My Baby Sweetness: Pregnancy, Parenting and Life

As long as I decided to start blogging again.... (maybe)

2011-10-13T08:59:00.000-04:00

Our other story from the weekend -

We walked back to our seats after communion at church this week and the monkey sat down, picked up her bunny crackers and pulled one out holding it towards my mouth. As she did, she said "Body of Christ, Mommy."

I seriously don't know what to do with this... (Mostly I'm laughing. I'm wondering if I'm supposed to do more than that...)

My husband said it's her early commentary on females in the priesthood.

Why Moms should never be proud/boastful

2011-10-10T15:58:00.001-04:00

This weekend while our daughter was playing with her friend, her friend told her – "sometimes my Mommy & Daddy get frustrated and yell at me." Our daughter responded – "my parents don’t yell at me, they talk to me." We were feeling really good about this. Till today…

Monkey – sometimes my Mommy and Daddy get frustrated with me
Me – No, sweetie, we don’t.
Monkey – and then they…
Me – what do they do when they get frustrated?
Monkey – they do bad things.

Great! I dropped her at my mother in laws and told her to just go ahead and place the preemptive call to Child Protective Services.

Today's message brought to you by the letter g

2011-04-19T09:58:00.002-04:00

I recently noticed that the monkey seems to drop the last “g” a lot – you know, she says: I’m comin’. And what are you doin’ (or more whatcha doin’)? So I thought – ok, she must get this from me. I’ll have to watch that and try not to do it. Then I remembered a friend telling me that my NJ accent came out more when I drank, as I started dropping (droppin’) g’s then. Now I haven’t been drinking (drinkin’) a lot (I actually pretty much gave it up for Lent in a bid to FINALLY lose the last 5 lbs and get back to my pre-baby weight), but I figure drunk is kind of like tired – esp. in speech. So, here’s the thing (thin’). I think I’ve just been tired for two years…

Crap…

She also repeated me when I said holy crap the other day! The funny part is – in my head, I though, I’m cleaning myself up so I don’t say the other. But then she repeats my new one and I think – well, darn – I don’t want her to say that either! (And this is when I start to realize what a bad speller I am / how much I rely on spell check… Most condemningly, I can’t verbally spell stupid.

Betty Crocker, I aint. Dork? Yes. Yes, that I am.

2011-03-02T14:36:00.003-05:00

Why even discuss my absense and irregularity in posting? It's become SO irregular that irregular is, in fact, my regular/norm.

... Yeah...

So anyway, this Mom's group I'm in mentioned doing a recipe exchange this week. Hmm... I thought this was a good idea until I typed it and thought - oh my gosh, is it 1955 already? I mean, I did just say gosh! But I'm going to share anyway as it's the first time I've even opened up blogger in nearly 2 months and this is what I've got.

I do also have toddler non-sequitors. My favorite this week was when she looked at our dog and said, "That's my dog. Sometimes I poke him in the eye." (My husband and I had to hide behind a pillow laughing before we could compose ourselves enough to tell her that was not a nice thing to do.

She's also started telling jokes. Bad jokes, admittedly - the first came from her Elmo if you're happy and you know it book. She looks at you and says - "what do you call banana peels?" (it's supposed to be 2 banana peels, but it's hit or miss if she says that...). "A pair of slippers." Then we laugh like it's the funniest thing we've heard repeated over and over today.

The other one came from my sister in law staying on the banana genre - "why did the banana go to the hostible?" (That's hospital for those of you not fluent in toddler.) The answer is supposed to be 'because it was peeling.' She usually says - "it peeled," which leaves people scratching their head a moment before they get it.

We've tried to branch beyond bananas (and fruit in general) to get her to tell our new favorite worst joke - "How do you make Lady Gaga cry?" (The answer is "Poke her face" (Poker face).) The best we can get is she say - how do you make goo goo ga ga cry? But she doesn't get the punch line (which doesn't work anyway if you've missed the Lady Gaga reference).

Regardless of the awfulness of the jokes, she has caught a few family members by surprise by telling them unsolicited - which is far funnier to us!

OK, so better crocker, here are those recipes. Sorry about the general lack of exactness - that's kinda how I cook...

Chicken salad with grapes, apples & walnuts
Bake chicken flavoring with a small amount of olive oil, herbs de provence (rosemary can substitute), garlic, salt and pepper (350 for 15-20 minutes should work) or use leftover baked chicken.
Amounts below will vary based on the amount of chicken – most important is the 2 to 1 ratio on yogurt to mayo.
1 cut non-fat greek yogurt (regular plain non fat yogurt can substitute)
½ cup low fat mayonnaise
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
Red grapes (halved)
Apple (diced) – I like granny smith
Walnuts, chopped (optional – I no longer include these for the baby)
Combine ingredients and let sit in refrigerator to mix/set (I’ve eaten immediately, but it’s better if it has an hour or two first)

Chicken pesto pasta
1 lb Bowtie pasta (cooked)
1 small jar pesto
Cooked chicken (great use for leftovers – if I’m making it fresh, I usually use just a couple of pieces of chicken breast)- the original recipe recommended shredding. When my daughter was very young and didn’t eat much meat, I pureed it. Now I usually just cube.
Cherry tomatoes (halved)
Combine ingredients and serve. This came from a picky eaters cookbook and has worked very well for my toddler.

Lemon risotto
2 cups Arborio rice
2TBs olive oil
4 TBs butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped (you can also buy this frozen to save time)
Fresh rosemary (I use a couple TBs of jarred most of the time)
2 lemons (zested)
1 cup parmesan cheese
7 cups chicken broth (can substitution vegetable for vegetarian dish)
1 cup white wine
Pine nuts (optional – roast on stove for just a couple minutes as they brown quickly)

In a large skillet (med high), cook onions and half rosemary in olive oil and half butter - do not brown. Add Arborio rice and cook for 2-3 minutes till grains begin to become translucent.
Separately, mix broth (I use bullion cubes), wine and the juice from the lemons.
Add broth mixture slowly (recipe says one ladle at a time. I usually add in larger increments) to the rice letting rice absorb the liquid before adding more.
Once all broth is added and absorbed, mix in the remaining butter and parmesan cheese. Add remaining rosemary and lemon zest as garnish (the lemon zest REALLY adds a lot of tanginess) as well as roasted pine nuts if including.

Spaghetti and hidden vegetable sauce
The original recipe made the sauce from scratch. This is the lazy man’s…
1 jar spaghetti sauce
Carrots (1-1.5 large or a handful of baby carrots), uncooked, as finely as your food processor can chop them.
1 Zucchini (uncooked, finely chopped)
Browned ground turkey
Other options in the recipe that I don’t add, included – finely chopped onion or apple.
Serve over spaghetti sauce or, if really adventurous, spaghetti squash.

Yogurt chicken

Marinate boneless skinless chicken breast (ideally cut and pounded) in non fat plain yogurt and dijon mustard (as much yogurt is needed to cover the chicken and then just a TB or two of dijon depending on how much you're making).

Dip the chicken in bread crumbs (I prefer cornflake crumbs myself)

Cook on rack over pan (rather than directly on the pan - this way, you don't need oil in the pan)

350 for 15 minutes (check at 12-15 mins, might take a little longer)

OK, this is a much streamlined variation of something from Paula Dean (I think), but I really love the tanginess from the yogurt mix and the chicken comes out really moist.

The other massively dorky thing I did this week....

I started to create a schedule of all the weekly kids events in the area (I focused on the free library stuff, but put up others too) so that I can post it in the kitchen for ideas on what to do when I'm totally at a loose end and going nuts (we call that every day in my house...).

ok, ok - I'm back. Worst blogger ever...

2011-01-05T10:34:00.003-05:00

Sorry for the pause in your irregularly scheduled operations while we "did" the holidays (and I just didn't feel like posting, darn it!).

Where are we now?

You know I do have stories to tell you, but somehow launching into my diatribe about everyone having a cold through Christmas, then getting 30 inches of snow while visiting my Mom, followed by the baby getting some sort of stomach virus the middle of Mon night/Tues morn before we started the drive back south (with the REST OF HUMANITY, mind you!), which took 8 hours instead of 4-5 - though admittedly that was because of the long stop when the monkey projectile vomitted... Well, that just seems wrong now doesn't it? (Um, did that count as a rant?)

Anyway - though it does provide a more colorful anecdote, it's not a really good picture of our Christmas, as truly - it was rather nice (minus masses of mucus and ... oh, sorry, sorry!). After all the flurry of getting ready (why didn't I start earlier?), we were actually mostly ready for Christmas when it came.

Santa came to our house on the morning of the 24th and we opened gifts with our own little family then. It was nice and fun. The monkey got a play-doh grocery store "kit" that Mommy and Daddy really wanted to play with (funny how Santa knows! And why didn't they have things this cool when I was this age?) as well as a few other small toys (many of which are already driving me nuts!) and one spring dress (with matching dress for a doll!) that I couldn't resist. So nothing too too crazy. We knew too too crazy was coming yet!

That afternoon we went to church (where the monkey who loves opening and closing things discovered the fly on Daddy's pants - "ooh, zipper!" and started opening it while the woman sitting next to my husband tried to contain her laughter. Seriously, he's thinking - look, I swear I didn't teach her this! Please don't call protective services! while he tried to redirect.) and headed to my in-laws for dinner and the first round of family and gifts.

The monkey made out like a bandit, of course! And got into the gift opening (though she likes paper and boxes best) - so she just started opening everyone's presents. It was actually rather fun to watch (and luckily she's the only kid there, so no one cared).

The next morning we did the trek up to my Mom's and just had time to unload the car and get dressed before heading to see one side of the family for dinner. After dinner (and more presents for the monkey there), we headed to other side for dessert (and my New Year's resolution will involve not eating that twice in a day this year...) and, you guessed it, more presents!

After staying up too late a 2nd night in a row, we took her back to my Mom's and hoped for sleep. We got... some. As it was Sunday, we were back at church again and then - time for presents with my Mom! Sadly by this point the monkey was actually starting to weary of getting gifts. She just wanted to play with what she had - and nap! I think she was a bit overwhelmed - I mean, she had one of those ride in electric cars at my Mom's! (It was a hand me down rather than an actual gift, but it was in great condition and, seriously, who cares?) We had to stop midway through gift opening for a nap and dinner and she finally made it through. (I didn't want to push - opening gifts is really supposed to be a FUN activity! Not work!)

Given the plague on our house (ok, a cold) and the "snow-icane" (i.e. blizzard of 30 inches), we were pretty well quarantined the rest of the trip.

And there you have it.

Did I live up to the hype? Yeah, probably not... ;)

Today's anecdote where I tell the mechanic he's full of it but then realize he's still working on my car and hope he doesn't cut my brake lines....

2010-11-24T13:35:00.002-05:00

The anecdote of the day:

I went to get my oil changed today at about 6K from my last change (my dealer recommended is 6k and I have an oil life monitor that told me I still had 15% oil life (the light went on yesterday) and I've read several articles recently that you really can go much longer than what Jiffy Lube tells you as we use synthetic or synthetic blend oil). The guy tries his typical upsell on air filters and fuel injection cleaning. Nope, I'm good. Then he comes back in from the garage a little while later (he's the manager)

Dude: (Chastisingly said in the someone was a bad girl voice) Somebody went 3K over their 3000 mile change.
Me: My oil life monitor showed 15% and my dealer recommends 6K.
Dude: But you should really still do 3K. It's better for your car.
Me: (Laughing) You're full of it. (oops was that out loud?)
Dude: No really - the dirty oil is wearing on your engine and making your engine wear out faster. The dealers want your engine to wear out sooner so you have to buy a new car sooner. They're seeing a lot of 2000 and 2004 Fords now whose engines are worn out because of that. (By the way - yes, the dealer wants you to buy a new car sooner, but if my engine is totally dead after 6 years and 70-80K when I've done their recommended maintenance, you can be darn sure that the car I buy won't be the same one! So it's theoretically possible that that isn't actually their strategy.... hmm....)
Me: Yeah, but that's a Ford. Show that to me on a Toyota or Honda.
Dude: yeah, true. (pause) But really - the dirty oil is bad for the engine (or something).
Technician (the guy probably actually working on my car who happened out front): Here's the deal - if you use real oil, that last about 3K. If you use a synthetic blend - 5-6K. A full synthetic - 8-10K.
Me: And which did you just put in my car?
Technician: A synthetic blend. (At this point I look over at the manager again who must be seething, but who's really got nothing now.)
Dude: Yeah, but I still change mine every 3K.
(I bite my lip from asking his price v. mine.)
Technician: Some people still do, but you don’t really need to.

Then I go to leave and he tries to charge me $10 more than he quoted over the phone. I got him to honor the price though he told me that I needed to make sure to print the coupon online the next time (this has never before been necessary).

Sigh... Really wish I knew anything about cars - it'd make these conversations so much more fun. I should have been an engineer. Do they have to take lab science in college?

planes, train and automobiles - and a crapload of work to do before that!

2010-11-23T15:17:00.004-05:00

Sorry I've been MIA. Work got totally crazy as I've gotten a ton more responsibilities (and no more time to do them in - ugh). And then we went to Florida for my cousin's wedding. The trip was a ton of fun, but I'll just go ahead and weigh in on TSA with the rest of America now...

My complaint is not so much about the new xray scanners or pat downs, but on profiling. I realize that my toddler who SCREAMED her way through the TSA line (happily most passengers just noted to us that she was only expressing what we were all feeling) probably did do the most to "terrorize" other passengers (and cause terror - you're not on MY flight, are you?), but that does not make her a "terrorist." Seriously, does my 21 month old fit a profile? I know we all have to take off our shoes and everyone hates it, but it poses a threat - and all that stuff. But, see, her shoes are small - not even a foot long (no pun intended) so is it completely necessary for her to take them off when she REALLY doesn't want to (and I mean really!) while you take her milk away from her (ok, so it's possible that when you did that she did start to sound very threatening - but I don't think she's actually part of an organized group on this front).

On our way out, TSA was testing new screening procedures - with a long line of travellers and ONE agent checking IDs. I'd just gone for a new license that week (which I did not know was going to be mailed to me or I would have waited. As an aside, it arrived and I look SERIOUSLY psychotic in the picture. I know everyone complains about the pictures, but this is horrifying!), so, after an hour or so of wrangling a toddler in line, I handed over my old (not expired, just old) license with the paperwork from the DMV that meant it was still valid. I never should have handed over the paperwork. They never would have noticed the "void" stamp (I hadn't noticed it till just then). They called a supervisor who needed to call a monitor. After 7 calls, he hadn't answered the phone yet. My husband looked at the agent and said - wow, so if you guys had a real problem, I guess they just hang you out to dry. The agent, with no sense of humor, said - no, they would NOT. They come as fast as they can. (Well, how do they do that if they don't answer the phone?) Finally the monitor came and after I gave him some secondary ID (credit cards), he decided that the 30 something woman of Irish decent traveling with her family was probably not actually all that big a risk and I could go. (OK, yes, I know they need to double check these things and really would have been much more accepting if we hadn't had to wait SO long to get that far. Or maybe if we hadn't had to stand to the side with a TSA agent guarding us as my overtired toddler tried to make a run for it.)

Then we went through security (see shoes and milk note above). We got to FL and realized we'd made a reservation with the shadiest of all shady offsite rental car places (U Save - avoid them like the plague!!!) and cancelled it. When my husband said - you guys are shady (they had tons of hidden fees and were totally unprofessional), the guy at the counter told him that if he made one more comment, he'd be walking back to the terminal and he was going to follow us outside to ensure that no comments were made. Oh sheesh.

The vacation as good - though busy! The monkey enjoyed the beach a lot (though we did get kicked out of the pool at my Mom's place since she had a swim diaper on. This is south Florida - my husband joked that more of the adults have diapers on than kids!).

TSA was slightly less exhausting on the way back. I didn't hand over the paperwork with my license and they didn't notice the void stamp. We did have the shoes and milk issues again - ugh. Happily they did not make us go through the new scanners though - I have since looked them up and I'm pretty sure that the x-rays are safe, but I really hadn' researched in advance and just didn't want to walk the baby through that. Also, you have to walk through and stand like the DaVinci man - arms out, feet apart. How does one explain that to a toddler - who wants you to carry her? Thank goodness we just did metal detectors! I mean, what if she got the pat down instead? Who knows what she's transporting in that diaper? Actually... I found out later as we didn't want to wake her from her nap till we had to put her in the car even though we knew her diaper was full, so when she got outside and the cold air hit her (and inspired her), she peed all over me! Welcome home.

Happy Thanksgiving to all! I hope your travels go well!

Alcoholism is a lifelong disease, so I don't see why I need to fix it this week.

2010-10-19T15:52:00.004-04:00

Sorry for the blogging hiatus. Realistically - it's not over.

Work has been crazy. I've been cranky (or just in a bad mood for weeks on end?). This actually wouldn't stop me from subjecting you to this (don't get me wrong!), but I'm frazzled and just haven't had a lot of time to torture you this way.

Quotes of the last week:
(beyond my title which I actually did say to my husband after another harrowing day of training)

My husband as I opened a bottle of wine at the end of my first day of training when I got home around 8 after spending 11 hours with a visiting coworker: Yeah, I thought you'd need that. What took so long?

My mother in law on hearing about the above: You don't really need a glass - a straw will do.

Me, after the first bottle was kicked. OK, not all in one night! I know I totally just lost street cred: I realize that opening up another bottle of wine tonight may be a sign of alcoholism. I don't care. I'm going to deal with that next week.

Great they are all about drinking too much... Crap. I was trying to be funny and now I might actually have to do something about that. And THIS is why I stopped blogging!

More stuff I don't really want to talk about

2010-10-06T14:43:00.002-04:00

Seriously - if you're in a good mood, don't bother reading this and ruining it. And if you're in an unhappy mood, don't read this to add to it. Really you should only read this if you feel like the day is already shot and what the heck or maybe if you're a bad person. Yeah, if you're a bad person who deserves to be brought down you should totally read this.

I know I've been a bit quiet recently. This is largely due to severe work stress / levels of busy-ness; in part due to even larger degrees of work stress / limited timeframes for my husband that I am trying to mitigate by making the rest of life run; and also in part having more stuff I don't want to talk about.

A few weeks ago I posted that I'd miscarried. It sucked and going for the D&C was scary (as my husband put it while we waited - they do a good job making this process as scary as possible) and just so weird. I was overwhelmed with emotions. But also working on repressing them - partially because I couldn't process them yet and partially because I'm not good with any public displays of that type of emotion.

I moved through the weeks following - repressing away, but I guess it was always close to the surface.

We went back to the OB for my post op follow up last week. She told us that there were some results in the pathology. I'd had a molar pregnancy (or actually a partial mole). * She explained a bit about this and I hit the computer with crazy research later, but basically it seems that two sperm fertilized the egg, but something went wrong. Instead of twins, a molar pregnancy developed. Either there was one twin which was overcome by the abnormal cells (a possibility that makes me sadder) or the fetus was never viable because of abnormalities. (I've read both options. I don't know if both are a possibility or if one of the sources was wrong.)

Well, at least we had a reason? Wasn't that what we wanted in the prior miscarriages? Something to point to and say - here it is. A secure knowledge that it wasn't because I hadn't started my prenatals earlier or because I'd gotten a bad sunburn at 6 weeks? And it wasn't something that was likely to recur, so that was good.

She went on to explain that a molar pregnancy puts me at a heightened risk for GTD (gestational tropoblastic disease - not sure if I spelled that right)*. Basically this means that though they "evacuated my uterus" the growth (the abnormal cells that were not a baby) could come back. And, if it did, it wouldn't necessarily be limited to my uterus (most reading I did suggested the lungs were a likely site).

The only way to test for GTD is by monitoring your hcg (pregnancy hormone) levels - which means you can't try to get pregnant for at least 6 months after they reach zero (as of last week they hadn't yet). This is done by a weekly blood test until you hit 0 and then a monthly blood test to make sure you're still at 0. (Is now a good time to mention how much I HATE having blood taken?)

Though it's probably not very likely, if the tests did come back positive, I think I'd have to have a CT scan to find the growths. They are generally benign, but treated with chemo. In 1% of cases they do turn out to be cancerous, but overall the prognosis is good.

Now I know all those things are worst case scenarios, but it's so hard for my head not to swim with all that. It's so much to take in.

Also, even though I'm not really consciously worried about cancer - or at least I'm telling myself not to be - the thought is lingering there. I start thinking about my Dad's cancer and how many people in his family had cancer. Then I pull myself back in and say - it's not a real possibility.

And.. I don't know... maybe I'm not actually even worried about that. Maybe it's easier to focus on that - on the big C which we all know is scary and horrible than all these other things I don't want to think about yet. Like tumors growing all over from GTD. Like all these blood tests when I can't even think about veins without feeling weak flutterings in my stomach. Blood tests when I was pregnant / trying to get pregnant all seemed doable because they were all for a good cause. But I sat in the lab last week waiting for the needle and got entirely focused on how much I HATED that. Didn't want to be here. Because it's NOT for a good cause. It's because of this bad thing that happened. And maybe that's really what I don't want to think about.

I'm leaving comments open this time because I need more information and am open to anything anyone knows on the subject. Also, I got the nicest email from a wonderful fellow blogger after my last post on this and realized I was probably dumb to close comments - even if I didn't want to talk about it.

*Note - I know I should post links to wikipedia here. Honestly at least part of what's held up this post is I'm feeling too tired (or emotionally tired) to go through getting together all the links I should have. So here it is without any supporting Google's revenue stream if you decide to do a search. Sorry.

Amber is the color of your energy, but red?

2010-09-21T16:17:00.003-04:00

Because I apparently like to be stressed and unsure of myself...

I joined this playgroup on Thursdays (starting in October) called "Little Sponges." It's 5 or 6 moms/kids and there are 3 activities each week. Each mom has to plan one activity (although the organizer seems to have managed to leave her name off the planning lists... Hmm...) - either music, art or reading.

OK, sure.

The organizer (who a few weeks ago mentioned fears that her child could be color blind, though she's not yet 2, so I think she just doesn't know her colors yet. I digress) just happened to pick an "easy" theme of colors for the semester. Each week is a different color.

The first week is red. And I've got music.

Now there are lots of songs on colors - but on a single color? I'm coming up with "You can't ride in my little red wagon..." I looked online and found SOME more songs (most are multiple colors).

But now I'm left wondering how to 'entertain' half a dozen kids ranging from under a year to probably 2 and half for 20 minutes with songs? (I should probably mention here that I'm just barely a step above tone deaf.) I mean, my daughter actually loves music, but I can't see entertaining her this way. Maybe itsy bitsy spider... But spiders aren't red! usually... Could I pull that off?

So far I've decided - I'm not signing alone for 20 minutes! I've found some lyrics (generally to well known tunes) and will print them for the other moms to join. Maybe I'll print some pictures of the objects... a red apple, a red wagon, a red fire truck... Um, yeah, I think I might be done now...

I should mention the woman organizing is a former teacher / administrator and has suggested that all this will be easy (did I mention she's not signed up for any lessons?). Having no teaching experience and generally finding myself to be a totally crap teacher, I'm not really finding that to be the case!

I welcome all suggestions!

I keep asking either or questions...

2010-09-16T13:01:00.000-04:00

And getting yes or no answers.

And not always from the same person. So I'm worried it's me.

Slowly going insane in Virginia...

Snakes, snakes, snakes!!!!!

2010-09-15T11:23:00.003-04:00

Had a freak out moment this morning when I went to the basement and saw a snake sitting on the bug/mouse sticky traps. Freaked, screamed, shut the door, ran up the stairs, shut the other door, shoved a towel under it so nothing could come up and wondered where I put the realtor’s number. Texted my husband who was in class today with a freak out message telling him we’d be moving and I was going to start packing upstairs, but he’d have to pack the basement. Or we could just abandon all that stuff.

But it wasn’t a snake stuck to the trap.

It was THREE SNAKES! THREE SNAKES!!!!! THREE!!! The number that is HIGHER than two. THREE! All stuck to traps. Likely a momma and two babies. My coworker came over to look and take care of them. So he checked the rest of the basement. There was a FOURTH over on another trap! FOUR! EVEN MORE THAN THREE!!!!! And some big snake skins stuck up in the rafters. He thinks they came in through the dryer vent which was filled with lint and stuck open, so he sort of wedged it closed and said that was probably it. He said she probably just came in to nest – a safe place to have her babies because it was cold last night. Um, have her babies? Yeah, why the EFF doesn’t that make me feel better!!!!?!?!?!?

But I just made the BIG EFFING MISTAKE of googling how many babies they have. HOLY oh God, Holy… I… sniffle, sniffle. One site said 12-40. One said 3-80. One noted a litter of 98 was recorded. NINETY EIGHT! Are you effing kidding me?!?!?!?! I am NEVER doing laundry down there again. It is totallymy husband's job now. Thank God I had the foresight to wash our clothes and sheets and towels this weekend because I’m not going back down there!!!! My coworker noted that momma wasn’t that big and for 98 it would have had to be a huge snake. Yeah, so I’m probably lucky and it’s only like 40. Oh Fuck.

At least I can give the realtor a range on what she should be looking for because GOD KNOWS I will not be SHOWING her the basement.

You'll remember that first we had big spiders and then mice. We got these plug ins to deal with the mice and I haven't seen any since. So, woo! Big sigh of relief. No more mice. Yeah, sigh...

UNTIL NOW! I mean snakes! I feel like Indiana Jones - why did it have to be snakes? Except like a really really wimpy Indiana as I don’t recall him screaming when stuck in a pit of oh yeah, poisonous, snakes. Sniffle, sniffle. Did Indy cry? I don’t recall him crying… I think he did. It was probably just off camera.

F*ck, f*ck, f*ck… And now I have Tourettes.

I'm really having a bad effing week.

whimper, whimper...

Potty Training

2010-09-14T10:47:00.000-04:00

We decided to give potty training a go last week. Yeah, it seemed a little crazy and many of my friends noted that it seemed a bit…early to them. But I’d gone to this thing on sign language for potty training at the library last month and THEY said your child could train by 18 months. And as the monkey is 19 months, CLEARLY I needed to get on board.

Hahaha.

So I picked a weekend that both my husband and I were off and would be home for several days (THEY recommend 3 days “intense training”) and marked it on our calendars. As it happened, we were both home Thurs-Sun. Plenty of time. Then my husband signed up to teach Thursday nights and Sundays. Ok, Ok. But Sunday would be day FOUR and we really only needed THREE. And he’d be home most of Thursday, right?

Then he signed up to take a class on Thursday. (I swear he doesn’t even look at his calendar. Seriously when he sent me the details on that class, he sent me his schedule for the fall. I looked at it and said – you know we’re in FL for a wedding for 3-4 of the dates you have listed, right?) Ugh! So day 1 is all me! I told him he could make it for it by starting on his own on Wednesday. Ha. (Actually, he did legitimately have some work stuff to do that day – though it wasn’t on his calendar…!)

Thursday morning the monkey wakes up and after breakfast I decide – ok, let’s start. I take her diaper off (THEY all say to leave them naked from the waist down for this) and set up the potty in the bathroom. I ask her if she has to go potty. No, but she really likes it. She sits on it for awhile, enjoys checking it out, squats down next to it to look at all the parts and – when she stands up the floor is wet! Right directly NEXT TO the potty! I decide to take this as progress – hey, you got close! Next time IN the potty, baby. But so close. Yeah!

A few minutes later, she squatting again, but I figure she’s ‘empty’ this time so we’re fine. She stands up and she’s pooped on the floor. I just barely got it up before she fully stepped in it. Ugh! But hey – close, yeah! Being a total idiot, as she hadn’t pooped IN the potty, I forgot all about poop etiquette and consequences and didn’t think to wipe her till I noticed some brown on her foot. Oh, yuck…

She’s still interested so we stay in the bathroom. She’s up and down on the potty, checking it all out and – yup, she’s peed on the floor again. (yippee?) Sigh.

By this point, she was done “looking” at the potty (and christening the floor all around it), so we go out to the family room (sans diaper) and start to play. It takes a little bit, but I start to realize that her crankiness seems to be related to her lack of diaper – maybe? Aren’t babies supposed to like being without a diaper? I don’t know, but man she doesn’t seem happy.

