Today was an awkward stressful sort of day where a lot of things went wrong.

For example the electric company contracted a tree cutting service to trim branches from around the power lines, but instead they came in my yard while we were asleep and chopped down (at the base) my five foot tall red leaf maple tree that Rosie and I planted a couple years ago when Ada was born.

They also moved my picnic table and left it against the garage, put the kids’ swings up on top of the swing set, and left my gate open so that the ducks waddled out towards the road.

Awesome.  Thanks Wright Tree Service for your excellent tree service.

Then at Home Depot someone apparently hit the side door of my van with their car door hard enough to leave a door outline dent.  It’s not a huge huge dent, but it’s big enough that I could see it when my van was parked across the road.

I love people.

The kids also fought all freaking day long.  I’m pulling out my hairs over here!

But seeing as I don’t intend this to be a blog of not-so-awesome things all the time (I mean it’s ok sometimes, keeping it real and everything) I should probably post something more pleasant.

Tonight’s pleasantry brought to you via Instagram, taken over the past week.

Beautiful almost summer evenings.

My mom’s two year old pouty face.

My sister doing the girls’ nails on the back porch at my parents’ house.

DUCK FACE!

Lion Cat, rawr.  (Rintoo)

How is Rosie nearly six?

Childhood imagination:  Band at 5 tomorrow.  Dragon Caves.  Free piece of paper to read.

Ada’s sign on the left:  Scribbles and an assisted happy face.

Ada with her giant swollen infection filled tonsils, still singing her heart out into a plastic microphone.

Bonnets.  Ada.  Duck Face.  A long series:

(LOL!)

Delightfully awkward (and delicious) strawberry from our garden:

A giant slug with leopard print.

My Gus kitty.

Abby, always at my feet.  (She has cat fur on her nose, haha!)

Rosie’s block castle that Ada didn’t knock over.

And finally, my garden this evening.  In progress…planting plants and seeds, weeding, filling with compost and dirt, rearranging the stones around the boxes…

Lots of work but I would spend all day every day out there if I could.

Note the duck.  I put up a fence this year.  Last year the ducks foraged through my entire garden.

I’m 100% sure that ducks see in color because they knew exactly when a tomato or strawberry was perfectly ripe.  They wouldn’t touch it a second before it was ready.

This year: Duck proof fence.  Take that!

Let’s just hope they don’t eat those new flowers I left on the picnic table overnight.  I just thought of that.  Crap.

By the way, you can follow me on Instagram under Pepper44 if you want.  People always ask me my screen name and I sometimes suck at replying to notes, so there you go.

Ok, reading in bed now for me.  It’s almost midnight.

This is a great blog entry.  One in which I admit to drugging my toddler and leaving my five year old alone with strange men outside a diner.  In other words, it’s a post about a bad day.  A really, really, REALLY bad day.  In hindsight it’s a tiny bit funny.  Just a teeny tiny bit.

 

We tried to go to meet friends from my April 2010 due date club yesterday in Asheville and it was a complete and total fail.  My due date club (from my pregnancy with Ada) is awesome and the ladies on the east coast have been planning a meet-up for months now.  I’ve been super excited to go to it.

Ada was finally well enough to go after having infected tonsils this weekend, so I packed late at night then slept for a few hours before getting the girls up at 4 in the morning to hop in the car and go. Tyler had to work.  It was just the girls and me going alone.  I’ve never taken them on a big trip alone before, but certainly it would be fine…right?

 

 

 

Watching Scooby Doo peacefully, before everything went wrong on the trip.

 

 

 

The trip started out fine except that they didn’t fall back asleep like planned. (Of course, right?) So they watched a movie instead and everyone was happy.

We got to the TN border in good time and my Garmin was telling me we’d be in Asheville in only a couple more hours.  Exciting!  I was thinking this was going to be an easy trip, and I was so glad I’d decided to come alone with the girls and faced my traveling anxiety.

At the Kentucky Tennessee border I-75 was closed right over Jellico mountain due to a collapse in the road. I’d heard that on the news but figured small detour, no big deal right?

I did not realize that detours were this big of a deal when traveling.  I have one brief memory of traveling in the Jellico mountain area witih my parents as a small child and hearing them upset that there was a detour at Jellico.  That was in the back of my mind, but I assumed it was just my dad being uptight like usual.  A detour couldn’t be that bad!  We would listen to music and smile through it, then we would be right back on the highway and to Asheville without losing much time at all.

Hi, I haven’t been an adult for very long and sometimes I still have to learn things the hard way.

I cheerfully took this no-big-deal-detour and it turned out to be 45 minutes of long winding roads up and down and around Jellico and Pine Mountain. The road wound around, up, down, over, and through the mountains for 26 miles.

TWENTY SIX EFFING MILES PEOPLE.

Now 26 miles may not sound that long to you, but 26 miles in fog and pouring rain along mountain roads in traffic in the car with small children is like the equivalent of pure hell.  There were huge semi trucks trying to drive on these roads with everyone else!

