I'm Busy.

Tate and I were reading one of hs 300 Sesame Street books tonight and he was having a good ol' time looking at a page of Bert and Ernie preparing an elaborate meal in their little apartment. He was doing a great job of pointing at random things and identifying them, such as hot dogs, pancakes, grapes, corn, and jam. (Ok. Now that I think about it, what the hell kind of meal were those two making?) He pointed at a can of whipped cream and this is what transpired:

Tate: "Asshat?" (No, he has still not mastered saying "what's that" correctly. I'm not pushing it. This way is much more humorous, especially in public.)

Me: "Oh, that's a can of whipped cream."

Tate: "No, Mommy. That's beer. Beer."

Me: "No, honey, not everything that comes in a can is beer. That's whipped cream."

Tate, looking extremely puzzled: "Where's the beer? They need beer!"

I was going to tell him that Bert and Ernie always seemed more like wine or martini guys to me, but I didn't think it was worth it. The problem was solved when he pointed at a bottle of ketchup and quite confidently proclaimed it to be red beer. There ya go.

His new thing when asked to do something is to turn down our offer quite regretfully, informing us that he is "busy." Yeah, busy crawling around on the floor looking for something to chuck at the dog's head. Or he could be going to the refrigerator, looking for a carton of milk to pull out and place in another room without our knowledge. That does take a lot of time and initiative. But no, most of the time he decrees his business while lounging on the couch, waiting for his next devilish plan to take form in his little head. Tonight, that plan showed itself in the form of putting penne noodles on Spencer's back and seeing how long they stuck there. Gotta say, those suckers just grab on and hold. There may still be one or two on there. I'm sure Nora will rectify that situation soon enough.

I Drown. I Drown in the Clutter.

I know I've mentioned this before, but my house will. Not. Stay. Clean. It was spic and span last night and by 10 am today...goodbye carpet! Nice seeing you while it lasted! So long, countertops! May we meet again someday! Both of my children have made it their mission to throw every conceivable thing they come across onto the floor. Hey, it's nice to have purpose in your life.

Here are some things I've picked up off my floor in the last couple days:

• A pot holder with a yellow plastic triangle stuck in it
• An empty prescription bottle from 2005
• A can of enchilada sauce
• One of Tate's shoes, from the pair of shoes I bought him recently that he refuses to wear. He seems to think they will cause his feet to catch fire or something. The other shoe was on the windowsill. I think it was trying to escape.
• One of Spencer's toenails. Yes, gross. At least Nora didn't eat it.
• 3000 magazines shredded into 39646903450000 pieces by Nora the Paper Eater. She seems to really enjoy purusing the lasting hoochie antics of Paris Hilton in my People magazines. Perusing, then eating.
• A miniature plastic A&W mugh with a french fry and AA battery in it
• A Christmas card
• A paper plate from Tate's 1st birthday party in 2007

I don't know where it comes from. Well, some of it probably comes from Nora's forays into random kitchen and laundry room drawers. She's very proud of her newfound talent of opening drawers and chucking everything in them to their death on the floor. She's merciless. Many a plastic cup has met it's doom being hurled from her little paw. Gravity rocks, if you ask her.

So I push forward, through the hodgepodge of random artifacts from our life strewn about my house. One of these days I'm certain I'll find a $100 bill on my floor. I have no idea where it would come from, but I've found stranger things floating around my house. It could happen.

I asked Tate to help me pick up today and he said "No, Mommy. I don't do that kind of thing. I don't think so." Ah. Well, good to know for next time. He's been a stinker of epic proportions lately, and it's actually been wearing on me quite a bit. I won't get into details because I just don't feel like it, but I will just say this. It's amazing how crappy I feel due to judgemental people. I don't appreciate it, and I hate that I let other people make me feel like I'm doing something wrong as a mother, but there you go. I let it affect me way too much. One of these days I'll just punch someone in the face the next time they give me or my two year old child a dirty look. They'd be in a crapload of pain, but probably not surprised. I seem like the type of person to do that, I'm sure.

So next time you see a screaming, tornadic blur of a little boy running around wreaking havoc and a stressed-out, frantic mother chasing him around trying to get him to stop hitting or pinching or pushing over racks in a department store or licking the conveyer belt at the grocery store or whatever, think before you give a nasty look. I've got a mean left hook.

Photo FAIL Part 2

Let's have another laugh or two at my kidlets' expense.

This is what Nora looks like after she pulls the ponytail out of her hair:

And, well....Tate.

