today was a fairly good day...i got a bit of what the english would call a 'lie-in'....gotta love that, even if it was only until twenty past seven! LOL will get it tomorrow, too! :)

then griffin got a really freaking nasty bite from gage....i just don't know what to do with the biting...it's getting way out of hand! :(

my poor jan is finding it harder and harder to be a part-time single mom... :( her boys are rotten to the core, and her oldest is manipulative....i hope that she can get things sorted out, because it's hard for me to see her so unhappy! :( some of it is that she's given into him for so long, but sometimes i worry that her oldest has some problems...hopefully it will get sorted out...

we went on a picnic with aaron's parents today. it was fun...poor dante was in a fleece outfit! LOL so i got him naked, because the poor dear was very warm....the kids all slept pretty well this afternoon, so that was good for me! i got caught up with some of my NICU mom friends, so that's always good for my heart! :)

i took the kids out to play in the neighbor's sprinkler...they were funny...erin just loves the water and went right in...the older boys 'convinced' him to go in, and he wound up sobbing his fool head off! :( poor boy....he's just like his older brother sometimes! then we gave the babies spaghetti for supper (always give them sloppy stuff on nights when we're bathing them! LOL) and they took showers with me....i'm getting spiders again, and was greeted by one in the shower! :( HATE spiders!!

anyway, now i'm off to wal-mart to buy whole milk and condoms! LOL

whew...am i tired!! :) it's a happy kind of tired, tho...not the usual dead-on-my-feet-these-kids-need-to-give-me-two-minutes-of-peace tired! :D

i went to chicago yesterday to visit some of my online buddies. we met through the preemie mom forum, and chat often with messenger. andrea came up from cincinnati area to meet me, and then we piled all five (yes, five!!) kiddos in the car and head out. the downfall is that it took us FIVE hours to get there, not including the half hour pit stop for lunch! LOL it was a blast, tho....we got up there about 5:30 and the kids all played for about two hours. we then went to pizza hut and grubbed. after that, we played hell to find a hotel (gotta love concerts and the taste of chicago!). we gave up after about three or four stops, and headed east into indiana. i got the notion in my head that we might as well try to drive on to indy, but gave up when we had two hours left to go. my eyes were starting to cross! so we each took a bed at a holiday inn express, and slept for a few hours. the downside is that the kiddos, who had been sleeping for about two hours, woke up and decided it was playtime! LOL

all in all it was a good trip. i am so happy that i got to meet my girlfriends face-to-face. it kind of makes the friendship real, you know? not that my online buddies aren't real friends, but it's wonderful to SEE them...give them REAL hugs....hear them laugh....really see what their kids do.....i loved it!

this week has been interesting to say the very least. some good some bad, but i will concentrate on the good things right now! :)

monday was absolutely fab! i went to the dave matthews band concert with jill, gage's mom, as a sort of thank you for extra watching.....well...we left, and it was starting to sprinkle....we go to the venue, and it was starting to piss down rain....so we decided that whatever happens, we were going to make our own fun! we get patted down and hand our tickets to the girl to scan, and she asks jill "how many people in your party?" jill says "2"..."see that man behind me" the lady says....here we are looking at eachother as if to say: "what the hell did we do? we've not even been inside yet!" the guy asks us "how many people in your party?" "two" we repeat...."how would you like to sit in the pavillion tonight?" "of course," we say! he gave us tickets to sit in the pavillion....and they weren't just tickets in the farthest point....we were 27 rows from the stage! was absolutely fab!

tuesday my parents dropped my youngest brother, joshua, off at the airport so he could go to honduras on a missions trip. they then came up to see us for a bit. was nice to see them. i don't get to see them often because they live three hours away from me. i have missed so much of my little brothers' growing up....that makes me sad, but it would also be really tough on me to live much nearer to them. when dysfunction rears its ugly head, it's hard for me to keep my nose out! LOL

but it has been a good few days nonetheless. now i need to hop back on the flylady wagon, and clean stuff up a bit...i have half-finished projects lying about.... for which i am queen! :)

happy father's day to all the fathers out there! i hope that aaron had a good day. i am not much of a wife and mother, as he did the cooking for breakfast this morning! LOL he makes better sunday breakfasts than i do, and besides...i was so wiped out from being up until midnight doing his father's day album! whew! it would have been easier to do if he were out of the house a little more. i waited until the last minute, but it's very hard to keep anything a secret around here! LOL at any rate, i will post a pic of the album when i get the chance. i'm quite proud of it, as i've never actually made a book myself before. he liked it, so it was worth it! :)

