Yawn. Num.

We had an interesting Memorial Day weekend. The kids both got sick on Friday night, so for the first half of the weekend, there was a lot of sleeping going on around here.






Then they both started to perk up a bit by today, and were able to resume their previously adored pastime of stuffing their faces every chance they get:

A boy and his cob.

A funnel cake and Mommy's giant head.

They also both did an extremely impressive job barfing, but somehow I forgot to grab my camera to capture that particular moment on film for posterity. Bad Mommy. It was a fun night, though. Nora somehow managed to puke in her sleep and not wake up, therefor not waking us up (although we were probably awake sopping up Tate's 17 yarf puddles already), so walking into her room the next morning was simply an olfactory delight. Smelled just like daisies.

But like I said, they both perked up enough by today for us to go to a outdoor festival where we spent the afternoon basically putting Tate's life in the hands of scary people with questionable personal and dental hygiene practices as he rode the rides, and paying like $35 for a hot dog. It was a nice afternoon though.

I was able to escape on Saturday night, thanks to my dear husband, and go with some friends to see Night Ranger play in concert at the festival. You know. Night Ranger? That...band? From like the '80s? They play that awesome song "Sister Chistian" and...uh, some other stuff. It was a really fun night.

Sunday we went to a cookout in the neighborhood for a bit. We loaded the kids up on Tylenol and dashed out of the house to take advantage of their drug-induced agreeability and docility. The kids and I were back in the house fairly early on in the evening, and Eric took his turn staying out imbibing in a few beverages. That's how we have to do now. We take turns having fun. It's so much easier and cheaper that way.

So hopefully Tate's fever stays under control and we don't have The Hospital Disaster Part 2. I still break out in hives and a cold sweat when I think of our last experience. If we ever have to check Tate back into a hospital, I'm bringing a flask of vodka with me.

Are You Stinking Me?

Things have been so mellow around here, I feel like I'm living in an alternate universe or something. Tate has been so...human. He hasn't banged his head or tried to pull someone's ear off in forever. No shrieks of "LISTEN TO ME, MOM!" or "NO, OK?? NO! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?". Now it's all "Oh, Norey, did you get hurt? Let me kiss it." or "Mommy, I just love you." or "I can't go poopy on the potty. My booty has no poo in it." Ok, the last one is kind of random but he said it, and it was funny. Maybe because it was said in the same tone of voice that one would use when saying "Oh, me, look at the lovely weather outside."

He still gets kinda feisty in the car though. We were sitting at a red light for the big 2.1 seconds and I heard a big huff and a "Oh my gosh, are you STINKING me??" I'm assuming the little road rager meant to say "kidding" instead of "stinking", but the point came across very well. Nora has added to the road-rage repertoire by yelling "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" at the top of her little lungs. So her vocabulary currently consists of "Hi", "Dada", and "GOOOOOOOOOO." Although I think she's starting to pick up my irritation with Bob's barking at people or dogs or leaves or ants, because when he barks, I'll oftentimes hear a little "BA!" floating out of the front room in a tiny little voice. "BA!!!!" I like to teach my kids really useful stuff. Like how to yell at old people in cars and canines.

Tate is still a singing fool. He sings all the time. Nonstop. There is always some little ditty wafting through the house. Most of the time it's the ABCs or Twinkle Twinkle or Wheels on the Bus, but he's also proficient at making up his own little ditties. The other day I heard "Bob the Builder Loves HuHot", "Ababala Chocolate Milk", and my personal fave "Schmooke Luka Dee". They're always to the tune of an existing song, he just becomes Alan Menken in a 3-year-old form and comes up with completely new, random, usually nonsensical words. And usually while he's tootling about wipers on the bus going "skish skish skish" or asking how to get to "Sefase Street" or trilling about his friends Luke and Emilie going to the park with sticks and Katie Couric, you'll see his own personal little number-one fan behind him with her arms in the air swaying back and forth with a look of rapture on her face. You kind of expect to see a lighter in one hand and a plastic cup half-full of warm, flat beer in the other.

So things have been nice around here. Other people have started to notice Tate's change in general demeanor too, so I really think I'm just not fooling myself here. My friend was with us at the park the other day, and Tate was being all charming and non-fiendish and she just looked at him and said "Tate, what's with all the...niceness lately??". The times, they are a'changing. It's the dawn of a new era.

Maybe.

You Should See the Other Guy

So Tate accidentally got smacked in the eye with a book yesterday. He looks like he got in a bar fight. Come back to this blog in about 18 years and I'll probably have a picture up of him sporting a pretty similar shiner:




I figured since we were at a park, the sun was shining, and both kidlets were acting somewhat human, I'd try and get a picture of the two of them, shiner and all.

Almost...

Not quite...

Awwww. The cuteness, it overwhelms.

Believe it or not, this last picture is not of Tate throwing a hissy fit. He wanted me to take a picture of his neck. So I did. The look of long-suffering agony and anguish was his idea.

