Road trip

Where have I been? Oh, just off in Pennsylvania somewhere between the lucite busts and Frank Lloyd Wright chairs. I knew if I procrastinated long enough, NG would write all about it.

Sometimes I think my life is boring. Then I realize few people would do things like seek out the Latin Quarter of Milwaukee. And who sees an item for bid on ebay and takes the time to track down the auction house and then decide "Well, why not? What better do we have to do next Tuesday?" Me, that's who.

More pictures to follow. Until then, check out NG's post.

It's that time of year

Sometimes I think I spend way too many brain cells thinking about Marielle's birthday parties. Then I see stuff like this 4 year old's party and realize WOW. I'm not even close to the top of the crazy scale. Though definitely above average, clearly I could be much worse.

(I think we all know I could do this and more if my funds were endless. I just wouldn't have a need for that many chairs since I've never met that many people in my entire life. And that carpet? Eew. I would have paid to have a nice fresh sod installed by my imaginary garden staff. Duh.)

Speaking of...I realized that I only have 3 1/2 months until the 2nd birthday party. I don't know how that could be, since I have not aged a day.

Our original theme was derailed when I realized every third child in America was using the same one. So our new one is CENSORED and I am busy thinking about the invitations. I have to start early because it's the ONE tiny thing I like to do myself, and it takes me FOREVER. I cannot beat last year's invites, but that's not to say I won't try.

We will not be getting another cake from Charm City this year, mainly because the bank denied our credit application. I think I can do almost as well for 1/8 the price. My other plan was to just print some pictures off flickr, plop them in her albums, and swear that was her cake. Surely I could get away with that for at least 3 or 4 more years.

Just like I'm going to take all the pictures from Disneyworld where Doormouse was facing away from the camera and swear to Mari that we took her there the time we went to Disneyworld with NG.

Virtual high school reunion

One of my good friends who wishes to remain anonymous mentioned that people are climbing out of the woodwork and hunting him down. People he really cared not to talk to ever again. Thanks much, Facebook (and weird last names which make it way too easy to find us)!

"I got an account because alot of friend from randomforeigncountry were on there, but then slowly, alot of people from high school that I assumed were either dead or otherwise, have started to friend me. and I don't care about them. at all. and now what to do?"

I've had the exact same thing happen to me lately. People who couldn't even take the time to acknoweldge any of my life changing events of the past 10 years with a card - or even an e-mail - now spying on me via technology. Got this fortune on our Thai binge this past weekend and it seemed appropriate.


Anonyfriend says he's actually receiving emails from people. I guess my stalkers don't like me that much. All follow the same formula:

(1) I used to have dreams but I was too stupid to realize those dreams were idiotic
(2) so I stayed in small town USA
(3) I have eight kids/two cats/a new house/ a husband or wife who beats me/a chinchilla farm
(4) so please validate my life choices by letting me know that you also failed!

Love,
Someone you don't care about

What's the verdict? I say respond with polite, brief email about how fabulous your life is, making sure to point out how long it's been since you chatted. Either ignore their friend request on Facebook or if you feel guilty, add them and resume ignoring them for the next 10 years. Unless you actually like the person a ton. But if you did, wouldn't you have stayed in touch all along? Hmm.

Sandbox - $10. Hours of entertainment - Priceless.

I would encourage you to use Craigslist, but then that would mean fewer things for us. Forget I ever said a thing.

Has anyone seen my baby?

It seems someone has taken my baby and replaced her with a chopstick using, dumpling loving, pad-thai eating CHILD. Unacceptable or irresistable?

Oral fixation

I'm not going to lie. I cringe and judge when I see a 3 or 4 year old walking around with a pacifier. Why? Who knows. Somehow my brain was convinced that the only preschoolers using pacifiers were born to heroin addict parents who barely remember they have spawn. These less intelligent children can only find happiness in a cheap plastic mother substitute. (Yes, I judge. Don't even get me started on Suri Cruise and her bottle habit.)

