Archive for the ‘Daily Ramblings’ Category

My sweet angelic little son decided overnight that he is now a kicking, screaming, temper tantrum throwing brat. We were able to avoid the “terrible two’s” for seven months, it sure was nice while it lasted. In the past week we have had a tantrum over leaving Red Robin, multiple tantrums over being put in a shopping cart and today the mother of all tantrums and we have no idea what it is over. We’ve been trying all the methods the experts recommend and here’s where we’re at.

Ignoring the child
We have tried ignoring him but after thirty minutes of tantrum from a kid that won’t back down he is hard to ignore. I might as well be standing underneath a landing airplane, once he gets going he is louder than any jet engine.

Give your child some space
Another failing method for dealing with my son. He follows you around so he makes sure you know how ticked off he is. Today we tried giving him space in his room and I write this listening to twenty minutes of non stop screaming.

Create a Diversion
All I can say is hahaha! The diversion is met with screams of no or the diversion being hurled across the room.

Hugs
All I’m going to say is two busted lips from a hard headed little boy

Offer Food
Ummm OK, let him learn from an early age if I throw a fit Mommy is going to give me a cookie. No thanks.

Speak Calmly
We have tried the calm approach and talking to him in a soothing voice to find it is a waste of time, he is screaming too loud for him to hear us.

Remove the child from the situation
We tried taking the approach of removing him from the situation, who thought of this? Seriously, the kid has started throwing fits because he knows that he gets his own way by doing so. He is out of the cart, in the car and usually on his way back home.

My daughter had her moments but her tantrums were nothing compared to whatever takes over my son when he has his. The joys of raising kids!

This morning I had go run to Lowes to get a new vent cover for the dryer that the dog chewed up. In the ten minutes from our house to Lowe’s a huge storm rolled in and dumped several inches of rain and hail. We got to the Lowes parking lot and between the rain and hail there was no way I could get two kids out of the car and get in without drowning or being knocked out.

I choose to sit in the parking lot with thunder rattling the car, lightning bolts striking in the distance and the torrential downpour. I thought that it would roll through quickly, 30 minutes we were still there. My son started getting cranky after the first five minutes so I let the kids out of their car seats and they ran rampant around the back of the Yukon for five minutes before they got bored.

I’m not Supermom, I never have the necessary essentials on hand to keep the kids happy in situations like this. I had no snacks, no drinks and no toys. I didn’t even have a pen in my purse so my daughter could draw. There was lightning around us so I didn’t want to go handing the kids electronic devices. Then it hit me, I Spy! Yes, my daughter loves this game and Ethan always tries to chime in. I start off “I spy with my little”, that’s when my daughter interrupted me, hands on hips, “I can’t spy through the rain Mommy”. I was waiting for the “duh” following that. In the end we ending up singing twenty minutes of “Rain Rain go Away”. I really need to start that whole good mommy being prepared thing, I’ll probably drink less if I do.

A woman on a forum I frequent recently made a post about a pair of combat boots she had for 11 years and regretted getting rid of. Her post made me think about a pair of boots in my closet that I’ve owned for over 20 years and can’t bring myself to part with. I’m not a pack rat and for me to keep something like this is rare.

I can’t remember exactly when I bought these boots; I do remember that I bought them in high school. I remember wearing them to basketball games and when I was 18 and delivered pizzas. I wore them to my first frat party and they have been around longer than I have kept any guy in my life. These boots have been resoled in three times, walked on four continents and more countries than I was sober enough to remember. I have fond memories of running through the backstreets of Venice in the rain with a hole in the left sole and my foot getting soaked.

Throwing away these boots would be like throwing out a huge part of my past. They were versatile enough to wear with long skirts, leggings, jeans and I have even polished them up and worn them with dress pants. I no longer wear them and they sit in my closet desperate for a fourth resoling. I would love to know how many miles I walked in my favorite boots, I assume its a lot to have worn through four pairs of soles. If I ever decide to part with these boots I think they will deserve to be given a proper burial and not be turned into landfill.

