Guess who's going on a diet?

When was the last time I posted about Molly? A baby book entry? Anyone? Who knows, but the poor kid doesn't get a lot of real estate on this ol' blog like her brother did. We finally went to her 6-month well-baby check today. Only a month late. Not too shabby in my book. The nurse and I took bets on how much she'd weigh. The nurse guessed 23 lbs. I KNEW she was at least 26. She clocked in at 21 lbs and change. I don't know how that lady knows my kid better than me (since I'm the one hauling her up and down the stairs and pushing her in the stroller and carrying her in that carseat that weighs eleventy billion and a half pounds) but she was closer than I was. I might also have a slight tendency to exaggerate. Maybe.

But I'm not joking when I tell you her appointment lasted TWO SOLID HOURS. This was my face most of the time.

I'm glad Sarah saved the day once again and watched Sam for me so I only had to put on a show for one child instead of two. Since we had so much time in there to ourselves, I did a thorough examination on Molly. I usually only see her undressed while I'm giving her a bath (quick!) and when I'm lotioning her up for bed (quicker!) and right before I swaddle her (quickest!), so I don't really take the time to look over every square inch of her chub. But today I did, and I noticed some red patches at the bottom of her back. I assumed it was just a little dry skin, but brought it up to the doctor anyway.

BIG MISTAKE. I hear a list of words that make me scrunch my nose and squint my eyes and audibly say things like, "SHUT UP SHUT UP NO NO NO" to people I just met (like, say, for instance, the doctor).
Words like:

• eczema
• allergies
• gluten
• dairy
• Try eliminating these foods from your diet for a month and see if things improve.

DAMMIT TO HELL I am not ready to give up the milk in my coffee or cheese or real-life chocolate cake or breaded anything. I try consoling myself with the fact that it's only for a month. But the month I'm conducting this little food experiment would be the one month of the year that contains a food holiday. And my birthday. So cake and breaded things will be missed. I guess I will just suck it up and eat more fruit. And by "eat more fruit" I obviously mean drink a lot of wine.

Geez you're cute. And worth it.

You know you want to see eight bazillion pictures of my kids at a pumpkin patch wearing handmade outfits and playing with another funny blogger

A while back, I had this great idea that I would take my kids to the pumpkin patch. What a great fall experience! Pumpkins! Hay rides! Cute pictures!

How delusional I can be sometimes. At first I thought I'd wait until my parents came up for a visit, but when that didn't pan out, I decided that I'd take them on my own. Easy enough. One of them can walk, so I can just strap the other one to my person or in a stroller and everything will be peachy! Easy! Enjoyable, even!

Again. Delusional. Luckily I mentioned the idea to Sarah and she wanted to go! With us! I know, I wasn't even offering a chocolate incentive or anything. She must be able to anticipate these disastrous situations. (Can you tell I am in the gung-ho phase of this deployment? Thinking I can do all of these two-person jobs on my own? Will reality ever set in for me or is this just how it's gonna be until Steve gets back?)

I picked a pumpkin patch in Hopkinsville because they advertised live animals, not just corn mazes. (I'm sorry, but if I want to walk around in circles for hours, I can take Sam out in the field behind our house and just follow him around. I will not pay money to do that.) Turns out that it was a good hour or so drive. Take into account my missing an exit and almost running off a skinny road thanks to a fat truck and not knowing what my updated directions were telling me, I think we came in right around an hour for drive time.

When we arrived, the drive was instantly worth it.

Whose kid is this TOUCHING GOATS and letting them lick his sensitive hands?!

Baby goats!

This is Sarah's This-Goat-Is-Going-To-Eat-Your-Hand face. (By-the-way, it totally did.)

These are hillbilly goats. Harhar.

Like this place could get any more charming.

Old truck turned into a corn-filled sandbox.

These pigs were the size of Volkswagons, I kid you not. Sam found their oinking hilarious.

Molly's thoughts on the hayride. (To be fair, it was a little jerky. That could very well be because the truck was produced in 1927.)

