Clearly Delirious: July 2009 Archives

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July 28, 2009

Fifteen

Wanna know how far behind I am on my little list of post ideas? Owen turned 16 months LAST WEEK.

That makes the title a little dated, to say the least.

At 15 months, Owen was starting to say a few words somewhat regularly. Some words he would say several times for a few days, and then they would disappear completely. Like, say, Mama.

At 16 months, Owen seems to be picking up new words every day. He has some standards, like Hi, Bye, Mamamamama (Always at the top of his lungs), Meow, Dog and Ice. Then he has his specialty words, the ones that start with "B" and "P". Poo, potty, Boo(bie), Poo(kie), Bike and Bird. He's constantly pointing out new things and inquiring as to what they might be called, although he can rarely make a sound that approximates the actual word.

Today, he learned to say Mine. Oh, goody.

He also waves (he likes to say hi to every car that passes, and people in stores, just after they get to the point where they can't see him. He doesn't seem to mind when they don't respond.) He waves bye after people leave. He blew kisses for a couple days, but apparently he's too manly for that now, and prefers a masculine "pat" that feels more like he's trying to dislodge a bon bon that's trapped in my esophagus. He likes to spin, last month in just one direction, but now he'll go either way. He flings his arm across his body to get the momentum going and then just keeps going. Today he discovered the comedy on falling down and saying Ow, before climbing back up to start all over again.

He's sleeping like a champ, which is still a wonder to me, after all the struggle in the first year. Only rarely does someone have to intervene before 6am, the time at which I'll drag my butt out of bed and nurse him. Depending on what time the urge to snack strikes him, I'll often get another hour or so of sleep before he's had enough of whatever he's doing up there. There are times I'm sure he's awake, but playing so quietly that no one is disturbed. In the last couple weeks, while the girls have been gone, he was doing a fairly good job of sleeping in til 7:30 or 8, a couple times until 8:30. I'm becoming freakishly well rested.

Owen has a mouthful of teeth, with new ones popping through every day, it seems. I'm blaming his few cranky days on the pain of his gums. He's generally very happy, if extremely loud and squealy. He shrieks every. single. time. he sees a bird, so loudly that I wonder why they still come into our yard. He adores the cats, and treats them like tackling dummies on a football field. He eats sporadically, sometimes downing ridiculous amounts of something one day, then never touching it again. I'm still pouring more milk down the drain than into his stomach, but he eats yoghurt with a passion. And don't get between the boy and his pancake: he'll just as soon cut you as look at you for such offense. I've recently unbent enough to let him start feeding himself the messy stuff with a spoon, and he surprises me every time with his skill and dexterity. He's great at getting a spoon or fork full of food into his mouth; he's also great at upending the bowl on top of his head before it's completely empty.

I can't imagine a time when this sweet boy wasn't part of my life, a time when I thought our family was complete without him. He's such a joy, an exercise in patience, the picture of giddy balls-to-the-wall life, my very own.

Posted by me at 8:23 PM | Comments (0)

Haircut achieved through the gratuitous use of grape lollipops

Posted by me at 4:27 PM | Comments (0)

July 25, 2009

December 2008

I'm trying to catch up on the last year's worth of pictures on our family website, and I came across this one in a series of sisterly adoration. Don't know how I missed such an adorable shot the first time around!

Posted by me at 5:13 PM | Comments (0)

July 23, 2009

The great beyond

Posted by me at 8:58 PM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2009

Hum drum

On and off for the last, oh, month maybe, I've had this hum in one ear. I can hear just fine, as long as you talk louder than the hum (I swear it's not voices, it tells me NOTHING) in my head. The hum is intermittent, and if I hear it in the morning, it is often gone by that afternoon. For a while I thought I could keep it from happening by not turning my head to the left in my sleep, but lately it's been showing up anyway.

I have poked things in my ear canal, stolen Katie's swimmer's ear drops, filled my ear with peroxide, tried to depressurize and slept flat on my back with my face pointed directly at the ceiling for days on end, and it keeps coming back.

So today, I did something radical.

I went to the doctor.

