A Welcome Distraction

We lost a guppy yesterday. We sent him to the hospital through the toilet and I don’t think he’s coming back. I guess he just couldn’t handle the major cleaning overhaul that just occurred due to the worms we discovered in the tank. I have had a fish or fish tank for almost as long as I can remember and have never had worms before. They were these little nasty looking pin worms that were swimming after I did a water change. After Googling, it was determined that if we cleaned the tank really well, it would take care of them. And it did. I boiled the rocks, scrubbed the sides and removed all live plants. Connor even helped, (sort of). And after all that work, we are minus one fish, but still have three Neon Tetras, a Fancytail Guppy, and three snails.
Connor has named everything in the tank, Nemo, including the snails, one of which Jorma has named Danger Snail, because he likes to climb to the top of the tank and then propel himself outward, floating like a Stingray with a very large barnacle attached to his back.
Connor got the fish tank as a birthday present from PawPaw and Nana and he does love it... but not as much as Jorma who has become fascinated by the snails. Especially Danger Snail. I guess when you are trapped in a house with me and two children all day long, anything is a welcome distraction.

First Report Card

Today we had our parent teacher conference at Connor’s pre-school. It’s one of the best preschools around and I’m not just saying that because we just happened to get in last year and didn’t have to stand outside at 4am like some women did to get in this year. We just got lucky. One of the reasons that it’s such a great school is the parent teacher feedback that you get. I’m happy to report that Connor got straight A’s. These were a few of his subjects:

-Walks without stumbling
-Runs without stumbling
-Participates in and enjoys outside play
-Participates in and enjoys inside play
-Can build a small tower of blocks
-Is generally a happy, agreeable child

That kid. He’s a genius.

Dear Connor - 27 Months

Dear Connor,
Yesterday you turned 27 months old. When we look back on this month, we will fondly remember as the month of voice. The month that you learned how to scream. You’ve known how to scream for a while now, but this is a different sort of scream. It’s a high pitched, fingernails down the chalkboard, Nazgul sort of scream. It pleases you. But us. Not so much.

We’ve been working on the inside voice. And we’ve been working on it enough; that sometimes when you wake up in the middle of the night and are feeling chatty, one of the first things that we talk about is how there is “No screaming inside. Screaming on the patio and screaming outside is ok”. You want to know if PawPaw and Grammie scream inside. You want to know if Daddy screams outside. I think you sometimes wonder why we wouldn’t do something that feels that good, at every whim… even inside. It would be nice to let out this random scream each time you get frustrated or bored inside or out. Think of how much the neighbors would love you. Think of how much money you could save on therapy.

Probably is your word this month. Daddy is probably downstairs. Tristan is probably sleeping. Connor is probably hungry. The door is probably open. You aren’t sure what it means but you hear it a lot. Things like, “It’s probably going to take Mommy a full week to write this blog entry because you will not stop climbing up the back of the office chair to stand behind me and whisper in my ear, ‘Mooooommm-eeeeeee… Are you up dare?’ while holding onto my head.” Normally this is something that would land you in time out but today I’m taking it easy on you because you have a cold. And because after three days of writing this entry, this is how far I’ve gotten. This is because you’ve learned how to open the gate that goes to the office.

We thought about removing the gate, since it’s not actually holding you in and if your Dad doesn’t stop watching when he’s walking through the hallway, you won’t have any more siblings, whether we want to or not. But we decided to leave it up, because it squeaks loudly each time it’s opened. At least then if we are making dinner, or trying to do something like have a conversation while our eyes are not on you or your brother and you go into the office, we know that we have about 10 minutes before you remember that you can shut our computer down cold by flipping all of the switches on the surge protector that the monitor sits on.
Your Dad wanted me to note this month that he fed you chopped up prunes and you liked them. I still deny this and say that you only ate them because he was eating them and because they were orange flavored. I still refuse to believe that any child of mine would eat something that foul. Even if I happened to see it with my own eyes.

