Let The Sun Shine In

September 29, 2005

Autumn signals a lot of different things.
Cool crisp days, which mean you can wear pants and forgo daily leg shaving.
Dragging out all the winter clothes and taking inventory of what is needed, while wondering how children can possibly grow so quickly.
Leaves on the trees that turn beautiful shades of gold and red that need to be raked into piles or, my personal alternative, leaf blown into the neighbor’s yard.
Picking apples and buying wildly overpriced pumpkins to carve into jack-o-lanterns.

It also means, for us, finishing up all the home improvement projects that we intended to finish in the warmer weather, but didn’t. Now we have no choice but to work ourselves crazy trying to finish them up. This year it is scraping, reglazing, painting, and reinstalling windows. Too many windows.

So many windows, in fact, that we have contemplated the unthinkable, on more than one occasion.

I’ll ask, “Rob, do we really need so many windows?”

“Probably not. The kids just smudge them all up with their sticky little fingers anyway.”

“I have an idea… Why don’t we get rid of the window and wall it up!”

“Let’s wall them all up!” he will shout and toss his tools down.

“Think of the savings in heat,” I will say.

“We can pretend we live in a cave”

“Never be bothered by that pesky sunshine”

“I hate it when it makes a glare on the television,” Rob will add.

“Sunshine is so over rated.”

“Vitamin D too.”

“Who needs sun, isn’t that why god invented electricity?”

“It was on the 8th day. God said, “Let there be light indoors”

“Bored of all that resting in the dark He was.”

“And it was good”

In the end, however, it is just all talk and we decide that keeping the windows is probably for the best. For resale value. But it doesn’t stop us from having variations of this conversation over and over again.

I guess we are easily amused. Or else missing precious brain cells from working with chemical strippers.

Wondering

September 28, 2005

If I try on a pair of low waisted pants and my underwear is above the “waistline” of the pants, does that mean I am too much of an old fart, who is evidently wearing grannie underwear, to wear said pants?

Also, I bought a beautiful velvet and lace spaghetti strap shirt today, which I have no idea when I will actually wear since it both velvet AND sleeveless, and what would the appropriate weather be for it’s wearing?

I know WHO (World Health Organization) recommends extended breastfeeding… so, would it be so wrong to continue nursing my youngest son until he is in college? Because I have grown very fond of having boobs and I fear that after ten plus years of nursing a baby that when I stop I will have what amounts to shriveled raisins left on my rib cage.

And why, for the love of God, do the grocery stores persist in hiring mentally challenged people to bag the groceries, but yet not train them to put the bread on top. I am so tired of having to reshape my bread so I can make something vaguely sandwich shaped.

Quote of the Day

September 27, 2005

said by me during a particularly loud and rowdy dinner last night.

“Will you shut your mouths and eat your dinner already.”

Hearing muffled laughter I look over to see six children, with closed mouths, banging forks full of food against their lips.

And I laughed, while silently cursing them, like mothers have been doing since time began, I hope you have children just like you.

To The Withered Old Woman At the Library Book Sale

September 26, 2005

Having arrived at the ripe old age that you are, I would think that you would have learned that children sometimes cry and scream, especially two year old children. Two year old children who do not get their own way (for example coloring all over the books that are for sale with a pencil she just found on the ground) are particularly notorious for this type of behavior.

And really who can blame her. When you are two year old and surrounded by thousands of books finding a pencil on the ground seems like a stroke of good luck.

When you give me dirty looks and sigh loudly, it doesn’t help the situation. When you loudly complain about my screaming child it makes me angry. It makes me want to grab you by you short gray helmet of hair and twist your arm behind your back while shouting “Who’s crying now? HUH ? WHO’S CRYING NOW???”

As I was trying to calm my daughter down and wrestle the pencil out of her little hand, while she tried her hardest to gouge my eyeballs out of my head with it, I suddenly realized that I was allowing you to steal my joy.

Yes, it was aggravating dealing with her tantrum, but at two years old, her behavior is to be expected. Now your behavior, that is a different story.

The entire day leading up to this event was beautiful. The weather was warm and sunny, with a slight breeze that cooled you off just enough to enjoy standing out in the sunshine. I was pushing my sleeping infant in his stroller while three of my children skipped ahead of me on the sidewalk, my daughter with her ponytails swinging. I was thinking how lucky I am to live in this town with it’s well funded public library, paved sidewalks, almost Norman Rockwellesque appearance.

It was at that moment that my anger dissipated and was replace with pity. You must have a very sad life if you can not bear to hear a two year old scream for all of 90 seconds. For that I am sorry.

That is why I smiled at you.

But say anything to me again like you did today, and I am taking you down.

In Which I Stand In Place, Frozen

September 25, 2005

Stacy has tagged me.

1. Delve into your blog archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five people to do the same.

You can all collectively stop holding your breath in anticipation now. My sentence is:

“I really have no idea.”

And that pretty much sums up my very existence. No need to blog anymore, that sentence says it all.

I’m not going to single anyone out, if you’d like to do it consider yourself tagged, just tell me in the comments section.

(Disclaimer: yes, I know I just violated my own unwritten rule of doing a meme (how do you pronounce that anyway..mee-mee, mehm, mehm-mee?) and I am sure that someone will email me and point it out. And what can say other than I liked this one and it didn’t ask me my favorite color, what kind of shoe I would be if I were a shoe, or require a picture of the inside of my refrigerator. It’s my perogative to be fickle and no one should take this as a slight against them personally. M’kay?)

