And last but certainly not least - - one lonely little picture representative of our wild Chicago weekend. Some of the other real gems didn't really turn out. Lots of mysterious glare when you are taking pictures in a moving vehicle. Oh well. I promised. So here it is. Too bad you miss out on the true Beetlejuice nature of it when you can only see it from the side. Take my word for it - - - it was super hot.

Jordan and Bayley had left the sliding door partially open and Sedona was sitting in the kitchen floor watching them through the glass while I did dishes or laundry or some other menial task. Just sittin and watchin when she realized that maybe she could get out there too and off she went one sock and all.

Sedona and Dad. Don't really have anything clever to say here so we'll just fill this space knowing what a dork I am.

Jordan's birthday picture. I just found the camera I thought I had lost from his birthday so maybe we'll get more birthday pics soon but for now here he is along with Joey's arm.

And later that night. . . .

Pretty cute even if they are completely covered in mashed potatoes. and banana. and kinda drooly and sweaty. Hey - -who else could pull off this look?

Did you ever wonder . . .

what it would like to find that every time you open your mouth (or blog) you can't help but spew out all sorts of lame things about how gosh darn cute your kids are?
Well wonder no more because you are now provided the opportunity to live vicariously (or perhaps this is everything but vicariousness) through me because I am obsessed.
Its an addiction really.
A diarrhea of sorts.
I HAVE FABULOUS CHILDREN!!!
There, now, that wasn't so bad was it? Saved you the trouble of reading the rest of the posts since that pretty much sums it all up.
If any of you would care to offer up some intelligent or otherwise adult conversation or possible blog entry topics I will gladly entertain them. Until then, however, we turn to an intelligence that far surpasses our own.
Our children.

"Son of a . . . ."

So as I sat pulling books out from under the playpen while Sedona and Bayley played nearby, Jordan and his friend Austin came in from riding bikes and started one of the funnier conversations of late.

I jokingly put an empty bowl on Sedona's head and laughed that she was "stylin' now". Austin said "I could totally wear that as a hat to school if it was a different color."
"oh yeah? and you'd get all the girls?" I queried.
"It takes a boy and a girl to have a baby, you know."
Thank you, Austin. A little late but useful information nevertheless.
I nodded and said something to the effect of "well yes it does" or "Right you are, son". Something chummy and evasive.
But could we leave it at that?
Certainly not.

"You know I saw this girl on the news who had a baby when she was like 18!".
outrage.
dismay.
awe?

"Well, it happens."
"No but she was like only 18!"
At which point Jordan chimes in with some "whoa"s and "yeah"s all the while making a face at me like "umm . . duh, mother. 18!!! We're saying 18 here!"
And I just couldn't help myself.

"Well I had you when I was 17 and didn't make it on the news." Shrug.
Wide-eyed.
"Yup. 17."

And Jordan's arms go up, suddenly limp and as if being carelessly flailed around by some force other than his own, he kind of leans back, then forward, arms up then down. limp. pretty floppy.
And then a rather drawn out, breathy -
"Son of a bitch."
and some more dramatics with the arms.

I sat and stared. Thought for a moment, figuring my best approach.
"Jordan," I asked calmly and with a little smirk, "did you just call me a bitch?"

But he didn't miss a beat.
"No - I just mean like, the whole world is kind of a bitch."

Wow.
What else could I do?
"Right on. Probably a better way to say it though, right?"
"Yeah, Mom, I know."
Chuckle.
"You know that I am serious even though I'm smiling at you right, darling?"
Another chuckle.
"Yeah, Mom, I know. C'mon Austin let's go like skate or something."

And as they walk out the door I hear
"Maybe that girl was like 18 or 10. Yeah like 10."

So now Jordan and Bayley have spruced up their repertoire with some new, improved, 33% more free phrases. I've included a few of my favorites:

• Son of mother!
• Son of a goat! (Which I will accept blame for - -it was meant as a joke. never intended for it to stick)
• Son of a Paw-Paw! (Bayley's grandpa)
• Son of my daddy!
• Son of a carseat!
• Son of a cop!

And as you can imagine, they are able to insert just about any and every thing they see into this one multipurpose phrase.

