Dream Weaver

After you have children, there are a few indicators that suggest you may be more "Mom" than actual person now.  This may seem like a blow to your sense of individuality and desire to define yourself, but I think it is an unavoidable fact.  Some of these may be when you reach out to wipe your child's snot with your bare hands, or on impulse, try to catch a waterfall of puke with your hand in a public place (sorry Kelly and all those who may not enjoy the vomit images).  

While I've had my kids wipe their food in my hair, pee and poop all over me, and crush my face with their flying heads, the real indication that I've stepped over from being Lily with normal human impulses to being "Mom with dominate mommy instincts" came to me in a dream last night.  Before you prepare yourself for some life-changing profundity, be warned that I never have those kinds of dreams; I only have ones that are totally ridiculous with a million meaningless details.  

Last night as I slept, intense images floated through my head.  I was in a situation of great stress, like being chased or threatened in some way.  I had to try to get away through all of these different places, one of which turned out to be a department store.  As I ran, my eye caught a sign that made me halt in my tracks. It said, "Carters apparel:  Buy 3, Get 2 Free or Buy 7, Get 4 Free."  (I realize that my subconscious must not be much in the math department since the buy 3 deal is much better than the buy 7 deal)  For anyone who shops for children's clothing, you would know that this sale would be unheard of.  That is the exact reason I had to stop running and start shopping.  While I still had a sense of urgency, it was instead directed at fighting the other shoppers for the perfect three items.  I don't know if my attacker ever caught up with me or just realized that the Carter's sale was like Quasimodo's sanctuary, but I do know that I was confused when I woke up and mad at the ridiculous Lily from my dream who would rank a good children's clothing sale over her very life.  It wasn't even like a sale on cakes or Little Debbie's, which would be worth stopping for!

I better hustle, there are children waiting to be fed.  One would like to follow up his meal with whipping his mother with a rubber snake and the other would like to smack Mommy in the face each time she asks for a kiss.  But dang it!  I love these stinkers!

Happy Birthday to Marina!

[I'm publishing this 30 minutes before August 27th, Marina's actual birthday, because I'm impatient.]

Today my little girl is one.  It is shocking and exciting.

I was just thinking back over her short life and seeing pictures and memories flash around like scenes in a movie.  I found out I was pregnant on New Years Eve and had to make a sneaky switch to sparkling cider when no one was looking so we could keep our secret.  Then of course I had the pukes through the first three months of pregnancy.  Since Marina crossed her legs so tightly, we had to wait extra time to find out her sex.  When the ultrasound tech told me it was a girl, I was so shocked (as if I didn't know the 50/50 odds) and then began muttering to myself about weddings and bikinis and arguments.  Months later I went into labor while I was alone at work.  My water broke in the same exact way it had with Eli and on the same exact day of my pregnancy - 37 weeks and 6 days (she and Eli were both born on the 27th, just three months apart.  Mark's and my birthday fall on the 14th, also three months apart,  you do the math...).  I had to pace around work, torn between labor and my work obligations.

Though labor was not terrible, Marina came out and made her presence known immediately.  For the first 4 months of her life, we called her Screaming Mimi and for very good reason.  Somewhere around 6 months she decided to calm down and totally change her personality.  She became mellow and rough and tumble.  Yet she still resisted a good night's sleep.  She was our roommate literally until last month.  Finally, I got sick of our bedroom being held hostage by a light-sleeping-night-screamer and I moved her crib into Eli's room.  Since that day, both of my children have become miraculous sleepers.  I'm not even going to question the reason why, I'll just accept it gratefully.

Marina is the funniest little girl.  She loves dolls and kitties.  She has an impressive vocabulary and is decidedly undersized.  Her brother cannot seem to stop tackling her but she takes it all in stride (literally now that she is tentatively walking).

I'm always surprised at just how much I love my kids.  It's not that I ever thought I wouldn't love them, I just never thought I would have any to begin with.  And here I am, bragging about them and putting their pictures up everywhere I go.  If you see me walking around in the mall wearing a #1 Mom shirt with my spandex pants, you have my permission to "whoop my bootie" as Eli would say.  P.S. Just because I openly profess love for my kids doesn't really mean I like anyone else's very much, so you might not want to ask me to babysit.

Below you will find an onslaught of Marina pictures from the past year.

Current Lecture Series: Creativity

In my extensive experience as a wife and mother, I have found ways to sharpen several of my previously unused skills. One of these skills is my Creativity. Because of my awesomeness in this field, I think it is wise to share some of my secrets.


