The Queen's Rambles

Thank you thank you thank you Bethany and Sandy and bershili! We got a hard drive enclosure and it worked perfectly. I have all my pictures of Elsa! I am missing my laptop, of course. There isn’t a comfortable way to type with a kid on my lap down in the basement, plus Erik doesn’t like to come down here. While it is fabulous to have a few Erik free moments (I swear I have that cuddle bug on my lap more hours a day than I have his baby sister on my lap) I can’t just leave him to himself for more than 20 minutes. He starts yelling down the stairs and it wakes the baby.

But I have all my pictures of Elsa!

Anyway, Erik does know what he did and he is very embarassed. I didn’t beat him or anything, but he does ask me to do things and I tell him I can’t because I don’t have my computer (look up things, play games, draw, whatever). It is a fine line to walk–I don’t ever want him to think the computer is more important than he is but I am also really mad that I no longer have my computer.

After having Elsa kick it off my lap and fracture the screen than having Erik fry the rest of it, Mike says we don’t need a new laptop for a few years. I am sad.

It has been hotter than hell here so we are kind of stuck indoors. It was 90 degrees when we left the house at 9:30. Ugh. We usually spend most of July in Oregon so I guess we’ve been missing the hottest month of the summer. This year we will just spend the second week of August in Oregon. Even with no A/C it is cooler than here.

We went to an indoor play place today and there were four little babies. Elsa was by far the biggest and she was two months younger than the next youngest. One lady didn’t believe that she is only nursing and not getting some kind of solid food. Do you think people can produce milk with different caloric values? Or is it strictly genetics that determines how a baby body processes mother’s milk? I don’t know, but I am having a problem with dear Elsa’s one size diapers. They are getting tight! They’re supposed to fit through toddlerhood but her stomach is so big it is hard to snap them. The sized ones are fine. Weird how that works. I know once she is crawling and walking she’ll slim up and the others will be fine, it is just funny that they are supposed to fit a three year old and aren’t really fitting my not even three month old. When I changed her at my friend’s house this weekend my friend’s eyes about popped out of her head when she saw poor Elsa’s tummy.

Do you read Brain, Child? I was startled to find an article about the type of ovarian cyst I supposedly have. Remember the saga of my side hurting and all that and apparently I have a crazy, unfertilized egg growing hair, skin, teeth and who knows what? The author of the article had the same thing and found it amusing. Personally, I find it revolting. If it was someone else I would think it was totally cool, but thinking about such a thing inside myself makes me want to gag. I have another sonogram on Friday. I hope they are able to see it this time. I’m not so keen on all these internal sonos, even if it is the most action I’m seeing these days.

I am sort of considering getting Erik some kind of hand held game thing for our flight to Oregon. I always swore my kid wouldn’t have one of those until he could buy it himself but it sure would be nice for him to have some way to entertain himself on the plane. I hated the Indiana Jones game when we first got it, but now I am liking it a lot. The boy can do subtraction now! He has been doing adding and some multiplication for awhile but just couldn’t figure out subtraction. Thanks to the game he has finally figured it out. There are also a lot of logic puzzles that he has to do and it is good for him. I find it is more authentic and fun than “educational” games. All the educational games we’ve played are either way below his level or just plain boring.

I hesitate to get a hand held device because it takes away the social aspect of the game. Currently he plays the game in the living room and either Mike or I help him or at least talk to him about what’s going on. It’s something Mike and Erik can do together and genuinely enjoy. It’s a lot more engaging than staring at the TV screen.* I suppose we can get the hand held device and make it clear that it is only for long plane rides, car rides and waiting times. Personally, I can’t stand to see a family in a restaurant with all the kids sitting and playing their own games while the parents eat.

I guess that’s it for my computer time tonight. I need to go and tell Erik stories about Spot. He is now refusing all books and only wants stories that I make-up, but he has to be in charge of the direction of the stories. I like making up stories, but I was getting pretty bored of Spot until I had a revelation. Kids don’t care about logic! Duh! Spot doesn’t have to just do doggie things! It got a whole lot more fun when Spot started doing stuff like riding elephants at the zoo and turning into a person.

Speaking of stories and imagination, we went to see Horton Hears a Who at the free movies yesterday. I am not a fan of Dr. Suess and this movie just reinforced my dislike. My friend HATED the movie. I just didn’t like it. It certainly had an agenda, but I’m not sure what it was.

