wordless(ish) wednesday: cooking up trouble

my middle two—harrison and ava—have developed quite the love of cooking lately.

if you follow me on instagram you’ve seen some pics of my breakfast in bed, and last nights adventures in chocolate.

opa—always one to encourage a love of both cooking and reading (two subjects about which he’s passionate)—gifted my little chefs with this…

the source of many of our…err…delightful culinary adventures, shall we say?

thanks for that, opa.

and so i fight my worst type-A traits, allowing them to mash and beat and mix and stir and cook…

and i swallow my annoyance at a broken smoothie maker. it’s just a smoothie maker, after all.

and i choke down enjoy nutmeg eggs (???!??!) and lemon apples and watery “iced” coffee.

(this morning’s breakfast—two plates of eggs, pancakes, apples, oranges, french toast and a frozen waffle. all for me.)

memories, folks.

it’s all about the memories.

weekend in review

it was our first summer trip to the seashore.

a gorgeous sunday afternoon.

elliot, like her siblings before her, thoroughly enjoyed the sand and surf. marching back and forth between each (somewhat difficult for chubby little legs), fearless and excited.

the water was cold. sooooo cold.

we had to keep forcing our little fish to warm their bones.

blue lips and chattering teeth. but they kept insisting they weren’t cold.

even the littlest one—waves and surf and ocean?

no fear. she wanted OUT of daddy’s grasp.

even with a face like this…

yup. it was a perfect start to our summer.

there's crazy in them eyes.

i’ve mentioned before how…well…interesting gigi is.

the kiddo lives in her own world—i think it’s a colorful and interesting world. think lucy in the sky with diamonds meets rainman.
 
“personality?” oh yeah, she’s got it. and that’s a nice way of phrasing it.
earlier this week she told me that her imaginary friend/pet feather told her she was a nerd. it kept telling her that she was a nerd. (cue sad pouty face)

what do you even say to that?

i know i’m not the first one to pick up my phone and find it full of these…



but yesterday when i was deleting a bunch of random gigi pics i stumbled across these little never-before-seen flicks.

and after i wiped the tears from my eyes i knew i had to share.
for those of you that know her personally—this is no surprise. for those of you who’ve never met her—this is gigi at her finest.


enjoy.



the Gigi files on Vimeo.


the immediate questions that come to mind:

o1) what goes on in her brain?
and
o2) WHERE WAS I?????

the life of a stay-at-home mom and blogger

yesterday was take your daughter (child) to work day. did you participate? we ended up with a divide-and-conquer approach for our three school aged kiddos—not planned, but it worked out that way.

miss ava headed off to work with my brother. his big ole company had a full day planned for kids who came in with a family member. i got texts throughout the day saying things like “she’s impossible to spoil!” …poor 29 year old who doesn’t know how to relate to his 7 year old niece. ;) i told him he probably should have read my blog first.

harrison went to work with daddy. i think he thought it would be a day of  lazing around—playing on the computer and watching tv in the office while daddy slaved away making furniture in the shop. custom furniture building isn’t exactly child’s work (ha!). but his pop had other plans—he turned it into take your grandson to work day, and set harrison to work in the office. the blessings of a family business. ;)

meanwhile, guinevere stayed home with me. a small (and not totally accurate) taste of the life of this homemaker domestic engineer and sometimes blogger. we made sure to hit the high points: coffee to start the day, a trip to target, and laundry.

yup. that, folks, is what it’s all about.

oh—and poopy diapers. lots and lots of poopy diapers.

guinevere had to conduct an interview with the parent she spent the day with. therefore, i am pleased to present to you, in it’s entirety, my daughter’s first blog post/interview.

The Life of a Stay-At-Home Mom and Blogger

by Guinevere Kline

  April 26 is bring your child to work day. So, I decided to go to work with my mom, a stay-at-home mom and blogger. This may not seem exactly like a job, but it is. It is a very hard job too. I stayed home with her all day and did everything with her like she does on a normal day. To help you understand her life, I prepared a little interview with her. Be ready to learn how a stay-at-home mom and blogger does exactly what she does.

