101 Things To Do With A Dixie Cup

I’ve been on the road a lot lately for work over the past three weeks, which accounts for my lack of blogging lately. It’s been nice to hear from some of you that you miss me. Trust me – I miss you, too. Like nictone used to be my addiction, blogging is my next best thing to a big glass of wine, and living without it lately has given me withdrawals. My mind has felt like mush lately, and by typing these sentences right now I feel like I just received a shot of B-12. So hooray for blogging! The best non-toxic habit I’ve acquired that’s good for my health!

However, mostly due to my travels, the level of anxiety has increased in my household. Like the threat level issued by Homeland Security, we’re at an “Orange”. Sickness has been going back and forth between my kids for about 4 weeks. With my weekday absences, the cold weather, and the sick kids, nobody has been doing much of anything outside of the four walls lately, and I sense that all this is getting on my husband’s last nerve. The second week of January I left for Cincinnati, then the third week I was in Houston, and then last week I was in Chicago. I have a week off of traveling, but then turn around for NY next week for the final installment of 4 programs that I am working on. We knew I would be working this crazy schedule before I even agreed to take the job back in September, and this is a fantastic career opportunity for me, but we’re all just getting a little tired. Patience is growing thin, moods are sullen, babies are missing their mama, mama is missing the kids, and there’s a general feeling of needing normalcy to return. But the light at the end of the tunnel is near.

Here in the Midwest, we are getting pummeled with single digit temperatures. As I mentioned above, the kids have been sick, and the baby is feeling the worst right now. We were at the doctor on Saturday and he has ear infections in both ears (2nd time in one month!), and also has a cold. To top it off he is cutting 2 teeth on top, so he’s overall miserable. So since we were pretty much prisoners of the house this weekend, it was up to me to provide the entertainment. To my surprise, a $2.50 box of bathroom cups gave us hours of enjoyment:

1. We constructed a cardboard bowling alley and used the cups as “pins”.
2. We decorated some cups with stickers and construction paper and with some leftover elastic string, made them into hats
3. We made pyramids and crashed cars and trains into them
4. We played “telephone”
5. We played “store” and “purchased” them along with a bunch of other toys
6. The baby is learning to drink out of them

And who says you have to pay a fortune on toys?