Alabaster Mom

I have a new nephew! He was born yesterday afternoon - I think my Mom said that he was 7 lb 10 oz (same as Short Stuff!) but she was a little bit sketchy on details (she was tired after a long flight). My baby sister lives in Oklahoma (where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain) so my mom flew out there from DC. My sister was supposed to be induced on Thursday but ended up with a c-section instead. I'm surprised that he came a day early but I have to wonder if the calculations were always a bit off. If I know my sister, there is no way in hell that she had any idea of the first date of her last period when she first went to her OB/GYN (she is extremely bright but not what you'd call the model of organization). She hadn't planned to have a baby until after she finished graduate school, but she and her fiance (now husband) had just moved and her birth control pills were in a box somewhere and she "wasn't sure where." So, the little guy wasn't pla

Yesterday I escorted my little tabby boy to the Bridge. My Franklin, Frank, Frankadoodle, Doodle. He was just shy of his 13th birthday. I sure wish he could have been with me longer. I obtained Frank via an ad in the paper. Some rural folks had a huge litter of identical tabby kittens. My mom came with me to pick one out. I wanted a male, because at that time in my life I didn't have a lot of cash and neuters are cheaper than spays. The kittens were running around everywhere so my mom and I just started catching them at random. I kept the first male we caught, which turned out to be Frank. I recall that they charged me something like $10.00 for him, just to ensure that I wasn't going to do something nefarious with him, I suppose. Frank was always a social, outgoing kitty. He was such a naughty kitten. Somewhere I have a photo of him standing on his two hind legs, stretched waaaaay up in order to chew on an electrical cord that was plugged into the wall. He was also an alpha c

We're back from our big weekend "up north." Our group was comprised of 6 adults and 4 kids. I was the first to get a tick. I think I managed to obtain a passenger within an hour and a half of arriving at the cabin. I asked my friend (who is more outdoorsy than I am) to pluck it off my leg. I also made her promise that she would be my tick picker for the entire weekend, regardless of where a tick may latch on. She agreed, as any good friend would. I am way too prissy for this stuff. On Saturday we went to a local county park to do a little hiking. It was a beautiful day and there were photo ops in abundance. We foolishly brought strollers along and then found out that most of the trails were not strollerable (even for our rugged big-tired strollers). P's main job was to chase A around and keep her from plummeting to her death. Later, the kids napped and most of the adults (save one kidsitter) went tubing down the river that runs past the cabin. I don't think I had

So, if you had to think of the most dangerous household object that a toddler could possibly get his/her hands on, what would you pick? The fireplace poker? Yeah, me too. Which is why it's so baffling to me that my daughter's father let her play with ours just last night. We are going out of town ("up north") for the weekend which means that, as usual, I had a few hundred things to do in order to prepare for that. For whatever reason, my other half doesn't dedicate any mental resources at all to making sure that our our child has food to eat, clothes to wear, etc. Last night I told him that allllllll he had to do was to keep her occupied. That was it. He didn't have to bathe her or take her for a walk or do anything strenuous. He put up the baby gate so as to keep her corraled in the living room. I busied myself with packing, doing laundry, etc. I didn't hear much noise coming out of the living room so eventually I decided that I'd better check and see

Check out this bee-yoo-tiful dress that my mommy has for sale on etsy.com. She's going to start selling some of her creations there. I don't know how it is that I was born with no talents whatsoever (well, actually I have two: I'm a good speller and I can touch my tongue to my nose, but the second one is more of a freakish physical aberration), but my muddah is very talented. Another plug: my friend Carl is riding his bike to support a local Boys & Girls Club: Carl's donation page

I am in need of a new car. My 2000 Ford Explorer has 576,987,231,987 miles on it. As a volunteer for rescue I drive a lot. We're always picking up dogs and driving them hither and yon. Plus, my family lives in Virginia so we make that trek by car at least once a year. Not to mention all the weekend trips to Madison, Milwaukee, and "up north." We pack up and go somewhere any chance we get (fair warning: be sure that you never casually mention that you have a cabin somewhere if we are within earshot - we'll be on it like white on rice). Anyway, I love my Explorer but it's starting to exhibit some quirks. I think it's best to bid it adieu before stuff starts falling off. So, I started to do some research. Ideally, I'd like another SUV. Sorry to be so environmentally incorrect but I can't fit three Boxers and a toddler and a stroller into a Toyota Matrix and that's all there is to it. But SUVs are expensive and we are already saddled with the car payme

