Archive for March, 2007

Tackle It Tuesday – The Cleaning of My Closet III

March 27, 2007

Tackle It Tuesday Meme
I am STILL tackling my closet, but it’s getting better and better. I have to say, there are times where I walk in my closet just to look at how pretty it’s looking!

I finally made it over to Ikea to pick up a bunch of these baskets. Ikea BasketsI already had a few of these baskets in my house and I love them. They are such great sizes and very sturdy, plus they are pretty inexpensive–just what I needed for my closet!

On one shelf I have two baskets-I put hats in one, bags and purses in another. Up in my fancy schmancy new shelves I put a few baskets for sheets and bedding.
Bags and HatsSheets and Bedding
Although we have lots of beds, I don’t have much bedding. Each bed has two sets of sheets. One set is on each bed and the other set is in the bucket. On sheet washing day, the dirty sheets go off and the clean sheets immediately go on. This way if something comes up, we aren’t scrambling at bedtime to find sheets that fit each bed. The only beds that have lots of extra sheets are the babies cribs. The great thing about the basket is that I can grab the appropriate basket and tote it around the house as we change sheets, put the dirty ones in the basket to take to the laundry area, then I can fold the freshly washed sheets right back into the basket.

We were having a dilemma with our shoes and my mom suggested I put something infront of the door. It’s big double slider and we never ever open one of the sides, so we thought we’d give it a try. We found some great shoe racks at Costco that are nice and sturdy, plus look better than our old plastic shoe holders (that were recycled to the girls). We each had to purge some shoes to get it to fit and it looks like we better not buy anymore shoes or we’re going to need another rack.
If the Shoes fit!

I still need to finish a little calking on the shelves (so I can use that middle cubby!) and paint the insides of the cubbies, which I’ll hopefully have finished tackling by the end of today!

Menu Plan Monday

March 25, 2007

menu plan monday

Another week of dinners! Here’s what we’ve got coming up this week!

Sunday Sunday Chicken with steamed broccoli
Monday Asian Lettuce Wraps
Tuesday Southern Chicken Roll Ups
Wednesday Chile Verde (a freezer meal!)
Thursday Left Over Night
Friday Taco Salad
Saturday DH was sick last week so I didn’t get my hot date with a steak dinner. Hopefully it will work out this time!

If you haven’t already seen the post, The Soapy Dish is hosting a Freeze it Friday meme. If you have any great freezer meals, tips or ideas, get ‘em ready for this Friday!

Laundry Lessons

March 24, 2007

With Rooster playing hooky from school this week I’ve exhausted all entertaining resources. I cannot play one more game of Strawberry Shortcake Dominos, create another sculped bust of Daddy out of pink, orange and green mixed play dough (although I do have a killer recipe for play dough), water paint an exact replica of the Black Beauty DVD cover (18 times), string plastic pony beads into anklets or pick up itty bitty scraps of paper off the floor from ‘cut and paste’ time….until Monday when we’ll do it all again.

Anyways, I was trying to find something to do and with all the fun we’d been having we really needed to get some chores done. In attempts to gather a little help, I taught Rooster (5) and Tootsie (3) how to do the laundry. We learned about sorting. We learned how to empty the dryer and reload the wet clothes, put in a dryer sheet, turn the knobby to the star and push to start.

We learned how to start the water, scoop and pour the soap INTO the washer without a generously sprinkling detergent all over the floor. We learned how to empty one of the sorting bins into the wash and gently close the lid so the boi-oi-oi-oi-oing of the crashing washer lid didn’t wake the babies. (yes, we did have one nap on Thursday for about 20 minutes-ugh) Then we’d use teamwork, (thank you Wonderpets!) and drag the basket inside the house.

With the babies waking so soon, I never got to folding the basket, but the girls would listen for the dryer to finish and run out and do another load, and another, and another, dumping the clean clothes in the middle of my living room so they could re-use baskets and at this very moment, here is what I still have left to fold:

The Laundry Pit

Yes, it IS the chaos that it looks like.
I think they did 8 loads, plus a two loads of towels, a load of all their sheets and blankets (Impetigo rules) and even a load with their doodle dolls. There is no more laundry left in the house and they are devistated! I keep hearing them talking about what they can do to get dirty to make enough clothes to put in the washer.

Why have I not utilized this FREE help before? Now if I could only get them to fold and hang…..

Freeze it Friday

March 22, 2007

Freeze it Friday

The Soapy Dish is hosting it’s first installment of Freeze it Friday, yes, I know it’s not Friday yet, but I’m the first host and I’ve posted all about my Freezer Meal Frenzy meal swap.

Head on over to check out some great tips and leave an idea or recipe of your own!

Several of my previously posted recipes have been great freezer swaps. Best Ribs was a huge hit. As was the Ritz Chicken. If you haven’t already tried them, give them a try. I’m sure your family will love them and they freeze up perfectly. Just stick everything in ziploc bags!

Barfing With A Side of Impetigo Please!

March 22, 2007

Really, what more could I ask for this week?

Monday’s plan was to have the Tootsie’s JoySchool over for a fun filled day of the letter M, crafting maracas and making music. But oh the joys of a three year old. She didn’t want to tidy up her room, so she cried. She didn’t like the color of her cereal bowl, so she cried. She didn’t like the way I scooted her chair in to the kitchen table so she fell on the floor, kicked, screamed and threw a spoon that bonked Bubba in the head.

