Bringing up Bug & Bee

a whole newwwww world

2012-01-31T16:55:00.004-06:00

I have BIG HUGE NEWS. You know what it is? Are you ready? Are you? ARE YOU?

Today, we went outside! I KNOW! We haven't been outside for a year and a half, it seems. It really feels that long that I've been staring at the walls counting the seconds to spring (aka, July). We get a gasp of "fresh" air here and there getting out of the car and sprinting into the store, but by "fresh" I do mean "so icy cold you choke on it and almost die". So today? When the sun was out and it was nearly 40 degrees and I was miraculously able to locate two pairs of snowpants, four mittens, and two non-outgrown pairs of boots? Outside. The mistake I made was telling Bug we were going to go outside. He was up from his nap, I was trying to finish up with work, and he was beside me begging to do "sumfin fun". So I absentmindedly spilled the beans, then tacked on the disclaimer that we had to wait a little bit until his sister was up from her nap. Then, I went to the bathroom. BECAUSE I'M REAL DUMB. You all know what happened next, right? Obviously, he pounded up the stairs and down the hall and through Vivi's door. "BUBBITA! WE GOIN' OUTSIDE!" Gah. Vivi didn't share in his enthusiasm. #1: because she likes to sleep. #2: because she looked out her window and saw there was, indeed, still snow on the ground and gave her brother her very best "bitchplease" look. She got the Texas blood, I think.

And the dog? I think if he could talk he would've been all "OMG! YOU GUYS ARE OUTSIDE! THIS IS SO WEIRD! WHAT ARE YOU DOING! HEY, OVER HERE! STICK! TREE! SNOW! OMGZZZZZZ!" He's very excitable. And also, he's never really seen us outside, because we got him and two seconds later it snowed and hibernation began. I don't know that I'd do a winter puppy again, poor boo.

So anywho, the fresh air did us all good. Except it (of course) gave me a bit of spring fever, recalling days of yore when we'd fling open the doors the moment nap time was over and greet daddy in the driveway and set up dinner on our patio table and sit out there until bedtime and it was so, so awesome. And the problem with even the tiniest touch of spring fever in January (well, let's call it February, just to be optimistic) is that it's only going to make you stir crazy(er) than you already are.

one of us is happier than the other about this "outside" place.

her name is dora. because duh.

poor dora.

the week

2012-01-28T18:04:00.001-06:00

It was, you know, a week in January. We wore a lot of pajamas. Half the time, I couldn't get onto the internet from home, so that was obviously a quite painful experience. The other half of the time, things like these were happening. (I'm doing this in lieu of the old iphone week in review thing. Because Blurb, you know? STUPIDDAMNBLURB is STILL making me CRAZY.) (And ALSO because Picnik isn't working right and will soon be dead for real, which is MEGA sadface.)

that'd be a vivi meltdown, folks. bleeping molars.

oh, what? you're not wearing your night vision goggles? oh. that's the PBK delivery truck that wedged itself in a snowbank, requiring many men and many trucks and chains and HOURS to be freed from the end of our driveway. anderson? THRILLED.

tired, runny nosed, and teething on the right. sickie on the left. that'd be my sad pale sickie face, people. yikes.

then there was the day i left them with a box of mac n' cheese on a friend's porch and peeled out. buh-bye! i went home and attempted recovery via a nap.
*i'm kidding. i waited until she pulled into her garage to peel out.

laundry detergent, dumped, then smeared to and fro with the broom.
*stock photo
*but it happened again and i was in no mood for picturing.

and then ... saturday. glorious, babysitter saturday. i did this, ignored the stink eye for my unshaven legs, and i drank my coffee, and i went to the lake cabin and stared the the log walls. the quiet, quiet log walls. then i went home and squeezed my babies, because, you know, i actually kind of missed 'em.

It's a movie and early to bed night 'round these parts. I'm contemplating Contagion. But I'm also contemplating whether I might never leave the house again if I watch it? I'll be back soon with pics of Vivi's big slash little girl room, that did FINALLY get assembled at 8:30pm when Willy got freed. Our girl will probably be tented in that crib (ahem... princess castle) until college, but her new bed is most perfect for pre-bedtime reading and snuggles.

it's january which means blah

2012-01-24T21:07:00.002-06:00

I don't even know what to tell you about my boringness of late. It's January. I've got the January blahs. Don't we all? At least those of us whose yards are frozen under a foot or two of snow and whose faces are a pasty shade of blah? I mean, BLAH. So I don't have much to blog about, except BLAH. I only blogged that last post because my cousin (hiiiiii, Michelle!) was like "yo, blog!" and I was like "blah! Fine I will!"

So, you know, it's cold. And snowy. Those are the days I like though, the snowy ones. The ones that suck are the ones that are all "oh, hey, look at me, I'm sunshiney!" and then you go outside and your face freezes off in 2.2 frigid seconds. Just be REAL, weather. So due to the snow and the face freezing frigidness, more days than not these past few weeks, the kids stay in their jammies and we forgo the whole "leaving the house" thing. (I do NOT stay in my jammies. I change from my jammie black leggings to my "dressed" black leggings. Fine line, but big diff.) And as per usual, we've had minor maladies here and there. Had you seen me at Walgreens on Sunday morning, you'd have seen laxatives in my one hand and diarrhea meds in the other. (And Boogie Wipes and vitamins and Marie Claire under my arm because HELLO I need some distraction from the pooping. And the non-pooping. And the whining about the non-pooping.) It's just been that kind of week(s), you know? Blahville.

And speaking of blah, this presidential address. BLAH BLAH BLAH. How glad are we that MTV doesn't play the State of the Union? Thank you, MTV, for priorities. And Teen Mom 2. I can't wait to see Jenelle bond with her roomie!

Don't get me wrong, people, I'm not complaining. All is well. The kids are healthy in all the ways that matter, the roof is over our head andsuch, the cats all sleep on one bed from time to time without biting each other. I'd take blah over "ZOMGDRAMAZ!" any old day, you know? And there was a break in the blah in the form of a plethora of good news in my inbox today. Those whose news it was know who you are .... thanks for sharing. And YAYSKIS all around!

ps: Vivian still thinks that thing is a princess castle. She runs up to her "princess castle" at nap time and is like "in dah castle! Wip me in!" Wip = zip. Okay, kid, if you insist! And her sleep? Back to Vivi normal, which is real kid awesome. Thank. You. GOD. And also Megan (friend Megan not sister Megan) for being the voice of reason on the matter. THANK YOU MEGAN.

nap time

2012-01-23T15:12:00.002-06:00

Turns out, the pets like nap time as much as mama does. And that's a LOT.

yeah, no.

2012-01-19T13:25:00.002-06:00

You were wondering how the big girl bed thing was working for us?

She thinks it's a princess castle. Tell her otherwise and I'll break your teeth.

perspective

2012-01-17T21:21:00.004-06:00

I got a healthy dose of it this week. Perspective, I mean.

You see, V's had some odd bruising the past few weeks. Her armpit, around her shoulder blades, the back of her calf. Not places you expect a toddler to bruise, even a monkeyish 2 year old toddler with rambunctious 3 year old brother and a clumsy moose of a puppy. I was nervous about it, but kind of did the ostrich head-in-sand thing. Then, a friend saw Vivi without her shirt on (changing into a princess dress at a play date, not like we just walk around topless in January as a general rule). And the friend suggested, kindly and calmly, that I make a doctor's appointment. (Thanks, friend, for looking out for my littles like you do.) And instead of being a rational human being and just making the appointment and keeping my cool, I went home, put the kids down for naps, and consulted Dr. Google. I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW. Dumb-zo. By midway through naptime, I was having a full blown meltdown. Don't ever, ever, ever google "2 year old, unexplained bruising" or anything of the sort. Because you'll end up on a message board for something so scary I don't even want to say it out loud here. And you'll read all these scary stories, and you'll cry, and you'll call your mom and make HER cry, and you'll have a really awful day and not even be able to look at your daughter without crying some more. And then your sister will have to come over ~~after work~~ at 3:00 in the afternoon and answer your insane questions likesuchas "does she look PALE to you?" To which your sister, being funny, deadpans "she's a white kid in the midwest in January. I mean, duh?" Touche. But still, I worried. Bumblebee? She completes us. She's our sparkle, you know? We didn't even know we needed her, but now, I know she was JUST the sweet little thing we needed. Any the thought of anything being wrong that I couldn't fix just absolutely tore me up inside and made me barf.

Let's just say there wasn't much quality sleep last night.

And this morning, we took her to her pedi. Her new pedi, who I love, because she's The Awesomest Ever. As opposed to her old pedi, who tried to double vaccinate her and doubted my instincts on the regular and greeted us at every appointment with "nice to meet you" even though we'd met her eleventy billion times previously. Regardless. I half expected the new pedi to be all "okay mom, you're crazypants, but here, I'll indulge your crazy and bill you a bajillion and a half dollars doing so." That wasn't so much how it went. The nurse looked concerned. Then the doctor came in looking equally concerned. Then they gave her a new puzzle, a juice box, and some animal crackers while we waited for the arm numbing meds to work before the blood draw, and I felt like they were being WAY too nice to her for people who I was hoping weren't terribly concerned. And fifteen minutes later, they took five gallons of blood from my baby. She screamed and screamed, and I laid beside her on the exam table holding her close and trying to hide the quiver in my voice as I sang into her ear.

And then, we left, and we waited. J fetched A from the friends' house he was staying at, I drove home with shaky hands and a tear faced, hiccuping baby girl in the backseat, and we all went home for lunch. The kids watched Dora, J and I sat silently. He pretending he wasn't nervous, me pretending to believe him and distracting myself with internet nonsense. And finally, the pedi called. And, thank God, said all was well. Everything looked perfect. Nothing amiss. Every blood test came back smack dab in the normal range. It's likely she's just a fair skinned kid who's going to bruise, and the crawling out of her crib act she's been pulling probably wasn't helping. And maybe that the daily dose of chlorine and sunshine she soaked up during our California trip irritated her sensitive skin and some of the marks aren't bruises at all but random irritations. But all that matters is, we're not facing the Big Scary Things. I all but fell to my knees in thanks. I'm so thankful.

Puts it all in perspective, you know? My babies are healthy. Chocolate chip throwing, night waking, choo choo tug of warring, car seat fighting, grocery store screaming ..... HEALTHY kids. That's all that matters. Oh, I'm not saying I won't be back here by Thursday afternoon with a woeful tale of some random thing flushed down the toilet while I unloaded the dishwasher (Saturday it was my not cheap bottle of facial tanner) .... but this scare was a reminder to cherish every. single. moment. They're all precious. All of them.

Like this moment. From tonight.

GULP.

She's in a toddler bed. (And a tutu. Because duh.) Vivi was climbing out of the crib like a mad lady lately, and after today, we decided better safe (take toddler bed plunge) than sorry (headfirst plunge from the top of the crib). I'm literally knocking on wood as I tell you she got all tucked in and ..... went to sleep. Not a single teeny Vivi toe out of that bed. Maybe it will be that easy? Famous last words? DUN DUN DUNNNNN.

fun

2012-01-15T21:00:00.003-06:00

You haven't had fun until you've spent ten minutes on your hands and knees at 8:30pm (an HOUR after you put your kid to bed, mind you) in your pajamas picking melty chocolate chips out of his bedroom carpet while he looks on sobbing "DADDY! DADDY! I WANT MY DADDY! NOT MY MOMMY!" And this, just after he crept into his (sleeping) sister's room and tossed a handful of chocolate chips into her crib, which of course a) wakes her up and b) makes her scream as anyone would scream if they were sleeping peacefully and it suddenly rained chocolate chips on their face and c) alerted me to the choco-chip festivities going on overhead in the first place. And all this, just after your beloved Packers are defeated, and not just barely or in one of those games you walk away from the TV set saying "oh, but they gave it their all" ... but in a sad, slow, came into our house and stole our thunder kind of game. And J's team lost today, too, so there's that. Football, YOU'RE DEAD TO US.

It wasn't the finest Sunday ever, is what I'm saying to you. I might be slightly crabby. I might have went on a little FB defriend-athon after that game, and it felt GOOD. You're safe, my friend, unless you're a Viking fan gloating on FB. And if you ARE a Viking fan gloating the Packer loss on FB, I've got a select three words for you: three and thirteen. And also: your outfits are purple. Sadface.

But. My husband kindly offered to do the grocery shopping while I took a bath and watched the Globes, AND came home with a hot fudge Sunday in hand. And my kid, while wily and tooth-grindingly-challenging these past seven or so days, is healthy and will someday not be three anymore .... so there's that.

The week will only get better from here. Right? Right? RIGHT?!?!

in which i go BLABLABLABLA!

2012-01-12T14:32:00.003-06:00

I'm alive. And semi-well. I just haven't been feeling the blog thing this week. Or anything requiring concentration, creativity, or patience, really. Mostly because my kid? The bigger one who I love so much I typically want to smush him with hugs 200 times a day? More often than not this week, I've been stifling the urge just to SMUSH HIM LIKE A BUG. (Ha. Bug.) Like, putting them down for naps (thank you Lord Jesus Christ in heaven for naps) and laying in my bed crying for ten minutes because I just. can't. deal. Why did everyone lie and tell me the twos were terrible? LYING LIARS WHO LIE! They were, like, the terrifically non-terrible cakewalk twos in comparison to the threes. The Totally Terrifying Terrible Threes. I say yes, he says no (ten times). I say go, he says stop. I say put some pants on for the love of God before you freeze your penis right off, he says "NO PANTS TIME OUT MOMMY." Water must have ice, and crushed, or ELSE. Shirts must not have hoods. Puppies must not touch socks, or socks are tainted and will not be tolerated. Ketchup must go in that spot on the plate, not that other spot. Sisters must not touch choo-choos. Mommies must not get coffee on the way to the gym, because that involves STOPPING and WAITING, neither of which are allowed.

It's not just Bug, though. (Because really, he's three, and this shall pass. I know.) I'm just ..... irritable with many things. My car smells like something died in it and I don't know what (all three cats are accounted for.) I can't keep up with the laundry to save my soul. The puppy bit the kitty and now his tail is broke. I still have a Christmas gift on my dining table that I didn't even SEND. I wasted two hours of my life last night on TM2 (just get your bleeping GED already, Chelsea!) My internet keeps blinking out on me. Every picture I take this week has blurry eyes. I haven't backed up my iPhoto in, um, forever and that sometimes keeps me up at night. My Blurb book isn't working right. You know the weekly iPhone photo week in review I've painstakingly dedicated myself to week after week? That I even upgraded to the $5/month Picnik to make happen? Well, it's not transferring into the book well, because the pictures are SQUARE and BLURBFORBID we have a format for that, so as of now I've got a book with one stupid (title) page done because the rest of it is frustrating me too much to even look at it. As I told a friend complaining about her own Blurb struggles, at this point, I'm putting my faith in a magic Blurb fairy constructing my book perfectly and sending it my way when it's done. Perfectly.

Ahem. Deep breath.

I want my villa back. With a nanny, this time.

Aren't you glad I came out of hiding for this (Aunt Tammy? Are you? Ha! Love you for caring.)

I'll end this on a better note. Upon the recommendation of my friend Katie (who, fortunately for her, is on the short list of people/things that have NOT made my shitlist this week, quite the opposite really) I joined a Project 2012 this year. This one here. Because, obvi, so much free time on my hands. But no, really, I wanted to do this for me. I love playing with my camera and want to get better. Not because I want to be a fancypants photog or anything, but because I'd like to one day have at least half of the eyeballs in my pictures be in focus. Andsuch. So anyway, I decided to combine the project's monthly inspiration challenge with the Project 52, and come toddler hell or high water, I'm making it happen. January's word is "fresh", so my personal goal is one picture each week illustrating "fresh." Weeks one and two. Both of Vivi, because she's not three.

1 | 52
funky fresh, this girl of mine.

2 | 52
freshly fallen flakes

home again

2012-01-06T11:35:00.000-06:00

It's no villa by the sea, but home is good in its own forested, snowy way. Especially when home includes BabyNormy nuzzling my face all the livelong night. BabyNormy missed his mommy. So did Chester. You know how I know? Because when I let him out of his kennel, he peed on my leggings. Yay, dogs! (THAT'S why I'm a cat lady at heart. Has a cat ever peed on your leggings while you were wearing them? No? That's what I thought.)

The trip home was survived. The plane part? A total breeze, other than the uptight first class attendant with a serious superiority complex who APPARENTLY didn't appreciate us in the bulkhead so close to her precious first class passengers. You know how we knew we were unappreciated? She spent 48% of the flight time giving us the stinky side-eye. True story, true stat. And the kids weren't even remotely monstrous! See?

The airport leaving part and the 3.5 hour late night drive home part? Meh, I've had more fun. Like, suchas, getting a pap smear. There was a hijacked elevator, a lost car, a screamy poop stop, and a whole lot of crying for the first few .... hours. From the kid who's big enough to maybe know better. Which illicited a totally inappropriate but totally hilllarious exclamation from Miss V: "CHUT UP I TWY'IN TO SWEEEEEEP!" She's never said "shut up" before, and I don't necessarily want to hear her say it again .... but not like we weren't all thinking it. J and I had to "use the facilities" for about the last 90 minutes of our drive, but by then the kids were actually (blissfully, silently) sleeping so I told him we were letting our bladders burst into a thousand pieces before we were stopping that Tahoe of Torture.

But the moral of the story is, we made it home. And home feels cozy and good, and even better with each suitcase I manage to completely unpack and stash away in the basement until our next trip. And it will feel even better when I de-Christmas-ize the place. Bring on ..... that dead season where no decor is quite right! YAYS!

departure looms

2012-01-03T17:25:00.001-06:00

Reasons it's okay we have to leave in 40ish hours:

one) I'm borderline morbidly obese. I unbuttoned my jeans before I even left Cheesecake Factory today, you guys. They were skinny jeans, BUT STILL. Not. Okay.

two) My fun money account is the opposite of morbidly obese. It's wasting away. Nordstrom, Bloomies, eighty bajillion other moneysucking stores filled with stuff I have to have or I'll diiiiiie .... I'm looking at you.

three) I do miss those pet babies of ours. Word on the scene is that Normy's turned into a reclusive hiding McPouterPants, and Chester's probably a five foot tall grownass man by now.

four) The time change is kickingmyass. I succumb to unconsciousness at 8:30pm here. I missed the second half of The Bachelor, for goodness sake!

Reasons it's NOT OKAY we have to leave in 40ish hours:

I mean, really. And also, leaving my parents and brother and my new catsister Kiki is Sadsville USA. Oh, fine, and leaving housekeeping and room service and men who bring us drinks by the pool is also going to hurt. I mean, I'll have to pick up my own TOWEL off the floor. The horror! (And also, I'll keep those poor Newpsies in my thoughts and prayers on Thursday. There are CLOUDS! I hope they'll all pull through the hardship, don't you?)

