Seven Quick Takes – The Monday Edition

1.  I won Swistle’s baby girl clothes giveaway! I could not be more excited about winning this, especially since I’ve been bemoaning never winning ANYTHING ever.  Awesomeness.  I had to bookmark the page so I go back and visit the tiny baby girl dress and the tights and the jeans that MATCH the dress.  Obviously I cannot be trusted on my own in any stores that actually sell baby girl clothes any time soon.

Although I did take a spin through the Target baby girl section the other day and perhaps it’s just a matter of the grass being greener and all that, but while the TODDLER girl clothes were adorable, the baby girl clothes were sort of “meh”. Perhaps they’re just in a down cycle or something over there at the Big T, but I’m not one for pajamas with “Mommy’s Sweetheart” scrawled across the front, so it was sort of a dud of a shopping trip.  This doesn’t mean I won’t be spending an inappropriate amount of money in the Gap Kids Outlet sometime soon though.

Edited to Add:  This is not to say I don’t love me some Target baby clothes, or that you shouldn’t buy baby presents at Target, and also I totally bought four things when I was there and plan to buy many more.  It just wasn’t the baby girls clothing shopping Valhalla that I thought it would be when I was stuck on the boy side of the aisle, if you get what I mean.

2. I asked Twitter the other day if I should order the maternity gaucho pants, or if that was a fashion disaster waiting to happen.  As soon as A’Dell said “they’re like pajamas you can wear in public” I added them to my cart and I feel confident that’s probably one of the better decisions I made last week.

3.  Thank you so much for all of the potty training advice.  We’ve decided to give it a rest for the time being and to try again later, especially after talking to the pediatrician and Emily, both of who put the fear of god in me re:  stubborn children who decide just not to poop at all.  It probably wouldn’t be SUCH a big deal to me anyway except Pants poops A LOT.  Like four times a day.  Which I should probably ask the nutritionist about, because it doesn’t seem super normal to be such a prolific pooper.

4. Amy came over to watch the Super Bowl yesterday and we blathered away over a bowl of man dip for hours and at no point did I actually have to watch any football, which was intensely awesome.  Friends that make you laugh are the best even if you do get them in trouble by telling stories that you aren’t supposed to repeat for which you are VERY SORRY!

5. Two Internet Babies were announced last week – again, AWESOME. I just love internet babies.  I am super happy for both these ladies and I am inappropriately interested in what Janssen names her future progeny because her and all her siblings have some seriously cool names.

6. I had some blood drawn a few weeks ago and it turns out that I have three times the amount of HCG as the average pregnant woman!  (Please note,  I am not outing myself as a Hardcore Christian Gamer, cool as that sounds). No one really knows why this is, and I had a super duper long ultrasound with three doctors and all is well with *Lighting Bacon.  And I feel a strange sense of validation after receiving this news – HCG is the chemical that makes you sick when you’re pregnant, so I’m not just a crazy drama queen, there is a real reason that I’ve been so sick and it’s not because I’m weak and lame and making too big a deal out of things or because I am just not trying hard enough to suck it up or fix it.  It sucks, but at least I know now it’s not just me.

*Pants has named the baby Lightning Bacon.  You have to admit it does have a certain ring to it, no?

7. I did do some shopping, I have to admit.

And Jennie send me Lighting Bacon’s first pair of teeny weeny itty bitty jeans, which are just insanely adorable. And polka dots! You all know about my thing for polka dots.

7a. And finally, the  seeds are started!  Only the things you start indoors, but we’ve got trays full of peppers, way too many kinds of tomatoes, zinnias, and a few melons.  Pants helped.   It’s really nice – on this gray cloudy February day, tomato seeds on my windowsill feel like the very best kind of hope.

Elephant Ears Update

So after a somewhat lengthy morning sickness hiatus, my Etsy shop is back up and running, and I’m going to continue adding stuff whenever I get the time.

Anyway, go check it out if you get a chance and I will be back shortly with more fascinating tales re: poop.

What To Doooooooo

Ok, parents. I am mega mega frustrated, and I need advice.