We have roads like that in the part of Kentucky where I live too, but they usually don’t have long lines of crawling traffic on them, let alone 18 wheelers roaring around hair pin curves on the edge of a mountainside in heavy rain and fog.

That alone was bad enough, and I was beginning to question the cheerful attitude I’d had about this detour.

And then Rosie got car sick.

My vomit phobia, the middle of nowhere in the rain and fog, no cell phone reception to call my mom and cry, and no GPS satellite reception to know how much further we had to go.  A barfing terrified kid wanting to be comforted while I drove the car, a crying toddler, a never ending long line of traffic, and not a single place to stop.

Awful!

Seriously, these are the things I have anxiety riddled nightmares about.

The safety of home seemed like a million desperate light years away during the next few hours.

Finally we got to LaFollette, TN at the end of that long and hellish road. We hit it right at morning rush hour. Except I think LaFollette has a population of like 7,000. Small town. The entire town was out on their way to work and school that Monday morning.

I stopped at the first tiny gas station I saw to see if they had any Dramamine for Rosie, but they didn’t. An old man tried to convince me that Pepto Bismol would work just fine, because they had that. Then a couple other old men squeezed in the closet sized store to get coffee and they started passing around Duck Face, who Rosie had carried inside.  (Did I mention the duck went on our trip with us?  She rides in a dog crate, but I’d taken her out for Rosie to hold in an attempt to calm Rosie down earlier when she started feeling sickly.  The duck is so tame that it wants to be with us where ever we go if it can.  It absolutely loved riding in Rosie’s lap in the car!)

I didn’t want to buy Pepto Bismal so got the duck back and left to look for another gas station one of the guys had pointed out down the street, which thankfully did have Dramamine.

Five dollars later I thought we were saved, I was so relieved!  I made Rosie take one tablet even though she really didn’t want to. Before we drove two seconds she was puking it back up. She’s never, ever gotten car sick before.  Then I really started to panic.  I was holding out hope that Dramamine would be my savior for the remainder of the trip and all would be well and good after that.   I don’t know if she got sick because she got up super early and only drank water and didn’t eat anything, then we hit those mountain roads? But we drive through rural mountain roads all the time around here with no issue. I just don’t know what happened to her stomach on this trip.
Then in the middle of Rosie puking up the Dramamine and sobbing Ada started screaming that she was going to pee her pants. I stopped at the next driveway, which happened to be a diner that looked like something straight out of 1950. It even had the original Pepsi signs, original old wood floors, etc.  I don’t mean it was decorated to be a 1950′s diner.  It just hadn’t changed since 1950.  I think it was actually called The Diner.

Rosie wouldn’t get out of the car, she was just sitting there heaving into a red solo cup and sobbing with Face Duck happily chattering away on a towel in her lap. (Thank you motion sick Duggars for the red solo cup idea!)

Ada was loudly screaming that she had to pee. I was desperately trying to figure out what to do and how to take Rosie inside the diner to the bathroom without her puking all over the restaurant, which would be traumatic and embarrassing to say the least. These two guys–middle aged good ol’ boys both wearing white undershirts, one with suspenders, and both smoking–who had been standing out front of the diner near my car came over to see what the commotion was.

They were what I call down home people.  Please tell me someone else knows what I mean by that.  Tyler makes fun of me and has no clue what kind of people I’m talking about.

You know, nice people, genuinely friendly, from a small town/rural area where everyone knows and looks out for everyone else.  Tyler has only lived in a city and just cannot grasp what I mean, but everyone in the town where my mom grew up is like this.  It’s a wonderful sort of place to live.  I could tell LaFollete was probably that sort of place just based on the looks of that diner and the people in it.

Out of complete desperation I left those men outside comforting Rosie as she sat in the car while I took Ada inside to the potty.

The old bathroom was so funny. The toilet was on a tiny platform in the corner, up four huge steps from the sink area. It was literally a throne.  Ada was delighted. I should have taken a picture, but I was too flustered by everything else.

I rushed back outside worried about Rosie.  One of the men was holding Duck Face with a huge grin on his face. He only had one front tooth.  I swear they were like angels at that moment.  Comforting and reassuring men in overalls saved me from a distressing situation.

I can’t believe I left Rosie alone with strange men, but small town and nice people…I guess it’s one thing about quirky rural Kentucky and Tennessee that’s good. Not that I ever want such a situation to happen again, but I was thankful those guys were there because Rosie really wasn’t able to get out and walk into a diner at that moment and I didn’t want to leave her totally alone, sick and terrified in the car.

It looked like those two guys probably stood outside of The Diner at 8 o’clock every morning drinking coffee and smoking.  Didn’t seem likely they would hurt or kidnap a vomiting five year old girl and a quacking duck in broad daylight in the hustle and bustle of morning rush hour, in front of a diner they frequent daily.  That’s good logic for desperate times right?  (Did I mention I never want to attempt traveling alone with the girls ever again?)
We started driving once more after those guys gave us directions to continue the detour through town and find the interstate at the end of it.  Rosie was screaming that she just wanted to get out of the car and to a house. We were closer to our house than Asheville by an hour or so, and since I didn’t know if she was car sick or germy sick we just went back home.  I was completely and totally stressed to the max by that point. Incapable of making another rational decision if my life depended on it.

