Tonight the kids are with Nana/Papa, met them in Durant for the monkey handoff this morning, and I am staying late to work on my 20-year high school reunion invite. Almost done. Dave and I are meeting everyone, including my sister’s family, in Chicago late tomorrow night after our live RAGBRAI coverage in Coralville. Let me just tell you, I am SO HYPED for Saturday. The Wiggles concert jumps off at 4:30pm. Thomas and Charlotte are still in the dark. We’re announcing the day of, so they don’t have a lot of time to drive us nuts about it. I have been to a ton of concerts in my life… Rick Springfield, Sister Sledge, Posion, Milli Vanilli, John Cougar, Bon Jovi, to name a few… but I am perhaps more excited about taking my almost 3-year-old to see the Australian foursome live! It’s crazy. A Toy Story cake is in the fridge waiting to be put on ice in the cooler. Dave thinks it will melt in the car when it’s parked in Coralville. But no time to grab one in Chicago when pre-concert we’re going to have lunch at the American Girl store with Sissy’s doll Kit. Gotta spread the love when the kids are 26-months apart. Meanwhile, I’m on Day 10 of a 17-day diet that cuts carbs and sugar. Hey, I’ve got a reunion coming up.

Posted under Baby Thomas: Month 37

As promised, and thanks to our generous gals in the front office, I have 4 FREE Valleyfair tickets to give away to blog readers!  Please don’t enter the drawing unless you are able to make the trip to Shakopee, Minnesota where the amusement park is located.  Keep in mind, each ticket is valued at $41.99, so I will give 2 passes to 2 winners and hope each can afford to include other family members.  (Children less than 48 inches get in for $9.99 and 2 & under are free.)  Here’s the catch, so many people entered the last drawing I need to narrow the field.  Email me your entry by clicking here and in addition to your first name and town, answer these 3 questions:

1)  What is Dave’s job?

2)  Where am I from?

3)  Where do my step-daughters live?

Correct answers will be entered to win.  Deadline is Friday 5pm.  May the nicest blog readers win!

Posted under Baby Thomas: Month 37

I titled this entry the name of the once-popular 80s sitcom starring Tony Danza and Alyssa Milano, in part, because I have been told I look like Judith Light–the actress who played Angela Bower.  Thought you would find that amusing.  The other reason is to simply state the controversial idea that bossy children are not bad children.  So there.  At times, I was a bossy/controlling child.  The one whose voice was so loud my mom could locate me in a room without even seeing me.  The one who was so excited to read aloud in class that I could not stand waiting for my turn to come.  To me, there is a difference between being in charge and being disrespectful.  I tongue-in-cheek detail the daily power struggle in our home, but clearly know Dave and I are the ones calling the shots now and until the kids move out…. whenever that happens since nowadays I hear the average is far older than 18.  As for respect, Charlotte and Thomas give it and get it all the time.  If they didn’t, we would have a problem.  But this personal diary of mine, this blog, is not for me to brag about all the wonderful things my kids are doing.  It’s to say despite all their pleases and thank yous, praises from multiple preschool teachers and compliments showered upon them on a regular basis… they can be challenged children at times, too.  And that’s the exception that I share here.  It’s not the rule.  Fortunately or unfortunately, it’s in their gene pool to be in charge.  Their maternal grandpa was the yougest superintendent in the state of Illinois at the time he got the job (28).  And their maternal grandma was an elementary school principal.  Dave’s dad, their paternal grandfather, was a bank vice president and his wife, their grandmother, owned and ran a Montessori school for years.  So if they have a take charge, can-do attitude, I say so much the better.  Being authoritative can go far in a real world full of people trying to shut you down.

Posted under Baby Thomas: Month 37

Surely I’ve covered this topic before, but with a now 5-year-old daughter and a nearly 3-year-old son it’s still very current.  Isn’t everything all about control these days?  The more our lives overwhelm us with schedules and jobs and kids, the more we try to put our thumb on everything since we are in charge of hardly anything.  Apparently Charlotte and Thomas think they are co-managers of our family.  Dave and I are not supposed to sing in the car or dance around the house.  We are to stand by the side of the car and SUV until the kids decide which door they want to get out and re-buckle the seatbelts in case one of us gets to it when they wanted to do it themselves.  Not only that, we have to pick out specific pajamas for them and use a certain kind of toothpaste plus, in Dave’s case, race around the kitchen like a short order cook on a daily basis.  Of course we aren’t the best employees and don’t always comply… but some times we do just to keep the peace in our world with little tyrants.  I always say I’m a pretty laid back person, but when it comes to control issues I think the reason I don’t have them is I was blessed with a husband who usually agrees with me.   Except when it comes to our parenting styles.  So I guess we’re all trying to tell the other family members what to do and it’s, at times, complete chaos.  As for trying to control on the job… it’s rampant.  All these men who must have little to no control at home are running around telling their female counterparts what to do on the job.  Just to feel masculine, I guess.  I get it, your wife wears the pants.  My kids wear them.

Posted under Baby Thomas: Month 37

But only seven of my devoted blog readers are taking home a prize tonight:

Karen from Waterloo, 2 Adventureland tickets

Deb from Ossian, KWWL mousepad

Sarah from Waverly, KWWL mousepad

Darliene from Waterloo, KWWL travel mug

Jen from Elgin, KWWL travel mug

Tiffany from Independence, KWWL cup & frisbee

Lexie from Dubuque, KWWL cup & frisbee

I will email the winners to arrange prize delivery!  Thanks to my co-workers for drawing the names and thanks to hundreds of you for entering.  Don’t worry, I’ll come up with more free stuff now that I know you’re interested.

