Geographically challenged

You know, my family generally has the same trajectory each day. We are typically all aligned, and heading in parallel due north. It really works like a well oiled machine, the schedule is down to the minute. There is no room in this schedule for deviations, except perhaps on the weekends, but even then it's questionable.

And then out of the blue, someone puts a magnet on each of our little individual compasses and we all have differing tragectories. Melissa has to go south. Nikolai, he absolutely must go west and there is no arguing it. Matt is due east and I, totally inept when it comes to geographical skills, spend the whole day looking at my stupid compass and cursing to myself because it's generally my responsiblity to coordinate the logistics of the family. My poor family. It's days like this when I need to clone myself. Some days one simple clone would be sufficient. Today, not only do I need to clone myself twice, but I also need to clone Matt and Gail.

Last night, my blessed saviors came not in the form of a clone, but the closest thing to it. Direct female ancestor and decendent willingly took charge, and the decendent (she truly is an angel) not only cooked dinner and bathed her brother but also withstood, patiently, his screaming and crying for an hour before bed. She put him to bed lovingly. Somewhere during the evening she found the time to fold the 4 piles of laundry on the couch, as well as run a couple more through. Upon returning, the house was as clean as it was when I left it yesterday morning. She slept dutifully in my spot on the bed so that her brother would not panic if he woke up alone. I wish I had the means to take her with me to the Bahamas for a vacation. I guess I'll just have to smother her with love and appreciation instead.

Mama's office

Yesterday Gail was closed for the first half of the day, and Matt had a doctor's appointment at 10:30. So, from about 10:15 to 11:45 I had Nikolai with me in my office. It actually worked out quite well -- much better than I had imagined it would. When first he got here I thought immediately of the entertainment value of the vending machine and getting food from it. In hindsight I see that placing a 3 year old in front of a box full of 50 different candy options might not be a good idea.
When I turned down his 87 requests for candy from the machine and routed him instead to the healthiest options he handled it quite well (whew), and without any fits. I allowed him to feed the dimes (yes, all dimes, I was scrounging) into the machine and then push the button for the strawberry flavored fruit snacks I allowed him to have (ok, so it was almost as healthy as I could get with a vending machine). He was tickled pink watching the spiral arm move and push the snacks out, and he found the loud "bang" when they dropped quite gratifying. He reached in and grabbed them himself and off we went to Mama's office.
He discovered some cars that were buried under a pile of junk behind my chair, and sat quietly and very happily eating his strawberry fruit snacks and playing with his "new cars". All in all it was a very peaceful and productive time. I got work done, he got new cars. We were both happy.

When I dropped him off today at Gail's, I was telling her that he had spent some time with me in my office yesterday morning before he came to her house. Having overheard this conversation, Nikolai said "Mama, you have *wonderful* snacks in your office."

As if the belly button wasn't gross enough...

mama: "Awww..look. It's a baby Nikolai!"
nikolai: "He's taking a poopy out of his tummy!"

Fondue

Thank you everyone for a glorious and rich evening of fondue.

you know who you are.

Sears: The Saga Continues

In addition to working from home today because Gail was closed, the Sears installers came to install our three applicances: dishwasher; wall oven (ack...this was a nightmare); a water line for the ice maker/water dispenser in the refrigerator.

I thought it was some kind of miracle. We made the appointment, the installers actually showed up, *and* they stayed until 4:45 pm to finish the work. Considering they started around 10:00 I believe the fact that they stayed was the true miracle. When they left, everything looked perfect. The refrigerator was happily making ice chunks and spitting out water on demand. The wall oven was proudly displaying the time to me in beautiful green numbers. The dishwasher was all wet inside from the trial run they'd done before leaving.

They warned me that I ought to run about a gallon of water through the water filter before actually consuming any of it. I should also, they warned me, run the upper and lower ovens for about 30 to 45 minutes to cook off any substance stuff that they put on it to make it shine. I followed orders and did both things without question. Once they had gone I turned the upper and lower ovens up to 500 to bake. I begun to filter out a gallon's worth of water from the refrigerator rather inefficiently with a 6 oz cup. Unfortunately I followed on to rid myself of the entire gallon with the 6 oz cup. Once done disposing of the water, I decided it was high time to take the dishwasher for a trial run. I'd only been waiting 4 1/2 months for this.

