Holiday? (long post, sorry)

Every time I go to our blog homepage, I am reminded that our header is old. I also immediately think "I don't want to deal with that right now." And, its true. I could update pictures, get anew look or whatever, but sometime when I am less busy.

This weekend Daniel came down with some cough, headache, lose your voice fun. He even got a blessing Monday to help him be better for work. I think Alice has some of the same stuff, and with the way I have been sleeping I probably have a bit of something as well. Lucky us!

Saturday we spent about 2 horus at Nebraska Furniture Mart sitting on couches. It sounds relaxing, until you also realize we never sit on one for longer than 2-3 minutes until we found one that was a comprimise.

You see, Daniel likes comfort so much that even the {hideous} lazy-boy style couches that have recline function, and are way way too big for our living room anyway look good to him. I think he is also somewhat resentful that I immediately said no way to the first couch and we were stuck covering literally the entire rest of the furniture department.

Here is our opinion in the way of couches. If you want a stylish couch, you must be willing to sacrifice some comfort. The cooler it looks, the harder it will be, and the less back support because the back is only 18 inches tall, etc. The so called 'comfy' couches are incredibly soft, but provide no back support at all. Oh, and futons. You have to get a REALLY expensive futon for those to be comfortable.

We went with a $450 sleeper sofa. (I think it was $450, one can't be sure.) It gets delivered on Friday, and the arms are less tailored than I would prefer, but its soft while still being somewhat supportive on the back and stuff.

Its 91" long. I realized as we were 'checking out' and setting up delivery. Part of why we nixed the last couch was the sheer bulk. But, this couch doesn't have slanty arms or a slanty back, and aside from the built in pillows in the arm cushions, its rather tailored. Upside? ITs the same color as our slip cover we already have. That means, we can throw that on top, and keep it safe. Then again, I ordered the 5 year stain warranty stuff, so we might just let Alice go nuts. Eat fruit loops on the couch? OK. Dump spaghetti and tomato sauce on there? Go for it.

It gets delivered on Friday.

We also had copious amounts of family visitation this weekend. Rachel came up for the weekend, then my parents showed up Monday morning and slept for a million hours. Not consecutively, but still. They took more naps than Alice. Thats accomplishing something. My mother said they must be getting old. Maybe.

Last night Alice was having the WORST time teething. She is getting her first molars on top (don't know the name). And, I numbed up her gums thinking she could nurse and go to sleep easier. Well, she was REALLY mad that I numbed up her mouth. She was drooling, and upset. We literally watched Sesame Street clips on youtube until midnight (2+ hours). I kept falling asleep and she would harass me until I would repeat the clip. I was glad there were a few 8 minute clips on there. The 30 second ones were killing me.

She finally passed out head at the bottom of the bed, staring at the fan. Thank goodness. She is still in bed. I had to help Daniel find the keys to the car. I think I shall join her.

Oh, and I decided on dates for the homemaking Food storage class. The first one will be June 8th at 10am at the church. That's right, a Monday morning. I figure, people can't forget if its the day after church. Also, it will be at the church, so people can just bring all the kids and let them run around the gym. We are going to sanitize containers for water storage. Yay bleach water! (The church also has deeper sinks than most homes, so we might be able to do more at a time.) Plus you know, I never sanitized our 2 liter water bottles before filling them with water. That probably means they are, or will be, growing green stuff under the cap. No worries, I will just water the garden with the green stuff and sanitize them on the 8th.

Alice's teeth are growing! She is getting buddies for her fang. One of her two front teeth is totally visible, and the second is making an appearance. That means people other than me can know they are present! Sweet. She also looks less like a vampire. Sad (*_*) I liked my little monster child. (Even though the very strange order of teeth appearing was a little alarming)

I also had a really strange dream involving dead people/bodies, some really strange tv studio thingy, getting felt up by some creepy guy, and leavign some Alice poopy in my pants. You know, just a regular day in the life of me! The general idea was that the bishop wanted people to try out for this commercial about how amazing lawrence is...it was gonna be a nationwide thing (cause that makes sense you know) And so there were all sorts of church people there, though most of the exact names elude me. But that recording studio that was housed in the strip mall by Dillons on Mass was full of bedrooms with bodies (that of course I knew were dead). PLus really creepy killing children. I think they were zombies. Thats the best explaination.

