The Queen's Rambles

When I last wrote, Elsa has just puked in my mouth. You got to miss the part about Erik puking all over my mom and other wonderful things along those lines. Let’s not dwell.

I was hoping like mad that the adults would avoid the whole thing, but no. You don’t get puked in the mouth and somehow manage to avoid the germs. I do believe I’m going to die.

I shouldn’t be so blase with that word, should I? There are too many terrible tragedies, both personal and on a wide scale.

Because of the flu, I’ve missed two fun times. I totally could have went and had lunch with Tora because I wasn’t sick and my mom volunteered to keep the kids, but I am not comfortable going out in the world when I know I am exuding flu germs. I don’t know about you, but I think I’d rather a petty criminal steal something small (as long as there is no violence involved) than have a person knowingly expose me to flu germs. Perhaps I’m crazy. My mom thought so.

Then, tomorrow I was supposed to go to a fancy brunch in downtown DC. Doesn’t that sound fun and grown-up and not at all like me? I was very much looking forward to it, but right now the thought of any food other than rice with milk and sugar makes me want to hurl.

Did I forget to talk about the picture at the top? That’s Erik on the school bus. We had a long enough break in our sickness to take him to Kindergarten orientation and watch him get his purple stripe belt in karate. I thought the bus ride was supposed to be a five minute jaunt around the block, but holy hell! The bus driver took us on a half-hour excursion through every neighborhood that serves the school. I should have had him drop me off when we passed our street.

Erik was first on the bus, the only kid (of maybe 8) who got on without parental prodding, and went straight for the back. How did I grow a “cool kid”? I was bus sick almost immediately.

To be fair and equal, here’s a picture of Elsa looking like herself. Not the best pic in the world, but this is her happy face and she looks like this 90% of the time. I love my little chunky monkey roly poly baby.

I took my mom to the airport this morning. So sad. So very sad. We are all going to miss her.

What else?

Oh, we found out why you can’t use regular diaper cream in a cloth diaper. Butt Paste is made with fish oil, I guess. You know what happens when you wash it? The fish oil lingers in your diaper laundry and makes the whole thing smell like you’ve just opened a can of surstromming (rotten Swedish fish delicacy). Oh. My. God. If the stomach flu doesn’t kill us, the stench from that will. I am hoping I can strip with Dawn and call it good, but we shall see. I would hate to throw out my whole stash of diapers because of the smell.

Of course, I won’t need them long because I’m going to start potty training next week.

NOT!

My mom kept telling us that I was potty trained by 15 months and we need to get started with Elsa. I think she was smoking the serious crack. She said she always potty trained in the summer. I was a March baby. I think she must have trained me after I turned two.

Also, her method of potty training was really simple. She just told my sister and I to start using the potty and we did. So easy! Why is she the only person in the history of the world to think of that?

I have so much to do lately that I’ve resorted to list making. I’ve never been a list maker. I used to have an excellent memory and was able to mentally keep track of everything. I was a straight A student through college so I guess my system worked.

Not so much these days.

I never realized how satisfying a physical list is. I can cross things off!

I don’t know if I will become a list maker, but I just might do it. Especially if my memory continues to fail me. I need to start doing crosswords so I don’t get Alzheimer’s (I realize it is not that simple, but crosswords are supposed to keep your brain sharp.)

My sister has been calling and harassing for the past few days, wanting to make sure we go to church today. Ha. That’s really going to happen. She’s concerned for our souls because Jesus is returning in 2012 and the Earth is going to fall apart. She saw it in a John Cusack movie.

Funny, I don’t recall any Jesus talk in 2012. Does she really not get the total hypocrisy of telling us to go to church when she lies, steals, drinks, drugs, sleeps around and doesn’t take care of her own children? “What do you mean? I just have to ask Jesus to forgive me. He loves me.” She goes to a Baptist church. They must do things a lot differently than the Wesleyan church I grew up in. Not saying Baptists would approve of her lifestyle, but I don’t believe they have quite the emphasis on guilt and holy living that the Wesleyans have. Honestly, I have no idea about any of the Baptist theology and don’t really care to be schooled on it. Suffice it to say, I don’t think my sister understands or really even cares about their theology.

