every day is like saturday

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Why I hide the baseball bat.

The above video is a true and accurate representation of what waking up is like for me. I think it’s payback for all that loving I force on my furry little babies cats.

I can actually sleep through a lot of what the cats can dish out but I’m a little worried Lee will kill them if he gets his balls jumped on one more time.

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Exhausted

Monday afternoon we started talking about going to the Orange County fair and about 3 hours later we were packed and on the road. I love that our life allows spontaneous trips.

First stop after check in was the pool, of course:

Then the hot tub:

They also swam for a few hours in the morning before going to the fair.

Jack didn’t like the petting zoo too much. He was ready to leave after a quick look around but Olivia liked feeding the baby goats. The baby pot belly pigs were ADORABLE but I have no pictures of them.

Olivia liked this baby the best.

Jack saw the lemon and ran over and stuck his head through so he could get his picture taken.

He is a funny little boy.

Jack asked me just last week where we could go so he could do some rock climbing. He will probably want to try this again.

Olivia liked playing the games and came home with 3 stuffed animals because that is exactly what the Stranahan household needs; MORE Stuffed Animals.

She decided to ride the teacups right before we all collapsed.

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Accidental Beach Day

We went to Santa Monica Friday with the intention of hanging out at the pier.

But first the kids wanted to stick their feet in the ocean.

They were running around in circles of excitement.

Then they were up to their knees …

and all hope for staying even a little dry was gone.

The pier had a Red Bull promotion that was getting ready to kick off so I didn’t care that we weren’t going to be in that madness. The kids still want to go ride the rides and play games though, so next time I will suggest we do that before so much as a toe gets stuck in the ocean.

Because they got soaked …

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time slips away

I’m pretty sure I was 29 just a few days ago, then I had a couple of babies and things got all blurry for a while. And now somehow my baby boy is 7 and my girl is 9 going on 27.

That right there is freaking me out a quite a bit.

Ten years have gone by so fast I wish I’d paid more attention to the stuff that matters and less attention to the stuff that doesn’t. I wish I’d taken more pictures and videos and done a much better job at filing away every single moment. I wish I’d been better at being happy.

Ten years are going to zoom by again and I’m feeling an overwhelming need to catch every little thing. And to be better at being happy.

Mark, Set, Go!

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June 16, 2008

Last night Olivia told me that she was going to wake up early today because it’s her birthday. And true to her word, at 6AM she sticks her head into the room and says, “Hi mama!” I’m so lucky she doesn’t want breakfast first thing in the morning. She went to play in her room and I went back to sleep for another hour.

She decided she wanted to go into work with her dad so she’d been packing up Barbie dolls and their various accessories. She talked me into letting her use a new purse I got over the weekend at Target, because “it’s so big and roomy” for her dolls. She unpacked the Barbies from another purse of mine she had been using. It used to be the “perfect thing” for her to carry her stuff around in, but no more I guess. Out with the old and in with the new.

She’s good at getting my stuff. Very, very good.

We will be taking her and Jack to Chuck e. Cheese, again later today. Why does that place have to be so gross? Last time we were there it reeked of hot pee. Starting to gag just thinking about it.

Now must plan out my Ativan dosage for maximum calmness and get on treadmill.

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Worm lovin’

I’ve been composting with worms under my kitchen sink for about 2 weeks now and everything is going fine. (knock wood, as my grandmother would say … ) I had been really excited about getting worms until the day they were to arrive. That day I was kind of panicking. I was sure I was going to kill the worms right off the bat, or they were going to crawl out of the bin or the bin would stink. But they are still alive and getting fatter each time I see them, no worms have crawled out and there is no stinking. I even saw some itty bitty baby worms wiggling around in there.

While we were at the park one day I noticed that the bushes had just been topped with a fresh layer of mulch. I was thinking about how much my worms would like it and made a mental note to bring a bag with us next time so I could quietly take a little home when a Target bag blew down the sidewalk. I took that as a sign. Olivia chased after the bag and then she and Jack threw in a few handfuls of mulch. We found some decomposing leaves under a bench and scooped up some of those, too. When we got home Olivia helped me spread it over the top of the bin. We sprayed it with water to get it damp and then I gave it a gentle stir to aerate it a bit. I should probably use my gloved hands to do that instead of a wooden spoon, but I just can’t bring myself to do that yet.

The last time I was tending my worms Olivia stopped in the doorway and said, “Oh, givin’ your worms some lovin’ huh?” She didn’t see me doing a chore or as busy, she saw me giving worms love. She’s so cute I just gotta squeeze her sometimes.

She is more interested in the worms than Jack. Sometimes she will ask to put on gloves and hold them. And she’s been reading a book on bugs a lot lately. She went to play with a friend the other day and in her pink purse she carried two Barbies, a stuffed animal and an over-sized bug book.

