I'm back! My finger is mostly healed up now and its not painful to type or use the mouse anymore.

We had a very crazy week. Jasons car wouldn't start for two days, so he had to take my car. Even if I have no plans, I HATE being without a car. I don't know how poeple get by with one car.

Then, early Wednesday morning, I was up with the kids and noticed these brown spots all over our carpets. Turns out Tilli had gotten into the cocoa powder, which is deadly for dogs! We were really freaked out and kept an extremely close eye on her, but it looks like she must have gotten just a tiny bit and just made a big mess because other than being more sleepy than usual, she didn't get sick.

I got a new phone, so you can call us at home now.

Thursday, my Mom noticed that Ethan could crawl into Gwens crib. Indeed, he does it at every opportunity now! The time is drawing near when he's going to have to get into a toddler bed and I'm so nervous about it!

Ethan is full of words and every day says more and more. His understanding is unbelievable, and Gwennie and him are getting along really well, especially since he likes to tell Gwen what to do now and she (sometimes) responds.

Gwen is so close to walking! We've been practicinig with her. All she lacks is confidence. Physically she's all ready. I cannot wait for her to walk so that her clothes will stay clean. I know that sounds like a silly reason, but if you only knew how much time I spend on stains on that girls knees and tummy!

Jason and I have a lot planned for this weekend. I'm not gonna say what just in case it all falls apart and we get nothing done, but it is ambitious.

Gwen is running a low grade fever today. Hopefully she's not getting sick :(

Ethan is 2 in four days!

Just a quick note to say hi and let you know that we are all doing well.

I cut my finger badly on Friday and it really hurts to type or use the mouse so its put a crimp in my internet activities.

For those who might be trying to reach us, our home phone is broken. Don't take it personally if I don't call you back, because I can't :) Try my cell phone!

All for now. Will type again once the finger doesn't hurt so bad.

When will I learn?

DO NOT EAT PIPING HOT PIZZA!

As my former co-workers may remember, I have a thing about having my pizza extremely hot. We worked across the street from a great pizza place and even if it had just come out of the oven I would pop it into the toaster oven in the office kitchen and cook that baby till it was crisp. Once I started a small fire... and then the darn thing started to smoke so badly that I couldn't do it anymore :(

Anyway, I digress. I would eat this screaming hot pizza and scald my mouth. As I ate pizza like 3-4 times a week, you would think that I would learn to let it cool first. Nope.

Apparently I still haven't learned because I burned my mouth so bad today. Ouch.

My Mom and Jenni came over and cleaned up the house so nice! My Mom also toppled half the laundry mountain, bless her heart. As soon as she arrived she was like, "Show me", hehe.

We're having ham steak, creamed spinach and mashed potatoes for dinner.

Made a big mistake last night and gave Gwennie pepperoni pizza. Usually she just gets crust and cheese, but I thought, why not give her some of the good stuff. Weeeeeell, I paid for it today with the most enormous and messy poopy diaper I've ever had to deal with. GROSS.

Mom is coming today and I cannot wait. Simply must get out of this house! They will be here about 1 and I'll be gone for a few hours grocery shopping and finding other things to fill my time. Will probably run down and get a schedule from Central Market for their cooking classes.

Ethan woke up at 4:30 and wanted to come into our bed. Foolishly, I let him. He then proceeded to play and keep us all awake and finally at 5:30 we gave up and just got up. Gwen woke up at 6, thanks to her brother busting into the nursery and so we were all a tired and cranky family! Just put them down for nap and they immediately laid their heads down. They were wore out.

Had some snow last night and this morning, but all gone now. Freezing cold though. Today I must get stuff for the pellet stove so the kids and I don't have to be bundled up inside the house.

I'm cold.... so very very cold *shiver*

Its windy, rainy and cold. Generally I love this weather. But our pellet stove isn't on and our wall heaters just ain't cutting it. BRRRRR.

Yesterday afternoon, Shelly called to ask if she and her friend Alex could come over for dinner and see the kids. We said she could, and so they joined us for dinner. They picked a good night to come as I was making pot roast. Came out well, not a speck left!

