Shelley's Case

Art of Mom Monday

I'm not feeling like a mothering maven today - a screaming toddler during morning daycare drop off does it to me, every time - but even a weekend of sick Mactyres had some up moments.

• My favorite, around 2:30 am this morning: Peach wakes up from a bad dream yelling, "No, it's my boot!  My boot!"  Seriously, cracked me up. I really wonder what that was all about. 
  
• Yesterday, Peach and I took the MAX from Lloyd Center back to Sunset Transit Center for no good reason other than she loves trains.  Loves them.  At every stop, she looked at me frantically and signed (and said) "More train! More train!"  In the tunnel, she said solemnly, "Darkness." It was rough when we finally had to disembark, but Daddy was waiting for us on the platform (he drove ahead and beat us there), so that was a bonus. 
  
• Potty training seems to have taken.  I put her in a diaper at night, because she's about 50% on staying dry all night, and those aren't great odds.  Mothering perk: having a toddler means I can go to the bathroom as much as I want to in public, without worrying what anyone else thinks. 

Art of Mom Monday

One word: Schwan's. 

On his own volition, Matthew started ordering from Schwan's.  And lo, there were healthy dinners on the table that I did not have to prepare.  Balance is restored.  Life is good.  (And mostly, he does the dishes.)  The prices are somewhat more expensive than if I cook, but substantially less expensive than eating out.  And the food is pretty tasty. If careful, it's also healthy.  The veggies have been crunchy, and I haven't run across an entree I dislike yet.  Whew!  It makes cooking more of a desire than a demand, and so I - for the first time in ages - enjoyed baking yesterday afternoon.  I made pumpkin-cranberry biscotti.  Yum!

Next item: gratuitous picture of my perfect Peach, enjoying our first post-potty-trained trip to the zoo on Saturday.  She's a jungle VIP:

 

If you ask her, she'll be happy to tell you, "I ride lion." 

Two things about my kid

1.  Today we had an almost completely accident free day (one not-quite-to-potty-in-time morning incident).  All day at daycare: no accidents.  Wearing big girl underwear.  Yes!!! 

2.  This was a real conversation about ten minutes ago. 

Shelley: Peach, don't touch that. It's dirty.  

Peach: Well, wash it, Mommy.  

Matthew: [Cracking up] 

My wild girl

My kid loves Duran Duran, so much so that I'm expecting the next thing out of her mouth to be why Simon LeBon is so much cuter than John Taylor.

(OK, maybe not quite that much.  But close.)

Take this exchange.  The stage: the car, on the way home after a long day of work/daycare.  I had been chatting with my brother via bluetooth, with my iphone connected to the stereo, when I turned the engine over after getting gas.  This resulted in a weird error where the music started playing in the bluetooth adapter.

Shelley: "Can you hear that?"

Shelley's Brother: "What?" 

S: "The Duran Duran?" 

SB, singing: "'Her name is Rio, and she dances on the sand...'"

S: "No, it was the 'Wild Boys.'" 

SB, still singing: "'Wild Boys! Wild Boys! Wild Boys!"

I called him back, fixing the sound bug, and we chatted for another 20 minutes or so.  The music came back on, and a few more songs played.  Then, from the back of the car:

Peach: "More Wild Boys, please." 

S: "What did you say?"

Peach, emphatically: "More Wild Boys, PLEASE."

And since then, that is the only song she wants to hear.  I have listened to "The Wild Boys" more in the last week than I did in all of 1984.  

God help me: for diversity, I may have to introduce her to Wild Boys remixes.

New kind of normalcy

Since Matthew's mid-September surgery, we're getting back to a sort of normalcy.  The hospital bed is gone from the house.  The shower chair isn't used in the shower, but has been converted to a special place for Peach to sit when brushing her teeth.  My sister in law, who came here to help out for a week, returned to Nevada today.  (Unfortunately, Peach never warmed to her - perhaps it was cultural, or her accent, I don't know. It would have been a lot easier on me if she had, but ah, well.  It was nice having Elina visiting, in any case.) 

