From time to time, I’m asked to write on other blogs.

It doesn’t happen often, and I try to be selective of who I write for…after all, writing for my OWN blog can be more than plenty.

But when Jana of Band Back Together asked me if I would like to be featured and tell the story of how I chose to use my blog for good, I had to say yes.

After all, in a lot of ways, Band Back Together does what we do here at Life Rearranged: We share Story.

Not just for the sake of sharing…but to encourage and let others know that hey, you’re not the only one.

So if you’ve ever wondered how Life Rearranged got started, you can read all about it here.

{Disclaimer: Band Back Together deals with some very, very heavy topics that cover the spectrum of life.  Many of the stories are very candid and raw, and may also contain crude language.  If this is something that would be offensive to you, I wanted to give you a heads up.  Not my post…that’s my usual writing…just didn’t want anyone getting all huffy at me that I sent you to a site that has some four letter words in it when you start clicking around.}

You know how I’ve been writing those One Bite at a Time: Together posts?

Well, Tsh and I have been chatting and we decided that the best place to host those re-caps is on Simple Mom.  After all, it’s her e-book and it really does make more sense in her space.  Her blog content lends itself better to the material and I just think it’s better all around.

So, the first Friday of every month, pop over to Simple Mom and continue working through the book with me (don’t worry, I’ll remind you).  But honestly, Simple Mom is a great blog and I highly recommend adding it to your reader/blogroll/whatever on a regular basis (and no, I’m not being paid to say that…I’ve been reading for a while and it’s never disappointed).

Happy Saturday friends!!!

Oh I’m so happy, I’m delirious!

It’s been a looooong week.  It’ll be really nice to have Dad home for a few days…when everyone is finally on the mend.

New to InstaFriday?  Link up your posts made up of nothing but cell phone pictures.  You don’t have to have an iPhone or use the Instagram app (I’m jeannettg if you want to follow)…just the camera you always have in your pocket!!!

This was my week.

Henry had a fever that fluctuated anywhere from 100.1 to 103.3 for FIVE DAYS.

Every morning I thought he’d wake up nice and cool…only to find him boiling hot.

Being that he was sick and had done little more than lie on the couch all day I thought I’d treat him with a little activity.

I made tortilla soup a couple of weeks ago and had Henry juice the lime for me in my little glass juicer doohicky.

He was completely enthralled with it and has been begging me to buy oranges to make orange juice.

So, I finally bought him a big bag to juice to his sick little heart’s content.

Except that oranges are out of season, so not only did it not make very much juice, it was bland.

Not sour, not sweet…just blah.

I love spending $6 on oranges and then tossing it all down the drain.

Love it.

I heard my girls playing in their room the other morning so I snuck in to see what was so dang funny.

I found them having a swordfight…with the plastic forks from their play kitchen.

I love that Lucy delivers toys to her sister.

It makes me happy.

Unlike the snot encrusted bedhead that Jill had.

Another day I decided to try another low energy activity just to peel him off the couch and into an upright position…

So we made these homemade bouncy balls.

Don’t do it.

It took five times longer to accumulate the ingredients, set up and clean up as it did to actually do the activity.

Not to mention that the bouncy balls were bouncy…but I mean, so is a potato if you drop it from the right height.

Jill picked up the fever too.

And I captured a moment you might never see again:

They were cuddling.

Jilly finds herself mostly annoyed by her brother.  So this is shocking.

On third day of sickies, I tried to ply a smile with some chocolate chip/walnut cookies (that melted because apparently my butter was too soft)…

He ate three bites and then asked to go lay back down.

Lucky for him, the rest of us ate his share.

Would hate for all of that to go to waste.

Especially after the orange debacle.

By the FIFTH day of the fever, I made a doctor appointment.

And y’all know exactly what happened right?

The kid laid around like a hot little lump all day long.  His fever continued to rage.  He hadn’t eaten in days.  He was pathetic.

Our appointment was at 2:50 p.m.

Can you guess what happened at 2:30 p.m.?