Is there a such thing as a clean house when you are not expecting anyone to come over? I try to stay on top of everything but I fail miserably. This morning the doorbell rang and my heart jumped. I’m standing in the living room still in my pajamas trying to remember if I was expecting someone. I run to a window to peak out and it was the UPS guy who fortunately didn’t need me to sign for anything. I looked around the house and felt instant relief that I didn’t have to let anyone in this morning. I did a walk around the house and found the following messes in need of attention

1. Last nights dishes still in the sink, dishwasher needed to be emptied
2. Clean sticky mess off kitchen floor (what the %$#& is that)
3. Paper and crayons all over the office floor
4. Kids marked their territory in the living room…again
5. Garbage overflowing
6. Clothes basket in the bedroom needing to be put away
7. Beds need to be made
8. Laundry room is being painted so dirty clothes in floor of master bedroom
9. Finish painting the laundry room already!
10. Clothes left in washer, must rewash

I am by no means perfect, nor do I strive to be perfect. My house is by no means a pigsty but the only time you are going to find it perfectly clean is once a week when I do my top to bottom three hour cleaning marathon. With two young kids that state of cleanliness usually lasts about an hour after nap time. I visit friends who always have perfect houses and it always makes me wonder if they are always that perfect or do they sometimes look like mine. You know the type, there is nothing out of place and the first thing they say is “excuse the house its a mess”. If that is a mess I’d hate to think what they’d say about mine right now.

I think back to spring as a child and remember blowing dandelion puffs, endlessly throwing helicopters in the air and digging worms out of my dads garden beds. These are all things that were countless hours of fun. As an adult I see weeds multiplying in my lawn, my gutters clogged with those little helicopters and the trees that will eventually sprout and require pulling up when they seed. There is also the mulch I just put down getting thrown everywhere because my kids don’t want to dig in the garden I left for them, its more fun to dig in the ones that have been planted.

I hate that all those wonderful childhood memories turn into such a nuisance as an adult. I do love watching the hundreds of little helicopters spiraling through the air but then they have to land and spoil it for me. It would be so nice to always be able to see things through a child’s eyes. I think that is why I love writing Internet Toddler so much, its nice to see things through they eyes of my kids and regress to to a time when life wasn’t so complex.

The picture is of the tons of helicopters on the roof, this isn’t even a drop in the bucket of how many of these things we have covering the property.

After murals on the walls, lipstick on the carpet and various other toddler related disaster you’d think I’d learn not to trust my kids when they were out of my site. Wrong, once again my laptop has become victim to my son. He pulled thirteen keys off my keys off my keyboard when I was cleaning the kitchen. Luckily I was able to get all but five of them back on. I am missing the letters c, x, z, an alt key and some other key that fortunately I never use. I now get to type on little black nubs for the missing keys, fun!! I didn’t want a new laptop right now but it is looking like I will be getting one soon. I love my 12″ tablet HP but it is not sturdy enough to survive my kids.

The damage

As a parent I can understand that sometimes you might have to bring your kids to work. When Georgie was a newborn I was lucky enough to have a job that allowed me to bring her in with me. I had my own office, wasn’t near any other employees and was able to close the door so that if she did start crying she would never bother anyone. I did this for one month before we left Australia for the US. If we had planned on staying I would have found daycare for her; I would not have expected this to be a long term solution.

This past weekend we had an Architect come over to take some measurements and photos for a renovation of our old barn and the plans for our new garage. This guy showed up with his six year old son in tow. I personally find this very unprofessional, especially seeing that he mentioned that his wife was at home with their 18 month old. My husband ended up watching our two kids plus the architects child while I showed him around. This is our family home and my husband and I both want to be involved in the plans for it. We felt as if he wasn’t taking his job or us seriously. We made the decision to hire him together and he should have been talking to both of us about what we wanted for this project. We both want different things and its his job to put all that together.

