Squeaky wheel

Guess who will be enjoying a lovely dinner at the hotel steakhouse courtesy of the hotel manager? As a vegetarian it will take a lot to get my "money's worth," but I trust I can make it happen.

And look what just showed up:


Why yes, that is cheese shaped like the state of Wisconsin. You might not be able to see if since it is covered up by the cheese shaped like a cow. All my dreams came true!

Restless Baby Syndrome

Last night's search was a waste of time; my child apparently no longer requires sleep to function.
Since yesterday morning Marielle has slept all of 6 hours - 2:30 am until 7:30 this morning, and several very, very short naps in her stroller. I figure she's got to collapse eventually but there's no sign of it happening anytime soon.

Marielle refuses to sleep in her crib, travel bed OR in bed with us, preferring to spend her time exploring the hotel room. I finally tossed her in the crib with a pacifier and parked it in front of the cartoon network. I'm pretty sure cartoons at 10 pm on a Friday are not meant for kids. (With her hearing aids out, so that's only half the damage, right?) She's been jumping up and down in the crib ever since, but at least she's no longer trying to call the front desk or eat trash. So far she hasn't figured out that the crib barely comes up to her waist and she could jump out in two seconds.

Luckily we paid for child care all day tomorrow. I was tempted to skip the conference sessions and just take a really long nap until I remembered I'm volunteering tomorrow. Uuuuuugh.

update: 11:20 pm - asleep at last!

note jello stain on arm!

Seventh try's a charm?

Number of times you have to ask the Hilton Milwaukee for a crib before they actually bring you one?

SEVEN.

Time it will be delivered?

12:10 am

Ooops, no that's a rollaway. You wanted a CRIB?

Try again!

12:30 am (central time. 1:30 Marielle time.)

Oh, you wanted one that wasn't broken? Yeah....right....uh....

You would think taking your toddler with you to the front desk at midnight might speed things up, but you would be wrong.

I hope there's cheese and beer.

We are off to the conference in Milwaukee!

(Please don't rob our house. But if you do, could you water my tomatoes while you're here?)

Vintage bulletin board

Because your kids are never too young to start doing your job for you.

There's always room for a milkshake

Barry's birthday is this Wednesday. Father's Day was a week ago. Our anniversary is coming up July 6. The bad news is this means he usually gets one present instead of three. The good news is it's usually something great like an iPhone. I seriously considered the upgraded phone this year - so I could steal his old one.

Instead I decided we had enough stuff sitting around the house collecting dust and and instead I would get him an "experience." Something fun, memorable and dust-free.

Barry was incredibly patient and didn't bug me for hints. He mostly stayed out of my e-mail inbox where he could have easily learned what I was cooking up. I told him to reserve Sunday morning for the big reveal and had him guessing until the last second. Luckily it didn't seem unusual to him that we would "just stop in" for a milkshake at his favorite ice cream parlor. Even though it was 10 am on a Sunday. And we had just eaten a huge breakfast down the road.

For his birtherverser'sday present he got to design his own ice-cream flavor! After much thought he and Sue decided on a lemon ice-cream with fresh raspberries and a hint of mint. Nice summer flavor and easily made into a milkshake, his favorite way to consume ice-cream.

We go back on July 5 to make it. It will be the flavor of the week starting July 6, available for sale to everyone. Personally I hope they sell none of it and she gives it all to us.

We have the next week to come up with the name. I've only come up with:

RaspBarry Lemonade - Mint Condition
RaspBarry Lemonade Wondermint (or Excitemint?)
When Life Hands You Lemons, Make Ice-Cream

Any other ideas? Like either of ours? Leave us comments!

Beached whales

Did you hear the news about Gloucester? (No, no, not THAT news.) We're going on vacation!

After probably 30 hours of searching, hundreds of e-mails and much gnashing of teeth, we found a house at the last minute for an almost affordable price. It's a beauty! They claim it will even have furniture by the time we arrive.

One can only hope there will be fewer medical emergencies than last year's vacation. And fewer freaky cabbage patch kids.

School's out, for summer!

Why am I still this busy and frazzled? I'm supposed to be napping, watching movies and sitting on a pool chaise!

We'll be back to posting next week. Going to take this week off. See you then!

One-woman-band

(Marielle also loves to pretend to strum the guitars on her shoes.)

Despite her love for her new bath toys, the drum is shunned. Apparently it just can't live up to the real thing.

Pickpocket update

Two thumbs up for ING who returned all my money only hours after they received my affadavits that my card was stolen. I was initially suspicious of the 100% online banking concept but found them to be much more helpful than the bozos I deal with at my local BB&T branch.

I also appreciate our county police department allows you to file a police report online, in the air-conditioned comfort of your home!

I've been trying to invent a story in my head about what happened to my card. It was very well traveled in 36 hours, going from Woodbridge VA to DC to Charlotte, NC, and back to Woodbridge. Most likely it was some young punk buying electronics, sports gear and gasoline. In my fantasy world the story is much more tolerable - something like a young widow with twelve adopted children went on a diaper buying spree. The trip to Charlotte was to visit her husband's grave, but then she was mugged in the cemetary parking lot...and some punk went and bought electronics and sports gear. Chances are I'll never know what happened, which really peeves me more than anything!

