Why I Haven't Returned Your Phone Call

If you are wondering why I haven't, called you / returned your phone call / fixed your computer / come by to visit or returned your email this is the reason. Click on image to view larger.
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DeepThroat

DeepThroat
Originally uploaded by Dewchild.

This is from the Lazy5 Ranch on Saturday.
I'm attempting to post to my blog from my flickr account. Hopefully the font won't be all screwy but there is only one way to tell.

Making the World a Better Place

The Associated Press has put a ban on Paris Hilton stories. And suddenly the world is a better place.
Click here for more info.

Dear Connor - 28 Months

Dear Connor,
You are like a little boy explosion. I’ve got to tell you over the past month we’ve had some issues. All at once, we were stunned by your complete disregard for any rule or anything that we had to say. You were totally and completely out of control. And so was I. Turns out you have a sixth sense. It lets you know when Mommy is sleep deprived. You take advantage of this special power by getting into anything and everything that you aren’t supposed to, because you know that Mommy is probably too tired to deal. Because for a while, Mommy was. Nothing was working. Not spanking, not time out, not the naughty spot, not taking away toys, not having a talk with Mommy or Daddy. Nothing. I began to think that maybe for the next few years we were doomed to live in the wake of your tsunami like tantrums, trapped by the flood of your two year old emotions. But after reading a couple of different, How The Hell To Do This Parenting Thing books, I came to several conclusions.

One, I had to calm. down. Speak softly and carry a big stick. Two, when you have your talk with Mommy because you’ve done something wrong you have to make eye contact. You absolutely hate this. I hold you in my lap until you are ready to look at me, (we’ve had marathon sessions of this) and then we have a little chat. That’s all.

The problem is we have to stay very, very consistent. Because you are a both determined and smart, you are constantly testing the perimeters and letting you slide on an offense could cause our new manifest to come crashing down around us. It’s the same reason that people play the slots. Because once out of 20 times… you are going to hit the jackpot.So there isn’t much relaxing around here. Although there is nothing more that your Dad and I would like better than to just lay on the sofa and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer re-runs while your brother coos in our arms and you quietly play with blocks at our feet. For the WHOLE ENTIRE EPISODE. But since that, nor anything close to that has ever happened… we just have to settle for watching in 5 minute increments, (Thank you DVR!) while we pull you off of the top shelf of the linen closet.
Because oh how you love to climb. I recently finished the mural in your room and the first time you saw it completely, you tried to climb up onto the rock that the wolf is standing on and kept saying, “Mommy? Want to climb up it. Want up.” I guess it says something for my skill at realism, but also that you truly would, climb a flat wall.

OhMyGod are you obsessed with the toilet. And putting things into it. And flushing them. Thing like plastic alphabet letters and Daddy’s toothbrush. Things like wads of toilet paper. You will poo and pee on the potty, but get so obsessed with the toilet paper that I have to take it off of the holder so you can’t reach it and move away items like magazines and the hairdryer. Everything must go into the toilet. I’m so glad that you don’t have access to the cat.
You are so sweet to your brother. You bring him toys and try to share your goldfish crackers with him. You offer your sippy cup and don’t understand why you aren’t praised for sharing your V8 juice with the baby. That’s right. You drink V8 juice. But only because Daddy told you it was coffee and since you see what a big deal coffee is in the mornings, you figure it MUST be all that. Even if it tastes like spaghetti sauce over ice.

You sing everything you say. We love it. It’s not intentional… but even if you say, Mommy is folding laundry; you say it in the cutest little sing song voice. It sounds like mo-MEEE is fo-DING Laun-DREEEE!

You are starting to drawn conclusions on your own. The other day you asked what a sound was and I told you it was a police car. You said, “Must be zoomin!” which totally cracked me up because actually it was driving very quickly… you could tell by the sound. Although you never saw the car. You’ve got such amazing listening skills. If we could just get you to hear us when we ask you to please stop jumping on the sofa.

Love,

Mom-MEEE!

