i have a burn on my right wrist and a filling that has been chipped for almost 18 months now has broken AGAIN and has a jagged edge that really hurts.

a. we have no dental insurance
b. i am terrified of the dentist
c. the only way i'm willing to do dental work is on triazolam, which, though safe for breastfeeding, puts me out for about 18 hours. i have no idea what that would do to my family. nothing good, i'm sure.



i'm working on trying to get state insurance but they want stuff like alli's birth certificate, which we don't have and never have had because it costs money and my social security card, which i lost a long time ago and never got around to replacing and then just eventually forgot about. and they want it all RIGHT AWAY! i'm hoping that when my mom comes to visit this week, maybe i can get a few of these things done.



also, a little birdie told me that the weather forecasters are expecting snow for ben's birthday party.

of course.

i've been holding in a bunch of stuff. i miss lj.

we are planning to clear out our storage unit to save $96 a month and maybe afford internet. that's the plan.

i hate disjointed entries. i want to post stories. i want to have the energy to tell them. i want to respond to comments in real time, or at least in a somewhat timely manner. and most of all, i want to read my friends list and actually respond to other people's lives. i miss being friends with my friends.

i also feel like i'm missing my kids growing up again. ben is almost 4! how did this happen? also, what the hell is up with kids birthday parties? he knows what they are about now because he has friends in preschool and expectations and stuff. shit. stephen suggested we just have it at our house because i was freaking out about how much money this was going to cost but that won't work either because our apartment is too teeny tiny. Ben's preschool class alone is 8 other kids, not to mention cousins and other friends!!!!! It CANNOT be at my house, lemme tell you. So I am trying to come up with ideas and it's looking like everything is $200 or more. :-(

I have a couple of ideas right now that are less, but I need to make phone calls in the morning. I'm running out of time. And Ben got his hair cut too. My toddler is almost a child!!!!!!!!!!! like, officially and crap.

dude, it is late, i need to get to bed.

Last winter I knit a bamboo baby hat for a friend. I liked it so much, I made another one for Allison. Then a few weeks ago an lj-friend asked if anyone would be interested in knitting a warm hat for her baby. She requested wool, but I told her about my bamboo hats and she said it sounded nice.

Several IRL friends saw the hat before I mailed it and said I should sell them. I was very hesitant, but finally said that I'd give it a trial run, and if it doesn't work out, no harm done.


So, uh, here goes ...

Do you want a bamboo baby hat? Maybe for the holiday season?
I decided I'd take orders through November 22 to ensure holiday delivery. (Hanukkah orders get priority. If it's a Hanukkah order, please mention that!)

The specs:

Yarn is a bamboo/acrylic/rayon blend, (86 percent bamboo) and is machine-washable. These hats are SUPER-soft!
Colors are oatmeal, sage green, yellow, white, blue, rose and baby pink.
Sizes are small/medium or medium/large. The small/medium I made for Allison still fits her and she's almost 8 months old.
Prices are $10 plus shipping for a basic hat. Add $2 for a contrast color stripe. (Currently not pictured, but if someone orders one, I'll add photos of it before I send it out.) Add $4 for a rush order, mailed by Nov. 30.

Also available without the I-cord tail. Please specify if you do NOT want the 6 inches of cord at the top of the hat.



Would you like to see the hat? Of course you would! Good thing I have a resident model whose always happy to help out. This is actually the hat I recently made for my friend's baby, Piper, but I put it on Alli for a minute just to show how well the small size fits her. Oatmeal seems to be a popular color!













Available in rose, blue, sage green and yellow. White and baby pink are not pictured.

I don't know this person, I just found this linked in a community, but seriously, get a hankie and read it. Be sitting down.

http://fiercemamas.blogspot.com/2009/10/saving-my-baby.html

Alli pulls up on things. She is cruising. No joke. 6 months, 2 weeks and 3 days old. I had to go buy her some Robeez today because she can't be in footie pajamas and barefoot forever. I have now heard two stories of walking 7 month olds. Previously I would have thought this was impossible. But now? I am so scared it's about to happen to me. I am not ready for this. I know I should be proud, and maybe a tiny part of me is, (my mom sure is!) but mostly I'm panicking. This is my last baby and though I know she can't stay a baby forever, I don't need her skipping entire phases, mmmkay? I seriously am really really upset about this. I want to take away everything that's baby-height so she'll stop pulling up on stuff, but I know that's silly and probably wouldn't help anyway. Ben's preschool teacher told me her third child did this and she started puting the baby right in the center of the room, away from all the furniture to prevent it, and it didn't help. One day, her 8-month-old baby just stood up and walked anyway. Shit.




