The giant brown moron

I know you're all probably curious. You're thinking "I wonder what that big brown puppy looks like these days?"

So here you go. Recent-ish (if a week or two ago counts as recent in puppy days, which it really doesn't) pictures of Ruby and the boys in their backyard spa. Which is now only a two-ring pool instead of a three-ring pool thanks to Ruby and her exuberant love for swimming.

We usually swim at our town's little aquatic center complete with slides, lazy river and baby pool. But since it was 137 degrees out a few weeks ago, I succumbed to swimming at 7:00 at night in our blow-up pool.

These are tough days. I'm not gonna lie. My husband is sick and it's been hard on us all. Except that the kids and the dogs don't seem to mind much, so maybe it's just been hard on me and him. Mostly him, in the physical sense, and me in the I-have-to-do-everything-so-I'm-tired-and-worn-out-and-can't-complain-because-it-is-what-it-is-and-it-could-be-worse sense.

Did you catch that?

Today we spent the day at the hospital for a fun-filled round of tests that involved anesthesia and scoping. We suspected he has an autoimmune disease so we're hoping for a diagnosis. He's lost almost forty pounds in the last two months. I've done what I could and picked up ten of those (at least in bloating, if not in actual numbers) but we're at the point now where it's not a good side effect anymore and it needs to stop. No one likes the heroine chic look, except for heroine users.

Sadly, all of the blood test and the scopes were inconclusive. So we soldier on with a CAT scan and possible camera pill.

My days are a back-to-back drill of task upon task upon task. I feel like I'm simply moving from one task to the next. Wake up, dress everyone for the day, breakfast, school, work, school, play, feed, bathe, bedtime, collapse. Throw in the exuberant brown moron and her half-blind elderly sister who need two walks a day and you have me about to commit myself to an assylum so I can take a break.

Tomorrow I'm taking a break. I'm going golfing with my mom. And hopefully out to lunch at the club, if I'm lucky.

Don't worry. I know this is not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, and time will move us along to a better place one day. I know gajillions of other people have problems way worse than these, and are way more overworked and exhausted. B this is my party, so I'm crying cause I want to.

- H

The reunion, circa 2010

We spent the last weekend in Nebraska for our every-five-years family reunion. Actually, it's a reunion of my dad's mom's clan. So my paternal grandma's side of the family. One of my brothers came with his family, so it was really nice to be able to see them for a little over 24 hours before we had to load up the car and drive home again.

Since I rarely post photos, I thought I'd flood you with recent pictures from the reunion. Lest I be accused of one of those bloggers who doesn't use pictures (gasp!).

My nephews and my kids...

My family...
My hubs and Grif....
Cooper....
Cooper and Griffin....
As you can see, there was a playground next to the reunion hall, so as soon as the kids could escape, they did. This helped a great deal, as they napped in the car from 4:00 to almost 7:00, cutting their trip in half on the way home. Or rather, cutting the time they could say "are we there yet?" in half. Score!

Oh, and yes, we were all wearing matching outfits. Just in case you were curious.

- H

Spikes

Cooper: inspecting my leg "Mom, what are these spikes on you?"

Me: " Spikes? What do you mean?"

Cooper: "These little spikes. What are they?" he was pointing to some spots on my calf

Mw: "I don't know what you mean, show me."

Cooper: pointing to the unshaved hairs on my legs "These little spikes. What are they?"

Time to shave.

- H

Perspective

I had my annual check-up with the Lady Doctor today. This is what I saw on my car thermometer as I was driving to the hospital.


For whatever reason, my crackberry camera cut off the top half of all the numbers. So let me help out a little.

It said 100. Seriously. 100.

That is not taking into account the "heat index" which is what we Midwesterners call the Death Factor. Or rather, just how much does the temperature feel like death? When it's 99 outside and with the heat index it feels like 107, then I would say the Death Factor is super high.

For instance, right now it's 8:30 p.m. Weather.com says our temperature is 87 degrees. Not too bad, right? Except in the teeny tiny letters under that where it says feels like 100.

I'd like to complain to someone about it, but there isn't anybody who will take my call. Everyone is inside their homes with the curtains drawn and the air conditioning on high, probably laying half nude on their bathroom floors. I can't blame them.

Tomorrow's high is predicted to be 99. After that, we're supposed to get a cold front and then it'll go down to 94, which is going to feel something like 75 after today's heat index of 108.

If I ever need to go into the witness protection program, I'm going to request a relocation to Santa Barbara, California. Their high for tomorrow is 70.