I can't decide if I should blame the AMAZING curry I ate last night, or the fact that I went back to sleep after Daniel left. Or the fact that he noticed we didn't shut our front door and it was open when he went downstairs this morning. All of those things could be contributing factors. Oh, and FYI as long as I was with other church people I was safe. Yay for the power of church people!

Now, the phone wasn't having problems. It was the internet. Right now I am of the opinion that Lawrence Freenet isn't popular cause its slow enough that if you try to open gmail you have to load the basic view...and the signal is so weak that if you open an attachment, plan on it taking forever to load/download and it might reboot the little $120 pepwave wifi reciever. Then you will never actually get to open that pdf file until you get frustrated and plug the ATT modem back in. Pshaw.

We are hooked back up to our el cheapo ATT dsl. It might not be all that fast, but its consistantly slow, and consistantly on. I can catch up on my House that way. (We watched some crazy dude take over the clinic with a gun last night. And, yes we saw the whole thing. Thank you ATT for your consistantly slow internet.) You see, we don't watch much TV, cause why pay for TV when you are poor, but some shows we like. And now that Stylista is over and there is no project runway or america's next top model I have to move onto shows daniel like. Our next show will be Bones. We are sad that FOX moved them from both being on i na row, on the same night, to No one knows when they are on. But hey, I can handle watching the episodes 8 days after they air. I am a fan, but no fanatic. Unlike with Everyday Food Storage. I am a fanatic of that. I am such a fanatic that I am working on posting myself 101 goals in 1001 days...and I know at least a few will be for food storage. (Maybe I shouldn't post that cause now I will have to follow through).

Oh well, off to write my 10 page double spaced ward project paper! I mean, ward history. Yeah. Fun times.

Naturally, we haven't quite returned the hardware and got our refund. I mean, we have 30 days to do that, and the people are sending someone to check on the WiFi thingy they have on the corner. But, if its still obscenely slow Monday night, we will be trying to return it before Christmas.

Teeth!

Alice has at least 2 teeth popping onto the scene. A canine (or maybe just one next to the middle two) has broken the surface, and I can see that the middle two are on thier way out as well.

This explains 104.9 last night. Followed by a tepid bath. Followed by ibuprofen. Followed by a trip to the store to buy more Tylenol.

Did you know that you can 'alternate' between ibuprofen and tylenol for infant fevers...so long as you wait at least 4 hours between doses. The nurse thought it was probably because it had been 8 hours since her last dose of ibuprofen that the fever was so crazy.

Of course she was fine the rest of the night. At 5am this morning she had a 100.3 so we put off giving meds until 10 am when it was 102.something. She also acted interested in toys and food and even smiled today! Yay. Recovery is on its way! It only took about 2 days of sleeping, lots and lots of nursing and some drugs. Oh yeah, and a blessing (which she got before the fever got really bad, ironic huh?)

Teething and cooler weather part 2

So we put the groceries away and I tell Daniel to call his mother (she called while he was at school and had poor reception so we talked for about 5 minutes between two different calls and I figured whatever Daniel can call back when he gets home).

I come down after Alice passed out within 30 minutes to find the strangest looking rice crispy treats I have ever seen. Daniel got too excited about eating them and didn't melt the marshmallows down enough. That means there were random marshmallows amongst the cereal. Plus it was REALLY sticky (also because it wasn't cooked long enough).

Alice wet herself awake every hour for the next 4 hours. I passed out with Daniel on our floor reading right before midnight.

Alice woke me up a few more times. The last time it looked bright. I woke Daniel and asked what time it was. 10:10. Oops. We rushed about getting dressed and the bulletin printed and off to church where we were surprisingly not late.

Sunday night was a similar thing. Only, her fever which was really low until then, spiked to 103.2 and at 5am I was sitting in a bathtub holding a crying baby and pouring water over her.

Alice woke us at 8:20. Daniel works at 8:30. She felt really really hot. Her temp was 104.4. She got a blessing and fell asleep and began feeling cooler. She still had abit of a fever the rest of Monday, but we drugged her. Between benzocaine on the gums and tylenol down the gullet she was manageable.

By Monday evening she had no fever and had little daggers coming out of her gums.

Daggers for chomping.

She also thinks she needs to be standing all the time. This results in falling. And bruises. She had a nice shiner on the edge of her chin that looked like a tiny fist clipped her. It was part pf the chair she was climbing. Luckily she seems to get over the pain rather fast.

Daniel said I needed to correct things from my last post, but I don't remember what they are. Oh well. Maybe I will post them some other time, maybe not.

