life with ego

My Life Monday

(This is a redo, since Typepad likes to freeze when I'm almost done and then not recover my post, due to this it may not be as peppy as the former.)

Rain. I hate rain.  I hate feeling cooped up in the house -- our life is outside this house, shopping, playing, and exploring.  We sleep here, and eat here (sometimes) but we live other places.  Other places are not fun to go to when it is pouring outside.  Some people love the rain, love cuddling up in comfy big beds and having movie days while they listen to the rain, but not us partially because a toddler is not going to sit in your bed all day and watch chick flicks.  So our activities this weekend were at the mercy of the rain fest outside. (Side note: I'm pretty bummed that our neighborhood has such awesome drainage.  I wish I could get some cool puddle jumping photos).

We hit a dry spot on Saturday and went out to color the world. 

 

Some places were a little higher to reach...

So we stuck to coloring locally...

Sunday fun day was also filled with rain.  We talked about going to the beach and throwing balls for the dogs before we saw the weather forecast of doom.  So our fake lake would have to do. 

You can't go to the fake lake without doing a little swinging.  She is trying to "get me" in this picture.  It's our bit we do.  She swings high and almost touches me with her feet, I pretend to fall backwards and she screams "ahhh got you!!"

Water + ball = Katelyn's element.  She was made for this.  She's the first in, the last out and never loses that ball.  We tested Charlie's swimming abilities, he can swim, but chooses not to he prefers to wander, and that's ok by Katelyn, less competition.

And then I was in my element.  And I almost forgot about the rain.

 

Ten on Tuesday

 ..merged with My Life Monday because my Mama was too lazy to do this entire post yesterday.  We have been dead to the blogging world for a bit because we've been so busy and were out of town.  While we were gone I  participated in 3 (!) Easter egg hunts. That is triple the candy intake of normal kids.  But I'm not normal, so that's ok.  After each one of my hunts my Mama made me dump all the candy in one big bowl and only lets me have one piece at a time and usually only once per day.  Umm, how is that fair?  I'm the one that worked for it, I didn't see her out there on her hands and knees picking up plastic eggs. I saw her standing cozy with her little paparazzi camera.  She says too much candy is bad for me, but I don't see any credentials hanging on the wall that make her some sort of candy expert.  She just needs to wait and see how bad the karma from this is going to be.

1.  Annyywayyy, our my first hunt was with our playgroup, pretty low key, but as always the Mamarazzi followed me, damn flashbulbs....
2. My second egg hunt made me a local celebrity, err I mean local celebrity in Mama's hometown.  At my normal stomping ground in NW Houston I'm kind of a big deal, plus I've been named the Funnest Girl in Cypress, a pretty high title if I do say so myself.

3. Then as if teasing me with all this candy wasn't enough, they make me have ANOTHER egg hunt at home.  I found lots of eggs, I'm pretty much a professional now a great skill to list on my resume.

4. Let's see, what else have I been up to, with so many activities it's hard to remember.  Oh yeah, I did some swinging, but you already knew that was on my daily agenda.

5. I did some circus training with my miniature lion at my MeeMee's house.

  

6. I sat around looking carefree and stylish in case I make it into the current issue of US Weekly.

7. I had to bring our new puppy Charlie, (Charlie is his given name but I prefer Charlie-boy), to the vet.  It's a good thing I let my Mama come along, it was hard work holding him and I don't think I could have held him and filled out the proper paperwork so she came in handy.  The "doggy and kitty doc-or" gave him some medicines to make his cough go away.  I could take a picture of the medicines to show you but the camera is too high for me to reach right now.  Just picture normal pills in your brain, now picture them going into a blue bottle with a dog and cat picture on the side, now take a mind picture, taadaaa!!