I'd write more, but my eyes are still burning from Paula Abdul's unbelievable orange-ness beaming through my TV screen at me. She looked like an Oompa-Loompa. My retinas will take some time to recover. Plus I'm tired. All this watching of "American Idol" and "Dancing With the Stars" and "The Bachelorette" and, uh...I think that's it...really takes it out of a girl.

Beep Beep

We finally got Tate his big birthday present. Hey, he didn't realize that it was almost 2 weeks late. That's the good thing about 3-year-olds...they don't understand a lot of stuff. Take a look at him whoopin' it up in his phat wheels.

"Hellllllp!"

Later, losers.

It was pretty humorous to watch Nora's little radish-top ponytail flowing in the breeze as they speed away down the cul-de-sac at 3 mph. It took Tate awhile to get the hang of it though. He would throw the 'stang into reverse, back all the way down the driveway and into the street, and then instead of throwing the car into "drive" (or "crawl", more accurately), he would get out of the car and attempt to pick it up and manually turn it. Since the car weighed about 14 times as much as he did, he didn't experience a whole lot of success in this endeavor. At least he got some good, frustrated tantrums out of the deal, though.

Once he figured out that he cannot lift something the weight of a small horse, he finally let us show him the magic of the gear stick and then there was really no stopping the kid. Especially since Eric rigged it so the car would not only go in "turtle" mode, it would also go in "rabbit" mode. Tate would step on the gas, the tires would squeal, and they'd go hurtling off into the distance until they were just a little read dot with a ponytail sticking out of the top. That sucker can motor. Eric and I would stand in the driveway and listen to Nora's exalted "ZEEEEEE!!!!"s as they went careening around the circle. I was dying laughing. Tate looked like a total natural, hanging his elbow out of the door, looking over his shoulder as he threw 'er into reverse...the whole deal. Pretty soon I'll look out the window and he'll be taking the Town and Country for a joyride.

The best part was when he got out of the car, came up to Eric and said completely of his own accord, "I love my car, Daddy. Thank you so much for the car." Yeah, I guess Mommy's chopped liver, but still...it was a charming and sweet moment.

Oh, and Nora has learned how to open our back screen door, scuttle out onto the deck, back herself down the stairs and trot over to our swingset a good 50 feet away, all without telling Mommy. Awesome. She's gonna be feisty, that one. One of these days she'll start storing a few of Daddy's brewskis in the Little Tykes playhouse and inviting the other toddlers over for a night of beer and cruisin' in the Cozy Coupe, looking for action.

"I'm My Own Best Friend!"

Nora:

Barf:

Seperated at birth? I hope not. I don't need to be giving birth to any half-man, half-dogs. But the hair and the ears are kind of eerily similar.

Who's Yo Momma

We had a nice weekend. Nothing too exciting, but there were really very few meltdowns, tantrums, chucking of large objects at other people's heads, moments of public humiliation, etc. That's a success in my book.

On Saturday we took the kidlets to a thing at Lambeau Field. It was just some event type...thing for kids. They got to do such things as...


...pet a goat and get really excited!

...and get tattoos and not be too sure about it!!

After that, I went in to work for an hour, and was so grateful to my client for being female, clean, and not a disgusting nasty old perv, I gave her like the best massage EVER. Because, you see, my last client before that did not give me those same considerations. I had my first true experience with a dirty old man in my massage room, and it was not cool. I have no desire to see a grandpa's schlong. Apparently he thought I was simply DYING to see it and proudly put it out on display. Barfo. But anyway. This female client on Sat tipped me $15. Clean people are awesome.

After that, we went to a bowling alley. Here's Tate bowling. He did it for a whole 8.5 minutes. Then we went into the game room and he threw an 8.5 minute fit because Eric told him he'd be able to get him a koosh ball out of the claw machine thingie and he couldn't. I don't know how on earth Eric ever thought he'd be smarter than the claw machine, but whatever.

My Mother's Day started with breakfast in bed. Breakfast in bed consisted of Tate tiptoeing into my room at about 8 am, thrusting a semi-stale cracker in my hand and whispering "Happy Birthday, Mommy. I love you", before scampering back out. It was the best cracker ever. After that we went to church where Nora discovered the joy of slamming the kneelers against the floor and Tate randomly yelled out "Luke! EMMMMILLLLLIEEEE!!!!" at the most quiet times of the service. He did not actually see Luke and Emilie at Mass, he must have just been remembering some awesome time with them or...something.

Then we had brunch, came home, I put Nora down for a nap, Tate and Eric left to go watch baseball in a bar (yes, really. We take our 3 year old to bars. So what.) and I gave myself the best Mother's Day present ever, which was a nice long nap on the couch. It was kickass.

