liveandlaughmoms

And, by reason of no particular reason, we have two winners!!

**Five** (I think she’s actually sister ’1′)

and

**Leslie**

You will both be receiving your prizes soon. (Five, email me your address so I can mail yours: maren@sahmsisters.com um, Leslie, you’d better email me your address too, I keep losing it.)

The prize includes: One fabulous mug with our new logo on it, and an Amazon gift card.

You’re welcome:)

Yahoo! Thanks for entering, the new name will be up soon and with hopefully little to no confusion, messiness, or disasters.

In the meantime,  we have a little problem over here. One of the chickens has decided she wants to be a mommy chicken come heck or high water. Despite the glaring facts:

1)no eggs under her

2)no rooster for miles

she has decided she is ‘broody’ which means that she is incubating and trying hatch baby chicks. Dumb. We have taken her eggs and keep tossing her feathered butt out of the coop, to no avail. Now, we have taken to the internet, foraging fowl forums for advice. This is, apparently, a common difficulty. Go figure.

The suggestions so far include dog kennels, buckets of water, ice packs and wire cages. Not to be used all at once.

I feel sort of sorry for her. I mean, if I couldnt’ have been a mommy, I would be way depressed. On the other hand, she’s too young for motherhood, I mean, the chicken in question is only 7 months old! Sheesh! She doesn’t even know roosters exist yet! She lives in a hen commune with 5 other chicks. Which makes you wonder exactly what those girls are talking, er, clucking about late into the night, alone in the coop….:)

I guess they can’t stay babies for ever, and you can’t overcome hormones.

Sigh, if only a bucket of water and an ice pack would slow down the teenage girl hormones around here.

On the other hand…:)

(Not to mention I keep having to remind myself that it’s Tuesday.)

A sudden change of plans left me in charge of co-op preschool this morning.  (Tuesday morning, today, not Monday, just in case you find yourself wondering!)  Thankfully, I did have enough time to plan a good lesson, but I still felt a little scrambled since I thought my turn wasn’t for two more weeks.  And I have nothing planned for Thursday yet.

This is not the only sudden change of plans I’m dealing with.  Miss 8 was supposed to be performing in a third-grade Valentine’s skit for the moms last Wednesday.  Then it was changed to Friday, then to Tuesday (that’s TODAY!) at 2:40.  I have dealt with all of these changes.  I rearranged carpool since I thought I’d be at the school around ending time today and I rearranged my piano student so I would have time to be back home.

Then the phone rang during preschool.  It was a little voice from the school saying, “Mommy, it’s me.”  After I clarified if it was Miss 8 or Miss 7 (I never hear their voices via phone and couldn’t tell the difference) I was informed that the skit has been changed to 1:40. Argh!!  So I didn’t need to rearrange carpool or piano!

Now I will be stuck at the other end of town with one ridiculous random hour to fill. I don’t know what I’ll be doing yet.  I need to brainstorm.  Hmmm….

I don’t need to run to the store, I already did that last night.  It is too rainy to find a park for the girls to play. Perhaps a Burger King play place may be in order?!  Maybe I will take a book, order one thing for myself and let the girls run free.….It’s less dangerous than going toWal-mart where I might just stroll the aisles finding things to waste money on while the girls are stuck in the cart, bored out of their skulls….

Not super productive, but workable.

Yes, that just may be the plan.  Especially since I will only have poor little Miss 2 and Miss 5 stuck with me during this spare, ill-fitting hour.  I won’t have Tiny Baby because My Dear Husband is home sick today, so I am going to try to nap her at home with home while I’m gone.

So, it’s off to the school.  For the Tuesday plan.  Since it’s not Monday.  Then enduring the wasted hour, after which I will race home, teach piano, make dinner, get all the girls homework done, and finally, go to book club.

I am sort of in charge at book club tonight, but not really.  I am teamed up with an over- achiever friend, so I am just bringing a few ideas and a few odds and ends to supplement the overachiever’s fabulous plans.  That is fine with me, because I’m doing the same book next week for my other book club.  (At which time I will probably steal some of the over achiever’s ideas.  ahem.)

Well, I suppose I’d better get back to my day.  It’s time to put Tiny down for her nap and head off to the school with the other girls.

