A blog without pictures...

...would be a sad blog, indeed. I just noticed that today's post pushed the last of my cute-kid pics into archive, so here are a couple from lunch today. Notice Ruth's mouth full of food in the shot of her. Yum!
Marianne is showing off her big-girl eating - sitting at the table and drinking from her open cup. She appears to have her mama's horrible sitting posture, though.
We were all looking a little scrappy by lunchtime because we'd been outside on a walk and then playing in the backyard for about an hour, and the wind today is crazy!

This was mainly a photo update. Don't miss the longer post about Ruth from this morning!

Caution: High speed baby development ahead

Ruth is eight and a half months old, and she's really hitting her stride. She's finally figured out how to push herself into a sitting position, where she can stay indefinitely upright. She mastered the leg-arm coordination of real crawling and uses it the majority of the time, though she does still occasionally choose to army-crawl on her tummy. And, here's the new and exciting (read: dangerous) one - she's pulling up on things. She used to hold herself standing for a few seconds if you stood her up next to the couch, or maybe pull herself up onto her knees in her crib. That was enough to make us lower the crib mattress over the weekend. But since Sunday she's gotten much more adept at pulling up. She can fully stand up in her crib and can almost do it on the furniture, but she's still a little cautious. On the downside, this means that when she woke up around 4am this morning (which I will, from now on, refer to as "the witching hour" since for some reason my kids can no longer sleep through it) she didn't just roll around and then go back to sleep. Ruth decided it was jungle gym time and Nathaniel found her standing in her crib when we eventually responded to her cries. Great. It's cute when you're ready for them to be up, but less so in the middle of the night.

On the eating front also, Ruth is progressing by leaps and bounds. We began feeding her lunch this weekend, in addition to the breakfast and dinner she was already eating (and numerous milk snacks in between). I decided lunch would be a time of finger food exploration while we kept up the pureed food at the other times to make sure she gets the nutrition she needs. But I needn't have worried. She will eat anything you set in front of her. And that was tested out yesterday! Another reminder to be careful of what I say, I guess... I told Ruth's daycare lady on Friday that we'd be starting lunch and that we wanted to try out real solids, so she said she'd just offer Ruth tiny bites of whatever she was feeding the other kids, within reason. Sounded good to me, based on the list I usually get of what Marianne has eaten during the day. Yesterday, as a result, Ruth had for lunch: ham, cheese, peas, peaches, mac & cheese, goldfish crackers and nilla wafers. A few of those were things I'd given her previously, either as finger foods or puree, but ham was her first meat and she'd never had peas whole before, nor nilla wafers. It's not a big deal, but honestly it sounds like the kid had three lunches instead of one! As long as she still drinks enough milk afterward, I guess that's fine.

Weekend entertainment

In the car on the drive home from daycare Friday...

Me (to a car turning into the wrong lane): DUDE!
Marianne: Don't say "dude"!
Me: Oh, um, sorry...
Marianne: Dude! Where are you GOING?! (a quote from me from a month ago)
Me: Oh, right! Dude! Where are you going?
Marianne: I like Dude-where-are-you-going.
Me: Great.
Marianne: Duuuuude! Where are you going, duuuude! Dude, where are you goooing?! (and repeat)

I suppose I should be very, very glad that those are the words she's picked up from me the in car. I'm generally a clean talker, but a couple weeks ago I was driving the girls home from the Children's Museum in some nasty snow, and the car started to slide on the road. I totally slipped out the "s" word, but I think it was warranted since there were visions in my mind of the car going into a full spin in the HOV lane and slamming into the side barriers. Thankfully I got the car back under control and Marianne has yet to repeat the bad word. Of course, the bigger danger for us seems to be having our kid-free friends over. They try to keep the conversation clean, but as anyone who's ever tried to give up cursing for lent can tell you, old habits die hard. I can't recall the exact quote Marianne picked up this weekend from our friend Ted, but I remember the eyes of every parent around the table going wide as Marianne repeated him word for word. The bad word wasn't so bad - "sucks" maybe, but enough to make Ted feel bad for having said it.

Twice in the past three nights Marianne has woken up around 4am. That does not result in happy parents. On Friday night the whole family ended up awake from about 4:00 till 5:30 because Marianne woke Ruth up, then neither would go back to bed. Did they sleep in the next morning? I guess if you'd call 8am sleeping in. Which, come to think of it, I guess I would these days. Last night only Marianne woke up, thankfully, and it was partly our fault. We didn't put a sippy cup of water next to her bed like we usually do (my thought was that the girl will never potty train if she's allowed to drink water all night long - I don't think she's woken up in the morning with a dry diaper once in her life). It's possible she would have had a drink of water and gone right back to sleep this morning, but the lack of water resulted in screaming. And then she needed to potty. Here's a quandary for you - you want your child to potty train, but you also want her to go back to bed so you can get some sleep. Your child announces that she needs to potty at 4am. Do you take her to the bathroom, or suggest that she has a diaper on, so really, she should just go back to sleep? I mean, she's not really anywhere near potty-training, so it's not like this is the make-it-or-break-it time... Of course I took her, and she did go, but then I had to coax her back into her room and it was all a huge hassle. Still, I think I was back in bed before 4:30, so that's an improvement over Friday night.