The best part is that we had to go back through that horrible detour along the mountain roads.  I made Rosie close her eyes and try to sleep through it.  She didn’t throw up any more thankfully. Then I made record time going 90 mph on the interstate while Rosie threw an epic and irrational tantrum about not getting to see her friend Atlee at the meet-up we were missing in Asheville, complete with kicking and throwing things.

Ada had taken 1/2 a dramamine tablet and she was out COLD. (Ada asked for some medicine when I gave the tablet to Rosie, and in my great distress I went ahead and gave her half hoping she would fall asleep so I would have one less kid to worry about. Rosie was more than I could handle at that point.)  Ada was fine on the entire trip, surprisingly.  Rosie didn’t throw up at all on the trip home, she was too busy screaming in pure anger about turning around and not going to Asheville.
Once we finally got home Rosie screamed and cried for another hour about how angry she was at me for bringing us back home.  Then she started begging for food. She was completely fine after that, not sick at all. I promised her I would take her to the movies to make up for not getting to go to the meet up. We’re both extremely disappointed. I was so freaking excited that Ada was better and we were going to make it.

Clearly fate did not want me to go, for some reason.  First Ada got unexpectedly really ill, then when we tried to drive there Rosie randomly got car sick and we took the detour from hell.  I even wasted an entire tank of gas.

 

Want to know something kind of funny?  When I got home there was a two foot long skinny strip of magnet scrap stuck to the driver’s door of my van.  Tyler asked me where it came from and I have absolutely no idea.  I never really left the van parked anywhere.  We were in it the entire time except for when I ran Ada into the bathroom and when we stepped into the gas station for three seconds to look for Dramamine.  Weird.

Tyler took the magnet and in Sharpie he wrote on it, “I went to Hell and back, and all I got was this ugly magnet.”

Then he stuck it back on my van.

 

After I described my LaFollete, Tennessee experience to Tyler in great detail he didn’t completely believe me.  Now I’ve sworn that we’re taking a weekend vacation there.  It looked like a nice place to live.  I want to stay in the mountain lodge I saw on the detour (McCloud’s or something like that) and eat BBQ ribs on Saturday night at The Diner.  I bet those two angel men will be there.  Before we drive down there again I am loading Rosie up on Dramamine just in case!

Last week we babysat Ada’s friend Alice for the afternoon.  Alice and Ada are almost the same age.  Alice is a few weeks older.

We played outside a lot.

Toddler face-off!

(Ada has a fantastically over dramatic frowny face she always makes, and lately it’s been even more dramatic by the addition of eye rolls with the frown and pursed lips.)

Alice tested out Ada’s new scooter.

Rosie played with her friend Hannah who lives down the street.

Bubbles were so exciting, and also something to fight over…

Rosie taught Ada to make this face, but I think it’s so rude.  I’ve been trying to teach them not to do it.  It’s usually accompanied by the stomping of a foot and a snort.  I hate it!

That is not the sort of attitude I want my little girls to ever have.  I don’t know where Rosie learned it.  She just started doing it one day and believe me I am quick to put a stop to it each time it pops up, yet it persists…

(Ada isn’t sun burned, her skin just flushes easily.  She’s actually considerably more than tan Rosie, Tyler, or me.)

Duck Face tastes everything.

Willow.

Pouting because it isn’t her turn with the bubble wand.

Duckling anatomy fail:  Big head and tiny little arms!

I am obsessed with Amish and Old Order Mennonite bonnets.  I totally have one in adult size too, and sometimes I wear it.

Funny adorable Alice:

That’s Alice’s uncle there behind the rocking chair, who was adopted from Eastern Europe a few years ago.

My chubby toddler drinking her “molch” as she calls it.

Ada has been acting odd for the past month or so.  Gagging a lot at night in her sleep, off balance, dry cough.  She never had a fever or a cold, so I assumed she just had some allergies going on and started giving her children’s Claritin.

Last week she started freaking out because she said there was an ant crawling in her ear.  Then she kept coughing.  I was thinking she must have some fluid moving around in her ear.

Last night she started crying and crying after supper then threw up twice.  This morning she seemed normal digestive-wise, but she kept complaining that her hair hurt above her ear, and her cheek her next to her ear, so I took her to the doctor.

It turns out her tonsils are super swollen, red, and infected.  A bacterial infection.  Her ears are totally full of fluid, and she’s having a lot of nasty drainage.  My poor baby!  This totally explains the tossing and turning all night, desperate nursing, gagging easily, and dry cough.  I wonder how long she’s had this going on!  I can’t believe she never had a fever.  It was all mild annoying symptoms, not anything that would make you think she’s really ill and needed to go to the doctor.

