Mel-orange-drama

It all started innocently enough. The girls were eating toast, I was preparing some oatmeal cereal for Jackson, and I thought I should add some fruit to our breakfast. It was Saturday, why not a special treat for Olivia… I’ll bust out the mandarins.

The peak. The high. She abandoned her toast like yesterday’s old beat up flip flops and dove into that little orange like it was the cutest pair of ballet flats you’d ever seen. But then, faster than you could say “what do you mean parachute pants are coming back,” it was gone.

Nicole, however, was still pecking away at her peanut butter toast. She likes order, and she loves to savour. First her toast must be finished, then her orange carefully peeled (preferably by her mother) and segmented, then eaten one small piece at a time.

Olivia eyed up Nicole’s mandarin pensively. “No, Olivia,” two voices at once, and she looks at us as if she is offended. “Cole’s orange,” she says almost defensively, then her words twist with a hint of melancholy. “You eat it, Cole? You eat your orange? Yours?” Her eyes fill with the forbidden fruit. She moves a chair closer.

Nicole eyes her distrustfully, and looks at me, her hand hovering over her orange. I spoon cereal into Jackson’s eager little mouth. Olivia moves another seat closer and Nicole snatches her orange up and moves it to the other side of her plate, furthest from Olivia. “Cole’s orange,” Olivia tries to reassure her placidly, slipping off the chair and sitting on Nicole’s other side, while Nicole switches her orange back. Olivia looks charming and conversational. Nicole is starting to look panicked at this point, and decides she and her breakfast are safest beside me.

Olivia watches the mandarin orange intently as it finds a home back across the table, then feigns a casual attitude as she follows Nicole. Then she abandons all pretence and stands on Nicole’s chair, leaning over her now-shrieking sister to stare hypnotically at the orange. “Orange… orange… Cole’s orange… orange…” she chants through Nicole’s dramatic shrieks. “Olivia, back off!” I bark, and she looks up at me, startled. “Okay, I back off…” she says remorsefully, to my surprise, and does so, for approximately two-thirds of a second. Then she’s right back on Nicole’s chair, leaning over her to try get a glimpse of the orange that Nicole is now curled up protectively around, still shrieking.

I throw my hands up and give up on feeding Jackson. “Nicole, please go finish breakfast in your room so you can eat in peace. And run.” She happily obliges, Olivia hot on her tail, until the door slams. My wild, intense middle child returns to me, hot fat tears running down her face and her large blue eye eyes full of sorrow.

I stifle a grin, and casually start peeling my own mandarin orange, which until now had apparently gone unnoticed. Immediately those eyes regain their sparkle, and she hopefully says, “Mommy’s orange?” “Yes, Mommy’s orange,” I tell her firmly. She nods, smiling at me, and we both know I’m going to share, but I say it anyways, and she bubbles up, a giggle escaping.

And a few minutes later, Nicole comes out of her room with two orange slices. “I have pieces for you, Olivia, because you’re two years old. I’m the best big sister ever, hey?” Olivia explodes into a million tiny pieces of pure joy, and they’re best friends again.

And I never, ever put mandarins on the breakfast table again.

code purple

 

We have thrush. Jackson is taking it like a man. Read: very poorly. Think man-cold. He has man-thrush and he wants his mommy. Since we started treating him with genetian violet (Hence the Why So Serious? face above) he is back to sleeping through the night. He just politely requests that I hold him, touch him, squeeze him, love him 24/7 outside of that. I just wore him to the dentist, where Nicole had an emotional breakdown, no big deal but that’s a pretty good summary for my day, and then came home and held him. The end. What I was supposed to do today was get up early, toss in a load of laundry, have a nice cup of coffee while blogging and checking the facebooks and stuff. Then feed my lovely children, work out, come home, change the loads and do some tidying, dentist. Then come home, naps for the little ones, and then haul ass with laundry and packing things away because we’re starting the kitchen reno right now.

