A Fall Festival

Apparently I'm a terrible blogger. I have no real desire to spill my guts online. Silly me. However, in the name of giving it the old college try, I'm forcing myself to write.

So normally on Saturdays, our family sits around and looks at each other while American Gladiator plays on ESPN classic. We do the 'what do you want to do?' 'well, I dunno. What do you want to do?' game until there's no real time to do anything. If we do go somewhere, it is to the mall.

Today, we broke the cycle. Go us! We decided that we *were* going to do something. I wanted to go apple picking. Hubby didn't. He wanted to go to K and G to look at suits for work. Blah. So, we compromised and found a fall festival going on at a school in the county. We took the boys, got some free stuff, and helped support the local schools.

Things I learned today: I do NOT want to go back to teaching middle school. Ever.

My momma bear instinct really kicks in when a grown man laughs at my kid getting hurt.

And, Five Guys is reaaaaallly growing on me. As are Trader Joe's sea salt brownies. Yum.

Here are some pics of the day. Sage was quite cute as 'Spiderman'. :) Hmmm. Apparently, they can't 'process' my request right now, so you'll have to take my word for it. Spidey is very cute when he's my kid. ;) There's also an adorable one of Kai posing with dad on the merry go round, and an adorable shot of my little skeleton pj clad boys from this morning, just for good measure. Ah well. Perhaps they will be able to process my request at some other point in time and I will be able to show you my pride and joy. :)

Car Seats

I told you I'd eventually get back to car seats. :)

I'm a tech. I got certified this summer after years of reading on car seat forums and endlessly researching seat choices. I took the plunge. I got mom to come stay with the kiddos and I took the course.

You may be wondering what in the world one has to do to learn how to install car seats. After all, every parent that's had a kid since about 1980 has installed a car seat. What's so hard about that?

You'd be surprised at what people don't know about installing a seat. Most of them are wrong. I've done probably 40 cars or so since becoming certified. Out of those, one seat was correct. One. It's harder than you'd think. :) Here's the PSA: Please, get your seat checked by a certified child passenger safety tech. You can find one in your area on the safekids website . They should be able to teach you how to safely install your seat in your car. Ideally, you leave feeling like you can install your own seat with no problems. :)

Anyway, most of the people who are certified in my area in Northern VA are cops. They are the ones that sponser most of the public seat checks. Their officers are compensated for their time, so we very often are working with someone who doesn't care much about the car seats and just wants the overtime. I worked with such an individual today. We had a children's health fair. I volunteered to go man the car seat booth. One officer was there. She was giving out grossly incorrect information to a mom, so I stuck my nose into the conversation and started asking the mom some questions. I then gently tried to lead her in another direction from what the cop was saying. This? Pissed her off. Badly. lol I need to remember that many cops (not all, mind you) like to be in charge and I stepped on her toes. However, I couldn't have this mom leave thinking it was okay to put her 3 year old in a backless booster when it seemed from my questions she probably just had the harnesses on her convertible threaded incorrectly.

Oye. It was an unpleasant day.

Hand, Foot and Mouth

Apparently, Kai has hand foot and mouth disease. Lovely. At least it is only mildly contagious. gah. I thought he might be better today but his fever went back up this evening and he cried for an hour before passing out in my arms tonight. He wouldn't even nurse, the poor little love. :(

On a related note, I went and bought a temporal scanner today. Wow, do I love this thing. It is so stinkin' easy to take the kids' temp with it. So much better than our old underarm method. Yay for new toys. :D Sage kept having me take his temp. He was having fun with it, too. :)

In other news, my FIL called today. I can go get a new phone. Did I tell you about my phone? ugh. I got a new phone for my birthday in July. It was lovely. It was perfect. It was stolen a couple of weeks ago. sigh. So, I've been using S's b/c we are on FILs phone plan and he needed to go do his end of things before we can get a new phone. So, I'm off to check them out tomorrow. That will be fun with the sick baby in tow.

