Every Cowgirl Needs a Horse by Rebecca Janni and Lynne Avril

Did you know that Ivy loves horses?

She does.  Really, really loves them.

Sometime last winter her Grandma Mary happened to say, “Ivy, what would you do if Santa brought you a horse?”

Bad idea Grandma Mary, bad idea.

After a few weeks when it became obvious that Ivy was convinced Santa was bringing her a horse I called up my Mom and yelled at her.

In effort to fix the situation she told Ivy that winter isn’t a very good time to get a horse. Ivy accepted this explanation and our conversations turned to, “…when it’s spring and I get my horse…” which was a problem, but I was hoping she would forget.

Of course she did not forget.

We still don’t have a horse and Ivy still wants one, so when the librarian showed her this book at the library I must have got a bit of a wide eyed panicked look because she quickly assured me it would be perfect.

The girl in the story wants a horse for her birthday,

instead she gets a bicycle.

The bike turns out to be a great pretend horse for the “cowgirl,” the last line says: “Yes, sir, I’m a cowgirl from head to toe, and all a cowgirl really needs is a horse…

…and I do have that.”

It did seem perfect for the little girl who really wants a horse but isn’t getting one even though, as she has pointed out, it is spring now.

Ivy listened to the book.  When we finished she pointed at the last page and said “But Mom, that’s not a horse that’s a bike.”

So much for that idea.

Would I recommend it? Yes, while it did nothing to temper Ivy’s horses wishes we did read it approximately 16 million times and she only pointed out the bike/horse discrepancy 14 million. I’m calling it progress.

Wallowing

The sudden temperature jump into the 90’s  has been a bit of a shock.

The sheep have been panting in the shade.

The dogs have been panting in the shade.

The chickens have been panting in the shade.

The pigs on the other hand don’t pant so we made them a nice mud wallow to cool off in.

They seemed appreciative, as far as pig appreciation goes.

Ivy watched them roll in the mud, became inspired and shed her clothes at a run to the nearest puddle.

She convinced Clara to join her as well, sadly Clara was a bit too concerned about belly button cleanliness to fully enjoy the experience.

Things in the Night

Oh the things nobody tells you…

When you are pregnant or have an infant baby, unwanted advice is everywhere, and I’ve decided it wouldn’t be so completely obnoxious if it wasn’t so useless.

“Cherish every moment”  is a good idea, but perhaps it would be more practical to mention what could possibly happen to your body after two births.

“They are only little once” is very true, but it should come with the additional advice that even though they are only little once, there will still be times where flushing them down the toilet or selling them to the bum on the corner seems like a completely sane idea.

Currently I’m hating all those well-wishing-baby-questioners who wanted to know if my girls were “sleeping through the night yet?”

Sleeping through the night, HAH!

What people should really ask is: “Is your darling little baby sleeping through the night yet? Because soon she’ll turn into a toddler that you are convinced may be possessed by evil otherworldly spirits and will never again sleep though the night. Ever.”

Many, many, months ago I’m sure I must have reported to someone that yes, little Clara was sleeping through the night.

I take it back.

Here is how our nights go:

The girls go to sleep.

John goes to sleep.

I stay up too late (I can’t help, it it’s a life long problem I have) and finally hours after everyone else, I turn off the light and start to fall asleep.

It is an uncanny coincidence that every night within 15 minutes of me turning my bedside light out, I hear Clara. Let me rephrase that I don’t just hear Clara. I lie there 3/4 asleep when a glowing ball of blue energy flies through the air and smacks me between the shoulder blades jolting me awake with the realization that my youngest daughter is no longer sleeping. And neither am I. Except the problem is sometimes she is sleeping.

Clara cries in her sleep.

She screams in her sleep.

She talks in her sleep.

And sometimes she is genuinely awake and only Mom will be able to calm her down again. So I listen to determine if this is a sleeping noise or an awake noise. If I’m lucky I fall back asleep with the knowledge that she’s just sleeping, and only I got to wake up for that one. If I’m unlucky I get up and check on her, pat her back, rock her, sing a song, do a dance, stand on my head, anything, anything to get me back to my bed. If I’m extra grumpy I make John go take care of her. This usually results in me lying awake listening to Clara scream for me. Unfortunately, since it’s me she’s screaming for and John can fall asleep rocking her while the screaming is taking place, I can end up lying there awake listening for an awfully long time.

Finally I truly fall asleep.

Then the whole scene plays out three or four more times through the night, if I’m lucky.

Between these times isn’t all deep sleeping bliss either. There are times where I will be soundly sleeping and then start waking up because I’m feeling hot, and claustrophobic, and where did my pillow go (?) only to discover that Ivy has joined us in bed, stolen my pillow and sandwiched me between her and John. This is easy to remedy, all I have to do is pick her up and put her back in bed, or I can whisper the magic words, “Ivy, go over to Dad’s side.” And off I go back to sleep, Until…

That nasty ball of screaming energy smacks me between the shoulders again.

Eventually something wakes me up and I’m not sure why at first but I feel sort of like I’m being watched. Because I am. Piper is staring at me from the foot of the bed. Not whining, not moving, just staring. Staring, because for whatever reason she has gotten off her twin sized mattress on the floor next to our bed and would really like to go back to sleep but could I please hold her blanket up so she could crawl back underneath?