Actual day: wake up, feed Jackson, hold Jackson, feed Jackson, hold Jackson, make french toast while Nicole holds Jackson, feed Jackson, hold Jackson, dentist while holding Jackson, feed Jackson, hold Jackson, try put Jackson down, think about laundry, groan inwardly, apologize to Jackson for thinking he’d sleep independantly, hold Jackson, feed Jackson while writing this blog post. The above picture sort of represents the last few days except today I have dubious personal hygiene. I did brush my teeth, and fingercomb my hair when I applied the dry shampoo, and today I’m wearing normal (but maternity haha) jeans. But aren’t those teal jeans fun? That’s the day the thrush was really really hurting me – still hurts today but the Genetian Violet has really taken that down a notch – so my fun $15 teal stretch skinny jeans from Giant Tiger really cheered me up. Oh, and those are my new glasses, free from clearlycontacts.ca and boy howdy did they ship fast.

Now I’m going to go put Jackson back in the wrap and try get some of that cleaning and laundry done. Oy vey. I have a friend coming over in 15 minutes and she is about to get a very real glimpse of my house, which is okay because she’s one of my besties and this is not going to be her first very real glimpse, but possibly the worst because I smell like maybe my shirt sat in the washer overnight because I forgot to switch the loads, but I needed a clean shirt so I put it in the dryer and wore it anyways.

Dontcha wish your girlfriend was hot-like-me!

Schoolchild?!

Guys, I have a schoolchild! And also, I did manage to singlehandedly get her and her siblings to school, 15 minutes away, for 8:30. Actually, that’s a lie; it turned out to be 8:35 and 20 minutes, because I live in the depths of not one but THREE other schools (elementary, middle, and high) and the traffic that entails. It’s a cluster… um… it’s not pretty. And I may have sat three houses down from my house mom-swearing (“Come on, buddy! Even I’m less of a grandma-driver than that! GO! GOGOGO! Okay and now there’s traffic again, too late, we’re just going to sit here forever, thanks for that.”) at some guy who appeared to be quite nervous about making a left turn without a stop sign to hold his hand and tell him he’s pretty.

So okay, I completely forgot to snap a dropping-her-off-first-day picture. Which is too bad, because I made her a new tunic dress and this was going to be my chance to take a picture. My time to shine. Also because it was her first day of school and I wanted a picture of her to commemorate the last few moments of her as a pre-school-child. Parent fail.  I resolved to get one on the pickup. Even if it was just my cameraphone.

Then she wanted me to drop her off in the parking lot. Um, this is day one? You’re supposed to cling to my waist and beg me to stay when I tell you we’re leaving you in the classroom. Nope, I had to ask for my kiss goodbye. But I did get it, and enthusiastically.

And this is what greeted me when I went to pick her up:

Why yes, she is aiming a bit low. Please enjoy the bottom bit of the tunic, by the way. I made that. Me. She wasn’t running to me… she was running to Olivia, who she scooped up and spun around. “Olivia, I missed you!!” It was adorable. Everyone ate it up. And then she gave Jackson a bit smooch, and I was given the blessed privilege to drive her home. However, she filled my ears with excited chatter, telling me about her day. And also, when can she go back?

I’ve known for a while she was QUITE ready for school. She’d been bored and getting into quite a bit of mischief. I’m expecting roses and sparkles from her from here on in. She’s already willingly cleaning her room and making her bed daily again! It’s got to be ready at a moments notice for her to leave and go to SCHOOL!

I got a Salted Caramel Mocha to console me, before which I dropped my two littler ones off at my sister in laws for two hours and hit CanadianFabricStoreLand to take advantage of their big fat sale. Quilting solids and notions, I think yes. I may have picked up some sequin trim while I was there, in two different colors, thinking of my eldest child and her love of sparkles. And when I got home with the younger two and they were both napping, I may have caught myself staring at her bike thoughtfully. But I also cleaned the house, folded laundry, and plotted out some projects. Since I’d gotten so much done during the day, I even tripped and fell into the sewing room for a while late last night and cut out the pieces for a top for Olivia.

