Merry Christmas....and now I'm looking forward to the New Year.

Sorry if my title is a little.....jaded. I am just SO SO SO ready for the new year. So, here's to having had a wonderful Christmas. Now I am awaiting the new year with much anticipation. Just for some kind of a Christmas pic, here's one of my Sam and Kate with their cousins this morning. I don't really have any AWESOME ones of the kids opening presents and stuff, just snap shots. Maybe, I'll post those later as I look through them as I store them for our own memories.

The kids had an awesome Christmas. We spoiled them with the toys the wanted and the ones they didn't know they wanted. We had awesome food and spent time with family. All in all, our Christmases were wonderful. It is probably official that my daughter is somewhat of a geek. Her big and most enjoyed presents so far have been a telescope and a microscope. But she also has enjoyed flying her Tinkerbell and letting the Zhu Zhu Pets run around. I can feel many an eye roll at the words Zhu Zhu, but we came across them and Katie had asked us for them. And she has enjoyed them. Sam, got a gazillion things with wheels on it and stuff for him to bounce and roll around in. I'm sure that as we get through opening all the presents, I'll post pics of them. Some of the toys are really neat, and I think to myself, "Now, where was that when I was a kid?". Anyway, Merry Christmas to everyone out there and I hope yours was as enjoyable as ours. Kisses....

Wordless Wednesday

OMG!!! It's a gum burn!!!

So you might be a little curious about the title of this post. It's a follow up to last weeks post about the zoo trip. Sorry it's taken so long to get here, but life has been some what chaotic this past week. Ok. Maybe not JUST somewhat chaotic, it's been a an all out chaos-fest. In any case, sit back, relax, and be prepared to think "Really? Nah, they couldn't be that foolish, could they?". So last Saturday morning, as I was cooking eggs for Miguel's breakfast, Sam was throwing one of his usual tantrums because I wouldn't pick him up. Poor boy, don't you already feel sorry for him? So for the sake of my nerves, I picked him up. What does he do as I am heating the pan with OIL in it to cook the eggs? Yeah, you guessed it, he put his hand in the pan. He managed to only burn a finger, which began to blister. I immediately treat it and decide it's not bad enough to warrant a trip to the ER. So I give him some pain killer and off we go to the zoo. He complains and is upset about his finger all morning, and rightfully so. Burns hurt. So we'll fast forward through the day to making the gingerbread house. See the picture left. We decorate the gingerbread house, all the while I'm letting Katie do most of the work. She's happily adorning the house with candies of all description, as well as some gum balls. I let her have a couple of gum balls, and apparently behind my back Sam is helping himself to a couple too. Why is this an important part of the story, you might ask? Well, I'll tell you. These little gumballs contain FLESH colored gum. The particular one Sam got a hold of, must have had a red shell. So we finish the gingerbread house, Miguel comes home from work and we head out to get something to eat. The real drama is about to begin. Seriously. After dinner we head home, and start getting the kids ready for bed. Miguel takes Sam's shirt AND sweater vest off to discover some nasty looking scratched up "sore" on Sam's shoulder. His RIGHT shoulder, the same side as his burned finger. I look at it and feel the "skin" and start wondering what in the world is going on. Miguel says, "Is that a burn?". Looking at it, it could be. I suppose. If it is a burn, it's a really nasty nasty weird looking burn. So we decide that to prevent it getting infected or anything we'll take him to the ER and get "the burn" and his finger treated. So all the while, I'm thinking, did I really miss a burn that huge? How could I not have noticed his shoulder was bothering him? We get to ER, the intake nurse, says wow that looks like a nasty "burn", let's put you guys on the fast track. So we go back and get seen by a nurse practitioner, who says to us, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's not a burn, it's gum." Oh no, really? We just wasted an ER visit and everybody's time for GUM?!?! To be fair, it was flesh colored, with bits of red shell,and he had been scratching at it, apparently. We weren't the only ones fooled. So we wait for someone to come remove said gum, because it is very very stuck to his skin, which by the way, it took almost a week to get all of it off. But we don't have to wait long because Sam starts pulling at it and takes care of most of the removal for us. Sigh.....there's me, feeling like a moron. Thinking my son is going to have this huge scar and deal with all kinds of things related to a burn. CHOA (Children's Healthcare of Atlanta) was nice enough to wrap up and treat his finger and off we went home. At 2am in the morning. Back home. Yeah, definitely one for the scrapbook.

