****Edited below****

Nothing quite so disconcerting as handing over pretty much ALL of your money in one tidy cashiers check, is there? We closed on the house. All went well. I think my stomach is finally settling down. And, well, I guess we’re home owners now. So I suppose one of us had better get around to mowing that unattended lawn . . . and moving. That would be good too. We move a week from Saturday because we wanted to have work done to it before we brought the kids in. Now I wish we could just get it over with.

You know, this was a very different post when I put it up two hours ago, but it felt wrong (and I apologize for any confusion for the few of you that may have seen it in its original form).  It was sort of a downer, which is not indicative of how my husband and I feel about the purchase of our new home - it felt dishonest and forced.   And most of all, it told details of a story that is not mine to tell, so I’m taking a lot of it out.

What I really want to say is this:

That’s our house.  Those trees? Those are our trees.  That’s where my family is going to live and play and settle.  And we’re so excited about it we can’t stand it.  We can’t wait to be there and wake up for the first time in our new home.

Labels: Bodily functions, House, Pictures

****Edited below ******

Curses on you, Croup!

I sleep between two fevers

Barking baby seals

For more of Haiku Friday go to A Mommy Story or Playgroups Are No Place for Children.

******I just wanted to add, for those of you waiting for an update on this fiasco, that the blog has finally been removed from the website (after several weeks, several phone calls, and a deadline of today, issued by my lawyer husband). And someone emailed me to ask if that event might have a relation to the publication I mentioned yesterday. No, the two events are not related at all, so please don’t think that Sekund had anything to do with that.

Labels: Bodily functions, The Big One, The Little One, Writing

There’s a theme, a lovely theme for Sam’s best quotes of the week:

“It a big boogie; it have long arms!” and

“I have bigger boogies than Robby.” Leave it to an older brother to find competition in snot size.

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Now, I have a question for ya’ll. I was thinking about starting a book group here on my blog - “Total Mom Bookclub,” perhaps. It would be one of those things where we vote on a book, preferably one that is mom-related (I have a whole stack of possibilities - that’s what gave me the idea), we set some dates to discuss sections, then I post about the book, and we discuss it in the comments for the post on those dates. Others could also post about the book and we could link back and forth. Would anyone be interested in doing something like that? I don’t need a full blown commitment, I just want to know if anyone else might be intrigued by the idea. More details to follow.

Labels: Bodily functions, Brothers, Talking, The Big One

Here are the top five things you do not want to be doing while a baby is screaming at you. And I have a lot of experience with this now, so you can trust me.

5. Driving. I seriously considered driving into the car in front of me the other day because it JUST WOULDN’T MOVE.

4. Anything where a sudden jerk of the arm may result in blindness, burn, or maiming, such as applying eyeliner, taking a sip of your cup of coffee, or chopping carrots.

3. Trying to conduct a time-sensitive phone conversation involving something critical, such as making a decision about locking in an interest rate on a home loan before market closes.

2. Trying to put the blue pants on an almost three-year-old who wants to wear the brown pants. BTW, the brown pants in this scenario are obviously dirty and unavailable. Seriously, the moms who can keep it together and maintain patience with their older child when things like this happen (aka child who is being insistent about a minor detail and being totally uncooperative despite younger brother’s screams of fury) are totally amazing.

1. You know what it is people . . . yes, you do. Involves a throne? Yeah. I don’t need to tell ya’ll. Man, I hate it when that happens. Talk about a time you don’t want to feel rushed . . . and I especially like it when you can hear the baby screaming in the other room where you’ve left him in his crib and you’ve got the older one in the room with you yelling at you to come and do whatever it is he wants you to do - fix a train, find a sippy cup, pick a booger, whatever - but you can’t actually hear what he wants because the baby is so loud, and you can’t actually help him right now anyway because, well, you’re stuck. Yeah. Love that moment. What is that, like every day?

Labels: Bodily functions, Mommyhood, The Big One, The Little One

Each day I debate whether or not to try and take both boys out for a drive in order to get Sam and Robby to nap simultaneously. It’s a tough decision to make. When it works it is wonderful. Both boys sleep, and I get at least a little downtime. I have my snack in the car and listen to a book on tape. The problem is that sometimes it doesn’t work, like really, really doesn’t work. Usually when it doesn’t work it’s because Robby wakes up too early and ends up screaming - he does not like being in his car seat once he is awake. Sometimes this could happen right as Sam is falling asleep, sometimes it could be about 20 minutes into Sam’s nap. But when this happens things get ugly. I end up with two miserable children crying in my car some distance away from my home.

