Mother of the Year

So...I must relate a story here that will do me no favors, but it's too good and weird to pass up.

Yesterday we had kind of a big day, for us. I took the car & dropped Jeff off & then we went out to the park later on. Nice day, nice park, nice time. We were there for probably 2 hours or so. Then we came home & the baby had to be put to bed, and then I had to make dinner, etc, etc, ad nauseum, and throughout I kept thinking every little while: "I have to change Dillon". But I would get busy with something else and I didn't. (Alright, competent mothers, here's the part where you can pat yourself on the back at my expense. I do say, members of the jury, in my own defense, he didn't have poop on. No. MUCH WORSE. )

So after he's had the same diaper on for about 6 hours or so, I finally changed him. This is what I found in his diaper:

ROCKS!!! And not, like, poop rocks. ACTUAL GEOLOGICAL ROCKS. A whole, oh, let's say...2 handfulls. At first I DID think they were poop, but no. He had somehow gotten a load of rocks into his pants at the park and had had them in his diaper for hours. I mean, think about the implications. He sat in his car seat as we rode home from the park, ate dinner with them there, play time, everything. The things were IMBEDDED in his butt. And he never said a word!

And yet he complains bitterly when he has a poop on, and won't sit on it or anything.

Sometimes I wonder about that child.

Sometimes I wonder about myself.

Overdue Pictures

Well, folks, this is just a hodge-podge of pictures, old and new, that I've been meaning to post for some time now. Some of them (the swing pics) are our backyard, some are from the Waco Zoo, and some from our little home. Enjoy!

Dillon's "Cool Tricks"...(what he actually calls it)...which he performs anywhere and everywhere, all over the house, on the dining room table, etc.

Miss Zoe Boe, pretty in pink.

The many faces of Zoe (please notice the precious hat)

Little Miss Pink. Isn't she lovely?

Noah "Dances with Wolves" Doss, gettin down with the spirit of the drums at the Mayborn Museum, a VERY good place to take small children.

Baby Eienstein

(Note to self: throw away the poopy diaper before taking picture)

Let brotherly love continue

Some Waco Zoo shots: Dilly huging the ancient Chinese horse statue replica...or perhaps trying not to fall off.

Mom: Dilly, what was you doing?

Dilly: Dat's me pullin Chona's hair right dere.

Mom: Why was you pulling his hair?

Dilly: Cuz i was riding on dis lizard. Dat's NAUGHTY!

Mom: Who was naughty?

Dilly: Me's naughty. Yeah, I's naughty. I was having my jacket on.

There you have it, folks. A full confession, straight from the horse's mouth.

My handsome husband, with White Rhinos looking on.

Winner of "Most Unfortunately Named Deer Ever"

AHHHHH....urination station. (Pull up the picture and look closely)

A bad picture of the boys, but the bison in the background looked awesome.

Giraffe in the savannah land

Re: Nothing

So....a minor miracle. ALL my progeny are sleeping! AT THE SAME TIME! RIGHT NOW! It's never happened before, in the daytime. Of course, I'm so excited that I keep running into the room, checking to make sure they continue to sleep, and that the baby doesn't wake up & start growling or something & wake the others up, that unfortunately I cannot do anything productive with the time. But it's AWESOME, all the same.
I hope you're having a great Friday. We're having some lovely spring weather here, in Waco, and there are flowers blooming in our never-been-mowed backyard. They're weed flowers, of course, but they're the same kind of weed flowers that we had in Japan, and it evokes many good memories of making weed-flower crowns as a child. Ah, bliss. Spring seems to be making an appearance. For me, all seasons start out with a sort of a deep satisfaction & excitement....when it's winter I'm so pleased to pull on my long sleeves and sweaters, and when it's spring I relish the feeling of the wind & sun on my fish-belly-white arms. It gives me a feeling of renewal, you know? And then in a few weeks I get sick of it & start bitching about the humidity. But for now, I'm happy!
Have a good weekend!

