Spring Update

Wow, been a while since I posted anything. Good thing no one ever reads this! :)

Biggest news in our house? Caelyn's about to turn THIRTEEN. Two more weeks until we have a teenager in the house. Not sure I'm ready for that. She's been a teenager for a while in the sense that she's on the computer all the time, talking on the phone, going to parties. This kid has a very active social life! I'm jealous...

Piper turned double digits this year. She's still a little kid at heart though. She idolizes Caelyn, though they have a love/hate relationship. She's doing well in fourth grade, but I think she's bored. She keeps getting caught reading during the math lesson.

Wyatt is having a blast in kindergarten, although I have no idea what he does. I ask him how his day went and he says "fine." I ask him what he did and he can't tell me. So, I guess as long as he's happy to go, it's okay that he can't remember what he did. We had his IEP at the beginning of January and I finally added his autism diagnosis into his records. I wanted to see how things went without everyone knowing, just because I didn't want the diagnosis to affect the way he was treated. But at his October parent/teacher conference, his teacher brought it up. And at his IEP, they all said they "had a feeling." I think they might have pushed me to have him tested if I hadn't already had a diagnosis. At the moment, I don't think his autism is interfering in his learning, but that may change as he grows older.

Larkin is three now. Whoever said "terrible twos" said it before their kid hit three! She's a little stinker. And way to smart for her own good. She lost her speech therapist when she turned three, but I'm thinking I might take her and see if I can get it through the school. I think she still needs some work on it. She's a very girly-girl. Loves dresses and playing with Barbies.

Jay is still at The Order Fulfillment Group. Nothing's changed there. The economy is taking a toll on the company, but I think his job is secure at least for a little while longer. Hopefully if they have to let anyone go, it'll be the helpers in his warehouse instead of him.

I am still at JBS. My temporary job ended a week and a half ago with the hiring of a new customer service rep. The receptionist came back to her desk, which left me with no where to go. So, that Wed was supposed to be my last day, but by Friday I had four different areas wanting me to help on various projects. Not only am I not fired, I now have my own office! Okay, it's really more of a cubbyhole, probably six by eight feet big, but it's got a door that I can close, which is helpful because I think I might have ADD. :) I've been busy this week updating a mailing database for marketing. Next week I start calling vendors for samples of their products. I also should start with one of the sub-companies, copy editing their USDA information. And the accounts payable person says if work dries up at my site, I can always head over to her site and do jobs for her. I've been told I have about two months of work right now, which is good, cause I have to pay for my two Bon Jovi trips. One on March 17th up to Detroit (with Larkin's old speech therapist) and one in July to Chicago. Can't wait!

Maybe I'll update this in three weeks after the trip to Detroit. No promises though! :)

Here we go again!

We're taking off in about half an hour to go camping again. This time it's down south of Bloomington (IN) and it has electricity and water hookups! YAY! And a swimming pool and a playground. Still haven't been able to import my photos from last week. So by the time I can get them done, I'll have tons to show y'all!

Have a good week!

