How Are The Kids?

This question came up recently.  My answer, with more details, was this:


Ugh!
Seriously?  If you were pissed because I said you will have to get a job in order to get things from here on out that you don't take care of anyway want or need, I wonder what you thought when I took you to Goodwill to find some clothes for jury duty.  On the upside, I spent less than ten bucks on  a pair of man pants, two dresses and some short overalls for Madelyn and a donation for the troops.
Back to the downside, what do you mean you came shopping for pants and didn't wear boxers?!?  Dude.  Oh wait, maybe it was my offer to buy you some man panties that made you decide to go straight home?  Or was it the way I didn't get so excited about your free-through-this-guy-on-the-Internet computer repair tech training that's going to help you become a department manager at Staples?


Haha!
Well, this could be either of the girls, but in this case I'm thinking about how Mad and I had to have The Talk.  You know, the one where I explained, "Listen, when we see Aunt Carol with the baby in her tummy, we're going to talk about how beautiful she is and how lovely.  Even though you've been especially interested lately in how my body pushed you out, we're not going to talk about that with her.  Okay?"
For further clarification, I am not referring to the conversation my 21 month old wee bebe had with her father recently, wherein she asked, "Chase boys?"
And in no way am I referring to this conversation with Fynnie Fynn:


Me:  What happened to your diaper?
Fynnie, one hand on her bare heinie:  Um, wew (well)... dipey *mumble mumble* cyimb!"
Me:  Your dipey came off because you were trying to climb?
Fynnie:  Yesh.

Here's the crappy cell pic to use for blackmail later illustrate my point.

Aw!
Again, could be either girl.  However, this is about Fynnie asking to be carried like a baby.  She hasn't let it happen in months now, and it only took place because she was copying her big sister, who would give just about anything to be the baby these days... while still maintaining her position as the leader of the pack, of course.  Fynnie let me carry her down the hall and into her room, all the while looking up with a satisfied little smile.  I had the same smile, I'm sure.  That would be a change from the days when I regularly carried her like a baby.  I'll forever think of those days as the time when I just barely made it through.

I Probably Think That Song Is About Me

A couple weeks ago I fell at work.  It was one of those "where are the cameras?!" moments that had me sailing down the hall, arms outstretched for what felt like 20 feet.

Am I surprised that I fell?  No.  Only that it's been so long since the last time.  Oh, and that I didn't have an audience.  The last time I fell on the job was about eight years ago.

At a mixer for several local chambers of commerce.  To be specific, I was in a business that provided non-emergency medical transport.

From the top of the stairs to exactly halfway down.

Why halfway?  Because this office was in a converted house circa mid-19th century.  The stairway was narrow and I'd "saved" myself by using the handrails on both sides.  Only my hands slipped and I went bumping (loudly) down the stairs on my knees with my arms hung over the rails.

Until I hit the brackets that held the handrails to the wall.  Halfway down.

My body jerked forward, but did not dislocate my shoulders.  I stood up and declared, "This is not an emergency and I do not need medical transport," before limping off into the sunset.

I was clumsy as a kid, too.  My mom says there were two reasons she put me in gymnastics.  One, because I watched the '76 Olympics and Nadia Comaneci without moving, totally rapt.  And two, because she figured I might learn how to fall more gracefully.  I'm going out on a limb and saying her reasoning was pretty sound.

Still, I bonked a lot.  Photos of my childhood show knees with huge bloody scabs and legs and arms full of bruises.  How many times did I have toes taped together until the breaks could heal?

Let's not even get into the fact that I have a scar on top of my foot from stepping on a piece of glass.  My mom said it was only possible because we're Polish.

I ran into things with my face, too.  Two black eyes at the same time?  Check!  Yep, pretty exciting times being me.

I was a tomboy.  (What?!)  I never really considered myself vain.  I mean, there was a time when I appreciated my looks (and now I can appreciate that they are fleeing and leaving crepe-y, wrinkled old lady skin in their stead).  I went three years without mascara, eye shadow and lipstick (the most makeup I ever wear) because I couldn't take anything for my allergies.  It wasn't the worst thing in the world.

Whatever.  I'm vain.  About my teeth.

If you knew me when I was a kid, you would not be able to guess such a transformation would take place.  In my home, oral hygiene was completely optional.  I had yellow sweater teeth* for a long time.

*Sweater teeth may alternately be known as bread teeth, depending on whether or not it looks like a person has just eaten bread.  Ever notice how bread clings to dirty teeth?

(Ever notice that any time people bring up oral hygiene or teeth in general, people close their mouths and run their tongues along their teeth?)

My sister and I, we of the mutant crowded teeth, had a longstanding wish fulfilled at age 14.  An orthodontist in a neighboring (bad) town (the sort of place you wouldn't like to visit) ran a coupon in the paper.  Fifty percent off!  And they took payments!  With a coupon from the neighbor's paper, we had a two for one deal.

One requirement before the appliances were installed (why are they called that?) was a trip to the dentist for X-rays.  Between my sister and I, more than one-third of our teeth had cavities.  I have a vague recollection of our parents asking us to choose between fillings and braces.  My sister had an extra set of eye teeth and my front teeth formed two-thirds of an isosceles triangle.  It was a no brainer for a couple of young teens.

A few months before my braces came off, a hygienist showed me how to brush my teeth.  There was something about those little circular motions that stuck with me and I've been doing it ever since.

The first time I went to the dentist was 12 or 13 years ago.  I had the same number of cavities as I'd had at age 14.  And little dark, hard spots on my teeth.  Oh, I was a beaut!

I smiled behind my hand.  It took one coworker pointing that out and the rest of them encouraging me to go to the dentist for me to finally put on my big girl panties and go.

