Home Alone II

So, our final morning alone was quite blissful. Sleeping in, followed by more newspaper reading and coffee drinking on the couch. In honor of Father's Day I made brunch for Hubby and my Father, who would be with my Mom to drop off the girls. I even enjoyed making the breakfast - no one to whine "when will it be done" no one to trip over or supervise stirring the eggs. Just some cooking fun.

We were excited to get our baby girls back. Refreshed and enthusiastic over parenting again.

When they arrived, it was such fun to hear about their weekend away. Finding out what they did with their Mimi and Pop Pop. The new adventures they encountered. We enjoyed a nice brunch with my parents then off they went.

Hubby and I were still in relaxation mode, and the girls were happily rediscovering their toys. As we continued to read the paper, and make plans for the rest of the day, the girls played in the playroom and living room - shuttling toys between the two rooms as they often like to do.

Suddenly my little D2 walks into the room. "D2, what is that blue stuff in your hair?" CRAP! She got into the toiletry bag that my parents returned along with them! Where else is it?

And so I went into the living room to discover blue toothpaste smeared all over the wall, carpet and Hubby's beloved leather man chair (which btw, I have commandeered into the beloved Mama hiding from the rest of the family chair - but I guess that's another story!) Where was the rest of the items in the toiletry bag? What else did they get into?

And that's when I discovered it - the Benadryl bottle behind the chair. Once 3/4's full, now empty.

WHO DRANK THIS!!!
WHO?

What followed was a lot of screaming. A lot of confusion. We figured since D2 was covered in toothpaste, she must have drank the Benadryl, too. A quick call to my Mom to ask if she recalled how much was left in the bottle. Then the dreaded call to Poison Control. They were asking me for information, information easily found on the benadryl box. Why could I only see the spanish directions? "Calm down, Ma'am. Take a breath, you're upset" says the hotline operator. Ok, breathing again.

The operator advised we take D2 to the emergency room. More chaos follows. Hubby and I are not dressed, it dawns on us that we took the back seats out of the car in order to pick up D1's new mattress. Lots of tripping over one another, and yelling.

Where is D1? I search for her, and finally find her in her room. She is close to unconsciousness. OH my god! It was her. She must have drank it. Or did they both? What do we do? Who do we take to the ER? It was decided to take both of them.

Once at the ER we are immediately relieved when the nurse at the front desk tells us to take a seat. Relieved and annoyed. Hello? These are my babies! Make sure they are ok! And relieved, it must not be a big deal if they aren't taking them right away.

Once in, it becomes very clear that D2 did not have any of the Benadryl. D1, however, most definitely did. She went from barely able to walk, to cranky, to hyper as anything. The Doctor did very little. They kept her for about 6 hours to "observe" her, and then sent her home.

What a day! I now fully understand the feeling of not knowing whether to hit someone or hug them. Such a scary, scary feeling. Horrible, really. Thank the spirits above that she was fine.

And my weekend to recharge? Ha! I was back to being the harried Mom in no time! Silly Mommy....

A Mystery

So I know I owe you Part II of my last post, and I have some other things I want to tell you about. BUT, this is just a quick post I wanted to share.

This morning the girls painted. Painting turned into D2 needing to wash her hands. Washing her hands turned into playing in the sink. Playing in the sink turned into her being totally soaked. Her totally soaked turned into her taking off all her clothes. So, I sent her upstairs to get some new clothes. About 5 minutes went by, and she was REALLY quiet. So I went upstairs to investigate. I found her amid a huge mound of clothes. When she saw me she said "I pooped" and sure enough, the indisputable evidence was smeared down her leg. But here's the thing: I can't find the poop! I've walked around the entire house sniffing and looking and it hasn't turned up!

Where the hell is the poop?

Home Alone, Part I

So back in June, Hubby and I celebrated our 10th anniversary. To celebrate, my parents took the girls for the weekend. Picked them up Friday afternoon, and dropped them back home Sunday morning, which happened to be Father's Day.

