Window markers and misc. stuff

This is what those really cool Crayola Window Markers looks like. Those dots you see are beetles, the ones that appear suddenly in huge numbers each fall in the Midwest. I heard that they are released each year and that they have some purpose but I don't recall what it is, this isn't an informational blog so your on your own if you want to know more. They look like orange ladybugs and I vacuum them up daily because they actually get inside the house yuck. If you smash them they stink.This is what regular Crayons look like on the windows. It was an honest mistake so I didn't freak out about it. Piper saw us drawing on the windows with the markers so she thought she'd try it too. This was last week and I'm really behind on my blog, sorry.

This is a picture of Ava's plate. She was sitting there lining up each noodle so that they were side by side. She does things like this a lot, I was thinking she might have OCD but when I looked at the picture it bothered me that the corn was not together so maybe I am the one with issues!

The chair game

The Chair Game. Directions: 1) Wait until supervising adult is cooking breakfast and is completely distracted because there is no pancake mix and she has to make them from scratch. Chant "cakies-cakies!" for at least 5 minutes prior to this so that there is no way she will try to serve oatmeal or eggs.

2) Flip up headrest of leather chair to reveal the zipper, unzip and proceed to pull out as much cotton candy as you can before supervising adult catches on to the game.

3) Flash the puppy dog eyes and big smiles when adult notices and pretend to play sweetly with the cotton candy by filling shopping cart and play cookware with it, only throw it wildly when adult is not looking.

4) Use teamwork to replace the cotton candy inside the chair or you won't get your "cakies".

A Princess, A Unicorn, A LoveBug and Spiderman

Pictures of our Halloween adventure. It was our first time taking the triplets out without a stroller and they did great! Piper really enjoyed the candy and they all loved digging into the bags and dumping them to inspect all the treats. We spilled Nerds on Aunt Paula's carpet while visiting and we played with Grandma's kitten that she adopted from us. A big Thank you to Delaney C. for the Princess costume and to Josie R. for the Unicorn!

Our Marine is on his way back to North Carolina today, we had a nice visit but since he was on RA (Recruiter's Assistance) he wasn't really home that much. Of course he had Halloween parties to go to and friends to visit with too. We will get to see him at Christmas and since he will be on leave during that time he'll be home more :) I am starting to work on Christmas dresses and presents but with 2 early outs this week for the boys I don't know how much I will get done. Maybe If I decided what kind of dress I was making it would help. I will start the pettiskirts though and go from there.

Does this look like a potty to you?

Does this look like a potty to you?

How about now, with the lid up?

I guess Ava thinks it does look like a potty because she totally peed in it today! I was changing them all before nap time and I guess she couldn't wait for me to open the bathroom door or something. I noticed she had something wet on her leg and I asked her where she peed at. She smiled and lifted the lid on the turtle. Oh, well at least it wasn't on the floor. And at least it wasn't poop.

By the way that is a Radio Flyer Turtle. I love it and I wish they made them in adult size. It has casters on it like an office chair, ya know the wheels turn all around so you can fly around all over and spin. Logan goes like a maniac on it all around the living room and up and down the hallway on the wood floors. I remember the riding toys we had as kids where the wheels didn't even turn, you ride up into a corner or something and had to stand up and carry it between your legs.

Kolcraft is a Wonderful Company!

Here is a copy of a letter I emailed to the Customer Service Department of Kolcraft Enterprises Inc. about one of our baby bed mattresses:

Hi,
I am wondering if there is anything you can do to help me. We have 3 baby mattresses made by your company. The oldest one was made in 2004, purchased for our now 5 year old and is still going strong for one of our triplets. Another was made in 2008 and is in perfect condition. The last one is where we have a problem. It has no tag on it so I don't know when it was made it was given to us in great condition, but it has ripped and torn to the point where one side has no vinyl left on it (or whatever that material is). The baby who sleeps in that bed feels the tears and now has begun to pull up the sheet and pick at the inside stuffing material.

