Mmmm...Hair.

Dog hair, specifically. Nora can't get enough of the stuff. She goes on hourly hunts for dog hair that she can stuff in her mouth and savor. She's getting smart enough to realize that she can also just go up to Spencer, grab a fistful of hair, pull, and enjoy. It's like her own little drive-thru window. I should open up a restaurant for babies. I think it'd be a huge success.

"For our soup tonight we have a lovely diaper rash cream or a swirl of water from the dog bowl. The pasta tonight is day-old penne with strands of hair retrieved from inside a T-shirt. And dessert is a choice of icing licked from a cupcake, or a cough drop found on the driveway."

"Thank you, I'll stick with my butter wrapper for now, and perhaps you could just pour some apple juice down my pants."

I can't believe no one's thought of this yet. I'm gonna be rich.

In other news, Christmas was fairly uneventful. None of the shenanigans of years past, such as Eric locking our car keys in the trunk when we were 180 miles away from where we needed to be; me spilling coffee all over my white cashmere maternity sweater on Christmas morning, somehow getting it clean and then having Tate yarf all over it a couple hours later; me getting so sick while pregnant with Nora that everytime she kicked or moved I thought I was going to die; Eric breaking the window of the bedroom we were staying in (and slicing up his wrist in the process) when it was -10 degrees outside...all that good stuff.

No, the only annoying part of our travels was staying in hotels. The first night, Tate woke up from a restful slumber and decided that The Country Inn and Suites was actually The Inn of Terror and started screaming to go home. Listening to your kid yell "I wanna go hoooooome!" for literally two hours while frantically trying to shush him just a little bit so he doesn't wake the baby up is not the best way to get yourself in the holiday spirit. I bet the people in the rooms around us weren't exactly feeling goodwill towards us at that point either. The next night was better but he still tried to pull the "I'm so homesick I'm going to die" card, although that was quickly thwarted by a dip in the hotel pool and a baggie of Goldfish.

Now we have so many toys we can't fit them all in our family room. What was once our playroom is now our formal dining room (aren't WE grown up) so we have to stuff all our toys in our family room and with the tree still being up, there just ain't room to rearrange stuff or walk or stand on more than one foot at a time. I keep expecting to walk in the room and hear faint cries from Nora being buried under a mountain of Little People and Thomas the Trains. The basement WILL be getting done soon, and I'm not kidding this time. Really.

All in all, I'm glad Christmas went by smoothly. We weren't able to get home to the Twin Cities, which was a massive bummer, but we'll be back there soon. And then eventually we'll move there and I'll finally be living where I want to, after 7 years of living in places I don't particularly enjoy. And then I'll have nothing to complain about, ever.

I'm all A'Twitter

I have so much crap to do. My house is full of crap, my kid feels like crap, we have to drive a hundred million miles through a bunch of crap this week, my dog crapped on my porch, and a certain baby girl smells like Cheerios and Veggie Sticks. And crap.

My house is seriously a disaster right now. I was gone all morning with the kids, and the man I married was here alone. No one hanging on him or following him around demanding stuff. And the house is messier than when I left. Nice. That's all I'm saying. I'm here alone the rest of the day with the kids, so I guess after I feed them dinner by myself and give them baths by myself and put them to bed by myself I'll tackle the house. Oh, and I'll be by myself. If we weren't having people coming into town to spend the night tomorrow I wouldn't give a dog's ass, but we are, so an ass I'm givin'.

Blah.

And I just thought of FIVE more people I have to buy gifts for. Five. So I get to brave the store tomorrow, the day before Christmas Eve, in -4697 degree weather. Why do we know so many people?

The next few days should be an adventure. I'm sure I'll have lots of stories to share so all y'all can have some fun laughing at my expense and be in awe of the continuing sharp decline of my sanity. Ah...the holidays.

The Weirdness, It is Everywhere

I know I haven't written in awhile, just haven't gotten around to it or haven't felt like it or whatever. We've just been putzing along in our little world of weirdness around here. Tate, in particular, is rocking the weird pretty impressively lately.

One of his new things is to purposely run into things, like the table, wall, dog, whatever, and exclaim "AH! Ow! Oh MY that hurt!". He'll do this constantly...just be walking down the hallway and all of a sudden make a sharp veer to the left and ram his big melon into the door frame. "Oh ME! OW!"

