banana, who?

our conversation at dinner tonight:

madeleine: mom, do you want to play knock knock?
me: sure.
madeleine: okay, your turn.

me: knock knock.
madeleine: who's there?
me: banana.
madeleine: banana, who?
me: knock knock.
madeleine: pauses and looks at me strangely. that's not how you do it.
randy: that's the most classic knock knock joke there is, madeleine.
me: fine, your turn, madeleine.

madeleine: knock knock.
me: who's there?
madeleine: orangie.
me: orangie, who?
madeleine: michael!
the girls erupt in laughter.

me: knock knock.
madeleine: who's there?
me: henrietta, the rude interrupting cow. 
madeleine: pauses and looks at me strangely. that's not a name.
me: fine, your turn again.

madeleine: knock knock.
me: who's there?
madeleine: um, cup (i was holding a cup. this girl doesn't go far for her inspiration).
me: cup, who?
madeleine: stringy!
more uncontrollable laughter from the girls.

social media

recently, i've read several articles and studies (here's one, but there are a bunch out there) about the benefits of blogging for stay-at-home moms. it helps them feel more connected to the outside world and their families, among other benefits. i generally agree with them. during this phase of my life, where i just moved to a new place and it's hard to get out with three small children that are on three different schedules, being able to both read other people's blogs and write my own blog makes me feel like i still know what is going on with people that i care about and with the world in general.

i realize that there are drawbacks to it as well - a false sense of keeping in touch with people without actually knowing more about what's going on than what they put on their blog, the danger of comparing your worst to other people's well-edited best, materialism from seeing so many amazing things posted about, and the slight neglect that may come from spending too much time on my phone/computer (this is the worst one for me, and i always feel better about life when i try to confine it to a few set times a day when the kids are asleep). but when i don't have the opportunity for real face time, when my phone reception is terrible and even if i can make a call, my children don't tolerate it for long, and when it gives me a little sanity while staying home with three small children, i think that the pros outweigh the cons. 

then there's facebook. i fought facebook for a long time. i refused to get an account and rarely checked it once i did. i'm not going to lie, there are still a lot of things that i hate about facebook. i hate the interface for so many reasons and hate a lot of the ways people use it (oh, the horrible grammar that lives on facebook...). but, i've learned to embrace some aspects of it and i get on there a couple of times a day to check in. i think i've posted a total of two times on it, but i comment every once in a while and i use it a lot as a news source for my family and friends. after google reader, it is my second social media intake source.

i got a twitter account (@debrapeck) a few years ago because my friend was having a baby and they were updating people on the birth, etc. via twitter. i just checked and it looks like i have 8 tweets on my account since it was created. i follow six people and get on there every few days to check things out. randy tweets quite a bit, so it is a good way for me to see what he's tweeting about.

i should tweet more. it fits well with my sense of humor. i make jokes in my head in little snippets and love the idea of hashtags for furthering a joke, too. i just haven't really gotten into tweeting and don't have much of an audience, so i often feel like there's no point.

maybe i'll start tweeting more. because i don't have enough going on in my life right now. but once again, i am looking for ways to communicate with the outside world and this would probably be fulfilling for me.

oh, google+, i had such high hopes for you. it had the promise of being a facebook-like space without being facebook. facebook with a google interface? yes, please. i wanted everyone to jump over there and leave facebook in the dust. but it didn't really happen. facebook may have a terrible product, but it was first to market with a great concept and no one wants to risk being left behind by switching to google+. that's the problem - everyone might switch if they knew that their friends would switch too, but nobody wants to take the first step. and so, it sits, stagnant.

i go on google+ once a month.

finally, there's instagram (debbypeck). i downloaded the instagram app when i first got my iphone and then promptly forgot about it until we went to mccall a few weeks ago and randy's aunt and cousin were talking about how their family is all on instagram. a few days ago, i opened up the app and started messing around with it a little bit.

here's why i like instagram: it is like speed blogging. if i take a picture with my phone and don't have time to sit down and do a whole post about it, i can still throw it up on instagram. or, if i take a picture of something that's not really blog worthy, but would still be fun to post, i can do it on instagram. plus, there are some friends on there that really don't blog, but post frequently on instagram and it's a fun way to keep up with them.

we'll see how it goes, but i think that i'll stick with it for a while and see how i like it. i don't want it to take away from blogging because i know there are people that won't check instagram, but do look forward to pictures, etc. on my blog. plus, i like being able to write a little more sometimes, and instagram only allows for a small caption (with hashtags!). it fits a social media niche that i didn't have before though.

now, if i could just get these all together in one place... (google+!)

a few thoughts on the common cold

summer colds are for the birds. no one ever wants to feel like this, but certainly not when the sun is shining.

being a responsible citizen with a cold puts a damper on your social life. i missed four social events last week in an attempt to be considerate of others. four. i'm pretty sure i haven't had four things to go to in the last three months put together and of course they all happen on the week that my family has an infectious disease. but, i decided that if i am going to try to make friends here, it's best not to start out by getting my targeted social audience sick first.

when do kids get better at controlling their germs? after any of our children has a cold, i always feel like i need to completely disinfect the house. how can they make contact with so many surfaces so quickly? madeleine actually started licking the handle to our bedroom door at the height of her cold last week. licking it. she doesn't usually do this. is she trying to get randy sick?

being a mom with a cold is the pits. especially when your kids also have colds. because no matter how good your husband is to you, the world just doesn't stop for mom. all i wanted to do was crawl into bed for three days straight and all that my children wanted was my constant attention. including at 2:00am and 4:00am and 4:30am and...

