Rory is a FIVE YEAR OLD!! How did that happen?!

I am in complete disbelief that my little baby girl turned five years old yesterday.

It seems like it was yesterday that I was making this blog post, about her turning 4! (lots of cute baby pics and flashbacks in there)

It seems like just yesterday, when I was holding her weebaby newbornness in my arms and kissing her sweet smelling head- while she screamed , and refused to sleep , and my body ached , and my mind was lost to lack of sleep. ..hmm. Maybe that delirium is part of the reason five years seems like so resent?

I just can't believe it. SO much so , I watched this old video of her last night and teared up:
She was maybe two in that video- why does she look soo tiny!?!- Wasn't that just recently, I could swear I just uploaded that .
My baby got sooo big over night!!!

In fact, the morning of her birthday I swear she grew overnight- she woke up and just looked bigger. I measured her and sure enough she had grown a bit, surely not overnight- but it feels that way.

I am going to go ahead and skip to telling you about her birthday party. The rest of our week was filled with stressful planning for it ;no one cares to read that-

We planned a tea party at Lissy's house. That is all she wanted. She even made a point to tell people she didn't neeeed presents (because I told her if she got a lot of new things we would need to get rid of other toys to make room) - she JUST wanted people to come to tea. Lissy took the tea party idea and ran with a whole Mad Hatter , Alice in wonderland style tea party.
Ri made stuffed mushrooms and Rory dressed up- we gave her one toy while she waited
The shopping cart she wanted...
Momo called and she told her all about it.

The local noisy Sandhill Cranes came to wish Rory a Happy Birthday, they even came in a group of five


Val came to follow us over.. she brought Damian and Seth all dressed up for tea !



We got a WAY later start than planned. I had planned on going over to help Lissy decorate for the party. I was soo stressed on the way over.
I realized the party was set for 4pm(tea time) and then got very worried the only people who were coming were there, or following us. (Val ,and hopefully Ri's mom )
Ri's sisters were blowing us off.

I would not be able to get anything ready. AND Lissy made it out like she wouldn't be able to move the table and decorate it before I got there...

I knew she had her hands full with Nico. I spent Friday there helping put it together ,but it was far from out and ready... I was sad to think we would be rushing to put things out as our only guest came.

Instead, I walked in to see this:
Lissy is so mean! or sweet! or something I almost cried!

The kids played for a bit with the exercise balls in the den, while I set out clues .and we all snacked a bit- Lissy and Mom made tea and cream .
Cake -


Lissy made the cake , I helped put icing on the mushroom- which was actually a cinnabun we found in just the right shape- and she - made a the Mad Hatter's hat cake, and icing- soo cute.


RI and I had scoured stores Thursday (while Lissy watched Rory) to find sugar cubes (PUBLIX- dude. we also found the food coloring and candles we needed there.)
, for what ever reason , sugar cubes made tea even cooler.
Ri's mom poured the tea for the kids -Damian and Seth played along like perfect gentlemen .

Though , Damian was not really in love with the tea. He did think the sugar cubes cool.


Seth loved the tea, he even thanked Lynn (Ri's mom ) for talking him in to adding cream. "It made it really good." - sweetest.thing.ever.

All the adults really seemed to love the tea, too.
The eatme cookies that I made from scratch were a pretty big hit ,too. I made a batch of molasses, and a batch of chocolate chip- I had leftovers even,and I was worried there wouldn't be enough.
even Nico stuffed his face with them
Mom made little tea sized sandwiches , and brought a veggie platter, and crackers and cheeses, and a bean dip- and the cheetos Rory wanted. Ri made yummy stuffed mushrooms and Parmesan crunchies. I even used the calligraphy set Ri's mom got me for xmas to make cute little eat me tags next to everything.

See the Cheshire Cat? If you can believe it Lissy drew that and painted it( I helped paint a little) Friday- We used it to play "pin the smile on the Cheshire cat". Rory got the closest - Damian was scared to be blindfolded.

I think Lissy is going to frame it and keep it.