It was particularly amusing when he did it in the waiting room at the doctor's office today. He was wondering around as he is apt to do, and ran full-on into a chair. Everyone in the room gasped but like a good mom, I just sat there and waited for what I knew was coming. He stopped, rubbed his knee, glared at the chair and said "ARGH! DUDE! What the hell, chair??"

I really must just stop speaking when I'm around this child. First of all, as anyone who speaks to me in person on a regular basis can tell you, I say "dude" about 6 times a minute. I also, as pointed out to me recently, say "what the hell?" about 8 times a minute. Those phrases have pretty much been pounded into the kid's brain from day one. I'm surprised "dude" wasn't his first word. That would have been awesome.

Melodrama has just been running rampant around here. Everytime Tate climbs up on a chair, goes up the stairs, stands up, sits down, breathes, whatever, he starts groaning and sighing like it's just so hard being two. He's acting like a 90-year-old man in a two year old body.

"Ohhhhhhh, oh oh. Stairs are soooo hard. pant pant. Mommy, I'm wore out!" By the time the kid's 16 he'll be asking for orthopedic shoes, a walker, and one of those cool chairs you attach to your stair railing so you don't have to walk up.

He's been improving on the whole "Let's be nice to baby sister and not sit on her and bounce up and down" idea, but still has setbacks now and then. But at least now he'll ask before he causes her bodily harm. What the heck does he expect me to say??

"Poke Baby in the eye, Mommy?"

"Sure, Tate, poke it and scoop it right out of there! We'll just throw it in the fridge for later!"

"Pull Baby's hair, Mommy?"

"Yep, grab a nice chunk. I'll knit a little muffler out of it."

Nora's been exhibiting her own signs of weirdness. We like to start early in this family. For example, apparently eating paper just wasn't satisfying her needs anymore, so she moved on to diaper wipes. Mmmm...nice and moist. She'll figure out how to open the wipes pack, pull one out, suck on it til she's gotten all the juice out of it, pull another one out, do the same thing, repeat repeat repeat.

Let's take a look at the oddities, just for the heck of it.

Proof that we do indeed believe in making our kids as weird as possible as early as possible. Tate never had a chance.

And then there's me, going on a sleigh ride a few nights ago in subzero temperaures in the middle of what was basically a blizzard. Some people would call that weird, but I call it a freakin' blast. Everyone that wussed out, missed out. Here's me dressed like a man and not looking all that pretty. Bonus points if you can even figure out which one I am amongst all the bundled up-edness.

It was kickass.

On Eating Plastic and Santa

Tate and I went to the grocery store yesterday. I was not in the mood to drive myself insane so I left Nora at home with Eric. Tate was in a very odd mood, and by odd, I mean "Look at that kid...what a freak" type of odd. He was holding onto my coupons (or "Tate money", according to him) for me since he feels like he's helping when he does that, and I wasn't paying him too much attention, because as long as he's actually sitting and not throwing canned goods out of the cart at old people, I pretty much let him be.

We get up to the checkout counter and I get the coupons from Tate and discover that they're all soggy and gummy. He'd been chewing the corners off of them. I figure, who needs corners? and hand them to the 17 year old cashier dude. He flipped his hair out of his eyes, looked at the coupons and then at me and said "Uh...I think your kid was eating paper." I replied "Well, better paper than boogers, right?" He looked at me like I was demented but took them gingerly from me between two fingers, making sure not to touch any part that had teeth marks on them. Then he got to the plastic bag of hamburger buns, and we both saw that Tate had been going to town on that as well. The plastic was shredded in some parts, and each bun had chunks ripped out of them. Apparently my child is half rat. Cashier dude eyes the buns nervously, looked at me again and said, "Um, is he like really hungry or something?" I was thisclose from answering "Well, yeah, but the plastic and paper is enough to hold him til we get home and he can start in on that cardboard box I've been saving for him. He'll eat it right next to his sister who's still working on her Sears catalog."

