Tid Bits...

So a few tid bits from the Cross' household....

-Kena called me 'Yoko Uno' the other day. Yes really. She yelled something to the affect of "Yoko Uno" while looking at me. Adam and I turned to each other and asked "did she just call me/you Yoko Uno??" I appologize for breaking up the beatles.

Kena loves singing the wheels on the bus. Today she wanted to the crying baby part. We did and once she finished she covered face, turned around started walking and RAN RIGHT INTO THE WALL. She turned, looked at us, and then continued on. Adam and I thought it was joke. We laughed and I fell off the couch it was so funny. Its not child abuse if its funny right?

-While listening to my music today, "Queens of the Stonage" is on my playlist with a song called "sick, sick, sick". Kena was taking a bath when the song was playing from the family room. The song goes "sick, sick, sick" and sweet little Kena in the bathtub sang "SIC, SIC, SIC" along with the song.

-While sitting for a family dinner one night at our dinning room table with a nice home cooked meal...oh shoot, thats right I need to be honest. Ok, we were lazy one night and had dinner in the family room. That dinner consisted of mac and cheese or something like that. While we were eatting Kena lifted her finger...she had something on it...what on earth was it. So Adam got up from the couch to see (I was thinking it was cheese maybe), looked at it then smelled it (right then I should have known). Kena put her hand in the back of her diaper and picked some squish poop out for dinner. Yummy right?

-After 'creative time' at our house it was bath time. I let Kena play with markers (not always the wisest choice, but I don't care), so her clothes took a toll-mainly the tan colored pants. So I took off her clothes and saw blue pen marks on her butt...but no pen marks on the back of her pants. Yes my child, took her pen and drew on her butt.

-One of the most recent battles is that Kena wants to take lovey with her into the bath. If we take lovey away that means she screams during the whole bath time. Well dada isn't home and I wanted to score some mommy points-showing dada that I can get Kena to learn her lesson. It freak'n blew up in my face. She LOVED THE WET LOVEY. One point Kena.

Thank You for following my blog...

Thank you for all that responded and said that they DO read my blog! Yes, I got warm fuzzies NOT cold pricklies.

Dear Uncle Tyler....

I think Kena hearts you....

Pre-Easter Egg Hunt at Gold Creek

Our church had the big egg hunt the weekend before Easter. Boppa and G'ma came down especially for the egg hunt.

Kena, well, was Kena....look on to find out...

Yup...she cried the whole freak'n time while picking up eggs....

Observations at Barnes and Noble...

..Sorry folks, this was written about last week. I am lazy and it sat as a "draft" for almost a week...

Sunday I desprately jumped at the chance to get away from my house, my Kena, and my adam to take a trip to the bookstore. Adam took Kena to Lowes for a lawn mover blade and I took a long hot shower and 'got ready' for the day. Next, I hopped into Adam's car (which for some reason is difficult for a shorty like me to drive) and drove to the local Barnes and Noble. It was a pretty day (not beautiful) so I rolled down the window and breathed in the toxic allegien air.

I knew I wasn't going to buy anything. To be honest I just wanted to read a few pages for a book I have on hold at the library "I cried and it sucked: How I had a baby, a breakdown and a much needed margarita" by Heather Anderson over at dooce.com. It was located in the parenting section (ha!), so I walked by the 'newly pregnant' couple. Her huddled on the ground with a HUGE book and him standing over her with "the EVERYTHING about Fatherhood book". I am guessing by the size of her book it was pregnancy week by week. She wasn't showing, so I am guessing this is a newly known. They didn't looked stressed or unnessarily happy either. You all remember...oh CRAP, this is for real? Of course you say that after the cheers of pure joy (or hyperventating like myself).

With how they were BOTH looking, I knew they weren't buying the book for their neighbors.

For some odd reason, I just wanted to go up to them and sliently say "its going to be ok".

I remember the overwhelming joy, yet anxiety with our impending arrival. I too bought the books, studied them like I was in school and then shortly after that forgot about them (collected some dust). Thankfully I passed the final test (or what I think is passing). Reading the pregnancy books helped me, but the raising your children books were a little hard to grasp for me. I stopped reading shortly after a few months, Kena is turning out just fine. She has her moments, which then I in turn want to call my mom and appologize for how I acted as a kid. "What on earth am I going to do with you???" I feel like asking Kena. Luckily we haven't any moments that involved a burning candle or my make up or a roll of toliet paper (not all together of course). But as of recently her favorite thing to do is to dump her snack on the floor. Want to know what her snack normally is (what is asked for)..cereal, corn flakes. Yup, crunched up corn flakes on my the bottom of my feet, sounds nice huh? Or taking all of the books out of the bookshelf. That kid needs to start earning her keep around here!

