Alabaster Mom

DH's grandpa died and the funeral was held today. DH did not want to take the kid. I didn't want to take her either, but I felt that taking her was the right thing to do. Kids have to learn about these things sometime and plus, if we didn't take her along everyone would just ask where she was anyway. The good news is that there was not an open casket. P's grandpa died on Friday and was found on Tuesday, so that should answer all of your questions right there. Grandpa Ray was Catholic so it did not come as a suprise to us that the funeral was held at a Catholic church. I told A that this was an important day and that she needed to be QUIET. I was armed with 421 Nemo fruit snacks in hopes it would get us through the service. We had about 45 minutes of visitation time prior to the service, though. I chased A around so that P could visit with his relatives. She made several loops through the reception area, through the church, went careening past the casket, and tried to pl...

I've written in a previous entry about the trauma and drama I've endured in the course of grocery shopping with my daughter. She is two and some days her two-ness gets a little overwhelming. It's gotten to where I wait until we are subsisting on stale Wheat Thins and expired milk before I will go to the grocery store now. I get off work a couple hours before P does, so it only makes sense that I head to the store after work. This means that I do have to take the kid. Yesterday's shopping trip was almost as bad as this one , minus the pierced-bag-of-sugar incident. A had been in the cart for .039 seconds when I heard, "Where's the toys?" I resolved to stay out of the toy department if at all possible. That type of excursion never ends well. I brought her Doodle Pro into the store and suggested that she draw some stuff. That lasted less than five minutes. I needed shampoo and conditioner and soon found myself in an overcrowded aisle with other local resident...

I've been tagged by Green Bay Vegan for my first meme. Is this like a chain letter? Will horrible bad luck befall me if I don't participate? What if I can't think of 8 things? What if I don't have 8 friends to tag? Actually I definitely don't know 8 bloggers that I can tag, so I suppose I will have to do a half-assed job at this and then wait for the swarm of locusts or whatever. So here it goes: 1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts. 2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves. 3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. 4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. 5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog. Now the 8 true things. I can touch my tongue to my nose (without any involvement from my hands). And not just barely, either. Apparently I have a freakishly long t...

So, let's say, just for the sake of argument, that you invited one of your sisters to come to your home for a visit. And let's say your sister sent you a list of possible flights for this trip. Suppose you are looking at the list and notice that she initially flies out of the nation's capital. This makes sense, seeing as how she lives there and all. Then suppose you scroll down and notice that her flight arrives in . . . Fort Lauderdale. You think this is odd because you live in the midwest and Fort Lauderdale is not, in fact, "on the way." Then you scroll down a bit further and notice that her connecting flight (to the land of cows and corn) doesn't leave Fort Lauderdale until three days later. That's quite the layover, you think. What does it all mean, you wonder? Is the midwest so boring that a detour to the land of thongs and wickedness and debauchery is required? Hmmm. (I should add that I've never been to Florida, so I am basing what I know about...

It's the summer of 1999. I'm pregnant. P and I are vacationing in Myrtle Beach with my family. We find ourselves at an outlet mall and soon wander into a Carter's outlet. I'm far enough along that I've started to feel confident about buying stuff for the baby. I pick out a green frog made by Gund. It has a bell/chime in its roly-poly tummy and the noise just makes me smile somehow. It is perhaps the most satisfying sound I have ever heard and I cannot resist it - I toss it into our cart. A couple weeks later I begin to bleed. It's a Saturday. I had had some bleeding early in the pregnancy and I told my OB/GYN that something was wrong. I asked for an ultrasound. The doctor informed me that I was just a first-time mom and didn't need an ultrasound. He told me, "You're supposed to worry! That's what moms do." And besides, their office didn't have an ultrasound machine. But now they can't ignore what is obviously happening. I am sent ov...

Just wondering. Yesterday I read a blurb in Parents magazine that mentioned a new "Elmo Knows How You Feel" video in which Elmo's dad gets deployed overseas. As further proof that we are going insane, DH and I actually had this conversation: Me: Check this out. Elmo's dad is getting deployed. Him : No way. Really? Me: Seriously, I think he is too old for military duty. (Editorial note: after having seen "Elmo's Potty Time" (in which Elmo's dad is prominently featured) 12,756 times we feel we've had ample time to study Elmo and his family and can therefore extrapolate data as needed.) Him: Well, maybe he's in the Guard or something.

I'm 90% sure the kid is getting her two-year molars. We had hoped she would never get them. I mean, she seemed to be faring just fine without them. But as near as we can tell, at least one of them is thinking about breaking through the gums. It's hard to tell because when we check her mouth, well, she bites us. So I squirt some Orajel in there periodically and hope for the best. The thing that tipped us off was that A seems to have lowered her tolerance level to an almost imperceivable threshold - almost anything can and will offend her at this point. We have been dreading this day because we barely lived through the arrival of the cuspids (a process that took several months from start to finish). My sister-in-law is a dental hygienist and she mentioned that the cuspids (AKA "canines") have the longest roots and therefore take the longest to pop through. She reminded me that teeth have to come through bone and when you think about it that way, you can see why the kid ...

"So I said, don't even think about wearing white shoes after Labor Day." My kid, she's funny (in the ha-ha sort of way). Most of the time I can't tell if she's laughing with me or at me. Probably the latter. Last night I put her in time-out for biting me. When her two minutes were up, I knelt down and asked her to come over and apologize. I could tell she found the whole scene to be pretty amusing. She gave me her sing-song apology ("sooooorrrr-ry ma-ma") and then put her index finger in the middle of my chin and said, "You're pretty!" All along I've been thinking that she is headed for a career on the stage, but now she has me wondering if she is destined to go into politics. This is sort of a random blog but I wanted to catalog a few of the things A has been saying because she is growing up at a lightning pace and it will only be matter of time until she is in college, blowing our money on microbrews. Darned kid. When I pull her o...

My niece is gone and my five-day weekend is even goner, so it's back to work I go. We had an eventful week. We attended two 4th of July parties, visited an amusement park, went swimming, went to a farmer's market, saw a movie, went on a nature walk, went to church, and attended a pow wow. A passed two minor milestones during her cousin's visit: she got her first haircut and she rode her first amusement park ride. Oh, and she also held a frog if that counts at all. My niece is a great kid. She's bright and funny, and she also helps keep her cousin entertained. I learned at the beginning of the visit that my niece is obsessed with Webkinz . She had some spending money that my sister sent along so she hatched a plot whereby she would hoard the money until the last day and blow it on Webkinz. I let her purchase one Webkinz during her visit after she mumbled something about how she only had a couple. After the purchase, she admitted to having nearly a dozen of them (the numb...

The weekend was pretty chaotic. On Friday I received a check for some stock that I sold back to my employer, so we decided to go out to dinner and then head to a car dealership to (gasp) look at some mini-vans. I compared various features while A picked flowers for the sales guy. She kept telling him to put the flowers in his bucket (some would call it a pocket but I see no need to split hairs here). The dealership was about to close so we decided to come back on Saturday. I was torn between two models (both were Grand Caravans, though). One model was two grand more but had lots of extra features, such as the side doors opening and closing at the push of a button. The other model was less expensive, but had fewer miles on it. Quelle dilemma. On Saturday morning I took A to a play group while P stained the deck. I asked some of the other moms for an opinion on the two mini-vans but the ones who drive mini-vans wouldn't admit it and the others gave me a look that said: I'm sorry ...