Hey, Y'all!

Itchy and Scratchy

Dean's preschool recently shared the dreaded head lice with our family.  What a lucky bunch we are.  I debated whether or not to write about it for all of 3 seconds before reminding myself that DUH! Every single home remedy and trick that worked? I learned from another blog mom friend.   Amalah recently wrote this awesome guide to Plague and Pestilence, which I turned to at the first sign of nits.  Her recommendations are excellent, especially the comb. 

Stacey of Tree, Root and Twig was my lifesaver when it came to lice.  She's the mom of five kids, so she's pretty much seen it all.  Her home remedies saved me a bundle of cash and heartache.

FIRST SIGNS:

Ok, so, how do you differentiate between lice and plain ole dandruff?  Lice lay eggs, called nits, which attach to your hair shaft.  You'll usually see them about a quarter inch (or less) down from the root. It's easiest to spot them around the ears and base of the hairline, though most of Marcus's were around his part on top of his head.  When you move the hair, dandruff will fall downwards while nits will stay attached.   As they hatch, the lice move around your head, causing itching. (Grossed out yet?  Me too.)

TREATMENT:

Here's where Stacey's brilliance saved me.  Her suggestion was, rather than buying costly products that can be full of chemicals, use household products to saturate the hair and smother the lice.  We went with her top suggestion of olive oil.  All three of us held our head over our kitchen sink and poured olive oil liberally over our scalps.  We rubbed it all over and through our hair, taking care to really saturate the area behind the ears and at the hairline.  Marcus wrapped his head in saran wrap, which was HAWT, while Dean and I rocked disposable shower caps.  Rather than spending over $10 per bottle just for Rid shampoo, we spent $6.99 for 2 bottles of olive oil (they were buy one get one free at our store!), $2 on shower caps and right around $7 for the comb to end all combs, the RidVantage Lice Removal Comb.  Steel combs are where it's at for lice removal.  Don't even waste time with the plastic ones. 

So, once we marinated our heads for about 4 hours, we rinsed out the olive oil using regular shampoo (baby shampoo on Dean).  It left the hair a bit oily and slippery, but that made things easier.  I used the awesome comb to go through each little section of hair, rinsing after each stroke, picking out any nits that were stubborn enough to stick around.  This part takes FOREVER, especially if you have long hair like Marcus and me.  Dean's nits slid right out of his very fine hair.  That  night, I washed his hair again with baby shampoo, mostly to get the oil out, combed it once again (while he was in the tub! Distraction with bathtub fingerpaint FTW!), then blew it dry. I think the blow-drying was the worst part for him--he's not a fan.  I have not seen one single nit in his head since.

Marcus and I were not so lucky.  For whatever reason, we had a reoccurrance and finally had to use Rid shampoo. Y'all.  That stuff smells HORRIBLE. I did mine first and complained to Marcus that I smelled like the bathroom of a dollar store.  He laughed at me, then did his own hair.  He came out of the bathroom claiming to smell "old people, flea dip, that hand soap that sort of smells like bacon, lighter fluid and kitty litter."  In other words, the bathroom at a dollar store.

So far so good, though we'll be doing another olive oil treatment tonight and combing, combing, combing again, just to be sure.

FOR YOUR HOME:

It's importatnt to know that domestic cats cannot contract human lice.  I called the vet immediately, dreading we'd have to pick nits out of Chutney.  Luckily, she  is in the clear.  She wishes we'd all stop wearing shower caps.

I bought Rid's home lice spray and have used it on our mattresses, couches, carpets, dining chairs, car seats, curtains and rugs.  I had a few extra pillows I'd bought last summer when they were on sale, so we tossed the old ones and brought in the new ones. We've wiped down all our surfaces with bleach and mopped the floors.  I vacuumed with baking soda.  I have washed approximately 4000 loads of laundry in hot water and dried them on the "heavy duty" setting.  For Dean's school nap mat, which we're pretty sure started all of this in the first place, I washed it, dried it, then immediately sealed it in a platic bag and put it in the trunk of my car until we got to school this morning. Toys that may have gone near someone's head have been soaked in very diluted bleach or sprayed with Lysol. 