Then we went into the liquor store next to the grocery store. I know, it sounds like we're always in the liquor store. We're not, it's just where a lot of memorable stuff happens, apparently. Tate was no longer in the cart since it was jammed full of bags and there was no room for us, so he had free rein to sprint away from me and basically give me a heart attack, seeing him twirling dizzily in the aisle among 5000 breakable bottles of wine, rum, and tequila. His new favorite liquor store game is "Let's Clink Two Bottles Together as Hard as We Can and See if They Break!". Then at the checkout he kept pressing his face up to the counter and going "Muuaaaaaaa". I soon realized that this is the sound he makes when licking germ-infested counters at liqour stores. I had to tuck him under one arm and push the cart with the other. I was about to break open the box of wine right there, put my mouth under the spout and just pour it in.

So we took the kids to see Santa today at my mothers group's annual Christmas party. They loved him. See?

Now, when we look at Santa, we see this:

Apparently, when my kids look at Santa, they see this:

Who knew?

They eventually did calm down though. To prove we didn't scar our kids for life, here's them later on in the morning.

Pretending he's in a line-up. Good practice for later in life

Eating jingle bells and bows.

Successful day, overall. Got the kids nice and freaked out, Nora's actually taking a nap to try and escape the image of Killer Santa in her mind, Eric and Tate went to the zoo, and we two adults are going out tonight! No kids! We may never come back!

I'm Not Crazy

Ok, well, whether or not I'm crazy can be up for debate at a later time, but there is one thing I know is true. My baby girl looks like David Cook. You know, the guy who won American Idol. I swear that I'll look at her and expect her to break out into "This Is My Now", the resemblence is so uncanny. So I'll grab the camera to document it as proof, and it disappears, or just doesn't transfer to pictures, or whatever. Then I put the camera down, and Nora's a 20-something crooner again.
But look at the hair. It's Cook hair.


Just...go with me on this.

We're actually living with two celebrities in our house. Tate used to be a dead ringer for:




Eh? Uncle Fester at his finest. No hair, no neck, general air of weirdness...seperated at birth, I tell ya.

So we took Dave and Fester to the park behind our house today to go sledding.

Annnnd we will never be doing that again.

The snow was up to our knees, making the trek across our back yard an odyssey of epic proportions. Ever carry a baby stuffed in to a 20lb snowsuit across a neverending field of snow? I was terrified I was going to fall and faceplant Nora into a drift, rendering her terrified of anything white and chilly for the rest of her life. As I was panting and sweating my way across the yard like a broken down geriatric mule, she kept looking at me like, "Mom, seriously. What the hell? Our nice warm house is right there. Remember that hot chocolate with butterscotch schnapps you were imbibing in? Still there. Turn the hell around."

We got to the sledding hill, I set Nora down in the snow to take a picture, she spazzed out, and we went home. Eric and Tate were about 10 minutes behind us. Apparently Tate gets mad when his thumbs are rendered useless by gigantic puffy mittens and he has the manual dexterity of a worm. Lesson learned: do not take a 2 year old and an 8 month old out to frolic in the snow. They will not do it.

So I always wonder if all the time I spend trying to pound the concept of manners into Tate's head will ever pay off. Well, today we were playing his current favorite game of "Red Ball or Bouncy Ball? Which One Should I Throw?" and after he tossed the red ball to me upon my request, he stared me down and said "Um, what do we say??". Eek. Thank you, master. So he gets the concept of thank you, you're welcome, etc...he just chooses not to be bothered to say them himself unless a sippy cup of orange juice or an oatmeal cream pie is at stake and about to be taken away.

And finally, if you read my blog, please sign my guestbook. I'll be forever indebted. I'm always curious as to who finds it worthwhile to laugh at my attempts at raising somewhat normal children, and how people in New Hampshire and Georgia and freakin' England find my little blog. If you sign it, you'll be entered in a drawing to win one kajillion dollars. Am I serious? Guess you'll never know, unless you sign it. One kajillion dollars, people.

Apricot Baby Food...

...looks pretty much the same puked up on your shirt as it does in the little baby food container. Just in case you were wondering. The kids have taken turns fighting stomach bugs over the weekend, with Tate blowing chunks last night (and me blissfully ignorant, sleeping right through it. Don't worry, Eric was with him. It's not like we make the kid sleep in barf.) and Nora shouting soup (baby food, whatever) a couple times today.

The funny thing is, when babies throw up, it seems to barely even faze them. Just a natural part of life, folks. I can just imagine what's going through Nora's head.

