On My Mind

1)It's my dear friend Autumn's birthday. For her birthday, I wish her good painting karma.

2)My sister Bekah. Good thing for texts, emails and phone calls. How did they communicate in olden times when separated by a few states? The "days of yore" must also have been hard.

2)I hold my 20-pound 7-month-old too much on my right hip. I think that bicep is now twice the size of the other one, and my hip has become a jutting out shelf. At dinner last night: "Please pass the veggies. Just set them on my hip." Who am I kidding, I never ask for veggies.

3)Max is doing well in his big boy underwear. He kept Snoopy and Shrek dry all weekend, with the exception of, to put it gently, some stronger stuff. He hid to do that business. Over two days that little bladder went in our upstairs and downstairs toilets, grandparents front and hallway toilets, the up and downstairs church bathrooms, the Gateway bathroom (and I'm pretty sure the Gateway fountains but I can't prove it) and a tree by our car parked near the Farmer's Market (it was an emergency).

4)I love JB's new salsa experimenting. I can't wait for our tomatoes to really flourish!

5)Chicken and chocolate. I can picture exactly in my cupboard where I put two chocolate candy bars on Saturday after finding them on sale at the store. I thought, "I'll put them here and find them some day and have a nice surprise." No, I'm never going to forget and suddenly be surprised by them. I'm going to eat them as soon as I get home! Chicken is on my mind b/c our staff mtg is being catered by El Pollo Loco. Hey, I'll eat even crazy chicken.

6)I miss The Office. But, good news -- there are webisodes this summer that are hilarious. Here's the first one.

Minutes from naptime

People ask how I survive working as an early-morning radio reporter with two children. The answer: naptime. But today everything went wrong, wrong, wrong.

I usually put Max down around 1 and he sleeps until 3. I tuck Ben in bed with me, and he nurses and falls asleep. But lately he’s been so squirmy and wiggly I can’t stand it. I’ll drift off to sleep and wake up with a baby bum or foot in my face. So today I thought I could put Ben in his crib at the same time as Max napped. Again, wrong, wrong, wrong.

1:00. Ben in bed. He’s fussing it out a little but drifting off.

1:10 Max changed and tucked in bed.

1:11 I jump in my bed.

1:12 Max hollers out to me to cover him up. It wakes Ben up.

1:13 Binkie in Ben’s mouth, Max covered up.

1:30 I hear a suspicious noise. I peek in. Max is INSIDE THE CRIB with Ben.

1:30 ½ I rush Max back into his bed, and put Ben’s binkie back in. I remove the diaper boxes by the side of the crib that Max climbed on to get in.

1:40 Ben is still fussing it out. Max hollers at him to “Be quiet Ben, I told you about that!”

1:45 I go in there and ask Max to please be quiet and stop talking to Ben so he can fall asleep.

1:50 I hear the pitter-patter of little feet. I put Max back in his bed, rock Ben and put him back in his crib. I go back to my bed.

2:00 It’s quiet. Good. A peek in the door shows Ben asleep, but Max standing by the bookshelf. I tuck him back in.

2:20 I’ve just drifted off, when I hear a thump and a bump. Not good. Max has pulled the diaper changing pad to the ground and strapped himself on it. “I’m poopy,” he says.

2:30 Max is all changed and tucked back in. Ben still sleeping. I go back to bed.

2:40 Max starts singing. It wakes Ben and me up. I stomp in there and try to get both boys to sleep for just a little bit longer, please!

2:50 I give up. Ben and I go out to the living room but I keep Max in bed for the hope he’ll go to sleep.

3:00 Max hollers out, “I’m awake mommy!” Of course you are.

Garage slippery slope

Our garage door is on the fritz. It's a single-car garage with a manual door that you have to lift up (gotta love these older homes). The door just loves to come off its tracks when I (and now even our nanny) lift it to get to the stroller inside. I have the upper body strength of a kitten, and have to go running to my strong husband to get him to put the door back in place. Last night the door wrestled back, so I helped him. Here's the scene:

JB: Lift up on your side.

Me: Ok

JB: Anytime now.

Me: This is my lift!

JB: Oh.

Meanwhile Max and Ben were waiting nearby our our daily walk. Their waiting became wailing -- Max thought JB and I were in mortal danger and kept screaming "Come out of the garage momma!" Ben wailed because I put him down on the grass and it was tickling him. Plus he couldn't see me and he's in a "I'm 7-months old, I must see mom at all times" stage. I have to tiptoe out of the room with his back turned, or he lays his head down on the floor and cries.

We put the door back and went on our walk, but I just don't know what to do about that door. If you're going to fix a door on an old garage, might as well replace the garage. Might as well then get a two-car garage. Then if we are ripping up stuff anyway, we should replace the driveway concrete as well. Shoot, if we tear down the garage we'll need to rebuild the deck and swingset that are attached to it. Now a little repair has turned into tens of thousands of dollars! Looks like we're stuck with the possessed door.

Our Fourth of July

We started our day with the neighborhood parade, with our new wagon. Ben sat up the whole time, just staring at everything around him. Max too was speechless at the decorated cars, trikes, bikes, wagons, go-carts, strollers and even a few horses.
After lunch we went swimming with friends.
Notice how clinging Max is to me and how with JB he's now in the baby floating device. I think he needs swimming lessons to get over his fear (and mine) of the water. Then we had a BBQ that night with my brothers. Here's Michael, his wife Bethany and their cutie-pie Nathanael.
Here's me and three of my brothers and Nathanael. In family order, from left to right, we are #s 2,3,4 and 5. With a big family, you count off your number whenever traveling. With names left to right we are Mary, Joe, Michael, and James.

Poo Praise

I got a call this morning from JB at an unusual time while I was at work. My heart skipped a beat, thinking something had happened to the boys. Instead, Max jumped on the phone to tell me proudly, "I went poopoo on the potty mommy!" I instantly threw a huge stinkin' praise party. "Yes!" I shouted to the heavens, "He's getting it!" The first time he went on the potty was five months ago but I digress. We are almost there, people -- I can feel it!

Things I'm grateful for about this incident:

1)I was alone in the news car during my praise party

2)My live microphone feed was turned off

3)JB has promised Max an ice cream cone. Maybe there's one in there for me, too.

Incidentally this sounds a lot like a funny episode for Max's little friend Gracie. Read her father's account here.

Samples

Several trips to Costco and the grocery store this weekend have shown me I need a tougher spine when it comes to samples. More specifically, the sample-givers. Usually you can hover, take a sample, mumble thanks, then be on your way. But I swear the sample-people are getting more aggressive. "That's on sale today!" "It's right in the case beside me if you want more." "Here's a bag for your cart." "Here, take two!" Instead of moving on with a "No thanks," I feel obliged to explain why I've just stuffed my face with their sample but am not buying the product. My lowest moment -- telling the lady that I believed my husband may have already purchased the ready-made-only-on-special-today-fantastic-in-the-case-beside-me-brats and I had better call him and make sure. I walked away making the fake call on my cell phone and about crashed into the yogurts.

Staying cool

We've found a nice way to cool the Max down after playing outside.
When I was really young my sister Bekah and brother Joe and I would play in buckets of water. I did this last summer with Max, but couldn't find a bucket big enough this week. Instead, I found a storage bin in the garage and filled it with water. Before I could get a swimsuit on him he had stripped down to his birthday suit and hopped in to his new pool. Except I think he thinks it's more of a bathtub. He calls the outdoor faucet a shower, and asked JB yesterday if he could take a shower outside. Brace yourself for another cute picture:Ben didn't like it as much. I took him out to warm up.

Who needs to buy a wading pool, right?