What's A Fancy Word for "Rerun"?

You guys! You guys!  I just got SYNDICATED ON BLOGHER!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                                                          Source                

Go check it out!  Granted, you may have already read it before, but it's a whole new experience on a different website, trust me.  Go take a look.  

I'M SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Downgrading to Babies 1.0

The older girls left today for their camping trip. With my husband still gone on his campaign for world peace, this left me tending to a single smiling, happy, easy-to-care-for baby the entire weekend all by myself.  For those of you with no kids, or just one baby, let me share something with you (in a completely non-judgmental way): this whole one-baby-having thing?  AMAZING.  Seriously, it's magical.  I'm on vacation in my head.  It's fucking Margaritaville up in here, and there most certainly is a woman to blame, Jimmy -- my fabulous mother-in-law.

This song is on repeat in my head.  

It's very weird going back to caring for just one baby after you've become used to firng on all cylinders with three kids.  It's like that dream where you have to go back to high school and re-do everything, except you are still your adult self.  I'm back to only having to care for one baby, except I'm doing it not as Brand-New-Mom Janel, but as Slightly-More-Experienced-Mom Janel.  

Not to be confused with Doesn't-Have-Any-Kids Janel

So, as single ladies left alone will often do, we headed out on the town.  To K-Mart.  I know, why not Target?  Because I didn't have an extra $40 to blow, and all I needed was a garden hose to replace the one we've been using ever since we found it in the garage when we moved in seven years ago and now apparently shoots water out everywhere except the place that's supposed to shoot water.  Here's something I noticed while hose-shopping with one adorable baby that doesn't happen when you're shopping with three kids: people flock to you.  They smile and say hi to your baby.  They oooh and ahhhh over your baby's beautiful red hair.  They exclaim over her massively impressive thigh rolls.  They do not do this when you also have a three year old babbling on and on about CAN I HAVE A YOGURT CAN I HAVE A YOGURT PLEEEEEEEEEASE? and a five year old whining about the giant plastic Lalaloopsy couch that you refuse to spend $15 on just so her dolls can have someplace comfortable to park their plastic ass after a long, hard day of lying on the bedroom floor doing NOTHING.  In that little tableau, you are basically a human car accident -- other shoppers see you, know you're there, try to act like they're not looking, but really they slow down just a bit and glance over to see what's going on before zooming off and thinking to themselves, "Better you than me, honey."

I noticed another thing once we got home.  With three little kids, there is constantly somebody talking, and the chatter is usually directed at you.  As a parent, you do a lot of talking: answering questions ("I'll get you a glass of milk in just a minute"), asking questions ("Where's Bella?"), conducting interviews to figure out the meaning of a question ("Why do you want to know if we have any more towels?") and trying to figure out exactly how much your kid knows before you answer their question ("Um, what do you think 'booty call' means?")  When you switch to having just one pre-verbal kid in the house, you find yourself doing much less talking.  Not having to keep up a running conversation with every single person in the house is a huge relief.  In fact, Baby Surrey and I went almost a half hour without saying a single thing to each other.  It was downright pleasant.

Finally, the last thing I am discovering right this moment is that when you're used to staying up until almost 2 a.m. every night playing "musical kids" as they go to sleep, wake up, refuse to go to sleep, etc., your brain refuses to go to bed at a normal time even when those kids are gone.  So even though I'm home with the one kid that actually goes to bed at a decent hour, I'm still sitting here typing away at ridiculous o'clock even though I have to get up early for work tomorrow.  These kids are so smart, they figured out a way to keep me up at night when they're not even here.  

                                                                      Source

Tip o' the hat, ladies.

All the Single Ladies!

My girls are going camping again this weekend.  Well, Phaedra and Bella are; Surrey is too little to enjoy the wonders of nature and s'mores, so she'll be partying with me this weekend.  In addition, my husband is going on a four-day road trip to Maryland for some kind of festival where they meditate and hug trees.  As you can probably guess, my attitude towards his trip greatly improved once I realized these two events were overlapping and I wasn't going to be spending the entire weekend alone with the Sisters Cray-Cray.

