Breathe In…

…Breathe Out.

I finally feel like I am getting a handle on everything around here. And J. is coming home. Tonight. In a mere 2 hours! (He has been traveling this week, again.) Life is good.

My God-sent sitter, Denise, has totally come through for us again this week. She pitched in an extra day this week AND she is sitting for the girls on Saturday night so we get another date night. For anyone keeping track at home, that is two Saturdays in a row. I know. Right?

So I have managed to get five of my six projects finished while J. was away this week. I’m not saying that it is difficult to work when J. is home, but…let’s just say, I don’t get much done when he is here. I feel guilty. Plus, our time together is so very scarce, I can’t take it up with work. Although we have been known to work the evening away many nights. Sitting at separate ends of the sofa, tapping away on our laptops. Sometimes we even IM each other. Yeah, we are geeks like that.

I am expecting, no make that – counting on, having a relaxing, Daddy-filled weekend. And I know the girls are looking forward to it, too. I found gorgeous holiday dresses for the girls, so I am hoping to work on a Christmas card photo this weekend. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll get a free moment to sketch down some of the scrapbook ideas floating around in my head. Maybe this week I’ll actually have something for Crafty Tuesday. Well, a girl can dream, can’t she?

Where are all the lows?

Our life is usually a little, gently sloping rollercoaster, some highs, some lows. Apparently we are heading for one doozy of a hill because we have been on nothing but a high, all week long.

To start the week off the girls and I were on a “Daddy high” when he safely arrived back home from his week + of travels. It was a serious love-fest around here Monday night and has been the rest of the week, when Daddy is not passed out from sheer exhaustion. It is so nice to have him home and I have returned Emma to her own bed and J’s cricket bat back to his closet. (A few crazy noises one of the nights while he was gone, had given it a premier spot within arms reach of my side of the bed.)

The middle of the week sent the girls into a serious “sugar high” with all of the Halloween festivities and candy. Candy. Oh my word – do we have candy. We got all dressed up. Mommy and Daddy, too. Emma was insistent on me having a costume, so while we were in Target the other day (and their costumes were all on sale!) I told her she could pick one out for me. Her first attempt was a bar wench costume, with the shirt cut down to here, and the skirt cut up to here. She said, “it is like a girl pirate, Mama!”

I told her they didn’t have my size (thankfully they didn’t) and she tried again. The second time around she picked out a queen costume. Nice long skirt, super cheap. Ding, ding, ding. We had a winner.

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It was fun to get dressed up with them and yes, that is glitter that you see on every inch of each of us. Apparently queens, princesses and fairies all are very glittery. I was not aware, as I’m sure you were not. But now we all know. And we also know to put the glitter up, far, far out of the reach of little 2-year olds. Yeah. She still has glitter in her ears, and I still have about an inch of glitter covering my house. At any rate, we had a good time and Em and Ad got a little prize at one of our neighbors’ for being the “best dressed.” Very cute.

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And Daddy was a pirate, of course. We trick-o-treated around the block and the girls came away with quite a load of candy. They have each had maybe 2 pieces of it. I just threw our Easter basket candy away, so I’m guessing that this batch will last us til next Easter, at least.

Addie totally caught on to the whole routine and even had her “Trick Or Treats” “Thank Yous” and “Happy Halloweens” at all the appropriate moments. It was so sweet. But their favorite part of the whole night was when we got back to the house and they got to hand out candy. They loved that part and both wanted to give away handfuls to all the kids. I had to keep telling them “only 2 pieces for each kid.” And then Emma would say, “or three, right Mama?” It is hard to say no to them being so happy to give to others.

So no naps, and a late night led to a little bit of an off-kilter morning yesterday and then the chin-splitting incident. Which all just pushed everyone into a little bit of an “adrenaline high.” We went to the gym, lunch and were on our way to Trader Joe’s for some groceries and Addie had those “sparkly” shoes on from Halloween. She had already tripped two or three times before we even got to the store, I am not sure what the problem with them is. She was sitting on the bottom shelf of the basket while I was picking out some groceries and she tried to get up, tripped over her shoe and face-planted right on her chin.