A Wednesday night trip to urgent care revealed that the feeling like I'd been swallowing ground glass was, in fact, an infection, and after five days on Zithromax, I am all better.  I'd had that thing for weeks, and it had seriously run me down. I actually feel human today!

Matthew still limps, still has a lot of pain, and still has to resolve the upper back issues. (Recap: he had surgery on his upper back in January, a lengthy recovery, then back to work.  He fell in July, and we had to wait for federal comp to approve the surgery on the lower back he had in September.  Unfortunately, the fall made the upper back situation much worse - we will hopefully find out how much worse this week.) 

But we're a unit again.  After months of being the primary (and often only) caregiver, it's so wonderful to hear Peach ask for Daddy to read stories, Daddy to hold her, Daddy to snuggle. (Not just because it's a break for me, but because there was a long period of time when she was quite distant from Matthew. That made my heart ache.)  

Tonight we all hung out in our living room.  I read a novel, Eden bounced and danced to the "country chick" playlist I was listening to, and Matthew tweaked the media computer.  We ate dinner, quietly at home.  It was exactly the sort of ordinary evening that we haven't had in so very long - it was lovely.  I could use a lot more evenings like this one!

Close encounters with reality TV

Friday morning, my sister-in-law and Peach and I set out to Roloff Farms, home of Little People, Big World.  (It's located about 15 minutes from my house.)  S-I-L Elina is a huge fan of the show, and I am a closet huge fan of the show... and Peach is at the perfect age for her first trip to a pumpkin patch!  It was perfect. 

We arrived two minutes before 10, opening time.  There was already a line of cars! 

 

(Parking was $2.  I don't know why this is important, but I thought I'd throw it out there.)

While we were waiting in the car line, family members cruised by in Mom Amy's minivan (Amy was riding and waved at the guy selling the parking tickets to us). 

We probably spent ten, fifteen minutes in the car line before things started moving.  And once we got to the top of this hill, we turned right into the parking lot.  And there it all was, just like the TV show!  Elaborate home, catapult, the swimming pool, the soccer field, volleyball court, etc.  It's all there. 

TLC was there filming, and Dad Matt Roloff was in front letting people take pictures with him.  While Elina and Peach were posing with him, Peach decided to melt down and have a little mini-tantrum.  My best shot?

You can see Peach's arm, at least!

We figured out how to buy tickets to the two tours (they added a second, scenic tour this year).  Tickets for both tours: $10 per person.

The scenic tour was first.  Our tractor driver?  Son Jeremy.  Our tour guide?  Brittany.  Not bad!  Finn Elina got points for being the person in our tour who came the furthest.  

Peach loved the tractor ride, and keeps talking about it.

 

(Here she is saying, "I ride tractor, too!")  

After the scenic tour, I took Elina's picture with Jeremy - it turned out beautifully, and I hope she reads this and emails me it so I can post it!  - then we found the port-a-potties (oh, SO much fun to attempt a diaper change in one of those)! and got in line for the "western town" tour. 

 

(I owe my kid's great behavior during much of this experience to tic-tacs, gummi bears, and raisins.) 

I have no idea who the driver or tour guide were for these, but the highlight was stopping at the western town and meeting Pop and Honey, Matt Roloff's parents.  They were super, super sweet, and posed for a picture with Elina (which is alas, on Elina's camera, too).

At this point, we'd been there about an hour and a half, and the place was crammed with people.  Tour groups from assisted living facilities, Kindercare classes, and it was crazy.  We skipped the petting zoo and pony rides and headed into the pumpkin patch. 

Peach went for the biggest ones she could find, until I started asking her to find small pumpkins (there were no wagons free to use - all taken)! 

 

(But even small pumpkins can be kind of heavy!) 

And gourds are kind of crazy looking!

