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Monday, June 28, 2010

Out of the mouths’ of babes: All Ryan

So Ryan says some rather off-the-wall stuff, more so than Zach. So, this version of out of the mouths’ of babes is ALL RYAN.

Ryan to me RE: Zach "He's not MY brother. You can have him."
Me to Ryan "Who said 'Let the little children come to me'?" Ryan "Um, me." Me "No Ryan it was someone in the Bible." Ryan "Mommy, I AM in the Bible."
Ryan: "I don't want a shower. I want to be stinky and gross."
Ryan "I can't color in this anymore throw it away." Me "Well why can't you?" Ryan "This page is TORN." (last page in coloring book) Me "Are any others torn?" Ryan "No, but it doesn't matter, throw it away."
Me "Ryan pull your undies up, your crack is showing." Ryan "OK Mommy." (minute later) Ryan "Mommy!" Me "What?" Ryan "Look!" (turns around and shows me he has pulled the back of his underwear down so his whole butt is showing) Ryan "Is my crack still showing?" (giggles and runs away)

Ain’t having a four-year old grand?

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Sunday Sayings (6/27)

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count.  It's the life in your years.

- Abraham Lincoln

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

How does God answer prayers?

Zach asked me this recently, and I had trouble explaining it to him so that he’d understand.

Well, let me tell you how God just answered one of mine.

I was sitting here at my computer crying, there’s just so much going on in my life right now and I’ve been so stressed and worried and it all has just built up to a breaking point this afternoon. While I was crying Belly was sitting on the floor across the room drinking her bottle and watching Dora. I must have made some noticeable sound because she gave up her bottle and crawled over to me. She pulled herself up and was patting my leg, her way to say up, so I picked her up and put her in my lap. She turns around to face me, wraps her little arms around my neck, and presses her cheek to mine in a long sweet hug. (She just started giving them last week.) Not long after she starts hugging me Dora ends and Nick Jr. plays Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” Odd choice for Nick Jr. I know. Belly sits in my laps and hugs me through the entire song, and at the end she wants down.

And I no longer felt like crying.

Right before I started crying I’d been praying asking God how I was going to get through all this when all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cry.

I know there’s no guarantee that everything is going to be all right, but I feel like today it. I can make it through the rest of today. So see, God does answer prayers.

Monday, June 21, 2010

A sad yet pleasant surprise.

Saturday in the mail I got a check for $100 from my grandmother.

In her note she included she said it was to buy Zach and Belly something for their birthdays and to help us out a little since I refuse to ask for any money or to take it when she calls or I visit and she offers.

This grandmother would be my father’s mother. She is in the mid-stages of dementia, something she has lived in fear of getting since not only did she care for her mother, who had it, she also watched her mother care for her mother when she had it. And yes in case you’re wondering, I live with the fear that one day I too will have it. I know the genetic link is a low percent, but if you look at my family history its too common to not worry. They all started showing signs of it before the age of 65, which also shows a greater predisposition to it being hereditary in this case. I remember, since I was in my early teens when my great grandmother died, how scary and sad it was for our family to watch her deteriorate. She spent her last few years hallucinating and living in a fog that never let up. In her last year of life my grandmother had to place her in a nursing home since she had also become paranoid and violent. It broke my grandmother’s heart. Now, even though my grandmother has been taking medicines to try to treat and prevent it, to the point of using experimental medicines, she has it too.

That is why I refuse to take her money when its offered. I’d hate for anyone to think I was taking advantage of her, and yes a few in my family would. The sadder part is that those few have no hesitation doing so themselves. She’s not too bad as yet, but it’s becoming more and more noticeable. So while its nice to get the check, it just makes me sad. When I call to tell her I got it will she remember even sending it?

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Sunday Sayings (6/20)

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."

- Albert Einstein

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Contemplating on how I post.

Patty (the main lady on the Justmommies website and one of their Mommy Blogs contributors) posed a question on the blog asking:

“How do you turn your thoughts into posts you are satisfied with?… do you just blog whatever or do you try to craft your posts? What do you do when you are inspired to blog about something but you can’t get your words out right? Do you scrap it or keep working on it till you are happy with it?”

(read her whole post here: Mommy bloggers, how do you craft your posts?)

I was thinking about how I would reply to her (which I still plan too!) and it got me thinking enough about it to make a blog post here about how it is for me.

Its a convoluted process that I use on blogging.

My first step is, well, live my life. As I go through my day something will usually trigger the impulse to blog. Be it something one of the boys have said or something Belly did. Or it will be what I cooked, or what I did. Sometimes it’ll just be about something I read, saw, or wish I had done differently. About 90% of my post ideas hit me at night while I’m laying in bed going over my day.

