Hidden Agenda

I have a lot of things I would like to write, but I will probably not get to all of them. What I want to talk about is children's cartoons on Noggin. Being very wintry out here, we spend a lot of time inside and a lot of time with the TV on. Much more than I would like, but there is only so much a Mommy can do while nursing. So I was watching Noggin, which is all for preschoolers. One of the shows was exploring diversity and how different was good. Here were the examples: Grandpa, Oobi, different - good; Sun, rain, different - good; boy, girl, different - good. This was punctuated by a young couple walking by. Huh. Now that was interesting. I thought maybe I was watching too much kids TV and reading way to much into it. This weekend Jim pointed out that on the commercial break, when they were discussing right and left, that Dora was ALWAYS on the left, no mattered who she was paired with. He thinks this is because she is a minority and the stereotype is politically on the left for minorities. Well, I have to tell you, we might have just been joshing about all of this, but it sure gives you something to think about when Blue's Clues is playing again for the millionth time.

Eating Out

We have not eaten out for a meal as a family for a long time. I mean to say at a restaurant versus fast food. We don’t get that very much, either, but it has probably been 10 months since we have successfully gone to a sit-done restaurant and had an entire meal. Today Jim suggested we go out for lunch. Mexican! So, we risked it – nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Let me just say that if you are one of the people at another table (particularly of the Grandparent age), you should NOT speak to my children. Mostly this is because Emma, as any toddler, views this as an open invitation to share during the meal. She will share conversation, her crayons, her food, her milk, etc., etc. If you truly knew a toddler, you would REFRAIN from greeting the child and trying to get them to talk back to you. That is a cry for help, and in the toddler’s mind you are lonely and wish to be befriended – for the entirety of the time you are there. It doesn’t matter to the kid that you are with other friends with who you would like to spend time. You started the conversation; therefore you must want more of it. Don’t even start sending dirty looks over. Emma does not know what a dirty look means and will freely and gladly interpret that to mean you are looking to her for something like talking, or maybe more crayons. Then don’t get annoyed when she wants to know whom your friends are that you brought with you to play. Toddlers are not known for their politeness, and pointing and commenting are things they feel entitled to do. Especially if it involves something she must get close to for touching, like your face or the large mole resting on it. You cannot pretend that she doesn’t exist. After all, YOU started the conversation. The whole thing is just poor form. What I especially don’t like is the child is clearly too young to answer questions, so I am expected to answer for her. “What is your name, dear?” is followed by mommy responding “Emma”. “Oh! Emma! How old are you?” Is that essential for your dining pleasure? “Nearly 2.” Then comes the inevitable – “You are about my grandchild’s age! Her name is ___________, and she likes to ___________”. Then the conversation, according to the adult, is over. It is time for them to talk to the people they know and to enjoy a quiet meal. They do not wish to answer questions, amazingly enough, about why they have a coat on the back of the chair or what is on their face. So, take my advice, do not talk to other peoples’ children unless they talk to you first. Better yet, just pay attention to your life and stay out of my frazzled one. Inevitably, you didn’t really want to know in the first place.
Did I say that lunch went just fine?

Blah, Blah, Blah...

Snow, snow, snow. It is nice to have winter, even if it means I am stuck inside the house all day. It is just nice to be able to poke my head out and smell the white, clean smell of fresh snow. Both kids are napping in the same room today, so I am not starting anything huge and all encompassing (like working out) in case one of them starts screaming and I have to run up and get them before they wake up the other kid. 1 hour into nap time and all is well, so far. Nothing interesting to write about the babies so I will blabber on about me.

I went to a 'crop' last Friday with a couple of friends. For those of you who are not familiar with scrapbooking terminology, it is when you go and work on your scrapbook pages with a group and are there for many hours. It has the benefit of being at a scrapbook store, so you can buy whatever you might need (or want) and use it right away. This essentially gives you the whole store to choose from when doing a page. You just run a tab, and at the end of the night cash out. That's the painful part. So I realized I am missing quite a few large sections of Emma's first year. It seems we took the pictures and then never printed them out. It is the curse of digital photography. Sure, we can print them out, but how much INK do you think that will take? I can't do it. So I am busy uploading a zillion pictures to Ofoto so that I can have them printed and mailed to me. I know it seems counter intuitive, but at this point the time and money really do work out better in the end. I am not planning on sending the album to anyone to bore them with pictures taken over a year ago, so you can stop holding your breath. I have signed up for another crop with my friends in 2 weeks and hope to do a couple of pages for Emma's 1st birthday. I told you I was behind, since her second birthday is quickly approaching.

Well that is the end of happy napping. Someone woke up and now they are both complaining. I do not know why I think these children can nap in the same room and I am not sure what to do about it. Must go check on the bawling babies.

