Toddler Tamer

Almost 6

2012-02-05T22:31:00.003-06:00

In case anyone is paying attention, I thought I would post the traditional last picture. Here are J's last pics as a 5 year old. He had his party this weekend--a taekwondo party and it was pretty awesome. Will post more pics later. I can't believe he is 6!

Hi There!

2011-11-09T14:51:00.004-06:00

I don't know if anyone will even read this since I've left you all for so long, but just in case, Howdy!

Halloween was super fun. J was Darth Vader and S was a cat. She was going to be Alice in Wonderland, but she changed her mind. I didn't care so much because I found this costume for $5. J also dressed as Abraham Lincoln for a presentation at school. They did Historic Halloween. It was really cute. My favorite part was when he said when he was born and when he died before he said anything else.

B and I had the chance to go to New Orleans last week. He had a conference and I tagged along. I. Am. So. Full.

It was my first time in New Orleans, and I had nothing planned other than Lunch and Dinner each day. And we barely scratched the surface, people.

Here is how our days went.

Wed: arrived at 8:30 pm, checked into our hotel (which I got a great deal on through Living Social that included our hotel stay, restaurant vouchers, free drinks each night, free breakfast, jazz club vouchers, and a voucher for a cafe) at oysters and shrimp. We also ate a salad because it was on the menu and I didn't think we'd eat many more of those. Walked to Cafe Du Monde for Beignets.

Thurs: Took a tour of New Orleans with other dental people. Ate lunch at Muriel's Jackson Square (it's haunted!)

Ate dinner at Emeril's. The service was outstanding and the food was just as great. Hail to the barbecue shrimp and the oysters. Oh my.

Listened to some great jazz.

Fri: Lunch at Dooky Chase's. Obama ate here when he was campaigning and it has been said that they have the best fried chicken in the country. Well I am not a fried chicken conoisseur because I have never even made it before, but it was so good that I had four pieces.

Dinner: Cooking class! B said that he was reading some magazine and they wrote that people always remember the experiences they have on trips, so he wanted this to be our experience. It was so much fun. Our class was taught by a native of Louisiana, who grew up on the Bayou and has so many stories to tell. We listened. We helped with the roux, we laughed as Canadians marveled at ingredients they had never seen before, we ate. Shrimp and Crab C'est Si Bon, Chicken and Sausage Gumbo, Dirty Rice, Creole Fish, Bourbon Pecan Bread Pudding. I am seriously thinking of making that shrimp appetizer right now. In fact, I've been thinking about it since Friday.

Sat: Lunch at a French bistro that was charming, but the food was too salty. Oh well.

Long walk in the Garden District marveling at the enormous homes.

Dinner at Cassamentos. More oysters and shrimp. More great jazz afterwards.

Sun: Jazz Brunch at Commander's Palace. So much fun.

We took a drive to Oak Alley Plantation. It's beautiful and right on the Mississippi. The story of the woman for whom it was built reminded me of the Paris Hilton/Kim Kardashian of the 1800s. I guess things don't change much over time.

Appetizers at Felix's Oyster Bar. Because we hadn't had any oysters that weren't fried yet!

Dinner at Upperline. At this point, when they brought out dessert, B and I both looked at each other and laughed. We couldn't do anymore. I think we put forth a valiant effort.

I hope we get to go back sometime. I had heard all of these stories about how New Orleans never came back after Katrina. We definitely saw places where things are not being rebuilt and are still in shambles, but we saw lots of places where people have rebuilt and that things are moving in the right direction. The people we met were extremely friendly and couldn't do enough for you. I'm starting to sound like a tourist commercial, so I'll stop.

Now I have to go think about how I'm going to cook our shrimp for dinner tonight since I'm pretty sure I cannot do as well as the cooking instructor did on Friday.

School

2011-09-06T14:48:00.003-05:00

First Day of School for J

First Day of School for Little Miss (don't worry, she had a plant to give too)

I can't seem to finish the three other posts I started. Maybe there will be a summer backtrack at some point.

And Then We Went to Florida!

2011-07-08T14:50:00.004-05:00

Getting ready for the beach!

Little Miss was a bit apprehensive when we first got to the character breakfast, but she perked up at the sight of Minnie

Two goofies

She insists on wearing her sunglasses upside down

It was nice to get back to Florida after a year. My parents have a lovely new place. We enjoyed a week of low humidity and cooler 80-90 degree temperatures. We also had fun two days at Disney. It's nice having parents that live within a few hours because you don't feel like you have to see everything and run all over the place. J had a great time riding the Thunder Mountain Railroad this time (hands up the entire time). He freaked a bit on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, but then said he would go on it again after it was all over. During the ride he kept yelling, "I hate this! I want to get off!" For about a week after the trip, Little Miss kept telling me, "Those pirates, they weren't careful, Mommy. They lost their keys" when referring to the last scene in the ride when the dog has the keys to the cell that the pirates are locked in. I even survived flying home alone with two kids. I had to entertain LM for the entire flight and she continued her sleeping on planes strike, but it all worked out. I must be crazy, but I will be attempting to take them to the west coast on my own in just a few days. I do have a few free drink coupons that I might redeem on that flight!

Milestones

2011-06-11T22:43:00.008-05:00

(In the time that it has taken me to finish this post, two people I know have had babies!)

Little Miss turned two and had a lovely birthday. I was a terrible example and gave my kids cupcakes for breakfast on her birthday because it was the only time of the day that all of us were going to be together that day. But, as Bill Cosby said, "It has flour, eggs, milk..." The kids definitely weren't complaining. Perhaps I wasn't such a bad example because I refrained from early morning cupcakes and went to the gym instead? No?

J also had his school graduation. They also had an international day after the ceremony. The kids were dressed in costumes from different countries. I honestly don't know what country Jonah was representing, but he looked cute anyway. J also presented his family tree. This was a project he worked on at school for close to 2 weeks. Aside from gathering the pictures and writing down names for him to copy, J did everything by himself at school. I was so impressed and proud of his hard work!

I got a funky henna tatoo, which looked really cool at first. Then I had to live with it for two weeks. I am not meant to be truly inked.

LM's birthday party was held the following weekend and was an ice cream theme. I got a lot of decoration ideas from This Mommy Loves. My favorite part was the ice cream pom poms. They're still hanging in our living room entry and since they're too high for me to reach, I don't plan on taking them down because they make everyone happy when they see them. Aside from the ice cream related goodies, we had a ladybug bounce house, an ice cream shaped pinata, and played put the cherry on the ice cream cone. I know the bounce house is kind of "one of these things is not like the other" and I always bawked at bouce houses before I had kids, but the grown ups, I mean kids really have a blast in them. Actually it was B who was really hinting about wanting it. The place we get them from always delivers a day early, so there's plenty of opportunity to bounce at 7 am and wake up the neighbors.

The ice cream cones are still hanging in our hallway one month later!

Almond butter ice cream cones

This is the table before we decided it would be best if little kids decorated sundaes outside.

Taking her best shot at the pinata

These "big kids" look so grown up

Good thing these big kids don't!

Party favors! I love a good party!

Deux

2011-05-25T13:39:00.006-05:00

Don't be fooled by the smile. I keep my mom on her toes!

Yes you do, little one. Yes you do.

So I guess this is where I write my yearly ode to the Little Miss. There's just one problem. Mama is exhausted. I think the entire year of toddlerhood has caught up with me. My ears hurt from the screaming and the squeals. My voice is tired from all of the positive redirecting. But, since I already made your cupcakes and we plan on eating them at 7 am for breakfast because it is the only time we will all be together as a family before 7 pm tomorrow night, which will totally make me mother of the year, I think I'll muster some strength and put this to paper so you don't complain about being the screwed second child when you're 18.

Dear Little Miss,

As you turn two, the biggest thing that seems to amaze me on a daily basis is that you are your own person. You are a stubborn, insistent, charming, and strong-willed trailblazer. You roll with the punches as long as it doesn't mean that mommy is leaving your side, in which case, watch out because there might be some incessant crying. I'm happy to report this is getting better, but you're not one to let go easily when you're not ready for Mommy to leave. I do have to admit at being relieved and proud the other day when I told you that I had to go out and you told me that you wanted to race me down the sidewalk and you said, "I'm ready for you to go now!"

It's been a long year of holding you. "Mommy, hold you!" is what you always said, until about a week ago when you decided that you understood the correct placement of pronouns. You are also quite a talker! About a month and a half ago, you were streaming a few words together and getting frustrated that you had to repeat yourself a couple of times. Then there was a moment in the car when you said, "I want to go to Daddy's office to show him my sticker" and you have been pretty much talking in complete sentences ever since. It's fun to listen to you and J have "conversations" in the car now. I love to hear you laugh at each other.

You really like coffee. Thank goodness Mommy drinks decaf. It makes me laugh when you say, "How about we go to get a coffee?"

You enjoy watering the garden and taking your baby doll for walks to get the mail. You insist on taking your purse with you and you look like a little old lady walking down the street as it hangs around your elbow as you try to push the stroller. You haven't quite figured out how to get all the way down to the mailbox and back, and carrying you, the stroller, the baby doll and the mail all at once can be a bit difficult at times.

You love the water and you have no fear of jumping in. I wouldn't be surprised if you swim early. If we could just get you to stop drinking all of the bath water, we'd be in good shape!

You also love books, but you're a creature of habit and if I don't read something exactly the way I'm supposed to, you turn back to that page and make me do it over. I have to admit that this is a little annoying, especially when I feel like we're in a hurry to read before naptime. I am impresed by your memory of a story even if we've only read it once or twice.

I think the cats have come to accept the fact that you aren't going away. I'm not sure they like it much, but I think they'll be okay as long as you don't try to pull off their tails too much.

It cracks me up when J gets put in a time out for something and you walk over to where he is sitting and give him a talking to. You say, "J, listen to me! Listen to me, J!" You turn your head as if you're very disappointed in him and let him know exactly what you think. For awhile you just babbled at him, but now you are starting to talk logically to him.

You sometimes act like a valley girl. You say, "Ohh!!!" whenever I explain something to you and I often can't tell if you've understood a thing I've said. Maybe there's a career in politics in your future?

You love ice cream. I can't say you've had that much of it, but we've been talking about having ice cream on your birthday for months thanks to your brother. I'm so glad your birthday is here because it's been hard telling you that every other day is not your birthday and that today is not a day for cake and ice cream. It was pretty funny tonight when we said, "Tomorrow is your birthday!" and you replied, "No it isn't!"

You are incredibly tough. You have to get hurt pretty badly to start crying. Most of the time you just pick yourself up and continue with what you were doing, almost as if it was supposed to happen that way.

The terrible twos are tough and we definitely have our days where I hardly recognize you, but in the end it's fairly simple. You smile, laugh, giggle, try to get away with something, have fun, learn, and grow every day. You're starting to show an interest in potty training. You even ask to take a nap when it's time. I can't complain too much.

We love you, Little Miss. Even when you turn on us at the drop of the hat and scream "No!" at the almond butter sandwich I have placed before you after it's what you told me you wanted for lunch. Even when you try to bite your brother. Even when you want to get out of the car when there's no possible way to do that. Even when you ask me to read The Dr. Seuss ABC book for the 30th time. We love you and can't believe you're two.

Happy Birthday!
Love,
Mommy

P.S. Thank you for sleeping until almost 7 am on most days. I really appreciate it

Gym Rant

2011-05-19T14:03:00.003-05:00

I rarely complain on this blog; mostly it's all about my wonderful children and our wonderful, perfect life. But sometimes, I get so irritated by other people and I just keep it to myself. Well, I needed to vent today because there were just too many things bugging me.

1. Dear Gym lady with the fake boobs, fake hair, and standing right in the front row,
You were at Body Combat class today, not Do Whatever You Feel Like Doing class. While everyone else was jabbing and crossing, you were jumping and spinning. You also pulled your shirt over your boobs during the abs sequence so you could stare at yourself. Obviously, you like yourself, but we all don't have to love you. Please stand in the back or just do what everybody else does! Thank you!

2. Dear Other Gym Lady,
Yes, you, the one who was so into class that you started practically barking like a dog on a conga line. I totally get it when people are working so hard and they really feel like they are punching something so they let out a great big, "Hi-yah!" or they grunt a lot. But making a sound that goes something like this, "Woof Woof! Oof oof!" does not fit the bill. For close to 30 minutes. I think it's time for you to go on a cruise and get this conga line thing out of your system.

3. Dear Other Gym Lady (this actually happened on Tuesday)
Yes, I do come to this class often. I'm sorry that you've gained 10-15 lbs in the past few months and that you have 4 kids and you are a teacher, but do you have to tell me all of this while completely standing in my personal space and all but kissing me on the lips? Despite my best efforts to back away, you just kept creeping closer and closer to tell me your story. I'm sure you're a very nice person, but BACK UP!!!

4. Dear Gym Lady on the Phone talking loud enough to make her point in front of everyone,
It really was sweet of you to take your first grade daughter out of school yesterday and take her to a local arcade/miniature golf place instead. You truly have your educational priorities in order and must simply have forgotten that summer vacation begins in Texas on May 28, only a mere 9 days away. Good for you for complaining to the management that there were too many teenagers there because your first grader totally should have been playing those shooting games instead.

That was fun. Thanks for listening. I promise we'll be back to our normal programmed blogging soon!

Random Order of Events

2011-04-29T14:15:00.007-05:00

Pictures of the past two months-- Art Day at J's school, strawberry picking, Easter fun, and our trip to CA.

Creating with friends

Sitting while everyone else picked for her. I guess we could call her The Strawberry Princess

Dressed up for the neighborhood egg hunt. J chose to wear a tie so that he could look nice for the Easter Bunny.

Little Miss wasn't so enthused about meeting an oversized rabbit.

But she felt much better about having her face painted to look like one!

Double rainbow on our way to Napa made us giggle only because it had been a comedy of errors to finally get there...

The only person in the family to get on skiis during the week

"I can't put my arms down! And this snow really stinks!" About 5 feet fell that day.

Looking happy in San Francisco! (Before the pink eye and double ear infections and sick parents)

You Can't Ignore Cancer (and I bet you have $10)

2011-03-01T00:00:00.002-06:00

I am going to hope that today is one of those days that more than 1 person checks to see if I have updated my blog. Today, I am going to shamelessly plug my dear friend, Mama Kat's cause. She's planning on shaving her head to help kids with cancer and she's trying to raise a boatload of dough for those kids with cancer through http://www.stbaldricks.org/. I could give you all the details, but then you wouldn't be as intrigued to read her story.
Click here now!!! http://www.baldybubbers.blogspot.com/

So, if you haven't clicked there yet, I hope you'll change your mind, but if you don't feel like reading a lot today, will you consider making a small donation to her cause first and read more later? You know you have an extra $5 or $10 laying around. I'm sure there's been a time recently where you said to yourself, "Oh, I should give them some money" and then you put it off and forgot. Or maybe somebody (a friend or even a stranger) did something really nice for you and you kept telling yourself that you were going to pay it forward someday and life just got in your way and you haven't done that yet? Well, right now would be a great time!

Have I convinced you yet? Good. Go here now! http://www.baldybubbers.blogspot.com/.

Thank you!

Montessori Birthday

2011-02-15T14:28:00.004-06:00

J goes to a Montessori preschool and they celebrate birthdays a little bit differently there. Here are some pictures of his celebration at school.

Parents make and share a poster of the child's life highlighting things such as what they were like as a baby, their first birthday, special trips or events, etc. Most of J's descriptions for each year involved some sort of travel to California or to Florida to visit family. Man, that kid has traveled a lot!

(we added some glitter to his name after I took this picture)

The kids listen to the story of J's life

The months of the year are put on the floor in a circle with a candle in the center to represent the sun. J stood on February and began to walk around the circle while the kids sang a song about the earth going around the sun. He stopped each time he got to February and told something (with some help) that he liked especially in that year. It was hard to remember years one and two! After he walked around 5 times, the teacher lit four more candles and the kids sang happy birthday. J blew out the candles and all the kids gave him hugs. They then shared a fruit salad instead of cupcakes (they discourage sugary sweets-- at first I thought this was a bit of a bummer, but honestly it was nice to not have to make 24 more cupcakes and have leftovers).

walking around the sun

making his wish

Super Party!

2011-02-10T13:48:00.007-06:00

We officially have a 5 year old in the house. J's party was fantastic, and as he said, "This was the best birthday EVER!" Nobody's ever accused him of not being excited about things.

It was a super hero training party. There was cape making, a Batman bounce house, games such as "Pass the Kryptonite" and "Pin Spiderman to his web". The kids attempted to destroy a #5 pinata and also ran on a superhero training obstacle course, which J designed. Many of my pics are blurry, and some were taken after the party was over, so they aren't as clear as I would have hoped, but here you go!

Happy Birthday J Sign

Super Grandma with her Super Grandkids

J wants to hang these in his room

The Super Food-- Power Juice, X-Ray Vision Improvers, Fruit Sabres (with lightning bolt handles), Brain Power Pellets, and Muscle Maker Munch.

Cape decorating-- the kids ran the obstacle course and earned their capes to decorate. The obstacle course involved jumping over rivers, crawling through tunnels, rescuing a cat from a tree, swerving through tall buildings, hopping along a bumpy trail, and pushing a car to safety.

Playing Pass the Kryptonite. We played this game without anyone being out. When the music stopped, instead of being "out", kids got to jumg along with me in a different circle and say, "kryptonite, kryptonite, kryptonite!" It saved a lot of hurt feelings.

This pinata took forever to break. Finally the loot was dispersed to all!

Super Jonah! This cake was made using a 1977 cake pan of my mom's. It took about 3 hours to decorate from making the icing to completing the decorating. It was awesome, but my hands hurt!

Goodie bags said, "Thanks for coming to my birthday party! Your Super Pal, J"

The Super Strongs. We all had superhero shirts. I had Wonder Woman, B was Green Lantern (although he was supposed to be Robin, but his shirt got messed up in the mail twice). The kiddos were superman and supergirl.

I'm hoping that J has super year as a 5 year old. I'd say it's off to a pretty great start!

I'll Take, "Random Toddler Categories" for $200, Alex

2011-01-28T13:14:00.005-06:00

Little Miss is becoming the non-stop talker. Who would've thought this would happen since her brother is constantly jabbering too? What's even funnier is that she likes to use all of the words she knows in a category all at once. For example, if it's lunchtime and I say, "Would you like some cheese?" She'll say, "cheese, turkey, toast, apple, avocado, blueberries". If I mention the park, she says, "swing, slide, rocks, balance beam, running". She does the same with people and places. If it's time to take J to school, she starts to rattle off all of the people we will see when we get there. It's pretty funny. I find myself marveling at how many people's names she actually remembers. It is true that Geminis are party people, right? I think she's starting very early.

I began a Christmas wrap-up post. Are you surprised you never saw it? I would like to say that blogging more was one of my New Year's resolutions. I suppose it could be. Let's just say that I'll try to do better without any guarantees. Here are a few xmas pictures of J and his new drumset and S in her new car. Both have been big hits around here (pardon the pun). I'm amazed at how little the drumming bothers me, yet how much screaming and whining does.

(that's a candy cane and not a cigarette in her mouth)

We're gearing up for a 5th birthday party around here next week. It's going to be a superhero themed party at our house. I desperately tried to get J to pick a place so that I wouldn't have to worry about cleaning and hosting lots of people, but he decided that since he had his party at a place last year that he wanted to have it at home this year. He's so type A. He's been full of good ideas for the party, which has been great. In some ways, he wants to do nothing special ("We don't need special plates with pictures on them; we can just used colored ones") but in other ways he has been extremely detail oriented ("Let's make an obstacle course for superhero training with a chance for running, jumping, slithering, and bouncing activities.") I'm excited to be using a very old cake pan for his cake (circa 1977) that my mom used to make a few cakes for my brother's birthdays. This weekend is going to involve some fabric cutting and label making. I will do my best to update you on the actual party in decent time.

I thought for a while that my daughter was going to have to be given away to be raised by wolves for a few years because she was quite the little animal over Christmas and the few weeks after. She decided to have some major separation anxiety while we traveled, leaving her pretty much attached to my hip for our entire holiday. If I even walked over to the sink and she was in the same room, she still screamed my name over and over again. Things are gettting better, but she does like to let everyone know when things are not going the way she would like them. All I can say is thank God for wine and early bedtimes!

I just picked up J from school to find out that he has pink eye. A quick trip to the doctor to get eyedrops confirmed it. I'm glad it's this weekend and not next weekend, but my eyes feel itchy already and I hate that!

This is also totally random but funny. The kids got great bath stuff for Christmas from their Aunt. One of the toys is a bunny called "jumping Jo Jo". It plays a song, shoots out water, and rides around the bath. Both kids like this, especially Little Miss, who yells, "Captain Jo Jo at the helm! Captain Sam-mone at the helm! Captain Nonah at the helm!" And so on... Anyway, other fun bath ritual involves a bath tea pot and hair washing. J likes to wash Little Miss' hair with the tea pot and calls it shampoo with champagne. When he rinses her hair off he says the water coming from the teapot is the champagne. Now whenever it's time for a bath, Little Miss yells, "Champange! Champagne!" If you didn't know she was 20 months old, you would think she has very refined taste.

Warm and Fuzzy

2010-12-09T22:36:00.003-06:00

There is something about getting lights up on the Christmas tree that makes me feel calm and warm. We got our tree earlier in the week, but we've been slow at getting it in the house. We finally moved it in last night. The kids came downstairs and were so excited to see it this morning. S has been taking special trips outside to smell it while it was sitting in a bucket against our house. This morning she just kept waving at it. When we came back from running errands this afternoon, she walked right over to it, waved hello, said, "Hello tree Christmas, (how) are you?" and went about the business of playing. J helped B put up the lights and then did the inaugural "light show" with the remote before going to bed. I bought one of those remotes a few years ago at a post-Christmas sale at Target. We've had a ball with it every year. The best part is that it really annoys a member of the family when we turn it on flash. We like to act as if we have no idea how that happened, which is quite juvenile and quite fun. Plus, we get a rise out of some people, which is a win-win in my book! We're such pranksters over here, you know!

We've been doing a lot of advent-y activities over the past week and a half. Some of the highlights have included going to the Biscuit Brothers Ho Ho Ho Holiday Hoe-down, decorating a gingerbread house, watching Rudolph (along with wearing a handmade Rudolph hat-- gotta love it when your kid is still young enough to want to look silly), touring the neighborhood lights, writing our letter to Santa, and listening to lots of Christmas music. On the agenda this weekend is going to Christmas in Downtown Round Rock, which I have never been, seeing Joe McDermott play at the Cherrywood Craft Festival, Holiday in the Park at our neighborhood park, decorating the tree, and baking our first batch of Christmas cookies.

I'm going to give you all fair warning because I strive to be a citizen of good grammar and spelling, that my Christmas card has a potential spelling error depending on which dictionary you choose to follow. It is going to say, .... wonderous joy. I didn't notice this in the slightest when I was looking at it on the computer, but once I got them in the mail, I immediately said to myself, "that should say "wondrous". I quickly looked at Webster's and they told me it is a common misspelling, but other dictionaries like urban dictionary, said it was completely fine. I also learned through Webster's that it is an early spelling used in the middle ages and throughout history in Britain. So, instead of paying full price to have them printed again, I'm going with the the idea that I am sending you a modern Christmas card with a British twist. And you'll be so kind to excuse the error if you see it as one (if you even read the written part anyway!) I feel better telling you all about that ahead of time. This way, nobody can say, "I can't believe she sent that out this way!" Hopefully the cuteness of the kiddos will make up for it.

This is also the beginning of my birthday weekend, whereby I lwill eave the 18-34 demographic on Monday. It's kind of sad. I imagine the AARP flyers will be arriving soon enough. It's also really annoying that J keeps asking my how old I'm going to be. I know he remembers and I just don't think he can comprehend how old 35 actually is, even though B is 36. B and I have plans to go see Black Swan on Sunday night. I've been dying to see that movie for months!

I'll leave you with my latest facebook update. Tonight, J and I were writing a second note to Santa. We wrote the first one at Macy's, so we weren't sure that counted. I asked him if we told Santa everything he wanted to tell him and he said, "We should maybe ask him for some wine. You know, for the adults." I love how considerate he is of others!

Have a good weekend!

Try Again

2010-11-30T13:10:00.010-06:00

I was going to rant about how my computer and camera hate each other and that is why I haven't been blogging. Although it's true and I have about seven drafts that I wanted to include pictures, I figure I'll save the page and write about something else. At the end I will try to post some pics. If it works, you'll see them. If it doesn't, you'll just read this (if you're even here, which I doubt anyway!)

