The Best Broccoli of Your Life!

I couldn't think of a good headline for this post so I thought, why not start it with a bit about broccoli?  I was on the website pinterest which seems to be the latest trendy thing.  It's a site that lets you "pin" things you find on other websites that interest you and groups them into categories under your name.  Someone can follow you on the website and see all of the different things that interest you.  Or, in the case of me who has yet to pin anything, just how boring you are.  But I digress.  So I was on there the other day looking at recipes and this recipe for broccoli caught my eye since it was called "The Best Broccoli of Your Life."  You know what?  It was true!  I made it last night and oh my word, it was unbelievable.  The write-up on the recipe cracked me up too because in one part, the blog author wrote that he didn't wash the broccoli because he remembered a famous French chef saying: "The heat kills all the germs," he said in his famous French accent. "If bacteria could survive that oven, it deserves to kill me."  And no, I didn't wash the broccoli either.

Monday morning found us at Amaya Papaya.  With school back in session, things were a lot slower and Calleigh was the oldest there by far.  Thankfully a little girl not too much younger showed up near the end but then it just makes it all the harder to leave.  While we were there, a little boy kept trying to take one of Aubree's baby dolls (which, if you know her, you know she's very possessive of them).  He kept trying to snatch them away throwing Aubree into a fit.  Apparently the mother was not watching because no one came to rectify the situation which thus puts you in the difficult position of figuring out if you should reprimand the boy yourself or loudly ask "Would the mother of this boy please identify herself?"  I think the mom finally noticed before I had to take some drastic measures.

Tuesday we went to story time at the library.  The age for this story time is 2- and 3-year olds.  Calleigh is certainly allowed to be there but I've had to tell her to quiet down when they ask questions so that the younger kids have a chance to answer.  One of the routines is where the teacher has a "magic" bag and the kids have to say what color it is.  She'll then pull a bag out of that bag and you guess the color and so on and so forth.  With Calleigh quiet, Aubree had the change to answer and she was the first to yell (very loudly I might add) each of the colors.  All the right colors I might add.  I don't even think I realized she knew her colors until my mother was here for Brady's birth and told me she noticed Aubree knew her colors.  I know I didn't intentionally try and teach them to her but she learned them nonetheless.

Later in the day, the big activity was making cupcakes.  Grandma had hurt her back the day before and the first thing that Calleigh said is that we should make cupcakes to help her feel better.  Of course, I can't help but wonder if somewhere in the recesses of her mind she was thinking "If we make cupcakes for Grandma, there are sure to be some leftover for us."  Obviously, we didn't just make one cupcake so if that was indeed in her mind, it was absolutely true.

In case you can't tell from Aubree's face, they were chocolate.

Also later on Tuesday, we got a visit from our good friend, Eric Badillo (or, Eric Armidillo as Calleigh calls him) who is in town with his parents.  Calleigh just latches on to whoever comes over here so in no time at all, she was bouncing all over him and generally tormenting him.  We had a nice visit with him and somehow he and I started talking about high school, going through my old year book, and discussing who we still keep in touch with from back then.  It was a lovely trip down memory lane....until Eric showed Duncan a picture of me from the year book and Duncan nearly had a heart attack.  Okay, it wasn't that bad. Besides, don't we all hate how we looked back in high school?

On Wednesday, my friend Karri came over for lunch.  It's been really nice because over the last week I've gotten to see friends I haven't seen in awhile.  Karri just recently became a grandmother which quite frankly, freaks me out to say.  I mean, I consider Karri to be in my age group (albeit a little older) and to say she's now a grandmother is VERY strange, to say the least.  Her grandson, Eddy, was born on June 22 so he's only a few weeks younger than Brady.  Anyway, it was so nice to see her and catch up on things.  The visit didn't start off to well though.  I was feeding Brady right before she arrived and I told the girls they needed to clean up.  Before they could finish, Karri arrived and Aubree majorly freaked out because she hadn't finished cleaning up.  That set her off crying for like a good 10 minutes.  How strange considering that they leave messes out wherever they go and it never seems to bother them.

