Maggie was starting to fuss in her swing a few minutes ago. I wanted to keep playing on the computer (selfish mommy!), and nothing was expressly wrong with my offspring, so I raised my left hand in the air and snapped my fingers.
The baby laughed! She grinned and gurgled appreciatively as if to say, “Gee my mom knows me. She just knew that nothing in the world would make me happier right this very instant than to see snapping fingers!”
I stopped and about a minute later she yelled in boredom again. “I want to get out of this confounded swing! Once again, I raised my hand and snapped.
“What’s that you say? Fingers, huh. And they snap. That is so cool. Wait! What was I fussing about? Oh. . . I can’t remember. . .but look- fingers!”
Five minutes go by. Child fusses. Mother snaps. Problem solved.
In the words of Paul Reiser, “Congratulations, you have momentarily outwitted an infant!”
Posted by Lou on March 30, 2005 @ 10:36 pm | 0 Comments
100 things. . .because everybody’s doing it!
1. I am five foot three and 3/4th inches tall.
2. My favorite thing that I own is my Canon Digital Rebel It rocks!
3. I have two children.
4. I hate being pregnant.
5. I spend a lot of time at Barnes & Noble.
6. I love lefse.
7. My Gramma makes the world’s best lefse.
8. I am 51% Norwegian.
9. I have been happily married for almost four years.
10. I am originally from North Dakota.
11. I was an English major.
12. I used to sing and dance in a show choir. I’ve performed at Disney World.
13. I am a published scrapbooker.
14. I have been scrapbooking for 13 years.
15. I am LDS.
16. I am an oldest child.
17. I attended four years of seminary and two years of religious institute.
18. My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving.
19. I love Easter candy the best.
20. I am an Air Force wife.
21. I am not a patient person. Not even a little bit.
22. I love to garden.
23. I love to eat; but I don’t enjoy cooking.
24. I rolled in a car 3.5 times and walked away unscathed ( I was not driving).
25. I have never been pulled over (even though I deserve it).
26. I played the guitar before my son was born.
27. I am a Scorpio.
28. I take a lot of pictures.
29. I love Diet Coke w/ Lime.
30. I would prefer to eat at Burger King, but McDonald’s has better Happy Meal toys.
31. I adore Mexican food. I would eat it every day if I could.
32. I need a lot of me time or I’m not a very good mother.
33. I worked at a Balloon store. We decorated events. My boss would drink on the job.
34. I got married when I was 19.
35. No regrets.
36. I volunteered at a nursing home for 6 years.
37. I love elderly people.
38. I have very vivid dreams.
39. I enjoy sewing, but I’m not very good at it.
40. I don’t like ice in my drinks.
41. I frequently escape to the bathtub and take long hot baths.
42. I read in the bathtub.
43. I used to tutor English.
44. I had an epidural with Jonas.
45. The epidural didn’t work at all with Maggie so that was natural.
46. Labor wasn’t so bad. Delivery was horrid.
47. I breastfed both kids.
48. I think co-sleeping is a good thing.
49. I do not believe in abortion as a means of birth control. But I think there are circumstances where it is ok (rape, incest, life of mother in danger.)