Cooler weather and teething

Well it feels like fall is here. Its been drizzling and cool for a few days, the leaves are starting to die and fall and I somehow have tomatoes finally growing. My guess is that it will get too cold and we will have green tomatoes, but you never know.

Alice has Teeth! Well right now we are looking at tiny little nubs on the gumline, but if you stick your finger in her mouth, tada teeth. I have a efeling that every time we get teeth we are gonna be facing torture though. Forget the middle of the night crying, the worst part is the fevers. She spiked to 104.4 yesterday morning.

You see, the fever was discovered Friday morning, and it was rather low (about 101.4 without tylenol) so we figured what the heck, she will be fine. She was also somewhat cranky and acted sleepy all day. Besides, she was goign to bed earlier and earlier and some nights waking up every hour, but the last few we got a few hours without hearing from her once. It wasn't a big deal as it was pretty much the weekend and I can get baby duty relief, right?

Wrong.

Someone hadn't done any school work during the week. None. In fact the only thing he did Friday night was the discussion online thingy that he had to do.

Saturday morning he went to his Chem lab. It was rainy and gross, and the baby was cranky but wouldn't allow me to sleep.

The teacher had indicated that the lab would only take them until noon. He came home around 2:30.

Daniel was banished to take a nap and do homework. We went grocry shopping. Daniel decided he wanted rice crisy treats (and we have TONS of cereal but never remember to buy marshmallows), we needed a vacuum belt and I just wanted out of the house. We went to Dillons and the price of marshmallows made Daniel decide we were going to Hy-vee. Dillons is closer, but they tend to be the most expensive store in town.

So off to Hy-vee on the quest to find a vacuum belt. (and get marshmallos for less than $1.60 a pound, i mean come on marshmallows are sugar and fat...why spend that much for Generic brand?) So I had no clue where the vacuum belts would be, or the marshmallows. So we ended up going down 6 or so aisles before finding Marshmallows (not on the baking aisle but 2 aisles down with the Jello) and vacuum belts.

In our quest to find the marshmallows we ran across the canned food aisle. And everything was on sale. And we have no canned food. I prefer frozen veggies, or fresh, but canned is really handy, and it was a great price, so we got some...or rather TONs. I don't think I have bought that many canned foods at a time ever.

We also bought 4 bags of marshmallows. Yeah. I know its excessive.

continues in part 2...you know when the baby lets me.

Ah the random baby emails...

So when Alice was still unripe...as in she was still a fetus...I signed up for silly emails that told me, you baby is the size of a kiwi, grapefruit, or whatever. Typically it was a random fruit or vegetable, which was fun. Anyway, they continue after birth with the whole What to Expect in this week. The tips for the day are about teething.

Five signs your baby may be teething:
• She looks like the winner of her own personal wet T-shirt contest.
• When she chews on her fist, the expression "self-cannibalizing" leaps to mind.
• You've exhausted all other explanations for her crabbiness.
• You've exhausted all other explanations for your crabbiness.
• When you look in her mouth, you see teeth.

I thought the first two were funny, the second 2 reasonable...but come on. A sign she is teething...there are teeth in her mouth? Way to state the obvious internet. Way to do it.

Anyway, in news of the house. The hols still has small amounts of water in the bottom. As long as it actually doesn't rain today, it should be dried out by tommorow morning when 4 missionaries attack the remaining few feet of ditch. Then a small slop from the side of the house to the drain means TaDa! We have no more chance of flooding! That is unless the promise to Noah was a lie. OK OK enough blastphemy.

So anyway, we get to go buy some more stuff from Home De Pot. And axe (with a pick at the end, if we an find one) and a wheel barrel. Probably a smaller one since we have a tiny plot and all, we don't need a huge one.

I went to the store with Alice already and got an anti-itch stick. I bought the benedryl one because it was the same price as the skeeter stick, but contained things I know are analgesics...I mean sure you can use benzocaine to stop the 'itch' but technically thats just gonna deaden the area. I also have considered connecting the dots on my ankles with markers and making anklets...but for now its just Benadryl. Thats what I get for wearing cute shoes and rolled up jean cuffs. 4 inches of ankle and top of foot just asking the mosquitos to eat them. Alice has a few dots on her head, but luckily she doesn't understand scratching. If she did, I would call the doc and see what they recommend. Well, I am off to see if this new found stink is a water leak...or just some random article of wet clothing that has been left for too long. I would not be suprised to find some wet alice item that has been allowed to become one with the spores. Does mildew spread through spores? I know mold does.