Off to enjoy our final hours of OC. Sunset on the beach, a day at the pool tomorrow, and one last fat pants dinner at Javi's tomorrow. Then, it's homeward. Which, really, will be okay. I've got the January jitters - you know, those exciting urges to fix up and rearrange and start the year off all fresh and new? The ~~man~~ family (sorry J) cave awaits finishing now that the hubs has hoarded enough Best Buy gift cards for a TV the size of Texas (he's been saving those for YEARS, no lie!), Vivi's big girl room is in the (mental) works, and mama's all full of inspiration big and small. 2012's going to be good, yall!

good morning, fabulous one

2012-01-02T18:16:00.000-06:00

Pink sparkly shades, pink sparkly phone, and a gorgeous Cali morning coming to life outside her villa's patio doors. I think Vivi would say her 2012 is off to a smashing start. I agree, Vivi, I agree.

twenty eleven. in closing.

2011-12-31T00:30:00.000-06:00

2011, a year of good and happy. And a little sad, here and there, but even the sad was marked with fond memories and growth and new beginnings. But mostly? There was just a whole lot of contentment, laughter, and happiness. My babies grew and grew (and grew). I turned 30. I dragged my feet all the way there and held back kicks and screams as I bid my 20s adieu (with a bucket filled with beer and great friends on hand), but found that 30? It's a seriously good place to be. I'm grown up. I'm strong. I know what I want, and I'm not ashamed to be who I am, say what I think, ask questions when I don't understand. To let bygones be bygones. To dream, to try, to take leaps of faith and hold my head high doing so. To fail with grace, to learn some lesson from it all. To appreciate our families for their steadfast presence, for the way we grow closer through time and changes and occasional strife - but come out stronger, more understood. To hold tight to girlfriends. Old girlfriends, new girlfriends, somewhere-in-the-middle girlfriends. Because those good friends, be they old or new? Those ones that support you and hug you and bring a smile to your face when their name pops up in your inbox and who understand when the response is harried or delayed or ends with akjnvs;jknfdvkajnsdvknasdv because a toddler got ahold of your laptop? They're priceless. I'm so thankful for my friends. And that includes you, people who read my blog and leave an encouraging comment or send a Facebook message saying hi or thanks or "here's what worked at our house...."

I go into 2012 optimistic. Encouraged. Blessed. Inspired. Loved. Happy.

(And excited to be an auntie! To a niece!)

Enough words.

Our year, snapshot style.

my babies are actually babies. it's cold. we hibernate. I zumba.

the littlest little is one. a cupcake party with loved ones all around. it's cold. we get colds. green bay wins the bowl. tahoe takes a licking, keeps on ticking.

our first family mini-vacation. the dells. tub jets are a petrifying fail. it's still very cold. we get more colds. vivi steps.

easter baskets. the easter bunny terrifies vivi. mama turns 30. good friends come together to party. anderson speaks more every day, fears subside. wahm becomes sahm.

spring arrives. we plant on mother's day. then it snows. we're cold. we get another round of colds. sun comes out. memorial weekend bbq with friends.

mommo arrives and brings summer with her. funfest at the long awaited robbie/jackie wedding. seven years married. we boat. auntie megs moves north. my dot visits from austin with her babe.

mimi and papaw stay in the brown house. we boat. we're warm. a madison trip for ma & pa. we ooh and ahh the fireworks display from our front porch. the princess embraces the pretties.

we boat. we meet goats at the zoo. rhigtg is a smashing success, nobody eaten by bears. big boy bed struggles drive me to drink. i start a new job, i love a new job. learn to believe the one door closes, one door opens bit. cali with my best girls.

our boy is three. cowboy party. happy hello to norman. hard goodbye to griffin. bunk beds. we sleep well again. the boy halfway potty trained.

go pack go. mommo and grandpa head west. halloween is too scary to celebrate. chester comes home. we pretty much die of cuteness attack.

it snows. i craft. i photograph much. thanksgiving in california. kids travel beautifully. santa terrifies vivian. chester triples in size.

holiday music 24/7 and that's no lie. glitter on everything. vivi speaks in sentences, cuts molars, goes diva. the boy fully potty trained. cozy christmas at home. we say goodbye to 2011 on the west coast (around 10pm, I'm sure, because we're old.)

Happy New Year to all. May this be the year you make your dreams happen.

good mail

2011-12-28T10:42:00.000-06:00

I loooooove getting the mail this time of year. So much that it's worth trudging all the way across the yard, through the snow, uphill both ways, to see what's waiting in my frozen ice block of a mailbox. Instead of the usual (bills, bills, bills, can you pay my telephone bills....) I find a whole lot of these:

Lovely, right? And that's not even all of them! I ran out of Scotch tape. And room. But every day, from Black Friday to Christmas Eve, we'd find these cards in our mailbox. The kids like to stand at the patio doors and point at cute babies and cute dogs and cute friends they know by name. And when it's all over, I save the picture cards. For what, I don't yet know (maybe to make into books like THESE?), but I've got stacks from each year in a box in the basement for my kids to one day look over. (Or use in the Hoarders submission tape they'll send in. "A third cousin's Christmas card from the ancient year twenty eleven! OH EM GEE MOM YOU'RE CRAZY!") I don't know. I just think Christmas cards are very special, is all I'm saying.

So with Christmas officially behind us on the calendar, my enthusiastic stalking of the mail lady dwindles some. Okay, a lot, I barely even look up from my laptop when she pulls onto our road. I usually just let the mail sit there until the next day when I can pick it up by car on our way off to ~~the gym~~ get coffee. Yesterday, though, I went to get the mail. I thought we might get a few straggler Christmas cards or something. And the mailbox? It surprised me with quite possibly the most touching piece of correspondence I've received this entire season. I found this in my box:

You see, I didn't know what to buy MIL for Christmas this year. Oh, I did the usual little things you do for grandmas who love their grandbabies so - pictures of the kids, a few things they made. But MIL didn't need anything gifty that I could think of. So I started thinking about MIL. If there's one thing I've known about my MIL since the day I met her, it's that she's a gold-hearted giver. She gives her time, her money, and her heart. And recently, a lot of her time has been going to the Zion Project. It's a faith-based organization helping young women and girls who face unspeakable hardship in Uganda. (Go read up on that HERE.) So this year, as a gift in MIL's name, we signed up to sponsor a girl in Uganda. For $35 each month, we're helping to provide her with shelter, health care, food, counseling, and safety. For $35. Think of the miscellany we all spend $35 on each month. Coffees? A dinner out with friends? A movie date with the hubs? Luxuries, and all the while, there are girls dying - for lack of medical care or food, or from disease or conflict. So it's an honor, this year, to be a part of an organization using that miscellaneous cash to do good for those who need it most.

Check it out for yourself. Do you have a little extra left over at the end of the month? Or maybe you're looking for a last minute tax deductible donation to show the tax man? Consider it, friends. And if it's not this worthy organization, find another that touches your heart. It feels good to do good.

All right. The laundry room beckons. As do the dishes and the suitcases and the three year old with a fake tummy ache. I asked him what would help this "tummy ache" and he told me "maybe cookies". Fakey faker who fakes.

'twas merry. and bright.

2011-12-27T15:50:00.002-06:00

It was a merry little Christmas, indeed. Just we four, plus auntie, plus loved ones Skyping in from the south and the west to talk food and football and show off the cutest little baby bump in all of east Texas (I'm going to be an auntie!) The big holiday funfest shindig is yet to come, when we fly to California later this week to be with mommo and grandpa and auntie (again) and uncle Michael. But our cozy at home Christmas in the woods was just perfect, too. The usual merriment went on - cookies with more frosting than cookie, snowflakes, candlelit singing in church, kids in jammies ripping into wrapped packages, Christmas day food comas on the couch. Half naked toddler boys busting out of their room and into their (sleeping) sister's room (and then, crib) in a late night, post-bedtime sugar cookie fueled craze. So when I heard noises upstairs, and went to investigate, I found a pantless Mister A standing in the corner of (now awake) (and not happy about it) Vivi's crib. My "WHAT are you DOING?" was answered in a super no-duh tone with "reading to Bubbita, mommy." I mean, doesn't everyone's Christmas include a pantless reading from one's brother? (Dear God, I hope not.)

These Christmas morning pictures are more for the blog book than anything, because you and I both know you're sick to death of looking at everyone else's Christmas morning pictures that look just like everyone else's Christmas morning pictures. Right? Right. (Please excuse the purple pajamas. Let the record show that Vivian did have a pair of Christmas jammies that perfectly coordinated with her brother's. There was an incident. A smelly, leaky, incident. Hence, the purple snowman getup.) (That her daddy chose.)

My gift to you. A super special edition of the weekly iPhone thingy. You are so welcome.

merry christmas

2011-12-23T07:16:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas, y'all.

Lots of love from Bug & Bee.

And me, too.

xoxo

week thirty + thirty one

2011-12-22T21:13:00.000-06:00

Well, hellllllooooo there. Excuse my absence, would you? I had a little pre-Christmas mini meltdown of sorts. I'd been speeding along, so on top of everything holiday related - decorating and crafting and photographing and Christmas carding and blogging it all like a machine. And then it was like I just straight up ran out of Christmassing energy and just wanted to lay in my bed eating ice cream and watching TLC. Which, not going to lie, is totally what I'm doing right this very second. But I'm also feeling back into the Christmas spirit. Thank you, thank you, peppermint mochas and Mariah Carey!

Randomness from the week.

#1: I mentioned to the kids as we got out of the car at Wally that their mother had to use the facilities. Okay whatever it was more like "mommy has to pee pee, okay?" We get into the store and into the cart and as we made our way to the family restroom at the verrrrrry back of the store, Anderson shouted OVER AND OVER again, "Don't pee on the floor, mommy! Don't pee on the floor!"

#2: I told the cable guy, who looked 20-ish and cool-ish, to use his inside voice. Somebody just go ahead and shoot me.

RHOBH is calling my name from the magical DVR machine. But first, a little iPhone week in review catch-up.

coffee makers. we're very into dinos these days. skyping. my goodwill dresser find. accessorized. puppy eyes. she refused to remove the christmas jammies to go to wally. guess who dressed himself to play in the garage. besties.

glamming up for a family date night. totally shredded. recovering from a family date night. christmas cookie time. mmmm frosting. for the teachers. sprinkles are a girl's best friend. you just never know where you'll find jesus. stinkerface.

more cookies at the museum. more sprinkles. fireman. that's one posh firefighter. i'm disturbed by how much she loves riding in that wheelchair. now that's what mama likes to come home to. ooh chairs. hands off bishes he's mine. christmas sprinkle pretzels.

chester sparklepants mcglitterface

2011-12-16T14:32:00.003-06:00

Guess who's looking less and less like a puppy every day and more and more like a GINORMOUS BEAST?

the correct answer is chester.
chester sparklepants mcglitterface.
or as the kids call him "NO CHESSAH, NOOOOO EAT MY DOLL/TRUCK/FACE!"

Now, guess who got scored big at Goodwill yesterday morning and hauled out not only that perfectly scuffed chair (as seen above) but ALSO a vintage-style dresser just begging to be refinished for Vivi's room, all for a whopping $21? That would be me. Thrifty McAwesomeface. Whose husband almost threw up when I told him I bought two pieces of furniture at Goodwill, one of which was likely going to require hours (and hours) of his time to strip/paint/re-knob/etc. Poor, poor J.

Now, guess who got Photoshop Elements 10 and has NO idea what she's doing but sure has stayed up past bedtime the past few nights trying to figure it all out? Me, again. This picture-taking hobby is like a black hole of obsession, you guys. Yikes.

flushed

2011-12-14T18:00:00.002-06:00

Oh, Bug. You didn't quite outdo your sister's death-defying poison puke playdate of yesterday (or the after-effect gym daycare barfing act of this morning) .... but this was a solid runner-up performance. Ten minutes with the plumber and $66 later, your pajama pants returned from their journey to the depths of our plumbing system.

WHY ARE TODDLERS SO INSANE?

ARE THEY IN KINDERGARTEN YET?

DOES ANYONE DELIVER WINE?

(Just kidding. I'm not ready for my babies to leave me for kindergarten. But I would take on a part time nanny, if I were to find one who would work for free. And who wasn't Swedish and/or prettier than me. And I wasn't kidding about the insanity. Or the wine. I don't kid about wine.)

aint no party like a poison control party

2011-12-13T14:47:00.000-06:00

PSA: toddlers are insane. Oh, what, that's not news to you? It's not news to my new friend Sharon at Poison Control, either. She told me earlier, as she reassured me that these things happen to even the best of moms, that they'd be out of business without two year olds. And almost-two year olds, apparently.

Let me back up. We were at a perfectly nice playdate with friends this morning. Well, perfect except for my poop-challenged child luring me into the bathroom 87 times to do nothing. But otherwise? Fun! Coffee! Chatting! A snuggly baby to snuggle! All very nice. Until the very end. The moms were cleaning up and discussing mom things in the living room. The kids were in eye-and-earshot just down the hall. Suddenly, I see Vivi running panicked down the hallway, gagging. I ran to her, scooped her up, and immediately smelled something chemical on her breath. My heart just DROPPED, you guys. Your baby shouldn't ever smell chemicalish, you know? I ran down to the room they'd been in, gaggy Vivi my arms, trying not to lose my cool as I asked Anderson to tell me what his sister had gotten into. Just as he held up a (now cap-less) bottle of liquid hand sanitizer, the barf shower started. On the (clean, pretty) carpet. On Vivi. On me. And it just kept on coming as I ran to the bathroom and climbed into the tub with her, trying to spare future damage to my friend's house, and also because I was straight up fuh-reaking and needed to just sit there and hold her close and figure out what the hell we were supposed to do next.

I'm grateful tonight. Grateful my baby is okay. Grateful for quick-thinking friends, friends who clean my daughter's vomit off the carpet and the tub without blinking an eye and send us off with clean (borrowed) clothes and warm hugs. And who send messages throughout the afternoon to check up on us. And grateful for the reminder that even if you THINK you're being cautious and careful, you need to be MORE cautious and careful because TODDLERS ARE INSANE.

Oh and then? We came home, ate lunch, and the bigger little chose this day to crap his pants for the first time. And by pants I DO mean footie pajamas (yeah, he wore that to the playdate, SO?) And no undies (because I've got one unworking toilet killed off by flushed Elmopants, so NO MORE ELMOPANTS). So use your imagination about how fantastic THAT mess was. Gag, barf, omg, etc.

TM2 and wine? Oh yes, they will be mine. Because hey, my day might have been about poison and barf and poop in the foot of footies .... but at least my mom never threw my underpants out on the curb in a laundry basket!

zomg interwebs + week twenty nine

2011-12-11T08:34:00.001-06:00

The interwebs done blew my mind this week, you guys. First, there was the MODG thing. I like MODG. I like her snappy humor and I like that she stopped talking about boiling animal hooves for eating, because let's be real, guh-ross. But after last week, I LOVE her for restoring my faith in internet humankind. Are you following this whole needing and giving thing? If you're not, you should be. Go read up. Right HERE. And help, if you're so inclined. Because I tell you what, taking your kids to the store to choose gifts for other kids and willingly handing over the baby dolls and dinos come check out time with not a single tear? And then, at bedtime, having your sweet boy hand you one of his very favorite books and say softly "give to udder kids? Wiff no books?" Will make you warm and fuzzy like no glass(es) of pinot ever even could. Or at least, it won't make you puke the next morning.

Thenalso, there's the friend of mine from middle school whose adoption fundraiser exploded on Facebook. Kristen and her family, (blog HERE) happen to be about the most beautiful family I've ever seen, inside and out. They are working (and praying) hard to bring home their daughter from Ethiopia. A friend of hers organized a Kindle Fire raffle as a fundraiser (HERE) and it's been pretty amazing to watch the numbers grow and grow with each passing Facebook status update. What a weight off their shoulders those numbers must be!

And then there was the much (much much) more frivolous matter of FIVE FREAKING THOUSAND (plus!) people looking at my last post. The Christmas pictures born of having nothing better to do one Wednesday night than play with the camera and burn through half a giant bag of M&Ms. Um, I almost died when I saw those pins and repins and the resulting stats. And now I feel a little stage frighty. Pinterest is no joke, yall. Those of you clicking back over here for more such photographic feats ... my apologies. This blog is more often about poop, craft projects (with glitter!), cats, and over-caffienated ramblings about reality TV. If you're into that kind of thing, welcome!

So anyway. Big couple of days on the worldwideweb. And now, off to enjoy an internet-free pajama clad Sunday afternoon. Football, sugar cookies, and not getting tipsy before noon like yesterday. And Shredding. Eff.

OH! Not internet related, but I'd be amiss not to share this little tidbit. Mister A and his sister were "cooking" breakfast. Melty ice cubes, spoons, a strainer, and muffin pans. Really, it was just buying me time to finish my coffee before I had to function. Well, the hubs comes in and goes all "GAH! MESS! WHY? NO!" on us and I was all "dude, you're being a buzzkill!" and Bug was all "yeah, daddy! Buzzlightyearkill!" Mwahaha.

I leave you with the week in review.

butt paste head. i love me some stickgrams. when good puppies go bad. that's what a conference call cost me. bean table. i'm pretty sure that's not even legal. look we're all dressed in reallife clothes. studmuffin. party girl.

it's magical, this little tree

2011-12-08T08:00:00.000-06:00

It's not the prettiest tree, this Christmas tree of ours. Not the fullest, or the tallest, or the greenest. Blame it on my second grade music teacher, who cast me as the "Littlest Christmas Tree" in our school Christmas play. A role that had me standing in a cardboard tree costume with a hole cut out for my face while my classmates, playing townspeople on a tree lot, pointed and laughed at my scrawniness, passing me over time and time again. I was not, my teacher assured me, chosen because I was the tiniest second grader to ever do second grade, but because she thought I had the most talent. I knew, even then as I held my (tiny) chin high, that she was just being nice. I was the littlest. I could see that. It was okay. I was special, too, even if I was the size of the baby kindergartners in the lunch line and got my younger cousin's hand-me-downs. So this year, when my husband turned up his nose at the skinny, stumpy, picked-over trees at our local hardware store, and turned to me impatiently and said "come on, let's go somewhere else and find better trees" ... I lingered, chewing my lip. Those poor scraggly trees! They were pretty, too, just in their own special kind of way. I picked the one that looked the most hopeful, knowing I could pull off the dead branches at the bottom and wrap it with a million white twinkly lights and make it shine. Sure, it's a little crooked, and sure, the branches could be more evenly spaced. But it's our tree. And last night? With two little littles wiggling giddily in their zipped up holiday jammies as they danced around that tree and I snapped away? It was magical, that tree of ours.

Shine on, little tree.

Shot these at night with every light in the house off. Except the one million on the tree, obvi. I've got a Nikon D60 with a Tamron 28-75mm lens that I'm juuuuust barely learning to shoot in manual. To get these pics I cranked the ISO as high as it would go (1600), set the aperture at f 2.8, and shutter speed at 1/30. I propped the camera on a bar stool to make sure I didn't get any blur from movement (since I don't have a tripod). Then I told the kids to be good or they wouldn't get any M&Ms. I did the teensiest bit of editing in Aperture, just to up the exposure a tiny bit. I have no idea if I'm using technically correct terms here, yall. I'm just a newbie. :)

A shout out to my friend Beth B (now very Pinterest-famous!) and one of my new favorite bloggers, Little Blue Boo for the great inspiration picture/setting info I used to get these photos. Isn't the internet the best? Yes. Yes, it is.

more on the poop

2011-12-07T22:54:00.001-06:00

You guys. I love blogging. I really, really do. I mean, to think I can post some nonsense about poop and not only have other moms not judge me for diapering my 3.25 year old so he'll just shaddup and poop already, but make me feel BETTER about it? And I tell you what, I feel about a bajillion times better after reading through the previous poopy post comments. Because, for real, here I was thinking I was the only one with a half-trained kid! I appreciate every one of your comments - both the commiserating ones and the helpful tip ones.

