Happy Birthday to US!

Its been 30 years, and you are still cooler than me . . .when's it my turn? : )

Denver trip pics

Girls (fancy) night out!

Tonight Alaina and I got all dolled up and headed to a fashion show at a local church in town that we read about over in Mindee's blog. (See my list of a few blogs? See Mindee's name? Click there for a great blog!)

And when your daughter is 4 the only way to get all dolled up is Fancy Nancy style.

I even went and bought us some cute bobby pins with colorful hair attached. Check out Alaina's rocking curls . . . .

Oh and did you notice the spectacular bling around her neck? That's what I'm going to call my birthday present for myself. There were a few vendor at the show selling jewelry and I couldn't resist.

Sigh.... Isn't it pretty?


Isn't SHE pretty? She's blowing me a pretty kiss, too.

And check out the muffin that we got as intermission treats. We were singing the Aardvark intermission song while we ate.

And then I got to meet Mindee!!! I felt a little stalker-ish, but I flagged her down in a casual manner versus jumping up and down, waving my arms and screaming . . .

MINDEE! OVER HERE I'M LIKE YOUR BIGGEST FAN!

Not that I'd embarrass my daughter like that until she's at least 13 and can be mortified. But the thought did cross my mind.

A good time was had by all.

A typical weeknight at the Brenneman household . . .

Well . . .

After being sick and having 2 snow days this week, I feel like I don't have much to write about here.

So I'll break out the pictures!!!


Any night of the week you could come to the Brenneman House and find the Brenneman girls . . ..

Walking their sister

Getting tatoos
(and doing Wondertwin impressions)



Putting on their bling

Rockin' and readin'

Playing hide and seek in our new furniture

Playing with stamps (Look REALLY CLOSE at her forehead . . .)

Playing with Dolls

Putting on makeup

Watching it snow outside

But we always end with reading a bedtime story.

Blech. . .

For the third day in a row, I'm home sick. I don't care for this at all, but at least today I can rest peacefully.

Snow days for school and sick days for mommy do not mix especially when daddy is on second shift. No rest for the weary.

I've taken a hot shower, pumped myself full of meds, and eaten as much as possible to send myself into hybernation.

But now all I can think about is all the things that I could putter around the house and get done. Boo for thinking I should be constructive with my day off even if I feel like I'm on my deathbed.

Anyone want to brave the snowy, icky streets to come do my dishes and vacuum?

The birth of a nightmare

I know, I KNOW! I'm terrible at this blogging thing. But I'm sick, and cold, and trying to put a happy face on for my beautiful girls who are enjoying a fun day home from daycare with crabby/cold mommy.

So here's a fun entry that I've been working on for a while.

Hopefully Sleeping Beauty was lying when she said if you have a dream more than once it is supposed to come true, because there are a couple dreams that I have repeatedly.

The worst one is a dream that I have dubbed "Uncomfortable/Stress dream."

After a stressful day where I have been in an uncomfortable situation or the night before what is guaranteed to be a stressful day, I have a dream like this:

I'm back in High School (As if that wasn't enough to classify this as a nightmare . . .)

I walk through the big double doors into the school and everyone is standing around waiting for the first bell to ring. (This is always the biggest clue that I am dreaming, because in real life I was never at school in time to hear the first bell ring.)

Everyone is staring at me and I can't figure out why. My confusion continues for usually one to two class periods, then I usually figure out what everyone is looking at. . .

Do you see where this is heading?

Yep . .. I'm only half dresses.

Yep, that's right, every time I get too stressed out, I have my own version of the naked at school dream. I'm never really naked, I always seem to have forgotten to put my shirt on or forgotten my pants. In my dream I will usually try to brazen through the day without the missing garment while my saner self is desperately trying to wake up.

Sometimes, just to shake things up, my stress dream would take on a different tone after school dances, large social gatherings or large hectic meetings. I would dream that everyone who was at the big gathering had come back to my house to party. Actually, it is always my parents house because my nightmares love to put me back in high school. Everyone shows up after I'm in bed and I'm trying to brazen out the fact that I'm in my bed, wearing my pjs (a ratty tshirt) and trying to convince them to all to get the heck out of my room.

The worst case was the time my brother had invited all of his fraternity brothers out to our parents house for a bonfire party. I was still in high school at the time. That night, I was having the previously mentioned dream of trying to convince my brother's friends that they needed to go have their party somewhere other than in my room when I woke up to find that 2 of his frat brothers were standing in my doorway hissing my brother's name.

They were a little shocked that they had the wrong room (My brother's room was the next door down), but were glad that I was kind enough to give them directions on how to get back to the interstate.

Or course what makes the dream even more frustrating is that I know exactly when and why I started having it.

