The Queen's Rambles

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.

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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.

I’ve made a horrible, horrible discovery.

I’ve been on a huge Ceasar salad kick lately, ordering it any time we go to any resturant. I’ve even bought a kit and made it at home a few times.

Point 1: I’ve been watching a lot of competitive cooking shows lately.

Did you know Ceasar salad dressing is made out of pureed anchovies???????????

Do you know I have a major fish aversion? Do you know what I need to do? I need to go wash my mouth out with nuclear waste. I need to vomit out my last six month’s worth or meals. I need to go into a coma and not wake up until I can forget that I ever had a molecule of fish in my mouth.

The sad thing? I’m still trying to convince myself that the restaurants we eat at don’t make the dressing properly, so it’s still safe for me to eat.

Yes, it is “safe” for me to eat anyway. I don’t have allergies to fish, but the mental aversion makes me ill. What am I supposed to do about my Ceasar salad love?

Point 2: I have been spending way too much time outside since I refuse to let Erik go out there alone. It’s majorly cutting into my internet/Elsa-berry/cooking/reading/being human time. I take Elsa-berry out in her stroller, but she’s getting too big to just sit there. She wants out and I let her out and she eats the mulch, the rocks, the grass, the dead leaves, the . . . you get the story. Being outside is good for all of us, but the dear boy wants to be out there for hours at a time. He got used to being really independent and just having me swing by and check on him every fifteen minutes so he doesn’t get why he has to come in when I’m not out with him.

Point 3: I thought I won a major victory in my “just say no” campaign yesterday. My carpool friend asked if I wanted to do a sort of homemade kid camp swap thing this summer. Before Elsa came along that is something I would have said yes to without any hesitation at all. The carpool kid doesn’t listen to me and is much more . . .hmmmm. . . enthusiastic. . .than Erik. There’s no way I can handle him and Erik and Elsa for extended periods of time. And frankly, I don’t want Erik over at their house because the kid talks to his mother like she’s his slave and Erik doesn’t need to be hearing that. I heard the kid tell Erik that I’m the meanest mom in the world. Mwhahahaha. That’s right, and don’t you forget it! I will not be bossed by a five year old.

But then I said yes to something else. I agreed to run for president of our MOMS Club chapter. Ugh. In our club “running” is a euphemism for “being” since there’s no competition. I didn’t want to run. In fact, I was thinking of dropping out of the club altogether, but maybe this fall when Erik no longer has a weird school schedule, Elsa-berry and I will be able to partipate a little more. Not that we lack participation now, considering there are only three of us who ever show up to anything. I want to just drop out and e-mail my friends when we want to get together, but I also think MOMS Club is a great organization and really helps people. I know it saved my sanity more than once and has given me a great network of friends and acquaintances who I depend on. We are desperate for a president and there are a couple of people who might step up that would really irritate me, so I decided to just do it myself.

So I guess I still am a push-over. Since having Elsa I’ve given up a lot of my “just do it” attitude toward things and have been setting limits. I simply can’t do everything with two kids.

Point 4: I’m sure I had a point four, but I just lost all my brain cells trying to use the dark force to hold down a platform while my kid yelled at me that I wasn’t pushing Z correctly. How did I go from “my kid will NEVER have a video gaming system until he can pay for it himself” to this? I suppose I said a lot of things before he was born that haven’t panned out. I didn’t count on actually, you know, LOVING the kid and wanting to make him happy. Sounds so stupid when I put it that way, but I had no idea what mother-love was all about.

I don’t know what happened, but I guess I didn’t hit publish on this last week. I didn’t notice since the events of this post have caused me to have even less free time. I can no longer let Erik go outside on his own at all, even though it feels dumb for me to just stand around, trying to entertain Elsa while Erik plays with the nice kids. I thought we lived in a safe neighbhorhood and I guess it isn’t “unsafe” but Erik doesn’t need to be left alone with jerky 13 year olds.

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Ugh. So remember the girl who called Erik Hitler?

That wasn’t even half the story.

On the way home from school yesterday Erik piped up, “Mommy, you didn’t need to be so mad that that girl called me Hitler. All the big kids call me Hitler.”

Yes, I about had a seizure right then and there.

“They do? Like who?”

He named some names, and I found myself getting angrier and angrier. I thought some of those kids were good kids. I even bought stuff from one of them because I thought he was nice.

Mike came home early and took Erik to karate, so I started making phone calls. The parents were all mortified, outraged and appalled. There are several grounded middle schoolers in the neighborhood.

After the phone calls, the parents started stopping by to apologize in person. I was surprised by that and really appreciated it. They were all very supportive and thanked me for letting them know, telling me that as the kids get older it is imperative for neighbors to keep an eye out on things and report to the parents.

I certainly agree with that attitude.

The most appalling thing, of course, is that it was such big kids picking on a little five year old who didn’t even know he was being picked on. We had to have a little chat about Hitler, but I didn’t get too deep into it. I explained that he was a very bad man who only liked people with blonde hair and blue eyes.

One of my other neighbors is kind of weird. She has two boys, ages 7 and 4. She has been on my ass about sending Erik to school early (she did with her 7 year old and she is pissed that her 4 year old doesn’t meet the deadline for early testing). She is also always up in my grill about teaching Erik to read.

Dude.

It’s great if you want your kid to read early. If my kid expressed an interest I would foster that interest. Honestly, though? If he’s not interested I don’t give a flipping froufrou. Research shows it doesn’t really matter when they learn to read, as long as they learn by the time they are 8. I am sure Erik will learn by then. He already has some sight words and can sound out some simple words.

