The time has come my best friend said to talk of many things i choose smokers, lights, babies and kings. Ok, not kings but it rymed. It was mentioned to me that i need to blog more for some quality reading... yea right. You know how when you get to that point where so much is happening that your mind feels about to explode? Is that just a January thing? I swear it's always like this... then come March we are all whining about how cold and bored we are. Here's the tip of the iceburg... So the past few weeks have been the best and the worst for my dear friend Lori. She removed from her life, shall we say, dead weight. I couldn't be more thrilled. Adios and don't come back. Of course when removing a fixture of our lives there is always a process. Some would say this process isn't all that important when said fixture was a complete waste of humanity to begin with... however I think that the process is important and should be tailored to the situation and the individual. I'm doing what I can to help, which as usual is pretty much nothing but it's made life a little more fun for me! Haha! Last weekend she came up to stay with us which meant we took her out to dinner- it was nice to have someone new around, changes the conversation a little you know? Of course Lori's afraid of nothing so she brought up the dredded preschool issue... i must report we are not closer to any decision on the matter but it was nice to get her insight. Gary and the kids left and we forged on to the Mall. That's right folks! No kids! No diaper bag, no cheerios, no strollers, no "if you don't walk right I'm going to spank your butt". I remember on the way to eat (i rode with her) thinking how nice it was to talk to someone who's voice isn't so high pitched only cats can hear it and how weird it was to just listen and nod and not have to repeat each sentance back to assure I was listening. :) You mothers won't be surprised to learn I kind of missed it. What is it about kids? We ache for a moments peace and quiet and we get it and all we can think about is the kids! Will I grow out of that? So we went to Anne Taylor which I love. I tried on jeans and was thrilled to be down a size however they didn't have my size in petites so i passed. Lori got some really cute jeans and a beautiful dress. They have the nicest clothes and when stuff is on sale it's such a great deal! It was fun to just walk around and look- i made some special purchases in the Disney store- they had stuff an extra 50% off so I had to get these adorable bowls for the kids- tigger for Tyler and princess for Grace. Then I just picked some up for Jenn's kids. Jason can get over it. Besides, I see him like thrice a year. Is it realy worth his time to beat me up over a couple plates? I think not! See, he hates when existing kids get gifts at any time a new or expected baby gets gifts. I see his point but EXTRA 50% off! I even left the tags on in case they wanted to take them back. They don't. Her kids love them just as I knew they would. I also got Grace a Christmas dress iwth Mickey and Minnie on it for next year. It was 5$. She doesn't evne have to wear it for Christmas though it is red and black plaid. It said 1-2 years and it's sleeveless so as is if it fits in the summer, with a top if it fits in the winter. Couldn't pass it up. Saturday brought Lori observing a typical Saturday at our house. Awake for 6 hours, got nothing done before we left for the baby shower. It was great of Lori to come along and I knew Jen would be understanding. Again with the no kids! There were 10 of us there, most of us with no kids! It was like a glitch in the matrix... Jen, of course, got some great great stuff. I was especially impressed with the gallons of Garlic-Garlic her friend Amy got her. I think next time i'm over there i'll request we do veggies and dip. We headed out to my mom's that night which was fun. No matter how little I pack we manage to fill up the car. Thankfully Tyler was pretty quiet the whole trip so Gary and I got to converse like normal people a bit. Sunday we went to see my brother's new apartment. HIS. CLOSET. IS. HUGE. I think it's actually larger than his kitchen. I could stand in the middle stretching out my hands and not touch any walls. In fact Gary probably couldn't and his wing span is a good 2 feet more than mine. Joshua's TV is about a quarter the size of a real live theatre screen so i thought it'd be funny to watch Little People Big World on it. It was. I really do love that show but we didn't have to watch so much of it. Joshua was trying to be all polite and let us pick, mom slept on the couch, and Gary acts like he's not a remote hog when we are out in public. When we came home it was overdue baths time which was fun. I've given up on the baby tub so Grace sits on a washcloth in the water to keep from sliding and it's SO much easier to wash her... i wish I'd have tried it before Christmas rather than waiting till after. She's been doing it a month now and that little girl is just like me. She's a water baby. I love baths and swimming and the ocean... Grace just LOVES baths. She splashes and makes all these crazy noises. She makes noises in her mouth with her lips, tonge and in her throat that I can't even figure out how to copy and she's even louder in the bathroom. It's adorable. Plus you can see all her baby fat which I love. She's so short. I realized today when I was dressing her that she's in 12 month onsies and the 9 month pants are a bit long. I think she might just have short legs so far but she may be doomed to a life like mine- never having pants you don't walk on... This week was pretty typical- keep the kids alive all day and night and start over in the morning. I"m re-reading the second half of th Harry Potter series b/c I read the last book so fast last year I forget most of it and i'm reading the books leading up to refresh my memory. It's funny what you'll make time for when you want to. haha! Tuesday we went to visit Mary which turned out to be a blast. i wasn't sure she really wanted us over but we stayed till almost 9! Then we came home and fought about the stupid DVR which stopped recording biggest loser as soon as Gary touched the remote. I wanted to just listen to what was on but he wanted to scream and swear at it. I'm like SHUT UP I"M WATCHING TIHS! Thta's really my only show I care about. So we watched the second half first and the first half second. Yesterday i babysat. Tyler woke up