Quick Quiz....Baby Food

This is for all you moms out there....

It's dinner time, and the family (the six month old baby girl included) is gathered around the breakfast bar eating a take out pizza. The toothless (and pretty much solely breastfed and cereal fed) baby leans forward in her high chair and grabs a slice of pizza and starts sucking the corner of it. What do you do?

A) What's take-out pizza? I cook every meal from scratch! Only the best for my family. And....whoa, did she just say everyone was eating at the breakfast bar? Not in my household!

B) Freak out. The world is coming to an end! You know for sure that your baby will either die from choking on the pizza or from a allergic reaction to pepperoni grease.

C) Remove the pizza from the baby's mouth, and use your spit to clean the grease off her face.

D) Wait to see what she does. I mean, come on! What's a little bit of cheese going to do? If she doesn't like it....well, she probably will spit it out.

If you answered A....you are probably a brand new first time parent. Trust me, it does get easier. If you answered B, well....you still haven't graduated from First Time Parenting School yet. If you answered C, you have your 2nd child and are settling in to this parenting thing.

Then, there are those of us that are 3rd time parents. Yes. I have to answer D to my own quiz.

My Little One was the one that grabbed the pizza off my plate this evening and managed to get some in her mouth. I just calmly sat there and watched her do it. And I enjoyed her reaction. I watched my little one roll a little bit of cheesy greasy goodness around in her mouth, practice trying to chew it a little, and then spit it out. And then she started vocally expressing her opinion on pizza. She yelled for more. Oy.

She sure is growing up fast. In just a few short years, she will be old enough to call for her own take out. *sniffle*

Not me Monday.

I'm coming clean.

MckMama over at My Charming Kids, has a fun little way of confessing all of our little shortcomings. It's actually very therapeutic reading about how NOT perfect moms can be. So, here goes...my own little confessions, out in public for the rest of the world can read. I may be totally in denial about these things, but...I really did them.

• I totally did NOT just take all of the clothes out of the dryer and toss them in the floor in the hallway, nope, not even in a basket...straight onto the floor. I am not thinking about folding them some other time....and I am sooooo NOT going to pull something out of that pile and put it on myself tomorrow morning before driving my kid to school.
• I Did Not just go to McDonalds 3 different times this week to buy happy meals...just for the Madam Alexander Wizard of Oz toy. And I DID NOT take a handful of duplicates back and plow through the stash at the counter to get that coveted Flying Monkey for The Oldest.
  
• I did not let my kids run through the church's sprinkler system today...simply because it looked fun. And I did not apologize to about 5 other parents when their kids started doing it too. Nope, not me. And I did not have to drive home sopping wet children.
  
• I totally deny plopping the baby in a swing, knowing full well that it wasn't her nap time, so that I could sneak a nap myself. I would NEVER do THAT! *snicker*
  
• I really didn't give my middle child a second fudgecicle after lunch because she missed having her older sister at home.
  
• I did not lock myself in the bathroom this morning for a half hour so that I could finish a really good book....while my children wrote messages and shoved them under the door, stating that they were starving children from Africa and wanted some breakfast.
  
• And Finally...I did not just borrow High School Musical from the Library on Friday, watch it for the first time, and enjoy it as much as my daughters....nope, not me!
  

Those are my little confessionals for the week. What have you got to share for Not Me Monday? Hope on over to MCK and read what other people are fessing up to.

Hoooray! My first Blog Award!

Thank You, Marian at Princess of Pink for this great award!!!! It's my first.

Update? Did someone say update?

We had a whirlwind week last week....my husband somehow managed to get a week of leave time, drove through the night and arrived here for a visit.

Can I just say....WONDERFUL?

Such a lovely time...the girls had their Daddy back, I had my best friend in the house again (not to mention, oh...nevermind ;) ) and some little handyman projects that I was dreading tackling myself got done. I have learned so much about standing on my own two feet since he has been gone, but you know, I got married so that I wouldn't have to do things like changing oil in the car or sharpening the lawn mower blades. It was so nice to have a man (MY MAN!!!!) here.

The Oldest was baptized on Sunday, and may I just say that she was just glowing! The microphone was held out to her right before she was dunked for her to give a little testimony, and she stated plainly and sweetly that "God is good all the time, and I want to live my life for him." I don't know about the rest of the congregation, but I could not stop from bawling! It is a day that I will never forget as long as I live. And to make the icing on the cake, my own father, whom I have been praying for since I was saved as a teenager, decided to be baptized as well. How cool is that???? To have 2 of the people that you love very dearly, both being baptized in the same weekend??? I am just so giddy with joy over that one.