He started to perk up.  Giggle.  Wanted to play.

By the time we made it to the doctor’s office: his fever was down to 99.2 and he was laughing and chatty.

Becuase of course he was.  Of course he got better the SECOND we walked into the doctor’s office.

The doctor who took a look at him and then basically said “Well, have a nice day!”

Kids drive me batty sometimes.  From now on, I’m just gonna make doctor’s appointments the minute they get sick and then watch them get magically better.

It’s a conspiracy.

(P.S. Jill’s fever only lasted two days…and no seizures!!!!  So far Lucy is unscathed…not that that surprises me really.  And did I mention that for some reason my morning sickness/headaches are back???  Awesome.  Like I said: it’s been a long week.)

Okay, now it’s your turn!

Grab a button, link up, and leave a comment on at least two other InstaFridayers! 

Please tell me your week was better than mine?!

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“With certainty.”

“So be it.”

AAAAAMen.

It doesn’t mean “The End” like at the last page of a storybook.

Instead it’s a proclamation.  God keeps his promises.  We believe it.  We acknowledge it.  We petition with full trust.

That’s it, that’s all.  We got it.  We know it.  Boom.

‘Amen’ is applied equally to confirmation or endorsement of what God says; it can also be used to express hope, or to confirm a blessing, prayer, curse or oath.

What does this have to do with anything at all?

Why on earth am I blabbering about the meaning of a word we say all the time?

Because my friends, that one word, those four letters: made me fall apart.

You see, this sweet girl, my almost two and a half year old babe, doesn’t speak.

Speech therapy three times a week urges her little brain to make the connections and flow from her lips.

But the truth is, months of sessions, it hasn’t changed much.

Sure, we’ll get the occassional “mama” when she’s really upset.

A one syllabled “Da!”

A “d” sound when she’s pointing at the dogs and a really stinking cute long “nnnnnn” for her button nose.

She’s really good at “No”.  Really good at it.

But that’s mostly it.

No multi-syllabic words.

Plenty of laughs and giggles and grunts and groans.  She does the best she can to let us know what she wants and needs.  We do the best we can to try to understand and we have our own little form of communication…it’s just not the English language.

We include Jill as best as we can in everyday activities, but if I’m honest, she’s the perpetual baby of the family.  She’s always there, but always a little bit apart too.  Hanging on a jutted hip, crawling at our feet, sitting at her high chair.

A few weeks ago, Jill standing in her crib in pink pj’s…Lucy tucked into her toddler bed…when Henry offered to say bedtime prayers over his sister.

As we kneeled at Lucy’s bitty bed, a little boy’s prayer was offered: “Thank you God for today and all the fun we had.  And that I can ride my bike with no training wheels and that my friends played with me and came over to jump on the trampoline.  In Jesus’ name…”

He knew to wait and let his sister say it.

“Amen!”

Except that it didn’t come from Lucy.

No, her little eyes were still squeezed shut and her chubby fingers weaved tightly together.

My jaw dropped.

I turned around in shock.

Slow motion.

It was Jill.

Grinning Jill.

Jill, who sits quietly and watches.

Processes.

Understands more than we ever realize.

Jilly who we don’t include nearly as much as we should because we assume she is “too little”.

Jilly’s first and only real word…PRAISE.

We clapped and jumped and laughed.

“Mommy!!!  Did you hear Jilly?!  She said it!!!  Good job Jilly!”

I rushed to her crib: “In Jesus’ name…”

“Amen!  Amen!!!”

Two syllables.  Clear as day.  With intention.

And the biggest, goofiest, toothiest proud of herself smile.

If she only says one word, there isn’t one more perfect.

“With certainty.”

{Incidentally, girlfriend doesn’t perform.  When Andy came home I excitedly tried to recreate the moment…and she just stared at me like I was nuts.  She still says it…but on her terms and when she feels like it.  I’m being slowly convinced that she will one day just bust out with a full sentence like it’s nothing…I think she might quite like bossing all four of us around with nothing but hand gestures and grunts.  And I’m not really kidding.  She’s a sneaky one.}

Do your kids watch Caillou?