Everyone's gearing up for the holidays. We had a lovely Thanksgiving week that started off with an early Thanksgiving the weekend before at our house with my parents, brother, and his girlfriend. There was golf, shopping, going out downtown, playing with the kids, and of course, turkey. The best part was probably the crush that J had on M's girlfriend, P. It was pretty hysterical. She would walk into the room and he would go the other way. Or he would smile and stop what he was doing and just get all flustered. I asked him if he thought P was pretty. He said, "Yeah. Duh!"

S is incredibly taken with her grandpa and her "u-mar" (my brother). She loved playing with both of them. She asks about them all the time now that they are gone. I was reading books with her earlier and out of the blue she just started saying their names as if I could produce them for her on the spot. Then she smiles as if she believes that I can. It's really cute. I guess you have to be there.

We had Thanksgiving at K and C's house and had a lovely day. There was good food and drinks, games, kiddos that played incredibly well together, and little ones who cooperated enough for us to stay later than usual. I got to do the worm and play a trombone. How many of you did that on Thanskgiving? I did not do both at the same time, though! The worm came out of planning for Thanksgiving a few weeks prior over a few drinks. Next thing I knew, the list for who was bringing mashed potatoes, etc was made, and I was on the agenda for doing the worm. The trombone was part of a game we played with various instruments and songs. It was basically a name that tune game. I highly recommend it at your next get-together. Any instruments will do!

Now I am starting to get slightly stressed over birthday month and Christmas. There are 7 birthdays in Dec. in our family! There were some good posts today on other blogs about advent calendars and lists of things to do to make the holidays memorable. Loved them all. I have a list myself, but what tops my list more than anything this year is making sure my 4 year old doesn't completely lose it with our trip to TN for Christmas. The natural "how is Santa going to find me?" worry began right after Halloween and is causing a bit of anxiety in this house. And it's starting to get to me because he's asked for a drumset for Christmas. Of all years, why couldn't he have asked for something smaller?

Actually I think I've got this covered. Santa will be bringing the drumset here and will be bringing a drum pad to TN. What's keeping me on my toes is trying to figure out what goes to TN and what stays here. Don't get me wrong; it's going to be so much fun having the three cousins spend Christmas together. There will be much cuteness. I just don't want too much in either place because I don't want Christmas to be an overload. After all, it generally takes us days for J to open up his gifts. We want him to appreciate them and he wants to take the time to use everything, so it takes awhile. If he were a few years older, we could just say that Santa's leaving most of your stuff at home and Christmas is really a time for family anyway. This doesn't work as well when you're four.***

I also have no idea what to give S. She doesn't really need anything. It doesn't matter much because she's only 18 months old and really won't know the difference, but I have to play it up enough so that it passes muster in J's eyes. We don't want him to think Santa forgot his sister or that she was bad or something. Believe me, we've talked about this too. He actually asked, "How will Santa know S is in TN too if she can't tell him like I can?" The kid is getting me at every angle!!

Yesterday we were in the backyard running around. He stopped for a minute to catch his breath, looked at our chimney and said, "Mom, why does Santa go down the chimney? Wouldn't it just be easier to use the front door? Instead of only using the front door when there's a fire in the chimney, he should just use the front door all the time." I'm learning to answer such things with a "What do you think?" I also told J that he could suggest that to Santa when he saw him. BTW, we've already seen Santa twice. The first day we were by ourselves and the extremely nice picture guys allowed us to say hello and have a chat without taking pictures. We went back the next day with S to get the shot with Santa. I was kind of hoping that she would freak like she did with the Easter Bunny because the picture was so funny, but she casually walked up to him, sat on his lap and stayed put. I don't think she would have moved if we didn't tell her we were done!

S has been going through the 18 month stage of being completely OCD. If she sees trash, she picks it up. If she sees something that looks dirty, she tries to wipe it away. If something drops or is broken like an acorn on the ground, she says, "Uh oh!" or "Oh! No!" or "Oh Dude!" Those crack me up. Flipping out when things aren't in the order that an 18 month wants them to be, especially when I have no idea what that order is, is not so much fun.

Well, it's back to my list making. I hope to be back here since I do miss blogging and hearing from people. We'll be realistic and try for once a week. In the meantime, if you see Santa, make sure to tell him that J will be in TN for Christmas. Thanks!

(pic upload worked!)

I took J to see a Pigeon Party downtown. It was a show of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, Don't Let the Pigeon Stay up Late, and The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog by Mo Willems.

S (sporting her duck hat) playing with some lettuce at an organic farm we visited earlier in the month.

S likes to hold onto the back of the tricycle while J rides it. He then crashes into the garage door and they both laugh. This never gets old. I love this picture.

***Please excuse the lack of paragraphs. Apparently since blogger let me upload pictures, it would not let me make paragraphs here even though I tried 4 times. Don't want you thinking I don't care about my layout!

The Saga Continues

2010-08-11T14:15:00.002-05:00

I know you are waiting at the edge of your chairs to find out the conclusion to my Home Depot/patio furniture story. Would you be surprised if I told you that there is no ending yet? When we last left, our consumer had six patio chairs and a table assembled with a giant hole in the middle where the glass was supposed to be in tact and holding up wonderful margarita glasses and a bowl of chips and salsa. Or something. Instead, the consumer had received an apology, a $50 gift card, and another apology with the offer of something else. Well, in between the apology and the offer of something else, I got an email that my replacement glass shipped ahead of schedule and would be delivered in a few days. Fabulous! Until it arrived and was also shattered in a million pieces. I couldn't believe the way this was packaged. Anyone who has ever moved down the street or across the country knows you pack glass in more than one layer of bubble wrap!

I was getting pretty livid at this point and composed myself for another chat with Home Depot. I received another apology and told them that I would like to return the furniture. They said this wouldn't be a problem. As long as I had the box, everything could be picked up. When I told them the box was now a makeshift pirate ship, they told me I could return everything to my local store. I told them that was impossible and that I wasn't going to make 4 or 5 trips on my own time because of something they couldn't get right. They said that they could arrange for someone could pick it up, but they would need to get back in touch with me about that. Fine. When they asked if there was anything else they could do for me, I asked to whom I could talk to about the frustrating experience I had since the end of June. I was transferred to someone who could help me, told them my story, got transferred again because they sent me to the wrong person, told my story again, got transferred for the same reason, until I finally told my story to a corporate person that handled online purchases. I spent 54 minutes of my time getting to the right person and just when I got to her, the kids woke up from their naps. Of course. I had to be quick, but she was very nice and offered me another $50 for my troubles and asked if there was anything else she could do. Since the kids were up, I couldn't think about ordering anything else at that time (and I wasn't sure that I wanted to!).

We let a few days pass and shopped around and couldn't find anything that was a reasonable price. I am unwilling to spend thousands of dollars on patio furniture. I just can't do it. So we decided to push the offer with HD about price matching another set with them. B called up because I was tired of dealing with them, but he called after hours and was told that there were no supervisors there. Lo and behold, we actually got a call back during regular hours from a supervisor who asked how she could help us. We picked two sets that we hoped could be price matched or discounted (one was a stretch so we decided we would take a discount if they offered it). She said she had to put it through to her supervisor. He actually called me back yesterday and was willing to price match the nicer set for us. People, we are getting a steal. And it doesn't have glass, so it can't shatter. I'm not saying it's perfect because until it is assembled and we are sitting out in our yard with drinks in hand, one never knows what could happen.

I guess the moral of the story here is that you should always calmly try to reach a solution when you have spent money and you are not satisfied with the product or service you have received. I can't tell you how many times I have just said, "Oh, okay" to someone when something is not right and have just let it be, but I have felt worse in the end because I felt like I was taken advantage of. In the end, I think we are getting way more than we thought we would, but that never would have happened if we had screamed and ranted. It also helped that I didn't back down when all they gave me was an apology. By simply saying, "I appreciate the apology, but it doesn't fix the problem," I felt that HD had to use actions instead of empty words. I will still do my best to not shop the large conglomerate mess if I have a choice, but at least I didn't feel like I got swallowed up in the large conglomerate in the end.

Oh, and the last three digits of my first order number were 666. When the corporate guy heard that, he freaked and immediately issued me a new number. Bizarre, but hopefully everything will be great now that that is fixed!

Whoops!

2010-07-30T20:21:00.000-05:00

Well, if I said my lack of blogging wasn't on purpose, I wouldn't totally be telling the truth. There have been many times when I have sat down at the computer to write an update of Little Miss' birthday, our trip to Florida, the Feathernester's visit at the beginning of May. Then I get tired. That's my excuse. I've been tired. We've been busy. Good busy, mostly. Next thing I knew, June was over and July was beginning.* Whoops! This weekend was supposed to be super good busy, but it turned out to be super bad busy because both the kiddos ended up being sick on Friday. J had strep, and Little Miss was also running a fever, so the assumption that she also had strep was made. This is the second time in a month that J has had strep, so that totally sucks, and it looks like he is following in my footsteps of being a major strep sufferer. I got strep along with him the first time, but this time (knock, knock) I appear to have been spared. Little Miss' infection has been a bit more dramatic, with a higher fever, some crazy crying jags, and some explosiveness that is just not fun to write about. But we will continue on and hopefully we will be able to celebrate our next weekend of super fun busy in a few days.

(The things we had to miss because of the simultaneous sickness included a baseball game and access to a room with food and drinks, and a birthday party at the children's museum.)

Other than that, what have we been up to? Well, let's back up a few months, shall we? We began the month of May with a visit from the Feathernesters for a week of non-stop cousin talking. Squealing. Squeaking. Giggling. Chasing. It was lots of fun. We also had a visit from B's mom in time for Mother's Day. She graciously played the part of babysitter and allowed the four parents to go out and have some fun. For Mother's Day, B arranged for the three ladies to go downtown to the Ballet. He chauffered us down so we could enjoy imbibing before and after the show without worry. One of the many reasons B and I love going to the ballet is because they pour a hefty drink that doesn't do complete damage to your wallet. We also had a lovely Mother's Day brunch with K, C, Z, and J.

The Hawaiian troubadors

Two cuties in the park

J made me some bling bling for Mother's Day. He told me so.

About a week after that, we headed east to Florida for a week. This trip coincided with Little Miss' birthday. We spent a few days at the retirement village (aka summer camp for the 55 and over crowd) with my parents. J and S had multiple carousel rides at various places. The boys played some golf. J got a 7 iron from my dad (his first real golf club!). B headed back to TX to work and the rest of us headed north three hours to Disney World for a couple of days. We were in Disney for S's actual birthday, so we had a mini celebration there with cupcakes. Both kids ended up with a faceful of frosting, which was lovely. As for visiting Disney itself, we did it in a very laid back way. Since my parents live three hours away, there was no pressure to do everything all at once for fear of never returning. This made it so much easier. We spent the morning at The Magic Kingdom, where J and S rode another carousel and my mom got to ride It's a Small World with someone who actually enjoyed it. I have to admit it was much more fun riding it this time with little kids on board because it was fun to see it through their eyes, and it was worth having the song stuck in my head for a few hours. J also rode the race cars, went on the Jungle Cruise, saw the bear country jamboree, and a couple of other things. The wait to meet Mickey was an hour long, so we decided to skip that and try again later when we didn't have LM in tow.

I love this picture.

Get. This. Thing. Off. Of. Me!

Face dive into icing

After a little naptime and pool time (we stayed at Port Orleans) J, my mom and I headed back to Disney to meet the Mouse. We waited patiently for 45 minutes, checking in every once in awhile to make sure that J did indeed want to meet Mickey Mouse, and that he wasn't going to be afraid once we got to the front of the line. J's had a lukewarm relationship with other life-sized characters so far, and I really didn't want to stand around waiting for nothing. As you can tell by the picture, it ended up being worth the wait. Lots of fun. We rounded out the night by riding a roller coaster, getting some popcorn and frozen lemonade, and heading back to the hotel. It was a great first visit. I'm sure Grandma will take him back anytime he wants.

I love how the Hawaiian shirt clashes with Minnie's dress!

After we got back from Disney (my first solo flight with two kids, I might add), we had one day before we had LM's birthday party. It was a fun-filled day. Since there were going to be just as many big kids as there were little ones, we decided to spring for some outdoor entertainment in the form of a bouncy castle. This ended up being one of the best party investments ever. I paid for four hours of fun and the guy was supposed to pick it up after the party ended around 2. He called me at 1 and asked if it would be okay if he didn't pick it up until 6. J had a blast. His buddy that lives down the street even came back later on so that they could both jump some more together.

Birthday outfit.

Owl cupcakes.

Unfortunately, two days later, we had our first bout of strep. We were blaming the bouncy castle.

Let's see... what came next? Ah. Father's Day. We went to a "meat and mustaches" barbecue and K/C's house. The men dined on some pork stuffed with bacon, wrapped in bacon thing while the rest of us spared our arteries and had other BBQ fare.

All that's missing are the cigars

I think I also forgot to mention that we have had a birthday party every weekend since LM's birthday party on May 30. It's been exhausting. We still have three more to go and then I think we are going to be done for a bit. Other than that, LM has been walking all over the place. She started shortly after her birthday, and she has been almost running since. She's talking a bit, too. Some of her favorite things to say are owl, bye bye, and bub bub (blueberry), and burp. She says other stuff here and there, but those are pretty consistent.

In other news, I'm a bit irate at Home Depot. I'm sure some of you are saying, "Duh!". We ordered some patio furniture on June 23 from them. It was on sale, free shipping, so we were excited. We hemmed and hawwed about whether to get a table that had some glass in the top, or if we should go with the tile top. Either way, we were concerned with breakage. We went with the partial glass one. It arrived about 2 weeks after ordering just in time for July 4th. Super. We put the chairs and table together and went to put in the glass. The glass was in the box and was shattered in a million little pieces. Yeah, we forgot that rule about checking things before assembly. So, we called HD and told them and they apologized and said they would send us a replacement, but it would take 10-14 days. At 14 days, we called them to find out where it was, only to learn that it had never been ordered. The customer service rep apologized again, said it would be ordered, and also gave us a gift card for $50 for our trouble. That was 12 days ago, so I called today to find out the status of this glass so that my table would no longer have a giant hole in it. The lady told me that this set is on backorder and would not be available until August 27 at the earliest. I tried to keep calm and expressed how this was extremely frustrating, and how a little bit of communication on their part would have done a lot of good here since I have had useless furniture for a month. She offered to have someone come and pick up the furniture if I wanted to return it, or she said she would match the price to something comparable that is in stock.

Those words comparable and in stock are the tricky ones. B and I spent months looking for furniture that we didn't think was too ornate and that was also reasonably priced. I'm not satisfied with any of the options, so unfortunately it looks like I will be returning things and starting from scratch. I can't decide if that's better than waiting a month for the glass to come in or not. My concern with waiting is that it will end up being shattered again anyway.

Sigh. This is the stressful life I live, people.

Well, I think I'll leave you here for now. Hope you like the pictures even if they are a few months old. I really wish uploading to blogger were faster, or I really would do it more.**

*clearly July is now ending and August is beginning. I started this post weeks ago!

**It took literally all day for me to get all of these pictures uploaded. My computer does not like blogger one bit!

Almost One

2010-05-25T09:08:00.006-05:00

Dear Little Miss,

I just put you to sleep a few hours ago for what is technically your last sleep as a baby. Tomorrow you turn one and officially enter the land of toddlerhood. You took three steps a few weeks ago and then decided that crawling was a much easier mode of transportation for the time being, but today when one of Grandma's friends asked if you could walk(we are off in Florida visiting the grandparents), I stood you up on your own and you took four small steps for her. This is typical of your emerging personality. You definitely want to show people what you can do, but it's only on your own terms.

A year ago tonight I had just finished a meal of catfish tacos and an extra spicy virgin bloody mary. Grandma arrived earlier in the day and told you that you had to wait to arrive until she got here to watch your brother. You did exactly as you were told and came the next afternoon. Today as I was asking you not to bite my arm and shoulder for the tenth time, I wondered if you would ever listen as well as you did last year. I am sure that there will be some good moments and some not so good ones in this area.

Your brother is so excited about your birthday. Part of this is because he knows you get to have cake for the first time. The other part is because he knows he will also get cake. We will also be going to Disney World. This is not really a trip to celebrate your birthday, as it is also a trip for J and Grandma, but you will be coming along for the ride and will hopefully also have a good time! I am very excited to see you put icing to your lips/face for the first time, but I have to admit, I am really looking forward to Sunday when I get to make owl cupcakes for your birthday party at home.

We had 10 months of a dairy free, soy free diet together. At first I thought it was total hell, but towards the end I was so used to it that I was surprised at the fact that milk didn't actually taste that good to me anymore. In a way I am grateful to having had to be on such a restrictive diet because it allowed me to lose all of my pregnancy weight and thensome. That really made the lack of goat cheese/queso worth it! Thank you for that little silver lining.

You have a beautiful, almost toothless smile. You have a shy, yet sneaky look when you are meeting someone new. You love time with your daddy and even though you get a little distressed when I leave the room, you really get upset when I come back and you have just discovered that I have been away.

There are many pictures where you look the way I did as a baby.
Many people can immediately tell that you and J are brother and sister.
You still have very little hair.
Your grandfather, daddy, and I think you look like your grandmother, with whom you share a name.
Your bright blue eyes stand out to everyone who sees you.

I know that the terrible twos are right around the corner, but I am hoping that I have more strength to handle them than I did the first time around with J. He wasn't that bad, but I have the feeling that you are going to be, oh, I don't know, more persistent, perhaps? I think you are going to be equally as talkative and just as fun, though!

You have not been much of a cuddler for the past year, but tonight as you briefly rested on my shoulder before I put you to sleep, I told you how glad I was that you have become a part of our family. And, just as I was glad at the revelation on J's first birthday that we hadn't broken him yet, I am just as pleased that we still have yet to break you, too. I guess we're doing something right.

I hope you have a wonderful first birthday and many more happy birthdays to come! I love you.

Love,
Mommy

Gackashchlisshphllaaah!!!

2010-04-22T20:52:00.002-05:00

Or something like that.

That's how my daughter tries to say guacamole. She's pretty consistent about saying it when she sees an avocado, so I think I will consider this one of her first words.

Other things that J and I think we have heard her say:

onahnah (jonah)

nana (banana)

cat

up

mama

dada

bye bye

I truly am amazed that she can get a word in edgewise with the mile a minute four year old we have in the house, but she sure is doing her best to try!

San Diego was great. Will post with pics soon.

Happy Easter!

2010-04-05T15:13:00.004-05:00

J kept saying "cheese" and looking away from the camera.

The little girl is not always serious...

Got J's egg cup two years ago when we went to Switzerland and crossed over into France for a day. B's cousin, M was nice enough to get one for the Little Miss.

Texas Bluebonnet spring rite of passage... if only I hadn't dressed my girl like a boy.
I had no luck getting both of them looking and smiling at me at the same time.

She was so into these little yellow wildflowers.

I Can't Believe That She is Ten!

2010-03-26T14:05:00.004-05:00

Today is the 10 month birthday of our Little Miss. J is blown away that she is 10. Concept of time is still a bit tricky, so even though he knows that she is still a baby, he can't quite comprehend how she has a larger number than he does. He acts like he gets it when you explain it, but then he says stuff like, "Yeah, kind of like having one week and then 30 seconds in a year." I have no idea what he means, but if it works for him, I just go with it.

As I was attempting to get my daughter to eat some pieces of elbow macaroni, all she did was pick them up and then smear them across the high chair tray. This got me thinking (yet again)about how much more difficult she is to feed than J. Once in awhile I can get her to try a bite of something, but it usually ends up on the floor or in her seat. This girl is tough! It took me forever to get her to eat more than a teaspoon or two at every meal, and I thought that she would go to true solid food and abandon baby food altogether, but I think she is just very slow and picky. She seems to be one of those babies that you have to offer a food to at least 20 times before she will accept it. The tough part about it is once you offer her something that she doesn't like, she signs that she's all done and then nothing else is getting into her mouth whether she likes it or not. The only exception to this are bananas. She will eat a banana if it's mashed, pureed, cut up in chunks, or right out of the peel, anytime, anywhere.

The funny part about this strange little eater of mine are the combinations she will accept. In some ways she's quite the bougie eater. She's not a fan of carrots, but she LOVES a combo of carrots, apples, and mangoes. Will she eat mango by itself? No. She won't eat squash on its own either, but pair it with apples and it's going in. She will suck down blueberries, especially the tiny, wild, organic, frozen ones from Costco. I can mix blueberries with green beans and I might be able to get her to eat a few spoonfuls. She's not a fan of pears by themselves, but she will grab a whole pear out of my hands and suck all of the juice right out of it. She only has two little teeth buds right now, so we'll see what happens when she gets more.

I've been feeding her more meats because her iron levels came back a bit low at her last doctor's visit. They seem to be her thing. I can mix up some ground roasted chicken or turkey cutlet and put it into anything and she will barely bat an eye at it. That texture is fine, but she hated when I offered her couscous. I don't get it. Last night she finished all the chicken and carrots I made her and she still wanted more, so I was feeding her the chicken dry. She kept eating it and washed it down with a little water. Mmm, mmm, good! It really looked disgusting. We won't be repeating this tonight because she woke up at 1:30 last night with the biggest diaper and I am pretty sure it's because she ate about 3 times more than she usually does at dinner.

Little Miss has finally taken to the idea that books can be fun. She has been sitting for 15-20 minutes at a time for the past few days as I read to her. She's figured out how to sign "book" and while I repeated the book "What's On My Head?" for what I think was the 10th time in a row, she signed "thank you." It was so sweet. She did it every time I started reading the book again.

This weekend we have two birthday parties. One is downtown at a park and the other is in the complete opposite direction an hour later. I have yet to figure out how we are going to go to both, but we'll do it somehow. J has to make three birthday cards this afternoon because the second party is actually a double birthday. These parties make numbers 4 and 5 for March. J has probably eaten his weight in cake this month.

We also have a lot of yard work to do. All of the rain left us with a ton of weeds and other dandelions. We need to get a bunch of dirt and put it in the beds near our foundation because we have gigantic puddles. Our garden isn't even started yet because we have sprinkler issues that are going to be addressed on Monday. It's going to be 80 degrees tomorrow and it's gorgeous today. I'm pretty excited about that.

Well, I hoped to be able to share a pic of J and S today, but the computer still does not have all of the stuff I need on it to download stuff. Right now it is basically an Internet machine. We'll try soon. In the meantime, please send good labor vibes to my friend, B in CA. She's not in labor yet, but would really like to be, and she's pretty much run out of labor inducing things to try. Since I have sooo many readers, I thought I would just put that out there for her.

And How Was Your Day?

2010-03-25T18:02:00.003-05:00

This impromptu song that J was just singing as I was putting S to bed pretty much sums up today:

I feel like making bad choices. Oh yeah! I feel like making bad choices. Oh yeah. Should I make bad choices? Oh no! But I feel like making bad choices!

I hear it's going to be made into the four year old theme song and be played on all of the major kid networks.

The wine is in the glass. Now.

9 months (a little late) and Could You Say that Price Again?

2010-03-08T14:02:00.005-06:00

Little Miss has had one cold or another for over three weeks. I feel so bad for her because it seems that all I do to her lately is wipe her nose. She also had pink eye last week, and now she's holding onto a cough that just won't give up. It's not an awful cough as far as coughs go, but it was annoying enough to wake her up about 6 times last night. Of course, that also woke us up.

We had our 9 month visit to the doctor today. She's 27.5 inches and only 17.5 lbs. That's average height and 25% for weight. J was like that too except he was even taller. So she's a sweet petite, but as someone said to me the other day, "But her smile is as big as Texas." I smiled back at the lady and thought to myself, "Well, as long as her smile is like that and not her ass, she'll be fine."

J is becoming a bit bipolar. One minute he's super sweet to us. How many four year olds thank their parents for making a lovely dinner? The next minute, he's whining up a storm and throwing himself on the floor because he was asked to throw something in the trash. It must be so hard to figure out this big world of rules when all you want to do is play. Oh, and the foot stomp has become one of his favorite signs of disapproval. Perhaps I should enroll him in tap dance classes?

**********************
So in between drafting the first part of this post and today, we've had another computer break, a car battery die, two teeth pop through, high 70s weather, and mid 30s as well. The runny noses are still everywhere. We have no idea if they are allergies or just one cold after another, but we're all feeling well enough to play a lot.

I had a great time on Monday. Monday was window day. Back around Christmas we had a guy come out to give us an estimate for new windows for our house. I should clarify that these people solicited us to come and give us an estimate. We figured we'd let them because we knew that windows could be expensive, and it would be a good thing to know the ballpark we would be in when it came time to do that sort of thing.

The estimate was $12,000 for the house. Brett and I kind of chuckled and said that there were plenty of other things we'd like to do first.

