Musings

I just overheard Gwen saying

When I grow up I want to be a kid, then a teacher, then a mommy, then a Grandma, then a HOME TEACHER and then I want to be a great-grandma and then I don't know.

I hope she gets to be a home teacher. That would be awesome.

Finders Fee

So this morning I was reading this article on MSNBC.com about how there is so much unclaimed property in the world and all you have to do is search a free database to find if your state is holding some of your unclaimed $. So I took the liberty of searching and found that Blaine has an unclaimed property! I took some more liberties and found that his cousin, three of his uncles, my Grandpa and a business that his extended family once owned also had unclaimed money. I feel kind of like I should get a finders fee. Seriously.

So go do your search!

http://www.unclaimed.org/

(be sure you go to .org not .com )

It's totally free and they will let you know how to claim the property and you can send my finders fee by cash, check, money order or paypal. Not kidding.

And for kicks after you do your search post on here if you found anything! It was super easy to search and you can just search by last names to see if your relatives have anything. Then you can charge your very own finders fee and we can all rejoice.

Utah's site didn't say how much Blaine's thing is for, but the Texas one did and his Uncle has 108 bones just waiting for him. I bet ours is like two dollars or something, but hey...two bucks!

1968

My parents are visiting and my Dad was filling out some information about me online to see if he could get me a good rate on my auto insurance.

He was filling out my birthday and said, "December 9th....1968, right?

I scoffed and said, "yeah Dad NINETEEN SIXTY-EIGHT"

then a few minutes later he was like "so Blaine was born in 1968 too, right?"

and that is when I realized that he hadn't been kidding.

I rubbed the patch of gray hair that is sprouting on the crown of my head and walked away as a solitary tear trickled down my cheek.

EIGHTY ONE folks, that's when I was born (very nearly eighty two). My Dad thought his twenty seven year old daughter was forty one.

It's dispicable.

Babies don't keep...

I've always loved this poem. Whenever I am up with one of my kids in the middle of the night rocking them I think of the last two lines of this poem and it makes the tiredness go away, it makes me want to keep rocking forever! I have to say it was particularly true for little Bentley (who, incidentally got stung by a bee ON HIS EYE today...well, near his eye, so sad!). Bentley only got to be the baby for a little while, and one day soon he will be taller than I am, but I will remember the nights right before Ivy was born where I would sneak into his room and pick up his tired body and rock him. I was rocking my baby, cuz babies don't keep.

Anyway for those of you tired mothers out there, I hope you enjoy this poem!

Mother, O Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing, make up the bed,
Sew on a button and butter the bread.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I've grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue,
Lullabye, rockabye, lullabye loo.
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo

The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew
And out in the yard there's a hullabaloo
But I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo
Look! Aren't his eyes the most wonderful hue?
Lullabye, rockaby lullabye loo.

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow
But children grow up as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

- Ruth Hulbert Hamilton

MTM

My apologies for the lack of blogging, I have family in town and I am too busy having fun!

I made it to the gym all three times last week, but unfortunately my weigh in this morning was 134.5. So I gained a half a pound. That may be due to the eclair cake I ate last night, and also Janssen's Lemon Cake, and also all of the popcorn, ice cream, and so on that comes with having family in town. (PS, for those of you who never order a strawberry shake at chick-fil-a because you are watching your weight...you should order one, because there is nothing better. Or better yet, have your mom and dad order one to share but then you eat most of it).

Let's just consider me off of the bandwagon for the treat thing until they leave town. Life's too short.

In more embarrassing news....at the gym today my leg started spasming or cramping or something while I was going hog wild on the elliptical and so, being the genius I am, I lifted up my leg to shake it out. My other leg was still going 150mph on the other side of the elliptical (I guess I thought it would magically stop or something). So I totally flew off of the elliptical all off of balance and crazy like. Much to the amusement of my fellow gym goers.

Nothing like falling off the elliptical to start your day ; )

Blogging to resume next monday!

So I married a genius!

AND HE GOT MY PICTURES BACK FOR FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Top o' the Muffin to you

Thanks Ang for the witty blog post title : )

Okay. Well. I said that I would get back on the bandwagon and I did. Kind of.

Good news:

I worked out three times this week! Woo hoo!