It’s been on continuous loop around here the last few days since everyone’s been feverish and lethargic.

And for some reason, of which I cannot fathom, the constant request is for episodes of Caillou (via the OnDemand feature).

Truthfully, I’d be annoyed with any cartoon on non-stop rotation, but this one…oh this one!

I want to scream when my kids ask for it.

His whiny little voice makes me want to jump off a bridge.

“No!  I will NOT under any circumstances put Caillou on!  Anything else!  I don’t even care what it is!  Just anything but Caillou!!!”

And then Henry starts crying, which then makes him start hacking up a lung, which then makes him start gagging, which makes him cry even harder, and then his fever spikes…so I put on another stupid, ridiculous episode of Caillou.

Again.

I just don’t get it.

It’s soooo boring.

And slow.

And his voice.

Have I mentioned his whiny, annoying, I-want-to-stab-Q-Tips-into-my-ears-until-they-bleed voice?

And I want to scream:

“Use a grown up voice already, Caillou!!!” 

“Didn’t your mother teach you that no one will respond if you’re whining, Caillou???!!!”

“NOW what do you want, Caillou?!”

I have absolutely no patience for that little kid.

And then there’s the episode of Caillou that I really hate.

The one that I’m convinced is out to teach my children that I am the Wicked Witch of the West.

It’s the episode where Caillou, in his four years old whiny voiced bald self, gets his little sister Rosie (who, in my opinion, got the good end of the name game in that family) OUT OF HER CRIB…

As if that weren’t enough naughtiness, he goes downstairs with Rosie and decides to make breakfast for Mommy and Daddy.

With Rosie.

And the stupid cat.

He manages to put Rosie and her full head of hair into her high chair without killing her or otherwise dropping her on her head.

And then proceeds to make the biggest mess known to mankind in the kitchen.

He spills milk.

He drops stuff.

He turns the tidy kitchen his poor mother slaved over the night before into a re-enactment of Hurricane Katrina.

How one whiny little bald kid can manage this much destruction while his parents sleep soundly is beyond me, but look, I didn’t write the script.

Clearly I didn’t…because when Mom and Dad walk into the bomb that went off in their kitchen, they smile and giggle and thank that little bald punk for making them their “favorite breakfast”.

Because I will tell you right here and now that if my kids made that kind of mess…particularly first thing in the morning…the last thing I would do is smile and giggle…much less THANK THEM.

No, I would turn into a flailing, yelling crazed wildebeest.

Smoke might even come out of my ears.

It would not be pretty.

Not one bit.

Granted, they do have a real Cosby-esque moment and tell him that he’s not allowed to do that anymore and that he has to help clean up…which he happily agrees to and does so with a giggle and a smile…which just makes me want to pull my hair out because that scenario is about as real as glittery unicorns and dancing fairies.

“Henry, you do know that’s really naughty and that if you EVER did that Mommy would ground you for the rest of your God given life, right?”

Now, I will admit that it would be sweet and cute if Henry tried to surprise me with breakfast…but I would only even begin to think that approximately 3.5 hours after said incident.  And even then, only after a very large mug (or three) of coffee. And a good dose of yelling.

Can you tell it’s been a long week?

Testy much, Jeannett?

Which show/cartoon would you be happiest if it never aired another episode?

Henry has a fever today and has for three days now.

He’s in pretty decent spirits, all things considered, and has spent a bulk of the last 72 hours occupying the cozy corner spot on our new sectional sofa.

The countdown has begun to see how long it takes for someone else to come down with it…because we’re all about sharing around here.

Last night I woke to hear him heading back to his room at 2 a.m.  I heard him turn off a light and crawl back into bed.  Curious where he had gone (because it hadn’t been in the direction of the bathroom), I hopped out of bed to check on him.

He was boiling hot.

“Hey Buddy.  Where’d you just go?”

“Downstairs to get some water.  But don’ t worry mom, I put it in a sippy cup so that I didn’t spill in my room.  Is it okay I brought water into my room?”