Now for the big (huge stinky gross) news .... I WON! This round, anyway. If you want to actually call it winning when the prize is, well, a turd. The kids and I were taking Christmas tree pictures tonight when Mister A suddenly got this panicky look on his face that I just KNEW meant the poo was a'coming, one way/place or another, so it was time to MOVE. I tossed my camera on the couch, grabbed the boy up, thanked God he was in easy-to-remove zippy pajamas as I stripped them off mid-run, and plunked him on the potty. Where he POOPED. You better believe there were some major festivities right there in that powder room. Sister, puppy, mommy .... we made him feel like a very big special man.

We'll see what tomorrow (and the next day and the next) bring. I will confess that I spiked a glass of apple juice with laxative this afternoon, so I'm sure that helped get things moving and upped his urgency a bit. But hey, still, he did it! We'll be sticking with the diaper ban 'round these parts, I think.

Thanks, friends. I love you all for making me feel better about stressing over poop.

wednesday miscellany

2011-12-07T14:08:00.001-06:00

So here's what's going on this Wednesday, tidbit style because that's what I have the time and mental capacity to string together, okay?

Stuff my puppy ate/mauled during my half hour conference call: catnip cat toy, dryer sheet, cough drop wrapper, tampon (unused), hair roller. He's an unstoppable beast lately.

30 Day Shred. Doing it. On day 3. Hasta la NEVER, muffin top.

Cheese curds. All I can think about while Shredding. I want cheese curds. Smothered in ranch.

Christmas cards. Out. Not glittered or crafty, but done. Whoop!

Cold. Oh so inhumanely old.

Teen Mom 2. Last night. Kind of ho-hum, no? I mean, Barbarasaurus did her best, but if you read UsWeekly you already know how this whole season is going to play out. At least there's always the IBBB recap to live for!

Vivian is in mega diva mode this week. All she wants to wear is her favorite pair of pink pony fleecy pajamas and two long strands of pink (play) pearls. I mean, at least she's accessorizing creatively but hello, not going to work for the gym day care (read: the only public place we've gone this week) because a) you can't wear shoes with footie pajamas and b) choking hazards likesuchas long strands of pearls are frowned upon at the gym day care (party poopers). Removal of these items is punishable by a half hour of kicking and screaming and wrestling her into her car seat WWF style and Anderson covering his ears all the way to the gym daycare yelling "NO! BUBBITA! TOO LOUD HURTINGMYEARS! NO! BUBBITA! TOOLOUD!" So peaceful and doesn't make me want to drop them both off at Goodwill and go hide in a coffee shop AT ALL.

((Stop reading now if you're not the parent of a toddler, have an aversion to poop, or are eating or drinking anything you want to enjoy.))

Poop. OMG, the poop. I put the poo-smack down on Bug. Remember how he pee trained in, like, a day back in September? A single easy-peasy day, and done. Maybe four pee accidents since then. Yay for Anderson, awesomes. Not as awesomes? The Poop. Gawd, you guys, the poop drama. He went a few times on the potty that first week of no-diapers, and has not pooped even ONCE on the potty since then. He doesn't do it in his pants, either, thank my lucky stars. What possible pooping options remain, you ask? A diaper, duh. Why not just NOT give him a diaper? Oh, well well well. Do you know what happens when I withhold the diaper he begs me for come big-job time? He just won't shit. For DAYS. He'll go into his sister's room, grab a diaper, then roll around on the floor wailing when I refuse to stick it on him. He'll just hold it and hold it until he's got a five pound poo-baby sticking out his belly and he's crying in pain. After a few failed attempts to encourage him along (bribery, DVD in the bathroom, potty chair in the room of his choice, etc.), we just went with the diaper poos for awhile. He'd eat his lunch, he'd start in about needing a diaper, and I'd put one on him because hello, that's nap time and mama needs nap time and he figured out the pee on his own, so surely he'd give up on the poo-stand-off sooner or later. But over the weekend J and I had a poopie-pow-wow and agreed enough was enough already, he's 3.25 now, he understands the potty concept, we're being enablers. So no diaper on demand since then. He does require a diaper for overnight sleep, and did fill that one right on up with a special surprise the first morning .... but nothing since. And his naps the past few days, now that he's not relieving himself of the post-lunch pre-nap poo? Suckville. Yesterday he slept an hour, then woke crying for a diaper. Today, same. He's up there waiting for green light time talking to his teddy about what an evil monster his mommy is, I'm sure, but I'm standing my ground here. Or should I not be? I was pretty hands-off with the pee and it happened on its own .... but I'm starting to fear he'd be happy crapping in a diaper forever. What do I DO, people?

Is it summer yet?

iphone photo week in review: twenty eight

2011-12-04T21:55:00.001-06:00

A semi-quick word about these 'iphone photo week in review' posts. I've been asked a time or two or ten how I do these. I don't have some super secret sophisticated method of assembling the phone dump to share with you, unfortunately. (Do you? Tell me if you do, por favor.) But I keep doing these every week not because I think all of you really care about some random picture of Vivian in her pajamas with bed head at 4pm on a Thursday, but because I've got the blog book in the back of my mind, and I know these little here-and-there candid shots are going to come together to paint a very big picture one day in a way no super special family portrait even could. You know? So do it. It's not hard at all, just a little slow. Here's how I do mine using my iPhone, the Instagram app, iPhoto on my MacBook, and picnik.com.

one: i take pictures with my iphone throughout the week

two: once a week, using my iphone, i upload my favorite shots from the week to instagram one by one

three: i apply my favorite filter to each picture (i like earlybird for the coloring and rounded edges)

four: i email each finished image to myself

five: i repeat that about 10-20 times, depending on how many pics i took that week

six: from my laptop, i follow the link in my email to the full size image in my instagram account

seven: i drag each picture from the instagram site into iphoto

eight: i upload the pictures from iphoto into my picnik account

nine: i make a collage in picnik

ten: i save the collage to my desktop

eleven: i upload the collage to my blog

That sounds like more work than it is, actually. It's not that bad. I can do it and watch RHO-wherever and drink wine at the same time, and I'm no genius.

I hope that helped!

Now, on with the photos.

sprinkles. moty. one last beach trip. toesies. cfa. still waiting for that cfa. megan and michael at sunset. park after dark. me and my bug.

sleepy bug. blastoff time again. play-doh for the win. thank heavens for airport valet. asleep before we left the parking garage. if i leave my j it's going to be for that hot nugget. festivity. never mind about the chainsaw. this one right here.

sparkly ornaments

2011-12-03T14:02:00.001-06:00

Sparkly ornaments! That don't shed glitter like mo-fos! And are cheap as dirt, or at least about $18 cheaper than your average Pottery Barn pretty. Obviously, I found this idea in the newspaper. HAHAHAHA I'M SO FUNNY. I found it on Pinterest, where the world begins and ends as far as sparkly things are concerned. Anyway, here's my Pin. But between you and me and the world wide web, I found that post a little difficult to read. ell oh ell and dot dot dot and such. So to make your life easier, I'll give you the low down right here.

It's a super quick and easy project that doesn't require any focus at all, moms. I did it this morning while talking to my mom and sister on the phone (not like I saw my sister just last night and will be seeing her again tonight or anything), drinking coffee, listening to Christmas music, keeping my cats from climbing the Christmas tree, and baking cookies. My kids watched Little Einsteins (oh fine, twice) and were none the wiser that I was playing with glitter, thank baby Jesus, because otherwise you KNOW they would've been all up in that and it wouldn't have ended prettily for anyone.

Anyway. SPARKLY THINGS! Here's what you're going to need:

Pull the tops off of each ornament. One by one, fill ornament with the floor polish (I filled my ornaments about 1/4 full). Swirl it around gently, making sure all glass is covered. Now drain the leftover wax back into the bottle (I let mine sit for a minute or so.) If you've got bubbles inside of your ornament, use a q-tip to get those out. Now insert the funnel into the ornament and dump glitter inside. Use a LOT, only some will stick but the more you put in there, the better coverage you'll get. Turn your ornament every which way to get the glitter on evenly. When it's sufficiently sparkled, tap the leftover glitter back into your glitter container. Let the ornaments dry for a bit, then stick the ornament tops back on. That's it! You've got sparklefied ornaments to pretty up your tree or give out as gifts or whatever else it is you might want to do with a sparkly ornament. (Is there something else you might do with it? If there is, tell me, because I want to make MORE.)

Happy Saturday, friends!

ps: I totally considered spraying that un-festive yellow funnel from the auto parts department with sparkly spray paint. I think I have a problem.

on the beasts

2011-12-02T07:53:00.000-06:00

Because a 12 week old baby golden just wasn't cute enough.....

I added a sweater.

he's all "what? i'm wearing a sweater?" then all "oh, fiiiiiiine i'll wear the sweater."

I will now tell you a story about why you should sometimes listen to your three year old, even when it IS an hour past bedtime and you just want him to SLEEP and you're pretty sure he's just making up excuses to get you up to his room (fake poops, monsters, invisible boo boos). Wednesday night, Anderson would. not. go. to. bed. The last hurrah was him standing at his gate saying "kitty! kitty in woom! kitty in MY woom!" Except, Rodger was sitting by me, and he's the typically the only one who goes into A's room looking to snuggle (desperate times, desperate measures). Normy was in the living room with me as well, so he definitely wasn't up there, either. And George wouldn't go near Anderson if he were covered in tuna flavored catnip, for reals. So no, kid, there is NOT a kitty in your room. Except he kept saying it. And saying it. And after fifteen minutes of this insistence, J lost the match of paper-rock-scissors and went up to go put Anderson back to bed. Except when he got up there, the boy led him to the closet, held shut by a childproof lock he hasn't yet mastered. And there, peeking through the crack between the closet doors? Yeah, there was George. Who, I guess, went for a snooze inside the open closet after lunch time (my last recollection of a George sighting), then I locked the closet at nap time without looking inside, and he slept in there all through nap time and all afternoon and well into the evening before being discovered by Bug. So, oops.

Cats.

Oh, speaking of cats. This one? WILL NOT STAY OFF THE COUNTERS! Help me! (Tin foil, spray bottle, fail, fail.)

"oh, what? you no want me on no counter? why you not just say so?"
I DID SAY SO ELEVENTY BILLION TIMES!
GAH!

getting twiggy with it

2011-12-01T09:57:00.001-06:00

Na na na na na nana, na na na na nana.

This post has nothing to do with Will Smith. Or jiggyness of any sort, but just try to tell me you're not jigging around right now in your chair like it's 1998. (You're welcome!) What this post DOES have to do with is how I emptied the forest of twigs yesterday to, you guessed it, get mah craft on. The kids even helped. And by helped I do mean peddled a Spiderman "motorcycle" (aka big wheel looking bike thing) all the way out to the very far end of the road as I gathered twigs, then somehow nosedived over the handlebars and face planted in some gravel, taking out baby sister who was unfortunate enough to be in his path, so then they screamed their sad little faces off all the way home. Leaving me to transport two screaming sad faced toddlers, one rambunctious runaway wannabe puppy, a bigass bundle of twigs, and a Spiderman "motorcycle" all the way back down the road. It was so scenic and special, you guys! I wasn't sweating or saying swear words in my head AT ALL! Fa la la la effing la!

Where was I? Oh, yes. So I did many Christmassy things with twigs yesterday. And some Christmassy things without twigs. The tree is still forthcoming. We're entertaining thoughts of trekking into the woods and chopping one of our own. Seems silly to spend $50 on something we could have for free, right? And think of the photo ops! And the quaint memories they'd hold! (And the sap and frozen limbs and ER bill for the chainsaw injury!)

Anyway. I give you Christmas in progress at our house in the woods. With twigs aplenty.

pinterest inspiration HERE.
i added star ornaments to give it more flair.
more flair, more better.

a craft so simple i don't think it's actually a craft.
it's a 'break up twigs, throw 'em in a jar, add a votive' thing.
but oh so pretty lining the windowsills of my dining room, no?

more pinterest inspiration HERE, though i know you've already seen it.
(who hasn't?)
little hands christmas tree.
i added a button i glitter painted to act as a star.
and the littles also fingertip painted "tree lights".

my tree!
with twigs instead of my hands.
glitter spray painted the canvas, glued on twigs and bark.
and of course, some buttons for the top.
loosely based on THIS pin.
(but i like mine better.)

for teresa, who questioned my lack of glitter.
glitter rolled pillars.
with glitter stars from pottery barn about a hundred years ago.
no worries, my friends, many glittery plans in the making.

santa 2011

2011-11-30T08:29:00.001-06:00

While in Cali, we did a lot. We did our favorite restaurants. We did the beach. We did Super Target (I mean, DUH.) But best of all (if you're one of my kids) and most horrible of all (if you're the other one of my kids) .... we did Santa Claus.

But first, we waited. All bright blue eyes and curious peeks and surprising patience.

And waited. Adorably.

And waited. And made a frienemy in line. A sparkle shoe showdown ensued.

And then, it was our turn. Show time. SANTA time.

And it went like so.

Poor Santy.

remembered

2011-11-27T14:43:00.001-06:00

turkey baby.
due 11/27/07.
forever in my heart.
...you are precious in my sight, and honored, and i love you. (isaiah 43:4)

iphone photo week in review: twenty seven

2011-11-26T15:38:00.001-06:00

11 weeks. the sweetest sibs. because i was all hey i should take another baby to wally. wah wah waaaah. pet sitters. goodbye cold. airporting. happy traveler. sleepy traveler.

pajamarama thanksgiving morning stroll. losing his britches. tail wagged. you say fireplace he says sandbox. sunshine peeking. holidays. silly. happy. silly happy.

black friday 7am. black friday round two 10am. wear the fox hat. ocean view. just us girls. buggy. princesses love target too. oh so cali. animal boy.

that's how we rolled

2011-11-25T18:17:00.001-06:00

Double stroller, car seat on a GoGo Kidz, huge carry on, two medium carry ons, three year old, almost two year old, a teddy, and a baby doll ..... and it was no big thing. For real. The three hour drive to the Minneapolis airport flew by with not a single whiny moment or icy patch. Everyone at the airport was helpful, the kids were obedient and upbeat, I managed to manuever the whole rig AND sip a Caribou Coffee vanilla white chocolate mocha. And I actually spent a decent amount of in-flight time reading my Kindle while V snoozed or stared out the window and A played with his myPad! I don't know if it's their ages or my accumulated traveling experience or a total blessed fluke that made the journey such a smooth one. Probably some combination of the three. But whatever it was, I liked it.

And the little mama? She liked doing what little mamas do best. Packing (and unpacking and packing) the baby bag, and making sure baby's tummy was good and full before boarding. Good mama.

And Bug? He liked take-off, minus a split-second a moment of apprehension when a coffee pot bit it up at the attendant's station. Then right back to excitment, a la Little Einsteins, with a boisterous "TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP ......... BLASTOFF!" Which I thought was plenty funny, as did the mom of four young boys (including an Anderson!) sitting near us. The old ladies to our right? Not so thrilled.

Success. Here's hoping for a repeat performance on the return trip! Hope you and yours had a fabulous Thanksgiving. xoxo

untimely

2011-11-22T21:41:00.001-06:00

Not like there's ever a good time to have your double stroller annihilated. But the night before you leave on a cross-(half)-country trip by yourself with two toddlers, when you 100% absolutely for SURE need a double stroller to get those toddlers and all their stuff and some of your stuff into the airport and all the way down to your gate without losing anyone or anything or oh idk, your MIND? TOTALLY NOT A GOOD TIME. Let's just say this: J was trying to be helpful, and instead, in a split second he turned my beautiful trusty four wheel stroller into a big brokeass one with three wheels and one sad, useless stump. It wasn't pretty, people. I NEEDED THAT STROLLER. No double stroller in the airport with a 3 and almost-2 year old? Is not an option. Not. An. Option. So maybe I spazzed. Rightfully!

And then, I drove 200mph to Shopko, which is totally not a place I enjoy going to because it's like a sad, soulless Target. But I was DESPERATE here. It's not like I have a Buy Buy Baby down the road with eleven hundred strollers in stock. No. Nada. This was my only hope, because I already knew Wally carried a handful of strollers and none were made for two. And praise JESUS, Shopko had a double in stock. And after a little, erm, discussion (some might call it a spat) with an uptight manager who wouldn't sell me the floor model because it's illegal, which the rational side of me absolutely understands but the spazzy panicky time pressed mom with two whiny toddlers side of me? NOT UNDERSTANDING. Anyway. We have a double stroller now, and I was pleased to come home and see that we got it for about $10 less than the Amazon price and that the reviews are decent. Not like it matters, it could be the worst double stroller in all of history and be covered in cartoon characters and camo and it would still be better than having no double stroller at all. I was envisioning lugging Vivi around in the Bjorn, which is pretty much hilarious because she's about two inches shy of being as tall as I am (which is not very).

his penance. assemblage.

oh, i'm going to miss that mug.

With that, off to Thanksgiving. Thankful for new (crappy plastic) wheels and husbands who don't take spazz-outs personally. And fabulous family waiting on the west coast, of course.

deja vu

2011-11-21T08:54:00.001-06:00

I watched homegirl climb out of her crib this morning. NO NO NO PLEASE GOD NO! Please let it be a fluke, please let it be a fluke, please let it be a fluke.

Sit, Vivi. Stay, Vivi. Good Vivi.

iphone photo week in review: twenty six

2011-11-19T15:45:00.001-06:00

It's the weekend, again? The week went where? Not that I'm complaining. Ohhhhh, no. J's off, and today included a road trip where nobody cried or barfed, a quick but fulfilling hour of shopping, a stockpiling of crafty goods for Pinterest projects, and an art fair. (Oh FINE it was a craft fair, I just didn't want to use the word "craft" twice in one sentence. Crafty Crafter McCraftsalot, reporting for duty.) The day also meant saying goodbye to Mimi and Papaw at the Wausau airport, which wasn't as much fun (or fun at all, really), but we can't complain when we had a week as fun and memorable as we did. Thanks for coming, yall! Go thaw your Texan blood now. Speaking of thawing, guess who found some last minute plane tickets and will be thawing HERSELF next week under the SoCal sun? Me! And the little people! Don't you cry a single tear for poor worker bee J, he's none too sad about being left home (in non-working hours) with his dog and his remote control.

And now, I'm off to pack away the fall leaves and gourds. I typically leave the autumnal goodness up until Thanksgiving weekend, but since I won't be around then, now's time to bid adieu. Plus, it's snowing and looks all Christmassy outside. Plus, the XM Holly station I was listening to driving to the art ((craft)) fair has Santa on my brain. Plus, this girl's got some new wintery goods from that art ((craft)) fair that must be put into place. Plus, I had an extra coffee this afternoon and need to do SOMETHING.

