You will never die

Meet Goldie. She is (was) SB's goldfish. SB has been begging for a fish for weeks now. Jack finally caved and told her that if she could be responsible enough to remember to feed the dogs for 10 days in a row, then she could have a goldfish. Last Monday was day 10.

Off they went to Wal Mart for a fish and all the trimmings. On the way, Jack prepared SB for the reality that sometimes fish die. They don't always live for a very long time, and we don't always know why. SB was sure that rule wouldn't apply to her. When she got home with Goldie, she was so excited.

I really wanted that fish to live. I read and reread the instructions on bowl preparation and went to great lengths to ensure a proper fish environment. I cleaned the bowl, rinsed the accessories, filled the bowl and waited for the water to reach room temp. Then I added the chlorine neutralizer, waited some more and then added some of that water to Goldie's bag so she could adjust to her new environment slowly.

SB was not prepared to wait so long to put Goldie into her new home. She passed the time by dancing around the living room swinging that bag singing, "You will never die! You will never die!"
I feared the worst. I also wondered if fish, like babies, could suffer from shaken fish syndrome.

Finally the bowl was ready. We released Goldie from her plastic bag into her new glass cage. SB was ecstatic. I asked her to make room on her bedside table for Goldie's bowl. She shoved all of her most precious possessions off of the table and onto the floor. Then she set up a chair in front of her table so that she could keep a close eye on Goldie.

Every few minutes, SB would excuse herself from the living room saying, "I'm gonna go check on Goldie." She would run into her room, sit in the chair and get eye level with Goldie. Then she would tell her a story or sing her a song or just chat about her favorite show Octonauts. She would report back to me after a few minutes with Goldie's status.

SB: "Mom. Goldie's hungry."
Me: "We feed Goldie at bedtime."
10 minutes later
SB: "Mom, Goldie's reallllly hungry."
Me: "It's not time to feed Goldie yet."
10 minutes later
SB: "Mom, Goldie--"
Me: "We aren't feeding Goldie right now. I will tell you when it's time."
SB: "I was going to tell you that Goldie is hot."
Me: "How do you know that she's hot?"
SB: "She's going like this" she made a fish face
Me: "Okay I will turn on the air conditioner."

At bedtime, we fed Goldie. But Goldie didn't seem very hungry. The next morning, we tried again. Still not too hungry. Not a great sign. SB continued to check in on Goldie throughout the morning, serenading her with all of SB's favorite songs. Every few minutes SB would give me a status report on how Goldie was doing. Around 10 that morning, SB came in and said, "Mom, Goldie is pretending to be dead, but she isn't."

She sounded so sure of herself. Goldie wasn't really dead. She was just pretending. What an amazing fish, learning how to play dead already! I went to see for myself. Sure enough, there was Goldie, playing dead and giving an Oscar worthy performance. I steered SB out of the room and told her that we would wait for daddy to get home and check.

SB got concerned and suggested that we call the vet. I suggested that it might be a little late for that. Jack came home and pronounced Goldie dead that afternoon. SB was only devastated for about 10 seconds until Jack assured her that we could get another fish. SB has already named him Goldie. I have decided that SB will not be allowed to dance around the living room with this one.

Colorado

I'm finally getting around to uploading our pics from Colorado. We had so much fun visiting family and playing in the snow! Annie got all dressed up for the cold, but didn't venture out into the snow.

Sarah Beth, however, was undeterred by the fierce winds and falling snow.


Out we went into the great white world. Ready or not.


It was cold, but we would not be denied. The snow tubing was fantastic! Sarah Beth loved it.

We finally called it a day and spent the rest of our time inside!

our gracious hosts

Thanks for hosting us, feeding us, babysitting for us and showing us such a good time!

First Birthday, First Steps, First Words

Annie is one! I can't believe how the time flies. Her birthday was actually almost a month ago, but I'm a little late to the blogging party. She jumped up to the 5th percentile (from the ONE percentile) in weight at her 12 month check up, so we were all happy about that. She is about 18 lbs now.

Last week we got Annie's first official word: ball! She was trying to say it, so I whipped out the camera and caught the event on my phone. Now she says it allllll the time. She puts so much effort into it; it's almost like it takes everything she has to just get that one word out. She takes a deep breath, squeezes her lips together and scrunches her forehead like she is thinking really hard. After a minute of intense concentration, she spits out "BAW?" like she is still a little uncertain of the correct pronunciation. We count it. We can work on the el sound later.

The truth is that Annie babbles all the time, and for the last couple of months she has been intentionally saying lots of sort of words like dada, mama, uh oh, ta ta (for thank you) and CHEESE every time I pull out the camera. Sometime with much coaxing, she will say sah sah for Sarah. I don't know why I count ball as her first "real" word, but I do.

I also recorded her first steps last week (busy girl!). According to a few of my family members and the nursery worker at church, Annie has taken a tentative step here and there already. But I never saw it, so I didn't count it. A few days ago, Jack and I had a rare moment alone with Annie in her room while SB was napping. I stood her up and told her to go get daddy. And she did. Probably 3 steps before tumbling into his arms. It was awesome. She is so cute.