You enjoy preschool so much more now. I think after missing so many days because of the holidays and having to deal with both Mommy and Daddy all day long you love it more than ever. Sometimes I really expect to hear, “Miss MARTHA! Thank GOD! Get me the hell away from these people!”, muttered under your breath when I drop you off.
You sleep in a sea of Animals (Note the capitalization of the A in animals, a literary nod to the Wicked book that we just finished at bookclub). If we looked into your crib at any time, we would see two blankets, a Diego doll, baby doll, stuffed bear, dragon, macaw sometimes a bunny and a small plastic lama. Oh, and the Puffalump that Nana searched everywhere for so that Tristan could have it for Christmas. There are so many animals in the crib that I wonder that there is room for you but when I see you sleeping, the animals have arranged themselves around you like a cocoon.

The other day when we were playing with a toy in the upstairs hallway and you stopped for a minute and suddenly came running over to me yelling, “ I LOVE YOU, MOMMY!” and threw your arms around my neck, hugging me. Unprompted. It made my heart swell to three times it normal size and I hugged you back tightly because I know before I know it, you’ll be saying it as you walk out the door to college. I love you too.
Love,
Mommy

Disco Dining Room

Tonight while making dinner, I noticed an unusual display of lights on the kitchen wall next to the dining room doorway. I then heard a mischief induced giggle and walked into the dining room to see Connor standing on the middle of the dining room table, spinning the chandelier. The chandelier still has glittered snowflakes hanging from it that I put up before Christmas time and decided to leave up for the entire season. The snowflakes were spinning out like a ceiling fan reflecting the light making the entire room look like a disco. Connor had a look of complete rapture on his face and then he saw Mommy.
The look then changed from rapture to joy because he was going to get to show me what he had just been able to do. “MOMMY!”, he yelled, “Spinning round and round!”. He gazed one last time up at this spectacle of lights and then looked at me with some hesitation. Mommy, the world’s biggest party pooper. Because sometimes I hate that part of the job I almost considered letting him play with it for just a few more minutes. But I knew it would be only a matter or a few more seconds before he realized that if he were hanging from the chandelier… he could be spinning too! And took him down, carrying him out of the dining room and turning out the light.

Mommy. The world’s biggest party pooper. I think I might have a t-shirt made.

Calling All Cell Phones

This is the article that I wrote for the Mom’s Club Newsletter. If you have a cell phone or clothes that you’d like to donate… let me know and I’ll make arrangements to grab it from ya!

Calling All Cell Phones

My 2 year old, has the worst case of, “You have that, I want it” anyone has ever seen. We’ve been working on sharing, but it’s hard for him. In fact, if he sees his 4 month old brother with a toy, he immediately finds a new one for baby brother and swaps it out for the one that brother is holding. About 3 seconds after that, he decides that maybe the toy he gave up when taking the first one away is the one that he wants. He almost always ends up taking both toys and after a brief intervention from Mommy, throws himself on the floor in a supreme fit of rage.

It’s hard being two years old.

This month, let’s show our kids that we are great at sharing and lend a hand to women in need by donating used cell phones and/or business attire for the Women's Commission Domestic Violence Services and Displaced Homemaker Program. Let the kids’ help you pick an outfit to donate, or drop a phone in the donation box so they too can be part of the fun.

Your donation will go to the Domestic Violence Advocacy Council based in Charlotte, NC who in response to the growing number of domestic violence cases has created a program for old cell phones to be collected. These phones allow victims to call 911 even if the phone does not have an active service plan. These phones are given to current or potential victims of domestic violence through the Women's Commission, the Shelter for Battered Women, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department's DV-Unit, and Department of Social Services.

The Women's Commission also hosts a Displaced Homemakers program which allows women that are searching the job market in an effort to achieve independence, to acquire (borrow) clothing for job interviews. Maybe it will be your donation that gets the job, or makes the call to save a life.

If you are interested in donating, just shoot me an email to let me know you’ll be dropping something off and bring your donation by and simply leave it in the donation box on my front porch. You don’t even have to knock and say hello. You don’t even have to get the kids out of the car. Just drop and go.