Pants is almost three, he’ll be three in February, and I am really really really really ready to be done changing diapers.  I am DEFINITELY a one booty mom and there’s another booty on the way, and furthermore, he starts preschool in September, and he has to be potty trained for preschool.

So, we’re doing our best to get the kid potty trained, and we are failing miserably.

First of all, keep in mind, we may be dealing with the most stubborn human being ever to exist on this planet.  It’s not a PROVEN theory, or anything, but he’s more stubborn than I am, and whew, that’s saying something.

So we’ve tried your standard methods – we have a little kid potty and we’ve tried the M and M bribes and the lollipop bribes, and we’ve bribed him with trips to McDonald’s and trips to Baskin Robbins and a toy piano, and he does not care.  He is INTERESTED in these bribes, he won’t turn down an M and M, but he wants to poop and pee in his diaper more than he wants any of that stuff.

We can’t tell  him to let us know when he has to go to the bathroom, because he WANTS to go the bathroom in his diaper.  Every once in a while we can tell that he’s about to poop, and we’ll grab him, whip his diaper off, and stick him on the toilet.  Those are the only times he’s ever gone in the potty, and we’ve given him mega praise and then delivered on the promised bribes and he DOES NOT CARE.  The only thing this has done has been to make sure he knows that he should be sneaky about when he’s going to the bathroom in his diaper.

So, to review.   He knows he CAN go in the potty,  he knows we want him to go in the potty, he knows he’ll get mega treats and praise for going in the potty.  He DOES NOT CARE. He wants to go in his diaper.

So, our only other option is to refuse to give him a diaper.  I tried that this morning, and this means from 8:15 until 12:45, I listened to moaning, whining, top volume screeching of “I WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANT A DIAPER.” FOR FOUR HOURS.   And we can’t go anywhere, because to even go on a walk, I’d have to put a diaper on him, and then he’ll pee or poop in it.  So I’m just trapped listening to him whine at top volume and it’s really not something I can deal with for like, hours and days at a time.  ESPECIALLY WHEN IT IS NEVER SUNNY AND I THROW UP MY HAPPY PILLS AND I CAN’T HAVE WINE.

The last hour or so of Whinefest 2010, he figured out that I’d have to put a diaper on him in order for him to take a nap, so he alternated “I WAAAAAAAANT a diaper” with “I WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANT to take a nap. PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESE CAN I TAKE A NAP?!” and finally I gave in, put a diaper on him, and put him in his crib.

So, any advice? Is he just not ready to be potty trained?  Should I just flat our refuse diapers and put big boy pants on him to take a walk or go to the store or to take a nap and let him go to the bathroom in them? (Which he will do, he treats them as a diaper.)   I can’t tell him he needs to be a big boy or that he has to get ready for preschool, because he doesn’t want to be a big boy, and he REALLY doesn’t like the idea of preschool.  He wants to stay home with Mommy, he wants to be a baby, and he wants to poop and pee in his diaper.

HELP!

It’s A…

I thought it would be really funny if I posted a big long boring rambly thing right here and only got to the point after nine paragraphs of blather, (not that you’d notice the difference) but then I’d actually have to write nine paragraphs, so I’d like to just say:
Holla! It’s a girl.

Save The Date! Blathering II, Electric Bugaloo

Get a badge for your side bar and some more information here, thanks to lots of hard work by Miss Maggie.

I can’t wait to see you all there!

Second Verse, Same As the First

Goddamit! Why does the fracking phone always ring 20 minutes after the child goes down for a nap! People! Do not call me between the hours of 1 and 5 PM!  SERIOUSLY!  Also, if I ever buy a phone without a mute button on it again, kick me in the shins repeatedly, please. It would be way less painful than having my child awoken 20 minutes after he first falls asleep.

And now there is screaming.  So  much screaming! Fun times.

