Kids These Days

My little Marina is growing up before our eyes these days. Here we are at 9 months already and she is so interactive, very busy and starting to have a funny little personality of her own, just like her big brother. She is one tough little bean after having to put up with some of the hugs and "attention" Eli gives her. It's hard to believe what a good eater she is, especially if you look at her mini size. I took a little video of Eli helping me feed her tonight. Since we spent the day at the lake, her naps were compromised and she was showing some of her more vibrant colors at dinner. Notice her impatience to get to the next bite and listen to Eli's dislike for a mess while anyone is eating (which is amazing that he isn't totally immune to all forms of mess based on his level of everyday exposure to it).

Also, tomorrow we are having Eli's birthday party. He has been letting me know all of the things he can do now that he is 4. He insists that feeding Marina is one of them. I just stopped him in time to keep the quarter-sized apple from entering her mouth. Phew!

We have been impressing upon him that 4-year-olds wipe themselves after they go to the bathroom. He says he doesn't really like that idea but then he gave it another try. I had to educate him on the benefit of using more than one square at a time. Somewhere between the whole toilet-clogging roll and one square is the sufficient medium. We'll get there someday...

Midnight Train

Eli got a new train table for his birthday present from his Nana and Papa. Here is a video of him we took so they could see him playing with it.

When it was time for him to go to bed, I had to tear him away from his new table. We read his book and sang songs and turned off the light. Since it was only 8 and the sun had not really gone down yet, it wasn't all that dark so he could still see the objects in his room. I saw him looking over longingly at the trains. I knew that when I left the room he would want to sneak out of bed and play more, so I had to threaten the poor little guy. We made a deal that he would be able to play as soon as he woke up so he was able to drift off to sleep peacefully, dreaming about his little train table. I love this little stinker!

Pro Prose

This day, like every other one, has a list of pros and cons attached to it.  It reads something like this:

Pro:  I got out of bed today.
Con:  My hair looks like it stayed in bed all day.

Pro:  I ran errands today accompanied by two very well behaved children.
Con:  I did not consult my shopping list in a moment of memory-pride and forgot several things, including baby food and coffee.  Coffee is more important than toilet paper to us!  Also, I didn't realize until I got home that my dark colored underwear are visible through these pants.  Perhaps I should opt not to wear cellophane pants in public and in 90 degree oppressive heat.

Pro:  I made dinner.
Con:  It doesn't seem to have any flavor no matter how many shakes of garlic salt I give it.  Sorry [again], family.

Pro:  I spent two full hours standing in the kitchen cleaning and doing laundry.
Con:  I walked into the living room and realized there must have been an explosion in there.  Then I walked upstairs and could not locate the source of a skunk smell and also noticed our hallway might be shrinking as the floor seemed to have sprouted piles of clothes that await their final destination, but cannot be put away until after the kids wake up from their naps (unfortunately, the clothes never find their way home).

Pro:  My cats are both still alive today.
Con:  They both have bulimia and choose to vomit all over this house.  Fat Linda likes to find items to puke on top of (i.e. a shirt that is lying on the floor or a picture of Mark and Eli from Chuck E. Cheese)

Also, I would just like to take this sentence to admit to you that I have a comma abuse problem.  I ignore the grammar laws (at least the ones I know) and smear commas all over every sentence that I think should have a "natural pause".  I, Lily Clinton, apologize for my commaholism.

Fat Chance!

Lately I have been stumped by some "unexplained" weight gain.  Naturally my first thought is that I must have some underlying medical issue that causes this - like a broken thyroid or something.  I can fit myself into some of the symptoms that come with a thyroid issue, like headaches, weight gain, pale face and hairy legs (wait...) but those are also the symptoms of someone who spends most of her days indoors, eating and not exercising. 

But then yesterday, all my conclusions were proven false and the mystery was solved.  I had the genius idea to clean out my car in the middle of a heat wave.  So for 45 minutes, in 92 degree weather, I crawled around my car jamming a vacuum under the seats and sweating all over myself, while showing everyone in my mom's nice neighborhood what an unexercised butt looks like under tight biker shorts (yes, to everyone's delight, I have brought out the fashionable wonders this year too).  Then, like lightning, a discovery was made:  long, skinny papers, that once housed straws, with letters all over them were hidden under my seats.  One would say "McDonalds", while another "Wendy's" or "Taco Johns".  What?  Who has been eating all this junk in my car?  And where did all of these old french fries come from?  It seems I have an alter ego, much like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but mine drives around and visits all of the fast food restaurants in the area, either that, or I have situational amnesia caused by post traumatic stress syndrome brought on by constantly being beat by a preschooler and crawling baby with grabby hands (clearly, I overuse google to diagnose all manner of malady).