"Doo doo doo, let's crawl over here and find that errant piece of paper I've had my eye on. I haven't partaken in a good magazine chew for a few days. Ooh, look, there's Mom's shoelace. Must go grab that and somehow poke myself in the eye. And over here we have Tate...let's just stay away from that. Oooh, and look there's the-

RAAAALLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPHHHHHHHH

Hmmm. I seem to have spewed. Ah well, no time to worry about that. Must crawl over to that quarter on the floor that Mom dropped and try and stuff it in my mouth before she--crap. Caught me."

See? She just pukes and goes on with her day. Today it was a yarf of epic proportions, all on me, of course. You know how you know you're a mom? (In case you weren't quite sure before.) When your kid yammies on you, you don't freak out, you just sit there and wait for the rest of it to come before you bother starting to clean yourself up. And when you do clean up, you always start with the kid. What's a little yack in your hair, down your shirt, wherever? And you get bonus points for the first time you see your kid about to toss cookies, you reach your hands out to grab it. Done it. On Christmas Day at my parents' country club, in the bathroom stall with Tate. That, my friends, was the day I truly became a woman. Nothing like holding fistfuls of regurgitated cottage cheese, fruit, and ham.

This entry will be disgusting for anyone to read who is not the mother of young children. All the moms are reading this going "Yep. A little york from your kid never hurt anyone."

Oh, and on a totally unrelated subject, Eric and I are going to a '90s ghetto rap Christmas party next weekend. Does anyone have any clue what we can do for cheap as outfits?? I know Kriss Kross is already taken, or we'd just throw our clothes on backwards and act like obnoxious 13 year old one-hit wonders. Beyond that, I got nothin'. Help a girl out.

I Think My Days Are Numbered...

..for I believe my little darlings are trying to do me in. You dress 'em, feed 'em, spend a crapload of money on toys they never play with, and this is how they repay you?

Let's go back to last night for a moment. It was about 7 pm. It was December 5th. In Green Bay. So, it could have been considered a wee bit frigid outside. Me, being the epitome of intellegence and sensibility that I am, decided to run outside in no jacket to get the mail. I sprinted to the mailbox and back, only to discover that Tate had locked the screen door and was standing right inside, cackling merrily at poor Mommy out in the Arctic tundra. This is what happened next:

Me: "Tate, honey, unlock the door! Mommy's cold!"

Tate tries to unlock the door and for some reason keeps turning the latch the wrong way. Never mind that he's locked us out of the house countless times before and has always been successful at allowing us entry back in, this time apparently he had no brain.

Me: "Tate! Seriously! I'm freezing my nips off! Let me in!"

Tate: "ARRRRGH!" while trying frantically to unlock the door by turning the latch further in the lock position

Me: "Oh, my God, I do believe I'm going to die out here"

Tate: "AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!! AH! AH AH!" This is him screaming bloody murder as he completely gives up on the lock altogether, runs into the den hysterically and throws himself down on the floor. The kid was fuh-reaking out. This was not helping my situation any.

Then I realized that my house has two alternate doors to get in. Yes, I've lived in the house for 2 1/2 years. Yes, it took me a good 5 minutes to realize this. I went over to the side door, and went through the garage back into the house. Well, apparently, during the 20 seconds it took me to do this, Tate seemed to think that I had gotten eaten by a snowbank and went in to full-fledged hysteria. I don't know how Nora didn't wake up. He was making noises like he was getting eaten by a gorilla or something.

So, Tate tried to freeze me to death. Nora just decided to ram her head into my nose as hard as she could. The side of my nose that has the nose ring in it. You ever have a little metal rod practically pierce the middle wall of your nose? I almost had a hole straight through to the other nostril. I could have done that thing where you put a hoop through it and look like a bull. I could have totally pulled that off, by the way.

And my house is trying to kill me by burying me in clutter. It's neverending. I picked up the family around 9 am today. I took this picture around 10:30 am.

And this isn't even bad! That's barely messy! But my point is, my house repels neatness. It shuns it, alienates it.

And this is what was outside my window:

You can't tell, but it's snowing as I took the picture. Eric was at work all day, so I was stuck inside my messy house while we were in the middle of a freaking snow monsoon. It was a rather long day.

I'd like to close with a shot of my little rapscallions. Don't be fooled by the innocent faces. Who knows what's lurking underneath?