We had a pretty nice Easter around here except for the not nice parts. Erik loved hunting eggs and was pretty upset that Elsa wouldn’t find any because it “wasn’t fair.” He is such a good big brother–so loving and always watching out for her.

The Easter bunny made too much noise last night and woke Elsa up around 10 pm. She was awake! Wide, wide AWAKE! And ready to have fun! She discovered her belly and kept rubbing it and trying to pinch it off, then she started playing telephone and was creeping us out. We’d say “Hello” and she’d say “heh-wo.” We’d say “How are you?” and it sounded like she said “How are you” as clear as day. Same with “I love you.” Then she came over, handed me her pretend phone and started having a complete hissy fit until I handed her the camera. We’ve taught Erik to trade things with her to keep her from getting upset so I guess she’s learned her lesson well. I forget that 1 year olds aren’t little, lumps of flesh. They know and do and want and plan.

After lunch I was going to take a nap with Elsa. She started choking in her sleep, then all of a sudden she started puking and puking and puking. She even puked in my mouth. Gag. Ugh.

I hope I never repeat that.

Mike has been working his butt off this weekend and even managed to get up our new-to-us trampoline. He put the last tie in place and Erik was just about to start bouncing when the heavens opened and rain started coming down in buckets. I later found out that we had a tornado warning right then as well, but we didn’t have a radio, TV, or computer on at the time. Guess it’s a good thing we didn’t get blown away.

We took my mom to Bucca de Beppo yesterday and Erik discovered a little statue of David. He kept going over and looking under the grape leaf and fondling what he found. It was just a weeeeeee bit embarrassing. He won’t quit grabbing his own private parts either. I told him I’m going to cut it off if he doesn’t quit but he just looked at me like I was stupid. “You won’t do that mommy. I’d die.” I was breaking the all important “say what you mean and mean what you say” rule. I need to think of something else. Time outs, hand slaps, growling. . . it doesn’t work. My mom said to get him a jock strap. Do they make jock straps for 5 year olds?

I guess that’s all I’ve got. My stupid WordPress is not e-mailing me my comments and I have no idea what to do about it. I can reply to the comments, but I think it just publishes them on my site and not in an e-mail to the person. Does anyone really go back and check the comments? I know I don’t.

This girl has a will of iron. She will NOT eat anything given to her by spoon. She will NOT drink anything that has an irony taste. She will not eat treats made with iron. Honestly, the treats I made tasted like the bottom of a cast iron skillet so I don’t blame her. And she most certainly won’t take her medicine like a good girl. Or even a bad girl.

I was so frustrated yesterday that I temporarily lost my mind and decided to just force the iron down her throat. We were able to do it and even able to get her to swallow by blowing in her face.

Of course, the whole reason we don’t force medicine down her is because she forces herself to throw up. Which she did. Spectacularly.

I’m going to call the doctor next week and see if we need to think about getting her shots or something. I am worried. I tried to turn to Doc Google to see how worried I should be, but am not turning up any numbers and nothing worth reading other than lists of iron rich food. I’m totally buying some chicken livers tomorrow and frying them up for her.

I have drastically reduced the amount of nursing during the day and am giving her lots of meatballs and other iron rich foods instead. I don’t know if this is making her cranky or if something else is making her cranky, but she’s been really clingy and crying and just wanting her mommy. Then we have Erik, my dearest son, who also loves his mommy and wants to be IN MY FACE and talking non-stop and fighting and wrestling and just ALL OVER ME. Constantly. It was spring break this week, did you know?

I am one exhausted mother. You’d think it would help that my mom is here. In fact, I’m sure it has helped a lot, but there is not much she can do about Elsa since Elsa is such a mamma’s girl.