As if this wasn't bad enough ...





This is what she did when she saw I had the camera out.





Here's one of my great-grandmother too, since that's why we're here and all, I figure I should probably include it. But my heart is too tangled up in this walking thing to really even reflect on any other aspect of our visit.




Some firsts are actually positives for me, I swear I'm not an awful person about letting my daughter grow up. This bath took a lot of begging and convincing from Ben, and really, the main reason it ended up happening is because my mom was really tired and she didn't really want to watch Alli while I bathed Ben, and even MORE didn't want to be the one to give him his bath. And since he was very disgusting, the bath was necessary. So I just decided, the hell with it, and threw Alli in there too. Ben was very respectful and didn't splash her and mostly didn't hug her or drag her around too much in there. Mostly.

It took like 54535234930 shots to get one that was both in focus AND rated G, but here you go.




Oh, and here's Ben watching Scooby Doo in the hotel room. It wasn't scary at all, he swears ...

alli had food today! broccolli.

she was unimpressed. photos and story to come on saturday.

I am sitting in the grass, in the pitch black night, outside of the apartment office of our new apartments. Yes there is free wi-fi here but no, it doesn't reach my building!!!!!!!!!!!!! i want to talk all about my new place, but i'm freezing and getting eaten by bugs. i mostly just suffered through this to let everyone know i'm no dead and will likely be around less than before. at least for awhile. they swear it's supossed to reach, so i dunno. she said that someone else complained awhile ago and that it was "fixed" but obviously, not so much.

anyway, i checked on my aam mentees, posted here and on fb, and i'm done. i need some hot cocoa!

Stephen called me at a quarter to 1 and said he's coming home. I almost squeed, but thought for a second and caught myself long enough to process his tone. Oh crap. "What happened?" (PLEASE NOT AN INJURY!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

He's sick. For my husband to come home in the middle of the day is crazy enough, but to cancel an appointment with just minutes of notice and clear the rest of his day? Yipes.

But even though I feel bad for him, it sure turned my day around! Instead of dealing with the kids and being overwhelmed and tired and cranky and feeling overwhelmed with all the stuff I should be doing and just can't work up the gumption to plug away at, I got to have a "sick" day too. More like a snow day for me ...

Stephen got home and layed down with Alli so she could go right to sleep without howling about it. Ben needed a nap so badly that he almost feel asleep on the couch (this hasn't happened in nearly a year!) so I put him in bed too. I wonder if he is getting sick as well. Then Stephen gave me a shopping list of things he thought he *might* be able to eat, and I got to take a CAR in the middle of the day with NO KIDS and run to Fred Meyer. And maybe Starbucks ;-)

Ironically, Sbux does have pumpkin spice lattes back, but I didn't want one today. It's suddenly sunny and gorgeous 67 perfect September degrees. I got a mocha frap. And it was fabulous! Better yet, I returned home and Alli was still asleep and Stephen and Ben were quietly playing video games.

Time to get back to knitting packing!

Stephen turned to me in the kitchen tonight and asked me if I've been taking my pills. LOL, no, no I have not.

This made me reflect on his reaction when I first told him about the idea of the pills and he squicked a little and said he thought it sounded like it wouldn't work. Here we are, 18 months later, and he's the one noticing that I haven't been taking them and reminding me!

And so I sheepishly went to make some and saw there was only enough left for three more! I made them, took them, and now that's it. I'm kind of sad. Even though I stopped doing it daily like four months ago, it was still nice to have them there.

Why did I like having them there? Well, for times like these.

Alli is in the middle of her six-month growth spurt and I wish I could claw my way up a tree just to jump out of it. I kind of want to post to the breastfeeding community, even though I obviously already know what a growth spurt is and could give myself the advice I'd get in there, "hang in there mama, it will pass!" etc. I just need to bitch to people who I know understand.

The stress level around here is high for the time-being, but it should start to ease up soon. Hopefully, moving goes smoothly, and Alli settles down and returns to being the laid-back easy-going little lady that she used to be. I am done with 24 hour boob baby and cryathons that are so loud they wake Benjamin up. Seriously.

DONE.

