Never a Good Sign.

As part of my ongoing effort to vary my childrens' diets, I try to make something new at least once a week.  I have mixed success with this, since I shop on tuesdays and have to plan in advance, and cooking takes time, and I hate hate HATE throwing food away.  Also I am not very creative so it almost always ends up involving chickpeas and spices in some kind of tomato sauce with pasta or rice and guess what?  NOT REALLY VARYING THE DIET.

Katie eats relatively well, since she is still a baby.  Gracie, though, is on a strict pasta with marinara, mac and cheese, soup, and yogurt diet, with the occasional peanut butter and jelly.  And not always all of that- some days, she will take one bite of pb&j and reject the rest.  Once I made her a veggie burger and she inhaled it and asked for more.  The next time, she took a single bite, politely pushed her plate away and sweetly said, "Mama?  Pwease-ah get me somefing better to eat."  (try not laughing at that, by the way.  YOU CAN'T.)

But the worst sign?  The one that tells me she will be having milk and yogurt for dinner?  Is when she comes cruising into the kitchen, stops dead in her tracks, and says, "Mama.  What is dat hoe-bibble smell coming from???"

She actually ate this, but see?  Pasta and chick peas.  Sigh.

Randoms to Remember

(sidenote: Curse you, Blogger.  I do not like change.)

Fun with Homophones:

me: Hee, Gracie, look at Katie's bare feet!
Gracie: Hee hee hee, mama, those aren't bear feet, those are Katie feet!

me: D'oh!!
Gracie: mama?  Why you say d'oh?
me: That's something to say when you're frustrated.
Gracie: No, mama, dough makes pizza.

Related To The First But Not the Second:

me: Gracie, what does Grammy call Katie when she takes her shoes off?
Gracie: Shoeless Joke!!

"Why do they sound the same but mean different things?  That's just SILLY."

First Words

Katie finally has some actual words.  And like her sister, her first word was identifying one of our pets.  Where Gracie started with kitty cat, Katie started saying (screaming, actually) dog just a week or so ago.  This morning, I got her out of bed and opened the blinds, and she saw Sam walking out to his pee spot and nearly lost her mind, yelling, "DAH!! DAH!!"  She also says night night, which is totally freaking adorable, and over the weekend when I asked her to tell grandma thank you, she immediately and perfectly signed it to her.  Genius.  Clearly.

"OK, so if we approach from the eastern front and bank left, then I'll never have to sleep again!"

The Best Thing of All

During the brief 30-45 minutes that Katie sleeps in her crib, I SHOULD be trying to get things done, things I cannot accomplish when the girls are awake.  And so I do: I crawl under a soft fuzzy blanket on the couch and sleep.  And then Katie wakes up and screams her brains out for half an hour because she is not done napping, but doesn't want to sleep anymore.  Over the weekend, though, I managed to get her back to sleep on my chest to finish her nap.  NOT ideal, but seriously, the girl is just awful from 2pm until bedtime when she wakes up and doesn't go back to sleep and I am also tired and so zzzzzz.....Sunday, we came back down to the couch, both got under the fuzzy blankie, and I immediately joined her in dreamland.  The sun was streaming through the windows over the couch, warming up the blanket, Katie was all warm and snuggly, and I passed the eff out right alongside her.  She napped for another two hours.  BLISS.  Gracie supported this effort by taking her own extra-long nap.  I cannot remember the last time I felt so clear-headed.  It was phenomenal.  Of course, they paid me back by both waking at 4:15 today, but I take my victories where I can find them.

playing together without screaming: another major example of winning

It's the little things these days.  I don't feel like I have anything really that interesting, exciting, or funny to record.  But I don't want to forget the little things.

That is the Middle of the Goddamn Night.

It's funny to look back and think how I thought Gracie was a bad sleeper because she woke up every day at 4:30 and took tiny short crappy little naps. 

She was a fanfuckingtastic sleeper.

I have learned this now that I have a second child, who goes to bed even later than Gracie, takes even shorter, crappier naps, and for the past two days, has woken at 3:45am.

I am so exhausted and frustrated and pissed off that I got two crappy sleepers, and you know what's not helping?  The smug people who are SO SURE my kids could sleep, if only I would do it their way because I'm just doing it WRONG.

And look, I get it.  We all get smug about stupid parenting shit because here's the thing: when our kids do something well, whether it's eat their vegetables, sit quietly in church, or sleep like a normal goddamn earthling, they do so because we've worked really hard at it.  We want credit for that, because it took thought and patience and consistency and it was not fun but darnit, we did it and we got good results.  But here's the other thing: sometimes?  You do all that hateful thinking and patience and consistency and the kid still refuses to eat anything other than corn, screams through mass, or wakes up at THREE FORTY MUTHALOVING FIVE IN THE AM. 