The doctor prescribed an antibiotic and Dimetap to dry up the fluid in her ears before it becomes infected too.  We were supposed to leave for Asheville tomorrow for my due date club meet up.  I was so excited about going.  I want to cry.  I can’t very well make Ada ride in the car for five hours with her nasty nauseating drainage and congested head.  Plus the bacterial infection is contagious.  The doctor said it should be less contagious in 24-48 hours, but we’re going to be with a group of toddlers staying at someone’s house.  I don’t want to infect every other little kid.

I’m going to see how she is on Sunday.  Maybe we can drive down on Sunday and then drive home on Wednesday.  *sigh*

My poor baby!

At least we have a great doctor.  We recently found him, this past fall. He is super nice.  He spends the whole time joking with the kids, and he hugs and kisses them goodbye at the end and tells them to come visit again. He’s about 65 years old and kind of flamboyant.  The girls just love him.  They got so excited when I said we were going to the doctor today.  He’s also very knowledgeable and laid back.  Not alarmist or worst case scenario over anything, just a lot of old school wisdom to try first…kind of like the take two aspirin and call me in the morning sort of attitude.  Then in the morning he would have all kinds of great advice if you still weren’t feeling well.  He also doesn’t make a big deal about vaccines.  He answers questions in depth but leaves the choices up to us and doesn’t add in guilt or scare tactics.

 

This is Ada last night an hour before she started crying and puking. She looks deathly ill doesn’t she?  Pizza smeared on her face and everything.

Alas, I have survived the wisdom tooth removal.

Barely.

I psyched myself up beforehand so I wasn’t even that nervous.  The night before I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink after midnight, and I dreamed realistically that Ada was unwrapping foil covered chocolates and stuffing the candy in my mouth.  I was like, “Om nom nom this is so delicious.  I can’t swallow or I won’t be able to have my surgery.  But it’s so goooood…”

Then I woke up and it was time to go.  Tyler took me to the oral surgeon and my mom took the girls over to her house.

When I went back into the surgery room it just looked like a regular dentist chair.  Anticlimatic much?

They put that gas over my nose, which I didn’t like because it smelled like vomit.  Gross.  I didn’t realize they were going to use the gas, I thought they were just going to give me something through an IV.

I guess the gas was to make the IV less scary, except I’m not the least bit bothered by needles.  If I ever need this again I’m skipping the gas!  It didn’t have much effect, it just made me feel really heavy all over.

 

 

This is when the unfortunate panic inducing part happened.

They gave me the IV, and the dentist put the drugs in it to make me lose consciousness.  You’re still awake technically, you’re just not aware any longer.  I watched him inject something into my IV and I wasn’t able to see anymore. I don’t know if my eyes were open or closed, but everything was black.  Except I could still hear them.  I could still feel everything that was happening.

I felt him give me a shot in my gums and I tried to move, but I couldn’t.  I tried to say something, but I couldn’t make any sounds.  I was blind and immobilized.  I was horrified! It was like I was in this deep, dark tunnel.  It was warm and soft there, and heavy, and I couldn’t get out.  I felt him give me six shots.  I was laying there panicking trying to force my body listen to my brain.  I was terrified that I would hear and feel him removing my teeth and not be able to say anything.

Finally I managed to make a noise.  In my head it was a loud moan, but it may have been different out loud.  I heard the dentist say, “Oh hang on she needs more propofol!”  Then they poked me and I moaned again and I heard him exclaim, “Even more?”

The next thing I remember I could hear the nurse talking to me.  I felt her removing my IV and it pinched a little.  Then I was sitting up on a bed in another room with my glasses on.  According to Tyler she gave us after care instructions and I told them prednisone makes me feel like a boss.  I have no memory of any of that.  The next thing I remember I was sitting in the car, but I don’t even really remember riding home.

Tyler said the nurse told him that I had to have more than double the normal dose of propofol for my size.

I don’t go down without a fight.  My insomina even beats out levels of propofol high enough to kill Michael Jackson.

It’s funny in hindsight.  It was not funny when I was conscious and paralyzed.  That’s the stuff nightmares are made of right there.  I never thought that would happen to me.

I have red hair.  I’ve read before that redheads react differently to pain and anesthesia.  Maybe that has something to do with my experience.

 

The recovery after the surgery has kind of sucked.  The one impacted infected tooth they removed left the worst spot.  My jaw bone is all bruised along my cheek and it throbs.  Eating is hard and I have been really hungry.  For the first two days every time I moved my mouth would bleed.  The gauze felt like soggy tampons stuffed in my cheeks, but without it I was swallowing salty penny flavored blood.  The first night I drooled red saliva everywhere and woke up encrusted.  Really gross.

The bleeding has finally stopped now, on day three.  But I have some minor swelling today and more throbbing than before.