Still -

Jana

And the picture that should be under the heading Barf-o-Rama. This is our sick little Sedona passed out on the couch. I was under her but wiggled out somehow - might have been my only 10 minutes without her in my arms for close to 2 days.

Easter Sunday sporting a sweater that Nanna (Grandma Thomas) made. Look at all my hair! I had 8" cut off last night and it is still pretty darn long - too long perhaps . . .

Alright so now that I've kind of figured out how to put pictures on this thing I just can't stop. So here they are. This was at least a month ago - but if they aren't two of the guiltiest looking characters. . . . . .

And Ms. Sedona Jane

And here is the Power-Ranger-loving grape eater. Ever the intellectual.

"Umm . . our sizes actually run small so . . . "

You run away for the weekend and what do you get?

Some mysterious bumps on your knee, a complex about your weight, a hole in your nose, a tub of rotten cookie dough, and some kick ass hair do's.

Stephanie and I escaped to Chicago for the weekend with no children. A kind of girls' night gone road trip.

Before we even made it over the Dupage County line we'd had a hole poked in Stephanie. The small opalescent stud that made her cross eyed staring at it the rest of the night was a whim. Nothing more. Just a "Hey maybe I should get my nose pierced while we are there" and so she did.
I have to say - - not a bad start to our weekend adventure.

I won't bore you with the details of our travels but I will say that when a sales person asks your size and then says "Really? Have you ever tried our sizes because they run small" it is best to be as obnoxious of a customer as possible from that point forward. I restrained myself and did little more than deliberately set a pair of flip flops on top of a pile of recently folded sweaters as my small act of rebellion and insult but now, safe within my Missouri home I have to say . . .. should have done something more.

So now I implore you all, my dear cyber friends, these people must be stopped. Do whatever you must to make sure that no sales person ever again directs a young boy to the husky section of a department store or raises an eyebrow of doubt when you bravely reveal your size in the middle of a store. It simply cannot go on.

As for the hair do's . . . you'll all just have to wait until I figure out how to get the pictures on the right blog. (The ones I try to post here keep going to Jeremy's . . . arg.)

and thanks to those of you who made our weekend rock.


still
jana

Food Wars

In a galaxy not all that far away . . .


I never knew such discrimination existed in the world of grape selection.

• I don't like them when they are cracked open a little
• I don't like them when they are too dark purple
• I don't like them green everyday, just on some days
• I don't like them if they aren't cold
• I don't like them unless they are wet

And you probably think I'm exaggerating. Oh, if only I was.

As if the older ones weren't particular enough, Sedona is flexing her independence this week and embarking on a hunger strike of sorts. It seems that the only food allowed to enter her mouth is food that she directly handles in some way. This eliminates oatmeal, yogurt, any form of processed or home-made baby food leaving Cheerios, bread, bananas, strawberries and melon.

I was simply unprepared for this act of autonomy. Had I been informed before I did the grocery shopping for the week that this was on the horizon I could have bought some more suitable finger foods. As it is, though, I was out of the loop.

I'll admit it.

I sat with an 11 month old holding her hands out in front of her, shaking her head adamantly that she simply would not eat anything presented on a spoon and out of desperation or maybe exhaustion - I slopped it in her hands. She did, in my defense, eat it.

My time here is cut short as we've entered into negotiations over Blow Pops and naptimes.

still,

Jana

"I'll just, you know, protect the world from bad people"

Ahh my little superhero. Criminal at first glance but a desire to do good deeds lies somewhere under the roaring, walking on all fours, eyes rolling, smuggling dinosaurs into church exterior.

Power Rangers are not allowed in our house because my darling dear brought home one too many notes from school that said things like
"Jordan had some trouble with karate chopping someone in the neck".
To which Jeremy and I first asked - Did he not chop correctly? What trouble did he have?

Okay so there was only one such note but in my book that is one too many. And so the terribly dressed and evenly more poorly scripted masked crusaders made a complete exodus from our house. That isn't to say that we had much that had to leave. From the beginning we told Jordan that truly, the show kinda sucks. And for a long time he was with us but some things are too good to last.