This picture would actually be cute if he didn't have remnents of the 6 M&Ms he had eaten two hours before left on his face. Well, cute, and...kinda smarmy.



Ok, and here Nora's totally reminding me of some crabby old lady completely dissatisfied with her Blue Plate Special. She looks very disgruntled.

Ethel! This Early Bird Special sucks!!

Busy Little Bees

We've had a busy week. We took a little mini-break and loaded up the kids and went to Wisconsin Dells to stay at a resort with an indoor waterpark. We went with a family that we're friends with and had a great time.

Ok, well, the drive down wasn't so hot. (You know there had to be something, right?) Sue and her kids rode with us since her husband had to work late, so we were packed nice and tight into our van, with me and Eric in the front, my kidlets in the middle and Sue and her two offspring in the back. I could hear our van groaning as we all climbed in. Things were fine for a good, oh, 10 minutes, and then Nora started getting pissed off about something. I think was the fact that she had to stare at three people she barely knew in the backseat. It was fun at first and then she realized that they weren't going anywhere and it totally threw her little world out of balance.

So after 900 hours of her screaming and smearing nose goo all over her face and hair, we decided to do something about it and pulled over to make a bottle. For some reason, this bottle was not acceptable for Her Majesty and was promptly rejected. Figuring that well, we tried, we stuck her back in her car seat and continued driving, as she continued screaming. Finally, since I knew there were three other kids in the back trying to sleep, and poor Sue probably was feeling a little ill watching Nora use snot as hair gel, I lumbered over the center console into the back. This is where I stuffed my big butt in between the two captain's chairs and squatted on the floor, facing backwards, to try and convince her to eat.

Now, this was a lot of fun. I get motion sickness really easily, so facing backwards while squatting on the floor of a moving vehicle is not really on my top 10 list of of fun things to do. At least I wasn't subjecting Sue and her kids to the lovely sight of my butt crack sticking out of my jeans. I saved that for Eric in the front seat, everytime he turned around. Plus my legs were completely asleep and I was pretty sure that my toes were turning black due to lack of circulation. But hey, as long as Nora was silent.

So we get to the resort, check into our condo, and proceed to have a lot of fun for the next two days. Well, waking up at 5 am with the kids wasn't the best part, but when you have three kids sharing a bedroom, they spend a lot of time in there plotting how to make things just a little more difficult for their poor unsuspecting parents. I kept expecting to hear little evil cackles wafting out under the door, and at some point a declaration of "...And then the world will be MINE! MUA HA HA!!" That would have been Tate, obviously.

And please give me the crappy mother award because I took about 5 pictures the whole time, and they all ended up being of a big splash of water with Tate's foot or other random appendage sticking out. I never quite got the shot I was going for. But I was having too much fun playing with the kids to be bothered to actually preserve the moment for later.

And since it's been awhile since we've had a Grocery Store Trip From Hell blurb, let's go there for a moment. I had to take both kids to the store yesterday since we had no milk or eggs or, well...food, in our house and I heard that feeding your children is generally a good idea. We walk in and Tate starts yelling for his own cart. Last time Eric had taken him, he let him push one of those little carts with the flag that states "I'm Helping!" It did not, he informed me grimly upon returning home, go well. After the 4000th time of Tate picking some random can of tuna, baked beans, or sardines off the shelf and chucking into his cart and Eric discovering it 3 aisles later and having to go back and return it to the shelf, he decided that it was not working. The shopping trip commenced with Eric pushing the big cart, pulling the little cart, and ignoring a squalling Tate tucked under his arm.

So anyway, no little cart for Tate, which of course turned into a huge protest on his part. As some random dude observed as he walked by us, Tate was "not a happy camper". Thanks, buddy. I had no idea. Even better, there were no racing car carts left where the kids could both sit in the drivers seat, so I had to use a regular cart and put Nora in the seat and Tate in the actual cart, where he promptly got completely buried by groceries. It looked like he had no legs. Although, that was actually kind of a good thing. The kid can't stand up and try to jump out of the cart when he's got 30 pounds of potatoes and apples pinning his legs down.

And the best part. We leave the store, it's sleeting out, Nora's hollering for lunch, etc etc etc. I march up to our car, wonder why the hell th remote start didn't work, haul Tate out of the cart and frantically try to unlock the back doors with the remote. Not working. I try to unlock the front doors and the back gate. Nope. At this point both kids are screaming, I'm holding on to Tate by his hood so he doesn't run away, Nora's trying to climb out of the cart, the groceries are getting wet, and I'm freaking out, yelling "WHAT THE HELL??" because obviously someone out there hates me and has tampered with my remote control. Just as I'm wondering who I could possibly call to freak out at and insist they come and help me, I look more closely at the van and realize I can see my reflection in the side of it. Which means it's clean. Which means it's not our van.