I had to combine it with something real, just in case the ear thing was all in my imagination. After all, I don't want to look like a hypochondriac to my doctor. I've made repeated pleas for thyroid retests and antibiotics, taken my kids in for multiple kinds of ear infections and broken bones, bot to mention well checks. He's going to start thinking we're medically fragile, or that I have some huge crush on him, and I'm willing to pitch myself in front of a bus just to see him more often.

I combined my frivolous ear check with a gratuitous thyroid recheck. It was the best I could do, and I was hoping at least one of them would pan out into something real.

I didn't get to see my regular doctor, which worked out fine, because Dr. Fonze (not his real name, but the name I keep thinking in my head) may barely have been able to look me in the eye, but he could see fluid in my ears, particularly the left. He offered steroids, which I took, and some comforting advice about there being worse things than nursing a baby while on Prednisone. He even bolstered my position that if I'm feeling tired, the thyroid is the first thing we should check, which I am, and he did. Last, but not least, he offered his personal "ripping the kid off the boobie" story, one that involved Mama leaving town while Daddy deals with the resulting hell demon.

I'm left with high hopes for a hum free life, where a tiny pill allows me to sleep 7 hours and wake without feeling the need for an immediate nap.

We'll just see how that goes, shall we?

Posted by me at 2:37 PM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2009

I'm going to blame Bill for my flabby abs

Tonight's activities have been preempted by Microsoft.

No blogging.

No working out (and dammit, I needed to move, move it!)

No tv.

Just several hours of frustration that have so far gained me nothing I'm capable of using.

Posted by me at 9:59 PM | Comments (0)

July 20, 2009

Bruised and battered, but making progress

I'm slowly working my way through my to-do list while the girls are gone. I don't know why I can't seem to get some of this stuff done while they're here. It's not like they are the ones that can't be told to cork it while I may a phone call, after all. Heck, they're really quite good at occupying Owen for short periods during the day when I need to get stuff done.

Maybe I just needed an excuse to stop procrastinating.

This weekend, I finally got around to painting Owen's room. I think I bought the paint last November, and it's just been hanging around spewing insults at me and dragging me down. I did the majority of it on Saturday, and by Sunday afternoon I was so sore I could barely walk up and down the stairs. How I overworked so many muscles in my legs when it was my arms doing most of the work is beyond me, but one leg is still so sore than I'm using it as an excuse to skip exercising again, and I'm not even feeling horribly guilty about it.

I am feeling horribly guilty over poor Owen. He sidled up behind me while I was vacuuming, and I knocked the poor kid over on my back swing. When I picked him up, I saw the abrasion and swelling where the thing must have caught him just below the eye. I swear I looked behind me, saw nothing, and figured he'd gone into the dining room. Doesn't really make me feel much better about giving my kid a shiner.

And this was after he managed to trip over absolutely nothing walking through Target and smack his head into the floor. I still haven't figured out what he cut, but there was some blood in his mouth, and a cherry red spot on his forehead. Maybe he reopened the cut in his lip from where he put his teeth through last week. He's a fairly tough kid, but he made sure everyone in the store knew he was displeased.

Posted by me at 10:08 PM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2009

Fit

I started working out (just a little bit, nothing too crazy!) about a week and a half ago. I'm a little hesitant to say anything, since who knows how long it will last, really.

I've done fairly well with the actual movement thing, although as I type this I realize I've done nothing for today, and I'm about to go sit down and watch a movie for a couple hours. The problem is, the more I move, the more I seem to feel entitled to eat. Which might be ok if I were, say, training for a marathon or something. What I'm really working toward is just being a little more...firm. I'm fairly happy with my weight (although I wouldn't cry if another 5 pounds happened to go missing), but I've noticed, when I look straight down, that my belly looks similar to what it did when I was oh, say, four months pregnant. You know, right at that point where people start to wonder, but they don't want to say anything just in case.

And so I will try to keep up with my "5 Hot Bod Exercises for Mom" (I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth) and with the Wii Fit, and I will hope that next month I look more like a rockfish than a jellyfish.

Posted by me at 8:41 PM | Comments (0)

July 16, 2009

Hypertension

Yay! We managed to take all the bits and pieces of the grill, along with the packaging (which I had to dig out of the trash and recycling bins. I actually almost feel bad for the poor guy who has to deal with all the styro that is now poo scented), back to the store. Turns out, the guy who assembles the grills in the store had found four more of the same model with the same damage. We decided to take one that was already put together instead of taking a chance on another closed box. After a bit of disassembling, creative loading, and reassembling, we have a working grill. And it only took a couple extra hours of our day.

