Underroonies!

Would it be completely inappropriate to post pictures of my daughter in her underroos on the internet? Probably, but I'm going to do it anyways because they are her very first underroos ever and I am so proud!

I still won't say that we're officially potty training. I try not to do anything officially (which is why she still has her bottle and her binkis. Bad Mommy!!). We have been very casually practicing with the potty for a few months and I've been so lucky. Madeline has no fears whatsoever. She loves to flush, will sit on the big toilet if I want her to, and will do all of her business in the potty chair no problem. Still, I have heard many horror stories from people who pushed their kids too hard and ended up having problems, so we have been moving very slowly. I've let Madeline make the choice of whether she wanted her diaper on or off, and if she asked for it to be put on, I'd put it right on.

The past few weeks, with the warm (hot!!) weather, we've been in nudey-butt mode whenever we 're at home and Madeline has had absolutely no problems at all. Her little pottychair is in the front room by the TV and she'll go and let us know that she's going or has gone. I think she's getting to the point I hoped she'd get to. The point where she notices how much more comfortable it is to not have a diaper on.

So we have made a big step. I took her to Target and she picked out Elmo underroos. Then I took her home and she helped put them in the washer and the dryer and was waiting for them to be done and dry. She was excited. And now I have discovered something that is cuter that toddler tush- toddler tush in Elmo underroos!

So, here she is in her very first pair of big girl underroos:


And here she is, four minutes later, in her 2nd pair:


I don't think I explained them very well, and she thought they were a type of diaper. Now she knows that she shouldn't pee on Elmo (or as she says, "no pee Elmo"). It only took 2 1/2 wet ones for her to learn to pull them down to her knees and penguin walk to the potty (now she penguin walks all over the house, and thinks it's hilarious). She's a pro.

Now that she's had a taste of freedom, I don't know if I'll ever get her to put her clothes back on.

At least she's wearing her tennies. And no, my mighty whitey doesn't have sunscreen on, but it was like 7:30 in the morning, so no worries.

I'm completely stumped as to how to proceed from here. Potty trained at home, but, umm, I'm not putting her in my car without a diaper. Or in her bed for that matter...

A Crayon and a Tooth

The crayon-

This morning while I was making breakfast, I checked on my too quiet Madeline and found her in the corner drawing on her legs and feet with a pen. So, because I'm such a good mom, I took the pen, made her scream bloody murder, gave her some crayons and paper and told her to color on the paper and paper only, and went back to making breakfast (yummy french toast).

I don't know, maybe like 3 minutes later, she came in the kitchen and said Stuck and pointed to her nose. No freakin' way. I said "you put crayon in your nose?" uh huh. "Really? there's crayon stuck in your nose??" uh huh. "Hunny, crayons don't go in your nose!! There's really crayon in your nose???" Wahhhhh! (I must have scared her, go figure). This is where I panicked, grabbed a flashlight and yep, there was a piece of green crayon in her nose.

I thought about using tweezers, but called the doc instead. They sent me to voicemail- a holes, so I called my mommy. Before she answered I had a HUGE brainstorm and got a kleenex and asked Madeline to blow. It came right out, whattaya know. Thank goodness, but my brain sure could have shot out that solution a little sooner, if you ask me.

And the tooth-

I can feel one tiny point of one tiny bottom tooth in Maison's mouth. So he is cutting his first tooth. That's all. Much less dramatic than the crayon.

Maison at 6 Months

My 6 month old baby boy... now it's getting fun. I don't have any official stats since I always put off doctors appointments, but he's bigger than he was yesterday. He's getting a little rollie-pollie. I think he loves his cereal and he's really getting the hang of eating from a spoon. It took him a while, but he's got it down now, and when he eats, he eats a lot.


He is strong strong strong. He would much rather be standing up than sitting or laying down. He very often whines just to be stood up. This makes him one of those not-easy-to-hold-while-you're-sitting babies. We even end up standng him to burp him because he will refuse to bend at the waist. But he is starting to hold on to me while I walk with him on my hip- I love that. And I love how he scrunches his legs up into a sitting position when I pick him up to carry him.

