Runaway October

Today was one of those days that are gone too fast, but when you look back you real­ize it’s been a long day indeed.

My lit­tle bro was here and made me/us break­fast. I’m try­ing to cut out all dairy because of Rowan’s colic and he made sure to ask what was okay. He’s a good kid. We demoed a few new games on the xBox 360 — Jeri­cho looks pretty good.

Then I tried to sew up some quick cot­ton throw­ing balls for the boys. I had the great idea to use the stuff­ing out of some old stuffed ani­mals since I didn’t have any on hand. Ya know, the whole “reuse, reduce, recy­cle” and be thrifty idea. All was well until my mom pointed out that it would be like gut­ting and killing them. Thanks mom. I didn’t have the heart. On top of that, the lower ten­sion on my sewing machine is sud­denly out of whack again, it’s much too loose. I have no idea how to fix it and have had to take it in to the shop for this before. I have no man­ual as it was a “gift” from a friend. He never used it and I was always bor­row­ing it. So the sewing machine is dead and so is the cam­era; Great.

The grand finale of the evening was Declan dump­ing out the whole $16 bot­tle of Rowan’s Myli­con drops. When he has the time to do these things I don’t know. There were 4 adults in the house at the time. There are only 4 rooms he can access if he kitchen gate is up.

Le sigh. Time to try and get myself and Rowan to sleep. Wish me luck. And maybe I can find some bat­ting for pic­tures on the balls tomor­row. Despite every­thing they’re pretty cute.

It seems my youngest may have colic or some sort of reflux. Poor lit­tle guy. All of us here are run­ning on lit­tle sleep and even less money, which causes great stress. To lis­ten to a new­born wail and sob for hours at a time is enough to make my cheese slide right of the cracker. We’re try­ing some reme­dies to see if it’s really colic or if it’s some kind of 24 hour upset. Of course, it never fails that Declan chooses to be two right as Rowan has fallen asleep.

I just want to gush over my new lit­tle day­care guy. He has Down Syn­drome and is just the cutest lit­tle guy ever. Appar­ently his par­ents had had a hard time try­ing to find a care­giver for him because he’s spe­cial needs. And here I am expe­ri­enced and every­thing. I already know all the sign lan­guage he does and we have great teach­ing aids to help us help him. He sticks up for him­self when the dog or other kids get in his face which makes every­thing so much eas­ier. I don’t have to police the dog’s every move.

I spoke with an old friend tonight again. She has 3 girls, which is awe­some because who would I be able to make these awe­some things for:

• Patch­work Cir­cle Skirt
• No Sew Tutu
• Faery Wings
• And such girl-like things…

Din­ner tonight was del­ish — Chicken Que­sadil­las with Carmelized Onions, though the pre­sen­ta­tion was lack­ing cause Rowan was fuss­ing. Break­fast was a mod­i­fied pan­cake of sorts — 1/2c peanut­but­ter, 2 eggs and some honey fried up like pan­cakes. They’re great because it’s pretty nutri­tion dense and sweet enough to not need syrup, so lit­tle hands can just pick them up. Plan­ning on mak­ing some Peanut­But­ter Choco­late Chip cook­ies tomor­row. Yay! No pic­tures though, unless I can find my moms camera.

I spent a bit of my super early morn­ing nurs­ing and read­ing oth­ers res­o­lu­tions, cour­tesy of decor8. Bad idea. Now I have 6 mil­lion I would like to add to my own list and whit­tling it down is hard. So here it goes.

1…) Stop cussing, com­pletely. No “shoot”, no “Christ on a pony”, no “son of a bis­cuiteater”. The sen­ti­ment is the same, so tech­ni­cally it is swear­ing, just not using the actual word. This is going to be a super tough one.

2…) Smile more. I have one of those faces that in it’s nor­mal state can be mis­taken for a scowl, which in turn makes peo­ple think that I’m surly. Really, I’m not. Also a smile can make a per­sons day.

3…) Spend more indi­vid­ual time with Declan and treat him like an adult. This was great inspi­ra­tion for that and it truly makes sense. If we want our chil­dren to grow up as respect­ful adults, we need to model that behav­ior always. Some days I go to bed and can­not think of a time that I sat down and played with Declan, or did more than fill a sim­ple request for a glass of water. Poor lit­tle man.

4…) Cre­ate and add some items to my Etsy shop. It’s been open for almost 2 years now and I’ve never put a sin­gle item up for sale.

5…) Along with num­ber 4 goes do more craft projects — for myself and with the kids. Declan is get­ting big enough that a lit­tle struc­tured craft time would be fun for both of us. Also, send­ing home neat lit­tle crafts with my day­care kids would give me a great sense of satisfaction.

Of course there’s the manda­tory ones — Lose weight, make more money, get orga­nized, buy a house, get rid of debt.… blah blah blah.

So, that’s the long and short of it.

Good Luck on your res­o­lu­tions and have a Happy 2008!

So the hol­i­days are just about wrap­ping up and it’s time to go back to normal.

If I could leave up the Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions year round I would. I love the lights and the smells and the count­less hours wor­ry­ing if so&so is going to like what you bought or made them. Of course, if I left all the Christ­mas stuff out, it would be destroyed by lit­tle hands like every­thing else I own.

We’re super broke, so no gifts for any­one but the kidlets. Declan received a huge wooden pirate ship, com­plete with lit­tle wooden pirates, canons and a plank (as in “Arg! Walk the plank, Matey.”) He also got about 87 courses worth of wooden play food — he loves the ketchup bot­tle. Rowan… I dunno. Some­how I ended up buy­ing him like 8 wooden rat­tles. When is he going to use them?

We went to the In Laws for Christ­mas din­ner. I wasn’t look­ing for­ward to see­ing cer­tain peo­ple and was half tempted not to go because of them, but Christ­mas has always been a fun time for us. Ann made the day won­der­ful as usual. Din­ner was deli­cious, even though Rowan insisted I eat it cold. Matt’s par­ents bought just about every large thing on our wish­list. I never hoped that we’d get so many things that we’ve been need­ing, but to receive them as gifts was such a treat. The boys’ Aunt came this time, though she was absent from Thanks­giv­ing. She loves to buy things for Declan and we are grate­ful for the things she buys, but to be truth­ful I’d be happy to never have a toy that required bat­ter­ies again. She bought a Tickle Me Cookie Mon­ster this year. It’s one of those toys you see as an adult and think it’s adorable (it orig­i­nally made me laugh), but when you see it as a par­ent it makes you want to cry. My only sav­ing grace is Declan goes between ambiva­lent about it to ter­ri­fied of it. Once Cookie Mon­ster starts throw­ing him­self to the ground and rolling around, Declan books it! Some out of town rel­a­tives of Matt’s fam­ily showed up, so I was able to meet some of the extended fam­ily. Unfor­tu­nately I also got the oppor­tu­nity to try and ignore Matt’s thiev­ing brother for the day. That was fun… not.

I’d still like to get the kids down to Zoo­Lights, but it has been so, so cold for us Ari­zona Natives.

Happy Hol­i­days every­one. I hope yours was as amaz­ing as ours was.

• He brings you his last Skit­tle. Not just any Skit­tle — the one he dug out of the couch which has to be six months old and is cov­ered in lint, hair and sweat from his chubby lit­tle hand.
• He points to every pic­ture of beau­ti­ful women in mag­a­zines and says “Mama”.
• He attempts to brush your curly-ass hair… with a round brush.
• He kisses your boo-boo’s.
• He yells at the dog when she gets in your face.
• He brings you a small wooden trea­sure chest… full of soggy cereal because you said you were starving.