so, to sum up the weekend, i spent most of it working on his album....nearly all day yesterday! and today we went to aaron's parents' house for a cookout. aaron's mom bought his dad a bike for a father's day/anniversary present, and she kept it at our house for a few days so aaron's dad would be surprised. and he was surprised, so she was happy about that. the rest of the day was spent lounging around a bit and taking care of babies. i did whip up a batches of rice krispie treats and toll house bars to take for the cookout! :) quite the little betty crocker i've become sometimes! LMAO

tonight i am watching gage so that jill can go to the dave matthews concert with her friend jennifer. i think they will have fun! gage was not excited about spending the night with me at first, but warmed up after jill left, giving me snuggles of his own free will! :) love gage lovin's! :D

the kids have been a bit under the weather recently....i hate it when they get the sniffles. i always worry that the other shoe will drop and we'll wind up back in the hospital....it's not an all-consuming fear, but it's always in the back of my mind.

anyway, off to watch toy story and put erin and collin down for the night. probably will involve some harry potter reading, too!

woohoo! it's friday! and it's been a pretty good day so far....aside from the fact that miss erin won't take a nap! i really am having a difficult time keeping their schedules at a manageable pace.....now they like to take a nap in the morning, but i'll be damned if they'll lay down when everyone else's taking a nap!! *pout*

i'm really excited. my friend andrea and i started a new premature baby forum! andrea did all the work to get it set up....i feel bad about that, but she did a very good job! we're excited to have this new start! it's wonderful to be able to connect with a wonderful group of people who have gone through so many similar things as i have with parenting. so far we've had six other people other than ourselves join the forum! i'm really happy about this! :)

i'm excited about the weekend. tonight i have an interview with a pregnant mother, and friend of gage's mom. she wants someone two days a week for her girl in the fall. this makes me a bit nervous, but i think that everything will be fine, should she choose us. i would really like to get another kiddo gage's age to watch as well.

it looks like tomorrow will be spent working on aaron's father's day album. i have selected some photographs to use, and spent some time last night looking for quotes to use with it as well. i really hope that he likes this! :)

and sunday we will go to aaron's parents' house to celebrate father's day. aaron's mom bought his dad a bike for a father's day/anniversary present. he has been having problems with his feet and can no longer run anymore. i hate that for him, as he used to run races and everything. but hopefully this will help keep him in shape.

nothing much new to report. i need to go look for more quotes to use in aaron's album!

i'm tired today....*yawn*.....i went to jan's to scrapbook again last night. i am making aaron an album for father's day. it's my first ever accordion (accordian??) album (thanks to a search, i was introduced to shez' scrapbook forum! funny how that works, eh?), and i have to say that it isn't bad for my first whack at it! it's not perfect, by any means...and i'm a perfectionist by nature, but it will just have to do! i also used metallic rub-ons for the first time to 'age' an accordion tag. i'm fairly pleased with how that turned out. now i just have to dig up some pics, print them out if need be, and decide what else i'm going to do. it has four pages, so i've decided to use a page for each of us. (this is still a very weird thing for me...getting used to being a family of FIVE, not three...hehe) i think i'm going to look for a pic of each kiddo with their daddy....we'll see how it goes.

but not only did that keep me awake until well after midnight...then griffin has had a bout of diarrhea and that has made his little bum a bit raw, so he was an unhappy camper and spent the rest of the night with us. poor little man...he's still a bit unhappy this morning. aaron said that he didn't go to sleep right away, which surprised me, because i went right back to sleep after he latched on.....gotta love allergy medicines! LOL poor aaron!

here's hoping for some nice weather today so that i can get these kiddos out of the house to play!!

i'm a bit tired today. it seems as though my body is messed up as far as the clock goes...for some reason, i can't get to bed before 11pm. not a good thing when you wake up at 6:10 am! makes for a tired girl in the morning! oh, well. as ever, could be worse, eh?

it's raining outside today, which means it's television and movie day chez miss steph! LOL i will do something with the booger boy. i might bust out the paints today to see what he comes up with! at two, gage is already painting actual shapes and things. not sure if this is advanced, but it's great to see him develop like that.

