UPDATE!!! We made the cut!!

After a round a tamiflu for Baby DIVA and a round for myself, some clorox and lysol used on every surface in our home, and some fresh air, we can officially say after last weeks torturous illness that we are H1N1 FREE! YAY!

And just in time. This morning we were granted with a coveted spot in our MDO of choice. We met with the staff and toured the facility about 2 weeks ago and Baby DIVA was informed she was "accepted" into the program. However, we still had the daunting task of standing in the line, trying not to push other moms and tots out of the way, as we tried to score a spot for Baby DIVA.

Luck would have it, or maybe skills, that my pink hair is quite memorable. Not to mention my gorgeous Baby DIVA and hilarious 6 month pregnant waddle, so as we entered the MDO facility the smiles begin to flash our way. At least that was what I was telling myself in hopes that some of my breakfast didn't take this trip with us via my nose or something. Luckily it wasn't the latter. Finally it was our turn and WE GOT IT!!! Baby DIVA will starting her FIRST day of "school" on September 6, 2011. At the the MDO of my choosing and super close to home!

YAY! We rock. And I guess I am one of those moms now. Critter2 is a shoe in for this same program, at a sibling discount of course, when it is her time, and she hasn't even arrived yet. Motherhood and the politics. Who knew?

H1N1 in the house

On Monday Baby DIVA popped a fever. Pretty high hitting 104 at times, but not too alarming. Baby DIVA doesn't get fever often, but when she does she tends to have high temps. By Wednesday morning we had no relief, so I decided we best head into the peds. Fevers always get a Dr check in my world. Especially for a kiddo who rarely has them. Poor Baby DIVA.

The office was packed. All the tots in our great city seem to be sporting snotty noses and fevers and various other "cold" symptoms. Fun times. "Sniffle sniffle, no momma. Whine", was common sound while waiting for our name to be called. I was most impressed that Baby DIVA continued to feel sick and even kept her fever for the Dr appt. Most peds appt's usually make me look like and idiot. you know, a really sick kid miraculously recovers for the 15 minutes you are at the Dr, only to have a full "relapse" on the way home. Not this time though. Dr was able to see all her symptoms in full force and assured me something was definitely up.

We had a look over, checked for bunnies in her ears, birds in her throat and swabbed her nose for ugly green monsters. The verdict rolled in shortly after...H1N1. Swine Flu. Awesome! How the heck did we catch that? Not something you ever want to hear, especially about your Baby DIVA or while you are pregnant with a Critter.

A round of Tamiflu for my tiny tot and a round of Tamiflu for myself and Critter2 have now commenced. Baby DIVA seems to somewhat be doing better. Her fever is going down, but she is still whiney and miserable. This morning she only wanted to wear her favorite TUTU while being sickly on the couch. Unfortunately she barfed all over it and a wardrobe change was necessary. Now she snoozes and Momma sure hopes she wakes up fever free and feeling better.

We did receive Flu vax this year, so mommas keep your kiddos safe and clean their noses and hands! Germs are out in full force!

$5 bathroom makeover

Still nesting over here. Recall this big nesting weekend?

Well I wanted to re-do Baby DIVA's and Critter2's bathroom. But honestly, I didn't want to drop a lot of cash on a tots potty training castle. So I "screen" shopped several stores looking for a deal or two on new shower curtains and decor. Finally, I decided on a bright and colorful curtain from amazon, that would work well with the already inviting yellow walls in the girls bath. Before hitting "ship to me", I thought a quick run to target should be had in order to seal the deal. I'm kind of an instant gratification girl with these projects, so if I could snag the items in question quicker, I'd be much happier.

Well, am I just lucky or what? I found an even better shower curtain, bright and colorful, exactly what I wanted for $3.47 on my little jaunt to Target. And to top that off I also snagged some super fun wallies to add to pizazz to the potty training kingdom. All we need now are some new bath mat's and bathroom re-do is complete!

Mirror is pretty!

Full wallies grouping

$3.47 shower curtain!!

So in total as of right now, this entire bathroom re-do has put me out right at $5. Doesn't get much better than that.

Happy Hearts!!!

