Little Miss Fussbudget

Little C is heading right into the age of three. At two, she was at the absolute pinnacle of cuteness. Not just in her two year old rosy rotundity, but in her sweet mannerisms and halting, accented babyspeak. She was SO profoundly adorable that I had already scheduled out in my mind just exactly when I would be trying for -- or at least pestering my husband about -- baby number three.

Now, as I said, she's heading into three. And while she is still perniciously adorable, while she still sends me into raving fits of nervio, this newly intense phase of stubborn sensitivity is wearing a little thin.

She is potty learned. The problem is that she doesn't want to take herself to the bathroom. She wants to be escorted. If I refuse to escort her, she will refuse to go. And she will dance around, grabbing her crotch like a small, unmutilated Michael Jackson, until she pees in her pants.

Except, oh wait, not her pants. She won't wear pants. She hates and despises pants. She will wear tights, and she will wear shorts, and she will wear dresses (with or without tights), and she will happily wear panties, but if you put pants on her, she will cry and moan and whine continuously while wearing them. In winter, in Western NY, this is going to be a problem.

Today she put on stretchy cotton pants, because I told her it was cold and to pick out pants. And then she rolled the pant legs up as high as she could, to her upper thighs. She wore them like that outside, in the car, in Target, and back home again. Whenever the pant legs would begin to slip down, she would groan and yank at them and say in the most exasperated tone, "I haaaaate dese pants!"

As soon as we got home, she stripped them off.

Her pants disdain also extends to pull ups or training pants. I insist that she wear them, because although she is well trained, she also has the bladder of a chipmunk and can't go all night long without peeing. Every night, she complains about them.

"Dey bunch UP," she groans, pulling and squishing at the front of the pull ups.

It doesn't matter what kind they are. I have tried every cloth trainer in my considerable stash, and just about every disposable variety. The only ones she will consent to wear are the Wegmans store brand, because they have Shrek and Donkey on them. For no other reason will she wear them, and she will complain about them endlessly, but at least she won't shriek and tear them off and try to run away buck naked.

She is also very particular about her shoes. In September, we bought her a pair of brown Stride Rite mary janes that she loved. Until she started wearing them regularly, and then she complained vociferously that the straps on top were too loose. Every time we'd put them on her, she'd yell, "Tighter! Tighter!" until the straps were tighter than they were ever designed to go and there was three inches of strap hanging off the side of her shoe. If I didn't put them on to her exacting standards, she would moan and refuse to walk and take them off in the car.

Disgusted with the amount of maintenance these shoes required, I took her to the Crocs store in the mall. She tried on every pair of kids' shoes in the joint, and hated them ALL. Even though she previously loved her little pink pair of Crocs that she just outgrew.

Okay.

Today, we bought her a pair of cheap-o Dora sneakers from Target. I hate branded stuff, but they were the only pair in her size. I put them on her, and put her on the floor, and her eyes went wide.

"I LOVE dese shoes," she gasped. "Dey are GREAT!"

I asked her to walk back and forth, and she moonwalked.

"Is dis walkin' back and forf?"

So then I took her on a jaunt up and down the aisle, and she fell in love with those silly sparkly Dora shoes. She spent the rest of the afternoon at home, no pants, socks pulled up to her knees, and the Dora sneakers.

"I'm gonna wear dese to gul (school)!" she exclaimed.

She is not picky about food, thank All That Is, but she is demanding about drinks, and she is constantly asking for drinks. Although, I think part of that is because my husband gives her drinks in tiny disposable snack containers, because they fit the sippy cup lids. She asks for drinks all day long, so much so that I asked my husband today if he thought she had diabetes.

He laughed at me.

She does not want to be little. She is a BIG GIRL, and she tells me all the time. She tells me as a matter of course throughout our day, and sometimes quite indignantly if I refer to her as little or "my baby." She wants to be FIVE, like her big sister, and go to kindergarten with her.

I once stupidly pointed out that her sister was also growing, and would still be older even when she turned five.

"No! I born first, and I'm gonna grow and be bigger than her!"

She's also envious of things her big sister gets to have or do that she doesn't. She was very indignant when her sister outgrew her carseat and got a booster. I recently bought her a new carseat for my car, and it has a much higher weight limit, so she will not outgrow it as quickly as Ani did hers. When I introduced it to her, she asked me if it was a booster.

"Well, yes, it's a convertible booster," I replied impressively.

This pleased her, and now when she gets in the car, she says, "Dis is my cabooster!"

Last week, my husband did something at bedtime that made her angry. She said, aside, to herself, "Oh, dat fuckin' Daddy."