Ok, totally side tracked there. But those were one of my observations at Barnes and Nobles.

Have you read my blog yet???

I googled "Read my Blog" and this came up....thought it was pretty funny.

So random question-who are you? Who is reading this blog??? I am so curious to whom I am writing to, complaining and rejoicing in my normal 'mommyhood' or just plan life. Do you read it often? Or just check in once and awhile? I say this because there are blogs that I check daily-Kjerste, The Redmonds, Noah and Olivia's, Lisa over at Views from a Java Hut and others that are saved in my "favorite's" that I check out. I wonder if anyone else checks on this? Could you please leave me a comment??? Just so I know you are out there, floating in cyberspace. I know it sounds like desperation-good I am getting my point across!

In posting random info and sharing my love of photography, I have found joy. I have even picked up writing again (which I did when I was must younger and found joy) and even started to read more.

Just sometimes I sit back and wonder...who reads this? Or as the cartoon says "Why? I don't even find you interesting in person". Which, if thats the fact, please keep your comments to yourself...oh wait, you wouldn't even be reading-HA score one for me!

I wanted to do more 'product reviews' on this blog, but really never got to it. So if I find a great product or find I will post it. Otherwise frankly, it is the Adventures with Little Mama and Big Makena (with a little Adam thrown in there too!)

Thank you for reading.....

The BIG A has hit...

And what I mean by the BIG A?? Allergies!

Spring has arrived, which means that I am 'drugged' 50% of the time. Each year once fall hits I completely forget about allergies, taking OTC drugs that you are only allowed to take "one every 24 hours" and feeling like I have crusties in my eyes all the time. And if you know me, crusties in the eye is my biggest pet peeve. The worse of my allergies that I remember is when I was super pregnant, July 4th 2007. I was literally days away from our arrival, or what I thought (Kena came a week late on August 4th). At our house we have a tradition to throw a HUGE block party on the 4th. Pretty much our road is shut down, bqqs are out and we have a great time. All I remember is that I could barely see out of my droopy, watery, crusty eyes. I was constantly sneezing and frankly...because I was pregnant...couldn't do a darn thing. Well, actually I could do a darn thing-grin and bare it. Of course, I being the perfect hostess (ahem, not really) I let anyone with in a earshot know how misserable I was. Ask Adam, he remembers.

To be honest, I never grew up with allergies, or at least I don't remember. It was when I moved out to Lake Stevens then to Bothell that I had allergies, crazy huh? So there was many fond memories of Spring and Summer in my past.

Here's to praying (sneeze, sneeze, sneeze-literally right now!) that Kena doesn't get them also...

A dressing up

We already have Kena's easter dress (pictures of come later), but I was given this easter dress as a hand-me-down. We LOVE hand-me-downs in his house. Kena loved walking around in her 'dress-up dress' carrying of course, what else, a big bucket of crayons.

A girl and her mama

I rarely post any pictures of myself...because frankly, I don'twant to. But I have to give the credit to Adam who took the photos of Kena and I.

Visiting the church's playground.

A kids love of cocoa...

A trip to the outlet mall with boppa and g'ma of course means cocoa!

Dad hammers teen's phone...

Read the article here
A-what is a 13 year old doing with a phone? In school? I didn't get my first cell (keep in mind it weigted like 10 lbs) until I had my first car...18 years old. My parents watched the bill and made sure I didn't over my minutes...we didn't even have text back then (boy do I sound old??).

B-I do commend the dad...hammering the phone was the best thing. And grounding her until the summer...lucky for her it wasn't until she turned 18. $4,000...I am surprised they didn't disown her. Ok, not really but wow...

C-Dad thought the phone had been disabled when it comes to text messages...surprise, surprise dad...verizon has the upper hand...

Celebrity Apprentice

Adam and I normally sit down and watch the Celebrity Apprentice on Sunday nights. We risk the lack of sleep and watch the whole thing through until 11pm, just to see who gets kicked off. Trump always picks celebrities that will 'push the envelope', actually in the last episode that phrase was thrown around alot. Dennis Rodman and Joan Rivers, I would say are the most...um...difficult of the celebrities. Luckily Rodman was sent home last week after drinking, I can only guess, the east river amount of Vodka and Cranberry (and let me add, what ex basketball player's choice of poisin is Vodka and Cranberry? Oh thats right...Rodman), during a task. Smart choice Trump, but it won't save his life. I was hoping that he would at least send or talk about sending him to rehab...come on Trump, think. The only one who did talk about it was Jesse James.

Anyways, thats not what episode this post is about. Last week's episode was to make a viral video (aka youtube) for All's new "small and mighty" line of detergent. Teams were mixed up to have both male and females on each side. Apparently when you think of small and mighty what else do you think of but...a little person? Come on PEOPLE! Adam and I both sat there, uneasy of what the outcome was relieving. One team decided to hire little people for there video, the other team decided to use an unrealistic model of a housewife (with 'affair' undertones).