Nobody can make Katie sleep.  Just trust me on this one.  And consider this your warning, the next time you roll your eyes and say I just need to make her cry for FOUR hours every night for a month, I am not going to be nice about it.  I'm going to remind you that your kid eats nothing but bologna and grapes and hasn't had a drop of milk since you took his bottles away.  Don't make me be that asshole.

"The thing is, Katie, even *I* think you  might be taking this no-sleeping thing a bit too far."

Laziness Never Pays.

Every once in awhile, I get sick of blogging. It just becomes a chore, and I wonder why I'm doing it. It's just one more task on an endless list of responsibilities. But then I start reading through my archives and I'm reminded of something funny or sweet that I completely forgot about, and think, oh FINE I'LL KEEP BLOGGING. And after I lost my goddamn muthaloving iPhone earlier this week, I was reminded AGAIN that I need to keep blogging because I am not a reliable recorder of memories otherwise.

Because, see, I not only failed to set up iCloud (which took all of three seconds with the new phone, which I KNEW IT WOULD, by the way), it had been ages since I uploaded pics from the phone. So the pictures of Katie climbing into Gracie's frog potty? Gone. The videos of Katie and Gracie playing in the tub together and laughing hysterically? ...well, actually, I still have one, but I lost the BETTER one. The pictures of Gracie dyeing Easter eggs in the kitchen? NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN.

Luckily, my parents are not as flaky as me.

To me, the suckiest thing about the lost phone is the lost pictures.  The rest, meh, I'll figure it out.  But the pictures....ohhhh, that hurts.  So FINE.  I'll keep BLOGGING, even when it feels like a freaking chore, because it's one more place to come back and think, awwww, yeah, Katie WAS a total photobomber!!

Early Spring: the lone drawback

The incredibly mild winter was all-out awesome, and spring coming early is like the cherry on the icing on the cake.  The only problem is that I am totally unprepared to clothe my children for warm weather.

Katie has the benefit of enough hand-me-downs to clothe twelve children.  As a result, she is ready for anything and generally dressed adorably, no matter what the weather.

I hope this doesn't take too long.  I'm due at a picnic with Audrey  Hepburn.

Gracie, on the other hand, does not have the benefit of hand-me-downs.  She has slightly-too-small clothes from the fall and too-large clothes that I ordered, thinking she would be bigger than she really is now.  She is also fond of odd combinations, and when I'm in a hurry to get her dressed, anything goes.

I hope this doesn't take too long.  I'm due at Swap-o-Rama with Bogdan and Basia

I didn't realize just how ill-fitting and ridiculous the outfit was until we were already late to leave for the pediatrician, so I did what any rational person would do, and lied to the front desk staff, telling them Gracie dressed herself.  (They didn't ask.  I volunteered the information.)  One of the girls cocked her head to one side and said, "Awww!  Obviously!"

Compounding the problem is my utter lack of organization.  I took some time from a workday, while the girls were with Grammy, and came home to do closet-cleaning.  I got through all the storage totes, the closet, and Katie's dresser, and was left with eight bags of clothes to donate- and that does not include the stuff that was too grotty to even donate.  The sad thing is, four hours later, I ran out of time to clean out Gracie's dresser, so I still have no room for actual spring clothing that fits the child, so I can't even go shopping for her.

This is what hoarding hath wrought.

Fortunately, her shorts from last summer still fit. Not so fortunately, her t shirts do not. If I don't get on the ball soon, she's either gonna be walking around with her belly hanging out, or in those same two purple t-shirts that are roughly a size and a half too big, and I'm gonna have to keep lying about who picked out her clothes. Which works just fine for me, actually, but let's be real here: it's Gracie. I tell that lie again, and she corrects me. Promptly. And it is the fear of that shame that motivates me.

....someday. For now: couch.

Various

I keep having all kinds of things I want to blog about, funny things the girls do, mostly, and assorted random thoughts, but as luck would have it, we are getting our house ready to put on the market and simultaneously, Katie has decided once and for all that naps are for pansies, and since I am the Queen of the Pansies, I am TOO TIRED to blog by the time I get them to bed.  This means I have missed blogging about all sorts of funny/cute/sweet things they've done lately, but such is life.  If they wanted a better record, they would SLEEP MORE.  (OK, just Katie.  Gracie has, against all odds, become a champion sleeper.  So, I mean, there's hope for the future but I live in the present and I am exhausted.  And rambling.)