Everything he gets his hands on goes straight into his mouth. And he looks at everything that's not in his mouth with a pretty intense I Want That in My Mouth look. If he doesn't have anything in his hands, his hands are in his mouth. He grabs for everything that is in his reach, including hair and body parts. Madeline doesn't like him to touch her because he's always grabbing and pulling. But he loves his sister. He laughs when she talks, even when she's not talking to him, and he watches everything she does. I can already hear all of the "Mom!! Tell Maison to leave me alone!!!" 's.

He loves his exersaucer thingy and knows how to work everything on it. You can see his serious concentration.

Bathtime is not a joy for him. He cries the entire time. I'm sure partly because Madeline is helping and always pretty noisy. I stuck his feet in the pool the other day and he started crying as soon as they hit the water. I tried it 3 times, he cried with each.

His hair is coming in blondish. It's very fuzzy and cute. Now I have my blond haired, blue eyed baby.

I can see his determination all ready. His determination and his impatience. When he wants to eat, he wants to eat, and he will curl up and wiggle and squirm and pull and push and flail about trying to get to the goods. And if not successful he grunts his displeasure. He has the cutest scrunched up cry face and he cries like his heart is breaking.

He loves attention and is a flirty little dude. He'll smile at someone from across the room and just keep smiling at them until they notice and start talking to him.

He's rolling like crazy. Mostly from back to front, but he's done a few full revolutions to get where he wants to go. He now sleeps on his belly.

My beautiful smiley baby boy...

Too Much Sad Stuff

Horrible horrible things have been happening. I don't really feel right about writing about them because the most horrible things are not directly affecting me, but I don't feel right about not mentioning them and just going on with my merry life, either. It started with some really stupid things, but now horrible things have happened.

First the stupid nothing stuff-

Last week I kept coming across things that would make me really, really sad. The first thing was when my mom told me that someone she works with's 2 year old had drowned in a pool. That jolted all of us because we're always extra paranoid about Madeline being around my parent's pool, which doesn't have a fence.

A couple days later, I was looking at this website that I've looked at briefly before, and noticed a charity link, which ended up being photos from a charity where photographers donate their time and go to prenatal ICU units to take family pictures of families with their preemie babies, most of which don't end up surviving. Looking at those pictures was very, very heart-renching.

A couple days after that, I was blog-hopping and ended up here. A blog that's chronicling day by day, a guy's life with his newborn baby- his wife past away the day after the baby was born, this April. Reading that has made me much more appreciative of my life. Warning though: probably you shouldn't follow the link if you're pregnant.

Then, this is the stupidest thing, I watch I Am Legend and am seriously upset the entire movie because his wife and daughter die at the beginning. I must have been hormonal or something.

Then the horrible things happened.

My dad's brother-in-law in Massachusetts died suddenly of a heart attack. He has 5 kids, my cousins, the oldest is my age and the youngest in high school. Now they have to go the rest of their lives missing their dad. My aunt is younger than my dad...

The same day I found out about that, I found out that my great aunt's husband has lymphoma. I only see my great aunt a couple times a year and rarely her husband, but they've been around my whole life.

Then on Friday morning, one of my dad's oldest friends was hit by a car and killed while riding his motorcycle here in town. It was the car drivers fault. I know life's not fair, but it's really scary when the unfairness gets this close to my life. He had kids and a wife and family and friends, all whose lives have now completely changed.

I don't know how to end this post, except to say that I am thinking about everyone affected by all of this unfairness. And I have been hugging my kids almost constantly.

Congratulations Thor!

After years of unwaivering loyalty, dedication and sacrifice, Thor has finally received the recognition he so desperately sought.


He has been named CUSTOMER OF THE WEEK at our neighborhood Starbucks store! Good work hunny!

Today

- I painted 35 stripes on Maison's wall, and Madeline only touched one

- I think I may have forgotten to brush my hair

- Maison was the poopin-ist, for the first time ever

- Maison got a bath, which he hated

- Madeline was a very good girl

- We told Madeline to run a lap around the backyard and she did it, for a bottle

- I made BBQ pork sandwiches and cornbread, and it was yummy

- Maison missed 2 of his 3 naps and was not a happy boy by bedtime

- Madeline used her potty chair 4 times

- We played the Monster's Inc. DVD 5 times in a row, maybe even more

- Maison loved his exersaucer thingy while I painted stripes

- Madeline had me hug and kiss both of her bears before she went to bed

- Thor worked and came home tired, and didn't want to watch Monster's Inc.