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Hotel Par-tay

We stayed at a hotel Friday night about ten minutes from home mostly because the kids like to swim and jump on hotel beds. As soon as Jack woke up on Friday morning he started packing his stuff. I’d told them the day before they could each pack 2 toys. Jack packed a webkinz and notebook and a sharpie and put them in his manpurse he got for Christmas. Olivia packed her webkinz (and wanted to bring mine so it wouldn’t be lonely, but not have it count as part of her 2) and 2 Barbie dolls. Sometimes when I say 2, I really mean please don’t unload the book shelves and the toy bins into our suitcase.

Olivia’s bathing suit didn’t fit anymore so went to Target after checking into the hotel. She’s gotten taller all of a sudden and medium is too small but large is too big. I think she gets that from me because that is the story of my freaking life when it comes to clothes.

Once we got back to the hotel the kids had fun opening and closing all the doors and drawers in the room. They watched cartoons and ate snacks and jumped back and forth between the beds. There was much giggling. We tried to go out on the balcony but it was locked for our protection.

They spent about 4 hours in the pool the next day, playing with a little girl who was at the hotel with her Grandmother. After a while another girl and her brother got in the water and they all played Marco Polo, which is funny because it sounded like Olivia initiated the game and I didn’t know she knew it.

They love fun!

Photos by Lee.

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Just a regular old Thursday afternoon

Both kids played a lot yesterday with a microscope set we got them at Fry’s. I left it in the back of the van saving it for a day when we needed something new and exciting. But Jack knows my tricks and I guess has developed the habit of checking the very back of the van when he climbs into his car seat because this is the second time he’s busted me. He had gone out somewhere with Lee and when they came back Jack wanted to know what ‘that telescope thing was’ … once he knew something was there there really isn’t any holding it back. I tried but he was persistent.

So we brought the microscope in and then we didn’t have batteries. Olivia is good at asking Shane to go to the store for her so he ran up and got batteries and candy while Jack used a little screwdriver to open up the battery cover on the bottom. Once we had the batteries the kids ran around looking for things to stick under the light. Olivia was looking at the ink on a dollar bill and kept saying, “This is so cooo-uuul!” She made sure everyone took a look at it before moving on to other stuff.

And again I have no pictures. Grrrr on me.

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Right On Time, Save My Mind

A couple of weeks ago the Hannah Montana show was a pretty constant fixture in our living room. Olivia set up the dvr to record episodes and she wasn’t deleting the shows she had already seen, she kept watching them over and over and over again. She didn’t sit in front of the tv from the time she woke up until the time she went to sleep but when nothing more interesting to her was going on, she was watching. And there wasn’t much that was more interesting to her than that show. It was a Hannah Montana nightmare marathon everyday. The combination of Miley and Billy Ray acting together makes me shudder. It’s not good. Throw in a couple episodes of The Suite Life with Zack and Cody and Life with Derek and Mama done near lost her mind.

But then it stopped! One morning she woke up and started playing with her Barbies right away. I wanted to get on the treadmill and I asked if she wanted to sit on the couch and watch tv while I exercised. She didn’t, she was busy playing. She played all day and all the next day without turning on the tv.

She’s back to watching tv again but she hasn’t gone back to the marathon sessions. If there is a next time I’m going to work harder to go with it and figure out what is so appealing to her. With Hannah Montana I think it was the whole ‘pop star’ thing. Olivia was singing a lot and putting on shows for me where she would walk down a run way she made out of pillows singing the Hannah Montana theme song.

I should have video taped it, dammit.

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Waiting on worms

I’ve got worms arriving today and I am not ready.

First I was going to use a kitty litter container, but then I read that is too deep …

The box or container should be shallow, not more than 1 1/2’ deep. Redworms tend to feed in the top layers of bedding. Materials may pack down if spread too deep.

I have a rubbermaid container that I guessed would be plenty big enough. I didn’t measure it until a few minutes ago, it measures 15″ x 13″ and is 7″ deep. And that is too small according to this …

Size depends on the average pounds of kitchen waste per week. A box measuring 1’ by 2’ by 3’ can handle 6 pounds of kitchen waste, which is the average for families from 4 to 6 people. A smaller sized box, 1’ by 2’ by 2’, can handle kitchen waste for 2 people.

I’ve been running around the apartment measuring stuff I think might work for a worm bin and I’ve been googling. I found this video about mini worm bins but I can’t get it to embed here. You have to scroll down to the January 1, 2008 entry. It’s a wormcast! I love the internet.

After watching the video I’m back to using the rubbermade container and I don’t have to drill any holes, which is a big plus considering I don’t have a drill.