Next step, think it to death. Once I have an idea I’ll sit (or lay) and think and think on how I’d go about making my post. What the focus will be, the tone I’ll use, the syntax. Do I want to post it in my own “voice,” or do I want to take the time to make it easy to understand and be read without readers having to be fluent in Trishology? Do I want to include pictures? Do I even have any pictures I could use? Will it be humorous or silly or angry?

Step three, get to typing. When I get the chance I sit down, pull up Live Writer, and prepare to be confused, angry, thoughtful, frustrated, and drained. I’m not one who can go through type a rough draft of a post and then go through and fill it in with the meaty details. I type out a sentence and think about it in relationship to the sentence before it. Do they flow well? Am I keeping my tenses correct? Is this really how I want to put my thought down? Did I throw in any cuss words without noticing? (Yeah… I swear a lot in my thoughts and type my thoughts as I think them so very often they get included on accident.) Are there any red squiggly lines reminding me that I have no knack for spelling at all? I’ll finish a paragraph then go through and re-read the whole thing. Do I still like it? Do the sentences combine together to form a coherent thought? Is it choppy and stilted? I go through this as I type the post re-reading constantly to see how it all flows and meshes, and I just keep at it until I’m happy with it.

The final step, do I like it? Once I finish typing the whole thing and feel I have no thoughts at all left to add to my post I do a final read through. I try to catch any mistakes that seem glaring to my eye, or that Live Writer has so thoughtfully underlined as if to say “Yo! This ain’t right!” Then I sit and I ponder. Did I get the point across that I was trying to make? Does it at least attempt to make sense? And most importantly, do I like what I wrote? Since I try not to second guess myself, I, at this point, pat myself on my back and think “Way to go Trish, you did it and didn’t punch the computer as an outlet of your frustrations,” then click the publish button. Yeah I may, a week or two later, think, “What the hell was I thinking when I typed that?!” But I never second guess myself enough to remove it. I figure if I liked it enough to get through the whole thinking and typing process then it was really what I was thinking and feeling at the time and it deserves a place with the rest of my thoughts.

So, that’s how I blog. Like I said it’s not the easiest or shortest process, but at least you readers can comfort yourself in the fact that I think really long and hard about something before posting it to my blog in an explosion of word vomit.

Top 10 Songs Played on My IPod

This is just a fun bit of info on me. Here are the top 10 songs that have been played on my IPod.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

That yummy fish

DSCN7229 Yeah, my kids have no knack for remembering the names to food. lol Anyway, today I’m going to share with you the recipe for, a dish Ryan and Zach call, That Yummy Fish.

Ingredients:
4 Tilapia fillets
2 peices of bread
Salt, Pepper, Italian Seasoning, Onion Powder, and Garlic Powder
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

(will also need aluminum foil)

Directions:
Lightly sprinkle bread with Italian seasoning and the onion and garlic powder, then broil in oven at 500 degrees until the tops are a light brown, take bread out flip over and season that side too, place bread back in the oven and broil again until light brown.
Switch oven from broil to bake at 425 degrees.
Get a bowl then rub the two pieces of toast together using the bowl to catch the crumbs, do so until you either run out of the bread or untoasted parts show through. Add 1/4 teaspoon salt and pepper, and a 1/4 cup parmesan then mix together.
Line a pan with aluminum foil and then spray with a non-stick thing (like Pam). Place the fish on the foil and then drizzle the oil over it. Sprinkle half of the crumb mixture over it then flip fish over. Drizzle oil over this side too and sprinkle the rest of the crumbs over it. Lastly sprinkle the rest of the parmesan cheese on top.
Cook in the oven until the fish flakes easily with a fork. (About 10ish minutes.)

(*Note – since I’m cheap for the parmesan we just use the stuff that comes in the green can thing that you can sprinkle on stuff like spaghetti. Also, you can cut most of the steps if you buy Italian Seasoned Bread Crumbs, but again, we’re cheap.)