A little later when Ani went into her room, Cel remarked to her, "I like Daddy, but he just DOESN'T LISTEN!"

She has this spunky little attitude. Where Ani would argue with me endlessly about something, Celyn will say, "Fine! I don't care!" If I make an ill-conceived threat out of exasperation ("If you don't put away those markers, I will take them away!") she will put her hands on her hips and say, "GO AHEAD!"

I was asking her to please just take herself to the bathroom the other day, when she was dancing and I was doing something in the kitchen, and I told her, "If you hold it too long, you might get an infection."

"Oh, fine," she replied haughtily. "I want to get an insfexion!"

Yet, she still has these amazing babyish dimples in her round cheeks, and curly blonde locks, chubby little legs and a round belly with the sweetest little almost-outtie, almost-innie belly button, and I can't really believe she's not still my plump little baby. She still has a delightful baby smell, and I still want to nibble on her cheek every time I get close to her face.

She still has trouble with words that begin with an "s" and another consonant. "Sneeze" comes out "h'neeze," and "stop" comes out "dop!" She "h'mells" with her nose, and she does not like "tinky h'mells." School is "gul," and she always wants to play in the "h'now" (snow).

She is extremely affectionate and gushingly sweet. She tells us she loves us a hundred times a day. "I love you!" she says. "And I love Daddy, and I love 'Ka, and I love Grandpa, and I love myself!" She often throws her arms around me and says, "Oh, you my sweetie," or "You da best mommy EVER!"

This morning she woke up too early, so I crawled into her bed to help her fall back to sleep. When the sun came up, Annika slipped in beside me on the other side, and put her arm across my back over toward Cel's side.

"Mommy?" a little voice piped up, and I turned to see Cel, fully awake and smiling at me. "Ka is touching my hand. And I love dat because I love 'Ka!"

It was painfully sweet. Their affection and deep sisterly love lasted for almost twenty minutes, too, until someone started hogging a blanket and World War Three began.

She's adorable and charming and crazy-making and I can't fathom how I ever lived without her.

Danke Schoen

I can't do an "I'm grateful for" kind of entry without feeling incredibly corny. I do have an unbelievable glut of blessings in my life, but enumerating them feels so crass. On one hand, I feel it's a bit gloaty, and on the other, saying how thankful I am sounds like tooting my own horn, "Look how pious I am, to be so grateful, blah blah blah."

Which is not to say that I read other people's writings about gratitude that way. They are probably just better at expressing themselves without sounding like a knob.

I once read a very thoughtful article about how "thank yous" can actually devalue expressions of generosity or consideration, and I wish I could find that again because I thought it was genius.

Thanksgiving was lovely. Someday, I will get it through my head that my turkey recipe cooks turkey REALLY FAST and I don't need to set my alarm or get up early to start it. It came out alright, despite being done almost three hours before dinner. I was able to keep it warm without drying it out, and no one was poisoned, so I consider that a success.

I think I have officially run out of room for our usual guests. Our table could hold eight with a tight squeeze, and we had ten. We brought up a second table and set it alongside, but it was very awkward, with very little room left to maneuver around the room, so I need to come up with a better arrangement before Christmas.

I almost wonder if I should be planning some subtle activities or talking points to get people involved, because that seems like a good hostessy thing to do. I'm not sure my guests would cooperate, though.

The kids enjoyed themselves, and that's the whole point for me, really.

I didn't leave the house on Black Friday. My husband and oldest did, but not until afternoon, and just to a local toy shop that wasn't having any extravagant sales and wasn't at all crowded. I'm viscerally disgusted by all the mayhem that took place this morning, and I'm having a hard time putting myself in any of those people's shoes to understand the mindset you'd have to have to join a stampede into a Wal-Mart at 5am. (Ok, I know, that sentence sucked. Too lazy to edit.) There is nothing, and I mean nothing, in Wal-Mart that could induce me to get up at 4:00am, let alone join a rabid herd of wild people stomping over each other.

But that may just be because I'm, you know, lazy. And here is where laziness is transformed into stunning virtue, folks!

Hopefully the carb cloud hanging over my head will clear tomorrow, if I can manage to run it like a normal Saturday and avoid the rest of the leftovers in the fridge.

And now, full speed ahead to the winter holidays.

Eep.

Preoccupations

I'm not blogging anything like I used to. I guess a lot of that is just being busier. No more days of blogging with a baby asleep on my chest. The babies now roam free and wild, fomenting discord and mischief with bright and sparkling energy.

Also? They have not had much school lately, what with parent-teacher conferences and random days off and that's only going to continue.

