You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August, 2006.
AWOL Mama checking in here! I’m still alive, just on vacation with the family. I’ve got a log jam of words banging around in my head from not writing for so many days, but this is going to be quick anyway. We’ve logged onto a wi-fi somewhere in Anaheim, and I’m doing a stealth posting on a pirate airwave on a borrowed computer from a hotel right, and I do mean right, across the street from Disneyland. We are here! Hooray! The babies are all asleep, worn out from their first day in the magic kingdom…
Pirating an airwave isn’t illegal, is it? I mean, it’s air, right? And pirates go with Disneyland, so Yo Ho, a pirates life for me! This is my first trip to Disneyland since new years eve 1999-2000- the longest stretch of my life without going to the park. My family are all Disney freaks- right now there are 10 of us in a family suite at the hotel, and uncle Freddy isn’t even here.
The best part of this trip is seeing my children light up with joy at the same things I loved as a kid. After a little trepidation, my kids were so totally gung-ho for all the rides. Jeffrey even rode Big Thunder Mountain, smooshed between my both brothers, with his hands high in the air. Eric was delighted with Dumbo and with the Buzz Lightyear ride. Abby slept and burped and didn’t care much for the blops of water that splashed on her in Pirates of the Caribbean, but otherwise has been most agreeable.
It is flippin HOT here, and I think I have sweated about a gallon pushing around babies in strollers, but I have a lot of help from my family, so three kids without the husband in Disneyland isn’t the disaster it has the potential to be. Tomorrow I’m seriously considering going out and buying a new stroller just for this trip- I have the new Silver Cross I bought a few weeks ago with us, and it is awesome, but Eric is using that and I have Abby in an older Peg Perego I borrowed from my cousin- and it’s not working so hot for five days in Disneyland. Dropping a hundred bucks on another stroller doesn’t delight me, but neither does being miserable for almost a week of walking all day. There is a Target up the street from Disneyland that opens at 8 tomorrow morning, and I may hijack my cousins car and make an irresponsible purchase. We’ll see…
The “shower” at the hotel when we got back tonite was actually more of a “spit and spray”, but after the HOT, I have never been so grateful for being “spit and sprayed” upon. Ah, cool water! Cool Anaheim water, at that!
I’m off to the Land of Nod- the babies are already there, and I go to join them. We’ll be in the park for a million hours tomorrow, so my poor feet and noggin need a bit on beauty sleep. Yo Ho, Yo ho, a mama’s life for me….
Let me just state for the record, the DVD player was worth it’s weight in fruit snacks on our flight. Never has my little wild goat been so sedate on an airplane as he was yesterday… he walked down the jetway himself, entered the plane without leaving claw marks on the doorway, and buckled himself in his seat. He drank his juice, ate his contraband granola bar, popped his ear-buds in his little ears, and watched Stuart Little 2 for the entire flight. Hallelujah!!
In a mere two hours, we were safely on the ground in California and I was neither toally wiped out, nor ready to sell my children. My arms were not strectched out rubber bands from wrestling with a maniac child hell-bent on getting out of an airplane at 30,000 feet. It was the best flight ever.
We are all settled in, and had a super-crazy day yesterday, with all the travel and family goodness. I’m at Dumbs house right now, submersed in joy at his super fast, super gigantic computer and the delights thereof. He’s lying on his bed behind me, arguing about doing laundry with our cousin Michael, in his total bachelor room; huge computer, stacks of DVD’s, laundry, baseball gloves, history books and his funky hat he wears to play some game online. We like to tease him about his hat of funkness. but hey,I got me some free computer access!
My boys are sunburned already from playing ball in the backyard with Dumb and Dumber and half a dozen other friends and cousins. We have not real plans until next week when we head to Disneyland. I’m hoping my dad can sneak a fishing trip in for the boys- even if they don’t catch anything, who but a grandpa should teach boys to fish??
Being with family is so wonderful. It’s been two days, and no one has even gotten ticked at anyone else yet! Yehaw! Here’s to a wonderful week…
The new header is a picture taken about half an hour drive from my childhood home, in the Santa Cruz Mountains- Big Basin area. Trees like this are eveywhere, yet never cease to take your breath away. There is a bench, suitable for several people to sit on, in the foreground to give a sense of scale. These trees stood when Christ walked upon the earth, and stand still. They are awe inspiring, worthy of respect and reverence, and one of the things I miss most about Home.
Cue the Led Zeppelin:
Going to California with an aching in my heart.