I think we may just make it through this. 

And just because I pretty much stayed on-topic the whole blog post and I’m not entirely sure I’m comfortable with that, here’s a quick cameraphone shot of my little fattie, who has woken up this past week, and even went down to only looking paranoid and stressed out about half the time.

Peasant top and a quick brawl

In hindsight, I feel a little guilty submitting Olivia to GAP’s ‘model call’ contest. She’s terrible.

This side shot, which involved a lot of cropping, was probably one of the closest possible representatives to a ‘’modelled shot”

I got a lot of these ‘running away’ type shots. So we know there’s a back.

We even got some ‘detail shots’ *ahem* we’ll pretend that was deliberate.

This out of focus beauty is the only documentation of full frontal shirt-ity that I’ve got. And for your viewing pleasure, we have WWE, ON{thelaundry}LINE style.

Oooh, that’s a good chunk of hair Olivia’s got there. But it looks like Nicole has got a good defensive strategy, holding the hair closer to the root and just going along with the pull for a minute while Olivia drags her around!

Oh, now look at that turnaround. A quick shove to the ground and Olivia is dooooown!!!

Oh, but she’s back up and running again. But it looks like this battle may be over, this seems to be some sort of weird …chase-hug? We’re not quite sure.

No children were harmed in the making of this blog post. No tears were being shed, so I just kept snapping during the 30-second brawl. If you’re curious, the only person who’s inflicted any real damage between the two of them … is Olivia. When they briefly fight, if she’s losing she runs upstairs and bawls. But she’s been known to lose her temper and suddenly bite Nicole, and last Sunday Nicole sported a nice fancy bite mark on her upper cheek for most of the day before it faded. Brutal. But they still get along 95% of the time, and love each other to smithereens!

Kids Clothes Week Challenge

So in case you don’t follow any of the bloggers participating….

I have actually been sewing away almost every day at one thing or another, most of which is for my children, but today I actually have a finished product to display. Simple enough, a peasant top for Olivia in a very cool fabric. I’ll try get a picture of her actually wearing it tomorrow. After I finished it, washed it, and hung til it was dry, her and I were done with each other for the day. We had a falling-out over dinner. I’d tell you who won but I don’t want to embarrass myself anyone on the internet.

I had to put it all large in hopes that you can see some of the detail in this very cool fabric. And now I will tell you a sad, sad tale about said fabric. (see it modelled, if you can call it that, here)

See, I was quite delighted to find this fabric with a finished edge to it, all dappled grey and pretty and very light and airy. “This,” I thought to myself, “is perfect for making a summer maternity dress.” Whether I did a tank on top with a gathered skirt of this on the bottom, or shirred it on the top and just did a maxi dress, it was going to be perfect.

But no.

Because I did my mental math on how much fabric I would need to make a dress. BUT. And this is a big old BUTT, much like my own…….. I did that mental math based on when I use both sides of the selvedge on a piece of fashion fabric. Nooooo, sir. Wrong. I came home with two different fabrics intended for this type of purpose, and in both of them I have exactly half of what I need.

And the moral of the story is

When shopping for Kids Clothes Week Challenge

Shop for Kids Clothes Week Challenge.

The end.

(on the bright side, I have to go back for fabric for me next week. Because I. Am. So. Done. With. Maternity. Pants. Please tell me I’m not the only one out there who finds that they drag your underwear halfway down your bum. And then you have to pull up your underwear, and then you have to pull up the back of your pants, and then you have to pull up the front of your pants.  Repeat every five minutes for about eight hours. And then you just go and take off your pants, sit on your bed and scowl, and then put on some perfectly good yoga pants.)