We celebrated her first birthday while we were in Colorado. (As I'm typing this, it occurs to me that I never posted the pictures from our trip to see the Redwoods up north. I promise to do that soon.) Annie was no superstar on her first birthday, if I'm being honest. She didn't nap alllll day, and I was not optimistic about her attitude for her birthday party. But she snapped into happy mode by the time the guests arrived, and she was a little charmer for the evening.

She was a little tentative at first with her cake, politely scooping tiny bites one at a time into her mouth.


But by the end of the night, she was diving in head first.



Thanks to the Redwoods, Wallins and Andersons for making Annie's first birthday so special! We loved sharing it with you!

The expensivest show on earth!

The traveling circus recently made a stop in our small town. SB was so pumped, mostly about seeing elephants. The tickets for kids were free, so I figured, why not? Off we went with our free kids tickets. SB and I went with two friends and met my brother, father, niece and nephew there. We got inside without a hitch. Even got a discount on the grown up tickets. A clever trick indeed. As soon as we walked inside, we were accosted by a carney selling VIP seats. Only $10 each to sit on the floor right next to the action. You could smell the elephants.

See the front row seats?

We passed on the premium seating; I was sure SB would be too scared to sit that close anyway. Soon the begging went from wanting to sit closer to wanting something to eat. I went for the popcorn; my brother went for cotton candy. SB also needed a sprite or her world just might come crashing down. I waited patiently in the concession line.

Me: "I'd like one popcorn, please."
Concession man: "That'll be $8."
Me: "I'm sorry. I said one bag of popcorn."
CM: "Right. That'll be $8 for one bag of popcorn."
Me: "I'm afraid to ask for a sprite."
CM: "Those are only $3."
Me: "How big?"

He held up a warm 12 oz can. I ponied up the $11 because I had no other choice. I met my brother back in our seats and the sickened look on his face told me he had met a similar fate at the cotton candy stand. $10 for the cotton candy. Plus three drinks. The kids were thrilled and already planning what else they wanted. You can only imagine the trinkets and prizes they were hawking in every aisle. I began to reminisce the free chicken incident, which ironically had taken place in that very same arena the year before.

We shook it off and settled in to enjoy the show. It was actually a pretty good performance. The kids were a little young to appreciate all of it, but they loved seeing the animals. SB kept asking when will we see the elephants do tricks? Intermission came and the ring master invited all the children to the bottom of the arena to ride ponies and elephants, slide down the inflatables and feed / photograph the animals. Our kids were out of their seats in an instant. Ride an elephant?? Yes, please. I tried to guess how much it would cost to ride an elephant and multiplied it by three.


In the end, they each rode the elephant, then split decisions between the slide and pony rides. I realized we were actually saving $5 per kid on paper cups of llama food when I noticed the kids scooping fallen food pellets off of the floor and feeding them to the llamas and goats. Good thinking, kids. Please go use some hanitizer.




It was all worth it in the end, although my brother and I figured intermission alone cost us about $60. And we didn't even attempt the animal photography. Thankfully our kids were content to recycle rejected llama food from the floor and shove it back at the llamas. What a relief. Well, maybe not for the llamas.

As the show neared completion, SB could not hold it any longer, so we made for the nearest potty. After the hand washing and drying (SB is obsessed with push button hand dryers), we headed back out to our seats. SB and I simultaneously realized with dismay that we were missing the grand finale. The elephants. As we returned to our seats, the elephants were performing their final trick. I was just relieved that we got to see a small part of the elephant show, and SB was pretty easily convinced that we had not missed most of it.

I certainly learned some valuable lessons at the greatest show on earth. Next time when the circus comes to town, I'll bring my own sprite. And plan the bathroom break for intermission.

Mommy, why did you say you were going to kill somebody?

**UPDATED TO ADD: No children were harmed during the course of this incident.**

I was never really going to kill anybody, but the thought of strangling a 12 year old did cross my mind and lingered there longer than I'd like to admit. Let me explain. I was in our cell phone store, which should shed quite a bit of light on my mental state at the time. It was my third trip in about a month. Let's go back to last month and start with my first trip in this sequence to Verizon. To be fair, I'll have to start with the day before the trip when I got an unexpected email...

Our account balance had exceeded our monthly allowance, and Verizon thought that since we owed them over $700 ( a bit over our average $200 / month bill), they would shoot me a courtesy email to let me know about some unusual activity on one of our phones. Also to let me know that if we didn't go ahead and make a payment, they would go ahead and shut down all of our phones.

Our bill is pretty stable each month. Jack and I both have unlimited services on our phones, so we are never in danger of any overage charges. The other phone on our account, which is used by one of Jack's employees, doesn't have any kind of data capabilities, and this guy has never abused his allotted minutes. So I was pretty sure that Verizon had made a huge mistake. I assured Jack that I would take care of it and went into the store the next day to confirm.

