Fools Ride Motorbikes

What do you do with inconsiderate nincompoops who jeopardize the safety of everyone in the community by riding their stupid motorbikes on the sidewalks? For the last several days I've been calling the cops every chance I get to report these morons. I've seen at least 3 different bikes go through my community on the sidewalk. They don't have a license plate so I can't report the tag. All I can do is give a description of the bike and the idiots riding it to the police when I call. My neighbors are also calling but so far the cops have not managed to catch these jerks. Today, my next door neighbor was out with his dogs when one of the imbeciles went by and he yelled to him "hey, you know you're not supposed to ride on the sidewalks, right?" and the lowlife just yelled back "so, I don't care". Yesterday I called the cops because the scumbag had a small child on the back of the motor bike. The kid couldn't have been much older than 6 and he looked about ready to fall off. The worst part of the whole thing was that the child wasn't even wearing a helmet! I was irate that someone could put a child in danger that way! I'm sure the cops are sick and tired of hearing from us but until they get these dirt bags to stop riding on the sidewalks where there are kids playing I'm going to keep calling every time I see it happen. It is so frustrating to keep calling and calling and by the time the cops arrive, the schmucks are long gone because they've got motorized transportation. There is a group of us that has sort of made it our mission to get rid of these cretins We've thought about tackling them as they drive by. We've thought about making a make shift strip of nails to puncture their tires but that would be dangerous for everyone else. One of my neighbors even got a picture of one of the nitwits and gave it to the cops but even that didn't help. So really, we haven't come up with anything better than calling the cops which, while its logging lots of complaints, isn't getting us any closer to getting rid of these bums. Any ideas about how to rid the community of dirty rotten scoundrels? I'll take practical ideas and those that are completely impractical but fun to imagine. I'm also about out of adjectives to describe these jackasses so if you've got any particularly creative ones let me know.

Are you ready for some football?

I've been whining lately about how slow we are at work but for once I'm grateful. Tomorrow we have no patients. Tonight the Ravens play the Steelers on Monday Night football and the game won't be over until late. Since I don't have to be at work at 7am I can stay up and watch. May the better team win!

How I spent my day off...

We are so slow at work right now that I was able to take today off. I got up at 6:45 when Collin woke up (way better than the 5:10 I usually wake up), got the boys dressed and sent them to daycare with Daddy and the promise of a surprise when I picked them up if they were good. After that I let the dog out, grabbed a shower, put Collin's books back in his book case (they'd been in a laundry basket all week because he dumped them all out of his book case and I took them away), made the beds, sat down and had a yogurt for breakfast, then I went back upstairs and gathered up every piece of laundry I could find. I have been really good about doing laundry but, as usual, the clean laundry has piled up on me and I had 4 huge laundry baskets to fold and put away, not to mention the 2 loads of towels, the load of lights, the load of darks, the load of jeans, the load of reds and the bathroom rugs that I had just dragged down to the laundry room. I tossed the first load in and grabbed a basket to sort and put away. A couple hours later the clean laundry was completely put away and I was even done with the first load of today's pile. I grabbed a quick peanut butter sandwich for lunch and went back to work. I cleaned up the living room and the dining room and vacuumed the whole downstairs. Then I went upstairs and vacuumed the bedrooms and the steps. Then I cleaned my bathroom top to bottom and ran back downstairs to clean the half bath as well. Since I had the Windex out, I cleaned the sliding glass door and the glass in the front door as well. In between chores I ran up and down the stairs grabbing another load of clean laundry as it finished drying and putting it away. At 3:45 I called the cops on the jackass that's been riding his motorcycle down my sidewalk for the last 2 days and ran to pick up the boys. On the way I stopped at 7-11 and picked up slurpees for the boys Good thing I did it too because all Collin talked about all day long was that he was going to get a surprise when he got home. Of course I walked in and Collin said "where's Dad?" Huh? I thought he'd be happy to see me but he wanted his Daddy, apparently when he wasn't talking about his surprise he was talking about how Daddy was picking him up. The slurpees in the car made him forget how disappointed he was that I picked him up instead of Daddy. By the time Tim got home I was in no mood to cook so we went to Macaroni Grill for dinner. The boys were so well behaved. It was just so nice to go out as a family and make it through an entire dinner without having to correct either one of them for bad behavior. When we got home I pulled the very last load out of the dryer and put it away. As of right now the only dirty laundry in the entire house is the stuff we wore today. I will wash that along with the sheets tomorrow. It feels so good to come home to a clean house. It also feels good to accomplish something rather than just chilling out and relaxing all day, not that there's anything wrong with that, it's exactly what I plan to do tomorrow.