1. What is the name of your blog and what do you “blog” about?

my blog is called “googiemomma”. i write about day to day life with kids, my sewing projects, sometimes recipes, sometimes photography…anything and everything i think would be an interesting post!

2. Which of your 5 children stay home with you during the day and how old are they?

gigi (3 years old) and elliot (11 months) are with me all day.

3. What are some necessities’ you need to go through the day?

hmmm…if you’re asking what i think you’re asking, well, i NEED my coffee. i try to keep it to my morning cup, but sometimes a 2nd cup is required on tough days! also, my phone is pretty important—it’s my calendar, organizer, point and shoot camera, alarm clock, oh—and phone. and one of the biggest things i think i need as a mommy—alone time. even if it’s just 1/2 hour of quiet, i need a few minutes everyday to just breath. it makes me a better person all around.

4. What does your basic day consist of?

well, after i get up and get the older three off to school, i usually come home and nurse the baby and feed everyone breakfast. i usually throw in a load of laundry, and after that it depends—sewing, cleaning, shopping, errand running, post writing…it can be any or all of these things! i try to keep a list going of daily goals and long term goals. i fill in with taking care of the little girls, playing with them, cooking…there’s always something that needs doing!

5. What are some the hardest things to do?

if you mean physically—chore wise i absolutely DETEST putting away the laundry. i don’t mind washing, sorting, folding…but putting it away is the pits.

mentally—well, i hate having to yell! haha! really though, when things get out of hand and i feel overwhelmed (which can happen a lot and very easily) i have a hard time getting myself on top of it all. i kind of want to just curl up and go to sleep.

it’s also hard to make sure i feel like all my kiddos are getting individual attention. five kids is a lot. sometimes it feels like one or another can get lost in the shuffle, especially when the baby and gigi are just inherently more demanding. so i try to make sure everyone gets a slice of mommy at some point ;)

6. What are some the easiest thing to do?

well, vacuuming is super easy now that we have rosie the roomba! ;) but some of the best “easy” things are sitting around on the couch playing and laughing with the family. i love those times—when we have nowhere to be and nothing scheduled. it’s hard to carve out the time, but when we do i love sitting around together.

7. Do you ever get to relax at home, or are you always busy doing something?

haha! i think i just answered that! yes, i do get to relax at home. but there is always something that i could be busy doing somewhere. so i have to make the conscious choice to just embrace the moment and let something slide.

8. Was there anything or anyone who made you decide to become a blogger?

well, i’ve been sewing for years. since i’m pretty much self-taught, i started turning to the internet when there was a certain skill i wanted to learn about. there i found tons of awesome blogs—women just like me who were sewing and sharing what they’d done. it looked like fun! i also wanted to start an online shop for the baby name signs i made. so i started the blog and shop together. the shop is shut down right now—i just don’t have time at the moment. but the blog is going strong!

9. Do you enjoy your “job”?

not really.

ha! kidding! i LOVE it! although, i don’t appreciate the use of quotation marks around the word job. >:~( as a little girl i always knew there were three things that called to me: art, writing and motherhood. my children made me a mother, and my blog allows me to write, and my sewing and photography let me express my artistic side. what’s not to love about that?

10. Is there anything else you think people should know about being a mom/blogger?

not that i can think of! you asked good questions!

  Shannon is the best mom in the whole world [and best blogger.] I enjoyed spending the day with my mom and seeing exactly what she does while I’m at school all day. I even hope to do the same thing as her someday.