Our First Camping Experience -- Summer '09

Last Sunday, we packed up the trailer, put the kids in Grandma's car and drove five hours to get to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. It was a pretty uneventful trip down and set up of the trailer went smoothly. And although Grandma's trailer has electricity and water hook ups, the park didn't. So, no television for the kids (darn), no running water to wash dishes, and worst of all, no air conditioning!! Unfortunately, it was hot and sticky, with no breezes coming in those tiny windows. Made sleeping even more uncomfortable on that little couch.
Mammoth Cave is not just a cool name that the park rangers thought up. The park sits atop miles of caves. So far they have mapped out 367 miles of caves. Or something like that. Grandma was gung-ho on going spelunking. Okay, it wasn't really spelunking, but it sounds better than "walked down some stairs into the cave." :D
The first tour of the cave that we did was called the "Snowball Tour." They drove us out in a bus and dropped us in the middle of nowhere. Then we walked down 183 wet, cold stairs to get into the cave. Don't know why Wyatt was so freaked out by the stairs, but he wanted to hold my hand the whole way. At the bottom of the stairs, we walked for about a mile, admiring stalagtites and markings from explorers before. They also took us down a side tunnel and made everyone turn off their flashlights/cameras/phones to get a sense of how dark it was down there. No light comes in. I couldn't see Larkin -- and I was holding her! For some reason, I couldn't get any bars on my phone....... We made it to the Snowball Room, which is an underground cafeteria. Grandma had brought some snacks, so we munched on those while waiting for the tour to resume. After lunch, we headed back the way we came. I knew I was going to have to climb those 183 steps to get back out, but I knew I could handle it. Until we got to the incline right before them, when I realized that my legs had turned to jello. But, I was not the last one up those stairs -- I left that little old lady from California in the dust! :D
The second day, we took another tour. It was the "New Entrance" tour. This one had almost three hundred stairs to go down! Not only were they cold and wet, they also got narrower as you went down. Plus, the cave crowded in a few places. Oh, and there was a 60 ft drop off to the side. Good place to get over your fear of heights, small spaces, creepy white spiders and crickets.... This tour was much more fascinating. There were really cool formations of stalagtites and stalagmites. Eventually they will grow together and close off portions of the cave. I highly recommend the tours. They're a great workout!
Wednesday was supposed to be rainy all day, but we decided to go down to Bowling Green and take the kids to an amusement park called Beech Bend. It didn't look like much driving up to it. We decided to let the kids go to the waterpark first. There was a splash pool for Wyatt and Larkin. I have pics, but my cord is acting up and I can't import them. Anyway, there was a jungle gym in the middle of it, with slides and buckets and fountains. Wyatt was having a ball sliding down into the water. Larkin stayed by the edge of the pool. She didn't like the shower of water if she wandered too far towards the slides. Caelyn and Piper took off to the bigger kids water slides. They had a yellow one, which was all open; a red one that was semi-enclosed; and a blue one that was completely enclosed. The girls had fun going down those. Wyatt convinced Grandma to take him up and he came down the yellow and red slides with her. He really didn't want to go back to the baby pool after that. Caelyn and Piper lasted about an hour in the pools before they changed and went on the amusement rides. We caught up to them about two hours later when we were ready to leave. Even with everyone getting a little red, I think they had a good time.
Storms broke around midnight on Wednesday and continued into Thursday. We almost came home a day early, but Grandma, Grandpa and Piper decided to take another cave tour. More power to them! All the rain had soaked our firewood, so when they got back, we cooked dinner in the trailer. The radio was on during dinner and clean up, which was good as there was a tornado warning for us. We got the two little ones out of bed, everyone put on their ponchos and we headed over to the campground bathroom, where we hunkered down while the storm passed over us. Kentucky's extreme weather is like a regular thunderstorm here in Indy!
Friday consisted of getting everyone ready, the trailer packed up and the kids in the car to come home. We apparently didn't learn our lesson as we're headed back out Sunday for more. This time we're going to Spring Hill State Park (I think) somewhere south of Bloomington. At least we'll have water and electricity! I'll post pics as soon as I can get the cord to work.

This one's for Julie!

Getting a lot of flak about not keeping up with this. But really, it's so boring over here! Biggest thing to happen is I got a (temp) job! I've been covering the phones at Jim's workplace as the receptionist does some training. Yesterday was her last day of training, so I only have one more day of work lined up. It's this Thursday while Linda goes and gets some different training. They seem to like me and I haven't gotten any complaints about my performance, so maybe they'll keep me in mind when something else comes up.

Yesterday was fun. It's always going to be a good day when the principal calls. Now, unlike Julie, I didn't know it was the school calling. But when he said his name, I was more confused than worried. I mean, Piper's principal calling me is one thing -- hate to say I expect to hear from her principals! But this one was Caelyn's. Apparently, she's been a little physical with one of her friends. She's been jumping on his back, pushing him in the hallway, into a locker. She thought it was all in fun, but I guess he didn't. So he went to the principal and talked to him, who then talked to Caelyn. Now, this is the boy who on Thursday put his arm around Caelyn and said she was his girlfriend. Which she's not.

I had Grandma ground her until I got home from work and talked to her. She admitted doing the things the boy accused her of, but didn't know he was taking it badly. Her biggest thing was that he never said anything to her, he went to the principal. And she wanted to know if she had an in school suspension because some of her friends thought she did. And they heard it from the boy. Twelve year old drama. Can't wait til she hits the teens!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I can't believe 2009 is here already. Where does the time go? It's been a month since my last post and several things happened in there. Jason took off the week of Christmas and we headed down to a cabin in TN to spend Christmas with his parents and his sister Julie and her family. Now, when I say cabin, y'all probably are imagining this one room building with no heat and an outhouse. Well, you were kind of right on the heat thing, but not about the one room building. This cabin was bigger than our house... and much cooler! Here's a link if you want to see:

http://www.cabinfevervacations.com/gatlinburg-pigeon-forge-cabin-rentals/cid/748

All in all, it was a great trip. We got to the cabin Monday night, and found out the furnace wasn't big enough to heat the entire cabin. Thank goodness Monday and Tuesday were the coldest days and we didn't have to use the heater too much! By the time we left Sunday, I think it was in the upper 60s. Christmas eve day was spent making cookies and ornaments. I napped on the couch through the ornament making as the hard bed and my head cold made sleeping at night a challenge. The guys went out and shot a round of golf...Jason blamed the wind for driving his ball into one of the other cabins. After getting Wyatt and Larkin in bed, we were about to follow a Turner family tradition of watching "The Polar Express" while eating popcorn when the power went out. Grandma and the five older kids scrunched together on the couch to watch the movie on Julie's Mac. None seemed to care. After the movie and getting the kids to bed, presents were put under the tree (and some were being wrapped) in the dark, using cell phones, laptops and cameras for light. Deciding we all enjoy living in the age of electricity, we called it an early night and went to bed. The power came on around 11 that night, so at least it wasn't out too long!

Christmas was wonderful. Very low-key, not too many toys that made noise. The kids disappeared for hours to play with new toys. Don't think I saw Wyatt at all the rest of that day. Jason cooked {gasp! I know!} breakfast for everyone. It was very quiet the rest of the day. Mom cooked a wonderful full dinner and things went fine until clean up when the kitchen faucet started to look like Old Faithful! Thank goodness it was a rental and they were able to get a plumber out to look at it on Christmas Day. Unfortunately, he didn't have the right part and had to come back on Friday. By then, Mom, Julie, Caelyn and I were out the door for a day of shopping. We went down a road that has a lot of art galleries and other interesting shops. I think Julie was the only one to buy anything and that was just a small handbag. A whole day of shopping and only one purchase?? Unheard of! :D

Saturday we all went in to Pigeon Forge where everyone but Larkin and me rode the go carts. Caelyn was tall enough to drive by herself, but everyone else had a partner. Not sure Brian or Grandma had all that much fun (Grandma got bumped and spun around) but I think everyone else enjoyed it. While they were doing that, Larkin and I went over to the baby section where she rode on the carousel twice, the airplanes once and the spinners three times. The carny working that one thought Larkin was about to cry. I had to assure her that Larkin was having a blast. She even wanted to spin faster. Think I would have lost my lunch by the third time in a row!

Sunday we came home and had Christmas with my parents. They had spent a good portion of the week painting our bedroom (had the paint since the summer.) Mom had added one of those accents to the wall. It says "Let Love Rain" and there are pictures of all the kids under it. It was a wonderful surprise to see that done! The kids got Wii Music from my parents and we all got Wii Mario Kart from Rob and Steph. There have been a lot of video games played this past week.


It's hard to believe, but Piper turned NINE on Thursday! The day was spent making gingerbread houses and listening to Piper ask when we were doing her cake and presents. Which happened to be after dinner. So by the time it was time to do cake and presents, we were sick of her asking and threatening to take all the presents back! I can still remember her birth... probably because I didn't get enough drugs, but that's beside the point. I cannot believe she's almost into double digits.





Well, I hope everyone had a great holiday season and got to spend it like I did, surrounded by people I love. May 2009 be a blessed year for you!

Final Nano Update

Well, here it is, December 2nd. I'm sure you're all on pins and needles wondering how I did on my novel. I'll have you know that I reached 50,000 words on November 29th. A whole day to spare. However, the novel wasn't done. So I spent a lot of Sunday writing a conclusion to it. My final word count was 53,698 (or something like that.) After a ton of editing, rewriting and hair pulling, I will be sending it on to Julie for her opinion. Hopefully she can sweetly tell me what a load of crap I wrote! :D

After all the angst and sore bottoms I went through, would I do it again? In a heartbeat. There were moments when I beat my fists against my head and cursed my impulsivity in signing up, but those were few and far between. I hope to have this edited and revised in time for a 2010 publishing date. HA!

Thanks to all for the encouragement. And kid watching. And weird discussions on the best way to kill a man and not get caught.... I'm amazed at how many of you want to read hastily written, badly worded prose, but to each his own! :D

Another Nano Update

Hey all. Been working hard on the book the past two weeks. Fell behind a little last week when most of us caught a stomach bug. Everyone's fine now, thanks for asking.