Last week the same company called us back and said it was kind of slow for them and they'd love to work with us on the price they quoted us back in December, and could they come out and talk to us again? We figured why not. I also called another company that I knew would be more expensive and asked them to come and give us an estimate as well. Both people came on Monday.

The first guy to come was the expensive guy. We were told that the talk would be between an hour and an hour and a half. When we had to cut him off at two hours to pick up J from school, he still wasn't finished and we still didn't have a price from him. We tentatively agreed that he could come back and tell us all about how much better his energy efficiency was next Monday, but in my heart, I knew I would be canceling that appointment. If you can't sell me something completely in two hours while I feed a baby, change a diaper, dress a baby, and hold a baby in my lap for most of your yapping, you don't get my business. I guess he was trying to build a relationship with us, but it didn't work.

Later that afternoon we revisited with our friends from earlier in December. It was a new guy because the old guy was "no longer with the company." I told them this surprised me because I thought his dad owned the company. The guy said while that was true, he was trying out something else. New guy asked what the old guy quoted and we told him. He said, "Well that sounds about close. Let's take a look and see what we can do for you." I should also mention here that he gave us a fabulous presentation with a heat lamp that went up to 400 degrees and when you put their top of the line glass in front of it, you couldn't feel the heat. Brett and I know what glass we'll pick when we go live closer to the sun!

After much measuring and figuring, the new estimate with all of the "marketing" discounts came out to...... wait for it.... okay.... here it comes.....

$24,000.

And the guy was actually brave enough to ask us if we wanted to sign up for his financing plan that had no payments for a year. No really, he did.

Now you know me, I often say what's on my mind. So I asked the obvious question, "Why in the world is your price double?" He told me it's because we have 31 windows that would need replacing and that's a ton of windows. I agree that's a lot, but how is it double? He said the other guy must have made a mistake. Of course. Blame the guy that no longer works for you.
I told him that is the price of a car. He said, "But these will last longer." I told him that's a year of college at most schools (Colgate not included, of course). He didn't respond to that.

So then he said, "You've invited us to your home two times. You obviously want these windows. Why can't you give me an answer right here and now? (Brett said that we would "think about it"). I told him, "You just gave me a quote that is double what you originally quoted us and you say that this is the lowest possible price you can do? For that much money, I would hope you would let me "invite" you to my home 4 or 5 times if need be." He yessed me up and down and gathered up his stuff to leave. I know he was pissed by the original quote and couldn't figure it out. I don't know if the first guy messed up or what, but we will obviously not be getting new windows anytime soon. The best part? A cute 4 year old who thought he had to be completely charming to our new friend as he left. "Bye bye! It was nice to meet you! See you again soon!"

I can only imagine what that guy was really thinking as he said, "See ya later, buddy" and drove away.

We went inside, had a good chuckle, and opened the windows for some fresh air.

S is ten months old on Friday. Maybe I'll get some pictures up soon.

And on to Four (A Few Weeks Late)

2010-02-27T13:47:00.001-06:00

My parents are too poor for real teething toys, so I eat my brother's socks.

I steal toy guitars from 4 year olds in order to feel special. Yep, you're indeed special!

The rightful owner of said electric guitar gets a go at it.

Looking more like a 4 year old hippy birthday boy, J opens his saxophone from his sister.

Rockin' electric guitar cake. Notice the comma cupcake. I am that kind of nerd. Punctuation is important!

(The strings are licorice laces, which is why they do not look straight. Also, you have no idea how much red coloring went into making that color frosting. Everyone's teeth looked bloody. It was a great combo with the black frosting. I didn't get any teeth photos though.)

Rough Life

2010-02-26T10:14:00.004-06:00

J: This is the hardest thing I've had to do in all my life.
Me: What's that?
J: Ugh. Moving this laundry basket. It's totally the hardest thing of my life. Ugh!!!

J: No, that's my guitar. You, S, you have to wait for the bacon to cook before you can play my guitar.
Me: What does that mean?
J: It means I just made it up and she needs to wait a long time to play my guitar because it takes a long time for bacon to cook.

Yesterday the blackboard part of the easel, which was facing the wall, looked like something out of a horror movie. Written in scratch handwriting were the letters D I E. I saw it and called to B so that he could also take a look. Confused, we asked J to come over. We asked him if he wrote that. He said yes. Since I was uncertain if he knew what he wrote, I asked him. He said, "Well, I was trying to write Davy Crockett, but I didn't know how to so I only wrote Davy. (side note, he has a cd from They Might Be Giants called Here Comes Science, which is totally awesome and has a song about Davy Crockett in outer space)

Well, if you say it slowly with a Texas accent, you hear the D, then you hear Ay, which could be mistaken for I if you really stretch out the twang. He forgot the V sound and went straight to the E instead of a Y. Makes perfect sense. But it was still a little freaky when we first saw it.

We helped him write Davy Crockett. I'll have to post a picture of that. And the other stuff from his birthday that I said I would. I'm bad, I know.

Don't Cry For Me, Argentina!

2010-01-28T14:05:00.008-06:00

The truth is, I haven't left you!

I finally have two kids napping at the same time and finally felt the need to get my pictures off of my new camera. Here are a few to keep you happy. I have to admit that I have taken very few pictures of J lately mainly because I tend to shoot these of the little miss when he is taking a nap or is at school. There is also the fact that any time I take out the camera he yells, "Take a picture of me! Take a picture of me!" Then I have to take a picture, show him the picture, ogle about how great the picture is and so on. It gets tiring. I have to admit that this isn't how I always feel, but right now I am pretty annoyed at J for deliberately pushing his sister down so that she would get hurt. He announced it, did it, then laughed as he ran away. Needless to say, he was put in his room to think that one over and to give me time to come up with a reasonable consequence. Anyway...

Little Miss loves dressing up like a bear to scare the kitties.

I have an unfinished post about Christmas, which I am going to still add with some pictures. I keep writing posts and then not finishing them. I really am sorry to those of you that look forward to these. I can say I will try to do better. With the impending 4th birthday on the way next week, I better. For now, enjoy these.

That's a blueberry and some whipped cream, not a big gross booger.

PS. I forgot to mention that my daughter is now 8 months old! And standing! And looking like she wants to walk early like her cousin L! Please do not encourage this!!

I Know You Still Want to Hear About Christmas Even Though It's Feb!

2010-01-07T09:56:00.005-06:00

(okay, i tried to post this about ten times, but blogger did not like my new camera and kept rejecting my photo uploads. I finally got it to be nice to me (feb. 4)

The last of the family visitors departed on Monday, so I finally have some time to figure out how to use my new camera and share the fun of Christmas with you.

I feel like Christmas went on for about 16 days because that's how many days J didn't have school, and that's about how many days he was spoiled by the attention of one person or another in our house. It was great though.

We began our Christmas fun by taking J to see the Nutcracker downtown. I had no idea if he would be interested or if we would be leaving early out of boredom, so we just went with it. Anybody who ever goes to the Long Center in Austin, get a glass of wine. Let's just say the pours are very large, and it can be very dangerous when you pre-order your intermission cocktail and happily find an extra glass that you didn't order sitting with the drinks you did order. It made The Nutcracker that much more enjoyable! Turned out that J loved every bit of the show--the dancing, the jumping, the swordfight, the toy soldiers, getting a nutcracker of his own during intermission, eating goldfish and a cookie at 9 pm, and clapping for everyone. He was very sad when we put away the music and his book a few days ago and is looking forward to going again next year.

The S family cookie exchange party was the following day. This year I decided to do it smaller, so I only invited mamas and new babies. Dads and big kids went for a play date and enjoyed each other's company without destroying my clean house in the process. Cookies and pomegranate chamagne cocktails for the girls and mayhem running around for the boys. It was a win-win for all involved. There was a bit of drama with our good friends C and Z at the end. They were involved in a car crash that ended up totaling their car, but thankfully they were both fine and the car did its job of protecting them. We spent the rest of the day being grateful for our health and for each other.

My parents and brother arrived a few days later, just in time for B and I to discover that our refrigerator wasn't working properly. We noticed that our milk wasn't as cold as normal, but I just chalked it up to the fact that rice milk probably just doesn't get as cold or something like that. Well when the rice milk felt luke warm and the fridge registered a temp of 55 degrees on the top shelf, we knew we had a problem on our hands. Merry Christmas!! We took everything out of the fridge and put it in the garage fridge (thank God for that!). B proceded to use a hairdryer to melt ice that he found at the back of the fridge. I know you aren't supposed to do that, but all we had in our heads was, "Where will we put the prime rib?" We were desperate. Once B got as much ice out as he could, we let it run empty for a couple of hours to see if the temperature would stabilize. No such luck. We decided to deal with the situation after Christmas when we could unplug the entire thing. In the meantime, we only put beverages and things that didn't really need to be kept that cool in there. Everything else was kept outside.

Christmas Eve was lovely with some cookie decorating at one of J's house in the morning followed by our traditional Rudy's BBQ dinner. K, C and her fam also joined us for the fun. B and I received a fabulous gift of Whole Foods cooking classes from them. Then it was time to play Santa and go to bed.

As a child, Santa used to individually wrap the items in our stockings and leave it by our beds so that we had something to do when we woke up in the morning. In some ways, the stockings were almost more fun than the gifts under the tree. Having them wrapped made opening that mundane pair of socks or toothpaste that much more exciting. Not very green mind you, but not so bad when you consider that Santa saved all of the small leftover pieces of wrapping paper from the year before. I decided that our Santa would do this for J this year.

Fast forward to Christmas morning. I thought that J would be up at the crack of dawn. Instead, both he and S slept in. J slept until 7:45 and then proceeded to sing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer to himself about 5 times before he wandered out of his room. Santa left his giant stocking propped up against his door so that he wouldn't trip on it in the dark. It fell to the ground, J ran past it, realized it was there and said, "What is that thing doing there?" So much for needing to keep him occupied.

J's big wish this year was for a bike. Did you know that Santa's elves work magic on craigslist and help you find red and black bikes? They do. The only problem is when you pick up the bikes in the dark and don't notice the scratch marks and extra work that is going to be required of you when you get it home. B ended up putting on a new seat, grips, painting the chrome, and spot painting the body. It really looks great now. Did you also know that it is nearly impossible to find a helmet that doesn't scream, "Please beat me up now!" I was so excited after searching high and low to come across a blue one with a single soccer ball on it. J also asked for knee pads and elbow pads. He even got racer gloves.

So there J was downstairs looking at the Christmas tree. Naturally the bike was too big to fit under the tree, so it was placed over by the couch. J ran to the tree, scanned all the other gifts, took a deep breath and said, "But no bike." He didn't know what to do with himself. I told him to turn around and that's what he literally did (a 360) Then we told him to look by the couch. When he saw the giant package, his heart lifted a bit. He unwrapped it, got excited at the sight of the bike, looked down beside it and said, "No helmet. I can't ride it because I have no helmet." I told him that maybe Santa put the helmet with the other presents. This wasn't any good. The poor kid was nearly in tears. We told him to try out the bike inside without the helmet. As he was doing that, I grabbed the bag with the helmet and placed it out in the middle of the room. The kid died when he saw it. Phew!

Christmas was pretty light for the Little Miss, but that's the way it should have been considering that her favorite things that morning were the bows and paper. Besides, she's been too busy with things like crawling and pulling up to be bothered to stop and play with a new toy or two.

B and I went to see Trans-Siberian orchestra one night. His boss gave us tickets to that and to another holiday show that we also took J. The show was really good, but because it had been non-stop excitement, B and I actually fell asleep during part of it because we were in the dark. Oops. It was just a quick snooze, but honestly the rest of the show was good.

We had more visitors for New Year's, which meant more spoiling of grandchildren. There was also babysitting available for going to the movies (haven't done that since last Christmas) and picking up craigslist finds like china cabinets. I've been looking for awhile, and B and I couldn't really agree on a style, so I finally found one that was a compromise. We need to do some clean up work to it, so I'll post a picture when it's done. Everyone who has seen it thinks it was a great find. I'm just excited to get stuff out of my garage and into it!

34

2009-12-14T10:32:00.004-06:00

I started and did not finish a number of posts, and I know this has left some of you missing me. Everything is fine and is just extremely busy. Little Miss started crawling about a week ago and it's kept me on my toes. Then the holidays and December birthday fever (read: 7 family birthdays in December!) took hold and blogging was the last thing on the list.

A quick update from the last month+

We took a trip to Dallas so that I could attend a reading conference and rack up some ce credits. It was good, but left me feeling pretty negative towards teaching in Texas. I started a whole post about why, and perhaps I will actually finish that one. Let's just say the low salaries aren't the only thing justifying my desire to stay home longer.

Dear friends B from San Fran, and Roasted Beat came for a visit just before Thanksgiving. The weather was horrible until the last day, but it was so great to catch up and have time to spend with them that didn't involve somebody's wedding. I hope we can get together again like that soon!

We shared a lovely Thanksgiving with other family-less Austin friends. Great food, great company, cooperative napping babies, and super well-behaved three year olds.
We now have a lumberjack in our midst complete with a lumberjack song. The jacket is a coincidence that I bought last year on sale.

Santa has begun watching J to see if he deserves a bike for Christmas.

In addition to the crawling, Little Miss has begun solids and also graces us with one of the worst sounds in the world. If you didn't see her face, you would think she was being poisoned and is trying to cough up a hairball at the same time, but she actually smiles as she vibrates the back of her throat and tries to clear said hairball. An awful, wonderful sound. She also takes food best from her big brother, so we let him feed her quite a bit.

We got our tree. It took over three hours to get standing correctly in our living room. There were some slight miscalculations of the height of our ceiling.

We decorated the house with lights. Everyone does this so early in Texas (the day after Thanksgiving) that I was beginning to feel that we were really out of the loop. Some really cold weather didn't help us get this done any earlier. (J also got to see snow!)

I turned 34 yesterday. Saying it sounds so old, but I don't feel that way at all. The boys made me a cake and it was yummy. J thinks I am the coolest because I kept sneaking him little pieces out the refrigerator while he was eating his breakfast a la Bill Cosby. I mean, cake for breakfast really is the best way, is it not?

I will try to be better about posting, but it will more than likely be after Christmas. I do promise to post pictures so you can see how Christmas as the S household was.

Booooo

2009-11-03T09:55:00.004-06:00

Poor Little Miss. She was the victim of Mommy's fashion whims all day. We started out in a Baby's First Halloween outfit with matching pumpkin hat and pumpkin booties...

Then we squeezed into a 0-3 month dalmation costume that barked. It was actually given to J, but since I misread the label, he never got a chance to wear it. She was happy for a brief moment...

But perked up when we dressed her in this...I think she was the happiest flower on earth.

J was a skeleton for Halloween. He was having a hard time deciding between a skeleton and a golfer. I suggested both and being a skelegolfer. He loved the idea, but we forgot to carry around the golf clubs. It was just as well. He had a blast anyway. I was really proud of J for choosing a skeleton costume because he is afraid of skeletons. Last year, a scary skeleton came to our house trick or treating and frightened him to Dallas and back. He's been talking about it all year long. When we saw this costume, he said he wanted it, and I wasn't going to question it. I think it made the grade because it looks more like an x-ray than an acutal skeleton, and he thinks x-rays are way cool. Go figure. He still doesn't like the spooky stuff and I can't say I blame him, but J really took the cake for bravery this year.

He also was a super sharer when it came to his candy. At first he said he would only go to three houses since he was three. When I suggested he could go to more, he said, "Mommy, how would you feel if I went to 5 houses or more and they ran out of candy for everyone else? You would be sad." Okay then! He ended up going to a few more, but he said he was done when he thought he had enough. Then he sorted through his candy and offered some to all of us if he thought we liked it. And it wasn't even the Mary Jane and the Bit of Honey! He gave away good stuff. Of course his pile was the biggest, but props to the not yet four year old for doing it right!

Now we need to take down the decorations, which I have been told, "need to stay up through Thanksgiving because Thanksgiving doesn't have good decorations." I'll have to see what I can muster up. Maybe I should go straight to Christmas lights since that's what all the stores are doing.

October Fun

2009-10-20T20:10:00.003-05:00

J got to help out his favorite band, The Biscuit Brothers on stage at a recent concert. That's him teaching the crowd how to sign, "Go Make Music."

I give smiles to practically everyone, as long as I know my mama is around.

Pumpkin patch time! My head is way too small to make this look good!

We didn't get any good shots of the two of them in the pumpkins, so we had to do with one in front of a painted pumpkin cutout.

B's birthday trip to visit Thomas the Train. He told J that's what he wanted for his birthday. J said, "I don't think they make one of those, so maybe we can just take you on a train ride."

These were the expressions on J's and Z's faces when they saw Thomas.

The looks on their faces when the shock wore off and they realized they were going to ride on Thomas!

Yeah, I know I am wearing boy colors, but it has my name on it!!!

Probably Mom's favorite picture of me to date. Can my smile get any bigger? I'm smiling because I know it's only a matter of time before I can crawl around after those cats...

Sneaky Little Devils

2009-09-26T09:31:00.003-05:00

J got in trouble at school on Friday for stuffing paper towels in the sink and making it overflow. Or stuffing the paper towels up the faucet and making water squirt out everywhere. Either way, it was bad behavior. I am not one of those people that tries to pass the buck when my kid does something wrong, but I have to admit, my first thought was, "How is a 3 year old given the opportunity to do something like this when someone is supposed to be in there watching him?" It would have taken more than 30 seconds to complete such a task, which is way too long to not have your eyes on a 3 year old in a bathroom.

Little Miss gave us a full night of sleep the other night! Well we would have had a full night of sleep if we went to bed at 7 like she did. Instead, we were up late and then up early when she did decide to be fed. We'll get it right one of these days. Last night was interesting, though. She fell asleep at 7:30 and stayed asleep until around 2. That's technically sleeping through the night too. Then she was up for 2.5 hours. She ate and then she squealed and talked to herself for the rest of the time. I couldn't believe it. She was actually having that little crib party everyone always jokes about on baby bibs (Party in my crib, 2 am). I don't know what she was thinking, but I hope this doesn't repeat itself tonight. We are way too old and lame to party at 2 am and she needs to get on board with that ASAP!

Let's see, what else? I made chocolate chip cookies out of rice milk and dairy free/ soy free mini chocolate chips. Let's just say that they are fine and you would never know the difference if you'd never had a real chocolate chip cookie. But, I've had real ones. Oh well. They'll do in a pinch. I also discovered that I can have my decaf chai concentrate mixed with rice milk and it pretty much tastes the same, so that's good. I was missing my morning hot beverage since I like cream in my tea or coffee. This will do just fine. Oh, I think I forgot to mention that we're also not doing soy anymore. The dairy thing was taking too long to show a real improvement and so I decided to be proactive and eliminate soy as well. I figured it would be better to do that than wait for the doctor to say to eliminate soy, so when the time comes, I'll add that back first and see what happens. So I am eating little more than fish, salads, fruit, and Annie's graham cracker bunnies. This elimination diet has made me so aware of what is in packaged foods (soy is virtually in everything and pretty much, so is milk). Hopefully we won't have to do this for too long, as babies usually grow out of their intolerances by 6-9 months. In the meantime, the pre-preggo skinny jeans are buttonable, but I still won't scare anyone by convincing myself that they are wearable yet.

It's a beautiful day here in Austin and we're hoping to have some fun outside. J and B are at soccer/t-ball and I'm waiting for Little Miss to wake up from her nap. We'll see if she sleeps longer because of her antics last night. Later!

I Promised You Pictures..

2009-09-20T20:25:00.004-05:00

From our trip to NY...

She has such an awesome smile!

Uncle M loved playing in his pajamas before 10 am!

J and his cousin R, who gave J a giant inflatable baseball bat and ball, which he LOVES!

Rocking out with Tante L, who was in NY bringing Cousin L to college. Good timing!

I love my play mat!

And my Baby Bjorn! Slobber, slobber!

We went to a glasses party for a friend. J wears his every morning to help see his cereal better.

L also came to the party

Little Miss also sported the look.

One of the best pictures of the cousin visit. Simply awesome.

The house is very quiet now. In all, we managed to get most of the kids to bed at the same time. It was chaotic and fun all at the same time. I can't wait to get them all together again soon. Next time S will be more mobile! Ahhhhh!

Keep your fingers crossed for us over here. She's now going to bed at 7 and staying asleep! Not sleeping through the night yet, but only waking once or twice. We're slowly getting there!

Three Months+

2009-09-01T14:07:00.003-05:00

I've been neglecting you again. Sorry. We went out of town and I still haven't uploaded my photos yet. The trip was to NY to visit my parents and "help" them (aka take all the crap we could load into a pod and have it shipped to Austin) get ready to move. The kids did great on the plane. S even kept it together for a car trip to Philadelphia (we left J with the grandparents to spare him the crying). I sat in the back and kept her occupied. It was fun. The rest of the week was spent having lots of wonderful people come and visit us, which was awesome. My brother was even in town for a wedding, and B's Aunt L was in NY taking Cousin L to college. I promise pictures, I promise!

Today we are starting Day 1 of the dairy free challenge. S has been congested pretty much since birth. That can be a normal part of life in Austin, but her diapers have been pretty gross. I'll leave it at that and if you want more details on what I mean, let me know and I'll give you more info. What it all means for me is cutting out milk, cheese, yogurt, cottage cheese, ice cream, and anything else that has milk or a milk derivative in it. Hopefully things will clear up on her end and we'll go about our business, and slowly add things back to my diet as she gets a little older. Worse case scenario is she has a true milk allergy, but I doubt it since it doesn't run in the family. It' s most likely a milk protein sensitivity that most kids grow out of by their first or second birthday.

The other bummer about that is I will most likely have to throw out a whole bunch of frozen milk that I have pumped because I wouldn't want to reintroduce milk by accident. Pumping a bottle is like pumping gold and it kills me to throw any away. I think I have a few days stashed in the freezer, so that will be tough.

But it's not like she takes a bottle willingly anyway! My mom babysat for us on Friday night as B and I went to Fogo de Chao for a meat-fest. S completely refused to eat anything until I came home. On Saturday, we went to see Wicked and she would only take a bottle while laying on my bed on her side. I would say the girl's just a little bit picky.

Tomorrow we pick up Feathernester, Cousin L, and Uncle D. They'll stay with us for the next week. Lots of playtime for J and L, and three different nap schedules and bedtimes for us all to figure out. That should be enough birth control for all of us. Again, I promise pics.

I'm off to finish the closet cleaning project that began yesterday when I was trying to organize S's 3-6 month clothes. It's turned into a 4 closet reorganization. I'm sure she'll wake up just when I get started. Later!

Two Months

2009-07-28T09:29:00.003-05:00

Grandma came for a quick visit just in time for S's 2 month birthday. We pulled out the fancy dresses for the occasion, too.

Laughing at being dressed up for no reason at all

Joking with Daddy

Her serious corporate pose

Hanging out with two week old boyfriend, J. She's twice his size, but their heads are about the same.

It was 80 degrees and breezy this morning. Because it's been over 100 for 3 weeks, J said it was cold outside. Here's how he dressed himself for the blustery weather.

We have a doctor's appt. tomorrow, so we'll find out her current stats. I can't wait, but I'm not looking forward to the shots.

Funnies

2009-07-22T15:08:00.003-05:00

I know I need to post some new pics, but the camera battery is dead, so that will have to wait. In the meantime, some funnies from J:

"Mommy! S is getting bigger and you're getting smaller! Wow!" (Can you see why I love this kid?)

J brings the boppy over to S and says, "Okay, S. I'm going to feed you now." I ask J if he would like to try to give S a bottle, which has been a gigantic challenge for two weeks (her taking a bottle that is). J says, "No, I'm going to breastfeeding!" I wished him luck in that endeavor. Maybe he is a man of the future.

Yesterday J woke up from his nap early. Correction. He never fell asleep for his nap and I heard him saying, "I think I'm sick. I think I'm sick." So I went in to see what was wrong. He said, "Mommy, I think I am sick in my throat because I have been eating too many donuts." (He had a donut on Sunday). A quick sip of water made it all feel better.

Taking a shower doesn't always happen when you have a newborn in the house. I've been lucky to get one once every other day, which is only because I choose to go to bed later some nights to take one. Yesterday was day two without a shower. Out of nowhere, J says, "Mommy, you're a little stinky. I think you need your hair washed."

That's exactly how I felt too, but I didn't get one until this morning. I plopped S in her bouncy seat after J went to school, showered, and toweled off. Then I noticed S had a major blowout though her cute little outfit and all over the bouncy seat, which is why she was scrunching up her face in a really strange way. And you take a moment to ask yourself, "Should I get dressed first or clean that up?" You really just want to take the two minutes to finish up and think to yourself, "Hey, she's already been sitting in it for a few minutes, what's a few more?" But then you know you just can't do it because it's one thing when you don't realize that it's there, but it's another thing to ignore it when it is. Everyone is clean now. And napping. So that's what I have to do too. Later!