We had the conference with Big Kid's teacher last week, and it was lovely and there wasn't anything unexpected. She's adjusting very well, no behavior issues, and is meeting or exceeding all academic expectations. I also volunteered in her classroom last week, which was a reassuring experience, all told. Except every child there was hacking or snotting or sticking their fingers up their noses, and we've gotten letters home about strep and pneumonia already, so I'm digging out all the usual magic tricks and then I'm going to invest in some Hazmat suits. I think they'll be the height of style soon. I want one that's red and black.

Other than that, I am preoccupied with holiday planning, karate, and on the internet in fits and starts, Twittering and Blipping. I'm all about the instant gratification right now. I'm pretty set with Thanksgiving planning, birthday planning, and nearly done with Christmas/Solstice planning. Making SIMPLE a priority again this year, maybe to an even more extreme degree than last year, and going China-Free again. Having that restriction makes it so much easier not to get carried away. And also not to get melamine poisoning. Let's not forget that.

Back to cooking and Blippin'!

FTW!

I jumped on the scale yesterday after neglecting it for about, oh, four weeks to discover a five pound loss.

The downside to this is that none of my jeans fit anymore. They were already on the awkward side, now they require serious belt cinching to hold them up, which just looks ridiculous.

I'd still like to lose another ten pounds, though, so I'm not sure I should update the old wardrobe just yet.

The coolest part is that I wasn't making any special effort. Wow, imagine if I start drinking water again.

I also -- not sure if I wrote about this here, or just everywhere else -- got my blue belt this week. I had two official goals for this year: get my blue belt and paint the rest of the house. Well, I got the blue belt. I will probably not finish the painting. Jeez. I think I'll be okay, though.

In other news of total unimportance, I finally got an adapter so that I could play my Sansa in the car. This makes me unaccountably happy. I've discovered everything is much happier with music. If I could somehow program a soundtrack into my life, I think I would have a happiness aneurysm. (*I* would have to program it, though. If somehow The Carpenters or Van Halen got in there, things would get ugly.)

Boogie oogie oogie oogie.

Wow, That's Funny!*

*That subject is for my homegirl J.B.!

We had a terrifically normal weekend around Chez S___! A normal weekend of lazy mornings, an awesome Saturday karate class, household re-organization (what, you don't find that fun?), great food, and I brought my big girl to her very first movie at the theater. Big milestone!

I didn't have any special intentions of doing this when she was five, or any plans at all really. I knew I wanted to wait until she had a shot at remembering it, and I also figured, with all that sensory overload, the older she was, the better it'd probably go.

When Madagascar 2 came out, I gave in to temptation. She loved the first movie, which was gifted to her at 2, when I was too pregnant and tired to protest. She seemed excited when she saw a commercial for it (at the hospital, of course; we don't have commercials at our house [/snobbery]), and that started me thinking about it.

Now that she's in school, we have even less one-on-one time together than we used to, so I took her on Sunday as a surprise. It was hilarious. She didn't know where we were. She had no frame of reference. So she didn't guess from the parking lot, didn't even guess once in the lobby. She just stared, awestruck.

"I would like to go on the rides, if they have any!" she whispered.

I explained while we got popcorn (o, highway robbery, Regal Cinemas!) what we were there for, and her eyes widened to the size of saucers.

She loved it. She loved the movie, which was thankfully low on scary parts and full of silliness. The beginning, where baby lion cub Alex is snatched by hunters, and Dad gives chase unsuccessfully worried me a little, but she seemed ok with it. The hunters raised a gun and shot it at the father lion, who fell, and OMG I had Bambi flashbacks. Noooooooo! Then you see him get up with a tiny mark on his ear, and I went noodly limp with relief.

She ravaged the bag of popcorn, and sat still for nearly the whole thing, though she moved to my lap at the end. We both enjoyed the entire experience from beginning to end.

She is growing up! *sneefle*

Rockin' the Casbah

Things are starting to swirl into cohesion once more. The washer is fixed (for only the cost of a part, by my handyman programmer husband!) thus clothes are getting clean and sheets are fresh and a fresh sheet, MY FRIENDS, is one of life's pure pleasures. Or something. (Hey, at least I didn't say it's nature's candy.)

I had to pick up my poor munchkin early from school yesterday, because she bashed her noggin on the gym floor after falling off a cheese. (I'm only passing along what I was told!) She had a nice round shiny goose egg on her forehead, and the nurse called and said, "Well, she probably could make it through the rest of the day, but I'm sending home a head injury sheet of things to watch for tonight."

Hahaha, I thought. If I have to watch her for crossed eyes and speaking in tongues, I may as well start now.

She was fine. Sad, yes, but fine. In the car, as I buckled her in, I said, "What's your name?"