The Hotdog of the Potato Chip World

When we had our parent teacher conference at Connor’s preschool, I asked how his behavior was at lunch. Did he try to grab food from someone else’s plate, (like he does at home)? She told us that sometimes he does if another child has fruit snacks or Pringles. We had no idea. I never bought fruit snacks for him, because they are neither fruit nor snack, but candy and because I’m completely paranoid about choking hazards and we seldom buy Pringles just because. So the next time that he had school we saw to it that his lunch contained both fruit snacks AND Pringles with the obligatory pimento cheese sandwich. His teacher said when he opened his lunch, his eyes lit up when he saw what awaited him. He ate all his lunch that day.Since then, we’ve had Pringles on hand. Today when I was enjoying a stack of them I started thinking about the texture. Pressed, molded chips how tasty. And then I had an epiphany. The Pringle is the hotdog of the potato chip world. Where do all of those little pieces of chips come from? I can answer that for you. Most likely from the rejects and broken chips. From the potatoes that don’t make the “cut”. Just like a hotdog. Extra parts. Ew. Tonight when I was eating a couple of Pringles with our Philly Cheese Steak wrapped in whole wheat flat bread I was thinking about this again and they just didn’t taste the same. As a result, I think I just don’t like Pringles anymore.If I could just have a similar epiphany with ice cream, my diet would be a whole lot easier.

A Little TLC at the DMV

How to enjoy the DMV.
Have your husband take both kids and put on your comfiest sweatpants and shoes and then grab the latest copy of O magazine. Drive to the DMV at a leisurely pace preparing to enjoy some quality child free time with yourself and your cup of coffee. Of course this will be the day that it only takes you 20 minutes to renew your license.

Cause I Like Rock and Stuff

We purchased a GE Adora Washer/Dryer when we bought the house. I like to call them my 4.2 cubic feet of heaven. You wouldn’t believe how much laundry you can cram into the washer at once, which for me that’s a good thing, because, well, if you’ve never heard me bitch about it before… I do A LOT of laundry. But the washing machine stopped draining. And my clothes were left sitting in a murky mess of water. It was happening every now and again, just often enough for me to start to panic and then calm back down again, but when I washed the last load of sheets the other day, I couldn’t get the water to drain. I didn’t want to call a repair man, mostly because I washed my screen cleaner shammie mouse in it and it exploded filling the washing machine and our clothes with thousands of little white plastic beads… (Because we don’t have enough other crazy stuff lying around on the floors). I knew that it wouldn’t be covered under warranty because there is no way that the repair man wouldn’t see any beads, since they seem to multiply like Gremlins when exposed to water. So I ran the rinse and spin cycle 5 different times and rewashed twice with hot water, hoping that something would free up. It didn’t. So… I Googled it. I read several reviews of people having the same problem and then found one guy that had called a repair man, only to have the repair man, open the front cover and dump the trap. Although when I pulled out the trap, it was so clogged that I had to put a trashcan under it to catch the gallon of water it released, it wasn’t clogged with the 5 million plastic beads I found inside. Instead it was clogged with three baby socks, two bolts, a washer and a drill bit and now, it works like a champ again. The guy that wrote the post mentioned that the trap cleaning isn’t listed in the owners manual, (it’s not) which means there could be thousands of people having this problem because GE didn’t add this to the manual. I hope those people find this post.

So if you have one of these washers and you want to save yourself a hundred bucks or so here’s how you do it.

Remove front panel > Unscrew the large white plastic core on the front to pull out the trap. Clean out trap > Go spend the $100.00 that you saved on not calling a repair man at the mall on Starbucks, Cinnabon and new shoes, (I skipped this step and it’s still working just fine, so it can be optional).
And those sheets that got rinse and spun and then washed two other times in an attempt to drain?
Man, those are some clean sheets.