Someone told me theres a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair…
The kids and I are headed off to California- we’ll be gone for almost three weeks, and my computer access is going to be a little sporatic. I’ll try and post as much as I can, but with family immersion and a trip to Disneyland and birthdays (six family birthdays while we are down!) things are going to be pretty crazy…
I love going home, and no matter where I live or move to, Northern California, with it’s foggy mornings, golden sunlight and majestic redwoods will always be home. Not only will we have six family birthdays, but my one-year blogiversary is also this week! So, in a sort-of self indulgent personal best-of, I’m giving links to my favorite posts:
Bovine Emergencies and the first time I got noticed…
Cue up the Dead Milkmen- “…It’s just you and me, punk rock girl!”
OK, so I’ve never pushed the punk rock fold. Not even close. Maybe the Biker fold, the time I rode from California to South Dakota on the back of a boyfriend’s Harley. Maybe the Librarian fold when I have my hair in a bun and my glasses on… maybe the Hippie Chick fold when I followed the Dead (Man, I’ve had a busy life for a young thirty-something mama!), but about as close as I’ve come to Punk Rock is seeing Primus at a tiny club in San Jose, and a sicko appreciation for the Dead Milkmen. Until tonight.
My regular hair cutting gal was all booked up, and since we are leaving at O-dark-thirty on Wednesday morning, I needed to get in bad, so tonight I went to a colleague of hers. The cut is cool, and she flat-ironed it and “textured” the bottom, which as far as I can tell meant jaggedy scissoring the edges to be all spikey- you won’t be able to tell as soon as I wash it and it’s curly again. But the COLOR- Oh my stars!! She highlighted me, and boy howdy, I’m colorful! It took her two hours just to do the foil, and my hair is a United Nations of colors; lots of blonds, my natural brownish color, strawberry, and some total ORANGE that she was saying would match my kids hair! It’s kinda freaky, but since the cut is good, I really can roll with wacky color- it doesn’t last forever like a bad cut. But I LOOK way Punk Rock, way edgier than I am!
When I got home, Jeffrey was still up, and he stopped when he walked in the kitchen and just stared at me.
“Mom, you look PRETTY!” Awwww…. Nothing like a boy who loves his Mama.
Today, I am the Evil Genius and the Princess, according to my sons. They are playing dress up and imagination, and I am fulfilling many rolls and wearing diverse hats. I love it when they do stuff like this- I have been given a Tinker Toy sword, and am glad to be an armed Princess. Abby is also a Princess, with which I heartily agree, as she naps in her swing I keep nudging with my foot to keep it going.
Really, I should be packing. We are leaving in, like, 36 hours for three weeks, and I haven’t even begun to think about it, let alone dig the suitcases out of the garage. I’m a late-packer. At midnight tomorrow night I will probably still be packing. We have to leave for the airport at like, 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday, but I don’t need any sleep- who needs sleep? Me and three kids- at least it’s a non-stop, and only two hours. We picked up a portable DVD player the other night, in hopes of making Eric less of a wild goat on the plane. Here’s to high hopes!
And so here I sit, boing, boing, boing…. I still sit on the ball I got when preggo with Abs- just became a habbit and my back loves it. Procrastinating….procrastinating…
Almost 6 years ago, when I found out I was pregnant with Jeffrey, we decided I would stay home with our children. On one hand, this was not an easy decision, as we were giving up the larger salary (like most executives, I was overpaid for not much hard work)- but on the other hand, it was easy, because we inherently understood the importance of raising our own children. For the record, a dad staying home is just as good as a mom, but in our case, I wanted to be the one home, and my husband supported my desire.
There were trade-off’s. We no longer had much disposable income. We had to live on a budget, and sometimes, making ends meet was more than just a stretch. We haven’t taken a family vacation since before Jeffrey was born. We drive older cars and don’t go out to eat often. In order to buy a home, we had to move away from family to a more reasonabley priced area. All of these things we accept as consequences of our choices.
But there is one thing that has consistently bothered me about budgeting: the quality of food and goods available to families living on a budget. Back when we had double incomes, I did all of our grocery shopping in organic and natural markets- I love the idea of supporting local growers and pesticide free farming. The problem is, when your income is reduced in half, those sweet, green markets become outrageously expensive and out of your reach. But I still want to provide good, quality foods and renewable goods for my family. What do you do?
There is a certain snobery of sorts in the green-foods markets. They seems to like being elite and set apart from the everyday markets- but I have to wonder if that snobery is really furthering the aims of making organic and natural products available, at an affordable cost, to everyone.
So last night, when I ran into Waldemort (Yes, I go there sometimes- see the aforementioned “living on a budget”) to grab a few things for our upcoming airplane trip, I was pleased to see that Waldemort, the big, evil empire that it is, is embracing Organic. Not only in the produce section, but in the clothing department, too. There were many things to choose from, including a large selection of very cute, very stylish and trendy tee’s that teens and young women tend to like. All 100% organic. And made in Canada. For $10.