After half an hour, the timer goes off, so we head towards the bathroom and I ask if she wants to use the potty. NO! She starts to head towards a tantrum, so I immediately drop it (that’s what THEY say to do). But I also decide we better put a diaper on her. If she’s not going to try on the “schedule,” it’s just going to be a damn messy day. She must not be ready and we’ll try another day.

My Mom was visiting so I asked if she’d watch the baby while I went up to shower. While I was gone, the monkey looked at her and said – Potty! They went into the bathroom, she sat down the potty itself was finally christened! My Mom put her back in her diaper.

Twenty minutes later, we’re back in there (and now I’ve got it fully set up with batteries and turned on so when she goes it plays a song). She goes in the potty again and the song plays. She loves the song! Why won’t the song play again? A small tantrum ensues. She sits on the potty again – up and down. I empty and clean it and she tries again (almost right away). She pees another thimbleful and gets another song! So that became the pattern for the day. Running into and out of the bathroom all day and peeing every time she could get enough in her bladder to make the music play. My Mom asked if I thought she did these small pees all day long normally. Could she really have that much control to work out to only go a little really frequently so the potty would sing to her?

Sadly we had a few things come up this weekend unexpected that prevented any further potty training (she used it on and off, but I think we totally lost momentum). We’re contemplating whether to do a bare bottom weekend (when my husband does NOT schedule classes!) soon, but we’ll see…

The short version

2010-09-14T10:45:00.002-04:00

I don’t really want to talk about this. I know I need to. I need to get it out – put it somewhere for the world to deal with so maybe I can stop. But I feel like I’m having a hard time saying the words. Well… posting them anyway. Truthfully, I wrote about 10 pages of post yesterday, but I’m not ready to put those out there (you can save your cheers on that one).

But if I don’t tell you this, everything else I write feels like a bit of a lie. Because THIS is what I’m thinking about. Sometimes it feels like all I’m thinking about. Sometimes it feels too surreal to think about. But the truth is – I was pregnant and last week we found out I wasn’t anymore. We’d gone in for our 8 week sonogram the week before and things didn’t look good, but they wanted to confirm. There were lots of ifs and maybes. My hcg numbers were high. I should be hopeful. But really, I wasn’t. I was paying attention to my body that week and knew that it had been telling me this for a little while now – I just wasn’t listening.

I went for the D&C on Friday afternoon. The day was interminably long waiting for that. The check in process was horrible and I decided I hated the woman taking my information and the other woman who flitted about the office. I hated their cheeriness and perkiness (this was the gyn surgery unit. I can’t think of a reason one would be “happy” to be there), their lack of understanding (yeah, that might just have been me. Seems I was in a bad and whormonal* mood), the information they didn’t give me.

I was woefully unprepared for all this (I didn’t even know you were asleep for the procedure). In my super long (unpublished) post I wrote all the details of it. I needed to get it out and what if someone else was as unprepared as I was? I should be able to tell them. And maybe one day I’ll publish it or a version of it. But it turns out that again today I don’t want to talk about it.

And then, after forever, it was done. The surgery itself was easy and by Sunday I actually felt physically better than I had in weeks. I wasn’t SO exhausted anymore (which is too bad, as hiding in sleep would be sort of blissful). The whole day felt fuzzy and dreamlike with some moments of nightmarish clarity, but now it feels like it happened to someone else. On occasion reality pokes its ugly head in and brings anger with it, but mostly I’m just moving along. Two friends have told me about their new pregnancies already this week and I feel like a horrible person that I can’t quite seem to feel happy for them yet. I want to be a better person than that. But I admit it. I’m jealous and it pokes the wound a bit.

So for now, I’m going back to posts about potty training, new words and the silly things a 19 month old does. She’s learning animal sounds. Recently she picked up “gobble gobble” which she can’t say without laughing. My husband and his fellow VT alumni sister are very happy with this development (hokies, which are turkeys, are their mascot). As a BC grad, despite 4 years of college, I can’t say I have any idea what an eagle (our mascot) says (does it say “suck it, VT?” Just kidding. I promise it’s my second favorite!). I’ll have to work on that.

*As always, whormonal is still stolen from The Domestication of the Single Girl.

Is learning how to manipulate grandparents against parents by 19 months impressive or just scary?

2010-09-08T15:33:00.005-04:00

My Mom is visiting this week to watch the monkey for us while my mother in law is on vacation (she usually watches her one, or possibly three(! depending on my husband's schedule) days a week).

Yesterday I came home and my Mom told me how good she'd been. No crying and hardly any whining all day. Happy and helpful and listened - all those things.

Within a few minutes of me arriving home - whining and crying had started. My Mom looked at her and said - what is this? I just finished saying how good you were!

The monkey has learned the importance of grandparents and begun to master toddler-dom. Ah, I am so "proud," young grasshopper. (But still tired, so could you PLEASE quit whining?!)

Well, truthfully, she hasn't totally mastered manipulation. I mean she TOTALLY showed her hand in front of Grandma at the end there. (Whatever. Maybe she also realizes she's an only grandchild and is going to be completely spoiled regardless.)

Stress, random thoughts and the other junk I threw in here. Sorry...

2010-09-07T15:33:00.004-04:00

Hello, blogging world!

I know I've been a little MIA recently. The truth is - I am stressed. Sometimes it's that background music stress - that stuff that's always there playing in the back of your head, but you're not really listening to. But then I stop to think and its ugly head is raging up again and it's the bull in the china shop of my psyche stress.

So, you know, typical.

Anyway, as I like to diversify my stress (to hedge lest one should actually resolve!), it's coming in two flavors these days. The first is a personal issue that I just don't really want to talk about yet.

I'm sorry - I know that's annoying and it's not meant to be a cliffhanger. We'll get there, but just not today.

The second is work. And though I'm perfectly "ready" to talk about this one, no one in their right mind would be ready to listen! Seriously - for those of us working isn't the 5 minutes (or was that hours?) we take to check out blogs done to escape?! You don't want to hear my whines about work! (Well, you probably will at some point anyway. But I'll try to spare you this one today too!)

So I've been a little quieter on the blogging front to keep from doing the mental upchuck of all my stress (which could lead to real physical upchuck of any poor readers!).

So instead I throw out some random stories to amuse:

How Daddy reads children's stories:

This one was Pooh's New Clothes or something (it's the Emporer's New Clothes, but with the pooh characters).

Pooh was walking through the forest to the bee tree to look for some honey when he saw all his friends standing together. He wondered what they were doing.

(and for the ad lib)
It turns out it was an intervention. See - it's obvious. There's the Pooh with the honey AND he's looking for more.

**********************
How Baby Decorates

I've mentioned the plethora of ugly wall paper in our house before. We're working on removing, but apparently not fast enough.

I took the monkey in the bathroom with me and she started out by pulling down all the magazines (as usual) and ripping some. When suddenly she noticed something that looked more fun to rip. Before I could stop her she'd grabbed a peeling edge of wallpaper and RIP!

Guess maybe we'll move up redecorating here...

**********************
Be careful what you say...

As the monkey bent in half starting to do a headstand / forward roll / God knows what..., my Mom looked at her and said - "You're amazing!"

It's now her favorite word ("mazing"). I'm not sure she knows what it means, but she knows it's a good thing and she knows it refers to her (I'm not sure if she's really putting two words together yet or not, but she does seem to be saying "I'm mazing."). It's getting a little narcissistic...

Thank goodness this isn't one of "Daddy's" words...

**********************
Faking it

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this one before... So here goes - Like all kids, my daughter has perfected the fake cry (the one that stops the second she gets attention / what she wants). But she's got a few others now too - the fake cough, the fake sneeze (achoo). But my personal favorite is the fake laugh.

If she hears other people laughing, she'll suddenly jump in with a really boisterous - HA HA HA!

I've also started asking her to find her laugh when we do body parts. (I'd started with smile - which leads to this really over the top, squinched eyes smile.) But then, as nothing is "funny," her laugh tends to be more like - sigh, ha, ha. I'm humoring you.

Somehow the whole day was gone trying to sleep. Which never quite happened. So it just kind of sucked. But then we were grown ups again.

2010-08-31T15:17:00.000-04:00

The title sums up quite a lot of my Friday and Saturday.

After Thursday, I started the day Friday exhausted. My husband got held over at work which meant that he got home around lunch - I was counting the hours. All day we both felt beat and sort of lounged around the family room - but with a toddler, so no real sleeping actually happened and that "hint" of sleep (so close, I can almost taste it but alas, no) felt possibly worse than actually running around all day would have.

Much of Saturday felt the same. Till finally as the monkey and I were sobbing together about her inability to fall asleep, my husband decided to take her for a ride and leave me to sleep. I blessed him, but then felt horribly guilty and whormonally (thank you, Single Girl! -
http://domesticationofthesinglegirl.blogspot.com/) cried again for awhile.

I HATE those type of days.

But then Saturday night we went out to a party downtown. It was my friend's birthday and she and her roommate had commandeered the party room in their condo as well as the balcony (an awesome location overlooking the China town arch) to celebrate. Suddenly I saw friends I hadn't seen in ... God knows how long. Adult beverages were served (and this is one of my cool friends, so real adult beverages - mixed drinks, but tons of prosecco and bellinis and wine and microbrews and, oh crap, I'm not drinking. Damn it.) and adult conversations had. But she also had a pinata (I was the muscle behind finally breaking this one too. And was then accused of juicing...). .

The one downside was talking to all my childless friends who planned to sleep till noon the next day and maybe shower by 2 or so.

Jerks.

How many times a day can your child bleed before it starts to become a reflection on your parenting?

2010-08-30T14:00:00.003-04:00

Is it less than 3? If it's less than 3, I'm in trouble.

Last Thursday was one of those days. I woke up feeling like crap and realizing that motherhood did not come with any sick days - damn. I figured I'd muscle through it and decided to take the baby for a walk. Muscle through it, my butt... I was barely hobbling home wondering how long it would take me to get the monkey out of the stroller and into the bathroom with me. I moved the baby gates to make the bathroom accessible - I had no time for this. By the 4th or so trip in, she had no time for this either. But I managed to control her ire via tv watching. We usually try to minimize this. Not so on Thursday. Look - we have a collection of vintage episodes of the Muppets right here! (Then in a fit of self pity, I even put on the movie I'd been watching the night before.)

Anyway, eventually I felt better, so on with the day and errands. As usual, the monkey was opposed to the nap concept, so I had to trick her into it with a car ride. But unusually I was actually able to transfer her from the car seat to her crib so I could lay down too - maybe my day was looking up! Of course, that transfer always means that the nap will not be long.

But, as she'd napped, I decided we could go to the pool. Despite the fact that she was really still overtired and a bit cranky. And the problem with a tired toddler is that they're sort of like little drunks. Flitting from one thing to another on unsteady feet - and they fall down. A lot.

So in my brilliance, I'd taken this small person ready to fall down to a concrete filled area. The possibilities are well, not really endless. In fact, they are pretty limited to the obvious bad thing that's about to happen (cue after school special music).

We were there about an hour before the big fall. I ran and checked her knees and hands glad there were no (more) scrapes. But I soon realized that that was because she'd managed to take quite a bit of the fall with her forehead. Oh jeez! Luckily it wasn't actually that bad (technically, she didn't actually bleed, which my friend insisted meant that it shouldn't count in my accident numbers for the day). I went to the lifeguards (always Eastern European youths, it seems. I have no idea why this is) to ask for ice. One checked the first aid kit and reported, no we don't have any. I went to get her a cold/wet cloth from the bathroom (only it wasn't that cold) and when we came back out, he told me - oh, we found some in the refridgerator (what a place to look for it!). Here, I wrapped it in cotton (meaning, stuck a half dozen cotton balls around it, which are thick enough to not conduct the cold at all) for you.

He then followed me back to our stuff as I tried to put the ice on her head (this is what the monkey considers adding insult to injury or are you effing kidding me?) and get her changed so we could go. The lifeguard then asked me - how did this happen?

Now I know that he might be 17 (in 3 years) and obviously does not have kids or much exposure to small children and he's male and all that, but it was the Mom in me that responded - she was walking. She's a toddler. She's not very good at it yet and she falls down sometimes. (I tried to hide the silent duh in that sentence. I know it's not fair. I mean, among other things - there ARE in fact other ways she could have hurt herself like getting in or out of the pool or... well, maybe that's it. And it's probably just a standard question they need to ask for reports. It was just that his tone seemed so perplexed - like, wow, how did this happen?!)

Anyway, the lifeguard was very nice and did try to play with her / distract her some. I just wasn't having such a good day...

So we went home.

And a couple hours later I decided to make dinner. And as I turned on the oven, the monkey started climbing into her high chair. I hate that she does this. I always want to hover and hold and "help." She's so little. The floor is so far away. But I can't actually seem to stop this from happening. So I just live with the heart palpitations. But I must have gotten too used to my fear - as rather than run to help her, I actually went to turn off the oven (if she was already climbing into her chair, she was hungry. I clearly didn't have time to bake chicken nuggets (oh yeah, I'm a regular Betty Crocker) and would have to nuke them.

And in that second, she fell.

And there was wailing and gnashing of teeth.

And blood.

Oh how I hate that sight.

She was fine in the end. As much as she would let me look in her mouth, it didn't appear that any teeth were chipped or knocked out (wouldn't it be nice if I could get the first set in before she's spitting them into her sippy cup?) - just blood. It looked like she'd bit / somehow split her lip (well, a little).

The Muppets were brought back out (why not rot her mind at this point too?) to soothe and she decided she liked the little ice pack things. And I think she particularly liked getting to eat chicken nuggets on the couch with the tv on (like the grown ups do! Well, not that she'd know that... I hope!).

And I prayed for bedtime to arrive fast and without further injury.

God help us.

The big hooha about hoohas

2010-08-25T11:34:00.003-04:00

My parents like to say that they always believed in telling us anatomically accurate names for things. There wasn't poop in the toilet, but feces. I didn't have to go potty - I had to go to the bathroom. I didn't pee. I urinated.

My Dad liked to tell the story of one time when my brother was very young and told my grandmother that he needed to go make urine from his penis. She was horrified! How could they teach him such words! My Dad said, he responded - what should he say? I have to make zee-zoo from zumba (or something like that). It's silly. He should use the right words. (Um, ok, maybe what he should have said was - I have to go to the bathroom... But then again, my Dad liked to exaggerate or hyperbolize, as he might prefer, so this story may be well, 100% accurate.)

Regardless, my parents were all about correct words. Except I didn't know what MY private parts were called until ... I don't know, when do you learn this stuff in biology? Probably Middle School or something. In fact, several years ago when I was reading The Vagina Monologues my Dad seemed to avoid using the book's title - till I finally called him out on it and he sort of mumbled the name. (I was probably 26.) I noted that they'd never taught me the proper word when my brother had learned penis and I think my Dad pointed out that you don't, in fact, urinate out of your vagina, so it's not the proper word. (After that I don't think any of could actually come up with what the proper word would be. Urinary tract?)

So now I'm the parent and the question of language has come up with my husband. Now I'm know that he is NOT in favor of teaching her vagina (apparently vulva is technically more accurate, but let's not REALLY confuse matters. I mean most adults wouldn't know what she was saying. OK, maybe it was just me...), but then comes the question of what to call the waste.

The thing is pee and poop seem so much more universal terms (i.e., not just used by kids) than when we were kids. Urinate or defecate/feces seem so... I don't know? Can a poop word be formal?

I was reading a little article on this this morning that suggested we shouldn't treat genitalia any differently than any other body part. You'd never come up with a cute kid name for your elbow, so why the penis or vagina?

Have I said vagina too many times in this post? Hmm... and this is probably why it's good I blog anonymously (Mom).

Then I read a really interesting (by which I mean kind of scary) comment on the article. It was from someone who worked with Child Protective Services. She suggested that God forbid a child is abused, if they don't know the appropriate words for body parts when they meet with the police, they may not explain what happened correctly and the case could be thrown out.

So that feels a little like an extreme scare tactic... And yet...

Ugh. Parenthood is hard (said in Barbie's "math is hard" voice).

What did you (or do you plan to) teach your kids? Any other thoughts on the subject?

Monday Minute - which is apparently the when I feel like it minute now...

2010-08-24T17:18:00.002-04:00

So the Monday Minute has moved from Ian to (dum, dum, dum!) Melissa and Heather

And just to be crazy, I thought I'd participate.

ish... sometime well into Tuesday... Ugh. Dude, it's been that type of week. And it's only Tuesday...

What is your favorite 80s flick?

OK, I LOVE 80's movies! I just recently saw Hot Tub Time Machine and all the 80's references were BEYOND AWESOME. I don't know where to go here - John Hughes did some awesome stuff (Sixteen Candles, Breakfast Club, Better off Dead - if I'm messing up my references here and those aren't him - see note on it's Tuesday and I'm posting for Monday). Pretty much anything with John Cusack (Better off dead makes the list again, One Crazy Summer, Say Anything).

But I might have to note two of my favorites to watch IN THEATERS when they came out (because I am THAT old!) - Back to the Future and Adventures in Babysitting.

Oh man... Ferris Bueller's Day Off - I can't NOT watch that when it comes on... Oh, and Red Dawn...

I'll stop now! This could go on awhile.

One genre of music needs to be banned. Which genre?

Hmm... I'm not a fan of rap. But if I could ban one thing from the radio, it might be Diane Reams (spelling?) on NPR. Or maybe just all of NPR. I know, I know - I'm a phillistine. But when I get into my husband's car and he's listening to this stuff. Ugh. Can we play some music? Just not rap...

What is your all time favorite candy?

Wow, very mood dependent as well. I think M&Ms are really high on my list. Possibly dipped in peanut butter - which is way better than peanut butter M&Ms. And way messier.

How 'flawed' is your driving record?

Not too bad. Actually, scrap that. I'm going to be driving soon and I've seen speed traps recently. I just don't want to talk about this. it's a total jinx waiting to happen!

What was high school mascot?

Lions!

and finally...

What color socks are you wearing?

None. I LOVE summer!

We're all in this alone together

2010-08-17T15:48:00.003-04:00

A couple of years ago I got back in touch with a good friend of mine from high school via Facebook (ah, facebook, you crazy and surreal portal into my past...). We've been talking on and off, but hadn't caught up in awhile. I got a message from her today that reminded me of how universal the loneliest and most isolating experiences of motherhood are. It reminded me a lot of why I started to blog in the first place and as I thought about all we said, I wanted to post something here.

She explained that she's under a ton of stress. Her husband was laid off again and rehired to an old company, but is making less money, so finances are very tight. Her whole family is sick and her husband is under tons of stress at work, so is working his butt off and unable to help. Her baby doesn't sleep well and her toddler has become very difficult all at once. She's got some good stuff going on as well - her husband has a show for a side project soon, which sounds really exciting and, I guess, prestigious. It also may mean a chance to make some extra money, but until the show he will have to work very hard preparing - leaving her to continue to parent alone.

So there she is - struggling with finances, struggling with sanity with kids who won't sleep and struggling with balancing two kids who need a lot from her. And, while I think she generally gets a lot of joy out of being a Mom, it just sounds like it ALL feels like a struggle for her right now.

It got me thinking. The thing is - while we don't have the same immediate pressures that she has right now, many of those same stresses plague me. Both of us having left the corporate fast track (him for fire fighting, me for a part time mommy track) and taking the associated income hits while trying to live the American dream has been a struggle. I've never worried about money the way I do now. (Note - I'm totally type A. I'm a saver. Money HAS to go into my 401k. Money HAS to go into Savings for a rainy day. Money HAS to go to the monkey's 529. And truthfully, there often isn't enough to do all that and pay the mortgage, etc. Our spending seems to outpace savings a lot of months in a way that makes me ... itchy.)

But more than that, maybe I was reading into it or projecting my own feelings, but I really sensed a loneliness in her "complaints" about the current difficulties of motherhood. Her husband was too busy to help. Her mother made things worse when she tried to help (made her son nap when he was too much for her and returned her a cranky, hyper kid). Her in-laws were no help and drove her blood pressure through the roof.

Now, we're really lucky. My in-laws are a GREAT help and very often give us a break. And, while my Mom doesn't live in the area, she's usually available in a pinch (she LOVES that kid!). And, despite so often being sleep deprived and overworked himself, my husband let me nap one day recently when I was just worn out saying - 'I know that extra sleep / naps are part of your standard maintenance. I knew it when I married you and have to let you have a break to recharge sometimes.' (I've sadly ALWAYS been that way. Pathetic.) But that doesn't stop me from feeling overwhelmed and exhausted sometimes (those naps aren't an every day or every week thing!). And when I do, I ABSOLUTELY feel like I'm all alone in this. In fact, I feel like NO ONE understands (no matter how involved my husband is with the baby). And possibly that NO ONE ELSE feels this way!

(has anyone EVER felt this way before?)

Because lack of sleep (and by that I (apparently) mean less than an average of 8-9 hours!) does not make me rational.

But now, in a rational (though actually not all that well rested - why on earth did we watch that dumb movie last night instead of sleeping...?) moment, I think that maybe everyone feels this way. That maybe this is one of those secrets of motherhood.

Like the fact that I find 24 hours in the baby's company alone without playdates and errands and distractions kind of boring... I canonly stack those dang blocks so many times in between yelling "sit" when she stands on the furniture for the 1000th time while desperately praying that she'll nap today so I can nap too... Are you going to report me now?

So I started trying to think of ways to overcome it. To deal with it. Crap, let's face it, I turned into a boy listener and looked for ways to FIX it. (She lives too far away for me to offer to watch her kids for her for a few hours. As in, we live in VA and she lives in AZ.)

Well, actually, first I went to the root of what I think my greatest issue with adult (and specifically mommy) stress is. It's not finite. And because it's not finite, it feels INFINITE! (I feel like there should have been lightening and thunder on that.)

Seriously, think about it. As a kid, you can usually limit your problems to getting through this test / this class / this semester / this school year (or at worst, my time at this school?). OK, all those things FEEL incredibly long at the time (and some are!). But there's still a predictable end to them - even if that end is SO FAR away. There's a light at the end of the tunnel.

In adulthood, they tell us that light is the oncoming train...

But adult problems are not pushed into segments. Your dead end job can feel like you're stuck there forever. And your child who won't sleep? Will she EVER sleep? I mean, ok, probably, but there's no definitive timeframe on when that'll happen. It'll probably be before she goes to college. I think... But right now I can't conceive of a time when I'll be able to sleep past 7 on a weekend to make up for the deprivation now.

Oh, you parents of teenagers who you have to pry out of bed at noon, laugh at me. I know it's coming - laugh!

The well rested and well adjusted CAN laugh...

So, I thought like a boy and thought about fixes - the need for a light at the end of the tunnel / something to look forward to. I suggested that after her husband's show was done, she should get an afternoon "off" where he and/or her mother watched the kids and she napped or had a small luxury (a pedicure, coffee with friends, a haircut, a bath with a glass of wine); that maybe she could be specific with her Mom on what EXACTLY she needs from her or could drop one or both kids to her Mom with a very specific activity for them (so she doesn't make them nap. BTW - dude, IF ONLY I knew how to "make" my daughter nap...); that maybe if the side business made some money a small amount could be set aside for a babysitter for a few hours so she could have a little me time (or if not, maybe she could do a babysitting co-op). Finally, I thought maybe she could come up with some activities that were low stress and fun for her kids, so that she had a good back up plan on the worst days (and to give herself a break on letting a little TV slip in on the really really worst days).

But after saying all this - I don't know if it's helpful. I mean, I don't know if she wanted advice. And, if so, if it was at all good. But, just in case it is, I throw it out to you - what are some of your best coping strategies on those overwhelming days?

By the way, also, do you think that the stress / loneliness / alone and I'm the only one who ever felt this way feelings are universal? Or am I REALLY the only one who ever felt this way?!?!?! Maybe I'm whormonal*.

*Note - awesome spelling of hormonal SHAMELESSLY stolen from The Single Girl. After the insuing lawsuits, she will most likely own me and therefore also this blog, but worry not - she's way funnier than me, so it'll be an improvement.

Trophy Wife, part 2

2010-08-16T09:53:00.005-04:00

I wrapped my 3 year old goddaughter's birthday gift in paper covered with pictures of alcoholic drinks. (The night before, I realized it was the only paper we had and it was too late (i.e. I was too lazy) to go out and get other paper.) I tried to disguise this with a gift bag - narrowly managing to find one that wasn't Christmas or new baby themed (only just).

I did at least manage to take out the bottle of wine for her Mom (she was about to live through a party with 3 year olds!) before I gave it to her.

Hmm, I must have put my *appropriate* wrapping paper next to my Mother of the Year award...

***********

The monkey and I went to the party (the husband had to work) at the beach/marina. I managed to lather the baby up with sunscreen, but somehow thought I'd be fine... Midway through the party I realized I was burning a bit. I thought about sunscreen then, but realized I couldn't reach my back (I was wearing a sundress) and would just have weird tan lines then. I'm burned to a crisp! My husband looked and assessed the damage as 1st degree burns over 30% of my body. It's really attractive... And dehydrating (I wake up feeling hung over without drinking every morning).

Must have stored my sunscreen next to my common sense. Or was it next to the medal for setting a good example for my young child?

I'm going to argue this isn't so bad an example. She can now see how painful and damaging a bad sunburn is without getting one herself! Yup, that's it.

Note - this award will come in the form of a sunburn tattoo. My sister in law looked at me while assessing the burn and said - were you holding the baby a lot on this side (indicating my right). Yeah, I guess so, why?

Because you have a handprint on your arm.

Oh good.

***********

And this time the award goes to my neighbor (for once it's not me!)...

My husband came home from work on Thursday morning exhausted. I suggested he go take a nap and I'd head to Target with the monkey for... oh, something. Who remembers what my pilgrimage to Target was for now? I didn't want to drive his truck to the store, so I pulled it out of the driveway and put it on the street to get my car out. (I reasoned I could leave it there because he'd be leaving in a few hours anyway. If I put it in the driveway, we'd just have to switch up the cars later.)

About 20 minutes into my errand, my phone rings. His car just got hit. He was half asleep upstairs and heard a loud crash. He decided to look out the window to see what it was, but didn't immediately see anything. Then he noticed a guy walking up our driveway. Ugh.

He heads downstairs to talk to him. Apparently the guy didn't even slow down (which he told his own insurance as well) thereby creaming the entire side of the car. He started making excuses to my husband (while admitting fault) that there were cars on both sides of the street and oncoming traffic. My husband, who teaches driving to fire fighters, said - so what should you have done? Should you have slowed down?

Ugh.

Our doorbell rang at about 8 the next night. It was another neighbor asking us to settle an argument between him and his wife. He insisted the guy had to be completely drunk to hit a parked car like that. My husband said - nope, stone cold sober. Just an awful driver (as his wife had said countless times when she brought his insurance info over. Always good to be supportive...).

And the award for worst driver (a stupid sign for your forehead to warn the world) does NOT go to me today! Woo hoo!

***********

UPDATE - Just peeled my shirt off my back from where the aloe had stuck it too my skin. Eww, eww, ewww! Ouch. And, oh yeah, EWWWWWW!!!! Paralyzed by the grossness, must go now.

Trophy wife

2010-08-11T09:25:00.003-04:00

I should start by telling you that my husband has this thing about cheerleading. I’m not exactly sure why – and really, it’s not important – but he’s adamant that our daughter should not be a cheerleader (remember – she’s 18 months old). In fact, we were having dinner with some friends a few weeks ago and something came up about cheering. He was holding their 3 year old daughter – I think he was lifting her up and joking that he would do this as long as it didn’t lead to pyramids and such in her future. He looked at her and said, Ok, we can do the lift again – as long as you promise me you won’t be a cheerleader! I looked at him and stage whispered across – her mother (who was sitting next to him) was a cheerleader. He turned red, but the Mom took it all in stride and said – ah, I know you go home and say, Give me a T, give me an E, etc.

I know that many people who read this may have been cheerleaders. Your daughters may be cheerleaders. Please don’t shoot the messenger here! The truth is I cheered too.