with a froggy throat and some congestion in his chest which only flared up when he ran which is like all day when Matthew is here. I let them go pretty much because the more he runs in the house with Matthew, the less he runs in the house with me. I get dizzy running that circle! Samantha is either sick or teething or both but she was miserable. Grace just sat on the floor all day and played with herself b/c I was tending to Samantha quite a bit and trying to keep the boys entertained/away from the babies. My dad was over in the evening and we attempted to hit the new Quaker Steak and Lube... however it was 6:30 by the time we got there and all of Stark County was there. We'll try again when it's been open a little longer... I told dad we need to come early on a Tuesday- all you can eat wings- we make money back on that with Gary... Today was a pretty typical day. I'm so emotional that this roller coaster lori's on has been affecting me too. Today I was just ill for her because i just hate to see someone go through pain you know? I just hate it. I also know that the tone of emails can be decieving and i was desperate to know how she REALLY was. Thankfully tonight was our get together night so I got to go out AGAIN with no kids! whoo hooo!! Kudo's to Gary for watching them all these times so I can do these things. We met over in Salem and got to do a bit of chatting, eating and shopping. All great things in life. I figure in a few months she'll have a man and we can take the men with us to be the DD's and we can really have good time!! Long Island Iced Tea for her, Margaritaville for me! I always think it would be fun to go out to dinner and have a drink and then go dancing... you know I missed that whole scene in life but bars and clubs seem so trashy to me for the most part... Lori, should we do it before we turn 30?!?! Anyways on the way home I had to stop to pee, of course, so i hit wally-world which was fun b/c I was BY MYSELF but turned into a giant fiasco. I have a real love-hate relationship with walmart. I've discussed that here before... you know, the fun of being able to buy spinach, supper glue, clothes, makeup, light bulbs and paint in the same store is just facinating to me and so it's fun to jsut go walk around... plus about 90% of gary and I's dates in our 10 years of love have included walking around walmart or k.mart in the early days. I picked up a few items and headed to check out. My theory on the 10 items or less by the cigarette aisle being the fastest has completely been blown out of the water. We are talking Atomic Bomb here. I admit it, i have issues with smokers. It's nothing personal I just can't stand it. It's gross. It stinks and you make me wait around in the damn line. This guy is up there, gets off his little go-cart-mobile and limps over to where is son has the cart in line and proceeds to ask for a certain ciggy. Fine. Either the lady had never seen a cigarette before in her life or this guy had no idea what he wanted b/c it took FOREVER. he ended up with 2 cartons of Marlboro reds and about 10 individual packs of greens. Don't ask my why. What the hell do I know? He's got his vetran hat on all stooped over mumbling something to the lady and taking his sweet time... then they proceed to unload the cart of 12 tshirts that I counted (there were more) 2 gallons of milk, a pair of shoes and a few small things I coudln't quite make out --aforementioned son (# 5 of 6 kids mind you) was embarassed enough to attempt to hid the cart from the crabby lady behind me who said ever so quietly that it "F-ing sure doesn't look like no G-D 10 items" to her. I'm sure the guy with the adorable toddler girl (in her pink jammies on his shoulders aww!) in the lane next to us really appreaciate it. So 15 minutes later (no he did not know how to use his bank card and yes he checked the recipt and put it in his wallet folded neatly, in his inside coat pocket BEFORE he put the bags into his cart and shuffled away) it was my turn. Now I'm a sucker for great little gifts right? So valentines day is coming up so the world is full of random odds and ends colored pink, red and purple. I love those colors! SO I found a couple pink spatula's and thought that might be a cute gift to brighten the kitchen of some friends. Of course they were not marked with a price and I could nto find the price on teh shelf anywhere and the "FIND THE PRICE HERE" scannres wouldn't read it so I asked the cashier to tell me the price before I purchased. (Very audible sigh escapes lips of woman behind me.) She scans them- Freaking 4.97$! Who pays $5 for a freaking spatual at WALMART?!?!? I mean if this was Williams Sonoma I'd have bought them bu thtis was WALMART! I had watched the flat screen TV for that whole 15 minutes tell me about the millions of dollars walmart has saved Ohioans in 2008 (averages aobut 300$ a second best i could tell). You know how walmart saved me money? I did NOT buy those spatulas! Sorry. I said thank you but i don't want them and the cashier agreed with me that it was pretty expensive and she usually paid about a dollar for hers. I said "yea, i figured if they were a buck or two they'd be fun for me and my friends but not for 5. I can't pay that much- that's why I'm here." The lady behind me MIGHT have actually cracked a smile....err... grin. The guy with her (these ppl were in there 50's I'd guess) smiled kindly to me. I wonder if he was bright enough to be embarassed that the lady had ealier yelled/cussed in my ear about the ppl in front of me which I have no control over thank-you-very-much. Ok, that covers smokers, babies and the last week-in-the-life updates... lights... aahhh.. (Don't read this part grandma!!) So driving today I must have gone under at least 100 lights. At least 20 of them yellow and one red by the time i was under it. Sometimes idiots tail you so badly you just can't stop you know? Plus the momentary panic goes away when you see 2 idiots followed you making you less of an idiot. Anyways Gary told me ages ago that if you go under a yellow light and hit the ceiling as you go under you get 5 years great sex. 10 years for a red. I don't hit the ceiling but I'd say we're set for life. God bless the lights every 50 yards in Alliance (I'm mentally passing on the blessing to a friend- you know who you are). I will say though if you hit one red you hit at least 6 as was my fate earlier tonight.... PS edited to add that Gary is incredibly cool.