life has been pretty much standard around here. nothing much new going on at all. but sometimes this is a really good thing! LOL

i have made some plans that i'm getting excited about, so i guess that there is something new! LOL i have a few online friends, of whom i live in the middle. one's near cincinnati, and one's near chicago. well....the girl near cincy's going to meet up with me here and we're going to drive to chicago to meet her! i've never seen either of them face-to-face, but talk with them nearly every day, so i'm really excited to meet them and their children! we all have a lot in common, and get along very well online, so i'm really excited to meet them in person! we met on the preemie forum...their kids are older than mine, so it's always reassuring to see older preemies. i'm very excited to have this to look forward to!

today has been decent so far. the babies are off their schedule, but it could be worse, eh?

last night my sis-in-law came over and we made cards for a card swap we're in. i feel so rejuvenated with scrapbooking now that i did those cards!! i want to hide out in my closet and scrap the day away. hopefully i'll get the chance to do some either today or tonight. we still haven't made up our mind what we want to do today.

my good friend rebecca bought the babies new swimsuits. erin is now the proud owner of a two piece! LOL she struts around the sprinkler park like she's big stuff! i can't wait until i can get some good pics of her in it to show off. she's too hysterical! she's so tiny still, but has been getting a little potbelly from eating so much lately. so, from the back, she's totally cute, with a teeny little bottom and back. from the front, she's a potbelly with her strawberry hanging out. she's still as cute as she can be, but it's definitely humorous!

griffin, on the other hand, is a bit more like collin. he's very apprehensive of the water, and takes a longer time to get used to it. he's still a bit more daring than collin, but he's definitely not as brave as erin!

i'll definitely take the camera next time i go to the sprinkler park!!

it's pouring down rain outside today....keep me in your thoughts that 'movie day at the zoo' goes well! ;)

today was a quiet day, aside from a doc's appointment in the morning. the babies had their developmental peds appointment today. unlike many of the other appointments we've had there, they were very upbeat and happy with the babies' progress! i can't tell you how happy this made me! griffin is now getting really close to bridging the gap between where he would be had he been full term and where he should be at the age he really is. well...he is for gross motor development, at any rate! erin, however, is getting really close to bridging the gap with fine motor skills. it's funny how i forget that the babies have come so far from the little half-baked peanuts that they were. they never cease to amaze me, and i love them so much!

feeling a bit back to normal today. i'm still a little stressed out.....for as bad as it sounds, i would really like a break from my family...i think i would be a better mommy and wife if i did. and, the fact that aaron will have thursday and friday as a break, and then turn around and have another six day break in july kind of makes me a teensy-weensy bit jealous....i have to admit it...i'm really jealous. i want to do something like that. even if i took a week off at this point, i would still have to be with my own children.

i suppose i really should give up the nursing, but i don't want to really do that either. perhaps the title of my post should be "on having my cake and eating it, too"....i don't want to give up the nursing...i don't feel that any of the three of us are ready yet. i want to be able to comfort and provide for them in that way still. and i think the WHO would support me on this! ;) did you know that they recommend nursing until age THREE??? not sure i want to give it that long, but i'm thinking two is a good possibility. i know this might sound odd, but i really think that trying to go that long will be ok. if they should happen to not want to nurse until then, so be it, but i will open to nursing until then...and, gasp! perhaps longer. we'll see.

i actually cropped some pics this morning, and tried to plan out a few pages. i'm hoping to get to it sometime soon. i would really love to get a few more pages in the 2001 album done...perhaps all of them. i really NEED to start on the babies' albums, as they are now (well, in two days at any rate) sixteen months old, and i've done nada, aside from collect stuff for it. i have all kinds of pastels and bright papers for when i do get started! and most of it matches!! LOL..i swore i wouldn't do that, but here i am! tee hee

ok...novel for today should cease. i'm sure all of you are bored to tears now. feel free to post comments on how much of sorry girl i've become! LOL


Looking for quote on trains for a scrapbook page. I found this very good quote. I always need to find a perspective on things when Zookeeping! ;) and those germans always have a point, now that their free from hitler! ;)
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

ok....after a bit of a nap after reading two chapters of harry potter to collin, i am fully restored to a better mood, tho still somewhat groggy.

roll on, diet coke! ;)

upon logging in today, i realized that i've hit 100 posts! funny how something like that will make you giggle a bit.