8. Oh yeah, and the big bunny dude visited me -- you know the giant bunny, like at the mall.  A regular old 'don't follow down the hole' bunny couldn't lift those big baskets silly.  I only saw the giant bunny from afar.  I mean, I know he is innocent and on the up and up but he reminds me of these. Yuck.  Anyway, he brought me some cool stuff.  I don't have any actual pictures of my basket because my loser Mama was in charge of the camera and failed to get that shot.  Oh well, it's only my childhood, who would want to capture pictures of that anyway, since I'm only going to have one and all.

9. We bought some dead animals and cooked them, hooray! *Note: I'm a vegetarian except for the occasional chicken nugget.

10. Oh my goodness I almost forgot, I have the most wonderful and exciting news!!  The big bunny brought me my own sextuplets!!!  Now I can finally get that reality show I've been wanting!!  I didn't know how I was going to make it happen but now that this opportunity has just dropped into my lap, how could I pass it up?!  (*Note: The picture below only shows 5 of my sextuplets, I'm not dumb, I can count.  I misplaced one, I mean she must be around here somewhere, have you ever tried to keep track of six kids?  That's what I thought, so stop judging. )

 

My Life Monday

Another semi-uneventful weekend happened at our house.  Most houses were filled with chatter about how our government is forcing us to get health insurance, so make sure you keep your ears open because I hear next they are going to force us to feed our kids and get licenses to drive our cars -- crazzzy world.  But our house was filled with lots of other things.

Like shopping, dinner dates and broken sinks.  None of which I have proof of but I swear they did take place.  We had a plumber at the house this morning to fix the sink, his exact words were "wow, I've never seen this happen before", comforting.  He will be returning tomorrow because the tank on our master toilet (btw our house is not even a year old) is cracked so he has to replace that.  It's nice buying a house with a "bumper to bumper" warranty.

As always we filled our days with being silly...

 
It was winndddddy this weekend. Perfect weather for doing things like this:

 
When we weren't attempting to stay upright outside we were inside making healthy things unhealthy, sweet potatoes covered in cinnamon and brown sugar:

 
...and making carnival food "yummy yummy cakes" in The Girl's words..

 
  But the weekend was not all fun and game we took the plunge to became full fledged safety minded parents and installed this little $75 apparatus (sp?).

 
Don't worry all you daredevils out there, we could never cage her in, it only took approximately 3.5 minutes for The Girl to figure out how to waste $75 and pop that thing right open to continue her dangerous way of life.

My Life Monday

We are sick, again. I know, right. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.  Flip back a few posts, you'll see this same post approximately a month ago, I get sick every month, never fails.  Unfortunately the last 2 times The Girl has joined me.  I'm still holding out hope that her's is just allergies since her eyes have been watering too. Double Grrrrr.

But this past week has been so nice and I've spent a minimum amount of time inside working on projects like this:

And a combination of these...

 
and these...

But most of my time has been spent on my biggest project, the one I've been working on daily for over 2 years, there is always more work to be done, but so far she is turning out just perfect.

So we spent some time here...

And finding shadows on the sidewalk...

And being a professional bubble catcher...

And teaching Hello Kitty how to dance...

And taking in some fresh air..

We've tried warming up to loving, or at least liking the sprinkler and a vast improvement has been made.  But a large chunk of time is still spent taking it all in from a far.

 
Could it stay like this forever?  The perfect balance of warm and cool, minimum wind, cloudless sky.  The Girl being an awe of her surrounding and double checking to be sure that I also hear the "bird say tweet tweet" or her much enjoyment of picnic food like "fry crackers".   Or the way she giggles when the wind blows her hair in her face "quick Mama, look..wowwww, hahahaha".  Spring is definitely having an impact on her, for someone who used to wakeup and her first words were "eat cereal?" has turned into "go outside and swiinnngggg".  So if any strings could be pulled and we could pause this weather, I would greatly appreciate it...pretty please?

My Life Monday

Two projects took place in our household this weekend which is a lot for us, we tend to side with procrastination way of life.  First up was a gift for a baby shower for one of the husband's coworkers.  I really wanted to take the easy way out and go grab a 150 count case of Pampers Swaddlers from Sam's Club and call it a day but I figured since I had nothing better to do then watch Oprah I would go ahead and do something fun with the diapers since it was a diaper shower.  A diaper cake it was.  Here are some photos from my little craft day on Friday, just in case you have no idea what I'm talking about.

