Mom Guilt

I get one off to school and wouldn't you know it I am suddenly aware of how little one-on-one time I've been giving to the other. It's called Mom Guilt, if you don't have it yet, you will, give it 5 minutes.

The first day of school I decided I should take it easy. Figured walking to and from the school, while not far, might just be enough to do me in, so decided to veg while we waited for BigSpeak to get done. I sat on the couch in the playroom & told LittleSpeak to go make me some breakfast in her kitchen. She just about fell over! Pretty soon she was running back & forth bringing me play eggs and toast, coffee ("Hot!") "no milk, Juice! (only she says shews)". The whole time this was going on she was giggling uncontrollablly. She was giddy w/Mommy's sole attention. Seriously, all I was doing was sitting on the couch making sure she wasn't literally climbing the walls (no she did that the next day at the public library...you think I jest,) and it was the most exciting thing ever to her. I realized that I haven't had one-on-one time with her unless I schedule it. When I schedule it we're at a class or something, so it's not just us. Ummm, can you say mom guilt?

Every day this week, we've walked BigSpeak to school, walked to Starbucks and then headed home. We do one chore for house cleaning; dust, vacuum, mop and she helps me. She has her own duster, swifter and Dyson (play one), and I pretty sure LittleSpeak would tell you it has been the best week of her life.

Tonight I laid her in her crib and she said, "BigSpeak in kool morrow?" And I said yes, then she says, "Dada work. Mama & Little ommm." And I said, "Yes, Mama & Little stay home while BigSpeak goes to school and Dada works." "Mama & Little ommm" and she grabs my arm and hugs it.

First Day Of School

Today was BigSpeak's first day of kindergarten. Sigh. She's not a baby anymore. At 6:30 this morning she was in my room mostly dressed and asking me to cut some tags off her new dress. G'ma & Papa came & walked with us. The chaos at the school was crazy, but happy and her day was without a hitch.

Surfer Grrrls!

The one day we did make it to the beach (and some SUN) on Saturday the girls did have a blast. And as you can see from the pix it didn't really matter to the girls. In fact BigSpeak's new wetsuit ($30!, yeah consignment!) is keeping her so comfortable that she doesn't want to take any breaks. DaddySpeak didn't have his wetsuit so he kept making her take breaks because he was cold and she was not impressed at all. In that vein DaddySpeak explained the "potty protocol" with wetsuits. Like I said, "no breaks". TMI? Sorry. ;-) Cool pix below, huh?

Update from the Fire Lines

Just wanted to let you know how our friends are doing. I feel bad that I haven't updated you, but I wanted to be able to include how the fire started, and that's a very recent development.

The Bad News:

Their house is totaled.

It’s in the process of being taken down to studs (which whips up the fire smell on a regular basis). 99% of everything they owned is gone due to water, fire & smoke damage. Pix is from their daughter’s room and it makes me want to cry every time I see it. (It's a color pix, nothing was altered in the color or anything, that's just what it looks like now.)

The fire was arson & apparently the PD & FD feel they know who did it; some kid who has set other fires in the neighborhood. He’s currently detained for other things, but hasn’t been charged with this one yet. They have quite a bit of evidence so I think it’s probably a matter of time. He’s a foster kid, so I’m not sure it does anything for our friends. I don’t think there’s anyone they can sue or anything.

The Good News:

They have unbelievable insurance; their house and possessions are completely covered and there is also money for living and expenses while their out of their house. (Out for 10-12 months). They were able to rent a house on our street, which is amazingly lucky. The response of friends and family actually overwhelmed them. It finally got to the point where they had to tell people not to bring them anymore stuff. One of the other neighbors volunteered to collect the donations and several other neighbors helped with sorting, so in the end it was fine and quite a bit got donated to some very lucky charities too.

They are able to now remodel their house and update their kitchen, which was original (40 years old). Not the way you want that to happen, but it’ll be so nice when it’s done.

Emotionally they are hanging in there. They have good and bad days. I think it’ll be good once school starts and there’s more distraction to things.

The one bad thing is that now they are much farther down the street from us and I miss them a lot. I didn’t realize how many impromptu play dates we had just because the kids where playing out front.

All is well and everyone is safe and really that's all that matters.