ANYWAY.

She told me I had to give Erik an explanation about why Hitler was bad and suggested I show him Valkyrie and Inglorious Bastards. That’s what she’s shown her sons.

Wha????

I know I can be pretty overprotective, but no way in hell am I showing my five year old a rated R or PG-13 movie. I don’t even let him watch Cartoon Network.

So that was weird.

In other news, Elsa had her spring pictures taken. It was a nightmare, as usual.

I am really irked at the photographer because she didn’t listen to me or use any of the props I wanted to use. I told her that Elsa doesn’t like strangers in her face or loud noises, so she got right in Elsa’s face and made weird shrieking noises, causing Elsa to freak out. I posted the pics on FB and need to get them on Flickr. You can see she is pretty red in the face in a lot of the pictures, poor baby. The lady just didn’t want to take any time with us and didn’t even want me to pick out pictures. I had a $50 gift certificate and she suggested I order a CD. I never get the CD, but with a coupon and the gift certificate I ended up buying it b/c it was obvious the photographer was done with us.

And now I’m being attacked by two over-zealous children so I suppose this entry is done.

Boy howdy, people, I was hot under the collar today. Still am, truth be told.

Erik was outside playing with a group of kids I don’t really like him to play with. They were two bitchy young teen girls, hanging all over a nice young teen guy. Erik likes to play with them because the nice guy has a five year old brother that tags along every where.

When I got home from getting groceries they were playing right in front of our house. I hear the black teen girl (if this story matters, one girl is white, one is black, and the boys are Filipino) calling Erik “Hitler.” She is laughing and keeps saying his new name is Hitler and that she likes to call white people Hitler.

I was livid, as you can well imagine.

Erik was clueless and thought Hitler was a fun new name.

At first I just asked what was going on and she denied it, but I told her I heard her. I took the groceries in the house and became angrier by the minute.

It would be one thing if Erik was being bossy and they were all teenage peers and she called him that. It’s quite another for her to call an innocent little boy a name that he has no clue about and think it’s some big joke. It’s racist. Pure and simple.

So I go over there and ask if her parents are home. She tells me no, but I went up to knock on the door anyway since there were three cars in the drive. She started screaming at me that she was going to call the police on me if I didn’t get off her property, which was when I knew her parents would not approve of her calling little five year old boys racist names.

Indeed, her mother was PISSED. She apologized to me and made her daughter apologize. We didn’t see the daughter again.

Poor Erik, though.

He had no idea what was going on, why I was mad or why I had just gotten this girl in trouble.

The other jackass teenagers started being mean to him and wouldn’t play with him. His days of lots of unsupervised outside time are at an end for awhile, I’m afraid. I don’t know if I did the right thing by tattling, but at the time it felt right. If my teenager was calling a little girl a horrible, racist name I would want to know (and my teenager would be feeling my WRATH).

Both Mike and I took turns outside with Erik and he was crying and crying because those kids wouldn’t play with him, but he refused to go up the street to where the nice kids were playing. I tried to explain that those kids were mean and it would be much better to play with his real friends, but he thought the teenagers were cool and wanted to play with them.

I just hope that we don’t see any worse fall out from this. It is often not wise to get on the bad side of a bitchy teen girl because they know no limits. We live directly across the street. The mom was horrified and so I guess she would probably be on our side, but who knows what will happen?

I’m still kind of shook up about the whole thing. I suppose I was making a mountain out of a mole hill, but that girl needed to learn that you just don’t do that. You don’t pick on an innocent little five year old boy.

In happier news, I guess I have just been feeding Elsa the wrong things. In the past 48 hours she has totally devoured spicy pinto beans, pesto pasta, taco meat, cheese, apple cereal bars. She no longer wants the gross little Gerber Pasta Pick-ups, which is fine with me except they were having a sale and I totally stocked up. Maybe our food bank will be getting a big donation sometime soon. Maybe she’ll eat them if I put a big dollop of pesto on them. I’m just glad she’s eating and that my freak out about her gagging was all a huge overreaction. I just really really really really never want to be in denial when something is wrong because that bugs me, so I guess I go the other direction. Not that I was ever super worried, but I think it’s good to keep an eye on things you aren’t sure about.

Kindle update: Love it! I like to read when Elsa is sleeping on my lap, but it is really uncomfortable to hold the book and sometimes turning the pages wakes her up. No problemo with the Kindle. I can just sort of lean it on her and the page turns with a single little button click. Unfortunately, my library does not offer any Kindle loans, but I have discovered some Kindle book trading sites. I haven’t explored them fully b/c the loan only lasts 14 days so I don’t want to download anything until I finish my current book.

Diaper Update: Remember a few weeks ago I was praising Ecobumz diapers? I hope none of you rushed out to order some. I don’t know what the deal is, but they are still having their “72 Hour Sale” from a few weeks ago, my diapers haven’t been shipped and no one is answering e-mails. I am irked because those diapers are totally awesome for night time, but at least I paid with paypal so I will be able to get a refund if I file a claim within 45 days of the sale. I need to mark my calendar. I was really happy yesterday when I opened my diaper bag and found another one of those diapers. I put my least desirable diapers in the bag so obviously I haven’t changed her diaper while out in quite awhile. I also found a cute shirt and pair of pants that had been missing. Guess I need to rotate the contents a little more often.