In other good news, the temperatures might finally stay in the double digits today, allowing us the chance to leave the house without fear of heat stroke. Who knows, we might actually do something worth blogging about.

And things were going so well...

Check out all the shopping I've done in the past 36 hours:

TARGET $118.45
TARGET $5.54
TARGET $260.35
7-ELEVEN $40.45
URBAN OUTFITTERS $241.10
CITY SPORTS INC $69.76
BEST BUY $325.47
WAL-MART $313.64
7-ELEVEN $72.38

Only I've barely left the house in the last 36 hours. Seems I've been burgled.

The charges were made on my debit card in Woodbridge & Dumfries, VA, and Charlotte, NC. I am racking my brain trying to figure out when and how my card was taken and who could be traveling the East coast on my dime. Did you know that even when you run out of money they will let you keep using your debit card? Lucky me!

I guess it's time to figure out where my local police station is and file a report. What a fun field trip for Marielle tonight!

Victory

How about a bit of good news for a change?

Which do you wanna hear about first?

Today half our house fell down and we set the other half on fire.

Grab Toto

Huge storm sweeping through. OUR FENCE JUST BLEW OVER.

An attempt at acceptance

This morning Marielle brought me a book she wanted me to read -- Harriet Goes to School. I did my best to read the book without adding any special commentary of my own.

We have been reading books about school around here! Visiting her school regularly! Going on outings with the class! Going to meet the school bus and watch the kids get off. Sigh.

I have all the clothes she was going to wear to class next year. I even signed up to take a fruit-art class so I can be the mom who makes all the awesome lunches and classroom treats! Now I'll just be the creepy woman down the street that makes zucchini trees to pass the day.

Trying to look on the bright side of things doesn't come easily to me but I am doing my best. Like now I don't have to rush the potty training. That's something I guess. Heck, I can just take off the diaper entirely and let her run wild in the living room.

The living room has become the playroom.


I fought that for months. I didn't want it to look like a kid had taken over our entire house, but honestly it's the biggest space we have - especially once I moved half the furniture upstairs. The carpet is already ruined from years of beagles, so getting red marker and blue paint all over yesterday was not a big deal.

Nothing in the Marielle tornado path is overlooked; it all gets strewn about. Last night I decided to just give up for awhile. I relaxed the couch and read Newsweek while she played. (Another advantage of the living room as playroom set up - the couch!) Then I got a phone call from another mommy and chatted for another 20 minutes. All of my energy was focused on the call and keeping Marielle from hanging up the phone.

Forty minutes after my "break" started, I looked up and saw this:

I guess it could be worse. We'll find out!

Lowered expectations

No, I didn't stick my head in the oven. But the news is definitely final, and it is not good.

For those of you that aren't avid Baby Beethoven readers, here's the short condensed version with links:

For the past 15 months we have spent an extensive amount of time and energy trying to make a very important decision on how to communicate with our child. We took classes in ASL and cued speech since we wanted to be fully informed when we made the decision of which school to send her to this winter. We started touring county preschools last fall!

We were told she would start pre-school at 2 years of age.

I made choices in my career with this in mind. I cut back on hours and with only limited child care managed to somehow not get fired and even take on a little extra work here and there to help pay our gigantic mortage we were stuck with after we were robbed.

I made choices not to enroll her in daycare or other preschool programs knowing that this December she would go off to the county program for the hard of hearing.

I made choices not to overdose on pills when a day of trying to juggle work and the destructive force of a toddler drove me mad. I seriously sit around and think "just six more months...just six more months..."

I stayed up to date with all of the proposed school budget cuts, even testifying before the school board.

We were still under this impression until last week when I stumbled across a couple of sentences buried in a budget of another county agency. Surprise! I found out even before the school did that my daughter's entrance would be delayed by an additional nine months.

Later I heard rumors they were considering totally revamping the preschool program.

Bartender? I'll have another round!

I realize preschool at 2 with rolling admissions is pretty much unheard of across special education programs and that our system was lucky to have it at all. But that is what I was told we would get, and that is what we had planned.

At this point all of the preschool programs near us are full. Their lotteries were last Spring or even last winter! Of course none of them are designed for deaf students and don't have the advantage of the school system. To grandfather in those already in the process would not be a huge expense. Heck, I would even pay the expense if that were an option.

I have to very quickly decide if I'm going to postpone adding new clients for another 9 months or if I'm going to send Marielle to a substandard pre-school. And if I don't take on more work and don't find a pre-school, how will I keep the two of us sane for another year and a half. (OH, it stings to write that. IT STINGS!!!!)

I have attempted to bribe the preschool teacher - who is totally on my side and wants Marielle in her class as soon as possible - but I guess the $3.75 cash I had in my pocket wasn't appealing enough to make things happen. She suggested I move to another state, then move back, re-enrolling Marielle under an assumed name and birth date. My kind of woman! She continues to fight for us but so far the news is not good.

It would have been nice if these changes had gone through proper public comment like the other budget cuts. It would have been nice if they made an effort to inform the parents. It just makes no sense.

Barry claims we won't go down without a fight. I resent we weren't even given the chance to fight.