We got A one of those big kitchen playsets (my friend's sister was closing a preschool and sold a bunch of stuff). It didn't come with any supplies, so I ran over to Toys R Us (wasn't it Dave Barry who always called it "Toys Sure R Expensive?") and bought plastic fruits, plastic vegetables, plastic doughnuts, and a set of pink, purple, and yellow dishes. It took me a good half-hour to wrestle the dishes out of the plastic display box. The kitchen has been up and running for two days. As far as I can tell, there is no method to her madness. She stores the doughnuts in the sink and the pitcher of milk in the microwave. The dishes are in the refrigerator and the utensils are in the oven. She serves us "milk" from a little pitcher. We drink it out of tiny blue cups. I noticed that she usually takes a big swig out of the same pitcher from which she just served us. The kid has a lot to learn about proper food handling, I tell ya. She does provide good service,

I have never wanted to be one of those moms who schedules her kid to death (I think we all know parents like that). So we try to stick with one activity at a time. She's only two so anything we sign up for at this stage is really just for fun. I do think it's very important that she learns how to swim, so we'll tackle that when she's a little older (she took a "Daddy and Me" swim class with P when she was six months old). For the last six months she has been taking a developmental gymnastics class at The Little Gym. They have all sorts of fun equipment and A has a blast running around and jumping on stuff. P and I have been taking turns attending the class with her. Each week there has been a new skill to learn and practice. Here's the thing, though: she didn't learn any of them. She runs around and she runs her mouth and that's about the size of it. I told P that I'm pretty sure we'd better keep contributing to the kid's college fund b

Every week, the grocery shopping gets a little more nightmarish because of course I have to take the short one along. I look forward to it about like cancer patients look forward to chemotherapy. So it was with much dread and trepidation yesterday that I picked her up from daycare and headed to Ye Olde SuperWalmart. In addition to groceries we also needed a life jacket for A and some other stuff. The excursion started off innocently enough with the nice lady handing the nice toddler a nice yellow sticker. The kid stuck it on me and pulled it off a few times, and finally left it on my right boob. The trip went downhill from there. Eventually the cart fills up and that causes a problem because it means that she can turn around and reach stuff. I bribed her with some fruit snacks that I had brought along in my purse. She shoved them all in her mouth at once and resumed the manipulation and torture. She saw a small Dora ball and asked for it so in a momentary lapse of reason I gave it to h

P and I had a date last night. I think that's maybe the third one since the kid was born two years ago. We went to see Fountains of Wayne in concert. I'm the FOW fan - I think he was just along for the ride. I feel compelled to mention that I was a fan BEFORE "Stacy's Mom." I noticed that I was one of the few at the show who knew all the words to ALL the songs. I don't know if that makes me a nerd or what. I think a lot of the Johnny-come-latelys were just there for "Stacy's Mom." FOW did a lot of stuff off their new CD but they also threw in two of my old favorites: "Survival Car" and "Radiation Vibe." (Don't it make you wanna get some sun, shine on, shine on, shine onnnnnnnnnnn . . . . ) The most notable thing about them when you see them in person is that they are all skinny. Concave, almost. Earlier in the evening I thought I saw Adam Schlesinger walking around but he had sunglasses on so I wasn't sure. Later I saw

I picked up my new foster dog on Sunday. His name is Odin. Odin is an odd name but I'm always grateful when a dog shows up who is not named Rocky. Just a note to all the Boxer owners out there: if you think it's funny to name your Boxer after an actual Boxer, you are not the first person to think of this. I am pretty sure that 20% of all Boxer dogs on the planet are named Rocky. And if not Rocky, Tyson. Bor-ring! Odin is a nice dog and he gets along with my boys and my kid, so that's as much as I can ask for. He was surrendered by a family who said they were moving into an apartment and that Odin exceeded the allowable weight limit. First they said they had to move because their child is ill and they needed to be near a specific medical facility. Later they said they were moving because of a job change. Remember, kids, when you tell a lie, you have to try to remember what you said so that you can be consistent with your lying. I took Odin to the vet yesterday. He is three a

We're back from our big weekend. Short Stuff and I had a lot of fun. We ate lunch at a zany, kid-oriented type place and much to my amazement, she actually ate. We then checked into our hotel room. The hotel was economical and, judging from the telephone in our room, was also conveniently located in 1981. I thought our room seemed clean but then later I started noticing that the soles of our feet were getting dirty. And then I found an old M&M in a corner. I'm sure I do not need to tell you that if the short one had found it first, she would be digesting it as I type this. We got unpacked and it was time for her to nap. But she couldn't seem to handle that task while I was in the same room. So I pretended to sleep. No dice. "Poooooopy diiiiiiiaper," she announced. I changed her and we started the process over. Finally I grabbed a People magazine (because I'm all about the intellectual stuff) and sat on the toilet lid for about 20 minutes, turning the pages