So, we're a little past the halfway point. Which means I should have more than 25,000 words written. And how many do I have? Pause for suspense.... 31,000! The story is the same premise I started out with, but it's not going the way I thought it would. A secondary character has jumped out and demanded attention. A beloved character came to a shocking end. And my murderer is not who I thought it was!

Thirteen more days to write 19,000 more words. Yep, pretty sure I'll get there and I may have even wrapped the story up by then! They group that sponsors this every year announced that another sponsor will print and bind any novel written this November, so I might actually see my book in print!

NaNoWriMo Update

For those following, November first was the first day of NaNoWriMo. (For those not following: Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Basically, I signed up to write a fifty thousand word novel between November 1st and November 30th. All for nothing but the knowledge that I can do it.) Did it start off with a bang? More like a fizzle. The girls bowl on Saturday mornings, so I wasn't around to work on it. Then Jason came home. Then my parents came back with the little kids, who wanted to go outside and play while Daddy and Grandpa worked on getting the rest of the fence up. Then after dinner, Jason used the laptop to play games all night.

I have a calendar that has it all worked out how many words per day you need to get to reach fifty thousand. It's basically one thousand six hundred and sixty-seven. My grand total at the end of day one? Thirty. Yep, I'm smokin' up the keyboard!

After venting to my mentor, I got a fresh start on Sunday. On and off through the day, I would sit down at the computer and type out something. The expected total at the end of day two? Three thousand three hundred and thirty-three. My total? About thirty-one hundred. Not so bad. I might catch up.

This morning dawned early (could have to do with daylight savings) and in between getting kids fed and on buses, my story was coming along. I'm trying to work in the names of family and friends, although :disclaimer: any similarities between characters and real people either living or dead is purely coincidental. I was IMing my sister in law Julie about just having added a character with her name. I don't know if she ever got the other IM that said I think my Julie character is going to come to a bad end. :D Nothing personal, Jules!!

So, NaNoWriMo calendar total for the end of day three? C'mon math majors! Okay, it's five thousand. I know, daunting, right? My total at the end of day three? About eighty-two hundred. Woohoo! I'm ahead of the game! And I haven't even killed anyone yet!

Okay, well, I'm going to let my fingers and wrists have a break. I'll keep y'all updated on how it's going.

A New Look

Sorry about the picture quality. You know how hard it is to keep a two year old still enough to get a picture that's not blurry? Especially this two year old! Anyway, Larkin's had a runny nose for like a month and her hair is forever getting stuck to her face. So here was our solution:





Okay, so if I had an uploadable picture of Caelyn at age 2, you would see how close the haircuts are. I always said that Caelyn and Wyatt look alike and Piper and Larkin look alike, but man, with this haircut, Larkin's like a mini-Caelyn! She is just too darn cute. And it was her first haircut and all the curls in the back are now gone. :( She'll probably get the curls back in ten years. I did.

NaNoWriMo

In the past couple of years, I have several people say to me that I should be a writer. And not just family members either. So, when someone mentioned NaNoWriMo to me, I thought it was a great idea. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Basically, I signed up to write a 50,000 word novel during November. That's only 175 pages. Or 1667 words a day. I don't win anything but the satisfaction of completing a book. I don't have anything to lose but my sanity and lots of sleep. But who needs those?

So, in the next 26 days, I'll be busy with ideas, characters, plotlines...And if anyone has any ideas for a title, feel free to send it to me. I know many songwriters think of the title first and then write the song around the title. I figure if someone sends me a title I like, I could do that, too.

And in November, I plan on sitting in front of this laptop for hours on end. Okay, that's not really any different than what I'm doing now, but I'll be doing something productive!!

Where's the Tambourine?

If you follow the blog at all, you'll have read the post about Larkin's birthday earlier this month. She got a tambourine from us. Except, I haven't seen it since the party. I'm thinking Daddy hid it away, but he swears he doesn't know where it is! I didn't realize there was a black market for tambourines and now have decided one of my kids sold it for lunch money.....

Wyatt's been Tested

This morning, we got Wyatt up at 6:30 to travel to downtown Indy to the Riley Children's Hospital's Autism Clinic. They told us to arrive an hour early to fill out paperwork. Which only took 1/2 an hour to do and we just had to sit around for the other 1/2 hour. Then the doctor and her med student shadow took us to a room to interview us for an hour. I am assuming she also watched how Wyatt interacted with everyone. Then the doctors left to consult with another doctor about all she talked about and all the reports I had brought with us. After another half hour wait, they came back in and told us their diagnosis. They said that of 100 kids with autism spectrum disorders, 20% will have autism, 30% will have Asperger's and 50% will have PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified.) And Wyatt falls into that last category. And since he's on the autism spectrum, we can apply for Medicaid which will pay for medications, schooling, therapies... Only catch is that there's a six YEAR waiting list for it!!! So, we'll be applying for that here soon. So, now we have a "real" diagnosis. If we can get more services for Wyatt, it was worth it.