Well, sort of. Truthfully… I wasn’t much of an athlete.

I took gymnastics for years (from about 5 to 13 or 14) and I played some different sport most years in grade school. The thing was – it was essentially a different sport every year. I’d do it one year, discover my lack of talent, move on to the next sport. (Realistically, looking back, I was probably just starting to get a little better at some by the end of season, but whatever.)

Second grade was soccer – the only girl on an all boys team. Pass! I finished out the season (because we don’t quit!), but that was it for me. Third grade was cheerleading (see!). I was a “mascot” – you had to be in 5th grade to be a real member of the team. 4th grade I think was track (a teammate's jog was my sprint – ugh). 5th grade basketball (have I mentioned before I was littlest angel in our school play because I was, well, littlest? Prolly not my sport...). 6th grade cheerleading again – this time as a “full” member. 7th grade softball – and by then I’d exhausted all the sport options and stopped. High school offered new sport options, but… oh school was far away and practice ran so late I’d miss my carpool and when would I do homework and… You get the picture. I believe my next athletic attempt came with adult kickball!

Fast forward to yesterday. My Mom was coming to visit and in the process of cleaning out the basement had found all the old trophies and decided that while they should probably go in the trash, it was up to me to throw them out. (Such parental pride! OK, so maybe that Halloween parade participant trophy isn’t really a necessary part of life…) My husband starts looking through them. There were trophies (well, participant trophies anyway) for each of the sports I’d played. There were academic trophies (geek!). There were probably half a dozen gymnastics trophies. There were Halloween trophies – God knows what else! But what does he focus on? Cheerleading! He jumps on the cheerleading trophies with "I can’t believe you cheered!" (By the way, we've had this discussion before. He knows I cheered. He knew it before we were married. We have not found grounds for anullment here.) Guess we know which ones will hit the trash first if he has a say. (Note – he doesn’t.)

Oh, I never knew it would be so hard to be a trophy wife.

My God if you'd only STOP BREATHING (at least so loudly)!

2010-08-09T15:41:00.003-04:00

Have you ever been stuckwith a heavy breather?

No, no - not in the dirty sense (this time. I think I worked with a few of those too. Probably a more interesting story if I work through that... Hmm...). Just someone who breathes REALLY loudly all the time. It's like ... daytime snoring!

I try not to say too much about people I know that I wouldn't also say to their faces. Yeah, yeah, this is anonymous so it doesn't matter and all that, but still. It's anonymous so I can be honest about me / my feelings.

So that friend I made fun of for sending out a mass email every week about every poop and breath her son had won't catch on...

But anonymous doesn't really give me license to just be mean and inconsiderate. I try to avoid talking about the topics (ok, people) who drive me to that. But today...

I work in an office. Not just an office building, but randomly most people who work here have actual walled offices (don't get some crazy silly impression I'm important and executive. I'm not. It's just our layout). Now this is usually nice in that it does cut down on the amount you have to listen to some of the annoying habits / conversations of coworkers and gives you some quiet space to get work done. But somehow the distance across the hall is not enough today!

I just had to get up to close my door because the guy next door was actually breathing SO LOUD that not only could I hear it, but it was getting REALLY annoying. (Note - no, not the first time.) I don't think he's asleep in there (i.e., actually snoring. Anyway, most people don't snore this loud. Ok, maybe they do...). And, I've walked past - he's not working out or doing anything physical. These are desk jobs.

Here's the worst part though - I mean, how on earth can you possibly complain about that? You sound like a crazy person! Seriously - you're whining that someone is breathing too loud? I'm going to go home and tell my husband and he'll likely accuse me of being hormonal

Except that he's heard about this guy before and has seen him, so there's a chance he'll know enough to believe it of him.

Like the woman in an old office who complained that a coworker typed too loud.

Although I did later sit next to the loud typer and with those long acryllic nails, I had to admit... Never mind, never mind!

So - what drives you nuts? Give me your weirdest / lamest / sounds most ridiculous and petty example. Don't leave me hanging here!

Google is now a standard install on your toddler

2010-08-05T10:15:00.000-04:00

The other day my husband was dropping our daughter off at his Mom’s. She was showing the monkey her new books to play with and other toys. This lasted a few minutes till the monkey put down the book, went over to the computer, pointed at it and said “Google.”

As she is spoiled as all heck, they turned on the computer for her, but it didn’t open to the standard Google screen. She looked at them again and pointing to the screen said, “Google.” So they brought up the Google screen and she started typing away – ah yes, Google. I know – the yahoo algorithms really just don’t work as well, do they, baby?

I really thought the potty mouth would come from my husband

2010-08-04T10:12:00.000-04:00

Now that the monkey is almost 18 months, she’s really starting to pick up on language and try to repeat things. We’ve been trying to take advantage of this to teach her some basic words and work on repetition. My Mom was here last week and decided to work on the dog’s name – Shiloh.

No, we did NOT name our dog after that Jolie Pitt kid. Our dog is 10. Maybe she was named after him.

So my Mom said – Shi-loh, can you say Shiiii-looooh? The monkey looked at her and said shit. Every time my Mom tried to turn that into Shiloh, the monkey said shit. I tried saying “Loh. Can you say loh?” She looked at me said – shit.

Yesterday we were upstairs playing in her room when the dog started barking downstairs. She started calling Shit. If you didn’t know what she meant, it really sounded like – oh shit, that damn dog is barking again. Great.

My husband looked at my Mom and pointed out that he had actually been working on cleaning up his language around the baby – thanks a lot, lady.

Uninspired, but busy! The story of our landscaping…

2010-08-03T10:36:00.000-04:00

The title says it all. Despite being pretty busy these days, I am feeling a bit uninspired and didn’t want to just bore you with drivel. But now it’s been a week, so I guess… bore away! ;) No, no – I’ll try harder! (Also, our landscaping is totally uninspired and very busy...)

So busy, you say? Yes… A bit. In all my house buying posts, I think I mentioned that the house we bought needed a bit of work. I mean – not so much a fixer upper as “well cared for” in real estate parlance – i.e., nothing has been updated in YEARS. We did a bit, but then ran short on time, money, stamina and stopped for a bit. But as it got warmer outside we realized that “well cared for” did not extend to our yard. Nothing had been done there – even basic upkeep – in a LONG, LONG time. We have this small fenced in area behind the house, but then our yard extends much further beyond the fence (not like miles – like our yard is maybe 2 or 2.5x as big as the small fenced part) and that was crazy overgrown. Just unusable. In the front, we have a big oak right in front of the house surrounded by ivy – crazy ivy everywhere! As we can’t seem to grow grass (apparently oaks suck up a lot of water? Who knew?), the ivy was ground cover. But now one had kept it in check – it extended into the back and even into the “woods” behind us. Then to the side (still in the front), we have another little “forest” (ok, not really – it’s small. But so overgrown you can’t walk through it. I tried raking it in the spring and 10 bags later you couldn’t tell I’d done anything.)

We needed to get to work. My husband started pulling out the overgrowth in front of the house (azalea bushes that hadn’t been trimmed back in this millennium and other overgrowth). As he did, he found a huge stump a few feet from the house – old and rotten and just never removed. He took load after load to the dump. This was getting old…

So we decided to rent a dumpster. We had SO MUCH undergrowth to attack, but also there were several trees that needed to come down. Dead and dying ones. Ones that abutted the house ruining our roof, whose roots were headed into the foundation. Ones that should have been trimmed back years ago! The dumpster arrived last Monday and work commenced. My husband started pulling out brush and cutting down trees while I was at work and my Mom stayed with us to watch the baby. In a couple of days, the dumpster was pretty full. We called to see about replacing it (and this is where it gets hairy). Due to miscommunication, we thought the replacement was included in our contract – but really, it was a whole new dumpster. It arrived Thursday morning and was half full by the end of the day. As we thought the replacements were included, I suggested that maybe we should get a new one on Friday in case they couldn’t deliver on the weekends. We ordered one. But that evening, my husband thought through his conversation with the dumpster company. Had they actually said it was included? Well, no. And it didn’t really make sense to include it… I mean, they were expensive to get out to us. He called them back. Not included. This was a whole new dumpster / new contract / new fee. Crap! We cancelled the 3rd one coming and the guy was really nice and gave us a bit of a discount (about 20%). So now we are filling the hell out of this thing.

Now I don’t like to think of myself as a “girly” girl, but really – I’m not exactly great with the Great Outdoors. Each day I’ve been helping us clear things out I’ve attired myself in long pants tucked into my socks (just to make sure I look as dorky as possible), a shirt, a hat (God knows what creepy crawlies are out there!) and more bug spray than you can imagine! Then I’ve gone about tripping over myself as I haul away branches and wheel barrows – stopping to think, I look like a bad tv show / movie about idiots in the woods as the branches manage to catch on the fence as I pass and then hit me in the face.

But the progress has been amazing. We managed to create a huge clearing beyond our fence (that might once day house a swing set or maybe a little patio. Or, per my husband, a pit bbq…) on Thursday. On Friday morning we looked out and saw four large bucks standing in! Of course we weren’t on top of getting pictures, but man, it was really cool! My husband said he also saw a lone Indian crying out there and maybe the Lorax…

Once all the bigger stuff was gone we moved on to the mind numbingly repetitive / boring part… Cutting back the brush, raking out all the leaves, getting all the small crap into the dumpster. Kill me now. While I worked on this, my husband started attacking the stumps (so his work was more back breakingly hard than mind numbingly boring). I’ve suggested we paint the remainder of the larger ones and make them into little tables for a play area for my daughter (I think I saw that on a home improvement show once… something like that…).

Anyway, the hard labor continues. The real problem with it all that my husband noted is that the place was SO overgrown before that despite a week of hard work, no one would look at yard and think – wow, that looks amazing! Or even really good. We’ve just barely gotten it up to the clean slate of what it “should” look like now. On the “amazing” front… I can’t even pick out paint colors (When I was at my old job, we painted the condo bedrooms. I got the intern (marketing) to pick out the colors for me because I was too lame to figure it out for myself. And my husband is color blind.). I don’t think I’m going to do well with trees…

So if you have any suggestions for plantings that do well without a ton of sun and oak trees soaking up all the moisture (is there a grass that will survive this?), let me know! Or any great (and super cheap) design ideas? Or ways to get cheap materials? We have space – not great space, but space. And maybe even some skill (the “we” here refers entirely to my husband). But creativity and vision… it’s always something, isn’t it?

The cutest of late

2010-07-26T10:40:00.003-04:00

Shoes
Last week, the monkey decided she wanted to put on her shoes. And she alone did. This was sort of adorable, but... she can't put on her shoes. She's 17 months old - she can't quite coordinate this (unless it's a slip on) and can't buckle them. But she wouldn't accept help. I called my husband to say - well this is adorable today, but is going to get darn annoying soon!

****

Thank you!

The monkey has started saying thank you. Sort of. It sounds a lot like "DQ" or "Teeku." She generally repeats it if you say Thank you. And then because she gets such a good reaction, she says it over and over again.

By the way, the grandmothers have been "impressed" that she's putting two words together so young. I don't think this is quite fair... She has no idea that these are two words.

****
Eating

I've been meaning to do an update on eating - something consolidating all the great tips I got and letting you know how she's doing. Been meaning to for months... Um, anyway, so onto today...

OK, Ok, yes eating has gotten MUCH better. She's still a bit on the fussy side and we never actually went through the "human vacuum cleaner who will eat anything stage" - just right onto toddler pickiness, but OK. She will eat solids now - with a definite preference for cheerios or any form of carb (well, crackers and such).

So because she had been very picky, I didn't focus on letting her feed herself at all. I was just trying hard to get food into her! Until I read recently that at this age she should be able to use a fork and spoon (at least sometimes). Um, oops...

In my fear of feeding her until she's 20, I decided to start putting the utensils out and letting her go to town (so the dog gets fatter). And, genius that I am, I started this process on pasta with sauce this weekend. The good news - she actually at the pasta! The bad news - I think she might STILL have some in her ears...

Project management

2010-07-20T14:08:00.001-04:00

A friend of mine, ironically a male, once told me that any woman who planned a wedding should automatically get her PMP (project management certification if you are not stuck in my sad little world) at the end. He argued that all the crazy planning, managing expectations, budgeting and details were certainly a project worthy of some sort of degree (ironically also not gay).

When I got married, I thought – you know, he may have a point.

Now I realize, he clearly never had kids.

Saturday was one of those examples of a “nice working on this project with you, hon” type of day. The days we try to avoid. When my husband and I talked through our possible working options, one we thought about was – what if I work the days he doesn’t (excluding weekends in my case), averaging 3 days a week. My boss was surprisingly open to this (in theory), but I realized it would wreak havoc at work if no one ever knew when to expect me. And we also realized – this would just wreak havoc on our lives if all they really consisted of was “baby hand off.” My husband said that we ran the risk of raising a child being a project we were working on together rather than being a family. It’s one of those things that doesn’t jump out to you when you look at a schedule “on paper,” but can easily become a stark and cold reality when you actually do it. So instead I work Mon-Wed and his Mom watches the monkey one day a week and it turns out it gives us balance (what doesn’t jump out on that spreadsheet approach is that we haven’t always built in any time to sleep in our schedule, but that’s another topic for another day) most days. It’s always the “most” part that kills you.

My husband had worked 24 on Thursday with no sleep to speak of. He came home on Friday morning and, as always, it was pretty much time to run. I was actually off, so I tried to convince him to nap late morning when the monkey seemed ready to go down, but he wanted to head over to renters to take care of something they needed before it got too late. On the way back, the little one did, in fact, fall asleep in the car, so we kept driving. Then we had to run her by the doctor (slight low grade fever – what’s that about?). And suddenly it was dinner time and he hadn’t rested yet.

So Saturday when I got up with the baby to give her breakfast at 7 I told him to take a break and rest. After breakfast, I wanted to take her out on a wog/snog (wog = walk/jog. It’s mostly a walk with small parts of “snog” or snail’s paced jog), so I suggested he rest while I did that. He actually got up while we were out to start working on his slides for class the next day. I kept the monkey with me while I cleaned up and he worked and then I took her to the store with me. When he finished the slides, I was feeling the need for a break (though not nearly as long, Thursday had been a damn long day for me too), so I handed her off and he took her to Home Depot with him. She fell asleep in the car on the way back and it was my turn to drive her around so that he could hang baby gates without waking her. We came back in time to get her (and me) cleaned up / presentable to meet friends for dinner. The gates got done and we were 40 minutes late (maybe half of that was traffic…).

He looked at me when I outlined the plans on hand offs and said – um, when exactly do I get to hang out with you? I asked him how next Friday looked. Ugh.

Is it just me? Do you have those days too? How do you deal with them? Besides planning ahead (I forgot to mention the cake baking for the dinner part), as that’s clearly not an option!

Monday Minute: 07/19/2010 Survivor Style

2010-07-19T12:07:00.006-04:00

Today's Monday minute from Ian along with this week's cohost (drum roll, please!):

Michelle

What's your real name?

Inigo Montoya. You see why I haven't said before - I mean, no anonymity at all!

Have you ever fabricated a story or anything on your blog?

Nope. I've probably exaggerated. But if you met the rest of my family, you'd understand - I can't help it / don't even know I'm doing it / couldn't stop if I tried.

When in the car do you listen to the radio/CDs/iPod/etc?

I can't seem to get my iPod to play through my car even though there's a little hook up thing (what the heck!). I usually listen to the radio with CDs for kids stuff - either her songs or a book on CD for me to stay awake while she sleeps.

Describe the 'sexiest' item of clothing that you own.

Hmm... I don't know. I have these leather pants that everyone always seems to react to (wait, that came out wrong. I mean, my friends are always like - whoa! I guess because they are "unexpected" for me - one of my favorite things about them.), but truthfully I don't think they're that 'sexy.' My friend got them for me on super uber sale at a Gap clearance center (think outlet on crack), but they pretty much fit like Gap classic fit jeans do - not exactly tight or anything. They are fun though!

My early to mid 20s wardrobe had a lot more in this category - when I was young, single and skinny! I had some tight shiny vinyl pants that were really fun (for the unexpected factor). I also had at least one wrap around shirt that showed a bit of mid-drift. I was never really comfortable in that one though as I didn't think my stomach was flat enough for it (what I wouldn't give now!).

Would you be willing to breastfeed your friend's three year old child?

No. No. NO!!!!!! I wouldn't be willing to breastfeed my OWN 3 year old child! Ugh.

OK, fine, I'll caveat - if we're stuck on a desert island and I don't have my currently non-existent new baby with me (the one that would be causing me to lactate) and it's not looking good, but I can make this a little more bearable for the dehydrated 3 year old and maybe give him/her a better shot. OK, then, yes.

Outside of Lost or Survivor style reality TV, I'm not seeing a whole heck of a lot of other circumstances where I'd do this though.

Well, as I already had my soapbox out this week…

2010-07-16T10:30:00.000-04:00

I came across this article from the LA Times this week I thought I’d share. It has NOTHING to do with my normal blog topics, but it made me think a lot so I thought I’d pass it on.

The article covers legislation in France that makes it illegal for women to wear burqas in public places. It says that this vote passed because the burqa “undermines French values” (being about subservience, not religion), but it’s overall seen as attempt to “clamp down on Islamic extremism.”

On the one hand, I’m a religious person (though not Muslim) and don’t like the idea of restricting religious freedom. On the other, I wonder how many women really WANT to wear a burqa and how many are forced to so that this law would “free” them and give them equality in exactly the way it says.

But throwing out arguments about religious freedom (though those are the most likely to reverse any decision), I thought about this a bit more and just kept coming up with more questions, like:

1. Doesn’t this just restrict these women all the more? Won’t they be forced to stay out of the public entirely now? Doesn’t this give the males the French see as oppressing them more power and the women less freedom, as now they can’t even leave their homes?

2. Or, what if the women WANT to wear the burqa? Trying to think of what might be an equivalent (though I don’t understand much about the rules on the burqa), what if I were forced to leave the house only in a bikini? Or my underwear? (or would it be even less?) I would feel uncomfortable (and, on display and all sorts of other things). I would feel more restricted to my home. And, honestly, I’d feel like that law was totally oppressing and objectifying me. So does this type of rule do exactly the opposite of what it suggests/intends for some women?

And then there are all the arguments about religious freedom… Or does the burqa “scare” the average person the street because they see it as extremism and worry about terrorism? So is it about making 99% of people feel safer? Are they actually really concerned that maybe it’s not a woman in the burqa but that such a large shapeless dress could conceal a man with a bomb strapped to his chest – in which case it’s not about the perception of safety, but about real safety?

As you can see, I am ALL OVER THE MAP on this one. So I was sort of wondering what the ol’ interwebby thought of it all. I have a traffic jam of thoughts roaming through my head and wondered about other perspectives on it – what do you think?

And on to Savannah

2010-07-15T10:30:00.000-04:00

After a few days in Charleston we headed to Savannah. We again started with a self guided walking tour and late in the (very hot) afternoon) found another fountain designated as a pool I, of course, had NOT put a bathing suit or swim diaper in the baby bag, so we decided to just let her go in with her clothes on this time and change her after. It took her a few minutes to warm up to the idea again again, but then she loved it and cried when it was time to go.

This one was a little different as you couldn’t really wade into the fountain, but instead there were spots where water was sprouting up from the ground that you could run through and other spots of mini waterfalls about the monkey’s height that she could get under. And, in the spirit of all that is random, this one had a lifeguard!

Mostly she seemed to be there to stop the kids from running. With a 17 month old, I was pretty glad for it (the monkey had been knocked into / over a couple of times) and yet, we all know I’m not REALLY mature enough to be a parent as I was looking at the kids running and thinking – dude, if I were a 9 year old boy I’m not sure I could NOT run either! The place was MADE for running! For leapfrogging over each of the spouts of water as fast as you can!

Anyway, after a hot afternoon of exploring the pretty parks and architecture of Savannah (and wondering if maybe I should try to read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil again. Then remembering that I really couldn’t get into it/ didn’t like it and I should probably just rend the movie…), we decided to go to Tybee beach the next day.

I have a theory that my body NEEDS to experience sand between my toes several times a year to keep my equilibrium – and, dude, I was due! And it would be nice to have a relaxing day at the beach (or to find out if that concept was possible with a toddler). So we headed to the beach, bought some sand toys there and were lucky enough to get a spot under the pier with all the other parents trying to keep their kids out of the sun. And, in YET another example of how old I’m getting… it turns out it’s kind of nice to sit in the shade at the beach. You don’t get too hot. You don’t have to worry about sunburn. Yeah, I’m like a million. The monkey enjoyed playing in the sand (the one problem with under the pier is that’s generally where all the more… hmm “illicit?” stuff goes on at night, right? We’d cleared the area of any bottles or other garbage we saw, but the monkey was the one to find the used condom when she started digging. EW!). She even enjoyed the surf when she got used to it. And Momma enjoyed the soft serve ice cream before we left!

In order to avoid the horrors of another ALL DAY drive, we decided to stop in Chapel Hill on the way back – which was really cute, totally worth seeing (a side note – though we got there too late for real “touring,” I noticed a lot of stuff was free! Something I always love on a trip!). So we did 2 days of long drives instead…

The second day my husband pointed out that we could take the highways home or we could take 15 which would be way more scenic and only 40 minutes longer. I said, you know, if it was just us, I’d be all about 15. But… I don’t know… That last 40 minutes of a long car ride with the baby can be VERY long. So we took the highways. And she did well – till about the last hour / 1.5 hours mark and then all hell started to break loose and those words came back to us! We were glad not to add another 40 mins (although, to be fair, she did then fall asleep).

So we finally made it back and “staycation”-ed a couple of days at home. My sister in law even came over to baby-sit on Saturday so we could go to the movies (at which point we realized that there is nothing out and they apparently now charge $8 for popcorn! This is why I sneak snacks in… And why I clearly need to go buy the “mom purse” with room for more snacks!).

Yeah, so we’d finally arrived in Charleston (part II)

2010-07-14T11:22:00.003-04:00

We’d used points to get a room at Springhill Suites, hoping that “suites” would imply enough living space to give the baby some room. Not so much. So each night one of us would try to rock her / calm her down while the other one hid in the bathroom / closet / etc. waiting. Or we’d sit in the dark room / lay on the bed and pretend to be asleep till she went down – which, at least in my case, inevitably led to me actually falling asleep and waking up at midnight or so to brush my teeth and take out my contacts. My husband looked at me one night in Savannah when we were lying in bed at 8:30 while it was still light out and we could hear kids playing in the pool outside and said – “you know, this is the 9 year old me nightmare - going to bed when it’s light out and you can hear kids playing. At 33, it’s kind of awesome!”

So yes, sadly, I’m old and boring. Falling asleep at 8:30 sounded great! Especially as we seemed to have set ourselves a 3 or 4 am wake up call – of the biological variety when the baby would start crying. At home, when this goes on a few nights, we’ll start to let her cry it out (she’s going to be finding her way out of that crib soon and I really don’t want to spend 3 hours walking her back to her bed each night till she gets the idea that she has to stay there. As an aside, I am making no progress against this goal.), but we worried about doing this in a hotel where she might wake up the whole place (with that siren going, they might think it was an air raid!). So my husband would get her and move to the couch (this was the part that made it a “suite”) with her for the next few hours – while she moved the length of his body in her fitful sleep. At the second hotel, the couch was not at all comfortable, so at 6, he walked over to me and unceremoniously said – “your turn!” – while he laid down to try to get some feeling back in his extremities after cutting off circulation on the lower vertebrae. So I stayed awake while my “sort of” sleeping daughter made her way up and down the length of me – taking a foot in the belly, an elbow in the neck, whatever! Just make this kid sleep! Yeah, by the last nights, we decided she couldn’t cry that long and it would be just fine – the walls were thick enough. And, shockingly, it turned out it was – her tears were short lived and she went back to sleep. Well, dang, if I’d known that…

Anyway, our first full day in Charleston we decided to go see Fort Sumter. We took the ferry out, listened to the tour and then were told we had about an hour on the island before the boat left, so get going. It’s actually a small island, but we really felt like we could use another 15-30 minutes (I’d say the monkey did NOT agree). I thought we could take whatever ferry back rather than being relegated to the one we came on, so we asked. Yes, but the next ferry coming was actually coming from a different place. We could get on that one, but it wouldn’t take us back to our car. Hmm…OK. The next one coming from our port would get us back about 3 hours later. So, uh, not 30 minutes then? We decided we could probably read about whatever was in the museum online. Also at the spot where you get the ferry (well, one of them, apparently) to Fort Sumter was the USS Yorktown (an aircraft carrier). The husband was VERY excited at the possibility of touring this! But we decided we’d tortured the baby enough for one day and we’d just come back the next (the 4th!) to see it. We had not yet pulled out of the parking lot when the baby fell asleep in her car seat – yeah, she was done.

Unfortunately we thought about it later and realized that aircraft carriers don’t really tend to be stroller friendly. In fact they involve a lot of climbing up ladders and through hatches – not something all that conducive to a toddler. (I told a friend of mine this and she said that we were clearly wimps as indigenous people in S. America climb the Andes with babies all the time (she doesn’t have kids – and also was kidding). I said that they probably had baby slings (the Mobie (sp?) I’ve drooled over) and we didn’t.)

Most of the rest of our time in Charleston was spent roaming around – a (self guided) walking tour and just checking the place out. We discovered the fountains that are designated as public pools and let the monkey go in in her diaper (no, it’s not a swim diaper, but it’s a fountain, not REALLY a pool anyway!), vowing to throw a swim diaper and her bathing suit in our bags for next time) while I got soaked hovering over her (which wasn’t half bad in 90 degrees either!).

Highlights beyond the fountain included a Mexican place with $3 margaritas for Momma... Hmm, having fond memories of Charleston as I go back to work now...

Stop the presses! July 13 is National French Fry Day!

2010-07-13T11:28:00.001-04:00

Sorry - I thought it was important that we all knew that.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

I started trying to tell you about the trip, but then I decided to get on my soapbox instead. Sorry.

2010-07-13T09:43:00.002-04:00

So last week we went on vacation. And yes, I could go into a detailed description of what exactly we saw and did – the history of Fort Sumter, other important stuff in Charleston and what we liked best in Savannah. But seriously – you could buy a travel book and get way better (and highly likely more accurate! I mean, did the people writing the travel book take the tour of Fort Sumter with a 17 month old in need of a nap who was pretty ticked at us for forcing her on a 9 hour drive (Napolean’s retreat from Russia was not so inhumane) the day before? Well, I guess it’s possible. But then they probably fact checked on wikipedia to straighten that stuff out.), so let’s instead do highlights.

Day 1 (Friday) highlights – we got up about 5 with the intention of hitting the road by 5:30 (yeah, right. We’re seriously going to get both of us and a baby out of the house that fast. I put that one as my goal, but hoped for 6). It was about 6:30 when we left. We’d discussed it the night before and my husband asked – what’s the hurry? Why do we need to leave so early? It was about 8-9 hours to Charleston (plus stops) and we live in the DC suburbs. This means we either need to get our butts out of bed very early and get going before rush hour or we should wait till 10 to get started. My hope was to get going with the baby still tired so she’d go back to sleep in the car. Hahahahaha. Why yes, I am a first time mother. Why do you ask?

The monkey actually did exceptionally well with the car ride, all things considered. All things being its length PLUS the random pockets of traffic (seriously what the heck?) that we kept hitting. But let’s be honest, when we were rolling into our hotel after 6 that night, she’d had it. She’d had it quite awhile before actually… I’d packed a “bucket” full of car toys and had been refilling it and handing it to her to dump for a lot longer than I wanted to (I’m harder to amuse on a long car ride than a baby). A friend had offered us a dvd player for the car, but, like complete idiots, we’d decided against. The monkey isn’t really all that interested in TV anyway, but, as first time, idealistic, we won’t fall into these commercial traps, aren’t we so awesome and we’ll do it better parents, we also really didn’t want to introduce the car DVD player. Look, I know, I know! I hesitate to even mention these things as we ALL know I’m going to give in and get one in no time – long before she’s even telling me that “all her friends” have one. But still – in my ideal little ivory tower of parenthood… I hate them. They’re part of my whole “kids are getting soft” theory.

