Oh my goodness! Last Friday was so fun. I loved reading all the comments. Looks like Sarah Joy bought the cheapest gas in Charlotte, NC for $2.19 per gallon; and Lynda in Gauteng, South Africa paid the most at roughly $1 per liter (making it $4 per gallon). (Alaska was our most expensive area stateside.) It was also fun to see where everyone is from.
And just to clarify, I have no idea what Ainsley was singing. She was making up some little song and singing it at the top of her lungs.
Okay, now on to this week’s Seven Quick Takes.
1
Lis mentioned getting up at 4:45 a.m. to exercise. I have one word for you Lis – sick! Not the exercising, but the getting up at 4:45 a.m. While I am extremely impressed, I am also a bit confused as to why anyone would ever want to get up that early. I try to only see one side of 4:45 and that would be the one when the sun is setting, not rising. 🙂
All this is in jest, of course. But seriously, I got up three days this week at 6 a.m. to do P90X. I am sore, but content. The only motivating factor here is a pact I made with a dear friend – a dear friend with six kids under the age of 10. We have to exercise three times a week or watch the other person’s kids while they go on a date with their husband. While I love her kids to death, this is enough of a motivator to get out of bed at least three times a week.
I’m still working on the snacking. Thank you to those who kept me accountable this week.
2
I want to clarify that while I repeatedly say the doctors have told us every step of the way Ryan’s chances were extremely low, his cardiologist Dr. D has never told us he would die. She has been his biggest cheerleader (and ours) from the time we met her when Ryan was 22 wks in utero.
I also want to clarify my OB was very supportive in me carrying to term. They never, ever put any pressure on me to terminate my pregnancy and made it as easy as possible for me to get through a difficult pregnancy. Easy is a terrible word, but that is the one that comes to mind. There was nothing easy about having a fatal diagnosis for my unborn child. But they were very kind and accommodating.
Additionally, I am not trying to bad mouth the doctors who told us Ryan’s chances were low. They were being realistic. The truth is that Ryan was in heart failure at 12 weeks. Fluid was building up all over his body and the medical prognosis was true – he was dying. The doctors were simply calling it as they saw it. Henry and I were not trying to prove them wrong when we decided not to terminate. I will tell you what we told the specialist who was flabbergasted that we were choosing to keep the baby…. we were uncomfortable making a life and death decision for another individual and more comfortable allowing the pregnancy to end in a miscarriage. No matter how hard emotionally and physically that might have been.
So back to Dr. D – we met her at 22 wks. She immediately told us she felt she could help our son. She immediately spoke about him in terms of birth (not miscarriage) and in terms of being a baby. And she has continually been by our side encouraging us and rooting for Ryan.
My comments about the naysayers are not to portray these very intelligent and skilled doctors in a poor light. I only say these things to make it clear that Ryan is a statistical outlier that can not be explained by coincidence or experience. Enough said!
3
I would like to know when my almost five year old grew up. She and Ainsley now shower instead of bathe. It started several weeks ago when Ainsley wanted to take a shower and ended up shampooing her own hair – unbeknownst to me. She did an amazing job for a three year old (I had to rinse a little shampoo residue from her hair). Not to be outdone by her little sister, Natalie immediately stopped bathing and started showering. She also wants to wash her own hair. So now both of them shower and wash and condition their own hair. I am simply a supervisor.
Natalie also helps make pb and j sandwiches when I’m running late. She feeds and waters the cat. She puts her own laundry away (when she is in the mood). She’s not bad at loading and unloading the dishwasher either. And to make sure we all understand – these are not things I ask her to do (other than the cat). These are things she sees need done and does them. Cuh-ray-Z! There is a downside to this personality which perhaps I will ask some advice on… does anyone know how to get a perfectionist to take a chill pill?
