IT'S ALIVE

Have I mentioned that I have an ALIEN growing inside of me?

We have now hit the point at which it’s not just kicking (and punching don't forget the punching!), but more (seemingly) deliberate movements involving things that go across my entire midsection. Quite the show. And it’s been going on since last night—the child does not sleep.

An Alien.

Finished!!! (sort of)

Daddyspeak (DS) and I went out for his b-day on Saturday night. (Yes, it was a couple weeks ago. We like to drag these things out.) Actually, my gift to him was tickets to see Dave Attell (that should give you some insight into our version of humor), so we turned it into a “date” and went to dinner too. Very exciting stuff for us.
Toddlerspeak (TS) spent the night w/G’ma & Papa. It turned out to be a banner night because her cousin came over to play. (I don’t think she missed us too much.)

I got up in the AM, (sort of the AM, OMG! we got to sleep till 10!!!!!) and finished painting her closet doors. I was all ambitious at first, thinking I’m going to paint both girls rooms (yeah, right). Honestly, I was probably lucky to just get the flowers painted on her closet. I haven’t taken pix of the finished room, yet. But I will this week (I promise) and I’ll post them too!

It looks really cool!

I thought it might be an appropriate time to post the pix of TS from last weekend when I had to paint 5 coats of yellow on the damn doors. But she looks damn cute.

So happy, “paining her woom” That’s a hair clip on top of her head, she insisted on wearing one so she could be “samies” with mommy.

So pretend it’s like February 15 or something

I wanted to write this one on V-day or right after but wanted to post the pix with it and was too (lazy) busy to get the pix off the camera. However, Daddyspeak (DS) finally stepped up and now I can give you the story w/the pix.

On February 13 when I dropped Todderspeak (TS) from daycare they had lists of all the kids’ names so we could bring valentines in the next day for the party. (Grrrr….they could’ve given us a little more time, we are working parents after all.) So I was bitching about it to my SIL during work and she says, “You know the teachers want you to write friend instead of the kid’s names so passing them out will go faster.” Um, ok, no I didn’t know that. (I get why the teacher would want that, but man is that lame!!! The kids are getting good & sugared up from the party anyway, so it’s not like you’re going to get anything done anyway. But I digress...) so when I picked TS up that day I asked one the teachers about it. Teacher says, “No big deal, we can write the names if you want, or you can write them, or you can write friend, it’s all good.” My point being that I had a conversation with one of the teachers about the whole deal and you’ve now heard the extent of what I was told.

So I get TS some v-day cards, standard stuff from when we were kids. They had some Mickey Mouse ones on sale at Walgreen’s. Cool, age appropriate even. I forgot about filling them out until I was on my way to bed & making sure my purse, keys, etc…were on the table by the front door. Crap. So I stayed up for an extra half an hour & filled the damn things out. Gave them to the teacher in the AM when I dropped TS off, along w/the strawberries we got for the party. (I figure if I’m bitching about the food the other parents are sending with their kids for breakfast/lunch, I should at least be contributing something healthy to the party, right? The rest of the sign ups for the party were things like: candy, cupcakes, cookies, oh and fruit, right…guess how many parents signed up to contribute fruit?)

So when I pick up TS as the end of the day, she got this cute little “hat” and “basket” they made for the party. (The segue-way art projects from last week.) Her basket is filled with her “loot”. I didn’t think much of it, just figured it was the leftovers from the party more or less. So we get home & I start pulling the stuff out of her basket; all of the other parents did “goodie bags” for their kid’s valentines. There’s a card in there too, but they all brought candy & toys bagged up w/the card! Grrr…..NO ONE TOLD ME!!! I mean my kid is only two, so I didn’t expect the kids to really even pass out valentines yet, much less something like this!!! It looks like maybe one other little girl did what we did—just a plain lame card. But who knows maybe her card just fell out of the goodie bag it came in. So I was that parent this holiday. I HATE THAT!!! I am NOT that parent. (Oh, but apparently Internet, I am right now.) The thing is, I get it, I just didn’t think I needed to be getting it yet! I guess I just Thank God that TS isn’t old enough to know (or care) that her mom is indeed that lame. AND that this won’t affect her social standing in school yet.

