Snoring vs. The Jiggly Leg

I sort of wondered if Shane's Jiggly Leg would go away when he got his new knee.

The answer is no, it didn't. :(

At 3:38 am it was in full swing again.

Jiggle-jiggle-jiggle.

Aghhhhhhh!

It gives me anxiety because I can't stop counting between jiggles.

It will shake the whole bed and then I start counting, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5…." and I just wonder if it will be right on the same jiggly schedule every time.

It generally is.

At 3:40 I lovingly reached over to him, put my leg on his jiggly leg and put my hand on his chest to get his attention.  Then I whispered, "I love you, but I'm going to have to cut off your leg."

He said sorry and rolled over.

Then I sat there wondering if I would prefer snoring over the jiggly leg.

Which would be better?

I finally settled on the jiggly leg because it's quieter and it's attached to a really cute guy.

…And then I went back to sleep.

(*You'll be pleased to note that Shane's leg is still intact as well.)

The Champion

You probably think I'm writing about a person.

I'm not.

I'm writing about our toilet.

It's called The Champion.

About a year ago we replaced the toilets in our house because the ones that were here when we moved in were gross.  Shane said, "If we're going to get new toilets let's get really good ones."

So we went to Home Depot and said, "Give us your best toilet."

That is where we got The Champion (it is literally called that on the box).

It touted being able to flush an entire bucket of golf balls at once!

I'm not sure if it can really do that, I've never tried, but it can get my 9-year old nieces doo-doo down without clogging, which is more than I can say for our other toilets.

But all of this is neither here nor there, my point in talking about The Champion is its height.

It is a "chair height" toilet.

This means a couple of things.

One, my feet can't be flat on the ground when I sit on it.

I hate that.

I feel like a five year old with my tippy-toes touching the ground.

But number two, this is what I hate most of all, I have gotten used to this "chair height" so when I go to sit on any other toilet there is a millisecond of panic that shoots through me thinking that somehow the toilet I was about to sit on disappeared because my backside should have hit it by now.

Then I am rudely jarred out of this panic because I hit the toilet harder than a person normally should.

It's not pleasant.

And I'm thinking that The Champion isn't such a champion after all.

Too much information?

Oh well.

Taking Over the World… :)

What's up Zaharis?

That would be ONE...

TWO...

THREE! 

That's right….All three of my awesome kids got selected to student council as their class representatives.

It all went down exactly as I would expect.

Olivia wrote reminders to herself about writing a speech.  

She thought about it and wrote out what she felt was important.  

She wanted to let her class know she would represent them well.

She delivered her speech with confidence.

She won by a landslide.

Owen decided the night before that he'd like to run.

Olivia wrote his speech for him.

Olivia made him practice his speech several times.

Olivia chided him the morning of his speech for wearing sports shorts instead of looking nicer.

Owen reluctantly changed his clothes to appease his sister.

He won--I'm guessing by a landslide.

Morgan didn't write a speech.

Morgan simply raised her hand and said she'd be interested in doing it.

Every other girl in the class raised their hand and said, "I vote for Morgan."

She won--by a landslide of girl votes.

All three of them did this on their own.

"Why do you think people voted for you?"  I asked each of them.

Olivia: "Because I get good grades."

Owen: "Because I have good actions."

Morgan: "Because I'm really nice and everyone loves to play with me."

Morgan is never shy about her awesomeness. :)

Congrats to my babies!

Represent.

President Scar...

Every time I hear Obama speak and look at what he has done to our country while in office I can't help but see in my mind Scar from the Lion King promising all the Hyena's as much food as they want.

It sounds so good!

Who doesn't want food you don't have to work for and the ability to be lazy and do whatever you feel like while someone else takes care of you?

We all deserve that, right?

The only problem is... that doesn't work.

Before long the food runs out and all you have are a bunch of fat hyena's (soon to be starving) complaining that nobody is taking care of them.

I know Obama tells people what they like to hear but he has shown us over the past four years that, just like Scar, he can't change the "circle of life".

It is what it is.

The "something for nothing" philosophy can never work and before long we will all be paying for it one way or another.  (and we already are)

There has to be wisdom and order and Barak Obama simply doesn't understand that, which means he does not understand how to run a country.

Clearly.



"I don't want to live in a country where everything is free but us." --Paul Ryan

Hey Shorty, It's Your Birthday!

My baby turns 6 today!

This year I went with a turtle theme because they have tortoises at Zaharis and you can buy baby tortoises for $40.  Morgan REALLY wanted one.