Rory did NOT expect presents- she was overjoyed that she got some, she couldn't wait to open them.
Seth and Damian where soo sweet helping her open them.


1st a new porcelain doll from mom "Yay! a new medium sized doll!"

This vid is stuck loading but if it works it is the cutest thing. Tell me your heart doesn't melt when she kisses Damian on the cheek for helping her: ---
(um... no , it didn't work-- I will see what I can do and edit it in, curse you stupid wiped laptop)-------


The 'message' was a handmade card from Val-soo pretty!

Ri's mom got her the new littlest petshop car... her face says it all.




Seth & Damian where soo sweet , I cannot thank Val enough for coming and getting them all dressed up, and everything.

Rory had soo much fun. The kids looked for the doormouse we hid in a tea cup ,and put rhyming clues leading through the house and back to- Seth thought it was a bit too easy, but he read the clues and showed Rory and Damian where they would be.
Damian was more interested in blowing the colored bubbles than anything-
tho I do hope Jen(his mom) isn't pissed he got bubble colors all over his dress clothes.
I had to get a pic of Seth in his awesome hat.
and I have to get as many pics of Nico-na as possible.

Everyone started to leave , we stuck around a bit helping clean up.. while Rory said she just wanted to " watch a bit more tv"
Lissy has Cable.. and Nico thinks he is big watching it with Rory.
He also thinks Rory is big enough to hold him.

We waited around thinking Mel (ri's older sis) would show, and had cake
Rory said she was a bit sad Ben couldn't see her cake, she knows he loves the Mad Hatter.
The homemade icing has started to run- still cute though
I love my kid. I love that a simple tea with her Grammys and a few friends was JUST what she wanted.
. Rory wanted the cinnabun part not the cake lol.

Mel DID show up after we got home. Ri was pretty angry with her.
She got Rory a really cute my little pony playset. The kids sat and played with Rory and had some cake- SO Rory was pretty happy
Though, she didn't let Eli play with the girly toys at first.
He did end up playing the girliest game of dolls ,eventually

Rory has told everyone how awesome her party was. Even me, as we played tea party again today.

....and some pics from our park trip the other day- just because

It has been a long long stressful week leading up to Rory's birthday.


I am soo happy Rory had a great birthday.
Even though it means she is so big.

Ri is off work for the next two weeks- except maybe a few days at Cowboys.
Woo hoo!


PEACE AND TOFU CHICKEN GREASE,
BABYHELLFIRE

It started with salad...

and it all went downhill from there.

Oh. Hi there.I know, I borrowed Lissy's netbook with the intention of keeping up with my blog and I haven't really done so ...

I have an excuse. I swear ,
It wasn't me just goofing around on Facebook,or various message boards,
It wasn't that I was just watching tv shows on the interwebs( Ok. Maybe I don't swear ;) )

No.
It was that damn salad. I blame the salad.

Last Wednesday, (er. the one before that)As we were getting ready for Rory's dentist appt, I slacked on dinner- Ri stopped to pick us up a pizza on his way home. He didn't like the prices at the 1st place he went so he just ordered a eggplant parm that came with a salad, and got pizza at a different place.

The pizza was awesome. The overprice eggplant parm was ok.
Rory wouldn't touch a salad with premixed in dressing.That was wise of her.
By the time I finished gorging myself on our greasy take out dinner, I knew something was wrong.

Food poisoning.

Ri woke up to it in the middle of the night. Rory was spared. I woke up even before the, ridiculously early , reminder we had to take the long ride to Rory's dentist, feeling a new sort of sick, on top of my dehydrated stomach ill-
I thought my throat was closing up, I could barely breathe. I took a benadryl and started getting ready. Ri and Rory have been sort of stuffy,mostly attributed to the yucky weather and stale central heating. I hoped I was just suffering that.