Tyler playing playdough
Tyler and Marta painting (Marta is a friend who came to visit last week)
A picture of Gary and I Jackie sent from 2003 maybe? WHY does my hair look dyed I wonder?
Beautiful Armandina

Handsome Tyler

The kids with my dad- Papa Tim
Eating puffs and cheerios now! She's growing up! ~*SOB*~ :o(
We're doing well. For those we've not heard from in awhile, we miss you!

Long overdue ... I"m back to the world of blogging. I was incredibly upset over everything that happened with Tyler going to see the surgeon and then busy over Christmas that I just got away from it- got more into keeping current with emailing... Tyler is well. The surgeon did recommend surgery by the time Tyler is 6, prefferably now or we can try casts but he's not confident it will work. Gary's mom also works for an orthopedic surgeon so she talked to him and said that in Tyler's case he belives surgery should be a last option. He also said (and belive me- Gary's mother in law found research to back it up) that often kids who have the surgery still walk on thier toes. Since Tyler does not have pain and physically CAN walk flat footed when he wants to, we are working with him to stand and walk on his flat feet and also on some stretching. We hope to take Tyler in the next couple months to see this doctor, continue to work with him including stretching and look into physical therapy. I'd like to then take him back in about a year and see if he thinks there is any reason to pursue the surgery. If there is, the man we saw in Akron is the best in the area and we'll do it. I just hate for surgery to be a first option when we've been told for 3 years not to worry about it. Something just can't go from "no big deal" to "let's put your kid under and cut the back of his leg open". Grace is officially "mobile". She's scooting all over the place on her bottom and also rolls around to get where she wants. We call the scooting "stealth" because neither of us have actually seen her do it She just tends to end up several feet away from where we left her in seconds to minutes. She tried to grab Tyler's pizza off his breakfast tray (we had pizza and Little Einstiens picnic) today. She's very interested in what we are eating too. Everyone always said she'd be the quiet one because Tyler will talk for her but she's showing us that this is highly unlikely. They both talk pretty nonstop. Since Grace suddenly is fine with being on her tummy she's gotten closer to crawling in the past two weeks. I really thought she'd never do it but suddenly she's not very interested in sitting and playing. She's getting down on her tummy from sitting, reaching stuff, rolling to stuff or scooting. She still occasionally gets so excited she falls backwards but not too often. I'm just amazed and how quickly things can change. She can stand holding only one hand and loves to bounce when she's like that... once she figures out how to pick up her feet we are in some serious trouble! She'll be our kid who's into everything and since she's observing all her brother's attempts to avoid athority I expect her to also have a bit of an attitude... on top of just being a woman! I"m babysitting one day a week now. The boy i watched last year and his sister. matthew is 3and Samantha is 10 months. She army crawls which I'm sure is where Grace has gotten the idea to chase after Tyler's cars and trains and try to get into our desk. They are both good kids and so far I've gotten all of them to nap at the same time for at least an hour and a half. This gives me time to get dishes done and colapse on the couch for a few minutes. So far no attempt on cleaning or anything else has been made on those days. Playing with them is really fun but so far I keep them pretty seperated since the boys don't like having to be careful and the girls want to eat all the boys toys! Tyler is still doing really well with the underpants. I keep him in diapers when he sleeps because he's just not showing any signs of being ready to be dry through the night. He's dry about half the time for naps. I swear the kid pees as many times a day as me but sleeps as hard as his dad so I expect bed-wetting to be an issue so i'm not giong to worry about it until he's older. Now that he's been in underpants for several months i finally, today, put him in the preschool class at church. he was th eonly one in there. Oh well. I actually felt bad afterwards b/c his teacher could have enjoyed the service with her boyfriend had Tyler not been in there, but it was time and Tyler did well. He did a craft, had a snac, played, did a bible story and even learned a verse. He was very excited that he got to take some snack up to the older kids and share. :) I was very relieved to be able to put him there and feel like he got something out of it. he's going to learn to follow directions from another adult, and hopefully learn more about Jesus and the Bible not to mention how to sit still at a table. I hope to also find out from this if he's going