In preparation of friends and family coming into town and filling my house with fun and excitement in honor of Cooper’s 1st birthday on the 12th, we have been cleaning. And cleaning. And cleaning some more. And no, our house is still not all that clean because well, we’ve cleaned it like twice since Cooper was born. I might be exaggerating, but not by much.

Justin did some vacuuming and mopping; I’ve been tackling the bathrooms and the never-ending-piles-o-laundry (and really, WTH…every time I go to Target to pick up some more laundry supplies, they’ve stopped carrying whatever I’ve last bought AND they’ve rearranged the whole dang laundry aisle); we’ve been tag-teaming for dishes, toys, and general clutter (I admit, I am a clutter-monster and a pack-rat). So at least we’re getting somewhere so that come this weekend, we just need to do a few good wipe-downs of things and run the vacuum. Or so we hope. We’ll see how things go with weekend.
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In other housekeeping news, Karen over at The Rocking Pony gave me this and I am tickled pink! I swear, she is one of the sweetest people I know.

I would like to pass it along to

• LaskiGal
• Sue over at As Cape Cod Turns
• Tranny Head
• LagLiv

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I realized that due to Justin’s incredibly heavy work schedule in the past few weeks and my idiocy, we never updated you guys on the final say in Gavin’s Child Find testing, etc. The final decision was that he is about 6 months behind for Receptive Language (what he hears and understands), and about 11 or 12 months behind for Expressive Language (what says, his vocabulary, how easily is he understood by strangers). In other words his auditory processing is on par with that of a 3-1/2 year old boy and he speaks like a 3-year old. This has certainly explained a lot of our frustration in communicating with Gavin, and explains why when we ask him a question he sometimes gives us an answer that just isn’t quite right. Add in his stuttering, and it’s downright aggravating for all of us because he’s annoyed he can’t get his words out or get his point across or can’t understand why we keep asking him the same dang thing over and over. And for us…we just have a hard time seeing our child struggle, or hear his classmates speak so much better (or worse, hear children a year or younger have what seems to be better speaking and comprehension skills).

So thankfully we will have our IEP and will be starting services the first week of September. Three hours of therapy per month…well, technically in 3 weeks. The fourth week of the month is set aside for any additional help if needed or meeting with the teacher for in-depth discussions, etc. The neat thing is that it is going to be at the elementary school that he will be going to in Fall ‘09, so by the time he starts kindergarten he will be King of the Classroom and will know the school well.

and that someone would be me.

Thankfully all of you lovely readers are nice enough to not point out to me yesterday that my title indicated that there might be updates and/or addendums. And really, there weren’t any. But I had every intention, but was dumb and hit “Publish” instead of “Save” and ran out the door to bring the car into the shop. By the time I came back I was so tired, hot (holy crap it was still 90 degrees at 6:30pm!), hungry, and stunned from a near-miss with a potential car repair, that I had forgotten that I didn’t actually finish the post and just went about the rest of my evening. Read comments from folks, replied to some of those comments, all the while completely oblivious of my error. I wasn’t aware until my internet service came back up this afternoon and saw my article on my reader (hatred from Comcast’s ineptitude may or may not be forthcoming. You know, if I remember).

So, now will be your REAL updates and addendums:

First off, I came back from getting the car checked and it is the catalytic converter. Good news is that the issue won’t affect the actual runability of the car…it will keep running. The bad part is that I won’t be able to pass the emissions because the catalytic converter is not getting the correct ration of oxygen to fuel or some mess like that, and is polluting a little more. The worse part is that my emissions is due later this summer and failure to pass means the state won’t renew my plates unless I pay to repair it. The worsest part is that the estimate I got was $700 for repair, which even if it didn’t fully fix the issue, I’d at least get a waiver on my emissions because I spent over $600. Yeah.

So do I get a “pass” now for writing like an idiot? I mean, most of you would probably have a little heart failure, or at least would bat an eyelash at a potential $700 car repair, right?

Well, the garage cleared the error (check-engine light) and did some other diagnostics to make sure there weren’t any other underlying issues. This just seems to be an issue of a 7-1/2 year old car with nearly 100,000 miles on it. He also told me that if the light stays off to still go ahead and try to see if I’d pass the emissions…because if I do, I don’t need to worry about the catalytic converter again for 2 more years. By then we’re hoping to replace it.

More updates….This morning I get up, start getting ready for work, check on Cooper and he still feels feverish. Crap. He had a low temp, but was physically warm enough to alert the teachers in his class if I was so rotten as to bring him in. Crap-crap.

