Snot, Interrupted

Tim and his mom have this horrible habit of interrupting Abby, and now Nora, when they are talking. It mostly happens in the car for some reason. It has to have something to do with the Sirius Kids Stuff that we have all learned to tune out.
I find it really irritating that my mother in law does this so I have now started ignoring her to listen to Abby. I need to find a tactful way to tell her that I would rather pay attention to my kid than to her most times, and that maybe she should pay some attention to her also.
Whatever.
The girls and I spent the day with my Tim's mom, and while the premise was annoying, my MIL didn't want to make me poke my eyes out as she usually does. She had bought Abby a bunch of stuff form Gymboree, which is pretty hit or miss. For the most part she does ok, but then again, it is getting pretty old that just about everything my girls wear comes from the same place. Whatever.
There was a bunch of stuff that I was going to return, but since she was with me I couldn't, which sucks because then I have to back again to get rid of some of the stuff that is seriously heinous.
While we were out Nora, who started the day with crust on her nose, got more and more lethargic and more and more crusty. She had some kid goo coming out of her nose, and her cheek was all swollen and red, so I thought it was just her 2 year molars combined with a little cold (you know, the one I gave to Amanda and Clementine who then gave it back to us) but then her eye started oozing some yellowy gunk.
By the time we got home, the eye stuff had gotten remarkably worse.
Exhibit A:

Seriously, have you ever seen something so yucky? So I called the pediatrician's office who said she should be seen before they closed today. Can I tell you how much that fucked up my mojo? No, because my mojo is too fucked.
So we are the proud owners of an ear infection (red cheek, low grade fever, lethargy), a sinus infection (goop coming out of her nose and eye), an eye infection (caused by the sinus infection), and possibly fleas (a parting gift from Floyd- my MIL got a bit tonight, I am hoping a load of laundry will fix that, keep your fingers off for me).
Are you jealous?

Visiting Santa

While in Detroit we went to Paradeland (which RULES!) to see the floats and meet up with our old friend Santa Clause. Of course he went on his lunch break about the same time we were ready for him so we waited around until he came back. When we got in line we were behind this family with older children and a overbearing mother who was determined to get the ultimate Christmas card picture with her reluctant kids.
So they get up there and are all piled around the fat man, someone is snapping pictures and we all kind of step up to get ready to park our kids on Santa to get our Christmas card picture. But there was a snag. The people didn't move, they kept talking to Santa, and talking and talking and talking. This is what it looked like:

Is that woman serious? I mean the whole hunched over peering at Santa thing she is doing is not working for her. What is funnier than that is what Tim and Amanda looked like while waiting for this woman to finish what she was doing.

I want that to be my Christmas card.

1,829 Days

In the last 1829 days Abby has gone from being this fragile little lump to a an actual walking talking individual with a (great) personality, sense of humor, and opinion. She has gone from relying solely on me for feeding her to a kid who I have to beg to eat her green beans. She has traded in splashing in the bath tub for singing in the shower, but still wants me to "dress her like a baby" some nights before bed. She has gone from being an only child and the center of everyone's universe to a big sister and an older cousin who must now share the spot light. While she is still nestled under my wing, she is branching out socially at her schools, and I have been told by both her sets of teachers that she is incredibly smart.
She is, in a word, awesome, and while the first 1,829 days have had their ups and downs, I would not change a single second of it.
So her is to you, my little 5 year old, who brings such joy and light to everything around her. You really do make the world a better place.
Happy Birthday kiddo.

Sharing is Caring

We are 2 days into a week with no school (which is kind of a lie since there was a mini day yesterday) and I am already feeling the burn.
Maybe it was the weekend escape to Detroit to hang with my sister and her super cooler friends (oh yeah, my cousin went too, but only spoke in the car) which left Tim alone with the children that destroyed any semblance of organization we had in the house. Maybe it was the sewer issue we had last week that turned the house upside down. Or maybe it is just the barometric pressure change that has made me completely intolerant to other people's children in my house. Yesterday it was (Insert witty name for a kid who I generally like, but I am glad that she is not mine) before ballet class which led to fights over who goes first for every damn thing from washing hands to going to college. Today it was 2 kids who the girls like playing with, but really, a 4 hour playdate almost tipped me over the edge. I have done everything short of tap dancing to entertain those kids today and they are still bitching about who goes first, who has the bigger piece, who looks more like Wonder Woman (we have started quite the craze around here- who knew we would ever be trendsetters?), and so on. (Note on the Wonder Woman thing: It was a 4 year old boy with red hair who was telling Abby that he looked more like WW than she does) I also refereed fights between Abby and Nora, Abby and the red headed boy, Nora and the red headed kids' sister, the sister and the red head, and so on. If I had to tell them to "figure it out" or "stop tattling" or "knock it off" one more time I was going to lose my shit and run away screaming "You win!", but finally my friend came and whisked them away (she had been to the doctor and shopping) so that I could deliver a meal to the bedridden pregnant mom (will the giving ever stop?).
Now, after extolling the virtues of sharing all fucking day (which let's be honest sometimes sharing sucks) I am off to share my computer with my beloved husband.
Share Bear would be proud!

