My friend, Rob Weddle is performing on Oprah's karaoke challenge today (I should've blogged this yesterday).  I'm watching the show now, which means it aired in Florida 4 hours ago.  You can vote for Rob (even if you missed him, trust me, he rocks) at Oprah.com. 

I'm so excited for him.  The votes are tallied tonight and the top three will be announced tomorrow.  Break a leg, Rob!

Spud has a blister on his toe.  This is weird, right?




I mean, how does a child who doesn't take more than 5 steps at a time get a blister.  I guess this is a rhetorical question.  I assume he was wearing a sock that bunched up and rubbed on his toe all day.  It can't be his shoes.  He never wears his shoes!

I picked up his baby book yesterday.  You know how I toiled over what photos to include.  This is exactly why.  Isn't it weird for a baby to get a blister?  I had a whole page of physical anomalies included in the book (how his umbilical cord was cut twice, his eye infection, cradle cap, and his long middle toe (which you can see in this photo as well).  I tried to photograph his enlarged lymph node but he was too squirmy.) If I had not already ordered the book I totally would have included his first blister.  I wonder if I ever would have been happy with it.  Arg.  Well, first of all there was one collage of photos that was printed differently than it appeared on screen (I designed a hard bound book through walmart.com) so in the book half of Spud's head was cut off in one photo.  Also I refer to the magical land of "Floorida" and compose an entire sentence with the word, "Were".  I did not include the photo of Marie's grandparents with Spud or the one of him smiling with his Nana ( although there is a fairly nice photo of him not smiling with his Nana.)  I intentionally left out the professional "old timey" photo because I couldn't obtain the copy release.  I supposed I could add these photos to the back of the book where I intended to make a pocket for a DVD including JPEGs of all the photos and video footage of Spud's baby days.  But what do I do about the typos?  If I hand correct them I am only drawing attention to them.  On the other hand if I hand correct them then it is obvious that I already know they're there.  I could draw googly eyes in Floorida.

My friend (let's call her Lebecca) makes a hot breakfast for her family every morning.  I can't testify that this happens every morning but I hang out with her on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and she is always cooking oat meal, biscuits, bacon, pancakes, and more.

Last Thursday was her husand's birthday.  She made pancakes, bacon, english muffins with homemade grape jelly (although a friend made it), and served it with fresh strawberries and dragon fruit.  He gratefully took his plate and said, "Nothing special for my birthday?"

No he didn't.  But he may as well have.  If I served my husband this delicious breakfast he would have fainted on the spot, woken up, kissed the back of my hand and then cleaned the plate.  He would have known how special his birthday was to me.  This is why I refuse to cook a hot breakfast.  I REFUSE!  I mean tomorrow is Little's birthday and I would cook her a hot breakfast but we have to leave for school at 7:50a.m.  Maybe I'll microwave some oatmeal.  I'll let you know how well that goes over, she's gonna love it!

So, as you know, Little has been coughing for 9 days (insert principal from Ferris Beuller's, "Nine times").  Four days ago she asked me for a kiss.  I offered her my cheek, "But I want to kiss you on the mouth."  And she was so cute and I figured if I had not gotten sick by then I must be invinsible.  So I squeezed my eyes shut and let her kiss me.  I thought it was funny.  Now I'm sick and it is not funny at all.

On Saturday morning I called Marie.  I hadn't spoken to anyone yet, but I hadn't really thought about it.  She picked up.  I tried to say hello but nothing came out.  I gasped.  Ursula must have stolen my voice!  Then I apologized for calling her without first checking my throat to see if I could talk.

Today Face is feeling ill.  I was i.m.ing with him and said, "Oh no!  I told her not to kiss you!"  He said, "It's not her fault.  I'm very kissable."  Which is true.  I have often fallen prey to his kissability.

I'm at work now and Little is playing with one of those toys that has beads and hard wires.  The beads look like cars, trucks and hot air balloons.  As she pushes the beads along she is shouting, "Stay in your city on the Earth!"  What a strange thing to say, over and over and over...

Also, earlier this morning I i.m.ed Face to say I was on hold with the doctor.  I wanted to know if a nine day cough was cause to visit.  Later I said, "We're leaving for the gym now, see ya later."  And Face said, "Let me know when you hear from the doctor."  "Oops.  Did I not tell you?  I feel like I told you."  Apparently I blogged about my discussion with Little's nurse but neglected to tell her father.  Oh well, that's why he should read my blog, right?

It has been 9 days and she continues to cough.  She has no fever, no runny nose, no stomach issues.  I called her dr but he's only available to see her when I'm at work (I have a three hour day today.)  So maybe she'll see another dr or see him tomorrow.