During one of these non-sleeping episodes it occurs to me I have to pee. I can’t fall back asleep having to pee. So I get up and head down stairs. As I stumble down our stairs I curse my pre-child self who thought having one bathroom on the ground floor was fine. It’s not fine, I hate it.

Cue Clara.

Finally as morning approaches, John’s alarm goes off (hours before the rest of us get up) and if it happens to wake up a girl, or a dog, or a wife, I hear it. Then I hear him snooze it, and I lie there waiting for it to go off again. He snoozes it. I wait. He snoozes it. I wait. – Alarm clock snoozing habits should really appear more in premarital counseling sessions than they do.

In the final hours before the girls and I get up two things happen.

1) Clara screams one more time. Always.

2) Ivy wakes up way too early and I spend my last hour of sleep half awake trying to keep her quiet so that Clara and I can continue to sleep.

Then morning arrives and I drag myself out of bed after a very restful 7 or 8 hours.

Yes my baby did sleep through the night.  Who wants to know!

Diet Coke Gets Even Better

I know, I know, you are thinking this is impossible.

You are thinking that Diet Coke is perfect, and you can’t make perfect better.

But, as I’m sure you all know, the only thing that can compete with Diet Coke is chocolate.

Please watch Ivy’s demonstration on how to make Diet Coke even better.

Take one chocolate cake mix,

and one can of Diet Coke,

combine,

and mix.

Pour into a pan and bake.

Then all that’s left is to frost,

(and don’t let your little sister help, she puts the frosting in the wrong places.)

and decorate.

And there you have it Diet Coke made even better.

It is possible that because Ivy made me a birthday cake all by herself I’m a bit biased as to the results.

But hey, that’s my daughter,  it’s my birthday, and I think the cake was awesome!

Dinner Fail

Tonight dinner was a failure.

We all dutifully ate some and declared it bad.

Then, after crossing out the recipe in the cookbook with a Sharpie marker, John looked at the remains on the table and said, “What are we going to do with it?”

Ivy gleefully answered, “Feed it to the chickens!”

I thought that was ridiculous, this was clearly something the pigs would enjoy more.

We dropped it off for them on our way out the door.

McDonalds may not be fantastic, but at least it’s dependable.

*note: This is not a picture of the pigs eating our dinner, our dinner was not that good looking.*

Please Send Earplugs

Last May Clara spent most of the month looking like this:

We eventually discovered that she had a dairy allergy, changed her diet and she stopped looking quite so sad and pathetic.

A whole year later there have been so many changes – she walks, she talks,  steals toys from her sister,  helps feed the dogs, cooks with me, throws objects in the toilet, identifies poop in any location and no longer has that sad and pathetic look about her.

Nope, now when we have days of extended screaming for mysterious reasons she just looks mad.

What a difference a year makes!

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

  My copy of this book is a discard from our library and it confuses me because on the spine there is a little sticker that says “Mystery” complete with ghost and candle.

Is it because mystery and history rhyme and they mixed up the stickers?

Or if I was still a young adult and hadn’t read this book a pile of times would there be a mystery to solve?

I can’t figure it out, but if I ignore the sticker I like the rest of the book mystery or not.  I think I read this first as a Battle of the Books book and it’s somehow found it’s way onto my book shelf.

Would I recommend it? Yes, while I enjoy it now I loved it when I was younger.

Push Up Confession

I have a confession.

I haven’t done my push ups in over two weeks and I’m scared to start again.

I’m not sure how it got to be so long, something about a lot of excuses and then getting sick on top of it and skipping them even though I know if you start skipping workouts it gets really hard.

So tomorrow I’m diving back in again.

I know there are a pile of people who have started doing push ups as well, and I know that there’s a really big chunk of that pile that has slowly dropped out.

I’m hoping a few of you will join me getting back on the program again.

Then tomorrow when we’re done with our sets and our bodies have been reduced to a quivering mess and we are irritated that we can’t do as many reps as we used to, we’ll know we aren’t alone.

If the misery loves company angle isn’t motivating enough for you try this:

Nine of us have posted our push ups on the Google document. Only one person was able to do more than 50 push ups in the beginning and many were under ten.

Now the nine of us since February have collectively done…

10,215 push ups!

Amazing.

So make it your May resolution, call it a favor to yourself (Here is Jenny’s post if you need a reminder why), call it my early birthday present, call it whatever you like and do your push ups tomorrow, (or start the program, http://hundredpushups.com) and let us know how it goes!

Push Up Log can be found here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkCenthS4rIwdFowaS1ja1JmNEtraFFYalhOY1JNSlE&hl=en&authkey=CNvHxIQB#gid=0

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

The last of my “sick” books was an old favorite.I’m a book re-reader, I like to own my favorite books so I can come back to them again. Even though I’ve read them before it’s almost always something new that jumps out at me.

As I was reading The Poisonwood Bible I realized that I haven’t read it since having the girls. What a different perspective motherhood brings!

Would I recommend it? Yes!