I get out the Elmo videos and some of Cooper’s favorite toys and some of Gavin’s most coveted-from-Cooper toys, start up my work lap-top and can’t.get.on.the.VPN. What? I putz around with a few settings and try again. No dice. Just as I’m about to get beligerant, Justin calls asking if the internet is down because he can’t hit the server. One check of the modem validates our suspicions. Two power-cycles assures us I need to call Comcast. Thirty minutes on hold to talk to one underinformed Comcast rep (albeit he was very nice), two more power-cycles, and a reset confirm that there is an outage in our area. Crap-crap-crap.
However, my rep tells me “for some reason a lot of modems in {my town, my zipcode} are just going ‘offline’.”
Me: “A lot of offline modems in one area sounds like an outage to me.”
Rep: “well, that’s not really an outage.”
Me: “huh. That’s funny. The telecom company I work for usually considers this same sort of situation an outage. Why else would a bunch of random modems in a concentrated area go offline?”
Rep: “well, it’s still not an ‘outage’.”
Me: “ok, whatever. How soon till it’s back up?”
Rep: “we need to dispatch a technician…soonest we can get is Tuesday morning.”
Me: “what? You know it’s Friday, right? I have blogging work to do.”
Rep: “yeah, I know. I’m sorry. You could try calling tomorrow to get an earlier date.”
Me: “why can’t you give it to me now?”
Rep: “well, I just mean there might be an earlier one available tomorrow.”
Me: “that makes no sense. Okay. I’ll call back tomorrow.”

But it came up on it’s own later in the day. Like it has a hundred other times. Stupid Comcast.

On a much more fun update, Marmarbug over at My Life as Momma, gave me this lovely award!!!

Isn’t it cute??? I think I’m going to pass it along to a few folks who I don’t think have gotten it yet…so to Tootsie Farklepants and Precarious Tomato because they both make me laugh till I scream, to Caramama because she’s so open-minded and doesn’t mind my rather conservative leanings in our email discussions, to Burgh for letting me be a PITA and harrass her all the time (or rather, she tolerates me), and to Karen for propositioning me last week…that totally made my summer, lady! Oh, and also to Justin, and not because he’s my husband. But because he found a petition community group on Facebook that is trying to get Facebook to adjust their rules on considering photographs of breastfeeding to be offensive. Apparently 26,000 people have joined. And I might just join Facebook so I can join the petition as well. We’ll see.

By the way…tonight is the last night for the silent auction and fundraiser to support the Victims of the Midwest Floods.

I’ve been VERY negligent in acknowledging the cute bloggy bling that Karen from The Rocking Pony gave me a few weeks ago.  Just got busy with the trip and sick kids and, well, you know how time seems to slip away from you.  So a big overdue thank you to Karen for bestowing this lovely award on me.

I would like to share this lovely award with Law School Hot Mama, LL over at Lag Liv,and LaskiGal at The Cheap Seats…we all have little boys born within a few days and/or weeks of each other and it’s fun to watch each little (or big, in Sumo Baby’s case) boy go through different milestones, and I was kind of curious which of the 4 boys would sleep consistently through the night first (uh, Cooper did…not bragging, though).  Since I got this award about the same time Cooper started sleeping through the night, I figured I’d see if it would help those gals as well. ;)  Actually, while I’m at it, I might as well see if the luck rubs off for Precarious Tomato since her little girl, Cherry, hasn’t exactly been letting mom and dad sleep regularly, although she is a bit younger than the boys–it’s never too early to sleep a good 6-hours straight.

I also got a really cool sparkly bloggly bling from Madame Queen:

Now I’m starting to suspect that she’s not only the Queen, but maybe also a bit of a psychic because she somehow knew that I am a Princess and prance around in a tiara everyday weeklyon occasion:

This was a couple days ago, while home with a sick Cooper.  I also like to wear it while cleaning toilets and cleaning up cat hairballs.

I’d like to pass this lovely tiara award along to Burgh Baby’s Mom, Flea, and to Karen,so that they each can tap into their inner-princess since we all need that once in a while (or a lotta while).

