jennanddave.com

...in three days:

Wednesday: Holly, well-baby checkup, healthy!
Thursday: Henry, bronchitis, ear infection!
Friday: Jenn, sinus infection!

Meanwhile, Dave remains healthy...

Posted by Jenn at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Last night I went ahead and made two more journals.

Subtle, aren't they?

While I was making the journals, we also cleaned the couch cushion covers (Better living through alliteration! Literally!) and hauled out the living room rug. I was sneezing throughout the entire process, so I'm pretty sure we're in much better shape now. Yesterday morning I took the vacuum upstairs and cleaned my little heart out up there. Hopefully Henry will show some signs of improvement.

On the ukulele front, I've been teaching myself two new songs. One is "Yellow Bird", the other is "Beyond the Sea". This uke version of "Beyond the Sea" is really good and very sweet. Something to aspire to. Here are The Mills Brothers singing "Yellow Bird". No ukes, but it's so good, I couldn't not link to it.

Holly had her nine month checkup this morning. She's beautifully, spectacularly average: 50th percentile straight across the board. A big difference from Henry whose stats were always either 90th percentile or ^95th percentile. Naturally she charmed everyone because she's just so charming with all of the charm she's got going on. Nary a tear was shed, not even for the dreaded ear exam, which she hated last time, and which Henry hates all the time. What's up with that anyway? It doesn't hurt. I don't get it. Kids, man.

Henry's going to a birthday party on Friday evening. We have to come up with his own superhero costume. He wants to be a whale. Whale Boy it is. But what are his superpowers? And what could his costume be besides this? A cape? With sea animals on it? I'm at a bit of a loss.

This is Henry's last full week of school. A summer full of vacations and summer camps stretches out before us...

Posted by Jenn at 01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One of my very motivated, creative, and selfless friends has been busy enlisting people to help out with the Write It Out Project whose purpose is to supply handmade journals to those who have lost their spouses to war. I read about the project last Thursday morning but decided I couldn't participate because I didn't think I'd have time. The goal is to send the journals in by May 31st, but we're leaving town on the 22nd and we have a huge laundry list of things to get done before then. I thought that adding a sewing project on top of it all would be adding a lot of stress, considering my general lack of comfort sitting behind a sewing machine. About an hour later, I saw my friend at playgroup and after talking about it I told her I'd do one. Yesterday I picked up some supplies, and today I got to work.

Supplies!

It took me a while, partly because I'm a slow sewer, and also partly because of all of the usual day-to-day stuff that goes on around here. I did it though!

Now that I've done one, others would go much quicker. I'm tempted to head back to the store for more supplies for a few more journals. It would be a nice way to pass the evening after the kids are in bed.

Posted by Jenn at 03:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Since February I've been dancing around a sneaking suspicion that Henry has allergies. I myself am allergic to, among other things, dust, specifically three different kinds per the skin test I endured many moons ago, so I'm not only familiar with the tell-tale signs, but I also have major sympathy for him. I, too, give the allergy salute. I, too, have constant post-nasal drip. I, too, have itchy, watery eyes. The one thing I have that he probably doesn't have yet are big purple polyps in my nose, the kind which make every doctor who dares peer up my nostrils actually pause and say "Wow. Look at that!"

His symptoms have become worse the last week or so until finally last night I decided to declare an all out war. The problem with old houses is they make dust at a break-neck pace. It's also worse upstairs in the former attic area. Add to that the fact that the only time I'm able to really get anything done around the house is when Holly is napping, means I really don't clean his (or her) room as often as I should because I don't want to wake up the young lady. Nonetheless, I've come up with a battle plan:

1. I cranked up the thermostat on our water heater and have been washing Henry's pillows, sheets, blankets, and comforter in extra hot water to kill off the dust mites.
2. Our chest freezer is currently housing a couple of Henry's favorite stuffed animals in order to freeze and kill off the dust mites.
3. I picked up some anti-allergen pillow covers at the store today. I think the mattress wrap we picked up for Henry when we were potty training him is the same company as the pillow covers, because I remember thinking "Why not just get the allergen-free one since it's also water-proof, just to be on the safe side?"
4. I'll be calling someone in to have our ducts cleaned again. We did it a few years ago, it's probably time.
5. There's a spray you can get for items, such as curtains, you're not able to wash as frequently as you would like.
6. New filters for our heat pump.
7. Air purifier for upstairs and one for downstairs.
8. Get rid of living room rug, which is impossible to really get clean without using a product that has hazardous substances (aka "bu#llsh!t cr@p" depending on your personal preference), in favor of bare wood floor.