Where am I? Whose lap is this??

Why Do I Bother?

I realized today that among the 4648572 things I need to do before Christmas, one of them is get our holiday cards ordered, which means I needed a good picture of the kids. Seeing as I have none of the both of them actually looking human together at the same time, I got the bright idea of bundling them up and taking them outside to take pictures in the 500 feet of snow that's been falling since yesterday.

Presenting Nora, aka the kid from A Christmas Story:

"I can't put my arms down!"

After a good 15 or 20 minuts of wrestling two kids into snowsuits, boots, hats, mittens, a frenzy, what have you, we were ready. And parents, just don't do that. Don't try and bundle two kids up on your own. You're all sweating, panting and ready to kill each other by the time it's done. But finally, we were ready to go frolic in the snow. Kodak moments were sure to abound, right?

Well...not really.

None of them are horrible, but they both seem to have some aversion to actually looking at the camera. I gave up after about 10 shots of them steadfastly refusing to cooperate and pulled them back home. It was a nice thought on my part. I'm just shocked that Tate didn't push his sister out of the sled. Maybe that could have been the photo. It would have been a pretty good representation of our everyday life.

Robo-Nora Marley

I may have mentioned this in passing once or three thousand times before, but Nora does not sleep. I think she's a robot, as we humans tend to snooze every once in awhile. If you need more proof of her robot-ness, here ya go.

Ok, there she actually looks more like a cross between Jack Nicholson and some sort of zombie-type creature, but still. Those Jack zombies aren't human anyway, so it's the same thing.

As an example to her non-sleeping un-humanosity, let's look at the events of the last 18 hours or so. She went to bed last night at 7, as usual. She then woke up at 8:30 fussing and putzing around and was awake until 11. For reals. I let her complain for awhile, then went in there and rocked her back to sleep. As soon as I'd put her butt back in bed, her eyes would pop open, her head would pop up and she'd start yodeling in protest. This went on FOREVER. Finally, when Eric got home from work, I went downstairs (very calmly and quietly, of course. No frustration here) and informed him in no uncertain terms that it was his turn to try and wrestle the baby into slumber.

She slept til 6 this morning. Yeah, 6. 11 to 6. It's now 1:04 pm and she has yet to nap. I'm not kidding. She took a 10 minute snooze in the car on the way to check out a preschool for Tate, and damned if that's not all she's given me. 10 minutes in the last 7 hours. Do you believe me now when I say I gave birth to a robot? Total insanity.

Tate, on the other hand, took a break from his usual evildoings the other night to do this in our family room.

He never falls asleep like that. Ever. Is it bad that I kinda enjoy when he's feeling a little under the weather? He's so...calm and un-insane. Plus, this was the night after Thanksgiving, which was a busy day for us, so he had some sleep to catch up on. He had a busy Black Friday, too. We went to Kohl's (I do not know why. We didn't buy anything and had no reason to be there except to stress ourselves out and tell Tate to stop licking random sweaters), where he took great glee in announcing "I gots POOPIES" at the top of his lungs as Eric was carrying him. I was far enough behind that it was easy for me to pretend I didn't know them, and therefore was able to laugh my ass off.

As I mentioned, we went to check out a preschool today for Tate, since they have to register in January. As soon as we brought him in the room, his eyes got wide and you could just see him thinking "Oh, hells no, bitches!" and start making a beeline for the door. He thought we were going to leave him there. He did calm down eventually, although he refused to actually speak to the teacher. When she asked him how old he was, he responded by flopping onto the floor dramatically. Uh, that means he's two.

We also took both kidlets to get their flu shots and they were stone cold champs. Neither cried at all. Nora did look a little irritated, like "who the hell sticks a needle in my thigh fat roll?" but couldn't be bothered to drum up more emotion than that. Because she's a robot, you see. She also takes great joy in eating paper. My sister was asking for suggestions for what to get Nora for Christmas, and my first thought was perhaps a nice thick Sears catalog for her to gnaw on. That sucker would last a good week or two. Oh, and she's been sounding like Bob Marley lately. I'm serious. There's that part of "Buffalo Solder" (I think that's the song...I usually only hear Bob in bars, so my memory tends to be a bit fuzzy when it comes to his music) where he's "ay-yi-yi"-ing a bunch and I swear she does the exact same thing. Timing, rhythm, everything. I think I should start dreading her hair when it gets long enough. Can you see the resemblance?