I rinsed all the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. In the midst of washing out my fondue pot, I noticed the kitchen was awfully steamy. I turned around to see if it was just near the sink, and discovered the whole house seemed to have filled up with smoke. I couldn't really see the dining room too well. I figured disaster had struck with one or the other of the fire pits in the house and headed out the kitchen door, and on my way noticed that the smoke was pouring out of the fan coming from behind the wall oven. The wiring was burning. I turned it off and muttered a few unmentionable words to myself. There goes another day of work.

How could I have let myself hope that I would actually have 3 new functional appliances in the kitchen?

Amber, we're safe.

For a matter of years now Amber and I have been very concerned, because Nikolai has exhibited an excessively sensitive nature toward creatures. He has become very distressed when an animal or insect (or spatula, in some cases) has been hurt. Madisyn, on the other hand, finds great joy and entertainment in squishing bugs. Any bugs around? SQISH 'EM!

So, yesterday afternoon I was picking Nikolai up from Gail's house, and he was outside playing in the plastic playhouse on the playground. From inside the house Nikolai began to holler about a spider he'd found in the house.
Nikolai: "A spider, Mama! An itsy bitsy spider in here! Come look, Mama! Look what I found!"
Mama: "Awww...look how cute he is. You found a little tiny one!"
Nikolai: "We should SQUISH HIM!!"
Mama: "No, I don't think we should squish him. Lives are precious. Why don't we let him stay there so he can find some food."
Nikolai: "Can we squish him with a stick?"
Mama: "No, I think we should just leave him be so he can get his food. He's not doing anything to hurt you.
Nikolai: "Can we squish him with a rock? A rock would squish him."
Mama: "I don't think we should squish him. Let's leave him be."
Nikolai: "A LEAF!! I think we should squish him with a leaf!"
Mama: gives up.

I think we're safe to let them play outside around bugs now, Amber.

Shoo fly, don't bother me

Yesterday was such a beautiful day that I just had to open the windows and let the warm fresh air in the house. It's been so stuffed up with the rain that it needed it. Consequently, a few large, very fat, very noisy and very obnoxious flies decided to fly in the house to join us. They were buzzing around and around and around, annoying the heck out of all of us, when Nikolai asked if we should scare them away. This brought to my mind immediately the song "Shoo fly, don't bother me". I began to sing it and he looked at me like I had 4 heads. He was quiet for a few minutes and then got up to retrieve his shoes from our coat closet. With one shoe in each hand he proceeded to Shoe the flies away.

We had extensive and exhaustive conversations for the rest of the evening about Shoe'ing flies.

It figures

Just after I post that last post, we had the sweetest night with Nikolai. He was back to his old sweetheart self, full of love and hugs and sweetly state sentences.

aaahhhhhh (sigh of relief, not scream)

Do I kiss him, or do I strangle him?

You know, children are such beautiful things. Their innocence and complete openness is admirable and endearing. As they grow you see this gradually disappear, and for me the farewell to purity is a sad one. I have always held the opinion, however, that the only reason the human race still exists is that their children are so damn cute that they can't kill them. Nikolai seems to have entered this challenging phase lately.
He began his time here on Earth with such a sweet and quiet and peaceful disposition. He was always curious yet careful. He has been afraid of nearly everything at one point in time, but faces his challenges with a determination to conquer. Since he turned three that's all different.
Now, he is constant motion. He is constant noise and constant challenge. I find the only times I smile fondly at his innocent sweetness is when he's asleep. If I want to keep things clean around the house, I have to follow him around at a three year old pace and clean things in his wake. He's like a tornado. A really really noisy tornado. Ever heard of Dennis the Menace? Well, that's Nikolai these days, although a good portion of the time he's not doing things as innocently as Dennis did.
For the first few years of his life he was a little Matthew. Now, he's a little Rebecca. I prayed this wouldn't happen.