I’d had enough this afternoon and ran away to Fashion Bug. I am too old to shop there, but I did manage to find a couple of cute things. They have really good customer service, almost annoyingly so. I thought I was on the set of a make-over show because there was a girl in her early 20s and a mom and they were both crying and crying and thanking the sales girls and the sales girl was crying. The girl hated shopping and could never find anything to wear and was just so relieved to finally find a store like Fashion Bug. Her mom bought her over $700 worth of clothing so I guess they were all having a good day. I wanted to ask where they were from since the Fashion Bug is not exactly new or innovative. The girl wasn’t even all that heavy so I’m sure she could have found stuff elsewhere, but the Fashion Bug is definitely a store she should be shopping at.

Afterward, I walked to K-Mart and asked for zip ties in the garden department because Mike needed some for gardening purposes. They had no clue what I was talking about. My mom said they probably thought I was going to kidnap someone because that’s what you use zip ties for. My mother. Oh that woman. She’s met many of my friends and acquaintances and thinks at least 1/3 of them are abused women based on very scanty evidence. She really needs to stop watching all those Lifetime movies and court shows. They make her think her life is normal and everyone is abused.

Adding to the stress: my sewing machine is broken. I finally had time to baste that baby quilt I made a few weeks (months?) ago and was all set to quilt it. Mike and I have both messed around, but the things is just not working. There’s a problem with the bobbin or the needle or both. The bobbin keeps hitting the foot, which should not be happening. I’ve cleaned the thing out multiple times, tried several different needles, different threads, different bobbins. I guess I am going to have to spring for a real repair. On the plus side, I complained about it on FB and one of my local friends said I can borrow her machine. I “fixed” it for her last year so I know it’s a pretty decent machine. She’d never used it because it wouldn’t work correctly. Turns out the feed dogs were lowered. I fixed that and she’s sewed on it exactly one time since then. I’m sure she won’t mind giving it up for the length of time it will take me to finish off the baby quilt.

I was planning on getting more caught up with my Harry Potter paper piecing project, but who knows when that will happen. I guess I’ll have to find that repair shop first.

Also, we are thinking of buying a new dryer.

And I want a new dining room set. Ours is really old and gross and the chairs hurt my back because they are completely worn out.

While I’m buying new things, maybe I’ll just get a body transplant. I suppose I’m going to have to cancel my gym membership, but I sure do need something to make my giant belly disappear. And my flabby arms. I am so disgusted with myself. My biceps were so awesome when I was doing BodyPump, but now they are more flabby than they’ve ever been before. Stupid weight lifting. Grrrrr. I wish Miss Elsa would stay at the child care and my back wasn’t killing me. Even if I could go to the gym I would be afraid of lifting weights because of my back problem.

Ok, I suppose someone has to go get Easter baskets organized and things like that. I am tired of being a mommy. I love my kids and wouldn’t trade them for anything, but sometimes being the responsible one gets just a weeeeeeee bit old.

I had a lengthy phone conversation with the ped today. I think there must be a general rule that you don’t want to have lengthy phone conversations with the ped. I’ve never had a lengthy phone conversation in regards to Erik. Elsa is another creature all together.

She is severely iron deficient. When doing an iron test, the desired result is 10%. Elsa is at 2%. The doctor sounded pretty worried and told me to do whatever it takes to get the iron supplement into her, even if it means giving it to her in straight sugar. She needs to be taking 60 mg of elemental iron a day and hopefully that will get her levels where they need to be. She has to have another nightmare blood draw in three months.

She also gave several other suggestions for getting the iron into her, none of which have worked so far. She said she didn’t want to tell me to quit nursing because she loves that I am still breastfeeding, but I have to cut way back and hope that she will start eating. That’s the main problem, I think. She’s just a super picky eater and is not getting the dietary iron that she needs.