Bad news:

I ate about ten thousand treats. It's Easter time and being the loving mother I am I had to eat some of Gwen's candy, so the sugar bugs wouldn't get her teeth. Had to take one for the team there.

Good news:

I bought an MP3 player! I decided on the Sansa Clip. It was on sale! Woohoo. So now I can elliptical to the tunes of Mika and the Scissor Sisters, and High School Musical. Gotta get my head in the game, you know?


Somewhat good news:

My weigh in? 135.

Better news?

On the other scale at the gym, the one I usually weigh in on, my weigh in was 134.

So I guess you could say I lost three pounds. Or you could also say I lost two, but then you would be a pessimist. Not to mention a big fat jerk.

See you next week!

Amnesia

Today I lost 300 pictures from my camera. Three hundred. They were pictures from about the entire last month. As in half of Ivy's life. As in her first smiles. Her Easter dress. Easter egg hunts. Cute pictures of Ben holding Ivy. Conference Breakfast. The toilet paper disaster of 09 (that was going to be a blog post). The picture of our coffee table the day that Bentley knocked over a glass of water and incidentally got my bank receipt all wet which somehow transposed all of our bank information from the receipt to be permanently imprinted on our table...resulting in me never being able to sell the table because, well, our bank account number is printed on it. I lost it all. And I just ache.

I had some really really really great pictures of Ivy smiling today. That elusive smile has yet to be caught on film. But today, in the perfect lighting of late afternoon, with her new Easter dress and beautiful bow, I got some great pictures. Pictures that would have made Ralphie and Meleah proud.

But now they are gone.

And I am going to go cry about it, because they really meant a lot to me.

Nostalgia

I thought it was a little weird when I turned into the neighborhood and a police car was turning out. Weirder still when I drove up our street and saw three more undercover police cars on the street. But what really knocked my socks off was when I pulled into my driveway to see that there were about twenty kids and ten adults all standing in the circle and looking down the street with binoculars.

At the risk of scaring you all from moving into my neighborhood (ahem, Allison) I'll just tell you that I left my house for a couple of hours and somehow missed an entire police standoff! With rifles and guns and stuff.

Seriously, my life is so dull and I sit in this house all day, but the one day all of my neighbors are out playing real life cops and robbers I am at the store. Seriously.

I guess they heard the loud sirens and then went to go see what was up, but only got far enough to see the NINE police cars and officers with guns drawn (including a big rifle apparently) before they headed back to the circle to round up the kids. Once they had the kids inside they went and scoped out the situation with binoculars from the safety of Annie's garage.

I love my neighbors!

Not the ones that were having the police standoff at their house, but the ones who were watching it with binoculars.

It brings back memories of growing up next to crazy, non law abiding citizens where police and ambulances and SWAT teams were an every week (sometimes every day) occurance.

I like it better when the law breakers aren't right next door though, feels a little safer.

Am I worried? Nah. I wave to the homeboys who were involved in the hullaballoo every day. I say if you can't beat 'em join 'em. Or at least wave to them and try to give them a winning "please don't kill me" smile.

Major

You know you choose a really high paying major when you see this on the sidebar of facebook!

Sociology Major?

Sociology Majors qualify for special government assistance programs. Click here now to find out more if you are a Sociology major.

I know, it means assistance for school but when I first read it I had to laugh, because it's true...most Sociology majors probably qualify for other special government assistance programs, like WIC and Medicaid. I know I did when our income was up to just me and my Sociology degree : )

You say tomato I say hillbilly.

Ever have one of those days. You know...the kind that make you want to look around innocently and ask, "Whose kids are those?? They are unfit to be in public!"

It all started when we went to Costco. We walked in the door and Ivy started sca-reaming. I mean, I am the first to admit that Ivy is an angel baby. Nary a peep from the girl. She is so good in fact that I can count the number of times on two fingers that she has even spit up. She's that good. So the Costco screamfest of 09 was kinda freaking me out. I don't mind if my kids scream and act crazy, what I do mind are the eye rolls and scoffs of passersby. Jerks. Ever try walking through Costco with one kid clinging to your pant leg, crying because you bypassed the 5000 pack of fruitsnacks, one kid in the cart throwing out all of your groceries as you walk, and one very very very screaming newborn who lacks the neck support to hold up her own head, so you can't really bend over and pick up your milk because her head will snap off if you don't use one hand to hold her and the other to hold her bobble head. And it just so happens to be the one time in your career of being a mother of three that you didn't bring your snugli because you were kind of sick of feeling like you are pregnant ALL of the time.

