Ickkkk

I hate cleaning. In fact, I could confidently say that it's the #1 thing I dislike about staying home. The need to clean is just always in your face.

Therefore, the frequency in which I change my daughter's toddler bed is pretty sad. But since the appearance of a strange, pinkish stain on her bed earlier in the week, I've felt the need to do it. So yes, even with strange stain, it took me about 4 days to get around to it.

This is what I found in her small, converted crib, 3-sided toddler bed:

- two stains, one with unindentifiable dried on crumbs
- 12 books
-3 stuffed animals
-4 blankets
-2 pillows
- sippy cup with curdled milk
- pen
-small plastic bag with following message: "warning: to avoid danger of suffocation, keep away from babies and children. Do not use in cribs, beds, carriages or play pens." Good to know.

Hmmm... and I wonder why she's been coming into our room 10 times a night?

In Over My Head

Somedays I just feel so in over my head. My daughters are "spirited". IE, they are nuts. active, into everything, destructive, inventive, curious, mean, loving. Yes, all of the above. On days when all those adjectives are turned into verbs coming at me all at once; I'm just in this way, way over my head.
The last 90 minutes kind of play out like this: The girls are eating lunch, so I sneak outside to get our pool bag from the purse, D #1 comes running out after me, now she's poking through her daddy's things in the garage.
"D#1, come inside."

"come inside"

"please, come inside"

"sigh" And I pick her up and in we go.

As I walk in, the phone is ringing, D2 is standing up in her high chair.

"D2, sit down"

"On, your bum"

"Down"

"Sigh" and I pick her up and put her down on the floor.

As I'm talking to a new friend, I turn around in the kitchen and see that D1 has emptied the contents of my pool bag onto the floor.

"sigh"

"D1, please come back here and clean up this mess"

Still chatting (selfish me, trying to speak to another adult for 5 mins)

I walk into family room.

"D1! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!! THE SUNTAN LOTION IS NOT FOR YOU TO PLAY WITH!"

"D1, STOP! STOP RUBBING IT ON THE FIREPLACE!!!"

And phone conversation is abruptly cut short.

"D1, Time out. Don't leave the step till I say"

"ok, Mommy"

30 seconds later: "D1, I said not to leave the step"

"ok, Mommy"

"D1, Do you want to go to the pool?"

"Yes, Mama"

"then stay on this step till Mommy says it's time to get up"

"yes. Mama"

"D1, why did you leave the step? Now we can't go to the pool"

"sorry, Mama"

So crap, that didn't work. And now what the hell are we going to do? Alright, where did I put those water paints?

"D2, get off the steps, come follow Mommy"

"D2, off the steps"

"Off the steps"

Here they are!

"off with all your clothes, we are going to paint!"

"D1, don't put the paint on your sister"

"D1, you got paint in her eye!"

"D2, off the steps"

"D2, come lets paint"

"off the steps"

"D1, why did you paint all over your body?"

"Ok, time for a bath!"

"D1, stop turning the water to hot"

"D2, let me take off your diaper"

"Shit! Poo!"

"D1, I need wipes"

"please, hurry, I need the wipes"

"thank you"

"ok, wait, Mommy needs to add some cold water"

"wait"

"Please, wait"

"wait"

"ok, nows ok"

"D1, don't push your sister"

"D2, water stays inside the tub"

"in the tub"

"ok, give me the cup"

"D2, I mean D1, stop splashing your sister"

"D1, stop splashing so hard"

"D2, keep the water in the tub"

"in the tub"

"stop hitting your sister"

"stop"

"stop it!"

"ok, time to get out!"

"wait, mommy has to give you towel"

"wait, you're getting water all over the floor"

"let Mommy put a diaper on"

"sit still"

ahhhh..... I'm in so deep, glub glub glub!!!!

More thoughts on landing in the Lehigh Valley

"And all my friends have settled down, become their Mothers and Fathers without a
sound" From the song "A Horse in the Country" by the Cowboy Junkies



That lyric keeps going through my head again and again. Why? Well, I absolutely love my new house - it's a wonderful layout and lots of space. My neighborhood is beautiful with lots of mature trees and very quiet. But it's all so suburban. Don't get me wrong, my last town, Somerville, wasn't exactly living in the fast lane. But where I've landed reminds me soooo much of the town I grew up in, and this house is, as my sister said when she first saw it, "a grown-ups house" the neighborhood is full of mature adults rearing responsible children. It's all so, so suburban I guess. My life is becoming way more "domesticated" than I ever thought it would be. Mama extraordinaire. Wake up, clean the house, make breakfast, lunch, dinner, cut coupons, plan meals, take the kids to the community pool. It's what I wanted, space to breathe, a slow pace, predictability. But I'm afraid, too. Afraid my personality and eccentricities will be put on a shelf somewhere and forgotten. Gathering dust till I'm 50 or 60 and finally lose my mind and end up running down the street singing "Raspberry Beret" wearing nothing but my bra and panties and the beret I kept from college.

Is there room for all of me in this suburban development? It's a fight, I think, a fight to keep me out and about. Boy, my husband, the happy Chameleon, won't like it when I start waving my freak flag, but out it must go!

"She wore a Raspberry Beret, the kind you find in a second hand store...." by Prince, of course

awkward moment

Am I a bad Mom? My 3 yr old isn't big on naps anymore. She'll take one maybe once every 4 or 5 days. But I, I love nap time. It's my only time alone. So I let her lay in my bed for one to two hours and watch cartooons. Today I left her to watch PBS while I wrote some emails and checked out Facebook. I was probably locked in the spare bedroom at my desk for about an hour. I could hear drawers opening and closing and other mysterious sounds, but I ignored them.

