Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Time Calculator

Somewhat fun, somewhat sad - the results of the CNN.com "time calculator" show that I'm at 125% capacity each day. At least someone is validating what I've been feeling.

Take the survey yourself (only truly fun for parents):
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/03/30/how.busy.are.you/index.html

Speaking of time spent cooking and cleaning, I just finished up nearly 12 hours with the kids alone. The only annoying part is they refused to eat the chicken and noodles I slaved over for dinner. What is it about gravy that turns my kids off?

Monday, March 30, 2009

Another Clinic Night

Yes - Molly has another double ear infection (though it's not bad yet, and in fact, her mood is generally great). A clinic trip at 9pm tonight confirmed it. She did wake us up at 3am last night, so hopefully after the Augmentin, Motrin, and numbing ear drops we'll get a full night's sleep. I am getting so tired of this fire drill around here.

A typical 18-month-old milestone is that toddlers begin to put two words together. I was thinking the twins wouldn't make the mental leap for a while longer, but I may have heard Molly say "all done, momma" in the car ride home after the clinic visit. She was upset she had finished her slushie drink. I will listen closely to see if I get another repeat of this before I say she's met the milestone.

And is it sad that Molly clapped wildly when we drove up to the clinic? I think that says it all.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Melting Snow And Puddles




Molly is just now going to bed ... yes, it's nearly 11pm, and Kyle just got home from working, so he is putting her down for me as I've suffered through the last few hours of her attitude alone. Guess she's finally gotten the ear infection going herself. I'll have her checked tomorrow. Fingers crossed she sleeps through the night.

Today the sun came out and the snow melted. I took the girls out to play, and after trying to keep them out of the puddles for half an hour, I gave in and let them stomp and splash. They loved it. I imagine the water was absolutely freezing on their feet and lower legs but they didn't seem to mind. Photos capture the joy. I also had to post the photo here of Molly's reaction to the snow versus Lily's reaction - while Molly is quite happy you can see Lily crying loudly in the background. Lily was terrified for the first 20 minutes but got over it. I think that photo perfectly illustrates the personality differences between them. Claire also got to sit in Kyle's bobcat today.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

A Blast Of, Uh, Spring?




Sleet, hail, and snow - that's what we all expect during Spring, right? So it's March 28 and here we are with Kyle off snow plowing and 3-bean chili in our bellies. This just doesn't seem right!

The snow started later in the day, so Claire did have tap/ballet class and we ran an errand at Target and had lunch at Mr. Goodcents. We were home the rest of the day, with Kyle out running errands for a while and then he got called for snow plowing after dinner. I got the twins and Claire to bed. I don't think tomorrow will be much of an improvement - we'll be sticking close to home, cabin fever and all.

Photos are of scenes from today. Of particular note: the photo with the green tree leaves under the snow and ice, and the photo of my neighbor's trees, falling over under the weight of the snow and ice ... after brushing the snow off, he propped them up with ladders!

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Toddler Stats

Lily, the freight train, ended up needing a breathing treatment at the "well-child" check up today (I guess we aren't so 'well' after all). And we got sent home with an inhaler to use four times per day. We got super lucky because we already had a "chamber" (the delivery device, like a mask, for the inhaler) from Claire's RSV incident three years ago so we saved ourselves $60 today.

Somehow the twins are nearly exactly the same size. Both weigh 22 pounds (25th percentile), which surprises even me because Molly looks a full pound heavier. I guess it's the bigger head. They're both about 32 1/2 inches tall (75th percentile), with Molly maybe 1/4 of an inch shorter, but that could just be nurse's error - heights aren't so exact with toddlers.

I'm off to administer the second breathing treatment for today. This ought to be fun.

Next up: Claire's first swimming lesson tonight.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

A Half Birthday

The twins are 1 1/2 today. Amazing. I feel unapologetic joy that I will never deal with the baby phase again, especially for two at one time (yet, I admit, at the same time I feel guilty for "missing" their infancy, being too caught up in the craziness to enjoy much of it). I am really beginning to enjoy the girls as they become their own little people and work hard to communicate with us. The defiance they show is almost laughably cute in comparison to what I know it'll be in another six months and on up through the years.

