Haircut fail

**I wrote most of this on Wednesday, so just pretend I managed to post it on Wednesday too please.

I breakfasted on the usual suspects today.

Charlotte also wanted to set up her breakfast and have it photographed, so here is (most of) what she had.

I WAS going to be ambitious and go somewhere with the girls today, but I decided tomorrow would be a better day to go on an "adventure", plus Emily had really been pushing to have her hair cut super short, so we had a chill morning doing some coloring.

Then we headed out the door to get Emily's hair cut.  I intended to walk her over to the Hair Cuttery near our house, but as we were leaving she said "You know what Mom?  I kinda like my long hair."  so our walk to get her hair cut just turned into a regular walk to enjoy the pretty weather.  Remy was pleased to be included at the last minute.

Lunch was a normal salad and a mango KeVita.

Emily has enjoyed wearing this cape recently.  I called her a "caped crusader", then had to spend a long time explaining what I meant by that.  She proclaimed that all superheroes wear capes, but when I countered with Spiderman she decided that she was going to pretend to be Spidergirl, who DOES wear a cape and a purple dress and also shoots rainbows out of her hands.  She vanquished quite a few monsters for Charlotte this afternoon.

I had a predictable (but delicious) peanut flour banana smoothie with fiber cereal for a snack.

My workout for today was Lauren's Bodypump class.  I can NEVER get my butt over to the gym on time for that class even though I'm leaving straight from home.  The problem is that I always try to feed the girls dinner before we head over, which means I basically have to start at least THINKING about cooking dinner at 3:30 so they can be eating by 4:30 so we can all be to the gym by 5:30 and it has been tough to get everybody through dinner, to the potty, into the car, into the gym, to the potty again at the daycare and settled by the time class starts.  I always run in at the last minute and have to stand at the very front, although that's probably a good thing because it makes me feel like I have to lift a lot and know what I'm doing if I'm going to be in front of everybody else.  I think I even had to stand closer to the front of the room than Lauren tonight!

For dinner tonight (of which I ate some before and some after class) I just shamelessly repurposed the lamb veggie mixture from the galettes last night by adding tomatoes and serving it over noodles.  It was simple but yummy.

I also had a mish mash of all the greens we had leftover (kale, toscano kale and collards) sautéed with onions  and sprinkled with nutritional yeast.  I LOVE nutritional yeast over greens, and considering how amazingly healthy kale is and how amazingly healthy nutritional yeast is, I figure it is probably hands-down the most vitamin-packed side dish known to man.  It's a good thing it has that going for it, since it's not such a treat to look at.

And that was pretty much all there was to my exciting Wednesday.  I have fun plans for tomorrow though.

Two! Two! Two days of food!

Hey!  I just saw the first lightning bug of the season out my back window.  It must be summer!  In all ways other than officially, that is.

And sorry, instead of blogging there for a bit I ran off to investigate the Ann Taylor Loft 2 hour online sale but now I'm back.  Without having bought anything.  Grumble grumble....can't combine savings cards with sale code...

So now that I don't have much time to finish this post before bed, I guess I will jump in and make this quick, especially since I have 2 days to do.

Monday's breakfast:

I went to Bodypump afterwards, but didn't end up needing a morning snack.  As soon as I got in the car after Bodypump I ate the salad I had packed...

...because the pool finally opens in the mornings now instead of at 4!  Actually it doesn't open until noon this year.  Grumble grumble...used to open at 11...can only swim for 1 hour before Charlotte's naptime now...

Emily was happy though

My lunch snack was much the same as Sunday's, except that this time I enjoyed it from a bowl that says "Charlotte" on the bottom.

I had some watermelon with a squeeze of lime and some chopped mint later on.

Then for dinner I had lamb with fresh pea and barley salad (I have a feeling I'll be using a lot of recipes from that blog this summer!)

