They're Conspiring Against Us

I think our electronics are conspiring against us.

For a few months now we've been dealing with shorts in the overhead lights in our living room. Sometimes they'd work, sometimes they'd blink, sometimes they'd just go on vacation for a few days and leave us fumbling around in the dark. Finally, about a week ago, they lit up for the very last time and after choking on the repair estimate we decided that seeing your way through the living room is overrated. Candles and the sad little table lamp will have to do for the time being. (Note to self: Be more diligent about picking up stray toys and sharp blocks, because those make navigating the room in your bare feet infinitely more difficult).

Upon my departure to torture-land (also known as our hospital visit last week), it was decided that I would take a phone charger with me in case my phone takes it's last breath in the middle of some really important, life-altering conversation. What we didn't consider was that this would leave my husband with no phone charger, essentially rendering our plan pretty much useless. We HAD another charger at one point, but it decided to spontaneously combust a couple months back and we didn't see the need to replace it. Until now.

Then, the morning after we got back home, our laptop's mouse became the victim of an internal demon. The pointer sat, unmoving, in an eery paralysis despite our attempts to wake it up. Suddenly, without warning, it began to shoot across the screen violently. I half expected foam to start oozing out of the keyboard. And just as suddenly, it came to a rest, where it remained until we were forced to resurrect our old USB mouse. Ironically, the same thing happened to our last laptop - the one that has been shunned to the corner due to the reoccuring demonic possession and it's affiliation with Gateway (which may be one in the same).

Yesterday, as we struggled to use our external computer mouse in the presence of two curious and not-so-careful children, my husband noticed that his cell phone must have had a stroke sometime in the night. The buttons down the left side would not work. So if you have a phone number that involves a 1, 4, or 7, you are out of luck. Wait, you'd be out of luck anyway, because the "CALL" button is there, too. Guess we don't need that phone charger after all...

And if that weren't enough, even my daughter's toy cell phone refuses to ring any longer. It must have reached the end of it's (ridiculously short) plastic lifetime. Unfortunately, somewhere along the lines my daughter learned that the way to fix everything is to stick new batteries in it, and despite having watched Daddy do that very thing, she keeps asking. I'm tempted to throw it against the floor and crack it in half so at least she can SEE that it's broken, and not just think that we are too stupid to properly insert a battery.

I'm happy to report though that the television and the toaster are still functioning, so there is no need to panic just yet...

...But At Least I Got Free PopTarts

Last week was pretty much terrible. I'd like to think that there was a silver lining in it somewhere, but the closest thing I could find was the fact that I got a free package of strawberry PopTarts.
Let me start by informing those of you who aren't members of my family (so basically, my other two readers) that my son has been starting up again with some noisy wheezing and apnea spells. This is certainly a far cry from their predictions two months ago when they assured me he would "outgrow this" and that the reflux medication "should make a big difference". Well, he didn't and it didn't. So his ENT doctor decided he should be admitted to the children's hospital so they could do some testing and see what they would come up with. At this point, Owen's team included doctors from: GI, ENT, pulmonology, cardiology, surgery, and speech pathology. That's right, 6 specialists - not including the cycle of residents, on-call pediatricians, and student doctors. You'd think that with that many people working on the mystery, they could come to some sort of reasonable conclusion?

That sort of optimism was my first mistake.

World's Smallest Mohawk

Get Guiness on the phone - I did it! I FINALLY did it! It's taken over 9 months but my son finally had enough hair for me to fashion into the World's Smallest Mohawk.

Chicago: The REAL Story

It's true, Johnny did come with us to Chicago. He was discovered to have stowed away in my husband's pocket about halfway through the Shedd Aquarium. But really, our story starts out quite a bit earlier in the day - around 6:30am.

We managed to wake the kids up and get them dressed in under a half an hour, which is the closest you can actually get to miraculous without actually being biblical. The car ride worried me, because my son is notorious for being a poor sport when it comes to carseat riding. My daughter was easy - we bribed her with a donut and a promise of dolphins. My son? He slept. It was glorious.

We arrived at the aquarium in a shockingly short amount of time, given the traffic situation in Chicago and the surprising lack of construction work we encountered. Uncle Eli was joining us, and upon news of that Lainey's donut sugar rush kicked into high gear and she was - quite literally - spinning in circles in the lobby.

Johnny and the Windy City

Johnny (and the rest of the family) took a little overnight trip to Chicago this week. He was so excited, the smile never left his face! He had to sit through a long car ride first though:


But when we finally arrived, he couldn't believe the city view (though he had to take it all in quickly, before the treacherous winds blew him into Lake Michigan):


We headed inside the aquarium where Johnny met up with a weedy seadragon:


It had been a long day, so we decided to kick back at the hotel for the night:


The next day, we hit the Brookfield Zoo, where Johnny got to see a rhino:


AND an elephant:


Though I think, despite his happy demeanor, he was slightly disappointed that he was not tall enough to ride the carousel:


It was a great trip, one Johnny will not soon forget.

(PS, Lest you think I'm a terrible mom, I DID get some pictures of my children as well. But that is a longer post for a night when I actually have a few ounces of brainpower left.)