Six Weeks

2009-07-08T08:05:00.003-05:00

j playing in the bubble mound at july 4th fiesta

s celebrated by sleeping through the whole thing. no, we are not blanketing her in 100 degree heat. a burp rag must be near at all times while in car seat. it is the evil spit up machine.

laying around and smiling

sporting some red, white, and blue

one of this week's bounties from the garden of weeds. unfortunately i am only looking at them because tomatoes seem to make s pretty fussy.

and no, i am not going all ee cummings on you people. i am typing with one hand as s fell asleep sideways in my sling and my other arm is holding her head.

Four Weeks

2009-06-24T10:04:00.003-05:00

10 days old

It's hard to believe but we've now had two kids for four weeks. All of our fabulous help has gone back home and we're all by ourselves now. B is "on vacation" this week, but he's since been to the office twice. I keep telling him that he wouldn't rush back if he were in Vegas, so he should just pretend that he's there instead. Unfortunately the lure of a root canal is just too great for him.

A lot of people have been asking how we're doing, so here's a quick update:

We're changing at least 10 diapers a day. Apparently swimming around in fluid for 9 months has not made this girl immune to a wet diaper. She gets annoyed by the slightest drop of pee. I guess I can understand that.
I've been feeling like quite the milk maid given that she likes to eat between 10-12 times a day. At least she's pretty quick about it or else I would feel completely strapped to the couch.
We've had our first real smiles! It's so awesome to know that she has the ability to smile at something other than gas and poop. She's also started cooing and making some noises other than "Waaaaa". I think she sounds pretty content, so that's good.
No, we're not sleeping through the night, but we are getting some sleep. The days and nights are a little confused, but not too badly. Thankfully, aside from a few crying jags here and there, S doesn't really fuss when she is awake at night. Mostly she'll just stare and say, "Ba" before she drifts off again.
She takes after her brother and hates the car seat, but I think she may be warming up to the swing after she took a nap in there yesterday and this morning.
She loves being in the sling, which is such a blessing because it means that I can get some things done around the house.
We are so grateful to everyone that has cooked or sent us meals, and especially to my mom, B's mom, and B's cousin L for taking on the roles of J watcher, dish washer, kitchen cleaner, and baby holder while we got used to the idea of taking care of two little ones. I'm still wondering how it will be (other than exhausting) next week when J is off from school and I am completely on my own, but I know we'll manage.

Getting in a little bit of tummy time before heading out her first baseball game

J still likes his sister and enjoys holding her and helping to burp her.

L was a bit nervous holding such a small baby, but she was a pro by the end of the week!

Not sure about the swing...

Just Pictures

2009-06-07T15:49:00.003-05:00

Proud big brother

The trauma subsides after 1st bath at home

Grandpa popped down to meet his new granddaughter

Sleeping it off after an eventful afternoon at the photographers-- somebody is a little diva-- waaahhh!

Holding hands

The Newest Addition

2009-06-02T16:30:00.003-05:00

As J so often has the best words to describe things, he has announced several times this week that, "Now we are one big happily family of four!"

SAS joined our family unit on May 26th. Labor couldn't have been any different than it had been with J, which took 36 hours and 3 separate trips to the hospital. This one took a total of 7 hours, but have no fear-- it still had its own dramatic moments. I woke up at 6:11 with a lot of pain in my back. This had been happening for a few days, so I didn't pay much attention to it until the sweeping waves of pain made their way to my abdomen. Within an hour they went from 10 minutes apart to 6 minutes apart. I wasn't about to run to the hospital because I didn't want to be there all day or have to be sent home, so I decided to wait and see how things went at my regularly scheduled appointment at 9. With my doctor tucked away on a beach somewhere in Cabo, I wanted to know who might potentially deliver my child. I was also convinced I would be told I was 2 cm and things were moving very slowly. Imagine my surprise when I was told to get to the hospital or else if I had any hopes of an epidural. Apparently I was 4.5 cm. Maybe the extra spicy virgin bloody mary I drank the night before did the trick?

B made me walk to the hospital. Granted, the hospital is right next door to the doctor's office, but it was still a long enough walk to go through two more sets of contractions as I kept screaming to B to get off the phone and walk with me (he had this small excuse called work that he supposedly had to handle before he could deal with me. whatever :). Once we were checked into the hospital, I immediately asked for an epidural and was told it would be on its way as soon as they did my blood work and determined that I was well enough to receive an epidural. I didn't remember any of this from last time. My recollection after 30 hours of labor at home was that I went into the hospital, got on a bed, received a shot, and headed off into la la land for a few hours before delivering. Not so this time. It took close to an hour and a half of waiting for two nurses to figure out all of the buttons on the machines (one was new), one small screaming fit at a doe-eyed husband as he just stared at me in utter confusion as to what to do to help me, and an eventual pinch and screw feeling in my spine before I started to feel better. The nurse told me she would let me rest for about 20 minutes before we got pushing and that she hoped to have the baby delivered by about 1:00. I wondered if this was her lunch break time or if things were actually moving along that quickly. I think itwas a combination of both.

It took about 20 minutes of pushing and a little bit of extra oxygen on me and then we heard the screams we had been waiting for. She weighed in at 7 lbs, 9 oz, 19 inches long. Her hair is blondish, so there is hope for some of my genes in there. Her eyes are dark blue, so I am pretty sure they will change to the dominant dark color of B's family.

Now for you squeamish ones, I told you there was drama, but it might just make you feel all icky, so scroll past the next paragraph and move onto the lovely pictures if you're one of those people right now....

After the oohs and ahhs of childbirth when everyone is relieved that the baby is alive and breathing well, there is the small mess of other things to deliver like the placenta. This usually takes place about 20-30 minutes after birth and I don't even remember it last time. As I said before, this was very different than last time. Here's the gist of what happened. The doctor gave the nurse a look. The nurse gave the doctor the same look back. I looked at B and said, "Okay I know something is up." That's when the doctor said, "Well, it appears your placenta doesn't want to come out and might be attached to your uterus. That's what we call an accreta. Let's see what we can do here." (People, if you know someone giving birth soon and they are on the fence about an epidural, that sentence alone should be enough to convince them that they should err on the side of caution and just get the thing because you never know what might happen afterwards and there certainly aren't any medals given out at the finish line.) The doctor mentioned that if she couldn't detach it that she might have to do a surgical procedure to remove it. Well, I guess the thought of surgery sent my body into uber-patient, do-what-you-have-to-do-mode, and the doctor was able to remove the placenta with the help of a small ultrasound machine and my guidance. Turns out that the spot where it was attached never really got numb from the epidural and I could feel the discomfort and knew exactly where she needed to work. Is that strange, or what? Oh, and I forgot to mention that a placental accreta happens in about 1 in every 2,500 births and usually after a c-section has been performed in the past. I didn't fit that profile at all. Why can't I win the lottery too?

Thank goodness we've had help this time and my mom arrived the night before she was born. J has been a very excited big brother and loves when she makes little involuntary coos. He doesn't seem to mind the crying too much yet, and has been a very good keeper of SAS' toes. Every night he makes sure there are still 10 of them before he goes to sleep. He's taken a lot of pride in "holding her by himself" which is just her resting against him with his arms around her. It's pretty cute.

So here are her first pictures. I have others to add to the mix, but it's time for bed now. We're all
doing well and are just tired. Thanks for all of the well wishes!

Hello World!

I'm so hungry I could eat this blanket

J helps to hold his sister

Grandma was so glad SAS waited until her arrival!

The key to all those arm bands is being allergic to sulfa, being rh negative, getting admitted to the hospital, and having a baby. Everybody needs an id badge. It's one big party!

Waiting

2009-05-22T08:07:00.002-05:00

39 weeks down and counting. Well, we've reached the point in the pregnancy where I am officially feeling done and ready. I'm due on Wednesday. If I go into labor next week, my doctor is on vacation. If I don't go into labor next week, I get induced on Monday, June 1. Kind of a dilemma. In a perfect world, I would go into labor late next Sunday night (the 31) and have my doctor deliver on Monday morning. But, this girl is going to come when she wants to, or by the 1st if she doesn't feel like it, so we'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, I'm swollen and getting tired of wearing flip flops because they are the only shoe that has fit for the past two months. I'm also pretty tired, but not tired enough to be asleep at 5 am. I've just been waking up and staring at the windows and trying to think of something to bake that would motivate me to get up and moving at such an hour. So far, nothing has been calling out to me that much.

Yesterday J and I were at the grocery store. He was disappointed by the lack of samples, so he said, "Mommy, since there are no samples, we need to get some donuts." I didn't even hesitate to tell him he was right and we filled our little bag of sugar. Only one more week, so why stop now, right?

Anyway, just thought I'd let you know we're all just hanging out here waiting. If anyone knows any good baby chants, share them with me, please.

Kind of Missing the Point

2009-05-13T16:45:00.004-05:00

Last week, J did a horrible thing at Walgreens. Actually, he did two horrible things. While playing with a large bottle of antibacterial soap while I was paying for something at the register, he headed for the door. Upon realization that the door magically opened by itself, he took the opportunity to perform his first act of shoplifting and bolted outside. I freaked. He laughed. Laughed as I called for him to come back. Laughed as I sprinted after him like a gazelle that was not pregnant (or maybe it was a hippo?). I grabbed a hold of him for a second, but he was too quick for me, for he just dropped his unpaid merchandise and kept on running.

This was no longer humorous, not that it really was to me, but I was seriously worried that he was going to leap out into the parking lot and get hit by a car. Cars were stopping in the parking lot because they saw this crazy boy with his unfit mother sprinting after him. I finally caught him as he rounded the corner of the building. His response? "You're hurting my arm!" I felt like the sterotypical parent, thinking, "I could be hurting more than your arm" and "Just wait until your father hears about this (only the father was on a plane to Florida for a conference)." I retrieved the bottle of soap and quickly placed it back inside the store. What did I see when I did that? About ten people with their eyes fixed on me and their jaws stuck open. I can only imagine what they were thinking.

This little escapade left me unable to walk for the rest of the day. Clearly full-term pregnant ladies are not supposed to test their agility and swiftness at this point in time, and I was paying for using my animal instincts.

The best part? J didn't want to apologize. I let him sit in his room for close to 45 minutes "to think about what he did" while I took a shower and composed myself. He finally got lonely and caved. We talked about how people who take things they don't pay for go to jail. We talked about how he could have been hurt. Then he asked if he could eat lunch. The three year old mind can only process so much.

This isn't the first time I have had to deal with a laughing J running away from me, but it was the first time I had to deal with it in a store. I realized this would be no easier for me when I have a newborn in a sling and I am at the cash register, so I folded. I bought my kid a leash. I can hear all of you gasping. I'll give you a moment...

Now before you all go judgmental on me, I did not opt for one of those harness ones, or even worse, one of those teddy bear or elmo backpacks, although looking back on it, I totally missed an opportunity since my kid is petrified of teddy bears and that would have taught him a lesson pronto. I chose one that attaches to the wrist with super-duper velcro and stretches so that he can still move. What did J say when his dad told him what it was? "Oh goody, I can take Mommy for a walk." Hmmm...

We had to "practice" using our little leash around the house the other day. Then we had to play puppy with it. This was so not the point, but I figured he wouldn't be too keen on using it in public. Not so! I had to make a trip inside the post office today and I brought it along with me. I asked J if he could behave without it. He told me, "I want to use it. I want you to walk me." In fact, he practically had a tantrum because I was considering not using it. Honestly, I don't want the stares any more than the next mom, but I was stuck.

Off we went into the post office. My little puppy and I waited in line. Apparently I am not allowed to put the leash on my wrist as directed because that is "doing it wrong." We almost had a melt down about that. All in all, it kept him close and happy at the same time. Who knew?

J refused to take it off as we left the store. I had to walk him to the car. And just like a puppy, he stopped every so often so I would have to pull him. Once again, the three year old found a way to beat the parent. Who knows what could come next.

Probably a Fluke, but...

2009-05-12T16:56:00.002-05:00

J was watching Super Why while I was taking a shower. Wonder Red was using -at words to try to fit the story. The first was cat. Then she said, "Let's change the first letter." And J said, "Bat!" before the tv kids answered. I was pretty surprised. So I did what every reading teacher/mother does in times like these-- I quizzed my child.

I wrote down cat on a piece of paper and asked him what it said. He told me. Next I wrote down bat. No problem. Fat. Hat. Sat. Pat. Mat. The last one took a few seconds.

How cool is that?

J's Thoughts

2009-05-06T09:33:00.004-05:00

"Did you know that a chrysalis is sometimes called a pupa? That's a funny word. Pupa." Okay, I think we can upgrade the second grade science curriculum in schools if my kid is learning about it in his 3 year old class.

"I hope we practice our letter M today. Worksheets are the best." Oh no! Say it isn't so!

"Heh, heh, heh. The baby will be swaddled. Swaddled, swaddled, swaddled. That's so funny. A swaddle is like a baby enchilada wrapped up like a burrito."

"If I am a good boy, I can have an icicle pop. Maybe even two. If I am not a good boy...sigh, I can forget about it."

"Fire ants are mean. They bit that boy. I will stay away from the fire ants and if they come near me, I will say, 'Get out of here fire ants and go bite something else because you are not nice.'"

"Why does Daddy have another meeting? I'm all meetinged out." Me, too!

I had to ask J to repeat this one because I had to write it all down.
"Bubbles and toots make something out of air. They are the same because they come out of your bottom. I'm tooting right now and that's what I did. I made some air. It's called a toot. Did you know that?"

I'll Tell You if You Have the Swine Flu!

2009-05-02T21:09:00.006-05:00

I promised you pictures. B is away in Florida at his annual endo conference. I'll just say that J and I have had an interesting few days. Stories to follow at some point when I am still not fuming from them. Yes, there is now more than one story.

Ready for the patient

Heartbeat sounds good, Mom!

J talks to his sister-- your one and only bare belly shot on this blog.

J and R in similar Easter duds

My bunny cake. I totally understand why Mom always put coconut on the Easter lamb cake! What you can't see are the little black and brown jelly beans in the grass at the back of the bunny. B begged me to put them there. It's the little things that make him happy.

My friends threw me a delightful little shower a few weeks ago. D knitted this adorable burp cloth, sweater, and cupcake hat. I can't wait to use all of them!

Everyone contributed to a "words to live by" tree that will hang in the girl's room.

I asked K to paint some dragonflies in the bedroom, but she painted me some fantastic ones on canvas instead. They are perfect. If you look in between the crib slats, you can see the chair rail and purple paint we chose. I'll take a picture when everything is up and organized in the room.

Big Improvements

2009-04-08T16:28:00.006-05:00

We've reached the 5th sticker on the poop chart. J took the big leap and did this one at school. My excitement is 100 times greater than words on this blog can express. Only 5 more to go until the Spaghetti Factory makes its way into our house. I guess I should buy one.

J had an egg hunt at school today. As he was helping me fill the eggs with treats yesterday, I could sense that he was going to have some major problems with giving up his eggs. I had to reassure him that everyone in his class was going to give up their eggs and that in the end, he would end up with just as many as he brought to school. He still needed help giving them to his teacher this morning, but he was thrilled with what he brought home.

The Springsteen concert on Sunday was amazing! He played 28 songs in 3 hours and never took a single break. His energy is amazing. I was disappointed that I was winded after singing about 3 songs. I forgot that my diaphragm is being squished by a baby. Oh well, it saved my voice.

1 week later update

Since I never finished that part of the post, there is more to say. J has been in underwear (DRY underwear, I might add) for a week now. He earned his spaghetti factory on Easter, which made Easter a completely underwhelming event for him, but that's fine. He took a look at his basket, read his books, found his eggs, and then he was done with it. But he spent over an hour making pasta on that little playdough machine.

I thought we would need to set up a new chart immediately after the old one was filled in, but there hasn't been a need. He tells us when he has to go and then gets excited that he's done his business. The funniest part is that he announces about ten times that he "needs his privacy" when he has to poop. Even if you shut the door, he has to remind you that it's his privacy.

We had a lovely Easter brunch with the gang on Sunday. It turned out to be a gorgeous day and all of the rain dried up just in time for cascarones smashing and egg hunting.

Oh and I almost forgot to mention that we got a new car! This has been in the works for forever. We ended up with a Toyota Highlander (unfortunately we didn't have the extra 15 grand for the hybrid model). Now before you enviro-conscious people yell at me for putting another SUV on the road, let me offer our reasoning, and yes, I understand there are some holes in it, but nobody's perfect. We started seriously looking at Mazda 5s. They are considered mini-minivans. We almost bought one, but B had serious concerns about it not having traction control or stability control. That's pretty funny if you consider that he had been driving a 1998 Honda Civic with power/computerized NOTHING. The dealbreaker ended up being that the multiple times we ended up going to the various Mazda places, the dealers couldn't seem to fess up and be honest about the fact that their car was lacking something. We heard things like, "Oh, the upper model has traction control" and "our breaking system is just as good as stability control." None of that is true. I understand the sales pitch thing, but I don't understand flat out lying. Does traction control matter since we live in Texas and not in snow country? Well, my car has it and I've notice it kick in on several occasions after we've had rain and the roads are oily and wet.

Move on to the Forester. Really nice ride, comfy for me, lots more space, but it was lacking the 3rd row (and that was something that was important to me because we have so many people visit us that the thought of taking two cars everywhere because car seats fill up the back seat is just annoying.) B didn't find the passenger seat very comfortable in the Forester. Even though he would most likely drive whenever we were together and not be in the passenger seat, he decided we should pass on this one as well. What a picky guy.

Next stop, Toyotaland. I've liked Highlanders for a long time, but we always figured it would be our next car after this one-- our minivan of sorts without ever getting a minivan. I kept whispering "hybrid, hybrid" into my husband's ear, but he just didn't have the hearing aid turned up high enough. In the end we did the math and figured out that it would take close to 10 years to recoup the extra cost through gas savings on a hybrid even if gas went up to $4 a gallon again. Then factor in that you can't get a simple hybrid model with a 3rd row (they have to be completely tricked out). Then factor in that my husband called every dealership within 200 miles to get the best deal on a regular 2008 model, which had significant incentives on it. We ended up with one that was 125 miles away, black with leather seats, a third row, and a nine speaker subwoofer blue tooth dealio. Honestly I don't even know what that means. Point being that we got a whole lot in this car for a lot less than a 2009 and for just slightly more than what a Mazda or a Subaru would have cost us. That's what you can do when you buy a car that nobody in farm country would ever want because it's not a truck. Maybe at some point we can trade it in for a hybrid, but for now, we're just going to hope to keep it to at least 300,000 miles.

B painted the baby room and hung up some decorative chair rails. We are getting a new dresser for J this weekend (c/o my favorite store-- craigslist) and moving his dresser into the girl's room. Hopefully things will get much more organized quickly. How does J feel about giving up his furniture? He's pretty psyched about it actually because he thinks the new stuff was made just for him.

I have strong concerns that this baby is sideways. I have a dr.'s appointment on Monday and am going to ask for an ultrasound so I know whether I need to do some crazy position things like stand on my head or shine flashlights all over my belly to get this girl to turn. A sideways baby, also known as being in the transverse position can pose more problems during a natural labor than a breech baby. It most likely ends up in a scheduled c-section if there is no turning because the umbilical cord has a chance of coming out first and essentially cutting off your child's blood/oxygen supply. No bueno, no thank you. Now, I've read that a lot of transverse babies just turn at the very last minute, but I'd love it if all of you could whisper to my kid to get her head down in the right position so that things can be a lot easier for all of us. Thanks in advance for that!

Next post, pictures! I promise!

Slow Goings

2009-04-02T16:37:00.002-05:00

I know there are a few of you who aren't on facebook and are probably wondering what in the world has happened to me. I have neglected you. My J tales have been minimal. I apologize.

I just woke up from a 2.5 hour nap and J is still sleeping, which is great because B has a meeting tonight until about 9, so I'm flying solo tonight. It's been an understatement that I've been tired in the evenings. I'm pretty much tired all of the time. I've been trying to get into the frame of mind that in two months I will probably never get to nap again, or at least, not for a very long time, so I've been trying to make rest a priority over projects. I've been successful about 5 out of 7 days a week. Unfortunately there are some days when I sleep way too long in the daytime and then I am an insomniac at night.

J has been playing the under the shirt game where he tries to fit his head under my shirt and I am supposed to look down at him. It works most of the time, but one day I was wearing a shirt with a higher neckline and he couldn't see me. He declared that his sister was getting fat and that wasn't nice of her. I thought it was sweet that he didn't say I was getting fat. If he keeps up that courtesy, he'll go far with the ladies someday. He also likes putting on his doctor coat from feathernester and wearing a mask and gloves from dad (unused) and checking the baby's heartbeat with his toy stethescope. He's gone to a few doctor's appointments with me and he's really enjoyed watching the doctor use the doppler.

Despite the fact that I expect major regression soon, we're still plugging along with potty training. Ugh. My mother always says that I was horrible and never had any interest, so it seems that J has inherited this quality from me (that and the fact that he's a boy). We've had a few bright moments where he has gone #2 in the potty, but this has only been followed by going in his underwear and even on the floor. I set up a chart with a few rewards that he is really interested in and all I had been hearing for the last few days was, "Maybe another day." Do you know how hard it is to be patient when a kid tells you that? Is he waiting for Christmas to roll around? Perhaps his 7th birthday? Doesn't he know they aren't going to make the Play Dough Spaghetti Factory forever?

I guess the pooping on the floor incident bothered him enough that finally this afternoon he told me he had to poop (only two little drops on the floor. sorry if that grosses you out, but be prepared if you are going to train a child!) and completed the deed where he was supposed to! I was thrilled, he was thrilled, we put stickers on his chart. Let's see if we can do it again later.

We had a lovely visit a few weeks ago with the feathernesters and ouisers on our first trip out to TN. Feathernesters were kind enough to help a preggo out and give up their bedroom for our visit. I also took home my weight in baby girl clothes, which was so much fun. I think dressing a girl is going to take some getting used to. With a boy you just slap on a t shirt and some jeans and you're done. I imagine wanting to do the same for the girl, but everyone tells me you just can't. We'll see. I foresee the biggest problem being shoes, so I hope the husband is prepared for the fact that she will have more than J does in that department.

In an effort to make things fair for both siblings in as many ways as possible, my dad is coming in for the weekend and we're going to the Springsteen concert on Sunday. J also attended one of his shows in utero and I think that is one of the reasons he is so muscially inclined. Who knows if she will love it or hate it. Either way, I am very excited.

So I think that's all there is to report for now. We're trying to get things ready, but it's happening very slowly. Snails pace slowly, people. One of us thinks we have two months while the other thinks everything needed to be finished yesterday. Does anyone want to bet on who's who in that debate? I know, it's probably pretty obvious.

I'll try to post some cute pics of J sometime soon, but remember that my naps come before picture downloads for now.

Gender Roles

2009-03-14T09:14:00.001-05:00

"Mommy, I'm going upstairs to play with Daddy. You stay downstairs and do the dishes. Or some other kitchen job. That's what you're supposed to do."

Lucky me!

You Know You Need To Get Out When...

2009-03-13T08:05:00.001-05:00

Your son asks you this serious question,

"Mommy, do you like farts?" (accompanied by fart)

I guess we'd run out of things to talk about.

Fuzzy Logic

2009-03-04T22:30:00.000-06:00

With the rite of passage of turning three comes a newfound sense of logic. Everything makes sense to J. If only they made sense to us.

J: Ohhhh, let me see that pizza. It looks like it has cheese. I don't like cheese.
Me: What kind of pizza do you like?
J:Plain
Me: This is plain pizza.
J: Well I don't like plain pizza.
(After the pizza is hot and cut)
Can I have another piece of pizza, please?

J: Don't worry, Mommy. Your pants are dirty, but they will dry in the washing machine.

There's a line in a Barenaked Ladies song that goes like this, "But I don't like salmon. It looks really appetizing. Of course if I were to eat salmon, it would be the wild caught salmon."

J: But I don't like orzo. It looks appetizing. Of course if I were to eat orzo it would have to be the wild caught orzo. (put said orzo into mouth)

J: Mommy, if you pee a lot in the potty, all the time, your headache will go away.
(I think to myself that my headache is not due to the fact that I won't use the potty-- he will pee anytime, but #2 is totally a different story)

J: Did you know that sometimes babies float?
I tried really hard to make a connection to this, but it was just an out there thought with no further explanation. I will be sure to keep him away from the tub with his little sister for awhile.