Dane got one.

But I said no.

I know, I'm mean.

But to show her I really love her lots we got her as many turtle things as we could.

I made her a turtle cake.

And decorated all festive like. 

She liked it.

A lot.

And she liked her new turtle friend "Fluffy".  I told her he's way easier to cuddle than a live tortoise. :)

Morgan is one of the funniest, spunkiest, most confident little girls I know.  She makes me smile every day.

The other day I was recounting stories of Olivia when she was a baby.  I had tons of them.

Morgan kept saying, "Tell one about me.  What did I do?"

I felt horrible because I could hardly think of anything.  Morgan was a baby at the hardest time in my life and my brain simply didn't store a lot of her baby-hood.  I do remember she was an amazingly good baby, she drooled a lot, she would never take a bottle (just mama), and she always made me smile.

There are plenty of things I remember about her now.  Like her uncanny ability to make up the perfect names for animals (Livy will even ask her to name things she gets because her names are always so cute).

She also makes up words and just incorporates them into her daily language.  We have to know how to speak Morgan around here.  For example, about 2 years ago, when she was either 3 or just barely 4 she told me she needed to go "Flickey".

"Flickey?  What's that?" I asked.

"That's when you have to go pee AND poop."  She had fully created the word, had a definition for it, and used it like we all knew it.  And she still uses it…well, we all use it now.

Just yesterday she created another word.  When I picked her up from gymnastics she exhaled all tired like and said,

"Whew. Well that was just piff!"

"Piff?" I asked again, "What's piff?"

"You know, when something's really hard or tiring."

Oh well of course, silly me.  Who hasn't had a day that was just piff?

She continues to be obsessed with animals.  She's gone from wanting to be an animal when she grows up to wanting to train them or own a pet store.  The latest thing she's told me she wants to do is teach animals how to swim…most especially "mouses".

She's smart, logical…very logical, straightforward, happy, and goofy.  Not many people really know Morgan because she doesn't open up for just anyone.  She's quite selective.  But once you're in her inner circle she is very loyal.

We sure love this girl and I feel very lucky to be her mom.

Lessons from Bambi...

The other day we watched Bambi.

It taught us some lessons.

Owen constantly complains about dinner.  He hates it, it's disgusting, he doesn't want to eat it.

After spewing these words out of his mouth Shane reminded him to just keep his mouth closed and channeled Thumper by saying,  "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

Owen then realized that Bambi actually teaches us a lot of good lessons.  "Another lesson," he recounted, "is that we shouldn't shoot animals because look what happens."  We all solemnly nodded our heads thinking about poor Bambi's mother.

And then, perhaps another lesson I hadn't really thought of before, Owen said, "And it also helps us to see how Abraham Lincoln must have felt."

Mmmmmm-kay.  I hadn't really thought of comparing the shooting of animals to the shooting of presidents before, but I can see a connection here I guess.  Good point.  May we all refrain from shooting animals AND presidents because "Look what happens."

Bambi is so much deeper than I had ever realized.

Thirsty?

While we were at Greer Shane was pretty well confined to his bed a majority of the time.  The pain and the pain medication left him in a pretty bad state.  So let's all just remember that as I tell you this story.  He looked a little like this. :)

One morning he was clipping his fingernails into a cup.  He didn't want to get up to clip them but he didn't want them all over the bed either (which I appreciated), so the cup was his solution.  I, however, told him I thought it was disgusting that he was clipping his nails into a cup.  It just grossed me out.

Fast forward to the late afternoon.  Shane was still in bed and needed me to get him some pain medication.  I got his pills and grabbed "the cup" off the night stand, not remembering anything from earlier in the day.  I filled it with water from the bathroom faucet and gave Shane his pills without another thought.  He thanked me and started drinking and then started spitting the water out, back into the cup.  I thought he was doing this because I got the water from the bathroom faucet and not from the kitchen but it still seemed like a  big reaction to me so I asked, "What's wrong?"

"Just take this away please." He frantically handed the cup out to me.

"Why?" I asked again, still not understanding, and then it hit me.

AGHHHHHHHH!!!   SICK!

My dry heaves started to kick in and even more so as I dumped out the water and fingernails into the kitchen sink and had to wash them down. (okay, I'm still dry heaving as I type this. so gross!)

He claims he didn't actually drink any, he just happened to glance down as he started drinking and saw the fingernails floating all around.

So let this be a lesson to you...no fingernails in cups I tell you!

It's just safer that way.