Watched the episode, wasn't happy, but kind of pushed it to the back of my head. Until I read from a college friend's blog. Jen Montzingo over at a little zing, wrote about it from her heart. She is a little person and talks about Social Responsibility in her latest blog. Please click on that link to read what she wrote. Thank you Jen!

Dooce.com

A new favorite blog! And you all know how much I love blogs!

Heather Anderson over at dooce! Awesome writer, with a great story. A mother of one and one on the way, she battled depression/anxiety and ppd with her first child. As most of you know I too battle with depression/anxiety/ppd, however don't talk about it in this blog since I have my own that is only about depression.

She is funny and creative. Its nice to get a different approach to depression...

Check it out.

Have you ever....

...Fabreze your child?

Ok, so as some of you know, I had a barfing child yesterday. Barfed all over her nice, bright, clean carseat cover. After the barf, I rushed Kena inside layed her into bed (because I had to contain if any more barfing were to follow), rushed back outside to clean up the...mess. Oh, forgot to tell you, Kena...had yogurt and milk for breakfast. I cleaned up with babywipes (moms, we all know how amazing they are) and towels. Feeling pretty good about my clean up job, I rushed back inside to tend to me child. For the rest of the day forgot about the milky barf that was or wasn't sitting in the carseat.

Most of you know, I suck at cleaning. And I also kind of forget about things. So the next morning, Kena was doing better so we resumed our outing from yesterday. Off to Woodinville for a little shopping. Kena needed a sweater and shoes for her Easter dress. I took shower, got Kena dressed, even strigten my hair. Grabbed my bag, remembered my camera (just in case), snacks for Kena and was out the door in perfect timing. So proud of myself, got into the car and...sniff, sniff...oh crap. The barf. It wasn't cleaned as well as I thought. But, once I have something in my mind, I don't turn back. So Kena, (sweet, sweet Kena) sat in the smelly carseat (to my defense-it didn't look like it was nasty.) On our way to the consignment shop I decided to stop by target, look for somethings and purchase some fabreze for the carseat. My idea was to at least spray it, save the trip and wash the cover at home tonight.

Got Kena out, put in her the cart and the smell was still lingering. You have GOT to me kidding me. Score one for me. I am not going to win mother of the day award (thats ok, I won it yesterday for letting my child throw up on me). We didn't even make it into the store yet and she started crying. Not the full blown-out cry, just that consent whinning crying. I rolled my eyes and continued on. Grabbed my few things, couldn't find shoes/sweater for Kena (crap) and grabbed of the "lavender fabreze".

Ok, let me say this...I DID NOT fabreze my child. Kids don't have things to spray on them to make them not smell nasty. Sometimes I wish they did. Although, Kena's nautral smell is the yummiest around, the smell of barf outreached natural. While Kena sat in the front seat, I sprayed/sprayed/sprayed the carseat. Waited a few minutes then safely buckeled in Kena. We did our shopping and I felt like the smell was starting to disappear.

We made it over the 520 bridge (which gives me major axinety) and over to Adam's work for lunch. Adam got in the car and said "WOW, its smells like vomit". Awesome, know I am just immune to the smell, or am I starting to smell like yogurt/milk barf?

We had a great lunch at Ivars (of course seafood!), Adam cuddled with Kena-he said he didn't smell barf, but fabreze.

Just want to clarify...I DID NOT SPRAY MY CHILD!

We are more than blessed.

Do you ever sit down and think "oh my gosh, we are so blessed!". I don't think I do it enough in a day. Yes today, my child threw up all over her carseat, then once inside threw up all over me. But those thing are so small to what we really do have. I have an amazing family. Beyond the support and love, I am blesssed with more than I can say or write. My child is healthy, happy and here with us. There is just nothing like your little girl, curled up in your arms. Or sitting watching me getting ready for the day and wanting to brush her hair (all three hairs). She has her moments, like an incredibly embrassing meltdown at the outlet mall (which resulted in a time out in the food court. I saw it on supernanny-it didn't work). But those moments are small compared to her smile, chubby cheeks and warm hugs. My husband is healthy, happy and here with us. He works so hard for our family so that I can stay home with Makena, a dream that a lot of women can only dream. He listens to me, comes home to a crying mess and gives me a hug. I've always said it takes a special man to be a daddy of a little girl and God knew exactly what He was doing. Adam might kill me for writing this but, he even plays dress up with Kena. I mean purse, tea cup in hand and scarf around the neck. Then will play indoor soccer to make sure she is well rounded.

It amazing the things I forget about it and need to be thankful for. So what are your blessings?
...now must tend to that throwing up child! The things we do out of love.