I did some research on this subject before Marielle was born. I AM NOT JOKING. I still read way too much and trust way too many experts. The verdict I came to was:

1. No pacifiers at first, or she'll never breastfeed.

2. Later is OK, but get it away from her before she's one year old. Otherwise she'll develop such a habit she'll walk down the aisle in a wedding dress with poor speech, buck teeth and matching pacifier.

Oh, silly me. Let's all guess how well I did on both of those.

First off, I was begging the midwife the first day. "PLEASE, can I PLEASE give this child pacifier. This child won't stop sucking at my (redacted). My (redacted)s are about to fall off!"

She looked at me like I was a fool and said, "Of course she can. Her feeding seems great." Yet it still took me another 36 hours to cave. I refused to let the nurses give her pacifiers or gasp - a bottle.

As I left the hospital I conned the nurses into giving me several pacifiers for free, just in case. Of course I would never need them. Right??

I don't remember when I caved, but I'm pretty sure it was almost immediately. She sucked at that pacifier for about a month. I remember sleeping with her bassinet right next to the bed. She would cry anytime the pacifier fell out, so I slept with my arm hanging over the top, waiting to grab it and shove it back in. By morning my arm was so numb you could have sawed it off with a butter knife and I wouldn't have felt a thing.

This "dirty habit" only lasted about six weeks, at which point she ditched it and never looked back. (Maybe I took it from her when I found out she was deaf and was even more scared of the speech delays. Who can remember details from a period of my life where I never slept more than 3 hours straight.) Whee! Home free! So proud of myself! Didn't even have to deal with weaning her off the pacifier at a year.

(Pausing for a moment so you can have a hearty laugh and throw in a "silly Monica!")

I think we all know what's coming.

About 3 months ago I was on my hands and knees, crib pulled out from the wall, looking for a missing hearing aid part. Marielle snuck up next to me. She spied a pacifier, popped it into her mouth, and hasn't let go since.

This was right around the time she was so whiny I occasionally wanted to throw her against the wall. Very quickly I realized the pacifier was serving mommy even more than it was soothing her. At that point in our lives I would have given her a fifth of whiskey if it would solve both our problems. A pacifier seemed like a good compromise, less likely to send me to jail.

After the whiny stage passed, she got pretty good about using them only in the crib or the car. Then they slowly crept back. "We're on vacation." or "She's teething." They don't slow down her talking, in fact she's more verbal than ever.

Now she's started asking for it by name. We call it a "paci" but since she can't say "pah" or "see" it comes out "dacky." Hilarious, adorable, and when accompanid with "peeeez?!" it's just irresistable.

This week Marielle's obsession snowballed to all new hilarious level of hoarding. She spent an hour rounding up ever pacifier she could find in the house. She tried to hold on to as many as she could, careful to keep the rest within site. She would share them with her rocking horse & dollies. She even tried to give one to daddy. At least when she walks across the stage to collect her college diploma, she'll offer to share her dacky with the Dean.

Good in theory

Until real preschool starts (115 days but who's counting), Mari's stuck with me and the dinosaur.

Let's modify that Montessori method of purposeful activity slightly, Marielle. The purpose of this next activity is what can you do for me?

Whole Paycheck Foods allows me a handsfree shopping experience. No carrying of the child, no screaming child in my shopping cart or wandering toddler, no purse falling off my arm - this is great stuff! Why yes, I would gladly pay $24 for a pie in exchange!

Unfortunately Marielle learned somewhere about the independence & free choice aspects of Montessori theory. Before I could stop her she was off stealing the keys to the car, never to be heard from again.

Carjacking near the sushi counter.

Taking one for the family

Today is the three week anniversary of Barry's new job! (It should be his fourth day, but his start date was abruptly moved back several weeks - disrupting our vacation plans - because THE MAN said he had to start by July 31 or forfeit this year's bonus.)

Tonight we celebrated his arrival home with a family outing to the neighborhood park.

Perhaps some nice bedtime stories would be less taxing?

Oops. Looks like we put the wrong person to sleep. At least his 7 o'clock bedtime means I don't have to worry about what to make for dinner tonight.

As you may know, Barry owned his own consulting business for about 7 years. There are definitely numerous benefits to this scenario, particulary a very lenient dress code not requiring pants on most days. However, you do have to be somewhat diligent about such pesky details as timesheets and billing your clients if you want to keep the electricity on and your giant child fed.