Do Not Adjust Your Monitor

So, this was totally one of Those Moments. “Well, they’re being nice and quiet.” :) (long blissful pause, followed by slowly remembering that there is no such thing as Nice And Quiet.)

Now, considering this has previously ended in Olivia receiving a haircut from Nicole when she was too small to wiggle away and/or defend herself… this wasn’t so bad.

Makeup artistry in this post is courtesy of Nicole. The bronzed baby, if you look closely, is in fact Olivia. I am pretty sure, at least. I found her in Olivia’s bed, at any rate, with Nicole standing by the bed holding a makeup brush and looking guilty. (I know, Olivia is super slimy in the first picture. She had a runny nose yesterday.)

Why yes, that is my cellphone, thank you for asking. I had to sacrifice it for the sake of photojournalism, because she kept crawling in and out of the sunbeams, and to the puppy, and to the memory box Nicole pulled out so she could put a flower petal that Chris gave her in it, and to the shoes, and… you get the picture. Sorry, phone.

And yes, the astute amongst have may have noticed that the girls match. I know, that is some crazy shizznit right there, that stuff never happens around here. Actually, right now I’m just killing time because Nicole took a nap (rare) and wet herself and now she’s on her bed screeching because I want to take off her peed clothes AND SHE WANTS TO MATCH OLIVIA AND SHE NO WANT A BATH. So I’m waiting it out. I’m more patient than her. Theoretically. Or Chris will come home and she will choose to let one of us do it over the other. Or I’ll just dump her in the bath fully dressed because she’s at like a Level 12 Temper Tantrum right about now, and covered in pee, and that situation WILL end in the bath, either way. But I’m hoping if I wait it out it will end peacefully .

The Incident

So, for Christmas last year and this year, my parents take us and my youngest siblings (the ones that live at home) to Grand Forks for a few days and get us all a hotel room in the Canad Inns Grand Forks, where we spend a lot of time enjoying the waterpark. (We spend a lot of the rest of the time shopping at places like Target, which we don’t have in Canada. Nursing tanks for $16, whaaaat! Same quality costs at least $40 here…. but I’ve wandered off topic.)

The waterpark is divided into this area, which is a splashpark with two smaller waterslides, and then a middle swimming pool, and then another little splash area for really small kids which is attached to a ‘river’ of sorts that you ride floaties around, and the main attraction, a whirlpool waterslide.

Nicole enjoying the waterslides, and me hovering like the mother hen I am… my mom was up in the hotel room with Olivia, she has Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Disorder and the chlorine really gets  to her. (and clearly I’m not in bikini-body shape but since I had a baby six weeks before this picture was taken I’m not hating on myself.)

Now, we all had a hoot, especially Nicole. She ran around CONSTANTLY. Like, wow. The batteries do not die on this kid. There was no pause, there was no break. Just the on button.

So, I was taking her down the whirlpool waterslide just one more time before I headed back up to the room. The first time I had gone down, I’d ask the lifeguard at the top, who was wearing glasses, what I should do with mine … wear them or hold them. He said, “I’d hang onto them.” So I did. Now watch the photo progression as I hit the bottom on the last round.

Yay/whoosh! Yay/whoosh!Kerplunk! *snap*Oh, shit!Exucuse me… my lens snapped when I hit the bottom and dropped into the pool! (Lifeguard doesn’t say a word and just walks off…)

And now I’m cheerfully yelling at my sister to stop taking pictures and go find my husband and tell him what happened. I get very panicky feeling when I can’t see, my vision is pretty bad. And of course I didn’t pack any spare glasses! Now I need to buy a new pair, but the next night when I got home I did find an older weaker pair with the nosepiece broken, but two lenses. Far worse off was the hotel, they did some diving and came up with four pieces of my lens and decided the responsible thing to do would be to shut down half the waterpark – everything connected and unfortunately most of the main stuff – and drain and totally clean it. I felt really bad for all the people who were there and for the Canad Inns as well. I mostly was just feeling sortof panicky and sorry for myself at the time though, since I could only see clearly out of one eye! My choices for the rest of the time were either a wierd trippy sort of double vision, complete blur, or closing one eye to look out of the good lens. Bummer. Note to self – when you’re dependant on breakable plastic to see, bring a spare, always!!!!