Before you get offended, note – I know that this is only my newbie, one kid idealism and really, deep down, I know it will fall. But (but!) – do you remember long car rides as a kid? Yes, they were boring and interminable (I’m pretty sure I’m actually still in the middle of that one when I was 12 and all this is just a dream. Hmm – you think I’d be more successful in my own dream, huh? At least thinner…) and how horrifying (we won’t even discuss my car sickness/ projectile vomiting. I apologize if you ever got the rental car after us) and all that. But, we had to DO stuff to combat all that. We played the license plate game. And the alphabet game. And the “let’s name all 50 states” game (and why did we usually only get 49 till our parents or other adult woke up at 3 am thinking – oh, sheesh! How did I forget West Virginia?!). We had to get creative. On occasion we actually had to talk to each other! (Until I hit my teens and brought my walkman along to avoid that horror.) But now we don’t have to do any of that – we can wait for the world to entertain us with DVDs.

And here’s the other thing – is all this making it impossible for us to be alone? I know, holy leap there, batman! But hear me out. When I first moved from NJ to DC, I used to actually kind of enjoy the drives back and forth. Not the traffic, but I remember thinking it was a 4 hour license to daydream. I mean, seriously – I couldn’t be doing something “productive” for all that time. It was my “me” time to zone out. But the truth is – I’m not so comfortable with that anymore. My Dad got sick and I did the drive nearly every weekend for months and I really didn’t want “me” time anymore – there was too much in my head and I had to get out of it. So I started getting on my cell phone for large portions of the drive. And then I discovered books on tape – my new car entertainment! If I couldn’t find a book I wanted to read, I’d just “reread” old ones. And now, truthfully, I’ve lost some of my ability to be alone with myself. I can barely commute without a book on tape or the phone to my ear, let alone take a long car ride.

Anyway, this is getting long and we haven’t even checked in – or gotten to the story of eating dinner in the bathroom that night so as not to wake the baby who we’ve finally gotten to sleep in our “it turns out ‘suite’ just means there’s a couch on the far side of the room” hotel room at 9 pm after the wait at the one nearby restaurant was too long. So maybe we better go for part 2.

But as I’ve spouted out my burst of uninvited social commentary, I open it up to you. What do you think of the car dvd players (and how long will I likely last before I also realize that they are gifts from God?!)? What car games did you play as a kid? Do you think all our electronic hooks are making our ability to be alone die a slow and painful death (or, more likely, a “so quick I didn’t even notice it” death)?

Monday Minute - apparently the gross out edition...

2010-07-12T16:47:00.004-04:00

So Jen from http://www.adailyscoopofchaos.com/ is hosting the Monday Minute this week (instead of Ian at the Daily Dose of Reality), but back from vacation and ready to play along!

Here goes:

1. Can you burp the ABC's?

No. My husband is proud of his burp talking abilities. It causes many a "discussion" about whether or not I'm willing to respond to comments burped at me. I've ALMOST gotten him to stop. At least when talking to me.

2. So lets just say you have a 9+ hour drive ahead of you would you consider wearing Depends so you didn't have to stop multiple times?

It didn't work on the baby on last week's 9+ hour drive, I doubt it will work on me.

OK, seriously - no. Theoretically, I guess you could be OK peeing like that with the fabric to "wick" away your pee, but if you have to poop, can you imagine the nasty diaper rash? So now I'm using depends and desitin? Great...

Also, I've discovered that my potty training was well enough instilled that I'm really not able as an adult to pee in inappropriate situations. I did one of those river float things a few years ago and was DYING to go - I thought my bladder would burst! I knew everyone else was going in the river, but I had such a hard time getting over the mental hurdle of going fully dressed in a river that people swim in. Separately, I was in the hospital a few years ago and was brought a bedpan and had the same issue. I looked at the nurse and said, I know I said I had to go, but I can't seem to do this - and awaited her wrath at my ridiculousness (didn't I "have" to go?). Instead she was really kind and looked at me and said - of course you can't. You're not used to wetting the bed.

So, long story short, I don't think it would work.

Oh, and EW!

3. Would you rather...run your tongue down five feet of a NYC street or press your tongue into a strangers nostril?

Ah, the fear factor edition. So do I get to see the street first (can I choose my own) and/or see the stranger first? I guess if totally forced, I'd probably "prefer" the nostril, as that could just take a second v. the street thing taking ALL DAY (the way I'd do it...). But the street thing is probably "more hygenic" (on the scale of 0-10, 0 being a sterilized lab and 10 being a petrie dish, it's probably a 122 v. the nostril thing being a 200?) because how long can germs live outside the body?

Hmm... maybe I need to rethink. Just making the decision might take ALL DAY.

4. If you had an envelope that contained the date you would die would you open it?

If I've completed #3, isn't this a moot point?

5. Which one song describes your sex life best?

Well, let's see we just went on vacation with our baby where our "suite" hotels were actually just a bedroom with a completely attached sitting room. We'd put her down in the crib and then sit very quietly in the dark until she stopped crying (read: I fell asleep at about 8:30 many nights). I don't think I want to answer the question this week!

Looking at my future

2010-07-12T12:21:00.002-04:00

Yes, yes, been gone a week and must blog about my adventures. But also, been gone a week and must actually do some work... So no major stories today and just this thought:

Yesterday, my 17 month old (how did she get so big? Pause for a moment while all my reproductive organs weep...) grabbed my blackberry as a favorite toy of the day. She lay down on the couch in our family room with her legs bent and feet on the couch (but NOT standing! So I think I've won that battle) holding the phone up against her legs and pressing the buttons to watch the colors change, etc.

And I looked at her and thought - I will see this exact picture again in 12 or 15 years. My (not so little) monkey laying on that couch (or, I HOPE, its future descendents) texting or on the phone or whatever new fangled things those kids have come up with then...

Later I wrestled the phone from her admist much screaming and thought - yeah, this is probably a premonition too. Particularly as I put the phone on the counter while I fed her in her high chair and the very second I let her down, she walked over to the counter and swiped it off again in passing!

Happy 4th of July!

2010-07-04T14:44:00.000-04:00

Taking a small blogging break this week. I'll catch up with you guys next week - hope you have a wonderful holiday!

Can I get an amen?!

2010-07-02T10:04:00.000-04:00

Thank goodness! Maybe I'll hold off on full amens and hallelujahs till we get everything signed, but my husband talked to the renters yesterday and they are interested in renewing their lease!

Oh thank goodness!

Things at work are well, let's just say in a state of upheaval, for both of us at the moment and our stress levels are pretty well through the roof. I am so glad that this is not one more thing to worry about!

The thing about renting the condo is - this is an absolute for us. I bought the place 5 years ago at the HEIGHT of the market. When we realized we were outgrowing it and it was actually finally a good time in the market to buy last year, there was just no way we could sell it. We'd lose WAY more money than we have to lose. So we rented it (there are myriad posts from last fall on that little oopsie of renting it before our new place was finalized, but I digress). We figured we'd have to hold it at least a few years - till the price recovered some and/or till we could AT LEAST write off some of the loss.

And we got lucky (OK, maybe not all luck - my husband was great about vetting everyone, but also lucky). We got GREAT renters! Exactly what you want in your renters - quiet, possibly kind of nerdy (I say this as a nerd), young women who not only pay their rent on time but tend to send the checks about a week early!

Yeah, we've been called out to fix some dumb stuff and switch over the thermostat from hot to cold. But really - a small price to pay for otherwise low maintenance renters who pay on time.

But my ever increasing anyway stress levels started to get another shot of adrenaline as I realized that their year lease was almost up. Oh man, what if they don't renew? How will we show the place when they're living there? What if we don't find someone? We can't afford NOT to find someone. And worry, worry, worry.

But my husband called yesterday and they plan to renew. He'll bring over a lease for them to sign next week - and then AMEN and HALLELUJAH!

You might have a climber...

2010-06-30T14:04:00.003-04:00

I wish I could remember who to give credit to on this one, but instead I'll just have to say this was inspired by a blog I saw awhile ago and hope to add the reference later.

Some time ago one of my fellow bloggers posted a quote (yes, I'm paraphrasing!) about hyperactive children. It went something like - all children climb on things. Your child might be hyperactive if he climbs on top of the refrigerator. She then posted a picture of her son in a spiderman costume climbing on the car windshield.

I laughed and thought of the story my husband had told about how his parents had taken away the cape from his superman costume so he'd stop trying to fly, but then I forgot.

I mentioned it to him awhile later and he looked at me and said - oh, I used to climb on top of the refrigerator.

I stopped what I was doing to stare. The things is - I was a climber as a kid. But this was always out of necessity. I had a very late growth spurt, so climbing was part of overcoming and adapting to the world. I climbed on the counter to get a glass for a drink. I climbed on the bathroom vanity to get a band aid. And, ok, yes, I did climb too high in our tree - but trees are meant to be climbed!

But here's the thing - he'd actually "done" the hyperbolic example!

I meant to blog about that then, but forgot.

Until this weekend... when my 16 month old daughter, who had shown *some* interest in climbing - up on the couch and chairs, going up the stairs, that sort of thing - climbed up into her high chair on her own.

I had my back turned and couldn't figure out how she'd managed to get up there. I had to wait to see her do it again. She put her knee up to the foot rest (about her chest level) with her hands on the seat. Once she got herself up that far, she moved her hands to the arm rests to get further up on the foot rest and then moved her hands to the back of the chair to pull herself into the seat.

My husband looked at me and said - on the one hand, I'm really impressed. On the other, oh crap.

Oops! My Guest Post

2010-06-29T22:10:00.001-04:00

Forgot to mention - I'm a guest blogger over at Our Mommyhood this week. Please stop by and check it out when you have a chance - http://www.ourmommyhood.com/

The difference between men and women

2010-06-29T10:05:00.003-04:00

Me: I know it'll be expensive, but I want to get some decent eye cream. I'm starting to get dark circles and I'm worried that I'll end up with those deep bags that really age your face.

Hubby: Hmm, do I have circles and bags too? (looking in the mirror) I kind of do. Maybe I should do something about that too (except he would never consider a moisturizer. It's too close to make-up, I think!)

Me: You know, what would probably make a real difference for you would be if you drank more water/stayed hydrated and used sunscreen.

Hubby: Yeah, but if I do that, then I won't look like a crusty old man!

Hmm...sort of the look I was trying to avoid for myself...

That 4:00 o'clock feeling

2010-06-23T15:43:00.003-04:00

For me, that 4:00 o'clock feeling is some combination of the following:

1. Check the to do list to make sure there's not something random and major that really needs to be done today before I go home.
2. Speed up on whatever I'm working on so it will be done sometime in the vicinity of 5 (5:30 is in the vicinity of 5. 6 is probably not an easy walk - you might want to drive. 8 pm? That's a plane ride, my friend.)
3. If I feel like I've done NOTHING all day (it happens), check and make sure that there wasn't a big SOMETHING I was meant to be doing.
4. Also check that internal to do list of the personal things I meant to get done that I'll be too tired to do in the evening / will never get done on the weekend (credit card payment sent yet?)
5. And if I'm really really feeling organized / optimistic, think about what we might do for dinner - possibly look up a recipe or ask the hubby about it (so I'm not running to the store and getting home to start cooking at 7. See yesterday.)

My boss's 4 o'clock feeling seems to go more like this:
Hmm - got this email from [me] this morning about a project. I should look at that. Then gets distracted. Somewhere around 4:45, he gets to looking at it and right around 4:59 calls me for the changes he'd like today.

OK, I'm exaggerating. I'm not sure there's a 45 minute process. I think it might be around 4:55 that he realizes I'm going to leave soon and needs to call me before. About something I sent him 6 hours ago. This is most popular on Wednesdays, as I'm part time and don't work Thurs or Fri (which explains why I leave somewhere in the vicinity of 5).

In the case of today, it's a meeting scheduled for 4 to discuss the status of something my coworker sent at 8:15. Maybe I better call the hubby to make sure he's shopping for dinner now (last night when I got home and asked about dinner he suggested - let's just eat tomorrow.).

Monday Minute - 6/21/10

2010-06-21T23:59:00.000-04:00

1 - Have you ever had any feelings towards one of your teachers back in the day?

Hmm… Nothing much really. I mean, most of my teacher’s were women, so there wasn’t a lot of opportunity (although I really did love my earliest teachers. I thought my kindergarten teacher was SO pretty with her long blonde hair parted in the middle and her blue eyeshadow. Did I mention it was 1980?). I sort of had a very mild crush on my HS math teacher. He was a really great teacher and his class was a lot of fun. I think my love was more of math / the class than the teacher though. “Luckily” I had the antichrist the next year and got over the crush on higher level math as well….

2 - What's the most embarrassing thing that happened while at work?

I don’t know if I have a really great one here. I mean, somewhere I told the story of my boss knocking on my office door while I was pumping / expressing milk, but I wasn’t actually all that embarrassed (he, on the other hand, has not knocked on my closed door since. I consider it a win, actually).

I’ve done tons of stupid things, but they’re not all that funny to share.

3 - When was the last time you crapped yourself sharted?

Um, I can’t think of a time I’ve done this as an adult. But I will tell you, my husband as a paramedic has definitely gotten the advice from old men – “never trust a fart.” This wisdom is right up there with the old men who say – “never waste an erection.” Words to live by, my friends.

4 - What is one thing you have always kept a secret and why have you kept this a secret for so long?

Always? Always is a long time… I keep quite a bit secret on my blog – really all personal identifiers. This is mostly so I can be more honest in my writing. If all my friends and family were reading, I’d filter the stories to suit. I do still try to abide by some rules on what I blog about (sort of pretending they are reading and not talking about people behind their backs, that sort of thing).

5 - What's your best advice for us habitual coffee drinkers as to not have to poop right after drinking it?

Um… decaf? Actually, I don’t think that works either. Tea? Drink it with iron tablets, as I think those are supposed to cause constipation….

Father’s Day - In Memory of my Dad

2010-06-21T10:12:00.002-04:00

In honor of Father’s Day this past weekend, I thought I’d write a post about my Dad. After all, he was the English teacher who inspired me to want to write as a kid (and maybe even as an adult too!).

It’s a little hard to think where to begin. My Dad inspired a lot of my life – even in his death. I hate to define him by death but truly – he even did that really “well.” He was diagnosed with cancer in late May of 2002. He’d had a malignant sarcoma (soft tissue cancer) in his back a few years before, but the doctor had removed it and said he was good to go – no need for chemo or radiation even. Turns out, he probably should have gotten a second opinion. The cancer spread to his lungs with a large tumor nestling itself on the aorta – so that in x-rays it actually just looked like a shadow of the heart. He’d been sick for several months, but x-rays then had revealed nothing. It was only found during an exploratory surgery.

I guess when my Mom told me that they’d found it – but didn’t remove it – I should have understood more about what that meant. Some place inside, I think I did, but not a place I was willing to share with my conscious mind. So I kept trucking along – visiting and talking to them more, but that was it. Scared as hell, but pushing that down. It was in September that the oncologist confirmed this was terminal. He’d do chemo (in addition to the radiation he’d already had) as long as it was palliative, but eventually they’d stop that and we’d lose him.

I talked to my Dad one time about what the possible “options” were – he said, there were two chances in all this. The first was a miracle (when hope number one is a miracle, that’s not all that reassuring) and the second was that the chemo could keep him around long enough for a cure to be found. So, being a religious man, my Dad chose a saint to focus his prayers for intercession on (Brother Andre of Montreal). He often said – Brother Andre needs one more miracle to be canonized and I need just this one miracle – it’s a win/win! And then he said – but if I get this miracle, I can’t just take this extra time I’m given in life and use it for me. I think I’ll plan to go someplace I’m needed and volunteer for several weeks or a month each year. If God’s given me this extra time, I can’t be selfish in it and need to share that. I remember I told a friend that and she said – you know, that’s really a lesson for all of us (using the time God has given us for others). I answered abruptly (only say 85% joking…), “Nope! No lessons without the miracle!”

The months of his illness went on – there were a few small moments of hope, but there were a lot more moments of abject fear (at least for me). I’d taken him out one time in October or so to go shopping for a birthday gift for my Mom. He’d taken an anti-nausea medication and it hit him during lunch, with horrible side effects. He was starting to hallucinate a little (as a side note, this was actually not an uncommon side effect for my Dad with medications. He’d had horrible hallucinations on morphine after his appendicitis. They’d finally gone away and he was watching the news when the Falkland Islands War was being covered. He saw that Argentina had declared war on the UK and called my Mom very upset – his hallucinations were clearly back! Nope, turns out truth is stranger than fiction) and was very unsteady on his feet. I was scared. I wanted to drive him to a hospital, but I suddenly realized that hospitals couldn’t do anything for him and that scared me in a whole different way.

But in all this – while I felt scared and confused and wondered about how to maintain faith. He didn’t. It was unreal – but only once did he ever mention anything like fear to me. He said, sort of academically, that this was odd for him. He’d never really known anyone who was dying, so it all felt like a strange uncharted territory. I tried to probe a little, but that was it. I think I was the only person who really ever cried much in front of him. I tried not to, as I think it upset him – but then again… Even though I knew he didn’t want us to be sad, well maybe it wasn’t so bad to see one person get a bit overwrought every once in awhile – you’d know you were really missed!

When asked how he felt about it all. He said he was pretty much ready. He said – look, I’m asking for this miracle, but I’m not at all mad if I don’t get it. I’ve had a wonderful life – how can I be mad at God for giving me so much? Sure I’d like more, but getting mad about not getting it would just be greedy.

That was a hard spirit for me to maintain… But when I’d start to get angry, I’d find that train of thought coming towards me. A friend of mine said at the time – the only way this could hurt less is if you loved him less.

I thought about that one a lot. During this time, a lot of people said a lot of well meaning, but in the end, kind of dumb things. This was the most noteworthy exception and it’s what I always say to people now. Because, the more I pondered it, the more I thought – you know, I wouldn’t give up one good memory to have it hurt less that I can’t repeat those. I suddenly felt a little less powerless in a situation that beat at my type A, control freak personality!

He eventually lost the battle against cancer in March 2003. As it happened, he’d actually seemed to have been on a decent plateau at the time – where we would have thought that we’d have a few more months at least. Despite months of a terminal illness, it felt sudden. Sudden enough that it was the first weekend in months that I wasn’t coming home to visit. I’d been exhausted with the strain of the constant drive and, selfish as it may sound, I’d wanted a weekend off to be young and go to a friend’s birthday party. My Mom called Friday night to tell me to come home, but despite breaking every traffic law known to man, I didn’t quite make it in time. (My brother and my cousin used to joke about their “beat the clock” trips back from DC – every one a challenge to how quick you could make it. That trip – at about 2.5 hours from Northern VA to Central NJ - was probably the new standard.)

And, what can I say? It really really sucked for awhile. But after a little over a year of first avoiding dealing with anything and then falling into my negative emotions, I finally came up for air. And it turned out that he even had the power to inspire me in death. I looked at my life and said – I’m fairly young and healthy and it’s time to get out there and live my life. I finally fully freed myself from a bad relationship (well, emotionally. The relationship was over quite awhile before) and just went out to have some fun. I took belly dancing lessons (even though my stress – all this was coupled with a very stressful time at work and finishing grad school – had put me at a point where I was very underweight and missing the required belly). I played adult kickball. I did 8 minute dating. And I decided to just get out there and stop worrying so much about the future and just have fun. And when I did, my future walked in – I met my husband about 6 weeks later.

And to think, my Dad, as he tried to insure that everything was taken care of and we were on the right path, had been so worried I might not ever settle down and meet someone! We were married about two years later and though I didn’t have my father daughter dance – a thought that had hovered in my brain during his illness – we did invite everyone to dance to “My Daughter’s Eyes” in his memory because he “was there. In [his] daughter’s eyes.”

Ooh… got really schmaltzy there at the end! Sorry for the long babbled post this week. What crazy things these Hallmark holidays do to us!

Black and blue

2010-06-16T09:55:00.004-04:00

As a small child I can remember wondering how I'd ever be able to wear skirts / stockings as an adult because everyone would see my black and blues / bruises. I simply didn't know how women did it! I wasn't (particularly) clumsy, but I was a kid - I was active! I climbed trees (did I ever? I'd climb so high, my Dad would have to talk me down. Hmm... active, but maybe not the smartest kid...), I played sports (badly) and I just played. It was a good day if I only had a scrape or bruise or two.

Hmm... now that I think of it, I did fall down some as well. There was one particular spot. It seemed that nearly every week walking to church one spring I fell on the SAME spot of sidewalk where a tree was pushing up the path. It was so frequent that as I'd run ahead my parents would remind me - remember the uneven spot is coming up. Don't fall! I'd yell back - I know! Afterall, I walked to school this way every day (and for some reason, never fell then - just every Sunday morning) and I'd fallen there before. And yet, a few minutes later, I'd be turning around to run back to my parents with torn tights and bloody knees. As a parent now, I imagine their sighs as I'd done it yet AGAIN. (By the way, sadly, no, this was not a phase I grew out of. It wasn't even solved by my parents choosing to drive the block and half to church as we often did anyway. It was solved by the sidewalk getting fixed. My Grandpa was a councilman and he moved that particular spot up on the priority list - cause it was clearly a safety hazzard!)

Anyway, eventually I *did* in fact grow up (well, mostly) and as I got to the age of skirts and stockings, it seemed that I magically didn't seem to have so many scrapes and bruises. I wasn't playing sports anymore (turns out people who fall down all the time on the same spot of sidewalk aren't necessarily athletic). I probably wasn't climbing so many trees. And the sidewalk had long since been fixed. So it turned out I could wear a skirt without violent bruises shouting out to the world.

Fast forward to today. I look down at my daughter's learning to walk legs and I've noticed that she seems to have a similar pattern of bruises to what I remember - faded black and blues and little scrapes adorning her chubby little legs. But you know, you might not even notice. The reason? I am covered with bruises again! I don't know what it is! There are at least 5 on my legs today - 2 or 3 reasonably faded ones on my left knee and another (also, mercifully faded) on my right and then a bunch of random (not really faded) ones higher up my legs! It's gotten to the point where, as the weather gets nicer and I'm wearing shorts, my husband seems to comment daily - dude, where did you get that one?! Man, that thing is huge! People are going to think I hit you!

Apparently he was at the park yesterday and happened to notice a few other mothers my age there with small children and said - Ok, it turns out they all have these huge bruises on their legs too. That made me feel a little better as my husband does not seem to be beat up the way I am. I thought maybe she just didn't like me... ;)

What about you? Do your kids practice their baby jujitsu on you? Do you bear "the marks" of motherhood (and here I thought it was just stretch marks and cellulite)?

Round up

2010-06-15T15:47:00.002-04:00

The other day my husband told me how he took our daughter out on a walk and, as she seemed to have energy to burn, he didn't put her in the stroller, but let her walk a bit. I was a bit unnerved - she's 16 months old and thinks the busy street is a good place to walk, but he explained that he was holding on to the back of her overalls so she couldn't go anywhere or really even fall.

I pictured him, hunched over, parading after her and thought about how uncomfortable that particular pose is for me (at 10 inches shorter) and said:

You know, I used to think leashes for kids were awful, but now... I can kind of see the benefit.

My husband said: Yeah, I know. But the choke chain is probably going too far.

Monday Minute

2010-06-14T10:12:00.003-04:00

Good morning (well, it was morning when I started trying to write this...) and Happy Monday all! Today's Monday Minute (normally hosted by Ian) is hosted by Kmama.

And here we go!

1 - What's the specs of the first computer you owned?

It was a TI. I can't remember all the specifics, but this dinosaur was huge (think brontosaurus) and didn't do a whole heck of a lot. I remember taking Saturday morning classes (cause I was *that cool* even then!) to learn to program in basic:
Line 10 Start
Line 20 Print "I am really cool" (or something like that - it wasn't print. I can't remember...)
Line 30 Go to line 20
Line 40 end

and then it would loop, printing how cool I was all over the screen while I tried to recall how to get it to stop...

2 - Are you on Twitter/Facebook/etc, if so link it/them up

Nope. Am I the one and only lame-o left on the planet who just isn't quite getting twitter...? (Note - Saturday morning classes as a kid - we've established I'm lame, so I guess this is redundant...)
3 - Who's more to blame for the oil mess in the gulf - BP or the Gov't and why?

Would saying - they're all idiots be too much of a cop out? I think the whole thing is such an ugly mess. It makes me too sick to read about it in enough detail to come up with a really well informed opinion, but my primary blame would go to BP.

One of my cousins sent out the below picture with the note - "hey BP, follow your own rules." I'll leave it at that.

4 - What's your favorite Dr. Suess book?

Oh man, I think I love them all! Let's see - Oh The Places You'll Go will always have a spot in my heart. But then we also just read Green Eggs and Ham to my daughter for the first time last weekend (and reminisced about making green eggs in 2nd grade), so I can't leave that off. Oh and as we cut down all the trees in the jungle of our backyard, the Lorax is referenced often (though I guess not always so postively...).

Hmm, I think I can only be certain in noting my LEAST favorite Dr. Suess books - those my daughter wants read 34 times in a row. I could recite The Foot Book verbatim to you now, but won't torture you

And finally...

5 - What did you want to be when you grew up?

This changed ALL THE TIME! Let's see - there was a period where I wanted to be a doctor, but I decided I couldn't give needles (if only I knew that they alwasy sloughed that off to nurses!), an engineer (kind of wishing I'd followed that one more), an architect (another that I sometimes wonder why I didn't follow up) and last, so that we know that dreams really do come true - I think I always kind of figured I'd be some random not easily described business person sort of role. Something to do with numbers. And here I am, with Chandler Bing's job to prove you CAN live the dream!

My husband wanted to be a firefighter as a kid. After a brief dalliance with finance and IT consulting, he decided screw it and went after being a firefighter. It just goes to show that I should have been a more creative (or traditional!) kid! As an aside, now that he is "living the dream," he wishes he'd gone to medical school.

We are a hard bunch to please!

Now your turn! Head over to Kmama's and link up!

You can't argue with stupid.

2010-06-11T12:39:00.000-04:00

Well, you can, but you won't win.

I know that's more of a thought for Monday, but Happy Friday anyway!

And now for some answers

2010-06-10T12:34:00.000-04:00

In response to my request to know what you want to know/hear about, Ian immediately jumped up with the following questions:

What do you want to get out of blogging?

When I started… hmm… well, I think at the beginning maybe I did have some dreams of “setting the world on fire” and really going somewhere with all this. Could it be my new career? Ha – probably not! But… I think that was just what got me thinking about it in the first place. Even not knowing how many bloggers are out there, I knew that was pretty unlikely. And, honestly, I’m not sure that would have motivated me to move forward. It definitely would not have motivated to keep it up!

The REAL reason was… I started blogging right around the time I went back to work. I’d been writing different things – drafts and lists and thoughts and all that – but my mind had been all over. This was true all through pregnancy, but the real stress came when the baby arrived! No matter what anyone had said, no one prepared me for the crazy hormones! And then, the decision to go back to work, to leave my job, wait no – to stay at my job part time – those were impossible / crazy / like nothing else. Around the time I started to blog, I was finally thinking I was finding some balance. And I wanted to share some of process in case it could help anyone else.

What are your goals?

Well, the big one was to honestly share some of the fears / challenges / disasters – and greatness that was going on so that other people feeling scared, overwhelmed or like a disaster themselves could see they weren’t alone in it – and particularly as it was getting better to share the light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t think I realized how many more fears and challenges (and disasters!) were yet to come – or how much greatness.

Now my goals are more, hmm, concrete – to try to write reasonably regularly just to get in the habit of writing again. I used to love to write, but then time and life and God knows what got in the way and I stopped. I’ve never been good about journaling, but I seem to do this a little more (well, at least a little).

Have you achieved any of them?

I don’t know. My original goals were sort of outward facing and I have no idea if anyone has found my journey or any of my struggles helpful. But, I think I’ve approached it honestly, so I can say I’ve achieved that one!

