Saturday, July 29, 2006
Styrofoam fun
She discovered styrofoam packing today. And the joy of tearing it apart, tiny bit by tiny bit. Woo hoo. Where the hell is my vacuum?

She's a quick study...
Somehow she knew it was the weekend. She made Daddy put up the tent, something which she seems to reserve for the weekends (thankfully). She even made me get in it this time. It's hot in there.

FYI, she was still dealing with the fever yesterday, intermittently. The worst we saw was 101.5, but Tylenol or Motrin usually takes care of it. I thought about taking her to the doc's yesterday afternoon, but when I called Mary's the report was that she was just fine and playing with the other kids. So...no doc. She seems OK today. She woke up warm so we dosed her with Motrin again. She has dark patches under her eyes, otherwise she seems fine.

Some macros for Leslie
A daylily from our yard...


M.'s second sunflower...


The first sunflower REALLY close...

Emma was tagged!
by her friend Brianna

3 Things that scare me: Really loud nuh-nuh (thunder), bugs flying at me, new people who come on strong.

3 People that make me laugh: Noni, Mommy, my friends at babysitters

3 Things that I love: Tigger lovie, paci, shoes

3 Things that I hate: When I have to stop playing to change a diaper, when Daddy goes to work, when I can't go walk around in the garden.

3 Things that I don’t understand: Why Popi isn't with me the entire time I'm at his house, why Mommy won't let me go up the stairs all by myself, why that phone talks to me in Noni's voice.

3 Things on my floor: My tent occupying the whole living room, shoes, my golf club

3 Things I am doing right now: Watching Elmo, trying to see the tractor outside, fighting of a dodgy fever

3 Things I can do: Count to ten (somewhat), say just about anything I hear, put my suede pink shoes on by myself.

3 Things I can’t do: put my socks on, climb out of my crib (and mommy's so glad!), cross the street by myself ;)

3 Ways to describe my personality: happy, inquisitive, loving

3 Things I think you should listen to: Ring Around the Rosie, ABC's, You Are My Sunshine

3 Things that I think you should never listen to: Dogs barking, Mommy telling me not to touch that, Country music (Daddy made me say that!)

3 Absolute favorite foods: chicken-mushroom soup-rice, mashed potatoes, shrimp

3 Things I liked to learn: To "read" my books, to push my cart outside, to go down my slide

3 Beverages I drink regularly: milk, water, only those two

3 Shows I watch: Elmo's World, Curious Buddies, Baby Einstein DVDs

3 kids I tag: Avery, Claire, Jenna
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Playing with rocks is fun!
Emma and Popi were playing toss the rock.

Feverish
Emma came right in the house and settled down on the couch. She had me worried, she was actually acting like a couch potato. Then I changed DVDs and she came over and crawled on my lap. She was hot, hot, hot. She sat on me for the longest time and when Daddy came home I had him fetch the thermometer. I did under the arm because I have no idea what else to do at this age. She let me keep it under there long enough to reach 102.3 degrees.

M. and I discussed what to do and we decided on giving her Tylenol. When it was time for supper we were afraid she wouldn't eat, because she was so lethargic. She ate all right. We had salmon cakes and she kept pushing her plate over to me for more. She ate a bunch of that, all her broccoli and a cookie. By the time supper was over her fever had broken. Totally weird.

We'll check in on her tonight and check her in the morning. I have no idea what might be going on.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Daddy's first sunflower
This one is in the patch in front of the house. Yay!

M.'s nightmare
Poor M. He's been in a tight spot since his brother had his gall bladder removed last Thursday. He's been working in the store by himself. Sometimes his Mom can come spell him so he can go to the mailbox or the bank, but she's been taking care of BIL so she hasn't been available.

Yesterday our babysitter needed the day off so we asked Grandma G. to watch Emma. She could, but if she's doing that she can't come to relieve M. at the store. So he was stuck there all day on the day he normally makes his grocery run over the mountains. He decided that he'd bite the bullet and go shopping after we put Emma down to bed. He hates to ever miss bath time. He didn't leave the house until 9:00 p.m. It's a 1 hour 20 minute drive to get to Walmart. These shopping trips take a minimum of 5 hours, usually longer.

