sethrak

Auntie Steph sent him a horse head on a stick, which has the capacity to make battery-operated whinnying noises, and which Mark kept trying to steal. We ended up hiding it in Jack's room. ^_^ He also got a small plushie horse and a pair of plastic horse figures from me and Tom. He adores all of them, but is particularly fond of the figures; Tom picked them out.

Cupcakes continue to be a failure. Mark was at least willing to pick up the cut chunks and press them to his lips - but not to taste them or even open his mouth. Jack completely ignored his cupcake in favor of playing with his new horsies.

I tried adding drops of food coloring to two of the cupcakes, just to play around with color. Two drops of red in one cupcake, and two drops of blue in another cupcake, stirred into the batter with a clean knife for each one. The color came out not nearly as saturated as I hoped, and while it covered the top, it didn't quite penetrate all the way out to the sides of the base, just filled the center. Steph suggested next time I should try a concentrated food color gel that's supposed to give really good saturation without the funky flavor excess amounts of regular food coloring can give. I hadn't been aware this gel existed, or that too much food coloring makes things taste odd; the last time I played around with food coloring was when I was a kid and colored Easter eggs.

Not that it matters, when my boys steadfastly refuse to EAT my efforts. ;p But it'll be fun to play with.

Had a very nasty bout of gastro. symptoms starting around dinner time Tuesday, which finally ebbed around midnight, and have spent the last two days recovering from the after effects. Sigh. At least it didn't kick in until after I got to the library with the boys to retrieve some of my holds.

Finally felt good enough this afternoon to make a short jaunt to the Citadel for window shopping. Assuming I don't have ANOTHER bout, I'm planning to go see Brave on Saturday, after Tom gets back from Dragonman and also makes sure the office doesn't need him to update the website again. He's planning to see either Prometheus or Avengers tomorrow night. I hope he picks the latter; I am dying to geek out at him over it. ^_^

Right now, he's at the store, and I'm wrangling Zodlings. Probably going to break out some of my library books while they watch Backyardigans; it is entirely too hot in the yard to let them loose.

Spent a largish chunk of yesterday afternoon at the cardiologist. Highlights were getting an EKG (again), getting a chest ultrasound (kinda cool; despite my glasses being off), and getting a chest monitor to be worn for 24 hours.

Said monitor sits in a little cloth pouch, similar to the stuff used in dentist patient bibs, currently dangling from straps around my neck. There's four wires, connected to four sensor pads, one just below the u-bend of my clavicle, two on my left ribs, and one on my right ribs.

They used a tiny brillo pad on the portions of my skin they intended to affix the sensor pads to. This is now the second funniest medical thing ever, right after the tiny floral stickers used in mammograms. :D

As I am a redhead (with distressingly wide ashblond roots that I REALLY need to attend to) with a high tech heart device on my chest, and Tom is a scruffy dark-haired reprobate who provides me with much needed assistance, I have decided I am now Iron Woman, and he is my comely but morally degenerate personal assistant, Mr. Davner. :D


Hopefully this thing will be able to pick up on the things going wrong in my chest. I REALLY don't want to do the IV of blood markers and massive scanning device thing.

Funny, it feels like just yesterday I was doing a post on my 30th birthday. I certainly don't feel 33 any more than I felt properly 30.

Tom's away on work business, so he gave me my presents yesterday. The Ninth Doctor on DVD :D. Gunnerkrieg Court Volume One :D. And volume four of Nodame Cantabile :D.

There will be steak and baked potatoes when he gets home; in the meantime, I took Jack to the Commissary and got myself treats. TWO packages of sushi, one of my fave cream cheese/smoked salmon/avocado rolls, one of rice and salmon and rice and tuna slabs. The makings of my favorite chip dip. A box of two slices of key lime pie. (My birthday is Pie Day, and buying/baking an entire pie OR cake when the Zodlings won't eat any is silly.) Best of all, I found that Bahlsen, German makers of the holiday chocolate-covered soft gingerbread I so adore, makes little sponge cakes with orange filling and coated in chocolate. :D I deserve a treat.

Tom and I worked hard this weekend on Mark's potty-training. He's made excellent progress - by bedtime yesterday, he was on stage four. That means that, starting from first putting on his underwear in the morning, we check to see if he's dry twenty-five minutes later, and if he is, he gets a reward, then we put him on the toilet twenty minutes after that. Another dry check twenty-five minutes after he's done on the toilet, and so on. There's a system of rewards for when he uses the toilet, and of aversion and cleanup when he has an accident. This morning, he stayed dry at every check - but he also didn't go on the toilet at ALL. ::sigh::

We'll work on it more this afternoon. For now, we are putting him back in a pullup for school, and in a diaper overnight. He's nowhere near ready for night-time training, and the school was so appalled that he wasn't already toilet-trained when he transferred in from Henry, that I am not going to try and ask them to give him more frequent toileting than their schedule already permits. I will send a note to his teacher regarding our efforts, but I don't intend to use underwear at school until he's much closer to mastery at home.

There isn't a lot I can do about the situation in Japan or WI right now, aside from donate money to the former and cheer on my friends living in the latter. But i think about both situations a lot, and my heart goes out to the people there.