I feel like we've got a handle on things, though I will continue to be EXTREMELY vigilant for the next few days.

I want to be sure to point out that having lice doesn't mean you are a gross person or that your home is unclean.  In fact, lice can't stick to dirty hair.  It's just part of life, especially in the deep south.  I had them as a kid at the same time I had chicken pox. (That was a bad week.)  I imagine this may not be our last time to deal with this, so long as we live in this region and have a little kid in our house.

Have you ever had lice? Got any tricks up your sleeve to get rid of them?

Disney...On Ice!

Last night was a very worthwhile splurge for our little family.  A couple of weeks ago, Marcus heard a radio ad for Disney On Ice and decided we should take Dean.  Never one to turn down a night out or anything with the word DISNEY in the title, I wholeheartedly agreed.  He poked around online a bit and found that there was a 20% opening night discount.  Then he bought front row tickets, declaring, "If we're gonna do it, let's do it right." And boy howdy, did we.

"Mama, what's gonna HAPPEN?"

(Also, LOOK! Actual photographic evidence that I go places with my family! Who knew you could just hand the camera to your husband and make that happen?)

Dean really didn't understand what we were going to see prior to the event.  He just knew he was wearing special clothes, big boy shoes and getting to eat dinner in a restaurant.  He enjoyed his cheesey pizza, declaring it "kinda good."  In true Disney form, you were immediately bombarded with souvenier options, most of which were astronomical in price.  We settled for the least expensive, but definitely the cutest, option:

Flounder hat and cotton candy combo for the win!

When the show started, Dean was very quiet.  He didn't really react at first, unless you count the fact that his eyes grew to the size of saucers when Mickey and Minnie entered the rink.  However, even Mr. Cool couldn't resist a squeal of delight when these guys appeared:

TIMON AND PUMBA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dean said, "Daddy, you see that?"  We enjoyed the Lion King portion of the show, except for the fact that adult Simba looked more like a Jellicle Cat than a lion.  We loved The Little Mermaid and Lilo and Stitch.  I realized around 3pm the day of the show that Dean had no idea who Lilo and Stitch were, so we watched some YouTube clips so he would recognize him.  Their rendition of "Burning Love" brought the house down. 

At intermission, we watched the zamboni:

I'm a sucker for a zamboni.  When I was in college, we hosted a Russian production of Swan Lake on ice, for which our students served as crew.  One thing they asked for were volunteers to stay overnight and make the ice stage.  I was ALL OVER that, mostly because I thought the job would involve driving a zamboni in the wee hours of the morning. Imagine my surprise when I was handed a pair of rubber boots and a garden hose and told to "walk the ice" every half hour. LAME. But I digress.

The second act was all Peter Pan.  Dean absolutely loves Captain Hook and Mr. Smee, so it was nice that they happened to spend a lot of their time addressing our side of the arena.

Overall, it was an awesome night and certainly money well-spent. I hope he remembers it forever.

When The Ordinary Turns Extraordinary

Yesterday was just a normal day.  I went in to work to wrap a few things up from my show that just closed and attend a meeting. Dean went to preschool. Marcus taught his classes.  When I picked Dean up, he had just finished making a mask on a stick. (SURPRISE! It's name is Dean.)

The third eyeball atop the forehead is my favorite part, I think.

Dean "proper" told me a sordid tale of Dean the Masks's past as a circus performer. But then he got scared of the clowns (LIKE YOU, MAMA!) and decided to come live with us.  It's make-believe week at preschool, you see.  I kind of want to go to class...

We got home, sorted our Halloween candy, since somebody was too sleepy to do it on Halloween night, and played with all our plastic bats and skeletons. Marcus called and asked me to preheat the oven.  He arrived a few minutes later with some lovely steaks, baking potatoes and fixin's for a caesar salad.  We are foodies, you see, so if we're going to splurge on something, it's usually going to be a nice meal, and it's usually going to be prepared by one of us.  Dean took one look and said, "YUK!" so I made him some turkey meatballs, macaroni and cheese and broccoli, which he dipped in A-1 sauce.

