Fracking Sweet!

I have a confession to make. A word of warning, however. Once read, the following cannot be unread or forgotten.

I have converted. I am totally hooked on the new Battlestar Galactica.

T got back from California on Saturday and, so enamored of the show is he, we had to stop on the way home to buy it. Best Buy carried the mini-series (which effectively served as the Pilot episode) and Season 2, but not Season 1.

SO, I have now seen the mini-series, and I am having a jones the size of Texas to see season 1, but so far not a single retailer in our immediate area is carrying it. (Damn you, Wal-Mart!) Every place seems to have season 2, but not season 1. Today, T will be attempting to locate a copy of season 1 by making a strategic sweep of the mall near his office.

If you have not seen this show, I urge you to go out NOW, RIGHT NOW, Do not pass go, do not collect $200, just go buy this show in its entirety and prepare to prostrate yourself in front of the television until summer. It's THAT good.

What? You need further convincing? Well, let me share a few key tidbits:

1) Sexy Robots.

2) Starbuck is a girl. A really hot girl, with serious muscle who smokes cigars and makes wise-ass comments.

3) You need another addiction in your life.

You may not even LIKE Sci-fi, but that's okay, because this is just an awesome story that happens to take place in the middle of an intergalactic war...

Did I mention Sexy Robots?

Jelly Bean, Vermouth... Symbiotic, Patriotic...

Last day on my own, and I can't get "It's the end of the world" by R.E.M. out of my head. I'm not sure of the significance, but I'm pretty sure it can't be good.

Yesterday, I greeted the sitter with a great deal of enthusiasm. I may have frightened her - being 13, I doubt she quite understood the intensity of my desperation to get out of the house after 5 days of uninterrupted child rearing. I put the neurotic energy to good use and upped the number of sprints in my power walk/run cycles, which means that I did about two and a half miles yesterday.

The extra half-mile came in handy as I was rationalizing that second Krispy Kreme this morning. And, of course, the caffeine in my cup of coffee totally cancelled out the effects of that third one. *twitch* Don't tell me I have a problem. *twitch* I can quit any time I want to. *twitch* No, my hands always shake like that.

24 and a half hours to go. Hopefully I can still fit in the car by tomorrow morning, otherwise T will be taking the blue bus home from the airport.

You lose some.. you lose some.

So here's something fun - looks like something went wonky with T's flight schedule. I would swear in court that the return flight was originally scheduled for Friday morning, but the online itinerary is now saying Saturday so looks like I'll be on my own for another night. *sigh* Ah well.

Not so bad, but all this really means is that the box of Entemenn's on my counter will make it to the playgroup tomorrow, but the Krispy Kremes, sadly, will have passed away quietly by then. A curbside memorial service will be held on Tuesday morning (trash pick-up day). Box Of Krispy Kremes will be survived by the extra pounds on my rotund posterior. In lieu of flowers, please send Aerobic Workout DVD's in memorial.

We are thankful for your compassion at this difficult time.

I haven't finished my coffee yet. Yeah, that must be why I'm still registering a 5.0 on the Crazy Richter Scale this morning.

Home Alone, evening 2 of 5

So what did I do with my second evening home alone with the kids? I'm so glad you asked!

Jack didn't nap today so, after spending 2 hours at the grocery store and watching ungodly amounts of television, he went to bed half an hour early - 7:30. This will lead to one of two possible results. Either he was so tired that the early bedtime will spur on his circadian rhythms and he will sleep in until 8am, or he will awake totally refreshed somewhere around dawn and begin his ritual of jumping up and down on my bed shouting "Mommy! waaaaaake UP!" in his trademark sing-song screech. He hates anyone to be asleep while he's in the room. I dozed off for a few seconds during hour 4 of Jimmy Neutron only to have him poke me firmly in the eye and say "Mommy! Lights ON!". Daddy made up a game with him where they pull one ear lobe and say "lights off" and the eyes close, and then repeat on the other side while saying "Lights on" to get the eyes to reopen. Needless to say, daddy can be very thankful he is on the other side of the continent at present, which is the only thing saving him from a smack upside his head. What was he THINKING?!