My goal of reasonable updates seem to be getting a little tattered these days.... Oops… Ok, I’m working on it.

Do you plan on having 6 more kids?

Not on your life! Or mine! Or my sanity! We’re starting to think about another one, but we’re more of the 2 or 3 at the max type. First, I’m 34, so 6 more kids (unless I become my own version of an octo-mom – but only 6, so that’s totally achievable, right?) isn’t all that realistic. But it was never a goal of mine anyway. I love my daughter and my husband and I love focusing our attention on her now. If we have a second, that’s fine, but we really don’t want a huge family. We want to love whatever (whoever) we get and not go crazy! ;)

I was at a family party this weekend and my aunt pointed out a niece on the other side of the family who has a 9 month older daughter and is expecting a sibling in November. She said – “no pressure, but” and introduced me. I looked at the Mom and said, “well, you’re a little crazy!” I think she took it the right way (but then later learned that her English isn’t so good, so she just might not have gotten it at all – which probably also works well).

So... what about you?

2010-06-09T11:36:00.002-04:00

I've been feeling like my blog is getting a little dry and... well, uninspired, recently. I started out writing this for me - and I know I'll never set the world on fire with it or achieve fame and fortune. But hey, I would like to know what you want to hear / what you're interested in. A year into the life of the monkey, I think I'm getting a little stale...

Although, to be honest, I really always thought all the great parenting stories came once they started talking - inappropriately... in front of your grandmother/minister/boss/etc. As she's only got a few words still, most of my stories tend to focus more on the fact that I got pooped on TWICE this week - and peed on once...

Anyway, this post is a shout out to you. Is there anything you want to see? Questions you want answered? Comments that I really should have highlighted better?

Hope to hear from you!

My life is too exciting!

2010-06-07T17:02:00.003-04:00

My husband's phone is not exactly working - he can text, but no one can hear him on it.

His text - headed to Safeway on the way home - where is your prescription to drop off?

My text - in my purse. I can stop at Safeway. What are we doing (healthy!) for dinner?

His text - leaving now. I'll meet you at Safeway.

I was left with only this to text - Our lives are just TOO exciting.

Ah the big Safeway date. Dude, it's not even wegmans! happy Monday all!

Poop, there it is!

2010-06-03T09:46:00.001-04:00

Ran home from work at lunch to see the monkey. She was asleep when I got home, so I ate lunch and chilled for a bit. Then she woke up so I happily did get to see her a little. I went to say goodbye (running late as always) and picked her up into my lap for a last hug/cuddle/kiss. As I put her down, my Mom (who's visiting this week), noticed a wet mark on my leg - was that mud?

Nope, she pooped on me.

And this is why I always seem to take long lunches!

Roseola: Under seige

2010-06-02T09:41:00.002-04:00

And the rash continues...

Day 3.

The monkey is still not at all bothered by the rash as far as we can tell. She's sleeping well, eating reasonably well (I mean, she's 15 months old and not a great eater anyway, so let's not expect miracles here) and playing well/happy. I, however, am bothered by it. It hurts me to look at it. Her tiny little body covered in red spots (sniffle). Thank GOD they don't bother her. I think I'd be a basket case if they did (cause I'm so sane to start off with, right?).

Everything’s coming up roses

2010-06-01T14:25:00.001-04:00

Where to begin?

I know I was a little MIA last week, so I never mentioned the snot faucet of last week. Sorry? Too graphic? Did I jump right in a little fast there? Let’s try again.

Last weekend, the monkey had a runny nose. Only saying a runny nose sounds a bit benign compared to the actual level of running – she had a marathoning nose. A nose whose procreative powers knew no limits. And thus I bring you back to my point – snot faucet.

So Monday we took her to the doctor, noting that she really had no other symptoms – no fever, eating fine, sleeping fine, all that – just gallons of colorful mucus. He checked her out and diagnosed an ear infection (despite the lack of fever or fussiness) and prescribed an antibiotic. We went on about our week – tissues in hand – until the weekend, when the congestion seemed worse and a cough started on Saturday. We talked about and, given that the office is closed on Sundays and it was a holiday weekend, it seemed like a good idea to bring her back in right away. So we did.

Apparently the antibiotic wasn’t working, so the doctor prescribed another antibiotic, something for the congestion (which no one stocks) and, ugh, a shot – extra strength antibiotic. It was horrible.

But maybe it was working as the mucus marathon seemed to be coasting down to a 5k or something (or the sprints were now a jog? I don’t know. Maybe this metaphor is dead.). So, we figured she was FINALLY getting better.

My husband went to work yesterday morning and when the baby got up, I gave her breakfast and her antibiotic and we decided to go for a walk. When I got her outside and saw her belly (her t-shirt had ridden up) when I put her in the stroller, I turned around and went right back in to the call the doctor. A rash.

Oh man – if it’s not one thing… So I called the doctor and left a message and the nurse called me back. I explained she’d had her 15 mo inoculations recently so it could be that (I later realized that they were 2.5 weeks ago, so it probably couldn’t be that) and she had a new antibiotic, so it could be a rash, but I really didn’t know. She said it could be a lot of things so she called the doctor, who called me back and told me to discontinue the antibiotic as it was either an allergic reaction (in which case it should clear in 24 hours if I stopped) or roseola.

This doctor (our least favorite at this office. Ok, fine, that was being polite. We really don’t like him.) has a very thick accent, so I kept trying to figure out what he meant. Rosacia maybe? While I’d waited for him to call me back, I’d called my husband and pretty much every mom I knew to get reassurance on what this was – none of the suggestions had sounded like that… Anyway, he said if she had no fever and seemed happy I shouldn’t worry, but should bring her in the next day.

This morning – I swear it looked worse. You definitely didn’t need to go outside to see it in the light. It was apparent everywhere (well, it’d been pretty much everywhere the day before – but maybe not so much on her face). We went to the doctor (we managed an appt for 8:40 so I was just a little late for work) and he (same one we don’t like) said, yes, it’s roseola. Apparently this is a common viral infection in kids under 2 – it normally starts with a high fever for a few days and then this rash.

Overall, he did NOT give us great info. I asked a lot of questions. He mostly seemed to keep talking about what he was talking about rather than giving responses. Then my husband repeated my questions and we actually got some answers. Oh yeah, I’m loving this guy now. Let me give an example:

Me: Should we tell parents of other kids she’s seen recently about this?
Dr.: You could do that. (Blah, blah about the progression from fever to rash.)
Me: Do we need to keep her away from other kids now?
Dr.: You could do that. (Blah, blah blah about the rash)
Hubby: Is she contagious?
Dr.: No, she shouldn’t be.

Ok, so why would I quarantine her if she’s not contagious? (Apparently, it’s sort of like chicken pox – it’s contagious before you have the rash. Maybe. Who knows? I think I picked that up from web MD.)

So my husband took her home and I went to work. I stopped in at lunch and the rash looked WAY worse. Much more pronounced on her face, the bumps seemed bigger / redder / more raised. My husband was just coming in from an errand and she was out cold asleep (thereby making her lethargic and much more worrisome to me!). We discussed our options of other doctors (don’t you think the doc should have mentioned we could expect the rash to get worse?) or an ER this evening.

I guess this is what parenting is all about…

Am I the only one or does everyone else get paranoid about illness (esp. these ugly rashes)? Has anyone else’s kids had roseola? (Any more surprise symptoms that my doctor didn’t think I’d want to know about?!)

And now for something completely different.

2010-05-26T13:42:00.001-04:00

Hmm… ok, not completely different – we’re back to the work life balance question. It just feels a little different… maybe… Well, it feels effing overwhelming is what it feels…

Oh right, the point.

So last week my husband came home and told me that he’d just heard on NPR that furloughs were on the way. Apparently the number of days of furlough would depend on how much you currently make starting at 3 and going up. I am deeply suppressing my tangents on this and will just say his is 5 days.

It’s unclear to us what 5 days means – 5 of his 24 work days or 5 8 hour equivalents (about a week’s pay v. 2.5 weeks pay). And there’s so little info available as he hasn’t heard it directly yet. I’m going to refrain from shooting my mouth off here to blow off a lot of steam in deference to him / his work, as that’s not REALLY what this post is about. I’m just giving you a framework to work in here before I start on the path.

So here’s the framework – he’s got a furlough coming (oh, a furlough means you don’t work/don’t get paid for some amount of time. So rather than just cutting your salary by 2 or 4 or whatever percent, they pay you that much less, but you also don’t have to work), so we’ve been looking at our finances and our plans anyway. He’s been talking about getting a part time job in addition to fire fighting. He’s even considered quitting and going back to consulting full time.

Of course, if he works 5 or 6 days a week, what does that do to our current daycare amalgam – where I work 3 days and have the baby the other 4 (usually 2 or 3 with him), he works 2 days and gets her on his own 2 and his Mom watches her one day. We weren’t sure we could bring his Mom up to 3 days a week – she might not want to do it / it might be too much. So we talked about whether I should quit (I don’t really want to. I don’t always like my job, but I like the balance) or what we need to consider.

And then…

Reorgs are coming at my office. Due to some M&As, we likely don’t need as many support staff (I’m in finance) as we have and the role I currently have is probably on the chopping block. But I’m a good worker and I’ve known my boss a long time and he thinks there might be some other options for me. But part time? That doesn’t seem too likely – at least not short term.

He mentioned a couple of options. In another life, one of them might actually have been of real interest to me. Maybe it still is… but really, right now (right this second), I like getting some good quality time with my baby and just working 3 days. Maybe I could get into the stuff I’d be doing, but the idea of leaving her hurts my heart a little.

Always the negotiator, I suggested that maybe I could jump into that role full time for a couple of months and then once I had the hang of it and had reorg’d that team a little bit to better use their strengths, maybe I could go part time. He agreed to present that version to his boss. But… whoa…

I mean, it’s good to be wanted and to have a good reputation. It’s good to have a job (the other option is that I’d be losing my job in a couple of months). But it feels like we’re really getting hit with a lot.

And…

Even though he’s going to float the full time for awhile transitioning to part time idea by his boss, there’s no guarantee on that. I may get into and determine – yeah, this is really a full time job. And then I’m screwed and working full time. Maybe I’d get lucky and find something else, but I probably wouldn’t even make as much as my severance package would have been in that time.

It all makes my head (and heart and stomach and…) hurt.

Anyway, thank you for listening. I just needed to throw this all out there to the universe. Please say a prayer for me or send me good vibes or whatever. Thanks!

Post it Note Tuesday

2010-05-25T17:11:00.006-04:00

My weekly homage to Supah Mommy is here with post it notes - late again...

An idea as smooth as a baby's bottom... I hope!

2010-05-21T09:00:00.001-04:00

OK after my last post dissing pampers (I apologize to my good friend who works for P&G, but seriously, man, you didn’t see my baby’s butt!), this seems like a fitting next post. Stephanie at My New Life As Mom is hosting a “Fluffy Bottom Cloth Diaper Event” form June 1-30.

As we were going through the “what are we going to do” ugh of the diaper rash issue, I mentioned to my husband that if we didn’t come up with another solution, I wanted to try cloth diapers. He was totally opposed. I believe the exact quote was – I’d prefer to let her go naked and just clean up the furniture/rugs later. (um, ew!)

I think a big part of the problem is neither one of us really has any idea how cloth diapers work (to this point, I’ve found disposables to be one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century!). We didn’t wear them. No one younger than us in our family wore them. I’ve heard stories – you rinse them in your toilet? Who knows what else? But none from anyone who has ever used them.

So I’m kind of excited by this event – because it’s not just giveaways (yes, I do love those too!). It’s also some education about cloth diapers – styles, price comparison, misconceptions, etc.

Anyway, if you’re at all interested too, go visit herhere and find out more.

Doesn’t the name Pampers imply some level of … pampering?

2010-05-19T15:36:00.001-04:00

When the monkey was born, the hospital had Pampers Swaddlers – they gave us a bunch to take home and we’d gotten a bunch at the baby shower. They seemed like a good choice. But we did also have some Huggies – I think some free samples and maybe some from friends. We tried them and it seemed that we had far more leaks / explosions / ew moments with Huggies than with the right size Pampers (my husband had an uncanny ability to open the bigger size packages she hadn’t yet grown into and think they were the right ones in those days).

So while I’ve never been much of a person for brand loyalty (people loyalty sure! Brand – um, is it on sale?), we became Pampers people. And for 13 or 14 months, we felt a loyalty here. Sure, Costco sold Huggies for cheaper, but remember? They leaked. Not worth it. And there were the non-name brands – but didn’t that seem risky for my little munchkin’s caboose? No, Pampers people we were.

And then a friend of mine mentioned that she thought that Pampers had changed their diapers – to some new “dry max.” She said the box looked the same, but the new diapers were thinner and she thought that they might have even caused a diaper rash.

I didn’t think too much of it. I didn’t even realize that they’d changed. And then, I started to notice a diaper rash on the monkey – maybe a little over a month ago. OK, these things happen. She’d never really been prone to it before, but ok – we need to get on top of changing her more often and lube her up with diaper cream. I’m on it.

Except that didn’t seem to do it. It would get a little better, but the second you didn’t cover her in an inch thick layer of diaper cream for one or two changes (usually it would be that I’d be out and didn’t have it on hand), the rash would be back. I mentioned to my husband that maybe we should see a doctor, but he brought me back to the point I’d been making for a week – what will the doctor tell us? Change her more frequently and get cream on her every time. We just need to do that.

Until one day, I went to change her and her butt looked horrible! I mean, it looked really painful. It was all red with lots of angry looking bumps. I called the doctor right away and in we went. He told me that what had started as diaper rash had opened the door to other opportunistic infections – staph (but not the bad kind. The kind that is always on your skin.) and a yeast infection. He gave me his “recipe” for diaper cream, called Dr. Bill’s Butt Paste – it was equal parts A&D, Lotrimin AF and Neosporin. I went to get the ingredients and, though not a brand girl, went name brand on all – creating a tub of $20 diaper cream.

A week later she was still all red. It wasn’t as bad. But it wasn’t good. We went back. I saw the other doctor and she gave me a prescription. She mentioned lots of possible causes – any change in diet or soap or cream and did mention that some people thought the new pampers could be the cause of this. I began to wonder… But didn’t switch her out yet as I had the new prescription.

In our overzealousness, we ran through the whole 30 day supply in a week. And really – her rash wasn’t gone. It was better certainly – but she was still red and a little bumpy. We went back to the doctor – he gave us another script (telling us to only use this one twice a day, not every time – apparently not all of us were listening when this advice was given (ahem)) and we mentioned we’d switched to Huggies the day before. He told us – you’re actually not the first parents to make this connection. I can’t tell you if it’s true, but you’re not alone in thinking it.

A week later was her 15 month appointment and, of course, we did another check on the rash. She looked a ton better, but her skin still looked a little discolored. The doctor looked and said that discoloration actually wasn’t diaper rash, but the healing skin. The rash was gone, but it could take up to 6 months (SIX MONTHS!) for the color to go away and the skin to be entirely normal.

UGH. So we are no longer Pampers people (this is what I get for brand loyalty!). And the internet is implying that a number of other people are going that same way – though Pampers official statement is still that this product was well tested and is not an issue. We’ve given away the rest of our size 3’s (it was of course the ONE TIME we were totally stocked up!) to friends not having the issue.

Is anyone else having any issues with the new Pampers? Do you have a specific product for which you have unshakeable brand loyalty?

Mother's Day

2010-05-18T09:42:00.001-04:00

I mentioned last week that we went away on Friday and Saturday. What I didn’t mention was that the combination of pollen and screaming (when I was awake. I can’t account for the blacked out parts…) pretty much destroyed my voice. On Friday afternoon it worked – sort of a sultry low voice. My husband kept asking me to say something sexy – like 'you can hold the remote.' But Saturday morning, it was just plain gone. I actually didn’t feel too bad – I just couldn’t speak much. You’d think this could work out well for my husband’s weekend, but instead he spent a lot of time hearing angry whispered “yells” from me telling him to STOP MAKING FUN OF ME!

We got to his parents house to pick up the baby and his family noticed my lack of voice right away. The husband looked at them and said, but don’t make fun of her for it – you’ll get in a lot of trouble.

And would you believe his Mom started making fun of me for it!?!?! Even noting, it’s OK, I won’t get in trouble / she won’t get mad at me. (!!!!!!) Ok, now NORMALLY I really love my mother in law. She’s (well, usually!) a very sweet lady and always very nice to me and doesn’t try to tell me what to do or how to raise my child or things I should do for her son – or ANY of those typical “mother in law” type things. But, dude, SERIOUSLY! You’re going to rank on the laryngitis! When your son just forewarned you about this.

Actually, she only did it once. Maybe she saw the look I shot her son as she whispered and faked sign language to me.

Anyway, we went to bed pretty early again (I was feeling wiped) and got to sleep through till 7:15 when the monkey decided it was time to be up! After her breakfast, my husband bundled her into the car to go buy bagels (my breakfast of choice) while I went back to bed. We finished up and got ready to go to church for 10:30. He was about ready to go (and laughed that I changed the baby from the jeans, red socks and colorful pink sweater into a little party dress. It was mother’s day after all!) when we noticed the baby looked exhausted. Church was NOT going to be fun. So we put her down for a nap and promptly fell asleep ourselves with plans to go at noon.

Well, thank goodness the “noon” mass is actually at 12:15, as I woke up at 12:14 with a SHIT! As I saw the clock (I like to throw in as many expletives as I can to celebrate the Sabbath… Yup, I’m an overachiever that way). We ran to get back out the door and then drove like “Catholics late for mass” (my husband’s universal expression for really, really horrible and impatient driving) and made it there horribly late – but it was our last church option, so we went with it. (It’s been a lot of years since I’ve slept through a noon mass – oh, I miss those days… ;))

Our afternoon was pretty low key. We FINALLY put up the baby gates on our stairs (something that will perplex the dog to no end for days to come!) and hung out till we met my in-laws for dinner. Late. As always.

I think we just might not be very good at low key…

Tell me about your Mother’s Day. Or how you have managed to combat the ever ongoing battle with late! (We won’t discuss how this post topic is a week late…)

Is it a good sign or a bad sign that I am not the only one in the family cooing over baby ANYthings?

2010-05-17T16:27:00.004-04:00

My husband got home from work about 8 on Friday morning and heard a noise in the front yard - sort of a crying / hurt animal noise. But he didn't see anything, so he came in.

About 9:30, we were headed out and then he saw it - a baby raccoon was at the bottom of our tree in the ivy (or the #$%@$ ivy, as I prefer to call it), looking like it wanted to climb up, but couldn't. We stopped to look at it for awhile, took pictures of its cuteness and then wondered... hmm... you don't usually see baby animals all by themselves...

We decided that mama must be gone and this little orphan was left alone on the lawn. My husband asked what we should do. Pragmatically I said, we should go to the appointment we were now late for and think of what to do about this when we got home, as it would surely still be there if mama was really "gone."

We got back around 11:30 and didn't see "Rocky" (or Roxanne. I never really got to know the little furball *that* well). But then we went out to the store a few hours later and I realize he (or she) had just moved a bit and was now about 3 feet from the tree on the other side. We also noticed that there was a second baby over there, but it looked like that one hadn't made it. So we were left wondering what to do again?

Now here's the thing - if this were a full grown raccoon, we'd be giving the thing a damn wide berth. I might be calling animal control for that, but for very different reasons! But this one was... cute!

So we called animal control who gave us the number of some rescue operations in the area. We left a message and headed to the store. All the while my husband was saying, "we can't adopt a raccoon" (in that voice that says - I'm trying to think of how we can adopt this raccoon...). The rescue people called us back and offered to pick it up. They also confirmed that we shouldn't feed it (they have very sensitive stomachs as babies) and we should be careful about touching it (keep the baby and the dog away), as they can be born with rabies and it can be transferred via fluids.

So when we got home, my husband put on his fire gloves (to protect if it bit) and set up a little "home" for it - a cardboard box with newspapers, a hospital blanket and a hot water bottle. Apparently, when he picked it up (by the scruff as mama would have), it barely reacted at all. And we waited for the rescue people to come by. (Side note - when he called the first rescue number, he got the "rescuer's" husband who said - she's taking ANOTHER raccoon?!)

After a little while, my husband went to check on the baby (he'd left the box outside) and it was gone! There was a big scratch (from the outside) in the box and the little raccoon was gone along with his/her sibling on the lawn. Mama came back! Or so my husband assures me to prevent the inevitable - did something come and eat the baby raccoon? - conversation.

Now all this is cute and Disney. But just wait for my blog in a year or two - and those #$~!% raccoons are in my garbage again! ;)

So am I the only sucker who tries to save baby animals (that will later destroy my yard!) or do you do the same?

When I really have nothing to blog are knock knock jokes acceptable?

2010-05-13T09:00:00.000-04:00

As I've already whined in earlier posts, I'm a little under the weather this week and therefore everything I'm coming up with is starting to sound all whiney and annoying even to my own ears (eyes?). So rather than post those things, I wanted to direct you over to Ian at the Daily Dose of Reality who is sponsoring Mission Monkey, a raffle to raise money to help his friend whose young daughter was diagnosed with cancer.

Click on monkey to donate...please help!

While I've never experienced this (and pray to God I never will), some good friends of mine have (with a happy ending, as their daughter is doing very well now) and can only imagine how rough this is for that family, so I wanted to spread the word to the blogging world. Thanks!

I generally thought it was pretty fun until I started to black out. For my husband, blacking out was where the fun began!

2010-05-12T15:26:00.002-04:00

Monday I mentioned that we went to Kings Dominion (an amusement park) as a belated birthday gift to my husband last week. Now the awesome thing about going to an amusement park on a random Friday in May is there are no lines. Paradoxically, the problem with going to an amusement park on a random Friday in May is – there are no lines.

Wait, bare with me!

I hate waiting on all those crazy lines in the blazing heat as well. But I’ve come to realize – I think that those lines possibly serve a purpose. They give me time to resettle my stomach and hold my lunch back down before I get on again. This was not an option last week. No… it wasn’t…

We got to the park about 10 (it opened at 9:30) and headed in to see what the day would bring us. I haven’t been to an amusement park in several years – the last time was when my friend’s company sponsored an amusement park day in November. So there were actually almost no lines then as well – and I already knew that no lines could be a problem… Before that… hmm… well, when my Mom and I went to Disney in 2004, we were using day 3 of our 4 days passes bought in 1989. So you get the basic idea.

We headed right for the grizzly – my husband’s favorite from his previous visit (senior class trip, 1996). We jumped into the front car and away we went. We got back – and hey, still no one waiting for the front car – let’s go again. The third time, we had to move back to another car. Then I said I needed to stop to walk to another ride before going again.

So we got to the next one – I believe it was called the hurler. Also, an old wooden coaster (like Grizzly), so rickety and load and bounces your head around, but no upside down parts. I think we did that one twice (?).

We were working our way around the park mostly sticking to the “big” rides. We did have a short stop on a less intense ride, but actually got kind of bored, so it was back to the big guns.

It all starts to get somewhat hazy… but I think we hit our first metal upside down roller coaster around this point – I think it was the anaconda. And suddenly my husband had a new favorite. Then there was the indoor in the dark coaster, Flight of fear – and we both had a new favorite. But now we were at the back of the park – at the newest coaster the park was unveiling for 2010 – The Intimidator.

Now I generally think these ride names are cheesy (the Dominator, I started calling the denominator – which let’s face it, a math test can be WAY scarier than a few loop-di-loops!), but this one may have intimidated me a little… We head in and this was the first ride where we actually had to wait a few minutes to ride (the injustice of it all!). But finally we get on and start heading up the first hill – pretty much a straight lift up about 300 feet (learned that later), then you fly down the hill at a bit over 90 mph (again, checked our stats later – you’ll see why in a sec) and immediately bank right (I think). This was about the point where I thought – why do I still have my eyes shut? Oh God, I don’t actually have my eyes shut. I think… I think I just blacked out a little…

We got off the ride while my husband crowed how that was the greatest coaster ever and I wondered exactly where the ground was. Still feeling dazed by it, I turned to him and said – I think I almost passed out on that… Once he established that I was OK (as we passed another woman throwing up on the pathway out), this only helped to confirm to him that this was, in fact, the greatest coaster EVER.

Beyond feeling a bit shaky, I was also feeling pretty lame. I mean how OLD am I getting now? What loser passes out on a roller coaster (or fine, almost passes out)? And this is where we turn to technology to save my self esteem. My husband checked the web on his phone and found that apparently you experience about 5 Gs on the ride and most people will start to black out at 4-5 Gs.

While that helped my ego, it didn’t quite help my “sea legs.” But I didn’t want to ruin his day! So we stopped to get lunch (and funnel cake!) and then headed for another coaster. Two coasters later, I was feeling all the shakier and my husband noticed that I was starting to look pale. So we stopped for awhile and just lay down on a bench and then listened to a show. And then we were off! (I may be lame on the wooziness, but I want points for the rally!) We did a few more rides and then… I gave in. I knew he REALLY wanted to ride the Intimidator again. So “intimidated” as I was… I started towards the ride. As we got to the line, one woman turned to me and said – go ahead! I am NOT riding that. I hear that you black out on the second hill.

Where was she when I needed her? Where was she to tell me that was “normal?” (I’m not sure it’s “normal” to go back and do it again, but that’s another point…)

We got to the front, all the while my husband coaching me to tense my leg muscles so that it shunts the blood flow and keeps it from all draining from my head (something he learned in flight school! Flight School! I need flight school to ride this roller coaster!). The second time through I only grayed out a bit (he did too this time).

But thank goodness we could call it a day then! Cause I really needed to lie down…

I wondered later if doing things like that was killing brain cells – you know, depriving them of oxygen and therefore killing them. My husband suggested that I probably would have been able to figure out that answer before I rode the ride.

What’s the craziest roller coaster you’ve been on? Or the stupidest thing you’ve done (twice!) for the one you love?

Post it Note Tuesday - I'm back... ish...

2010-05-11T10:47:00.008-04:00

Finally back for post it note Tuesday after my hiatus!

Sorry for the sad return showing. My brain is dead today!

Mystery trip

2010-05-10T09:22:00.002-04:00

For my husband’s birthday (in March), I gave him a mystery trip – a night away with activities planned by me and, the big deal, our first night away from the baby. (yeah, I feel like I should have a drum roll in their or something – psshaw, like I’d have any idea how to pull that off!)

So Friday morning, we got up early and dropped the munchkin at her Grandma’s and hit the road while I teased my husband about where we MIGHT be going. He’s generally not a great a guesser when it comes to these things. He thinks I’m a good guesser (to the point that he’s suggested I’m psychic), but it’s because, being a bad guesser himself, he sometimes REALLY gives it away with his clues. I think this runs in the family. Before the monkey was born, his Mom told us that she “knew” what the baby’s name was. She just had decided it and was sure. As, at 7 months pregnant, we did not actually “know” what the baby’s name was (I think we were narrowed down to 3 possibilities, but I was still swinging widely between favorites), we asked what it was. We told her it could save us a lot of time and trouble! She wouldn’t tell us, though, insisting that could change the outcome – but she promised that she’d told my father in law so he could confirm if she was right. We begged for a clue and asked what letter it began with. So she said, well, it could be one of 2 letters.

So work with me here – if it’s one of two letters, we’re seriously narrowed down. It’s basically got to be a vowel (most likely A/E, but I guess there might be other options), C/K (seems the most likely possibility in the bunch), F/Ph or C/S. So I said that. Her face froze on C/K and she said – ok, you’re too good at this! No more clues! Now, I knew that she’d intended to name my husband Kathleen if he was a girl, so it wasn’t too hard to get to a likely guess here (I didn’t voice it then, as she seemed a little upset that I’d “figured” so much out, but that was her guess. By the way – our daughter’s name is not Kathleen.)

OK, back to the present. You see where I’m going on clues. So when I told my husband, it was a little north of Richmond. It was a day totally focused on fun (I didn’t go so far as to say “amusement” – I thought that might be too much). And he’d be “king” for the day as it was his birthday present. I didn’t worry at all that he’d guess King’s Dominion (an amusement park just north of Richmond). If you didn’t guess either, don’t feel bad (esp. if you didn’t grow up near DC) – I wasn’t trying to make it too easy (though I thought king for a day was a risky giveaway) and he got other clues (like, you’ve said you wanted to go here since the baby was born. You’ve been here before, but not in a lot of years. Etc.).

