My slippery grasp on astrology, Babies, and How i am cheating on this blog with facebook

I think my seventh moon is in the house of "screwing with your finances and other bureaucratic crap" because my credit card company misread my payment check and deposited it for $900 less than what i wrote it out for, the insurance company has their little head up their big patootie (what else is new, right?), and it took me almost 3 hours to post a payment to my student loan corporation that neglected to tell me that they were going completely wireless, thus my payment is 4 days late... sigh.


In other news, Have i mentioned that Esther is POTTY TRAINED?? I'm sure i eluded to it here and there but this is the official announcement because it's just SOOOO awesome to be changing the dipers of only one kid rather than two. I mean there's seriously only soo much poop one person can handle in a day... So hoorah for Esther and being so awesome. Hooorah for the power of stickers and chocolate to a toddler. and hoorah for cutting my work load down by at least 13%.

Esther is turning into an artistic genius - i think this is owed to our letting her write on the fridge with dry erase markers...


We've begun putting Asa in the Johnny jump-up. I have an awful tendency to mock him when he's in it though. "Who's a real boy?", "Am I mommy or the puppet master?" I admit it, i'm cruel. After all he's not crazy about it, but it does allow me about 15 minutes of hands-free chore time - just long enough to make a cup of tea and take a dump without a baby on my lap. Also, you wouldn't know it by looking at this picture but Esther really is Ben's daughter and not Owen Wilson's love child.

And...

Dear Blog,
I'm so sorry I've been cheating on you with facebook. I know it's wrong. It's just out of sheer convenience you see. My true love is and has always been reserved for you and you alone. Unfortuantely, with all the chaos in my life facebook seems to make it a bit easier to update lots of folks with very little effort. Perhaps you can see fit to believe in polygamy, just this once.
Sincerely,
You Snoodly-poo

My Mother's Day

Despite the fact that i am not HIS mother, Ben went on a mission to Ma Petite Shoe and managed to score himself some serious "good husband points". Am I a lucky girl or what!?

Asa laughing

3 Esther Stories, a tidbit about me, and several words i cannot live without

Esther Story 1
me: Esther do you understand? Are you listening to me?
e: Uh-huh (looking at everything but me)
me: Esther! Look at me when i'm talking to you
e: uh-huh (still not looking at me)
me: (Claps hands loudly) ESTHER! LOOK AT MOMMY'S EYES!!
e: OH! They're beeeauuuutiful!!!!

Esther Story 2
While watching me change Asa's diaper.
e: Is that his belly button mom?
me: yep that's his belly button.
e: what's that? (pointing to his penis) Is that his peanut mom?
me: (stifling giggle) pe-NIS.
e: (moves away quickly) HE PEED ON THIS??

Esther Story 3
Esther is drawing on the refrigerator with dry erase markers (yes we let her).
ben: Esther, those are beautiful pictures you're drawing!!
e: Daddy... don't be mean.

my tidbit: because my eyes are my best feature (i mean aside from my sharp wit and astounding sense of humor) i have a desperate fear of going cross eyed. So when people say things to Esther like "your face will be stuck like that" i feel like whacking them on the back of the head.

and because i've been thinking about it for a week or so for some completely unknown reason - several words i think i'm head-over-heels in love with:
Trousers
Boulevard
Pilfer
Obsequious
Vacillate
Gregarious
Defenestrate
Ogle

In the last ten days...

1) Esther is potty trained!!!!
2) Becky is GETTING MARRIED!!! - congrats Becks and Alan!!!
3)Esther has her own twitter account (Esthermathilda) - yes Mathilde is spelled wrong. i (not I) mistyped and it stuck - also thanks i&j for helping us to keep our heads above water in the technology pool.
4) I started back to work for real - mon, wed, 1/2 day fri. It's not so bad but it's hard getting used to a new schedule. And it feels hectic most of the time.
5) My mom's birthday was yesterday - HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!! - we had a little dinner with friends at their house last night. I made mexican and followed it with a puff pastry strawberry thingie.
6) Ben has apparently started a screen play which i know nothing about.
7) I scheduled an appointment (may 23rd) at a salon for me and j to have all our luxurious locks hacked off. I'm thinking of something like this.

The weekend in pictures...

Ahhh. the sun. Hello my old friend me and my diapers have missed you...
Esther's new wheels - a potty training reward.
Our newest yard ornament: the giant trampoline. I know, i know, a little red-neck, but what can i say, i can't help myself...

Ben's found object grill. Practical, functional, and oh-so-stylish.

Looking out the backdoor for spiders
She's trying to show us her big-girl "under panties"

Easter Esther

fun site!

http://www.nanibird.com/

Asa's milestones

I've been trying to upload a video to you tube for the last two days so you can see Asa doing the Army crawl but for some reason it keeps erroring...

anyhow he now rolls front to back and back to front, smiles, giggles, and army crawls... yahooo! it might be time to break out the Johnny- jumper.