Uncanny.

Gobble Gobble

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, already. This year is going by so quickly. I can't believe Nora's almost 8 months old already. It seems like yesterday I was shoving her out into the world. Oh, and then having horrible complications and going into shock, but that's water under the bridge. I'll just bring it up whenever she's being particularly heinous to me in the future.

Things I'm thankful for:

The kidlets. When they're being good:

My husband, who is so grateful and humbled to have me as his kickass wife:

Yes, the picture's like 4 years old. I wanted one where I didn't look exhausted and fat. Ah, the good old days. We look so unaware of what was coming.

My fam:

Also an older picture, from last year. Apparently we don't believe in getting pictures taken of all of us very often. Or if we do, I just can't be bothered to put them on my computer.

Other things that float my boat:

My friends edged out the french fries, but just barely. Those things are good.

Although you know what I'm not thankful for? When you're all excited for hot, greasy, salty fries and you get them and they're like hard and brown and crunchy and feel like chewing on a hard piece of skin. Totally ruins my day.

Goes without saying.

Hubba hubba

I am not so thankful for:

Today is Sunday.

You like that title? Couldn't think of anything original. Must be all the mucous and phlegm clogging up my brain. I feel like crap. Very tired, crabby crap. Eric's working 3rd shift right now (everytime I go to write "shift", I write "shit" instead. Fruedian slips and all that). So he's gone all night at work, and sleeping upstairs during the day. Totally sucks. I do like having the bed to myself at night so I can sprawl out and turn the fan on, but then I'll be laying there and imagining that I hear some serial killer opening our front door, or I'll remember some freaky horrer movie that I saw like 10 years ago and not be able to sleep. But that's ok, because Nora doesn't sleep either, so we can just sit up and be freaked out together.

So, as mothers, we all think our kids are special, right? Look at how cute and precious the little kidlets are.

But then sometimes, you wonder if they're, well...special.

I love that hat of Nora's but it kind of makes her look like a knob head. And it's almost impossible to get on. Apparently, if you're in public and trying to get your kids ready to go outside to the car, it is absolutely impossible to get on. I know.

We were at the grocery store yesterday (well, more accurately, at the liqour store inside the grocery store. Don't worry, I got food, too) and getting ready to head out to the car. Now, at the grocery store, Tate likes to ride in those carts that look like racing cars so he can "drive". No problem. Well, except for the fact that I can't put Nora in the drivers seat with him, because I'm not an idiot. She'd come out of that experience missing a layer of skin or an ear or something. We're still working on the whole "be nice to the baby" concept with Tate. It's slow going. So I wear Nora in a sling. To put her in the sling I have to take off my coat, her coat, hat, etc, because otherwise we'd look like a big fat Shamu carrying a little marshmallow on it's chest.

So anyway. I got Tate all bundled up, as he was screaming for the sticker he dropped on the floor that I stepped on and got stuck to my foot, and started on Nora. After I realized there was nowhere to set her down to get her coat on, I sat her on the floor. Apparently this is a mortal sin because she immediately started hollering and trying to flip over onto her stomach so she could make a getaway from Evil Mother. Trying to get a coat on a kid slipping around on a linoleum floor ain't no easy feat. Add trying to get a hat over the kid's head and it's pretty much impossible. Kind of like trying to get clothes on a giant, flopping, hysterical fish.

What really made it fun was the old lady buying some Franzia who kept commenting "Oh, these days go by so fast. Enjoy them now because soon you'll turn around and they'll be grown!". I was about to grab her by the collar and hiss "Not soon enough, lady." At this point one of the managers noticed the steam coming out of my ears and kindly came over to help. I'm sure she recognized me as one of her best customers and didn't want to lose all that business.

I also got Nora these boots.

Cute, huh? I know. I have excellent taste. Except these aren't boots, they're tiny, pink, fur-lined BASTARDS. Suckers will not stay on her feet. I found this out when I got out to the car, finally, and realized they were both MIA. This is what ensued:

Me: "GAHMOTHERFRIGGINSTUPIDCRAPBOOTSFROMHELLARGHHHH"

Then I saw one of the boots bouncing away and someone came up with the other one. I felt pretty cool when I realized he had witnessed my boot-related meltdown, but really, at that point, I didn't care.