So now that the problem has been identified, all of the fast food restaurants in our town will see a sizeable drop in their profits this quarter.  I will single-handedly deliver a major blow to the economy and my pair of fat jeans.

It's Raining Robins

For the love of our kids, you can find us doing some pretty odd things.  We sit on the floor for hours and play cars, we go without sleep and contort our faces and make ridiculous sounds just to earn a smile from their little faces.  We lie on the bathroom floor all night with a sick child, praying that he will feel better soon.  Mark and I openly and consistently make fools of ourselves for these two little persons, who we fiercely love (actually, to be honest, I make a fool of myself regularly just on my own).

This morning, that love drove me to stand out in the freezing, pouring rain wearing capri sweat pants and high-heeled wedge flip flops.  I had to use a snow shovel (which I conveniently leave out all year long for just such an occasion) to scoop up a very sad baby bird that had somehow tragically died right next to my car this.  Mark called me on his way to work to warn me about it because we both know that Eli is a very impressionable boy and he would be very upset if he came into contact with the bird that was lying right by his side of the car.  He would talk about it for months.  So, in order to avoid that, I shoveled up the fallen baby and put him to rest out of sight in our bushes.  Sorry, birdie, I would have given you a better resting place if it wasn't pouring all over my head.

Don't worry bird, His eye is on the sparrow, and I assume the baby robin.

It was all worth it when I came in, dried off and snuggled my two favorite mini-people, who were blissfully unaware of the little body in the bushes.

Mad Hatter

This week has been full and funny.  This weekend, we had a great chance to get together with some friends from college, who have two kids that are about the same age as ours.  As you can imagine, when we all go somewhere together, the chaos that surrounds us feels a little bit like the stink cloud that floats around Pig Pen.  But the best part is, we always have fun and really value our friends, even if we only see them now and then (this is really our fault, since we have a tendency toward the anti-social).  As usual, I brought my camera with me to capture all of the great moments we were going to have, but then left it in the car.  What a surprise.

Aside from our fun friend time... Some funny parts of this week, as usual, have included my little stinker, Eli.

I took the kids to the Children's Discovery Museum on Thursday and unfortunately we chose a day when three schools were having their field trips, so it was mayhem.  We were bumped and shoved for hours, while paranoid Mommy obsessively sanitized all of our hands.  Toward the end, for the first time ever, Eli noticed a doll house in the corner.  For some reason, it interested him and he sat on the stool and started piling furniture into the house and stacking the dolls in the corner.  There were several young girls that did not look too kindly on Eli's doll house dominance.  They wanted to play with it but he fought them for the space (with his typical 'box em out' tactic).  I took a few pictures of his fun.  Then, after over-furnishing the house and playing with the dolls, it seemed that a large earthquake hit the home and all of the furniture and family ended up on the roof, where it all went tumbling off.  Ah yes, there is my boy.

Also, today Eli has been particularly attached to a sombrero that our friend, Shanin, gave him.  He wanted to wear it to church, but I eventually convinced him that it may not be the best idea.  I did, however, give him the ok to wear it to Sam's Club.  I've decided that I have to ease up sometimes and just let my kids be kids, so this was a step toward that.  He has been insisting on riding in the front of the cart, even though he is pushing the 35 pound weight limit and his feet are too big to fit easily though the foot holes, but I said yes to that too;  mostly because I had been watching him run into a few things because he couldn't see when running and wearing a sombrero, so heaving him into the seat seemed to be the safest option.

I can't wait to see what kind of shenanigans we can get into in the coming week, particularly since I have decided that we have to only participate in activities that don't cost anything.  That means I will have to brew my own coffee at home and stay away from Target.  I might spend my week going through withdrawal while my son beats me with a foam sword and my daughter rips my lips off with her tight little pinching hands.

Houston, We Have a Problem

Right now, Marina is napping, I am folding laundry and Eli is painting me beautiful sunset while wearing no pants and we are both listening to Whitney Houston on my iPod.

I don't know why Mark is always concerned and giving me the business about making this kid a sissy.

Booger PSA

A valuable public service announcement brought to you by my son.

