The latest trend in our house has been making “Italian Sodas” with club sodas and Torani syrup. Since some of us (ok, me) are on a low-carb diet (24 pounds down and counting) we have even gone as far as to by the sugar-free Torani syrups.

Tonight, Ethan discovered flavored teas. No, not the usual “Raspberry Zinger” or “Strawberry Maple.” I’m talking about flavoring tea with Torani syrups. We drink a lot of tea around our house (mainly green) especially during the summer. Since current temps are in the 105 - 107 range our tea pitcher is rarely empty.

Flavors tonight have ranged from black cherry vanilla to mango and even the more tame raspberry. Everything was going well, Maggie and I were relaxing after having had shower and bath time. I was finally sipping a tall, cool, glass of black cherry vanilla flavored tea courtesy of my creative and wonderful son, Ethan.

(If you read the last post you will not be surprised by the night’s events)

Until the crash - which sounded like an explosion…

*feet running down the hall*

“Ok, Kate,” I said to the resident informer. “How bad is it?”

“Not too bad…” she said, clearly doubting her own assessment.

“Not too bad, hmm? What is broken?” I asked, silently praying that it was just a pyrex pie dish, a plate, a bowl, and please while I am at it NOT my favorite Starbuck’s mug!!!

“Uh, well, just a bottle of soy sauce.”

So, that’s the smell. Wonderful.

“What about the glass?”

“Oh, there’s A LOT of glass… but Ethan’s cleaning it up.”

Happy, damn doodle, the king of concussions and multiple sutures is on the job.

“Ok, Kate, keep the baby in here and I’ll go help Ethan.”

“Ok.” Kate says in that my-job-here-is-done tone. There should be a super-hero named the informer… her job would be to fly around and just make people aware of situations they wish they’d never heard of.

Apparently while either putting syrup bottles up or taking them down (does it really matter at this point?) a renegade bottle of soy sauce fell from the shelf and landed on the tile counter. Landed is definitely sugar-coating it. The soy sauce struck the counter with maximum force, the cap blew off and landed in the sink in a couple of pieces, the rest of the bottle was on the counter, under the counter, on the stove, and all over the floor. The contents of the bottle was puddled on the counter, stove, floor, dripping down the cabinets, stove, and wall (nearly 4 feet away from ground zero).

“I’ve got this, Mom.” Ethan says.

“Uh-huh, well, it’s going to take more than just you to handle this, kid.”

“I’m really sorry, I swear it was accident.”

“Not a problem, E… let’s just get it cleaned up.” By that time I was craving sushi and egg rolls… can’t imagine why.

“Wow, that thing freaking well exploded!” He said, showing me the cap. “Not that it’s cool that it exploded or anything, but the cap ended up IN THE SINK! Uh… not that that is a good thing.”

“Hey, Mom… I had some water boiling you should have seen the flame when the soy sauce hit it.”

“Uh huh…” I said as I went off to get my trusty Swiffer - the wet jet would be necessary for this job. I was all the way to the laundry room before his last comment dawned on me…

Considering the cleanup journey I was about to embark on (Gilligan got of EASY) I just filed that under my “Things I Don’t Want To Know Any More About” category.

From the damage and length of time it took to clean it all up (put my Swiffer Wetjet to GOOD use tonight) I’m thinking the US Military should be researching Soy Sauce Bombs - because that Kikkoman’s got one messy product on their hands.

I still don’t know why anyone would need to boil water when it’s over 100 outside… and, quite frankly, I don’t WANT to know.

Related Tags: explosions, soy sauce, italian sodas, iced tea, flavored teas, broken glass, kitchen, messes, clean up

When Ethan was fifteen months old, we had our first trip to the
emergency room. I had left him with a family member for an
evening out, don’t think that the guilt doesn’t flare up every
now and then even to this day.

As I left him that night, I had a horrible feeling. I have since learned
to go on my “mother’s instinct” and it has never failed me. At the time
this was my first foray into motherhood and so I vacillated between
staying and going. Being a young mother I was quickly dismissed as
having “new mom anxiety” and sent on my way.

