My life as a mombie

Conversations

2011-05-05T12:11:00.002-05:00

So, my head feels like it is about to implode at any minute. Or maybe explode. I am not clear on which. But it hurts whichever 'ploding it is about to do.

It's one of those days. The kids don't stop fighting. Or whining, screaming, hitting, trying in vain to unlock the closet they've been shoved into...all the fun stuff. Throw my pretty much futile attempts at potty-training Nora in there too and it's just a banner day.

You can lead my child to the toilet, but you can NOT make her pee. Any attempts to do so are immediately thwarted with a violent head shake and a "No WAY, MAMA". She then will trot upstairs to get one of her 6 million pairs of Dora underwear and say she wants to wear undies just like Tate. I then tell her she needs to go on the potty if she wears undies and this is what happens:

Nora: "NO WAY! I only will go on the potty TOMORROW! NOT TODAY!!!"

Me: "Nora, it's been tomorrow for the last like 34 days. Time to step up to the plate, sister."

Nora: "ONLY TOMORROW! NEVER TODAY! I WOULD RATHER BURN IN HELL THAN GO ON THE POTTY TODAY!!!"

Me: "Hell ain't soundin' half bad to me right about now."

So then I put her diaper on her and come to realize a few hours later that the diaper was subsequently violently ripped off at some point and thrown to it's death over the deck railing. This child will never, ever be trained.

And Tate and I had this touching exchange the other day:

Tate: "Why did God make me and you?"

Me: "Well, he made you to be my little boy and me to be your mommy. And I sure am lucky because I wouldn't want any other little boy in the whole world to be my little boy."

Tate: "Oh....but can I get another Mommy?"

I'm on a roll with these kids.

Gone With the Wind

2011-05-01T18:35:00.006-05:00

Note to self: Make sure your kids are actually excited about doing something before you spend all morning preparing to take your kids to said event.

This morning, we attempted to go to a teddy bear hunt. There was a problem. It's name was wind. I have somehow gone almost 5 years without realizing my children were apparently rendered useless, terrified, and completely unable to form any coherent train of thought by this wonder of nature. I mean, seriously. This is what went down.

Wind: Whhhhooooooshhhhhhh......

My spawn: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wind: Swissssssshhhhhh

The fruit of my loins: SOMETHING IS TRYING TO KILLLLLLLLL MEEEEEEEE!!!! I MUST SCREAM UNCONTROLLABLY UNTIL EVERYONE LOOKS AT MY MOTHER LIKE SHE IS TRYING TO TEAR MY TEETH OUT OF MY MOUTH!!!!!!!!!! SOMEONE HELLLLLLLP ME!!!!

Wind: Blooooowwwwww

My sweet sweet babies: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SOMEONE SAVE US NOWWWWWW!!!!! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE! LET US SCREAM UNTIL OUR EYES WATER, OUR EARS RING, AND OUR MOTHER COLLAPSES INTO A QUIVERING HEAP UPON THE GROUND!! IT IS THE APOCALYPSE!!!! THE END OF THE WORLD!!!! THE WIND IS RIPPING OUR VERY SOULS FROM OUR BEINGS!!!! LET US SCREEEEEEAAAAMMMM!!! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY, LET US COERCE EVERYONE IN A 20 MILE RADIUS TO SCREAM IN UNISON WITH US!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm being a good mom to difficult children. That's my special project.

These are my darlings. Pictures taken .3.5 seconds before the glass-shattering shrieking occured.

After the ringing from our ears subsided, one of my very dearest friends and I looked at each other, and in that awesome, we-know-each-other-so-well-way, decided mutely it was time to make a break for it and head to the nearest bar. And so we did. This is how we wiled away our Sunday afternoon.

Break.

My turn for the online poker, dammit.

In other news, I am trying to potty train Nora. Is it going well? Why, no. But thanks for asking.

I have realized this. Going potty in the potty is only one small portion of potty training. There are 50 other steps conveniently skipped over in the parenting books. There's the "transition from little potty to big potty" step. The "yes, you must flush every time you go potty" step. The "weaning from potty-rewards" step (otherwise known as "no, grown-ups don't get M&Ms for pooping" step). The "privacy without locking yourself in, and thus Mommy out, of the bathroom" step. The "not everyone wants to see your new Dora The Explorer underwear" step. The "not discussing what Mommy is doing in the potty in a public bathroom" step.

Yeah. It's not as easy as you'd think.

The Bucket of Doom

2011-04-12T10:43:00.005-05:00

Last week, since it was Nora's 3rd birthday and Eric finally got two days off in a row from work, we decided to celebrate by hitting up the Great Wolf Lodge in Wisconsin Dells for a couple days. The first night, we got Nora a Rice Crispy treat the size of her torso. She went to town on that bad boy, which of course is normal for my little garbage disposal. She then passed out on the bed at 7:00 pm and slept til 8:15 the next day. This is not normal for her. It is in fact so outside the realm of anything completely resembling normal that really I should not even be using the word normal in conjunction with this activity. Because the two simply do not belong together. She shattered her previous sleeping record by a good, oh....two gazillion hours. She did wake up eventually, though. Then we continued our shenanigans at the water park and I tried to get a cute picture of both kids together. It didn't work.

The kids had a grand old time, as long as we stayed away from one part of the waterpark. You know how lots of places have those gigantic buckets that dump gallons of water on everyone periodically? And how must kids squeal in delight and scamper around delightedly under the deluge of water? Well, MY kids view this bucket as The Demon Bucket of Evil and Possible Disembowelment and Definite Torture. Once they saw that thing pour water on everyone, they turned and booked the hell out of there and didn't look back. Whenever it was suggested we just go see the bucket, from like 900 feet away, we were met with shrieks of panic until we finally just shut up about the damn bucket and gave up.

So....they found a little slide to play on. A slide that is about the size of the slide at the hotel waterpark a mile away from our house that costs us $5 to go play on. But, why not drive 3 hours and drop a few hundred bucks so the kids could play on a different 2 foot long slide? What else did we really have to do those days, anyway? So they went to town. Tate decided it was his job to direct children down the slide. A kid would climb up the steps, Tate would throw his hand up at said kid as he peered down to the bottom of the slide that was like 3 centimeters away to ensure there were no other children floundering around in the 2 inches of water at the bottom, and then give an authoritative nod to the kid, saying "Ok, you can go now. Have fun and be careful". The kids would look at Tate quizzically, inch past him, and get down the slide as fast as they could. Then Tate would repeat with the next kid. Six thousand times. That's what he did.

While he was doing this, Nora would frolic around and practice her new trick of dramatically belly-flopping into the water and laying face down for a good 5 or 10 seconds, just long enough for everyone around her to think she was dead. She would then hop up, howling with laughter, wipe the water from her eyes and do it again. It was....weird. Sure kept the lifeguards on their toes though. Interspersed with pretending to die a watery death, she would trot up to me and bellow that she wanted to go hooooooome. She didn't liiiiiiike the waterpark. I would tell her tough cookies, she better go have fun and ENJOY HERSELF, DAMMIT, and she would run off to practice the Dead Nora Float again for a few minutes.

So my kids have fun in odd ways. What else can I expect by now, really.

But Why Not?

2011-04-05T11:24:00.006-05:00

Apparently there is a lot my daughter doesn't understand. Like the fact that markers will not magically start to taste like Skittles if you just suck on them long enough.

Also, we are at that lovely stage of toddler-hood where every single thing Mommy says is instantly questioned. She must think I have the mental capacity of a piece of cheese. She does the whole interrogation thing in kind of a...weird way, though

Nora: Mommy, is it Monday or Fruesday or Fliday or Sannurday today?

Me: It's Tuesday.

Nora: But why NOT? Why NOT, MOMMY?

Me: Uh, why not what? You asked what day it was. I told you.

Nora: WHY NOOTTTTTTT???????

Me: I DIDN'T DENY YOU ANYTHING!!!

Nora: Can we go to Chloe's house sometime?

Me: Sure.

Nora: But why can we go to Chloe's house sometime?

Me: Because you asked.

Nora: But why did I ask to go to Chloe's house?

Me: Because she's your friend. And her mom always has wine.

Nora: Why NOT???

Me: Why not what?????

Nora: But why is it why not?

Me: Are you really honestly trying to make me bang my head against the window?

Nora: But why do you bang your head against the window?

Me: Nora. Have you finished this round of torture?

Nora: NOTHING!!!!! I'M NOT GOOD RIGHT NOW!!!

So I've decided that when my kids ask me something I don't understand I'm not going to ask them "what?" anymore. They repeat themselves about 249 times regardless. I should save that energy for taking another bite of my cookie.

She also does not understand portion control. The thing still eats like an elephant. It's not an uncommon occurrence for me to go into the kitchen and find her teetering on one of the top shelves of the pantry rooting around diligently for more food even though she's already got 17 Snack Sticks sticking out of her mouth and four packs of fruit snacks stored in her diaper. I fully expect one day to find her fashioning herself some kind of satchel to sling over her shoulder for more functional storage. What's really fun is when she climbs the fridge. Ever stroll into your kitchen to see your daughter literally standing in the fruit drawer with her head so far in the cheese drawer you can't even see it? She must think she gets bonus points everytime she spills the entire jug of apple juice all over the floor. Because that happens every 20 minutes.

I can in fact hear rustling and chewing coming from the kitchen as I type this. She must have found the 5 lb chicken I have in the fridge. Or perhaps she was in the mood for a nice stuffed pork chop. I should go see if she's started on that satchel yet.

Oh Hi

2011-04-03T15:07:00.005-05:00

Yeah, how's it going. Yep, it's been awhile. Me? Oh, doing fine. Still managing to skillfully dodge my children's' repeated attempts to strip me of any sanity whatsoever. Well, by "skillfully" I actually mean "crappily". And by "crappily" I mean "Who-the-hell-am-I-kidding-ly".

I've been pondering my return to blogging for a good while now, and have been rather intimidated at the idea, actually. SO MUCH has happened the past months that I almost don't know where to start. How far back do I go? How much do I share? I finally decided to just jump right back in, and let the blanks fill themselves in as I go. So, get ready to start having your world rocked again.

Tate has been in therapy for about 6 months now. It was a slow start, but I feel like we are truly beginning to see progress in him. The tantrums are dwindling, the moments of utter frustration on everyone's part as he struggles to control his emotions and impulses are becoming fewer and further between. Now, when people come up to him and say hello, 90% of the time he will either wave or shyly duck his head and say hi instead of just refusing to make eye contact or uttering any noise that doesn't sound like it should be being made by a rabid gorilla as opposed to a little boy.

School has been a struggle. It still is, but the daily problems are finally starting to abate as well. One of his therapists accompanies him to school and through many instances of trial and error, we seem to have hit on some successful methods and solutions to help him have a more "typical" day at school. And he's almost 5. Yeah, I know. He has grown so much in the past few months and he has come so far. And of course, as I write this, he is sitting behind me on the floor trying to clock his sister on the head with Buzz Lightyear. Hey, we can't set our expectations too high here, people.

Speaking of his sister, she is now almost 3. Yeah, I know. And holy crap, is she turning into a sassy pants. If she's sitting by me and I dare to talk or sneeze or inhale, she is very likely to turn to me and bellow "STOP ITTTTTT!!! DO NOT DO THAT, MOMMY! NOW STOPPPPP ITTTTTTTTTTT!!!!" And I sit and rock back and forth in a corner and recall those hazy days when she was but a happy, compliant, cheerful little bundle of lilac and sunshine bumbling around the house warbling ditties about world peace and puppies.

Getting her dressed is quite literally one of the parts of the day I dread most. Ever gotten a little heel direct to the teeth? It don't tickle, I tell ya what. She screams and caterwauls like I'm trying to peel her ears off instead of just trying to put a motherfreaking diaper on you, for GOD'S SAKE. So quite honestly, most of the time she scampers around the house in various states of undress and I pretend not to notice or care that a toddler has whipped me into such submission. I'm not even going to talk about what it's like trying to brush her hair. Most days we leave the house with her just looking like a homeless, ungroomed alpaca or something. Every once in awhile I manage to jab a barrette in there in the hopes that it will help. It doesn't.

So, life is still full of the usual stuff....looking for toys that haven't been seen in like 9 months but must be played with RIGHT NOW, looking for them again 30 minutes later when they get lost, ignoring various bumps, thumps, whines and screams, fighting the urge to bang my head against a wall when I realize that I've once again done something as stupid as bring both kids to a department store by myself, etc. I've missed recording all my moments of idiocy, desperation, annoyance, and believe it or not, pride, contentment and glee. Yes, it does happen. Shut up.

Hopefully I'll get back into blogging on a regular basis. If only for the reason that it gives me another excuse to pretend not to hear Tate tell Nora it's time to pretend they're going to dive off the moon into a cup. I've just realized there's too much stuff going on that I don't ever want to forget.

What It Is

2010-07-29T12:47:00.004-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about a few things lately. Namely A) If I should write this blog post B) How I should write this blog post and C) If it would be possible to survive solely on wine and cookies. Hey, I never said all three things were related.

But anyway.

Obviously I have not written much in awhile. As many people who know me in real life have figured out, things have been not so good around here lately. Well, I shouldn't say that. Things have been interesting around here. The one good thing that has happened is that we have found answers. Answers that confuse, frustrate and scare me, but answers nonetheless.

Tate has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome.

Just writing that has caused tears to prick my eyes once again. I think I've cried more in the past 3 months than I have in the 32 years prior. I often wonder when I'll be able to write or speak those words consistently without getting tears in my eyes or a lump in my throat or my chin doing that wobbling, wrinkling thing that makes you look really ugly. I've determined that I am not an attractive crier. My face looks like an old wrinkly potato.

So, that's what it is. Oh, and he has ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder) thrown in there too. It's like a little salad of behavioral disorders. Now, anyone who has met, read about, or...seen Tate in the distance will probably be nodding their head along with this diagnosis. I mean, hello. At some point I fully expect his picture to be placed next to the ODD description in whatever book holds such descriptions.

I'm not going to go into a butt-ton of detail, just because the post would be like 800 paragraphs long and everyone would lose interest pretty darn quick. Oh, and I'd just keep getting all potato face-y. But believe me, I could go on and on and ON. I just don't know if I'm up to it yet.

But yes, it's been interesting around here. I've been trying to come to terms with all of this and for the most part, failing spectacularly. I am not what you would call, oh, patient. Or even-tempered. It's been a lot to deal with and I will be the first to admit I need to work on that a lot. For every time that I manage to sit down calmly with Tate and try to redirect his actions/keep him from talking gibberish/stop his hitting/encourage him to interact with other kids/not make me want to bang my head against a wall, I have a time where I just. do. not. react. well. Kneeling in front of your child with tears running down your cheeks begging him to just please, please be normal is really not a high point in any parent's career.

Asperger's is by and large a social disorder. Tate does not do well with making eye contact or picking up on social cues made by other children or adults. I cannot remember the last time I saw him sit down next to another child and play with them, as opposed to next to them. Usually it takes quite a bit of cajoling on my part just to get him to sit next to another kid, period. Unless there's food involved.

The main problem is when he does interact with people, it's made up of talking gibberish, intentionally calling people wrong names, getting agitated and upset when they respond, pushing, hitting, grabbing, squeezing, pointing, grunting, being oppositional and defiant (see where that term Oppositional Defiance Disorder comes from? See how they did that?) refusing to answer questions or ask for things or look people in the eyes or....well, all that kind of stuff. Not to say this is how he is 100% of the time, because it's not. He has lots of good days. He just has a lot more bad ones. And the meltdowns. Oh Lordy, the meltdowns.

The reason I struggled for awhile with writing this post was because it seems like these days with Facebook and blogs and Twitter and all that, a lot of what people write just seems kind of...attention whorish. I mean, obviously I was not going to update my status on Facebook as "OMG!!! My kid totally has Asperger's! Like this sux so hard core! Can't wait to hang with my girlz tonite! LOL!!!!", but I felt at some point I should just kind of put it all out there and this seemed the best way in which to do it. My family and close friends (who I consider family by this point) have known for awhile. I then started mentioning to it a few other people and hoping the word might just kind of spread naturally. And now I feel like it might be beneficial for me and Tate to just throw it on out there. Hey! Lookie! Tate has Asperger's!! Wheeeeee!

There have been many times where people have given Tate dirty looks. Or made snide comments about his behavior. Or just kind of made me think they pretty much regarded him as strange and weird and freakish. I don't know if they think I don't notice when they do this but hi. I can see. Oh, and hear. Crazy, I know. Now the thing I've been wondering is, when Tate gets in one of his moods and I see the looks and hear the comments, do I A) ignore the judgemental bitches and comfort myself by thinking that if they're the type of person to judge and ridicule a 4 year old then they're pretty much destined to a life of being stupid, small-minded and ugly or B) resign myself to having to explain every odd behavior and epic meltdown by saying "He's got Asperger's. It's Asperger's. Not that it's really your business but there you have it. Have a lovely day, skeezos."

So, even though it may not sound like it, one of the strongest emotions I have had through all of this is relief. Now we know. I've suspected very strongly for about a year now that his aggression and all his little quirks and challenging ways have been telling us something that we weren't quite ready to hear, but we heard, and now we know. I'm scared for Tate...I'm scared that he will be shunned, ridiculed, left out, everything that we dread for our children. I worry that he's unhappy and frustrated and doesn't know what to do. But I do know this: Compassion is the most powerful parenting tool I possess. I just need to freakin' use it more often.

I mean, look at this face:

That is one of my very favorite faces in the world. This is what I know for certain.

Sorry, I Didn't Catch That.

2010-05-04T12:33:00.003-05:00

It's not that I don't WANT to listen. It's just that I have two children who talk more than I do (which is mind-boggling, in and of itself), and at the end of the day, I just want everyone to shut the hell up.

Ok, by "everyone" I really just mean people I don't know. Oh, and Eric. But he already knows all this. And by "the end of the day", I really just mean "all the freaking time". If I do not know you from Adam, I do not really need to know that your kid likes apples. And likes to watch Wonder Pets. And has a sister who used to jump rope a lot. And knows some of his colors. And dropped a turd the exact size and shape of Christopher Walken this morning.

To clarify further, I've finally stopped giving Nora the "I'm the Second Kid and Therefore Don't Get Signed up For Swimming and Gymnastics and Dance and Sports Classes From the Moment I Exit the Womb Like My Older Sibling Did" treatment and have been taking Nora to a little dance and swim class at the Y. She loves the swimming portion and is quite the little kicker. The dance portion is mostly spend with her burrowing her face into my lap and refusing to look at or acknowledge anyone else is the class. See all the kids dancing? Yeah, there's my kid trying to crawl back up into my uterus. Oh, and now how they're all playing with scarves and ribbons? That's her over there. Yeah, the one in the corner looking steadfastly at the wall.

But the whole point of this is that there is one woman in the class who never stops talking. Ever. It doesn't matter if the teacher is talking at the same time, or if no one is listening to her, or if everyone has suddenly found 400 other things to do that must be immediately seen to, she will not shut the yapper. I shall demonstrate:

Teacher: "Ok, kids! This is the letter K! What starts with K?"

Lady Who Never Stops Talking Even Though No One Listens: "Oooh, my son used to have a toy dog. I think he named him Harold. He's so smart to come up with a name like that. Most kids wouldn't think of such a funny name for a dog"

Teacher: "Let's pass around the kangaroo! That starts with K!"

LWNSTETNOL: "Remember when your dad built you that snowman? You put the face on it all by yourself!" (Looks around to see who's listening and wondering why everyone suddenly seems to have fallen deaf). "Oh, and remember when we went to Disney World??"

Teacher: "Ok, time to get up and dance!"

LWNSTETNOL: "You're such a good dancer! I think you are the best dancer in here!" Silence. "Remember when your other teacher said you were such a great dancer? Show everyone how you twirl!" Non-compliance from child. "Come on! You are such a great twirler and jumper! Show all the other little kids how to do it." Child attempts to turn into a statue. "Ohhh...don't start acting shy! You're never shy! You're the friendliest little kid out there, remember? You just talk and talk and talk and everyone gets such a kick out of you! Why don't you start singing your ABCs so everyone can hear how you are the smartest kid ever to be spawned!" Child tries to slink away to hide under a bag of basketballs. "Listen!! You need to get back over here AND HAVE FUN or you get a time out! Don't make Mommy give you a time out! You know you never get time-outs!"

Teacher: "Uh, I'm just going to turn on the music"

LWHSTETNOL (to me, of course. Lucky, lucky me): "I don't know what his problem is today. He's usually the most active kid in all his classes. I have to sign him up for a ton of classes because he's so advanced and smart and needs to keep his brain stimulated or it will start to lose power. He usually loves to do all this kind of stuff. I bet he'll be better when we go swimming. Did you see last week how he can already jump in the pool? His sister is already at the top her her swimming class too. One time we took them to Florida. They both really like peanut butter. I'm starting to think they both may actually be the second coming of Jesus."

Me: "Sorry, did you say something?"

The really funny part about all this is that this kid has the exact same name as the son of one of my best friends (Hi, Jodi!). Same first AND middle. The reason I know this is because the mother calls him by both names all the time. And it's not a short name. I just find it humorous because the only time Jodi's son gets called by both names is when he's in trouble, usually because he and Tate have started chucking rocks off our trampoline at their sisters or something.

I always wonder what people expect other parents to say when they act like their kid is the be-all, end-all of children in general. Are we supposed to agree? Say "why, yes, your kid IS the smartest kid in all the land! My child is pretty much doomed to a life of sitting on a rock in a field drooling and trying to figure out how to unzip the snap on their pants!! Lucky you, O Magnificent Parent! You have given birth to a hybrid of Einstein, Ghandi, George Clooney, Pavarotti, and Stephan King! It's Eighclpaki!!"

I just don't know.

So You Want to Be a Two Year Old.

2010-04-20T20:15:00.004-05:00

Well, it's happened. Nora officially turned two at 12:27 pm on April 7th. At 12:32, the Terrible Twos made their appearance. Seriously. That must have been when all the stuff from the handbook really sunk in. You know, the handbook that Tate studied and culled from for a good, oh, three years. The one entitled "Congratulations! You Are Now Two! Let's Discuss the Best and Most Embarrassing Tactics to Make Your Mother Want to Pull Her Hair Out!"

Chapter 1: Public Tantrums. "This chapter instructs you, the wee little reader, that you must insist on being both inside the cart and walking next to it simultaneously. Never mind that this is impossible, it must still be insisted on. Because, to two year olds, impossible things could maybe become possible if you just SCREAM LOUD ENOUGH. After Mommy gets tired of trying to hold you down in the cart and chuckling nervously as people glare at her as her daughter howls and screeches in anguish, she will then just haul you out of the cart and start to walk away. Now, this is where you plop down on the floor and lay face down. Make sure to throw some ear-piercing shrieks in there while kicking your heels on the floor. Bonus if you're next to the greeting card aisle...then you can grab handfuls of cards and envelopes and chuck them on the floor to share in your agony.

Never mind that Mommy is slowly creeping away. See how she keeps looking back, hoping you'll shut up and get up? She won't actually leave you on the floor at Target, as you know. She would get in major trouble. She's just playing you. So therefore, you can lay on the floor for as long as you like. Try to switch it up a bit. Intersperse some "MOMMMMMMMMYYYYY....NOOOOOOOOOOOOs" in with the general screaming. This will make it sound like Mommy is inflicting great pain on you somehow and make her feel like even more of an idiot when people pop their head around the corner of the aisle to glare at her. Your brother, who has this handbook memorized and who is currently teaching seminars on it, decides to jump in and add his brand of help by wailing "But, Mommy...you can't leave her! I LOVE HER!"

So Mommy will feel pretty much like a gigantic tool. She will then slink her way back over to the Wailing Two Year Old of Doom and attempt to pick you up. You will put into place the patented "Pretend You're a Paralyzed Elephant" move where you somehow go from weighing a scant 23 lbs to being a limp, languishing, floppy, cumbersome load. She is then that mother, the one with a squalling two-year-old tucked under one arm as she trudges to the check-out counter. See how she's trying to pretend that you don't exist at this very moment? Give her a good swift kick in the kidneys. That'll teach her.

And, finally, scream the entire way home and chuck books at Mommy's head as she tries to drive. Because Mommy loves that. It goes without saying that you will continue your week-long streak of not napping. Because you now believe that naps will slowly eat away at your soul til you're but a shell of your former self. The End."

Way to go, Nora. You passed the first induction in to two-year-oldville with flying colors. I'm really freaking proud of you. Yay.

Two Cute

2010-04-14T20:07:00.003-05:00

Ok, so there is just nothing to write about in winter. We get up, stare out the window at the snow, the kids drive me crazy, we dash out into the car, go to the store or the bank or some other boring indoor place, dash back into the car, come home, stare out the window at the snow, the kids drive me crazy, I put Nora down for a nap that she refuses to take like 64% of the time, the kids drive me crazy, I make dinner that usually doesn't get eaten by half of the family, the kids drive me crazy, we put the kids to bed, Tate gets up 3957 times, therefore driving me crazy, I drink wine, everyone goes to bed.

Repeat.

It gets old. So it's hard for me to find the humor in it after awhile. I get blue, the kids get sassy...it's just not an enjoyable time of year around here. So it's really great that winter lasts 10 months out of the year. Juuuuust perfect.

But anyway. It's April, the sun is shining, we're going to the park, hanging out with friends on the deck...I am like a little delicate flower that is finally starting to bloom. But the most important thing about April? My BABY GIRL turns two. Eeek. For real. It just happened last week. I was there.

Here's the feminine, dainty little daisy now:

RWARRRRF. CAKE.

Yeah, she still eats like a truck driver. And has no qualms about stuffing the food in her face at a rate that would impress one of those professional hot dog eaters. And the really fun part is that she's a MASSIVE 23 lbs. Yeah, she weighs as much as like one of my feet. And I'd be willing to bet that 14 of those pounds are in her head, considering that her noggin is in the 85 percentile for her age. No wonder I can never get any shirts over her head.

Tate is almost 4, and all of a sudden is...older. He holds long conversations with me about things like dinosaurs and cheese, and tells us how proud he is of us for doing things like putting bird food in the bird feeder. He chuckles at his little sister's antics and shakes his head ruefully, wondering if he was ever quite that young and silly. He makes me happy to be around him a good 87% of the time. That's up a good 53 percentile points from other time periods in our life. He's growing up.

So I will be trying to get better about blogging more. I mean, what else is there to do while sitting on a couch in the evening, drinking wine, watching stupid reality TV, and pretending I don't hear Tate thumping around in his bedroom upstairs?? Nothin'.

I Wish I May, I Wish I Might...

2010-02-02T09:20:00.003-06:00

It's a pretty important week around here. Tate is Student of the Week at preschool, so he's kind of a big deal for the next few days. Being Student of the Week basically entails the kid getting to wear a crown, sitting on a special chair, and the parents filling out three thousand little forms, trying to get the kid to draw a picture of spaghetti or whatever their favorite food is, cutting the kid's name out of construction paper and then watching as the kid accidentally tears three out of the four letters in half, and getting the kid to answer questions about themselves when they have no idea what the correct response is.