B-E-D

It was bedtime. That's never a good time in our household. Tonight's conversation went like this:

Me to Tim: I think its time to go to B-E-D. (I was referring to the boys who were both in the room, hence the spelling)

Collin: I want to go to B-E-D!

Me: You do???

Collin: Yes! Please can I go to B-E-D????

Tim: Absolutely, let's go to B-E-D.

Me: Do you know what B-E-D is?

Collin: Are we going to buy something?

Me: No we're going to do something. Let's sound it out.

Collin: Buh-eh-duh

Me: Bed, we're going to bed.

Collin: We're going to B-E-D to buy a new bed? (he's still very excited at this point)

Me: We're going to B-E-D to sleep.

Collin: I don't like to sleep. (excitement gone, back to our usual bedtime routine)

It was just funny how excited he got about going to B-E-D until he realized that it was actually bed and not somewhere fun.

Last night we had a little fun at bedtime. We tucked him in and Tim and I went downstairs to play some wii. Pretty soon I heard a noise and as I walked toward the stairs to check it out I heard the pitter patter of little feet scampering back to the bedroom as fast as he could go. I went back to playing the wii without saying anything. A few minutes later I hear the noise again and again walk to the stairs. More scampering. This went on three or four times, each time I stayed quiet instead of yelling at him. It was a little game we were playing until I finally caught Collin on the stairs unwinding my dental floss. Before he started unwinding my dental floss he squeezed another half tube of tooth paste into the sink. Both are now on my list of things to pick up at the store. Had I not been off today I would have put a stop to that game much sooner but I knew that he could sleep in a bit today so I let him have some fun at our expense (literally $4 for toothpaste and $1.50 for dental floss).

Chef Collin

I was fortunate enough to have a lovely afternoon with my husband (without the kids) and we went out to a late lunch so the kids were thrilled to hear they could have mac-n-cheese for dinner. Collin grabbed his apron and chef hat and helped fix dinner. For a change, he was willing to let me take his picture, even smiling multiple times because for some reason the pictures kept coming out blurry. This is one of the better ones I got.

Nick

Friday Nicholas went for his well-visit (for those of you counting this does make 4 doctors visits in 7 days). He is growing like a little weed. He's already 25lbs and 32 inches tall! He had to get 4 more shots but he took them like a champ and wasn't even particularly fussy the rest of the day. The doctor says he's doing great developmentally as well so, all in all, this was a great visit.

A Lesson in Humility

This week Tim decided to put his Best Buy gift card and some extra money toward the purchase of a Wii. We called Best Buy and the girl who answered the phone told us "Yep, we've got wii's" so we headed over to pick one up. We walked to the back where the video game section is and Collin immediately began playing with the demo. When another little boy wandered over and wanted to play too he let him have a turn and the two of them played very nicely for quite a while while Tim looked at games and finally got around to asking for a wii. The kid working in the department informed us that he was very sorry but they didn't have any wii's. Really? We just called and were told you do. So he went to look in the back and came back very apologetic and said, "I checked, I don't see any back there either". Bummer. So we headed for the checkout with an xbox game instead. While Tim was waiting for me to catch up (I had to put back all the things Collin put in the cart to buy along the way) he made small talk with the security guard.

T: So you guys don't have any wii's
SG: Sure we do
T: No really, they just checked and said you didn't have any
SG: They lied to you, we have lots.
T: That's not funny
SG: Seriously, look behind the check out counter

We looked. I counted 30 in the stack I was looking at and I think there may have been another stack as well. (If anyone is looking to buy one, we were at the BestBuy in Columbia) So we walked back to the video game section, returned the xbox game to its spot and picked up a wii game with an extra controller instead. By this time Collin could barely contain his excitement. All he could talk about on the way home was playing the games. Since it was late, we all went to bed and didn't hook it up that night. The next day Collin went to daycare where all he spoke about all day long was the game he wanted to play. Finally, we got home and he had his chance. Even a simple game on the xbox is just a little beyond what he's able to do at this point but games on the wii are pretty manageable. In fact, you should see the little dude bowl. I'm ashamed to admit it but I was playing him this morning and I got a respectable 106. My son's score: also a 106. Now given that he's 3 and I'm.... a lot older than 3, I'd say he wins. And I wasn't trying to let him win either because he came very close to beating his Daddy before he played me! I know there's lots of people who say video games are horrible for kids but its a great way to work on eye hand coordination and at least the wii games get you up and moving. Now I also have a new weapon in my bribery basket: if you want to play wii you will pickup your toys. I'll try to get some video of him playing because he's just so excited about it, you can't help but laugh.