I locate our van 3 aisles over and leave. Really, what else is there to say.

Except this. If any of you live in Green Bay, have a light blue Town and Country, and go to Festival Foods on the East Side very often, you're gonna have to sell your car. It's causing me way too much confusion and consternation. Thanks a bunch.

Yawn.

I'm so tired I could fall asleep like this:

Tate woke up this morning at 5 am. Sucky, yeah, but nothing I haven't done before, a bajillion times. Although it was extra special fun this morning, because he rolled over (he had crawled into our bed around 4, one of his really great, enjoyable new habits), looked at me, and burst into terrified, panicked tears. Because, you see, I am not Daddy. I'm just this horrible freak of nature known as Mommy. It took a good 45 minutes for him to stop wailing and asking if Daddy was downstairs. I kept trying to tell him Daddy was at work but apparently giving that answer earns one a kick in the shin. He finally calmed down, just in time for Nora to wake up. And the day's festivities have begun.

The crazy thing is, yesterday was worse. How could it be worse than waking up at 5 am next to a crying kid, you ask? Why, waking up at 3:50 am next to a crying kid, silly! And that's exactly what I did. Nora cut me a break and lounged in her crib til 5:30...what a pal. So Tate was awake from 3:50 til about 8:45, when he passed out on the couch as evidenced above. I was all ready to go back to sleep since Nora had gone down for an early nap but as we all know, my children do everything in their power to ensure I never get any sleep, ever. Nora woke up 15 minutes after Tate fell asleep. But get this. Tate slept until almost 2 pm. Pretty much the whole freaking day. 8:45 til 2. And Nora went down for her nap at 1:45! Another 15 minutes of silence! I know, right? My options of what to do for those glorious 900 seconds were simply endless.

So yesterday pretty much passed by in a fog for me. I vaguely remember talking to a couple friends on the phone but it's just a distant memory at this point. Pam and Nicole, if you're reading this, I have no idea what I said to you guys. Hopefully it wasn't anything more offensive and moronic than usual.

In other news, I got Tate some Elmo underpants just for the hell of it. The kid won't even look at his potty, much less sit on it, but I figured he could just kind of hang out with the underwear, they could get to know each other, forge a relationship, become confidantes, whatever. He does seem to like his little mini-briefs, and keeps trying to slip him over his head which makes for some amusing moments. He won't do it for the camera, though. Kid's too smart for his own good. He knows those pictures would be trotted out regularly at family gatherings for years to come.

He also has this toy phone that has Buzz Lightyear on it that he's obssessed with. So obssessed he can never remember Buzz's name, so we have this exchange about 35083 times a day.

Tate: "Who's that?"

Me or Eric: "Buzz Lightyear."

Tate: "Yeah! Buzz Whitehair!"

Me: "Sure."

30 seconds later

Tate: "Mommy, who is that right there? That guy, right there?"

Me: "That's still Buzz Lightyear"

Tate: "HAHAHA!! BUZZ WHITEHAIR!"

30 seconds later

Tate: "Who's-"

Me: "BUZZ. LIGHT. YEAR"

Tate: "Who is that, Mommy?"

Me: BANG BANG BANG. That's me pounding my head against the wall.

Seriously. 35083 times a day. At least Nora can't talk yet. At this point it's all squeals and growls. Which is fun too.

The four of us are going to Wisconsin Dells tomorrow to stay in a waterpark resort for a couple days. We're renting a condo with another family that we're friends with. It could be a blast, or a complete, unmitigated disaster. Sue, consider this my advance apology. Just in case it's needed. All I know is I'm wearing my kids out during the day. Like, to the point of dropping over. They'll sleep then, right? You'll see Tate climbing up the 40 steps to the top of the waterslide all by himself, over and over, pulling a 20 lb raft. Hell, Nora will do it too. Tate can run laps in the lazy river, against the currant. I'll float by with a drink in one hand and a stopwatch in the other.

We'll see how that works.

Apparently, I Suck.

Tate has recently decided that I'm a big loser. Eric, apparently, is the coolest guy on the planet. I'm going to need to have a serious talk with that kid...in what world is Eric cooler than me??

