My Monkeys

Happy 3rd Birthday, Natasha!

2008-05-01T19:03:00.000-07:00

My girl turned three on April 22. We had her birthday party on the weekend and the Betz's came over with the Gilmer's making an appearance on web cam. Gotta love modern technology.

Natasha is still at the age where she's not quite sure what to ask for on her birthday. When the question was posed the response was always "brownies". Though I could have gotten off easy, I decided to get her something that I knew she would love. My little gal. She's a huge Yoga girl. Does her Yoga kids tape every day.

Here's my lass:

4 kids

2008-04-18T13:21:00.000-07:00

Our daycare provider has been taking one Friday off per month. To attenuate the inconvenience of this, Cole & Kaden's mom and I take turns caring for all four kids.

Today was my day.

It wasn't too bad, really. Adam and Cole are best friends of the permanently-glued kind. They rarely disagree on anything and wear each other out nicely. Kaden is not yet two, so he just kind of wanders around crawling on things he shouldn't. He only needs the occasional shepherding back to his boundaries. Natasha is somewhere between the two, oscillating between playing rough with the bigger boys, hugging Kaden, and being mommy's helper.

I do however, earn the right to vent. Not only is Natasha still experiencing diarrhea, but so is Kaden. Between the two I changed 6 poopy diapers.

To keep on topic, the conversational highlight of the day was when the following dialog took place:

Adam: "Peek-a-butt!"
Natasha: (uproarious laughter)
Adam: "Ha! Ha! Peek-a-butt, Tasha! Like this Butt!" (pointing to his ba-dunka-dunk-dunk)
Natasha: (more laughter)
Adam: "Man, that's a good one. I'm going to have to remember that."

Oh, and as an aside: I think I might not have the most stubborn 4 1/2 year old on the planet! Cole is a very good child, but he's less receptive to my persuasive techniques than Adam.

Language Instincts

2008-04-16T17:24:00.000-07:00

I have had a few funny conversations with Adam lately that are illustrative of just how much this kid never fails to surprise me with his verbal acumen.

One conversation:

Me: "Adam, do you feel ok today?"
Him: (all of 4 1/2): "Why do you ask, mom?"

************
Another
Jason: "Do you like that pizza, buddy?"
Adam: "I quite believe I do!"

************
A few weeks ago we were reading the Night Before Christmas (yeah, we need to put it away) and I got to the part "Then I ran to the window and threw up the sash!"

A few minutes (and pages) later he asks, "what's a sash?"...so I explained what it was and moved on. He then says "he threw it up?" and I failed to catch on to the path of logic this was following.

He rescued me..."Oh, you mean threw up like with his arms, I thought you meant threw up like 'blehhhhh!"

I love the literal brains of 4-year olds!

Kneeded: good doctor

2008-04-11T17:07:00.000-07:00

And...check.

I finally got in to see the elusive Dr. Barnes today. I was referred to him via last week's appt. The knee ain't doin' much better. Walking to my office from my car every day involves a .6 mile walk (more like a hobble) with elderly Clinic patients angrily shuffling past me as they glare and curse at the fact that I'm making them late for their glaucoma screen.

It's been 5 years, people. This is ridiculous!

As I mentioned before, I thoroughly expected to be told "don't run anymore". Instead, the former doctor for all of the Professional Ohio sports teams ordered my MRI to determine the extent of the damage. He told me that we'll use whatever combination of therapies necessary to get me back into my running program so I can finish the marathon. I probably won't be doing Med City but I think Grandma's might still be a possibility! He mentioned physical therapy, braces, and possibly "injections". I wanted to hug him.

I thanked him for making the effort to help me continue running and that I feared he'd say "don't"...he laughed with me and jokingly said "yeah, just give it up". He got it.

In the meantime he told me to try biking to keep the cardiovascular fitness. If that doesn't work, swimming.

That's a "can do".

Or at least a "will try".

Waaahh!

2008-04-08T17:31:00.000-07:00

I can't walk without the aid of heavy doses of Relafen. I HATE not being able to run. I'm going to miss the 20k run this weekend, which means that I am not on track to do my marathon in less than two months.

I'm going to hold off on determining what my secondary goal is going to be until I find out from the musculoskeletal doc what the extent of the injury is. I suspect it's minor and they'll say "don't run", to which I will reply "go to hell" until they decide to do surgery and give me my new roboknee. I just want it fixed forever. Running is not a choice for me.

Stolen Thunder

2008-04-07T12:47:00.000-07:00

Ever have those moments when you are going through an intense personal change, and it's so consuming that you are quite certain it could only apply to you? That you are the only person in the world who could have ever felt this way?

Ok, to be fair, I think I've felt that way since I was like...five, and capable of putting words to feelings. But I go through this every few years. While on the precipice of some new adjustment I'm being forced to make I look around me and see everyone utterly content with their lives and wonder why I am the only one that's not completely well adjusted.

Then I stumble upon an article like this and feel embarrassed yet slightly relieved. I'm not the only one, apparently, who goes through these things. It's just that it's not Ok to talk about them. Apparently it's Ok to blog about them. Just that my blog isn't famous, so not many people are listening.

One day, people. One day. You'll all be forced to listen!

"Thrisis"

Injured List

2008-04-06T12:06:00.000-07:00

I was supposed to do 14 miles today. Per Dr.'s orders, I am taking the next 9 days off from running.

After my fitness test earlier this week my knee started aching. I didn't pay attention to that and went for a 4-mile run outside. I'm not quite able to judge my pace outdoors yet, so I am confident I overdid it. On a hard, uneven surface no less.

I woke up yesterday with severe knee pain and was unable to walk on it at all so I went to the doc. She felt it's fine to just rest it and take my Relafen (powerful anti-inflammatory). Then I should gently ease back into the running. If the knee doesn't get better then it's to the sports doc/muscular-skeletal specialist. I'm telling you, I think it's time for a robotic knee. This thing has been plaguing me for five years now.

Scientifically Proven: I'm Fat

2008-04-03T20:06:00.000-07:00

I've always said there are a few theories about myself I'd prefer to not put to the test. 1) I have a very high IQ, 2) The only thing keeping me from becoming the next American Idol is that I'm just not that interested, and 3) Despite all outward appearances, I am extremely fit.

So I put the third hypothesis to the test today and had a "wellness evaluation". My VO2 max is slightly above average, though not as great as I had expected. My leg strength is in the 85% of women my age, but...I have a lot of belly fat (duh!) and very poor upper arm strength.

I guess I didn't need modern technology and a young man fresh out of college with a bachelor's in kineseology to prove this to me, but I now have the proof.

My only bit of light in this dark cloud of self-discovery is that these are things that can be improved upon. I will finish the marathon this spring. And I will be much more fit.

Last Sunday I finished my longest run ever. 12 miles. 12 boring, painful miles. Tuesday = 4, Wednesday = 6, today was my day off and tomorrow another 4 miles. The great thing is that it's going to be nice enough to run outside tomorrow!

Yay spring!

Subdued

2008-03-29T20:02:00.000-07:00

This winter was my 4th in Minnesota. It has been by far the longest, coldest, least humane winter I have ever experienced.

There has been snow on the ground since early December, which means it has been four months since I've been able to gaze upon my yard without seeing any white. The snow itself hasn't been so bad. It's the numerous accompanying annoyances that pick away at you over the course of the long dull winter that eventually wear you down. All these little annoyances are enough to make even the most polite and reserved Minnesotan snap like Diana Ross at an airport security gate. And I'm not reserved, nor am I a native Minnesotan (by my own hedonist standards, I am quite polite, though).

The most recent example of the minor annoyance that almost made me put my fist through our truck window was when we were attempting to get the children in the car the other day. To someone not living in a land with air temperatures below zero, this sounds like an easy task, I know. Certainly not one that could require a well-thought out excuse for the new stitches now holding your fingers onto your hand. But by the time March rolls around in Minnesota, you are pretty damn tired of the 40-minute process of getting your children dressed and strapped into their car seats only to have to de-layer them after your ten minute car ride.

By the time you get all the 14 layers onto the children, you are quite sweaty, running late, and pretty frustrated. So, without the gentle nature that you possess in November, you shove them into the garage to get into the truck. Sensing your impatience they decide to rub against the mud-covered truck resulting in a thick batter of caked on dirt that couldn't be thicker if you had first dipped them in beaten eggs.

Now that the suppressed rage of hating winter is no longer blinding, I can look back and say that the children are not completely to blame. It's hard NOT to touch the truck given that there is a mere 1 inch of space left between the garage wall and the vehicles due to the layers of mud now stuck to it. You see, when it's below 10 f, the carwashes no longer operate. It only takes 2 days of driving on salted, muddy roads to coat your vehicle in a cakey batter of winter. So, we all get a little dirty, no matter how careful we are.

That said, even if there were room in the garage to maneuver past, the kids would still get covered in dirt...I am convinced that there is a direct and provable correlation between how much dirt is on your vehicle and how strongly your children feel compelled to rub against it.

I recorded data for many months and here is my final analysis:

Easter Bunny 2.0

2008-03-24T18:35:00.000-07:00

Easter. Spring. Tulips. Bunnies. Peeps. Little girls with golden curls prancing about in their green yard searching for eggs...

Or...

Flu. Snow. Code push requiring husband to work on the weekend. Last minute shopping trips at Target and near fist-fights over the last handful of Cadbury Cremes.

If you ever get the choice, I'd recommend the former.

But spring is quite cruel to us Minnesotans. I remember the first year I moved here, dressing up the best I could as a 6-month pregnant person. It was the hardest I had tried to look decent in a skirt and a pair of heels in...well, 6 months. Of course, the day Easter came, it was approximately 8 degrees outside. All the cute little girls dressed up for church were adorned in beautiful spring dresses. You just couldn't see them underneath their winter-mud-encrusted coats. That's when I learned what all Minnesota women know. You can be tough, or you can be cute. If you want us to be both, then don't expect us to be nice.

But now that my kids are finally old enough to enjoy Easter, I wanted to have a little fun with it. We made elaborate plans for food, friends, family and the instilling of traditions. These were all quickly jettisoned when Adam came home with the flu. The next day it snowed many inches.

These two factors confined me and the kids to a veritable quarantine. Jason still had to work at 6 am on Saturday. By the time afternoon rolled around and I was finally able to buy the egg dye kit, Adam was feeling well enough to get into the spirit of easter. We had fun dying them, but after that, things got tricky.

I explained to Adam that EB (Easter Bunny) would hide the eggs that we had dyed. He didn't appreciate this. See, years prior to this, we spent Easter with Jason's family. His mother isn't fond of leaving eggs out overnight, so we used plastic eggs. Myself? I think a healthy background level of bacteria keeps one from violent reactions to an incidental ingestion of large amounts of same bacteria....it's why I regularly eat things like hot dogs, pizza left out overnight, and sushi. A little egg left out overnight? No big deal. Not yet a nutritionist or biology major, Adam wouldn't, of course appreciate my line of reasoning. I had to work on him at another level. Our ensuing conversation left me exasperated.

Me: "What's the matter with leaving these eggs out overnight, buddy?"

Adam: "The EB brings his own eggs...on one paw, he carries treats and toys, on the other he carries the eggs with candy in them!"

Me: "But EB wrote a letter to me this year and told me that he has SO MANY toys and candy that he doesn't have any room in a bag for any eggs, so he thought we could use our own."

Adam: "Can you give him another bag?"

Me: "Not in time for tonight...he's already doing delivery...?" (running out of excuses at this point)

"How about we write him another letter and next year he can bring us his own eggs..."

Adam: "OK, tomorrow write him a letter and send him a bag for his eggs. Tomorrow we'll just find our own."

So the deal was struck. Next year: plastic eggs. I guess I don't mind giving into a 4-yr old's demands, so long as he has good reasoning and arguing capabilities. Kind of makes a momma proud.

Though, I did learn from another mom, that actually writing letters to EB is so passe. Apparently, he has an e-mail account now!

Week 6 Wrap-Up

2008-03-16T15:14:00.000-07:00

I'm 6 weeks into the 16 week training program for my marathon.

I was supposed to do: 4, 5, 4, 11 with no days of working out in between.

I was stupid.

I did: 4 tues, 6 weds, should have rested on thurs but instead I did weights and bike, friday should have been a 4-miler, but my legs gave out on me and I ended up doing 3 miles.

I should have rested Saturday, but instead I thought, "hey! Yoga would be a good thing to do!" so I ran to the 90 minute class. The super-fit bodies on everyone should have given away the fact that this wasn't just stretching.

I really did enjoy the class, but it was the most intense Yoga I've ever done. With the running, I am really good at finding my center and a focal point when external things try their hardest to get in your way (try holding "awkward pose when everyone else around you is falling; it ain't easy!) so there is plenty of crossover between this Yoga and running. It's not about tuning out the pain, it's about focusing on that which will carry you through.

Not surprisingly, my left leg is what gave me the most trouble in the class. Performing any poses that invoked the strength of my left leg was intensely challenging and left me shaking (literally). But I knew this was a good thing; these are the very muscle groups that cause me problems post-run (my motorcycle accident 5 years ago still haunts me)...I figured this Yoga class would be a good solution to my running problems.

Until I tried to run today. Muscles were on fire! I like to believe I've experienced some severe pain in my life. Like the time I fell and broke three ribs. Or the time I was in labor for 30 hrs (and pushed for 3!) or the time I rode my motorcycle with my knee out into Jason's motorcycle, hitting his tailpipe on the knee joint and had to limp for 3 months...Grrr...I am so ready for a robot body.

So, lessons learned: don't work out on planned days off. Stick to 4 days per week. And, also, get more sleep. I managed only 9 hours of sleep in 48 hrs at the end of the week. No wonder all I can think about is snuggling up in in bed.

*************
Here is a good summary of the 26 poses from our Yoga class. I am considering moving my long run day in order to accommodate this class.

26 Yoga Poses

10 Miles

2008-03-09T20:33:00.000-07:00

I finally did it. I finally ran 10 miles (at one time).

Although I am still a giant cow, this is the farthest I have run in one attempt. Even farther than when I weighed 116 lbs and could run an 8:30 mile for 3 miles.

The curious thing is that I thoroughly enjoy running much more than I did when I was skinny and it all came so easy to me. Now, I can't just hammer my way through a run. I have to relax while doing it. That was not a skill I was ready to develop a few years ago. When you are 25, you think you can do anything as fast as you want. When you are 31, you know better (or at least you should).

Just 'cuz you take longer to do it, doesn't mean you can't do it.

So the thing I was supposed to focus on this week according to my training plan, was learning to visualize myself on my best run, or at the end of the marathon in order to have "positive mental tapes" to pull myself through the rough spots. I didn't make my mental tape according to plan, but rather, used what works for me...I always turn to the molecular level, trying to imagine glycolosis, aerobic respiration, CO2/O2 exchange - the crap I try to picture when I'm actually in school and having to learn something difficult.

When that fails, I turn on ESPN and watch college basketball.

Not Hot

2008-03-06T10:52:00.000-08:00

Long run was sidelined this week due to illness. A GI issue on Sunday had me out of commission and now I've got a head cold. So does Natasha. So does Adam. Jason: You're next!

Week 5

2008-02-29T08:38:00.000-08:00

I'm again training for a marathon. Only this time I'm not in school, so I actually have the time to devote to it.

I'm in the 5th week logging 20-30 miles per week (very, very, very slowly). My longest run yet was 8 miles in the gym. Now that it's finally above zero, I can move my workouts to the great outdoors so I'm using the USATF site to map some routes. We'll see how this whole "running outside" thing goes. I'm a bit of a treadmill lover.

To keep myself inspired, I like to watch shoe commercials. Here are some of my favorites.

Memories...

2008-01-24T08:10:00.000-08:00

Thinking of the sandbox at the old house reminded me that I had pictures of the actual event.

I can't believe Adam was ever that young looking!

Who is the smartest? "muh-muh-meee!"

2008-01-23T15:28:00.000-08:00

Adam is trying his hardest to learn which letters make which sounds. True to toddler form, he is overapplying one of the first simple rules. He has mastered that the sound that makes "tuh-tuh" is said "Tee" (learned by the following phrase "tuh-tuh-tee!") and "buh-buh" is "Bee"...etc. Unfortunately, according to his logic, the sound "ruh-ruh" is the letter "Reeee!" and "fff-ffff" is "Feee!"

Frankly, I think his logic makes much more sense than does actual English language and/or alphabet. The calculus involved in our language is so complicated.

That Old House

2008-01-20T17:02:00.000-08:00

We have been living our new house just a few months short of one year now. We are still growing into it, but we've racked up enough memories in this new space for me to consider it where I belong at the end of the day.

Mind you, I'm not calling it "home".

As someone who was transplanted from Seattle as an adult, I don't know if any place other than Seattle is "home".

As a former military-brat-child, I don't know if I can actually know what "home" is.

Nonetheless, this place, this house we are in, it holds several seasons' worth of memories for us. The children, however, they love to reflect upon the old house. I don't find it terribly surprising that Adam has a long standing narrative of the old house, since he was 3 1/2 when we moved and was very verbal and thus able to discuss with us at length details about our old vs. new house and why we were moving.

Natasha, however, surprised the heck out of me when she recalled taking a bath in the kitchen sink at the old house. We did this when the bathtub was off limits because of the new caulk job we had to do to get the house ready to sell.

So now her new favorite thing is to weave together a narrative of our old house based upon her memories and the stories that Adam recalls. As far as they remember, here are the Betz highlights (in order of popular story request by both Betz kids):

1) The dead bird
About two weeks before we moved, a bird fell out of the tree in front of our house and died. Adam found its carcass. I did not remove it quickly enough causing the old house to be known for many months as "the dead bird house".

2) Bathing in the kitchen sink
Both kids had to do this while the upstairs bathtub was off limits during repair. Neither kid was fond of the standup shower stall in the basement.

3) The big ol' sandbox
The one that daddy and Adam built together. Adam spent many, many, many, many hours in there. Natasha was a mere infant when they built it. I remember looking out our bedroom window upon the two: Adam - thinking he was such a big boy helping as he hammered with his stick on a piece of wood. DH, completey absorbed in his project. I bounced Natasha on my shoulder trying to get her to sleep so I could join the two.

4) Bringing Natasha home
Adam was only a few weeks old when we moved into the old house, so of course, he has no memory of the event. He does, however, vaguely recall when Natasha came home (I think this is only because we have pics of the event and talk about it often). Natasha recalls the event from a third person perspective ("I camed home and Adam was there and I had my nookie");(Nookie is Natasha-speak for pacifier).