Somehow, though, I still had to clean up the kitchen. I mean, it had been like 3 days, so it was kind of dire. I had SPECIFICALLY been holding out on cleaning up until today rolled around because there was no way I would be made to actually clean on my day, right? Wrong. Sigh. Oh well, I'll just return the favor and make Eric scrub the toilets on Father's Day.

Happy Birthday, Tater

It's been a crazy 3 years around here. I don't know how a little baby can go from here:

stop here:


here:

and here:

and end up here, in the blink of my eye.

That little guy has definitely made the past three years...oh, let's say...stimulating. Had he been born 3 hours earlier, on Cinco De Mayo, I would have pushed for naming him Paco. Hey, why not. Paco Sonnenberg really has a ring to it, you gotta admit. But he held out, and May 6th has never just been a random date on the calendar to me since.

No doubt has there been lots of frustration and head-butting, but the absolute joy that he can bring to me usually (usually) overrides all the scream-worthy moments. He's smart, cute, sweet, and funny. Really.

Happy Birthday little Tater-bug. I love you.

Screeeeeeeeeeeeech.

I decided to face all my demons, fears, and apprehensions yesterday and make another foray to the grocery store while outnumbered by my children. Any remnant of common sense has pretty much be relegated to a small, desperate, fading voice in the back of my subconscious at this point, so it's quite easy to ignore.




Tate once again decided that he should have his own cart. I again ignored the little sing-song in the back of my brain going "You're an iiidiot, you're an iiidiot, you're an-" (that was me stomping on common sense and bringing it's song to an abrupt halt) and said sure, fine, whatever. Let's make this trip one to remember. It's been a good week since our last adventure that cumulated in me quivering in a corner.




Tate picked the Demon Screecher Cart From Hell. Seriously, as we were walking around people were covering their ears and cowering under the potatoes. It sounded like a gigantic rat was screaming as someone dug it's entrails out with a spintery wooden spoon that had a rusty nail on the end. My ears were practically bleeding by the end of it. Then to add to the cacophony Tate decided to merrily sing "The Wheels on the Bus" at the top of his voice. It sounded a little something like this"

"SSCCCCCREEEEEEEEEEThewheelsonthebusgoSQQQQQQQQQEEEEEEARRRRRRRsaysmoveonbackmoveonREEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSQQQQQQQQQQQthemommysonthebusgoshhshhshSHHHHHHHARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGQQQQQQQQQQ"


It was a lovely medley. People alternated between laughing at Tate and shuddering in sheer despair over the never ending auditory torture they were subjected to as they desperately tried to pick out a nice cut of pork tenderloin and get the hell out of there.



Check-out was fine. Tate likes to take all the stuff out of his little cart and put it on the belt himself. It's a good way for him to help. It's a great way for me to realize that apparently we're buying 3 bags of nasty barbecue flavored Cheetos. I don't think so, pal.



Leaving the store, I turned my back on Tate for 1.3 seconds to try and convince Nora that hanging out of the cart by her little toe wasn't such a good idea and he jetted. I had a slight moment of "Oh-my-God-where-is-my-KID??" until a kindly elderly dude teetering past me pointed me to the gigantic freezer where the bagged ice is kept. Apparently not only is it an ideal home for ice, but also for slightly wacky almost 3-year-olds. I got over there just as his little rump was disappearing through the door. He's gonna be the next kid to get stuck in one of those claw machines at Wal-Mart or something.



Well, Nora is currently wandering around with no shirt on and gigantic slimy nuggets of mandarin oranges in her hair, her pants and diaper are falling down so she's showing off her impressive mini plumbers crack, and she has a piece of ravioli stuck to her cheek. Tate just started howling in panic because he dislodged his little Cars toilet seat and almost fell into the big toilet. It's a high-class day here at our house. High Class.

Paaarrr---tay.

So I thought by tonight I'd have the energy to write this huge long blog about Tate's birthday party yesterday.



I don't.



Too much sitting around gabbing today with various people. Too much imbibing in rum and Cokes. Too much running after Nora trying to keep her from A) drinking 3-year-old rainwater out of a random bucket B) gallumping into the street and C) falling headfirst off our swingset into a pile of rocks.



But it was a great time. Tate had a blast and so did the 20,000 other kids that came. Or 17 kids. I don't know. Once you get more than three 2-year-olds in one spot they all kind of blur together into a giant larvae of insanity. The party went as well as I could have hoped. Well, I forgot knives. Oh, and I accidentally got those stupid trick candles for his cake. Poor Tate will never trust another birthday candle as long as he lives. I felt bad. He just...kept blowing.

So thanks to everyone who came and made the day special. I have no pictures to share at the moment because our camera was lost, but I will at some point. I enlisted my brother-in-law, who takes pictures at every given opportunity, to capture the day. Tate smiled? Click. Tate ran around? Click. Tate breathed? Or looked at another kid? Or moved his pinky finger a millimeter to the left? Click click click.

It was a great day.