It's just going to be me and Surrey, two single women loose on the town!  WHOOOOO!  Shit's going to be so wild up in my house!! I've been making a mental list all week of all the crazy hijinks we are going to get into:

1. Go to the movies: This will obviously require me to find someone to babysit Surrey, since I'm not that guy that brings their baby to the movie theater.  I can watch TV and nurse a baby for free at home, thankyouverymuch.  Also, I heard there's this new movie in the theaters about hungry kids that I really want to see.  Alone.  With a huge bag of popcorn and a liter of cola all to myself.  I can see it now in my head, and you guys?  It's so beautiful.

2. Get a haircut: OK, real talk: I've been cutting my own hair.  I don't want ultra-long hair, and I don't have time to get a haircut, so when I'm feeling inspired, I get the kitchen shears and hack it off in the shower.  Which is a terrible idea for many, many reasons.  First, the kitchen shears are quite possibly the dullest scissors in the house.  On top of that, I have the thickest hair in these here United States of America.  It's like trying to cut a rope with a pair of safety scissors.  Lots of hacking and sawing, which means surprise! it doesn't really turn out even.  My haircuts usually end up being three-day projects, in which the last two days involve me periodically re-adjusting and trimming until it's finally passably even.  It's never 100% even, which actually isn't a big deal, since my hair is so insanely thick that you really can't tell if half of it is a different length.  At any rate, I may make an appointment to have a professional get this situation under control.

3. Take a nap: Surrey and I, we like sleep.  We're going to get our nap on this weekend and OH MY GOD IT WILL BE MAGICAL.  I mean, in general the sleep situation is going to be goddamn amazing.  We're going to sleep in separate beds and sleep all through the night, uninterrupted.  Don't be jealous.

4. Have a Toy Rapture: The toy situation in this house has reached critical mass.  With three young girls and a flock of their adoring fans, the toys can pile up pretty darn quickly.  When I'm kicking a path through the toys a majority of the week and I start fantasizing about living in an apartment because it would take less time to clean because we simply COULD NOT CONTAIN ALL THIS SHIT IN SUCH A SMALL SPACE, I know it's time for a Toy Rapture.  Toy Rapture is when a bunch of toys, typically the same amount that could fill a couple of garbage bags, suddenly disappears from the house, reappearing in Toy Heaven (i.e., Goodwill).  For us to continue to live in our house without having to swim through an ocean of stuffed animals and McDonald's Happy Meal toys, Toy Rapture must happen at least three times a year, minimum.  The tricky thing about Toy Rapture, though, is that it really needs to be done when the kids are not around.  Otherwise I get lots of suspicious side-eye looks and prying questions from Phaedra about why I'm stuffing her toys into a black plastic garbage bag.  So I guess what I'm trying to say is YOU DIDN'T SEE ANYTHING, BABY SURREY.

5. Clean and be amazed when it looks the same at the end of the day: Do you remember when you used to clean your house, go to bed, get up in the morning, go to work, come home, and your house looked exactly the same?  Me neither, but someone told me that still happens.  I'm going to find out this weekend.

6.  Not look at a single minute of children's programming: A four-day vacation from the theme song for Wow Wow Wubbzy?  YES FUCKING PLEASE.

6. Go to a restaurant: And even though I'll have Baby Surrey with me, it's going to look like this.

And everyone in the restaurant is going to be like, "What the fuck is wrong with that woman?!?!", and I'll just shout, "CAMPING, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!", and then the manager will ask me to be quiet and take my seat and I'll finish my tacos and quietly leave.

It will be a Mexican restaurant.  I forgot to mention that.

Time for a Cheap Post!

I just got done half-writing a post, and then saying, "UUUUGGGGGHH THIS SUUUUUUUUCKS" and giving up.  Because if there's one thing I can't stand, it's trying to write when I don't like what I'm writing about. That shit's for suckers and undergrad students, and I'm neither one of those things anymore.  So here's a lame post about random goings-on at our house.

