Archives for 2008

We’re leaving for the airport to fly to Florida in one hour! Whoop! (Did I just type whoop?!?) Since yesterday I’ve been cleaning and preparing like a mad woman. You see, there are only two things that truly motivate me to deep down clean my house. Having a party and going out of town. I hate leaving a dirty house. And the bigger and longer the trip, the deeper I clean. I have mopped, vaccuumed, cleaned bathrooms (including toilets and showers) and washed every item of laundry in this house. So, the way I see it is we just need to travel more so my house will stay this clean. I’m just sayin’…

For those of you that have spent time around my kids recently, you know that while they do love one another, they fight like cats and dogs. Literally, they make each other bleed! So this morning when they were playing in the basement and I heard them laughing and giggling for a good fifteen minutes without any screams, tears or fights, I had to peek and see what was up. This is what I found them doing. They were having a ball.

Just a quick rant to ease some frustration. I went to Country Club Car Wash today to have my nasty car washed. It was one of those that guide your car along, which I hate and I didn’t know that until I’d already purchased the car wash or I wouldn’t have done it. Anyway, I’m driving into the car wash and all of the sudden, my left front hub cap breaks in half from the dumb guider thing. This lady comes running out and motions for me to roll my window down then says in this snotty, condescending voice, “You’re not supposed to steer. You just broke your tire. You have to read the sign!” I then ask, “Uhh, what sign?” She points. Oh, you mean that tiny little sign on the sidewalk to my left? Gee, I’m sorry, I was staring at the giant flashing green sign in front of me that said Drive forward. Silly me for not craning my neck to the side to check for further instructions. So what does this lady do? She picks up my broken pieces of hub cap and hands them back to me and tells me to be more careful! I was so pissed off. So now I have a barely clean car and a broken wheel. Nice. I mean, I know it was technically my fault. I get that. But the lady was so obnoxious about it that it made me even madder. Okay, I was hoping that ranting here would make me feel better. It didn’t. I’m still annoyed…

So Lee had a special business program/dinner last night that I went to with him. Before we left I tried on my size 8 Gap slacks and they fit! They weren’t loose by any means, but they fit comfortably enough that I could move around and even sit without splitting them. I was so thrilled that I decided to wear them to dinner. Mistake number one. Because, you see, all I’d had to eat for lunch was a Slim Fast (which are nasty, by the way, but apparently they are working) so of course my pants fit well. By the time I finished my salad, however, I was miserable. I’m in a room of 17 doctors listening to a presentation and all I can think is the button on my pants is going to pop off and embed itself into someone’s forehead. Finally, knowing there was no way I’d be able to eat my steak when it came, I discreetly unbottoned my pants, mistake number two as now it would be impossible to discreetly button them back up since they were so dang tight. After dinner, Lee calls me to come over and meet one of the doctors. I panic slightly before deciding to just go for the buttoning and hope no one notices. Luckily I was sitting by two women that I know well and am friends with so they were the only ones that saw me and we all enjoyed a good laugh. So, now we know. Just because they fit, doesn’t mean you need to wear them out. I think I’ll give myself a little more time before I wear those pants again.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le_mnuyUFes]

Here is Sloan’s YouTube debut. He loves to “play” American Idol. Note that the words to the song should be “Deep WAY Down” not Deep Where Down. The kid knows just what to do with a microphone. I have no idea where he gets that! A few desclaimers: First, he always wants me to be Simon and I do a horrible British accent. Please do forgive! Second, for some reason he wanted me to “introduce” him as Krut Stuart. I have no idea why. Third, I was feeding Landon a bottle while taping so you can hear Landon grunting in the background and that’s why the video is a little shaky. Finally, for some reason he wanted to change Ryan Seacrest’s name to Brad. Again, I don’t know why. But you don’t argue with a four year old about such matters. Anyway, enjoy this video of our little ham!

I thought of a few more Sloan stories that I wanted to document. Perhaps some of my fondest, and most embarrassing, moments, have been with Sloan learning the names of body parts. Let’s start with when he learned the name of his own body part. For all you psychologists out there who say it’s best to teach the proper names for bady parts – umm, do any of you actually have children that you have to take in public? Because my kid went through a phase where he loved to say penis everywhere he went. No matter how hard I tried to get him to understand tht we didn’t use that word in public, he still managed to shout it out at least once a day in public, usually at the grocery store or Target. One day, while he was sitting in the cart at the store he turned his head slightly and looked at me with a devilish grin, then grabbed himself and said, “Oh wook. Heeeere’s my peeeenis!” The two women beside me cracked up. I blushed and tried not to encourage him with laughter. That day I came up with the solution that we would only be allowed to use that word in the bathroom. That worked well until we were in a public bathroom and he yelled it at the top of his lungs. That was the day that we made it a bathroom word only at home. Sheesh.
The next great Sloan story, and most of you have heard this but I have to document it for later so I can humiliate him, was his obsession with women’s chests. Only he didn’t call it a chest, he called it a “nest.” Everywhere we went, he commented on women’s nests. “Ooooh mommy, look. That lady has a huge nest!” Or, “Mommy that lady’s nest was really small.” Or, “Look, that lady has flowers on her nest!” He would point and comment constantly. The only thing that kept this from being entirely mortifying was that usually people didn’t know what he was talking about. While I was horrified at this obsession, Lee found it hilarious. His response the first time I told him about it? “At least he’s not gay!” which he emphasized by thrusting his hands into the air. Apparently there was some concern…

My last story is probably one of my favorite. When we went to the Bahamas this summer we had to make a stopover in Miami. All day, Lee kept telling Sloan that we had to spend th night in Miami before we would get to the Bahamas. When we finally arrived I asked Sloan what he thought of Miami. Looking very serious he said, “No mommy, it’s daddy’s Ami. It’s his Ami.” He thought Lee had been saying we were going to MY-Ami. Those are my favorite Sloan stories so far. I am sure we’ll add many more to those over the years.

