Harper Valley PTA

I went to my first PTA meeting tonight, and ever since I've had the song "Harper Valley PTA" running through my head. It's not an all together unpleasant song, but it's getting a little annoying. Anyhow, I'm now an official suburban PTA mom. I already signed up to help with "back to school night" and to possibly be a room mother (although they aren't called "room mothers" anymore - they're now called "class coordinators"). My friend Lucy is VP of the PTA, so I have a feeling by default I'm going to be very involved in PTA. I suppose that's OK, I just hope it doesn't interfere with my blogging;)

In other news, we had some excitement at swimming lessons today. Ethan and his friend Brooke are in this class along with 4 other kids from the same family. To make a long story short, today was the first time this session they ventured to the "big pool". I really like Ethan's teacher. He is the perfect fit for Ethan - he's great with the kids but pushes them just enough. He doesn't put up with crying and whining, and will basically push them in if they won't jump. Now, this may seem cruel, but he says he won't put them in the big pool until he's sure they can swim back to the side. This worked well in the first session - all of the parents were very supportive of his teaching style and we were all there cheering the kids on once they made it into the big pool. Well, apparently the mom of the siblings in Ethan's class isn't into pushing her kids. As soon as she saw Marshall (the teacher) putting her son into the pool against his will she waddled her pregnant self (yes - child #5) over and started cussing and yelling at him right in front of the kids. It went something like this "Why in the h*## are you forcing them to do s*%t they don't want to do? I tell them not to go into the deep water at the lake and you are forcing them. I want a refund. We're not coming back." Being the diplomatic sort, I tried to explain that Ethan didn't like it at first, but now he's jumping off the diving board and loving it. She informed me "she didn't need my opinion on her kids". I beg to differ, but I was kind of afraid she might tackle me, so I didn't offer any other opinions. I do however have a feeling Brooke and Ethan will be having their own private swimming lessons the rest of the session!

Ball Pit!!

Today we took our first trip to Tunnel Town in Lee's Summit. It's a really cool place to hang out when the weather isn't cooperating (80% of the time in Missouri). There are LOTS of things to play on and in, but the ball pits were by far the favorite of both Ethan and Abby. I love this top picture where Abby's hair is flying out as she jumps in the pit. They played hard for about an hour and a half, then we had lunch at the Pirate Cafe. Lunch was OK - it took a while because they lost our order, but they did give me an extra Diet Coke so all is forgiven. Then we played for another hour and came home to relax for a while. Abby took a good nap and Ethan actually cooperated this afternoon. It's amazing what almost 3 hours of playing hard will do to those two!!

Wieners gone wild!!

We've had a crazy busy weekend!! I'll leave the rest of the gory details until later and get straight to the title of my post, as I'm sure I've got you wondering what in the world I'm talking about:) Today we finished off our busy weekend by attending the Wiener Dog Nationals at the Woodlands Race Track in KC. Seriously. The funniest part is the wiener dog races are all Ed has talked about for the past 2 weeks. When we moved here 2 years ago, the wiener dog race was the weekend right after we moved and we were buried in moving boxes, so we didn't make it to the race. Ed was very intrigued by the article in the paper and swore we were going to make it in 2006. Last year the race rolled around again and we had plans, so once again we were left out of the wiener dog mania. About a month ago, Ed came in and said "the wiener dog race is July 29th - put it on the calendar - we're going". I very rarely see my husband excited about anything, let alone a race with a bunch of little yippee dogs. So, today we went. It was very amusing on many levels. I won't go into all of them, but I can tell you that Abby LOVED it. She stood on her bench waving her little fan yelling "yeah dog races!!". I'm a little scared we might have created a little dog track addict today;) It was an interesting race - they ran the wiener dogs in between the greyhound races. Here's an article that explains it better than I can, but take it from me, it was very funny to watch to owners and the dogs running 100 yds down the racetrack at a top speed of 4 mph. Ed and the kids were so excited they all bought wieners gone wild T-shirts (in all honestly I would have bought one also, but they were sold out of medium T-shirts). My husband has declared the Wiener Dog Nationals a new "Harper Family Tradition". I'm not quite sure what to think about that!

