Craziness

The past week has been quite exciting over here…so exciting that I’ve neglected posting anything here.Last Monday, Little Sister caught her hair on one of the springs beneath Big Sister’s bed. I was sitting on the toilet when I heard her scream. I hurriedly washed my hands and found pulling her head away from the bed. I helped her untangle herself, but it was too late to salvage some of her gorgeous six inch-long hair. As I undid her style and combed through, huge chunks of hair came off as I gingerly picked through with a wide comb. The result…a huge section of her hair in the middle of her head is now about an inch long. I have been trying to find creative ways to hide the damage. I can’t bear the thought of cutting the rest of her hair right now! Two and a half years of growth! But, I think I’ll have to get her to a salon sometime in the near future to see if they might have ideas.

That same day, Princess decided that she was tired of growing out her bangs and took her kid scissors to her hair. It wasn’t too bad a job, but I did have to even things out a bit.

On the mouse front, seven have been caught so far and we’ve found signs of them in the attic. (Oh, great!) We’re trying to seal off every possible source of food in the house and we’ll soon be able to recommend/criticize every mouse trap on the market. We had an entertaining discussion the other night wherein we wondered if anyone would want to take house mice off our hands on Craig’s List or FreeCycle. What is the most humane thing to do with live mice when you live in the city? (We’re not going to drive our car out 30 miles just to unload mice that are languishing in a live trap, nor will we take them to the other side of the park near our home where it will take them all of five minutes to find their entrance into our house that we still haven’t figured out.) Do you offer them to people who have a pet snake? The pet store? The pharmaceutical company for research, perhaps? If there is some entity out there that is really wanting to take in your live mice, wouldn’t they advertise themselves to you on the humane mouse traps? Take out ads in your local paper? Maybe have a link on a “How to Get Rid of Mice” web page?

So, if you happen to have any great pointers for what to do in our situation and be kind to our rodent population, feel free to tell me. Otherwise, we will use every trap at our disposal until we completely eradicate the vermin from our home!!!!

Mice in the House

So, this weekend we discovered mice in our kitchen range and found we have had some rodent visitors in the kitchen and pantry! I’ve been cleaning up mouse droppings, but so far have avoided SEEING our quiet visitors. My honey is not so lucky. He found a dead mouse on our back stairwell yesterday. Then, he heard one this evening and decided to press down on the foot lever of our garbage can to startle it out of hiding. He ended up squishing it with his foot, which totally grossed him out. Yechhh! I hope that I can avoid any sightings. Hearing the pitter patter of little feet is enough for me.

Parties

One of the benefits of having my husband’s and two daughters’ birthdays in July is that I can throw one big party and be done with it! That, and you can keep the party outside and have minimal indoor clean-up. In the summer, people are just fine with a wading pool and a few simple party games.

On Saturday, our daughters were invited to a very fun party. There were nearly twenty kids there for a four-year-old’s party. There were lots of fun activities. The birthday girl wanted a train party and they made a train track with masking tape all over the family room floor and had the older siblings pull the little kids around the track on blankets. They made an indoor obstacle course and let the kids decorate their own cupcakes into choo-choo trains. It was a very creative party. A lot of guests…but other than that I could actually see myself doing a similar type of party for kids.

Recently at church I have been called to serve on basically a party planning committee. This is SO not my forte, but maybe I’ll learn something along the way. My philosophy about entertaining is that the less work you make, the more likely you are to enjoy people’s company. Sometimes, I go to a really creative party and I get thinking about how nice it was. The hosts went into so much detail! The food was exquisite. The decorations could have come from a magazine.

But then, I remind myself that I’m not such a bad host. I just do things a little more casually. And that is how my honey and I manage to have two preschoolers and still host at least two meals a month in our home, plus our monthly game night. I’m not saying that putting in the extra effort isn’t appreciated by others. But, if lazy old me wants to get some socialization in, I have to accept the fact that I’m not Martha Stewart and just be me.

Starting Over…

There is something exciting about change. Scary and exciting. Two years ago, my honey helped me create a blog. I kept hounding him to update our family site with stories and he did what he always does when I bug him a little too much. “You want to do it?”

That’s how I started cross-stitching. “Honey, look at this cool project. When you get done with that one, maybe you could do this one?” So, he gave me a primer and told me he picks his own projects. “If you want that one done, you can do it yourself!” 

Yes, I married someone who refuses to enable me too much. And, it’s sometimes frustrating when you just want to be lazy and let someone else do the work. He’s the computer geek! It would be so much easier for him to just update the family web site once a month, accepting my editing, of course! But, no, he hasn’t updated posts since our move in August.

I had a blog that I was getting frustrated with…not overly much, just a little irritation. Then, my laptop died in November and I’ve missed putting up a few of our stories. I doubt many people have noticed my absence, except maybe my mom-in-law. I was kind of laying low and I never figured out how to turn the comments on…so I assume that I had maybe five people ever read that blog.

So, I’m starting over. I’ll make some mistakes, but I’m going to see how far I can get doing the blog thing on my own. Wish me luck. I’ll need lots of it.

Doing Hair

When we said we were willing to adopt transracially, I never imagined how adding an African-American daughter into our home would transform my abilities with doing hair. I am so NOT a hair dresser. But, I’m too frugal and lazy to be taking my two year old to a salon to get her hair braided every week. So, I’ve come a long way in two and a half years. I’m getting better with the cornrows and the braiding. I’m always trying out new hairdos. Unfortunately, I have allowed my kids a lot more TV time in order to style hair. Two years ago, our princess didn’t know much about videos. Now, she can load a movie onto a laptop and hit the play button with the mouse.