Here's the thing...

It turns out it's way more fun for me to create new blogs then to actually POST on them. So, embarrassed as I am to be writing this, I started a new blog. It is private and I sent out invites a couple of minutes ago for those who's email address I had and thought might want to read it. I'm seriously embarrassed. This is my third. That's right. Please try to hold mocking to a minimum. Anyway, if you didn't get an invite and want one than email me or leave your address. Because I don't have it.

P.S. A new blog does not guarantee I will keep up on it:) It just means that I wanted to write today. But hopefully I will because I really enjoy posting. Love you guys!

Joda Wisdom

The conversation my 2-year-old and I had while changing her moments ago:

Me: Please don't touch your diaper. It's poopy.
Joda: Oh. It's yucky.
Me: Yes, yes it is.
Joda: I don't want to eat the poopy diaper.
Me: No, you don't. That's gross.
Joda: Yeah. I don't want to eat my poop. It's not a pancake.
Me: No, it is definitely not a pancake.
Joda: Yeah. (extending her finger to the counter) That's a nice pancake.

And there you have it. Eat the nice pancake, not human feces.

In case you needed a laugh.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/107500/saturday-night-live-digital-short-firelight

My captors

A chilled hand covers my mouth.
My muffled call for help carries to no one,
no one but my captors.
We're alone-
in my living room.
I've been wrestled to the couch.
Two on one.
With the chilled hand still quieting my mouth
the shorter, stronger one pokes me in the eye,
and I squirm.
His nail is sharp and painful on my eyelid-
possibly drawing blood.
The hand on my mouth tightens.
And then something wet... across my forehead;
It drips down the side of my face
I try to wipe it away,
But My captors force back my arm.
Instinctively I jerk and the hand on my mouth releases,
"I'll get you for this!"I scream in desperation.
But they laugh and the hand returns to my mouth.
How long will they torture me?
Suddenly, my adrenalin catches fire and I receive strength,
"Off you fiends!" I yell with courage!
And in one great movement I roll to the side and dive off the couch.
I'm facing the two of them from across the room now.
Who will move first...
Finally, and with great vigor, my 2 year old daughter yells,
"Mama, I get you!" and she runs me down our hallway
and I'm searching fast as I can for a good hiding place,
something not too difficult for them to find me.
I know my 14 month son is close on my heels as well.
"I gon get you!" I hear again.
I dive under the covers on my daughters bed.
And then they're there, they see the lump-
I'm ruined- this is the end.
They pull the blanket off my head with huge grins on their faces
laying on my arms, leaving me defenseless.
And then I see it:
One large blob of drool falling from my son's mouth.
"NOOOOO!" I yell, trying to wrench my arm free.
But I can't, and they've won, they're giggling over my scream.
The blob belly flops over my good eyeball.
And I'm blinded.
I throw them off and growl
"You better run!"
"Ahhhhhh!" They yell!
The tables have turned and it's my turn to torture my captors.

I heart yardsaling

In a big way. I love it. And yes, to any fourth grader reading this blog, I should probably marry it. But I kind of did since it was actually my husband who helped me discover this passion I now have for raiding other people's junk. This morning my little sister and sister-in-law and I spent 4 hours and came home with loads of goodness. With approximately $9.00 (all of which came from our change jar) I acquired a pretty cool mirror, a snowman decoration, a bottle for Tic, 7 shirts, 2 skirts, 1 sweater, a Noah's Ark stuffed animal toy, a cute stuffed bear, 2 hats for dress ups, a very nice coat and shorts for my honey, a kids book about the human anatomy, thee cutest peasant dress for my daughter, and one package of strawberry flavored Bubblicious! Beat that Savers or DI.

FYI: This is for anyone I have now tempted to join my ranks. There are three major dangers in yardsaling. One: not one object is safe in your neighbor's yard between the months of April and October (depending on the weather or course). It's been more than once that I've attempted to buy things people were not selling, in yards where a sale was not being held. Two: Whenever someone compliments anything I am wearing I cannot help but tell them where I found it and how much it cost. It's one of those annoying things about me that I totally recognize but cannot control. And Three: yarsalers are not out early Saturday morning to be careful, law abiding citizens. We drive slow, we don't always see stop signs, we park illegally, etc. Our eyes are on the lawns, not on the road:)

Dirty Rotten Villains

My 2-year-old just woke up crying really hard about a frog trying to get her. I think this is from Thumbelina, although she hasn't watched it for a month or so.