Later that evening as I heard my name being paged, I knew it was
my baby and that it was bad news. His babysitter had allowed him
to climb up onto a chair where he promptly fell off and hit the
corner of a china hutch on the way down. The goose egg that
resulted was the largest I have seen to date. Not only did he
look like something out of the elephant man, but what should have
been a rounded lump protruding from his head rapidly turned into
a doughnut.

Arriving at the hospital my son was classified as “yellow” which,
while usually considered a cheerful color, is actually just one
step below critical on the hospitals chart of “good news.” The
term “skull fracture” was mentioned and a concussion was the
least of the concerns.

After a number of x-rays and several frantic, nail biting hours,
the final diagnosis was a moderate concussion. Ethan would
recover and live to visit the emergency room again.

Two years later Ethan was playing with a friend’s dog. The dog
was older and couldn’t see very well. At some point (and I was
watching the whole thing) the dog tripped over Ethan sending him
flying face first into a floor vent. Back to the emergency room.
Ethan’s eyebrow was split in half, he required several stitches
and again, had a mild concussion. But, he was quite the little
trooper.

Two years later, Ethan fell down while roller-blading and broke
his right arm. He spent 6 weeks in a lovely cast.

Time passed with only the occasional jammed finger, bruise, and
skinned knee. He made it through two seasons of little league,
amazingly without injury. In sixth grade Ethan began playing
tag football at school. After severely jamming two of his
fingers, his father and I decided that one more injury would end
his elementary school football career, permanently.

Three months later, Ethan began to complain about his elbow. It
was swollen and sore. Later we found out that the initial injury
happened in November (this was January) and that he didn’t tell
us because he was afraid we would make him stop playing. Off to
the pediatric orthopedic specialist we went.

This time, Ethan ended up in a brace that he had to wear for
several weeks. He had severe inflammation around his elbow and
permanent restricted range of motion. He cannot straighten his
arm out completely or bend it towards his shoulder all the way.
Granted it is just a few degrees off, but it is still a
permanent affliction. Truth be told, there are very few, if any,
normal day-to-day activities where you are required to
straighten your arm 100% and the same goes for bending it
towards your shoulder. Ethan, thankfully, had not disabled
himself.

The doctor informed us that Ethan should not play contact sports
of any kind, especially football and wrestling. This, of course,
was just fine by us, because if you haven’t guessed by now,
Ethan is a bit accident-prone and not the most gifted kid where
coordination is concerned.

Last summer we took a weekend trip to the beach. Ethan saw some
older kids skim-boarding and absolutely had to try it. I bought
him a skim board and within ten minutes he had fallen and
dislocated his finger.

Ethan has two younger sisters. The oldest, Kate, is ten. Kate
has never had an accident that has sent us to the emergency
room. In fact, it is a rare occasion that Kate even has the
normal bumps, skinned knees, and bruises for a kid her age.

Which can only lead me to believe that this is a gender related problem. Boys will be boys… or as I like to think of it, boys will be accidents waiting to happen. I swear I am sending Ethan to AA… accidents anonymous…

“My name is Ethan, and it’s been almost 1 year since my last accident.”

I was trying to get Maggie to settle down for the night, I put her into my bed (where she usually starts out until she falls asleep) and gave her a bottle. She immediately became very interested in Emeril Live on TV. Not long after I noticed that every time he would add something to a bowl she would clap and say, “Yeah!” as if she were cheering for him.

My son ran over and hopped on the bed and began cheering for Emeril as well. Then Maggie began to make these very funny hand gestures and talk to Ethan in a very stern gibberish. It was hilarious because Ethan began to talk back to her in the same sort of way.

Maggie has been doing this all day long and it cracks everybody up. She sounds very serious as if she is really saying something very important and all the while making these conversational hand gestures. It just slays me!

Earlier today I was chasing her around the house and she was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes. She kept running and hiding behind my husband’s legs and I would say, “Maggie, I see you!!” and she would laugh and tug on my husband’s shorts and say, “Da Da!! Da Da!!! **gibberish** (then pointing to me) MA MA!! MAMA!!!!” as if she were telling on me. Then she would laugh hysterically.

It looked a little like this:

is a pic of Maggie on the deck of the cabin when we were in Pismo last weekend.