Okay, his nurse just called.  She said without other symptoms (coughing something up, fever, vomiting) thatshe doesn't need to see th dr and she's probably not contagious any more.  Of course four days ago I figured she wasn't contagious and I let her kiss me -on the mouth!  Now I have no voice (which is nice for everyone else) and a cough slightly less annoying than hers.

Luckily Spud has stayed healthy through this all.  It's hard to keep them from sharing a straw or food. 

It stopped snowing.  It's about 40 degrees here.  My friend, Barb is on her way to Orlando to vacation the month of November away.  I'm trying not to be jealous.  After all, the sun is shining here, we have a new bottle of bubbles and we're gonna put on our winter coats and blow bubbles!

I started out the night thinking I would not have that much fun.  To hold Spud upright in his apple costume I had to arch my back which made it hurt like heck!  Surprisingly he did not hate wearing it.  Little took a shower and when I tried to do her hair it was awful.  Is this weird?  I think her hair was too clean.  There was no oil to slick it down.  And I could not find the one little tube of gel that we own -because I used it on her for her class photos and did not put it back -I think it's in the car -anyway...

We went to the ghost walk at Mt.Jumbo gym.  We've never been before.  They had plinko and mini-golf, little basketball games, fishing games, and great costumes (there was a huge Woody the woodpecker that Little was convinced was a duck.)

We came home for Spud's nap.  When Spud woke up we fed the children.  It took till 9:00p.m. for Face and I to realize we never ate dinner.

We went to Fall Fest at Little's school.  Where there were more games.  Even Spud got to play plinko and try fishing.  We went from room to room and ended up at the gym -where they had huge bounce arounds!  It was awesome.  Even Face and I went sliding.  There were little bounce arounds -which Spud loved, especially because that meant it was time to take off the sphere of an apple costume and just wear his cute little red outfit.






I even stopped at Walmart and picked up those photos for both of the children's baby frames.  The wallets I printed were a bit large so now all of his photos look like extreme close-ups.  His December photo is just a foot!

Why am I blogging this at 3:00a.m. you might ask.  Apparently Spud wanted to share the time change with me.  I wonder if he was thrown off because we let them stay up an hour after bedtime playing on the bounce arounds.  Anyway, he woke up, I changed him, I offered him some soy milk, I put an extra layer of clothing on him, he kept crying.  Then we snuggled on the couch for a half hour while I watched one of my newly rented Halloween movies, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Face picked this and Drag Me to Hell as a surprise for me).  Apart from being awake in the middle of the night, it was really nice to snuggle with Spud.  He doesn't do a lot of snuggling any more. 

Okay, okay, I almost forgot (in my groggy-middle-of-the-night-stupor) the best blog story of the night!  So Face and I put the children to bed and call for Chinese food (I told you we forgot to eat dinner).  Kenny's is not answering and Dragon Inn is no longer delivering.  I decide to make tacos.  I pour myself a pepsi.  I start getting out all the ingredients; shells, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese...

Face comes into the kitchen to help me clean up while the meat is frying.  I think, "How nice."  He picks up my freshly poured glass of cool, fizzy pepsi.  He pours it into the kitchen sink.  When he sees it fizzle he says, "Was that your pepsi?"  ARG!

Then I started shredding the cheese (I say shredding even though I was really cutting because I hate that expression.)  I pull out the trash can to throw away the plastic wrap from the cheese and there I see the lettuce I had just pulled out of the refrigerator.

"You threw away my lettuce?"  That living lettuce which I was less than impressed by but which stayed fresh (though admittedly limp) for some time.

"I thought you just got it out of the fridge to throw it away.  It was limp."

"You thought I got it out with the green taco sauce, the cheese, and the tomatoes because I was cleaning out the fridge?"

Then he suggests I pull a "George" and eat it out of the trash.  "It's still in its container.  It's on the top."

So I did, I ate the lettuce out of the trash.  Don't judge me!

I hope you had a Happy Halloween!

At walmart.com you can order a variety of prints, uploaded from your home computer. 4x6 inch photos cost 9 cents.  Wallets come in pairs.  A pair of wallets, printed on a 4x6 inch piece of photo paper cost 54 cents.  Why do they cost so much more?  Because the employee is expected to cut your wallets apart for you.  Which they never do (in my experience with several labs).  But even if they did, I think 46 cents to cut a piece of paper in half in excessive.

I made collages of my photos in Picassa, uploaded them and ordered 4x6 inch prints.  I saved $5.00.

