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By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on July 3, 2009, at 12:58 am
I’d almost forgotten exactly how literally little kids take everything. At 3 years old, Becca’s more of a ‘big kid’ now and certainly not the 18-month-old she was when I started blogging. Toddlers are so funny and I was reminded again of that fact tonight, hanging out with Ron, Mary and little Eric after all of the other kids were in bed.
Eric had slept on the way up here, so wasn’t exactly tired by bedtime. Besides, there were just way too many fun places in my house to explore. We’ve gated off the hallway so he can only go down a small portion of it, and he keeps hanging out by the gate, shaking it and attempting to figure out how to open it.
It’s not an easy gate to open – even my kids have trouble with it. I’ve been letting Becca back and forth through it all day – which is going to get very old, very quickly…
Mary had just finished telling Ron and I about something cute that Eric’s been doing lately. At the end of the Open Season 2 DVD, there’s a music video featuring the animated characters, to the song “Who Let The Dogs Out?”. Eric and Emma love to dance to the song and Eric has started chanting along with the “Who… Who… Who…" part. It’s one of the few actual ‘words’ that he says regularly. Mary asked him, “Hey Eric, who let the dogs out?” and he looked up, smiled and right on cue went, “Who… Who… Who…”. Ron and I laughed and that was it.
Until about ten minutes later, after Abby had made one of her several trips out of Hannah and Becca’s room (which she’s sharing so that Mary and the kids can have her room) – there’s the usual, “Are there any storms?”, and the “I’m afraid of the dark!” because Hannah and Becca’s nightlight is dimmer than hers is. Plus tonight we got a detailed description of how Hannah was pushing and otherwise antagonizing her instead of going to sleep, and the requisite potty visit and drink. It’s frustrating, but unfortunately part of life with Asperger’s – she literally cannot go to sleep without knowing or telling us what’s on her mind.
All day, we’ve been after the kids to keep that hallway gate closed behind them as they go through. It’s gotten so that as soon as Eric hears that gate, he’s over to it immediately to see if it’s been left open. Abby is probably the worst offender – even Becca not only shuts the gate, but has taken to reminding others to do so as well.
Can you guess where this is going yet?
Abby went back to bed, and Eric immediately headed for the gate – which had not been closed. Ron saw, and already frustrated to begin with, yelled out, “Who left that gate open?”.
Very loudly. And angrily. And he certainly wasn’t singing it.
But right on cue, from the hallway we then heard Eric’s little voice going, “Who… Who… Who…”.
So maybe it’s not as funny to describe as it was at the time… But it got the three of us completely cracking up. 
Yes, I know this picture has absolutely nothing to do with the story I just told, but I’m throwing it in here anyway because it’s a cute picture of Eric that I took at dinner tonight. So there. 
Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek
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By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on July 1, 2009, at 11:51 pm
I’m not sure exactly how it started, but somehow July 4th has become one of the biggest holidays of the year that we celebrate. It wasn’t that way when I was a kid – we usually found some fireworks to watch, often last-minute and I can remember at least one occasion where we ended up driving around looking for a show to watch even as they were starting. We never wore anything in particular and for us kids the most exciting part of the 4th was getting to light sparklers and writing in the sky with them.
Somewhere along the line July 4th has turned into a weekend full of friends, activities, fireworks, and even a birthday. And I wouldn’t have it any other way – it’s one of my absolute favorite times of the year. In no small part because it’s one of the very few times where my two closest friends and I get to hang out nowadays.
Over the years, we’ve gone from watching fireworks along Lake Michigan to spending the evening across town (watching them on July 3rd instead of the 4th), to for the past couple of years taking the afternoon and evening to hang out here in town and join in the local festivities even before it gets dark out. We’ve added boyfriends and then husbands to the mix – and now 8 kids between the three of us as well.
From July 4th of 1997…
 (Kristi and I, back in our pre-kid days)
…to 1998…
 (The whole ‘gang’ – me, Kristi and Steve, Mary and Dave with Matthew)
…1999…
 (adding in Ron along with friends Chris and Jean)
…2000…
 (minus Mary and Dave that year)
…and 2001.
 (still no Mary and Dave, but adding in baby Abby)
In 2002, Kristi and Steve celebrated Noah’s birth on July 4th…
 
And in 2003 the ‘gang’ was back together for Noah’s first birthday party.
Since then, us girls have gotten together every year – sometimes with husbands, sometimes not. Dave and Ron often work the holiday, but we gather as many of us as we can and hang out for fun, food, and fireworks. And a birthday celebration, of course.
Like in 2005…
…2006…
 (Not sure why the group photos went by the wayside – too many kids to corral probably)
…2007…
 (minus Mary and her kids that year)
…and last year.
 
