Caleb woke up with a fever two nights ago.  Yesterday he seemed to feel okay, but just not active.  He watched movies most of the day.  Today, he has not eaten or drank anything.  I finally got him to eat some graham crackers for dinner and a few sips of water and OJ here and there.  He has continually turned down milk all day.  If you know how much he likes milk, you know the gravity of this statement.  He would much rather drink milk than eat most meals.

After dinner, it was time for the bath I’ve been putting off all day hoping he’d perk up.  But his fever is coming back, he has goosebumps everywhere and is starting to feel like you could cook hot dogs over him again.  He didn’t want a bath, and I was trying to figure out how to keep him from freaking out and shivering the whole time with most of his body out of the water.  I didn’t want to fill up the whole tub just for 10-15 minutes trying to keep him warm and calm (he usually plays way longer in less water).  So here’s what I came up with.  Not only is he happy to be in the bath, he’s quite enjoying something different.

Oh the uses of rubbermaids…

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Crazy good things that happened:

  1. I got 2% milk for $2.09 a gallon.  I did a double take at the tag (because it was an unadvertised sale), then read it carefully to make sure it wasn’t the half gallon.
  2. I had a $1 off coupon for Country Time lemonade.  There were two containers, a 8oz container for $2.28, and a 29oz container.  For $2.28.  Guess which one I got?
  3. Toilet paper: BOGO.  Need I say more?
  4. I attended an awesome online photography trade show.  I didn’t get to see all of it, so I’m waiting for them to get the programs I missed on demand.
  5. Last but not least: We found crazy straws.

You know it has been a good day when you drink out of crazy straws.  Especially 3 or 4 at the same time.

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Ta-da!!!

Get it? We were still under construction yesterday… toldja to read carefully :)

Our train table has become a somewhat temporary jobsite.  I made this reasonably easy to store away when not in use.

The gravel yard: coffee grounds and sawdust

Construction work is serious business.

And no, the blue painters tape is not an accent piece…our train table actually has very small holes all the way around the outside for add on toys that we don’t have.  I’m a little bit crazy, but not plain stupid.  I covered up all those already dust filled holes.

We’re planning to go and collect some small rocks to add to our site, we just haven’t gotten to it yet.

I can’t take credit for this awesome idea though, you can read more about it here.  I borrowed the general idea, and then kind of went a different direction toward the end.  This guy made more of a rock quarry.  My patience with the project was wavering by the time it came to painting, so I gooped sand, brown paint and glue together and smeared it everywhere!  It definitely achieved the textured, yet not too messy appeal I was going for.  I do recommend his cutting technique for the styrofoam.  You know, unless an indoor snowstorm just appeals to you.  In that case, stabbing a bean bag chair will render approximately the same result.

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Project X, as it has been nicknamed is nearly complete.  So these will probably be your final hints.  I curious to see if anyone can figure it out while it is still under construction.

Guess this sort of blows the iceberg theory out of the water ;)

Yes, we did this on purpose.

Final hint: Read carefully.

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…there’s a warning somewhere on this thing that says “Not for use by children” and perhaps a “Use with care” notice. Maybe Black and Decker should have issued a special attention notice  for our family: “Dustbuster not intended as a substitute for bathing.  Please refrain from vacuuming child after meals and allowing child to vacuum his own hair while unattended.”

For those of you who, instead of laughing, are thinking to yourselves, hmmm maybe I should let my kid try that, I leave you with this.  He entertained himself for a full 12 blissful minutes.  I’m unsure of whether an extended life battery can be purchased, but I can look into it for you.

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I cleaned up a small mess before taking this picture.

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Who’s up for a good mystery?  Any guesses what in the world we are up to this week?

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“All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

“Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton, Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, have all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories.

“What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations –what they taught me, was that they couldn’t really teach me very much at all. Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2.

“When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself.

“Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton’s wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane?

“Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

“Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the, ‘Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame.’ The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, “What did you get wrong?”. (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald’s drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

“But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night.

“I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

“Even today I’m not sure what worked and what didn’t, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I’d done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be.

“The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That’s what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.”

~ Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist

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Caleb and I were riding in the car when the topic of remote control trucks came up (Scott has a few gas powered ones.  And not gas like what goes in your car, nooo, no, $35 a gallon gas. Yeah.).

“I want Daddy to get another truck!”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen, they are expensive.”

“Why?”

“Because they cost a lot of money.”

“Why?”

“Because they are expensive to make I suppose.”

“Why?”

“Well, because they take a lot of time and work I suppose.  And the parts are expensive to make.”

“…Why?”

“I reckon the materials the parts are made of cost a lot.”

“Why?”

“[laughing now] I don’t know Caleb.  They just do!”

“…[longer pause]…Why?  Don’t laugh.  DON’T LAUGH!”

~He told me something about his little pull along puppy, so I turned the tables~

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it just does.”

“Why?” I asked again.

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you know?”

“I DON’T KNOW.  I JUST DON’T!”

“Hey did you see those cows?!” I asked, changing the subject.

“No, what color where they?”

“Brown.”

“Were they milk cows?”

“No, I think they were beef cows.”

“Well maybe they were chocolate cows since they were brown.”

“I think they were beef cows.”

“No, those are brown and white cows.  So I think they were chocolate cows.”

“I’m not sure what the difference is in brown cows and brown and white cows.”

“Brown cows are chocolate cows.  I just told you.”

“Okay, they were chocolate cows.”

Case closed.

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Scene: Rest time (early afternoon at our house).  Caleb “reads” books in his bed while sometimes talking and singing loudly to himself quietly.  He usually ends up going to the…umm…little boy’s room at some point during this 75 minutes.  To, you know, preform the only one of the Three S’s he is capable of at four years old.  I sit at the computer and whittle away my time with mindless internet activities sometimes blog during this time.  I was on the phone with my mom.

Caleb: [entering the room for help buttoning his shorts]: “You don’t EVEN want to know what the toilet looks like right now.”

Me: [phone conversation ceases, my mom pauses, then says "uh oh":  "What's that?"

Caleb: [repeats sentence with strong emphasis on the word even]

Me: [My mom is giggling bigtime at this point]: “Why is that?”

Caleb: *Grin* I think I actually saw a twinkle in his eye

Me: [stands up from my computer chair] “Hold on Momma”

Caleb: [Tears ASS around the corner, slams the toilet lid and waves his hands over it as if to make the contents disappear] “No.  No, no, no.  NO!”

Me: “Caleb, please go get back in your bed.” [Loose translation: Move, I need to assess the damage.]

The bottom line, pardon the pun: Do not sit on the toilet unless you desire the sensation otherwise known as “Toilet-butt.”  But there was ne’er a drop of water on the floor.  How I’ll never know.  After the tides recede, a plunge shall be required.

~~~

Scene: The kitchen table, examining a science experiment butter from Wendy’s that has gone unrefrigerated for five days now.

Caleb: “It’s better than fast food.  It’s Wendy’s.”

Me: “Oh?  Where did you hear that?”

Caleb: “The TV Channel told me.”

The bottom line: There in lies the reason we watch very little TV.  By we, I mean Caleb.  I can just hear in a zombified voice, “The talking box told me to do it.”  Still, it cracked me up.  We taped Madagascar (with commercials) on the DVR a few weeks ago.  I’m guessing it contains a Wendy’s commercial at some point during the movie.

~~~

Oh yeah, ps…you can rate blog entries before/when leaving a comment.  Because sometimes you just don’t have anything to say  (I love when you do!).  In that case, you are encouraged to check “You rock” ;)   That’s all.

You’re excited.  I can tell.

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