In the car today:

Eli:  "Mommy, do you like to glitter?"
Me:  "Do I like to use glitter?"
Eli:  "No, glitter!"
Me:  "I'm not sure what you mean."
Eli:  "Glittering is when you throw things out of your car onto the road."
Me:  "Oh no, you mean littering.  And no I do not like to litter.  We should never throw anything out of our car."  (Mark, you may roll your eyes at my environmental, hippie nonsense.  By the way, we were just coming from dropping off our recycling.)
Eli:  "Except boogers."
Me:  "What's that?"
Eli:  "We should throw our boogers out of the car."
Me:  "Yes, that's right, we throw our boogers out of the car, they are biodegradable.  We should not, however, wipe them on the windows.  Or you can continue handing every one of them to me so I can dispose of them."

At least both of us have a strong command of our manners.

Cat Fight

Picture this scene, if you will:

It's Monday morning and I am dragging after another night of very interrupted sleep at the hands of an 8-month-old.  We are having a messy breakfast when I look over and notice that Lorenzo, our tall, skinny cat (as opposed to Fat Linda, our short, fat cat) is in the litter box again.  It seems to me that he has been in there a lot this morning.  A little bell goes off in my head.  Our cats have been on a strict diet of the pricey Iams food ever since Lorenzo got a nasty urinary tract infection four years ago from eating the cheap, crap food we were feeding him.  A few weeks ago, Sam's Club mysteriously stopped carrying the giant bag of Iams, so in a moment of laziness, after much mental debate, I went for the store brand food (first I spent 10 minutes in the aisle reading the ingredients).  The cats loved their new food.  But on Monday morning, the "business" hit the fan.  Lorenzo was in bad shape.

Now, it is no secret that our family is not exactly wealthy so our money is often already accounted for each month without a lot of wiggle room (groceries, gas, buying multiple coffees a week to survive), so vet bills are unexpected and entirely unwelcome.

After breakfast, I set off trying to call the vets in the area to find out who will be cheap but not conduct the exam in the back of a van.  I find one and make an appointment.  I have to find someone to watch the kids because I have a mental image of disaster striking around all the sick animals at the hands of a bouncy preschooler and shrieking baby.  But before we can go, the task of getting Lorenzo into his cat carrier looms.  He violently hates being in a carrier and traveling by car.  He gets so crazy and stressed, we fear that he might actually have a heart attack.  So, in all my animal wisdom (that I've made up in my head), I get the carrier out early in the morning so he can get used to seeing it.  I can tell he is already casting me a suspicious eye.  The hours pass and finally it is time to start loading up the troops.  I put Marina in her car seat and make sure Eli has his shoes on.  Just as I start easing my way toward Lorenzo, suddenly a flying red bag flies at him.  Eli has picked up the cat carrier bag and chucked it at the poor cat.  This is not exactly the calm beginning I had hoped for.  I have to ask Eli to please be quiet and sit down while I try to help Lorenzo.  Eli tells me he can help too and gallops away.  I grab the already resisting cat and try to gently ease him into the top zip of the carrier.  Just then, Marina starts to cry about being in her seat.  Lorenzo is meowing and spreading his back legs out in a way that makes my job impossible.  And suddenly, Eli appears out of no where with his lasso rope (a coral colored chain I stupidly crocheted for him one day) and starts running in circles around me and whipping us with his rope.  I try to calmly ask him to stop but he knows that while I am in the middle of my struggle, I cannot do anything to him, so the party continues for him.  I start to sweat.  I have to literally sit on the cat and try to zip the bag but his head kept popping up, all while shielding myself from lasso blows.  Over ten minutes pass in this way:  screams coming from the kids and the cat and crazy Mommy trying to keep her cool and not yell at everyone.  After the bag finally zips, I stand up, take the lasso away from a protesting cowboy and load up the car.  I am so full of cat hair, I look like I'm wearing a sheep's wool shirt.  There is no sense in changing since I know that it will only get worse at the vet.

The office visit is not as bad as I anticipated but I get the feeling that everyone is disapproving of the fact that we don't bring our animals in for annual check ups and I am guilty of feeding them cheap food.  It turns out that Lorenzo has to stay so they can get a urine sample, but the stubborn cat holds out so long that he eventually has to stay the night there.  Eli is very concerned when Lorenzo does not come home from the vet.  He asks me all day if he is dead and living with Jesus now (Grandpa's cat died a few weeks ago, so the conversation has come up more than once).  Fortunately, Lorenzo lives and is home again now.  But twice a day, I have to force a liquid medicine down his throat and his special food is twice as expensive as before, not to mention more than a few bucks incurred in vet bills.

I have learned my lesson.  No more being lazy and cheap because it always seems to catch up to me and will eventually result in a death match with a cat while being beaten with a lasso and deafened by shrill screams from the audience.

Taxing Syntax

It's awfully funny what a difference syntax makes, especially when uttered by a high-voiced preschooler.  Today, this sentence had me laughing.