This seems like an important step; like it or not, Waldemort has the big-bucks bargaining power to help drive the organic market even more, and if they get the ball rolling, other big retailers are bound to follow suit. So even if you hate Wal-Mart and the things it stands for, you have to love that organics might be getting a big boost. If you still insist on being a snob and saying you should only buy your organics from small local markets and independents, well, you don’t have three kids and one income. Or, you really aren’t about organics at all, but about elite consumerism as opposed to an open market.
I for one, am tickled pink that I can buy organic t-shirts, socks and even bedding for my kids without having to sell a kidney to do so. This seems like a good thing to this mama.
A day and a half later, and I am STILL pulling thread off of things….
All I can say is: that’s what I get for turning my back for a minute. I went upstairs to tend and feed a crying, not feeling very well Abby, leaving the boys content playing Tinker Toys and watching Sesame Street. Then I got sidetracked, calling the doctor and changing my barf-riddled clothes. You know, mama stuff.
A little bit later, Eric came upstairs, complaining that he was stuck. Stuck on what, I wondered as I began to notice the strange wads of white, floss-like strands trailing off his behind. I went downstairs, following the strands, and it appeared a gigantic spider had decided our play room was the ideal spot to build her new nest. And the bathroom, and my office, and dad’s exercise room, and the laundry room… The boys had gone in my sewing room and found some spools of thread. Lots of spools of thread. And had run around pretending they were Charlotte, spinning webs.
I have no thread left. Do you know how much thread is on a spool? Miles. And I buy the big, commercial cones. Uh-huh. What you are picturing in your head? That’s what it looked like.
NaddinJtheblissfulplaydoughpickertotallymormonmillie’s site, What on Earth is that Smell has a fun game she plays, and my brain is mush from being up all night with a gassy girl, so I’m jumping on the bandwagon.
Quick, no cleaning up or cheating, What’s on your desk or computer table?
It’s frightening, but here’s mine:
- Superman band-aids hand picked by Eric as apeasement for his forhead-gash.
- A stapler that has no staples, but connect the papers with a tiny cut and fold. Endless fascination for the kiddies.
- The Pen
- My raisin-bran bowl from breakfast, with 1/2″ of milk still in it.
- Jeffrey’s nebulizer and fish-face mask
- An empty grape Diet Rite can inside a larger empty plastic cup that was used to hold flowers at Abby’s baby shower.
- A clay flower pot full of pencils that need sharpening, paintbrushes, pens and scissors.
- The baby monitor, so I can hear the Monkeys
- A bag of dries white beans, cut open, because Eric was so sure they were chocolate chips I had to let him taste one.
- A stack of photos of the kids that belong in an album, but will probably get misplaced and mangled by glommy hands.
- A wooden desk organizer I got in Germany a few years ago that the kids love to play with, so it organzies nothing.
- The JoAnn fabric ad and coupon
- A lamp
- A Mickey Mouse mouse pad courtesy of my mama
- A stack of bills in a wicker basket, my filing system.
- A green glue stick
- A picture of my sister-in-law and Jeffrey at her wedding.
- The string of beads from the Belly of a Black Winged Bird box.
- A desk callender with notes about to-do’s, houses for sale and post ideas that will never get written.
- A rubber band and a spool of thread.
- A jar of purple paint.
- A skinny blue hand-out copy of the BOM
Your turn!
One of the joys of having breast-reduction surgery is that I can now shop for my bra’s in regular stores. I no longer have to go to specialty stores and shell out $60 for a gigantic over-the-shoulder sling to haul my great big-un’s around. And I love it. Bra shopping is no longer as painful as swimsuit shopping.
However, taking your almost-five year old boy with you bra shopping is not such a hot idea. I didn’t mean to, but we were in the store, and they were having a sale, and post-baby #3, I really need a pick-me up- something not an oh-so-sexy nursing bra… so I veered off course and headed into bra-land, with a small, freckly faced red-headed haystack following behind and complaining loudly.
“I hate bras, mama! Why do you need a new braaaaaaaaa??” “YUCK, bras are GROOOOOSSS!” ignoring him, I was looking for a particular one, and knew this wasn’t going to take long- I didn’t even need to try it on, just find my size, grab and go.
“Look at me mom!” Turning around, Jeff has his head in the bras. “This one is really soft and pretty, mom… why do you get the plain white ones, look! Mama! That one is like a leopard, get that one mama!” and suddenly my little boy was making lingerie suggestions, and I was oddly more comfortable with is protests of grossness than I was with him eyeballing the red lace garter get-up. OK, time to go!