Don't look now, it's another awesome picture of the three of us! Molly- distracted, Sam- overly enthused, Me- can't remember to take sunglasses off to save my life

YUM my fingers taste like dirt and sawdust can't get enough.

Corn maze!

Where's Sammy??

Ahh, such a happy child... (Do you see that halo above Sarah's head? Because SHE IS A SAINT.)

It's a great pumpkin patch, Charlie Brown!

The hayride from 1932

At first, things did not look so promising.

At second, they did not look much better.

Ahh, there they are. Just had to get past the picked-over part of the patch.

This is the one, Mom. (discarded minutes later in exchange for a different one)

I'll take that pumpkin right there. No, not that one, the one next to it. Nope, a little further to the left. No, my left, not your left. You know what? Just skip that one, I see one I like better. It's about a mile that way. Yep, I'll just wait here for ya. Thaaaaaanks.

After loading babies and pumpkins back into the truck, I snuck back off to grab more than the one baby pumpkin that Sam picked up. Sarah caught me lookin like a pumpkin thief.

Goodbye pretty part of Kentucky that I do not live in!

A tractor pull!

COWS! OMG! COWS!

This little boy was so sweet, trying to help Sam feed the cows. Sam, of course, acted very interested until it came time to actually feed the cows. 

This lasted 4.6 seconds. I managed to take 8 pictures somehow though, so I'll let you figure out the shutter speed there.

This is approximately 4.3 seconds in.

Can we just take a moment to petition for Ruthie to open up an Etsy shop already? These outfits she HANDMADE for my children are the CUTEST.

Taken a half second before his little toosh left the slide and flew through the air before making solid contact with the ground. I think someone greased up that slide.

The second attempt required careful hands-on guidance from Sarah and a little coaxing.

Is she killing you with pumpkin patch cuteness yet???

Seriously, if you are in the Ft Campbell area, check this pumpkin patch out. They are some of the sweetest people, it's family-owned, Christian-based, and there is so much more to do there than I took pictures of! I was in no way compensated to advertise for them, but when the guy running the place didn't charge us the admission fee and then practically let us steal pumpkins (I got 4 pumpkins for $8!), all he asked was that we tell our friends about this place. We might even go back just to play around. Sarah? Yes? Are you up for this again? I'll bring chocolate this time.

Oh we had a giveaway, right? Let's see who won.


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Congratulations Stephanie! And thanks y'all for participating. I loved reading your funny responses and tweets. 

Ah! Just noticed that this crosses off #75 on my 101 in 1,001 list. More updates on that list soon. (Hint: it involves my oral health. Who's excited?!)

Don't be bashful, y'all know you deserve it

So I got this email the other day from Tiny Prints, and they were like, "If you wanna do up a post about our Christmas Cards, we'd really appreciate it since you're a big time blogger with like, tens of followers, and even though most of them are family members and friends you've conned into "following" you, we still wanna offer you a discount on your Christmas cards this year. Thaaaaaaaanks." Actually, I think it might have been slightly less sarcastic than that. Maybe. But if there's one thing I love thinking about at Halloween, it's Christmas. I mean, seriously, how can you even avoid those thoughts if you leave your house and travel into society on a regular basis? (And hey, let it be known that I actually do that, despite my regular jaunts to the Mennonite market.) The PX here didn't even give me a proper amount of time to scavenge for clearanced summer merchandise that I don't need before they started hanging lights and blowing fake snow all over the place. But you know what? If people wanna start celebrating Baby Jesus' birth in September, I will not stand in their way.