I meant to pull out the lamb to defrost Sunday night.  Then I meant to pull out the lamb to defrost Monday morning.  I ACTUALLY managed to pull the lamb out to defrost Monday afternoon, and despite using my favorite hot water defrosting trick, the lamb was still about 50% frozen solid when it was time to cook it.  "Oh well!", I thought.  "What better place to un-freeze something than in a hot oven?"  And you know what?  It turned out pretty ok.  By the time Will needed to eat dinner (he was leaving again for a beer meeting that evening so he had a narrow window in which to eat) we carved off some of the lamb on the outside that was done and let the middle keep defrosting/cooking.  It all ended up cooked and delicious in the end, so that was a win.

What was not a win?  Was the way I ate a lot more of dinner than was pictured here when I picked at it while putting away leftovers :-(

Then ate what was probably a full serving of this ice cream afterward.

I blame our freezer.

You see, our freezer has been getting progressively colder without our permission, and at this point even things that aren't supposed to freeze at normal kitchen freezer temperature (like alcohol) are freezing in there.  When the girls asked for ice cream and I pulled this out it was like cement.  Knowing a 2 year old and a 5 year old would not be able to wait for 2 hours for promised ice cream to soften up without annoying their mother to death in the meantime, I hastened the process by putting it into the microwave.

But then I was left with scoopable ice cream and a lot of almost all the way melted ice cream around the outside.

You know what one of my biggest weaknesses is?  Almost all the way melted ice cream.  So I ate what was left after serving the girls their portions.  This stuff is made locally and is absolutely heavenly.  BUT.  It doesn't have nutrition facts on the back, so I am going to assume they left them off because the calorie count and fat content are so unbelieveably low that no one who peeked first at the nutrition facts would buy it for fear it would taste like the sugar-free low fat crap.

If the nutrition facts aren't there, I can't count them!

Then because I have no control whatsoever I also ate the bite of dark chocolate that had been laying on the counter since Charlotte decided she didn't want it last night.  However I didn't completely say "To Hell with it!" and have the glass of wine and handful of chocolate chips I was considering, so I count myself lucky that I stopped where I did.

Onward to today.

That's an egg white, swiss chard, onion, canadian bacon and goat cheddar "omelette" (scrambled eggs because I'm lazy) and coffee.  I was worried that without carbs I would be hungry again right away, and I definitely was, but it was the kind of hungry that doesn't get much worse for awhile and I was able to distract myself with a Zumba class.  Actually it was 15 minutes of standing around while the teacher tried to get the music to work, 10 minutes on a bike, then half an hour of Zumba once they got the music working.  Not the best workout, but all I had time for (unless I wanted to give up MORE of my punches on my punchcard for childcare, which I didn't).

After Zumba-ish I went to Common Market.  I had a list this time, and the trip went really well.  I got everything I needed, very few things that I didn't, and it went faster which was good because my kids were crazy.  As always.

I tried a new flavor of KeVita and found it to be pleasing.

Then I made a kind of copy of the collard wrap I had in San Antonio earlier this year.

While I was making it, I was thinking about how yummy it was going to be, and feeling sad that Will was not going to be able to have any.  The poor guy has gotten cheated since the kids were born...I used to make his lunch every day and now he's on his own.  In all fairness though, he takes a crap-ton of chopped vegetables and fruits and several smoothies AND his actual lunch to work with him every day, and that's a lot to make when I have difficulty even making myself and the girls 3 healthy meals a day.

Anyway.

I DID end up getting to share my wrap with Will because he came home to drop off his drycleaning right in the middle of lunch!  Nice timing.  He was greeted at the door with Charlotte's latest art project:

Which she ended up tracking into the house when I called her in for lunch.

I've been trying to come up with some creative ideas for lunches (both mine and my kids') and plan ahead so that I have the materials on hand to execute them.  Menu planning...imagine!  Emily is no help beacause she requests the same lunch every single day (squished-up cheese sandwich with Amy's tomato bisque soup with whole wheat alphabet noodles cooked in it).  I managed to plunk her down in my lap and look through Pinterest for a bit for some inspiration the other day though, so we finally got a nice list of acceptable lunches that she's excited about.  Today it was "Squids", which are whole wheat spaghetti noodles pushed through sliced applegate organics sausages.  They were very popular.