Too bad that the 18-month mark was "celebrated" by another trip to the after-hours clinic tonight. Ah, yes, the expected ear infections hit. Lily has a double, but Molly (the truly cranky kid) is perfectly fine. Hmmmmm. Tomorrow is the twins' official 18-month "well child" check up with the regular pediatrician (and no, I couldn't wait another night to get their ears checked by her tomorrow, but yes, too bad we doubled up on two doctors' co-pays within 24 hours). Again I will discuss ear tubes with her. The after-hours clinic doctor went the extra mile to document the number of ear infections for each kid since last May, and it's surprising (or not, if you read this blog regularly): 9 for Lily and 7 for Molly. I suspect there's one extra in there for each girl which the regular pediatrician diagnosed herself. The doctor did mention that Molly's right eardrum looked like it had hardened a little from all the (nearly ever present) gunk in there, so I need to quiz my pediatrician about that tomorrow. That sounds a little scary.

Today was an office day for me while Kyle was home with the kids. I came home for lunch so I could check the twins' moods, but otherwise I was busy at work. Claire got a surprise visit from grandma and she finagled a bunch of stuff out of her at HyVee. Exactly at the time they were shopping HyVee, my friend alerted me to a known sex offender who has been stalking moms and kids at our HyVee for the past month, so I had about 15 minutes of panic imagining my mother being oblivious to some creep's efforts to mess with Claire. All was fine, but I'll be on the lookout for this guy from now on.

Tomorrow night is Claire's first swimming lesson. We'll see how the evening goes - it'll be quite a challenge to get everyone fed and get her to swimming class by 7:05pm!

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Thankless Effort

I clearly don't take photos for Gourmet magazine, because my food looks ugly in the photo here. Actually, my dinners often look ugly for real, but more than often taste just fine - I just won't get an A+ for how I plate food.

So for some crazy reason today, I took on Lasagna Bolognese (not a family recipe, but from Cook's Illustrated, my favorite cooking fanatics). And yes, I spent literally all afternoon cooking the darned thing. The verdict? Well, the noodles overcooked a little, but the taste was great and I'll likely make it again but cook it at a lower heat for a longer amount of time. More importantly (and annoying), however, is that my kids refused to eat any of it - Molly threw it on the floor, Claire kept saying "disgusting" and Lily just left it alone. I know they're just kids, and I shouldn't have expected any better, but it does frustrate me a tad when I just spent four hours cooking and no one will eat it but the adults. Please, please tell me they'll eat better some day, and actually appreciate my efforts.

We've had a hellish couple of days. After my posting Sunday night, Molly came down with a cold and wouldn't go to bed until 4am. Kyle gave up at 1:30am, so I was on Molly duty until 4am. She wouldn't sleep anywhere but on me, so I ended up with only spotty sleep between 4am and 8am. I was a zombie Monday and didn't go to the office. The nanny helped with the kids while I caught an hour's nap and worked from home, but I was pretty darned nonfunctional. Last night I took Molly to the clinic only to find out her ears are just fine for now (which means we'll be revisiting tomorrow or Thursday for a real infection). She still stayed up until midnight last night, and while Kyle did care for her, I just couldn't settle down and slept poorly despite my overwhelming fatigue.

Lily is similarly in bad shape and will likely need a clinic visit tomorrow. She is a total snot spigot and is starting to cry about little things which tells me she is in pain. I write this post rather early, just as the twins are going to bed, so I don't rule out having to take a kid to the clinic tonight if someone refuses to go to sleep. I'm exhausted and tired of listening to the twins cry and whine. Maybe the lasagna effort was some level of escape from them. Who knows.

I'm going to hunker down and wait for someone to start screaming in her bed now. But one last comment: go out and rent "Young at [@] Heart" immediately (it's actually with the @ sign in the name of the movie, but this post sees it as an email address if I type it correctly so I inserted the 'at'). I got it at Blockbuster in new releases. It's a life-affirming documentary about old folks (we're talking people in their 80s and 90s) who sing pop/rock songs. The show see-saws between making you belly laugh and cry your eyes out, often just minutes apart. It's not a long documentary, about an hour and a half, so it's not a huge time commitment and it's worth every minute. You'll thank me for the recommendation. Or thank Newsweek, which gave me the impetus to rent it.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Three-Ring Circus

We had a 3-ring circus day. I took the kids to Sonic for lunch and we ate outside, only to find we were in what seemed like gale force winds, so we were all miserable [photo here, and yes, they're in the same outfits from yesterday] ... we had an "incident" playing outside this afternoon where I had to yell at the neighbor kid before she wildly swung into my 17-month-old and knocked her silly which sent her parents down to my house, angry with me for yelling at their child ... and then Papa had a long-overdue dinner visit and got to see the twins pull all sorts of hi jinx at the dinner table and Claire throw at least three temper tantrums. Yikes.

