DragonBlog

Food For Thought...

Just a quick post to drop this link to an interesting little video:

http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/

One of the moms on my moms' forums found that one and posted it there. I thought it was worth sharing.

P.S. - HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Current Mood: busy

Bats and Spiders and ... well, more Bats, actually... Oh MY!

I stepped up to be the "craft mom". Well, someone had to do it. I have two Halloween parties to take the kids to tomorrow and since I was already bringing food to the afternoon/evening party, I said I'd bring crafts to the morning one.

heh. heheheheh.

*rolls over in fits of maniacal laughter*

So...

Now that I've spent the day cutting more than EIGHTY bats out of construction paper to make darn sure I've got enough of them for the TWO different "bat crafts" I have lined up... I nearly got a blister on my fingers from the scissors, I swear! But we have BATS. Oh yes. And spiders. Or, rather, pipe cleaners and buttons with which we will make spider rings!

Jareth and I have each already made one of each craft. He LOVES his spider the best. It doesn't skitter though. It spiders around places. He holds it up, making it walk around on things, saying "spider, spider, spider..." for the sound effect.

heehee!

One of the bats has a clothspin on back so it can hang onto stuff. The other one has holes for kids' fingers to come through. I'm hoping they go over well. And, I've managed to avoid the dangerous mix of paint with kids' Halloween costumes. Not glue, mind you, but at least no paint. Paint could be baaaaaaaad for Halloween costumes, even if it was washable. Because kids... well, are kids. Messy. Yup.

So still no pictures up here for y'all. Sorry. At least the blues from the other day are somewhat better now. For one, Brian finally got news about his job hunt! Pop on over to his blog for more details on that. For two, I moved back to the allergy meds I normally take. I'd been stupid enough to give Claritin a second chance. Tried for a whole day and a half before I had to bail and load myself up with extra meds to come back from it. I wanted to roll myself up into a little ball and cry. Actually, I did do that. A couple of times. T'was not good.

But soon there will be Brian's new job. And then, will come benefits. Which means INSURANCE! *gasp, sob, sigh*

Guess who's gonna go see a doctor?

Okay, I mean AFTER I get the visits for the pediatric allergist in first... lol.

Why is it I feel like I build up these medical problems so that whenever there is insurance I go into the doctor with a shopping list of things I want remedied?

In other news, I think Lissakatt may have had her baby. In another blog she keeps, chronicling her pregnancy, she mentions her water breaking and prepping to have the baby (she's been planning a home birth). Then - nothing. Silence on that front. Another forum she posts on mentions for people NOT to call her. That was the 24th. I'm waiting in anticipation of a post. Hopefully with baby pictures! I'm SO hoping everything went well, but I'm scared to call and bug them when they have a brand new baby in the house. I remember too well how exhausted I was those first days...

That's all for now. I've got TONS of pictures to put up. And I'm sure to take more over the next couple of days. At this rate I'll have to put up a separate gallery for this month alone! We'll see.

For now, sleep. I have to be crafty in the morning!

Current Mood: creative

Not in the Mood...

I know, I promised pictures. I have blog fodder too - cute little sayings from Jareth and rants aplenty on all manner of things.

But some days... in the reality show of my life...

I feel as if I've been voted off my island.

I'm just not in a good place at the moment. We're standing at a crossroads, waiting for changes that are about to happen. Waiting to see what will be in so many things going on around us. Our lives are in this holding pattern, at the edge between hope and despair. It's stressful, and I'm busy just trying not to crack into tiny little pieces. Some days it's almost too much to face the day, knowing I've got to get up and put my smile on again.

Thankfully there's little arms with big hugs, little smiles, and little toes. And little moments where one's son explains, upon turning something over after it was upside down - "now it's upside up!"

More soon. But now... sleep.

Current Mood: tired

Pockets of Press Pause...

I am having a moment right now. I am sitting at my computer, trying to get a spot of work done between laundry loads and breastmilk feedings. I've put Kayla down on a soft, satiny blanket to play on the floor and work on those rolling and moving around skills. Jareth was playing with his own computer when I put her down.

I look over to find first - Jareth rescuing Kayla's toys from the kitties. Mimicking words I say to him sometimes - "Those are Kayla's toys, not yours. Remember? We don't take Kayla's toys..."

I stop to tell him what a good big brother he is as he shoos the cats away and makes sure Kayla can reach her toys. Pleased as punch, I return to my typing.

