Posts from — December 2008

In Bug’s room there now lives a small strand of Christmas lights, left over from our tree decorations.  He calls them his Christmas Nightlight, though they’re more akin to the lights on an airport runway.

Last year was the first year Bug really “got” Christmas.  We talked about what the holiday meant for us for the first time.  The name “Santa” was introduced into his vocabulary. We stayed at our own house for Christmas morning and got up at the crack of dawn to watch him pull out each item of his stocking, breathless and wide-eyed.

This year, he is a veteran Christmas-er.  He knows the drill, points out Barnum and Bailey animal crackers every time we see them (remembering that they were in his stocking last year) and presses his ear to each gift with his name on it under the tree.  He gleefully peels back the new Advent door each morning at breakfast, unable to leave it a mystery for even one second of the new day.  Seconds later he’s in my pitch dark bedroom, thrusting the book into my face and hissing in a loud stage whisper, “MOM! DO YOU KNOW WHAT SIXTEEN IS?  IT’S A MAN ON A CAMEL!”  He’s learning Christmas carols.

He’s also more hip to the fact that he will Get Stuff for Christmas, and him Getting Stuff is the part of Christmas that I simultaneously love and dread at the same time. I dread the consumerism of it all – the stores with wailing children who are being dragged around by harried parents and the constant worry about having enough money to pay for what we want to give people kind of sour it for me.  BUT.  I love to give this kid presents.  You could give him a 25 cent plastic ring shaped like a spider, and he would react just as gleefully as he would if you got him a real live pony that pooped candy canes.  Just the other day he received a car as a gift that (SHOCKER) he actually already owned, and he opened it, took a look at it, ran and got the identical car from his room and held both of them up triumphantly, yelling, “TWINS!”

That’s the kind of kid you want to have Christmas morning with.

And not surprisingly, he’s only had two gift requests this year: 1. a watch and 2. a toothbrush.  Because he is actually from the 1950s. But I’ll bet that even though his wish list is short and simple, on Christmas morning when he rips off that paper to see his new blue digital watch (it can go underwater!) and his battery operated rotating toothbrush (it’s orange!) the excitement on his face will be bright enough to be measured in kilowatts.

Just like runway lights.

Before LG was born, when I was out of ideas for Fun Things To Do and was tired of Bug velcroing himself to my legs in desperate boredom, I would resort to a tried and true distraction: hard manual labor.  Nine times out of ten this meant playing a Very Fun Game called Raking The Yard.

Yesterday was unseasonably balmy, and Bug had already come out of his room to ask me How Many More Minutes? about thirty one times during his hour long rest time, so it seemed appropriate that we resume our raking ways of yore.  It seemed like it might make for a fun afternoon.  And for the most part it did not disappoint:

HOWEVER.

Soon after we began, I darted inside to get my camera to capture the moment of Xtreme Fashion Brilliance I had with LG today (short sleeved shirts over long sleeved onesies – TRIPLED her wardrobe.  BRILLIANCE, I say)  and this is the shot I got:

I checked the image in the camera and had a little chuckle over LG’s WTF! face when I realized that she had EVERY RIGHT to that expression.  There seemed to be a mysterious black spot on her shirt that had not been there before I fetched the camera and when I bent down to inspect I discovered a STEAMING GLOP OF BIRD SHIT.

BIRD SHIT. ON MY BABY.  BLEEAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGHHH.

I am not much of a germaphobe, but OMG.  POOP.  FROM A GERMY BIRD. DID I MENTION IT WAS ON MY BABY.

Nine Clorox wipes and a few doses of straight bleach later I decided just to burn the shirt.

I couldn’t get the image of that festering inky pile of Avian bird flu out of my head and obsessively kept checking LG for any signs of further fecal attacks.  Finally I got an umbrella and propped it up over her bouncy chair as a safeguard. Not quite the super fun wholesome afternoon rake-a-thon I had hoped for, but with the umbrella in place I relaxed a little and enjoyed the fresh air.

It was all but forgotten too, until Lorso, upon hearing the incident report, shrugged and said, “At least it didn’t land on her face.”

And now: NIGHTMARES.  FOR WEEKS.

I am like a Christmas shopping MACHINE this year.  It was great timing on my ovaries’ part to leave me with a highly portable and often sleeping baby during the holiday season.  LG’s seen every Target within a 10 mile radius of our house.  And now that I’m done I get to kick back in the comfort of my own home and wrap in peace while the rest of the world sits in parking lots, blinkers on, waiting for that old couple with the 13 bags to leave their damn space already.

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This year for my birthday I received a six month subscription to Blockbuster Access from my sister.  I was STOKED.  I filled my queue right up and made my way through some movies I’d been meaning to see (Definitely, Maybe; Smart People; Sex and the City) and then moved right on to my favorite genre: episodic TV.  I started with Nip/Tuck, which I had never seen before, but quickly decided that a show where the least disturbing scenes were the ones involving bloody surgeries was not the show for me. Next I moved on to Mad Men (review here, summary: LOVE). Then the other day I opened my mailbox only to find my childhood dreams in a blue and yellow envelope: Fame: The Complete First Season.  I used to slackjaw drool over that show.  A high school for the performing arts in NYC?  Yes please!  Impromptu dancing in the hall! String quartets in the stairwells! Rock bands in the cafeteria!  I wanted to go to that high school in a bad way.  Sadly, the small high school I attended in rural SWVA did not quite fulfill that fantasy.  However, I hold out hope for my retirement community: Nursing Home for the Performing Farts!