4
Speaking of said perfectionist, she is also a hoarder. As in, she keeps everything. She has two small dresser drawers of scrap paper. SCRAP PAPER! The latest is from last Friday. Her class goes on a nature walk every Friday and then draws pictures of their findings in their nature journal. She brought home two mushrooms and a leaf. She put them on my dresser (my dresser is in her room). This is going somewhere and you might already know where… several days later every time I was standing in the upstairs hallway there was a funny smell. Kindof like fish and not remotely a good kind of fish. I tracked it to Natalie’s room. I tracked it to the corner by my dresser. I got a little nervous because Taurus has caught a mouse in our house before and I was afraid there might be a dead….well, no need to finish that thought. After gingerly lifting all the toys in the corner and opening several toy containers, I tracked the smell to a rotten mushroom sitting on my dresser. Whew! I’ll take a rotten mushroom over a dead mouse carcass any day.
5
Don’t blink!
6
Last week while the girls were watching t.v. I happened to catch this little song that came on between shows.
Roy G Biv is a colorful man and he stands at the end of the rainbow
R is for red
O is for orange
Y is for yellow
G is for green
B is for blue
I is for indigo
and V is for violet
and that spells roy g biv. roy g biv is a colorful man and he stands at the end of the rainbow…
I mean, really, couldn’t we come up with something better than this to remember the colors with? Is this the name of the songwriter? Was he sitting around one day thinking, “I could immortalize my name by making a kids’ song out of it. Hmmm, how could I do that? Colors! That’s it. I’ll make an anagram of my name using colors!” My kids are never watching that channel again.
7
Several years ago, okay like 10, I wanted to be romantic so I put Henry’s towel in the dryer to heat it up while he was in the shower. I placed it on the towel bar as I heard him finishing up, giddy with the thought of how nice and toasty and wonderful his towel would make him feel.
I hung around while he dried off in hopes of catching some little phrase to find out how great my random act of kindness was. Instead Henry said, “Why is it so hot in here? I’m sweating!”
Several weeks ago, Henry splashed me with water from his shower. I shrieked and said, “Hey, be nice!”
He replied, “I’m a boy. Don’t you know we’re mean to girls we like?”
Question for this week: What is a romantic thing you’ve done for your significant other lately? (you can chose to tell if it went over well or not!)
(c) 2016 Leighann Marquiss
Comments (12)
Good Morning! I’ll explain the insane hour that I go to the gym. I get up at 4:00 go the gym, do my workout, get back home just in time to get my youngest daughter up for school. I’ve done my workout and my daughter has not missed one minute with her mother. So I don’t feel guilty about doing something for myself. Got into this routine about 8 years ago and it has just stuck.
I left a note for my husband by the coffee pot this morning.. Simple and to the point…
“I love YOU!” I got a big giant hug when I came back from the gym so I guess it went over pretty good.
Love to you and your family, give the sweet little one a kiss from Dothan, Alabama!
Hey leighann! I can see the word verification letters today!!! If you find a way to get a perfectionist to chill out will you let me know too? 🙂 ainsley’s dancing is adorable. The most romantic thing i did for my husband recently was prepare his coffee for him. We have a one cup maker and it’s annoying to have to clean out the filter in the morning and put new grounds in. it’s really a very simple task but before your first cup of coffee it’s too hard to deal with. I prepared everything for him the night before so he just had to push the button. when i woke up for my cup of coffee he had likewise prepared it for me. it made me smile 🙂
love you,
katie
Hello there!!! I’ve been following your blog for awhile, but have never commented. Thanks for keeping us in loop with your happenings and with Ryan. I think about him and pray for him quite often. The sweetest thing I’ve done for my hubby lately is…not say a peep when he wants to watch his football with his buddies on the weekends. Guess that may not sound that sweet, but in our household, with a new baby, I can tell you it goes over well! 🙂
Regarding ROYGBIV, there is a reason behind it (believe it or not), check more out about it here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_G._Biv.
I remember learning the colors of the rainbow while in school by using ROYGBIV, and I will say it has stuck with me since!
Samantha, in FL.
Roy G biv is the sequence of colors in the rainbow:) not a songwriters name. This made me smile today.
And wow, 4am, this makes me feel like a slacker, then again, I have a 7 week old so I am up at 4am usually anyway, just not to exercise
Okay, okay. So I’m a ditz when it comes to using an mnemonic to remember the colors of a rainbow. I guess my elementary school was defunct. Thank you for the education, ladies!
Roy B. Giv is a clever way to help children(and adults)learn and remember the colors of the rainbow in the correct order!