Fabulous Food

Tonight I made stuffed pork chops, mashed potatoes, green beans and rosemary bread. I only list all of this because I was so darn proud of my pork chops. Remember, I am trying to stretch the food dollar, so I went digging through the freezer. I might say that the freezer, which is normally a cornucopia of selections, is starting to look a little barren. I was down to tip steaks, 2 packages of hamburger, salmon (which I think has to be thrown out), chicken breasts, and pork chops. That is it for the meat. So I pulled out the pork chops and noticed my frozen left over stuffing from Thanksgiving. It was really good stuffing- apple almond stuffing with dried cranberries in it. Not the Stove Top Stuffing variety. So I pulled that out too, and the rest is dinner history. That made such good stuffing for pork chops! I was so pleased with dinner and neither Jim nor I could finish even one of the pork chops, so plenty of leftovers for tomorrow! I figured if I couldn't crow about it here, where could I?

The Great Escape

Yes, it has happened. Miss Emma Grace has learned how to climb out of her crib. Today at naptime she discovered how to throw her leg over the rail and lower herself to the floor. This was punctuated by a brief and victorious “YEAH!” (from Emma, not me). She quickly found me vacuuming the stairs, toddled up and greeted me (“HI!”). Really, despite the obvious fear and dread I should have been feeling, I could only laugh. I knew this time would come, but I somehow thought there would be some bumping of her head or tell tale thumping when she fell out at last. So to see how this phenomenon occurred, Jim and I left the door cracked and quietly watched from the other side. Emma stood up, waited, then hitched her leg up like she was mounting a horse, then in one fell swoop she lowered herself a little and jumped the rest of the way to the ground, landing squarely on her feet. While this may foreshadow a future gymnast, we decided to nip the activity in the bud when it had to do with escaping from her crib. I must mention that both of us were silently proud of the agility and grace she exuded. We cheered her flawless landing (no head bumps!) and basked in her new accomplishment. Then we scolded her and put her back to bed. All in a day’s work of parenting.

Emma recently had another freedom of exploration at the mall. We let her out of her stroller to walk around with us. Unfortunately, I had the short sightedness to let her off right next to the bulk candy store “Sweets from Heaven”. Predictably, Emma bee-lined for the brightly colored palace of goodness. Once we got past that, Emma enjoyed leading us around the mall in general. We did 4 or 5 trips up and down the escalators (“Whee!!!”) and a mini diversion into the Disney Store, despite our best attempts to block it from her sight. We did manage to get out without buying anything for her, just don’t ask me how.

Walking in the Rain

Nobody walks in the rain anymore. Do you remember those days at college where you had to walk to class through torrential rainstorms? Of course, such weather was a perfect reason to not go to class, and I don't remember walking through many rainstorms. Last night I had a committee meeting to attend and it was raining. I am mostly sick of rain in February when we should be up to our eyebrows in snow. But last night I donned a rain jacket and an umbrella and walked the 2 blocks to my neighbor's. All of the streets were lit up by porch lights (which are all built in with light sensors and no off switch here, so they all stay on all night long and keep the streets from being dark and scary). The houses here are close together, like old Boston or something, and so you could hear the rain in the gutters of the houses, coming together like some unpracticed percussion band. The sound of the rain on the sidewalks and streets ran and splashed and poured over the concrete creating the movement to the orchestration. It was beautiful. I didn't want to go inside. I even walked to another neighbor's house to deliver a book. Imagine their surprise when I told them I was just passing by and thought I would stop over. I got the most incredulous looks, then a breif glance behind me to check that the rain was still coming down prolifically. I waved cheerily, put my hood back up, and happily trekked back home.

Did I say it was a glorious evening?

Pilates Workouts

In response to a comment under the Lazy? post, that workout did do me in for a few days. It involves all of those hidden, hardly used muscles and made me very sore. I could move just fine, but laughing or coughing were horrendous torture. But I did manage to do it 2 more times last week and I felt pretty good in the end, not even too sore. I was even down about a pound and a half. Then I had birthday cake, gave a party with plenty of snacks, ate more birthday cake and went out to dinner and ate myself silly. By Sunday I was up 2 pounds. So much for working out....

Long Time, No Blog

Well, it has been a long time, as far as updating this goes! I have not been phenomenally busy, just busy enough and rather tired since Mary has decided to be up at all hours of the night again. I am really beginning to wonder when I will ever get a full night's rest. But on to cheerier things.

Last week was my birthday on Wednesday. My mom came down for the day, which was one of the nicest presents I got. Well, the new carseat (for Mary) was very nice, too. We had pizza for dinner and I tutored in the evening. Jim made a nice cake with homemade buttercream frosting and even put candles on it. It was a very nice birthday.