In the hour they were here this child managed to bust my sons large Mickey Mouse balloon, hit Ethan with a truck, turn the slide upside down, climb up on it and try to get Georgie to climb up so he could shake it and knock her off and the worst was he killed our goldfish. Yes, this six year old child killed our much loved family pet. He dumped an entire container of fish food in with the fish and that’s what led to her death. We have had that goldfish for ages and it was a great fish with a lot of personality. We were only annoyed but the death of our fish was the final straw for us. How do we know that he won’t bring his son along with him in the future, next time he could injure one of our children.

The Architect has now been fired and it was all due to a twenty cent fish. I wonder how he feels knowing that he lost a large job due to something that costs twenty cents. Hopefully he learned a lesson and doesn’t take his child to clients houses anymore. If he does hopefully he’ll keep his son with him and not expect the client to babysit him.

How is it that 2009 is almost half way over? I remember when a year used to seem like a year, since having kids a year seems to fly by in a few months. I can’t believe its been three weeks since I last blogged, it was the quickest three weeks of my life.

My husband and I flew out to New York to pick up our RV. We bought this site unseen and were a bit nervous about it but we were more than pleasantly surprised at the condition its in. The inside has more storage space than I know what to do with and there is also tons of storage space underneath. I’m going to do minimal work to the inside, just recover the couch and reupholster the window boxes.

I have to tell you about the trip to pick up the RV; it was quite an event. Our flight to Charlotte was delayed so we missed our connecting flight to New York. Our one hour layover in New York turned into a four hour layover. I was surprised at how fast the time went at Charlotte airport, it really is nice for an airport. They have all these great rocking chairs by the windows overlooking the tarmac. We kicked back and read while waiting for our next flight.

The delay had us getting into JFK right at peak hour Memorial Day weekend. We were caught in traffic with all the people escaping the city for the weekend and it took us over 3 hours to go about 60 miles. I finally understand the saying there is no place like home. I’ve never really settled and enjoyed my nomad lifestyle but the traffic in New York made me appreciate the wonderful little piece of the world we live in.

I have lots more to blog about and a contest to announce the winner of but this will have to wait until this afternoon. I need to get the kids dressed and get them off to daycare.

Kicked back enjoying the view at Charlotte

What do you say to a friend who’s oldest child has just been diagnosed with cancer? I have been a member of an online forum for three years now. We all have two year old children born around September 2006. One of our members oldest child was just diagnosed today with a Brainstem Glioma. There are a lot of resources on the web for what not to say and some of them I really can’t believe a human being would mutter. I want to create a list for others who find themselves in the situation of trying to support a friend with a sick child. Please leave comments on what should be said and suggestions for what can be done to help a family in the same situation.

I’m tired, but I can’t sleep. Its been months since I had a good nights sleep and it is starting to wear me down. I’m not stressed even though I should be. I had four vials of blood taken on Monday and another taken on Tuesday so I’m hoping these provide a simple solution as to what is going on with me. I want to hear “take one pill twice a day and you’ll be back to normal in one week”. That would be nice.

We have a lot going on in our lives and I think that has a lot to do with it. I’ve temporarily given up on my Jeep blog and am just maintaining this one and Internet Toddler. We leave next week for New York and my parents are coming to stay with the kids. I think between picking up the RV, house hunting, sick kids and everything else I am just having trouble turning my brain off. If I don’t get some sleep soon I’ll have to change the name of my blog to ramblings of a Crazy Woman…darn it, already taken.

Despite the way it may seem I’m really not complaining. I have a wonderful husband who is a great provider and supports me 100% in all my crazy ideas. I have one wonderful child and a two and a half year old. I love life, love all the things I have accomplished, love the places I have been and the people I have met along the way. I still believe that life is an adventure meant to be lived. I just need to get some sleep so I can get back to living it the way I enjoy it best.