The dentist scheduled me for four visits, deep cleaning and filling cavities in one quadrant at a time.

A weight I didn't fully understand I was carrying, lifted.  How often was it in the back of my mind?  I felt freer and instantly quit the habit of covering my smile.

I have not missed a dental appointment since then.  One time, I showed up a week early by mistake.  In fact, I go every five months because those pesky allergies often make me a mouth breather, which is a great way to get more nasty goo on my teeth.

Seven years ago Nancy mentioned that one of my front teeth was starting to turn colors.  My front teeth were in pretty bad shape anyway, with little chips out of the inside corners.  But now one was dead from all that bonking.  It was turning brown.  I had a root canal and a month of internal bleaching to get it back to a normal appearance.

The day after my home run-like slide down the hall at my office, I sat in the dentist's office steeling myself for the first step in getting a crown on that same tooth.  I guess the root canal had made it more brittle, and there was a fracture running from top to bottom.  Going to the dentist doesn't usually stress me out in the slightest, but I'd forgotten to find out what to expect until about four hours before my appointment.  No one I asked had any experience, or if they did, it was decades old and they didn't really remember.

The receptionist had to fill in for the regular hygienist for a few minutes.  She tried to reassure me that the end result would be worth it all.  But she was very clear that I would not like the process or the temporary crown.

I did not enjoy at all the numbing injection in the roof of my mouth, the sound and scent of my tooth being "shaved down, like a peg," or the fact that I realized my dentist has yellow and brown teeth of his own.  A lot of them.

Add to that the sensation and *gag* sight that caused me to say, "I'm kind of a gusher, huh Doc?"  (I tried to reassure myself later, asking the hygienist if it's normal to bleed that much.  After a long pause, she said, "Ummm, well, it's... not... uncommon."  Yeah, okay.)

I did take a peek at my peg of a tooth before the temporary crown was placed.  It was too depressing.  Imagine a front tooth about one third its normal width and length and the gums around it purple and blue.

Like I wasn't bruised enough already from my fall, right?

Doc figured out my tooth color and the hygienist went to work shaping the temporary crown.  When it was all done, I got to take a peek.

*sigh*

Sometimes the strangest things make me regret moving up here.  Like having a dentist whose teeth don't look well cared for.

Or the fact that my temporary tooth was way too narrow at the top (of course, flossing was a breeze, so there was that).

Or, what seemed like the worst part of all... it was yellow.  Why?

*ohm*

I felt more than a little down when I left the dental office that evening.  The receptionist had done her best to prepare me for what I'd see after the temporary crown was placed, but I was surprised anyway.

My face was numb, with blood spattered here and there.  My gums battered, my body and limbs equally bruised.  One tooth that looked like it belonged to Bubba the Lifelong Smoker.  It seemed to be placed a little askew, so the bottom right corner stuck out while the bottom left corner pushed in.  Could it get any worse?

Yes, it could.

As the numbness went away that evening, I noticed that my nose ached.  Really hurt.  Eventually I dared to look.  No, not in my 10X magnification mirror.  And what did I find?

A massive zit.  Which I foolishly attempted to pop.  Much like my mouth, it just bled.  A lot.  And left a scab that lasted three long days.

I soon realized that there were gaps on both sides of Bubba.  Big ones.  That caused me to blow bubbles when talking for more than a few seconds.

Okay, so the fact that I talked less over the past two weeks would not be deemed a problem by everyone.  I get that.

This evening I returned for part two.

Nervous?  Yes.  I believe I used the phrase "rising anxiety" to the dentist.

I turned on my MP3 player, set it to my birth playlist and tried to block everything out as he used a pair of pincers to remove Bubba.  It was uncomfortable and I was struggling not to imagine what would happen if he broke off my peg of a natural tooth.

In one of those moments that can best be described by most middle schooler's favorite word, I realized that I accidentally licked the dentist's gloved hand.  Awkward!

The next song that came up through my earbuds?


Apparently, using a phrase like "rising anxiety" and then bursting into uncontrollable giggles freaks out my dentist.

Bubba eventually came loose and my permanent crown was tried out.  The relief that swept over me at the pressure I felt when it squeezed into place bordered on ridiculous.  The ginormous gaps were gone.  The corners that had irritated my lip and tongue for two weeks?  Gone.  The unnatural thickness of Bubba?  Disappeared.

Were we done?  We were not.

I knew I was getting a filling on the other front tooth, but I hadn't heard about a cavity there. Normally I ask questions, but I had been silenced by fear and bubbles.  Well that other tooth was pretty banged up from years of abuse, too.  So the "filling" was really more of a filling in where the little chips had fallen out over the years.

I have two whole teeth.

That are reasonable tooth colors.

Bubble blowing will again require a wand.

I told my dentist I might sprout a happy tear.  He was glad to know in advance it would be a happy one.

One odd thing I learned tonight?  The process of oral coronation causes nasal acne.  That's right, I have a pimple so massive on the side of my nose that it hurts to flare my nostrils.  (I do it to entertain the girls.  It's a skill, I swear.)

Thank goodness I'm done.

Somebody, play my song!

Just Tonight I Have...

... said, "Madelyn, do not lap up the dog's water."

... heard, "Dad, I think I want to blow something up."*

... had a phone to each ear, a breast fully exposed with a small kidlet attached to it, two timers ringing and a partridge in a freaking pear tree.

*Okay, so she was talking about the bag of balloons Tom bought for Mad's birthday party.  You know, the ones where I told him, "Hey, we didn't remember to get balloons.  Can you grab a few while you're out?"  In my mind, "helium-filled" and "tied with a pretty ribbon" were unnecessary descriptors based on the last four birthday parties held around here.