We have used duct tape on some of the rips but it's beyond repair now. First I would like to know what the content of the "insides" is, it's fluffy like cotton candy, it sticks to everything. Is it safe for babies to touch?? Is there any way to repair it or would this be covered under any warranty? Having triplets and a 5 yr old makes for a tight budget so we are not able to just go out and purchase a new mattress. Do you make a mattress replacement cover? Anything? Can you give me any suggestions?

I have included some pictures of the mattress to see if you could help us figure out how old it is or if it's under warranty. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Amy

I received an email from an awesome lady named Lynn and she asked for a number and told me where it was located on the sticker. By the end of the week she told me to tear off the sticker and mail it to her, she would put in an order to replace the mattress! Well it's had been so crazy/busy around here watching my oldest son go off to boot camp and losing my mind and then going out to California and all that business I kinda forgot all about it. I found the papers last weekend when I cleaned the desk and Gary put the stamp on it and mailed it off. I honestly thought it had been too long (since the end of April) and that they might say forget it. But today the UPS guy came and brought a brand new mattress! You can buy one here http://www.sears.com/shc/s/ProductDisplay?partNumber=04988521000P&storeId=10153&sName=All&psid=FROOGLE01&vName=Gifts&cName=Baby&catalogId=12605&sid=IDx20070921x00003a

I'm really happy about it too because yesterday the girls were watching me change the sheets and thought they'd try it at nap time (they ripped off the sheets) so it will be nice to get that old fuzzy thing out of there for Piper. This picture of the old one looks really bad, Piper had really destroyed it more in the last few months. I swear when we started using it it looked decent, it just had a couple little tears in it. I was praying that they would send me a mattress cover/pad, like the kind the whole thing slides into and you zip it up. That was all I was hoping for and I just want to show everybody that there really are some great companies out there that really do care. Most Sealy/Kolcraft mattresses have a 10 year warranty and I know that the old one wasn't that old. ** Just a note for safety: The firmness of the mattress was never compromised or we would have immediately taken it out of the bed. Please remember that firm mattresses are safer for babies to sleep on and always put your baby to sleep on their back.

The Golden Tooth??

I was talking to Logan this morning while brushing his teeth. He is 5 years old so he does brush on his own but when we are in a hurry like this morning for school I always brush for him to hurry the process along. When the girls brush it takes almost 10 minutes of brushing time before I can wrangle the tooth brushes away from them and Logan is usually brushing right along with them. I don't mind most of the time because it helps to erase some of the guilt that I have for ruining Logan's teeth. What kind of horrible mother would ruin her child's teeth you ask? Not Supermom, that's who. He had what most people call "bottle rot" on his front teeth. He never took a bottle-ever. None of my kids ever had a bottle past 12 months in fact. Logan nursed until he was 22 months and no that didn't cause it either silly. Somehow he got started taking a sippy cup to bed. It wasn't every night at first and I really think it had a lot to do with the fact that we had a 4 year old foster son at the time that routinely had screaming fits for up to 2 hours at a time, even at bedtime. He shared a room with Logan, yea. This child took a LOT of my time and energy and it was right at the time when I weaned Logan. Enter major "mommy guilt". By the time I realized it had became a habit it was too late, he was completely addicted. We tried switching to water and all the tricks and nothing worked. I cannot believe how fast it happened either, he got a black spot right between his 2 front teeth! The dentist used a grinder and ground away the black spot so now his 2 front teeth are shorter. I bet everybody up until now thought it was just natural but no it isn't. I can't wait for the day when his baby teeth come out and he can have some new shiny pearly whites! Which brings me to the conversation we had this morning. i was telling him about the Tooth Fairy Pillow that I will be making for him and we discussed the procedure of hanging it on the doorknob outside his room so she wouldn't have to wake him when she exchanges the tooth for money. I told him he would have to do a great job brushing those "new" teeth because they are going to have to last forever. Logan looked at me and said "yea, and they will be GOLD!" Um, what? "No, they will be white." "But xxxx's new tooth is gold." he said with a look of disappointment. Ok so some kid in his class got a new gold tooth. Why I'm not sure but I'm going to let myself think that the kid had bottle rot, it just makes me feel better. Here is a link to a site that has a FREE pattern for a Ballerina tooth fairy pillow as well as a monster one if you look around. http://mmmcrafts.blogspot.com/2009/02/tooth-pillow-revisited.html