I was giddy with anticipation as I waited for Hubby to get home from work on Friday. I have this amazing dressing area adjacent to my master bath and for once I actually used and enjoyed it. Sat on a chair and slowly put on makeup, took my time going through the makeup brushes to find the one's undamaged by my girls; used the blow dryer to style my hair with out intermittant stops to listen and make sure the girls were not up to any mischief.

Once Hubby was home, we hung out and watched some tv. Grown up tv. Then we were off to dinner. We chose a restaurant I have been wanting to go to for a full year. The Farmhouse - known for cooking to the season and using local farms as their food source. When we arrived, our table was not quite ready, so we sat at the bar. Sat at the bar. No, we didn't pace the parking lot, praying dinner wouldn't extend too far into bedtime. Nope, we sat at the bar and oggled over the beer list.

After being seated, there was a delay in being served. But it didn't matter. No one to shush, or say "sit on your bum!" to; we simply enjoyed our drinks and chatted. Ok, I'll admit, we did a lot of chatting about our girls, but what do you expect?

As dinner was served and we took our first bites, we wept. Yes, tears burst forth from our eyes. What an amazing meal. We cried for the perfection and we cried over the knowledge that once upon a time, two DINKS used to enjoy a meal such as this because it was a Tuesday. A whim, a "I don't feel like cooking" kind of night; not a meal that had a one year wait list. The meal followed by dessert,and dare I say it? After dinner drinks! was sublime. Perfection.

The next day we slept in. Then we read the saturday paper and each had two cups of coffee. Yes, I drank two cups of coffee. Savored, actually. While sitting on the couch reading the paper. Yes, I know I said that already, but I just wanted you to understand fully the signifigance of this. I drank my coffee while sitting on the couch. Not standing over the counter, quickly slurping and impatiently waiting for it to cool down. I drank it on the couch. Reading the paper.

Next, because of the rainy day, we changed our plans of walking around Jim Thorpe. Instead, we did something more ordinary: ran errands. I know, you are rolling your eyes, wondering why we would waste a day such as this on errands. But here's the thing: we ran errands TOGETHER. It wasn't our usual divide and conquer Saturday where we split the girls up and each run around to get stuff done. We drove around, in the little car, the car without car seats. Together. We bought peanut butter and hot dogs. Picked up D1's new mattress. Together. At one point we got back into the car, looked at each other and smiled.

This is kind of fun
Yeah, I've missed you
Yeah, you're kind of fun to hang out with
You too!

It was nice, a relaxing rainy Saturday afternoon.

That night we met up with friends at a new Gastro Pub. Yeah, it's a weird description, but that's what they call it. It was yummy - great beers, plus one of my favorite things ever! European style french fries with real home made mayo. Real mayo - not some crap you buy in a jar. Yum. We hung out with some good friends, ate, drank and listened to the live band. A great night.

We went home high on solitude, but excited to get our baby girls back the next morning.

To be continued....

Remember Me?

So, ummmmm, uh, Hi. How have you been? Good to hear... yes, I know, I know. It has been a while. And yes, to be honest, I guess I have been avoiding you. Sorry about that. But really, it's not you, it's me. No, really, it is. I mean yeah, you could post a few more comments or link me to your blog, but that's not it, not really. It's me.

I feel like I owe you an explanation. Remember one of my first posts where I told you I get really excited about things, and then drop them? Yeah, that's happening. Sorry about that. I've been really busy though. Yeah, I mean So You Think You Can Dance takes up two whole nights, and then the rest I've been really busy eating ice cream. Scooping up that vanilla and adding that Hershey syrup just right takes TIME.

So what have I been up to? Well, lets see. My girls have been my girls. Crazy. Into lots of stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. There was a Benadryl scare that required taking them both to the ER. Double bills for the ER - now that is a good time. And yes, thankfully they were fine. There was a beach vacation that was wonderful. The girls are now tanned beach babes. D2 has no fear, and D1 worked off some of hers along the shoreside. Took a visit to Assateague Island to see the wild horses. Yep, driving an extra 90 minutes to see 5 horses in the parking lot was pretty priceless. Vacation ended badly with a lot of blue nail polish being painted all over our rental home's bathroom - and D1. That was a good time. My family hit a new high on the gluttony scale. I believe it was 15 pizzas, 5 large Thrashers, 4 large orders of wings and like 100 ice cream cones.