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Onto other business.  I need to put out some mean props to Karen.  I keep buying stuff at her store because she makes really really really nice products for kids.  In fact, I added her Etsy store to my Business Blogroll so that all of you could buy more stuff so that maybe she’ll have less to tempt me and my PayPal account. :)  But seriously, I bought shirts for both my kids; for our friend’s daughter, Ainsley; for our other friend’s son, Peyton; for both my godchildren (they uh, haven’t received them yet since my cousin STILL has not released that infant hiding in her womb); I got something for that baby, once s/he makes their debut; I got something for a friend that just had a baby girl; I got stuff for my sister-in-law, who’s expecting a baby in about a month (I snapped it up way early so that I didn’t miss out on the items cuz I’m a freak that way); and I got myself a cute headband.  So I have an addiction…but at least it seems well appreciated:

and you can see I still can’t control my camera rotation…thanks to Justin for doing a little bit of editing

Justin is sick (read:  being a big whiny baby), and has left me with two hungry (read: grouchy) young boys.  After feeding Cooper a fantastic Beechnut Good Evening Creamy Chicken Noodle Dinner, I have gone above and beyond the normal demands of motherhood to procure a highly palatable and nutritious meal for Gavin and I:

I carefully prepared it to ensure it was cooked properly,

 

I then tastefully and artfully arranged our meal on lovely plates.

 

Yeah, yeah, I know.  I totally made up for it by putting my kids in matching Carter’s Crocodile jammies.  See how cute?  Best part is that they retail for $24, saw them marked down at regular stores for $14.something, but found them (and a crapload more of Carter’s 3-pc jammies and other Carter’s stuff) at Costco for $8.something!!!!

 

Now, feel free to hand over fantastic mothering awards…

First and foremost, I need to get some Thank-You’s out there.  I’ve been a bit lax in the gratitude department.  I want to say thanks to LaskiGal at From the Cheap Seats for hearting my little blog:

I’m not quite sure who to pass this along to, since it seems nearly everybody that I regularly read has it already (and rightly so!). So I guess I will give to my entire blogroll since I <3 all of you enough to read you (nearly) daily.I’d also like to do a big ol’ shout-out and hug to Flea at Flea’s World for the Bible Story book, Nana’s Bible Stories written by Roberta Simpson. I entered her contest, and HOLY COWS (yes, plural, since I’m talking about Fred and Bessie), I actually won! Okay, really, my kids actually won. But I cannot wait to be able to read the stories to them. Hopefully Gavin doesn’t rename any more of the Biblical Patriarchs.

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I’m sure we’re not alone in this, but I’m starting to feel like a crazy woman because of it:  Cooper screams in his sleep at night.  Usually this happens when he’s overtired (read:  every night).  I’ve been trying to work with the wonderful teachers in his classroom about forcing him down for naps to help (because this rarely occurs on weekends when he gets his two naps), but it seems that this stubborn child refuses to sleep more than an hour or so at daycare with any regularity.  I’m considering spiking one of his bottles or containers of food with benadryl, but uh…thought I’d poll the Interwebs for any other ideas.  Now, for a little background:

• Cooper has never been a good sleeper, which is frustrating enough since Gavin spoiled us by sleeping through the night by 6 weeks.
• When he’s woken himself up with his own nocturnal screams, we have tried rocking him back to sleep, singing, walking around with him, and can only get him to quiet down if we feed him (and by “we” I mean “me”).
• I tried letting Cooper “cry it out” a little, but he’s already so wound up and ticked-off that he ends up waking up Gavin, too, which is no easy feat.  Then we’re all unhappy and I have two kids crying.
• They have a hard time getting Cooper to sleep at school unless he’s in one of the swings (which doesn’t help my plight at all, but hey, I’m not trying to care for 13 kids between the ages of 3 months and 12 months).  I may have to get tough and ask them to put him in the crib because at home he naps without any problems–give him his binky, a blanket to snuggle, rock him a minute or two, and lay him on his side in his crib.
• I stuff him so full of food at dinner that he sits there with his tongue all lolling out like an over-stuffed pug: 




• He usually gets up around 7 or 7:30am and goes to bed around 8pm.  I thought about getting him up earlier, but um, that would mean I have to get up earlier than I already do…and that’s just not going to happen.
• It isn’t too bad when he just gets up once per night, but the screaming in his sleep periodically through the night is a bit disruptive. 

So any ideas?…I mean, outside of drugging him or hitting him with the Baby Mallet to knock him out? 

p.s.  Um, LaskiGal…I’m such a twit…just realized that I’ve had “Laski Gal” as the name of your blog in my blogroll instead of your actual blog title of “From the Cheap Seats”.  So Sorry!!!  And thanks for hearting my blog in spite of my idiocy.