Fortune cookies

At lunch today I received two fortunes. I actually got the first and laughed so hard that I had to share it with a neighboring table (seated at which were people who knew me). The neighbors then offered me a second cookie to see if I would get something even slightly more accurate.
Fortune 1) You have a quiet and unobtrusive nature.
Fortune 2) The night life is for you.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

soggy cash

I think I've had enough Easter to last me at least a year. Between 5 egg hunts and a treasure hunt, I'm all hunted out. I did get some good pictures, though. In a nutshell, we went over to Amber's house for some egg hunts there and then came back to do our hunts at the house.

Every year I tell myself I'm going to start my preparations earlier so that I'm done early enough to get to bed and get a good night's rest before the events. Every year I fail in this endeavor. This year was certainly no different. Instead of starting the preparations earlier, I chose to leave the house on a hunt for PEEP PEEPs. Not to be mistaken for Peeps, PEEP PEEPs are tiny little chicks made out of what I think must be some sort of pipe cleaners. Last year I bought some on a whim for the kids, and Nikolai carried them around for months afterward, as though they were as fragile and precious as raw eggs themselves. I beleive we had one survivor as long as just a few months ago when we moved into my parents' house briefly. I figured they would be really easy to find this year, as they were *everywhere* last year, but I could find them nowhere. Alas, Mission: PEEP PEEP was unsuccsessful. We headed home in the evening on Saturday empty handed (well, except for all the incredients necessary to make up the treasure hunt map). Thank goodness for the foresight which told me that I needed to use the last bit of daylight I had left to bury the box full of treasure.
I found a good spot outside the living room window and behind the shed and dug a 3' x 3' x 3' hole (incidentally, the box itself was about 12" x 18" x 6"...so much wasted effort). The sun went down in the middle of the dig, so I propped a flashlight up on a pole pointed directly at the hole. I knew it was going to rain, and that it might be disastrous, so I wrapped the box in a pillow case ("a PILLOWCASE?!" you, as the objective reader over there, are no doubt saying to yourself) and heaped dirt on top of it. I stuck a plastic knife into the mud directly over the center of the box and headed inside. (kindly note that there is no mention here of having taken the flashlight, which was pointing directly at the buried treasure, inside with me)
I started drawing the map at about 7:00 pm, and finished sometime around 10:30. I hadn't even begun to dye eggs, so I did that from about 10:30 to 11:30 or so. From about 11:30 to 12:30 I sat in bed and stuffed the plastic eggs with candy, accompanied by Nick at Night. Too many sit-coms later I actually fell asleep. I think it was about 2:00 am. Fortunately for me, Matt noticed the flashlight and retrieved it. I think that might have been a dead giveaway to the treasure's location (and another testament to mom's cleverness). Thank you, Matt.