5) Riding our bikes to Cheryl's
Cheryl, our daycare provider, lived only blocks from us, which is how I found her. I used to experiment with many modes of transport depending upon the kids' ages. I remember being pregnant with Natasha and taking Adam to daycare. I had him in the backpack on my shoulders, walked Desi on a leash, Natasha bulged in my belly, and I had a new little puppy zipped up in my jacket with her head poking out because it was so cold.

But that's not what Adam and Natasha recall. They remember when Adam would ride his bike to Cheryl's and I would push Natasha in a stroller right behind him. Now we are much too far to get to her house on foot (or bike).

Hair yesterday...gone today...

2008-01-16T17:39:00.000-08:00

I cut Natasha's hair. I've been trying to get it all to one length since she was born, but it's all come in at its own crazy pace. She had a mullet for about a year (just naturally business in the front and party in the back, I guess)...We finally gave her a bob with some bangs.

At least we don't have to go through the pain of putting a barrette in every day now.

Before:

After:

Hello. Is there anybody in there?

2008-01-08T17:59:00.000-08:00

Please leave a comment if you can hear me.

I have been MIA for over a year now. Tried to do the full time school, work, kids, whatever else thing. It worked for about a year. Then, when we bought the new house, the straw broke the camel's back. Apparently I am the camel.

31 years old? Check.

Nervous breakdown? Check.

School, the piece of my life that is utterly important to me has taken a backburner. It was the only "optional" thing. Turns out, when you become a mom, you are the last on your own list.

I kind of knew this was the case, but I guess I thought I could somehow outrun the cliche.

I cannot.

Ironically, it turns out that I can again run. A lot. Did 5 miles on Sunday. If I don't run, I'm psychotic. It's in my genetic code that I, physiologically, NEED to run. A marathon is on my list of life goals. It only takes a few months to train and I got a few months since I'm not in school, so why not?

I should update this blog about the kids and how great they are and how cute, etc...but if you know me well enough to read this, then I have already updated you in person.

Let this be said: Adam is 4 going on 17. As protective as ever over his younger sister. Loves his movies. Loves to shoot hoops and wants to sign up for basketball. Has all of his planets in the solar system memorized.

Natasha is 2 1/2 and has finally started calling herself "big girl" instead of "the baby". She's got her colors and numbers down. Mommy cut her hair and gave her a bob because she had 100,000 layers of crazy curls. She's still our little daredevil. She got a scooter from St. Nick and, just like she normally does, practiced riding it nonstop until she perfected the art.

Please bear with me

2006-08-13T20:37:00.000-07:00

Obviously, I am searching for a template that will work for me. There are 100,000 of 'em out there...it's been a long process.

Hang in there. I'll find something that will work. Eventually.

Dang it. I wish I would have signed up with wordpress or moveable type; their themes are so much better.

Tricks are for kids

2006-08-12T22:40:00.000-07:00

Devin is on his way home now. His flight left late. After a Mt. Dew for the road right before he boarded the flight and utter excitement to see his family and sleep in his bed after 6 weeks of being stuck in Minnesota, I'm sure he's bristling with excitement.

If he were not forced to be strapped into his seat on the plane, he'd be doing backflips right about now.

Thankfully for him, he got his fill of backflips while visiting us. Adam is in the "watch this, mommy!" stage right now. I naively thought this stage would end soon. But after watching no less than 3087 back tucks, 901 forward tucks, 873 off-the-tree flips, and countless other tricks of Devin's, I fear this stage might never end.

Devin made me capture 80% of his tricks on film. Yes, they are quite impressive. As I told him, if I did a backflip off of a tree, you can bet I'd make everyone I know (and many I don't) watch footage of it repeatedly. So, while I don't begrudge him for wanting his talents recognized, I must admit that I do more than my share of watching "This!"

So, if you are dying to see it, here is footage of Devin, flipping off a tree. He's gonna be a famous performer of some sort one day, so don't forget: you saw it here first!

Sensitive Soul

2006-08-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

My Adam...he is extremely sensitive. He doesn't warm up to most people quickly, but once he does, he completely trusts you and he'll be in love with you forever. So, his favor is worth the work - he'll reward you in spades.

Today was his daycare provider's 12th anniversary reunion. We love Cheryl. Everyone who has entrusted their children to her loves her. We lucked out when we found her. I knew nothing about finding the right provider, but I knew that I could trust my intuition and my intuition was extremely dead on when it told me that I should run and jump at the chance to let her take care of my children while I attend school, clean the house, and tend to things other than my brood.

Adam took about two months to warm up to the setting. But he immediately fell in love with Zach and Katie. They are both extremely sweet kiddos who have since moved on. Adam wasn't even two when they left Cheryl's, but Adam was deeply upset by them leaving. He would cry some mornings, telling me in his best 2-yr old vocabulary "Zackie and Katie all gone..."

One year later he STILL talks about them. After seeing them at the reunion today he told me, "I saw Zach and Katie and now I'm happy but they not at Cheryl's anymore so I sad but I saw them now and so I happy" (forgive the runon sentence, but it's hard to transcribe a toddler accurately).

That said, can you see the happiness on this child's face? I have not captured a genuine smile from him in ages (ever since he's learned the "cheese!" pose, natural smiles have been out the door).

Fun at the park

2006-08-11T16:51:00.000-07:00

A letter from my television

2006-08-04T12:17:00.000-07:00

I found this letter laying on the floor this morning. Printed dot-matrix style. The text was smudged as though it had been written through tears. I thought I would share it with you.

"Do you think it's easy being me? C'mon, look at me! I'm a 10-year old 28" Sony Trinitron. While 10 years old may not sound that old to you, it's like 200 in technology years. Seriously. You replaced your laptop when it was only THREE years old. Yet you still expect me to hold up to my greuling schedule of 15 hrs of nonstop, uninterrupted programming.

I've done so much for you. It's high time you start giving me some respect.

Look. I don't want to complain. The truth is, my worst fear is being replaced. I've seen those ads for those fancy schmancy flat screen tv's. I had no choice! I'm the TV! I had to watch them! But I also saw the look on your face as you sadly wished you could afford one, making a mental note to wait until they came down in price so you could run to Sam's Club or Sears and purchase one. All I could do was hold back my tears and continue to show the commercial, albeit in shamefully low resolution. Still. I did my best.

We've been through a lot. I consider myself part of this family, even though I don't have a name. I was here before the kids. Before the dog. Hell! I was here before Jason even married you! Oh, man! I could tell you some things about him! The stuff he used to watch before you came around. Let's just say, he knows a little bit more about monster trucks and the Miss America Pageant than he'll ever admit.

I didn't complain when you came into the picture. In fact, it was kind of nice not to have to watch Seinfeld and Simpsons ad nauseum. It was a treat to occasionally watch a salacious episode of the Real World or some CNN. I had not seen pictures of Japan since I left the factory! Man, things have changed there.

I've been through six moves with you and Jason. That doesn't include the moves I've been through alone with him. Look how well I have held up! Yeah, the plate broke off my face revealing my AV inputs, and the bottom of me is all chipped up, but I'm still running flawlessly! You even spilled a couple gallons of oil into me during your move from Seattle to LA. Except for emitting the stench of motor oil every now and then, it didn't affect me one bit.

But this. C'mon. How much longer am I going to have to put up with THIS? I can handle Tivo and I can handle Direct TV. I don't particularly like how they think they run the show, when really, they would be nothing without me, but I am a silent leader. I don't need to be in the limelight. I can handle the toddler fingerprints all over my screen (you blame ME for the crappy picture quality!). I can take the spilled kool-aid running underneath me, and the wrong buttons constantly being banged on. But really, do we have to watch 8 hours of Dora every day?

If I had known this is what having a Tivo meant, I would have stopped working a long time ago. I know how lazy you two are. You wouldn't completely get rid of me. You would have just put me on the dresser in the spare bedroom thinking someday you'd get me working again. But now the jig is up. You know I can do it. And you refuse to get another television set right now. So I am forced to bring you endless amounts of Dora and Backyardigans. Not just ANY Dora or Backyardigans. But specific episodes! C'mon, we all know what's going to happen: Dora and Boots have to save King Popo from the mean magician. But wait! How will they figure out the way to the mountains so they can save the king? Oh no! The world is going to end! Who will help them find the way? WAAAHHH!

Oh, that's right. Ask Map! He knows the way! Ok, across the bridge, over the rocks, to the mountains. Let's go. Seriously! We've done this like 800 times already, let's get this mofo in the can. I don't need to repeat it 7 times.

Look, you know I love the kids. I understand they have simple tastes. It's just that...well, I guess I'm just tired. And I'm feeling a little insecure about my age. And, well, it wouldn't hurt if you would show me some attention every now and then. Clean my screen. Maybe dust my top off once in awhile. Put a nice plant on top of me or something. I just need to know you care. I mean, after all we've been through, you could show me a little appreciation once in awhile. If you do, I promise I won't tell Jason that you are addicted to watching Dr. Phil every day.

Love,

Your Television"

Technorati Tags: Toddlers, Dora The Explorer, motherhood, mothering, Backyardigans, Television

Google & Giggle

2006-08-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

Because I chose to use the word "monkeys" in the title of this blog, I get a lot of visitors directed from Google who have googled phrases like "monkey butt pictures", "cute monkeys", and, inexplicably, "monkeys breastfeeding". So, for you mis-led readers, whose hopes of finding weird monkey trivia are dashed upon visiting my site, I will occasionally try to post something just for you in a weekly letter called "Dear Google Visitor".

Here is today's first installment.

Dear Google Visitor searching for Monkeys Playing Poker Picture,

First of all, I am sorry that you came to my site by accident. I can tell you why you ended up here. The title "Monkey" in my blog. Secondly, I wrote a piece a while back about Adam and Jason's poker obsession. So, while it was entertaining, I'm sure it isn't what you were looking for.

Here. Will this do?

Now that we have that cleared up, might I suggest something for your next search for a picture? Instead of using MSN for your search, you'd probably get a better result using Google's Image search. You don't even have to wade through text. It's great! And now that I have the monkey's playing poker picture on my site, the Google Image search just might lead you back to me.

I hope you found what you were looking for, Gentle Google Visitor. Please come back again as I am sure I will have more monkey trivia collected on my site in the near future.

Sincerely,

Mama Monkey

The Speed of Summer

2006-08-01T06:26:00.000-07:00

Why does summer have to end so quickly? Nevermind. I can answer that. It's because up here in Minnesota, where it's winter 9 months out of the year, you 3 months have to cram in all of your fun outdoor recreation and your not-so-fun outdoor projects (like building a 200 sq foot patio, completely relandscaping your front yard, pulling out 6 poky, thorny, evil shrubs).

I know what you're thinking. It's only August 1. The end of summer is nowhere close. Well, Mr. Know It All, that's where you're wrong. See, for some dumb reason, my college decided that "Fall" semester should start on August 21. That's only 20 days away.

And now I have exactly 20 days to finish all of the projects I started and have as much fun as possible. Those two goals seem mutually exclusive, but I'll have to find a way. Once fall semester starts I'll be even busier, but in a much less fun way. Biology and Literature, here I come!

Translation

2006-07-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

I wrote an essay for my English class on learning to speak Minnesotan. I won't make you read the whole thing, instead, I'd like to offer you the following translations, should you, traveling to or from Minnesota, ever want to communicate with the locals.

West Coast Speak .........................Minnesota Equivalent
Muggy.........................................................Humid
Lunch..........................................................Dinner
Dinner.........................................................Supper
Casserole....................................................Hot Dish
Ok, I've got to go.......................................Well, I suppose...
I'm hungry.................................................Oh, if you're hungry, we can eat
I feel like crap...........................................Oh, things could be worse

The biggest translation problem is not the words themselves, but the indirect way in which the words are used. I've learned that a true Minnesotan never has (or shows, anyway) strong emotions or desires. Being a fairly direct person, I've had a lot of difficulty adjusting to this.

I don't think I'll adopt the very indirect approach, but understanding the local custom helps a little bit.

Safety

2006-07-22T06:17:00.000-07:00

How did we all make it out of childhood alive? Personally, I owe a great deal of gratitude to Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of the antibiotic effects of Penicillin. If it weren't for this wonder drug, I'd probably be dead - I had at least three ear infections a year, sinus infections, strep throat. Yeah, I'm a hardy specimen.

Beyond the raging bacterial infections that I had to fight off, I grew up outside the era of the extra-safe childhood. Like, I remember the 80 foot tall slide made of unforgiving steel that towered above actual concrete. The slide would heat up all day long under the scorching sun silently waiting for our little exposed legs to touch it so it could give us a fine searing. If someone had poured olive oil on the thing, I'm sure the school playground would have smelled of scent of lightly sauteed school children.

If the burns inflicted upon us were not enough to challenge our existence, we had to ensure that we would never fall off the damn thing. Because if we did, we didn't land on that nice blacktop or the soft rubber mulch they use now. We would have hit the concrete and left a school-child body-shaped dent. Of course, that would mean we would have bled or broke something, so the upshot is that we would have gotten to go home early that day. Sweet! I can hear the shouts now "Oh, Jenny! Your'e clavicle shattered! You're so lucky!"

Now things are so very different. As a slightly neurotic parent, I am glad things are safer. There are so many things to worry about. Things to choke on, fall off of, get hit by, run into, and so on. With my particular children, I have two different sets of worries. With Adam, I have never worried about his physical development getting too ahead of his cognitive development. He's never been overly confident and doesn't usually climb things. But, he is very clumsy. I swear he'll be standing still in the middle of the room, nothing around him and he'll just keel over like some schoolyard bully just tackled him. I think he gets that from me.

Natasha, on the other hand, well, she is a spider. At 7 months, she was climbing things that Adam barely started climbing at 18 months. She's very small, which helps, but she's also very strong. I think she has the strength of 10 grown men. Every ounce of physical self-assuredness that Adam may lack, Natasha makes up for in spades. So, yes, she worries me.

I vascillate between wanting to protect my children from all the dangers that are lurking waiting to snatch them from my protective grip and make us spend time getting to know the ER nurse, and thinking that if, somehow, I made it through childhood with a few minor injuries, that my children can too. But then I get the One Step Ahead catalog and wonder if I should be doing more than keeping the kids off the table and out of the street.

Like, maybe I should buy two of these so that when they do fall down, which they inevitably will, the kids will not sustain a massive head injry.

Yes, this bumper bonnet is an actual product marketed to terrified parents like myself so that when Jr. slips on a piece of macaroni n' cheese, he won't hurt his head. Thanks One Step Ahead.

Thank goodness Natasha and Adam are past the crawling stage, otherwise I would have to buy these knee protectors. Wait, Natasha! You can't crawl yet, you need your knee protectors on!

Frankly, it's kind of funny watching a baby learn to crawl on a hardwood floor. And what baby would actually keep those little legwarmers on? Personally, I think it's a way for the leg warmer industry to try to make a comeback. They market to babies, hooking them on the product early on.

Ok, ok, you argue that accidents are the leading cause of death among children between 1-15. You make a good point, but the biggest number of these deaths are caused by car accidents. Even with $300 + car seats, we still manage to leave our children at risk in the car. Fortunately, our hospital has a car seat class. It's a two-hr class designed to scare the shit out of expecting parents who are not only stressed about the major impending life change, but now have to learn how to properly install a gadget with 9,000 parts, including 857 buckles.

I don't mean to sound righteous, but back in the day, safety in the car meant sitting as far away from your big sister as you could so she wouldn't kick you.

Somehow, all of us parents have reached adulthood. Looking at all the safety products, we scratch our heads wondering how we did it. I would like to say it's survival of the fittest, but given my track record with illnesses, I think in my case it's a combination of luck and survival of the meekest.

Now if I can figure out how to keep Natasha from spinning on the ceiling fan, I think I might be able to get my kids out of childhood alive.

Technorati Tags: toddlers, safety, motherhood, mothering, car seats

Peak Oil

2006-07-17T18:21:00.000-07:00

I REALLY do not want to have a political blog. I've tried to keep all my posts about my error filled journey into and through motherhood, but I can no longer resist the urge to post about something that has been eating away at me for a long time.

As soon as I started my summer vacation from school, I decided I would do some light summer reading. Something casual, lofty, and light-hearted.

I went to the library and picked out a few things from various genres:

- A book about parenting (I usually don't read these, but, to my dismay, I actually like the Supernanny!)

- A cookbook (I think I got one on one-pot meals and one for making your own babyfood)

- The Best American Short Stories from 2004

- Crossing the Rubicon

The only one I kept beyond the due date was Crossing the Rubicon. I mean, it is almost 1,000 pages, but that's not the only reason I kept it so long. I would say it was eye-opening, but a better term might be pants-soiling. I had originally attempted to get a book by Richard Clarke, but none were available. So I grabbed this one instead.

I don't know how to convey to you how scary of a book this is. I'll just pretend to be a bad movie reviewer and say...if you only read one book this year, this should be it.

This book, by the way, did not fit the "lighthearted" requirement. It was just something I felt compelled to read after seeing an interview with Mike Ruppert on The Daily Show a long time ago. Rubicon is a non-fiction account of how and why the government was involved in the attacks of 9/11. However, the most enlightening concept within the book is the subject of Peak Oil - how it rules our lives and how it is fueling (pardon the pun) the current wars in the middle east.

Go now, and follow the link to the book. In case you don't feel like scanning my preceeding paragraphs, here it is again. I doubt that many of you feel like reading all 1,000 pages of the book, so instead, I have compiled a list of great links that will provide an overview of what Ruppert discusses in his tome.

I implore you to read as many of these as possible and to familiarize yourself with peak oil and to decide what behaviors of yours you are going to change so that you contribute less to the problem.

Wiki explainer of Peak Oil

Peak Oil Primer by the Energy Bulletin

Peak Oil News

The most terrifying "Project for the New American Century" and more importantly, an anti-PNAC site

You may disagree with the prophecies Peak Oilers are predicting. Many of their predictions are quite grim. And since having the veil ripped off my eyes, I have had a bowling ball in my stomach thinking about how it is going to affect us. One thing is clear, we are on the verge of WWIII now. So, unable to control world events, I am changing my behavior as best I can.