I’ve been looking up iron rich foods and am planning on getting them in front of her. Getting her to eat them is another matter entirely, but I have to try. Sometimes it can take a kid 20 times before they’ll even put the food in their mouth.

*********

That was all written yesterday. Today things are looking a little better. I was able to put the iron in her pancake batter. I know she hasn’t gotten enough yet, but she got enough to turn her poop black. That’s a start, at least. She absolutely refuses to be spoon fed anything, so I need to find something to bake it in. I have a mini-muffin pan. My plan is to bake some kind of muffin or cookie or something and put a 2 ml (she needs 4 ml a day) in each treat so I can control the dosage. Just gotta figure out what I’m going to do. Didn’t have time to figure out anything today because we were off having fun. Guess what we were doing?

The sun was out, so I decided to unleash Erik on the world. He responded by harassing innocent children with “crazy hugs.”

Even Miss Elsa found a friend just her age. They seemed to like each other if the amount of eye poking and fingers-in-each-other’s-mouths was any indication.

Why am I posting pictures of kids who sort of look familiar to many of my LJ readers?

Yes! It’s a Heather!. We were very excited to get to hang out with Heather, Rob and Tora for a few hours. Ok, so I was really excited. Erik was actually really excited to hang out with Nate. I was excited that Nate kept calling me ma’am. What a good boy! And Erik was mostly nice to him.

The thing I hate about blogging is all my friends living so far away. The thing I love about living in the DC area is that many of my friends come through here for one reason or another.

It is really a shame that I don’t hang out with Tora more since it is totally doable, except for the traffic. If Erik didn’t have preschool smack-dab in middle of prime non-rush-hour-traffic time I’d be able to do a lot more. I’ve been pretty incognito this past year. Also, tired. And mothering an infant. Mothering an infant and trying to juggle a social life is hard, especially a sleepy infant. Maybe all the iron will make the baby less sleepy.

And now I have to go mother that sleepy baby.

I had a board meeting tonight. When I walked in the door I was informed that Elsa is downstairs, asleep on my mother, clad in a diaper from 7 pm and a not-at-all-fitting summer romper (I loved that romper. I really, truly thought it would fit, but it won’t even fasten. She’s up to 25 lbs 9 oz and 30″). She needs a night diaper. Who wants to wake her up? I guess it better be sooner rather than later so there is a better chance she’ll go back down, but I really would like a few minutes peace before waking the clinging child.

She had her blood draw today and it was just as nightmarish as I expected. She is so different from Erik. He would have been happy right up until he was stuck with the needle, but she was hysterical before the process even started. The stupid lab tech was being good and making silly faces at her. She was happy. Then suddenly the tech got right in her face and yelled “yi yi yi!”

Why? WHY? WHY?????????

Seriously, do not get in a baby’s face and start yelling. Elsa doesn’t like people in her face and she doesn’t like yelling and she really, really doesn’t like people yelling in her face. Neither do I.

So she was hysterical and then the tech had to put the band around her arm. I had to have one arm tucked under my arm and then hold her other arm as straight as I could. The baby is strong though. Super strong. I couldn’t keep her straight arm held still enough and she kept wiggling it around until finally the butterfly needle came undone and started spraying blood every where.

The tech called in another tech to help and kept saying I wasn’t strong enough to hold her. The other tech was really rude to me and told me I needed to just hold her and it was ridiculous for her to come in and help. At least the original tech defended me and told her that the baby was really, super strong. I find it very difficult to hold my own child still enough for things like that. It is much easier to hold someone else’s child down since they are not breaking your heart in quite the same way.

The second stick was much better, but Elsa was still completely hysterical and a scary shade of red. Thankfully she quit crying as soon as the tech said “All done.”

If I never have to do that again it will be too soon. My heart breaks for all the parents of sick children who have to watch their children suffer through much worse than a blood draw.

Thankfully one of my friends called and invited Erik over, so we didn’t have him in our hair.