So, Jack went to bed early and without fanfare. T called a half hour later to say that all is well on the left coast, except that it rained all day. (I was somewhat appeased by this. Does that make me a bad person? Don't answer that.) He had lunch at In'N Out Burger, and had the brass cajones to say that it was less than the Ambrosia of the Gods. I'm sure my memory has embellished the goodness somewhat, but the image of those freshly cut potatoes going into the oil to make fries that are actually made of POTATO... is almost more than I can bear. Don't get me started on the burgers. *drool*

SO, I consoled myself with a bag of gummy bears (Don't worry, hon, I didn't eat the whole thing. Quite.) and ordered "In Her Shoes" on pay-per-view. I even managed to watch the whole thing without crying once - which is totally impressive considering the hormonal mess I have been lately. (I cried all the way home from the airport when we dropped T off on Sunday.) It's definitely not something T would have wanted to watch with me, so I felt totally decadent gnoshing on my gummy bears and deciding that Toni Colette really is more attractive than Cameron Diaz, if only because if you squint and turn your head sideways I kinda look like Toni. Especially if it's a really really dark room.

And now I'm going to head to bed and, after checking the kids one more time and setting the house alarm, I'm going to curl up on T's side of the bed and snuggle up to his pillow. It still smells like him.

Wherever you are tonight, Babe, I miss you.

Ka Lee For Nee Yah!

T headed out last night for California and the Game Developer's Conference. But I'm not at all bitter. Not at all. I swear. I mean, sure, he'll get to meet Will Wright - creator of Sim City and, more importantly, the brains behind The Sims, which is possibly the most addictive game in history (Or at least a close second to World of Warcraft) and he'll get to drive around in the California sunshine and eat subs on REAL sourdough bread and... but I'm not at all bitter. Really.

I'm really not a "gamer". I didn't grow up with computers - I wasn't allowed to touch our family IBM 386 until I was in high school, and even then it was only for word processing purposes. While my brothers were getting nintendos and segas and playstations I usually got books or clothes. I can only assume it was because I am a girl, and therefore would have no use for the possible career opportunities involved with computers because I was *supposed* to be married by 19 and making babies. SO, I got a late start in the computer arena and had to teach myself html from books and website tutorials at age 21 (because, to the great disappointment of my 432785743826 relatives, I remained unmarried until the ripe old age of 23.)

But I digress. I got into gaming after meeting T, starting really with Diablo 2 (which was totally a gateway drug to WoW.) And now I don't have much time for it, but I still the over-the-top culture of it all. And sure, GDC is more about hard-core game building than about Lara Croft lookalikes in tight leather (see E3 ) but just to sit in a room with some of those creative brains would be like catnip for me. I find a lot of similarities between the creation of some of the game storylines and the creation of a good book. Many of them create totally inclusive worlds with histories and storylines that rival many epic book series currently in print.

Besides the fact that T will be hanging in San Jose, near my old Walnut Creek stomping grounds in the SF Bay area. I've been trying to get back to Cali for about 8 years now. I'm still working on it. Unfortunately, he found me when I tried to hide in his suitcase and informed me I would never make it through security that way and didn't I realize the children might get hungry before Friday. To which I replied "Children? We have Children? I'm sorry, I was distracted by that shiny thing over *there* - on the west coast. Yes, that - see? It's called Sunshine."

Candy In My Heels Tonight, Baybee

Tuesday night was a watershed in motherhood for me. It was my first night out without ANY kids since before Toby was born. (5 months and 2 days, but who's counting?) I drove T's car (the blue batmobile) out to Melissa's house for drinks with the girls.

Turns out, Melissa's house USED to be our friends Dave & Tracy's house. Totally bizarre - two couples we know who don't know each other, but one bought the house from the other over a year ago and I just found this out. The world suddenly felt very, very small.

T had both boys all to himself. I felt a mild terror as I pulled out of the driveway in a car without car seats. As I cranked up the radio, though (to many many decibels over child-safe volumes for the first time in eons) my apprehension gave way to a feeling suspiciously close to that time I "borrowed" my mom's minivan to take my friends out for milkshakes at 2am. "So THIS is what freedom feels like!"

As it turns out, Toby cried for over an hour while I was gone but T, bless his heart, decided not to call me in a panic. Which totally saved my night, because I would not have been able to enjoy the evening as much as I did had I felt I really needed to be home to comfort my little cherub. So, blissfully unaware of the drama unfolding at home, I settled into Melissa's comfy sofa and engaged in deliciously frivolous conversation with the girls over a glass of Rum Punch.

