Is anyone out there?

What do you do when your mom is out of town, your friends' husbands are all home for the weekend having family time, your sister is a bitch and probably isn't even in town anyway, you can't get a hold of your mother-in-law to define what 'later on' means, you've just put in the last-resort phone call to your husband begging him to come home immediately and he says no?

What do you do when it's almost 3pm and you're still wearing the clothes you slept in, which incidentally, are the clothes you were wearing during the day yesterday. the baby finally stopped trying to climb up your legs only because she found an empty beer bottle in the recycling bin, has just discovered it makes a cool noise when banged on the somewhat new hardwood floor and is alternately mouthing the outside of it?

What do you do when you're sure that you are permanently damaging your five year old's self-esteem, you've exhausted the television-as-babysitter sanity method and you're about to murder the boy foe continually doing things that are probably normal five year old behaviors but when accumulated together make you want to tear your ears off of your head and there is no one around to stop you?

Answers: Emergency help line, rubber room, tranquilizer gun, respectively. These are my wish list items.

What's your story?

You know how they interview each contestant on Jeopardy? Just a little tid-bit that tells a little about who they are...what's up with the things people say? They come up with the stupidest facts to tell the world about their lives. Some guy's biggest thing in life was that he once got invited to a party for Barack Obama (boy I hope I spelled that right). This was like 15 years ago, and he didn't even go. Swell. Oh, how about the lady last night who once voted in an election and had her picture taken and put in the paper because she was one of only 100+ people who actually voted. Fantastic.

Now that I'm actually writing about this I can't even remember any of the other stupid things I've heard. They're that trivial. Why can't anyone talk about what they do for a living, or how many kids they have? Those would be things that people can relate to. If they want 'different' stories to tell can't they come up anything vaguely interesting?

Anyway, speaking of the president, a couple weeks ago we were riding in the car when Zach heard something on the radio that prompted him to tell me, "Did you know that 75% of Americans don't know the president's name?" Are you serious? What a ridiculously inflated statistic. How could anyone believe that? Why would they even try to say such a thing? My response to Zach, "Did you know that 95% of statistics are completely fabricated?"

Gusfest

What do you get when you pour three hundred pounds of dried corn on the floor and then throw in six boys ages three to five?



The coolest birthday party ever!

This was Barb's idea of a 'simple' party...hehe. But she is crazy like that and that's why we love her! And can I just talk about the 'cake' for a minute. When I walked in I actually thought that was a dump truck full of dirt. But no, it was a dump truck full of broken up chocolate cake and chocolate pudding. Oh yeah.

The Heating Pad

I don't seem to have good luck with electric heating pads. I've posted about this before just incase you don't believe what I'm about to say. Read the seventh paragraph, the one that starts, "after waking up this morning..." Notice how casually I mention the exploding heating pads, like it's something that happens to me all the time.

The other night I was on the couch nursing Sabine when I saw a red light blinking on the heating pad. It wasn't even on or anything, just plugged in and sitting next to me. I picked it up and tried to get the light to stop flashing at me. In hindsight, I'm now seeing this as a warning from the heating pad that I (being the klutz that I am) was too close to it. If there was a voice to go along with the pulsating red light it would have been repeating in a robotic voice Warning, warning, please step away! Self-destruct mode initiated.

Then it exploded on me, less than a foot from Sabine's face. There was a big flash, pop and shriek. The lights went out and Zach yelled, "Jesus Christ!! No more heating pads! You're not allowed to use them anymore!" I had totally blown a circuit. He went downstairs to reset the circuit (or however you would describe such an action) and the lights came back on revealing black char all over my one hand.

Why do I have such bad luck with electrical devices? It's like all heating pads have been warned about me and they blacklisted me or something...

Sabine 7& 3/4

After I posted the other day I realized there was some stuff I'd meant to write about Sabine which I left out. I also wanted to put in some more pictures. And now that I'm sitting here to finish up I'm realizing that she's only a week away from being eight months old. So I might as well go ahead and make this the 'Month 8' post, or 7 & 3/4.

So as I was saying, she plows through things, she gets to whatever it is she wants, she's a force to be reckoned with. And in turn, if there is something Sabine doesn't want to do, there's a good chance you might not get to do it. For instance: Changing her diaper. Sabine does not like getting her diaper changed. She doesn't like getting into her carseat. She doesn't liked to be restrained in any way, shape or form. She flips her little body this way and that, tossing herself all about, trying to get out of your grips. Oh, and getting dressed is The Worst. It wasn't always like that, it used to be fun dressing her, we made a little game out of it. Now, it is like you might as well be killing her.