On Saturday we had the family party here (Jeff's birthday was Friday - THE BIG 3-0), and everything went well. I got BOOKS galore (I had asked for them) and a nice new sweater that fits me perfectly. Few clothes fit perfectly after being pregnant, so that was truly something worth commenting on. Afterwards, my parents stayed and put the kids to bed so we could go out to dinner. Jim and I had a good time trying to come up with conversation that did not involve Emma or Mary. Well, we figured it out and had a nice, long dinner at Bucca di Beppo's Italian restaurant. We even had a couple of drinks.

Emma is repeating just about every word anyone says. She also likes to play pretend with her dolls by "changing" their diapers. She lays them on the floor and puts the legs up, then exclaims "WHEW!", as if she had just encountered the STINKIEST diaper ever. It is the funniest thing. She also has begun to play hide and seek. However, it does involve her standing in the middle of the room with her eyes covered when she hides. We do have a lot of fun with it.

Mary is 6 1/2 months old already. She is babbling away all of the time. She squeals with delight any time Emma gets near her. Her favorite game to play is Ring Around the Rosie when Emma is involved. Sometimes I think she is going to burst from laughing so hard. She still does not crawl and hates being on her tummy. Since she can roll on to it but not off, she gets there and gets pretty cranky sometimes. She will learn soon enough and then be REALLY mobile.

Well, I still have to put away groceries. We tried Meijer again this week and it was not half as bad as last week. I was armed with fruit snacks, toys, and bottles for both girls and it was a lot smoother. So I will try to keep this up more often!

Lazy

I did Pilates today. That is not why I am lazy. It is because it took me 3 1/2 months to get up the energy to try it. I collapsed on the couch and fell asleep directly afterwards. I never realized exercise could make you feel so rested!

Rainy Days and Mondays

Before I start ranting about the difficulties of managing this household and maintaining sanity at the same time, I want to say Happy Birthday to my Mom. I believe she is 38, or maybe 32 this year. I am not quite sure, since she says she gets 1 year younger every birthday. So Happy Birthday to her!

I spent Sunday cleaning (or re-cleaning) everything that the pine cleaner had touched earlier in the week. Then I spent like 2 hours sorting and hanging up the new sized clothes for Emma and Mary. I should not have decided to do both girls' clothes at the same time, but now I know. It took forever to weed out the clothes that were too small and go through the bigger clothes to see what would fit them. So my total time spent vigorously improving the household situation was around 6 hours. Thank goodness Jim made dinner (and it was a tasty one, at that).
Today I went to Meijer’s to pick up a few necessities. I think I have mentioned that I am trying to be frugal when grocery shopping, so I took $50 and aimed to spend $25. Of course, I needed diapers ($9 on sale for one child only), formula ($12 for a small can), baby food ($8 to get the coupon discount) and milk and eggs. So anyone can see that $25 was not going to cut it, but I held out hope. I had a list and it was pretty small and I even managed to not impulse buy (practically a miracle at Meijer’s). My darling daughter Emma was just a prize during the shopping trip. First, it was raining. Why is it raining in FEBRUARY??? I hate rain. So I got both girls into the shopping cart in the rain, with Mary in front and Emma sitting in the larger basket area of the cart. I see moms do that all of the time. I know, they have those deluxe bus-like carts where you can strap your child in the added on part and still have the entire cart for groceries. Except that putting them at that level allows little hands to grab things off of the shelf, or kick them, if they are feeling particularly evil. Emma threw her hat off into a puddle to start. Then she didn’t want to sit. I tried to make her sit and she screamed. This produced various types of looks from the different people shopping near me. An old man cut me off in his zippy motorized cart and gave me a ‘screw you’ look. A younger man with Pampers in his cart and a list in his hand looked at me knowingly and then hurried off. An older woman smiled endearingly and said, “Oh, we don’t want to go shopping today!”. I wanted to kick her really hard. Eventually I let Emma stand because I had developed a headache and did not want to deal with the bystanders. Of course, then she didn’t get any attention, so she started throwing items out of the cart (with a surprised “UH-OH!”). That was great, since I had just picked out 12 jars of baby food. I had, at least, put the eggs on the bottom, just in case of such an emergency. So I found a neat little toy thing (well, Emma found it and screamed MINE-Y! To get it) and let her play with it until we were done. Well, she ignored it until the moment we were at the register, when I found out the cost would be $47 for my groceries, before the $5 toy. You guessed it - another onslaught of crying. We finally got out of there and back home, where everyone (except me) was fed and put down for a nap. I may just follow suit and join the napping throngs.