The week, compliments of iPhone photos.

10 weeks. movie date. making pretties. favorite activity of late is cruising with babies. bubbita and her bubbitas. pillow top dog. getting ready. so parklee. caution i'm hot.

road trip 3rd row view. 3rd row co passenger. bug and his mypad. qdoba wasn't sad to see her go. silly. nap what nap? i gave in. ah winter. i'm 89 years old now.

the ten dollar boots

2011-11-15T13:37:00.001-06:00

Based on the comments, texts, and an email I received in response to my last post, I think you were more interested in Vivi's new pink sparkly boots than you were about my tragic near-death coffee overdose. (I made it home alive, but just barely. Thanks for caring.) So a few of you might also want to get your hands on a pair of $10 pink sparkly Ugg-type boots for your little princess sparklepantses, I'm gathering? Vivi would definitely approve of you buying these. She's got her brother's hand me down chocolate Uggs, and while they're cushier and obviously higher quality (and therefore hand me downable) than the knock-off version, there are two problems with said hand me down chocolate Uggs: a) a certain dearly departed dog chewed a tiny portion of the trim last winter and b) they're NOT PINK. OR SPARKLY. So when Miss V woke up Saturday morning and laid eyes on the pink sparkly non-nibbled pair I'd picked up for her the night before? Oh, happy day. She wanted them on over her footie pajamas immediately, and I had to fight them off of her at nap time. And this morning, when I tried to coerce her into the brown pair (they matched her tights better!) there were tears. "Pink parkleeeee odder ones! Pink parkleeeeee boots, mama!" I gave in, obvi.

Anyway, ready? Walmart! (I know, I know, hardy har har, laugh away college BFFs who remember a day when yours truly wouldn't step FOOT inside a Wally except that one time when Britney's new album came out at midnight and Gervs and I were there with bells on to get our CD the minute it was available.) (This was before iTunes made the youth of America lazy.) (Gawd, we're old.) Anywho, I found Vivi's size 7s in the store, but I see sizes 8 - 11 are available online. Right HERE. Run! I just ordered the size 8s, because the way my girl's feet are growing, she'll need to size up by next month. And also because I knew all you crazies were going to go buy them all up if I didn't jump on it. So there you go! Sparkle away, sparkly ones!

THREESHOTS!!!!!! and iphone photos week in review: twenty five

2011-11-14T10:28:00.001-06:00

MONDAY! MONDAY! OMG IT'S MONDAY! I LOVE MONDAY!

Guess what? Are you guessing? Are you? ARE YOU ARE YOU ARE YOU? So this morning, when I left my kids home with the visiting Mimi and took my laptop to a coffee shop to work and the barista was like "3 shots okay?" I might have kinda sorta been distracted by FB on my iPhone so I was all "uh huh, 3, okay, good" and then I drank my coffee real fast like and now I CAN'T EVEN SEE STRAIGHT and my hands they are SHAKING. What does that even MEAN, 3 shots? Of what? What did she put in this thing? I'm so AWAKE! I'm so ALIVE! I'm so GLAD the kids aren't with me because I don't even think I could drive them around in good conscience because WOO HOOOOO COFFEE OMG WOW!

Back to work. I'm a MACHINE.

I think I'll be staying at this coffee shop until I sober up. Tomorrow afternoonish. Good luck to you, Mimi.

Here. iPhone photos whateverthehell.

chessypoo. moon. sleeping off the anesthesia. hi pretty. he loves that boot. fetch. sleepy. finger painting is a mess. pink and sparkly and ten dollars. he loves snow. scenic. you call this fun. maybe fun. my sweet boys. postcard perfect. jello powder is the devil. date night. the rgmt gang and the cheesedag.

it no-ing!

2011-11-09T12:04:00.003-06:00

I'm not a snow enthusiast. You won't see me on skis (deathtraps), you couldn't pay me enough to snowmobile (ew) (and also omgbrrrrr), and you're more than a little crazy if you think I'll pick up a shovel without a gun to my head. I don't have snowpants, because seriously, who wants their butt looking that much puffier? Not I, said me. It's not that I don't like the snow (I probably wouldn't have willingly moved to northern Wisconsin if that were true), it's pretty and cozy and Christmas cheery and I'll take it gladly over 100 degrees and 100% humidity .... but I'm just not one who counts the days to that first snowfall and cheers along the weatherman as he ups the watch to a warning and leaps from my bed on the very first snow day of the season.

Until now. Until today. We woke this morning to the first snowfall of the season.

Today, you might say I love the snow like I'd love .... glittery coffee making cats. Because in the small hours of this morning, one by one my littles came to life, and each time I watched them rub their eyes adjust to the light outside their windows, then watched those little eyes grow big and bright and heard them sigh "oooohhhhhhh! Snooooooow!" Or in Anderson's case, "MOMMY! It no-ing! It no-ing!" Oh, the innocent excitement of littles, who don't think of shoveling or botched travel plans or seasonal affective disorder, but just embrace the magic of fluffy white puffs swirling down from the sky, of Santa and sleds and making a snowman when "daddy get home way-ter?" It all made me a believer in the snow.

maybe notsomuch a believer. you want me to pee WHERE?

If you need me come nap time, I'll be in the basement doing a winter decor inventory, or breaking out the glitter spray paint to sparklefy my pile of twigs (a la Pinterest, which I'd link you to if it weren't being a total DB and 404ing and 505ing every time I touch it) (AGAIN). Or I'll be by my mixer, stirring together a batch of cookies with the snuggly puppy at my feet. Or with a cup of coffee in hand (goodbye, Diet Dew, it was nice knowing you) staring out the window and seeing it all in a brand new way. There might be Christmas music involved, people. Don't tell the turkey, okay?

bug's big(ger) boy room

2011-11-07T19:45:00.003-06:00

Um, yall? Last week? I DIED. Or I was pretty sure I was going to at some point. There were three things that got me by. Number One: I discovered I like coffee after all (or coffee-like drinks) after the very persuasive barista at my favorite local coffee place peer pressured me into upgrading my occasional hot chocolate treat to a cafe mocha. And now if I don't have one every day or every other day at least, THE WORLD ENDS. Or I'm pretty sure it will. I haven't tested that theory. So there were many coffee-like drinks being drank. Number Two: Auntie Megan, who I guilted into doing things like picking up my kitten from the vet and watching my kids at 9am on a Saturday with a mild tequila hangover so I could go drink coffee and buy groceries. Number Three: wine and Bravo (likeduh). Why, you ask, was last week so particularly formidable? Because, my friends, J was out of town. Off in the wild wild west shooting things with manly men who do man things. Which left me. And a three year old and a one and a half year old and an infant dog and three cats, one of whom was freshly neutered and none too happy about that. And my job and my house which started to look like a landfill by the fifth day. And the twice-nightly pee breaks out in the yard with that puppy, where he spent 10 minutes sniffing and spinning and I stood there shivering and shining my flashlight every which way because I was VERY SURE we were about to be eaten by coyotes and my kids would wake up and nobody would be here to take care of them for DAYS and it would be SO TRAGIC. And then there was that $%&*#@% stupid daylight savings time business. (WHYYYY?!?) It was rough, all in all. I'm not saying we didn't have fun, too - we SO did. We ate pizza and snuggled in my bed with the pup and crashed friends' houses for rowdy playdates. But still. Challenging. I will say this - I appreciate my super helpful husband more than ever before because if I had to do all the work by myself all the time? Um, no.

So anyway, I didn't have much to talk about last week, because I couldn't hardly come on my public interwebs blog and be all "hey, everyone! I'm all alone out here in the dark dark woods with only a steak knife and a puppy for protection!" You know?

Anyramblingnonsense, it's a new week. And yesterday, in a caramel mocha fueled Pinterest binge, inspiration struck. I got my craft on. Bug's big boy room had been slow going. He got the bunk beds, you may remember, for his birthday. And they are all he I hoped they would be. Cute, sturdy, certainly cozy enough for a parent to pass out on after a 3am monster check. And the bedding didn't disappoint, either. First of all, ADORBS and hits that perfect mark where it's not too babyish but also not too all grown up. Second of all, washes up well. Which is a non-negotiable when a newly pee-trained 3 year old is sleeping on it, you know? So, we had beds and bedding.

And then, we had a stupidcute framed car picture, thanks to our friends Anne & Co. Which perfectly filled the wall space in the tiny little "reading corner." Which, of course, is a fancy way of saying I shoved an old Target bookshelf in an awkward corner space and deemed it "the reading corner". Which Bug took to mean "the corner where I dump all my books all over the floor when I'm supposed to be napping corner."

But then, there was this big huge wall on the other side of the room. I had vague ideas - I wanted something bright, something somehow transportation related without being like "hi here are some more pictures of cars and trucks", and something not ugly. And yesterday, I was finally ready to commit and craft. So I got out the felt and the glue gun and an hour and a half later, I had this!

I love it. I thought it had kind of a race track feel to it, but Bug saw it and clapped his hands and said "like swimming lessons!" Apparently, it reminds him of the flags around the pool at the Y. But whatever, he likes it. And I do, too. And it was SO easy to make. I printed off lower case letters using a font I liked in Word (Stone Sans ITC), cut them out to make stencils to make the felt letters, used a piece of cardboard for the triangle stencils, then used hot glue to stick it all together and onto a piece of double fold bias tape.

I'm not quite done yet. I still have to make the map-covered letter A and I'd really prefer to have some sort of a book sling instead of the beat up bookshelf ... but it's good for now. (I tried to show you my Pins for both of those items, but Pinterest is in a mood, it seems. 404 YO'SELF, Pinterest!)

Here's hoping for a good week. Despite the weatherman saying we might need a SHOVEL by Wednesday night. A freaking SHOVEL!?!? Hold me.

*Please excuse the random formatting issues. I don't even have the energy to try to figure it out. Andplusalso, there's probably nobody still reading at this point anyway, so BLALALASLBAKBJNKAJBSFDKJBAWKERGH≥/.

the best mac and cheese in the world

2011-11-03T16:10:00.000-05:00

You're either going to love me or hate me for what I'm about to share. Probably a little bit of both. You're about to taste the best mac and cheese EVAH .... but you're also about to gain eleventy hundred pounds eating it again and again and again until there's nothing left to do but lick the cheese off the side of the casserole dish. I'm not saying it's healthy, I'm not saying it won't put you into cardiac arrest. But I am saying it's my favorite comfort dish recipe, and obviously, because I just polished off a large bowl and then scooped a couple more spoonfuls right out of the casserole dish but ate those standing up in front of the fridge, because calories consumed standing up don't even count as calories. (True story!)

I like to put this together while the kids are napping, skipping only the panko/butter topping (I think it would get soggy), and then put it in the fridge until 30ish minutes before dinner. Then pull it out, do the panko/butter thing, bake and die of goodness. You're welcome!

this is not my mac and cheese. i've never let my mac and cheese sit around long enough to photograph it. but it looks just like my mac and cheese, promise.

what you need:
2 cups uncooked elbow macaroni
1/4 cup butter, cubed
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups 2% milk
1 tub (8oz) Philly chive and onion cream cheese
4oz Velveeta, cut into cubes
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
5 bacon strips, crumbled
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1/3 cup panko bread crumbs
2 tbsp butter, melted

what you do:
cook macaroni according to package directions. in a large saucepan, melt butter. stir in flour until smooth; gradually add milk. bring to a boil; cook and stir for 1-2 minutes or until thickened. stir in the cream cheese, velveeta, cheddar cheese, bacon, salt and pepper.

drain macaroni, stir in cheese sauce. transfer to a greased 8 inch square baking dish. combine bread crumbs and melted butter; sprinkle over casserole. bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes or until bubbly.

iphone photo week(s) in review: twenty three & twenty four

2011-11-03T11:35:00.000-05:00

We've been busy.

watch your ankles. so homey. play-doh. weekly scrambled egg feed. snuggles. chasing bubbles. adios amiga. local coffee is good. hi.

megantober's birthday. in retrospect my cupcakes look a little nipply. birthday. birthday. oops too tired to fix that. cookie cake. free babysitter. cows need fuel too. cow & cowgirl.

tweet. road trip. chipotle with my girl. hi chester. late night pit stop. nugget boy. love chester. spooky. the crew.

rough life. take your dog nephew to work day. cars with boo boos. chicken baby food ends the food strike. chester drives. chester sleeps.

escape artist

2011-11-01T13:36:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty sure this is the sweetest puppy that ever did live. He's potty training like a champ, sleeping all through the night, not chewing on a thing that doesn't belong to him, and not making a peep. Like, ever. He loves everyone and everything and everycat. And as I write this, he's snuggled up beside my leg, mostly snoozing but occasionally stealing a glance up at me with his sweet little puppy eyes to make sure I haven't gone left his side. The only time he ever makes a fuss? And by fuss I mean FUH-REAK-OUT? When put into ..... DUN DUN DUN ..... the Kennel Of Doom. Then? Spaz time. Whining, chewing, yelping, and jumping. Probably the saddest sight that I ever did see. But we're working on it. Yesterday I gave it about twenty minutes (while I scrubbed pee out of the carpet, NOT DOG PEE mind you), then set him free. I tried again today when I took the kids upstairs to get dressed, brush their teeth, and make them pick up the eleventy billion Little People pieces that SOMEHOW ended up from one end of the upstairs to the other. (Nobody did it. I asked.)

Anyway, so I put Chester in the kennel. And there was the immediate whining/chewing/yelping/jumping reflex, and it made me very sad, but the kids were in yogurt covered pajamas. With yogurt sugar sinking into their tiny impressionable teeth RIGHT THAT SECOND. It had to happen. But then, after a few minutes upstairs .... there was quiet from below! Ah ha! He'd realized his humans were just right upstairs, and snuggled in. That's my perfect, genius puppy boy.

Except then I went downstairs to take a peek at this perfection. And found the kennel like so:

clearly, this kennel is puppyless

And after a few frantic seconds where I was very sure he'd either a) been puppynapped or b) eaten by the cats or c) found a pair of Uggs and ate them ..... I found baby Chester. Like so:

Chester for the win!

happy halloween!

2011-10-31T07:55:00.001-05:00

this IS my costume. i'm a freakishly adorable puppy. see?

this is as costume-y as they're getting this year.
bug's in an "everything is SO SCARY" phase, so trick or treating was out.
and i wasn't paying money just for the sake of pictures of him choking his sister in costume.

spoooooooky!

bringing home chester

2011-10-30T14:08:00.000-05:00

Did you come here to read about a batshitcrazy road trip where everyone screamed and no one slept and J and I divorced somewhere around the state line? Disappointing news for you, then. Because you guys? It was like we were in the Twilight Zone of car trips. Where kids, even tired and hungry kids strapped snugly into car seats for hours and hours, behave impreccably. Where, when we finally complete the trek from northern Wisconsin to southern Minnesota after five-ish hours in the car, we take the kids into Chipotle (because we miss Chipotle so much we cry about it sometimes) and nobody screams! Or throws a quesadilla! Or otherwise forces us to hog-chow the last bits of our beloved burrito bowl and sprint out the door! It was all 100% better than I was imagining it would be, down to the part where we didn't get home until about 2.5 hours after usual bedtime, 13.25 hours after we'd pulled out of the driveway that morning, and STILL they were good natured. It was awesomes. I kept thinking all the way home that the schmidt was going to hit the fan at any moment and the crazy would happen. We were going to hit a deer. Or run into a surprise blizzard. Or lose our xm radio signal (gasp!) But no! Nothing happened! Thank you to the following for your assistance: juice boxes (crack), Elmo DVDs, and Steve Jobs (rip). ANDPLUSALSO, they have COLDS! So they're SICK and they still knocked my worried socks off!

I'm guessing that you actually came here to meet Chester. Right? I can't even begin to tell you how sweet he is or how much we love him to pieces already. So, I'll just show you pictures.

super special juice box, just for road trips, freaked his freak.

sleepy mc-sniffleface

puppy time!

princess sparklepants not so much a fan of the licking

yes. yes, this one will do.

and then i died of cute overload.

vivi wanted to be very sure we received the pick of the litter. (we did.)

mr. "black" (he wore the black ribbon)

i want them alllllllllllll!

i think maybe we're insane.

to the park, he said!

heading home

So now, we're home. And having the most perfect Sunday of all time, I think (except the bye week). Fire in the fireplace, pumpkins waiting for carving, crispy seeds baking, and a whole lot of love. And poop.

ps: we need to work on obedience, though. We sent Sir Chester to throw in a load of laundry just now, and instead found him like this:

slacker.

pps: don't you love how 3 year olds think a bandaid fixes anything? Even a stuffy nose? I do.

ppps: ohmahgawsh.

pppps: thanks again, HannahO, for your fancypants detective work! Appreciated!

bad bad bad bad GOOD!

2011-10-28T13:34:00.003-05:00

This week went a little something like this: bad day, bad day, bad day, bad day, GOOD DAY! Or like this: stuffy nose, Nyquil hangovers, exploding sinuses, tired, achy, whiny, drive off to the vet without the cat, break my favorite vase, nobody listens to me EVER, etc. And also something like this: miss my mom, want my mom, wah wah waaaaaah come back mom (and dad). But then, today, it was like the figurative storm clouds parted and the heavens sang and it was kind of like this: snuggly kid, other kid who sleeps until 9am, well behaved kids, sucker from the bank drive thru keeps 'em quiet for a good fifteen minutes while I drive and drink my hot chocolate in peace kids. And also kind of like this: OMG WE GET OUR PUPPY TOMORROW! And we have a babysitter tonight, so we can go and celebrate Halloween with our friends! (Wait until you see J's costume. If he lets me post it.) And I can breathe out of BOTH sides of my nose! And MIL sent a Halloween cookie cake! And my parents sent Halloween cards with Uggs inside (or, Ugg-designated-cashola, because hello, cards aren't all that big)! And the FedEx guy rolled up with my Christmas cards (early bird, worm) and they're CUTER than I even thought they would be! I couldn't be more excited about this whole day if it suddenly started raining glitter and glue guns, yall!