There was a brief shining moment last week some time when my fingers hovered over this very keyboard and I thought about saying something about how maybe I might sort of kind of be feeling slightly better.  But no, THAT moment passed.  Today I feel as rotten as ever.  In order to spice up my usual monologue of “I really truly wish I were dead” I have taken to asking if Mr. E knows where I can get industrial grade ether or if medicinal marijuana is permissable during pregnancy (turns out NO, of course, no one wants you to have ANY fun when you’re PREGNANT). When those two bon mots grow old, I simply announce, as dramatically as possible “I JUST CANNOT DO THIS ANY LONGER.”

Of course one must continue on, no matter what.  And I do feel keenly at certain fleeting moments that it will all be worth it, certainly, absolutely worth it.  But oh, lord, it’s still awfully tremendously terrible.

Ah! You know what solves this crying problem almost instantly?  Headphones + Elliott Smith.  Highly recommend.  Plus then you can really do a nice depressive ponder of untimely death, what with Mr. Smith’s unfortunate demise, and THAT’S almost as good as actually being 13 again and wondering where to find a new pair of those fetching black and white striped tights.  If you have enough cash in your Star Trek lunchbox purse, that is.

Also! Because life wasn’t sunny enough, this week I get to add another entire category to the “food I can’t eat without wishing I was dead, no, really, DEAD DEAD DEAD”, because now not only can I not eat gluten, dairy, sugar, booze of any kind, or anything without nuclear levels of protein, but I also can’t even look at a can of tomato soup without inciting Mach 10 levels of heartburn, so, for those keeping score, that means:  no gluten, no booze, no dairy, no sugar, and nothing acidic.  Seriously, WATER gives me heartburn.

I comfort myself with an image I like to call, simply:  “After”.  I have just given birth, there’s a lovely glow hovering in the air around me, a sort of aura, you might say, and I’m surrounded by bright white clean sheets, solicitous nurses offering heaping baskets of the good drugs, and Entemann’s donuts and Taco Bell cheese sauce.

I am tired.  Tired tired tired.  I just finished reading “The Corner” and seriously, it’s awfully hard not to draw the comparison between myself and a crack addict.  Every forty minutes I have to crawl out of my cave and search for my next fix, and if it’s not calibrated to nuclear fusion levels of correctness, I feel like hot garbage for the next four hours or so.  Maybe I’ll get lucky and I’ll feel unprecedented levels of decent for up to 20 minutes at a time!, and then I get hungry again, and it’s off in search of my next score.

I should just keep a cooler of steak tartare by the side of my bed.

Oh, that might be the most revolting image I have ever conjured up in the history of all time.

Have I mentioned I. AM. TIRED. OF. THIS. SHIT?

Anyway.  Besides the miracle of conception, what else am I up to?  Well, this weekend I helped Mr. E plant a climbing rose next to the fence.  I would imagine it will be lovely come any time that’s not right now.  Let’s say – June.  Right around DONUT TIME.  And we planted raspberry bushes in the backyard and I feel a proprietary love towards them which can only be classified as unnatural.  If I name this kid Raspberry Ekd@hl don’t be surprised.

And I successfully goaded Mr. E into putting up another shelf in our closet to hold more shoes, which means the closet floor is clear of shoes, which means the CANIS TERRIBILIS can sleep in there now, and I finally have a shot at a night’s sleep in which I am not awoken by either the oppressive stench of dog or the indescribably horrendous sound of a dog licking unknown dog parts.  Hooray!

Also, I cut my hair because although I was right in the middle of “growing it out” it was WAKING ME UP AT NIGHT and we can’t have that.  I am already awoken numerous times a night by my dipshit neighbor, my child, my wildebeest husband, my stupid dog, and my traitorous bladder, so clearly I the hair had to go.  I did remember that it needs to be left much longer than I actually ever think it does, (in order to be tucked behind my ears), and I have decided that the fact that I actually remembered this means I am GROWING AS A PERSON in all sorts of marvelous life affirming ways.