Like this.

Me: "Tate, what's your favorite color?"

Tate: "Ummm....where's my Thomas the Train?"

Me: "Yeah, Crayola doesn't seem to make that particular hue anymore. Try again."

Or like this.

Me: "Tate, what are your three greatest wishes?"

Tate: "......"

Me: "Ok, like is there anywhere you really want to go or someone you really want to see or anything?"

Tate: "Umm....someone I want to see!"

Me: "And that would be who."

Tate: "Ummm....Luke!"

Me: "So your greatest wish in the world right now is to see your friend, the son of Mommy's best friend, who lives like 15 minutes away and who we see like every week?"

Tate: "Yes!"

Me: "Alrighty."

Yeah, the concept was not completely grasped by this one. That's ok. What was really fun was trying to round up three items that had "special meaning". I know that different things are special to different people, but really, I don't think a cheap toy chipmunk from a Happy Meal or a penny that could very well have been dug out of the garbage really holds a lot of sentimental value. Apparently "special" to this kid means "whatever my little sister is holding at the moment that I can go grab from her, causing her to scream like a little monkey, making Mommy's headache intensity go up about 19 notches."

We finally settled on Snowy the Monkey With No Paw, a little wooden airplane, and some sausage-type stuffed dude that Eric bought him at a Brewer game that they went to together. I figured those are pretty accurate representations. Although so were the Mickey Mouse undies that my sister got him for Christmas that he desperately made a plea to include, but I figured those were better off staying under his pants. Hey, they were still included in the whole experience. Hopefully he doesn't feel the need to drop his drawers and do a little too much sharing.

What the Flush?

2010-01-18T21:43:00.004-06:00

Well, huh. Apparently, apparently, you actually do NOT want to flush a small fake food item toy type thingie down your toilet. Like something like oh, say....THIS:

I don't know exactly how it was decided that a miniature bag of flour belonged in a toilet, but there you have it. We had a bunch of little friends over for pizza one night, and the next morning out toilet was desperately regurgitating water in a vain attempt to hark up the small rectangular piece of plastic lodged in it's...throat? Esophagus? What do toilets have??

We had the plumber come over to rectify the situation, since Eric's frantic attempts at plunging the little fucker out of there were proving extremely futile. I wasn't downstairs at the time, but apparently, the only way the plumber could get the Toy of Complete Latrine Destruction out of there was to remove the toilet, carry it outside, turn it upside down and go in from the, uh, rear. Basically the toilet got all kinds of violated. Poor thing. But alas, the offending object was removed, photographed for dexterity, and promptly disposed of.

I did hear Eric trying to turn the whole thing into a learning situation with Tate by kindly instructing him that maybe, just maybe, it's not a good thing to flush hard plastic things down the toilet since it results in said toilet being put in several compromising positions. Tate responded by saying:

"Well, Daddy, I don't think it was me that flushed it down the toilet. I think maybe it was Mommy."

Yeah, I think not. Way to try and throw me under the bus, though, kid.

And since we're on this lovely subject, let me just throw a little public service announcement out there to all the little kidlets of the world. Mothers, you can thank me later.

Ahem. When Mommy goes to the toilet, it just stays like a normal toilet. It doesn't start playing music, flashing lights or handing out suckers. You know that, do you? Well then why do you BOTH have to come and watch Mommy go to the toilet? You are missing NOTHING by staying OUTSIDE of the bathroom. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

That is all.

No, No...Don't Get Up

2010-01-10T13:14:00.003-06:00

Sometimes McDonalds makes me feel like a total slacker mom. I mean seriously, who in their right mind willingly takes their children into a McDonalds playland? Where all the badly behaved children of the tri-state area hold their daily conferences? Where sending your kid into the climbing apparatus is basically the same as tossing them into a Hallway of Snot? Where said kids eventually come up to you with some unidentifiable food in their hand snatched from God knows what cranny, and then opens their mouth and shows you the other half of the unidentifiable food object that is probably giving them swine flu or tetanus as you speak?

Well, yeah. That was me today. I couldn't help it, people. I had a gift card.

I tell you what, though. I may feel like a slacker for bringing them there, but I always, ALWAYS leave feeling like, hey, maybe I'm not the worst mom in the world after all. Now, we all know that there have been many, many, manymanymanymany times that I have been that mom with that kid. The one who's hitting or pushing or pinching or performing Chinese Water Torture or what have you. But I've honestly always tried to keep on top of Tate, and if he wonks some other kid's head into a wall, well then..I go up and punish him. He gets time out or we leave or whatever. Crazy, I know. But because of all this, I have a pretty high tolerance for sassy little kids. I get it.

However (caution: I am about to step on my soapbox). I have no tolerance for moms who either pretend not to see what their kid is doing or who see it and just can't be bothered to do anything other than sit and yell "Hey! You better stop doing that or yer daddy's gonna whip yer ass!" and then turn around and eat their 400th straight Big Mac. And all these moms seem to live in McDonalds.

This is what one such lady shouted today.

"Zach! Don't push! Zach! Let's go! Zachie! Zach! Get your shoes! Zach! I mean it! Stop pushing other kids off the slide! Zach! Where are you? Let's go! Zach! I want to go! Zach! Don't kick babies! Zach! It's time to go! Zach! Come over and get your coat and help me up! Zach! Zach! Zaaaaaach! Tell all these other parents to stop stuffing dirty socks in my mouth to get me to shut the hell up!!"

Ok, the last sentence didn't really get bellowed, but if you had given me and a couple of the other parents in there about 1 more minute, it may just have. Seriously. This lady could not get her butt out of her chair. She just sat and yelled so hard she jiggled. For 10 MINUTES. And for 10 minutes her kid ran around like Satan's minion trying to become King of The Germ Crusted Slide by hurling any kid in his path out of the way.

So we left, simply because I couldn't handle the yelling anymore, and because I could practically see bacteria and germs festering on my childrens' skin. Those McDonalds fries lure me in every time, though. I can hear them calling to me frantically whenever I pass by. It's always work avoiding fast food. Even though my mind says "This is garbage!", my mouth says "I like garbage! Put a crapload of salt on it and call it a day!"

Mmmm...salt.

The Snow Hates Me

2010-01-08T13:38:00.002-06:00

As I sit here typing this, Nora is upstairs loudly protesting the fact that I had the gall to put her in her crib for a nap. This is the second day in a row she is loudly bemoaning the fact that she got stuck with ME as a mother, this bitch who dares to expect her to take a NAP. I'm pretending not to hear her. Although I do wish she would squeal and shriek at a pitch just slightly higher than the one she's using now, because then only the dogs could hear her, and I wouldn't even have to pretend. Problem solved.

When she's not upstairs madly banging her heels against the sides of her crib and bellowing for me to either come get her or die a slow painful death, she is actually quite funny. She's talking a ton these days, mostly whatever she learns from Tate. So we get a lot of "butt!" and "STOP IT!!!" and of course the timeless "nononononNONONONONONONO!!!". Thankfully, she hasn't yet been able to master "Oh, for God's sake", but it's coming. Just give it time, people. Because my children live to embarrass me. It's their forte.

Did you ever notice how many things no one ever tells you about parenting before you have kids? I'm not talking about how you'll never sleep or go pee in peace again. Plenty of people tell you that. No, I'm talking about the little things. For instance, nobody ever told me that I would actually say things like "No, Tate, you're not allowed to stick Buzz Lightyear in the dog's butt." Would've been nice, is all I'm saying. A little advanced warning is always appreciated.

Anyway. Winter is here with a vengeance. There is snow everywhere. I got stuck yesterday, twice. Once in my friend's driveway, because I cannot drive backwards and therefore went straight into a snowbank at the end of the drive. I should not be allowed to drive in reverse. The main argument for that being that at one point I thought I was putting the car in park and instead threw it in reverse, consequently almost flattening my poor friend who was directly behind the car. Last time she ever invites me over, I tell ya what. The other time I got stuck was when I pissed off the plow dude and he shoved a 56 foot ridge of snow in front of my driveway. I tried in vain to shovel it away, but I shouldn't really be allowed to shovel, either. I basically would lift up the snow, look around frantically for somewhere to throw it, and then just kind of toss it in front of me. 9 times out of 10 the snow ended up exactly back where it was. The other 1 time it ended up in my face and down my neck. So I gave up and tried to ram through the ridge of death. Chrysler Town and Country vans are not made for ramming. I made it about 3 centimeters and then got stuck. It was really, really fun.

What really boggles my mind is when people say "I love the snow" or "Winter is my favorite season" or better yet "The cold is so invigorating and refreshing". I find this disturbing. It's like they're saying "I drag 3 inch nails up my arm for fun" or "I enjoy having my toenails ripped out with a pair of rusty pliers." Sick, I tell you. Sick.

And So it Begins

2010-01-04T20:09:00.002-06:00

Things have calmed down. The holidays are over. We were away from home for 4603 days. Or 12, whatever. Mexico was fab, seeing family was great, getting home in our own beds was the best thing ever.

Now life has returned to normal, aka chaotic. We're finally making headway on our basement. There is paint on the walls! And yes, every wall that I did myself needs a second coat on it to cover the glaring spots of white that I somehow managed to overlook the first time around, but that's not the point. It looks pretty! Soon there will be walls and a ceiling! We're planning on having a basement warming party and telling people to bring their own beanbags. We don't need furniture. We need walls. Oh, and the kegerator. But we've got that already. Duh.

Nora has started to become her brother's clone. Gone are the days of watching teddy bears and toy cars go catapulting through the air after being released from Tate's paw. No, now baby dolls and sippy cups are being hurtled to their untimely death thanks to Nora the Intimidator. She doesn't like being told "no"? Here comes Baby Alive, whizzing through space. She hates the state of the economy today? There goes a pink plastic dump truck soaring across the room. It's great. I knew it had to happen but there's always that small, pathetic part of yourself going "Oh, no, she'll somehow become immune to her brother's influence and spend life skipping through fields of clover and agreeing to everything Mommy says." That part of me has now slunk away in shame.

What's really fun? Breakfast. Mornings find none of us at our perkiest, especially her. She demands to go straight from crib to highchair, which is no big deal. Then we have the breakfast battle. She howls at the pantry doors to somehow be opened, and I get to point at every sort of breakfast-type food in there in a desperate quest to satisfy the beast. Everything I point to that she deems simply unacceptable earns a "Noooooooooooooooooooo!!" while thrashing her head back and forth madly. Pretty much everything is displeasing the first go-round. Sometimes it takes two or three tries before she grudgingly accepts the paltry offerings. And when I say grudgingly, I mean it. The only way I know that the current offering is suitable is by the almost imperceptible flick of her finger and minuscule jerk of her chin.

Me: "Nora, do you want these yummy waffles?"

Nora: "NOOOOOOOOARRRRRRRRRRRRCGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

Me: "Oookay, how about some cereal"

Nora: "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL"

Me: "Sure. Is fruit ok?"

Nora: Flick. Jerk.

It's fun times. Not only is breakfast the most important meal of the day, it's also the one that makes me want to crawl under the table and bang my head on the floor and not wake up again til dinnertime.

Adios!

2009-12-14T21:37:00.002-06:00

I know I've been slacking off on writing again lately. I've just been a busy little bee lately, and you all are just going to have to wait a little longer for any sort of update. I know, you're crushed, confused, and completely disheartened. But I'm heading to Mexico in two days with Eric and some friends and you KNOW I'll have some stories.

I'll miss my little kidlets though. Most of the time. Nora's been all sorts of fun lately with her new stripping in public habit. Tate's decided that sitting on my lap and then farting is just the be-all, end-all. So yeah, those things I won't miss.

Date Night

2009-11-22T19:47:00.005-06:00

Have you ever taken a 3 year old to any sort of Sesame Street/Disney/Ice Capades type event? I have. Just did it tonight, in fact. Tate and I had a night out at the social event of the...hour. It went surprisingly smoothly, for the most part...pretty much, kinda.

As soon as I sat down, I felt like we were living on borrowed time. You know, where you just kinda sit and watch the kid, observing the initial excitement starting to wane and boredom and tiredness slowly creep in. Now, we had front row seats (yeah, I got an in with Elmo. What can I say) so at least we were RIGHT THERE. The problem was, we were RIGHT THERE at the very far side of the stage, so for much of the performance we had a nice view of furry blue and red and yellow...asses.

The characters did come out on the floor quite a bit though, so Tate got a lot of high fives and hair ruffles. I got a lot of ginormous, rock-hard, freaking 500 lb Muppet feet kicking me in the instep and clomping on my toes. I usually managed to bite my tongue before letting a profanity slip out. No reason to be teaching random kidlets something new besides the alphabet that evening.

Basically, the evening could be broken down like so:

FIRST 20 MINUTES: Tate: "Ooooh! Elmo! Cookie Monster! Let's get up and dance and sing and wave and freak out with general unabashed three-year-old joyfulness!" Me: "Aww, it's so fun to watch Tate enjoy himself. Such a joyous experience for mother and son."

SECOND 20 MINUTES: Tate: "Mommy, that little boy has an Elmo toy. Can I get an Elmo toy? Where are the Elmo toys? I think I need to go potty. Ooh, Cookie Monster just gave me a high five! I love Grover! Where are the Elmo toys?" Me: "Let's wait til the break, honey. There is a break, right? Shouldn't there be a break right about now? How long can these furry beings sing about sharing and the ocean and imagining crap??"

BREAK: Tate: "ELLLMOOOOOOO TOY!!! PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE!! I HAVE TO GO POTTY AGAIN! CAN I HAVE SOME POPCORN? THAT KID HAS POPCORN!" Me: "Oh my God, where are the stupid Elmo toys? Here, lady, here's your $4000 dollars for a cheap piece of plastic with Elmo's face on it. Oh look, and there's a guy walking around with Elmo balloons throughout the audience, 2 inches away from each kid. Hey pal, where's your sign saying 'Parents, if you make me walk right by your kid without buying them a balloon, you're telling them that you don't love them' ?? Awesome. Let's buy a balloon."

THIRD 20 MINUTES: Tate, as he wonks himself absentmindedly in the head with the freaking Elmo toy: "Soooo...Mom. What are you doing? Should I brush my teeth when I get home? Where's my popcorn? I think I have to go potty again. POO. I have to go POO. Does Abby Cadabby go poo? She doesn't have a pee-pee." Me: "Why don't they sell wine at these things? How can they sing 30 songs about the letter K?" Tate again: "Where's my drink made out of red dye and sugar? YOU THREW IT AWAY??? I WANT MY RED DRINK! Watch as I shimmy out of my chair and flop around desperately on the floor trying to suck up any puddles of red!"

All in all, it was a success. I kept myself occupied by snickering each time one of the characters wiped out on stage, which happened surprisingly often. Or maybe not all that surprisingly. Those feet are freaking heavy. I know. I still can't feel my toe from when Cookie Monster flattened it with his colossal paw. Big blue bastard. I also kept busy dreaming up ways to silence the brat behind me wailing "BEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTT!!!! I ONLY WANT TO SEE BEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTT!! NO ERNIE! NO BIG BIRD!! SHUT UP, GRANDMA YOU'RE STUPID!!!" Yeah, that kid was really pleasing to be around.

Nora and I had a little time together this morning, as well. She and I went to my friend's house for a little knitting and chatting time. Let's just say I'm a hell of a lot better at chatting than knitting. I would get to a certain point and then completely lose all coordination, patience, and even a minuscule sense of something resembling skill. Pretty much, I suck. I got to the point where I just put the needles down and declared I was done. Funny thing was, nobody really argued with me at that point. I think I may be a knitting failure. Oh well. There are other things I'm good at. Shut up, I'm serious.

Sweet Cheez-its.

2009-11-14T13:42:00.003-06:00

Tate's becoming a pro at this whole preschool thing. Every morning as we drive there, he exclaims "I'm SO excited, Mom!" and every afternoon as we drive home, he gives me a garbled rundown of all his activities that day. Usually it's how they learned about dinosaurs or apples or owls, but last week was something rather...unexpected. This was the scene in the car ride home:

Me: "So, what did you learn about today, Tate?"
Tate: "Cheez-its."
Me: "...Cheez-its?"
Tate: "Yep. Cheez-its."
Me: "You mean you had Cheez-its at snack time?"
Tate: "NO! WE TALKED ABOUT CHEEZ-ITS!!"

Now, at this point I'm wondering if the teacher just plain ran out ideas of what to talk about that day and conducted an impromptu lecture on the joys of unnaturally orange snack crackers. Perhaps she had had a ferocious craving for them for one reason or another. Maybe she just wanted to make sure all the little children were able to revel in the wonder of...Cheez-its. I don't know.

Me: "Well, uh, what did you learn about Cheez-its? Are they yummy?"
Tate: "Mom. NO. Don't be silly."
Me: "O...K..."
Tate: "Cheez-its is our friend. Cheezi-its lives up in the sky."
Me: "Tate. Do you maybe, by chance, mean JESUS?"
Tate: "YES. CHEEZ-ITS."

Therrrrre we go. Tate will now be saying his evening prayers to a gigantic box of cheese-flavored squares floating merrily in the sky, looking down on all the little children telling them to do unto others as they would do unto them.

And if anyone knows the patron saint of missing shoes and socks, hit me up with their digits or something. Because I have like no foot coverings of any sort for any person in my house at this point. Now, things are even more cluttered and disorganized around here than usual. Eric's working 14 hour days, 6 or 7 days a week so I'm pretty much Single Mommy these days. The kids aren't much for washing windows or scrubbing down baseboards, and also aren't really fans of letting me out of their sight for more than 3 minutes before pushing each other down the stairs or off the couch. Or out of the laundry hamper, toy shopping cart or clothes dryer. Therefore, I do not get much done. Well, really, anything done. It ain't pretty.

So today, I was in the usual chaos of trying to pin down both kidlets long enough to wrestle them into their clothes. I took a clean pair of matched socks off the kitchen table (yes, we have clean laundry on the kitchen table. It's usually only there for about 5 or 6 days. Then we'll have a different load of clean laundry on the kitchen table.) and put them on the couch. I left for 20 seconds, came back, and there was only one sock on the couch. The other sock apparently got so fed up with the disarray around here it staged a protest and stormed off. I made a quick check to ensure it wasn't stashed in Nora's cheek, and asked Tate if he took the sock.

Tate: "I'll help you look, Mommy. It's ok"
Me: "Gee, thanks. Why don't you tell me where you put it?"
Tate: "Um....your name is Nemo."
Me: "Awesome. That's the next place I was gonna look anyway."

I still haven't found it. I seriously think it made a desperate dash for freedom, to find a world where socks can run free without being stuffed into random cupboards or left in the car under one of the seats for years at a time or chewed on by little girls. A world where Tate's shoe doesn't end up in the clothes hamper, where mittens are no longer hidden inside the broom closet, where my hairbrush doesn't find itself buried under a foot of sand in the sandbox outside. It just unfolded itself, bid it's mate adieu and ran. Goodbye, sock. It's ok. There are days where it's simply easier to run to the store and buy new socks rather than wash and try to match up the ones you already have. There are always more socks out there.

But maybe it's just me and my stance on cleaning. Like the average person out there and I most likely have different views on what exactly "just do it" means in terms of cleaning. For most people, it might mean setting aside an entire day to to clean the hell out of your house: scraping old food off the oven, shoveling the dust out from behind the couches, sweeping out mummified carrots from behind the fridge. For me, "just do it" means finally bending down and picking up that piece of paper towel on the floor instead of just kicking it out of my way 100 times a day. Hey, every little bit helps.

2009-11-09T19:21:00.003-06:00

Ok, for any of you who are A) not parents and therefore not used to dealing with this kind of stuff or B) extremely grossed out by gooey things, let's just save you major discomfort right now by saying this: SLIMY GREEN EYE BOOGERS. Oh, and EYELIDS CRUSTED TOGETHER WITH GOOPY, STRINGY, MUCOUS-Y EYE MATTER. And what the hell...DIARRHEA. Yep, you can leave now. I understand.

Yeah, the kids have pinkeye. I started to suspect something when Tate woke up this morning unable to open his right eye due to it being glued together with slimy yellowish glop. Oh, and when Nora's eyes both started looking kinda swollen and, uh...pink. Well, pink aside from the neon-green slime slithering out of the corners of her eyes and instantly hardening on her cheek, dying a quick and painful death. Pretty. Oh, yeah, and the diarrhea. That was fun too. Especially when it got embedded under my fingernails and splattered up onto my neck. I have to say though, you know you're a mom when you can strip your kid naked. scrub the poo off them and you, and wedge them between your knees and wrestle them back into clean clothes, all while keeping the phone firmly wedged against your ear, chattering a mile a minute with your friend, not missing a beat.

After taking both kids to the walk-in clinic where Tate managed to make the nurse almost fall off the stool when he snuck up behind her and lifted the little lever that makes the stool go "pphhhhffft" and drop like a rock, we headed to Target to get the prescriptions.

Holy Hell.

Normally I'm a fan of Target. However, I've realized that this is because I'm normally smart enough to not take both of my kids there at 5:15 pm. But since I needed to get eye drops I really had no choice. So we went. And waited for 45 minutes for eyedrops. Forty. Five. Minutes. I mean, really. Watching Tate hit Nora over the head with a plastic hanger gets old after like 8 minutes, people. So that left a whole 37 minutes to kill. And this is how I killed it.

"Tate, please stop doing that. Tate, I said stop. Seriously, STOP. Ok, really. Will you please stop. Just DON'T. OK??? WILL YOU NOT DO THAT?? COME BACK HERE. Look at me. I'm walking away. Really. No, Tate, I am. Walking. Away. Ok, this is supposed to make you FOLLOW ME. No, follow ME. Not the smelly 500 lb man with toilet paper hanging off his shoe. ME. Ok, where are you. Seriously not funny! WHAT CLOTHES RACK ARE YOU HIDING UNDER?? STOP PULLING ALL THE CARDS OFF THE SHELF. STOP LICKING THE DVD CASES. STOP OPENING THE HOME PREGNANCY TEST BOXES. STOP TRYING TO CRAWL INTO THE PHARMACY. SANTA WILL NOT BRING YOU ANY TOYS IF YOU KEEP SQUIRTING ME WITH KY JELLY"

Yeah. Just imagine 37 minutes of that. And 37 minutes of Tate going:

"No. No! NO! NONONONONONONONONO!!! I want to! I want Nora to cry! I HAVE TO! BYE BYE MOMMY!!! NO! NO! NO!NO!NO!NO! Are you very happy with me, Mommy?"

And Nora going:

"NUM NUM!! MAMAMAMA!!! NUM NUM!! MORE!!! MAMAMAMA! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!"

By the time we left the store I was down to saying three words. It's all my brain could process. "Don't. Stop. Go. Stop. Go. Don't." I do believe it was a glimpse into the 8th circle of hell. Just remember, kids, Mommy is always 2 seconds away from Crazy.

But we got home. I think I got the drops in Tate's eye. It's kind of hard to tell when they're thrashing around like a demented, possessed Jack Russell terrier on crack. I know I got them in Nora's because she just laid there and looked at me like "well, what the fresh hell is this, you crazy woman?" while I dripped them in there. Then she trotted away with her Dum-dum and proceeded to drop it in the dog's water bowl.

Yep, good day. I know experiences like these are a huge part of the job description of being a mommy, but sheesh. This job is so freaking hard, and I have a feeling my performance review is not going to set me up for a promotion. Although, really, what do you get promoted to from Mother? God?

Candy? What Candy?

2009-11-03T18:01:00.003-06:00

I'm pretty convinced that toddler ears are tuned to a certain frequency that allows them to hear candy being opened from anywhere in the house. Seriously. I have the Halloween goods stashed away in a corner of the house we're rarely in to discourage the kids (and myself...who am I kidding) from going through it in a mad, sugar-crazed frenzy more than a couple times a day. I swear, whenever I notice the kids are upstairs without me and probably smearing Vaseline all over the dogs, rugs and toilet seats, and creep over to the stash of candy to snag something, it always ends the same way. I open the wrapper. I hear: Thump. Thump. Thumpthumpthudthudthudthud. Pitter patter pitter patter. Then I turn around and my two little angels will be standing before me, bent over with their hands on their knees, panting madly and gasping for breath as they hold a hand up in the air and force out "Ma..ma....candy?"

Every. Time.

But I figure, the more they eat, the less I do. And since my body apparently hates me and refuses to acknowledge that I've been hitting the gym almost EVERY FREAKING DAY, it's probably best I don't stuff my face with chocolate all that often. I swear these days it's like I can gain weight by osmosis. I have to sprint through the chip aisle in the grocery store for fear my fat cells will start expanding just from breathing too deeply near the Doritos. Seriously, it's like my metabolism is sitting in a corner rocking back and forth with it's hands over it's ears going "I can't heeeeeeear you! I don't belieeeeeeeve that you're on a treadmill!!! I've decided to totally screwwwwwwww you!!" And, on that note, why does 30 minutes on the treadmill feel like two and a half hours, while the two and a half hours that Tate's in preschool go by in a 30 minute blink? Just wondering.

Anyway. Back to the original subject. Halloween was pretty low-key this year. Eric worked, as he has like practically every single other day this year, so it was just me and the kidlets hitting the streets. How cute are they?

Uh...good evening folks. This is your Tater speaking.

Heeeere, kitty kitty.

And then there's me, the Friday before Halloween, doing shots at a party with Kate Gosselin and Jessica Simpson. I may have to go platinum blonde on a permanent basis. On account of my sassiness and all. And yes, we're doing Jell-O shots, simply because we are classy in that way.

It was good times...from what I remember, anyway.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

2009-10-22T12:54:00.005-05:00

All of a sudden, Nora is really talking. A new word here, a new word there. "Please", "Cheese", "Okay" "Tate" and, uh..."Gracias." I don't know if she's decided to be half Spanish, or if Tate is sneakily teaching her a foreign language in one his late-night seminars on How to Drive Mom as Crazy as Possible in 100 Days or Less or Your Money Back. One of these days they're going to playing in the next room and I'll hear Tate say "Vamos a ir a tomar una botella de vodka del armario y de un paseo en coche." Nora will reply back with "Si, senor diablo!". And I'll sit there in blissful ignorance and all of a sudden wonder why I'm missing a bottle of vodka, the kids, and the car.

I don't know what Nora's trying to say when "gracias" comes out, since she throws it out there at pretty random times. I do know, however, she's trying to say "thank you" when in fact what actually comes out of her angelic little mouth is "fuck you!". Yeah, that's a fun one. If I'm in a punchy mood at the grocery store, I'll hand her a bag of rice or something to play with just so I can watch people's faces as she shouts out "FUCK YOU, MA!!!!" with nothin' but a smile on her face. I have a feeling I'm pretty much known as the Crazy Mother with Strange Children at Festival by this point. Which I'm fine with. It was a long time coming.