“Look how pretty this one is mama!” We left the store. No bra.
Lets just chalk this one up to “really bad ideas I’ve has since becoming a mother” and call it a day.
Monday is housecleaning day. In my feeble attempt to establish order and tame the Whimsey-beast, I have declared Monday the day in which I will attempt to to all the chores I despise and in doing so, I can then enjoy the rest of the week without digging through baskets of perma-press wrinkled laundry that never got folded, let alone put away.
However…
I do have some laundry going, but I just keep finding myself distracted by other things that are much more fun than laundry and spotless floors. Things like playing building-block roads with my sparkling boys, and a divine game of “I’m-gonna-getcha!” with the effervescent miss Babs.
So much for taming the whimsey beast. Who needs whiter-than white laundry and impecible floors anyway? I’m off to read “Bread and Jam for Francis” to the Monkeys…
Well, we made it almost five years without having to go to the ER for stitches. Not too bad for a house with little boys…
Eric is my child who is going to give me heart palpitations- he is fearless, lithe, squirrely, strong and very active; I have cracked jokes about him being the one to keep me up at night worrying, and the one who will send us, many nights, to the ER. I hope I’m wrong. Well, last night was his inaugural trip.
We had a great day, a barbecue on the new grill, friends with boys over to share really good food, baseball for the dads, and social time. All in all, a marvelous Saturday.
For some odd, Bermuda Triangle reason, every time we hang out with these friends, someone ends up bleeding. Twice my monkeys have given their kids either a bloody nose or lip. Yesterday, their youngest crashed in our downstairs bath and got a fat lip. I thought our “blood” quota for this visit had been met…
After dinner, the four boys were in the bedroom playing, when there was a “thunk” and Jeffrey called me anxiously that Eric had a “really bad scratch on his forehead!” Scratch? Uh, yeah, how bout a bone-deep, inch long gash that was bleeding all over his face??! I had a moment or two of panic; this was my first substantial wound on any of my children, I had to fight the feeling of fainting while I carried screaming Eric to the bathroom and tried to wipe off some of the blood to see how bad it was. Pretty ugly. Of course, being two and screaming, he was very cooperative with my efforts to clean him up.
Our friends offered to stay at watch Abby and Jeffrey while we ran to the hospital to get Eric stitched up, and DH and I took off to the ER. Mercifully, it wasn’t too busy for a Saturday night, and we only had to wait about an hour. Instead of stitches, which the doctor said would have been really traumatizing and left a worse scar, they surgically glued the gash back together. Poor baby.
He is still sleeping this morning, and I didn’t get much sleep last night- I kept waking up and checking to make sure it hadn’t busted open again. Sometime in the middle of the night he pulled the bandage off, but I left him alone since he was sleeping soundly.
My little Monkey has his first battle scar. But he was very brave, and his jammies are covered in stickers from the ER nurses. Next time, and I know there will be a next time, I’ll be better prepared: head wounds bleed like crazy, and maybe I won’t feel the need to faint. Another notch on the Mama belt…
Target. Oh, Target, my love, are we destined to hurt one another forevermore?
After my last trip to Target, I hadn’t had the personal fortitude to try again, until yesterday, when they had barbecue’s on clearance, and we both needed one, and didn’t have wads of cash to shell out for one. So I took a deep breath, packed all three Monkeys in the ‘Burb, and headed off to meet my pain head on. It couldn’t be any worse. Could it?
We stopped off at DH’s office on the way, and he looked at me like I had just suggested eating caterpillars for dinner when I told him where we were headed. Some things men just don’t get, and a woman’s love for Target is one of them.
This time I was prepared though. I had the $2.17 required for two popcorn’s and two soda-pop’s, yes, two, so as to alleviate the possibility of any fighting from the get-go. I also was able to nab the special, giganto-cart with the extender on it where you can strap your Monkeys in, and still have a place for the baby and Target junk you can’t live without. Score!
Everyone is strapped in, buckled, tied down, can’t move, has their popcorn and Jones Green Apple Soda, never-mind my cart is 16 feet long; they cannot escape me this time! And off we go. I give a mighty push. Nothing. The cart won’t move. I jerk it back and forth. Nothing. What the….? Jiggle, shove, kick. The left back wheel is perpendicular to the rest of the cart. $#*&. There is NO way I am unpacking these kids and trying to do this while they walk beside the cart. Hahahahahahahahaha! No. Not gonna happen. So, I kick the wheel as strait as I can get it, and begin to drag the cart through Target. (cue the toiling slave music…)
Yes, I actually drug the cart, through Target, with 120 or so pounds of my kids in it, and a gimpy wheel. And of course the barbecue clearance section is in the very south-40 back corner of the store. Of course. OK, how can I make the best of this? I start talking to the cart, calling it silly names, and the kids think this is the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. They are jerking and bouncing around as I pull the lame cart all the way to the back of the store, spilling popcorn and soda as we go. But, they are laughing. No matter how much things may suck, if your kids are laughing, everything is easier.