50. I believe in being responsible.
51. Flies gross me out.
52. I like cows.
53. I can drive an automatic or a clutch.
54. I drove 100 mph once. I drive 80mph frequently.
55. I get more nervous driving in rain than in snow.
56. I think guacamole is wonderful.
57. I love old movies.
58. I have very eclectic taste in music.
59. I scare easily.
60. I don’t watch scary movies for that reason.
61. I have a working knowldege of how to find my way around San Francisco.
62. I have no sense of direction.
63. I hate it when people whistle.
64. I also hate it when people are late or when I am late. That is my biggest pet peeve.
65. I like to go camping, but I don’t get to very often.
66. Whenever I move somewhere I try to learn the names of the local flora.
67. It makes me feel at home.
68. The only place that I have disliked living or visiting is Texas.
69. I get along better with people much older than me than with my peers.
70. I was married in Manti, UT. Here.
71. Horses are beautiful, but they make me nervous.
72. I had a 4-wheeler flip over on top of me.
73. I got 5 scholarships when I went to college.
74. I played Chava in Fiddler on the Roof.
75. I hated the dating scene.
76. I have been in the ocean surrounded by jellyfish.
77. I didn’t get stung because I was clinging to life on top of a boogie board.
78. Both of my children were planned pregnancies.
79. I had a barracuda swim so close to me he brushed by my belly.
80. I don’t go swimming in the ocean much because weird stuff seems to happen to me.
81. I like the color green because it goes with everything.
82. I like purply periwinkle the best though.
83. I have a lot of Pampered Chef stuff.
84. I hate math.
85. I think most of the stuff you learn in High School is useless.
86. I love to read, but I don’t get to very often.
87. I really enjoy Willa Cather and Zora Neale Hurston. And Harry Potter books.
88. I think Alan Rickman is hot.
89. I like Oscar the Grouch.
90. Elmo bugs me.
91. My daughter looks just like me. My son looks like my husband.
92. I have a younger brother and sister. They don’t update much.
93. I like to talk.
94. I spent 7 weeks in the hospital when I was expecting my son.
95. Both my babies were preemies, but healthy.
96. I can’t carry a baby past 30 weeks w/o medical intervention.
97. I love chocolate and eat it every day.
98. I wear contacts. I’m just about blind w/o them.
99. I never feel my age. I always feel about fourty something or about twelve.
100. This list took me an hour and a half!
Posted by Lou on @ 10:35 pm | 0 Comments
My knee is feeling a lot better. It is still sore and I don’t particularly enjoy stairs, but I can function. Can’t ask for much more than that can I?
I just found out that Chris is going to be on twelve hour shifts for the bulk of April. He will also be working straight through the weekends. Gag. So. . .I must conjure Super Mommy and Ultra Devoted Wife to the rescue. When Chris is on schedules like this I have to be everything to everybody and it can be a pain in the neck. But if I get grouchy about it, Chris moves from grouchy to intolerable and the kids get cranky, the house falls apart and I just want to hit something. The old adage is true: If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.
So I must make a conscious effort to be happy. Happiness really is a choice. Things and circumstances don’t make you happy- you make you happy. Circumstances make it easier to be happy, of course. If someone handed me several million dollars and told me to go have fun, I would probably be pretty happy, at least for a day or two. But, ultimately, you can have peace in your heart and a happy nature in even the worst of circumstances. It is all about attitude. I am going to need reminding of this in April.
I will also need to make a conscious effort to do the things that keep me happy. Social events will be planned and babysitters will be hired on occasion. It is easier to be happy when I am not suffering from total burnout.
This weekend is our last weekend to have any time together as a family or a couple. Chris has Friday off, so that will help matters. We are driving to my in-law’s house on Thursday because there is a class I want to take at the scrapbook store there. A very talented woman named Lilac Chang is teaching. I haven’t met her, but I have seen her work in several magazines. The class is on using dyes and bleach on your scrapbook pages. I am so stoked! I rarely take classes because I know most of the stuff they have to offer (and I HATE making insipid copycat pages that most classes offer. ) In this class we are going to be altering a children’s board book. I can’t wait!
So that takes care of some me time. Friday we are going to the beach and doing stuff as a family. I’m going to see if I can’t find a sitter for the kids for part of Saturday so Chris and I can get out together and do something as a couple. We need that couple time.
Posted by Lou on March 29, 2005 @ 10:34 pm | 0 Comments
It was a simple trip to the BX. I was going to pick up some Easter candy and an egg dying kit, then we were scheduling an eye exam, and then a quick stop to the post office. I made it safely to the parking lot. I put Maggie in the Baby Bjorn, had Jonas holding my right hand, and had the diaper bag balancing over my left shoulder. We walked up to the store, and when I got there, I very gracefully tripped over the curb.
My left arm protectively reached around my baby, the diaper bag on that arm swung around and smacked me in the back of the head and the right arm tried to keep the two year old from having too painful a faceplant into the concrete. That left me no arms with which to protect myself, so my left knee took the full force of my weight (and Maggie’s). My jeans (the only pair that fits me) exploded at the knee. Pain shot through my leg. I was about six inches from squishing Maggie and her little head was about an inch from the pavement. Jonas had hit the ground- but was more surprised than hurt. About fifty people were walking around us or driving right by us, and instead of stopping to help me collect myself, they all stared at me as if they were trying to figure out why I was on the ground wincing from pain, baby strapped to my chest and two year old whining near my feet.
I managed to get myself back on my feet. There was a huge bruise and not a whole lot of skin left on my knee cap. It was raw and it hurt just standing still. It hurt even more when I tried to bear weight on it. I figured it would just take a few minutes to shake off, so I limped around the store wincing. When I was done with my errands I went home, still in pain.
I had a similar accident about a year ago where I slipped on a broom (I know, I’m so talented), waited to go in to the ER and wound up in a leg brace for two weeks. So I figured I would just bite the bullet now and head to the doctor. I dropped Jonas off at a friends house and proceeded to wait for two hours in the ER.
The doctor examined my knee. I would like to know why anytime I get hurt it never happens on a day when I’ve shaved my legs recently (recently being defined as within the current month). The doctor must have thought he was examining a female Sasquatch. At any rate, Sasquatch’s knee bent in all the right directions and the X-rays showed no major damage. So that was good. The problem was it was still so bruised and raw that walking on it was excruciating. The doctor wrapped it in an ace bandage, then told me to “stay off of it.”
I said to him, “I have a two year old and a baby who wants to be walked around all day. My husband is working twelve hour shifts all weekend. How am I supposed to stay off of it?”
His response? “The baby will just have to give a little. I’ll give you crutches.”