We'll be trading in our gas guzzler SUV for a Toyota Hybrid. I plant as much of my own food as I can and am learning to be a decent gardener (still, at this rate, if we ate only what I grew, we'd get about 2 beets every 9 months, but we'd sure be up to our ears in tomatoes during August). I am going to put in a compost bin because I feel so wasteful throwing out scraps of food that can be used for something. I'm trying to be less of a consumer and more of a make-do'er; relearning the lessons of thriftyness that our parents' parents knew and lived so well. We have a long way to go but I feel better trying to be more self-sufficient.

One thing that does make me feel better is trying to support the effort of relocalization, which is the antithesis of globalization. While I do support knowing about other cultures as much as one can, globalization enslaves citizens to huge mega-corporations in favor of economies of scale, which only benefit the heads of the economies (CEO's, our government), localization gives the power back to the people. Unfortunately for me, living in Minnesota, it also means that if you only shop at the farmer's market for you food, the only vegetables you eat are rhubarb, tomatoes, and corn. I'll sure miss my Kiwi's from California and my grapes from Peru.

Back from camping

2006-07-17T08:58:00.000-07:00

We took the boat and the camper up to Starbuck, MN. In case you are wondering, no, there is no Starbucks there. There is, however, a small coffee shop that purported to have WiFi access. We, being internet fiends, took our laptops and were disappointed when we couldn't get it working; something was wrong with Qwests DHCP server and the people running the shop were not only unknowledgeable about their WiFi, but also very unwilling to help. But we did get coffee.

We spent a lot of time at the lake and Adam went on his first tube ride. Devin again proved his masterful kneeboarding skeelz by jumping waves and attempting a 360. His wipeouts were very impressive.

Here are a few pics:

Casualty

2006-06-24T17:22:00.000-07:00

The tree in front of our house was killed. We had a minor thunderstorm this evening with a little bit of wind. I came home from a brief trip to Dairy Queen to find one of our trees laying against the garage. It doesn't look like it did any damage to the house. If it had fallen a few inches left or right, it would have done more damage.

So the weekend project of digging up our back yard has turned into a weekend project of chopping up a tree.

More Cheese

2006-06-23T21:18:00.000-07:00

Let's face it. It's been a long time since I've posted some pictures of my children. So, to honor their smiling little faces, I think I will do just that.

We've been a busy family so far this summer.

Here are some pictures from our camping trip:

Natasha's teeth are coming in weird. She has both eye teeth, but not the top two-front teeth (one just started coming in this week, though).

Here is big brother Adam protecting his little sister at the park the other day. Some girl was fascinated by Natasha and followed her around staring at her. Adam didn't like that idea, so he put his arms around her and gave the stranger his best big-brother scowl.

And here is big brother Adam driving Natasha around in the Jeep (a big surprise they found one morning in the garage - Santa Claus daddy came the night before).

Getting Political

2006-06-16T12:20:00.000-07:00

I don't normally waste my time saying anything about politics in my blog because I know my audience (hi, mom!). You don't come here to read about politics. You come to see cute pictures of my monkeys.

But I couldn't resist posting the link to this hilarious video made by Comedy Central last year. It made fun of President Bush's poor speaking skills. It's always funny to watch, but of course now that Bush's speechwriter has resigned, it's finally topical.

http://www.devilducky.com/media/23894/

A Few Anecdotes

2006-06-10T20:18:00.000-07:00

Adam has wholeheartedly entered the world of "why?" I was determined to meet all of his inquisitiveness with precise scientific answers, but as with all things related to parenting...I get too tired and go the easy route responding "because that's just how it is". This is when being religious would come in handy. I could say "Because that's how God made it", but well...I don't feel ready to try to explain my theological beliefs quite yet.

He had an interesting comeback the other day. I told Jason "you kick my butt" after an exhausting effort to get everything packed and ready for camping. Adam said, "No mommy! I don't kick your butt. Your butt is too big!" I suspected Jason in implanting this into his head, but he claimed innocence. I do believe him, but I wonder where this quick retort came from.

While Natasha hasn't mastered quick wit yet, she is becoming much more communicative. She is learning to say "all gone" while doing the ASL sign. The other day she tried nursing and I guess there was nothing there. She looked up at at me and gave me the sign and said "ahh goh!"

Some Gardening Notes

2006-06-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

Not to bore you. This post is merely so I can keep track of what's going on in the garden so I can refer to it next year. Ok, and it is so I can brag about my gardening adventures. But just a little.

In my raised bed, I planted early blooming sweet peas, beets, and carrots from seed. I did this late April/early May. A few weeks ago I transplanted some basil and oregano. Last week I stuck in some late blooming bulbs. I can't remember exactly what kinds, but they are all orange. I did this because I got tired of all the veggie planning and wanted something that, after it bloomed, wouldn't need quite so much maintenance. Plus, I had no other place to put the dang bulbs.

So, after I had planted all the veggies seeds, Desi promptly got up in the garden and started digging. I was thoroughly expecting nothing to grow. But the things are growing great! The basil doesn't seem quite as happy about its lot in life as the oregano plant does - that thing is crazy!

Now I have to figure out when I'm supposed to harvest these things....?

As for the new garden spot I dug out next to the shed, everything I planted there seems pretty happy about life. The Rhubarb has always been insane. It produces faster than we can possibly eat it. I put in a Hydrangea (endless summer). It is partially shaded, but unfortunately takes a lot of late afternoon sunshine and tends to droop in the evening. An evening watering usually brings it back to life. I put in a Lily of the Valley and some annuals. I'm going to have to put in some more annuals to keep the weeds at bay until the hydrangea starts to get fuller.

The tomatoes, as always are growing like mad. Soon they'll be threatening to take over the house. I went with small fruit varieties in all three planters this year, since the bigger fruits tend to get eaten by pests before they can fully mature.

I've been spending all my time in the back yard and veggie garden that I haven't done a lick to the front yard other than mow. It needs a lot of help!

Memorial Day

2006-05-29T20:19:00.000-07:00

While the Summer Solstice is officially several weeks away, Memorial Day seems to be the unofficial beginning of summer in Minnesota.

The fishing opener here usually, unironically, is on Mother's Day. This is also the usually the weekend or near the weekend of mine and Jason's anniversary. Because of cosmic luck, the fishing opener is usually accompanied by miserable weather. Just when we Minnesotans think the weather is going to work in our favor - the bulbs are blooming, the grass is turning green, we've even donned shorts on more than one occasion - the fishing opener occurs. That weekend we regress into winter weather that makes those, in the words of Garrison Keillor, "who do not drink" come to know "what a hangover feels like". It's utterly depressing. Thank God I drink.

If you have the gall to complain about this cruddy, cold, wet weather, you will most certainly be eating crow come Memorial Day, for this is the weekend that usually represents a turn in the Minnesota microclimate.

Our little family traversed over to Lake Shetek for the weekend. We camped in a tent and endured 95+ degree temps. Thankfully, the lake offered a lot of respite and the campsite was fairly well shaded. This lake is where Jason grew up camping. Where his mommy grew up camping, and with all hopes, where my children will grow up camping. Even though it's quite a drive from our own house, the kids did great (we plan really well, exhausting them and then leaving right at nap time). Adam and Natasha are born campers. Then again, what kids wouldn't be? You eat junk food, stay up late, sleep in a tent, play in sand, mud, lake water, and playgrounds all day long.

Tonight we came back to our boring old home. Adam was NOT pleased with going home. All through the ride he kept saying "I want to go camping NOW"..."I want to go to Worthington"..."I want to go back to the camper". But, tonight is the earliest that Adam had gone to bed in months. Ditto Natasha. Ditto Desi. Ditto Jason....Hmmm....I might hit the hay before midnight myself.

Camping is a lot of fun despite all the work required. Perhaps that's part of its appeal. We all need a good reason to be exhausted. I mean, we're all exhausted anyway, so why not have a good reason?

No More Bitty

2006-04-29T17:59:00.000-07:00

6 times my nipples have been bitten in the past 24 hrs. We are talking deliberate, hard, screech-inducing chomping.

One time, she bit and wouldn't let go. The only way I could get her off was to push her face into me so she had to let go so she could breathe. Yes, this sounds very smothering, a la Freud, but it's a technique recommended by my own Britt (my online La Leche League, Crunchy Momma). It worked. She let go. But she cried forever.

My nipples are still in recovery.

Fellas, let me tell you. Boobies are not all that they are cracked up to be. Yes, they can hypnotize men. They can soothe babies (even if you don't breastfeed...I remember going to sleep on my own mother's boobs and even felt sad when she had a breast reduction because I had come to know them as my "personal pillows"). But the pain! In puberty they hurt. When Auntie Flow visits, they hurt. When you are pregnant, they hurt. They are always being judged for how well they stand at attention or how much they don't. When you have big ones you want little ones. When you have little ones, you want big ones. Then you learn that out of all the cancers, the #3 killer for women, booby cancer is the one most likely to kill you.

Well sheesh. What good are these things?

I've fed my Nat for one good solid year (plus some) with 'em. So they have done some good. But, I would like to keep my nipples, so I think I'm ready to deprive her of eating from them...also, I can't get this image out of my head, which totally makes me want to stop breastfeeding....even though it cracks me up, it's just too close to home.

http://www.vidilife.com/index.cfm?f=media.play&vchrMediaProgramIDCryp=4F8B5CA1-F931-4ADA-9F01-2&action=search

Happy Homecoming Day, Natasha

2006-04-24T20:28:00.000-07:00

This day last year is when we brought Natasha home. She slept most of the day, which worked out well since it enabled DH and me to pay endless amounts of attention to Adam.

I was fearful that he would react to her the same way he did when we were at the hospital, but he just loved her up as though he had been waiting his whole life to meet her. Still, she slept. Even through the kisses and his attempts to pick her up.

This last year has been a magnificent neon blur. Like a waving sparkler photographed on the fourth of July. It's hard to encapsulate all that has happened, but Natasha has started to bloom in the last month. She's gone from My Little Baby to the brink of toddlerhood. She's *this close* to walking. She signs "more", "drink", and "up" (also Adam's first signs). Tries to say "Desi" and "Adam" and says "Da da" and "ball" easily. The girl climbs things at 12 months that Adam has just started to climb. I call her my spider monkey because she's so swift and agile it's scary.

At her 12-month appt today our doc agreed that our recent decision to get tubes surgically placed in her ears was a good idea. She had actually lost a few pounds during her last ear infection (but she gained two pounds since and has finally broken 17 pounds!). We visited the ENT and her hearing is perfect, but after 7 rounds of antibiotics, we are ready for something else.

Here are a few recent pictures of my darling little girl.

Enjoying an apple:

With the cake that she HATED (still slow-going on solid foods):

Learning to walk:

This Time

2006-04-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

This Time Last Year...

I was miserable. Fat. Unable to bend over to change Adam's diaper without grunting, sweating, and cursing silently.

Natasha was only a week and a few days from being born. Adam didn't know what to expect, except that someone named "Tasha" existed...sort of...

Spring is a funny thing in Minnesota. One week you think you are going to commit suicide or homicide if the snow won't go away. The next week you are busting at the seams because the birds are chirping, the sun is shining, your plants are blooming. You wake up after one long winter night and suddenly...

You have TWO beautiful children. A dog that, despite his insanity is the best dog for your family; a husband, despite his infatuation with expensive toys, is the best husband ever; a wonderful safe yard in a safe neighborhood you can all play in, a university with the best neuroscience program in the country that you can attend, and wonderful family just a call away.

Spring is here. I can bend over and tend to my garden without going into premature labor.

As the Cabella's shirt says, Life is Good.

Thanks for the Mammaries!

2006-04-08T16:51:00.000-07:00

I have mentioned before that Adam was formula fed. Not by my choice. We had a very difficult start. Not only did it take 30 hours to extricate him from my body, but it was rather traumatic for the both of us. I was severely dehydrated and he was not a happy newborn. It just didn't work for us. We tried. For 3 good weeks, but eventually I gave in and fed him some formula (which he gobbled up at a pace that most 3 month-olds couldn't match).

So, I was humble in my aspirations to breastfeed Natasha. In fact, I had planned on just starting off formula feeding her, but decided to give breastfeeding a shot at the last minute. Her birth was a planned cesarian, so it was much easier by comparison (and the process lasted about a full day less than Adam's birth). I drank tons of water and prepared myself for weeks of hard work. But it was never really hard with her. She was just extremely patient and naturally knew what to do. This was my first piece of evidence that two babies from the same exact lineage could be so different.

I didn't plan on breastfeeding for 2 weeks or 2 months or even 6 months. I just decided to keep on going as long as it felt like the right thing to do and worked for us. And here we are 12 months later still going strong. This, I am afraid, is not by my own choosing. The benefits are really no longer with me (relaxation, weight loss - a joke for me!). Nutritionally, we are really almost at the point where breastmilk should be less important than solid foods. So weaning should be in our near future.

In truth, I have been trying to "gently" wean her for the last 6 months. But my Natasha is a girl who knows how to get what she wants. And what she wants is the booby. Or, "the boobies"...because I do have two. I am thrilled that it has been so easy for us. I mean, we had some tough moments right in the beginning, but compared to a lot of women, it has been a cakewalk. No thrush, no mastitis, not a lot of pain (except for when she decided to experiment using me as a teething ring once).

My only complaint is that she still loves to breastfeed SO much. Like, if I let her do it 24 hours a day and never gave her solid foods, she would be fine with it. At one year old and only 16 pounds, I am quite anxious for her to get on with solid foods. Breasteeding her doesn't bother me and it's very convenient when we are out and about. I don't have to pack along bottles or anything, but she will soon, sadly, be big enough where people will start to think she's too old. This is a hot debate and I don't care what your opinions on the subject of when a baby is too old to nurse might be. But it's getting to be that time for us.

Unfortunately, she has a radar for when I decide to wean her. The moment I say to myself "let's try to wean her" that's when she decides to want to nurse non-stop. She just got over yet another ear infection and cold and nursing was the only thing that would comfort her. What am I going to use when she is weaned?

At the rate we are going, I am going to have the only daughter in college still nursing...and the only son in college still not potty trained.

A Juicy One!

2006-04-06T10:12:00.000-07:00

Spring is finally here! Yesterday was warm enough for me and the kids to get outside. We had a blast digging up the weeds out of my raised bed garden. Adam and Natasha ate lots of dirt (the most solid foods Natasha has eaten in the past week).

Adam found lots of worms. I told him "that's a juicy one, Adam!", so he kept referring to his favorite worm as "my juicy one".

Later he told me "I broke my juicy one in half"...poor worm.

I had to till the soil, but it turns out that it didn't involve a lot of effort on my part. I just had to let Adam loose in it. He is going to be a great gardener.

I am a novice gardener, so hopefully something will grow in my raised bed other than the 9 foot tall weeds that took over last summer.

010203040506

2006-04-04T22:13:00.000-07:00

It was pointed out that at 1:02:03 today it will also be 04/05/06. I didn't think I would be awake to experience this firsthand. I should have known better.

Insomnia, I am afraid, is part of who I am. I never had an issue with it until my 20's. As a teen I had "hypersomnia", which is the ability to sleep for 12 hours or more and still not feel refreshed. I truly could have slept my life away then. I know that a lot of teenagers go through that stage, but mine was severe. I could fall asleep anywhere, too. I even fell asleep at a Nine Inch Nails concert.

My first experience with insomnia started about 6 years ago. It also occurred the first time I really experienced anxiety. The two things go hand in hand. I think I would experience the sleeplessness even without the anxiety, though. Motherhood would have been enough to do it to me. For instance, I was taking tonight "off" from childcare duties due to my sickness (a really bad cold that I think has progressed to a sinus infection and possibly bronchitis). I took some NyQuil in preparation for the blessed event. Two hours later I wake up. Here I am. Alert as can be! What normal human being experiences this? Possibly all mothers everywhere. Because, no later than 20 minutes of my waking up do I hear both kids crying.

Maybe they just knew I was up for them. Fortunately, DH got Natasha back to sleep. I covered Adam back up and he's resting again.

Speaking of mothers, I can assure you that mine is awake and will be checking this blog. In fact, she will probably check it at 4:00 am because she is a mother. And insomnia is a mother's disease. Even after your kids grow up, apparently, you still lay awake all night listening for them to need you.

Good to know

2006-03-03T19:25:00.000-08:00

Prior to this semester I had been feeling like there was no way I could possibly narrow down my potential career choices. However, I am happy to say that I have made some progress along this front.

I will NOT be an economist. In fact, I will most likely not do anything involving the subject of economics.

I just finished the course. 4 credits in 2 months (that's one credit more than normal in half the normal amount of time). So, while my grade won't be good, at least my course load is going to be much lighter now!

Epi...Curious!

2006-02-28T14:38:00.000-08:00

Here's what Natasha REFUSES to eat so far:

- Any baby food that comes in a jar
- Graham crackers
- Biter biscuits
- Cream of Wheat
- Things from a bottle
- Yogurt
- Cheese
- Bread
- Any fruit
- Any vegetable

Here's what Natasha would eat if only I wouldn't take it away from her:
- Lint
- Toe nail shrapnel
- Pieces of paper
- Hair that has fallen from my head in this lovely post-partum stage of hair loss
- Old food that she has tossed off her high chair onto the floor that I haven't found yet
- Things that have fallen off the bottom of our shoes tracked in from outside
- *Dog barf

*Let me explain this last one. No, I do not leave puddles of dog barf laying around. I was in the kitchen a few weeks ago. Desi was laying on the couch. Adam and Natasha were in the living room. Within a minute or so of being in the kitchen I hear Adam say "What Tasha eating?" Not a good sign. So I ran into the living room to find Desi licking up his puddle he had silently thrown up. Natasha was chewing on something and had a chunk in her hand ready to shovel in more. She actually cried in protest when I tried to dig the chunk out of her mouth.

But yet, applesauce just will not do.

Someone suggested letting Desi eat it first...

The funny thing is, now every time Adam sees some schmutz on something he says "that Desi barf?"

Sibling Love

2006-02-22T19:57:00.000-08:00

The day Adam visited me in the hospital when I had Natasha...he cried. I expected him to not be thrilled, but I don't know if it was seeing me in a hospital bed with tubes hooked into me, or me holding another baby that made him cry.

The next day we met in a neutral territory. The lactation classroom. Our tactic was different this day. Instead of focussing on introducing him to Nat, the focus was on minimizing her existence and paying attention to him. It went much better, even though he hid in a locker.

By the time we brought Nat home we realized the goal would be, again, to minimize her existence. She slept in her car seat for a few hours in our bedroom. When she woke up we went in to visit her and Adam immediately fell in love with her. To our surprise, he was dying to shower her with kisses and hi-fives whenever she put her hand out.

