Thankful Take 2...

So everything I wrote in my last post on Thanksgiving was true. All of it. I am thankful for SO much and my kids are just amazing little things...but...

There are other things I am thankful for too. Like daycare and school. After spending every single waking hour (and some not-so-waking hours) with both of my kids from Wednesday at noon until this morning...well I can definitely tell you I am thankful for daycare and school. SO SO thankful. If I'm being honest, it was a really long weekend.

The Boy was fine. He was good. Plus, he's easy to deal with so he got some time out of the house away from me with friends and family. So he was good. But The Girl? She and I literally spent every single second together and man...it got rough a couple of times. Remember a couple of months ago when she got some little bug and started having diarrhea all over the place? Remember that? Yeah, we are right there again. It started the day after Thanksgiving which makes today...day 4. Last time it lasted almost 10 days. Dear God we are not even half way done if that repeats itself. And on a long weekend it was really hard. She was super whiny and just wanted to be held and rocked. Which for the first day or so was really sweet and cute and, OF COURSE Mommy will hold you and rock you and make you feel better. But by day three I started to wonder what that smell was and couldn't tell if it was my own self because I hadn't showered in two days, or if it was something coming from the kitchen as I hadn't been able to empty the dishwasher in two days, or perhaps the cats litter box...the choices were endless. Because, you see, when you are a single Mommy and one of your children is demanding to be held all the time there isn't a lot of other stuff that can get done. So you choose to either let your child cry and whine and follow you around the house and latch onto your legs every time you pause long enough for them to get a grip, or you sit. And you sit. And you watch PBS because it is the only thing that keeps her quiet.

The weather was also super crappy and cold and rainy here this weekend and what with Little Miss Poops-A-Lot messing through any outfit at any given time (OOHH!! Also thankful for the washing machine. SUPER thankful for that), we barely left the house. And man...these walls started to close in on me. Add to that bored, whiny, sometimes sick kids and it makes for a REALLY long weekend.

So today! Back to school for both of them. Yesterday was somewhat better for The Girl with no major blow outs so I was hoping we were going to be done with it. I warned her daycare ladies that she had a bit of a tummy thing going on and to please call me if they needed me to come and get her (please don't call...please don't call...please don't call...) but that I hoped she was on the tail end of it. Since I made it through the entire day without a phone call I figured we were all good. Until my mom brought her home tonight. She was in a different outfit than I sent her in (bad sign number one) and then my mom came in carrying a grocery bag stuffed full. I knew we had done the grocery shopping over the weekend (an outting!! Yay!! How sad is my life?) so I looked a little perplexed. My mom said, "Apparently your daughter pooped through every single one of her spare outfits and it all needs to be washed." (Bad sign number 2). She has 4 spare outfits. All 4 of them came home, along with ALL of her bedding from school. Not only did it need to be washed, but it had to be rinsed first because they literally peeled it off of her and stuffed it into a bag. So it sat in a bag and marinated all day long and then when I opened it? I can't even tell you all. I seriously almost barfed from the stench.

And bad sign number 3? Well when we were eating dinner, out of the blue The Girl starts screaming. I asked her what was wrong and she said in a pitiful little voice, "I wanta a new diaper..." Her poor bum. So I took her back to change it and...nothing. A little tiny skid on the diaper but that was it. I can't imagine how much it must have hurt to have that reaction. So I gave her a fresh diaper anyway and put some medicine on her bum and sent her on her way. About 10 minutes later she came toddling down the hall and said, "Pee You!! Stinky!!" I looked at her and she was COVERED. Seriously. Down both legs, up the front, in her belly button you guys. So of course I picked her up and cleaned her up getting my new cute red Christmas sweater covered in poop in the process. Poor sweetie. Poor me. Poor all of us.

At least my mom agreed to take my sweater home and make it smell like new again. Because seriously, the washer was already going and...I just didn't have it in me. Even now, I am going to go put on a different outfit all together because something on my person smells like ass. And it is kinda making me want to lose my mind.

So...thankful? Absolutely. Wouldn't trade it for anything. But damn...sometimes it is just easier to go to work!

Thankful

This Thanksgiving was a first for me. It was the first time in my 36 years on this planet that I have not spent this day at my grandmother's house. She is turning 94 this year and has finally moved out of her home and therefore we had to start a new tradition this year. So we ended up at my brother's house and it was lovely. I left there after a very long, but thankful, day.