I tried to freeze some grapes today, but sadly we have one freezer that freezes things to absolute zero, and another freezer that kinda makes things a little bit cold.  A happy medium would be nice.  But at least the grapes for my snack came from the kinda a little bit cold freezer and not the absolute zero freezer.

There's greek yogurt under there too

I ate a bite of goat cheese while making dinner tonight. 

The goat cheese is also local, from a place called Caprikorn Farms, and it is called "Kids Love Goats Milk Pizza Cheese".  I have to call shenannigans though, because mine sure don't, even though they'll happily eat other kinds of goat cheese.

My other evening snack was 6 Tamari almonds, also called Dibby almonds or now Mommy almonds around here.

She's not an attention-hog at all

For dinner I decided to replicate my Dad's chickpea-crust galettes, except I filled some of mine with a lamb and veggie mixture and some with tomato sauce, cheese and Applegate pepperoni.  They were all quite yummy if you ask me.  If you ask my children you'll get a different story though.

I had them with some roasted beets dressed with orange juice and tarragon vinegar...

...plus some pickled cucumber and onion salad.  I just love making all these little salad-y side dishes with my produce in the summer!

My in-laws came over to watch the girls for a bit, so I left them to wrangle my wildlings (who were jumping in the gigantic mud puddles in our back yard as I pulled away) and headed to Costco for a few things.  I also headed to Target to look for a new booster seat for Emily, but had no luck.  Upon returning home, I had a giant bowl of fruit.

I definitely got in my 5 servings of fruits and veggies today!

Blogger and my laptop don't get along very well (does Blogger get along well with ANYTHING?) so I apologize if you tried to read this post when it published while I was halfway through writing it and got confused.  I also apologize if you are reading it fully written and are still confused.  In fact, if you're confused at all today, I'll go ahead and apologize for that.  It's probably my fault.

May (in a) day

So let's see.  In the time I took off from blogging, lots of stuff happened.  Let's see if I can get caught up.

WAAAAAAAY back in the beginning of May, Emily's preschool hosted a mother's day tea.  It was adorable.

All the other kids thought their moms were 6, 15, one was even 25.  Me?  I'm 100 years old :-(

The kids did a super-cute presentation...

...then we shared a special dessert they had made for us.

The next day we went to the fairgrounds for the MD Beer Festival!

My husband, as he is most often observed (beer in one hand, iPhone in the other)

Will sprung for the "VIP" tickets which, among other things, allowed us to get in early which was awesome.  Emily got her face painted and the girls got balloon animals before there were lines for those activities.  Then we plunked down near the giant train obstacle course that actually looks like a worm where your kids crawl in its butt and out its mouth, and Will and I took turns making beer runs from our base camp.  It was HOT but fun, and in honor of Mother's day the next day, Will offered to drive home :-)

Fun bus!

It was aptly named

 Sunday was Mother's day, and Will let me sleep in, made me breakfast and gave me a laptop!  Then we went over to my parents' house and had a picnic in their front yard.

Will really did an awesome job of making me feel relaxed and happy all weekend :-)  Which meant he was not at all relaxed and happy, I'm sure.  Now I'm under pressure to make this upcoming weekend just as good for him, eek!

And for no other reason than the sheer hilarity, I have to share these two pictures I took that day of Charlotte eating ice cream.  I call the second one "Brain Freeze".

The following week Emily had her preschool picnic.

And the following weekend was Abigail's 2nd birthday party!

She's SO ready for it to rain!

 After that was a "Fireside Chat with Brad" in honor of HIS birthday (May is getting almost as full of birthdays as June!).

And you know that farm I posted pictures of the other day?  We went there back in mid-May too for my mom's church picnic.

