One Perfect Mess

Archive for November, 2009

It wasn’t me that stepped in a puddle while in the kitchen in the wee hours of the morning and upon checking to make sure it wasn’t pee from one critter or another walked away without bothering to get it up.

It also isn’t me that has no plans for dinner this week or groceries in the house. But if it WERE me, I’d totally have a justifiable excuse because c’mon people, it was just Thanksgiving and certainly I shouldn’t still be having to do all this thinking about food.

It was most definitely not me last night that was completely confused by Google Wave. I would never have sat there staring at the screen in confusion for twenty minutes. I’m not that old.. right?

I came to this realization a few days ago. I wanted to back this claim up with pictures, but I’ll never get things together enough for that.

The Peanut has already managed to chew pieces of wood off of both his cribs.

The Weebles nibbles bites off when she eats. If you hand her an apple she will give it back to you when she is done with a dozen little tiny nibbles all over the apple. She does the same thing with celery and potatoes.

Yesterday the Peanut crawled between the sofa and the wall. We were afraid we’d have to move the whole thing to get him out.

While they certainly do NOT sleep during the day, they have been known to be wide awake half the night.

I’m considering looking into buying a large wheel for the living room so they can run off their energy in the afternoon….

My posts of late have been more twitter worthy than blog worthy and I feel bad about that. My on again off again depression has been dragging me down the last week or two and it has taken every ounce of everything I have to keep on keepin’ on where I absolutely have to. Some afternoons I’m pretty sure I’m going to collapse on the floor and never get up again. Bleh. I’m hoping the fog lifts soon and things look up. This is my favorite time of the year and I don’t want this bullshit depression to detract from that. Bring on the Xanax* people.

*I don’t actually know if Xanax is for anxiety/depression per se. I am woefully uneducated in the world of pharmaceuticals. So don’t go self prescribing based on me…

Thankful for my babies. Thankful for my husband. Thankful for my friends, IRL and bloggy. Thankful for sleeeeep.

I am a slave to the daytime routine on the days I am here by myself. Admittedly part of the reason I am so rigid regarding naps is that I crave a few minutes to just zone out. However, it is also crucial that the little people get the sleep they need or they turn into whiny PITAs. And I say that as only a mama who loves them can. So the double whammy of no time to myself + whiny children is enough to push me right over the edge into screamy mad mama behavior.

I have documented the Peanut’s sketchy daytime sleep record here many times. I seem to have hit on a delicate formula that works. After lunch I nurse him and put him in his sister’s old car seat, yeah it is pink gotaproblemwiththat?? He doesn’t know and I try not to take too many pictures… ahem. I have to turn on a specific episode I have TiVo’ed of Classical Baby and then I get his sister ready for her nap and we go upstairs for me to tuck her in. Yes, believe me I have tremendous guilt for essentially strapping my poor baby in and forcing him to watch TV but it is the only way he will sleep for any length of time. If I tuck him in upstairs in his room (during the day only, at night he’s fine) he wakes up after 15 or 20 minutes and will not fall back asleep. No amount of crying, playing, cajoling, nursing, or witch doctor-y will change this fact. I wouldn’t let him cry it out anyway because that isn’t my thing, but believe me, not gonna happen. This little guy is STUBBORN. The show is 20 minutes long, I have to manually restart the damn thing (TiVo doesn’t have a repeat function, although I can’t really imagine why it would..) and if I accidentally let it run out some damn Elmo commercial comes on that is loud as hell and wakes him. Then it is game over. So I spend his entire nap (which with this plan lasts 2+ hours) keeping a close eye on the TV and restarting as soon as it nears the end with bomb squad precision.

What quirky rituals do you or your children require?

Today was one of those no nap days. So.. yeah. I’m pretty much done for. Night all.

We spent the weekend with my in laws. The purpose of the trip was two fold. Saturday was my father in law’s birthday and we wanted to celebrate it with him and Saturday was also the Asheville Christmas parade. We tried to go to the parade last year but assumed it was the weekend after Thanksgiving instead of the weekend before and missed out.

We got into Asheville a little after ten Friday night. Peanut did great and slept the entire four hours or so we were in the car. Weebles stayed up until her usual bedtime around eight thirty so she only got in about two hours of sleep. When we got there they both woke up and were immediately thrown into excited ooooh goodie look it is SiSi, Granddaddy and Uncle Yama! mode. This was the first time Peanut really seemed to take in his surroundings there and their house has all sorts of interesting things to look at. As a result we didn’t manage to get them settled back down until nearly one AM. Ouch. Someone that doesn’t have kids might think “well at least they’ll sleep in the next morning…” and to that I say YOU FOOL! That is not how the game is played. Peanut was up and at ‘em at his usual five AM.

We spent two hours at the parade and both kids were wild the whole time. Then the Peanut grabbed a twenty minute catnap on the way to lunch. After lunch we headed back to my in laws’ and the Weebles took a nice hour + nap until five or so. Peanut meanwhile refused further napping and played. We headed to dinner around six thirty and the kids held up remarkably well for having had such a busy day. Peanut passed out in the car on the way home and we managed to change him into his jammies and tuck him in all while he still slept. Weebles however kept going on strong throughout the presents and cake and called it a night around ten.

Not surprisingly both kids were whiny basketcases all day Sunday. Totally exhausted from the previous day they weren’t able to handle much of anything so we piled into the car fairly early to head home. My mood wasn’t too far off from theirs so it probably wasn’t the most pleasant ride for my poor husband with three whiny folks in the car. Thankfully bedtime went well and we’re back into our regular (still up at five AM… groan) routine. Just in time to do it all again for Thanksgiving!

A cinnamon roll. Cup of milk.

A handful of cheddar bunnies and a pack of dried fruit.

Two lollipops. They were organic, does that help? No?

Two mini candy canes.

Three french fries and probably a quarter of a cup of ketchup.

Chocolate milkshake.

An orange.

Two and a half french fries and another quarter cup of ketchup. Cup of milk.

The icing off a piece of chocolate birthday cake. It was vegan, does that help? No?

The sad thing is, I’m pretty sure she did better than me yesterday. Sigh.

The Peanut really got into the Christmas parade today. Laughing and waving at the passing floats.

Then again, maybe he knows something I don’t about this guy: