I Have Nothing

Apparently I have been quite the good mom this week. It helps that I dropped my kids with my mother on Friday and she has had them ever since. So, working on a shorter week, I have nothing. The only truly evil thing I have done (which in fact is more of being a bad daycare mommie than a wme) is send Kyle to school all week with a nasty cold. Including fever. Which I conveniently did not tell anyone at school, most especially his teacher. I just kept giving him Tylenol and hoped it kept his fever at bay all day. No calls, must have worked. Of course I did experience a brief (very brief) moment of guilt when three days later Kyle's teacher was in school sick with a cold....oh well!

To make up for my total lack of a true wme moment I am posting an old pic of my now 4 year old son Kyle when he was somewhere between 9 to 12 mos old. He was "eating" all by himself for the first time. Can't quite remember if he was upset because we tried to help him get the food in his mouth or if we were not helping him get the food in his mouth.....All in all this pic makes me laugh.

Another one for Paige

How much of my list was accomplished when Lindsay was born (and mind you I already had a great deal of the baby stuff from Lauren:

1. crib and changing table assembled and installed, with the crib mattress on its side, no linens on either
   
2. beautiful crib linens installed in crib
3. new hardware affixed to family heirloomempty chest of drawers formerly belonging to Lauren
   
4. chest of drawers placed in room
   
5. a box of baby clothes - some new, some used, all unlaundered - in closet
6. half-painted room
   
7. dust bunnies bears in corners
   
8. enormous wasted space at top of closet
9. diapers and wipes in boxes under crib, none stocked in gingham lined wicker baskets
   
10. all none of the kid laundry washed (own no Dreft)

The nursery was unfinished when I had Lindsay a month early, Alec had to call our handyman to come and finish it in 2 days, and when my mom and my grandma came down the day I left the hospital, I pleaded with them to launder all of the baby clothes, linens, and help me wash down the swing, playpen, and bouncy seat so that I had somewhere to put the baby besides on my person.

Agony

The kids are in the back of the car, whining about their oh-so-tragic lives. My eyes are rolled to the roof, ears pinned to my head with the effort of trying not to hear them. I don't really feel like being crabby but they MUST STOP WHINING or my head will explode and splattered brains are really hard to clean off leather seats. I decide to tackle the problem at hand with very bad singing and burst into a rendition of 'Agony' from Into The Woods. Chris joins in immediately and I'm grateful - he's a HUGE help in the very bad singing arena. We gleefully sing the chorus at the top of our lungs, breaking into two different notes where actual singers would be in harmony. As our final notes die, Ross groans, "UGH! MY PARENTS!" and I feel perfectly content.

With Progress Comes Consequence

Progress:

1. crib and changing table assembled and installed
2. beautiful crib linens installed in crib
3. new hardware affixed to family heirloom chest of drawers
4. chest of drawers installed into "finished" closet
5. bronze curtain rod installed above closet
6. tab top drapery panels arranged on bronze curtain rod
7. bronze tie-back hooks installed on molding at either side of closet
8. shelving installed in enormous wasted space at top of closet
9. canvas storage bins installed on upper shelves in closet
10. all kid laundry washed (in Dreft!), dried, carefully folded and lovingly stowed in nursery

Consequences:

1. swollen feet
2. serious fatigue
3. a seemingly endless List of Things To Do Before Baby Arrives

Could somebody please stop the hamster wheel? I want to rest for a while, and maybe put up my feet!

It Makes A (Grand)Mother Proud

Chris (general service announcement): Saturday's game starts at 7:00am.

Ross (with sincere conviction and tone exactly matching his mother and her mother -yes, you, grandmoo! - before her): Crap!

Chris (amused (ok, well not very amused but it will be funny later (at least to his wife)) to see his wife and mother-in-law rendered before him in the form of an eight-year-old boy) glares at Ross, eyebrows raised.

Ross (meekly, exactly matching tone of his mother after she utters same expletive in presence of children): Sorry.

Car seats

I arrived at daycare at the usual time, excited to see my sweet girls after a day of enduring boring adults. But what is this? There's not one spot in the parking lot available! Annoyed, I parked down the hill in what is certainly an illegal spot. I trudged up the hill and wondered why on earth there were a bunch of pylons blocking the best spots in the lot. When I got inside and made it down the hall to Kate's room her teacher asked if I'd be having my car seats checked.

Oh. That.

According to all the signs in the pediatrician's office and all over the internet 80% of the car seats in this country are installed incorrectly. There are metal catches in the car just for the car seats. The car seats have straps with hooks on them so you can latch them onto those catches. So, how are so many of us doing it wrong? Eighty percent? To me that says there's something wrong with the product. I've read that car seats don't actually make our children much safer - the main thing is keeping them in the back seat versus the front. To me this obsessive checking and re-checking of our installation skills is just one more way to fill parents with paralyzing fear. So, I said to my child's teacher "No. I will not be having them check my car seats". Raised eyebrow from her. Shrug from me. "What if they're in the wrong size seats?" she politely asked. "They're not." She let out a little sigh and nodded, officially giving up on me and, I presume, writing me off as a horrible parent. The girls and I headed back down the hill, right past the nice firefighters who were telling the vast majority of parents who aren't horrible people, how to correctly put the hooks in the catches. I placed my children their deadly car seats, buckled them in, kissed them each, and drove home.

Scavenging

Because I have so much free time on my hands, what with the kids taking care of themselves and all, I signed up for an online scavenger hunt. It was a challenge on one of the message boards I frequent and it involves taking digital pictures and posting them, with your screenname included to prohibit cheating. Asdie form the general neglect of my children that this requires on my part as I wrack my brains for creative ways to get a picture of a crackhead, it also involved my children in the following situations:

• crackhouse - we were required to find a pic of a crackhouse. Sadly, I know just where one is. I used to work across the street from it, in a rehab, ironically, and the rehab clients all knew it was a crackhouse. So I drove my kids to the 'hood and parked on a side street outside a crackhouse to get a picture. "Tell Daddy what we did today?' "Daddy, we went to a crackhouse." I can see OCFS at my doorstep already. This trip also required a photo of a ghetto so I pulled off to another side street to get a picture of the ghetto. Nothing like a field trip to the 'hood. I looked for a pimp when I was there, but coudn't find one at 10 a.m., so I improvised on that picture and dressed Ruthie's Ken doll up like one. I think that photo was disqualified
  
• traffic lights - I had to get a green traffic light, a yellow one, and a red one. Now the other team wisely parked somewhere and waited for the light to change to the appropriate colors. Not me. I drove around with elbows on the steering wheel, a camera in one hand and a paper with my screenname in the other, trying to navigate traffic and frame my pics. The yellow light, in particular, was a bitch. But I got it.
  
• churches - I dressed my children at 7 a.m. on a non-school day, and packed them in the car in 35 degree weather so we could go get a picture of a mosque and a Seventh Day Adventist Church.
• pregnant dog - A pregnant dog. If only I'd known a breeder. But alas, I do not, so I went in search of that twisted toy that's a dog with removable puppies in her belly. Apparently that one isn't sold in stores anymore. But I did stumble upon a dog costume on clearance for 80 cents, so I did this to Helen:

My team won.