The entire time I’ve just been taking ibuprofen for pain.  I’m also taking an antibiotic because of the infection that was under the impacted tooth.  I had three teeth removed in total, so both sides of my mouth are sore.  I’m terrified of dry sockets.  I’m so paranoid I’ll knock the clot out.  The impacted tooth area periodically oozes puss, which is absolutely disgusting.

I cannot wait until they are all healed.  The one good thing I can think of about wisdom teeth removal is that your wisdom teeth never grow back.  I’m never doing this again in my life.

And you know what?  I completely forgot to ask the dentist if I could keep my teeth!  Darn it!

 

 

Bahaha.  Misery.

I spent the night at my parents’ house the first night so my mom could help me watch the girls. I still had to take care of Ada all night, which was hard.  I came back to my house the next evening and I had a lot of cleaning up to do.  Tyler didn’t do a very good job taking care of the pets or helping me get caught up on chores.  The hard part is that my mouth throbs and oozes if I move around too much or talk a lot.  Taking care of the girls by myself has been hard.  I’m hoping I’ll feel a lot better tomorrow.  It will be a full three days since the surgery.

Now for some things cute and fluffy, and not teeth related.  Brought to you by the world of Instagram!

The girls played with a neighbor girl at my parents’ house while I was putting frozen peas on my swollen jaws.  My parents’ court is very safe and the kids can just go out and run and play.  They loved it.  Our street is…not safe…at all.  There are also very few kids that I would want my girls to play with here.

That’s my mom with Ada.  Ada and my mom look exactly alike, which is weird because I look like my dad.

This little girl was so incredibly sweet.  I want to take Rosie back over to my parents’ this summer so they can play together.  She’s 8 and Rosie is (almost) 6, but they got along fine.

You can see Rosie way ahead up there.  And yes, my just turned two year old is huge and can race on her new birthday scooter already.

Of course she’s still my baby when she needs a break from her new scooter.

Did anyone else play with these elves and read the books as a kid?  I loved them!  My mom still had my whole set!

I think she’s called Herself the Elf.

These next pictures are from today, back at my house.

Rosie’s eyes are bugging out of her head in this one, ahahaha!

She still carries Bitty Baby absolutely everywhere.

Ginny the Old English Game bantam sits down inside the feeder to eat undisturbed by the bigger hens.

My Silkie hens are so broody that you can just stick chicks and eggs under them.

Benny and June!

Duck Face grows rapidly!  We had to put him/her outside with the heat lamp because it was just too messy and smelly in the rubbermaid tote inside now that (s)he’s a bit larger.

I found out that this is an Ancona duckling.  They are considered critical, just a step above endangered, and they are a heritage duck breed.

This is a silver laced Sebright bantam.  (Please ignore the random yellow coop wall.  I’m in the process of painting everything red and white.)

Abby sunning herself.  She looks small in this picture but she’s actually a 60 pound lab mix.

Ok.  Aching jaws need to be iced or something.  Time to read books in bed.

 

Fail Tooth removal is scheduled for Wednesday at 9:15.  The Fail Tooth is a bony extraction because it’s impacted, the other two I think were labeled simple extraction.

Want to see my teeth?  Fail Tooth is so obvious.

 

There’s actually a pocket underneath that impacted tooth on the bottom. (Right side of the picture, left side in my actual head.)

The pocket underneath has trapped infected food in it and it’s also causing a cavity on the healthy molar next to it.

Isn’t that just awesome?

This, my friends, is why when your mouth throbs you should not just ignore it for two years and pray it goes away…

Because one day it will throb so bad you’ll wake from a deep sleep sobbing and sweating, and the throbbing won’t stop until you pay someone to chop that sucker out of your head.

Thankfully (surprisingly!) our dental insurance covers the almost entire procedure except for a $50 deductible, and $49 shot of antibiotics they give during the surgery.  I also have to pay 20% of the procedure cost.  However since I’m not yet 26 (I will be in June!) I am still covered under my mom’s federal health insurance, and that covers a bit too, bringing the entire cost down to only $128 total.

I CAN AFFORD THAT!

They’re using IV sedation to knock me out.  I’m a little nervous about that.  I’ve had general anesthesia but never IV sedation.  I guess it’s like twilight sleep where you’re awake but you don’t realize it or remember it.  Kinda freaky.

I’m nervous about two things: throwing up (huge phobia!) and peeing my pants.

I mean really, what if I pee my pants while I’m in awake/asleep twilight land?  Is that even a logical fear?  I won’t be drinking 6 hours before the procedure, and Ada will have nursed all night, so I’ll certainly be dehydrated.  I guess that makes it less likely.

I can guarantee nerves will make me have to poop 10,000 times though.

Maybe I am a freak.  I have bodily function anxiety.

I don’t like loss of control.  Twilight sleep is like the biggest loss of control EVER!

I’m trying not to think about that, or the recovery afterward.  My parents are going to help me watch the girls. I think my dad is going to take me to the actual surgery.  Tyler will be asleep after work, he can’t get up to take me after just getting home.