Madelyn Rocket Frog Turns Four

Madelyn turned four a couple weeks ago. Can you believe it? Four is so much older than three, don't you think?

There were a few similarities between this year's party and last year's. In case you don't remember, we had frog cupcakes then.

We also had them now. (Yeah, I know "had them now"... it is what it is.)

You see frogs, right? (All smiling Muppets... er... frogs were done by Grandma Margaret. As usual, the nonplussed frogs were created by yours truly.

This year's party had a camping theme.  Although my dad's generous offer to bring over their fire pit was tempting, I opted for these insanely delicious s'mores cookie bites. (My version of the recipe calls for dark chocolate instead of sickeningly sweet Hershey's bars. Plus, dark chocolate has antioxidants, so these bites are healthy.)

I got the recipe here, although you can see mine bear little resemblance. The main difference, aside from the chocolate is that my pan was apparently 9 X 9. The extra inch in each direction meant less cookie on top. As far as I'm concerned, this is a serious win.

Our parties are developing quite the reputation for crafts and activities. Nobody pretends like I'm some amazing child party guru. They ask if they can rent out Grandma Margaret to come up with great fun that costs nothing.


Like the pine cone bird feeder. Okay, so you made dozens of these when you were a kid. In my sheltered (ha!) life, I only learned of them when Grandma Margaret recently said, "Hey, I was thinking... "  

Pine cone, peanut butter (just go ahead and accept now that the kids are all going to stick that spreader back into the peanut butter after licking it off... yes, even your beloved Princess Smooshy Face) and birdseed. Use a pipe cleaner to make a hanger and put it on the tree in your yard.  

Ours are buried in the full foliage of one of our plum trees, but they are already needing to be reseeded. The birds are happy.

Hand- and fingerprint trees are a lot of fun. (Bailey's is a weeping willow.) Be sure to tell the kidlets that it's not chocolate, even if it looks like it could be. I've said it before, whoever invented washable inks and paints is my favorite person. In the world.

No campsite is complete without a tree and a roaring fire. (I cannot stress how much better that fire looked in real life. Same for the tree. No matter how schmancy the camera, sometimes it just comes down to operator skill... or lack thereof.)

Madelyn, giving me her latest "Oh, you're taking my photo?" look. Bonus:  A little Fynnie in the lush landscape that is our perpetually awesome backyard.

Last year at this point, Madelyn looked just as excited. And then we gave her ice cream and she passed out. Over the course of the past year we have taught her about breathing exercises to calm herself and that ice cream should be enjoyed slowly with small bites. Although she and I did buy ice cream for the party, it never made it out of the freezer. What?! She didn't even notice.

Not that Madelyn didn't make my heart jump into my throat anyway. Why she threw her head... and hair!... forward while blowing out the candle, I'll never know. But she didn't catch on fire and we did not find any other reasons to seek specialized medical treatment. That, my friends, is a successful party!

Fynnie may or may not have gotten hold of three or four cupcakes. All we know for sure is that we found three of them sitting outside with the frosting and candy faces eaten away.

This, my friends, is Fynnie's thinking face. Ask her a question and this is what she will do. Usually while saying, "Um..."

I'm pretty sure she's planning her next party.  Not to worry, Grandma Margaret is all over it!

And Then I Had To Do the Creepy Dance

My birthday was a week ago Friday.  Get this:  Tom realized ahead of time that my birthday was going to be on March 23 this year.  (And you go, "Whaaat?!?" and I go, "I know, right!?!")

Unlike previous years that have included the well thought out last minute trip to Target for a greeting card and some Tic Tacs, he began plotting and scheming and, you know, being aware well in advance.

He took the day off from work, so I did, too.  We took the girls to IHOP for breakfast and then spent the morning shopping.  Okay, sure, it was for sheets and frames for Madelyn's room.  Ask me how much I care?  I don't.  Then we drove down the hill.

We took the train road.  We stopped for sunflowers.  I tried to snap a few photos, but it was too windy in the pass.  After wrangling a few sunflowers off their bushes, I headed toward the car.

I noticed a little green bug on one of the flowers.  Brushed it off and searched for others before taking the flower into our car and giving it to one of the girls.

Got 'em all!  Whew!

Turned to the second flower and saw this:

What's the big deal?!  Allow me to magnify for you.

What the hell is that?!?!

Which of my daughters did I almost give that to?

Gah!

So, yeah.  I set the flower on the hood of my car, snapped a couple photos, flung that flower off the car and proceeded to do the creepy dance.

Did you do it, too?

Stupid Things I Say

"No, please do not lick the wall like that.  See how you're leaving tongue prints.  Mama doesn't like that."

"I'm going to go call the vet.  I'm pretty sure the horse is dead, but I see that you don't all agree."  (Gotta hate love office meetings.)

"I was just thinking... during sex you need wrist guards and I must look like Tyrannosaurus Rex trying to keep my breasts in place."  (File this under things that are least appropriate... if there is a good time at all... to say during sex.)

Subliminal Mad

Do you remember when Kevin Nealon was on Saturday Night Live and played Subliminal Man?

No?

(This is where I would have inserted a YouTube video clip, but all I could find was this audio clip.)

So Kevin Nealon as Subliminal Man would tell a story while mumbling something hilarious and/or inappropriate.

Why do I mention this?  Because I'm pretty sure Madelyn has learned his technique.  Refined it, even.  Taken it to a nearly paranormal level.

The other day we were heading down the hill.  Both girls had cups of water to drink on the way.  We don't use sippy cups, but they only drink water, so it's fine if a (rare) spill happens.  Along the way, Madelyn mentioned that her hands needed a bath.  I looked in the mirror to find she had a hand in her cup.  Normally I don't allow this, but I had a lot of work-related crap on my mind and I let it go.

