Sick-os

Please note: After I read this post I realized how long and boring it really was. Sorry. I apparently needed to vent about cough syrup.


So the winter sicknesses have hit the Scott house. You may consider disinfecting your keyboard and mouse when you are done reading this. You can never be too safe.

Last week Emilyn was diagnosed with pink eye. Great. Every day I have to sit on her to pin her arms down while I pry open her eyes with one hand and the other hand has to hold her head still while I put her medicine in with the other hand.

Did ya' catch that last one? :) Three hands? I wish! If evolution was true new mom's would leave the hospital with real eyes in the backs of their heads and an extra arm with an extension.

Anywho needless to say we have been a little fanatical about hand washing around here. If Ahston couldn't talk yet I'm sure his first words would be "get your hands away from your face!".

Now both the kids have colds. Ashton's nose was running like a faucet all day the past two days. Ick. It is kind of funny though. He doesn't say, "I have a runny nose" like most normal kids. It always comes out "I have a bloody nose". If you don't come running with the tissue he starts repeatedly yelling it louder and louder. An almost 2-year-old screaming, "I HAVE A BLOODY NOSE!!!" as if he is dying is quite comical.

Last night Emilyn was up coughing quite a bit. It wasn't the kind of cough that woke her up. But it woke me up. Every. Time. She. Coughed. Gosh I just love that ultra sensitive mom sense. It seems especially sharp at night. That kind of thing NEVER wakes Kyle up. Or at least that's what he says. Needless to say I was up and down the stairs quite a bit trying as many things I could think of to ease the cough. Humidifier. Propped up pillows. Drinks of water. (Which is consequently very hard to make a sleeping 3-year-old drink water). The only thing that came of it was the poor kid rolled off the pillow and got her head stuck under the little rail on the side of her bed. Stellar mom award right there people. Finally I resorted to medicine. I gave her some homeopathic cough syrup and went back to bed. I kept waiting for it to kick in. Didn't happen. Didn't happen. Didn't happen. Almost 2 hours later I busted out the big guns. Robitussin. I laid in bed thinking, "If she coughs one more time, I'm going up there again. And there is was. One more. That's IT! I filled the medicine syringe and headed up in a huff.

Now I need to take you down a little side road for a second. Although my kids are very much their own individuals there are several things about them that are creepily similar. Their coughs being one of them. If I'm not in the room with them I have a difficult time distinguishing their coughs.

I needed to make sure it really WAS Emilyn and not Ashton coughing. After all I didn't want to medicate one of my kids if it wasn't needed. That would be disastrous. I'm sure it would create an early dependence on medication later leading to substance abuse at some point. Gosh that mom sense really sounds logical late at night. Sheesh. I should have just giving both of them some medicine and called it good several hours earlier. But I didn't. I stood in their room with the glow of the nightlight on the wall, waiting. Standing between Ashton's crib and Emilyn's toddler bed, holding the syringe loaded with the all-powerful Robitussin, ready to pounce. I waited for several minutes. And several more. Not a single peep out of either one of them. Finally I gave up. I took the medicine back downstairs and didn't hear a sound for the rest of the night. (By then it was closer to morning though.) Really?! Seriously? Was it only the threat of real medicine that made her stop coughing? Good grief.

I'm tired. But I have a plan for tonight. If someone starts coughing, I'm chugging the entire bottle of Robitussin myself and hope it kicks in before the guilt.

Good night!

P.S. I'll leave you with a few pictures. Who doesn't love pictures? Now maybe you will understand why I hiked up those stairs a million times last night. Anything for these faces. Holy moley I love them :)

The Chair

I know you all (All 3 of you faithful followers. You are the best! I love you. When this blog hits it big time I will forever acknowledge you as being my first.) Sorry for the side track.

Anyhow, like I was saying. I know you have all been waiting on pins and needles for the unveiling of "The Chair". It's a sentimental one so get the kleenex ready kids.

When my grandma decided to move out of her house, the only house I have known her to live in, the house that holds so many childhood memories..sniff sniff. She started cleaning out. As she decided what to give away she would put things in her basement. We would occasionally go over to shop in "Grandma's Bargain Basement". When I saw "The Chair" sitting down there looking lonely in the corner I knew I needed to take it home. I remember playing with this chair when I was a kid. There was no way I was letting some stranger buy it at Grandma's yard sale and take it to their strange house and let their strange kid play with it. I would rescue it and let MY strange kids play with it! But not before giving it a little nip-tuck.

Now, if any of you know me, you know I am not the best at finishing projects. Really good at starting...I won't tell you when I started it. The important thing is that I finished it before my kids were too big to use it! Victory! So once more here are the "befores". Lovely floral with touches of harvest gold....




Here is the "before" of where Emilyn used to read her books.



We gave her the chair for her birthday. Here she is reading her books before bed. Happy as a clam in her new chair.


The After

Much better!

Grandma and Emilyn


A small tribute to Grandma's house.

Better After

So my friend Stephanie did me the not-so-kind favor of telling me about this blog (Better After) quite awhile ago. I know she was well-intentioned, 'cause that's the kind of gal she is, but knowledge of this blog has been quite detrimental to me. I am obsessed. Really I am. If you don't take the time to go to the blog, it basically highlights people's home projects by sharing a before and after picture and a few details of the project. There is usually a link to the do-it-yourselfer's (if that wasn't a word before, it is now!) blog as well. I never follow the link, so I am left with two pictures. It always looks SO easy, but that's mainly because I don't pay attention to all the in-between steps. I leave the blog wanting to scour flea markets for inexpensive things I can redo. It is very inspirational. This summer I found a few things needing a little sprucing up. Here is my own little version of Better After. It's a lamp I got for $2 at a garage sale. It came with a "nice" pale pink shade. The kind with all the folds. The ones I hated dusting as a kid, because no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn't get the dirt out of those darn folds! I told the guy at the garage sale I didn't need the shade and left it there.