So you know what makes me feel like a gigantic ass in all my complaining about the oppressive unseasonably early heat wave? My ob-gyn, who is a mom of three small kids and is roughly my age, just returned last night from an 8-day trip to Haiti, where she volunteered her medical services for the people there. She delivered babies. She did a few D&Cs. She did a lot of general gyno work. You know, she made a difference.

So yeah. Other people have real problems. Oh, and she said it was way hotter there than here. So there's that.

- H

Rich mom poor mom

I was putting away laundry this evening and found a beautifully wrapped giftbox from Nordstrom's. Oops, it was a Father's Day present for my husband that I'd totally forgotten about when he picked out a windowbox air conditioner for his garage from Costco last week. So he'll be getting it in the morning, if he survives the night. He's down with a headcold, and you know how those headcolds affect the American Male. We're holding vigil over him. I digress.

Cooper was "helping" me put away the laundry. His super-sleuth eyeballs spied the present instantly.

"Mom, what's that?!"

"It's a present for dad. For Father's Day."

"What is it?"

"Nothing exciting, just a t-shirt."

"Oh," dropping the box like a red hot potato. "Mom, for Mother's Day, I'm going to get you heart earrings."

"Oh, that would be lovely honey."

"And cash."

"Cash? Wow, that's a pretty extravagant present."

"Yeah. Can I play with your jewelry?"

"No."

"But whhhhyyyyy? I want to!"

"Because you break it. No, those are the rules."

"FINE! NO CASH FOR YOU!"

Just like that. I hope it wasn't a lot of cash, that would have totally rocked to get a lot of cash for Mother's Day.

- H

Mother of the Year part 193

At Bread Company this morning...

Griffin was eating his pancakes, imported from McDonald's, and sipping on his open cup of apple juice. Yes, straight sugar to his veins. That's not why I'm winning the award.

As I predicted would happen, his arm swiped his open cup and the apple juice splashed all over the seat and his legs.

He did what every two-and-a-half-year-old would do in this situation.

"GODDAMN!"

"SHHhhhhhhh! Griffie! We do not say those words!!"

"GODDAMN! I SPILLED MY APPLE JUICE! GODDAMN!"

Cooper started giggling, and tattling.

"Griffin said GODDAMN! Mom, Griffin said GODDAMN!"

"SSSHHHHHHhhhhhhhh! No more talking! Everybody, no more!"

We made our departure, thank you very much.

I think the award will probably be arriving later this week. I hope it's a pretty statue.

- H

I will not be making signs keeping one child out of the other child's room

I don't know what I'm doing with these two boys of mine most of the time, have I mentioned that lately? Oh, that's right. I did. When I told y'all about how I have no idea how to tackle poop-training. Potty-training I know how to do, but the poop part? No idea.

I was just mentally patting myself on the back for my ability to have a pretty rocking weekend despite being the only parent with the two hellcats, one giant idiot puppy who needs a freakish amount of exercise right now, and a cranky elderly dog, from Friday morning til 7:00 p.m. Sunday night. Somehow weekends alone seem so much harder than weekdays.

Anyhoodle, we did really well and I was totally proud of myself. Plus, it's a good skill to have, self-sufficiency. Just in case you ever need it.

We went to the Botanical Garden's Children's Garden with my mom, complete with Huck Finn tree house, rope bridges, sand boxes and splash areas. We sweated our way through the Climatron with the Dinoquest exhibit that was super cool. At every dino, Cooper said "is it real?" and seemed so bummed out that they weren't real. I think he's planning on telling the kids at school that he saw real dinos.

We went swimming twice - once at Grandma's pool and then this morning we went to our community pool when it opened. I think both boys went down the slide like a hundred and fifty times? That probably explains why Cooper napped for over two hours this afternoon. Score. Mommy got to finish two expense reports she's been procrastinating on.

So all of this mommy goodness and I was simply glowing! And then Cooper snuggled up next to me to watch his bedtime ritual of one episode of Spongebob Squarepants and he had a super urgent request for me.

"Mom, mom, can you make me a sign for my room?"

"Well, that depends. What kind of a sign do you want?"

"I want a circle like this, that goes around and around and around and a line through it. A line through it like this. And then I want it to say GRIFFIN IS NOT ALLOWED IN MY ROOM."

"Uh-huh."

"Uh-huh? Did you say uh-huh? Yes?!"

"No, I said uh-huh, I'm listening. I did not say I was going to make you a sign for your room that would keep your brother out."

"Oh. I want a sign to keep him out."

"He never goes up there without you anyway, Cooper."

"He's not allowed. I do not want him in my room."

"Sorry, Cooper. Your brother is allowed in your room. We aren't going to be nasty to each other around here."