Next time I look over, I find Jareth laying on the floor in front of Kayla, zooming his toy camper around on the carpet in front of her as she giggles. I chuckle, and Jareth turns to tell me, very decisively - "she likes my camper. It makes her laugh."

The third time, the younger of the two cats, Cinder, is sprawled out next to Kayla, who is absolutely thrilled. She grabs a handful of the soft kitty-hair and laughs. Cinder whines, but tolerates it for a moment (I'm wincing, myself, worrying that it could go badly) before taking the opportunity to escape when Kayla lets go. Still, she doesn't flee, but wanders off with more of an "okay, that's enough for now" attitude. Kayla watches her go with big, round eyes.

Jareth's shirt has a hood on it. He thinks this is great, and has spent half the day asking me to pull it back up onto his head after it falls back or he's pulled it down. He's "Hoodie Guy" today when he's not being "a tiger."

There have been quite a few little moments like these, intermingling with all the frustrating ones as of late. I just happen to be at my computer right now, so I can capture these a little. I want to press pause on the moment so I can run up and grab my camera (which I've errantly left in my bag from when I took it with me yesterday), throw it into video mode and capture it truely. Instead, I'm dropping them down in writing. If I run upstairs it will distract them and ruin it.

Another one I've wanted to post about happened last week. We were driving in the car and Jareth kept watching the clouds. When I turned a corner, I heard him say - "...turning. The clouds are turning around! Turn, turn, turn."

A short while later, I hear - "Mommy? Are the clouds following you?"

I think about this for a moment, trying not to lose myself totally in the desire to laugh. He seems so serious about wanting to know!

"Maybe!" I answer. Nevermind that I was headed NorthWest and the clouds were heading pretty much the total opposite direction. He's having too much fun watching them, for me to disappoint.

A little while later, as we near our destination, I suddenly hear him exclaim - "Holy cow! LOTS CLOUDS!"

What runs through my mind when I think back on that moment?

Holy cow! LOTS CUTE!

Later!

Current Mood: amused

Wings will set you free!

Not much time right now, but I wanted to mention a landmark for my smallest child - she finally managed to roll over from her back onto her tummy yesterday! She'd been rolling the other way (tummy to back) for a while now, but couldn't seem to quite figure out how to get back, which was frustrating the heck out of her when she did. Yesterday I had her in her costume on a blanket on her bedroom floor, playing and she managed to do it - despite the wings on her costume! Looks like she's my kid for sure - waited to do it the hard way!

Behold - my little fairy:

More pics and post soon. I've got some cute ones of the kids together and Jareth in his costume, along with the tale of the first Halloween party I took the kids to this year.

But now I've gotta run. We've got fun stuff afoot today again, as well as groceries later and a small list of other tasks that need doing.

Later!

Current Mood: enthralled

Been Busy...

Sorry no posts lately. I've been super busy getting finished up on a web project. I've determined, in the process, that I won't necessarily be upgrading to the newest version of Movable Type anytime soon. Too many things it's not doing that there aren't the plugins for yet. And some things it's doing that I don't want it to. Like, they seem to think it's okay for their notification system to send one e-mail to me for every twenty it sends out for me. I get enough spam. Okay, well I don't actually use email notifications for this blog, but it came into play for the one I've been setting up. As it is, I've created a dump account for it to send from. But I'm using an older version of MT so that I can make use of the notifier plugin instead of the piss-poor notification setup MT has integrated. Bah.

Almost makes a girl want to go to WordPress instead. Almost. I may just have to check in on them and see if they fixed the main flaw that had prevented me from switching before - there was no way to export entries!!! There was not a simple way to back up just the blog. I had to back up the database such instead. Recovery would have involved a lot more learning of stuff I didn't really need to know. Pffft. MT, however, lets me just dump to a file for the entries that I can reload into a new installation. In the end, that's why I stayed back when I evaluated Wordpress. But that was back when MT stopped being completely free... Who knows.

Ironic that I think of looking into WP again just after I install someone with MT eh? Yeah. But one tends to work with what one knows, you know?

Yeah, I know. I'm babbling now. My brain is a bit fried from making MT, HTML, CSS, etc, all play nicely together. It's those damned end quotation marks and semicolons that get you. Or the occasional unclosed <div> that will screw everything to hell in a virtual handbasket.

But it's done. All those little divs and dots have been whipped into shape! Yay me!

More on other stuff later. Or tomorrow. Or at least soon anyway.

Current Mood: accomplished