And then you find out that they don't sell your favorite kind of chicken at Costco.

And then you nearly die of heart failure on the way home when your four year old informs you that your newborn is turning purple in the backseat of the car.

Then you manage to get home and get all the groceries in (Ivy still screaming in the background, what the?). But since Costco doesn't sell good chicken you have nothing to make for dinner even though you just spent about a million dollars at the store (I hate that about going to Costco, you still have to go to a regular store afterwards). Then your husband comes home and opens the cool little yellow tomatoes you bought and incidentally dumps half of them on the floor...

and one of them rolls under the stove, which leads to an hour long cleansing of under the stove and you feel a little bit like you should have been wearing a spacesuit or something to keep out the noxious fumes of all the disgusting yuckies that were found back there. (but hey the good news is we found the illusive missing "P" from our fridge magnetic letters!)

And just then you think, hey, I should make spaghetti for dinner but your thoughts are interrupted by...

*CRASH*

* SCREAM*

And you walk in the pantry to find Bentley covered in blood from head to toe, but then you notice the blood smells a lot like spaghetti sauce, and you're kind of glad it's not blood, but kind of sad that it was your last jar of spaghetti sauce.

But then there was a little blood because you stepped on some glass on the way in there (alright, that part didn't really happen, but easily could have)

And you think, it's okay, I'll just look in my favorite cookbook where none of the recipes take more than thirty minutes, I will feed this family, I am superwoman! But then you realize that somewhere in the hullaballooo the cookbook got plastered with spaghetti sauce.

Then you turn around to see that Bentley has learned how to climb up on his high chair and is balancing precariously and is likely to come crashing down on your hard tile floor.

So you decide to go to dinner. You deserve it.

And HOORAY you have a coupon plus half priced appetizers if you get there before seven! This day is starting to turn around! Woohoo!

You run, you scold, you drive like mad.

Hooray, it doesn't look crowded at all, we're going to make it! Wait...there's no one here, is this place any good? WAIT there are like not even employees here. It's closed? Closed! Egh....dang economy.

Okay, on to the next restaurant. Your quick jaunt to dinner is really turning into something now.

Your exhausted toddler and preschooler join the chorus of screams and whines STILL coming from your newborn.

You battle with the preschooler to stop acting insane when you realize that she is not wearing shoes, or socks. And you distinctly recall seeing a sign on the door that read something like "no shoes no shirt no dignity" or something.

When more than half of your dinner party isn't wearing shoes and the other half have glazed over eyes and earplugs in...I don't know, you just kind of feel a bit like ....hillbillies I guess.

Then as you collapse, exhausted and ready to quit your job (being a mom) and watch "Marley and Me" you realize that these are the days that you are going to remember. The days you are going to miss. As hard as it is to believe now, you will miss this and long for the days of spaghetti sauce kisses and working so hard to just survive the day. I have no doubt that one day, in the very far future ( : ) ) I will miss the chaos and the craziness and being supermom.

Anyway, it wasn't a bad day, just remarkably chaotic and really memorable and it all started with a tomato.

Tomatoes and I have a history. Speaking of...2/3 of my tomato plants are dead.

Gotta run. Here's hoping for no catastrophes today of the human or vegetable variety!

Panic

Have you ever felt your heart actually stop beating? It hurts, and scares the living daylights out of you. I can think of two instances in particular where I am pretty sure my heart has skipped a beat...or two...or three.

The first is today. We went to Costco with a friend and shortly after entering the store Ivy started a cry fest that lasted the duration of our Costco trip and half of the ride home. I had just noticed that the incessant screaming had stopped and about two minutes later I hear Gwen say, "Wow Mom! Ivy's lips are PURPLE". And I am thinking, oh my gosh, she is suffocating or choking or something and that is why she stopped screaming, I am a horrible mother! SLAM on the breaks, tear off my seat belt and lunge to the backseat to see a smiling baby with very much pink lips. Mental note...teach Gwen the difference between pink and purple.

