The Queen's Rambles

I’ve been sitting here for an hour, trying to think of something fun and exciting to post about. That’s an hour of my life I’ll never have back. Nor will it result in a fun and exciting post. You’ve been warned.

I recommitted myself to going to the gym on a daily basis. I even bought a babysitting pass for Elsa, which means I need to go at least 10 times this month to break even. If I carefully plan my days and don’t mind showing up at MOMS Club events with gross hair and a nasty smell, I should be golden. When Erik was little I never minded going to the park after going to the gym, but I think I am in a better place emotionally these days so I care more about my appearance. Today, though, I showed up at the park with rank pits and flattened hair. I’m sure everyone was thrilled.

I bought a set of four toddler gymnastic classes for Elsa via Living Social. Tomorrow is the first day, but I have no freakin’ clue how I’m going to remember to go. I keep thinking tomorrow is Wednesday. I even made a special trip in the dark to Staples to pick up something I need for Wednesday. Doh!

I used to totally make fun of my grandma for hating to drive in the dark, but now I also hate driving in the dark. Yet another reason to hate winter. Whoo-hoo! Darkness at 5 pm!

I got totally freaked out on my drive home. There was a homeless guy with a mattress laying out in middle of the grassy median on a very busy, main street. Some drunk will probably run him over tonight if the police don’t roust him out of there.

Erik had a dental appointment today. He went back all by himself and apparently did a great job. Elsa entertained herself with the germ infested waiting room toys, so I got to sit and read about how to make the perfect gravy via Bon Appetit. However you spell that. I guess I must be a pretty good cook because I already know their method for gravy making. I spent a summer working in the kitchen of my local senior center and an old guy taught me how to make gravy. I am so thankful that someone took the time to teach me that you can’t just pour water in the pan drippings and call it gravy, a la my mother. I always wondered why her gravy was so disgusting.

Back to the dental appointment. I learned that Erik has giant gaps between his teeth and I’m supposed to be flossing them every night because his gums are sore from packed in food. I’m a great mother!

Erik was really excited to have me floss his teeth tonight, but I doubt that will last long. I don’t know how dentists, hygienists and assistants stand their jobs. I wanted to puke the whole time my fingers were in his mouth. He was trying to be helpful, but he kept almost biting me because his mouth would get tired. I could hardly work my giant fingers in his tiny mouth. Ugh. Not looking forward to making this a nightly ritual. I made him lay on his bed and open his mouth really wide, so that helped a little, but my hands are not made for dental procedures.

Elsa has always been a great communicator, but now she has started answering my questions with a very definitive “no.” Do you need a new diaper? No! Do you want chicken? No! Do you want to sit on the potty? No! Of course, no is the most beloved word of toddlers everywhere, but she really does seem to be using it appropriately. When I ask if she wants pretzels/shoes/other things she does want, she doesn’t say no.

I miss my cuddly little babies, but life is a lot easier when they can communicate effectively. I’m sure she’ll be speaking in fully understandable sentences by her 2nd birthday. She already strings together quite a few phrases and she’s totally into sign language. Maybe I should watch the sign language DVD as a refresher so I know what she’s talking about. Usually I have her watch it when I need to run around and do other things, then she gets frustrated with me when she’s banging her hands together or making the sign for cow. Why are you not mooing at me, mommy?

My mom bought Elsa a big rocking horse for Christmas and had Mike set it up before she left since she wanted to see Elsa use it. I am seeing a trip to the ER in our near future. Riding it like a normal person isn’t good enough. She wants to ride it standing up and I refuse to let her. She’s not even in the terrible twos and we are already having epic battles of will. At least she doesn’t scream like her brother did. She just refuses to listen, laughs at me, and goes about her business unless I physically restrain her. If I’m murdered or go into a coma or something the police are going to think I’m abused. I’m bruised all over.

So anyone watching any good TV this season? Of the new shows, I’m really liking Grimm and New Girl. Revenge is also nice. Once Upon a Time seems to be made of fail, but maybe it will improve. Should I Even give it a chance?
I’m not enjoying many of my old favorites, though Fringe is kicking it up to an even higher level. How is this show always on the bubble of being cancelled? Chuck is really disappointing and Community has lost the funny.

I really don’t have time to care about TV. I need to do more reading. I’m hosting a book club at the end of the month, so I need to make sure I read the book this month. In the past year I think I’ve only read two of our book club books. I selected Deathless by Catherynne Valente. I hope it isn’t too strange for the other members. It was a risk, but I couldn’t think of anything mainstream that I would enjoy. The last book I picked was supposed to be a more mainstream comedy (I’d read it before and remembered it as a comedy. I didn’t realize I was suffering from post-partum depression) but turned out to be totally disturbing and depressing. We’ll see crazy they think I am after this book club meeting.

