Short Attention Span Theater

Today while Connor was playing in the corner by himself, he was rambling so that I grabbed a pen and documented about 30 seconds of the conversation he was having with himself. It went like this.

“Giraffe! Stay awake! Oh Giraffe! Vroom! ABCDFG. ABCDFGD. That turns. ABCFG. Find W! Find W! Find W! Rite Dare! Hold on! Where’s Connor? Help! Help! Help! Help! Help us. Help! Help! Help! Help! Help! Help! Help! Help! again. again. Dragonfly. Dragon. Dragon butterfly. Two! I’m Two!”

The thing is that the conversation was going on for about ten minutes before I decided to start documenting. Short attention span theater.

It's raining, it's pouring...

One of the downfalls of having to shut the upstairs bathroom doors all the time is that you can’t see if something happens inside of the bathroom.

 

For example, if you ran into the bathroom to pee and then flushed and rushed out to pull the toddler out of the linen closet again, closing the door behind you… You might not notice that the toilet is overflowing. In fact, you might not notice it for quite some time, until you go to get the baby after his nap and are coming down the stairs and pause to listen to the noise of a waterfall that’s coming from the kitchen. Then you would yell your toddlers name as you ran through the hallway with a screaming baby under your arm, to find the toddler sitting quietly stacking blocks and smiling sweetly at you. You might then realize that whatever is making the waterfall noise is not toddler induced and walk into the kitchen to find that the light fixture in the ceiling is pumping out about 2 gallons of water per minute. You probably would freeze and just stare in awe at the sheet of rain that is dripping from the glass shades over the island. You might stare in confusion wondering why the water is only coming from the light fixtures and not through the ceiling and then in a split second know what happened. You would then, run into the downstairs bathroom with screaming baby still, and drag every towel downstairs onto the island under the light fixture. You would then run back upstairs and fling open the bathroom door to find about an inch of standing pee water on the bathroom floor. After jiggling the toilet handle you would drop all of your clean towels on the floor onto the pee water and shutting off the water supply run back downstairs to turn off the light in the kitchen only to find your toddler standing in a puddle of water on the kitchen floor pointing at the dripping water trying to sing the “drip drop” song from Jack’s Big Music Show. You might then call a plumber and have him come out and charge you $175.00 to tell you that the toilet overflowed. When the plumber is gone and the mess is all cleaned up, you might even think about having a margarita. But then you would remember that you are breastfeeding and alcohol is not allowed. Instead you just might continue on your day thanking the universe that the ceiling did not cave in.

Or at least that’s how it happened in my world.

STOP! Thief!

Recently my debit card number was stolen. Now I’m pretty tight with that thing and the only time it actually leaves my hands is once a month when we go to a restaurant for girls night out. But that didn’t stop the young Italian gentlemen from one of the kiosks in the mall from stealing it. I know it was this specific kiosk because I seldom use my card. The occasional McDonalds drive through for “nuggets and fry fries” as the toddler calls them and the bi weekly trip to the grocery store at which time, I’m actually running my card as debit, so it’s unlikely that someone is going to memorize the number. I explained all of this to the fraud specialist at my bank and he asked if I had any proof. It’s hard to state gut feeling as proof and you can’t even file a police report based on intuition, or even the basis that the kids were Italian and the next day, several plane tickets, all based out of Italy to back to Italy appeared on my card. I check our account on a regular basis and I’ve talked to so many people that said that they only check their account every few weeks so I guess I’m lucky. We caught the thief within two days of the charges. The bank refunds these charges, but only as a temporary loan until they investigate the matter and decide whether or not it’s a legitimate case. Joy. I get to wait for 90 days for the bank to let me know that I’m not lying about these charges. Yay.

Notice how I call the perps kids? They were actually in their early 20’s but they are kids to me. That’s what starts happening when you have your 35^th birthday right around the corner.

You kids be careful this shopping season.

What preschool tuition looks like

Besides coming home and explaining to me that the moon is scared or some other obscure reference that leaves me just smiling, nodding and wondering what in the hell my toddler is talking about; preschool is good for us. I hate paying the tuition each month, but know it’s necessary for both my sanity and Connor’s social skills. And things like this:

Help!!!