Mommy body

So far I've avoided mentioning my dieting challenges here, but I've had several conversations recently with friends who are facing similar challenges and I thought, what can it hurt? If I talk openly about my weight loss (or lack thereof), maybe it will motivate me to do better so everyone doesn't think I'm a big loser. Unless they're thinking of it in the sense of the TV show - the Biggest Loser - in which case, that might be a good thing.

By way of background, I have been doing Weight Watchers off and on for several years now. Off when I'm pregnant, on when I'm not. I've had some good success, but never gotten anywhere close to "goal" by WW standards. I happen to think the "goal" WW wants to set for me is somewhat unrealistic since it would have me down to my weight in the middle of high school. But I digress. I rejoined WW a few weeks after I had Ruth, and was going to meetings till August when, as part of our budgeting to allow me to work part time, I decided to stop paying for meetings but keep trying to follow the plan at home. That's been only moderately successful. For the past couple months I've been fluctuating around the same weight, and it's more than a little discouraging. I'm about 5 pounds from my low weight before getting pregnant with Ruth, and that's still about 10 pounds above what I consider a realistic, happy goal. 15 pounds may not sound like a lot to everyone, but of course its the LAST 15 pounds, so will take me forever and a day to lose.

In an effort to self-motivate, here's a list of ways that I sabotage myself, that I really need to stop:

- Eat first, consider the consequences later. Last night we had a bunch of friends over for dinner. We had homemade pizza for dinner and I made up a couple dessert pizzas. After our friends headed home, I started calculating WW points for the food I'd had. I knew the dessert pizza wouldn't be healthy, but I had no idea what was in store. Of course I could have calculated the points before I had three pieces of it, but instead I have to spend the rest of this week (till I weigh myself next Tuesday) not eating over my daily allowance of points, because I have no "flex-points" left.

- Give up till I can start fresh. My standard reaction to the story above would be to blow off the week as lost and eat everything I can now since "I'll start back up next week and be better then!" Certainly this method has not resulted in weight loss for me.

- You wanna bite, Mommy? There's a game parents sometimes play to convince their kids to eat. You know - "Oh come on, it's SO good. Look, I'm having some and it's really yummy!" Or, Marianne will want to share her food with me, and after turning it down 16 times, it saves my sanity to just take the bite and move on. I don't usually think to count the points for it, because it's a bite here and bite there, but in retrospect, I can see days where it really added up.

- You look great, for someone who's had two kids. I'm not sure how this factors into my mental state with respect to eating, in all honesty. It's a combination of things. For starters, the statement "you look great" is totally flattering, and almost makes me feel like I'm beating myself up over nothing. Hey, I look great. Why should I keep working so hard at dieting? I mean, I'm the mother of two kids, so I shouldn't expect to look much better... Then there's the second half of the statement. When it's said by someone else, I think it's meant well. But does anyone want to look great for having had kids?! Ouch! And if I look like that now, can I even get better? I'm only 28. I don't want to have a mommy body for the rest of my life.

Enough whining. I'll try not to harass my few readers with diet stuff often. But I think it's good for me to get this off my chest publicly. If it helps me resist a single donut (or half of Marianne's donut), it will have been worth it!

For the white rappers in all of us

A friend of mine sent this link to me today and it cracked me up. It's a west coast response to the SNL Chronicles of Narnia rap that's been all the rage lately. SNL did it a little better, but I liked this one because the guys are driving my black Corolla in it. Sweet.

(If you're somehow not familiar with the SNL version, check it out. It's the funniest thing I've seen from SNL in a long time!)

An update and a story

Well, the verdict is in, and our furniture is going red. I think I'll stop by Target tonight and get the matching loveseat slipcover. We're having friends over for dinner tomorrow night, so it would be nice if our furniture was de-wrinkled and matching by then. Woohoo! My house officially has some color! Now, if I could just come up with a good, non-white color to paint our kitchen so that I could paint the cabinets white, I might actually enjoy my living space a little more.

I feel like most of my kid updates focus on Marianne, but I suppose that's to be expected since she does a lot more than Ruth. While I could watch Ruth sit up, and perfect her crawling technique, and eat paper all day long without getting bored, it doesn't make for the best stories. So here's one more about Marianne:

Last night I had to put the girls to bed on my own, as Nathaniel had control of some big telescope in New Mexico for the night, so had to stay at work to use the computers there to control it and take some images (anything else I say will only make that even more confusing to someone who doesn't already know what I mean, so I'll leave it at that). I got Marianne in bed, then gave Ruth her last feeding of the night and put her in her crib. That woke Marianne up, so she walked over to me with her blankie, bear, pillow and sippy cup (arms totally full of stuff - it was pretty cute). Ruth was still fussing in the crib some as well. I was holding Marianne in one arm, using the other hand to rub Ruth's back and singing them the usual night-night song, Suzanne Vega's 'Gypsy'. They seemed to both be going down, so I put Marianne back in bed and left the room. A couple minutes later Ruth was crying again, but I was resolved to let the situation work itself out. Usually if only one is fussing, she'll go back to sleep on her own. It's when both get going that you know you're in trouble, because they feed off each other. After a short time I heard Marianne as well, so I stood outside the door to listen more closely and decide whether I should do anything. Ruth stopped crying within a minute, though, and what I heard was awesome. Marianne was in her bed, singing 'Gypsy' for Ruth. It was too cute!

