Why I am dead meat when Rylan hits puberty

Rylan: (watching kids volunteering at an animal shelter by feeding a kitten out of a bottle)

"Mom, is that a real kitten?"

Me: (peering from behind the computer to check the screen)

"Yep."

Rylan: (eyebrows scrunching, lip starting to quiver, tears welling up)

Me: (What the...?)

Rylan: "That's so cute (gulp) I think I'm going to cry!" (immediate sobbing commences, Rylan runs towards me and throws herself into my arms)

(Sob, sob, sob -- now wiping nose on my shoulder -- gasping for breath like she's been kicked in the stomach)

Me: (Are you freaking kidding me? She can't be serious. Maybe she thinks the kitten is dying? Please tell me she thinks it's dying. Maybe they said the mother got run over by a car and she's all broken up over the thought of me ground into the pavement. OK, let's clarify here...)

"Rylan, calm down. Why are you so upset? Mommy's not going to d---"

Rylan: (Through stifled sobs) "Sometimes there are two reasons to cry: one is if you are sad, and the other is if you are happy -- (really taking it up a notch now) --and that little kitten is so cute I just can't help it!" (again burying her head in my shoulder).

Yeah. And then over 2 hours later she burst into tears again looking at one of our cats because it "reminded her of that precious little kitten".

Heaven help me. And her future husband.



P.S. Quit laughing, Mom. I was NEVER that bad.

More Fun With Feces!

Okay. So my last post about Keaton's poop has prompted a few of you to email/call me with a request that I put in writing what has come to be known as "The Dumptruck Incident". I'm a people pleaser, so here you go...

Once upon a time, there was a 3 year old boy who LOVED volcanoes. He talked about them all the time, drew them on his Magna Doodle, and sculpted them out of play dough whenever he got the chance. He turned strawberries upside down to look like volcanoes, watched YouTube videos of eruptions, and even had a volcano birthday cake when he turned 3. The boy was particularly fond of an episode of Dora the Explorer where young heroine Dora leads an expedition through "the muddy mud pit", over the bridge, and to the volcano.

The little boy's mommy loved him and his siblings very much, but one day she thought she might throw herself in front of a bus if she didn't leave the house alone and have a few hours of priceless silence. The boy's daddy knew this about the mommy, and because he loved the mommy and the children very much, he sent the mommy to Target.

The wise daddy and the children waved goodbye to the mommy as the car screeched out of the driveway, and when she disappeared they went inside to eat lunch. Afterwards, the daddy put the 3 year old and his little brother down for their naps and got on the treadmill to exercise. Silly daddy!

About 45 minutes later, the daddy got off the treadmill and headed out towards the living room. He paused, however, in the hallway when he noticed a particular odor coming from the last bedroom on the left. As he approached the door the stench got stronger, and the daddy was sore afraid.

The daddy mustered all of his courage and opened the 3 year old's door and beheld a scene that was beyond anything he had ever witnessed.

There was the boy, wide awake and gleefully running around his room -- naked from the waist down -- pushing his dumptruck in front of him instead of taking his much needed nap.



"That's not so bad," you say?

*** Did I mention the part where he had poop smeared all down both legs from yanking his nasty Pull Up off? No? How about the part where he had removed a shelf from his little bookshelf, used it as a platform to hold the contents of his Pull Up, "shaped" said contents into a volcano/muddy mud pit (we still aren't totally sure which it was), and wiped his poopy hands on his shirt and his HAIR to clean them off? Did I tell you that part?

How about the part where he had driven his dumptruck through the "muddy mud pit" over and over and over again grinding tire tracks of poo all over his bedroom carpet? ALL. OVER.

Or the part where the poop was all stuck in the tire treads on the dumptruck, so that the daddy had to blast it off with a hose which caused the wheels to spin which sent stuff flying in a manner we like to call the "Sprinkler O' Poo"? Did I tell you all of that?

Good. Back to our story. ***

The little boy's daddy was not happy, and found himself uttering a question the little boy got asked several times a week while he was potty training:

"Keaton Blake! WHERE DOES OUR POOP GO?"

To which the little boy quickly replied, "On the yellow truck, Dad!"

So the boy went into the shower, and the truck stayed outside, and the daddy called the mommy and said in an eerily calm voice, "Where are you?"

"Just leaving Target. And yes, we can still pay the mortgage. At least part of it."