First you take 80 something Pamper's Swaddlers, roll them, and tie them with up with rubber bands until your fingers want to bleed.

 
Then I arranged the bottom two layers around one of those jumbo sized Johnson's Baby Wash pumps, and made the top two layers just a circle-ish shape of diapers. 

Then I folded receiving blankets to go around the layers, pinned them in the back, and added ribbon (I wish I would have used wider ribbons but these were the only ones I really liked.

Then added in all the fun stuff.  I wish I could have found more stuff to throw on it.  I went with a safari theme since it's their nursery theme but I guess it's not as popular as I thought it was because safarish things were few and far between.

It was a big hit, so I was pretty pleased in then end.

In between the two projects I went on Saturday and got The Girl a sprinkler.  Our labopotamus is hopelessly obsessed with sprinklers.  You could leave the gate open, have little children running around outside, and have 8 steak dinners lined up on the sidewalk and as long as that sprinkler was turned on she would be in her own little world.  I turned on the lawn sprinklers and she and The Girl seemed to be having fun together in them.  So I thought it was a marvelous idea to get her her very own sprinkler.  There were quite a few to choose from on the water row I almost went with the little blowup baby splash pad that barely had a few springs of water.  But it my genius stupidity I decided to get this 10 foot long one that goes nuts and throws water everywhere. 

So we came home and she suited up.  I used my savvy instruction reading skills and assembled spread out the already assembled sprinkler. I plugged in the hose and turned the nozzle.  I soon felt water hitting me in the face and it wasn't coming from the sprinkler.  I had turned the wrong nozzle and was being hosed down by one of the lawn sprinklers (note: this is what happens when you have 86 different nozzles in your yard).  Turned that one off, followed the hose I attached to the sprinkler to the correct nozzle and turned it on.  There was barely a stream, and the little hoses on this thing were definitely not shooting a crazy amount of water everywhere.  The dog started using it as a water fountain.  Super, I picked the one that was a dud. 

I went pull the packaging out of the trash, reread the directions -- there were none, this was the sprinkler for idiots, and seeing as how I'm a genius this should have been a cake walk.  I look at the picture again, trying to figure out if it was photo shopped to just look like a fun time with lots of crazy water.  It did looked photo shopped.  I was going to march right back into Wal-Mart (the place where dreams die) and demand my money back for this little dose of false advertisement they were selling.  Though in reality I think we all know that I didn't have to bring any drama in there, Wal-Mart will take back anything if you wait in line long enough.  I go back outside to see The Girl swishing her hands through the tiny little streams coming out of the sprinklers and trying to throw a few drops on the dog.  She was having a ton of fun just doing it her way.  Thennnnnnn, the genius part of my brain kicked in and I noticed the hose was kinked.  I unkinked it and all hell broke loose.  The sprinkler went wild, the dog went wild, the baby went running, I screamed from being blasted with water.  I ran to this little corner outside that wasn't getting hit with water and The Girl followed me.  She wanted no part of that crazy sprinkler, she made it quite obvious that she was too good for it (note: the prissy hand in the photo below).  She just stood in the corner laughing at the dog. "haha Mama, Kaylyn funny..Mama, Kaylyn drink yummy water...Kaylynnnnnn you're silly!"  I asked her if she wanted me to turn it off and she said yes, so I did and then she started screaming "again, again, yay!!".

Second project for the weekend was creating a garden.  We had one when we lived in NY and every year since then the husband has complained about how he wished we had a garden again, so the complaining can officially end.  We polished off a few hours and the likes of Lowe's and Home Depot getting supplies.

We ended up with tomatoes, peppers, cilantro, watermelon, strawberries, blueberries, cantaloupe, cucumbers...and I think that's it.