But all kidding aside, it kinda sucks. I have to bribe him, threaten him, lay on him, drug him up with Benedryl, whatever, just to get him to let me have the supreme honor of changing his diaper. Apparently it can only be Daddy who gets the joy of wiping poo off of a wiggly little butt. And no, I don't drug him with Benedryl. The other things I mentioned, yes. I'm actually more tempted to take a nice gulp or eight of the B-dryl myself. I imagine the screams would be a lot more muffled that way, and kicks to me shin would be nothing but a glancing blow. Barely noticable. Ah, to be floating around in a lovely fog of blissful ignorance.

Today after Eric went to work, we had a tantrum that will be spoken of for years to come. This was DefCon 5, people. I imagine people down the block were diving for cover upon hearing what they thought was an air raid siren come wailing through their windows. No, sorry guys...just my kid sreaming, because Daddy wasn't home to put his train track back together. Apparently if Mommy touches the train tracks they will burst into flames. So this was a typical exchange:

Tate, through a stream of tears and snot. Phlegm, too: "Fix it! Fix the tracks! AAAAAHHH"
Me: "Ok, Tate, give it to me and I'll put it back together"
Tate, trying to clock me on the head with a track portion: "NOOOOOOO! JUST DADDY! ONLY DADDY DO IT!"
Me: "Well, it's me or nothin' kid" as I get up to walk away
Tate: "Mommy, fix my track, please?" I start to walk back and reach for the track. "NOOOOOOOOOO!! WANT DADDY! WHERE'S DADDY??"

Wherever he is, it ain't here. Lucky bastard. This went on for way too long and just as my head was about to explode and grant me some sweet relief from the caterwauling of a deranged two year old, he climbed into my lap and passed out hardcore. It was pretty funny, but not as funny as yesterday when he fell asleep, tipped over and went right off the couch onto the floor. Didn't even flinch.

And on the subject of these damn trains, each time you buy a new little train dude they come with a little card that has their pictures and likes, dislikes, astrological signs, ideal first date, favorite alcoholic beverage, whatever. I don't actually read the things, I just spend all day looking for a 2''x3'' card in my pit of a house. Try that if you're bored sometime. It's extremely relaxing and non-frustrating, especially when you're being trailed by a little boy yowling for the Oliver Card. It's been in my laundry hamper, my dishwasher, a shoe in the front closet, the dog's food bowl, and my underwear drawer. These dudes like to get around. If they're smart they'll start hanging out in the liquor cabinet. I'm already dreading bedtime tonight though, because he's been wanting to sleep with the Salty card and I'll be buggered if I know where the heck that thing is. It's not going to be pretty.

Oh well. He's not all craziness. He's had his usual moments of humor peppered in with the insanity lately. Like yesterday when he was playing with Nora and looked at me very seriously saying "We have to respect our friends, Mommy. They need respect." Now, if he would just learn what the word respect actually means, we'd be golden. We also bought him a stuffed monkey at the mall last week and when I asked him what the monkey's name was, he said "Ummm...Snowy." There ya go. Snowy the Monkey. I find that just very random. But wouldn't expect anything less from the little guy.

Eric's working all weekend so by Sunday night I'm sure I'll be reduced to a babbling pile of goo. Although tomorrow night is dinner and pedicures with the girls. Ahh...a shining beacon of light in my world of poop, runny noses, and general clutter, disarray and pandemonium.

She's a Nut.

Nora, that is. A peanut. I just took her to her 9 month appointment and here are her stats:

Length: 27 1/2'' (45%tile)
Weight: 18# (41%tile)
Head: 46 cm (78%tile)

Ok, so she's not like freakishly small, just smaller than Tate ever was. I don't have his 9 month stats for some reason, but really all you have to do is like double whatever Nora's stats were and that was him. He was probably about 40 lbs at this point. Well, close, anyway.

But I'd like to proudly point out that although she's got a petite little frame, at least my girl is rockin' the Herculean head that we are just so proud of and famous for in my family. More room for brains, I say. Or just a really dense skull. Whichever.

Not much has been going on around here, hence the lack of blogging. Sorry. Well, there was yesterday, but that's one of those days I kind of tend to block out of my memory. Tate had been doing really well lately...being very polite, not hitting, kissing his sister, etc. I don't know how I keep falling for his evil plan, but I do. As soon as I start to believe we MIGHT be coming out of the "My Son is a Devil and Quite Mischevious, Which is a Word I'm Just Using Because I Love Him Too Much to Use a Different, More Accurate One" stage of our lives, BAM! He chucks me right back in.