Posted under Baby Thomas: Month 37

I should be home taking a “cuddle” with Dave and the kids as Thomas was asking for my ring at 6am, but of course I had to go to work.  The crazy thing, I am getting a surge of adrenaline reflecting on what went down this morning.  I spoke to some 75 women and one kind audio guy as part of Praisefest in Cedar Falls.  For nearly an hour I rambled on and on about everything from Dave’s vasectomy reversal to the fact I didn’t have time to curl the back of my hair or touch up my chipped nails to make it there on time.  But the point of the whole talk, and the theme I attempted to weave through, was that becoming a Christian is clearly one of the best moves I’ve ever made, if not THE best.  Imagine when you pour your heart out to a group of receptive and open-minded women, you get the love right back.  Then I open my email to discover an overwhelming response to my ticket giveaway… so I called our promo guy and have come up with six other SMALLER prizes.  The good news is I shared the GOOD NEWS and I will now add six more winners to the list with the grand prize victor.  Have a blessed day!

Posted under Baby Thomas: Month 37

Hundreds of you have been faithfully reading the twists and turns of my professional and personal life as documented here for months.  So it occurred to me this week when I found myself with two free passes to Adventureland that I’m not going to use… why not give them away to a blog reader?  Email me your first name and town by Friday at 9pm and I will enter it in a drawing.  The winner will be posted on here and receive a confirmation email from me.  You can either pick up the tickets at the station or I can mail them to you.  Only people who like me are eligible.

Posted under Baby Thomas: Month 37

A gentleman from Dubuque was so fired up over some remark I made recently about my preference for hot weather over colder days, he snail-mailed me a letter in red pen.  Posted here verbatim for your enjoyment:

Tera!  I can appreciate you loving hot & humid weather.  But there are more of us that despize this kind of weather.  Just think about it.  Older people suffer as do animals that must wear fur coats.  People that don’t have fans & can’t afford AC.  Construction people who have to work in these oppressive conditions, unhealthy air quality.  Crops that are burning up, droughts & fires that are caused by it being so dry.  Cattle have no grass to eat because its so dry.  Produce prices at the Grocery stores skyrocket Electric bills go up.  Instead of having your windows open in your house, people have to lock everything up & pull the shades.  I’m a welder in a hot factory we can’t even use fans.  Not everybody works in an air conditioned office.  So don’t be so selfish like you in your thoughts; think about other people & the poor helpless animals.  its your job!  People also die from it!

Ron, my evening co-anchor, has mentioned more than once how much he likes it hot and humid… of course he never heard from this guy!

Posted under Baby Thomas: Month 37

Have I mentioned I’m not the outdoors-type?  Which is a shame, actually, since I lived in the Northwest for a quarter of my life.  People from all over the globe were coming there to hike and camp in the scenic settings.  Meantime, the most I did was roller blade on a concrete trail and hike one time with my primary concern being the stops for trail mix and other snacks in the backpack.  I just don’t do well with bugs.  Mosquitoes love me and I once stepped on a fire ant hill in Florida.  Yet I recently braved a “nature hike” with the kids.  Dave wasn’t feeling well, so I decided to go it alone with the munchkins.  My first mistake.  We donned long sleeves and long pants and, of course, hats.  Don’t want to show too much skin to the ticks.  It was an evening with intense humidity.  At least I had each of us bring a drink.  The path in a wooded area near our house turned out to be a wild goose chase–with no end in sight.  So we had to back track the way we came and I ended up carrying Thomas part of the way.  Let’s just say it was the best workout I’ve had in a while.  Dressed for fall, carrying a nearly 40-pound kid and a big and now empty plastic cup.  Charlotte was a trooper.  “This didn’t go very well,” she said to me as we panted back to some pavement.  I intentionally walked through a neighbor’s sprinkler spray.  And ended up with a mosquito bite on the underside of my left wrist.  Next time I’ll wear gloves and a ski mask.

Posted under Baby Thomas: Month 37

No, we can’t go back to the way things used to be… but we can sure try and recreate it.  This week my kids have been making the kind of summer memories that swirl in my head.  Charlotte, with Daddy’s guidance and patience, learned how to ride her bike without training wheels.  Thomas is getting the hang of pedaling forward after a lot of stops and starts braking.  Watching them ride on the street and driveways around our house reminds me so much of all those summer afternoons when I’d be doing the same and my mom would open the door and shout, “Time for lunch, girls!”  Of course you know me, she didn’t have to call me twice.  Charlotte wanted to do a lemonade stand as she’s seen a few around the neighborhood.  Let’s do it, I thought.  So I hauled out a card table, an easel-sized pad of paper, duct tape, bowl of change, cups and apple juice.  No lemonade was available but we threw in a bowl of leftover parade candy for 10 cents each.  Friends from across and down the street joined us.  Amazingly with construction workers and a kind UPS driver, customers weren’t just kids and moms.  Much of the merchandise was eaten, however.  I can’t get enough of those Tootsie Rolls!

Posted under Baby Thomas: Month 37