Charlotte was so jealous, but so scared to go out in the boat

She forgave Emmy for going without her though

 We left the church picnic with these guys:

 They're our newest pets, Christopher and Ryan.  They did a whole lot of nothing for a couple days, until OVERNIGHT first Christopher, then a couple days later Ryan turned into frogs.  I realize that this is what tadpoles are supposed to do, but I was expecting it to be a more gradual change, especially after reading the books we got from the library that talk about it taking weeks and weeks for tadpoles to metamorphose into frogs.  Nope.  One day tail, the next day hopping around, leaving me scrambling to find food so our newly carnivorous pets wouldn't starve to death.

And while our tadpoles were turning into frogs, my friend Carolyn's baby was "evolving into a human", as Emily puts it.  I am sad to say that looking back I realized I haven't taken any pictures of the new baby Alice, but trust me, she's cute with the most adorable round baby head :-)
Let's see, what else.

Our strawberries came in like gangbusters at the end of the month.

Picking strawberries gets ones feet very dirty (so does simply being a 5 year old)

 We also FINALLY got that huge ugly TV out of our living room and had the mantle and new TV put up, so we're enjoying lots more space now.

Plus more neck aches if you sit there to watch the TV

 Then Emily went and graduated from preschool.  Remember the preschool that I was freaking out about selecting, oh, a couple days ago?  Turns out that was actually 2.5 years ago and yeah, we're DONE with it now.  Wow.

Soon-to-be-kindergartener

Emily's adoring groupies

I can just see this picture juxtaposed with her high school graduation picture (SOB!)

After-picnic

Then came the fillings.

We decided to go ahead and fill Emily's teeth.  I freaked out about it for awhile, consulted the internet, spoke to a couple different people who were dentists but not in a position to make money off of us and they all pretty much agreed that we should do it.  I honestly felt like the cavities wouldn't turn out to be a big deal if we didn't fill them, but if they DID and she ended up having to have multiple root canals because of our decision I would've felt horrible.

So we shipped Charlotte off to Gemmy's house, stuffed Emily with food and water right before bed, and set our alarms for 4:45AM.  We got up and drove to the hospital down in Shady Grove while I tried to choke down some food and keep up my "This is an adventure!" attitude.  I was at least happy to be going to Shady Grove where they have a major pediatric focus which I hoped would make things easier.  Knowing she'd have nurses who were used to starting IVs in tiny little veins and anesthesiologists who had lots of experience with little kids made me feel better.

Check-in was long, as expected, but it was the first time I've ever checked into a hospital without being in full-blown labor so I focused on how much more pleasant it was this time to not be breathing through contrations while they asked me my social security number :-)  We moved from waiting room to waiting room until we were finally called back to pre-op...too bad I had just taken Emily to the bathroom when that happened.  And too bad they didn't come back out for us until half an hour later.  Bad timing there.

They took her vital signs and gave her some baby Valium, which she kinda hated.  Soon though, she started giggling and trying to poke the characters on the TV, and when we asked her if she had any questions for her dentist she said "Um....um.....um.....I LOVE UNICORNS!"  I kinda wanted to ask for some baby Valium for myself at that point.

I got to suit up and go back to the OR with her, and stay there until she fell asleep but honestly she was so thrilled about getting to ride in a rolling bed (Am I on a TABLE????  HA!) she probably didn't even notice I was there.  Then I was escorted back out to wait.

The procedure was supposed to take 45min-1 hour, so when 1 hour came and went I started to freak out.  Again.  I couldn't concentrate on my book and I kept straining my ears to see if I could hear any alarms or people running, and every time a doctor came out to meet with a family I whipped around in my seat to see if it was our doctor.  Eventually we had our meeting with the doctor, who told us he had given her 7 (!!) fillings, then we went back to get Emily.