I think my favorite part of the day was watching his face light up when he realized where we were going. His friends/coworkers all knew we were doing some sort of mystery trip, but guessed that he was going to end up at a bed and breakfast somewhere. Now, I have to admit – I’d considered that, but eventually discarded it for 2 reasons. First – this was HIS day, not mine. The B&B would be something I’d love, but while my husband would enjoy it, it really wouldn’t be an exciting surprise for him. And second – the B&B involves “breakfast,” right? Something they generally want you to get up for - early. So why on earth would I plan our first night away from the baby – our first chance to sleep in in 15 months for a place with a wake up call for breakfast by 8 or 8:30?! That’s crazy talk!

Anyway, more on the amusement park in another post, but overall the day was great. We actually didn’t stay till close, as after riding countless rides and screaming for hours (and getting up early to head out!), we were pretty well beat at the end of the day! So we headed to the hotel and got cleaned up for dinner, but FIRST – we flipped channels!

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned it here, but when we moved we never renewed our cable subscription at our house. We were thinking – it tends to be very expensive and how much do we ever really use it? I mean, there’s usually NOTHING on tv and we really don’t want the monkey watching much tv. So instead of cable, we figured we’d just go with broadcast tv. Except there’s pretty much no signal at our house… Oops. So, instead we’ve got the laptop hooked up to the tv and we watch a lot of netflix instant and we catch our favorite shows on hulu. So, in the end, we really more just watch stuff we actually WANT to watch instead of just zoning out with what’s on. 95% of the time this is a bonus. But about 5% of the time, we just jones to zone out with the nothing that is on all the time! Oh, and we don’t catch enough news this way. We get our news online, but I felt like I really missed the constant weather updates during “snowmanji” (aren’t we supposed to be glued to the screen watching accumulations at those times?).

So anyway, a hotel room with TWO TVs was like a resort for us! And yeah, there was still NOTHING on… So we went to dinner, fell asleep early after our long day and then… oh, wait for it, wait for it… SLEPT IN. To quote (or probably paraphrase), Office Space, I did nothing and it was everything I hoped it would be.

We headed down to breakfast (hot breakfast served till 10 – now that’s a more reasonable wake up time! OK, we woke up by about 8:30 anyway. Our internal clocks are just broken now!) and then decided to head to Richmond to tour the Confederate White House before we headed home.

Yes, we did miss the monkey. But we actually really enjoyed ourselves – and truthfully, that thought did not consume me the way I worried it might. We did check on her quite a few times, but she was happy and well cared for and she and her grandparents had a ball!

What was your first get away without your children like? I’m guessing most people don’t spend it at a kid centric place like a theme park! What’s the longest time away you’ve gotten? Did you do well the first time or just worry about the little ones throughout?

YARD SALE!!!! Woo woo!!!

2010-05-05T14:21:00.006-04:00

At the beginning of the day, my husband said he thought it was “cute” how excited I got at the yard sale concept. By lunch, he could not be stopped.

Me: Honey, I think the baby needs to eat.
Him: Ok, just one more (I didn’t realize he meant neighborhood!)

Last Saturday was our community yard sale. The HOA sets up 2 Saturdays a year for everyone to have yard sales. If you go to the proprietary office on Wednesday, you can get a map of all the sales. We, of course, didn’t do this. That would have taken advance planning, so not really our style. But, that’s OK, as they were YARD sales – you can drive around and look in the, um, yards.

So we did and boy did the monkey ever make out!? She’s really about the perfect age for this – young enough to be super cute (don’t you want her to have this?), but mostly too young to market to (mostly! One person did try to convince her and/or me that she really wanted some little stuffed animal. Fail! She was interested, but then noticed sharp objects she shouldn’t be near and choking hazards and was WAY more interested in those.)

Several of my friends had recommended that we troll garage sales for any of the Little Tikes things or really any plastic outdoor tables / slides / etc. They tend to be expensive to buy new and they hold up really well, so they’re fine to buy used. Hence we bought her this little slide ($10).

We also got her an outdoor climb / slide / God knows what implement, but I couldn’t find a picture of that. (Also, it’s not currently put together, so God knows what a picture would look like…) It looked like it’s probably a bit bigger (still guessing on exactly what we’re getting for $20...)

But that was just the start! There was also a Noah’s ark ($4) – she’s played with this one at friend’s houses and loved it.

A dollhouse ($5).

A xylophone ($1 – it looked something like the attached, but this isn’t it. We also managed to knock this out of the car and break it on the way home…

And about a bazillion books. Or, well, maybe 13 books ($3).

We weren’t really looking for us, but someone was selling some decent area rugs for $5 each (and we’re in desperate need – yes, we will shampoo them first, Mom!) and a cool picture of the earth (that looks something like this, for $3)

Oh, and someone just gave us a ride on toy for her – I think he was pretty desperate not to have to bring it back inside!

So, yes, we went to A LOT of houses! But we done good!

Oh my God, my excitement at my life in suburbia is SO sad…

Yes, I'm still alive

2010-05-04T12:16:00.002-04:00

But we're starting the forecast and I'm planning a semi-surprise trip away (he knows we're going away, just not where)for my husband this weekend (the monkey is going to grandma's! Our first night away - I'll pack extra tissues for me), so all feels chaotic.

I'm going to try to get a post or two in (I lost a follower for the first time today and realize this must be because I am delinquent... or crap... ugh) this week, but will definitely do my best to catch up later. Thanks!

Sometimes Monday morning lasts a few days and random musings for today

2010-05-03T09:54:00.001-04:00

Why do I try to pack everything I need for the week into Monday morning before work? Seriously? I managed to get my laundry (and some of my husband’s - I find it hard to distinguish his clean clothes from his dirty based on his… unique storage system) done yesterday, but didn’t hit up the baby’s at all or things like towels. So first thing this morning, while the baby was still asleep, I put on the towels. Then once she was up (and my husband was watching her), I moved the towels and threw her clothes in – while deciding that I needed to pull tags off / wash a bunch of her new summer clothes, as she is growing and it is getting warmer. And this needs to be done... NOW.

Then I remembered that I wanted my husband to mail a birthday gift and the mother’s day gift for my Mom. Now the birthday gift is already nearly a month late – so CLEARLY, it needs to be mailed right now. Of course. And hey, as long as I’m doing that, I’ve got two new baby gifts to send – one, we haven’t even received the birth announcement on and the other sent our daughter a new baby gift for her first birthday, so they’ll understand if we’re late (they expect this of us anyway…). But no, it was really important to pull those together – to get the price tags off everything and wrap them (well, put them in gift bags). Right now. Of course. It goes without saying. What else would one do while running late for work on a Monday morning – besides move laundry?

I also decided that it was really important to micromanage my husband. My husband who watches this child on his own at least a day or two every week. And while I may tease him that she is dressed like Punky Brewster when I get home those days (he’s color blind. And not like typical male color blind, but actually doesn’t pass the spot test color blind. And also – typical male color blind…), she’s always happy and healthy and no worse for wear.

He was headed to his Mom’s. So I wrote out the list of things he needed to bring with him – things that needed to be returned to his Mom’s, the soup that the monkey is willing to eat pureed (his Mom is watching her several days this week, so this will save me from trying to fit all this into my Tuesday morning crazy) – you get the idea. I stopped short of packing the clothes for her. But let’s be honest – this is really only because now I was REALLY late for work.

I’m going to blame this level of crazy on the pure mad exhaustion that overcame me by the end of yesterday. The monkey is pushing through molars and because someone up there must hate me, Motrin was recalled this week. And my husband was spending the day with his dad. He got several – when are you coming home voicemails? And one “the dog just puked in the kitchen and it smells like have digested poop, kill me now,” text message. I wish I were making that last one up.

Happy Monday!

So how was your morning / weekend? ;) Just kidding! But I know we all have those days – those days where everything feels like it’s exploding at once – a teething toddler who won’t nap / a dog throwing up / and you don’t feel well – or something along those lines? What are you worst? How do you cope? What are your craziest doing chores like a mad woman first thing in the morning though they could totally wait stories?

On beach shares and mini-vans

2010-04-30T09:00:00.000-04:00

This quote of the day came from a very good friend of mine who doesn't have kids. We were talking about a beach share that my family was thinking of doing with some other families. (It all got too complicated and we realize we wouldn't know most of the people there so we decided against it.)

My friend had said that every family has to "do the kids/house rental thing (and buy a mini van) so you might as well take your turn now. (buy the mini van)."*

She ended on this note for the quote of the day:

By the way, I was riding around in a mini van last night. It was like riding in a lounger. Mind you I got out and put on high heels with a cocktail to try and get the kid stench off me ;)

*We've had the "I'm NOT going to buy a mini van" discussion (the one that everyone has before they have a 2nd or 3rd kid each of whom has huge car seats / activities / stuff that makes the mini van ultimately become necessary. But I'm in denial) several times.

So, my thought/question for the day - what have you done that you said you'd NEVER do before kids? And how long did it take you to break down? What are you still holding on to (like we're holding on to the no mini van for now)?

I don’t want you to lie to me. But I want you to lie to me ABOUT THIS. But I don’t want to know that you lied to me. What’s so hard about that?

2010-04-29T09:37:00.000-04:00

When I found the first mouse (silent shiver), I mentioned to my husband that it looked like another trap had been chewed a little. He admitted that he’d noticed that too, but he was “sure” the teeth marks were from the trapped mouse. Yeah, right. He also admitted that they’d pulled a dead mouse out when cleaning the HVAC, but he hadn’t told me.

I admit that these are good things NOT to tell me. I don’t want to know. The thing is when you do tell me – even if you’re just confirming something I’ve noticed on my own – it always adds the silent question in my head, so what else have you noticed? You’ve disposed of a dozen other mice, haven’t you? You’ve seen them running around everywhere? You fought one off that was attacking the baby?!?! OK, we have to move. But I’m Irish Catholic, so I am very good at repressing all this. I have years of experience. So I just pretend that none of those thoughts have occurred to me and move on.

Until it comes up again.

Like yesterday.

I went down to the basement to move clothes and noticed the one bug (cum mouse) trap that had some bite marks in it before seemed to have MORE bite marks in it and it had moved. The three mice I’d found on traps before had all been stuck on pretty well – ok, one wasn’t so WELL stuck – he was trying really hard to free himself, but still. And one was dead. I convinced myself that the second mouse we found must have been the one to put the bite marks on the other trap. So I was feeling in the clear. I hadn’t seen any evidence of mice or found one in a few weeks. I was even getting to the point where I was (somewhat) willing to check the far side of the basement (on my own!) to make sure there were no mice on the traps there.

Now in that checking, I’d noticed some of the insulation pulled out on the ground (a pretty clear sign of mice), but I again convinced myself that it was from the original mice and I just hadn’t checked. It was NOT new mice. (No, I didn’t pick it up. If I bend over to get it, the mice might be laying in wait and attack me! Are you kidding?)

But then I saw the trap with the edge all chewed up that had been moved.

I mentioned this to my husband and, with a sigh, he admitted he’d seen it too. And my imagination went into overdrive on what other signs of mice he’d seen and hadn’t told me about! Cause think about it – the traps had caught the three tiny field mice we’d seen. But this one isn’t being caught by the traps! He’s able to “steal” the bugs stuck to the traps for food (so not really “steal,” as these aren’t “baited” with bugs – they’re just bug traps too.) and not get stuck himself. This must be a mouse on steroids! The king of mice! Mighty mouse! … a rat. Oh crap. And I haven’t found it yet…

And thanks for that new set of nightmares.

What still gives you nightmares as an adult? If you have/had mice, how have you gotten rid of them (I’m thinking of just paving over our whole yard and adding booby traps. I just have to think of a way to get the HOA to go for it.)? Or do you have stories about other pesks?

Sick day – part 2

2010-04-28T09:00:00.002-04:00

I mentioned I took a real day off a few days ago. Well, as it was unplanned and my calendar was open I decided to FINALLY use my spa gift card from Mother’s Day last year. I’d meant to use it earlier, but first we were house hunting. Not only did that take all our spare time, but also – it was so stressful. Why waste the gift card when I was about to get stressed out again?! Then we were living with my in laws (see prior excuse!). Then I was ALMOST done nursing, so why not wait for the facial? (I was a little worried about what I put on my skin when nursing, as apparently that can have a negative impact on the baby. Who knew?) Then we got busy again and then… Well, yesterday I went for it!

It was very nice to have a couple of hours of pampering, but that’s not actually what’s inspiring this blog post. Instead, it’s the magazine I was reading while waiting for my massage. The magazine was a mom’s magazine (I am modern – I think.). This isn’t necessarily what I would have chosen first – I really would have liked some really indulgent brain candy like Glamour or something, but this was what was available. I started looking at their discussions of “Stay at home moms” v. “working moms” and all that. Blah, blah, blah. What caught my attention though, was in the 10 minutes I flipped through the magazine at least 80% (if not more) of the ads were for some sort of plastic surgery – breast augmentation, tummy tucks, etc. – all pictures of before and after baby body pictures. It seemed like every doctor in the area (I guess it’s a regional magazine) had an ad for his services showing how to lose the post baby belly or saddle bags, how to make your breasts perky again, even comparing silicone to saline implants. And as I looked at it all, I couldn’t help but think – seriously, what the hell?

This is the view of motherhood? This is the best type of ad that can go in? I realize that magazines are out there to make a profit and they are going to take the ad dollars that they can get, but it seemed RIDICULOUS. Theoretically this magazine was celebrating and supporting motherhood – whatever way you choose it (there were long articles on the “mommy wars” and how we undermine ourselves on our decisions to work or not, etc.) and peppered throughout these pep talks were unrealistic body images – with the message that your body needs to look like this, you can’t do it on your own and here’s the (expensive) solution. Now I realize I was sitting at a spa, so of course the idea of unrealistic body images is sort of a given – but these weren’t spa ads! This was just a magazine that happened to be there.

Have you experienced something similar - in magazines, the doctors, somewhere else? Where? Did you say/do anything about it? Or are there people in your life who seem to push these unrealistic standards?

New look

2010-04-27T10:08:00.003-04:00

Hello all!

You may have noticed that my little face lift has FINALLY happened! Well... is happening... As you can see, the links at the top don't all work yet, but we're getting close. And this is all thanks to Krista at Rocky Run Designs!

Please stop over to check out all her cool work and say hi! And keep coming back to visit me (please!) as we finish the facelift over here!

Disclaimer: I know this has taken about a month since I first said a new design is coming! That is ENTIRELY my fault for being indecisive or even unresponsive on occasion when life got busy. Krista has been great - very patient and great about following up (without being annoying!).

Monday Minute - 4/26/10

2010-04-26T09:42:00.003-04:00

1 - What drugs have you done in your life?
I'm totally boring and straight on this one. The closest I've come (outside alcohol and my recovery from a SEVERE caffeine addiction) is taking prescription meds that weren't mine. But not even in an abusive way - like taking a "leftover" antibiotic from an unfinished prescription while I wait for a doctor's appointment or taking someone else's allergy meds when I don't have my own.

I admit that I'm generally too much of a wimp and too much of a control freak to want to lose control, but also I don't always have great reactions to the meds I'm supposed to take. For instance, I can't understand how anyone could ever abuse vicadin as the "floaty" feeling was not really a nice one and that was followed by projectile vomiting for a day. (Note - I was actually given the prescription for vicadin over the phone for a sore throat! With doctors like that, why on earth would I need to do any illegal drugs?)

2 - A/S/L?

Is this like DSL? OK fine -
age = 34, sex = (yes, please! Oh, sorry..) Female, location = Northern Virginia

3 - Do you pick your nose?

Ugh... OK, fine. Generally with a tissue or in the shower / by a sink, so I can "clean up" afterward, but yes. With allergies like mine, it's not really optional. (Great - I just admitted to bad allergies and nose picking. Add a band uniform and headgear and I am the belle of this ball!)

4 - What's your favorite childhood cartoon?

Hmm... this probably depends on whether it was "as a child" (and does college count as a child?) or now? If college counts, then Animaniacs. As a kid, The Smurfs ranked pretty high. But I think this was mostly because I wasn't really allowed to watch cartoons (I know - abusive!) so I would beg my parents on Saturday morning (they eventually gave in so that I'd stop bugging them and they could sleep) arguing that The Smurfs were really ok because "there's a moral in every one." yes, really.

5 - List the URL, of what you believe to be the best blog post you've ever done

Oh, man. I'm not sure I have a real "favorite." I like the one on the lies we Moms tell each other, but I've linked to that one a bunch of times.

I won't say this is my best, but it's a recent one I like a lot:

http://mybabysweetness.blogspot.com/2010/03/its-like-wild-kingdom-in-here.html

Sick day

2010-04-21T10:41:00.001-04:00

So I took an actual sick day this week. Like for real. I mean – Mom’s don’t get sick days exactly, right? Because if you’re home with the baby you still need to take care of her regardless (OK, so you can phone it in a little – extra videos / tv time and who says you REALLY have to shower?). I’ve had a few days where I’ve felt crummy in the last 14 months, but the best I’ve done is nap when she naps and go to bed about 5 minutes after her. But not this time! And the best part? I wasn’t actually feeling THAT crummy!

My husband had worked 24, so I was on baby duty the day before. She’d woken up about 12:30 and needed to be cuddled back to sleep (this has gotten more frequent recently – like every night – after weeks of sleeping well. Ugh. Looks like we need to do some cry it out nights. Kill me now.). Then she woke up at 6:30 and even though she was clearly overtired – that was it! No sleep for you! I hadn’t showered yet (hadn’t even gotten up to get ready for work yet!) and was thinking – it’s going to be a long effing day. (I’m not good in the morning.)

So I thought about it. I thought about what needed to get done today and thought – you know, I could call in sick. Really. There’s nothing major that has a deadline today. I can reschedule a meeting. And we have PTO rather than sick time anyway, so it’s not even like “faking” for the day (I’m just using my vacation time). Since I’ve gone to part time, I very rarely even use my vacation time anyway, so I have plenty. Why not? So I did.

And, as it wasn’t my day to the watch the baby, my husband already had plans. He was headed over to his parents to work on their yard and his Mom was going to watch the munchkin. So rather than change that up, we went with it. Well, first we all laid down during her first nap (very early – 8:30 – because she’d gotten up so early!), but then they headed out. And I went back to bed! Of course I couldn’t sleep. It goes without saying. But I did rest. I stayed in bed till 10:30 or 11 (a luxury I have done without far too long!). Then I got up and watched tv while I ate lunch. To quote (or likely misquote) Office Space – “I did nothing. And it was everything I dreamed it would be!”

What about you? When was your last *true* sick day? How did you manage to get it? What do you do when you just need a day off?

This would be cute if it weren't so sad

2010-04-20T08:27:00.003-04:00

My daughter is teething (oh is she ever!) and was up a bit last night and then completely awake at 6:30 this morning. My alarm hadn't gone off yet to get up and get ready for work, so I tried to rock her back to sleep, but this tired baby was having NONE of it. My husband was not yet home (he works 24 hour shifts). This should make getting ready interesting...

I fed her some breakfast (and fed the dog breakfast as he kept barking at me) and tried to convince her she wanted to go back to sleep (right....). So I thought - OK, if I want to shower, we're going to have to get creative. Our master bath has a shower with glass doors, so I could watch her (of course, I don't usually use this bathroom because it also seems to have a bit of a mold problem in there at the moment. I don't want to discuss it...). I brought in a few toys and figured she could play and I could shower. In the back of my head, I sort of knew, the whole shower would be spent jumping out to move her away from all the non baby proofed items in that room. I was wrong...

I forgot about the teething clinginess. She spent the entire time standing outside the glass doors and trying to find a way in while howling! She tried to get her little fingers between the doors. She banged on the glass. When I opened the door a sliver to reach out for my towel, she tried to squeeze her little body through (and wound up with a very wet sock).

Oh man - sounds like a good opportunity for a mental health day...

Monday Minute - Today's random musings

2010-04-19T10:17:00.003-04:00

1 - Ever take a shit in the woods?

Yeah, I think I probably have as a kid (sorry it's not more memorable than "probably!"). You know - we took a lot of car trips (or flew someplace and then drove a lot) and sometimes - you just gotta go! My parents were seasoned travelers - they brought along tissues for such occasions.

2 - If you won $1,000, what's the first thing you would do with it besides give me a cut?

After I sent my penny to Ian... ;) Is it sad that $1000 doesn't even feel like enough to make a huge difference in our oh so American level of debt? I want to say I'd do really fun things, but I feel like our rainy day fund (and the college fund and the one day renovation / home expansion fund and ...) really need the help.

But to be more fun in my answer - if it was $1000 gift card that had to be spent (I'm seeing the value of those), I'd really like a very nice camera (so that all my "baby in motion" pictures taken of the munchkin these days could come into focus!) and my husband would really like a very nice chainsaw.

3 - What's your favorite phrase?

Why thank you for that $1000 gift card! I totally know how I'm going to use it!

4 - Fill in the blank - the world would be a better place if ______ left the planet.

I really want to name names here! ;) But I'm going to go with "hate" and I guess ignorance and all the stuff that goes along with that as well.

5 - How do you take your coffee or tea?

Though I love Ian's "Airplane" reference, I'm going to have say with LOTS of milk.

Somewhere around the 37th chorus...

2010-04-18T16:21:00.003-04:00

...I start to think I'm getting the words to the alphabet song wrong.

Where am I today? In the gym… well, not really. UPDATED

2010-04-14T11:01:00.003-04:00

If you’re looking for my post today, please check out Our Mommyhood for my post in their “in the gym” section. As I note there, “in the gym” is not exactly what you’d call an obvious post topic for me – other than coming up with a list of excuses NOT to go - you can look for some of my best ones there!

Note - it's supposed to be up at 11 Eastern, but it looks like it's not posted yet... Oops... So um, this is just a preview... coming soon... I see there's a good article on surogacy there now... ;)

UPDATED: There was an error in posting. This will be up on Monday.

And to the weather this year I say, what the $%#$@% ?!?!?!?

2010-04-13T10:02:00.000-04:00

Seriously! Record breaking snow falls – multiple storms throwing down more than a foot of snow (yeah, yeah, I know if you’re in Canada, you’re thinking – so what? My senior year in college, Boston broke it’s snow fall record at 90 something inches and my parents laughed because they’d live in Ottawa when they broke their snow fall record at something like 170 that year (long enough ago that I wasn’t born yet and Canada hadn’t fully switched to metric!. But this is Virginia! We don’t do blizzards!). Kids will probably be in school until July – unless schools have to close for the heat because at this point it looks like it may be 127! It’s currently April and we’re already having highs in the 90s!

Now I don’t mean to be so picky. I know I complained about the cold in the winter and here I am already complaining about the heat (this may have something to do with the fact that our AC doesn’t seem to be working and after running all night last week it was still 75 downstairs (and warmer upstairs) – even though the outside temperature had dropped to the 50’s overnight! We didn’t open the windows because everyone’s allergies have been bothering them and we didn’t want all the pollen exposure all night.). It’s just that – well it would have been nice to have just A LITTLE touch of spring in there. You know – more than a weekend of it.

My Mom was here last week (coming back this weekend for another stopover) and when we were driving on Sunday, she noted that some convertibles had their tops down (it was probably in the low 80s). I said – well, it is convertible weather! Then she said what she always says on this topic – the problem with convertibles is in the summer it’s too hot to have the top down, so they have such a limited season. I tried suggesting that if you’re “moving” on a highway, you can have the top down in the summer and the breeze keeps it reasonable. (Keep in mind that on a trip to San Francisco in February or March several years ago, I was not above putting down the top in the freezing cold and just driving with the heat blasting because heck, the sun was out and it was a pretty day and I was sick of winter!) She said it would be too hot if stuck in traffic. But then again, she’s more the type to be worried about her hair getting blown (even with the windows down) and I’m more the type to have forgotten to dry/style/ maybe brush my hair this morning anyway (I wish I could blame this characteristic on the baby, but such a defamation would be a total lie.).

So I made the argument that convertibles work out well in DC because we have these longer shoulder seasons – a nice long spring and fall when you can use them. I can remember recent years where I was still wearing a sweatshirt in June (sadly at the beach) because it just wasn’t warming up here yet. (Note – this is still entirely a possibility here given DC weather. I mean – since it was 90 last week, it could be snowing next week. That would be followed by a monsoon and then a drought…) Anyway, I’d probably just about finished my argument on our long spring when God started laughing at me and it hit 90. And we discovered our AC problems (when you add this to the plumbing, electrical, bug and dry wall issues we’ve thus far had with the house, I am AGAIN praising God for the home warranty. It’s the only thing that keeps me from cursing the sellers…).

As a side note, I wrote this last week, but didn't get to publish. Following writing this, the temperature dropped again. Now it was beautiful in the day - highs in the 60's and 70's, but cold at night (lows in the 40's). This would generally be fine except that the AC problems seem to mean that our heat now won't work either! (When the repair guy came he explained something about leaks and issues and how they're linked and took the fuse... I don't know - I wasn't actually there for this discussion.) The point is the other morning it was 59 in my house (and 40 something outside).

I know, I know - I totally complained that it was 75 in my house the other day and wouldn't cool off and now I'm complaining about the cold. But SERIOUSLY!

Rather than continue to talk about the weather (how long have I been talkign about it now?! ;)), where do you stand on the convertible issue? Would you want one (ok, if you’re worried about kids – how about a Volvo convertible with roll bars?)? Or are you with my Mom that they have such limited use and/or you don’t want your hair blown? (Note – if by some miracle it’s the one day this month that I’ve actually bothered to do something with my hair, I probably want the top up too. But what are the chances of that?)

Dating and the married mom, part III

2010-04-12T09:59:00.000-04:00

In the first two parts, I talked about my crazy attempt to stalk every Mom I could find who looked like a match, but let’s now go with the more obvious approaches (because why START with the obvious ways to meet people? That’s just silly.) – Moms groups.

I mentioned I was a little scared of Moms’ groups because the only person I knew who was really into hers was… um, I think I’m going with “not my type” here. But I sucked it up and…

It turns out that Moms’ groups are cliquey. Or they FEEL cliquey, damn it! The first one I tried was at our church. Most of the other moms had been going a long time and the kids (and hence the activities) were directed at older kids. Those who had babies, also had a few older kids, so the baby was just being dragged along. I stood in the back and felt weird. It was “last kid picked” in gym class all over again. A few moms tried to reach out – they suggested maybe I’d prefer the women’s bible study in the evening. But here’s the thing – I wasn’t really joining because I was interested in religious fulfillment. I wanted a playgroup for my daughter and some moms I could get along with during that time! What I didn’t want was some event without her on one of the few nights my husband was home so that he was watching her and I was out feeling socially awkward trying to make friends (and trying to remember to watch my language around a church group!). Bible study in our VERY conservative diocese is just not me. (I’m pretty sure I said this before, but I’ll give my husband’s take again. This was on homeschooling, but the principle applies. His view was we can’t homeschool our daughter because she’d be a very opinionated young lady. She’d be the only kid in the conservative Catholic homeschool group going – I think women should be priests!)

After we moved I tried another moms group – this one for a play date. That was probably a bad place to start as all the other moms were really just looking to socialize with their friends. They tried to be friendly and welcoming, but truthfully, I felt like such an outsider. So I tried a meeting with another group. I arrived and who was the first person I saw…?

… That mom who had scared me away from moms’ groups in the first place! Oh God! She’d moved from her old place too and now lived out this way. Luckily, she’s self absorbed enough that she didn’t see me at first, but when they introduced the new people…

The sad thing was that even though they tried, this group started to feel “cliquey” enough that I went over to talk to her more. (How many pathetic points do I get for this?) The reality is that “cliquey” is probably not the right word. It’s just that I’m trying so hard to find things to connect on (other than JUST talking about kids) and so many of these women are already connected to each other in the group.