Update

Since the very nice, but stupid, doctor couldn't tell me for sure what was wrong with Nick last night I had to take him to the doctor again this morning. She took one look at his rash, asked if it had started before or after the fever had broken (it was after) informed me that it was viral and he was not contagious after the fever broke and the rash would fade over the next few days. She also looked in his ears, determined that they were not infected and told me to stop his antibiotic. So, all in all, good news, except that I had to take an entire day off from work to spend 10 minutes in the doctors office so she could tell me my child was completely fine. Why couldn't the doctor have told me that the night before? Granted, if I needed to take a day off, this was a good one to take because we were closed anyway. I was just going in to do the stuff that needed to be done for tomorrow and to catch up on a ton of busy work I'd been saving for just such a day. Nick and I did go in for about an hour so that I could call tomorrow's patients. He sat very quietly and ate 2 big cups of animal crackers while I did what absolutely had to be done before we could leave. I was very proud of how good he was and how he left me alone while I was on the phone. By the time we left he was starting to get a little fussy. He conked out on the way home and is still asleep now. Bless his little heart, I doubt he'll want any lunch after all those cookies but when he wakes up I'll try making him something yummy anyway. I'm just glad he's OK and hasn't been spreading germs at daycare.

Blessing in Disguise

So for all my complaining about my ruined trip to Williamsburg, it was a blessing in disguise. We were supposed to leave Friday morning and didn't go because of the hurricane. Saturday morning Nick slept a long time, I mean a really long time. As in it was 10:30 and I was on the phone complaining to my mom about how hot my house was when I finally decided enough was enough and I needed go check on him because while he's a good sleeper, he's not usually 14 hours good and of course as I'm whining about my house being hot I'm starting to panic that I've over-heated my kid by not using the air conditioning. Totally dumb since if I had thought about it for more than 30 seconds I would have concluded that it was in the 60's all night long and his window was open, my house was only in the low 80's by 10:30 and while it was humid, it really wasn't all that bad. No way could my kid have gotten hot enough to cause damage. However, when I walked in his room and picked him up and felt how hot he was, all reason melted away and all I could think about was how to cool this poor child down. I gave him some water to drink and a nice cool bath (which he hated) before it finally dawned on my that I had not given my kid heat stroke, maybe he was actually sick and I needed to check his temperature. It was 102.7 so we called Nighttime Peds and took him in. The doctor wasn't sure what the problem was but noted that his ears were red around the tubes and put him on an antibiotic. The fever finally broke sometime Sunday evening but I noticed a very faint red rash on his legs. This morning, I tortured the poor guy to make sure he didn't have a fever and sent him to daycare because the rash seemed to be gone. However, when I picked him up from daycare I noticed the rash was back and it seemed considerably worse to me so I called Nighttime Peds again and brought him in to be sure he wasn't having an allergic reaction to his antibiotic. I still don't know what's going on. It's either an allergic reaction or hand-foot-and mouth disease, the doctor couldn't be sure and told me to follow up with the pediatrician in the morning. He didn't want me to stop the antibiotic so he must not be too worried that's whats causing the rash. I guess we'll know more tomorrow. In the mean time I am so wishing I'd done a flexible spending account this year because we have a well baby visit scheduled for Friday. If we actually get to go to that, we will have been to the doctor 4 times in 7 days for a grand total of $110 in copays plus whatever the prescription cost. All this money I've got to pay out anyway, I might as well pay it out pre-tax and get it back later in one lump sum. We will definitely be signing up for that next year!

Yummy.....

I can't remember exactly where I read it but somewhere I read in one of those "instead of that eat this" articles to switch from regular yogurt to Greek yogurt. I'm back on my quest to lose some weight so I thought I'd give it a try. I compared the nutritional information to the yoplait I usually buy.

Here's what I found:
Chobani/Yoplait
Calories: 140/170
Calories from fat: 0/15
Total Fat: 0/1.5g
Cholesterol: 0/3mg
Sodium: 65mg/80mg
Total Carbohydrates: 20g/33g
Dietary Fiber: 1g/0g
Sugars: 20g/27g
Protein: 14g/5g
%DV Vitamin A: 0/15
%DV Vitamin C: 0/0
%DV Calcium: 20/20
%DV Iron: 0/0
%DV Vitamin D: Not listed/20
%DV Phosphorous: Not listed/15

Wow! Less calories, less fat and sugar, more fiber and way more protein, but how would it taste? I got the blueberry flavor and found it to be thicker and creamier than Yoplait. It wasn't too sweet, just the right amount of blueberry flavor. I definitely like the Chobani yogurt a lot and since I only bought two to try, I'll be headed back to the store to get some more. With all that protein, one 6oz container filled me up and kept me satisfied for several hours. I found them on sale at Giant 10 for $10 this week so I'm not sure about the cost comparison but its definitely worth a little extra money in my book.