It's a good day, is what I'm saying, and a well-earned one. And tomorrow is Chester day. I'm so excited. For the Chester part. For the part where we spend a total of TEN hours in the car with two toddlers? I'm so ... I'm so .... SCARED! The iPad is loaded up with games, and the SUV is loaded up with DVDs and snacks and emergency stashes of more snacks. We'll be okay. Probablymaybe. Whatever. PUPPY!

boobankie EMERGENCY

2011-10-23T20:00:00.004-05:00

Do you not have a kid yet? Or is your kid still teeny tiny and impressionable? If yes, here's some advice for you, from me for free, because I'm a giver. LISTEN CLOSELY. Do not, do not, do NOT let your child get attached to one very specific blue blankie. Or "boobankie" if you will. Buy ten loveys, or ten blankies, and rotate them out every single day, or just never let them get an attachment to one specific very particular item in the first place. Because you know what happens THEN? On a Sunday night when you think you have a sinus infection and you haven't eaten a meal all day unless Pirates Booty counts as a meal and you decide the kids are going to bed early because there are steaks marinating and NJ Housewives reuniting and your bed calling .... YOU LOSE BOOBANKIE. Nobody knows how it happens, but what everyone does know is that no three year old in this house is going to bed without boobankie. Oh, no no no, couldn't have that. So instead? You're in the kitchen getting your potatoes into the oven and wondering where in Carmen San Diego's name your husband is because SURELY it shouldn't be taking this long to read the kid two stories and peace on out of his room, so you go upstairs to find him all wild-eyed ripping apart the bedding and the closet and your three year old looks up and shrugs and says "Daddy finding boobankie." And then you spend an hour stomping up the stairs and down the stairs and back on up the &^%#%^&* stairs tearing your house apart in search of boobankie. Dumping laundry baskets, opening and slamming every cupboard in the kitchen, peering into the (firey) fireplace when the kid tells you that's maybe where he put boobankie, waking up baby sister not one but TWO freaking times by going into her room and turning the lights on because surely, that's the only other place in this whole God-forsaken house that &^%#@@%^*^# boobankie could've gone to. I even looked in the litter box, like maybe BabyNormy had hauled it off into the deep dark depths of the basement or something, just for kicks. And maybe there was also some spousal sparring through clenched teeth. "No, I DIDN'T let him take it out of his bedroom." "Well it didn't grow two bleeping legs and walk away now DID IT?!" "I DON'T KNOW MARGO!" and such. All the while your kid is up in his room chillin like Dylan, reading a book all nonchalant-like, occasionally shouting out "hey, find boobankie? No? Okay!" And then a couple times you go find some randomass OTHER blankie and offer it up faking excitement like "hey, buddy, look at this cool blankie! You should sleep with it!" Which goes over about as well as you'd expect when the kid hasn't slept a wink in 2 1/2 YEARS without that blasted boobankie, and he doesn't stop screaming until you agree to remove the impostor from his presence immediately and resume the search for the authentic boobankie.

Well, anyway, to put you out of this nail biting suspense .... we found boobankie. In the clothes hamper in the kids' bathroom, a place we'd checked a collective three times, so I'm pretty sure there's some crazy ghost of a dead old maid messing with us like on American Horror Story (are you watching that? OMG you must! Rubber man!)

And now the steaks are on the grill.

And the kid is in his bed.

And the Packers are 7-0.

And tomorrow morning, I'm going to hot glue that %$#@!&$ boobankie to his headboard.

saturday.

2011-10-22T15:41:00.004-05:00

Saturdays tend to bring out the moper in me. Just certain Saturdays. The ones when J is working for the 6th day in a row and my parents have deserted me for the west coast and my sister is out of town and everyone in the whole wide (facebook) world seems to be doing something WAY more fun than me. So, like today. I woke up feeling mopey. I've felt blah all week. Not sick, quite, but not well, either. Scratchy throat, achy, cranky. Like something was coming on. And tired. I've felt tired, not like that should come as a shock to anyone with a toddler or two. They're tiring, even when they're being totally sweet and not flushing undergarments down the toilet. It's just been a long week. I've done the crayons and the wagon pulls and the itsy bitsy spider and I just felt .... done. So this morning, part of me wanted to pull the covers over my head, have a little cry, then call a babysitter and spend the day bonding with my Kindle. And my pillow. And maybe some riesling. After noon, of course.

But then? I was like "self, enough already!" Because for real? Who can sit around moping when you're in the company of these sweet little littles?

Not me. So off we went. Children's Museum, out to lunch, back down the highway and home for a nice long 2 1/2 hour naptime. Saturday's not so bad, after all. And Sunday is shaping up to be even better. Nice weather, football, cookie baking, steaks on the grill. Perhaps a coat or two of paint on that desk that's still sitting in the garage. A family day. Me likey.

iphone photo week in review: twenty two

2011-10-22T15:00:00.000-05:00

parka time baby. moto-ty-kell. she's delish. to wausau they say. goodbye day. zumba party. checking out auntie's new palace. fish sandwiches. sleeping kitty. leaping kitty (we die laughing every time). dream on littles. i have no idea. busy bee. girlfriends. yani. i'll give you cheese.

liar liar pants on fire

2011-10-18T13:38:00.005-05:00

This morning, we went to the pediatrician. I thought we had a 10:00am appointment. But last night, as I stared at my ceiling listening to my husband snore and trying to sleep and instead thinking about how I was going to work the word "slutpig" into at least three conversations a day, I had a weird feeling that maybe I had the appointment time wrong. So this morning, in my pajamas at 8:15am with one child awake but unfed and the other child (who is SO AWESOME) still soundly asleep in her crib, I called the pediatrician's office. And was informed that our appointment was, in fact, at 9:00am. Oh goody! 45 minutes to wake a kid and feed two kids and try to make myself presentable enough to not cause us all any undue embarrassment. And, you know, actually get to the pediatrician's office.

Anyway, we made it. It was flu shot day and Anderson's 3 year 1 month appointment. And by that I mean it was is 3 year appointment which I waited too long to schedule, hence, a 3 year 1 month appointment. You should know, I sort of feel like his doctor is judgey. In that smug "don't have kids but do have medical degree" new pediatrician way that irks me so, because hello, don't you lecture me about how to deal with a tantrum when you're probably still having them YOURSELF (because you appear to be like 12), or at very least, until YOU have successfully tamed a 3 year old beast in the throes of a "but I WANNNNNA new ball/candy bar/life sized stuffed giraffe" in the middle of Wally. I know. I could get an older pedi, but this one can get us in by 10am when a fever strikes at 8am, and does seem smart in the book smart ways I need her to be to keep my kids upright, so anyway.

Where was I? Oh, right, at the 3 year 1 month appointment. So I'm sitting there answering the doctor's questions and feeling a little judged the way it was, because one of my children (who, okay, isn't ALWAYS awesome) had just ripped her flu shot consent form right down the middle, right after she maybe kinda-sorta took a nosedive off the chair while I had my back turned (to calm the other kid, mind you). The topic of A's speech came up, and I proudly informed her that he was doing so, so good (he is!) and that I'm so, so proud (I am!) She wanted to hear his speech for herself, so she's asking him a bunch of random questions, and he's answering her all adorable and polite-like and then she comes to this one: "what did you have for breakfast, Anderson?"

His answer: "a Happy Meal with FRIES!"

Zoh. Mah. Gah.

He did NOT! Not only do they not even SERVE Happy Meals at that hour (not that I'd KNOW), but we wouldn't have had time to get one anyway because we were in a major rush, but ALSO if he does get a Happy Meal (which he does, occasionally, because seriously) he gets apple slices. Not fries. But apparently, the young doc took his word as The Truth, because I got The Look. So I turned to my kid and said "I'm going to sell you on eBay and buy a Louis with the money!" In my head. For real, what I said was "honey, can you please tell the nice doctor what you really had for breakfast?" To his credit, he did then say "yogurt with Cheerios". Which was the God-honest truth. Organic yogurt, even!

And then? When we got home? He flushed his Bert & Ernie underpants down the toilet.

THREE! You guys! It's CUH-RAZY!

Before he threw me under the bus with the fake breakfast, my little budding nudist was a smidge excited about this place where he was TOLD to remove his clothes. (Dreamland!)

Oh, relax, he's not naked. He's wearing those Bert & Ernie underpants. Pre-flush, obvi.

iphone photo week in review: twenty one

2011-10-17T13:59:00.004-05:00

There are reasons I'm in no mood to blog today.

1) my parents are in a car heading west. I'm not happy. At all.

2) the forecast for tomorrow includes snow flurries. Again, not happy.

That's basically it. So instead of continuing along on this waaaaahm-bulance, I'll end with the photos.

cat. cat. puddle. fargo zip code gave her away (KIM). cat shirt from fargo. cat. money in a card. feeding fish with uncle robbie who's actually mom's cousin robbie but uncle is easier to say. convinced jackie to let her take the tutu outside. lambeau here we come. still coming. lambeau! lambeau! ugg rainbow. my mama. the girls. my parents are cute. love that guy.

how to get ready

2011-10-14T14:10:00.004-05:00

I go out in public a lot (and by "a lot" I do mean 6/7th of the days of the week) looking ... um ... like a mom. You know. Leggings (always with the leggings), a hoodie, my air-dried wavy hair twisted back into one of those halfass ponytail/bun jobbies, concealer under my eyes, and a swipe of mascara. Flip flops in the summer, Uggs in the winter (aka, August 1 through June 1 in the woods). Then DONE. This routine takes 10 minutes, tops. Or an Elmo's World straight through Mister Noodle, if you speak Sesame Street. And that's IF my kids are in the mood to watch Sesame Street without offing each other while I ready myself. Usually? It goes a little something like this.

But I mean, really? What else is a mom to do? I don't have a nanny for each kid and cat like the RHOBHs, my kids wake up too early for me to rise before them to primp, and precious as they may be - I surely don't have those pretend unicorn kind of kids who will sit patiently reading their bibles and penning letters to grandma while I blow dry my hair and pluck my stray brows (but they will tip the Culligan water thing over and/or crawl into the fireplace). So, I shower at night and do the standby 10 minute routine by morn, then I pat myself on the back for even bothering with the mascara and we go. Because even the leggings-hoodie-halfass hair-concealer-mascara-slip on shoes thing? Serious commitment to the anti-total-frump movement. I'll allow some frump in the form of leggings I wear at least twice before washing .... but I'm not giving up my damn mascara, yall.

ahem. i have something to show you.

2011-10-10T11:06:00.002-05:00

Did you think I was going to show you a pregnancy test or something? BWAHAHA! One, no. Two, it's even better (for now). Three, I'll show you this thing I want to show you in a second, after I tell you about my weekend even though you didn't ask.

Oh, this weekend. It. Was. Awesome. J and I left the kids in the loving care of the Mommo, and didn't shed a single tear as we cruised out of town. Not that we don't love our kids to PIECES, you know that we do, but sheesh, three year olds are something ELSE. We needed a time out from parenting. And we took one, in the form of a road trip to Minneapolis, where we visited college friends (who are having a baby ANY SECOND, but her water did NOT break during our visit, much to J's relief.) Then we meandered through shops, choosing only those with breakable items and walkways too narrow for double strollers and really expensive/impractical things (that we did not buy, obvi). And Super Targ, because duh. And we also went antiquing, because apparently we're 93 years old now. Then had one of the most scrumptious Italian dinners I've had in years. Then, and this is probably the second best part of all .... we slept in until 8:30am. I KNOW! SO LATE. It was delicious, that uninterrupted Sunday morning sleep. But you want to know the FIRST best part of all? The real reason for this road trip, or at least the other real reason for this road trip (the other real reason being how three year olds are something ELSE)? Okay, then. Here's why we went to Minnesota:

Meet Chester. Or, one of Chester's siblings, as we don't know yet exactly which of the nine pups will our new baby. If you don't think that's about the cutest thing you've seen in forever, I'm concerned for you. Let's try this:

Sleeping puppy! Cutesplosion!

So yes, we're getting a puppy. And yes, I know I'm a smidge crazy to add a puppy to our two toddler/three cats/not enough hours in any day life. But we need a dog. We miss having a dog, and have always hoped there would be a Golden in our future. We didn't anticipate Griffy passing away so soon, and certainly didn't anticipate bringing home another dog so soon after that .... but fate intervened. We found an amazing breeder with this sweet litter, born precisely the same day as our Griff went to doggy heaven. Meant to be. Baby Chester gets a few more weeks to be with his mama and siblings, then we'll trek back to southern Minnesota and bring our new baby home. I. Am. So. EXCITED.

Oh, PS: one of my kids welcomed me back with hugs and kisses and "wuv you mommy"s alllll morning long. The other kid welcomed me back with three temper tantrums before breakfast was even on the table. I'll let you guess who's who. Hint: one of my children is three. And fortunately for him, very very redeemably cute. And he'll be four in 11.5 months, so that's very soon.

Oh, PPS: antiqued cream it is for the desk! Thanks for all the ideas, both here on el bloggo and emailed. You're the best friends (and e-friends) a girl could ask for. Stay tuned for the office reveal. I mean, after I paint the desk and do the other 107 things I'm now planning to do to my office space. So stay tuned until the year 2098. Kthxbye.

iphone photo week in review: nineteen and twenty

2011-10-10T10:05:00.003-05:00

And now, a supersized edition of the iPhone photos. Which I am too lazy to caption. I trust that you'll figure it out. Kids, pets, road trip, scenery.

ayudame! por favor!

2011-10-04T19:37:00.006-05:00

Project time! And I need your help. Mama's getting an office. Because working (oh fine and crafting) at the dining room table isn't working for me. Sticky kid fingers on my laptop, J growing increasingly unhappy with my stacks of felt and glue sticks in the dining room, the like. So the loft, formerly known as the collecting place of riffraff furniture, is slowly becoming my office. Very slowly. Meaning, right now, it contains two chairs and a tangle of cords I think is part of something called our modem. Whatever that is.

Anyway. So last month, I scored a great solid wood table/desk off Craigslist for $50 (STEAL!) The paint was in awful condition (three layers of blobbed on awfulness, to be exact), so I've (HAHAHA I mean J has) spent the past few weeks stripping and sanding it down. And now it's sitting all lonesome-like out in our garage on a tarp looking like so:

The top picture is the desk. The other three pictures are what a desk looks like when you've got a three year old. "CHEESE! CHEESE! MAMA LOOK AT ME!"

So. Now what do I DO with this desk of mine? I'm having the wood-finishing equivelent of writer's block (painter's block?) I can't picture the finished desk, and I'm afraid of making the wrong choice and having it end up back out in the garage for sanding/staining/sitting on a tarp round 2. I need to get a move on.

Here's the space it's going into. Obviously, this is a picture the builder took a few years before we moved in, because there are no Goldfish ground into the carpet or errant blocks thrown about like you'd find now. Or riffraff furniture.

It's very .... woody, you see? I'd like to play that down a bit, if such a thing is even possible. So no wood stains. My initial thought was a creamy white color for the desk. The wall (not pictured) is a dark chocolate brown and is NOT getting repainted since it goes all the way on down to the main floor and into the kitchen. So I thought the creamy white might lighten things up a bit, and I could do fun light colored picture frames all over the wall. But then, of course, I went on Pinterest and saw gray desks and blue desks and green desks and got all kinds of confused/overwhelmed. Do I go with color? Do I do some antique finishing treatment? Black? Hot pink with gold sparkles? WHAT?

So here I am. Begging you. Tell me what to do with my desk. And my office as a whole. And my life, if you're so inclined.

Thank you kindly.

a worthy cause

2011-10-03T13:13:00.006-05:00

Have yall ever clicked on the 'but now to live the life' link in my blog list? If you have, how inspiring are they? And if you haven't visited, check it. I have no idea how I ever found Sarah's blog, but I'm glad I did. It's the story of a California family with four little kids who put all their faith in God's plan for them and sold nearly everything they owned to move to Peru, where they're working to empower impoverished women through a project called Krochet Kids. Sarah writes honestly about their trials and triumphs there and it really puts things in perspective. I sometimes think I'm having a bad day because my internet went out for ten minutes when I needed to use it (GASP!) or my kid peed right over the toilet and on the bathroom wall instead (true story) ... but then I read her blog and see the day in and day out living conditions of the people they're trying to help, and hello, reality check.

Anywho. I saw today that they're setting up childcare so that the women working for them can bring their children along when they work. They need help getting toys for the kids to play with while their moms work, and she created an Amazon list so you can send something. I made a small purchase - for what I would've paid to grab the kids and I lunch at some drive through window, those sweet kids in Peru will have a fun and brand new toy. And that makes me happy.

If you want to help, click on the blog: but now to live the life. Or go directly to the wish list by clicking on Amazon: here.

Thanks, friends.

iphone photo week in review: eighteen

2011-10-01T15:35:00.001-05:00

October? Already? How? September blew by, didn't it? Literally in our case, since the last two days of the month brought gagillion miles per hour winds that ripped half of our gorgeous autumn leaves off the trees. I suppose that flying time thing will happen when you start a job, relearn the wahm routine, get a pet, lose a pet, plan a party, host a party, catch up with relatives, spend Sundays watching football as long as your kids will let you, and craft 7,649 things. October doesn't look to be much calmer. Road trips planned for 3 of the 5 weekends (including one to Lambeau! YESYESYES!), parties and a baby brunch on the calendar, Halloween costumes to plan (and maybe craft, since PBK is INSANE if they think I'm paying them $70 for a costume and shipping of such costume, asIF), and another fun thing that I'll tell you all about later (no I'm not pregnant, thankyouverymuch). October's looking good despite the busyness, is what I'm saying. Even if it's not actually calmer, it feels calmer as the temps go lower and lower and any excuse is a good excuse to cozy up in sweatpants, light a few candles, and snuggle with the littles. Happy October, yall!

And now, the iPhone snaps.

rainy campfire. same. tasteless crock pot breakfast casserole/pinterest flop. hiking. leaves. hiker. how champs eat breakfast. looked a lot like a dead mole on my carpet might have freaked my freak. normynormy.

not about crafts!

2011-09-29T21:40:00.002-05:00

So. My kids?

They're CUTE! Even when one's borderline choking the other one. Hug, choke, samediff. I ended up going the DIY route on our photo session this year, since A & V have been known not to cooperate with a pro which makes me all agitated and sweaty, and also since I did kindasorta talk my husband into getting me a nice camera by saying "but think how much money we'll SAVE not paying a photographer all the time!" And then I hired a photographer ten times after that. So this time around, I hired (for free) an assistant (my mom) and we took the kids out on a perfect fall day and snapped away. And then I actually took some time to play with that Aperture editing program I've had on my computer for oh, like 10 months. And I'm so, so happy with our results! Of course, I'm only sharing the so-so ones that aren't my super top favorites. Christmas cards and grandparent gifts and such, you know? But trust me. There are some where BOTH of my kids are not only looking in the general direction of my lens but ALSO smiling. I know. It's as miraculous as a sparkly unicorn.

he loves his bubbita

oh, i love her too

autumn tree

2011-09-27T15:00:00.001-05:00

This is not turning into a craft blog. I sweartodog! It's still a "zomg toddlers be nuts/zomg I'm turning into a cat lady/zomg the Real Housewives did WHA WHAAAT?!?" blog. I promise. But yeah, there's also going to be some craftiness. Unless my crafting venture crashes and burns like some of my other short-lived hobbies (::cough cough running::) (::cough cough piano lessons::) have been known to do.

In today's edition of Crafts On A Blog Not About Crafting, Anderbug and I made my mom a birthday present. And it turned out SO stinking cute that I requested he help me make another for our house. He obliged. This kid likes paint. And glue. And anything else that involves his mother requesting he get himself messy. (Vivi? Not so much into messy hands. She opted out.)

The project....fall hands.

Inspired by the Pinterest "Christmas tree of hands" project you can't throw a rock without hitting.

Canvas, fall colored paints, spongey paint brush for applying paint to hands and painting tree trunk. And a toothpick to paint on the year, si'l vous plait.

I thought the canvas was needing a little something to look complete, so when the paint was nice and dry, I hot glued hemp cord around the sides. I love how it gave it a rustic finishing touch.

(And if you happen to be my kids' other grandparents, no worries, we've got crafty gift making plans for yall as well. Ho ho ho!)

