Catching Up

Yes, people, I know it's been two weeks since my last entry. I've gotten frantic, pleading, pathetic phone calls, emails, visits to my front door, death threats, etc, from people going through some serious withdrawal. So rejoice, all ye who read my ramblings.

Things have just been chugging along here. Tate has caused me moments of great joy and extreme despair. The hitting is not getting better. He's like Jackie Chan, only as a bad guy. Which, come to think of it, I don't know if Jackie Chan has ever played. Isn't he always the good guy? He's just such a jolly little fellow. But yeah, Tate...what can I do. I've had more breakdowns over that kid. He's in time out about 3045 times a day. Today, for a fun little example. He woke up around 7:15 and was in his first time out at 7:22. I freaking kid you not. Oh, what a beautiful mooooorning....

He does this thing lately, though, where he'll point at something and say "Asshat, Mama?" So I say "Purse" or "Potato" or "Crack Pipe" (Come on, I'm kidding. We hide the crack pipe in the garage. The roach clip on the other hand....). Then he'll say "Potato! YES!!!" He sounds like Ed McMahon. I keep expecting to hear "HAW HAW HAW" afterwards. And is it weird that I get a strange sense of personal satisfaction when he agrees with me so emphatically? I mean, I could really get that kid to agree to pretty much anything, yet I feel pretty cool when he assures me that I do inded know what I'm talking about and that I'm extremely proficient at identifying random things on my kitchen counter.

Nora has gotten two teeth and is in the procees of acquiring more. She chews on her hand so much I'm suprised it's not a shriveled up nub by this point. Poor thing. She can also sit up on her own for a decent amount of time before tipping over and face planting into the carpet. Still sweet and angelic, of course.

So I had my nose stud taken out and attempted to get a new one put in. It was not a success. Apparently my buddy Hank in Chicago did a pretty crappy job. It was too high up and he pierced it at a strange angle. The lady at the place I went to was trying to finagle the new stud in the hole as I writhed around in pain, trying not to scream or belt her across the face, when she finally told me it was a lost cause. She said she had been doing piercings for over 10 years (evidently most of them on herself...this lady was like half metal) and had never been not able to get a corkscrew nose stud in a hole. She suggested letting it close up and coming back in a week to get it repierced, which she would do for free. Since I was pretty much half out of my brain in agony at this point, I agreed. That hurt like a mofo, people. Getting the piercing itself was a walk in the park but having insert a "stretching needle" in the hole and wriggle it around just about made me hit the ceiling.
It was pretty cool, because for about 2 hours after getting the stud out, whenever I breathed through my nose I could feel the air whooshing out of that extra hole. I felt very effecient, having a whole extra hole serving a very significant purpose. Get the air in and out, holes!! So I think I'll go back on Friday and get it redone. My friend Heather wants to come with me to watch. She'll be getting pierced, too, although she may not realize it yet.

We're going to an open gym at a gymnastics place today with the playgroup. I'm already nervous. Tate could unleash some serious ass-whupping on innocent children. We'll see how it goes. Pray for me and my little demon. Well, mostly for me, and my rapidly dwindling sanity.

Chugga Chugga Shoot Me

I'm watching Thomas the Tank Engine. For the 5th time this morning. It's pretty much on repeat around here. We got the bright idea to DVR a couple episodes on PBS so Tate could watch them whenever he wanted, or whenever I wanted 30 seconds to pee without someone trying to climb into the toilet bowl. Well, apparently Thomas is no longer playing on PBS so we can't record any new episodes, so we watch the same two episodes over and over and over. I'm tired of hearing about stupid Thomas and James and Percy (or "Pussy" as Tate calls him).

The worst is this creepy song that plays on one of the episodes. It's a chorus of British kids intoning "Patience is a virture, so it never hurts to, take a little time to seeeee", and it's very reminiscent to those dead twin girls in "The Shining". I just imagine a bunch of English brats in pinafores and buckled shoes with, like, no eyeballs, swarming around me as they chant "Don't get too excited, just try staying calm...GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE" (that's them chewing on my brain after they ripped it out of my head). I know, I'm disturbed. But this is what I think about when I'm lying in bed at night.

The funny thing that has come out of Thomas-mania is that now Tate says certain things with a British accent. He'll say " 'Allo, Tomas! 'Allo, Mum! 'Allo, Pops!" It's pretty freaking funny.

Yeah, we got the minivan. Town and County, light metallic blue. It's totally pimpin'. Remote start, automatic doors, two seperate DVD players, a hard drive for music, Sirius radio, etc etc. I still get a little shock when I go into my garage and see a middle-aged mom car in there but I'm slowling coming to terms with it.