He was a terribly sweet big brother for the longest time. Treating her sweetly. Showering her with kisses.

Always wanting to hold her (despite the fact that he was actually choking her)

But lately...he is getting mean. He gives her the ol' three stooges eye gouge. Steals her toys. But he's still a big ol' sweety. In the morning he can't wait to greet her in the morning (even though she desperately acts like she needs more coffee before she can handle his hyperactivity).

And he hugs her all the time and says "I yuvs you, Tasha". He's mean to her about 50% of the time...for a 2 1/2 year old, I think that's much better than you can expect. When she freaks out in the car he tries to take care of her and settle her down...they even hold hands sometimes...

Oh my God, I love my babies. I hope they are best friends throughout their lives. Even if it means uniting against a common enemy, which I pray is not mom and dad....

Bag Lady

2006-02-22T18:00:00.000-08:00

The other night the laundry basket was out. Unlike normal circumstances, the basket was actually empty.

So Adam decided it would make a good boat. We play that game often. But Natasha wanted to inspect it. Of course, he wanted her to have nothing to do with his new boat, so he ran away with it in tow. She's used to that. So she crawled over to the giant soft cube with zippers on it and started investigating it. Adam decided she shouldn't have that, either. So, into the boat it went.

Being the good natured little gal she is, she crawled over to her little purple car and started investigating it. Quickly, into the boat it went.

Same, is true for my school binder, the zipper of which she innocently, cautiously inspected...

And the food processor that Adam drug out earlier (it's small and I keep the blade out so they don't get hurt).

And the walk-behind popcorn car.

After Adam had all the toys in his boat there was nothing left for Natasha. So she had to go for the boat again. Of course, Adam had to carry it away. But he couldn't forget the car, either. So there he was. Dragging his car in one hand and a boat full of toys in the other. I just pictured him, if he had more words, "back off! this is my cart!"

She might get to play with something one of these days.

It's been so long

2006-02-09T20:44:00.000-08:00

I miss coming here and writing about what my monkeys are up to. In fact, I miss my monkeys. Especially Adam Monkey.

Since Natasha sleeps the whole time she spent at daycare, I decided to pull her out and save a few bucks. Because it ain't easy hauling two kids in and out of the ol' Excursion, and having only a few hours before I have to haul Nat back out into the 3 degree temps to go pick Adam up from daycare, I decided to have Adam go 3 full days instead of 4 half days.

We are adjusting, but I miss my little guy so much. I only get to see him for about one hour on Mondays and Tuesdays. It doesn't sound like much, but it really is taking its toll on me. I deeply resent being in class when people are chiming on making class run longer than it ought to. I have a family to get home to...can't everyone just stick to the agenda?

The bright side is I get all day Thursday and Friday to spend with both kiddos. That's mostly a good thing. Although I do long for a break every now and then. Miraculously, they both decide to not sleep at all on Thursdays. I think this routine is just hard on everyone.

Speaking of routine, we desperately need a new one. The old one was to plop both kiddos into the bath after dinner. We have a handy bathtub seat for Natasha so she could sit upright in the tub with Adam and not get knocked over and/or drowned. But it doesn't stop him from pouring water over her head and stuffing her face full of bubbles or gouging her eyes out. So, they don't get to bathe together anymore.

After bathtime, Adam used to settle down nicely in front of the tube watching Little Einsteins or Dora. Then you could read him a book and he'd be out. Not anymore. Now getting him to sleep requires lots of bargaining, battling, crying, consoling, etc. It's like we've taken a step backward.

Natasha...well, she's a great napper, but when it comes to sleeping at night, she refuses to sleep anywhere other than our bed. This wasn't a problem the first few months when she was relatively immobile, but she has, I am afraid to admit, fallen off the bed more than once now. That wasn't a problem when I was in bed with her, but now that she's getting bigger, she just tosses and turns all night long keeping me awake. I cannot remember the last night of good sleep I've had.

Neither DH nor I have a backbone when it comes to "training" our kids to learn to sleep on their own. It is most definitely taking its toll on us. But how do I not give in when I am at school and miss them so much? I feel guilty for being gone at all!

God I am a wimp. I am afraid my kids have already figured this out, too!

Mission Completion

2006-01-24T20:30:00.000-08:00

I took a trip into space.

My name was inscribed on a microchip and blasted into space in 1999 on the Stardust mission by JPL. The purpose of the mission was to collect dust from the Stardust comet. In order to gain public awareness for the mission, some marketing genious for JPL started a campaign where you could submit your name to be included on two microchips. One microchip would return to earth upon completion of the Stardust mission and the other chip would be left in space forever...

I included my name as well as my nephew's name (I only had one nephew at the time). So, we are now immortal.

Please visit the Stardust mission's web site for information. Stardust just returned to earth with more samples than NASA engineers thought possible. It's such a cool mission and the public outreach for this mission for NASA on this mission was among the most creative campaigns they have ever come up with.

A room full of leaders

2006-01-24T19:16:00.000-08:00

And we all want to be the leader...

My Studies in Leadership class is on Tuesday nights. I just got back from it. It was the second night that my group got to work together on our group project in which we are to design a company, a product, come up with interview questions that we will use in a mock interview. I got stuck with a lame group. But, the first thing in leadership is that you have to learn to work with what you've got.

We do not really get along well as a group. I would probably only CHOOSE to work with one of the people out of the 5 that I got saddled with, but again, work with what you've got. I think the thing that made us not get along is that we all wanted to be the leader. Are you familiar with the forming/storming/norming/and performing model of group dynamics? We are very much in the "storming" stage. But I like to think, as do all the other members of the group, that I am the leaderist of the group!

Oh, and my Psychopathology class was interesting last night. Some kid came drunk out of his mind, passed out on the table and the teacher thought he was sleeping and just let him "sleep". In the middle of her lecture he puked all over the table and floor. Get this. She didn't stop the class! His friend ushered him out and she just kept on lecturing with the puddle of barf that was 3 chairs away from me. I couldn't believe it. This was after we watched a video of someone drilling a hole in their own head. I am really not looking forward to going back to that classroom next week given the nasty associations I have with the class.

Sorry for the disgusting rant. I will have some cute kid pictures up this week to compensate for your having to read my unpleasant news.

A Little Update

2006-01-13T17:23:00.000-08:00

I didn't write about all the things I had decided to write about while on break. It was my plan to develop a few ideas I had and post them here but I enjoyed not writing for awhile since my composition class had me all written out. Although I did enjoy the hard work. And, it paid off.

Here are a few updates:

On School
I got a 4.0 and am "technically" on the Dean's List although they messed up and my ethics instructor didn't get my grade turned in on time so I'm not on the list that's posted everywhere. Still, a 4.0 was my goal for this semester and I am proud to say "I did it!"

I did my final speech on running, even though Advance Directives won the poll I had posted here (thanks for voting). I was the first speaker to go and I couldn't see myself starting the final speeches on the topic of death. Plus, Advanced Directives required more research than the running speech and I had to devote all my energy to my composition course.

Regarding my composition course, my final paper was very well-researched and I worked my butt off on writing the damn thing. I was so thrilled when I read the professor's comments, which said it was the best paper of her two honors' classes. Yeah, me! Also, she wants to use my "Midwestern as a Second Language" paper for the writing magazine they publish twice per semester. Yippee! And the presentation I lead went off fabulously. I think I did a really good job helping everyone do a good job and that makes me happy. It was a great group to work with.

On Adam
Adam is doing great. Amusing us daily and being a good big brother. We were working on potty training but he REFUSES to poop. He is literally very anal retentive. Being a (currently) psych major, I am aware of what this means, therefore, I find myself worrying..."am I too controlling?" So we put the potty away for now and are forgetting about it. Still, when a child says "No, I am not going to poop on my potty, I'm just gonna poop in my diaper" it seems like they are capable of potty training. I'll give him some more time.

Sadly, Adam was spending so much time at daycare during the last two weeks of fall semester that he actually said one night when I brought him home "I wanna go home to Cheryl's house". I almost cried. Fortunately, children are quick to forgive and we spent a lot of re-bonding time over the holiday break. I missed my little guy SO MUCH. He is such a good buddy.

On Natasha
She has had one ear infection after the other. Her pediatrician is not recommending tubes yet, but it's a technicality. Her last EI took 3 rounds of antibiotics to kill ending with Omnicef (which I keep mentally changing to "unicef"). If the Omnicef doesn't kill it, it's tubes. Though this EI they kicked her back to Augmentin, which means it won't kill it, she'll have an EI for two months meanwhile not eating. I have been working so hard to get her up to 16 pounds and the EI's don't help. I just want tubes already. I might bypass the Ped and go right to the ENT.

Her development is way ahead of what I expected her to be, though. She has been crawling for about a month or two. She pulls up on everything (including, to her disfavor, Adam and Desi, who do not stay put) and has attempted letting go only to fall a few times. She claps and does "so big" all the time. I am convinced she's going to be my wild child. You throw her up in the air and she cracks up laughing. Swing her around and she doesn't stop smiling. When you did these things to Adam he would just get a scared, surprised look on his face.

Oh yeah, and she caught the stomach flu the other day and barfed all night last night. At least I got to see how much breastmilk she actually consumes in a sitting. More than I thought! I was thinking of weaning her but with the EI's she gets, I can't bring myself to do it. She was down to two or three sessions a day and I was drying up so I've been drinking tons of water and taking Fenugreek to increase my supply.

On DH
He got DirectTV. Good research on his part. It's cheaper than cable and we get more channels. He's on the Atkins diet (sort of), which is good because it resulted in him eating broccoli, which is something I never thought I could get the man to do. I can't believe he hasn't left me yet considering how stressed, tired, not there for him I have been. It will pay off one day, honey!

On Desi
You know, he gets by. The dog has been climbing into my lap lately when there are no kids on it. He's also been climbing into bed with us lately, which is something he hasn't done in quite some time.

This Semester
Microeconomics, Studies in Leadership (with the crazy right brained, type C personality professor I had fall 2004), Digital Art (lookout red eyes here I come!), and Psychopathology.

Lots of subbing for daycare (meaning I fill in for our provider with like 900 kids screaming for me at once, but my own scream the loudest at this time). Everyone pray for an easy cold and flu season for us.

Thanks for reading. I'll be posting lots now because posts on here mean avoiding homework and housework!

My Little Einstein

2005-12-28T12:35:00.000-08:00

Adam loves the cartoon Little Einsteins. It's been on for only a few months but we've seen every episode several times. It's by the creators of Baby Einstein, which we used to abuse often. Adam particularly loved Baby Mozart and would watch the thing over and over and over and over. I guess the makers of the Baby Einstein series decided to capitalize on their popularity with parents who, no doubt, think they are doing something good for their kids by letting them watch something with the name "Einstein" in it.

It's true, the name does have some appeal to me. "If I let Adam watch this, he too will grasp the concept laws of physics", I reason. Little Einsteins is a cute cartoon, though. The four characters go on little adventures and introduce children to famous paintings and classical music and it is, visually, a pretty cartoon.

A few weeks ago Adam started calling his Little People by the names of the Little Einsteins. The funny thing is, they do kind of resemble the Einsteins (except for June as you will see). Then he decided that they needed to go everywhere with him. And if one was missing we had to find it. If I couldn't find it, I had to concoct a story about where that particular Einstein went. They went in the bath with him, had to be dried off like him, and even had to be covered up in their own blanket when they went to bed with him.

Here are Adam's Einsteins. From left to right: Leo, Annie, June, and Quincy.

Here are the actual Little Einsteins. You can probably work out who is who, although June is actually a little brunette girl and not a man with a helmet.

The Family Christmas Picture

2005-12-19T09:52:00.000-08:00

I am not a traditionalist by any means. I am also relatively cheap. Combine those two factors with the fact that Adam has a phobia of professional photographers and you get exactly two professionl pictures in Adam's life. Sometimes I fear this makes me a bad mother. I always acknowledge the dozens of pro pictures of their kids at varying ages adorning people's walls and fireplace mantles and silently reflect on my own shame for not having enough of my own. But then I reason that I take enough pictures on my own and they generally come out better than the stiff poses of unhappy children you get in those photography studios.

I am not a good photographer but kids are really easy subjects. Especially when they are your own. All you have to do is follow them around with the camera snapping away and eventually you'll capture something cute or funny or revealing in a way that you had not intended. But I have never been able to get a good Christmas picture. Last year I had a grand scheme and the mental picture I took was fantastic. Two dogs with reindeer antlers and Adam wearing a Santa hat in his Christmas PJ's. It didn't work.

I had failed, in my fantasy, to consider the tired 18 month old who would refuse to wear his santa hat or sit still. Or the dogs attacking one another because they look like aliens with their antlers on. I guess that's how fantasies work, though. Here's what our one picture with all three wiggly little subjects ended up looking like:

It did not go on our Christmas card.

This year I tried again. Only without the dog. I figured I would have my hands full enough with two wiggly babies. To my surprise, they cooperated marvelously and the very first picture I tried to take turned out great. The only problem is that I tried to remove the red eye using the red eye feature of Photoshop. Being the genious that I am, I overdid it, making Adam look like the RCA dog. To further illustrate how intelligent I am, I saved over the original file!

Here's what it looked like:

I tried to fix it Photoshop and ended up making Adam's eye look like it was melting off his face so I scrapped that plan and re-washed the Christmas jammies the next day and tried again. The kids weren't feeling in the holiday spirit.

So I went back to plan A and found a good replacement eye for Adam. I patched it on there and blurred a few lines and it almost came out normal looking.

Notice they still have red eyes. Maybe this is why people hire a professional.

Where to begin?

2005-12-14T11:45:00.000-08:00

I took my last final yesterday. Finished up my Christmas shopping today. Our tree is up and decorated and the kids both managed to survive fall quarter without starving to death. Thank goodness DH is such a good father. It's not every dad you could leave your babies home alone with while he cooks dinner, feeds both kids, bathes both kids, and gets them both to bed.

I hope to have my grades by the end of the week. If they aren't good, I won't share them with you. I do know that I got an A in Public Speaking, though. I really didn't want to take the class, but I was actually sad to give my last speech. It was quite a bit of fun.

Now I just need to get motivated to do the maid's work. She's really been slacking off this past month.

Finally Finals

2005-12-06T13:34:00.000-08:00

Because it's finals week (it feels like it has been finals week for the past 3 weeks now), I just wanted to give you something to stare at as you wait for my next posts. I know you are all just sitting there hitting "refresh" over and over waiting for my blathering.

Adam and Natasha both holding their beloved "binkies" waiting for the camera to flash so that they can put them back in their mouths.

Adam holding Natasha. I didn't realize he had food all over his face. But they are both smiling at the same time and that almost NEVER happens (well, on film, anyway).

Here Adam is displaying his androgeny by carrying around his "baby" (a little cheap doll I bought him a long time ago whose eyes are supposed to blink, but one is stuck halfway open giving her a slightly crazed look - combined with her messy hair and smudge on her face, she looks rather like a doll of ill repute). Nontheless, not to be too feminine, he is also carrying around a bunch of cars and trucks in the sling. Hey, those cars enjoy a little attachment parenting every now and then (proof that Adam really does take after his dad).

I'll be back next week with lots of posts, I promise!

Inertia

2005-11-15T17:40:00.000-08:00

I mentioned in a previous post that I registered for a marathon. In fact, I regiestered for the St. Louis Marathon, which will take place April 9, 2006, which is just under 21 weeks away. I am not sure I will be ready at this pace.

I am using the program devised by a Professor at the University of Iowa, which is a 16 week program that involves running only 4 days per week. Over 200 people have taken this course and only ONE person has not finished the marathon. Based on the success of the program, he published a book which has rave reviews on Amazon. So I bought the book and have been following their pre-training-training program (gets you up to 30 minute runs 4 times a week, which I have not been able to do for several years).

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1570281823/qid=1132105486/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-6276787-8671960?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

I've been stuck on the 6th week of pre-marathon training for two and half weeks now. First I had some issues with my ITB as a result of my knee injury a few years ago when, riding my motorcycle, I drove my knee right into the tailpipe of DH's motorcycle (don't ask, it's a long, embarassing story, about which I am sad to admit there was no alcohol involved. Just plain ol' distraction).

Here's the dent I made in the tailpipe:

After that, my ligament was damaged for several months. I couldn't walk on my left leg properly for months, but I found a way to run despite the injury. I think I was doing about 15-20 miles per week with the injury.

Unfortunately, I ran by avoiding bending and landing on the knee at the same time, which completely changed my gait. So now my left knee is much weaker than my right knee, which results in me placing all my weight on my right side and now, with the loosened joints from pregnancy, the extra weight from being a bloated pregzilla, and overly strong right leg, things are just all whacked out. My new Mizunos help, though. And after resting for a week and consciously focussing on properly striding, things are getting better.

But just when I thought I was back on the treadmill, I got The Cold. The first of what will be many, many, many colds this winter, I am sure. It started off rather benignly but stuck around for a long time and turned into bronchitis and laryngitis and another meeting with my dear friend Zithromax. So I decided not to run last week.

I am determined to make it past pre-training week #6 and move on to my 15/5 week (run 15 minutes, walk 5, repeat once. Do it 4 times per week). I'm gonna do this! Or die trying...

By the way, Adam is almost over The Cold. Natasha is sick with a double ear infection. DH had The Cold for a few days, but he seems to be better. I no longer sound like a smoky jazz club singer...

I Need Your Help

2005-11-14T09:30:00.000-08:00

I am at a loss for my next speech topic. It's my final speech and must be as close to ten minutes as possible. I never have a problem with having enough to say about anything, so the problem with time will be for me to keep a narrow focus, not add too many asides, and not to add too many personal anecdotes to try to illicit a laugh from the group.

So far I have done speeches on the following topics
1) Sleep (importance, how much, what happens when you do it, what happens without enough, ways to get more)

2) Ukraine's Orange Revolution (I was assigned the country to do the speech on)

3) Nursing in Public (persuasive speech. I argued that it should be considered acceptable, why it's sometimes necessary, and that boobs are not just for selling beer. I also got to open my speech with the following words [because everyone was busy chattering when I took to the podium, and I had a picture of this book on the projector] "hey everyone! look at the boobs!". It worked!)

4) Affluenza. How you can do a few simple things to reduce your level of consumerism.

Now what should my next topic be on? Here's what I am considering. Please vote and help me! (Note: you have to scroll down a bit to see the poll because I am too lazy or dense to try to figure out how to change the html code so that there's not this giant space below this paragraph).