And then there's his favorite one, which I hear at least 10 times a day...
J: There are two babies in your belly!
L: No, there's only one.
J: There are two. One. two. Because I say there are. It's pretty funny. I can see them.

I bet he can.

Birthday Mayhem

2009-02-18T09:52:00.006-06:00

Not really, but to a three year old, it may have been. J had a super awesome birthday. The fun went on for days. And the gifts just keep on coming, much to his surprise. Probably best to tell the story in pictures...

It was a loosely themed Biscuit Brothers/musical farm party, so K,C and Z gave J a Biscuit Brothers outfit. So cool...

We got a phone call during the party that a friend's baby boy was born. We won't forget his birthday!

Newborn twins made an appearance and didn't mind any of the noise at all.

I made J a tractor cake. It would have been a lot easier if he wanted chocolate cake, but he wanted a yellow cake, so it took forever to decorate. I was really happy with it, though. And he talked about it for days, so that was a pretty good compliment.

The kiddos decorated electric guitars, but they had a little trouble getting the band together for a good photo.

We gave J a train table and a piano. I know I have said it before, but I. Love. Craigslist.

Uncle M made the trip down from Baltimore for the big day. I think the party was a good form of birth control for him.
Other cool gifts.

After the birthday extravaganza, J and I went back to Florida with my mom. Beach, parks, golf, Butterfly World. Getting spoiled by all the other grandmas in the neighborhood. Here he is feeding some Lorikeets and practicing his putting with Grandpa.

Well I better post this instead of trying to think of more interesting things to say. I'm just trying to get you guys used to the absence come May and there is no writing at all.

Entering the Kingdom of Threedom

2009-02-05T08:27:00.004-06:00

The third birthday will be upon us tomorrow, followed by a party on Saturday. I see lots of cake eating in our future because there will be cupcakes at school, most likely followed by extra cupcake eating at home, and a tractor cake on Saturday. I'll try to get some veggies in there somehow. I'm hoping that turning three makes J happy, unlike last year when he woke up angry at the world for turning two.

How would I wrap up the year of two?

with a big sigh and a nap. It's been a whirlwind of a year for all of us. Pregnant or not, it's been tiring.
Faster talking, faster walking/running, faster manipulation time
whining that often becomes conniving
laughing that is incredibly infectious
opinions that are strongly expressed ("Those aren't the rules, Mommy!")
the use of words like "actually, in fact, finally, eventually, suddenly, after all". Sometimes I feel like this kid could have his own instructional tv show.
the development of logic that is completely clear and at the same time, completely fuzzy
the acquisition of knowledge about almost every percussion instrument
wrapping paper tubes can be guitars, bass, banjos, and even mandolins
singing a song is a great way to ignore your parents when they request you clean up
my kid cannot be in a car without music--preferably his music
potty training is evil with boys
he tries to show kindness and empathy to everyone he meets. One day this will break his heart (and mine). One day this will make him extremely happy.
testing his parents and others became an interesting part-time job
his imagination has grown immensely. Sometimes this makes me realize how narrow minded I have become with age.
he still loves to read (yes!)
he loves to travel
he's a boy and seems to be really good with directions in the car
he recognizes Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen
he loves when other people come to visit and hates when they leave
he asks adults if they have no food in front of them if they would like some of his
a recall of events sometime later which makes me ask, "How do you remember that?"
milk is the only thing he will use as a dip for food. Sometimes this is appropriate and other times this is completely disgusting. Carrots and milk anyone?

A completely random list and there's plenty more. Like I said last year, we still haven't broken him and he still wakes up happy to see us in the morning. That is something for which I am incredibly grateful.

Happy Birthday, Sweet Boy. Keep on strumming and singing.

See ya later, two!

The Big D

2009-02-02T13:09:00.004-06:00

Forgive me for the lack of posting. Aside from using my extra time for nesting purposes, the only other topics I could write about lately is shocking toddler behavior. I started a post about it, but never finished it. Maybe I will, but hopefully we've moved on and that's that for now.

We took a last minute trip up to the Big D on Friday and Saturday. That's Dallas to the rest of you. B had to renew his sedation license so that his patients wouldn't get angry when he told them that he had to do their root canal without anesthesia. Originally he was going to drive up and back on the same day, but we agreed that spending a few extra bucks on a hotel room and not falling asleep at the wheel or in the class might be a better option. Thanks to our buddies over at Priceline, he got a great hotel for $50. When I found out how nice it was, I decided that J and I should tag along and have some fun.

Here's what J thought of the experience. I said, "J, would you like to go to Dallas and see a new city and go to a museum while daddy goes to school?" J said, "Yeah! I think that would be AMAZING!" His enthusiasm just cracks me up. He was so excited that he didn't sleep at all on the way up there even though we left right before his bedtime. There were too many neon lights to gaze upon. When we got to the hotel room, which for some odd reason, he called, "the church hotel", he said, "Wow! This is my new bedroom? I am so excited to be here." Thankfully we were all able to fall asleep rather quickly.

The next morning, we dropped B off at his class. As we drove through downtown Dallas, J said, "This is the biggest city I have ever seen in my life! Look at how big the buildings are!" All I could think was just wait until I take you to New York City, kiddo. J and I returned back to our church hotel for a leisurely morning of breakfast and Mickey Mouse. We then ventured over to the Museum of Nature and Science. Given that we spent about three hours total inside, I'd say the museum got two thumbs up from J. It actually was a lot of fun. The upstairs is geared towards older kids, but still fine for younger kids to browse. J especially enjoyed the giant nose that you could stick your head into and it would sneeze you out. There was also a place where you could experiment with sound. It took about 2.2 seconds for my music loving child to seize the microphone and belt out an echoing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Other people in the exhibit area cracked up because the microphone was meant to be used for testing simple sounds, but whatever. His confidence drew a crowd of other kids that then wanted to sing their own little tunes.

The downstairs part of the museum was a children's museum fit with a firetruck and fireman apparel, a giant xylophone, tarantulas, snakes and other creepy crawlies, a giant cow that could be milked, a farm area with tons of activities, a building station, sand pit, water exploration area, hot air balloon, and dental exhibit. The best part was we were there at lunch time so there were very few people around and J got to linger and revisit things numerous times.

It was a gorgeous day. The only meltdown we had was when I told J we couldn't ride a swan boat. I didn't think taking a toddler in a boat by myself while I am pregnant was the best of ideas. I did allow a quick jaunt out on a rock to look at turtle in the middle of a pond. After some munching and walking, J said he wanted to go back inside again, which was fine with me because I was wondering what we were going to do for the next 2.5 hours. It was back to xylophoning, firefighting, and cow milking. So fun.

The museum is actually on the state fairgrounds and is the home to a variety of museums. We also checked out the American Railway Museum. J and I were both of the opinion that it was a complete bust. The trains were really cool (and old) but there were only a few cars that were open to walk through and J really wanted to steer a steering wheel. We managed to find one on the back of a caboose. We weren't supposed to climb up there, but we did anyway. Thankfully that satisfied the steering wheel need and we called it a day. J fell asleep in the car for a bit before we went to pick up B and head back home.

The ride from Dallas to Austin is incredibly painful. It's straight for three hours. There's nothing to look at. And I had a kicking kid causing multiple rest stops, and another kid in the back saying, "I can't see home! Where is it?" The fun was over, but we had a pretty good time.

Obamanos!

2009-01-20T08:56:00.002-06:00

As I was getting J ready for bed last night, I asked him if he could say inauguration. With much determination he replied, "in-aug-u-wation". I told him we were going to watch an inauguration tomorrow because we are going to have a new president. I asked him if he knew who the new president would be and he yelled out, "Barack, Barack, Barack Obama!" Awesome.

When he woke up this morning, I heard him tell B that "he couldn't watch The Biscuit Brothers today because he was going to watch the inauguration with Barack Obama and that would take a long time." Now he keeps asking where Barack Obama is. Maybe he thinks he's coming over to watch some tv and share a snack? I have a feeling he's going to be a little disappointed.

Blue or red, have a great day everyone!!

The Excitement Gods Can Feel Free to Leave Us Alone

2009-01-13T16:03:00.004-06:00

Had a lovely weekend visit from Auntie B from San Francisco. She just returned from a fabulous honeymoon in Argentina. Her request of things to do while in Texas with us? Roast a chicken. I never felt so able to accommodate in my life. You see, B's husband supposedly got overloaded on chicken as a child, so he refuses to eat it as an adult. B is a big roasted chicken fan, but doesn't want to sit down to a 5lb bird all by herself. We made her dreams come true on Friday night with a side dish of lemon thyme orzo and some broccoli. Deliciousness.

Perfect Roast Chicken (Marcella Hazan)
1 chicken of any size
1-2 lemons, small
salt
pepper

Salt and pepper chicken inside. Roll lemons around on counter to massage them. Pierce each with toothpick many times. Put 1-2 inside chicken. Truss chicken very tightly at both neck and abdomen. Salt and pepper outside. Cook at 375° until done (160 in breast).

If you leave the oven closed and put the thermometer in the right place, it is impossible not to have a juicy, perfectly cooked chicken.

Lemon-Thyme Orzo (or Rice)
Orzo, 1 C
Chicken stock, 1/2 C
Lemon zest, 1.5 t
Thyme, 1 t
Salt and pepper
Butter, 1 T
Parmesan, 1/3 C

Cook orzo in water until done. Drain. Return to saucepan. Add stock, zest, thyme, 1/2 t salt and pepper. Cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally until most of liquid absorbed. Stir in butter and Parmesan just before serving.

I always add less parmesan and more lemon to this. Double the recipe because you won't have leftovers unless you do.

We had a relaxing weekend that included a trip to the farmer's market, some outlet shopping, New York Times reading, and Sweet Tart Hearts munching (it's that time again). J's newest fun phase is telling people, "Don't say that! Don't do that!" It's really annoying. I haven't decided if it's best to ignore him altogether since he's looking for a reaction, or to reprimand him for not being nice. The latter gives him a reaction and he already knows he's not being nice. It's one of the ways almost three year olds test limits and set boundaries. Better than terrible twos? I'll let you know. But B should feel better knowing that once she left, he did the same thing us.

Yesterday had some unplanned and unwelcomed excitement. I had an early dentist appointment and B had his right after mine. He brought J with him, I took J to school, and then headed down to my friend K's house to babysit while she had an ultrasound. I was running on time. Until I got rear ended at a red light by a truck. Everything is fine, but because I am pregnant I wasn't just willing to share insurance info and be on my way, so I called 911. Well, apparently when you do that, the entire world comes to your rescue-- police, ambulance, and a rescue fire truck. I felt pretty stupid, but I had to do it since I wanted to make sure everything was okay and I experienced quite a jolt since the truck was double the size of my car. My doctor directed me to go to the ER because she wasn't in the office yet and they hooked me up to a fetal monitor for awhile. The heartbeat was strong and steady, but they had a heck of a time finding it. Apparently she is lodged near my hip bone. She was kicking plenty yesterday afternoon, but I was still pretty achy.

This morning I woke up feeling a little nauseous and was nervous that something was wrong, but that also could have been because J decided he wanted to sleep with me at 4:30 and I was too cold and tired to say no. He didn't go back to sleep right away and I was up for probably about 2 hours before getting another hour of sleep. I felt some kicks later this afternoon after forcing myself to eat some mint chocolate chip ice cream to help the process along.

Upon further inspection of my car when we got home we saw that there were actually more than scratches on it and an estimate at a dealer nearby put the damage at $1800, which I know is way too high, but still. The other driver was driving a company vehicle, so I hope we don't have any trouble collecting on a claim against them. I wouldn't care about the car since you really can't see anything, but I do care about the fact that I had to pay for a hospital visit and we aren't lucky to have a $25 copay or anything like that.

The most important thing is that everything is fine. I was really glad J wasn't in the car, but he probably would have loved all of the action with the fire trucks.

Christmas Past

2009-01-07T14:39:00.000-06:00

It's been a crazy few weeks in the S household and the visitors actually aren't finished just yet! We began our holiday adventures two weeks ago when the Feathernesters joined us for a week of toddler chasing, hole in the wall making, garden border building, cream corn eating fun. Sounds like your typical family visit right? Perhaps I should explain a bit.

The toddler chasing is self explanatory, but it was so great to have L and J together for Christmas. They did their best to share toys and keep their screeching to a minimum (okay, that might be a stretch). Perhaps the best thing was that they stimulated each other so much during the day that they slept like logs at night and even graced us all with an extra hour of sleep on Christmas morning. Of course children don't give gifts easily and they decided that extra hour of sleep entitled them to not take naps on Christmas afternoon. We were all grateful for little presents.

The week began with some unplanned excitement as D decided he would make things more entertaining if he fell off an imaginary chair that he thought was at his spot at the table which was really taken away from him by his wife. As he crashed on the hard, cold tile, I thought he broke the chair, but upon further investigation, we saw that there was actually no chair behind him at all. He was okay, but the wall was not. Enter the beginning of the marathon trips to Lowe's for drywall, spackle, texture, and more texture.

In between toddler wrangling and drywall patching, we actually had a chance to be grown ups for a little while. We went to two movies during the week, which I believe is my quota for the entire year. We saw Quantum of Solace and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Both were really good. The sad part? The fact that we had to make arrangements to eat dinner at 5:30 because we would be too tired to go to a 9:00 movie. Ahh, how times have changed.

There were nonstop comings and goings from other family members throughout the week. My aunt and uncle popped in for a few days on their way to Brownsville, Tx. B's best friend J came and stayed with us from icy Seattle. Grandparents from Florida and California also joined us. And we had some last minute surprise guests who stopped in from Lubbock on Christmas night as they were leaving from Austin to go to Mexico in the morning. We fed 17 people on Christmas night, which was chaotic, but we had plenty to go around, including a fully cooked turkey and plenty of pie, so it was lots of fun.

Santa was very good to J this year. The biggest hits from Santa were a tom tom drum, (everyone says I am crazy, but I can't not encourage this kid to be musical since he loves it so much) and a guitar (Santa shops at garage sales and found a kid-sized one for $1.00!). It's completely out of tune, but I know nothing about guitars and J doesn't know the difference, so it's a perfect match in our house. Both instruments are used to jam to the new Biscuit Brothers cd he got. Uncle D was a little tired of them by the end of the week (sorry!) because the jam sessions started early in the morning and repeated themselves throughout the day. He also got some great books, which I will probably add to the side of the blog. J became a complete present opening zombie and wanted present after present. We actually put a halt to his present opening at one point because he wasn't even noticing what he was opening anymore.

Matching pjs to please the mamas

1st trip downstairs

Hard at Work

In addition to fixing a hole in the kitchen wall, the boys decided to make an all out effort to build a new border for our garden. This almost turned out badly when D told me the plan and it was nothing like I had envisioned it and they were planning on carrying out said plan without my okay. Thankfully some other mothers in the room insisted this was a bad idea and we all got on the same page first. I think this building project included about 4 trips to Lowe's and a very heated discussion about what to do about the fact that the previous owners built this garden on top of a zone of the sprinkler system (which means the entire garden may need to be ripped up if a pipe ever breaks and needs fixing). The finished product looks really good and will hopefully keep the annoying St. Augustine grass from invading my planting territory.

The New Year's Eve guests arrived a day after all of the Christmas ones left. Round two included B's dad, stepmother, stepbrother and his wife (visiting from Poland after spending their honeymoon on a cruise). We cooked prime rib for dinner because B's stepbrother never had it before. He ate four pieces. We also went to a ballroom dancing party to ring in the new year. I'll spare you the long story, but just say that it was BYOB, which saved us money, but they didn't provide any mixers, and even though I called to make sure they would have mixers for whatever drinks we brought(this is important stuff to do when some people in your party consider tonic a fifth food group), the only mixers they provided were "dance mixers". As in everybody gets on the dance floor and mixes up their partners type of mixers. Disaster was averted with a last minute trip to the grocery store. Upon further inquiry, I found out from the stepbrother and wife that their preference for New Year's Eve is to usually stay home. I wish I would have known that. I felt like the chaperone at a high school dance as I looked at the clock wanting it to be midnight every ten minutes. It was so hard to stay up until midnight without alcohol. We had a good time, but it felt like everyone was forcing themselves to stay up late.

I forgot to mention that Jonah caught pink eye and a nasty cough in between all of this as well. We had to give him eyedrops and cough medicine. Imagine a screaming child. Now raise the noise level by 100 and that's what we had three times a day. We gave up on the cough medicine after two days of him literally spitting it all out on B's arm. I finally became a pro at doing the eyedrops. It's amazing what mini tootsie pops can do.

B's dad and stepmom left and returned two days later for doctor's appointments before she heads back to Poland later in the week. Yesterday was the first day we had nobody in our house. We're a bit tired, but fine. I'm getting fat and kicked. She's already a night owl. Happy New Year everyone!

B's boss gave J a Texas jersey. He loves it. Hook 'em!

A New Hue

2008-12-16T18:27:00.003-06:00

Due to a couple of things happening around here that were just a bit stressful in the past week, we were able to get some news about a certain Baby Next's gender earlier than expected. No worries, everything is fine, but I am not feeling moved to share the nitty gritty with everyone over the Internet. Here is what you need to know:

While I am perfectly content with blue and red in my life, I am so so excited that I will not be outnumbered and there will be a little pink in our lives! Hooray!

I always find it quite funny when you tell people this news and they ask, "Are you excited?" Does anybody ever say, "Quite frankly, I'm not."

We will not be sharing names ahead of time, so I'll save you the trouble of asking. Last time we didn't even share our possibilities. It's just easier that way so you don't have someone saying, "Well, I hate that name, but that one is okay." Let's just say that if you knew our possible girl names before, they are still in the running, but we feel the need to explore every other name and popularity trend graphs before coming to a final decision. You think I'm kidding, but don't forget that I have a scientific nerdy husband who gets upset whenever we meet someone with the same name as J.

More good news... our bathrooms are textured and painted! With green (earth friendly) paint! I'll post some pictures when we get the new light fixtures and mirrors up (that implies that we have them and we don't yet).

That's about it from here for now. Did I mention it is freezing here? As in last week it was 78 degrees in the afternoon and by 8 pm it was 31? I know that all you northerners are laughing when I say 31, but my blood is thin now and 31 feels like 15 below. The bright side is that it is supposed to be 78 again on Saturday followed by 34 on Sunday. Good luck to the feathernesters on packing for that one.

2008-12-06T19:52:00.006-06:00

I was waiting in line at the Starbucks drive thru a few days ago after picking up our Christmas cards. When I got to the window to pay, I was told that the car that was two in front of me already paid for me. I was totally surprised. The coffee guy wasn't kidding. In the three seconds I had to think about it, I decided it would be wrong to just drive away and not pay this forward, so I said I would pay for the guy behind me. Turned out I was truly paying it forward because he must have ordered a venti mocha with a triple shot of espresso and an extra shot of mocha because his cost way more than mine would have. Oh well. I think I once read on a coffee cup about this happening. It was pretty cool that it happened to me. I wonder if the guy behind me chose to pay for the person behind him.

I took J out for breakfast this morning because we were dressed and ready to start the day. Darn kid has been waking up earlier and earlier each morning and today was the earliest of all at 5:50. We are getting an alarm clock for his room which we will set for something reasonable (like 6:30 or 7) and he will not be allowed to call for us until then. We'll see how it goes.

J was extremely shy with the waitress at breakfast until she brought us the bill. Then he told her, "You're cute." She died in awwws and it was incredibly cute, but I didn't have the heart to tell her that cute is the word of the week. The sweater I'm wearing today is cute (it's a plain Jane white ribbed v-neck), the cats are cute. Even his milk cup is cute.

He has also been learning his fair share of Christmas songs, which all now come with accompanying drum solos. Our favorites are The Muppets Twelve Days of Christmas, also referred to as "The Bird Song." He loves Frosty the Snowman and uses our own broom as his broomstick to lead us around the house as he sings. He really likes Feliz Navidad, but can't quite say it, so it comes out as "Fleece Naddidad." We've also used the lyrics from Santa Claus is Coming to Town as a bit of a threat when he starts to act up and throw a fit over silly stuff. So far, it's been working like a charm. And because we are listening to all of these songs on the 24 hour Christmas station, he also sings the radio station jingle (Magic 95.5!!!) I think that cracks me up most of all.

I have painters in my house right now. This is very exciting, but it seems that all painters have their quirks. Mine likes to take naps in his truck while his assistant does the work. This bugged me a great deal earlier, but he hasn't taken a lunch break, so I guess it's okay. It was just kind of strange to see him passed out in his beat up jillopy of a vehicle with a book in his lap.

That's about all that's new here. I think I'm going to go and get some Christmas decorations out. We are way behind on that compared to our neighbors, who all decorated their homes and trees the day after Thanksgiving. Hopefully everything will be done by this weekend.

The Raw and the Overcooked

2008-12-02T13:51:00.003-06:00

Die Frau made a special mention that she followed the turkey recipe I gave her last year and had stellar results with it this Thanksgiving. Yay! It's a mighty fine recipe.

I wish I could say I followed the same one.

Upon watching "Dear Food Network Thanksgiving" with Alton Brown, we decided to go with his recipe. The husband loves anything from Uncle Alton. We cooked a fantastic prime rib at Christmas with him, and B often takes notes while watching Good Eats. The recipe looked good enough, so we decided to give it a try. And since we ti-voed (sp?) the show, we went back and forth many times to watch his trussing technique, gravy method, and beautiful, glorious looking turkey.

So imagine our surprise when all of our sides were ready to go on the table at 6:30 and our bird rested to a comfortable 164 degrees that we should cut into it and find a red bird. Raw, people. Raw! Everything went back in the oven. The father in law laughed over his vodka tonic, J nearly lost his shirt as he begged for more and more pumpkin muffins, and I went to the couch feeling dejected and confused. How could this happen? We did everything he said to do. Right?

Well, upon printing out a written recipe for the turkey, we found conflicting evidence. The written recipe says to take the bird out at 161 and let it rest to 165. The tv show said take it out at 151 and let it rest to 165. Easy to check, right? Well, we deleted the show after we jotted down the gravy recipe and put the turkey in the oven. And I can't find a copy of the episode anywhere on the food network website. I can find AB's Good Eats show where he makes a turkey, but there is no evidence of this show anywhere that I can find on the Internet.

So this is where I need your help, people! Did Alton Brown completely let us down and make a huge snafu on his show? Or did B and I incorrectly hear the directions after watching the show both separately and together at least 4 times? I'm dying to know, so if anybody has a copy of this show anywhere on their ti-vo, please help a girl out. Every review of this turkey was outstanding and it totally bummed me out that we screwed it up so badly. I mean, in hindsight, it makes no sense to take a bird out of the oven 15 degrees before it's ready, but we really thought we were doing what we were supposed to!

Needless to say, our raw turkey turned into an overcooked turkey even though it had a beautifully roasted skin. The garlic mashed potatoes became complete garlic after being warmed for an extra hour and a half. I thought they were at least tasty, but B didn't agree. The green beans were inedible. The stuffing was fine, however. And there was, of course, the small incident that involved a full Brita pitcher, a toddler, a cracked Brita pitcher, water all over the floor, and a fallen toddler with a bit tongue and lots of blood coming out of his mouth right before we sat down to dinner. All in all, it was a fabulous Thanksgiving!

To top it off, there was no pie, people! No pie! I will never ever, ever have a holiday that has no pie. I thought I was doing the sensible thing by not making a pie because there were only three of us and one guest would definitely not eat any and B would only eat a sliver. I don't care how pregnant you are; you just can't plan to eat a whole pie. I mean, if it happens, it happens, but you just can't go into making one knowing you are going to eat 9/10 of it. So I poached some pears in white wine and vanilla beans. They were actually quite delicious, but my final words to Brett as I went to bed that night were, "I really, really want pie." I do believe that pie would have made it all better.

It started out as a happy morning...

So to all of you coming to my house on Christmas. There will be cookies. There will be candy. There will be pie. Or some sort of gooey cake that will make it all okay just in case it all goes horribly, horribly wrong again!

What's Cooking?

2008-11-21T11:49:00.006-06:00

I'm starting to think about what's going to be on the Thanksgiving menu this year. I probably should get my act in gear soon, or I will be faced with throngs of people in a mad panic at the grocery store fighting over that last bag of carrots.

There's only going to be three adults this year, which makes preparing a gigantic Thanksgiving feast seem a bit wasteful. I mean, I know that leftovers are the best part of Thanksgiving, but how many leftovers will there be if you make everything you normally make when there are 6-8 people around the table? I know that I could cut recipes in half and I am sure that's what I'll have to do, but the idea of a small gathering is leaving me a bit uninspired. Or maybe it's because I know that our other guest does not prefer turkey, isn't all that into potatoes, doesn't eat vegetables, and won't go for dessert. That leaves a lot of leftovers for two of us and I doubt J will pull his own weight and justify getting that larger turkey that looks so pretty when it comes out of the oven. I guess I should just look on the bright side that maybe this dinner won't cost as much as it has in years past and just get over it.