to benefit from going to "real" preschool or if he'll be fine with me homeschooling him. Gary's district (where Tyler will likely go) now has all day every day Kindergarten which I don't preferr- I like having a choice of a few days a week or every day... ugh. I have some pretty strong opionons about education and what i feel is best for my son so we'll see what the Lord brings. I have thought about homeschooing as much as through third grade but I really do want Tyler in school starting in First grade...now maybe Kindergarten... that's a ways off though. :) Either way I'm glad for him to be learning something in church other than bad habits of other kids :) LOL! Gary and I FINALLY got our will done. The main thing we wanted was to be sure the kids were taken care of and to adress a power of attorney and healthcare power of attorney. I"m so relieved to have it done and official. We've been going to do it since before Tyler was born... talk about procrastination! I'm ashamed to say we had nothing before this. It was easy, took only a few emails and an hour of signing (and visiting since we know the attorney we used) and a relativly small fee for the peace of mind. I"m relieved too that one of my bestest friends is single, happy and SAFE. Hours and hours and days and years of prayer have been answered- in God's perfect timing! Gary's still doing indoor soccer and we got to go to his game last night. I like the 6:00 games much better than the 10:00 games. Keep in mind this is PM! I like to be able to take the kids especially when, like last night, Tyler is well behaved and cheers. Between yelling for "daddy" "Spencer's Daddy" and "Pastor Dan" he provided a good bit of entertainment! Also Sue (Dan's wife) was there and she loves to hold Grace (I mean who doesn't?) so it was easy to feed her and watch Tyler at the same time. You'd think more was going on, and it is, but I think I've bored you to your limit so I will resume dancing and singing praise songs with Tyler! Have a blessed week! 06 Jan 2008 Grace update Grace is growing like a little weed. She's into and almost out of 6-9 month clothes already. I find I change her sizes a bit late b/c I'm so shocked when things still "fit" i don't realize that they fit BETTER in the next size up! In December she really found her voice even more than before. She mostly made just noises but she also finally got hugging, kissing, raspberries and discovered her tounge. She also discovered her fingers more and more. She plays a lot and sits up without help very very well. She only falls occasionally now and always when either rocking too hard back to front or when reaching for a toy. She just kind of leans forward until she's on her belly and then kicks her legs out and rolls over. She learned last week how to nod her head up and down which is hysterical b/c it makes it look like she's saying "yes" to everything- especially with her cute little closed-mouth grin she's started. Today was the big day though- she said her first word. After months of prodding she finally said Da-da and it's just amazing! She said it at the mall tonight (you know she's my child!!) How funny though that I"m sad b/c it's our last first word in our house. :( I'll get over it- don't worry. DOnt' worry, Tyler is doing well too- growing and learning and changing and challenging me every step of the way. 20 Dec 2007 Thursday oiy. Today Tyler has an appointment at Akron Children's to see an orthopedic doctor/surgeon. His toe walking, though adorable, could be a problem and we're getting it checked out. Results of this visit could range from "he's fine" to needed therapy, braces, casts or surgery. Please just pray for him and us. I'm very nervous (surprise surprise!) but don't want to make him nervous. I may never finish my last blog so in a nutshell we've all had the flu this week and it's horrible. Tyler's had the worst diapers known to man- in fact he had to be bathed in the middle of the night last night b/c it had gotten all down his legs and dried in the night. Why do they not wake us up to tell us? I mean he's THREE! You'd think that would bother him. ugh. Grace has thankfully stopped vomiting/ spitting up but still is waking in a 2 month old routine and eating little, Gary claims to be back to normal but I predict he'll have it again Christmas morning b/c he's running himself ragged. I can't seem to beat it b/c I'm running myself ragged too-not to mention my weak stomach and taking care of two kids secreting various bodily fluids at all hours of the day. Thank the LORD we have a working washer and dryer! We hope to leave tomorrow after Gary's work to go visit with my family through Christmas eve night, return for church and have Christmas morning us, and then afternoon and 26th with Gary's family. Pray for us as we travel and if I don't get back on here- Merry Christmas! We love you and are praying for you all. God Bless and thanks for your prayers!! UPDATE: Tyler needs casts, 2 sets 3 weeks each, and/or surgery.