A healthy dose of birth control

Good news!  I figured out a way to get Claire to let me brush her teeth.  Apparently if I sing “Popcorn Popping” like a clown on crack she happily opens her mouth and lets me brush away.

In other news, she also came down with a nasty cough a couple nights ago.  The husband has actually been sick for weeks and finally went to the doctor to find out he had RSV, of all things, so there is a good chance that is what she has too.  At 10:00 PM we could hear the dreaded deep, strong, barky cough coming from her room.  It woke her up and caused her to cough so hard that she threw up all over the floor.  Poor girl.

Last night we went in to check on her around midnight and were punched in the face by the smell of vomit as soon as we walked in the room.  It seemed extremely odd, since we never heard anything aside from a little coughing, so there’s no way she actually threw up, right?  Upon closer inspection, we discovered vomit on her sheets.  We rolled her over and lo and behold, there was barf covering her pj’s, blanket, and hair.  It must have been a rather pleasant and peaceful experience for her this time around, because nary a peep did she make.  We woke her up, stripped her and the bed, and discovered chunks of broccoli barf dried in her hair…and on her cheek…and down her neck…and onto her back… and on her hands.

This is the kind of stuff they need to teach to crazy teenagers in sex ed classes.  Are you ready to clean up chunks of broccoli barf at midnight instead of partying with your friends?  ARE YOU? If that doesn’t scare them straight, I don’t know what will.

In the tub she went, the poor little thing bleary eyed and bewildered, wondering why she was woken up from a peaceful sleep and thrown into the water.

I sure do love being a mom and my little girl.  But if there was one thing I could eliminate from motherhood, it just might be cleaning up vomit.

What do you other parents think?  What would be the one gross/onerous task you would eliminate from daily life with kids?

Tags: barf, late nights, sick

Home again, home again…

Well, I’m back from a week in the Caribbean.  It’s ok if you’re jealous, you probably should be.  We had a great time.  Explored some AMAZING beaches, ate a lot of good food, went on some adventures, got good and sunburned, and enjoyed relaxing with my sweetheart.

Now its back to the daily grind.  I’m trying to muster up some enthusiasm but am having a tough time.  After seeing the beautiful sights of St. Martin, St. Thomas, and Grand Turk, it’s hard to return to the drab routine.  Don’t get me wrong, I am happy to be home.  But I miss the color of life in the Caribbean.  The vibrant greens and blues and pinks and oranges.  Sometimes I feel my life here is so…gray.  Gray winter outside.  Gray townhomes.  Gray carpet and cubicle walls at work.  Blah…..

We’ve been Googling job opportunities and housing in St. Thomas since we got back.  Maybe it will become a reality someday…?

Tags: Caribbean, fun, vacation

The fun never stops around here

As the snow started melting a few weeks ago we noticed our tiny backyard looked rather different.  We put grass in a couple of years ago, and last fall it looked just fine.  Now, it looks like this:

This, my friends, is the work of a vole, a hamster/mouse-like rodent that burrows and eats roots and grass.  For a couple of weeks we could not figure out what sort of creature would make runways in the grass.  Then one day recently I saw it poking it’s little head out of one of the holes, causing a scramble by my husband to exterminate the rodent.  He tried drowning it by sticking the hose down one of the holes, but it soon emerged soaking wet from another hole and began scurrying along it’s little runways, my husband dousing it with water the whole time.  The thing suddenly made a dash for the open doorway, where our daughter was sitting in her highchair.  With a flying leap Brady jumped onto the patio and sprayed the vole into hiding under our BBQ.  When he came down the steps to inspect it, the vole charged him, causing him to let out a scream, leap back onto the patio, and spray it with water more vigorously.  The vole then disappeared down another hole and we haven’t seen it since.