I Love These Kids, Really I Do

September 23, 2005

I am sick.
I hate being sick.
But more than I hate myself being sick, I hate my kids being sick.
I hate them coughing in my face.
I hate them wiping their noses on the furniture.
I hate them using tissues to smear their boogers all over their cheeks.
I hate them mouth breathing in my general vicinity.
I hate listening to them sniff and snort instead of blowing their noses.
And that throat thing, ugh. makes. me. want. to. vomit.

All to say, this is why I could never have a job where I had to deal with the general public. I would not be able to hide my general disgust with people I didn’t love.

On the up side, I love Nyquil and the sound drug induced sleep I enjoyed last night.

If only I could give it to a nine month old. If only…

Nine Months

September 22, 2005

Dear Miles,

You turned nine months old last week and for the past week I have been trying to write about the stage you are at now. But I am finding it so hard to encapsulate your emerging personality.

You are beginning to leave babyhood behind and taking small steps to independence, which both warms my heart and leaves me a bit sad.

Active doesn’t even begin to describe you. When you are awake you are constantly on the go. You walk along all the furniture and have taken your first tentative steps without holding on to anything. You race around the house, bent over at the waist, hands and feet on the ground, crawling almost as fast as the rest of us can walk. And while you do this you “talk” constantly. There is no other way to describe it other than hooting like an owl, interspersed with bouts of spitting.

You don’t even stay still when you are nursing, instead preferring to engage in something I call “nursing gymnastics” I have to hold you tightly to make you lay still, otherwise you try to stand, jump, and do handstands while nursing. And unfortunately, for you, my nipples are not detachable.

This past weekend we were at a baseball game, yes the baseball field is like your second home, and one of the mothers came up to me and remarked at how big you were getting. She couldn’t believe how you were standing and walking around everything. She said, “Oh, my babies didn’t do any of that until they were at least 14 months old because I just loved to hold them all the time. I’m sure you can’t do that, but I just loved holding my babies.” I want you to know that I do hold you, hug you, and carry you around as much as you will allow. I hope you never think that because you were seventh that you weren’t as loved and cherished as those before you.

You hate my laptop with the fiery passion you previously only reserved for diaper changes and being strapped into your carseat. Right now as I am typing you are trying to slam my computer shut with one hand and reach around and bang on the keyboard with the other. It really is quite annoying. You keep hitting the caps lock key and I keep having to backspace and retype. I am not sure why you object so strenuously to having your diaper changed. Everyday, several times a day, for your entire life you have been having your diaper changed, why does it have to be a big deal now? Why? It would be so much easier on all of us if you would just lay still and deal with it.

You have a stubborn and independent streak, that makes me laugh in spite of myself. I know that by the time you are two years old I will be tearing my hair from my own head,and possibly yours, in frustration, but how can I not laugh when you collapse to the ground screaming as if you have been shot, just because I dared to wipe your nose.

You refuse to eat any sort of baby food or cereal or to let me spoon any food into your mouth. Your favorite foods are pasta with butter and grated cheese, raisins, cocoa puffs, toasted apple butter sandwiches, and any other random food bits that you find under the kitchen table. You just recently discovered the joys of drinking out of a sippy cup, though the term drinking is a bit disingenuous as you fill your mouth with water and then let it dribble out of your mouth and down your chin. Considering you still have no teeth, you do incredibly well in the eating department.

You do not like to sleep and avoid it at all costs, until you can not possibly carry on any longer. At that point you will just fall asleep wherever you are.

Sleeping through the night is just a dream at this point. You wake several times a night to nurse. And if there are going to be points given out for motherhood, I think I deserve a whole slew of them for being woken up every hour, every night for nine months. But I am really not complaining. I know from experience that this stage will eventually pass and that one day it will be a distant memory that I have trouble fully recalling. I promise though that I will never forget enough that I would tell your wife that my babies slept through the night from the day they were born.

Your latest passion is opening and closing cabinets and taking everything out of them that you can get your hands on. As soon as we open the dishwasher to unload it you get so excited you climb onto the open door and begin flinging silverware.

You smile at everyone and you think everything is worthy of a giggle. You recently learned to give high fives and so you frequently sit with your hand up in the air just waiting for someone to notice.

You are such a treasure and bring so much joy to our entire family. As much as I hate to fall back on tired old cliches, I have to say that time is passing so quickly and I feel the days, weeks, and months slipping by. I wish I could stop time and enjoy you at this moment for awhile longer. Well, maybe not this exact moment since you are screaming and hitting my keyboard, but you know what I mean.

Micey-Mouse, Mini-Man, PITA pocket…

I love you,
Mom

Quote Of The Day

September 21, 2005

“For crying out loud, you’re not dying. Will you just stop your damn moaning and whining and keep up with the rest us.”

Said by me to my 8 yr old son seconds before I turned around to see him vomiting in the middle of the parking lot. Might as well engrave it on my tombstone, because you just know I will never be able to live it down.

Do You Think He Will Tickle Me If I Ask Nicely?

September 17, 2005

Get Out Your Feathersword
Originally uploaded by the big yellow house.

At 10:00 am this morning I bought tickets to see the Wiggles.

I don’t know what is sadder, that I was online at 10:00 am when they went on sale to get the best seats possible, or that I danced around the roon cheering once I bought tenth row orchestra seats.

Hello, my name is Chris and I live vicariously through the happiness of my children.

Some Things Are Better Left To The Professionals

September 16, 2005

Things like brain surgery, asbestos removal, criminal legal defense… and eyebrow waxing.

Just so you know.

Preparing myself to say, “No, I’m not surprised. Why do you ask?” all day long.