Shout Out to Stain Removal! Whoop-Whoop!

If I were one of the friends on Friends, I'd be Monica. Why? Her love affair with cleaning products. (Side note: I don't love cleaning like Monica does. But trying new cleaning products? Yowza!!) I LURVE trying new cleaning products, especially if they work well. Or trying new methods for cleaning - that's a pretty good time, too. Yeah, I'm cool like that. My cleaning bible is How The Queen Cleans Everything. If you don't have a copy, get one. It has saved my life (or maybe just stained clothing/upholstery/whatever) more times that I can count.

I'm not sure what I was thinking, but we had fresh cherries with dinner tonight. No surprise, Spencer got cherry juice all over his shirt. And of course it was one of his favorite shirts. Cherry stains are notorious, right? It was one of those stains that just looks permanent. I checked the Queen, and tried a few of her tricks, but the stain only faded a little. (I promise, 9 times out of 10 the Queen works!) I bought a box of 20 Mule Team Borax a couple of weeks ago at Wal-Mart but hadn't really had a chance to put it to the test. (I'd used it as a laundry booster and it did make my whites whiter and cleaned Spencer's underpants pretty well, but that wasn't too exciting for me.) Figuring I had nothing to lose, I soaked the shirt for 30 minutes in a sink of cold water and half a cup of borax.

I'm kicking myself for not taking before and after pictures. The stains are totally gone! And so are a few older stains that I had never been able to get out. Shout out to Borax!! I almost wish I had another stain to work on. Oh wait - I have two boys. The wait won't be too long.

On a totally different and unrelated note, Josh figured out how to correctly hold corn on the cob tonight. For some reason I found it completely adorable and had to take a few shots.


Song currently in my head: Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? by Culture Club

p.s. If you create an account with Project Playlist, you can click the link and hear the song in my head. (And then have it in your head, too!)

A Dinner of Many Colors

Tonight we had so much fresh produce that needed to be eaten that I decided we'd just have it all for dinner. The menu included:

steamed green beans with Gouda white sauce
mini purple potatoes roasted in olive oil, kosher salt, and garlic
sliced red & yellow tomatoes topped with salt, pepper, a basil leaf, and mozzarella & broiled
yellow watermelon
red watermelon
cantaloupe
cinnamon sugar crazy bread (adapted from Christy's faboo recipe)

It was YUMMY! The crazy bread wasn't exactly part of the theme, but I knew I'd have an uprising if I didn't have some sort of fresh bread. (Not having meat in a meal makes fresh bread mandatory in our home.)

The things I forgot (Doh!) to include for dinner:

Indiana sweet corn
blueberry strawberry lemonade
summer squash

Oh well. There's always tomorrow night.


On the same note, we had grilled white pizza the other night. (Recipe courtesy of Andrea.) I had never made it before, which is crazy because we are nothing if not a pizza-experimenting family. It was super yummy! I love how crispy the crust was. (One got a little too crispy - Cajun, really. But that's why you have kids - so someone will eat the burned stuff.) There will definitely be more grilled pizza for us in the future.

Coincidentally, the song in my head today is: Cheese, Peas, Pickles, & Bananas

(It's off of this awesome kid's CD I have: The Bottle Let Me Down: Songs for Bumpy Wagon Rides. It's been playing in our car constantly for the past three weeks.)

Get In My Head

So Lance and I have a little game that we play almost every night while we get into bed. (No, not that kind of game - this is not that kind of blog!) It's called 'What Random Song Is In Maren's Head Tonight?'

You play it like this:

Me (getting settled into bed and getting my scriptures out): Guess what song I have in my head tonight.
Lance (turning to the chapter we finished at last night): *sigh* What song?
Me: No, guess!
Lance: *silence*
Me: *I start singing the song that is in my head*
Lance: *silence*
Me: I think I got it in my head ___________ *fill in the details of how it got there*
Lance then looks at me like I'm a crazy woman. But no worries, because he knew what he was getting into when he married me. Invariably the song gets stuck in his head, too. Hey, marriage is all about sharing, give and take, etc.

As you can see, I almost always have some random song in my head. I can't get rid of 'em. It's like constantly living in a musical. I've learned to live with and embrace it; sing along and sometimes even dance in public. Now I'm forcing it on the rest of you. I was thinking that it would be fun to end my blogs from now on with whatever song is in my head right then. Maybe I'll even explain how that song got there.

Because why should Lance have all the fun?

Current Song: Harry Potter Theme Song.

p.s. Stacey & Heather N., this is way more fun than the microwave or phone book game!

Pesky Baby.