Surrey is growing and teething at the same time.  Because why the hell not?  This means she's cranky during the day and can't nap for more than 20 minutes at a time, but since her poor little body is trying desperately to grow, she's inhaling every piece of food she can get her hands on and trying to fill the rest of the time with sleep.  Which she can't do, because her asshole teeth are keeping her awake during the day, and waking her up earlier than usual in the morning.  Once again, circle of life.

Phaedra has a dance recital this weekend, which will probably tear a hole in the space/time continuum because of the sheer amount of AWWWWWW that will be concentrated in such a small area of the universe.  Since there are two shows (Saturday and Sunday), and she has to attend both shows, I was a little concerned that she would be over it after the dress rehearsal.  "Oh, I don't mind waiting during the show, Mom!  I get to play with my friends, and there's books backstage we can read?  One of them is about camping!  It tells you how to make your own camper!"

O rly?

"Yes!  You just get some aluminum foil, and you paint it.  Then you get some wheels that someone's car doesn't want anymore.  Then you get a cardboard box, and that's the inside part.  And then you just fill it with accessories, like a bed, and a kitchen table, and maybe some Play-Doh!"

You guys, it's travel brochures.  They read the free travel brochures while they're waiting to go onstage.

Go ahead.  I'll wait.

Bella is going through a mental growth spurt right now.  She's changing so much every day, becoming more and more verbal and social.  Instead of talking to herself or at you, she talks to you.  She also plays with Phaedra more and more, instead of just parallel playing next to her.  My anxiety about preschool in the fall is slowly receding, but depending on how next week's preschool open house goes, it may experience a brief spike.  If we can just convince her to wait until she's actually next to a toilet before she strips off her pants to go potty, she'll be all set.

So, that's the goings-on here.  See!  We just sat down and caught up!  Like people do!  As a final cheap move reward for sitting through such a dumb post, I present to you:

Cute pictures of my kids!

Happiest Baby on Earth

 

 First trip to Dairy Queen of the summer.

 She seriously smiles like this the entire time we shop.

 Bella's very dangerous, sharp-edged pet bird.  

Tiny firefighter.

Turning In My Crunchy Card

So, you know how you're at work, and you're talking to a coworker, and they're all, "Yeah, I know I said I'd do that for you, but I'm just so busy!" and you're like, "I know, me too.  It's just that..." and they say, "No, I'm really BUSY!"  and you're thinking, "YEAH I KNOW MAN WE'RE ALL BUSY, WE'RE AT WORK," because apparently this bitch thinks she's some sort of special kind of busy that you can't possibly understand?

Yeah.  Get ready for a whole lot of that in this post.

I don't mind telling you that since my children were born, I have upped the crunchy/green/hippie level in my house from about 0.5 to, at its peak, about a 6.5.  However, due to a combination of factors, my crunchiness has dropped off considerably since Surrey was born.  I feel like the following chart illustrates my point more clearly:

As you can see, before I had children, I was pretty much ingesting plastic straight up.  If you had asked me whether or not I would ever be willing to pay more money for an "organic" item, I would have laughed in your face while continuing to munch on my plastic chips.  However, after I had Phaedra, I realized that this little baby was pure.  How could I pollute her body with anything that was even remotely toxic?  

Fast forward to today, where I don't even want to tell you some of the things that have been in her mouth (hint: it was organic, but not in a good way). Though I had a good streak going for awhile, the combination of work, kids, household chores, and opposite work/school schedule with the husband has put this fucking racecar in the red.  I have had to regretfully admit to myself that I cannot keep up with some of the hippie habits I have picked up over the last few years.  Maybe I can go back to some of them as the girls get older, but I think some of them are going to have to die a dignified, eco-friendly death.

