Couldn't have planned it any better

NOTE: I wrote this entry hours ago with paragraph breaks at all the right places. For whatever reason, it will NOT publish any other way than as one big glop of words. I hate that, but who knows when it will be fixed, so the glop will have to do. ACTUAL POST: I babysat a LOT in college. I loved it. I distinctly remember having, at any given time, a few upcoming dates reserved for people who had called me and asked me to babysit. Sometimes they had tickets to an event, sometimes they were just going out to dinner. We are not like those people. Occasionally, we get it together to secure one of our two regular babysitters in advance. This is rare, though. Usually, both the girls are used to getting a call at about 5:30 on a Saturday night from me. "So, uh, this is TOTALLY last minute, but do you by any chance want to babysit in, like, 20 minutes?" Why anyone would give up a free Saturday night to come to our house and hang out with three hooligans is beyond me, but somehow we've convinced them, and this past Saturday night just such a thing occured. Matt and I found ourselves free! Earlier in the day we'd been watching Anthony Bourdain eat Asian food that looked crazy good on The Travel Channel, so we decided to eat at Shogun. If you aren't familiar, it's one of those Japanese places where you sit in front of a grill and watch a guy cook your food while doing all kinds of fancy food-related tricks. We sat with three prom couples and a large family celebrating the olderst daughter's 15th birthday. The prom couples were fun to watch. One of the boys had a fedora with a big red feather in it, and I had to resist the urge to call him Yankee Doodle out loud. The boy directly next to me kept using his chopsticks as drumsticks on the table, and I had to work even harder to resist the urge to snatch them out of his hand and beat him over the head with them. Shogun is a nice restaurant--architecturally beautiful, dim lighting. You know, the kind of place people go for prom. This is why I find it rather odd that when they acknowledge a customer's birthday, they do so by turning on 50 strobe lights all over the ceiling and playing a random pop song at full volume (think Michael Jackson or Katy Perry). When it was the girl at our table's turn, they cranked up some Bieber. The girl's mother stood up and started singing and dancing, totally feeling the groove. It was both amusing and tragic to watch the girl's horror. We had a lovely time and ate ourselves silly. Every time we have a real date, we say that we love it, that it's so important to make sure we keep doing it, that we need to schedule a regular date night. But what's the fun in that?

And the winner is...

MELANIE!! Congratulations, Melanie! You are the winner of a $5 Sonic gift card, to be mailed to you directly.

To ensure a fair contest, I put numbered pieces of paper representing each comment into one of Abby's Hannah Montana cups. Then I interrupted the game of Phase 10 that she and her dad were playing to have Matt (who is still grateful that I didn't write a haiku about him) pick a number without looking. Abby watched and demanded to be the one to pick next time. He pulled the number 7, and the seventh comment belonged to Melanie!

This was really fun. I will have to do it again soon. Sonic appears to be an internationally accepted incentive! Thanks to everyone who entered!

Poetry? Yes. Poetic? Not so much.

I was an English major in college. Did you know that? Probably. I don't hide the fact that I am a grammar freak and that misspelled words and absurdly placed apostrophes raise my blood pressure. I refuse to use shorthand while texting (I mean really, is it SO much quicker to type u than it is to type you?) and I use capitalization and punctuation at ALL times--Facebook, a scribbled note to Matt, whatever. It's a standard I have.

As much as I was born to be an English major, there were some classes I didn't like. At all. Like poetry classes. I had a very good reason not to like poetry classes--I don't much care for poetry. There's some stuff out there I don't mind, of course. We had to memorize Rudyard Kipling's "If" in high school, and I believe it to be the sagest bit of rhyming advice I have ever heard. But most poetry, to me, is just silly and over-dramatic. (I'm sure someone out there is reacting to this statement the way I react when I see someone write there when they clearly mean their.)

However! As I thought about what kind of blog post I needed to write today, I realized that poetry is the perfect mechanism for getting everyone up to date on life for AAMEN. I speak specifically of that strange, random, efficient form of poetry, the haiku. A few haikus are all I need to get everyone in the loop!

Also, I still feel the need to make up for my slacker pace of blogging lately. So this post will have my FIRST EVER BLOG GIVEAWAY! Yahoo!!! Here's the plan. Comment on this blog and tell me which haiku you like the best. All comments posted by this coming Friday, March 4, at noon CST will be entered in a random drawing to win A FIVE DOLLAR SONIC GIFT CARD! Okay, so it's not a new car or a KitchenAid stand mixer, but give me a break. We're raising three kids here. Play your cards right, though, and that's an entire work week's worth of Happy Hour Route 44s!!