And the daddy said, "Can you please stop and get carpet cleaner?"

And the mommy said, "We have some. It's above the washing machine in the laundry room."

And the daddy said, "I used that. We need more."

And the mommy was frightened and said, "What happened?"

And the daddy said, "Just get the cleaner and come home."

So the mommy spent more money on materials for cleaning floors and returned home and beheld the magnitude of the nastiness that she had avoided by going to Target.

And the mommy smiled.

THE END

(Except for 6 days later when the little boy did it again in the living room -- this time running back into his bedroom to retrieve a different vehicle (you know, on PURPOSE, instead of out of convenience) -- while the mommy was away. The fact that I was gone both times this blessed event occured has assured me that divine intervention is a very real thing.)

Words I dread hearing...

"Mommy, we should only go poop in the potty."

Thus saith Keaton whilst using his hand to cover the evidence protruding from his backside. Apparently looking at pictures of Thomas engines on the computer is too good to tear yourself away, even for (seemingly) urgent reasons.

I never claimed to be tasteful -- only honest.

So that was today, but since I am already on the subject, let me quickly recap the most awesome 3 minutes of my day yesterday:

1:14 I get off the treadmill, dripping with sweat, and come out to check on Keaton. As I pass the hall bathroom, I notice a light on, and Thomas underwear on the floor next to the toilet. Uh-oh -- this is usually not good news. Oh Hurray! They are dry! He must have just forgotten to put them back on...let's go find him...

1:15 There he is..."Keaton, let's put your underwear back on, okay?" Keaton casts a nervous glance in my direction and doesn't move from his perch on the arm of the loveseat. I come closer to physically remove him from the couch, at which point he says to me, "Poop is too yucky."

1:15 1/2 OH. MY. FREAKING. NASTY. Dry heave. Gag. String of expletives running through my brain. Gag again.

1:15 3/4 Quick assessment of damage: poop on arm rest of loveseat; poop on fingers of right hand; poop on heel that he rested under his rear end; poop all over floor where said poopy heel contacted carpet over and over and over again; poop up and down opposite leg where boy "wiped" poopy heel on shin to clean it off.

1:16 Yell at Keaton not to move and frantically grab wipes. Start disgusting process of cleaning up Poop Fest 2008 while muttering under my breath and swearing in my head some more.

1:16 1/2 DOORBELL.

1:16 2/3 Me frantically yelling at now escaped 4 year old, "GET OVER HERE NOW!" Too late. Keaton is now standing totally naked from the waist down in the window to the side of the door, grinning wildly at the UPS man while pressing the family jewels into the glass.


Let's pause here to remember that I am soaked with sweat and have a handful of poopy baby wipes in my hand. Let's also point out that as I am home, running on my own treadmill, I am only wearing my sports bra (and also shorts, socks, and shoes, but no shirt). Did I mention the sports bra is white? And I am TOTALLY SOAKED?

Are we all on the same page now? Good.

So I can't exactly hide now because I have a nude 4 year old talking to the UPS man through the glass and unlocking the door at the same time. I have no choice but to go to the door and try to use it as a shield while I lean my head out enough to talk. Oh good! The guy has a 5 pound tub of protein powder in the box and it's too heavy and awkward for me to grab it using only my left hand and still manage to keep my nudist in the house! So into full view I go, apologizing profusely and avoiding eye contact.


Poor UPS man. Unless I am way hotter than his wife/girlfriend, in which case, Happy Birthday, pervert.


1:17 I shut the door totally humiliated and go back to the glorious task of cleaning fecal matter off a good portion of my front room.


You only WISH your life was this awesome...

Procrastinating the day away...

OK, so my in-laws are arriving tonight and I have been putting off cleaning my house until the last possible minute. All weekend I ignored the growing chaos because I knew I would take care of it Wednesday. That's all fine and dandy until Wednesday arrives (which it did, about 13 hours ago, right on time) and I find myself feeling the way I do: I can't think of anything I would rather do less than clean my house.

And so I blog. About nothing, really. My best work has always come when I am under serious pressure, so I'll be running around the house spraying and sweeping and dusting and vacuuming starting around, oh...let's say 8:30 -- which will give me 2 hours before they arrive. Plenty of time, especially if I drink 3 or 4 energy drinks with dinner.