A few minutes later she said, "They have tears."

"What has tears?"

"The fingers on my left hand have tears."

"Are they sad or happy?"

"Um (hey moron!), I think they're just fingers."

And yes, that came complete with the look just in case I didn't catch her subliminal message.

Fat and Jiggly... Like I'm Apparently Supposed to Be

This morning the girls went to Grandma’s house with Daddy. This way I could attend a local gardening class put on by a woman from the mommy group.

I had dreams of sleeping late. (In fact, I was dreaming about lost panties and planting seeds, but you know what I mean. Right?)

Tom brought Fynnie in to nurse around 3:30 this morning. He brought Madelyn in half an hour later to gather up the Fynn girl and get going.

Getting going takes about half an hour, even with my considerable help, and even with the girls heading out in their jams with a bag of clothes for the day.

Only the bag of clothes got left here. And Margaret and I had recently weeded through what she had to remove things the girls have outgrown. They have outgrown a lot. I haven’t replaced those things yet, so I couldn’t tell Tom to just keep going when he called seven minutes after leaving to say he was coming back.

By the time they were on the road again (do do doo do dooo), it was quarter to 5:00 and I was up. Thoughts of what I might do to fill the next four and half hours floated through my head.

I can exercise!

I could use some of those very ripe bananas and learn how to make banana bread!

I could…

The reality was messing around on Facebook, catching up on some banking and an earlier shower than I’d initially planned. Oh, and I used the face file to get rid of reduce the stray eyebrows on my chin. Exciting, I know.

The gardening class was awesome. And by awesome I mean it was freaking fantastic. We have almost 100 starters going already, and it was nice to know that everything but the winter squash mix (doh!) should do well. I am sitting here with a seed catalog that is, as the instructor said, full of gorgeous wall art.

And, because I am admittedly weird about things like this, I will tell you that the catalog smells great, too. There are a lot of modern printings that smell horrible. Nothing smells as good as old books, but this is a very nice alternative to the nastiness that is the modern paper. In case you were wondering.

On the way home, I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things. (And to curse my stupid phone that will only hold a charge for about six minutes if I, you know, use it. But that’s another story.)

Came home and reconsidered the list of things I could do. The first one, again, was exercising.

It’s a sad state of affairs, this body of mine. I had started using Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred a few months back. By started using, I mean I used it two days in a row. It was definitely painful effective. But it was hard. One hundred times worse than hard, it was boring. So a few weeks ago I bought a Zumba-like DVD called Rhythmica.

Where Jillian Michaels’ DVD is physically challenging because I’m rather weak and out of shape, Rhythmica is freaking impossible because… as it just so happens… I’m not a hip hop dancer. How did I not know this?!

I realized pretty quickly the Rhythmica DVD is beyond my capacity. (Seriously, I wasn’t even close to keeping up when he was doing what was apparently just the “let me slow it down and show you how we’re going to do this” segments. And then he’d take to triple time.)

Fortunately, one of the moms on my group recently posted a link to a series of free exercise videos on YouTube. And I saved the link in a new Favorites folder entitled Exercise. Because I am going to conquer this fat, jiggly ass. Right?! I stopped the DVD and clicked on the YouTube link.

Started exercising. Thirty seconds in or so, I was feeling confident that this was much more my speed.

And was thwarted by a loading error on AOL.

Switched to Google Chrome and can’t get it to load. (I’ve even tried a few times while writing this post into a Word doc since I can only post on here through Google.

I am beginning to wonder if it’s just the universe saying, “Sure, your ass is fat and jiggly. Keep it that way. I like it! It’s fun watching you stress over which pair of pants will make you least resemble a certain desert animal or TSA worker!”

That's my new story, I look this way for entertainment purposes.

Lost in My Daughter

Madelyn's fourth birthday is coming up soon. I am working on a photo book for her. It's not easy to fit four years of energetic and happy and studious life (make no mistake, she's watching!) into one book, but I'm trying. It's even more difficult when a certain someone who is not me, but who is the only other adult living in this homestead, has taken the old photo cards out of the monitor stand, where they had been since I owned a digital camera, and put them who knows where. (I don't mind them being moved, especially since we don't use the monitor stand anymore.  But can they all just go in one place that someone here remembers?)

Slightly sickening feeling when I remember pawing through some things he had set aside for recycling and trash a couple years ago.  In with the box from my first digital camera was a disk for it.  Once upon a time there were probably five or six such disks that captured much of Corey's youth and Tom's and my early years, but I only have that rescued one.

*Ohm*

On top of those disks, almost all of which predate even my pregnancy with Madelyn, I was missing the card from her first six months at home.

I have a code for a free photo book.  It expires soon.  More importantly, Mad's birthday is coming up right after that!  And I have another coupon code that should cover any extra pages I might need in order to make four years fit into one book.  That coupon expires tonight.  (Yes, I should be working on it now.  I know!)

Tom and I had a brief discussion that... well... here's my status update last night:  

Happiness is having your husband find the photo card that has Madelyn from about two weeks to six months old. (Let's not talk about the open-mouthed stare I received when I pointed out that he had said he'd look for it a month ago. Or the rude remark he made about how I shouldn't go "tearing up the office" right before he went in and tore up the office and banged things around for half an hour. Aaand, since we're not talking about certain things, let's also not mention that I had already pulled the disk out of our desk, but thought it was something else and let it sit there, only popping it into the computer because he handed it to me along with the disk reader.) Happy, happy.

So yeah.  Tom handed me the disk I had located and it turned out to hold 1624 photos, almost exclusively of Mad's early days.  That's a lot of photos.  A lot of memories.  And yet, I needed more.

