Saturday

for the blogosphere friends who haven't heard, baby #3 is coming august 22. or thereabouts. after a month of "morning" (all day sometimes) sickness, i visited the pregnancy coordinator and she put me on a new drug for nausea. the first couple hours i thought it was great, but now i'm starting to rethink the whole process. the benefits may not be worth the side effects. i'm debating that little pill right now, but thanking the Lord that i'm 9 weeks in and this means (at least in the past) that i will be feeling like a new woman on week 13.

this should be an interesting pregnancy, as i've never been huge in the summer and i'm already dreading the heat. with two kids my energy level has severely decreased and tom is picking up the slack. i feel bad for him, getting up most mornings with both kids yelling "MAMA!" but he does it anyway.

on a sidenote, wyatt is getting the potty training thing down pretty well. he sometimes even goes into the bathroom and sits on the toilet by himself. my biggest concern for him is that he thinks he's a big boy now and doesn't always use the little toilet insert thing so he just hangs on for dear life, his bum dangling dangerously close to the cold toilet water. he very well could fall in. i try telling him that he is a big boy but his bum is not a big bum. honestly, though, i'm seeing a problem arise in the poop area: when he poops they are the littlest turds. and then a day or two later i find a load in his diaper/pull-up. any tips on how to get the kid to relax?

and cassie, well, she's not interested in the process. she would rather wash her hands. my hope is they'll both be potty-trained by the time this new one comes out. wyatt says he wants a girl. no matter how many times i ask him he says he wants a little sister. he must really like cass. she is pretty great. and i don't think the little lady has any idea that there's a real baby on the way. she'll be so excited to get her hands on a live baby. just today they both were playing with her babies in her crib and i heard him say, "ew! poopie!" i had to ask whose poopie it was and was relieved to hear him say, "my baby's". maybe they'll be changing diapers in 8 months.

Wednesday

it's been snowing here, little flakes every couple of days. saturday acutally gave us a little snow to work with and wyatt, with the new concept of a snowman in his head thanks to winnie the pooh, decided he wanted to build a snowman. mind you, it was 45' out and sunny when we attempted this, and it really only turned out to be me building, as tom couldn't remember how to make one. in fact, he's not sure he's ever made a snowman. i assume that's because he made forts to protect himself from his brothers.

we also had to find clothes for the kids to wear. we don't spend much time out in the snow and the mittens i purchased for cassie 4 months ago have disappeared. but the snowsuit fits her, and so do the boots. wyatt on the other hand, well, let's just say i'll be shopping sales this spring for 4T snow stuff. nevertheless, i was really proud of our little snowman, and proud that no one got hurt...



you see, one time, when i was in high school and my siblings were in college (or out of college, i think) we built a snowman. at least, i remember it being a snowman but when i try to get an image in my head, i'm not really sure what it was. but we'll go with snowman, more traditional. and my creative siblings thought, let's get some spray paint and to really jazz him up. it worked great for a while until the spray paint got clogged. and rachel decided the best way to fix it would be to jab at it with a toothpick. while holding the can as close to her face as possible she pushed down on the nozzle and spray paint went everywhere, including her eyes.

911!

have you ever called 911? they're pretty fast. and pretty nice. the ambulance came and the guys walked into the house, commenting on the snowman out front. they took a look at rachel, i can't remember if they flushed her eye out (we had already done that ourselves) but they seemed to think she would be fine and left not long after they arrived. when we went back outside we saw the snowman was surrounded in yellow "do not cross" tape. we felt a lot better knowing our neightborhood would be safe from the snowman.

boy, it's a good thing our parents were home...

Tuesday

introducing: sam-a-lam-a-ding-dong, sammy, sam the man van buskirk. i find it hard to just call him sam. he's a great guy, marrying our favorite big cassie, and blogging from manhappenin' kansas. check him out on the sidebar.

Sunday

i thought this was an interesting piece of information put out via the A.P.

"Leaders of Germany, France, Spain, Britain, Italy, Turkey and the Czech Republic, which holds the rotating European Union presidency, attended the summit in Egypt.

Israel did not send a representative. Hamas, shunned internationally as a terrorist organization, was not invited."

amazing that we're putting this in print and yet people all over the world are upset that israel is actually fighting back after being hit with rockets every day for six years. even during the previous "cease fire" the people in sderot were bracing themselves for kassam rockets. somehow israel is the bad guy for wanting to get hamas out of gaza, and yet the world shuns hamas as a terrorist organization. i know not all things are so black and white, but if you look at the facts (all of them) we need to be supporting this tiny nation of israel before the philistines, ahem, palestinians attack again.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090119/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians

Wednesday



michael d. blake officially retired this month and his company sent him off with quite the party. there were so many nice things said about him it was overwhelming. i know i got teary-eyed. as family we all know he is an exceptional man, but to hear his boss/partner of 30 years, as well as other associates sing his praises was to see a different side of him. the word tenacious kept coming up, "like a dog on a bone" was a phrase repeated throughout the night. tom observed that we see him as diligent, but in the work world that is tenacity. no wonder he was so successful for so long. i'm sure the whole company will miss him, but as evidenced by last monday when he came with deann to watch the kids, we will get more time with him now that he's not so busy. congratulations to you mike, and welcome to a whole new life!

you're wondering, what's the story on this picture, leah? a good question, but i must ask (since paul is polling people too) is this:

a) a plate still being nibbled on
b) a plate that needs to be cleared to make room for more
c) a plate that does not get cleared even when plates with more food (pieces of cake, for crying out loud) are getting cleared

you guessed it, this was my plate. i thought i was finished. apparently i hadn't cleared my plate enough because all the other plates got cleared and mine stayed on the table. it wasn't until they (unnamed restaurant) started taking tablecloths off the tables that this plate got cleared. my poor plate. next time i'll put it in front of susan and lauren. their plates disappeared all night.