Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Well, this holiday season is one we're not likely to forget.

This year we decided to stretch the holidays a bit and for the last few days before Christmas, we let the kids open one gift every day. December 23 was one such day. Kardynn picked out a gift from Annika.

She was delighted to unwrap a Hello Kitty makeup/toiletry kit. The girls immediately started to play with it but then they moved on to other things.  They were using post-its and making "beards" and taking turns pretending to be Santa.  We watched several performances of Santa interacting with little girls.  (In this case the "little girl" is bigger than Santa.)

They had also opened a marble run present so everyone took a turn making a structure.

Eventually we encouraged the kids to take showers.  But after a while, Dwight and I realized that it had been quiet for too long.  I went off to investigate and found two little girls locked in the kids' bathroom - never a good sign.

They had taken the three bottles of Hello Kitty nail polish and decided to "highlight" Kardynn's hair.  I only took one photo before Dwight suggested that I was giving the wrong message by taking photos.  So I have no pictures of the ensuing buzz cuts...which probably would have been tricky anyway since I became somewhat emotional watching their beautiful tresses falling to the floor.  But I'm getting ahead of myself, what you can't see here are the additional "highlights" on the sides, not to mention the additional mess of nail polish that was unveiled when we removed the bun.  It was definitely impressive.  That one blue streak, for example, went the entire length of her hair.

 

I spent quite a bit of time reading online about how to get nail polish out of hair and most of the suggestions were for nail polish remover (which I did NOT want to put on my baby's sensitive scalp).  Dwight tried to get it off with water but that didn't do much on the thick glob of nail polish.  We thought about just leaving it, and letting her have multi-colored hair, but that didn't seem like a good idea either.  So eventually we decided to go with the second most popular suggestion on the Internet - cut off the hair.  We had warned Annika that if Kardynn's hair ended up having to be cut off, we would cut off her hair as well.  Initially she was enthusiastic about the idea but when she saw my reaction, as it was happening, she started to get second thoughts.  I'll admit, it didn't really seem like *that* big of a deal until I saw the hair falling to the floor and then it seemed like the worst idea we'd ever had. 

But, hey, it's just hair.  It will grow back.  And on the bright side, I don't think we have to worry about these two putting nail polish in their hair ever again.  Let me tell you that seeing those two girls with their bald heads makes me incredibly grateful for two healthy - albeit mischievous - little girls.

Laundry

This is the behemoth pile of clean laundry that occupied much of my Mother's Day. (Dwight took the kids to his mom's house and I had 24 hours to myself.)



The week before I kept washing the clothes but had no time to fold them so the mound just kept getting bigger and bigger.



Eventually my family started running out of socks and underwear so I had no choice but to start folding.

By the way, I have a statement to make about that.  As the person who folds the laundry of every single member of this household - not to mention the person who purchase 99% of the clothing - I consider myself a bit of an expert on the family's laundry. I'm pretty sure that each of these persons owns more socks and/or underwear than they do shirts and/or pants (with the possible exception of my husband who does have A LOT of t-shirts). How exactly is it that they run out of underwear and socks? I don't understand. Furthermore, if you are completely out of socks and underwear, than why is it IMPOSSIBLE for you to find a place inside your presumably near-empty drawer to put your nice, neat folded laundry? Makes no sense to me. I'm pretty sure that there's some sort of conspiracy.

Laundry is such a major part of my life these days. I'm very particular about how I do it. I'm definitely a sorter. I'm also a very neat folder.



To say I'm a neat folder might be downplaying the reality just a smidge. Fanatical might be a better word. I'm fanatical about folding my laundry. I mean, I'm not crazy enough that I would actually re-fold a basket of laundry that wasn't folded to my exacting measures...definitely not that crazy (or at least I'm not crazy enough to 'fess up to it on my blog). But believe it or not, I actually don't mind folding laundry. It's one of those very gratifying jobs where you can easily see the progress you're making. I like that. Plus I've always been suspicious that I'm a tad OCD...so it totally appeals to that side of my nature.

Yep, I don't mind folding laundry but I HATE putting it away. I've started trying to get other members of the family to put away their own laundry. The other day I had the genius idea of racing the girls. I told them I would put away my clothes, Kardynn's clothes and Oskar's clothes (because he was at school) and that I could beat them. Kiersten finished first and then Annika beat me as well. As she was happily informing me that she won, I was thinking to myself, "No, I win because you put away your laundry in less than five minutes."  Score for Mommy!

Another reason I don't mind folding laundry is because I plant myself in front of the TV and watch episodes of Law & Order (that I've recorded on my DVR). That's the only time I watch Law & Order so usually there are plenty of episodes queued up that I've never seen. And I don't feel the least bit guilty about it. The only down side is that I won't watch Law & Order in front of the kids so it limits the time when I can do laundry. :(

Uh oh...I hear the baby in the other room singing "Shake your booty...shake your booty". Perhaps it's time I return to being a mother.

Grandma Van Belle

I've been thinking about things that I wanted to blog about...but with my Facebook addiction to tend to, I never get around to it in a timely matter, and then I forget what I was going to write about. Although...I think my few loyal readers are all on Facebook anyway so I think that's why I haven't worried too much about staying current here. But let me see if I can remember any of the things I wanted to write about.

I got home from Michigan yesterday. I had a really nice visit at Aunt Barb's house. I loved being able to just enjoy the kids and not worry about much else. I played with them on the beach, in the water and took them for a walk around the canal. Although we only went to the playground and then came back because Oskar informed me, "my bottom is worned out".

Other amusing things they said:

When we were walking around one of the sand bars in the lake, Annika was looking at the rippled sand and said, "Mommy, is this a zebra?"

While we were working on our second sand castle, Annika asked me to build some steps. I built some miniature sand castle sized steps and then some Annika sized steps. Oskar said, "Build me a ramp, Mommy so that we can bring a stroller."

I've been remembering Grandma a lot. Mom and I shared a lot of funny anecdotes and memories during our trip together. Grandma was such a character. That's the word I always come back to. We were laughing about how Grandma always had various different cases that she'd lug around with her - several briefcases loaded up with papers of all sorts. She was forever collecting clippings. She'd have a case for jewelry, a case for make-up. Come to think of it, I'm a lot like Grandma.

Grandma used to give us rolls of quarters and then she'd discipline us by taking away a quarter. If Danny and I would run to her with a squabble she'd tell us that if she wanted her to arbitrate, we'd each have to pay a "court fee" and then we'd have to accept whatever decision she came up with. This was usually enough to end our disagreement. We didn't want to put our money where our mouth was!!! :)