In other less nerve inducing news, Ada’s second birthday was on the 21st.

I can’t believe she’s two years old!  That flew by.  My sweet, fat baby is growing up.  Soon I’m going to do a collage with one picture for each month of the past two years.

On her actual birthday we opened a couple of presents and just hung out.  We had her birthday party the next day (Sunday) with family.

Here are the pictures from her birthday.  I still have to upload the pictures from her party, along with the rest of the Easter pictures, and a few pictures from Christmas…haha.

Chocolate face!  (The lighting in my house was horrible on her birthday, it was so cold and gray outside.)

She spent the day playing with Duck Face.

Singing to the duck…

We will forever remember that she was wearing Dora panties on her second birthday…haha.

Oh, I love her so much!

I *love* when the duck stretches tall and flaps its teeny tiny wings.  It’s incredibly adorable.

Rosie was at my in-laws’ house, that’s why there are no pictures of her in this series, in case you were wondering.

Then Ada opened a couple birthday presents from us.  We only got her a few things because we already have so many toys, and she was getting more stuff from family the next day at her party.

She got her own cash register and a scooter.  We also got Rosie a scooter and gave it to her after Ada opened her gifts.  We told Rosie it was an early birthday present.  Her birthday isn’t until July, but we wanted her to be able to enjoy the scooter all summer and not have to wait until the end of July to get it.

Best/worst/scariest outtake EVER.

Tyler and I about died when it came up on the screen.

Hahahahahaahahaaaa!

Here’s her cake.  She wanted a choo choo train cake, she’s been talking about it for months.

My tooth was throbbing so I kept it simple. I ordered a plain sheet cake and then decorated it quickly with the train and tracks, and I wrote her name on it.

The Thomas train is actually a whistle that sounds like a real train.  The tracks are pretzels with melted chocolate shook in cocoa powder.  My stupid tooth hurt too bad to make a cake and decorate it.  :(

Ada was thrilled with it anyway!

We didn’t eat it until the next day at her party.  It’s chocolate cake with buttercream icing.  It came from Sam’s club.  Their cakes have awful ingredients, but they taste so delicious.  Artificial noms for the win.

And the girls on their scooters:

We have Rosie’s meeting with the school to plan her speech therapy in an hour.  I have to go feed my chickens, switch the laundry, and get us all ready to go! My mother-in-law is picking up the girls to watch them during the meeting.

Nervous about my wisdom teeth removal.  Blah.

 

Today I finally went to the dentist for my wisdom tooth.  The one on the bottom left has been throbbing and burning like crazy.  I’ve spent several nights recently crying all night long, or waking up sweating in pain.  Can’t chew, can’t function.  Effing tooth!  I called the dentist this morning and they saw me right away.

I was hoping the dentist would just be able to pull it, but no such luck.

The x-ray showed a big infection under the tooth, and the tooth is impacted.  That means what should be the top of the tooth is pointing straight forwards at my other tooth.  It’s like this:

<——  instead of the arrow pointing up like for a normal tooth.

Awesome, right?

I have to go to an oral surgeon and get general anesthesia so they can chop the stupid tooth out, and possibly shave off a bit of my jaw bone to do it.

Bonus: The wisdom tooth on the top of that same side looks like it will be impacted also when it comes through more, so it needs to be sliced and diced as well.

This will be wonderful.  Why does my life not have a pause button for events like this?  My mom said she would take off of work to help me with the girls while I recover, thankfully.  But still I will have to take care of Ada all night and that will suck.

I have to get rid of the infection before I can do the surgery.  I have some horrible tasting antibiotic mouthwash to use.  My surgery consult appointment is on Monday at 8:45 in the morning.  If the infection is under control by then they can schedule the surgery for the next few days.

I’ve named that tooth Fail Tooth because it totally fails at being a functional tooth.

Fail Tooth is destined to die in the next week.

Thank the Lord.  I can’t take much more of this throbbing pain.

I’m not nervous about the surgery itself, but I am not looking forward to the recovery.

The best news is that I should have it all over and done with before I ovulate.  One track mind over here!

I am thankful now that I did not get pregnant this past cycle, and that my period was like a week late.  If I had gotten pregnant, that would be bad for oral surgery!  I couldn’t keep the infecty tooth through an entire pregnancy either.  Did you know that bad dental health can cause premature labor, or worse?  Those infections can spread to other parts of your body, like your brain or heart.  Dangerous!

If I had gotten my period on time then I would be ovulating during the surgery and recovery period.  That would be a trying to conceive fail, most likely.  I’m not going to feel like doing it with chip munk teeth.  Though Tyler probably wouldn’t mind me looking goofy.

Oh well.

Anyway, I guess things in the fertility area worked out ok this past cycle after all despite my frustrations at not becoming knocked up and having to wait an extra week for good old Aunt Flow to appear.

Yeah.

To erase talk of that from your brain, here are duckling pictures from a few days ago.  (S)he’s actually bigger already!

