Make me an offer I can't refuse...

So things are getting ugly here in our house. Helen is increasingly unhappy with the crackdown. And I believe we've been threatened. We're having a horrible time getting her to stay in her bed at night, and then gettingh er to STAY ASLEEP!!! (Isn't the statute of limitations over for regular and repeated night waking...she's three for God's sake!) So anyway, Beenny and I have each gotten up repeatedly over the last few nights to try to figure out what is wrong with Helen, who refuses to speak to us. She just whines. And not in that "I'm hurting" or "I'm scared" kinda way. Rather it is that "I am just waking up and whining to PISS YOU OFF" kinda way. And piss me off it does. Things here at about 12:30 last night were way ugly. I am not happy when I am awoken, especially by a whining three year old who woke me up for no good reason. When I put her to bed, I reminded her that she needed to stay in bed, and she needed to sleep and not wake Mommy and Daddy up. She understood that and agreed. But she got up anyway. And I told her to go back to bed, but I didn't go upstairs. Lately she's been stealthing around upstairs, making her way to our room where she doesn't belong and doing other things she should not. be. doing. She had been told to stay out of our room, after we found lotion smeared on our new bedspread, my earplugs missing, and tissues scattered around the rug. The other day I found some black foam strips on the bathroom sink. I assumed Benny was embarking on some sort of project and left them there. Later, when i asked him about them, he didn't know what I was talking about. We eventually figured out that they were striops that he had put on the door frame of Helen's door to keep the door from banging. Helen has decided to remove them from the door frame and left them int he bathroom for us. We told her they were helping to keep her door quiet and she needed to leave them there, and Benny adhered them to the door frame again. Last night, after Helen had finally gone to sleep, I went to go into our room and was stopped in the doorway by the foam strips, pulled from the doorway of Helen's door again, and placed on the threshold of our bedroom. Like some kind of warning to us. "Take things back to the way they were...or else." I am taking great comfort in knowing that Helen is nowhere near strong enough to lift the head of a horse.

I caved

Anyone who knows me well knows I detest character clothing. Perhaps this is a remnant of my days working in day care: I recall a little girl coming in and proudly showing off her Pocahontas sneakers. Before the movie was even released. I was so disgusted by this (and other examples of flagrant over marketing to young children) that I swore I would not dress my children in character clothing. Actually, I make the exception at underwear and pajamas, which I guess means that maybe some of my issue is about the fact that I think a lot of the stuff is ugly (do I need to take a picture of the shiny brown Disney Princess hand-me-down tracksuit with the rainbow stripes to prove my point?). And poorly made. (Does not bode well for my consignment selling). Either way, Helen was NOT getting the Dora swimsuit she has persistently requested each and every time we have been to Target in the last month. Well, yesterday we went shoe shopping. More specifically, Easter dress shoes for Ruthie and summer sandals for both. We went to Payless first, where I accidentally bought Ruthie a par of Hannah Montana boots on clearance. I'm sure you're wondering how someone accidentally purchases a pair of boots. Well, they were on clearance, in the size I anticipate her to be next year, and they are kinda cute. So I picked them up out of the box and said "Look, honey, do you like these?" at which point she looked at the box and screamed "Hannah Montana!" Oops. I hadn't looked at the box....just the boots. And the big kicker here is that we don't watch Hannah Montana. I know there is nothing offensive about the show, but I don't need my pre-schooler looking to teenagers as role models just yet. KWIM? So anyway, we got the boots. They don't actually say HM on them anywhere, so I can live with that. I do beleive I saw Benny roll his eyes when Ruthie arrived home toting an enormous HM box.
On to Target for sandals. I found a pair for Helen immediately. She didn't want them. Because she wanted the Princess sandals and the Princess shoes and the Dora sneakers and the Dora sandals and the Dora crocs. Sigh. After trying desperately and unsuccessfully to divert her attention to the sandals that were pretty and white and had NO FRICKIN CHARACTERS on them, she steered me back over to the character shoe section, where she found a lovely (note the sarcasm here) pair of strappy pastel metallic sandals.