1.  Cloth diapers:  AAAAAAAAHHHHH this one kills me.  I started cloth diapering Bella when she was about nine months old.  It's just me, not my husband or anyone else, because who else would put up with all the nonsense that goes along with cloth diapers when DUDE YOU CAN THROW THESE OTHER DIAPERS AWAY?  I still believe cloth diapering is safer, healthier, and cheaper in the long run, but I recently had a long, hard look at the mountain of laundry that is in my basement, both clean and dirty.  After sending my daughter to preschool in the same pair of pants three days in a row because they were the only clean ones I could find in the entire house, I finally admitted to myself that if I can't keep up with the regular laundry, I sure as hell can't keep up with diaper laundry on top of it.  As it turns out, three children is the threshold at which your laundry situation just fucking explodes into unmanageable levels. The cheapskate in me is still crying her eyes out over using so many disposable diapers, but the part of me that is responsible for remaining sane and caring for my children is relieved.

2.  Clothes line: My husband learned to ignore the cloth diapers, but his 6' 1" frame cannot ignore the clothesline that is hung 5' 11" off the ground. Getting a clothesline to the neck doesn't really put you in the green frame of mind. He hates my ugly-looking clothesline with a passion.  I delighted in using my clothesline two summers ago, and getting to tell my gas company to suck it every time I didn't have to use my dryer.  Every time I hung laundry up, in my mind I was Laura Ingalls Wilder living on the goddamn prairie.  It was magical.  However, last summer I just couldn't bring myself to haul my huge, pregnant ass outside and stand in the sun hanging laundry, then haul it back outside at night to take it down.  I gave myself a pass, saying that I would go back to using it this summer, when I wasn't feeling so tired. AAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  I'm pretty sure that this summer, finding 15-20 minutes when I'll be able to do nothing but hang clothes without holding a baby on my hip is going to be impossible.

Just please, you guys, don't tell my husband he was right.

3.  Organic meat: I was so embarrassingly pumped when the company that delivers organic fruit to my house, Door to Door Organics*, started carrying organic meat.  I wanted to make the jump to organic meat, but, sadly, it was unavailable at my local grocery store, and I'll be goddamned if I'll drive all the way across town to the other grocery store that stays open 24 hours and rhymes with "liar" just to buy meat.  However, after suffering for almost six months or so, I've finally admitted to myself that it's not working out.  While the quality is just as good or sometimes better than the stuff at my grocery store (which, if you're curious, rhymes with "brogue-er"), the cost is quite literally three times more than what you would pay for normal meat.  I am willing to shell out slightly more cash for safer food and cosmetic products, but I had to finally admit defeat when I realized how high my weekly grocery bill had climbed.  On top of that, for what I was paying, I could only afford to buy one pound of hamburger meat and one pound of chicken breast every other week. So, back to Brogue-er I go for my bag-o-chicken-breasts.

4.  Homemade baby food: When it was time for Phaedra to start eating solid food, I couldn't bear the thought that, after six months of (almost) exclusively eating naturally good-for-her breastmilk, I was going to start putting man-made junk from a jar into her body.  So, I tried making homemade baby food.  I proudly steamed a sliced-up peach, blended that bad boy in my food processor, and served it up to my little angel.

And she promptly spit that crap in my face.

I tried almost everything: apples, peas, pumpkin, banana -- no luck.  I have a vivid memory of Rob and I scooping mountains of pureed sweet potato out of an overflowing food processor one Saturday night and asking each other, "How the fuck did we get here?"  The next day, I went to the store and bought a jar of carrot baby food.  She inhaled it, and even though I've tried to ply every single one of my babies with homemade baby food, they've all responded the same way: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WOMAN, GO TO THE STORE AND BUY ME THAT DELICIOUS PROCESSED STUFF.  I even tried this new-fangled baby-lead weaning thing with Surrey, but upon finding out that Surrey enjoys taking enormous bites of everything, my anxiety level was too high to continue on this path.

So, this is me turning in my membership card to the Crunchy Mothers of America.  Godspeed, you patchouli-scented angels.

*didn't give me a dime for the shout-out, but I wish the hell they would.