5:15

I watched Kelly's kids for her. Three of them. I was scared. I thought it would be hard. But it was not. They said please and thank you and cleaned up after themselves. I was happy to help and would do it again in a heartbeat. But the number one most amazing thing about them? They handled it so well when they learned that their friend Ben would not be joining us tonight. I excepted a much worse reaction, but they were like, Oh OK.

Why, you might ask, was Ben not here? BECAUSE HE NEVER GOT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's right, my son went to bed for the night at 4:15 p.m.

I knew he was acting cranky and suspected he was getting sick, but never imagined that this was what was going to happen when I suggested he lay down. I went in there several times, but he was like a log. :-(

If only I'd been smart enough to not tell him that his friends were coming ... now he's going to wake up tomorrow and ask where they are. And I'll have to tell him that he missed the whole thing. The only thing worse than that is if it isn't morning at all when he wakes up, but some unholy hour of the middle of the night, like 3:30 a.m.


Seriously, Kelly's kids were angels sent from heaven. I have never seen a 1-year-old like this before. We had those kids for more than four hours and she never made the teeniest tiniest little complaint. I offered to nurse her (with permission from her mom of course) but she wasn't having it. She latched for a second, took a suck and then gave me this look like "what is this crap?" ha ha ha. She wouldn't take my milk from a bottle either, but she did have some juice and cheerios and baby food. The cheerios tasted much better once they were turned into floorios. Of course. Why didn't I think of that?

Ugggh! Ben is actually asleep right now. You'd think that would make my day, right? We are babysitting for my friend Kelly's three kids tonight and he was way cranky this afternoon, so I told him that if he napped he could stay up with them and play instead of having to go to bed 45 minutes after they got here. He agreed (and was really tired) and that was an hour ago. I was thrilled to be able to clean the house without him underfoot ... except that Miss Bitchypants has been SCREAMING THE WHOLE TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not crying, mind you. I believe with all my heart that crying needs to be tended to, it means there's something wrong. No. That isn't it. She's is screaming. Like vocalizing/talking type sounds, "aaaaaah, and uuuuuhhhhhh," except at a volume so loud that her voice is getting hoarse.

WHY?

I tried tending to her, believe me. I changed her diaper. I put her on the potty. She had some gas. She peed. Still loud. I nursed her. She ate. She layed down and sucked her thumb for like a minute. Then she started up again. So I wore her in the mei tai while I cleaned. Nope, that didn't help. That just put the noise closer to my ears! The racket basically continued no matter what I was doing. So I finally put her in bed, and started vacuuming anyway. I thought maybe the sound of the vacuum would put her to sleep. Nope. Turned it off, hrrmm, she's still at it. I checked on her, gave her a new toy, made some tea and am taking an lj break before hitting round two of cleaning: the table!

(I wonder how long I can let Ben sleep without it coming back to bite me at 2 a.m.)

Is it insane that I love the smell of my son so much that all I want to do when I hold him is bury my face in his hair and breathe him?

It's not just his hair, it's all of him. His skin, especially his cheeks and hands (when they aren't covered in something sticky) have this sweet aroma that is so intrinsic to him that it just puts me in this happy peaceful place. It's definitely him, and not any sort of lotion or shampoo or soap or anything. I thought it was a baby-type smell when he was younger, but as he's gotten older, it's just gotten stronger. And stragely, Alli doesn't really have it. I think maybe that she has her own scent and I just haven't learned it as well, or it just isn't as well-matched to my biology (What? Don't worry, I don't really know what I just said either ...)

Maybe since Ben's scent got stronger as he got older, hers will too? Or maybe Ben is a special smelly snowflake and it's not normal for children to smell so good. Recently, I've been wondering just how much longer I'm going to be able to do this before he tells me I'm weird for breathing him and rolls his eyes at me. With my luck, probably not long. Seriously though, even then, if he still smells this good, I'll just save it for when he's asleep.

I'll love you forever
I'll like you for always
As long as I'm living
My baby you'll be

Ben's last day of soccer was Wednesday and we won't be doing it again in the fall. It's very sad, because he really enjoyed soccer and was pretty good at it (it was a much better fit for him than art class, karate class and gymnastics class, all of which were kinda challenges for him in the past) But sadly, not only are they raising the price for fall by an unfair amount, we are also moving, so we won't be able to just walk to the park where the classes are anymore. I talked to Ben about it, and he agreed that taking two buses to soccer and then another two home again on a preschool day seemed like too much work. So, since I had already told him that he could do soccer again before we decided to move, I figure I owe him something fun that we can do together.