See the Dora on the bottom there. Dora brand. She tried them on and I almost let her get them, but then I regained consciousness. Then she found these:

And of course my first instinct was to scream "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD CHILD HAVE YOU NO DIGNITY?!!" But I fought that, and tried instead to gently dissuade her. Helen will not be dissuaded, gently or otherwise. I realized pretty soon that she was never going to forget the fact that she wanted these shoes. And I could either be badgered every day for the next 15 years until she moves out of my house, or I could buy her the damned shoes and hope that nobody noticed she was wearing Dora crocs. Which is what I did. But they're hot pink. And they have a huge Dora head on them. And in case they don't notice, Helen points them out to everyone she meets. "Look at my Dora shoes."
But as a mom who shares my view on character clothes noted today, Helen stared at her shoes the whole way down the path at the front of Ruthie's school. So I guess that, in the end, buying her those shoes was okay.

The Gloves are OFF....and my hands hurt. (not literally, folks)

Okay, here's the thing....Helen is one of those kids who will make you laugh 23 hours out of the day. She says things that you don't expect out of a little, tiny person...she does things that are just frickin hilarious. But she can border on obnoxious. And I've been around little kids long enough to know that if you keep laughing a them when they're three and hilarious and a little precocious, they keep it up. Even when they turn seven, and no longer so tiny and adorable, and they are now full-blown snots. And so it was with a heaving sigh that I announced that we needed to crack down on Helen before she became one of these incorrigible snots. So last night, when I put her to bed, I told her in no uncertain terms that if she got out of her bed, I would be closing her bedroom door. She got out of bed. Twice. So I closed her bedroom door. And so the all-out screaming and kicking the door tantrum began. Benny wasn't home, so I was flying solo on this one. I had wanted nothing more than to put my children to bed and curl up on the couch for the series finale of ER. Thank God for tiVo, because the pause button got a lot of action last night. I went up and down the stairs, putting Helen back in her room and shutting the door, again and again, for two hours. And then Benny came home and put her to be and left her door open. And by the time I realized it, she was out cold. Thanks Buddy. Two hours of my life down the drain. He thought the point was to get her to fall asleep. That was NOT the point. The point was to let her know that Mommy said what Mommy meant. So now she knows: Mommy might mean what she says, but that doesn't mean Daddy will do something else. Helen's exhaustion, coupled with my exhasution and a downright depressing day in terms of weather, did nothing to improve my mood this morning, and made the day seem endless. And since Benny is getting home late tonight, I have fed the chldren. After he gets home, while he puts them to bed, I will run out and pick up our movie, already reserved courtesy of Red Box, And then I'll make this. And we'll curl up on the couch with a nice big bowl if this. And THAT should make it all better.

Home on the Range

Funny that my friend Carly should mention Pioneer Woman in her blog the other day. I have become a recent and huge fan and had every intention of mentioning her here as well. I guess great minds do think alike.
Pioneer Woman was mentioned quite some time ago on a message board I frequent. I added her to my Goggle Reader, but didn't really check things out. Probably because at that point I was completely addicted to Hatchlings and if someone posted more than twice in a day, I marked their posts as read without even looking. And PW...well, she had four or five posts some days. Too many for me...or so I thought. But one day not too long ago, I decided to give her a closer look. And I loved what I saw. She has amazing photography, funny anecdotes about life on the ranch, and awesome giveaways. But best is her recipe section! She has four children so I know that her recipes cannot be too labor intensive, or off the wall. And they all look so yummy (thanks in no small part to her amazing photography). She'll take you through step by step with pictures and amusing commentary, and then link you to a printable version. Last night, I made Chicken Scallopine and it was YUMMY!!! And not too hard to make. Ruthie gobbled up every drop of the mushroomy sauce and begged for more. (Don't even ask about Helen...really.....just don't.) I get agita each week just thinking about what to make for dinner. It's not that I'm that awful a cook, I just don't want to get in a rut, and I suck at planing ahead. So why bother to cook at all? (Or would that in itself be consdered a rut?) But PW has actually made me excited about making dinner!! Woohoo! So if you haven't checked her out, I urge you to enrich your life by adding her to your feeds. You won't be sorry. And me? I'm searching her archives for a fabulous seafood dish for tomorrow night. Benny will be coming home late and we're going to have a nice grown-up dinner after Frick and Frack go to bed.

