Archive for the ‘family’ Category

Everyone’s been asking me how Patches is doing and I suppose it’s time for an update.

Patches fits in all too well around here. She’s quickly picking up some of Cinders’ bad habits (figures) but she’s still stinkin’ cute! She’s growing so fast and I can’t believe how much she’s eating.

Patches has picked up on Cinders’ wet food feeding time. So now when Cinders gets his can of wet food, she thinks it’s time for her to get one too. So now I am feeding both cats a can of wet food at 5pm (kitten patte for Patches and regular for Cinders). But I don’t do it fast enough for Miss Patches… oh no. She can now jump up to where Cinders gets fed and tries to get in his dish with him and he gets mad and knocks her off the platform.

She’s also taken to crying. She doesn’t meow… she makes a crying noise and it makes me so sad. If I lock the cats out of my bedroom at night so I can sleep and I come out early in the morning, she’ll come to me and cry because she wants to come snuggle in bed with me. So about 6am every morning, I take Patches with me and we snuggle for a little while.

For whatever reason, Patches is skiddish randomly during the day. It doesn’t matter how slowly you approach her, she runs off and doesn’t want to be touched. I’m not sure why she’s doing it and it’s not all the time.

Cinders is getting more rough with Patches as she gets older. They are wrestling harder and playing harder. But it’s a good thing – Patches needs to learn to fend for herself and where her place is here. That said, Patches is a little instigator! She is constantly popping Cinders and running off or swatting at him when he’s trying to relax. He put up with it the first couple of weeks but that is sooo over.

But yet… they love each other and snuggle together during the day.

Dinner time is supposed to be a relaxing meal shared with your family – or at least that’s what we strive for in this house despite the chaos of every day life. It helps that we have two cooks in the house as my husband and I both share a passion for it and are able to work side by side to get a meal prepared fast and easy. But not everyone has that option so what I am proposing are some 7 simple tips / tricks to help you make a meal not only quick and easy… but delicious as well!

Tip #1

Be organized. Sounds easy right? Well all moms know it’s not. You’ve got kids and all of their crazy schedules – basketball, soccer, tuba lessons, dance recitals. Who on earth has time to be organized about dinner!? Well now you do. Keep a note pad handy and jot down dinner ideas for the week in it a little bit each day. By the end of the week, you’ll have managed to plan out the meals for the rest of the week!

If you have a plan in mind, there will be no last minute “what on earth am I going to feed these kids!?” moments (I’m all for saving a little sanity where I can).

Tip #2

Stock up on cans of soup. Not only are they fairly cheap, but they can add a great depth of flavor to your cooking and cut your cooking time by half!

I like to buy creamy soups – Cream of Chicken / Mushroom / Celery / whatever else that they’ve got. It goes fantastic with chicken, beef or pork dishes. You can even use the soup as a base for gravy. It cheap. It’s quick. It’s absolutely delicious. Plus it can stretch a buck and if you buy the low sodium versions you can really pay attention to the amount of salt you’re putting in your body.

Tip #3

Assign jobs to your kids! One of the more stressful parts to making dinner is that you have kids running around the house getting into trouble while you’re trying to cook a meal. Get them involved. Let your daughter dig her hands into that meatloaf and mix the ingredients or allow your son measure out some ingredients for you. Sure, it might take a little longer but it’s fun and food tastes so much better with a little love in it!

Tip #4

Never underestimate the power of Rachael Ray’s 30 minute meals (or less in some cases!). Not only are they really that fast, but they are really good. I find most of her recipes are affordable and easy enough for people without much cooking skill to make. So check out the Food Network website and pick out some meals you would like to try.

Tip #5

Do all of your grocery shopping ahead of time. If you do the shopping once a week and buy everything you’ll need, you won’t have to stress out about picking up something for dinner. This means you have everything available at home and ready to go when it’s time to start dinner.

Tip #6

Wash all of your produce when you get home from grocery shopping and store it in proper containers. If you wash everything ahead of time, you won’t need to when it’s time to cook!

Tip #7

My favorite tip. Chop up onion, carrot, celery and green bell pepper in small dices. Mix them well in a bowl and transfer them to an air tight container of some kind (tupperware will do but if you have containers that air can be sucked out of, it’s even better). Store them in the freezer. They freeze well and when you need those ingredients to start a dish, you just take it out of the freezer and break off a piece.

Hope these tips are useful to my readers. We practice these in our own home and they work out great!