Well!  Cut to last Saturday.  After returning home from the blogger brunch I attended, I was showing my mom (who was kind enough to baby-sit) the damage the vole had done to our backyard.  As she was looking out the window she suddenly exclaimed, “Rache!  There’s a snake out there!”  I dashed to the window, and to my horror there was indeed a snake just chillin’ on the grass.  Oddly, the first thing that popped into my mind was well I hope it ate the vole! But then reality hit again: there was a SNAKE six feet away from my house.  At least this time it wasn’t IN my house, but if one got in before, this one could too.

My petite, super-brave little mother marched right out there with a rake and told me to get a trash bag.  Already shaking, I handed it to her and was about to dash inside, but the wind was blowing and she couldn’t could the bag open and scoop the snake in at the same time and needed help.  I tried to pawn it off on Claire, but she turned me down.  Slacker!  Darn kid needs to start earning her keep around this place.

I hope none of my neighbors were out, because they would’ve overheard this:

mom:  Ok, just hold the bag open…come on snake…ooh, yuck…come on…

me:  ohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!

mom:  ok, almost got him!  Now, Rache, just hold the bag open-

me:  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

mom:  Crap!  Lost him, ok here we go.  Haha!  Ok.  Rache, hold the bag- yeah, just hold the bag open-

me:  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

mom: Rache, come on, just hold the bag open!  Just like that!  Haha!  Ok, I think I’ve got him!  Crap, you can’t drop the bag!  Just hold it open for a sec…

me:  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

As you can tell, I was a huge help.

By some magic we were able to get the horrid thing into a bag and tie it off and throw it in the dumpster down the street.  I didn’t know what else to do with it.  And it smelled. The snake, that is, not the dumpster.  Well actually, yes, the dumpster did too, but you know what I mean.  Have you ever heard of a snake smelling bad?

So.Gross.

Confession

Internet, I have a confession to make:  I am socially inept.

Ok, that’s too strong of a statement.  I am not socially inept.  I get along just fine with people and can hold my own when necessary.  I guess the better term is that I am shy.  But sometimes that makes me feel socially inept.

The odd thing is I have no fear of public speaking or anything like that.  I’ll get up and give presentations and actually enjoy it.  But when it comes to socializing with strangers that is where I get all anxious and feel like I’m all thumbs and two left feet and like my tongue is swelling up in my mouth or something.  Why, I do not know.  It drives me crazy.  And the older I get the worse it gets.

In all honesty there are days when I feel like I would be perfectly happy forever with just a small circle of friends and family, never to have to network or build relationships elsewhere.  I know that is completely unreasonable and really not true either.  Deep down I need other people just like anyone else, and in this world it’s not what you know it’s who you know, right?  So I try to force myself to get out there and be a real person once in a while.

(I just read over what I wrote and it sounds so pathetic. Good grief.)

About a week ago I stumbled across a blog I love written by a local woman.  She was hosting a free blogger brunch on Saturday the 20th to help launch a service project.  At first I blew it off, because of course I NEVER do anything like that.  Make small talk, with strangers?  BY MYSELF? Yeah right!  But the more I thought about, the more I knew it would be a good thing.  There would be other women there with the same interests as me.  I could get involved in some sort of service project and therefore be a better person because of it.  Besides, it was like, 10 minutes away from my house and I had a babysitter, so I had absolutely no excuse.

The event was being hosted at the Blue Lemon restaurant in Highland, Utah which was really awesome of them because they did it for free.  It was actually really beautiful, so hit them up if you’re hosting an event!   The whole time I was driving out there I resisted the urge to turn around and return to my safe haven of shyness.  BUT, I went in, slapped on a timid smile, and did my best to get out there.

We did a “speed-dating” type thing where we rotated around getting to know the different women, what they blog about, etc.  It was awesome!  I’ve never met so many nice ladies in one place like that before.  We then compiled ideas for a fabulous service project that I will post about in the future in case anyone else wants to get involved (you should!).