For a few glorious hours I felt like my old self -- not Mel the wife or homemaker or the mama, just plain Mel... who is still just crazy enough to entertain a room full of women by shaking her groove thing to the Napoleon Dynamite soundtrack.

Don't bother searching for Flickr photos of THAT particular adventure, I made everyone sign an NDA. Suffice it to say you would, indeed, have known this boogie was for real...

Control Issues

I'm creating a new category for OCD. It won't have any medical credibility, but it's the only way I can think of to explain my own little mental-trap.

I create mental checklists obsessively. Laundry. Dishes. Vacuum. Pick up Toys. Make Beds. Feed Kids. Change Diapers.

The caring for the kids stuff takes priority, especially the whole feeding and changing thing. But I've found that no matter what I'm doing, or how heavily I am sweating in the midst of some back-braking chore, I feel like I'm somehow failing in my duties. If I'm bathing the kids, I feel like I should be doing laundry. If I'm doing laundry I feel like I should be entertaining the kids. When I'm entertaining the kids I feel like I should really be vacuuming.

I know that SuperNanny Jo Frost would say I just need to make up a strict schedule and stick to it - that the kids and I both need the benefit and security of a routine. The problem is, when I get into a routine I start to freak out too. PK described it the other day as that feeling where you know that you were not cut out to work on an assembly line -- the not knowing exactly how the day is going to go is the only thing that keeps the repetetive quality of the tasks from driving you insane. (This is the part where I again mention that PK has to get out of my brain because IT'S BEGINNING TO SCARE ME. Seriously - she is the only other person I have ever met who absolutely cannot stand White Noise.)

But back to topic. This morning I am so overwhelmed by all the chores we left undone when we headed out for a weekend at a mountain cabin, I don't know where to begin. I keep starting and stopping, getting halfway through one task before getting sidetracked by another. In the mean time, Toby was napping in 10 minute increments because I hadn't gotten around to putting him down in his crib until now (where he is presently screaming his head off at the indignity).

I never watch Desperate Housewives - I just couldn't get into it, too campy, too snarky or something - but I got the last few minutes of it when I recorded Grey's Anatomy last night, and I suddenly felt an uncomfortable kinship to Bree Van De Kamp. Here is a woman who is a total control freak with a life that is totally out of control. For a show that I consider way too over the top to be relatable, I felt a squirmy sense of recognition at the concept.

I can't help but feel that on some level, my inner control freak has become so overwhelmed by all the variables I am unable to control (and my innate resistance to hyper-scheduling) that I am paralyzed to the point of near-total inability to act.

Poison Control

Mental Subtitle: Ode to the Mr Yuck Moron Who Completely Ruined My Thursday.

Toby is in the opening stages of the teething game. Basically, he gnaws on everything in sight, gets cranky for no apparent reason, and uses my juggies as human chew toys. This is all lead-up to explain why we had the homeopathic teething tablets out on Wednesday night. It also explains why, after that sleepless night, I was slow-moving and cranky on Thursday morning.

I popped downstairs to check email and order a (very belated) wedding gift for my brother and his new wife. Jack was contentedly absorbed in the Backyardigans. As I finished up in the office, I heard him heading up the stairs. I clicked "submit order", gathered up Toby and my coffee, and headed upstairs after him.

I entered my bedroom just in time to see him taking the bottle of pills from his mouth. 'Oh God, Oh God, Oh God. What does he have?' is the only thing I remember thinking. I set Toby in the bassinet and was to him in 2 strides, doing my level best not to scare the shit out of him, but hell bent on getting that bottle out of his hands.

For anyone unfamiliar, the teething tablets to which I am referring are tiny white tabs about the size of the birth control pill. They are powdery and soft, and dissolve instantly on contact with liquid or with the tongue of a 2 year old. The bottle holds 250 of the pills, and had been about half full the night before. As I took it from Jack's hand, it held about 20 tablets.

Having some rudimentary medical training, I scanned the contents of the bottle for the ingredients... sugar, mostly, coffee (okay, so he'd be hyper for a while)... nothing that caught my eye until "uh-oh" BellaDonna.

All I know about BellaDonna is from reading some Agatha Christie novel where some country squire or other poisoned his cheating mistress with it or something along those lines. Poison being the operative word here.

