Sunday, July 27, 2008

PhotoHunt::Hanging


This is my first week participating in the weekly photohunt! I am excited to play along. Here is my rather literal take on the theme!


Friday, July 18, 2008

Mothering... not for the faint of heart

This has been a huge emotional roller coaster week. I am contending with going back to work full time and leaving my precious baby in someone else's care. Apparently my son has sensed this because he has done things that bring me to my knees in tears with the grief of knowing how much I will miss him and then doing something that makes me think maybe I will be glad to get a break from him.

Case in point:
On Wednesday DS has his second to last swimming lesson which entitles him to the title of champion dog paddler. We have spent exactly 18 days this summer going to swimming lessons. I have yet to see any real swimming instruction. However, my child is king of the game "Green Light Go, Red Light Stop"as played in the shallow end of the pool. Anyway, I digress. Lessons are over and DS and I have hopped into the pool for quality mother and son time. This is also known as me being repeatedly splashed in the face as he belly flops into my arms from the side of the pool screaming, "I want to do it again, Mommy." This time though he is distracted by the big kids jumping off of the diving board. He looks at me and says I want to go off the board. I pause, casting about for some reason to keep my four year old safely with me. I am not sure about your community pool, but ours have pretty stringent rules that have not changed in 25+ years (I am not exaggerating, the rules are the exact same as when I swam at this very same pool during my childhood.) For the diving board, you must jump off and swim to the ladder, not the side and no one may be there to help you. This is not a short distance to the ladder and I am certain my kiddo will not be able to make it. I explain this to DS knowing that he will see reason and change his mind. No dice! After asking him,"Are you sure?" for the eighteen billionth time, I know what I have to do. My son is NOT a risk taker. When other mothers are pleading with their children to stop doing dangerous things I am encouraging my son to try it. I must let him give it a shot. I tell him I will go first and will wait for him at the ladder. I figure that way when I go into to save him it will not be as crazy as me running and screaming from the edge to jump in after him. I jump off and swim to the ladder and look at him perched on the edge of the board. I am fairly confident he is going to chicken out and all I will have an opportunity to be the perfect mother as I help him back off the board and comfort his bruised ego. But no, he jumps in with vigor. Holy toledo he is swimming and he keeps going. I am waiting for him to tucker out and look at me to rescue him. But, it never happens., He happily swims all the way to the ladder as I cheer him on and he is beaming with pride. That's my boy!!

Case in Point #2:
We are now at home happily basking in the glow of DS's diving board success. He has picked "Monsters Inc" to watch for family movie night and we are happily cuddled up enjoying the flick while he greedily munches away on his snack. All of the sudden he turns to me screaming bloody murder. "What is wrong, sweetie?" I urgently ask. Through his tears and the blood that is starting to drip out of his nose he informs me that he has stuck a Craisin up his nose and he can not get it out. For those of you unfamiliar with Craisins, they are dried cranberries. They happen to be my child's favorite thing to eat in this world besides any form of pasta. I ask him why in the world he would do that, but he just wails, "I don't know!" We try to get him to blow it out, I go excavating with a flashlight and tweezers. No luck. I guess I will have to call the pediatrician in the morning as it appears that he is fine now and will likely not die during his sleep. (Although I kept the monitor turned to 10 in case the Craisin decides to dislodge and choke him in his sleep. NO Craisin is going to take the life of my child!!) So the pediatrician assures me they remove objects from children's noses and ears all of the time and to give my ENT a call to get him checked. I call the ENT who likes me very much. She likes me because I alone am funding her retirement with the numerous surgeries for ear tubes and removal of mysterious things called adenoids. They are more than happy to take more of my money to remove foreign objects from my child's nose. So we get up the next morning to head downtown to the hospital. We have to park on the very highest level of the parking garage which is problematic given my child's long standing phobia of elevators. We trudge down 7 flights of stairs and make it down to the long hallway to the lobby. We run into a man and his three young sons. I smile and mention that he has his hands full. He smiles back and tells me they are going to get mom and the baby. I continue with the pleasantries saying he will really have his hands full with one more. He proceeds to tell me that the baby will die of a chromosomal disorder and I am searching for the appropriate words to respond when DS pipes in,"I have a Craisin in my nose!" In case you are wondering, there are no rocks to crawl under in that particular hallway. We make it to the lobby and get directions and realize we are going to have to take an elevator. This is not going to be pretty. DS starts shaking and begging me not to go and I remind him we would not be in this predicament if HE WOULD NOT HAVE STUCK A CRAISIN IN HIS NOSE!!! He wisely relents and decides to ride the elevator. We wait in a waiting room for an hour and finally get to see the doctor. Several tools go in his nose, no Craisin comes out. We are pronounced to be in the clear and we are sent on our merry way, after paying our copay of course!