Last night was a long night. LONG NIGHT. Josh woke up around 2:30am, crying and just plain sad. He would stop crying as long as I held him, but would scream and cry if I put him back in his crib. And this wasn't the normal "I just don't want to go to bed" cry. I could tell something was wrong. (Moms just know, right? You know when something's not quite right with your baby!) I think it was a combo of teething, his ear gumminess/infection, and just plain orneriness - a lethal Joshie brew!

So I held and held and held him. We dozed in the chair. But then he started getting upset being held in the chair, and still would not go back into his crib. He was so loud that I was afraid he would wake Spencer and Lance up. (Although I will admit I was more worried about Spencer's rest than Lance's!) So by 3:30am I settled us both into the day bed that we have in his room. (Side note: I inherited the daybed from my dad last year, and it's great! It's so nice to have an extra bed in the house when guests come or when you have a c-section and can't get into your real bed for a month. I'd take a picture of it but 1. I don't like the bedspread that's on it now and 2. Josh is in bed and there's NO WAY I'm risking waking him up!)

Like I was saying, I decided that the only way we would both survive the night was if I could get him to sleep somehow. He was snuggled up, taking his half out of the middle, and I was balanced on the very edge of the bed. I think he played, patted my head, and drank a bottle for about another 90 minutes or so, keeping me just on the edge of real sleep. We finally both fell asleep, him sprawled out and me trying not to fall off the edge. I woke up at at 7:30am with his foot in my face.

Needless to say, it's been a long day.

Number of 2+ hour naps today: Josh - 2, Maren - 0.

Number of hours weeding and doing yard work: Josh - 0, Maren - 2

Pesky baby.

(But it's hard to stay mad at such a cutie!)

Mmmmm... grubs

This is a real conversation I had with Spencer on Tuesday. I was in the kitchen re-potting some plants.

Spencer: Mommy, I need some grubs.
Me: Grubs.
Spencer: Yes, I need grubs.
Me: What do you need grubs for?
Spencer: Because.
Me: Do you know what grubs are?
Spencer: Yes.
Me: What are they?
Spencer: I don't know.
Me: Grubs are bugs. Do you want bugs?
Spencer: But I need some grubs!
Me: What are you, a bear? Bears eat grubs. Are you a bear?
Spencer: Yes.
Me: You're a bear today? Roawwrr!
Spencer: Yes. No. I'm not a bear! I need grubs. To help you!
Me: To help me? Grubs won't help me.
Spencer: Like you. I need Spencer grubs.
Me: OH! GLOVES! You want gloves.
Spencer: Yes, grubs.
Me: Gluuvvss. Say gloves.
Spencer: Grubs.
Me: Guh-luv-ess. Guh-luv-ess.
Spencer: Glubs.
Me: Close enough.

Stroller Lust: Satisfied!

So I did it - I bought the stroller. I put it together this evening and took the boys on an inaugural walk.

Verdict: LOVE IT!!!

Josh loves that he sits up so strait - our old stroller was really hard to sit up in. The shade also rotates all the way, so you can always move it to shade the baby. Spencer lurved that he could stand or sit and continually moved from one position to the next. He was especially excited that he didn't have to sit right next to Josh, since in the jogging stroller they sit side by side and Josh has wandering hands. :)

My only complaints? 1) There's no where for me to put my stuff. (No cupholder or little bin or something.) They sell an organizer for it, but I don't really feel like forking out $25 for it. (But then again, I do have a $5 promotional certificate from Amazon. $20 might be worth it...) Or maybe I'll just sew something myself. HAHAHAHA! Like I'd ever have enough time or ambition for that. 2) Spencer kept sticking his feet out in the road while we were walking, almost tripping me if I wasn't paying attention. Not really the stroller's fault, but something I know we'll be dealing with for the next few trips.

Anywho, love the stroller. Totally recommend it.

Madsen Medical Mysteries III

Apparently in our family the month wouldn't be complete without a trip to the doctor. And this month the patient is Josh.

Joshie's eyes started getting gummy and runny a little over a week ago. I just ignored it because, unless it's truly serious, that's what I do with most weird things that happen to my kids. (Otherwise we'd be at the doctor every week!) But his eyes started getting worse and worse, and last night he woke up a couple of times, rubbing his eyes almost raw. Poor baby!

About an hour before his appointment his eyes started to look a bit better - of course! But I decided to still take him in. I'm glad I did, because apparently when their eyes get gummy like that their ears can get 'gummy', too. Luckily, we caught this in the early stages, so it hadn't had a chance yet to get too bad or painful. We got our prescription and went on our merry way. Case closed. (Hopefully!)

By the way, Josh is now 26 pounds and Spencer is 34. The gap is closing... :)