Remember Green Eggs and Ham? Was I the only kid in the world who was totally irritated with the guy who kept offering the green eggs and ham? I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to tear the book into shred. The guy doesn’t want green eggs and ham! Leave him alone!

Ok, I’ve really gotta go. Having baby on my lap and typing on the desktop is doing nothing good for my back.

*Just to be clear we have time limits on this gaming. It is not an hour after hour free for all!

Our holiday weekend started out quite grand. We spent several hours at the Splash Park/Mini-Golf Course on Friday with a good friend. Erik had a blast, as did his friend. Elsa slept, so I couldn’t ask for much more than that. I was wearing a two piece suit (not a bikini *shudder*) in case I had to try to nurse her, but she never woke up once. It was almost freaky.

We’ve discovered Erik is a natural at golf. Sort of. At least he did better than his little friend and my big friend. Now he wants to be a golfing tennis pro who has a whip. A guy can dream, right?

Thankfully his behavior improved 100% after our rough morning on Thursday. We had a major talk about attitude and what would happen to his Indiana Jones game if his attitude didn’t greatly improve. I was surprised that worked since I know I’m not able to turn my attitude around on a dime like that

The fun of Friday and Saturday came crashing down in a horrible wave of icy water yesterday afternoon. I bought some headbands to try on Elsa so she would look more girly. I hate the look of headbands on little babies so I don’t know why I thought I would like them on my baby. It didn’t make her look girly–just very uncomfortable.

Erik got into them and had one on so I did what any mother would do and tried to take a picture. He’s at a really funny age right now where he doesn’t want his picture taken (the main reason I rarely post photos of him anymore). He started screaming and flailing his arms and. . . . . . . . suddenly that icy wave of water was all over my laptop. There was smoking and burning. There was running. There was screaming.

Lucky for him he runs fast and I was more worried about wiping up the water than hanging him up by his ankles. By the time I had cooled off and we had discovered that the computer is totally fried he was upstairs on our bed, fast asleep. He must have been one tired kid, probably because he got up at 6:30 am, something that never happens.

As you can imagine I am feeling pretty sick right now. I was supposed to have the newsletter done and mailed out this weekend. It’s gone. Totally gone. All the pictures I’ve taken in the past six months–gone. Who knows what else is gone. Mike pulled the hard drive but we aren’t geeks of the computer hardware sort so we aren’t sure what to do, other than go visit the Geek Squad and hope they can pull off the data.

You thought I never posted any more? Now I really won’t be posting. We haven’t even discussed if I am going to get a new laptop or not. It seems pretty useless to get one right now but I will go insane if I can’t have my friends in my computer. We just spent a boat load of money on tickets for Oregon so I don’t know.

At least we had a good afternoon after Erik woke up from his nap. We went over to our friends’ house to swim in their community pool and have dinner, only to find the community pool was closed for the holiday. Instead we sat around and talked and the boys played. They only fought a few times! Miracle! They are so different that sometimes it is miserable when we all get together, but yesterday they clicked.

This will be short and sweet since I desperately need a shower. I hardly have any time for internetting now that my laptop is toast. Boo! I would cry if I had the energy.

My darling son has turned into a monster brat. Seriously. He is totally embarrassing to take places. I wanted to hide my head in the sand at our Canada Day party today. He was being mean to the little girl that he normally loves and he punched a six year old boy in the eye. His mom was a potential new member to the club. Dandy.

I’m ready to lock him in his room and throw away the key. I know how to deal with him at home, but when we are out it gets really embarrassing. How can you make a kid be nice and polite to other children? I can make him stop being physically mean or stop him from saying inappropriate things, but I can’t make him be nice. The worst thing was I had plans with the hosting mom to pick up some things I need for next week after the party so I couldn’t just scoop him up and leave, which would have been my normal solution.

At least the baby continues to be sweet and smiley. We were in B&N the other day and it took all sorts of restraint not to buy every princess fairy tale book in the store. Now I remember why I wanted a girl so badly when I was pregnant with Erik! I hope I can share books and fairy tales and girly-girl things with my sweet Elsa. I’m tired of playing trucks and cars and monsters.

And now I hear that sweet little baby making noise up in the room. Did you know that baby monitors are the coolest? I never had one with Erik since we lived in a tiny apartment. It took me awhile to get used to having one with Elsa, but now that I have it I don’t know how people live without them. You can hear! The baby! All the time! Whoa. . .