Jason decided that today, he’d make caramel rolls.  Normally he does this about once or twice a year, so it is quite a treat for us.

He started the dough around 2 p.m.

At 5:30 I asked him if he was supposed to do anything with the dough that was climbing out of the bowl and all over my kitchen counters.

Needless to say, as of 8 p.m. we have a heck of a lot of caramel rolls.

And a big ol’ mess in my sink.

My darling husband and I were cleaning up the front room, and thought the kids were playing in their play kitchen.  They were supposed to be putting away toys, but seriously, so long as they aren’t underfoot during pick-up time we are better off.

So, we finally finish picking up 7,231 legos, 113 puzzle pieces, and an ungodly number of unmatched socks and assorted pieces of toy sets.  And we are planning on buying these kids more presents for birthdays and Hanukkah?  I need to have my head examined, but I digress.

We finally finish and DH goes into the kitchen to get a glass of water, and I hear him holler for me. Always a great way to get my attention.  So, I get up having just sat down with a magazine and go into the kitchen, where there is, once again, flour all over my floor.  Everywhere.  The boy again got into the flour canister and this time, did a thorough job.  The floor, a paper bag, all over everything on the bottom of the open shelves, and of course filling one of his gym shoes to the top, all with bread flour.

Okay, well we did leave him for 37 seconds unsupervised, so this is not unexpected.  We get to work cleaning this new mess.  DH has the brilliant idea to use his shop-vac.  Hooray!  He doesn’t need my help if he’s going to shop-vac it all up, so I get to go back to my magazine.

Color me a happy mama.

He forgot one thing though.  There was no filter on the shop-vac.

My kitchen finely dusted in bread flour, and the cute culprit #1

Guess who now has a completely scrubbed down kitchen?  At least we got a good laugh out of it.

Kids helping daddy with his work

Woke up feeling much better this morning.  If I were to ignore the marching band and cannons in my head, and the sniffles, I could even go so far as to say I feel good.  I decided that with this new found “well” feeling, and energy, I’d do something nice for my family.  I pulled out two heavy frying pans, and set to work making French Toast from the leftover Challah, and cooking up some turkey bacon.  We’d use cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving on the french toast, and have a really good, hearty breakfast before we planned our day.

So, there I am in my sushi pajamas cooking away, in a good mood.  My little helper, the dude, pulled a chair over to the counter and climbed up.  He loves to watch me cook, and be helpful.  He’s very good at handing mommy a spoon, or throwing away a paper towel.  I don’t know that I could cook without his help any more.

Well, today his chair was a wee bit off from where he normally puts it.  So, I’m cooking, and everything is fine.  Then he decided to reach out and touch the pan.  Yeah.

He grabbed the edge of the non-stick pan that the french toast was frying in.  Luckily, there was no oil or anything where he grabbed, and it wasn’t the cast-iron pan.  He yelped and pulled his hand away quickly.  I managed to catch the pan by the handle, steady it, and at the same time catch the dude as he fell off his chair.  I ran him to Jason, who was already in the bathroom helping our princess, and he ran A’s hand under cold water while I turned everything off in the kitchen and fetched the first aid kit.

It turns out the dude’s hand is okay.  He has a very minor burn along his index finger and thumb.  No blister or anything.  Within 10 minutes he was back playing and using his hand as if nothing was wrong with it.

I’m not sure I’m going to recover though.

Oh, breakfast turned out to be wonderful by the way.  Just slightly delayed and tasting of fear.

I’m sick, I’ve been battling a cold for several days and now the cold meds seem to have declared war on my digestive system.  My body is not a fun place to be right now.

Little man also seems under the weather.  He was running a fever of 101.0 last night, but woke up fever free.  He’s been throwing up occasionally, but then playing and being active.

Given all of this though, I’ve decided to back off on his potty training for now.  We had a couple of days where it looked really good, but since Thanksgiving, it’s just been an exercise in frustration and tears for both boy and mommy.  Daddy was working hard with him still, but having no success.

So, we put the little man back in a diaper and everything seemed good.

Then I walked by the bathroom after grabbing a fresh box of tissues from the garage, and there was little man with his pants off, and the toilet lid up, trying to take off his diaper and climb up onto the potty at the same time.

If I weren’t so dizzy I would have helped him.  As it was, I hollered for the Daddy person, who came and helped the dude get up there, sit for a minute or so, and earn his M&M.

We’ll try again once the momma is feeling better.

In the continuing saga of Becca breaking every freaking thing she owns . . . DH was unloading the dishwasher and called me in to see something.  My measuring spoons had slipped out of place and melted against the bottom heating element of the dishwasher.  I hope they didn’t break the dishwasher as well, but at the very least, my measuring spoons are broken and need replacing.  (This makes item #47 in the last 20 days for those of you playing the at home game.)

Obviously, I was displeased.

I cried out “shit!” as I pulled the mishappen plastic out of the dishwasher.  To which Miriam responded likewise at the top of her lungs.

DH then started laughing hysterically at the 2 year old shouting “shit”, which only encouraged her more.

head*keyboard

So now my 2 year old is wandering around shouting “shit”, my 20 month old is crying, my spoons are melted, and my husband is laughing while washing dishes.

At least something good came out of this, right?

I don’t do “horror”.  I don’t like scary movies.  I don’t enjoy suspense novels.  I can’t even handle haunted houses.  My husband however, loves the stuff.  His fondest memories from high school are of working the haunted house in town.  He thinks Steven King novels don’t qualify as “scary”.  Monster movies are totally his thing.  He’s been reading The Walking Dead comics since issue 1 came out way back when.  So, needless to say, he got very excited when he found out they were turning his favorite comic series into a t.v. show.

