She Laughs at the Days

I have a giant zit in the middle of my face. I get one about every two years, if that. (I know, I'm lucky and should stop complaining.) But of course I get it just a few days before I have to see people I've not seen in a couple of years. My kids are all sick, snot, coughing, waking in the middle of the night. It would be too easy to fly with a healthy baby after all. And it would be too easy top leave my happy healthy children with their grandma, not, while I'm gone. I need to leave them pathetic and needy instead, and bite back the desire to write detailed notes that would be entirely silly to write to a veteran mother of 8 about child care. (Please make sure they go to bed on time. You have to listen for the Girl at night, she wakes up crying and needs help to get to the bathroom. Make sure they take a nap. The Boy needs help finding his dry PJ's if he wets. You need to wash his bedding because if it sits it will get stinky. Like she doesn't already know these k

You have left behind all things baby, and embraced toddler hood. Of course, you don't do much toddling anymore. It's all running and trying new daredevil tricks all the time. You have this little push car that you LOVE to ride. You've figured out how to steer it where you want it to go. You laugh and push it excitedly up and down in front of our front door. You push it up the little hill we have there and then you turn it around and pick up your feet and coast all the way to the bottom. Not satisfied with that form of entertainment for very long, you've started seeking out bigger and better hills. And you get very angry when I stop you from riding down some of them. So instead you decided to try and stand on the thing, no hands. And you can. You hold onto the steering wheel and get your feet on the seat, and then let go and stand as the little car wiggles underneath you. I'm sure this is in preparation for trying this while the thing is in motion and I am somewhat

This weekend started this past Friday morning. At least it did for us. That's when we packed up the car with clothes, groceries, and as much extra laundry as we could stuff in and went to Beema's house. The GH is is renovating their bathroom on his days off. He does good work. So I spent the day with loads of laundry, washing, scrubbing, and hanging. Did I mention that it was above 100 this weekend? Yeah, it was a bit warm out there hanging laundry. The kids helped their aunties to pull up crab grass in the garden plots out back, and then they watered, which turned into a full scale mud fight. There are fabulous pictures of the girl and her auntie caked in mud from head to toe, she in her little sun dress with the flower pots on the front. (But I can't show them to you yet because my computer isn't recognizing my new external drive and without it I don't have the memory to download any more pictures. Frustrating.) So I did some more laundry. The house was filled

Some of my long time readers may remember back when I was pregnant, had just moved to San Diego, and was pining away for Canada. I missed our old life. I felt trapped here. I wanted to go home. And, I missed my best friend's wedding because I was waiting for my green card. Well, in a lovely, and ironic twist of fate, I'm going to Canada this month, and I'm not as excited about it as you might imagine. My MIL gave to me all of her Capital One points so I could book a trip last year, and offered to watch my older children while I was away. I didn't do anything with them. I wasn't ready to leave the Girl alone for more than one night at a time, even with her Beema . I didn't think she was ready. I'm still not sure she's ready some moments, but she's far closer than she was last year. But I may not be ready to leave her. But this best friend, whose husband I have never met, lives in China. They moved there right after they were married. But she will b

I've been a little too busy neglecting my children to write recently. But there are these scenes from the past few months that are lodged in my brain and need to be recorded. There is no graceful way to get them out at this point they've been rattling around a little too long and are starting to pile up. So I'm going to just try to plow through and share them as quickly as possible. The Boy was sick a while back. He got the mild version, which meant he woke up in the middle of the night and projectile vomited all over the bathroom, including the wall behind the toilet a few times, but was feeling much better by the next morning. (Except for the diarrhea that plagued him for a week or so.) He wisely put himself back to bed however that first morning and slept for another few hours. I was watching my friend's 13 month old that day, and she loves the Boy. I hope I never forget the moment when he woke up. The babies are playing quietly. They babble at each other and pa

This is pretty much the most awesome thing I've seen all month. This guy is amazing. You are welcome. Shout out to Brian is a Rock Star for the link.

So Tamra tagged me with this meme a long time ago. So long ago that she's gone and had a baby boy since then. Congratulations are in order because he's adorable, go give her some. Here are the rules. 1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog. 2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird. 3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs. 4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog. 1. My thumbs are double jointed. 2. I vomit silently. Once when I was pregnant I suddenly needed to vomit while in the kitchen. I held onto the island sink for dear life and retched and retched and my mother in law, who had her back to me, didn't even realize I was puking until she turned around about to ask me a question. This often puts me in the strange situation of having people ask me to do things for them while I'm mid retch. Imagine throwing up and having someone casually