I read further along the bottle and found the warning right there on the side "In case of accidental overdose contact the poison control center immediately." And, as luck would have it (and long experience, from that time he tried to drink tire cleaner, and that other time when he got hold of the Febreeze) we have a Mr. Yuck magnet on the fridge. I grabbed the clueless Jack and the cordless phone, left Toby screaming in his bed, and ran for the kitchen. I silently thanked God for all that dialing practice I got over the years trying to win concert tickets from radio stations. I got a bored sounding female voice on the other end of the line.

I quickly explained the situation as calmly as I could, told her what he'd taken and about how many, and waited. She sounded confused as to what exactly it was Jack had swallowed. I explained again and offered to read her the NDC number from the side of the bottle. She declined and said "no no, that's okay. How long ago did he take this?"

Tick. Tock. "About 2 minutes ago."

"You need to take him into the nearest Emergency Room immediately. They're going to need to give him charcoal and he'll require observation."

Tick. Tock. "Okay thank you."

A panicked phone call to my neighbor later (she decreed that she was following me to the ER and would take Toby in the waiting room while I went with Jack) and we were on the road. Jack seemed unbothered by mommy barely keeping a lid on her TOTALLY BLOWN MIND until we got in the car and pulled out of the driveway with me muttering under my breath. "Mommy. You scaring me." Crap. "Don't worry baby, there's nothing to be scared of. Everything is going to be okay."

The receptionist at the ER looked at the bottle of pills I handed her. "My son just swallowed half of these. Poison Control said to come straight over." They rushed us back. Doctors and nurses came in and out, took the mostly-empty bottle, made phone calls, had hushed conversations. Our assigned doc patted my hand and said "how are YOU doing?" and it was all I could do to keep from sobbing into his scrubs and screaming "I am a TERRIBLE mother and how did this happen to my baby?! is how I'm doing." I stripped Jack down to his diaper and he was examined. More hushed conversations.

Tick. Tock. Minutes pass. The doctor walked into the room and said again "how are YOU doing?.. because the good news is, he is going to be totally fine."

As it turns out, they called poison control themselves and talked to SOMEONE WITH A CLUE who informed them that Jack would have had to swallow about 3 bottles of the tablets before there would be enough BellaDonna to actually have an effect.

The guy they talked to said "Next time, tell her to call us first. We could have saved her the trip." And bless his heart, the doctor (who I now love so much I may let him father my next child) informed him that, indeed, I HAD called and somebody over there is a total asshat for scaring me unnecessarily and not bothering to actually look up what it was Jack had swallowed.

And so ended my horrific adventure. Jack was fine, and basically I paid 75 bucks for a cup of apple juice. (Which is what the nurse gave him, then said to push fluids on him the rest of the day just to be sure.)

And of course, OCD Mommy that I am, the kid peed like a racehorse from all the water, juice, and milk I was shoving at him for the next 12 hours.

Inflammation Of The Mast.

Hello. My name is MeL, and today I manually cleared a clogged milk duct in my breast.

Not something I ever thought I would say.

But, yeah, I was coming down with the beginning symptoms of mastitis (inflammation of the breast due to infection from a clogged milk duct). This whole babymaking business is just one adventure after another, I tell ya. I felt like I was coming down with the flu over the past few days, and today I realized there was a hard knot on the left side. Massaging and nursing didn't fix it, but after reading Ask Dr. Sears and finding that I did, indeed, have the little white blister indicating a clog, I followed the directions and Voila! I am feeling much better already. The knot is gone, and hopefully I will be feeling all better by tomorrow.

I refuse to feel ill this weekend. I get to go to Bryce and party with T, PK, JK, and co. for an entire weekend. This may or may not involve me attempting to get on skis once again, depending on how the kids do and if T feels up to handling them alone for a while. Also on the up side, 3 days of opportunities to smack PK on the ass. If you've never had the joy of doing so yourself, you so totally don't know what you are missing.

A Trip To The Woodshed...

"A trip to the woodshed" was my dad's euphemism for a spanking. It wasn't totally inaccurate, as a spanking in our house usually involved picking out which 2x4 from the toy block box you were going to get a swat on the behind with. Before anyone goes calling CPS let me say that, first of all, you are twenty years too late. Secondly, it was never a violent spanking and really the whole process of choosing the block was by far the worse punishment than the actual pat on the backside with it.