When Robby wakes up early I often try to still get Sam as much sleep as I possibly can. That is why there have been many instances where I end up pulling in to some random parking lot, pulling Robby out of his car seat and nursing him in the passenger seat while Sam sleeps on. He’ll usually go back to sleep and then we sit there until Sam wakes up, Robby goes back in his seat, I drive the rest of the way home, and we all slug inside. It’s kind of ridiculous. It’s certainly silly that I have to go to this extreme in order to get Sam to nap these days. That’s what I was thinking about today whilst I sat in the passenger seat, looking at the clock to see if Sam had at least been asleep 45 minutes because Robby was starting to stir. I was thinking about this ridiculous situation that I keep finding myself in as Robby opened his eyes wide and looked up at me. I was thinking about it when he gave me a great big smile. And I was still thinking about it when he shat all over both of us.

So today, instead of waking up to see his mom nursing his new brother in the front of the car in a strange parking lot somewhere, Sam got to wake up to his mom frantically trying to change the baby’s diaper, onesie, and pants while she, herself, was covered in poo. And no, I did not follow the baby diaper bag rule: I did not have a change of clothes for myself as well as the baby. Nope, just the baby. And no, this was not a small dollop of poo on my clothes - I was covered. Sam woke up, took a look at his brother and mother and their little charade, I pointed out to him that Robby had pooped all over my pants, and he just shook his head yes and looked out the window.
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Scary enough for you? No? Well, I’m sending in an old archive post to Scribbit’s Write Away Contest, which I have never entered before even though I’ve always wanted to. She has prizes too! And the topic for this month is: Things That Scare You. Very few of you will remember this one since it was one of my very first posts from back in the day.

Labels: Bodily functions, Mommyhood, The Little One

Whenever I was feeling sorry for myself while pregnant with Sam - not like a serious sorry for myself but like a, “Oh I’m so tired and gassy and sick of my job and bloated and fat and ugly and it sucks,” sort of way - I would watch one of the Lord of The Rings movies. Frodo had it bad, he really did. Has to leave home to do this damn quest that he didn’t even sign up for, bear the weight of that blasted ring, sleep on the edge of rock cliffs, leave his friends, get stabbed by Ringwraith blades…man, it’s rough. I knew that no matter how I was feeling I didn’t have it as bad as Frodo and should therefore feel good about my situation. During my third trimester when my hands and feet broke out in unbearable itchy rashes that were untreatable due to the dangers of the drugs to the baby I watched a whole lot of LOTR, but by then I was taking it much more seriously and I really wasn’t sure that Frodo did have it so bad. At least when Frodo went to sleep on that rock cliff he didn’t lay there scratching his feet until they bled…anyway…

I’m not sure yet, because we still aren’t caught up with the new season, but I think my pity character for this pregancy will be Jack Bauer. I mean, seriously, dude returns after spending two years being tortured in a Chinese prison only to find out he will now be handed over to another group who wants to torture him to death and he is sacrificed for the country that abandoned him…several times. Rough. I guess I shouldn’t feel so bad about the fact that my farts make me gag and want to vomit.

Am I the only one that does this? Do others have characters that they fall back on to comfort them in times of pregnant misery? If so, who are they? I love a good pity party.
And I suppose I should explain where the heck I’ve been:

I know, ridiculous. It has been so long. Everything is fine. We are alive and I appreciate those of you who have contacted me to make sure things are ok. We’ve just had a whole lot of sickness going around. Not even a week passed after that Norwalk virus thing before Sam came down with a fever and a bad cold, and then I caught it. And we STILL have it. It’s now been two weeks. We’re recovering but it seriously feels like we’ve been sick all winter. We’ve been trapped in the house, which is not good for one’s psyche, especially when we get very little sunlight in here, and it’s just been kind of rough. Top it off with the constant morning sickness nausea and you’ve got a pretty good sense of what’s going on over here. But we are alive and even heard the babe’s heartbeat today, so all is well.

Labels: Bodily functions, Pregnant

Well, we all caught it - Sam’s pukey illness, that is. By Wednesday Hubby came home early and ran to the bathroom upon entering the apartment. By that night I was sick too. So there, my reason for a long absence. According to our pediatrician, who we saw on Thursday to make sure Sam wasn’t dehydrated (thank goodness he’s still nursing - I swear it kept him out of the hospital), that cruise ship virus has been going around this area and is extremely contagious. Funny, I’m pretty sure I’m not tan and damn sure no one has been cooking any awesome food for me. So does that mean all the bastards who went on cruises for the holidays came back here and passed on their little virus? Ok, sorry, I know they’re not bastards and that that would mean that they also were sick…but they also got to lounge by the pool for a few days before it kicked in I would think.
Blah. I feel like we have finally recovered and we have moved out of our living room where we dwelled for a full week. And now I have to go watch American Idol.

Labels: Bodily functions