Finally, do you think this:

“NO SOLICITING OF ANY KIND, PLEASE. THANK YOU.”

properly conveys that I do not want a “free” GE Security system, to find God, magazines, candy, my lawn mowed, or to be born again?  Because really, in my VERY BEST DREAMS I am the sort of person who answers the door at EIGHT THIRTY AT NIGHT and says “FOR GOD’S SAKE OF COURSE I DO NOT WANT A FREE PAPER WHAT  ON EARTH IS WRONG WITH YOU AND ALSO CHILDREN ARE SLEEPING NOW OR AT LEAST THEY WERE EVEN THOUGH THEY AREN’T ANYMORE SO THANKS BUT NO THANKS, ASS HAT AND YOU CAN SHOVE THAT FREE PAPER WHERE THE…(well, you get the idea)” but in reality I am the sort of person who instead simply inwardly seethes these lines in my head for months, and then thinks really hard about printing a sign, and googles “No Soliciting” signs and favorites “No Solicitors of Any Kind” signs on Etsy and then asks the assembled masses curiously “Do you think they sell No Soliciting signs at Home Depot?” and then gets ALL RILED UP all over again EVERY SINGLE TIME someone tries to sell me a “free” GE security system and then I again compose a lengthy ranting treatise  (in my head) about HOW TOTALLY OFFENDED I AM BY THE PEDDLING OF FEAR AND PREYING ON THE PARANOIA OF POOR CONFUSED OLD PEOPLE and then finally finally finally prints out a sign and slaps it on the door and then really really  hopes everyone leaves her the hell alone.

But not you all, you all are lovely and can feel free to sell me candy for your “basketball team” any day of the week.  I won’t be able to eat it, but I will save it, and I will add it to the imaginary pile of drugs, donuts, and cheese sauce.

Ten Good Things

1. It is not sunny, but it has stopped raining. For now.

2. I finished the taxes yesterday, thanks to the miracle known as Turbo Tax. Now I just have to wait for a big fat check to be deposited into my checking account.  Which is a MUCH MUCH nicer feeling than the year we discovered we owed money, let me tell you.

3. I get to check one of my “To Do in 2010″ items off since we just switched cable companies.  FYI, we did briefly consider getting rid of cable entirely, but it’s not as simple as all that, because our cable, internet, and home phone are all bundled together.  Getting rid of the cable portion of that doesn’t make enough difference to justify not having ANY television.  Anyway, we ditched Comcast and signed up with a local company that uses FIBER OPTICS. I have no idea what that even means – but it’s $90 dollars a month instead of $170 or $180, and they’ve already earned a place in my heart because instead of running the cable  SMACK DAB THROUGH THE MIDDLE OF THE FRONT OF MY HOUSE  Comcast style, they put the wire in through the side of the house where it can’t even be seen.  And then instead of  a GIANT BLACK CABLE CORD COMING OUT OF THE MIDDLE OF MY LIVING ROOM WALL, they put two tiny white boxes along the baseboards.  This means I get to rip out the giant ugly black cable IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WALL and that makes me very very happy. Also, I like dealing with people who seem to possess basic common sense.  It just makes me feel like they actually CARE.

4.  My SIL is pregnant! Yeah babies!  Also I told her my secret WAAAAAAY TMI method for actually pooping while taking Zofran and now I feel that we have an unbreakable bond.

5.  If you count in a certain sort of way, there’s only five ish days until we find out the sex of OUR babeeeeee.  I am desperately trying not to look at the baby girl crib bedding at Pottery Barn Kids.

6.  Eli told me this morning  he wants to name the new baby “Bacon.”

7. I’ve decided I should use the power of the internet combined with the random information I’ve gleaned by not actually reading “The Secret” and put my wants out there into the universe to see what happens.  So, internet slash the universe, I want:  to win an internet contest because I never ever do and it makes me feel like a loser, summer to start tomorrow or maybe even today, and for the furloughs to end AND for some awesome judge somewhere to rule that Mr. E is also owed back pay so I can roll around in a giant pile of money ala Demi Moore in that one movie.  Only fully clothed.  And also by “roll around in a giant pile of money” I really mean I will just transfer money around online a lot.  Which is really the 2010 version of rolling around in money, I guess. Anyway, that’s what I want.