I know nothing can top the Wieners Gone Wild, but the rest of our weekend was busy but fun. Friday night we went shopping and purchased all of Ethan's school supplies (have I mentioned there's only 18 days 'til school starts). Saturday we went to the Liberty Farmer's Market and bought corn on the cob, tomatoes, zucchini and watermelon. Ethan informed me that he's going to sell the watermelons he grows at the Farmer's Market next year. I told him I didn't think the 4 plants he had would produce enough watermelons to sell, but imagine his excitement (and my dismay) when we cut into our supposedly seedless watermelon to find it FULL of black seeds. He was so excited he wanted to harvest and plant them all to work on his watermelon crop. I think we've created a monster!!

Saturday evening my friend Lucy watched the kids while Ed and I went to the Jumpin' Catfish for dinner with my Mom and Step-Dad. My little brother was there entertaining diners with his guitar playing, so we had a nice dinner with some relaxing music.

Now I'm exhausted and ready for bed. Hopefully my dreams won't be filled with little wiener dogs:)

China

A recent conversation with Ethan:

E: Mom, sometime can we go to China?
Me: Well, China is very very far away - what do you want to do in China?
E: I want to go to one of those restaurants where you get Chinese food and the table spins around. Like on Calliou.

I guess he's been watching too much PBS. Maybe this weekend we'll go in search of a Chinese restaurant with a "spinning table". In Kansas City. Not China.

Farmer Ethan

A few weeks ago we went out to eat with my Dad and Step-Mom to celebrate my birthday. Ethan ordered fruit with his dinner and was very excited when his watermelon showed up with actual seeds (I always buy seedless). My Dad convinced Ethan to take the seeds home and plant them so he could grow his own watermelons. The very next day Ethan and Ed got out some plastic cups and planted the watermelon seeds - ever since they have been sitting in the bay window above the sink in the kitchen. This weekend I was getting really tired of looking at them and I told Ed "those are never going to grow, I'm going to throw them out". I never got around to it - or should I say I never had a chance when Ethan wasn't around. Today I was doing the dishes and I looked up to see a little watermelon seedling popping over the top of one of the cups! I took down the cups and indeed we have 4 little watermelon seedlings growing.

The first thing he said was "Wow - I have to call Pops". After that he looked at me and said "so when will we get watermelons?" I guess we'll be transplanting the seedlings to a pot soon to see if they keep growing!

Public Service Announcement - Please double check the refrigerator door

I was awakened this morning by Ed shaking me asking "when was the last time you were in the refrigerator?" This may seem like an odd question, but I have a habit of getting up in the middle of the night and getting a diet coke. However, last night was not one of those nights - I hadn't been in the fridge since about 10pm. The next question this morning "do you have the temperature display set on Fahrenheit or Celsius?" Never a good question. Apparently I didn't get the refrigerator door shut all the way last night. Ed got the milk out this morning to have his cereal and the milk was warm. Not room temp - WARM. So he checked the temperature display and it was a toasty 52 degrees Celsius (125.6 degrees Fahrenheit!). The door was cracked open last night and the light stayed on - heating eveything in the fridge - especially items on the top shelf where the light bulb is located. It was very painful for me to throw out everything perishable - including 4lbs of chicken and 2lbs of lean groun beef I was thawing to grill tonight. Abby and I had to make a trip to the store to replace everything - not a fun way to start the day. So tonight - check your refrigerator door! I know I will be.

Stinky crocodile

We originally bought this crocodile for Ethan - it's a game where you take turns pushing down the teeth and one of the teeth randomly causes the crocodile mouth to snap shut. Abby has taken over possession of the crocodile, but she has a love/hate relationship with the critter. Every afternoon after nap she drags out the crocodile and begs me to "play crocodile" with her. When I finally sit down and agree to play she looks at it and says "no, it scary - lets play a different game". Every day this is our post naptime routine. Lately she's started just playing with the crocodile. The other day I found her trying to feed her stuffed dog to the crocodile. When I asked her what she was doing she informed me the crocodile was hungry (she has a whole bin full of kitchen play food and she chose to feed him the dog - I don't even want to think about what that means). Today after nap she carried out the crocodile, a changing pad and a diaper. I once again asked what she was doing and she told me "crocodile stinky - he need a new diaper". I guess I can go along with this since changing the croc's diaper entertained her for about 20 minutes!

