Headytail

Today I had Annika on my lap and Kardynn came along and tried to shove her off. This is nothing new. Kardynn is extremely possessive of me. I said, "Kardynn, this is my daughter and she can sit on my lap too.  I love her very much."  Kardynn replied, "No! I the daughter."

Just now Kiersten crawled up onto my chair and started playing with my hair. As she tugged at my ponytail holder Kardynn showed up and screamed, "No! My momma headytail on!!!" I chuckled. She looked at me and screamed, "No!That's not funny."

Now she's trying to take a picture of us with my MP3 player.

The Things Kids Say

Yesterday as I was headed out the door for a lunch date with my son, I informed the babysitter that my phone was almost dead so if she really needed to reach me, she could try just calling the restaurant. Six year-old Oskar pipes up, "Oh, your phone isn't working? It was probably a cosmic ray. They can mess up electronics."  The babysitter and I both struggled to suppress chuckles.  I joked with my friend later on that he's totally headed towards being one of those guys who's incredibly smart and knowledgeable but totally lacking common sense. 

This morning I was disgusted with Annika because she came into my room to tell me some totally trivial and mundane thing. (With four kids, it's pretty much a guarantee that I'll wake up to some kid who has an "urgent" matter to bring to my attention.  Urgent as in, "Mom, my socks don't match" or "Mom, yesterday you forgot to tuck me in for the twelfth time" or "Mom, I can't find my favorite shorts".)  Oops, I'm getting off track. I was getting a little too enthusiastic with my examples.  So anyway, as I was saying, Annika had just woken me up and I grumpily sent her back to her room. As she's walking down the hall I hear Kardynn shout from her room, "Annika, don't wake up me." My sentiments exactly, 'Don't wake up me.'

An Update on all the "Little Stones" Occupying our Days

School got out a week ago and I have been crazy busy ever since - but good busy.

On Saturday we went to a party for some friends. They spontaneously got married last year so this was the party they didn't have at that time.

On Sunday Amy and I took the kids to The Watermine and let Dwight celebrate Father's Day by having some time to himself. He played basketball at the gym for a couple of hours and then met up with us. We arrived shortly after they opened at 10 and stayed until after 4.  And though I was diligently applying sunscreen that entire time, I ended up with burned shoulders. Ironically my sister-in-law - who's a tanner, not a burner - suggested that I use vinegar on my burn. That worked really good.

On Monday I scanned photos while the babysitter entertained the kids. And then I took them to the Air & Space Museum (free parking after 4pm).  On Tuesday I took the kids to see Charlotte's Web, we went out to eat and then we went to the gym so I could workout. On Wednesday we went back to the gym (I swam another mile) and the kids had swim lessons. On Thursday the babysitter came back so I had special outings with Annika (hair cuts) and Oskar (lunch date) and then I worked on organizing my desk.  After that we went to the gym again.

I'm a little bummed though because I thought the babysitter would be back today so I had more errands to run and a special outing with Kiersten planned but now I'll have to do the errands with all the kids.  If I had realized, I would have just done everything yesterday and skipped the organizing the desk part.  Oh well.

So there you go. A week of running around here and there. I'm tackling my summer priorities with gusto (priority #1 - do fun stuff with the kids and priority # 2 - exercise). I've not downloaded pictures since last Saturday and what's really crazy - I've barely taken pictures. In fact, I think I might have actually missed a day.  Yikes!

AWOL

I've been AWOL. Sorry. This past week kicked my butt. We had so much stuff going on every single day.  But today was the last day of school so now we get to relax and chill.  Thank.goodness.

And yesterday I bought a new lens - the nifty fifty. I am loving it. I took a ton of pictures with very shallow depth of field...because I can. Dwight is not impressed. But I am so that's what matters.  Maybe I'll upload some of them and post a link for you so you can declare whether you're in my camp or in Dwight's camp.  :)

10:02 pm update click here to see twenty pictures I took with the new lens.