TS in her hat with some of her loot.

Feed the Addiction

So I have this horrible headache this morning. Gee….you think in might have to do with the fact that I only got like 4 hours of sleep? I hit the snooze way too many times, of course. (Really what’s the point? If it’s going off every 5 minutes it’s not like you’re getting any extra sleep? Why then do I continue to do it?) Babyspeak (BS) was kicking my butt yesterday, (well really all week) and it was really getting me down.

But today is a new day.

I’m actually in a pretty good mood, (headache and all). Why you ask?

Well for starters, Toddlerspeak (TS) got up on her own this AM (benefit of hitting snooze too many times). When she does this she’s pretty proud of herself, “I get up by myself mama!” And the result is that she’s (usually) pretty cooperative; the case this AM. No fighting over getting dressed or breakfast or hairdos—so nice. Lots of hugs and “I wuv you mama”—even nicer.

Another reason I’m in a good mood; it’s my Friday. The benefit of working part-time: I have Fridays off! I’ve started planning my day of (relative) freedom (I’ve got TS w/me after all, but that’s the point) on Wednesday. Not sure yet if we’re going to the park or the mall yet, but we’re going. Maybe both—I’m good like that.

Lastly, the real reason I’m a good mood; as we were driving to daycare I noticed, OUR STARBUCKS IS OPEN!!! OMG, need I say more? I can walk to Starbucks from my house! Let us all pause now and give thanks over this small slice of perfection that life has directed to my neighborhood.

Make mine a Vente, single, non-fat, no-whip mocha, Please!!!

Maybe we should name the baby Fibro

I’m having trouble sleeping these days. I know nothing really new. I’m just admitting to it (for a change). I attribute it to BabySpeak (BS), and I know my uncomfortableness is because she’s really good at getting onto my:
A) Bladder (makes me have to pee ALL. THE. TIME. )
B) Main artery (cuts off my circulation so that either my extremities are falling asleep and/or I’m having major headaches and dizzy spells. Yes, even while laying down.)
C) Either my stomach or my intestines or something like that (makes me nauseated.)

I have lots of experience with this whole deal. (The lack of sleep.) It’s one of the major symptoms of my Fibro. And while BS is probably the major cause of my lack of rest, I think my Fibro issues might be contributing just a little bit too.

So what do I do? I avoid going to bed of course. Do I do something useful with this time? Like cleaning the house? Maybe the filing I need to do (so we can do our taxes), some ironing would be good. Or I know, I could update my blog. Noooo, dear internet I do not do any of things. Someone who is really good at avoidance has a pattern and just like anyone in denial I’m right there. No I spend this valuable time (that I should be SLEEPING) playing solitaire & hearts. Poorly.

I am Yellow’s Bitch

I painted the closet doors in my daughter’s rooms this weekend. My intention is to have them match the walls, which are yellow. The top of the walls have a pattern of scallops: in Toddlerspeak’s (TS) room these are pink; in Babyspeak’s (BS) (should I be calling her Fetusspeak (FS) until she’s actually born?) they’re in purple. I want to paint flowers on the closet doors, also in the corresponding pink and purple, but I needed the background color first. (Yes, I know Internet I owe you pictures of this, maybe tonight. I'm a tease like that.)

The point of this whole post: TS’s closet doors took FIVE COATS OF PAINT!!!! Daddyspeak realized what a pain these things were (mostly cause he was having to entertain TS all day while I worked on this) and added texture to BS’s doors (and painted them too--wahoo!!) and they only took the normal two coats. THANK GOD, or I’d still be painting them I think.

Turns out yellow is a really hard color to paint with because it’s so light (at least this yellow is). I don’t ever recommend using yellow in your house. EVER.