Smarty pants

I was asked to participate in a panel at the hospital where I volunteer each week. The same hospital where Ruthie and Helen received their care as premature newborns. It is a panel discussing medical decision making for premature babies, and I am asked to participate as a parent. I am honored to be a member of this panel, and I welcome any opportunity to better the experience of a family in the NICU. That said, I believe I am screwed. The panel meets next week. I was asked a couple of months ago to participate and the person who asked me had only been given a general description, so that was all the info I had. Until today. I was emailed an article for perusal before this panel meets. I opened the attachment, and that is the precise moment when I realized that I was screwed.
I was really excited to know I had, essentially, homework. I was gearing myself up for a night on the couch with a highlighter and some little post-it notes, so that I could note relevant material and provide meaningful contributions to this panel. That is soooo not what is going to happen.
You see, I have spent the last five years as a stay-at-home mom. My reading material has varied over these last five years. I have always been an avid reader and motherhood hasn't changed that, but my reading material has become more diverse, and has come to overwhelmingly include passages such as "Look what I found in the park in the dark, I will take him home, I will call him Clark." The material that was emailed to me today, well, one sentence begins "In bivariable analyses as well as analyses adjusted for the center and the factors described above..." Um, okay. That does not rhyme, making it significantly harder for me to understand. And I think a few of those words exceed the syllable limit for my comprehension level.
I know that at one point, say when I was in graduate school eons ago, I probably would have know instantly what that meant. And chances are that if I sat long enough IN SILENCE, I would again know what that meant. And therein lies the problem. When in hell am I going to find an hour during the next week when I can sit in my house IN SILENCE? Evening does not count because by the time my children go to bed at night, I am generally bordering on minimally functional. And really, in order for my house to be silent, it needs to be EMP. T. Except, of course, for me. I will be sure to update you during the week to let you know what kind of progress I have made (i.e. whether or not Cliff Notes are available for this particular article.)
In the meantime, I am sitting here waiting for Benny to arrive home with the final ingredient in our dinner, which I plan to write about tomorrow. So dinner prep has been done, but not the actual cooking yet. But I keep smelling food-something as I sit here typing. I was a bit confused at first until I realized that I just vacuumed the rug which was infested with popcorn from the little party Benny and the girls had last night, and the vacuum is sitting next to me. Mmmm....the smell of stale, vacuumed snacks. Does it get better than this?

So friggin tired

Okay, I got a ton accomplished today and yesterday...all the stuff in red is done:

1. Strip beds
2. Remake beds
3. Do laundry
4. Finish adding playground reviews to MCOT website
5. Start adding restaurant reviews to MCOT website
6. Add April calendar to MCOT website
7. Add newsletter archives to MCOT website
8. Think about adding recipes to MCOT website, but laugh instead
9. Fold girls’ laundry
10. Clean kitchen
11. Straighten living room
12. Mail updated auto bill payment to Internets
13. call March of Dimes and find out why, for the second year in a row, I HAVE BEEN KICKED OFF MY OWN TEAM…y’know….the one that I FORMED!!!
14. Edit March for babies homepage and add team members (after they make me captain of my own team again)
15. Call place that will take furniture donations (i.e. beg them to haul away tables and boxspring that are preventing Project Garage Purge from commencing)
16. More things that I cannot remember

And number 16 was a WHOLE bunch of things which I am too tired to list here.
but after a boatload of figuring crap out, the website is live...woot!
There's till work to be done....it's ongoing...and I'm sure some glitches will surface over the next couple of days, but the bulk of the work is done.

So maybe I can post about more interesting things tomorrow. But right now...off to bed!

To Do List

I have a suffocating to do list today. Well, suffocating if you are surviving on about 3 hours of sleep and all you want to do is curl up in a ball on the couch. And were it not for the little neighbor boy I watch, who is quietly doing his homework, I may well be doing just that. Both of my own children are sleeping. (scratch that....I think I hear Helen crying.)


Well, it now looks like the motivation I have mustered up may be derailed by crying toddler.
so quickly...
my list...