We got up on Sunday morning (barely...Nikolai wasn't asleep the night before until about 11:30 as well), and I stuffed as much protein in the kid as I could manage, in spite of his fff objections. We headed out the door to Amber's house. First thing upon arrival Nikolai slipped and fell into a 3" deep puddle. Instead of getting up, he decided to sit in the water screaming until his sister picked him up. Even then he refused to let her help him walk into the house. Since I was laden with three huge baskets as well as other rain gear for the hunt, the solution required my going in the house to drop everything so I could return outside to pick him up. All in all it was about 5 good solid minutes of screaming until we were in the door and removing the soaked clothing. Thank goodness for the foresight to bring a spare set of clothes. As soon as Disaster 1 was resolved, I doled out the easter baskets. Amber handed Nikolai a gift, it was a little carrot shaped zipped up bag which contained the very precious and rare PEEP PEEPs for which I had searched so long. The kids dug through their baskets for about 1/2 an hour while I settled in and took a deep breath. Thanks to Amber, Nikolai had the biggest chocolate car I've ever seen in his basket this year. He had only gnawed the bumper off before I confiscated the remainder. As soon as it seemed they'd settled down for a bit, we headed out for the big hunt. The rain subsided at least for the duration of our hunt, which was a small miracle for which we were all thankful.
The little ones found their eggs pretty quickly. Chris did a fabulous job of hiding the eggs for them. Anthony and Melissa were battling each other, both wanted to be the first to find the hidden Carrot which would bring the lucky seeker the grand prize of a giant yard long tube of red licorice. Melissa was the victor, and treasured her prize. Chris hid the eggs for the older kids again, and after the second hunt we headed home via Taco Bell to do our own various hunts.
At home, we did a hunt inside the house for the plastic eggs. Here is a picture of Melissa looking for eggs in the kitchen. If you look closely you can see an egg hidden under the bottom edge of the clock right above her head. After we did the hunt inside, we headed outdoors to find the real eggs. This went pretty quickly, thank God. By this point I had pretty much had it with the whole "following kids around finding stupid eggs" thing.
The egg hunts were said and done, so I hinted to Melissa that there was something hidden on the table. After only slight exploration she found the letter from One Eye'd Pete which told of a treasure map hidden somewhere in the loft. After about 37 trips back down the stairs to whine at me that there WAS no treasure map hidden in the loft, they finally found the map. It was hidden in the loft. I think I didn't make the map challenging enough, because they didn't really even have to look to find the spot where it was buried. Melissa led, holding the map, and Anthony followed. To Melissa's credit, she was actually walking between the shed and the house examining the map closely to figure out where it was buried when Anthony piped up from behind her "Uhhh...it's kind of obvious where it's buried, Melissa", to which she replied "Oh. Shut up." They took turns digging. Melissa first, and then Anthony. Melissa actually did the dirty work of pulling the muddy bag out of the ground and extracting the box from it. She carried it inside and put it on the living room coffee table where it promptly began to ooze (D'OH!).
Damn rain.
Almost everything in the box was ruined (at least a hundred chocolate coins). We put a towel under the box and opened it up and the chocolate coins spilled out. Nikolai yelled "CASH!!" (maybe he'll be a banker)

Whew. I'm glad it's over. Work feels like a vacation today.

Productivity: ACT III

So, I'm really rip roarin' now. For some reason I'm actually accomplishing more in considerably less time. I'm making the most of every moment. I'm doing it all, man. I know this can't be sustainable, but I sure wish it could be.

*NEW*
Thanks to Mother I exist.
*NEW*
Thanks to Matt the dishes got done.
Thanks to Nikolai my bathroom towel basket is cleaned out.
Thanks to the cats a few more moles are dead.
Thanks to me I found the floor under Mt. StinkyClothes.
Thanks to Chris my productivity at work is more directed.
Thanks to Carl my daughter is a movie star.
Thanks to Amber Easter will actually happen gloriously.
Thanks to Kelly I have a rocket scientist in the family.
Thanks to Steph I have a reason to travel to Bolivia.

Life is good.

More fun than a barrel full of monkeys

Easter time again!

Well, here we are at easter time again. I love this time of year. I find it funny that I go absolutely nuts for holidays. Where did I learn this? I don't remember my mother doing this when we were growing up. Anyway, the typical easter tradition is that we do two two egg hunts: one outside with real eggs and one inside with plastic eggs (the logic here being that if an egg doesn't get found, it doesn't sit rotting under the couch for a few months before being discovered by a 3 year old). Then we follow the egg hunts along with the annual visit from One Eye'd Pete. He's a pirate who seems to have followed our family around all over the place since Anthony was about 6 years old. Every year he mistakenly buries at least one box containing treasures in our yard somewhere. This is impressive because not only has he misplaced a good number of boxes over the years, he hasn't even come back to retrieve any of them. And somehow he knows where we live. Every year, he knows where to lose a box. Amazing. It's getting tougher every year, though. I think Anthony and Melissa are old enough now that I just can't do much to entertain them. It's sad in a way.

One year there were two boxes: one for each child. One Eye'd Pete must be pretty in touch with sibling rivalry issues, because this was the perfect year for two separate boxes.

And then there was the year the kids found One Eye'd Pete's box in the attic which they had completely forgotten existed. Here they are seen removing their easter baskets from the dryer.

Success!