While we were getting ready to grill, which for some reason, happened in the driveway, our neighbors came over.  Their son is almost 3 and loves to play with Dean.  We had tricycle races up and down the driveway as the sun set, then once it got dark and we lit the grill, Dean said, "Let's camp!"  He sat down in front of the flaming grill (at a very safe distance, mind you, lest his paranoid parents stroke out right there in the yard) and had himself a campout.  In a rare moment of mommy genius, I ran inside, grabbed a couple of bamboo skewers I'd previously soaked in water and some marshmallows and we roasted ourselves some appetizers.

 

It was a fine campout and the best part was that I didn't have to sleep in a tent.

Anything extraordinary happen during your ordinary day?

 

Still here!

OH, HEY!  Sorry for the lack of posting, y'all.  I've been stage managing a hum-dinger of a show.

 

That's a lie...it opened Sunday.

DRACULA!!!!!!!!  It's fun. And big. And there are explosions.  No one flies, but there's a ton of magic. I'm having a blast. It's also kind of nerve-wracking because there are multiple times when I could screw up and kill someone. Let's all hope that doesn't happen.  The audience for opening went insane every time something blew up.  It was so much fun.

Even Shakespeare got dressed up for the occasion:

 

He says he didn't write this play, but it's still pretty good.

Here's a sneak-peek at one of my favorite special effects:

 
That, friends, is what a vampire looks like after you stake it.  See the little round things by his head, hip and between his legs?  Those are pyro pots and contain enough flash powder to blow the sides off a coffin. (Told you the special effects were cool!).  This picture was taken looking down into one of our traps in the stage floor.  I kind of felt like this guy looked during tech week, but we made it through and have one of the best shows I've seen in a long time, so all the hard work was worth it!

To read more, check out our company's website:  www.asf.net, or like Alabama Shakespeare Festival on Facebook!

(Shameless plug over. But I have to admit...my job's pretty cool.)

Preparing to Peace Out

We're gearing up for our annual trip to the DC area to visit Marcus's side of the family.  This year, we've decided to fly and Dean is beside himself with excitement.  Every morning he tells me, "We got to go to the airport, get some juice (I love his priorities), take off our shoes (security), get on the airplane, buckle the seat belt and take off!"  Whenever we ask who we're going to see he yells "Uncle Mikey!!!!!!!!" (That's Marcus's brother. He's a lot of fun.) This will be the  first time since last August that we've seen our nephews, Adam and Lukas.  We're looking forward to trips to the park and nature reserve, riding the merry go round at the lake and playing in G-Mama's basement, which is absolutely packed with cool toys. 

I feel like the boys are finally old enough to go and see some of the sights of DC this year.  Dean, of course, would be happy to spend every day in a museum looking at dinosaur fossils.  Adam is obsessed with camping, so there might be a front yard campout with sons and dads.  (I"ll be inside eating pie with my mother in law.)  Pop Pop is making the boys cane poles out of bamboo from their backyard, so there will definitely be fishing. (As if there were any doubt about that.)  Marcus and I have a few new dishes in our repertoire that we want to make for everyone.

Mostly this visit will be just that--a visit, a time for us all to get reacquainted, to see how much the boys have grown, and to play. Oh, my mercy, will we play.

 

Lofty Intentions and Chicken

WARNING: The following is random drivel. You've been warned.

I keep reminding myself at about 3pm each day that I want to start a week  in the life photo project. Yesterday, I went as far as setting the camera on my nightstand.  Of course, when you get a tiny visitor in your room at 5:30am who watns to snuggle up then falls back asleep and spreads out so much that he runs his dad out of the room at 6:15am, you kind of forget details like that.  Now it's almost 4th of July and my goal was to do the project during a very ordinary week (without holidays and road trips, you see), so we'll put it back on the shelf for now. But it WILL happen. Oh yes.