Thanks to Jenn for the suggestion of doing some role-playing with Erik. We used to do a lot of role-playing when he was younger, but I totally forgot about the idea. I told him we were going to play a really fun game of Good Friend/Bad Friend and he thought it was hilarious when we were being good friends. He was not pleased at all when I was being a bad friend so maybe the idea will hit home. I hope. I just want a nice kid. He is pretty popular in most of his peer sets, which is sort of a problem. I mean, yeah. Popular. That’s what you want for your kid. But the flip side is that he can pick and choose who he plays with because he has power. Power is not always good for your personality.

Ok, Mike just walked by with the sleeping baby so I probably should go and try to help him get a night diaper on the girl. Did I ever tell you the end of my EcoBumz saga? I put in a paypal dispute and the person refunded my money as an apology and told me she was sending the diapers that day so I would get them in 3 or 4 days. That was two weeks ago and they haven’t shown up, which is unfortunate because I really wanted them. I am more than willing to pay for them, but I’m not going to order more through her site since she clearly has no idea how to run a business. I’m disappointed. I like this whole “no leaks at night” thing. I also need to buy some more hemp inserts. They hold way, way more than microfiber and are a lot thinner. They are also more expensive.

Even with my mom here, I still never get a moment to post an entry. Elsa is a mama’s girl. It’s all me, all the time. I’m pretty well exhausted.

We went to the ped today and had an interesting time of it. They have a new doctor and I’m going to go to her from now on. She’s about my age, she also cloth diapers, she was ok with extended breastfeeding and co-sleeping though she did say if we were not getting enough sleep it would be better to get Elsa into a crib sooner rather than later because of some developmental things that will happen at 15 months. I need to take that under advisement because I am damned tired. Erik never moved when we co-slept. Elsa never holds still.

We got a bit of bad news. She has anemia, which sort of makes sense since she isn’t eating all she should be eating. They did a finger prick at the office, but we have to take her to the lab tomorrow and have a real blood draw from a vein to get better numbers. I’m so looking forward to that. What hell that shall be. My poor baby.

I think I must have an iron deficiency as well. I’m tired all the time, I have dark circles, I’m cranky. It wouldn’t hurt to pick up some iron tablets, I suppose.

I also need to pick up some kind of parenting book for five year olds. Erik is a wonderful, smart, funny, charming little boy but sometimes he is a straight up asshole.

I can no longer host any official MOMS Club things at my house because he turns into a sulky, pouty, brat and tells the kids to go away. He refuses to participate. He is mean.

I babysat a sweet little two year old for an hour last week and Erik was a total jerk to him. The little boy loves Erik and wants to follow him around. For some reason that irritates Erik and he kept telling im to go away and leave him alone.

He is also really rude to a few of his less preferred friends.

I thought have a two year old throw a temper tantrum at a restaurant was embarrassing, but it’s got nothing on my five year old being a jerk face to my friends’ children. Punishing him seems to make it worse. Talking about it seems to make it worse. The only thing that works is for the other kid to go away and play and ignore him. He’ll slowly make his way over to the other kid and want to play. Try explaining that to another little kid, though.

Today we were talking about how rude he has been and I was telling him that if he kept acting like that he wouldn’t have any friends left. He said “Mommy, I just think there’s something wrong with my brain. You have to fix it. And you have to fix my soul.”

If only I could.

I’m sure there must be a book or theory or blog or something out there that deals with a kid who won’t be nice. Believe me, I’ve tried things. Time-outs, taking away of toys, talking, guilting him, giving him rewards when he is nice. None of it matters. I am at my wit’s end and the behavior is just getting worse. Is this a phase? Someone tell me it’s a phase. I’m used to a charming boy who likes to be friends with everyone. I’ve always been so happy that he’s really self-confident and expressive, but it’s not so great when he clearly and loudly states that he wants the other kid to go away.