Calgon, take me awaaaaaaaaaaaaay. Oh, I guess that's my office time tomorrow.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Antioch Park Revisited




Just posting a few photos from Antioch Park late this afternoon ... the twins loved watching the geese and ducks. Claire loved the "western village" houses again.

Other than this nice hour at the park, the day wasn't so great. Claire's mood wasn't good, Lily has snot pouring out of her nose, Molly was a crank in the morning, and my "migraine equivalent" acted up badly and caused me some focus issues all while Kyle worked the entire day. I really needed some downtime today but couldn't get a spare moment to myself.

And I've just heard tomorrow will be a repeat of today, with Kyle off working the entire day. Sigh. My body is telling me I need a break but I can't seem to carve out that time for myself.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Video Attempt

The kids were hysterical after dinner Thursday night. Molly and Lily came up with a screeching (super loud) chasing and tickling game, and Claire tried to get in on the action. By the time I shot this video their game was winding down considerably, so it doesn't quite impart how loud our house was for about 15 minutes. But I did get lucky with Claire's poop comment on my video, and I love that she sounds quite British. Molly looks like a drunken sailor with a lollipop. Lily is obsessing about a HyVee balloon we picked up at the store earlier in the day.

So here's to my first video attempt on the blog. It's just a cell phone video, hence the poor quality, and it took me overnight to figure out how to get it in a usable format for the blog.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

St. Patrick's Day





Call it a snow day. Or a vacation day. Or a slow work day. Or St. Patrick's Day. I'm not owning up to my whereabouts today, but I'll post some photos from the roughly-80-degree-and-sunny-perfect-weather day here.

Oh, and a funny from about an hour ago - I bathed the twins after all the dirt and grime today, and Molly got super interested in checking out her girl parts. Best part was she kept checking to make sure Lily had the same thing. I literally watched her check her own, then Lily's, and then her own at least three times. Hysterical!

[photos from Overland Park Arboretum and our backyard where we set up the bouncy house for the first time this year ... we had four neighborhood kids join us in bouncing today]

Sunday, March 15, 2009

The Bean Table




Firstly, I must give props to Miss Christina for teaching me about bean tables (all my good kid ideas come from other people ... I'm not that creative). Instead of filling a water activity table with water, you fill it with dried beans (I bought a 5 or 10 pound bag at Sam's Club, and we re-use them time after time). The kids love scooping and touching and throwing them around. It's this amazing tactile experience for them, and it holds their attention for the longest time.

So I guessed wrong about the weather - the day was just warm enough to play outside for a while, so after swinging for a bit, we got the bean table operating and the girls had a blast as the photos show [note on the photos - in the photo of Molly alone, note how she sucks in her bottom lip a little when she concentrates ... she has done this since birth]. We had a low-key Sunday. I finally got the extra rest I needed this morning. We walked the kids to Einstein's for lunch, I spent $150 at HyVee to get us through the week, and we played outside and grilled pork tenderloin for dinner (the twins gorged themselves on it).

And now I'm off for an after-dark walk with my twin mom friend! Tomorrow ... back to the office.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

My Granny Is A Hottie


OK, seriously - look at the woman. She's nearly 86 years old, and she's just gobsmackingly beautiful. I am continually amazed by her beauty and so sad I didn't catch those genetics. Tee hee.

We had a "four generation" day, with both grandma (my mom) and great-grandma (her mom) visiting. The kids actually have two great grandmothers who are still alive, including Kyle's paternal grandmother. And I am admitting now we're idiots for not doing an official photography session with the four generations all together. The best we'll ever have is the snapshots to show the girls some day. Anyways, as you can see from the photos, the girls were loving all the extra attention.

The afternoon consisted of the family visit, and this morning Claire and I fell back into our usual tap/ballet, errands, and Waffle House pattern. Kyle needed to work today, but I wanted to have at least the morning to enjoy some one-on-one time with Claire. Tomorrow Kyle will likely work again and I'll be home with the kids all day. The weather tomorrow won't be good enough to really get everyone outdoors, so we'll be cooped up again at home. Blah.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Job News and Fundraisers

I still have a job. However, I know others who are now out of a job, so the day is still a little sobering. I consider my fate to be a continuation of the status quo - we're just steady state. With the economy still impacting us, our financial pressures have not eased and in fact have ramped up considerably this month. We're at the end of our rope. And I don't see the Volvo selling or Kyle's business improving significantly any time soon, so we could be in crisis mode very soon.