In other news, those of you faithful readers may have noticed my absence for a while. Our internet went out on Tuesday and it was not a good day in our house. The very helpful man from Time Warner came and replaced our motem on Wednesday, but then the wireless was having issues. Thanks to the hard work of my husband my internet is now up and running faster than ever. Lets just say it's been a tense week here at the Harper house - I didn't realize how addicted I am to the internet until I didn't have access.

We've had a quiet weekend with no plans to speak of. Ethan has been in rare form - so much that today I actually got out the calendar and counted the number of days until school starts - 25 for those of you keeping track. We put them both to bed early tonight and now I'm enjoying the peace and quiet. I may just go take a long hot bath!!

The Monster Truck Fairy

My nephew Dalton is staying with us for a few days. Ethan and Abby both love playing with him and they are all having a great time. We've been trying to get them to sleep for about half an hour now - and they are wound up despite all my efforts to wear them out tonight. Dalton is a funny little man - he reminds me of Marc (my brother) in so many ways. Ethan just came out of his room with one of his monster trucks and said "Dalton told me if I put a monster truck under my pillow the monster truck fairy will come tonight and leave me $5.00". This is something I could see my brother coming up with. Ethan idolizes Dalton - so now he honestly believes the monster truck fairy will be coming tonight. It may be a rough morning when his monster truck is still under his pillow and there is no money.......

Backyard Cobbler

I do believe our neighbors think Ed has gone crazy. For some unknown reason, tonight Ed decided to use some of the camping supplies he had left over and make a cobbler in his dutch oven. Now while most people would do this inside in the oven, my husband decided to make the cobbler outside. He made a fire with charcoal under the deck (the only place in the backyard where there isn't grass), put the cobbler together in his dutch oven and cooked it over the coals in the backyard. He went outside to start the fire and while he was inside assembling the ingredients for his creation the phone rang. Yep, you guessed it - it was the deck-sitting neighbors. I answered the phone to hear "did you know there's a fire under your deck? Karl is on his way over with the hose!!" I could almost hear the sound of disbelief when I told her it was OK - Ed was just making a cobbler. Once the cobbler was finished he did take some to the neighbors, so hopefully they'll overlook my crazy husband making a cobbler in the backyard since he brought a peace offering. And as much as I hate to admit it, the cobbler (apple-cherry) was pretty tasty! Lets just say I'll be doing a few extra minutes on the elliptical tomorrow due to the amount of cobbler I consumed.

We'll be eating ramen noodles for a while

But the dog will be healthy. I took Hero for his follow-up today. He's been on his thyroid meds for 2 months now and we were all convinced he'd lost weight. So I very proudly walked him up on the scale today only to see that his weight has not changed - not even an ounce! I have to say I was shocked. It went downhill from there. While we were waiting in the exam room I noticed Hero was getting another hot spot. When they went to shave the area, the Dr. checked his ears and they once again need cleaned and more meds. To make a very long story short(er), $200.00 later we are home once again treating hot spots and waiting to hear from the vet for the results of Hero's blood test. The results should reveal why he hasn't lost weight. He does get to go on diet food now, so maybe I'll start taking him to weight watchers with me after all!

