Alabaster Mom

A is an only child (well, technically speaking, she does have a biological half-brother, but she is *our* only child). She is our first and, as far as we know, our last. She was the long, long, long awaited baby who brought an end to years of heartbreak and longing. And, it goes without saying that she is exceedingly cute. As such, she has been photographed daily since her birth. Sometimes multiple times a day. It's gotten to the point where she now mumbles "cheese" and doesn't even look up. This morning she is wearing a new fall outfit so I thought I would take a quick snapshot. But here's the problem: Pingu is on. The kid is obsessed with Pingu . If you've never heard of Pingu , count your blessings. Seriously. He appears on the "Sprout on demand" channel on our cable system. They broadcast the shows in sets of three, because they are only about 6 minutes long. While the shows do get replaced by different episodes from time to time, we still get P...

Our Caller ID has started displaying in Spanish. We have no idea why. Our Caller Id is a separate box that sits on our kitchen counter (we don't have one of them new-fangled phones that displays Caller ID, ya'll). Yesterday it started telling me that I had 9 Llamadas. P says that the kid must have pressed too many buttons and somehow switched the language. I dunno - I mean, the thing only has three buttons. But, who knows. I took French for something like 7 years and don't know any Spanish at all, but I feel pretty confident that I can figure out what my Caller ID is trying to tell me nonetheless. This little episode did bring a little thought into my mind, though. Why would Caller ID ever need to display in a different language? At least not in the U.S., right? If I lived in Germany I would expect my Caller ID to display in German. Fine. Now, I am not one of these people who beats a drum saying, "If you live in this country you'd better speak the lan...

I stepped on the scale this morning. It was not good news. I even resorted to stripping off my pajamas and taking off my glasses to see if that would help. Short of blowing my nose, I had nothing else to get rid of. It seems I have fallen off the wagon. Not only did I fall off the wagon, I think the wagon backed up and ran over me a few times. I've been eating too much and I had hoped that the fat cells in my ass wouldn't notice. But alas, they did. So, I am recommiting myself to the Weight Watchers program today. Maybe if I say it out loud, so to speak, I can hold myself accountable. I'm going to head back to the meetings and get rid of this extra weight (I haven't weighed in since early August). I'm going to get back to my goal weight by the time Short Stuff and I leave for our Thanksgiving trip to VA. I started WW in September of 2005, when the kid was just four months old. I became a lifetime member in December of 2006. Unlike most moms who lose pregna...

I think you'll agree that this is a flattering portrait (that's my friend Kathy on the left). I thought Dave had already taken the photo and I was saying, "Did you get my boobs in that shot?" Just making my mother proud every chance I get, you know how it goes. I'm going to refer to my friends by name in this post because it's too confusing to do otherwise. They are welcome to sue me. However, they all know that I just bought a furnace on Friday and therefore . . . what's that old saying about blood and a rock? The wedding was a lot of fun as was the reception. P could've come but didn't want to expend the effort to find a sitter. My friend Kim agreed to be my date, though (I also spent the night at her house, as I live about 120 miles from the wedding location). A bunch of our friends from the rescue were there. Apparently the bride was expecting some questionable behavior from our group, because she sat us at two tables that were about as far fr...

[the kind of lady who yells "I farted!" in public, but anyway . . . ] Dig the glittery cha-cha shoes Short Stuff and I had an interesting evening together. To back up a bit, I had an appointment after work with my optometrist. It was a good time, as always. I am convinced that the whole "air puff in the eye" test is actually not a valid test at all but rather an elaborate practical joke carried about by optometrists the world over. Then comes the "this one or that one" test. You know you don't want to fail this test ( Oh my God, what if they both look the same?!?!). If you do, you're walking out of there with glasses thicker than your forearm. (Brian Regan has a funny routine about this. I tried to find a clip of it on YouTube but all I could find was the audio , accompanied by some weird anime crap. But anyway, it's funny.) Anyway, I guess I passed because he informed me that my prescription was the same as before. But then, not content to le...

We need a new furnace. And a new A.C. I know I said that A not taking a nap was the worst thing that could happen, but spending $5,000 on a new furnace and air conditioner has to be right up there, too. The trouble started two summers ago. Our central air went out on a sweltering day (which is always the case, right?) We called the HVAC guys. They came out, took a look at our compressor/condenser unit (the big thing that sits outside), and announced that it had died from . . . urine. I guess we had never paid much attention but our dogs (and foster dogs) had peed on the unit so many times that the coils had eroded. Sa-weet! So the HVAC guys jury-rigged our AC to get it working again and announced that eventually we would need to spend $367,490,231 on a new one. So since that day we knew our AC was living on borrowed time. No huge surprise when it stopped working at the end of this summer. We decided just to suck it up ("it" being the oppressive heat) and have it fixed in the ...