Of course, my brother Andy - always the comedian of the family - is the only to actually manage to make my dad laugh so hard he got out of the spanking altogether. He did this by coming back to Dad with a 1x2 block that was about 3 inches long. But that has always been Andy. This is the guy who, after getting married as a 30-year-old mormon, emailed from the honeymoon cruise to say:

"This is AWESOME. Oh, and the boat is nice too."

... All of which has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the jazz band playing at brunch on Sunday at Beans In The Belfry was a fantastic group called The Woodshedders.

Their website describes them as "an acoustic Hot Club *Gypsy Jazz style quintet". I would say that pretty much covers it, but if you still aren't sure what the hell I'm talking about check out some >Django Reinhardt.

Now Listening To: Hungaria. Django Reinhardt with Stephane Grapelli. Sheer genius.

In Absentia

In the small break since I last sat down to ponder my existence in written form (a fancy way of saying "think out loud in print") I realized how addicted I am to venting my spleen on here. All the thoughts seem to build up in my head, like so many buzzing insects, until I sit down and release the pressure valve. Then, I move on with a little more quiet in my brain.

Well, except for the voices in my head. But since I was told that they're loud enough for other people to hear them, too, I don't worry so much about them any more.

*cough*

T's Mom came down on Friday to spend the weekend. It was like having the Mommy Mafia roll into town; she came armed with a cooler full of food to make all the meals for the weekend. I'm not talking hamburger helper, either. We gorged ourselves on orzo with fresh chopped veggies and shrimp, broiled salmon filets, and a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and (pause for dramatic effect) Home. Made. Hashbrowns. Not those grated, deep fried, heart attacks you get at the drive through. Sliced potatoes sauteed and browned with onions. You'll have to excuse me for a moment while I wipe the drool from my chin.

Mama S also arrived with an unexpected surprise for me: a brand-spankin-new Coffee Pot that really looks more like something you'd find in the back room of an experimental NASA workshop.

This coffee machine is to the old machine as HDTV is to the old black and white wooden box tv's. It has a pre-set timer so I can have coffee brewing up before I'm even out of bed the next morning. It beeps when it's done. It lets me choose strength, hot plate temperature, and I can pause it while it's brewing to pour myself a cup without any of those annoying drippies. We're talking twenty-third century coffee technology here, people! As I type this, I am sipping a cup of heavenly brew which is also missing that funky 'je ne sais quois' flavor we got from our old and overly-used carafe. It's a delicious extravagance, for which I am supremely grateful.

Add in brunch at my favorite spot, Beans In The Belfry, and it was a flawless weekend... all the way up to last night. I watched the Oscars out of mild curiousity; mostly I wanted to see how John Stuart would do with hosting. (I think he did great, but it was funny to see how akward it got at times when folks couldn't laugh at themselves. Hollywood types take themselves WAAAY too seriously.) But I digress.

Finally wrapping up the weekend and heading to bed after the Oscars, we stumbled upstairs around midnight to find that Jack was sound asleep in a puddle of his own vomit. The next 40 minutes was a blur of waking him up and stripping down both him and his bed; he got his second bath of the night, a clean pair of pajamas, and a lot of soothing. It became clear that he wasn't actually feeling sick, and most likely just ate something that disagreed with his little tummy. Of course, by then he was wide awake and asking to watch TV. This meant that I ended up in the recliner with him for another half hour watching recorded episodes of Jimmy Neutron.

When I finally stumbled back upstairs around 1am, got him back to sleep in his room, and climbed into my own bed... well, let's just say that I vaguely remember brushing my teeth and I still haven't figured out what I did with my pants.

Just a typical weekend of ups and downs in the bizarre universe that is our life.

Grey Skies, Sunny Disposition

In lieu of anything really interesting to post today, I'll share that my husband just called to prepare me in advance for the fact that he purchased THIS today.


Great, now I need a box of depends and a liter of Malibu...

Rollin'.. Rollin'...Rollin'...

Be it here noted that on this 28th day of February, 2006... TM rolled over. I was afraid that the second time around all these firsts wouldn't be as exciting as they were with JT... today, I finally put those fears to rest.

I squealed like a schoolgirl, and spent the next 20 minutes trying to get him to pull out a repeat performance so I could record it in quicktime with the digital camera. He finally did it again (once I put the camera away) so it's not recorded in easily shared digital format... but it is permanently burned into my brain.