While he was here, we had some surprises for him...I had been holding off giving the baby her first cereal, so that he could be here for the milestone event. The Little One really gave a prized performance as she tried on several occasions to steal the spoon and feed herself. And she barely spit out any at all. I think if she knew how to run, she would have snagged the bowl and run off with it too. Daddy's other surprise? Well, The Middle sat down with him on the couch and READ TO HIM for the first time. It was out of Dick and Jane. He was so pleased with her.

But alas, we return to business as usual as hubby left to go back to whatever it is he does in Louisiana. And I have an empty spot in my bed again...and a big hole in our family again.

Ah. Poop.

Spelling Tests...

1. I
2. a
   
3. me
4. my
5. you

These words were my daughter's spelling test words last week.

I made a huge mistake. I asked the teacher for something a little more challenging. Here are a few of my daughter's spelling words for this week:

1. excited
2. unfortunate
3. elegantly
4. excellent

Did I mention that my kid is in the 1st grade? I believe in challenging my girl, but not totally discouraging her. These words made her cry. Hoping for a happy medium here. Most of the other kids in her class got these words:

1. he
2. she
3. we
   
4. me
5. the
   

Homeschool moment of the day....

While discussing God's 7 days of creation today....

Me: "What were the names of the first man and woman in the Bible?"

The Middle Child: "Um....their names were Madame and Beef."

I thought that I had told this story several times to my daughter. Little did I know that she had the names of the main characters all wrong. Oh well. I think Adam and Eve will forgive her.

Labor Day....

In honor of Labor Day, I am posting on, well.....labor! I got this idea from Rocks in my Dryer
That picture was taken just after my water broke on the elevator, nurses were scrambling for a mop, the pastor grabbed a wheel chair, hubby got the camera.

So here goes...

How long were your labors?

Kid # 1: 39 hours
Kid #2 : 36 hours
Kid #3 : 1 hour

How did you know you were in labor?

Kid #1: Water broke
Kid #2: Excruciating pain every 3 minutes for a few hours.
Kid #3: Scheduled C-Section, but my water broke on the elevator at the hospital.

Where did you deliver?

At the hospital where the people who know what they are doing are. I wouldn't think of doing it anywhere else.

Drugs?

I didn't want drugs. But when you are in that much pain for that long, you are begging everyone around you to just make it stop. If my labors were 6 to 8 hours like some, no problem. But try 39 or 36 hours and see how exhausted you will be. I didn't do pitocin to speed up anything, we have a "no pitocin" theory in my family. I ended up with a spinal block for the first, an epidural with the second child which totally stalled my labor, and another spinal block with the third.

C-section?

Oh yes. Actually I am getting quit good at C sections. After the first 39 hours of labor with The Oldest child, the sheer exhaustion of it all, I had only dilated to 3. The doctor comes in and asks me if I am finally ready to try the pitocin, I told him that I wanted the baby out immediately...and demanded a c section. No problem.

With The Middle child, I labored all day, went to a Support the Troops rally in labor, went to the hospital that night, labored some more, and finally the next day, when dilation stalled at 6 for several hours, I knew it was time.

For The Little, I just went ahead and scheduled the C Section, called my best friend in MN and told her when to come. She was scheduled to be delivered on St. Patrick's Day. But as I said, my water broke on the elevator that morning at the hospital....and I thought that I was going to deliver her vaginally right there in the pre-op room because the doctor that was supposed to perform the C-section that morning was stuck in traffic. The anesthesiologist (put that word on your next spelling test!) was asking me all kinds of questions about allergies, and I could barely answer the questions because the contractions were so close together.

Who delivered?

Doctors. I love doctors.

The Oldest and The Middle were both delivered by a wonderful Christian Man who left his church service on both Sunday mornings (13 months apart) to attend to my delivery. And he praised God with me in the delivery room after they were born.

The Little was born at a military hospital and was delivered by a really nice man. The delivery room was almost like a party because we were all cracking jokes, and the meds made me feel so loopy that instead of feeling nervous, I was feeling like a comedian. All that were attending the delivery got a hearty laugh when I gushed how much I LOVED my anesthesiologist, that I couldn't feel a thing, and that pink was a great color on him.

This is my last baby. I am tired and do not wish to have any more. I feel the Lord has blessed me enough times. As a matter of fact, I typed this whole post one handed...The Little still latched and napping on my breast. If God chooses to bless me with another? I will start praying for octopus arms.