This was the first day, right after we rescued her from the lake.

First time in our backyard!

Baby ducks are overwhelmingly adorable, aren’t they?

I still haven’t finished editing the rest of the pictures from Easter.  I’d better get on that before I lose them or something.

I’ve got like a million blog entries to write, but there’s no time!

Ada’s birthday is on Saturday and we’re having her party at our house on Sunday.  Just family, but I’ve got a lot of cleaning to do.

Our tadpoles are turning into mini froglets and I have to set up their terrarium first thing in the morning.  (I have a 20 gallon long tank for it.  Suggestions welcome!  Need to make it half water, half land for the 9 remaining swimming tadpoles to grow and climb out onto land.)

One tadpole can already breathe air!

Check it out, we discovered it tonight.  It’s so tame, it just sat on my finger.  The girls were in awe.

I made frogs y’all!!!!!

(Better pictures later, this one is from Instagram.  You can follow me on there under Pepper44.  Loads of pictures, I will spam your feed.)

I think the tadpoles are several different types and ages of frogs and/or toads.  That tadpole in the water next to the froglet looks totally different and is much larger than the tadpole turned frog up on the java moss.  I can’t wait to see what they all turn into!

 On that note, I must go to bed…very tired, throbby tooth…sigh.  If you are the praying sort say a little prayer for my Fail Tooth removal.  :(

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, Hank…

I cleaned out the fridge last night and didn’t get a chance to take it out yet.

He ate half a big container of expired yogurt, a box (4 sticks) of expired butter (wtf I’ve never had butter expire before…had a really short date), he also ate half a bowl of really old Panera broccoli and cheddar soup, half a thing of old roast beef deli meat, some wilted spinach, a few bananas, and who knows what else.

Bonus: Most likely I’ll get to clean up this trash again in the form of vomit and/or explosive dog diarrhea in the middle of the night.

Awesome.

I just cleaned up all the trash and vacuumed up the dirt and pistachio shells.  Now I have to get Ada to go play so I can mop and wash the rug.  Fun stuff.

Warning: About a million pictures below.

I had way too many bantam eggs, so we decided to dye those for Easter.

They are like mini eggs.  Everything mini is more fun, because mini things are cute, right? Plus they are the perfect size for little hands to grip.

I saw this idea on Pinterest to use a muffin tin to dye eggs.  Well that one deserves a negative rating.

Two seconds after this picture was taken Ada flipped the muffin tin over, mixing and spilling all of the colors.

Thankfully I had the common sense (and nice weather) to do this outdoors.

I never thought I’d say this, but thank goodness we live 5 minutes from Walmart.

Tyler went to buy more egg dye and I occupied them with the wax crayon.

Ada was frustrated because she thought the crayon wasn’t working.  Poor toddler brains, they do not compute the purpose of invisible wax crayons.

Curious and curiouser…

Behold!

“Hi. When I’m not screaming I’m really cute.”

Rosie discovered the egg dye came with glitter.

She was so excited she kissed the glitter package repeatedly.

The glitter was like a happy drug.

Except then I distracted them away from the glitter before we even opened the package.

Because you know what?  I hate glitter.

Oooh, buzz kill.

The last time I unleashed that sparkly crap in my home I found it every where for like a week.

Including in my eyebrows, and a piece in between my teeth one day.

Yeah.  Glittered eggs?  No.  Just…sorry but no.

We had lots of bright colored dye for distraction, so all was well.

See?  Dye on her finger.  Oh my.

Uh, yeah…I really don’t know what was going on here.

Ada’s chipped front tooth makes me sad, but I’ve realized now it also matches her personality.

Upon being told she cannot splash in the dye:

Can you believe this one is almost six?  SIX!

Back to happy again.  Nearly two, such a fun age.

I have no explanation for this.

Thankfully an airplane flew past to offer a much needed distraction before the spoon attack went any further.

I really love toddlers.  No sarcasm.

Showing off some of her eggs!

“My eggs say it CHEESE toooo!”

Oh my gosh I made these eggs change colors!

Intermission: Rosie instructed me to photograph her strawberries.

Daddy returned with more dye and spill proof bowls, which actually worked very well.

Ada said, “Huh?  This?”

Ada was allowed to use the remaining muffin tin dyes.

She was quite thrilled.

Mini-eggs are really cool. At least I think so.

Ada agrees.

What the heck are these egg traps you bought Dad?

She kept wanting to re-dye the eggs as other colors. This ended up being a teal egg.

She whipped that spoon back out from where ever she hid it and used it to remove her egg somehow.

Martha Stewart perfect eggs?  Nope.  Naturally died eggs?  No again.

Fun?  Yep.

(Note the article in the newspaper at the bottom of the picture.  Talk about perpetuating stereotypes! I have good teeth, thank you very much.)

Speaking of doctor exams, Ada had an eye exam today.

She did so well! She didn’t cry at all, but she also refused to speak.  She just bashfully grinned.

