As for me and my house... we shall call them lollipops

As with any story I begin to tell, there is always a back story.  I am a paranoid freak about kids and hard candy.  This goes back almost 20 years to the day a woman was shopping in our store and had her 4 year old daughter with her, and the girl was eating a peppermint candy.  As we were talking, suddenly the little girl began to choke on the candy.  The Mom started to panic and pound the little girl on the back, and I turned around and grabbed the two on duty firemen who were getting some electrical parts less than 10' away from me.  They intervened and saved the little girl's life.

Throughout the years I have made it a priority to know how to correctly handle a child choking situation, and have had to use those skills.  Once, when my nephew was 4 months old, he was happily hanging out in his father's lap sucking on a piece of watermelon while we all visited.  He managed to break the end of the watermelon off and get it lodged in his throat and my sister saw this and grabbed him from her husband and began to pound on his back.  I reached over and grabbed him from her, leaned him forward in my lap and did chest compressions on him until he puked the watermelon into my lap.  I handed him back and walked away because I had just yanked her baby out of hands without a word.  I let about 15 minutes go by before carefully approaching and saying "I'm sorry that I grabbed him like that, but you were doing it wrong, and making it worse." She thanked me for intervening and from that point on we all knew the procedures.

When I had Andrew, I was a little nervous that he might be prone to choking like his cousin was, and I watched and hovered as he tried new things.  I cut things into such small pieces to ensure his chewing safety.  And I steadfastly refused to allow hard candy, including suckers.  Whenever we were somewhere that they would offer one, I would politely decline.

One day when he was about 2, maybe 2 1/2, I decided to let him have a sucker after he got his hair cut. I was so nervous about it that I hovered and after a couple minutes I ended up taking it away.  Thankfully, Andrew is not really that into candy, and he doesn't ask for them, and he accepts my no as no when he asks for one and I say, "No, that's hard candy and you don't have that."

As anyone who has been around us knows, Andrew has speech delays and we are working on articulation and making letter sounds correctly.  He recently finished his first school year of speech therapy and has made huge improvements.  He is getting much clearer and easier for others to understand too.

Yesterday I took him to get his hair cut, and unlike most other people who usually ask the parent first if it's ok for him to have a sucker, she asked him directly, "Would you like a sucker?"  "A sucker??? Sure I'd love a sucker!!" my child excitedly proclaimed.  I cringed a little, but decided to let him have it.  We left the salon and went down to the Dollar Tree to get some graduation cards, and to let him pick a toy for being such a good boy.  He happily chatted about his sucker the whole way there and all through the store.

When we got home I texted my husband and said, "I broke down and let Andrew have a sucker.  On a related note, I think that as long as his S's are still coming out as F's, we should refer to them as lollipops!"

So to anyone who may have overheard the apparently foul mouthed toddler in the Dollar Tree yesterday, I promise you, he was really just talking about the lemon-lime Dum Dum he'd received.

We also don't talk about socks, or shocks in public anymore either.  He went grocery shopping with my sister one day and the cart apparently had a lot of static electricity, and so he kept getting shocked, and he would loudly say "Bumpie, stop "shocking" me!!" "You "shocked" me again!!!"

S's are at the top of my priority list for his articulation goals!!

The Horrible Housewife is at it again...

A couple weeks ago started out like a normal Sunday... I was just really exhausted and the idea of a nice relaxing morning at home sounded better than anything else.  So I had my coffee and relaxed for a while, and then I started to feel it, the compulsive need to clean that only hits me every once in a great while had returned.

I started off slowly... I emptied the dishwasher, and loaded the dirty dishes in the sink into it. And then I wiped down the counters.  Nothing too crazy... And then I decided to do some laundry, and maybe a little vacuuming.  I'm not sure what happened after that, I must have gone into some sort of trance to protect myself so that I wouldn't remember it later on.  But the next thing I knew, hours had passed, furniture had been moved, there was sweeping and vacuuming, and mopping too.  An entire room was re-arranged, I cleaned and re-organized my pantry.  

I thought that it might be like a 24 hour bug, it would run its course and leave me alone in my lazy and slobby ways.  But no... I found myself researching new vacuum cleaners.  A lot! I spent hours on multiple sites comparing features and prices.  I hate vacuuming to begin with, so the fact that I spent any time at all researching vacuums is proof that this crazy cleaning bug had burrowed into my brain and taken control! 

I mentioned to my husband that I was looking at new vacuums, and the next day we went shopping and I got a new Shark vacuum.  And if you have talked to me in the last week or so, I'm sure you've walked away shaking your head and thinking, "That crazy broad has joined a cult!!" I cannot stop talking about my new vacuum.  And even worse, I find things to vacuum just so I can use it. 

The downside to having such a great vacuum that works so well is that I'm getting even crazier than I usually am. I vacuumed our stairs as soon as I got the vacuum out of the box and all put together.  And they looked beautiful.  And then someone walked up them, and there were specks of sawdust that had been tracked on their shoes.  And I had to clean them again.  And then Lucie walked up them and dropped more hair.  And I had to clean them again.  And then Andrew dropped some goldfish cracker crumbs... and AAARRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!  When I had a vacuum that didn't work so well, I didn't know any better.

I thought that maybe after a few vacuumings this cleaning bug that had taken over my life might subside... and then I found myself at home with a sick child. And I had a free time while he slept.  So I started cleaning the kitchen, the usual stuff. And then I noticed that my dish-drying rack could use a little cleaning.  Next thing I know, I've taken it apart and soaked and scrubbed it, and then I had to try to figure out how all the pieces went back together again. That was fun... some words were said that I'm glad were not overheard by 3 year old ears.  Then I went upstairs to look for something, and I started cleaning my closet, and then I moved on to the bedroom as a whole. I de-cluttered, and of course moved furniture and vacuumed. Then I walked into the laundry room to start another load, and of course I had to clean that room too.

I find myself wondering... did I join a cult? Is this some sort of multiple personality disorder? Is it maybe an "All Of Me" situation, and I am sharing my body with the spirit of some poor deceased person who loves to clean? Whatever it is... I am enjoying my house being clean, and I'm sorry to those that have been forced to listen to my rhapsodize about my new vacuum... but honestly, it gets Lucie hair out of my carpet!! That is AMAZING!! 

At least I know that whatever is going on, I still have the controlling share of the brain/personality because my fridge is still a chamber of horrors.  That is how I know I haven't gone full on Stepford is because at any given moment I can guarantee that there is at least one thing in my fridge that is unrecognizable, or no longer in its original form.