Why?  Because my old camera had crapped out about a week before Mad's arrival, and we didn't replace it until she was a couple weeks old.  Everything we have from those intervening weeks are crappy, but much loved cell phone shots.

The good news is that I've been pretty generous in sending photos to both Tom (at work) and his mom. The better news is that they are both hoarders photo savers.  (They're really not hoarders.  Well, his mom is really not a hoarder.)  (I wouldn't even be putting disclaimers in here if it weren't for the fact that one of his good friends reads this blog.  Shh.)

One week before my due date.  Six days before her arrival.

Her very first photo, taken when she was about 20 minutes old, gray, grunting and giving Daddy the stink eye.  I held her for a few minutes that went by way to quickly.  The next time I would see her would be another rapid few minutes in the nursery before she was taken to NICU, and after that, it would be a photo taken by the nurses; she was covered in electrodes and little gold heart-shaped stickers and tubes.  Add to that her blonde hair (in the photo from the nurses) and it's no wonder it felt surreal.  Speaking of her head, do you see how it's perfectly round?  That's because my kids like to stay up in my ribs until the last freaking second.  You would never guess that I'd been in labor 36 hours before she shot out!

The first time she got to eat, she was almost a day and a half old.  I look at my nails and remember getting the manicure so my hands would look nice in photos.  Who knew those photos would be taken in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and that my hands would be holding a bottle of mostly formula and the couple tiny drops I had been able to pump?

Part of me thinks this is the first time Tom got to hold Madelyn. But there was a period of an hour or two when she went to the regular nursery for monitoring. He went with her and I hope he got to hold her there, too. Do you see the way their eyes locked? I have a few photos like that. Immediately after her birth, she was taken to the isolette to be worked on by the respiratory team. Although she had ingested meconium and one lung had collapsed, our Mad-A-Girl hollered. My mom, Corey and Nance could all hear her even though they were on the other side of a glass door with a room in between us and them.  But as soon as Tom walked over and said something to her, she stopped crying and looked at him.  (If only that worked so well now!)

Out of all the photos, this is the one that surprised me. How do I not remember that she had a feeding tube? Even looking at this photo and comparing it to my memory... it just doesn't match up. Even though I have followed Miss Elimy's story, my memory was never jogged.

Dear Carol,

Can you believe it's been five years?  I miss you.  I try to remember what you said, especially the part about forgiving.  You were a good friend to me.  Sometimes I wonder if I was as good a friend to you.  This will probably not shock you, but I can walk around for quite a while with my head up my ass before I realize I haven't seen daylight in a while.

I wonder if I should have done something differently.  When the donor requirements were for someone taller than I am, should I have pressed?  It seems stupid to wonder about this now, but I do.  I miss you.

Thinker

Madelyn's new new mattress has finally arrived.  The new company, Easy Life, called yesterday morning to confirm.  Unlike Sears' robo-caller, which has continued to call every single freaking day this week, Easy Life had a live person call.  Was she a native American English speaker?  I don't think so, but there were no problems communicating with her.

The delivery guys?  Friendly and happy, like they enjoy their job.  And, even though Tom apparently didn't request that Mad's crib mattress get picked up (I have my suspicions that it was hard for him to see it go), the delivery guys willingly took it with them for the bargain price of nothing.

We ended up with a memory foam mattress.  It's processed differently (read: less chemically) than a lot of other similar products.  Tom had warned me that it would take a few hours to get to its full size because of the way it would arrive.  I was still surprised when it came in a roll.  A super tight roll.  The full size mattress was rolled up so tightly that the roll wasn't even 18 inches across.

By the time it was unwrapped and unrolled, it was already fluffing up.  By the time I came back from signing off on the delivery forms, it looked like this:

In the past few hours it has nearly doubled in size.

I washed the mattress pad and a few full-size sheet sets we happened to get last summer before our Chinese exchange students arrived.  Next up will be the continued search for bedding.  Why do they make children's bedding that needs to be dry cleaned?

Have you bought bedding lately?  Whew!  That stuff's expensive!  We'll be making it Mad's birthday present.

In less than one month, the daughter I always knew I'd have will turn four.  How that can be?  Four is so much older than three, don't you think?  At four, we really can't get away with calling her a toddler any more.  Not that she acts much like a toddler.

Her morning routine for the past several weeks has included coming into my bed in the morning and telling me, "I'm hungry.  I'm thirsty."  (If Fynn is already with us... and she usually is... the next thing I hear is, "I hunc.  Jink.")

One recent morning I responded by telling them I had to take a shower and get dressed before we would head downstairs.

Mad wasn't having it.  "I simply need a drink," she said with blessedly mild consternation.  (Yeah, she got her drink right away.)

It will be interesting to see how our mornings change with the new bed.

Aside from just making the transition to Madelyn's new bigger bed, I am... we all are... looking forward to returning to the regular nighttime routine.  Half a week of acting crazy, loud screaming fits and running from Tom before joining us in Fynn's room?  Beyond ready for it to be over.  (Aside from the major change in routine and dealing with new fears, Mad is coming down with a head cold... a sure path to trouble.)

It will be so nice to have Mad in her own room.  It will be even better to make the room into a place that Madelyn will love for (hopefully a lot of) years to come.  Since this is coming in time for her birthday, and because I've been trying to make gifts for the girls* instead of filling the house with a bunch of plastic crap, I've been working on a project for Madelyn's room.

Have I mentioned that we live on one side of a mountain range and work, Grandma and Papa's house and our friends are all on the other side?  (Okay, fine, I've mentioned it few [hundred] times.  What?)  The pass that goes down the hill has a fire road on one side.  We call it the train road because there are several tracks that carry freight from Los Angeles to points east.