So yesterday when he came home from a friend's house he had prepared a detailed list of the reasons why he should be allowed to not only watch Power Rangers Dinothunder but also be allowed to purchase a full costume that he intended to wear "you know, just like for fun sometimes". Points covered include:
- I won't spazz out and chop people
- it would be cool
- I am in control of my actions and will make good choices
- Donovan has one (the friend down the street who I might add was seen just this morning on a walk with his mother and little sister wearing a Spiderman costume complete with mask. hmm.. a man of many disguises)
- Power Rangers teach me good things. "Such as?"
-- to treat people nice, and respect and responsibility for myself, and they teach me how to fight if I had to - like if there was a fire and robbers broke into our house I could POWER RANGER SBD!!! (and this was accompanied by some sort of ninja display that more closely resembled a seizure of some kind)
And finally, my favorite -
- and I'll just, you know, protect the world from bad people.

Can I quickly return to the fact that we are talking about a crappy, polyester, $7.99 at Walmart Power Ranger costume? Gotta love it.

Oh - -and if there is anyone who could shed some light on the whole "SBD" thing I would appreciate it. I assume it is in the same vein as Law and Order SVU which of course, is the Special Victims Unit. But the only thing I've ever known SBD to be an acronym for is in reference to a Silent But Deadly passing of gas. Somehow that hardly seems like a super power. Though I could be wrong.


Later on - -
Jana

Barf-O-Rama

Hey - - who ever said having kids was a lot of work? What do they know?

Last Thursday night, or more accurately early Friday morning I ran into a screaming child's room -
"What's wrong - oh my gosh. Did you throw up?"
And why might I ask such a question? Well it occurred to me as I stood barefoot in a puddle of some sort that something had been launched from his loft bed.

So for the next few days Jordan had a somewhat convenient stomach ache that came as scheduled whenever there were chores to do, meals to be eaten, or any other activity he was just simply "too sick" to complete.
By Sunday morning, after all the birthday festivities were finished, Jordan seemed to be in the best of health. That is, seemed to be until I saw the little orange numbers appear in the corner of the screen during church.
144.
144.
And Jordan is feeling sick in Sunday School. Yet somehow, when I looked at him intently for just a minute or two and said "really? Stomach hurts that much?" he quietly mumbled, "well. . . . Not really."
Shock, confusion, dismay.
It seems that Jordan's new birthday toys "were calling from home". They needed him.


In the following days Jeremy got conjunctivitis, I had a persisting headache due to lack of sleep and Sedona just kept getting crabbier and crabbier. Until Wednesday morning when she joined in the fun and started the most elaborate display of projectile vomiting I have seen to date. So off we go to the doctor just to make sure it is nothing more than your garden variety stomach flu.
Assured that it was nothing more exotic, we returned home to await the diarrhea that would follow the vomiting. As if all of this record breaking spillage wasn't enough excitement . . . then she got pink eye in her left eye. So we treated it with a dose of $45 (!!!!) drops only to have it spread to the right eye yesterday.

And here I sit Monday morning with most of my belongings and all of Sedona's pants covered in poo and my watch still encrusted with puke, with one eye a little blurry and the other starting to itch.
Happy Monday.

So here's hoping that we are looking at the beautiful 70 degree sunny day that will start a week with no puke, no eye goop, and certainly no uncontainable diarrhea.

Don't let the ceiling fall on your heads -
Jana

There's a dead hippopotamus in our yard!

Really? A hippopotamus?
Well - so it would seem.

Welcome to our insanity.
The lineup:
Mom - Jana, Dad - Jeremy, Son - Jordan, Daughter - Sedona.

A balance of the right moon cycles and hormones and you gots a nasty cocktail (which may contain one or more of the following: mucus, tears, feces, urine and, of course, love.)

They say that the average American family has 2.5 children. The .5 role is gladly fulfilled by Dad most of the time.

Things that you can get a giddy about:

- pictures of the kids

- cute little things that the kids say (see title of posting)

- pictures of the kids

- musings of untold comedic value

- pictures of the kids

Our little patch of suburban bliss.

With love, from us to you, that while we think of you daily you might laugh at us as often.