How I'm Already Spoiling My First Niece

My sister is due to have her first baby in June, about 2.5 weeks before I expect to be induced to have Kate. She is having a little girl too and I sewed this blessing dress for her. (In our faith a baby blessing is comparable to but different than a christening.)

I can only take credit for execution, the design is all Jessica's. Cute, huh? Almost made me jealous. But I'm content to sew only one blessing dress during this pregnancy and let Kate wear the same one I made for Claire. I mean, I'm too lazy to sew elastic onto a flat sheet, so do you really think I'm up for a SECOND baby dress???

Who's your best friend?

A little while back I got the best compliment I've ever received.

Or so I thought.

A few months ago or so, Scott announces, "Dad, you're my best friend!". As you may have picked up, in our house, Scott tends to be the sweet emotional kid. He wears his heart on his sleeve so this wasn't jaw dropping but I still felt like a million bucks. I mean really, how many dad's top the list of people their son would like to be around? Especially one that reminds him EVERY SINGLE NIGHT he has to eat BOTH tablespoons of dinner Mom made BEFORE he can have ice cream? I was feeling pretty good about myself

Fast forward a bit. Scott is missing Grandma and Grandpa who visited recently so we decide to give them a call. Scott's not the biggest phone talker but he does manage to eek out "Grandpa, you're my best friend EVER."
Suddenly, I'm feeling more like 100K. That's ok. So there is someone out there who is Scott's favorite person regardless of which social circle we are talking about. This is Grampa we're talking about after all. He's not the one forcing a spoonful of unpalatable spaghetti on the kid.

Fast forward a bit more. We are at church. Scott sees one of his friends from nursery. "Look, it's my BROTHER Anden!

Well, at least I'm on the guest list. I suppose that's the best a dad at this age can ask for. But if Scott thinks he's getting out of eating that half a hot dog he's got another thing coming.

Oh Sheet!

The other day Claire came downstairs and told us, wide-eyed, that Scott was up in our room cutting our bed. WHAT?!?!?

We ran upstairs and found Scott sitting on our new-to-us king size bed with a pair of scissors. The fitted sheet I had bought less than 2 weeks ago was riddled with holes:


I would have thought I would get crazy-mad, but I didn't. I had to keep a very solemn face to make sure Scott knew not to do that again, but really all I was thinking was, "Phew!" You see, this is the very first scissors incident we've ever had. How have we gotten to the point where we have a 5 year old and a 3 year old and haven't had scissors problem yet? I guess we're just really lucky. And in the whole scheme of things, it could have been so much worse. Sure the sheets were practically brand new, but they're so replaceable. They are plain white sheets. There's nothing special or sentimental or unique about them. Don't you just love when a problem can truly be solved by just throwing money at it? Not that I like throwing money around, but the $25 I had spent at Ross on the sheet set was a small price considering the cost of many other fabric items in our home (i.e. the comforter that was right next to the victimized sheet, the mattress underneath said sheets, the carpet, the couch). We lectured him a little and then told him he had to help us take off the old sheet and put a new one on. He humbly replied, "Yes sir, Mommy." :)

But here's the problem now. We had an extra fitted sheet because I bought two sets for the sake of washing, so we have something to sleep on for now, but I would like to have a second sheet again like I did before. You know, for next time Scott breaks out the scissors... hardy har har - NOT! (This better not happen again or next time I might go ballistic after all.) Anyway, I would like to purchase JUST a fitted sheet. Not an entirely new set. Apparently this costs more than an entire set.

Huh?