At last, Friday cometh. I'm taking Short Stuff out of town for the weekend - we're going to a dog event about 2 1/2 hours away. I volunteer for Boxer Rescue and the rescue will have a booth at the event. Of course, A and I will be no help. We are just going down to supervise. (If any of my fellow rescue volunteers are reading this, I'm just kidding! Ha ha! Ha?) We are also picking up a new foster dog while we are there. I haven't been fostering as much since the kid was born, but we still take them as the need arises. For obvious reasons I can only take dogs that are known to be good with children. Fortunately, my favorite breed is known to be good with kids in general. This particular dog is coming into rescue because his owners are moving to an apartment and Odin exceeds the allowable weight limit. He is three years old. If nothing else, I'm sure he will keep Gideon out of my hair for a while. Gideon is also three. My other dog, Karl, is nine and t

Last night I took A for our nightly stroll. She has this tricycle: She knows how to neither steer nor pedal so how it works is that she sits on it and I push her. Oh, and she rings the bell periodically. The other thing is that she requires me to keep both hands on the handle as I push the bike. She busts me on this all the time because she watches my shadow on the pavement and can tell if I have both hands on there. "Hold your hands!" she demands. I actually push her pretty far - our nightly "walks" take about 30-45 minutes. Last night we were about ten blocks from our house when she refused to sit on the bike any longer. I tried everything to get her back on the bike. The kicker is that she also refused to walk. She wanted me to carry her. It didn't take long before I grew tired of holding 28 pounds on my hip while pushing the bike with my free hand. I decided to put her on my shoulders. As I was lifting her over my head I thought I detected an aroma. "Pi

I promise this will be my last post about vomit. But, in case you wondered, DH and I did indeed catch the plague from our rugrat. He has a second job tending bar at a nearby restaurant. As he was headed off to work Sunday evening he kept asking me if it was hot in the house. It wasn't - a storm had just blown through and in fact it was almost chilly. At around 9 he was sent home because it seems they didn't want him around the food if he was going to be power-hurling in their bathroom. I did the hot/cold/hot/cold thing all night on Sunday and by Monday morning I felt like death warmed over. So, we both decided to stay home. And being the fabulous parents we are, we sent the kid off to daycare anyway. The conversation went something like this: "I don't feel like chasing her" "Me neither." "Well, who's gonna drive her there?" The next hurdle was getting her dressed (my other half doesn't know the basic rules of fashion, like that pink and

Like every parent from the dawn of time until now, I have convinced my daughter that I can fix stuff by kissing it. She slams her hand in the kitchen drawer (which, for the record, I have told her 8,674 times to stay out of) and I kiss it and make it better. She smacks her head on a corner (which she does with alarming frequency) and I kiss it. "I bonk a head!" she exclaims. She also makes me kiss her feet all the time. Let me just say that my kid is pretty sweaty and she's definitely lost that sweet newborn smell of yore. So then the inevitable happened. She has just gotten over a case of the stomach flu. The vomiting has stopped, but it has been replaced by something almost as bad - diarrhea. And, you know, that kind of thing starts to cause a wee bit of discomfort after a while. I was changing A's diaper last night when she said, "Mama, owie in the heinie. Kiss it." Ummmm. I did what any good mommy would do. I air-kissed her little round butt and said, &q

Good boy, Karl I wanted to give a little shout-out to my blackbird, Karl. He gets nervous and chirps, hence the nickname. Today he is 9. Well, technically we don't know his birthday because the people who dumped him at the shelter didn't speak English. We've had him for 8 1/2 years. He's a great dog, as long as you don't touch his paws (he freaks out and acts as though you've come at him with a machete).

Last night I was finishing off an orange popsicle and watching "So You Think You Can Dance" when I heard Short Stuff whining and complaining about something. "Your daughter is calling you," I said to my other half. A few seconds later I heard him yelling and knew it wasn't good. As I jogged into her room the smell of vomit hit me like a speeding bus. Ugh. Believe it or not, this is only the second round of stomach flu we've encountered in the past two years. We weren't entirely surprised because we knew that one of the kids at daycare had been puking two days before. When I was a kid, I always wondered how my mom could clean up my vomit. My mom said that when it's your own kid's vomit, somehow you can just do it. My nephew Liam once threw up in my hand but that's a whole other story. As a kid I was a tough case because I could never tell when I was going to hurl. Sometimes I still can't tell. It just comes on FAST. One time my poor mom ha