Imagine being a young lady in the 80s and totally rocking the sweater and stirrup pants look. Then imagine having a really nice elementary teacher who looks out for her students.

One day, this lovely teacher stops by your desk and leans over to ask you to come with her. She leads you to the small bathroom attached to the classroom, and tells you that there is a hole in the crotch of your rockin stirrup/stretch pants.

Teacher is so nice she has brought her needle and thread and instructs you to go into the bathroom, hand your stretch pants to her and she will stitch up the hole.

She was cool about the whole event, but I was mortified.

I can still remember exactly how I felt standing sans pants in the small prison cell like bathroom.

And that, apparently, is how a reoccurring nightmare is born.

Guess what?

By tomorrow I meant the next day, and by next day I meant YEAR.

So its been a few more days than I had anticipated . . .but life is never dull in our house and I'm finally able to sit down and compose a few words.

But first thing first.

After Alaina dropped the bomb of boys having two *ahem* TONGUES. I hustled her off to take a nap so that Jeff and I could strategies on how to diffuse the situation.

Jeff's big plan was avert and evade. After all why did we even need to correct her?

I immediately began sputtering with indignation (I've ALWAYS wanted to do that!) and replied in a haughty tone,
"Because I only associate one thing specifically with tongues and there is NO WAY I want Alaina to associate LICKING with that area on a boy!!! "

I felt that I had a pretty good argument with that point, but Jeff decided that if I wanted to approach this issue, I was on my own.

SO BE IT!

After Alaina woke up from her nap I bided my time until she was having as much fun as possible and then sat down beside her to begin the inquisition.

My first order of business was to determine where this little tidbit of information had come from.

"Hey Alaina?"

Yes? She chirpped happily.

Do you remember what we were talking about just before nap time?

That boys have tongues?

Yes, that's it. Do you remember who told you that?

Alaina glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, paused, and said Nobody.

Crap. I somehow gave away that this was a Not-So-Good issue and she was clamming up on me. But I kept at it.

Did you hear it at Daycare?

Nope

Did you hear it at the Mall?

Nope

Did you hear it on the TV?

Nope

Did you hear it at home? (I can see Jeff's eyebrow going up across the room at that one . . . .)

Nope

Did you (Deep breathe . . ..) SEE ONE? (Jeff has now raised BOTH eyebrows . . . .)

Nope

Alaina has now given me her full attention as well. I can almost see the gears in her mind turning, assessing what she can do with this powerful piece of knowledge that she has found in her possession. Never the less, I continue.

Alaina, boys don't have tongues between their legs.

Yes, they do.

No, they don't. Those are where the boys potty comes out. Sometimes that what little kids call them. Pottys.

Oh, well I'm going to call them tongues.

No, don't call them tongues Alaina. They aren't tongues and you shouldn't call them that. Please call them pottys.

Oh, OK.

And now on to the most comfortable issue to be addressed.

And Alaina, if someone talks to you about a potty, tries to show you their potty, or you see a potty you need to tell mommy, daddy, or one of your teacher at daycare. Okay?

Her eyes have widened just a bit, now as she takes the last bit in. Then a big smile brightens her face and I know she's gotten an idea to see how she can use all this to her advantage.

Oh, well Miss So-and-so is the one who told me to call them that.

Unfortunately she has named the sweetest little teacher at daycare who probably wouldn't say shit if she had a mouth full of it so I call her bluff.

No Alaina, no she didn't.

Now she's pouting a bit about not getting very far with her little plan.

No, she didn't.

So what do you do if someone talks to you about pottys?

Tell teacher. Or mommy or daddy.

That's right. Because people shouldn't talk about pottys or show them to anyone. Except if they are taking a bath, going to the bathroom or talking to their doctor.

Later as I'm telling this to my mother, she gave me a great tip. So from now on, I will be referring to words like potty as a 'bathroom word.' These things can only be referred to if you are in a bathroom. That covers bathing and bathroom rituals, so I would only have to worry about the Doctors office since Alaina take everything very, very literally.

I felt like that discussion went pretty well, but I decided I had better to talk to her daycare teacher and let her know the situation just in case something came up there. Basically my goal was just to let them know that we were NOT encouraging the speaking of 'tongue.'

The teacher got a little defensive. I guess she thought I was accusing her of teaching it to Alaina. She informed me in a bit of a haughty tone that she didn't even allow barbies in her classroom and that they NEVER talk about those things.

(I should probably mention that Alaina's teacher at daycare is probably my least favorite person there, but I figure that I'd better get used to not loving all of the people who will be in my daughter's life unless I plan on homeschooling her.)

So pretty much the only things I gained from speaking to this woman, is the knowledge that I gave someone a heads up in case this would become an issue and a little bit of sadness that my daughter who loves barbies so much isn't allowed to play with them at daycare.