Pucker Up

I think I’ve mentioned before that Toddlerspeak (TS) goes to speech therapy? Yeah, she’s only 2.5, but there’s history of it in the family so when she seemed to obviously understand and communicate without her vocabulary continuing to expand verbally, and since she wasn’t mimicking at all, we had her tested.
Turns out she doesn’t use the muscles around her lips to make her sounds. (Uses her tongue & teeth.) She also doesn’t use them to suck (like through a straw). Testing also found that she has “poor” muscle control of her tongue (which I think is weird considering that the way she makes the sounds she has is by using her tongue & teeth.) Anyway, she’s been going for many months now and is making great progress. You wouldn’t know she has any issues on this front at all. We’ve even progressed to working on specific sounds as her muscle control/development is getting on track. It’s a big step, and in case you’re curious, we’re currently working on “P”.

To help develop these muscles we have “exercises” we do; using a tongue depressor we put it on the sides/top/bottom/front of her mouth & get her to touch it (push on it) with her tongue. We wrap the end of it w/dried fruit (a.k.a. –fruit roll ups) for motivation. She gets to eat the roll up off the depressor when we’ve gone through our drill. We also blow bubbles. Because of her lack of motor skill in this area she doesn’t make an “O” with her mouth when she blows. If you don’t pucker when you try to blow bubbles you pretty much don’t get any bubbles (not so effective). Sometimes we use a straw to help her blow (and get the general shape) and sometimes I’ll put my hand around her chin and “help” her pucker, kinda give her “fish lips”. She’s not real keen on you doing the helping, but as she’s getting that it works better that way, so lately she’s more inclined to let you.

Last night for Daddyspeak’s (DS) b-day I made him a pie. We put a candle in it for him to blow out. Being 2, TS was all over this and wanted to “help”. She sat in DS’s lap and he let her blow it out. Her first two tries, not much and we looked at each other trying to decide how long we should let her go at it. (Usually there’s a crowd for this sort of thing and everyone kind of blows it out at the same time.) Then she grabs her own face to make the “fish lips” and starts blowing. We both just about fell over trying not to laugh out loud. But it worked, and we cheered like crazy. I just wish I had a picture of it to share with you. Hopefully, my version gives you a good visual.
So in that spirit, pucker up Internet & Happy Valentine’s Day!

Happy Birthday to the Old Man!

Today is Daddyspeak’s b-day! We spent the weekend celebrating. In my family, you celebrate your b-day on a surrounding weekend, but you MUST at least have cake with others (if you’re not doing something to celebrate w/your friends then family members will show up) on the actual date of your birth. This means that a birthday usual manages to manifest itself into like 3 celebrations of sorts. No exception here: family dinner & celebration on Friday, friends over for dinner & cake on Saturday and tonight I’m making some of DS’s favorites tonight.

Happy Birthday Honey! I love you old man!

Meet Fred & Wilma

For the first 4 years of our marriage, Daddyspeak (DS) and I had an extra-long “Full” sized bed. We share this bed with two cats and at that time one dog (the other dog never got in bed with us). Not a lot of room to move around. If you wanted to roll over you would “spin” in place. (Hmmm, wonder why I have sleep issues….) One of the things we agreed, when we moved into this house is that we would pony up and purchase a “real-sized” bed. We now have a California King. Honestly, at first I wasn’t that crazy about the size. I kinda wished we had gotten the Queen. I know, I’m insane (you’re just realizing this?) But I was used to having DS right next to me and at first it was like I’d get into bed and be like, “Where are you? Oh, all the way over there.” Also, this bed sits so high (and the dogs now have such nice dog beds) that we’re only sharing with the cats. So it was like we almost had too much room.
Don’t worry I got over it. I like it now. (What I don’t like are making it and buying linens for it. Can you say expensive?)
Of course, I’ve managed to find a way to make it not seem so large. I’ve hit the point in my pregnancy where I need some “support” at night to sleep. So I pulled out the infamous body pillow. I stick it between my knees (helps support my hips,) and under my stomach (obvious support issue). This go around I’ve also found that my back doesn’t seem to bother me so much if I put a large (king-sized) pillow on my backside so I don’t end up on my back. For those of you who don’t know, when you’re pregnant you’re supposed to sleep on your left side. Depending on the size & placement of your baby, laying on your back or right side can potentially restrict blood flow in your major artery. (Note: sleeping in one position is really hard to do from the perspective of actually getting your body to stay that way & it’s hard on the parts that are supporting all your weight.) During my first pregnancy I named the body pillow “Fred”. It’s so big, it seemed like it ought to have its own zip code, much less a name! Since we’ve added to the family this go around I figured I’d name the other one (somewhat smaller in stature,) Wilma seemed appropriate.