1. Strip beds
2. Remake beds
3. Do laundry
4. Finish adding playground reviews to MCOT website
5. Start adding restaurant reviews to MCOT website
6. Add April calendar to MCOT website
7. Add newsletter archives to MCOT website
8. Think about adding recipes to MCOT website, but laugh instead
9. Fold girls’ laundry
10. Clean kitchen
11. Straighten living room
12. Mail updated auto bill payment to Internets
13. call March of Dimes and find out why, for the second year in a row, I HAVE BEEN KICKED OFF MY OWN TEAM…y’know….the one that I FORMED!!!
14. Edit March for babies homepage and add team members (after they make me captain of my own team again)
15. Call place that will take furniture donations (i.e. beg them to haul away tables and boxspring that are preventing Project Garage Purge from commencing)
16. More things that I cannot remember

Items number 1 and #12 are done, and #2 is 2/3 completed, item #3 is under way. (Yes, I know it’s 3 pm, but I had to bring Ruthie to school, go to the gym, take a shower, pick Ruthie up from school, feed the children, get them to bed, and eat my lunch, with a few instances of disciplining unruly children thrown in for good measure).
I’ll check back later to give you an update…(as if you reeeeaaalllly care, right?)
And now, my two children are awake, which renders the previously quiet neighbor boy not so quiet anymore. This all makes completion of tasks much harder. ::sigh::

A little movie...2009 version

Sick this weekend. Chills, fever, sweats, digestive trouble and complete exhaustion. So I almost skipped posting today too, but thought I'd post this as well. Most of you have seen it before, but the end is different I update pictures every year.

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

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Short Memory

I have ten moms and a baker's dozen of kids (not including my own) coming over for our book club discussion and lunch. I do not have enough room for all these people. I really expected about 2/3 of that number, at most. I am on my knees praying to the gods of sunshine that they dry out my yard and warm up the air by 11:30. Originally, I wasn't even going to attend this month's book club, since I'd read the book before and hated it. But now, not only am I hosting the discussion, I read the damned book again, if only to have a more specific and valid argument about why I hated it. (I originally read it about 4 years ago, and remembered little, except that it sucked.)
There seems to be a pattern developing here. Remember this post? And this year for Helen's birthday, I decided to forgo our usual party and just have a few of our MOMS club friends over for cookie decorating. That turned into about the same amount of people as today. And it took me about 3 hours to clean up the toys alone. I swore I would never do it again, yet here we are a mere six or weeks later....in the same boat.
At least this time I had the sense to proclaim it a potluck lunch...and we're using paper plates. Now if only I could find where Benny hid the plastic cups.



(Carly, I think I can hear you laughing from across the river...feel free to stop by.)

As I was enjoying some of them with my soup one day...

Yesterday, Benny received two coupons in the mail for free bags of Wise potato chips. (I will be saving these for the next BOGO sale somewhere.) He received these coupons because of this:

Wise Consumer Affairs Department

228 Raseley Street

Berwick, PA 18603-4533

To Whom It May Concern:

First, let me state that I am a longtime customer, consumer and fan of Wise snack foods. I have been purchasing your products and enjoying them for as long as I can remember. Your Owl mascot is one of the most welcome and recognizable symbols in the snack food aisle and I continue to look to it as a reassurance of quality and good taste.

That makes the following discovery all the more distressing.

I recently purchased two 8 ounce bags of your Wise Ridgies All Natural Ridged Potato Chips. As I was enjoying some of them with my soup one day, I started to read the back of the bag. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me as I read “No dip? They’re also great right out the bag.” I had to reread it three times to make sure that I had seen what I thought I had seen.

Did I just read the phrase “…right out the bag” ? Yes, I did.

I hope I do not need to point out that this phrasing is grammatically incorrect. The correct phrase would be “They’re also great right out of the bag.” The “of” is definitely needed. “Of” is a preposition, a word that shows the relation between a substantive (a word or group of words functioning as a noun) and a verb, an adjective, or another substantive. In this sentence “of” serves as a bridge and its omission creates an awkward and erroneous phrasing. This phrasing is no more correct than saying “My car ran out gas.” or “I put the dog out the house.”

An alternate tack would be to say “They’re also great right from the bag.”, but that is a different story.

In these days of illiteracy and grammatical shortcuts it is especially important for respected companies to set a proper example of correct usage of the English language.

Please reply to this letter as soon as you can and inform me of the steps you intend to take to phase this packaging off of the shelves.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Benny

I'm too lazy to type out the entire reply, but this was worth noting:

I have notified our Marketing department of your concerns and you will be glad to know we will be correcting the sentence to include "of". We would like to apologize for the disappointment and inconvenience this situation has caused you.

I don't believe you need any commentary from me.