SIT Still.

Little Miss got a really cute new shirt. Ok, so I bought it for her. Because I've been ogling the shirts that Karen makes for months and months and we're finally at a point where Little Miss is moving into a new size where we don't have a bunch of hand me downs. Ok, as many hand me downs. Ok ok ok. It was too cute, and I couldn't not have it. I admit it.

Little Miss opened the package herself when it arrived, and immediately held it up against her body to see what it would look like. Mommy, I'm be-yoooo-tiful. Look at my new shirt? Isn't it be-yoooo-tiful? Why, yes. Yes, it is (thanks, Karen!).

Of course, this is the shirt she chose to wear the next morning. She was so excited to get to choose pants to match, and she did a pretty good job. Once dressed, she announced that she wanted to do a photo shoot. Mommy, go get your camera. I need pictures.

And so I did. I placed her carefully on the steps so that the bright colors of the shirt and pants would have nothing distracting from it. And then she couldn't sit still. She had to talk. She had to move. She had to get the kitty involved. I kept snapping pictures, hoping that I would capture something worthwhile.



















When I finally gave up, Little Miss wanted to see the results. I've discovered that this merely means she wants proof that I took her picture. She doesn't care what she looks like or what she's doing. It's all about, That's me! Look, more me, Mommy! I'm in that picture. See me, Mommy?

Oh well. She's only three. And a half. I can't forget that precious half. There's only so much I can hope for, right?



PS It isn't just me. My mom saw the shirt and took with her one of the business cards that Karen so conveniently enclosed. Now I need one for Mister Man!

Karma Is Not My Friend

Last night, my husband went to bed before me by a couple minutes. By the time I finished straightening things up downstairs and getting my mug of water, he was laying in bed and watching tv.

Since I'm usually the one who has the television on minimal volume when I fall asleep, it is kept on my channel. That television is basically a Food Network television. My husband though... not so into the Food Network.

When I walked into the room, the television was on a different channel. Nope, not ESPN (good guess though). Not Comedy Central (another good guess). Not the nightly news. Not the Simpsons on Fox. Nope, not my husband. He was watching the Weather Channel.

My husband is one of those Weather Channel junkies. He actually has a favorite weather guy -- but don't ask me the name. He likes to watch the progress of extreme weather -- in other locales. He thinks it's fascinating. I think it's weird.

As I realized what he was watching, I started to giggle. And make fun of him. I did the big loser sign with my hands on my forehead. Still giggling, I bent down to take off my jeans.

The three years of yoga weren't enough. My ankle somehow got caught in the heel of the jeans. I started to lose my balance and could feel my weight shifting backwards. I had two choices, and I had to decide quickly. I could either hop backwards hoping to regain my balance with both legs in the jeans but one leg half out, or I could try to sit down quickly and control my fall.

I chose option b. I neglected to account for the large magazine basket sitting next to the nightstand behind me. I neglected to notice how sharp the edge of the magazine basket is.

I quickly found out, however, as I sat on the handle of said basket. With all my weight, and the momentum of my fall. As I knocked the basket over, I continued to fall, and the basket ended up atop me. My feet went over my head, and my pride was lost somewhere amidst all the mess.

My husband, on the other hand, thought that it was perfect. He couldn't even offer to help me up because he was laughing so hard.

Thanks, Karma. I didn't really need that bruise. For some reason, though, my husband thinks I did.

Yep, We Need More Drugs

We've all met her. It's very rarely a him; in fact, I can't think of any male afflicted with this disease. The worst part of the disease is that she doesn't know she has it. She thinks everything is fine, and she typically surrounds herself with those who enable her behavior and encourage her.

The rest of us, though, we cringe off to the side, just hoping that we aren't sprayed with the buckshot of her attitude. We don't understand her, and we know there's no talking to her trying to get her to change.

But now. There's a new drug available that will help everyone.

No longer will there be women caught in the throes of cheer. No more overenthusiastic, scaring the Disney chipmunks laughing and giggling and exclaiming. She can finally take it down a level. Once again, she will have appropriate reactions because not everything is that "cute" or "OMG, AWEsome" or worse yet, "the cutie-wootie-est, wittow, itty-bitty, pwecious" anything.

Our ears will thank us. Those afraid of surprise hugs will thank us. And our gag reflexes will thank us.

I can't stop laughing.



My husband sent that to me. And he promises it isn't because I need Despondex but because I find these people a little scary. Ok and it's possible that sometimes we spend the evening on the couch just totally vegging. Like a normal couple.

Oops.