All Good Things That Require You to Wake Up at 7am On Your Day Off Must Temporarily Come To An End

First day of school, 2010

 First day of school, 2011

Tomorrow morning, I'm going to get up, actually put on clothes (instead of traipse through the door wearing the pajamas I slept in), and go watch Phaedra graduate from preschool. I'm going to take her picture walking over a little wooden footbridge and watch her proudly display her brand new teddy bear (who will take her place in Tiny and Cart's family as their new sister, I'm told) and carry home her binder full of classroom work.

I will do all this while trying not to bawl my eyes out. Because, in a weird way, on top of dealing with the fact that my little baby is going to real school in the fall, it feels like I'm reliving the school experience myself.

No one really tells you on your last day of high school "HA HA SUCKERS! You think you're done with school?!?!? You get to do this shit all over again when you have kids!"  Because if they did, half the kids wouldn't believe them, and the other half would just yell "HEY EAT ME MS. WOJINOWSKI!", which is just really rude.

But it's true. You think when you finish school that you're finally done with having to get up at the buttcrack of dawn and spend six hours inside a building that very closely resembles a minimum-security prison. Then you have kids, and you realize that oh snap, this kid can't drive himself to school, and he's expected to be there every single day.  Really, really early in the morning. Which means you just signed up for ANOTHER thirteen years (or more!) of getting up at the buttcrack of dawn and dropping someone off at a building that very closely resembles a minimum-security prison.

                                                       FanPop

It's the Ciiiiiiiiiircle of BUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLSHIT.

Some things are slightly different this time around, though.  Instead of your classmates all being the same age, they're a wide range of ages. You don't have to stay in class; in fact, they prefer it if you don't come to class. Also, you get to talk back to the teachers now if you want, and they can't make you stand at the wall at recess! Score! 

On the other hand, some things never change. You have homework again (spoiler alert: it still sucks, but for wholly different reasons now). You're still taking orders from teachers, but this time it's via clip-art filled, badly worded flyers that are printed on orangey-yellow paper. Some of your classmates are cool, but there are definitely a few that are just complete assholes, and there's at least one genuine moron. You do your best to make friends with the cool ones, and hope to Christ that your kid doesn't make friends with the moron's kid.

Although Phaedra is the one that is graduating tomorrow, I feel like it's the last day of school for me, too. Sure, I'll be back next year with Bella, as will some of the other parents. But some of them won't be back. And since it's preschool, Phaedra probably won't see a lot of these kids again until high school; possibly never again. Which means I won't see their parents again, either. I think about all the hurried drop-off discussions. The field trip to Scary Farm (also known as The Field Trip That Must Not Be Named). The babies that I watched grow up in the hallway. Our little group that, of course, always sits together at the same table during class parties.

Yes, I know I'll make new friends, but it won't be the same! I DON'T WANT TO GO TO KINDERGARTEN! What if the parents there don't like me? Will I fit in? But check it out, I'm not going to worry too much about that now, because you know what starts next week? 

SUMMER VACATION, BRO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                      Know Your Meme

The After Party

By popular demand (i.e., two people casually inquired about it), here's an update on Phaedra's birthday party. As funny as it would be to come on here and be all OH MY GOD SHIT WAS BANANAS AAAAAAAAAAAAAH, it really wasn't. It was a hundred times more stressful preparing for the party than the actual party. The kids basically entertained themselves for an hour and a half, and then I jacked them up on cake and unlimited scoops of ice cream. Then I sent them all home with their moms. Goodbye, extra kids! I was super tempted to slip one of my kids into one of their purses, but in the end I decided that my kids were actually pretty cool and I should keep them.

Also, Surrey wouldn't fit in a single purse. Seriously, why are these moms carrying such tiny purses? And how am I supposed to slip my enormous eight month old into such a tiny handbag? PLEASE TO UPGRADE.

Here's the post-game analysis of how my suggestions and strategies actually worked out:

1.  Semi-decorated cake: Um, I don't mean to brag, but in terms of execution, this one was a total success. When Cake-and-Ice-Cream Time came, I popped off the plastic lid to my Meijer bakery cake, arranged Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup on their respective frosting balloons, and stuck a "5" candle in the middle. Everybody sang, she blew out the candle, and I served cake and ice cream to all.

