Crawling

It just seems as if this little peanut, who at 6 months doesn't even weigh in at 14lbs yet is too small to be crawling. But, ALMOST crawling she is...basically doing the army crawl.

Today while I was vacuuming upstairs she was trying her darndest to get up there with me. She had 2 arms and one leg up on the bottom step when she kinda did this rolling backwards thing. Then she got mad, but I was okay with that. She's too tiny to be going up stairs yet, isn't she?

She wants so bad to be so big like her brothers, and I find that painful beyond belief. Soon enough we'll be saying "bye bye baby" because she'll be a maniac toddler and into everything and I'll only have the millions of pictures I've taken to remember when she was just a wee little thing.

It makes me so, so sad.

The Brittney Mess

I am fully perturbed by this whole Brittney Spears "Thing". Excellent blogs have been written regarding her "issues" on www.weisswomen.blogspot.com, and www.momontherocks.com .

Here's my spin:
When we decided to have kids, it wasn't because "Hey, it's what you do when you're married", or "Hey, it would be fun to be a mom". (Although it IS fun). We both knew it would be a lot of work. A job full of sacrifices...I'd love to be furthering my career right now, collecting money in a 401k, but it's more important to me to provide a stable home for my kids, and a loving place for my husband to come home to everynight. Thus, I digress.

I made the decision to have kids with John based on several factors. I knew what kind of dad he would be. He would be home every night, some nights later than others, but that's because he's working his ass off so I can stay home and provide said stable environment for our kids. I knew he would provide for us and do the best he can for us as a family and what is best in the LONG RUN. Sure, I've been called cheap, but my 3 kids already have college savings accounts (not that they'll need them since they are all geniuses and will get academic scholarships....I'm not holding my breath for athletic scholarships...).

Back to Brit. The media spin on her recent craziness is that she could have some post partum issues going on, and 2 kids 13 months apart is really too hard blah blah blah and wahhhhh wahhhh!!! UM HELLO AND WELCOME TO MY CLUB!!!

I don't have the luxury of a NANNY getting up all hours with the kids.
I don't have the luxury of MAIDS keeping my shit clean.
I don't have the luxury of a BOTTOMLESS BANK ACCOUNT.
I don't have the luxury of being blessed with good looks and talent and a size TWO waist
probaby thanks to the luxury of my PERSONAL TRAINER.

Yes, I get it. I know Post partem depression is a chemical imbalance etc.... But it seems as if we claim poor poor Brit is just a VICTIM, then it seems as if she will never have to claim responsibility and absorb all that comes with the JOB of PARENTING!!! Did she not think it was going to be like this?

It just goes to show that money can't buy you any more than what money can buy you. And at the end of the day, who really needs more "things"? Obviously, they're not making some people very happy anyway.

Keep Your Pants ON!

Some people have to work at being funny. Some just are. Nate is one of those kids that are just funny. Here he's trying to wear his sister's fancy schmancy pink fur coat, for no other reason than it seemed like a good idea at the time. Lately we have been having a HUGE problem with Mr. Nate, also known as "El Tanko" (The Tank), Sasquatch, Bull in a China Shop, and Little Urlacher. He won't leave his pants on. We are constantly heard in this house shouting, cajoling, pleading, begging, and ordering, "Keep your pants on". We don't know why, but he's apparently most comfy in a t-shirt and diaper.

Last week I called my mom and said "Listen to this mess". Nate was screaming, almost tantruming. She kept asking "What did you do to that poor baby??"

"Poor Baby my ass....all I did was pull his pants up." It went on for about 5 minutes and I was laughing (without him knowing) while my mom told me I should crack him one. Had it not been more traumatic therefore effective to just pull his pants up everytime he pulled them down, I may have considered a swipe on the bum as an option. Otherwise, it was just fun to play the "You keep pulling them down buster, and I'll just keep pulling them up anyways" game.

He's a funny kid, like I said. We're just in trouble when he figures it out that sometimes we are in fact laughing AT him, not WITH him....

Oh well. C'est la vie!

Totally Freaked Out

By Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth".

Check it out. Great documentary.

www.climatecrisis.net

Kids

Isn't she a vision of her father? Not John as a baby, but John now. What a peanut, Up on all fours at this very moment trying to crawl. No way, she's too little, and she's my BABY!!! For whatever reason, we have alot of photos of Nate eating. He's not exactly a "neat" eater.