8.  The daffodils are coming up!

9.  $5 foot longs for dinner! (Confidential to Mr. E:  We are having $5 foot longs for dinner.)  Also, the word “footlong” looks really disturbing when you type it out on the computer.  Ew.

10.  This morning because I didn’t want to park cars and I needed to make the terrible noise coming out of my child’s face stop for at least three minutes, I played Pants one of his very favorite songs (My Girl) and when he heard those first few bonging notes coming out of the stereo, his little head popped up, and he got a huge smile on his face, and he said “MAMA! Dance with me!” and those moments, man, well, it makes all the rest of it totally totally worth it.

Misc.

Inspired by (ok, copied from) Swistle.

I might as well admit right off the bat that I am feeling cranky.

1.  Some mornings, Pants and I sleep until nine.  Some mornings, Pants wakes up at 7:15, and then I get to wake up at 7:15.  Do I need to tell you that the 9 oclock mornings are glorious (the whole day goes by SO MUCH FASTER) and the 7:15 mornings are in fact, quite hideous?  I don’t TECHNICALLY know the reason why sometimes Pants wakes up at 9 and sometimes he wakes up at 7, but it is REALLY DIFFICULT not to feel like SOME MORNINGS my husband tromps around our house like a wildebeest, and wakes Pants up, and even though I cannot scientifically prove that it is HIS FAULT, it feels an awful lot like it MUST BE at 7 oclock in the morning.  I just want to sit up in bed and scream at the top of my lungs “WHY ARE YOU SO FRACKING LOUD?”

2.  It rained yesterday, it rained today, and it’s supposed to rain until Saturday, when it might stop raining for 12 seconds before it starts raining again. I never used to mind rain, but now it traps me in the house with my almost three year old and so I hate rain.  Also, somehow the rain seems like it’s bringing a whole host of semi disasters with it – the underneath of the sink is leaking because it’s never been properly fixed, the toilet runs on and we’ve apparently given up on trying to figure out how to make that stop, we have a series of weird water troughs placed around the outside of our house because our carport is leaky and some of our gutters need to be repaired, the front window leaks, the bedroom wall next to the bed is damp and anything that falls down there ends up covered in mold.

3.  We’re chucking off the shackles of our old cable company and trying some new local company, which is all well and good but that means people have to come IN MY HOUSE TO install it. I know it’s neurotic and crazy pants, but I HATE HATE HATE having random fix it people or installers in my house. I HATE IT.  Hello, fun awkward times.  And because I am the one who stays at home, I am always the one who has to deal with it, when I hate it more than anything.

4.  Have I mentioned I can’t take my anti anxiety medicine?  Well, I can’t.  I can’t drink, I can’t have dairy, gluten or sugar, and when I try to take my Lex@pro, it’s like someone flips a switch, and I throw up violently for the next 12 hours.  My psychiatrist gave me a reduced dose, but I’m not in the mood to experiment with Barf Party Take Three, so I just don’t take it.  Which  means that things that I might normally be a little anxious/crabby/ragey about now make me EXTREMELY anxious and it sucks.

5.  After you have been woken up at 7 am, even if it’s not someone else’s fault, it doesn’t improve your mood to find that someone has made coffee, but left you so little that you can either make more and waste most of it, or else you can look forward to a headache at 3 PM.  Pondering your options there while cleaning up an entire kitchen worth of dirty dishes left over from the night before does nothing to improve this mood, you may be shocked to learn.

6.  I don’t like my dog. I just really don’t like my dog, and I am sick to death of people arguing about this with me.  “It’s just a dog! That’s how dogs are!  That’s what dogs do! She’s such good security!”  How do these things change anything?  Why does the dog get to be “just a dog” and I don’t get to be “just a person who doesn’t like dogs?”  Why does ARGUING with me about how I should like dogs seem helpful? I DON’T LIKE DOGS.  And the fact that I have to walk into my bedroom, open the door, and be blown away by the smell of dog?  Or sit down on my couch and smell dog?  IT MAKES ME STABBY.   I feel like I have all of the negatives of a dog and none of the positives, because I DON’T LIKE DOGS, but I still have to live with this one.

