Never rock your baby to sleep

"Never rock your baby to sleep."

I can't tell you how many times I've been told that.  I try pretty hard to listen to that advice, but from time to time, you just have to tell the experts to shove it.

Kenyon has been fussy lately, running a bit of a temperature and trying to teethe.  On nights like these, I disregard all the 'rules' and snuggle with my baby.

I absolutely love rocking him to sleep.  He's the best cuddler in the world, hands down.  He has to be.  There is no one in the world that can be more snuggle-ish than my son.  I hope that I never forget these quiet moments and the way his face burrows into the crook of my arm and he plants his left hand firmly on my chest, telling me not to move from my current post.  I simply can't soak in moments like that enough. 

Sometimes you just have to disregard the experts and take the time to rock your baby to sleep. 

Birthday Wishes

A conversation in our house this morning. 

Person 1:  Honey, you know what I'd like for my birthday present this year?  I'd like a long coat rack/storage bench in our utility room.  Something where I can hang chore coats up top and dirty mud boots down below, set gloves on the bench to dry.  Do you think you could do something like that?

Person 2:  Sigh.  Yeah, probably so.  Give me a day or two and I'll see what I can come up with. 




Guess which one was Wesley, and guess which one was me. 

The day I tried to throw our child

Alternate titles for this post include:

• Why we now hold hands while nursing
• I'm glad our child is too heavy to throw (far)
• I hate snakes

We have a routine in the mornings.  I get ready for my day and then wake Kenyon.  He gets a diaper change, wardrobe change, and then we sit in the rocking chair where he nurses and I watch the Today Show.  (Miss you, Ann Curry!  Side note: I always wanted to go to New York and hold up a sign on the Plaza that said "Anna Curry came to meet Ann Curry."  But I digress.)

Last week we were finishing up our morning routine (ie, nursing).  One of the opening news stories that day was about some deadly poisonous snake in Australia that fell onto a car's windshield.  The driver turned on his windshield wipers to try and 'sweep' the snake off his vehicle, and the passenger whipped out his cell phone to take video of the escapade.  (Do folks just walk around with their phones on the 'video' setting nowadays?  I can never record something that quickly.)

Let it be known that I am deathly afraid of snakes.  They are the devil in the Bible for a reason, folks.

So I was already on high alert while watching this segment.  Suddenly, I felt something small and cold start to 'slither' across my chest.  I then did what any reasonable person would do - I screamed like a banshee and tried to throw the deadly poisonous snake that had obviously just snuck into my house across the room.

I looked down just in time to see that it was my son's hand that had 'slithered' across my chest.  I jerked my hands that were holding him back down so he didn't complete his sail across the room.  His eyes were huge.  After hearing my scream, he screamed (we all screamed for ice cream!) and started to cry.  I screamed again for good measure and started to cry along with him.

Since then, we hold hands like a loving mother and child while he nurses.  I also don't watch shows that involve snakes. 

The End.

Sunday Funday

Doesn't everyone do a Sunday morning science experiment? BVD snap tests on your washing machine? No???  Weird.....

This was also most of my wild and crazy Saturday night as well. Jealous? Thought so.

Wasted advertising dollars

I subscribe to a certain handyman magazine.  Actually, I wasn't going to say it, but it really is Handyman Magazine.  Turns out I couldn't come up with some clever alternate title to avoid copyright laws that I'm probably infringing upon somehow.  And second truth, I didn't subscribe to this magazine, it is something that my folks give me every year as a Christmas present.  Whew.  Glad I got all that off my chest.

I love my magazine, but I wish that the editors would realize that not all of their faithful readers are 55+ year old white males with receding hairlines and prostate problems.  (Or the worst: E.D.  We won't even go there.) 

Can't they throw in a nice shampoo ad?  What about a little foundation or concealer advertisement?  Perfume?

Eh, who am I kidding.  Due to my hoarding and couponing addictions we have enough shampoo and conditioner in our house to last well into 2015.  I wish I was kidding.  Actually, I love it.  Wesley wishes I was kidding. 

So perhaps this will turn into an experiment of sorts.  Does the power of advertising really work?  Let's check back in another 6 months and see if I have filled our storage shelves with bottles of Rogaine and a digital-analog hybrid watch so I can "Tell Time Like a Man."  Seriously, word for word what the advertisement said. 

Happy birthday!

Six months of poopy diapers, sleepless nights and 1,000 faces.

Snow Day

I love snow days. 

I mean, I LOVE SNOW DAYS.

When we were little, we live on the edge of the flint hills.  Which is to say, we lived where it was quite flat.  When it snowed we needed to find a hill in order to sled anywhere meaningful. 

We had a pond in our pasture a 1/4 mile from our house.  My sisters and I trudged down there on one such snowy occasion to sled down the backside of the pond, down on the pond damn.  Whoops... I mean, dam. 

Karalina and I would have been in elementary school, big enough to be more than 40 pounds or so.  Elizabeth was little bitty, somewhere in the preschool - first grade range. 

We were fairly genius back then.... much like now.  In our extraordinary physics calculations we knew that if we slid off the backside of the dam we would probably run right into the barbed wire fence at the bottom of that hill.  Karalina and I then built an embankment at the bottom of our sled run in an attempt to keep us from running into that barbed wire fence.  We would sled down the backside of the hill, slide up the embankment and then glide back down safely to the middle.

We were genius. 

It came time for the little one, Elizabeth, to sled down the damn, dam bank.  (I don't care how many times you watch Chevy Chase's Vegas Vacation, it never gets old.)  Liza laid down on out red saucer and made her way flying down the slope.  She followed the sled track perfectly; just like we planned...almost.

  She made her way to the bottom of the track and instead of gliding up and then back down the embankment.... she used it as a runway of sorts and flew down the sled track, down the damn, dam slope and then used the embankment as a launching pad. 

She gained quite the commendable amount of air underneath her as she sailed.  She sailed right into a barbed wire fence. 

When we ran down the sled slope and found her body she was hung on the barbed wire fence, unable to move.  As I recall, her neck was resting near the top wire of the fence and the other fence wires were suspending her other appendages in mid-air.  We had quite the time trying to pry our little sister off the fence while trying not to rip her clothing too badly and all the while trying to convince her not to tattle to our folks. 

Good times, good times...