At first it didn’t even bleed. She cried for a few minutes and then I realized it was bleeding, and then gushing. So I got it to let up, put a band-aid on it (first-aid kit in the car, so handy yet again!), and we finished shopping. She was smiling, all seemed ok. When we got back to the car with the groceries, I peeled the band-aid off just to see how it was doing and it started bleeding again and I realized, it was a bit of a gaping hole. So I decided to take her in just to make sure she didn’t need stitches, or get them if she did.

Luckily Michelle was with us and took our groceries and Em back to the house to stay with Denise, and Ad and I trekked to the ER. Like I said, 3 hours later, they basically super-glued her chin together and she was/is as good as new. She was fantastic at the ER, though. I really can’t believe that kid sometimes. She hung out, got stickers from all the nurses and was completely cooperative. One male nurse came in and was checking her chin (and her puppy’s chin, he got a band-aid and boo-boo, too!) and she just looked at me and said, “I’m gonna be ok, right Mama?” I don’t know if she was trying to convince herself of it or trying to tell the nurse she didn’t really need to be looked at. She was not as fond of the doctor since he was a formidable fellow and a little gruff. But she still did great. I’ll have to try to take a pic of our first trip to the ER for Addie. I had forgotten that it isn’t our first ER trip, Kim reminded me of Emma’s first flesh wound incident when was attacked by a bird at the Playboy Mansion. (Yes, it truly is as bizarre a story as it sounds!) She was only 18 months old and that was our first official trip. Ha!

You know when it seems like the week is going by in slow motion, but then you look back on it and it seems to have gone so fast and you did so much? That is kind of what this week has been like. So I’m really hoping for a low-key weekend. We really need it. A little recuperation, rest and hopefully a good showing from our football team tomorrow. That would be the perfect ending to our week of highs.

Don’t drink the tea.

I told you people to not let me get too cocky. I dedicated my BSM to Addie and her potty-training achievements and have been running around patting myself on the back as if I was the one who did a spectacular job with the training.

And now I shall pay for all of the arrogance.

While sitting on the steps in a timeout this morning, Addie was screaming and carrying on and looked at me and said most defiantly, “I am going pee!” And she did. Right there on the step through her Cinderella skirt.

No sooner had I cleaned the puddle up and put her back in timeout (for the original offense, not for having an accident), when she started screaming about having more pee-pee. And so we had been running to the bathroom every 10 minutes up until lunchtime because I have been all about the “pee patrol” again.

Then we got home this afternoon after dropping Em off at school and Addie said, “I have to go poopy.” As we were walking back to the bathroom, I realized that she had in fact already “gone.” In her pants. So I cleaned her up and was taking her dirty clothes to the laundry room when I was sidetracked by the cat pee on the floor. (As a side-note, I scoop that stupid box every single day and they sit and WAIT until it is scooped and then will saunter over and either dirty the box within 2 minutes of it being clean, or even worse pee as close to the box as you can get without getting any of it IN the box.)

So I’m fuming, cleaning up the cat pee, and vowing to not let Smokey back in the house the next time she escapes. Addie is “airing out” until I can corral her to get her upstairs, clothed, and down for a nap, when she comes in and says, “Uh, oh. Poopy, Mommy! There is some poopy.”

At this point I’m not sure if it is human or cat poop, I can barely bring myself to follow her into the playroom. But I do, and there in the middle of the play kitchen area, all by itself, is a teacup. Filled with poop.

The girl pooped in one of her teacups.

POOPED. IN A TEACUP.

This qualifies as the most disgusting mommy clean-up to date.

As I was telling J. about my poopy day, I said, “See how much fun you are missing out on?”
He sarcastically says, “I can’t lie. It sounds like a blast.”

Not entirely the sympathy I was looking for. But I don’t expect any from you either, frankly I’d be amazed if you made it through this whole poopy post.

I must go sterilize…something. Everything.

Getting a little crowded in here.

Daddy didn’t bring back presents from his trip last week to Chicago, so while we were out last week, (Little sidenote – we had 2 consecutive date nights…that is two nights. In a row. Without children. Doing grown-up things. It was heavenly.) he found a couple of friends that he had to buy for the girls.

 

Yes, the last thing they need is more toys. Yes, they are a wee bit spoiled by their Daddy. Yes, the cat is larger than Addie and she can barely carry him. And, yes, the monkey looks suspiciously like Emma.

So they have been carefully added to the respective entourages. And I wonder why Addie doesn’t want to nap lately?