In any event, I walked away with three pumpkins (total price: $9), a pack of gummy worms ($3) and a Diet Pepsi ($2), a very exhausted toddler, and a happy sister in law.  And it was fun.  The crowds were the worst part: I don't like crowds, anyway, but the fawning touristy types were obnoxious.  Heavily made up women pushing toddlers out of the way to get their pictures taken with the family?  That is so not cool.  Also, it was kind of sad - most of the people there were so busy snapping photos of the Roloff family that they weren't really into it as the experience for their kid that it ought to have been.  (At some point I realized I was the only person taking pictures of my own family during the tractor tours, instead of members of the Roloff family!)

Overall, I had a great time.  I would have enjoyed going to any pumpkin patch with Peach, but the reality show overlay made it thoroughly fun.  Also, I can't say I would have been all that excited to wait in lines to go on tractor rides of just any farmer's property (twice), which was clearly the highlight for Peach.  It was win-win.

Tips: get there as early as you can, and do what we did and go on Friday, instead of a weekend day.  (The Farm is open Friday-Sundays in October.)  Bring your own food and water and snacks for the kids. Avoid the women with spray-on tans and Kate Gosselin hairstyles. 

If I believed in hell...

...this woman would be rotting in it.  Good call on prosecuting her...although (her) God knows she'll probably claim it's an infringement on her 1st Amendment rights. 

My first administrative assistant at my first grown-up job was bilked by someone just as unscrupulous - and she delayed evidence-based treatment long enough that her cancer killed her - and she was flat broke while she was dying.  She had to work until the bitter end, vomiting in her wastebasket in between taking calls and writing letters. 

It sickens me.  Truly, these charlatans are the sort of people who deserve harsh prison sentences. 

Not created equally

There's a very well-written article about how National Guard soldiers are shafted on GI Bill benefits on Truthdig -- by a name some of you might find familiar. 

Mommy's little Calvinist

This morning I dropped Peach off at daycare.  She was the first kid on her side of the room, and she was being pretty clingy.  I read a book to her on a little couch, then told her I had to leave and go to work.  She tried to get me another book, but I said, "No, I really have to go to work, Peach.  I'm sorry." 

Her teacher said, "Do you want me to read you a book?"  and Peach said, "Yeah."  (A newer development and annoying, the "yeah.")

She then turned to me and, when I went to give her a hug, pushed me away.  "Go work, Mama!" she said.  "Go work."  

(FWIW, she did run up and give me a hug as I was leaving!) 

Can I bottle this?

Today I am calm and peaceful and being pragmatic and not at all panicky.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact I got a few hours of sleep without Eden in the bed (until nightmares or teeth woke her up at 3), or maybe it has something to do with the fact I got a few hours of sleep with Matthew in the bed (!) instead of the hospital bed in the loft.  Either way, it's nice.  I don't run around feeling calm very often, so I'll take it. 

I just hope it doesn't mean I'm getting sick. 

Art of Mom Monday: Commute contemplations

There are mornings when I am up, out of bed, hair straightened (because I was clever enough/energetic enough to have showered the night before), ready to go, with Peach clean and shiny and ready to go - all by 6:45. 

Today wasn't one of those days.  This means I was downing Diet Dr. Pepper before I hit the shower, my hair drip-dried while I chased Peach around the bed, trying to spray de-tangler on her hair, I finally got her completely dressed, but realized I'd neglected to put my own shirt on....you get the picture.  We left the house at 7:15, which means inevitably awful traffic as we crawl into Portland.

The thing is that it's not LA bad or Seattle bad - it's just a pain.  And the sun is in Eden's eyes almost the entire way.  (Leaving earlier means less sun - although before long, it'll be no sun, so I ought not to complain, I guess!) 

