Monday, September 12, 2011

Obligatory Bluebonnet Picture


Every spring I see the bluebonnets and think, oh I need to get a picture of the girls in the bluebonnets, but inevitablly, in my quest to find that perfect, beautiful, convenient spot, the bluebonnets would begin to fade before I would find that spot. So this year I was bound and determine to be a good mother, and get that Texas Bluebonnet Picture! FAIL. It appears I waited too long again to get a good one, even with all the extra time of a SAHM. So these are the pictures I had to settle for. Oh, well, there is always next year. Wouldn't want to knock everything off my list at once. (note Becca's bangs).

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Mommy and Me

While I wasn't as anxious to keep up with Mommy school I was anxious to knock out all the activities I'd been missing. All the museum mommy and me days. All the holiday special events. So we started with the Dallas Arboretum. Since it was still spring when I declared it summer vacation, the girls had to wear shirts under their sundresses. Grammy went with us, and we had a picnic lunch on the big lawn. There was also a petting zoo. All in all, a fun day. And everyone went home and took a nap, including Grammy and Mommy.




Next on the list was the Science Museum and Children's Museum. Also a good time. And we also packed a lunch and enjoyed it at Fair Park. There was also a dinosaur exhibit that was a lot of fun.






Saturday, September 10, 2011

Mommy as Teacher



With Becca's surgery behind us, I started my own version of preschool. I turned the old nursery into a "classroom". I bought a couple of books on preschool educations. I printed off several worksheet. I bought a marker board. I thought I was prepared. After one week, I was ready to throw in the towel. Bella enjoyed the activities (she loves worksheets), but Becca is really too small to sit and do worksheets or art projects. Thus I have signed an executive order to postpone Mommy School until the fall and declare it summer vacation early.

Becca's Surgery

April 1, 2011 marked the start of my time as a stay at home mom. April 1st is also the day that we scheduled Becca to have her adenoid taken out and tubes put in her ears. All of the illnesses took their toll on Becca, and the doctors finally decided that the surgery was necessary since her adenoid was probably just full of germies.  We went with a different ENT than what we had with Bella since me and him didn't seem to see eye to eye. LOVE our new ENT, and the surgery and recovery went relatively smoothly. Of course we had just got through this with Bella in October so we knew what to expect, and since nobody can top Bella on playing miserable, Becca's recovery seemed like a piece of cake.

Snow Vacation






Despite, or maybe because of all the snow we had, Bella could not be persuaded to take a beach vacation. She wanted a snow vacation. However, we weren't sure how the girls would do, so we wanted to do something on the cheap. Skiing is NOT cheap. But if we went to NM we didn't have to pay for airfare, so that is where we headed. Popo and Grammy made the trip with us, although we left a  day before and while we didn't find any aliens in Roswell, we did find Popo and Grammy. Our first day on the slopes were a little dissapointing. There was little snow left, and Bella was not excited about being on skis. Big suprise. So, it was a quick first day. And then that night Becca had an attack to end all attacks. I remembered her nebulizer, but it tends to work better with medicine. So by morning we wound up in the ER so that we could get her some pulmicort, but of course it could be that simple either becauser I had just filled her pulmicort at home, and the insurance was not picking it up again so quickly. Ergh.  By the time if all got worked out, it was pointless to use our lift tickets for that day.  But on our last day, we found some fun inter-tubing. All that being said, we probably won't be skiing next year, nor will be go to NM again.

Dr. Sandy


I recently found out that someone I went to high school with (technically someone George went to school with) is a pedicatric dentist in the area. So I took the girls to see her for their first dentist appointment, and she was great and so was her practice. The girls weren't afraid at all. In fact they were so impressed with Dr. Sandy, they came home and pretended they were "mommy dentists" and began giving exams.

Valentine's Day

This was an eventful time at the Dyer household. I just notified my boss that I would like to become a stay at home mom before the summer starts. So we decided that I would work until the end of March. It was a decision that was a long time coming, and I am so looking forward to seeing more of my girls. Poor little Becca has had quite a time of it this winter. She is most likely will be diagnosed with asthma in the future, but for the time being it has been lots of antibotics, breathing treatments and sleepless nights. Her failure to get better probably isn't being helped by our decision to get a dog. Glitter is precious, but we will probably be finding her a home soon since Becca doesn't seem to be getting better is is likely allergic to the dog, on top of everything else. We have managed to have some V-day fun by making cookies and decorating them. And of course we also celebrated Todd's birthday, although plans were cancelled due to sickness - seems to be a constant theme around here. 




Another first - self inflicted haircut



For some odd reason, Becca's hair on the crown of her head grown straight down into her face. So I must always have it pinned back or else it is in her face, and she is forced to wear a vial of blond hair. And she is pretty good at keeping her ponytail holders or other hair accessory in (oh you know there is a but coming), but for some reason on the night of February 1, 2010 she decided to take out her Whoville-girl ponytail and chop off that pesky hair in front of her face. Was momma mad? Momma was more mad that Becca had grabbed the scissors because quite frankly, Becca didn't do too bad a job on her hair. Although when Todd said such a thing, I told him it wasn't too bad if she was Farrah Fawcett and it was the 1970's (Becca also managed to tapper her hair at the sides). We had to brave the cold and ice to get Becca a real haircut the next day.

And perhaps it was cabin fever setting in that cause Becca to make bad decisions on consecutive nights (these events occurred during the previously mentioned Winter Whiteout of 2011), because Becca made another egregious mistake by tearing off all the flaps on her lift and flap books. Becca's punishment was sever: All books were taken out of her room for one week. Many tears were shed since "reading" books to herself at night is how Becca puts herself to sleep. She has been caught sleeping on top of her precious books or holding them in her had while she is fast asleep. A co-worker of mine shook her finger at me when I told her that I withheld books as punishment. I say, you gotten know what hurts, which makes the destruction of her precious books all the more baffling. If she starts writing "redrum"in lipstick on the mirrors, I'll know for sure cabin fever has set in.


Winter Wonderland

I don't have many pictures from the big snow event of 2011 that nearly whited out the Super Bowl that was hosted here in the Metroplex. In fact I just have some from when it first started snowing. We had around 11 inches of snow! So much snow that it shut down the city for almost the whole week before the Super Bowl. The kids were off from school for 4 days. Initially it was too cold to go play in it, but we did manage to go sledding one day, and it was so much fun. Too bad Todd missed all the fun since he felt it was his duty as a Michigander to go to work in the snow. Too bad the rear end of Todd's truck paid the price for his heroism.