What else...both kids have colds so there's a lot of screaming as I try to pry crusty boogers out of little nostrils. It's amazing the sense of satisfaction you feel after pulling out a nice big one. Ok, I'm making myself quesy here so enough of that.

I'm so excited...a bunch of girlfriends and I just got tickets for the Broadway preview showing of Dirty Dancing down in Chicago. Nobody freaking puts Baby in the corner. He had a dirty knife and a folding table. I'm going to sing I Feel Pretty, or What do the Simple Folk Do, or I Feel Pretty...Come on, hit me. Hit me right here.

Points for anyone who can tell me the context of all those quotes from the movie. No one will ever come close to the godliness perfection of Patrick Swayze, but I'm sure the play will still kick ass.

Well, Nora's up from her 35 minute nap. Gotta go.

Got any Toothpicks?

'Cause I think I need them to prop my eyelids open. As I'm starting to write this, it's 6:48 am and I've been up for almost 2 hours. I am cursed with bad sleepers for children.

Nora usually wakes up once during the night and then is up at 5 am, if not earlier. The little shit insists on being all smiley and coo-y and WIDE AWAKE at this time. Doesn't want to eat, doesn't want to cuddle, just wants to sit up and try and pry my nose off my face. If she insists on getting up before the sun, the least she could do is make herself useful and run out and get me coffee or something, but noooooo.

Most people at this point would say, "Well, just put her to bed later." Ok, this kid will not stay up past 7 pm. There are nights that I practically have to strip her naked and hang her upside down by about 6:30 in order to keep her awake. She's got an amazing internal clock. 7 pm and she wants her bottle and bed and God help you if you try and delay it for 30 seconds. 5 am and she's wide freaking awake. Every. Morning. I just get stressed because I'm trying to start getting her on some sort of rough nap/eat schedule, but it's hard because she starts getting tired for her morning nap around the time we have to leave to take Tate to day care on the 2 days a week he goes, and then on the other days she's usually napping at the time we have to leave for playdates. Which isn't usually too big of a problem because the kid usually blesses me with about a 45-minute nap.

Yes, it's Tate all over again. Early rising, non-napping insanity around here. I get so mad when I read "babies normally sleep 12-14 hours a night". Yeah, bite me. Mine gives me 10 hours if I'm lucky. Then I've heard rumors that babies normally take like 2 or 3 significant naps a day. Ok, suck my left one. I get 2 naps. MAYBE for an hour each. Maybe. Tate must be grooming her to be his evil underling.

Tate got up by 5:30 every morning for about 18 months. 5:30 was a good day. There were many mornings of me hearing Tate, rolling over to look at the clock and going "Fuuuuuuuck!" when I realized it was 5, or 4:45 or 4:20. And let's not forget the Infamous Morning of Waking Up at 3:30, back in '07. Yeah, that was a good day. I was curled up on the couch weeping from exhaustion by about 9 am, and it didn't get any better, because Tate did not sleep again til 7 pm. Yes, he was up for, what, 15 1/2 hours? It's insane. It's like they're robots or mutants or on crack or something. Tate has taken a nap the last two days in a row, and that's honestly the first time that's happened in months. He went 5 weeks with no nap.

I have no idea how to break Nora of this nasty habit but I really have to. Sleep deprivation was a huge contributer to my nasty PPD last time, and that little affliction just insists on hanging on and on, and I know I can't let it get as bad as it did before. Mommy gets a little crazy when she's overtired.

On a lighter note, I took Tate in for a haircut yesterday at Snips and Giggles and I love it, as always. He looks like a little man. not a homeless dog. I also asked them to do a little snip snip on the front of Nora's hair just so it wouldn't be in her eyes and ears and mouth all the time. They took off a little more than I would have liked but it's nice to be able to see her eyes without having to part her hair in the middle so she ends up looking like Hitler.

Time to go wrestle my kid into some clothes.

I Hate our Car

Ever have one of those days where you're so tired you feel like this?:

So you're all crabby and therefore people piss the hell out of you and you want to do this to them:

Yeah, I'm there.

I would preface this by saying that I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, but that would involve actually waking up, meaning that I fell asleep in the first place, and I don't really think that happened last night. Nora was up every cotton'-pickin' (always wanted to use that phrase) hour. Then she decided that 3:45 am is just a lovely time of day to wake up and say "Hello world". She's done this for the past four nights. I'm wiped out.