As you can see I’ve made some edits to the blog template. It’s written using CSS which I’m able to find my way around with relative ease. However, there are a couple of changes that just aren’t working out for me. I’m trying to add a sidebar to the left hand side, to put my flickr badge on, (the picture thumbnails on the bottom left for everyone that has no idea what I’m talking about.

Ahem. Pattie.

But I can’t seem to figure it out. I’ve tried using this code:

/* Sidebar Content
----------------------------------------------- */

#sidebar ul {
float:left ;
margin:0 0 1.5em;
padding:0 0 1.5em;
border-bottom:1px dotted #ccc;
list-style:none;
}

#sidebar li {
margin:0;
padding:0 0 .25em 15px;
text-indent:0px;
line-height:1.5em;
}

#sidebar p {
color:#666;
line-height:1.5em;
}

But it just isn’t showing up. Someone please tell me what in the hell I’m doing wrong. It’s driving me CRAZY! And believe me there is enough crazy going on in this household already.

Good bye sweet cream... I knew thee well

When I was pregnant with Tristan I was certain that he would not have colic like his big brother did. I was certain because I thought, what are the chances that God would do that to me twice? Well as it turns out, the chances are pretty good, although Tristan isn’t as bad as his brother was with it. I took him to the pediatrician after staying up until 2am (yet again) almost a month ago to see if she had any advice that I hadn’t already read on the internet or learned from Connor’s Dr. in CA who was absolutely fantastic. Tristan’s doctor suggested that he might be lactose intolerant and told me to give up all dairy. At first, I was in complete denial of this suggestion. Did she not understand who this child’s mother IS?! Did she not understand that Tristan was born into a family of cheese lovers, evidenced further by big brothers second word being, “cheese” even before he said Mama? How could this be? Did she not understand that I might not be able to nourish myself, not being able to remember ever eating a taco without cheese not to mention the pain of eating a plain hamburger… I mean, ewwww. But I was so desperate for sleep that I decided that it probably wouldn’t hurt anything to just try.

And do you know…

It actually worked. Not completely, but it put a stop to the projectile vomiting and gas until 1am in the morning that Tristan was experiencing. And I’ve lost ten pounds. Tristan still is super gassy and we have to burp him within an inch of his life every time he’s finished eating but it’s working. The Dr. said that I needed to keep up the dairy fast until I was completely finished breastfeeding. I’m going to probably try a glass of milk or something (mmmmmmm nachos!) in a few weeks to see if the internet is correct and this just needs to be done until the colic period is over.

It makes me sad that Connor suffered, (as did we) for three months, because although I tried giving up dairy with him also, I did it for less than a week before determining there was no change and going back on the cow. It took about two weeks for the effect to be seen in Tristan and we still find if I dare to have a piece of cheese on my burger that he’s incredible gassy the next day. Sometimes for me it’s worth it, although for Jorma who gets his fair share of gassy baby time, not so much.

Not napping

After using up the little bit of blogging time that I have daily to try to figure out my blogger template, I’ve decided just to cut to the chase and download movable type. It’s can’t be THAT much harder than trying to add a sidebar on the left hand side of a template that doesn’t use tables. I’ve made some changes using some basic html, but my skills are rusty, (yeah yeah, I bet you can’t change a diaper in 20 seconds flat so I don’t want to hear it).
I’ve decided to just continue on with the blogging instead of procrastinating until I get a design that doesn’t suck. Can you tell I got some sleep last night? Both of the kids are sleeping and I’m actually motivated to so something besides sleep with them. This is the power of not needing a nap.

Stay tuned

HA! I've moved the blog to the front page of my site and added a redirect from the old link, just in case anyone has that link book marked. Yeah, I know that the old page is much prettier than the blog template, but give me a break, I'm trying to figure out how the blogger language works so that I can change it. This is all just a temporary fix until I learn movable type, or until one of the web design programs is released with a blog feature, but until then I'll work on making it a little bit prettier. At least the links won't be as old as my other page!
I've been putting on updating until I got the changes done, well that and some days it's a choice between brushing my teeth or blogging. Yes, we are that busy around here. Actually we aren't but the toddler and baby are.
Stay tuned...