Fun Monday--the Fire Sale Edition

Don’t know if you heard, but Northern California is pretty much aflame. Seriously, I woke up with a sore throat from all the smoke in our air. It’s bad. Really bad. None of the fires are very close to us, but the wind is working against us as far as smoke goes. And, just for the record, the beach house has a fire just a few miles from it too, so going down there isn’t much help. Thus you get the fire sale edition of Fun Monday. cough, cough

After many weeks off I decided to participate in Fun Monday again. Fun Monday this week is hosted by Hula Girl at Heart, (go check her out for more on this topic and a really, really 90's wedding dress). The topic she gave us is:

Show us those pieces of clothing you just can't part with, whether you wear them or not. It might be your grandma's vintage wedding dress, a jacket from high school, a t-shirt from an old boyfriend or those jeans you hope to get back into some day. It could be anything. Most of us have something like that we can't seem to throw away.

I was going to participate in the Fun Monday by talking about my favorite outfit, which is a teal skirt & top. I got the outfit the spring Daddy Speak & I were engaged; so it’s 8-9 years old. I love it for a lot of reasons, mostly cause it’s gorgeous and my eyes turn the same color teal when I wear it. I wore it a lot and even took my engagement photos with DaddySpeak in it, so it’s memory is well preserved to me no matter what. Once I got pregnant with BigSpeak (6 years ago) I no longer fit in it. Or at least, no longer fit in it well. I hold on to it in the hope that I will get thin enough to get back into it, although I’m pretty sure even at a size smaller than it, my hips expanded enough so that it won’t fit “right”. But I still hope, a girl‘s gotta have a dream, right? Today I decided I’m going to give up that dream. Yup, just today I decided I’m going to get rid of it. Our friends who lost their house this weekend, I’m going to pass it on to them. Well to K, I don't think D would look that good in teal, I'm just saying... They have nothing now and it’s just sitting in my closet, waiting to eventually be passed on to Goodwill. Instead it’s going to get a new life. It holds such happy memories for me, it seems fitting that it should help her move forward into new happiness.

This is not the best pix of it, but the only I could find for now. Plus look at DaddySpeak w/his long hair! Being the Rock Star he is!

Summer Vacation with a Vengeance!

This is our first week true week of summer vacation and we are at it with a vengeance!

On Monday we went to Happy Hollow. This is a park aimed at the under 5 set and is perfect for us. After 30+ years are they are gutting the place & redoing all of it starting in July, which is really very bittersweet. On one hand ,it’ll be really, really, really nice once it’s finished. On the other, this park is a place that anyone who grew up in the South Bay has visited as a child, and to have them change it now after all this time, is just sort of sad. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure, safety wise the place is a nightmare, but still, I have pictures of both DaddySpeak and I as children riding the carousel, running in the maze, climbing the fire engine….so it’s melancholy. We’re trying to get in as many visits as possible before their close date.

Yesterday, we cleaned house and then cousin S came over for a playdate; after which you couldn’t tell I’d done any cleaning. It was fine, they just built a “carnival” in the front room using every toy in the house and utilizing every inch of space in our playroom. After the playdate we headed over to one of the neighbors for slip and slide and then take out Chinese. (I love summer!)

This morning we got up and picked up the playroom (took us 30 minutes, I set the timer in 10 minute increments) then headed off to Gilroy Gardens for the day. The girls slept the entire ride home.

Tomorrow we have gymnastics and swim lessons, and Friday is Gymboree.

Whew! If we keep up this pace I’ll be a size 4 in a month!

Odd Man Out

Sigh.

Sometimes this parenting thing can be so hard. And they're only 5 and 2! I'm not sure how to help BigSpeak, she's super sensitive and not mature enough emotionally to deal with all the things she picks up on.

This afternoon we had a lovely low-key Father's Day with about 5 other neighbors at our neighborhood pool. We'd all agreed to a BYOM (Bring Your Own Meat) Potluck. BYOM is explainatory, potluck=sidedish to share. It was going great till we realized that the pool's BBQ is missing it' s propane tank. No problem we moved it to one of the neighbor's backyards. After everyone had finished eating the kids were playing inside and one of the girls announced we were getting a dance show. When the kids assembled to do the show BigSpeak hung back by the parents. I asked her if she was going to go with the kids and she burst into tears. She was so upset that I had to take her inside so I could get her to calm down. The explination I got was that she didn't know how to do what they were doing and wanted to do it at home. I told her that was fine & got her to calm down. She watched the "show" w/the adults, but was still unhappy. When we got home, as promised, we got our dance show. She beamed while dancing for just us.