The other rough thing for me about this group was that I needed to leave the monkey with caregivers upstairs. I’m sure that they were all really nice and all that, but I didn’t know them. And we’d never done that. I had to gulp back my fears on that one and trust. Which is NOT my strong suit.

So, so far the moms’ groups have been a bit of a slow start… but it occurs to me that I’ll never actually FEEL like part of them until I bite the bullet and actually try BECOMING part of them (you know – joining!). I have one more group to try next week, but I think unless it’s awful I will join. And I’ll probably join the group with the crazy mommy too (they will be ending for the year in a couple of weeks, so it didn’t make sense to join this year).

Thank you so much for all your thoughts and advice! At Aging Mommy’s suggestion, I checked out what the library had to offer and it turns out that there are quite a few classes available. I’m also planning to sign the monkey up for swim classes (we’ll see if she’s a sea monkey!). I’ve told the hubby that he needs to come too – a thought that he is WAY less than thrilled with. But I’ve argued that he at least needs to be at the first one to hold the camera. We’ll see…

I guess my prompts on favorite ways to meet Moms are getting old, so… now that you’ve found groups, what are your favorite activities? How would you describe your groups in terms of the Breakfast Club (the princess, the jock, the loner, the criminal – tell me I’m not the only one, people!)? Or find a better 80’s movie reference to put in here (Baby Boom, anyone?)?

Good fences make good neighbors and ditto to you!

2010-04-08T09:00:00.002-04:00

Now that the weather is finally getting nice, it’s occurred to us that we need to start doing something about our TOTAL MESS of a yard. Seriously, the couple who owned the house before us were older and really didn’t take care of any outdoor maintenance (the indoor maintenance is somewhat debatable too, but let’s not go there) and there’s a lot of really basic clean up to be done to just begin to be able to see what’s out there. Then we can get into the REALLY expensive stuff…

Thus far we are living with suburban dream… Finding babysitters so my husband can cut down trees (he got to play with a chainsaw – one he borrowed from his Dad. I was thinking, good, now we don’t have to buy one. He was thinking – oh, this just proves I need to buy a more powerful one) and I can rake leaves in that big patch to right that separates us from the neighbors. It’s like trying to rake the forest. (Now, it’s not that big, we’re in Northern VA suburbia – we feel like we have a fiefdom at half an acre. It’s just not been taken care of in YEARS so it’s totally overgrown and hasn’t been raked. It’s bad enough trying to pull out all the downed branches from this winter. I’m pulling out completely rotten branches from the past 5 (10?) winters.) I feel like Sisyphus doing this (you know, you never make progress – you start to think you’ve made progress and it turns out you have to start over), but it has to be done. No, really has to. One neighbor has been complaining to us about this since BEFORE we moved in.

We started a couple of weeks ago and filled 38 bags with leaves from the back. (note – it’s April, right? The leaves are not falling off the trees. This is just the crap that’s been there FOREVER. Also, that was just from the small part of the yard inside the fence. I'm not sure how much beyond the fence is ours. What I used to proudly think was "possibly the whole wooded area!", I now really friggin hope is just a little bit past the fence line...) I started on the front (this actually was raked once in the fall) and so far have 10 bags filled and I don’t know how many loads of branches to go to the dump. The progress here is slower as I haven’t had as much time to devote to it and truly, I’m a wimp. Hubby probably did 30 of the 38 bags (ok, 35). And he’s been in the back trying to cut up the trees that fell and dealing with the dead ones that will fall rather than muscling through this mess.

So Saturday, as we were coming up for air on this project, we ran into our neighbor (the other side this time) and my husband asked her if she had an arborist she’d used to take down trees in the past. She said that there were several who’d worked in the neighborhood, but then said – you’re not taking down LIVING trees are you. Cause you know you’re not allowed to do that? (Great, we live next door to a 1950’s sitcom neighbor.) My husband said (with more than a hint of impatience and sarcasm) – yes, I’ve read the HOA documents. I’m talking about dead trees here. She joked – don’t make me come after you / report you.

Now, my husband was a bit tired given hours of labor outside and a bit overwhelmed with the remaining task and really – just in no mood! So he said – Ditto! And pretty much ended the conversation there.

You could tell she was a bit taken aback – so shortly thereafter she called me over to mention that they had an old baby pool we could use for the munchkin any time we wanted. And she called over to tell us how nice we all looked when we were headed out that evening.

The thing is – it’s not that she really says anything so egregious at any point. She just tends to be so… hmm, forceful. No that’s not the word – really, I mean over the line – in the WAY she says things. (How’s that for me being a girl? It’s not WHAT you said. It’s the WAY you said it!) For instance, instead of saying – hey, let us know if you ever need to borrow a tool, as we may have something . Or even – hey, do you guys happen to have a [insert totally random tool that I have no idea what it does here], as we need one? Instead she said – we should get together sometime and make an inventory of our tools so we each know what the other has (for our master inventory). Umm… OK.

Basically, I just think she should do some Jeopardy training – you know, learn to phrase things in the form of a question.

We certainly don’t want neighbor issues (that’s a headache that’ll last YEARS if you start it), but sometimes it does feel that good fences make good neighbors. Despite our “fiefdom,” our neighbors sometimes do feel too close. Ironically, the neighbor on the other side who WANTS our trees down asked if she could have some removed when she’s having some done on her property. Maybe we should let the two of them negotiate…

How do you negotiate the neighbor minefield? What are the weirdest neighbor requests or comments you’ve gotten? And how the heck does one rake a forest (short of a blow torch, as my husband has suggested this a few times…)?

The world beyond me and things that scare me so much about being a parent

2010-04-07T11:45:00.002-04:00

This post has been brewing a little while, but was inspired by the bloggess’s post today on Constance McMillan .

When I was in college, we had to read this book, Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott. It’s her journal of her son’s first year (in a book! Because we didn’t have Mom blogs then. Can you imagine?). I’ve pulled a lot of inspiration from this book over the years and would highly recommend it (no, I’m not being paid to say this. I read/bought this book in 1996. If anyone would have considered paying me to say anything, I would have. Hell, it was college – I would have stood on a corner juggling it in a clown suit for money. That was not on the table). I haven’t read it again in a long time, but there’s one thing that stuck out to me at the time that’s been coming back recently.

Lamott’s pregnancy was not planned. She was not married and wasn’t sure how she could support a baby and was very conflicted. But it wasn’t just those issues, she also notes that part of what’s hard about having a baby is KNOWING that that child will one day have to be in the 7th grade. Because the 7th grade is awful. (You can replace junior high on the whole here and possibly high school, but I think you know where I’m going.)

For me personally, she hit it spot on – junior high was that low point. The point where your self esteem is so fragile and where I felt so unpopular and unloved. This was probably true before 7th grade as well (ok, not probably – definitely – I was unpopular!), but I think junior high is probably where you’re really starting to seek more affirmation outside yourself and your family (I don’t know – ask a shrink! I’m guessing.). Oh, was I ever unpopular then. Luckily, my school was discriminatory enough that even with less than 40 of us (we graduated 39 in 8th grade), there was a large unpopular clique(I guess I should say discriminating enough) – at least 6 or 7 girls (because boys and girls didn’t REALLY mix too much yet – a little. With the popular girls.), so we still had some strength in numbers. (There were really 3 groups among the 20 girls, so at 7 (wait – EIGHT – I forgot someone!), we were a full third of the class. Ironically, we weren’t even the smallest group.) Now, to be fair, maybe it would have been possible to transcend my nerd status – some girls did move groups (with difficulty), but I was shy enough to feel like I needed to be invited. I remember at one point, when one of my friends decided she didn’t want to be a nerd and wasn’t going to hang out with us anymore, I decided I could do the same. And I actually did (she never did). I stood on the outside of the popular circle on the playground for two weeks at lunchtime. And, to be fair, no one told me to get lost. They didn’t include me in their plans or really let me play their reindeer games, but they weren’t all that overtly mean. Not the girls anyway. I remember some mean boys. I can remember one day wearing my denim jacket and feeling super cool about it (it was a hand me down from my cousin – this wasn’t the sort of thing my parents were wont to indulge me in. Oh, and it was what? 1987? It was way cooler then – and probably replaced my purple Member’s Only jacket, so there!). I had a hard rock café pin stuck the lapel – to add to my coolness (again, dude, 1987! Really – it wasn’t that cliché yet). Two of the boys noticed the pin (and hadn’t heard of Hard Rock… yet!) and started saying how I wouldn’t know anything about rock (ok, that’s actually totally true… still…) and then said I smelled like shit (that one – not actually true).

Oh man, my inner child is still cringing. Cringing about boys who were stupid. Who knew nothing. Who I wouldn’t recognize if I saw them on the street tomorrow. Who are totally unimportant to my life today or anything about who I am (unless – I hope they’ve maybe made me a better person who learned not to say mean things about people for no reason – the hard way…).

But now I hear the stories that are happening to kids today and mine is absolutely – SO WHAT? Because that is NOTHING compared to what kids are doing to each other now. Maybe part of it is that I got lucky – I went to a girls’ high school where none of my classmates went (so none of my history followed me and honestly – girls are a lot nicer when boys aren’t around). Yes, there were groups and sure there were some mean girls mixed in – but really, there weren’t the same types of cliques. And though I may never have been the most popular girl in high school, I always had people to have lunch with. And I always felt like there were lots of friends around – both in school and through groups outside. And in the end, I haven’t thought about 7th grade in a long time.

But I started thinking about it again when I knew I was having a baby. Because the truth is – I think it’s always hard. Possibly, it always has been. But as I watch the news, it is SO MUCH harder now. I’ve seen these stories about YOUNG kids (11 and 15) committing suicide in Massachusetts due to the beyond excessive bullying. Bullying that schools seem to know about. Hell – there was that story about the girl who was bullied on myspace by her schoolmate’s Mom! I want to say where the hell are the parents? The administrators? But if you look at the Constance McMillan story, they are there – supporting or even instigating the harassment!

How on earth do I begin to protect my child from that?! And most importantly, how do I teach her how wrong it is? I feel like my choices start to become – raise the asshole who bullies the other kids or raise the kid who is bullied to the point of brutality. Because NO ONE is stepping up to stop this stuff. And the truth is – I HATE those choices. (And refuse to go with either one.)

But there is room for me to take heart. And it’s in my husband. My husband has long told me stories of how as a big kid (he’s 6’4 and a fire fighter now, so I think he was the better part of 6’ when he started high school), he didn’t put up with bullying (and he didn’t bully – possibly because his Mom would have kicked his little butt!). There was one time, in defending the small kids, he actually got in a fist fight with a kid a few years older – but much smaller (which the playground guard let happen – probably because he’d been wanting to kick that kid’s butt for awhile too). That kid didn't bully the smaller kids again.

He reminded me just yesterday of why this makes him a good parent. We were out for a walk last night and passed some kids (junior high age). One said something and the other responded –“Nobody cares. Nobody cares about you!” My inner 7th grader cringed again – wanted to go hug (but not in a weird way!) the one who’d been yelled at, but felt helpless. My husband’s inner 7th grader must have said, we don’t have to put up with bull (or maybe it’s just his inner parent)! He stopped and said – “That’s not nice! You shouldn’t say that to people.” As we walked away, we heard one of the kids saying – oh, you just got told!

It all made me realize that I can’t be a part of the “no one” stepping up (because wasn’t that what I did when I didn’t say anything there?). I need to start to be a voice – in all the little ways I can when I hear this stuff. It won’t change the world, but it CAN start to form my daughter into the person I want her to be. The person who does stand up! Who doesn’t go along with the terrible things that other kids may want to do! And, if she does wind up on the wrong end of bullying, a kid who realizes that bullying is WRONG. That it is NOT her fault and there are people to go to / people who will stand up for her and people who love her. Hopefully, she will know that this is true of us, as her parents, regardless. But I’m actually not talking about us here – I’m trying to say that by being an example, she can know that we are just that - ONE example – of lots of possible good in the world.

OK, I know this was long and not my usual style (and a second post today!). But I needed to say it today. Thank you for listening.

Totally weird, but it works…

2010-04-07T09:00:00.000-04:00

I went to the dentist in January for my semi-annual (or maybe it’s ah, “semi” (as in sort of ) annual… Actually, just kidding! I was only a few months late this time) visit. We sat and the discussion of dental hygiene started and my answers got shorter and more muffled as went. Something like this:

Doc (ok, hygienist, but it’s shorter) – do you brush your teeth regularly?
Me – (sweet, an easy one) – oh yeah, twice a day with an electric toothbrush.
Doc – anything bothering you today?
Me – no, no issues (I’ve actually never had a cavity in 34 years. Last year there was a spot on my tooth that might have been a stain or might have been a pre-cavity and my hubby teased me (badly) that my “perfect record” would be broken. But still no – so, ha! To him… not you.)
Doc – do you floss?
Me – um… (shouldn’t I be gargling or something? Where’s something else to distract her? Dang..) Well, no… I really don’t. (head hung)
Doc – It’s hard with a little one at home to find time for things
Me – (Yeah, that’s why. The reasons I never did before must have been really good too! But if I had time, flossing would be so high on my list above getting my hair cut (it’d been at least 5 months then), shopping, reading, sleeping…you get the point)
Doc – you know, I was at a conference awhile ago and they had a really odd suggestion, but the more I thought about it, the better it sounded. You might like it.
Me – (don’t I always love things that are the odd suggestion? Great, I’ve been here 5 minutes and she pegged me as a nutjob already)
Doc – You could try flossing in the shower.
Me - ??? (This is the weirdest thing I’ve heard in…)
Doc – I mean, you’re in there anyway and with limited time as a new Mom, you might be happy for an extra few minutes soaking under the hot water.
Me – huh. Well, maybe…

She went on to explain how people who don’t have issues with cavities very often have issues with gingivitis and that might creep up soon (age wise) and how the plaque on your teeth is thought maybe to be linked to the plaque (am I spelling this right?) in your heart, so it could contribute to heart disease.

And those were all compelling and scary arguments. But did those convince me? Nope, not even a little. But three more minutes in the shower in the morning. I am a convert! I’ve been flossing very regularly. Not every day – some days there are urgent calls to move quickly out of the shower. Some days it’s technically possible that maybe I (ahem) don’t shower. But probably 5 times a week and it turns out – yeah, it actually doesn’t take all that long (when I could stand under hot water longer if it did, I can say it’s fast!) and isn’t that hard.

Who’d have thunk it?

Does anyone else have any weird or random tips that have gotten them to put on their big girl pants and do the things you know you should, but just never do?

Dating and the married mom, part II

2010-04-06T09:00:00.000-04:00

When last we left me, I had done the “pick up line” meeting of moms with somewhat limited success (only one response – but from a really nice woman!).

But before jumping into my Mom version of 8 minute dating – why am I calling all this dating? My inspiration came from a friend of mine, who, as it happens, is single and doesn’t have kids. She said to me awhile ago that female adult friendships feel like trying to ask out the cute guy in high school. They feel a little like a minefield and seem harder than regular dating. She was talking about a neighbor who joked that she’d made a coffee date with this woman she’d recently met and was considering whether to take that further to a dinner date – after she saw how it went. Seriously, though, I totally got what she meant. If you’re single and meet a guy (I’m not saying that’s always easy!) and hit it off, you exchange numbers and often this will be followed up with conversations / actual meetings / etc. It may not become a relationship – you may just be friends. But it seems like there’s a pathway to follow. When you want to make new female friendships, the pathway seems so much more obscured. We’ve hung out at a party, we’ve hit it off – how do I ask for her number? It seems the only way that info is exchanged is if there’s something specific you’ve both mentioned an interest (hey, can you send me the info on where you ordered that [thing that is more complex than clothes because couldn’t you just tell me that now]? Or hey, I’ll find out about that event you mentioned and send you stuff.). It’s really hard to just say – hey, you’re a cool person. I’ve enjoyed talking to you. Maybe we could hang out again sometime. Is it just hard for me?

I don’t know – it’s somehow not in our path. I mean, it’s sometimes awkward in dating situations too, but … I don’t know, I kind of feel like we know where it’s going. If I’ve been talking to a guy at a party all evening – the number exchange is obvious. Society is set up around dating (or the dating concept). OK, the more I say – the more this may just be me. But it still feels like – other moms have their own set up already and may not “need” the friendship the way I do. So it feels awkward to me. As the desperate one.

Anyway, I’ve highlighted my social awkwardness too long. Let’s move on to coworkers. This one works about the same as my church stalking did. There were those women I used to always see in the bathroom at the same time when I was pregnant (because wasn’t I always in the bathroom?!) – we’d chat. How far along are you? What are you having? I was due a few months before my most frequent bathroom buddy (a woman having twins due 3 months after my daughter), so she was out when I came back from maternity leave, but I caught up with her when she came back.

I started with a few casual questions about her kids. Oh, send pictures! Where do you – get their photos done / take them to the doctor / etc.? How was your delivery? And then one day said – you know, we’re always so truncated in these conversations, we should have lunch some time.

So we did. And it was fun. But then… that was that. And the truth is – I don’t really want a weekday lunch buddy. I don’t want to go out too often (for money and calories) and we’ve been really lucky in our recent move that I live extremely close to my office now – so close that I can, in fact, go home and see my little munchkin at lunchtime. And she’s hard to compete with!

Attempt 2 – mostly a bust. A nice person who I really enjoyed having lunch with, but it was unlikely our schedules would ever synch up for ongoing friendships.

Another attempt has been the neighborhood. In our condo, I’d take the dog for walks with the baby in bjorn as often as I could. And one day I saw another mom with twin girls just a few weeks older than my daughter. She and her husband each had a baby in a bjorn and a friend was walking their (very big!) dog. She mentioned that she’d seen me pass her place several times and always wanted to say hi, so we’d get together but always seemed to have AT LEAST one hand full. Well perfect! Someone right in the neighborhood! We didn’t have pens/paper, but we pointed out (generally) where we lived and she promised she’d at least yell out next time she saw me passing.

The dog got more exercise than he had in months! I was a dog walking demon. Stalking the area where I knew her place was every day (it’s a wonder they didn’t take out a restraining order). But nada. Was it because I was the crazy lady who stood outside their door every day (ok, really, I didn’t. I just walked by most days – which I’d pretty much been doing before. Sort of.)? Or had she just found other friends?

Desperation gets 2 points here and dignity a -7.

I’ve had a little more luck in our new neighborhood – sort of. One neighbor with 2 little girls a little older than mine (and a son in school) did pass on her contact info – but then didn’t respond to my email. I’m still debating how far into deficit I should go on dignity points to email her again.

Hmm… well, it looks like I’ll need a part 3 for community events and the mom’s groups 8 minute dating (my peak into mom cliques).

So I guess I’ll leave the prompt as what are your mom dating recommendations and the funniest / most desperate things you did in an attempt to meet other moms? Hopefully my last post will consolidate the list… but I probably shouldn’t make promises!

Monday Minute: Five Questions

2010-04-05T10:15:00.002-04:00

I saw this prompt over at Momma Fargo and thought it was a fun one to do today

What's wrong with fake breasts?

OK, this wasn't my favorite of the questions, but why not? There's nothing wrong with them if they look reasonable good / natural and are not over the top on size (hello, Barbie, I think you're going to topple over...). That is - there's nothing wrong with them for OTHER people. Personally, I'd look like an idiot. It's not just that my frame isn't meant for "greatness" here - it's that I can't do 'fake' or any real fashion risk without looking like a complete tool - like a kid who tried dressing up in her Mom's clothes.

List your latest run-in with the Carnival of Idiocy.

OK, latest and greatest of today... We bought a house last year, so I was trying to get some liquid funds together for a down payment and therefore sold some stocks that my parents or possible grandparents got me YEARS ago. One check came made out to my Dad as my "custodian." I couldn't cash it (he passed away several years ago), so contacted the company to reissue it. It'd been about a month of jumping through hoops, getting papers signed, etc. and I still hadn't seen anything last week, so I called. After a bunch more hoops, they confirmed that they would reissue it and could send it to our new address. I came this weekend - they got the address right which was nice, but... it was STILL made out to my Dad. Let the phone games begin this morning...

Name one thing you'd like to tell your ten year ago self.

Mostly - don't sweat it. You'll be fine.

What's your favorite word that's not in the dictionary?

Favoritest. This is most often used when describing ice cream - as in, chocolate chocolate chip is my favorite flavor (or most favoritest).

Why do fools fall in love?

We can't NOT fall in love. For the true fool, we fall in love LOTS with lots of things and people and the world - and are happier for it.

Speaking from the Crib - guest post

2010-04-02T14:27:00.003-04:00

Sorry for the late notice on this! But if you're looking for me today, I am visiting (guest blogging) at Kelly's blog - www.speakingfromthecrib.com.

Stop by to see me there - and check out Kelly's site while you're over there! She's a very funny blogger with some great posts!

Enjoy

Morning ARGH!

2010-03-31T14:23:00.002-04:00

This seems to be one of those weeks, so I thought I need to do a little thought on mornings so far this week. Well, it’s Wednesday, so just a few mornings, but still.

Monday I had to drop the munchkin at my in laws as my husband was working. So I got up at 6 (well, that was after getting up at midnight for teething, 4 for the dog puking and again at 5:30 for the baby), got ready and woke the baby around 7 (who was none to happy about being woken – she’d had such a long night of waking me up!) to bring her to their house.

We were running late. Shocking, I know. But traffic was actually pretty light (I forgot it was spring break here), so we made it there early and I headed towards work. As I was early, it occurred to me… I could go to church this morning before work if I wanted. Now, this isn’t something I normally do. But a few weeks ago was the anniversary of the day my Dad died and always try to go that day to pray for him / remember him. When I went to mass that day, I realized – this is totally on the way from my in laws to work and the timing is actually perfect to get me to work on time. And it is Lent… I only drop her to their house once a week – I could go one extra time a week. It’s an 8 am weekday mass – it never lasts more than 30 minutes.

I really didn’t feel like going on Monday. I mean, really just wasn’t in the mood. But I also was thinking – today’s not too busy and I really do have time for this. And it is holy week. And that darn Catholic guilt got the better of me and in I went.

I left thinking I was glad I went as the priest had had some really good insights and I’d learned a bunch of stuff I didn’t know. Then midway across the parking lot I started to focus on work and realized – Oh God, I have an 8:30 meeting (it was 8:26) at the other building that I’ve only been to once and don’t quite know how to get to – but it’s at least 10 minutes away from my office (which was still a good 5-10 mins from where I was). Then I uttered a string of expletives (oh, I get so much from religious experiences), as I ran towards my car.

My husband always says no one drives as poorly as a Catholic late for mass. It’s that mad rush of speed trying to get there on time (he knows – this is us nearly every week!) and it seems to flow into the really poor driving coming into and going out of the parking lot. I sort of combined the poor driving of “late for mass” with poor parking lot etiquette with totally late for a meeting with a colleague, my boss and his boss’s boss (or maybe 3 levels up). Oh crap.

Yes I made it. Yes I was late. But not too bad and life goes on.

So let’s move on to today’s mad rush… My Mom arrives on a flight about 3 this afternoon. I have done SO LITTLE to prepare for her coming. I did do some mad vacuuming at lunch on Monday (yeah, Monday was just one of those days), but I hadn’t gotten around to cleaning toilets or just tidying! My husband did a little of the tidying yesterday, but he had the munchkin, so bathroom cleaning was not hitting the agenda.

He left this morning with the munchkin to take the dog to the vet at 7:30 (this did follow some really nice morning cuddles with her!) and I realized – I actually had the house to myself for an hour and if I rushed getting ready, I could get some of this stuff done. So after throwing myself together, there came the mad rush of wiping off bathroom counter tops and throwing some cleaner at the toilets – maybe the scrubbing bubbles will really scrub all by themselves… Then I rushed around with the swiffer trying to hide all the errant dog hair. Threw things in the dishwasher! Threw papers in recycling! Hid things in closets! And squeaked into work a little later than intended, but not too bad.

When did I become this person?

Today’s prompt – how much cleanup do you do before your parents or in-laws arrive? How much is real cleaning and how much is hiding? What are your best secrets for the “fast” clean? Do your significant others help much (or hinder!)?

Dating and the Married Mom

2010-03-30T14:27:00.002-04:00

It’s true. I admit it. My husband has said he looks at my blog sometimes and he’ll see it right there in black and white. And what will happen then? Well, he’ll probably ask me how my dates are going and if I’m making any progress breaking into the Moms groups around here.

Yes, you see! Not nearly as tawdry as you thought. I’m not dating men. I’m dating other Moms! Wait… now that sounded a little tawdry too… Let me try again. I’m “play-dating” other Moms!

The longer I've been trying to find other moms – people with kids my daughters age, people I can hang out with, people I have something in common with! – the more it begins to feel like the old dating game. Worse, actually. See, I’m shameless now. I’ve tried “e-baby” (ok, not really – my husband says that there should be an e-baby or maybe baby-harmony to meet your Mom mates) - checking out all the meet up websites and groups. I’ve tried the Mom version of 8 minute dating. The real dating version was so much more fun… But then again, I think I was less desperate in my single status than as a Mom! I’ve tried friends of friends (or wives of friends). And I’ve gone with the old standby of straight up pick up lines! It’s just now I’m doing them at the back of church rather than a bar. And they sound more like “so how old is your baby?” rather than “do you come here often?” (Disclaimer: I think it’s important to note that I’m almost positive I NEVER actually used that line. Almost… Well, maybe ironically…)

You know, now that I think of it, I’ve really even done personal ads… web based personal ads, but still… Oh God, I’m starting to feel like a loser… How did I get here...?

In those early days of mommyhood, my Mom stayed with us for a few weeks and she was NEVER more welcome in my home than then! When she left I cried and wondered how I’d make it through every day, as my husband was working crazy hours. I started to feel lonely, so I started to reach out to look for moms groups, but by the time I found them it was nearly time to go back to work anyway.

I kept looking for groups, but it seemed hard to figure out around my work schedule (and his!) and now we were thinking of moving – maybe I should just wait for our new neighborhood… And I put it off. The truth was I think I was a little scared of the moms groups. The only woman I knew who was really involved in one from a prior job was … oh gosh, how to describe her? I’ll go with a little narcissistic and a bit ditzy. I had this vision that the groups would be filled with clones of her.

But once we moved I started to notice again how VERY long those days off at home alone with the baby could be. So I started looking again. And this time with a vengeance. One of my problems on this front has always been my husband’s work schedule. I really want to find groups when he’s at work. Because if he’s home, we really like to have that family time together. The problem is – everyone else feels the same way! And their schedules are totally different than ours. So, where I may want to be home when he is on Thursday and Friday, they want to be home with their families on Saturdayor Sunday when my husband is at work. I started to realize I probably needed to compromise on this to establish the friendships. (Then, once they saw how awesome I was wouldn’t they all want to change?! Ha!)

So, step 1. My church stalking / desperate card distribution! One of my friends insisted that staying home, you’d start to meet other people “naturally.” If you are in the grocery store at 10:30 am on Tuesday, a good number of the other people there are probably stay at home moms too. You’ll see babies your daughter’s age and just start talking. I have yet to find this to really be the case. Instead I tried the crying area at church. The key was to try to find a Mom who looked reasonable / like someone I could get along with, who had a child my daughter’s age and ideally did not have other older kids. If she already had kids, she’d totally already be in the playgroup circle – and, man, are those Moms circles ever hard to break into!

I started flinging out my card with a vengeance! Oh, your son likes trucks, my husband’s fire station participates in “truck day” in the county. Here’s my card. Why don’t you send me a message and I’ll find out when it is? Oh, your daughter is just a little older than my little girl? Hey, here’s my card! Oh, your son is so cute – why don’t you take a card?

And here I have to turn to the great wisdom of Jersey Shore to say – “it’s a numbers game. If I give out my number / call 30 different girls, at least a couple of them will be into hanging out with me.” (No, I didn’t memorize Jersey Shore. I’m paraphrasing.)

And, as it turned out – ONE mom did respond! And we actually had a play date. And it was fun! No, she’s not my new best friend. But she’s a cool person who I could hang with again.

Desperation – 1, Dignity – 0.