*I finally figured out why one of my e-mail accounts was acting insane. I kept running out of room, but I could not find all these mystery e-mails anywhere. We switched to Fios last week (seriously, HALF the cost of Comcast. Should have switched months ago even if Verizon sucks) and my e-mail stopped mailing. Mike did some magic, changed some settings, and suddenly there was a trash folder with over 60,000 e-mails in it. So that’s where all those pesky things were hiding. I emptied it and am hoping that is the end of that little problem.

*Elsa’s birthday part is tomorrow. We’re supposed to have it at a park. It is supposed to be sunny and mid-60s. I hope the weather man isn’t lying. It’s been raining like mad all day today so I am stressing myself out. I’m also stressed because I don’t have much of a plan other than “Go to Costco and look for some kind of food tray and a cake.” On a weekend. Oy. I do have goody bags made up. I went the cheap plastic route but at this point I just don’t care. Having a second child has made me care a lot less about a lot of things. I’m too freakin’ tired to worry.

*Speaking of being tired. Man oh man. This girl is teething again I think. She has been whiny and clingy for two days straight. No one is good enough except me. And even then, I’m only good enough to roll around on, bite, and cry at. I just have to remember that it could be so much worse. She could be like her brother, and just scream 24/7.

*Speaking of her brother. That boy is so overly excited about his grandma being here that we are probably going to have to duct tape him to the wall. I love him, but today has been too much. It has been pouring all day long so he didn’t get any outside time. Elsa was crawling all over me. He wanted to crawl all over me. I am tired of being a human snuggli.

*I love having my mom here, but I think I may have to wash her mouth out with soap. She doesn’t curse, but she doesn’t watch what she says around Erik. She watches all those crime shows and then she likes to gossip about them and about my sister and her drug addled friends. Erik pipes up in the background “What’s murder? What are drugs? Why doesn’t Auntie take care of her kids?”

And then the judging. Oh, lordy, the judging. She makes snap judgments about every single person she meets based on their appearance. As if she’s so hot? She is not racist because she says stupid stuff about people from EVERYWHERE, not just a certain race. So I guess that’s not racist? I don’t know, but it’s getting pretty old. Also, it’s no wonder I have a major complex about my looks. “Why don’t you get that mole taken off? Why don’t you wear more make-up? You’d be so pretty if you started working out again. You just need to drop 50 pounds. Your butt looks big in that. Why are your brows so hairy? Is that a hair growing cock-eyed out of that mole? If you call the doctor, I bet insurance will cover breast reduction.” And on and on and on. I know they say you shouldn’t tell your kids they are pretty because that can mess them up, but I plan on making sure my children hear they are beautiful on a regular basis. Hearing nothing but complaints, even if they are supposed to be helpful in some way, gets really old really fast. I’m surprised I didn’t just kill myself when I was a teen. Instead, I moved to Oklahoma and sequestered myself with fundamental Christians (I was a fundamental Christian at the time).

psp1129, originally uploaded by Ramble Queen.

I keep meaning to post, but time just gets away from me. Elsa had an uneventful first birthday. If you’re on facebook, you saw how happy she was with the idea of birthday cake. If you’re not on FB, click through this picture to see a series of birthday pics. Won’t that excite you?

We learned she does know the meaning of “yuck-yuck,” a phrase I’m always saying as she shoves rocks, leaves, mulch, dried cheese, Erik’s shoes and all kinds of other gross little treats into her mouth. As soon as we stuck her hands in the cake she started yelling “Yuck yuck! Yuck yuck!” and the photo sesion was over.

We did get some good pics of Erik and her and my mom (and me, I guess. I wasn’t really camera ready, but my mom insisted. Wish I would have wore a black shirt).

Elsa is such a sweet baby. I can’t believe she’s already one! She doesn’t fight sleep. In fact, she climbs up on a lap, lays her head down and goes to sleep. She loves wandering around the house, picking up toys and playing by herself. She seems to be able to talk a little. I swear she said “I like that song” yesterday. I couldn’t get her to repeat it, but it about made the eyes pop out of my head.

