Grocery Store, Broken Light Bulb, and an Old Man

After Jenna's dance class today, we stopped at the grocery store to get bags of salad for dinner tonight. But this was a new grocery store; one that I've never been to before.

I had no idea where the salad was and I couldn't see it from the entrance of the store, so we started on the right hand side and walked along the edges of the store until we found the salads, because they are usually on some wall in every store. As we were walking, Jenna kept touching *everything* in sight. When I realized she was doing this, I asked her to stop. She didn't. I saw her little hands beginning to graze the glass bottles of barbeque sauce and I immediately grabbed her hand.

After asking her several more times I started to tell her that if she touched on more thing that she would lose her computer privileges tomorrow. As those words came out of my mouth, she knocked over a lightbulb and it, of course, smashed into lots of tiny bits.

We stopped. Jenna knew she was in trouble. Surprisingly, I didn't get all worked up about it, I just calmly told her that the lightbulb was broken because she didn't listen to me the first time I asked her not to touch all the merchandise. (We are currently working on listening on the first time directions are given. It obviously didn't work out too well today.) Jenna was crying. I was trying to talk to her and find somene to clean up the broken glass at the same time.

There was an older man standing about five feet away from us and as I got up to ask the lady at the deli counter to help, he looked at me and said, "That wouldn't have happened if she wouldn't have touched the lightbulb." Now I was ticked. Really ticked. I am used to the occasional spectacle that we can be in a store. I've shopped with screaming kids before, knocked over an entire display of Ragu spaghetti sauce before, and picked up 50 apples that have fallen off the display in the produce section because Abby decided to swipe the one from the very bottom. But I have never had anyone talk to me directly, and make such an obvious and irritating observation.

I looked at this guy and said, "Do you think I don't know that? Really, do you think I don't know that the lightbulb wouldn't have broken if she wouldn't have touched it?"

I know, I know . . . not a very nice thing to say and certainly not very pastor wifish of me, but I just couldn't hold back. I'm happy that this particular store is not my normal grocery store. I won't be going back anytime soon!

My Sweet Little Adventure

Sometimes I write posts simply because I don't want to lose the memories that have happened during the day. This blog is a lot of things for me, and one of them is a record of our lives. I don't scrapbook and I don't keep a regular journal, but I want to remember the "stuff" of our lives and this seems to be the only way that happens for me.

So today is a post about our little Abby. She's two and still an adventure and I love being her mommy. Here are a few things that happened today that deserve to be remembered (at least for me).

I was talking on the phone with a friend tonight as Abby was finishing up her dinner. She's generally messy and I have learned not to flip out about that, but tonight, she got extra messy. She had applesauce for dinner, as I glanced over at her and caught her rubbing appplesauce up and down her arms as if she were rubbing lotion on her skin. Before I got to her, she had moved to her face. So messy, but oh so cute:)

Every night we say prayers. We say the "Now I Lay Me" prayer and then the Lord's Prayer right after. At the end, we always tag on a few extra prayers for the day. Abby has never said anything during this time, but right as I was about to wrap up the prayer, she said, "My turn, my turn!" They I heard this little voice say, "I wuv Duh Duh (Jenna) and Mama and Da Da and Gamma and Papa. And I wuv Sheshus (Jesus)."

So, so precious.

I Can't Do It

Nate and I are in agreement that we are done adding to our family. We don't feel the need to try for a boy or 8 kids (which everyone always asks me since Nate is the oldest of 8 kids). I am happy with that decision and have been for some time.

My problem is the baby clothes. I have a desire to bless women who cannot afford clothes on their own with the large amount of baby clothes that we have accumulated in the last four years. There is this wonderful charity called, Hope, that collects items for people in need. Another perk is that they pick up your stuff from the curb every few months. I have never put anything out, but this month I am ready! I have a few bags of toys and old clothes of ours that I am ready to part with, and they are ready to go in our garage. I have a note on my calendar to put the clothes out next Wednesday. But I can't seem to bring myself to part with the the numerous large bins of baby clothes that occupy a large space in our garage.

I set a deadline for myself that I would at least go through 0-6 months for this pickup and get rid of most of those. But I can't do it. I stood in my garage tonight, looking at the bins of baby clothes and couldn't even open them to go through them.

I guess giving away the baby clothes is the final acceptance that I am not a mommy of babies anymore and that part of my life is over. And that makes me kind of sad. There's also another part to this. I JUST KNOW that the second I give my clothes away, God will start laughing and give me another little girl. You never know with God, and I'm not looking to give him a reason to laugh at me right now.

So, I can't do it. I'll keep working on it though. . . I've got four days!