Sleeping it off

So about a month or two ago I put the baby in her swing because she was overtired and wouldn't go to sleep any other way, and put on the "Kiddy Viddie" and tried to leave her alone & get the kids to be quiet too. It worked, and she went to sleep. A few minutes later I look over at her & gave a quiet screech of horror, because I thought she was falling out of her chair. Behold:

Notice the precious feet. She looks like a bunny rabbit on a bender. Sound asleep, and holding onto the swing tray as she slept on it. Awww!

Happy Birthday Aunty Adie!

Happy Birthday to you! Sorry the day was marred by sickness, etc, but I hope it ended up somewhat salvagable. I love you, my dear, and hope for the best for you this next year. You're a wonderful sister and I'm so blessed and lucky to have you in my life. Thanks for always being there for me and our family....and for your moral support through this past year.

May your days be merry and bright, and may none of your hairs be white!

Go for the Gold!

So I've been watching the Winter Olympics a lot for the past few days...maybe not quite as thrilling as the Summer ones, but they certainly have their moments. Like did you catch the men's & women's Mogul skiing? They all have to wear a blonde toupe and yell "You're FIRED" when they cross the finish line. Ha ha, I slay me.
No, really...it was full of drama. For the uninitiated: Canada is hosting the Olympics, and they've never had a gold medal on their own turf. So it looked really good for the women's Moguls, they were one competitor away and their Canadian lady had done really well, when along came the last one to ski, an American, and knocked it out of the ballpark. Everyone was really dissapointed. But then the men's Moguls came along and a Canadian won over some Australian jockstrap, the favorite to win, who was...get this...ACTUALLY CANDADIAN but defected to the Australian team when they wouldn't let him run his INTERNET SPAM BUSINESS on the side of, like, training for the Olympics. I was pretty gratified. Chalk one up for Karma, eh?

Anyway...I got to thinking the other day...they should TOTALLY have the Housewife Olympics. And the event that I would medal in would be: putting the sleeping baby down on the bed. Awesome. It would go something like this:

First Sportscaster: (whispering): And she gets in position for the first element, lowering the infant. Could be a little early, here....

Second Sportscaster: Yes, timing is everything in this sport. If it's not completely asleep....aannnd there she goes! A little early, but she nails it. This housewife in particular has terrific instincts, and seems to be able to get away with doing things on her own timetable.

Second: The baby is down. Note the terrific control in the seamless descent from arms to bed.

First: Doss is particularly known for the stomach lay, which we saw her execute several times during the practice runs. It's where she keeps the core temperature of the baby stable by maintaing stomach contact, essentially laying on the baby, as she withdraws her hands from under it, the difficult second element. Very hard to execute, especially with the weight that Doss is carrying.

Second: Yes, but she seems to have a real feel for it.

First:

Second:

First: I would like to point out at this juncture that "luge" is one of the few words that rhymes with "booje".

Second:

First: Just saying.

Second: (whispering even lower): As you can see, the baby is moving a little. Ah, it's still......

First: No, I saw a hand.

Second: Oh! A gutsy move by Doss! She attempts the Right handed withdrawl WHILE THE BABY IS MOVING. This is one tough competitor!

First: No doubt about that. And here we see the genius of the stomach lay....both hands have been withdrawn and the baby still thinks that the mother is there, because she still feels the warmth...and Doss slowly stands up....

Second: This is the tricky bit...if you do it too early all is lost......................................wait for it............

Second: She nails it! The child is motionless! She wraps it up with the last element, the blanket cover, and out of the room she goes.....careful not to click the room's door too loud.....ANNNDDD SHE'S OUT! A SPECTACULAR RUN BY DOSS! This is a gold-winning performance for sure!

(Crowd goes wild, waking the baby)

Right? Can I get an amen from all mothers everywhere who have learned the exact way to put their baby down? It's a delicate science. Not just anyone can do it.

Anyway, you should really watch the Olympics. Not only is is a culturally enriching experience, but it's even got some extra-curricular stuff that's pretty....titillating. When Mr. Canada won the Men's Moguls, after a TV interview was done, the camera caught him turning around, face into some blonde bombshell, who proceeded to STICK HER TONGUE DOWN HIS THROAT without even so much as a how'dy do. It was like, Blah blah blah, turn, BAM! PORNO! Phew!