Maybe everyone was in awe of my sweet decorating skills, or just really hungry, or trying to figure out why I didn't even have the decency to ask the lady at the bakery to write my kid's name on her own birthday cake, but suddenly everybody decided that all small talk should stop and everyone should silently glare at me while I served cake and ice cream, ignoring all my (awkward) attempts at chitchat. I have absolutely no idea what to make of this. Was it some kind of initiation or hazing? Because I already did that shit once at band camp, except instead of getting dessert at the end, I got to eat a plate of prune baby food.  Surprisingly little has changed between then and now.

Also, please someone tell me what the fuck I was thinking when I bought a birthday cake two days in advance? I wasn't worried about freshness, obviously, since the label on my cake clearly stated I had exactly one more day before it would become stale. I completely forgot that I live with Bella, a.k.a. Cakewrecker. She is deeply obsessed with cake. You know how in horror movies, a vampire can be talking to you about some deep, philosophical concept, but then they see blood and suddenly become single-minded monsters that will stop at nothing until they've sated their awful lust for blood?

Yeah. Substitute "blood" for "frosting", and that's what we're dealing with here.

                                                                                   Pop Eighties

Or, in their case, "shitty hair cuts".

I put the cake in the fridge, thinking to myself, "This is a really bad idea." Which was confirmed about two hours later when Bella took the cake out of the fridge and attempted to bring it to me, requesting CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!!!! FYI: Three-year-old cake vampires don't understand the concept of waiting two whole days to eat a cake that you could be eating RIGHT NOW.

What was I saying about the cake being a total success?

2.  Goodie bags: OK, for real, these sincerely were a success. Little Debbie snacks and Easter candy for everyone! I also forgot that my mother-in-law, amazing bargain shopper that she is, found a ton of Lalaloopsy Mini dolls on clearance for $2.00. Whut whuuuuuuuuuuut!!!!!  So each kid got to pick out their own Lalaloopsy. Even the lone boy that came seemed kind of jazzed about getting a toy. I guess at the end of the day, a free toy is a free toy.  

3.  Decorations: Husband bitched, but hung the streamers in the dining room (where, almost two weeks later, they remain). I blew up about ten balloons, hung three on the mailbox, then watched them blow past the window about an hour later.

                                                      Derplass @ Photobucket.com

Don't care.

4.  Cleaning: Here's a fun story: a few nights ago, I noticed that every time I walked through the kitchen, I could swear I smelled sour cream and onion dip. Which was weird, because I knew we didn't have any sour cream and onion dip in the house. Finally, after about the fifth time I noticed this, I finally thought to take a look-see at the dirty pots and pans I shoved in the oven OVER A WEEK AGO. Oh yeah, we did have onion chicken a few days before the party! Guess Rob didn't really put the leftovers away after he ate his dinner that night. Guess that's what onion chicken smells like after incubating in a warm, dry place for ten days. Guess I don't cook that often in my house.  Moral of the story: don't trust your husband to put away leftovers.

5.  Cut the guest list: This was a good strategy. We had five kids show up between three parents. Not a huge group, but manageable. In fact, from what I read online, a good rule of thumb is to limit the guest list to the age of the child, i.e., three kids for a third birthday, five kids for a fifth birthday, etc. Check out Little Miss Rule Follower over here! Another thing that worked in our favor was passing out invitations last-minute. The kids were on spring break the week before her party, so we passed out invitations at school the week of the party. So, you know, only the most elite kids and parents with absolutely nothing going on and didn't mind shopping at the last minute for a birthday present were available to come over. Actually, the three moms that did come were downright delightful. It was like a party for everyone involved: the kids got to run around and have fun, and the moms got to sit and talk to other adults with minimal interruption by kids for an hour or so.

There you have it, folks: it is indeed possible to have a birthday party for kids with minimal effort. In fact, it went so well that I can't wait to plan Surrey's first birthday party this summer NOT REALLY.