Nightmare At The Mall Play Place

Next to those "kid friendly" grocery carts that have a two-seater car on the front with two steering wheels (which is impossible to navigate through the aisles without toppling over a display of Ragu spaghetti sauce), I LOATHE the little play areas that have become popular in malls. You know the ones. The ones with bright green turtles to climb on and cars to drive. The ones with squishy floors where many parents think it's free time for them and an anything goes time for their children?

I took the girls to the mall today to just walk around, have a girls' day out that included the Disney store, dinner, and an ice cream treat. I can never remember the best place to park, as to avoid the play area, and this time, right after we walked into the mall, there it was. Right in front of the Macy's where we came out of from the parking lot. I had obviously parked in the wrong spot. The girls wanted to play so badly, so I let them.

We had an awful experience during our play time and I vow never to go there again. (Let's hope I can remember where to park so I can avoid it all together). So here are my issues with the play areas in malls, based on today's experience.

Issue #1: The germs that must be crawling in that place. I'm pretty sure we'll have a cold or the stomach flu next week.

Issue #2: Big kids that run around like crazy people, knocking little kids down, and the parents that allow that.

Issue #3: Parents not watching their kids.

Issue #4: A little girl who pinched Abby and then pushed her off the bright green turtle. The parent saw this happen did nothing to stop it, didn't apologize to Abby or me, as she fell face first onto the ground crying.

Issue #5: Parents who stand directly behind me and give me dirty looks after I fall into them because their stroller is touching my heels as I am trying to take off Abby's shoes. Why stand that close to me?

Issue #6: Parents who let their little boy run around the play area in only a shirt and a diaper. And a full diaper at that. Seriously . . .gross.

Issue #7: Kids who don't let other kids play in the giant shoe (I think it was a shoe) that had more than enough space for 6 kids and the parents who won't let any other kids in either.

After Issue #4 happened, I scooped up my kids and left muttering under my breath that the play area was the worst place ever. I really wanted to give the mother of the little girl who pushed Abby off the turtle a piece of my mind, but I am trying to avoid drama these days and just kept on walking.

Although the play place was a nightmare today, we had a fun girls' day out:)

A Bit Of Our Day

In case you were all worried . . . we found Blossom! She was all wrapped up in a blanket that was on the couch, and even though I checked it once, I must not have checked well enough. So a crisis was averted, although I was getting pretty nervous and frustrated for a while there.

Today Jenna had her first dance class for the summer at the studio that I'm going to sign her up for in the fall. This particular studio offers a program through the local parks department, so I thought we'd try it out before I committed an entire year's worth of money to them. Jenna's never been in an official dance class before, except for an awful class of 2 year olds through the parks department a few years ago which was so disorganized it was ridiculous. So I vowed that the next dance experience would be with a good studio. So here we are.

We walk in today and Jenna immediately clams up, which shouldn't be a surprise to me, but I was caught off guard. Kind of like when she wouldn't walk down the aisle when she was a flower girl for Josh and Annie's wedding. Really . . . I know that is takes her a while to warm up and that she doesn't just jump into things, but I always seem to forget that. For the first ten minutes, she refused to stand in the circle with the kids, and stood there all shy and nervous. I was so upset that she wouldn't participate. I was thinking about how excited she was for this and how disappointed I would be if she were the kid that stood in the corner each week. (Kind of like swimming lessons when she just stood on the steps for a good 16 weeks.) I stayed in the room with her for a few minutes, but as soon as I left, she was fine. She was having such a great time, and it made me so happy to see her enjoy herself. Especially after we'd spent time and money on the shoes and outfit:)

Wish me luck on the swimming lessons though. We're starting those up again in the fall:) I only pray that she'll get off the steps this time:)

Blossom is on vacation . . .again.

By vacation, I mean that she is missing. I know she is in this house, but I cannot find her for the life of me.

Blossom is Jenna's little bear that is like a member of our family. She is her security, her friend, and her sleeping buddy. She's had her since she was very little.

Last time Blossom went on vacation, I'm pretty sure we lost her in our grocery store. We never found her and I ended up having to order a new one online. We told Jenna that Blossom was on vacation, and that worked for the week or so I needed to find a new one and have it delivered to the house. I can't do that this time. Blossom is a form of a Beanie Baby and is retired. It would be VERY hard to find one.

I saw Blossom today. Jenna had her this afternoon when she was tired and cuddled up to me on the couch. I've looked everywhere!

I've looked:
in the desk drawer (where Jenna has been known to stuff her)
in the refrigerator
in the freezer
in the pantry
in every laundry basket
in the bathtub
under every bed
in every bed
in every drawer
in the play kitchen
in the trashcans
in the garage
in the car
in the desk
in the toy bins
under the couch
behind the chair
outside
everywhere

So, hopefully, we won't be going to bed without our Blossom. We'll see though. I hope she isn't on vacation for long . . . I'm exhausted from looking for her and not looking forward to trying to get Jenna to sleep tonight:)

To Nate

I love my husband, and I love that God gave me the family that He did. Nate is a wonderful daddy, and I am the luckiest girl in the world to have him by my side in this adventure called parenting. Here are a few things that I love about Nate.