anyway....on to the day.....i have to say that i've had better ones....in the past, i've been known for complaining a lot, not that i've never had anything to complain about. life just sucks sometimes. but i do need to complain now, so that maybe i'll feel better about it. and it's my blog, anyway, right?! LOL

this morning was pretty crappy. first...i'm a few pounds heavier on top than i used to be (not such a bad thing most of the time..until swim suit tops are too small!), and still no slimmer on bottom (lovely little children....that is some curse of motherhood, eh?). hence, NONE of my swimsuits (only one of which is newer than five to nine (gulp!) years old) looks even remotely close to something i would want anyone seeing me in....AND.....who was the sad mofo who decided that we must shave the pubes? i'd like to kick his sorry ass! so....that started the day off just peachy.

second....gage....he's two....i don't really need to go any further, but the little man lost his sandals right before we decided to leave the house for the sprinkler park. took ten minutes before collin finally found them....grrrrrr.

third....the friend who was supposed to direct me to said sprinkler park listened to aaron when he told her falsely that i knew where i was going.

fourth...backing up to before the sad swimsuit selection, there was no milk or pop-tarts in the house this morning...so no breakfast for miss steph until she got to mcdonalds'. i buy the super size diet coke and two cinnamon rolls...nothing bad happens and the cinnamon rolls lie nicely in my stomach when the friend decides to sit right by my drink and knock it off the wall on which it sat, drenching my ONLY shorts with HALF my diet coke.

fifth...i come home to aaron, who makes fun of me and is mad that i'm in such a shitty mood.

sixth...erin, my lovely little princess, pees all over the bathroom floor while i'm preparing to give the younger three a bath to knock off some of the icky sprinkler park water.

ok....off to read some harry potter to collin before i spontaneously combust.....ok..i suppose it wouldn't be spontaneous, as i've been boiling and heating up all damn day....but i'll explode, i swear! LOL

so....here's hoping that the afternoon holds better things for miss steph.....crossing my fingers, throwing salt over my shoulder, grabbing the rabbit's foot....

on Flylady.net......

i think i go in big spurts of being over the top.....today's feat was to clean the baseboards in the kitchen with a toothbrush and to sweep and mop the floor....in broad daylight....on a WEEKDAY.

i also cleaned my scrap area...no small feat, as i've managed to cram more things than should ever fit into a three by six by six space in a closet! LOL don't get me wrong....i love my scrapbooking stuff...but it really sucks when i go through phases of being less than orderly!

soo....hopefully i'll stay on the wagon for a while and get everything cleaned up again....i've some chores left over from yesterday, but tomorrow's a leaving prints day, so hopefully i'll get some stuff done then.

here's hoping i get a newsletter out by tomorrow night! was supposed to have it done by tonight (according to myself! LOL), and it didn't get done.....need to put flylady in the middle of my leaving prints work! hehehe

roll wagon, roll!!!!

the weekend has been decent so far. aaron had class again yesterday...we only have until october before he's completely done! woohoo!!! so the morning was spent lounging around and taking care of the kidlets. i took collin to michael's to do the kiddo craft project. we are now happy owners of a fuzzy poster with a multi-colored moon on it. he did a really good job! :) after that, we went to taco bell to pick up lunch, where we came back and ate with rebecca. we then played around with paper clay and shrinky dinks to see what kind of fun things we could come up with for rebecca's card swap that's taking place later this month. i'm excited about it. i wound up not using the shrinky dinks (i don't think that the sizzix likes shrink plastic all that well....), but opted to use the confetti die i bought and make many colors of confetti to use with the card. will post when finished! :)

i went to see harry potter 3 with the big boy last night. i have to admit, i wasn't impressed! the first two did so much better with sticking to the book and did a much better job at explaining the plot. had i not just read the book, i would have been a little lost....oh, well. it was fun to go on a date with just collin. we bought the big-ass bucket o'popcorn, two big drinks (i even let him drink.....caffiene!!), and got some starburst. it was a fun time.

