Making progress!

Lunch from Home Depot

Mouldings for Emma's room.

Buying more paint

Tea Party

This is how the Mommy of small girls spends a Friday morning. Emma and Mary got dressed up in their Halloween costumes, as did their friend Zoe, and we went over to Zoe's house and had a tea party. I had made cookies last night and Trica had cleared her dining room for the event. She also found a table cloth to cover the table and put matching pillow cases on the backs of the chairs to make them all matching. Yes, I knew it would be a good thing to do this with Trica. I have a porcelain tea set that was given to us just for such an occasion and the girls happily used that. We put water in the Tea Pot, and since a lot of the water spent a lot of the time on the dresses, the table, and the floor, it was a Good Thing we did not use tea. Anyhow, don't you just love the color of her Dining Room? Just so Derek knows, it is not orange but Terra Cotta. Orange is a bad mistake, terra cotta is a design choice.

Tonight my parents are taking the kids for a couple of days and we are going to paint Emma's "Big Girl Room", add chair rails (Jim's ambition) and put in a closet organizer. If I have time I will do a Dora Princess Mural. There will be pictures, as always. We are also breaking down the guest room bed, which means my basement pictures will start having classy mattresses leaning against the walls. I just can't wait for that. The new furniture is coming Tuesday, but all of the bedding is back ordered until May. One thing at a time, I suppose! Well, enough chit chat, I have Things To Do while the girls are sleeping.

Just Desserts

To answer Mr. Nemesis, yes, I am feeling better. I went to the Doctor on Tuesday and she gave me a wicked antibiotic that is only a 5 day thing. It's like SUPER antibiotic or something. I was fascinated by the insert, which explained the exact microbiology and target of this fine drug. Who knew the 50s ribosome could be so weak??? Anyhow, today I had a LOT of things to do. I spent the last 5 days doing nothing. Well, 2 parties and a Dora cake nothing. Oh, and a trip downtown to see the musical Chicago. But I digress. I mean to say that all daily chores were shoved aside until Further Notice. That was today. I had laundry from last week that was still to be put away, right next to laundry that needed to be done. Piles of it. Don't ask me what was on the kitchen floor. It couldn't be seen for all of the dirt it had picked up after being smashed there sometime earlier this week. It was awful. So I got up and neglected my normal routine that makes me feel human since I would be spending the day catching up. I soaked my hair over the sink and combed it back, letting it dry any which way it felt like. I did put in my contacts and brushed my teeth, but skipped the daily eye makeup. I donned a workout t-shirt, pulled on yesterday's jeans, and white socks - those are almost always coordinated. That is all relevant information.

So, this afternoon, Emma had an appointment with the Ear, Nose, Throat specialist due to an infection in one of her ear tubes. I begged Jim, who was working from home, to come with me so I wouldn't have to wrestle with 2 small children by myself in the office. He did. When we left we were driving by a restaurant we used to go to for romantic dinners - J. Alexanders - and Jim pulled in. Yes, Reader, I went to a nice restaurant with two toddlers and no makeup. I am officially ashamed of myself. I need to add that Emma, who refuses to wear anything but dresses, was in jeans. And Mary, who was adorable in pigtails before nap time, now had rain soaked mop hair. We looked like we belonged on the couch during Saturday morning cartoons. Jim hasn't shaved since last month some time, and his hair is almost as unwieldly as Mary's. It was a GOOD feeling. After we ate, Jim realized he had left his wallet at home. Well, I had left it at home, since it was I who dumped out the contents of his pants to wash them with the rest of the laundry. So I paid. I understand it is ALL THE SAME MONEY, especially since Jim is the only money maker, but it still felt like an insult. If I had looked good, the man would have paid, I tell you. It was like dating all over again.

4:00 this afternoon

Waiting at the ENT doctor's office. I was taking pictures to entertain Emma. The Doctor was running 40 mintues late, we were told.

Surprise Night Out

Jim took us out to dinner! The restuarant is dark (atmosphere), but Emma was being so sweet giving me hugs and kisses endlessly. Gotta love that girl!