My Baby Is Mobile!!!

Wait.

My Baby Is Mobile???

Dear God. Why was I happy about this again?????

Chaos and Cosmos

I had a moment this evening to ponder a past life.

We live out in what is colloquially referred to as "the country". We're on the down side of a mountain and between us and what I like to call "civilization" is a narrow but dense wilderness, consisting of a large river, lots of trees, a few stretches of farm land, and a couple of vineyards. There's not much out here in the way of shopping; if I want anything less than 20 minutes away my choices boil down to a couple of grocery stores and the local Wal-Mart. Oh, and there's a Dollar General, but I quit going there after a very very drunk man, still reeking of yesterday's urine, attempted to pick up my terrified 2-year-old. I'm sure he didn't mean any harm - he really seemed like he just wanted to continue the one-sided conversation he'd been having with JT - but when it comes to my kids I'm just a teensy but overprotective and paranoid. There are a couple of coffee shops and one very awesome kids' consignment store, but beyond that the pickings are pretty slim.

In a previous life, more often than not, I crashed with T (who was then my boyfriend) at his very cosmopolitan apartment in downtown D.C. Their were more local haunts than you could shake a stick at; we could walk out the front door of his complex and go across the street to this great little Italian restaurant that had a fantastic house chianti and these incredible little crusty bread rolls. We could catch a cab up to Cleveland Park and spend an evening drinking heavy beer and hard cider while we gnoshed on Irish soda bread and chips with malt vinegar at Ireland's Four Provinces. We could take a quick drive to Arlington Cinema Drafhouse and watch a movie with a pitcher and some nachos, or catch the metro to the museum district and spend an afternoon wandering the various Smithsonian buildings. Before I ever watched an episode of "Sex and the City" or even knew what it was, I felt like the Carrie Bradshaw of D.C. (minus the outrageous shoe collection.)

In my heart, I have to admit I'm a city girl. I prefer the hustle and bustle, the car horns on the street below and the ability to get a decent cup of coffee at any time of day or night. I miss wandering anonymously through a crowd and taking a mall for granted. I miss the million strangers all around and bagel sandwiches from Pumpernickel's Bagelry.

But, as fate would have it, for the time being I am a city girl out here in the country. I don't regret our move out here; it's done wonders for JT and he and TM have a real yard to play in. There's enough room to put up a playground or maybe even get them a dog one day (if I can feel up to attempting that adventure again.)

And, even though it gets awfully quiet out here in the sticks, I have to admit that there is something at once wistful and comforting about hearing the lonely sound of the whistle as the trains barrel through town in the middle of the night. I can hear them thundering over the tracks with the soft rumble of a fading storm, unmuffled in the cold night air. Reminding me that I am a long way from the city. Reminding me that I am home.

Proof.

Proof #452 that I am his mother -- He loves pizza as much as I do.


Okay, so there's also those cheeks. But we'll pretend he didn't get those from me.

F this, that, and the other thing...

F for Food, Friends, and Frickin' Fantastic Fun. Good times, indeed.

T had his annual review this week and, hallelujah, he got a promotion!!! We decided to go out and celebrate with crab legs at a local hole-in-the-wall, but quickly changed our plans after an invitation to party like rock stars with some of the coolest people you could ever hope to meet.

When I say "party like rock stars" I mean, of course, that we stayed up past our bedtime, consumed mass quantities of adult beverages, and talked until our voices gave out. And everyone who reads this is incredibly jealous that I got to spend the evening in the company of this gorgeous woman:See? Told you she's a babe. If I could create the perfect amiga in a lab, she'd be exactly like PK. (But a little less hot because, really, no mother of 3 should be allowed to look that good.) Admit it - you want to lick your monitor, don't you?

PK also happens to be married to T's bizarrely identical non-twin, JK. The four of us mesh so well, I sometimes get the sneaking suspicion I've stumbled into a John Hughes movie. Animated discussion, copious laughs, and no akward lulls in the conversation. What more could a person need in life, really? Well, maybe good food -- which was also had in abundant supply. I think I'm still full from yesterday, but that may be because I about half a cow and a generous portion of snow crab legs.