66 lengths

I swam more laps yesterday. It was a lot harder because I was sore and tired from the day before. But I swam 66 laps non stop...well...I say nonstop. I did put my feet down once or twice to adjust my goggles but otherwise I swam the entire time. Other people came and went while I was swimming laps. I was fascinated by this one guy who looked like a pretty decent swimmer to me but he would frequently stop and rest at the end of the pool.  And he only swam for like MAYBE 15 minutes.  Another dude swam like three laps and jetted.  (What's the point?)  Even though I never stopped to rest, I did mostly stick to the breast stroke.  Every time I would try to crawl I would realize just how tired I was.

Believe it or not, I forgot to look at the clock when I started but I think it took me about 50 minutes to swim 66 laps.  So I think that's a pretty slow time but whatever, I'm happy with it.

I did practice putting my head under for the crawl. My sinus infection is improving so I could breathe a little easier. I practiced breathing out through my nose with my head above water and after a few laps of that, I tried underwater.  No big deal.  I think I just had to get used to breathing out through my nose because typically I'm a mouth breather.  (More info than you ever wanted to know about me, right?!)

Why did I do 66 laps?  Well, the board at the pool said 64 lengths is a mile (I had read that there's debate about what constitutes a mile) so I figured I'd do 64 laps this time. And then when I finished that I think my brain got a little muddled with euphoria so as I was coming down the home stretch of the last length I thought, "Oh! I should do a little sprint" (because I like to sprint at the end of a run).  So I decided to sprint back to the other end. Of course I was exhausted by this point and my "sprint" probably looked more like thrashing to the life guards.  It took me about 30 seconds to swim the 25 meters.  (Next time I get in the pool I'll have to try sprinting on my first lap, instead of my last one.)  And then of course I had to swim back.  So there you have it. Sixty-six lengths.

LapCounter

I love swimming. I don't have fantastic technique or lightning speed but I enjoy it. I've never had a swim lesson in my life, as far as I know, and sometimes I entertain the idea of doing it. I'd love to learn how to turn at the end of the lane. And I'll confess that I usually "crawl" with my head out of the water - though at this point in my life I justify it to myself because I need to be able to hear if I get paged back to the childcare center, right?! 

Most of all I wish I could keep track of how many laps I've swum. I'm terrible at remembering stuff like that and it drives me crazy. Previously, as I've struggled to remember what lap I'm on, I kept thinking there must be some sort of gadget to keep track of that. The other day I finally remembered to go look online and sure enough, there are numerous gadgets for exactly that purpose.

I decided to get all wild and crazy with my money and I impulsively bought a SportCount LapCounter. There's a basic lapcounter OR for a few bucks more you can upgrade to one that keeps track of your pace and total time. But the basic one had tons more reviews and I figured I can keep track of the time easily enough so I went for simple (less stuff to break that way, right?).

Today was my first time trying it out and can I just tell you, I love, love, loved this little gadget! It was so easy to use.



I've often wondered how far I could swim but by the time I would get to like 25 laps, I would be really struggling to keep count. So I aimed low and asked the guards how many laps to swim half a mile - 31 laps. After counting to ten I doubled checked with the guard to make sure that a lap was two lengths of the pool (to the other side and back) and found out that in fact half a mile was actually 31 LENGTHS so I'd actually swum 20/31 lengths at that point. I decided I should go ahead and do a mile (62 lengths).  The added benefit to keeping track of lengths, instead of laps, was that I knew it was always odd at one end of the pool and even at the other so if I ever questioned whether or not I had actually hit the button, it was easy to double check myself.

Unfortunately I'm not exactly sure how long it took to swim my 62 lengths because on that tenth lap, I got paged to the childcare center. Off I went in my swimsuit. They told me I needed to change a diaper...which turned out to be a false alarm. (For some reason my two year old likes to announce that she has a poopy diaper. Of course I'm used to this and totally ignore her but they didn't know. *sigh*) I think it was good that I showed up when I did because a little girl in the bathroom had an accident so I was able to alert the staff.

Anyway, I got into the pool at like 12:55 and got out of the pool at like 2:05 but I'll bet I was out for the childcare adventure for at least 30 minutes. I hadn't been in the pool much more than ten minutes when I got paged and by the time I got back in, I know it was after 12:30.  Okay, okay, I know no one else cares about all these details. (Though if you're like me, you might understand what it's like to get obsessed with the STATS.)