Mary is Mobile

Yes, she actually dragged herself across the couch to get to something she wanted. She was after the large yellow Wendy's cup I was holding. That would be the one FULL of caffeine. No, Mary, you will not get a drink of that no matter how far you drag yourself soldier style. What she did do was capture the cup (after I sat her back up) and LICK the side of the lid. I let her do that about 3 times, which is precisely when I couldn't stand the idea of her scraping her tongue on the lid of my drink. Jim, however, took a huge swig and said, "At least it doesn't affect the straw!". Yuck.

That is about all I can drum up tonight. I still need to mop up the allergen coating my floor, but when one takes allergy medicine for a few days, ambition goes out the window. At least it keeps me from itching.

Groundhog Day?

Good morning to me, I woke up with hives. Well, I really woke up with super puffy eyes and a rash on my forehead. I thrust my red, itchy face into Jim's and say, "See? I wasn't making it up!". My darling husband offered to run out and get me non-drowsy Benadryl. He also bought dried beans (2 packages, just in case of any emergencies) and the gallon of milk that every husband on every sit-com has had to stop and pick up at one time or another. Kids were screaming for breakfast, so I brushed my teeth and moved on.

I took the Clariton (who knew they don't make non-drowsy Benadryl?) and did my mommy job. I also boiled the beans that should have been soaked overnight in a way that the package said would work just as well. BUT THEN I TURNED DOWN THE HEAT. I also stopped itching (Ahhhhhhhh), so I didn't need to lay down and I even finished the soup before nap times began. We made it to play group and Tricia laughed when she found out I made bean soup again. Jim made it home just in time to watch the girls while I went to the Doctor about this rash thing.

The Doctor and I figured out that I had an allergy to..... get this.... the cleaning solution I used to SCOUR the first floor of the house on Tuesday. So, all I need to do is re-clean everything I already cleaned this week. Hurray for me.

Wednesday from Hell

Good morning to me, I woke up with hives (scratch, scratch). Well, I really woke up with super puffy eyes, which I thought must have been caused by 6 1/2 months of poor sleep (scratch). I wondered if there was any truth to Preparation-H working for puffy eyelids. Then I noticed the rash on my forehead (please, let's move on from the idea that I might have Preparation-H in my household). And the back of my hand. Suddenly my watch was incredibly itchy. And my entire body, wherever any clothes touched it. Huh. Kids were screaming for breakfast, so I brushed my teeth and moved on.

The day progressed as normal (scratch). That is, I tried to make dinner early in the day so that I would not have to think about it later. So after I cleaned out the freezer (scratch, scratch) I decided on a hearty bean and sausage soup. Now I should mention that my new job as a stay at home mom has brought on a severe effort at frugality when it comes to groceries. So bean soup was my answer to stretching no real meal supplies another week (scratch). So I took the beans that should have been soaked overnight and boiled them in the way that the package said would work just as well (scratch). I also took one Benadryl to help with the itching (ugh). After many hours of routine Mommy work, I called Jim to let him know I couldn't take this itching any longer (SCRATCH). I told him I needed a sick day and he told me he couldn't cancel his meetings for the day or come home early. So I fed the kids lunch and put them down for their afternoon nap (SCRATCH).

I gave in and took a second Benadryl. I had 1 hour to get a nap in before we had to get ready for the play group that we had missed for the last 2 weeks (yawn). Since there is only me and one other mom, it is pretty obvious when we don't show up (scratch). So I set my alarm for 2:00, and with Emma asleep in her crib (with the baby monitor on) and Mary asleep in the bassinet in my room, I laid down on top of the covers of my bed and fell asleep immediately.

At 3:20 I woke up to my alarm blaring (since 2:00, supposedly), Mary crying LOUDLY, Emma calling me from her crib (MAMA!! MAMA!!), and the distinct smell of smoke. That would be the beans I left boiling since noon. So 3+ hours of rapid boiling in the chicken stock I made from scratch (no pun intended) that morning had left the beans less than edible. I ran downstairs to a smoke filled kitchen and a horrible smell I can only describe as worse than burnt popcorn when wet and 2 solid inches of bean ash in the pot. So after removing the pot to the garage and opening windows and turning on fans, I brought the girls downstairs and faced the next problem. I had to call Tricia and try to explain this. The conversation went kind of like this:

"Tricia? It's Ann."

"Hi Ann." She's playing this one cool, so no inflection to let me know where she stood on this.

"I am so sorry I missed our play date. The explanation is hardly believable, but do you want to know what happened?" Tricia laughs, knowing she is in for a story that would normally happen on the Lucille Ball show.

"Go ahead," she says.

"Well, I woke up this morning with hives....."

Seriously, folks. We moved the play date to Thursday and Jim brought home carry out food. So much for frugality. But on the bright side, the hives are gone.