The second time happened about a year ago. Bentley was new to playing in his saucer and I would stick him in it upstairs while I would come down here and blog clean. I felt a bit guilty but on the other hand, he seemed happy and I always checked to make sure there were no choking hazards within reach or on his saucer. Anyway, one day I was down here blogging away meticulously scrubbing the floors when I heard Gwen from upstairs say, "MOM! MOM! Bentley is turning all red!". I bolted upstairs with my heart pounding in my chest and found Bentley and he was red, but so was the entire room. The sun was just shining through our new bright red ikea curtains. Talk about hearts stopping in chests. Whew...

I guess my heart kind of skipped a beat today when Gwen, in the car, said..."Mom, you have two daughters, one husband, one boy dog, and one son...and another son in the sky". Since I know kids have divine intuition or whatever I was thinking, oh no...not again! I need more time. I'll have another baby, but please please, just a few more years, or at the very least a few more months (note: I mean at the very very very very very least)! It took me entirely too long to realize that she meant the "sun" in the sky and not a future brother in the sky. Thank goodness!!

Whoopsie

Hate to be this guy!

Yoyo Muffin Top Monday

This week was a total and complete disaster.

It all started with the chocolate mint cupcakes they had at mutual. They had little pieces of andes mints in them. So I ate two. Then, you know, I had spent all that time making the homemade oreos, so I had one of them too. Then I can't remember what happened Wednesday but it involved another treat. Having both treats used up by Wednesday is not a happy place to be in. Janssen was out of town on Wednesday and Ralphie can't make it to the gym on Wednesdays so I didn't go. Then Thursday I helped stuff the Easter eggs for our HOA Easter party and...yeah, well, I'm not superwoman folks. Then Saturday I had a little psychotic..ummm "episode" and my awesome husband brought home flowers and ice cream. I've begged him incessently for like five years to do stuff like that, so like I was going to turn it down. Then on Sunday, well....Janssen made mint brownies for crying out loud. And you guessed it, I couldn't find the time during my "episode" to go to the gym.

So, one trip to the gym, about a thousand treats...and yup, my weight went back up to 137lbs.

Stupid scale.

Stupid gym.

Stupid choclately things with mints in them.

The good news though is that today marks the beginning of a new week. I went to the gym and burned way more calories than usual (which means I burned like 260 instead of 200, but hey, progress!) and I am committed to the treat thing again. I am back on the bandwagon folks.

Ebay

I got $12 worth of formula coupons in the mail the other day, and just as I was about to throw them in the recycling I thought, hey...maybe someone else could use these. So I checked ebay and surely enough people were selling their coupons. So I listed them. My auction still has a day left but the bid is up to almost $7, and to think I almost threw them out!

Of course I do feel a bit guilty that I didn't just give them away to someone too.

Maybe I can do something charitable with my winnings?

Hmmm....

Average

My bottons are bursting, and it's not just because of my muffin top!

I have an average child!

Ivy is exactly in the 50th percentile for everything! It's so grand! So...normal! So not MRI worthy!

She only weighs 10.3lbs, usually by two months my kids are nearing the 20 lb mark. She's so lovely and I love that I don't have to worry about another huge noggin.

Bentley on the otherhand....

Well first off he is stubborn as a mule and even though he has been taking steps and walking a bit for about two weeks now he wouldn't do a durn thing for the doctor.

Doctor: So, does he know about 5 words or so?
Me: Oh yeah! He knows like ten, at least!
Me: Come on Ben, say Uh Oh
Ben: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SCREAM
Me: * nervous chuckle * Oh, he must be nervous, *cough * um...hey Bentley, say mama
Ben: gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa scream
Me: I promise he's very bright, see, watch this...Bentley, where are your toes?
Ben: *sticks out tongue and spits *
Doctor: *rummaging through MRI images* well on MRI his brain appears normal, we'll keep an eye on him.

It went much the same with the walking bit. He walked about as well as Ivy does.

Oh well, at least Ivy doesn't have a huge noggin!

April Fools

Today I invited no less than twenty moms and their kids to join me for lunch at the park at 11:30AM.

And I didn't show up.

APRIL FOOLS to them! Ha ha ha ha

Except I didn't plan it that way. I got all of my kids ready, had a lunch packed, sunscreen on, sunhats out, diaper bag packed....got out to the car and then noticed that all of my carseats were gone.

Blaine took the kids somewhere yesterday and left the carseats in his car. Either that or he played me for a fool. If he did it on purpose he's a dead man.