On a lighter topic, I'm horrified that my 4-year-old is already being sucked into a school fundraiser. We have a brochure of frozen bread products she has to sell to help make money for buying playground equipment. I've heard my friends with "real" school-aged kids talk about the endless fundraisers, but preschoolers?! Really? I consider this a significant annoyance and refuse to find the time to bother my neighbors with the obligatory bread purchase. And two years from now, when Claire is in real school, my attitude on this won't change either. I'd rather ante up a donation than deal with asking neighbors to buy something they don't want.

Claire had a playdate at our house with Lauren today, and because it was a daddy-the-nanny day, Kyle had to manage four kids in the house. It seems everything went just fine. When I got home from work, Kyle left to finish a tile job for the night, so I had to fly solo for the night again. The kids were well behaved and other than Claire mentioning her ear hurt (oh please tell me she's wrong, because I put her to bed without medication), the night went smoothly.

While brushing her teeth before bed, Claire told me that Lauren's little brother was "glued" to their mother's leg, and I could tell she was repeating a phrase that confused her. I asked her if she understood what that meant, and she told me no. After laughing in my own head (realizing she thought he was literally Elmer's glued to the mom's leg), I explained that it's a phrase, a figure of speech, that means that he was refusing to move away from his mother. She seemed relieved by my explanation.

Ah, I must sign off ... just realized I have laundry in the washing machine waiting to be hung up to dry. It's too late to be messing with laundry!

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Twelve Hours

So back to this personal time concept I discussed last night ...... well, today Kyle had an early morning meeting and then also worked late, so I had twelve straight hours of kids by myself. Not even a one-minute break. I had to wake up the kids this morning and then manage them all the way straight to getting the twins to bed tonight. Fortunately, the kids were actually quite good today (and importantly, work was slow), so it was a reasonably enjoyable but super busy day. The funniest part of the day was Molly figured out how to talk on the phone, so she had a super hysterical "conversation" with daddy on the phone today. If I only had a video camera ...

So in my 12 hours of kids, I did kid breakfasts, got everyone dressed for the day, got Claire looking good for school photos today, took Claire to school (of course the twins had to go along too, and we were still on time), picked up Claire from school, went to Arby's for lunch, took Claire to her last gym class (I didn't realize that parents got invited in toward the end, which meant I chased the twins all over her gym room), got the twins their naps and snacks for all the kids, played with the kids, washed sheets, made pork chops & gravy for dinner, hung up all the kids' laundry in their closets, picked up toys off the floor, fed everyone dinner, cleaned up the kitchen, and then got the twins to bed. And then Kyle got home two minutes after the babies went down for the night. Oh, and I also got my job tasks done - that is, my gainful employment kind of work.

Just past 8pm tonight a friend randomly dropped by to give me an article from The New York Times, and once she heard I'd been on kid duty for 12 hours she took me out joyriding for 45 minutes to give me a mental break. We gazed at houses I'll never be able to afford.

And I have found myself a show about the family who had the two sets of identical twin quadruplets (one set of girls, one set of boys, same pregnancy). And they have the older sibling too. Oh lordy. They make my life look like a cakewalk, just like Jon & Kate of septuplet fame. I'm going to concentrate on the rest of the show now. Good night!

Monday, March 9, 2009

What Personal Time?

I just got a good laugh out of this article on "personal time" after kids. The best part is it's written by a dad, and an unusually honest one at that:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/03/09/p.dads.want.out.house/index.html

Obviously, the desperate need for personal time is universal, so we've battled this one in our own household too. This is what I've officially carved out: I don't do the kids' breakfasts (that's daddy time, and time for me to lie in bed working up the energy for the day ahead, or to shower without kids running about), and after getting the twins to bed at about 8pm, I call it quits for the night and Kyle has to put Claire to bed. This is my balance to the fact that other than Mondays and Wednesdays (and a couple hours on Thursday about twice a month), I am 100% on kid duty the other five days of the week, all day long. And yes, even a Saturday morning with Claire and without the twins still counts as kid duty - it's certainly not personal time.

I now have to consider office time also as "pseudo personal time" - it's time away from kids at least, time that allows for adult conversation and a stray personal phone call and such - otherwise I'd go a little crazy thinking that my only personal time is from 8pm to midnight each night. And let's face it - that's not all pleasurable personal time, right? That's paying bills, sorting mail, doing laundry, cleaning the house. So once you remove the daily chores from the 8pm to midnight stretch, that leaves about an hour and a half of true personal time. Hence the reason I continue to stay up until midnight. If I turned off the lights at 10:30pm instead, I would barely have a minute to myself. And being a true introvert, I recharge my battery with quiet reflection time, which means I won't ever get that light turned off at 10:30pm.