Wish me luck and I wish you the same with your own crazy day!

“Hey look, Mom, it’s Miss 2.”

Don’t forget that we have a contest going on!  Read yesterday’s post and make a comment to enter.

And now, on to today’s topic-

I am sitting here thinking about Miss 2′s eyes.  Somewhere between her one-year old birthday

and about 18 months,

she totally went cross-eyed.

I took her to the doctor to find out about it and discovered that she’s also very far-sighted, so she started wearing glasses, patching, and visiting the eye doctor every 6-8 weeks.

Her eye isn’t constantly stuck inward, so it took me awhile to be sure of what I was seeing.

Actually, there’s a funny story behind this (of course there is, right?)

We went to Maren’s for a big family event.  Everyone was there, so her house was teeming with children, food, family, and general craziness.  Somewhere in the middle of it all, she cornered me and asked me if I knew that Miss 2 was cross-eyed.  I laughed because my mom-in-law had asked me that the week before.  Apparently, all my sisters were whispering about it in the kitchen, wondering if they should tell me, but concerned that this stressful-yet-wonderful family event might not be the right setting.  They didn’t want me to “freak.”

I didn’t freak.  I just took Miss 2 off to the doctor.  She has spent about a year looking like this:

patch on

patch off

(yes, that was a cheesy Karate Kid allusion.)

Now she is scheduled for eye surgery.  I’ve known about this for a month or so.  When the Doc told me it was time to go down this road, I was hoping it would be fairly immediate, but we needed to wait until My Dear Busy Husband had a free enough day.  Since then I’ve purposefully decided not to think about it because I didn’t want to feel like it was hanging over my head.  Now it is a week and a half way, and I just spent the last hour searching google for “post strabismus surgery for children.”

To be clear, I am not “freaking.”   I am concerned.  Concerned about general anesthesia.  Concerned  about discomfort for Miss 2.  Concerned about how everything will go down.

Most of all I am just concerned about making a good choice for my little girl, so that she can have a full and happy life. (and she can see that life unfolding.)

I did give in to a teeny tiny itsy bitsy urge to kind of freak about the surgery the other night.  I woke up my husband to ask,

“Should we be doing this?”

“Carrie,” he responded,  “It’s either that or we go out and buy ourselves a mule.”

“She falls down a well, her eyes go cross. She gets kicked by a mule. They go back. I don’t know.” -Eddie (National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation)

Heh. Heh. Heh.

How can I freak with My Dear Husband around to say funny things like that and make me laugh?

Strabismus surgery?  Bring. It. On.

We are planning a garage remodel, but we’re having a slowdown due to the fact that Blair has developed plantar fasciitis and is off his feet for a few days. I suppose I could clean house, crochet and bake cookies…I usually do those things ‘in addition to’, it might be nice to do them ‘Only’.

Speaking of V-day, for those of you who know of past experiences, I will say that Blair did a good job with his present to me, which was lots of roses, and a romantic dinner with candlelight and music in our living room served by Jessica and cooked by Rachel. It was very nice.

My present to Blair was workout clothes and earphones that don’t fall out while you work out which will be so OH SO USEFUL now that he’s off his feet.

About Nick and the Autism. I have believed for some time that something is up with that kid. He is funny and cute and a precious gift. He is also quirkier than the average bear. (do you know where I’m getting that from? The reference to the ‘average bear’? It’s a cultural media reference…go on, take a guess) After meeting with teachers, doctor and the school’s psychologist, the diagnosis of ‘Autism’ has been agreed on. Now we do additional testing, to further narrow the diagnosis and discover Nick’s strengths and weaknesses to tailor his educational experience. That sounds pretty snazzy, right?:)

Ok, so, Carrie put up our new look, and we are changing our name, but we have hit a bit of a standstill. We can’t exactly all agree on the new URL. So far we have:

(www) momsliveandlaugh (.com)

liveandlaughmoms

liveandlaughalot

We rejected ‘liveandlaughaboutit’ because of the last 3 letters. Ahem.