If you find yourself becoming slowly driven crazy by some of the more mundane tasks in your day, I suggest you change it up a little bit to keep things exciting. Research has proven that people who have to wash the dishes, empty the dishwasher, sweep the floor and fold clothes every day (and more than once a day) often age faster and have a tendency to overeat (especially cake) to the point of illness, thus resulting in old, fat, crazy moms.

So, if you take my advice and follow some of the easy instructions below, you can wipe away the fears of insanity and embrace a new, more creative lifestyle.

Nearly everyday, I have to sweep the kitchen floor about 5 times. By the end of the day, the accumulation of the piles is large enough to build a city. So, instead of throwing it away and adding to the destruction of the Earth, I've taken to placing it one of the 4,000 grocery bags I've shoved in the closet. Then I make a tag that says "I Love You, from Anonymous" and I gently place it in front of my neighbor's door. The benefits to this are three-fold. One: I have a clean floor. Two: I encourage my neighbor and make them feel loved. Three: I give them something to snack on since the majority of the contents of the bag are old Cheerios.

Another mundane and redundant task (just like this sentence) is putting away the dishes from the dishwasher. I actually violently hate this duty. The best way to make this more palatable is introducing something unpredictable into the mix. After I have loaded up the cups, plates and endless baby spoons, I then reach over into the nearby laundry basket and pull out a handful of underwear (we prefer to have our laundry room in our kitchen for the convenience of dirty clothes next to your eating area) and throw it in. I find this can "spice" up the dish duty because you never know what you are going to pull out with your clean dishes. Will it be polka dotted? Will it be wrapped around the water jets?

You may find vacuuming to be a tiresome task. I used to, until I started to sprinkle flower, salt and eggs onto the floor before running the vacuum. Not only do I get a somewhat cleaner living room, but I also can mix up a mean bread dough in the process. I think you really can experiment with this one. Maybe the next big cookbook in place of the easy crock pot meals will be fool-proof vacuum feasts. Caution, you might want to empty the canister after vacuuming near the bathrooms.

And lastly, if you are sick of making terrible meals that are so over-salted they burn your family members' mouths and give them a chronic case of IBS, I suggest you stop cooking all together and start watching Spanish soap operas at night. Your loved ones may be hungry but they will quickly forget all that when they see you have adopted a convincing flare for the dramatic and now only walk around in low-cut shirts and uncomfortably high-heels.

After reading the above advice, it is very possible that you may think I have already entered into the land of the nuts. This is very likely but also, I can't wait to hop out of bed in the morning and see what I will find in the dishwasher, what I can gift my neighbors with, and what my family may or may not be eating today.

I Know an Old Lullaby

Recently I have been contacted by several companies that want to market the latest beautiful lullaby I composed as a bedtime song for my children.  While I may be momentarily swayed by the thought of a significant monetary recompense, I am a woman of the people.  Instead of being instantly wealthy, I choose to keep my humble surroundings and enrich the lives of your children and possibly their children.  So here it is.  If it touches your life, please share it so it can continue the spark.

Sung softly to the tune of "I know an old lady..."  If you can use an accent, it helps.

1

I know an old Eli who swallowed a turd

How absurd to swallow a turd!

2

I know an old Eli who swallowed toilet paper

He swallowed the toilet paper to wipe the turd

He swallowed the turd, How absurd to swallow a turd!

3

I know an old Eli who swallowed toilet water

He swallowed the toilet water to wash down the toilet paper

He swallowed the toilet paper to wipe the turd

He swallowed the turd, How absurd to swallow a turd!

4

I know an old Eli who swallowed Fat Linda

He swallowed Fat Linda to drink the toilet water

He swallowed the toilet water to wash down the toilet paper

He swallowed the toilet paper to wipe the turd

He swallowed the turd, How absurd to swallow a turd!

5

I know an old Eli who swallowed Lorenzo

He swallowed Lorenzo to fight Fat Linda

He swallowed Fat Linda to drink the toilet water

He swallowed the toilet water to wash down the toilet paper

He swallowed the toilet paper to wipe the turd

He swallowed the turd, How absurd to swallow a turd!

6

I know an old Eli who swallowed Daddy

He swallowed the Daddy to kick Lorenzo

He swallowed Lorenzo to fight Fat Linda

He swallowed Fat Linda to drink the toilet water

He swallowed the toilet water to wash down the toilet paper

He swallowed the toilet paper to wipe the turd

He swallowed the turd, How absurd to swallow a turd!