I'm filling one of those frames that has space for one wallet photo for every month of Spud's first year.  I am also filling in Little's baby frame.  Better late than never.

I feel so bad for the baby munchkin face.  She has a dry cough.  She had to stay home form school yesterday.  She seemed to get better throughout the day.  I'm planning on taking her out today but I did pick up some medical masks, I'll tell her it's a Halloween mask and she'll love wearing it.

I finished Spud's baby book yesterday and actually ordered it.  I'm making a hard-covered book from Walmart.com.  There are 58 photos of Face, 65 photos of me, 93 photos of Little and 452 of Spud himself (not counting the ultrasound photos.)  It was hard to order it.  I wanted to stop with his first birthday but there were "baby milestones" that followed the party, his first haircut, his first step, his first visitors, his first whale sighting.  So I added two more pages.  But then there was his first ice cream cone and his first brain freeze.  Then I wanted to add his first trip down the big slide at turf time.  It could go on forever!  It is 108 pages of beautiful babyhood.  It should arrive in two weeks, I'm so excited!

Spud's Halloween costume is coming along smashingly, no really I'm ready to smash it.  He's supposed to be an apple (Little is Snow White and I'm the Evil Queen.)  I paper mached a punch balloon which immediately started to shrink and the paper crinkled.  Around the third layer the balloon shrank so badly that the knot at the bottom of the balloon was pulling the globe inward.  So I cut the knot off.  In the fifth layer the globe fell off of the ballon completely (The rubber-band on the punch balloon was suspending my globe from the light fixture above the dining room table.)  I let it dry in the sink but the bottom was flattened out completely.  That's okay, you have to cut the bottom off for Spud's legs anyway.  The last layer was red wrapping paper (I got the instructions online.)  I guess you're supposed to only put the glue on the underneath side of the red paper or I used too much flour because the next morning it was grey and splotchy.  So I bought some fabric and covered the blob.  Luckily I also found an adorable red cap that I am going to sew a stem and a leaf on to.  I'll post a photo later. 

Yesterday a lady told Little she had beautiful eyes and Little said, "Oh, so do you!"

Also yesterday we stopped at the A&P to use my coupons and while we were standing in line at the cashier I said to Little, "Did I not brush your hair at all today?  It looks like you're growing dread locks."  That's when I looked up at the people in front of me, who had dreadlocks.  They smiled.  I said, "It's different when you're not doing it on purpose.  And she doesn't even have a hair tie!"  I was so embarrassed.  I continued to be embarrassed all night, occasionally calling out, "I can't believe I did that!"

We're on the last season of Six Feet Under and at the funeral last night some Quakers were having a moment of silence, more than moment, they were having centering silence.  I said may be people should do that at my funeral.  Especially if I continue to do this centering prayer.  Face was very much against it.  Maybe I could just invite those who want to do it after the funeral to stay.  Of course he did say I could do whatever I wanted at his funeral.  He just has to hope he dies first.  I mean how's it going to look if my last request is that my family tries centering prayer and he goes to the buffet instead?

Since meeting my own Addie I have met more Addies than I have in the rest of my life.  Which wasn't hard because I don't remember ever meeting an Addie before.  I've met Addie, whose full name is Adreama.  Addie, whose full name is Adalynn.  Addie whose full name is Addison.

Where did they all come from?  And how come no one is really named Addie?

Last week at the workshop I sttended, there was a Mary Claire and another Clare.  But Clare's name wasn't really Clare, it was Clarice.  She's just always gone by Clare.  I was almost named Mary Clare but my mother thought it was too many syllables to scream in anger.  Most moms lengthen their children's names with the middle and last name but not my mother she wants get her point across quickly, "John!"  "Clare!"  I don't think "Addie" takes too much time to scream.

Face is very excited about this movie.  He asked if I could find a babysitter.  It took me about two seconds (thanks Rebecca!)  And then it occurs to me; isn't this a cartoon?  I mean didn't we see the preview for it before watching "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs"?  Why are we not taking the children?  It's true Spud has been a little antsy lately.  He can't sit through church and we spent the last half-hour of "Cloudy" pacing in the back of the theater.  But surely we can take Little, right?  Saw6 is also out.  I think the series is getting a little too complicated.  I may have to watch 1-5 so I can keep up (actually I think I have to watch 4 and 5, that's where it started skipping around in time and introducing new bad guys.)  I love to go to the movies and was stoked to see two movies coming out that I can go see.  Then I realized I have to work all day tomorrow. 

Maybe I should forget about the movies and finish Spud's Halloween costume.  I got my costume yesterday, I cannot wait to show you photos!