Spring FAIL

This?

Is SNOW.

Coming down fast and furious outside right now.

On April 27th.

What the hey, Mother Nature?!?!

I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike...

I am bursting right now.  With pride, not chocolate (though the bunny that remains pristine, whole and untouched in Kiddo's Easter basket has been calling to me quite loudly today).  You see, today, for the first time ever, Kiddo did this:

Yep, she rode her bike without the training wheels.

I know you're thinking "What's the big, flippin' deal?  Isn't she almost 7?!  Of course she's riding her bike without training wheels!"  Yes, she will be seven at the end of May.  I know that most kids are riding without their training wheels way earlier than practically-seven-years-old.  But for Kiddo, bike riding came with extra challenges.

Due to her SPD, Kiddo has always had issues with two of her senses in particular.  Which two? The vestibular and proprioceptive senses.  "Whaaaa?" I hear you ask, "Those aren't senses..." But yes, they are.  They have to do with balance, where one's body parts are in relation to each other and in relation to everything around the body, and how much pressure/effort is needed by the muscles to achieve a certain task.  This has always been a problematic area for Kiddo.  When she was younger, before she was diagnosed, we just chalked it up to her being extraordinarily clumsy.  Seriously, not a day would go by without her walking into a doorjamb or table or wall or trip on a stair or curb - something she was paying attention to and looking straight at as she was moving, yet still, KABOOM.  Once she was diagnosed, it was an "a-ha!" moment as we finally had an explanation for the extraordinary levels of clumsiness, and I'm happy to say that in some areas, (like, for example, the walking into doorways) Kiddo has improved greatly with a few years of OT under her belt.


Still, bike riding just wasn't coming to her.  Even with training wheels, she wobbled a lot and often crashed and fell.  Her SPD was really making it difficult and frustrating for her, to the point that she eventually refused to even try to ride her bike.  She preferred "scootering" - on a three-wheeled scooter from which she still has falls and crashes regularly thanks to the same issues that were preventing her from riding a bike - and it seemed like the day would never come that she would master bike riding.  It isn't that Hubby and I haven't tried to get her going without the training wheels, mind you.  We tried every trick suggested by well-meaning friends and relatives whose own, younger children were merrily pedaling rings around Kiddo.  None of them worked for her, because her sensory system was unable to help her brain figure out how to balance on two wheels.  Knowing how frustrated she was broke our hearts.


Here, in our new neighborhood, she has friends from school.  Friends who ride their bikes past our house, who race their bikes up and down the streets, who invite her to join them.  Motivation anew for her, but still, she was nervous and hesitant to try.  Hubby did some research on the internet (actually, he was looking for a different program that Kiddo's PT and OT had mentioned in passing when I asked them for suggestions on how to help Kiddo master a two-wheeler) and found a system that seemed worth a try, so he decided to give it a go.  He had Kiddo watch the explanatory video yesterday and she was super-excited to try this method out with Daddy after school today.


This system is called Pedal Magic and all I can say is that within 10 minutes of Hubby and Kiddo starting to use the system in the parking lot up the road, she was doing this:

I was at home, busily stripping wallpaper, when the phone rang.  It was Kiddo, giddy and breathless with excitement, asking me to come up to the parking lot and watch.  So I did, and I'm telling you, I could've started crying, I was so happy.  Sometimes it's the little things, you know.  When we got home, she was bubbling over and couldn't wait to call her grandparents to share the news.  She was busily planning outings on her bike with friends as I tucked her into bed tonight.



Of course, she's going to need more practice at things like turning and stopping, but just the fact that she can maintain her balance on a bicycle unaided?  That's huge.

Now I just wish the Bike Fairy would come and leave Hubby and me each a bike in our garage so we could go on family bike rides this summer.  Sadly, every last cent of income that is above and beyond normal living expenses is slotted towards the neverending home renovations, so there will be no bikes for us this summer unless I can find a great deal on Craigslist or at a garage sale.  I've been keeping my eyes peeled...  You see, when I was a kid, we would go on family bike rides all the time in the good weather months.  We'd spend entire afternoons riding our bikes, exploring our neighborhood or some other scenic spot.  I have such fond memories of those outings, which started when we were too young to ride our own bikes.  Dad built a "bicycle seat for two" child carrier for the back of his bike (I recall plywood and shag carpet remnants being primary components) so my sister and I could sit side-by-side on his bike, while our youngest sister rode in a more standard child carrier on Mom's bike.  Eventually, we were all biking under our own steam, and we'd ride for miles, us kids zooming off ahead, then waiting for Mom and Dad to catch up.  Good times, very good times.  Now, the idea of doing that with Kiddo is so much closer to being a reality, despite the stumbling blocks her SPD threw in front of her bike tires.  And this is why I am bragging about my kid riding without her training wheels.  I hope you will indulge this proud mama!  Yay, Kiddo!!!