That is her, curled up under kitty to the left of the crib. In case you couldn’t spot her.

Also present: bear, blankie, old kitty, snoopy, Birthday puppy from Nena, Birthday doggy from Uncle Jeff and Wendy, Birthday puppy (and purse!) from Aunt Meesh, Elmo book, and the ever-present Cinderella gown. Although she did take it off, it is never more than a few feet away from her.

By the time we get everything in the crib she wants to sleep with, you’d think she would be tired. Maybe there are just too many diversion. Or maybe there just isn’t enough room for her to stretch her weary body out…

I’m back, Happy Birthday and Crafty Tuesday all in one…

I have so much to tell you! I am sitting contentedly writing on my very happy laptop with a ton to do, but I don’t care – I’m soooo happy to be back up and running.

Thanks to my sweet husband, who tirelessly worked on my laptop in between all the visits to the Apple store this weekend and last night, we figured out that it was the memory we had installed last year that made ‘ol Mac here very unhappy.

So I just installed new memory in my laptop. Me. How much of a geek-nerd do I feel like telling you all that? But, I am so very proud. Thanks to the tutorial last night from J., and the Apple store wanting to charge me $40 to take the old memory out and pop in the new, I just decided to do it. Five minutes later…all done. Whew. Now we are zipping along and just so, so happy!

Did I mention I was happy?

J. is traveling tonight and tomorrow night so I’ll have time to reset my stuff up here and catch up on all of your blogs! Plus have time to update you on all of our chaos, too.

But first, please go on over to my sweet little godson, Will and wish him a happy 1st birthday! He is one already – man, that is insane. And I haven’t been over there yet, but I’m sure Kim has some fun Tuesday craftiness, too.

Here is my one and only layout from the week. I told you it was nuts around here. But I do love this one. The pics were from one day after Em’s 2nd birthday, which would make her the age Addie is now. It is so weird it seems like yesterday, yet so long ago, too. I was only halfway through my pregnancy with Addie when I took these. (Yeah, I took all the photos, so no pregnant belly photos there – but I’m working on that stupid meme, so maybe you’ll get some.)

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Happy, Happy Tuesday!

I’m back, Happy Birthday and Crafty Tuesday all in one…

I have so much to tell you! I am sitting contentedly writing on my very happy laptop with a ton to do, but I don’t care – I’m soooo happy to be back up and running.

Thanks to my sweet husband, who tirelessly worked on my laptop in between all the visits to the Apple store this weekend and last night, we figured out that it was the memory we had installed last year that made ‘ol Mac here very unhappy.

So I just installed new memory in my laptop. Me. How much of a geek-nerd do I feel like telling you all that? But, I am so very proud. Thanks to the tutorial last night from J., and the Apple store wanting to charge me $40 to take the old memory out and pop in the new, I just decided to do it. Five minutes later…all done. Whew. Now we are zipping along and just so, so happy!

Did I mention I was happy?

J. is traveling tonight and tomorrow night so I’ll have time to reset my stuff up here and catch up on all of your blogs! Plus have time to update you on all of our chaos, too.

But first, please go on over to my sweet little godson, Will and wish him a happy 1st birthday! He is one already – man, that is insane. And I haven’t been over there yet, but I’m sure Kim has some fun Tuesday craftiness, too.

Here is my one and only layout from the week. I told you it was nuts around here. But I do love this one. The pics were from one day after Em’s 2nd birthday, which would make her the age Addie is now. It is so weird it seems like yesterday, yet so long ago, too. I was only halfway through my pregnancy with Addie when I took these. (Yeah, I took all the photos, so no pregnant belly photos there – but I’m working on that stupid meme, so maybe you’ll get some.)

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Happy, Happy Tuesday!

It is so on…

Conversation from yesterday that never made it into a post. Proof that my daughters are in fact sisters and not sweet and loving all of the time.