We went to a playdate yesterday and while he wasn't horrible, he wasn't great either. Well, until he tried to push a kid down some steps. That went from not being quite horrible to crossing over into horrible-land. So we left. Then we had people over for dinner, and I just had a sinking feeling all day that it was not going to go well. I've learned that sinking feelings are usually there for a reason, and what do ya know, I was right. Having all these kids in his house just put Tate into overdrive. So many kids to hit! Where to start?? You could hear his little brain whirring and I kept expecting to see his eyeballs start spinning around in his sockets. He spent more time in his room than he did downstairs. Although I have to admit, sometimes I left him in there for a little longer than neccessary because it was just so...nice, having those 5 minutes to sit and not have to keep jumping up and pulling him off someone.

Oh well. My sanity is pretty much already gone. It was nice knowing it, but I'm not counting on being reacquianted with it anytime in the next decade or so. Although I've heard it's taken up residence in the Caribbean somewhere. Maybe I should go search for it there.

The Weirdness is Still Here

I've been conversing with Tate quite a bit lately, as a mother tends to do with her child, and some of the things that come out of his mouth just blow me away. Some are cute, some are funny, some are....weird.

Today he was running around doing Very Important Things while I was getting dinner started. I kept asking him to shut the laundry room door so the baby wouldn't get in there and he kept kinda vaguely blowing me off (at two? Seriously?? I thought I had a good 5 or 6 years before the selective deafness really set in). Finally it came to this:

Me: "TATE! Please shut the door, honey! Mommy's busy!"
Tate: "OH MY GOSH! OK, SWEETHEART!"

Well, at least the love is there.

Also, this is just so....odd. Tate is obsessed with our grocery store. Or, as he calls it, "goo-see cah". Like, he wakes up in the morning and asks to go to the goo-see cah. Or he's eating lunch and in between bites asks to go to the goo-see ca. Lately he's been getting really specific and asking to go the "Festi-ba", which is Festival, the store by our house. This morning Eric was looking to get the demon out of the house for a bit and give me a break and he asked Tate if he wanted to go swimming. Tate replied he would much rather go to the goo-see cah.

This went on for quite awhile. "Tate, honey, Daddy's going to take you swimming! You can play in the fountains!" "NO! Want to go to Festi-ba! Festi-ba, please!" Pretty soon it escalated into a screaming toddler banging his heels on the floor pleading for a grocery store fix. It's like his version of crack. He needs a hit of the fruit department and deli counter at least once a week to keep the shakes away.

So, they went to Festi-ba. I needed milk anyway.

And good Lord, when that kid gets a thought in his head he latches onto it and does. not. let. go. He has this little card that came with one of his Thomas tracks that has a picture of Peter Sam on it. Peter Sam is this weird, kinda hickish train. But this is a synopsis of about a 10 minute chunk of my afternoon today.

Tate: "Mommy, I got a card! Look, there's a card in my pocket!"
Me: "Yep, cool!"
Tate: "Mommy, look! Is that a card? Yeah! It's a card! Of Peter Sam! In my pocket!"
Me: "Yeah, Peter Sam! He's pretty hot!"
Tate: "Hmmm....where's my card? Where'd it go? Oh, there it is! In my pocket! Mommy, it was in my pocket!"
Me: "Wow, that is totally amazing!"
Tate: "I have a card! Peter Sam is on my card! Do you have a card? I have a card!"
Me: "No, I don't have a card. I'd like a nice big glass of wine, though. You got that in your pocket, by chance?"

And on and on and on. It's like a broken record. He finally wandered into the other room, still chattering about that stupid Peter Sam and I was able to get a moment of peace to wait for the ringing in my ears to subside. All was good until I was in the bathroom daring to escape to pee, when there was a knock on the door and a little voice calling:

"Mommy? Did you know I have a card?"

You don't say.

Are You Feeling Tired? A Bit Sluggish, Perhaps?

Then come and suck my family room carpet.

How's that for a random statement? Well, the reason I'm offering up my carpet for your sucking pleasure is that my dear daughter managed to upend an entire cup of coffee on it this morning. Now, I know that this is my fault. As those of you who personally know me are aware, I can usually be seen clutching a cup of coffee in my hand, desperately extracting every last ounce of caffeine out of it. Nora has obviously seen me with these cups of coffee many times and decided that it was time for her to be just like her mama. And who can blame the dear thing? Who wouldn't want to be like me? So, upon spying the full cup of cafe mocha I so brilliantly left on the floor next to the couch, she scuttled right over to it and attempted to pour it into her mouth. Unfortunately she really only managed to pour it all over her lap and the carpet. Don't worry, it wasn't hot. It was about an hour or so old.