What will this year’s July 4th weekend bring? We’ll find out starting today when Mary and her kids arrive.
And I, for one, can’t wait to get everyone all together again.
 (all pregnant together – 3rd trimester, 2nd trimester and 1st trimester – in 2002)
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By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on July 1, 2009, at 1:01 am
By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on June 30, 2009, at 2:01 pm
So you’re probably thinking, huh? Babyproofing? Is there something she hasn’t told us about?
Relax… It’s just temporary. My friend Mary is coming to for her annual July 4th visit on Thursday, and that means that we’ll have a very curious, fearless little 18-month-old in the house for 4 days. And as I’ve realized – now that Becca is 3 (almost 3-1/2!), we aren’t nearly as babyproofed as we used to be. In fact, I’m quite surprised at exactly how un-babyproofed we are now.
See this angelic little face?
There’s not a lot that will keep this little boy from getting to anything and everything that he thinks looks interesting. Like the birthday presents from Abby’s party in April, for example…
So I need to go through my house from a toddler’s perspective and deal with everything that looks even just a little bit tempting.
Like these:
Remedy = relocating food and water dishes to the bathroom which keeps them safe from little fingers (and mouth) – but creates three very confused felines…
And these:
 
Remedy = Find someplace in my jam-packed house to store the crayon and marker boxes, tubs of coloring books and loose paper that will keep them all safe from Eric, but still allow the rest of the kids to access them as needed. Still pondering this one…
Not to mention these:
Yes, the stairway is gated off but unfortunately that doesn’t save my bags, purse and jacket. Even after I find a new location for all of this, I have the feeling I’m still going to be wondering all weekend where my purse is at…
And these:
This basket is my new solution to the “where ARE your library books???!!” question, freak-out and house turning upside down that was the normal routine before our weekly trips to the library. However it’s going to have to be temporarily relocated, unless I want the library books to REALLY end up lost (or munched on).
Then there are all of the ‘little’ things that I don’t worry about so much anymore, like the cord for the Wii remote charger that’s not exactly childproofed:
And the cupboards that used to be childproofed, but where the latches have either fallen off, been taken off, or broken off in the past couple of years.
 
I think I have a few spare latches lying around that I’m going to try and dig up for these.
Let’s see, what else… Well there’s the fact that we won’t be able to simply leave things out on tables and such as we’re now used to doing again. Like remotes, books, tissue boxes, dirty dishes (blame Ron for that one!), etc…
Don’t ask me why there are two boxes of tissues on the same table. I’ve given up wondering… And yes, I removed the dirty dishes from the table before taking the above photo. I do have standards, you know…
Oh yes, and laptops. *grin*
Thankfully there’s only the kitchen and living room to really deal with. Childproofing the bathroom and bedrooms is no more difficult than bringing our baby gate back upstairs to put in the hallway:
And I was smart enough to leave Mary’s and my solution to the broken plexiglass on the kitchen banister intact from the last time they visited. It’s not exactly elegant, but neither is our cat-scratched-up banister, so I can live with it in order to keep Eric (or anyone else) from falling through the banister rails.
Yes, Mary and I created this using items we already had around the house – a spare toy hammock net and lots of zip ties. Just call us ‘MacGyver’, lol.
All in all, I’m hoping we’ll be well enough prepared. If not, I’m sure Eric can help us find where the cracks in the ‘toddler-proofing’ plan are.
What are you tackling this week? And check out other Tackle It Tuesday posts over at 5 Minutes for Mom!
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By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on June 29, 2009, at 1:01 am
So even though Kristi’s out of town at the moment, I’m still going to do a weekend round-up – pretty much because I’ve grown used to summing up our weekend activities this way. It was a rather low-key weekend in general, but I’ll do my best to come up with a decent list. Here’s our ‘Weekend Top 5’ for this week:
5: By Friday, Abby was quite well recovered from her eye surgery in almost every way – and the girls and I were going absolutely stir crazy. With the 90+ degree weather we’d had, even Hannah and Becca had been cooped up indoors, so we were more than ready to get out of the house. Abby had been keeping her eye mostly closed, but once we got out and about, she started opening and using it a lot more. Here’s what it looked like on Thursday – the day after surgery:
Yes, it was bright red – but notice that it’s not crossing anymore, even without her glasses! So the surgery was obviously a success, thank goodness. I was wondering if people were going to think she had pink eye or something, but nobody said anything to me. We went and walked around the mall a bit and the girls turned in their summer reading program forms at Barnes & Noble to get their free books.
4: One of the things I wanted to do at the mall was pick up sunglasses for Abby, since her eye was still sensitive to light. We hit the jackpot at the Disney Store – if you have one nearby, you may want to head over and check out their 75% off sale right now. I got new sunglasses for all 3 girls, for just over $1 each. Abby’s fit fairly well over her regular glasses too, so she can wear them at least somewhat comfortably.
 
