rain on tulips

I’ve started cutting squares to be cut into triangles for quilts! (Always love the excuse to do new projects!) Instead of starting at the fabric store (another vice!) I started with my fabric stash. I have the tendency to ‘overbuy’ when I’m purchasing fabrics for projects, and then wind up with ‘leftovers’! Which is wonderful, but I tend to save them and buy new each time rather than incorporate what I have!

So. I found a cute pattern that allows me to use coordinating but not necessarily ‘matchy-matchy’ fabrics to make a quilt (or two) and I’ve been selecting and cutting up a storm here! I will have to buy backing, and cute print fabrics for the bigger squares, but for now, I’m having a lot of fun playing with what I have, and mixing and matching tones and colors from so many previous projects…

I think this is going to be a lot of fun!!

The cranio-facial doctors office finally called this afternoon. I think they may have called under duress, though.

Let me back up…

I talked to EK’s pediatrician last week, and she had agreed to call and talk to the cranio-facial clinic and find out why they weren’t getting us scheduled in. Well, she called me back again this morning, and said she had talked with them, and they were still waiting on getting records from her office before they could schedule anything. She asked what they wanted, and they said they needed at least EK’s head circumference measurements. Dr RR gave them the measurements, and asked when they could get us in!

A while later, the cranio-facial office called me and set up an appointment for Thursday, February 10^th. So. We start the countdown for that appointment. (By the way, the lady who called sounded rather put out that our doctor had called her, and was perturbed that she still has not received the records from the doctors office. Oh well!)

Side note: I asked Dr RR about EK’s opthalmology appointment being changed to February 8, and she said that is probably ok, since it is only another 8 days out. So, we’ll be in Portland 2 days next week. Woohoo!

(At least we can maybe start getting some answers?!)

GC gave her first talk in church today during primary! She was excited when I told her about it last week, then promptly forgot that she was supposed to do it! So, come Sunday morning, as I was frantically scrambling around looking for my “default first childrens talk with pictures”, she was being grumpy at me about doing a talk.

I tried to tell her how exciting it was going to be! She’d get to talk in front of everyone! (She’s a ham!) She’d get to use the microphone! Daddy would come in and help her out! She’d get to hold up pictures! Monkeys! Crocodiles! Dinosaurs!! (I didn’t think she was buying it, because she kept the same skeptical scowl on her face the whole time!)

I was about to give the entire idea up for lost, as her stubborn streak (where’d she get that from?? *gasp*) has a never say die attitude to it

Then… she ran over to where her Daddy was, and with this huge grin — you know: the one reserved exclusively for Daddies?? — and started bubbling on and on about how she was going to give a talk, and talk about animals, and there was a monkey and a crocodile and a dinosaur! (I think there may have even been some jumping up and down in excitement during the description!)

Its always hard being the mom.

Anyway, she did a wonderful job, repeating the lines of the poem as Daddy fed them to her, and holding up the pictures proudly in front of all the kids! She was so pleased with herself!

Funny how they grow up when we aren’t looking…

My sister-in-law is slowly taking to this blogging/writing thing.

The real problem is, perhaps, that I am not writing. I think that the simple act of writing forces you to think in unique ways, to see the significance in simple things, to live. So, which came first–the chicken or the egg? I have been waiting for the chicken–significance, but now I am trying the egg–writing first. We’ll see if it works.

There’s more there on her site, at anna-chat!! Go check it out!

I have found a no-spill sippy cup that doesn’t have a removable valve that is impossible to clean! (It is a Nuby No-Spill Gripper cup from Luv n’ Care. )The mouthpiece is soft and flexible, and the seals are built in! I have 5 of them now — only 1 opened — but they are easy to clean (need a bottle brush for the cup, but the lid cleans with just a washcloth) and they really don’t spill!

Anyway… just had to share!

(oh! for anyone interested: I found them at walmart in the baby product section for $1.47 each! They are listed online for $2.99 each.)

Found a fun ‘doll-maker’ program at Suzanne’s site, and spent a good hour playing around with it! I came up with a pretty good likeness to me (amazing — sans the pink hair, though!) and (as soon as I get the permissions problems corrected on my upload file) I’ll post it here, for fun!

Enjoy! (but don’t blame me if you can’t tear yourself away, or find yourself trying to build more and more dolls of the people you know! Bwahaha!!)

updated 2/4/2005 with the picture I made.

The kids are out of school today. I’m still not absolutely certain why — I’ve heard that there was an inservice day, or a grading day, or … well, I don’t know what it is, but the kids have all been home all day today.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the xBox is a mixed blessing. Especially when you have 5 kids (plus one friend) who all want to play, and the system has only four controllers.

We would have gone outside somewhere to play — a friend was taking her kids to the park — but the rain came back again. (Finally looking like a typical Oregon winter!) So, we stay in and the kids fight over the video games again.

AE got out her crocheted hat pattern again, and gave it a go. She got 1 1/2 more rows completed on it. Her speed is getting quicker, and her stitches are starting to look more even.