One of his clients had been begging him for months to come work for them full time. Barry's business manager went in to their office, met with the executives and negotiated quite the deal, if I do say so myself. They pay him every 2 weeks - mindblowing - and we gots ourselves some fancy dental insurance and everything. Vision insurance? Who knew it even existed?! Anyone that will pay him that much money after he drags in a squiggly toddler and scraggly wife who barks demands is worth considering.

Back in the day when we were both self-employed, I had some pretty crappy health insurance. My deductible was over $2000 and the co-insurance was equally ridiculous. My primary care provider was Dr. Google and if I needed a second opinion I asked a friend who went to fake medical school. The only year I went to a doctor was 2006. I managed to get pregnant and have the baby all in the same year so I wouldn't have to pay that giant deductible twice -- and don't think I didn't plan it that way.

It wasn't just the promise of sweet, sweet drugs that won me over. Honestly I was tired of Barry going down to his dungeon (office/music room) at 7 am some mornings only to emerge after Marielle had gone to bed. It didn't happen every day, but I soon saw a pattern emerge: as long as he was on the computer, he could play the "I'm working" card. Only later when the large windfall of income failed to appear did I wise up and start examining his timesheet and surfing history. Intriguing indeed.

Blah blah blah fast forward to now: he's working for THE MAN. Things seem to have improved since the first day when they showed him his computerless cube and abandoned him for four hours. It's no pantless paradise, but as far as jobs go I would say he's got a pretty good one. It's very close to home, he can wear jeans and wrinkled shirts, and he gets a cell phone allowance.

Somehow I just thought he would be the one sacrificing though. I didn't really consider how much I would miss having him around during the day. No longer can I say "I have a conference call! Watch Marielle for 20 minutes!"

It's made my life pretty awful at times as I struggle to keep up with my clients, entertain a very active child, and keep up with the doctors appointments, etc. It doesn't help that my workload quadrupled this week. People are getting lots of 1 am emails and no laundry has been done in a week. It is literally chest high. (I would take a picture but I'm afraid if I open the door to the laundry closet, it might bury me and my body would decompose before anyone else got around to dealing with it.)

And how can I plan a spontaneous family getaway when there's pesky stuff like vacation policies getting in my way? Woe is me.

Enough griping...the whole point of this was to solicit opinions from other families with young kids. As we are settling into our new routine I'm interested in how you divide up the childcare and housework. I've read some interesting posts about morning routines that make my head swim. I've heard rumors of dads who always handle the bedtime routine. (I'm suspicious but have heard it from more than one person, so it must be happening somewhere and somehow.)

How do you balance getting some time for yourself with not throwing the child at your husband the second he walks in the door? Or do you stop caring by 6 pm, toss the kid, and hope someone is there to catch them. Inquiring minds want to know.

(And not that it necessarily matters for this discussion but let me point out that I am currently bringing in some bacon myself, so it's not like I'm at the park all morning and napping all afternoon. I'm wearing out my daughter in the morning so she can nap as long as possible, while I work furiously. Many nights find me staying up until 2 am finishing work projects, fueled by illegal amounts of caffeinated beverages.)

I'm waiting, you, you, you, you, you, you, all my blogless friends and especially you over there with the FIVE kids. Anyone have suggestions that don't involve smuggling in an indentured servant? Because I'm already looking into that, and I could use a back up plan if that doesn't pan out.

So very tired

Mr. Sandman

I'm not quite sure how this happened, but the last 2 days Marielle went to bed at a normal time and yet slept in past 10 am. I was pretty depressed to end my beach nirvana, so it was nice of her to slowly ease me back to reality. Pictures from our trip are posted here or here.

High on life

Dolphins. Performing live with Rachel. Love notes in the sand. Late night chats with friends. Incredible experts. What an amazing 24 hours.

The Price is Right

We started today at the new preschool and I'm still not sure it's the best fit. The kids come from a wide variety of backgrounds but there are so many of them they have to share chairs or even sit on the table!