The kids were harder to please in the food arena, but I ended the night feeling like super-parent when JT consumed half a loaf of zucchini bread he gaffled from the counter. Hey, he stole food with veggies in it -- we called it a nutritious main course and moved on. TM finally settled down after a long evening of watching the big people party and actually slept for about 8 hours. All in all, a win-win of an evening. CONGRATS! to T and THANKS! to the K's for their unprecendented hospitality.

These Shoes Were Made for Walkin...

The Costco that we go to is part of a trifecta. Costco, Target, and Kohl's department store share one giant parking lot. This entails a very tricky situation, as any of these 3 stores alone is enough to put us in the poor house; together they mean instant death.

Before going on the aforementioned Costco excursion, I stopped into Target with no real list or aim, but a vague notion that JT could use a new pair of jeans and some new shoes. He's been wearing the same "Plaza Sesamo" sneakers for about 6 months now. (he picked them out himself, and they didn't have any english language version ones with Elmo on them. So, no Sesame Street... Plaza Sesamo.)

Target had english language Elmo shoes but JT, being older and more discerning now, shunned those in favor of a pair of shiny new Thomas and Friends sneakers. He immediately realized, to his horror, that he was wearing the toddler equivalent of Last Year's Manolo's and DEAR GOD he had to get them off NOW RIGHT NOW THEY BURN!

I ran distraction while I paid for the new shoes, and before we set off on our Costco adventure he was safely ensconced in his new pair of size 7 and a half sneakers. He wore them in Costco. When we got home, he wouldn't let me take them off.. so he wore them around the house.

When bedtime came, T removed JT's shoes, pulled off his courderoy pants, and changed his diaper. At which point JT went into apoplexy because the shoes were no longer on his feet. So T, being a daddy and somewhat more inclined to sympathy in these situations than I would probably be, put the shoes back on him. At which point JT promptly went to sleep.

I removed the shoes from the sleeping child before going to bed myself, only to be awoken at 6:30 the next morning to wails of "CHOO CHOO SHOES! I NEED CHOO CHOO SHOES! ONNA FEET!"

So he spent the rest of the morning in his shirt, a diaper, and his shoes and socks. I think we got pants on him eventually. At least we've managed to scale down to not actually wearing the shoes in bed... now, they just rest comfortably in a place of honor next to his pillow while he sleeps.

I'm thinking it's safe to say he has his daddy's sense of sentimentality, eh?


Unrelated TM Update: Last night the little angel went back to his old self, at least temporarily. Put him down at 11:30, he woke up at 4am to nurse, went back to sleep and stayed there until 7:30. I actually feel almost human today.

This will hurt.

If you put a frog in a pot of hot water, it will jump right out. If you put it in cold water and slowly crank up the heat, the frog will sit there until it dies. So I've been told, anyway. I would never perform such an experiment, myself. But the concept is there.

My kids are great sleepers. JT slept in his crib, in his own room, from the first night home from the hospital. This time around, I wanted TM close to me. He was so tiny, so defenseless - not to mention so noisy I was afraid he would wake his older brother if put in the nursery next door. But by 5 or 6 weeks old, TM was sleeping 8 hours at night, broken up with just one feeding after 4 hours, after which he would go right back to sleep. For anyone without kids, let me tell you that this is a new parent's dream.

So what happened? Well, like the poor frog, he slowly began to turn up the heat on me. As close as a week ago, I still would have told you "My baby really is a good sleeper, he just has a bad night here and there."

In the last few days, however, it has dawned on me. Not only does he not sleep long stretches well any more, but by the time I wake up in the morning he has somehow migrated to a spot next to me in the bed. He starts out in his bassinet, but wakes every few hours and settles back down only after I replace his pacifier and give him my hand to hold. Eventually, in my zombie-like state of exhaustion, I move him next to me in bed - where he snuggles up to me and finally falls asleep for a stretch of more than 2 hours. And then I get some sleep.

He is a very clingy baby by nature, something JT never has been. If one of my hands get anywhere near him, he grabs for it, pressing it to his chest with both tiny pink hands as though I might snatch it away. It's simultaneously heart-melting and terrifying.

Today I realized he hasn't taken a daytime nap longer than an hour or so in at least a week. He may take only 2 or 3 of these naps all day. My baby is exhausted, and his mommy is not far behind. So, after I got JT down for his "quiet time" (which may or may not involve sleep, it depends on the day) I nursed TM until his tummy was full and his eyes were half-closed. I laid him down in his bassinet and covered him with his favorite blanket. And then I walked out of the room.