This blog is happily written in hopes of winning a French Door Refridgerator thanks to TwitterMoms.com and Samsung Appliances. For more information on how you too can enter, please check out this link.

There are just some things I wish my husband would do simply because it would make me really happy. That isn’t to say he doesn’t already make me happy, but I think it might make me feel a little better if he did a couple of what probably seems like stupid activities to him just to make me a little happier.

But on that same note, I’m trying to do things for him to make him happy and I dunno if I’m doing a good job or not. Football season absolutely is driving me crazy. But I’m doing my best to just deal with it because I realize it’s something he really enjoys. But I swear it’s one of the very few things he and I have ever argued about.

For example… He complained that he doesn’t have any Sundays off and he wants to watch football. I even offered to record it for him and he got snotty with me and told me he doesn’t want to actually watch the game – just the highlights. *Scratches head* There must be some weird man/woman communication barrier. He says there is more than one game. Great… I’ll record them all and what I can’t record, I will find someone who can.

But he got mad at me and told me it wasn’t the same thing because he’d already know the score and outcome. Huh? Again… must be a gender barrier. Why can’t he just not look at the score before hand and watch the game? How is this any damn different from watching it live? It’s not like by recording it, the highlights and stuff won’t be there. It’s the same damn game… and he can even fast forward through the commercials!

I don’t get it and no amount of his explaining is going to change that because quite frankly, I really think he’s more angry at his job in general rather than being upset because he’s missing a football game. He can’t say I didn’t try I guess. I was more than willing to record the games and make him dinner and get him all set up so he could enjoy it.

I hate it when he’s being stubborn like this. Because we both know the outcome. We’ll be upset at each other for thirty minutes or so. I’ll be really quiet for a while and so will he until one of us decides to admit defeat / wrong-doing and we’ll tell each other how sorry we are and all will be done and forgiven. Fighting is so silly. Is that even fighting? haha

Anyways… I want him to do something with me that I know he’s not happy about. He’s not even real happy that I’m doing it but he for the most part has let it go. But I want him to participate in it with me. I feel like all of my friends are enjoying something together with their significant others and I’m always the third wheel.

I know, I know… his ex girlfriend used it to cheat on him. I get it. But I do things for him and with him that bring up bad memories for me too. And I really think if I introduced him to a different aspect of it and he spent time with me on it, he’d come to enjoy it. Blah. I just think in this twisted, messed up world we live in, this would take a bit of the edge off for me and we could enjoy spending time together.

I know that was totally vague. I read it again and it sounds weird. haha He’ll know what I’m talking about tho.

I’m so incredibly proud of Cinders. When I imagined what it would be like to introduce another cat into this house, I really thought that we would have some problems at first. I figured Flora would be jealous and eager to be babied and that Cinders would be flat out pissed off. I really thought Cinders would get very territorial and he really hasn’t.

I never would have guessed that I’d be taking pictures like this one…

…or this one…

…not anytime soon at least.

But the truth is, Cinders has been incredibly patient with Patches. They have played together and Cinders lets her know when it’s time to calm down. He sternly but lovingly puts her in her place. He’s laid with her and groomed her. She follows him around the house and they gang up on Flora together.

I’m really surprised and it’s been really fun to watch!

What a fun day it’s been. The past twelve hours have been hilarious. I can say without a doubt that Patches fits in well around here. She’s already holding her own, making herself comfortable and getting along very well with Cinders and even Flora.

It took about the first 9 or 10 hours for Patches to allow Flora near her but now Flora is a-okay with her. I think it’s because Flora will lay down with her and lick her and snuggle. Patches still hisses at Flora if she is too rough or hyper with her, but otherwise, I’m seeing a lot of this…

Isn’t that just the cutest damn thing!?

I love Patches’ personality thus far. She’s very cuddly. In fact, I tweeted earlier about her trying to sleep on my face. It was really funny and sweeter than it sounds. She’s desperate to be close to me. It’s so fun having a pet in the baby stage. There is still so much for them to explore and learn.

Cinders knows not to jump on counters or furniture like my desk. But Patches used my computer chair to climb, digging her claws into it and pulling herself up until she got in my lap – and then my desk. It’s something she’ll have to be taught not to do, but it sure was cute seeing a little kitty walk across my keyboard happily.

Right now, Patches is laying on my left foot, nuzzling against it. No complaints here… my foot is cold. haha

What a crazy morning it’s been. Wow is it only 11am!?