At first, when I got the ego-inflating email from Tiny Prints, I was like, "Oh *skim, skim, skim* when is the cut-off date? Because obviously I will do my post with something like 3 hours remaining on the deadline." (Takes me back to my college days; makes me feel young again. And skinny. But mostly stressed out.) So lo and behold, strange things happen when you actually READ something in its entirety. (This really could have changed a few of my grades, I realize this now.) In the email, they VERY CASUALLY mention that "Oh hey, if you wanna give away FIFTY FREE DOLLARS to one of your readers that you claim to have, then you can do that too. No biggie." Seriously?! So obviously I think that y'all need rewarding, what with all the posts I make you read about poop and puke and diaper rashes and how much I love cake yet how much I need to lose those last 30lbs of baby weight and wine and dead birds and such. Yes, I think y'all deserve a little something.

I've never given anything away before (except for those two times when I gave away my body for these cute cling-ons I've got), but y'all seem like a deserving bunch. I can write about anything and y'all always come through with some uplifting words or jokes or relatable stories and some of you even SENT ME CHOCOLATE and let's not get into how hard I'll hug you when we finally meet. (Because you gave me your return address on those packages, so yes. We'll hang out soon. Creepy!)

So I have attempted to create a Rafflecopter. All of the cool, big-time bloggers use this for their giveaways. They also have approximately a frillion more followers than me and do things like make their own layouts from scratch, but I'm trying not to focus on details here. Some of the ways you can earn entries for this giveaway: (You know I can't do this without over-explaining the thing to death.)

1. Answer a question. Pretty simple. Even I can handle this.

2. Follow me on twitter. I usually just upload cute pictures of my kids and/or dog poop from instagram, but I like having new people to follow, so basically this is just my way of finding you because I cannot figure out the twitter.

3. Tweet about the giveaway. I swear to Moses, the one thing I truly hate about twitter is all of these tweets about "Oh I just LOVE the new Depends underwear! So comfortable and discreet! Enter to win a $6 million dollar prize pack from so-and-so at her big-time blog, such-and-such.com!"
I'm sure people want tweets like this to give them exposure or what have you. (This could be why I'm not so proficient at gaining followers or understanding twitter.) But whenever I see one like that, my eyes glaze over and I totally ignore whatever that person is tweeting. So please don't do that for my giveaway. We don't need our eyes glazing over any more than usual. Make your tweet funny and original and then just include the link to this post at the end. Because I love nothing more than a funny tweet (except chocolate). It's basically the only reason I check twitter at all.
Example: "My dog farted 47 times today! Smelled like a pumpkin spice latte EVERY TIME! (link to this post)"
See how easy that is? And how much more fun that would be to read than the regular ol' giveaway tweets? Ok, so let's make that happen.

4. Follow the blog. I know I've got some creepers out there. You read, but you don't follow. And that's ok. But if you wanna win this prize-money you're gonna have to de-lurkify yourself. Don't be embarrassed to let people know you read here. I'm pretty sure there's a way to make yourself anonymous if it bothers you that much. I am not into "growing my numbers" or hitting some significant number of followers. I write these thoughts that pop into my head and usually the same 20ish of you leave me sweet, heartfelt comments. I don't wanna be one of those people that has eleventy billion followers and averages two random responses for every post I churn out. I prefer quality over quantity. And I feel like I've got that right now. Athankyouverymuch. Also, I love y'all.


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This one is kinda gross, potentially offensive, but definitely funny

I know I seem to have a post-once-a-week unwritten rule going on here, but I have almost peed myself from laughing so hard this week, so it almost feels like a disservice if I don't share.

Let's start off with Odie.

She's cute, right? Yeah. Until she's not.

This is the email I sent Steve about the incident that took place two days ago. I can't re-tell it any better than the way I told him since I wrote this a few hours after it happened. Please be warned that I use strong language because this is all very disgusting and I also had a very healthy glass of wine in me. So there are your warnings: strong language and stop eating.