She's also still bidding people "Die!" as she leaves them, waving her little hand frantically. I particularly enjoy when I lay her down for her nap, and after she's given me a hug and a kiss she'll lift her head up and holler "DIE, MA!" and then flop back down, curl in a ball, and fall asleep. Gives me a warm fuzzy feeling all through naptime.

Tate's favorite phrase is (get ready to judge me) "Oh...for God's SAKE!". He says it 300 times an hour. We also get a lot of double takes and strange looks in public when he breaks that one out. And apparently it's a pretty universal phrase. Happy, sad, angry, hungry, bewildered...it all merits an "Oh...for God's SAKE!" Examples:

Me: "Tate, can you get your jacket on, please?"

Tate: "Oh, for God's SAKE, Mom!"

Me: "Ok, say goodbye to your teacher before we leave."

Tate: "Oh...for...God's...SAKE!!!"

Me: "Goodnight, Tate. I love you."

Tate: "OH! FOR! GOD'S! SAKE!"

And on and on. Sometimes it's mumbled, sometimes it's shouted, sometimes it comes out of nowhere while he's watching Sesame Street (apparently Grover is extremely annoying). And, yes, since everyone's thinking it anyway, he learned it from me. I know. The Mother of the Year award is on it's way.

It Was Epic

2009-10-20T20:28:00.002-05:00

Epic, I tell you. Ep. Ic.

What was epic, you say? Why, I say, the tantrum that Tate threw at the YMCA yesterday, that's what! I have seen more than my fair share of Tate tantrums (Tatetrums?). I've got enough stored up to last me until I am 9802 years old. This one, though, was one to go in the history books. I should totally write a book about the history of tantrums, and how my dear son has committed his very being to the art of sharing tantrums with the world at every possible opportunity, in every possible place, in front of EVERY POSSIBLE PERSON IN THE WORLD. I would rock that.

Basically, I wanted him to put on his jacket before going out in 40 degree weather. He disagreed, somewhat strongly. I told him that we would not be budging from the spot we were standing in until he put on his jacket. He would budge, I would replace him in his original spot, he would wail and thrash and lunge for the handicap button to open the door (his form of crack), I would replace him, etc etc freaking etc for 30 minutes. I know I am prone to exaggeration every once in a great while, but it was literally a half hour. 1800 seconds of hollering, caterwauling, bellowing, trying to remove random parts from Mommy's body with his teeth, what have you. Nora would wander off for a bit, come wandering back, frantically sign "eat" for a few minutes, realize I was not about to magically produce a plate full of ravioli from under my clothing, and wander back off in search of people to beg food from, or tables to scour for crumbs under. She was a peanut on a mission.

Finally I got tired of watching people steadfastedly, pointedly ignore my psychotic toddler as he tried to hurl himself through the front doors of a public venue and decided to get the jacket on, get through the doors, and get home where I could start pouring wine down my throat because I was thisfreakingclosetolosingmysanity. So I did...somehow. I still don't know how I did it, since he seemed to think the jacket was the spawn of Satan, but I ended up with him tucked under one arm, Nora in the other, and wearily trudging out to my car wondering why I ever decided to open my uterus for business. Good times.

Then I took Nora to the grocery store and she dropped a full can of enchilada sauce on my foot. I'm convincing myself, perhaps futilely, that it was not intentional. If my 18-month-old starts trying to break my metatarsals on a regular basis now, I think it may be time to wave the white flag and just letting the kidlets start the dictatorship they seem so intent on cultivating. Hey, I tried. Not many 31-year-olds can say they got their ass kicked by a couple of kids who like to run around naked after bathtime and roll themselves up in curtains. That's something. It IS.

And Unto Tate, A Child Was Born

2009-10-17T12:29:00.002-05:00

Tate and I had a fun conversation the other day. Sometimes I just gotta wonder what goes through that brain of his. The rundown:

Tate: Mommy, I have a baby in my tummy!
Me: Oh, really? How did it get there?
Tate: The spaceship flew it into there and then it had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Now it's living in my tummy. Remember when I did that? When I was in your tummy?
Me: Yes, I do remember that. Do you?
Tate: Yes. That was so fun. I'd run around and go "Wheeeee!"
Me: Well, sometimes it certainly felt like that. Do you remember doing your best to dislodge my rib with your heel? Cause that was really fun for me, too. What kind of baby do you have in your tummy?
Tate: A girl. Her name is Hammer.
Me: Always an option for the next kid. Not many little Hammers running around these days.

I tried to get him to continue the conversation but he got distracted by a patch of sunlight on the wall or something and wondered off. Later, when I tried to ask him about Baby Girl Hammer in his tummy, he looked at me like I had been sneaking hits from the bong when his back was turned. I guess it was a short pregnancy.

The four of us went to get our pictures taken this past week. I was not entirely optimistic, seeing as both kids were turning into snot fountains, Eric had worked all night the night before and not gone to bed yet, and I was annoyed at Eric for not being totally excited and exhilirated about getting his picture taken after being awake for like 18 hours. Small detail.

Anyway, things went surprisingly well. Tate had to be...himself, and did plenty of looking the complete opposite direction of the camera with his patented little smirk on his face while pretending he was deaf, but the creepy, ugly, freaky rubber chicken that the photographer waved in both kids' faces did a great job of coaxing a decent number of smiles out of them. I'm really happy with the ones we've seen so far. See? Look how cute we are.

And just for kicks, here are the little rapscallions at this time last year. Sniff. They look so little and innocent. Well, ok, only Nora looks innocent. Tate hasn't looked innocent since he came shooting out of the womb.

Take Me to Your Leader

2009-10-09T19:42:00.003-05:00

I took Nora in for her 18 month check up yesterday. In the past 6 months, she's gained a grand total of 3, count 'em 3 lbs, bringing her up to a whopping 22 lbs even. Now, considering the fact that she shoves a total of 22 lbs of food in her mouth every 12 hours, this is somewhat impressive. I've come to the conclusion that she has either A) a hollow leg, B) a tapeworm, or C) some sort of alien DNA coursing through her veins. I have never known a human being to shove this sheer amount of food in their mouth on a 23 an hour a day basis and only gain like an ounce a month. She's from another planet. I gave birth to ET's sweet, plucky, teeny-tiny, second cousin or something.

Tate has learned the fine art of lying. We're extremely proud. I keep insisting that Eric take the credit passing down this laudable trait, but he seems to think it's something that can only be passed from a loving mother down to her mentally pliable, impressionable son. The other day Tate and I were coming in from the garage to the house. I had 4000 grocery bags in my arms and Nora hanging off my neck, writhing and squealing as she tried to separate my eyebrows from my forehead. This was our exchange:

Me: "Tate, can you please open the door for Mommy?"

Tate: "No. My hands are full."

Me: "Is it hard work, carrying all that air?? Open the door."

Tate: "I just CANNOT right now. My HANDS are FULL."

Me: "Oh, right. I failed to notice that gigantic speck of lint on your palm. I'm surprised you haven't been reduced to dragging your hand along behind you, grunting and groaning as you strain to take every step. Please, please let me put down my 600 pounds of groceries and stash Nora down my shirt or something so you don't pull a muscle by trying to balance a piece of fuzz in one hand while wrenching open the door with the other."

Tate: "Ok, Mommy."

Then we have the typical situation where he pushes Nora down while standing 3 feet in front of me, then quickly saying "I didn't do anything!" Right. I may be a little slow on the uptake sometimes but I'm pretty sure he's not able to inadvertently knock people over with an innocent flick of his eyeballs.

I took the kids on a hayride this morning. Nora, as usual, was so thrilled she simply lost all expression in her face. It takes a lot to impress this kid.

What the hell, Ma.

Tate and good ol' One Eye.

I may be a liar, but I'm stinkin' cute, too.

It was a really good time, but the whole getting-in-and-out-of-the-car process made me really, really not excited for winter. It takes 45 minutes to get everyone's crap into the car, and then you get where you're going and take another 3 hours to get both kids crammed into their hats and mittens and jackets and boots and other stuff they insist on wearing because they want to be warm or something. After I'm done getting them ready in their 40 layers of clothes, I'm about to strip all mine off because I'm panting and sweating and about to fall over from fatigue. Then Nora poops in her diaper and Tate starts screaming because he doesn't like the way his zipper smells and I start mumbling that this taking the kids out stuff is for the birds and next time we're just staying home and wearing the same clothes for 2 weeks at a time because even though I remember all the kids' clothes I inevitably forget something of mine, like, oh, my shoes. It's good times.

Can't wait for winter. Can. Not. Wait.

I Got You, Babe

2009-10-05T14:13:00.005-05:00

I know. Yes, I know. Really. You all have been tormented and left feeling strangely alone and unfulfilled by the lack of blogging. Well, too bad. I was in a really bad mood for about a month and any nugget of humor in my life was hiding deep under all the clutter in my family room. So I didn't have any desire to put my bitchy moanings and rantings down for all the world to see.

But I'm back now. Clap, clap.

To jump right in, let's start with the recent makeover we had. This is what my dear little Nora had been looking like:
Lovely, isn't she? Just pure sweetness and delicacy. What a little flower, all abloom with dainty and cute. Actually, to get the real picture, you'd have to imagine this 'do with food and lint and, I don't know, baby raccoons hanging off of it. She was like Little Miss Dustmop Head. Plus there was the whole issue of her not being able to, you know, SEE. We got tired of hearing the thumps as she careened into walls and took headers down the stairs. Kidding.

So I took her in for a little snip snip and here she is now:

Or maybe this is her. They've pretty much got identical hairstyles. She's still working on the moustache, though. I'm trying to get her to start answering to "Sonny" and teaching her to sing "I got flowers, in the spring....I got you, to wear my RIIIIING". It's slow going.

She's learning a lot of new words, although her favorite is still "BladabladaBLAHBLAHBLAH". So far that's seemed to have meant "cup", "sponge" "blackened banana peel" and "Mommy's arm fat". But she's also got "Doggie" "Airplane" "Thank you" (which comes out sounding like "Dankmnn"), and still, of course "BOB!!!!!! STOP!!!". She also likes to bid people adieu by saying "bye", although when she says it, it comes out as "Die". So I often hear her sweet little voice warbling "Die, Ma! DIE DIE, MA!" It's a little disconcerting. I keep expecting to turn around and see her coming at me with a stick in her hand or something.

And let's not forget about this little tornado:

I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear he's still the same bounce-off-the-walls, yell-at-the-top-of-his-lungs, make-Mommy-drink-straight-out-of-the-winebox little dude he always was. He's in preschool now and adores it. I've also got him in swimming and gymnastics in vain attempts to burn off some of the energy he has stored. He enjoys those classes too, but refuses to let them tire him out in any way, shape or form. Truly, how daft and moronic of me to hold out any pathetic little morsel of hope. I chalk it up to sleep deprivation and just pure desperation. Can I get an hour of downtime in the afternoon, people? No? How about 20 minutes? 10? Periodic escapes to the bathroom where I feign gastrointestinal troubles? Nope. These children follow me everywhere.

And now, my brief reintroduction back into the world of blogging must end for today. Nora is chucking cut up fruit at the dogs and Tate is trying to crawl into the dishwasher and shut the door. Better I don't do too much all at once anyway. I don't want to pull a muscle.

Show Me Your Booty

2009-08-18T13:02:00.004-05:00

We've been busy lately, as evidenced by the fact I have not bothered to blog in like two and a half weeks. I've just heard once or twice that things like fresh air and exercise are supposed to be good for kids or something, so we've been outside a lot. Then we come inside and I herd the kids to bed and all I want to do is sit on the couch and not use any part of my brain. This is why I watch "Dating in the Dark". No brainpower required.

We did, however, make a trek to Minneapolis for my cousin's wedding and then on to Nantucket with the whole fam. It was a nice time. Some things I did not do while there:

1) Meet "the man from Nantucket". I did, however, buy a t-shirt proclaiming that I am the man from Nantucket. I live for irony.

2) Get in any major fights with a family member. This is a big one.

3) Refrain from jumping in the pool with my clothes on. The fact that Tate tipped over in his inner tube and got stuck upside down underwater with his feet flailing madly above the surface may have had something to do with this.

4) Refrain from jumping in the pool with my clothes on again. Tate apparently had a vendetta against the pool after it kicked his ass the first time, so he marched right on back in, only this time he had no inner tube. All that chlorine snorted up his nose must have short wired something in his brain.

5) Manage not to make a fool out of myself on the flight down. I'm what some would call a nervous flier. At this point, my family would call it a screaming, bucking, hyperventilating, looking-like-someone-who-just-got-electrocuted flier. It's not pretty. I thought ahead on the flight home though, and started drinking pretty much immediately. The fact that it was only 11 am played no part in my reasoning.

All in all, a successful trip. My mom, sister and I went on a house tour where we got to mingle with a bunch of snooty women who all got some magic, East Coast memo to wear white capri pants, pastel shirts, sweaters with ropes and gold chain things printed on them slung jauntily over their shoulders, and big straw hats. We did not wear any of these things because we're just lowly Midwesterners. I don;t think I impressed any of them when I yelled "Hey, Joanna, look at me!" and opened my mouth to show off my partly masticated brownie. While at the tour, we also experienced what we dubbed "Booty Gate". All the houses made you put on these shoe-condom thingies so we wouldn't track in our mud and germs all over their house. Imagine the uproar when one of the houses ran out of booties. Not a booty to be found. Then the people in charge started trying to get women to give up their booties as they left the house so some of the sad, pathetic little booty-less people could have some.

No one would give up their booties. It was booty madness. Some of these women were about to start throwing chairs or Louis Vuitton purses or their kicky little wedge heels at people in order to get booties. It was pretty much impossible for my sister and I to not start snickering "Give up the booty! Give me booty or give me death! I'll kick your ass for some booty!!" When we finally procured booties for ourselves, we decided that it was everyone for themselves, bitches. Therefore, as we walked out of each houses, we hid the booties under our shirts and steadfastly avoided looking at any of the booty-less masses as we passed. Hey, I don't give up booty to just anyone. I was afraid at any moment I'd turn around and see some Botox-ed, collagened, Lilly Pulitzer-wearing grandma come sprinting towards me intent on getting my booty.

We also went to the beach, swam in the pool, strolled around the town, chased Tate out of the street a million times because it was made of rock and looked just like the sidewalk, and frolicked on a centuries-old Quaker cemetery across the street. We figured the Quakers were a pretty chill group so they would be ok with it.

I would post pictures of the adventures, but something is screwy and the powers that be that live in my computer are not letting me. Bastards. They're all on my Facebook page anyway. And now, since it's been so long since I've blogged, I must stop, for I am spent. I should have stretched first. Hopefully I'm not sore tomorrow.

Ha HA!

2009-08-02T12:32:00.008-05:00

Since his surgery a couple weeks ago (no fevers yet...yay!), Tate seems to have a new outlook on life. Mainly, everything is incredibly freaking funny. He wanders around the house all day going "Ha HA!". He sees something humorous on TV? "Ha HA!" Mom drops something on her foot and hops around cursing madly? "Ha HA!" Nora uses her peanut butter and jelly sandwich as hair mousse? "Ha HA!" He puts his underwear on his own head and runs around like a lunatic? "Ha HA! Ha HA!" At least he finds humor in the mundane. Because at this point, underwear-on-head-running-around is a pretty stock activity around here. It's a strange day when that doesn't happen.

He's changing so much lately. All of a sudden he just seems smarter and calmer and...less toddler-ish. I sit back and watch with an odd mixture of pride and mourning. Everyday he surprises me with something new that he knows and everyday I seem to need to fight back tears as I remember the little baby that he was, and is getting farther and farther away from. He likes to play outside by himself now. I watch him as he plays pretend and as he picks up his toys and dresses himself and writes shaky "T"s on his aqua-doodle, and I'm so proud at what he can do, and wonder what new thing he'll be doing tomorrow. I listen to him exclaim "Oh, my GOODNESS!" as he runs away from me and the face of Elmo imprinted on his big-boy undies peeks at me over the back waistband of his shorts. Soon he'll be in preschool, and then I'll turn around and he'll be in grade school and then all of a sudden he'll be graduating high school. Then he'll get married and have kids of his own and I'll be all old and wrinkly and wondering what the hell happened to my bladder control and when I started needing to wear Depends and to take my teeth out at night and put them in a glass by my bed and then I'll be DEAD.

Ah, good times.

Nora, on the other hand, is still my baby. And really lookin' fine these days. This is what happens when she spills something on her dress and it's late enough in the day that there's really no point in putting a clean one on her and neither of us can really be bothered to give a crap about what she looks like.

Now, that's a special looking kid.

And I'm thinking I may have to do something about her hair. Everytime I put pigtails or braids in her hair these days, they last approximately 2.4 seconds before getting savagely, forcibly undone. Then she ends up looking like this for the rest of the day. Imagine a few chunks of slimy crackers and ravioli hanging off the ends and you've got the perfect image of how great she's looking by about 5pm each day.

Nora, aka the reincarnation of John Denver

You're fired.

I long for the days of pigtails. Ah, pigtails. I shall never forget you. Perhaps we'll meet again someday.

RIP Pigtails. 2008-2009.

Prepare for Battle

2009-07-28T12:37:00.002-05:00

Ever feel like life is just a series of battles? Battle here, battle there, battle battle everywhere. I battle with my daughter to take a nap without getting a bottle first, I battle with my house to stop barfing up clutter everywhere when my back is turned, and I engage in a battle of wills with my son just about every hour.

We went to a park today and of course Tate very quickly started making me want to pull my hair our. Par for the course. I just wonder what goes on in his little head sometimes, why he gets so frustrated and impatient that he can only express it by hitting or pinching. We try to tell him that it hurts, it's not nice, he'll get a time-out, someone will belt him back harder and we really won't be bothered to care all that much, blah blah BLAH. It doesn't sink in, he hits again, and we leave. It's a finely choreographed routine at this point. Apparently our family isn't much for spontaneity.

Then of course I notice the looks from other people, towards both me and Tate, and I let it affect me more than I should, because really, you think I'd be immune to it at this point. But he's still my son, stinker that he is, and when I can tell that people are disgusted or annoyed by him, it rankles me. I'm his mommy, and even though he drives me to bury my head under a pillow and scream obscenities that would make George Carlin blush, I grew the kid. He's still my baby.

Yes, he hits and yells and makes me wonder sometimes if his head is about to start spinning, but he also kisses his sister's boo-boos and strokes her on the head as she cries. He picks out the best french fry on his plate and gives it to me to eat. He buries his head in my lap and peeks up at me through his lashes, dimples flashing, as he asks "Are you just so proud of me, Mommy? Did I make you happy?" He gets out of bed sometimes at night when he hears me go into my room and asks if he can tuck me in. He's a series of ebbs and flows, rises and falls, smiles and tears, songs and screams. He's not easy, but he's never boring.

And honestly, I like that he's got such strong opinions. I like that he's stubborn and already knows how to stand his ground. He's tough, which often transitions into being naughty, which I'm not so crazy about, but at least he's not going to crumple into a heap and start wailing everytime someone looks at him the wrong way. He's smart. Quick. You really can't hope for more than that. Although there are days where I look at him and wonder if having a nice, dopey kid would be ALL that bad. Just kinda...bumbling along, singing "doo doo doo", getting entranced by a leaf or a rock...I wonder what that would be like, having a kid like that.

But he's not, so we will continue the battle. Someone's gotta back down eventually, right? Now if I could just get my house to stop refusing to stay clean. This battle's gonna be a bitch. Who am I kidding. I've already lost.

Hello World!

2009-07-22T13:01:00.002-05:00

I think this may be it. I think the worst is over and Tate is slowly, sloooooowly returning to his human self. The demon may have left the building. I feel like I survived some gigantic nuclear holocaust or something, and am now stepping gingerly out into the sunlight, blinking dazedly and mumbling "Am I ok? Did I make it??" while patting myself down, feeling for bruises and broken bones.

Yeah, I'm what you'd call a survivor. It was a craptastic week but I think, think, we've gotten through the worst of it. I mean, sure we still have at least one daily tantrum, but if those ever stopped I would go right past thinking we survived a nuclear holocaust and go right into thinking we've just been blasted into some alternate universe where up is down and blue is green and people eat ink cartridges for dinner.

The worst part by far has been the kid's breath. Holy crap. They told us it would be a side effect but I kind of forgot about it til the morning he opened his mouth to speak and I swear I saw the flowers outside the window wilt and die. It's like something crawled into his mouth while holding a hot, sweaty penny, stuck poo in it's mouth, and then died while trying to dye it's butt hair with peroxide. I have never smelled such an odor. Thankfully, that seems to be regressing as well. Because for awhile there I'd have to stick my head out of a window and gasp desperately for air anytime he spoke. That didn't work too well while I was driving.

Hopefully this is the end of the fevers. Because if those suckers come back, I'll think I'll actually be hoping for a nuclear holocaust at that point.

Nora's well-timed sickness has abated as well. We of course just had to have a runny-poo-escaping-the-diaper-and-going-all-up-and-down-Mom's-arm episode first, but those are usually to be expected. Now she's running around cheerfully bellowing "Sis? Sat?" ("What's this?" and "What's that?" for those of you not schooled in the fine art of One Year Old-ese.) She also waves madly at anyone who happens to be passing by our house or car or shopping cart while peeping "Hi! HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII! HI HI HI!!!". She finally seems to have gotten over her stranger anxiety and will now beeline towards any male presence within a 2 mile radius, demand to be picked up, and snuggle her head into their neck. We may have to work on that as well. Girl's gotta learn how to exude a little mystery.

Hork.

2009-07-17T12:54:00.002-05:00

So Nora keeps waking up in the morning and horking all over. Yesterday I was summoned into her room at 5:30 in the morning by the lovely, melodic sounds of yakking, and was treated to the sight of barf, well...everywhere. Nothing like starting off the day by giving your daughter a bath at 5:45 am and trying not to fall asleep and tip over into the bathtub with her. Although the putrid stench of all the little chunks I was pulling out of her hair really did a good job of keeping me awake.

So really, the only thing I can think of is that the little dear is stashing a flask of rum or something under her mattress and having a little party every night. Which would really upset me. Because really, if there's rum drinking in this house to be done, it should be done by me.

Oh yeah, and because one-year-olds probably shouldn't be drinking rum in the first place.

The demon possession continues around here as well. Like this morning, when I told Tate we were out of bread after the EIGHT peanut butter and jelly sandwiches he had yesterday. Hoo boy. I expected a priest to come slamming through the door, lay his hand on Tate's forehead and start yelling "BACK! Back, ye otherworldly pb&j devil!! BACK!!!" The priest never materialized, though, so I did the next best thing and called Eric on the phone blubbering that he needed to come home from work. At 7:30 am. It didn't happen.

Yogurt-covered raisins were the cure of the day, though. If you're ever trying to get your kid to stop acting like the Devil, try those. I guess they have lots of demon-blocking antioxidants or something. You know, in addition to their sweet sweet chewiness. After the raisins, he was fine. But we're getting really, really bored. This weekend isn't going to be much better. Eric's working 12-hour days, 1:30 am-1:30 pm. Yeah, don't you wish you had those hours?

At least Tate is polite in his aggravation these days. When he gets frustrated, he keeps yelling "Oh my goodness! OH MY GOODNESS!!!!" I don't know where he got the old lady-speak from but it's pretty funny. Well, funny for the first 20 times and then it starts to get a little old. But still, it's better than him yelling "WHAT THE FUCK??" in the middle of the grocery store when he can't get a good hold on his Jell-O square. I have a feeling that would culminate in no more free Jell-O for us.

So Long, Suckers

2009-07-15T12:18:00.004-05:00

Do you know how hard it is to try to explain to a three-year-old why he can't have Goldfish crackers? Those things are like cheddar flavor-blasted crack amphibians to this kid. Trying to tell him that they will shred a throat that's still pretty much completely raw is not going over well. All he knows is that he wants Goldfish. Now. Dammit.

It's been a hellish couple of days. I knew it would be, but kind of chose not to dwell on it till the hour of doom approached. Tate's ENT finally suggested getting his tonsils out when we saw him on Friday, and since I decided I would do anything to possibly, perhaps make the fevers of ruin go away, I jumped at the idea. The fevers had to stop.

So we get to the hospital at 6:30 yesterday morning. Tate was pretty chilled out on the drive over and walking into the hospital, but as we were standing in line to register, I watched the expression on his face change to sheer panic as he started to look around. You could see in the dialogue going on in his little brain. "Talking to a bored woman while she gives us paperwork and a bracelet? Check. Weird smell of sick people, rubber gloves and crappy food? Check. Slightly odd pictures of Jesus in the operating room peeking over doctors' shoulders hanging on the walls? CHECK. OH GOD." He started to panic, wailing "I don't LIKE the hosipal! I don't want to BE in the hosipal!!" I knew then that the party had officially started.

We were then checked into our quaint, lovely 10 ft by 10 ft cage of a room surrounded by other little cages and hunkered down to wait. FOREVER. After almost 3 hours of listening to Tate scream that he wanted to go home and watching him chuck shoes at Eric's head, they were finally ready for him. I think the nurses at the desk were relieved when it was finally time to sedate the kid. I kind of expected one of them to slip the anesthesiologist a tenner and whisper to give Tate a heavy load of the real good stuff.

Walking down the hall towards the operating room was extremely difficult. Tate just had this look of sheer confusion and alarm on his face as he held onto Snowy the Monkey with a death grip. We then had to hand him over to Joe the Nurse and watch them walk through the double doors without us. Seeing Tate's face peering over Joe's shoulder at us as the tears started to fall was just about the crappiest thing ever. Seriously. Nothing like knowing your child is terrified and you can't be there to comfort him. Good times. I was a wreck as we sat in the waiting room and listened to two obese old men bellow across the room with each other about their dead wives and various medical complaints.

Luckily, the surgery was over within 15 minutes and they brought him out about a half hour after that. We could hear him crying before we saw him, and when they did bring him through the doors I just about burst into tears myself. Kid looked like he had been ridden hard and put away wet. And of course, there was the IV in his hand. I knew that was going to be a problem, since during our last hospital stay Tate had declared his IV to be his mortal, eternal enemy and set about finding any way to destroy it. I had a feeling this would be "Tate vs IV, vol. 2".

Guess what? I was RIGHT!! Whee for us! We got to spend the next 4 hours trying to keep him from yanking the stupid thing out of his hand and getting whacked in the head for our efforts. He was intent on making that IV suffer for what it had done to him. All of this vengeance-seeking was of course accompanied by window-shattering screams, which I'm going to say was probably not such a good thing to be doing with a throat that had just had stuff carved out of it. After awhile the nurse poked her head in and said "Isn't there anything you can do to get him to stop screaming?" I wanted to reply "Well, yeah, a bunch of things. I just don't feel like doing them. Screaming makes me happy and serene. I FREAKING LOVE IT." I just had to laugh when I thought about how we had dutifully warned the nurses about Tate's Tateness and they all said "Ohhh, don't worry. We've seen it all before, we're used to it, blah blah blah." Right.