After finding the ellusive Target employee and asking for our new barbecue to be brought up front, I begin the arduous task of dragging my brick of a cart back to the front of the store. Near the shoe department, the wheel really jacked itself, and the boys lurched forward, bashing Eric’s head into Jeffrey’s mouth. Can I just get out of Target without any blood, just once?? But no, Jeff’s lip is split wide open, but he doesn’t yet realize he is bleeding. That is, until Eric chimes in with “Look at the blood!”, and the shrieking begins. Jeff is something of a drama queen, if I hadn’t mentioned that before.
Bloody lip taken care of with a Huggies wipe, tears cleaned up, face red and splotchy, (the kids and mine!) we drag ourselves into the check-out line. No, I do not want to save 10% by opening a Target card. I spend enough money here, thank you very much. No, really. I don’t want one. Thanks. No. NO.
We have a lovely new, stainless steel barbecue sitting in the back of my ‘Burb. And I made it through Target. I can do anything!
Quite possibly I am the worst mother ever. My 2 3/4 year old is not potty-trained yet. That in and of itself is not a crime; plenty of kid not yet three are still in diapers. Or course my first was long trained by now, but alas, the reprioritation of life as more babies come along strikes again.
First, I was so pregnant and barfing that I was constitutionally and physically incapable of training a busy boy to use the toilet. Then, I knew the new baby would likely send him for a tailspin, which it did, and I stalled for that. The baby is three months old and what’s the problem now? Welllll……
In less than two weeks, we are going on vacation. Airplane rides, long car rides, a trip to Disneyland… and the idea of dealing with a boy who doesn’t yet have complete control of his pee-pee through all that makes me a little queasy. It’s going to be a bumpy enough ride with just me and three kids, without the potty issue, so I’m stalling again. My plan was to tackle it head-on once we get home from vacation. My poor kid.
But tonight, well, we got a little surprise. As I was fixing dinner, sweet little diaper-prisoner Eric comes in the kitchen and gazes up at me with his giant two-year old eyes and red hair, and informs me that he is, currently, peeing. He makes sure to remind me that he has a diaper on, but he wants me to know that he is relieving himself. Right next to my leg. OK, honey.
We sit down to dinner, but Eric is nowhere to be found. Eric? We look around the house, and DH calls from the bathroom, “Honey…? Can you come here…” in just that right tone of voice that told me he had found our boy, and I better hurry.
In the bathroom, sitting upon the large, grown up potty, was my tiny boy. Of course he is on the grown up potty- because I, diaper-hostage-bad-mom, have not yet gotten out the potty chair. He had removed all of his clothes, taken his diaper off, folded it up and put it carefully in the trash, gotten on the potty without falling in, and gone poop. All by himself.
My heart just about burst. He looked so small, and my guilt was like a gigantic booming kettle drum in my chest. What kind of mother doesn’t let her boy use a potty?? Ugh. I hang my head in shame.
Bless his little heart, he even tried to wipe himself. I’ll leave that to your imagination, but there was a whole roll of TP in the toilet. All I could do was congratulate his little self. What an awesome kid. And what a sucky mom.
So, if you have any potty training questions for me, bring ‘em on! It’s a new method I developed. Don’t let your kid use the toilet, and when he gets sick of his lame mom, he will use his industry and creativity and show you how it’s done. With the right marketing strategy, I bet it would sell! Man, I suck.
(DP at MMW today)
I knew I shouldn’t have bought it. I knew it. But the boys were being maniacs, I had all three kids with me for my errands today, and the last stop was the grocery store. (Abby, bless her pink polka dotted heart, slept the whole time we were out.)
But when I walked down the freezer aisle, and I saw that they were “Buy one get one Free!”, like a powerful magnet, they drew me in. I was powerless. Haagen…Daz…raspberry…chocolate…truffle… and a free pistachio for DH!
I put the kids to bed, DH went downstairs to workout, and I cracked that baby open. Ah, peace at last. All by myself.
I ate the whole thing.
Now, feeling sick and disgusting, I am going to drag my sorry butt to go ride the exercise bike for like, the next fourteen hours. Don’t anyone tell me how many calories are in a whole container of HD. Seriously. Lalalalalallala. I’m not listening!
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