Dressing up, as usual. Jack loves to dress up and be silly.
Anyone with kids knows that even though this isn't the greatest photo, it was simply painful to acquire. Painful.

We just Had FUN!!

John, Matt (our best man) and Saint Rene, Matt's fiance and the bride's best friend livin' it up. Mike, Woody, and DiNoff's--probably the best guys ever to sit next to at a wedding. Mike palmed one of the waiters a $20 so the liquor service didn't stop flowing at our table, however, Noff's and Mike found it necessary to "borrow" liquor from the cabinets in the cocktail lounge down the hall. We were well supplied for the hour long dinner.

Bride's bro Jeff and Me. He rocks.

The Jenny and John That I know...

Apparently, the old fuddy duddy married Jenny and John are not quite as fun as the "We Party Like Rock Stars" Jenny and John. As Matt (the Best man at our wedding, marrying the Bride's Best Friend in June) snapped our photos he said "Now, There's the Jenny and John that I know and love."

Yes, we still got it...That "Fun" gene. STill in us, despite 3 kids and 6 years of marriage later, we're still cool to hang with. Rock on!!
At our finest.....

On Weddings

A vision of a bride and groom, just living it up and having a GREAT time. I love it! Beautiful, even at 2 a.m.

We went to a GREAT wedding this weekend. Just Great..., and I got to thinking, what makes a wedding great? The food, the dancing, the liquor? No, It's all about the people. (But the liquor helps!)

Some people may get to attend one great wedding in their lifetimes, I've had the privilege of attending several...my college roommate's, my gradeschool best friend's, my friend Danielle's wedding, and recently Kristin and Jim's.

The bride was in a simple dress, and she looked beautiful. She had on a minimal amount of makeup, so she didn't look all "done up", and was a vision of pure, classic beauty. Note the above picture, taken at the END of a very long day for her I'm sure, and she still looks great. I'm more than slightly jealous.

The entire ceremony and reception you could tell they were just HAPPY. Happy to have everyone there celebrating with them, happy to be in love, happy to be sharing the beginning of their life together with everyone. They are two of the kindest, most generous people you'd ever want to meet as well. In lieu of favors they donated money to her school (she's a social worker for an alternative school in the burbs) so that a student could attend the school's summer program. That's just the kind of people they are.

I wish them all the best, and hopefully emulate their goodness. The world needs more Kristin's and Jimmy's!!!

Chocolate on The Brain

http://www.pushindaisies.com/candypress/scripts/prodView.asp?idProduct=223

This gives new meaning to the phrase, eh?

How to Make Cheese

Step 1: Lose a sippy cup with Milk in it.

Step 2: Find sippy cup in Laundry room on top of dryer (assume heat helps).

Step 3: Open lost sippy cup to find coagulated milk byproduct and notice there is no foul smell, Oddly enough. The cheese is consistent with what cream cheese looks like instead of cottage cheese.

Step 4: utter a faint..."hmmmmm" and wonder if this will work for science fair projects in the future.

You Just Trap Them

At Church on Sunday, the minister called all the little kids up for children's ministry. The lesson was how to make someone feel welcome, or at home as they were inducting new members into the church. Jack likes to talk during these ministries, even though he doesn't quite know what he's saying.

So, when kids are answering "Tell people your name", "Be nice to them", "Introduce yourself to someone you don't know" Jack proudly raised his hand and told pastor "You could just trap them".

Maybe he does know what he's saying, since John calls churchs cults (too much religious ed in his childhood I think). Maybe we are all trapped every Sunday for an hour or so. Just something to think about.......

Everyone should see...

Little Miss Sunshine.


http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/littlemisssunshine/trailer/

What a good message it sends.... just let someone be who they are going to be, you can't protect them from hurts and disappointments. That is just life. A good movie for anyone, but especially anyone with daughters.

I loved the little girl in this flick, she's totally great. Now I know why I love those Indie movies so much. They have true artistic depth.

Love it.

I LOVE...

*The glass of wine I'm drinking.

* My morning coffee. Even decaff.

*That my husband really doesn't drink pop anymore and asked me to stop buying him the light juice because it still has aspartame sweeteners in it. Did you know that soda literally sucks calcium out of your bones? And who knows what chemicals are in just a regular pop these days, not to mention the "diet" formulations. I'm proud of him for being so health conscious.