I'm going to go do a sun dance to entice it to come out... too much rain and being trapped in the house makes me a bit punchy.

Esther on Easter

Auntie Rachie "You know what today is, Esther?"
Esther "uh-huh"
Auntie Rachie "What?"
Esther "uh-huh"
Auntie Rachie "It's Good Friday."
Mommy "You remember Jesus, well on Good Friday he died"
Esther then looks at the little statue of the baby Jesus that my grandmother gave us for Christmas and says "Him? He's dying? awww."

2 hours later at Lali's house (my mother)
Mommy "Esther tell Lali what happened to Jesus on Easter"
Esther "He melted!"

1 hour later at Lali's with Auntie Chrissy (Rachie's mother)
Mommy "Esther, tell Aunta Chrissy what happened to Jesus today"
Esther "He melted"
Rachie "Esther, tell Aunta Chrissy what you do with Easter eggs"
Esther "You eat them"
Lali "You put melted Jesus on them and eat em"

french braids

Aryan babies with big eyes

some stuff...

He didn't think the purple milk was particularly funny. He wasn't angry or anything but he didn't laugh either. I think his funny bone needs a tune up.

Sometimes when the kids are napping and i can't seem to turn my brain off enough to nap i like to window shop online. I'm not sure why but it relaxes me. So i had to share my find for the day:

This has got to be the cutest sweater on the face of the earth -
Also the laundry is starting to breed and form battalions of demonic legions of the unwashed.

And i'm turning over a new anti-whiny leaf. Which may or may not be successful but i'm too whiny and it's doing nothing for me. So in lieu of barbiturates i've decided to use self-hypnosis and positive feed back (e.g. Jones, you're doing a great job. A dirty kid is a happy kid and a death trap of a house means everyone is having fun or at least meeting their full diabolical genius potential)

And i'm going to go brush my teeth now.

April Fools!!

I'm trying to think of a good April Fools to play on Ben.

I thought about seran wrapping the toilet seat. But since the last week or so has been spent in, around, and cleaning up toilet related issues i thought that might be grounds for divorce.

I thought about hard boiling all the eggs but that would result in having to eat egg salad for the next three days and just the sight of egg salad makes me a bit queasy (i'll leave it to the imagination to wonder why - i don't fee like reliving the moment).

One of my all-time fave's is putting an inconspicuous rubber band around the kitchen sink sprayer and aiming it at where the person turning the faucet on would be that way the next person to turn on the sink gets sprayed -- but we don't have a sprayer.

I thought about lying and saying the car or dvd player is broken or i lost Esther (and having her hide somewhere) -- but i'm a REALLY bad liar. My face twitches and turns pink and my eyes get really big which is i guess my way of trying to be very convincing...

So we've settled for putting food coloring in the milk. rice milk actually but the container is still not see-through so we'll see what happens.

And don't worry, said faithful and supportive husband never reads the blog so he won't find out... and you better not tell him (Ian!!!!!).

HOTU

Home of the Unwell.

It's been a sh*tty few days. Esther got a stomach virus from God knows where. Benand I spent 4 days cleaning up any and all forms of bodily fluid. Then he got sick too. and yesterday it was apparently my turn. It's been a really hard and extremely messy week. If any one feels brave they're welcome to come over and hold a baby or two so Ben and can catch some much needed shut-eye....

Esther's Super power

If Esther were a super heroher name would be Vomit-girl. And we're running out of dry towels and clean dishes.

Oh Esther My Esther!!

New Favorite Artist!

An Etsy retailer named CrustyChristy made these shirts for my kiddies. She has some fantastic designs so if you're looking for fun kid duds go visit her!

Asa finds his hand and other photos...

Esther helping me in the kitchen. I think the health department would disapprove.
Esther loves it when Asa lays on her. Course it's really hard to keep her from squeezing the life out of him.
The amount of slobbering, chomping noises he makes while gnawing on his hand is hilarious.

joining the masses... and oh what masses they are...

I've stopped fighting it and finally set up a face book account. And since then i've wasted countless free moments figuring out how to use it, what exactly it's for (other than a time-suck), and who to look up since we've lost touch...

anyhow feel free to come find me in all my new face book glory.