Since I have a tub of wacky hormones, (and several boxes of thin mints), and I am feeling particularly mushy this year, I wanted to shout to the world Happy Valentine's Day. May your heart, soul and life be filled with love and happiness.

And as I sit here and type this lovely sweet note, 1 of the loves of my life just waltzed by sporting a stench of love for me to wipe clean shortly as another of my loves kicked my bladder so hard I pissed myself! Awesome! Happy Heart Day!

Perfection!

My non girly Baby DIVA

And this is how we wear our headbands.

Colored Ice fun

Since the snowmagedon blizzard of 2011 failed to arrive with the gusto as predicted, we were jipped of our snow ice cream making plans. BOO! Instead we improvised and made colored ice.

Really simple. You need water, food color, a freezer (or snowmagedon outside), and a fun loving toddler who likes to get dirty.

Baby DIVA helped me color the water in the ice trays. Then she took a nap. Exhausting work. But perfect timing for the colored ice to freeze to play perfection.

When she woke up the ice was ready. I grabbed some towels and wrapped a baking sheet in white paper. Gave her some colored ice and some cups and let her go to town. she got all kinds of dirty and lots of "ewwww's" were to be announced. But she had a blast playing with the ice, sorting the colors, naming the colors and showing me her colored fingers. A great way to waste half an hour!

This project was a lot of fun and is quite similar to the project we did last summer, Ice Painting, which is also lots of fun and messy!

MDO/ preschool hunt

We are on the prowl for a mothers day out/pre school program for Baby DIVA. Nothing Fancy. I do not want my child in the most trendy, Einstein school out there. I simply want a casual learning experience where she might learn a letter and a color but mostly will begin to learn how to not kill her her little sister by gaining social interaction skills.


So the last few weeks I have been hunting. And all I can say is WOW! I honestly had no idea that I needed to be concerned with my child's glorified day care of one day a week back when she was still just a sperm. Wait list after wait list, I have placed our name. I will be lucky to get my kid into a MDO program before she heads off to college.

Really? Is this necessary? Toddlers are toddlers. They all go in and poop their pants, eat glue and learn how to quietly steal each others toys. Do we really need to act like a bunch of desperate housewife characters to snag our kids a spot in the school down the street so they can see who eats the glue the fastest. Geez.

I suppose I am already too late for Critter2. I mean she is 23 weeks along in my belly. Damn poor kid is never gonna have a chance at Mothers Day Out.

Snowmagedon 2011 hits Katy, Texas

Have you been watching the news? Have you been face to face with the snowmagedon of 2011? Well, if you are reading this from one of the northern states please hold back your laughter as I share with you the crazy experiences we having down here in the south with this snowmagedon.

First off, let me tell you, here in Katy Texas, a suburb west of Houston, we DO NOT have winter. We have 2 seasons. We have summer and light summer. My family does not even own winter coats. Sure each year we might have a cold "hour" and we might even drop to 39 degrees here and there. But it is usually at 3am and for all intensive purposes not really my problem. A sweatshirt and flip flops suffice just fine on my tiny walk from the garage to my house. The idea of "winter" is something cute we make with our kids turning cotton balls and glue into snowmen.

Well for some reason this week, Mother nature thought it would be rather humorous to include our little place in the world in the path of snowmagedon. We all watched the tube as the storm crossed to the country, dropping feet and feet of snow on the northern states. Blizzard warnings went up left and right. We watched in awe as states and cities, who all well equipped to handle winter weather, buckled under the pressure of this storm. Couple that with the repeated warnings for us "Houstonians" to hunker down and prepare for "Real" winter weather and the possibility of 1-3 inches of accumulated snow, and HOT DOG our city went ballistic!

Store shelves were emptied. Bread. Milk. Ice. (cause ummm that is needed in a winter storm) were all quick sell outs. Oh and let us not forget the hot chocolate. 24 hours of snow is going to require tons and tons of this magic potion. Schools closed. Offices closed. Classes were cancelled. We all sat with anticipation waiting to experience WINTER. And although very excited about the possibility of building snowmen, a little nervous after watching what power this storm brought to the rest of the country.

And then it came.

And in case you missed that here is another shot.