Happy Valentines Day, eh.

A long catch up post

So Happy New Year! It's 2010! Quite frankly, I'm surprised I lived to see this year...this year seems "sci-fi-ish"...I feel that we should all be getting places by personal rocket pack jets strapped to our butts or commuting to work via some transporter which emails your molecules to Tokyo and back in a nano-second, or something. At LEAST we should all have zero body fat (because we take the magic zero-body-fat-pill every day, of course) and should be wearing maroon onesies as the new business-casual, a-la Startrek. Sigh.

(By the way, I think somebody forgot to inform Jennifer "Cameltoe" Lopez that onesies are still only acceptable fashion for babies, if you know what I mean. She showed up in some VERY strange gear for her performance at the ball-drop in NY city over the New Year.
Klassy, with a capital K.)

Anyhoo, here we are, back to the future, looking and feeling exactly the same as ever, give or take the 30+ pounds we gained over the holidays. And when I say we, I mean I. It's VERY bad. We are at orange on the terrorist-holiday-weight-gain-o-meter, and may possibly be travelling very soon into the red zone, depending on the availablity of funds for glazed Starbucks' donuts this weekend. I'll keep you posted.


So my Christmas, in a nutshell:

Christmas Eve I posted about the snow, and then Bikki arrived for Christmas! Yay! We jawed for hours and then went to sleep....ha ha ha. Nikki went to sleep and I proceeded to stay up ALL NIGHT LONG. Why? Because Jeff, in a fit of genius, decided to volunteer for all night duty on Christmas Eve so that he could have it guaranteed that next Christmas he will be off-duty. It's a work-one-year, get-next-year-off sort of deal with holidays at his new company.

The reason this kept me up all night is because we have sort of unusual sleeping arrangements at our house...every living being in it sleeps on the same King-sized bed. Jeff acts as a sort of human barrier against the onslaughts of Dillon in the night, so that he doesn't squash Zoe accidentally. It sounds prehistoric and uncivilized, but it really works quite well, usually. Except when YOUR HUSBAND DECIDES TO BE GONE ALL NIGHT CHRISTMAS EVE LIKE SANTA AND THEN YOU'RE STUCK FENDING OFF THE TODDLER AS HE LUNGES AT YOU, IN INTERVALS, ALL NIGHT LONG. Whew! Got that out of my system. Excuse me.

Oh but seriously, I really was up all night. Dilly has this fixation for....I was going to say cuddling, but it's really a whole new world BEYOND cuddling....more like smooshing. He has to be smooshed up against a parent at all times or his interal 'smooshing' alarm goes off and he wakes up. So I ended up checking on Jeff at about 3 hour intervals all night long, to ensure he was ok...he was worried about being able to keep it together on the job all night long. He did great, and we got through Christmas day ok too...Jeff took a little nap and I ran on vast amounts of coffee and sugar all day long. We had Richard and Sunny over for the dinner as well, which was nice...it's always more festive when you have guests.

Then, on the 26th, hot on the heels of Nikka, Paula (MIL) came with Jeff's nephew Bradley to spend about 2 weeks! FUN! We packed a lot into those 2 weeks, it seems...I think it was because it was the first real 'vacation' we've had since Jeff lost his job, and although we went places together as a family while he was unemployed, and had fun doing it, it was tres stressful, and we really couldn't relax or "vacay" the way you want to. Stressing over how much money you spend is not relaxing. So Jeff got all this time off (the first time since we've been married that he's been able to take time off at this time of year...thank you Atmos Energy!) and we went to all sorts of places with Paula & Bradley: a science museum, which was TERRIFIC for kids, every room just filled with interactive play & learning stuff for young children. We were very impressed and will surely take the kids back there. It's funny...it's a terrific place for young kids, but if you're older and are going there to actually learn about science, it's really not so informative. Example: there's this super-high end room full of displays of these life-sized dwellings from hundreds of years ago, people that lived in the Waco area. Wax figures, you name it. And you go up to this neato full-sized grass hut they built, and the sign under it says something like: "Women traditionally built these huts while the men went out hunting." Aha. Women. Which women? English women? American Indian? Martian, perhaps? There is no indication at all. They spent all this money on the displays and not very much on the explanations. Ha.