Yes, I know, this isn’t a very thought provoking post. I even know there are people out there who actually think these types of post are a complete waste of time. But, heck, I never claimed to be thought provoking - I only claim to be the mother of 3 great but strange kids - this just about lives up to that.

Well, my son has become a blogging addict. I wanted him to start blogging because I felt that it would keep his writing skills up during the summer. He loves blog surfing now and has been posting like a mad man. He even had me help him rework his blog yesterday… stop by and visit!

I love coffee… couldn’t live without it and I don’t care what diet I am on… I won’t give it up, although, I do drink it now with sugar-free syrups or sweeteners.

You Are an Espresso

At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energetic At your worst, you are: anxious and high strung You drink coffee when: anytime you’re not sleeping Your caffeine addiction level: high

Hate to say it - but this is definitely me.

My favorite Starbuck’s order is - Venti Cafe Americano over ice with sugar-free vanilla and heavy cream.

For a special treat - Caramel Machiato with extra caramel!

There really are too many reasons to list, none of which are related to the sounds of Blue Hawaii by Elvis coming from my son’s bedroom.

Over the last few weeks I’ve done more laundry than usual, I’ve packed the entire family to go on two different trips (the kids to the east coast, my husband and I to dogsit at my mom’s). Then I did laundry and packed the entire family, again, to go to the beach for 4 days. Anyone traveling with a child under the age of 2 knows the amount of stuff (plus the stuff to manage the “what-if” scenarios) you have to pack just to accommodate the smallest person in the family.

This was supposed to be a family vacation… I guess my name didn’t make the membership list. My husband spent the weekend fishing, I believe I mentioned that before. When he wasn’t fishing, I’m not sure where he was or what he was doing… he wasn’t doing it with the kids or I.

We rented a cabin, which meant that there were dishes to do and a kitchen to clean as well as some minor cooking to do. Sounds like a vacation, doesn’t it? Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all bad, I did do some shopping… that was fun.

I’ve heard of people taking “working vacations” as if it were a choice. Funny how moms don’t get that option, every vacation is a working vacation. ;o)

I love my kids, I love my husband - I love them enough to know when it’s time for me to get a break from them. The last time I was away from my kids and husband (for all of 48 hours) was three years ago. Since then, I have been pregnant and given birth to our third child who is now 18 months old. So not only have I not gotten a break, 9 months out of the last three years I also SHARED a BODY with one of my children. How is THAT for devotion? ;o)

My mom and I are going to attempt to schedule a girl’s weekend in Vegas - soon. This, of course, is dependent upon my husband cooperating… you see, we can squish and make arrangements if it means he gets to spend hours on a pier fishing his brains out… when it comes to making arrangements to spend time with his kids (whom he is away from most of the time because of the hours he works) well, that’s a different story all together.

Even the best of marriages is not without conflict and inequities, I’m afraid.

I’ve spent the morning (and most of yesterday) uploading and reworking the Home-Based-Parents website. It was quite a chore considering that I believe my web design skills to be less than tip-top. After much headache and hassle I’m happy with the results. The website, this blog, and my shop all coordinate, which - as I’m sure most women will understand - is nice to have the three coordinating finally.

I guess that sounded pretty sexist… but let’s face it, most of the time women prefer to have things looking neat and coordinated. Men, for the most part, could care less.

Isn’t this a funny tightrope we women are walking these days? I once wrote an article talking about how my mom’s generation was responsible for breaking the glass ceiling and my grandmother’s generation was focused on having the cleanest windows on the block. I’ll avoid the lengthy history lesson - both of those descriptions are very general, I admit.

My point is that my generation, I believe, is stuck in the middle. I read somewhere (wish I could quote it, I stink at that) that my generation would be far less likely to divorce than my parent’s generation. Growing up, everyone I knew had parents who had divorced, many were dealing with step-parents. By the time I was 12, my parents had split and I was joining the ranks of latch-key kids whose moms worked full-time (sometimes more than 1 job) to make up for the lack of income.

Truth is, many of us were so traumatized by our parents’ divorces and being forced to deal with step-parents who felt the need to impose themselves where they weren’t welcome and probably didn’t belong to begin with, that somewhere along the line we decided that come hell or high water we wouldn’t do the same to our children.