Without Matthew with me on the commute, I end up with time to think, and given my crappy sleep habits of late, it's been some weird stuff. This morning's musings:

• Why do Cheerios taste good, yet produce the most foul burps?
• Why do I get cut off in traffic by so many people with yoga bumper stickers?
• Does that mean yoga would probably not help my nerves? 
• Why does Eden like Rammstein and not Alison Krauss?
• Should I color my hair? 
• What is that smell?  Did Eden poo...or just burp more Cheerios? 

And so it went.

I'm back.

Back from hiatus.  I wasn't sure if I would do this again, but damn it, I miss blogging.  I miss having an outlet for the crazy stuff in my life (and there is a lot of crazy stuff).  For a while, it was one long pity party, but the party's over, and it's time to move on. 

 Matthew had an accident at work, major back surgery, almost a week in the hospital, and is now home with us again.  It's an adjustment, having a hospital bed in the house, seeing Matthew go through this slow recovery, and all that entails. Working that into our routine has been tricky, especially since Peach and I had worked out a routine by ourselves.  Still. 

Someone (a parent!) asked me how I "could possibly" cope with what was going on, and I was like, "Um.  I have a kid.  I don't really have a choice about whether I make it or not - I just have to make it."  And so far, I've made it. Maybe hanging on by my fingernails some days, but I've made it. 

As for me, for work, for life - I'm making it.  I have almost no "me" time, but part of why I'm resurrecting the blog is to reclaim some of that.  I want to start taking cello lessons again.  I want to start running again. I want to do NaNoWriMo again.  I want to have something to talk about besides the fact my kid can stack 20 blocks and can put her shoes on and frequently stays dry all night, but she told her first fib last weekend.  You know? 

So, for what it's worth: I'm back.  I'm blogging (and hopefully not bitching too much).

"No" means "maybe later"

In the past, I have said I would NEVER EVER NEVER do the following:

• Get married. 
  
  • Was married December 30, 1992.

• Have a baby.
  
  • Had a baby June 4, 2007.

• Work in a small office again (damn you, evil comic book ladies!).
  
  • Started full time for the boss June 2008, after doing K work starting in 2006.

• Own a small dog.
  
  • Um....

(Which begs the question, why do I make such broad, sweeping pronouncements?) 

 Anyway.  On Tuesday I popped in to Dogstar, a dog daycare business a couple of blocks from my office.  I'd been in once before, when I was trying to figure out what to do about Norris.  The owner of the business, Theresa, was the first person who said, "You know your dog.  You probably already know what you should do."  And she was right - I did.  It sucked.  I did it anyway, I know it was the right decision, and can (usually) look myself in the eye in the mirror each morning.  It was interesting, though, because at that point I talked to her, I realized I'd met someone who shared the same dog philosophy that Matthew and I share.

Dogstar has dogs available to foster or adopt via the Pixie Project - there are usually a handful around at any given point.  And I don't know what made me decide to pop in on Tuesday to see what dogs were available to adopt, except that Tuesday was...odd... at the office, with some weird interpersonal dynamic things going on, and I kept wanting to get out and walk around the neighborhood.

By the end of the day, I was taking a scruffy little terrier-mix home.  She'd been fostered and taught manners by Theresa, the Dogstar owner.  She's an adult, and she maybe weighs 15 pounds, dripping wet.  My best guess as to her antecedents: wire-hair Jack Russell, dachsund, and maybe some Chinese Crested.  She looks just like my husband's beloved boyhood dog, Skippy.

 

Deep breath.  I now own a small dog.  After many false starts, she has been named "Peanut."  She is sweet.  She's around 2.  She has a yappy bark, but thank God doesn't bark much.  She adores me.  She is sweet with Peach, and genuinely delighted to see her when Peach wakes up from a nap.  (I am more worried about the baby hurting the dog than the other way around.) 

Sweet dog.  Mellow, too, for a terrier mix.  She hangs out at my feet all day (she has been going to work with me - the size was a selling point, as our office is in a loft with a HOA that limits dog sizes).  She has been hugely popular when I've taken her out and about to lunch. 