Don’t feel like driving all the way to my place? No problem, just bring your items to either the business meeting or the potluck lunch and I’ll take it from there. Could sharing get any easier?

Dear Pink

Dear Pink,

While I realize that you own this house I would like to ask you respectfully and reasonably like a tenant would a landlord, to PLEASE STOP SHITTING IN THE BATHTUB. I realize that if you are going to shit in the house to show your displeasure that your cat box is not located at the foot of the bed where you lounge that the bathtub is a pretty ok place. But what I really need you to do, is to keep it in the box, Buddy. Your box is clean for goodness sakes.
Also, why must you insist on drinking from the toilet like a dog? Your water bowl has been cleaned and is full of fresh clean water. I won’t even allow Connor to put his fingers in it and scolded him the other day when he picked up the water bowl and poured it into your food dish. Don’t be angry with him, he’s just trying to help you multitask.
I realize that you don’t get near the attention that you used to. I’d be happy to hold you in my lap all day, if you would let me, next to the toddler and the baby, but you’ll not be having any of that. I can’t say that I blame you I guess, but your fear of the toddler makes it hard for us to give you the attention you are craving.
One more thing, I would like to gently mention. It is NOT OK to waltz down the hallway at 3am caterwauling like you are lost. You are not lost and we are not missing, since we are still laying in the bed that you just got out of so that you could go and use your loudest voice to wake the sleeping toddler. We do not like this. No, not at all.
I know that you are upset that you aren’t getting your can of food each day, but the vet said it wasn’t good for you and would stress out your kidneys. I only took you to the vet because I thought that something might be wrong with you since you were using the tub as your personal litter box. It only cost me 150.00 to find out that nothing is wrong with you, and that you shouldn’t get a daily can. So the lack of a can, buddy… you brought that on yourself.
We’ll try to do better with the attention thing. I’ll try to talk to you more, play with and brush you more and give you a little bit more catnip. Sometimes we forget that you were our baby first. Sorry about that. And the toddler… don’t worry. Sometimes he scares us too.
Love,
Mommy

Cascade Failure

Everyone always tells me that I should do PC troubleshooting on the side. That I could make a business of it. And actually, I could. So I volunteered to take my friends, friends computer which had been decimated with Spyware and give it a little look-see and fix it. And I did. It only took about 6 hours, (1 to fix it and 5 to remove about 300 pieces of spyware, including lop.com) but it was fixed. Then the next day while troubleshooting the CD rom and minding my own business it turned off. And. Would. Not. Reboot. Ok so maybe we weren’t minding our own business and just happened to uninstall the Primary IDE driver trying to force the system to give us an option to enable DMA.

The oddity was that it was displaying a multidisk partition error upon boot and would NOT boot into Windows. Not no way. Not no how. After Luckily, we were able to save all of her files to CD by removing said, hard drive and connecting it with our home system where I drug files over and then burned them to CD. Phew. But still unable to get Windows to boot and without a copy of XP home, which has got to be the most pain in the ass OS since Windows ME.
I even did what I always do in times of technical crisis. I called Sam. He made me feel much better and even offered to stop by after one of his 20 hour workdays and grab the system to check it out.

Jorma ended up getting the system to boot, by reinstalling the Intel drivers found on the hard drive to itself while it was slaved to my system.
This is the reason that I in fact can not start my own PC repair business. Cascade failure.
Cascade failure is one of Sam’s terms that I love. It means that one little thing is broken, and little by little the system gets chipped away. Until in the end, the system is toast. You know, you are suddenly fixing the CD rom and then the virus software fails, and then you can’t get on the internet, one of the fans goes and then the hard drive crashes. Like that.
The other reason is, if you fix something one time on someone’s system most, (but not all) feel as though you are then responsible for the system.
If you remove a virus for someone and then six months later their CD rom stops working… it’s somehow your fault. And if you are really lucky, they might even be bold enough to say something like, “Do you think it quit working because of the virus that you removed… you know… before?”. Now we techies know that this isn’t possible and but try to explain this to someone that doesn’t know that the hard drive from the RAM and you’ve got problems.
The problem is though, as a techie, you are torn. You don’t really want to fix the system… you know you aren’t really responsible, but you just can’t stop your self from asking… “Are you getting an error message?” and so it begins. This is what you should take from this ladies and gents. When you fix a computer. You own it. Love it, or just leave it alone.