Catching Up

Friday was Emma's 3rd birthday. We had a party for the kids at McDonald's and that was fine. Many Moms came, more children came, all had a good time. Except the one little baby who kept spitting up and his Mom. I don't think they were having too good of a time. We let Emma open her presents from us ONE AT A TIME. I don't mean plowing through them individually but all at once. I mean one every time we felt like sharing. HA! It was great! It worked out to roughly one an hour, not counting nap times or McDonald's parties. But she did get to pick which one to open each time. It was fabulously fun and I think we will always run it like that. Jim and I weren't sure what to do - we each had to wait until our fathers got home and we did the cake at the same time. But Jim was home. And the cake wasn't made yet. I baked a Dora shaped cake during nap times and after the kids went to bed I dragged yellow Duncan Hines Dora over to Trica's house and she helped me decorate it. It took us 3 hours. I kid you not, Reader. There was quite the amount of time to get such vibrant colors mixed, not to mention put on the cake in small, orderly, perfect little stars. Yes, it was a task for the truely ambitious. And I will not be adding cake decorating to my list of hobbies any time soon.


Then Saturday we had the family party. I came down with a terrbile sore throat and lethargy and a bit of a fever. But with some phenomenal help I got the house adequately cleaned and shiney for the party. Emma got an art easel, Dora bed sheets (we are painting her room next week), some Disney stock (OOOOOO DISNEY!), and a foam couch that folds out to a little bed. The couch thing she carries to whatever room she is going to be in (including her bedroom) and her and Mary sit on it to do whatever it is toddlers do all day. She spends a lot of time taking it up to her room, where she and Mary have a "pajama party". This also means she cannot get changed out of her pajamas all day long. It is an unseen twist to the new addition. So far she will now only sleep on this couch thing. She is a little too long for it and her feet hang off the end, but she doesn't care. It also has apeculiar chemical smeel about that Fabreeze won't remove and makes my daughter smell like old plastic chairs. I'm hoping that will go away.

You can click here to see the pictures from the parties.

Sunday I was feeling worse, with no appetite continuing and no willingness to communicate with anyone. So I napped and Jim took care of household things like children and some grocery shopping while the kids slept. I tried to take a relaxing and soothing bubble bath but for some reason our hot water was not working and Jim was at Kroger. So I sat in an underfilled tepid bubble bath for 20 minutes and gave up. That evening we joined Trica and her husband and went to see the musical Chicago. I got through it on throat lozenges, but I was glad to go. I love live theater and this was no exception. Then Monday came and I am slightly better, but still had no tolerance for irritating toddler things today. I even went out for a bit with the girls, only to add to my general frustration.

And so goes our Journey.

The Conspiracy of Pink

Well, it seems my inconsistencies have been outed. Now, to explain to Tinybites why I had to list that I Hate Pink yet happened to be wearing a shirt of the EXACT color in a picture I posted, I must go into the whole story of Pink Hatred. If you are not interested in the reasons behind Pink Hatred, you should click on a favorite on the side of your browser now, or type in something on your address bar IMMEDIATELY, because here begins the pinkness.