Patches is inside and fitting in all too well. She’s positively in love with Cinders and has been chasing him around the house since she came in about 2 hours ago. I’m talking all out sprinting around the house, batting at one another, jumping on and off of furniture and meowing like crazy. They are having a rip-roaring good time.

Poor Flora. She really is the red-headed step child of the family. Patches wants nothing to do with her just yet – even hissed at Flora a little. I think Flora is just too hyper for anyone’s liking. And yet, she’s so desperate to play with Patches. She wants to have fun too sooooo bad. Trying to give Flora some extra lovings today.

See how sad Flora looks? She’s watching the kitties play and she wants to have fun too!

Patches is absolutely in love with this little cat hotel we have. Cinders hasn’t used it in ages and he’s a bit too big for it now [although Cinders did get jealous and tried to fit his fat ass in it earlier to spite Patches haha].

Both Cinders and Flora have gotten in trouble already today. I set out food for Patches because she didn’t eat well last night due to the rain. Cinders tried to eat it. I chased him off and went after Patches to bring her back to the bowl and by the time I returned no more than 30 seconds later, Flora had scarfed up 90% of the cat food in the bowl. Oh boy was I pissed. It’s like 54 cents per can for that stuff and Flora has her own food.

I’ve shown Patches the litter box a few times and Charlie took her once as well. She just looks around and looks at you like “Why am I in this box and why does it smell like pee?” and she jumps out. Hopefully since she’s bonding so well with Cinders, he’ll show her how to use it.

I have to go out today and leave the animals all home to themselves for a little while so I can drop off my prescription stuff. This should be interesting. I hope the 3 Pupcateers behave while I’m gone!

Men are so funny sometimes.

Remember the other day? I said that that Patches could come inside on Saturday. The vet said to give her “a few days” so that the medicine to get to work on her fleas and de-worming so it would be safe to expose her to the animals. That was the afternoon of the 15th (Tuesday). So Charlie told me that we would bring Patches in on Saturday – much to my dismay, but I understood.

Yesterday, Charlie suddenly started talking about bringing her in Friday night. And this quickly progressed to “When you bring her in Friday afternoon…” and to “Let’s bring her in Friday morning.” So that’s what I’m doing… bringing Patches in tomorrow morning. *grin*

Cinders is not pleased. He knows something is up. He saw Patches get brought into the house inside of the pet carrier on Tuesday. He sees me outside feeding her every night and he’s come nose to nose with her on a few occasions when I’m trying to get back inside and Patches is trying desperately to follow. Cinders is too damn smart. In fact, he’s under my desk right now, at my feet. He never does this. He’s suddenly been a total lap kitty the last few days – suddenly eager and desperate for my attention.

Flora is none the wiser. She knows Patches exists. She wants very much to observe her closer but otherwise, has taken no interest in the whole ordeal thus far. Tomorrow should prove interesting as I imagine both animals will want to express their dominance over Patches.

Charlie said that when he first brought Flora into the house, Cinders would run over and smack her a lot and hiss. It took a few weeks for him to accept Flora so I suspect we’ll have just as much if not more of that going on in this house for a while.

*Yawn* It’s time for me to head to bed. My heart is pounding. It’s been hurting since I ate dinner. I guess it was too much grease [meh my doctor totally said that was a no no]. Tomorrow will be a full and eventful day, I’m sure. Stay turned for pictures!

I was standing at the kitchen sink and scrubbing some dishes [bleh I hate dishes] when I picked my head up and looked out of the window to see hundreds of leaves falling from the big tree in my back yard… the one I got married under. I couldn’t help but feel a little sad.

Sure, it wasn’t my first choice to get married under that tree, but I love it just the same. I’ve made so many memories involving that tree since I moved here a year ago. There was the time Cinders climbed all the way up the tree and I almost had to call animal control to get him out of it. All those times Hailey and I ran around it and still do. All of the sticks Flora picks up from around that tree to run around the back yard with. And of course, being hand in hand with my family to say I do… forever.

I know it’s not like the tree is dieing – it’s just taking a break.

Taking a break? What an amazing concept. How easily that applies to my life right now.

I’ve said before that I sometimes feel like I’m forgetting how to be a mommy, but I really should be looking at it as if I’m just taking a break. The tree isn’t going to forget how to be a tree. Logically, it’s still serving it’s same purpose – it’s just taking a break. Next year it will be back – bigger, better and even more beautiful and wonderful than before.