Dear Tristan - 4 Months

Dear Tristan,
Tomorrow you turn 17 weeks old. You’ve decided to prove to us that you ARE a member of this family and that you have a vote too. And your vote is that you be held, At. All. Times. We do our best really, because it’s easier to hold you in one arm while trying to make lunch, than it is to put you down and listen to you whimper. You’ve developed the cutest laugh. It’s mostly you sucking in air in one big gulp and letting out a noise much like a donkey would make. You love it. And it totally cracks us up.

You officially weigh 14lbs and 6oz, and have already gotten in both your bottom teeth. Because of this, your hands are so tightly pulled to your mouth at all times, when I gently pull them away to place them onto a toy that you like, I feel like I might break your arms.
You are able to grab things now and bring them up to your mouth, things like your toys or your brothers hands. We think you would probably like to put the kitty into your mouth because when he starts milling around in the mornings you watch him like a hawk, but lucky for you, big brother has already given him a healthy mistrust of children, so he stays far away. Connor is a constant source of entertainment for you and has taken to bringing you toys to play with, although usually after stealing the one that you had first. He’s doing quite well with you however, sometimes bringing you toys for no other reason than he likes watching you smile at him.

You’ve started cooing with a vengeance and are crying less often. When you get hungry or tired though, it happens all of a sudden. You don’t give us any symptoms… no eye rubbing or trying to latch on, you just simply start yelling. Probably in your little baby brain you are really thinking, “Hey, watch how fast I can make Mommy move. Tee hee!”
You can roll yourself over and elevate to a propping position, with your weight on both of your elbows all by yourself. You did it for the first time today in fact, and then terrified me by pulling your knees underneath you and kicking them out like wanted to go somewhere.

Your PawPaw told me last week that once you start crawling that it’s over, but in fact it’s been over since your brother learned to crawl, so I figure, how bad can it get? I worry about our tile floors and you hitting your head. I joke with your Dad that maybe you could wear a helmet or something once you start to walk. He laughs with me, but he knows in his heart that there is a part of me that’s actually serious.

Darlene told me once that with the first child all you want is to get them up and moving, but with the second child you are like, “STAY DOWN!”. I think I might know what she means.

Love,

Mommy

Because I have so much extra time

When we were in California and I was about 7 months pregnant, I took a painting class. I’ve had every sort of art class you can imagine, but never painting. The teacher was exactly what you would expect in a California Painting class. She was all about the idea of art, rather than the actual art. In fact, she never brought in any of her own work as samples but instead had another student bring in theirs. She wasn’t much on actual instruction and I got the feeling that she at one time, had been a kindergarten teacher. The class was more a place to go and sit and paint with other people that were painting. Which in itself wasn’t a bad thing. But I did learn something of value. When you are painting, you start with the background first. You work it all up in layers. Like a chess game, you have to know which move you are making several moves in advance.

After painting clouds on the playroom ceiling, we’ve now decided to paint a mural. I know that’s ambitious with two kids, but if I try to work fast I think I might actually get it accomplished in this lifetime. Maybe even by the end of February, which is my goal.

It was hard choosing a subject. Maybe we should do a jungle scene. Maybe we should do water. Maybe we should do a Lord of the Rings mural (I REALLY thought about this one for a while), maybe we should just slap up the hill and sky default background image from Windows XP. It was a hard choice without knowing what Connor is going to be into in the next few years. So we decided on a North American mountain scene with all animals that the boys might actually see in the wild.

So we’ve started the layering. The basecoat is complete and all we need to do it get to it. I’m going to layout and draw the mural. Some of the areas Jorma is going to do and then I’ll go back and paint in the details. Some areas I’ll create little paint by numbers and Jorma can do those, while I work on other areas. If I can remember to take pictures, I’ll post them to the blog. If you want to come and help, give us a call. Maybe you can help me draw foxes that don’t look like cows.