So he finally passed out on my lap and slept for a couple hours. As soon as he woke up, the nurse took a look at his throat and said "Okhelooksfinelet'sgetyououtofhereI'llgetthepaperworkberightback" and sprinted out of the room. We were out of there about 4 minutes later.

And now we're home and having epic Goldfish battles every 45 minutes or so. I'm thinking the little guy's probably getting tired of Popsicles after having 4,000 of them in the last 24 hours, but I can't start feeding him soft foods til tomorrow. I'm surprised he hasn't resorted to picking food up off the floor or out of the garbage and hastily stuffing it in his mouth. I mean, he sees Nora doing it all the time, you'd think it would be at the forefront of his mind.

It's been just loads of fun around here. Tantrums at every turn. Puke splattered all over my kitchen floors, cabinets, and refrigerator, courtesy of Nora. She decided she just had to join in the extremely gratifying process of making Mommy's sanity completely perish, and what better way to do that than hork up blueberries all over the floor? Perfect.

But honestly, if doing this makes the fevers stop, I have no regrets or qualms about it. We couldn't keep going on like that...it was taking a huge toll on every one of us. I can take a week or two of pure, unadulterated hell if it's worth it in the end. I may come out of it missing a frontal lobe or something, but it'll be worth it. Those suckers have been removed and disposed of in an undignified fashion. Screw you, tonsils!!

And once again, I'm humbled and blown away by all the fabulous people we know who have offered help, prayers, good thoughts, Popsicles, and wine. Cool people make everything better.

More to Come

2009-07-14T19:10:00.002-05:00

As many of you know, our little Tater got his tonsils out today. And surprise, surprise, it was quite an adventure. I've been up for almost 15 hours and am pretty mentally fried. Therefore, you will be getting the story tomorrow. Try not to quiver to death with anticipation.

Hey! GOAT!!

2009-07-05T19:14:00.003-05:00

Toddlers do not come with snooze buttons.

Case in point: my two little angels, who have both gotten about 28 fewer hours of sleep this weekend than normal, and who both went to bed way way way WAY later than they should have last night...and who were both awake this morning well before 7:15. And once those suckers start buzzing and warbling and EE-EE-EE-EEing...well, they don't shut off.

What they do have? Some crazy sonar that tells them exactly when Mommy is on her Very. Last. Nerve. Once they get the secret signal that Mommy is thisclose to losing her shit if she hears that whiny little "uh-uh-uh" or the "NOOOOOOO!! I DO IT!!!" one more time, they spring into action.

Tate: "Look Mommy! I bit Nora! Whyyyyyyyy can't I watch TV?? WHYYYYYYY CAN'T I PLAY IN THE CAR??? WHHHHHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYY CAN'T I POUR MAPLE SYRUP ON THE DOG????????????"

Nora: "HHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEZZZZZZZZZZZEEEEEEEEEEESQUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEE!!!" (Translated: "IF YOU DON'T GIVE ME ANOTHER GOLDFISH CRACKER OR LET ME DRINK OUT OF THE DOG BOWL I'MA THROW THE SMACK DOWN HARDCORE!!!")

Me: CLUNK. Twitch, twitch.

Yeah, so apart from the six thousand moments of crabbiness and general hatred of life by our little cherubs, it was a fun weekend overall. Well, apart from Friday, which sucked. But anyway, we spent the 4th at a couple of different barbecues with friends and neighbors where the kidlets partook in the traditional Fourth activities:

Sparklers. The perfect toy for a 3 year old.

Careening down a hill on a plastic duck that was made for no such careening.

Eating

And...eating. Can you believe it?

We all had a lot of fun. We did miss our friend setting his woods on fire, though...bummer we left before that action. Also, our crazy neighbor didn't call the cops on us this year...first time ever. Although I don't think he was home. We scared him away.

Today we took the kidlets to a petting farm up in Door County. This is where I learned that my daughter is obsessed with goats. Good thing there were 200 of them at this place, so she could go up to each and every one of them, pet them, pull their tail, examine their buttholes, and painstakingly pick up single kernels of corn from the ground and shove them into the goats' mouths. Over and over and over. With every single goat. We tried to interest her in the cows or pigs or kitties, but no. Nora the Goatherd would not stray from her flock. As soon as I'd put her down after walking away from the Goats of Temptation, she would turn around and freakin' book back to them. Fine. Nora loves goats. It is what it is.

Tate was not so endeared to them. He mostly spent our goat-viewing hours going "Hey!! GOAT!!! GOAT! WHAT ARE YOU DOING??" Then he'd see a tree or a leaf and wander off to go check that out. Cause, really, if we're going to drive and hour and pay $16 to show Tate stuff, it may as well be trees, right? He did really like the baby chicks, though. He dug the chicks.

So I took 52 pictures today. And honestly, 26 of them are ones I tried to take of the kids together where they were both looking at the camera, didn't have a hand down their shorts or up their skirts, weren't looking constipated, and weren't in the process of yelling, "Mommy, do you have to go poo??" It was a long process. Here's an incredibly condensed version.

I swear Tate isn't peeing off the side of the wagon.

...um, yeah.

Almost...

So close...

Yesss!!! The ONE AND ONLY picture of the two of them not looking like schlubs together.

It was a good weekend. But I'm ready for a vacation now. I've learned the valuable lesson that there is such a thing as too much quality family time. And I'm riiiiight about there.

Panic

2009-06-30T19:49:00.003-05:00

I thought I knew the meaning of panic. Who doesn't? Panic is what you do when you wake up late for one of your finals in college, or when you realize that you accidentally pressed "send" on that bitchy email, or when you realize that your box of wine has but one precious drop left in it and you got a whole lotta sitting on the couch and watching TV yet to do. That's panic, right, people?

Nu-uh. That ain't nothin'.

Panic is when your one-year-old daughter vanishes from your house. Yeah. I'm not kidding. It's when you're standing at the stove, idly shoving ground beef into uncooperative pasta shells and humming the Pajanimals theme when you cock your head to one side, listening to the unusual silence in your house. You know your son is downstairs with his dad in the basement, but you don't hear the usual pitter-patter of your daughter's feet as she trots through the house causing her own personal brand of ruckus. So you go through the house, calling for her and feeling more panicked with each empty room you look in. Then you realize that your son left the door from the house out to the garage propped open, and the garage door is open as well.

Well, that's when a special type of feeling like you're about to crap your pants sets in. So you run outside yelling her name when you hear a panicked shriek that sounds awfully familiar. Then you have that moment of "Call the sheriff! Nora done fell in that there rock quarry!". Never mind that there is no quarry within 600 miles of your house and come to think of it, you're not really sure what a rock quarry is. No, the shriek is due to the fact that your neighbor has scooped your daughter up in her arms so she can deposit her back in your house.

So you run up to your neighbor, who says "Well, I was looking out my window and saw Nora meandering by, and when I didn't see anyone with her, I kinda figured that wasn't how that was supposed to go." She describes how she went outside and picked her up to bring her home and Nora did her usual wig-out that she does when someone she's only seen 200 times in her life picks her up. But, as your neighbor dryly observed "At least she's got the right defense mechanism going."

So you thank your neighbor six billion times while trying to get your heart to slow down, and your neighbor, who has three kids of her own and a very "been there, done that, not a big freaking deal" attitude, consoles you by talking about how her kid once escaped from her house and went into the neighbor's garage and fell asleep in their car.

Then you go home and try not to think about how differently things could have turned out. If she had turned left out of the driveway and not right, and gone towards the cross-street instead of deeper into the cul-de-sac where everyone recognizes her. If your neighbor hadn't happened to see her. If she had cut through someone's back yard into a different street and had swaggered into the bar up the road for a scotch on the rocks. And then you think about what a freaking idiot you must be. How can it take so much brain power to stuff meat into shells? Do you really not notice your daughter strolling right past you into the laundry room and then out the door??

So now not only do I know the true meaning of "panic", I also am pretty familiar with the bona fide definition of "relief". Oh, and "being-so-mad-at-myself-I-want-to-stab-myself-in-the-temple." I got that one down now too.

My little vagabond:

Yeah, I gots to go, people. I gots to roam. Y'all can't tie ME down.

Mommy=Potty?

2009-06-22T19:48:00.003-05:00

We had another fun weekend here at the 'bergs. Eric and I are continuing on our quest to turn our kids into the consummate party animals. We're firm believers in the theory that if you party well, then you can do just about anything well. It's a good motto.

Saturday we took the kids to a parade and festival thingie. It was good times, especially since there were about 8 other people at the parade, and all Tate had to do was stand on the curb with his hand extended imperiously and candy would magically come flying through the air at him. That was pretty awesome. It would have been more awesome if we didn't get so much freaking salt-water taffy. Seriously, who eats that stuff? It tastes like salty, watery, chewy...ass. But anyway, we stuffed all the candy into the diaper bag, where Tate promptly forgot about it. Mwa haha. I steal my kid's candy.

Then we went to the festival and went on some rides. I had brief moments where I wondered if putting my child on something that looked like it would fall apart in a slight breeze and was operated by dudes who looked like they could be related to Sloth from Goonies was the smartest idea I've had, but I got over it. You gotta have faith, man. And, see? He loved it.

Ohhhhhh, yeah.

Helllllllp.

Ok, he looks a little petrified there, but honestly, he loved it. They went down that thing like 6 times. Eric had to stop dragging him up the steps by his ankle kicking and screaming after like the third time. Kidding, kidding.

Nora opted out of the rusty, squeaky, creaky, death-defying fun and sat on the grass and ate it. Cause, really, what else is there to do?

Don't even try to tell me this isn't the cutest picture ever. Cause I'll have to cut you.

That night Eric and I went out for date night and had the worst waitress in the history of the world. You know you're in good hands when you ask for a drink menu and she asks you what that is. Apparently she had trouble grasping the concept of drinks themselves, since it took her 25 minutes to bring us ours. I was about to grab something off the table next to us at that point. Ah well. We were sitting outside, sans kids, enjoying ourselves.

Sunday we had people over for a BBQ. It was good times, as BBQs tend to be. See? Here's Tate jumping on the trampoline with his crack peeping out. Really, toddler butt crack and a trampoline are all you need for a successful soiree. Especially when the toddler's swim trunks fall completely down. And then he pees on the trampoline.

Crack is whack.

The kid has issues with shorts lately. I keep the waist loose on them for optimal potty pull-downage, but in Festival the other day we were hurrying across the parking lot with him holding my hand. I noticed he seemed to be walking weird but didn't stop to think much of it. Weirdness is pretty much par for the course with this kid. As I was putting Nora in the cart, I heard someone say "Wow! Do you need help, little guy?" I turned around to see Tate chewing on his finger nonchalantly while his shorts puddled around his feet. Yeah, he was displaying the SpiderMan undies for all the blue-hairs at Festival to see. I wonder how long it would have taken me to notice my kids shorts fell down if someone hadn't said something. I'm thinking awhile, seeing as my powers of observation are pretty weak these days. I'm the mom who didn't notice right away that her daughter was trying to chew on a dog toenail, after all.

And finally, on the subject of pottying, here's a heartwarming story to leave you with. I was sitting on the floor the other day and my dear son came up to me, entwined his arms around my neck and rested his head on my shoulder. I know. Awww. This is what transpired.

Tate: "Mommy?"

Me: "Yes, honey."

Tate: "Can I do something?"

Me: "What would that be, my little pumpkin of sweetness and light?"

Tate: "Can I pee on you?"

Me: "Yeah, I'm gonna say no."

Tate: "But I want to! You can be my potty!"

You know you have your kid's utmost respect and idolatry when he wants to use you as a latrine. It took a long time, folks, but we got there. That's reverence, right there. After a long, drawn-out discussion, we came to an agreement that really, mommies are just so much cooler than toilets and therefore should not be whizzed on. Success.

Whoa

2009-06-18T13:45:00.002-05:00

Nora seems to be completely in awe of the fact that she is able to sneeze. It's like she forgets about it in between sneezing bouts. Every time she sneezes, she'll say "WHOA!! Whoa....whoa. Whoa." She's pretty impressed with her ability to project snot from her nose and food from her mouth simultaneously. I don't have the heart to tell her she's not the only one with that talent. We'll save that disappointment for another day. She already had to endure the inhumanity of being informed today that she could not, in fact, eat two-day-old piece of chicken out of the garbage can. And let me tell ya, the day you learn that lesson is a hard day indeed. How can a mother rightfully deny her child the joys of eating a foul chicken carcass and blackened banana peel? Shameful.

Today was difficult for little Nora in more ways than one. I decided to really screw her up and take her to the Y with me and put her in the childcare there while I worked out. Well. She has informed me we will not be doing THAT again. As soon as I handed her over to the lady, she wigged out. No big deal...nothing new there. I walked by the room a few minutes later to peek in the window, and saw her leeched onto one of the childcare givers with her head on her shoulder. Sweet. That's like her favorite position, so I figured she was all good.

Upon my entry to retrieve her, I heard some of the ladies going "Wow, that kid must not like books, huh?". Yeah, apparently when the woman dared to sit down in a chair while holding Nora to read to her, she grabbed the book and pelted it across the room, beaning some poor unsuspecting kid in the melon. I must have forgotten to mention that when Nora is crabby, sitting down while holding her is akin to ripping her eyes out with sporks. Torture. Unforgivable.

Nora then saw me coming and flung herself dramatically onto the floor facedown and sobbed like someone just told her the world ran out of goldfish crackers. I tried to pick her up but she did her patented flop-on-the-floor-like-a-giant-dead-fish move. I swear when I finally did hoist her up, she gave me the death glare. Who knew fourteen-month-olds could shoot daggers with their eyes? Impressive.

Oh well. Perhaps at some point she'll be able to get the indignity of this horrible, loathsome, ungodly day and smile again.

Fun in the Sun. With Some Mortification Thrown in.

2009-06-16T13:11:00.002-05:00

So it's finally warm out. It's the middle of June and the temperature rose above 42 degrees a couple days ago for the first time all year. Ok, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but seriously, this past winter was 9 years long. And that's the truth.

So we've been finally able to hang outside. Although the hanging with my kidlets hasn't been quite as pleasant as my poor deluded mind always convinces me it's going to be. Shocking, I know. Tate was sick AGAIN a few days ago, and as we all know, it takes him a good week to fully recover. This recovery week is what I lovingly refer to the "Watch Out, Tate Has Become Possessed by the Devil and all His Minions And Is Determined To Drive Me To Break Out The Tranquilizer Gun" week. We're on day 2. And it's just been loverly.

Last night we went to an outdoor concert with our playgroup. Tate had gone to bed late the night before, woken up early that morning, spent half the afternoon in time-out, smacked Eric on the cheek shortly before leaving, and fell asleep in the car on the way there. Do I really need to continue with the story? I'm sure you can see where this is going. What the hell. I have no shame.

We got there and he spent the first 25 minutes turning on a spigot that of course he found immediately that was by the water fountain. This spigot did not produce a little gentle, affable stream of water. No, when it was turned out, a gush of water would come frantically spewing out in all directions. It was like Niagra Falls. So Tate loved it and felt he should introduce his little sister to the magic of the Water Fountain Geyser, and then she loved it too. When told to stop wasting 500 gallons of water/second, he freaked. So then Eric took him on a walk. I watched as the screaming, flailing, infuriated toddler grew smaller and smaller and realized we would not be there much longer.

We weren't. Watching Tate steal food from other kids and poke me in the stomach and say "FAAAAAAT TUMMY!!!" really lost it's appeal pretty quickly. He got me in the boob once, too, which was kind of weird. So we left, and he loudly protested being strapped in the stroller the entire walk back. Being strapped in was "only for babies!", apparently. It was also only for our diminishing sanity, but he didn't really seem to care about that. So we got into the car, panting and sweating, and Tate declares "Oh, ME, it's chilly out!! Mom, can you believe how chilly it is??". It was 74 degrees. Whatever.

And then today...yeah. We went to a splash pad to let the kids run around. Tate went up to a kid who we didn't know who was easily the size of Hulk Hogan and who had bigger boobs than me (yeah, not hard, I know, but seriously...this kid was like 6), pulled the back of his swim trunks out and put something down them. I'm not kidding. I think it was a handful of grass. I also think I almost died. He then scampered away merrily while the kid gave him a look like "Oh yeah, you BETTER run before I smother you with my man boobs" and I tried to hide behind a tree. I do not know where this kid comes up with this stuff.

Nora, at least, is fairly normal. She's still extremely cuddly and snuggly, which is great most of the time, but man, when it's hot and muggy out...her nuzzling up to me is pretty much the equivalent of a fat sweaty ass sticking to a leather couch. And the ass is only going to get fatter and sweatier and the couch leatherier (yep, I made that word up) as the summer goes on.

Potty training is going awesome. We've made several forays into the big bad outside world with Tate only wearing undies and we've had no accidents. He is currently laying every single pair of undies he owns out on the couch and examining them with his head cocked to one side and tapping his lips with a finger and musing "Hmmm...I think I'll wear Thomas undies now, and then Buzz Lightyear later. I can wear Molly (which is actually Wall-E) ones tomorrow. And then Elmo. Ok, sounds good."

It's hard work, picking out undies.

Oh Happy Day

2009-06-11T07:48:00.004-05:00

We had quite the day yesterday. It started off with the four of us going to A Day Out With Thomas the Train at our local railroad museum. I know you're absolutely dying to see photographic evidence of our train-filled experience, so here it is.

Nora on the train ride. As you can see, she's thrilled.

She perked up, though, and did a little Thomas dance.

Tate dug the train ride right from the start.

Tate with Sir Topham Hat. Nora took one look at the inflated man/giant-mole-baby-with a top-hat and burst into panicked tears. Can't say I blame her.

Looking at this picture, I think it may be time to cut my hair. Or perhaps just, you know...brush it.

Tate doing a happy dance.

It was a fun day. The kids had a good time, we got to dine on hamburgers that tasted like sawdust dipped in ashes (guess Thomas isn't much of a culinary artiste), and we got to see lots of whiny little kids acting much brattier than ours. That's the best way to make yourself feel like a somewhat successful parent.

ALSO....big news. Big, big news, people. You know how we had Urination Celebration 2009 a couple months ago? Well, that's old news. Yesterday, we moved into the big time. Defecation Celebration 2009. Ohhhh, yeah. We were a'singing from the rooftops. We all felt like this:

It was another major day in our house. I was about to call the news stations, but then I realized they'd probably be a little busy preparing for Obama's visit to Green Bay. Although, really...who cares about that??? My kid POOPED.

My Bathroom is Awesome

2009-06-07T19:31:00.004-05:00

I know first-hand the exact, complete awesomeness of my downstairs bathroom because over the past two days, I've been spending roughly 8 hours in there at a stretch. It's the potty training, you see. We're kicking it into high gear. Toilet or nothin'. It's been somewhat successful and mostly...not.

I made a chart for Tate with stickers, rewards, blah blah blah. He doesn't quite get the concept. He thinks that he should get to go to Chuck E Cheese EVERY time he pees, not just every 12th or so time. Same with the sucker or the Thomas Toy. So, things normally go as thus:

Me: "Tate, you want to try going potty?"

Tate: "YEEEEEEEEAH!!!!" He then spends 10 minutes trying desperately to pee, complete with a little hip-thrusting and behind-slapping (I think he's trying to propel the pee forward). It doesn't work. "Come ON, pee!! Why is not this working????"

Me: "It's ok, honey. Let's just try again later."

Tate: "NO!!!!" More dancing around in front of the potty. I think he tries to call upon the mighty Potty Training God by doing a special, aggravated dance. "Why is there NO POTTY IN THERE??? COME ON!!!!!!"

Repeat. 60000 times. Too bad I can't fit a recliner in the bathroom. I'd bring in the laptop and a glass of wine (or box. Let's be realistic here) and be perfectly happy. Instead I sit on the cold, hard floor and stare at the base of the toilet. Which, really, isn't that exciting. Which, really, is a good thing, I suppose. You don't want to be staring at your toilet wondering what the hell that thing is growing on it and how exactly you can get rid of it without contaminating your whole being.

Anyway, after a few despairing queries of "why is not this WORKING?" (no, that's not a typo. That's how he says it), and desperate chugs of water from his sippy, he usually is successful. Then he gets a sticker on his chart and freaks out because we're not to the point where he gets a toy or to go to Chuck E Cheese. So, really, he gets excited for nothing, in his eyes. Then he pees in his Pull-Up. So, this is why we are somewhat successful and mostly...not.

But whatever. I really really love saying "Honey, do you have to go potty?" every 4 minutes so honestly, no rush. Truly. For real.

In other news, Eric bought me an AWESOME, KICKASS, RAD camera. I lurve it. See, look at my pretty pictures.

And, I'm sorry, but in those last two pictures, my kidlets look waaaaaay too old for my liking. Like, they're adults in tiny, diaper wearing, tantrum throwing, mostly undecipherable bodies. They're looking so....big. I swear tomorrow they'll be needing help with some kind of science project totally beyond my intelligence level, and next week they'll be asking for the car, and next month they'll be sitting around moaning about their artificial hips and the young hooligans running around next door. Tate's striking some kind of GQ pose or something in that last picture. And Nora is once again looking like John Candy in one of his finest roles.

Barf. Remember? Barf the Dog. From "Spaceballs". Try to keep up here, people.

She actually was looking a little like Hitler for awhile there, which is really not something most people envision or hope for their children. I wasn't too eager to show her face in public. I tried to cover her up with blankets and tarps and whatnot, but for some reason she wasn't really going for that. Kid likes to see and breathe and all that crap. But she had somehow scraped her upper lip in her crib one morning and the resulting scab just looked a little too much like Hitler's 'stache for my liking. Kind of weird to see this kid looking like one of the most evil men in the history of the world running around babbling and pushing her little ball-popper thingy with unabashed glee. Hitler loves all that Fischer-Price has to offer, apparently.

Yawn. Num.

2009-05-25T19:43:00.010-05:00

We had an interesting Memorial Day weekend. The kids both got sick on Friday night, so for the first half of the weekend, there was a lot of sleeping going on around here.

Then they both started to perk up a bit by today, and were able to resume their previously adored pastime of stuffing their faces every chance they get:

A boy and his cob.

A funnel cake and Mommy's giant head.

They also both did an extremely impressive job barfing, but somehow I forgot to grab my camera to capture that particular moment on film for posterity. Bad Mommy. It was a fun night, though. Nora somehow managed to puke in her sleep and not wake up, therefor not waking us up (although we were probably awake sopping up Tate's 17 yarf puddles already), so walking into her room the next morning was simply an olfactory delight. Smelled just like daisies.

But like I said, they both perked up enough by today for us to go to a outdoor festival where we spent the afternoon basically putting Tate's life in the hands of scary people with questionable personal and dental hygiene practices as he rode the rides, and paying like $35 for a hot dog. It was a nice afternoon though.

I was able to escape on Saturday night, thanks to my dear husband, and go with some friends to see Night Ranger play in concert at the festival. You know. Night Ranger? That...band? From like the '80s? They play that awesome song "Sister Chistian" and...uh, some other stuff. It was a really fun night.

Sunday we went to a cookout in the neighborhood for a bit. We loaded the kids up on Tylenol and dashed out of the house to take advantage of their drug-induced agreeability and docility. The kids and I were back in the house fairly early on in the evening, and Eric took his turn staying out imbibing in a few beverages. That's how we have to do now. We take turns having fun. It's so much easier and cheaper that way.

So hopefully Tate's fever stays under control and we don't have The Hospital Disaster Part 2. I still break out in hives and a cold sweat when I think of our last experience. If we ever have to check Tate back into a hospital, I'm bringing a flask of vodka with me.

Are You Stinking Me?

2009-05-22T13:03:00.002-05:00

Things have been so mellow around here, I feel like I'm living in an alternate universe or something. Tate has been so...human. He hasn't banged his head or tried to pull someone's ear off in forever. No shrieks of "LISTEN TO ME, MOM!" or "NO, OK?? NO! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?". Now it's all "Oh, Norey, did you get hurt? Let me kiss it." or "Mommy, I just love you." or "I can't go poopy on the potty. My booty has no poo in it." Ok, the last one is kind of random but he said it, and it was funny. Maybe because it was said in the same tone of voice that one would use when saying "Oh, me, look at the lovely weather outside."

He still gets kinda feisty in the car though. We were sitting at a red light for the big 2.1 seconds and I heard a big huff and a "Oh my gosh, are you STINKING me??" I'm assuming the little road rager meant to say "kidding" instead of "stinking", but the point came across very well. Nora has added to the road-rage repertoire by yelling "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" at the top of her little lungs. So her vocabulary currently consists of "Hi", "Dada", and "GOOOOOOOOOO." Although I think she's starting to pick up my irritation with Bob's barking at people or dogs or leaves or ants, because when he barks, I'll oftentimes hear a little "BA!" floating out of the front room in a tiny little voice. "BA!!!!" I like to teach my kids really useful stuff. Like how to yell at old people in cars and canines.

Tate is still a singing fool. He sings all the time. Nonstop. There is always some little ditty wafting through the house. Most of the time it's the ABCs or Twinkle Twinkle or Wheels on the Bus, but he's also proficient at making up his own little ditties. The other day I heard "Bob the Builder Loves HuHot", "Ababala Chocolate Milk", and my personal fave "Schmooke Luka Dee". They're always to the tune of an existing song, he just becomes Alan Menken in a 3-year-old form and comes up with completely new, random, usually nonsensical words. And usually while he's tootling about wipers on the bus going "skish skish skish" or asking how to get to "Sefase Street" or trilling about his friends Luke and Emilie going to the park with sticks and Katie Couric, you'll see his own personal little number-one fan behind him with her arms in the air swaying back and forth with a look of rapture on her face. You kind of expect to see a lighter in one hand and a plastic cup half-full of warm, flat beer in the other.

So things have been nice around here. Other people have started to notice Tate's change in general demeanor too, so I really think I'm just not fooling myself here. My friend was with us at the park the other day, and Tate was being all charming and non-fiendish and she just looked at him and said "Tate, what's with all the...niceness lately??". The times, they are a'changing. It's the dawn of a new era.

Maybe.

You Should See the Other Guy

2009-05-19T22:25:00.003-05:00

So Tate accidentally got smacked in the eye with a book yesterday. He looks like he got in a bar fight. Come back to this blog in about 18 years and I'll probably have a picture up of him sporting a pretty similar shiner:

I figured since we were at a park, the sun was shining, and both kidlets were acting somewhat human, I'd try and get a picture of the two of them, shiner and all.

Almost...

Not quite...

Awwww. The cuteness, it overwhelms.

Believe it or not, this last picture is not of Tate throwing a hissy fit. He wanted me to take a picture of his neck. So I did. The look of long-suffering agony and anguish was his idea.

I'd write more, but my eyes are still burning from Paula Abdul's unbelievable orange-ness beaming through my TV screen at me. She looked like an Oompa-Loompa. My retinas will take some time to recover. Plus I'm tired. All this watching of "American Idol" and "Dancing With the Stars" and "The Bachelorette" and, uh...I think that's it...really takes it out of a girl.

