1.20.2008

New Blog

I'm moving. Visit me here. Because of course!

Mama is tired.

Parenting is hard. Waaaaaaaaaaaaa, I know. It's wonderful and great and fun and life-changing, but it's also hard and tiring and heart-breaking. You know, since I have exactly 1 child, I'm total authority on the subject, right? This morning Ethan started crying at like 6 a.m. We brought him in bed with us (mistake) and I finally got up with him at around 6:45. I really would've liked to stay in bed for another 30 minutes or so. That would've been very, very nice. He had a nightmare diaper, complete with earth-tone colored poo (silty clay?) and highly offensive stank. He felt a little warm to me and his cheeks were flushed, so I gave him a dose of children's Motrin. He fussed over what to eat for breakfast. He wanted a waffle, then a quesadilla, then cereal, then a cereal bar, then peanut butter on graham crackers, then NO waffle, NO quesadilla, NO CEREAL NOPEANUTBUTTERNOGRAHAMCRACKERSGETTHEMOFFMYHIGHCHAIRNOW! So I decided to make him some whole-wheat pancakes, to which he happily agreed. I groggily mixed the batter, substituting cinnamon applesauce for the oil, and added it to the skillet in sleepy blobs. While they were cooking I wondered, why don't I cook breakfast more often? Why don't I cook more in general? I always wanted to be the kind of mom to prepare home-cooked meals every night. And I am clearly NOT that mom. I slid 2 pancakes onto Ethan's Winnie the Pooh plate, spread a little Smart Balance spread on them and poured on the syrup. I carefully cut each pancake into little squares, retrieved a kid fork from the drawer and stumbled over to his highchair. "Um, no pancake... I wanna waffle! Or quesadilla!" he exclaimed. THIS. This is exactly why I don't go to great lengths to prepare meals anymore. I brushed the pancakes into the trash with a sigh.

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4 weeks to go until my last day of work. 5 weeks until we're on the road! I can't tell you how excited I am to throw away half of our crap. Looking around I can name more than a handful of things we will NOT be taking with us back to Texas. Our house is tiny. Eensy weensy. So if we throw/give away half our stuff, packing up the other half should be a snap. My new mantra for life in Texas will be less is more. I want to simplify and downsize. Also, we have (counts on fingers) 5 televisions. How'd THAT happen?

::

Bwa, hahaha, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA! (insert crazed laugh) I just finished cooking up the rest of the pancakes for Drew and myself, along with some turkey bacon, and OF COURSE the second I sit down with my plate, Ethan toddles over and says "Pancakes? I want pancakes!" He's on his second one now. Yeah, I was tempted to dig the two rejected pancakes out of the trash to feed him, but I didn't. Good mommy.

1.13.2008

Oh Holy Shit...

Spirophita tagged me a few weeks back to do the "5 Things Most People Don't Know About Me" thing. I love getting tagged! It's like being picked to be on someone's dodge ball team in middle school (thanks Spiro!).

1) I am OCD (or maybe I'm just weird, which is no news flash) but have gotten much better. I still have to set two alarm clocks every night and check them each fifty bajillion times before going to sleep, but it used to be much worse. This is related to # 2:
2) I am a clean/neat FREAK. It took me forever to get used to having toys and crayons strewn about. Now I just take a deep breath and remember that it'll all be cleaned up and put away at the end of the day, and that it'll be a mess again the next day. Breathe! Breathe! Breathe!
3) Right after high school I became a certified nurse aide and worked on the medical/surgical floor of a local hospital in Texas for about 6 months. My responsibilities included but were not limited to taking vital signs, measuring feces, emptying catheter bags and even inserting and removing them! This is what made me decide to enroll in college!
4) I was born in Canada, where they administer fluoride treatments to young children (mom, is that right?) and the bottom half of my two front teeth ended up being severely discolored because of this. I was teased a lot in elementary school. I was so self-conscious of my teeth that I practiced smiling in front of the mirror so my bottom lip would cover the first half of my two front teeth. Goofy, yes, but still better than showing my big, toothy, discolored grill. In middle school as a birthday present my parents bought me porcelain veneers, which cost a LOT of money. From that instant my life changed. I still remember coming back to school after the procedure and smiling a full smile. It felt great. Then, of course, I started smoking like a chimney a few years later, and then drinking hellacious amounts of coffee, tea and diet soda, so my once gleaming pearly whites are now more, uh, off-white, unfortunately. How sad. Still much better than once upon a time, though.
5) I played the flute in middle school. I became so nervous when I had to play solo in front of the rest of the class that I developed this horrible shaky lip, which caused my notes to sound out in short, nervous chops rather than in a long, continuous flow. I quit after one year.