On Friday, Sloan and I had an awesome time of just sitting on the couch together talking and laughing and reading the Bible. At one point I asked him if he make sure to never get too big to sit on my lap and give me kisses and hugs. “Okay, mom,” he said. “But when I’m 49 I might be too big.”

Well, I’ll take it.

Sitting there with him being all snuggly and cute made me want to document some things about him. This blog is kind of like my journal. I am printing off every month and storing it in a notebook so I’ll always remember these stories. So, let me tell you a little about Sloan.

He’s always been a really funny little kid. It took him forever to start talking, not quite as long as his sister, but close. But the words he said were really cute and random. He was big on making the sounds of things to let you know what they were. A firetruck was a Weeaw-weeaw. A bird was a tee-tee. When he wanted you to sit down, he’d point and say “ahs,” which sounded an awful lot like ass. We don’t know where it came from and were a little glad when he stopped doing that. For a long time he called my mom “House” because we always said we were going to byshka’s house. We were also glad when he stopped doing that.

Sloan is a very passionate and excitable little guy. One night, when he was about 2.5, we were driving and the moon was really big out his window. In his loudest voice he exclaimed, “Wow! Wook at da moon. It’s pitty (pretty).” We then turned a corner and the moon was in front of us. “Mommy wook,” he said pointing. “Two moons! Der’s two moons tonight.” Every time after that, whenever the moon was in a different window he got excited about another moon!

When he was three he was big enough to sing on stage with his class at church. They crowded the kids in groups around several mic’s. Sloan kind of looked from side to side at everyone, then stepped proudly in front of the microphone, put his mouth up on it and sang his little heart out. And he knew all the words. It was darling, and like a good, proud mama, I caught it on videotape. I may post it sometime…if I ever figure out how to do that. Sloan loves to sing and will do so loudly, even if he has no clue what the words are. It’s hysterical to hear how he interprets songs.

Sloan is very empathetic. He does not like to see people hurting or upset. Despite his orneriness (is that a word?) he really adores his sister and wants her to play with him at pretty much every moment. The other day, we were talking about how his Byshka (my mom) was in Florida so Boss (my dad) was all alone at home. “That’s so sad,” Sloan said. “What if a monster comes to his house. What will Boss do?” There are so many funny stories about Sloan it’s hard to keep them all straight. Mostly, I’m just so glad he’s mine. Even though he’s a bit sassy these days, sitting with him by the fire on Friday reminded me that he’s still my precious little boy and according to him, he will be until he turns 49.

Landon had his check up on Tuesday morning. He weighs a whopping 14 pounds! Pretty good for a kid that doesn’t eat hardly at all. He’ll hate that slow metabolism someday but for now it’s a good thing. He also got his first round of immunizations. I would love to hear some thoughts that some of you have on immunizations. Here are my struggles. While I am all for some of the big ones like polio, hep b, and even MMR despite the controversy over that one, I am beginning to feel a little leary about the others that they keep introducing. Like, is it completely necessary to immunize children from the chicken pox, pneumonia (prevnar) and rotovirus? The reason I ask is because some good friends of ours recently found out their 4 year old has type1 diabetes. This is a severe form of diabetes. Since then, they, and I, have been researching some of the studies that suggest the possibility of some of these live virus vaccines being the root cause of some auto immune disorders. Now, I know that for every study that links diabetes and autism to vaccinations, there is one that refutes any such link, so I am not going to not vaccinate my children for those reasons alone. But, I am beginning to wonder if the risks really outweigh the benefits in some cases. Now if hundreds of thousands of children were dying a year of chicken pox, then sure, the vaccination would definately outweigh the risks associated. Same with rotovirus. But as far as I can tell, the actual percentage of children who have actually died from chicken pox and rotovirus is quite low. I don’t know, it’s all very overwhelming. I did let them give Landon all four vaccinations the other day because I’m a weanie and didn’t feel like I had any ground to back up my concern, but I am strongly thinking about holding off on chicken pox and rotovirus until I either have enough research to feel comfortable with them giving those to him, or I feel comfortable forgoing them altogether. Lee and I decided we will be doing a lot more research before Landon gets more vaccinations, then I think I will have him come to the dr.’s office with me to discuss our concerns and decide which ones we may pass up. If any of you have done research, I would love to hear some of your thoughts.

…that trying to run outside when it’s 32 degrees out and you have a cold and you’ve only had a baby two months ago is a bad idea. Amy S., if you are reading this, I would just like you to know that you stink for making me think it would be a good idea to run this race. I have to be able to run 6 miles in about 4 weeks. Uh-huh. I’m also hoping for a unicorn for my thirtieth birthday but that probably won’t happen either…