"Pregnant"

No, silly, not me.

Today I was in JoAnn fabrics with the girls and I got a call from my friend with the infertile husband (I know I have mentioned her before). They finally got the referral from the adoption agency- their Korean will be here by the end of the school year. I don't know why this makes me SO happy, and I don't know why this made me cry in the aisle of JoAnn fabrics, or why I feel obliged to tell everyone I know that my friend and her infertile husband are finally going to have the child they always wanted.
So now her "pregnancy" begins. The final paper work gets filed and they wait to go and get their adorable little boy with the huge cheeks and goofy hair. I am just so happy for them......

Mandatory Volunteers Wanted

The moms at Abby's old preschool are pretty cool. Despite the "Mommy wars" that tend to go on, they are all pretty nice and we have gotten to know each other over the past year and a half our kids have gone to school together. There is this one mom who, over the summer, got pregnant (she has 3 other kids) and when she went in for her 20 week ultra sound she found out she was having spontaneous twins. I think that a 4th pregnancy would tip me over the edge, but then to find out it is twins?! I don't even know what I would do.
So this mom is 26 weeks and has started dilating so her doctors have put her on complete bedrest. So now she has these 3 kids to tend to and can't be up for more than 15 minutes at a time. The moms at school yesterday were setting up a schedule for when we could all be bringing these people lunches and dinners, and trying to schedule car pool and what not to help her out.
One of the moms said nothing and did not volunteer to help at all, and when she left all the others started talking about her and how rude that was.
When did helping the pregnant mom become mandatory? I have offered to help, but I am not going to go overboard because I have shit to do and making sure that they have a nutritious and delicious meal is totally peripheral to me. Does this make me a bad acquaintance?
Do I care?

Can you even imagine?

I used to play hockey with this woman who had a baby last week. She had your average c-section then after a day she went into heart failure because she had a blood clot in her leg. She had open heart surgery, but had been unconscious so long she was brain dead and her husband had to make the decision to pull the plug. Tomorrow, when her baby is a week old, she will be buried.
Despite the fact that it has been a while since I last saw her I went to her wake tonight. I felt so bad for her husband who could only say over and over that this was not supposed to happen this way. It was surreal, and so sad, and I wish there was something I could do for that baby who will never know her mother. I wish there was something I could do for her poor husband who can't enjoy the first weeks of fatherhood completely because he is grieving the loss of his wife.
Can you even imagine?

Dinner With Grown Ups

Saturday Tim and I went to this fantastic dinner party at this amazing house in Lincoln Park with incredible people and delicious food. Seeing as I am marginally socially awkward (that is how spell check is telling me to spell that, but it is not looking right to me), and Tim is even more so in certain settings, I was a tad nervous about this whole thing for a variety of reasons. First of all it was at a friend of a friend's house. And it is not just any friend of a friend, it is a supremely fabulous friend of a Charles' who wrote this book (The Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life) that was seriously one of my most favoritest books ever. Second of all, once Chach read me the guest list for this party I realized that Tim and I were going to be the most uninteresting people there, and possibly in the universe.
So Tim and I get a sitter (who promptly screws us by telling me she "has plans" and can't come until 7:30- God damn I hate being a slave to the social calendar of a 15 year old), and we make playlists in our iTunes (a prerequisite, according to Chach, was for all of us to create a playlist to share) and head off to Lincoln Park for dinner with grown ups.
First let me start with this- EGADS this was the most amazing house I have ever seen. The Rosenthals just built it, and it is large and roomy, but not ostentatious. It is completely high tech and modern, but it is totally warm and comfy. In a word it is amazing.
Second, all these people (with the exception of Chach and the Sommelier) who were essentially strangers to us, seriously could not have been more fantastic if they tried. It is hard going into certain social settings because I do not have an interesting career to talk about, and the last thing Tim read were the directions on his Monster Energy Drink can. But it was inexplicably wonderful to visit with actual adults who are able to converse about something other than the local preschool gossip and minivans.
We had such a great time, in such a great place, with such great people, and I wish I had a better blog about it, but alas, I am not Amy Krouse Rosenthal and cannot articulate the joys and pitfalls of adult/parenthood.