We've sort of been holed up in our own little world lately. It's SO hot. We've tried to take Dean to the park as much as possible, but even he's figured out it's too hot sometimes.  He now asks to visit Chick-Fil-A when he wants to go to the playground, which is fine with me. They have a big, clean play area and I can sit there and sip a sweet tea while he climbs.  Yesterday, Marcus dropped us off there then went to pick up a few groceries.  While we were there, Dean told me he was hungry.  I reminded him that this place ONLY serves chicken and he said he'd try it.  I bought a small kids' meal and a lemonade for myself, assuming I'd be the one who actually ended up eating the 4 nuggets and waffle fries.  Dean looked warily at the nugget, which I tore in half and dipped in a little ketchup. He licked it, then stuffed it into his mouth and declared it "Tasty."  We're calling this a huge parental victory people.  It took me nearly three and a half years, but my boy has now ingested chicken voluntarily. Amen.

Our life these days seems full of afternoon rainstorms that don't last nearly as long we we'd like, tiny boys' underpants (which really are the cutest things), fresh fruit and dinosaurs.  The rest of our summer is filling up with plans, as we head to my mom and dad's for the 4th of July, then to visit the Lanes in Virginia in late July.  We continue to work on using the potty and it's going really well. So well, in fact, that Dean scored a trip to the movie theatre to see Kung Fu Panda 2 this weekend.

 
Going to the movies is totally fun, especially when you sucker your parents into buying the Kung Fu Panda 2 snack pack, none of which you will eat, so your mom has to drink her Coke Zero out of a goofy Kung Fu Panda cup. Bwahaha.

 
Helping with the yard work.  Wisteria = the devil.  Also, why are you so huge, child?

Our week at a glance

 
Mooooooooooom, do these black ballet flats go with my new big boy undies?  I like them. Sorry I trashed the living room. (again)

 
Dean has started calling his father "Marcus," probably because he heard all of us calling him that a lot on vacation. When he says it, it sounds like "Mah-cus."  Here he can be seen explaining how to catch a bluegill.

"You trow the cricket in da water and da fishy bites it--CHOMP, Mahcus."

 
Look! A rare photo of me! I do exist!

Whatever, lady. It's hot. Let's get a juice box.

 

Deano Lane'll make ya JUMP JUMP! (on the couch!) (which is a no-no!) (but still cute!) (in big boy undies!)

 

Mooom, I appreciate that you and Mahcus are "show people," really, I do.  However, I do not care about these Tony Awards of which you speak.  Hook me up with some Princess and The Frog.

Don't call us show people, son.

The one thing I didn't get a picture of that OH, I wish I would have was Dean and me watching his lovey, Stu, in the washer last night. We had a bit of a traumatic evening--Dean was stung by a yellowjacket 3 times. He was such a trouper about it though. Between his screams of pain, he made sure to say "thank you" to me for putting ice on his stings and to his dad for applying hydrocortisone cream.  With all that excitement, we all lost track of how long it had been since our last potty break, so we had a little accident on the living room floor. Poor Stu got a little damp, so into the washer he went.  Dean was nervous for him, so I let him pour in the detergent and we sat right in front of the door and watched Stu roll around in the suds.  It was one of those perfectly simple moments. I got to steal lots of top-of-the-head kisses and we sang a lot of songs.  And once Stu was all clean, to bed they went.

Today, we head to Birmingham Children's Theatre to see one of our former students in The Little Red Hen. I'm so, so excited and I hope Dean loves it.  Something tells me he will, being the son of show people.

Free At Last

DIAPER-free, that is!  We started potty-training Dean not long after his second birthday.  He went along with it when we'd put him on the potty. I think he liked the rewards (chocolate chips or stickers).  Then we had a setback. For a while, we had to completely abandon the idea of the potty, lest he end up in tears.  We started trying again after he turned 3.  No interest.  Bribes rarely worked. Wearing underwear or going naked didn't work. Enlisting the help of his teachers at mother's day out was a disaster. They found it much easier to stick to his diaper and pull-up changing schedule than try to get him to the potty before he wet.  Almost nothing we tried worked.