I don't know if she was just:

• Overtired (likely)


• Upset because it seemed the kids had paired off & she was somewhat of the odd man out. (I think she picked up on this but may not have understood why this upset her.)


• Being the perfectionist and not wanting to do something until she knew she could do it perfectly. (This one has been a big problem in the past, and hasn't reared it's head for a while.)

I'm sure it's a combination of the 3, the later two concerning me greatly. There's so many ramifications to being a perfectionist like that. I mean, Dude, you're only 5, if you're putting this much pressure on yourself now, how are top it by age 13? And the feeling left out thing, I know it's something we all go through, but the cliquiness that has started already, it scares the crap out of me.

I just want to gather her up in my lap and hold her. She looks so much older than her barely 5YO self, and she's still such a little girl. I want to protect her from all those mean things that rotten kids will inevitably say to her, (because kids are mean and will do that,) and the snubs that will be put her direction (because she's sensitive and will wear her feelings making herself an easy target). I just want to hold her close and make it OK.

Most of the time she's such a happy, carefree little girl and it hurts me to see these types of things chipping away at that. I want to tell her it will be OK, and know that it really will be for her. How do you help your child develop a thick skin, without chipping away at that the pure innocence that believes everyone is nice?

I watch her sleep and she's still such a baby. The world is asking her to grow up too fast and I want to protect her from that.

Shhhhh......

Yeah, OK a pix of her sleeping would've been way more appropriate for this post, I agree. However, I have discovered, upon looking at my photo library, that my child rarely sleeps. Thus, I have no recent pix of her sleeping. After reading what I have to say below, you will completely understand why I am NOT going to got take a pix her right now (and risk waking her up.) I love you Internet, but a mama's gotta sleep too.

She's sleeping w/out her binky right now! I know, who would've thunk it?
DaddySpeak took her to a friends house today during nap time (I was having tea at the Fairmont, cause I'm all Fancy Nancy like that). Since we had a b-day party at 4 I made it clear that she needed to nap. That was fine, friends own a port-a-crib. They also have daughters the same age as ours, so big girls could play while little ones napped. Ahhh, but DaddySpeak forgot to bring a bink. She cried. But he was surprised at how short it lasted, less then 10 min total (and that included him going in once to make sure she wasn't climbing walls). So I was inspired and tonight at bedtime I asked her if she was ready to send them off to the Bink Fairy. I got an enthusiastic "babies", meaning that's who would get them. I agreed that the mythical babies would get her binks. That was that. I rocked her a little, but she wasn't completely alseep, I put her in her crib, gave her Sally (favorite doll), a blanket and she rolled over & went to sleep w/out a peep.

My fingers are crossed that she won't wake up at 2 AM screaming cause she can't find it.

Sigh, she's really not a baby anymore.

FIVE

Five is half a decade
Five is oh so grown up…
Five wants to watch Hi-Five & Hannah Montana, not Barney
Five can add and subtract
Five can play board and card games, and win without help
Five is smart
Five is an awareness that “I want to play with XX” means I don’t want to play with you
Five is sensitive and sweet
Five looks out for her little sister, even when her lil sis is not being all that nice
Five is worrying about others; including your mommy
Five is NOT too old to call your mom, mommy, yet
Five is one lost tooth and another ready to go
Five is kindergarten ready
Five is starting to read
Five is one year away from six which is already too old already for mommy’s taste
Five is here…and

Five is beautiful

We are so screwed

I still owe you a post about LittleSpeak turning two, which was like a month ago! And BigSpeak is about to turn FIVE this weekend!

WTH??? These damn kids w/their growing up! Grumble, grumble, grumble…

.........Night before last LittleSpeak went to the silverware drawer & pulled out this hard plastic straw (came w/some cup at an amusement park at some point,) walked over to the drawer I keep all the art stuff in and used the straw to leverage the baby lock and Open. The. Drawer.

I kid you not. Obviously, she is smarter than the rest of us.

I need a weekend from my weekend now.

I was going to write about my weekend, but once I started writing I realized how freaking boring it really was, sorry, such is life in suburbia. I'll bullet list the high lights below. And then to make it up to you, a photo I've been meaning to post.

• My back was pretty sucky all weekend long. Vicodin and my bed are my new BFFs.


• We pulled the training wheels off BigSpeak's bike (running along w/her, not one of my smarter choices.) I predict she'll be w/out training wheels full time by June 1st!


• I found a great new place for pedicures!


• We got our fence fixed!


