A Sign

So I'm chatting to my process engineer on the cell phone while I'm driving. Don't worry, both hands were on the steering wheel. I have speaker phone. I'm babbling on and on about 5 minutes when I look back to check on Rachel...

She is sitting quietly in her carseat, with her fingers in her ears.

Pumps

In high school... I wore pumps. Not often, but I had a black pair and a white pair. Never wore the white pair before Easter or after Labor Day.

After my babies... I used a pump. I invested some money in a good double-breasted electric. I got a lot of use out of it. It traveled back and forth to work with me. I hate the thought of parting with it... someday.

At work I have to know about pitch pumps... Have to know that the relief valve is not supposed to be used to regulate the pump speed. The relief valve is a safety device to let out pressure build up. I have to know that pump parts are not easy to come by, for some reason. Our pump life is relatively short compared to what it should be. Downtime associated with a pump failure is bad. This is probably the most emotional situation of all the pumps I've ever had to deal with.

Lightened my Day

After the 100th day project saga and Michael's terrible Sunday, I called my sister for support. She didn't disappoint. Her 3rd child fessed up to eating the oldest child's Sea Monkey eggs. Yup, 1ooth day project didn't seem so bad after that.

Love you Sissy.

100th Day of School Project

So the note home from school said to brainstorm things that you could collect 100 of, then pick one and find a unique way to display it. Don't ask why, we chose straws. So for the last two weeks, we've raided ever dollar store in the area buying unique straws.

Saturday was our day to put the project together. I started by having Michael arrange the straws on a poster board, thinking I would punch holes through and attach them with rubber bands or something. He arranged 50 and ran out of reasonable space. Then I looked at how I would punch holes through and bagged that idea.

The next plan was to string them together. The string worked great through the straight ones but I couldn't push them through the twisted ones. Yes, I bought sculped bunny ears and twisted straws.

The third plan was to use fishing line... It didn't make the curves and now it was Saturday night. Michael was completely not into doing the project. Can you blame him? I was pretty frustrated and irritated by this time, thinking that I was going to cause him to fail Kindergarten.

The fourth plan was to just use straight straws and loop the fishing line from both sides so it was more like a mat than a long string... IT DIDN'T WORK EITHER.

Sunday morning, we had fresh outlooks. The last plan was to cut a cheap bag of 50 neon straws in half and glue them in the shape of 100 on the poster board. The cutting went well, the gluing went well. Phew - off to church. (see previous posts, this was the only thing that went well during the morning)

Chris was preparing the dining room table for dinner. He moved the presentation and as soon as he picked up the poster board, pop pop pop, the straws started popping out of the glue and falling off. NOOOOOO Luckily, he thought to cut a piece of cardboard to stiffen the backing. It worked. I re-glued, and re-glued. And finally, Monday morning, I drizzled "new skin" over them as an added measure to keep the straws on. Chris drove Michael to school and carried it into the classrooom. PHEW!

My Daughter Is MiniMe

Rachel wanted to brush her hair like I was. So, I gave her a brush. She started toward the toilet with it, and because she's known to have toilet fishing tendancies, I started to say, "NO NO." Then I realized she was pulling the stray hair out of the brush and putting it in the toilet... Like I do.

As Michael was throwing a fit about his jeans (see previous post), Rachel started yelling, "WHAT?!" Like I do.

Michael and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Sunday was his Alexander day. He couldn't get his belt bucket to work. As I was brushing my hair in the bathroom, he was yelling, "STOP, GET OUT OF THERE, STOP IT!" Thinking it was Rachel he was yelling at, I looked and found she was right by me. So I asked, "Michael, what are you yelling at?"
"My jeans are doing bad things to my penis!" Hmm, no comment on that one.
Then he went to the van before Rachel and I were ready to leave. When we finally reach the van, he was inside crying. I expected the reason to be that we took too long. Nope, he was upset because he wanted to "scoot over" in his seat, but couldn't because the seatbelt was hurting his hip.

He fell asleep on the way to church.

Question...

Why is it that 95% of the toothpaste that is dispensed onto a 5-year-old's tooth brush ends up on the edge of the sink and counter? I clean so much wasted toothpaste from off the countertop. And it is Shrek toothpaste, so it looks like green snot!

Tonight I let Michael get into the bath tub with Rachel. She LOVED sharing the space with Brubba. He showed her how to blow bubbles and how to put your head into the water. She was so impressed and tried to mimic him. She screamed when I told her it was time to get out. Michael said, "Mom, I'm going to remind Sister when she gets older about this time that we took a bath together and she didn't want you to take her out because she was having so much fun."

You know a kid is sick when you offer him a cookie for dessert and he leaves it on the table untouched. Poor Michael has been fighting a fever off and on for 3 days, terrible runny nose and now goopy eyes. I've called the Dr. and really didn't get much help. "It's probably a virus, which in that case just make him comfortable until it runs it course." If he wakes up with goop again tomorrow, I'm bringing him in! I said, "it might be pink eye." He got all upset and said, "I don't want a black eye or a pink eye."

Missed Photo Op

So Rachel was sitting in a dinning room chair bare footed while I was feeding her macaroni and cheese. She'd taken her binky (Bee-tee) out long enough for the feeding. I happen to notice that she nonchalantly hung it on her big toe and was wiggling her toe. Man, I wish I had that photo. Of course as I tried to get up quickly to grab the camera, she took it off her toe and was more interested in the camera.

GIANTS - it's going to be a good year

The Giants won. It's going to be a good year in the Hewey house.

Time Flies

Rachel is 1-1/2 years old now. She talks pretty well and is starting to combine words: go way dog (from the sitter's house), c'mon Bubba (as she's being buckled into car seat and he is still playing outside), I SIT! (when she wants to side BESIDE me instead of on my lap), wollwit wollwit (from patty cake), come back.

As we're driving to the sitter's in the morning, she'll ask, "where's Dadda?" to which I answer where ever he happens to be, she'll say, "oh. Where's Bubba?"

She's a dancer. Any music makes her move; in the car, in front of the TV, anywhere. When it's the SpongeBob theme song, she drops what she's doing and comes running.






Michael is 5. Sometimes he thinks he knows everything. He's quite stylish. Has finally, after 3 years, started wearing jeans again. I thought he would be stuck in wind pants forever. Not sure what made him change his mind, but I'm glad he's switched up his wardrobe a bit. It's great to see the development through kindergarten. He's recognizing letters, both upper and lower case, and is trying to sound out words. He can count to twenty and usually gets 13 in the right spot.











They both love to color. Rachel will ask "colur?" whenever she sees the crayon tin. Her favorite part of coloring is dumping out the crayons.

Michael is getting good at staying in the lines.













They keep us busy!