7

I know an old Eli who swallowed Mommy

He swallowed the Mommy to kiss the Daddy

He swallowed the Daddy to kick Lorenzo

He swallowed Lorenzo to fight Fat Linda

He swallowed Fat Linda to drink the toilet water

He swallowed the toilet water to wash down the toilet paper

He swallowed the toilet paper to wipe the turd

He swallowed the turd, How absurd to swallow a turd!

8

I know an old Eli who swallowed a cake!

He swallowed the cake to lure the Mommy

He swallowed the Mommy to kiss the Daddy

He swallowed the Daddy to kick Lorenzo

He swallowed Lorenzo to fight Fat Linda

He swallowed Fat Linda to drink the toilet water

He swallowed the toilet water to wash down the toilet paper

He swallowed the toilet paper to wipe the turd

He swallowed the turd, How absurd to swallow a turd!

There you have it.  If you read through all of that, I applaud your tolerance and your appetite for the ridiculous.  

Pajama Party

I already shared this on my facebook earlier this week, but because it is so great, I think it deserves a second mention.

You always see that little girl walking around the mall wearing a tutu and crown and you know her mom let her dress herself that morning.  In Eli's 4 years of life, the closest he has gotten to a display like this was his insistence on wearing a sombrero to Sam's Club one day... that is until this week.  

It all started when he discovered a bag of his old clothes that had been set aside for storage.  In there were a pair of his footie pajamas from last winter.  He pulled them out and indignantly asked me what I planned to do with them.  I told him we were going to give them away.  The response to this answer was not pretty.  I tried to tell him that they didn't fit anymore and that some other little boy will love them.  Even when Eli wore them last year, his feet were too long for them so I had to cut the toes off of the footies!  But he insisted on proving to me that they did in fact still fit him.  He unzipped them and climbed in (on top of the clothes he already was wearing).  He is so tall now that he could barely bend over because of an uncomfortable wedgie situation that was at play.  Still, he told me they fit and he still loved them, so much in fact that when it was time to go the grocery store, he refused to take the pajamas off.  I gave in and let him wear them to the store, but told him to put shoes on.  He found he Veggie Tales crocs and off we went.  

Fleece footie pajamas make an excellent clothing choice for an August afternoon.

I told him he had to let me take these pictures or I would make him take them off.  Mean Mommy.  Maybe he feels this outfit is justified since he sees his mom at the grocery store in her pajamas all the time.

When we got home, he picked his butt and told me it was ok to give them away.  I guess they just needed one last hoo-rah.  

Divine Dinos

In the past, I've mentioned my creative streak.  I go through phases with varying levels of awesomeness.  Typically the people around me either benefit or suffer from this.  Right now, I'm going through a hat-making frenzy so all my family members will have warm, stylish heads come winter.

Several years ago, I went through a crocheting stage that produced a whole family of golf club head covers with puffs for Mark and me.  While Mark claimed he liked the gift, he systematically lost every one of them over the course of the summer.  I was contemplating offering my services to the PGA until then.

You've heard of women making dresses for their daughter's dolls; I joined this club last week, well in a way.  Eli had been eyeing my big bag of yarn so he asked me if I would make a sweater for his dinosaur.  I said yes.  Then one by one, he brought me about 25 dinosaurs to dress.  Since I don't have the talent to make a wardrobe for these little plastic toys, I made them their own "sweaters" with my creativity.  I am including a series of pictures in case you would like some ideas on how to use your talents.

If you need specific instructions or sizes, email me and I can send them to you.

He's A Cold Hearted Cat

You might doubt the following story, but I tell you it is true.

This week, Lorenzo, our stupid male cat,  was acting a bit odd.  He kept licking his nose and sneezing on everything.  He would be sitting next to you looking peaceful and then all of the sudden your arm (or my dinner plate) would be covered in cat snot.  Since he had just been to the vet for his follow up appointment, that was required by the state of Illinois as a penalty for viciously biting my sister, I thought the sneezing was due to this liquid they dropped up his nose for some kind of "distemperment" vaccine.  (By the way, I didn't understand what this was for, is it supposed to put him in a better mood?  Or is there some cat disease called distemperment?  Aren't all cats kind of butt holes by nature and no nose drop will change that?)  But as the days went on, Lorenzo kept sneezing and acting oddly.  As is a regular practice of my mom's and mine, I decided to look up his ailments on the Internet.  Google results indicated that he was suffering from a feline "cold" of some sort.  I had never heard of this sort of thing.  It also said that this virus was fully transferable to humans.