What should my next speech topic be?
Advanced Directives
Disaster Preparedness
Marathonning. You can, too!

Current results

Gotta Love Minnesota Weather

2005-11-12T16:54:00.000-08:00

Today it was balmy for November in Minnesota. This morning when Adam and I went out for breakfast for our Saturday morning date we didn't even need coats. It was a warm 60 degrees out. I still have a few tomatoes growing in my barrels, for crikey's sake!

Things will change after tonight.

We are currently under a tornado watch. In November! I can't get over it. Hail, lightening, wind, rain, you name it. We're getting it. Next week is supposed to bring snow. Some sick part of me is looking forward to it. I think that means I'm becoming a true Minnesotan. The part of me that knows how insane I get after 6 months of being forced indoors knows better.

http://www.weather.com/weather/alerts/nswxcategory/MN

It Only Took Two Years!

2005-11-10T17:56:00.000-08:00

Well, technically it took 25 months, but it finally happened. We can now go through our bedtime ritual with Adam and then leave him in his room fully conscious and he'll fall asleep on his own! It has been the routine for about a week now and I'm hopeful it's going to stick.

When it comes to Adam sleeping, we have tried just about every trick, tool, gadget, aid, piece of advice you could imagine. I have read no fewer than 6 books devoted to getting your kid to sleep more. The thing is, he sleeps more at 2 than he did at 1 month (when babies are supposed to be sleeping 16 or more hours a day).

Here's a few sleep things we tried with Adam. I'll describe them in chronological order (that is, the order in which we tried them).

Co-Sleeping
I tried sleeping with Adam next to me (co-sleeping as they now call it) in his first few weeks of life but he was a nonstop wriggler. His little arms would flail about all night punching me in the face and he didn't seem to like being too close. So I kicked him out of our bed and into the pack n' play next to us.

To the pack n' play! To the crib!
Every time he would move about in the pack n' play it would jiggle for a few seconds afterward and made these tiny scratchy noises. Well, he flailed every few seconds so the thing was constantly jiggling, constantly keeping me awake. So I moved him farther down the hall into his own crib in his own bedroom.

Adam Meets the Straight Jacket
After about a month of being outside the womb, his nervous system started to mature causing him to constantly startle himself. I would literally have to hold his hands down to get him to sleep. I felt like I was wrestling him. Once you laid him down he would startle himself awake again. Normal blankets didn't work for swaddling him so we had to find something stronger. That's when I found the Miracle Blanket, which does the job of pinning your darling angel's arms down for you so they can't startle themselves awake. It really did work miracles for him. It didnt' turn him into the fantastic sleeper all the other moms in the world seemed to be blessed with, but he did eek out a few decent naps a week.

God Forbid, CIO
Still, it was a 50/50 shot that he would wake up and not go back to sleep once you laid him down. So we got frustrated and tried the Cry It Out routine a few times. He would cry hours upon hours if you let him. I could not.

The Wonder From Down Under
Don't ask me how, but I eventually came across this contraption called the Amby Bed. By this time I think Adam was about 7 months old and I was so exhausted that I was willing to try just about anything. It's a hammock that is suspended from a frame (that comes with it). When the baby starts to move around it gently bounces and sways lulling your baby back to sleep. Plus, it swaddles them while they are on their back so they feel secure. Get this. The first night we put him in it, he slept 11 hours straight! After that, he caught on to the fact that it would make him sleep so he was a little more difficult to get to sleep, but we reached a turning point with the hammock and you could put him in it semi-awake rather than waiting the full 45 minutes until he was in "deep sleep", or stage 3 of sleep (infants take this long to reach stage 3; adults take less than 20).

More Black Eyes
After about 11 months Adam decided he needed to sleep on his tummy. He would get terribly frustrated at not being able to roll over in the hammock, which the Amby bed prevents. So we tried the crib, which he detested, of course. So he spent a few weeks in bed with us again. However, after waking up with his foot in my mouth, fist in my eye, and fingers tangled in my hair on several occasions, I had to boot him out again.

Cribs
Back into the crib he went. He did a little better after he learned to get himself onto his tummy in his sleep. But we still had to go into his room several times a night. A few times I even fell asleep in his crib WITH him.

After this, I decided it was time to make things easier on everyone. I bought Adam a twin-size mattress and put it on the floor against the wall in his bedroom. This way, he could climb in and out as he wished. Roll around all he wanted. And if we fell asleep with him trying to get him back to sleep, we wouldn't wake up with leg cramps and crib rails embedded on our foreheads. One of the best decisions I've ever made.

For many months, Adam's twin bed was, admittedly, his and DH's bed. The queen bed was mine (it's not called a queen bed for nothin'!). Now it is, properly, mine and DH's bed again. Natasha does join us in the middle of the night after she wakes up to eat at 4 am, but she's not like Adam, practicing to be an NHL enforcer in her sleep. She's pretty still all night long. Adam taught us a lot of tricks that I have used on her. She's definitely easier to get to sleep, but knowing so many tricks certainly has helped.

So tonight, after Adam had his bath, watched his 1/2 hour of tv (these days it's usually Little Einsteins, but tonight it was Dora), he got his one book read to him in his new bed (a really cool upgraded bed - it's a bunk bed but he doesn't know that there's anything on top yet) while his "stars" were on (it's a spinning lantern). We said goodnight to him and left him alone listening to his sleep tunes CD I made for him.

Wonders never cease to exist! Only two more years and maybe the second kid will be going to sleep on her own (and sleeping through the night).

Go on! Google Yourself!

2005-11-08T21:37:00.000-08:00

Seriously. Do this now.

Go to http://www.google.com

In the search field type in your first and last name and click Search. See what you get.

I used to be way more popular than I am now. In fact, the first few links that popped up were actually about me. Then, a few years later, most of them were about the Jenny with the same last name, but this Jenny happened to be some leader of a gay and lesbian organization. I swear I'm not leading a gay and lesbian organization in my copious amounts of spare time (between the hours of 11 pm and 5 am, during which time I should be sleeping but am putting off sleep or am being interrupted by Natasha to feed her).

DH was a very well-known college wrestler. What's your alternate identity?

House WiFi

2005-11-04T16:44:00.000-08:00

I am so connected. But not by wires.

If it weren't for DH, I would still be using my old desktop we procured about 8 years ago. I wouldn't have an iPod, would have no clue about wireless modems. You see, I am by all descriptions a "late adaptor". I rarely see a need for new technology. I don't have the desire to learn a new technolgy, don't want to spend money on new technology, so it must first change society before I even consider buying it.

Fortunately I am married to someone more forward looking than I am when it comes to technology. He bought me my Vaio, against my protests. I love this thing. He bought me my iPod for a birthday (or Christmas or mother's day, I can't remember which), which I protested against. Tonight, after a very trying 48 hrs he sent me to a coffee shop that I usually go to on mornings that both kids are at daycare to do homework.

So here I sit, connected to a network, able to surf, download U2 songs for my iPod, drinking a glass of wine, watching the musician set up for his live show, and I'm doing my homework! God I love technology. God I love DH.

Happy Ween!

2005-11-03T07:58:00.000-08:00

I know it's late, but things are hectic. So happy belated "ween". That's how Adam truncated the sentiment.

He did pretty well this year. Once he caught onto the fact that going up to strange houses in the dark meant getting candy his fears started to fade. He definitely got the hang of saying "trick or treat". However, his normal bed time is 7'ish so the festivities did not last long.

Natasha was clueless, of course. But that made it easier to dress her up like a monkey since she couldn't object to wearing the silly hat. As you can see, she didn't really know what to make of Adam wearing the hat.

He loves the bag, too

2005-11-03T07:55:00.000-08:00

Adam and I were out in the back yard yesterday raking leaves. Well, I was raking, he was plowing through the piles. But that's what you're supposed to do, right? Anyway, he came over and told me again, "I love you, mommy". I responded in kind with the same amount of affection that overcame me the first time he said that. Then he walks over to the bag of raked up leaves and lovingly leans on and says "I love the bag, mommy."

It was a very special bag.

The Sweetest Thing

2005-10-30T19:27:00.000-08:00

The other day when I was getting Adam out of his car seat I gave him a hug. He wrapped his arms around me, laid his head on my shoulder and played with my hair gently, like he used to do when he was a baby (this was how he fell asleep; always playing with my hair - it put me to sleep, too). Then he said, "I love your hair, mommy".

For a moment I didn't know how to respond. He hasn't played with my hair in ages. I haven't been able to comfort him in ages. Well, more specifically, since Natasha was born. But lately I have been making a concerted effort to reconnect with Adam and spend some good one-on-one time with him. Is this the fruit of my effort? I don't know, but I don't care. I have been enjoying our one-on-one time more than I could have thought possible.

Having Adam randomly tell me that he loves my hair...well that is icing on the cake. But, get this...right after that he said, "mommy, you're pretty". My heart has never melted faster. There is no greater compliment I could receive because I know his assessment isn't based on how my looks compare to women in fashion magazines, but he knows "pretty" is a compliment and bestowed upon women you admire, and to be a woman that my son admires, well, there is nothing sweeter.

Life is all about perspective

2005-10-30T19:09:00.000-08:00

I substituted for our daycare provider on Friday for 2 entire hours. It was the most exhausting two hours of my life.

First, let me state that with two kids in diapers, I do more before 8 am than I used to do in an entire day. Yes, I was lazy before, but by anyone's standards, I am busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest these days. So even before I left the house to head to Cheryl's house I was already wiped out. DH does help quite a bit with getting the kids ready these days, but it still involves more effort than my caffeine and sleep deprived body is ready to deal with.

Nonetheless, with only one cup of coffee in my system and having just a few hours of sleep the night before I stumbled over to Cheryl's house and proceeded to care for 3 2-yr olds (including Adam), 3-4r olds, a 1-yr old and Natasha (6 months). Most of the kids were quite charming and just as Cheryl informed me would happen, I was a mere formality most of the time. They all knew the drills, cleaned up their messes, charmed me with their talents, and competed for lap time. There was only one moment of tension involving Adam when Taylor, one of the 2-yr olds said "My Jenny!" to which Adam promptly responded "No! Mommy my Jenny!". I think I had 4 kids on my lap at that point.

Things didn't get too bad until little Alex arrived. He's the 1-yr old who is quite high needs. I mean, Adam was very high needs as an infant, but once he learned to crawl and wear himself out things got much easier. Alex literally screamed unless he was being held. Well, Natasha was starving and I couldn't feed her because I had 7 kids to get out the door after their school lesson (pumpkins, color orange, letter "i"). Turns out, I'm pretty good at keeping two kids on my hips while tending to a bazillion other kids. But that's only because Cheryl has done such a wonderful job of teaching the other older kids how to be patient, take turns, help one another, etc.

After those two hours I was sweating. I felt like I had run a marathon already. I keep saying that caring for two kids in diapers should be a sanctioned olympic event. Being a daycare provider would be the decathalon. I don't know how people do it for a living. But I do know that we have an exceptional provider. And I love all the kids that Adam gets to see every day he 1goes. Also, I am thankful I get to sub but man, I couldn't do it more than once or twice a month!

"I'm a Superhero"

2005-10-19T21:55:00.000-07:00

This is what Adam yelled in Natasha's face a few days ago. Then he looks at me and says "I say for Tasha 'I'm a superhero'".

My little Adam. He is my superhero.

Today Cheryl, his daycare provider told me, "Adam is just one of those kiddos that outshines everyone. Every once in awhile a child will come along that can do no wrong (mostly). The last one was several years ago. Adam is so special I just love him".

I couldn't be any prouder. That totally made my entire...life.

Sometimes it's hard for me to remember that he's only 2. I have to remind myself of this fact from time to time when I feel frustrated by his demands. I've just become accustomed to thinking of him as much older than he actually is. He is spectacularly gentle and engaging with Natasha. She thinks he is the funniest, coolest person ever (or as Adam would say "ever ever ever ever ever!").

Of course, I have bragged on here that his verbal skills are on the level of a 3 or 4-yr old. Counts to 11, can sing his ABC's, puts together 7-word sentences on a regular basis, uses articles, prepositions. Yet he still surprises me on a daily basis. Today he put on his hard hat and said "Mommy, I'm a carpenter!". As he was carrying one of his toy trucks he asked "Where's my backhoe, mommy?". I said "in your hand, Adam". Correctly he retored "No, mommy. This my crane. Where is backhoe?". He caught me. It was the crane. I just didn't know where the backhoe got deposited (probably flushed down the toilet). I was hoping to outsmart my 2-yr old, but I didn't.

Some other delightful things Adam has said lately to elevate my mood:

"Don't cry, mommy" (when I am nowhere near crying, so it's totally random but completely hilarious)

"MMMM! Delicious!" drinking a spoonful of water

"I think I do!" in response to DH telling him "I don't think you need chocolate".

"Daddy go to work and make money....for mommy" I am positive someone must have planted this in his head. He knows "daddy go to work" and "make money", but the "for mommy" part? I have no idea where that came from.

My little superhero is already smarter than I am. I have to finish college so I can help him with his 2nd grade homework.

Empathic Exhuastion

2005-10-17T11:45:00.000-07:00

I got so tired of reading "Man's Search for Meaning" the other day. It's partially an account of a man's experience in a concentration camp and partially a discussion and explanation of his theory of Logotherapy where he states that in order to live a full life, it must have meaning. He quotes Nietzsche several hundred times, "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." It's a compelling read and I'm getting a lot out of it, but I couldn't take any more concentration camp tales. My mind cannot, absolutely refuses to understand how such a thing could have taken place in human history and what it must have been like for those who suffered.

So I opened up my laptop to take a break. I was sick of reading about baby related stuff so I opened the NY Times. Not because I have a superiority complex, but because our own local fish wrapper of a paper actually charges you to read their content online whereas the NYTimes doesn't. I was just surfing for something to catch my interest. I couldn't take any more news regarding huricane victims since I've thought about that so much my head hurts. I couldn't take anymore news about the recent earthquake in Pakistan, or the war in Iraq, or gas prices. So I happened upon a story about a doctor in Africa that does a surgery called a Fistula.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/international/africa/28africa.html?ex=1129694400&en=8692228c20e723b8&ei=5070

I wanted to stop reading it but I couldn't. I should have, though.

Women in Africa marry and give birth quite young. A 12-year old's body isn't as capable of pushing out a baby as an older woman's body. So the babies of course, get stuck. The moms give birth at home many miles away from any medical help. The babies die. The moms have to somehow be transported to a medical facility (usually this takes at least a day including walking, being carried, on a mule, on a city bus, or all of the above) meanwhile the baby's head is partially hanging out. No drugs, of course.

Well, aside from the trauma of losing their babies, their nether regions are ripped to shreds. They are completely incontinent and cannot control either their urine flow or their bowels so their husbands leave them and they become outcasts. Some women cope by refraining as long as possible from eating or drinking. A fistula is a surgery to repair their bowels and urethra. It only takes 20 minutes and the women are immediately better. Unfortunately, there are very few doctors that can perform this surgery and the numbers of young girls giving birth and experiencing this trauma outpaces the rate at which the doctors can perform the surgery.

After I read the story, I thanked my lucky stars for being born in the Western world, not being in poverty, having two successful c-sections, and then I closed my laptop and watched The Real World. It's tragic that Danny and Melinda can't make their relationship work more smoothely but it's a tragedy I can handle.

My Pod

2005-10-15T20:29:00.000-07:00

I have been having lots of problems with my iPod. I admit, I am not easy on my electronic equipment (my Vaio can attest to this). My Nokia phone has been wigging out on me for a few months now, but it was free. When I spend several hundred dollars on a piece of equipment that I could have easily lived without, the thing had better live through being dropped on the ground once or twice. The iPod hasn't even been fed peanut butter or flushed down the toilet for crying out loud!

So in the past week I have been forced to accept no less than 3 iTunes updates on laptop which is quite annoying and utterly time consuming. And of course I have to remember to deselect all the little checkboxes that say "do you want iTunes to automatically come on and prompt you to use iTunes as your default e-mail text editor every time you open your internet browser and also install no less than 200 shortcuts on your desktop as well as check for updates 2.8 times per minute" as well as 187 other little checkboxes that all ultimately mean "how can we prod you to let us further take over your life other than making you update your software every 2.4 days?".

Since then I have had several problems it iTunes as well as iPod software. I'm telling you, before I had my iPod, I had no desire to own one. I was getting by quite fine without it. Now that I've had it for a year or so, I don't know how I lived without it. But I'm starting to feel like it's time I learn. As Neil Postman said in Technopoly, technology creates new paradigms. Society with the gun isn't the same as society without the gun with a simple addition of the gun. The gun permanently alters society so that it is incomparable to what it looked like before.

I am this close to becoming a luddite. Do you think they would accept me living among them with my treadmill? (and TiVo, and by extension television and cable box)?

Kimmie & Como

2005-10-15T19:42:00.000-07:00

We are so glad our Kimmie is here with us in Minnestoa! I told Adam on Thursday that we would be seeing her on Saturday and he talked about it until we finally got to go see her. He was also excited to see Zac-a-mer (Zac, the shih tzu). I had to tell him several times that Grandma and Grandpa wouldn't be there, even that Justin wouldn't be there since he associates them with seeing Kimmie.

Once we got near the airport and he saw the airplanes he thought we were going to pick up Grandma Toody and Papa "from Seattle" (he actually said that), so I had to disappoint him once again. But I think all his disappointment was forgotten when Kimmie & Zac accompanied Adam, me, and Natasha to Como Park. It's an awesome place and today was the perfect fall day for such an activity. Everyone had a great time.

Here is Miss Kimmie and Adam having fun (they moved too quickly for my picture to turn out well)

After all the walking around, Zac got tired so he got to ride shotgun in the double stroller

Natasha still has mixed feelings about Zac

And, for good measure, here are my two babies together. They get along so well together these days. Nat thinks Adam is the funniest thing alive and he always says "I yuv Tasha!".

So much love to go around!

What I actually did today

2005-10-12T20:44:00.000-07:00

First thing a.m., Adam pounds at the door.

Get up, change him, do some puzzles with him in his bedroom.

Get DH up and moving.

Natasha is awake by now (no surprise since Adam is there screaming in her face "Tasha awake!" because he is so excited to see her; Desi is right there with him).

Feed her and change her diaper and clothes.

Take DH to work.

Drop kids off at daycare.

Come home and sleep for an hour (trust me, this almost never happens).

Get up, do dishes, laundry, pick up toys, vacuum.