I feel like Henry's symptoms get worse when he climbs into bed at night. Hopefully all of these things will help give him some relief.

Posted by Jenn at 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

True story: Mucinex ads make me a little queasy. Animated mucus = ick.

So. Every once in a while I get completely sick of picking up everyone's clothes and putting them in the laundry basket, washing the same dishes, picking up the same toys, cleaning off the same counters/tables, day in and day out. When that happens, for a few blissful days I park myself on the couch and completely indulge in doing whatever it is I want to do, regardless of the rapidly deteriorating condition of the house. Then one morning I'll get out of bed, look around with mild disgust, and then I'll spend the next few hours tidying up. Once everything's back to where it should be, I'll spend my days picking up everyone's dirty laundry, washing the same dishes, picking up the same toys, cleaning off the same counters/tables, day in and day out, until I get completely sick of it again.

Right now I'm in the throes of spending my evenings on the couch, alternately knitting, reading, and obsessing over a couple of new songs on the ukulele. The house is in a bit of a state. As of right now, I don't care.

Posted by Jenn at 08:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Dave got me a Topsy-Turvy for Mother's Day. When I unwrapped it, Henry was thrilled. He immediately asked me to pull it out of the box, and when I did, he unfolded it and peered inside, then he looked in the box, then he asked "Where are the tomato slicers that are supposed to come with it?" It was very funny. It also reminded me of the Bloom County strips that featured Opus buying all sorts of useless junk after watching hours of late-night infomercials.

Posted by Jenn at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So. I was just read the riot act by Dave, who is a chemist. Apparently, chemists get grumpy when you treat the word "chemicals" like it's a four letter word, which I admit, is what I pretty much did in my last post. Every naturally occurring thing is a chemical, and just as we can't say every naturally occurring thing is good for you, we can't say every chemical is bad for you. Arsenic is a chemical that's not particularly good for people. Water is a chemical substance which happens to be very good for you. Oil is a chemical substance which you may consider to be very bad or very good for you. In the interest of avoiding poking the sleeping bear again, I'm going to have to come up with a better way of saying "de-chemicalizing". Any suggestions?

Posted by Jenn at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Back in February, when I mentioned to a friend of mine that I was trying to clean up our diet by reducing the amount of processed foods we eat, she said she was attempting to do the same thing with her beauty products. At the time, I was so consumed with de-chemicaling what we were putting in our bodies, that it never occurred to me to think about what we were putting on them. Megan specifically mentioned shampoo, which often contains sodium laureth sulfate and sodium lauryl sulfate, both of which are surfactants and while not carcinogenic in small amounts, such as what are found in shampoos, they are known to be irritants. I started to think that while each individual product I use is not necessarily harmful, the compounded amounts and possible side-effects of what my body is absorbing while using all of them at once was probably not the best. I did a little research online and found a large number of people were forgoing shampoo altogether in favor of baking soda and apple cider vinegar rinses. So that's what I started to do.

Initially, I was dissolving one tablespoon of baking soda in one cup of water, and rinsing my hair with it. I would then follow up with 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar diluted in 3/4 cup of water, which is supposed to smooth out your hair's cuticles, thus making it shiny. It also makes your hair smell like salad, but only until it dries. (Or gets wet again. I was caught in a rain shower once and noticed my hair smelled again when it got wet.) Over the past three months, I've fine-tuned the process to something that works for me. I wash my hair with a small amount of regular shampoo (so small it doesn't even foam) just to get the excess oil off of the length of my hair. I don't wash it the next day. The third day I put a couple of tablespoons of baking soda in my hand, add enough water from the shower to make a paste, then I rub that onto my roots. I rinse it and follow up with a little bit of hair conditioner. The fourth day I don't wash it. The fifth day I do the baking soda paste/conditioner again, then on the sixth or seventh day, I use a small amount of shampoo, and start the cycle all over. Back in February when I first started using baking soda, I had about 1/4 of a bottle of shampoo. A month and a half later, I still had about 1/4 of a bottle of shampoo. Around that time I added water to it to stretch it out, and even now I have a lot of it left. If I had carried on with my usual shampoo habits, by now I would have already used up two or three bottles. It's definitely saving money and plastic, as well as all of the resources that go into making the shampoo and the bottles, but it's also not putting a lot of unnecessary chemicals into my system or into the environment.

