A bad news/good news post

Bad news: I woke up this morning to TWO wet beds in my household.
Good news: Neither one was mine. Given the stage of pregnancy I'm in and baby Johanna's penchant for JUMPING on my bladder, this is no small victory. :)

My drama queen child...part one million five

Disclaimer: (just in case you're a bit stand-offish about, um, body parts) My kids know all the correct terms for their anatomy, including the boy and girl parts. I've never seen a need or a compelling reason to call them "down there" or "peepee" or any other cutesy term. Disclaimer over.

Abbie has been feeling ill for two days now. The night before last, she was running a fever and complaining of a sore throat and a headache. I also had a sore throat and headache, and Katie started feeling badly yesterday. All the kids went to my mom's house for naptime/playtime yesterday, and when I arrived to pick them up, my mom was laughing and said, "Abbie has the strangest malady I've ever heard of." I said, "Oh, really? She's good for that." She said, "No, I've never heard of this one. She was complaining that her throat hurt, and then she said, 'Nanny, my throat hurts so bad it hurts all the way to my vagina!'"

Yeah. That's my kid. Good grief.

Breaking my blog silence for a kid funny

I swear it's not on purpose that I don't blog. I just feel like I don't have that much interesting to say. Also, since just before New Year's, I haven't had my own computer (our desktop crashed and is HOPEFULLY being repaired, so I just have a pretty slow laptop - that I am very thankful for!)...I can't upload pictures or anything else. Also, the five people that read this blog are on my Facebook or I speak to on the phone daily. :)
Anyway, yesterday I was speaking to my sister Melody on the phone, and her 2-year-old daughter Evie was being kind of whiney in the background. I knew it was almost time for her nap, and I asked to speak to her. At first she said she didn't want to talk to me, but then she decided to. As Melody handed her the phone, she (Melody) switched it to speakerphone. Here's the general gist of the conversation:
Me: Evie, are you being a crankypants today?
Evie: NO!
Me: Are you sure? You sound a little grumpy today. Do you feel grumpy?
Evie: Yeah. Grumpy.
Me: I feel a little grumpy today, too. Do you need a nap?
Evie: Yeah.
Me: How about we make a deal? Do you know what a deal is?
Evie: Yes.
Me: OK. So you go "check your eyelids for leaks" (that's what my dad says), and I'll go take a nap too, OK?
Evie: OKAY!
She hands the phone back to her mom and says excitedly, "Ma! Auntie Gretchen says when I wake up my cousins will be here!"

Scones...a pregnancy craving adventure in cooking

Does that even make any sense? Well, cravings rarely do. I haven't had too many this time around, and they're usually short-lived. Which is sometimes good and sometimes bad. Like, if I crave Doritos, I'm like an ADD kid: "OOOH, I need some Doritos! I need some really BAD! Jon, please go to Red Apple and get me some Dorit....ooh, shiny! I could make a craft out of that!...." etc., etc. That would be a GOOD short-lived craving. A BAD short-lived craving would be the time that I ordered $25 worth of Chinese food (including a tip) for delivery, and by the time it got here less than an hour later I TOTALLY didn't want it. Blech. Gross. Get it away from me. (And for those of you Chinese-food conisseurs in Manteo - Neil, namely - it was from Top China, which is inferior to China King in so many ways.)
Anyway, the longest-lasting craving so far (at nearly a week) was for cranberry-lemon scones. Seriously? Who even craves this stuff? Where does my mind come up with it? But I had to have them, and after having the cranberries and the lemons in my fridge for about 4 days, I finally made them this morning. I figured this crap ought to be documented, so here ya go:

Must...have....coffee.....to start.


Does that look like "coarse crumbs" to you? Works for me.


No buttermilk? (Who ever does?) My mama taught me
to sour milk with a tablespoon or so of vinegar or lemon juice before
you start. Works like a charm.)



I love Pampered Chef. This tool (which was cheap, as far as
PC stuff goes) is a lemon zester/scorer.

Another Pampered Chef favorite; this one gets
nearly daily use: my food chopper makes short work
of the fresh cranberries.

Leftover cranberries; must find a use for
them! The garlic salt has nothing to do with this
recipe, don't worry! :) It just lives on my counter
because it, too, sees nearly daily use.

Add the good stuff.

First taste of fresh cranberries :)


Very sticky.



And messy.
Ready to go in the oven.

Yes, oven is filthy.

Finished product! Yum. Craving satisfied.
Even my picky-butt son liked them.

The End.

A healthy baby...good report!

After we had our ultrasound last month, my doctor sent me for a fetal echocardiogram up in Norfolk. NOT because he thought there was a problem, but because, since I had my last baby, both of my sisters had babies born with congenital heart issues, one benign, one severe. So Dr. Dwyer, even though everything looked OK to him, sent me up to Eastern Virginia Medical School so they could double- and triple-check.
The process is exactly like every other ultrasound I've had (except a bit longer). The pictures looked the same. The technician was very friendly and kept commenting "What a pretty baby!" She was able to confirm that she is DEFINITELY a girl (yay!) and gave us an A+ for everything. No heart issues or other issues that she could see at all. At one point (and I so wish I had a
picture of this), she had her hand up to her head, and it looked like she was swooning like a drama queen. I think she'll take after her sisters, huh?
Here are some pictures:


Profile with her hand by her face. It kept looking like she was going for her thumb. :)

Another profile that shows that she has my nose, for sure.

Girly parts :)

I think she looks an awfully lot like Micah in this one.



Jon says she looks like Micah AND me. Especially in this one because
he says it looks like she is holding a book.

Something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read....

....this is how we approach Christmas in our family. Each kid gets four gifts that meet the above criteria. (I get some little stocking stuffers, too.) I don't want my kids to have a material explosion for Christmas. Usually, I have some pretty good ideas for what to get them. I get suggestions from them for the "something you want" category, of course. I try to accomodate (within reason, as long as it's age-appropriate and not hideously expensive) their requests, even if I think to myself (usually rightly so) "you'll NEVER play with/use that". Whatever. It's "something YOU want", not "something I WANT YOU TO HAVE".
I'm having trouble this year, though. Maybe it's the economy and the scarcity of funds that's making me so Grinchy. But really, when I look at these categories, only the "something you want" category even makes sense to me. Because there's really, really nothing they need. They truly, truly don't need any more clothing. We honestly, honestly, have too many books in this house. They're overrunning our place to keep them. We are expecting a baby in March with all the gack that goes along with that.
Anyone have any suggestions?

Just in case you missed my Facebook status update...

....another example of "good thing I have thick skin":
Abbie (to me): You look different.
Me: How do I look different?
Abbie: You look like an Oompa-Loompa. I don't like that headband.