A Santa and an Animal Encounter

Where else could these two things happen at the same visit? Only at the zoo of course. Yesterday was breakfast with Santa at the zoo, which Katie enjoyed. She got to have muffins, see Santa and hang out with her cousin. Good times. My sister has a friend who works at the Zoo and was able to get us an animal encounter. Thanks again to Megan for taking the time to hang out with us and show us the animals and teach us a little about them. We saw lots of animals, scary ones, cute ones, icky ones, happy ones, and shy ones. Katie is an avid Wonder Pets watcher. Has been for a couple of years now. There is one particular episode that seems to stick with her though, "The Wonder Pets Save the Hedgehog". So Megan was kind enough to bring out the hedgehog and if you ask Kate what the highlight of the trip was yesterday, the hedgehog trumps Santa. Funny girl. So I'll just list the photos of the animals Katie got to touch and see below my ramblings. In the last pic, the carapace on the tortoise is all messed up because he was kept as a pet and fed dog food. So just an FYI, if you want a tortoise as a pet, you are so not supposed to feed them dog food. Just thought that might be a useful piece of information to someone.
Oh and if you are wondering where Sam is in all these pics, he's being an arm monkey because yesterday morning he burnt his finger. Because AS USUAL he insisted on being held while I cooked breakfast and curiosity got the best of him, I suppose. 19 months old are ridiculously like kittens, I swear. There's a really funny story about a gingerbread house, gum, and how we ended up in the ER, but I'll save that embarrassment for later. Right now, I gotta go cook me some meatballs. Paleo ones. With Almond Meal. Mmmmmm.....my tummy says, "yummy".

"1, 2, 3, smile at me!!"

If you've had a recent session with me, you might have heard me say this. A few times maybe. Ok, maybe more than a few times. Anyway, it no longer works with Katie. Rhyming no longer makes her laugh or even cracks a smile with her. And all my funny noises in the world won't work with Sam anymore. Katie will pose when I bribe her with candy or eating at "Old McDonald's". Sam will occasionally take the cue from Kate and sit near or around her and say "ceheeeeessseee" (intentionally typo, that's really how he says it). But for the most part, temporarily, they are uncooperative. It may be that for right now, I have no where near the patience for my own kids that I have for clients kids. Sigh...N-E-WAY. I attempted to get some Christmas pics out of the kids over the past couple of days. They aren't exactly what I envisioned, it rarely is with your own kids. But I've been under the weather and I just wanted to get them done. They are cute and all, but I might try and do something different for New Year's or Valentine's or Easter or........

PS, there's more than just the one picture, but you'll have to click on it and view them through lightbox. Remember roll over one side of the pic or the other and you should see the next or previous buttons.

Wordless Wednesday

Sam, Future Crackberry Addict

This is me, about to lose my mind

This is my post about my 19 month old and his need to clean the floor with his head and back. I seriously feel like I'm about to lost my dang mind when he throws these new tantrums. It all starts because I just physically can't hold him any more. You try carrying around a 20lb bag of potatoes all day and see how long it is before your arms start to give out. So as soon as I put him down he immediately throws himself backwards, hitting his head on the oh so soft and squishy tile floor. Thud. Then he proceeds to SCREAM at the top of his lungs, all the while pushing himself along the floor on his back with his feet. On the way across the floor he RAMS his head into numerous objects. Thud...thud....thud...thud....you get the point. His tantrums don't.ever.stop. Period. I have tried ignoring them, picking him up and putting him in another room, etc. He climbs out of everything or THROWS himself out of everything. I'm about to lose my mind with him. It's emotionally exhausting to go through this 3-4 times a day. Seriously. The pediatrician says to just ignore him, walk away, and let him come to me when he's done. But Sam, my dear son, will throw these tantrums till he just wears himself out and falls asleep. This can be upwards of an hour. So this whole long winded explanation and description of my son throwing his tantrum and how I am slowly going crazy is to ask, what in the world do I do with him? Grit my teeth and hold on for the ride until he outgrows this stage? I'm afraid before we get there, he might seriously injure himself. Sigh......I feel better now venting about his tantrums at least a little bit. Now I just figure out how to help him.