Part of what brought my husband and I together were our childhoods that were remarkably similar. We shared the same background of “Ozzie and Harriet” until we hit our early teens. Our families went to church, our moms stayed home with us, and eventually our parents hit a wall and couldn’t hold it together any longer. No point in dredging up the past, but suffice it to say that the shrapnel from the bomb that was our parent’s marriages spread far and wide leaving thinly disguised carnage in their wakes. We watched our lives implode, explode and sat dumbfounded as they were put back together in a freak, frankenstein-ish way.

These similar experiences allowed my husband and I to build a family-life based on very similar, personal, equally-shared values. It is what allowed us to build a foundation that has gotten us through very tough times and helped us to appreciate the good times even more.

Still there are times when I feel the pull - so much is expected from women these days. We’re supposed to be strong, educated, ambitious, every bit as competent as our male counterparts, most of the times even more so, quick on our feet, light in our clothes, amazing moms, Betty Crockers, interior designers, family managers, financial planners, faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound…

;o)

You get my point.

Yet, our natural instinct (for those of us with 1/2 a brain and an ounce of sanity) is that our children take top priority above it all…

Forget that, it’s not a tightrope we walk at all. We’re trapped in an unending, hellish, game of twister… that’s what it is.

I realized that I complained a bit in one of my last posts about our vacation. I said that my husband didn’t spend very much time with us - which was true. But, I have to admit, I apparently wasn’t far from his thoughts.

When he showed up late for dinner on Sunday (having been out fishing for several hours) he came in with a beautiful, red, long-stemmed rose for me. He said that he bought me the rose before he was trouble. LOL

Our relationship is going through a transitional period in a sense. Our youngest child is 18 months old (Maggie). The other two are 10 and 13. That’s a fairly big age gap and it’s fair to say that in between the 10 year old and the baby we had gotten well past the sleepless nights. We were able to sleep in on the weekends, we had a well-rounded relationship and were happy on all fronts. We went out occasionally and enjoyed quiet dinners alone from time to time.

The baby changed all that. We had tried for over five years to have another child and had resigned ourselves to the fact that it just wasn’t meant to be. We went away for a romantic anniversary weekend one year and haven’t gone away since. ;o)

We are still very close, we talk to each other several times during the day, we are affectionate. But, between the baby and his new job - we’re both a little fried and still trying to adjust to the new schedule, work load, and of course, this is all during the time that we have a little munchkin running circles about the house (usually yelling “bweeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”).

Spending this much time with someone, for so many years, you start to recognize the mountains and valleys. The longer you are together, the more the valleys just don’t seem as rough.

Still, we haven’t had much alone time lately. We’re both tired and worn out. The great thing is that going for this long without alone time seems to make us miss each other more. This morning my husband told me that he had a dream about me last night… we were having alone time. ;o) LOL - which is funny because I had a similar dream myself.

There’s just something nice about being married to your soulmate and knowing that if you go for weeks without alone time - the other person is missing you as much as you are missing them.

Well, what do you think?

It took quite a bit of trial and error until I got it just the way I wanted it. I’m really pleased with the new look of the blog. In fact, I won my first and only battle of the blogs at Blog Explosion!

Had a great 4th of July… ate way to much.

Yesterday we hung out at Pismo Beach. We went to Mo’s which has the best barbecue on the planet. Ate way too many french fries… totally blew my low-carb thing over the weekend and I am trying to get back with the program - without much success, I might add.

My husband spent much of his vacation fishing and, in my opinion, not enough time with us. I’m hoping that the next trip we take - he’ll be able to balance a bit more between family and play. Which, stopped being the same thing about the time he got this new job. Isn’t that interesting?

Still, I can’t complain too much about darling hubby, mainly because I do know that he has busted his rump for the last year to get his license and do this job efficiently and successfully. That doesn’t mean that I am not occasionally annoyed at the lack of attention on his part.

We had a pretty good weekend, if nothing else it was great just to get away. As it is almost every summer about the time we hit the 4th of July I am already starting to look forward to fall and winter. Those really are my favorite months…

But, the 4th of July… we had a nice time, we watched the fireworks from a distance had hamburgers, hot dogs, and clam chowder from Splash! What is it about vacations that make you think of food… constantly?