My apologies for not writing in three months! As I write this, I cannot believe it has been this long since I last wrote, but upon glancing back at my previous posts, I find it is true! The last time I wrote was when Sandy was set to wreck havoc on the East Coast. How did you guys fare? It was windy and rainy here, but that was about the extent of her. School was cancelled (just made that day up last week for work), and there were some large twigs and sticks strewn about, but that was it for our area, thankfully.
Since then, we have had Thanksgiving (did some pretty decent Black Friday shopping), Christmas and the New Year. The most recent celebration in our house: our son turned 7 years old! I know, 7 isn't very old, but it still boggles my mind that I have a 7 year old! I see him every day, and yet when I look back at pictures from just the beginning of this year, he has changed and grown so much! He's has literally grown an inch since November. For those of you with kids, have you ever woken up one morning, looked at your kids and thought, "Gosh, did you change overnight? You look different!"? It's a bizarre phenomenon. And amazing. And it's not just their looks, but their mannerisms, vocabulary, personality and thought processes. Today, Kiddo was playing Mario World on the Wii while his sister was sleeping and I asked him to turn down volume a little. He said he would, but he really had to go to the bathroom first, and he didn't know where the remote was. As he headed to the bathroom, I walked up to the tv and told him he could always walk up to the tv and push the buttons on the tv to turn it down. His reply "Yeah, like in the old days!" I know, I've seen that joke in the funnies before (Calvin and Hobbes, I think), but I don't think he ever has! My husband and I just looked at each other like "Did our son really just say that?!" and laughed.
I don't know about you guys, but our house has been under siege of this cough/snotty nose/clogged sinus gunk that's been going around (Hubby and Kiddo also got the throw up with fever part and Little Miss added in an ear infection in each ear, just for good measure). I have wiped every doorknob, faucet, keyboard, and remote within my reach with Lysol wipes. I have set up cool mist humidifiers in each of the kids' rooms. Miss has the humidifier that was in our room before she was born (we didn't need them last year). Which leaves our room without cool mist and dry as a proverbial bone. My lungs are getting calluses from all the coughing I'm doing. "Go out and get a dang humidifier already!", you say. Well, I would, except I'm a humidifier snob and I want a certain brand: Crane. They are great! No filter, reasonably priced, easy to clean and store and darn it, they're cute (Kiddo has a frog and Miss has an elephant) and I want one for our room! "What's the problem?! Go get one and stop hacking!", you say. I can't. No stores in Western PA carry them. I kid you not: not Walmart, not Sears, not Kmart, or Walgreens. I've either walked in and looked, or called. I even called over to Target in OH (I got the other two back in VA at Target) and all they have are the frog, elephant and a teardrop (who wants to look at a sad teardrop? Sorry if you like teardrops.). I want the owl. Look at how sweet he is!
So, I'm ordering him from Walmart. He'll be here by next Friday. Until then, Luden's licorice cough drops and lots of water will be my bosom buddies. So, is this a small town thing or has anyone else had a difficult time finding these cuties in stores in their areas?
I hope everyone is staying warm! We're getting the winter we had hoped for when we moved to PA: snowy! We had a great snow covering over the Christmas holidays (about 8"!), followed by a weekend with temps in the 60s, and now we've got a couple inches of really fluffy snow on the ground. We haven't been sledding in it, but I don't think it's really good sledding snow (nobody's been out sledding that we've seen. Of course, they could all be inside sick!).
Take care, stay healthy and Happy New Year!