I'm thinking of maybe buying a membership to the children's museum ... he loves it there so much but we rarely go because it is so pricy! And after March 24 goes by, we'll have to start paying for Alli too! That's like $21 each time I want to take my kids there. A membership is like $60ish? I'll have to look into it.

Anyway, here is Ben on his last day of soccer, getting a certificate from the coach. This is by far not the first time something like this has happened in his short little life, but it's definitely the first time he really understood. Or perhaps cared ;-)

 

Yes, that is my diaper bag sitting there, and yes, that is my daughter in the arms of the other boy's mom! They said, "we're doing an awards thing, does anyone want to take pictures?" and I asked if she'd hold Alli for a minute while I got a few shots. It was my intention to send her the ones that had her son in them too, but she said no thank you to that.

I guess most of the parents thought it was stupid because there was only one other kid there on the last day ... it's too bad too, because it really was the funnest day. Rather than having an agenda of skills they were working on with the kids, they just let them pick their favorite games and they played them over and over again.

My other favorite thing about this class, called "tot soccer" in the parks & rec book, is that it was only for 3.5 to 4 year olds. Mommy & me soccer was like 2-3 and Soccer 1 was 4-5, but this teeny little class was all kids who were exactly Ben's age. When you're that young, the difference between a 3-year-old who just had a birthday and a kid who is just a week away from being 4 is astronomical. It was nice for Ben not to be the biggest or the smallest, but just another kid in the crowd.

 

This is Ben getting his certificate from the main teacher, Coach Ian. He was very proud of himself and talked about this all the way home.

 

See the silly grin of a happy boy?

 

I love that you can even read his name in this shot.




Cheer time!
"Three, two, one, KIDS LOVE SOCCER!!!!!!!!!!!"

my friend newsbean posted this and i laughed at nearly all of them. she says it's annonymous, so i just yoinked it from her. seriously, read and be very entertained.


-My 4-year old son asked me in the car the other day "Dad what would
happen if you ran over a ninja?" How the hell do I respond to that?

-There is a great need for sarcasm font.

-Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't
work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically
fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all
know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards
or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.

( They really are worth one little clicky )

I seriously could have actually written this myself except for the ones that are clearly male. And I'm pretty sad that I didn't. oh well.

i am about to go into ben's room and WAKE HIM UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

he has been asleep for 14 hours.

it's become somewhat of a thing in our little circle of friends and family as to who has and has not pottied alli. the first person to do it was her uncle aaron, and he was pretty proud. (he was not the first one to attempt, mind you, just the first to suceed) well, when our friend chelsea heard about this, she was not to be outdone. so she made it her goal to potty alli as well, and did so! yay. so that was two people besides stephen and i who had done it.

well, today, we add a third to the list. except not really. except we will anyway.

what?

well, today we were playing in ben's room and he said "i think alli has to go potty!" and i concurred! so he went and got the potty and took off her diaper and even hoisted her onto it! (with a minimal amount of assistance. mostly just supervision.) he then hissed for her, declared she had gone, and reliquished care of her back to me. i congratulated him, told him he was special and added to the list of very few people who had done this, and sent him along. well, then I actually checked in the potty, and there was a miniscule amount of water left over from the last time i rinsed it out. she did not pee for him. i gave her a quick hiss, and she went.

then ben asked if he could clean the potty and i said sure. so he even got to dump her pee into the toilet. that's basically pottying her right? i mean, he did all the steps ... he was right, and she did go ...

i don't know if i have the heart to tell him. i probably won't. this doesn't make me a bad mom, right?

Ben and I are learning about the world via youtube! We watched a chick hatch, a giraffe being born and an oranutan being born. Then we switched gears and learned about volcanos (he got to see hawaiian ones with lava as well as mt. saint helens) and lightning and tornadoes and a forest fire. Oh, and the northern lights! Such amazingness there is to be found on the internet!

He asked me the tough questions about the northern lights "how? why?" and i had to admit I didn't know! So first I learned about it and then I explained it to him as best I could.

You know how when we cook water the steam goes into the air? Well that's a gas. But there are other kinds of gases too, not just water. When the sun shines down on our earth, it lights up these other kinds of gases and they look pretty!