After 4 minutes he started screaming. By 10 minutes he was at a full-fledged wail. By 20 minutes I was headed upstairs. I got halfway up when he suddenly went quiet. I waited. Counted to 30. Tiptoed into the room. He startled a little, opened his eyes, then slowly closed them again and drifted off as I watched him.

Progress. Or so I thought until he woke up about 2 minutes ago. He started crying in a sad, half-hearted kind of way. It has built to another scream.

He's safe, he's not hungry, his diaper is clean, and he doesn't have gas. Suddenly, my 2 and a half years of parenting experience leave me totally unprepared to deal with a baby who WILL NOT SLEEP.

I've decided to give him 5 minutes more to try to fall back asleep on his own. This may be a good time to start looking for a book on what kind of therapy will help him deal with the abandonment issues I am currently giving him.

But I'll probably use the time to tear the house apart in search of something with lots of sugar and no nutritional value.

I really need to locate a more constructive coping mechanism.

TP or not TP

The big adventure of yesterday was my periodic excursion to Costco. Some women? They spend a day at the spa, or wander the aisles at Bloomingdales. For me, the true extravagance in life comes from looking at 5 gallon cans of tomato sauce and industrial-sized packs of underwear.

I never leave that store without being at least a hundred bucks poorer, and utterly confused about where the money went. Case in point: My primary purchases yesterday were a 40 pound bag of Cat Litter (you're welcome, honey!), a few bags of frozen necessities (you know, health foods like potstickers and chicken nuggets), diapers, baby wipes, and jumbo-sized packages of paper towels and toilet paper.

I know the size of the items, the sheer quantity, is massive in scale compared to what I would be getting if I purchased the same items at the grocery store. And yet that total on the receipt still boggles me. And, being prone to oversimplification as I am, I can't help but boil it down to one simple question for my self.

How the hell did I spend a hundred and fifty bucks on toilet paper??

Unrelated Aside: The caterpillar is gone. I no longer have to fear waking in the night to find I am in bed with Morgan Spurlock. He did keep the pointy sideburns, but only because I insisted. They're right sexy, those are.

The Wrong Side Of The Bed.

Yesterday I looked at T and said, with no trace of irony at the time, "As long as you don't tease, torment, or otherwise cajole me, today has the potential to be a very good day."

It was still morning, and I knew that, mentally, I was in a place to have a good day. I then asked him if he thought it was at all weird that I could wake up and know right away if I was going to be unable to have a "good" day that day. He shook his head and said, with his trademark shrug "there's an expression for that 'woke up on the wrong side of the bed' - it's totally normal."

That's reassuring -- in a bizarro kind of way. Today I feel pretty numb. I'm finding it difficult to figure out what I should be doing, or what I want to be doing.

I'm a very single-minded person -- I tend to go into tunnel vision when I'm working on something. If I start a painting, pick up a book, or turn on a movie I will get absorbed in it to the exclusion of all else. I don't hear people when they talk to me, I don't see things happening around me. Basically, any senses unnecessary to the task at hand get filtered out in my brain.

When I was working in an office, this was actually an asset, as I could crank out a very intensive project in record time and with no mistakes. Now that I'm a mother, I find that I am so far unable to focus on the role of motherhood and homemaker with that intensity. I am also afraid to focus on anything else because, as a mom, you CAN'T filter out your children and their needs for any period of time. They have to eat. They need diapers changed. They need love, affection, attention. You can't ignore them, it's not fair to them.

Even so, I always feel like there's something else I should be doing. I have a burning need to express myself in some way, to have an intellectual goal of some kind that I'm working towards with the oversight of a boss, a professor, an Auditor of some kind.

You would think 2 gorgeous sons would proivide a total sense of fulfillment. It's not that I don't adore motherhood, because I do. I love going out with the boys and seeing strangers smile at their incredible cuteness. I cherish every "first", and my heart melts at each indication of proof that they love me in return. I enjoy washing dirty faces, and I don't even hate changing diapers.

So what is it that is lacking? Is it something innate within myself? Or is it okay for me to feel like I need something more? Am I a terrible mother because there are days when I think "I'd really like to go back to a regular job now?" or that I'd like to go back to school, and waiting until my kids are all in school themselves seems entirely too far off and in the distance?

Is this why I ate a gallon of rice pudding last night?