Madelyn has loved taking the train road for a couple years now.  Around this time last year she learned about the sunflowers that often line the road.  I stopped and mangled picked one for her and she has never forgotten.

Sunflowers are yellow.  Yellow is Mad's favorite color.

My camera and I have made many trips on the train road lately.  I learned pretty quickly not to pull over too close to that area where men pull over to "hang out" with other men.  They're so friendly!

The pass is usually at least a little windy.  It's hard to photograph flowers in the wind, but it can be done.

These are all from the train road.  Something like this, but without the background and with frames will hopefully end up on Madelyn's wall within the next month.

*Why, yes, I did make two of the cutest stuffed dogs for the girls for Christmas.  So what if neither one has eyes, a nose, a mouth, an attached head.  It's the thought that matters, people!  And I'm a thinker!

Dear Sears, Feel Free to Suck It

Last fall I checked around to see about having our fridge and dishwasher repaired.  After the debacle of looking for a local repair guy several months earlier (as I write this it's been 10 months since parts were supposedly ordered), I decided to ask friends.  Sears came up a lot, so I looked online.  Scheduled a repair for one through their online self-service function, but I wanted one appointment for both.  I chatted online with someone, who gave me different costs than what I'd seen when doing it myself.  In some cases the prices were better, but not across the board.  The man wouldn't give me a straight answer about the differences and insisted I had to decide then and there.  Talking it over later with my husband wasn't an option.  So then neither was using their repair guys.

It was annoying, but I moved on.  Fast forward to last week, when we headed out to shop for Madelyn's new bigger bed.  As there have been seven years or so and a recession since the last time I bought something other than a crib mattress, I had no idea how much had changed.  Mostly it's pretty cool stuff, but can be difficult to make direct comparisons.

After shopping at a couple places, Tom and I were able to define our preferences for Madelyn's new bigger bed pretty succinctly:  Firm, not extra firm, no pillow top.  Reinforced sides.  Pocket coils.  It's for our almost four year old daughter; she's a stomach sleeper.

We found several awesome sales last weekend and salespeople of varying knowledge and usefulness.  I'm sorry, but "It's got the box spring, so... you know..." does not answer our question about, well, anything.


After taking time to think about our two top choices, Tom headed out Sunday afternoon to seal the deal at a local mattress store.  Would have been great if someone had actually bothered to show up for work that day.  Or return his call the next day.

Monday evening, we schlepped the girls around to a few stores near my office.  Found a really good deal combined with a very nice, reasonably knowledgeable salesperson and walked out of Sears with a receipt for Madelyn's new mattress and box spring.  We paid a little extra to have it delivered on Saturday so I wouldn't have to take time off from work.

We received Sears' robo-calls on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday that sought to confirm Saturday's delivery.

Friday morning I confirmed with the robot and a live person who works for Sears.  It required three calls to make that happen.

Friday night around 7:00 I accepted Sears' robo-scheduler's estimated time of delivery, even though it was right in the middle of Mad's (late afternoon) nap.  I figured it would be better to accept than try for a different time since it was already going to be so late in the day.

We had a busy day planned, including a play date with some of the girls' (and our!) friends here at the house.  Plus, Tom and his brother were heading down to watch a tennis tournament in Indian Wells right after lunch.  I asked him to convert Mad's toddler bed into her bigger bed first thing in the morning.  He did it.  With the girls' help, it took about an hour.

  

Late yesterday morning we received yet another robo-call from Sears.  This one was not only telling us that the delivery would have to be rescheduled for another day, but also that I would have to hang up and call another number to find out more.  

It's almost as if Sears tries harder to annoy customers than to actually serve them.  They succeeded.

I called the other number, got on the phone with someone who initially sounded annoyed because I couldn't understand his thick accent.  Dude, you may live in India, but your customers are in America.  Don't get pissy with me because I can't understand you!  I'm normally pretty good with a variety of accents, but there are limits.

The customer no-service guy said we could reschedule delivery for a week later.  

"Yeah, that's not going to happen.  Her bed has already been converted.  We can't put a mattress in there, because she gets up at night.  If she were to get up and trip over the massive bed frame that's now filling her room, I'd really be upset.  And we have company, so the spare bed isn't available.  We need the mattress when it was promised and for which we paid, but if it has to be delayed, we cannot wait a week."

After about 45 minutes on the phone, mostly on hold, we were offered a ten percent off coupon for a future purchase.  I explained very clearly that there would be no future purchase if the situation wasn't resolved.

They put me through to the store with the understanding that I would be discussing a switch to a comparable or better mattress that could be delivered sooner.

Nothing could be delivered sooner.  The (same, previously thought of as nice) salesperson, Josie, said she'd get back to me as long as it didn't require that she violate the meal code.  She said she was upset with the manufacturer.

I pointed out that the problem was on Sears' side.  They had confirmed delivery at 7:00 the night before.  If they didn't have the merchandise, they shouldn't have done that.

Josie had the nerve to say that the only way to get the mattress we paid for and that Sears had promised would be to take it from someone else.  She then blamed the automated service for confirming because "it doesn't know what the people are doing."  Clearly.

So I packed up the girls and made the almost 50 mile drive down to Rancho Cucamonga (or, according to one of their many robo-phone operators, Raunch-o Cucamonga). 

And stand around waiting for almost half an hour.  Does it help that the sales people were nice and completely professional during the wait?  Yes, but not nearly enough.  And that whole "completely professional" part deteriorated at the end as I was trying to leave.  The woman who had sold us a bill of goods the alleged mattress continued to argue Sears' side.  Among other points (which she was trying to make as my girls were beginning to meltdown) was something about how she couldn't possibly move our order up unless someone else had canceled theirs and it was exactly like ours.  I just walked away shaking my head at that point.  I never asked for someone else's order to be pulled.  I wanted our order to be fulfilled.