So happy, happy birthday to my lovely mama! You're an inspiration to me every single day. We love you forever and ever!

i like to craft it craft it

2011-09-26T13:03:00.006-05:00

I'm having a manic crafting episode. So much so that late last night, as I put the finishing touches on my THIRD project of the day, J started making up songs at my crafty expense. Like: "Look at me now. Look at me now. Look at me now. Oh I'm craftin papers." And also like: "Getcho craft on. Getcho craft on. Getcha Getcha Getcha Getcha Getcha craft on." There were others in his repertoire, and some accompanying dance moves I wish I had on video should I ever need to blackmail him ... but you get it, right? I did some crafts, with a little help from the kids. Want to see one? Okay, then. I'll share. (But not my very favorite one. That's ((literally)) under wraps until my mom's birthday tomorrow.)

I give you .... fall leaves that were once coffee filters. A fine alternative to plastic window clings, if I do say so myself. (And I just did say so. Myself.)

Super simple. We used four things. Coffee filters, watercolor paints, hemp, and glue.

The littles and I painted the coffee filters in an orderly and cooperative fashion (HAHAHAHAHA!), and when they were dry and my kids were ~~locked in the basement~~ in bed, I cut them up into leaf shapes. Then I glued on the stems and hung them with tape on the windows and finished watching the Packers show the Bears how to play football. Easy peasy!

I also attempted this project. Yeah, notsomuch. My leaves had no interest in adhering to a pumpkin and I ended up with Mod Podge in my eye. So instead, I slapped some glitter paint on the gourds and called it a project.

Nothing groundbreaking, obvi, but they're sparkly and I like sparkly things. So, win.

How about you other Pinterest crackbabies? Did you do anything you loved that I might have missed on my jam-packed Pinterest feed? Do share!

OMGWTF?!? plus iphone photo week in review: sixteen and seventeen

2011-09-23T14:46:00.006-05:00

This evening, I met my husband at the door with two toddlers, both in their shoes and coats, and shoved them all outside. Then resisted the urge to slam the door, go find my car keys and my Uggs, and FLEE FOR THE BORDER. Instead, I legit sprinted into the kitchen for a Rhinelander Shorty beer (you want some, trust me.) Then got on my laptop to blog, because therapy is expensive and blogging is free, that's why. OMG, IT WAS NOT A GOOD DAY. Why are three year olds certifiably insane? Why must everyone only want the RED watercolor paint when they're offered the ORANGE, then only the ORANGE when they're given the RED and then just throw their paintbrush at the floor in a fit of rage when FINALLY given the color of choice? Why is it fun to kick the back of my car seat over and over and over again? What's with the shoving lately? Who thinks an hour is a serious nap (hint: NOT ME)? Why would anyone think a kitten wanted to go into the toilet? Speaking of toilets, why is it such a big freaking process to POO in one? Why throw a perfectly good lunch on the floor because it wasn't cut up JUST SO? Why is my beer gone already? WHY WHY WHY?

Ahem. In other news, you guys, I love your Pinterest enthusiasm! I'm now following about eleventy billion of you, and I LOVE what I see. And if I'm not following you yet, I will be soon. Just as soon as I get done drinking my beer and going to a movie and taking a much needed morning off tomorrow with my friend Katie. We're going to look at crafty things at some crafty place, she says! I'll be mentally pinning all the livelong morning, I bet.

Okay. Let's all reflect on finer moments from the last few weeks. Mmkay?

bunt beds are here! bunt beds! first swimming lesson. athletic supporters. snugglywugglykittywitty. mister. cowboy treat bags. my very first rosette. throwing rocks. too small to be a bear too big to be a dog omg what is in my yard. not possessed that day. collecting leaves.

pinterest is crack and i love it

2011-09-21T21:17:00.009-05:00

Yeah, go ahead and add Pinterest to the list of 'things that suck my free time down to shards of nothingness'. And also 'things that won't help me fit into a bikini ever ever again'. But. You guys. This Pinterest thing. Despite the time suck/muffin top making attributes ..... is it not, like, the best invention ever? It's making me so crafty. And inspired. And GENIUS. And tired, when I stay up long after my bed time clicking and clicking and clicking JUST ONCE MORE.

I've made a crock pot buffalo chicken that was kind of to die for. I have back to school photos figured out from preschool to senior year (neveryoumind that my kids don't go to school for, uh, years). I've tried new hairstyles and have a winter wardrobe all planned out. The littles and I are spending tomorrow morning making an autumn window mural and painting/modge podging pumpkins (*and by modge podge I did mean MOD podge). I've got rosette making down pat. There are Christmas and Valentines crafts on the docket. I treated A& V to pumpkin cream cheese with their pear slices the other day. Just call me Martha-Freaking-Stewart, yall. And it's all thanks to Pinterest! Which I love even MORE for being so simply lovely, now that Facebook is being ridiculous (no, I don't care what my friends were doing nine hours ago, Facebook, I like my social media chronological. And not dumb.) Anyway. Pinterest. Have I mentioned I love it?

Here's a clicky link to my Pinterest: linktomyPinterest. If I'm not already following you, leave me your link in the comments so I can find you and steal, oh excuse me ... "pin" all of your ideas. You know, because I have SO MUCH TIME on my hands to pin, what with the kids and the pets and the laundry and the house and the job (did I mention I'm working from home again? Oh. I'm working from home again. Yay money! Yay my brain!) If I keep this pace up, and also spend 4 hours a day on Pinterest/implementing ideas that I've pinned like I want to, soon I'll be down to an hour of sleep and start forgetting to feed the ~~kids~~ cats. Meh. They're getting chubby anyway. (The cats! I said the cats, CPS!)

What's your best Pinterest find so far? I want to know so I can craft it/buy it/eat it. TELL ME.

PS: And THEN I found out there's an iPhone app. I'm probably going to need an intervention.

yee haw, yall!

2011-09-18T17:07:00.002-05:00

Let's be real. Part of the appeal of a cowboy party? It's easy. Franks, throwaway tin pans, plaid shirts, a pile of ten gallon hats. Done. The other appeal? The ridiculous adorability of a three year old in a cowboy hat. Like, such as, see above. And also see below for more of the cow/birthday boy and his down home celebration.

We had fun. The boy had fun. He had all the people he loves most packed into his house, a pile of thoughtful gifts, and free reign of the food table. So of course, he passed up the whole wheat pb&js and stuffed his face with potato chips and franks and cake. And then also twenty pieces of candy from the cowboy boot pinata. And then, superbigsurprise, he woke up five times last night dry heaving and complaining of a stomach ache. Yee haw!

So now, he's three. And a calmer week lies ahead. Which we kicked off with the very best kind of late September Sunday - sweatpants, football (WIN!), and a steady, chilly rain giving us an excuse not to budge from the cozy house. Hellllooooo, fall.

happy birthday, anderson

2011-09-17T07:00:00.004-05:00

Oh, sweet boy. I don't know how you've gone from this ....

to this ....

in thirty six teeny tiny months.

But I do know this: you are so amazing, Anderbuggy. You are happy and kind. You're a good, sweet, thoughtful boy. You forget nothing or no one. You're bright, you're adventurous, you're curious. You love your bubbita, your boobankie, your kitties, your paydough. You can't go to bed without one last hug, then one last kiss, then one more last hug. You put your own shoes on, you like your cup with no lid, you do more things "youself" every day and make me both proud and wistful by doing so. You are a dream come true, my boy, and I'm forever grateful for the way you came along and made our hearts whole. Happy third birthday, Anderson. You are so, so loved, forever and ever.

ooh, cozy

2011-09-13T13:04:00.007-05:00

I don't know about you, but if someone took me to a furniture store and let me (help) pick out the cushiest twin mattress of all time, and also ordered me the softest kid bedding of all time, and washed it all up in the freshest smelling detergent of all time, I might .... oh, I don't know ... actually SLEEP ON IT?

Not Bug. This is his first ever "crashed on the floor" episode, and he chooses to do it the very night he graduates into a real bed with real bedding? (That's his blankie around his neck. Not a dashing fall scarf, and also not maxi pads stuck to his chin, you hear me Facebook friends?)

Later today, his actual bed is being delivered and assembled. His four grandparents, in their usual grandparental awesomeness, came together for his third birthday to do this boy's bedroom up right: a cool set of bunk beds, and the most adorable boy bedding I've seen in my life to go along with it. (See it here and here.) I know. Luckyduck.

And the birthday week fun just goes on and on. He starts swimming lessons Thursday. His Mimi, Papaw, and Auntie Lauren are flying in for the weekend. We're celebrating his big oh-three cowboy style on Saturday. After the gloom and doom of last week, it's nice to have so much to smile about this week.

And also, I'm pretty sure he's potty trained for real. Both ways, if you know whati'msaying.

And also, I'm knocking on wood now. And AM SO EXCITED not to be changing man poops anymore.

iphone photo week in review: fifteen

2011-09-10T07:44:00.005-05:00

wausau bound. silly faces. nothing auntie loves more than a balloon in her face. curious kitten. grown up. if you don't like kittens i can't like you. my kids are milkaholics and we're going broke fast. practicing (not her coat, it's not even pink).

a $3 goodwill mirror made us happy. he really loves normy. it's good to be king. winter it's coming omg hold me. car swing. happy faces on a sad day got me by. my coworker. a pony. abbie visited. they're going to give me a heart attack doing that.

don't read this if you don't want to read about pee and poop

2011-09-09T14:59:00.005-05:00

Okay, I need to post something so I can stop looking at that picture of GriffyPoo when I open up my blog to blog-stalk my blog lists. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all the love you've given me this week via the blog and Facebook and emails and calls and cupcakes at 8pm (looking at you, Katie). Means the world to me, yall. It's been a hard week. I miss my Griff.

Anyway. For the sake of posting something not depressing, I'll tell you this ... I think my kid is potty trained. KNOCK ON WOOD TIMES ONE MILLION. A few wise mothers who have walked the toddler path before us have told me that you get an easy pass on on of the following two things: 1) crib to bed transition or 2) potty training. Let's not get me started on the crib to bed transition, right? That wasn't our easy pass. GODHELPUS if it was. But potty training? Just kind of ... happened. Not to pat myself on the back, because we all know that then, all progress will unhappen in the blink of an eye, but I think the "wait until the kid is 100% ready" approach was the way to go. On Monday, faced with the unsavory likelihood of changing 2,592 diapers on what should have been a holiday but was just another working day around here, and ALSO faced with the idea of hauling my behind to Wally World for yet another box of diapers, and ALSO knowing the kid was ready as the day was long ... I told him a little fib. Just to see what would happen. I told Mister A his doctor had called, and she said he was too big for diapers now. He tilted his head and studied my face and I thought I was so busted, but then, THEN, he turned around and ran to the potty. And peed. And said "tell doctor!" Huh. Fluke? I thought so, but get this - it's now Friday, he's been in ElmoPants since Monday, and we've only had one accident. Total. And that happened when he was watching Sesame Street, which he loves like I love RHOBH, and sometimes I'd rather pee MY pants than take a break to use the bathroom. Okay, that accident tally only applies to the number ones, but hello? Go, Bug! No pee in my car, even! We shall not speak of what's going on with the number twos. Oh, who am I kidding, we shall too. Because I won't cough up a diaper no matter pleadingly he begs, he's started pooping outside. But you know what? He's not pooping in a diaper. And eventually (in two days) it's going to be snowy and cold here and I'm guessing the potty will seem a whole lot more enticing than the frozen tundra of a yard. Hopefully we nip the exhibitionist poos before then, but for now I feel pretty good about five entire days of dry underpants (-1).

Though I will say this ... if you're a germaphobe, get over it before your kid starts potty training. Because today alone, I've been in three public restrooms. Including one in ... wait for it ... Wally. And not just IN the bathroom, up close and personal with the toilet. Because how else do you help a three year old balance on a "big potty" and keep an 18 month old away from the potty? You're going to have to get right in there, and then you're going to have to scrub everyone's hands in the questionably clean public bathroom sink. But if it saves me some money on diapers, and by "saves" I do mean leaves me with extra money to spend on Ideeli, bring on the Tour De Public Restrooms.

goodbye, griffin

2011-09-07T18:30:00.005-05:00

rest in peace, sweet griffin

march 23, 2006 - september 7, 2011

It's awful to lose a pet. It's awful when they wander off, never to be seen again, leaving you hoping and wondering and eventually accepting the heartbreaking idea that they're gone. And it's awful when faultless, tragic accidents happen, when one minute there's playing and running and barking and the next there's not. I imagine, also, that it's awfully sad to watch a pet grow old and gray faced and know the time to say goodbye is near .... but oh, how I wish we'd gotten that chance with Griffin, that we'd had the years we thought we'd have with our quirky, simple, often yappy but always sweetly loyal little dog. Tonight, as I mourn the sudden passing of our Griff, I take comfort in all the love we gave him, and the infinite, unconditional love he gave us right back, even when babies came and focuses shifted and his food dish was sometimes left kibbleless until the very end of the day. I think of the days together at the lake, the walks from our first place in Austin to Amy's Ice Cream (and the stops we'd make for him to visit with his admirers), the time the groomer shaved his fluffy Sheltie coat nearly bald and I cried for hours at his misfortune. I remember how he'd walk obediently at our side wherever it was we took him, how we never needed a leash because he never thought to wander from his human pack. I think of the happy days with our dog, and hope their memory lingers more strongly than the ones of this incredibly sad day.

You were loved, sweet Griff. I hope you always knew that.

hi, norman

2011-09-05T07:43:00.001-05:00

If I'm going to live in the wooded country, I might as well rescue a(nother) cat. I can't resist the homeless cats. I mean, from now on I HAVE to, because we've got a newly imposed 1:1 rule in this family (1 human family member to 1 animal family member). So we're done with pets now.

Until we have another baby (HAHAHA!)

It's just too bad kittens aren't cute at all, isn't it?

not so sparkly

2011-09-04T19:37:00.003-05:00

Lots of this going on around here this weekend:

Scowling. (And whining and drooling and throwing oneself on the floor over not being allowed to take a lovey outside.) That'll happen when you cut all your eye teeth at once, Princess Sparklepants.

Or maybe she's just irked that we left her in pajamas all day. She did find herself a pretty to dress the look up a bit, at least.

iphone photo week in review: fourteen

2011-09-02T13:23:00.004-05:00

i'd be 10 pounds lighter if there were no dq. summer babes. new big boy room bedding arrives. bug and mama likey. klassy digs. groceries for 13. baby fever maker. sweet boy. already happening. long walks. how we roll. neighbor's "park". fresh picked. howdy yall. date night. see it love it. hi norman (oh what the hell). who needs chew toys when mama has feet.

wisconsin-iversary

2011-09-01T13:29:00.002-05:00

One year ago today, we were Texans. But not for long.

As my Facebook status said last September 1, "off we go!" To Wisconsin, and our new home in the woods. It's our one year Wisconsin-iversary! In honor of this momentous occasion, I have a story to tell you. One I'm not sure how I never got around to telling. Maybe because I was busy moving across the country with two children so small they were practically fetuses. Or something.

The whole reason we moved was because of Al Roker. Really! Last July, we were considering the move, but we just couldn't make a 100% final decision, so we were still prefacing the idea with "maybe/possibly/perhaps/weather permitting". J had the job lined up, we had my parents scouring the woods for houses with potential, we'd interviewed a realtor in Austin about maybe/possibly/perhaps listing our house there. But we hadn't fully committed to the move yet and kept going back to "are we SURE we can leave Austin/our friends/malls/Mighty Fine french fries?" Life, or at least where to live it, was up in the air. UNTIL. One morning, J was home. I have no idea how that happened, because in my memories of Austin, J's never home. But he WAS home, and we were watching the Today Show. And you know how Al Roker does his pick city of the day, and tells you about the weather in that far-off burg? And it always seems to be some mid-sized city where the weather is nicer than wherever you are, but it's never more off the path places like, say, Rhinelander, Wisconsin? Well, on that day where J and I were feeling like we needed to make a final decision, oh, about ten minutes ago (Austin or Rhinelander? Austin or Rhinelander? WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH OUR LIVES?!?!) .... Al Roker picked Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Not even kidding you. There, in front of our faces on the flatscreen TV, was the undeniable answer. Sent straight from Al Roker (via God). So we called the movers and we moved. And from now on, I'll trust Al Roker (okay, and God) with all of my big life decisions, because those guys knew what they were doing there.

thanks monsters

2011-08-30T14:18:00.001-05:00

Last night, for the first time in probably two and a half years, Mister A slept in our bed. Because there were monsters in his room. (The night before, he was up five times because his toe hurt. It's one catastrophe after another around here, I tell you.) The monsters woke him around 1:00am, and after an hour of the staircase shuffle, with exhausted frustration mounting each time we'd settle back into our bed only for the screams to start up again just as we drifted off, J and I forfeited. I stumbled up the stairs one last time, gathered my boy and his blankie in my arms, and brought him back down to our bed. Where he promptly fell into a deep sleep the second his head hit my pillow. I did not do the same. Not because of the pointy elbow in my side, though I'm sure that didn't help. It was more that, with him so close beside me and so uncharacteristically still, I was overcome with awe at how big he's grown. How this boy beside me was the same being as tiny newborn Anderson, bundled into a striped cap and tight nurse's swaddle and tucked right underneath my arm on his first night of life, feet barely reaching down to my hip, now sprawled out with his feet tucked somewhere past my knees. How this child who was now taking up a third of our king sized bed once fit, somehow, inside my belly. How half of his time at home with me, almost to the day, has passed. In the span of another nearly-three years, he'll be wearing a backpack and walking into a school, leaving his little days behind for good. And that will be okay, that's the whole point of why we're here, to grow big and change and go off and do .... but it's just so true, what they say. The days at home with children are often so long, but the years are going by faster than I ever could've known.

I suppose it's the nearing of September, the planning of a third birthday party, that has me waxing nostalgic about the days gone by. I don't know. But I do know, that for one night at least, I was grateful to the monsters for giving me an excuse to snuggle up with my Bug. To look him over and take him in. To be reminded, once more, that the little won't keep.

Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I've grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo

The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew
And out in the yard there's a hullabaloo
But I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo
Look! Aren't his eyes the most wonderful hue?
Lullabye, rockaby lullabye loo.

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

- Ruth Hulbert Hamilton

rhigtg

2011-08-28T19:08:00.002-05:00

The internet's a funny thing. It can take three sorority sisters who weren't especially close in college, and over a the years, through a series of eleventy bazillion emails spanning topics from pregnancies (the three of us had three kids in the span of exactly one month back in 2008) to Pottery Barn Kids purchases to the ins and outs of every reality show under the sun, give you something really remarkable. Like RHIGTG2011! That's Rhinelander Get Together, when Anne, Kim, and I finally got together face to face for the first time in many years. Just us, our husbands, 7.75 children, $400 worth of groceries, and a jumbo RV parked in our yard, classystyle. The girls pulled up on Thursday in SUVs jam-packed with coolers and blankies and snack cups, and we squealed and hugged and introduced babies out in the driveway, then went on like we'd just seen each other last week. And the kids?

