Kitty talk

Even though Kitty has more than her share of temper tantrums that she can throw throughout the day, overall she is a very cute little girl who talks quite a lot for a 2 year old. Kitty has some funny expressions that she says. One thing that she does is refer to herself as "Mine's" instead of "I". Here are some examples of the funny things she says:

"Mine's sleeped well," means "I slept well".

"Mine's got toesies," means that she has bare feet.

I checked out a He-Man DVD last week just for kicks (DH & I both watched it when we were younger). While we were watching it, whenever He-Man would say, "I have the power", Kitty would say, "Mine's got the power".

I was cleaning the bathrooms the other day and Kitty had to come and help me. So I gave her a sponge to use and she helped me wipe down the counters. When I got to the toilet though, I decided I needed to find something else for her to do while I cleaned the toilet myself. So I put her up on the counter with a paper towel, sprayed the mirror with a cleaning spray and let her clean the mirrors while I was working on the toilet. While Kitty was wiping the mirror she kept saying, "Mine's can do it... all the way home." (I think she was getting that line from the "This Little Piggie" song when the littlest piggy cries, "Wee, wee, wee, all the way home".)

Every once in a while Kitty will just out of the blue say, "What the hey?!?" She got this from a Sesame Street DVD that we checked out from the library a couple of weeks ago. It sounds pretty funny hearing that come out of her mouth...

Kitty was sitting with her dad last week (I think we were watching some He-Man episodes) and she looked down at his feet and said, "You've got toesies woesies!"

Kitty is very concerned about other people. Whenever she hears someone crying or coughing or something similar, she'll go over to them, put her hand on their shoulder and ask, "You okay?"

I took Kitty to get her pictures taken a couple of weeks ago since she just turned two. After we were finished with the photo shoot we went out to the computers to look at the pictures and decide which ones I wanted. When the photographer pulled up the first picture on the computer I asked Kitty who it was. She said, "That's Kitty." Then when he switched to the next picture I asked her again who it was and she responded, "That's Janey." The photographer started to laugh because he thought that she thought the picture was of someone else whose name was Janey. I had to explain to him that Jane is her middle name and I call her Janey a lot so she will sometimes call herself Kitty and other times will call herself Janey. It's actually kind of funny because she uses the names interchangeably. I'm sure it will start to confuse some people when she gets a little older.

No more braces!

On Thursday, M&M had her braces taken off (all 6 of them) and was fitted for a retainer which we picked up on Friday. It's amazing how straight and pretty her teeth look! She is supposed to wear the retainer all day & night (except when eating) for 6 months and then just at night after that. Unfortunately this is just round 1 of braces for her since she hasn't lost all of her baby teeth yet, but hopefully it will shorten the amount of time she has to have them on later...

Busy days!

I haven't been blogging much this past week because things have been very busy out here. Now that the weather is getting nice it is time to get the garden ready for planting and I've been painting our wood fence with a wood protector so that it will resist water and last longer. I've only done the front of the fence so far and it's taking a lot of paint and a lot of time. The wood is just soaking up the paint. (In the picture the left side is painted and the right side is not.) We've also been busy looking after my parents' new house (mowing the lawn, setting out the garbage and collecting mail). Luke has been out of school this week so the teacher could conduct end-of-the-year testing. I've also been visiting a lot of stores looking for some items for the adult craft activity for the W Family Reunion.

Here is my week in review:

Friday - Get our sectional! Go to the grocery store. Try to mow the backyard but it starts raining. M&M attends a birthday party.
Saturday - Drive to my parents house. DH mows the lawn while the kids & I vacuum the house. Come home. DH gets the kids lunch while I finish mowing the backyard. Luke attends a birthday party. M&M & I do some shopping until the party's over.
Sunday - YW board meeting, Elder's Quorum Pres. meeting, church, Elder's Quorum visits
Monday - Go to Furniture Warehouse. Return something to a store and do some shopping for the family reunion. Pick up M&M from gymnastics. Eat dinner. Go to my parents' house to put out the garbage & take a walk up there for FHE. Neighbor sees us and we visit for a while. Don't get home until about 10 p.m.
Tuesday - Do laundry all day. Luke has kindergarten testing. Go to a few more stores. Paint some of the fence. Run out of paint. Make dinner. Take M&M & DH to get some eye exams. M&M will need glasses soon but the longer we can wait the better. We will probably get her some when school starts up again after the summer. She is taking after DH it appears... Order some glasses & sunglasses for DH. Go home and eat dinner at about 8 p.m. :( Get a call from the optical dept saying they overcharged us $100. :) Missed enrichment since we got home so late (the appointments were for 5 & 5:30).
Wednesday - Take the kids to a neighbor's house so I can help with M&M's class at school. Go to the store to get more paint. Eat lunch. Mail some packages at the post office. Paint some more fence. Do another load of laundry. Make dinner. DH gets home and takes apart the dryer so he can fix it with the replacement parts we got that day. Find out that we need to order another part. :( DH puts the dryer back together while I run off to a YW activity.
Thursday - Work outside in the garden. Fill up the trash can with weeds and rocks. Hopefully it will be ready to plant on Saturday. Take a shower. Pick M&M up from school for her orthodontist appt. Stop at Wendy's for lunch on the way. M&M gets her braces off!! :) (More details tomorrow)

It's here!

Well, we finally got our sectional last Friday. Just after I wrote my blog saying that we were going to have it delivered Friday morning, we got a call from the salesman saying that they were loading it up on the truck and noticed that the sectional wasn't quite what we had ordered. The sectional that they received had a sleeper sofa which we opted not to get. Our thinking was that the family room is the last place where we would put guests that are sleeping over at our house. The price was cheaper without the sleeper since there would just be spring & cushions in place of it. The salesman wanted to know what we wanted to do. We decided to take it with the sleeper as long as they wouldn't try and charge us any more. We are also supposed to get $100 taken off the price since we had to wait so long and our 12-month no interest will get a couple of months added to it.

We were told that the delivery men would call on their way to the house, which they didn't do. They got here at about 9 a.m. and it took a lot of work to get it into our family room. There is a short flight of stairs and then a narrow doorway at the bottom of the stairs. I was actually afraid that they weren't going to be able to get it in. Thankfully after a few tries, unscrewing some legs and moving back and forth they were finally able to get it in and we have been enjoying it this past week. DH says we can have a couple of more kids now because we have room on the sectional for them. Blondie & Kitty have a hard time climbing onto it because it is quite a bit taller than our old couches.

We paid extra to get stain protection on the couch and the salesman told us that we would get the info for it from the delivery men. I asked one of the deliverymen about it and he said that we should have received a kit at the store when we purchased the sectional... The deliveryman said that I would have to go back to the store and pick one up. He said that there are usually some on the delivery truck but there weren't any that day (of course). So that night we were sitting around enjoying the sectional when Blondie decided to do a somersault on it and ended up getting a bloody nose somehow - and of course she got some blood on the couch... Luckily DH was able to get it out... (He was not too happy though.)

I went back to the store on Monday and they seemed a little hesitant to give me a kit. I think the lady behind the customer service counter went back and asked someone what she should do. She told me that she was going to go see if they had any and then when she came back she grabbed a kit from off a shelf right next to the counter (and there were at least 8-10 others there right in plain view of where she sits at the counter).

I also took one of the pillows with me when I went back because I wasn't convinced that the color was correct. Apparently this color green just looks VERY different in the store than it does in our house because the color was the same. I also asked if they could have someone come out and adjust the recliner on the chaise lounge because it does not go back easily and it doesn't stay back. There's supposed to be some way to adjust the spring tension but I can't find where the dial is you're supposed to be able to turn. I still haven't heard from the repairman...

**I just want to say that I have NOT been impressed with this store. I would not recommend Furniture Warehouse to anyone. The only time I can ever see myself going back there is if it is for something I can buy and take home with me that day. I will not take any more deliveries from them and I will never, ever do any special orders from this store again... Their customer service has been horrible, the salesman we worked with was not very good with dealing with our problem and the furniture company that they order from was horrible in communicating to our salesman that they were having problems with our order...

It's rough being 2

Kitty has had a rough time this week. She can throw some terrific tantrums when she doesn't get what she wants. On Tuesday she was throwing one of those tantrums and had thrown herself on the living room floor and was just laying there crying & screaming and the next thing I knew she was asleep. The funny part is that I was vacuuming at the time and M&M & Luke were playing around her and were not being very quiet either. Kitty has never been a good napper - even when she was a baby, so I usually don't put her down for a nap. I guess when you're tired enough you can fall asleep anywhere and sleep through anything...

Then on Wednesday while I was at YW, this is how she fell asleep while the family was watching a movie...

More updates

My dentist appointment went well on Tuesday. The endodontist said that as long as I don't have any more problems with pain or swelling in that area of my jaw, he doesn't need to see me until the fall for a quick follow-up. It took me about 30 minutes to drive there, I was in the office for about 5 minutes and then it took me another 20 minutes to get home...

I got a call from the Furniture Company earlier this week asking if they could move the delivery date for our sectional to Friday because there was some problem that came up with Thursday. They then called this morning and said that they will deliver it tomorrow between 8 a.m. and noon. So tomorrow by this time we should have it. Yea!!!

After playing some phone tag with a genetics counselor at the U of U, we finally were able to talk to each other. After reading some of the info on my sister's report we were able to determine that the test I need done can't be done at the U of U. So she directed me to the website for the Texas clinic and she was able to help me figure out which test I need from their lab. I then called up my Dr's office and of course he is out of town until next week... The lady I talked to told me to bring the papers in that I printed out and she would make sure that my Dr gets them. So hopefully next week I will be able to finally get this test under my belt. The only thing I'm not sure of yet is whether our insurance company will cover any of the costs of the test. The test is $585. The insurance company needs my Dr to call with the procedure codes so they can determine if it will be covered or not.

The basement carpet appears to have dried completely now and so far things look good - and no smells...

The weather has been crazy here over the past week. We finally had to break down and turn on the A/C because we were in the 80s for several days in a row. This morning though we had a cold front hit us. At lunchtime today it was raining/hailing outside and this is what our yard looked like.

On a happier note...

On Saturday morning, M&M had a gymnastics competition that her gymnastics class performed in. M&M has LOVED taking gymnastics and she's pretty good at it. She also has really enjoyed having a couple of her friends in the same class. The competition is organized by a couple of the dance teachers in the area and there were only a couple of gymnastics groups. There were judges that scored them, but the scores weren't really important. Everybody went home with a participation trophy.

On the way to the gymnastics competition, Blondie asked from the back of the car, "What's this hair doing on my legs?" I looked back and she was inspecting her legs and was noticing for the first time that they had hair on them. Then a minute later I noticed her inspecting her arms as well...

My jaw feels 110% better than it did last week. The stitches in my mouth are all gone and my gums look like they have healed nicely. I am still on antibiotics and my jaw is still slightly swollen where the bone was removed. I think that that is normal - but I will definitely ask at my appointment tomorrow. Hopefully the worst is over and it will be clear sailing after this.

We got the part to our dishwasher on Friday (even though I didn't check the mail until Saturday). DH installed the new part and now we can use it again!

I got a call on Thursday from the furniture company and they have finally received our sectional. The earliest they could deliver it is tomorrow (Tuesday), but I have a dentist appointment tomorrow and I have something else scheduled for Wednesday so they will deliver it on Thursday. Hopefully they got the order right and that there won't be any further problems...

I'm still getting the run-around trying to get info on MD testing. I finally talked to the genetics counselor from Texas on Thursday and she gave me the phone number that I already have from the University of Utah. She was very nice to talk to though and was able to answer some of my questions that I had. I called the U on Thursday and Friday and I still have not been able to talk to the person that I am supposed to talk with there. I will be trying again today.

When it rains, it POURS!!

Well, for those of you who have been sitting back thinking that I need a few more trials in my life because it has just been too easy & uneventful over the last few weeks, you got your wish on Friday. The day started out pretty good. I did some clothes shopping in the morning and then came home in time for Luke to get off the kindergarten bus. We were out front playing because it was a very warm day and I thought, why don't I get the water turned on outside and run through the sprinkler zones to see what we need to do to get them ready to start watering the lawn.

To let you know, the water shut-off valve for the outdoor water is about 6-7 feet underground in our front yard. It is accessed by a hole in the ground and we have a huge "key" that is about 8 feet long that you lower down the hole in the yard and twist it until it feels like it is on the valve correctly and then you turn it about a half turn to turn the water on or off. The key is just a large iron bar that has a C-shape on one end to fit over the valve and comes to a "T" at the other end which makes a handle.