• My neighbor (who shares the fence) came over to yell at me because her dog got out during fence fixing (somehow this was my fault) and her 90+YO dad fell looking for him (also somehow my fault.) She ruined all my good pedi vibes by making me feel guilty. Bah!


• LittleSpeak is doing her best to try and make me rethink the whole SAHM thing.


• BigSpeak has started a new line of whining and I may have to cut her tongue out.


• Got decorations for LittleSpeak's b-day next weekend: going to be a Fiesta!

Thanks for letting me vent; and now your reward.....BigSpeak playing in the backyard!

Her beauty continues to amaze me. Even if she is whiny sometimes.

Binky Ba

DaddySpeak and I are proponents of the pacifier. If you’re anti them good for you, don’t suck on one.

Our opinions about pacifiers/thumb sucking comes from the fact that there has been quite a bit of thumb sucking by the kids in our families’ till late ages (5+). While we want our babies’ to be able to sooth themselves, we also don’t want the one thing that makes them feel better to be the reason they get teased by kids when they start school. We are not big proponents of older kids using a pacifier, so we have a plan for how to “break” them of their habit. At age 2, all the “binks” go into a box and get put on the porch at night. The Bink Fairy comes and takes the binks to a baby who needs them and leaves a “gift” that is only appropriate for a “big kid”.

This worked like a charm with BigSpeak. No problem at all.

---------------------------------------

LittleSpeak has started getting really attached to her bink (aka-pacifier). (We’ve always called them binks, but she refers to them as her “ba”.) A month or so ago she started asking for her ba. Before that, she seemed like she could take it or leave it; the only time she’d ask for it was when she wanted to do something like fall asleep in a place other than her bed, like the stroller or car. Once she started asking for it at random times I realized we needed to be cognitive about limiting it.
The limiting of her ba time has been the result of many of her recent tantrums. At first, she’d get so very PISSED OFF if you told her no when she asked for it; a half hour long tantrum comes to mind. Then she started to sneak it; she’d use a kitchen chair to be able to reach the back of the counter where we keep them. She’d get one, we’d take it away. Then she started to sneak them when she thought we weren’t around. Yes, she is smart enough to not just get the bink off the counter, but to take a few extra and hide them in various places in her playroom. She is also smart enough to put the chair back so (she thinks) we won’t know she’s done this; be afraid, be very, very afraid. We’re wise to her and make her go get them and give them back. At that point, she was allowed to have the bink when she went to her crib (naps & bedtime) and if she was hurt. A week or so ago, she started purposely hitting herself and telling you she had a boo-boo, while asking for her “ba”. When that started, I decided it was time to limit it to just the crib. Another round of tantrums ensued, but we’ve substituted w/ice packs (boo-boo bunnies, etc..) and she’s begun to accept that.

DaddySpeak is still giving it to her when I’m not around. He’ll have his own demons to deal with soon.

LittleSpeak turns 2 at the end of the month. We’ll probably wait a week or two, but sooner, rather than later that Bink Fairy is going to be visiting our house. I think LittleSpeak will be very cooperative about putting them out for the Fairy, but I don’t think she’s going to be too happy that those binks don't come back.

These days, when she wants a bink she’ll tell me she’s a baby and happily pop it into her mouth.
Sigh.
She’s growing up too fast.

Motivation

Or maybe it should be titled “lack of…” cause man have I checked out over here. I have spent my entire morning reading emails, updating facebook and reading blogs, cause I’m cool like that. I just have very little motivation for work anymore, go figure.

Bad case of the senioritis. Oh well, what they gonna do? Fire me? Tank You, I’ll be here all zee week folks, be sure to tip your bartenders and waitresses.

OK, so the effort area of my brain is a bit on the mush side right now, and in that vein here’s something else that requires little effort my part (but maximum reward for you dear internets, cause truly it’s all about you.) A little photo story, bout a girl & her dawg.

Just Hanging Around	Uh Oh! Here Comes Trouble!
Trouble Has Arrived!	Maybe she won't notice me.
Girl & Her Dawg!	Here comes the love!
Too Much Love	There better be a treat in it for me!

OHMYGAWD! I know you don't really care, but dude I can not tell you how much time I just spent working on that damn table so those pix & captions would layout correctly! I do web stuff, so posting a table, not normally a big deal, but OH.MY.GAWD! Apparently there's a bug in blogger related to table and even though I found the info and correct fix for it in the blogger groups it still took me like two hours to really get it to post correctly. I'm not kidding.