****************************************

so, did any of you take your kiddos to work yesterday? how’d it go?

i’m just a singer in a rock ‘n roll band

today is the first day in five days that i’ve put on real clothes.
real clothes being: a t-shirt, jeans, slippers and bra.

we here at the googiehaus are at the tail end of Puke Fest ‘12-- an event of such unsurpassed enormity that it will for all time go down in the annals of history.
all five of my children succumbed to the siren song of the stomach flu, providing virtually no end to the fun times (and cleaning) of the last five days.

if you are of a delicate constitution i suggest you just close your browser down right now. better yet, click over to some cute kitty pictures or rainbowsandpuppies.com (which i just made up so i don’t know if it exists but probably it does but don’t blame me if you actually go there and it doesn’t contain either rainbows OR puppies ifyaknowwhatimsayin).
come back tomorrow when things are back to the normal crafty/sewing thing and not quite so…body-fluidy.

little man came down with it first: friday night at bedtime punctuated by his whines of “my bellllllly hurts.” we were a touch surprised—seeing as how his typical m.o. is sunday night belly pains—you know--the infamous Sunday Night Sickness.
but the second time he came out his lips were noticeably grayer, and he was sent back to bed with The Bucket.
when the puking began i went into cleaning overdrive. i donned disposable latex gloves and followed The Boy to the bathroom—alternating soothing whispers and back rubs with spritzes of lysol.

we have FIVE children. i knew the havoc one stomach flu could reek, and i was determined to outwit it. i even dug out chux pads we were sent home with from the hospital after five’s birth. i layered them—over his pillow, the bathroom floor. thank you, nurses.

by sunday morning i optimistically thought i had won the battle. there had been no episodes since saturday morning, and if the boy wasn’t exactly 100%, he was undeniably better.

naivety, thy name is shannon.

the two older girls started within minutes of each other on sunday night. i sat across from guinevere at the table and literally watched her lips lose their color.
three kids sick with stomach bugs triggered something in my brain. a protective cleaning mechanism that made me start scrubbing and sanitizing. the “sanitize” setting on our washing machine has never been used so much.
so when ava only made it as far as the dining room before losing her cookies (and no, it wasn’t cookies—it was beef stew and how’s THAT for a mental image?) i couldn’t even hear the googiedaddy yelling for me over the sound of my vacuuming.
it was one of those times where you stand there and think i truly, truly don’t even know where to begin. i grabbed some rags and waded in, repeating my mantra over and over: this isn’t puke, someone spilled soup. this isn’t puke, someone spilled soup.

by monday morning it was a very, very quiet house. blobs of children draped lifelessly on the towel and sheet-covered sofa. i hoped for the best—maybe this was it. maybe the two little girls would be spared.

maybe the bucket of bleach water i had at the ready was actually helping.

maybe i’m a dreamer.

when gigi finally got sick i wasn’t surprised. what did surprise me was that my overdramatic three year old, who screams for virtually every bump and scrap she gets, was totally an awesome puker. sat in front of the tv with her bowl, perfect aim every time, not a tear.

there’s a silver lining for ya.

and when elliot started turning the most interesting shade of green on monday night all we could do was sigh and pull out some more towels.

i’ll hand it to him: jeremy tried hard to take the brunt of elliot’s sickness. he cradled her most of monday night while she squirmed and burped and gagged. but i told him early on—she’s saving it for me. fact.

when it finally came it was just as i suspected it would be: she was laying on top of me in bed. the towel we had so carefully kept at the ready nowhere to be found. she simply lifted her head, looked me in the eyes, and released.

there’s no way of sparing you the gory details. i will tell you this: it splashed. i had to shower. when i did, it was everywhere from between and under my boobs to the back of my neck, my hair and my back. i had to strip my entire bed—pillows and all.
i wasn’t covered in puke—i was AWASH IN VOMITUS.

which, it occurred to me as i scrubbed my hair during my impromptu midnight shower, would be an awesome name for a rock band.

probably a grunge band (giggle giggle snort).

so i think we’re done. googiedaddy and i have been queasy and shaky since the start of it all. but how much of that is due to us getting sick vs. just the fact that we’re cleaning up OTHER PEOPLE’S PUKE ten times a day is hard to differentiate.

this afternoon i brushed my teeth, flattened my hair, and dressed myself. i’m hopeful that these clothes will remain untarnished—and not be more in a long line of disgusting jammies i peel off myself and toss right into the washer without thinking about exactly why the hems of my pants are so wet.