Fun! I tag Unsociable and Taciturn. YOU BETTER DO IT! ;O)

1.08.2008

I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING...

You never stop learning from Sesame Street. Over the weekend Drew and I were watching an episode with Ethan, and the letter of the day was A. They ran through the usual: apple, ant, armadillo, and alcoholics anonymous. Next, they showed an acorn. "A is for ACORN!" said the voice in the background. Drew turned to me, stunned. "Acorn? It's acorn?" he questioned. "Um, yeah.... what the hell are you talking about?" I asked. "All this time I thought it was EGG-corn. You know, cuz it's sort of shaped like an egg..." he confessed. Our thirst for knowledge will simply never be quenched.

1.06.2008

Excrement! Also, Texas...

Jesus Christ. Ethan has had this HORRIBLE obsession with taking his diaper off during nap and night time the last two days. We've had 2 poo situations and 2 pee situations, so far an even score, each significantly more disgusting than the last. We were up at 2:30 a.m. this morning stripping the urine-soaked sheets from his mattress and re-diapering his naked ass, and then we were lucky enough to enter his room this morning at 7 a.m. to find the same mess, only this time involving poo. Between that and trying to potty train the new pup, my entire weekend has pretty much involved nothing but bodily excretions, NONE OF WHICH WERE FROM MY OWN BODY.

Ahem! Today we returned the puppy to D's mom's house, where it came from. This experience has made me realize that I am no longer a dog person. Not at all. Or, I'm not a puppy person, rather. Oh, how I hate puppies. Isn't that awful? Next I'll be saying that I love to eat the brains of baby bunnies. Anyway, two weeks of random peeing and pooping and chewing and biting and scratching almost caused me a nervous breakdown. He had to go. Supposedly we are not allowed to give Ethan away in this same manner, so instead we bought some Diego pull-ups and said a few prayers. Cool, look, it's DIEGO! And you want to wear Diego on your crotch, right? If the Spanish-speaking, backpack totin' explorer isn't enough to keep those suckers on, I'm hoping that they'll be too tight for Ethan to take off himself. Hopefully he will grow tired after a few minutes of tugging and pulling and will PASS the FUCK OUT from exhaustion. My fingers are crossed.

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Alert, alert! I scoped out some Cadbury Creme Eggs at the grocery store yesterday and bought three of them. I think these little nuggets of sweet and creamy goodness are a love-or-hate food. You either absolutely LURVE them or they make you want to yack. For all you lovers out there, go buy some and molest the gooey center with your tongue. You know you wanna.

::

In other, more exciting news, we are moving back to Texas! We're GOING-GOING, BACK-BACK to TEXAS-TEXAS. I turned in my resignation at work nearly a month ago, giving them a more than fair 9-week notice, so now the hunt is on for my replacement. What is in store for us in Texas, you ask? Well, D has already secured a job. I am looking at going back to school to finish out my Bachelors degree. I think I might enjoy majoring in journalism! I can't believe that has never occurred to me before, to pursue something I actually enjoy. For the longest time I wanted to get a degree in nutrition, but that wasn't necessarily because I'm in love with macronutrients or anything; my eating-disordered past had programmed me to memorize any and everything I learn about food and metabolism. So it just made sense to go with something I seemed to be good at. Now I'm not so sure I was ever good at nutrition, I think I'm just really good at having eating disorders. I don't think the University of North Texas offers that degree plan.

Anyway! I'm stoked to move back, really over-the-freaking-moon excited. I'm nervous about trying to find a new daycare for Ethan. We love his current class so much that I'm sure everything else will pale in comparison (Megan? Didja talk to yer mama?). I remember the anxiety I had the first time we looked for a daycare, so I'm certain everything will work out just as well this time. My last day is Friday, February 15th. That's what, less than six weeks away!? I'm kind of sad to leave the people at my office. They are without a doubt the funniest, most enthusiastic, smartest group of people I have ever had the pleasure of working with. But I'm not sad to leave my actual job. It's time to mooooooooooooove on. It's time to move back home! We'll be U-Haulin' it back to DFW on February 25th. YEE-freaking-HAW, y'all!

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