She loves her brother and daddy and lights up when they walk into the room. Most of all she loves her mommy and never wants mommy to leave her sight.

She’ve very cautious around strangers. She does ok if the stranger ignores her, but if the stranger gets in her face or acts like they are going to touch her she completely melts down.

We had a beautiful day yesterday so I took both kids out to our neighborhood park. I finally had to leave because an old Indian grandma kept trying to hold her and refused to accept no for an answer. She seemed shocked I would tell her no, but Elsa was batting her away and screaming bloody murder. Plus there was a nine year old girl who has no boundaries who wanted to hold her. When I told her no she kept coming up and making mean faces at Elsa, so I just left.

The girl decided she was going to push Elsa’s stroller but there was no way that was going to happen. I know this girl. She’s a wild child. I told her it was a mommy job, so she claimed she was Elsa’s mommy.

I told her that the next mommy job was folding lots of laundry, so she took off. At least that scared her off.

And now duty calls so I can’t complete my birthday post of baby love. Poor second child.

I am really frustrated because my camera is missing. I know I had it on March 31. I haven’t seen it since that day. Where is it? I’ve looked in all my pockets and all my bags. Mike has been a house cleaning fool. It must be around here somewhere.

I took out my old camera and tried using it and instantly remembered why I hated that camera with the hate of 10,000 suns. HATE! Couldn’t get a single clear picture. Not that I can get a clear picture with my new camera. I am not a good photographer and my subjects never hold still. I miss my first digital camera. It took wonderful pictures, but they were 1.8 MP so sometimes they wouldn’t even print out.

My mom is here! I forgot to stock up on Diet Pepsi so she and Mike are at Home Depot and Target. I think she’s planning yard work while she’s here. That would be awesome because I hate yard work. Last year she planted some petunias around our front tree that lasted all summer with minimal maintenance from me. I enjoy the pretty. I am just not good at making the pretty happen.

Her plane got in at 10 pm so we let Erik go to the airport with Mike. Silly boy didn’t end up going to sleep until after 1 am last night, but he was up at 8 am this morning. I believe he is napping right now. Elsa is also napping away. For once she’s in bed instead of on me so I am feeling free. Freeeeee!

Can you believe she turns 1 on Wednesday???? I can’t!

Plan thus far:

-Make cupcakes Tuesday night for a little family cupcake time on her real birthday and so Erik can take some to his spring party (also on her birthday). That worked out awfully nice.

-Have birthday party on Sunday. I think I’ll just pick up a big cake at Costco and give her a piece to mess with. We’re having an afternoon party and the invites just said we would have cake and snacks so I am not planning anything too elaborate. Maybe a fruit and veggie platter from Costco. I don’t know. One of our guests is allergic to dairy, soy, nuts, eggs, citrus and I can’t remember what all else. He’s only two. I have a recipe for “Depression Era Cake” that I know he can eat, but am not sure how to frost them. I guess I’ll ask his mom. He doesn’t really eat most food since he always gets so sick, so I don’t know what to get that he’ll enjoy. Maybe some bananas? I’ll have to talk to his mom. He mainly lives on a special formula. They do have hopes that he’ll outgrow some of his allergies. For his sake I hope that’s true. Can you imagine how miserable that would be? I know Grain_Damaged can. I don’t really know what to do about goody bags either. You know I hate goody bags, but I think I am going to give in to the inevitable and just give away bags of plastic crap. Kids love ’em.

-Go to another photo session on Monday. I know. Ridiculous. But when I picked up Elsa’s photos last week the manager talked to me about her birthday and suggested I come in and bring a cake and balloons (what I originally wanted to do and the person I talked to on the phone said I couldn’t do). I also got Erik an outfit to wear and maybe will get some grandkid/grandma pictures or sibling pictures. He is not pleased with my outfit for him, but maybe he’ll wear it. I don’t know. It is just a robin egg blue button down shirt. He hates buttons. Brat.

If only I can find that damned camera we’ll be all set!