When we came in her eyes were going in 2 different directions like a chameleon, she was flopping all over the place and blood was pouring out of her nose :-(  The nurses told us we could hold her, but she was attached to so many monitors and tubes that it was really tough to figure out how they wanted me to do that.  At first she couldn't even speak, but once she could she kept gasping that she couldn't see, which kinda freaked me out.  The nurses kept encouraging me to get her to go back to sleep, but they don't know my daughter.  This girl has NEVER willingly gone to sleep in her whole 5 years of life, and that time was no different.  "They usually have a much easier time coming out of the anesthesia if they can sleep for half an hour or so", they kept telling me.  Then why did you guys wake her up in the first place?!?!?!

The next hour was awful, as she kept bleeding and crying and flopping and doing a whole lot of things that were NOT sleeping.  Before I felt ready to face the world again it was time to go, and the nurse pushed me out of the hospital in a wheelchair holding Emily in my lap, much as a different nurse had pushed me out of a different hospital almost exactly 5 years before.  There was a whole lot more Emily in my lap this time though, and I can't quite recall but I don't THINK she was sucking on an orange popsicle when we brought her home the first time.

She fell asleep JUST as we got home, but then, miracle of miracles, fell back asleep on her own when I laid her down on the couch.  Possibly the first time she's ever gone to sleep without an extensive bedtime routine being performed to perfection first.

Then her nose bled and she felt horrible for 3.5 days :-(

I worried and called nurses, dentists, doctors, and friends whose kids had had surgeries.  Will and I did a lot of freaking out and second (and third and fourth and fifth) guessing our decision to have this done.  We were pretty upset for quite awhile there.  We think, looking back, that she picked up some virus at the hospital, which kept her nose pouring snot for days, and since she was so snotty her nose couldn't dry out and heal up so it kept bleeding.  And she just LOOKED haggard, even though she was in good spirits the whole time, which made it all extra-heartbreaking.

Poor brave little girl

Again, I KNOW that many mothers watch their kids go through much worse, and I don't know where they get the strength.  I was an emotional wreck on the inside over this whole thing even though my kid was technically fine, just a bit sick after a run-of-the-mill procedure, but it was pretty damned scary while we were going through it and we just wanted her to get better.

We were housebound for a large portion of that week, but when things got dire I had to make a stop by a grocery store.  You get some LOOKS from the other shoppers if you stop to peruse the cheese selection while your child slumps in the cart clutching a blood-soaked tissue to her face, let me tell you. 

She finally rallied and her nose slowed the bleeding enough to take her out in public the weekend, so we went to our friends Eric and Heather's barbeque.

That's better!  And yes, she wears this outfit all the time

OM NOM NOM

We really need a golden retriever 

At the barbecue I decided to show Emily how to properly throw a frisbee and hit her smack in the face, busting her lip open :*(  Because she hadn't poured enough blood from her face yet that week.

By recital time, her nose wasn't bleeding anymore, but she still had a fat lip from the frisbee incident.  I was incredibly happy that she was still able to dance in and enjoy her first recital despite all that had happened the week before.  She's a resilient little thing.

Yes, Charlotte wears this dress all the time too

I had to put this picture in for the sole purpose of showing off the PERFECT ballerina bun I put in her hair.  I was quite proud.

Then I think I just kind of shut down for a week or so.  I didn't take a single picture!  I suspect it was PMS (which for me manifests as a day or two of depression and just being angry at everyone) combined with finally being able to breathe a sigh of relief and stop keeping up the front of "everything's fine" while I was eaten up by guilt and worry over what we had inflicted on our daughter.  All this mixed with a dose of "I think my thyroid medication is too low" to really make laying motionless on the couch while sniffling look like the most attractive option for a couple days.  Thank goodness for kids!  They don't allow you to wallow in self-pity, as much as you may want to.

I'm feeling back to my old self now, and I'm trying hard to get back to my old eating habits again too.  The healthy ones that is.  I'll need to be feeling my best to get through this month, which always seems to gallop right over me in an endless string of birthdays and recitals and swim lessons before I even fully realize it's June.