“Yes Son.  It’s totally okay.  Why didn’t you come ask Mommy to get you water?”

“It’s okay Mom, I already did it.  You were sleeping anyway.”

Don’t miss it: My FOUR YEAR OLD son woke up, flipped on the stairwell lights, walked downstairs, went into the cupboard, filled up a cup, screwed the lid on, came back upstairs, turned off the lights, and got himself back in bed.  At 2 a.m. By himself.  With a fever.

I was secretly devastated.

While I don’t love being woken up in the middle of the night, I also love being a Mommy.  And taking care of sick littles is for sure a Mommy job.

And getting your own water in the middle of the night with a blazing fever is totally a growing-up-way-too-fast-so-knock-it-off-because-you’re-stressing-me-out kind of thing.

And it wasn’t the first time he broke my heart with his grown up sickly antics.

We battled the stomach flu in December and I had set him up for bed with a bucket…you know, in case.  I didn’t really expect him to use it, but I figured I should at least pretend.

I woke up the next morning surprised and encouraged by the fact that he hadn’t thrown up all night long.

At the usual 6:30 he came out of his room.

“Good morning Love.  Feeling better?”

“Not really.”

“Bummer.  But at least you didn’t throw up last night!”

“Yes I did.”

“You did?”  (Panic began to set in as I imagined his bedsheets in all sorts of sordid disarray…although a quick scan of his PJ’s showed he was clean).

“Yeah.  Twice.  But don’t worry Mom, I got it all in my Bucket!”

A quick peek in his room confirmed that the Bucket had been used…and he had impeccable aim.

“Why didn’t you come get Mommy if you threw up?!  I didn’t even know!”

“I didn’t need you Mommy.  I just threw up in the Bucket, drank some water and then went back to sleep.”

Insert the sound of a mama’s heart breaking into a million pieces here.

I DIDN’T NEED YOU MOMMY???!!!  You were wretching into a bucket in the middle of the night and you didn’t NEED me???!!!

Just pull the knife out of my heart.  Go ahead.

Truth is, Lucy was the same way.  A few days later, she had the flu and I put the Bucket next to her on the couch…while in the kitchen doing dishes, I came back into the living room to see that the Bucket had “matter” in it…and a perfectly content Lucy sitting next to it, enthralled with Mickey and his friends.

No crying.  No fussing.  No mess.

What the heck is going on around here???!!!

Don’t get me wrong…it’s kinda nice in some ways.

My kids are absolute ROCKSTARS when they are sick…but I kinda want them to be whiny, clingy little things too.

Hate me?

My boy has been the sweetest cuddle bug lately.
I’m eating. it. up.

That’s what we try to capture around here…but not with fancy DSLR’s where we fiddle with ISO, apperture and shutter speed.  Just the grainy cell phone cammy you have on your phone.  (It doesn’t have to be an iPhone or use Instagram…that’s just what I use, but anything is welcome!)

Here’s my week:

Jill had an appointment to be fitted for SMO’s last week.

The whole experience of having my daughter fitted for “equipment” was interesting and hard and emotional and exciting all rolled into one.

I had mentioned to my friend Tracy that I was going to have to go out and buy socks since the only ones we owned were pairs people gave me at baby showers!  We are barefoot, flip flop, tennis shoes without socks kinda people.  My kids never, ever, ever wear socks.  They usually put them on their hands and pretend they are gloves.

The morning of our fitting appointment, Tracy and her husband stopped by with a sweet little gift of cute new socks and the nicest card I think anyone has ever written me.

We had to wait a bit for our turn, but time went really fast because of the full mirrored wall.

Girlfriend likes herself.

A lot.

My couches came!  My couches came!

Oh my word.  We had been sitting on patio furniture and camping chairs for like two months.  (I sold my old couches on craigslist not quite realizing how long it would take once we ordered the new ones.  Opps.)

I love them.  They are comfortable and lovely and I love them.