All I want for Christmas

This morning Abby wrote a letter to Santa with no help from anyone. This is the result (translation following):

Satu
Ckanihav u baby uliv plys and brby hrt bblgum
ABBY

Here is the translation-

Santa (she confuses the 'a' and the 'u' sounds often)
Can I have a baby alive please and Barbie heart bubble gum
ABBY

Now do me a favor and check out her phonetic spelling and try to tell me that she is not the cutest and most brilliant thing ever.
But seriously, what is a Barbie heart?

Raisng Funds

Abby's first preschool is selling cookie dough as a fundraiser. For the low low low price of $10 you can be the proud owner of a 4 lb tub of raw cookie dough. You can also buy various flavors of popcorn coated in chocolate, or these creepy "lava cakes" that you can toss in the microwave and they are meant to be raw and runny in the middle. Yum.
I tried to hit up my mom and sister to buy some of this garbage, but it looks like I am going to be the proud owner of multiple 4 pound "cubes" of chocolate cookie dough with the most bizarre green mint flavored chips, or snicker-doodle cookies with "cinnamon" chips, or maybe some "Chicago Style" popcorn- you know the "delicious" (read: vile) combo of carmel corn and cheese popcorn. Hooray.
Abby was sent home with her second preschool's fundraiser. Guess what it is... you got it- more fucking cookie dough.
So now I can complete my collection of crap to crowd my freezer.
Anyone want to buy some cookie dough so that Abby's schools can pay for their play dough?



Didn't think so.

Coming Down

Does anyone know what time it is?
I can't for the life of me figure out what time it is. Did I set that clock over there? Is it 2 o'clock, or is it 1 o'clock, or did we fall back and it is really 3 o'clock on our internal clock, and why won't Nora sleep? And really what were they doing up so damn early, but hey, I was up too, so I guess it is not the end of the world, right?

I turned 30 last week, and in honor of this Tim decided to take the better part of last week off so he could hang with his wife and kids. He also threw me a surprise party, and my sister and her family came for a visit. It is now eerily quiet around here.

I had a great birthday, the girls both were at school so Tm took me out for pancakes then to look at cars (I refuse to drive a minivan and as we talk about potentially adding one more to our posse, and as my car racks up more miles, we are looking to replace the Jeep with something a little larger). Tim really liked being off of work, and it was nice to have him around- kind of. Don't get me wrong, I love his company, it is just that he sometimes forgets that we do have kids who need things like quiet time and naps, and occasionally I would like to go and run some errands by myself without the three of them standing over my shoulder asking when we are going to be done. And also it got a little old that on the 3 days he was home from work he never once got out of bed before 9, which, ok, I get it, you are on a mini vacation from work, you should be allowed to sleep in, but when do I get to do that? When do I get to play hooky from my job? Oh, that is right, I don't.
In all it was fun to have him home, but I was ready for him to go back to work this morning.

My sister and her clan came to town this weekend, which is always fun. They were here to celebrate my birthday and be here for my surprise party. The plan was to go out for a nice dinner Saturday night after meeting Tim's cousin for drinks. Needless to say the drinks were to lure me to this bar where several of my friends for different eras of my life convened to shower me with warm wishes, gift cards, and booze.
While it was not a genuine surprise (thank God, because seriously if I had to walk into a room with my "mom friends" and my high school friends and didn't have at least a little warning to prepare mentally I might have died), it was really sweet of Tim to go to the trouble of planning and executing such an event. In all a good birthday celebration.

Since Nora took a total of 0.00 naps since last Wednesday she was a mess all day yesterday and is currently sleeping off the bender she has been on. Abby is quietly playing downstairs, and I am contemplating the groceries I bought today yet I still have nothing to make for dinner (all the meat is still frozen). I have a ton of thank you notes to write, a drivers license to renew, and an iPhone to return (yeah, Tim bought me an iPhone, I am still not ready to talk about it yet). If only I knew what time it was.....