Easy to Please

“Hey Connor, do you want Mommy lick all of the cheese off of your Doritos for you?”

Connor beams with excitement, “Oh, YES!”

Oh Shit!

Yesterday morning, right before Connor was going to get his hair cut, I was trying to put on his sweater and he was being a little difficult about it. Actually he was so excited at the prospect of getting a haircut and actually leaving the house that couldn’t sit still for me to put it on. I sighed loudly during the tussle at which point he stopped looked up and me and said, “Oh. My. God.” and started helping by putting his arms in the sweater. I was able to be mortified by this, only because it’s the thing that Jorma says, not me. Connor did a pretty good impression too, with the emphasis on the “my” and sounding as frustrated as possible. But if someone had been around to hear Connor say, “Oh Shit!” as some idiot on his cell phone cut in front of us in traffic, (waving like that made it all ok), as I slammed on the brakes, yesterday on the way home from preschool they could be mortified too. As soon as I heard it, I responded, “Oh SIT! That’s RIGHT, Connor is sitting! Mommy is sitting too!” hoping that I might confuse him into thinking that’s what he actually meant to say. I checked him out in the rearview and he had that “Nobody ever listens to me” look about him but happily chimed in about who was sitting and standing, who was awake and asleep. I guess it boils down to what I’ve known all along… that now I have to start watching my language so that my little Myna bird doesn’t pick it up. Because there is nothing more attractive than a kid in a stroller in Target hollering, Oh Shit! each time we get near another cart. Yeah, that’s be great. Hi, my name is Janice… and we live in the trailer park up the road.

It's Time for a Timer

In an effort to try and subdue the terrible two’s we’ve decided to put Connor on a schedule. He’s been in a routine for quite a while, where we do the exact same thing in the same order each day. This time however, I’m setting up a multiple alarm clock on the PC to see if doing things each day at the EXACT time makes a difference to him. Or at least keep him from throwing a tantrum long enough for me to complete a thought. We are going to start putting him to bed a little bit earlier too. Maybe more sleep is the answer. I know my last few entries have been about how terrible it is at our house right now, but I don’t want to give the wrong impression. He’s such a good kid. He is amazing, cute and often downright hysterical. Which is good because at this point it’s the only thing that’s keeping us from trading him for a puppy.

Welcome to the Terrible Twos

I told Jorma that I didn’t want to assume that Connor was going to go through the terrible twos because I didn’t want to create his destiny. Meaning, if we expect him to go through this stage… he will. We tried to remain positive, or I did at least, but it’s come time to accept the fact… The terrible twos are officially here.

And it hurts.

It’s not the testing, the willfulness or the sneakiness. It’s not the temper tantrums, every sentence beginning with, “Connor wants”, it’s not the refusal to listen. It’s the whining that gets to us. The whining that makes me understand why some animals eat their young. The whining that makes us wish the OB had given me more than only one refill of the prescription Motrin. The whining that doesn’t care that Mommy is holding the baby, while stirring pasta sauce and unloading the dishwasher with one hand. Because at that exact moment, “Connor wants” a cookie… or to put his choo choo in the pasta sauce or to play mad scientist by pouring water from one cup to another in the middle of the kitchen floor, or my personal favorite… whining, “Mommy UP!” over and over and over at that exact moment.
He is like a little boy explosion. And I don’t know what to do.

Last night I was at my neighbor’s house lamenting about the terrible two’s blossoming at our place and how the past few days had been unbearable.
Her parents are in town and her Mother was sitting at the table listening and said, in her charming Dutch accent, “There is a wind coming, yah? Sometimes, the wind comes through and some people, it makes them crazy.”
“I think I gave birth to one of those people, “ I said.
But ya know what... I’ll take that, because I would rather believe that the wind is causing the problem than accept the fact that it’s going to be this way for quite a while. It’s amazing what a powerful tool denial can be.
Everyone keeps saying it’s a stage and I know it is, it’s just so damn hard to live through. If it’s this bad now, I’m going to have to pickle him before he gets to puberty.