Yeah, they had a pretty great time, too. They skipped naps and ate cookies and drank non-organic milk. Because we're CRAZY like that.

Backstory: our sorority was quite proud of our patented window pop-out recruitment routine. We ROCKED that pop out, but not without lots and lots of strenuous practice sessions, often starting as INSANELY early as 8:00am. (Being in a sorority is HARD WORK!) And so, at RHIGTG, the window pop out was reenacted. I'm happy to report our Alpha Phi window pop skills are still in fine form. Phew. Never know when that might come in handy.

Despite the apparent nakedness (and the Mikearitas), Kim and I are wearing clothes. And probably also smushing Anne's fetus.

So, thank goodness for the internet and emails and friendships that grow over the world wide web ... and in real life, too.

The internet also tells me it's 111 degrees in Austin right now (!!!!!!), there was a hurricane of some sort, and that I've got about 268 blogs to read up on. Better get to it. And then go to bed at 9pm. Because the elderly aren't meant to sit around a bonfire until 1:00am drinking wine. Makes 'em moody, I hear. Hopefully I recover in time for GTG2012.

he will totally pee in your car

2011-08-22T21:45:00.004-05:00

"Never trust a (sorta) potty training almost-3 year old to wear underpants in your car. I don't care how many times he swears he won't pee in your car, he will TOTALLY pee in your car." -me, facebook, 8/22/11

We've taken the casual approach to potty training around here. For a few reasons. One is that I'm in the camp who believes starting too early will only prolong the process and I have no interest in prolonging any parenting process that requires me to spend half my day in the bathroom keeping one toddler out of the potty and the other one on it/bribe him into pooping/do more laundry than I already have to do. Two is that we had our hands full in recent months just getting the kid to SLEEPFORTHELOVEOFGOD, so I wasn't feeling like we should add another major transitional milestone to his plate (or ours). Three is that I know my Bug, I know he's smart and capable and he'll do it when he does it. No use pushing him on the matter. Not that we haven't encouraged him. We've had a potty available for a year now, a cool stack of Sesame Street underpants at his disposal in his dresser drawer, and we've cheered on (quite enthusiastically) any and all attempts to utilize these tools ... but we just weren't going to push it until he seemed truly ready.

Well, I'm thinking he's ready. He can get his pants on and off. He seems to prefer the potty over the diaper. He's asked the gym daycare teacher to help him use the bathroom the past two times he's been there. He'll get up after his nap, remove his diaper, and pull on his Elmopants (all underpants are Elmopants, so says A). And the past few days, he's done really well keeping those Elmopants dry. At home. We haven't let him out of the yard sans diaper just yet. Until this afternoon, when we went to go pick up J from work. I tried wrangling him into a diaper before we left, I really did. But he wanted his Elmopants on, and THAT WAS THAT. "Promise you won't pee in the car, A? Go one more time before we go. Now one more time. Promise no pee-pee in the car? PROMISE?" He was resolute. No pee-pee in the car.

So obviously, he peed in my car.

The end.

iphone photo week in review: thirteen (california edition)

2011-08-20T10:06:00.002-05:00

*Wondering about that first picture? It's Fernanda! RHOC Tamara's ladyfling Fernanda! Who, when we honked at her, was all smiley and flashed us a peace sign before jumping back in her Caddy.

five days

2011-08-19T14:03:00.006-05:00

This week has been a blur. There were suitcases to be unpacked and that unwavering pile of laundry to deal with. A pantry crying out for replenishment. Details of Project Big Boy Room (more on that later) to be exacted. Vivi had her 18 month check up and is still rocking supermodel baby stats (95% height, 25-50% weight).

A fall photo session to schedule, a birthday party to plan, a DVR needing a good weed-out. There were cats pawing at my face all night because they wanted CAT food, not DOG food like they were served the last two days of my absence when their food ran out (nice try, J). Ames won my heart once more when he danced a little jig in his crimson pants and chose love over the BPad. There was a playdate on the books with friends we haven't seen enough of this summer. Where Anderson tore out of their driveway with his gal-pal Cassie. Both topless. Because they're "spirited" like that.

And all week long, as we ran this way and that way and then back home in the nick of naptime, I've carried with me this mindfulness and awe at how much two little kids can change in five days. I was gone five days, yall. And in those five days, it's like they each aged MONTHS. A's fitting into 3T pants and knows babies come out of tummies (?!?). V's combining words and putting on her own tutu and "reading" from upside down books. A's off the purple pop-popsicle train and now only orange pop-popsicles will do. They don't beg for the "airplane Barney one", they want the "shapes Barney one". Five days I was gone! It just goes to show you how fleeting this time really is. How, tiring and mentally demanding as the job may be, I'll soon look back on these little-little days and wish there was someone home to scrub a toilet with my toothbrush (maybe? sorta?) It's not that I regret missing these tiny transitions in the five days I was away. Au contraire! The trip was amazing and such trips will be repeated annually. Those days of rest gave me a much needed boost in patience to come home and deal with things like, oh, an almost-3 year old who learned the phrase "me do it myself" and uses that phrase ten times an hour. Minimum. The five days away gave me an appreciation for the breakneck speed at which things change when you're raising babies. The reminder that if I'm feeling in a rut today, tomorrow will bust us out of it into new places, new challenges, new needs and wants and routines. How I really need to take the time every day to just sit back and watch them be little, find joy in the newfound self-confidence of a boy learning to put his shoes on (the wrong feet), even if it means we're five minutes late for Zumba. To agree to the yellow pretty when the pink pretty is the only obvious match, because who am I to stifle her burgeoning sense of fashion? To relish today's early nap wake-up, because all my boy really wants is to snuggle up beside me playing PaintSparkles on the iPad beside me while I blog, and you know what? That's just as good as peace and quiet sometimes, anyway. (Once a week or so, max.)

Anyway. That's what's up. And now he's off PaintSparkles and somehow pulled up a rap video on YouTube, so bye.

PS: like Vivi's headband? Check out my friend Mandy's shop: Love Squirrels!

grateful

2011-08-15T10:41:00.006-05:00

Though stuffing a suitcase (my belongings mysteriously multiplied in California, it seems) and clearing out is never the highlight of anyone's vacation, this morning as we clean up and pack up and prepare to board our midwestern bound planes, I feel more grateful than sad. Grateful for parents who encourage and make possible time away. Who graciously offer up their house and their car and their enthusiastic, loving child care. (If not their tequila*.) For husbands who say "go, do, have fun!" even if it means they're left home holding the kids and cleaning up after the pets and working the job and taming (hahahaha ignoring) the laundry mountain. For friends. Oh, how grateful I am for my good, good friends. For girls who encourage our talents, those hidden beneath the mommying and the careering and the practicalities of our everyday lives, who sift them out and point them out and passionately voice their belief that you've got what it takes to do that thing, take that risk. For girls who make me laugh harder every time we get together, even if we're retelling the same story we tell every time we're together. For girls who are around for the long haul, who I know without a doubt will continue to gather and laugh and encourage and story tell for years and years, that though one day we'll find ourselves more gray than golden, we'll gather still, swapping stories about our grandbabies and our arthritis meds and shaking our heads at how old we thought we were when we were 30.

I'm so grateful for this trip. I feel rested, reenergized, reminded that while long awaited vacations are fun, going home to love the pieces out of everyone that you left back there is the true joy of it all.

You've been grand, California. We'll see you next year.

*What's up with the tequila reference, you ask? Oh, just my dad being my dad. Geez. We raid** his liquor stash once (in college, mind you) and we're perps for life.

**and by raid I do mean decimate

iphone photo week in review: twelve

2011-08-13T11:08:00.002-05:00

love you, love squirrels shop. her happy place. lake boys. lake babies. her mother's daughter. going to the zoo zoo zoo. anderson portrait, feet. anderson portrait, mommy and uncle. snoop dog at 5am why not i'm on vaca. oc, baby.

california!

2011-08-10T13:21:00.004-05:00

You know what? Packing for a trip for one grown up person is so easy it's almost like not doing anything at all. It's that easy. So easy that I can do it while watching Toddlers & Tiaras and also so easy that I don't even have a two page checklist! I also don't have 85 Ziplocs to contain baby medicine and applesauce and sippies full of milk that never fail to leak into the bottom of my bag, I don't have to take out a pair of shoes (or two) to make room for a second pack of diapers, and my carry on? It's SO LIGHT it's almost AIR. I can even take my laptop! And USE IT on the plane if I want to, because not like I have anything else (takeoff pressure change poo diaper changing, Valium popping, profuse sweating) to do! And my suitcase is pretty much all packed and there's still room in it, you guys. Enough room that I'd go buy myself more shoes to take along, just because I COULD, if only I had a Nordstrom at which to do such a crazy thing. Or hell, a DSW would do right about now. Alas, our shoe pickins are slim up here in the woods, and I don't want to take hiking boots or bright white elderly people tennies on my trip, so my husband and credit card can breathe a big sigh of relief and my suitcase will just be light, for a change. So light I won't be holding my breath and trying to tip the side of my jumbo-stuffed suitcase off the side of the scale at the airport in fear of busting over the 50 pound mark and being fined $1,500 and my (fictional) thirdborn child for my bag packing gluttony.

I'm leaving for California in the morning. Just me, my lightass suitcase, and three of my oldest, bestest friends. We're finally taking the girlfriend trip we started talking about taking when we were still sweet little innocent (HAHAHA!) college girls and had no idea the logistics that would go into taking such a trip as adults (child care, cha-chingy airplane tickets, work arrangements, etc etc etc). But we always said we would do it, and now we're doing it, and it's going to be fab. And I'm not going to Super Target, I swear! Just the sweet sweet frivolous mall. And the beach. And restaurants. Where I can have a drink or four and nobody's going to scream at me to cut their food into teeny tiny pieces FASTER, unless one of the girls has one too many drinks, in which case how funny would THAT be?!? I'll take pictures if it happens.

It goes without saying that by about day two, the little people will be missed like I'd miss an appendage, but I'm choosing not to focus on that. And hello, they're pretty cool with some uninterrupted Mommo/uncle/auntie/daddy time. And even if they do miss me a little (they will, right? They'll notice I'm gone?), it will be good for them to have mama come back a little more relaxed and so excited to see them that I'll squeeze them to teeny tiny toddler pieces. For days on end. Because I'm totally going to miss them. A lot. But that's why God made margaritas! AMEN AND HALLELUJAH AND SUCH!

goats eat everything

2011-08-07T13:03:00.008-05:00

We'd told Anderson last night that if he went to bed and slept reallllly well, we'd take him on a surprise trip in the morning. Well, that kid has a memory like a steel trap, so he woke up this morning shouting "Surprise! Surprise!" So despite the threatening rain clouds rolling overhead, off we went for this surprise outing. We spent the first portion of the drive asking Mister A to make guesses about what his surprise was. ("Ball? Walmart? Popsicle?" All wrong guesses, but gotta love the kid for dreaming big.) Instead, we pulled up to a zoo with bears and lions and zebras ..... but what really made the trip memorable was the goats. The many, apparently starving, goats.

They weren't kidding with this sign. (Ha! Get it? Kid? Hardy har.)

Goats be CRAZY, yall! They attempted to eat all of the following items: our stroller (fabric, straps, wheels, whatever), my camera strap, the diaper bag, a diaper, a sippy cup, my jeans, Vivi's bracelet (which broke), Vivi's hair (and by hair I do mean scalp), Anderson's shoe, and my sunglasses. As well as anything else they could reach. Which was everything, because goats are ninjas. I didn't even have food in the stroller, I swear.

Then one got INTO the stroller.

Which Anderson thought was about the funniest thing that ever happened in his life, until later when a kangaroo took a sip from his sippy cup. For real.

The baby bunnies were more Vivi's style.

Just guessing, but I think if my kids had to make a list of their favorite things, 'taking pictures with mommy' would come in around #879. And that's probably an optimistic estimate.

iphone photo week in review: ten and eleven

2011-08-05T12:57:00.002-05:00

haven't mentioned the pretties lately. or the sperry love. mimi playtime. papaw playtime. my bestie of late. tree down at the cabin. why you don't want to be our waiter. walking with daddy. even lifejackets need accessorizing. labs too. picnic kids.

oh hi another pretty. sisters. jam sesh. bug eyes. that's his baby alice. someone wanted in on the pretties attention.

fancy

2011-08-04T11:26:00.008-05:00

Last night, we left the kids with a sitter and went out to dinner. The kids are getting to be pros at the babysitter thing (yay for grown up dinners where I actually get to, like, EAT!) and all went very well at home. Other than a quick call from the babysitter to me, where she put Anderson on speaker phone so I could translate what it was he was trying to tell her he needed before he could go to sleep (Anderson saying "udder bwankie" sounds to babysitter like "water binky" sounds to mama like "other blankie, I will not go to sleep unless I have BOTH of my blankies, how many times do I have to TELL YOU THIS BABYSITTER GIRL?!") And then. Later, when I'm driving the sitter home, she casually mentions that Vivian was good as gold, as usual. Except when said sitter tried to remove V's tutu for bedtime. Apparently there was a struggle, and V was victorious. So, the sitter said, that's why she's sleeping in a tutu.

I got home, snuck into her room, and sure enough. My girl, asleep like this:

Oh, Vivi. That can't even be comfy, but I guess she knows that sometimes, a girl has to hurt for fashion. She's even got the drama queen pose down. Fabulousity, that Miss V.

(For the record, I took it off. I was torn about whether to, but the yards of elastic and tulle and their stretchy chokeworthy qualities finally convinced me to yank it off of her. DIVA WAS NOT IMPRESSED, for the record.)

happy

2011-08-01T13:27:00.000-05:00

Those three have my heart. I love being their mommy. I love being his wife. I love this place we're in, even if it's sometimes a tired place where the laundry pile never fully disappears .... there's nothing I'd rather be doing, nowhere I'd rather be than right here at home with this little family. We're in a happy place. There's this soul deep feeling that we're exactly where we're supposed to be, doing just what we should be doing. That we've found a balance that's allowing us all to thrive, that closing our eyes and taking a cross-country, city-to-country, TexMex-to-cheese-curd leap of faith was precisely what we needed to do to get to this happy place. That we don't know where we'll be five or ten years from now, but there's no yearning for someplace or something else, no urgent itch for some other kind of life, because this one fits quite right. And there are evenings like the one above, that start out as killing time in a touristy restaurant while the power is out at home, and end up with the four of us out past bed time, strolling hand in hand down the sidewalk pretending to be tourists ourselves, smiling and waving at passerby, littles giggling uncontrollably as their feet swing up and off the ground .... and me feeling like there's just no way life gets better than this.

It may not be the fanciest family portrait we've ever taken, but it's so real. It's happy. Leaky sippy cup, ketchup spotted shirt, and all.

sunday mishmash

2011-07-31T14:10:00.011-05:00

Okay. You guys? I think this might be it. For real, this time. I think Anderson might have a handle on this big boy bed thing (and it only took 48ish days, not that anyone was counting, OH WAIT I TOTALLY WAS). I channeled Supernanny on Wednesday, starting at nap time. I also started putting him down about an hour later for naps, and worked at creating a more peaceful wind-down time as well (dim lights + quiet play after Vivi went down + Jewel lullaby album.) (Buy it!) I repeated Supernanny at bedtime, but I also I hid the video monitor under his bed, so I a) didn't have to lay on the floor outside his door and b) was on him like white on rice the second so much as a single little tip-toe hit thefloor. By the next day, he was only getting up once or twice. Once, he dropped his blanket and let out an exasperated "OH, NO!" (I gave him a get-up hall pass for the blanket retrieval.) And the day after that? Not even one little toe out of his bed. Now, after he's read to and hugged and kissed and tucked in, he stays in his bed. For a couple hours at naptime, and for the most part, all night long as well. I'm feeling hopeful that The Big Stupid Effing Crib To Bed Transition may, at very long last, be winding down.

Switching topics, we had a truly wonderful visit from J's parents, best known as Mimi and Papaw 'round these parts. They escaped the Texas heat and rented an awesome lake cabin Mister A dubbed 'brown house'. ("Brown house now? Brown house please? Swimming brown house? Now? PLEASE BROWN HOUSE?") We swam and played and grilled and children museum'd the week away. We had a great night out with the kids at home with a sitter, catching up over margaritas and bar food. Best of all, watching our littles surrounded by all four of their loving grandparents? Pretty great stuff.

mimi, bug, mommo, bee

i want to freeze her at 17.5 months.

because she's superfab.

that's anderson's bear face.

papaw is a funfest!

see?

total funfest.

mimi and vivi looking for fish.

or talking about shoes and pretties, probably.

The rest of the weekend was a winner as well. Minus the 12 hours we spent without electricity after a severe storm knocked out power (and had the kids and I huddling in the pitch black basement during what should have been nap time). No electricity means no running water. Which means GROSS. But we hit the lake with the familytoday and I'm pretty sure I could live with another three or four months of summer, even if it means the occasional power outage, because there's just nothing better than boating-in-the-sunshine-with-the-family-Sundays. Not even football-and-fat-pants-with-the-couch-Sundays.

Anyway. There you go. And here I go, to watch the Men Tell All. Which we all know after eighty five seasons means the men tell nothing, and we end up wondering why we wasted two hours of our lives on this. Who's it going to be tomorrow night, ladies? I cheated and read up on Reality Steve, so I'll refrain from commenting beyond saying WHO EVEN CARES ANYMORE?

in which i talk about sleep for the eleventy billionth time

2011-07-27T13:56:00.007-05:00

See that? It's the outside of Bug's door. Where I sat for thirty minutes just now, winning the "Nap v. No Nap" battle. I use the word "winning" in a totally tentative and non-jinxworthy way, of course. But he's in his bed and he's sleeping at nap time, which is more than I can say for any other day since Sunday. When he didn't nap. Like, at all. Which I handled really calmly. HAHAHAHAHA! Have we met?!? No, no I did not handle it calmly. I freaked out to my mom, to my husband, to The Lisa via email, to Dr. Google, to my cat, and then to my favorite mommy advice board where the mommies know evvvvverything. I mean, we'd just finally gotten his night sleep to a good place, and by good I do mean tenuously tolerable, and now his naps were going to shit?!? What if he stopped napping forever?!? (NOT OKAY NOT OKAY AT ALL PANIC PANIC PANIC.) In the end, after considering the wealth of helpful thoughts and tips from that assembly of advice givers, I decided two things. One: nap time needed to be a bit later. Two: I was going to have to go Supernanny on his ass. Which I did. We stayed up an hour later than usual, building block towers and reading books to a soothing toddler music soundtrack, then I put him into his bed. Then I put him back into his bed seven times, then he cried for twelve (painfully dragging) minutes in that bed, and then he went the eff to sleep. And I sat there staring at the door and not breathing until I was entirely certain he was sleeping and not, say, braiding his curtains into a rope with which to escape (he WOULD!) Then I got up, did a happy dance all the way down the stairs (complete with Zumba moves and a herkie jump at the bottom), and shoved a whole bowl full of MIL's guacamole in my face to reward myself for my awesomeness/dedication to the sleep needs cause.