Beep Beep

2009-05-17T20:56:00.003-05:00

We finally got Tate his big birthday present. Hey, he didn't realize that it was almost 2 weeks late. That's the good thing about 3-year-olds...they don't understand a lot of stuff. Take a look at him whoopin' it up in his phat wheels.

"Hellllllp!"

Later, losers.

It was pretty humorous to watch Nora's little radish-top ponytail flowing in the breeze as they speed away down the cul-de-sac at 3 mph. It took Tate awhile to get the hang of it though. He would throw the 'stang into reverse, back all the way down the driveway and into the street, and then instead of throwing the car into "drive" (or "crawl", more accurately), he would get out of the car and attempt to pick it up and manually turn it. Since the car weighed about 14 times as much as he did, he didn't experience a whole lot of success in this endeavor. At least he got some good, frustrated tantrums out of the deal, though.

Once he figured out that he cannot lift something the weight of a small horse, he finally let us show him the magic of the gear stick and then there was really no stopping the kid. Especially since Eric rigged it so the car would not only go in "turtle" mode, it would also go in "rabbit" mode. Tate would step on the gas, the tires would squeal, and they'd go hurtling off into the distance until they were just a little read dot with a ponytail sticking out of the top. That sucker can motor. Eric and I would stand in the driveway and listen to Nora's exalted "ZEEEEEE!!!!"s as they went careening around the circle. I was dying laughing. Tate looked like a total natural, hanging his elbow out of the door, looking over his shoulder as he threw 'er into reverse...the whole deal. Pretty soon I'll look out the window and he'll be taking the Town and Country for a joyride.

The best part was when he got out of the car, came up to Eric and said completely of his own accord, "I love my car, Daddy. Thank you so much for the car." Yeah, I guess Mommy's chopped liver, but still...it was a charming and sweet moment.

Oh, and Nora has learned how to open our back screen door, scuttle out onto the deck, back herself down the stairs and trot over to our swingset a good 50 feet away, all without telling Mommy. Awesome. She's gonna be feisty, that one. One of these days she'll start storing a few of Daddy's brewskis in the Little Tykes playhouse and inviting the other toddlers over for a night of beer and cruisin' in the Cozy Coupe, looking for action.

"I'm My Own Best Friend!"

2009-05-13T21:56:00.003-05:00

Nora:

Barf:

Seperated at birth? I hope not. I don't need to be giving birth to any half-man, half-dogs. But the hair and the ears are kind of eerily similar.

Who's Yo Momma

2009-05-10T20:45:00.005-05:00

We had a nice weekend. Nothing too exciting, but there were really very few meltdowns, tantrums, chucking of large objects at other people's heads, moments of public humiliation, etc. That's a success in my book.

On Saturday we took the kidlets to a thing at Lambeau Field. It was just some event type...thing for kids. They got to do such things as...

...pet a goat and get really excited!

...and get tattoos and not be too sure about it!!

After that, I went in to work for an hour, and was so grateful to my client for being female, clean, and not a disgusting nasty old perv, I gave her like the best massage EVER. Because, you see, my last client before that did not give me those same considerations. I had my first true experience with a dirty old man in my massage room, and it was not cool. I have no desire to see a grandpa's schlong. Apparently he thought I was simply DYING to see it and proudly put it out on display. Barfo. But anyway. This female client on Sat tipped me $15. Clean people are awesome.

After that, we went to a bowling alley. Here's Tate bowling. He did it for a whole 8.5 minutes. Then we went into the game room and he threw an 8.5 minute fit because Eric told him he'd be able to get him a koosh ball out of the claw machine thingie and he couldn't. I don't know how on earth Eric ever thought he'd be smarter than the claw machine, but whatever.

My Mother's Day started with breakfast in bed. Breakfast in bed consisted of Tate tiptoeing into my room at about 8 am, thrusting a semi-stale cracker in my hand and whispering "Happy Birthday, Mommy. I love you", before scampering back out. It was the best cracker ever. After that we went to church where Nora discovered the joy of slamming the kneelers against the floor and Tate randomly yelled out "Luke! EMMMMILLLLLIEEEE!!!!" at the most quiet times of the service. He did not actually see Luke and Emilie at Mass, he must have just been remembering some awesome time with them or...something.

Then we had brunch, came home, I put Nora down for a nap, Tate and Eric left to go watch baseball in a bar (yes, really. We take our 3 year old to bars. So what.) and I gave myself the best Mother's Day present ever, which was a nice long nap on the couch. It was kickass.

Somehow, though, I still had to clean up the kitchen. I mean, it had been like 3 days, so it was kind of dire. I had SPECIFICALLY been holding out on cleaning up until today rolled around because there was no way I would be made to actually clean on my day, right? Wrong. Sigh. Oh well, I'll just return the favor and make Eric scrub the toilets on Father's Day.

Happy Birthday, Tater

2009-05-06T14:13:00.006-05:00

It's been a crazy 3 years around here. I don't know how a little baby can go from here:

stop here:

here:

and here:

and end up here, in the blink of my eye.

That little guy has definitely made the past three years...oh, let's say...stimulating. Had he been born 3 hours earlier, on Cinco De Mayo, I would have pushed for naming him Paco. Hey, why not. Paco Sonnenberg really has a ring to it, you gotta admit. But he held out, and May 6th has never just been a random date on the calendar to me since.

No doubt has there been lots of frustration and head-butting, but the absolute joy that he can bring to me usually (usually) overrides all the scream-worthy moments. He's smart, cute, sweet, and funny. Really.

Happy Birthday little Tater-bug. I love you.

Screeeeeeeeeeeeech.

2009-05-05T15:10:00.005-05:00

I decided to face all my demons, fears, and apprehensions yesterday and make another foray to the grocery store while outnumbered by my children. Any remnant of common sense has pretty much be relegated to a small, desperate, fading voice in the back of my subconscious at this point, so it's quite easy to ignore.

Tate once again decided that he should have his own cart. I again ignored the little sing-song in the back of my brain going "You're an iiidiot, you're an iiidiot, you're an-" (that was me stomping on common sense and bringing it's song to an abrupt halt) and said sure, fine, whatever. Let's make this trip one to remember. It's been a good week since our last adventure that cumulated in me quivering in a corner.

Tate picked the Demon Screecher Cart From Hell. Seriously, as we were walking around people were covering their ears and cowering under the potatoes. It sounded like a gigantic rat was screaming as someone dug it's entrails out with a spintery wooden spoon that had a rusty nail on the end. My ears were practically bleeding by the end of it. Then to add to the cacophony Tate decided to merrily sing "The Wheels on the Bus" at the top of his voice. It sounded a little something like this"

"SSCCCCCREEEEEEEEEEThewheelsonthebusgoSQQQQQQQQQEEEEEEARRRRRRRsaysmoveonbackmoveonREEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSQQQQQQQQQQQthemommysonthebusgoshhshhshSHHHHHHHARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGQQQQQQQQQQ"

It was a lovely medley. People alternated between laughing at Tate and shuddering in sheer despair over the never ending auditory torture they were subjected to as they desperately tried to pick out a nice cut of pork tenderloin and get the hell out of there.

Check-out was fine. Tate likes to take all the stuff out of his little cart and put it on the belt himself. It's a good way for him to help. It's a great way for me to realize that apparently we're buying 3 bags of nasty barbecue flavored Cheetos. I don't think so, pal.

Leaving the store, I turned my back on Tate for 1.3 seconds to try and convince Nora that hanging out of the cart by her little toe wasn't such a good idea and he jetted. I had a slight moment of "Oh-my-God-where-is-my-KID??" until a kindly elderly dude teetering past me pointed me to the gigantic freezer where the bagged ice is kept. Apparently not only is it an ideal home for ice, but also for slightly wacky almost 3-year-olds. I got over there just as his little rump was disappearing through the door. He's gonna be the next kid to get stuck in one of those claw machines at Wal-Mart or something.

Well, Nora is currently wandering around with no shirt on and gigantic slimy nuggets of mandarin oranges in her hair, her pants and diaper are falling down so she's showing off her impressive mini plumbers crack, and she has a piece of ravioli stuck to her cheek. Tate just started howling in panic because he dislodged his little Cars toilet seat and almost fell into the big toilet. It's a high-class day here at our house. High Class.

Paaarrr---tay.

2009-05-03T20:23:00.002-05:00

So I thought by tonight I'd have the energy to write this huge long blog about Tate's birthday party yesterday.

I don't.

Too much sitting around gabbing today with various people. Too much imbibing in rum and Cokes. Too much running after Nora trying to keep her from A) drinking 3-year-old rainwater out of a random bucket B) gallumping into the street and C) falling headfirst off our swingset into a pile of rocks.

But it was a great time. Tate had a blast and so did the 20,000 other kids that came. Or 17 kids. I don't know. Once you get more than three 2-year-olds in one spot they all kind of blur together into a giant larvae of insanity. The party went as well as I could have hoped. Well, I forgot knives. Oh, and I accidentally got those stupid trick candles for his cake. Poor Tate will never trust another birthday candle as long as he lives. I felt bad. He just...kept blowing.

So thanks to everyone who came and made the day special. I have no pictures to share at the moment because our camera was lost, but I will at some point. I enlisted my brother-in-law, who takes pictures at every given opportunity, to capture the day. Tate smiled? Click. Tate ran around? Click. Tate breathed? Or looked at another kid? Or moved his pinky finger a millimeter to the left? Click click click.

It was a great day.

The Toys Are Out to Get Me

2009-04-29T14:22:00.003-05:00

So a pair of plastic toy keys almost made me drive off the road today. Good times. They are the keys of Beezelbub. They somehow floated up from the depths of Hell and landed in our unsuspecting minivan.

I had tossed them at Nora for her to gnaw on while we tooled around, since her behemoth molars are still causing us all to go through pure hell, and she held on to them for about 2.3 seconds before chucking them to the floor, just beyond me reach. I think Tate is holding late-night seminars on how to do such things as this, designed to drive me insane and make car rides as absolutely unlovely as possible. This week's lesson: Chucking Toys Into the Back of the Monstrous Minivan. Next week: Screaming Randomly Like a Chimpanzee Being Ripped Into by a Hippopotamus Just as Mom is Trying to Back Out of an Extremely Tight Parking Spot, Causing Her Foot To Jerk on the Gas Pedal and Almost Flatten a Blue-Hair Walking Behind the Car. I'm afraid to think of what tidbits of wisdom he'll dole out next. He's got quite the stash.

So the keys are on the floor and I'm cruising down the highway when all of a sudden I hear "SQUEAL!! CRASH!! ARGHHHH!". Yeah, the keys make noises like a twelve-car pileup. It's lovely. They emit these particularly hair-raising sounds when you press the button on the key ring part. Noises are also emitted when you breathe near the keys, look at the keys, or think about how you want to chuck the keys into a fiery inferno and do a happy dance around the fire as they die a slow death. And of course, since I could not reach the keys (Nora must have gotten an "A" from Tate in that lesson), I had to listen to the sounds of random cars involved in some type of smashup like 50003 times. And EACH TIME, I would reflexively slam on the brake because I thought someone was about to crash into me or the guard rail or something. Those keys are the dumbest thing ever.

Except for the puzzle that makes noise when the lights go on our off. Nothing like being home alone at 11 pm, turning off the lights in the family room, and hearing come out of the pitch-blackness "VRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!! SQQQQQQQQQUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!" Or when you take a step too close to a certain horrible, vicious, sadistic stuffed dog and cause the ground to vibrate or shake or something (just me that makes the floor rumble when I take a step? Great. Awesome.) and that makes the dog come alive and say "PLAY WITH ME! LOVE ME! YOU STUPID BITCH! I'M COMING TO CLAW YOUR EYES OUT! RIGHT AFTER YOU SQUEEZE MY PAW SO I SING ROW ROW ROW YOUR BOAT!!" That thing is alive. It starts talking at the most random times when no one is near it. Except me. It's fooling with my head. It's making me crazy. The stuffed dog wants my soul.

Don't ever wonder why I refuse to buy my kids any creepy stuffed clowns or weird puppets or anything. Their toys already freak the hell out of me. They don't need any help from Doodles the Killer Klown.

My Boy Likes to Potty All the Time...

2009-04-26T19:12:00.002-05:00

...potty all the time, potty all the ti-iiiiiiime.

Ok, well, not all the time, but I'm in a giddy cloud of potty-related giddiness. I'm taking whatever I can get these days. Last week, Tate trotted by me, went into the bathroom and locked the door. I could hear him take his pants off, undo his diaper, and then make noises like he was either climbing up on the toilet, already up on the toilet and trying to make magic happen, or trying to pull the toilet out of the wall. I was hoping for options 1 or 2. So I knocked on the door and we had this exchange:

Me: "You ok in there, Tate?"

Tate: "Mom! I need privacy! I'm going potty!"

Me: "You got it, buddy. I have no desire to interfere with your potty adventures."

Tate: "Mom. Go. Away."

He didn't actually do anything, but I was psyched that he actually went in there of his own accord. He did it a few more times over the next few days, and I found that with each time, he felt the need to shed more clothes until he got to the point where he just climbed on the throne buck-ass naked. Again, no problem. Whatever it takes. If he needs to channel George Costanza to get the magic done, more power to him.

He may need a little more guidance in some respects though. He handed me a DVD while we were in the car yesterday and told me it had pee on it. Apparently his aim was a little off. I do not know why there was a DVD on the floor next to the toilet, but again, people...I just let him do whatever the toilet gods call him to do in there. I'm but a mere mortal. And since I'm so lowly, it fell to me to be the one to actually clean the pee off the DVD so he could watch it. Thank you, Lord of the Commode, thank you. Nothing like wiping off dried pee to really make me feel like I have a true calling in this world. I'm the Dried Whizz Wiper-Offer.

Anyway, we were in the car because we took a trip to go visit my grandma and uncle. It's about a four-hour drive. It's pretty much like you'd think it would be, knowing me and my spawn. Since Eric drove on the way there and it fell to me to be the Constantly Turning Around and Handing Goldfish Crackers, DVD Cases, Cups of Water, and Various Toys, Books and Other Objects Designed to Shut Kids the Hell Up bitch, I decided that Eric should have a turn being the CTAaHGCDCCoWaVTBaOODtSKtHU bitch. So I drove home. It was fine except for the torrential downpour that followed us wherever we went, and when we had this exchange as I was pulling out of a parking lot after we stopped for lunch and making a left-hand turn onto the street.

Me: "'Doo, doo do....here I am, calmly about to turn left as soon as this other dude turns out of the road. Man, I am a wonderful driver."

Eric "DUDE, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING???????"

Me: "WWWWWWWHHHHHHHAAAAAAAT????? What, what WHAT??"

Eric: "Oh, I was talking to that other guy. I wasn't talking to you."

Me: "Don't SAY things while I drive! You know I HATE that!"

Seriously. What a douche. We almost drove into a street sign. I HATE when Eric talks while I drive.

And Nora woke up this morning with the personality and basic likability of one of Satan's minions on crack. Then I looked into her mouth and saw four molars the size of my head poking through her gums. Honestly, you could have parked a Hummer on these things. I'd be pissed the hell off, too. I kept putting Orajel on there and she would keep grabbing my finger and trying to get me to put more on it. Still addicted to the stuff, I see. She needs an O-hit every now and then, just to take the edge of...you know how it is. She can stop any time she wants, really.

I also choose to believe that the Gigantic Molars from Hell are the reason she insisted on persistently flinging things all over the car as we drove. I thought we'd end up with a cracked window or deep, gushing head wound on one of us unsuspecting, pathetic parents before we got home. That girl's got an arm. And four new teeth.

My Family Is Weird

2009-04-20T14:59:00.005-05:00

Today Tate came up to me with a handful of Thomas the Train wooden track pieces from his train table. There was a lovely little track set up on that table at one point, then Nora swooped in from the sky and destroyed it like a little baby Godzilla. I kind of expected to see little airplanes buzzing around her head as she tore apart Thomasland, roaring and squealing with delight. Nothing quite like a creature hell-bent on world domination and destruction who's wearing overalls with little hearts and flowers on them. Kind of softens the blow.

Anyway, Tate seemed to be about to hand me all his train pieces and I thought he'd want me to go reconstruct the tracks.

Me: "Do you want Mommy to build you a track, honey?"

Tate, as he makes a sharp left and continues around my chair: "No, it's too hard for you. I'll get Daddy to do it."

Awesome. He thinks a few pieces of wood with a tab on one end and a hole on the other are simply too much stimulation for my feeble mind. Better not strain Mommy's brainpower by asking her to construct an oval!!

Nora has started doing this over dramatic, Oh-Lord-Whatever-Shall-I-Do-Life-Is-So-Hard-For-A-One-Year-Old thing. Whenever I dare to put her down in the family room and walk away to the faraway, unreachable land of Kitchen, she starts wailing and plops down on the floor where she positions herself so she's laying on her stomach with her face buried in the carpet and her arms and legs limp by her sides. Then she screams like a monkey on crack. So we just have this languishing, faceless blob on the floor, shrieking. It's quite funny. Most kids kick and roll around due to the inhumanity of it all, but she just lays there like a paralyzed slug. Well, a slug who's got the lungs of a gigantic rooster.

Let's move on to Eric. He's got curly hair, as many of you know. Now, on a normal day, he keeps it pretty well under control. He throws some gel in it and it looks fine. Today was not a normal day, I guess. It was rainy and damp out, and he forgot to put anything in it after his shower. He also put on a v-neck sweater with a v-neck undershirt under it (he claims that's all that was clean. Whatever). Therefore, you could see his like 4 chest hairs poking out, plus his thin gold chain that he always wears. He looked like this dude:

Seriously. His hair was that high. We went to go pick out new glasses for him and I kept calling him Disco Stu in the store. He thought it was funny for awhile, then he didn't. But trust me, it was pretty freaking funny every single time I said it. I know I laughed. It was either laugh or cringe in embarrassment at being out in public with Q-Tip Man From 1975. I had to stay strong and fight through the potential humiliation.

How I ended up with these flakes in my family, I do not know. Good thing I'm so wholesome and normal. Otherwise who knows what would go on around ere.

Exulte, People!! We Did It!

2009-04-16T13:28:00.004-05:00

As we all know, today was picture day for the kidlets. As we all know, just about any time I try and do something with the kids where I'd prefer a happy outcome, it usually ends up in tears, bloodshed, and/or dents in the wall from Tate running into them out of sheer irateness. Really, who would expect today to be any different?

We headed over to Aubrey at her great little studio to get the party started. And seriously, people, if you live in the Green Bay area and feel the need to photograph your kids (or yourselves, or pets, or plants, or shoes, or...whatever. I don't know, people take pictures of weird things), there is no reason not to go to Aubrey. (http://www.photobyaubrey.com/) She knows what's up. She has fruit snacks! Oh, and she takes great pictures, too.

Nora and I got there first. Eric and Tate were on their way back from Milwaukee and were going to meet us there. Nora took a little while to warm up and pry her face away from my neck and allow Aubrey to look at her, speak to her, or generally acknowledge her presence in any way, but once she got warmed up, she did great in her little ballerina outfit.

Then Tate got there. Yeah. He took one look at the situation, realized he was somewhere where he would be expected to at least partially behave and cooperate, and blew his shit, hardcore. He ran his ass straight of there and didn't stop til he careened headfirst into the wall. Now that I think of it, I probably should have checked for any damage. To the wall, I mean, not Tate's head. I think he's built up a layer of steel under his forehead. You could bounce a bowling ball off that thing at this point.

Me: "Tate, do you want to go sit over here on this chair?"

Tate:"NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOARRRRRRRRRRRCCCCCGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHBBBBBBBLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAHRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTTTTTIMGOINGTOEATYOURBRAINS!!!!!!!!!"

It took a loooooong time to calm him down. Fruit snacks saved the day. Thank the Lord for Tonka fruit snacks. After he digested those, he graciously allowed us to escort him into the studio. He then climbed up on a chair, sat down, and turned around. Now this would have been great if we were doing a photo study called "Tate: A Boy and His Ass", but that's not really the look I was going for. After awhile, he would peek over his shoulder. Smile? Nah. He looked like this guy.

But thanks to Aubrey and her infinite patience, and the sugar rush from the fruit snacks, Tate finally started to warm up and crack a few smiles. Then he got REALLY comfortable and started spitting on the chairs. I didn't really feel the need to capture that on film, though. Inevitably, though, once Tate start warming up, Nora started melting down. We got some awesome shots, though...I was really happy with the end results.

How kickass are these.

Yeah, that last picture? That's pretty much our life, summed up in one shot. Hair pulling. That's it. That's what we do. Pull hair. That sucker's getting blown up and hung on the wall in the front hallway to warn all ye who enter here. Hair. Pullage.

I Know, I Know.

2009-04-15T07:17:00.003-05:00

It's been a week since I've given all you people more reason to laugh at me. To shake your heads and wonder why I'm not clinically insane yet, given the children I have and general life I lead. Sorry. It's just been a week of the usual monotony, the same struggles and showdowns. Getting up at 5:45 and not going to bed until 10:30 because I need just a couple more minutes of alone time. Trying not to crush Nora with my gigantic body as I lay on her to get her to stay still for more than .02 seconds so I can change her diaper. You know. The usual.

Here's fun, though. Tate has started calling me Melissa. And it's PISSING ME OFF. All I hear now is "What are you doing, Melissa? Can I have some milk, Melissa? STOP IT, MELISSA! MELISSA! GET OVER HERE AND GET ME SOME SPONGEBOB MAC AND CHEESE, NOW!" I tend to ignore the last two types of requests. I fetch Spongebob for no one, least of all a 2 year old who needs to learn that his mother is the person most deserving of respect and utter adoration in his life. I mean, hello, I am pretty awesome.

Nora is...clingy. I know it's just because of the aforementioned awesomeness of me, but hello. I would like to be able to walk more than 2 feet before falling over because there is a little body wedged in between my legs with a death grip on each shin. If I don't pick her up right away because I'm doing something stupid like, oh, cooking dinner (I've heard somewhere you shouldn't have little kids around open ovens when they're at 450 degrees. I might be making that up, though) or getting dressed (ever try to put a pair of jeans on when holding on to a little person who's trying to climb into your mouth? It's not as easy as you'd think. Especially when the jeans are fresh out of the dryer and you gotta do the jump-up-and-down-squat-and-try-and-tuck-your-muffin-top-into-the-waistband-thing).

I have been going to the gym regularly, though. I'm one of those people who will go to the gym for an hour, and then rush home and hop on the scale. Then I will see that I did not magically lose 10 lbs in that hour and go downstairs and break open a bag of Lay's to soothe my chunkified self. I'm getting better at not doing that, though.

So, really, not a whole lot going on. Sorry for the boring blog entry, but I got tired of people whining and grumbling and pathetically pleading with me. I mean, have a little self-respect, people. It's just lately I haven't been feeling the creative juices sloshing around in me all that much. I try to think of what to write and it almost feels like a homework assignment or something. And anyone who knew me when I was in school knows I did not like homework and therefore didn't really...do it.

But fear not. The kids are getting their pictures taken tomorrow and you know that experience is going to most likely be chock-full of opportunities for you to laugh at me. I will strive to not let you down.

Happy Birthday, Norey Pants

2009-04-08T19:44:00.004-05:00

Ok, her actual birthday was yesterday, but Eric was working last night and I was dragged, kicking and screaming, to the NKOTB concert. I mean, I'm so above that kind of teeny-bopper dreck. I TOTALLY did not stand up on my chair and start squealing like a little girl when they were a mere 7 feet away from me. Then when I touched Danny, Donny and Joey I did NOT almost pee in my pants from sheer glee. Totally did not. I mean, God. PLEASE.

Anyway, back to my little girl. I can't believe she's one. I swear it was just yesterday she looked like this:

And then I turned around 2 seconds later and she had grown to this:

And now, today...we've molded her into the epitome of class, elegance, and pedigree.

Heh. Yeah, I got a cupcake, bitches. And this shit is good.

I don't know how she went from trying her damnedest to off me during childbirth (which I've pretty much forgiven her for)to all of a sudden being a year old. She walks and babbles and is all...human-like. She points! She waves! She scampers up the steps, cackling with the knowledge that she should be doing no scampering of the sort! She has a personality! And I love it!

Happy birthday, little girl.

Cute. And Not.

2009-04-06T18:51:00.006-05:00

Awwww......

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

I may just be the meanest mom in the world, putting that picture out there for the world to see, but day-um, that is a bad picture of a cute baby. Holy crap. She looks like some kind of chub monster zombie type person who just ate a lasagna made out of human remains. See, there's someone's brain matter hanging out in her hair up there. And smeared in her hair above her left ear? That would be someone's spleen goo.

Here's another cute one to help cleanse your brain palette of the one you just saw.

In other news, Tate is on the mend. This means that he's tired, crabby, and capable of going from chill to Oh-My-God-He's-Possessed-By-Some-Kind-Of-Demonic-Being in the span of 4.3 seconds. We've had some doozies. They're usually followed by him passing out on the couch or up in his room. It takes a lot out of you, screaming and kicking like someone's trying to remove your eye with a spork. Anything can set him off. He turned into some kind of nightmarish incubus at Wal-Mart yesterday because I asked him to stop yanking on my hair. I know, right? I'm such a bitch.

We made a quick exit from Wally World and when we got to the car, Eric spied a bike lock in Tate's sweaty little paw. The child had officially began his life of crime. He plundered a bike lock.

Really? A bike lock? We sat Tate down and had a stern talk with him.

Eric: "Tate, if you're gonna steal stuff....you gotta at least make it something good."

Me: "Yeah, I could use a diamond necklace. Hell, I'd settle for a new package of socks or a nice casserole dish (see my entry about my girls weekend last month) or something. I don't freaking need a bike lock!"

Tate: "I stole?"

Eric returned the bike lock to Marv, the 104-year-old man who stands guard at the front door (and apparently doesn't do a very good job of it), and we slunk out of the parking lot.

I'll let you know what he moves on to swiping next. Mother's Day is coming up next month.

Well, That Totally SUCKED

2009-04-04T09:19:00.003-05:00

Tate and his giant green paw.

Our adventure has ended. We came home last night with no surgery needing to be had. The Great Tate Hospital Incident 2009 is over. It was not fun.

Tate woke up yesterday morning at 4 when they came in to take his vitals. He then proceeded to cry til about 4:30 when he fell back asleep. Then he woke up at 5 when someone came in to prick his finger. Cue another half hour of crying followed by being taken over by sheer exhaustion and succumbing to sleep. Then Eric called at 6:45. After that, we were up for good. Well, I had pretty much been awake since 4. Believe it or not, the couch that converted into a bed was not so comfortable. It felt like sleeping on soggy Styrofoam. And I didn't even want to let myself think where that pillow had been before. Blech.