Ok, clearly this man has never had children. Babies don’t “give a little”. You give, they take, and if you stop giving they scream bloody murder. I can’t work crutches when I have a toddler latched onto my leg and a baby in my arms. I could perhaps, use the crutches as a sort of primeval lever to pry Jonas away from me (or just give in and beat him with them), but I don’t see how they are supposed to help the situation. With my luck I’ll trip over them and damage myself more.
At any rate, I ended up at home with crutches. Jonas immediately found them and decided they’d be great for swinging around in circles and smashing everything in his path. They are now locked in the bathroom. I’ve spent the day sort of hop-limping after him and trying to keep Maggie happy. I gave up this morning and called my in-laws. They will be taking Jonas for the weekend (yea!!!!). Hopefully I will be healed by the time Monday rolls around. We shall see.
Posted by Lou on March 25, 2005 @ 10:33 pm | 0 Comments
There has been mold growing in the crack where the wall of my shower meets the tub for about two months. I keep telling myself that I will go deal with it, but usually I remember when I have two kids to look after and you really can’t pull out the bleach and scrub a tub while you are holding an infant and coercing your two year old away from the chemicals. Last night at about eleven I had both kids asleep so I decided that in lieu of heading to bed like a normal person, I would clean the tub.
I hauled out the jug of bleach my mother had purchased for this very reason and lugged it to the bathroom. I started pouring the bleach over the edges where the mold was growing. It didn’t seem to be having much effect, so I poured even more bleach over the spots. Then I realized that the tub could do with a little cleaning to so I poured the rest of the jug into the tub and started the water running.
Oh how my throat and nose started to burn! I gasped and had to leave the bathroom. While I was out I dug through my cleaning stuff until I found an old toothbrush to use to scrub at the spots. Walking bath into the bathroom was like walking into an overly chlorinated indoor pool. I threw the window open and started scrubbing. The burning sensation came back fairly quickly and a sort of weird lightheaded feeling accompanied it. “I’ll just get this last spot up,” I thought, scrubbing madly.
I realized that I was starting to get a little high off of the fumes, so I ran downstairs for some fresh air again. A few minutes later, when I returned the fumes were a little less deadly, so I continued scrubbing and discovered that while the bleach was doing a great job getting rid of the nasty mold, it was also eating the caulk. I’ve never seen it do that, but I don’t think I’ve ever used quite this much bleach on something before.
When I was expecting Jonas I had a few weird months of nesting where I cleaned the kitchen twice a day with bleach. My hands dried out and my cuticles cracked and bled. But I was pregnant and crazy, so it didn’t even phase me. My pregnancy induced OCD behavior made perfect sense to me. The good thing was I didn’t get a single cold or flu while I was pregnant. Bleach kills germs pretty effectively. Maybe I ought to clean with it more often seeing as how the whole family has been sick for two weeks.
Anyway, the tub got scrubbed. It looks great and hopefully the missing hunks of caulk won’t cause a leak that makes it rain in the kitchen.
Posted by Lou on March 24, 2005 @ 10:32 pm | 0 Comments
Toilet training scares me. It is a daunting, exhausting battle of wills that I am not enjoying.
I’ve done everything the experts tell you to. We’ve purchased a potty. We’ve talked about it. We’ve invited Jonas to the bathroom with us. We point out when he does it. We’ve let him run naked (puddles everywhere). I’ve tried bribes, but I don’t think he get’s the concept, which is probably a good thing seeing as how I would gladly spend hundreds of dollars on anything he wants to end the poopy diapers. Really people, changing the diapers on a two year old is like changing the pants on a hobo. Just plain gross. He’s gone on the potty a few sporadic times and we’ve made a big fuss over it, but that’s it. He is pretty much not interested. One day when I was really pushing the issue he complacently sat on the toilet ( he doesn’t like the potty), grabbed his man parts and proceeded to yell, “It’s Stuck! It’s Stuck!” Needless to say, he didn’t have to go. Recently I realized that all three of his buddies are toilet trained. I am hoping he gets peer pressured into it.
Monday we went out of the house to run some errands. I had a big list of places to go and things to do. We ran a few errands, then got to the scrapbook store where I needed to pick up black cardstock. My friends was working so she set Jonas up in the crop room with coloring crayons and paper so I could go browse the new stuff. Things were going beautifully. Then my friend finds me and lets me know that Jonas is in the restroom and he needs me. I figured he was playing with the faucet. So I head to the restroom to find my two year old with his shorts around his ankles, soggy diaper swagged around one thigh, sitting on the potty as if this is what he does every day.
I was caught completely off guard. I didn’t even have diapers on me; they were in the car. So I removed the soggy one from his thigh and told him to sit tight until I got the diaper. I was feeling very positive about this and what it could mean for future potty training attempts.
He hasn’t gone on the potty since. Maybe we need to camp out at the scrapbook store so he can use their potty. Whatever the trick is, I just bought another pack of diapers at the grocery store.
Posted by Lou on March 23, 2005 @ 10:31 pm | 1 Comment