I thought we would be mopey this weekend since we had to drop Grandma off at the airport and I knew Erik was heartbroken that she was leaving. Her flight didn’t leave until 12:30 pm, so we had time to get everyone up and dressed and in the car. Usually she has to be there at some god awful hour that doesn’t make for a fun family outing. Mike rolls out of bed and shuffles her off to the airport and is home before the rooster crows.

Since we were down at Dulles, we decided to stop in at the air and space museum that’s housed down there. I didn’t realize it was actually on airport property, so that was pretty interesting. We saw great views of some jumbo jets taking off and landing. In fact, the views were almost too good. Those big ol’ jets are big. It was a little scary to see them moving so fast and low near my head.

Erik kept thinking we were going to the science museum in “Voldemort” (his pronunciation of Baltimore), so he kept waiting for the fun stuff that he remembered fro our trip there last year. And honestly? Can’t say I blamed him that much. There are all kinds of old airplanes, a space shuttle, and lots of space stuff on display, but it is not really fun if you can’t read. Chasing an 18 month old under the Enterprise is a lot more mundane than you’d think.

It would be a lot more exciting if they had a model Starship Enterprise set up and you could walk all around in it. Seeing the outside of a real space shuttle is neat, but nothing that shakes my gravy.

At the end we went up seven floors in an old observation tower and saw some really pretty views. The elevator had markings for floors 1-7. Erik was convinced that if we’d just stop on floor 3, 4 or 5 that we’d get to do all the fun stuff we’d been missing. A docent was in control of the elevator so we couldn’t stop on those floors and show him that they were empty. When we went outside, we turned around and had a perfect view of the observation tower. From the outside you could see that there was no building around the observation tower. It jutted up from the building on a long, spindly rectangle that blossomed into the observation tower. I tried explaining that floors 3-5 didn’t even exist, but his logical reasoning skills aren’t quite there yet.

He spent the whole time there saying he wanted to leave, then had a meltdown in the parking lot because we were leaving.

Did I say we had a pleasant weekend?

We did, actually. Or maybe we just had a pleasant Sunday.

I decided to take Erik to Puss n Boots today since I like Shrek. Sadly, the movie is no Shrek and I was getting pretty antsy while sitting there. Erik liked it, so that’s the important thing. I was a little worried that he would be bored. He told me he didn’t want to see it because there are no such things as sword fighting cats. Duh, Mom. Let’s stay home and watch the Power Rangers fight . . . aliens? cat people? gerbils? instead.

Afterwards, I needed to go look for a new fitted sheet for our bed since the current sheet has a gigantic hole in it. It used to be tiny, but then Elsa started using it as a hand hold for climbing into the bed and it all went downhill (or up-hole?) from there. Now I have new, beautiful teal sheets. I’ve always wanted teal sheets, but thread count and softness is more important so I usually end up with light blue. I don’t know what I’ll do with the flat sheet since we use duvet covers instead of sheets. I usually only buy a fitted sheet, but I couldn’t find any separate fitted sheets today. I couldn’t find any teal duvet covers either, so now we’ll really be mismatched.

We ended up at a shopping center with a pet store and a Five Below (like a dollar store, only five dollars and below), so Erik begged to go to both those places. Don’t you know Five Below is, like, totally awesome? He’d never been there before and was convinced that it must be the coolest place ever because some of his friends go there to spend their allowance. His mind is going to be totally blown if we ever take him to Disneyland.

It was really nice to have an afternoon with Erik. It feels like I never see him any more and when I do see him we just fight because I am supposed to be his mother and need to make him do things like homework or chores or other things that mothers require. He had a very nice time looking at all the animals and shopping around in Five Below. We didn’t argue or fuss at each other. It was like old times when he was my little buddy that went everywhere I went. We need to start having little mommy and son “dates” more often. I miss him.

My mom’s going back to Oregon tomorrow, so we’re all pretty sad. She’s going to miss the kids, the kids are going to miss her. I’m going to miss her. It’s nice to have someone around to help around the house and provide adult conversation. I guess a lot of people would go insane if their mom was at their house for five weeks, but she’s really well behaved when she’s here. She respects our parenting choices, even if she doesn’t always agree with them. She learned the hard way that we won’t put up with crap and we’re going to do things our way regardless of her thoughts on the subject. She doesn’t love that I’m nursing Elsa, but she hasn’t made any of the remarks that she used to make when I was nursing Erik.