I know, I know. It's only February 20. I think I make a pretty compelling case, however. I would like to hereby submit my application for Mother Of The Year 2009. Please see below for the details. I'm pretty sure I've got this one in the bag.

On Wednesday, we woke up and got ready for school. Little Miss gets on her bus around 8:30 or 8:40 or 8:45 or 9:05 or whenever the bus feels like showing up. I then take Mister Man to daycare by 9 to go to his kindergarten class there and begin work. From there, the school district handles getting Little Miss from preschool to daycare and Mister Man from daycare to preschool. I just need to make sure they're picked up before the daycare closes.

When I looked out the window that fateful morning, it was raining. I checked the thermometer, and it was in the high thirties. Given how hard it was raining, I decided the right call was Wellies and raincoats for both wee ones. They happily put them on, we went on our merry way, and that was that.

Exept for one small issue. By the time the afternoon rolled around, it looked something like this outside:



Just in case you can't see it too well, here's another image. Yes, that's snow. And yes, that's an accumulation on the ground. You can't see that it's now seventeen degrees.



Yep, by the time the wee ones got home, it was most definitely parka weather. But not for my wee ones. Nope, they were in their spring raincoats and wellies. Yeah....

Oops.

Next time, I'm checking the weather forecast. I promise! In the meantime, I'm a shoo-in, aren't I?

Ummm, Is Sorry Enough?

I have a younger sister. In fact, I can't remember life without her, as she's only fifteen months younger than me. In many ways we're very similar -- or my parents pushed us to do the same things -- but our personalities are very different.

I was always the older good girl who did everything first and who was remembered when my sister came behind me in school and sports two years later. Looking back, I kind of feel sorry for her, but at the time, I was annoyed that she always had to do the same things I did. I never had anything for myself.

I even had to wait until I was six and a half before I could get pierced ears. July 25, 1982 I got my ears pierced. I had waited so long, and my mom kept telling me I had to wait until I was older. Want to guess when my sister got her ears pierced? Too?

I wanted to start horseback riding. I had to wait until I turned eight for a few reasons. We were in Belgium and I didn't have strong enough French to start. When we moved back to the States, I was told that the barn wouldn't take students younger than eight. I waited and waited. When I turned eight, I started my lessons. My sister was in the same lesson group. (Then again, she fell off her horse the fourth lesson in and has never gotten on a horse since. Needless to say, horses became my -- defensive? -- passion.)

As I got older, I learned to deal with it better. As a young child, however, I probably could have been a better big sister.

I had the usual dream that I was an only child. That my parents loved me best. That my sister was an imposter. That she'd go away someday. Soon. (Hey, I was four or five at the time. Cut me some slack!)

I decided that having her believe this would make it that much more real.

So I told her that she was an alien. Quite matter of factly, I informed her that when she was a baby, aliens landed on the roof of our house. They had her all wrapped up in her special yellow blanket and left her on the roof as they flew away. My parents had found her up there after she started crying loudly enough to wake them up, and they felt sorry for the little alien baby, so they decided to take care of her. But any day now, those alien parents were going to come back and take her.

I repeated this story. Often. My sister became frightened to go outside, and when forced to, she'd stare at the sky and the roof just absolutely petrified. Secretly, I was pleased with myself for getting back at her for some imagined slight.

Unfortunately, my parents eventually noticed her odd behavior. Even though she was only three or four at the time, she finally explained why she was so scared. Yeah, I got into a little bit of trouble for that, but somehow I escaped too much trouble. I know I wasn't grounded.

And then there was the time when my sister was grounded and I rubbed it in her face by playing outside directly below her window... but I'll save that one for another time.

Luckily, I've grown up quite a bit since then, huh?

And The Battle Rages On....

In most homes, there's a flipper battle. (And let me take a brief aside to clarify what I mean for those of you who use wrong terminology for the flipper. I'm referring to the remote control that you use to power the television. It's a flipper. At least in my house.)

From what I've heard, the husband usually wins this battle. He controls the remote control, flipping through channels at random anytime a commercial comes on or he's otherwise bored. Don't think you're watching the whole way through The Terminator or seeing an entire baseball game uninterrupted. There are three other baseball games on at the same time, and -- unless there's a no hitter going on in one of them -- the man must watch all of them as simultaneously as he can. He rests no more than two minutes on a single game before moving to the next one.

Not so in our house. In our house, we have an entirely different battle of the flippers. Observe.

Yep, we've got two identical flippers to control a single television.

