Last Post

This is my last post of the year!! Tomorrow starts a New Year. It's a time for new beginnings and resolutions. What are my resolutions? I have several this year. Probably to make up for all the years that I've never had any. Then again, I ask myself "Why must it be a new year for me to decide to change or do something new?" Well this just happens to be a convient time for, as it is for alot of other people. So what are they?

1) Start being more deligent about my blogging.
Both on here and for my professional blog (kaylavanpatten.blogspot.com). I regret stopping doing both of them. I look back on all the things I've wrote or things that I've taken pictures of and I'm sad that I missed doing that for a while.

2) Start "home schooling" Emily.
Yes, she's way too young for homeschool persay, however I feel that I need to give her more structure. I need to be able to sit her down and say "Okay, Emily, it's school time" and teach her. I know that she will be so happy with it. She strives to learn more every day and I think that will help occupy some of her brain and maybe keep her out of mischief...a little. Since I blogged on her last she has learned so many new things that I'm going to have to keep adding them as they come up. But some of them are the letters "mommy E", "baby e", "m", "i", she has some trouble with "l" and doesn't quite have "y". She can also legitematly draw an "e" most of the time. So I feel that if I can channel her brain into learning her letters that she will be able to read before preschool...okay not really but she will definatly be ready by the time she turns 3.

3) More structure in myself.
My days go by all too fast. It could be the late hours that I wake up and the lack of structure in my daughter that I chase 24/7 that has done this too me, but I feel that if I can do this it will greatly improve my days.

4) Improve myself.
I want to start going to the gym and getting healthy. and I want to start eating healthier...Again, these also will reflect in Emily. When the dogs start barking Emily runs to the door and says "pizza?" That has to be a bad sign. She also calls Dr. Pepper "peppa dee". She has recently started both of these things and it's a bit of a red flag, the fact that she thinks the dog barking always means pizza and that she can easily distinguish Dr. Pepper from any other dring actually makes me kind of sad.

and I think with all of these things I will be able to do number 5

5) Become a better house wife and wife in general.
I want to pick up some wifely hobbies like: gardening, sewing, and baking. All three things I'm pretty sure that I'm cursed at doing, but I think with the TIME to be able to practice that I can at least give a valient effort to improve on them.

6) But 100% into building my business
Photography is something that I LOVE. Not only is it a passion and fun hobby, it is also a dream come true to be given such an amazing opportunity to build my on something that I love so much!

So with all of that said...I want to wish everyone a very Happy New Year in my last post of 2009.

THEE worst day ever!!

After Emily turned 2, I found myself having much less time to get on the computer or to take pictures. It also didn't help that every time I took a picture of Emily doing something bad, she would end up thinking it's cute because mommy would take a picture of her instead of getting her in trouble. That, and my wonderful husband complaining about the numerous hours I was on facebook, farmtown, and blogspot led me to giving up most those things so I would stop hearing the threats of divorce. But after much complaining (mainly from my dad who used to read this religiously) and the guilt trips of people not getting to see my daughter on a daily basis I planned on making a New Years resolution to be more dedicated to taking pictures of Emily and putting them on here. I also thought it was sad that in Emilys "year 2" photo album there where over 2000 pictures and in the first 4 months of her "year 3" album there are only a few hundred. So with all of that said...I'm starting this again and what better way to start it than on THEE worst day ever?

"THEE" worst day ever does seem a bit extreme because I'm sure that there will be other times in my life that I will feel even worse than today. However, these last 24 hours have been the most rediculous 24 hours I have endured in a while.

So lets start off with what I think to be the cause of it all...Winston. Some of you who read this know Winston. He is Aaron's brother's pet bull dog. Winston has hated me from day one. It could have something to do with me chasing him down and yelling at him for chasing cars from the day he came home to the Van Pattens. To some of you that may sound harsh, but you see, Aaron's brothers previous pet bulldog also did the same thing, which eventually led to him using up his 9 lives (yes like a cat) and not making it though the last car he came in contact with, which happened to be Aaron. SO to avoid this tragedy again, me and a few other friends and family will slam on their breaks and chase Winston in hopes of him not chasing us anymore. And for the most part this theory has worked. He might not like me but he also doesn't chase my car. A few days ago Aaron's cousin ran over Winston...actually ran over him and he got up and ran off, after finding and checking him out his bulky build held true to him and he was a little scraped up but fine. So yesterday I was driving up and here comes Winston running towards me before I could completely slam on my breaks he ran into my tire. "REALLY?!" were the first words out of my mouth. I opened up the door to see him standing a few yards from the car in the grass giving me this long ominous look like he was putting some sort of doggy curse on me before he ran off, again perfectly fine. I climbed back into my car and sat there for a second thinking "that was creepy" and drove to my house. THAT is when it all began.

Last night, after giving Emily the stuff we forgot was in her stocking (give us a break, we are new to this whole Christmas w/ kids thing!) she was super excited to have gotten some chapstick, that's she's pretty much obsessed with, and some nail polish, also favorite. Aaron gave her the nail polish and hid the chapstick for the time being. Well somewhere in the 5 minutes that she had the nail polish, she developed the ability to hold with one hand and twist a lid with another hand...I'm sure you know where this is going. After being quite for more than 2 minutes, which is rare, I set out on an Emily hunt and THIS is what I found:

I'm sure everyone reading this will think it's cute but think of it from the mom who has to clean it all up's point of view. I also failed to get a picture of my pretty white comforter, now painted pretty with bright purple smudges. *sigh*

After a small fit about not getting the polish back to play with Aaron gave her, her chapstick, which is only fair, right? RIGHT?! Well mommy failed to think of the color of it:

That pretty much rounded out my night. I scrubbed my daughter clean 2 times that day and with her pretty mad at me I put her to bed.