 

Because We All Know Valentine's Day is Really About the Sugar

Dear Tristan - 5 Months

Dear Tristan,
We are all so in love with you. If I could save a memory to play over and over during times of despair it would be the little nose wrinkle thing that you do before you smile. It’s beautiful… and most amusing. I also might include a clip of the excitement you seem to feel when your feet are released from your footie pj’s and you grab them to bring to your mouth. “These THINGS! They are SO SOFT! They taste a little bit like BOOB!” Today I sat on the bed and folded two loads of laundry as I watched Ice Age II as you lay next to me wriggling with delight, playing with your new toys. I will be sad when you are like, “These old things? No, let me destroy the living room instead”. That day is coming.

I say this because you are starting the motions of crawling. You push up with your elbows locked and look around the living room at your new perspective. Sometimes when you are in the bassinet, you pop up with your eyes and forehead showing over the rim like a little prairie dog all, “Why did you guys put me in here again? What’s going on out there?!”

You really want to be able to get from one place to another, but you can’t quite figure out how. You know instinctively that it involves moving your feet, so you teeter-totter on your little belly back and forth, kicking your feet and flapping. I’ve seen you put your feet under you and push a few times, but I don’t think you quite have the coordination to pull it off yet. Never fear child, its coming. Leave the fear to me.

You’ve also been delighting in your rice cereal in the evenings. At first when I would feed you, you would start flapping and wiggling so that I had to pin your arms to get a bite into your mouth. You’re getting better at eating it now, actually swallowing instead of pushing it around with your tongue, reveling in the feel of something that isn’t milk. Don’t worry, we got the entire 15 minutes of your first cereal feeding on film… it’s riveting. I have to take a minute here to tell you that your brother pretty much wants anything that you have… even if it’s rice cereal. He wants anything that I have too, so don’t take it personally. Yesterday after demanding a bite of your cereal over and over again, (although he knows that he doesn’t like it) I fed him a spoonful. His face turned beet red and he started gagging. Now, your brother will eat anything. Even salad. But apparently the taste of rice cereal is too much for him. In between gags he was trying to make out a sentence. That sentence was, “Mommy, maybe Connor sick?” I really tried not to laugh. Really.

You brother is still having some issues with your arrival. Sometimes he’s cute about it, “Mommy! Put Tristan down... hold Connor”. When I say, “No, I want to hold Tristan, Come sit with us.” he responds with, “Connor go get the bouncy seat” and brings over the bouncy seat insisting that I put you down. I don’t. I can’t, simply because it’s not fair to you. You are only 5 months old and I’m already trying to balance the fairness between siblings. One thing that I feel may be a lifelong trait in your brother is determination. He’s sometimes so relentless in his tantrum that I consider putting your down just to make it all stop. But I can’t. I fight for you. For my right to keep you in my lap as long as possible, because you are just growing so damn fast.
I fight for you.
I will always fight for you.
Love,
Mommy

Stage One

I’m on week 2 of the Oprah, (Bob Greene) Best Life Diet and so far it’s not that difficult. The first month, you drink water with every meal, take a vitamin supplement and don’t eat anything 2 hours before bedtime. You are also supposed to up your activity just a bit and eliminate pasta and alcohol. You weigh yourself at the beginning and then don’t weigh yourself again until the month is up. After that you move one to stage two, adding more eliminations and increasing exercise again. The premise is if you get the mind-set right the first month, the remaining stages shouldn’t be so difficult. We’ll see. I’m bound and determined to lose this dang baby weight. I feel awful. And because I don’t fit into any of my old clothes sweatpants have become my standard uniform. If you’ve seen me in the past five months, you’ll be nodding at that last line. That’s not to say when I lose the baby weight I’m back to stilettos and mini-skirts. Although that’s mostly because I haven’t worn either since my clubbing daze back in high school… but I might be tempted to pull out the overalls again.

 

Letting Go

Two Zen monks walked along a muddy, rain-drenched road. They came upon a lovely woman attempting to cross a large mud puddle. The elder monk stopped beside the woman, lifted her in his arms, and carried her across the puddle. He set her gently down on the dry ridge of the road as the younger monk discreetly admired her charms.
After bowing politely to the woman, the two monks continued down the muddy road. The younger monk was sullen and silent as they walked along. They traveled over the hills, down around the valleys, through a town, and under forest trees. At last, after many hours had passed, the younger monk scolded the elder. "You are aware that we monks do not touch women!" he said, "Why did you carry that girl?"
The elder monk slowly turned and smiled. He said, "My dear young brother, you have such heavy thoughts! I left the woman alongside the road hours ago. Why are you still carrying her?"