Monkeys, Monkeys Everywhere!

THE MONKEY HAS TURNED TWO!! Hard to believe that Larkin's birthday was Saturday. Even harder to believe that it was her second one! We actually celebrated her birthday over Labor Day weekend as Jason's parents weren't able to make it the 6th/7th and I was also working out at church all weekend. So it was just a small party with the family and both sets of grandparents.

We had a Curious George theme. I was going to go with Elmo, but then decided that Larkin and George look a like, so we went with him. I've decided to give her a monkey for every birthday and Christmas. Should have a good collection soon. Here she is with her first present:



She loves her monkeys! In case you're wondering, she also treats the cats like that -- hold 'em by the head and squeeze....Larkin got the monkey, a tambourine and a nubbie ball from us. She got two puzzles and some stacking boxes from Grand Os. She got a Mr. Potato Head Spud Buddies from Grand Bs. Grandma also got her a magnetic letter book where she sticks the magnet letters to the book. She's gotten pretty good at matching them up, considering they're lower case and the b,d,p & q all kind of look the same.

After presents came cake. She was very excited about it. It had a monkey, a Curious George figurine and then we left it in front of her so she started to stick her fingers in and eat the frosting. Very cute! Wasn't so cute the following morning when she realized she could reach the cake on the counter and had all of the frosting off one side before we realized it! Made me think of Bill Cosby's story about chocolate cake for breakfast.



Not too much going on here, but I'll try to post just a little more often than every three months! Starting to look like D. Turner's blog...... :D

She's Here!!!

Almost twenty-four hours ago, little Miss Lauren Rachel Benson made her debut into the world. Kristi was induced yesterday morning and had Lauren at 3:44pm CT. My brother David called my parents (home with David's three boys) that she was here and they named her Elizabeth Claire. So they could call her E. Claire. See, I'm not the only one with a strange sense of humor in my family! :D But I got all the info after my parents took the boys to see their new sister. She is 18 inches long and weighed almost seven pounds. Both mom and baby are doing fine. I can't wait to meet her, but we'll have to wait until her baptism in two weeks. I'll have to get my baby fix then. I'll post pics when I have them.

CaepipewyLARKIN!

Whenever I introduce my kids to people, I always get compliments on their names. Especially Piper and Larkin. I'm just glad I got a choice. I heard recently that in France, there's a list of approved names that you can choose your baby name from. But back to my reason for posting: even with awesome names such as they are, I can never keep them straight. I inevitably have to go through all four names before I can get the name that I want. Now, we have figured out a way around this:






So much easier, don't you think? :D
A very much deserved "Thank you" is going out to my cousin Trish who got the shirts at Universal Studios in FL.

Kickin' Family Fun

We've been trying to get Caelyn involved in anything for years now. She just doesn't want to join any clubs or sports. I finally told her she had to do something, so she chose karate. I thought that might be a good thing to enroll Wyatt in also as a structured setting.

Last weekend, we all went to see what it was like. On the way there, Piper said she wanted to do it. She also does dance and really wanted to do gymnastics. I told her she had to pick between gymnastics and karate because I want her to continue with dance. She's really good! She chose karate.

When we got there, the two instructors took Caelyn, Piper and Wyatt onto the mat and began some basic moves with them. Turns out Wyatt's not ready for structured lessons. He's still a free spirit. So we watched as Caelyn and Piper did punches, kicked a bag and broke boards with their feet. Okay, so it wasn't a two by four, but they thought it was pretty cool.

We decided to sign them up. Hey, they get points for listening to their parents, using manners, helping out. Of course I'm gonna sign them up. Even better, under the family plan, because we signed the two of them up, the rest of us are free!! We have our first family private lesson on Saturday. Thank goodness there aren't any cameras in there! :D While we were filling the paperwork out, we were in this little room that had one of the bags for kicking. I looked over and Larkin's kicking it with her foot. So not only is she going to dance, she's going to take karate when she's old enough, too!