Now, we didn't start out intendeding to have dueling flippers. We originally only had one. But then our new tv started acting funny. I got the black screen of death a few too many times (think computer blue screen of death except ummm black). After sending out a guy to repair our new tv twice, the nice people at Vizio agreed that we had a defective television and gave us a new one to replace our icky one. When they took the old one away, they didn't want its manuals. Or the extra flipper.

So now we have two.

This means that when my husband turns the volume up to 22 when the wee ones are sleeping, I can just quietly pick up my flipper to turn the volume down. Or when something we didn't intend to record starts recording and my husband is panicking trying to figure out how to stop it, I can calmly put things right. Or when he starts flipping the channel too often, I can flip back.

At least, I can do that most of the time.

You see, my husband typically goes to bed later than I do. And when I head to bed, I set my flipper on the coffee table in front of me so that I can easily access it when I next need it. Sometimes, I even put it in the drawer, and everything is all neat and uncluttered.

My husband, however, is from the family where the flipper belongs with the tv. He'll pick up my flipper at some point and put it... here where I found it this morning.



Or he'll move my flipper over here, like I found the other flipper this morning.



Or he'll have it in the kitchen. Or it will be buried in a couch cushion. Or on top of the mantel of the fireplace. I even found it in our bedroom once and once in the dining room.

One positive from this is that at least he doesn't try to blame it on the wee ones. He knows better. While I've successfully trained them to leave the flippers be or put them on the coffee table, I've yet to have any impact on my husband's habits.

And really, with two flippers, you'd think I'd have a chance at being able to easily spot a flipper when I need one, right? Not so much in our house.

Putting the flipper underneath the television is the one that cracks me up the most though. The whole point of having a flipper is to avoid having to go up to the television and change channels -- and yes, I've had televisions where I've had to do that. Back when there were three channels and then the U for the other two channels that supposedly were out there but were almost impossible to tune in (my family didn't get cable until 1986, I believe, and even then only one television had it). If you're trying to avoid walking up to the television and pressing buttons, why do you put the flipper where you must walk up to the television? At that point, I'd rather do it manually.

On the plus side, I'm sure I burn off a few calories each day looking for the wandering flippers.

Tasty Tuesday - Chicken Stew With Biscuits

Ok, first of all, I realized (too late) that I oopsed and forgot to take pictures. And since this was a nasty work week and then I got sick -- and I still have no voice -- the options for me cooking "real" food that I haven't already posted were minimal.

But this is one of my favorite wintertime recipes. I hadn't made it yet this year, but as soon as I did, I realized that I need to make it more often again! If you're up for more, go check out this week's Tempt My Tummy Tuesday with Blessed With Grace for more fun recipes and kitchen tips!

Chicken Stew with Biscuits:

Ingredients:
4 chicken breasts
2 1/2 c flour
1 T baking powder
1 t salt
7 T unsalted butter (butter substitute - Crisco or Earth Balance for dairy free)
1 1/3 c milk (rice milk for dairy free)
1 carrot, medium dice
2 stalks celery, medium dice
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 bay leaves
4 c chicken stock (low sodium)
2 T parsley, chopped (tarragon and sage also make great additions)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Poach chicken, then shred to bite sized pieces.

Heat heavy soup pot (wider is better to fit more biscuits) over medium heat and add 4 T butter. Add carrot and celery and saute until softened (4-5 minutes). Add garlic and cook 1 minute longer. Stir in 1/3 c flour to make roux, cooking 2 more minutes.

Pour in chicken stock and bring to a boil, then simmer 20 minutes until sauce is like a thick soup. Add 1/3 c milk and the poached chicken pieces. Season to taste with salt and pepper and add parsley.

While sauce is thickening, make biscuit dough and heat oven to 350 degrees. Mix 2 c flour, baking powder, and 1 t salt in large bowl. Heat 3 T butter and 1 c milk in small sauce pan, then pour over flour mixture. Gently mix together until it just forms a ball. Roll in your hand to make ~10 biscuits (flatten slightly).

Once the chicken mixture is ready, add biscuits atop the mixture (if your soup pot is too narrow to fit or won't go in the oven, move mixture to an oven safe Pyrex type pan). Don't fill all the space (although some touching is fine), so that the biscuits will cook properly.

Cover the pot (use tin foil, if necessary) and place in the 350 oven. Cook 10-15 minutes until the biscuits are firm and puffy, then serve.

Number of Servings: 10

In fact, my mouth is now watering thinking about this. Enjoy!



PS Yes, I did make this dairy free with soy milk and Crisco (for Little Miss), and it was fine. Not as good as the original, but pretty darn good nonetheless!