I then took the girls to Grandma's so I could go out and find another mattress from a company that would actually deliver on their promises.

I hit five stores last night, including a membership place before picking up the girls.  Then I brought them back home and got 'em to bed.  Mad's currently set up on the floor of Fynn's room.  Without the frame (which has three high sides as you can see here) and side rail of her toddler bed, it's nearly impossible for her to stay on the mattress.

We got home after their bedtime, thus the play clothes instead of jams.

Even better is the fact that Fynn's still not a great sleeper.  Her crying wakes up Madelyn.  And when Fynn called out for me to get her from her crib this morning, she woke her big sister again.

Best of all is that Madelyn is afraid to sleep in Fynn's room.  Bedtime and nap without her regular space have been loud quite a treat.

And a ten percent off coupon was supposed to entice me to return?  That'd be a hell no.

You'd think this would all be over, wouldn't you?  Well you'd be wrong.  This morning we received two robo-calls from Sears stating that the appliance we'd ordered would be delayed.  And, again, I had to call another number to make them stop calling.  The customer no-service person (who also seemed to be from India or that region) said they were calling about the foundation I'd ordered.

Um, no.  I have cash in hand from canceling that order yesterday, and it said an appliance was delayed.

Some day soon this is going to be functional.

Tom just walked in with a receipt for Madelyn's new new bed.  It will be here in a couple days.

UPDATE:  The Sears robo-dialer called three more times today (the day after this post was made).

No, Really, A *Good* Gift

We just found out that my brother-in-law and his wife are expecting their first baby.  So exciting!  They're the first besides us to have a baby (on Tom's side.  My family is pretty much done popping out babies in our generation.  Just waiting to see who's going to make one of us the first grandparent.  Please don't let it be me!).

So the first thing I wanted to do was get them a gift, preferably something handmade from Etsy.  I could practically live on the photos of squishy babies in those hats with the long tassels, like this.  Or how about this freaking adorable monkey?!

Carol crochets beautifully, so that pretty much eliminates a baby gift from Etsy.

Next up was jewelry.  I know that bird egg nest necklaces are pretty popular right now.  Awesome.  Except I really don't know Sarah all that well, and I'm not 100% sure of her style.  Does she even like birds?!  Is it too trendy?  But then I found this.  I'm pretty sure the heaven's opened and angels sang, "La ha."  I can't wait to see it in person.

Once we had her covered, I wanted to find something for the new daddy.  Do you know how hard it is to find a decent, thoughtful gift for a dad to be?  Preferably something that's not a T-shirt?  Don't believe me?  I did a Google search and came across this, this and my personal favorite, this.  Brilliant.

So I'm still looking.  If you're a dad, what would you have wanted to receive after announcing your first child?  Or, have you given a new dad something that was a big hit?  I need help.

Potty Mouth

Fynn's been talking a lot more lately.  She's even got a few phrases, her most commonly used being, "There it is!" and "What do?"  Mostly she sticks to single words to make her points.  A few of them sound entirely different than what she means.  This happens with every kid, I suppose.  Mad called water "wawoo" for about six months.  Maybe "wawoo" stuck around so long because we reinforced it.  It became part of our language and probably will always be around.  Same thing for Corey's once upon a time favorite question, "How that can be?!"

Many of Fynn's words are recognizable to strangers as she intends them.  But she has a few words that she means to say, but that could be misconstrued.  Some are a little embarrassing, like please, which comes out piss.  

And then there are those special words... stuck, count, frog... that, in fact, make her sound like a sex-obsessed tot.

Mad Day

This morning around 4:15, Tom prepared to take Fynn to Grandma's house on his way to work.  She was raring to go!

Madelyn and I stayed home for some Mama and Mad time.  I know that we've had at least one morning to ourselves since Fynn was born.  It was so long ago that I can't recall the details.  It's been too long.

We made cupcakes from scratch.  Mad was able to drag a chair over and get the white spatula all by herself.  (And thanks to those new pads I put on the chairs last night, it was a quiet event aside from Mad's gleeful sounds of independence.)

We made a small batch of cupcakes.  Half had vanilla frosting, the other half had root beer frosting.  The vanilla was delish, as always.  The root beer frosting tasted like root beer.  Great, if you like that sort of thing.  The cupcakes are in honor of Mardi Gras*, and they have appropriately colored sprinkles (purple, green and gold) on them.  And pink, because if you have one more color in the sprinkler, you've just got to use it, know what I mean?  One thing you can't tell is that each cupcake has chocolate kiss at the bottom.  It wasn't supposed to be the bottom, but those suckers sink.  And then the come out attached to the paper when you're done.  Kind of weird, but still better than baking a plastic baby in one.  Is it obvious I'm not from the south?

Next up?  Trying out the new brushes Mama scored yesterday at a local craft store that is closing so it can relocate about 10 miles farther away.  If you look closely, you'll see that Mad uses the blue brush for the blue paint, and the purple brush for the purple paint (and so on).

This pretty much sums up our day, aside from a few stories and trying out some new hair clips.  After lunch was nap.  As soon as I realized that I was spending the day at home with the good napper(!), I could hardly keep my eyes open.  We both slept great.  And then when she woke up in a cranky mood, we snuggled until it was better.

Not long after that, Daddy and Fynn came home and life went on like normal.

*I was selected to host a Zatarain's House Party.  It was on Saturday.  Everyone we were expecting to see ended up being sick.  So we made a few main dishes that night and have continued trying out recipes since then.