It took me about 2 tries to get the water turned on and then I went to the sprinkler controller in the garage to cycle through the 6 zones. The first 2 zones are in the front and they both seemed to work alright. The water pressure didn't seem to be as strong as it should be but I didn't think too much of it. Sometimes it takes a while for the sprinklers to get water all through the lines and work as they should. The next 2 zones are in the backyard and when I switched to those zones, neither of them worked. I wasn't too concerned again because we had some problems with those valves last year. The thought also crossed my mind that maybe the water pressure was too low to turn those on since they operate a little differently than the front ones. The next 2 zones are on the side of the house and those didn't work either. So my next thought was that there was something wrong with the electrical connection that goes to those 4 valves. The valves for the back and side are located together in the backyard (the front ones are in a separate sprinkler box).

Well, I ran through the front ones again and then to the back and while it was on one of the back sections I went out back to see if I could hear the water trying to get to the sprinklers. While I was looking over the backyard, there was a weed sticking up that really seemed odd to me and I decided to walk out there to pull the weed. On my way back to the house I happened to look down into the window well that goes to the kids' play room in the basement and to my dismay, the well was full with about a foot of water.

I quickly ran to the garage to shut off the sprinklers and then I ran to the front yard to try and turn the water off. Then I quickly got the kids in the house and ran upstairs to grab some towels and then I ran down to the play room to see what was happening down there. There was water leaking in from the window down the wall to the carpet. I hurried to move some toys away from the window and I stuffed some towels on the windowsill and tried to mop up some of the water. I then ran upstairs and grabbed a bucket and ran back outside to the window well. I lifted off the grate on top of the well and climbed down the ladder to get to the water at the bottom. I got a bucketful of water and lifted it up to the top to dump. I tried to get Luke to carry the bucket but it was a little too heavy for him to move very far. Luckily my neighbor, Lois, happened to walk in her backyard as this was happening and noticed me lifting out buckets of water from my window well. She came over to see if I needed help. She went to her house and grabbed a couple of more buckets and then I would fill the buckets and hand them to her to dump out on the lawn. Luke was able to lift some of the smaller buckets and sometimes I wouldn't fill them as full so that he could lift them. Blondie & Kitty also wanted to help and got some of their small toy buckets and were filling them up with water to dump in the yard. I thought that we were making good progress because the water was definitely not as high on the window or on my legs.

(You can get an idea of how high the water was in the window well by looking at this picture. On the right side of the window you can see some dirt marks. The highest mark is about how high the water was when I noticed the problem.)

My neighbor had to run back to her house to check on a pie she had in the oven and while she was gone, the water was definitely higher than when she had left. I kept listening to see if I heard any water running and neither of us could hear anything. When she came back after checking on her pie though it was clear that the water was still coming into the window well. So I ran out front and tried once again to turn off the water. This time I knelt down on the ground so I could hear and feel better what I was doing and I clearly heard the water shut off. I then ran out back again and we started hauling more buckets. This time it didn't take long to realize that I had finally stopped the water and we quickly emptied the window well. While I was finishing up outside, Lois went downstairs with my kitchen trash can and wrung the towels into the trash can and managed to mop up some more of the water. She then came back upstairs and stayed outside with the kids while I went down with our shop-vac and started vacuuming water out of the carpet.

I then called DH at the vault to let him know what was going on. Then I brought the kids inside and let them watch some cartoons while I worked down in the basement. When M&M got home I had her help with some of the vacuuming while Luke helped me clear most of the toys out of the play room. We have a carpet cleaning vacuum which I also used to suck some of the water out of the carpet. M&M & I took turns with the two vacuums, in-between emptying water out of them.

DH surprised me by actually coming home at 3:00 (the earliest he has been home in a LONG time). He surveyed the extent of the damage in the play room and then went outside to see if he could find the problem in the sprinkler system since I had things pretty much under control in the house. My guess was that since the leak hadn't stop when I turned off the sprinklers with the water still turned on, that the leak was in the main intake line to the backyard sprinkler box. It turns out that I guessed right. When DH got down to the sprinkler pipes right next to the window well, there was about a two-foot long split down the pipe that originated at an elbow joint that then feeds into the sprinkler box. We were able to get some parts to fix it that night and DH installed the pieces the next day. We turned the water back on once the glue was dry and it appears that we have fixed the problem.

M&M & I managed to vacuum out all the water we could from the carpet and then we just set some fans on the carpet and opened the window to get as much air circulation through there as possible. Right now the carpet is mostly dry and we will have to keep an eye on it to see if there is any permanent damage. If there isn't then we will come out of this experience relatively unscathed, but having learned a lot.