"hrmph."
- H

This is my virtual dream poster board thing

One of the total pluses of traveling a fair amount is you get to read every single magazine ever printed in a given month. Including in-flight magazines, which totally rock if you have ADD like I do (well, not really but it feels like it some days).

Last month I was reading an article in Oprah's magazine about some deal where you take a poster board and cut and paste pictures you like all over it, and then stare at it a lot and then suddenly VOILA! Your greatest desires in life come true. Or something like that. Have you read that article?

I love it. Kind of New Agey, kind of Purpose-Driven Lifey, kind of Easy Peasy, right?

I have yet to cut any pictures out. Partly because the author totally scared me by saying you had to only choose pictures that really rocked your world, took your breath away, made you question your very existence. Things that you connect with on a deep down spiritual protozoan level.

The only pictures I've seen that I even semi-admired recently weren't quite that earth-shattering. Unless bedroom shots out of the Serena & Lily catalog count as earth-shattering? Somehow I don't think they do. Maybe she reads higher literature than I do. People magazine isn't supplying me with earth-shattering inner-core photos. Oh, and there were some pictures of really pretty shoes I saw recently. Except I don't really want the universe aligning to bring me pretty shoes.*

So then I thought, hey maybe I can do the same sort of thing by just writing down what I'd like my life to look like? Kind of like how companies make you write a business plan for your job and the whole purpose behind is it because they know if you write something down you end up doing it regardless of whether or not you ever look at it again?

So here goes. These are the mental snapshots of my Imaginary Ideal Life. Imagine these are actual photos pasted to a posterboard or something.

I have a kitchen that's open to the family room, where I can cook dinner and watch my kids play and fight at the same time. I want to be able to cook dinner for my family. I don't do that very often right now.

My kitchen has a tv so I can watch the news every night and it won't interfere with cartoon time. I miss being able to watch the news.

Raised flower beds full of my favorite perennials. Dappled shade for some. Full sun for others. Conifers mixed in with annuals. A few herbs for the cooking I'd be doing in my open kitchen. No water drainage problems in the yard.

My bedroom is a calm retreat, and positioned very near my kids' bedrooms. Although it would be cool if they were finally sharing a room.

Cooper is in a good pre-school that's helping him develop his brain.

Griffin is potty-trained.

Only one extra car, besides my hubs and my work cars, at our home.

More friends.

OK, it's not a huge list yet. Probably wouldn't fill a poster. But it's a start. Clearly, the kitchen/cooking thing is pretty high on my ideals list, as is the bedroom situation. I'd love to be able to cook dinner most nights and I don't do that. It's probably not entirely because of the floorplan of our house, but I keep picturing myself in an open kitchen so maybe it's pretty important to me?

I might start cutting pictures out. I guess it can't hurt. I wish Cookie magazine hadn't gone out of business and replaced my subscription with Family Circle. Somehow I'm thinking the pictures out of Family Circle aren't going to help me attain my ideal life. Wait. Now that I think about it, even the lame pictures out of Family Circle are way better than what I'm living right now, so I might be on to something!

- H

*Except hey, if pretty shoes come with a peaceful life whereby my children and I are nourished physically, emotionally and mentally, then I am totally signing up for the pretty shoes, too.

And so it begins

It's been a while since I've talked at any great length about my kids, so this post will be the exception. It's clear, I am out of my element with these two.

I'll save the older one's newest challenges for a later post. When I'm feeling rested.

Today, I'd like to share a giant milestone of Griffin's. Who will heretoforwith be referred to as Baby Huey, because the child refuses to grow up. In fact, when asked the age-old question "are you a big boy, Griffie?" His answer is "no, I'm a baby."

Well, despite his best efforts, his mama needs him to grow up just a smidgen and so recently we finally finally were able to surgically remove the binkie from his mouth.

He wasn't happy about it. But he survived. I'm sure it shocked all of us just a little.

And so this weekend, while it's just the three of us again, I decided to move on to the next big milestone in helping Griffin along to Big Boy-dom. I brought out the big guns. The Big Boy Underpants.

Friday, after coming home from preschool and after I'd had a long talk with his preschool teacher who said he's plenty capable of going on the potty when you ask him to, I changed him out of his pull-up and into some big boy panties.

And he did great. We went out to dinner with my parents, he pottied twice at Dewey's Pizza! Not in his pants, either. On the potty.

The rest of the evening remained successful and at bedtime I put him back in a diaper for my own sanity plus I didn't want to push my luck. I could have pushed it, he woke up dry!