Fred and Wilma have made their appearance this week. They’ll be joining us for the next 3 months. I’m sleeping much better for it, but I think DS is feeling a little pushed out.

Meet Fred, my late night buddy.

You a good mama. I wuv you

Sometimes I feel bad, cause I feel like I’m constantly bitching about Toddlerspeak’s (TS) rotten behavior. The reality is that she’s a really good kid—better then most (and I’m not just saying that cause she’s my kid.) She really is a “rule follower” so we’ve been lucky in the fact that if you tell her, “That’s the way it is”, she tends to go along. I think that’s part of why the “boundary pushing” of late has been so hard on us. Up until now we haven’t really had to deal with it. Most kids work their way up to this level, but she seems to have gone from 0-3 year old in no time flat. (Almost like she skipped those 2s!)
On that note, I wanted to relay how sweet she can be too. This morning while I was getting ready for work she was rambling on and on. I can’t really tell you what she was talking about, I may have asked her what she was going to do today, “pay with papa! Cowor!” (a.k.a.—Play w/Papa, Color!) But she had a lot to tell me, so I was nodding and grunting at all the appropriate times. All the sudden she goes, “I wuv you mama.” And hugs my legs. “You a good mama. I wuv you.” Jeez, TS I love you too.

Taken in March 05, by a professional

One of those days

I’ve been feeling sluggish (for lack of a better word) all weekend. The baby is sitting low and putting a lot of pressure (a.k.a.—it’s painful) on my lower ligaments, which in turn are putting additional pressure on my lower back (including my sciatica). Plus Toddlerspeak (TS) has been big on pushing limits, just to keep us jumping. So when I left work yesterday I was really looking forward to my yoga class. (I always feel so much better after.) I’m sitting on this frontage road by work, on my way to the freeway, and the light changes to green. I’m like 4th in line. The cars in front of me start to roll, and the train goes by next to us and blows it’s horn, so of course, everyone stops. Everyone, but the guy behind me, who RAMS INTO ME! Luckily, we’d been at a full stop, so no visible damage to my car. But damit, it spilled my mocha all over, and it kinda shook me. I called Daddyspeak (DS) to see what he thought about me still going to yoga. I felt kinda irresponsible going, but at the same time I really wanted to & if I was going to be sore it wasn’t going to happen for at least 24 hours, right? He thought that I should just mention it to the teacher & see what she thought, but since it wasn’t bad enough to damage the car or anything it was probably fine. Good, at least I’m irresponsible with someone else agreeing with me, right?

So last night TS ends up have nightmares ALL NIGHT LONG. Every hour and half to two hours she’d wake up crying & be completely inconsolable. She yells out in her sleep all the time & we leave her alone. But last night she’d wake up really upset, full tears, the whole deal, and want to be held to fall back asleep. By 6:30 this AM I was wiped out. I ended up deciding to see if I could get her to sleep a couple extra hours & took some sick time. So I showered, dried my hair strait, etc…(she slept the whole time BTW!) So, by the time I got to work I was feeling pretty good. Radio was playing good music, it’s going to be in the low 70s today (I love CA), no traffic at that time of day…. I turn by the Starbucks in front of work & there’s a space: Right. In. Front. What great karma? Figure I’ll get my coffee & drive into the garage at work with it, won’t have to take the elevator twice. So I get my mocha & it’s perrrrr-fect! Yum! (The barista told me I looked great, like I’d lost weight. Hee, hee—told you I look better with strait hair. I’m 7 months pregnant next week; I don’t think I’ve lost any weight. I hope not or my dr. will really yell at me today!) So I get in my car & as go through the driveway to the parking garage my drink bounces out of the holder onto the floor in the back. All 20 oz! Mocha chocolate from Starbuck stains—really bad! The rug in our car is gold. Nice. DS is going to KILL me. Now I really need a mocha! (Yes, I went & got another one. Duh. But they asked what happend & compped me. :)