The triplets are restless today. We all have colds and are not feeling the greatest. I think we will head downstairs to the playroom after they eat their pancakes. The playroom isn't quite ready yet but they will still have fun and I can do some laundry and watch them at the same time, that's the idea behind the basement playroom. Hey do you hate giving pancakes with syrup to your kids? I used to, I hated the sticky mess and they always needed a bath when they were done, especially with girls because they get it in their hair somehow. I started making pancakes and putting about a Tablespoon of powdered sugar on top of them instead of syrup and it's great. No mess, so they can eat them at the little table instead of the highchairs and they love them. By now you all know to cut up everything for kids with your pizza cutter right? Oh yea, they taste like funnel cakes and have half the calories of regular maple syrup and less carbs too so they are good for mommies and daddies too. I just use a store brand complete mix that you add water to and I find it's faster than scrambled eggs and you can add fresh fruit right into the batter if you want to. We like blueberry, strawberry and apple pancakes. If you add the fruit you don't need the powdered sugar. Pancakes are also a great place to hide some Flax oil. I'm not always super health conscious, sometimes I like to make some fresh whipped cream to add to the top of our pancakes-yet another reason to get a cow lol.

This is Logan last week, right as he got off the school bus. Evidently he got to pick a prize from the prize box. I opened the door and this is what I saw!

Dora Upcycle, Skirt and Organization Issues

First is the Dora jacket remake before and afters. The skirt has no elastic yet because I can't decide who will wear it yet. It only takes a couple minutes to string some elastic in there so I will do it at the last minute I'm sure. Now all we need is some brown boots to complete the outfit. The little jacket was too short for anybody so adding the ruffle made it about an 1 1/2 inches longer. The top of the skirt is a light denim fabric that came from a pair of my old fat pants, I still have fat pants...they are just smaller. Then I added a couple of ruffles to match the jacket. I thought about going with tans and browns but the brown fabric I had on hand looked too old lady-ish so I took it in another direction. I had the lavender Dora fabric anyway. Oh, if you saw the guitar tee from yesterday's post it was just a black tee that was too short for Logan and I added a couple inches of red and blue striped tee shirt knit on the bottom.

So here is what's frustrating me today,any ideas are welcome and can be left in the comments section following this post. I have a whole storage tote filled with photographs from before we had our digital camera, school pictures and some are even my baby pictures. I don't know what to do with them. They are not organized or sorted in any fashion and it makes me crazy. I seriously cannot afford to go out and by 100 photo albums. I bought 2 and nobody (including me) wants to sort and put them in. I tried scanning a bunch to the computer so I could put them on a disc, it took half a day to scan a small pile of them! Besides the fact that I have so many pictures on my laptop that it's bogging down already and I need to clear them out and put those onto a disc too. I attempted to do it last week and I had too many pictures to fit on one disc so with my short attention span I ended up not continuing and now I have lost the blank discs in some clutter, hey don't judge. I have 8 people living in a 3 bedroom 1 bathroom house, you'd have clutter too.

My other frustration at the moment is that the basement is so filled with...well...garage sale stuff and stuff for storage. I wanted to clean it out and make a childproof area so the girls can come down with me and Levi's unfinished room is going to be converted to a sewing/craft room so that we can have our dining room back. We haven't had a table to eat on since the girls babies. The dining room table can come back upstairs and I can set up 2 long tables in the "new" sewing room for cutting out patterns etc...The basement currently has 2 unfinished rooms and an unfinished bathroom. When Austin moved out of his corner of the basement, Levi decided to drag all his stuff over there and take over. I finally got him to clear out the room he had been sleeping in so I need to start cleaning and moving down there. I'm keeping the bed in that room so that when Austin comes back to visit he has a place to sleep. "so I get to sleep in the sweatshop?" he asked. Yes. I hope that this weekend I get a chance to get down there and make some headway because there are so many other things to get done and this is the biggest obstacle in my plan to get organized. The picture of me with shelves of sewing stuff behind me is actually in our dining room and there is a full size dresser in there with girls clothes in it too! Aaahh the madness!