My garden has now hit a full time season of neglect. The squash bugs and mold should be abolishing all hopes of vegetables shortly. The plans for next year have been set in place: a new plot of grass and a veggie co-op from one of the nearby farms. I can't wait for good tasting fresh vegetables and all that new grass!

There was a good week of a cold/flu thing. Left me trembling in bed for several days, forgetting the 90+ degrees outside and thinking it just had to be the middle of February.

Now that it is August, can you believe it is freaking August?, We are trying to jam pack every last thing we wanted to accomplish this summer into 4 short weeks. Lake Tobias, pool days, local zoo days, cave exploring, ice cream parlor hunting and fire fly collecting. Not to mention my personal goal of drinking down at least a dozen more Gin N Tonics (sighhhhh.... I think I've only had one this entire summer!)

So that's been our summer so far. And I promise, I'll keep in touch!

Hay is for Horses

So as we pulled into the driveway, D1 spied the bale of straw I just bought sitting next to the garage. It's for my slacker garden. The garden that will become the garden of neglect by the end of the summer - a tradition two years in the making. Anyways, D1 asks "why do we have hay". And as a responsible Mother I reply "hay is for horses". I mean, what else was I going to say? But I couldn't stop there. I told her "we bought a horse. It's sleeping in your room. I'm not sure where you will sleep tonight". In the half second of forethought before I made this statement I figured she would whine that she wanted her bed, and I would simply tell her that I was joking. But she didn't whine, she got excited. Started talking about feeding it apples,sharing her bed with it and going for rides on it. I could have stopped there, but I didn't, I went with it. As we walked into the house, she nearly knocked me over trying to get upstairs. I braced myself for the tears. Instead, she yelled down "Mom, I can't find her!, Where is she!" I told her to look in my room "She's not there, Mom!" So I went upstairs and said to my dear D1 "now silly, do you really think Mommy put a horse in your room?" And her reply? "Oh yeah, right. It's in the yard?"

My addiction

So, I have a dirty little secret. I'm addicted. Addicted to my Blackberry. It really must be like crack, I hear that is also very quickly addicting. I've only had my blackberry for a month, and I can't believe how addicted I am.

Let me start at the beginning:

My husband needed a new cell phone. He uses his for work, so a multi-functioning device made sense for him. When he was looking into them, he mentioned to me that the current sale was buy one, get one free. Well, I knew NOTHING about them. Except I saw them on a commercial once, and thought they looked cute. A nice little accessory to put into my Coach handbag. So as hubby left to go to the Verizon store, I told him sure, I'd take one, but don't bother getting me the internet connection, because I don't need THAT.

Yeah, I was that clueless. See for those of you who are also clueless, you can't get a Blackberry with out internet connection. It's kind of pointless.

So Hubby comes home from Verizon, and before he even gives me the phone he announces that we had to pay for the internet access. He reduced our minutes, so we are actually paying the same, but we had to have internet access. Right away my hackles are up - we could have been SAVING money by reducing our minutes, but instead we are paying for the internet? Arghhhh. Then I start playing with the phone. Mine is a storm, or something, I don't really know. It doesn't actually have buttons, you have to push on the screen for it to work. In all of two minutes I decided I HATED it. It must go back, I declared! I put it in the box, while Hubby shook his head repeatedly at me. The next morning he asked me to just try it for a couple of days. Well, ok. But I wasn't going to take the protective clear plastic off of it, so I could still return it if I wanted.

Yeah, on day 3, D2 pulled it all off. The phone was mine. I've made peace with the push screen, actually I'm pretty good at it. I can punch in an email at a pretty fast speed. Have to admit, I'm a little embarrassed by it. I mean, come on, why the hell does a housewife need a Blackberry? What urgent matters do I need to attend to online? Scheduling the latest playgroup can't wait till I have time to sit in front of the computer? I mean really. It's kind of silly.