Rory did wonderful at her appt as she always does. She DOES have a cavity. Making the apt for that was the start of the reminder ,that Ri and I were both sick... we don't play well together when we are sick at the same time. Whiny and Mopey, does not go well with Needy and Pathetic.. neither of us ends up with patience or compassion for the other, and the "who is sicker" game starts. Plus, I feared with my new found disgust for anything edible, neither of us would have the ability to take care of a perfectly healthy spirited Rory.
It seems, I won the "who is sicker" competition , that I had no intention of entering... adding to it some deep depression over not getting along with my hubby. I spent the day in bed. Fevers ,body aches, stuffy nose.. and sad.

Damn that salad.
Ri felt a bit better and took Rory shopping, and let me rest.
My immune system being down, I guess a cold/flu thought it would be a good time to kick me while I was down.

Friday, Rory woke up with a slight fever. She said she felt "wobbly headed" and her legs hurt... when I told her that part of her leg was called her calf , she looked at me like I grew another head." WHY?"
Of course ,it is completely illogical that her legs would be called baby cows.

I spent the day trying to take care of Rory - in between , the sort of , sinus pressure that reeeallly convinced me my head could explode like a giant snot bubble , if I got up too quickly.
Neither of us felt too bad. I thought we may even be getting better. I took a long shower and deep cleaned my hair ,and Rory was back to bouncing on the walls by the end of the night.
(my hair looks great ,but you can SEE how swollen our sinus' are)

That Saturday RI was off work, but Rory and I were still wallowing in yucky... I had this all over body ache and fatigue that made me hateful- In my head, I was in one of those productive cleaning moods, My body was uncooperative :(.
Ri decided to call around for someone to hang out with and get him out of the house-he ended up riding around town with his buddy helping him run errands ,while I napped on the couch - and sweet Rory LET ME , playing quietly next to me.
I probably slept more Thursday , Friday and Saturday than I have in MONTHS.I am normally unaware of that sort of sleep time.

Rory was amazing , even cleaning up the livingroom.
I woke up every morning just wanting to shake off the sickness.
I am forever thankful to these little toys, for giving Rory something soo entertaining to do and giving me the ability to relax.

..and now my days are all running together, I was feeling much better on Monday- but I couldn't talk.
Now, I go through moments of being really bad at communicating- I can't find the words I need to express the feeling I have.. I was in that mode BEFORE I even lost my voice, so if it could get worse,it did. Plus, while Rory was being cute,funny and sweet- she has also been very testing of the rules-THIS was not the time for me to lose my ability to communicate.
Rory and I cleaned up , made some YUMMY molasses cookies and gave the stinky cat a bath.

Lissy called and convinced me to come over and help her out Tuesday, we had some grand plan of painting the house, but with two kids running around we mostly just hung out. It helped me immensely to get out of the house
- Rory was a little bit of a brat,being very needy and perhaps a bit jealous of the attention her baby cuz gets.Lissy even put up with my new 90 yr chainsmoker's sounding voice and chatted with me all day.I forgot my memory card and I didn't get any pics though :( .

Here are some Lissy took:

Rick James was HILARIOUS - wanting attention so she could make Lissy's other cat jealous.
She even cuddled up with Rory for a long time. It was soo cute. Daminion (their other cat) did not like that and crawled right up and bit her neck for it.
Oooo and found out Ben and Ileana had their baby- the pics of her are sooo gorgeous, and they all look soo happy! I can't wait to meet her. I am so happy for them :)

Ri took us to wal-mart when he picked us up.. I was wearing his Rastawookie shirt and a head wrap..(remember I had planned to paint with Lissy) - lol ,I was waiting on someone to take my picture and put it on peopleofwalmart.com .
Rory was insanely overtired,and hungry- She threw a big tantrum. Ugh. I had to buy a new coffee maker,yes.again. catfood,dogfood, and dinner...
We were both pretty tense by the time we left.At least we found throwback pepsi and Dr.pepper with REAL SUGAR. Might have made it all worth it, except for the even HUGER tantrum Rory had at dinner- when I lost my temper and resumed my inability to communicate anything.

Wednesday Rory and I had a really nice, but lazy day. She had been craving strawberry smoothie

The strawberries we got are seriously the size of my hand!