Their visit did inspire me to clean up the house too, which is good. The bedrooms and their massive piles of laundry still wait, but at least the main areas are fairly tidy.

We will not be going out to walk today. Not just the weather is holding us back, but lack of clothing. See, I have no clean clothes that I can wear out of the house. I'm sure a few could be dug out of the pile in my room, but I just don't feel like making an expedition into the laundry mountain. So, I will stay in my "house clothes" and try to make busy inside.

Oh, I'm going to get a wave put in my hair. So tired of the straight stuff. Next week is when I'll do it. I'm excited and scared too. If it goes bad, I'll have to live with it for awhile. But I do so need a change in the hair department.

This is an interesting personality quiz I haven't seen before. You can contribute to mine and start your own... If you'd like, please contribute to mine here

Just got back from our dinner at Sazerac. Eh. On a scale of 1-10, I would rate it a solid 5. The place was cute, but service was slowish, food was just ok and they messed up on our order a bit. If nothing else it was different :) We had hush puppies as an appetizer, then Jason had a bacon wrapped tenderloin (the server sent it back because even he could see from a distance that it was WAY undercooked), and I had lamb 3 ways. It was a chop, ribs and ravioli. Ravioli was good, ribs ok, chop not so good. We both had a glass of Syrah with our meal and it was good.

For dessert we had cassis sorbet (if I'm not mistaken, it was Hagen-Daz raspberry sorbet actually) and Jason had a "grand bowl of cafe mocha" which really came in a big bowl. It was really good though.

Sounds like Becki had a rough-ish times with the kids, poor thing. Thanks again Beck!

Went to the park earlier today and I have some good pics I'll put up later. Ethan had a great time and even tagged around with a little girl about his age. Gwen had a great time too, but she kept trying to eat the bark!

Another busy day.

Grammy came over early and I left to do things... well, basically just get out of the house. If I hadn't had something to do, I swear I would have just driven around aimlessly for hours. That's how much I just wanted to get out!

I got a bunch of house decorative things... mainly to spiff things up for when we go on the market. I finally found the ribbon I've had trouble finding for my personal project, and also picked up some ribbon for a cape I've knitted for a daughter of a friend.

I've realized that I'm rather drawn to circular shapes. I have 3 wreaths in my house, not counting the heart-ish shaped one from our wedding. Never really thought about it until today when over and over I was drawn to things of a circular design.

Kids didn't take a good afternoon nap at all. Surprisingly, I didn't lose my cool too much or anything. Usually on days when I've been out alone, I'm crabby for the rest of the day and have very little patience.

We had swedish meatballs over egg noodles, with sauteed carrots on the side. Good. Not spectacular... I'm sure I could do much better.

Did like 100 crunches yesterday and my abs are sooooooo sore! I better see some gain from all this pain.

Ethan is losing his title of sole troublemaker in this house! Oy vey.

Look what Gwennie did yesterday.

Yep, thats Desitin. She didn't actually ingest much, but spread it liberally over her face and hands. She had this face on because I had shrieked when I saw the mess and immediately ran for the camera. I scared the poor dear and then made her wait through pictures!



Then tonight, we were all playing on the floor when Jason realizes that Gwen has been eating Vaseline! Ugh. She was coated in a thick layer from face to toes.

The funny thing about this picture is that you can see Tilli in there already, trying to lick it off. That dog eats ANYTHING. If you click on these pics they'll open bigger and you can really see how much she had on her.


Love this one because it shows one of her new teeth



You may rightfully reason that we are completely lax parents by these events! In our defense, we're not quite used to Gwennie being able to get around and get into things. She used to be so immobile. Recently she's been like a hawk... you drop anything or leave any item out and she will absolutely find it within seconds.

I attempted a minor craft project today with Ethan. I gave him some construction paper, cut up some of my colorful origami paper into shapes and gave him a glue stick. In true kid fashion, he tasted the glue stick first :) We had fun with it for about 2 minutes, then he started tearing everything apart and threw it all over the house. I realize he's like almost 2 and perhaps a bit young for this stuff, but I'm so un-crafty and un-artistic myself... I keep hoping that my children will have some and then I get frustrated when they don't!