So this is what the poor girl started out looking like. Yikes! It just took a little sanding and a few coats of paint to add a few more years onto her life. For some reason I already had the shade laying around the house and the paint was leftover from when I had the red wall. So this project was SUPER cheap! Yeah!
Here is the after. Much better!



Stayed tuned to see what I do with this beaut of a chair. It came from my Grandma's basement when she moved. I used to play with it as a kid. Sentimental make-overs. Double whammy!

Crap I Find

So I don't know if this is a boy thing or what, but Emilyn has never been one to abscond things and hide them in weird places. Ashton on the other hand loves finding the most random crap and putting it in an even more random place for me to find. Here are a few of his treasures I have discovered.



Why yes superman, I do need that casserole dish. Thank you very much.





I left this one for Kyle to find.






Me while giving the kids a bath: "Kyle will you grab the body wash?"
Kyle: "Sure, where is it?"
Me: "In the washing machine of course.".

True story.

Mostly.





Pop some popcorn and grab a Dr. Pepper to drink while watching Spirit. I can somewhat understand his reasoning behind putting this there. Wait a minute, a one-year-old reasoning? Wow, I AM that frazzled tired mom of toddlers!





Don't make fun of me for owning tapes. They are sentimental sermons from Charlie McCall from my time spent at The Hill many moons ago. (Yes, I just said many moons) Kyle insists I need to do some purging. I chose to keep them because I WILL listen to these sermons again. Gosh darn it! As soon as I can find the tape player.
I think I own a tape player.
Maybe.

Hmmm, maybe I do need to purge a little.




The culprit himself. Playing in the tub toy box. I love that little stinker. And I'm thankful he hasn't started hiding food for me to find.

I'm Back!

So I have a confession, the "formatting issues" mentioned in the previous post really were OCD issues. As I am out and about blog-stalking I have seen so many people's REALLY cute blogs. Really how hard could it be? Apparently harder than I can handle. I struggle with having something plain and un-original. The perfectionist in me is throwing a royal tantrum right now. Maybe I'm just not meant to have a cute blog. Maybe people will come here because they enjoy the content of what I write.....ha! Oh well, you're here now, right?

I imagined my homecoming to the blogging world to be somewhat grand. I imagined I would post something amazingly witty as well as insightful and humorous all at the same time. Balloons and party blowers were even considered. The longer I waited to start blogging, the bigger my comeback post was idealized. So I figured I better just bite the bullet and do it. Otherwise it may have gotten out of hand and I would have felt compelled to do a tutorial of some sort or started giving stuff away.

A LOT has happened since my last post. Was that over a year ago?! Good grief! I could expound on all of it but I don't have the time right now, plus I would feel guilty making you read through it all. Maybe some day...in small doses. For now I will condense it into a list:

1) A lot of holidays came and went. We celebrated most of them in some way.
2) We probably took a few little trips to the west side of the state.
3) We added a member to our family! Not a dog you goons, a baby. Aston Lewis to be exact.
4) We won the lottery and bought a condo in Hawaii!

Okay, so only the first 3 are true. I almost had some of you didn't I? Who am I kidding? I know that most of you who read this keep in touch on a somewhat regular basis and you know better. A girl can try can't she?

There it is folks, in an effort to keep my sanity you may be seeing me around here more frequently. But don't get your hopes up.

I'll leave you with this picture of my adorable kids.

Under construction...

All right, I have officially completely messed up the format of my blog...and don't know how to fix it. It was my feeble attempt to make my blog cute like all my friends. I think this is God's way of telling me not to covet other people's things (and maybe to make better use of my time).

I get it. Now, how to get this thing fixed and updated... until that happens consider this page under construction. Please excuse whatever weirdness is going on.

The things we do for our children. Today I drank that completely gross glucose drink for my diabetes testing. If you haven't had the pleasure of doing this, it involves a nasty bottle of what reminds me of the mysterious McDonalds orange drink only doctored up with more sugar and a possible hint of something alcoholic. You have to drink the entire thing in less than 5 minutes and have to do it exactly a half hour before your appointment. Meaning whatever time that may be, you have to drop what you are doing and chug! (Sorry I missed the meeting Linds- now you know why) Bottoms up baby! I didn't throw up- thank goodness. It was a likely possibility considering what I had just consumed. My arm hurts though, apparently my veins were not having one of their better days. The tech had to poke around a bit to get the blood. Youch! I will find out hopefully soon if I passed or if I need to go back for the 3-hour test.

Everything else at the appointment went well. Baby Scottie (yes, we are calling him Scottie Scott) is doing well and amazingly not measuring big like Emilyn was. Sure feels like it though. Apparently I have only gained 7 pounds this pregnancy. I smiled at the Doctor when she told me that but thought in my head, "that's nice of you to say, but I'm pretty sure your scale is messed up honey. I don't pay your to flatter me. Besides that doesn't count the 25 or so pounds I never lost from Emilyn!" Anyhow, the count down is on with only 10 weeks to go! Oh man, I sure have a lot to do. Thinking about it makes me tired. I better get to bed. Hopefully my arm won't be so sore tomorrow.