A few bags of this came in handy...

so that while he did this (note that is not photo shopped, that's our real very dead grass from sod that we were not very kind to last summer)....

 
I had somewhere to supervise from.

 

My Life Monday

 
 

Free Friday/Saturday Salutations/My Life Monday

Due to some technical publishing errors, I have a 3x super sized post for you!

Friday --

I have a lot of ideas floating in my head.  Some of them come to life, most stay in my head.  My MIL's (mother-in-law) birthday was coming up and I was trying to think of something to get her.  You know the kind, one of those people who pretty much has everything.  And then it came to me.  A coffee table.  She has a pretty mod coffee table but the top is glass and she nears an anxiety attack when the baby visits.  So I looked for a coffee table but was pretty underwhelmed with what I was find.  Then I found a blog made my an ordinary stay at home Mom that happens to make her own furniture.  Not just any furniture but super cool knockoffs from the big wigs at Pottery Barn and Land of Nod.  So that was it, I decided I was going to make her a coffee table. Make. Me, who doesn't even make beds.  I made the mistake of telling the husband my idea.  He thought it was brilliant of course but then he began to think it was his project.  So it slowly transformed into a team effort.  He wouldn't allow me to use the saw so he cut the wood, I assisted with the construction and even drilled, countersunk, and put screws in.  We both sanded and stained.  And in the end after a few leveling difficulties we had a coffee table.  A pretty awesome one if I do say so myself.

(This is the crappiest finished project photo ever, it was raining and I was trying to take a photo inside the garage, but it didn't capture the color at all and I couldn't get a good angle. Blech)

 


Here is the pottery barn inspiration.

I've already purchased the wood to start our next project!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Saturday Salutations --

Dear Sprinkles Cupcakes, your website has been saying you were coming to Houston for over 2 years now.  You teased me with your deliciousness when we vacayed in Cali.  I wept for you when we left but felt secure since your website said you were arriving in "Summer 09".    Summer came and went.  You changed your website to "Fall 09" then "Winter 09", then finally a more exact date (not that it means anything to you) was given: "February 10".  So I once again have checked your website hoping for an exact date and it now reads "March '10". Seriously?  My stomach is growling.

Dear Jamba Juice, why don't you have a drive-thru?

Dear C-Phen DM, why don't you list on your little side effect handout that you could possibly make a normally sweet 19 month old into an evil being?

Dear Sickness, if you could please go away at some point during this week, that would be fabulous.

Dear Kitchen Drawers, thanks for just sitting around while I was trying to organize you and your contents, you could have at least given me a hand.

Dear Georgia & Labopotamus, if you could stop this shedding nonsense that would be terrific.

Dear Inventor of Snack Trap, you really deserve to be rich, I hope you are.

Dear HOA, I really hope that when you sent me a letter about the 3 little weeds in my front mulch (that are dead none the less, it's winter) that you also sent letters to the builder about the unsold lots that are overgrown.

xoxo, Mallory

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My Life Monday --

Busy week this week! 

1. We have about 4 things on the playgroup calendar that we will be participating in this week. I'm also attending a friends Scentsy launch party at the end of the week.  Around those activities I need to make a trip to the outlet mall, grocery store, library, CarSpa, and some other places that will probably pop up along the way.

2. We are wayy into the Olympics too.  I didn't think I loved them as much as the Summer but as long as I DVR ahead of time I can fast forward through the dull parts.  The Girl is fascinated with, I think it's called Alpine Downhill (?), where they ski down a bit and then jump, she thinks they are flying and loves it.

3. Operation Deep Clean and Lysol begins this week too.  We have family coming in next week that cannot stay with us if we are still sick, due to transporting germs to MD Anderson, so on top of attempting to get well at warp speed I also need to hose down the house in Lysol to try to rid of all of these upper respiratory germs we have floating around.  I need to do a triple vacuum of the carpet and the furniture to try and get as much dog hair out of the air as possible.