Basically the day played out like this: Tate would cry and scream for a couple hours, which would get amped up a few notches each time a nurse came in, he would throw his cup at us 59 million times, then pass out from fatigue. As soon as he would fall asleep, the hands of fate would decide to poop on our heads (can hands poop? Whatever), and then nurses would need to come in to take vitals, some volunteer would absolutely HAVE to stock the closet, the bathroom would need to get cleaned, etc, etc. So Tate would wake up after sleeping for about 15 minutes, look around, take a deep breath and start yowling again for the next couple hours. Seriously. I thought I was going to lose my mind.

He did enjoy getting pulled around the hallways on a wagon with Nora, though. We milked that for a good 45 minutes.

When the doctor finally came in, he said the fever was gone, the white blood cell count was almost back to normal, and the tonsils that were so swollen they were almost touching the previous day had shrunk down significantly. Apparently the antibiotics he had been on earlier just didn't work and weren't killing the bacteria or whatever the hell was causing all this. Getting a continuous dose of a different antibiotic and some type of steroid did the trick.

This better not happen again, is all I can say. I don't think the nurses would allow us back, for one thing. Our room was right next to the nurses station so they had front row seats to the concert Tate so thoughtfully provided from his bed. I also don't think they really appreciated getting sippy cups of apple juice chucked at their heads.

I felt so bad for him. He was completely confused, terrified, pissed off, what have you. I think it will take awhile for him to get back to normal...he's still extremely pale and lethargic. It's 9:32 am and he's already taking a nap on the couch. Well, the 45 minute tantrum he threw this morning might have contributed to making him a wee bit weary.

You gotta admire his sheer dedication to his art of tantrums. He will soon be known as a legend in his field, I believe.

So Here We Are...

2009-04-02T21:48:00.003-05:00

...at the hospital. Whee. I'm sitting here looking at my little guy sleeping in his hospital bed while I'm wide awake and not tired in the slightest. It's been a day. A DAY.

Basically, we took him to his pediatrician again today and she did more blood work (boo) and determined he didn't have mono (yay!), which was something she was thinking it might be. After taking a few looks at his throat, she made us an appointment with an ENT specialist to take a look-see. Tate hated being at the doctor again and made this pretty well known by smacking her whenever she tried to look in his mouth. Or ears. Or tried to listen to his heart.

At the ENT, Tate decided he hated being there too and screamed bloody murder when the doc said he wanted to look into his throat. This actually was helpful, though, since the doc could see clear into the back of his throat while Tate was squalling in his face. He said the tonsils looked absolutely horrible, and with his white blood cell count still being double what it should, and his fever still being crazy-ass high, he thought that getting the tonsils out might be the way to go. He mentioned just getting it down right away as an option, or getting Tate set up on an IV and antibiotics first to try and get the fever down before doing anything. So here we are. The process of getting to this point was horrible.

As soon as we got to the hospital, Tate flipped his shit when he realized he had been tricked into going to a doctor AGAIN, and just went ballistic. Nurses would try and take his temperature and he freaked. Try to listen to his heart... freaked. Getting his blood pressure was a joke since it was off the charts what with the screaming and flailing about and all that. Then came the truly horrible part. They had to do more blood work and put an IV in.

The nurses basically said that if either Eric or I were going to have issues with being in the room for that part, we should leave. Yeah, that would be me. I knew I would be a wreck, and therefore scare Tate even more. I went out in the hall and heard him start to scream. I went farther down the hall. The screams followed me. Through a set of doors...and I could still hear the screaming. It was tearing my heart out. I heard my baby screaming in terror and fear and I could. Not. Fix. It. It was unlike anything I've ever felt before...I felt completley helpless and guilty and scared and sick to my stomach. I could hear him scream "STOP! STOP! ALL DONE! ALL DONE, PLEASE!" It was the "pleases" that really tore me apart. It took about 20 minutes to get everything done, but it felt like an eternity of staring at the pattern on the hallway wallpaper and pretty much feeling like shit. All Eric said when I got back in the room was, "That was horrible."

When I came back in, he was hooked up to an IV and his entire hand was wrapped in bright green gauze. He's got a neon green paw and is NOT amused. But he seemed to forget about it after a bit. Still won't let the nurse do his blood pressure, though. We'll see what happens tomorrow. My brain is pretty much shut off at this point.

Poor baby.

Updater on the Tater

2009-04-01T14:01:00.002-05:00

It's been an interesting 24 hours around here. I last posted that Tate seemed to be getting better, was up to his usual evil overlord ways, etc, etc. However last night around 6 pm he was acting awfully listless and droopy so I decided to take his temperature again. Yeah, so...

Thermometer: 106.0

Me: CLUNK.

Seriously? I didn't think it was possible to get a fever that high. Wouldn't that entail you like, turning into a blazing ball of flames or something? A HUNDRED AND SIX??? So I took a deep breath and stuck the thermometer in his ear again. 105.8. And again. 105.8. Ah. Well, that's much better.

I went into my patented "Oh-my-God-what-do-I-do-do-I-call-Eric-or-the-doctor-or-an-ambulance-what-do-I-do-whatdoIdowhatdoIdo" mode. I paged Eric at work, putting 911 in front of our number so he'd know it was urgent and he told me to call the nurse hotline. Which any clearly-thinking person would have done first, but as we already established, I was not in clear-thinking mode. I was in "Omgwdiddiceortdoaawdidwdidwdid" mode.

When I told the nurse that his temp was 105.8, she said that ear thermometers weren't always the most accurate so I had to do it the other way. The yucky way. Let's just say Tate was THRILLED about that one. As he was screaming, the nurse dryly said "Well, he's obviously coherent, at least." Rectal temp was 105.4. The nurse paused, and then said "Yeah...I'm gonna have you bring him in". Good call.

I called my friend Aimee and she came right over to stay with Nora, like an angel, and Tate and I took off to urgent care. Oh, but before all this happened, he yorked chocolate milk all over the floor. Almost forgot about that. So then of course while we were in the car, Tate was acting perfectly normal, yelling at red lights, huffing at having to wait for our chance to turn left...the usual. I always get all paranoid that I'm going to get my kids to the doctor and the fever will magically be gone and they'll practically be up doing a jig on the table and I'll look like a prime nincompoop.

But when they took his temp, it was 105.4. The nurse didn't even seemed fazed by it. I just wanted to be like "DUDE! It's almost 106! That's the temperature where the body basically starts cooking itself!! Let's get a little concerned, here!!" The doctor's diagnosis? Tate is prone to frequent, high fevers. He called it "Persistant Fever Syndrome". I called it "I Could Have Told You That, Pal." He said it would probably go away in a couple days, and most likely would come back again at some point. Then he said goodbye. So that was just great. Totally cleared up my worries. Poof. Gone. Ha.

So now I don't know. We go back in to the doctor tomorrow, and they may run more tests to start ruling things out. Or they may not. I feel like I really need to ask for something to be done to get this figured out, but I don't even know what that would be. A 2 year old should not have that high of a fever for that many days in a row, this frequently.

What I do know, though, is that I have awesome friends. The number of people who have called, emailed, Facebooked, etc, to check on Tate just blows my mind. It's a huge comfort to know there are that many people who care about my little dude.

And on another high note, my good friend Jodi's little girl Gabby had her surgery today and it went really really well. So many people have been thinking and praying for her and it's such a relief to have it all over and done with. She's such a little trooper. Rock on, Gabs.

Gimme an F! Gimme an R! Gimmie a U! Gimme...

2009-03-31T15:34:00.003-05:00

...eh, never mind. "Frustrated" is too long to spell out like that. Plus I'd probably get confused and throw a random "Q" in there somewhere.

So Tate's been getting the high fevers again. Yesterday morning and Sunday night it got up to almost 105. Not cool. I can see getting high fevers every once in awhile, or low-grade fevers fairly often, but not topping out at 105.3 at least once a month. We went to the doctor and poor Tate ended up having to get needles jabbed in both arms to get blood drawn. My fault. I have shitty veins and I guess I passed it down to my son, along with my razor-sharp wit. You take the good with the bad. However, I can say with absolute certainty that there are few things as heart-wrenching as seeing your baby being held down on a table with terror in their eyes as they yell for you in complete panic. I was a wreck. A wreck who was holding Nora who was sucking on her finger, sticking it in my ear and then dragging it across my cheek. That wasn't so enjoyable either. Although at that point I was so upset that she could have been sticking boogers into my mouth and I wouldn't have noticed.

So then we waited for 90 minutes. Tate lay on the floor in a feverish mass of toddler, and Nora pulled every single thing out of the drawers under the examining table. She also enjoyed weighing herself, playing with the stirrups on the table, trying to grab used latex gloves out of the hazardous waste bin, draping herself in a gown, and chewing on electrical wires under the desk. The girl knows how to have a good time in any situation.

We found out that Tate's white blood cell count is too high and he has some sort of infection. He's on antibiotics. I'm fairly confident in saying that we will be going through all of this again in a matter of a month or two. It happens so frequently, and he just gets so enervated because of it that it's truly hard to watch. He's like a lump of goo on the couch who every so often requests a glass of water or a cracker.

He is definitely feeling better today but is still not 100%. He has bravely mustered up the energy to inflict small amounts of torture on the dogs and his sister periodically , so he's definitely on the right path to recovery. I just wish I knew why these fevers kept happening. I don't like them.

You suck, fevers.

Gordalien

2009-03-26T18:52:00.006-05:00

OK, seriously? How old is this dude? He's been on Sesame Street for at least 25 years.I mean, the man must be at least 113. He looks exactly the same now as he did back in my Sesame Street-filled days. It's like he's an alien. The man will never, ever die. Do you think he uses Just For Men in his moustache? Cause that thing ain't changed a whit either. I would be inclined to think that every human on that show is a non-aging alien, but then I remembered that Mr. Hooper kicked the bucket a few years ago. Guess they hired him before they caught onto the whole aliens-never-age-but-like-to-sing-stupid-songs-with-vapid-annoying-children-and-can-be-hired-as-actors thing.

Tate's a big fan of Sesame Street (or "Sefase Street" as he eloquently puts it), in case you couldn't tell. But now, thanks to that damn technology thing, he's intent on fast-forwarding through all the episodes til we get to this demon spawn:

We have PBS On Demand so you can just pick an episode and fast forward to the good crap. Of course, Tate refuses to let me do it. So this is a rendition of what usually happens:

TV: "Can you tell me how to get, how to get to-"......silence silence (this is Tate fast-forwarding)...."ONE! TWO! THREE COOKIES"......silence silence

Tate: "ARGH! Where's Elmo??"

TV: "La la la l-".....silence silence (this is Tate fast-forwarding without realizing that he doesn't want to be fast-forwarding at this point since we're actually AT the Elmo segment)..."ding ding ding, ding ding ding...Bye bye, everyone! Elmo loves you!"....silence silence...

Tate: "Oh NO! Now I must rewind!"

TV:...silence. We are now at the end of the episode and in order to watch it again, you must press play. Not rewind. Tate is freaking adamant that the rewind button MUST BE PUSHED WITH ALL HIS MIGHT.

Tate: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"

TV: "Sunny days, chasing the-"....this is the episode starting up again after Tate inadvertently begins it by either chucking the remote to the floor or banging it against the couch. Then he starts fast-forwarding again, so....silence silence....silence silence....silence silence..."Bye bye, everyone! Elmo loves you!"

Tate: "Noooooo!"

Me: "Tate! Just push play when I tell you to!"

Tate: "NOOOOO!!!!"

Yeah, pretty much repeat that scenario about 30 times and that's a typical hour at our house. I swear we end up actually watching Elmo for about 14 seconds out of a 60 minute period.

Oh, and Nora pretty much ate a toilet paper tube. That's good for her, right? Maybe it'll curb her fascination with cough drops, which I HATE because those bastards could totally choke the hell out of her, which freaks me out. She always manages to find the 3 ones in my bathroom drawer that are like 4 years old and pull them out while I'm in the shower. Those and some random panty liners. She likes to put those in her mouth and bumble around with them hanging out like a giant, white, absorbent tongue. Hey, man...whatever it takes to get me a shower.

I Give It a Score of 9.5

2009-03-25T14:50:00.003-05:00

I took the kids to the grocery store yesterday.

I know, right? I'm an idiot.

I foolishly thought that since I had to buy like 3 things it would be a relatively painless trip. Ha. See my previous statement. Nora will NOT sit in the cart anymore. At ALL. EVER. GOD!!!! It's like she is this boneless little blob of goo that can maneuver out of any restraint I foolishly try to employ. I'm thinking I have no choice but to revert to trying duct tape. But that might ruin her clothes. Or, you know, result in a call to the CPS by some well-meaning citizen.

But yesterday we had the inevitable happen. I knew it was coming. Nora took a swan dive out of the cart. I was trying to pay for the groceries, hold on to Nora and keep Tate from taking all the plastic bags off the holder and eating them when she just...leaned over and went gunning for the floor. Head first. I had the back of her shirt loosely in my hand, and when I felt gravity starting to do it's thing, I tightened my grasp and watched her do this cool forward flip thingie. She then landed on her feet, I let go of her to finish bagging the groceries that I had been holding with my other hand, and she toddled off to go talk to the bag boy at the next aisle and tell him how totally remarkable her mom was. For a nose-dive straight to the linoleum floor, it was rather anti-climatic. The cashier looked at me with either disgust or impress and said "Wow, you didn't even flinch." I decided against telling her that compared to what goes on in our house on a daily basis, a leap out of a shopping cart really doesn't rate that high on my freak-o-meter.

Oh, and Tate peed on the potty again today. Time for Urination Celebration 2.0!!!!

Rejoice, All Ye Who Enter Here

2009-03-23T13:07:00.004-05:00

For my son, the fruit of my womb, has done a miraculous deed. He peed. Not only did he pee (which, let's face it, lost it's excitement for us a good 34 months ago or so), but he did it in the toilet. For the first time EVER. We thought it was never going to happen. I had visions of myself going to Target and buying Depends for my kid. The urination celebration was long and boisterous at our house last night, I tell you. I think Eric and I were more excited than Tate was. Actually, I'd be willing to bet on it. Amazing how a little stream of wee-wee can completely brighten your outlook on life. Ain't nothing stopping us now, baby.

I'm choosing to ignore the fact that so far today, Tate has refused to even say the word potty. Because, really, that's neither here nor there. And yeah, so what if he acts like I'm asking to tear him apart limb by limb every time I ask if he needs to go potty. Because he WENT! ON THE POTTY!!! Next up, differential geometry. The world is at our feet.

So I got back last night from my girls weekend. It was exhausting. We sat. For 12 hours straight on Saturday. In the middle of all the sitting, my friend Tricia managed to cause a Pyrex casserole dish to explode. We stopped sitting, cleaned it up and then went back to the living room and sat some more. Well, sat and contemplated how on earth Tricia managed to not get her face completely sliced open and her eyeballs gashed out. Then we went and sang karaoke and made fools of ourselves, as the tradition dictates whenever I go out of town with girlfriends. Let me just say that 6 30-something women trying to sing Eninem is not a pleasant sight. Or sound.

So basically, the weekend can be summed up in two photos.

This one:

And uh...this one:

I know. I'm hot. No need to say it.

I'm Outta Here

2009-03-20T12:05:00.002-05:00

Some of the girls and I are going up to my good friend Jodi's ski chalet this weekend. We're going to do such crazy, outrageous things as...reading. Watching chick flicks. Sleeping in. Having a few drinks. Wearing our "fat pants". Sitting on our asses eating junk food and not having to get up unless WE FEEL LIKE IT. Not cutting up each other's food or wiping each other's butts or putting each other in time out.

I hope it will be just as uneventful as I'm anticipating. I've done my vacuuming and cleaning up the kitchen out of guilt already and I'll come back on Sunday refreshed and ready to dive back into the pool of craziness that is my house. I'll miss the kidlets...probably. They most likely won't even notice I'm gone.

I Almost Peed My Pants

2009-03-16T22:01:00.003-05:00

...when I saw this picture of Tate from Packer Fan Fest. I'm still freakin' laughing.

And PS...how excited were you when you saw I posted two entries in one day??? It's like Christmas all the time around here, baby.

Give The Kid an Espresso

2009-03-16T09:07:00.003-05:00

I was at the drive-thru of the coffee place (aka my mothership) the other day, and after the lady's voice came through the magical ordering box thing asking what I'd like, my dear son leaned forward from the back seat, cleared his throat and said "Hi, can I have a medium snow white mocha, please?".

I tell ya, this kid learns so much useful information from driving around in the car with me. So much. What other two-year-old knows how to order the yummiest coffee drink in town and refer to completely idiotic drivers as bastards? The kid is well on his way. To what, I'm not sure, but on his way nonetheless. I was thinking about ordering him a little shot-glass sized mocha, but well...that would be stupid. And make me kind of a bad mom.

Although, when people get a look at Nora's eye, they probably question my proficiency as a mother anyway. Gravity is not so kind to new walkers so we've been hearing a lot of smacks, thuds and thump-thump-thumps lately. The other day she smacked her eye on her little rocking chair.

The rocking chair of doom.

I tried my hardest to get a good picture of the shiner under her eye but the little spaz refuses to sit still for pictures lately and most of them ended up being a little head-shaped blur with a puff of hair on top. This is the best one I could get, and you can really barely see the bruise. It's there, though, and she looks like a total hardass.

Yeah, you should see the other guy.

So, I took the kids to the grocery store yesterday. (Yay! Another grocery store story whereupon you all can read and snicker at my continuing self-torture!) We got there and Tate made a beeline for the miniature "Customer in Training" cart. Since it had been a couple days since I had felt like banging my head against the wall in frustration, I let him push it with the implicit instructions that he must stay by Mommy at ALL TIMES. I likened it to a Mommy dolphin and her little baby dolphin who swims along next to her all the time, frolicking merrily next to Mommy's dorsal fin, because he feels the most comfortable and safe next to Mommy. This earned me a completely blank stare from Baby Dolphin. Well, I tried.

So, this is what our shopping trip sounded like:

ME: "Ok, Tate, stay by me! No, over this--no, honey this way. Tate, over here! Watch where you're--honey, you can't run into people! Especially if they're 95! Ok, Tate let's--no, over here. This aisle. No, THIS aisle. Tate, watch out! Ok, let's get some--TATE! Watch out!!! No, honey, we don't need any asparagus. No, really--over HERE, Tate! Tate, where are you? Did you grab some crackers? No, over--TATE! Over here! Come on please! Stop ramming your cart into the deli counter, please! Where are you--no, do NOT run away from Mommy! Wait, we don't need 14 bags of shredded cheese! Let Mommy put those--stay HERE while Mommy puts them back! No, we don't take things out of other people's carts, honey. How did you manage to tip your cart over, Tate???"

NORA: "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!"

TATE: "Hey. What's up. Hi. I got a cart."

He actually did a pretty good job, he just gets distracted by people. And pictures. And seeing himself in the reflection of the cases in the refrigerated aisle. He felt pretty studly, though, you could tell...pushing the HELL out of that cart around. Nora, on the other hand, thinks shopping carts are hateful metal contraptions out to eat her, and will spend every single second trying to climb out of the seat. I strap her in, but due to her and her damn contortionist ways, it's about as effective as strapping her in with a wet noodle. She usually ends up facing away from me, crouched on her knees with her butt up in the air while I hang on to the hem of her shirt, thus preventing me from being able to step more than 6 inches away from the cart. Those damn cans of diced tomatoes are always just beyond my reach. Bastards.

Eric took Tate to some Packer event...thing. Tate got to meet lots of Packer-type people. He seemed to enjoy himself.

Tate and...some Packer, I'm assuming.

I'm thinking this is another Packer.

No clue who this guy is, but I like how Tate seems to have his hand down his pants. Classy.

Monkey Down!

2009-03-13T15:14:00.005-05:00

Earlier today, I heard Tate exclaim from the other room, "Oh NO!". I went in to investigate and found poor little Snowy the Monkey had been brutally mutilated by our dog. Because, you know, Spencer is pretty evil:

Oh, wait, no. Spencer is this big pile of dumpy ineptitude:

Poor Snowy required medical attention, STAT, so Eric and Tate took him upstairs to do some repair. This is what Snowy looks like now:

You can't really tell from the picture, but his left hand (paw?) is bandaged up as well. Note the Spongebob Band-Aid on top of the gauze. Tate thinks putting those Band-Aids on his own skin will cause him to erupt into a fiery inferno, but apparently they're a-ok for a stuffed monkey. You're a brave little simian, Snowy.

My baby girl is walking. She started doing it in earnest two nights ago. Before she would take a step or two before doing a spectacular collapse into the carpet, but now she steadies herself, raises her arms above her head for balance, and lurches away. She looks like a drunken Weeble Wobble. Imagine this dude floundering around my family room, only with a little radish-sprout ponytail. Oh, and as a girl.

The best part is listening to her laugh delightedly, so proud of herself. That little sprite's gonna be quick. She can crawl at the speed of light already. She looks like a little spider skittering across the floor. I keep trying to post a video of her walking but something inside my computer is being stupid and not letting me. There's one on my Facebook page.

And of course, since she's been walking for a whole 48 hours, she's already acquired like 5903 bumps and bruises. The best was when she tripped and hit her crib with her mouth. It's amazing how much a mom will freak out when she sees blood pooling around her baby's teeth. I was going into psycho mother mode. Everything's fine, though. She tried to eat a rock a few minutes later so no permanent damage to teeth, gums or tongue, apparently. Or maybe it was just a particularly irresistible rock. She is quite the tough little broad.

Tate is turning into quite the reader, which delights me to no end. I've been an avid reader for as long as I can remember, and was determined to pass that down to my kids as well. Apparently, though, all of our books have some sort of subtext that we ignoble grownups cannot see. For whenever Tate reads to himself, each and every book consists of the text: "Oh Sa So Sil-lay!" That's what he chants to himself as he turns the pages. Every time, every book. "Oh Sa So Sil-lay! Oh Sa So Sil-lay!" Then he'll come to a page that he recognizes and it'll be something like "Oh Sa So Sil-lay! I love you alllll the time!" or "Oh Sa So Sil-lay! Michael likes to poop on the potty!" He likes to read in bed for awhile after I tuck him in, so I'll stand outside the door and listen to the "Oh Sa So Sil-lay! On the track, the trains are running!". I love it.

And what the hell ever happened to these dudes???

Those Yip Yips kicked ass. I heart the Yip Yips and they're not on Sesame Street anymore. How I miss the Yip Yips.

The Many Faces of the Tater.

2009-03-10T21:27:00.003-05:00

Here are some of the things Tate's been up to lately. Besides his usual evildoings, of course.

We went on a firestation tour today. After a little cajoling Tate agreed to don a fireman's jacket. It fits well, no? And the look of pure joy and thrill on his face...just warms the heart.

While we were in Minneapolis for Disney on Ice, we also hit up the Mall of America. I love that place. I used to LIVE there, hitting up Contempo Casuals and Maurices for the babydoll dresses and velvet chokers that were just so very nifty at the time. This is Tate at the amusement park in the mall. Yeah, he's sideways. I always forget to rotate the pictures before I put them on here. Deal.

Here's Tate decked out in some fine regalia. We've got the free skull cap we got in our gift bag at DOI (Disney On Ice for those of you not in the loop), his VIP pass that was so long on him it practically dragged on the floor, and his Bob the Builder toolbelt. Hawt. The dopey look on his face is just the icing on the cake. Cute, though, no?

I feel bad that there are no pictures of Nora in this batch. Lately most of my shots of her have been on her little booty as she crawls the hell away from me as fast as she can. She has no time whatsoever in her busy life to sit still for 3 nanoseconds so I can snap a picture. It's the Huggie Butt Blur, 2009.

Oh, wait! Here's one! Please notice the expression of pure exultation on her face. It's kind of hard to see, but let me assure you, she was screaming her ASS off. I had interupted her quest to find each and every strand of loose carpet fiber on the floor possible. She loves that stuff. I think it must taste like lollipops.

I am watching American Idol. What the hell did Paula do to her face? It's like Michael Myers from Halloween mixed with a Siamese cat with a little Joan Rivers thrown in there. I think all the Botox and collogen have finally, officially, COMPLETEY ruined any shred of sanity the poor dear had left. They've seeped into the little section marked "sanity" in her brain and completely obliterated it. Listening to her talk is like listening to the weird drunk aunt on somebody's wedding video who got ahold of the microphone and won't let it go.

PAULA: "I loved your song choice! You sounded like a little puppy who mated with Robert Wagner and then went and ate a sandwich! It's very ADMIRABLE! You are so wonderful to watch! It's like running in a field of cabbage while watching bunnies copulate with little mini Gloria Estefans and playing with a big bowl of zippers! You sounded TIMELESS! And you're so beautiful! Your dress looks like a wee little puff of styrofoam egg cartons! It's so RELEVENT! Watch me while I clap like a seal and writhe around drunkenly!"

Please stop me before I ever get to that point.

Ha HA! Up Yours, Blizzard!

2009-03-09T11:46:00.003-05:00

We drove home from the Twin Cities last night. It sucked in a majorly royal way. Driving on Hwy 29 is never all that pleasant, seeing as there's NOTHING on it and the stretch between Wausau and Green Bay is so long and desolate it's kinda creepy. There's a bunch of run-down buildings and dilapidated farms, but that's really about it. Each time I drive along it, I kind of expect to see a creepy little kid running through a cornfield shouting "Malachi! MALACHIIII!"* Last night was exceptionally unenjoyable.

* You know, from Children of the Corn? Please tell you me you knew that. It's only one of the best cheesy Stephan King movies ever. Did you know the redhaired kid in it is the guy who played Patrick Dempsey's dorky friend in Can't Buy Me Love? I tell ya, I'm full of useless knowledge.

It was the type of blizzard where you can't see two feet in front of the car, you feel like you're about to get blown off the road like the 4083 other cars you've seen in the ditch so far, you try and get in the left lane but then realize you can't tell where the left lane is, you're tense and sweating, you're wondering if people will even miss you when you're gone, etc etc. Of course, I wasn't driving, but, hello, it's EXTREMELY tense being the one in the passenger seat. Let's think about me, here. I was pumping that imaginary brake on the floor like a rockstar. I wouldn't have been surprised if I popped the door handle right off with how tight I was clutching it. I'm sure Eric appreciated the fact that I showed admirable restraint from shrieking "Oh MY GOD WATCH OUT FOR THAT TRUCK! WE'RE GOING IN THE DITCH! I NEED A DRINK! WHY WILL MY DAUGHTER NOT STOP SCREAMING???" I was quite the hero.

Tate was a champ, sitting in the way back watching his DVDs. I don't think he even realized we were in The Blizzard of the Century. Every once in awhile he'd ask for a snack because he thought it was fun when I chucked little baggies of fruit snacks back at him, but besides that he was awesome. Nora, on the other hand, was pissed that Mother Nature was being a total bitch and keeping her from her nice warm, soft crib and cried for an hour and a half, which in blizzard time equals roughly 39 hours.

After a particularly harrowing trip across a GIGANTIC bridge that freaks me out when it's calm and sunny out, we made it home. That bridge, man...that was rough. I just put my head down in my lap and told God that since he totally rocks, how about He lets us get across without, oh, plummeting into a river, how about?