The Diving Board

I just have to brag on Ethan for a minute. He's been taking swimming lessons twice a week and while I would love for him to learn to swim, I honestly enrolled him to have an activity that would wear him out a couple times a week. Combine that with the fact that I can put Abby in the daycare at the community center and have half an hour to work out and it's a win-win situation. Learning to swim was just a side benefit;) Today I decided to stay and watch Ethan during his lessons - he seems to be fully recovered from the evil virus, but I wanted to be there just in case he started feeling unwell again. I'm so glad I stayed - today was the first day they ventured to the "big pool" and jumped off the diving board. Here's the deal - I really like his swimming teacher. He's big into teaching them to do things the right way, so he doesn't get in the water to "catch" when they jump in. He stands on the side of the pool and coaches - and he swears he won't let them jump in until he knows they're ready. I guess today he decided they were ready. I was so proud of Ethan - my usually whiney drama queen went first (his choice) and walked to the end of the board and jumped right in to the 14-ft-deep pool. I have to say my stomach was doing flip-flops watching my baby jump in with no one there to "catch". He did GREAT and was so proud of himself. What a big man!!

Snugglebugs

It's been kind of a long day around here. Ethan has the virus that Abby had last week, and it's a tricky one. It causes vomiting, headache, low-grade fever and cold symptoms, but the tricky part is that it comes and goes for about a week! Just when you think they're fine, it starts all over. So, we had a long night last night. Abby was up sick around 11pm then Ethan was up every hour from midnight until this morning. Needless to say, we've all been a little tired today. After bathtime the kids were in the living room and being surprisingly quiet. This is what I found:

I asked what they were doing and the response: "we're snuggling while we watch Bob the Builder". I have to say it was a very cute ending to a very long day:)

Sad commentary on my life........

We've had a pretty quiet weekend. Today after I got Abby down for her nap I headed to the gym to work out. There I was driving along in the van - I made it almost to the community center before I realized I was singing along to the Wiggles - yes, I was singing "Toot Toot Chugga Chugga Big Red Car" along with the CD and I was the only one in the van. This has happened before, but usually I notice before I'm out of our subdivision. I guess today I was enjoying the Wiggles a little more than normal. I need to get a life.

Not in the job description

One of the chores I hate most is picking up the dog poop in the yard. I dislike this chore for obvious reasons, but one not-so-obvious reason is the fact that I inevitably end up with Joe Walsh's song "Ordinary Average Guy" stuck in my head. The main problem with this is the only lyrics from the song I know are "pick up the dog doo and hope that it's hard" and I have it running through my head the entire time I'm scooping. I'm having an outdoor playgroup here tomorrow and since my husband so nicely agreed to mow the lawn in the heat, I decided it would be pushing it a bit to ask him to deal with the dog doo as well, even if it is my birthday. So I told Ethan "I'll give you $5.00 if you pick up the dog poop". His response: "Uh, that's not on my chore chart". Hee Hee. Abby's response: "I pick up the poop mommy, I put on my gloves!". Hummm. I opted to do it myself and now I have that song running through my head again. Maybe I should learn the rest of the lyrics so it's not quite so annoying.

Surprises

Ethan snuggled up in bed with me this morning with a great big grin on his face. This is the conversation that followed:

Ethan: Daddy's going to bring you home a surprise for your birthday. I can't tell you what it is.
Me: Hummm, I like surprises.
Ethan: Want me to give you a hint? If you guess I won't be giving away the surprise.
Me: OK, give me a hint.
Ethan: It's round and has petals.
Me: Hummmmm, what could Daddy bring me that's round and has petals?
Ethan: Yep, it's flowers - you guessed it!!

I won't be sharing any secrets I want to keep with him anytime in the near future;)

Slip-n-Slide (and Splash!)

A couple of weekends ago we went up to visit Ed's parents in Quincy. There isn't much for the kids to do there, so we went and bought a Slip-n-Slide to keep the kids occupied. Yesterday was the first day we've played on it at home, and Ethan uses it more as a sprinkler than a slide. Abby avoids it all together because she really DOES NOT like sprinklers. However, she loves her pool, so we got that out as well and she was happy as a clam. We were supposed to have an outdoor playgroup here yesterday, but Abby has some sort of wierd stomach thing going on, and while I suspect it's related to teeth or ears, I didn't want to take the chance of getting anyone sick. So I cancelled the playgroup and Ethan was really bummed. I told him we could still get out all the outside water toys and he perked up immediately! It also gave me the opportunity to take some fun summer-time pics which I've posted above.