Plus, she’s scared of Mike. It’s pretty hilarious. He’s the most un-scary person ever, but she gets freaked out if he talks to her about any concerns or chores that need to be done. I guess she’s only used to yelling and screaming so she doesn’t know how to handle a person who can communicate effectively without resorting to violence.

In other news, I finally have a big chunk of background stress well on it’s way to being resolved. I put up a website for my MOMS Club chapter several months ago and it was hacked by evil malware people. I cleaned it up, threw on a WordPress installation, posted the bare minimum and ignored it. A blog was really not the best format for our needs. Last night I was looking it over and figured out how to create pages. That’s exactly what I needed, so now I am able to create the kind of site I need to create. Whoo-hoo! And I actually have time and energy to do so because my new VP is willing to take on some of the more pressing projects that have been filling up my head space.

Next topic:

I am so happy our November weather has been better than our October weather. We’ve been able to play outside without coats! In general this area is hell in the summer, but has really decent fall, winter and spring weather. I’ll take three great seasons for one hell season.

Unfortunately, that has not been the case this year, so it is nice to finally get some non-rainy, non-buggy outdoor time. The only problem is we can’t decide if we need the heat or A/C switched on. First world problems, eh?

We never had A/C or central heat growing up. I am so glad we don’t have to go out and chop wood every weekend and build a fire every morning. Fire building sucks big time. When I was in junior high and high school I would often be the one building the fire in the morning, or at least the one stoking it up. Not fun. I bet my clothes always smelled like smoke. They were also covered in black dog hair all the time. No wonder I didn’t have any friends.

Anyone who pines for life in the old days must be crazy. When was toilet paper invented? I know my grandma had to use an outhouse when she was a kid. Not sure about the TP situation. A corn cob can’t be that effective, can it? I think if I lived in the old days I would want to die young. My butt would always itch, my teeth would constantly hurt, I’d be popping out babies left and right and wouldn’t even be able to hope that they made it past age 5. Life would suck.

I’m right cheery tonight, aren’t I?

Truly, I am cheery! I am glad I never had to live through all that.

I seriously need to get back to the gym. I went twice this week, but need to get back into the six times a week habit. I need the endorphins. When I get those exercise endorphins life is a lot easier to manage. Plus, it would be nice if I could shrink this belly a little. I was always very motivated to go when Erik was little because I needed that hour and a half of cheap babysitting. I don’t have that motivation now. Elsa is such an easy baby, even if she is turning into a little bully.

Hmmmm. Maybe I better get her in there every day so they can train her to behave. The childcare at my gym is excellent and I credit them with teaching Erik the basics of getting along with other kids.

The kids both had well child visits this week. The doctor told me that when Elsa hits, bites or pinches I should just firmly tell her no and she’d stop.

I had to pick myself up off the floor after having a laugh attack.

If we tell her no, she looks at us, throws her head back and starts laughing. Then she might lunge in for another bite.

I suppose I should post the well child numbers for my own memory. Erik was 49 lbs, 46 inches. He surprised everyone. He’s always been in the 5th percentile for height, but he suddenly shot up to the 60th percentile. I thought he was getting awfully tall! This summer I was worried that they would get on me about his weight because he was starting to look a little husky. Even when he didn’t look husky, they would always chew my ass about his weight. I guess growing 2 inches in 2 weeks sucks that fat right out of your belly. His BMI was the lowest it’s ever been and the doctor was quite pleased.

Why can’t I grow 2 inches in 2 weeks? I think I would probably need to grow at least a foot to get my BMI to an acceptable range.

Elsa is chunkier than ever. She was 30.9 lbs, 32.5 inches. At one point she had dropped down to the 95th percentile in weight, but she’s back off the charts. Way, way off the charts. I know three year olds who are smaller than she is (granted, they are super tiny for their age). I am still not worried about it because my niece and nephew were both total chunks and now they are super skinny. They are still built solid, but you can count their ribs.

I have Elsa back in cloth diapers most of the time. I moved up to the size large fuzzibunz. She doesn’t like any of the one size diapers, and I don’t blame her. They don’t really fit around her legs. So much for the “birth through potty training” promise. My mom claimed she was going to potty train her. I scoffed, but bought some training pants. My mom arrived, put her in the training pants and told her to use the potty. When Elsa didn’t get it, my mom gave up. I am still laughing.

Is that enough rambling for one night? I do know how to jump from topic to topic without a transition, don’t I? Not that it takes skill, exactly. One might argue a more skilled person would at least attempt to tie things together.