Now that that's settled, let me show you our new pet:




Yep, that's an armadillo. I got used to seeing these in Texas, but I was kind of surprised to see them in Georgia. I was even more surprised to see one alive, since they usually decorate the sides of highways around here (and colorfully, I might add). We have at least two that live behind our back fence and come dig up bugs under the trampoline almost every evening. But yesterday this guy was chillin' in our front yard and was not at all concerned about our kids being close by.


They're actually sort of cute, in an "armored rat" kind of way, and they're faster than you'd think when they decide to get going. What was less cute was discovering that it located an ant hill in one of my front beds and decided to go for broke digging it up. I'm not partial to the ants, but I'm not so big on armadillos doing this to my flower beds either:



Yeah, so that's fun.

Also fun:

At least he's trying to clean, right? This was Rylan's spray bottle of water for when I do her hair. What you can't really see in the picture is that he had sprayed so much of it that there was a pond on the counter that was cascading down onto the floor. Good times.

I have decided that my boys were nudists in their former lives, because it's all I can do to keep their family jewels covered throughout the day. Branik is okay with leaving his diaper on (as long as he can accessorize as he pleases), but yesterday Boone looked over about halfway through dinner and started snickering (but trying to hide it from the kids -- you know how well that works). I asked him what was so funny, and he said, "Did YOU notice that Keaton is naked from the waist down?" Nope. Hadn't noticed. He was wearing a shirt and when he's at the table I can only see him from the shoulders up, so he was able to sneak into his seat while we were finishing up dinner and no one was the wiser.

*Note to self -- clean that chair TWICE before in-laws arrive.

Sigh. I guess I should really go try to do something productive, like shower. I don't have the energy to write about how swimming lessons are going, so I guess I'm done. I wasted a good hour on this post (picture uploads people, picture uploads) which I will consider another success in the "putting off the inevitable" area of my life.

Any suggestions for armadillo names?

Happy Birthday Branik!

So my baby turned 2 today which is just completely unbelievable to me. He has been a little sicko for about a week now, but since Boone's parents were here visiting we did a little family "party" on Saturday that involved watching Branik cry at dinner and during cake time. He perked up after his bath and did much better when the presents came out, but seriously, how pathetic is this?


You can see how empathetic Rylan and Keaton were to their sick little brother...



All they really cared about was eating scary Elmo cake -- especially since this relatively small cake had 2 whole cans of frosting on it. I usually do better than this, but since a) Boone hacked this shape out of a 9 x 13 cake, b) I was exhausted after painting the huge front area of my house and re-doing our flower beds in the front yard, and c) we'd had sick boys all week which meant Boone and I were SEVERELY sleep deprived, this is what Branik got.


He readily identified it as Elmo when he saw it, so whatever. (Chrysta -- I totally kicked your trash in the "lame-cake-for- son's-birthday-department!)

Anyway, Branik likes two things right now -- Elmo and Thomas. Since Keaton likes the same things minus Elmo, I went with our furry red friend here to avoid WWIII over Branik having a Thomas cake. "Melmo" also made several non-frightening appearances during gift time which helped put a little grin on our little buddy's face (thanks Mom!)...


As much as he loved his Elmo stuff, he went beserk when the Thomas things came out. My boys were totally fine with generic trains until recently, but now I have had two separate friends tell me that when Branik comes to their house, he beelines for the Thomas trains, scoops as many as he can hold into his arms, and cries hysterically when anyone (Keaton) comes near him. So we finally caved and got some real Thomas stuff for him so he won't act like a starving kid at a buffet when he goes to play dates.

You can see behind the big train in the foreground that he has several new engines lined up -- this was moments before it occurred to him that Keaton could also see the new trains, at which point he promptly picked them all up and shoved them under the couch so only he could see them. I somehow missed a picture of that, but it was so precious to see how totally unwilling to share Branik is becoming. Awwww.

So that was Saturday, but today, on his real birthday, he thoroughly convinced me that he did indeed turn two.



Sorry for the unbelievably awful photo, but we were in crisis mode. (Note the bloody left nostril, which has become Branik's signature look since he decided that shoving his finger up his nose to the second knuckle is a great idea). Let's have a little quiz here, shall we? Is this child crying:

1. Because Keaton took his new trains away?
2. Because he can't reach his sippy cup of apple juice?
3. Because his mostly naked Mommy just hauled his behind into the house after Keaton came into the bathroom while she was showering, said, "Mommy, Branik is in the car", which made Mommy dash out of the shower all lathered up only to discover that said two year old is NOT in fact in the car, but has pushed a dining room chair through the laundry room and out into the garage so he could reach the garage door opener and is now standing barefoot at the top of the driveway by the street?