See internet I do love you.
I have to also comment; when we first got Merit, she was not a "kid" dog. We worked hard w/her to get her over that. However, she prefers the adults or bigger kids even knowing that the little ones are really the key to the "food train." Of course, DD2 is in lurve with all animals, especially Merit. Merit has been a very good sport (DD2 is the food train after all) but she doesn't have to enjoy it; as you can see here. Merit's expressions crack me up. I know that she and DD2 will be best buds and at some point it will become clear that Merit has become DD2's dog more than mine.

Cleaning House, so to speak

Big News

And now for the most anti-climactic moment of the month…da, da, da, DA! I quit my job today! No, this is not a joke, April Fool’s is tomorrow. I know big surprise. My last day will be April 24th and then, God help us, I will officially be a Stay at Home Mom (SAHM). Right now I’m flying high on my "giving notice excitement" (I love giving notice, it’s such a sense of freedom!) I’m sure two weeks into this, I’ll be begging for them to take me back (I don’t think they’ll want me). DD2 turns two 3 days after I do this, so I will be staying at home right after my kids are done with their baby years. I think that means I’m doing this for them vs. for me.

Oh, yes, and for my love of you internets. You will benefit from more posts and I imagine more fodder for posts. All that time with the two year old, what else could come from it?

………………

Computer Issues (AKA Death vs. Taxes, I may just choose death)

Yesterday, I finally sat down to start our taxes, don’t want to rush into anything you know. It took me two hours to ascertain that the computer can not locate last years return. BAH!

I don’t know if you remember a couple months ago we had a big storm that knocked out our power (and our back fence, which also is still jimmied together, I see a theme emerging). The resulting power surge killed our CPU. It was fine, we have like 4 hard drives backing everything up 2-3 times. Seriously. We pulled out an old CPU which was loaned to us by a friend.

In Silicon Valley everyone pretty much has extra computers, parts and
accessories around their house. Seriously, it’s part of our geek code
here.

So that was all fine, right? Well other then photos we really haven’t tried to access the old files too much and last night when we did, I can’t find the one I need, of course. But hey, the text for my wedding invites, no problem. So I’m pretty sure I also saved this file on my laptop, which is having WiFi issues since we returned from our Cabo trip. Fine, I’ll lug it up the stairs and plug it in to the modem MANUALLY. The humanity of it! In the process of doing this, I found that the laptop is having driver problems (I suspect it may actually be Vista problems, but I don’t know for sure) and can not locate any networks anywhere at anytime. What I do know is that I will now have to spend some time on the phone with someone from Bangladesh and it's going to suck! Fun that I am so looking forward to. I also managed to set it up so that the CPU was not talking to the modem for a while as well. Big Fun! I love playing IT geek when I NEED to be doing something else. After two hours of all of this, I did finally get the CPU talking to the Internets again, but I was done. I loaded some pix to our Google photos and called it a day.

Tonight I get to re-enter all our personal information to start our taxes for this year.

And to really spice things up on Friday, I'll probably call Bangladesh. I'm just saying...

So how was your weekend?

Since I loaded some new photos I’ll share. This is my favorite of both of them together. Taken in Feb., when the outlaws were visiting.

Things I love--AKA Love Thursday Style

Meet Pancho & Speedy

(need I say more? Yeah, we'll be sending out Cinco De Mayo cards this year.)

Advanced For Her Age

She ain't giving up that bink w/out a fight either!