So here's to my last half hour of personal time before bedtime tonight. I think I'll watch a little more Jon & Kate Plus 8 - multiples reality TV. You think they ever get any personal time?

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Saturday Update

Let's see ... since my last posting, Molly is using walking as her primary mode of transportation now. Woo-hoo! And on Friday, she figured out how to stand up on her own, so she's fully mobile now. Her gait is awfully unsteady, but it's a riot to watch them both finally toddling around (well, Lily doesn't toddle so much anymore - she's quite the accomplished walker now, even taking on hills quite nicely). Today I bought the twins tennis shoes (Target brand, $10 apiece, and very cute!), and so they're both re-learning how to walk in these bulkier shoes. I had forgotten what a curve ball new shoes are to young kids.

Lily hasn't given us much good sleep recently. She's night waking quite a bit, and it's wearing on her parents. We don't know if it's her ears or if she's just not eating enough at dinner. I am much better today from my head cold or allergy attack or whatever that was, but I was knocked down for a few days there. Despite how I've been feeling, I've really made the effort to get the kids outside a lot during the day to enjoy our nice weather. The twins are now obsessed with the outdoors - especially with swinging. Today they also learned the joys of sidewalk chalk and I could barely drag Molly away from it.

Kyle worked all afternoon today, but I took the morning with Claire to do tap/ballet class, a Target run, and lunch at Mr. Goodcent's. We finally got some mother/daughter time which we haven't had in about a month due to Kyle's weekend work schedule. She is always a great kid to be around when she's got my full attention. This afternoon she played outside with the neighbor kids which allowed me to get through several loads of laundry and clean out my laptop bag. When the twins woke up, I put everyone in the jogger stroller and walked to Babies R Us mainly for entertainment purposes. Molly continues to be a terror in stores, with Lily as mild as can be.

And although Molly has no patience in stores, I had a great lunch experience with the kids on Friday. I took everyone to Winstead's after I got Claire at preschool, and other than Lily refusing to eat the hot dog (because it was "different" than the ones we feed her at home), we had a great time at lunch. Molly was in a fantastic mood, pulling all her tricks out of the bag for everyone to see.

We are continuing to struggle with the eating thing each day. Claire and Lily (but especially Lily) are being super picky, while Molly is Miss Piggy and eats extremely well. The size difference between Lily and Molly is becoming quite apparent, which is no surprise given their vastly different eating habits. Lily has several daily meltdowns over food and we continue to take a pretty hard line with her - eat it, or be hungry. She generally won't spit out food (she's learned I'll just put it back in her mouth), but she just sits with the offending food in her mouth for the longest time, hoping she can get rid of it somehow. In just the last few days, I clocked her with one tiny slice of banana in her mouth for 18 minutes. A piece of enchilada, 8 minutes. Tonight, it was "taco casserole" sitting in her mouth for 5 minutes. The list goes on. We've got to get her past this food freakiness. It's stressful for everyone, and remember - I will not be a short order cook.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

A Turn For The Worse

10:35pm news flash: At 9:10pm tonight I had to take a crying Lily to the after-hours clinic for confirmation that she has a double ear infection. We returned home at 10:05, dosed her with Molly's Augmentin (we'll fill Lily's prescription tomorrow), Motrin, and numbing eardrops, and hopefully she's asleep now and a disastrous night is averted.

And either that 1 1/2 hours outside today got my allergies going, or I've come down with a ferocious head cold myself. Even if Lily sleeps well tonight, it looks as though I won't - I can't sleep with a stopped up nose!

Sigh. Our decent day (other than Claire's grumpiness) definitely took a turn for the worse.

Warm Enough For The Park




With my work shuffling this week, today was actually a WFH day. Claire was grumpy all day (but the twins were great), so around 3:30pm I loaded up everyone for a walk to the park. I thought this would cure the grumps. The twins loved it, but Claire stayed grumpy! Urgh.

The weather warmed up enough to enjoy the outdoors for an hour and a half, and then I returned everyone home so I could start dinner. Claire ended up playing at the neighbor's house, Molly watched cartoons quietly in her playpen, and Lily entertained herself while I made chicken pot pie (which is quite time intensive when made from scratch). Kyle worked up until dinner time.