"Most disgusting day EVER. We went to Target, got you a pillow. I got Sam some popcorn when we got in there, and holy cow, that was the best dollar I think I ever spent. He ate that stuff the entire time and didn't whine ONCE. He also ate the entire bag. LOL We browsed for something like an hour (maybe less) and spent less than $10. I know. I'll give you a few minutes to pick yourself up off the floor. I think that's pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. Then we came home, I pumped real quick and we headed for the backyard. Sam was mowing the grass and I looked at Odie and.... wait a minute, she doesn't have a black feathery chew toy. OMG SHE IS EATING A BIRD HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT GET THE F*CK OFF THE BIRD ODIE OH MY GOD. I ran over there and it did not even have a head. Sweet Jesus. Where is my Steve when I need a manly man to take care of this nasty business?! I knew what you would do- get a plastic bag and pick it up. But I am just not that brave. I had the broom back there so I downed some wine and then swatted it towards the gate. I finally got it outside of our yard. OMG. GROSS. Then I think the worst is over, but Odie starts gnawing on the head. GACK. Sam sat on Mater and started pressing buttons, but then came over to me with some weird goop on his fingers. I had no clue what it was, so I made him wipe it on the side of the table. Looked like it coulda been a bug. Maybe. Didn't think too much else of it. But then we went inside to feed Molly and as I was closing the door, I noticed that there was some Odie vomit right outside the back door (right next to where Sam had been sitting on Mater) and it was HALF-DIGESTED BIRD BRAINS OH HOLY BARF. Needless to say, I flipped my shit and almost poured bleach on Sam's hands. I cannot eat dinner. I keep thinking about that bird. Odie is in DEEP. Like, the ONLY reason I brought her inside tonight is because the low is 44. Otherwise, her ass would be outside. Oh my gosh I am so grossed out. I figured that you might get a kick out of that story though. That is all this day is good for apparently. I'm not sure if I'll put this on the blog or not. I didn't take any pictures (obviously) and it's sick as shit. I still can't get over it.

Hope it put a smile on your face though. I LOVE YOU and hurry on back so you can take over as the man of the house. I am SO not good at replacing you.

xoxoxo,
Jenn

PS. I also had to spray out 2 horrifically poopy diapers today as well. Is this deployment over yet?"


My first concerns are obviously if this ordeal is blog-worthy (it is) and that I couldn't eat dinner (but fudge took care of me, don't you worry). So while Odie is a valued member of our entertainment staff here, she is also a filthy dog with filthy ways. Just one more (VERY VALID) reason why I won't let animals lick my children's faces.


Whew. Ok. Now that I've relived that, I fear my Cocoa Pebbles might make a second showing tonight (cereal diet- yes!!!). Let's all hope for the best and read one more story. I actually had to text my sister today to ask her if this was funny or if I was crazy because let's face it; I think I might be a little crazy.


When Sam is tickled, he loses all control of his body.

So when I do tickle him, I make sure to hold him pretty steady, lest he whap his head against the corner of a table and suffer multiple injuries that would result in CPS being informed of my haphazard tickling sprees. But while playing upstairs in his room this afternoon, I went to tickle him while he was on all fours. He literally let his hands go from out in front of him (control of extremities= gone) and face-planted into the floor. Obviously he cried. So I held him and tried to stop shaking from laughing so hard. Then I started singing a song to make him feel better.


(To the tune of Luke Bryan's "Drunk On You" and please don't ask me how these songs get embedded into my brain and what possesses me to sing them to my children)


"Sammy makes his FAaaaaace go boom boom
Right intooo the carpet in his room room
That kinda thing makes his mommy go mmmhmmmmm... HA HA HA"


Now you tell me that's not funny. I laughed until I cried. Like, I threw my head all the way back and laughed from the bottom of my belly. And then Sam laughed. And Molly did too. I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard. And then I immediately thought that maybe the next stop for me was the looney bin because I JUST MADE MYSELF LAUGH OUT LOUD, so I texted my sister to make sure this was actually funny and not just flat-out weird. She agreed that it was funny so that is how it ended up on the blog tonight.

Don't worry, I plan on making contact with people over the age of two tomorrow. I will avoid making up lyrics and drinking wine while swatting at dead birds.

Also, my deepest apologies to texting half of you the bird saga drama at dinnertime. I'd like to say it will never happen again, but I really don't feel like I can make such promises.