i'd rather deal with the flu than a cold. the flu may be messier, but it strikes fast and then it's gone. colds seem to hang around forever. plus, it seems easier to contain flu germs because the flu renders its victims more lethargic. my kids obviously don't feel well when they have colds, but they still go about touching everything (see comments above) and living life fairly normally. with the flu, i can usually keep them quarantined in front of the TV and hopefully keep their siblings from getting sick. i don't even try with colds. plus, my kids seem to give me more sympathy when they see me vomiting than when i just have a cold (see comments above).


but the saddest thing about the common cold is when infants get it. because there is so little you can do for them. i swear, you can't buy cold medicine for children under the age of thirteen (that may be a slight exaggeration, but only slight). so, i put saline drops in my little boy's tiny nostrils and listen to him scream as i suck his brains out with a small, blue, rubber torture device. i watch him drown as he tries to nurse while only being able to breathe out of his mouth. i try to calm him down as he fights sleep, despite extreme exhaustion. and i pray that he will get better quickly so that my usually cherubic boy will come back to me.

impromptu photo shoot

i went to take a better picture of the quilt my mom made for jonathan and he was being so cute that it turned into a little bit of an impromptu photo shoot.

new quilts for jonathan

i've been meaning to post about the quilt that my mom made for jonathan for a while now, but hadn't gotten around to it. when we went to boise, my mother-in-law gave us another quilt for jonathan, so i  figured i'd post about both of them at the same time. it's pretty nice having two mothers who quilt, takes the pressure off of me to make any baby quilts. and you can never have too many quilts, right?

jeanie made jonathan a train quilt. she paper pieced each engine and car, which is extremely impressive. if i had been doing that, he would have ended up with a single quilted bumper pad, maybe. 

 

i love the quilting on the wheels, and there is steam coming out of the engine.

jonathan enjoyed the quilt as well. 

this is the best picture that i have of the quilt my mom made for jonathan. sadly, i'm being too lazy to take another one right now, but it is the quilt that is in the video of jonathan rolling over, and there is a beautiful picture of it over on my mom's blog.

this boy is already spoiled.

mccall 2012

well, i warned you it was coming. here are only some of the many pictures that i took at mccall this year. we spent the week sitting on the beach and spending time with family. nothing better than that. i got in my annual waterski run and although i got up on the first try, i will admit that it ended abruptly (thankfully, i had skied for a while) when i tried to cut too hard and i ended up skidding across the water. we had a great time and can't wait for next year. what a fun tradition to marry into.

 

my girls loved the beach, as always. we got diane a tube this year and she loved being able to wade into the water by herself. they spent hours digging in the sand and swimming and were exhausted by the end of each day.

lainey, my cute niece. madeleine was in heaven with all of the little girls that were there this year. not only was her cousin lainey there, but a couple of randy's cousins have young daughters and randy has a cousin that is three, so there were plenty of playmates for my girls.

randy doing some beach reading. unfortunately, i made the mistake of bringing our mutual friend, by dickens, as my only book. turns out dickens isn't good beach reading. i think i read two pages the whole time we were there.

the girls loved having their aunt kim around. she is so good at spoiling them and playing with them. i love that i have a sister-in-law that knows how to work hard and play hard, too.

more cousin time with carsten and calli on the boat tube. 

i swear, i hardly held jonathan at all the whole week. he was either happy in his bouncy chair on the beach, or being passed around to various adults that showered him with attention. none so much as his grammy though.

randy on the tube with the girls and calli. my girls loved being pulled behind the boat. i have yet to see this in person because i was on the beach with jonathan (i refuse to put infants in life jackets unless absolutely necessary), but i'm grateful to whoever took pictures from the boat.

we spent wednesday up at ponderosa park, where the beach turns into dirt pretty quickly off the shore. no sooner had randy put sunscreen all over diane than diane rubbed dirt all over herself. queen of the ragamuffins, i tell you.

this was her running away from me as i tried to take a picture of her.

jonathan thought that randy putting sunscreen on him was about the funniest thing that had ever happened to him. he was giggling really hard and didn't stop until randy was done.

carsten

randy's brother's family, minus kim.

randy's dad, bob. 

proof that i did get in the water and play with my kids at some point.

my mother-in-law, jeanie, and all six grandkids.

napping on the beach.

calli was so helpful with the kids all week. i wish that she lived closer so i could have her as my babysitter.

randy's uncle, dan, holding jonathan.

on thursday morning, randy went with the big group and took the girls kayaking. i stayed home with jonathan and had a quiet morning to myself. like i said, no infant life jackets unless absolutely necessary.

bob and carsten

randy's uncle, aaron, and his fiance, katie.

kyle and lainey.

randy's aunt, rhonda, and his uncle, tim, and his daughter, eliza.

randy's grandparents, still active at 81.

some of the girls playing in the little yard behind the condos.

last year, kyle and kim let us tag along with them to go to ice cream alley one night in downtown mccall. the girls have been talking about it ever since, so it looks like it may have to be a mccall tradition. rough tradition when you can't have dairy, but so it goes. also, dropping the ice cream off your cone within 100 feet of ice cream alley appears to be a growing tradition (madeleine last year, diane this year). thanks to kim for sharing with diane.

my girls don't really have ice cream cones, ever, so they haven't mastered the art of eating it fast enough or rotating the cone as you do eat it. their hands were covered in ice cream by the end.

until next year!