She looked at me, non-plussed. "Annika?"

"Okay," I replied. "And who's our President-Elect?"

"Barack Obama?"

"You are fine," I said, as I smooched her nose.

So we all got to hang together for a day, and it was good. We had fun making up chore charts for the kids' doors, which they were totally into, and I made a few for myself because I hate to waste any time or brainpower thinking about what CHORES I have to do on a given day. Just tell me, piece of paper, so I can go on daydreaming about perfume or New Wave. Whatever.

Today C and I kicked ass at the grocery store. We went and had breakfast in the play area, and then leisurely went through the store. Despite the length of the visit, I managed to come in $50 below my usual total, without forgetting a single thing on my list. (And considering I haven't been grocery shopping in several weeks, this is a pretty awesome accomplishment.)

The rest of the day's schedule looks like reading stories, baking cupcakes, making dinner, and eventually scarpering off to karate.

Oh yeah, the mojo's back.

A Purely Positive Post

We got to take a second scenic drive this morning up to beautiful Lockport, NY, to visit our pediatrician's NP. Celyn says, "Doctor Chad is kinda GREAT." Whatever she may have had before, she now has bacterial conjunctivitis. That's great, because we can knock it out with antibiotic eyedrops and by washing nearly everything in the house. Yeah, our washer is broken, but hey, what's wrong with boiling your laundry in a pot on the stove? It brings you closer to your roots. I'll get dual pots going: laundry in one, polenta in the other. This will solve the total lack of humidity in our house, to boot!

Tomorrow Annika has off from school for Veteran's Day. I'm so glad, because we really just can't ever get enough togetherness, and I know she'll enjoy helping me wash and mop.

I'm starting to feel much better, myself. One ear opened up sometime this morning, maybe when I was singing and yodeling happily at my fellow drivers as we did the twenty minute drive to Lockport. I really enjoy seeing the senior contingent out on the roads, independent, enjoying the right to drive and really savoring the experience by going as slowly as possible. That's what Zen is all about, right there.

I made some more pendants last night, and have been working on rings this morning. It's nice to be able to work again. I loaded the attic with spare toys, so that when I'm working, the kids are usually happy to just hang out in there with me, playing with stuff they haven't seen in a while. I set up my desk in the brightest corner, near all the windows, and as I was working this morning, leaning back in my chair, an icy cold splish dripped onto my chest from the skylight above. It wasn't "the leaky one" either. Now they match!

After I wrap this up, I'm going to go get Sickie McEyeball some apple juice, start some mopping, and get those pots a'boilin'. It'll be nice to have a clean, fresh-smelling house again soon.

(How'd I do on the positivity? Too much sarcasm?)

Was it YOU?

Ok, 'fess up. Who cursed me?

Two weeks of unremitting illness. An 8 hour ER visit. An abduction attempt. And now, my washing machine is broken. Broken. Aaaah!

On Thursday, when I was coming home from taking Cel to the doctor, my phone rang, and it was Annika's school. She tripped on the playground and fell across some chains and ended up in the nurse's office.

"I think she's okay to come home on the bus," the nurse said. "If you can just try to remember to have her return this ice pack."

I almost laughed.

Today, I feel slightly better, thanks to antibiotics. Celyn, though -- her eye just looks even worse, and I will probably have to keep her home from school another day, and take her back to the doctor's tomorrow. Since apparently Thursday's visit was useless. The poor kid.

So, seriously, once I get the house scrubbed down I'll apparently have to do some sort of banishing ritual to get all these funky vibes off. Sheesh.

No fair!

We had about three whole days of moderately good health in the house. That's probably generous. Now Celyn is sick and I am sick. She's been running a 102° fever. I just have this total pervasive ache on the right side of my head and neck. Earache, sore throat, swollen glands -- all on one side. Oh, and my right eye is watering incessantly. Wtf is that. I am lying in bed with a hot water bottle across my ear and jaw.

The thing about Celyn is -- and almost no one, outside our immediately family, knows this or could even guess -- she never stops talking. And somehow, when she's sick, it's even worse. Just about every waking moment is, "Mommy? 'Scuse me, Mommy? Mommy? Mommy? I mean, Daddy?"

And when she's sick, she has no patience at all. So if you say yes to a request, and don't immediately HOP TO, she asks again. And again. And again. Politely, but at the same time, it still makes your head want to break. The past two nights, she's woken up around eleven and just talked continually, like she was on speed.

So it's hard enough to take care of her when she's sick, but being sick myself as well? That's just really not fair. I still haven't done all my laundry from vacation, ffs.

But hey, I'm happy about the election!