And Internet, I have another confession to make: I walked away from that blogger brunch feeling great.  Yes, it was outside my comfort zone and I felt a moment of terror when I first walked in, but I was so proud of myself for actually participating.  Plus, I finally did something for myself for once.  I got to meet new people and talk about something I’m interested in, and not go to work or do homework or wash dishes or wipe noses or all those other things that dominate my time these days.  It was an amazing feeling to do something I had chosen to do, and not something I felt obligated to do. Hopefully I can get a taste of that feeling more often in the future!

Tags: bloggers, fears, shy

Fish-sitting

This is Batman.  He lives in a flower vase.

He belongs to one of the little neighbor boys.  We are taking care of this bad boy while the family is out of town.

Batman the Fish.  How cute is that?

Tags: Batman, fish, too cute

When it rains, it pours…part 2

So as mentioned before, the week (which is now a little ways past…sorry for the delay), continued to be an adventure.  Thursday brought more barfing, but Friday and Saturday seemed to promise some much needed normalcy.  We were so optimistic that we actually rented a movie, I know, CRAZY right?  Somebody stop us, we might go to bed at 10:30!  We put the kid down to sleep and went downstairs to our little home theater to enjoy the show.

Not 45 seconds after starting the movie Claire started crying.  The hubby ran upstairs to get her, and I decided to follow in order to assist where needed.  Now, let me pause a moment to describe our basement.  It’s not particularly large, most of it we recently finished.  When you come down the stairs you are met by a door to our unfinished laundry/storage room and then there is a short hallway to our entertainment room.  As I was running down the hall to the stairs I noticed a grayish rope sticking out under the laundry room door, which I found extremely odd since I didn’t remember us having a gray rope.

I stopped dead in my tracks.  We don’t have a gray rope.  We especially don’t have a gray rope with scales.

My heart started pounding and I raced up to the baby’s room where the hubby was trying to console her.

With a shaking voice I said, “You need to come downstairs right now…we have a SNAKE in our basement!”

The hubby’s face went white and all three of us raced back downstairs to see that the SNAKE (shudder!) had fully revealed itself and was just chillin’ in our hallway.

We were paralyzed.  Never in my entire life have I had any type of reptile in my home.  I never really thought I was afraid of snakes, until I saw one in my home. Hubby hates snakes with a passion.  Not quite as much as he hates mice and rats, but snakes are right up there for him.  We just stood on the steps, mouths agape, and wondered what on earth we were supposed to do next.  We couldn’t kill it with a shovel, blood would get all over the carpet.  That meant we had to catch it.  Ugh!

We took turns watching the snake and running around the house to find something to put it in, however, while it was on my watch it got tired of hanging out in the hallway and quickly slithered back under the laundry room door  and into the mess of the storage room, all while I stood there screeching and clutching at the baby.

We couldn’t find it in the storage room.  It really seems to have disappeared into some small hiding space, and we’re too afraid to go poking around with much gusto.  We created an entire fortress around the base of the door in an attempt to keep it from escaping and prayed that it would go out the way it came in (which is a mystery to us, since we have no idea how it got in).  My brave sisters came over the next day and poked around, but we couldn’t find anything.

So now we still have a snake in our basement.  It’s been almost 2 weeks.  Doing laundry is a two man job as one person has to stand guard as the other throws clothes around as fast as humanly possible.  The sucky thing about snakes is there is no real easy way to get rid of them.  You have to either catch it or kill it.  There’s no such thing as snake traps or snake poison.  Yuck yuck yuck!  Someone pointed out that at least we won’t have mice in our basement.  Yeah, way to see the bright side…we don’t have mice, we just have a 20 inch long SNAKE!  No biggie!  The person who pointed that out is apparently some sort of snake enthusiast and said that it’s no big deal, we just have to hope that it isn’t a female that is going to give birth to a whole LITTER of snakes IN OUR HOUSE!  Yeah, no big deal.

Hang on for a second while I hyperventilate.

So, there you have it.  Snake in the house, mystery to where it has gone.  Possible infestation of baby snakes on the horizon.

So how are your holidays shaping up?

Tags: gross stuff, phobias, snakes