with it. so i thought, "i'll make a dress for bean's baby doll for christmas." then i thought, "what the heck, i'll make two dresses!" and i went to the store and bought some more fabric.

of course i have no idea how to make a doll dress but i figured if i could make a flamingo costume i could make a baby doll dress. well..............

i can kind of make a baby doll dress. it fits the doll and looks ok in the picture BUT if you saw it in real life and actually know how to sew you would probably say "for the love of pete woman, buy a pattern already! and it wouldn't kill you to learn to sew a straight line either!!" ;) but i figure since she's three she won't care about that kind of stuff, right?

here is dress #1- finished except for the velcro to hold it shut in the back.

here is dress #2- cut out but not sewn.

why unfinished?? well, i got side tracked by a bean request. she wanted me to make her a cat. where she got this idea i don't know but she was pretty insistent. and she assured me that i could in fact make her a cat. and so i tried....

why are there two?? well after i got the fabric cut on the first one bean got very excited and asked for me to make her friend one too. (i hope this friend appreciates odd, poorly made stuffed friends!) and since i had images of knuffle bunny too dancing in my head, they are slightly different so we moms can tell them apart fairly easily.

so there is my crafty for this week. maybe i'll practice a little and learn to follow a pattern next time. who knows?! ha ha!

How times have changed...

i suddenly realized how much being the mom of a little girl has changed me.

exhibit a:
cinderella is no longer a "hair" band from the 80's, but a blond haired, blue dressed princess.

sigh.
;)

Best Shot Monday

listen here, monday! you need to stop sneaking up on me like this, ya hear! grrrrrr!
;)

so, this is a super hectic time of year 'round our house. probably at yours too, huh? well, i managed to get a few pictures taken and find a couple minutes to actually get them on the computer. whoa!

we decorated the tree this past week. bean LOVES decorating the tree. LOVES IT. she asks every day if we can do it again. she doesn't understand why i'm not up for this. hmmm.

here is bean checking out one of our ornaments. one of the one's i get to hang.
(ya see, i don't want a repeat of last year's snow globe smashing. broken snow globe is NOT fun to clean up. NOT fun.)

bean was very amused when she found the box with the pickle in it. she thought it was funny that we would put a pickle on our tree. so i explained the tradition of the pickle. "one person hides the pickle on the tree and everyone else tries to find it. the first one who finds it gets an extra little gift." well bean wanted me to hide that pickle that very second so she could find it and get a little gift.
ummmm...... i wasn't planing on doing this. i thought she was still too little to do the pickle thing. oh well, what the heck! "you have to wait for daddy," i tell her. "you need someone else to look at the same time." she decided that was ok.

here are bean and daddy looking for the pickle.

and here is bean finding that pickle.

i can't really pick a best shot. i like all of these because of the warm glowy feeling of the christmas lights i think.
if you would like to see other great shots head on over to tracey's and check out what everyone has been up to!

Ummm?

dude, you may find that eating cheerios would be much easier if you just took that thing out of your mouth!
just sayin'......
;)

Best Shot Monday

ahhhh! not only is it monday but it is also december!! where did the whole year go?!?

anyhoo....
even though we had to deal with sickness it was still a nice thanksgiving. we had a yummy, yummy feast and my mom continued the tradition of having the grandkids decorate the christmas tree. unfortunately i didn't get a picture of all of them together. heck, i barely got any in focus pictures at all. the kids move too quickly for me some days! but here are a couple of decent ones of my cuties- one decorating and one trying to undecorate the tree. ;)


you can see from the first shot that the girls did a much better job decorating this year. the ornaments were spaced out fairly well and all of them stayed on the tree. what a difference a year makes, huh? it is amazing how much they've all grown this year- and that there is two more of them this year too! yep, my parents have quite the little crew of grandkids now- ages 5, 3, 2 1/2, 8 months, and 3 weeks. i really wanted a picture of all of them together BUT they weren't really having that! so, i will try again in 24 days at the family christmas gathering.

akkk! 24 days! i really need to go shop... NOW! ;)

don't forget to check out what everyone else has to share over at tracey's!! :) have a great week!