I decided I didn’t need to be pouty about not getting a good pic of Elsa in her fairy costume. I did what Heather suggested and took the bull by the horns. I went out and took some pictures today. No need to get hung up on the date, right? Just take an effing picture, for goodness sake. Stop with the angst and tears! Not that Heather said or implied any of the above, except that it was ok to take the picture on a day that wasn’t Halloween. I was the one turning my own brain into pretzel mush. Whatever that means. Twisty channels of thought that get squashed. . . something?

I still didn’t get the Perfect Picture, but I got a few that will work. I hate my photography skills and become more unhappy with them every single day. Perhaps I just need to get my eyes checked. Maybe that’s why everything looks blurry. I’ve decided that my many cameras are not to blame for my lack of gorgeous photos. It must be user error.

Moving on. . .

It was freezing on Halloween, but it was lovely today–in the 60s I believe–so I didn’t feel guilty about parading Elsa around in a flimsy little outfit. Btw, our house is not for rent. Our yard is in the shade, so I did the photo shoot in the common area across the street while several neighbors watched. We’re. . . cozy.

Erik wanted to help and was doing a pretty good job, except that he kept rolling around between the camera and the subject. Silly kid.

This was the last good Erik moment of the day.

After the photo shoot, we came in, fed him a snack and told him it was karate day.

The siren started wailing and it was full on hell for an hour. I’ve made a new rule: no playing outside unless you promise to go to karate without whining and crying. So he whined and cried about going outside for a whole hour while screaming that he wasn’t going to karate. At least he was honest? That’s the only positive thing I can get out of the ordeal. He didn’t say what I wanted to hear and then go back on a promise. He just refused to make a promise he knew he wouldn’t keep.

Finally I threw all 50 pounds of him over my shoulder like a bag of potatoes, carried him up the stairs and deposited him on his bed.

Elsa was also being a pill (I’m pretty sure she’s teething) so I was about to lose my mind. Even my mom declared that her darling grandchildren were behaving like hellions.

Mom took Elsa outside to play and I went to the basement to get away from the yelling coming from the top of the stairs. A few minutes later Erik appeared, fully dressed for karate. Good choice!

He did great at karate, but when it was time for leadership class (he does a basic class, then a more advanced leadership class that we are paying for and he refuses to go to) he screamed and cried and refused to line up. No amount of cajoling, threatening or anger was good enough to get him to go. I’ve told him he owes me $20 for the class (I think it was really $10 if I do a breakdown of price per hour) and he owes his grandma $14 because she bought him a sword just for this class. They’re learning a really cool sword dance and I thought he liked it the two times he went.

It was really pleasant when we got home. I’d already told him if he didn’t do leadership he couldn’t go to his school’s academic game night. He was screaming bloody murder about that and the money he owes us. Elsa was biting everyone and whining. I needed Calgon to come take me away, but someone had to cook dinner.

Erik says he can’t go to leadership because the other students aren’t expecting him. He won’t listen when we tell him the other kids don’t matter and that the teacher is expecting him. We even make it a point to have him talk to the teacher about going to the class. I don’t really even understand the complaint. “They aren’t expecting me! *whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeeee*”

What the hell? Can someone explain this kid to me?

At least the day wasn’t all bad. I met up with a really awesome mom this morning and we had a great play date. She just joined our MOMS Club board as an emergency fill-in for the vice-president position. She is full of energy and ideas and she follows through. She’s already got a mock-up of the website done, agreed to host our Christmas party, has taken over planning for our fall service project and has agreed to help me with the newsletter. You have no idea what a huge burden this all takes off me. We have five people on the board, but until she joined only three of us really did anything and only two of us were enthusiastic about it. I am so glad I can hand all this stuff over to someone I trust to get the job done. She’s way more creative than me, so I know she will be a huge asset to our club. She even has a craft blog! I haven’t asked for the address yet, but I will in the near future. For Halloween she took a round bowl, filled it with cantaloupe chunks and then added black grapes to make a jack-o-lantern face. And she thought of that on her own! I was very impressed.

To top it all off, her husband has the job Mike used to have. Not for the same company, but the same job! No one ever has that job. I about died laughing when I asked what her husband does and she got the same look and voice that I always have when I try to explain Mike’s job. She about fell out of her chair when I knew what she was talking about. No one ever understand the concept of satellite controller/engineer. She invited us over for dinner next week so the manly men could meet and talk shop. Not every day you meet another guy who flies satellites.