Thursday , the body aches and sinus pressure had left. I felt soo much better. I even got up and sprayed off the porch, something Sweets ate did not agree with him- ewwwwwww.

There was some nasty storm warning- tornado watch and all,but before it came we snuck out to the park and got a few minutes of play in
..the shirt speaks truth.

This one is mine though. She has been my buttbaby dog lately.



...and then I got sicker.
I started coughing.
I was better. I wasn't aching so much. It isn't fair.. Damn salad.
I had rested and was starting to feel like I could catch up.. but instead the coughing kept me up all night and day.. add to it the storm started knocking the oranges off of the trees shaking the whole house all night long.

I already felt like the cold /food poisoning stole days away from me. and Now I fear I have an infection. This whole month is flying past ,I am a sicky zombie. I don't feel like can get it together and do any of the things I want...
and Rory's birthday is next week.

Lissy and I have been trying to loosely plan a Madhatter style Tea party. Rory says she wants a tea party..but with this ick I haven't been able to get anything together.
Hopefully , I can spend time at her house this week and figure it out.
We also need to figure out what we will do while Ri is on vacation. Nalu's is going to be closed for the beginning of Feb.

Ri ordered Pizza for lunch that we munched on all day. He has a free trial of mobileTV on his phone, and we let Rory watch some cartoons- he is half considering buying the plan because it isn't much, would be good for news.But he is also still aching for a Iphone.
My friend Tata called and had long interesting convos with me despite my endless coughing and raspy voice. Harvey&Hether stopped in to use the internet .
It probably could have been a good night if not for the fevers coming back, and the cough.

I spent the rest of the night on the couch unable to do anything but sit straight upright and read books ( I borrowed some from Lissy&Bo) until my eyes got so heavy , so very heavy, head falling forward, -COUGH- that I would wake myself up coughing.
It was miserable.

Friday, on no sleep,I made enough bean and barely soup for us to lazily grub on.
Mom brought me some medicine and gatorade . I finally slept a whole of four hours this morning and am starting to feel a little better.

The dog is mad at me for not sleeping in bed the past couple of nights. I told you - total butt baby, lately she has been sleeping on my legs on the corner of the bed.
I messed up her sleep ,and she has whined at me all day about it.

Hopefully, now that my voice is coming back I can work on communicating better... and not being such a jerk to everyone. Maybe the dog will even forgive me.

I know this post is sort of all over the place,I know I am leaving stuff out, its bloggy bloggy and there aren't many pictures.I'm sorry, Blame the salad.

PEACE & TOFU CHICKEN GREASE,
BABYHELLFIRE

I haz tiny internets !

Surprise! It's me- on the thing, in the show- doing a blog... from the internets.
woohoo.

Yes.
Ri did finally pry the broken mouse laptop out of my white knuckled addicted fists,
and NO, dell didn't already send it back.
Ha.
ha
ha.

Lissy let me borrow the little netbook they got with their plan.
It's cute.tiny ,and sloooow and the mouse is almost as tricky as the two mouse deal i was dealing with before sending ours into repair.
but I am online feeding my television and net addiction as I hang laundry and clean.
woot.


Ri thought the lack of internet would leave me deep cleaning the house.
wait..
take a minute to soak that in,
me.cleaning.the.house...out of boredom.
ha.
no.
In fact, I found it really hard to get up and started to even do such things with the cold and no radio. I didn't even realize I had no radio in the house until it hit me I couldn't turn it to pandora(internet radio) before I did dishes :O
Then.. when the mood struck me to cook something, I realized I had no recipes. -gasp. I'll have to wing it! That isn't something that I do, that is something that Rian does!

but. that was later in the weekend, before I sent out for back up to keep me busy.
Friday ,we rode with mom to Nico's ped appt. It was so cold ,I could almost swear I could see teeny tiny snow flurries as I put the car seat in moms car.

lunch at subway on the way, ped visit and some shopping
= Nico vids & pics










(this pic is trippy)


Lissy spoiled Rory at the dollartree buying her a bunch of candy and a balloon. Rory was thrilled.