Recently, Marina has been on a kissing bender.  She kisses us, she kisses her dolls, and she especially kisses the cats.  It used to be that she would try to grab their paws and try to put them in her mouth; luckily that stage is over (I could always picture the mass of germs from cat urine and other litter box ills attacking her).  Now she kisses these jerks right on their lips (do cats have lips?) and noses.  And last week, this was the very nose that was spraying cat cold virus all over our house.  Two days later, Marina woke up with a stuffy nose that accelerated into a full-blown snot rocketing cold for my little girl.

Eli, as a rather hands-on older brother, tends to be a bit over-zealous with his sister.  He likes to follow her around and sit on her and brutally hug her.  He also likes to kiss her (of course).  While I was telling him to stay away from her face this week, he was planting his little lips all over her snot-wiped face.  Two days ago, Eli woke up with "the snots" (as we call it here).  He is not the most fun sickie.

Even though my kids are sharing a room now and sleeping rather marvelously, I have made poor decisions in my nighttime routine which include various Spanish soap operas (watched from my computer since we made the heart-wrenching decision to cancel cable), going to bed at midnight but then switching on the TV (which miraculously didn't get shut off yet, even though our digital cable box from downstairs is gone) and watching another Man vs Wild or Pawn Stars until the morning hours.  I finally go to sleep only to hear a 4-year-old standing at the end of my bed a few hours later saying he's ready to be awake and watching a show and that he doesn't need to go pee this morning because he went last night.  Because of these poor choices, my body is a bit racked, so it wasn't much of a surprise when I woke up with a sore throat yesterday.  I tried to fight the virus off with pop tarts and wine but so far it isn't responding.

Fat Linda (the second cat) is generally pleasant unless you walk toward the kitchen and she thinks she might be able to trick you into feeding her.  Also, she does have a rather annoying habit of following me into the bathroom every morning and standing in the sink as I try to put in my contacts while she clumsily knocks the case on the floor and then lies down in the sink, forcing me throw her off, but then I get her cat hair on my wet hands in the process, which I then have to wash, then dry, only to turn around and find her back in the sink.  All that introduction just to mention that she has been sneezing unceasingly all day today as well.

So what started with dumb Lorenzo has now been passed to every member of this family, minus Mark, who has not been infected because he has a strict vitamin regimen (this is funny if you know him well because he has a conspiracy theory about vitamin companies and their plot to infect us all with poisons and cancer).  I give him two days.

This is going to be like the swine flu, but instead it will be called the Butt Hole cold, that originated here in my house, caused by the sneezes of a "frisky", aggressive cat.

On a side note, recently I have made various gifts, like hats and blankets, for friends who are pregnant.  And without fail, Lorenzo has located and humped every article.  I am going to have to attach a note with the gift saying this garment has been pre-washed by me and pre-humped by my cat...

Take Two

As an update to my last blog from a few hours ago...

I came home from work in time to help Mark put the kids to bed.  As I changed Marina's diaper and noticed a peculiar smell, she reached her hand down and yanked it up half way up to her chest.  That's when I realized the smell was poop and it was now all over the front of her shirt and smeared on her legs.  She was also lying on the carpeted floor of Eli's room so I knew we had a bit of a poop emergency on our hands (literally).  I told Eli to quickly summon his father while I held the baby and diaper still; any movement could make a drastic difference in our clean-up situation.  Before Eli obeyed, he wanted me explain to him exactly what was going on, which took up time that we didn't have.  Marina is a squirmy little stinker and holding her still while you change a diaper is like an unrealistic dream.  Finally, Mark came up and held her arms while I used 140 wipes to clean up her little body and tried to maneuver her shirt off of her without leaving a poop streak over her face and through her hair.  I sang songs and tried to be patient in spite of having nerves that felt like I had them stretched in a torture device.  But finally pajamas found their way on two children and there is relative silence in the house.

I might add that Eli mentioned to me that he didn't want to eat all his dinner because the chicken was burning his mouth.

I am now sitting here on the couch, eating dry, salty chicken over rice (whoever told me that you couldn't dry out chicken in a crock pot was mistaken) with a generous glass of cheap wine.  Lorenzo has some sort of mysterious cat cold that is causing him to sneeze all the time and he just decided to sneeze all over my salty dinner plate.  Oh well...

Also, I am enjoying the irony of the name of our wireless network - "OhYouSalty" as I sip wine and choke on chicken.

Progress Report

If you looked at my day from an outsider's perspective, you might think I am quite domestic; you might even give me an A- on the Mom Report Card.  But then if you put your glasses on and took a closer look, you would see that in actuality, I earned a D. 

Positive:
I prepared a crock pot dinner for my family at 9 am.