There is a no crying downstairs rule at our house unless you are hurt, bleeding or dying. I scooped her up, took her to her bed and told her calmly that when she was ready to wake up happy, she was welcome to come back downstairs. This is a daily occurance at our house. Tootsie is a bit emotional.

I talked with Roosters carpool and told her I’d drive the girls to school and as I’m putting down the phone, I hear Tootsie coming down the stairs. I tell her we need to get in the car right now to take Rooster to school. I ask her if she’s decided to have a happy day and she covers her mouth and starts throwing up. I run her over to the kitchen sink. It’s 9:15 and she hasn’t gone potty, until now, all over my skirt and shoes. I have never seen so much pee in my entire life. The poor girl has lost all control.

I yell to Rooster to get the phone and call our carpooling neighbor to come pick her up before she’s late for school. She gets the phone, she dials, she runs right over to the rim of the pee to hand it to me. “Aaaaack!!! Stoppppp! WATCH OUT FOR THE PEE!,” I yell. “JUST TELL HER TOOTSIE IS PUKING!”

Rooster runs up and gets me a bath towel to lay over the lake of pee and I start peeling layers of wet clothing off Tootsie, set her down on the bath towel and started peeling off my own soaked clothes. My feet are literally splashing in pee so I lift each leg up into the kitchen sink to wash them off so I can walk through the rest of the house and my FRONT DOOR OPENS! I’ve got a leg propped on the counter soaping up my foot in the kitchen sink with just my undies on my bottom half. I jump, re-contaminate my feet in the process, and peek around the wall. It’s the neighbor coming to get Rooster for school and I can’t tell you how thankful I am that my kitchen sink is not visible from the front door!!

The rest of the day was a bit weepy, the babies wouldn’t nap, but at least there wasn’t any more throw up. We had to cancel Joy School until next week and I guess I failed to mention it to Tootsie who sat with her blankie on the couch most the day. At 4:15 she asked my why it was taking so long for her school friends to come over. That totally made my heart hurt!

Just wait, the excitement gets better. Saturday Rooster, who will probably never ever learn how to ride her bike, had a wee little crash that resulted in a few wee little owies on her nose and chin. Teeny tiny scratches, not much harm, I don’t think she even realized they were scratched up.

Sunday, the scratches are a little red.

Monday, barfing fiasco day, the scratches are red and scabby and I send her to school. Monday night she tells me her nose hurts and she has a scratch on the inside of her thigh that hurts. I check it out and it’s a huge scabby sore that looks tender so we put a little cream on it with a bandaid and send her to bed.

Tuesday, the scratches are officially sores and look terrible. Her nose is all scabbed over and her chin scab looks double the size. Her leg doesn’t look great either, but I put cream on them and send her off to school where all the kids make fun of her. She comes home nearly in tears and I tell her to tell those kids to stop making fun of her.

Wednesday, her face looks awful. I have to clean up her snotty nose and the scabbies are bleeding. She’s crying. She says her leg hurts so we get her a bandaid so her clothes don’t rub on it. She doesn’t have a fever. She feels fine, she just looks terrible and so I send her to school reminding her to be brave not feel bad if the kids say mean things.

I drop her off feeling like crap because I know some mean kid is going to say something to hurt my baby’s feelings. I call my husband to tell him how awful I feel for her and he tells me I should take her to the doctor if I feel so bad about it. The second I get home I call the doctors office and they don’t have an appointment until the next morning. The do suggest I talk to the advice nurse to ask if there’s anything I might put on the scabbies until then.

I explain the situation to the advice nurse and she tells me to get in my car and get her out of school! She’s probably got Impetigo and it’s highly contagious and she’ll get me an emergency appointment in an hour to see the doctor. Oh great.

I call the school, load up all the kids and run back over to the school. She’s been there 25 minutes and she’s absolutely perplexed as to why she needs to leave. I run into the classroom and the teacher tells me she thinks she probably has Impetigo. HELLO! Why didn’t you call me? Or send her to the school nurse? I thought they were just bike accident scabbies!

Over at the doctors office everyone is wearing gloves. We’ve obviously got a problem here. The doctor walks in and says exclaims YELLS, WHOA, SHE’S GOT IMPETIGO.

Great. Just great. It’s a highly infectious bacteria that gets into your cuts and spreads scabbies all over your body. Eventually, the scabs turn yellow, red and ooze puss and the only way to get rid of it is with strong antibiotics. She could have picked it up at school, at the park, on the playground, at the library. It basically looks like you have flesh eating disease.

I have to sanitize her sheets, pillow and pajamas every night for a week. She cannot share bath water with anyone, or any towels. She dries off and it should go right into the washing machine. No hand towels or wash cloths either, just a paper towel and she must stay out of school for the rest of the week.

Nice. I’ve just sent her to school all week to contaminate all the kids there. She’s also taken a bath with every kid in this house and shared a towel or two during the course of the week. She’s wiped her hands on the bathroom hand towel and slept in Tootsie’s bed.

If impetigo spreads around this house like pink eye usually does I’m going to die. In the meantime we’re giving our kids permission to bathe in the hand sanitizer and putting the prescription antibiotic cream on every cut on their bodies.

This morning, Thursday, they’ve all woken up with a cough. Seriously. Do they still sell Calgon?

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