We decided that it's time to get a minivan. We thought it would be a good day to go to the dealer, suck it up, plop some change down, and dive into middle age. Well, as we were leaving, we realized the dealer would probably want the title to the Santa Fe. No problem...it's gotta be in the file cabinet, right? No. Just no. As Nora screamed in her carseat and Tate attempted to start the car and back out of the driveway, we tore the house apart looking for the elusive title. Finally we decided enough time was wasted and agreed to just go buy a copy of the title. I hate our car. I swore it was laughing at us.

We motor over to De Pere city hall, because for some reason Eric thought that was where we were supposed to go. I thought he was nuts, but wasn't going to say anything because at that time he had the personality of a constipated gorilla. Little crabby. I hate our car. I swear it was injecting Eric with bad thoughts about his lovely wife and children.

After getting laughed at at City Hall, we went to the DMV and prepared ourselves for that certain level of hell that can only come by bringing two kids to a place where all there is to do is sit. For like 7 hours. We sat on pins and needles waiting for that "ding" and just praying our number would come up soon. Does 184 hours qualify as soon? Then we almost missed it because I was in the bathroom changing Nora's blowout diaper (why do they ALWAYS blowout in public?) and Eric was chasing Tate away from the little picture-taking station.

We finally got called up, gave the lady our info and waited. And here is a little synopsis of what happened:

Lady: "We don't have a record of any Hyundai for you in Wisconsin."
Us: "...guh?"
Me, lamely: "But we LIVE here!"
Lady's eyes, looking at me witheringly: "No shit, dumbass"
Lady: "Well, your car title is still filed in Florida. Is that where you bought the car?"
Eric: "I kinda thought the title just...followed us around."
Lady, as she realizes we're the customers she's going to be laughing about with her friends at the bar tonight: "Uh...no. The title does not just follow you around."
Eric: "Well, I guess you would know better than us."
Lady: "Yup."

Defeated, we left the den of maleficence cleverly disguised as the DMV and went home in silence. No new car today. Another week of driving around in my stupid evil car that I hate. A minivan opens its doors for you. The Santa Fe makes you actully use your own ARM. A minivan will magically stay clean forever. The Santa Fe is full of crumbled up pretzels, a dirty diaper wipe, spilled pop, and sticky little handprints all over the outside and a little noseprint on the back window. The minivan wil magically repel all such things.

After we got home I decided to run out and get coffee before Eric had to leave for work. I was running on 2 minutes of sleep and a Cheerio after all. I backed out of our driveway and ran over our garbage can, which apparently was in cahoots with the car to make my life a living hell.

I hate our garbage can.

My Snotty, Phlegmy Little Girl

Poor Nora has her first runny nose. It's quite impressive, actually. The snot just pours out of her nose and keeps coming. For awhile there I was running for the Kleenex every 30 seconds, then I just got to the point where I would lift up the hem of her dress and wipe her nose off. What? I'm lazy. She doesn't care. Oh and, those snot sucker things? AWESOME. Nothing quite as satisfying as listening to the gurgle of snot getting sucked through a baby's nose into the big bulb thing. But it's not so fun squeezing the snot out of the snot sucker though...it kinda goes everywhere. My counter and cupboards are very shiny right now.

So, because of said runny nose, Nora does not sleep. At all. We were up from 9 pm til THE END OF TIME last night because she kept waking up. Eric finally brought her into bed with us, and then of course neither of us slept because it totally would have sucked to roll over onto her. When Tate sleeps with us, we don't have this problem because A) he would probably bite us if we did roll over onto him and B) he spends all night spinning around in bed and kicking us in the head, boob, gut, nads, what have you before settling into a horizantal position across the bed, thus forcing Eric and I to sleep while clinging to the edge of the bed.

Neither of us were in very good moods this morning. Nora, oddly enough, was extremely chipper. Thanks, babe.

I was very proud of Tater today, though. I took him to a playdate with my playgroup and he only pinched like 3 times. This is about 394354758673 fewer times than he used to pinch, hit, push, kick, bite, sum0-wrestle, body slam, etc, other kids. Progress is being made. Rock on, kid. The best moment of the day was when he would take little triangles of watermelon to all the other kids and just give them to these kids. I loved it. He was like Ghandi or something. Who else was a good sharer? Whoever you think of, he was like that.

My friend Jodi came over tonight. She totally rocks, mostly because she likes to drink like me. We're all about the Mama Juice. By Mama Juice I mean wine, rum, vodka, beer, cough syrup, rubbing alcohol, whatever. It's happy hour all day long around here, baby.

Peace out.