Monday musings

• I hate summer colds. Gray brought home a cold from daycare last week and we have all been felled by it. I have been battling it with Emergen-C and sinus rinses (and I am curious, how do you get a child to do a sinus rinse? When I worked at a children's hospital they were prescribed all the time for kids. Sinus rinses are NO FUN). I have also discovered Breathe Right strips and they are MAGICAL! I slept great all night long and as soon as I took that sucker off: stuffy.
• We took Gray to a splash park yesterday and had so much fun watching him play in the water jets. He is a pretty brave boy, but we observed that he is a kid that needs to come to things by himself. He'll try it, but first he needs to stand back and observe a bit. Coaxing or cajoling doesn't work one bit. It was so funny to watch him observe the bigger kids and then try to imitate them karate chopping the water sprays.
• We celebrated Archie's fourth birthday this weekend and, sadly, the same day Phil's childhood dog had to be put down. We decided it was "dog appreciation" weekend and the boys got lots of treats, including doggy ice cream. Charlie thought the ice cream was awesome where you could see Archie's attitude was more along the lines of "if Charlie likes it I'll be damned if I leave any of this behind." I love our dogs.
• If someone would invent something that temporarily took away your sense of taste (like this stupid cold!) I would never eat. I am convinced that would be the ultimate diet solution.
• The finch feeder on our porch has been empty for a week. I feel guilty.
• Gray totally had a "Mama" weekend. He was SO into me and, of course, I loved it. I didn't see him all that much last week due to a company meeting so I think he had a little mama withdrawal going on. We went to a flea market together and afterwards we stopped at Panera for a snack. While sitting on my lap eating his scone, he stopped, looked up at me with this cheesy smile and said "Mmmmama!" So cute.
• The AuD creeps ever closer. I have started thinking more seriously about getting my AuD and found a way to cover the cost of the $1000 application fee... then today I got an email about a $1000 scholarship to cover part of the tuition. It seems like it's meant to be, unfortunately.
• I hate our damn kitchen. I had so hoped that we might be able to get a home equity loan to cover part of the renovation but it looks like that won't happen.