Photos are from the park today. We've gotten Molly to increase her walking, and today I watched her walk all around the house and also at the park too! This is an exciting development. While it poses some additional logistical challenges for outings (each twin going in a different direction), it also relieves me from carrying a child everywhere.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Dinner Chaos

Chaos this evening. Utter chaos. The twins woke up from their naps early which may have set me up for a bad scene later. While Kyle worked at the neighbor's house, I started my first dinner (yes, first) - chili - and things were going well. The twins were pushing strollers around the house while I chopped onions and peppers and started the meat. For the second time in recent memory, I got freaked out the pork seemed off, as in freezer burned or bad or something, so I ended up dumping out the entire beginnings of my chili. I was going to resort to Amy's enchiladas but the twins were doing well enough that I opted for a breakfast supper instead so we could have a little variety. Molly got cranky so I put her in the playpen with cartoons to entertain her. Lily wouldn't stay out of the kitchen, which concerned and annoyed me. I was so distracted I jacked up the entire meal other than the bacon - my waffles weren't great, my eggs overcooked, the grits lumpy - and then the kids decided they wouldn't eat any of it. After having cooked two dinners already, I was in no mood to deal with pickiness, so they got what they got. Lily refused to eat at all, so we resorted to putting the food in her mouth for her which sent her into screaming fits. She despises eggs. Kyle was home for dinner briefly and helped clean a little, but returned to the neighbor's house while the twins got ramped up on the screaming. Claire cried at length about slipping on the floor, so at one point I had all three kids hysterically crying at the same time. It was a joy.

Needless to say, I didn't waste time getting everyone to bed. The twins were asleep by 8pm if not before, and I was out of Claire's room by 8:30. I even medicated Claire because she was up again last night, for the third night in a row, and actually scared me to death last night. I woke up to a whispered 'mom' at 1am, and when I opened my eyes Claire's face was one inch from my face and it scared the hell out of me. She complained of a stomach ache, and other than working myself into a tizzy that she had appendix issues, I couldn't shake the rude awakening and I did a lot of yelling at her. So I'm hoping the Benadryl gives us all a good night's rest.

And as soon as Claire was in bed, I started a third dinner, although for tomorrow night. I'm doing a crockpot thing, so I chopped the veggies to get that out of the way. It's a new recipe for me, a creole chicken dish, so we'll see how it turns out. The recipe reminds me of something my mom used to cook. I know this is something that none of the kids will eat, which means it'll be a hot dog night tomorrow night for the kids. But surely tonight I could have expected them to eat a breakfast supper?!

I will not be a short order cook. I will not be a short order cook. I will not be a short order cook. Eat what I cook, or go hungry. That's the rule in this house now.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Goose Egg


I literally watched a goose egg appear on Lily's forehead (see photo, above eye). Claire and I don't know how she fell, but from the perfectly vertical goose egg line and her proximity to the door frame, we think she fell into the door frame while I was dressing Molly. I ran over to her, checked her face to see what was hurt, and watched how her face exploded in a goose egg within about 20 seconds. It was actually amazing to watch. I felt badly for her, but I was utterly fascinated watching her skin expand and turn purple at the same time. The worst part of the whole thing was I decided she needed to be iced, and no kids ever like body parts to be iced, so I had to hold her down while I put a bag of frozen peas on her forehead (it's a tip - frozen peas are flexible and form to whatever shape you need). I held her down for 10 minutes while I frozen pea'd her and she was one miserable, screaming child. But the bump looked slightly better afterwards.

A slow day here .... cooped up with 20-degree temps outside and Kyle working ... so I did the usual housework (laundry, cleaning), played three board games with Claire, and entertained the twins too. I had a quick outing to HyVee tonight for weekly shopping but that was the only time I left the house either yesterday or today. Blah. I did bring one of the toy strollers up from the basement for the twins to play with (e.g., fight over), and I enjoyed watching Lily push Molly in the stroller, although she couldn't make the turns so in the photo here she's pushing Molly into the cabinets. And yes, these pictures were taken today, not yesterday - the outfits are the same because I didn't feel like creating more laundry for myself so I dressed them in yesterday's (mostly clean) clothes.

This coming week my usual schedule is all messed up .... I'll do a half day at work Monday, be in the office all day Tuesday, and a few hours Thursday afternoon too. The nanny is unable to work tomorrow and Kyle is under pressure to finish some jobs so we're having to juggle both of our work schedules this week.