Sabine feeds herself Cheerios, but still can't figure out how to eat food from a spoon. She hasn't totally grasped the idea of opening her mouth when you come at her with the spoon. But she can ask for more; she uses the ASL sign for 'more'. She claps her hands. She loves music, and clapping her hands to music. Sabine asks for music to be put on, I swear to God. She does her little singing voice "aaahhh" and sometimes lightly claps her hands and you can just tell she's making a request. Then when the music is put on she really starts bopping around and clapping, or shaking one of the instruments.

Also Zach pointed out a typo of mine, where I wrote about how much she loves Jacob. I meant to say that she "cracks up" at him, but instead I wrote 'craps'. Typo, or Freudian slip?

Here's some more pictures:

Valentine's Date?

We needed new tires on the Civic and Jamie 'knows a guy' so on Saturday morning we all headed down to the place in two vehicles. Jamie went inside to get everything squared away while Zach and I loaded our stuff and the kids into Jamie's van.

We needed to go to the store to pick up some supplies for later on because we were going to dinner at Jen and Dan's. So my mom and Jamie drove us to the grocery store while we waited for the Civic. Upon arriving they decided they didn't really need anything so they were just going to wait in the parking lot and read the newspaper. It was a nice sunny day so someone suggested the kids stay in the care too. I agreed.

That means Zach and I went into the grocery store alone.

I gave that line it's own paragraph because of it's importance. We were walking around picking stuff out with such ease that it took me at least five minutes to realize what was missing: The noise, the whining, the pleading (my own - to get Jacob to shut up), the high stress levels, the ringing in my ears. If you have kids, you know the feeling.

When I realized how nice the experience was and how at peace I felt, I said it aloud to Zach. "Yeah, it's the first time we've been alone...." Neither one of us could remember how long. It doesn't count if the kids are asleep at home, and also, that never really happens anyway. I know that it hasn't happened since Sabine was born. I'm sure it happened at some point while I was pregnant, but again, that doesn't count because I was a cow and miserable.

And then we realized it was Valentine's day! So then we got laughing about how we were actually having a Valentine's date. Not that we even did that kind of thing before kids. And even though it was the grocery store, believe me, it counts.

Sabine: Month 7

Dear Sabine,

You are a Force of Nature. With capital letters. You know what you want. You know how to communicate those wants. And when we don't give in, you just go ahead and find a way to make it happen. Right now I am thinking Get ready for Sabine, she is coming full-force. I don't know what that means exactly, but that's what comes to mind. You've got the personality of a person who people know have just walked into a room. That's a whole of person-ing in that sentence!


What else can I say about my Sabine? You stand everywhere, you don't need much to pull-up, just a little knob sticking an inch off of a drawer. You crawl freaking everywhere. You do circles around the house, especially when I am vacuuming. You LOVE the vacuum. You want to marry it...hehe. But seriously, when I've got it out you come bull-dogging into the room just start attacking the canister, like you can't get close enough to it.

You have a little sit of your very own. We call it your hurdler position. Right foot out in front, left foot tucked under your toosh with knee bent. That's how you sit. Every time. And it's never been the left foot out in front with the right tucked under. This is not good news for your sports future. I would like to have a child who takes after me, who is left-handed. Jacob is right-handed but plays sports lefty, so there is hope for you.


You get into everything. Every Thing. I don't know how you get some of the stuff that ends up in your mouth. Your reach is long and strong. I'll be walking around the house with you hitched up on my left hip and then someone asks how you got the dish gloves in your hand. "What?" I look and you've got then, chewing away. Then I remember that I washed your hands ten minutes ago, you must have made a dive for them without me knowing.


You're beautiful. Not that that matters. ;-) Your hair is awesome. I love putting crap in it. I love dressing you in mis-matched layers. I don't know what it is, I can't put you in a matching outfit, like those sets that everyone likes to give little girls. You do wear more pink than I'd like but I always try to 'boy it down' with blue and other dark colors or 'boyish' accesories. I just hope you don't get to liking the pink thing. I don't know what I'd do with myself.


You love, love, love the dogs. Or any kind of non-human animal, for that matter. Ginger loves you back. That is so nice for her to have someone who isn't always yelling at her. She loves you back. Mango, however, Does Not Like You. With capital letters. You are the one who took her place as 'Daddy's Girl'. She is not happy about it and will look you right in the face to convey this, then turn and swagger away.


