Month: November 2008

To bring you this. Connor is really into sounding out words himself, and I love it so much! I just had to share these two from this week.

Translation: “Dear Miss Rizzo, From Connor. I’m sorry I lied. I will do better next time.” (Story…Connor swung his arms while standing in line and hit one of his classmates on accident. He told his teacher that he had said sorry when, in fact, he had not. Teachable moments…life is full of them. They have a color chart behavior system, and he wanted to draw how many he is going to get of each color.)

Translation: “I’m thankful for my brother Logan.”

6:30-Camryn wakes up and the day begins. She slept great last night! She needed her paci at about 3:00 a.m, but that was it.

6:50: Make lunches. Mac and cheese, ritz peanut butter crackers, cheese stick, a fruit cup and apple juice for Connor. Peanut Butter and jelly (no crust), pretzels, raisins, cheese stick, fruit cup, and a juice box for Logan.

7:00: Wake up Connor. He is sleeping so hard this morning.

7:10: Connor wanders out and seems to be in a happy mood. Get him some breakfast (2 peanut butter banana chocolate chip muffins and a glass of milk). Go get myself dressed.

7:15: Back in the kitchen, I find a puddle of water on the floor. Turns out Ike did more than just shingle damage to our roof, and we officially have a leak. Derek spends the next 30 minutes finding it in the attic, setting up buckets, etc.

7:20: Sit down with my cinnamon oatmeal and coffee.

7:50: Derek and Connor leave. D takes C to school this morning on his way to work, and I go finish getting ready.

8:00: Cami goes down for a nap.

8:15: Logan wakes up. He does not normally sleep in this late! He watches Dora while he eats breakfast (a muffin) and gets ready for school.

8:45: Take Logan to school. I send Camryn off with my friend Laura, and I head to Connor’s school. I volunteered in his class today. All I can say is I don’t think at this point in my life I could handle being a teacher! It was fun to see the class in action, but i was worn out after only an hour!

11:00: Leave the school and head straight to HEB for groceries.

12:00: Quickly put away cold stuff and head out to Laura’s house to pick up Camryn. Talk to Suzanne on the way.

(photo courtesy of Suz.)

1:00: After visiting with Laura for awhile, head back home. At this point, I’ve spent at least an hour in the car.

1:15: Feed Camryn. Read email and blogs.

1:40: Time to pick up Logan. Stop at Sonic on the way home. It’s been such a busy morning that I haven’t eaten lunch yet so I get mozzarella sticks to go with my diet vanilla dr. pepper. Chocolate milk for Logan, and a small popcorn chicken for us to share.

2:20: Back at home. Camryn goes down for a nap, Logan’s relaxes on my bed watching Little Bill, and I half watch Dawson’s Creek while eating my snack and browsing the internet.

2:50: Finish putting away groceries from this morning.

Late Afternoon: It’s always a blur. Connor arrives home at 3:15. Connor works on projects, he and Logan play outside (it’s wet and muddy so Logan is in and out needing new clothes every 5 minutes.  He hates to have on wet clothes.) I put away laundry, throw in another load, talk to Connor’s room mom about the upcoming Thanksgiving feast, and browse on my computer for a bit.

5:00: Camryn wakes up. Eats. I realize that I’m going to be hard pressed to get dinner on the table before I have to leave at 6:00 for Logan’s open house at school.  Logan comes inside covered in mud so he goes straight to the bath tub.

5:20: Quickly make dinner.

5:35: Remember that Logan is still in the tub.  I am excited to find that he washed himself and had been happily playing.

5:45: I sit down to eat Spaghetti Al Limon and french bread. I had every intention of making a salad, but it just didn’t happen.

5:55: Derek and boys sit down to eat. I’m done and get Cam to change her diaper before I go, only to realize she has had a major blowout. Give her a quick bath.

6:05: Kiss the fam, and I’m off.

7:30: Home from the open house. I got to see some cute pictures and a cute video of Logan’s class at school. He loves his teachers and his class and is having a great year. I feed Camryn.

8:15: All is quiet.

Evening plans: internet time, catching up on a few tivoed shows, and bed.