So after my dr. appointment today I will be hitting the car wash to have my carpet shampooed. Then I will be hitting it with the Costco bottle of Oxyclean we have at home in hopes of getting the stain out. I’m trying to be positive about it. It could’ve been worse; if it had bounced the opposite direction it would’ve landed INSIDE my purse.

I’m still in a good mood. My hair is strait & it’s going to be 70+ degrees today—how bad of a mood could I be in?

OMG! We were THAT family this weekend!

Kinda had a rough weekend. I mean overall it was fine, Toddlerspeak (TS) has just really hit her stride (God, I hope this is her stride and we’re on the downswing) in the “pushing limits” department. On Sunday, we were set to go to a Superbowl Party, something we’ve done for years now. I have to admit I was leery of it. It’s an adult party, TS was going to be, at best, one of 2-3 kids, but most likely the only kid. In the last couple years we’ve taken her and she’s been an angel. People realize she’s there and are amazed. She plays quietly with her toys and eats all the obnoxious party food with us and it’s all-good. We bask in her amazingness. But she’s 2 now, all bets are off, you know. And the superbowl was right in the middle of when she usually naps, so I was pretty sure I was going to spend the better part of the party 1) being embarrassed by her and 2) chasing her around, yelling to get down in front, etc… As if to prove my point:
We ran some errands a few hours before the game (V-day shopping). Home Depot was next door, so Daddyspeak (DS) ran in to pick up a couple things and TS and I hit Boutique Target (Tar-jay). Everything was more or less fine (minor altercation about getting out of the car, but nothing big) until DS showed up at Target. All hell broke loose! She became that kid who wants everything on the shelves and then meltdowns into a full tantrum when you tell her no. She has NEVER done that before. I know, what am I complaining about, she’s 2 and she’s never done the full public meltdown before??? (Yes, we’ve been lucky). It was just so random (for us). It only latest a few minutes, but felt like an hour. At one point DS (trying to distract,) says to her, “TS look at the cute baby over there,” to which she replied by shrieking louder. (Now everyone in the near vicinity is looking at us!) So he then says, (kinda under his breath) “Everyone don’t look at the not so cute toddler over here.” Exactly.
Needless, TS and I stayed home from the party. She napped, I got the first coat of lavender scallops painted in Babyspeaks room. (Shh, don’t tell TS, she’ll be pissed I painted without her again.)

Who could say no to this face?

Snow Bound

Ok, so finally got some pix from this weekend.











This is ToddlerSpeak (TS) just before & after her adventure down the hill BY. HER. SELF. (Again, it must’ve been the hormones that I let myself be convinced to let my TWO YEAR OLD do this!)

However, it’s deceiving, she’s having so much fun! And she looks at least FOUR damit! I know, I’m a moron. And now I’ve set a precedent. Moving on…

Ok, my two fav pix of DS & TS from the weekend WILL NOT UPLOAD for some reason!!!! So you'll have to wait on those.

Apparently I did hand off the camera to DS as some point during the weekend. Yes, that’s me underneath all those layers (can you tell I’m the fat chick?) This is me putting skis on my baby (2nd year in a row, cause damit this kid will ski and ski well!)

And here’s the family portrait! Such a waste, I was having a great hair weekend. (Of course, no one saw me all weekend and the couple pix I did take you can't even tell who the heck I am. Go figure.)

Ok, that’s your fix of TS for the day! More later.