Funny story: at the very end of the museum displays, there's this one that shows (people) dummies dressed in all sorts of different gear for different jobs, like fireman, police man, nurse, etc, and the display is showing how people do these jobs. Well Bradley (5) looks at these and exclaims with horror: "Look, they killed these people and dressed them up & put them here!" He thought because some of the animals in the other displays were stuffed, that they had done the same to the people.

What else? Jeff and I got to go out together (thanks, Paula!) to dinner and a movie on New Year's Eve. We saw Avatar, which was awesome...totally worth it, and a must-see on the big screen, in my opinion. We ate at this little Mexican place and I had...wait for it...a MARGARITA! Stop laughing, Adrianne. While YOU may drink alcohol with a dinner out without batting a false eyelash, I haven't been able to do it for years....I've been pregnant or nursing for over 4 years now. Like a moo-cow. Just call me Bessie.

But back to my story...we ended up just having a wonderful time with Paula, doing some shopping, eating out, going to parks with the kids, etc. And on the last day she was here we celebrated Dillon's 2nd birthday 2 days early, but who's counting when you're that young, right? We went to Chuck E Cheese, of course, and had the place all to ourselves cuz it was a week day. Then we went home and set things up while Dilly napped and when he woke up we did cake & presents... said presents mostly of the ball game variety, as Dilly is very into balls. He got a small plastic basket ball set, a kid's soccer goal & ball, and a few other sundries from his parents, and Grandma got him his first tricycle! A good haul. He's growing up so fast.

So thanks for visiting Paula & Becca, we loved seeing you! Next on the visiting roster: Christopher & Sarah! Horray! Will update when they come.

Wow, this is a long post. You have to understand that I've been writing this post for over a week, because I had a lot to say and NO BLOODY TIME for anything anymore. That's what happens when your baby is 5 months old and not sleeping as much anymore, and everyone wants a piece of you every minute of the day. And yet, it's funny, I find myself increasingly content with my lot right now, with the realisation that it won't last forever and I may miss this time when they're cute and cuddly and sweet...probably in about 10 years when they're teens. I love my little family so much, and I've been thinking recently that many of my childhood dreams have come true for me already in my life. And if that doesn't make me lucky, I don't know what does.

I will leave you now with entertainment from the little people:

Noah:

Recently he found this thing...it's a part of one of their toys, I can't really describe it, just a long plastic thing. He holds it up like the statue of liberty and says, VERY SERIOUSLY and with much gravitas:

"The fortunes are stachiels* and the ones that show proudly, and wisely, like a king. Also prancing. " And he proceeded to prance around still holding up his plastic thingie. Proudly and wisely, like a king.

*statues

Dilly:

He's begun saying and doing some seriously cute things, but this is the only one I can think of right now: We often listen to christian music, specifically this one song that starts:
"We fall down, we lay our crowns,
At the feet of Jesus".

Well, this song is somewhat of a favorite with the boys, and they both have sung it in their own special ways. Noah once sang it:
"We fall down, we lay around.....
At the feet of Jesus."

And Dilly recently sang only the first line over and over in his little falsetto, thusly:
"We fall down,
We lay we's self"

Zoe:
She, obviously, isn't talking yet, but is getting very fat and adorkable. She enjoys growling and sometimes does it for minutes at a time, entertaining her little self. Like a little bear or something. Also, she's a big finger sucker and will, when she's nursing, bring her little hand up to her face, and the fingers creep up to her mouth, and then she proceeds to stealthily insert a finger in with the booje, and see if she can suck both at the same time. Then, of course, the boob falls out of her mouth, and she looks at it with surprise and dismay. So I put it back in and she starts all over again. Nobel prize, here we come!

Have a great day, folks. This is a great day for us...old and painful things are passed and over, and we can get on with our lives.

Bless.