Speaking to my vanity, I actually like my hair more the further into the cycle I am because it's easier to manage and actually has body. As my scalp's natural oil production continues to regulate itself, I'm hoping I'll be able to longer and longer between shampoos.

Posted by Jenn at 02:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last week Wednesday I was still trying to kick this insidious cold I managed to pick up from who knows where, and by the time Henry was happily crafting at pre-school and Holly was a-snooze in her crib, I climbed into my own bed and tried to catch a few z's myself. I have a hard time napping in the afternoon because my brain tends to run amok for the thirty or forty minutes I stay horizontal, until finally I just give up. There I was laying in bed when suddenly it occurred to me that I had completely forgotten to nurse Holly at lunchtime. Our general schedule is: Holly wakes up in the morning, I nurse her, we have breakfast, she takes a nap, she wakes up, I nurse her, we have lunch,she takes a nap, I nurse her, a few hours later we have dinner, I nurse her, she goes to bed for the night. Mondays and Wednesdays are a bit nuts because Henry goes to preschool in the morning, we have an hour for lunch, then he's off to his afternoon school, so on the one hand it's not surprising that nursing her before lunch fell through the cracks, especially since I usually do it before we pick Henry up. However since her nap went long, I grabbed her and ran out the door to pick up Henry, ran home, set us all up with lunch, then ran Henry off to pre-school.

Yesterday I went and did it again, except I have no excuse this time. There wasn't anything exciting going on, no dashing around town, just the three of us kicking around the house, and when it was finally time for lunch and Holly was devouring apples and blueberries at an alarming rate, I recall wondering about how hungry she seemed. Just before it was time to put her down for her nap, I realized what had happened.

Lest you think this is somehow indicative of how everything else has been going around here lately, let me assure you: it absolutely is.

Posted by Jenn at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Last week, as the weekend loomed larger on the horizon, I became more and more antsy. On Wednesday I said to Henry "Wouldn't it be great if we could go to Virginia and visit your Grandparents this weekend?" He agreed wholeheartedly. On Thursday morning, just as real panic was about to set in, I whispered in Henry's ear to go tell his daddy that he wanted to go to Virginia. So he did. Dave said "Okay!". Angels started singing. Dave said he'd email his dad to see if it was a good weekend, but I said it might be best to call since we'd be leaving in just over 24 hours. Fortunately it was a good weekend for them as well.

On Saturday one of the neighboring towns held a parade that Dave's mom marches in every year. Dave marched too, as did Henry, who banged away on his drum. The parade ended at a field where there was food, live bands, and animals. We had lunch, stared at some goats, then headed back home where Holly and Dave's mom took naps while the rest of us headed out in search of fresh strawberry milkshakes. Henry initially didn't want to go, but once we were there, insisted we go out to the fields and pick strawberries. We came home laden with goodies, including pie and wine. After a quick regrouping, we headed to Charlottesville for a tour of the University of Virginia, which I hadn't ever really seen, aside from a parking garage and the bookstore. It's a beautiful campus. I temporarily felt sorry for myself and the relatively unattractive colleges I attended while pursuing higher education, but then again, I did enjoy making a big mess while downing crawfish boils at UNO, so there's always a silver lining. It turned out Robert Randolph and the Family Band were playing a gig at the amphitheater on campus, but at that point Henry was pretty much ready to call it a day so we picked up some Thai food for dinner, and headed home for the night. Looking back, I can't believe we crammed so much into one day, especially since we weren't rushing around trying to fit it all in, the activities just sort of flowed into each other. It was perfect.

Yesterday Henry got in some quality time with the garden hose, something he's been asking to do since February. He was unable to resist the urge to spray his dad and sister, although I'm impressed with how long he held out before finally giving in to it. Dave apparently informed Holly she should probably get used to it.

On the way down to Virginia, we passed a truck that was transporting horses. I asked Dave if the Kentucky Derby was this weekend. Then I wondered aloud about how long it would take to get there. Dave loudly and vehemently declared we would not be going anywhere for the next two weekends. Lame.

Posted by Jenn at 01:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)