girlfiend

1. F wanted an orange for breakfast. Instead he got rotini with butter and cheese, a plum and an orange popsicle.

2. I won $5 in a box of Cheerios.

I accidentally*  rearranged our family room, the upstairs parlor, yesterday after submitting pictures to a design website. I was worried about submitting the pictures to design snobs but the commenters left some very good advice and only one person was outright mean. Several people were actually complimentary, which made me feel a little less discouraged by the mess. I decluttered a bit, moved things around and the room now looks more like a family room and less like a disaster.

Of course, a few hours after the room looked  better and I felt good about it, my laptop died. Again. Which is especially irritating since I bought an impulse buy desk at a flea market last weekend, specifically to protect the laptop from my grabby-handed kids.

Now I’m wondering if instead of focusing on my bedroom, a room that I don’t spend many waking hours in, I should paint the parlor. The internet suggested blue.  I like blue.

I love this house.  It’s too big for us, and too expensive in the winter, but I love it.

* I say accidentally because that room was not on the master list.

The baby finally started cruising a little bit. He doesn’t appear to have any interest in actually walking yet, but he seems to enjoy standing and moving to get to toys. Like his older brother when he was a baby, one of his favorite activities is standing at a table and throwing anything on it to the floor. Then he likes to bang on the table for good measure.

He has started to embrace baby (well, ASL)  signs. At his one year appointment when the doctor asked if he had at least two words I said yes, but really I meant he’d said mama and dada a few times when he may or may not have been talking about us. But now he has eat, more, all done, and milk in his repertoire. I’m trying to add in drink, yes, no, please and thank you. Any suggestions for signs you found useful?

He’s pretty damn funny too. One of his favorite activities is crawling away from me full speed, looking back to make sure I’m chasing him. He laughs uproariously the whole time. It’s not as funny when I’m trying  to change his diaper.

I fear that he’s going to be quite the handful when he does start walking. He’s already a bit of a daredevil, and will go down single steps head first. He’s attempted (and failed) to climb a ladder at the playground and spends most of his playground time climbing up the slide.  He’s no dummy though- he got a little too big for his britches when it came to going up stairs, and after falling backwards once or twice he’s left the big staircases for the big people, and only tackles 3 steps at a time.

He’s surprisingly good at playing ball. He got the hang of it a few months ago and his skills have improved. He’s not so great with the catching, but he throws well and with some accuracy.

Eating isn’t going as well as it had been. He’s been pickier about what he wants and will sometimes throw things to the floor in a rage if I choose the wrong one. But the baby signs are helping me figure out what he wants, and when I do get it wrong,  he’s beginning to push my hand away instead of waiting until it hits the tray. He’s pretty vocal about his preferences and points for emphasis. He is a very good pointer. He’ll point to the box of cheerios then point to his tray, letting me know exactly where he wants them.

When he’s not sick or teething he is a very good sleeper. He naps well and sleeps through the night most of the time. I love him so.

He’s standing up for himself more. When his brother harasses him he’ll often shove him out of the way. He also likes his brother more. They play nicely together sometimes, which gives me a bit of a break.

He loves to have his teeth brushed. Loves it. He cries when I take the toothbrush away.

He looks like me. I appreciate that.

He continues to be the best baby ever. People constantly tell me how easy going and pleasant he is and ask if he ever cries. (The answer is sometimes.) He is a flirt and a cuddlebug and he is almost always content. He is the baby that makes me want another one, but I am not foolish and understand that I will never have a baby as wonderful as this one. I also understand that his baby perfection will probably not grow with him into toddlerhood and I will most likely be stuck with another cranky, stubborn three year old in the future. But I will love him just the same, and at least I’ll have his idyllic babyhood to remember him by.

We have so many, that after five years I let my subscription to Real Simple lapse. There may be a few I’m forgetting.

1.  Metropolitan Home

2. Elle Decor

3. Self

4. Good Housekeeping

5. Woman’s Day (was a subscription to the now defunct Home)

6. Esquire

7. Wood

8. Boating Life

9. Martha Stewart Living

10. Yachting

11. Kiwi

12. Parents

13. Parenting

14. Family Fun (was a subscription to the now defunct Wondertime)

15. Organic Gardening

16. Old House Journal

17. Gourmet ( not exactly free. it’s through B’s MS bike race- he could get $12 back, but I like the magazine)

18. Newsweek  (my dad gets it for B for Christmas every year)

It rained on Friday. I wanted to go to the Y, but F said, “The problem, mama, is that I don’t like it there,” so we decided to stay home. The baby took an early nap and F was playing nicely with his trains so I figured I’d try to knock off the easiest item on my list, organizing the books by color.

Of course T woke up after 40 minutes and there were great stacks of books everywhere. It was a disaster. F’s trains knocked stacks over and T ripped pages out of an already falling apart dictionary. I had to climb on the couch and tables and windowsill to get books up and out of the way. I wasn’t quite sure how to divide the books between the two bookcases and had tried a few different arrangements before deciding on what looked best. When I finally got all of the colors up and in order I had about 100 books that still needed to be shelved. I had to go back to work, arranging and rearranging the stacks to accommodate everything. All together, with a Margarita break, dinner and bedtime, it took about 9 hours to get everything up on the shelves.

Beige and white dominated, followed by black and brown and blue. I have a decent amount of red books, orange made a good showing, and yellow, with the inclusion of cliff’s notes has a small section. I do not have a lot of green books. I only found two pink, which is surprising, considering how much chick lit I read.

I think it looks pretty good.

There are a billion things around here that need to get done, but these are a few of the things I want to do this summer. I think this list may be overly ambitious, but if I accomplish one of the items on the list it will be better than nothing.