Brush Desi and try to get some of his fur off him (he's in his molting season). Give him a Greenie.

Regiester for the St. Louis Marathon! I did it! I am registered! 23 weeks to go.

Finish Reproductive Technology chapter.

Pick up kids from daycare.

Feed Natasha.

Put Adam down for a nap.

Try to put Nat down for a nap but it lasts only 20 minutes.

Chat with DH.

Nat's up. Feed her again.

Start folding and putting away laundry.

Adam wakes up in his normal post-nap grouch state.

Hold Adam for 20 minutes so he won't cry.

Fix him some "monkey cheese" (mac and cheese).

Try, unsucessfully to get Nat down for a nap again.

Get fed up with Nat's not sleeping and put her in the jumparoo and do play doh with Adam.

Change Nat's explosive poopy diaper (no wonder she couldn't sleep).

More play doh with Mr. Adam Pants.

Feed Nat.

Do the ethics quiz on the reproductive technology section. Score a 90%. For some reason the average grade for the rest of this class on this section is a 67%. Hmmm....

DH comes home and rescues me and plays with Adam but the smell of play doh makes him sick so I start a bubble bath for Adam. Get him in it and put the play doh away.

I finally get Nat down for a small nap.

Run and pick up dinner.

Eat, get Adam fed. Nat wakes up.

Feed Nat cereal.

Read a couple dozen books to Adam to get him to sleep.

Feed & change Nat.

Get her down again while watching poker on TV and falling asleep.

Read some of my psych book.

Feed Natasha again and get her to sleep again.

Now here I am....too tired to do anything productive. Too revved up to not do anything.

Avoidance

2005-10-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

Adam and Natasha are at daycare for one more hour. It's my day off today.

Here's what I should be doing:
- Reading the chapter in my ethics book on reproductive technology

- Starting the book "Man's Search for Meaning", for which a book review is due on 10/31

- Working on deciphering what in the hell "What the Butler Said" (a short story I picked from Zoetrope which is Francis Ford Coppolla's short story magazine) means so I can prepare a presentation on it.

- Rewriting my first paper on which I earned a B- (ouch!)

- Practice my speech on Affluenza (I get to talk about my swiffer addiction in this speech!)

- Finishing the chapter in my psych book on interpersonal communication.

Or
-Tackling one of the 82 piles of laundry (man I wish my mom were still here!)

- Doing the dishes

- Vacuuming

- Dusting

No wonder I can't get my act together. Look at all that work just waiting for me! Mom, where are you?

Best in Show!

2005-10-08T19:01:00.000-07:00

The AKC Eukanuba dog show was on animal planet tonight. Quite clearly there was nothing else on, but I admit that I enjoy watching dog shows every now and then. I amuse myself at the thought of Desi, our first monkey (who is actually a Boxer doggy that I nicknamed "monkey" early on), ever competing in anything other than being well...Desi. He's so-so on obedience. Well, who am I kidding? He's terrible unless he's positive you've got a treat. He's a bit neurotic, a tad high-strung, surprisingly wimpy, but he is without question, the best dog possible for our crazy family.

Here is Desi the day we brought him home. He weighed only 8 pounds. He would walk halfway down the block and then exhuastedly sit down in protest.

He withstood the move from Seattle to LA fine. We had a great time walking offleash in the desert down there. He breezed through obedience class. He was still a clown, though. He would make me laugh every day. Here is Desi giving Tyler "five". Tyler is a kid that came over specifically to visit Desi. Just about every day.

He did not withstand the move to Minnesota quite as well. After the 4-day drive he has since hated riding in the car and convulses every time we force him into our vehicle. Then we went and had a baby. We were terrified he wouldn't adjust to a baby being around because we had lavished Desi with non-stop attention, but he surprised us by doing exceptionally well. In fact, aside from licking Adam's face raw, he was the ideal dog for having a new baby around. He adjusted to being neglected quite well.

Adam and Desi became partners in crime getting into all kinds of messes together:

Here Adam got the sorbet out of the freezer. Desi chewed the lid off and they both went at the tub of sorbet together.

Now we have Natasha and Desi is still behaving wonderfully despite being relegated to an even lower position within the pack. We love this doggy. He takes daily beatings and all he'll do is sigh and walk away. He was our first child and we are so proud of him despite how goofy he is.

A new face for Mt. Rushmore!

2005-10-03T20:15:00.000-07:00

I'm sure that there is a theory in psychology that describes the process I go through with authority figures. Whenever I start a new job or meet a new teacher I am immediately enamored with them. They are what I want to be when I grow up. Then time passes and they slip up. They are human, after all. But they make a mistake and accidentally use a wrong word when speaking or write "who's" on your paper when they should have written "whose". And that's it for me. My illusion is crushed. Are there no more heroes in this world?

Since catching onto this pattern of mine I have tried to stop constructing monuments in the image of new instructors the moment I meet them. Likewise, I have also tried my hardest to not let any minor err on their part result in the complete destruction of respect I had for them. I've tried implementing this with 4 different instructors this semester and the results have been pretty good so far.

It's hard to say a lot about the instructors of my two online classes since our relationship is inherently much less personal. My Ethics class is an online class. This is the class I was most afraid of. My only other experience with an online class resulted in my lowest grade achieved in college so far (A "B"). I had good grades on my tests, a perfect score on my final paper...it was my contribution to the online discussions that got me in trouble. The class was "Anthropolgy of American Culture".

I made some good points in my arguments, but it turns out that "arguing" doesn't work really well online. My intentions were good. I wanted a good debate. I was open to ideas. I wanted to back up statements not made clear in my original post. But, I was new to the forum of online bulletin boards. What I have since learned is that in a standard online debate nobody becomes enlightened. It's just some flaming here and there. The instructor actually posted to the whole class that the point of making posts is to summarize, in your own words, what you think the author of the text you are reading is saying. My inner thoughts were "well, if 82 other people before me have done that then what the hell am I contributing to this discussion? Everyone has said the same exact thing!". That's the rote part of school.

Thankfully my Ethics class instructor is more accepting of our discussions. For instance, we have already discussed capital punishment and abortion and I have only enraged, like, 8 people so far. But for all of those 8 people there are many more that force me to flesh out my arguments. Can you believe that I have actually changed my opinion in one case (I will not say which here since I really wish to not exclude any of my readers). So, of the class I feared most, I have been quite relieved. I think that early learning experience of my anthropology class was valuable since I have held my tongue quite a bit since then.

In a related note, I took a silly little test in the workbook that came with the textbook for my current psych class. It's to see how argumentative you are...

DH can attest to the results.

I ranked high on the scale of argumentativeness.

Ok, don't let me forget. I need to tell you about my English instructor. I love her. I am so totally going to carve a likeness of her face into the canyon walls at Whitewater Park!

It's a Strawberry!

2005-09-30T20:05:00.000-07:00

I get a lot of questions about the red spot on Natasha's forehead. Mainly from kids younger than 7, but occasionally from adults without the compunction to audit their behavior. So if you are wondering, that red bump on Natasha's head is a "strawberry hemangioma", combined with a slight "cavernous hemangioma".

It doesn't hurt. It might get larger, it will not interfere with her development, and it will go away on its own. As our pediatrician said, it's there so we can "pick her out of a crowd".

Please visit this site for more information:
http://www.drgreene.com/21_1107.html

Edited to implore you read this site instead:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/invoke.cfm?objectid=A71EAE4D-E0FE-4BE9-AC8C585B0146E35C

Little Nani

2005-09-30T19:44:00.000-07:00

She is 5 months old already!

It's incredible, but I couldn't tell you what Adam was doing at this age. I think we were feeding him rice cereal, but I'm not sure. I know he was sitting up on his own. He wasn't rolling over because he was a chunky monkey. I think he was in 12 month clothing, but again, don't quote me.

Natasha is rolling both ways, eating her feet, laughing with little effort from you, the entertainer. She eats like a horse from morning until well, the next morning. Hence, I have decided that it's high time she learn to eat something other than mommy's milk. The last two days she has devoured cereal so I am hopeful.

I predict my little lady will challenge me in all the ways Adam did not. Although Adam was high maintenance, I could always reliably lay him in the middle of the bed without him rolling away. He wasn't very fearless so I never had to worry about him jumping off the bed or standing on the dining room table or swinging from the ceiling fan. I promise you Natasha will do these things. Check my blog 5 months from now and you'll see a picture of such a thing or hear a story about it.

For now, she is confined to the contraptions I place her in. When Adam was this age I couldn't wait for him to crawl, stand, walk, and run. I know better this time around!

Birthday #2

2005-09-30T19:17:00.000-07:00

He's officially out of toddlerhood and into the preschooler stage. Let the terrible two's begin!

Mr. Adam Pants had his second birthday. The celebration happened on the 19th, a Sunday, but his real birthday was on the 21st. His grandparents from Seattle came to visit him, Papa for one week and Grandma "Toody" for two weeks. So it's basically been his birthday celebration for two whole weeks.

It has been confirmed by sources other than myself that Adam is indeed quite bossy. When Papa was playing with Adam he was assigned specific toys and was given detailed instructions on how to play with those toys. He has also thoroughly entered the stage of expressing his independence. When we are crossing the street he knows he is supposed to hold my hand. At the intersection I say "hold mommy's hand, Adam". To which he responds "No, I hold my own hand" and then he proceeds to hold his own hand and start crossing the street.

It's a mother's myth that you get back as a parent tenfold what you dished out as a child. I fear it may be true. I took everything literally and no piece of information was taken for granted. I never accepted euphemisms or generalizations or half-facts and always wanted to know more. I exhausted my poor mother. And now I fear, my child may just do the same thing to me.

Adam is, at two years old, talking at a 4-yr old level. I thought this was fabulous until I realized that he still has the temper of the average 2-yr old. So, he can quite eloquently demand what he wants and then proceed into a massive temper tantrum when you don't give it to him (for instance, M&M's at 6:30 am). Here is where I must grow as a parent and learn to not cave in the face of those forceful demands. Everyone just keep your eyes out for us on Supernanny one of these days. My little tyrant explicitly detailing what I need to do for him every second of the day...He's hyper intelligent, very sensitive, and quite loving toward his younger sister. But he will most definitely require DH and myself to constantly educate ourselves as parents. Thank goodness he's so tough!

Here's our preschooler on his birthday:

Here was the little Booger at 10 pm refusing to go to sleep. He went and put the party hat on as if to say "hey, this party a'int over, you party poopers!"

New Material Please!

2005-09-24T08:17:00.000-07:00

There is a tool for bloggers that allows you to see referring URL's that people have used to access your page. Most of my referrals come from my girls over at blue moon (you know who you are!), but some get here by means of search engines. Seeing how people arrive here through various search terms and phrases has been somewhat enlightening.

Most used to get to my site:

monkeys throwing poop
calling in sick
monkeys breastfeeding (????)
cleaning crayon marks off walls

There is no telling if people searching for these things find my site in any way useful. I haven't exactly written anything about monkeys throwing poop yet, but I fear it may one day be in my future.

I Make a Mess!

2005-09-09T07:05:00.000-07:00

"I Make a Mess" is an phrase Adam delightedly screams at least 3 times a day. He thinks it's a good thing. So he makes his little mess and then tells me all about it. Some other more-than-obvious statements he likes to share these days: "I cryin'" after he stops to take a breath after 5 minutes of waling, screaming, & sobbing. And then the obvious answer to my dumb question "what are you watching, Adam?", he says, "TV!". Guess I should be more specific...

Here's a little retrospective of some of our favorite messes caught on film within the past two years:

Making a cake for mommy

Stealing the dog's water

First birthday cake

Eating a smoothie at Grandma Gilmer's house

Playing with green bubbles

Painting

The other sentence he likes to scream a lot is "Mommy clean it up!".

I Two Old!

2005-09-07T20:56:00.000-07:00

When turning two years old, it's important that you learn how to tell the world both your name and how old you are, for these are questions you will often be asked. We've had the "My name Adam" bit down for awhile so we started working on "I'm two" while holding up two fingers.

Our first challenge was getting over Adam's denial that the number two exists. The kid counts to 11 easily, but always forgets the number 2 for some reason. One, three, four...and so on. So I got the expected result the first few times I asked him old he was. "I thwee!" as he held up 6 fingers. "No, no, sweetheart. You are TWO years old". After a couple of days he started saying "I two". Then he decided to try to add "years old" except he keeps forgetting the "years". So he's always saying "I too old!". Yeah kid, me too.

I can't believe he's gonna be two already.

Here's him this time last year:

And now:

Old Monkey

2005-09-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

I just had my birthday (8/30). My warranty expires at the end of this year. As if to hammer home how old I'm getting I learned last Monday that I am officially the oldest person in my Honor's English class. For our first exercise we had to partner up with another person, interview them, and then write five different pieces about them. The first thing I learned about my partner was that I am almost twice as old as she is. She's 16! It was a fun exercise. I had to write a police report about her (I made her an arsonist), a personal ad (felt kind of sick doing this for a 16-year old), a fake e-mail about her, a letter of reference, and a piece identifying her for someone to pick her up at the airport. I know I'm nerdy for finding these activities fun. It's time I let my inner nerd out, though. Let her run free (until she trips and gets her hair tangled in her braces and breaks her glasses, because, you know, nerds are clumsy)...

Anyway, classes are going great. Except for the really boring speech teacher. But I have learned I can use his lecture time to catch up on other important homework. The kids are doing a relatively good job of behaving well for DH when I'm gone. Natasha just decides to wait until I get back home to eat. I'm hanging in there, DH is hanging in there. We're not doing too badly for such old geezers.

Everyone Talks About Poop! Right?

2005-08-21T16:38:00.000-07:00

Boy, you can never spend enough time talking about poop, can you? Well, I can't. Because I clean up the poop of 3 living creatures (not including myself). My life is all about what goes into and what comes out of these creatures. Plus, now that Adam Monkey is almost 2, we have been spending a lot of time talking about poop and pee, where it comes from, and where you are supposed to do it.

I have NOT been looking forward to potty training. Adam first went pee pee in the potty when he was a mere 16 months old. He's been telling me when he's poopy for many months now, but with a newborn around I just haven't had the motivation to try to chase around a 2-yr old trying to get him to go on the potty and then cleaning up the messes that ensue when he can't quite make it. But he drags his potty chair out all the time and asks to sit on it. Then he asks for "poop book", which is "Everyone Poops". We have reserved it for potty time so that he has a positive association with potty time. I think he still believes the potty is a place where you sit while mommy reads to you.

He rarely actually does anything in the potty. Rather, he just enjoys the quality, one-on-one time, I think. Good tactic.

So the other day I made a major mis-step. Adam's poop was...um..."formed" as they say in pediatrician talk, which meant he was minorly constipated. Upon changing his diaper I said "oh, you have poop nuggets". He repeated it back to me and it was so funny coming out of the mouth of a 2-yr old that I couldn't help but laugh. Another wrong move. Laughing when your toddler does something is another way of telling them "Do it again!". So he did. All day and evening. He ran around the house yelling "poop nuggets! poop nuggets! I have poop nuggets!". I tried really, really, really hard not to laugh.

How deprived of social interaction am I that such a phrase makes me laugh so much? I can't wait until he masters more refined comedy and can start using sarcasm and parody.

Doesn't matter. I must learn to retain myself no matter how funny the phrase is. When we were in church the other day, during a realtively quiet moment, Adam pooped in his diaper. Immediately after he yelled "I POOPY!". Immediately I covered his mouth with my hand and ushered him out as fast as I could. My goal was to get out before he yelled "poop nuggets!". Which he did, but fortunately for me, he waited until we got into the bathroom. *Sigh*.

Moral of the story: Never say anything to your children you don't want them repeating in church. And never laugh when they do something that is as inappropriate as it is funny. No matter how hard up you are for a good laugh. Oh yeah, and get out more.

Calling in sick

2005-08-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry. It's been a hairy week. First Adam got sick. Fevers, crying, non-stop consoling. It lasted for two days. The day he got better Natasha and I both got sick. I only cried a little, but she has been miserable and unable to eat or sleep for 4 days and has been crying unless you walk around with her. She's better today, but the whole week has been, I fear, a foreshadowing of what this fall and winter will be like...

Apropos of nothing, here are some pictures of my little monkeys.

Here is Adam right after he got home from the emergency room (they gave him stickers and bubbles, and Desi loves to eat bubbles)

Here is Natasha in one of the few hats that fits her tiny little head

I got a raise!

2005-08-07T19:10:00.000-07:00

My monkeys talked it over and decided I needed a higher salary for my job, which has felt pretty hard the last few weeks. Adam decided he would chip in by coming up to me, on his own free will, throwing his arms around me and saying "I yuvs you, mommy!". My heart just melts. Of course, he did exclaim while getting his diaper changed "I yuvs Carol" (Carol is our next door neighbor girl, 6 yrs old, who comes over and plays with Adam). Still...it means the world to me.

Natasha decided she would start giggling and even belly laughing when I play with her. She has the cutest chuckle!

Right Tools for the Job

2005-08-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

Last night's television viewing was a representation of extremes. Nothing else was on when I was feeding Natasha so I ended up watching Trading Spouses. I was excited to find a mother on there from Minnesota. I thought surely she would be the reasonable one. Interestingly, Trading Spouces was recruiting at the Mall of America one weekend when I was there. I didn't sign up, but now that I have two little babies it could have made for an interesting experience for the mother in my place.

Sadly, the Minnesota mother was extremely obsessive about cleanliness and order. And she was a major bitch, to boot. The house she was traded to was pretty dirty, but the family seemed extremely nice. I wish she could have lightened up a bit. Minnesota mom started each day with lists. Vacuumed her floors twice daily and nothing was ever out of place. Exactly the kind of person that would have a heart attack were she to visit my house.

Later that evening, DH stumbled onto a new series called "World's Dirtiest Jobs" or something like that. If you have not seen this show (or even if you have), I do not recommend watching it. Basically they follow people around who spend their day cleaning up poop. People poop. Bird poop. Dog poop. If it poops, someone cleans it up and WDJ will follow them around with cameras.

It occurred to me that WDJ could do an episode on a stay-at-home mom with two kids in diapers, and a dog that poops like a buffalo. My day really is all about cleaning up poop (and pee, and spitup, read my post on Blood, Sweat, and Tears).