She watched Swan Princess yesterday. Does that have a scary frog? This past weekend she also woke up crying after a nap telling me that the scary man got her and hurt her ear. But "Da-Da" saved her. My husband was extremely pleased to hear of his heroic role. I think this one was from Anastasia which she'd watched before bed the night before.

I was thinking that maybe I need to go through our kid movies and put away the ones with frightening villains. I feel deeply responsible for her nightmares. I am her mother. I (along with her dad) create her world and how she understands herself in that world. I just don't feel that at 2 and a half she should be waking up with nightmares. She should have no clue that anything bad could ever happen to her. That's for me to worry about- not her. What do you think? At what age can kids handle scary villains?

Sad.

Today has been a depressing day. I'm not sure why I'm writing this post. It's not for sympathy or for compliments. I do not want people telling me how adorable I am. It just totally stinks to lose your smokin' hot bod when you have babies. Of course I would never in a million trillion years choose the waist over the babies. They are my life and I love that life. Tasted it, Loved it, Crave it. However, I spent the last couple of hours going through all of my clothes I use to wear which have been in boxes for... awhile now. "For a smaller me" is what I labeled them. Ha ha. I'm only 5 pounds from where I started which is great. The goal is in sight. But the hips are not moving back. And I don't know if I was a total skank before the child bearing began but skin tight clothing is not attractive over the love handles. Which seem to be a permanent addition to this bod. So I'm getting rid of the clothes. Sick of seeing them. Good-bye. This world is the pits. I kind of feel like I never ever ever want to watch another movie or look at another magazine in my life. I'm sick of seeing other women that may or may not be real and feeling like I'm never going to be that. Wish I could just kick the crap out of them. That would help me feel better right now. Since I can't, I am now going to support the new me and spend a significant amount of time with Ben and Jerry. 340 calories. They are so good to me.

Some more cheese

So anyone who knows me and my honey know we are incredibly chessey. And I just took it to the next level. I wrote our story as a fairytale. It was surprisingly fun. I'm hoping to learn calligraphy and write it in a very cool journal his parents gave him. It's just for him and me and our kids. But here are a few excerpts so you can taste what you shall never have to read:)

After ice cream Rayown walked Amikins back to her sleeping quarters. From hence forth this became their ritual at the end of each day. Rayown would walk Amikins home, she would try to get her bracelet back, and Rayown would do whatever he wanted behind her back: touch her hair, smell her perfume, brush her back. So scandalous!

One day Amikins found herself wondering how things had gotten this far. Rayown had invited himself over to her quarters and she couldn’t find a way out of it! “Just deal with it.” He chided, “I’ll be over after dinner. We can watch whatever play you want that’s showing in the kingdom tonight. Pick something depressing and pessimistic. You like that stuff.”

“You’re too kind!” Amikins glared. So she chose Charly and cried all though it and completely ignored Rayown’s overtly available hand and arms. Well, she saw them. But she made sure he couldn’t reach her by putting a pillow, a magic wand, and some treats between them.

“Do you always put up physical barriers between yourself and those you want to keep away?” Rayown asked the next day.

“No, ah… what do you mean? No, I don’t.” And she changed the subject once again. What was with his total, upfront honesty?!