E: Stop! Stop it, Addie. No you have to do it like…
(Interrupted by Addie, shrieking, and then full on screaming.)
M: What happened?
(Addie is holding her head and crying. I try to tell her to take a breath and tell me what happened. That clearly isn’t going to happen, she shrieks louder and and eardrum-shatteringly louder…)
M: Em what did you do to Addie?
E: Nothing. Well…I don’t want to tell you.
M: Well, go sit on the stair until you feel like telling me.
E: I DON’T WANT TO SIT ON THE STAIR! NOOOOOoooooo.
(Stomp. Stomp. Stomp…in the general direction of the stairs. And Addie begins to quiet down.)
A: *sniff, sniff* I ok, Mama. Uh oh…Mama? Emma not on stairs.
E: Addie! I. AM. TOO! (
She wasn’t.) Mama, you need to tell Addie that she is tattling, and that is NOT nice.

*sigh.*

How does a 2-year old know how to “tattle?” And how does a 4-year old know how to call out tattling?

Gonna be a long 14 years.

Welcome to the food network. Where all we think about is food. All the time.

The chowdah (gotta say it like you are from Boston) and cookies were highly successful yesterday, thanks for the inquiries.

I am actually away from the house (Gasp…What? I Know!) at the moment, so I’ll post the recipes later on tonight.

But, yes, it was nice to have some good homemade nutrition for dinner. I think J. enjoyed his soup, it has jalapenos in it (totally optional), which he loves, but come to find out, it is not so nice to kiss someone who has indulged in them. So remember that. Be nice to your significant other if you make this chowder and/or if you would like any cuddling later on in the evening.

And the cookies! Let’s just say I’ve “tested” the cookies several times since last evening and they keep getting better with each taste test. So we may have a winning recipe. Finally. Now I need to slowly (s-l-o-w-l-y) wean myself off of them. Will you all just send me some random emails? Just title them “Carrie – Step away from the cookies. Now.”

Must. Stop. Eating. Cookies.

Because soon, our house will be flooded with cakes, cupcakes, puppy bone cookies, puppy chow and hot dogs.

We are on T-2 days and counting til A.’s birthday party. That is our menu for the event, so far. It has been really kind of fun prepping for it. I haven’t figured out, or bought, any of the food yet, but the girls and I have been putting together all of the “crafty” stuff for it.  J. and I cut 12 pairs of puppy and kitty ears out of felt the other night. (This is what constitutes a “hot night” at our house, aren’t you so jealous?) And then Em helped me glue them all together yesterday. And I made some little cards that have puppies on them and say “Doggy Bag” for the kids to take their goodies home in.  Em was so excited to glue them onto the little bags, so I expect that is what she and Denise are doing right now.

The hard thing is that I have to remember that A. is only 2, (although sometimes she acts like she is 4, like Em) and yet a lot of the kids that are coming are 4, 5 or older. You invite one child, and have to invite the other sibling sort of thing. Then it all snowballs. Anyways, I’m trying to do fun things for Addie that the big kids will still get “into” as well.

I’m also trying to decide whether to have a “pin the collar on the kitty” or a “pin the bone in the puppy’s mouth” game. I have some craft paper and I’m just going to draw it out, but I don’t know what would be cuter.

I was leaning towards doing more of the “puppy” side, I found this really cool doghouse cake that I thought she would flip over. So we are in the craft store and they actually had the pan, even though it is sold-out all over the internet. I showed it to A. and she said, “OH!  Puppy. Puppy in a house. Cute puppy.”

“Sweet,” I thought. And then A. squeeeeaaals, “Mama! A Smokey! A Smokey, Mama!” (All cats are “Smokey” right now.)

Sure enough, she found the only cake pan in the mountain of pans that can be made into a kitty. And as she pulled it out to carry it around, I realized the doghouse was so not going to happen.

So we are making a “Smokey” cake. Em thinks we should make it gray, black and white like our Smokey. Which I think is a fine idea, because black frosting is so much fun to work with and clean up.

Sigh.

I know. I know! It will be gray, black and white. Don’t worry.

Friday Randomness

It is Friday already. Yes, I did just say, already.

This week went flying by, even without running Em to preschool every other day. Between swim lessons everyday, dance lessons (and preparation for this weekend’s recital!), we have also been trying to catch up on work projects (well, I have), house cleaning (well, kind of) and have been house sitting for the neighbors (well, mostly just taking advantage of their pool). So, yeah, this week has kind of been a blur.