I love that he is always willing to play princess dress up.
I love that he actually sounds like the real Elmo when he makes our giant Elmo doll come to life.
I love that he is ready, willing, and able to change diapers, give baths, or get the girls ready at any given time.
I love that he sings the "La Dee Da Dee" part of a song from Cinderella to the girls as he pretends to waltz them around the kitchen like prince charming.
I love that he often turns into a tiger and chases the girls around the house.
I love that he wore a tiara during the entire performance of "Princesses on Ice."
I love that he takes the girls on dates to Blockbuster and King Egg Roll.
I love that he is ours.

Happy Father's Day!

Things I've learned lately.

1. Windex kills ants INSTANTLY. It's actually kind of fun to watch when they are trying to invade your kitchen.

2. Signing Jenna up for swimming lessons only results in her sitting on the steps for two full sessions, that would be 16 weeks, of lessons. Putting up the 8 foot pool in the backyard results in her doing all the things her swimming teacher tried to get her to do--with no fear. Sheesh!

3. Actually trying to stick to a budget is really, really hard.

4. Abby likes to play with the camera (when she can reach it) and likes to play hide and seek with the memory card. This particulaly made me furious in the five minutes before preschool graduation when I realized we had no camera.

5. There are some crazy, way too academic preschools around here. I checked into a few and the local Montessori school expected Jenna to be able to read. She's 4. They also said that at their school, by the end of Kindergarten, kids are able to identify parts of speech. What? That sounds a little developmentally off to me!!

I've finally accepted that I have smell issues.

I think, that I am THAT person. That person who is super-sensitive to smells. Especially candles, potpourri, and lotion--but the big one is cologne/perfume for me.

I have tried to deny my issue for quite some time now, but I've been running a series of tests on myself for the past few weeks, and I finally have to come to the realization that I am THAT person.

It all started when Nate went out and bought himself some nice cologne. Polo cologne to be exact. I really don't know what it's called, other than Polo in a nice green bottle. At first, I thought he was squirting too much (which I still think, but that is another issue). Every morning, he would get ready for work and I would dread him coming anywhere near me because the awful smell of his cologne seemed to envelope him like Pigpen's stench and linger in the house for hours giving me nasty headaches. I asked him to only put on one spray instead of two or three. But after a while, I couldn't stand it anymore, so I hid the bottle of cologne. Now, I should have just thrown it away, but I figured I'd get in really big trouble for that one, so I simply hid it. I told him I hid it, and he spent the next few months looking for it. No more yucky Polo cologne smell anymore and I was in heaven.

Then he found it. And started wearing it again. After I complained enough, he agreed to stop wearing it. Then . . . when we were in Houston, and he fell in love with Tommy Bahama cologne. I liked the smell too! Convinced that my headaches came from the nasty Polo cologne, I was so excited that my troubles seemed to be going away.

Well, the problem wasn't the cologne-it was me. The Tommy Bahama cologne does the same thing to me and it puts me in a difficult position.

When I ride in the car with Nate, I roll the window down. When I get in his car, my eyes sting from the faint smell of the cologne. I will often get a headache after hugging him before he leaves for work because the cologne gets to me. Last week, I put some of my perfume on, which I rarely wear, and I got a headache . . . so I for sure know that I have smell issues.

I can't ask Nate to quit wearing his cologne because he loves it, but I hate whining every day about the smell bothering me. I try to tell him that he wears too much, but he says that he doesn't. I think I just finally have to accept that the issue is not him, but it is me and my smell issues. If anyone has any good cologne suggestions that don't incite headaches, they are welcome!

The Strangest Thing

Last night, I hosted the first meeting of a book club that we are starting at church. It's just a bunch of girls meeting to talk about a book we're reading. Our first book is by Dr. Kevin Leman, 7 things he'll never tell you, but you need to know. We had a really fun time . . . nothing too serious, just fun talk about the way God made men:)

At one point, we ended up talking about making beds--I'm not sure how we got on that topic, but we did. Two women in our group talked about how they make their bed before they get into at night.

Really? I have never heard of this before!

I asked them if they made it in the morning, and they said no, that they only make it right before they get into bed at night so that that the covers are all straight.

I have just never heard of this before and thought it was a bit strange! If you don't make your bed in the morning, why go to the trouble right before you mess it all up again?

My two friends, however, were adament about the importance of making the bed before going to sleep:)

Does anyone else out there do that?

I think I might have to try it and see what they are talking about!