What's more, she's socialized.  She does bark at other dogs, but I don't have to worry about her attacking them - or children, for that matter.   She sits quietly in the car on the way to and from work, and sometimes filches Peach's snack.  She fits into our lives very well and is perfectly happy to be along for the ride.

So, I'm sure I'll regret this later, but I think she's the easiest dog we've ever had.  It's not the same as our shepherding breeds - there is no confusing this dog for a short, ugly human, the way we might with our border collie - but there is a lot to be said for easy (and portable). 

[Mea culpa, Sarah!  I promise I won't bring him over unannounced, like some siblings. :)]

Art of Mom Monday

Forget the months of interrupted sleep, the tantrums, the screaming fits (not the same thing!), the stacks of dishes in the sink.  Today is Art of Mom Monday, and I am going to think positively about parenting. 

Today's setting: harried morning, doctor's appointment (Peach), leaving work early (me), long commute home on the train, (Matthew), four stores to find Hello Kitty pigtail holders (a big negative for Peach & me, because who knew Peach only wanted "kitty piggies?").   Until about 4 PM, the highlight of my parenting day had been thinking to put a clean shirt on the kid *before* the doctor's appointment. 

But around 4, I amped up the kid with some chocolate milk and set her loose in Nordstrom Rack (one of the places I went looking for the kitty piggies).  We just happened to look - in case they were misfiled - in the size 7 shoe area, where I found a cheap (both meanings) pair of yellow fabric ballet flats that match the color of my current favorite handbag - a kind of baby poop yellow, to be honest.  It looks better than it sounds, really.

 I tried one on - and the kidlet went nuts. 

"NO MOMMY!  NO SHOE!"  She lunged for the shoe and pulled it off my foot. 

"But it's a pretty yellow."

"No yellow, Mommy.  No yellow!"  She dropped the shoe, face full of distain, in a box with some fushia pumps. 

Hrm. (This was a funny development - she had been trying to talk me into clothing the whole time previous, by saying, "Mommy shirt" and "Mommy coat" when she saw something she liked, usually in a brand I normally wear.) 

I picked the shoe back up.  "So...do you want to try it on?" 

And before I thought of pulling out the camera, she bent down, unfastened her Keen sandal, and pulled it off - all in one motion.  (Normally, taking off the sandals involves sitting and much pulling.)  She dropped the shoe and stuck her foot in it.

And still didn't like it. "No me, no yellow."  She inspected the shoe one last time, and put it away. 

I got the photo - and the shoes.  We chased each other around the store, which was hugely fun, and actually led to positive fellow-shopper interactions.  (At the Rack?  I *know*!)   My kid still threw some massive tantrums while we waited for Matthew's train to arrive; she stripped naked in the middle of my gourmet - ahem, Ikea meatballs and sauce - dinner, just as my boss called to ask a question, and announced it with "MOMMY NO DIAPER!"; and she pitched the requisite screaming fit when I put her to bed.  (Which the treadmill drowns out perfectly, I've noticed.)

But the shoes?  They were a golden moment in the day.  Well, baby poop yellow.  It works.

To the three of you still reading this blog

We are all alive.  Peach has some lovely gastrointestinal thing that has turned me off of chocolate frosting forever.  My only free time comes after the screaming fit that is putting her down for a nap.  (Thankfully, the naps have been long.  The nights, however, involve lots of screaming at 1-4 AM.  I am 36, Matthew is 47, and WE ARE TOO OLD FOR THIS.)  Also thankfully, I haven't gotten whatever it is that got Peach - although I have enough of a hard time staying home when I'm sick that staying home when someone else is sick is a bit maddening!

After spending almost a week in Nevada with family, we came home to normalcy - which is to say, work chaos and feeling infinitely behind.  Two forced days "off" were not on my radar, and I have come to the conclusion that it is infinitely more difficult to stay home with a kid than go to work. Seriously. Does it make me a bad mom that I would rather review discovery than do "ring around the rosey" until I'm sick to my stomach? 

