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.