Annnnd, finally, Melissa's cooking tip of the day. If you're making chicken noodle soup for lunch, it'll cook faster if you turn the stove burner on.

Remember that for next time.

Oh Yuck.

So I was browsing around on the internet this morning and read that Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz had their baby. Yeah, breaking news, I know. But they named the kid Bronx. Bronx Mowgli.

Ok, seriously? Not funny. Who does that to their kid? Who names them after a burough of New York where they tawk like dis and some random Disney character dude? Bronx Wentz. It sounds like a brand of bratwurst or something, doesn't it? Get your Bronxwentz bratwurst!!

There are some horrible names out there. I can't stand when people try to be all unique and special and end up giving their kid some trendy piece of crap like McMadysenKylieeLynn. I swear they're popping up all over. Just add a Mc- or a -son or -lynn onto any name and you've got the perfect sparkly, made-up gobbeldygook name of the day! Damn, my kids could have been Mctatedan or Annoralynnlie. What was I thinking? I totally missed the boat there.

If people want to truly be unique and original, freaking name your kid James or Caroline or something. I bet you anything they'd be the only one in their class, surrounded by Jaidens and Neveahs and Dextons. Pretty soon people will have used up all the somewhat normal place or noun names so we'll have little Carpet Fiber Jones and Sleepy Eye (not kidding, it's a town in MN) Vegas Smith running around. Cause, you know, it's all about being uncommon. Or unreal. Whichever.

Everyone out there should just let me name their kids. I would totally rock at that.

Dirty Dancing, ABBA, and Parasite Train Man

So this weekend was our world-famous, often imitated never duplicated, second annual Girls Trip to Chicago. Watch out, Windy City...here comes the 30 something mothers from Green Bay! We're pretty hardcore.

The weekend started off not so great. The plan was to leave from my house around noonish. All the girls got there, we hung out, laughed at Tate, and waited. And waited and waited and waited for Eric to call saying he was done at work. By 1:45 I decided waiting was for pansies and we all headed down to the designated meeting space in Manitowoc where Eric would drive the kids back up to Green Bay in our car and the four of us would continue on our journey. So we get to the gas station, I call Eric, and he's not done. Nowhere close to being done, funnily enough. Not so funny at the time, I promise you. So there's four women and two very confused, tired children stuffed into my van. We were making the best of it though and having a good time. Well, except for Nora. For some reason she thinks my friend Nicole is the Evil Incarnate, so everytime Nicole's head would pop over Nora's carseat to say hi, she would flip. Not that I can blame her. Who wants to see some giant disembodied head popping into view at random times with no warning?

This was us.

Notice Tate's look of confusion. He just has that air of a man desperate to get out of a car full of cackling women. Nicole's in the green coat. I gotta say, it is a scary head. Poor Nora.

So Eric's ride finally pulls up to the gas station and we all pile out of the van like clowns coming out of a miniature car. I gave him a kiss, waved bye bye to the kids and off we went to catch our train in Milwaukee. The original plan was to get the 3:00 train but that didn't work for obvious reasons. So we decided to hop on the 5 o'clock. We get to the Amtrak station at 4, skip inside, and realize the train isn't til 5:45. Perrrrfect. Can you blame me for mixing a little something something in with the Coke I bought from the vending machine?

Anyway. We get to the condo around 7:30, dump our crap and run back out for dinner since we're all so hungry we're about to start dining on each other. And you know what else we did that night? Nothing. We're so old and pathetic and the traveling and waiting wore us out so much we were giddy at the thought of just sitting on our asses in the condo and drinking. So we did. And we did a damn good job of it, too.

Saturday, though...we went to see Dirty Dancing! Live on stage! It was awesome! I totally screamed when Johnny Castle walked out on stage and I was the only one and I didn't care because he was totally hot and I was just waiting for him to take his shirt off and when he did it was totally awesome but he had an Australian accent that kept coming and going so it was weird but it really didn't matter because he had a 12-pack and then when he said "Nobody puts Baby in the corner I screamed again but it was ok because other people did too!!!!! The play was really good. It was the same as the movie, line for line, song for song, dance move for dance move. Cecilia and I did an extremely good job of refraining from reciting all the words along with the actors. Oh, and we managed not to jump in the aisle and do the lift at the end too. It's all about restraint.