I just love that we got married!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Potty Training

At 8:50 this morning mission potty training commenced. I read my daughter a book called "No More Diapers for Me!" (included flushing button which she thought was a car). We had baby Ella take off her diaper, go tinkle, and put on pretty undies. Jo tried to go potty (but didn't) and we put on super cool Nemo undies. She guzzled two juice boxes and ate a sucker and a tootsie roll - she didn't even have to eat breakfast first. It was so fun. I was jumping up and down and clapping and showing true enthusiasm for this wonderful day. I asked her AT LEAST every 5 minutes if she was dry, if she wanted to go to the potty, if she needed anything at all to make this day any more wonderful. And between 8:50 and 10:15 my 28 month old wet her newly acquired panties 3 times, pooped in them once, and was in full blown tears because of all the pee on her legs. She asked for a diaper back 3 times. So I held up panties and diapers and let her pick, reminding her that she only gets treats and juice if she wears panties. She picked the diaper. She just wants to play without constantly having wet things all over her. I can appreciate that. Does anyone have any advice for me? Do we do this every morning until she catches on? Do I give it a week or a month? Should I do something differently? She wakes up dry every morning and has gone tinkle and poop in the potty in months past. I thought she was ready for the boot camp of bowel control. I really wanted this to be an empowering day where SHE got to choose which undies to wear and SHE got to choose when to eat treats and drink juice and SHE got to tell me when she needed to go potty and flush and wash her hands. What is not totally exciting about this for a 2 year old who LOVES power and is usually denied it by nature of her age? For the love!

2 things I've learned.

1. It's kind of strange but mostly funny how children want to change their babies' and animals' diapers. It's extremely uncomfortable when they want to change MY diaper, especially in a public place.

2. Also uncomfortable when they just "check" to see if I'm poopy, which means looking down my pants. Awkward at home - ten times more awkward with others around.

A matter of business.

Facebook. I don't know how, I don't know when, and I don't know why. But somehow I created an account. A facebook account. Normally creating an account to something doesn't change your world. But a facebook account does. Daily I get emails. Dozens of people wanting me to be thier friend and a gazillion messages I haven't read and photos to see. They want me. The people want me. But the truth is, it was all an accident. This accident has brought me great popularity, yes. But it is not my favorite mistake. I don't know how to use facebook. I don't want to. I blog. And not terribly often. I don't have the time to keep up with so many friends. Forgive me if you are one of the people wishing to be my facebook friend. I don't know how to reject you. But consider yourself rejected.

In the end he was small.

I just killed a huge spider. I'm sure it must have been a wolf spider because that's what all of the really big ones around here are, right? It was brown. It was huge. Shudder.

I smashed it against the wall with my flip flop. "How did she do this?" anyone who knows me well would ask (nothing short of a true, full blown phobia going on here). Lots of support from lots of people. Spider therapy from my husband. And to top it off, a very good insight from Grandma. I found a spider in her sink a few weeks ago and didn't know what to do. She walked in, got some toilet paper and squished it. I asked how she could do that with such a big spider and she opened the toilet paper and said, "But look how small it is."

She was right spiders are small after you smash their legs and guts and kill the life out of them. So that's how I did it. I thought about how small that disgustingly huge hairy brown thing would be after he was crushed. And, I assure you, he was indeed small.

*I just tried to google "brown spider" to give you a picture to look at. DO NOT DO THIS. You can't smash a picture of a spider and make it small. I had to close the web after 4 seconds. Shudder.
Instead I give you what the demon looked like after I was done with him. In the end, they are all small.

.

Working on the Vocab Words

Guess who's been learning these new words/phrases:

No
Don't
Not
Can't
Won't
No way
Stop doing
I don't think so
That's enough
Stay

Some more hints: I love her... she's really cool... she's angry a lot... especially when her animals fall over after she's carefully lined them up. If I were going to pick someone she's similar to tonight it would be... Kelly Clarkston singing Since you've been gone... "Shut your mouth I just can't take it!" That would be her tonight.

Right Now...

My attractive husband is at a recording studio making a CD of my favorite songs including "How sweet it is" which he sang to me at our wedding and "Wrapped up in you" which he sang at my bridal shower. I am excited to get my hands on this CD. Then I will play it all day long, even when he's at home. Then he'll ask me to turn it off. I will tell him he's way better than James and Michael and he'll just smile and kiss me:) Did I mention he'll kiss me? Yeah, I'm excited for that. I know that once your married the idea of a single kiss is not supposed to make you get all tingly, butterfly excited like. But the thing is, he's going to give me that smile first. And that smile just kind of makes me melty and I start saying things like, "You want chips and salsa, sure I'll get that... don't move... a foot massage?.... love to.....babe." And I'll call him babe over and over again and we'll just get super annoying to everyone, even our kids who don't even know their ABC's yet. Not even out of diapers yet. Even they'll get annoyed. It's going to be awesome. I love when we're all lovey dovey and everyone hates it. You just gotta understand- that smile + that kiss = SERIOUSLY SO BLESSED. So we can't help it:) Avoid us like the plague for 2.73 weeks.

