State of Obvious

This might be kind of random, but it's what is on my mind today. I went shopping at the grocery store...always a depressing trip. Food prices are really taking a bite out of our pocket, especially it seems like we spend 2x as much just having Poppa living with us. Probably because he wants all kinds of special stuff that we never bought before. I grit my teeth every time the total pops up. I even clipped some coupons today in a feeble attempt to save some money. I saved about $10 on our $200 bill. Ouch. When I was loading my groceries up onto the belt that leads to the cash register, it got a chuckle out of the person in front of me. Have you ever noticed that at the grocery store, if one of the dividers is not available to put between the orders people create a huge artificial barrier? It's like we're afraid our groceries might touch each other. The person ahead of me put a nice 6 inch barrier between our orders and even after we got one of the plastic doohickeys...

Christmas was a little different this year. For Christmas Eve we started a new holiday tradition, dinner at Red Lobster! You'd be shocked by how packed the place actually was. The rest of the evening was spent at home waiting for the children to get to bed so that Santa could come and visit. I had the brilliant idea of hiding all the presents in the back of Eric's car. This worked very well even though a couple of times Eric's dad came close to spilling the beans (Poppa, kids in hearing range: Are you sure you want the kids to ride in the Escape, they might see things . Eric: They can't see any of the stuff back there . Me: SIGH ). Carly went to bed pretty early, for her anyhow, and we sent Josh up to his room for sleeping at about midnight. And waited. 1 am, Josh is still awake. 2 am, he comes downstairs for a "drink" and to tell us he can't sleep. I send him back to bed with videos and strict instructions not to come out of his room because I am going to...

I picked up a book at the store about ADD. Joshua has been officially diagnosed as ADD for about a year and a half. I feel a large quantity of guilt because I took this whole thing rather casually. We tend to think of ADD / ADHD kids as being problem kids, and Joshua is definitely not a problem child. He has always been sweet and mostly obedient, easy to please and able to entertain himself. The more I learn about ADD, though, the more I realize how much of a big deal it actually is, how many signs we missed, how many mistakes we made. For example, something I learned recently is that ADD often has ticks as a side affect or symptom. When Joshua was a baby he used to pull on his hair, just on a little patch near his temple. When he stopped the pulling, he started popping his eyelids (that started a couple years ago or so), and when he stopped popping his eyelids all the time he started snapping his fingers. All these little things seemed weird and the snapping in particular was ...

Some of you may remember that about 5 years ago Joshua cut his own hair. He took a big chunk out of the front of his hair, which I did not notice until Jenn pointed out that the front of his hair looked like a section was missing. Joshua decided to repeat his foray into the realm of hair stylist, except this time he didn't experiment on himself. That's right, he cut Carly's hair. 2 big chunks of hair from her curly black head. When I noticed that her hair seemed a bit...wrong, I asked Josh if he cut he hair. He answered no but with that tiny shake of the head that indicates, ever so clearly, his guilt. He tried to convince us that Carly must have done it. I, however, knew this wasn't true because she hasn't quite mastered holding the scissors and cutting at the same time. I cooked Thanksgiving dinner, the whole shabang , for the first time ever (with some help from Eric). Normally I just make a side and take it somewhere. The food was much better than I expected. I ...

We put up our Christmas tree last week. I can almost hear a collective sigh and rolling of eyes ripple across the waves of the internet. It's a small Christmas tree, maybe 4 foot, and it is out of the box. We can't have real trees in the Townhouse, even if I thought I wanted one. It has white lights and a strange collection of ornaments...John Deere mini tractors, pictures of the kids each year at Christmas; a giant silver star hanging near the bottom; some straw ornaments that remind me of my Grandparents; a small tin silver angel from my Aunt Nancy; a train with Santa on it from Julie; a tiny sparkling Santa that once lived in the Gingerbread House supplies at Mom's house; a couple ornaments we made the first year we were married; some beaded bells Charlotte and I made; a white crocheted angel from Aunt Mary Jane; and a little Santa holding a light on top instead of a star. It is a cute little tree, one that speaks of family and memory more than beauty. I do think it is p...

Carly has been fascinated with pumpkins this fall season. Everywhere we go: "Look! Punkys! Punkys!" Josh went to a pumpkin patch for cub scouts and got to pick out a pumpkin to bring home. Tonight we gutted and carved it. Carly's fascination is henceforth fear. Perhaps it was wiggling the dangly pumpkin guts in her face, or the insistent command "Not too close, Carly!" repeatedly issued from her brother while I carved out the face. Maybe it was the candle inside, or Josh jumping out from behind tables, chairs, corners every time she entered a room. Any way you slice it, Carly decided pumpkins were scawy. Some pictures of the fun: Josh's best scary face Carving it up: A pretty good impression of our pumpkin face: Carly "washing"...I'm not sure why she called it washing: The Headless Horseman: Happy Halloween!

I am very fortunate that both of my children have been willing cuddlers. I love snuggling up with them, feeling the smooth plump baby skin they both still have, hearing them breath, listening to the fast thumping of their hearts. Today, Carly and I are both sick. Not just "oh my nose is runny sick". Oh no! Sick like "I sound like I have typhoid, stay away" SICK. I've been teetering on the sick side of things for a couple of weeks now. I haven't been able to sleep enough and normal every day activities leave me on the bad side of functioning. Carly started with the sniffles last week and passed them on to me (why oh why must I kiss those sweet infected cheeks and fingers so often!), the sniffles have bloomed into a hacking cough and on/off fever. What makes this doubly joyful is that I have a choir concert Friday and Saturday night! But back to the subject at hand. Eric put the feverish and sniffly Carly in my bed with me before he left for work. I enjoy havi...