Here's us outside the theater. A cop took the picture. Yes, we really are that cute. I love my leopard jacket...I was too preggo to wear it last winter so I'm totally rocking it this year even though it's about as warm as wearing Kleenex.

Oh, and since there were five of us on Saturday since Cecilia took the train in from her parents' house, this is what we looked like in the back of cabs.

That picture is of me on Jodi's lap, and Sue. It was taken by Nicole. She was in the backseat with

us. Cozy? Yes. Hot? Very much so. Smelly? Maybe just a little.

Saturday night Jodi and I took the novices back over to the Blue Frog for a little karaoke. This was the site of our stunning karaoke fail of August '08. We were determined to make a comeback and leave 'em wanting more. And we so did. We totally rocked Sweet Caroline and Dancing Queen. People were dancing in the aisles, yo. We were better than ABBA themselves. We weren't better than Neil, though. No one is better than Neil, but we knew that going in. We had backup dancers! I was doing that thing where you hold the microphone out to your audience during the chorus so they can sing back like we were playing to a house of 305,000 adoring fans! It was more like 50 adoring fans, but they adored the SHIT out of us. Success. August's karaoke experience needn't ever be spoken of again.

Then we came home at about 12:30 am. God, we are crazy. Who stays out that late?? I amaze myself with our party animal ways.

So the train ride home...we ended up sitting right by the bathroom. Let me just say right now that that was not ideal. What was really not ideal was having this creepy, pale, ucky looking guy slink into the bathroom FOUR times in a 90 minute trip. Oh, and each potty break lasted a good 10 minutes. The last one was a quadruple-flusher. Sue and I were lucky enough to be able to close enough to count the flushes, and also to realize that apparently this man didn't believe in washing his hands after shooting the entire contents of his bowels into a hole on a train. Gagging yet? Yeah, tell me about it. I'll spare you the explanation of the foul odor that would follow Poopy Man out of the bathroom each time. I swear it was like a green cloud that would just hover over us. Didn't help so much that he apparently couldn't figure out how to shut the door behind him when he left. GAH. I seriously think he had some kind of parasite eating a hole in his intestines or something. Which is always a really really fun thing to think about. I know my mom is reading this and throwing up in her mouth a little bit right now.

Anyway, aside from Foul Butt Man, the trip was another great time. Lots of sleep, lots of drinks, lots of laughs...doesn't get better. Next time we're taking the train cross-country to Seattle. It looked cool on the poster. That was good enough for us.

Num.

So the holidays are coming up already. Now, I know there are many great things about this time of year, right? Most people will say the best thing is, you know, peace on earth, goodwill towards men, putting money in the little Salvation Army pails....





No.





You want to know what the best part of the holidays is? It's this, baby.

Oooooh yeah. I had my first sighting of the year at the grocery store yesterday and pounced, squealing, upon the first box I could grab. These things are like chocolate and cream crack-filled sandwhich cookies dipped in white fudge ecstasy. I may need to get Eric to hide the box so they don't all get eaten in one day. Eh, who am I kidding. If I can't find any, I'll run to the store right away to quell my withdrawal and buy 19 more boxes. This shit's good, yo. Screw Christmas caroling and making memories with your family....THIS is what it's all about.

The girls and I are heading to Chicago today. I'm sure shenanigans are to follow. Nothing like a group of 30-something housewives/mothers to really shake up the big city. Maybe this time we'll be able to make it out past 1 am. Don't count on it though. Sleep is pretty much the big draw this weekend.

Hmm. Maybe I should pack.

Photo FAIL

I tried to take a few pictures of the kids today just for kicks. Let's gauge my success.

Now, those are some good-lookin' spawn.

Here's Tate after my refusal to let him play with the camera.

And Nora after my refusal to let her suck on dog hair:

But I kept on, desperate to prove to myself that my kids are, indeed, not freakishly un-cute. I was mildly victorious.

Ignore the runny nose, please. I had to take what I could get.Too bad this one's blurry, but my camera is not that great sometimes:

I decided to call it a day after this one. In case you're wondering, Nora has no clothes on because she had just pooped through her fourth outfit. It was 11:30 am. Good day.