I can't say when it was, exactly, when I started hating pink. I know in grade school and junior high I was fairly amenable to the color, and even clearly remember buying clothes in the wonderful soft madras of pink and grey in the mid and late 80's. Karol may recall the outfit that she, Amy, and I all owned that was a wonderful rendition of that exact theme. In my freshman yearbook picture (go ahead, Derek, check it out) I am wearing a pink striped sweater. I am also looking a bit loopy and I still attribute that to the filling I had done the same morning and the resulting migraine, but I digress. I believe it was somewhere around sophomore year that I realized my ultimate goal of no longer being a little girl. Please recall that in the decades past, fashions tended to accent the adult that would be coming rather than the child that was being left behind. There was no cute little character t-shirts that girls wore to school. We were 15 and we wore heels to school and looked like the next corporate cutthroat. So I ditched the pink. It became my idea that pink was infantile and cute. I have spent most of my life trying to get rid of the "cute" factor. And so it began. There was the period of accidental avoidance, where I just ignored the clothes in my closet that were pink. Then the more deliberate not-buying things that were pink. Eventually that led to the active dislike and purging of all things pink. By the time I was 16 and off to Spain, it was widely accepted that I Hated Pink. By the time I got married, there were gag gifts all in pink at my shower (go ahead- think of EVERYTHING). Then I got pregnant and found out I was having a girl. That was the antithesis of Pink Hatred and a sign that the Conspiracy of Pink had won. I persevered, I tell you. I painted the nursery robin egg blue and made it a bunny theme, with flowers to make it more feminine. I bought little dresses in blue and yellow. I stockpiled the cutest red outfits you could find. Then, shortly after Emma was born and I was happily Pink Free, people started buying into the Pink Conspiracy. The fact is that every baby is androgynous until we hear a gender specific name or see gender clues, such as PINK. So even in the most flowery red outfits or the prettiest blue dresses people took to be gender clues of the wrong distinction. They referred to my dearest little girl as a BOY. Since I grew up with a non-gender specific name, this was a sore spot. This is where the Pink Conspiracy had begun the moment I was born, laying the foundation for the day when I had to give in to Pink. I went out and bought the PINKEST dresses, headbands, sweaters and pants I could find and dressed my daughter in nothing but Pink. With daughter number 2 I didn't even put the other clothes on. Just Pink. Then that color began to creep into my thinking. Oh, I would say, that pink sweater is quite pretty. Look at that book cover, I really like the pink and green scheme. Suddenly I was realizing my choices of wardrobe pieces were coming down to blue or pink. The green choice is frequently too garish. The purple is well, purple, and doesn't match many things except, um, pink. So when faced with Kohl's table of sweaters I am sometimes forced to take the Pink. Then, to top it off, it is a color that looks great on me. I glow. I hum with a happiness of pink that most people look for with every thing they put on. In truth, Pink suits me. But I still hate it, just on principal.

Monkey Business

I took Emma and Mary to the movie theater for our first adventure with kids and movies. My friend Trica (pronounced Tricia) brought her 2 year old daughter Zoe and we all went to see Curious George. To begin with, the only time we could go was 5 PM. When we set a date for the movie, I was kind of thinking along the lines of 10 in the morning. But that was not to be. So, after naps and in lieu of dinner, I packed up the girls and headed to Emagine theater. When I got there I inquired about pricing for kids. $5.75 per, I was told. I motioned to my kids.

For them?

Yes, for them.

Even for the little one?

Yes.

But she's only 18 months old!

Every person has to have a ticket, she said, eyeing Mary with a bit of distaste. That ran me $18. Then we got to the concession stand. Seeing as it was right at dinner time, I had already figured that there was no way to avoid buying food. I scanned the menu and found a wonderful little kid's combo, for a mere $5. Well you know my girls are just old enough to want their OWN. So I thought, instead of $10 (and nothing for me), I would work it another way. So I bought a medium popcorn (hey, it was my dinner, too) and 2 kid's drinks. That was $9.25. Thank GOODNESS I thought up that money saving idea. So we went and sat down. Everything was fabulous - Emma and Zoe were LAUGHING and LAUGHING with each other. It was so incredibly cute! And Mary was content to hold her pop and munch on popcorn that I put on her napkin in her lap. Trica and I exchanged happy looks over the heads of our 3 angels. Then the movie started. Well, at once Emma did not like the fact that it got dark and she was sure to talk about at the top of her voice. Then Mary did not really care to look at the screen, but really wanted to get out of her seat. I tried to hold her in my lap. I tried to let her pace in front of the other seats. Nothing worked. What she REALLY wanted to do was run up and down the aisle. So after 1 1/2 hours of juggling Mary and trying to shush Emma, the movie was over at last. Zoe was perfect through the whole thing - she even cheered at the climax! My girls would have been better off at McDonald's play place. So, anyhow, when we were talking about the movie later, I asked Emma if she liked the monkey movie. She said, "No, mama. Zoe liked it. I didn't like it." Well at least I won't have to worry about spending just under $30 anytime soon to go take them to a movie.

My day yesterday.

My MIL scrapbooking with me Saturday.

We went to the park even though it was rather cold.

Offspring Oddities

Today Mary has a cold and Emma has a tooth. She went around all day telling me she has a tooth. I tried asking her which tooth hurt, but she kept pointing in vague directions in her mouth and nothing was really conclusive. I finally figured it out at dinner when she explained that her "tooth" was behind and under her tongue. It seems she has a sore throat, I believe. The tooth reference probably has to do with Mary's continual state of teething that I wander around mumbling about. The other funny thing that Emma said was in regards to the computer. She likes to play the kids games on Nick Jr. And Noggin and she calls them Emma games. Jim has the computer set up so that when she clicks on her account, explorer automatically loads and the homepage is Nick Jr. She has learned how to use the mouse to get to the games/videos/etc she wants and can play a fair amount of them by herself. She calls these Emma games, and usually wanders over to the computer with a very serious, resigned statement that she has to play an Emma game. Today, as usual, she told me she had to play an Emma Game and then turned on the computer and added, "Because I'm Emma". That cracked me up for a good couple of hours.

As for Miss Mary, she is talking more than any other baby I know. I actually wrote down all of the words she said over a few days and have come up with about 150. Now she is putting those all together and is saying 2-6 word sentences. Emma had a vocabulary of 3 words when she was this age. Mary can sing the whole Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star song. She can even place blame, an important thing to learn when you are the younger sibling. When I ask her if she is stinky she always replies, "No, EMMA stinky". I think I should be worried.

Getting to Know Me

I was bumping around on the internet and reading one of the occasional blogs I frequent (fluid pudding) and I found that she had made a list. Now, I am all about making lists. I have no less that 5 lists right now that are occupying some space, detailing all sorts of things to be detailed. Her list is 100 Things to Know about Fluid Pudding. I am not going to do 100 things. But I will do some things because I thought her list was fun to read. If you are reading this blog, you may or may not find this list interesting. Also, I think it would be interesting to know if there is anything on this list that Diane does NOT know.

1. I have blue eyes.
2. My refrigerator has pictures of Emma, Mary, my Mom, my Dad, Diane and her children, all of my nieces and nephews except the one in California and the 2 that are to be born any minute, my babysitter, and my friend Trica and her family.
3. My favorite food is Popcorn.
4. My favorite thing to drink is English Breakfast tea.
5. I prefer regular Pepsi but Diet Coke.
6. My first pet I got all on my own was named Alexandra, or Alley Cat. I named her before I saw her and determined I wanted a grey cat before I knew what was available.
7. I always wanted 3 kids (until I had 2).
8. I count the buttons on people's shirts.
9. I practice square roots in my head when I am trying to go to sleep.
10. I like to laugh too loud.
11. My house is red, my car is red and my winter coat is red and I don't care for red at all.
12. I hate pink.
13. My 2nd daughter is named after my father and his heritage.
14. My first daughter is named after a Jane Austen book.
15. Emma was born on 03/03/03.
16. My dog's initials spell CAT.
17. My dog's middle name is Athelstan.
18. I love sapphires most.
19. I speak French in my sleep but not when I'm awake.
20. I understand written Portuguese and French.
21. I am obsessed with the life of Evita Peron.
22. I wanted to be a veterinarian when I grew up.
23. I have a life ambition of playing violin in a professional group at least once.
24. I harbor a dream to sing on stage.
25. I have stood on the stage at Carnegie Hall.
26. I once walked from Central Park to the Statue of Liberty - half the length of Manhattan.
27. I learned to barter in the Middle East.
28. I lived in Spain for a year and didn't know any Spanish when I got there.
29. I always wanted to learn ballet.

Well, that should be enough Ann-trivia for today. I am sure there are many more things that I could divulge, but I think you might get bored after 30 items, so I quit while I was ahead.

How does your garden grow?

I did it. I took this picture with my new cell phone and sent it to my blog. Due to this WONDERFUL discovery and Thanks entirely to Lydia, you can expect MANY pictures of beautiful children doing ordinary, everyday things. Just because I can. If I get too excited, I may start up just a mobile blog, called Moblog, and link that. But for now you must endure the pictures. Like this one! Isn't Mary sweet and pensive? What is she doing on the counter, you may ask. Well, it was the only way I could get her to stop hurtling herself at me when I wanted to take a picture. Anyhow, I swear to you that there could not possibly be any cuter 18 month old Mary out there than mine. Surely you must agree.