I am happy to report that I have actually succeeded in my arduous effort to become more productive. I find that I'm cleaning less (really effectively this means that everything domestic is falling behind...dishes are piling up like landfills, laundry is mountainous beyond belief, nightmares plague me each night about neglected household tasks), which means that come the weekend I'm hosed. Come to think of it a hose might just be my solution.

At any rate, I'm feeling much happier. I'm doing more, and I'm happy. Why is it that the tendnecy of humans is to follow the path of least resistance, when it's glaringly obvious, for those who care to look, that the path of most resistance holds the greatest reward?

Because I just can't resist, I have to show you this picture. While I was sick and unable to get out of bed, Nikolai conducted yet another experiment in Dentifrice Options. I think this child is seriously confused about dental care, and needs some comprehensive lessons. Obviously the teaching I'm doing has been unsuccessful.

Increase in productivity

OK. So, my resolution to be more productive in April is actually working out very well. I'm finding that (now that I'm among the living again) I'm actually more productive given the time that I have, and I'm spending more quality time with the kids in the evenings than I was previously. I have to sacrifice some cleaning time, with which the Gods of Clorox are unhappy, but I feel this was a necessary shift. I'm sure I will be smited, but oh well. You gotta do what you gotta do.
Unfortunately for those who actually care to read my blog, this means that during the day I'm mostly unable to update my blog here and read your blog there, but don't take it personally. I'm neglecting everyone equally. I'm going to make a more concerted effort in the evenings before bedtime but after kid time to update my blog, but this might interfere with my recently reestablished shower schedule. I'm gonna stink, but at least you'll be well informed. I think this works out well, since you can read my blog from the relative safety of your own offices/cubicles/homes and don't actually have to subject yourselves to the vapors. The Gods of Pantene will also be unhappy, but as far as I can tell they aren't nearly as vengeful as the Clorox Gods.

I think my only words of advice to you during this trying time are:
If you see 4 days in a row of blog posts between 10:00 and 11:00 pm, don't come visit my office.

Wipes: The New World Order

I think it started with Baby Wipes. We needed an health conscious and convenient way to get rid of some pretty darn vile stuff in a matter of seconds, while battling the bearer of said vile substance in a battle the likes of a WWF competition. I believe this is actually totally justified. We could just wet a paper towel, or wet a RAG, but we don't. This, of course, would necessitate laundering of roughly 80 rags a day by a woman or man who is already fully prepared to throw the infant away, never mind make the decision *not* to toss the 80 (or more realistically 320, the very last clean one is actually technically a doily) putrescent bundles of filth. This is fully and completely justifiable.
A few decades later, someone actually thought to themselves "Well, adults need to wipe their posteriors, too!" and out came the new line of Wipes, the Not-Baby Wipes.
Then someone thought "Wow, I think this Wipes market is a totally untapped market for MY product", and out came Clorox Wipes.
And then everyone realized the potential.
Pledge.
Windex.
Cutex.
Mr. Clean.
Clearasil.
Tucks.
Off.
Shout.
Armor All.
Purell.
Kleenex.
Always.
There's a Wipe for almost anything now. Pretty soon we won't be showering anymore, we'll just be Body Wiping. We'll not wash our cars anymore, we'll just use our Car Wipes. We won't vaccuum our carpets (uh oh...they've already invented this one), we'll just use our Carpet Wipes.

I, for one, am really happy about this new trend. As a busy workin' mom who's as neurotic about home cleanliness as Clorox commercials want her to be, it means I can actually keep things as clean as They think I should.
I have Clorox Wipes
I have Pledge Wipes
I have Scrubbin' Bubbles Wipes
I have Baby Wipes
I have Toddler Wipes
I have Carpet Wipes

Wipes rock.

is anybody out there?

Wow. I feel so alone. It's not enough that I'm bedridden and barely able to reach out, but when I have it's not even noticed. bizarre. I guess out of sight out of mind. serious blog drought.

Fever is still at 102 today, and my larynx is in such horrible shape that I can't cough anything up for the pain. I'm convinced it's now clogged and infected, and won't resolve itself. Matt just left to get antibiotics, so I pray that helps.

at least this isn't a sustainable situation. it either goes away or I die.