Since I’m blogging every day this month, I thought it would be the perfect time to do a week in the life series.  I saw it done awhile ago on several blogs I read, and I thought it was really interesting.  I love getting little glimpses into people’s everyday.  Plus it will be great someday to look back at what my life right now looks like.

6:50: Wake up and make Connor’s breakfast and lunch. Whole grain pop tart, yogurt, and milk for breakfast; turkey and cheese sandwich (no crust), pretzels, an apple, raisins, and a few mini oreos for lunch.

7:05: Make sure Connor is up and at ’em. He had quietly sneaked (snuck? Is snuck not a word? Spell check does not like it.) out to the couch and I didn’t even see him. He got quite a kick out of that.

7:15: Camryn wakes up and I feed her while Connor finishes his morning chart and Logan gets dressed. Logan is wearing his favorite orange shorts. He loves those things.

8:00: Drop Connor off at school.

8:15: Camryn, Logan, and I arrive at the gym. Today I did 35 minutes of cardio and 25 minutes of weights.

9:30: Back home. Logan and I eat breakfast (whole grain pop tart and orange juice for Logan, whole wheat English muffin with a bit of butter, a pop tart, and coffee for me)

10:00: Logan relaxes with a bit of tv (Noggin, his favorite channel). Time to feed Camryn again, so I start up Desperate Housewives while she eats.

The rest of the morning:
-Logan bounces from room to room, playing legos, looking for money to bring to church for a special giving project children’s church has going on, watching tv here and there, and collecting odds and ends in baskets which is one of his favorite things to do.
-Camryn goes down for a nap.
-I finish watching Desperate Housewives.
-I finally get around to showering. When I got out of the shower, I heard some hub bub in Camryn’s room. I guess she fussed a bit, so Logan climbed up into her crib and started her mobile for her. Luckily, she went back to sleep after a little mama reassuring.
-Fold a few loads of laundry.

12:30: Lunch. Peanut butter and marshmallow cream sandwich, applesauce, cheesestick, and orange juice for Logan (we are all out of milk. I have to get to the store today.) Lean Cuisine chicken alfredo, a mini butterfinger, and water for me. I catch up on blogs and emails while we eat.

Early Afternoon: more bouncing and playing, more laundry, more relaxing. It’s raining outside and it’s the perfect afternoon of low-stress, whatever-ness.

2:00: Camryn wakes up from a monster of a nap. Eats.

2:30: Sonic run. Diet Coke with Vanilla for me, chocolate milk for Logan.

2:45: I decide to make muffins. I saw a recipe for Nutella Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins on a blog I read. I’m part way into making them when I realize that I don’t have even close to enough nutella. I wing it and substitute a bit of peanut butter.

3:15: Walk down to the end of the street to pick up Connor off the bus. It’s raining, so Logan stayed behind at home and Camryn is all bundled and covered in the stroller. We wait. And wait some more. I see Logan coming, wondering what’s taking so long. We go back home, pull out a batch of muffins, get a jacket for Logan, and head back to the bus stop.

3:35: The bus finally arrives. I love this part of the day.

4:00: Camryn is back down for another nap, Connor is vegging out watching Sonic X, and Logan is eating a delicious muffin. Time to think about what we are going to eat for dinner and get the muffin mess cleaned up before I make a new mess.

Late Afternoon: Connor plays the computer, Logan plays outside, watches a bit more tv (lots of tv today…) I pick up the house a bit, browse blogs a bit, get dinner started, and we all wait for Derek to get home.

5:45: Derek is home!

6:00: Dinner time. Teriyaki stir fry chicken and carrots with rice.

6:45: We decide to go meet my parents and James and Kathy for dessert. We never go out after dinner, but it was a special occasion. James’ pediatric ER is officially open!

7:30: Home again. I feed Camryn while Derek gets the boys ready for bed.

8:20: Everyone is peacefully sleeping. ahhhh…sweet peace and quiet.

Evening: Derek and I pick up the rest of the house (he does the kitchen, I fold the last of the laundry and pick up the living room). We watch Prison Break, and then Derek plays a little X-Box while I finish blogging/browsing the internet.

10:45-my bedtime. There are brand new, clean sheets are on the bed tonight. I can’t wait to crawl into them!

Today is my sister’s birthday.

(Picture circa 1990)

She always had the coolest bangs, as you can see from the picture above!