ROY G BIV is how I learned the rainbow colors, back in the day. Amazing how things like that stick with you. I also remember my teacher (who is also my sister) telling us that separate has A RAT in it. That is how you know it is spelled separate and not seperate.
Natalie sounds like me as a child. I would hoarde everyting and I was constantly sorting and cleaning things. Mom would tell me to clean my room and it would take me 3 weeks to do because I would just sort all my junk into 18-million different piles over ond over again. I drove my little sister crazy when she wanted to play dolls- my idea of playing dolls was taking their measurements and sewing them a new wardrobe. I could never understand how my sister got a kick out of talking for them and acting out stories! Lol! I don’t know if your daughter is like this or not but for me, if my mom would go in my room when I was at school and throw away my hoarded stuff it would traumatize me terribly. I would cry for days and have anxiety attacks. It always went over best if mom made me clean WITH her and gave me an ultimatum like how many things I had to get rid of so that I was the one that had to choose and I didn’t have to cry over my favorites being suddenly missing when I got home from kindergarten. Sure I put up a fight DURING the cleaning if I had to help with it, but afterwards there was no longterm trauma. 😉 I was kind of a freak as a child. Maybe still am…
One think my husband and I do is when my daughter breaks her big fat washable crayolas we take the pieces that are too tiny for her 3 year old fingers to control very well and use them to write notes on the bathroom mirror! Now, I hear that they actually make window crayons but I had not heard of that and my daughter’s washable nontoxic crayolas work great. Sometimes we write, “I love you” but sometimes we draw a tic-tac-toe board or picture stories. It’s fun to write an X in the grid before bed and when I get up the next morning there’s an O in there, just waiting for my next X! And it warms my heart when I wake up to “I love you” written there. Sometimes if there is something I’m supposed to remind him of and I know we’re both gonna forget, I write it on the mirror. The only downside is we have only 1 bathroom and I always forget to wash the mirror when company comes… Lol! They probably wonder who is playing dots or tic-tac-toe on the bathroom mirror. 😉
As an artist and teacher, ROY G BIV drives me nuts!
Red (magenta really), Yellow and Blue (cyan) are the primary coplors, Green, Orange and Violet are secondary colors. Indigo is blue-Violet…a Tertiary (or intermediate) color…as are red-orange, yellow-orange, red-violet, blue-green and yellow green…if you are going to add one tertiary to the “rainbow” you should add them all. Sorry for the rant. Came here by way of conversion diary…I’ll be praying for Ryan.
Oh, and I can only exercise if I get up before the kids…I can’t seem to motivae myself once the day has started…sometimes, that is as early as 4:30 am.
Pax Christi.
I recently left an “I love you” written in lipstick on the bathroom mirror. Romantic, right…. well my hubby says, “Uh, can you just leave a post-it next time…something less seriel-killer-ish.” So much for romance. lol
Well, I was going to comment on the Roy G Biv thing…but I see that’s covered 🙂
I always try to do romantic things for my hubby but he recently took a job overseas so I had to get REALLY creative. He’s working in Nigeria and can’t send or receive any mail. When we were apart due to jobs in the past I ALWAYS sent him mail so this was going to crush me that he wouldn’t get notes from me. Now I write him letters and give them to him to take back with him when he’s home on vacation. I send him at least one letter per week (I write the date he should open it on the envelope) so he always has mail to open. He LOVES that he’s the only guy over there that gets mail 🙂 He brags to the guys he works with so it’s possibly the best thing I do for him!
Probally the most romantic thing I have done most recently for my husband was, on our wedding day which was June 19th of this year, I had got him a card and a bunch of Roses, I wrote a nice note in the card and on the envelope I put, “to the man of my dreams” I had my Maid of Honor bring it to his room at the Inn where our wedding was along with the roses, well…. the next day I said to my husband… did you like the card and he says “what card?” I was like the card I gave you with the flowers, he looked confused. He said “I didnt know what they were for”, I then say “To the Man of my dreams, wasnt a clue”? Needless to say when we got home and while I was unpacking his bag there was the card still in a sealed envelope. As for the flowers, well he thought we needed them for the ceremony so they were at the alter with him!!!
Loved the towel idea and can totally picture my hubby with the same response.
Hugs,
Kim