4. I did a mega batch picture order last week; I realized I don't have any pictures post her first birthday up around the house so that needed to change.  I'm doing a picture wall on our main eat in kitchen wall since it's a pretty big focal point when you enter the house through the courtyard.  I hope to have the husband hang everything this weekend and then all that will be missing is the dining room table that we are in the process of making.  My next photo project will be our bedroom, we have two very large walls that are blank, I need to pick out new bedding before I start on that project though.

Time to get started on our week...

My Life Monday

My life kind of sucks right now.  Not not super sucks but really sucks, but we are all so sick -- E is the worst.  If she doesn't show any sign of improvement by tomorrow I am whisking her off to the Dr.  It all started when I made the last post about us being sick, her having the most mild cold on the face of the planet, to the husband and I having a full blown hardcore cold with her seemingly better. 

She went to the Dr. last week for her 18 month well baby (for those of you counting it took place at nearly 19 months).  The Dr. was very impressed with her speech, her medical skills (she knew how to use the stethoscope), and her awesome spinning in circle skills (that were demonstrated).  She is growing right on track, tall and skinny, at nearly 34 inches (90%) and a hair over 23 pounds (30%).   She was a happy high fiving giving out girl this day, and then all hell broke loose 2 days later when she also developed the hardcore cold the husband and I had been battling.  Her hardcore cold vacation also came with a nice little all inclusive cough package.

She is not sleeping.  Not like the newborn days where you contemplate smothering yourself with the Boppy pillow when they wake up every 2 hours like clockwork -- but like not sleeping, period.  Her eyes are bloodshot, she whines constantly because she is soooooo tired.  I finally gave her Benedryl (which the Dr. recommended when she had the flu to help her sleep) and she was able to sleep 12 hours straight Saturday night.  But since discontinuing the Benedryl we are back to square one.  It sucks when you can't make them feel better.

So we are held up in a house that is 1/100 of a Hoarder's house due to the massive amount of Kleenex we seem to be collecting.  We canceled a play date for tomorrow in hopes of not infecting anyone else and we have a Valentine's party and a birthday party this weekend that I hope we recover in time to attend.

I had a post drafted up to share two projects I had been working on on Friday but obviously that took a back seat. Now that I think of it, I don't think I ever even took a picture of one of them, so I'll have to figure that out to share this Friday.

I'm off to Google how to create some sort of immunity shield orange juice I.V. line.

Monday Maybes

...maybe sometimes, once in a blue moon, for a millisecond I miss her being tiny.

...maybe E's pediatrician will be running on schedule tomorrow so we don't wait forever in the waiting room.

...maybe I am all for ditching Houston and moving to Los Angeles.

...maybe I let my kid sit on the coffee table to watch her last few minutes of a Dora episode after breakfast.

...maybe Jay will crash and burn and Conan will come back.

...maybe most definitely, I drink way too much Mountain Dew.

...maybe I let my kid watch Dora on my iPhone at the grocery store or while I load the dishwasher.

 

My Life Monday

A pretty low key day here.  E work up earlier then normal, around 8:30 so I had to keep her happy and entertained until it was time to leave for story time at 10 -- easier said then done.  After letting her dance to Gaga and singing the "Spider song Mama!!!" 8 gazillion times it was time to leave.  E did better then she normally does, she only did one of her bloody murder screams and was pretty nice to all of the kids.  She even shared a crayon.  Well she shared it for about 3.89 seconds and then ripped it out of his hands but that was progress -- baby steps.  We left the library with  a stack of her choices.  She once again went for the "Why I'm Proud of Being Black" board book, I'm not exactly sure why she is drawn to that book she was about to put it in the bag but then threw it back on the shelf and went for one with a funny looking "KITTTTTTYY!" on it.

I've spent the rest of the day trying to finish up various projects while E napped and possibly throwing in a little house cleaning here and there.  We also took a trip to gather up supplies for Valentine's Day gifts for Ella's Grandmas -- this is about as much of a hint as I can give you since I'm sure they are spying right now.