Kristin is 7 years older than me, which means for much of our lives I was the annoying little sister and she was the too-cool older sister. It wasn’t until I was 19 that I really got to know her. Now she is one of my very best friends, and has been since that first summer she came to visit me out in California.

That first summer, she wanted to rent a convertible and drive down the Pacific Coast Highway, so that’s exactly what we did.

That was really cool right up until we discovered that black smoke billowed out from under the car, and the odometer was completely jacked, and basically the car was a piece of junk. I have such happy memories of jamming to our California Tunes, spending all day at the beach, and cruising around like a couple of hot blondes in the vert.

Every summer, we would go to a fancy store and try on formal dresses.

We would make up imaginary benefits that we had to attend. When we were dressed-out, we would head over to In N Out for some burgers.  (I’m drooling right now just thinking about In N Out!)

Every year when I picked her up from the airport, In N Out was the very first stop, no matter what time of day she was arriving.  10:00 a.m?  How about an early lunch?  10:00 p.m.?  How about a late night snack?  We loved us some In N Out!

We loved to buy matching outfits, and had (and still have) several matching or coordinating things.

One year we even got professional pictures taken.

All in all, I think my sister is pretty great.  She is compassionate, funny, loyal, and loving.  She is the first one I called after dropping off Austin at the shelter, and she cried right along with me on the phone.  She is the one I want to call when something funny happens.  She is an amazing volleyball player and an amazing volleyball coach.

Basically, my sister rocks.

K, I wish I could have been there with you this weekend.  Sorry I’m such a db and dropped the ball on that one.  Only a few weeks until Thanksgiving…I can’t wait to see you!  Maybe we can go shopping and get a pedi.  Thanks for being one of my best friends and the best sister.  I love you and hope you had a fantastic birthday!

Camryn is a talker, and has been since she was about 2 weeks old.  She is so different than the boys in this way!  She has spent the last 3 days perfecting this noise:

(video)

She makes it when she wakes up.  She makes it as she falls asleep.  She makes that when she’s happy and when she’s fussy.  I love it! (Ask me in a few weeks if I still love it….it is quite loud and shrill!)

Just trying to post every single day.  But I’m exhausted tonight.

So…

Tune in tomorrow for a video of our baby bird sweet baby girl.

I feel like the mom of a big kid because of this:

(Video)

They are having a great time!  Justin has spent the night before, but it’s usually been for babysitting purposes.  This is the first time they’ve had a sleepover just for the fun of it.  I see many more of these in the future!

I’ve got an acute case of momnesia, aka mommy brain.

Example 1: Monday is library day for Connor.  As a kindergartener, he is allowed to check out 1 book at a time.  He can only check out a new book if he turns the old one in.  We’ve had the same book for 3 weeks, and it’s totally my fault.  I cannot for the life of me remember to put that book in his bag on Monday morning.

Example 2: Thursday is show and tell day for Logan.  I should have show and tell down pat since Connor went to the same school.  I’ve had 2 years of show and tell experience.  Logan has been in school for 7 Thursdays and has only brought show and tell for 3 of them.  Good one, mom.

Sometimes when he is in timeout, he gets very frustrated because we make him face the corner when he would really rather sit on the floor and spin around in circles.  When the frustration reaches the point of critical mass, he starts taking off his clothes.

It’s very hard to keep a straight face and be all disciplinarian-like when I walk around the corner and see his little naked tushie.

It also frustrates him when I pull out the camera and take pictures of him in situations like this.  Today was not the first time I’ve taken a picture of Logan in timeout.  Case and point:

(Logan in timeout, April 2007)

But I’m the mama, so I can take the pictures.  And then blog them.

Favorite Drink: Diet Dr. Pepper with Vanilla from Sonic

Favorite Baby Thing: Baby Legs

Favorite TV Show of the Moment: Friday Night Lights

Favorite CD of the Moment: Ben Folds Way to Normal

Favorite blog I’m reading start to finish: Nie Nie Dialogues (She and her husband were seriously burned in a private plane crash back in the summer. They have 4 young kids and seem like the sweetest family.)

Favorite new purchase: Bissell Healthy Home Vacuum Cleaner

Favorite shopping website: Baby Steals