It distresses me that this blog is becoming an apology piece, interspersed with pictures.  Sorry I haven't posted, sorry I have nothing interesting to say, sorry I can't talk about work, sorry for all the apologies. 

The apologies out of the way, here are some pictures:

Our trip to Reno was Peach's first airplane trip.  I was a wreck about this, because she hates loud noises - the vacuum, the garage door opener, and the time we watched a helicopter take off?  A NIGHTMARE.  So I'd prepped her with books and even though I am a member of the "pop a xanex before takeoff" club, I managed to feign excitement for her.  And it worked!  She loved it.  We had a hell of a time keeping her in the seat we had to pay for (because she'd turned 2 the previous week), but heck, she had fun and there was very minimal screaming, mostly to do with trying to keep her in her seat.

Most of our pictures of her on the plane are like this one - the back of her head while she watches out the window.

While in Reno, we had the third of Peach's three birthday parties.  Yeah.  I went from not wanting any to having three - one at daycare, a casual one with neighbors (Matthew was the orchestrator of this - he bought a cake all on his own), and one with my family in Reno.  All of them were a lot of fun, but it was so neat to see her interacting with my family.  For example, she'd never met either of my brothers, but had chatted with Phil via Skype.  When she first got out of the car in front of my sister's house, Phil came around the side of the car - and as soon as her feet were on the ground, she ran up to him and hugged him, with no prompting on my part.  Auntie Sarah was incredibly patient and wonderful with her and thought of a million ways to entertain her that never would have occurred to me, Uncle John fed her pizza, and she loved all the attention.  I loved the break.

She had an epic tantrum the day of her party, but hey, what toddler doesn't?  It meants she took a nap and I got to open her presents...which was actually pretty fun for me.  Most unusual gift: toilet seat with a toddler-sized seat that fits up into the lid with a magnetic catch - no idea what the TSA folks thought about it, but it has already made the potty training much more pleasant.  Loudest gifts: from my brothers, naturally.  Everyone was so kind and thoughtful to Peach, which was a delight for me, since my family is so far away.  My brothers had never met her and my father hadn't seen her since she was about a week old.  My sister hadn't seen her in over a year.  It was fun.

The point of the trip, getting my brother John married off, was accomplished with very few snags.  Peach fell asleep in the car about 20 minutes from the Squaw Valley Chapel - naturally.  She made it through the ceremony with only some squirming, but we couldn't stay too long.  For those who might remember my sister's wedding, or the stories therefrom, almost three years ago?  Let's just say that my parents GOT ALONG NICELY.  I have pictures of that, too, in case no one believes me, but would rather not risk a jinx by posting them.  Instead, I leave you with this:

Which is pretty much how I feel after having not gotten a full night's sleep in...um...I can't remember when.  Here's hoping her nap lasts long enough for me to get a few Zs in myself.

Not the U2 demographic yet

Peach and I were listening to music on our way home last week, and U2's "New Years Day" came on.  Peach listened to Bono for about 15 seconds and exclaimed, "Baby crying!"

Catching up with her

In the beginning, it was easy to get cute pictures of Peach - newborns don't dodge.  Now, though?  I am lucky if I get her in the frame.

Take last weekend's playground excursion:

Finally one with her face!

Snippets of conversation

Upset Client: "You just can't understand what it's like to have a rapist call you out of the blue!"
Me:  "Um, actually it happens to me almost every day."
UC: ....
Me: "And murderers.  The murderers are nicer on the phone, though."

Quandry

Half the time I think I am hovering over Peach too much and helping too much.  The rest of the time, I wonder things like, "Is it wrong to let her eat Bath and Bodyworks foaming soap?"

(FYI, I did hover and help her figure out how to swish and spit, and there were no ill effects.)

Today's helpful tip

Law review + child porn charges ≠ happy legal career.  Except for the prosecutor.