I promise that I'll try to make this my last post about bodily functions - at least for a little while. Last night A and I were hanging out at home while P was working. As usual, she wasn't wearing any pants (no diaper, no underwear, no nothin '). She was wearing a long knit purple dress because we had gone to church and to a baptism earlier in the day. Earlier in the evening she had peed in the potty and we had celebrated accordingly. I was watching Extreme Makeover Home Edition out of the corner of one eye and watching the kid drag toys around out of the other. And then it happened. She was walking across the living room and paused for the tiniest fraction of a second - and then kept going. Behind her lay a piping hot turd on the carpet. It just flew out from under her skirt and hit the floor like the newspaper hits the front porch. She looked back as if to say, "Huh, I wonder how that got there?" She was not outraged or embarrassed or anything close to it. At t...

The kid would not nap yesterday. You may think I am exaggerating as far as the gravity of this situation, but I would seriously place it somewhere between nuclear war and the toy recall. The day started out just fine. It was a chilly morning and she was excited to learn that she would get to wear a brand new outfit. I had a rescue event to attend so P told her that he would take her to Chuck E. Cheese. Better him than me - I generally avoid it at all costs. Just walking through the door makes my face start to twitch, so I think it's best if this is an activity shared between father and daughter. After the rescue event I did a little shopping and then came home. P was dead-eyed and solemn. The afternoon, it seemed, had gone downhill. The kid spent two hours in her bed but would not sleep. And now she was in a fine, fine mood. And by "fine" I mean "insane." As the afternoon turned into evening, A became more and more delirious. She fell repeatedly, too tired to co...

The potty training process seems to have ground to a halt. Last night the kid was standing on one of her plastic chairs and for reasons known only to her . . . peed on it. She alerted her dad and he alerted me so that I could, in his words, "sterilize the chair." A seemed unconcerned about the whole thing. We were saying things like, "Don't do that, it's kinda gross." And she would just repeat, "It's kinda gross." She spent the rest of the evening trying to shut herself in the bathroom. We don't know what she wants to do in there by herself, but we know we don't want her doing it. (It probably involves flushing un-flushable stuff down the toilet.) She was in rare form all evening. She really seemed to be bucking for a time-out - it was just a matter of which offense would finally put me and/or her father over the edge. The next problem we ran into last night was that she wouldn't go to sleep. She has been in her "big girl bed...

Apparently A's fixation with body parts and bodily functions has been leading somewhere: she peed in the potty for the first time yesterday. Hallelujah! She kept asking to go to the bathroom (which has been going on for a while now), but the thing is - she never pees. She says she went, waves a huge wad of toilet paper in the vicinity of her privates, and flushes it in the big potty. The flushing seems to be the focal point for her. Our water bill is going to be three trillion dollars this month. So on Saturday afternoon we decided just to leave her pants off. We figured either she'd go in the potty or she'd pee on the floor. I've been fostering dogs for over seven years so it's not like my carpet is not acquainted with urine. And wonder of wonders - she peed in the potty! She wanted to tell her Meemaw about it so we called my mom and A delivered the big news. Then we called her Aunt Craggy (Craggy is not my sister's name but that's what A calls her - I hav...

I love my husband to pieces but . . . he's no comedian. He says something genuinely funny about twice a year (coincidentally, I also get to hear "you look nice today" on a semi-annual basis - usually once in the summer and once around Christmastime). Apparently the planets are in alignment today because he made a funny! We spent the morning at a local amusement park and then headed to lunch at one of our favorite restaurants. After we finished eating, the kid demanded to be able to sit in her father's lap. She wiggled and bounced around as he attempted to pay the bill. All that was left to do was for him to sign the receipt, but she was making it difficult. Finally he said, "Hold still, I have to color." This is how your brain works when you have a two-year-old. The funniest thing he ever said was completely unintentional on his part. A few years ago we had a small stereo system with a three-CD changer. One day it simply began refusing to play CDs. P dutiful...

A is hopelessly, desperately obsessed with chap stick and lip gloss. The problem is that I also have a fixation and must keep my lips moist at all times. I have tubes of lip gloss everywhere. I still love Bonne Bell LipSmackers and I don't care who knows it. One day I let the kid use a tube of mint chap stick while we were in the car (I gave in after she chanted: "PUT IT ON THE LIPS" a hundred times in a row). At first she did okay with it. She smeared it from her chin to her nose and halfway out to her ears, but it seemed okay because it was colorless (greasy, but colorless). Because she is two and her two-year-old brain couldn't stand it any longer, eventually she shoved her thumb into the goo and essentially ruined the whole tube. So now I don't carry any in the car. If I want to use some from my purse, I have to put my head down and apply it surreptitiously. It's kind of comical - I'm willing to hide in order NOT to deprive my lips of the grape-y g...

We've decided to buy a "big girl" bed for A. I'm switching her room over to a doggie theme (the current theme is some combination of Muppets and Sesame Street). I tell ya, it's hard to find dog-themed stuff that is not made specifically for boys. I am fighting the "pink princess" stuff as hard as I can. If she wants a room full of pink junk she can pay for it herself. Before she was born we didn't get an opportunity to find out if she would be a boy or a girl, so I decided to decorate the room in primary colors. The new room will still have primary colors, but we're switching things up a little. And, of course, we're removing the crib and changing table. I wonder if there is anything more bittersweet than buying a grown-up bed for a little girl. We talked it up a lot and she was pretty excited about it. I laid her down on a comfy-looking mattress at the furniture store. "What do you think? Is it comfortable?" "No." So we b...