We went to a birthday party today for the little boy across the street. He’s five days older than Elsa and still fits in his baby bucket seat. Tiny little guy! He’s not walking either, and just sat on his grandmas’ laps or in his baby bucket the whole time. Elsa? She was walking all around, picking everything up and shoving it in her mouth, rolling down the hill (she’s a great big roly-poly baby. Always with the rolling.), wearing me and my mom out.

Speaking of Elsa. . . I’ve heard of yet another one. My mom sat next to an 18 month old Elsa on the plane.

Did any of you ever get the Baby Name Wizard baby name book? That was my favorite. They organized the names a lot differently than other books and I found it a lot less overwhelming. Anyway, at the end of the book they had a “Why Not?” section–a list of names that are nice and not really out there, but that weren’t popular at all. Elsa was on that list so I’m wondering if a lot of people read that book and decided they wanted a name that was nice, but not popular or crazy and they picked Elsa. I think I’ve heard of more baby Elsas than Eriks. I know lots of older Eriks, but don’t think I’ve run into a single kid Erik/Eric/Erick/Eriq.

Do any of you watch the BBC version of Being Human? I love that show. Love love love. Last night was the series 3 finale and I couldn’t believe what happened at the end. I was up all night with nightmares because of it (the show is about vampires, werewolves and ghosts, so you can imagine). One of these days I should make a list of all the shows I’m currently enjoying. I’m sure you care immensely. Most of them are already canceled, but at least most of them all knew they were going to be canceled and wrapped things up so it’s like watching a mini-series.

Last thing: I decided I was going to stencil myself a “Good for Goodness Sake” t-shirt. I even bought a couple of plain tees at Kohls.

But where do you put the design when you have gigantic boobs? WHERE? I can’t wait to stop nursing this baby. The only bra that fits even half-way nicely is a cup size I. As in I am a huge boob head. I! I am not saying that to brag. Small breasted women don’t understand why big breasted women hate their boobs. Big breasted women don’t understand why small breasted women don’t rejoice in their lack of boobage. I need breast reduction surgery.

I really wish more places had decent plus sized shirts. We all know I have to miss out on the most fun things from Threadless and so forth. But that doesn’t make it sting any less when I really, really want something.

Cafepress has some nice plus sized shirts, but they are danged expensive. I need one, though! But they don’t have exactly what I want.

My MOMS Club has to do two service projects a year. This spring we will be packing lunches and handing them out to homeless people. Great, right? I voted for this.

Only it is through a church.

Fine, I can deal with that. It is not really “through” the church, so much as “facilitated” by the church. Lots of churches and other organizations in the community have a hand in this particular program, but it happens to physically take place at the church of one of our members. I was fine with this until we got a paper from the church about signing up and it had a big ol’ thing on there about how we were not only helping people; we were helping God.

That just makes me gag since I don’t even believe in God and if I did believe in God and I believed he was omnipotent, why the hell would he need my help making peanut butter sandwiches. If he was so concerned about the homeless people eating a meal he could make manna come out of the sky. I am not helping God. I have no interest in helping an imaginary friend. I am helping homeless hungry people.

So I want to be subversive and wear an atheist t-shirt during my shift, but I don’t want it to be offensive or even very obvious. I don’t have any need to wear a shirt that says “Suck it Jesus” since I don’t even believe in Jesus, or a shirt that is throwing the cross in the garbage can or has Jesus eating brains or riding a dinosaur. I also don’t really want to wear something that says “Proud Atheist” just because I don’t really think making big political statements around homeless people (who may or may not be mentally disturbed) is all that wise. All I want is a shirt that say “Good for Goodness’ Sake” or something similar. Not offensive or obvious or anything too out there. If you know that’s an atheist saying then you know, but if you don’t it might make you think a little. There was one that said “Proud Member of America’s Most Distrusted Minority.” I kind of liked that one, but not for that use.

I guess I’m going to have to make my own design. I am so not a designer.