I wish I could end the story by saying that the song put Ruth to sleep and then Marianne put herself to sleep, but that would be a much happier ending than the truth. It only worked for a short time, and eventually I had to take Ruth out of the room for a few minutes so Marianne could get to sleep. It was one of the toughest bedtimes I've had in a while. But by 9:30 they were both asleep and I had time to fold some laundry before my own bedtime (yippee).

A long-awaited improvement

This is our old sofa. I bought it shortly after moving to Colorado many moons ago, and it has served us well. Unfortunately, it served our cats even better. Let me show you some detail that you may be missing in that shot.

Or if that's not enough to make you wince, allow me to zoom in on some of the most impressive work the cats did:

Now you understand some of my earlier comments about visions of slipcovers dancing in my head... We may not be able to afford new furniture, and I certainly don't have the time, patience or ambition to reupholster anything, but we can swing for $80 slipcovers from Target. I know we'll spend the rest of our time with this sofa in a constant state of tug and tuck, trying to keep the thing in place, but I don't care. I don't want to see the filling of our sofa anymore. So here it is - the official unveiling of our new and improved sofa (scroll back up to the top for comparison). Keep in mind that this will be the first time Nathaniel's seen it as well, since I bought the slipcover during this morning's shopping adventure, so it may be packed back up and returned if he hates it.

Even with the wrinkles and stickers (which I'll obviously remove if we decide to keep it), I think it's an improvement on the old one. Our house is extremely neutral in color, so this is a big step for me. The red works with the color-block throw rug and the artwork in the room (trust me that there is some decor, although it's not visible in the photos), so I think it'll be a fun change. Opinions? Is red too overdone these days? I think I like it.

Two, with a vengeance

I mentioned Marianne's aggression issues a few days ago. Today she decided to show off another key two year old skill - the tantrum. I took the girls shopping this morning. Marianne is usually very independent and will walk to the car herself, climb in (with a boost) and get into her car seat on her own. This morning involved being dragged bodily to the car and strapped in forcibly. Once at the first store, the normal routine is for me to get Marianne out of her seat, and she will stand next to me while I unbuckle Ruth then walk, holding my hand, through the parking lot to the store, where she usually will want to continue walking but I usually will bribe her to sit in a cart. This morning involved kicking and slapping while I tried to unbuckle her carseat, flinging herself onto the parking lot and lying on the pavement in an obvious effort to (a) be run down and (b) embarrass me in front of other shoppers until I scooped her up in my arm not already occupied with Ruth and a diaper bag and hauled her into the store. Once I had her in the cart and plied with fruit snacks, thing proceeded a little more smoothly. I'm sure you get the gist by now. There was only one more throw-herself-on-the-floor event at the second store, so really it could have been worse. However that doesn't mean that it wasn't more than a little humbling when my normally well-behaved daughter made a scene in front of other mothers whose kids were acting all polite and calm. Still, I thank my lucky stars that my kids are as good as they are. We met Nathaniel for lunch after the shopping fiasco, and Marianne sat at the table eating her sandwich (or the filling from it, at least) and playing with her kid's meal toy, while Ruth ate cheerios and chewed on the plastic wrapper from the afore-mentioned toy. There was no screaming or scene-making. They're good kids. Most of the time.

Cue Karate Kid soundtrack...

That's right. I'm the inspiration! My friend Jenni just started her own mommy-blog because she likes mine. Jenni has a very cute baby girl who will someday be best friends with Ruth, so check her out. I feel so proud right now!

Exciting moments in parenting

While tearing apart a rotisserie chicken yesterday to make a pot of chicken noodle soup, I was reminded of an evening a couple months ago and the memory made me laugh at myself. I thought I'd share. We were at a friend's house for dinner where fried chicken was served, so I took a drumstick for Marianne. I pulled a few pieces off for her to eat, and set the drumstick on the edge of the plate so I could get more from it if she needed it. A couple minutes later what do I see? Marianne is holding the drumstick, chewing the meat right off the bone. I can hardly express how proud and excited I was! I realize that parenting has completely warped my view of excitement, but here's my explanation: I have spent over two years now feeding this child. From physically producing the food myself, to cooking and mashing the food to cutting up the bites into sizes she won't choke to death on... For more than two years I've been hand-holding her as she learns to eat different types of food. And now here she is, my big girl, gnawing meat from a bone all by herself! It's like the lioness watching her cub after its first kill. (Do they do that? I think maybe the lionesses actually do the hunting for them until they leave the pack or something, but you get the idea.) She's growing up so fast! I almost saved one of the legs of the rotisserie chicken just to watch her do it again.

Party animals

The couple who adopted the cats came over yesterday and picked up the rest of the kitty stuff that we had - half-bags of food, big food bowls for when we'd travel, brushes, nail clippers, etc. It had a really nice sense of closure about it. They told us how Corby and Lula are doing and they sound happy. I can rest easy now that we found them a good (better?) home. Of course, it'll be just my luck if now that I'm settling into the idea of their being gone, the couple decides next week to bring them back for some reason.

We had a fantastic Saturday evening! We went to some friends' house for dinner, put the girls to bed there, and stayed up till after 1:00am talking over coffee and dessert. That makes three times this month that we've actually done something on the weekend outside of our house. It's refreshing. It feels like we have a real life beyond our little family unit! The only trouble is that here in suburbia, it's easy for all of your friends to live annoyingly far away. All the people we hang out with the most are a 30-45 minute drive away, and all in different directions. There's no good central place for us to meet. So after staying up till the early morning enjoying one another's company, all but the host family have to load up the car and drive for the better part of an hour. I think next weekend we'll volunteer to be the hosts...