DD2 is hit a new level this week. She’s become a complete TWO YEAR OLD. Why yes, she does have several months before her official birthday, so she must be advanced for her age.
OMG has she stepped it up. Her fuse is so short! She can’t stand it if you tell her “no”, she will immediately throw herself on the floor kicking and screaming. Doesn’t matter what it’s about, we are merciless and her life, it is tragic. Yes, at 21 months, her life it is already a tragedy, because her mean, mean mother will not let her have a cookie 10 minutes before dinner. I still haven’t hit this status with DD1. You know what they say about each kid being different? Like night and day folks. The biggest milestone she’s passed this week is that she will now promptly do exactly what you told her not to do. People w/no kids would call it "asserting her independence." Tonight it was about climbing on the leather cubes/tables. We have these in lieu of a coffee table, so the kids won't crack their heads open on them. No one told me we needed to get all the neighbors to get rid of their driveways too. New hobby of hers; climbing on everything she can & standing up! She likes to be TALL! She wants a matching scar above her other eye. Mommy is not impressed. So tonight, I catch her pulling herself up onto one of the cubes and I tell her to get down. This isn’t news to her, we’ve had this conversation before, almost daily this week in fact. She responds by STANDING UP! Because she’s independent and smart! I change my tone and tell her to “get on her tush” and get down. She ignores me. I walk (quickly, because I’m not in the mood for another trip to the emergency room) and pick her up and give her a time out. (Time out for her consists of being straped in her high chair and moved to the next room. I set a timer so they hear the beep when the time out is done, she gets a one minute time out, because she is one. However, by the end of this little episode, I decided she had more than graduated to 90 seconds; being advanced and all.) After the timeout she gets down, walks over to her sister and (insert any one of many negative behaviors here) bites, scratches, hits, pulls hair… her. She immediately gets another time out. After this timeout I make her apologize to her sister, which she does. She then she walks back over to the cube. She watches me watch her do this. She reaches to pull herself up (watching me) I tell her she’s going to get another timeout. She responds with a grunt/screech-like sound of displeasure. Lovely child. She continues to pull herself up I count “One!” She pulls herself some more, now on her stomach on the cube, still smiling at me. “Two!” and I start to walk over, she pushes herself off, smiling. I tell her, “You do it again & you’ll get another time out.” (God, I sound like my mother.) She sort of grunts her understanding, then she puts her hand on the other side of the cube, watching me the whole time and smiling. You can see the wheels turning in her head, “Hmmm, is this pushing your buttons yet mama?” You know all those things you wish for your child when they’re growing inside of you? To be smart, independent, a leader, creative, funny…Not so much what you’re looking for in your toddler. I’m just saying.

Yes, of course, I got pictures so I can scrapbook this event!

I spent my afternoon of free time in the local ER w/DD2. It was one of those stupid accidents, are there any other kind? We were walking DD1 to a neighbor’s house to play & in their driveway she tripped and fell. (You should see the driveway!) Not sure if she actually tripped on something or not, she’s 20 MO they fall a lot, you know. She turned her head just right so that she landed face first and used her eyebrow to catch herself. Her eyebrow was less then pleased. I was initially relieved that she didn’t knock out a tooth. She had obviously given herself a good knot on her head and after cleaning her up (quite a bleeder) we went home where I made her lunch. She seemed fine, was quite happy & joking around in fact. But the damn cut wouldn’t stop bleeding. It wasn’t gushing or anything, just every couple minutes I’d have to press it w/a cloth so the blood wasn’t dripping into her eye. Your welcome, eating breakfast were you? You should know better than to do that while reading my stuff by now. Once an hour had passed & it was still bleeding I decided to call the advice nurse; I knew it was more likely than not that they’d tell me to come in, but I also thought there was decent chance they’d say they don’t butterfly a child at that age or something and as long as she was acting fine then she was fine. Of course I told me to come in. In fact I was directed NOT to got to urgent care, but to go to ER. Great.
Luckily the hospital was relatively slow when we got there. We did end up having to wait for an hour and a half in the beginning (I think we got screwed in a receptionist shift change) but once I decided to allow DD1 carte blanch at the waiting room they got us in right away. Yes, I was that mother. In my defense I had pretty much run out of tricks to keep her entertained and seated after an hour an a half. Whatever, it worked. We didn’t even see a doctor. The nurse practitioner took one look & said stitches for sure.

Me: “Really? Can’t you glue it? It’s so small.”
Nurse: If it were anywhere else we probably would glue it, but by the eye we don’t use the glue. Plus being right at the beginning of her eyebrow we’d be messing w/the hairs & it’s really best left alone.
Me: So you’re basically going to give her a shot in her eye, right? (I'm thinking of the therapy this is going to cost me later in life.)
Nurse: We’ll numb it first, and we’ll strap her down to a papoose board.
Me: Trust me the board will be the worst part of it. She can’t stand to be confined. I can’t overstate how much she hates to be strapped down.
Nurse: That’s typically it’ll be fine.