I am thankful for my support system; the wonderful people in my life that allow me to live the amazing life that I live. My mother. Couldn't live without her; my best friend and co-parent to my children and just an amazing example of what I would always strive to be. Thankful for the rest of my large and complicated family. Thankful for my nieces and nephews and the ability to give my children the kind of traditions that I had as a child. Thankful that my other 88 year old grandmother was home from the hospital and healthy. Thankful that she sat next to me during dinner and told me that this was the best Thanksgiving she had ever had and it was because of my children. She said seeing their faces makes her life on this planet smile.

And thankful for my two amazing kids. Thankful that on days like today when both of you have colds and therefore are both pretty pitiful and whiny...thankful that I can make it through the end of a long day still thinking you are both amazing kids. I not only love my kids, but I like them too. I like spending the day with them. They make me laugh, they make me smile, they make me crazy...but I have nothing but love for the both of them. I could not be more thankful for them. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Hope it was a great one.

Resemblance

This is me between 18 and 24 months:

...and this is my son at 18 months old...
...and this is my daughter at 18 months old...
Can you see the resemblance?

The First Haircut

Here's The Girl this morning during breakfast. This is true "morning hair." It hasn't been brushed or anything. But this is how she spends her time before I "do her hair" each day. She has taken to saying, "Where's [Girl]?" and then she takes both of her hands and pushes her hair up out of her face so she can see and says, "Der she is!!"

It was time for the first haircut. Here's the before.

And here's the "after."
I love it! She looks so grown up. The pics from the "during" are on my phone so I'll show them to you later. Or not... But I love it. My big girl!

Check Out the New Digs

Hi everyone,

Just a quick note to tell you to check out my new header and format of my blog. I take no responsibility whatsoever. A fabulous reader--who am I kidding--Calliope! offered to give me a little face lift to my old header as a holiday gift. How rad is she? (Although I may have given her a little cashola into her paypal as a thank you anyway because she's just THAT awesome...).

So if you're reading this through a reader, click through and check it out. And then go over to her site and give her some love (and some business!!)

Continue on with your day...

Wordless Wednesday

More shots from The Girl's 18 month photo shoot... And you may wonder why I chose to have her photographed in her sunglasses pushing her stroller. The reason would be that this look really wraps up her essence at 18 months. She wears these glasses on a daily basis and for some reason she connects pushing her babies in a stroller with wearing the glasses. I wanted to capture this image to always remember this time. This is what she loved to do. This is who she was...at 18 months old...

PS--Clearly I am challenged by the "wordless" portion of "Wordless Wednesday..."

OMG You Guys...

Yesterday I had perhaps the scariest moment of my parenting career thus far. I can't even tell you how scared I was... But first, let me back up and give you some background.

Last Friday the 5th of November I had an appointment to take my kids to get professional pictures done. We were going to do their Holiday shots and also get some of just The Girl for her 18 month shots. My mom always goes with me on these things to help out so that was the plan. My mom called me at 8:00 that morning to tell me she had food poisoning and would (obviously) not be joining me. I was a little stressed out about doing it all on my own, but it went really well. In fact, after the pictures were taken I was going to write a blog post about "Tips for surviving Professional Pictures with your kids," and talk about my tips. First, schedule as early in the day as possible to avoid delays, second bring snacks and books, third bring toys that your kids are familiar with to use in the pictures (they are so much better than the props they give you that your kids have never seen before...)...I could go on. I never got around to writing that post (shocker, I know), but the point of this is that it all went really well. We got some great pictures and I left there proud of myself for doing it all on my own and I even managed to take the two kids out to lunch by myself after the pictures. So it went great. In fact, I got those pictures back yesterday and here are a couple of shots. They are adorable...

So anyway, that was last week. So THIS Friday we had another appointment at the same place with all of the cousins to try and get a picture of all 7 grandchildren to give to the parental units for Christmas. The age ranges of the kids goes from 7 as the oldest all the way down to 5 months as the youngest. I knew going into it that The Girl was going to be our difficult child to deal with. The baby (5 months) can pretty much just be propped up somewhere, and the child that is older than The Girl is almost 4 so all of those kids can just be told where to sit and they will stay. So my daughter was the wild card. I knew that going in. And she had had a ROUGH day. One of those days where they just don't want anything you offer them and the entire world seems to be conspiring against them. You know the days...we've all had them. So that was how we went into the pictures.