Update on the kitties

I just heard from the couple who has had our cats on a test basis for the past couple weeks, and they're planning to keep them. It took the cats a while to warm up to the new environment, but Corby and Lula seem to be doing great now. They're sleeping in the new couples' bed at night and seem content and happy. Hooray! I can feel the guiltiness slipping away...

Because they're cute

Not to brag, but sometimes I'm overwhelmed by how cute my kids are. No really. I'll look at one of them and just get this rush of motherly love and then think, how did that even happen?! Nathaniel and I certainly aren't unattractive people, but wow! We make cute kids!


Here are some updates on the progress of the daughters, for those of you interested in that sort of thing.

Marianne has a new game she likes to play with me. She'll bring an assortment of barrettes and ponytail holders and headbands to me, and ask me to fix her hair. But before I'm finished, I have to have every last one of those hair things somewhere on her head. The result is generally pretty cute-funny, and she has to go check it out for herself. She is growing up way too quickly. She sets the table for dinner (I'm not even kidding - last night I handed her three plates and three forks, and she carried them to the dining room and put them on the table in the right places; nevermind that she's hardly tall enough to see the surface of the table), she plays with her little sister, and she nearly dresses herself (though she hasn't yet mastered the art of getting her pants pulled up in back - darn those bulky diapers!). We talk a lot about potty training, but she's just not ready yet. She does have some aggression issues that we're dealing with. Some of the time her intentions are good, but she doesn't realize how hard she's "patting" you, or whatever. Other times it's your standard two year old tantrum, with hitting, kicking, pinching, etc. That's not much fun to deal with, but she's always very sorry, and we're working through it. Marianne is an amazing little kid! I wish you could all meet her and be in awe of her conversation skills (the missing consonants notwithstanding). Oh, and, though it's probably true of most kids her age, she has a great memory. Nathaniel was reading "Olivia" to her at bed time recently, and he would start a line of the book, then stop, and she'd fill in the missing words on every page! It was hilarious. So, she may really wear me out, but I love her anyway (my favorite paraphrased quote from Olivia - a great book if you don't have it for your kid yet).

Ruth is also growing up fast! She knows how to crawl for real now, but she usually only does it for a few "steps", then decides that scooting on her belly would be faster. She's getting very chatty and using more real syllables. She says Dadadada a lot, though without realizing just how happy she's making Nathaniel. Ruth's hair has turned blond, but her eyes are still a mystery. They're gray all over sometimes, and sometimes you can see brown in the middle with blue on the outside edges. If they stay this way, I'll be surprised, but she is eight months old. I think by that age eyes have usually reached their final color. She's eating more interesting foods every day, though her diet still revolves around mushed up fruits and veggies. She loved the couple little bites of an oatmeal cookie I gave her yesterday. Maybe this time my daughter will be a real girl (not like her older sister who refuses chocolate and generally prefers peas to cake). I can't get enough of hugging her and kissing her neck just below her ears, because I know my baby will be a big girl before too long. And while my big girl still lets me snuggle her almost anytime I want, there's nothing like that squishy-babyness of the first year. Ruthie-roo (as Marianne always refers to her) is a blast, and I love her to pieces.

Here's to my girls. My life wouldn't be the same without them, though I might get to see a lot more movies.

Itsy bitsy spiders and the like

You know it's a crazy busy day for me at work when I can't find time to post on my blog! Today has been hectic, to say the least, but it's partially my own fault. I had lunch with a friend and then went to get my hair cut, which means the shortened time I have in the office needs to be well spent.

My company is in the tallest office building in downtown Denver. We take up two floors of the tower. I work on the lower floor but sometimes I have to use the internal building stairwell to go up to the other floor (it's one of those cement, junky looking stairwells that you fear having to use during a fire someday). Well, for the past couple days that I've been at work, there's been this HUGE cockroach in the stairwell. I think it's dead, but that hardly makes me any less grossed out. It was on a different stair on Monday, but today it's been in the same place, in a very dead-looking position all day. Still, every time I have to go past it, I either tip-toe by on the far edge of the stair, or run up the stairs at top speed, hoping that it won't jump at me and eat my ankles. Ugh! Blech! I hate bugs.

As a mom, though, I'm not really allowed to hate bugs. I don't want to raise my daughters to scream every time they see a spider or a beetle or even a cockroach. I want them to be independent women who can squish their own bugs without having to rely on a man. It amazes me how circumstance dictates my reaction to bugs. If I'm home with the girls and I see a spider or insect, I will calmly get a shoe or paper towel, kill it, and clean it up (don't even get me started on how Nathaniel will pick the bug up and take it outside to live the rest of its life in happy freedom - the fewer bugs living in the world, the better, is my theory). But if Nathaniel or someone other adult is around, bugs will make me squeal and squirm and beg the other person to kill it. I really can't stand them, but I can be brave for my girls! Once, when I was home on maternity leave shortly after having Ruth, I noticed a big, hairy jumping spider on our ceiling. The ceiling is too high for me to reach, even on a chair, so I spent hours keeping an eye on the thing to make sure it didn't jump off the ceiling and eat one of my babies. Marianne noticed it at one point and seemed a little scared, so we sang the Itsy Bitsy Spider a few times and I told her how nice spiders are, and made a game out of spotting him on the ceiling as he wandered the room. But if I'd been home alone, I probably would have avoided the living room like the plague to avoid that nasty thing, and then made Nathaniel kill it when he got home. Blech.

