Car Pool Lane

After going through all of this week's pictures I realized that lately the most time I get to spend with my children is when we are in the car. How did I realize that? Well, when you have 20 pictures from a week and 18 of them are from in the car...it doesn't take much to realize you miss your kids.

Thankfully it will only be for a few more weeks!

Every morning I wake up, hop in the shower and give myself about 30 minutes to find something to wear and "beautify" myself. Then I rouse the kids. I start with Josh because he takes longer to wake up. From the time I say, "Josh....it's time to get up" to the time he actually gets out of bed I have picked out his entire wardrobe for the day, picked up the previous day's clothes off his floor, woken Lauren up and sorted through the massive amount of her clothes to find something for her to wear.

Then I spend the next 25 minutes convincing him to dress himself. Honestly, if I didn't push him every morning it would probably be noon before he got his pants on! By the time I actually get them fed, dressed and in the car it feels like I've run a marathon. So the fact that everyone is still smiling in these pictures is amazing.





Not every car trip is as pleasurable as that one. Lauren's been messing up with everyone's sleeping routine lately so some days I get to listen to this for 25 mintues.



Oh....those are my FAVORITE days!! Those are the moments you honestly wish you were deaf.

Then on top of her screaming you have Josh screaming, "Warren...GET OVER IT!" and "Warren, stop screaming." and "Mom, make Warren stop screaming!"

Given that it's tax season and I'm working a ton of hours Larry and Toni have been taking the kids overnight on Thursdays so that I can go to work at two or three in the morning. The last two Thursdays I have given the kids their baths, dressed them in pajamas and packed them up only to ship them over to Grandma and Grandpa's.





Josh thinks it's the coolest thing ever and Lauren is just happy to go wherever Josh goes. It helps me out a ton and the kids don't even miss me! If only that feeling were mutual. I got home this past Thursday after dropping them off and turned on the TV and the Jetson's movie was on. Between the stress and lack of sleep I started to cry because I missed my kids already. You can't win, can ya?

Other than that....not much else is new. Lauren is standing up on her own more and more each day. Every day I swear she looks more like a little girl and less like a baby. **sigh** Does this ever get easier?

Easter Mania

Well, nothing really exciting happened this week. So I'll just post what you really want...pictures!! I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter...we did!













Have a great week!

Water Problems

In the renovation of our bathroom we needed the pipes moved so that our new vanity would be centered. No one in my immediate family felt that they were qualified to take on such a project and I was more than happy to hire a professional to do it correctly. The last thing I needed was someone cutting huge holes in my wall and the $250 saved by not hiring a plumber would go to a drywall person.

Well, that thought process didn't really pan out because the PROFESSIONAL ended up doing this....



and I didn't even take a picture of the hole in my bedroom wall!!! While he was trying to fix the pipe he broke he busted through to our bedroom. Oy vey.

Yesterday I took a small break from work to help Josh dye Easter eggs. The kind I bought this year had you put the eggs in little plastic bags and "rub on" the dye. It was not nearly as messy as usual and definitely more "hands on" for Joshua.



We only had a few casualties and Lauren was very impressed with Josh's handy work.





Lauren had her 9 month check on Friday. I thought she was a big girl but the stats from Friday only confirmed my suspicions. She weighs a little over 25 pounds and is 30 1/2 inches long!!! She was in the 99th percentile for height and weight. The poor girl has to stay in the rear facing seat until she's one and she has to sit criss-cross because he legs are too long to have them straight out!

With the way the girl eats it's no wonder she's so "healthy"!!





This was from dinner last night...shortly afterwards I ran her up to the bathtub and hosed her down. Josh was disgusted by the floating noodles in his bath tub and Lauren was busy trying to grab them and finish eating them.

That's my girl!!

Dustin's first day back at work is today. He's on "light duty" for now. Yesterday was rough for him. I think the anxiety of returning to the scene of the accident was causing most of his hesitation. That and I know he's going to miss spending so much time with the kids.

Have a great week!

Par for the course

I know what you're thinking. This is normally what my refrigerator looks like during tax season. And while that may be true, I had just gone grocery shopping and spent over $200. I bet you're asking, "Where's all the food then?" I know, it's confusing but all the food is in the trash.

Why you ask? Because when little boys go down to get a juice in the middle of the night and leave the refrigerator door open all of the food goes bad. And as an added bonus I have a little known fact...shredded cheese will melt in a bag if placed close enough to a refrigerator light bulb.

Oy vey.

Of course there isn't enough going on in our lives right now so we decided, or I decided, to add a little remodeling to the mix. This weekend Dad and Thomas came down and we gutted our main bathroom and put down tile. Between going into work at 3:30 in the morning Saturday, the weekend projects and working till midnight on Sunday, Monday and again tonight...I'm wiped.

When Lauren heard that we were dealing with some plumbing issues she decided to contribute her bit to the situation. Unfortunately, she was only able to provide a little "plumber's crack".