- Madeline had me wanting to cut my ears off. She's speaking sentences now.

- My house became a complete disaster due to my ignoring it while I painted

Flower Girl

Madeline is LOVING flowers lately. When we go on walks she wants to pick them from everybody's yards. She does get them from my mom's house and my grandparent's house. Even her bedroom is decorated with flowers, but that's just a coincidence. Unfortunately the only flowers we have in our yard are dandelions, but at least she's taking care of the weeds for us. Every time I turn around there's a shriveled dandelion sitting on my floor.

I just had a vision of a dandelion sitting on my floor, on its little dandelion butt. I must be tired because that was really funny.

Isn't my picture lovely. I think it's lovely. Too bad the flower is just a weed. I'll never get her to stand still and look in the camera like that again.

Yaaawwwwn...

Boy, are we a tired bunch of folk around here lately. I mean seriously dragging ass. My great sleeping little man has decided to torture me by waking up 2-3 times a night. For food or for company, I can't tell. And his crazy sister has also decided that she needs a visit each night just to say hi, or to tell me that she's all done sleeping. Thor's been getting up super early trying to get his workouts back on track, so he's pooped too.

Add to that my howling, bed-jumping, on-my-pillow-sleeping (gross) cat, who would rather spend her nights outside catching rats and leaving their guts, plus an occasional tail or leg, right outside our backdoor, instead of inside where we keep her so we don't have to clean up the nastiness.

Yes, my neighborhood has rats. It's an old neighborhood, we have rats and huge prehistoric flys. None in the house though, thank goodness. I would let my stupid cat catch them all if she didn't insist on leaving us presents.

I'm hoping Maison is trying to cut a tooth and not getting rock-a-bye spoiled. I just can't let him cry it out with Madeline sleeping right next door, plus my experience with Madeline has taught me that most likely, if I do let him cry it out, he'll cut a tooth in a week and I'll feel horrible that I made him cry it out when he just wanted me to make him feel better. Tonight he got Tylenol before bed, so we'll see if that makes a difference. Probably won't- he's already been up once.

I took the kids for a walk this morning and was so drained that I only made it around the block. Even Madeline just wanted to go home and have her bottle, which means she was tired too. I can usually walk forever in my neighborhood, especially when the weather is nice. Sometimes I wish I drank coffee, just so I could catch that little buzz. I use hot chocolate, but it has lots of calories.

And my dang dizziness is back. I think it might be my eyes. I'm getting old and need to have my eyes checked. I haven't had them checked since it was my parents responsibility to make sure those kinds of things happened. For now I'm wearing the motion sickness patch so I can at least function.

Bitch bitch bitch, cry cry cry, wah wah wah...

Yay, He Pooped!

Yep, this post is about Maison's smelly diapers, so please feel free to stop reading now if you'd like. I am a girly-girl. I hate everything stinky, slimy, squirmy, boogery, etc., but for some reason I think my kid's diaper habits are insanely interesting and I will discuss them openly with whoever will listen. Sorry everyone (and Maison), but here we go...

My little man was born a stinker. I call him my little motorboat and we tease that his gas almost propels him off of our laps. But, the gas is where it stops. His messy diapers are very few and far between. This is something I'm not used to. I think I should get some kind of special recognition for how many times I still have to change Madeline in a day. Her plumbing works very well.

When I tried to think back to Maison's last messy diaper, I could only come up with about a week and a half ago, a day after eating his first cereal. I'm not positive, but pretty sure. That can't be good for him and it certainly can't be comfortable. Instead of calling the doctor, I decided to get ninja on his booty and give him some prunes instead. I just gave him a little bit mixed with cereal and then watched and waited. I was really afraid that when he went he would completely blow up.