Take some notes

Here's a little tip from me to other moms: if you, like me, aren't really the type to keep a formal "baby book" in which you document every achievement of your child's life in calligraphy with cute pictures with borders that you cut out using your fun scalloped edged scissors (my apologies to the scrapbookers out there - no offense intended), don't let that stop you from keeping some informal notes about when the child did what. I didn't keep any sort of stats on when Marianne hit milestones other than the pictures and videos we took of her doing new things, and now that Ruth is hitting milestones of her own, I have no idea how they compare. It's not so much a desire to compare the two that's problematic, though. What I'm running up against is that I don't know when to start certain things for Ruth, like a few months ago I couldn't remember when we'd started giving Marianne a sippy cup of water along with food, and if it was therefore about time to do that with Ruth as well. Obviously kids are different, so their progression through these steps will be different, but if something worked great for your first kid, it's nice to try that same tactic with child #2. Here's a short list of things I wish I had jotted down somewhere, though some of these are things I've already worked through with Ruth (Did I take notes this time? Of course not):

- when we started finger foods as opposed to purees and cereals, and how quickly we diversified those foods (read: moved from canned green beans to cheese slices to bean and cheese quesadillas)
- what age I started phasing caffeine into my diet without wreaking havoc with the baby's sleep pattern through caffeinated breast milk
- when we lowered the crib to keep the kid from diving out
- what age we transitioned the baby onto three meals a day, and when we started cutting nursing as a result
- when baby is able to sit up well in the bath by herself so that you don't have to live in constant fear of a face plant into the water or a head cracking backward tip(due to rock hard slippery surfaces, this is a distinctly different date from when baby can sit up by herself to play)
- when baby sleeps through the night consistently, and it's reasonable to expect her to fall back asleep within a few minutes if she happens to wake in the night fussing

Of course there are the obvious ones as well, but for these I've been able to go back to our pictures and get a pretty good idea of when they occurred, and these are more for comparing your kids to each other and to your friends' kids than any other reason I can think of:

- first teeth (I'd say tooth, but my kids have been impressive so far in their ability to shove two or more through at once)
- when rolling over becomes a mode of transportation
- when crawling replaces rolling and tummy-scooting as transportation at a higher speed, and therefore the baby gates must be securely in place at all times
- walking/talking/etc

I'm sure there are a million other things I'll start wishing I'd written down as well, but these are the ones that I've wondered about in the past, or that have recently had me guessing. Especially the three meals a day one. Ruth is on two now, but both include nursing after the spoon feeding, and I'm wondering how long I should keep that up. Any thoughts on these from other mothers, or other suggestions of things I should make note of are welcome comments.

I only have eyes for you

Ruth is going through a very mommy phase right now. It became apparent during our holiday travels, and it's still going on now. I had a feeling that Nathaniel's leaving town for several days wouldn't help to boost him into the baby's-favorite position, and it didn't. Don't get me wrong. Ruth let him hold her last night without screaming, which is a huge relief. But she likes to do this great thing where, if I'm anywhere in sight, she'll refuse to look at anything but me. Nathaniel was holding her, turning her body to face him and moving her from one side of him to the other, all the time saying "Ruth, look at me. Look at me, Ruth!" and she just kept swinging her head around as quickly as possible to maintain her line of sight with me. It makes a mom feel special.

Of course, last night Marianne had a bit of the mommy-phase herself. She screamed bloody murder till she was nearly hyperventilating when Nathaniel tried to take her through her bedtime routine. She wanted it to be me, and only me, tucking her in. Really, it's nice to feel loved, but come on. A mommy needs a little breather from time to time as well.

To lurk, or not to lurk

I'm a "lurker" on numerous websites and blogs. I seldom comment anywhere but here, in my own homey little blog, and on the blogs of a few friends. However, I just found out (while perusing Finslippy) that this is the official week for de-lurking. Okay, I didn't actually de-lurk on Finslippy, or anywhere else for that matter, but I did get a laugh out of it. I think I have something like five regular commentors on my blog. But I know there are at least, um, maybe six other people who read the blog but don't comment. So go ahead and say something already. Or not. It's really up to you.

By the way, I hate the term "lurker", as it's a tad creepier than it needs to be. If you're not familiar, here's a definition.

While the cat's away...

What happens when the more health-conscious adult is gone for five days? Cupcakes become the fifth food group! Cupcakes with brightly colored frosting and sprinkles, to be exact. Marianne helped me bake a batch of cupcakes on Sunday afternoon, to distract her from both her daddy and her kitties leaving, and we've been eating some every night since then. I bought a tub of white frosting and each night I scoop a little out and let Marianne pick which food coloring to add. This has proved a remarkably good way to get her to eat her dinner quickly! But in just a few days, we've managed to eat almost the whole batch. We did have some friends over for dinner one night, and shared a couple cupcakes with them, but Marianne and I are the main culprits.


Here's Marianne with her blue frosting mustache from dinner last night. Marianne is very proud of all sorts of food and drink "mustaches" these days. After every meal or snack, when I attempt to wash her hands and face with a washcloth, she says, "Don't wipe off my mustache!". Since most of the mirrors in our house are too high for her to use without assistance, I generally give her a good scrub while swearing that I managed to wipe around the mustache. When she gets older she may not appreciate all the lying, but for now it's working for me.

Ruth has spent the last two days with a temperature just over 100 degrees. She seems reasonably healthy otherwise, but I did take her into the pediatrician's office this morning just to be sure. I don't want to be that mom. You know the one - she takes her kids to the doctor for every sneeze or rash, and won't leave the house if the baby has coughed that morning, or if there's rumor of a cold strain making the rounds. But after two days of temperature, and the diagnosis of a kid at Ruth's daycare with some respiratory virus, I thought it worth the trip. The PA that saw her says she's very healthy, though, and I needn't be concerned. Still, I think Nathaniel will no longer be allowed to leave town without me. It seems like every time he does, one of the girls ends up sick.

Ouch

This morning Marianne was in a pretty huffy mood when I was getting her ready for daycare. It's understandable since I woke her up at 7am; I don't like to be woken at 7am either. In the process of getting her dressed, I had to pull first the onesie, then her sweater over her head. After the onesie, she brushed the hair out of her face. I told her I'd fix her hair once I finished helping her dress, and she said "I'm making my hair pretty!" as she pushed it back with her hand. So I pulled the sweater on and she pushed the hair out of her face some more, making increasingly disgruntled noises over how I kept messing it up. Thinking I'd be helping, I got her brush and began trying to work out some of the sleep tangles. "Stop! I make my hair PRETTY!" And then, when I explained that I was going to put some barrettes in and continued trying to brush it, came the kicker: "Go away from me, Mommy. Go AWAY from me!" She wouldn't even look at me. It was a sad moment.

Not that it stopped me from brushing her hair. But still, that hurt.

Circus lunch revisited

For those of you who went to ND, remember Circus Lunch? The dining hall would serve corn dogs and bags of peanuts and cotton candy. (Ginny - remember how you'd never eaten a corn dog before?! Weirdo.) That was fun stuff!

Nathaniel is away at a conference this week, so when I put together the menu for the week, I filled it with easy-to-make, kid friendly meals. I knew if I planned anything remotely complicated, or that I don't love to eat, I would end up picking up fast food on the way home. So this is sort of like a mild version of circus lunch for me for a week! It's not quite as bad all week, but tonight we're having pigs in blankets. I'll admit, I'm pretty excited about it. I'll include a vegetable, and maybe some fruit smoothies so that I don't feel like a bad mom for giving my kid nothing healthy, but for myself, I would happily eat three pigs in blankets and skip the rest! Yum!

My itties wan go bye bye...

That's been Marianne's most used phrase this afternoon. (She still drops a lot of opening consonants. In case you're having trouble, that second word is "kitties".) I've been debating posting off and on today about this, because I have mixed feelings, but here's the scoop... I posted our kitties as available for adoption on CraigsList earlier this week. I'm really terribly afraid that people will think I'm an awful person for giving up my cats, but at the same time, I think it will be so much better for me to have that much less stress in my life.

I got a few hits from CraigsList, and one of them seems to have paid off. It's not a sure thing yet, the husband may have allergy issues, but they do want cats if he can handle it, and they loved our kitties. They came over yesterday afternoon to meet the cats and chat about any quirky issues the cats might have, and then called later in the day to say they'd like to take them on a trial basis. Their two concerns: (1) whether his allergies will act up - they were bothering him a little by the time they left our house, but they think that maybe their hardwood floors and lack of kitty dander buildup will mean he can deal with it at their house; (2) whether the cats will claw their sofa to shreds - they just bought a $700 sofa and aren't willing to make it a scratching post. Our couches have been completely ruined by the cats, but our couches are made out of carpet-like fabric that resembles nothing so much as one big kitty tower, so we didn't have a lot of hope from the start. The couple picked the kitties up this afternoon and will let us know next weekend how things are going so we can discuss making it long term (or not).

Here's the thing: I'm torn between trying not to get my hopes up in case they bring the cats back, because the majority of me truly is excited about having a cat-free home (I'm already dreaming of sofa slip-covers and hiring a carpet shampooer to get things good and clean!), and feeling guilty about giving the cats to people I don't really know. Honestly, they seemed very friendly, and they live nearby and asked whether, if they do keep the cats, they might be able to call us to cat-sit occasionally when they vacation, which I think is really nice. But I still feel sort of guilty. I keep thinking of Corby and Lula in a strange house with unfamiliar people and how scared and sad they probably are tonight. I'm such a pushover. {sigh} I'm finally getting something I've wanted for months, and I'm finding it hard to enjoy. Ah well, I'm sure I'll get used to it, and the cats will, too. And really, who knows - they may be back within the week and I'll be begging someone else to take them and going through all of this over again. I hope not, though. For the cats sake, I'd rather put them through as few scary transitions as possible.

Despite Marianne's frequent comments about the kitties, she actually handled their leaving very well. That may because she generally follows "my itties wan go bye bye" with "they be ome oon, though".

Singing praises

Remember how I commented yesterday that Marianne is singing now? There are definitely some pitfalls to that development. We went to mass tonight, and from the sung Gloria in the opening prayers till the end of the first reading, we could not get Marianne to stop singing "God in the highest" over and over. (It was one of those Glorias where the congregation just repeats the refrain while the cantor sings most of the song, so the congregation had repeated the phrase "Glory to God in the highest" quite a few times). Most of the old people around us just gave us "oh, isn't that cute" looks, probably even more so because a lot of them still remember us as the cantors from a couple years back, so they think it's sweet that our kids are starting to sing as well. But that doesn't stop up from feeling really self-conscious about the volume of our children. Luckily the psalm distracted Marianne with it's new tune, and then we distracted her further with a baggie of fruit loops.

A tourniquet, of sorts

Nathaniel got some wonderful news at work today. His thesis is being postponed yet again! Okay, I know what you're thinking - "isn't that the worst possible news?!". It certainly would be if there wasn't a good reason. As it happens, though, his advisor has asked him to take on some additional work over the coming months that will only allow him to work part-time on his thesis, but in exchange, his advisor will start paying him as a post-doc! Or at least, close to that.

No, I haven't resigned from my job yet. This isn't actually enough money for me to stop working, no matter how tightly we budget. But what it does mean is that we will no longer be (to use a phrase Nathaniel coined a few months ago) "hemorrhaging money" from our savings account. We'll actually be able to put some money into savings each month. A novel idea, to be sure. And then, once Nathaniel has an even higher paying job, hopefully before too long, I will be able to retire to a leisurely life of soap operas and baking as a stay at home mom. Ha!

For those of you wondering how this affects Nathaniel's estimated graduation date, the hope is still that he'll officially graduate this May. He just may not defend his thesis till May, instead of the hoped for defense in February or March. We're still trying to get our arms around the whole thing, but I think all in all, it's a good deal for us. So, hooray!

A fun milestone

Marianne has started to sing. I mean really sing. For months now she's been able to do a tuneless sort of chant with the words from songs, but she's actually picking up some real tune these days! She's also picking up the diva attitude to go with. Watch out Mariah, Marianne is hot on your tail!

Most of the songs are classics: Twinkle Little Star, ABC Song(I realize those are the same tune, but I'm not so picky), Head Shoulders Knees and Toes. Then there are some seasonal favorites that she must have picked up at daycare like Santa Clause is Coming to Town and Frosty the Snowman. The most entertaining, though, are the ones she's learned from us from our bedtime songs repertoire. Sure we sing things like Baby Mine and Over the Rainbow at bedtime, but the ones she's singing now are a little less common. Her big bedtime request for Nathaniel is a song called "Water is Wide". I don't actually know the words to that song, but up until this very moment I had thought it was an old song Nathaniel must have learned from his ND Glee Club days. However, I just googled it to get the lyrics and it's actually Sarah McLachlan. Well, Sarah, and about 30 other artists including Indigo Girls, James Taylor, Jewel, and several I've never heard of. I'm not really surprised, I guess. Nathaniel knows a lot more Sarah and IG music than I. The other song, which is Marianne's #1 bedtime request from me, is by Suzanne Vega. Marianne calls it "Hold me like a baby", but if you know the song, you're probably more familiar with it as "Gypsy". So our little girl is just over two years old and is running around the house singing love songs by pop singers. I already have dreaded images flashing through my head of when she's 8 or 10 and, though she doesn't understand what she's saying, is dancing around the house singing the latest raunchy pop songs of the day. I did my share of dancing and belting out the lyrics to Madonna with the foggiest notion of what I was saying.

Shopping is exhausting

I remember the days when I used to look forward to going shopping. Whether it was to the mall, or a department store or even just Target. It was fun to be in the stores, to people-watch, to browse for the best item or deal. And then I had kids. Maybe part of the problem is that I now shop at slightly less fun stores. I can't afford the nicer stuff I used to buy, so I do a lot more time at Target, Walmart and of course, my most frequent stop, the grocery store. I don't think that's really it, though. Shopping for tiny baby clothes can be fun anywhere. It's really all an issue I have with the hassle of loading and unloading kids. Not to mention trying to keep kids entertained while browsing or bargain shopping! Ugh.

Today I had to go to one of my least favorite places - Kohls. I'm actually glad that Kohls exists, because I get a lot of nice gifts from there from my mom and other people. However, I'll be darned if I can ever find a single thing that I like when I'm doing the shopping! The kids section is totally overwhelming in how tightly everything is packed together and they don't have regular shopping carts so I have to bring my stroller... And don't get me started on the women's clothing, or even worse, the maternity clothes when I was shopping in that department. Just the thought of going to Kohls gives me a headache. So today I went to return a couple things and see if I could find replacement items. It's never that easy. I ended up keeping the baby outfit I was going to return despite the hole in the onesie. They didn't have it in Ruth's size to exchange, and there was nothing else I liked as well. Plus, since I had taken the tags off and washed it before seeing the hole, they were only going to give the cheapest clearance price, which made it not worth it. I'll see if I can sew it up myself, or just use the jeans and sweater without the shirt. And of course, I could find nothing I liked for myself to replace the sweater that hadn't fit. Not even shoes. So I bought some pants for Nathaniel with my store credit, and bought myself a shirt at Target instead. Fair trade, right? But then you may have just picked up on the fact that I had to go Target after Kohls. Another unloading and reloading of babies - woohoo. But diapers must be purchased, so Target was unavoidable. Marianne knows now that she can demand fruit snacks the minute we enter Target; sometimes she can get two packs out of me just to keep her quiet and in the cart. Whatever it takes to make the trip as short, and as quiet as possible.