in the meantime, while i’m in this state of wary watchful optimism, i’ll get to work on my first CD.
working title: Scrubbing the Porcelain Throne.

cupcake demolition

so what do you do when you have a party and there’s a bunch of cupcakes left over and you conveniently happen to have a 6 month old just sitting there?

well that’s just obvious.

you strip her down and plop a cupcake in front of her (and grab your camera, of course.)

cause with your first baby you’re all rice cereal ONLY for a month, then applesauce ONLY for a week, then carrots ONLY for a week, and maybe in a year we’ll try something crazy like peachs and blueberries together! gasp!
and with your fifth baby you’re all rice cereal, applesauce, CHOCOLATE CAKE YAY!

i love how she was like “hmm, this is new…”

“what in the WORLD???”

she was not having it.

i tried helping her out. forcing a little taste.

but give it some time…

and she’ll figure it out…

and once she gets wind of what’s happening here…

all. bets. are. off. i love how you can see the dawning realization here. her taste buds just went WHAT?!?!?!?

you had me at hello.

oh it was worth every crumb-sweeping second.

especially when you get a freshly washed towel-hair baby at the end.

and i wasn't even chasing waterfalls.

i might just go with it.
you know, call myself "left eye"...throw a smudge of whatever that inky stuff football players use under it.

of course, with freakishly dilated pupils like these...



i may not need the addition of wacky makeup.

here's the thing--in the words of my friend, we're just going to write off 2011. i got my baby ell out of it, but beyond that, it's kinda been a lousy year. i'm actually tired of telling people about my health problems. i never thought i'd be that person.

so i figure maybe if i say it real real fast it's better somehow?
okay, ready--read this like that micromachines guy used to talk on the commercial:

you can't see it in this picture, but just on the edge of the black part of my eye is a small white dot thingy.
apparently sometimes when you're sitting on the couch nursing your baby and your 2 year old gets excited about the paper that came in the mail that has sesame street characters on it and waves it at you and hits your eyeball, then you can get a corneal abrasion, which is essentially a paper cut on your eyeball and while gross and annoying, you've had one before and really it isn't a huge deal, until the next day when it REALLY HURTS so you go to the eye doctor and she kind of scoffs at you all "it's not very big. i don't know why you're in so much pain. i guess everyone's pain tolerance is different" and you're all "uh, i've given birth naturally four and a half times i'm no pain wimp and i'll cut you girlfriend and then we'll see who's in pain" and then by the next morning when you can't even open your eye because the sun feels like it's shooting flaming arrows directly into your brain and you're nursing your baby and whimpering a little and you're thinking you may need to go to the ER, but the other eye doctor tells you to just come in first thing so you do (holding your hands over your eyes the entire way there like an unsparkly vampire lady because DEAR LORD THE SUN. IT BURNS.) and he all nonchalantly tells your abrasion has become infected and developed a corneal ulcer, which has been described as the equivalent of an abcess or open sore in your eye.
and then you kind of throw up in your mouth a little because, well, that's just gross.

awesome, right?

gigi's little fancy hand manuever with the paper has cost us $140 in doctor's visits co-pays, $100 in prescriptions, and--had it been about 1/8 of an inch to the left--almost cost me my sight.

my 4x a day routine

the ulcer (gag) seems to finally be healing. but because it's healing it's creating a scar. i have a blurry spot on the edge of my vision. the doctor has me on steroid drops to try and control and minimize scarring and prevent permanent vision loss.

i think i'm just going to have super STRONG VISION.

then i really will need my awesome cyclops glasses permanently.

seriously not how i wanted to debut my new hair cut.

this is why road trips are only fun when you're young. and stupid. and childless.

waiting for something?

like some posts about my "picnic" themed dresses promised to begin today?

uh, yeah. about that...

we took advantage of the long weekend to make a (long overdue) trip out to visit family. yesterday's drive home, while a fairly long one, was begun in time to get us home before dinner, tucked like bugs in our beds before resuming school and work again today.