Hours and hours later, after lots of squirming, he finally went! Yay, we don't have to go see the doctor! It wasn't pretty, but the diaper contained it, thank goodness. I don't know if it was the prunes, or just his time to go, but I'm going to continue with the prunes to see if they make a difference.

Luckily, there aren't any pictures that correspond to this post- that'd be really gross. Here's an action shot of Maison instead.

Oh, and here's a cute little story that's almost as troubling as the poopy diaper stuff. I had Madeline running around all morning with no diaper on in our very casual, kinda potty training mode. She was playing in all of my old jewelery in my bathroom where she always plays while I get ready for the day. Next thing I know she has one end of a turquoise stone bracelet stuck in her lower booty crack with the bracelet hanging down, wagging it, saying, "mom. tail., look mom. tail." Sorry sweetie- you did it, not me.

All Done Pit-chure?

I am a wanna-be photographer. Which would be ok if I had a creative bone in my body and could think of something else to snap at other than my poor kids. Madeline takes the brunt of it, of course, since Maison is still pretty much just lying there (he's moved up to sucking on his toes, which is adorable. I'm sure I'll be posting a picture of than sometime soon). I do use the video camera to record Maison's wonderful babbling and Madeline's singing, but for the most part it's pictures. I would rather look at 3 pictures of Madeline going down a slide than at a movie of it. I think it's the facial expressions just frozen in time. She has such an expressive face & neat personality that I want a picture of every second of her life. Then if I want to watch a movie of it, I can just flip through the pictures really fast. :)


The whole every second of her life thing is what's making her tell me lately- "All done pit-chure?" Essentially she's asking me to PLEASE put the camera down and just play with her. I wouldn't be surprised if she has nightmares of a giant camera lens chasing her around (ha! that'd be payback for me having to have The Wiggles' Fruit Salad song stuck in my head constantly).

It makes me feel really bad, actually, and as soon as she asks I definitely do put it down and play with her. One of the problems is that she won't play by herself. I always have to play with her. There's really no taking candid pictures of her. Yesterday she was playing in the sprinklers (it's already so hot!), and I wanted pictures of her running around, but of course she would only stand at the edges until I would run through them with her. So no cute sprinkler running pics, just a soggy mommy.

Sleeping Beauty

I don't get to see Madeline sleep very often. When she's asleep, I want her to STAY asleep, so I do everything possible not to disturb her. Her bedroom's dark, the noisy fan is on, there's a note on the doorbell, I walk in socks, etc.

Her crib has to be arranged very specifically for her to go to sleep. Certain dollies have to have their heads on her pillow and covers to their chins, certain dollies have to be under the covers with her, certain toys have to be right outside her crib, she has to be covered with 2 blankets, have her sippy in her armpit, oh, and don't forget the binky, that's for sure.

The other day, I had to wake her from her nap so we could go meet family for lunch. My little sleeping angel. She didn't wake when I opened her door, so I ran and got my camera. She still hadn't woken up, so I opened her curtains a little to let some light in, braced myself, and clicked.

She woke on the first click (there were 3, just in case), but by the time she was awake enough to comprehend, I hid the camera behind my back and said Hi Baby, all innocently. I felt like I was intruding on her privacy. I know she's only 2, but how rude to wake an innocent baby with a camera in her face. I had to get that picture though. It looks like her bear got a little greedy with the pillow...

Here's another sleep-related picture. We bath her every night and she goes to sleep all clean and pretty, but nearly every morning she wakes up like this:

I don't know what she does, but that is not a clean and pretty rat's nest on the back of her head.

My Hunka Hunka Burnin' Love

Wow, doesn't he look great all prepped out, getting ready to go not-golf? I say not-golf because he just drives the golf cart, drinks beer and refuses to golf. But has a blast anyways. Today he's going to a charity golf event, which supports a girls soccer league. What's funny, at least from what Thor has told me, is that the girls in the soccer leauge generally come from fairly well-to-do families. So, he's not-golfing at a charity golf tournament to support a cause that doesn't really need support. Whatever- as long as he looks this good, it's all good for me!


On a jealous sidenote, I found out today that Madeline has been saying I Love You back to Thor for about 2 weeks now, with not a peep to me. Little pooper. But I do think I got the biggest smile ever from Maison today...