She's Come Undone

I am undone by Emma. Completely undone. There was a simple task today: I had a handful of paintchip colors and I wondered if she would pick one or two that she liked. I thought it may even help me with how to do her room. So I laid out the 8 colored squares in a random order and asked her if she liked any of those colors. "No, mama. Not like that, that's messy. Like this." Then she arranged them in 2 perfect rows of 4. Ok, fine. So then I asked her again, moving some of them around to make four choices of pairs of colors that would look nice together. "You have to put them like this, mama." And then she brought to my attention the little Dora figure in the top right corner. All of which had to be, well, in the top right corner. We were not able to pick colors with Dora being all turned around upside down and whatnot. Ok, fine. So then I asked her again. Emma picked up the colors one by one and stacked them neatly, with an extra tap on the edge to make sure they are all lined up. "Here, mama. These are your colors." So I laid them out in a circle, trying to see if she liked one over any others. And I asked again. Emma began to pick up some and rearrange the order of the colors, saying to me, "And this one goes there, and this one goes over here...". I gave up. I absolutely broke into giggles and laughed until I cried, right there on the dining room floor. Not that I am depending on her opinion to decorate this room, it is just that she has expressed opinions about clothes and colors in the past and I thought I would see what she would say. Well, it seems she was a little on the obsessive compulsive side today and as not about to pick a favorite color from such unruly squares of paper. Mary, who got to the pile later, really liked to throw them up in the air and let them rain down on her. If I had asked Emma which one was her favorite then, she may have just gone and picked them up - in correct color order - and handed a tidy stack back to me. I am just completely undone by her!

For the Princess in training

I was looking at beds and kid's furniture online for Emma. We want to make a "Big Girl" room for her (and eventually Mary, too). I feel bad that she is sleeping in the guest room, with all of her clothes and toys in the nursery and Mary, in contrast, is sleeping in the fabulously decorated nursery with murals I painted myself. I'm big on equality and I must say that falls incredibley short of the definition. So we are looking at what it will take to make the guest room into a girl's bedroom. I am in love with Pottery Barn's Madeline twin bed, but the price is downright scarey. So I was browsing around and found something that was purely terrifying: a life sized Cinderella coach handmade with a full or queen size bed inside for a mere $47,000. Click here to see the actual bed. It is on a site called Posh Tots. I should have known by that name. Anyhow, it made Pottery Barn look like pocket fluff. I found a nice set at Art Van that I think we are going to go with. Check out the dresser here. We're going to wait to see if they have some good sale on President's day weekend. Well, the children need to be bathed, so I'm up to bat.

It was Colgate

Well, Readers, it seems that a 2 word post really gets some response. As a matter of fact, it is rivaled by very few posts, excepting that one about my sinus infection where my faithful nemesis got roasted to a smoking crisp. Ah, that was fun. Anyhow, I have a couple of things I have to address. First of all, really good to see you, Karol. For those of you who don't know (which is many, I assume at this point), Karol and I (and Amy) were inseparable during 7th and 8th grade. We spent a lot of time writing notes (coded, as you already know) and taunting a very special group of guys which included my nemesis, Derek. It just seems that some things never change. The coded notes held PRECIOUS and VALUABLE information about liking guys and the whatnot. Oddly, the guys seemed DRIVEN to nuttiness by not knowing what was in these notes. So we made a code. I don't even remember what the code was based on, but all that mattered is the guys were flustered. Junior High was such a good practice for life. And those toothpaste names. That was a funny thing. It came up because Karol said when I smiled I looked like a Colgate toothpaste add. I have a big smile, I think. My little Emma has inherited that from me and when she smiles you can see every tooth in her head. Anyhow, since Amy's name automatically shortened to Aim, and I was the Colgate sponsor, that left Karol. I think she was Crest, since it started with the same sound as her name. I must admit that I bought Colgate for years just because of this.

I can only hope that future posts, especially those meant to incense Derek, produce just as much response as my last one did. The children are screaming and fighting over a toothbrush. I must go and intervene.