Dear "All Pediatric Offices"

Just a quick rant tonight. Why in the hell do they even bother taking your kids temp at the Dr’s office when they are going to use one of the digital underarm devices with a rubber sleeve on it?! It NEVER reads right. It always displays a normal temperature. Connor’s temperature was 103.7 at 11:00 and we gave him Motrin and went to the Dr. The nurse checked his temp, and declared it normal. I said, “There is NO WAY that thing is reading accurately. His temp was 103 when I left the house. So she replied, “Well you said you gave him Motrin so that probably brought it down.” I said, “FEEL HIM, he’s burning up.” “I dunno” she said and walked out of the room. So when we got home from the Dr, his temp was 104.8. So his temp went from 103.7 to normal and then back up to 104.8?!

All Pedia Doc’s read the temp this way. It’s ridiculous. If it doesn’t show a super high temp like that, what does it take to register a temperature? I mean… WTF?! I understand that they don’t want to do a rectal each time, so fine, don’t… but why even waste my time and energy holding a child who states, “All DONE!” and tries to climb down from my lap as soon as she touches him with it. THIS IS SO STUPID. You people went to MEDICAL SCHOOL!?!? God help us all.

 

Mother Knows Best

When my mother-in-law came to visit in August, during the tour of the house, she asked if we used the dining room each night. I told her that we’d been living in the house for three months and hadn’t used it yet, but would probably use it over the holidays. She gasped, “You mean this is just wasted space?!”. I told her that it wasn’t really wasted that we intended to use it we just hadn’t yet. It was just easier with the kid to eat in the kitchen where if spaghetti was thrown you didn’t have to wipe it off of an antique china cabinet. She was aghast and suggested that we remove all furniture and turn it into a painting studio for me. While the thought of having a space all my own made my toes tingle, I explained how that would be wasted space for sure since by the time the kids are in bed, I’m too tired to do much painting.
But in the way that a mother-in-law’s comments can, it began to chip away at my resolve. It kept popping into my head. I started seeing that it WAS wasted space. She was 100% right. So, on Monday while Connor was wrecking havoc at preschool, (that’s a whole other entry) we moved the china cabinet to the attic which involved packing up all of the china and Jorma and I carrying it upstairs, breaking down the dining room table and chairs, and moving down the sofa from Connor’s room.
We moved all of the toys and kids crap from the living room into the dining room and do you know… I absolutely LOVE it. Our living room is so unbelievable clean that it makes me happy just looking at it. I mean, spotless. And for our house… that’s quite a feat.

This means if you come over for dinner, you might have to eat in the living room, but at least it will feel like you are eating in a living room and not a daycare center.

Mommy Magic

To Connor after kissing the finger that he hurt running through the kitchen after being ejected from the pantry… yet again.

“You know, Mommy’s kiss always works. Sometimes it takes a little longer, but it always works. Broken arm, Mommy’s kiss might take about six weeks but it still will work. It’s true. We only go to the Dr. as a secondary precaution.”

How we roll

With two pack and plays, a grocery bag filled with snacks, a portable DVD player and two duffle bags full of clothes, diapers and anything else we could possibly need, we left for the beach on Tuesday. Both of the boys did surprisingly well in the car, which is nothing short of miraculous since it took us 7 hours to arrive at our destination. We missed our turn by about 50 miles and when we checked the map, “Oh Look! We are way over here!” we ended up taking a detour.

There isn’t any furniture in Pawpaw’s beach house yet, only a bed, a few chairs and a couple of air mattresses, which I thought was good since Connor wouldn’t be able to hurt himself on anything in the house, but he ended up breaking an electrical outlet with his head, cutting his ear in two places from spinning and falling into a table, and puncturing his knee on a magazine rack. I guess if that stuff wouldn’t have been around, he might have tripped on say, air and fallen down anyways.