After a night watching tv like that it's no wonder I woke up inspired to clean. Inspired, but not very motivated. Looking around a house where the dishes need to be done, 2 days of laundry waiting to be sorted through, trash to be taken out, floors cleaned, crayon on the walls, it's really hard to get motivated. I don't care how much coffee you drink. The only time I can generally get motivated to clean the house is when there is an alternate, more boring task waiting to be done and I can simultaneously clean and practice the art of avoidance.

I decided to go ahead and try to tackle the crayon on the wall first. I had a box of unopened Mr. Clean Magic Erasers waiting for me. Let me tell ya, those things actually work! I did manage to get a little too into the job actually rubbing for so long and hard that I managed to remove some paint. I tend to go crazy on jobs that involve elbow grease. Same with weeding. I will neglect my garden for weeks at a time only to get started one night and weed like a maniac until midnight not even stopping to think about what I'm doing or stepping back for a moment to make sure I'm not getting out of control. I'll run into the house from exhaustion only to find the 80 foot pile of weeds the next morning wondering what the hell I was thinking the night before.

I have to say, I was hesitant to try the magic erasers. I felt like it was a gimmick, just one more thing the new product development and marketing team at 3M could dream up to extract money from bored stay-at-home moms and obsessed Minnesota Moms who appear on Trading Spouces. But they win. I'll keep buying them at $90.00 a sponge, or whatever I paid.

Now that I have succumb to their marketing ploys and gave into the magic eraser I am afraid I might go even farther. Maybe the eraser is like some gateway drug for cleaning products. I need to move into harder things like disposable toilet brushes and disposable dusting cloths just to get the same fix.

And when did EVERYTHING start becoming disposable? When I grew up, your toilet brush sat next to the toilet. Granted, you stayed as far away as possible from it as you could, but it did the trick. So did the cloth diaper and furniture spray you used to dust. Ditto the regular old rag and baking soda to clean your tub. Today, there isn't a cleaning product you can dream up that doesn't come in a dispense-one-at-a-time tub and can be thrown away.

Here's a glimpse of a few products. I'm sure each of you owns at least TWO items listed here.

The beloved eraser. Capable of destroying pen marks, pencil marks, and even crayon markings.

Disposable duster. Although I'm not sure why you need a duster to be disposable.

Another one I don't completely get. You wash your tub with a disposable cloth at the end of a stick.

I'm giving in. The toilet brush is rather disgusting. The sponge at the end is disposable, of course. The stick, you get to keep.

And let us not forget Swiffer, who invented this whole genre of cleaning products.

Here's one I have never thought of. Disposable dish rags WITH dish soap!

And here's one you can't get yet! Quick! Put your deposit down and be the first on your block to have one!

I can't decide if I love or hate this new disposability. Does the thrifty, environmental side prevail and I can continue to make do with an old rag, or does the side obsessed with cleanliness (we've all seen the Dateline special where they tell you how many bazillion kinds of bacteria live in your kitchen sponge) prevail?

I guess for me, the answer is neither. The lazy mom who hates cleaning and has a toddler that can mess things up faster than she can clean them is usually the one that wins. Maybe I'll track that Minnesota Mom from Trading Spouces down and invite her over. An obsessive compulsive like that couldn't NOT clean, right? I just hope she can remember which sticks go to which cleaning products!

The New Kid on the Block

2005-07-27T19:16:00.000-07:00

Well, at least for a few weeks.

My nephew is in town. He's still young enough to consider visiting his aunt in Minnesota a fun thing to do. I love having him out here. It's like I have someone to act my age with. Er, I mean, act young with. Plus, he's really good with kids and having a younger brother Adam's age means he's very well trained in the re-binkying technique and is quite good at wrestling, chasing, peek-a-booing, and other forms of toddler entertainment.

Adam is in love. Devin is the big brother Adam wishes he could have. We tried our best, but I guess the best we could do for Adam is a little sister. Not exactly what Adam had in mind, I think. Adam says at least 73 times a day "Hi Devin!". Understandably, Devin's enthusiasm has waned and it's noticeable in his now obligatory replies. Still, he's wonderful with Adam.

Desi is also quite taken with him since Devin gives Desi the most attention the poor dog has had since...well...September 21, 2003. So between Desi and Adam, Devin doesn't really get a rest. It's hard being popular.

Devin even managed to make a few friends on our block. Kids come over asking for him and he's been here less than a week. He went with a group to the movies yesterday, and according to my neighbor, her 11-yr old son is mesmorized with Devin. I think his Halo 2 skills impress him.

So not only do I have tons of help keeping Adam happy ("mommy! mommy!" 2oo times a day has been replaced by "devin! devin!"), but the kids also does yards. And feeds the dog and takes out the trash. All I have to do is supply soda, frosted flakes, and no rules. Hey, I'm the aunt. I can do that.

The Number One Thing I Don't Miss About Seattle...

2005-07-21T10:17:00.000-07:00

How expensive it was to live there!

Well, maybe it's the traffic.

MSN Money posted their top ten list of the most overpriced cities in America and Seattle was at the top. No surprise, really. We pay less for a mortgage on our 3 bedroom house here than we paid for our 2 bedroom apartment in Seattle.

DH's commute time is barely in the double digits, while you could easily spend 2 hrs a day in your car if you lived and worked in the puget sound region.

Sadly, Rochester (MN) was not at the top of the best-places-to-live list compiled by Money magazine. If you come visit our fair city, you will see many signs boasting the title, which we held for several years. Interestingly, Bainbridge Island is on there, which would be a fabulous place to live, I agree, but how could you afford that?

Minnesota is, however, well regpresented in the coldest places category. Well duh!

Blood, Sweat, and Tears

2005-07-18T16:39:00.000-07:00

...and chocolate pudding, and ketchup, and cherry popsicle, and spitup, and I hate to admit, baby poop...

This is what I'm wearing. What are you wearing, hot stuff?

Ok, I had completely forgotten about the baby poop until just now, to be fair. I had every good intention to change my clothes after I got Natatasha out of her poopy diaper, which exploded onto me, but in the midst of changing her diaper, Adam hit his head on the dining room table so one emergency faded into another and I got distracted and what was priority #1 (getting out of shorts that have poop on them) became priority #2 (helping Adam). By the time that was over, I had forgotten about the poop and went on my business of figuring out what the last priority was before the whole diaper emergency business happend.

Which happened to be finishing cleaning up the chocolate pudding smear on the table from where Adam got tired of eating and decided to get creative and finger paint. Which, of course, ended up on me when I picked him up out of his seat and failed to realize that he still had some pudding on him. I thought I had wiped it all off, but food ends up in the darndest places. In fact, his food almost always ends up on me. As does anything he suddenly realizes is sticky, wet, itchy, gooey, or dirty (despite having been playing with the sticky, wet, itchy, etc. substance for more than a few minutes). Once he realizes the substance is on him and declares it "gose" which is Adamese for "gross", he yells "wape it!?!" (wipe it) and then runs over to me and wipes himself on my leg or shirt. I would like to blame the ketchup on this, but it's actually from my own clumsiness when I attempted to steal one of his corn dog husks (he hates the corn part) and it fell apart after I failed to realize that its weight had increased triple from soaking in ketchup for 30 minutes. It fell apart and half of it hit my leg before splatting on the floor.

The cherry popsicle, though. That's all Adam.

The spitup, nope. Not from me. DH and I had a whole conversation where we wondered when it's no longer called spitup and is referred to as vomit. We thought we were pretty clever until I mentioned it to his sister. She put an anticlamactic end to our cosmic, formerly unanswerable question when she simply responded "when you eat solid food". So there we go. Anyway, Natasha is not yet into solid food (apparently, neither is Adam, come to think of it, unless you count ketchup, cherry popsicle, and pudding). So her spitup adorns my shoulders. That's how you spot a new mom in stores. Just look at her shoulders. There should be tiny white patches where she burped her baby and didn't have a spit cloth on hand. Chances are good it was the cleanest of all her clothes because she doesn't have time to do laundry.

It's no wonder I feel so sexy at the end of the day. All this running around, wiping up messes and fluids (and solids, oye). It makes a person sweat. Makes you feel like you burn a million calories and shouldn't even have to use your treadmill. Which I never get to, sadly. And to round things out, I actually did bleed on myself today when I cut my finger trying to clean my new food processor. I was dying to try a recipe for carrot soup, but only got as far as chopping up the celery before the priority shift happened again. And the tears, well, if a day ends where I don't end up with Natasha and Adam tears on me, my shirt would be soaked in my own tears of happiness.

And bourbon.

Top 5 Places I miss in & around Seattle

2005-07-15T16:59:00.000-07:00

5. Olympic Athletic Club
I know this isn't representative of Seattle. You can't get a shot of the building with the space needle in the background. There are no tourists that visit it. It's not in a particularly hip part of Seattle (it's in Ballard, which I consider cool, but I'm not cool, so it doesn't count). But I used to visit the place religiously. All the people that worked there were super cranky and I never talked to anyone. Just went in, did my workout, and left. I loved it. It felt like church to me. I miss it.

4. Safeco Field
I never liked baseball until I saw it played in Safeco Field. It's a beautiful stadium. More importantly, it's an outdoor stadium unlike what we have here in Minnesota, where players lose sight of the ball because of the white rooftop. Its construction was voted down several times by Seattle voters but it got built anyway. I swore I would never step foot in it, but I loved the place. They had good garlic fries there, too. Sushi, Dixie's BBQ, you name it. Oh, and the Mariners, who were good when I lived in Seattle. Perhaps they wish I had not moved. Perhaps they can pay me a stipend to move back?

3. Eateries
I realize this is cheating by including several places under one category, but I cannot choose just one place. I love them all.

Monsoon: wonderful, delectable Viet Namese food. The best Sea Bass in the world.

Kingfish: Soul food. The place had crazy hours and people literally lined up an hour before it opened to get a table. Worth it!

Brownbag: Breakfast in Seattle on weekends was like a sport. You hunt down the restaurant with the fewest number of people standing outside waiting. Brownbag was a favorite, even though it was on the east side. I crossed the bridge for it almost monthly. They baked their own bread right there and had to bring your toast on a separate plate because their skillets were so packed full. MMMMM.....potato sausage skillet....I miss you.

LaVaca: A hole-in-the-wall Mexican lunch joint a block away from where I worked. I'm sure it wouldn't have passed food inspection, but I refused to try to find out because it was so good. The Chicken Verde burrito was the best. Eventually new owners bought it and tried to change how things were done. They stopped generously throwing in extra sauce and cheese and stuck to strict portioning. Changed recipes to save money, eliminated ingredients. I always laughed as I was gorging down my 8-pound burrito because I knew "La Vaca" translates to "The Cow", which I surely could become while eating off their menu!

5 Spot: If I had to pick one favorite, this would probably be it. They have a regular menu, which is small and a rotating menu. Each quarter they change the theme of the rotating menu. The "Chicago" theme sticks out in my mind as does something tropical where I had fresh rum-soaked banana bread with fruit salsa made of mangoes, pineapple, and papaya with a drizzle of caramel and mango sorbet.

Little coffee stands everywhere: There's one 2 seconds away from anywhere you are in Seattle. It's a cliche, I know, but it's a cliche for a reason. Starbucks was ok, Seattle's Best better, Tully's slightly better, but the really good coffee was to be had at those little coffee kiosks on the corner. The one I happened to frequent...frequently was located on 4th and James, which is a nasty part of town, but it's where I worked. The coffee was so thick I almost needed a spoon. Happy Hour was at 3 right before the lady closed. She was there every day, rain or shine. And the beauty of the stand is, the same person that I gave my order to actually made the coffee and even took my money, reducing the chance of my order getting screwed up since it didn't have to get filtered through 8 different people (like that old game "telephone" where you whisper something into someone's ear, they whisper it into another's and so on...at the end, the last person says what they heard and compares it to what the original person whispered and hilarity ensues over how different the interpretation was from the original statement, except when you are jonesin' for a short Americano with two shots and a few ice cubes so you can drink it THIS CENTURY and you get a decaf iced Mochachino, hilarity does not ensue!).

2. Olympic Peninsula
Everything good was on the peninsula. Good motorcycle roads all twisty and hilly and super smooth with no radar guns pointing at you and little traffic. You have to take a ferry to get there from Seattle, but you are first on and first off with a motorcycle bypassing long lines of commuters. There's the Olympic mountain range, which is breathtaking. There's plenty of camping. Small, pastoral towns. One day I'm gonna own me a house there.

Here's DH and me 3 years ago up at Hurricane Ridge.

1. The Salish Lodge/Snoqualmie Falls
One of the most beautiful places on earth. The Lodge sits right atop the falls. You can hike down to the base of the falls which is worth doing a couple of times. Or, if you are lazy or have already done it, just hang out at the top where there is a small park. There's lots of facts I could look up and tell you about the waterfall (I don't have them memorized), but that's not what I care about. It's a place I visited regularly from the time I was 15 until I left. Twin Peaks was filmed there, which is what originally drew me to visit. After that, it was just its beauty that kept me coming. And once I became a teenager, my friends and I realized that we were basically alone there at night. We were always respectful of the place. Just basically hung out admiring the sound of rushing water without the background noise of lookie-loos.

Before DH and I were married we would stay at the Lodge regularly. It was a pretty upscale hotel with a quite upscale restaurant. Save for our impass with the snotty wine steward, the service made you feel like the queen (or king) of the world. They even had those little table duster thingies and cleaned your table cloth after you finished your main course! I just loved that. That was when we had disposable income, which we were quite good at disposing of. To add to the list of reasons I love this place, getting there was also quite a treat. It was at the top of a 2-lane highway, which meandered through beautiful forest down through the snoqualmie valley. It was one of the best motorcycle rides in the region.

The lodge also had the best spa and pool in the world. We loved it so much we got married there, which is almost as good as loving the lodge so much I married the lodge.

*Sniff*. I miss Seattle. Until I get stuck in traffic there upon visiting. Then I'm happy to return home!

Reading is Cool!

2005-07-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

It's so cool that there's a guidebook on buying books. Nancy Pearl did an interview today on Minnesota Public Radio about her new book "More Book Lust". It turns out she is a librarian from Seattle, my hometown! And aren't I such a sleuth, I just found out that she inspired the Librarian Action figure from Archie McPhee.

She had lots of interesting suggestions for what to read and a lot of nerds called in to talk about various fantasy and sci-fi series, in which I have absolutely zero interest. Unfortunately, I have a ton of other books I am dying to read. Many of my favorite authors got together and decided they would all publish something this summer knowing that I wouldn't be able to read any of it!

Among the conspirators:

Sarah Vowell publishes another essay book, "Assassination Vacation"
John Irving, who publishes another novel "Until I Find You: A Novel"
Nick Hornby, the bastard. He puts out "A Long Way Down"
And then Melissa Bank puts out only her second novel, which I have been waiting for her to do for years now, "The Wonder Spot"

I still have two books sitting on my nightstand that might soon find their way downstairs so I will stop feeling guilty for not reading more of them. I was really enjoying Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct", a gift by my SIL, but you know..I have kids so I end up not reading very much. Unless it's a book about getting kids to sleep better so you can read more.

Hence the pile of books on my other nightstand:
Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (so far my favorite)
Baby Whisperer (don't get me started on this one!)
No Cry Sleep Solution
Mayo's Baby Book
The Baby Book (Dr. Sears)

I have decided to write my own book. I am just going to title it "Read this book and your baby will go to sleep" and I am positive it will become a best seller.

Other things I do get to read:
My Trucks
Mother Goose
Counting Kisses
Goodnight Moon

And speaking of reading, I will be doing lots of it this fall since I am registered for a full course load. All of them boring. Ethics, Honors English, Speech, and hopefully one that involves no reading: Jogging/Walking.

Go books!

Mama-Ha

2005-07-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

Adam, of course, is very familiar with all motorized vehicles. Trucks, boats, cars, motorcycles, you name it. It's gotten to the point where I can now ID, by sight, over 40 different types of trucks, including a paver, a grader, giant front-end loader, and our beloved garbage truck and fire truck (Adam's new favorites).

He definitely knows a motorcycle. We took him to Toys R' Us one day and my heart nearly stopped when he hopped onto a little pocket sport bike, leaned forward, put his foot on the pegs and looked right at home. My Boy!

I lamented out loud how badly I missed having a sportbike when we went up north and drove on beautifully twisty, curvey, hilly roads. Apparently DH took it to heart because now he thinks we need a sportbike.

If this were a boat, car, or truck I would try really hard to talk him out of it.

But you know...I love those sportbikes.

He was thinking Ninja. I love me some Yamaha, though.

Here's me a few years ago testing out an R1 at a motorcycle show. I had one shortly after that then sold it when we moved to California. Not good planning.

If I had a hammer

2005-07-06T11:14:00.000-07:00

I would end up hammering the crap out of the box new toys come in along with the toys contained within them because I CAN'T FOR THE LIFE OF ME GET A TOY OUT OF A BOX IN LESS THAN 37 HOURS!!!

AAAAHHHHH!!!!

When did they start making toys so damn difficult to get out of boxes? The Fisher Price Little People sets are by far the worst. Each little person is individually twist-tied to the box in at least two places. Then, to make sure that you don't get to the twist tie too easily, that is taped over. But of course, to get to the tape on the inside of the box, you have to remove the extra adhesive tape on the outside of the box, which is made out of a compound stronger than steel yet more malleable than rubber so that when you try to puncture it with your key or your fingernail, you never make any progress; you don't even damage the seal.

It would be less stressful, this toy-opening process if it didn't include an overly-excited toddler screaming impatiently "wussssat? wusssat?!? open! open! more, mommy open!". Then you have to run for the tool box and the toddler thinks you are abandoning him with his unopened toy, which is now just sitting there mocking you both. Of course, the hack saw, screwdriver, and blow torch you need to open the toy were not put back into the tool box from the last time you needed them and now you must search the entire house, garage, and shed for them. You try using your keys one more time, but this time you learn your lesson when the key slips off the box as you are stabbing it and into your leg. Now your toddler is just plain scared of you.

Sigh.

We went through this harrying ordeal again today when we came home from Wally World with a new tractor ("chakka") which pulls a wagon. Adam is obsessed with things towing other things these days. Ever since he saw us tow the boat and a camper, everything must tow something and I am inundated with requests to "hook it, mommy hook it" for things that won't hook to other things. So I knew we needed some more hooky things. He delightedly carried the box around in the shopping cart the entire shopping trip admiring the green, metallic beauty. And he was very patient when I told him we had to wait until we got home to open it. Of course, he had to hold the box in the car, and carry it to the house. I tried to open it as fast as I can, and I am getting faster now and outsmarting these complicated little contraptions. But man was I angry when I found out I actually had to get the screwdriver out to simply remove the tractor from the box. GRRR!