"Mommy, Marina pooped out of her brains!"

instead of

"Mommy, Marina pooped her brains out!"

Muy Linda

I walked into the living room this morning and was startled by a large raccoon lounging on the arm of my couch.  But then, upon closer inspection, I realized it was just Fat Linda, my short, obese cat.

Let It Pee, Let it Pee

It seems amazing to me that I always have so much material for this blog.  All I have to do is write about what kind of day I'm having and it usually adds up to something unusual.  I've been wondering if everyone has days like these, or is it just people who insist on going to the mall with two young children during the day.  Unfortunately, I generally have a lot of things that need to be accomplished and the only time to do them is between nap times and always accompanied by my two short friends.

Take today for instance.  I needed to return about 15 items to Old Navy, after some poorly thought-out purchases yesterday.  So, the majority of the Clinton crew began our adventure at the mall.  I've found that Marina does much better in these situations if I carry her in the Baby Bjorn carrier instead of the stroller or car seat (I would only bring this in if I was wanting to punish myself).  If I was thinking clearly, I would have remembered that last night I did a 30 Day Shred workout that resulted in sore shoulders this morning.  When you hang a baby off those shoulders for an hour and a half, the situation may become unpleasant. 

We entered the mall, as always, from our secret Macy's prime parking spots (there has been a great debate about the best location to enter the mall.  Ariana and I will only ever go in this door.), though they were a fair distance from our destination.  I had the Bjorn on, my purse over my aching shoulder and a giant shopping bag to carry, plus a little jumping bean in shorts to try to steer.  I tried to get Eli to hold my hand the whole time but he kept breaking away and punching the mannequins.  I have no idea why he was doing this but right after, he would yell out, "Look, this one has no arms!" 

Finally, we arrived at the store to do our return, where a very crabby girl did not crack a smile at my impulse buy jokes and seemingly could not understand why I would want to return $80 worth of merchandise the very next day (or why my son was pulling everything off a nearby shelf).  She probably thought I stole it all. 

After I had emptied one of my hands of the heavy bag, we walked further into mall.  Not long later, Eli informed me that he had to pee (what's new?).  Luckily, I looked up and we were standing right by the mall bathrooms that are down a long, hidden hallway.  We rushed into the bathroom and, as usual, we were not alone.  Yes, I really do have one more bathroom story to tell.  Once again, we went into the deluxe bathroom so we could fit.  As I was busy trying to get the door to stay closed, I turned around and saw Eli with his pants already down and trying to aim into the toilet, but it was several inches higher than where he measured.  I quickly shouted at him to not pee yet and then rushed over to awkwardly lift him onto the seat while I had another child strapped to the front of me.  We also had to make sure his pants were low enough so he didn't pee on them (again).  As I stepped aside, the oddest thing happened.  The pee squirted straight out of the toilet, between his little spread legs and in an arc the stretched for about 5 feet.  He must have really had some power behind that pee.  After about 3 seconds of pee, Eli screamed when he realized what was going on.  He was horrified.  He started whimpering and yelling that the pee was coming out of the toilet and asking why his wiener did that.  He was really upset.  It was amazing that I wasn't standing in front of him, because both Marina and I would have been pee-soaked.  I tried to comfort him and tell him that sometimes these things happen and that he should just close his legs and lean forward so the rest of the pee could go in the toilet but he was not having it.  He was trying to get up and would not be consoled.  Finally I had to threaten him so he would finishing peeing and even that took another 2 minutes.  I looked at the soaked pee floor and thought about bending down and wiping it up, but then I remembered I had a child attached to me and leaning her down to a puddle of pee on a filthy public bathroom floor might be unwise.  As we left our stall to wash our hands, I saw that the second stall was still occupied and just before we walked out the door, Eli made a comment about the particular stink coming from the bathroom.  Nice.

As you can imagine, the rest of the trip went downhill after the raining pee incident.  Immediately after, Eli got his leg jammed in a kiddie ride machine and was screaming.  Then he was tired of walking and insisted I should pick him up, which obviously couldn't happen, so he just followed behind me for about 20 minutes shouting that he was "out of energy" and "I don't like this idea" until we got back to our secret spot, miles away. 

At the end of the day, even though he was pooped out and literally "peed off", I was proud of my tired little trooper.  He even carried my bag for me (before you panic, it was from Hallmark and only had a card in it), which made him feel so proud and helpful.  His mommy is always dragging him places and expecting him to act like an adult, when in actuality, he is a three-year-old with an impressive wit and vocabulary and because of that, and his tendency to have bathroom incidents, he is often the subject of my ramblings.