Yesterday, we watched episode one of The Walking Dead. I don’t know how he conned me into watching it, but he did.  All my facebook and twitter feeds are full of praise for this show, and honestly, I can see why.  It’s visually stunning, well plotted, and scary as all get out.

The problem is, it gave me horrible nightmares.  Plus, my 20 month old isn’t talking yet, and in the middle of the night, his grunts and whimpers in his sleep sound awfully zombie-like.

Add to that the time change, with kids being up and ready for the day at 6 a.m., and I’m not sure I’m going to make it through the day.  Every time I close my eyes, I see a half corpse-zombie crawling through the grass.  Or a horde of zombies attacking a tank.  (If you’ve seen episode 1, you know the scenes I’m talking about, if you haven’t, don’t worry, I’m not giving out spoilers.)

So, I think today may be a huge quantity of coffee day.

I understand episode 2 premiered last night.  Ugh.  Pray for me.

In other news, better news, happier news that may just distract me from the horrors my darling husband inflicted on me, I have winners!

I plugged the numbers into a random number generator.  Okay, really, since there were only 10 entries I grabbed 10 scraps of paper, wrote 1-10 on each of them and laid them on the coffee table this morning since we were up at 6 a.m. anyway.  Asher grabbed two of them and brought them to me.  Well, no, Asher grabbed two pieces of paper and shoved them in his mouth.  I fished them out and figured out who our winners are!

Drumroll please!

The winners  of a $50 gift card courtesy of Kodak Gallery are . . .

Entry number 4, Jessica Garcia and entry number 1, Dreamsweaver. Watch your email for a message from me.  I’ll need your address so I can have your prizes shipped to you.

Those of you who didn’t win, keep reading because we’ll have another give away soon!  Have a great, zombie free day!

Late last night, my 20 month old decided to grab hold of the top of my laptop and pull backwards, hard.  Luckily, he wasn’t hurt.  Unfortunately, he did manage to crack the screen on my computer, rendering it a useless brick.  An expensive useless brick that is.

A few years back, my husband bought himself a toy.  An Acer netbook.  It’s the teeniest tiniest computer I’ve ever seen, but for now, it’s all I’ve got.

He’s got $5,000 worth of computers and parts all over the basement.  I’ve got a $200 Lilliputian laptop, running linux I might add.  Obviously, I have no familiarity with linux.  He tells me it is in fact running Ubuntu, but really, to me it’s all “huh?”

I managed to get access to my blog though, without any tears!  Hooray!

So, here I am pecking away at a minuscule keyboard, trying not to be resentful that when his computer has the teeniest issue, he runs straight to Tiger Direct or Dell and gets whatever it needs, no questions asked, and when my computer is killed violently, I hear “maybe before the end of the year”.

At any rate, here I am, with 75% of the functionality I really need.  So, I’ll muddle though, and the blog is still functional.

Counting my blessings.

So, any advice on how to make this Ubuntu netbook fun?  Please?

I love cooking.  I love setting an attractive table, and feeding people.  I love having people over to the house, putting out snacks, fixing drinks, and entertaining.  I love holidays once they actually are here and everyone is together and enjoying the holiday.

I love grocery shopping.  I love buying new dishes and serving pieces.  Particularly this adorable soup tureen and bowl set I treated myself to for the holidays this year.

What I do not love is cleaning.  In any form.  I’m trying to do the Fly Lady thing, but instead of flying, I find I’m barely fluttering.  I have toddlers who hide apples in the sofa cushions.  I have a husband who says the dishes are done and what he means is that he loaded and ran the dishwasher, but anything that didn’t fit was left on the stove and in the sink.

But really, it’s my fault.  Not theirs.  I should be the one following my routines and getting my house clean so that I don’t have to do a pre-Shabbat freak out every week to get things presentable.

Instead, I’m blogging.

Did I mention I really hate cleaning?

I need a domestic.  Oh well.  Until I can hire one (probably half past never) I need to get up off my tush and get to work.

The windows of my house are completely fogged up because of the heat and humidity outside.  My kids got into my spice drawer today and managed to open and dump 3 spice jars all over my floor.  My 2 year old decided to try her hand at disassembling furniture today and took a shelf out of the television stand.  The same one she hid the remote under the other day and we couldn’t find it for ages.  My 1 year old is sick, and refused to nap at all.  My husband is still working at 7:30 at night.  He started before 6 a.m. this morning.  My basement is flooded and the carpet goes “squish” whenever I take a step.  The same 2 year old discussed above is refusing to sleep in her own bed, but is (Thank G-d) willing to sleep in the guest bed.  The sheets for the guest bed are in the washer right now, but she doesn’t seem to mind sleeping on a mattress pad, so okay.  The light in my kitchen burned out.

But, I have a lovely glass of Riesling, and am hereby telling the world it can go take care of its own self.  Mama is done for the day.

Hey, when the kool-aid is this inspiring, I’ll drink right up!

1. I’m grateful for my husband. He works crazy hours, but is still willing to get up with the kids in the morning so I have a chance to catch a few more zzzz’s.

2. I’m grateful for my adorable children. Their minds work in incredible ways and I’m always surprised by what they come up with.

3. I’m grateful for my friends, without whom I totally would be in a loony bin

4. I’m grateful for my mom, who knows when to help make grandiose plans, and when to reign me back in before I go off the deep end and buy 47 yards of fabric or a dog.

5. I’m grateful that we have a roof over our heads, and food in the fridge. All my worries are pretty much silliness because we have the things we need.

I’m actually grateful for more than just this, but the kool-aid is to list 5, so 5 it is!