Off the wagon...

It has been a rough morning with Alina (i.e. several tantrums, time outs and spankings all before 9 AM). At one point she said "shut up" to no one in particular. Here is the ensuing conversation:

Me: "You need to say sorry for saying 'shut up'"
NiNi: "Sorry....and I don't forgive you"
Me: "Ok, I forgive you"
NiNi: "I don't like you. I like daddy"
Me: "Ok, that's fine that you don't like me"
NiNi: "Sissy likes daddy too"
Me: "Then who likes mommy?"
NiNi: "yourself"

Brutal, I know. On the other hand, I guess I better get used to being unpopular because I hear it doesn't get any better until they're about 25.

Part of the disdain for mommy may stem from the fact that I have been trying to get NiNi to stop sucking her fingers. If it were up to daddy, she could suck them "as long as she darn well pleases," but I have come up with '4' as the arbitrary age that one should no longer suck appendages whenever we're tired or upset. Her knuckles have two big ugly callouses on them from being rubbed by her teeth, and her orthodontist is not too happy about it either. Not to mention that it is just plain unhygienic. So, if she stays clean for 5 days she earns a brand new Barbie. To help her kick the habit I've tried wrapping her hands in gloves, medical tape (after which she broke out in hives...at least now we know she's allergic to latex) and mittens held on with duck tape, none of which are totally foolproof. She has been exhausted from not sleeping well and last night she fell off the wagon...I came into her room and found her peacefully sleeping and sucking. I didn't have the heart to tape on the mittens again. I guess we'll try again another day.

Growing up...

"Hey mom, take a camera of this..."

NiNi is becoming quite the ham and loves having her picture taken (although she pretends not to) especially while dressed up in princess garb.

Confessions of a working mom

This is not a post about working mom's vs. stay-at-home moms. I been both at different points in life and they are both hard. In fact, sometimes I am more exhausted on the days I stay home than when I go into work. It's just a different kind of exhaustion. What I have been currently experiencing is the drop over, brain-dead, peel off the sweaty socks and fall on the couch while the kids eat fruit loops right out of the box, variety. And here are some guilty little shortcuts I take on a regular basis:

1-We eat off of Styrofoam plates on weeknights. I find that Styrofoam seems more like real dinnerware than paper plates. Too bad they are not recyclable. We do recycle other things, but the plates are definitely one black smudge on my record.

2-I sometimes let my kids put themselves to bed. No bedtime story. No prayers. No tucking-in of covers. We do pray and read stories at other times, just not always at bedtime.

3-Speaking of bedtime, it is not uncommon for me to hit the sack immediately after I put the kids to bed (or they put themselves to bed). At 8:30. Yes it is still light outside.

4-I iron on the floor. This is a multi-faceted issue. For starters, the ironing board is kept in our bedroom and could use a good squirt of DW40. I am usually ironing at 5:30 in the morning and don't want to wake Chris. Plus, I hate to iron so this task must be done as quickly as possible. Throwing a towel on the floor and running a few quick swipes over my shirt works well enough.

5-I am having someone come in and clean once a month. I struggled with this for a long time because no one in my family has ever used a cleaning service. I am from a down-home, salt of the earth, blue collar background. We don't use cleaning services. On the other hand, if it allows me a few more hours to enjoy my family, it's probably worth it. And the cost of a cleaning service is still cheaper than a chiropractor, a counselor or anti-depressants (I read that in a book).

6-I sometimes don't wash my face or brush my teeth before I go to bed. Call me unhygienic if you want, but I did get a gold star at my last dentist visit.

7-I religiously do one load of laundry before work every morning. No matter what. You can usually find me sitting on the floor of our tiny laundry room in the wee hours of the morning folding or sorting or washing. It is a dreaded task, but the only way I have found to permanently keep the laundry monster at bay.

8-I am doing a lot more cooking ahead. This past Sunday I made 2 lasagnas and an enormous pot of beef stew. It's Tuesday and we're still eating the spoils and I have maintained a safe distance from the kitchen. I do a dinner coop with my frind Karen. She cooks for me on Wednesday and I cook for her on Thursday. I am getting together with a group of friends this Sunday to make-ahead 8 meals to freeze. In my perfect world, I would never have to come home from work and cook dinner. Maybe someday I'll figure out a way to swing it.