In order to go to the new awesome preschool in the fall, Dean has to be completely potty trained. No pull-ups. No diaper for nap time. Totally trained.  I began doing research and found the Potty Boot  Camp book. It claimed to do 90% of the training in 2 days.  I ordered the book on Amazon and read it quickly. (It's only about 50 pages long.)  In a nutshell, it was NOT the method for us. This approach has apparently worked really well for a lot of people, but it just didn't fit into our lives.  The 2 days of nakedness, the cleanup procedure and, especially, the "potty drills" seemed a bit harsh and counter-productive. Plus, Dean is a bit stubborn. (NO idea where he gets that, y'all.)  He would not have reacted well to punitive measures.

I was venting my frustrations to Andreaone night as we chatted on Skype and she asked if I'd heard of the 3 Day Potty Training method. She sent me a link to a site where you can download an e-book called "3 Day Potty Training."  You even get an online mentor who you can email with questions or concerns.  I read the 38 pages in no time flat and knew this was the method for us.  I'm not going to do a commercial for the product, I promise, but in order to tell the story, I need to tell you about the method. It uses praise and positive reinforcement. It allows the child to call the shots. He  learns from his mistakes, but he's not punished for them. 

The night before we started, we washed underwear. ALL our underwear.  We let Dean see ours and help fold them and pick out which ones we put on after our showers.  We also discussed the many types of cool undies that were available and he said he'd like some with Buzz and Woody on them. NO PROBLEM, kid. Your grandmothers sent you about 30 pairs.  After Dean was asleep, Marcus and I stuck some Buzz Lightyear wall decals all over the bathroom, cleaned the heck out of the toilet and put out his undies, some stickers and a reward chart.

 On day one (Sunday), we got up, had breakfast and read the paper.  Once Marcus and I were sufficiently caffeinated, we took Dean to the hall bathroom.   Once in the bathroom, we told him that he was now a big boy and that he no longer wore diapers. He took off his diaper and threw it in the trashcan, along with the 6 diapers and 2 pull-ups left in the packages.  He picked a cool pair of Buzz Lightyear undies and discovered his sticker reward chart. I borrowed an idea from Christy and made an underwear bowl. There's a big mixing bowl full of little boy briefs in his bathroom  and he can pick his own pair whenever he needs a change. He often picks new pair just for the heck of it, even when the ones he's wearing are still fine.  We told Dean to tell us if he needed to go potty. We said this about every 10 minutes.  He got extra cups of water and other liquidy refreshments throughout the day to provide more "learning experiences."  Each time he'd start to pee, he'd look at us and scream, "PEE!" and we'd all run to the bathroom to finish the "experience" on the potty.  By the 4th time, we were dribble-free and we made it to the bathroom with completely dry undies. 

Now when I say we told him to tell us if he needed to go every 10 minutes, I mean it.  We must have said those words a hundred times on Sunday.  We also did pop quizzes, where we all checked our pants to see if they were dry. If they were, we all got a sticker or a treat.  (Don't you want to hang out at our house?)  Anyway, the gist of it is, we made it DEAN's idea.  Now he tells us, either with words, by grabbing his crotch and running, or with "the look" that he needs to potty.  Sure, we're still having accidents from time to time, but he's woken up dry the last 3 mornings (we went cold turkey on the diapers--nighttime, too!) and he got up from his rest time yesterday to go potty.  Pooping is going slowly, but at least he will say, "Chock-o-lit?" when he feels like he needs to poop. I think all little kids are kind of freaked out by doing #2 in the potty, but we figure that will come eventually. We'll keep working.

We are SUPER proud of him and very, very relieved to be making huge steps in the right direction with potty training.   I know there are a ton of methods out there, but this one worked beautifully for us.  And it surely did feel good to break up with Huggies once and for all! 