Mostly Wordless Wednesday... reaching for the jumbo-sized ibuprofen bottle

The object: to master our newly attained wallpaper steamer to strip this -

(Isn't it hideous?!?  It was the pattern on the living room, foyer, stairway and hallway walls!)

The implements of destruction tools culprits who conspired to take me down -

(Actually, not the palm leaf.  It was merely a witness to the atrocity.  I just couldn't be bothered to move it out of the shot.)
  
The height from which I fell, while holding the scraper thingy in my right hand and the steamer thingy (the white, rectangular bit attached to the hose) in my left -

The result -

(Also banged up: my left wrist, elbow and hip and my lower back which had already been sore from yard work done earlier in the week.  Sadly, I don't have that many ice packs with cool, hands-free wraps.)

Ow.  Hubby has now promised me he'll bring the stepladder inside for me when I try to tackle the wallpaper stripping in the living room again tomorrow.

Yes, I am the Queen of grace and dexterity.  How could you tell?

A little advice (also known as I am so smart)

Say you have an iPod Touch that your kind and thoughtful, wonderful husband gave you for your 15th wedding anniversary back in January.  (Thanks again, honey!)

And say that a kind and thoughtful, wonderful friend who also owns an iPod Touch gave you a super-cool, hot pink, silicone skin for your Touch.  (Thanks again, Kristin!)

And say that your six year old owns a little, red egg full of Silly Putty that she leaves on the end table in the family room right next to your favorite spot for curling up and watching TV at night.

Sure, go right ahead, play with that Silly Putty while you're watching TV.  It's fun, after all, I mean, it's Silly Putty - go crazy, stretch it out, roll it up, flatten it on the table to make it all smooth...

Just don't.  Do.  This.

You will not wind up with a cool, funky, line-y print from the back of your iPod skin on your flattened blob of Silly Putty.  You will wind up with some sort of chemical reaction that bonds the Silly Putty to the silicone skin with a vengeance and will not come off.

Oh, and if you do decide to stick the rolled out, flattened circle of Silly Putty onto your iPod Touch skin and then spend the next forty-five minutes scraping it off molecule by molecule?  Don't decide to try to get the last blob off by resticking the Silly Putty to the spot because then you've just wasted forty-five minutes, you complete and utter idiot.

Oh yes, I am so smart.  S-M-R-T.

I'm just glad I didn't try to, say, get a print of my eyeball with my contact lenses in or something equally clever.

UPDATE: I put the skin in the freezer overnight, then scraped off what I could with a butter knife and followed that up with some rubbing alcohol on a q-tip and a warm water bath with plenty of dish soap, and voila!  Good as new!  Or, at least as good as if it hadn't had Silly Putty stuck to its back, twice.....

(And in case you're wondering, no one yet has posted *anything* on the internet about "how to remove Silly Putty from a silicone iPod skin" - yes, I managed to stump Google!  I used various methods recommended for other things to which folks have stuck Silly Putty in the past to come up with what I finally did.  Now, I suppose, any future such Google searches will come to..............me!  Hee!)

Wordless Wednesday: It's tough being a cat...

How to April Fools' prank a six year old

Kiddo has been way too excited about April Fools' Day's impending arrival this year.  She's been talking to me about it for at least a week, several times a day.  Clearly, it's been on her mind.  Last night she was giddy with glee at the thought of today finally being the day.

I decided we'd have to do something to prank her.  I've blogged before about how my own father loved a good April Fools' prank, so there is a family precedent.  After tucking her in, I came downstairs and tried to brainstorm with Hubby.  We were coming up mostly blank (I think Hubby might've been a bit less invested in the effort given that he had a 7am meeting on the schedule, so he wouldn't be around for any prank witnessing) so I turned to the trusty internet, and found in the fruits of my Googling the plan for today.

It involved a bit of prep work last night, so I set about getting stuff ready while snickering to myself around 11:00pm.  This morning, I finished my set up before Kiddo came downstairs for breakfast.  (Still snickering to myself, of course.)

See this perfectly ordinary bowl of cereal and mug of milk?