1. Refinish or paint trash-picked mirrors and hang them
2. refinish or paint vanity and move upstairs
3. get extra computer out of the office into parlor
4. learn to use a sewing machine again since the first time didn’t take.

5. Improve my bedroom. It looks like shit:
a. get bedroom furniture for clothing storage
b.replace bedroom art
c. get a rug for the bedroom
d. curtains

6. hang pictures in baby’s room
7. refinish or paint dresser in baby’s room and replace the hardware
8.curtains in baby’s room
9. reorganize storage in baby’s room
10.reorganize upstairs closets
11. frame unframed pics in F’s room

12. replace crappy ceiling fixtures in upstairs parlor and F’s room
13.organize books by color

14. reorganize/declutter laundry room storage

15. figure out a way to make the office less of an eyesore and more of a usable space

I like this one, but I need to replace the header which means I need to install my outdated copy of photoshop on one of the computers. and then I need to learn how to use it.

unless someone wants to make me a header. anyone?

I like the double sidebar but I see what you mean about it being all the way over to the left. I’d prefer the content in the middle but I’m having trouble finding a free widget ready wordpress theme with a design I like. I like a double sidebar because I can’t stand sidebars that stretch all the way to the bottom of the page and I don’t really want to lose anything in my sidebar. It’s a good thing I don’t have ads. I could try to collapse the links.

I’m being asked to read Pat the Bunny again. Well, not just again, but again, again, again. Read it. Again. Read it. Mama read it.

okay, I will.

I updated wordpress last week and now all of the themes I attempted to install in the past actually work. I think I’ll try this one for a bit. If you’re reading the feed click over and let me know if you hate it.

La la Loush left a comment on my housewife’s lament post that pretty much summed everything up.  You can read the whole comment in its entirety here, but the part that got me was this: People, mostly men will try to find solutions for you because that’s what they think you want. You know there isn’t much of a solution, but I sympathise and know what you are going through.

After reading my post Boyfiend was pretty upset. Despite the fact that I tried to make it clear in the post that Boyfiend was not to blame for how disconnected I felt, he took the post personally and offered solutions. There are no solutions. I have been breastfeeding and/or pregnant for four years and mothering full time. My interactions with the adult world are pretty limited. It is what it is. He can help with the kids and give me time to myself (which he’s done quite generously this past week) but it still doesn’t make the situation different.

This weekend we went to my mom’s house at the beach. It is never restful or relaxing for me to be at her house, but Boyfiend has a great time there,  the Fiendling loves it, and I always enjoy the time spent on the beach. My mother wants to be helpful, but she always fall short. She wants to give me a break but she doesn’t know how and usually ends up creating more work for me. And the insults, my god, the barrage of insults. They never end.

The first evening wasn’t too bad. But sometime in the middle of the night the baby woke up coughing. And it wasn’t just a normal baby cough it was the bark of a seal. Each cough made him cry and the more he cried the louder the coughs became. He was wheezing and crying and barking and clutching his throat and shoving his fingers in his mouth and distressed and it was awful. I suspected he had Croup and went down to use my mother’s computer to comfirm.

She was passed out on the couch with her bitey little dog with the TV on volume 7000. It was deafening, but I was afraid to turn it down for fear she’d wake up and I’d have to involve her. Google told me I was right and I went back upstairs prepared to spend the rest of the night in a steamy shower. But B had T asleep on his chest when I returned and the rest of the night was bad, but not as bad as I was expecting. T woke coughing and crying regularly throughout the night, but each time he was easily settled.

The next morning my mother watched the kids so B and I could sleep in a little. I came down around 9 and immediately called our pediatrician’s office. I left a message with the on-call operator. In the interim T was ready for a nap and F was ready for the beach so I prepared both of the kids and got our stuff ready our walk to the beach. A trip across the street to my mom’s neighbor’s house to use a pump for the stroller tires was necessary and through a series of events that Mix jokes sounded like a drug deal, later that afternoon we ended up getting the baby a prescription for steroids from my mom’s neighbor’s girlfriend’s cousin’s husband rather than taking him to the city to our pediatrician or to the emergency room. The neighbor’s girlfriend’s cousin’s husband is an ER doctor with three kids of his own. He told us that the steroids should help the cough but that it might get worse before it gets better and that we should expect a high fever.

After helping us with our sick baby the neighbor and his girlfriend  invited us over for dinner that night. After the kids were in bed we went across the street to join them and their other guests. It was nice to be in adult company enjoying adult beverages without small children running or crawling about, but I wasn’t completely there. I knew that across the street my baby was sleeping, but he probably wouldn’t be sleeping for long. I knew that I would have another night of interrupted sleep and that it might be worse than the night before.

The reason for the story is that it’s yet another example of me not getting a break. Even though in theory I had a break while my mom was at the house with two sleeping children so B and I could have drinks with friends, I couldn’t fully engage. I was on edge, waiting for the phone call that the baby was awake. I was on edge, anticipating the restless night ahead. My time, even when I have it, isn’t really my own.

It is what it is and I don’t expect or want anything different. I am completely wrapped up in my children and right now that’s the way it has to be. They are little. They need me. They need us.  I don’t want a different life than the one I have. I don’t need solutions. There are no solutions. I’m sad right now, overwhelmed by motherhood and the weight of staying home with two small children. I love my children and I enjoy my children.  But  children get sick and need attention. They pull and tug at me and cry for things they want. They need to be occupied and active and sometimes need my undivided attention. They don’t always listen and they don’t always sleep. When it was a two year old and a baby it was easier. But my baby isn’t  a baby anymore. He’s become a tiny little person with wants and needs and preferences. Newborns are easy. One year olds are work. This stage is more difficult than the last and it can be suffocating sometimes.