The Children's Museum, Part 2

While we were at the Children's Museum we mostly took pictures of Atticus since he was the one playing. Esme had fun watching everything but was too small to do hardly anything. In the train room, though, we had great lighting for the first time, so while Atticus played with the trains we had an impromptu photo shoot. Here are the results!

These first two are so similar, but I can't decide which I like more:

My camera has this nice feature where you can have it just take picture after picture about a second apart. I have hundreds of shots of Esme from this session alone. I tried to pick out the best.

These next two are right after each other. Her expression changes so fast!

I can't bring myself to get rid of all the in-between pictures because if I click through them fast it's like a movie. I love it!

This last one's kinda blurry, but it's one of the few where she wasn't looking right at me. I like it a lot. I wish it had turned out better.

Her eyes are usually a cool gray/green color, but those overalls really brought the green out. I'm so, so glad I have a decent camera and know a little about how to take pictures. I don't have anything nearly this good of Atticus at the same age. Oh, well.

Hope you liked the pics! Which is your favorite?

The Children's Museum, Part 1

Our library has free day passes to all kinds of fun things including the Children's Museum, so one day a couple months ago we took the kids. After realizing how many pictures I wanted to put up I decided to make it two posts. This first one is all Atticus, all the time.

We spent some time in the water room first. Unfortunately, the combination of the lighting and my not-so-awesome camera meant almost all of them blurred.

Here he is in the tree reading area:

Here's Justin painting his face. (We took turns. Maybe you think we should have let him do this himself, but you would be wrong.) The green above the eyebrows was my doing, but Justin got to do the crowning achievement -- the mustache. I've also got to add that when he looked at this picture just now he said, "Oh, I had paint on. I was just Jesus Christ." Apparently there's a theme going on here.

Atticus at the bus:

And here's where he spent the most time -- the train table. He loved this.

And, for good measure, here's what he thinks of you:

Rocks, Rivers, and Bare Feet

I think about posting sometimes, but I'm so tired lately. Really, really tired. But here goes. I thought I'd keep it simple to get myself to do it. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the last couple of months. I'll do this in a series. This first set is from a day when we took the kids to the river, obviously.

Here's Atticus hoarding rocks:

Posing (or maybe just pulling back for a throw):

Giving me a weird face:

And here he is after I told him to go get the mud off his hands. He did a pretty good job! I must admit, something about this pose makes me think of paintings of Christ I've seen. Maybe that's sacrilegious. Whatever.

Now it's Esme's turn. Here she is with Justin:

And here she is checking out the water. She looks kind of suspicious. She probably thinks it's a Communist.

And in this last one you can tell she was pretty much ready to go home. Also, she wanted me to know I was the worst person ever.

Me with Crutches: Yay.

Last Friday I thought I'd be a cool mom. You know, the kind who plays with her kids instead of sitting at the playground with a book. This turned out to be a bad idea. Lazy moms, you know what you're about.

We were playing Lava Monster¹ and I had been on the lava for almost three sweconds, so I jumped up on a slide to restart my time. As I jumped back down to keep running, I landed pretty badly. The next thing I know I'm laying on the ground in incredible pain. Seriously -- really, really terrible pain. I was losing it until I started doing my hypnobirthing stuff, relaxed, and got my mind of it. It was seriously the worst pain I think I've ever felt. Here's a picture.

So now I can't walk. Luckily Justin's mom had some crutches at her house that she let me borrow. I couldn't put any weight on my foot and couldn't even move it without serious, serious pain for the first 24 hours or so. I'm now to the point that I can rest it on the floor for short periods of time. I'm just hoping to be albe to stand on it and walk around by Thursday, since I have an Enrichment meeting I want to go to and I'll need to be able to drive.

In other news, here's what Atticus did to Esme today:

It could be worse. And yes, he got in BIG trouble. I don't want a pen anywhere near her eyes, espcially not while being held by a 3-year-old.

 

1If you don't know what this is you had a terrible childhood.

Goodbye, Teeth! or My Brain On Drugs

Okay -- I've been thinking that I should write an account of getting my wisdom teeth pulled. Not only because it was something big in my life and thus belongs on my blog if I want it there, but also because I think others who get their teeth pulled deserve to have accounts to read ahead of time to help prepare them. I'm officially adding my experience to the hundreds that are probably on here somewhere already.

We went in and first talked with the oral surgeon for a long time about different things that you will find boring and thus are not included.¹ Then -- and I didn't know this going in -- Justin was not allowed to go with me into the room where they did the actual pulling! Augh! Didn't they know I needed him? I wish I had been forewarned on that one.

After going in and sitting down they strapped the heart rate monitor to my finger and put a blood pressure cuff on my arm. This was unhelpful -- it let me know exactly how stressed out I was. I was trying to calm myself down with little success when they put the thing over my nose for the nitrous oxide. I was breathing it in, wondering if it was going to be okay or if I was going to seriously regret this later, and nothing was happening. I asked what percent the gas was.

"100 percent," they tell me. Now I know they're trying to kill me for sure. But why am I not feeling anything?

"100 percent nitrous?" I ask in a disbelieving voice. Then they laugh at me and tell me it's 100 percent oxygen right now. That makes me feel a little better, but I'm still pretty tense at that point.

They turn on the nitrous oxide at a 50/50 mix and it makes me feel unbelievably dizzy. I ask them to turn it down. They proceeded to numb me up and forcibly yank my teeth out.

It was a really weird experience, like having two levels in my brain. There was the stupid level that was high on drugs and thinking really dumb things.² Then below that was my sane brain -- I was fully aware and could think about how surreal the experience was and how stupid my other brain was being. I spent a lot of the time thinking about what my cognitive limits were and testing myself to see how fast I could think, which wasn't very fast. It was like my brain was slowed down.

Also, they kept talking to me like I was an idiot or a child. My high brain was okay with this, but the sane brain was kinda peeved. And it was interesting that while the nitrous oxide made me care less about what they were doing, my hands were still involuntarily clenched pretty much the whole time. My body was still stressed and definitely not relaxed. I remember at one point asking if my pulse was too fast. Every time I almost fell asleep my sane brain wouldn't let me. I know it's irrational, but I felt like if I did I might lose myself.

After it was all over I left with a mouth full of gauze and no feeling in the lower half of my face. Word of caution -- go straight to the pharmacy for your pain meds. We got stuck in traffic and had to pick the kids up first, so the numbness wore off completely before I got my prescription. It hurt really, really badly.

The biggest surprise for me was that it took me days -- more than a week -- to feel okay again, No one had mentioned that having your teeth pulled makes you feel like you have the flu. I was lethargic, dizzy, sometimes nauseated, and shaky for days. It was miserable. Add to that not being able to eat anything other than soup and pudding and such stuff and it was not something I would want to do again. I'm glad it's over.

1Well, not first. First was the x-ray machine that swiveled all the way around my head, making me feel like they were deliberately trying to give me brain cancer.

2Every time they said, "that one's out. We're going to clean now," it made my high brain want to say, "I love you guys!" My sane brain didn't let that happen.