As this is getting very long, I’m going to do separate posts on other “dating methods.” But I’m hardly done with my pursuit! So I turn it to you – what have you done to meet other moms? Find playgroups? What were your most desperate moves? Your most successful?

In the spirit of Easter - UPDATED

2010-03-29T11:50:00.002-04:00

Quote of the day

We were talking about potty training and my husband looked at me and said:

“Do you think it was hard to potty train Jesus?”

How does milk not come out your nose at the randomness of THAT thought?!

UPDATED:
I hate to pick favorites as all the comments were awesome, but this one made me laugh out loud, so I HAD to add it. FromGrace's Mom:

Perhaps, once we are addressing potty training, I should get Grace a WWJD bracelet for guidance?

This is why we became parents

2010-03-26T09:09:00.003-04:00

This morning, the munchkin started crying a little before 7, so my husband when in to attempt to cuddle her back to sleep in the chair for a bit. This is something that only Daddy can do (at best it works for 5 minutes for me), but which he LOVES to do. See normally the little monkey isn't much of a cuddler. There's so much to do and see! She needs to be on the move! But in her half asleep state, she's a champ!

The dog argued with me for awhile in the other room about why I should get my butt out of bed to let him out (it's raining. He doesn't really want to go out anyway!) and then once I'd done that, why it was NOT OK with him that I went back to bed instead of feeding him right away. He's very pushy... Anyway, around 7:30 my husband brought the munchkin in and she did something she NEVER does when he handed her to me in bed - she cuddled! Usually, when brought to our bed in the morning, she's a wiggle worm who is quite mad that we're not on the move to get her breakfast (Man, they are ALL so pushy!). We could sort of get away with morning bed time when I was nursing, as I could take care of breakfast there, but she'd still wiggle and squirm and we had to be on top of our game to make sure she didn't take a header off the bed.

But not this morning. This morning, she cuddled and did her great drooly baby kisses. She did still squirm a lot, but she also gave hugs and kisses! Even the dog got into the mix - he jumped up and the two of them interacted better than they ever have. Normally, he's a bit wary of her. It started out as scared - my 50 lb dog ran away from my 8 lb newborn and hid behind me. Then eventually it grew to a somewhat resentful tolerance - although still when she's coming at him, he tends to run! Now, he likes her when she's in her high chair - she's sure the finger foods I give her are meant for him - but gives her a wide berth most other times. But not this morning - this morning, he liked her face (her reaction was awesome!) and was very tolerant of her petting.

Then he jumped off the bed again to say - um, hello, FEED ME! And she cried! Where did he go? And then - well, this is one of those things that as parents we think she might have grasped a concept, but are willing to consider that maybe it was coincidence. Outsiders would say this was unrelated. Her grandmother would call Mensa to let them know about their new member. Anyway, then she started hitting the bed / my leg, the way that we do to say "come up" to the dog (you know - we'll pat the bed / chair / etc. next to us and say come. Yes, he's got his run of the house and is on everything. And we wonder why he thinks he's the Alpha... As an aside, my husband got him as a puppy in college. There was NOTHING in his college apartment that was (or should have been) off limits to "keep it nice." There were things he should have been kept out of to prevent him from catching some sort of disease... but that's a different story).

But, this morning, as our "puppy" (whose 10) was licking our little munchkin's face and she was squirming away giggly to cuddle into me, my husband looked at me and said - this is the payoff. This is what we signed up for.

One small year for baby sweetness, twenty five big years for dotcom - Should I thank Al Gore?

2010-03-25T09:00:00.000-04:00

Ok, I know this is a bit random - not to mention a week late, but I can't help but write a small post on this milestone...

I started using the internet "for real" in 1996 to get some background data for a research paper in college. My roommate had recommended that their might be some good stats on the web and when I looked at her blankly (crickets), she offered to show me how to use it. I can't believe I just had to write that... But it's actually true. I know I should 1000 there. But, um, you've been to my site - you have a good sense of my "natural computer ability" here. (note - I can absolutely LEARN computerese! Given years of practice, I'm actually really good with excel and access and can do just a little bit of sql - none of which helps in web design. And one more plug for delinquent designs here who has promised to fix the ugly for me! But I digress.) I think she was probably showing me how to turn the d@mn thing on as much as anything else! Also - remember - this is 1996. Google doesn't exist (again - can you imagine?), so God knows how I even found the information I was looking for.

But thus began my relationship with the internet. I'd had email before that, but let's not get into a pre-internet email description of vax machines - it will make all our heads hurt (no, I honestly can't remember how it worked - yeah, I'm not only that old to have used them, but also to have alz heimers). That relationship has grown and grown (to an obsession!) and here we are now.

So what was my point? I was actually a little late to the internet. It had actually been around since... March 15, 1985 (yes, that's 25 years this month) when the very first .com domain name was registered (in case you're wondering, it was www.symbolics.com). And, as I am writing to you in this blog on that funny little interwebby, I thought - why not give some props? A happy birthday message, if you will.

And, why not also back up that I am actually THAT big a geek to know this stuff.

So for today's prompt... do you remember when you first started using the internet? I know for a lot of people reading, it's been there your whole life, but you probably weren't logging onto symbolics (via aol dial up?! ;) ) on that first day, so where did you begin?

Working Mommy Wednesday recipes

2010-03-24T16:50:00.002-04:00

So, Lisa at This Mommy Works had a great meme today - easy 30 minute weeknight recipes -

She already took chili! (that's our big one) And I suppose takeout can't REALLY be my answer... I'd like to say pasta, but I don't think that even counts as a recipe...

OK, here goes:

Baked chicken
Take boneless skinless chicken breasts, spray with pam and add garlic and herbs de provence. Bake at 350 and I'd say check after 15 minutes.
Frozen veggies on the side and then the starch of your choice (7 minute microwaved baked potato or sweet potato, rice, etc.)

Make extra chicken and you can cut it up and mix with non-fat yogurt and low fat mayo (2 to 1 yogurt to mayo), dijon mustard (I prefer the coarse grain), apples, walnuts and grapes for a great, low fat chicken salad. For tomorrow's dinner!

And now for my Wednesday morning reality check..

2010-03-24T09:31:00.003-04:00

Oh wow - talk about Queen for a day! That was AMAZING! Everyone was just SO kind and the comment love gave such a warm fuzzy glow to an overcast day in NoVa.

And now... um, so, wait, do you mean that a couple hundred people won't be coming by my blog to say hi and comment EVERY day? Huh? Is this my SITs day hangover? ;)

Just kidding! But it was awesome - I felt like a celebrity for a day! And it was just great to get a chance to get that exposure to try to make some connections. (I don't think I quite appreciated what a good idea sits was before! Now I want to start 5 more sites like it - to combat the sits hangover!) And I've already started to find some great new sites and kindred spirits - though I still have a lot more visiting to do!

Hmm - I usually like to have a prompt, but I've been so "all about me" the last couple of days, I haven't set myself up so well. So, I admit this one is random, but I'm feeling a bit inspired by our first taste of spring this past weekend (which has been so callously ripped from our hands by cold rain this week!). What are your favorite things about spring? Your favorite springtime activities? Or, if not a fan of spring, what's your favorite season?

MY SITS Day – I’d like to thank the Academy

2010-03-23T00:01:00.000-04:00

Hello and welcome all! It is finally here! My SITS day! For those of you who don’t know about SITS – it’s a group of bloggers that supports each other through blog visits and comments. You can check them out here.

I feel like I’ve been waiting for this day for such a long time and yet I can’t believe it’s finally here! I don’t know what to say. I feel like I should thank the Academy… and by that I mean “sits”terhood! And my wonderful husband and daughter – my inspiration and support in so much of this. But if I’m thanking my inspiration and blog “fodder” … well, I should probably thank the bugs, mice, and the snake (!) in the basement that have provided so much for me to talk (read: complain!) about. Yes, you read that right – it’s been feeling like a full house here recently. My husband argued that I shouldn’t mention all that as you’d think I live in a tenement! But really, we’ve just bought our first house and are dealing with all the joys of home ownership (I never realized that my parents weren’t just born boring and adult – it was thrust upon them. Seriously, now I could have a twenty minute conversation on landscaping, paint colors, how to clean up after a toddler (or husband! Just kidding, babe… ish) or whether the trees will likely fall in the next storm. But I haven’t been out to that cool martini bar in I don’t know how long and I don’t know the name of that new sushi place downtown. We’ve become so suburban! How did this happen?!)

Oh sorry – did I lose half my audience on that last paragraph? Let me try again. Let’s start with a little bit about me. I’m a first time Mom of a 13 month old baby girl in my 30's. I work part time in Finance and really love the balance that this gives me – a decent amount of adult time out of the house where I very rarely discuss whether anyone’s pottied today mixed with a decent amount of baby time, so that I feel like I really get to be a part of her life and see her grow up. My husband is fire fighter / paramedic, so he also has a non-standard schedule which means that between the two of us, we can mostly cover child care. On days when both of us work, my mother in law gets some grandbaby time (usually one day a week). Of course, this doesn’t always work out perfectly and sometimes she goes to some “interesting” places like court.

I started blogging last summer and… ok, I admit it, I thought maybe I could take the blogging world by storm and even make money this way. Yes, yes, feel free to laugh at my naiveté. But, truthfully that wasn’t my only motivation (I promise!). I’d had a bit of a tough time of it working out the balance at the beginning and adjusting to my new life. I wanted to put down some of those thoughts to help me sort it out and because I thought it might help others to know that they weren’t alone. So in that spirit, I wrote this on adjusting to my new role as well as this and this on breastfeeding.

So there you have it – a little bit on me. For my regular followers, thanks so much for this trip down memory lane (it’s like the clip show on sitcoms when the writers just don’t want to write new material… except this was just as hard for me to write!). For those new to the site – thanks so much for coming by! I hope you have some fun and will come by to visit again – I look forward to “meeting you” through your comments and sites!

And last… while you’re stopping by, I’ll make my ongoing request for baby food recipes or suggestions to get a picky toddler who doesn’t like solids to eat ANYTHING!

For the first time ever…I am in favor of springing forward!

2010-03-22T09:18:00.001-04:00

OK, my title is a little misleading. See the whole time change thing has pluses and minuses every time, so each time it happens I celebrate my pluses – in spring, hey it’s light out an hour later and in fall, hey I don’t have to get up in the dark – complain about the minuses – in spring, jeez, I HATE getting up in the dark! Why do I have to do this again? And in Fall, man, it gets dark SO early! But always in the past, Fall would win out because you get to sleep an extra hour / get an extra hour of weekend. So Monday comes along and you feel like you get to sleep in and all is right with the world. And in Spring – the opposite and damn those time changing bastards.

But this year! This year! It is different as I have a toddler. Someone explained to me Monday that this time next year I’d learn that toddlers don’t follow the time change and that would be such a pain. No, no, my friend! That is a pain in the fall when your toddler insists on getting up at o’dark o’clock well before your alarm and is raring to go. I cursed whoever came up with this entirely stupid idea then.

But Spring! Oh lovely spring! My 13 month old has no idea that the clocks have changed. So whereas before I’d been desperately trying to push her bedtime back to 8pm so that she’d stop waking up before 7 (sometimes before 6). Now, oh sweet gods of the time change, she is cured! (It’s a miracle – can I get an amen?!) She easily stays up till 8:30 and, dude (DUDE!), she has slept in till 7:30 – or even 8:30 when that last hour is spent sleeping on Daddy! (Admittedly, the morning snooze bar of sleeping on daddy has started the night time waking cycle a bit again and we are back to some sleep training, but I am choosing to ignore this.)

I’m wondering how long I can keep this going for… Keeping in mind that it does mean that I have to stay up till at least 8:30 and therein lies the problem…

What time do your kids go to be / get up? How do you shift the needle on that to get a few extra z’s in the morning? When was the last time you actually got to sleep in? And what’s the secret on that?!

Just a little nip and tuck

2010-03-18T11:04:00.004-04:00

Some of you may have noticed (or even commented!) that the ol' blog design here is looking... well, a wee bit shabby. Really? The original blogger layouts? Come on! My sad attempt to get some backgrounds from The Cutest Blog on the Block that went so awry (by the way, I'm not dissing that site at all. It is a verycool site with lots of free stuff that has helped a lot of people. I am clearly too dumb to blog, though, as I can't seem to get it work for me.) It's been suggested (mostly by my inner voice these days) that maybe it's time I stepped it up. I've got over 200 posts - I guess I can no longer claim that I'm new to this and I'm doing content first and will make it pretty later...

So finally, to the rescue has come one awesome fellow blogger who will soon be giving us a little facelift! So stay tuned! And go visit Krista for some ideas for you - I believe she has a favicon giveaway this week.
Check out http://delinquentdesigns.blogspot.com

Erin Go Bragh! In celebration of St. Pat’s day, I decided the wearing o’ the green meant cabbage leaves in my “bragh.” Not really.

2010-03-17T09:41:00.002-04:00

I believe I mentioned that as my daughter turned one last month we had begun weaning. As she’s a bad eater (yes, still looking for any and all ideas on how to get her to eat more solids), I was pretty slow in the weaning process – waiting nearly a week between cutting feedings / replacing with foods. But about two weeks ago I finally finished. Well… she finally finished. My body was not so aware of that and thought it’d just go right on producing.

I talked to some friends about this before I weaned and most said that if I just did it slowly (they suggested about 3 days between cutting feedings), I should have no issue with engorgement. I wish they’d told that to my left boob. Sorry – is this TMI? You might want to stop reading now. Last week I noticed a big solid lump there – not the whole boob of granite as I’d noticed with engorgement before, but just sort of a ball of it in the center – that hurt like anything when the munchkin would bump into it (which she did often – how does she know?!). I decided to call my doctor. After I got past the receptionist’s attempt to web MD my problem (have you tried a warm compress? Um, could I speak to someone with a medical degree of some sort about this? I just want to make sure this is normal.), the doctor told me that this sometimes happens. I can try ibuprofen and a warm compress (ok, receptionist, you win this round!) and I should come in if it doesn’t go away in a month. I’m sorry – let me repeat – A MONTH. Argh!

The warm compress wasn’t doing much, as I soon discovered I didn’t really seem to have a blockage per se (there’s not delicate way to put this so let’s just be blunt – when I tried to massage out the “blockage” in the shower, I sprayed all over.) – just more engorgement. So I decided to go back to the old wives tales my friends had told me to use in case I experienced engorgement when my milk first came in (I didn’t. I felt like I was waiting for enough milk FOREVER). Note – now that I think of it, some of those ideas include icing the swollen area – exactly the opposite of what you do for a blockage, but I digress. Anyway, the main one had been cabbage leaves in the bra. Even her pediatrician had suggested this for weaning. And heck, as it was almost St. Patrick’s Day, what good timing… (I wish there were a sarcasm font.)

The first night, I put them in for a couple of hours. The small amount of remaining milk on the right side seemed to respond (that hadn’t really been a problem anyway), but not so much the other. So now… well, I’d have to say I was uneven. Just call me leftie. Southpaw? On second thought – DON’T! Great. I’m pretty sure this was only obvious to me and not something other people were really noting (as we’ve gone pretty far down the TMI path already, I’ll just go ahead and note that my chest is usually pretty un-noteworthy so no one is staring anyway). Regardless if that is true – I’m going to tell myself that.

So the next night, I tried going to bed with cabbage in the left cup. As a side note, my friends who’d suggested doing this when my milk came in had been very clear that I should NOT leave the cabbage in for very long – I think their suggestions were along the lines of half an hour – as it was very effective and could dry up supply too much. So I’d thought the couple hours the first night should be more than enough. Sleeping with it I thought might dry up supplyso much it'd make breastfeeding impossible if I ever decided to have a second child! But, um, no… At least not right away.

A day later it did seem like maybe things were on the mend. And now that St. Pat’s day is actually here, well it’s possible that I won’t even need to get “festive” and wear any green in my bra all day! Wouldn’t my ancestors be so proud…?

Did anyone else have trouble weaning due to engorgement? What did you do? How long did it take to fix? What’s the weirdest suggestion you heard – actually, let’s not limit to engorgement on that and go with any nursing suggestions?! And, as always, please send along any ideas for getting the baby to eat solids and/or recipes for making baby food. Thanks!

Not really a giveaway - but some coupons

2010-03-16T11:04:00.002-04:00

I generally don’t do giveaways or much along the lines of schilling, but I happened to have gotten a good offer so I wanted to pass it on. Here’s my full disclosure – no, I’m not getting paid or free tickets or any sort of prize or remuneration for doing this. But I love coupons! And this, my readers, is a coupon for you! I don’t think too many live in the DC area, so I’m not sure how useful it is, but I thought I’d pass it on just in case. I’m including the info (exactly as sent to me) for 30% off for the Big Apple Circus in case it’s of use to anyone. Here it is:

Information regarding the promo code is as follows (please do not edit):
To purchase your discounted tickets to the Big Apple Circus:
Online: http://bigapplecircus.org/dullespop.aspx and submit the code POP10 in the Promotional Codes box
By Phone: CALL 888-541-3750 and mention code POP10
In Person: Big Top Box Office 10AM–6PM daily. No service fee. Bring a copy of this blog post
*Offer good on select seat locations and performances. Must present this blog post to receive discount at the box office. Performance schedule subject to change. Offer is subject to availability; not valid on prior purchases; cannot be combined with other discounts or promotions. This offer can be revoked at any time. Discount amount varies. Limit 8 tickets per order. No refunds or exchanges. Telephone and Internet orders are subject to standard service fees.

OK, that said. We went to Big Apple Circus a couple of years ago – yes, before kids. I don’t know… we’re masochistic that way? No seriously. My husband had mentioned he thought it would be fun to go to the circus, so I got him tickets for his birthday. So my thoughts – I can vaguely remember going to the circus as a child and my recollections were of the “lions and tigers and bears (Oh my!)” variety – you know, a total spectacle / show. While the Big Apple Circus is fun, it’s a much smaller scale than that – the animals include horses and dogs rather than the full scale wild variety. However, that said, it’s WAY cheaper than Barnum and Bailey! I mean, I think it’s about half the price (and less with the handy dandy coupon). So for a more economical fun way to introduce your kids to the circus, I think you might enjoy – just don’t go expecting Barnum and Bailey or you'll be disappointed. Hmm… with this review I’m thinking they might not send me the coupon again when the munchkin is old enough to come along with us… Ah the risks I take for full disclosure for you.

And, as long as we’re going down the coupon path, why not totally sell out? OK, just kidding. Once again – here’s the whole story. I learned about this service via an email a few weeks ago and thought it was kind of a cool idea, so I forwarded it to a bunch of friends. I’m including “my” link so if you sign up and use the service at all, I will get a $10 credit on my next purchase. (If you sign up, you’ll get a similar link you can forward to friends for your own credit.) But you can also sign up without my link and that’s fine too. I just think it’s kind of cool and if I’m going the coupon route, why not throw this in?

The site is called groupon (http://www.groupon.com/r/uu1209198). Basically it uses the internet to take advantage of the group discount concept. So each day they negotiate a deal with a local vendor (you set it for your geographic area) and if enough people sign up for the service, you get a group discount rate. If not enough people sign up, there’s no commitment to buy and no discount.

Sorry for schilling today, but really this is not the sign of sell outs to come! Both just seemed like useful discounts to me so I wanted to pass them along. As the type of person who tends to do a search on “Quiznos coupons” (or name the restaurant of your choice) before going to lunch, I had to pass them on.

So for today’s prompt – let me know if you consider this too big a sell out or too annoying. I probably won’t do many of these promos, as I only want to pass on things I find useful or would use myself, but if you as the readers hate them, consider this my last one. Or let me know if you find this at all useful or like it – or, better yet, if you have any good discounts to share! ;)

It’s like wild kingdom in here.

2010-03-15T12:18:00.006-04:00

You want to know where the wild things are, Maurice Sendak? Well, I’ll tell you - they are in my basement!

Some of you may remember my story of the snake skin (unfortunately, I can't get the link to work today - basically there was a VERY large black snake skin the basement which we found during walk through. Its owner was likley 6 feet long or longer), when we did the walk through on our house. I refuse to say more on that as I will start convulsing – let’s just say HUMONGOUS and it is amazing we still bought the place and leave it at that. You may also remember (from my constant complaints on the subject) that we have ants. I would say that is enough. We have a baby, a dog, a whole bunch of bugs and the remnants of a snake. That is a full house, my friend. No more.

But apparently not.

Two weeks ago, my husband and I were both home and I went downstairs to move some laundry. He was videotaping the baby doing her little “dance” routine (she turns on the music in her play yard and wobbles about in her unsteady stance and says “dance!” – as first time parents, we think this is the cutest thing in the history of the universe). Midway through the video, I believe you can hear a scream from the distance and my husband yelling – what? Apparently, you can not hear my somewhat quieter – “Mouse!,” as he came running down to see if my arm had been bitten off (by the anacondas that frequent our basement!) only to laugh at my reaction to the tiny little fur ball stuck to the bug trap.

Yeah, let’s go back a minute. So when the exterminator came, he put out ant bait/poison all over the first floor and then put these bigger traps in the basement and garage to figure out what other bugs we might potentially have. Pretty quickly I noticed a few of the hopping spiders (I think they’re actually called spider crickets – they have a bunch of legs, hop about a foot off the ground and will attack you if caught off guard and/or suck out your brains in your sleep. It’s possible I made the last part up. But it’s also possible I didn’t!). OK, good. He could see we had those and figure out what to do about them. Some time passed and I noticed – those hopping spider corpses stuck to the trap didn’t appear to be there anymore… As they likely hadn’t just disintegrated, they’d either found their way off (because they’d been storing their energy laying there for a few weeks waiting to pounce… clearly) or … something bigger had come along and removed them for dinner. Yes, logic told me there was something else going on. But logic is never my friend in these circumstances, so I told logic to take a hike, I prefer ignorant bliss.

But I would go look at the traps periodically. To see if they’d magically reappeared? OK, I’m not that blissfully ignorant. I wanted to know if there were new ones. This particular Monday morning, I looked at the trap and saw something bigger on the other side. Excellent housekeeper that I am, I assumed it was a big piece of lint or dirt (in my defense, this is the unfinished side of the basement). I went to move the trap to see what it was and… it moved! SO YOU CAN SEE WHY I SCREAMED!

Hubby was sent to dispatch with this. We agreed that we couldn’t kill it (dude, it looked at us! I mean, I wasn't inviting it for dinner or anything, but I couldn't personally be the one to kill it), so he went to release it into the woods – all the while threatening that he would take my car to do this – the mouse could ride shotgun. Yeah, and then I’d find a shotgun too… He drove his truck to the wooded area a mile or so away, sang a chorus of “Born Free” and let Mickey go.

I checked the other traps and noticed some distinctive bite marks in one – which my husband insisted must have been from the same mouse (he just doesn’t want me to refuse to go into the basement, as he’d have to do all the laundry!). But then he did admit that, as it turns out, they did pull a mouse out when they cleaned out our ducts. In the ducts? Like they could be anywhere all over the house? I’m sticking my fingers in my ears and shouting IGNORANCE IS EFFING BLISS as we speak!

A few days later I’m back in the basement and take a look at another trap and – yup, Minnie must have been looking for her mate. Oh God help me. Hubby was called in again – with extra force as this one wasn’t stuck on so well and was trying hard to escape (the efforts looked sort of like a little kid trying to learn to jump – you know, when they stand on the ground and try to pull their bodies upward by sheer force of will without bending their knees?). When he came up with the whole trap in a plastic bag – as he didn’t want to get too near it – there wasn’t so much laughing at me this time… (As a side note, no I didn't scream this time - as I was LOOKING for mice and wasn't surprised by it.)

I had been planning on saving mouse traps for a birthday gift for him (later this week – here honey, here’s something for the house…), but decided it could NOT wait. We were off to Home Depot. We started with the sticky strips – these were just like the bug ones, but my husband noted that the bugs ones seemed to be getting too much hair on them (from the mice) to be effective. (Scream suppressed) And one catch and release baited one (which I REFUSE to check as it involves touching it). But we also got these plug in repellant things that my coworker recommended. She lives nearby and said she hasn’t seen a mouse since she put them in several years ago. So far, so good, but we’ll see.

So what about you? Any domestic interloper horror stories in your house? What’s your best remedy for mice? Or, God forbid, snakes? I don’t want to talk about snakes…

All about MEme - Pretty or not, here we prom

2010-03-15T11:20:00.003-04:00

So today's question is on prom. Pictures have been requested, but "unfortunately" I don't have them with me to upload. Oh yeah, that's a bummer... Shucks and darn... I'd need the witness protection blackout for my face on at least one - which would then hide the hair and ruin the point.

We should start with - I went to an all girls' high school, so it was up to me to ask a guy to prom and pony up for tickets and whatever else. Junior year I didn't have a boyfriend - nor did I yet have my license (you have to be 17 in NJ and I had a December birthday) - so my major requirement for a prom date was a license /car. I didn't live near any friends where it would make sense to do a limo together (nor did I really feel like shelling out for that for my non-date) and I certainly wasn't going to have my Dad drive me! Kill me now... And let's be honest - I'm sure my Dad would totally have wanted to drive out to God knows where to pick me and my prom date up at 11 or midnight (can't remember) to hear me say - but Dad, there's an after prom party at... To be honest, a drivers license was essentially my requirement for any semi-formal. I did go to one (where I was the date to the boys' school) where someone's Dad drove. It sort of hammered in my original thought / point...

So junior year, I went with the pale pink, tea length, off the shoulder Jessica McClintock number with matching shoes and purse. (Molly Ringwald, eat your heart out.) I think I wore enough of those off the shoulder dresses in the early 90's to convince me never to do this again (works well when you're short and dancing with your much taller the date. The fabric strip that fell below your shoulders sits attractively around your ears then and you can't raise your arms high enough to hit his shoulders.) It was very 1992 - though thank God, I'd at least put my hair in a French twist for this (this year...).

My prom was (stupidly) on a Thursday night. It was Ascension Thursday and we had off Thurs and Fri. But really - none of our dates did. A brilliant money saving scheme there, school admins... I asked a friend of mine to be my date, platonically - probably a better move than drooling over a secret crush and trying to assess his every action (I was also a fickle teenager, so there's a good shot my crush would not have continued from the time I asked him till the time of the dance - I say this with confidence because it happened once for a Christmas dance - in that case, his school not mine. So when we essentially weren't talking to each other and I was refusing to dance with him because he kept poking me and tickling me when we danced, it was a LONG night...). He was a decent date - good enough that he was my stand in date for senior prom as well! His fatal flaw was the complete lack of desire to dance - which, when I did convince him to dance, was because of the complete lack of skill in dancing! My favorite line was when he stood still on dance floor and said - "I'm vogueing. This is my position." (I still use this to cover my own bad dancing.)

Senior year was the year of bad prom hair. No conservative french twist for me. Instead I went with spiral curls and pushed all my hair to one side of my head with the stream of curls hanging over my shoulder. Grab the what not to wear people now... I remember thinking - this either looks really cool or really awful and I'm not sure which. As it was NJ in 1993, it was probably OK then. In retrospect - let's burn those pics before my daughter asks to see them. The dress was Jessica McClintock again (yes, there was an outlet nearby. Why do you ask?) - but this time short and white and strapless. Think the original Jamie Gertz Jersey Girl movie... I am so proud. (I'm sorry to say that I can not find an image online to do this justice, so you will just have to use your imagination.)

Yes, there was many a bad dress, bad hairstyle, bad date, bad - everything in those early years of the 90s. But thank God it ended then... Until I was a bridesmaid - I think I'd have a hard time picking a worst dress there. It's between the green satin skirt and white blouse (that looked like you threw your Dad's shirt on over your dress) that the groom (yeah, not even the bride here!) insisted made us look like "Irish lasses" for the St. Pat's day wedding - God help me. And the barbie pink number that my fellow bridesmaid calculated had 10 YARDS of fabric around the bottom (and enough crinoline to support that - and make you have to turn sideways to walk between the tables). But I suppose that is a story for another day...

And you? Worst prom or bridesmaid dress? Or did your fashion sense fail you elsewhere?