It's Been One of Those Days

The kind with new friends, who come over to your house and make themselves at home.

When comments like, "I'm just randomly going through your stuff to find what I need," make perfect sense.

The kind of day when the roar of 11(!) kids from nine months to four years old and all those musical instruments you were so excited for your girls to have suddenly turns into background noise while you and five women hang out.

How is that memory peaceful even though it's only from a few hours ago?

It's been the kind of day where homemade heart cookies and frosting colored with beet juice made it all even sweeter.

Phew!

This past holiday season I did more baking than in any three previous years combined.  More importantly, I've done more eating of said baked goods than normal.  (But, dude, chocolate chip macaroons?  Easy, fast and delicious before and after baking.)

So it was no surprise when I gained five pounds.

After enjoying myself through New Year's, I put the brakes on and began making some healthier choices.  Lost a couple pounds right away.

A week ago I weighed myself for the first time in maybe 10 days.  I was stunned, shocked and concerned to see that I had gained about 13 pounds.

Thirteen pounds.  In 10 days.

I'll just admit that the idea of a tumor popped right up.  But let's be honest, that's kind of my first response to everything.  Missed my period right after Tom and I agreed we weren't having kids together?  Gotta be a tumor!

If the brakes had been put on before, the keys were now removed.

And I gained two more pounds by yesterday.

I mentioned the situation to Tom and Nance, but lightly, like, "Haha, no reason to be frightened, I know what I'd been eating.  I guess it just took a minute to catch up to me."

I started an exercise routine last night that kicked my butt.

Today?  Gained another pound.

Concerned?  Shocked?  Stressed?  Oh yeah.

Then this fantastic little kid of mine who can't seem to get passed the 23 pound mark stepped on the scale.  She weighed 40 pounds.  And her sister, who was very recently right on the cusp of 40 pounds?  Try 56.

Fucking stupid digital scale.  I'll get new batteries this weekend.

I weighed myself at my dad's house this morning.  In full clothes, including jeans.  After breakfast.  On the first day of my period.  And I needed to use the restroom (every ounce counts, people!).  And I was still 15 pounds less than I had been only 90 minutes earlier at my home, naked.

I haven't gained weight.  In fact, in three days I can pretty much guarantee that I'll lose three to five pounds, which will put me right back to my pre-holiday number.

Came home tonight and stuck with my exercise plan, because it is still needed.  No longer secretly wondering if I'm going to die.  Openly feeling kind of stupid because now that the moment has passed, I am forced to recognize that my clothes still fit the same and that the scale had been kind of wonky lately.

Whatever.

The Old Homestead

I recently purchased a card reader so I'll be able to upload photos to this computer from my old camera.  We have only come across one disk so far.  October 28, 2007.  This is my old Mexican sage plant that I grew from a clipping a friend gave me.  Mexican sage is among the lengthy list of plants that are not ideal for the high desert climate, so we left it in the yard of our old apartment.  Nance and I went past the other day.    Either the apartment manager or the tenant who moved in after us removed it and everything else we grew.

Bummer.

Enough

I have just given up a friendship.  I am sad and mad and upset, but mostly I am fine.  It was both sudden and not.

This friendship was an important one to me.  We met while expecting our babies, who ended up being born on the same day, just a few hours and rooms apart.  I had dreams of our kids being lifelong friends.

It's one thing to be friends with other parents of newborns, but trickier once the kids get a little older.  Maybe a year ago after I listened to yet another story about the screaming match she got into with her not quite two year old and the nit-picking of her husband's faults*, Tom and I agreed that maybe they are not "our people" after all.

*Not that we haven't all complained about our spouses now and again.  These stories often took venting to new levels.

Then there were the two years in a row when they were invited to our house, confirmed, and then ended up at a different friend's home instead.  And that other friend?  Lived about the same distance from them that we do, only in another direction.

More importantly, there was that call I made to her last year around this time.  Struggling and feeling like I was drowning, I turned to her.  Told her what I was going through and didn't quite buy it when she said she couldn't hear me well and ended the call.  A month later she wrote to apologize and I just let it go without comment.

This friend had a second baby two months ago, a daughter.  Some of the stories I heard several weeks back... the last time I called, because I am always the one who calls... reminded me of our own Mad-A-Girl.  The independence, the determination.  I laughed and said, "Sounds like you've got your own Madelyn!"

Are those bad words?

Because when we spoke today she said her husband was upset that I would say something negative, you know, about his baby.

"But I told him you didn't mean it that way, in a bad way."

"And then there's the fact that there is absolutely nothing wrong with my daughter."

Sometimes in life I have overreacted and/or been too quick to react.  It's not a mistake I like to keep making, so I let the conversation end itself naturally (not before listening to how she can't relate to other moms who have a second baby because she's just so darn sure it's worse for her than it is for anyone else.  Really?!?).

I spoke with Tom and I spoke with Nancy.

If it were just the stupid comment about my girl, I'd probably attribute it to sleep deprivation and extra hormones.  But all in all, I've had enough.

I contemplated writing a lengthy email detailing my exact feelings (this is the Reader's Digest version, in case you were wondering), but instead decided to call her back.  I got their answering machine and left a message.  I wanted to say that I loved her kids, but I didn't.  I just said I couldn't be friends with someone who thought comparing their child to my own was hurtful, upsetting or offensive (all words that were used, can you believe it?) and that I would just enjoy the memories of when I thought we were friends.  And that is it.

And it is.

Or it will be once I get over it.

The Best Things

Feeling the giggling belly up against your own.

Seeing the soft baby shrugs of sleep.

Looking at her and thinking she's so grown up for her age, and then stumbling across a photo of this day last year, remembering you felt the exact same way then, only now you can see she was just a baby.  She still is.