*FYI: We will be selling copies of the CD for free if anyone is in need of some sweet music.

Wanted: Behavior Counseling for Father

Breakfast at Denny's

This morning as we sat in a booth at Denny's I overheard our waitress seating a middle aged couple.

"Is this booth okay?" She politely asked as she directed them to the table behind us.

"No." The woman quickly replied while shaking her head and glancing at our children.

"How about his one?"

"Yes." The couple was seated a little farther from us where they could be free from our little monsters:) (I will add that our monsters behaved extremely well- for monsters that is). I've heard lots of stories about people not wanting children in public places... but I'd never had a first hand experience.

And this is the cat we hired just after to hunt the couple down:)

There's no place like Dome

Here are several reasons why the Dome is so great:

1. Cherry Tree. Already producing lots of goodness. Come get some if you want!

2. 3 Raspberry Bushes. Quite possibly the best thing the Dome has to offer. Has started producing a little. DON'T bother coming for any. We won't share. It's just too important to us.

3. Our T.V. is now placed right at the end of our bed. This means the Husband and I go to bed each night to Dwight Schrut saying, "It has to be official. And it has to be Urine."

4. 100 year old piano! And I've started lessons with my old boss. She's promised that we're going to have an end of summer recital. So look out for invites. You could actually come hear arrangements such as The Wheels on the Bus, The Eencey Weencey Spider, or Head, Shoulder, Sneeze and Toes!

5. Our lawn takes about 30 minutes to mow. Not 2 1/2 hours:)

6. The woman we're living with is extremely helpful with our kids. She taught our Home Evening Lesson on whining for the daughter:) Hope that one sticks.

7. Tic has received some measure of the force. I think moving into Luke Skywalker's dome might have something to do with this. Just watch out when Tic extends that hand!

8. And last, but certainly not least, we're 4 minutes from my parents which is very excellent!

The Lovely Power

Today as I found myself sitting with a leopard, a bear, a baby doll, a blanket, and a "Bubba" in the corner of my 2-year-old's room I couldn't help but ponder what had gotten me into this mess. What could a mom and 5 inanimate toys do to warrent time out? The answer is easy. All 6 of us made the thoughtless, unkind choice to hit. That's not true now that I think of it. I know at least the baby doll bit. I heard her. Well, I heard my daughter's reaction from the other room,

"OW! Doan bite. It hurt! Doan bite, baby. Go time out! Doan bite, baby!"

But I think the rest of us hit. I believe in choice and accountability. I do. Let the crime fit the punishment. And in our house hitting and bitting certainly merit a time out! But it's hard for me to admit to hitting. I was sitting down trying to read when my daughter grabed my hand and smacked it against her own forehead,

"Doan hit! Doan hit, mama."

Then she did it again- smacked herself with my hand,

"Doan hit, Mama! Time out. Mama go time out."

She then led me down the same hall into the same corner as was baby just minutes before. It was hard to feel guilt, to feel that pit in my stomach for doing something wrong. I knew I had done something wrong. I knew it. I just couldn't feel it. My toddler's been acting time out with her stuffed animals for days and I've thought before,

"Good. She understands the process. She understands that there's a consequence when she hurts others! We're getting through to her."

Shortly she came back into the room to check on her delinquents and I took the opportunity to speak up,

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry I hit!"

She must have read past my words and discerned my indifference. Because she said,

"No mama! Stay time out!"

What? What about the process?! As soon as my daughter says sorry she is released from bondage. The power had definitely gone to her head. I knew it. I knew she was my daughter. Oh the POWER! Eventually (I think she let me sit for about 5 minutes) she accepted my apology and allowed me freedom.