So they put some gel on the cut to numb it, and in the end didn’t do a shot, only the gel. She ended up with two stitches. It was big enough for three, but the nurse decided the other two pulled it together well enough and a third is just that much more opportunity for scarring. Here's the real kicker; she didn’t cry. Yes, you read correctly. Remember I mentioned before that she doesn’t cry at shots (neither of my kids do), well she didn’t cry at this either. In fact, I spun the situation so well with her (yes, I am taking the credit for this thankyouverymuch) that she was cooing through the whole thing at me & the 2nd nurse who was holding her head still. No shite! I swear! I honestly wish I’d had a video of the thing because it was amazing. When we left, the nurses were in the back telling all the others about it because they’d never had a kid be not just so calm, but actually happy during something like that. I made a big deal out of the fact that she was getting to lay on a big girl bed (the ER beds) and she ate that up. Then they brought the board in and she was interested in what was going on, so they told her they were going to wrap her up w/blankies so she would stay warm. When they started, one of the nurses said something about becoming a baby burrito and I told her they were going to wrap her up like we do Baby S & Baby G, my friend’s twins. I told her we were going to pretend she was a baby. Well let me tell you, she lurved that!!! (She loves babies.) She cooed through the rest of the procedure. As they stitched her eye I stroked her face & told her how proud I was of her & what a big, brave girl she was, just like DD1. I couldn’t have said anything better, she was thrilled with herself. I have a feeling this is the first of many of these types of ER visits in her future. I hope I’m wrong, but I told DaddySpeak “I think this is our hockey player.”

Rock Star

I've been meaning to share some video with you. Ever since we got the Cannon TX1 (love it!!!) we've been pretty good about getting those kodak moments on video as well as photos. You're just getting video on here now because I am lazzzzzy. But you knew that already.

As a side note, if you're considering a new camera, but think this is too expensive, consider this: you can sell your regular digital camera & video camera on ebay or something to offset the price. Once you have this you won't need those anymore cause this one will take the place of both, I promise. (They should pay me or something.)

I'm looking for one of the baby (who really isn't a baby anymore) cause she has the most awesome toddler/baby giggle right now, but until then here's a good one of the my BIG girl who is starting kindergarten in September. Oh. My. God. Just shoot me now. It seems like I just brought her home from the damn hospital last week. Damn kids and their growing up.....grumble, grumble.



This is an original composition by her. Like the way she already knows to turn her back on the camera cause she's the star? Oh, and dig her moves, she gets that from her mama (singing voice from daddy.)

FUN Monday (whee!!!)

Whee! Are you having fun yet? I’m a little delirious about now, this cold is getting to me.
Ok, well I’m actually NOT having fun right now. I was all excited to share my pet photos with you and guess what?! Remember that CPU that got fried from the power outage on Friday? Um yeah. We didn’t lose the photos, we have them backed up in like 4 hard drives, but we don’t have a working CPU to access them right now. Yes, I could hook them up to this laptop, but that would take a while and I’m really don’t have the energy to get that involved in it. So I have some photos they just aren’t as recent as I had hoped and they won’t include our neighbors dog either. You'll have to settle for some old pix for now. Sorry deal with it, you're getting two posts in one day, don' t push it ok? ;-)
So Lisa over at Lisa's Chaos is hosting Fun Monday this week, here's her topic:
Let’s meet your pets. I think most of us have at least one pet and I would like to see your fluffy or scaly pal. If you don’t have a camera you can tell us about him/her/them. If you don’t have a pet tell us about a pet you had or a pet you want. If for some weird reason you hate all animals we want to know why gosh-dang-it.
Ok Lisa, you asked for it:
My mom (and quite possibly my husband) would tell you I bring home every stray in the county, which is totally not true (only the cute ones). I do, however, love my babies. I’ve had a pet of some sort for most of my life, mostly dogs, but after my teen years I started with my kitties too. In college (the dorms) I suddenly didn’t have any pets and boy did I miss them. After college & the dorms, there was a kitty who lived in apartments with me. I had this kitty for 7 years and there was a lot of drama involved with this kitty, A LOT OF DRAMA. But any story involving that kitty is a series of posts and in the not all happy, (he had what they call "behavior issues") so we’re going to focus on happier times and the current babies.