Then of course we get home, chuck the kids into bed and find we have nothing alcoholic to toast our being alive with. Eric made some sort of shot-type thing with Malibu and Blue Curacao but I didn't feel like adding gut rot to my still-racing heart and off-the-chart blood pressure, so I passed. The myriad of people on Facebook telling me what idiots we were for driving home in this weather definitely warmed my heart, though. Nothin' like friends to tell you how idiotic you really are, in case it had slipped your mind momentarily.

Whew. Sonnenbergs-1, Snow-0. Suck it, zero-visiblity. We kicked your ASS.

Underwire+Armpit=Sucks.

2009-03-03T19:02:00.002-06:00

Ok, so I buy cheap Target bras. I do not have the energy or desire to devote time to actually washing bras the way they should be washed. I don't put them in a little bag, I don't wash them on the "lingerie" cycle, I don't lay them flat to dry. Sorry, suckers, but you're getting thrown in the washer with my jeans and Tate's shirt with the dried green bean/chocolate/snot stain on it. Enjoy.

So because I abuse my bras, they feel justification in abusing me right back and springing forth the underwire from the side of the cup just so it can poke me in the armpit all. day. long. And since my laziness knows no bounds and thus prevents me from actually walking the 15 feet to my bathroom trash can at the end of the day when I take the bra off, I am forced, forced to just throw it in the hamper along with all the other dirty clothes. Then of course it gets washed, ends up back in my drawer, and sticking me in the armpit again. What a bastard. Normally I wouldn't feel the need to talk about my jackass undergarments, but the jerkwad is poking me in the armpit as I type.

So apparently I'm on some sort of crack, because I decided it would be just a keen idea to take both kids to the grocery store at 5 pm, which is when we usually eat dinner. The only reason I felt this insanity was justified is that I had no food to actually prepare for dinner, so the kids could either be whiny and crabby at home, or I could take them out and spread the whininess and crabbiness all about the land for everyone to see.

Somehow Tate manged to trip over my feet from behind as we were walking into the store and catapulted himself headfirst into the wall. He did not get hurt. He then dashed over to the spaceship cart and tried to climb up in it. The cart was no match for his ponderosity and tipped over onto him. He got up with nary a scratch. He reached for a jumbo-sized bottle of olive oil and got conked on the noggin. Didn't even notice. It's like the kid has an invisible shield around him. Either that or he's just not that observant. Although he did observe that Mom refused to let him climb into the salad bar and writhe amongst the lettuce and cucumber slices, and subsequently voiced his displeasure in the form of shrieking like a pterodactyl. He knows what's important, I guess.

Nora, on the other hand, observed quite astutely that we were not at home, she was not in her highchair, and food was not getting shoveled into her mouth at Mach-3 speed. Therefore, she took no delay in informing all of us poor innocent grocery shoppers that she was really, really PISSED OFF. At one point I had two pterodactyls in the Spaceship Cart of Doom and I was about to just stick them in the refrigerated food aisle among the yogurt and cream cheese and just call it a day.

Then I get home, realize I already had half the items I went to the store to get, tried to make fajitas but failed magnificently (the seasoning tasted like rubber gloves rubbed with feet sweat) and gave up. I slapped some shredded cheese in between a tortilla, microwaved it, threw some green beans in a bowl, microwaved them, and presented the kidlets with a gourmet meal a' la Frazzled Mother. I had a peanut butter cookie. It would have been delish, except there was a fair amount of salsa splashed on it from my fajita experiment. I did not notice the glob of salsa and therefore shoved the entire cookie in my mouth. Peanut Butter+Salsa=regurgitation.

I'm Silly, Either!

2009-03-01T12:25:00.004-06:00

Lately Tate has had trouble differentiating between the usage of the words "too" and "either". If he sees me eating, he'll say "I want something to eat, either!"or it's "My head is pounding from my incessant shrieking and running about like a banshee, either!!". It doesn't really make sense but it kinda does, in a two-year-old type way. Unlike when we asked him what Mommy's name was and he replied "Fffffttt...Up in the Sky!". I hear that name's going to be quite popular in the coming years. It fits me well, I believe. I look like a Fffffttt.

So last night we took the kids to a reception/dinner-type thingy at our church for newer members. Sheesh. Let me just say, it's a good thing this was at God's house, cause I think any other host would have booted us out after about 2 minutes. God's pretty chill, though. He knows what's up. As soon as we got in there and took Tate's jacket off, he was off like a shot. He would just run until he hit a table or a wall or an old man's legs and then ricochet off and run back the way he came. It was a little stressful, trying to weave through groups of oblivious smiling people in name tags trying to ensnare my kid before he knocked over the table full of baked goods or some little old lady. People would try to talk to us and catch a glimpse of Tate knocking chairs over or veering off his path of destruction to deliberately step on Nora's fingers or pull her hair, and they would kind of...fall silent. It was like they couldn't talk and watch the train wreck at the same time. We heard lots of "Well, he certainly is...energetic, isn't he?". Yep, energetic is definitely one of many words for it.

Then we came home, put Nora to bed, the sitter came, Tate freaked out, and we left. Because, usually, when we leave, the freak-out lasts for about 3 minutes, the sitter offers Tate food, and all is well. But this is a fairly new sitter and I guess Tate just hadn't really sussed her out that well yet, and he hit a level of beserk-ness (no, that's not a real word) that we don't often see 'round these parts. We got two phone calls from the poor sitter wondering just how one stops Tate from banging his head on the floor and screaming like someone was cutting his nads off. The poor girl was probably about to pack up and head out. We were on our way back home (after getting a new nose stud for me....hello, we have priorities) when she called a third time and stated that the craziness had been quelled, at least temporarily. Temporary is good for us, so we turned the car back around and headed for the bar.

It was a great time, with great friends. We drank, came home, were told that Tate did in fact calm down and stop trying to put a dent in the floor with his head, and sent the sitter home. Maybe we shall see her again someday, maybe not. She's probably scarred for life. Ah well.

In other news, Eric took both kidlets to the Children's Museum in Appleton. Here are some pictures. Just cause I feel like photowhoring my children, so photowhore I shall.

Doing a little shopping.

Yeah, so this is my jet. Wanna ride?

I Am Stomping

2009-02-24T14:23:00.002-06:00

All over my house. I am stomping because I am crabby, whiny and deeply, deeply displeased. Irritated. Sulky. Vexed. I am doing my best to avoid stomping on my daughter, who, funnily enough, is the reason for my stomping in the first place.

I will explain by saying Tate is sleeping. As we all know, the only thing that usually can get Tate to take a nap is a little thing called pneumonia. And while the 4 hour naps were stellar, I really don't think it would be fair to prolong the sickness just to keep those going. So, usually, no naps. Today, however, there was a nap! Still is one, actually! It's been an hour! He fell asleep in the car and I got him upstairs, no fuss, no muss. I then skipped back downstairs to get Nora a bottle since it was her usual naptime and she had only slept for about 40 minutes this morning. I was about to be on Easy Street, baby.

Well, Nora is not napping. For she is not tired, not even a little drowsy. She performed an impressive repertoire of yodeling up in her crib for awhile, until I became afraid she might wake Tate and reluctantly went up to get her. She's currently crawling around on the floor gurgling and "babadadamama"-ing while I wistfully dream of an afternoon in some far-off fairy land where young children sleep and mommies get to sit down and eat lunch, maybe take a shower, all that mythical stuff.

ARGH. WHY DO I NOT GET A BREAK??????

Because really, after taking Tate and the two dogs to the vet this morning, I think I deserve one. If you were driving past my vet clinic and saw a woman holding the leash of a fat black idiotic dog and a little boy holding the leash of a little black idiotic dog who was currently running circles around the other three while the big dog tried to drag them all over to the snow so he could pee and then the little boy fell down while still holding on to his leash, refusing to let it go as he yelled and when the woman tried to pick him up, the fat black dog decided for the first time in like a year that he felt like running so he tried to run out in the street while the woman was holding his leash while trying to calm the little boy who had the other leash wrapped around his legs so he couldn't walk, and the woman's shoulder almost got dislocated when the fat black dog reached the end of the leash while running full speed, and then the little dog saw a cat come out of the vet and ran after it, yanking the little boy off his feet again, and then the woman's purse got knocked off the back of her van and all the loose change that she never puts in her wallet fell out all over the parking lot...yeah, that was us. I'm sure you got a good laugh out of it. I was about to ask for a nice chihuahua tranquilizer to guzzle or something when we finally got in there.

Plus I just feel really fat today. My butt is the size of...oh, let's say, Costa Rica. Not quite up to Canada proportions, but the size of a country just the same. Good thing I'm going to go celebrate Fat Tuesday with the kids and some friends in a bit. It's my very own, personal day! Freakin' laissez les bon temps rouler, y'all.

Slow Down There, Big Fella.

2009-02-23T14:54:00.004-06:00

Here is Tate today:

At the rate this kid has been eating lately, this will be Tate in about 2 weeks:

Seriously. The kid is eating like he's got a tapeworm or something. For lunch the other day, he had four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Yes, four. Yes, he ate the crusts, too. Last night for dinner? Six bowls of corn cereal. Stuff should be called crack cereal the way he goes through it. Oh, and he had an apple too. He likes a little fiber thrown in there. Tonight I'm fully expecting him to put away a stuffed rack of lamb. Maybe a small Cornish hen to top it off. Never mind that we eat neither lamb nor hen. I have a feeling he will find them.

But he's been in a much better mood now that I've figured out that perhaps I should be feeding him sometimes. As soon as he starts to pitch a fit, or any kind of hard object at my head, I immediately ask if he's hungry. The answer is usually affirmative, so off we trot to raid the pantry. And refrigerator. He selects a nice block of cheese or bucket of ice cream and has a snack. This usually tides him over for an hour or so, when he puts away a box of crackers and a jug of apple juice. Or something close to all that.

It must be a growth spurt. I'm just waiting for him to come trotting out of his room one morning next week measuring 6'3'' and weighing in at a nice 200 lbs, the way he's scarfing everything down.

I decided to be either very brave or very stupid yesterday and take both kids to meet some friends and their kids at the Hardees playland yesterday, and then on to Toys R Us. It went suprisingly well. Tate was extremely well-behaved at Hardees. I had to keep standing up and checking that he hadn't escaped out of the room everytime 5 or so minutes went by without some kid screaming. Toys R Us was his reward for being so good. He's still young enough that we can get out of there with minimal toy buyage. He did need some new toys though...for some reason Nora's rattles don't really hold his attention. I'm hoping this angelic streak will continue, but I am well aware of the fact that now that I put that hope down in words, I will be forced to eat those very words because later today Tate will give the dog a haircut or dump all the napkins on the floor and spill vegetable oil on them or something.

I'm just enjoying it while it lasts.

When, Exactly...

2009-02-21T19:29:00.002-06:00

...did I get so old that I'm perfectly content, nay, THRILLED to partake in a Saturday night spent stuffed in my fat pants, plunked on the couch, drinking wine, watching crap on TV, and generally looking like poo warmed over? Cause I'm there. Right now.

Granted, not only do I look like heated poo, I feel like it too. My nose is all stuffy. You know how you get where all you want to do is get all that crap OUT of your nostril (why is it always just my right nostril? Left one's clear and sunny) so you're sniffing and snorting so hard you swear you feel your eye pop out of it's socket and an artery burst in your brain? I'm right there too. In the city of Snotty Couchland. I'm the mayor tonight, baby.

Countdown is on for Tate's bedtime and then...yeah. I'll probably go to bed too. Next Saturday night is shaping up to be a different story, at least. I can try and recapture the lost days of my youth for a few hours before returning home at oh, 10:30 pm and falling into bed before waking up with Nora at 5:45.

And here's another fun friendly tip from yours truly. Don't give my daughter a plateful of cut-up peaches when you're at a restaurant. She will somehow position the plate so it is half off the table, karate chop it at the precise angle to send it careening 20 feet up through the air, and then sceam in horror as chunks of peaches come hurtling at her from outer space. People will stop eating, drop their food and turn around with lasers shooting out of their eyes towards the parents who MUST be pinching their daughter to make her screech like that. I learned that today.

Livin' la Vida Nora

2009-02-17T10:20:00.006-06:00

Nora leads quite the busy life around here these days, as evidenced by my little photo montage below. Catching up on the daily news

Seeing what's on the tube

Sweeeeet! American Idol!

Drinking water served by a giant bodyless hand.

Looking cute.

What was in that cup, Mom??

Things have been chugging along here. Tate's slowly getting over the pneumonia, and here's a great little fun fact for you. Apparently, after your child gets pneumonia and starts the recovery process, that very process turns your child into a bedeviled clump of lunacy and general derangement. Tate has been...oh, let's say...very unpleasant to be around these last couple of days. I feel for the kid, honestly, but GOOD LORD, does he have to scream like a person getting their eyes gouged out with a rusty fork everytime something does not go his way? Or does go his way? Or just goes in general??

This morning was particularly unpleasant for everyone residing in this house. Well, probably everyone residing in this neighborhood. That kid has the volume of a steam engine when he gets going. We did get him calmed down enough to go look at another preschool where he steadfastly refused to speak, make eye contact, or basically acknowledge anyone else's presence in general. And now he's fine. I guess a gourmet PB&J made by yours truely will do the trick.

Nora and I went to my niece's baptism this weekend, which was an enjoyable time, hanging out with the reles. People take way too much interest in my eating habits, though. My mom spent a large portion of Sunday morning trying to convince me to eat a grapefruit. My denial to eat said grapefruit based on the fact that it tastes like paper clips dipped in stomach acid seemed to fall on deaf ears, as she must have asked me a good 10049 times to "just try it You'll like it". Then at the get-together at my sister's house, she had a sign posted stating that $40 would be rewarded to the person who could get me to eat an orange. I've never eaten an orange. It looks like it would feel like a big ball of juicy skin. I kept stating that I wasn't going to eat a juicy skin-ball just so someone ELSE would make money. I mean, seriously. My mom then offered me $500 to eat the orange. She could not produce the money then and there, however...so no orange. I shall not falter.

See? Evil. Oranges are evil.

Pneumonia is Pnot Cool.

2009-02-12T21:35:00.002-06:00

So Tate's been rockin' this horrible fever the last few days. It hovered around 103 for the most part, and Tylenol would get it all the way down to oooh, 100. But the doctor's office always says to wait till it lasts longer than 3 days, so I didn't call. Today, though, Tate woke from a four hour nap with a temp of 105. That got me on the horn to the doctor.

Tate, Nora and I made the field trip to the doc's at 3 pm. We got out of there at ten to 5. It was a long ordeal made up of swabs up Tate's nose, finger prickings, Spongebob Band-Aids, my realization that Tate seems to think that Band-Aids will rob him of his soul, the removal of said Band-Aid, chest X-rays, lots of tears (mostly from Tate...), and lots of waiting. It was rather nerve-wracking. I was fairly sure that it wasn't anything life-altering, but really, what do I know? Waiting those last 30 minutes in the little 10x10 room with Nora chewing on a tongue depressor and Tate asleep on the floor in the corner was not very relaxing for me. I let my mind wander way too much, and the diagnosis of pneumonia was honestly almost a relief. Pneumonia can be fixed.

Well, it can if Tate would agree to take the medicine for it. He was game at first, but after the first squirt into his month, he quickly changed his tune. I did manage to get it all in his mouth, but about 10 seconds later it pretty much all ended up harked up onto the floor. He does not enjoy imitation banana flavor, it seems. I have no idea how I'm going to get him to take this stuff 19 more times. After that whole debacle, he wouldn't even agree to chug some Tylenol, which he usually is cool with.

Poor kid. He's so listless and devoid of his usual spunk. Hopefully it passes soon. I'm going to bed, because I got no sleep last night and it was a long and wearing day, and I am wiped OUT. No wonder I decided to reward myself with hot wings, cheese fries, and wine. Yeah, the plan to lose weight is going just peachy.

Tater the Skater

2009-02-10T15:23:00.004-06:00

Eric took Tate skating the other day, after promising me 3449 times that this did not mean Tate was going to be pressured into playing hockey. I really don't want to push him into any sport, let alone one that costs the parents like 6 million dollars a year and eats up about 70 hours a week. But we're going to Disney on Ice in Minneapolis next month, and my dad was able to set it up so we get to go skating with the characters beforehand, then sit in the front row for the performance. Now Tate can wow Mickey and Buzz Lightyear with his mad sk8ing skilz.

What a goofball.

It's Expanding.

2009-02-09T15:00:00.005-06:00

No, I'm not talking about my waistline. Thanks for thinking that, though.

I mean the clutter. It's like The Blob. Pretty soon we'll all be swallowed alive by it before it moves out into the neighborhood. You'll see a quivering mass of toys, magazine shreds, various kitchen utensils and mismatched socks go globbing down my street looking for it's next victim. I'm picturing something like this dude, only made out of aforementioned products:

Case in point. I looked out onto my back deck earlier this afternoon and saw the turkey baster that's normally in the drawer next to my oven. It was just chillin' on the deck, enjoying the warm 38 degree weather. I was thinking of going out there and asking it if it wanted a nice beer and to fire up the grill. I'm sure pretty soon it will be joined by the pizza cutter, as I hear that's quite a party animal.

Tate did try to take matters into his own hands, though. He marched over to the dishwasher a little bit ago, declaring that it was "Time to clean UP, people!". He then opened the dishwasher and started unloading it. Awesome, right? Would have been a lot better if the stuff inside there was actually clean. Most of it he couldn't get into the correct places, but he did manage to put away every piece of silverware back into the drawer. When I tried to tell him the stuff was dirty and needed to get washed, well, he just wouldn't hear of it. Hopefully I remember to empty the silverware out of the drawer back into the dishwasher before I just grab some random fork covered in scrambled egg remnents. I hate looking at and touching old food. It makes me dry heave.

Also, would someone please remind my darling baby girl that sleep is, in fact, a MAGNIFICENT thing, and she should really partake in it more often? 5:30 AM is not my finest hour. Half hour naps are just not doing it for me. I'm starting to do the zombie walk again. Days are passing by in fogs, and I'm pretty sure I've forgotten to wash my hair for a good 3 days now. I gotta say, it's not a good look on me.

Plop.

2009-02-07T13:13:00.003-06:00

Why do my children never let me sit down? Ever? Is it something ingrained in their little minds, that Mommy is not allowed to actually SIT and eat dinner but only to perch on her chair, bringing a forkful of food to her mouth, only to immediately have to put it down again?

This is a typical dinner for me and the kids. Eric is working at dinnertime at least two weeks out of a month, usually three, sometimes four, so we've pretty much got the routine down pat.

I plop in my chair.

Tate: "Mommy, I need milk."

Plop again. Well, if I want to get technical, it's more of a "Plop, jiggle jiggle." But I'm going to omit the jiggle jiggle and pretend I have thighs of steel. Hey, it's my story.

Tate: "Mommy, I dropped my milk."

PLOP.

Nora: "AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" Roughly transated: "Where are the rest of my diced apple bits, you nutty woman?"

PLOP.

Tate: "Mommy, Spencer ate my noodle! Get it back! Get it out of his mouth!"

I'm thinking of doing a workout video along these lines. All that standing up and sitting down has to be doing something for my quads. But by the end of dinner, I'm about ready to plop through the floor and eat my dinner in peace in a hole under the house or something. By the time the kids are done eating, my dinner has usually congealed into something thoroughly unappetizing on my plate and I end up eating puffcorn and gumballs later and calling it dinner.

Tonight, though, I will plop and stay plopped. I'm going out for Mexican food and to see a movie with some girlfriends, and I'm greatly looking forward to eating an entire meal without getting gnawed-up Cheerios hurled at my head. Eric and I took the kids to Culver's for lunch today after swimming lessons, and while there were no great catastrophes, Tate did end up spilling his chocolate milk all over his butt so it looked like he was walking around with something gross and runny and brown on his rump. I don't know how he managed to get the milk on his butt instead of his lap, but that's my son for you. We decided to stop ruining other diners' appetites and wrapped him up in my jacket and left.

It's funny how meals out with the four of us start out just fine...Tate serenely coloring on his kids menu, Nora peacefully sucking on the edge of the table while Eric and I ignore it and convince ourselves that germs are good for children...and then by the end turn into something out of a horror movie. The kids are screaming and there are carcasses of grilled cheese sandwiches or slices of pizza on the floor where they've been launched to their death. Tate's under the table, Nora's trying to climb out of the highchair, Eric and I are hissing at each other to find Nora's freaking jacket and load up Tate's 20 books back into his diaper bag for GOD'S SAKE, and the waiter is no where to be found, probably because he thinks the four have us have become possessed with demons from the netherworld. I always expect everyone in the restaurant to stand up and applaud when we leave.

I would not blame them.

Welcome to the Jungle

2009-02-03T18:42:00.002-06:00

Or insane asylum, perhaps, would be more accurate. Things around here are just...loud. Messy. Chaotic. Prime fodder for a case study on just what drives a stay-at-home-mom to literally tear her hair out, drink a box of wine in one sitting, and pass out into peaceful oblivion.

I can't even put a finger on what exactly the chaos is made up of. Squealing. Screaming. "Ay-yi-yi-ing" (yes, Nora's still channeling Bob Marley. Well, him and Chewbacca. She does a mean impression when she gets going). Endless claims of "It's mine!". Constant admonishments from Tate that I must stop requesting for him to do things since he will, in fact, NOT do what I ask him to, because as we all know, he is extremely busy doing one of the actions mentioned above.

It's just been one of those days. You know the one. Where you're trying to obtain some semblance of tidiness in your kitchen while your baby girl is pulling a mummified Skittle covered in dog hair out from under the fridge and trying to eat it and your two year old son is running around half naked with blue Sharpie all over his face, pausing only in his careening in circles to pull his sister's hair everytime he passes, resulting in more screaming and ay-yi-yi-ing and desperate clinging to your legs trying to escape the whirling cloud of sassiness who at the moment is pulling every plastic cup he can find out of the drawer and you wondering why you have that stupid stupid song from FreeCreditReport.com in your head and wishing desperately it would just go away since you don't really CARE about the stupid guy serving chowder and ice tea and all you want to do is sit but you know that you can't just quite yet and....ARGH.

Then you look at the clock and realize that it's almost that magical hour known as bedtime. The end is near. Then you look at the windowsill above the sink where you keep the kids' medicine and remember that you're out of infant Tylenol. Normally, not a big deal. Today, when you have a teething infant with a temp of 102, BIG DEAL. But no way in hell will you be driving to the store to get some. Not tonight. Not by yourself. You let your eyes dart fleetingly to the liquor cabinet but decide that ultimately you just don't feel that comfortable rubbing Malibu or Butterscotch Schnapps over your daughter's gums to try and grant her some relief. You settle for the Orajel. You're heading into the home stretch...getting the baby changed and jammies on and all that jazz. Baby enjoys a little naked time at the end of the day so you let her charge around bare-assed on the floor while you attempt to do maybe a little more cleaning up. Then you look over and see your baby sitting cheerfully in the middle of Lake Urine. Better than sitting atop Mount Poo, yes, but still not something you really quite feel like dealing with right now.

But then finally, you sit in the rocking chair with your baby as you feed her her bottle and watch her eyelids droop and finally close, and you breathe in her smell and listen to her breathe and feel completely, 100% in love with this little human. Then you cuddle on the couch with your two year old son and stroke his hair and feel him burrow in as close to you as he can while you expose him to the awesomeness that is American Idol. And you think, "Yeah, this isn't so bad. I suppose the kids are worth the trouble. Tomorrow will be completely different...calm, Lake Urine-free, quiet..." and you completely ignore your subconcious knocking at the back of your head screaming at you that for the love of GOD, listen to yourself, you're in denial, and you snuggle with your son and you're happy.

I'm Busy.

2009-01-30T19:04:00.003-06:00

Tate and I were reading one of hs 300 Sesame Street books tonight and he was having a good ol' time looking at a page of Bert and Ernie preparing an elaborate meal in their little apartment. He was doing a great job of pointing at random things and identifying them, such as hot dogs, pancakes, grapes, corn, and jam. (Ok. Now that I think about it, what the hell kind of meal were those two making?) He pointed at a can of whipped cream and this is what transpired:

Tate: "Asshat?" (No, he has still not mastered saying "what's that" correctly. I'm not pushing it. This way is much more humorous, especially in public.)

Me: "Oh, that's a can of whipped cream."

Tate: "No, Mommy. That's beer. Beer."

Me: "No, honey, not everything that comes in a can is beer. That's whipped cream."

Tate, looking extremely puzzled: "Where's the beer? They need beer!"

I was going to tell him that Bert and Ernie always seemed more like wine or martini guys to me, but I didn't think it was worth it. The problem was solved when he pointed at a bottle of ketchup and quite confidently proclaimed it to be red beer. There ya go.

His new thing when asked to do something is to turn down our offer quite regretfully, informing us that he is "busy." Yeah, busy crawling around on the floor looking for something to chuck at the dog's head. Or he could be going to the refrigerator, looking for a carton of milk to pull out and place in another room without our knowledge. That does take a lot of time and initiative. But no, most of the time he decrees his business while lounging on the couch, waiting for his next devilish plan to take form in his little head. Tonight, that plan showed itself in the form of putting penne noodles on Spencer's back and seeing how long they stuck there. Gotta say, those suckers just grab on and hold. There may still be one or two on there. I'm sure Nora will rectify that situation soon enough.

I Drown. I Drown in the Clutter.

2009-01-28T22:02:00.002-06:00

I know I've mentioned this before, but my house will. Not. Stay. Clean. It was spic and span last night and by 10 am today...goodbye carpet! Nice seeing you while it lasted! So long, countertops! May we meet again someday! Both of my children have made it their mission to throw every conceivable thing they come across onto the floor. Hey, it's nice to have purpose in your life.

Here are some things I've picked up off my floor in the last couple days:

A pot holder with a yellow plastic triangle stuck in it
An empty prescription bottle from 2005
A can of enchilada sauce
One of Tate's shoes, from the pair of shoes I bought him recently that he refuses to wear. He seems to think they will cause his feet to catch fire or something. The other shoe was on the windowsill. I think it was trying to escape.
One of Spencer's toenails. Yes, gross. At least Nora didn't eat it.
3000 magazines shredded into 39646903450000 pieces by Nora the Paper Eater. She seems to really enjoy purusing the lasting hoochie antics of Paris Hilton in my People magazines. Perusing, then eating.
A miniature plastic A&W mugh with a french fry and AA battery in it
A Christmas card
A paper plate from Tate's 1st birthday party in 2007

I don't know where it comes from. Well, some of it probably comes from Nora's forays into random kitchen and laundry room drawers. She's very proud of her newfound talent of opening drawers and chucking everything in them to their death on the floor. She's merciless. Many a plastic cup has met it's doom being hurled from her little paw. Gravity rocks, if you ask her.

So I push forward, through the hodgepodge of random artifacts from our life strewn about my house. One of these days I'm certain I'll find a $100 bill on my floor. I have no idea where it would come from, but I've found stranger things floating around my house. It could happen.