You see, due to the need for marital peace, M and I don't use a flat sheet. I won't get into the bedding tug-of-war that occurred every night when we still had a separate flat sheet and comforter. The bizarre results were seemingly physically impossible bedding distributions by morning. (Note: I still stubbornly maintain that it was ALL M's fault.) Nor will I get into the freakish OCD-like tendencies I have when my skin is in direct contact with a comforter. [Shudder, shudder] Suffice it to say that having a duvet that can be taken off and washed but no flat sheet has saved our marriage and my sanity. It may not be my ideal set up, but compromise is an important part of marriage, right? So buying a sheet set that includes a flat sheet means we end up with nice high-thread count drop cloths. Or fabric for lots and lots of ghost costumes come Halloween. In short, we don't need the flat sheet. And, another long story in itself (basically I'm a sucker for free stuff), we already had king size pillows on our queen bed, so we already had a set of king pillowcases from before. So when we acquired the (FREE!) king bed I really only needed to buy us a couple fitted sheets and one set of pillowcases for us to have the two sets of the sheets we wanted (so we could have one on the bed and one in the wash). But I was (understandably I think) anxious to get to sleep on our newly acquired king-size bed in my whale-like pregnancy state, so I rushed out and bought two entire sets of king sheets at my local Ross anyway. They were cheap and it was a quick solution. Yay. So here is our current king size sheet tally:

6 pillowcases
2 flat sheets
1 fitted sheet
1 fitted sheet full of holes

Now I really don't want to go out and buy a whole new set. That would put our tally to:

8 pillowcases (all less than a year old, all plain white) - that's enough for more pillows than I can think of ways to use, EVEN when trying to get comfortable while pregnant!
3 flat sheets - do you think they'd make good tablecloths???
2 fitted sheets
1 fitted sheet full of holes

That seems silly to me. Why can't I buy JUST the fitted sheet? Sure I can, but only if I buy fancy ones that cost more than the entire reasonably nice sheet set did at Ross. At least this is the case at all the retailers I have checked. And you know, I'd kinda like the extra sheets before this baby arrives so I'm not in the mood to sit around stalking ebay auctions or anything. Any suggestions anyone? Anyone want to bid on an ebay entry that goes something like this:

NEW, Never Used Flat King Sheets and Pillowcases - open package, missing fitted sheet from set

Can I Call It That Too?

Sometimes it's just so funny when kids chronically mispronounce things. Scott's latest is Nutrigrain bars. He consistently calls them "Graitrinune bars" no matter how many times we coach him on the right way. When Claire was little she called helicopters "hop-poo-coppers." What is your favorite kid mispronunciation?

What Goes Around Comes Around, Eventually

Or Good Things Come to Those Who Wait While Repeatedly Pestering the Other Insurance Company

About 3 weeks ago, I got a bill in the mail. It was for $1.50 in toll charges.
From December of 2007.

Our cars have RFID tags on them for going through the toll plazas, so we never stop to pay a toll. Back when our minivan was in the shop due to an accident, turns out that we thoughtlessly drove through a toll plaza in our rental car out of sheer habit. Apparently it took this long for them to track down who had been driving the rental car at the time and get the bill sent to us. Talk about lag time. And they went to all that effort for a buck fifty. I almost felt sorry for them, but I certainly didn't mind paying it considering there were no extra fees involved.

But speaking of lag times, today I got a check in the mail. For $692.77! We finally got reimbursed by the other guys' insurance for that same rental car. They finally accepted that their guy was at fault and got around to coughing up the cash. The accident was in November of 2007.

Apparently 18 months is just how long it takes for anyone to get the blame for stupid acts, be they of the $1.50-variety or the endangering-the-lives-of-4-people variety.

Dote, Dote, Dote...

The umbilical cord was in front of her face, so that's what the deal is with the line-ish thing over the bridge of her nose.

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So some of you might be wondering why I am getting all these ultrasounds. No, I have not bribed an ultrasound tech. Kate has a two vessel umbilical cord. It's also called a Single Umbilical Artery (SUA). Normally a baby has two arteries and one vein in the cord, but she only has one artery and one vein. It is associated with some abnormalities, but we seem to be lucky and none have shown up in fairly extensive ultrasound scans. Now that the concern of abnormalities is pretty much over, the only concern is that blood flow might be restricted and she could experience impaired growth or other similar problems. This is what is being checked for by my now weekly ultrasounds. So far, everything looks great though! It is quite common for the one artery to get larger and fully compensate for the missing one, resulting in a perfectly normal pregnancy. So far, that seems to be the case and we just get a lot of peeks at Kate. The other result is that I will be induced about a week early, guaranteeing that I will NOT go almost a week past my due date and then still end up being induced like happened with Claire AND Scott.