Once I purchased my first home (by myself) I got Merit. Merit is 7 now. When I got her I worked at an ad agency which allowed you to bring your dog to work. Quite possibly one of the best places I'll ever work. We dubbed Merit, “Director of Dog Services” and she l became the department mascot. She learned tons of tricks while I worked there. I’d go to a meeting with her sleeping under my desk and come back to a monitor filled with post its notes of all the people who came & got her and took her places. In turn I had a “cookie jar” of dog treats on my desk and on Mondays I would put a post it on the top describing our trick of the week. She wasn’t to get treats unless she earned them. As a result of this Merit knows how to do the following: sit, down, come, shake, high-five, play dead (roll on her side), drop (whatever is in her mouth, including food), wait (when she's eating we make her stop and take food from her, so she won't get food aggression), heel (although she’s pretty rotten about that one if she thinks she can get away with it), bed (get on her bed), find “daddy” (or mommy, or either of our kids), crawl (we call it sneaky-sneaky), and hold, which involves holding a piece of food on her snout until given the command of ok, at which time she’ll flip the food into her mouth. (When we had Mowry we had them trained to do it in tandem). Yeah, I could go on and on about Merit she’s my baby. I choose this pix (taken in Oct) because it reminds me of how much of a part of our family she really is, as usually she's right in the middle of the action.
This is Mama. A few years back I was feeling a bit maternal. Daddyspeak and I had gotten married, purchased our first home together, etc…but I wanted a kitty to snuggle with again. I went to the Humane Society to adopt a kitten. While I was waiting they were asking people to come hold the older cats and someone handed me Mama. What a snugger! She chose me right there and then. When it got to be my turn I found out that the last girl kitten had just been adopted, but I couldn’t help myself I was already in love with Mama. She was 2 at that time, so that makes her about 9 (wow, I just realized how old she is, I haven’t really thought about it in a while!) Mama runs the show. She allows the kids to pet her and generally just moves when she is done with them. She’s still very much a lap kitty.
The last of my brood is Monkey. Yes, I know that’s an odd name for a cat. (My mom has a cat named Mouse, so Monkey suddenly isn’t so weird is it?) After getting Mama I was still feeling maternal & wanting a kitten so we went to the one of the local rescue groups and adopted Monkey. Her original name was Samba, as they named all the kitties in her litter after different dances. Monkey was a teeny, tiny kitty for a very long time. (Part of why Mama kept her name as Mama seeing as she was the bigger of the two.) One day when I got up from sitting on our bed and she launched herself onto my back in play. She was so little it didn’t hurt and it was funny as all get out (I imagine she looked a lot like small backpack) and I called her “Monkey-cat” and it just stuck. She’s much bigger now. I n fact, I just told her the other day I was going to change her name to “Fatty” for obvious reasons. She’s very much my cat & tends to follow me around the house. In fact, she won’t go to bed until I do, so she’s sitting next to me right now. Occasionally, she’ll meow at me cause she wants to go to bed & I’m taking too long. Monkey is surprisingly, also really good with the kids. Monkey’s always been a bit skittish and tends to go hide when new people are around or if someone is just moving too fast; like kids will do. But lately she’s decided she likes the attention and now that DD2 really understands how to scratch her she’ll go looking for her for some lovin’. Mama & Monkey mostly get along, but occasionally get into spats where we’ll have to separate them & reintroduce them to each other. They’re like to old ladies who get sassy with each other once in awhile, but most of the time (even when they supposedly aren’t getting along) we’ll find them sleeping all curled up with each other.
I guess my novel gives you an idea of how much I love my babies. This is inspiring to maybe have a weekly post about my babies or maybe more directly about my family. Hmmm…no promises, but I’m thinking about it.
Alright, I’ve typing for so long now that I’ve missed Fun Monday and this will be posting on Fun Tuesday! Monkey’s meowing at me again so I’m off to bed!

X-mas-y Type Things.

We decorated on Sunday, and at the beginning I had lots of helpers.

(Please note we have given the living room to the kids as a playroom, my whole house is not full of toys, you're pretty much seeing all of it. And yes, we do have way too much, a good portion of which is hand-me- downs.)

Why yes, that is a life size Barbie in the background, you mean you don't have one?

I made a huge deal about putting the star on the top of the tree the first year for DD1 and now I may have created a monster. We let DD1 put it on, but then had to stage a second round for DD2. The annual Staging of the Star!

DS decided the star needed straitening, but DD2 wasn't going to be left out of that either.

This incident should've clued us into the upcoming accident on Tuesday in which she pulled a chair onto her face, but that's another story. (Thankful no permanent damage, just to my ego and her trust I'm sure.) Right now my child and I are so bruised up I'm sure CPS is on their way over.

The kids had to go to bed before we were done, so near the end, not so much on the helpers Even Merit crashed out.
Monkey was providing help of her own kind. I’m sure she’ll do her best to scale the tree in the next week.

And finally the end product! (I kinda like blurry one, it's all artsy...work with me here people!)