Please give us your input! Everyone who gives an opinion in the next week, will be entered in our Live And Laugh About It contest! Where the winner will be awarded a Freaking Awesome Prize. Which happens to be a SURprise:)

Meanwhile, I will be here, smelling my roses, and crocheting my blanket while I eat some cookies.

Happy Wednesday!:)

Of course I am, right, because it’s Valentine’s Day.

When I told him that I needed something to write about for Valentine’s Day, he gave me my present one day early.  It is a book called, “All There Is.”  The following post is inspired by the book:

I met My Dear Husband at BYU, which is a total cliché for us Mormons, but oh well, that’s how it happened.  I was working as a janitor in the Administration Building and I told my friend Roseanne to stop hiring girls for our cleaning crew, because I needed someone to date.  When she told me she had interviewed a nice sounding guy on the phone, I was pretty embarrassed for opening my mouth, but I guess it worked out because she hired him for me.  (thanks Roseanne!)

The first time I saw him I thought,” darn, he looks too young for me!”  My Dear Husband is actually 3 years younger then me.  Younger even, than my little sis (who you haven’t heard much about ’cause she doesn’t do the blog with us.)  I remember he was wearing a blue shirt with a stripe and some weird-looking (or so I thought at the time) white tennis shoes.

So, why’d I change my mind about him?  Well, we were all having a meeting and I remember we were seated around a conference table and I was helping another guy with some homework.  All My Dear Husband did was lean across the table to point at something the other guy was writing and I couldn’t even breathe.

Needless to say I became interested.

Since I never dated or flirted or any of that behavior that’s supposed to come naturally to girls, but didn’t to me, I enlisted help from my friend Carrie.  She gave me a little list of things to do.  I don’t remember everything on her list anymore, but I remember the first one was ‘get him to talk about himself’ and the second was ‘get him laughing.’  (If anyone out there needs relationship advice, email me later and I’ll send you her info!  She’s actually a pretty great psychologist these days!)

Carrie’s advice worked.  He asked me out.  I was stunned.

Funnily enough, even though I never dated anyone (I was more of a hang out and be your best friend kinda’ gal) My Dear Husband had to ask me out three times before I had a free evening to actually go on a date with him.

It only took a few dates for us both to realize we were going to get married.  But we didn’t admit that feeling to each other right away.  In fact, My Dear Husband’s mom tried to talk him out of dating me.  She was worried about the “older unknown woman preying on her little son” and told him he should look around.  He explained this to me one night on the phone, but it only took one day of him looking around, before he called me back to say that he didn’t see anyone else he was interested in.  (phew!)

(don’t be mad at mom-in-law, she just hadn’t met me yet.)

Being My Dear Husband, when it came time to propose, first he had to trick me.  We went on a double date with our roommates to a very romantic spot.  The Salt Lake Temple.  He even got me alone and walked me to a little secluded bench, and sat me down, telling me he had something he needed to talk about.  Of course I was thinking he was going to ask me to marry him, how could I not?  But then he started asking for advice about how his roommate could get my roommate’s attention and I  realized I’d been set up.  Rat Fink!

He managed to trick me again on the night of the actual proposal.  We went to see the Nutcracker Ballet and afterward he told me sorry but he had to drop me off quick at my apartment and then go help his cousin Stephen with something.  Of course, this was a total lie.  We arrived at my apartment and I opened the door to see a cande lit table all set up.

I slammed the door.  I thought my roommate was trying to have a romantic evening with her boyfriend. heh heh heh.  oops.

The rest was history.  We went in, he asked me to marry him, we dropped our keys on the floor, I said I would marry him, he didn’t hear me, and he had to ask again.

(Smooth, like buttah, right?)

11 yrs + 5 girls = Happy Us 

 ”All There Is” is a collection of stories put together by Storycorps.   If you don’t know what Storycorps is, check them out:  http://storycorps.org/

They are folklorists of sorts, making sure that the stories of regular people, that history often forgets, are recorded.

The stories are romantic- not sappy- and very real and touching. Here’s a quote from the back of the book.  An 85-year old man named Leroy, remembering his wife:

“It lasted fifty three years, two months, and five days. . . She was something.  One thing:  If they ever let me in those pearly gates, I’m going to walk all over God’s heaven until I find that girl.  And the first thing I’m going to do is ask her if she would marry me, and do it all over again.”