Once I came back into the room from being gone for .05 seconds, I discovered the brown lake on my carpet and went into freak mode. We've only had the carpet for about 11 months and have narrowly escaped any huge, lifelong stains until this point. I grabbed the carpet spray stuff and dumped it all over the stain and started scrubbing madly. Ironically enough, the commercial playing on the TV as I was fervently and futilely scouring my carpet was the one for this thing:

Freakish, smug, uber-annoying gnat of a man: "Cola! Wine! COFFEE! Sham-wow works as a vacuum on your carpet!!!! Watch as it completely SUCKS the coffee out of this piece of carpet! It SUCKS right down to the bottom! You watching this, cameraman??"

Me: "SUCK THIS, BUDDY."

Tate came home with Eric in the middle of my scrubbing adventure, walked into the family room, assessed the situation, turned around and trotted back to me a minute later, cheerfully offering me a bottle of Windex. Because there there's nothing like a carpet with streak-free shine, is there? I thanked him for being so considerate, then jumped up to re-lock the cabinet under the sink where we keep the cleaning stuffm which I had very stupidly left wide open. Last thing I need is Tate trying to SoftScrub the inside of his nose or something.

Mom, I know you're reading this and hyperventilating but don't worry...I was very successful in my de-coffeeing adventure.

Also, I've decided that Nora no longer looks like David Cook with the hair and everything. No, now thanks to her latest hairstyle she bears an uncanny resemblence to this lovely fellow:

I gave birth to Gary Busey.

The Norey Dance

I like this video, so all you lucky suckers get to view it too. Nora takes her rocking back and forth very seriously. Make sure your volume is turned up so you can hear Tate's devilish laugh in the background.

Ok, I have no idea how to rotate it so it's right side up. Just lay on your left side and watch it that way or something. Plus, I swear my family room isn't that messy anymore. Really.

Happy New Year

Ok, I've never been one to make New Year's resolutions, mostly because I'm probably one of the laziest, easiest distracted people out there. Why set myself up for failure? But this year I don't have a choice. After trying on like 6 different shirts last night to go to a party and realizing that I looked like a whale in each and every one of them, I decided that I need to lose a little weight. Ok, more than a little. I've got the gut o' doom going on right now. Would you like proof? I'll give you proof. Why the hell not. Let's just throw it out there for the world to see.

The ciiiiiiiircle of liiiiiiiiife.

Cute picture, right? Me holding my brand new neice in the classic Lion King pose. I should be standing on a cliff in Africa, but my grandma's living room will have to suffice. So there's me who looks like I didn't bother to look in a mirror that day, and baby who of course is adorable. Then your eyes continue down and you gasp and think:

"Is Melissa 8 months pregnant?? How is that even possible when she has a 9 month baby? Look at that gut!"

Then I crawl into your thoughts and say:

"No, no, no. That's not a human baby in there. That's the recent medical phenomenon known as the Food Baby. It's made up of grease, salt, sugar and high fructose corn syrup. And there's no nine-month gestational period as with a regular baby. This one can bake in you for years. And it can spontaniously turn into twins, triplets, or octuplets. I think I shall name mine Jabba the Hut. Hopefully his twin sister Fatima will get nipped in the bud."

Well, it's either a food baby or this evil little dude making my stomach expand disgustingly. Hard to tell at this point.Feed me, bitch!

I just hate my stomach. Here is another perfectly good picture ruined by the Gut From Hell.
I just look like all kinds of out of whack there. The funny thing is, at this New Year's party I was at, just about all the women were standing around at one point comparing problem areas on their bodies and pretty much ripping their physical selves to shreds. I think it's a woman thing...we always end up either talking about our labor stories or bemoaning or lack of waistline. The guys, on the other hand, stood on the outskirts of our little Circle of Self-Hatred and guzzled beer while rolling their eyes and generally staying as quiet as possible. They know to not say anything. That's a husband thing.
But moving on. Am I the only person who thinks this is one of the funniest thing ever?

Rudolph the foot-headed reindeer.

There's nothing like artwork made from your kid's bare foot. I can't stop laughing at it. That thing is never getting thrown away because I love it.

Happy 2009, everyone. Feel free to harangue me at various points this year about keeping my resolution. If I scream at you to mind your own damn business I don't really mean it.

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.