Wish List

For the last three years or so i've been keeping a wish list on my computer and any time i realize that i want something (typically this means like "i want to learn how to raise bees" rather than "a new pair of shoes" although shoes do make it on there occasionally, only when they're really really NICE shoes). And i've learned a couple things after examining this list:

1) the list grows much faster than it shrinks
2) everything on the list is completely possible if i could just get over my sloth problem
3) the types of things that i wish for post-baby-having are VERY different than the things i wished for pre-baby-having (e.g. right now adequate sleep is right up there at the top of the list)
5) a lot of my wishes have to do with eventually feeling financially and emotionally stable and professionally successful (do we ever really attain these things??)
6) very few wishes have to do with the well-being of the world (stopping or slowing global climate change is not on there... it probably should be...)
7) many of these goals will take me many many years to complete (like paying off student loans, and learning to garden properly - i was born with a black thumb it's now a slightly off shade of gray and a long way from green).
8) i had to start a second list for material possessions only so that when, if ever again, we have extra money we can remember what it was we wanted to buy rather than spending it all on dvds and books (i really want a popcorn maker).
9) not one single thing on either list takes batteries
10) there isn't really a tenth thing but i couldn't resist making this a list of ten... so i'm stretching here - the list is not numbered...

Snow Day

Woke up to blizzarding. No work for Ben. Snuggling warm and movie watching. Laundry. Overflowing bathtubs and clean floors.Bundling and visiting at the big house. Winter wonderland walks with the boy i married and the girl that keeps getting swallowed up by the cranky mommy persona. races. falling down. sneak attacks. GIANT snowman. Popcorn. Pizza. Hot chocolate. Wrapped up sleeping babies. Porkie pot pie. The night drift back home.

My New Job

I have a new job. Well, it's not official and I won't start for a little bit yet but it's my ideal job.
I am the new Grant Writer for Affiliated Sante Group, a non-profit organization that specializes in mental health treatment for folks who can't afford it.
It's only 20 hrs a week and i have the option of working some of those hours from home. The money is good. The people are great. And it looks like i'll have my own office.

I'll be happy to be getting out of the house for a little bit each week and doing something to stretch my brain.

In other news: my children have decided that 2am is the perfect time to stage a coup. They have both stopped sleeping between the hours of 2am-5am in protest of what exactly, i'm not sure. Nonetheless, i am increasingly cranky and looking for a miracle cure, either for their sleeplessness or my ever shrinking temper.

Also, Esther has made the official switch from diapers to pull-ups as of today. We'll see how it goes...

Sick Sense of Humor

I had the stomach flu yesterday. At least that's what i think it was, i suppose it very well could have been e coli or botulism or something of the kind as well... regardless all the fluid in my body staged a mass exodus. Yay for me! Ben stayed home to take care of the kids while i spent the day on the bathroom floor vacillating between thoughts of how the bathroom rug should be changed and curiosity about the internal workings of a modern toilet.

Poor Asa didn't get to nurse enough yesterday i think. He's making up for it today by nursing every 5 minutes. And although i'm doing much, much better than yesterday, i'm still feeling a bit "fragile" toast is about the only thing i'm daring to risk at this point... and a little tea with honey.

Anyhow, here's hoping Ben and the kids don't get sick as well!!!

Esther Sings "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"

Esther's "piggie tails"
The proud big sister and the uncertain little brother.
Asa meets his Great Grand-Oa for the first time.
Tofu Power! This cute onesie was a gift from my friend (and favorite teacher) Melanie. Thanks Mel!!


Aside from the daunting task of trying to keep a baby asleep in the same house where a toddler lives, we're doing well. Asa now smiles and makes baby cooing noises. He sort of rolls over already. But it's if you leave him on his tummy and he gets really pissed.

We had our 6 week postpartum check up. He's growing well, nursing well, has a well healed belly button. I am mostly healed. Last stitch ought to fall out any day now. I'm now 110lbs which is 10lbs over my pre-Esther weight, 15lbs over my pre-Asa weight. My stomach muscles are knitting together again. They're about the width of one of my fingers apart still but I manage to get a couple sets of crunches in during the day so here's hoping the mummy tummy's days are numbered. The pump and I have resumed relations as of two nights ago. And I have a meeting next week about a part time job to start in the spring...

My Marsupial Babies...

We're doing well. Settling into a routine of sorts. Esther is adjusting well for a two year old who was just usurped from place of most needy person in the house. Asa spends quite a bit of time in the baby bjorn. Although he is somewhat fussy he's not nearly as bad as his sister was. Esther lived in the bjorn for the first 6 months of her life and i walked probably close to 20 miles a day just to keep her from fussing. If i sat down or stopped moving she would wake up and wail. Having Asa in the bjorn just leaves me with two free hands to do all the necessary things without having to feel guilty about leaving him to cry in his crib or baby chair thingie. And go figure he hates the baby swing... (so did Esther come to think of it).

But come 9pm and both babies are asleep and Ben and I finally get to breathe easy it takes us all of 30 seconds before we too are passed out. It's a hectic life. I really haven't any idea how people have more than two or for that matter 11 (my mom is the second oldest of 11... yeesh and yikes!!)




Oh, and a shout out to my cousin Jeni who made the awesome burnt orange hat that Asa is always wearting. Jeni, the hat is awesome. The booties don't fit quite yet but that hat is so great. Thank you, thank you, thank you!