The eye doctor said she has good vision right now, but it looks like she’ll likely need glasses as she gets bigger. This was based on the shape of her cornea.

If all seems well I don’t have to bring her back until she’s four.  Apparently there’s a major growth spurt around age four that usually results in eye sight change for some kids.

Will all my kids need glasses?  Stupid husband and his apparently dominant blindness gene.

Oh well.  I still think they’re cute, husband included.

Tomorrow I’ll post the pictures from Easter day.  I also have some super adorable pictures of Duck Face Amos to share later!

How do I keep running out of time to post here?  I love writing down thoughts and sharing pictures on my blog, if not for any other reason than I enjoy looking back at it years later.  I’ve been doing this for quite some time, since maybe 2002.  I’m too tired to look back and check the date of my very first entry, but it’s been years!

I can’t seem to catch up on anything lately.  I need a pause button.  Or maybe a part time nanny, and while we’re at it I’ll also take a house cleaner and heck, why not a butler too.  Oh and a professional dog walker would be pretty awesome.

Wait.  Then I wouldn’t really be living my life.  I’d just be directing it.  I might have time to post on my blog, but I wouldn’t have much to blog about.

Ah, well.  Conundrum.

I’m over tired and rambling.  Tyler accidentally woke up Ada at 4:30 this morning when he came home.  Tyler then slept until I woke him up to leave for work at 3 in the afternoon.  I feel like my eyeballs are melting in my skull.  I really need to go to bed.

But first, before I go cross eyed, I’ve got to share a couple things.

I met Rachel, a long time blog friend, today!  She has two daughters just a bit younger than Rosie and Ada.  Her daughter Ella and Rosie had a blast playing together at the park.  I think she’s the sixth person from the blog world I’ve met now.  Kind of thrilling. Who wants to meet up next?

(Rachel I hope you don’t mind if I post these pictures!  Feel free to steal them if you want any of them.)

It was super windy and kind of cool today.  I think the girls had fun anyway, despite Rosie not making it out the door with her coat.

Why does Rosie look so very old here!?  (My children are both huge compared to their peers.)

What an awesome “cheese” face!

They really liked that thing.  I think I need one in my backyard.

The sun was blinding today!  Too bad it wasn’t warm at all.  We’re even supposed to have a freeze tonight.

After playing on the playground we walked down to the edge of the lake to look at the geese and ducks.

The water level was abnormally low and there were way less birds than usual.  I’ve never seen the water that low before, it was weird.

We stepped down onto a spot that should have been underwater, but it was now a dry dirt bank.  Ada ran over and scooped up a baby duck.

She’s always trying to pick up wild birds because she thinks they are just like her pet chickens, domesticated. Usually of course the birds all fly away and she is dismayed.

This time the duckling didn’t run away.

See how small it is in comparison to Ada?  It has no feathers at all, so it must have just hatched in the past few days.

Nothing is wrong with it, it’s just tame.  Very, very tame.

Why is it so tame?  I think it was abandoned by someone.  An Easter gift that peeped too loud and pooped a lot.

Really, if you saw this giant toddler running at you, arms outstretched, grinning a la Darla from Finding Nemo…why in the world would you not run for your life?

Not only did it not run, when I put it down it hid underneath of me.  Then it wanted to follow me.

It was cold outside, windy, and there was no mama duck in sight.  No other baby ducks around.  I looked nearby on the lake and no other duck was worried about this poor shivering peeping ball of freaking adorable cute fluff.

WHAT ELSE WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?

Rosie named it Duck Face Amos.

It’s in a rubbermaid tub under a heat lamp, snuggled up in pine shavings at a nice toasty 100 degrees, basking in my living room.

Either my kids will remember they had an awesome childhood, or they will tell their therapist how crazy their mother was when they were growing up.

Tonight Duck Face Amos fell asleep snuggled up on Rosie’s shoulder by her neck.  When it was time to put Duck Face Amos in the brooder so the girls could go to bed Ada insisted on singing the duck her own version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, which is something like this:

Twankle twakle little star, how I wonder who you are.
Up above the noodle so high.
Like a farm in the sky.
Twanke twankle little noodle star
Har har har har har har har.

“Good night Duck Face!”

And she kept blowing it kisses.

I die of teh cute.

Anyway, it was great to meet Rachel and her family.

I wish you all lived closer so our girls could play together!  Rosie loved Ella and has talked about her all night, even calling her by the correct name and not Emma. Haha.  Rosie tried to make us name the duck Emma too, and when I said no she picked Duck Face Amos.  Thinking we might have to change that once we can tell if the duck is male or female in about a month. 

Now, I have to go watch my one trashy TV splurge (16 & Pregnant) and go to sleep before my eyeballs really do melt in my skull.

Tomorrow I’m going to share some of the Easter pictures.  Egg dying first.  Then maybe the next day I’ll share the actual Easter day pictures…

If I survive.  Must force self to go to bed now.  I’m such a procrastinator.

Ok. Saving this.  Really.