Monday, June 14, 2010

Review of Emily Van Do’s “Mama Never Told Me”

(Note: Its taken me a bit longer than I planned to do this review. As much as I enjoy this book it was really difficult for me to think of how to phrase all my thoughts on it.
*This book was given to me free of charge for the purpose of this review.)

cover

Title: “Mama Never Told Me…”
Author: Emily Van Do
Illustrator: G. F. Newland
Website: www.mamanevertoldme.org

About the book:
The front cover gives you a good idea of what to expect in the line “A diary of unbelievable comments and questions posed to a pregnant woman” and the humorously cute picture of the tired looking pregnant woman dressed in what many expecting moms would prefer to wear all day, a robe and comfy jams.
The book itself is full of full page color illustrations with laugh out loud worthy comments that’ll have you turning the pages just to see what on earth could top what you just read. The questions and comments posed to this woman (the author) during her pregnancy is enough to have anyone who has been pregnant or is pregnant wince in sympathy.

My thoughts:
When it was inquired on who would want to read and review this book I was instantly interested. I love books, and have a great fondness for pregnancy books that aren’t trying to tell you what to do, but that are purely humorous and for fun. After looking at a preview of “Mama Never Told Me…”, which can be found at the book’s website, I knew I just had to do the review. As someone who has been pregnant in high school and twice in college I felt who can be better qualified than someone who has been asked and told all manners of rude and sometime moronic things from pre-teens (I have four younger siblings who all sadly have friends), teens, teachers, and other adults.

I was extremely excited when the book came in and read through it twice that night. It only has 32 pages, and only the introduction has a full page of writing and the backsides of pages are blank. I found the book vastly humorous and some of the comments were dead on many that I had received myself. Emily Van Do did a great job capturing the comments that I think people just don’t think about before uttering. The illustrations are just perfect for the tone of the book. The frustration and sometimes humiliation women feel when hearing these types of things comes across so well in the face of the pregnant lady. I think the match of words and pictures is wonderful. I found the book highly funny.

I found the book so entertaining I showed it to my mother the next day when she came over to visit. She too found it to be very amusing, but not quite as much as I did, so I asked her why. She said the only real problem she had with the book was the fact that instead of saying butt they always said the swear word version. That alone, she said, would turn her off buying the book for others. I honestly hadn’t really noticed it until she pointed it out, but I don’t have the cleanest mouth myself. I can see how though it could bother people who choose not to use words like it.

Also, while there were many comments that I definitely had heard myself, there were still quite a few that I had never heard directed at me or other pregnant women. Those sort of left me thinking, “Really? Who on earth would say something like that?” Unbelievable as those were, they were still funny, and, I feel, added to the feel of the book.

My recommendation:
Would I buy the book for myself? No, probably not, but then I don’t plan on being pregnant again. Even if I did, I still probably wouldn’t buy it just because it’s not the type of thing I would buy myself. Would I buy it for others? Oh most definitely. Its the great sort of humor and stress relief the extremely pregnant would love, and a great gag type joke for the expecting moms at baby showers. The only thing I would add is to be sure you really know the person you buy it for. I wouldn’t buy it for someone who doesn’t like cussing, nor for those who get offended by boob and butt jokes.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

The next hurdles down

So I started work last week. I should be there today, but both Belly and I are sick, so I’ll use this time to catch up.

Tuesday
We only had six of the twelve children show up, which was wonderful. It gave my helper and I a  chance  to get used to things without a dozen  one year olds underfoot. The lady I’m working with is, well, nice. She seems really eager to help. We  didn’t get our schedule until half way through the day so we were a little off for most of the day. But overall I’d say it went really well.

Thursday
Nine of the twelve showed up, which sort of stretched the two of us quite a bit in the class, and especially when trying to get nine kids outside to the playground to and from recess, especially since two of them (Belly included) don’t walk. Getting everyone settled in for lunch and nap was a little more difficult, but again we managed.

Belly’s doing… ok with it. She doesn’t seem to have any problems with me holding and playing with the other kids, really she just sort of ignores me. However, since she’s still napping from 9:30ish to 11:30ish then again from 1-3 (and another later 1 hour nap) her nap schedule has been thrown into a tailspin. As of Thursday she was refusing to sleep during the nap time. Also we eat lunch there about an hour earlier than she normally does so she doesn’t have much interest in eating their either.

But really for the most part it went fine.

Monday, June 7, 2010

I’m so behind…

and it’s all my fault!

(lol)

I’m an odd duck and don’t just type and save drafts then edit them and post. No I plan out all of what I want to say, mess around with wording, and such in my head. Yeah its as ineffective as it sounds. I have 4 posts fully ready in my head, 3 for this blog, one for another, and I kept messing and tweaking with them I’m now a full week behind on my blog, AND I forgot to post my Saturday Snapshot and Sunday Saying.

However, I’ve got all three of the kiddos home all day today so I won’t have time to just sit down and type out all the posts at the moment. I’ll try to get at least one done tonight to be up for tomorrow though.