I'm home now and the girls are sleeping, though, so all is well. Hopefully I'll be able to escape by myself to do the grocery shopping this weekend. The free cookies for kids make the grocery store a little easier at least. Before Marianne could speak, she could use hand gestures to point us to the free cookies from any starting point in the store. It's like there's some sort of homing device inside the sugar cookies that calls her name. At least we'll know where to look for her if she ever gets separated from us in the store.

My claim to fame

Nathaniel and I were playing around last night with the site meter that I have on my blog (if you're not familiar, it tells me how many people are visiting my site, and where they're coming from), and it turns out I'm the number one listing on google if you search for draft doggies. I guess the way to get new readers is to make references to obscure (and obviously no longer for sale) items that people might want. I also got a hit from a person who had googled something about the runt of the litter for puppy surprise. And these people actually bothered to click on the link to my site in response to their searches. Amazing. I'm trying to think of other oddball 80s retail items that I can mention to bring in the web surfers...

My kitties

Apparently Nathaniel's friend Kris was shocked a while back to hear that we have kitties, since they'd never appeared on my blog. So I'd like to introduce you to them. This is Corby (named for a bar near ND which, though neither Nathaniel or I hung out there, had a much better name than the ones we did visit - I couldn't very well call my kitten Coach or Linebacker or Senior Bar, now could I?):

And this is Lula (named for a coffee shop just off the ND campus that we actually did frequent):

Aren't they cute? Wouldn't you just love to take them home with you? No, I mean that. Would you like to take them home? Let me know.

Our kitties are truly great cats. They're as patient as a cat could be with our kids, which is saying a lot. They run away if needed, but Corby especially will just lie still while Marianne pulls his tail and "pets" him. She's getting much gentler with them now, but Ruth is just learning to try and grab handfuls of hair, and Corby is still putting up with it. Can cats become saints? If so, he's well on his way. Sure, the cats scratch the furniture some, and jump on the table, but it's nothing all cats don't do, right?

So why do they get on my nerves so much?! Ever since I first became pregnant with Marianne, which, due to some hormonal shift or other mysterious change, caused Corby to want to sleep on my head and knead my neck with his claws, I have had no patience for these kitties. Lula is less annoying about rubbing herself all over me, but she's the one more likely to meow just when a baby has fallen asleep and I'm trying to put her in her crib. They knock over the humidifier in the girls' room because the bubbles in the water tank taunt them; they try to trip me when I have to check on a baby in the middle of night; they get on the kitchen counter when I have clean bottle supplies drying; they wrestle one another, leaving big clumps of kitty fur on the carpet immediately after I finish vacuuming. They generally raise my stress level by a huge factor, and that's the opposite of the effect cats are supposed to have.

Last spring I looked briefly into finding a new home for them, but it never came to anything. I adopted these kittens from the local humane society, and they are my responsibility. But still, it seems like there is probably a home out there where they could be better loved and cared for, and get scolded less than they do in my home. Plus, if I found a happy home for them, I could sleep with my bedroom door open for the first time in three years without the risk of a cat chewing on my hair in the night. Nathaniel loves the cats and I know he'd rather not give them up, but he also loves me when I'm in a good mood, and he'd see a little more of that me without the cats. For now they're ours and that's okay, but if a good opportunity to place them in a loving home comes along, I'd probably take it. I'm a failure as a kitty-mom. I may have to squelch that dream I had of getting a puppy someday, since I know for a fact that puppies are much higher maintenance. Anyway, here's to Corby and Lula, my wonderful kitties whom I can't seem to appreciate...

ADDENDUM: The cats obviously knew I was saying bad things about them. When I went up to the living room after typing this post, I discovered they had dragged a bag of yarn out of my closet and strung it all over the upstairs of the house, waking Ruth in the process. Don't tell me about how I should have my yarn in a zippered bag - I hear that from Nathaniel often enough. I think the cats should learn from my repeated bad reactions to their attacking my yarn that attacking yarn is a bad thing. Sure that's unreasonable, but these are precisely the things that drive me crazy. Grr.

Happy New Year!

We went to a New Year's Eve party last night. We actually stayed up till after midnight, which was the first time I've done that voluntarily in quite a while. Several of our friends at the party, including the hosts, have small children as well, so the upstairs of the house was full of sleeping children. Were ours among them? No. Ours were hanging out downstairs refusing to go to bed. It wasn't so bad, really. Marianne played happily (since the toys were someone else's, and therefore much more fun than her own) and Ruth just hung out in my arms most of the time. Ruth actually did go to bed by about 10pm, but Marianne was up till around 11pm. Cheerful the whole time! It was crazy. We (the adults) played board games and ate and socialized and it was a good time all around. By the time we got home and to bed, though, it was 4am. You didn't read that wrong, 4am. Not surprisingly, we went to a later mass this morning than we usually attend. But hey, for a brief moment I remembered what it was like to stay up till the wee hours of the morning playing games at a friend's house, and it was worth the lack of sleep. Still, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a nap this afternoon, because I'm really getting too old for this sort of thing.