Not so ordinary, after all!
 
(*snicker snicker*)

Thanks to an idea I read online, I'd filled both the bowl and mug last night with water (colored with a few drops of half-and-half) almost to the top and frozen them.  This morning, I topped off the mug with milk and the bowl with cereal and milk, and voila.

Kiddo came galumphing down to the table, fired up her iPod (because everyone needs to hear this song and this song at 6:43 in the morning, dontcha know) and picked up her spoon.  I carefully acted nonchalant and she seemed to not be quite awake enough yet to recall the date.  I had the camera at the ready, just out of her line of vision.

APRIL FOOLS'!!

She thought it was hilarious and was so excited to have been pranked.  I took the joke bowl of cereal away and told her to start drinking her milk while I got her real breakfast out.

APRIL FOOLS' AGAIN!!

Hee hee hee!  Now I see why Dad was so into pranking on April Fools' - it's FUN!

Of course, Kiddo felt the need to retaliate.  The best she could come up with off the cuff was "Hey Mom, your shoelaces are untied!"  This, while I was standing there barefoot and still in my (new and ridiculously adorable, pink flamingo-and-palm tree) jammies.  Well played, Kiddo.  *snort*  Especially when she tried it again ten minutes later, while I was still barefoot.

I texted Hubby to let him know the pranks were a hit.  Oh yes, I am feeling pleased with myself right about now.  Not the levels of excitement I felt a year ago today, but still.

Happy April Fools' Day, y'all! 

Bitch and Moan Monday, just what I needed!

Yes, I know it isn't even 9:00 in the morning yet, but this has been one craptastic Monday so far.  Therefore, I was utterly delighted to come upon this:



over on a new blog I just discovered this past weekend.  Heck YES, I want to play along this morning!

You see, my morning actually started at 2:14, when into my dream of auditioning for The Amazing Race with my sister came a shrill and persistent, sustained beeping noise.  Eventually, my dream self realized that no, in fact my sister and I weren't going to be meeting Phil Keoghan and his raised eyebrow after all, because that noise wasn't coming from my dream.  I halfway woke up and pondered.  It was hard to tell if the noise was real or just some sort of freaky, tinnitis-like sound I was only hearing in my head.  I lifted my head off the pillow to listen with both ears.  Hmmmmm, now it not only seemed to be a real noise, but it was sounding an awful lot like an alarm going off somewhere in the house.  Smoke detector?  Carbon monoxide detector?  Crap.


I hopped out of bed tout de suite, fumbling for my glasses in the dark, and made my way downstairs where the cat greeted me in a state of mild but clear distress.  Okay, at least that means there were two of us hearing this ungodly sound.  I looked at the CO detector - nope, that wasn't it.  I flung open the basement door and instantly the shrieking beep dramatically increased in volume.  Not seeing any smoke, I quickly determined that the sound was coming from the sump pump alarm and that the sump pump had stopped running.  (For the record, we've had the basement flood three times since the beginning of January due to sump pump failure.  I should also mention we have a brand-new sump pump now, as well.)  Crappity crap.  I dashed back upstairs and woke Hubby up.  Hubby, who has always been the much lighter sleeper of the two of us, who wakes up with a start if a fly lands on the ceiling or a dust bunny moves on the floor, was sleeping soundly away, totally oblivious.  As soon as I whispered "Dude.  That's the sump pump alarm going off!" he was out of bed and racing for the basement in a flash.  I followed him back downstairs to see what level of an emergency this was going to be.


Turns out there was a small piece of plastic that looked like the cap off a container of caulk that had found its way into the well and jammed itself into the machinery in such a way as to prevent the pump from starting when it should've.  Given that it had been raining pretty steadily for the past several hours, the well was on the verge of spilling over, hence the alarm.  (I'm not sure exactly how long the alarm had been sounding before I became conscious of it.)  Hubby extracted the piece of plastic, the pump started up, the water level began draining and the alarm shut off with a very horrific, dying SQUEEEEEEAAAWWWWWWWL sound.  Crisis averted.  We headed back upstairs to bed, leaving the still a bit freaked out crazy cat in the family room.  (Okay, I get that the noise was probably extremely upsetting to her - it was upsetting to me and my hearing is nowhere near that of a cat's.  However, this is the same creature that hears secret messages from the Cat Home Planet whenever we use the DVD player, so, you know, her reaction to any noise is automatically suspect.)


By 2:19, I was back in bed.  Wide awake.


I checked the clock again.  Yeeha, it was 2:31.