The teacher is super young and kept nodding off. They even have wild animals running about during story time. And I'm pretty sure that fish tank is totally fake. But what else can you do when the county screws you over at the last minute? At least the commute is short.

The teacher was grumpy and snotty all day, but blamed it on some temporary medical issue.

I will give them credit for the bright colors, cued speech instructional poster and extra credit for a fully stocked puppet theater ($10 on Craigslist, or so I heard.)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the county code one student per crib?

Questionable nutrition in the school cafeteria, but I didn't hear any complaints.

The teacher is hysterical though. Here's some secret camera footage from music class:


Allow me to translate, since the sound is lousy and she had a pacifier in her mouth:

"Hey! Dolly! Check out these cool pictures! My daddy took me to the grocery store once but then we snuck off and bought a drum set. Drums! You play them like this! Here's a close up shot. It was awesome."

Homophones

Did else notice the first US gold medal of this Olympic games went to a girl named...

MARIELLE

Ok, she spells it wrong, but she says it right - though most of the newscasters don't - so it totally counts! I predict a surge in popularity on the baby names chart, at least among female fencing fans anyway.

I've always says my Marielle would grow up to be in the Olympics, but I was leaning more towards her being one of those giant female weightlifters. I suppose she would make a good fencer too...she is really good at poking my eyes out when I least expect it.

Weird things we did on our summer vacation

The thrill is gone?

I wasn't a fan of the sand that permeated bodily orifices I didn't know I had, but Marielle had so much fun the first day at the beach that I decided to take her down for one more trip before going home.

I should have stopped while I was ahead.

Mari fell asleep during the 8 minute walk to the beach and I was then faced with the task of figuring out how to shield her from the sun without waking her up.

Beach umbrellas are way too fancy for my people. (Why is she sleeping with a shoe on her hand? Who knows.)

The one thing that made her happy that afternoon was bossing around her new friend.

Or maybe it was the other way around?

Perhaps the business lines should NOT ring in the bedroom

If napping were an Olympic sport, my family would clean up in Beijing. I would win in all categories - quickest to fall asleep, longest uninterrupted period of sleep, etc - though I'm sure Barry and my father would come in a close second and third.

Marielle has been a champion sleeper since returning home, which is fortunate since that's all I want to do as well. Last night around 7:30 she gathered up the toys (books) she wanted to sleep with and asked to get into her crib. This morning she was down for her first nap by 8 am!! (Someone woke up a tad early). She's napping again this afternoon.

My brain just ceased functioning late this afternoon so I decided to take a nap too. When I woke up, I was talking on the phone. I didn't know where I was or who I was talking to. Who was this "Barry" person they kept asking about? I would love to know what the people on the other line were thinking by the time I figured it all out and got Barry on the phone. Maybe he can just tell them I'm a drug addict, which would be slightly less embarassing.

Home sweet home

The house was lovely and perfect for the 15 of us. The four flights of stairs, and carrying my child up and down all day long, not so much. My back may never recover. Since I got home yesterday morning I don't think I've picked her up once. Luckily she has been so excited to see daddy again that she follows him around, and he's helping me recover by taking over baby duty while I cuddle a bottle of vicodin in my fluffy king sized bed. Oh, and the air conditioning! How I missed you!

After 11 days away, I couldn't be happier to be home. I am walking around the house talking to inaninmate objects. I think I may have even hugged the crib. I slept 19 of the past 24 hours. Marielle slept a really long stretch too. Put her in her crib last night at 7:30 and she was out for the next 11 hours. No fuss, no fighting. A far cry from the late night bedtimes at the beach which involved hours of her smacking me, pulling my hair and sticking her fingers up my nose while I tried to keep her in bed. Good times.

Mari is so happy to be home with her toys and the beagles. She's barely noticed the lack of late night partying, cookie access 24-7, and nonstop TV because she's been too busy riding Cosmo like a horse and looking at all her favorite books.

Now I just have to figure out how I'm going to unpack without lifting anything heavy. Barry goes back to work tomorrow so I have to take advantage of the recovery opportunity I have today. I wonder if I could find a masseuse, chiropractor and acupuncturist that all work on Sundays?

Soak up the sun