Next time I'll have to keep better track of the time.  I doubt my time will be super fast because as soon as I get tired, what to I do? Yep, the breast stroke.  Tonight I was reading up on the various strokes and discovered that while the breast stroke feels the most comfortable (because you can breathe naturally), it actually burns the most calories.  Yippee.  :)

Tidy

• It makes me happy when my house is tidy.

• I'm trying to stop freaking out when people come over and my house isn't tidy. (note: It's typically NOT tidy when my kids are awake.)

• I joke that my house is actually tidier now than it was in the BEFORE KIDS days. It might be true.

• Sometimes I chastise myself that I don't spend more time enjoying life and less time doing housework...but other times I wonder if that just isn't how I DO enjoy life.  

Bedroom, originally uploaded by hezro.

Living Room, originally uploaded by hezro.

I'm Going on a Trip

One of my favorite ways to kill time with the kids is to play the "I'm going on a trip" memory game. Sometimes we do it in alphabetical order but lately we've been going hog wild and just saying any old thing. The other hotly contested element is who gets to go first. EVERYONE wants to go first.

Today I declared that we'd go from oldest to youngest. So Kardynn (with Annika's help) chose peanuts to take on her trip (and that was her last contribution to the game).

Kiersten, "peanuts, flowers"
Annika, "peanuts, flowers, a blueprint."

A blueprint? Really? How does she even know what a blueprint is? DOES she know what a blueprint is?

Annika adds, "So that we know how to build our house when we get there."

Alrighty then, I guess she does know what a blueprint is.

In case you're wondering, this is far as we got before we ran out of time:

Oskar: bakugan
Mommy: elephant
Kiersten: pajamas
Annika: mac & cheese
Oskar: silly bandz
Mommy: chocolate milk (at Annika's request)

Ancedotes...and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey...

Thanks to my friend Suzie's sharp eyes, my blog now has anecdotes instead of ancedotes. *whew*

Thanks Suzie!!

Tomato Sandwich

Tomato Sandwich, originally uploaded by hezro.

Today as I was toasting bread for my tomato sandwich, I thought of my Uncle Don. I always think of my Uncle Don when I toast bread because he's the person who pointed out to me that you can usually push up on the little toaster knob thing-a-ma-jobey (as demonstrated below) to easily get your toast out. This is a pretty cool trick and I actually think a lot of people don't realize you can do that with your toaster. Having said, I'm sure my Uncle Don would not have expected this to be the thing that would stick in someone's head about him. Of course this isn't the ONLY thing that makes me think of my uncle but it is one of the things. Uncle Don is a family doctor (I've called him with many a medical question over the years) and a really smart guy and he's funny (not to mention very nice). So yeah, it's quite random that TOAST is one of the main things that makes me think of Uncle Don.

Toaster, originally uploaded by hezro.

The sandwich I was making today is one of my summer favorites. I'm not necessarily a huge mayonnaise lover but this is the one sandwich where nothing else compares: toasted wheat bread, a thin amount of Hellmann's mayo, sweet tomatoes and a dash of salt. Yum.

Another irony is that I've always attributed these sandwiches to my grandfather (Uncle Don's dad - and my dad's dad). For years I thought I was copying a favorite of my grandfather's. But then a few years ago I discovered that this isn't actually how my grandfather ate his tomato sandwiches. I think he put margarine on his. *shudder* But despite my faulty memory, they still make me think of my Grandpa and I like that.

Today I sat out on our screened porch with my girls and ate my delicious tomato sandwiches. The girls all hate tomatoes so they had egg salad sandwiches. But how amazing does that sandwich look?! Apparently even Kiersten - the most notorious tomato hater of all - could see that it looked delicious so she asked for a bite. And guess what? She liked it and asked for a sandwich of her own. And then Annika wanted one too. And both of them gobbled down their entire sandwiches.

Tomato Haters, originally uploaded by hezro.

So thank you Uncle Don and Grandpa for helping my girls appreciate tomatoes, even if for only one afternoon.

Mini Me

Flowers, originally uploaded by hezro.

My tigerlilies are finally blooming. So naturally I had to grab my camera and snap a few photos. And I couldn't help but chuckle when MiniMe came running out with *her* camera to take photos too. There's no denying it - she is her mother's daughter.

Mini Me, originally uploaded by hezro.