2:48.


3:12.


3:43.


4:07.  Dagnabit, why am I still awake?  SHUT THE HECK OFF ALREADY, BRAIN!


Of course, I know darn well why I couldn't fall back asleep.  Besides the fright factor and subsequent adrenaline rush of "AN ALARM IS GOING OFF SOMEWHERE IN THE HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT EEEEEEEK!" that had rendered me fully awake, I had lots of things to think about.  Things like Kiddo's upcoming CSE annual review, for which we have a team pre-meeting today.  You know, those things that like to keep one up in the wee, small hours of the morning.  Bleargh.


4:36 and I thought about giving up and getting up, but eventually, finally I drifted back off to sleep.  It was a brutal awakening when Kiddo's alarm went off two hours later.  I rolled over and felt the pounding behind my eyes. Splendid.


I had just made my way to the kitchen, where the Excedrin Migraine lives in the cabinet above the sink, when I heard the dulcet tones of my beloved daughter freaking the heck out.  For reasons unknown to anyone but her, she'd decided to wander down into the family room without turning on any lights.  The family room which was pretty much still pitch black, as the sun wasn't up yet and the shades were drawn anyhow.  As she made her way through the darkened room, she stepped in something cold, wet and slimy.


Yep, you guessed it.  Cat hairball, with a chaser of what once was dry cat food, now mostly digested, for good measure.


Now, you would think that as long as it wasn't you who had trod upon cat barf in naught but a pair of fuzzy slipper socks, life would be good.  However, when it is your child who steps in the cat barf and then promptly flips out and begins screaming and hopping around, managing to grind said cat barf further into the carpet and spread it around in the process?  Actually, that's much, much worse.


So there I was at ten to seven this morning, skull feeling two sizes too small and eyes feeling like they were about to burst right out of their sockets, kid shrieking and ewwwwwwing and hovering over my shoulder to witness the scene as I used the last, few paper towels on the roll from the laundry room to clean up cold, wet, ground-in cat barf.  (Apparently the cat was more upset by the alarm than I'd realized...)


And speaking of the last, few paper towels on the roll, it turns out that every kind of paper product that comes in roll form had decided to run out simultaneously this morning.  I kid you not: when I got up to pee at 3:12am, voila, two measly squares of TP left on the roll in the master bathroom.  When I went into Kiddo's bathroom to grab some Advil at 3:43, I discovered another empty roll.  After using the last of the paper towels in the laundry room for Operation Barf Removal, I went up to the kitchen to wash my hands......... and discovered the paper towel dispenser next to the kitchen sink was devoid of Select-a-Size Bounty as well.


Cheese on toast, man!  This Monday is definitely a contender for King of the Craptastic.


And it's cold.  And it's raining.  And it's freaking MONDAY.  And I have to go grocery shopping in the cold and rain this morning.  And we have that IEP meeting I was up stressing out about this afternoon.  And Kiddo has her swimming lesson after school today.  And it's freaking MONDAY.


Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!


I totally want to run away to the Seychelles after watching last night's episode of The Amazing Race.  I'm fairly certain those ginormous tortoises that live there do not barf up hairballs... of course with my craptastic luck, I'd probably arrive just in time for a monsoon.

The itsy-bitsy freak out

The other day, I had just finished my morning ablutions and had stepped in front of the mirror to comb my hair when I suddenly felt the sensation of a spider crawling across my foot.  You know how you get that sensation sometimes?  Like a bug or something small crawling across your skin?  Well, I looked down, as you would in such a case, fully expecting to either see (a) nothing or (b) an abandoned hair - either from my own head or perhaps the cat - that had fallen onto my foot and was giving me that ticklish sensation.

Horrifyingly, what I saw was in fact option (c) - an actual spider running across my bare foot.  Well, running is too speedy a term.  What he was doing was more of a mosey or an amble as he certainly was feeling no urgency in crossing the terrain.  I promptly did what any human being in her right mind would do.  I freaked the heck out.  I began vigorously shaking my foot while hopping up and down on my other leg in an attempt to fling the spider off of me, all the while shrieking like an extra in a B horror movie.  The spider, far from being dissuaded in his attempt to stay on my skin, decided that rather than hopping off the crazy, damp, shrieking, jiggling, madly leaping about the (very small) master bathroom chick, he'd head due north right up my leg.  All my evasive actions succeeded in doing was getting him to pick up his pace from a mosey to a sprint.

