Trick or Treat!

Bribery

I don't usually resort to bribery with Ben these days. But today is a teacher workday, and he was being SO ANNOYING this morning that I couldn't help it. I guess being home sick 2 days last week + the day off today = too much time at home. I took him for new shoes, a hair cut, and lunch, and then got him a (used) DS game in exchange for a promise of no more whining today! At least we did get some errands accomplished-- the shoes and hair situations were pretty desperate. Now can I please get some work done, Ben?

Pumpkin Carving

My kids always abandon me for more interesting pursuits (tv watching? Really guys?) shortly after the laborious task of pumpkin carving begins. Of course, if I suggested not doing one, they would be scandalized. I said to Ben, "if you don't watch me, how will you know how to do this for your own kids?" To which he replied, "I'm going to make my wife do it!"

Ten Years!

Today is Joel and my 10th anniversary! (Can you say WOW?) Joel is working this weekend, and we have a babysitter lined up for all-weekend-long two weeks from now, so we decided to forego any special anniversary celebration until then. Nevertheless we did go out to dinner (with kids), at Zen Asian Fusion. Zen is owned by the people who own my favorite restaurant, Miro, and is a fusion of Spanish and Asian. So Ben got to order Sesame Chicken (the kid has lived on sesame chicken ever since the stomach bug hit for some reason) and I got to order my favorite meal: pork tenderloin with chimichuri sauce, black beans, rice and plantains, and tres leche cake for dessert. And a glass of sangria. The kids were fairly well behaved, and I gave a toast that went something like this: "Kids, ten years ago right about now, your father and I got married, and we got married without a single thought in our little heads about where we would be or what life would be like ten years later, and... well, here we are." ;)

Seriously though, I could not have imagined a more amazing "ten years later" even if I had given any thought to it! Happy anniversary Joel!

And the Dog Almost Gives Me a Heart Attack - Again

My Friday was uneventful - all 3 kids made it through the day, had a nice lunch with a friend, got somewhat caught up with work stuff after being out for much of the last few days -- except for one MAJOR incident:

I was upstairs collecting laundry from the kids' dirty clothes hampers and when i came downstairs I saw something chewed up on the living room carpet - the recent work of the dog. I went over to see what it was, and it was A PRESCRIPTION BOTTLE OF SLEEPING PILLS! Which apparently she'd taken off Joel's bedside table. The pills were spilled all over the floor and the bottle was chewed up. In a TOTAL PANIC I called Joel and asked him if he knew how many of them he had ever taken --turns out he had only ever taken one, and I could still read the quantity on the pill bottle. I hung up on Joel to count the pills (Poor Joel almost had a heart attack himself) and mercifully concluded that only one pill was unaccounted for -- I guess they tasted pretty bad. The directions (for human consumption) were to take 1-3 pills, so after consulting with Joel we determined that one pill in a 60 pound dog was not going to do much except maybe make her sleepy. Indeed, she took a 2 hour nap after that.

Lesson learned, lesson learned, lesson learned.... there is no such thing as a Labrador-proof pill bottle!

Teacher Conference

Yesterday I had Ben's first quarter conference with his teacher. At the end of the quarter (which closes today), his averages are: 91% in literacy, 91% in math, 88% in writing, 93% in science, and 90% in social studies. Of course, since the grading scale is annoyingly strict, this is one A (science) and the rest B's. However, I am pleased because apparently 3rd grade report cards come as a shock for a lot of parents, because the highest mark in K through 2nd grades, a "3", can mean an A, B or C. His teacher said she is pleased with his performance, and she is working with him on his organization skills which she sees as being his one area that he needs improvement on (where have we heard this before?) She also said he is very sweet, very bright, and has a great attitude in class. Yay Ben! :) She also reviewed her homework policy, which is that she does not give very much homework because she feels like the kids work very hard in class and she doesn't want to overload them. (I am totally on board with this).

We Should Rename this Blog "The Diarrhea Chronicles"

So to recap my week:

Sunday: vomiting/diarrhea (Caroline)
Monday: Diarrhea (Caroline)
Tuesday V/D (Joel), D (Caroline), Nausea (me)
Wednesday: D (Caroline), N/D (me and Ben)

Arrive at Thursday. At some point during the night Ben gets up and comes to tell me his stomach hurts. I told him to go back to bed. Shortly after this the dog starts whining, which I attribute to having heard Ben get up (though in hindsight she never whines during the night any more...) So I ignore her except to yell at her a couple of times without actually going into the laundry room where her crate is.

In the morning, with Ben still sick, and the baby still sick, I got up and went into the laundry room to let her out of her crate and discovered she was covered in diarrhea, and not only was she covered, and her crate covered, but the floor and even the walls next to her crate.

Absolute horror does not begin to describe my reaction to this sight! It took two hours to clean dog, floors, walls, crate, bedding, etc. There may still be some doggy diarrhea in the baseboard crevices. Apparently, dogs can get rotavirus, which we assume is the bug circulating in our house. As I scrubbed her down in the bathtub, I yelled at the poor dog -- "This is what you get for trying to lick Caroline's butt!!!!" I really felt quite bad for her though. Who wants to sit in their own poop all night long? Poor doggy. She was obviously not feeling well, refusing to eat for most of the morning yesterday.