We had a good time, took a tour of the area and visited the local aquarium, where Connor was allowed to run free, his light up shoes, acting as a tracking device in the dark and Tristan, was held up to see the fish, fascinated by the blue lights of the jellyfish tank. After Connor's temper tantrum in the gift shop, (an actual laying on the floor and screaming tantrum) over the 500 magnets that I wouldn’t allow him to pull off of the display we went back to the house for lunch and naps.

The nap never happened, although it was desperately needed, later resulting in the hyperactive spinning that caused the ear injury later that night. We learned Wednesday night that it was going to snow so we opted to leave Friday instead of Thursday due to icy roads. The boys missing their chance to play in the snow broke my heart, but when I remembered that Connor had outgrown last years mittens I figured it was just as well. We made it back safe and sound on Friday, with not a speck of snow left on the ground, but due to the magic of digital photography, email and the most awesome neighbors in the universe, we were able to see our new house covered with snow.

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.

 

I think I can

This is the article that I wrote for January’s issue of my Mom’s Club’s newsletter. Let me know if you find it inspirational or just too overdramatic. Or you could all just lurk like always. :)

I think I can... I think I can…

This year I resolve to lose the baby weight. This year I resolve to exercise more and yell at my toddler less. To allow the person behind me with only one item at the grocery store get in front of me and my cart full of crucial foodstuffs like ketchup and goldfish crackers. To recycle more. To worry less.

Oh and one other little thing. This year I resolve to change the world… or at least my part of it.

It’s pretty hard to imagine changing the world when some days it’s all I can to do get the dishwasher unloaded. So here’s my plan. First, I’ve volunteered to head up the Service Project Committee in the Mom’s Club. Second, I’ve planned to lure you all to help with fantastic ideas and projects that are fun for kids. Third, I’m prepared to cajole any willing volunteers with promises of a feeling of accomplishment and the happiness that comes from helping someone else. If necessary I am also willing to bribe with goldfish crackers.

I don’t think it takes as much time as you think. If you don’t have the time that’s ok, just resolve to help out when you can. If you do have time, even if it’s just a little bit and you’d like to help change our world, drop me a line or give me a call and together we’ll figure out how to get started.

Happy New Year!

Janice

Big Red and the boys

Yeah, this pic was totally worth going out in the rain for.

Dear Connor - 26 months

Dear Connor,

I keep meaning to write letters to you and your brother each month, but it seems that when I can get around to it, is the best I can offer at this point. I’ll try to do better.

You are twenty six months old today. In celebration of your Dad’s recent extended time off from work last Tuesday, we decided to take you and your brother to the zoo. Getting out of the house was a major excursion and I truly believe that I’ve taken camping trips with less planning. You Dad made observation that the double stroller takes a lot longer to fold than the single stroller but then decided that once you have enough children to fit in a double stroller you’ve already realized that you are never leaving the house quickly again anyway.

Unfortunately it was naptime for all of the zoo animals. So many were sleeping in far corners that we determined that you would probably think that the zoo meant you got to see only rocks and waterfalls. You really dug the Aviary, because you got to get down and run around, although you were more interested in the puddles on the floor than actually looking at birds. You are such a little boy. The next day we decided that your favorite part of the zoo trip was getting to ride on the Zoo bus back to the parking lot. You were pretty into that.

You’ve been more independent lately, wanting to do things yourself, especially undressing. You sometimes ask for help, as you did the other night before getting in the shower when you had your shirt up over your head and were yanking on it so violently, that it was causing you to spin and disco dance around the bathroom, yelling, “HELP! HELP!”.

 I did not help, only because it was hysterical and I know you in fact, CAN undress yourself. I know this because you’ve decided to take every opportunity to show us that you enjoy being naked. This was especially fun when you were in bed for the night, and stripped down peepeeing all over your nice clean sheets… again and then again. We started putting you to bed in Pjs with the feet cut off turned around and zipped up backwards which seems to do the trick. This all started because we introduced you to your very own potty.

