We just sent Stu’s mom home early because of Massive Hurricane Gustav that is considering taking out a state or 2 tomorrow. If she didn’t make it out today, she would have been stuck here for quite sometime, there’s really no telling what we can expect. It is very difficult to be so far from your family at times like this. Not that I would prefer to join in on the mandatory evacuation, but I feel so helpless here. My home is right in the path at the moment. Not that anyone seems to really know where it might go. All my Beaumont friends are all scattered and temporarily stranded. Except my parents, who are still sitting at home last I checked. Don’t get me started Mom. I’ll be writing more soon, but we are still so overwhelmed with the kitchen project today. Trust me, I have alot to say about several things. Shocking.
Monthly Archives: August 2008
Despite my best efforts…
…He crawled!!! My stationary baby is now mobile! His Migi (Stu’s mom) has shown him freedom. I keep joking that I’ve been loosening the lid all this time (ok, well, Daina has), and she came over and popped it right off. I can’t lie, I have not been one of those moms teaching and teaching and begging him to crawl. He’s 10 months old, so it’s not like all is lost or anything if he’s not crawling. And frankly, I like that when I leave a room, he’s still where I left him when I come back. I’ve been pretty convinced that he would never crawl, just skip right on to walking. So convinced that I haven’t even put up any baby gates or those plug thingies or cabinet doohickies or anything! I have to get busy. I know, MOTY. I’m proud. And kinda sad. hmph. I tried to put the video up but can’t get it to work. Saaaaaaaaaaaaam!
Toshiba status update
Everyone calm down, she may have some life in her yet!! The picture has been totally fine today. I still suspect that she’s on her way down, but maybe the death will be extremely slow (like, until Christmas when we can request a new one) and hopefully painless for poor Toshi. I really resent having to buy a new tv for the living room when we were already trying to budget for a small one in the kitchen and our bedroom. Now we want THREE new tvs! Geez. And I fancied myself someone who wasn’t even a tv person. Oh, who am I kidding.
I just made coffee in the bathroom.
Just when Blake thinks he has things figured out. It was weird. The kitchen is now completely dysfunctional. The fridge is still plugged in though, and the microwave, so I suppose that was a mild exaggeration. But no countertops, which proved difficult while I tried to make my coffee -and we only have a pedestal sink in the bathroom so I guess the coffeepot’s new home is the back of the toilet (coffee is pretty much the top priority for me when morning comes). It reminds me of the Seinfeld when George brings the book in the bathroom then tries to return it. Anyways, we’ll have to put up pictures of the stripped kitchen soon, because I know you are dying to see it (and HGTV will be beating down my door to make a show out of it). Stu’s mother is coming in today to help with Blake so that we can make some real headway on building these cabinets. Hopefully, we will make IKEA proud. Anyways, I gotta go make myself Productive Polly. There is much to do before the MIL arrives!
Mommy Dating
This came up 2 different times yesterday with different friends, so I thought I would import one of my older myspace blogs to discuss it. Still very relevant, even more so with some of my recent play-date experiences.
Married White Female seeks mommy-friend. Child must be well behaved and husband must not be annoying. Non daytime worker preferable, seeing as my free time is during the day. Know-it-alls and perfect mothers need not apply.
I am observing a new phenomenon. I didn’t realize I did it too, but then my new friend pointed out that we met through mommy-dating techniques. My friend who, oddly enough, I met at Target. Blake was 4 months old and she was 8 months pregnant. She ooed and ahed over my baby and we talked about stretch marks and epidurals (don’t get me started). We parted ways, and then I decided that this is someone who would be fun to hang out with, and she’s about to be home with a baby all day too! So I trotted over to the Medela aisle (just a hunch), and found her. Once we determined that I wasn’t going to force her to go to Bible study and she wasn’t going to get me to sell Mary Kay (update: I’m now selling MaryKay and she has not gone to Bible study with me-what’s wrong with this picture?), we have become great friends! So I was recently telling another mom about this, and she started telling me how she met a couple mommy friends at the library’s reading hour and at the park. The more I ask about it, the more mommy dating stories I get. The funniest are the ones where you are trying to hedge a mommy you don’t want to date. You’re talking, and all of a sudden, she’s trying to get your kids to play together. She’s obviously a know-it-all mommy because she wants to know exactly when your child started crawling and whether you’re feeding him all organic food. So what happens when she asks for your number? You start pulling up your old dating techniques from college. Do I fake an emergency? Give a fake number? Its not you, it’s me?
I didn’t know that having a baby would throw me into this new culture, but I can’t say I hate it. Having mommy friends is great because they can relate to all of the nutty things you go through in a day. Now if you are one of my very special non-parent friends, don’t get the wrong idea. Any mother will tell you (as selfish as it sounds) that sometimes it’s nice to hang out with someone who doesn’t have a child on her hip and a nap schedule. Someone who can just ride somewhere in her car without having to play musical carseats. It takes all kinds!
Anyways, here’s to mommy-dating!
MOTY
If you look in my “about section”, you will see that I have sarcastically awarded myself with Mother of the Year, and Wife of the Century Awards and you might occasionally see me elaborate on my merits in those areas. I don’t know which this falls under. I’m so careful to be a coupon clipper and sale watcher. I try to do my part to help, since I certainly don’t do anything to contribute to our financial situation (well, except save us a fortune in daycare). I do, however, buy the expensive yobaby yogurt for Blake, which annoys me in itself-why does it have to cost a fortune just to get yogurt that isn’t chemically manufactured!!?? I’ll save that for another blog. Anyways, I bought the stupid yogurt yesterday, came home, and in my rush to put B down for his nap, left it sitting on the counter in the grocery sack. I found it this morning. I guess if it had been chemically manufactured it would probably still be good at this point. So now I have to not only spend the money again, but tote him into the grocery store to get it (I try to really minimize those trips). I know it’s a little thing, but I annoy myself sometimes.