Romantic, right?  (sigh)

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Meanwhile:

THE BATHROOM

A video of the thing:

http://youtu.be/mRzHiu5rR0w

Finished bathroom

CabinetTile on wall and floor

(Continue at your own peril.  You have been warned.)

Three of my children are good pukers.  One is NOT.  You may be asking yourself, “What is a ‘good’ puker?”  Simply put, someone who does NOT throw up where they are standing–a ‘good’ puker runs for the nearest receptacle;  the bathroom, trash can, or anything, anywhere, that is not carpet!

This was made painfully clear to me last night.  The events that took place were, to put it mildly, terrible and horrific.  We attended the Blue and Gold Banquet (For those of you non-scouters, that is the birthday celebration of cub scouting).  It was a potluck.  There was a smorgasbord of things to eat–lasagna, spaghetti, chicken wings, bread, enchiladas, and lots (and lots!) of soda pop.  Mr. 8 was thrilled to see so many choices.  He kept trying to refill his plate and his cup.  As a responsible mom, I was trying to let him have fun without letting him becoming a glutton.

Food was eaten, awards were presented–all seemed to be going well.  I was helping clean up and talking to the Cubmaster.  Then Mr 8 came up to me and said the dreaded phrase:

‘Mom, I am going to be sick”

Because Mr. 8  is NOT a good puker, he immediately did just that!  Hurled!  Right there in the hallway of the church!  ON THE CARPET!!!!! Being such a good mom, I grabbed all 80 pounds of him and pretty much threw him into the nearest (girls) restroom while saying ‘NOT on the carpet!”

It gets worse….

Once in the bathroom, he spewed like a sprinkler.  There was vomit on the floors and on the walls in a 180 degree arc, about 2 feet high!  It was on the sink and the toilet paper holder.

Ironically enough, it was not on any part of the toilet.

It was on my shirt and my shoes.  It was like Old Faithful had gone off in there.  And not in a good, tourist, picture-taking kind of way!

I looked over at Mr. 8–he was almost completely free of barf (except one small spot on his shoe) and still clutching his balloon which was also remarkably puke free.

I ran out of the bathroom to get my sweet husband.  Actually, first I tried to get a couple of people to get him for me.  But they were all mesmerized,  standing around, staring at the pool of ick on the carpet.  Nobody would move.

Finally, I called for my hubby myself and he quickly came to the rescue with supplies to clean the carpet.

Unfortunately he has cleaned up vomit at the church a number of times and knows the drill.  The man is a saint!

Many, many, many  paper towels, rubber gloves and A LOT of disinfectant later, the mess was cleaned up.  The carpet was scrubbed.  The bathroom was wiped down.

All was well again.

Just for the record, nothing empties an event faster than someone tossing their cookies!

I (used to and kind of still do) speak Bulgarian.  I learned it way back (more than ten years ago) when I was called to serve in Bulgaria as a missionary for the LDS (Mormon) Church. Whenever I tell someone that I speak Bulgarian, they always ask if it was hard to learn.

Um, yes, I suppose it was.  But it was not impossible.

Here’s what I began.  The very first thing I did was buy a good beginning grammar book.  Bulgarian has a different alphabet so I started with that.  Then I learned the very most common phrases:  Hello, How are you, and My name is.

My experience was different than someone learning language totally on their own, because the next thing I did was report to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah.  We had classes all day everyday. But the things we did can easily be applied to a solo learner.

Start reading right away.  We started with scriptures, but you could start with any book that you are very familiar with in your own language.  Just start learning to wrap your mouth around the new sounds of your language.

Label everything.  In my classroom at the MTC, and in my apartment in Bulgaria, everything was labeled with Bulgarian words.

Use your new words.  When you learn a word in your new language, replace the old one.  If you don’t start speaking, you’ll never commit your new vocab to memory.

Find anyone you can to talk to.  When I was learning Spanish in college, I went to my sis’s house everyday and since she speaks Spanish way better than me, we practiced speaking.  It was really fun and really helpful.  On my mission, even though most of my companions were English speakers, we were encouraged to try to speak Bulgarian to each other, even when we were just at home, not out in public.