Negative:
In an attempt to put an end to the flavorless chicken streak I've been on, I kept adding spices to a recipe that didn't call for any.  What did I end up with?  Really salty chicken that somehow still tastes flavorless.  Eli will likely start coughing and being dramatic when he takes his first bite.  Lucky for me, I am at work and will not have to witness the response to my masterpiece.

Positive:
I scrubbed the piss out of my bathrooms today (literally).

Negative:
I had to use bleach, which I do not do very well.  I ended up with a headache and burning lungs from inhaling the fumes for an hour or so.  I also managed to fumigate my entire house so my sister was forced to make dramatic statements about how she was getting crazy from the chemicals, even from downstairs.  Since my track record with bleach is not good (see a blog I wrote about a year for proof), I changed into some scrub clothes to prevent destruction.  Unfortunately those clothes included my hideous black shorts that resemble short 1990s biking shorts that Mark detests.  I wore them all the time when I was pregnant and still insist on bringing them into my daily uniform.  As a result of my vigorous scrubbing in the tub, I somehow managed to spread bleach in lines on my "special shorts".  While Mark may momentarily rejoice at the destruction of these gems, his cheers will quickly end when he sees me wear them tomorrow with brown horizontal lines across the front. 

Positive:
I tried cleaning up the living room and kitchen.

Negative:
A 4-year-old came in after me and threw things around and rolled around in his toys until the rooms looked worse than when I started. 

By the time I left for work at 3:50, I had enough of my faux domestication.  My head hurt, my hands were corroded by bleach and my tongue hurt from the salty chicken I had just sampled.  Right now I have some kind of heart burn that I will also blame on the chicken, or the Slim Jim beef jerky stick I had for dinner.

So tonight, it is very likely that I will put my biking shorts back on and do something very non-domestic, like eat a corn dog and drink a bottle of Boone's Farm flavored wine from the gas station.  Maybe tomorrow I will get a reset and I will do everything right.  Maybe someone else will cook us dinner...

Cents for Scents

If anyone would like to come and clean my house, I am now offering a bit of pay for services rendered.

If you clean the cats' litter box, I will give you 25 cents for every poop and 10 cents for every pee you clean (Ask about the special bonus for cat puke!).

If you clean Eli's bathroom, I will give you 5 cents for every significant pee mishap you wipe up from around the toilet.

If you clean my car, I will pay 30 cents for every full outfit you pull out from the interior and 2 cents for every bird poop on the exterior (French fries from under the seats are yours to keep).

If you clean my living room, I will give you 4 cents for every animal or blanket you pick up from the floor after you have discovered Lorenzo humping it and 6 cents for every plate Linda has overturned, desperately looking for food.

And if you clean out my refrigerator, I will award you with a high five and 8 cents for each reused butter or sour cream container you open and find some kind of rotten leftover food.

You see?  There is a lot of money to be made in this house.  While you are cleaning, I will sit on the couch and watch Spanish soap operas and occasionally throw nickels at you and yell.  I should run a sweat shop (instead of a sweat pants shop)...

Exstormating Book

Tonight, during our nighttime wrap-up routine with the kids, Eli listened to his book with Mark while Marina sat on the floor with me drinking her bottle.  The book was The Hungry Caterpillar and was made of a heavy cardboard.  As soon it was over, Eli showed us the picture of the beautiful butterfly at the end, then paused, closed it and launched it at Marina.  I was holding her with one hand and the other was steadying the bottle so I had no free hands to protect her.  The book clocked her straight in the face.  It was terrible.  She started screaming immediately and soon after, she looked like Scar from The Lion King.  My poor baby, minding her business one second and in horrible pain the next.

When we questioned Eli on why he made the choice to throw the book at her, he really couldn't say; just one of those impulses that couldn't be resisted.

So when it came to the disciplinary action in response to this violence, Mark thought of something that would be powerful enough to make an impact (he has been repeatedly warned about throwing things at people):  Eli would no longer be able to watch Billy the Exterminator (or as Eli says Exstorminator).  This was devastating for him.

What it means to his parents:  for the next week, we may be free of our baby wipes boxes being used as traps for imaginary rodents, no more "natural oils" from chrysanthemum (I remember how to spell that from Anne of Green Gables) juices being sprayed on anything that moves, no more imagined yellow jacket attacks in the middle of dinner, and lastly (hopefully) the response to me showing him the trash that blew into our yard will not be "Oh Damn" uttered over and over.

I'm sorry about your face Marina, but your mom and dad may have a more peaceful week because of your sacrifice.