Katie, my artist

Do you know Bendaroos? Katie is intimately acquainted with them. She luuurrvves them a lot. Enough that the other day she thought they would make great window art. And, ya know, I tend to agree with her. I turned around to find these rockin' flowers along with some assorted balloons (not pictured) plastered to the window. She actually took me by surprise because her flowers were just so awesome. You wouldn't believe what she can do with bendaroos. I should probably post more pictures of her bendaroo creations. I did happen to take a picture of her current chalkboard art. It is also totally rockin'. I added some helpful arrows and description on the off chance you weren't able to tell what things were. But honestly, I think you could tell anyway. Notice in the drawing of herself she is holding a flower? It's the little touches, the little things..... I am supposing that this is a picture of a giant Katie, although she herself didn't tell me that. She does a lot of drawings of giant people with little tiny houses. Poor giants, always stuck out in the cold. Maybe I should bring up this with Katie during our next drawing session. Maybe...
Our next art project is Christmas related and it should also be awesome, so I'll be sure to post what pictures of it I can. Although, some of it is "secret" stuff, ya know, as in presents and I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise. That would totally upset Katie. She's really into the whole giving presents this year. Hopefully she's as into that idea as she is into receiving presents.
PS, don't forget you can click on the image to see them bigger. Let me know if it doesn't work. I'm wondering if it works for everyone.

The Christmas tree and the Present next to it

Ok. So I finally got our tree up with all our ornaments on it. It took longer than I thought because Sam and Joanie conspired against me to take the ornaments OFF the tree as Katie and I were putting them ON the tree. But I digress, it's up and it's beautiful. I still have the upstairs tree to put up and the rest of the house to decorate, but this tree is up and the Samster and Joanie are used to it now. So hopefully, they'll leave the upstairs tree well enough alone. Yeah, right. So the other big thing we were working on last week was our Christmas present to ourselves (Miguel and I). A beautiful 52" 1080p 120hz Sharp LCD. It's beautiful. We had to expand our entertainment center to accommodate it. You know how you hear people say that they want to go back and watch movies because they look different and it's just amazing? You haven't? Well it's true. I totally want to go back and watch some movies like Lord of the Rings or 300 on this tv. It's just so awesome. Miguel has also hooked up a computer to the tv which is running XBMC. Which is also totally awesome. We can play our mp3s, view my pics, watch videos, youtube, and a host of other things. All on our beautiful new tv. It rocks. Thank you Miguel for being technically gifted. We have such neat gadgets in our lives. Ok, and technically speaking, in the picture you see Boxee, which is similar to XBMC, we were still trying to decide which program to go with. So there you have it, the present that sits next to our tree. :)

From mischevious little monkey to half way grown up cub scout

What seems like 10 seconds ago, I used to babysit my nephew Saturday mornings. I started watching him at 9 months old all the way until we moved 3 years ago. He is now the ripe old age of 9. Half way to being grown up. In 9 years from now, or another 10 seconds, I'll be taking pictures of him in his cap and gown. For now, he's in his cub scout uniform. Time goes by just too dang fast, ya'll, just too fast. James, or as we lovingly call him, "Smeggy" (I won't explain the nickname now, or maybe ever) spent a lot of Saturday mornings hanging out at our house. I was introduced long before we had our own kids to the world of "Playhouse Disney", which included many episodes of "The Wiggles" and other shows I can't remember now. Or maybe I choose not to remember them, who knows. Their memory slots have since been replaced by songs from "Yo Gabba Gabba" and "The Wonder Pets".
In any case, I have fond memories of playing out in the yard with a little boy who was always smiling and laughing and getting up to all sort of mischievousness, helping prepare me for the kids I would have of my own someday. Here's to you Smeggy, don't aspire to finish growing up too quickly, ok?