Also, even though The Girl is a complete ham and a crazy child, she is uncharacteristically shy when she gets somewhere. Even though she sees her cousins all the time, whenever we get somewhere with them she spends the first half an hour glued to my side until she warms up a little. So I knew that getting to the picture place with all those people and being rushed into a room and telling her to sit down away from me out of the blue was going to be a challenge.

It was more than a challenge. She threw a freaking colossal fit. I am not kidding. She screamed NO!!!! at the top of her lungs and threw herself on the floor kicking and screaming and throwing the biggest tantrum you have ever seen. The photographer actually even snapped a picture of it (which I am glad she did; it's hysterical and I bought a copy) with 6 kids posed perfectly and my daughter strewn across the floor screaming bloody murder and my son sitting above her with his hands over his ears because she was screaming so loud. It was quite a moment.

So we took her away and let the other families do some family shots with her watching hoping it would "warm her up" to the camera. Nope. Not so much. She still refused. After 40 MINUTES!! (that is NOT an exaggeration) we got her to sit on a stool next to her brother by bribing her with Pirates Booty. So in the pictures we ended up with, my daughter is sitting there with a zip lock bag of "popcorn" in her lap and her face stuffed full of the stuff and the powdery stuff all over her face mixed with snot and tears and her cute brown dress covered in "popcorn dust." Charming. But at least she was IN the picture. We weren't even sure if we would get that far. But needless to say I was glad I hadn't posted a blog post talking about how to conquer professional pictures because that day? That day was a huge failure. Huge.

So at that point it had been a REALLY long day with my daughter. I was stressed and tired and to be quite frank, really over it. I just wanted to get home and have a glass of wine (or 12). So then we were waiting for quite a while for them to process the pics and show them to us and the kids were all running around being crazy and eating snacks and reading the books I had brought (see back when I thought I knew how to get through this type of thing; I had packed well). My daughter was playing with all of her cousins and watching TV on her iPod and doing her thing. I was watching her like usual and also looking at the pictures they had managed to capture. I checked on her and saw her sitting on the floor with the iPod and went back to the pictures and not 30 seconds later, seriously, I looked back for her and she was gone.

Gone.

I said "Where's [her name]?" very casually while looking in the other studios and around the room where we were, and then "WHERE'S [GIRL]?!?!" with more urgency in my voice and when I still didn't see her I screamed, "I'm serious you guys! [She's] missing!!" This is one of those portrait studios in a bigger department store so the portrait studio opens up to the entire store. I looked and there were rows of clothes and sheets and crap everywhere. She could be ANYWHERE!! I freaked. We all scattered, including all the other kids until one of the other parents realized that wasn't the best idea and rounded up all the kids and stayed at the studio with them while my sister, my sister in law, and the photographer started running frantically around the store screaming her name.

My heart was pounding so loud you guys. She wasn't anywhere. It was all a blur. I was just looking down all these rows of clothes and racks and stuff and she wasn't there. Ever. She wasn't ever there. I was just about to run up to a checkout desk and tell them they needed to make an announcement about a lost child when I heard, "Kim, we found her!" and I ran back to see the photographer carrying my child back to the portrait studio. She set her down and she casually strolls up to me saying, "I wanna see Mommy..." I grabbed her and hugged her and then threw her in her stroller and put the 5 point harness straps on her and sat down and burst into tears. Holy crap. She had been way over by the escalator and the front door! The front freaking door you guys. And the escalator. Holy shit. She was probably missing a total of about 5 minutes but it was the longest 5 minutes of my entire life.

Somehow I managed to keep it together and we picked pictures paid and got out of there. I got home and The Ex took The Boy for the night and after I put The Girl to bed it all hit me. I just lost it. I cried for a good 5 minutes. That entire day was SUCH crap with her. From the temper tantrums in the morning for not sharing with her brother, to her fit getting into the car because she didn't want a jacket on, and then she DID want the jacket on, and then NO! NO! NO! not the jacket!! And then ruining the group picture for everyone and then freaking RUNNING AWAY!!!, it was all just too much.

And then, finally, at 8:30pm...I had my glass of wine. And then another one. And then half another one which I couldn't finish because I got so tired I simply had to go to bed.

The end.