What did I tell you? We have summer and light summer. Houston Blizzard 2011! My northern friends, you may laugh now.

Snack Necklace

Baby DIVA and I have been doing a little project everyday. Some days it is as simple as sitting in the backyard naming off colors as we see them. Other days we make crafts or bake or dance and sing silly songs. Whatever it may be, I make sure to spend a minimum of 30 minutes to an hour uninterrupted each day giving Baby DIVA my undivided attention. No laundry, no phone calls, no Facebook, no tv, nothing. No interrupting mom and babe. Just time devoted to one another without distractions. This is a very important gift that I give my child, and I do my best to make sure she gets it almost every single day.

The other day we did a project and Baby DIVA had so much fun. she giggled and laughed and it tickled me so. It is a really simple project. Something that all of us moms, girls, humans know how to do. A project I kind of threw together last minute. The project was making cereal necklaces.

I took some string and plain old Cheerios's. And then we began to string the cheerios. Baby DIVA squealed with delight and promptly began to eat the cheerios off the string quicker than I could put them on. She looked adorable. Like a little puppy scavenging for treats, as she devoured each "bead" of the cereal necklace. She thought it was awesome. After a few minutes she grasped the concept and we worked together to finish the first necklace. She quickly put it around her neck and started eating. Giggling all the while.

It just tickled me so to have her react so well to such a simple idea. We had a ball making necklaces. We ended up making about 6 in all. And she was ever so delighted to show them off to H4L when he came home from work.

Fluffin' the Nest

I managed to get some alone time this last weekend. Seriously! An entire Saturday all by my lonesome. H4L loaded up Baby DIVA and left me to my own devices. I didn't even have to ask for this marvelous happening. Nope, he offered it up all by himself. I'm thinking someone wants to get lucky. Just kidding! :) I just have a wonderful husband who can read me like a book and when he sees the horns growing from my head, he knows he needs to take action. Quickly.

So what did I do? I nested, of course! I kid you not; One kid is off with daddy leaving me alone all day and so the other one ramps up the hormones and sends me into nesting mode. JEEZ!!! One might think that I would opt to lay on the couch, work out my arm muscles by channel surfing and possibly take a big snooze. Well, in my perfect imagination that is exactly what I did. But In reality hormones won and I became a slave to my craving of clean.


Anyhow, now that it is all said and done, and my ENTIRE day of ALONE is gone spent scrubbing floors, organizing and labeling anything that I could, and making some space for Critter2 by cleaning out every closet I could get my grubby little hands on, I actually feel grateful. My house is spic and span. It feels awesome to walk into. No stench of poopie pants greets you as you pass the diaper genie because I was just too tired to take the trash out. No mystery piles of paper stacked up in odd places hoping to be sorted someday. All the cabinets and drawers and closets are organized and everything is in its proper place. The shredder has been fed for the month with paperwork that was just about to start growing a nasty fungus called "you better check this pile for anything important, or it might come out to bite you". It feels great. Clean. Organized. Ahhh, until Baby DIVA tap dances on her popcorn snack on my nice clean carpet. The joys of mommahood!


A couple of my prize projects from "Fluffin the Nest" day are my pantry and my stockpile closet. I went through both and cleaned, straightened, tossed out expired and old. I also made myself a running list that can be checked when stockpile ops come about. Also helps me know what I NEED to purchase and what I don't. This is something I have been desperately wanting to do for some time, so I am really glad to have completed this project. Here have a lookey:

Hair stuff stock

Teeth/shave and non Stench stock

My Spice cabinet, organized and each shelf listed for cooking ease

My perfectly organized pantry shelves listed out so I know exactly what we have on hand and where to find it

Pantry view

Maybe I am a big nerd. this might seem crazy to some. But for me it makes me feel great. Gives me structure in the insanity of parenthood and allows me to spend more of my time with my family rather than hunting for items in our home. So yes, that is how I spent my entire free day alone. Giving in to the needs of Critter2 hormones and "Fluffin my nest". Ignoring the fabulous opportunity I had to rest my fluffy pregnant butt on the couch and channel surf Lifetime Television. But I feel good about my choice and will continue to remind H4L how I choose MY friend time for months to come. heehee :)