And me? I made chili (Thanks, Grandpa F. for the wonderful recipe that the kids all like!), and I played with the idea of working on DA’s afghan (I found some really cool camouflage yarn (#0971) at Walmart a month ago!) , but I’m still not satisfied with the pattern I was going with. It’s the third one I’ve tried; still searching for the right look, I guess! And I did some surfing for a fun scrappy looking baby quilt pattern — my sister-in-law, E., is expecting a baby boy in May, and a good friend I hadn’t talked with in a few months emailed and said she is expecting a baby boy in February! Any excuse for playing with quilts!!

OH! And I did work on my writing today — at least in my head. I am considering how to address the POV in the tiger/dragon story, and whether or not to try it as a short piece, or run it out to full novel length. Yeah, so I didn’t write anything on it, but I mulled it over a lot, and that counts for something, right?

So… off to see if anything productive comes of the evening… maybe I can get EK to sleep enough that I can work on writing something besides blog posts!!

OK, the trailers and interviews I have seen look like its a fun new movie!

Its The Pacifier, with Vin Diesel starring in a Disney movie!

Classic!!

So, I went to a MaryKay Party last friday with my friend, K., at her sister-in-law’s home. It was fun (minus the crying baby — I did impress a lot of the attendees by being able to apply makeup one-handed!) and it was nice to have an evening out where I could play with new makeup and not have to worry about getting the kids to bed (I had fed them before I left, which they thought was rather strange — they kept asking why I was cooking dinner at 4:30 in the afternoon!).

And watching the interaction of the other ladies there — most of whom are sisters — was rather entertaining! Who knew that childhood sibling rivalry and ‘totem positions’ would carry over in women between 25 and 40 years old! But, they are all good-natured about the whole thing, cracking jokes and teasing in the way that sisters will!

I hadn’t planned on buying anything while I was at the party. Mostly I went to get to spend some time with K. — we haven’t had much time to visit, what with the holidays and new baby and her son breaking his arm this week — not to buy anything. I know what they have. I like there stuff. But it is a little pricy, and I just didn’t think I could justify buying anything!

And then the consultant, Kim, brought out the Satin Lips.

Oh. My. Goodness!!!

That stuff was amazing! It felt good going on. Little bit tingly! (The tingly sensation lasted even after the mask was washed off!) And the moisturizer? It was wonderful, too! In fact, I woke up the next morning, and my lips were still soft and full!

Now, if they’d only make it in color!!

We got a call this morning from the opthalmologits’ office: she is out sick today, and they will reschedule us to February 8th. Ugh. Only 2 more weeks of waiting.

We have a call in to the peds office, to see if there is somewhere else we can go, or some way to push things forward up there, or if it isn’t as urgent as we were led to believe (because none of the specialists seem to feel the urgency that I do!) But, of course, the ped is out of the office until tomorrow. At least she is good at returning calls in a timely manner!

Anyway. There we are.

I talked to the pediatrician today… as awful as it is to think that someone else has been before where I am today, its still rather comforting to know that they know of whence they speak! My kids’ ped had a child about 7 months ago, and her child was born with sagital craniosynostosis, which is what she suspects we might be dealing with. And they went through all the treatments and have had a wonderful outcome!

She also agreed to head up the contact with the cranial-facial specialists, and make sure we are getting everything we need in a timely manner. She did mention that even if we end up going a surgical route, the surgeons often won’t do anything until between 3 and 6 months. She was more concerned with the vision issues, and was pleased that we will be seeing the opthalmologist tomorrow afternoon.

So, back to only mildly frantic about everything…

Now, if only we were able to work out babysitting for the other kidlets…

I saw my tulips pushing up out of the ground!! The hyacinths have been trying to grow for a month now (even before the ice storms), daffodil greens are filling in, and the crocuses are starting to push their green stuff up… but over near the fence, under the willow, there are a bunch of obvious tulip leaves getting ready to unfurl! I think this is my favorite time of year (well, I LOVE fall in the northwest, but these still wintery, wet days of late winter/early spring when the flowers are starting to bloom bright in defiance of the grey light… LOVE this!!)

(If I can get the camera working again, and my upload file to allow me to write to it — grr! — I’ll post some pics of these early green things!)

why is it that when one doctor expresses extreme concern, and refers you to the specialists for immediate consultation, the referred doctors can be so nonchalant about taking the concerns seriously?

Its been (nearly) 10 days since the referrals were made in the computers at the pediatricians office, and the cranio-facial doctor’s office still won’t let us set an appointment.

They got the referral. But they didn’t do anything with it until we called. Then they asked us for all our information. And they will call the peds office to request the complete medical records (how long can they be for a 10 week old??). And when the records arrive, then they will send them out for review. And when that’s done?

THEN they will call us to make an appointment. Who knows how far out they will be scheduling by the time that happens!?

This wasn’t what I had envisioned when this beautiful baby was born!!

Tamara Siler Jones has a wonderful post on being lucky and the responsibility to nurture the ‘luck’ we find…

Its a wonderful piece, and one I will likely be referencing frequently as a good wake-up call!

(is that the plural for peony??)

Anyway, that is the color of the pants I picked up at Old Navy this morning: they’re peony. I woulda called them pink…. because thats what I called them!

obviously every writing-mom needs a pink pair of pants…

right? RIGHT???

(And, as usual, I’ll have to put elastic in the back to cinch them in a little, but thats a 10 minute job, and I’m resigned to doing that to 95% of the pants I buy now! It will keep my afternoon busy!)