Tiger's Near Death Experience

As I've explained in a previous post, Adam's best friend in the world is his stuffed tiger.

So... we were driving down the road today on our way to pick Mary up from school and Alex opened the window beside him. It's a van window that only opens a few inches at the bottom. I didn't think too much of it until Alex started crying about Tiger. I looked in my rear view mirror, and there was Tiger sitting in the road. As luck would have it, we were in the right lane and it's a pretty wide lane at that point in the road. However, that stretch of road doesn't meet up with any parking lots or any convenient place to pull into so I could get out and retrieve Tiger. I had to turn around and then backtrack to the intersection BEFORE Tiger was dropped and park down a side street in front of a home belonging to people we don't know. I locked the boys in the van and then had to run around the corner and down the street at least 100 yards (if not more) and then wait for a window in traffic to dart out into the road and retrieve Tiger. Fortunately, Tiger is bright orange and people were avoiding him so no real damage was done.

Did I mention that I've have a horrible chest cold all week? Running and chest congestion don't mix very well.

I confess Alex got an earful about how we don't stick things outside the window while we're driving down the road!

There's no boredom in motherhood!

The Best Reason

I've discovered that the best reason to keep a blog is so that I can remember to share the funny things my kids say before I forget them. Tonight we were doing our Monday night game portion of FHE. (We do the spiritual part on Sunday.) Doug and I were getting a little too competitive. We weren't yelling or really fighting, just debating one another's strategy to make sure the other didn't win the game. (Just for the record, Alex won.) As we were debating this Alex said, "I'm done with this game. You guys are giving me a headache." Too funny, but probably the reminder we needed. We were much more relaxed the rest of the game.

Alex woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. He was not at all pleased that I had made eggs for Mary's breakfast instead of pancakes. I told him I'd made pancakes tomorrow, but that wasn't really good enough for him. He also hates taking Mary to school in the mornings so he wasn't thrilled with that either. After we said our family prayer I sent him and Mary to get their coats while I woke Adam up. I got Adam up and then realized Alex was missing. I found him in his room back in bed with no shoes on. I told him he needed to get up so we could take Mary and he said, "I just can't take it anymore."

I did my best not to laugh at him, although maybe I should have. It might have actually made him happier this morning. Fortunately, he's doing much better now.

Soccer

This is a video of Mary's first soccer game last spring. She begged to play soccer so we signed her up. Of course as you'll notice our money would probably have been better spent on dance lessons as she dances all over the field.

She does get a goal at the end of this video. However, we probably should put an * next to it because she was playing on the wrong team with younger kids. I'd always taken her to practice but had Doug take her to the first game without me so I could take dinner to a family in our ward. He found a team with yellow shirts and told her to go play with them. I didn't figure it out until after the game when he said something the coach said about practice and kept saying "he said" this or "he said" that. Mary's real coach was a woman! Of course the coach on the younger team never said a word. If we hadn't been such rookies ourselves at kids sports we would have realized the color of the cones around the edge of the field determine what field your supposed to be playing on. Ooops! We'll do better in the future.

Guilt

Guilt is what you feel when you mix grape Shasta with your toddler's antibiotics and shamelessly tell him it's juice because he's on a juice kick lately and you want to get him to take his medicine that reeks.

Adam's had a bit of a rough week. Well, I guess maybe it's been longer than that to some extent. He's had a diaper rash for a couple weeks that we haven't been able to get rid of despite trying a few different ointments. Tuesday we were shopping at Target and he threw up all over one of the toy aisles. Good thing they had little sets of sweats on a good sale so he didn't have to go home in just a diaper!

Wednesday morning he woke up with several red spots on his face. By Thursday a few of them had disappeared, but one on his chin looked much worse. So since a long holiday weekend was coming up I called the pediatrician's office. They had me bring him in to check things out.

Turns out he's got an anal staph infection. (I know. Who knew you could get that??) Anyway, he's got to be on Keflex twice a day for 10 days. The stuff smells horrible, and I'm not sure we'll get away with the "juice" trick too many times. Now I really understand why Mom always made us get shots when we got strep throat as kids.

Build A Bear

Today we used our Build A Bear gift cards from Stephanie. I forgot I had a camera in my pocket until we were almost ready to leave. Mary has a cute little bunny named Louise. Alex insisted we name Adam's panda Phineas, and he named his own dog Ferb.

Adam spent most of his time running around and playing with things he wasn't supposed to. He even tried to do some shopping of his own and went out into the main part of the mall while we were helping Alex and Mary stuff their animals. Fortunately, his short little legs didn't carry him too far.

Thanks, Aunt Stephanie!!!

Tiger

This is Adam's tiger (or kiger in Toddler). Tiger hasn't always belonged to Adam. Mary got Tiger for her 6th birthday from her friend Mallory. Adam has a hard time going to nursery on Sundays. One of the women working in there suggested he bring a stuffed animal or blanket to nursery to help him feel more comfortable. We let Adam take Tiger to nursery one Sunday and Mary's never gotten him back since. She tried to hide him once but then felt sorry for Adam when he was looking all over the house for it and gave Tiger back to him.

As you can see, Tiger is always close at hand. He's the first thing Adam looks for in his bed when he wakes up and he goes with us on most shopping trips.

Fortunately, Aunt Stephanie was on the ball and gave Build A Bear gift certificates to the kids for Christmas so Mary was able to get a new "buddy" to replace her missing tiger.

Adam of course started looking for Tiger as soon as we got home. He took his new Panda with him when he went down for his nap, but he cuddled up with Tiger.