Fashion?

I know I'm old and just not "with it" anymore, but even I know that this is not going to be the next fashion trend.



It just wasn't the battle I wanted to fight this morning. Keeping the kid in his own bed at night is a battle I am willing to fight. Wearing knee high baseball socks and cowboy boots didn't even make a blip on my radar screen other than to snort and snicker at him. We headed off to Story Time at the library.

"Oh no Mom," Evan cried from the backseat on the drive across town. "My boots are on the wrong feet."

"Wow, you better fix that," I replied. "You wouldn't want to embarrass yourself!"

We got plenty of looks from sympathetic mothers. No explanation needed. They all understood.

By the way, Evan looked even funnier right before we left the house because the knee highs were pulled all the way up his thighs. You couldn't see any skin. Fashion forward? I think not.

Half Done

We are half done with 2009. We might not be technically done...I mean I haven't counted the days or anything to see if we are smack in the middle of the year, but six months are under our belt. I am determined that the second half of 2009 is going to be much less traumatic than the first half.

I spent the first day of the second half of 2009 doing many interesting things.

1. My sister and I went with my mom to handle business at the bank. My sister and I laughed and snickered when the bank lady suggested that my mom might be interested in online banking.

2. The three of us drove to Merced. We saw a movie. The Proposal. It was cute.

3. We ate a lot of popcorn, so we weren't hungry for lunch.

4. We picked up my dad's ashes and death certificates from the funeral home. Tiffany buckled my dad into a seat belt in the back seat on the drive home.

5. Tiffany bought us milkshakes and chili cheese fries to share. We were hungry by that point.

6. We looked at pictures of my dad when he was in his early 20's. He looked so young. He was so young.

7. I checked out Facebook with my sister.

8. I drove home, bought milk at the grocery store, picked up the kids, and reveled in the fact that dinner was ready and waiting in the crock pot.

9. I gave both kids a bath. They were surprisingly nice to each other in the tub.

10. I absolutely love eating Wild Cherry candies from Powell's Candy Store. That place is my version of heaven!



That was my nifty day. Now, off to watch Wipeout.

Something else to worry about

Hudson very quickly learned how to scale the rock wall to get up to the fort on his new play set. However, watching him do it scares the daylights out of me. He always wobbles at the top, but looks so stinkin' proud once he's up there!


Up he goes.


That is about the point where I start to watch him with my fingers over my eyes. It seems like he is going to tumble over that left side.


Then he pulls himself up onto the landing, and I can breathe again.


He looks pretty content up there on his new perch.

Level 3

I am so proud of Evan! He passed Level 2 in swimming lessons and is on to Level 3. Well, sort of. We are taking a two-week break, and hopefully we'll get him signed up for the 3rd session so he can continue making great progress.

He is now able to glide on his belly with his face in the water, and he can flip over and do a back float. Next step is learning how to add in arms and legs to actually start swimming. Great progress from last year.

Evan had some busy days last week. He not only had swimming lessons every night, but he went to basketball camp in the morning. Coach ran him around and taught him some great basketball skills. By the evening, the poor kid was ready to crash.

He needed to take a little break before heading to lessons!

Give me a nibble

There is a part in the movie Madagascar where Alex bites Marty on the butt because he sees him as a piece of meat rather than his friend the zebra. There is a line that goes with it that goes something along the lines of, "What's a little nibble among friends?"

For some reason that is a major catchphrase around this house. We use it in all sorts of situations. For instance, when Hudson is biting Evan, we'll say, "What's a little nibble among brothers?" and then run to grab Hudson off his screaming brother.

As I took this photo of Hudson begging for bites of Eric's cereal I said the phrase to them. "What's a little nibble between father and son?"

Another phrase we use even more from that movie is, "Smile and wave boys. Smile and wave." We tend to use this one when things are just nuts. Rather than try to make sense of things, we just smile and wave. Kind of like we've been doing for the past six months. Smile and wave.

Shoe Fetish

Hudson has a serious shoe fetish. However, it is only a fetish for shoes that aren't his.


Here is he clomping around in my sandals. I don't know how many times I have told him that black sandals just don't go with his brown/tan shirt! He just won't listen to my fashion advice.


Balancing on wedge sandals can be tricky, so Hudson decided to switch to some comfy tennis shoes.


Walking around in shoes three times too big can wear a guy out. Must rest.

The wee one has also been spotted with my slippers, my crocs, his brother's shoes, and my flip flops. He keeps us laughing.

Procedure

Eric has a kidney tumor. We have known about it since March when he was admitted to the hospital with pancreatitis. I just chose not to blog about it until now. Too scary.

As awful as Eric's ordeal was in March, the blessing of it was that the tumor was discovered during one of his many scans at the hospital. It was also discovered early. The tumor is 3 centimeters which classifies it as the lowest level, or stage, of cancer. (From what I understand, anything under 7 cm. is considered Stage I, which is where you want to be if you have cancer.) If he hadn't been sick or hospitalized, we might never have discovered the tumor until there was blood in the urine or until it was too late.

Eric has been to many appointments since March to figure out what to do next. The doctors have told us that kidney tumors are cancerous 90 percent of the time. Given that fact, Eric had a bone scan to rule out cancer anywhere else in his body. That was negative, thank goodness.

We know that the entire kidney will need to come out. Because of where the tumor is located, they can't just cut out that part. However, Eric had to have a procedure done today to determine if the tumor is just in the kidney, or if it is also growing into or from the ureter, which is the tube leading from the kidney to the bladder.

The procedure Eric went through today determined that the tumor is just in the kidney, which is the result we were hoping for. They had to put him to sleep and insert a contrast dye to see where the tumor was growing.

Eric is in a lot of pain. I won't go into details, but he's hurting.

I truly did not enjoy being at the hospital, even if this particular hospital does look more like a doctor's office than a hospital. I saved my tears until the doctor told me he was okay, then he thought I was a nutcase for crying. I told him that it's been a tough month. I could have said a tough 6 months, but why be melodramatic?

After a minor mess up with the medication (it got sent to Longs instead of Vons), Eric is resting and trying to eat. I am trying to make him as comfortable as possible.

Kidney cancer has been on my mind since March. I'm tired. I'm scared. I'm trying not to be. I'm trying to thank God that we found this early. I'm trying to turn my brain off for a bit to give me a break from thinking.