J's school is having a little feast at school today. Up until yesterday he kept calling it a beast because we've been reading the book, "A Beasty Story". He was a bit confused as to how he was going to have the character in the book at his school. But now that we're using the correct vocabulary, he's totally psyched for the party. You know, in the way two year olds get excited for something. "We're having a feast!" (run off and go play with something else.)

Let's see what else has been going on. Remember all that wallpaper removal I did in order to get my walls textured and repainted more acceptable colors? We found a painter with a reasonable price and scheduled a day that worked for both of us. He didn't show and didn't call. When I finally got a hold of him he told me that he hurt his back and was behind on some other projects and wouldn't be able to get to me for another week or so. I told him I was hosting a baby shower and really needed the downstairs one done quickly. He promised me it would get done in time. He promised me he would be there. He even gave me a time. That was the last I heard from him and it's been a week. Needless to say, the bathroom was not painted in time for the shower and while it wasn't a huge deal, I was really annoyed because I busted my butt to choose paint colors (I was very indecisive) and clean everything up so he could just come in and get down to business. Now I'm in the process of looking for another painter who might be slightly more reliable. I am stunned in this economy that there is someone out there who feels he has enough money and enough work that he doesn't even need to call and tell me that he isn't coming.

Finally, we had some pictures taken today that I think you might enjoy. May I present to you Baby Next Strong making his/her debut on the blogosphere at approximately 13 weeks and 2 days with an estimated due date of May 27, 2009! When we got a glimpse this morning it was face down and not moving at all, but after a few jiggles of the ultrasound wand, we had a flipper, a waver, and even got big a "whoop whoop!" If the due date turns out to be accurate this could be a Memorial Day baby. Perhaps it is already practicing its party moves for the beach.

Doesn't it look just like me? Laying face down before we shook it awake

I've been feeling pretty cruddy, which should now excuse the lack of posts and communication. Most of J's naptimes have been spent on the couch napping or feeling sick. I haven't had morning sickness, but I've had afternoon and evening sickness instead. No puking (thank goodness) but I feel sick when I eat and sick when I don't. Water tastes gross and I'm already getting heartburn from the mildest of foods. Hard boiled eggs have been my tastiest best friend.

"I'm gonna make 'em an offer they can't refuse!"

The ultrasound tech was able to get a peek in between the legs too! She gave us what she called "a fairly confident" prediction, but didn't want to make a true announcement because it's still early. Sorry, people. I'm keeping that info to myself until we're more sure about what it is, so you'll have to stay tuned at least until New Year's to find out.

crazy 4D image. Aliens! Ahh!

I'd like to consider this post like the ones the press puts out from the White House on a Friday when it's something that they want to slip in there and see how many people actually notice. He he.

A quick list of J-isms

2008-11-19T12:28:00.003-06:00

J puts his fruit basket on his head. I say to him, "Are you a basket case?" He replies, "I'm a basket case and nobody can help me."

"Mommy, I want to watch too much tv."

We took out the book A Day in the Life of a Garbage Collector. J says, "Daddy read me this book. It's a funny one." Yep, that one's a regular gut buster.

Heard when he woke up in the morning after friends stayed at our house, "K and J slept in bed together. We read books. I gave K a hug. Yeah! We read a lot of books." (let me clarify that my child did not sleep with K!)

Sung to the tune of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" when J really wanted to help me cut a cupcake in half. "I wanna hold your knife. I wanna hold your knife! And when I eat the cupcake I feel happy inside." He really is a musical genius.

That's all I've got today, people. I'd post some pics, but I've gotta go pick the boy up from school. Hope this is enough to hold you over until next time.

Boo of a Halloween

2008-11-03T18:04:00.003-06:00

We didn't have too much fun around here on Halloween. J got sick on Thursday-- a funky rash on his butt that turned to no appetite for three days and a fever. Poor kid was a good sport and tried to dress up in his costume for a little while to make an appearance at the Halloween get together at the park across the street, but he could barely muster up the strength for 10 minutes of it. Tylenol kicked in around trick or treat time and he had a good time handing out candy to everyone that came to the door... until the skeleton arrived. Scared the crap out of him, made him cry, and that was the end of Halloween. J has had this weird thing with skeletons. Sometimes he is deathly afraid of them, yet he enjoys seeing a skeleton picture in a book. The displays at Target and the grocery store were too much for him to handle, which is not a surprise since he is 2. However, he is vehemently against hearing anyone talk about skeletons as well. If he thinks we are talking about skeletons, he says, "Don't talk about the skeletons!" When we tell him that we aren't talking about skeletons, he says, "Just don't talk about them!" There is nothing we can do to convince him otherwise.

Now that Halloween is over and the decorations are slowly being put away, I hear "Are the skeletons not going to be out?" I have J fill in the blank when I say, "Halloween is _____" and he says, "OVER!!" Something in him doesn't completely believe me.

What do you do when you're sick and bored? Dress up in your penguin costume, grab your penguin, and watch Happy Feet, of course!

Here are a few pictures of us dressed up for a party last weekend. Do you get the connection? Fifty points to the first person that does. B was convinced that nobody would get it and that it was lame, but someone at the party quickly got it, declared it clever, and then he was okay with it. The man cannot wear a costume in complete confidence. We didn't win the contest this year, which was fine, since I don't think J could have taken another year of having the skeleton trophy tucked away in our drawer.

Any guesses?

This year's winners-- Capt. Jack Sparrow, the "man" with the yellow hat, and their kid who was dressed at the beginning of the party as Curious George. Too cute.

Finally, this last picture is for Ouiser, who is hopeful about getting her daughter to begin potty training. A picture to show you what J has been doing lately with his potty chair. This is the most use it's had in months. Hopefully you will have more luck than we are.

Don't forget to vote tomorrow, people!

Ways in Which My Husband Makes it Impossible to Compete

2008-10-24T08:12:00.002-05:00

Let's get this out of the way in the beginning. Poooooor B.

Okay, now let's make fun of his misery. Ready?

A couple of days ago B was ironing a shirt for a meeting after work. He had a small stepladder in his closet from our wallpaper removal (things are still in a holding pattern as I take forever to pick colors). I guess he had to remove the ladder from his closet in order to get the ironing board out, so he laid it next to his closet door. I didn't see the ladder until later that night when I was getting ready for bed, so when I saw it, I said to myself, "Huh, I wonder what that's doing there? Note to self-- do not bang into it in the middle of the night."

I was all set when I woke up later that night. A few minutes later, B was not. Crash! Expletive, expletive, expletive! Somewhere in all of that I mumbled, "I knew you would do that." Which of course did not make my husband happy and prompted him to ask, "Well if you knew it was there, why didn't you move it?" I told him it was late and I didn't know what it was doing there in the first place and I just reminded myself not to hit it in the middle of the night. Well it turns out, B has a bloody gash on his toe, which he has now broken for the second time in a year. I blame the fact that he has finger toes. He is still blaming other things.

Fast forward to last night. The three of us took a little fall walk around the neighborhood to check out Halloween lights and such. We're merrily walking down the sidewalk. B is having an idyllic moment looking at his cute family (in the dark, mind you) when all of a sudden-- Crash! Ahhh!!!

"Oh my God, I just got hit by a cactus."

There is one house that has a large cactus growing in their backyard. It's pretty tall so it spills over their fence. And since B is so tall and he wasn't watching where he was going, he took a cactus to the forehead. Double ouch.

Now has anyone had the thought that cactus have prickly things on them? Well, of course, they all embedded themselves in B's forehead. When we got home he asked for the scotch tape. His solution to removing the stickers was to stick tape on his forehead ala Biore Pore Cleanser style and rip them out. Wondering how well that worked? Not so well.

So then he had to do it the old fashioned way by taking a pair of tweezers and plucking each one out individually. I offered assistance, but since they were really hard to see, I hurt him anytime I touched his head.

I sent my husband to work with a helmet and a mask today. Lord knows what trouble he could get into with sharp instruments!

Once again, Poooor B. But seriously, the kid's gotta watch where he's going!

Would SP Think My Kid is "Elite" Because He Pretends to Be a Consultant?

2008-10-21T14:12:00.004-05:00

I know, I know, my fans have been left waiting and wondering when next I would appear.

Nothing's wrong! All is well, in fact. I've just cut back on computer time and haven't really felt like posting when I am on the computer. Keeping all of you interested in our mundane life is real work and sometimes a girl just needs a break.

We have a few favorite words to share. Actually and after all. Some examples:

"Actually we don't need to eat our dinner, we can just have ice cream."
"Actually, I am not ready for a nap. I think I will stay up a little longer."
"Actually, we are going to go to the park and then go to the store."
"Actually you are going to eat soup and I am going to have something else."

"I like playing the drums...after all."
"The juice is good without water...after all."
"The skeletons are scary...after all."
The ghost-es are on the street...after all."

J has also become his own consultant. When he wants to discuss something in his head, he picks up his imaginary cell phone, puts it to his ear, and talks about stuff. The other day he did this the entire time he was eating his lunch at school that his teacher thought that his ear hurt. Some consulting he has conducted sounds like this, "Should we eat the macaroni and cheese? I think so. It looks good. I see lots of noodles in there. Oh, well I guess we will eat it. Okay, bye." Also heard while playing the drums, "This is a base drum. Okay? Okay. This is a gogo bell. You bang it like this. Okay? Okay. Let's try it together. One, two three. That's good, but you have to practice. Like this. Keep practicing. Okay, bye."

Getting ready for a Halloween party this weekend. My costume is not even close to ready. I've also been busy helping to coordinate a neighborhood shindig at our park for the little trick or treaters. In fact, as soon as J wakes up from his nap, we're off to inform the masses about it.

Oh! And some of you will love this while it will make others moan-- we went to a little rally at a nearby park. It was mainly for local candidates, but they had Obama stickers and signs as well. J walked right up to the sticker lady and said, "Mama for Obama. Can I have a sticker?"

Good boy.

I'll try not to keep y'all waiting so long for such valuable information next time!

Three Signs That It's Quitting Time

2008-09-28T22:10:00.003-05:00

B and I have been feverishly removing wallpaper in our downstairs and master bathrooms. We need to get the walls textured before we paint because all of the other walls are textured and it just makes sense to do it right now than to have to do it last minute if we decide to sell the house at some point. We took our time removing the downstairs paper. It's a small space, but it has a lot of annoying angles and hard to reach places.

Once we finished the small bathroom, we seriously considered just bagging the master bathroom project. But that wallpaper is so ugly that I couldn't bring myself to give up. Then we asked the handyman what the price would be to texture both bathrooms at two separate times and it was going to be much more expensive, so we bit the bullet and got started again.

Feathernester and L are coming to visit on Wed, so it has been an absolute that everything needs to be done and cleaned up before they get here. We don't need a ten month old walker getting into things like steamers and picking up little pieces of wallpaper glue and such. I've spent every free moment working on this bathroom and while it hasn't been hard, it hasn't been easy. This bathroom is literally the size of a bedroom. I have no idea what they were thinking when they designed it; it's like they forgot the master plan so they said, "Oh well, let's just put in a tiny toilet space and give them lots of room to dance in the middle." The ceilings are as high as the bedroom so I need to use an 8 foot ladder to reach the top. So you can picture the safe maneuvering I've been doing all week with a steamer in one hand, a scorer in the other, and a scraper usually in my mouth.

Great progress was made up until today when it was time to take down the very large vanity mirror. House was built in 1990 so it's the classic, one large piece of six foot mirror with dressing room type lightbulbs above it. I knew right away that taking down this mirror was not a job for me, so I suggested that B ask our friend C to help him today when he came over for dinner. C gladly said he would help in exchange for a beer. Little did he know that he would be earning his dinner and thensome!

B and C went upstairs with a screwdriver and I stayed downstairs with the boys as they played. And then I heard the crash. I immediately knew what happened, so I ran upstairs to see if everyone was okay. C was holding the mirror up as best he could while B was rinsing off his bloody hand (everyone knows that his livelihood is in his hands, right?) A large chunk of mirror collapsed from the weight of the rest of the mirror or something. Now the guys were left with what exactly to do with the mirror that would no longer be saved. (it could be amusing to note here that I had been pulling to not put the mirror up again anyway and to get two smaller mirrors over each sink. this idea was shot down by B. anyway...)

After some minor bandaging (blood always looks worse than it is) the guys were able to safely take down the mirror. They decided the best thing to do next was to break the mirror into smaller pieces so that it could be brought outside without a chance of it shattering all over the place. So we heard tons of banging for about 5 minutes, which the little ones thought was hysterical. They had no idea what their dads were doing upstairs!

This was so not the way we had planned to spend our late afternoon, but we had a nice dinner once everything was cleaned up. B decided to continue removing the last bit of wallpaper after J went to bed. I heard some yelling after a few minutes. Then he came downstairs and said, "Have you ever had a light bulb explode in your face?" Even though the electricity was turned off at the breaker, the steam apparently made the light bulbs hot and as B was removing them, one of them exploded in his hands. He said that had he not been wearing glasses, it surely would have been in his eyes. I told B that I thought it was time he packed up for the night.

This was a pic I took before we moved in. Wouldn't you lose the paper too? And here's the mirror. Buh bye mirror.

He didn't listen. He said he only had a little bit left. And as he swiped on last piece of wallpaper near an outlet-- an outlet that he forgot to switch off-- he electrocuted himself. That's my husband. The handyman. The electrician. The endodontist whom is lucky to have his eyes and his fingers all in one place tonight.

Don't worry, feathernester. Everything will be finished and cleaned up by tomorrow! And we won't let B anywhere near L with any type of power tool! And by the way, J is not so sure about sharing his crib with L even though he is no longer using it. But tonight he decided that as long as she wasn't going to sleep with his chicken, she could sleep with his little lovey, which he doesn't sleep with anymore. He showed me how she should sleep with it and then put it in the crib for her. But then he said, "I want it back when she is done." Sharing can be so conflicting sometimes!

Weight Watchers, Two Year Old Style

2008-09-22T20:18:00.004-05:00

Just a quickie, folks.

J's request for breakfast today...

"Daddy, let's go get some donuts, some coffee, and some fat. Yeah. That would be good."

Of course, Daddy didn't say no as Mommy would have because he loves donuts and fat more than anyone in this world, and doesn't have the hips to prove it.

To balance out this morning's horror of a meal, we planted, broccoli, lettuce, arugula, and carrots this afternoon. Fall planting is new to me, so we'll see how it goes!

Fwustrating

2008-09-17T11:43:00.002-05:00

(I hope I don't sound soap boxish in this post.)

I don't believe in dumbing down speech for little kids. I believe kids can use sophisticated vocabulary properly if they are given the chance. Nothing hurts my ears more than hearing a mother at the gym say, "Come on ______, Let's go play-play." or "Do you want some nana?" to a two year old. I think baby talk makes parents feel better and really does very little for kids. Don't get me wrong, I've used high pitched voices and inflections and things like that, but I call a banana a banana. Pants are pants and not pantsy wantsies or something gross like that. My one exception to this rule is when names are involved. I think it's completely endearing for a child to have a cute name for an adult if they can't say their full name yet (and even thereafter if it is agreeable to all parties).

Well, all this proper talk has come to bite me in the behind. During a recent playtime with trains, J began to scream at the top of his lungs and yell, "I'm freaking out! I'm freaking out!" He has used this phrase before, and I've found it to be quite funny at times, but the phrase along with the ear piercing howling is no fun in a room that carries a huge echo. I also find it to be pretty unacceptable behavior and I thought I could do something to help that behavior out. After a few consecutive screams and freak out sessions that day, I very calmly said to J, "You know what? I understand you're having a tough time with your trains. Instead of screaming when you're having a tough time, I think it might help me if you use some words to tell me how you're feeling. I think the word you're looking for is frustrated." I'm pretty sure he heard this word on Sesame Street before and I gave him some small examples of how it feels to be frustrated. I encouraged him to say, "I'm frustrated" whenever he felt like he wanted to scream. J was happy with this suggestion and repeated the phrase a few times. Then he was eager to get back to playing trains. I think he would have eaten green beans at this point if it meant that we could get back to playing.

Well, the screaming has stopped, but guess what I hear at least 30 times a day now? "Mommy, I fwustrated." When I ask why he's frustrated, I get responses like, "I want a banana, I want you to read me a story, I don't want to go to bed, I'm not tired, I don't want to get in the car, I want some milk..." You name it and he's frustrated about it. The killer is that he uses this soft, sweet voice and adds a little snide smile at the end as if he knows that is going to get him whatever he wants. And of course, it's as cute as can be, so it often works.

So we're working on using "I'm frustrated" in a limited capacity without welcoming screaming back into our home. B can't help but laugh and say, "See what you've done?" Yes, it seems I've created a sneaky little monster for the time being, but at least that little monster isn't saying, "I'm freaky weeking out!" or something awful like that!

On a lighter note, I've also gotten him to say, "I can see Russia from my house!" because that is just too funny.

Some Good Lines

2008-09-09T13:52:00.004-05:00

I haven't given you any updates on the musings of J lately, so here are a few that I made a note to share.

Upon handing me a giant booger:
"I am just picking a booger. Yeah. It's the last booger I ever did see."

In response to a request to keep his legs up during a diaper change:
"I want to play with my penis!!!"
(So soon????)

There is a show J watches where their tag line is "Go make music." They also sign it as they say it. Said after we refused a $6 song by the mariachi band at a Mexican restaurant in San Antonio: "Go make money!!!"

On telling my dad what he did at Nummi's house:
"There were some chickens, and a horse. It's name is Beach. Yeah. And there was a bern." Dad says, "A what?" J says, " A bern. There was a big bern. With more chickens."
Ahhh!!! The Texas twang is already emerging!

In response to telling him he would have to clean up and come inside for a bath soon:
"You just relax right there, Mommy. I have important jobs to do."

While talking to himself and playing in the bath tonight:
"Do you want a cappuccino? That would be great (dumps water into a cup). Do you want cinnamon on your cappuccino? Oh that would be great." (dumps more water into cup)
No idea where he learned about cappuccino since I only drink lattes. I do put cinnamon on them, but still...

Super San Francisco and Sonoma

2008-09-04T15:30:00.006-05:00

After a quick turn around back home, J and I headed out to Sacramento/Grass Valley area to visit with B's mom for a few days. J loves the farm and he was super psyched about the newest addition, Beach. Beach is an older horse dying for some company. They are currently looking into that, but until Beach gets a friend, he is going to be content with neighing at the neighbor's horse. Especially between 4 and 5 am. Not my favorite time of day. J even yelled at the horse one morning, shouting, "What's all that noise about horsie?"

L gives J a ride on his tractor

J enjoyed a playdate with a three year old, M. The two of them were so cute together. They spent about 2 hours running all over the place collecting and cracking eggs, feeding chickens, petting the goats, playing with cars and trains, and best of all, blowing bubbles. When they were finally overstimulated, J had a meltdown and M and his dad left. We found out that M wondered why J was crying. When his dad told him it's because he was sad they were leaving, M began to have a meltdown. So cute. They also got together for breakfast later in the week. It's so easy to get along with new people when you're two.

J and M feed the chickens

After a few days on the farm, I headed down to San Francisco for B and M's wedding. I had my first solo driving experience in the city, which I am proud to say I passed with flying colors. I even succeeded in parallel parking on a hill the first time. If you've ever been to SF, you know what I'm talking about when I talk about the hills!

We were very fortunate that B's aunt L offered to let us stay at her house in Mill Valley while she was in NY taking her daughter to college. B flew in later that evening after working. S, one of my nearest and dearest from Colgate, and her husband P also stayed there with us. I had a chance to meet B's cousin W's girlfriend, S, who is a total sweetie and enjoyed the meal I cooked them with the fervor that only a starving college student possesses. We spent the better portion of our first night catching up. I then enjoyed my first night's sleep without neighing.

Friday was an awesome day. We woke up and headed into San Francisco by ferry. It felt so good to be in mid 60-70 degree weather and to be on the water. After a quick walk around fisherman's wharf, we boarded a ferry for a tour of Alcatraz. In all the years we've been to CA, B and I have never done the trip. It was so much fun! I highly recommend doing it because not only is it interesting if you're a crime buff, but also because you get to see what torture these prisoners were faced being so close to civilization but so far away.

Ick. B crouching down in cell block D. Never dare him to do anything.

Their crime? Not sharing enough gin and tonics.

Following our prison tour, we walked around a bit, shared a few drinks, then headed into Chinatown for an early dinner. Since good Chinese food is pretty much non-existent in Texas, I was really jonesing for some good stuff. If you've never had tomato beef chow mein, you are missing out on one of life's greatest meals. Yum.

After that, we walked (about a half hour) down to AT&T Park for the Giants/Padres game. This was a treat from the bride and groom to all of their out of town guests (which was almost everyone). We tried to get a cab, but getting a cab in SF is almost impossible so we ended up walking the whole way. We figured it at least made us out to be rock stars because not only did we do a full day of sightseeing, but we also walked off all of our dinner! The game was fun, but I barely watched any of it. It was such a great setting to see people we hadn't seen in years and to catch up. We finally got kicked out by one of the ushers after the game ended because he wanted to go home. I expect that kind of treatment in NY, but I was surprised by it on the casual coast!

It's been years since the three of us have been together! You'd think I would have worn lipstick.

Saturday was the day of the wedding and it was a glorious day. S and I walked into Mill Valley for coffee and chit chat before we leisurely got ready to drive to Sonoma. The wedding was at Cornerstone Gardens, which is just across the street from Gloria Ferrer, one of our favorite champagne wineries (okay, any champagne place is a fave of mine). Since we had time to kill, we shared some champagne before heading over for the ceremony.

B's wedding was one of the nicest weddings I have ever attended. It seriously could have been detailed in Martha Stewart Weddings. Now I'm not knocking any of the other weddings I've been to, so please don't take offense, but this girl has been to so many weddings, and her fiance was totally an uber-planning groom that they thought of everything. The ceremony was short and sweet and performed by a family friend. The cocktail hour was on the lawn and you were free to roam and enjoy the various gardens. Dinner was under a tent and the food was beautiful California fare paired with local wines from the Sonoma Valley.

B and M

The best part for all of us were the speeches. Both sets of parents toasted the bride and groom and said such kind things, but it was the groom's mom that had every woman in the tent weeping. She said that there was a time when M was taking a picture with B and her and said, "These are my two favorite girls." She said, "M, now it's time for you to put B first and I am happy to take second place." Can you imagine a mother in law saying such a thing about the bride? We were all in awe by what she said and had tears in our eyes. The men were all laughing at us, but anyone who has been married knows what it means to get such a nod from the mother in law. And we all hoped our mother in laws were listening at that moment.

The tent

Happy Guests

There was dancing and a fabulous band in the barn following dinner. There were couches and tons of pillows and great mood lighting, and flip flops so that you didn't ruin your heels dancing on the concrete floor. The champagne flowed all night and we danced until the end. It was such a great party and I'm not doing it justice in this blog.

Old friend SM and his wife B

On Sunday J and B's mom joined us in Mill Valley. We took J to the San Francisco Zoo and met up with B's other aunt S. We got to see the giraffes during feeding time, which I thought was fantastic because they were so close to us. J's response? "What's next? I want to see something else." He was fixated on the penguins. I think it's because they're at about his level and he could have stayed there all afternoon encouraging them to dive into the water. We ended the day with more tomato beef chow mein. We headed back to Texas with full bellies.

W reads to J

The elders are amazed by the giraffes

What a cute face!

Aunt S poses with the boys

The final bonus was J got a shout-out from the pilot on the ride home after he invited himself into the cockpit and got to push some buttons. He thinks it's his right to go in there now that he's traveled so much this month.

Whew! Sorry for the long post, but it was such a good time. I think that does it for the weddings and our travel for a little while. That is, after our little jaunt down to San Antonio this weekend. We're going because we got a great deal on one of those time share offers. We have absolutely no intention of buying a time share, but it gives us a good excuse to check out SA. We haven't been there in the almost three years we've been living here, so it should be a good time.

Poland

2008-09-02T15:57:00.004-05:00

I've been thinking about blogging each day since we returned from California last Monday, but I feel like I have so much and yet so little to update everyone on that I've been hesitant to write. I have to admit that all of this travel forced us to unplug for so long that it was actually nice and I didn't really miss email or blogging. Of course, once returned, it was right back on the computer, which just goes to show you how much time I waste.