In other news, here are a few recent quotes from the girls:
Meagan (as I was waking her up in the morning): "Awww, mom, I was fighting a woolly mammoth!"

Alina has recently begun calling Port-a-potties, "trash can bathrooms"

Meagan:
"If you lived on an island and you dug deep enough, would you get to the ocean?"


Me: "What was Bible class about today?"
NiNi: "Jesus....AGAIN."

We were on our way to go to out to eat and Meagan was whining about our restaurant selection. Chris said, "Meagan, stop being manipulative." Meagan responded, "I'm not being manipulative... I'm just trying to make you choose what I want."

NiNi was crying for no reason (this happens often) while riding in the grocery cart. When I asked her what was the matter, she said, "Jesus is not making me taller."

NiNi (looking out the window): "There's a chunky baby out there. Very chunky. I like to say that word"

Chris: "Did mommy fix your bike?" (it had a squeeky wheel)
NiNi: "Yeah, she put some W-OK on it"

Holiday weekend

No sound is more pleasing to the ears than the three little words..."four-day-weekend." Chris and I both took an extra day off to chill out and spend some family time. Thursday we headed to the zoo, which was also a popular idea with the rest of Indianapolis. Friday, my mom had both of the girls overnight and we had dinner at my favorite restaurant, The Old Spaghetti Factory. I worked there for a summer in college and going there always brings back memories. Afterwards we enjoyed the thrill of going to bed AND waking up completely according to our own schedule. Amazing.






As part of our official transition to adulthood, we shopped for and purchased a new sofa and bookcases for our living room. Although I had grown rather fond of the "dorm" look (i.e. broken futon with mis-matched end table/coffee table, and rickety over-loaded book shelf) I'll admit the room has lately taken on a sort of, well, dismal and non-functional feel to it. In a risky move, the sofa we finally decided on has white cushions! I figure NiNi is almost 3 1/2 and therefore not really a toddler anymore... and no more babies are expected as far as it is up to us...so maybe I'm not totally out of my mind. Plus, we purchased the 5 year stain warranty. This means that until 2014 you can come over and pee, vomit or spill nail polish on my couch and someone will come over and clean it right up.

We had a relaxing evening with friends for one of the chilliest 4th of July's I can remember. I was very excited to try my hand at cedar-plank grilling. The salmon turned out very tasty. Later we built a fire in the fireplace. Below is a picture of the kids warming their feet after running around barefoot in the rain for a couple of hours.

We sort of nixed going to the fireworks since we thought they might get cancelled and we were all pretty pooped anyway.

green

Vacation and misc. rantings

My latest revelation is that I have a finite amount of energy for each given day. About 85% of it is used up at work. This means I have approximately 15% remaining by the time I walk through the front door at 6:00PM...so I better use it wisely. Experimenting with making sugar-free muffins is not a good choice (baking with Stevia extract is not all it's cracked up to be). Nor is cleaning out our sock drawers (by the way, I found 32 pair of unmatched tube socks in my husband's dresser drawer. I would swear that some of them have been there since 1999) Yesterday I discarded all of the expired bottles from our medicine cabinet and organized them by use (i.e. pain relievers to the left, stomach issues to the right, cold and allergy medicine on the top shelf, etc.) In fact, just this morning I was thinking, "When I get home from work I should clean out and organize the girls' craft supplies." Chris says that I have a sick obsession with trying to organize my life. Hmmmm, now why would I feel the need to do that? I'll admit it's a little silly...and ultimately it leaves me lamenting, "Why am I so tired all the time?" I am seriously going to work on changing my ways.

We did have a relaxing vacation....Ahhhh, if only energy could be stored and spent like roll-over minutes. We spent the week in Naples, FL with my sister and her family. We lounged at the beach, lounged at the pool, and then lounged at the beach some more. I thought for sure that the kids would get tired of swimming, but they never did. We all got a little crispy since Naples in June is pretty darn hot. NiNi came home looking like she's from Pakistan.





What sand dollars look like before they're all dried out and bleached out by the sun









On a final note, Meagan has since lost BOTH of her top teeth. The other day she was staring at herself in the mirror. Sucking in her cheeks she exclaimed, "Mom, that's why old peole look like this....because they don't have any teeth to hold out their lips!"