On Our Table

I've shared my menu plans here before, but this week seems like a booming success of planning awesomeness, so I thought I'd let you know what we're eating up in here!  I generally do the bulk of my grocery shopping at Publix. They have great Buy-1-Get-1-Free deals, almost always including things I really need, like apple juice or pasta.  They also double coupons up to 50cents and have the best produce in town.  Their meat prices, however are H I G H, so I do my meat shopping at our smaller "local" stores, the Piggly Wiggly and Lucky's Foodland.  For less than $20 at the Pig, I bought a huge family pack of chicken breasts, a big pack of thick-cut pork chops and a 1.6 pound package of ground beef.  Combined with the rest of the stuff we bought at Publix (which included some non-food items, like parchment paper and Drano, plus some "Stock-up" items like salad dressing and soy sauce), we spent less than $100 at the grocery store this week.

Here's our menu plan:

Sunday:  Grilled teriyaki pork chops with rice and grilled asparagus.

Monday:  Grilled chicken Caesar salads (We are seeing a pattern with the grilled-ness, yes?)

Tuesday:  Pork fried rice (2 grilled (!) pork chops with veggies like bean sprouts, carrots, peas and leeks)  **I did the math (!) and this meal cost us $2.02 per serving.

Wednesday:  Grilled chicken breasts with baked potatoes and kale.

Thursday: Lasagna because MAN are we gonna be sick of pork and chicken! Also garlic bread. Possibly grilled.

Dean and I are heading to my mom and dad's for the weekend and Marcus has a crazy bunch of work commitments Friday through Sunday, so our grill will be neglected for a few days.

 

What are you eating this week?

 

The Croup

We haz it.

Dean started coughing a bit on Sunday afternoon.  We figured it was from playing outside with a friend all morning in the park. (Yes, I saw the air quality warnings. I just didn't want him to live in a bubble, ya know?)  By that evening, he was barking like a seal.  Given his asthma diagnosis, we tend to panic a little whenever there's a breathing-related issue.  We called the on-call number for our pediatrician to see whether or not we needed to run to the ER.  She listened to him over the phone and said it sounded like croup, which is viral.  Great! No trip to the ER! Not so great--this can't be "cured" with antibiotics. We've been cooped up in the house waiting this illness out ALL WEEK.  Dean and I are both prone to cabin fever, so we're losing our minds a bit. 

I decided today was the day we HAD to get out of the house, so we headed out to Target mid-morning. Dean was SO excited to get in the car. The entire way to Target, he kept talking about the big red balls outside the store. He was very well-behaved in the store, not running off or flailing about or anything his three-year-old self normally does on an outing. About halfway through our shopping list, though, he tuckered out. He looked up and held out his little arms and said, "Sugar, I hold you?"  I carried him the rest of the way. My arms may never recover.

What stinks about croup is the obvious sore throat you get from coughing that much.  Dean has not wanted to eat A THING this week.  For a couple of days, we could get some macaroni and cheese or scrambled eggs in him. Jello was our go-to for snacks.(Funny sidebar: I made Jello in one of my small mixing bowls. Dean has only ever seen it in snack packs. He kept saying, "Wow!"  He was very impressed that I could MAKE Jello.)  He'd eat yogurt.  Then yesterday, he wanted NOTHING. I even bought Gerber applesauce and some Beechnut baby oatmeal to see if he'd eat those (they're my usual last resort and they nearly always work). NADA.  I put out feelers to my Facebook and Twitter friends and called my mom to ask about PediaSure.  We're going to pick up some of that or some Carnation Instant Breakfast today to try and get some calories in this guy.  Fortunately, he'll still drink, so he's definitely not dehydrated.  I slip his asthma meds in his juice or milk, so it's good that we're still able to get those in him.

Our activities have included watching what is probably way too much tv (especially a new short Tinkerbell movie about 5 times), Play-Doh, playing with the Little People Farm, reading and reading and reading, working on potty training and perusing this week's Walgreen's sale paper.  Dean loves showing me the Easter stuff and telling me what the bunny is going to bring him. He also likes to sing a lot these days. Today we watched the Imagination Movers in concert and he sang nearly all the songs. (We listen to the CD in the car on our way to and from school every day.)

Here's hoping the croup vacates the premesis soon.  We need some socialization! 

Also, you'll notice I didn't mention the fact that Dean coughed into my open mouth and probably gave me the croup, because if I don't talk about it, it's not real. (I feel fine! REALLY! Where's the Claritin...)