Then came check in time. What could she be doing? I walked in to see my husbands socks all over the floor and my innocent 3 year old holding a condom. Yes, a rubber was in her hand - the packaging on the floor. Actually, on the floor were several opened packages and it's prior occupants. Oh god, and several more strewn across our bed.

It was all I could do not to laugh, and tell her she needs to respect Daddy's privacy and not go through his drawers.

Definitely time I made a decision on a new form of birth control........

How I landed in The Lehigh Valley

I feel the need to back-track today. My blog states that I'm a relocated Mama finding my way in the Lehigh Valley, yet I don't think I've explained that very well. I actually grew up in PA. I was born in Luzerne County, PA - coal mining country. But I spent most of my early years in a suburb of Harrisburg - for those of you familiar with the area, "the west shore". I went to college at IUP - which is in a very small town outside of Pittsburgh, Pa. There I met my husband. After graduation, we moved to Staten Island. The armpit of NYC. That is truly where my adventures, or rather, mis-adventures began. A sheltered suburbanite has no place in Staten Island. After 4 tremendous years in SI, we bought our first house and moved to Somerville, NJ. We lived here for close to 7 years. Moved in just before 9/11. Somerville was very charming to me - a small town, with the hipness of a revitalized mainstreet, close enough to the city to have a clue. Everything was within walking distance. It was a town that I felt at home in. We bought a very old fixer-upper in the middle of the enormous real estate boom. Threw tons of cash into the place, and after two kids quickly out grew it's small size. But as many a New Jerseyan can tell you, there was no way we could trade up and stay in NJ. Homes cost a fortune, and the taxes are just ridiculous. So we did what many before us have done - we moved to PA! My husbands job is just along the border of Pa & NJ, so the commute would actually improve for him. We sold our NJ home for almost double of what we bought it for, and purchased a sickeningly suburban home in Lehigh County. We paid 20K more for this house than what we sold our old house for, but more than doubled our square footage. We're adjusting, and liking it, so far. I'm taking baby steps into meeting new people - joined a MOM's club, but honestly haven't done much with them. Not sure what sort of people I want to meet, hoping some like minded people will simply pop out of the woodwork!

The Wedding

So this is going to be a very self-indulgent, one sided view of my brother in law's wedding.

Daughter #1 was one of three flower girls. And as an absolute, unbiased truth, she was the most adorable of them all. Really, she was!

She was the youngest, but also the most beautiful. What stole my heart, though, was that she honestly danced the night away. In the middle of a huge drunken group, my little girl clapped, rolled and boogied. At the end of the evening, she was a picture of innocence, half-asleep in her Daddy's arms as they slow danced.

The reception itself was an absolute blast. I have only seen my husband that intoxicated maybe one other time (that of course is not to say that he hasn't been that drunk in my presence more than once, but only twice have I been more sober...) In his striped seersucker suit, he would have looked like quite the gentleman, if he hadn't been two fisting it all night. Yes, a gin and tonic does pair perfectly well with a Brooklyn Lager. And yes, he did commit the perfect party foul by dropping one of those G&T's on the dance floor. :)

As for me, I dealt with wardrobe malfunctions all night. You can dress the girls up, but you just can't take them out. I can't wait to see the photos of them peaking out! Oh boy! (or rather, Oh Girls!)

My favorite part of the evening was the ladies room. I have never been at a wedding with so many drunk chicks! I think they out-did the drunk guys. It was refreshing to be one of the more together gals at the event. Although my husband informs me that it's because we're old. Oh well.

All in all, it was a great evening, and I wish the couple much love and success in their future together!

In and Out

I get so excited about new ideas. Then they fade or life hits me up with a bump or two, and I abandon them. Like this blog. It's in the back of my mind all the time, yet it's been two months since I posted. What have I been up to? A few bumps, definitely. First, my computer crashed and took several weeks to be repaired and put back together. During that time, I only had access to my hubbys laptop in the evenings. Not really when I feel like posting anything. Besides, it's amazingly sloooooow. Oh, and the big bump - I fractured my foot. Yes, in an amazing adventure I managed to fracture it in two places and also sprain my ankle. Ok, so it really wasn't an amazing adventure. It was actually quite dull, and yet quite typical of me. I was walking down the steps to make the baby a bottle and put her down for a nap. On the fourth step from the bottom, my daughter had left a flip flop. I tripped over it, twisting my ankle and falling down the remainder of the steps. The scene at the bottom was kind of amusing. I was crying, rocking my foot back and forth. It scared my eldest daughter, so she was with me, kissing my foot and sobbing. Then a long comes daughter #2, laughing. She sits on my leg, bouncing up and down, laughing and kissing me.
Needless to say, I made out pretty well. I was only given a hideously ugly velcro sneaker to wear, and was sent home with crutches. Crutches, by the way, made me feel extremely old. Remember when you were young, crutches seemed so cool. I remember being envious of friends who had to use them. I was never lucky enough to break something and be able to use them. Not until I was 33 that is. 33 and completely out of shape! I had no idea the physical exertion required to get around on them. It was horrendous.

So that's my story. And that's where I've been.

Where I'm going is to the Jersey Shore for the weekend. My brother in law is getting married on Sandy Hook on the 4th of July. I'll be sure to report back on that one. Daughter #1 is the flower girl. How will she act? Yet another source of anxiety.....