Two weddings in two weeks is a lot, but we had a great time at both of them. The wedding in Poland was held at a manor house in a town just outside of Krakow. It had a Lord of the Rings theme. All of the invitations and place cards were written in font just as it would have been found in the story. The guest book was handmade paper bound by wood and the guests had to use an ink pen to sign it. The cocktail hour music was from the movies. There was a reading about love (in Polish, so I don't know what they said at all). The table names were characters or places from the stories (we sat at the Frodo Baggins table) and there were maps all over the place. That takes care of the small details.

This hung over the entry way to the dining room

The ceremony itself was shorter than expected, as I was told it could last three hours or so. They went for the shortened, simple mass. One of the different things they do in Poland is the bride and groom walk down the aisle together at the beginning of the ceremony. They are lead by two ring holders (it doesn't matter if they are boys are girls, but they were girls in this case. In fact, the one girl wailed the entire way down the aisle, which was actually pretty funny). After the ceremony, there were cocktails and some traditional speeches and offerings. A loaf of bread is given to the bride and groom as a symbol of life and prosperity. They each take a bite just as we do from a wedding cake. There was a receiving line, where the guests traditionally give flowers, but the bride and groom instead requested that we give donations to a children's hospital (this is what it said on the invitation!). There was a toast after the reading from The Lord of the Rings followed by a glass breaking. The only problem was that they don't believe in protecting themselves from shards of glass and they just threw it on the floor in front of all of their guests! This wasn't the smartest thing I've seen done at weddings, though not necessarily the dumbest either.

The abundance of food was the most impressive part of the wedding. First there was a sit-down meal which consisted of an appetizer (salmon salad), soup (some type of broth), dinner (traditional pork, pierogi, potatoes, vegetables), and dessert (mousse, chocolate, fruits). About an hour after that, an enormous buffet of traditional Polish dishes was offered. It included various fish dishes and salads and homemade desserts and pastries. The barbecue opened an hour after that where you could have pork, sausage, and chicken. The wedding cake was served about an hour after that. The last course came around 2 am and was a venison stew. I'd never had venison before and it was delicious. All of this food, complete with an open bar, gave us no choice but to dance until 5 am. We caught a ride home when the sun was just coming up.

Lovely salmon appetizer

K's cousin and his fiance' were making fun of all my picture taking, so they helped me out a bit to make sure I got pictures of everything

The bride and groom. I guess she is my step sister in law. Strange how that happens and you only meet someone once!

B, D, and their step mom, who was so happy to have all of her "sons" in Poland

Oh and I forgot to mention the lanterns that were sent into the air like mini hot air balloons! I have no idea how this is legal to do, especially since you have no control over where they land, but it really was kind of neat to watch. Hopefully no trees or houses were burned in their descent!

The only real downer to our trip came the day after the wedding. B woke up violently ill and remained that way for about 10 hours. We thought we were going to have to take him to the hospital, which would have been really interesting since it was a Sunday and not all hospitals are open on Sunday (you have to check the newspaper to find out which are open). Thankfully he started to feel better. We think it was a virus. I always say that B always gets sick on vacation. Ask him and he will complain that I always say that, but it really is true!

Obamarama

2008-08-28T22:01:00.002-05:00

I'm not looking for a political debate from anybody, but I just had to say that for the first time in my life I was applauding into my television for something other than an athletic event. Whether you vote for him or not, you have to agree that was an amazing speech and that we should try to achieve all that he said tonight. I thought it was incredible and so inspiring.

A Bit About NY and Switzerland

2008-08-15T07:32:00.005-05:00

Part one of our trip...

New York was lots of fun, but too short of a visit for me. I got into NYC with my mom for a yummy Italian dinner and to see Gypsy, which was incredible. There's no way I can give Patty LuPone's performance justice through writing about it, so I will just say that you have to go and see it if you are able. What a voice. What a stage presence.

The next day we had a family barbecue and it looked like it was going to rain all day, but fortunately it only rained for an hour and then we were able to be outside. J enjoyed seeing his family, especially his cousin R. R is a big Yankees fan and was trying to watch the game. J was so taken by R after watching him swim and dive in the pool that he didn't want to leave R's side. So this is what it was like for R watching the game:
J: R, are you watching the Yankees? I will watch the Yankees too.
J: R, did you see the man hit the ball? Did you see it R?
J: R, the man hit the ball again. The man SCORED! He scored R!
J: He hit the ball again. He scored again, R. He scored again! Again, R!

(notice that R is not saying anything? Typical nine year old couldn't get a word in edgewise)

J and R pose for a pic. J was much more enthusastic.

Our flight to Swtizerland was the next day on our anniversary. We kept joking that B was being so romantic taking me to Europe for our anniversary. Well, if your husband ever books you a romantic holiday with it beginning on Swiss Airlines, you may want to rethink those plans. It wasn't horrible, but let's just say it was one of the most uncomfortable flights I have ever been on in my life. It started when our seats weren't together in spite of the fact that I called to do just that the night before and was told that it was taken care of. When we asked the ticketing agent to fix the problem, we were told he couldn't because we had already checked in. So we had to spend another half hour or so in another line waiting to talk to the higher up guy who apparently has the power to hit the change button on his computer. A lady next to the higher up guy ended up helping us. Her advice? Ask the person next to me to switch with my husband so we could sit together. I reminded her of two things, 1)we are in New York and people don't just give things up for the heck of it and 2) people aren't always nice just because you ask them to be. This made the lady have to actually do her job and fix our problem for us, which she reluctantly did. It's not like we were asking for free upgrades, so I have no idea why this was so difficult. Well I felt terrible for B once he was sitting next to me because it turned out his seat was broken and he couldn't adjust his headrest for 7 hours.

How was the service once on board you ask? Well, I was asked if I wanted ice in my gin and tonic? (Nah, I prefer to drink it warm...I can't understand the protectiveness Europeans have with ice as most will only give you one cube and turn their nose up at you if you ask for more.) Our dinner options were minced chicken and rice or a vegetarian option. I asked for the vegetarian option, which was no more than pasta on pasta, but it annoyed the flight attendant that she had to go and get it for me. Did we get to sleep on the plane? That may have been possible had the 500 pound man in front of us not insist on getting up every five minutes to readjust himself and plop down into his seat, practically sending the tray table into our guts. And just as I was falling asleep, they decided it was time to serve breakfast, about three hours after I had just eaten "dinner". If I hadn't been nailed in the elbow by the cart, I may have slept, but I gave up after that point.

I'm sure there is someone out there laughing at this experience because they have been through much worse. Believe me, I know it wasn't horrible, but being uncomfortable for a long period of time is no fun and that's how this felt.

We didn't let our jet lag get us down. Our quick trip to Geneva to visit B's cousin M was delightful. As far as cities go, Geneva is not one of those super romantic European cities, but it's definitely nice enough. The lake area is extremely pleasant, and it was made even better by the fact that Fete Geneve was taking place during our time there. There were carnival rides, vendors and live music along the lake, so it was lots of fun to walk around. We also visited an excavation site underneath a church that dated back to the 5th century. It's not every day you get to walk around rock that old, so that was pretty cool.

A View of Lake Geneva

We also took a day trip into France (sounds far, but it was only about a half hour away) to the towns of Yvoire and Evian. Yvoire is a simple, medieval city situated on the water complete with it's requisite castle, beautiful gardens, and charming streets. I found the most darling children's toy shop there and wished I was able to bring J home everything it contained. Evian is also right on the water and is famous because of that little company that produces bottled water there. There is a small tourist museum about the water that comes from there (we skipped it and just took a brochure). Of course we also bought a bottle to drink while we were there because after all, when in Evian...

The best part was spending time with M and J and eating some wonderful food. Expensive food (eveything in Switzerland is expensive) but delicious! A lunchtime salad nearly gave me a heart attack when I realized it was $27! The scary thing was after a few days we were used to it. Not sure if our bank account will be in a few weeks! One of the best salads I had was made with arugula, smoked salmon, cucumbers, tomatoes, mangoes, and a light balsamic vinaigrette. The sweetness of the mangoes matched so well with the saltiness of the salmon; I already bought everything I need to recreate this at home (at a much smaller price, too!). I also think I ate my body weight in yummy bread, but that has ended since our return because you just can't get it in Texas.

Yvoire streets

The castle at Yvoire

We thought this kid could have been J.

I'll cover Poland later. Unfortunately we have a sick kid today. 102.5 fever appeared out of nowhere and the spots are back in his throat. Here's hoping we kick it fast and don't pass it on to anyone else in the house.

For the Joneser

2008-08-13T14:32:00.003-05:00

She knows who she is, and this is just to tide her over. :) We've returned from our European wedding vacay and my body is completely confused as to what time it is. That's what happens when you cross the pond and don't sleep a wink, sleep for 12 hours after staying up for 36, lay completely awake the next night, sleep for two hours on a plane and then stay up until 2 am that night, go to a wedding and dance until 5 am, cross the pond again, sleep 8 hours, return to original destination at 2 am this morning after hours of delays. Of course our child slept in so that we could adjust a bit. Until 6:50.

So much to write about, but I am too tired to do it today. It took all of my effort to go grocery shopping and as much as I would like to nap right now, I'm afraid it will only screw up my sleep rhythms even more. I've got 5 nights to get back on track before the next trip begins. I know, I've got big problems, right?

Hopefully I'll get my pics downloaded sometime soon and I'll be able to share the adventure a bit more with you. For now I'll leave you all in suspense and tell you that I eventually found out what that wedding invitation said. Stay tuned...

Almost Packed and Ready to Go

2008-07-28T21:29:00.003-05:00

J ate some broccoli with hummus as part of his dinner tonight. After he finished he said, "Thank you for the broccoli!" I said, "I'm glad you ate broccoli because it's good for your eyes (i think i was thinking carrots, but that's irrelevant). He said, "Good for my eyes, but not for my mouth." We are finding that if we say, "Try them, Sam I am" we have a much better success rate at getting him to eat things we want him to eat.

Things have been really busy around here. We're gearing up for the first part of our August trips that will keep us away from home for 20 out of 31 days. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. On Wednesday morning, J and I head to NY for a couple of days of r/r at the familial Long Island home. I think I forgot to mention that this home is currently up for sale, so it could potentially be the last summer we go to visit there. My mom and I have tickets to see Gypsy in NY on Friday night and reservations at a yummy Italian restaurant (I will only eat Italian food in NY now because it doesn't exist down here). I'm so so so excited to go to the city! If all goes well, B will join us in NY late on Friday night after working and we'll get to take the train together back to LI.

Saturday is barbecue day with relatives and friends. B's cousin W is doing an internship in NY right now, so he might come out for the day as well.

Sunday is our wedding anniversary. Lucky #7!! We'll be spending a romantic evening in Economy Class on a Swiss Air flight bound for Geneva, Switzerland. I'm a little unsettled about traveling overseas and leaving J behind. I don't do the best with flying as it is, and last week's news about a hole blowing out of a Qantas plane didn't do much to make me feel better. B reminds me that driving is much more dangerous and I know it's irrational, but it's still tough for me. We're going to try some melatonin this time and see if it helps me relax and get over jet lag easier. If that doesn't work we'll be spending three days getting over jet lag with B's cousin M. I'm super excited about going to see him and we should have a blast! Then we'll get up at the crack of dawn on Thursday the 9th to head over to Krakow, Poland for B' stepbrother's wedding on Saturday (remember the invitation I tried to translate?). If all goes well with the timing of things, we should arrive within an hour of Mr. Feathernester. Feathernester is staying behind using that whole taking care of a baby excuse, which I guess will have to suffice, but I will totally be missing her and I know she knows exactly what I mean. The whole thing should be really interesting. Forget the fact that we don't speak Polish, but Polish weddings are apparently a lot of gloom and doom followed by a huge celebration from dusk till dawn. I am extremely concerned that my liver is not quite up to the challenge, but we'll see.

We arrive back home late on Aug. 12 and have a few days before we turn around and head to California for a visit to Nummi's farm and for B's wedding in Sonoma. I'll try to post in between, but it might be tough.

I'm hoping to have all of the packing done tonight so I am not running around like an idiot tomorrow, but it always ends up being that way regardless of how early I pack. I better get back to doing that, so we'll share our adventures with you in a few weeks!

He's appreciative

2008-07-25T08:27:00.002-05:00

Said by J at the dinner table last night:

(deep breath, monotone, determined voice)
Thank you for the cucumber daddy but I do not want it thank you for the lettuce Mommy but I do not want it I appreciate you gave it to me but I think I will just wait and have my own dinner. (deep breath)

You're Saying it Wrong!

2008-07-24T17:46:00.002-05:00

One of the sweetest things about J talking is that he says, "I love you" before he takes a nap or at bedtime.

Apparently I said the wrong thing back to him.

J: I love you, Mommy.
Me: I love you too. Sweet dreams.
J: Mommy doesn't say that. Mommy says, I love you, sweet boy. Daddy says, I love my son. You do not say I love my son. Only daddy says it. Now you need to say it, Mommy.
Me: Okay, I love you sweet boy.
J: I love you, Mommy. Thank you for saying it the right way, Mommy. Not the wrong way.

Ramblings on the Ride Home

2008-07-18T13:59:00.002-05:00

Me: Did you have fun at school today?
J: Yeah! (high inflection)
Me: I like your beach picture.
J: Yeah, I blowed bubbles by myself (high inflection)
me: you did?
J: Yah! I was not tired (tie-red) at sool (school)
Me: That's good you had a lot of energy.
J: M and T were tired a lot. M fell asleep in the bean bag chair.
(Now, I know that this happened three weeks ago, but anyway)
Me: He fell asleep again?
J:No. Just one time. But M and T were tired today. I was not tired.
Me: That's good you weren't tired. What else did you do today?
J: Umm... I told my friends to HIT IT (big arm swing here)
Me: Hit what?
J: I told my friends to HIT IT!
Me: What did you tell your friends to hit?
J: I do not know. Miss N made a very very loud noise (vewy vewy wowd noise)
Me: Did Miss N scream?
J: No. she was just very very loud. It scared her. (sared)
Me: What scared Miss N?
J: It was not a good deal. It scared Miss N. I thought it was a good deal but it was not a good deal. (idea)
Me: Did you scare Miss N?
J: No. Just the noise. In the puzzle. We thought it was a good deal.
Me: Oh okay so the puzzle made a noise and that made Miss N scream?
J: Yah! M and T were very tired and I was not tired! I want to eat the rest of my macaroni and cheese. You did not give me a sandwich today, Mommy. I ate my macaroni and cheese, Mommy. I liked my macaroni and cheese, Mommy.
Me: I'm glad you had such a good day at school.
J: Yeah. M and T were tired! I was not tired.

Hope you have a good weekend and are not tired!

Stuck at Home

2008-07-10T10:08:00.004-05:00

We've been stuck at home the last few days. J and I were in the grocery store on Tuesday and he was complaining of being chilly in the meat aisle. It was a little cold, but not worth complaining about. He also didn't want his free muffin that was being offered in the bakery section. I knew something was up.

He didn't want any lunch when we got home-not even anything to drink. It wasn't as if I put out his lunch and he didn't eat it; he didn't even want me to make it. In a matter of ten minutes or so, he was just sitting on the couch like one of the other pillows. He was tired and he felt warm. He had a fever of about 100.5, which isn't too alarming, so I gave him some Tylenol and put him to bed. When he woke up, he still didn't want anything to drink, so I asked him if his throat hurt. Sure enough, he said yes. I took a look as best I could in there and noticed a bunch of red spots, so I called the doctor to see if we could get in that day. J had strep throat last year and I didn't want to take any chances.

Turns out he has one of those coxsackievirus infections, which sounds much nastier than it is. Basically you get sores in your throat (you can also get them on your hands and feet, but he doesn't have that strain.) Everybody gets one form or another of these in early childhood. A fever can last a few days and then the sores go away. It is very contagious in the meantime. Unfortunately, it's contagious for 5-7 days, so there will be no socializing until at least Saturday afternoon. That's the toughest part for both of us. After sleeping for 14 hours on Tuesday night, he woke up happy and placed his breakfast order for bacon, eggs, and cantaloupe. I'd say he's on the mend even if he needs to be quarantined from society for a bit longer.

Before J was sick, we had a nice 4th. There was a little festival in one of our neighborhood parks complete with a train, petting zoo (including a camel), face painting, hair color spraying, and lots of watermelon. The only thing that seemed a little bass-ackwards to me was that the fire department came and raised the cherry picker and sprayed the hose in one of the fields to let the kids get wet. Hello? We are in a drought down here, so that just seemed dumb. The only way I can let this go is that they also wanted the grass to be wet in case any fireworks happened to hit it later on, but that's a stretch because nothing stays wet in 100 degrees for very long.

After a quick BBQ in the early evening, we headed up to one of the county parks for a fireworks show. We were hemming and hawing as to whether we wanted to go or not, but we decided, why not? The show was great. It was so funny to watch J's expressions. He kept saying, "That's enough. I'm all done" after the first few shots, and then he laid down on B for a bit. His head kept popping up to survey the scene to see what other people were doing. Once he realized that he wasn't going to get hurt, he popped up and clapped and cheered with everybody else. The only thing that stunk was that it took over an hour to get out of the park (bad parking choice on our part and an accident on the main road attributed to this). So our child fell asleep in the car at (gasp) 10:45. Of course he didn't sleep any later than normal the next morning, but he was in a good mood, so we couldn't say that it was a waste.

Look out Miss America! Check out that wagon posture and wave

What you can't see is how hard he is pulling B's hair

He retreated to this position for a bit, but was soon up again.

That's about it from here. We're just hanging around doing indoor things like making bird feeders and painting and sneaking outside a bit here and there when it doesn't feel too hot. Oh! And I've picked about 8 Roma tomatoes a day for the last week or so. That's been pretty exciting!

Wish You Were Here?

2008-07-01T22:37:00.003-05:00

Just a quick mention of the goings on here today.
J woke up at 5:30 pleading with B, "I want out! I want out!" He slept with me until 7:45.
I then proceeded to change 8 dirty diapers today. That's right, 8. Everything he ate came right out. I am grateful it was not coming out of his mouth, though. Sorry for the gross images.
J doesn't appear to be sick, though. He was still happy, playful, and making plenty of jokes, so hopefully this is just a minor stomach thing that will be gone tomorrow.

Then our dryer decided to crap out in the middle of a cycle. It's only two years old. We think it's either a fuse or a belt problem, but both require us to get the parts ourselves or call someone in to take care of the problem. It looks like I will be waiting around all day sometime soon for a repairman to arrive. One of my biggest pet peeves is hearing, "We'll be there between 8 and 5." Oh, thank you for being so specific.

I did make some yummy roasted red pepper and goat cheese sandwiches for dinner with peppers from the garden. Delicious. So all was not horrible today. Hope y'all had a day filled with fewer dirty diapers than I did!

One Wedding Down...

2008-06-25T22:59:00.005-05:00

B and I had a lovely time in upstate NY this weekend to attend Scarlet Lily's wedding. As many other dear bloggers will be posting wonderful little tidbits about the weekend, I will just tell you to read their posts because mine will just be a repetition. I will say, though, that I was a member of the 60s and 70s table, but I did not set the fire that occurred at our table. For more on that, see Ouiser's descriptions. I also will tell you that if you aren't married yet and you are a man, learn how to play the violin and then play for your bride as she walks down the aisle. Not a dry eye in the house. So wonderful.

It was great to catch up with the clan from Colgate and of course, to see my little niece again. I have to admit that I didn't get any terrific wedding shots because I was too far back for the ceremony and I am too short, but I took a boatload of L pics! You'll have to wait for those, though, because I left the battery charger in the hotel room and the battery is now dead. Oops.

J had a great time with his grandma this week. In fact, the only time he has cried at school was when she came with us to drop him off one day. He cried that he didn't want her to leave and was very excited when we returned to pick him up at the end of the day. We got some great pics of him made up as a little clown, which was about one of the cutest things I'd ever seen. 8 kids with little clown hats and painted faces popping bubbles as they waited for their parents to pick them up-- what fun!

There were peppers waiting for us when we got home! They were a little wilted because it's been so hot and I am afraid they have been a little underwatered with our two week triple digit temperatures, but we've had red and orange ones and they taste so good. They actually have a little bite to them, unlike the mass produced ones you get at the store. Our tomatoes are also turning red by the dozen and it's a race between us and the birds to see who gets to taste them first.

We received two wedding invitations in the mail yesterday. One of them was for B's stepbrother's wedding in Poland. I had to laugh when I opened it up because I don't know what I was expecting, but I couldn't read a word of it. I could get the gist that we were invited to their wedding on Aug. 9, but after that and the request for an email rsvp by some day in July, it was completely lost on me. I decided to find an online Polish-English dictionary so that I could read the rest of the invite. Since I didn't have a Polish keyboard and they use a lot of accent marks and letters we don't use on our English keyboard, I was only able to translate minor parts of it. My translation ended up being something like, "After the ceremony we will market blah blah blah (untranslatable Polish). We are needing volunteers for the flowers of the Ministry of Defense." Huh? I'll let you know if I ever find out what it really says. In the meantime, I think it's best that I don't volunteer for anything.

I'm off to make another batch of pesto. We have a double batch in the freezer, but the basil is looking like it's going to get bitter if I don't do something with it fast. It's going to be a real hardship to have more around the house!

Funny J comment right before bed, "Z is my best buddy. Not my best girl. K is my best girl." (He just saw K this week because they came down to visit from Dallas. If you asked J where she had been he would say, "Sleeping at her house.") So cute.

Negative Nillie

2008-06-17T13:32:00.002-05:00

The new, unfabulous phrase of the day is....

I can't.

As in, "Please get out of your carseat, J."
"I can't get out of my carseat."

Please get out of the car.
I can't get out of the car.

I can't bounce my ball.
I can't make my vacuum make noise.
I can't get off the floor.
I can't eat my yogurt.
I can't eat peppers today.
I can't go to take a nap.

Luckily he decided to switch it up shortly after lunch and before his nap, so it sounded like this...
"You can't drink the water now. You have to sit at the table. You can't sit in that chair. "
"You can't put that there, Mommy. You can't put it here, you have to put it there. That is not correct."

Well, alrighty then.

"You can't type your fingers on your cup, Mommy. You can only type on computer. I will show you. Like this."

(May I also point out that what I was doing incorrectly was holding the plastic margarita glass that J filled with water for me, as well as one for himself. I couldn't drink out of it standing up because apparently, that is not how you drink out of these glasses. Do you think he picked up on something at the barbecue on Sunday?)

"You can't hug my ear (no idea what that meant- totally random). You can't hug my ear. You can't kiss my ear."
"You can kiss my ear. You can't say hug, hug hug, Mommy."

Well, I can tell you what this Mommy could do was shut off the light, close the door and get away from there as fast as she could! All of that was in about the span of an hour and a half. We can't wait for after naptime!

Dad's Day

2008-06-15T09:46:00.004-05:00

Father's Day was pretty relaxing around here. Nothing says "I love you, Dad" better than a couple of pieces of bacon and the sports section delivered to your bedside after sleeping in until past 9. J gave B a tractor card. Actually, he gave it to him on Thursday when we brought it home from the store and he couldn't hold in his excitement as he shouted, "I bought you a card, Daddy. With a big TRACTOR! It's green! It's green Daddy! I bought it Daddy! For you!" Then as we gave B his present (a couple of cds) he said, "I will give Daddy his present. Maybe I can play with it. Probably it is a fire truck." I told him it wasn't a fire truck. "Yeah, probably it is a lollipop. I will eat it." I told him it wasn't a lollipop either. "Yeah, I will give the present to Daddy and I will play with it. It's not for J. Maybe I can play with it. Probably." Have you noticed how the word probably is used to exhibit his extreme confidence in whatever he is saying? It really is quite comical.

B sports the "tie" J made for him at school. He also gave him a picture frame that said, "I love my Daddy." All of this, of course, made Mommy weepy. Pathetic, but true.

We had a BBQ later in the day so the dads could celebrate Father's Day together. Our friend T commented at one point that he thought the service was so great-- lots of meat and margaritas served tableside-- that he was a little concerned that "you women might be expecting reciprocal treatment that I just can't come through with on Mother's Day." We told him not to worry; that's why jewelry is always appreciated.

I can block the carcinogens with one big sip from this margarita glass

The kids had a great time running around in the backyard, in the house, and at the park. At one point, they all decided to have a little exploratory trip to the garden. It's so funny because they still don't really play with each other that much yet, but when one person gets an idea, the others follow like it was the best plan all along. I did feel the need to apologize to J's teacher this morning because his dinner fare last night included a hot dog bun, some noodles, an ice cream sandwich, and blueberries. Then he didn't want to eat his breakfast this morning, so I can't imagine he will be full of too much energy today.