Lessons I Learned:
- Never turn on the water at the start of the season unless your husband (or other able-bodied adult) is around.
- Learn to use the wet part your wet/dry vac before there is an emergency - it doesn't help to have to run around looking for the instruction manual when you need to be using it NOW.
- Having a wet/dry vac that can hold a lot is not necessarily a good thing. 10 gallons of water weigh a LOT. I luckily caught it before it was full and managed to carry the vac upstairs to dump the water out in the sink.
- Keep fans around even if you think you will never need them. We have talked many times about getting rid of some of our fans since we moved from our apartment to a house with central air. This is not the first occasion that we have needed them...
- We now know that the main line for the water sprinklers runs all the way around 3 sides of our house. I'm not sure if I like how the previous owner designed the sprinkler system...
- If your husband has been working late hours and you want him home sooner, call him and tell him there has been a little problem at the house...

Things I Am Grateful For:
- An awesome neighbor who helped me out.
- A husband who can fix things (and loves to figure out how things work).
- A weed in the backyard that really stuck out and made me want to pull it.
- My kids who wanted to help, even if they couldn't do too much.
- The water pipe broke near the window to the toy room and not the window next door which has all of our computers & equipment in it.
- Most of the toys in the play room are kept in plastic storage containers so there wasn't any damage to anything in the room (other than possibly the carpet).

Kindergarten Field Trip

Luke's kindergarten class went on a field trip to the zoo this morning. It was pretty crazy because it was the morning & afternoon classes that his teacher teaches, plus one other kindergarten class from the school. I drove and met the school bus at the zoo so I could take Blondie & Kitty with me. We had a girl from Luke's class, Cortni, that was assigned to me to chaperone so it wasn't too bad. (The worst part of the trip was that every time I stopped the stroller for 2 seconds, Kitty would climb out and want to walk around. She kept trying to wander off and do her own thing. Maybe next time I'll take the child wrist strap with me...)
It was a VERY nice day, close to 70 degrees. The animals were more active than I have seen a lot of them. When we first got to the zoo, a tiger and a wolf were both walking pretty quickly around their enclosures and coming up to the fence. When we got down to the other side of the tiger enclosure some of the zoo staff were doing a demonstration with the tiger on how they train him and reward him (with food) when he follows their commands. At one point he stood up on his hind legs and put his front paws on the fence in front of him. I couldn't believe how BIG he was. (Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of it because I was trying to keep the kids together.) Right next to the tiger demonstration there was a leopard that was pacing back and forth right in front of the viewing windows, just staring at the people looking at him.

A lot of the animals were eating: the giraffes, bears, rhinos, elephants and some of the monkeys. There is a baby orangutan at the zoo that was having all sorts of fun in his enclosure - climbing things and swinging around. Kitty liked it when he lost his grip and fell a short distance to the ground. She kept saying, "Uh-oh, he fall down." Right after the orangutans there was a large gorilla who was walking back and forth in his cage. Kitty thought that he was pretty scary looking and wanted me to hold her.

We also saw a peacock showing off his tail. It was beautiful - almost fake looking! When we got close to him we noticed that he was actually shaking his tail back and forth slightly and it was making a rattling sound almost like the sound a rattlesnake makes with it's tail. We think he may have been trying to scare off some turkeys that were near him.

All in all the trip was nice but seemed pretty short. The buses ended up leaving the school a little later than they wanted to so we didn't get to the zoo as early as we would have liked. By the time we walked around a little and then ate lunch it was just about time to go. Since I was going to take Luke home with me we dropped Cortni off with the bus group and then the kids wanted to go play at the playground for a few minutes. So we walked over to the playground and played for a few minutes but I think the kids were getting a little hot and tired (and the playground was pretty crowded with bigger kids) so there were no complaints when I said it was time to go home.

Luke loses another tooth

Luke's second tooth on the bottom started getting pretty loose this weekend and by Sunday evening we could tell that it was going to come out very soon. When he got home from school on Monday I was actually surprised that it didn't fall out while he was at school. Luke asked me if he could eat an apple, so I gave him one and as you can imagine that hurt to eat with his loose tooth (he was hoping it would help the tooth come out). Not too long after that though he was trying to twist it and it finally came out. He looks pretty funny now!