Thank You

A big sarcastic THANK YOU goes out to hurricane Hanna who had the audacity to ruin my trip to Williamsburg this weekend. We were supposed to take the boys and go with my parents and my sister and Max for one last summer adventure. We'd planned on going to Busch Gardens but alas, the weatherman is predicting 20+ mph winds with gusts of 57mph during the entire day on Saturday not to mention all the rain. I figure that the park will probably be closed and if it isn't the good rides will probably be closed due to high winds. No point in hauling my family all the way down there to sit through a hurricane or tropical storm. We can do that here in the comfort of our own home for free.

I'm Done!

It's now 9:09.

Every last book has been removed from Collin's bedroom. Still don't know what the banging was from but he's dressed only in his underwear. I feel like the worst Mom in the world but I have reached my breaking point and I'm not dealing with him any more tonight. He can stay up as long as he wants. I turned his light off at the light so he can't turn it back on with the switch and I shut both his gate and his door. Whatever he decides to do tonight, he can do it behind closed doors. I think he's being so bad at bedtime because he wants extra attention. Maybe if I start ignoring all the bad things he's doing at bedtime, he'll stop doing them? Anyone have any ideas?

How do you spell FRUSTRATION?

C-O-L-L-I-N!

The time is currently 8:40.

I've been off for the last 6 days and we were way off our usual schedule in the hopes that I could sleep past 6am. Most days I got to sleep till 6:30 but yesterday they were finally tired enough to sleep until 7:45. I truely thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Unfortunately, not sticking to their schedule was a stupid, selfish thing to do and, while they were well behaved at daycare today, I could tell they were exhausted tonight. So at 6:45 we marched the boys upstairs to brush their teeth and begin our bedtime routine. Nick and I read a couple stories, sang his night-night songs and he laid down and fell asleep. I went into Collin's room and read him a story, Tim read him a story, then we sang his night-night songs and tucked him in. I went downstairs to straighten up and do some laundry By eight o'clock I hear "Mommy! I peed my pants!" Seriously? We leave the gate to his door open so that he can go to the bathroom if he needs to. He's completely potty trained and hasn't had an accident in months! Tonight was completely willfull and I don't know what you call it, but accident is NOT the right word. So I let him sit in it for a while. Then I went upstairs and cleaned him up and changed him and put him back to bed. I reminded him that if he has to use the potty, his gate is open, he can just go to the bathroom and then go back to bed. That brings us to about 10 minutes ago. Tim was busy putting up the blinds in our bedroom and needed to throw something away in the bathroom. His hands were full and the door was shut so he asked me to open it for him. Open door number one and claim your prize Mommy! There was Collin, naked from the waist down covered in my toothpaste. He has a toothbrush holder that he had squeezed full of toothpaste and he was busy smearing it all over the sink and himself. I had to shut the door and walk away for a few moments before I could bring myself to deal with him. PJ set #2 now needs to be washed so I stripped him and tossed his butt in the bath tub. Now minty fresh and in another set of PJ's he's back in his room, for good this time because I shut his gate. He's not asleep though, I can still hear him banging and doing God only knows what up there. I'm sure every book he owns will be on the floor and if they are I am removing his bookcase and all the books from his room because I'm tired of picking them up all the time. What do you do with a child who will not sleep? We have a routine, it doesn't seem to matter. I've tried charts with rewards and using a timer to no avail. I'm beyond frustrated. I dread bedtime every single night. I read somewhere that pre-schoolers (he's not quite a pre-schooler yet but close enough) need 11-13 hours of sleep each night. My son gets maybe 8! I know that everyone has different sleep needs but how can that possibly be enough? It's not anywhere close to the recommended amount. Most nights he finally gives it up and crashes around 9:30 and I wake him up at 5:45 so we can leave the house by 6:05. He's a bear in the morning, I can completely change his clothes before he even opens his eyes. Its like he gets a second wind and can't wind down enough to go to sleep at a reasonable time. I'm seriously thinking about calling his doctor to discuss the situation because I don't know what else to do with him.

The time is currently 9:01 and I'm signing off to go investigate a particularly loud, not to mention repeated banging sound.