7. On days like this I just have to repeat to myself “It will all be better in spring time. It will all be better in spring time.”

8.  We find out on the 27th of January if we are having a girl or a boy, so place your bets now.  I REALLY think it’s a boy, but we all know how bad I am at guessing these things.

9.   Sometimes I just get tired of everything being my fault. It’s my fault I don’t like the dog, because only bad people don’t like dogs.  I need to take a chill pill when someone takes 2/3 of the coffee, because being annoyed about this makes me high strung.  Eli is crazed after four days of being trapped in the house in the rain begging his dad to park cars, and it’s my fault because I never play with him.  We don’t have any towels to use to clean off the dog each one of the eight thousand times she has to be let back in the house, and it’s my fault because I must have thrown them out.  Yes, what a crazy person I am, to throw out the two ancient filthy towels wadded up in the backyard.  It’s true, it’s ALL MY FAULT.

10.  Ever since Pants watched some crappy On Demand episode of Thomas the Train, he insists that he can only be fed “Train Food.”  But he won’t tell any of us what “Train Food” is.  When I ask, he tells me “I don’t know! Give me train food!” and then goes into hysterics at the horrible! cruelty! of! his! parents! who! never! feed! him! train! food!

PS I hate Thomas the Train.

Chewy Sprees

Every time I try to write something funny or smart or even vaguely interesting, I think about all of the  mothers in Haiti who cannot find their babies right now and I have to stop writing drivel about the baby girl clothes at Target and give Pants about a hundred kisses.  Also, I let him have Chewy Sprees for lunch, because everyone knows that no matter what, candy makes everything better.

Those of you got our Christmas card this year probably already recognize this face, but here’s what Pants does when you ask him to give you a big smile.  This face is intentional, not random capture.  He does it EVERY SINGLE TIME I ask him to smile.  In fact, I like to think of the one closed eye as his signature look.

Remind me not to pay extra money for fancy yearbook pictures 15 years from now.

Book Review: A Gate At the Stairs

A Gate At the Stairs, by Lorrie Moore

Well, I was pretty sure I would hate this book, because everything I’d read about it said how damn good it was.

Um, yeah, it’s pretty damn good.

Like, my favorite thing I’ve read in a good long time good.

So, plot synopsis:  Tassie is twenty years old and she’s a college student at big midwestern university.  She’s also a farmer’s daughter, but her father grows fancy ish stuff like heirloom potatoes and spring mix and a lot of people in her small home town don’t consider him a real farmer.  Tassie needs a part time job to pay for books and food and such while she’s at school, and so she starts working as a baby sitter for a husband and wife, Sarah and Edward, who adopt a bi racial baby.

Um, so, I don’t know how else to say that I really loved this book, but it was the sort of book that makes me just absolutely despair at being a writer because every sentence seemed so elegantly crafted.  It was funny and interesting  – Sarah is the chef owner of a fancy restaurant in Tassie’s university town and the food is both lovingly talked about and made fun of.   And all throughout there were lines that made me laugh out loud and scenes of such heartbreak that it hurt to read them.

One thing that really stuck out for me – Lorrie Moore just built this WORLD.  The scenery of the novel was so clear and compelling and detailed – you could SEE the upscale house that Sarah and Edward live in – their fancy kitchen and their nursery and their woodwork.  You could SEE Tassie’s student apartment and the neighborhoods she takes the baby walking in and the setting of the book just absolutely came to life for me, but at the same time you didn’t even realize it until it had enveloped you, really.

And Tassie – one of my favorite characters in such a long time.  Smart, but not too smart, and learning about her world and yet not ashamed to admit it.  She made me like myself better and forgive myself a little bit for who I was when I was twenty.  I loved the songs that she would make up with her roommate and I loved the way she gave herself over Emmie, the child she cares for, and I loved the way she seemed self possessed and yet horrified at the awkward around every turn.  She’s this amazing voice of reason throughout the book, and half the time I don’t think she knows it, which makes it all the more refreshing.

This book was just…masterful.  Favorite book since I can’t remember when.