Otherwise, everything is pretty great around here this week. We're having a lot of fun with Mimi and Papaw, I had such a great time on Monday night having drinks with my girlfriends that I gave myself a Pinot bath on accident (and made Ramona eyes), I'm going on a long awaited girlfriend vacation in 15 days, football season is happening (!), and my daughter is still letting me put stuff on her head. And thanks to my genius college friend Kelsey and her patented secret headband trick, there will be no shortage of pretties around here.

iphone photo week in review: nine

2011-07-26T09:34:00.003-05:00

he's scary good with that thing. bffs. friday night pizza pick up. mah mah mah mah mah mah mah p-pizza face. waiting for auntie. that bow. my favorite shopping buddy. the hodagcadile. muffin top maker. daddy returns.

don't tell her i told you this

2011-07-24T19:19:00.006-05:00

I don't want to say this too loudly or in an even remotely boastful manner, in fear of Miss V hearing me and pulling the plug on the whole deal ... but as of yesterday ... she's letting me put things on her head. Elasticky bow headbands, to be exact. Things that, when worn out in public for a few hours yesterday, netted us about ten "look at that cute little GIRL" type comments and exactly zero "hey, little buddy/little guy/dude/I want my throat punched" comments.

she calls these her "pwetties." and it's stupidcute.

mwah!

she's also very into cleaning up.

she sees a mess and says "mess! no mess!"

have i told you lately that i love her?

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy Etsy all out of elasticky bow headband thingies.

this week

2011-07-23T07:53:00.004-05:00

This week, it was just mama and the kids, winging it. One night, we used the garden hose for a bath. We ignored the dust, the unvacuumed floors, the dishwasher that I forgot to run two nights in a row (because I was in a crap reality TV and ice cream trance, that's why). We watched the same (TOOKIE MONSTER!) episode of Sesame Street four days in a row because that's what the littles wanted. We ate Happy Meals one night and had a pizza night the next. Anderson wore mismatched pajamas because laundry was so not happening, and he happens to think Santa pajama pants go just fine with a race car pajama shirt, thankyouverymuch. I've got Miss V sleeping in the laundry room because I was THAT desperate for my bigger little to stop waking my littler little an hour before either of them had any business waking. (And okay, maybe it was comforting to have my baby girl ten feet away instead of all the way upstairs.) We lost the cat for one night, I slept with a wrought iron wreath hanger beside me in bed (to beat a burglar with), and yesterday I went to the Y just to walk 2mph on a treadmill and read my Kindle while someone else entertained my kids for an hour. Didn't break a sweat, did pick up my kids feeling refreshed. You see, J left for Texas on Wednesday to join his family in mourning the loss of his sweet Mamaw Mable. Much as I wanted to be with him and his family, we both knew the kids weren't making that kind of a trip, so behind I stayed. And not going to lie, I pulled out of the airport parking lot on Wednesday (with Anderson screaming and kicking at my seat because he wasn't on the plane with daddy and Vivian screaming because Anderson was screaming) wishing I had a paper bag to breathe into. Which I didn't, so instead I called my sister and went all "OMGZ four days ALONE with two kids what am I going to DO?!?" on her.

The thing of it is, it ended up being a pretty fun week. We missed J, of course, and I'm counting the minutes until his plane touches down in the woods (260 minutes!), but this week of solo parenting gave me a boost of confidence, I think. A week that showed me high standards (as far as housekeeping and mothering go, I mean) are sometimes kind of overrated, that sitting on the floor playing Little People is totally more important than scrubbing the mystery gunk off the kitchen counters. That yeah, you're bound to be tired if you start the day at 6:10am and run steady until the kids finally conk out at 7:30pm, but that you'll get up and do it again the next day, and actually kind of rock it. That it's still fun to have a chick flick and cookies sleepover with my sister. That Anderson actually CAN sit through a movie, as we found out Thursday when Mommo took him to hit up a matinee.

Anyway. That's where I've been. And now we prepare for a visit from Mimi and Papaw, and hopefully a week of great weather and catching up/playing/relaxing lakeside. Have a great weekend, internet!

refreshed

2011-07-19T18:50:00.004-05:00

I was hanging at the very end of my rope last week. Could you tell? What was your clue? The toilet full of lady products or the 85th post on how I'd rather pluck my eyelashes out one by one than EVER move a kid to a toddler bed EVERAGAIN? But this week? Plenty of rope left between me and the end. I'm happy and relaxed and my head actually didn't explode this morning at 6:30am when I found that my (naked, like I even needed to tell you that) Bug had scaled his bedroom gate (WTF?) and busted into his (sleeping) sister's room to do a little naked wake up jig. I calmly put his naked little hiney back in his room and told him I'd be back for him when his green light came on, and enjoyed some quiet snuggle time with my still-sleepy baby girl. I'm 10x the mom I was last week, frankly. What did it? A few days away from the littles. Not even a few days - it was about 34 hours. But those were 34 rejuvinating hours, I tell you! My mom, being the saint that she is, kept our kids and sent J and I down to Madison. Shopping, wine, dinner at our favorite swanky downtown steakhouse, more wine, and some late-night reminiscing on the rooftop terrace of our wedding reception site (with a wine nightcap, obvi). And sleeping in! Until 8:20am, which is like NOON back in Mommyland! It was just what we needed - to feel, for 34 hours, like the young kids we were when we fell in love, with no worries of mid-night baby wakings or 6am bickers about who had to go deal with the nudey or frustrations of putting a well balanced meal on the table and then cleaning it up off the floor (where all well balanced meals end up). Just us two, one of our favorite cities, and sweet sweet freedom. Until mid-afternoon Sunday, when I looked at J and said "okay, I miss our babies, let's go home now." And we did, and there were happy faces all around. The time away was great and fun, but the welcome home hugs may have been the very sweetest part.

But anyway, I gotta go. ABC conveniently blacked out on us at 7 central last night, JUST as the only Bachelorette episode of the whole season that I actually care about was starting. My head may or may not have almost exploded and I also may or may not have requested that my husband call our TV provider and tell them I wanted a refund for the whole month because this is NOT the first time in recent history that such a thing has happened (MTV, last week, Tuesday night). He refused, for the record. Thankfully for Charter, I found the show on our On Demand and may NOT have to hunt them down and kick their shins. Close call.

iphone photo week in review: eight

2011-07-18T19:34:00.004-05:00

that cat is having fun, he just doesn't know it. yeehaw. countryfesters. one of these things is not like the others. lockdown after 6:20am popsicle incident. loves. little bookworm. i never want to forget the playroom window bye-bye waving. so we went shopping duh. nice try scale. riesling with the birthday boy. nighty night madison.

and then this morning

2011-07-13T12:32:00.007-05:00

It seems somebody, somebody I won't name but somebody who is an adult who lives in this house (who is not of the feline variety, who is also not a dumb as a rock sheltie dog, and who also isn't ME), anyway, somebody didn't latch the gate in A's doorway when that somebody went up last night to check in on the littles before we went to bed. So this morning? I woke up at 6:20am to the sound of my bedroom door banging into the wall, like it was kicked in kung-fu style (because it was, I bet). And if THAT wasn't jarring enough, I open my eyes and my vision clears and what do I see? Anderson. Naked from the waste down, eating a popsicle. At 6:20am.

Oh and while I'm at here, I also think you should know that when we left the gym today, he removed his shoe and chucked it out the (moving) car window. Which was obviously not good, but it was also kind of hilarious. Apparently I'm losing my mind though, because it really WASN'T that funny, but I was trying so hard not to laugh that I choked on my gum. "SHOOOOO! MAMA! SHOOOOOOIN WOAD! WOAD! MAH SHOOOOO!"

Anyway. I'm going to go take a nap. After I read the Teen Mom recap over at I'm Bringing Blogging Back. If you don't already read it, but you are a Teen Mom fan (and now I know everyone who reads my blog IS, judging by the comments, which made me laugh out loud) ... you must read IBBB. Prepare to pee your britches.

EDIT/NOTE: I used "waste" when I meant "waist". It's official, I AM losing my mind. Oh, sad.

challenging

2011-07-12T16:10:00.006-05:00

This happened at 7:15am. What's that tell you about the kind of day we've had?

And now the whole wide web world knows I buy generic tampons. So?

I'm Crabby. Capital C. We're on day 39 of the Big Stupid Effing Crib To Bed Transition, aka, the never ending debacle that would've ruined Summer 2011 if it weren't for three things. One being my mom and sister here to offer support and the occasional relief in the form of taking my kids off my hands for ten seconds so I can do something fancy. Like go to Walmart for more tampons. Two being the fact that the weather, at least, has been perfectly behaved and offered plenty of opportunities to float our worries away aboard the yachtoon. Three being Mikearitas. Obvi. It's been THIRTY NINE days since he left the crib, yall. That's beyond the reasonable expectation for adaptation to a new bed, right? No? Yes? RIGHT? The clock helped him sleep past 5am, so I must be thankful for that, because while 6:30am still sucks, it sucks a whole lot less than 5am. But otherwise, there's just a lot of frustrating chaos for everyone unfortunate enough to be in our house around, say, 8pm. Screaming and refusing to stay in bed, which progresses to smashing the rocking chair into the wall over and over again, and one time, knocking the whole mattress and side rail off the bed platform. And then screaming a lot. And then, the next day, being a whiny crackpot because SURPRISE SURPRISE he's kind of TIRED. And then there's the waking of the sister, who does NOT respond well to these wakings, and who is tired because of these wakings. And a tired Vivi is not the finest version of the Vivi. Tired, teething Vivi? Have mercy.

I know these things are minor. I know this will pass (and that when it does, the crazy inside me will miss that summer when my teeny little Bug lost his teeny little mind). I know it's all part of being a mom and wearing big girl pants. So when my overtired toddlers are whining and fighting tooth and nail over the Swiffer Sweeper while I'm scraping a banana out of the toaster (true story), I lock myself in the bathroom and count to 10. I find ways to unwind when the house is finally, blessedly quiet (watching Teen Mom and drinking the aforementioned Mikearita and just being glad I'm not Gary), and most of all .... I grab hold of those moments where we come up for air and everyone's smiling and my babies hug each other and my whole body warms with this feeling of "yes! This! This is how it feels to love them so much I want to squeeze them until they POP!" But this past month has been a challenge. And I felt like I needed to get that out there, because it's hard to blog about the everyday tidbits without being honest about the big picture, you know? And also because I feel like it needs to get said that sometimes kids go insane when you move them to a bed. Because sometimes, I go on Facebook and see a picture of somebody's 16 month old in his new big boy bed, just snoozing away like he's been there his whole life, and I think "WHY?!? WHY is this so hard for us?!" I know, call the whaaaambulance, right? But for anyone reading whose kid maybe turned into an angry chimp during the Big Stupid Effing Crib To Bed Transition .... you're not alone, kemosabe.

iphone photo week in review: seven

2011-07-09T12:11:00.002-05:00

bug at the lake. mulligan at the lake. mommy and bug at the lake. i'd rather sniff stinky geraniums at the lake than look at you taking more pictures of me at the lake. septic pumping entertainment. playing dealership (all day every day). attack of the mascara wielding brother. not funny (was too). princess sparklepants rides on. little people garage sale jackpot.

a messy morning

2011-07-08T12:59:00.004-05:00

Poor, poor little Princess Sparklepants. She's working on cutting an eye tooth that clearly hurts like a you-know-what. Wakes her during the night, makes mealtime more like crytime, and has had her feverish at least every other day. (Shut it, Dr. Pediatrician Man!) Then this morning, she puked. (Sayonara, Funday Friday plans! Hello, quarantine!) Into the bath little V went, and brother too, because it's not like he's missing out on a tubby opportunity even if there may be microscopic flecks of barf floating in that tubby. The tubby I just scrubbed sparkly clean yesterday, I'll have you know. I get them out of the tubby, I get the A dressed and V into a diaper before she wiggled off to play. (Barf? What barf?) Then, I took a two minute Diet Dew and Facebook break, because I earned it (BARF!) During this break I thought to myself "hmm....they're awfully quiet...." Which we all know means something is damaged beyond repair and/or someone is pooping. Back up the stairs I dashed ...... and I find Vivian looking like THIS:

How much do we love the look on her face? You know she's trying to tell us her brother did this. And he totally did - the proof was all over his jet black hands that he was trying to hide under his blankie, but his poker face pretty much sucks. Busted.

funny faces

2011-07-06T18:38:00.004-05:00

As if I needed another reason to love Jackie and Robbie's wedding .... then came these. Courtesy of Ruby Photography and the brilliant Jackie, who put all these getups together for the most entertaining "photo booth" of all time.

making our vivian faces.

just us, a couple of cousinfriend kitties.

bug and his grandpa. in hats.

it was past vivi's bedtime.

and she's maybe just not that into mustaches.

4th of july

2011-07-05T12:44:00.006-05:00

What's not to love about summer? I mean, really? The sunscreen scented babies, the white blonde of A's summer hair, V's teeny tiny pink painted toenails in a pair of strappy sandals, the grill getting more use than the oven, my swimsuit tan line at the end of a long weekend on the lake, where each day was more blissfully perfect than the one before it. A beauty routine minimized to a swipe of mascara and some spf10 lip balm. Even A's little summer-scraped knees, the kind of knees you get from getting out there and playing your heart out. The feeling that we've got to gobble this all up, every sunny warm popsicle-melting minute of it between sun up and sundown, before it slips away into red and gold treetops and we shift our focus to football and fuzzy sweaters.

And the 4th of July? Totally the sweet spot of all that summer loving.

The duo-photo eludes me once again.

At least they're both looking at the camera.

iphone photo week in review: six

2011-07-05T12:37:00.003-05:00

fire truck driver. cuffed. midnight snack. pool boy. are you threatening me (ten cool points if you can name that 90s tv show). best brother ever delivers cfa. blooming. cats like fireworks, too. sprouting. but not down with those just yet.

it was most certainly not me

2011-06-30T18:25:00.005-05:00

Any day that starts with my (only) tube of toothpaste bobbing around in the toilet water* probably isn't going to be a spectacular day. You know? Total case of the Thursdays. Complete with baby girl walking in front of the (swinging) swing and getting knocked across the playground AND a last minute trip to the pediatrician's office for that same (likely teething) little miss who has all week long been refusing food and uncharacteristically cranky and screamed for an hour straight this afternoon ("boo boo, no no, boo boo!") I basically just wanted to rule out a raging ear infection, or get her on some drugs before the holiday weekend if it was, in fact, an ear infection .... and instead received a nice long lecture from that pedi about how teething pain is an urban legend. No diagnosis, just condescension for my copay. And then I went and bought some new toothpaste.

Is it the weekend now?

*me, upon finding tube of toothpaste in toilet: "who did this, Anderson?"

Anderson, somberly: "you."

haulin' him in

2011-06-29T13:07:00.006-05:00

Bug, this better be the last time I see you in the back of a cop car. Capiche?

my favorite things

2011-06-28T09:15:00.009-05:00

Forget brown paper packages tied up with strings. FORGET 'EM, YALL. Here, not that you asked, are a few of my favorite things of late.

The Ok to Wake clock.

Courtesy of Amazon.com, found here.

You guys. Those 5am-ish wake ups were getting so bad I seriously, truly thought I was going to have to be committed. Especially when they were combined with a two hour bedtime "routine". And by "routine" I do mean my kid not staying in his &^%$#@% big boy bed, instead choosing to open and slam his door a bajillion times, empty his dresser drawers, strip naked and yell "NAKED!" over and over again, etc. So a few hours missing sleep at night, a few hours missing sleep in the morning, combined with naps that lasted barely long enough for me to feed the dog, much less eat lunch in peace and read 29 blogs ... and it was all very bad. Crabby kid, crabby mom, people dashing off in the opposite direction when they saw this crabby hot mess coming. UNTIL! This clock! It's a lifesaver. My boy likes very clearly defined expectations - ambiguity doesn't a happy Bug make. Case in point: our last visit to CA. Remember? When he woke up at 3am? The next night at bed time, I told him he wasn't allowed to get up until the lights came on outside. Done deal, he waited until sunrise, then yelled "mama, LIGHTS!" and on with our vacation we went. So this clock is pretty much the same idea, in $30 form. No getting up until the green light comes on. We wrapped it up in gift wrap and made a big show of giving him this superawesome gift, then explained he wasn't allowed to get out of his room until the green light came on in the morning. I set the 'wake up' time (starting way earlier than I wanted to, but working our way up by 10 minutes each morning), he understands we won't be coming for him until the green light, so he may as well a) stay asleep or b) find something quiet to do in his room. And it's WORKING! He's sleeping later each day, and if he does wake early, he's looking at books quietly (if nakedly) in his room. And there's a nap timer too! My only tiny slight beef with it is that the face plate I wanted to use (it comes with two) was a green bug. But, hello? Tell a 2.75 year old to wait for the clock to turn green when part of it is green? Confusing, right? So pink flower it is. Whatever. It could have a purple sparkly Minnesota Viking helmet on it, for all I care, as long as it keeps working to restore sanity to our home.

The Ferbs Book.

Courtesy of the dark, dusty depths of my closet.

Oh, Ferbs. You were good to me in Winter 2009 when a 6 month old Mister A was waking every 90 minutes to feed, you were good to me in Fall 2010 when an 8 month old Vivi thought she was a newborn, and low and behold, you came in quite handy here in Summer 2011 when the toddler bed made mommy a (temporary semi) alcoholic. It was kind of a duh moment, reading through chapter 5 on limit setting. You remove the bars of the crib, and this removes a representation of the parents' authority, so new limits must be set and held firmly to. Just as you once limited your baby to a crib and helped him learn that crib means sleep and no amount of protesting will change that, you limit a bed-sleeping toddler to his room and don't give in to his attempts to push those limits and gain control. Pretty much what I'm saying is we made his room one ginormous uninteresting crib (minus a few books and his fancy new clock), and left him in there. (Pretty much what Anne told me to do, but it was Dr. Ferber who finally got it through my head.) So we don't go in to put him back in bed, we don't go up if he's taken his shirt off, we ignore his requests for cookies. And eventually, he crawls in his bed and goes to sleep. I mean, duh? I also came to learn we were likely expecting too much sleep from him at this age, so we're following Dr. F's advice and correcting the timing and distribution of sleep. In English, that means we're putting him down later and not expecting naps to last longer than two hours. Though we can still pray they do, I mean, it can't hurt.

Wholly Guacamole.

Courtesy of my friend Megan, who I'll have to thank when I'm 200 pounds on a skinny day.

Um, it is SO GOOD. Since leaving Texas, where I had Iron Cactus guac and MIL's guac, I've had a hole in my heart where good guac once lived. Hole filled. Chop up a ripe tomato, stir it in, and devour it while you blog. Which I just did, and had scraped the bowl clean before I knew it. Oops.

Move it, Move it

Courtesy of Reel 2 Reel, 1994

Bug heard this playing in the car a few weeks ago and is ob-freaking-sessed. I love watching him move it, move it.

iphone photo week in review: five

2011-06-26T19:18:00.003-05:00

red carts (minneapolis road trip!). homegirls. homeboysandgirls. sparkly princess sparklepants. lunching. truck stop leg stretch potty/diaper break. silly hat. mooommmm i'm naaaaaked.

the lisa and the alice and the me. bikers. no cheese. cheese. mid walk smooch break. the evening stroll.