Someone please tell me when tools became a necessary part of opening a new toy? What happened to that blister packaging? Granted, you could never open it without tearing through 3 or 4 layers of flesh, but at least it only involved a knife, or lacking a knife, sheer will and pluck.

Life is so complicated. But a happy Adam is well worth it.

Nat's Stats

2005-06-24T15:24:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe she is two months old already. Having been through all of this with Adam, I have an appreciation for how quickly infancy passes, but it's still hard to believe that kids can grow up so fast.

Natasha had her two month well-baby visit today. She is quite well indeed. She now weighs 10 pounds and 7 ounces, putting her in the 44% with a length of 21.65 inches for 25%. I just checked Adam's stats and he weighed over 13 pounds at this age. But he was a formula baby and Nat is breastfed, so her shooting up from the 22% to the 44% is an accomplishment I am quite proud of. Plus, I don't mind her being smaller than Adam. My arms got tired with him!

The poor little girl got all 4 shots, but she had some Tylenol and some mother's milk and is resting now in her hammock.

Here she is a few days ago in the camper. She was happy as a clam because I just took off her clothes and her diaper and she was planning a major explosion before I got her new diaper on. Cheeky little monkey!

Very Kiwi!

2005-06-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

We just returned from our big summer camping and fishing trip. Adam managed to return without chipmunk-related injury. They are his new greatest fear in life, usurping even the old Chinese lady and thunder as the most scary things on earth.

A Conversation with a Toddler

2005-06-16T10:44:00.000-07:00

Adam: "Wiggles?"
Me: "You want to watch The Wiggles?"
Adam: "OK!"

I grab the remote, turn on the TV and Sesame Street happened to be on. Adam apparently caught a glimpse of it before I could get The Wiggles on.

"Elmo!"
"But we're watching Wiggles, OK?"
"No, Elmo!"
"Do you want Wiggles or Elmo?"
"Boobah?!?"

Damn Dirty Hippies

2005-06-14T12:56:00.000-07:00

So DH and I had lunch today at our favorite Indian restaurant. We took Natasha in the car seat because it's just easier than taking her out and waking her up and then trying to find a way to not spill food on her while holding her. We were seated next to the hippy couple. The woman had dread locks and wore a tank top that looked like it had been made out of an old curtain and wore no bra. I don't recall the man too much other than his shaggy hair and his shirt that showed he obviously struggled to cross the "corporate casual" look with the "I'm subverting the dominant paradigm....and you can tell by the clothes that I wear. Also, kill your television" look.

When I looked at her I feared I might be judged for having Natasha in the car seat, or the "baby bucket" as AP nazis refer to them. But she was content and cute in it. Then, dare I say, I was correct. I overheard her mumbling to her lunch date the words "never.....car seat....sling....blah, blah". I filled in the rest to make it "I would NEVER leave my kid in a car seat. I would only wear them in slings."

Judging by how well her body parts were in their correct place, the lack of spitup on her clothing, the absence of children with her, and her strong opinion on parenting, I presume she didn't have any kids of her own. And as DH says, if she doesn't shower, she never will. The bright side is that they gave us lots of fodder for our lunchtime conversation.

I want to add a few more rules to my How-to-Be-Cool-AP list:

1) Have a natural home birth (bonus points if you save the placenta!)

2) No solid foods until your child is 3 or 4...YEARS

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

2005-06-10T09:12:00.000-07:00

Every mom should have a daughter. Natasha is intoxicatingly delicate and sweet. And remarkably easy. Everyone told me how much easier having a girl would be and I didn’t believe it until she arrived. Here’s the thing, though. Even though Adam required a lot as a newborn, I always theorized that you get out what you put in. So giving a lot to Adam meant that he was going to be a super hyper genius happy child and grow into a super hyper happy successful content secure (insert all positive adjectives here) adult. So I feel really freaked out when I don’t have to put as much effort into Natasha. Since I don’t swaddle her and hold her and bounce and “shhhh” in a dark room by myself with white noise for 24 hrs a day, maybe she’ll just be average. Then I stop and think…maybe she’ll just make up for the lack of parenting effort when she is a teenager.

Another thing different about girls is the amount of pink involved in dressing your child. I had long lamented over the dearth of boy clothes to choose from, but at least there is some variety in color choices. I remember looking at newborn girl clothes wondering what in the world I could bring myself to put on Natasha given my aversion to the color of Pepto Bismol. And hair! What would I do with her hair?!? Mine is always in a pony tail and I use that term loosely. Half of it is usually hanging out and I can’t get rid of those blasted comb lines. I am hair challenged, despite having more than my fair share of it.

Maybe it’s the hormones, but I find myself renewing my love affair with the color pink. I had always thought most newborn girls look rather anemic in the color pink, but Natasha looks quite vibrant in it. So I find myself gravitating to pink, ruffley clothing. Not that I have other options, mind you. And hair isn’t too much an issue since Natasha’s is less than an inch long.

We’ll see how girly she ends up being. She is quite petite and I think she always will be, but she’s also pretty tough having survived her 50% chance of not making it into this world, overcoming a single umbilical artery and thriving perfectly. Oh, and taking a few blows to the head courtesy of her clumsy older brother who hasn’t fully grasped the concept of gravity yet. No matter, he’ll always be there to look out for her when she’s older as he is quite the loving older brother already.

We’re hoping he is big enough to help keep those teenage years of hers from getting too challenging; it’s going to be his job to keep all the riff-raff away.

Kiwi!

2005-06-01T19:29:00.000-07:00

As reported in the previous entry, "kiwi" means "scary". It's a good thing not everyone speaks Adamese. We were on our daily walk today when the old, old, old Chinese lady that lives two houses down approached us. She hadn't bothered to take the single roller out of her hair (in the bangs), but that didn't detract from the rest of the hair, the texture of which resembles the tassles of frayed wheat. Her eyebrows are conspiciously painted on, and based on the color (dark blue), thickness, and mis-shapeness, I'm guessing she needs a new prescription for her eyeglasses. Still, she's a nice lady. I don't understand a majority of what she says, but I enjoy her presence. Adam, on the other hand declared "kiwi!", "kiwi!", "kiwi" as she was walking toward us. He then ducked down behind me and sat on the ground mumbling "kiwi" while hanging onto my legs as I talked to her.

I gotta get this kid out more.

New House Rule

2005-05-20T17:48:00.000-07:00

Added to our long list of house rules that revolve around keeping Adam happy is a new rule: No noises should be made that in any way resemble the sound of thunder.

I was wishing for a good hardy thunderstorm. I love them here in the midwest. But now I wish to take back my wish. I guess I didn't learn from the old fables to be careful what you wish for...

We had a decent thunderstorm on Wednesday afternoon. Nothing too intense. There were no weather warnings and we never spent any time in the basement. But there were some good, consistent booms every few minutes. I was in the middle of nursing Natasha when Adam first heard it and came screeching across the room and climbed up my leg onto my lap onto poor Natasha's head within .02 seconds. The poor kid was screaming his head off. I have truly never heard him so frightened. I tried to tell him that it was just thunder and everything would be fine, to no avail. He used his vocabulary to try to ease himself "all done!" he kept saying. Then he asked to go night-night. I think he thought that would make it go away. When he discovered he could still hear it in his bedroom, the fear truly set in. "Wake up!" he kept saying.

After that every little boom, bang, or vroom that occurs results in him using his new vocabulary "tunna?!!!!?!!" (thunder) followed by "kiwi" (scary; it took me forever to decipher this one), then "all done!". Unless he's trying to sleep, then it's "wake up!". Well, we live right by a major street. Lots of cars with loud bass drive by. The sounds of which, of course, are followed by the preceeding dialog. As are the sounds of footsteps, Desi barking, doors closing, coughing, chairs getting moved, toilets flushing, and so on...

And this is just the beginning of storm season. Everyone cross your fingers that he becomes desensitized quickly.

By the way, here are the other house rules:

1) If you are the one responsible for waking the children up, you are responsbile for getting them back to sleep. This rule applies to everyone, including children and pets.

2) Don't mention something you can't follow up on. Don't even whisper it because our kid misses nothing. So unless you don't feel like going for a walk at 9 pm, don't say the word.

3) No flushing toilets, closing doors all the way, closing cabinets all the way, or talking loudly during nap time.

4) In fact, try not to breathe too loudly during nap time.

5) Ok, don't move during nap time.

6) Phone ringer off during nap time.

7) Always leave at least one episode of each of the following on TiVo at all times: The Wiggles, Sesame Street, and Barney.

And here are a few imposed for DH's sake:

1) No toilet paper other than Charmin

2) No door slamming. Ever. No matter how mad you are!

3) Always have beer available.

4) Always leave at least one episode of each of the following on TiVo at all times: King of the Hill, In Fisherman, and American Hot Rod.

Viva La Vaio!

2005-05-03T19:05:00.000-07:00

So I tried to feed my laptop some coffee about a month and a half ago. I should have blamed the mishap on Adam, but it was my own fault. We took the laptop back to Best Buy where they told us it would be shipped to Sony, cost a minimum of $250 and take at least two weeks to get fixed.

A month later DH came home with the Vaio in his arms. I looked at the work order and the estimate to repair stated "uneconomical to repair" and gave an estimate of $1,200. So we thought it was a goner. DH decided to open her up and tinker a little and resurrected it! So I have my beautiful laptop back. Incidentally, it was last year's mother's day gift. I told DH that fixing it was this year's mother's day gift. It's just the gift that keeps on giving.

In other news, Natasha had her early followup last week and her weight is up great. She's gaining 2/3's an oz per day. Given how much boob time she gets, I'm surprised that's all. She's still in preemie clothes, but they are getting too short for her now. She is definitely more alert now, although still a much better sleeper than Adam ever was.

Adam is enjoying the company of his Grandma and Grandpa G who are dousing the child with gifts and, more importantly, infinite amounts of attention and outside time. Adam follows my dad around and refuses to let him leave his sight. When he tries, he grabs his Papa by the hand and says "c'mon", leading him back to play.

He has also learned a few new words. To my surprise, he knows the word "booby", which he exclaimed loudly when I was feeding Natasha. While his Grandma B was here, nonetheless. He's also learned the word for smoking, "moking" as he calls it. Whenever my dad goes outside he informs the house "Papa moking!". DH walked out the front door the other day and apparently Adam thinks everyone is moking every time they go outside for he declared "Daddy moking!". DH quickly corrected Adam.

Here is Adam and his Papa playing after they put together the kitchen set (Papa had lots of help).

Happy Birthday, Natasha Monkey

2005-04-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

Everything went according to the plan. April 22, Friday morning Jason and I got up and made our way to the hospital saying goodbye to Adam for a few hours as he was left in the more-than-capable hands of his Grandma and Grandpa B. We ended up waiting an extra hour or two since someone came in for an unscheduled c-section before me. That didn’t stop them from putting all kinds of various tubes in me on time, though as I got to sit there without the benefit of pain medication. So we sat and patiently waited and watched Jeopardy.

Eventually they took me back to the OR without Jason to get the spinal in place. It was much more mellow than last time I got wheeled in. Last time (with Adam) everyone was already in the OR scrubbing up and in a big hurry. This time everyone seemed very leisurely about the whole thing. To my surprise, getting the spinal didn’t hurt a bit. Unlike the epidural, it took effect almost immediately. And this time I felt nothing. Eventually Jason came in and within minutes, little Natasha was lifted out of me. They didn’t tell me that they were about to pull her out so when they did, her cry caught us off guard. Here she is in her first moment outside the womb (complete with a picture of the two-vessel cord, which is supposed to have three vessels).

I was very surprised to learn that she was only 6 pounds 10 ounces. She certainly felt a lot bigger on the inside. But she was (and is) completely healthy. We do have an early follow-up appointment on Friday since she was 10% below her birth weight at discharge. I have a feeling she will have made up for that given how much and how well she has been eating. Speaking of which, she is a pro at latching on. We weren’t planning on breastfeeding, but she took to it right away and it’s working out marvelously well this time so we are going to stick with it. I do reap the immediate rewards from it to, as the prolactin makes me feel like I drank a glass of red wine. Good most of the time, not always what I need at our 4 am feeding.

So far she is incredibly easy. She barely cries. Her whimpers wake me up at night. Sometimes I wake her up at night to eat and often wake her at 3-hr intervals in the day to eat. She is becoming more alert now, which is nice. I get to see her blue eyes staring back at me. She loves to look at Adam. Whenever he is near, she watches him intently. And he loves her. He’ll come home from daycare looking for her, “Tasha?” he’ll call until I show him where she is. He wasn’t terribly fond of her the first day; he cried when she cried and wasn’t happy until they left the hospital. But the day we brought her home we could barely keep him from laying on top of her to hug and kiss her. We had to put a little step next to the pack and play so he can check on her when she’s sleeping in it. Desi, as always, is the consummate good dog and has left her alone now that he has memorized her smell and given her a few good licks on the head.

Here are my babies the day we brought Nat home:

Overall the birth experience was much better this time around. A c-section is much easier when it doesn’t follow a very long, difficult labor. The babies arrive much happier, and mom is much less exhausted. My recovery is going very well. Less than one week later I am already completely mobile. I wear out easily still, but I can see improvement each day. I don’t think it could have gone any better.

Grandma B goes home tomorrow, which is sad. Adam is going to have a hard time with that. She has been tremendously helpful taking such good care of my baby boy while I recuperate. She has also taken care of my house, leaving it in much better condition than I ever have, and she is always good for support and advice. We’ll miss her being around every day! My parents arrive late Friday (the 29th). They will help out tremendously too, and Mr. Adam and my mom get along fabulously as well. I hope their arrival helps him deal with Grandma and Grandpa B being gone (he’s still asking for Grandpa even though he went home almost a week ago).

I am such a lucky momma. Not only do I have the two best kids, but I have such wonderful support. Not to mention the best DH who is the best dad in the world.

Item! Children Need Affection!

2005-04-20T19:08:00.000-07:00

Thank God for Harvard researchers! Where would I be without this new bit of information? I’m just glad it came before Natasha is born. This way I can properly raise her, unlike the hack job we’ve done on her poor older brother. I would stop locking him in the bathroom when he needs attention but I’m afraid to change parenting strategies with him now that we are already set in our ways. Perhaps someone will fund a study that will help me decide what to do about this quandary.

Seriously, this whole study is ridiculous. First, if you read the actual study, the authors state that they didn’t do their own research. Instead, they make extrapolations based on a seriously limited number of observations of multiple researchers with whom they are not even connected. It’s not that I disagree with the premise. Of course children need attention and touching! Of course they cry for a reason! Of course they need to be held and loved! But if you read the study, there is nothing that proves a one-time 30-minute crying jag will irreparably harm your child, causing him or her to suffer from generalized anxiety disorder in adulthood. Yet, this does nothing to calm down the attachment parenting zealots when arguing their case that your child, under no circumstances, should ever be allowed to be unhappy and should always be directly physically attached to your body, every coo and whimper immediately attended to. Among other apparent rules you must abide by to be part of the cool AP club:

· You must use cloth diapers, preferable ones woven by you. Out of hemp. That you grew organically in your own garden.
· Said cloth diapers must be washed in some sort of organic compound so as not to upset baby’s delicate skin.
· You must own at least 3 types of baby slings. Again, hemp is the ideal material. Extra points if you make your own. Extra extra points if you own one from each Asian country. Try some of these:
http://www.nurturedfamily.com/babycarriers.aspx
http://www.earthbaby.com/newnative.html
http://www.mayawrap.com/
http://store.peppermint.com/baby-slings-by-name.html
· You must not, under any circumstances, ever let a drop of formula touch the lips of your child. If someone says formula is ok to use, you must use the argument “Formula is not natural. You do not see animals in the wild eating formula”. (This argument of course, neglects the fact that infants of wild animals who could not, for whatever reason, eat their mother’s breast milk would die in the wild).
· Dr. Sears is your God.
· Make your own baby food.
· Do not own a television set.
· Co-sleep until your child is….eh, old enough to reproduce on his or her own.
· If you must choose between eating your first meal in 20 hours and actually putting your fussy infant in a swing to be happy alone for 3 minutes or holding your child, choose the latter. Or you are a bad mommy.
· Your child may never have any refined sugar, artificial sweeteners, or other additives. Seriously. Not even when his or her digestive system is mature enough to handle it in small quantities.
· If you see any parent not following the above rules, you must immediately feel superior to him or her. If their infant is crying, you must assume it is because they do not follow the rules listed above rather than the fact that sometimes…you know…babies cry!

Now that I got all of that off of my chest, I can say that I am happy there is a backlash movement against the parenting trends invoked by crazies like Dr. Spock and the infamous Gary Enzzo. But seriously, to make a movement out of it and attach yourself to this movement and identify yourself as a follower of it seems not only unhelpful to me, but at times, downright dangerous. The most deleterious effect is that it causes moms to not support other moms’ decisions. Without taking into consideration the circumstances behind their decisions.

But all this AP stuff is certainly good for one thing: Call your product “AP friendly” or advertise it in AP circles and you can charge an arm and a leg for it. Get it endorsed by Dr. Sears and you can increase your profit margin by at least tenfold.

The funny thing is, I don’t think parenting styles have changed dramatically with all the research being done or have been deeply affected by which parenting books are most popular. I used to crawl into bed all the time with my parents when I was a toddler and my mom let me get away with it. She didn’t call it “co-sleeping”, though. I was just “sleeping in her bed”.

If I sound a bit jaded and a touch bitter, it’s because I did everything I could to try to make Adam a happy baby. I swore that he wasn’t when he was still a little baby. He was very high needs and demanded to be held ALL OF THE TIME. So I did. But I didn’t love every minute of it and I felt bad for that. You know, sometimes I wanted to put him down and use the bathroom or take a shower. So he did end up sitting in front of Baby Einstein in a swing. But when I look at him now and I think back to his infancy….he was, and most definitely is, an extremely happy and well-adjusted little guy. We used some of the products dubbed "AP", primarily out of desperation. We'll use them on Natasha, too (the hammock, a sling), but I'm not joining a club. I'm not calling myself "AP". If she cries, it doesn't mean I'm unfit, if she has formula, she'll probably still be very healthy. And foremostly, if I see another mother abiding by a rule that is not my own or isn't AP, I'm not going to judge her for it.

I hope we do as good a job with Natasha as we did with Adam. I just need to remember not to read too much Harvard Research.