Imagination

I love when my kids speak encouraging words to one another, so yesterday when I heard Lily encouraging Ryan with, "Don't give up, Ryan. You can do it!" It was music to my ears. Knowing he was playing a princess Wii game with her because she loves it, but can't really play by herself made it even better. He had asked to play Wii and I told him he could play whatever he wanted. When Lily saw him getting ready to play she asked him to play princesses with her. After making checking with me to make sure he'd still get a chance to play the game he wanted he gladly obliged. I love when they play nicely with each other and do kind things for one another.

Of course all the wonderfulness only lasted for so long and they started getting frustrated with one another because Lily couldn't get past a particular obstacle. I helped with that one and everything went okay for a while longer. Then came another one and I couldn't keep helping, so I told Lily it was time to stop playing for now and let Ryan play his game. She didn't like that, so she went up to her room and cried. Ryan went up after her and the next thing I heard was Ryan running around saying, "I'm a green bog!" and Lily laughing and giggling as she chased him with her princess wand. They were playing the Wii game in real life. I was so impressed with Ryan in so many ways. He went on his own to cheer his sister up. He used great problem solving skills and used his imagination to come up with just the right thing to make his sister happy again. They spent the rest of the afternoon playing their own versions of Wii games in real life. They played Excite Truck, Mario and Sonic Winter Olympics and Mario Kart after they were done playing princesses. These kinds of afternoons warm my heart.

Our New Toilet

It's about 10PM... I hear Crash! Boom! Bang! I recognize the sound as the stool in the upstairs bathroom. It sounds horrible. I run upstairs. "Are you okay?!" I ask before I can even see what's going on. No response. I get to the top of the stairs and flip the light on because the bathroom was completely dark. And that's when I saw it. Unfortunately, Ryan did not see it, at least not the way I did. He was standing there holding the the upside down wooden stool at a 45* angle in one hand and aiming perfectly into it with the other. Oh, yes, he had turned the stool upside down and was using it as a toilet. Realizing he doesn't know what he is doing I very calmly(well as calmly as you can when someone is peeing in your stool) say, "Ryan, that's not the toilet. Can you stop peeing?" No response. This is when I just start cracking up because, well, because he is PEEING IN THE STOOL! Realizing it was no use to try to get him to stop I go to get some rags to limit the damage. I throw a couple old towels in and under the stool to try to soak it up. Meanwhile I'm laughing so uncontrolably I'm snorting. Oh, yes, people. I snort laugh when I really get going which only makes me laugh harder. It's a vicious cycle I tell you.  Anyway, I was laughing and Ryan started looking confused and fussing a little bit. Inevidably when you choose a wooden stool as your liquid waste recepticle things get messy, so I changed his clothes and got him to bed.
As I cleaned up the mess while still laughing at the whole situation I realized something. I'm turning into my mother because I am going to have to tell this story. I will tell this story many times and each time I tell it  I will be cracking up before I get through the second sentence. I've started laughing several times just writing it here. I know sometimes I will just start laughing out loud because I thought about it. Yes, I am becoming my mother. Well, at least I'll be doing it with a smile.

Chaos

I have not been able to get into a groove this year. Try as I might things just seem to return to chaos. Maybe I'm trying to do too much, maybe I'm just not doing enough, but organization, energy and the feeling of knowing what's going on elude me. Everything in my house is "in transition." The basement is half painted, the boxes still surround the Christmas tree(which still dons it's lights), toys cover the floor, miscellaneous junk covers every flat surface in the house, the "art room" is still full of unsorted crafting and art supplies and has trash everywhere from Ryan's constant projects, etc, etc. Events keep sneaking up on me. Like GNO that has been on my calendar for about 6 months is tonight. The only reason I remembered is because someone asked me if I'm going last night. I did switch to a new calendar for the new year and forgot to transfer the date, but that just illustrates the problem. Things around here have just not been right. It seems like all Lily wants to do is play Wii, watch TV and play the computer. I don't let her do that all the time, but the requests every 5 minutes can drive a person crazy. I haven't gotten a good night's sleep in a long time. Lily keeps shouting in her sleep and/or waking up in the middle of the night and neither Jay nor I seem to be able to  go to bed at a reasonable hour. If I do go to bed I can't sleep. Then of course I'm tired all day. I need to do something to get this family back on track. I think part of the problem is all these breaks. I consider the breaks from school breaks for me and I really shouldn't. I've been working on figuring out a daily routine that will bring things to order, but it's really hard to maintain a schedule when I'm so stinkin' tired. Maybe the next step is writing down the schedule and keeping myself accountable.

Right now Lily desires a bath and I should go do that since she is asking for something without a screen and I should encourage that. Perhaps I'll share some more unorganized rambling with you later.

A Brave New World

So I've been hanging (online anyway) with some other aspiring photographers lately. I think it's been good for me. One of them put out a challenge today. The challenge was to declare yourself a photographer. That takes a lot of guts and confidence. I started a new blog to commemorate the occasion because I am a photographer! I'm still growing in my craft, but I am a photographer. For real! Stop laughing, oh wait, that's me. Maybe if I say it enough it won't be weird or feel like I'm bringing judgment down upon myself.
It's a new format for me and maybe for some of you. It's a lot more complicated than I'm used to, so hopefully it will improve over time. Let's call this it's "soft opening" for friends and family. Hopefully soon it will be ready for the world to see. The template is so cool. It changes the color of the background to enhance each picture. I'm not sure if I'll stick with that, but it sounds like fun for now.

Blah!

I've had this sinus infection for about a month. Mostly it was just annoying, but lately I had started feeling sick and tired, really tired. Probably because I have not gotten a solid night's sleep since Christmas for one reason or another. The one of the kids would call out, I'd get too hot or I'd just wake up and not be able to get back to sleep. So I made an appointment and got the antibiotics. I started taking the antibiotics and have felt terrible ever since. That's not the way it's supposed to work! I guess all that gunk that was trapped in my sinuses needs to go somewhere and that's what is causing the crappiness. It's no fun. In fact I felt so bad this morning that I tried that sinus cleaning rinse stuff the doctor gave me. It wasn't as bad as I thought. It was a little strange, but after I felt like I could breathe- for a while anyway. I'll probably do it again, but the trial pack I got only had 2 packs of solution, so I'm saving it for later. I bet you really wanted to hear about my no good day...in detail, didn't you? Well, you can blame it on the boredom. You can only surf the internet for so long before people start thinking you're stalking them. Plus no one updates that often. I'm so bored! There are a million things I need to do, but I can't even stand up long enough to make a sandwich without my head throbbing. I'm afraid my brain is too fried to write something meaningful to someone. So internet, that is why I'm here. That is also why I have not done my 2nd and 3rd day of the 365 day photography challenge. Perhaps I'll start over when I'm feeling better.