You can’t tell in the photo, but Abby’s are princess sunglasses and Becca’s are Minnie Mouse. Somehow I missed getting a picture of Hannah in hers, but they are Tinkerbell.
The other reason to go to the mall was to look for new sandals for Hannah, whose pair from last year have finally, completely and utterly fallen apart. After striking out at both Payless and Sears (none of the sandals were ‘pretty’ enough for her to even try on), we finally found a pair she liked at Kohl’s. And they were on sale even – for only $10.49! But, of course they had size 12, and size 1 – but not size 13, which is what we needed. Miss Hannah decided to start throwing a fit on the way out of the mall with no sandals in hand (or on foot rather), so we had a bit of a talk about the fact that she passed up several perfectly good pairs earlier. And that we weren’t going to go back to those stores since we were heading home. If she was leaving the mall without sandals – it was basically her own fault.
I think that particular much-needed lesson may have sunk in at that point. I hope so anyway.
3: On Saturday, nobody much felt like going anywhere and the girls all played at home. I’d picked up some workbooks in the dollar bin at Target before Abby’s surgery and had saved them until she was able to see clearly enough again. She and Hannah spent a good couple of hours working on them that afternoon – Abby was doing Division (3rd grade) and Hannah did the entire First Grade Addition book and a portion of the Subtraction one. And they read a lot – we’ve been going to the library on a weekly basis and the girls have been going through books like crazy so far this summer. They are completely into the ‘Rainbow Magic’ series right now and trade their library books back and forth. Even Becca likes to swipe their books to sit down and ‘read’ them, lol.
2: By Sunday Abby’s eye was finally starting to look a bit less red, which is a relief. I wasn’t sure how long the redness would last, but it had gotten a bit worse on Saturday, so we were somewhat concerned.
We had a lazy morning and then the girls played with kids from the neighborhood all afternoon. One little boy brought over popsicles for everyone:
It was just a very nice, relaxing day. The kids all played well together and Ron helped get something installed in the kitchen that I can’t talk about here, but watch for a review coming soon on my other site.
1: Over the past couple of years I’ve had several occasions of having a lot of pain on my left side. It hadn’t happened in a while – not since last fall, but seems to have kicked back in now. I spent a good portion of Sunday lying down on the couch since that’s the only position that it really doesn’t hurt in. If it’s still hurting when I get up on Monday, I’ll head into the doctor and get it looked at. That was one down side of the weekend. The other was that we discovered that we apparently have a water leak somewhere either in or outside our house. Our water bill is more than double what is normally is, and we checked with neighbors – their water usage was much, much less than ours even though they water their lawn and we haven’t been. So as soon as we figure out what kind of professional we need to come out and take a look at it, we’ll have to get that dealt with. Sigh.
So that was our weekend! How was yours?
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By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on June 27, 2009, at 11:45 am
Just some quick links and fun stuff I found around the web this week:
 First off, please don’t forget to enter my current giveaways over on my other site:
This week’s reviews were for the Play With Pictures photo compilation software, and the book The Crypto-Capers in “The Case of the Missing Sock”.
Other new posts this week include a call for help about dress code and scheduling for BlogHer, the latest deals from kajeet and this week’s Deals & Steals.
There are more fun giveaways coming next week too, so stay tuned (and subscribed)…
This week’s Contest Round-Up is up over at the other site as well. And don’t forget to check the site during the week for updated contest listings – there are some pretty awesome giveaways happening around the blogosphere so you don’t want to miss out on your chance to enter any of them!
Some interesting posts I read this week on other sites include:
Hope you all have a great weekend!
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By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on June 26, 2009, at 12:06 am
 It’s Friday again! My favorite day of the week. We’re keeping it low-key again to let Abby recover further from surgery – although she’s already bored and driving me crazy, so we’ll see how that goes.
Here’s my question for this week:
Do you watch a lot of ‘summertime’ tv? What are your favorite shows?
Some of my most favorites are on generally just in the summer. I love ‘The Closer’, ‘Saving Grace’ and now ‘HawthoRNe’ on TNT, ‘Monk’ and ‘Psych’ on USA, and on the regular networks, I’m happy to have ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ and ‘America’s Got Talent’ back this summer.
Be sure to check out An Island Life for other fun Aloha Friday questions and to play along
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By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on June 25, 2009, at 10:25 pm
There’s just something about Daddies and their daughters.
I’m not even really sure what – but there is an undeniable bond there. And my husband is not immune – he completely adores all three of his girls.
But somewhere, even deep in the recesses of his heart – I know that he harbors a wish that we’d had at least one boy.
It’s about more than just carrying on the family name, or escaping from bathrooms filled with feminine products.
In one word – it’s all about football.
I don’t understand the draw – I’ll sit down and watch if no other choice exists, but the inner workings of the game and why it’s such an important Sunday ritual are beyond me.
Abby and Hannah’s level of interest seems limited to the excitement of talking about animal names, i.e. – “did the Lions beat the Bears?”.
But perhaps, with our littlest one, there just may be a football buddy for Daddy.
Girl or not, I think I’m seeing some potential there.
Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek
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By Deb - Mom of 3 Girls on June 25, 2009, at 1:56 am
I just wanted to give an update after Abby’s surgery today. She was extremely brave and only started to cry a little bit as they wheeled her away from us to take her into the operating room. Afterward she was quite groggy and in fact ended up sleeping or dozing for most of the rest of the day. The doctor said that the surgery went quite well and she doesn’t anticipate any complications, so we’re just in the recovery phase and hopefully she’ll be back to herself very soon. I haven’t had a good look at her eye yet, since she kept it mostly closed today – so far it’s just very red and a bit swollen. No covering |