The evening ended with J, Z, and S taking a bath together and playing in the crib for just a few quick seconds. K and I read Z and J some bedtime stories and they were both indicating that they wanted to sleep in J's crib. So we put them in the crib, turned off the lights, and crying ensued immediately from both parties. We knew it was a longshot, but it would have been so nice if they actually had fallen asleep and let us parents hang out just a little bit longer after sundown. Maybe in a few years.

Rub a Dub Dub, Three Cuties in the Tub

Little School Boy

2008-06-09T15:14:00.004-05:00

J started summer school today. No, he's not in need of remediation in playing with Play Dough or anything like that. B and I checked out a school down the street a few weeks ago for him to possibly start in the fall. J got to come with us for the tour. He liked it so much he wanted to stay the entire day and was crying when he had to leave (it could have had something to do with a tractor and a really cool lawn mower on the playground area). Anyway, they happened to have one slot open for the fall, so we signed him up. We think it will be good for him to be around other kids and to not necessarily be around me 24/7. I'll admit I have been a little conflicted about this because it means he is growing up way too fast, but we think it will work out well.

This was taken with my cell phone and emailed, so not the best quality. I know it looks like he is trying to hail a cab, but J is saying, "Hooray for school!"

Since J was so excited about his "school" I inquired about their summer program. The director told me that they were full, but he could be put on the wait list. I didn't think any more of it, but I got a call last week that a spot opened up and we could send him if we wanted to. I asked J if he wanted to go back to school and he was ready to go that day. When I told him he couldn't go until Monday, he told me, "I will wait there with the money!" I think it was the longest three days of his life waiting for Monday.

"I will show you my backpack!"

I was a little concerned that he would freak out once we got there and I left because his little school experience only involved playing outside for a few minutes and then "lining up" with Daddy. But when we got to his classroom, he said hello to his teacher, said, "Bye, bye Mommy" and went and played with a puzzle. He didn't even look back. I made no plans for the day because I honestly thought I would have to stay there part of the time, but it turned out that was unnecessary.

J was happy to see me when I picked him up, but I wouldn't exactly say he was overjoyed with enthusiasm. He was exhausted and he told me a little bit about the fun he had, but he was more interested in waving goodbye to all the other moms picking up their kids, and saying goodbye to the director of the school. He acted like he owned the place.

This morning when we arrived, he walked right into the director's office, gave her a hug, and said, "See you later. I will have fun!" She was blown away by his confidence. So much for the novelty wearing off on the second day.

What did I do with my free time? I actually took my time at the gym today. I took this new kickboxing/weight class called Strike and it totally whooped my behind. Which is a good thing because my behind (and my hips and thighs) need a really good whooping. I am already sore. Next it's off to do some ironing for B who has a meeting tonight. Then I am off to tackle the bathroom shower. Then it should be time to pick up J. I guess we'll save the sipping lattes and reading a book for another day.

Commitment

2008-06-01T14:43:00.006-05:00

Today B and I made a commitment. We bought art. It's the first time we bought art that was not in the form of a poster with a frame from Michael's around it!

We spent Sunday morning at the Art in the Park festival in a town north of Austin. I really enjoyed it because it wasn't a festival that included lots of art sold around a bunch of smelly incense, which can be common to find at art festivals around here. Here are a few pics of what we purchased:

These are all works by the same artist under a collection called, "Dancing in the Paint." The set of three don't come in the frames shown and they are matted with black around the picture with a black matte and gold and black frame. The last picture is on canvas and doesn't need a frame.

We also picked up a pair of copper and bronze garden spinners (decorative pinwheels? not sure what to call them) so that I can better keep the birds away from my veggies. Oh, and the veggies-- zucchini and squash are still in large abundance, as are the tomatoes, but they are all refusing to turn red (I think it's because of the extreme heat we've been having). We have been fortunate to have had three really great batches of pesto from our basil. I just froze the last batch for fear that we will gain twenty pounds overnight if we dip it with any more bread or eat another meal of pesto pasta, chicken, and tomatoes.

I made a great recipe from the Barefoot Contessa at Home cookbook for dessert last night. Peach and Bluberry Crumble. Yum! I halved the butter and halved the sugar because I had really ripe peaches and didn't think they needed to be sweetened much more. Then I just broiled the topping for the last few minutes so that it browned a bit more. You really should go make some and add whatever fruit you have laying around in the fridge. I had some blackberries and raspberries lingering, so they went in as well. J didn't want any. He didn't know what he was missing. I planned to post the recipe, but can't find it anywhere online, so if you want it, let me know.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Any thoughts on the decision to give Michigan and Florida half votes at the convention?

The Bean is Back

2008-05-28T16:25:00.003-05:00

Today J and I were walking down the frozen food aisle in Whole Foods. J was eyeing the ice cream and asked, "Pick out a flavor?" I told him it's too expensive to buy ice cream at Whole Foods. So he asked, "Buy lima beans?" and pointed right at them. J used to love lima beans, but he went on strike from eating them at least 6 months or so ago. He said "Yes, beans!" and so I picked some out of the case. He got all excited about them. "Lima beans! Lima beans!" I was doubtful he would share the same excitement when we brought them home and I put some on his plate.

I was wrong! He ate every single bean, one by one, pausing after each one to say, "Mmmm."

Now I just hope he continues to love them or they're going to be in the freezer for quite some time.

In other news, it was trash/recycling pick up day today, which means we got to race outside when the trucks came and wave our butts off until the garbage men waved back and beeped the horns at us. And now he's finishing up another 3 hour nap. All of this is really too much fun for one Wednesday. We need to start cutting back.

Sleepless in Austin

2008-05-25T14:34:00.004-05:00

What do you do when you wake up at 2:52 in the morning and cannot get back to bed at all? Well at first, you just lay there and try to clear your mind, which of course, floods it with tons of unnecessary stuff. Then, you turn on the tv (even though you know they say not to do that). You learn all about replacing weatherstripping on your doors. Then you start thinking about food because you've been up for over an hour. Cinnamon buns, to be exact. Low fat cinnamon buns that are in a new magazine you recently got. You toss and turn and try to go back to sleep, but you can't shake the idea of making these gooey treats right now.

Which is how I came to be in the kitchen at about 4:00 yesterday morning with a bunch of ingredients laid out before me. A little over two hours later I had them, all warm and iced and ready for J and B when they woke up. At which point I promptly went back to sleep until 9:30.

I have to say that these were pretty yummy considering they only had 4 tablespoons of butter in them. Supposedly they are only 280 calories and 3 grams of fat in each bun, so if you want the recipe, let me know. It's a bit long, but I'll get it out if anyone wants it. The only thing I would change next time is to maybe add some orange extract to the icing instead of vanilla for a different taste.

Yes, I was pathetically awake enough to even take pictures!

We've spent part of the weekend doing housework and part of it playing. This is the first weekend in over a month that B and I have had a "normal" weekend (normal being one where we don't have guests or he is not traveling). We headed down to a farmer's market in hopes of some peaches (I got some great ones last week), but we were too late due to my "sleeping in". The trip wasn't a total wash, though. J got to play in a fountain and had his first random hookup with a girl. A French girl. Don't worry, she was also two, but I wish I had video of this. First she batted her eyes at him and started squealing when she saw him. Then she came over and gave him a hug, which was immediately followed by a kiss. This made J blush and made the girl so excited that she took off her bathing suit! B and I were dying, as was the girl's mother and grandmother. Her grandmother told her she was behaving just like a true French girl. Ahh.... love moves fast when you're two. And then she was gone.

This afternoon we went to something called Parade of Homes. I don't know if anyone has ever done this, but I'd never heard of it before. A new home development (high priced homes that you can only dream of ever living in) opens up for a few weekends after the homes are built to raise money for charity and to allow the public to view these incredible homes. This development overlooked one of the lakes, so the views were terrific. For the most part, I walked into all of these homes and gawked at how ridiculous they were. Children's media rooms with microwave ovens and mini refrigerators, separate washer and dryers in the master bedrooms. There was even one master bathroom that had a hookup so you could work on the internet while you took a bath and sat in front of a large screen tv. If you ask me, some things just shouldn't be done in a bath. I could also think of lots of things I'd rather do with 3-4 million instead of buy one of these places, but it was a different way to spend the afternoon.

Well, I'm off to bed in hopes of a good night's sleep. Hope everyone has a good Memorial Day. Here's a pic of our patriotic kiddo examining the flag that was put up in our yard.

Wake Up Call

2008-05-16T12:40:00.002-05:00

We had a bit of a scare on Wednesday night. A large band of thunderstorms came through our area, which is not uncommon for this time of year in Texas. As I was watching tv, though, I realized this time was a little different. There was a funnel cloud sighting approximately 3 miles away from our house and the projected path if it touched down would go through our neighborhood. It was one of those moments where you say, "Oh crap!" and feel like you have little time to think about what to do next.

Of course, as my luck would have it, I was home alone. B was busy downtown at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse having a dental meeting of some sort. Wah, wah. Anyway, I went upstairs and got J and brought him downstairs. He didn't even move until I laid him down on the floor on a pillow beside the closet we would go into if we had to. Hail began to fall, which I later on learned was literally up to the size of a baseball. The satellite signal went out on the tv and I realized that my means of gathering information about the storm was just lost. I realized that we had an old clock radio with a battery backup upstairs, so I raced up to get it to see if I could hear anything on the radio. Little good would it have done me if the power went out though; the battery was dead and all of our replacements were out in our detached garage.

I texted B and told him NOT to come home. I got him just in time because he was just about to leave. He told me that after I called him, everyone else's phones starting ringing telling people the same thing.

Thankfully the storm came and went without a tornado touching down, but it was a pretty scary evening! The scariest thing for me was that I realized how unprepared we are in case of an actual emergency situation. Sure, it was easy to get into a closet, but if anything had happened that required us to be in there for awhile, I had nothing.

Today I spent a little bit of time getting a few important things together like flashlights that would be guaranteed to work when we need them to. Ever go to use your flashlight and the batteries are dead? Well, you may want to go and get a few of these:

a wind up flashlight (these are great because there is no battery- you just wind it up and get up to 40 minutes of light each time).

I also picked up a portable radio (I actually got an all in one flashight, radio, siren sounder) and some first aid stuff (I suppose you could make your own kit from supplies around the house, but the cost would end up being about the same). I found a variety of emergency lists online and you could pack yourself to the gills with supplies, but here is a concise one if you're interested :http://www.ready.gov/america/_downloads/checklist.pdf. I didn't realize how much we could possibly actually need if something did happen like a contact lens case and solution for myself (an extra pair of glasses in the bin is not an option) and diapers and wipes and nonperishable food.

So we're just trying to be a little more prepared, but not paranoid. I'm glad everything was okay. The only thing that took a bit of a hit was the garden, as the zucchini and squash lost a lot of flowers, but we're lucky if that's all that happened.

Hope everyone has a good weekend! We're alone again through Sunday. B is off in CA at his cousin's college graduation. I met W when he was about 10, so I really feel up there in age!

Everything's Growing!

2008-05-14T19:42:00.005-05:00

Our garden gave us a little present a few nights ago. It looked like this:

And today I picked this:

We also have a bunch of tomatoes growing on each plant, so it looks like we'll be able to make at least one salad!

We've had a bunch of rain and it got really hot in the last few days. As a result, the side of our house smells like gardenias because these bloomed in full force within 24 hours. So pretty!

What Mother's Day Means to Me

2008-05-11T14:12:00.007-05:00

(as told by J)

Mother's Day is letting Mommy sleep until after 8 and bringing her coffee in bed. It means holding a plant for our neighbor for "just a minute" before I tip it all over the floor. That was cool. It means eating my toothpaste that I have figured out how to unscrew while Mommy and Daddy are getting ready to go to the restaurant. Oh yeah, it also means begging daddy for a donut while Mommy is sleeping and eating it so I am even more excited and wired. Mommy says Daddy is a sucker.

Mother's Day means getting to go eat at a restaurant. Mother's Day means eating bagels at the restaurant. It means shouting, "Bagels, bagels, bagels!" at the top of my lungs. It means getting to run over to the waterfalls and squeal at the greatness of them. Why does everybody keep telling me, "No"? I just don't get it.

Let's see... what else about Mother's Day? There's ice cream before lunchtime. Oh, and cake, but mommy.... said.... NO CAAAAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKKKKE!!! So I had more bagels, bagels bagels and that was great! Playing with my best buddy Z at the restaurant was fun too! Don't we look all grown up?

Mother's Day is good for napping for a long time because everyone is in a food coma. For three hours.

Then getting to go to the airport to pick up Nummi!!! Hooray for Nummi! We have to pass a backhoe, a tractor and cars to get to the airport. Then we see Nummi! In the airport! And then we go to another restaurant. I have more ice cream and don't go to bed until 9:00. Mother's Day is lots of fun.

Good Morning!

2008-05-05T08:27:00.003-05:00

Hope everyone has a great day!

Straight From the Toddler's Mouth

2008-05-02T16:11:00.006-05:00

I feel that our adventures have left the stories of the J man a bit lacking these days. So here are some of the wonderful things he has been saying lately:

Greeting me in the morning:
Hiiiiiiyyyy (it's hard to spell expression)! I told you Mommy would come back!

When seeing Daddy's car in the driveway:
Of course! I told you Daddy would come back. He brought his pocketbook home from the office.

Figuring out how to select a cd, and hit the search button a number of times to get the song he wants: I did it! I did it! Hooray for J! It is much fun!

On finding that the train was not on the tracks again:

Where did the train go? To Poland, not Chinese.

On eating pancakes for breakfast this morning:
It's not bad this time. Thank you, Mommy.

On playing golf in the backyard:
Grandpa told J get one hole in.

On finding a ladybug in the park:
Let me see! I love him.

Things Are Not Always What They Seem

2008-05-01T19:38:00.002-05:00

I must thank everyone who sent flea death wishes my way. Your thoughts were so powerful that you were able to change the fleas into a completely different species of pest. That's right, folks. Turns out we didn't have fleas and all of that cleaning was for nothing. Well, I guess it wasn't for nothing, but it was overkill.

How did this happen? When I was still seeing a lot of activity after the third day, I called the pest company to ask if this was normal. They told me that it was normal, but this seemed a bit excessive, so they would send someone out to take a look. A supervisor came to my door and without even looking at what we still had, chuckled and told me I didn't have fleas, but springtails instead.

Have you ever felt relief and anger all at the same time? Well, it paralyzed me so that I didn't even know what to say to the guy. After a few minutes, I asked some questions, like what is a springtail? How do you know I have springtails and not fleas? What do you mean the guy that came last week didn't think I had fleas and sprayed my house anyway? What do you mean he's a trainee? Why didn't he call and ask someone if he wasn't sure before he went ahead with an unnecessary treatment? I expressed my concern about having a child in the house, as well as my displeasure at doing all of the cleanup work I'd been doing for the past 5 days. Basically all the guy did was apologize and tell me about springtails. So in case anyone is interested:

Springtails are tiny insects (about the same size as fleas) that come out in search of water. They live in nests and enter homes through window cracks, drain pipes, foundation cracks, etc. They are completely harmless and jump like fleas due to a mechanism in their tail that acts like a flea. They are more than a nuisance because of the numbers that they often appear when they entera home (this would explain why we found tons of them on our curtains and floors, baseboards and windowsills. Springtails can be found all over the country and are often mistaken for fleas.

So that's pretty much the short version of the story here. I have a few letters to write to the BBB, as I am outraged that this company would allow a trainee, who is obviously incompetent, to go ahead and perform chemical treatments in people's homes. I used the analogy to the supervisor that my husband is a dentist and if someone comes in and says they need a root canal, he does tests to see if that's true. If the tests do not agree that such a treatment is needed, he doesn't go ahead with it just because the patient thinks he needs one. And since I expressed such concern about putting down such chemicals with a child in the house, you would think that the technician would have taken that extra minute to make a phone call and ask someone if he wasn't sure about the job he was supposed to do. People just don't value the work they do. Either way, someone will be paying for my carpets to be cleaned and I will not use this company for services in the future. I'm also going to stock up on some organic goods to deal with a flea problem on my own if I have to (hopefully not, though!) sometime later on.

On the bright side, we're very happy that we don't have to vacuum everyday. And J is so excited that all of his toys did not get put away because they are for babies.

There Are Millions of Them!

2008-04-27T13:28:00.006-05:00

"A flea would be a frightening beast if you were one inch tall..." Shel Silverstein.

Umm... A flea is a frightening thing if you are almost 64 inches tall!

Here are some frightening facts about fleas:

a flea can go through its entire life cycle in two weeks under optimum conditions
the average flea can lay up to 50 eggs a day and up to 600 in its lifetime.
a flea can live without eating a blood meal for up to a year.
a flea egg can lay dormant for up to two years
your pet does not need to be an outdoor pet for it to attract fleas
you are screwed if you get fleas

Why the post about fleas? Well, if it hasn't hit you in the face yet, we have them. Again. Lucky us. We first discovered these vile things before we moved into our house while we were painting J's bedroom. The previous owners had a dog who apparently had a problem that they never took the time to eliminate. We immediately called an exterminator to take care of the problem. We purchased the 1 year contract instead of the 6 month contract because we had never dealt with this type of problem before. Thank goodness we did because the 6 month contract would have ended last month. It really sucked vacuuming everyday for a month, but it wasn't that bad because the house was empty since we hadn't moved in yet.

This time is a different story. The fleas are back. I'm not sure if they ever left, but we've had the optimal flea hatching weather in the past week and that's when we noticed our little intruders. B and I also missed a flea treatment last month because we figured that since we seemed to be in the clear and our cats don't go outside, we should be fine. We won't make that mistake again.

I want you to take a moment to imagine your living space with all of its clutter and furniture. Add toys if you have a child. Now I want you to imagine that you have fleas and that you need to prepare for someone to come and spray your house (eco-friendly people in the audience-- your only viable option is to try Borax or salt and sprinkle it all over your carpets, floors, windowsills, etc. and wait for 24 hours before vacuuming it up....repeat for up to two weeks if necessary.... will that work for you while you are still living there with pets and children?)* You need to vacuum everything, mop, sweep, and put away all of your kids toys (ALL of them). Chances are your yard is infested too (which is how the fleas got into your house and onto your animal in the first place) so you need to mow, rake, put away all outside toys. And that's not even the fun part.

Are you still imagining that house of yours? Now let's say your house has been treated and you can finally bring yourself and pets (yeah, they have to be out for at least 4 hours) back into your home. Everything should be fine, right? Wrong. You can see flea activity for up to two weeks in which they can start biting you because your animals are treated and the fleas are pissed off because they have lost their furry nesting ground. In the meantime, you need to vacuum as much as possible. Vacuuming causes vibrations in the carpets and floors, which will encourage those eggs to hatch, eat the spray that has been put down, and die. So you need to vacuum everyday to get the maximum results. Carpets, hard floors, baseboards, windowsills, upholstery, curtains. It takes me over two hours because it involves moving furniture out of the way and putting it back. Remember that I told you the life cylce of a flea is about two weeks under optimal conditions (which we have temperature wise)? That adds up to one full day of vacuuming in less than two weeks. Twenty four hours of my life gone because of a pest. And we still may not be rid of the problem.

What do you do if you have a child? Well, since you have basically put pesticide down on your floors, you really can't have your kid playing all over them, so most of the toys have to stay away for now. The entomologist recommeded I put a blanket down for J to play on (hello, a two year old won't sit on a blanket anymore!). The poor kid is freaked out that all of his toys have basically disappeared and he thinks they went away because they were for babies and not for him. I feel awful. We have a few things out, but for the most part, we're reading a lot of books, playing outside and going places to be distracted. B is away for four days, so that means J has to be extremely patient for those two hours while I am vacuuming (it has to be done all at once because you have to get rid of your vacuum bag as soon as you are finished so that the fleas don't thrive on the dirt in your bag and get out the next time you use the vacuum. Lovely). He's watching way too much TV for my liking, but there are very few options at this point until B comes home since most physical activities will last a max of 15 minutes and he usually wants me to play them with him. I have to say he's been so good and I am grateful for that.

So I beg of all of you to send flea death wishes to my home. I am itchy. I am frustrated. I am tired of vacuuming already. I hope nobody else has to deal with this.

*So there are some other environmental options out there. One is to use diatomaceous earth, but that has to be sprinkled on everything and vacuumed and repeated for up to two weeks. It's not toxic, but apparently you have to wear a mask because you don't want it in your lungs. I also recently found a eco friendly spray at $23.99 a can plus shipping. One can is not enough for the average household and you then have to wait for it to be shipped to you (remember, 50 eggs a day per flea!). So if you think you would want to do that instead of having your house professionally sprayed, you may want to stock up on some of it just in case...

Stage Fright

2008-04-23T15:14:00.003-05:00

If you've ever been afraid to perform for an audience, or even if you haven't, check out these clips from a show I saw on PBS this week. It's incredible and gives one a different perspective on what it's like to be a performer.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/shows/wolftrap/program.html

Click on the one called Luminescent Flights. It should take about 10 minutes to watch, but it's worth it. Anybody want to try it with me?

R&R, Eh?

2008-04-15T23:14:00.006-05:00

(Root canals and relaxation, Canadian style)

An oxymoron, you say? Au contraire. Vancouver was just that. Five days and five nights of it. Good weather, even better food, interesting workshops, and best of all, plenty of time to sleep. It was the first time in over two years that I was actually able to sleep for 10.5 hours at night. Glorious, heavenly, restorative sleep. Dare I say it was the highlight of my trip. I know some of you readers are cursing me because you are unable to share in the delight of all this right now, but just remember that I have already paid my dues and tomorrow things go back to the usual 6 am wakeup.

I know you don't want to hear about my slumber, so here's how the trip really was. It started out with the fortunate fact that we were not flying American Airlines. Everything was on time. Our hotel was just minutes away from the waterfront and convention center and within 100 steps of the most wonderful coffee shop in the city, Cafe Artigiano. If you are ever in Vancouver, you have to get your lattes or mochas or anything with steamed milk there. They put Starbucks to shame, not that that says much, but it's the only national example I can give.

We were also very lucky that we didn't decide to leave earlier in the week to do our sightseeing and saved it until after the conference. It rained for at least four days before we got there. The sun came out during the morning of our first day and didn't really leave us for the entire time. The mountains also came out from under the clouds to welcome us, which I really appreciated.

The conference itself was interesting and I got a chance to attend a bunch of different workshops. A few were on marketing a successful practice, one was on conflict resolution, and another was an interesting talk about the dental marriage, given by a psychologist who works mostly with dentists and their spouses. In short, we're all doomed and are going to get divorced because we're married to type A people who need all of their ducks in a row all of the time. I think I got lucky in that my husband is the only dentist I know that doesn't fit that description, so hopefully we can buck the trend!

There was time for meeting up with friends from B's residency, Dim Sum, seafood, Vietnamese food (all the things you can't really get much of where we live) and a big surprise for B. His best buds J and M drove up from Seattle to surprise him for the weekend. He thought they were unable to come visit us for months, but I was in cahoots with them ever since we booked our tickets. B was so surprised he was speechless. I was so glad that he was able to see them. It had been nearly 5 years since he saw J and 3 since he last saw M. I think that was one of the reasons I was able to get so much sleep. While they drank beer and relived their adolescent adventures, I went to bed.

Aside from some really long walks (Vancouver is a great walking city) and some shopping, we also hung out and went to the Capilano Suspension Bridge, Granville Public Market, and Stanley Park. I think one of the guys' highlights was the tower of beer they shared at dinner on Sunday night. Three liters of local brew. Three guys. How could it not be great?

How did J do during our absence? Apparently he didn't even ask for us. He kept busy by giving Grandma driving directions (I'm not kidding) and learning how to play golf with Grandpa. When I saw him on Tuesday morning, he said, "Hi Mommy", gave me a kiss, and kept playing. He didn't even realize that B was home as well until I asked him if he wanted to see Daddy. That got a little more excitement, but not much. I guess we can leave him and travel a little more often, which is a good thing because summer is almost upon us.

Of course all good things come to an end and now we are moving on. I have two more teaching tests this weekend. One is for my elementary k-4 certificate, the other is for a middle school certificate that Texas has decided I am qualified for once I pass the test. The one problem is the math. I don't remember any of it. It's so bad that I got 25 out of 36 wrong on the practice. And that doesn't include the Texas history I don't know or the science curriculums that are a distant memory. I actually thought about cancelling that test, but it's too late to get a refund, so I am sealed to a fate of guessing on trigonometry and quadratic equations. Maybe I'll get lucky, but if I don't pass, I already have my reading certificate and never had any intentions of teaching 8th grade math anyway!

Hope everyone is having a great week! Gotta go and try a few more of those f(x,y,z...) problems. Fun, fun!

PS Blogger wouldn't let me upload pics all day. Sorry for the lack of images.