As you can see the first story shows why I am absolutely bereft about leaving my baby behind. What you probably can't see is that the second story does not leave me craving a break like I reported earlier. Quite the opposite. It is in his trying moments, not his triumphant moments that he needs me most. I want to be there for them all. Damn job!!

Saturday, June 28, 2008

June Designer Palette Challenge!

I have finally completed Hummie's June Palette Challenge. Here it is! Hope you enjoy! The preview is clickable!

Monday, June 23, 2008

Fun Times

I was resigned to a summer with nothing but stacations! But my sister and her husband's family decided to purchase a lake home on Table Rock Lake. This last weekend we all headed down for some wet fun! My DH opted out as that kind of stuff is not his thing, but maybe we can talk him into going next year!! Anyway here are a few pics. I found it really hard to take pics while on a bobbing boat so most of the shots are not great, but my sis captured a few fun ones of me and my son!


Sunday, May 25, 2008

I hated playing tag when I was younger and I am not so sure it is any better now! :)

Alright I have posted my Kit for the May Design Challenge at Hummies, (see below) so onto more pressing matters! :) OK, so I guess I have been tagged by my friend Dani and that means I have to blog about 7 random things about me! Here goes:

1. I had straight hair until after my son was born and now it is curly. I have no idea how or why this has happened but it did...the mysteries of science never cease to amaze me.

2. My husband is 14 years older than me. We met when I student taught at the school where he taught. Our first date was to see Treasures of The Czars. We had taken a group of students to see it, but did not get a chance to see much ourselves. The group of kids I had were thugs and required constant supervision and Hilda C. did not feel so good after a 1hour bus ride so DH followed her around with a basin in case she decided to hurl. I asked him if he wanted to come back and see the exhibit without 100 6th graders and he agreed! Thanks Hilda, we'll never forget you!

3. My father died in a car accident when I was twelve. He was a geologist. So, in college, when I needed one more science course to get a science teaching endorsement I decided to take Geology 101. I thought it would be a neat way to learn about what made my father tick since I did not have the chance to do so firsthand. At the conclusion of the course I had come to a very deep realization about my father. He had to have been one of the most bored humans on the planet!! I was extremely hard pressed to find anything interesting about rocks! Sorry Dad if you are reading this from Heaven.

4. Like Julie, I have hazel eyes. Unlike her, I love mine.

5. I never leave the house without mascara on. NEVER! I am way too vain to not at least put in that little effort on my appearance.

6. I have secret desires to be a really great cook, right now the only thing food related that I am great at is ordering off of a menu!

7. I am a complete control freak and need to have my fingers in all of the things going on around me. I would be happiest if someone put me in charge of the world and I got to make ALL of the decisions!

Since I am a blog newbie and all of the people I know that have blogs have already been tagged, I will refrain from passing this on directly. However, if you have read all of this and are still lucid and not comatose and you yourself have yet to be tagged, consider yourself invited to join the game. It is actually much more fun than I would have thought.

Never underestimate the power of your preview!!


The original preview for my most recent kit was terrible! I should have never put it out there. The response to my kit has been underwhelming at best! So, I am going to give it another shot! Hopefully more people will be interested! Here ya' go! Download The Sun Also Rises

If you like these colors swing by the May Color Palette Challenge Thread at Hummies. I especially like the kits from my friends Julie and Dani!

Thursday, May 22, 2008

My May Palette Challenge Kit is Ready!

Well, it has been a crazy month and I have had a hard time finding time to get to this challenge at Hummie's World. But I am finally done. I have learned a lot by trying to work more with brushes and actions, so this kit has been a huge learning curve. I hope you enjoy it and can use it for your scrapping! Click on the preview to download! Enjoy!!


I have deleted the horrible preview for this kit. See the next post to see a much (I hope ) better preview!