Listen to your language.  If you can’t travel to another country or place and immerse yourself in the new language, there are still plenty of things you can do.  With the internet, you can always find a radio station to listen to or something to watch in the language you’re learning.

Study, Study, Study.  As missionaries, we set aside time each morning to study.  Every single day you need to have that grammar book out, studying some new part of the language.  Every single day.

Obviously, with language learning, there will be ups and downs.  These days my biggest challenge is just holding on to what I’ve learned.  (Sometimes I still dream in Bulgarian, but I’m usually telling others I can’t understand them, or saying, please slow down…..)

I remember one terrible day when I understood nothing.  I was with two other missionaries.  One of the others had been in Bulgaria the longest, and I was expecting to rely on her understanding.  After about an hour of talking, the lady we were visiting left the room, and the other missionary turned to me and said, “I am so sick with this cold, I have no idea what she’s saying!”  Oh the horror!  Not one of us knew what was going on!  That day we nicknamed the language barrier the “Great Wall of China.”

That truly was a terrible/hilarious day, but I also remember the first time I understood everything in a conversation.  I was meeting with a dear elderly man as he related to me some of the hardships that had come into his life when Bulgaria turned to communism.  It was amazing to understand what he was saying, in his own language.  It was worth every minute of study.  It was worth the Great Wall of China days.  It was an extraordinary moment.

*Thanks for reading and be sure and stop by these other great posts:*

Learning Spanish Language: McMom’s Happy Meal at Your Language Guide

Motherhood & Language Learning: An Attempt to Reach the Lower Level of Babel at Multilingual Living

The Story of How It Worked For Me: One Mom’s Journey at The Everyday Language Learner

7 Tips to Learn a New Language as a Mom at Early Languages

The Lazy Expat Mom’s Guide to Language Learning at I Was An Expat Wife

10 Tips to learning a New Language and Surviving it Mentally at Rachel’s Rantings

Language Learning Mom Blog Carnival at The Crazy Baby Mama

http://www.everydaylanguagelearner.com/2012/02/09/one-moms-journey/

She does it all the time…when she’s happy, sad, bugged, hungry, tired…the only time she’s not spitting is when there’s a plug in her mouth. Unfortunately, her mom and I agree, the plug is slowing down her speech. She’s completely consonant free. Even without the plug, she’s grunting vowels through her nose.

Or spitting.

Did I mention she’s a magician? The kid can find a pencil in an empty room and color all over the walls before you even realize she’s in there. We pick up every night. We pick up every morning. We vaccuum every day. We sweep every day. And yet…

Boy: Here’s a pencil I got from GB1 (Girl Baby 1).

Me: Thanks, Boy.

Girl: Here’s a pen I got from GB1.

Me: Thanks, Girl.

Blair: I just took this marker away from GB1. I thought we didn’t own markers.

Me: We don’t.

Me: AHHHH! GB1! Drop that crayon!

GB1: (Spits) Then says: ” Eh uh aeuh iue yuehuh eh?”

Me: No spitting.

One of the problems with the spitting is that the Baby Gang has all learned to spit and adopted this as some kind of gang sign. They use it to greet each other.  The other kids however, have learned that the spit can also be like a warning shot. Baby spits right before he/she wipes his/her nose on you, sits on you while smelling of unmentionable substances, or throws his/her toy in your face.

The problem with the pencil/pen/marker/crayon thing is obvious. NO GRAFFITI IN THE HOUSE. I’m like the freaking school janitor, showing up at the crack of dawn every morning to clean the gang signs and obscenities off the lockers.

Or was that just my high school….?

The Baby Gang is growing up. Soon they will all be 2. And by soon, I mean, at the end of this month, all THREE OF THEM TURN 2!

What kind of Gang is that? I admit, I’m scared. Three two-year-olds? At the same time? In my house? Oh sure it was all fun and games when they were learning to walk and starting to drink out of cups…but now…

*shudder*

I hate to even mention this, but we talking about:

P   O   T   T   Y    T   R   A   I   N   I   N   G

And the ability to flush things down the toilet.

Like pens. And pencils. And crayons. Oh my.