So in no particular order:

ONCE again, while nursing a child, I found myself a running superstar.  I trained for a half marathon with relative ease (though the race itself was, of course, not quite what I'd hoped for).  I ran a ten miler in record time.  I was regularly running sub-9 minute miles (which, yes, this makes me pathetic, but that is FAST for me).  I was a MACHINE.  Having visions of 25 minute 5ks.  The weather even cooperated, with the warmest winter of my entire life, so theoretically, no post-treadmill adjustment period.  And then I weaned Katie and promptly found myself barely able to run a mile.  W...T....EFFFF???  and then I remembered: the *exact* same thing happened both while I was nursing and after I weaned Gracie.  And I hate to keep going back to the same well on this, but it makes MAJOR evolutionary sense for a woman to become an exceptional runner while they're feeding another human.  I am not entirely sure why we have to become pathetic sloths after we wean those humans, but such is life.  The more attractive side effect of weaning is that the stubborn eight pounds that I could. not. drop while nursing are in the process of falling off, in spite of me eating a whole lot more and obviously running a whole lot less.  Which, YAY!  ...but oh man, I am TOTALLY going to become one of those women who gets that odd puffy look immediately upon reaching menopause.  There is nothing to be done about this.

THERE are very few things on this earth more awesome than Gracie pretending to nonchalantly whistle by saying "fuh fuh fuuuhhhh..."  Except maybe the belly laugh she whips out when she's (nicely) teasing Katie.

This is just here to show you how adorable she is.

KATIE is climbing stairs at every possible opportunity.  She is pretty much going to kill me dead.  She also nods her head yes in response to questions, tries to put socks and shoes on, and loves to stick monster finger puppets on her index finger and chase us while roaring.

no fear...for HER, anyway.

WE are listing our house soon.  And you know, moving is necessary, for various reasons.  But it's hard to think about leaving the first home our girls knew.  I was watching them play today and wondering if Gracie will even remember this house (obviously Katie will not, unless of course we never actually sell the house...)  It's just weird.

STEPHEN told Gracie awhile back that I have to work to make money to buy toys.  Ever since then, she greets me at the door, asking to see her toys.  Which, for the record, the toy is usually something like a note card or a bandaid or something like that, but I was at Target without her and hit up the dollar section, so she got a few good things, too.  Once, I got her a packet of sushi erasers, which are totally weird and probably don't even erase anything, not that she writes with pencils, anyway.  I figured she'd look at them and toss them aside, but they were funny so I bought them.  You guys.  The girl has not stopped playing with them.  it's been MONTHS.

The fish eggs are Stephen's favorites.

I am eating popcorn.  Cookie bars are next.  Don't be jealous.

Can't Think of a Good Title

It's really weird, to lose a friend you've lost touch with.  When someone isn't a part of your daily, or even special occasion-life, there's not that reminder that they're gone.  And you feel like you shouldn't be sad, because how can you miss someone you no longer really talk to that much?  But when that person was once one of your best friends, such an integral part of so  many memories that you can't even think of high school without thinking of them, it's hard to not feel the loss.

I find myself visiting her facebook page, every few months, staring at her face and thinking, you're dead.  You're gone.  You're dead.  Because you know, when you don't have that daily reminder, or change in routines, it's kind of hard to believe. 

I talk to her more now than I did when she was still alive.  Which is not even all that often, for the record.  I don't want to make it sound like I have daily conversations with her or anything.  Usually when I'm trying to figure something out, or about to do something stupid, or when I'm really, really wishing for something, I talk to her about it.  And sometimes I try to imagine her answer.  Usually when I know the answer and I don't really want to hear it.  I like to picture her being exasperated, because I think it's funny.

It makes me sad that she never met my girls.  I talk to her about them a lot.  She loved kids, and she was so good with them. 

She was difficult and imperfect and I don't mean to make it sound like it was only a matter of time before we reconnected and were thick as thieves again, because realistically, that was never going to happen. 

When her family had a memorial service a month or so after she died, there were more than a few people there from high school.  One of them was a girl she'd been close friends with throughout grade school, someone she'd grown apart from in high school.  This girl was one of Those Girls.  I'm pretty sure she never had an awkward phase, with long shiny hair and perfectly straight white teeth and clear olive skin, the queen of the dance team...one of Those Girls.  And the fact that they grew apart was pretty one-sided.  And I remember being so, so happy to see her there, and thinking that of all the people there, my friend would have been the happiest to know that she was there. 

It's been two years, and I haven't stopped thinking about her, and I never will, but I'm pretty sure I'm never going to figure out how I feel about it all.