So for now I went to walmart vision center yesterday and got fitted for my first ever pair of contacts. I have been meaning to for a long time, sometimes glasses are pretty inconvenient, although I do love mine. I hadn’t seen myself clearly without glasses for more than ten years (except for really up close.) I kept staring at myself in the mirror off and on while wearing them yesterday and today! (a few hours at a time, to get used to them.) I also keep feeling like I need to put my glasses on, since I don’t see them in my line of sight. Like I said, it’s been more than ten years of wearing them all the time! Here is my last good self-portrait, taken in June.

So, here’s the big reveal of me without glasses, and having done my hair and makeup to be worn without glasses. (The first time I did my makeup to wear without glasses my hubby flunked me and sent me back… LOL.)

So, New Year New Me, I guess! i have been chickening out of trying contacts for years and years now. It wasn’t touching my eyes that bothered me, or putting things in my eyes… I have just been wearing glasses for so long I was afraid I’d look crappy without them. I’m still going to order another pair of my current prescription to at least have on-hand… I haven’t quite decided yet if I will wear contacts most of the time or not yet. I am soooo insecure about this, you have no idea. I’ve had glasses and hinged a lot of how my face looks at any given time on them since grade six, people. That’s a lot of formative years and then the full chunk of my adult life so far. I mean, I have never stepped back and taken a good long look at my adult face without glasses before. I wasn’t sure at first, but I think maybe it’s not so bad. (and now I can buy cheap sunglasses for the first time ever… super yay!)

Happy New Years, everyone!

Another CSN Stores Opportunity and a Giant Squirrel.

So, first of all, I’m excited to share that I’ve been invited to work with CSN Stores again! I’ll be doing a review of one of their products again this time. (My last review is up on their website but I’ll post another one here once I share nursery pictures.) What I am most definitely NOT excited to share is how long I spent this afternoon looking around their stores. As in, not telling. I’ll give you a hint, more than fifteen minutes. Significantly more. But listen, they have everything from coffee tables to nursery art to shoes to lamps to soap. It’s mind-boggling. It makes wally mart look insignificant. Let me tell you. Want a fun suggestion on how to waste time browse their store for pretties? Type a color into the search, and then use the sidebar on the left to narrow down your search into types of things and price range. Like, I typed in aqua and narrowed it to a price range. And then I spent, uhhh… let’s say, ‘some’ time browsing. Art and clothes and shoes and FUN STUFF I TELL YOU.

Now, onto the squirrel issue. There is this gigantic grey squirrel in our neighbourhood. Chris and I like to joke about it, like that it’d take Chris out if he messed with it and stuff. The thing is the size of a small cat. It’s a monster, and despite the fact that Chris hates all the little squirrels in the neighbourhood, he has a strong admiration for this beast.

 
Early this afternoon, I went to grab the mail and when I opened the screen door I was surprised to find Gigantic Grey Squirrel sitting on my front step. He was about a foot away from me, and I held the screen door open a few inches as we stared at each other. I was admiring the fact that he didn’t seem to be scared of me, while trying to call Nicole over to come look without scaring him off. Next thing you know, he makes a move to try and jump in the house! I gave an undignified squawk and blocked him with my leg, hoping he wouldn’t call my bluff and actually jump at me. He hopped back and regarded me again, while Nicole ran over to see what the fuss was about. The two of us stared at the beast and I excitedly told her he’d tried to jump in the house. Suddenly he went for it again! I couldn’t believe the ballsy little guy! Two of us standing in the doorway, and he invites himself right in! I blocked him again and pulled the screen door closed, then got an idea. I instructed Nicole to keep the door closed so he stayed outside, then grabbed a cracker. I hucked the cracker onto the lawn, and he leapt for it. I grabbed the mail and closed the screen door again. Nicole was so delighted that he liked her crackers that she grabbed one and went outside to feed it to him, so he decided to take off. (I’m not sure why people are apparently scarier on a lawn then in a doorway, but there you go.)

