Daring Young Mom

You know how sometimes you let your car make a weird noise for a while before you get around to taking it in to the mechanic? You think, maybe it’s nothing or maybe it will just go away on its own. Then when you’re planning a big road trip, you think, “Maybe I should at least get the oil changed and see if it’s anything worth worrying about.”

Well, Magoo’s had a bad cough for a few weeks now but it’s the kind of cough the doctors always say is no big deal so I haven’t worried about taking him in. Now we’re getting ready for some Christmas travel so I thought I’d take him in to the pediatrician for an LOF.

I planned poorly, deciding to start feeding him solids at breakfast for the first time the morning of his appointment was not a good idea. Traffic was worse than usual, a stalled car on the side of the freeway causing no end of excitement and rubber-necking.

I arrived…dun..dun..dun….19 MINUTES LATE to my appointment. I think lateness is rude and shows disrespect for the other person and their time. I was embarrassed. I apologized to the receptionist.

Then they sent the nurse in to give me “the talk.” They allow 15 minutes lee-way but 19 minutes is just too much. The doctor would see me but they would put a note on my chart. My tardiness was not acceptable.

I felt awful, like a 2-year-old getting kicked out of nursery school for biting (or maybe the 2-year-old’s mom. The two year old probably wouldn’t care all that much and on the ride home, he’d just ask for a snack and then fall asleep with graham cracker drool all over his face). I apologized profusely.

When I told Heather, she asked if 3 tardies would equal an un-excused absence. Karen IMd that maybe there would be cute boys in detention. I’ll have to ask on my next visit to their office when I’m sitting in the waiting room, 20 minutes early.

Oh, and the doctor said, “It’s a cold.”

But when you open the heavy-duty (but not too hard to open) gripper/snaps:

They are albums:

They come in several sizes:

I bought small ones that hold 2 4×6 photos per sheet to use as gifts and the really big ones that hold 12×12 sheets for our family.

You can use just about any configuration of photos in them. Most of the sheets I bought just hold scads and scads of 4×6 photos but a few are full 12×12 sheets or split sheets so I can get creative here and there if I want, but I don’t have to.

They even have kits to make the little scrapbooky pages if you want them. They are super heavy-duty fabric or bonded leather, reasonably priced (if you don’t buy one million of them), they’re gorgeous and durable.

You add the photos from the inside of a two-sided sheet, sideways so the pictures won’t come out if you shake the book around and your kids can’t figure out how to get them out. Heck, I couldn’t figure it out until she showed me.

I am so excited for my new project for after Christmas and it will mostly involve shoving all of our old photos in at a rapid pace, periodically pausing to add a caption, a colored paper background or a picture of my face, cut out in the shape of an armadillo. I’m sure they have punches for that somewhere, right mom?

I haven’t done laundry in a while. I usually have a regular laundry day but the problem is, we have way too much underwear lately so I’ve been able to put it off a little longer than usual.

We’re down to the almost-too-tight jeans, the makes-me-look-fat t-shirts (not because I am, just because they’re poorly designed, of course), the beach towels, and the really really small bibs.

I just put one of them on Magoo for his midnight carrot snack and handed him to DY Dad for the feeding.

Magoo: Heh heh heh
Dan: That’s not a BIB! That’s like a Victoria’s Secret bib. It’s like a string around his neck!

Note to self: Do laundry tomorrow.

In other news, Jack has passed away. We had a small funeral for him and a serious, look-me-in-the-eyes-when-I’m-being-this-serious, talk about death with Laylee, explaining that it’s just his body now and that his spirit has left. Then we sang a song about the beauty of God’s creations and flushed him.

Her response?

“Can we get another one?”

Haaahhhhhhhhh (loud breath out).

The next day when her little friends, the 4 Moseses (Mosesus? Mosesi? Mosi?), asked where the fishy was, I told them we flushed him down the toilet so he could live with Nemo and Marlin. THIS, they could grasp onto. THIS made sense.

I’ve had requests to publish my Dad’s Seven Sevens and he kindly gave me permission. He is the best dad in the world and I love him dearly. (Interspersed are pictures of a few of the things he’s made for our family in his workshop.)

Seven Things I want to do before I die:
1. Have a stand alone, dedicated workshop of sufficient size to keep and use all of my tools in their own place, without having to move them around on wheels.
2. Learn to turn stuff on a lathe — bowls, spindles, pens, etc.
3. Build a Grandfather Clock (the case, not the mechanism)
4. Retire
5. Be able to spend 2 consecutive weeks at the beach in the summer, 2 weeks (not necessarily consecutive) camping and hiking in the mountains, and 1 week cruising, each year.
6. Weigh less than 180 pounds, and feel physically fit.
7. Be a professional Santa with my own full beard, and long hair for at least one Christmas season.
8. Go to Hawaii, New Zealand, and Fiji.
9. Go to Adam Ondi Ahman.
10. Learn to play the guitar using the Travis picking method.
11. Grow a big garden and preserve enough vegetables (bottled and root cellar) to last the winter.
12. Have a solar powered house that generates enough electricity back to the power company to zero out my power bill for the whole year.
13. Take Heather’s Hub, and any other in-laws and their spouses who would like to, backpacking for a week in the Canadian Rockies.
14. Read Don Quijote de la Mancha in the original Spanish in its entirety.

Seven Things I cannot do:
1. Count (see the 1st seven above)
2. Stop loving your mom.
3. Stop loving my children or being concerned for their happiness.
4. Play any sport with any degree of competence.
5. Watch an emotional or touching scene in a movie without getting choked up.
6. Sleep through the night without getting up at least once to go to the bathroom.
7. Fly (under my own power).
8. Remember things when I want to (it’s usually more like random recall) (this one is legal, cause # 1 was a joke — I really can count).

Seven Things That Attract Me to My Spouse:
1. She’s gorgeous.
2. She loves me.
3. She laughs at me (usually only when I’m trying to be funny).
4. She cares about others.
5. She’s a great cook.
6. She likes to be with me.
7. She’s smart.

Seven Things I say often:
1. The older I get, the sooner I can retire.
2. Did you hear about….. (usually followed by some joke or other)
3. I love you.
4. Honey, have you seen…….? (whatever it is that I’ve currently lost).
5. Drive Safe!!!
6. Thank You. (probably not enough, but, yeah quite a lot).
7. Hey Honey, come look at this….. (wood working project)

Seven Books of Book Series I love:
1. The scriptures.
2. Battle Cry — Leon Uris.
3. The Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit).
4. Harry Potter
5. The Work and the Glory
6. Most James Michener books.
7. My leather bound copy of Don Quijote de la Mancha, in the original Spanish. I’ve never read it all the way through yet, but someday I will.

Seven Movies I could watch over and over:
1. The Lord of the Rings.
2. Home Alone (I and II).
3. The Princess Bride.
4. Undercover Blues.
5. The Frisco Kid.
6. Pirates of the Caribbean.
7. A Knight’s Tale