today i cantored at church. funny...people still look at me like i've three heads when i tell them that collin is my son and that i've two more at home, and a husband....."aren't you in high school?" they ask...."um...no...i know." i respond. it's pretty funny! i actually had someone argue with me once at the mcdonald's counter! "surely you're his big sister...you did not just say mom!" the person behind the counter said. "no...he's mine...i've the stretch marks to prove it! and we've another baby on the way!" i say. oh, well. perhaps i should hawk off some miracle cream....it's called no shower for a few days of the week! hehe

griffin, i've decided, will be my musician. we sing the ABC's to him, and he really tries to sing it back. it's really cute! i also have this bucket o'instruments from the daycare that they play with. griffin and erin both have figured out the kazoo already! :) they know that they have to vocalize into it before it will make noise.....don't worry...they've all the standard horns and whistles down pat, too! hehe

i love being a mommy!

on feeling shitty.....

i feel a bit down right now. there's not a true reason why..it just is happening. it seems so cyclical. one minute i feel like i can handle things...the next minute, wham! down. it's odd.

here's hoping some good sleep will help me out....i don't like this at all. hopefully tomorrow will bring a better mood. allergy meds will help, too, no doubt.....i feel like shit all the time, and i work all the time (daycare kid left at 7 tonight!! grrrrrrr....), so i know that i've good reason to feel down.

so many scrapbook supplies, so little energy! pout, stamp foot!

bucking up, bucking up.......

On having a kiddie pool....

few things have given me a bigger giggle recently than this morning's kiddie pool adventure. i'm watching elizabeth and her older brother, who resents the fact that he's at my house. causes a bit of trouble while he's here, and there you have it....well...being the girl that i am, i try my hardest to do at least one fun activity with the snot while he's held captive at my zoo. so...i check my trusty rust Children's Busy Book by Trish Kuffner, and find a penny toss game using the kiddie pool and a butter tub. you float the butter tub on the water in the shallowly filled butter tub and make a game of tossing pennies into it. it was fun....until erin decided to climb in with her clothes on! LOL where's the camera when you need it??? so...after the game, i decided to let everyone take off their shoes and socks and take a foot bath in the pool. was too fun, and i'm glad that i spent the minimal effort and dollars in doing it.

On having a Girl in the House.........

boy, oh boy, am i really glad that erin will (probably) not have any sisters!! i can't even begin to imagine the mayhem life would be! hehe

erin's always been the girl with her own agenda. in the nicu, she was the 'no-touch' baby, displaying her anger at being messed with by holding her breath, causing alarms to go off and nurses to come running.

these days, her anger is displayed on a much more vocal level. i'm glad that we do not drink out of glass cups....because they would all be broken with the decibals and pitch that her little voice takes on when pissed off royally!

and...she's conniving already. this morning i finally realized how things work. all this time i thought that griffin was the mean brute, taking toys away from his little sister. boy, was i ever wrong!

it actually goes like this: erin has toy. erin thinks her toy is the best. erin waves toy in front of griffin with a very smug aire. griffin takes wonderful toy. erin screams bloody murder.
this is where it stops from this day forward. this is how the sequence of events used to go: griffin is reprimanded. mom gives toy back to erin and commences with the duties that she was called away from due to said infraction of sharing rules. erin starts screaming bloody murder again. mom realizses that erin has given griffin back the toy, but now wants it back.

i'm in trouble on so many levels here! at least i had three brothers and know how a lone girl works. sheesh!

i'm totally farting around today.....here's my horoscope.....

Horoscope for Virgo 01 Jun 2004

You will have no problem getting your point across to those in a position to help you. You can expect to face opposition on the home front. Be sure that you have all the facts before you take action.

CHOOSE...AriesTaurusGeminiCancerLeoVirgoLibraScorpioSagittariusCapricornAquariusPisces

Kwiz.Biz Daily Horoscopes for your Blog

back to the grind....not too bad, but busy nonetheless. today, i tried to teach the two year-old the color red. he knows his shapes, but has a hard time with the colors. i also tried to teach him that it's not nice to pinch, hit, or kick. we'll see how the learning goes on either of those. all efforts as of late seem to be for not, really.

i'm trying to figure out my ruddy scanner. it scans things totally off-color. anyone have any ideas? it seems to happen most with metal embellishments on the scrapbook pages i'm going to try and hawk off on ebay.....let me know if you have any ideas.

the babies were a bit sick this weekend. i think it might be allergies, but who knows. they are still doing very well considering they were so incredibly little at birth, but i still worry like a maniac. that all goes with being a mommy, i suppose.

check out griffin's latest feat.....i really do have monkeys on my hands! LOL


i know i'm in trouble.