The nominees:

1. Aaron's cast is off!
It was earlier than planned.
So thrilled to be done.

2. Our church just turned one.
We had a celebration.
I love The Harbor!

3. Love Steven Tyler.
He and JLo saved Idol.
Still glad Paula's gone.

4. Abby's birthday looms.
Eight years old just can't be right.
What is she thinking?!

5. Matt loves his iPad.
Abby and I love it too.
We steal it. A lot.

6. Thin Mints are my joy.
Girl Scouts, why not sell year round?
Life would be perfect.

7. Facebook sucks my time.
I need status updates though!
Because I...um...well.

8. Annie is our dog.
Aaron thinks she is his toy.
Annie disagrees.

9. Toys blanket the floor.
Carpet's somewhere under there.
At least I think so.

10. It's March already!
March of Twenty-Eleven!
Wow, I feel so old.

Only the best for my boy

We've all heard it: No matter what great presents you get a baby, they only want to play wtih the box. I am here to tell you that it could not be more true.

Aaron is 9 months old now. Because he's still in his body cast, the easiest way to entertain him is to perch him in my lap, facing out, and hand him small toys to play with, one at a time. He plays, throws the toy on the floor when he's tired of it, and then I give him another. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

When we figured out this method, I went through the house, collecting all of the small, fun toys I could find and putting them in a bin. Then I went to the store and bought a few more small, bright toys so he'd have plenty of options. Of course, some toys get more attention than others depending on his mood, but there are several that I can depend on to keep him entertained the longest. They are:

- An empty water bottle
- The funnel drain attachment for my panini maker
- A gift bow from Christmas
- The foam keychain that came with his diaper bag
- A spoon
- The lids from several small Tupperware containers
- The DVD player remote
- A calculator

It's okay though! It makes getting his birthday present really easy. I'm just going to wrap up a few toilet paper tubes and a comb and call it a day.

Silver Linings To All This Snow

1. There's not nearly as much laundry to be done since no one's getting out of their pajamas.

2. It takes so much less to make people happy now--45 degrees and partly cloudy would be met with rejoicing in the streets.

3. Think of all the gas money being saved when you don't drive for 8 days.

4. If you haven't taken your outdoor Christmas lights down/trimmed your hedges/cleaned up your yard lately, no one knows! The snow has provided you with a thorough disguise.

5. Since the snow has trapped you at home with nothing to do, you have plenty of time to post status updates on Facebook about how you're stuck at home with nothing to do.

Observations from the mother of a spica'd baby

Two weeks ago today, we brought our 8 month old baby home from the hospital, 2/3 of his body covered in a fiberglass hip spica cast. Most every day has presented some new challenge or revelation.

1. The cast should come with handles. That baby is HARD to pick up.

2. Managing the care of a baby in a spica cast is equivalent to lifting weights every day. I am going to have serious biceps after this is over.

3. It has apparently occured to very few people--like 2--that babies in body casts that can't bend at the waist still have to be able to ride legally in a car.

4. Of all the new experiences to be had with this cast, the strangest has to be buying diapers, feminine hygeine products, and adult incontinence products all at the same time, and all for my son. It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes 14 items to adequately diaper this child and protect the cast.

5. Fiberglass is scratchy on the outside. My arms look like I've been in a fight with a cat.

6. Though nothing makes this easy, the food has certainly helped. Thanks to our church family and dear friends, we have eaten better since Aaron broke his leg than we ever did before.

7. It is possible to go into withdrawal from not being able to squeeze squishy baby thighs when you're used to doing 3 or 4 or 27 times a day.

8. Laundry is significantly decreased when your baby can only wear a t-shirt and one sock.

9. You'd think something as bulky and awkward as a body cast would diminish a baby's cute quotient, but seems only to multiply it by a factor of "awwwwww...."

10. This too shall pass. Right?

And they always tell you babies aren't breakable...

If you are not privy to my near-obsessive Facebook status updating, then you may not know that the AAMEN life got a little more interesting a few days ago. Aaron, who is now 8 months old, broke his leg. His dad was holding him when he decided to dive backwards onto the floor. Matt saved him from the fall, but he had lunged with enough velocity to snap his femur in two. He's wearing something called a hip spica cast, which basically means he's got a fiberglass shell over 2/3 of his body for the next four weeks. It makes everything, especially diaper changing, a little tricky.

I have been astounded at how many people have texted, emailed, messaged and called with encouragement and offers of help. Our friends and family basically swooped in and took care of everything while we were in the hospital. When I told everyone that the only legal way to transport him in the car in his current condition is by using a harness, and that the harness is only available in this state at Children's Hospital but we can't have one because we aren't a patient there, no less than 10 people started calling friends to try to find someone there who could help us. No doubt we are on Children's black list now :) I am so thankful for the help, though!

I have no idea how the next 4 weeks are going to play out. Hopefully we'll settle into a routine and I can still get things done around here, including blogging. Go easy on me if that's not the case though!