This morning, my mom came over early to go to breakfast with us and then on to the children's garden at the botanical gardens (free on Saturday mornings for all curious locals, and a fabulous play place for littles - be sure to pack a dry change of clothes because they'll love the splash area a little too much). Griffin wore his alligator panties. And pottied on the potty whenever we asked him to, as well as sprinkling the yard a couple times. Total success.

Until it was time for him to go #2. And then he didn't say a word and merely pooped in his alligator panties.

SO. I have no idea how to work this one. You see, Cooper poop-trained himself at 19 months old. I never had to do it with him, just the pee part. How do I convince Griffin it's actually gross to sit in poopy underpants, and he needs to warn me if his belly feels like it has to go? Any help here would totally rock.

Oh, I guess I should have titled this post "Heather needs help with poop-training," huh? Sorry bout that.
- H

Lying liars

You know what's great about having kids? You get to watch lots of kid movies.

We've recently watched The Bee Movie in the Tahoe something like thirty-seven times. I don't actually get to watch the movies, I just get to listen to them. Actually, I think it makes them funnier.

Funniest line from The Bee Movie - Chris Rock as the Mosquito, on becoming a lawyer - "Ma'am, I was already a blood-sucking parasite. All I needed was a briefcase."

My apologies to my attorney friends. I can't really talk, I work in pharma, The Evil Empire that's out to hurt everyone, right? Yeah. [Knocking on wood that I don't get sick and need medicine to get better.]

Since I've been on a blogging hiatus, I've also not read a lot of my favorites recently. Then there was the whole problem with my own blogs not updating my blogroll since I hadn't posted forever. Whatever, it all culminated in me just tonight reading a bunch of blogs at a speedy pace.

Guess what I just found out?!

House Hunters is a total scam.

They pick families that have already bought their homes, and either film right before closing, or right after. So two of the homes are totally bogus. And the "reality" is staged.

I guess I probably knew some of that, it always seemed so cleanly cut and dried, nothing like my own house hunting with my own husband. How did these couples come to such easy agreement on their new home, just based on seeing three? We've seen three hundred and still can't agree!

This would also explain why they never responded to my application when they were filming in St. Louis. Apparently the fact that we truly were just hunting for a house wasn't good enough.

Well, back to my hiatus. I'm still trying to right my ship.

- H

I'm not dead yet

Just in case you were curious, I'm still kicking. Some days it feels like barely, but I'm kicking. I remind myself of that Monty Python skit from Holy Grail. It's just a flesh wound.

As I write this, I'm sitting in the Omaha airport, waiting for my flight to take me home to my family. My flight that was supposed to have left this airport over two hours ago but was diverted to Kansas City when The Mother of All Tornadoes and 75-Mile-An-Hour Wind Storms kicked up and caused this airport to be SHUT DOWN. Which didn't make me happy. Because I'd already spent the day trekking in a rental car from Omaha to Des Moines because you can't fly from Saint Louis to Des Moines anymore, despite the fact that the old direct flight was full every single day and thus would seem like a profitable route? But that would be wrong.

So, sigh. I flew to Omaha. Drove to Des Moines. Drove back to Omaha. And now I'm waiting to fly home.

I'm tired, have I mentioned that? Yes, it's true. I'm fatigued.

I haven't neglected this blog (or the other) for any other reason than I simply don't have the energy to write about my chaos right now. It doesn't seem very interesting to me. Really, it feels more like survival these days.

But that's ok, because I've been here before and the one thing I do remember is that this will pass. Things get better. Kids grow and change, tantrums stop and then new ones start again. Sleep returns for a while, and then it'll disappear for a while, too. The giant brown puppy will eventually learn to stop antagonizing her smaller, fatter sister. I'll feel better next week or maybe next month. I wish it was next month already.

Speaking of the small dog recently shaped like a stuffed sausage from her exercise strike, I witnessed a remarkable show of aggression this morning. A canine version of the rabbit cooking on the stovetop, if you will.

This morning, as I was getting ready to leave the house, I put the giant exuberant puppy in the kitchen with me and closed the gate between her and the crotchety snaggletooth dog. Binnie, old and cranky but not without spunk, picked up one of Ruby's monkey chew toys, carried it to the gate between them, and then proceeded to shake the living hell out of it. Shook it til its proverbial neck was broken, and then shook it some more. Just in case Ruby hadn't noticed, she shook it some more, ran around the dining room table with it, tromped on it and left it for dead in the hallway by the kitchen gate. Ruby watched this with wide eyes (so did I, it was really something to see), and backed up away from the gate. She sat down. She whined and retreated to her kennel without prompting.

I think she got the message.

- H