Considering we’re an urban family, we have a remarkably high number of Insane Animal Incidents.

Baby V ultrasound excerpt

Here is a little excerpt of my u/s in 2D and 3D both, featuring a yawn and lots of fist-gnawing. This was such a neat experience, words cannot express. It was also really cool watching my 3 yr old explain to grandma and grandpa how baby likes to hide behind arms and fists and that baby is disgusting because baby licks baby’s hand. (haha. Little hypocrite, that one.)

I have a guest post scheduled for tomorrow and then hopefully I’ll be back to life! Camping last week was fun, coming down with a monster toothache was not fun. Neither was speeding to the dentist monday morning when I was back, fully prepared to bawl my eyes out at any cop who dared try pull me over (ok, i speed by like 3-5 km/h. odds are against getting pulled over, granted.) to find out I need to see a specialist / oral surgeon. PREGGOS DO NOT GET T3s, kids. Preggos get tylenol and Orajel and sympathetic looks. But google helped me find some homeopathic remedies and guess what works best for me? Warm salt water rinses. Oh. Huh. Okay! I should have thought of that one myself. It has me back to a functioning level, and one where I’m not using a full tube of Orajel every three days while being on Tylenol as often as is safe. Which is great, because I’m waiting a month for that appointment! Eek! I’ll be halfway to baby by then(compared to now)! Oh well. Take my advice, if you’re thinking of getting pregnant, get your teeth did. And then get them cleaned halfways through. There are a few different factors that make you much much more likely to get a nasty toothache during pregnancy, and you want to get on top of that shit because honey, it is not fun gargling salt and avoiding solid foods. Just saying.

Shit, son 2, aka the Skunk Tale

Here we get the whole story of the Skunk Drama, including the conclusion, which is fairly tragic all around. If you really love feral skunks maybe skip this blog post because you may find it upsetting.

So, we’ve had something – a cat, we thought – attacking our garbage at night this week. Very displeased, Chris has been talking about making a trap. Turned out he didn’t have to, and it’s probably just as well that he didn’t.

Last night he was outside doing his nightly lockup of his worktruck, garage, etc. when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. “AHA,” he thought, “that darn cat!” He immediately looked around for something to poke it with.

 

Before he found something with which to do poking, he got a clearer look at what was actually a small young skunk. All 6’5” 235lb of him squeaked like a smallish girlchild and hid behind his truck.

After some unsuccessful attempts to yell loudly whisper for me (I’m not sure what I was supposed to do, if I had heard him, but there you go…) Chris steeled himself and peeked around the truck at the skunk.

 

Chris saw the skunk. The skunk saw Chris. The skunk, apparently being hard of hearing, was so startled it fell backwards. Into the window well. And started freaking out, in the way that skunks do best. With a situationally appropriate mild epitaph, Chris turned tail and ran around the truck to the front door, then darted through the house yelling gibberish to me about skunks and the backyard. He quickly closed the back door in an attempt to keep the smell outside. Unfortunately, the window well in question was right beside the intake vent for our heating/cooling system.  He eventually plugged the intake vent from inside, but suffice it to say, it does not smell like cookies baking in my house.

 

I tucked Nicole into bed – it was around 8:30 or 9 at this point, and we’d just finished moving her bed back into her room – and we both spent the next hour or two on our phones trying to deal with his dilemma, once it became clear the skunk was really and truly stuck in the window well. As you can imagine, the skunk was in quite a tizzy about this as well, and every once in a while the household was treated to a new wave of his, uh, panic.