Our living room is this giant open space that doesn’t really have walls so my regular couches always felt like they were floating in the room.  This giant sectional really anchors the room and makes it feel smaller…but cozier and more like a living room should feel.

And see that corner sweet spot?  That’s mine.  I call dibs.  Forever and until the end of time.

Last night Andy was out late playing basketball and the kids and I all piled into that little corner and cuddled while watching The Jetson’s Movie together.  (Which, btw, had a “futuristic” vacuum that didn’t look all that different from Sid.)

Sweetest. feeling. ever.  I literally started crying.  Feeling so blessed to have these littles draped all over me.

I love my family.  Have I ever mentioned that?

I made guacamole last week.

Henry likes it (!!!) but my girls thought I was basically feeding them cow dung.

Losers.

Jill’s Occupational Therapist has been bugging me suggesting that I try a regular cup with her at meals.

Look lady, I get why you want me to do this, but you do realize that my four year old son with no developmental delays still spills his regular cup sometimes?  You do realize that meals result in a mess much like the aftermath of a tsunami as it is?

I just didn’t have it in me. I wanted to.  Really I did.  But Lucy still uses a sippy cup.  So there.

Until I randomly found this trainer cup
and it was like the Heavens opened and I could hear the voices of singing angels coming down to me right in the middle of TJMaxx.

Spillage is still totally possible with this cup, but I’ll take it over a fully open top anyday.

Speaking of TJMaxx…remember how yesterday I said that sometimes I just need to get away by myself?

TJMaxx is like my mecca of window shopping happiness.  It’s my go-to when I just want to wander up and down aisles arbitrarily with no shopping list or likelihood of buying diapers or shampoo or paper towels.

I went this week and found this chair and practically proposed to it right on the spot.

Love. at. first. sight.

It was $129 which isn’t bad in the world of upholstered chairs, but I’m cheap and $129 is still $129, you know?

It keeps taunting me in my dreams though.

Matches my coffee table EXACTLY.  Perfectly.  Maybe I should go back…

Since I couldn’t bring myself to buy the yellow chair, I settled for happy yellow flats.

I haven’t bought myself shoes in AGES.  I honestly can’t even remember the last time I bought shoes.

And for $16.99 it was an easy decision.

I also got a different pair of gray flats.  Shopaholic I tell you.  It’s getting crazy up in here!!!

Yesterday Henry came out of his room, still sucking his fingers, eyes half closed, cuddled up to my side and whispered “Mom, can you take me on a donut date?  Just us?”

Oh my word.

It was like I was in a trance.  ‘Yes dear…anything you want dear…”

It won’t take him long to figure out that all he has to do is basically say “mom, I want to hang out with you” and I’ll take him on a Brand New Pair of Sneakers Date or Four Wheel Drive Truck Date.

Sucker.  That’s me.

Okay, now it’s your turn!  Grab a button, link up and leave at least two other instafridayers some comment love!

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There were some great questions from this post!  I’ll answer some now, some later, and a few might even get their own blog post over the next few weeks.  (Maybe by then my writer’s block/boring life will make a turn for the better?)

If you had a “you day”, where would you go and what would you do?

For me, a “Jeannett Day” would consist of being completely and totally alone.  I love my friends, I love my husband, but ultimately I like alone time too.  So I would probably get in the car and drive to Santa Barbara or somewhere similar that has fun outdoor shopping and casually stroll and window shop.  I’d eat a sandwich on a croissant (probably turkey, bacon, and avocado) and read a book in the sunshine.  I’d get an ice cream cone (butter pecan please) and people watch.  I’d sit on the beach with my toes in the sand and listen to the waves.  And if budget constraints allowed, I’d get a luxurious massage at a fancy spa place.  And then I’d miss my family terribly and buy my kids a little trinket and drive home too fast because I couldn’t wait to kiss those little cheeks again.

What do you do for yourself in the midst of life’s craziness?