Mom took Lissy and Nico home.. and we probably would have went home too- but Ri forgot I lost my house keys and double locked every door and window.
So we went to moms, ate some dinner and hung out waiting on Ri to pick us up.
They were sleeeppppyy..


Saturday we DID wake up to a thin layer of: "OMIGOD You have to be kidding me it doesn't do THAT in Florida" Snow ! We woke up too late to actually see it snow, but it was pretty neat.
That lack of internet thing did seem to get Ri to clean the house.He also planned a veggieloaf dinner for us, but needed a few ingredients..
Which had us stuck at the grocery store a lot longer than planned, Ri couldn't walk past the sign on the blooddrive bus about needing O blood without donating. :) .. the idea of him giving blood did freak Rory out a bit though. Well, they took soo long even I got a bit worried.

Val stopped in to have Ri try and fix her little netbook but she needs and aircard or something.


Harvey , Hether and Miranda came over for dinner-
Rory was soo excited.
Harvey and Hether even tried veggieloaf and liked it.
The real mashed potatoes were the big hit though.
We drank rum and coke,watched the simpsons, and played some of that boardgame we got for Xmas while the girls played..
and I gave them candy bracelets and lipstick
They played a little too rough - throwing toys-
but I am amazed how well they play together, they both seem so used to playing alone and a bit bossy and demanding, yet somehow they play wonderfully together.

Ri had to work the next morn...
but I.
well.I drank way way way too much. All the sudden. yuck.
I think Hether did too.Harvey had taken them home by the time I got out of the shower.

Needless to say, my Sunday was very very lazy. So much for Ri's hope of me cleaning. It was sort of nice to have a lazy day drinking mad quantities of water and hanging out inside with Rory.

Monday JJ brought me Lissy little netbook. oo yayyyy internets.
I can hold it in one hand..
and it only takes me four hours to make it through an episode of Fringe- a really crappy one-.
beggars can't be choosers.. but I will be more than thrilled to have my BFF back with my photoshop and open multiple windows and play music.Hurry dell.hurry.
Ri compared it to Lissy bringing me some pain killers while I am suffering heroin withdrawl.lol
I'm still sweating and wetting myself, but I feel better about it.yeah.

Tomorrow it looks like we are spending Ri's day off in Gainsville for Rory's overpriced dental cleaning appt. .. and today Ri gets off work early , I really SHOULD clean the house.
I wonder how long it will take that new scrubs episode to buffer so I can watch it while I clean the kitchen?

Well
PEACE AND TOFU CHICKEN GREASE,
BABYHELLFIRE

A birthday party,clowning around, and a goodbye note to my laptop

Hey folks!!

I'm gonna blog. Because I should be doing dishes- but this blistery gross cold is NO fun to do dishes in. I don't know how people who live in actual cold climates get anything done in this.
All I have wanted to do the last few days is sleep and eat.

I did manage to vacuum the floor today finally...
without vacuum bags, I rigged it to blow the tree needles out the front door with the hose.LOL.

Saturday was Seth's BIG 10 birthday party.
soo crazy.

His trampoline arrived on New Years Eve- Val expected it AFTER Seth's birthday. So she was really thrilled it came earlier- and trying to figure out a way to keep it hidden from him, and get it set up to surprise him..
I imagine it is hard to surprise a 10 yr old..
they have big ears
He did see and read it on the box.. but he was still really thrilled.

Saturday was insanely cold. I bundled Rory up loads- but even the cold cold weather couldn't keep the kids off of the trampoline- even the little ones

I was surprised how well the little kids kept up with the bigger kids, and how careful they were. We had planned on keeping them separate but Brad &Seth are soo great with the little kids- and Rory and Damian are such rough and tumble kids they didn't need to be separated much..
Though I did need to to remind Rory not to actually punch when wrestling with the boys... though that is a hard thing to tell a girl when she is keeping up with 10 yr olds.
Damian was grumpy though, he wanted the entire trampoline to himself.