RIP Toshiba 36 inch
So the other day our friend OC was over helping with our kitchen renovation (he got tricked too), and he was commenting on our place. He noted that as we work through the house, everything is so new and beautiful- except our big tube tv. He told us it was time for a flatscreen. I took offense (naturally) and told him that I am not so materialistic that I need to go out and replace a perfectly good tv, with something fancier and shinier. This evening, I turned the tv on and watched the screen shrink to something like a 19inch. It’s not looking good. Kelli assured me that this is definitely what a dying television looks like. We’re not sure how long she’ll make it (the tv, Kelli’s fine), but I guess we should say our goodbyes. I’m super annoyed though, because our tv isn’t even all that old. We bought it 5 years ago! My parents have been using the same sad old tv for, like, 15 years! I really, really feel like saying, “they don’t make them like they used to”, but I fear being dated. Anyways, we accept donations if anyone feels sorry for us and considers lack of tv a worthy cause. Mom? 🙂 (who needs a cruise Mom, when you could come up here and watch a big old new tv!)
GIF
I love the obnoxious abbreviations that have come through text messaging. Even though sometimes I think they get a little carried away; its a challenge, and who doesn’t enjoy a good challenge? You get to sit and wonder for awhile what someone has just said about you. In Sam’s blog, it took me alittle while to figure out IRL (I hope it’s “in real life”). Stu and I crack ourselves up talking around the house. We crack ourselves up anyways, its probably just us. I digress. No, I didn’t forget the T for TGIF (its not friday anyways people). It stands for God is Faithful. A few years ago Stu’s parents gave us a journal, a GIF journal. They encouraged us to start writing down those moments in our lives where God has proven faithful, by answering a prayer, giving a blessing (big or small), and basically just showed His hand in our meager little lives. I am convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt that remembering to be thankful for what we are given is key in our happiness on this planet. We all need perspective from time to time in order to remember that life is good, God does love us and want to give us good things. These are important things to remember when life doesn’t seem good, it seems difficult and trying. God doesn’t promise that He will spare us those moments, but He does promise to never leave us. So back to the book. Stu has been better about writing in it than have, he’s kinda made it his thing. This morning while I was cleaning our room (sometimes I do), I saw it and opened it up. I was already feeling like it was one of those luxuriously beautiful days anyways, but this was an additional upper. SO many wonderful, amazing blessings!! I’ve decided to make GIF a regular blog in order to remind myself, and others to be thankful. So for today’s GIF, I am thankful for this amazing day. Summer is starting to ease into fall and it feels FABULOUS outside. I have the windows open and the air conditioner off. My sweet chubbo boy (Thank you God, what a blessing in himself!) has taken a nice long nap and allowed me to get so much done this morning. I got 10 hours of sleep last night (that’s right), and I feel so refreshed!! I hope the fact that we document these blessings helps me through those moments that I would rather NOT document. I hope it helps you too.
DOOL, BTW
I just found this old pic from 2005 (6?) of me visiting the set of Days of Our Lives in LA. I found it relevant to my recent DOOL post. That’s right, I’m hanging out in Salem. They should probably call me for come sort of cameo. Or starring role, whatever.
BTW: Stu just reminded me that this was 2004, our 1st anniversary. We are getting old.
Wrestling with a Pig
My sister can’t stop laughing at me because Blake has started having his first temper tantrums. I don’t know why anyone would think that whole, “Now you know what I’ve been going through all these years” snicker helps the situation. He’s only 10 months old, so I’m pretty perplexed. It’s also perplexing because up to this point, he has truly been such a perfect baby. He very very rarely cries, and when he does we usually figure out that there was a good reason for it. He’s just so content, and so darn fun! But now he’s getting opinionated. For the last couple of days its just been some kicking during diaper changes, and yelling at me when I tell him no. But tonight he had a full blown, red-in-the-face tantrum. It makes him mad when he has to stop what he’s doing for a diaper change. I guess he’s discovering so much independence that he sees laying on the floor like that as something he did when he was incapable of everything else. Once he could sit up, he wanted to do it all the time. Now that he can stand, he wants to do that all the time. So laying down really ticks him off now that he’s tasted such freedom. Up until today I’ve been doing all this reasoning with him, distracting him, telling him “no”, blah blah blah. In fact, yesterday Stu heard Blake “talking back” (basically I tell him “no” when he kicks at me, and he grunts and kicks harder-ugh), so he comes around the corner to do the “daddy” thing. You know, “don’t talk to your mother like that”. He almost stopped his fit just to laugh at us for a moment. I guess this is all so weird because I thought I had fantastic ideas about what a great disciplinarian I was going to be (see my Mother of the Year award), but I wasn’t picturing a baby when I came up with these scenarios. I had someone who could be reasoned with in mind. Soanyways, today in church, pastor was talking about dealing with unreasonable people, and he said the most profound thing. “You can wrestle with a pig, but you’ll just get dirty and the pig will enjoy it”. This is good advice for many situations, but I decided that surely trying to reason with and discipline a 10 month old having a tantrum must look something like wrestling a pig. So tonight I just held him down and finished changing the diaper, I didn’t acknowledge the tantrum at all. MAN, that pissed him off! It got ugly, turned into those crying hiccups. I hated it, but maybe he’ll get the picture soon. When I picked him up from the change, he snuggled me in the sweetest way. I guess he needed some comfort after all that trauma. He was really sweet for the rest of the night. Maybe he’s apologizing and it will never, ever happen again! Thank goodness I’ve figured it all out now. Whew.
View From The Hills 