Nonetheless, our bathroom floor has gone from this...



to this...



In all my spare time I will be grouting tomorrow night (with any luck) so that the plumber can come on Friday and move some pipes and install our new vanity. Dad and I put the toilet in on Sunday and if I had known what was all included in installing a toilet...I would have added it to the list of things for the plumber to complete.

Other than that, Dustin is improving every day. He appears to have full mobility of his hand thanks to all of his hard work in therapy. I haven't shared any pictures of the actual injury but I did take a picture of his "Michael Jackson glove" after I changed his dressing the other night.



Tomorrow he has another doctor's appointment and they will decide when/if he can return to work and determine his work restrictions. I'm not sure if I can actually go with him but I will certainly post an update as soon as possible.

I'm so proud of him. He went through a lot and I guess he's trumped my "I grew and carried a person inside of me for 9 months...and then had them removed from me!" speech for awhile.

As Lauren says in her new diva glasses....Peace Out!

Quel Nightmare!

A little update on Dustin...each day he's improving dramatically! The doctor's decided against any grafting so he's taking it slow and working on his hand movements daily. I still do his daily dressing changes and still cannot believe how much the human body can heal in the matter of a week. We continue to thank God that it wasn't worse and are eternally grateful for all of the thoughts and prayers.

In light of all the drama lately, my blogs have been lacking...to say the least. So I figured I better get my act together.

I had been giving Dustin baths to help avoid getting his hand wet so last week Josh thought it would be funny to switch things around and give his Daddy a bath for once. He thought it was hysterical and Dustin and I were touched by how much he wanted to help his Daddy.




It was so cute!! Josh wanted to make sure he cleaned his hips (who knows where that came from) and then he had the cutest little giggle when he told me he "washed Daddy's 'nickles'"!

In other news, Miss Lauren went potty on the potty!!!! I had noticed she was dry from the night so I thought, "Ah, what the heck!" and threw her on her potty chair. Two seconds later she went potty!!!



Of course she's not done it since.

Josh has been going through a phase where he doesn't want to wear pants. He'll wear them to school - because that would be just silly - but when he's home he'd rather just have a pull-up on. So the other night I told him to get ready for bed. He ended up wearing the sweater he wore all day, a pull-up and his Curious George slippers.



Quite the fashion statement, wouldn't you say?

As if my life hasn't had enough stress I decided to schedule Lauren's 9 month photos and the kid's Easter photos for Sunday afternoon. It always sounds like a good idea and I always love seeing the result but the actual process is enough to make me lock myself in a padded room.

The first hurdle is timing the naps. The is by far the most crucial of all the steps. I scheduled the appointment at 4 assuming that Lauren would wake up from her nap at 2:45, I'd get her dressed and we'd hop in the van and make it there just in time. Yeah, when she woke up at 1:30 I should have walked directly to the phone and cancelled our appointment. On top of that Josh wouldn't even lay down so I already had two strikes against me.

The next step was getting his suit on him. This is always a battle. "I don't want to button the top button." "These pants are tight." I don't like these shoes." "Why do I have to wear a tie?"

I kept threatening him by saying, "If I don't get a good picture we'll just keep going back like we did at Christmas!!!!" Then Dustin was kind enough to chime in and inform Josh that his entire life would be made easier if he would just succumb to the fact that mom gets what mom wants. "So do what she says and don't complain." While that theory may work on a "trained" 28 year-old man it does little to influence a 4 year-old boy.

The next step was to fix his hair. He didn't want me to put the sticky stuff in it because it freezes his neck (hairspray). So I showed him how I was doing Daddy's hair and then reached for the hairspray to do his. At this time Josh looked at Dustin, turned around and headed straight out the bathroom and said, "I'm out."

This story just keeps getting worse and worse....I forgot Josh's tie so we had turn around as soon as we got to the mall, Josh feel asleep in the car so he was cranky and had the imprint of his seat belt on his face, Lauren didn't want anything to do with the photographer and I sweat like a pig while trying to lovingly threaten my children to smile.

Miraculously, I did get a few good shots and will attempt to get them on the blog this weekend. But here is a preview of Lauren...



Funny Josh story:

I went to pick the kids up from mom's on Wednesday. I was greeted by Josh at the door and he had his hand on his butt.

Josh: Mom, I had an AWFUL poop.
Me: You did?
Josh: Yeah, it was hot.
Me: (laughing) It was?
Mom: I may have given him too much juice.
Me: Ahhhh.
Josh: Mom, it was hot.
Me: I'm sorry.
Josh: Like lava.
Me: (laughing) Yeah, Grandma said she may have given you too much juice.
Josh: Well, don't let her do that again!

Then we got home and I drove up the mailbox to get the mail.

Me: Josh, can you believe that the snow is all the way up to the mailbox?
Josh: Yeah, you sure don't see that every day!

I swear...I don't know where he comes up with this stuff.

Have a great week!!!