He does his shopping at Walmart and goes to check out. They ring up two carts worth of groceries and when he gives them the store check it comes back "denied." Bear in mind it is nearly midnight. So he asks why? It says on the ticket Reason #88. What does that mean? "I don't know, you'll have to call the phone number on the ticket." So he calls the number for Telecheck, the outfit that denied him. They're closed, of course. Trying to salvage his trip he pulls out his credit card. They scan it, "denied." By this point he's pretty fed up and it being the night shift there's really no one to help him. He walks away from two full carts and leaves the store. He didn't even go to Kroger, he came right home. He got in around 2:00 a.m.

This morning he tells me about it and I start worrying. Are his accounts frozen for some reason we don't know about? Is it the IRS? Did they freeze all our accounts? Is our savings frozen? Because I put most of that money in there!...You know how I am.

Before he gets in the shower the phone rings, it's Chase Bank's fraud department. They're concerned about some activity on his card last night. Yeah. What he finds out is that paying for his new tires yesterday and then later the same day paying $500 for groceries alerted their fraud doo-hickey so they just denied it. Nice, huh? So the denial of the credit card is in no way related to the check denial. But still, using your credit card twice in one day causes an alert? Give me a break. As soon as he got off the phone with Chase bank he called the (separate) fraud alert company and cancelled their service on his card. The credit card company blamed the fraud alert company and the fraud alert company blamed the credit card company. I told him he should ditch Chase Bank all together. I'm tired of their stupid phone solicitations anyway.

When he gets to the store he calls the bank first thing. No problems with his checking account, plenty of money there. Then he calls this Telecheck outfit. Reason #88 is that they don't have enough information on him. WTF? Walmart has his name, address, phone number, tax ID, everything you could possible want to know! So he gives Telecheck all this information. Then they say, it will be six days until this information is in the system and you can write checks again. WHAT!?! (That would be anywhere that uses Telecheck) So he can't go back to Walmart and get his groceries or pick up his customer's prescriptions till next week?

He calls Walmart and talks to the manager. He explains to the manager...I come to your store every week, I spend on average $500 a week, I always write checks, I've never had a check bounce, I drove over 100 miles round trip last night to shop at your store and this is what happened to me. The mananger is all sorts of apologetic. He explains that it's a Telecheck hitch and he's really, really sorry. Of course everyone he's called all along the way has been apologetic, but no one really owns it, you know?

He reports all this to me and I'm relieved we're not wanted by the IRS. I'm also terribly sorry for M. as he went through all that hassle last night and still doesn't have the groceries he needs. I talked to M. around noon time and he told me that the manager at Walmart had called him back three more times and told him that he had found that there was nothing he could do for him at the store level. It appears the six day waiting period stands.

Is that F***** up or what?
Monday, July 24, 2006
So Serious

(Tonight's photos are all Daddy's)
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Welcome to the Dark Side...
I'd like to welcome commenter "wermit" to the blogosphere, or the Dark Side as we like to call it. I've added her to my blogroll and you can check her out at A Grand Adventure is Bound to Happen. Wermit has a cute 16 month old daughter, an interesting occupation and is a fan of mommy blogs. I hope you'll drop by and welcome her.
I went a little nuts yesterday...
I think it's a natural consequence of keeping me cooped up at home last weekend and forcing me into hard labor like laying a new floor. Or maybe I just wanted them all. Not sure which.

Reading to Popi
She was so cute, she set the pillow on her lap and then set the book on it. Clever Monkey. It's so cute to watch them arrange their environment to suit them.

I'm a bad influence...
How do you like Noni's new dining room table? I took her out with me to look for a new couch and, well, isn't the table nice? She's very pleased with it.

I had three things I was looking for: microfiber, reclining couch and long, about 88 to 92 inches. I can order all three in Sage for around $758.00. It takes 4-6 weeks to come in so I didn't feel any pressure to decide yesterday. I'm thinking about it.

We found it!
The pink shoe! The last time we packed away Emma's tent and sleeping bag the shoe apparently got caught up in the sleeping bag. Today she wanted to put up her tent so we unpacked the bag and Voila! pink shoe.