* That tomorrow is Sunday and I have my postnatal pampered pregnancy massage scheduled. My hospital rocks.

I HATE

Teething as part of human development during infancy.

A Perfect Prone

Yesterday while I was at work getting therapy for my pelvic floor dysfunction and the fact that when I went to do a situps machine at the gym I literally felt my pubic symphysis bone shift and grind and move around (which by the way is EXTREMELY painful), a pediatric physical therapist who totally rocks, walked in, looked at Maddie, and said "What a beautiful prone position! Look at how strong she is pushing up. It's just beautiful!"

For those of you who are not PT's, OT's, Speechies, or DT's prone position is how you put a baby down for "Tummy Time". It was actually very funny that she was on her belly, when another therapist (a Speechie checking out if Nate needs an eval) walked in and said, "You know it's a therapist's kid. She put her right on her belly." Yup, I'm a therapist and my kid has perfectly beautiful prone positioning.

On to Nate. I'm still debating whether or not to get him a speech eval. My good friend came in to do a quick check on him and in 5 minutes he didn't say a word to her. I went through his list of words for her, reassuring that I'm not the kind of mom who would want him to look better than her is. But I still forgot some. He's got: Mama, moma (trying to say Oma, but it counts as a word in the speech world), Doc (jack), Ka(sock), Hot, Are you (as in "Jack, where are you" when we drop him off at school), more, milk, please, car, car noises (Vroom), cookie, juice, hot dog (which really sounds like Hk dg, but again, still counts) and yesterday at dinner when I was singing Old MacDonald, he totally knew the sounds for cow, pig, duck, and rooster.

My instincts tell me he's okay, but he's an ear infection kid, and I don't want to over look anything. Also a part of me is hating myself for comparing him to his brother who was speaking in complete sentences at this point in his development. But of course I'd compare them, right? Jack's my baseline, but he's a pretty high standard setting baseline so I'll just have to consider the whole speech eval thing a bit longer.....

Lick-A-Lish

That is how Jack says licorice....LICK-A-LISH. It's really cute. So cute, sometimes I even beg him to play Candy Land with me so I can hear him say "I don't want to land on Lord Lickalish". And then when he does, he goes "Whaa Whaa Whaaaaa" Like on a game show. It makes Candyland fun again.

In this photo he was helping my grandmother and I bake cookies. Actually, he made more of a mess than anything, but he likes to be helpful in the kitchen. All weekend long he helped my mom cook. Thank goodness he has short hair and can't burn it off like I did when I was little trying to cook/playing with the stove. For the longest time everyone thought I was a boy...Oh, the trauma of Grade school.

Reason 1,223 I don't really care about sports....

Is because apparently God does. Ever notice that players pray before, during, and even after big games. (I stress GAMES, you know, ENTERTAINMENT). They always say: God was with us for the win, or something corny like that.

I respect your right to believe in God. I'm not sure of an existence of one, but if there were, I cannot believe that HE/SHE really gives a damn about American College Football, or whatever sport you'd like to insert.

Stop telling media audiences "God carried us thru it". I would hope that if there is a God, there are more important matters to attend to.

Like, you know, a pointless war overseas where our youth keeps getting shot down by Godless infidels.....

Oh, Those Crazy Space People...

Guys, she wore a diaper for crying out loud. Hello institutionalization, goodbye NASA.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070206/ap_on_re_us/astronaut_arrested

OH, those Crazy Brits!

Don't ask......

http://www.myvasectomy.com/

Credit where It's Due

I have to give the man credit. It seems as though I've been husband bashing a bit much lately, although my last post wasn't really bashing him, it was more the 4 Male uroligists at the practice and their protocol for surgical procedures. Apparently they don't work with many 5months postpartem moms of 3....

Anyway, yesterday while I was at work, he did all the laundry (and even put it away), which includes stripping the beds (I do it every week due to asthma and allergies) and re-making the beds.

He also did our taxes and cleaned the kitchen.

What a guy!

(I have to add here that he only had 1 kid and not 3 as the boys stayed with my mom, and it's amazing what you can get done when you don't have to chase after them. How did we EVER think 1 was hard?)

Again...what a guy!