As it turned out, the tertiary phone on our account did indeed have some data capabilities, in that it was possible for a person to download games onto that phone. 91 games to be exact. At an average of $4.00 / pop, that's about $364.00 in backgammon fees. Plus a few other fun applications that brought our total to just over $700. Awesome. Since the games and applications had been downloaded from a third party and not Verizon, the salesmen were not confident that they could help me out.

Jack confirmed with his employee that there were quite a few "extras" on his phone, and the employee admitted that he had let his girlfriend's kid play with his phone a few times recently. Other people's kids. Wouldn't you just love to strangle them sometimes? Me too.

I spent a great deal of time on the phone with customer service, and they were kind enough to listen to my sob story. Then they said they were really sorry and would cover 25% of those premium services fees.

The next day after the initial shock had worn off, I made my second trip to Verizon to cancel all access to third party services on that phone. Something we would have done a long time ago had we known it was even possible. We paid the bill and thanked God we had the funds to cover it. We also rested in the fact that it wouldn't happen again.

Fast forward to this month. Another email from Verizon. Another $267.00 in "premium services" fees on our employee's phone. I thought I was mad until Jack found out. His face turned so red I thought he might explode. I ran back to Verizon before Jack had the chance to go kung fu all over this guy's face.

Hmmmm, it was so confusing. The premium services had all been blocked the month before. Where were these fees coming from? The salesmen just didn't know. One guy suggested, "maybe he signed up for some monthly subscriptions?" I called customer service again. Before I could even begin my "I'm not going to pay for this" shpill, I was placed on hold. I suppose the lady could feel my anger through the phone line, because she put on some very soothing music while she looked for a supervisor.

I tried to calm myself by imagining myself in different scenarios: on a beach somewhere, soothing music playing, waves washing over my feet, on the banks of a river, babbling brook, mountaintop resort. But I just ended up strangling this kid over and over again in my mind alongside the ocean, river, mountain, whatever. The soothing music wasn't working.

Once the customer service lady confirmed that we had canceled all premium service access, she also confirmed that many of the games and applications this kid had already downloaded came with a monthly subscription service. We had only just begun with the overage fees. You can't just download one solitaire game for $4 and play it forever. You have to pay each month. We had blocked all access to MORE games, but the ones that had already been purchased would continue to bill each month. Brilliant! Very Tapfish like.

The good news is that the customer service lady was able to cancel the subscriptions, so this SHOULD be the last time we have to deal with this. She also said to call back after the next billing cycle and they would issue a credit to our account for the subscriptions. Strange that she couldn't do it right then, but if she thought I was going to forget about it by the time the next bill comes, she was wrong. I already have the date circled on my calendar.

On a related note, my phone stopped reading my SD card last night. I was back at Verizon today. I'm pretty much on a first name basis with all those guys now.

SB auditions for American Idol

It was an accident?

Last week I had an early morning appointment, so I sent SB downstairs to play while I got ready to leave. She was doing a very good job of playing by herself, and I was so proud. When my mom arrived to watch the girls, I ran downstairs to tell SB goodbye.

In my absence, she had drawn me a beautiful picture. A very large, red picture. So large in fact, that the extra large sized tablet had not been able to contain it. So she expanded the picture to cover most of the carpet. A true masterpiece. In Red.

I stood aghast at the bottom of the stairs, staring in disbelief at the long red (marker) streaks across the floor.

Me: SB!! What happened?
SB: I drew you a picture!
Me: I see the picture. Why is it on the carpet?
SB: It was an accident.

An accident. Really? You be the judge.



Needless to say, SB is grounded from markers for a while. And I spent most of my afternoon with a bottle of carpet cleaner.

Open mouth, insert paint

I don't have to tell you that kids will eat anything. One of my friends and her husband started calling their middle child "big nasty" after his palate expanded to include toilet bowl cleaners. Poor kid, like he didn't have enough of a complex being the middle child already. Now he has to deal with a nasty moniker while being on a first name basis with poison control.

Looks like we may need to free up a speed dial spot for poison control as well, since Annie has taken to eating paint. I noticed some curious white specks in and around her mouth for a few days before discovering her latest teething ring - the side rails of her crib. Apparently this is a common problem amongst teething babies, although I don't remember experiencing this with SB. We've got the teeth marks to prove it this time.

But now, thanks to Go Mama Go, we've got it covered. At least part of it. I ordered a soft crib rail guard from Amazon (yay prime!!), put it on last night, and it did the trick. It successfully kept Annie from chewing the side of her crib rail. I noticed this morning that she had slobbed all over the rail cover, but no paint in sight! So naturally I was surprised to see more white flecks of paint on her mouth when I rescued her from her crib this afternoon.

I shouldn't have been surprised. She just moved on to another crib rail. Duh. A kid's gotta do what a kid's gotta do. So Go Mama Go just received a full order of crib rail guards from the Redwood family.

(PS Jack I put a few things on the credit card)

UPDATE: works great!!