Your favorite human is Jacob. To you, he is Hys-ter-ic-al. Anything he does, you crap up and make all kinds of crazy sounds. You do prefer me most of the time, but we all know you just love me for my body. You play hard, laugh hard, cry hard and sleep light. You are so full of life, yet quite an old soul I can tell. You've been around before.

What else can I say? I haven't gotten much done since you started crawling, and now you're getting ready to walk soon! If something is in your way, you just plow on through it, there's no stoppiong you. I started this post back when you were 7 months. Now you're closer to eight months. That's what you've done to me. Anyway, here's so photos I stuck in when I first started writing this. There's many more now, I'll try to post them later.





Love,

Mommy

Smarter Than the Jeopardy Contestants

We've been watching Jeopardy religiously for a few weeks now, all three of us. It's a good way to make the shift from evening to night time (when bed happens). I've always loved Jeopardy so it's nice to get back into watching it, as well as to have a regular time marker to keep us on track with the routine.

Tonight there was a 'kiddy lit' category. The last clue in the category was something about Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. None of the contestants even tried to guess at it, but I got excited and said, "Jacob, you know this one!" And he came through with the answer. It was a very cool moment, especially because minutes earlier he'd been crying that he never wins at Candy Land.

We also like to guess the numbers when they have the lotto drawing during the commercial break. I'm so happy that we finally have something to get all of us motivated to keep to a routine, and that it's something we can all share.

Getting ready for the recession

This afternoon Jacob came out of the bathroom after spending a few minutes in there. When he opened the door there was quite a stink. He walked around the corner with a crumpled wipe in his hand, "Mommy. If you have to change Sabine later, you don't have to take a new wipe, you can use this one." We reuse everything in this house, or use it till it's completely exhausted it's indicated purpose, or any other purpose, for that matter.

"Oh, ok. Thanks honey. Did you just use that one?"

"Uh-huh."

"Oh, did you go poop?"

"Yup."

"And you used that to wipe yourself?"

"Yup."

"Alright, cool."

"I'll leave it right on the counter."

Just to be clear (because Zach thinks I need to clarify this) I didn't use it on Sabine. Some certain people who know me might not put it past me...

Since Saturday

Ha! I actually wrote that I was going to get a bunch of stuff done on Saturday. And that cockiness is what did me in. I wrote about how much I was going to do with the few hours left in the day. Then Jacob threw up.

The End.

That's the short version. Here's the longer version:

Jacob threw up. Zach was holding him and I saw it coming. I had only a second to get one word out and in a flash my brain decided the best word to succinctly convey what needed to happen next was, "Toilet, toilet!!" Success. He made it to the toilet. Then we got him to bed with a bucket on the floor. The bucket got used in the middle of the night one time and that was the end of the throwing up. Sunday was the start of the fever and feeling icky. Then the full-body rash started. Monday we stayed home from Playschool and the rest of the day was much of the same as Sunday.

Despite his fever, Jacob seemed to feel fine. He was running around and acting mostly normal, just a little bit more mellow. I put in a call to the doctor's office because the rash was very strange. No one called me back until today. I mentioned that he said his throat was hurting. The nurse said it sounded like Strep Throat and that I'd better bring him in. After I hung up I was all pissy that I had to pack the kids up and pay a $25 co-pay for no reason. I told Zach it wasn't strep, I'd just looked in his mouth the night before and I didn't see anything.

Turns out it is strep. Very much so. It's not that I'm a medical idiot, I just haven't had to deal with many, or really any, childhood diseases since becoming a mother. We're generally very healthy people. I've had strep myself, but I guess it presents itself differently with young children than it does with older people. And the rash...I'm so used to seeing Jacob's skin flare up with eczema, that I just thought it was some extension of that.

So, he just took his first-ever dose of antibiotics. I can no longer say that he's never taken them. Boo.

Sabine has also been under the weather a bit. I can't tell if it's teething or something more. She's just a tad off, but for a baby that's enough to want to be held and coddled all day long.

And there you have it, between these two sick kids, there isn't room for anything else. I can't believe I could have ever gotten to a point where I would let the order in our house get so out of order. I'm behind on everything and can't get caught up no matter how hard I try. There used to be a time when I could get caught up if only I tried hard enough, stayed up late enough. I believe that time is over. I will never finish my to-do list.