But that doesn't stop me from checking it ALL THE TIME. Constantly. The little ding of a new message is hypnotizing: MUST CHECK MESSAGE NOW! And it's pathetic, just how detached from the here and now I've become. I'm playing with the girls at the park, and suddenly I have an overwhelming urge to check my messages. Or in the middle of dinner I hear a ding and desperately want to get up to see what it is. I mean really, ho


Sorry, where was I? My phone just dinged so I had to check what it was - not to worry, it was just SPAM. Now, I forget what I was s

Sorry, sorry, it happened again. Apparently book club is being re-scheduled. Good thing I checked it right away, urgent stuff, you know?

So last night I think I hit rock bottom. Hubby and I frequently spend our evenings on opposite ends of our sectional watching tv and playing with our blackberry's. Yeah, I know, it is as pathetic as it sounds. Sometime's we IM each other. Uh Huh. We really do.

We were watching the finale of American Idol. Does it make us sound less pathetic if I tell you that we watch it in order to mock it? Yeah, I know, it doesn't. At least I tried.

So to annoy Hubby or to make him laugh, I'm not really sure, I start using my FB status update to add my two cents to what is going on during the show. Some of them were actually hilarious in my opinion. Hee hee. But ok,maybe, just maybe, it was a little overboard to write 15 updates in about 23 minutes. But come on, Hubby was laughing! Who cares about my other 144 FB friends, right?

I know, it was as low as a Blackberry addict could go,right? Where do I go for counseling on this sort of thing?

Or ma

Ah never mind, my phone is dinging again, going to go check it....

Spring Fever

So after several days of miserable rain, late Saturday afternoon, the sky cleared, the sun shone and the temperature rose. It was a beautiful day! A touch of spring fever infected hubby and I. And after perusing the horrible state of my kitchen, I decided that not only was there no way in hell I was cooking, but I wasn't going to eat in that wretched place, either. Out to eat for the Henny crew! We decided upon a fav italian restaurant that featured an outdoor patio - a perfect space for our unruly children.

As we drove there in our mini-van, with the windows rolled down, the 80's retro rock pumped up, Hubby and I sang along with our kids bopping along in the back. I smiled, and day dreamed of the chilled glass of Riesling I was going to sip on at the patio while eating whole wheat pasta tossed with sun-dried tomatoes and fresh basil. Exchanging a few buzzed giggles with hubby and smiling at our children's banter. I was ready for a relaxing, fun evening.


Ok, so this is where the fun music comes to a scratching halt and reality hits in the sitcom version of this glimpse into my life.

We walked into the restaurant,to find that the patio was closed for the evening due to a threat of rain. The restaurant was packed with boys in tuxedos and girls in skimpy dresses and updos. IT WAS PROM NIGHT! And so we backed out of the restaurant as quickly as possible.

I pouted all the way to the next restaurant, where we were turned away for the very same reason. An understanding hostess who obviously had children of her own, suggested it would be a very bad idea to eat there because of the crowds of teenagers. A helpful Hubby suggested that we do eat there, as a public service to all the parents at home worrying. Our children on display would make such a great statement in support of abstinence.

Then we drove around for 15 minutes, arguing over where to eat. I pouted. Hubby still insisted on having the windows open, which just felt like an annoying wind to me, at this point.

And so we ended up at Panera, eating salads and grilled cheese sandwiches. The whole time shocked and amazed that it cost us $36 to eat those entrees. Salad, cheese and bread for $36??? Arghhhhh! My chilled wine was replaced by iced tea. My ambience replaced with reprimands to the children on sitting still. It was reality at it's finest.

For the most part, I don't miss my life before children. I really do treasure them, and love our times together. But sometimes, just sometimes, I miss the casualness, the unplanned-ness of eating out, taking our time finding a place and savoring a meal. Especially the savoring of the meal.