Fortunately for me, I did not drop into a dead faint at the sight of this ferocious beast coming straight for my throat as fast as his eight hairy legs could carry him.  I somehow managed to keep presence of mind enough to grab a wad of toilet paper (while still screaming a bit and jumping around, I confess) and execute a combination swipe-squish maneuver that removed him both from my thigh and this world.

Now, I have a strict No Squishing policy when it comes to creepy-crawlies.  Not to say I'm one of those insane do-gooders who gently scoop any and all such home invaders into a cup and set them free back in the great outdoors, because if it isn't a ladybug, butterfly or cricket, that's pretty much not happening.  Nope, if I see a spider, beetle or any other EW EW ICK LOOK AT THAT HORRIBLE THING type creature inside my house, I'm all for killing it.  I just can't kill it in a way that will leave a smear or worse behind.  Just the thought of that makes me a little queasy.  This must be related to my innate dread and hatred for pumpkin guts, but I have never wanted to dwell on the topic long enough to work it out.

Anyhow, my preferred method of killing things that go BOO! in my bathroom is to render them immobile by whatever means are handy and then picking up the paralyzed and/or dead creepy-crawlie and disposing of it in either the garbage can or toilet.  (This is my preferred method for the rest of the house, too, actually.)  If I'm in the bathroom, hairspray usually is the weapon of choice, and if I'm not near a can of something or if I'm in a room with carpeting, I'll opt to Dustbuster the critter into the next world.  (Okay, my most preferred method is to call Hubby and get him to eradicate the creepy-crawlie, but Hubby is gone for pretty much the whole day so I have to have a back-up method handy for those times when it's just me and the bugs.)

The other morning, though, with Certain Death lunging ever closer to my jugular (he had FANGS, I'm telling you.  FANGS and an evil and bloodthirsty gleam in his beady eyes), I didn't have time to run into Kiddo's bathroom and retrieve my hairspray, so I had to squish the horrible creature with my bare hands.  Well, my bare hands and a wad of toilet paper about three inches thick.  Terror overrode my gag reflex as I crumpled the TP for all I was worth, suddenly finding Hulk-like strength in my hand, and then I promptly dropped the corpse in his Charmin shroud into the bowl and sent him to his watery grave.  And then I waited for the tank to refill and flushed again.  And again.  Just to be sure, you know.

*shudder*

Sorry Charlotte, but unless you can write out George Clooney's cell phone number in a web on my bathroom mirror, you and all your brethren are destined to meet the same fate should you dare enter this coward's domain.  So do me a favor and spread the word to all your creepy-crawlie pals, okay?

Mostly Wordless Wednesday... signs of Spring

The first (and only, thus far) bloom of the season!

Robins! (And cardinals, and sparrows, and lots and lots of other birdies, too!
Also, many squirrels and chipmunks frolicking about, driving our crazy cat even crazier...)

Sidewalk, chalked!

(A far more appealing sight to see than the hundreds and hundreds of worms that covered our walkway and driveway this morning, that slowly died and dried into shrively, crispy lines as the sun rose higher in the sky...)

I'm choosing to ignore the evil and gloomy weatherpersons who love to keep reminding us that we usually get snow "well into April" around here.  I'm also choosing to ignore the freezing cold mornings and the ridiculously low highs in our 10 day forecast.  I am choosing to believe that Spring, finally, has sprung!!

Hello Spring,

Goodbye Wintr!

The next Al Roker?

Kiddo's first grade class has been doing a unit on weather this month.  As part of this unit, they've been reading lots and lots of weather related books.  Hubby and I now know way more about clouds and lightning than we ever cared to, thanks to the homework reading assignments of late.

Today in Kiddo's homework folder, along with the weather book du jour, came a worksheet she's apparently been filling out at school.  It's a sheet of Weather Facts and the kids have to fill in one weather fact for each of the various books they've read.

Here is all the essential weather knowledge Kiddo has gleaned from this unit thus far (there is one more book yet to be read entitled Gusts and Gales: A Book About Wind):

• Whiteouts are dangris.
• During a thundrstorm you should stay indoors for suport.
• Clouds can have shaps and sizes.
• If there is to much rain it will make a flud.
• Hurricanes are dangris.
• There are about 800 tornados in the U.S.A.
• A snowflake is at lest made out of two crystals.
• Litning is dangris.

I'm guessing that based on the facts above, the last blank spot will be filled in with something scintillating like "A lot of wind is called a gust." or "Gales are dangris."  Perhaps she's not the next Al Roker after all...