I asked Tate to help me pick up today and he said "No, Mommy. I don't do that kind of thing. I don't think so." Ah. Well, good to know for next time. He's been a stinker of epic proportions lately, and it's actually been wearing on me quite a bit. I won't get into details because I just don't feel like it, but I will just say this. It's amazing how crappy I feel due to judgemental people. I don't appreciate it, and I hate that I let other people make me feel like I'm doing something wrong as a mother, but there you go. I let it affect me way too much. One of these days I'll just punch someone in the face the next time they give me or my two year old child a dirty look. They'd be in a crapload of pain, but probably not surprised. I seem like the type of person to do that, I'm sure.

So next time you see a screaming, tornadic blur of a little boy running around wreaking havoc and a stressed-out, frantic mother chasing him around trying to get him to stop hitting or pinching or pushing over racks in a department store or licking the conveyer belt at the grocery store or whatever, think before you give a nasty look. I've got a mean left hook.

Photo FAIL Part 2

2009-01-26T22:00:00.006-06:00

Let's have another laugh or two at my kidlets' expense.

This is what Nora looks like after she pulls the ponytail out of her hair:

And, well....Tate.

This picture would actually be cute if he didn't have remnents of the 6 M&Ms he had eaten two hours before left on his face. Well, cute, and...kinda smarmy.

Ok, and here Nora's totally reminding me of some crabby old lady completely dissatisfied with her Blue Plate Special. She looks very disgruntled.

Ethel! This Early Bird Special sucks!!

Busy Little Bees

2009-01-24T07:35:00.002-06:00

We've had a busy week. We took a little mini-break and loaded up the kids and went to Wisconsin Dells to stay at a resort with an indoor waterpark. We went with a family that we're friends with and had a great time.

Ok, well, the drive down wasn't so hot. (You know there had to be something, right?) Sue and her kids rode with us since her husband had to work late, so we were packed nice and tight into our van, with me and Eric in the front, my kidlets in the middle and Sue and her two offspring in the back. I could hear our van groaning as we all climbed in. Things were fine for a good, oh, 10 minutes, and then Nora started getting pissed off about something. I think was the fact that she had to stare at three people she barely knew in the backseat. It was fun at first and then she realized that they weren't going anywhere and it totally threw her little world out of balance.

So after 900 hours of her screaming and smearing nose goo all over her face and hair, we decided to do something about it and pulled over to make a bottle. For some reason, this bottle was not acceptable for Her Majesty and was promptly rejected. Figuring that well, we tried, we stuck her back in her car seat and continued driving, as she continued screaming. Finally, since I knew there were three other kids in the back trying to sleep, and poor Sue probably was feeling a little ill watching Nora use snot as hair gel, I lumbered over the center console into the back. This is where I stuffed my big butt in between the two captain's chairs and squatted on the floor, facing backwards, to try and convince her to eat.

Now, this was a lot of fun. I get motion sickness really easily, so facing backwards while squatting on the floor of a moving vehicle is not really on my top 10 list of of fun things to do. At least I wasn't subjecting Sue and her kids to the lovely sight of my butt crack sticking out of my jeans. I saved that for Eric in the front seat, everytime he turned around. Plus my legs were completely asleep and I was pretty sure that my toes were turning black due to lack of circulation. But hey, as long as Nora was silent.

So we get to the resort, check into our condo, and proceed to have a lot of fun for the next two days. Well, waking up at 5 am with the kids wasn't the best part, but when you have three kids sharing a bedroom, they spend a lot of time in there plotting how to make things just a little more difficult for their poor unsuspecting parents. I kept expecting to hear little evil cackles wafting out under the door, and at some point a declaration of "...And then the world will be MINE! MUA HA HA!!" That would have been Tate, obviously.

And please give me the crappy mother award because I took about 5 pictures the whole time, and they all ended up being of a big splash of water with Tate's foot or other random appendage sticking out. I never quite got the shot I was going for. But I was having too much fun playing with the kids to be bothered to actually preserve the moment for later.

And since it's been awhile since we've had a Grocery Store Trip From Hell blurb, let's go there for a moment. I had to take both kids to the store yesterday since we had no milk or eggs or, well...food, in our house and I heard that feeding your children is generally a good idea. We walk in and Tate starts yelling for his own cart. Last time Eric had taken him, he let him push one of those little carts with the flag that states "I'm Helping!" It did not, he informed me grimly upon returning home, go well. After the 4000th time of Tate picking some random can of tuna, baked beans, or sardines off the shelf and chucking into his cart and Eric discovering it 3 aisles later and having to go back and return it to the shelf, he decided that it was not working. The shopping trip commenced with Eric pushing the big cart, pulling the little cart, and ignoring a squalling Tate tucked under his arm.

So anyway, no little cart for Tate, which of course turned into a huge protest on his part. As some random dude observed as he walked by us, Tate was "not a happy camper". Thanks, buddy. I had no idea. Even better, there were no racing car carts left where the kids could both sit in the drivers seat, so I had to use a regular cart and put Nora in the seat and Tate in the actual cart, where he promptly got completely buried by groceries. It looked like he had no legs. Although, that was actually kind of a good thing. The kid can't stand up and try to jump out of the cart when he's got 30 pounds of potatoes and apples pinning his legs down.

And the best part. We leave the store, it's sleeting out, Nora's hollering for lunch, etc etc etc. I march up to our car, wonder why the hell th remote start didn't work, haul Tate out of the cart and frantically try to unlock the back doors with the remote. Not working. I try to unlock the front doors and the back gate. Nope. At this point both kids are screaming, I'm holding on to Tate by his hood so he doesn't run away, Nora's trying to climb out of the cart, the groceries are getting wet, and I'm freaking out, yelling "WHAT THE HELL??" because obviously someone out there hates me and has tampered with my remote control. Just as I'm wondering who I could possibly call to freak out at and insist they come and help me, I look more closely at the van and realize I can see my reflection in the side of it. Which means it's clean. Which means it's not our van.

I locate our van 3 aisles over and leave. Really, what else is there to say.

Except this. If any of you live in Green Bay, have a light blue Town and Country, and go to Festival Foods on the East Side very often, you're gonna have to sell your car. It's causing me way too much confusion and consternation. Thanks a bunch.

Yawn.

2009-01-19T06:14:00.007-06:00

I'm so tired I could fall asleep like this:

Tate woke up this morning at 5 am. Sucky, yeah, but nothing I haven't done before, a bajillion times. Although it was extra special fun this morning, because he rolled over (he had crawled into our bed around 4, one of his really great, enjoyable new habits), looked at me, and burst into terrified, panicked tears. Because, you see, I am not Daddy. I'm just this horrible freak of nature known as Mommy. It took a good 45 minutes for him to stop wailing and asking if Daddy was downstairs. I kept trying to tell him Daddy was at work but apparently giving that answer earns one a kick in the shin. He finally calmed down, just in time for Nora to wake up. And the day's festivities have begun.

The crazy thing is, yesterday was worse. How could it be worse than waking up at 5 am next to a crying kid, you ask? Why, waking up at 3:50 am next to a crying kid, silly! And that's exactly what I did. Nora cut me a break and lounged in her crib til 5:30...what a pal. So Tate was awake from 3:50 til about 8:45, when he passed out on the couch as evidenced above. I was all ready to go back to sleep since Nora had gone down for an early nap but as we all know, my children do everything in their power to ensure I never get any sleep, ever. Nora woke up 15 minutes after Tate fell asleep. But get this. Tate slept until almost 2 pm. Pretty much the whole freaking day. 8:45 til 2. And Nora went down for her nap at 1:45! Another 15 minutes of silence! I know, right? My options of what to do for those glorious 900 seconds were simply endless.

So yesterday pretty much passed by in a fog for me. I vaguely remember talking to a couple friends on the phone but it's just a distant memory at this point. Pam and Nicole, if you're reading this, I have no idea what I said to you guys. Hopefully it wasn't anything more offensive and moronic than usual.

In other news, I got Tate some Elmo underpants just for the hell of it. The kid won't even look at his potty, much less sit on it, but I figured he could just kind of hang out with the underwear, they could get to know each other, forge a relationship, become confidantes, whatever. He does seem to like his little mini-briefs, and keeps trying to slip him over his head which makes for some amusing moments. He won't do it for the camera, though. Kid's too smart for his own good. He knows those pictures would be trotted out regularly at family gatherings for years to come.

He also has this toy phone that has Buzz Lightyear on it that he's obssessed with. So obssessed he can never remember Buzz's name, so we have this exchange about 35083 times a day.

Tate: "Who's that?"

Me or Eric: "Buzz Lightyear."

Tate: "Yeah! Buzz Whitehair!"

Me: "Sure."

30 seconds later

Tate: "Mommy, who is that right there? That guy, right there?"

Me: "That's still Buzz Lightyear"

Tate: "HAHAHA!! BUZZ WHITEHAIR!"

30 seconds later

Tate: "Who's-"

Me: "BUZZ. LIGHT. YEAR"

Tate: "Who is that, Mommy?"

Me: BANG BANG BANG. That's me pounding my head against the wall.

Seriously. 35083 times a day. At least Nora can't talk yet. At this point it's all squeals and growls. Which is fun too.

The four of us are going to Wisconsin Dells tomorrow to stay in a waterpark resort for a couple days. We're renting a condo with another family that we're friends with. It could be a blast, or a complete, unmitigated disaster. Sue, consider this my advance apology. Just in case it's needed. All I know is I'm wearing my kids out during the day. Like, to the point of dropping over. They'll sleep then, right? You'll see Tate climbing up the 40 steps to the top of the waterslide all by himself, over and over, pulling a 20 lb raft. Hell, Nora will do it too. Tate can run laps in the lazy river, against the currant. I'll float by with a drink in one hand and a stopwatch in the other.

We'll see how that works.

Apparently, I Suck.

2009-01-16T18:08:00.002-06:00

Tate has recently decided that I'm a big loser. Eric, apparently, is the coolest guy on the planet. I'm going to need to have a serious talk with that kid...in what world is Eric cooler than me??

But all kidding aside, it kinda sucks. I have to bribe him, threaten him, lay on him, drug him up with Benedryl, whatever, just to get him to let me have the supreme honor of changing his diaper. Apparently it can only be Daddy who gets the joy of wiping poo off of a wiggly little butt. And no, I don't drug him with Benedryl. The other things I mentioned, yes. I'm actually more tempted to take a nice gulp or eight of the B-dryl myself. I imagine the screams would be a lot more muffled that way, and kicks to me shin would be nothing but a glancing blow. Barely noticable. Ah, to be floating around in a lovely fog of blissful ignorance.

Today after Eric went to work, we had a tantrum that will be spoken of for years to come. This was DefCon 5, people. I imagine people down the block were diving for cover upon hearing what they thought was an air raid siren come wailing through their windows. No, sorry guys...just my kid sreaming, because Daddy wasn't home to put his train track back together. Apparently if Mommy touches the train tracks they will burst into flames. So this was a typical exchange:

Tate, through a stream of tears and snot. Phlegm, too: "Fix it! Fix the tracks! AAAAAHHH"
Me: "Ok, Tate, give it to me and I'll put it back together"
Tate, trying to clock me on the head with a track portion: "NOOOOOOO! JUST DADDY! ONLY DADDY DO IT!"
Me: "Well, it's me or nothin' kid" as I get up to walk away
Tate: "Mommy, fix my track, please?" I start to walk back and reach for the track. "NOOOOOOOOOO!! WANT DADDY! WHERE'S DADDY??"

Wherever he is, it ain't here. Lucky bastard. This went on for way too long and just as my head was about to explode and grant me some sweet relief from the caterwauling of a deranged two year old, he climbed into my lap and passed out hardcore. It was pretty funny, but not as funny as yesterday when he fell asleep, tipped over and went right off the couch onto the floor. Didn't even flinch.

And on the subject of these damn trains, each time you buy a new little train dude they come with a little card that has their pictures and likes, dislikes, astrological signs, ideal first date, favorite alcoholic beverage, whatever. I don't actually read the things, I just spend all day looking for a 2''x3'' card in my pit of a house. Try that if you're bored sometime. It's extremely relaxing and non-frustrating, especially when you're being trailed by a little boy yowling for the Oliver Card. It's been in my laundry hamper, my dishwasher, a shoe in the front closet, the dog's food bowl, and my underwear drawer. These dudes like to get around. If they're smart they'll start hanging out in the liquor cabinet. I'm already dreading bedtime tonight though, because he's been wanting to sleep with the Salty card and I'll be buggered if I know where the heck that thing is. It's not going to be pretty.

Oh well. He's not all craziness. He's had his usual moments of humor peppered in with the insanity lately. Like yesterday when he was playing with Nora and looked at me very seriously saying "We have to respect our friends, Mommy. They need respect." Now, if he would just learn what the word respect actually means, we'd be golden. We also bought him a stuffed monkey at the mall last week and when I asked him what the monkey's name was, he said "Ummm...Snowy." There ya go. Snowy the Monkey. I find that just very random. But wouldn't expect anything less from the little guy.

Eric's working all weekend so by Sunday night I'm sure I'll be reduced to a babbling pile of goo. Although tomorrow night is dinner and pedicures with the girls. Ahh...a shining beacon of light in my world of poop, runny noses, and general clutter, disarray and pandemonium.

She's a Nut.

2009-01-14T10:19:00.003-06:00

Nora, that is. A peanut. I just took her to her 9 month appointment and here are her stats:

Length: 27 1/2'' (45%tile)
Weight: 18# (41%tile)
Head: 46 cm (78%tile)

Ok, so she's not like freakishly small, just smaller than Tate ever was. I don't have his 9 month stats for some reason, but really all you have to do is like double whatever Nora's stats were and that was him. He was probably about 40 lbs at this point. Well, close, anyway.

But I'd like to proudly point out that although she's got a petite little frame, at least my girl is rockin' the Herculean head that we are just so proud of and famous for in my family. More room for brains, I say. Or just a really dense skull. Whichever.

Not much has been going on around here, hence the lack of blogging. Sorry. Well, there was yesterday, but that's one of those days I kind of tend to block out of my memory. Tate had been doing really well lately...being very polite, not hitting, kissing his sister, etc. I don't know how I keep falling for his evil plan, but I do. As soon as I start to believe we MIGHT be coming out of the "My Son is a Devil and Quite Mischevious, Which is a Word I'm Just Using Because I Love Him Too Much to Use a Different, More Accurate One" stage of our lives, BAM! He chucks me right back in.

We went to a playdate yesterday and while he wasn't horrible, he wasn't great either. Well, until he tried to push a kid down some steps. That went from not being quite horrible to crossing over into horrible-land. So we left. Then we had people over for dinner, and I just had a sinking feeling all day that it was not going to go well. I've learned that sinking feelings are usually there for a reason, and what do ya know, I was right. Having all these kids in his house just put Tate into overdrive. So many kids to hit! Where to start?? You could hear his little brain whirring and I kept expecting to see his eyeballs start spinning around in his sockets. He spent more time in his room than he did downstairs. Although I have to admit, sometimes I left him in there for a little longer than neccessary because it was just so...nice, having those 5 minutes to sit and not have to keep jumping up and pulling him off someone.

Oh well. My sanity is pretty much already gone. It was nice knowing it, but I'm not counting on being reacquianted with it anytime in the next decade or so. Although I've heard it's taken up residence in the Caribbean somewhere. Maybe I should go search for it there.

The Weirdness is Still Here

2009-01-06T16:45:00.003-06:00

I've been conversing with Tate quite a bit lately, as a mother tends to do with her child, and some of the things that come out of his mouth just blow me away. Some are cute, some are funny, some are....weird.

Today he was running around doing Very Important Things while I was getting dinner started. I kept asking him to shut the laundry room door so the baby wouldn't get in there and he kept kinda vaguely blowing me off (at two? Seriously?? I thought I had a good 5 or 6 years before the selective deafness really set in). Finally it came to this:

Me: "TATE! Please shut the door, honey! Mommy's busy!"
Tate: "OH MY GOSH! OK, SWEETHEART!"

Well, at least the love is there.

Also, this is just so....odd. Tate is obsessed with our grocery store. Or, as he calls it, "goo-see cah". Like, he wakes up in the morning and asks to go to the goo-see cah. Or he's eating lunch and in between bites asks to go to the goo-see ca. Lately he's been getting really specific and asking to go the "Festi-ba", which is Festival, the store by our house. This morning Eric was looking to get the demon out of the house for a bit and give me a break and he asked Tate if he wanted to go swimming. Tate replied he would much rather go to the goo-see cah.

This went on for quite awhile. "Tate, honey, Daddy's going to take you swimming! You can play in the fountains!" "NO! Want to go to Festi-ba! Festi-ba, please!" Pretty soon it escalated into a screaming toddler banging his heels on the floor pleading for a grocery store fix. It's like his version of crack. He needs a hit of the fruit department and deli counter at least once a week to keep the shakes away.

So, they went to Festi-ba. I needed milk anyway.

And good Lord, when that kid gets a thought in his head he latches onto it and does. not. let. go. He has this little card that came with one of his Thomas tracks that has a picture of Peter Sam on it. Peter Sam is this weird, kinda hickish train. But this is a synopsis of about a 10 minute chunk of my afternoon today.

Tate: "Mommy, I got a card! Look, there's a card in my pocket!"
Me: "Yep, cool!"
Tate: "Mommy, look! Is that a card? Yeah! It's a card! Of Peter Sam! In my pocket!"
Me: "Yeah, Peter Sam! He's pretty hot!"
Tate: "Hmmm....where's my card? Where'd it go? Oh, there it is! In my pocket! Mommy, it was in my pocket!"
Me: "Wow, that is totally amazing!"
Tate: "I have a card! Peter Sam is on my card! Do you have a card? I have a card!"
Me: "No, I don't have a card. I'd like a nice big glass of wine, though. You got that in your pocket, by chance?"

And on and on and on. It's like a broken record. He finally wandered into the other room, still chattering about that stupid Peter Sam and I was able to get a moment of peace to wait for the ringing in my ears to subside. All was good until I was in the bathroom daring to escape to pee, when there was a knock on the door and a little voice calling:

"Mommy? Did you know I have a card?"

You don't say.

Are You Feeling Tired? A Bit Sluggish, Perhaps?

2009-01-05T14:28:00.006-06:00

Then come and suck my family room carpet.

How's that for a random statement? Well, the reason I'm offering up my carpet for your sucking pleasure is that my dear daughter managed to upend an entire cup of coffee on it this morning. Now, I know that this is my fault. As those of you who personally know me are aware, I can usually be seen clutching a cup of coffee in my hand, desperately extracting every last ounce of caffeine out of it. Nora has obviously seen me with these cups of coffee many times and decided that it was time for her to be just like her mama. And who can blame the dear thing? Who wouldn't want to be like me? So, upon spying the full cup of cafe mocha I so brilliantly left on the floor next to the couch, she scuttled right over to it and attempted to pour it into her mouth. Unfortunately she really only managed to pour it all over her lap and the carpet. Don't worry, it wasn't hot. It was about an hour or so old.

Once I came back into the room from being gone for .05 seconds, I discovered the brown lake on my carpet and went into freak mode. We've only had the carpet for about 11 months and have narrowly escaped any huge, lifelong stains until this point. I grabbed the carpet spray stuff and dumped it all over the stain and started scrubbing madly. Ironically enough, the commercial playing on the TV as I was fervently and futilely scouring my carpet was the one for this thing:

Freakish, smug, uber-annoying gnat of a man: "Cola! Wine! COFFEE! Sham-wow works as a vacuum on your carpet!!!! Watch as it completely SUCKS the coffee out of this piece of carpet! It SUCKS right down to the bottom! You watching this, cameraman??"

Me: "SUCK THIS, BUDDY."

Tate came home with Eric in the middle of my scrubbing adventure, walked into the family room, assessed the situation, turned around and trotted back to me a minute later, cheerfully offering me a bottle of Windex. Because there there's nothing like a carpet with streak-free shine, is there? I thanked him for being so considerate, then jumped up to re-lock the cabinet under the sink where we keep the cleaning stuffm which I had very stupidly left wide open. Last thing I need is Tate trying to SoftScrub the inside of his nose or something.

Mom, I know you're reading this and hyperventilating but don't worry...I was very successful in my de-coffeeing adventure.

Also, I've decided that Nora no longer looks like David Cook with the hair and everything. No, now thanks to her latest hairstyle she bears an uncanny resemblence to this lovely fellow:

I gave birth to Gary Busey.

The Norey Dance

2009-01-02T14:25:00.004-06:00

I like this video, so all you lucky suckers get to view it too. Nora takes her rocking back and forth very seriously. Make sure your volume is turned up so you can hear Tate's devilish laugh in the background.

Ok, I have no idea how to rotate it so it's right side up. Just lay on your left side and watch it that way or something. Plus, I swear my family room isn't that messy anymore. Really.

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T14:44:00.004-06:00

Ok, I've never been one to make New Year's resolutions, mostly because I'm probably one of the laziest, easiest distracted people out there. Why set myself up for failure? But this year I don't have a choice. After trying on like 6 different shirts last night to go to a party and realizing that I looked like a whale in each and every one of them, I decided that I need to lose a little weight. Ok, more than a little. I've got the gut o' doom going on right now. Would you like proof? I'll give you proof. Why the hell not. Let's just throw it out there for the world to see.

The ciiiiiiiircle of liiiiiiiiife.

Cute picture, right? Me holding my brand new neice in the classic Lion King pose. I should be standing on a cliff in Africa, but my grandma's living room will have to suffice. So there's me who looks like I didn't bother to look in a mirror that day, and baby who of course is adorable. Then your eyes continue down and you gasp and think:

"Is Melissa 8 months pregnant?? How is that even possible when she has a 9 month baby? Look at that gut!"

Then I crawl into your thoughts and say:

"No, no, no. That's not a human baby in there. That's the recent medical phenomenon known as the Food Baby. It's made up of grease, salt, sugar and high fructose corn syrup. And there's no nine-month gestational period as with a regular baby. This one can bake in you for years. And it can spontaniously turn into twins, triplets, or octuplets. I think I shall name mine Jabba the Hut. Hopefully his twin sister Fatima will get nipped in the bud."

Well, it's either a food baby or this evil little dude making my stomach expand disgustingly. Hard to tell at this point.Feed me, bitch!

I just hate my stomach. Here is another perfectly good picture ruined by the Gut From Hell.
I just look like all kinds of out of whack there. The funny thing is, at this New Year's party I was at, just about all the women were standing around at one point comparing problem areas on their bodies and pretty much ripping their physical selves to shreds. I think it's a woman thing...we always end up either talking about our labor stories or bemoaning or lack of waistline. The guys, on the other hand, stood on the outskirts of our little Circle of Self-Hatred and guzzled beer while rolling their eyes and generally staying as quiet as possible. They know to not say anything. That's a husband thing.
But moving on. Am I the only person who thinks this is one of the funniest thing ever?

Rudolph the foot-headed reindeer.

There's nothing like artwork made from your kid's bare foot. I can't stop laughing at it. That thing is never getting thrown away because I love it.

Happy 2009, everyone. Feel free to harangue me at various points this year about keeping my resolution. If I scream at you to mind your own damn business I don't really mean it.

Mmmm...Hair.

2008-12-28T11:02:00.003-06:00

Dog hair, specifically. Nora can't get enough of the stuff. She goes on hourly hunts for dog hair that she can stuff in her mouth and savor. She's getting smart enough to realize that she can also just go up to Spencer, grab a fistful of hair, pull, and enjoy. It's like her own little drive-thru window. I should open up a restaurant for babies. I think it'd be a huge success.

"For our soup tonight we have a lovely diaper rash cream or a swirl of water from the dog bowl. The pasta tonight is day-old penne with strands of hair retrieved from inside a T-shirt. And dessert is a choice of icing licked from a cupcake, or a cough drop found on the driveway."

"Thank you, I'll stick with my butter wrapper for now, and perhaps you could just pour some apple juice down my pants."

I can't believe no one's thought of this yet. I'm gonna be rich.

In other news, Christmas was fairly uneventful. None of the shenanigans of years past, such as Eric locking our car keys in the trunk when we were 180 miles away from where we needed to be; me spilling coffee all over my white cashmere maternity sweater on Christmas morning, somehow getting it clean and then having Tate yarf all over it a couple hours later; me getting so sick while pregnant with Nora that everytime she kicked or moved I thought I was going to die; Eric breaking the window of the bedroom we were staying in (and slicing up his wrist in the process) when it was -10 degrees outside...all that good stuff.

No, the only annoying part of our travels was staying in hotels. The first night, Tate woke up from a restful slumber and decided that The Country Inn and Suites was actually The Inn of Terror and started screaming to go home. Listening to your kid yell "I wanna go hoooooome!" for literally two hours while frantically trying to shush him just a little bit so he doesn't wake the baby up is not the best way to get yourself in the holiday spirit. I bet the people in the rooms around us weren't exactly feeling goodwill towards us at that point either. The next night was better but he still tried to pull the "I'm so homesick I'm going to die" card, although that was quickly thwarted by a dip in the hotel pool and a baggie of Goldfish.

Now we have so many toys we can't fit them all in our family room. What was once our playroom is now our formal dining room (aren't WE grown up) so we have to stuff all our toys in our family room and with the tree still being up, there just ain't room to rearrange stuff or walk or stand on more than one foot at a time. I keep expecting to walk in the room and hear faint cries from Nora being buried under a mountain of Little People and Thomas the Trains. The basement WILL be getting done soon, and I'm not kidding this time. Really.

All in all, I'm glad Christmas went by smoothly. We weren't able to get home to the Twin Cities, which was a massive bummer, but we'll be back there soon. And then eventually we'll move there and I'll finally be living where I want to, after 7 years of living in places I don't particularly enjoy. And then I'll have nothing to complain about, ever.

I'm all A'Twitter

2008-12-22T13:47:00.002-06:00

I have so much crap to do. My house is full of crap, my kid feels like crap, we have to drive a hundred million miles through a bunch of crap this week, my dog crapped on my porch, and a certain baby girl smells like Cheerios and Veggie Sticks. And crap.

My house is seriously a disaster right now. I was gone all morning with the kids, and the man I married was here alone. No one hanging on him or following him around demanding stuff. And the house is messier than when I left. Nice. That's all I'm saying. I'm here alone the rest of the day with the kids, so I guess after I feed them dinner by myself and give them baths by myself and put them to bed by myself I'll tackle the house. Oh, and I'll be by myself. If we weren't having people coming into town to spend the night tomorrow I wouldn't give a dog's ass, but we are, so an ass I'm givin'.

Blah.

And I just thought of FIVE more people I have to buy gifts for. Five. So I get to brave the store tomorrow, the day before Christmas Eve, in -4697 degree weather. Why do we know so many people?

The next few days should be an adventure. I'm sure I'll have lots of stories to share so all y'all can have some fun laughing at my expense and be in awe of the continuing sharp decline of my sanity. Ah...the holidays.