A few noteworthy points to document on the week:

-Addie now has most of her favorite bedtime books memorized. She reads them along with me. And God forbid I try to skip a page or two. Last night I didn’t think she was paying attention, just playing with her little stuffed kitty, so I tried to skip a page (or two, or four). Suddenly her had snapped up so fast I thought it was going to pop right off of her little neck. She exclaimed, “OH! Mama! No, no. This page. THIS page!” As she flipped back to the “forgotten” page. That girl is too smart for her own good.

-Emma has graduated from a “fish” to a “dolphin” in the pool. I am utterly impressed with that girl and how quickly she has caught on to swimming. She now jumps into the pool, no fear, no need for catching. Yesterday in swim class she was going down and picking up rings off of the floor of the pool and was so proud to tell me how to “side breathe.” It won’t be long until we will be needing to find a swim team for her to compete on, I think.

-The debate over Katie Holmes’ haircut still rages on. Apparently people are either really for, or really against this ‘do. I could care less about her, her crazy marriage, or her impossibly cute daughter, but I do happen to love the haircut. And unless I get some serious feedback telling me otherwise by 2 o’clock this afternoon, I’m going in to get my haircut as close to this cut as possible.

And that just about does it for the totally unrelated post today. Hope you all have a great weekend.

Brownie Nightmares

Today was Em’s last day of school. So she is “home,” for all of three weeks, and then the Fall Preschool starts.

It was a little anti-climatic, I think, but nonetheless, they got to have a little party. Plus she will more than likely have a different teacher next time around, so it was goodbye to sweet Mrs. McCoy. She was a wonderful teacher for Em’s introduction to the whole wide world of school.

Last week there was a little sign-up sheet for their party today and I asked Em what she would like to bring. I was reading down the list, “water, cheese and crackers, cut-up fruit, brownies…”

“BROWNIES! I want to bring BROWNIES, Mama,” she screamed.

Ah, a girl after my own heart. So we signed up for brownies.

Then last night we went over to the neighbor’s house to get the “scoop” on their kitties and fish, since we are taking care of them while they go on vacation. (We also get to “take care” of their pool for the week, yahoo! And it is a really, really nice pool!) So we were swimming, (the kids were, at least) having a glass of wine, (that would be the grown-ups) and visiting.  And time kind of got away from us, so I didn’t get the girls home and in bed until nearly 9:00. And yes, paid for it all day today, cranktankerous girls!

As I was quickly hosing them down in the bath, Em pipes up, “Oh, Mom! Don’t forget we have to make brownies for school tomorrow!”

*#@%!.  I had forgotten. Of course.

So I shuffled them off to bed and ran downstairs to make a couple batches of brownies. Pulled them out, ran to bed myself and thought all was well.

And then I had “brownie” nightmares. The entire night. In between Emma waking me up (a grand total of 7 times) I would get back to sleep I would have some snippet of a dream that involved those stupid brownies.

The first dream was that the brownies had nuts in them and made half the class sick. After I woke up with a start, and then realized I had in fact, NOT, put nuts into them, I drifted back to sleep.

I think Em woke me up once or twice in there, and then I had a dream that Ad had knocked the whole plate of brownies on the floor, and I had to “smoosh” them back into squares because I didn’t have time to make any more.

And, cue Em, who wakes me up because she had to go the bathroom, then I realized Addie hadn’t been anywhere near the brownies, so it was, just a dream. All is still ok.

And finally in that early-morning, kind of “floating in-and-out” sleep, I dreamt that I had entirely forgotten to make the brownies and was running around trying to figure out what to do.

As I woke up from that one, and reassured myself that I did indeed make the brownies and they were ready to go, I tried to figure out why all this stress over some cocoa, sugar and eggs?

I came to the conclusion that I so want to be that Mom who can do it all; bake brownies, have a fantastically clean house (where I can serve brownies off of the floor!), look all pulled-together – you know that calm, cool, collected Mom that seems to just have her crap sorted out. I want to be her, but it is just so hard. And it has been especially hard this week.

It isn’t an earth-shattering conclusion, I know, but I think I just need to let something go. I feel like I strive on having a “full plate.” I seem better organized and I love being able to look back on the day and really feel like I accomplished something, if I have a looming “to-do” list. But really is it worth it?

I mean will Emma remember that I made brownies for her to bring into her “Last Day” party?

Well, let’s not answer that. Because knowing the memory on that girl, she will.

Maybe I just need to find a good bakery where I can buy a decent batch of brownies and pass them off as homemade, and call it a day.