Blessedly, that was (I am assuming!) the low point of my week. Since then I am happy to report that dog, boy and baby seem much improved. Today everyone is back at school / day care, though I am slightly concerned about Caroline who is as yet not diarrhea free, though since she only had 2 episodes yesterday I am hoping she can make it through the day today! Fingers crossed!

Illness Update

Caroline has been to day care for all of about an hour and 15 minutes this week so far thanks to non-stop diarrhea. Joel and I fell victim to the stomach bug yesterday morning, and Ben last night. Becca is the only one not sick so far ( knock on wood). Needless to say, it has not been a very productive week so far.

My Kids are so Cool

Waiting

Sick Baby

This is a baby who woke up covered in vomit and sitting in diarrhea this morning. Not one of her finer moments. Nothing like a tubby and a load of laundry first thing in the morning!

Hendersonville

Some pictures from our trip to Hendersonville for Uncle Joe's birthday.

Best line of the weekend-- Joel's cousin Paul trying to explain to Ben what another relative, who's a physicist, studies:

Paul: He studies really small things... So, what's the smallest thing you can think of?

Ben: A bunny.

Top Knot

Clean dog?

After paying $100 (including tip) for a mobile pet grooming service, Clara certainly smells better, but whether or not she is really significantly cleaner, I am unsure.... She did get a nifty Halloween bandana though.

Cranky Baby

Joel wants to start putting Caroline to bed at 8 in an effort to get her to sleep past 6:30 a.m. But at 6:45 she looked like this. By 7:10 Joel announced that he had given up and I could put her to bed.

Halloween Preview

Weekend Recap

Saturday Joel helped out a neighbor at a barbecue competition at a festival in Matthews, while I took the kids for their Halloween costumes (I have a picture of Ben and Becca in their costumes that apparently I forgot to post so I will do that... Baby hasn't modeled her costume yet, since when we got back from Party City it was nap time). After nap we met Joel at the festival where the kids got their faces painted and petted adorable puppies that had Ben moaning "puppy.... puppy..." for an hour after we left. We arrived home just before friends arrived to hang out / go out to dinner. We tried to get into Cow Fish but the wait was an hour and a half even though we got there by 5:30. So we went next door to Zink instead, which is a bit fancier, and the children were well behaved under penalty of death.

Yesterday Ben had Hebrew school while I took Rebecca to a friend's birthday party at the Ballantyne Country Club, where she got to play on the Fun Bus and hit a piniata, and I got to eat her cake because she didn't like it for some reason. So a win-win all around.

Face of a Girl who Missed her Afternoon Nap

Face Paint is Serious Business

While Joel helped a neighbor in a barbecue competition at a festival in Waxhaw today, Ben got down to the serious business of face-paint.

Fall Fashion Preview

Manic Monday

Today Rebecca's preschool is closed again for yet another round of holidays (Simchat Torah maybe?) Babysitting is at my house, with 8 kids and 2 babysitters. When I left the house to drop Caroline off and come to Barnes & Noble to try to get some work done, there was a lot of running and screaming going on. And whining from the dog, who'd been accidentally left off the doggy-day-care schedule. Fortunately I called to find out why they were late picking her up, and they promised to send someone back out to get her. Otherwise I would have a very unhappy dog today. Hoping the house will be in one piece when I return later!

Crawling!

So yesterday while a friend was over I was discussing Caroline's crawling skills and attempted to demonstrate that instead of crawling properly on hands and knees, she "army crawls" on her belly using her elbows and toes to push herself forward. So I chucked a baby book across the floor in an effort to get Caroline to demonstrate this, and what does she do? She crawls on hands and knees for the very first time! Shocked, I did it again, and again, and then grabbed my phone to take a video. And-- she immediately gave up crawling and started doing her belly crawl again. And again. And again. Until FINALLY, when she thought I had put the camera away and wasn't watching, she crawled again. Sneaky Caroline, very sneaky.

One More

Pumpkin Picking

I tried to upload a whole bunch of pictures to my Picasa web albums from my iPhone, but it crapped out in exhaustion halfway through it seems... I'll try to upload the rest at some point soon ;)

Reunion

This is Ladybug, the dog Ben met last year apple picking who prompted us to get our own dog.

Modern Technology and Random Stuff

Modern Tech-
I am a little dubious about this one, but I gave it a try. I used my bank's mobile app to deposit a check by taking a picture of the front and back of the check. I wonder if it will actually work? If so, it will be a convenient way to deposit the rent check that we get every month for the other house (really the only live check we get on a regular basis). I tested it out with a random check from the dentist's office, I guess we overpaid at some point. I am keeping the paper check for a while, in case it doesn't go through -- I have my doubts ;)

Random-
I happened to notice the stock price of Apple the other day after not having noticed it for like literally years. Back in 2000, or around there sometime, when Apple's stock crashed, I had the foresight to buy some at $23 a share. Unfortunately I did not have nearly enough foresight, because I sold it when it got back up to $60 or so a share a couple years later (when I was buying a house in MA at the height of the real estate market.... Okay let's not go there). What I *should* have done was to liquidate all my assets and put EVERYTHING in Apple and then just sit tight for a dozen years. I'd be a millionaire a couple times over by now. Seriously. Crap.

If you get any random texts and you aren't sure who they are from, they might be from Ben. He discovered how to text using his iPod and iMessage, and he is becoming a total menace. I stopped him in the nick of time from texting Grandma at 6:30 a.m (You're welcome).

My baby gargoyle

Is it just me or do the piggers look like little horns?

Pillow Pet