Raimy’s Twister

By: Raimy

This morning I saw on the floor a pair of broken socks. I decided to make Twister. I started sowing one sock at the top and bottom with the other sock inside. Then I sowed a string to it and tied it to my foot so that it could come on and off. I started circling it round and round and jumped, just like in the video. You can make your own too. Twister!

Happy Birthday Shawn!

Dear Shawn,

Wow - you are what? 26? Congratulations on this your birthday!

I am sure that mom could tell it much better than I could; but I always loved your birth story best of all...

The nurse that assisted in the delivery wore flashy earrings because everyone was partying for the New Year. Mom was praying in tongues so loud they thought that she spoke Spanish - so they called in a Spanish speaking person to translate. Mom knew she had nothing to prove so she wanted pain killers. Dad was watching the injection and he fainted! He hit his head on the doorknob and had to be taken out to get stitches. And you were born on the last day of the year.

You have always been my sweet little sister. I love you very much! I hope that you feel special today and that you are able to do something fun. Happy Birthday!!!

Check out Christmas Slide Show!

Happy times and Holiday warmth while cold outside. Family gatherings in Omaha and Wichita.

Washington Family Christmas Photos - part two

Here are some fun moments from yesterday:


Tyler showing off his new trick of sticking out his tongue and waging his head.


Raimy got a few canvasas and paint brushes. She was inspired to paint a portrait of one of our new guinea pigs, Patrik.


Gabrielle grabbing some sweet goodies from the kitchen.


Timothy by the glow of the Christmas tree.


Papa and Tyler listening to Christmas music. Tyler singing along.


Gabrielle with "Patrik".


Raimy and Timothy with "Rosebud", the girl of the pair.


Tyler playing with his awesome new toy.


Timothy trying out his new golf set.

Just the 6 of us (well, 9 if you count our pets) celebrated Christmas at the house. The day was bright, warm and sunny. The kids went to the park to play golf. DaRonn got a nice nap in. And I finished reading "East of Eden", a great, great book. We lounged around all day eating baked goods and Chineese take-out. It was a nice day. I hope all you had a good time too.

Washington Family Christmas Photos - part one

Merry Christmas!

Plans for the holidays have begun to slowly trickle in from my dear family. Keep 'em coming. I want to hear about everything!

We had our Christmas celebration with church. You can go to my personal blog to read about that.

Today is a normal day in the office. Some of our staff is on vacation, including Pati my house help gal. So I will be cooking and cleaning (gasp!) for the next couple of days. :-) An American holiday!

We found a website that has online radio stations that only play Christmas music. So I have been filling the house with traditional Christmas carols. It has been fun to dance around with the kids to the familiar tunes that are new to them. I did my baking last week: 200 cut out sugar cookies, 2 loaves of banana bread, a coconut cream pie and a batch of brownies. Looks like I need to do a bot more today. I think I will do an apple pie and another batch of brownies. Oh yeah some of my famous bread pudding too. Yummy Yummy! Our tree is just exactly like I wanted it. (Pictures will be posted later.) We are going to do presents tomorrow morning.

Here are the christmas pictures from last year and this year. Thought you might like to see the comparison. You might notice that is this year's picture that Gabrielle lost her first tooth. She was happy about that. I will be posting more pictures after the family celebrations.

We love you! Merry Christmas!

Exposé of Grossness

(Warning: the content of this post may be considered unnecessarily gross to humans of the non mother persuasion.)

The pediatrician told me that the reason my son’s front is constantly drenched in slobber is that he has an over active salivatory gland that he will grow out of. I swear people, this boy is like a leaky faucet; you just can’t turn him off. The endearing nicknames that he has gained due to his zealot of a gland are: slobber-bot and drool-miester.

And while I am on it, sometimes I feel like my day consists of the meticulous gathering, inspection, categorizing and proper storage of every bodily fluid and excretion ever created. Am I comparing toddler care to the exact study of a scientist? Yes. How else do you think I can endure this demeaning yet all so important work they call care-giving?