Wicked Book Club

Last night I went to the second meeting of my Book Club and I have to say, I love it. I’ve never been in a book club before but I read all of the time. Mostly when I read something I want to talk about I pester Jorma until he reads it, or just whine because he is finding some Second Edition Statistical Distributions book more interesting than my Oprah Book Club book. The nerve.

Our last read was Wicked. I’ve read it before, but I couldn’t get through the sequel, Son of a Witch, because I could barely remember the details from the first book. Now that I’ve read it again I can go on to the sequel. Yay!
It’s great fun to talk with someone that just has just finished the same book, and to add to the evening, it’s child free. Last night we had it in the cozy little coffee house around the corner. I love this coffee house because it has a little living room seating area, great desserts and a quiet atmosphere. Perfect for book chat.
I was able to appreciate it all the more, because we had a meeting in the same coffee house one morning when everyone at the mom’s club brought their kids. I sat in my chair, looked around and saw all of the same things that were there that day. The highchairs that Connor was obsessed with climbing to the top of. The chalk board where he played happily until an older child came and took his chalk away causing a screaming fit. The bathroom where someone kept leaving the door open, causing him to go racing into it so he could play in the toilet water. The din of all of the other children doing the same thing.
Last night was quiet, relaxing and even stimulating. I’m reminded how much I miss talking to other adults. How much I miss using my brain for something other than, trying to figure a way to organize the bathroom counter so that nothing on it can be touched by someone under, say, 3 feet tall. The only thing that would have made it funner was sneaking into the bathroom and pouring Vodka from the hairspray bottles we had hidden in our purse into our coffee. But there was none of that. I guess because it’s a book club meeting and not a Sadie Hawkins dance. But I enjoyed it all the same.

 

Painted Ceiling

I haven’t been writing for the past couple of days because we’ve been involved in a project of enormous proportion. We’ve painted clouds on Connor’s ceiling. Now that may not sound like such a great task, but we have popcorn ceilings. First Jorma had to tape off and put plastic over everything in the room. Then he scraped. Then he sanded. Then he scraped. Then he sanded. Then we primed. Then we painted almost three coats of blue. Then we added clouds. It’s a relief to have it all completed and finally after two exhausting days of cloud painting, I feel a sense of accomplishment. Connor’s pretty proud of it too. Although he’s more proud of the fact that Mommy paints the sky for him.
Coming out of pre-school yesterday, Jorma pointed out the clouds in the sky. Connor looked up at them and pointed and said, “Mommy paint?” Jorma explained to him that yes, Mommy paints the sky.
It’s good being a Goddess.

Happy Christmas!

Our Christmas was spectacular. We woke up early morning and got everyone fed and diapered before going downstairs. We reminded Connor that Santa had come and brought him presents, to which he responded with a blank stare and a shout of “Santa Claus!” breaking into smile. It was pretty clear that he just wasn’t clear on the entire Santa thing, so we took him downstairs pumping him up about Santa and gifts. He at first was blind to the toys laying all over the floor because he was stunned by the piles of packages under the tree. He then started noticing that there was a whole lotta stuff that wasn’t there the night before and went running into the tent that Santa had left up for him.

Grammie and Papa Chuck came by to eat brunch with us and open presents and then we packed up the car and headed up to see PawPaw and Nana.
Everyone assumed that Connor would get so much stuff from everyone else, that the toys he received were limited. (Limited being, filling the entire toy box in our living room and covering the floor.) He was so exhausted when we got home from Pawpaw and Nana’s that he said softly to Jorma, “Daddy? Connor tired” and later climbed into the crib of his own free will. Absolutely Amazing. We should have Christmas every day.

Tristan, also rather enjoyed himself, in the way that babies do, being held and fussed over by Grammie in the morning and by Nana for most of the evening. He was content to giggle and smile and everyone who held him and made sure he got some cooing in so everyone could see that no, in fact, his brother wasn’t cuter than he is at all.
At the end of the evening it was determined that a good time was had by all and we settled in for a long winters nap. Or at least until one of the kids woke up hollering. Back to normal again.