I'll let y'all know how Saturday went. Oh, and we can go up to four times a week, no extra cost. So on days the kids are saying they're bored, I'll pop em in the car and make em kick out their boredom!

Who Does He Think He Is?

Jason really wanted to go to King's Island in Cincinnati over the weekend, but I convinced him the Indy Zoo would be just as much fun. And he believed me! Sunday morning we got the kids up and in the car and headed downtown. Caelyn thought maybe we were headed to the race (Indy 500). These kids don't like spending five minutes in the car and she thinks we're taking them to watch cars go around a track for five HOURS? We got to the zoo early enough that we could catch the first dolphin show. I don't think we've seen the show since before Wyatt was born, so the kids really enjoyed it. Larkin was just dancing along with the music.

The Indianapolis Zoo is a very nice zoo. They've done a ton of upgrades and new exhibits. This summer they have a couple of koalas visiting. One of the new things that opened last year is a shark petting pool. We hadn't seen that yet, so we headed over to the Oceans exhibit. After finally pushing (not really, we're patient people) our way to the edge of the pool, we watched the sharks swimming by and occasionally ran fingers down their backs. Jason and Piper were at the other end of the pool and Jason mentioned we needed to see a particular shark. We walked over to the other side of the pool to the shark resting area, where you're not allowed to pet them. Several sharks over there visited with us, but it was obvious which shark Jason wanted me to see.

Maybe he thinks the dolphins get too much attention. Or maybe he's confused on his species. Either way, he's an attention getter. The video is not too long, but all the good stuff is at the end. And just so Jason didn't have a terrible time, I let him take the older kids on the roller coaster.

An Early Celebration

Next weekend, we are headed up to IL for the joint birthday party of Grant, Wyatt and Ryan. We're gonna do that on Saturday and on Sunday, we're doing the Autism Walk at Soldier Field in Chicago. Wyatt, Larkin, Kristi, Drew and I did it last year, but this year, I think I'm getting the whole family involved.

So, because we're going to be gone that weekend (Saturday is Wyatt's birthday) we decided to open the presents Grandpa O brought up this week today. Wouldn't want them to get lost in the barrage of gifts next weekend. Or for the Benson boys to get jealous of what he might get. Wyatt had fun opening all the presents. He got a Thomas book with sounds (thanks, Mom!), he got a coloring book with crayons and markers, a tin with "Cars" magnets and his favorite, a Lightning McQueen remote controlled car.

Hopefully this works:

Be Careful What You Wish For

I decided that over the summer, I was going to start Wyatt on potty training. Except he beat me to it. Last Wednesday, as soon as he got to school, he took off his diaper and threw it in the garbage. His teacher called to tell me about it and suggested that I just send him in underpants from now on and we'll see how it goes. So far, so good. He loves to go! Unfortunately, it's every two minutes! I think his favorite thing is the Thomas and McQueen underwear. We've had it since last summer and it's just been waiting for him to be ready. I guess he's ready. He's only had one accident since we started the undies on Monday. I still have him in diapers overnight, but as soon as he wakes up, he yanks em off and sits on the toilet. Not bad for a kid who was afraid of the toilet a couple of months ago. Of course, that's because he lost his grip and his bottom fell into the water.....

I was going to get a picture of him on the potty and post it, but don't want to embarrass the poor kid. Hopefully we'll be done with diapers soon, but I've heard boys take a long time to train. The only experience I've had is with Jason and it's taken 12 years to get where we are. :D

The Joys of Parenting

Birth is just the beginning. It's the easy part, even without the epidural. I should be grateful that we've not had anything major happen to the kids. No broken arms, no hospital stays. We just get the annoying things. Like this morning, when Piper came downstairs before school complaining of an itchy head. And during the brushing of her hair, when little bugs fell out. And at the doctor's office where she confirmed that Piper has headlice. Yippee!!!

After buying the shampoo, we came home and I went through her hair with a comb, trying to get out as many lice as I could. Then I put the shampoo on. Directions say to keep eyes closed until the shampoo is rinsed out. It was funny watching Piper bump her way around the house for ten minutes. Then we rinsed out the shampoo and I began the tedious task of combing through it again. But half the little buggers were still alive! So I took a hairdryer to her head because heat kills. And according to one website, I also found out (later) that you shouldn't use a hairdryer because some of the shampoos have flammable ingredients. Oops!

It appears that no one else in the household have acquired the little suckers (pun intended) though I did make my mom check mine. It doesn't shock me that Piper was the one to get it. Let's just hope this is the last we see of them!