Anyway, I guess I better head off to bed. I need all the sleep I can get. My mom is leaving on Saturday and it will be back to “all me, all the time” during our very long days. Mike works insanely long hours at his new job, which leaves me with insanely long, lonely hours at home. I’m glad we have a roof over our heads, plenty of food to eat and enough discretionary money to be comfortable, but I sure wish I could see my husband sometimes. I hate that he’s so stressed out and that I’m so stressed out and that we rarely have time to connect with each other. As sappy as it sounds, he’s not only my husband–he’s my best friend. I miss him.

Great picture, huh? Elsa wouldn’t stand still for a single second, so I didn’t get any cute Halloween pictures. I am seriously thinking about dressing her in her costume and taking her in for professional pictures. Nothing says Halloween like mid-November professional pictures of a little fairy in a dirty dress.

This is the only non-blurry pic I have of her. I sort of feel like crying. Pictures used to be so important to me, but these days I just don’t have the time or energy to do long photo shoots with uncooperative children. She’s going to hate me when she’s older, isn’t she? Plus, this costume was kind of weird on her. It was a size 3-4 year, but she could barely squeeze into it. I had to put some warm clothes on underneath it and I skipped the fairy wings and wand because it seemed to be a little much for her to handle. All in all, not conducive to super cute pics.

Despite the lack of pictures, we had a pretty fun Halloween. We went to a MOMS Club party at the park in the morning and did a big group trick-or-treating thing in our neighborhood in the evening. I swear Elsa was a woodland fairy. It was pretty cold outside (there were still remnants of snow on the ground) but that didn’t faze* her. She plopped herself in a mud puddle and refused to be moved from it. Every time I’d take her out, she’d find it again and stomp around, before sitting. Her poor little shoes are ruined. How do you clean leather shoes? And let’s not even talk about her costume. It said hand wash, so I guess I may try that tomorrow. Not that it matters much. It was a cheapy from Costco, but it would be nice to be able to keep it around for dress up.

Can’t leave Erik out, though I already posted pictures of him a few days ago.

Elsa was pretty hilarious, as toddlers tend to be. She couldn’t figure out the trick-or-treating thing at all. First, she wanted to go into all the houses. Then she didn’t want to put the candy in her bag–she just wanted to hold it. She would get her hands full at one house, then deposit the candy in the bowl at the next house. She hardly got any candy (not a bad thing!).

I was glad we were doing a big group trick or treat activity because I couldn’t keep up with Erik while dragging Elsa along. Other grownups were comfortable with keeping him in check, so he had fun being slightly independent and running from house to house. I have a really good friend who I never talk about on this blog who came over for the festivities. I knew that she or her husband would keep Erik from being devoured by rouge jack-o-lanterns.

This friend and I been friends since Erik was 6 months old and her son was 4 months old. Erik thinks her kids are his cousins. She’s moving to Virginia and I’m so sad about that, even though it is just a 40 minute drive. We’re on opposite ends of the spectrum in many regards, but she’s really easy to talk to and very relaxed and upbeat. Even when she was working full time we always made a point to get together every couple of weeks. She’s joining our Campfire club** so at least we’ll get to see them once a month.

So are we supposed to say what we are thankful for this month? Today I’ll say I’m grateful for good friends. I’m grateful for the friend I mentioned above and I’m grateful for another friend that I see at least once a week. She’s another lady who is totally upbeat, relaxed and down to earth. Her son and Erik are two little peas in a pod. I feel like she’s a kindred spirit and I’m so glad she seems to agree. I’ve always liked her, but assumed that someone as fun and happy and outgoing as she was would have plenty of other friends. It turns out that she’s more of an introvert and seems to really enjoy my company.

Usually she calls on Wednesday afternoon to see if we want to meet at a park, so I figured she would call today since we had gorgeous weather. I didn’t want to call her because she has a baby and car pool and I never know when to call. I had to run to a couple of stores to try to find wall pockets***, so I told my mom that if Nina called to tell her we’d meet her at a park of her choice at 4 pm.

Sure enough, Nina called.

I’m still laughing at her reaction. She thought I was a mind reader because she had no idea she was going to call me and didn’t know she had a routine, so how would I know she was going to call me? I’m just that good. Mwhahahahaha. But really, she does have a routine and I’m very thankful that I’m a part of that routine.

And that’s all she wrote for tonight. Erik’s early morning school schedule kicks my butt.

*is it faze or phase?
**I finally got Campfire paperwork mailed in, so hopefully we’ll do our training soon.
***I got clear ones with some pretty file folders; I know you were dying to hear the results of my organization quest