Nova just wanted in it more than Jen would let her.
She is sucha cutie
time for presents
I had hoped Ri could find some sort of inflatable toy that would be cool on the trampoline-but he had no luck and got him a cool spygear dart gun thing instead
10 yr olds are hard to shop for.. it is hard to find TOYS that aren't too babyish.
We almost gave him money..
everyone else gave him money though , so I ended up glad we got him something.

Seth told me new year he was going to have a football cake- I guess that makes the party extra awesome
I think the balloons worked for the kids tho

I swear there was no cake in that icecream cake.
Rory LOVED it though- she was the only one to eat the vanilla half of her slice before the chocolate lol

Val's dad remembered my name! twice. LOL


Since Rory and Damian broke up on new years she decided she loved another boy at Seth's party named Micheal

they were soo cute.. but I had to keep telling them to play and NO KISSING please.
...but then Rory started using the kissing as a wrestling move. She figured out she could pin any of the boys by trying to kiss them.
trouble.
hilarious.
but trouble

They let Rog&Alicia's dog up..but Pepe got jealous
despite the fact that Pepe did not want to be up there at all

it was sooo cold we didn't stay long. Before it even got dark the temp dropped more and we brought the kids in to get ready to leave.

Rory was NOT ready to leave- she was really sad. Micheal tried to comfort her



and Nova even gave her a hug and kiss.
Rory begged to go to Jen's house and play(because she has never been)- and Val offered to take her one day. That did cheer her up a bit
We waved bye and ran to the house.

I made some butter beans-but Ri went ahead and ordered pizza so we could eat.
I am telling you. this cold makes my body want to eat everything in sight.

Val said she got sicker after the party and couldn't take us to Jen's sunday- it was soo nasty out I had already explained we would probably be spending the day indoors ,anyway.


The net is killing me.
The mouse on the laptop died on XMAS -shorted out and got stuck clicking everything
.. we thought it might just be more of windows7 trying to destroy the dell from the inside out.. but newyears day it all started working properly,except the mouse. Ri chatted with dell tech support.
They sent us a coffin box- to send our NEW (used) laptop back in for over a week until they fix it and send it back.
I morn the loss of my internets and we haven't even sent it out yet.
bad enough the mouse quit working.
we plugged the laser mouse into the usb port - which worked great,until the laser went POOF.
So, here I sit editing this post moving the mouse with the mouse pad and clicking with the mouse.
ahhhhh!


Rory and I did play dress up..
and i discovered dress up in our world has become "dress up and photoshop this"

I was clowning around



Rory was being a water fairy.She has decided they are her favorite sort of fairy.

- I am supposed to add a spiderweb and dewdrop in there...



Like this:

"You've heard of a dewdrop, we call this a DONTDROP- that's water fairy humor"

I couldn't do much PS magic before my double mouse system drove me insane..

Needless to say I haven't done as much online.
Just watch The GreenWing and read FB.
Mostly I just pumped music through the house and pretended I was cleaning.
Talked to mom for awhile.
Sort of worried about her, she just seems soo down. I wish there was something I could do for everyone right now.. the world seems to harsh and cold this winter.I'm allright for once, which almost makes me want to save everyone.

Even Rory has been super disobediant and left me grumpy- between the mouse and the neverending pile of chores and breaking things it is hard not to feel overwhelmed...
it is tooo much to add thirty million toys and crafts all going at once on my livingroom floor.
I am going to blame hormones for me being a nag.
Seems half the people I know just had a baby- and,as if in competition I have a early visit from a very violent aunt... and I think she brought some illness with her. bitch.

Well damn... between this and the minimal cleaning I just spent the day uploading a billion pics to myspace.
...yes,I must admit to Ri googlecrome IS a pretty fast browser.

Rory just fell asleep- I am not torn between waking her up and keeping her busy until at least nine
or taking a nap
either way
PEACE AND TOFU CHICKEN GREASE,
BABYHELLFIRE