Flashback Monday

Ok. Ok. Seriously, I do know it's supposed to be Flashback Friday in the blog world, but I want to post this now before other things come up. At the beginning of November I went to stay with parents in PA while Miguel went on a business trip. The kids and I basically got to chill for week with my parents and my brothers. We did drive around and I got to see the Amish farmers at work, which is awesome. The Amish are ridiculously hard workers. I can not even imagine a world where you get up at 4:30am and do hard physical labor all day, go to bed and repeat the next day. It's very inspiring, since I myself have a very difficult time getting up before 8am. We also went back to an ice cream store that I haven't taken Katie to since she was 5 months old. I wish I could find the picture of her eating there way back when. Maybe a project for another day. Miguel did manage to drive down to come hang out with us for a day, which was cool since we hadn't seen him. Miguel, by the way, got to spend the day in New York City, sightseeing and drankin' with his buddies from work. I have yet to make it to sight see New York myself. A trip for another time I suppose. Hint, hint Miguel. Hint, Hint.
So anyway, I'm trying out my new little viewing feature, so if you click on the picture, you should be able to go through my favorites from the trip. So, just roll your mouse over the image and you should see a "next" or "previous" button. Very neat. No more flickr slideshows. Makes me happy. And yes, I am aware, that particularly for the portrait images, the 1200x800 size is a tad large. But I am so not resizing them now, so if you all don't mind just dealing for now. I'll keep it in mind for the future.

Testing Lightbox

So I thought it might be fun to make a new way for you guys to view my photos larger. I've been posting them as 900x600 images, but this way I can post them even larger for your viewing pleasure and I don't have the pesky problem of them not fitting into my blogger template. Cool, huh? So from now, for the most part, you'll need to click on the image to view it larger. It's really awesome what happens when you click on it. So try it. I know you'll like it. ;) I even went back and added the code to the last couple of posts too, so you can play and click on the images to view them larger. And I posted a random really big picture here too, because it's fun for me to see it work. It rocks. Totally. Oh and PS, for all of you Facebookers reading this through the feed, it won't work for you. It'll only work if you come to my actual blog (www.iammommyplussome.blogspot.com). So there.

Mr. Wiggles, sent directly from Santa himself.....

Are you all ready? THIS is Mr. Wiggles. He is our Elf on a Shelf. Santa left him last weekend and has been keeping quite a good record of Sam and Kate's misbehavior. Oh and when they're good too. He's been all over the house and he gets up to his own elfin mischief. He hasn't been destructive yet, but he has stolen an oreo and got himself stuck in the refrigerator as he was trying to get a sip of milk. Silly Mr. Wiggles. Katie is reminded often that Mr. Wiggles is watching her and that everything she says and does is reported to Santa every night. So it is her morning ritual now to look around for Mr. Wiggles. At first she thought she only had to be good where Mr. Wiggles could see her and then I promptly reminded her that Mr. Wiggles has x-ray vision. He can even see your underwear. Hopefully, Mr. Wiggles will have more things on his good list than on his naughty list by the time Christmas Eve comes around. Oh and did you know, apparently, Mr. Wiggles is watching Miguel and I too? Because we have to be good to get our presents from Santa Clause. So I guess we all have to be on our best behavior. Oh and seeing Mr. Wiggles everyday has inspired Katie to sing "Santa Clause is coming to town" all the time. She's actually pretty good with the lyrics. Her favorite line is "you better not shout, you better not pout". Figures. So anyway, we're under constant watch here, and we've had to start hiding the cookies, because Mr. Wiggles has a thing for cookies. Oh and today he stole a Dorito from Katie's stash. So, you all better watch out, you never know where your Elf is hiding, checking to see if your being naughty or nice.