Anyone? Anyone?

RIP "LG" : 3/19/08 - 3/20/08

Nearly 8 years ago, Boone and I moved to Cleveland for dental school and found ourselves desperately poor but still needing to wash our unmentionables (well, really our "mentionables" too) on a somewhat regular basis. So we found an appliance repairman who sold us a used washer and dryer for $250. The dryer died about 3 years later, but the dang washer has been going strong (thanks a lot, Kenmore). We originally planned to replace it when dental school was over, but Boone graduated and it still worked, so we kept it when we went to Texas. We thought it would die there for sure (after a traumatic move and all) but nope, it kept washing stuff every time I asked it to. So here we are in Georgia, WAY past when we thought we would replace the old beast, and even with 15 loads of laundry a week it has been functional enough that we can't in good conscience get rid of it. It's ugly as sin, but functional.


The only real problem we have had with it is that it gets unbalanced from time to time and you have to redistribute the clothes to keep it from walking out of the laundry room. Since we have a billion things to pay for and less than a billion dollars, we just keep using it and hoping that one day it will pick up and leave the house completely so we can feel justified in buying a new machine. And this is not my dream alone -- oh no -- even Boone (THE most practical person in the world) has started saying "I can't wait for this thing to die so we can replace it with something younger than me".

Anyway this has been going on for a few years now, and late last week we thought our prayers had finally been answered. The washer had become so unbalanced that we were having to rearrange the clothes 6-10 times per load and it was making a horrendous rattling noise through the spin cycle. We glanced at each other with this fake "Oh no, that's not good" look, but really we were stifling unsurpassed joy. Still, we had literally paid off our Lowe's card 4 days earlier and the thought of putting something back on it immediately was discouraging, so Boone did what any dentist would do -- he said, "I better take a look at it to see if it just needs a bolt or something."

(Note to self...write blog entry about how all dentists think they are MacGyver...)

So I try to act all casual like, "Yeah, you better check it out" and then I sneak over to the laptop to start over-researching my new washer. It didn't take me long. I found a front loading LG that got great reviews and was even on sale, and I made sure to push the "it's better for the environment" thing to my tree-hugging hubby.

After 20 minutes of investigating and finding nothing obviously wrong, Dr. Terry called it -- time of death: 9:30 pm. HURRAH!!!

"You better order the LG," he tells me. (Sighing and still acting casual) "Alright," I say, "I'll do it in the morning."

So yesterday when I got up there was a Post-it note from Boone saying "buy the washer!", and being the subservient wife that I am, I obeyed him and ordered my beautiful new washing machine. I told my friends. I told my family. I fantasized about 7 different cycles and twice the capacity. Life was good!

And then, Branik threw up.

Last night at 11:30 Branik woke up screaming and vomited everything he had eaten since lunchtime all over himself, every blanket, and every stuffed animal in his crib. Branik is obsessed with his two blankies and WILL NOT sleep without them, so while I grabbed the boy to throw him in the bath, Boone grabbed the bedding for a true laundry emergency. This was bound to be big trouble, since the worst thing you can ask an unbalanced washer to do is manage a load of blankets, sheets, a mattress pad, 6 stuffed animals, and a nasty set of PJ's. Boone stood by to supervise the load and braced himself for the first of two rough spin cycles. That's when it happened.

He was using his body to stabilize the washer, and was surprised at how easily the washer handled the load when he leaned against it. He let go. The washer freaked out. He leaned against it again. Stable. "Hey Colie!" he calls, "look at this!" (Oh no, dread, dread, dread, bad news, I see my LG flashing before my eyes, I may vomit myself...) I approach the laundry room with a sopping wet, wide awake 23 month old in my arms and witness the death of my dream: Boone had "fixed" the beast by placing a wad of paper towels under the front right leg. That was it. The stupid thing needed to have a leg adjusted, and now it's running better than when we bought it. Boone looked at me, triumphant in his MacGyvering skills, and said, "cancel the LG order!"

And so, like the subservient wife that I am, I called this morning (a mere 24 hours later) and terminated the order for my LG WM0642H. Sob.

And then I went to Target. Seriously. I really did.