How bad can it be? (You so naively ask.) Here comes the grossness! Shall we start south and work our way north? Or should we just do the good ol’ head to foot routine? Going with the latter… There is that orange dandruff like stuff growing under what few hairs they have on their heads that no matter how much you pick at it there is a new crop daily. Eye-boogers are your early morning greeting. Then there is the ear wax that you are not supposed to dig out even though it looks like the child has been attacked by tiny aliens and they are constructing a weird colony in there. We mustn’t forget the rainbow of snot that drains out of not one but two nostrils on an occasional basis. If you do not know the color, consistency and frequency of that slime then don’t even think about calling ask-a-nurse*! Before moving on to the mouth the nose does have one more function. In the unfortunate event that a child begins laughing while drinking milk (why is it always milk?) said milk will reroute itself through the nose expelling itself with such force as to successfully cover all persons present with the physical manifestation of the intangible joy that your child is experiencing. Moving on to the mouth: drool, spit-up, juicy blenching, smelly burps, regurgitated baby food, unswallowed mashed up food, rejected medications, phlegm, goobery tiny pieces of toys that are supposedly “a choking hazard” but are actually a cause of temporary deafness due to the screaming that is invoked from the baby when the extraction takes place and last but not least the infamous, odorous, staining and sickening vomit. Oh, and we haven’t got to the most exciting bits yet folks!

A few words about blood. Blood is meant to stay inside the body; yet almost everywhere on the body can bleed! Band-aids* are a joke. They stick for all of 3 minutes. After that, if the child has not taken it off then it comes off in some kind of water play or it is so full of dirt that you gasp and work as hard as you can to pry the thing off without ripping the tiny hairs out of their follicles. The only things band-aids* are good for are bribes. You bribe the kids to stop wailing by promising them a cute little band-aid*.

So you have your blood that you have to take care of. If you do it right then you won’t have to take care of the pus that accompanies infection. That’s right – do not avoid the blood because the pus is 10 times worse to take care of than the blood. If you see blood do not waste one more minute. Grab that wonder water that make the fun little bubbles when killing infection (technical term: hydrogen peroxide) and douse that wound! Disclaimer for parents: you do not have care for or treat broken bones. Take the kid to a doctor for that. Whoo, load off! Right?

Wrong! We have now reached the pinnacle of grossness. Below that adorable little belly button lies a load of worries. And by load, I mean load! The things that make their way out of your child’s abdomen and into that Mickey Mouse* diaper are unthinkable and unspeakable. Little bit of trivia for you. You will have what color poop when you eat Froot Loops*? If you said bright green then give yourself a gold sticker. Yes, as a parent you have diaper duty. And speaking of “duty”, why is it that we invent funny little names for bodily functions? Pee-pee, poo-poo, doodie, pees, stinkies, uh-oh, tinkle, and any other cutesy name that pops into our heads at the time. Oh, and speaking of heads. You know you have reached the brink of insanity when you see one of those tiny pieces of toy in the diaper all covered in yuck and after your initial panic attack thinking it is some part of the child’s guts that need to be taken to the surgeon so he can put it back where it goes you seriously think to yourself, “Do I dig it out and clean it off?” or an even more demented thought, “Do I call the big kids in and show this to them so they quit leaving their little pieces of toys laying around.” Recognize this as a sign that you are about to go insane and stop. Just fold the diaper up and throw it away. Pretend you didn’t see the object. It doesn’t exist. It was never there. You are still a good mom!

I said we were going head to foot. I thought it was some kind of practical joke when I smelled my infant son’s feet and they had the odor of a high-school gym locker room. My girls’ feet never smelled like anything else than baby powder. But my boys’ feet have stunk from day one. Not to mention the toe jam and sweaty, sticky sock fuzz that you gotta scrape off.

My precious gooey children haven’t yet reached the age of puberty. They tell me that the teenage years are so much worse. Frankly I don’t image how it could be worse. It will have to be my next chapter in the exposé on grossness.

People just don’t tell you all this stuff when you are oohing and ahhing over the soft cuddly bundle wrapped up in the stroller of a radiant starry-eyed young mother. It’s all a trick! They are wrapped up so you don’t see all the grossness. And those aren’t stars in her eyes, the poor woman hasn’t slept in days and her eyes are frozen open. But that is for another post.

* The name brands that I mentioned above are probably like protected by copyrights and have a bunch of trademarks. So like somebody buy some of their products and I think that they won’t mind that I mentioned them.