I thought it might be easy to potty train you because for a while you were on a schedule so strict that you pooped each morning at 10:30am. Since that time, you’ve become more sporadic in your pooping, so it’s a little more difficult. But you enjoy nothing more than stripping down in 10 seconds flat and sitting on the potty explaining to us that you needed to go “peepee on da poddy” to keep yourself from getting in trouble for getting naked, yet again. I would be fine with this, if you had actually taken your clothes off because you actually had to pee, but you never do until you decide to get up from the potty and sprint across the living room leaving a wake of urine behind you. You have peed on the potty twice now which you should be proud of, but might be canceled out by the fact that you have also pooped twice on the living room carpet. It’s because of this that we’ve decided to put the potty away for a few weeks and try it again.

Christmas is coming and you are getting pretty excited. You aren’t real clear on who Santa is, but know something about him and his reindeer are a big deal and that you get smiles when you tell people that Santa says, HoHoHo. You are doing really well with the Christmas tree in the living room which is surprising. I thought for sure you would have pulled the entire thing down the first day, but seeing as how we put most of the ornaments on the top three feet of it, you’ve become bored and are content to turn the lights on the tree off and on, until your Dad and I start to feel like we might be having a seizure.

I can’t wait for Christmas. I can’t wait for you to see all of the toys that Santa brings to you, or the excitement you will have getting to see both sets of Grandparents on the same day. I can’t wait for you to look through your stocking. I can’t wait to see what’s in the bag that the preschool sent home with you, that says, To: Mommy and Daddy, From: Connor. I can’t wait to let you tear into the Gingerbread house you are going to make with Daddy. You make the holidays joyful again. Merry Christmas, Baby.

Love,

Mommy

Expectations

They say that the transition from one to two children, is a hard adjustment and it really is. But I’ve heard from many that the adjustment from two to three children is not that hard at all. So I’m going to tell you the truth. Going from one to two children is hard because you think that it’s possible that the transition just might suck. When you go from two to three children you know it will. And it’s all about setting expectations.

Dear Tristan - 3 Months

Dear Tristan,

Last Tuesday you turned 12 weeks old. A whole three months you have been with us now and I think you’re coming to like us quite well. You are especially fond of my boob and your paci. I’ve seen you smile at both so we can see you are already starting to make a list of your likes and dislikes. You aren’t quite sure what to make of your big brother, because at times he annoys you and at times he cracks you up so we feel like the brotherhood bond is coming along nicely. You are also pretty into Daddy right now. The recent time off granted to him by his previous job has given you more time to gaze adoringly at him cooing, your little arms flapping around his face.

You know what the swing means. If you are placed into said swing and do not at that exact moment feel like napping, you turn your bottom lip inside out immediately and start hysterically crying. You will stop as soon as you are picked up again. You are amazed by the mobile that hangs over your bassinet.

There’s not much to say about your eating habits since you are still just drinking milk, but I truly hope that you, like your brother will pretty much try anything once, even if you have a genetic disposition for macaroni and cheese with chopped up hotdogs just like your Dad. Other than milk, it appears that nothing tastes better than your fist.

You aren’t a great napper, settling for a long sleep through the night and two short power naps during the day. That’s just fine by me. You have decided that you will be held at regular intervals. Especially if you have been put in front of your kick gym for a whole 10 minutes, deciding all at once that maybe you don’t like those flashing lights… even if they do play Mozart.

But the best part of all of this for me, is that you think I’m funny. I mean really funny. You can’t quite laugh yet, but you try and make a little squeaking sound. The squeaking sound, further cracks you up making you smile so hard that your head wobbles.

I predict that you will be a thoughtful child. The Yin to your brother’s Yang. I think you’ll probably be all boy and I’ll bet you are going to be a busy one too. But hopefully you’ll stop and think before tasting an earthworm.