I’ve said it before, but I believe that the most important thing I do for my sanity and for my family is to get up really early in the morning and have “Mommy Time”.  Sure, it sounds miserable to get up at 5 a.m. (and sometimes the clock still even says 4!) but the trade off is priceless: absolute silence.  Uninterrupted time to think.  Time when I don’t have little hands (cute as they may be) pawing at me and ask, ask, asking me for something.  The rare days I sleep longer, I’m a disaster and feel really frazzled.  That being said, I get PLENTY of sleep.  Which I also think is super important.  I get up early, but I go to bed early too.  I still get at least 7 hours of sleep every night.  I cannot fathom the women who will tell me that they only get a handful of hours every night…I’d be the meanest, most impatient mom in the universe.

What’s your secret guilty pleasure?

A celebrity gossip magazine, white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, milk in a (white) mug, and locking myself up in my bedroom after my kids are in bed.  As you can see from my last three answers, some form of alone time is critical to me.  Not everyday, but after a while I start to just feel kind of anxious and I know it’s time to not speak to another human being…adult, child, or otherwise.  I love my loud crazy house of chaos, I really do…but I need to decompress too.  It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive…just some time to clear my brain.

How do you get your babies to sleep?

(That’s a bitty Jill in my all time favorite polka dot dress. Could you just DIE?)

I included this question in this post because I firmly believe that being well rested is the absolute best thing you can do for your family.  Now, the whole “getting babies to sleep” thing is controversial and there are people firmly entrenched in their own camps.  I will tell you what worked for US.  If you hate it or didn’t use it, I totally get it.  But the question was how do I get MY babies to sleep, so I’ll answer from my experience.  We used the cry it out method and and my kids are FABULOUS sleepers.  Incredible.  Sure, I thought my heart was going to break into a million pieces on those first few nights but I cannot tell you how amazing it is to kiss and play and cuddle your baby, get a big gummy smile, lay them down in their crib and walk out of the room to nothing but the sound of sucking fingers…and not have to go back in for 12 hours.  The same holds true for naps.  When it’s nap time, they all lay down and pass out.  (Actually, Lucy’s been playing with her kitchen for about half an hour before that, but she lays herself back down after her cookie making is done…or I go in and tell her enough is enough and she has to sleep now.)  Keep in mind that you have to be sure that they are physiologically ready for CIO…both Henry and Jill were teeny, itty bitty babies and ranked below the 3% for size…my pediatrician (who is an advocate of CIO) advised that they actually NEEDED to eat in the middle of the night much longer than the average baby.  (Particularly Jill who burned so many calories because coordinated movement was such an arduous task and she had been getting Physical Therapy since she was three weeks old.  It was like going to the gym for her!)  I think Lucy was sleeping through around 3 months but I had to wait until about 8 months for the other two.  That being said, I still sleep trained them to go to bed and self soothe (which I think is an incredibly important life skill) at bedtime…I just had to get up with them about halfway through the night for a quick nursing session…but right back to bed they went.  They’re little sleeping rockstars.  (Now watch, I just jinxed myself and this next baby is going to be a sleeping disaster.)

I used Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Childas a guide (and the twin versiontoo!).  I would highly recommend actually reading the first half of the book which is a really long and kind of boring almost medical journal type of thing that explains the WHY’s behind CIO.  It is boring and you’re temptation (particularly if you’re sleep deprived right now) will be to jump right to the section that tells you HOW to solve your problem, but you’ll be so much more confident in your efforts if you have a good handle on why this is so important and why it matters and some of the science/statistics behind it.  Even if it’s boring while you’re reading it.

Alright, I think that’s it for today!  Happy Thursday!!!

Life has been life and basically busy.

In boring, non-blogable ways.  (Did you know “blogable” is a word?  Totally.)

So how about y’all help a girl out and tell me what you want to know.

Got any questions you’ve been dying to ask me?  (You know, because you totally stay up at night thinking of these things.)

Things you wonder about?

I don’t even know what to write asking you to tell me what to write!

Ack.

But really…I’m happy to answer (within reason of course).

And if the comments section is crickets after this, I might just die.

Bueller?…Bueller…?