Yesterday we went to a dermatology appointment for me.  I have lots of moles everywhere and considering that my mother had a melanoma removed from her face some years back, I like to get checked over every now and then.  I actually try to go every year but I found out I hadn't been there since 2008.  Fortunately everything checked out perfectly.  From there, I decided to make a stop at the "Magic" playground.  Big mistake.  No sooner had we gotten out of the car than Calleigh declared that she had to go to the bathroom which she then followed up by saying she already peed a little in her undies.  There's a bathroom not too far away and despite Calleigh cries and protests that she didn't have to go after all, we started walking over.  Halfway over, Aubree takes off her diaper because she said it was falling off.  I realize I don't have any more diapers for her with me.  Oops.  Once we get into the bathroom, Calleigh starts majorly freaking out that she doesn't want to go.  I finally get her to sit on the toilet, all the while she's crying.  Next thing I know, the screams get louder and I look into to see the pee going all over her underwear, leg, and floor.  Sometimes that happens when she doesn't sit back far enough on toilet and this was one such time.  I look around the bathroom and realize it's one of those "green" bathrooms that has no paper towels, just a blower.  Well, this was really going to come back and bite them in the butt.  Unfortunately, I have no backup clothes, blankets or anything in my bag to clean up with and to top it all off, I have Brady strapped to my chest in the Bjorn.   The only thing I had were wipes so I got Brady out, buckled him into the changing table and managed to wipe off Calleigh legs.  The measly wipes did little good for the pee all on the floor and with no paper towels, I had no choice but to just leave it there.  I suppose I could have left a note but I didn't have a writing utensil.  So yes, public bathrooms can be a little nasty.  In the end, we had no choice but walk away.  With now two bare bottomed girls, there would be no playground that day.

Last night was the night of the broccoli (we actually did pizza night on Wednesday night over at Ron & Elaine's).  I also tried out a new meatball recipe.  I thought they were pretty good, not great but good, but get this.  Calleigh ate SEVEN meatballs.  Seriously, I don't think she's ever eaten more than two and even up until last month, she didn't even like meatballs.  I have no idea where that came from.  But actually, both of their appetites seem to be really good right now for whatever reason.  Speaking of food, I found this new fruit snack, Buddy Fruit Bites, that they're both going crazy over, especially Calleigh.  We've had the Buddy Fruit purees (kind of like those applesauce packets) which they also like but I like the bites so much better because they take longer to eat.  I was really happy to find these because they're just pure fruit, no added sugar or anything.  The standard fruit bites have lots of sugar added.  Of course, you pay for the fruit and these packets aren't cheap.  Nonetheless, Calleigh loves them so much, I may have to splurge.  I had first gotten some at the Publix at Hammock Beach and they quickly disappeared.  On Sunday, when we got back, Duncan took the girls while I went to Publix and I ended up getting 12 more packets (they were buy 3, get 1 free).  I didn't tell Calleigh I had gotten them and so I was highly anticipating her reaction when she opened the pantry door on Monday and spotted them.  Monday afternoon rolled around and I saw her heading for the pantry. Sure enough, a few seconds later, she comes running into the living room, "Mommy!  Mommy! There are like a million of those fruit packets in there!"  She was so excited.  I told her I didn't think there were quite that many so she downgraded it to only 500 packets.

This morning I was glad to be back out yard sale-ing.  And get this.  I think it might have only been in the high 80's today so we weren't quite so hot as usual.  Boy, was I ever glad to flip that calendar to September.  I am ready to kiss the summer goodbye.  I had low expectations for the yard sales today because I didn't find too much on Craigslist but I was pleasantly surprised.  I ended up getting lots of boys clothes for $0.50 at two different places and most of it was Gymboree and Gap.  I was a very happy camper.  Aubree got yet another baby doll (also for $.50) to add to her dozens of others.  Is it wrong of me to take a bunch of them to Goodwill when she isn't looking?

On the sleeping front, yeah, I'm not getting nearly as much of it as I would like.  It sure would be nice one of these days to have an uninterrupted night of sleep but I don't see that happening any time soon.  It seems like one of the girls is always waking up either because they had an accident or need a drink (Calleigh) or they lost their binky (Aubree).  In most cases, I take care of the issue and get back to bed in about 2 minutes but it's messing up my sleep.  Brady is consistently waking up somewhere between about 3:30 and 4:45 and I'm bringing him down to his swing in the hopes he'll go quickly back to sleep.  Sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't.  Wednesday night I ended up having to rock him to sleep in the chair downstairs.  I feel like I would normally try to be a little tougher with him but it's really not his fault that he still has this darn cough.  I don't know how much I can blame on the cough but as long as he still has it going on (which, at this point, I'm about to concede that it may be the rest of his life), I'm going to just go with the flow.

I forgot to mention this last week, and men I'm about to mention breasts, but I had some sort of problem going on with either a plugged duct or the start of mastitis.  My right breast started getting really sore on Wednesday night (last week).  It felt like it was engorged or something but then I realized that wasn't it.  I had mastitis with Calleigh and I was thinking maybe I was getting a repeat.  I knew if I started getting the shivers and a temp, that would be it.  Well, as the evening wore on, it started getting more and more painful.  I took some Motrin and finally got to sleep.  In the morning I saw the telltale red streak on it so I knew something was officially up.  Thankfully I didn't get the flu like symptoms that accompany mastitis so I think I dodged that bullet and it was just a plugged duct instead.  A few days later it was gone and so ends that tale.. hopefully.

Well, that's it from here for this week.  I hope everyone has a Happy Sabbath and a great holiday weekend.