Love,

Mommy

Of danger and opportunity

Originally I was going to post a piece about how the Asian symbol for crisis is formed from two words… danger and opportunity. Since I decided I should research it first, lest it be inaccurate and my lurkers be compelled to comment and found this.

http://www.pinyin.info/chinese/crisis.html

So today I would like to post a piece on how the Asian symbol for crisis is in fact NOT formed by those two symbols, but will not deny that if I am trapped in a conversation where that urban myth can be used to inspire or change the course of thought pattern in another person, that needs encouragement I won’t quote it.

 

Undergoing, ongoing reorganization

Last Thursday, I actually stopped and thought about how blessed we are. How lucky I am to be able to stay home with the children. How lucky we are to have a great house and how lucky our kids are that they’ve never wanted for anything. And especially how lucky we were that the husband is willing to go to work each day to provide it for us all and how lucky he is to have such a great job. I was feeling thankful. Grateful. Lucky. That was the same evening that Jorma came home and told me that he had with 9 other people been laid off due to, “undergoing, ongoing reorganization”. I thought about it later and was so confused that after my gush of admiration for the universe this could happen. So, we are trying to stay positive. Perhaps we are about to move on to bigger and better things. Perhaps the next job will change his life, (and ours). Perhaps the next job will be the opportunity of a lifetime. Meanwhile the kids are thrilled to have Daddy around full time and I don’t have to wash a bunch of dress clothes each week. Now, less laundry… that’s something to be thankful for.

The most wonderful time of the year

I used to have my Christmas shopping completed by Halloween. I used to have my presents wrapped and in the closet the day after Thanksgiving feeling smug that my shopping was all done. I used to walk through the mall with no shopping to do and look at the stores and holiday displays of Santa and his reindeer, complete with polyester and shaved white wax for snow... just looking. I used to go to holiday parties and drink Jagermeister and beer, eat nachos and go to work on 4 hours of sleep. I used to sleep.

Now that I’ve got children, I don’t sleep for other reasons… ear infections, midnight feedings or untwisting those bazillion twist ties they use on toy packaging. I don’t feel smug that my shopping is done early, because it’s not. I don’t go to party’s during the season unless they are from 11am – 2pm and involve balloons. When I walk through the mall I have a baby in the front pack a toddler in a stroller, a bag of diapers, a bottle and a bag of goldfish crackers, a purse, a cell phone and most likely… no makeup on. But all in all I feel pretty good about trading the parties and lack of procrastination for footy pjs and stories about Santa. I laugh more at my toddler explaining to me over and over again, that “Christmas tree, RITE DARE!!!” as if I can’t see the large spruce that has taken residence in the living room, than I did at Jager laden holiday festivities. Now I actually look forward to the holidays, instead of dreading them. Now I understand how people can accidentally spend so much on their children, because it’s just so easy to keep buying and buying and buying when you actually have an excuse. Everyone talks about the blessing of seeing Christmas through the eyes of a child, but I don’t really see it that way. Instead I see Christmas through the eyes of a mom and that in itself is a whole world of wonder. 

Another Year Wiser

Yesterday I celebrated my 35^th birthday.

I remember when the bartender at one of the restaurants I was working at turned 30. I remember consoling her and telling her that she wasn’t OLD, that she was being ridiculous and that she had so much more life to live. I was 21 at the time and while outside I was consoling her on the inside I was thinking that she really was OLD and that I didn’t blame her for being upset since her life was almost over. Now I’m 35… (that’ll teach me). How in the hell did this happen?!

Connor had a hard time not opening all of my presents for me and after a maddened frenzy of toddler fury and determination, he landed himself in time out while I finished my unwrapping. He went to the store with Daddy and picked out a chocolate birthday cake for me and my very own Dora the Explorer balloon, which he was content to show me, yelling, “Happy Birfday Mommy!” but would not allow me to touch. I think there might have been a little bit of confusion when we blew out the candles. I’m pretty sure that he thinks that yesterday was his birthday again, which is fine, as long as I don’t have to share my new books or bath and body works lotions with him. I might share my Ice Age 2 DVD with him but only if he says, “Happy Birfday, Mommy!” again and again to me, because it makes the pain of turning 35 totally worth it.

Yay Me!

Happy Birthday to me!

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...