Aaron worked his toosh off. We tried all sorts of things to get the graffiti off to no avail. We got one of the tags mostly removed, but the other didn't come off at all. We're going to need an electric sander of some kind or just replace the boards. I may still buy some gray paint and slap it over it too because the fence is gray and the painted portions don't show from the street.

Gwen didn't sleep in the afternoon. She's been teething so badly... 4 teeth all at once on the top and she's in a lot of pain.

I was far too worn out to do dinner and was starting to feel very depressed and bitchy, so Jason got us dinner from McD's and what I had for dinner was... its bad... a medium fry and a McFlurry. I did snag a few chicken mcnuggets. But can you believe that? Its horrible! Ah well. When a girl needs ice cream, she needs ice cream.

Tomorrow Grammy is coming early (like 10am) to babysit while I run and do errands for a few hours. I cannot wait. I need to bust out of this house like sooooo badly. Gonna go into Lynnwood and hit a couple craft stores for things I need for various projects. Will probably be back around 1, as Grammy needs to leave then.

Have I mentioned that I'm kinda into origami? Back in my younger years we had exchange students stay with us from Japan a couple times and they always showed us little things made out of origami. I was in the store the other day and picked up a pack of paper and looked online for diagrams. WOW. You will not believe what people can make out of little bits of paper. Its amazing. I'm still trying to get my cranes and waterbombs (they look like balls) and boats to come out nicely, but I thought that it might be pretty to make some of the more complex flowers then mount them on a dark colored mat and frame them. We'll see.

Get ready for another thrilling and adventurous blog from Kristi....

Or not ;)

Did all the usual things today. Weather was pleasant so the kids and I played outside for a bit, then went for our walk. I switched things up by putting Ethan in the back of the stroller instead of the front and surprisingly it seemed much harder to push with the weight distribution different. I feel so sore now!

I made some no-bake oatmeal cookies under the premise of increasing my milk supply (oatmeal is good for that) but really, I just wanted cookies.

We had a very... unique dinner called something like "Sausage with Rice and Lentils" and while it was edible, it was not great. That's what frustrates me a lot about the AllRecipes.com site. Its all user submitted and not tested. I mean, I KNEW that lentils and rice couldn't possibly be done at the same time, yet I followed the recipe thinking that perhaps the person who did this included some secret that would make it work. Nope. At 40 min, the rice was mush and the lentils had a slight crunch. Not ideal. Oh well.

Aaron is coming tomorrow to do some work so that will be nice. I'm going to have him remove the mold off the side of the house, remove the graffiti off the fence and scoop. That should be enough for more than a few hours! He's a good worker and a great kid :)

I'm struggling a lot with my internal emotions and shtuff.

I would like to have friends again. Sort of feels that since the kids I've been in a self-imposed bubble, and perhaps that was necessary to just deal with what was going on. But I really would like someone to talk with and such. However, when opportunities present themselves (there are many ladies who live close to me that I know from my message boards) I hesitate because, honestly, I'm not sure I'm up to putting out that effort to create and maintain a friendship.

This is mainly why I miss working. I was great friends with my co-workers and it was easy... You saw them every day by default. You didn't have to try and work time with them in between naps and loads of laundry. They were there and if you were all friendly, you had friends.

I also don't feel very genuine. I know that most everyone has shell they present to the world while keeping their true self inside and only available to a few, or no one at all. I feel like I have many shells. Daughter, sister, wife, mother, and... me. Parts of me are in those other shells, but none of them are fully me. Does that make sense? Many times I wonder at how little people really know about me. Perhaps that is a good and fine thing because my "real" me isn't very pretty. She's selfish and petty and kinda mean actually. So I end up feeling frustrated because of this pressure to be a certain way, and yet I don't really want to be the way I truly feel because it definitely wouldn't go over well.

Oh heavens, I really sound crazy don't I? Better stop while I'm ahead.