As the previous post mentioned, apparently nobody in authority – or not in authority, for that matter – really wants to deal with a skunk trapped in a window well. While I can totally understand why that is, that kind of left us in a bit of a pickle. The closest thing to a solution rather than just genuine sympathy and ‘good lucks’ was Wildlife Conservation, who suggested an exterminator might be up to the task. That doesn’t seem very Conservation-ish to me, by the way… Regardless, in the end it was our Boys In Blue who wound up deciding, between downtown and the local precinct, how the situation would be remedied. After they established that a) it was kind of hilarious/horrifying, and b) every avenue had been explored and nobody seemed willing to step in and rescue the skunk (who would have clearly been very grateful, and would have bestowed a wave of, uh, gratitude on his hero) the skunk wound up meeting his end fairly early on in life.

 
RIP, skunk. I’d feel more for him if he hadn’t scattered garbage all over my yard a couple of times and if my house didn’t smell strongly of skunk at 2:30 in the afternoon the next day. Awesomely enough, I was out and about to escape the odour in my house and could smell a skunky aroma. I quickly established –and my mom confirmed - that it was coming from me, and I never even saw the darn thing. I just stink from being in the house.

So, anyone want to come over for coffee???  

…no?

Don’t Make Eye Contact With The Pregnant Lady

Ever have those days where you just kind of snap and maniacally reorganize/rearrange all those areas of your house that just drive you crazy? Not that I actually rearranged that office upstairs into the craft room downstairs, that would be on my to-do list, and why on earth would I prioritize that? Nope, I rearranged the storage area in the unfinished half of our basement. AND Nicole’s bedroom. AND my bedroom, including all the baby stuff we’re storing in there right now for lack of anywhere else. Did I mention I snapped? Yup.

(random unrelated picture, since I didn’t
think you’d want to see pictures of dusty boxes.)

Unfortunately I spent so much time and energy rearranging those areas that the main living area is a bit messy tonight. I don’t even care, I’m just beat right now. I had a little breakdown somewhere in the middle when I realized there were four gigantic cardboard boxes full of VHS movies in storage. Chris is a keeper/hoarder and I’m a purger/waster. (to give you both of our basic definitions. I think you can guess which opinions are mine.) We drive each other batty with it.

Add some pregnancy hormones + one stubborn man in the mix and you have a mini episode of hoarders on your hands, very drama drama, and over several square feet of VHS movies might I add. Ultimatums were given, tears were shed, angry cleaning was done. (I clean with a vengeance when I’m angry. I’m like a fifties housewife with ‘roid rage.)

By the time Chris got home all those nooks and crannies were sorted through, I was elbows deep in laundry, and he quietly went to work on Nicole’s bedroom. (It’s next on the reno list, and probably will be the first thing that is completely finished.) The man knows how to stay out of the line of fire when my hormones are raging.

Speaking of raging hormones, if you’re curious what I would buy with a $70 gift card to CSN Stores, well, that would be the Storkcraft Hollie change table I’m reviewing from them! If you haven’t already, go ahead and tell me where you’d spend yours to enter to win. Think positive, browse around, do some coveting! Just kidding, coveting is a sin. Do some wishful thinking instead, much more positive of a vibe.

and then it goes downhill

First of all, I just want to put it out there, I’m really hungry right now. I’m really, really hungry and I should get up and make myself something to eat. But instead I’m sitting around blogging and thinking about how hungry I am. Why? I DONT KNOW. I guess there’s just nothing in the fridge calling my name, because we really need to do some groceries, and you like how I say “we” to make it sound like there is some other mysterious home executive in my house who is responsible for the fact that I’m sitting here thinking about how I am out of CoffeeMate Creamer and sandwich meat? I DONT WANT PEANUT BUTTER AND JAM. Now I know how my kid feels, I don’t want to eat anything when I don’t like the options, either. I should point out that I don’t want to put coffeemate and sandwich meat together into a meal. Add a few more key ingredients and I would have a numnum deli sandwich and a cup of coffee. Now I’m even hungrier and, quite frankly, I blame you. In entirety.