Sick Kids

My kids are sick. Kai is currently running a 102 fever. Sage had a fever last weekend. Turns out his was an ear infection--his first ever--and now has a residual cough. Kai is still up in the air. Since he can't 'catch' the ear infection (or so I've been told--I'm skeptical now) we are thinking it is just a virus. However, the doc is closed until Tuesday, thanks to dear old Columbus and his day.

It is hard having sick kids. I was up every hour with Sage just checking on him. He was *hot* and the meds only did so much so I was worried about him. Kai, well, let's just say Kai and I were up a LOT last night. He didn't sleep from 12:30 to about 5, so neither did mom. We walked, we cuddled, we nursed (yes, I'm still doing that), we watched Barney. I finally sent dad in to put the finishing touches on a very exhausted baby. Luckily dad is pretty good at getting him down to sleep. Also lucky is was the weekend. During the week dad is at work at night so it is all on mom.

I need (another) nap. I just hope tonight is better for all of our sakes. I tired mommy makes for a pretty grumpy household.

Well, I did it

I did it. I set up a blog. I'm officially part of the 21st century.

I was starting to feel all smug about doing the blogging thing until I remembered that a friend of ours has had one of these for months. He's six.


Enough of that. More about *me*, because isn't that why you write a blog in the first place. To tell the world all about *me*? I thought so.


I'm Sage and Kai's mom. I have a name. It is still used periodically, but really, I'm mostly just Sage and Kai's mom now. That's how the people at church recognize me. That's how all children under the age of about 15 recognize me. It's how the SAs in Gymboree recognize me. So, that's who I am. :) I'm also a CPST (that's a car seat tech). I'm a bit obsessed with car seats so I finally went and got myself certified in June. More on that later. First, my children.

Sage is my darling first born. Isn't he cute? He's four and a classic first born type A kinda kid. He's a people pleaser. Overall, he's a fabulous kid, even if I do say so myself. Sure, he has his moments. He's four, after all. But he's a good one. He loves to read, he loves to play, and he loves, loves, loves school. Let's hope that continues. :)




Next is Kai. He's 19 months old now.
He is a bit more of a ...parenting challenge. He likes to throw things. At people. He likes to hit. He can turn from a sweet content little angel into a scary little spitfire in nothing flat. Case in point. We went to buy him some new tennis shoes and his brother some new dress shoes. We found Kai the perfect shoes for him. They had balls on them and they lit up. What more could a kid want? Kai put them on and stomped around happily. When I discovered I couldn't find what I needed for Sage in the same store, I put the balls shoes back and we headed for another store so that I would only have to stand in line in one place. Once Kai realized the shoes were not going with him, he went *ballastic*. He kicked. He screeched. He tried to bite me. Where oh where did he learn that??? It was comical but at the same time, really not. ;)


He's a joy. He really is. He loves balls. He loves dogs. He loves dogs who chase balls. If I could just get him to stop throwing Hot Wheels at his brother, life would be a piece of cake with these two. :)


At this time, we only have two kids. I say at this time because I am holding out hope for a third. Only one problem with that. Scott (that'd be my husband), is perfectly happy with two and is therefore D.O.N.E. We'll see who wins this particular battle. :)



I'll add a few pics of our trip to Cox Farms from the other day. Cox Farms is a kid's dream come true. They have huge slides. There is free apple cider and apples. There's a hayride. And dirt. Lots and lots of dirt. What more could boys ask for? :)



Brothers on a hayride.






Sage and the goat stop to pose for a picture.






Kai takes a moment to play in the hay.



And enjoy some of that yummy apple cider.





This is Sage with 3 of our good friends who I'm sure you'll hear a lot about. If the level of fun is measured in the amount of dirt covering each kid, I'm thinking we couldn't have had a better day. :)





That's all for now. I'll be back. This is kind of fun.