instead we pulled into the driveway at 1:30 am, about 15 hours after we began what was supposed to be a 7 hour drive.

now, i can't lie. we did stop and do some shopping. but that was in the blissful beginning part of the trip--well before the torrential downpours, horrendous traffic, and major accidents that turned the turnpike into a parking lot and we sat in one spot for over 3 hours.

that was before i knew i'd be jogging across and along the side of the highway, looking for a spot to hop the fence and get over to the wendy's before i peed my pants right there in full view of the truckers and vacationers also sitting in their cars.

and the spot i finally chose? well, i got caught in the wire fence.

couldn't move.

so i stood there debating my options--none of which were pretty as i'm sure you can well imagine. the googiedaddy could hardly leave a car full of kiddos parked in the left hand lane of the pennsylvania turnpike to come rescue his stranded wife.

and there wasn't a whole lot of people offering to run to the aid of the crazy lady straddling the fence (is that a wet spot i see on her butt? lock the doors dear. she has a wild look in her eyes.)

really, i should have gone with my first idea--which was to knock on the door of the motor home parked next to us and throw myself at their mercy.

 i ended up tearing my pants to free myself.

desperation is a funny thing. desperation, and the feeling that your bladder is about to burst in a big gooey explosion.

this was also before i held my two-year old on the side of the road as the "mommy potty" because she'd already peed her pants once and i had no more blankets to sop up her car seat with (and i'd learned my lesson once about trying to hop the fence, so its the roadside for everyone under 30).

or held a different blanket up as a guard for another daughter to relieve herself right there between mile markers 100 and 100.2 (you may not want to walk there).

or just gave up completely and laughed hysterically when little man just stood in the open van door and let fly.

the boy got some serious distance.

(seriously, you really don't want to walk there. the googie family left their...uhh..mark.)

it was not our proudest moment.

this was also well before gigi completely lost it and went crazy bonkers, screaming for the last two hours of the trip that her arm was going "over dere" and her seatbelt was TOOO TIIIIGHT.

i really don't know what that first thing means. but it was clearly quite traumatic.

it was rough.

so i'll just get back to you tomorrow on that whole "picnic" thang, k?

in the meantime, in case you missed it~~here's the post that was up over at bugaboo, mr, mini & me last week! it's kind of the intro to this...

.............................................................................................

summer is ending, and i’ll certainly miss the fine picnic weather.

okay, who am i kidding. i hate heat. i hate summer. i hate bugs.

but really, who doesn’t love a picnic?? (besides mom…who has to pack it and haul it and clean up after it…grumble grumble) it certainly looks like we have the makings of a fine one here…

watermelon, lemonade, cherries, cupcakes!

you know what they say though…

--life imitates art!

 

or is that art imitates life?

either way…

it seems our “picnic” has sprung to life! 

a picnic blanket…

with a square neck and peter pan collar? that’s a first.

but all picnic blankets have something in common…

the ants go marching one by one!

hey wait! one of those ants is not like the others!

well, you know what i say: if life is a bowl of cherries…

make a dress to match!

you know, preferably a bubble dress with an asymetrical collar.

thirsty? how about some lemonade—or rather, lemon-mod!

keyholes running down the front, coordinating ruched headband…

 

bow in the back…

 

and big dark sunglasses are a must! jackie o would approve, don’t you think?

and no picnic is complete without the ultimate picnic food…

but one of these watermelons is not like the other!

plump and juicy—you may get splashed if you squeeze it too hard!

and the other one grows in gardens ;o)

yuck yuck snort…i’m so funny.

pintucks in the front, and matching sunhat and diaper cover for miss melon here.

unfortunately, it seems we picked a rather sour melon…

oh well. it’s all good, because we have cupcakes for dessert!

 

one zipper tie—his cupcakey finest!

how many cupcakes do you think i had to bribe him with to make him wear a cupcake tie? ;o)

i’ll be sharing more photos and details of the projects i’ve done here in the next few days.
now i just have to find someone to help me clean up this mess…

guys?…guys????