I woke up this morning way to late and Emily defiantly woke up on the wrong side of the bed with me. I got dressed and gave her breakfast. After spilling food all down the front of her I decided to put her in the bath. I started to run the water and for some reason it wouldn't drain. I pushed back the bubbles and saw :

Just kidding I didn't take a picture to save all of you weak stomached people from losing there lunch. What I saw in the drain was a little nose with whiskers, bucked teeth and little arms curled up in the fetal position...yes, it was a mouse...DEAD in my drain. I'm not 100% sure how it got there or why it was dead in my bathtub but it was in there. So my definition of "house wife" and "man of the house" might be wrong but it seems to me that this is where my job ends and Aaron's job begins. So I call Aaron and tell him that he must come home from work right now and come get this thing OUT. Apparently coming home to get a mouse out of my tub doesn't rank high on the emergency list. So I weighed my options: 1) suck up my manhood and get the mouse out or 2) leave it in there until Aaron gets home. With my knowledge of mice and how bad they smell after being dead for less than a day, I tried, with one final valiant effort, I called Aaron's brother Matt to save me, but he didn't answer.

So, I sucked it up and grabbed the little guy by his slimy little tail and, without trying to look at it I tossed it in the toilet. Somewhere in there I made the mistake of looking and lost it. After tossing in the mouse, I also lost my breakfast. I normally consider myself to have a strong stomach but apparently wet dead mice rank high on my gag reflex.

With my gag reflex still on high alert I walked out of the bathroom only to see that my cat (who I swear is allergic to humans) sneeze up the most disgusting slimy booger and with it still dangling from her nose, tactfully sling it around and into her mouth and eat it. I ALMOST lost it again.

It was about this time that I started contemplating going back to bed. I pulled out my hazmat suit and thoroughly bleached my bathtub I then put Emily in for her bath and called my friend Jessie to tell her about my horrendous morning. She laughed at me like the good friend that she is and told me it's bound to get better...it HAS to get better than that.

Somewhere along the line I forgot about my daughters "hold with one hand and be able to twist with the other hand" reflex that she so recently learned the night before. This is what my proud daughter came out of the bathroom looking like:

This is my long lasting 24-hour lipstick...ALL OVER Emily's face

After scrubbing the entire first layer of skin off of her face, I quickly learned that this is some

good makeup! It does NOT come off!! With my daughter screaming bloody murder at me, I tried

one last thing to get it off. I tried the age ol' trick they use with hair dye. Just put more on it and

it will come right off. To my surprise it came right off!! Emily still wasn't very happy with my excessive

scrubbing but eventually I got her all cleaned up.

After, I quickly ran over to the in-laws to check on my laundry to come back and find Emily

who had stripped down to nothing, dumped over my mop bucket water and was going "ming ming"

down my hall way. This included her running and sliding in the water then splashing her arms and

legs and squealing. Yes, it sounds cute now, but at the time it wasn't. Here was my freshly mopped

floor, and my freshly cleaned daughter covered in dirty mop water. So Emily gets to go back into the

bath and then put down for a nap. What could possibly happen while she is asleep?

I went over to my in-laws AGAIN to check on my laundry and as I am brisky walking (which I do

when I leave Emily unattended, sleeping or not) down the stairs I catch my little pinky toe on the

ping pong top that goes on the pool table. I saw my life flash before my eyes I started to black out.

I don't really remember much but I'm sure by the pace that Aaron's siblings ran down the stairs that

I had a few choice words that with forever scar their little ears. After realizing that the pain wasn't

ending and death probably wasn't coming. I opened my eyes to make sure my toe was even still

attached, and it was...which somehow makes my pain seem less sufficient. Aaron's sister ran and

grabbed me some ice and some papertowels to clean up the mess. I hobbled back over to my house

to curl up and die. I figured I should probably take care of my toe while Emily was asleep and wouldn't

bug me, and while I was still in shock and couldn't feel much. I thought for sure that I remembered my

mom always telling me "no, honey bactine doesn't hurt at all" so I was stoked when I found some

under my sink. So without hesitation I spray about 30 squirts on my broken and bloody toe. Now,

kids, if there are any reading this, if your mother ever tells you that bactine doesn't hurt SHE LIES!

I quickly began to feel that blacking out feeling again and braced myself on the toilet incase I went

down for the count. Again, I didn't, which makes me seem like even a bigger wussy. I cleaned it up

only to discover 1) that it wasn't broken and 2) that I had successfully "scalped" the whole top of

my poor pinky. So I clipped the rest of what dangling skin there was while the 'bactine shock' was

still in effect and flipped my toe nail back into its rightful place. Then bandaged her up.

This picture does NOT do it justice.

However, I did discover one very important thing today. The cure to any owie is a sweet Dora the Explorer bandaid and a kiss from my munchy!

P.S. Almost exactly 24 hours after I hit Winston...my bad day ended. So, you can think I'm crazy, but I'm going to have my eye on that dog.