Now that I’ve decided it’s actually entirely your fault I’m hungry (don’t argue with me. Just apologize.) Here’s what happened when I was laying on the floor with my camera for no apparent reason yesterday. First, there was some awesome running. It has been noted by my sister in law that Nicole really jut likes to run in circles a lot. I can’t explain why, I don’t know. Those sweet leggings are tw*nkletw*nkle. For some reason she always wears them longer on one leg than the other. I don’t know. She’s only half mine, okay.She was also moving her recliner around and drymopping the floor. So I mean, like I said, half mine. You like that drymop? NORWEX. I also tricked my husband into using it yesterday by telling him if he extended it long he could do most of the livingroom without getting off the couch. I was right, AND my floor was clean. Win/win. But then… suddenly, after the peak, the floor cleaning, the beauty…. WHAT IS THIS?! Fridge-rummaging? WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS?! She had decided she wanted a sippy of milk. This is the part where I turned off the camera and skidded into the kitchen, otherwise the story would have ended with a wet mop and something like 2 1/2 litres of milk on the floor. Instead it ended with a sippy of milk only following the magical phrase MILK PLEASE MOM and a little chat about how when we want something from the fridge we ASK and don’t just TAKE. I’m all for her eventually being self-sufficient but seriously, kid, two and a half years is not the point where you start menu planning.

Speaking of menu planning. I should go do that. So that “we” don’t spend the last day before grocery day grumpy about being out of everything that costs $3453453456billion more at the Safeway I can walk to than it does at every other grocery store.

Now that I think about it, peanut butter and jam sounds delicious.

Save the drama for your mama

No. No, don’t save the drama for your mama. DOES NOT WANT.

So, yesterday morning my precious, PRECIOUS child woke up at 6am. So okay, she was a little cranky by 8am, I think. There was a moment during breakfast which was definitely not a high point for her where she tried to dash her bowl off the table in a fit of rage. My catlike reflexes, while not completely preventing my floor from getting a coating of milk and Fruit Loops, did manage to prevent my bowl from shattering. 

(the people that have played volleyball with me, or any sport at all for that matter, are laughing at the idea of me having catlike reflexes right now. Yuck it up, ladies, and lets move on.)

So, I sent her to her room. Well. WELL. The nerve. Let me tell you.

First, she spent a good five, ten minutes wailing about how she wanted her papa. Because mama is a villain, doncha know. THEN she came out of her room and stood beside me, kind of sniffle-whimpering. “Are you going to be good now?” I challenged. “NO. I’m looking for my papa!” The girl is nothing if but honest. Back to her room.

Eventually she apologized and was allowed out of her room. (Fairly certain that apology was hunger-driven.) She ended the drama with a flourish by taking a picture of Chris off the fridge and wandering around the house with it mournfully. Let’s not forget, she also managed to wind up talking to him on the phone and wailed unintelligibly at him. (For the most part. “Mama’s MEAN!” was definitely in there a few times.)

Suffice it to say my two year old is a wee bit melodramatic. My friends were quick to crack jokes about that, pondering where she could have gotten that trait from. Something about me promising to stab my husband in the face if the blizzard kept up and continued to prevent him from going to work. But listen, I will lock you up with your husband unexpectedly on a Monday when he’s got nothing to do and is bored and follows you around poking you and hugging you and asking what you’re doing and what’s for supper and can we have creamy chicken soup instead even though you’re five seconds away from putting dinner on the table? But listen, the blizzard ended and he went back to work. The end. Oh and he raved about what I did make for dinner when he stopped trying to make me stab him long enough to put it in his mouth. So, we’re still happily married, nobody is dead, and when Chris got home Nicole flung her arms around his leg and then spent the evening talking his ear off.