So maybe I haven’t forgotten how to be a mommy after all. I still love my daughter just as much – if not more. I still want all the same things for her. I’m really just taking a break and when she’s back home, I can be an even better mommy to her than I have been in the past.

I’m not sure if I really intended this blog to go this direction. I’m not even sure if it makes any sense. It’s just where my brain took me today.

Happy Love Thursday!

I’ve seen so many other mommy bloggers participate in Wordless Wednesday and I really love what it’s about. But I can’t ever seem to come up with anything to post! I get the point of the Wordless Wednesday theme – to post a picture without any sort of explanation or caption to go with it. But then I start to post a picture I absolutely love and I feel the need to talk about the picture and why it’s so important and why I chose it.

I guess I’m just not “deep” enough to participate. haha

I was looking through old pictures of Hailey, trying to choose one to post. I love them all and I could say so much about any of them. But the more I looked, the more I realized that I can’t just choose one. She looks so happy in these and who doesn’t love a happy, smiling baby!?

I remember when it was so easy to make Hailey laugh. She was so little and everything in the world was outright hilarious to her. A simple funny face was all it took. I remember when I used to arm myself with the camera, hide behind it and then pop out with “Boo!” and a silly face. She’d absolutely scream with laughter and I’d get a great picture. You do that now and she just looks at you like you’re crazy. I’m sure every other mother in the world who tries to take pictures of their toddler can relate.

Remember that point where pictures were fun… just before your kids got too “mobile” and taking pictures was a difficult task [and often meant that a photo shoot of 50+ pictures resulted in only 3 or 4 good ones you'd actually send to your family]? Yeah. I’m talking that very brief time in your child’s life when getting awesome pics was a breeze and they always looked great [and OMG Keri this totally excludes your always perfect looking children. Just kidding hun... sorta! haha]

So moms… lets go back to those days. The task is to go back in time and select your favorite pictures of your baby’s smile [let's narrow it down to three for the sake of sanity]. Don’t forget to link back here so other moms can share as well and most importantly, don’t forget to leave a link to your post in my comments so we can all share!

Apparently I birthed Gene Simmons. This has ALWAYS been one of my favorite pics of Hailey.

She loved her first shoes. This was taken the same day she actually stood for the first time.

Can you believe this was taken in August 2007!? Look at that cute little tooth!

I’m so incredibly touched right now. In fact, I’m still crying as I write this.

This year has showed me both the good and bad sides of the world – particularly the people who inhabit it. I’m lucky that despite all of the negativity in my life and the emotional pain I am going through, I’ve still somehow managed to meet some incredible people who have made all of this just a bit less painful for my family.

And then there’s Patches. I believe in fate and I think she ended up on our doorstep for a reason. I’m feeling rather lonely these days and quite frankly, I’ve run out of things productive to do with my time. With Hailey not here to nurture, my days literally consist of browsing for jobs to apply for, working, communicating with my clientele and keeping the house clean [which really is a damn breeze since I'm married to a man who cleans up after himself and understands the concept of a hamper]. After all of that, it’s like… What am I supposed to do with my time?

I’ve also been so sick in the last week and having Patches to play and cuddle with has been really healing for me. It’s just a calming experience. Cinders doesn’t much care for affection – or rather, he wants it on his own timing. And Flora… her idea of attention involves running around and chasing after a toy. She’s a very on the spur of the moment kind of dog and her energy and need for attention comes in bursts. So it’s been nice having a little animal around who needs and wants me.

It’s been suggested to me that I should continue living my life as if Hailey were home. That’s something I’ve stuck to the best I can. But when I have nothing to do, where else am I going to be than at my computer? There is only so much television and sleep one can soak up. I can’t afford to go out and even if I could, it’s not something I’d be doing if Hailey were home. Most we ever did was go to the grocery store without her or to the movies. So right now, Patches is a nice little filler for my time.

And luckily after today, I think we will be bringing her into our home very soon. An incredibly nice woman from IMVU who I hardly know to be honest, donated $50 to go towards the cost of getting Patches “house-cat friendly”. The kindness of strangers absolutely astounds me. I catch so much crap from people at times who suggest that people online can’t be real friends and then I experience things like this and I say “Well why the hell can’t my online friends be considered real friends!?” I’m truly touched and extremely blessed. I’m fortunate to experience such a wonderful happening during such a cruel time in my life. A million thanks once again to the very nice lady. We’ll be sure to take excellent care of little Patches!