(Sorry.)
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Operation DeFlabbify: UPDATE

I feel like I am eating marginally better than I have been for the last 4 or 5 (or 9 or 10) months.  Emphasis on marginally.  But I’m not as focused on that because really my main goal is to MOVE MY BODY some each week, and not just from the couch to the bed to reinsert LG’s pacifier 748 times.  I need continuous, cardiovascular movement so that I can start feeling my blood actually pumping again instead of sludging and sloshing around my vessels like molasses.

Right after I wrote that post about wanting to be in better shape, one of my favorite bloggers announced that she and some other women had started a new blog about THAT VERY THING.  I’m often amazed at how easy it is to control the universe from my computer. Anyway, I read it daily and am inspired and motivated by the stories and tips, and if you’re looking to do what I’m looking to do, I highly recommend it.  I also recommend her blog because she is quite possibly the funniest blogger on the internet. Srsly.

Anyway. My goal for this week is to MOVE MY BODY (on purpose and not in response to sounds of vomit landing on the new couch) TWICE.  That doesn’t seem like much, but I’m intentionally starting small.  Like I said, baby steps. Newborn baby steps. Preemie steps.

You have to start somewhere to get to the IronMan!

(OMG NO WAY IN HELL.)

We’re still firmly entrenched in the Transition to a Family of Four Make It Up As We Go Period around these parts.  So far, no one has lost an eye or a limb, and we’ve only resorted to sausage cheese balls for dinner like ONCE.  So things are fair to moderate, I’d say.  As far as I can tell there are only two ZOMG whose-idea-was-it-to-have-two-kids times of each day, and they are 1. when I’m awake and 2. when I’m asleep.

HA.  I JOKE.  It’s just when I’m awake.

L often leaves before any of the others of us are up, so most of my mornings consist of getting three people ready to go out the door by 8:40.  My scientific observation about this is that size is inversely proportional to the amount of preparation required for departure.  I’m the biggest, and therefore need to do one thing before leaving: find my keys. (You might think I’d say “change out of my thrice-worn pajamas” or “brush my furry teeth,” but that would be overestimating my standards for public appearance.)  Rosie, on the other hand is much, much smaller, and consequently must go through a whole series of events before getting locked and loaded into the car: 1. Take off pajamas, change diaper 2. Eat 3. Barf on everything within a two foot radius (note: this does not always result in me changing my clothes, in case you’re wondering why I Smell Like That) 4. Change clothes 5. Poop 6. Change diaper again 7. Barf again 8. Barf one more time 9. Put on hat 10. Get in car seat 11. Barf.

As you can see, it’s a process.

Noah falls somewhere in the middle, depending on the day.  Some days he gets ready before I’ve even staggered to the bathroom and spends the rest of the time before we leave with his body pressed against the door saying “IT’S EIGHT FOUR THREE MOM.  WE WERE SUPPOSED TO LEAVE AT EIGHT FOUR OH. RIGHT MOM? RIGHT?”  Other days getting him to the car is like trying to pull an angry mule out of quicksand with dental floss (what?).  He doesn’t WANT that shirt, it’s not his FASTEST shirt.  He doesn’t NEED a coat, it doesn’t feel cold to HIM.  WATCH HIM MOM, watch how high he can jump in just his underwear! WATCH. Also, he is STILL hungry, Mom.  Can’t he just have one waffle? Oh PLEEEEASE, Mom. MOM, JUST ONE WAFFLE.

The more caps lock involved, the later the car leaves the driveway.

There is brief respite for me while Noah is in school: I only have one kid to keep my eyeballs on.  If you had said to me almost three and a half years ago that in the future I would see a morning with a six week old as a break, I would have laughed. Nervously. And then maybe moved to Tahiti.  But the truth is that Noah and Rosie take two totally different kinds of energy, and when I’m with them both I have to have both those energies switched to ON.  When I’m just with Rosie, I can turn off some of that energy.  Like for example the Energy Required for (let’s get real: FAKE) Enthusiasm About the Clock Changing or the Energy Required for Answering Questions About the Afterlife.   That sort of thing.  Rosie tends to require mostly physical energy, with all the hoisting and schlepping and nursing and so forth.  She is not having any trouble in the Chunking Up area of newborn life.  See: Friday’s post.

I was also going to speak a little about the hours of 4-6pm, which some people like to call the Witching Hour.  I like to think of it a little more as the Eleventieth Circle of Hell.  However, that is another post for another day.  Now I need to go to bed so that I can rest up for the Get To School Juggle.

Here’s hoping for a lowercase morning.

Wait for it…

Steady now…WAIT FOR IT…

KA-CHING!!!