HOWEVER.

The annoyance gods giveth, and the annoyance gods taketh away.

Last week I ordered three things from amazon.com. These three things were to be shipped together, to qualify me for free (snail's pace) shipping. All good. I got a shipping notice saying they were all coming in one package, via USPS, here's your tracking info that says what we just said, have a nice day.

And that's how I got my Baconnaise.

In a box with a receipt that said 3 OF 3.

And nothing else.

Amazon shows my one box delivered, USPS hasn't deposited any other goodies on my doorstep in the last two days, and now I will spend another nap time trying to figure out who gets yelled at next.

Posted by me at 4:05 PM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2009

Yum!

Posted by me at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)

Spoiled

So I walked into the bathroom at the Red Robin today, and there was a tv hanging from the ceiling showing HGTV. And my first thought was, "Why are they showing HGTV in the bathroom of a restaurant?"

It wasn't til I was walking back to the table that I realized that I should have been wondering why there was a tv in the first place.

Posted by me at 10:49 PM | Comments (0)

Frustrated

This is totally not the post I was planning to write tonight. That post was preempted by my annoyance. Why the hell can't things ever go right the first time?

It started with the fridge. The new one I got for my birthday. What can possibly go wrong with a brand new fridge? I wasn't home when it was delivered, but it arrived with a dent in the door. The delivery driver offered to take it back, or give us a 10% credit. Rex took the credit, I was thrilled to get it cheaper (I hadn't even noticed the dent until he pointed it out), it was all good.

Except the credit hasn't shown up yet.

A couple weeks later, we picked up a grill from the same place. I took it home in the box, in spite of their free assembly offer, since there was no way it would fit in the back of my van set up. I started unboxing it about a week ago and noticed a bow in the door, but then I got distracted by the kids. I didn't get back to putting the thing together again until today. There is a definite dent in the door, but it didn't look like it was going to affect anything functional, so whatever. I got to the point where I needed Rex to help me lift the box onto the frame, and that's when I noticed the whole front of the control area is pushed in. I think it will still work, but I'm not willing to keep this much damage without compensation. What I haven't figured out is *how* to deal with this. There are pieces all over the place, half the packing stuff is in the trash, and I'd never manage to put the puzzle back together again, anyway. I guess I'll try to just haul the giant bent up piece in and see if they'll give me a discount. Sounds like a fun way to waste a morning, right?

So I was all in a tizzy to write this "why doesn't anything ever work right the first time" post, but Rex and I rented a movie, so I unplugged my laptop to take it into the living room. Apparently there's a short in the cord for my iMac, because it went black at the same time. I thought it was a fluke the last time it happened, but apparently it's just one more thing that doesn't work the way it's supposed to the first time around.

Posted by me at 8:22 PM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2009

What the hell is wrong with my lens?

Posted by me at 8:29 PM | Comments (0)

Alone. Ish.

The girls took off with my dad today for their annual summer extravaganza. They've been super excited and talking about going for weeks. I know they're going to have a fantastic time, which as usual makes me feel like the least fun mom on the planet. I've grown resigned to the fact that some moms are fun moms, and some moms find fun people to send their kids off to.

I excel in other areas. I'll let you know when I think of one.

As usual, I'm torn about the girls leaving. I mean, I really look forward to some peace and quiet, and some relief from the constant "what can we do now" and the guilt from not giving them enough to do or taking them places to expand their minds. Of course, then I feel a bit guilty for being happy to see them go. I'm also going to miss the ways they help me out, intentionally and otherwise. They're great big sisters to Owen, helping me keep him out of trouble and doing what they can for him, but they're also great big sisters, playing with him and providing unintentional entertainment.

It's easier getting over the guilt, knowing that they have an awesome time with Grandpa, and they learn and do all sorts of things that just aren't part of our suburban lifestyle. I'm also starting to realize that it's just plain OK to want some time away from the kids.

Now, who's going to come and play with the boy for me?

Posted by me at 7:46 PM | Comments (0)