So I had a friend today (well she was a friend in high school and now our only communication is through Facebook so a Facebook friend I suppose) basically ask in her post what other people's dinners look like with toddlers.  I usually don't reply to stuff on Facebook but something compelled me to do so with her post. Here's what I replied:

When I actually cook dinner, I call out dinners ready.  Which means plates of food are on the table.  No silverware or drinks for anyone.  The 3 year old runs off.  We have to chase him down and tell him for the 4000th time the rule is he has to sit with us whether he eats or not.  The 2 year old has already gotten to the table and dumped over her plate and is screaming that her food is on the floor.  Pick up her food while the baby screams for no reason (or teething, I don't know).  Drag whining 3 year old to his chair, sit him down and grab some silverware.  The 3 year old is back out of his chair and attempting to run away again.  Back in his chair he whines while I grab some side dish I forgot.  Put baby's food together in a bowl and search for her Bumbo chair for 1.5 minutes, grumbling to myself about how disheveled our house is.  Find the chair and put it on the table.  Plop her down, shovel a spoonful of food in her mouth.  Big kids start whining for milk.   Get up and scrub some crusty sippy cups clean for milk.  Warm the milk because they want it warm for some reason.  Shovel another bite down the baby's gullet.  Two big kids decide to have a back and forth screeching match which they think is hilarious.  Stuff half my plate in my mouth while picking up dropped spoons and forks.  Shovel more food down baby.  Eat six bites of food in three seconds.  Get up to find a clean cup somewhere and fill it with lukewarm water and down it as fast as I can since I'm not sure when the next time will come that I will get to take a drink.  The 3 year old licks his ranch for dinner and leaves after 2.5 minutes at the table, sliding out of his chair like a snake as if I can't see him.  The 2 year old eats a few bites and ends up needing a bath because she is covered in food.  Baby is happy with food and now wants milk...from me...NOW!  I finish the last dregs of food on my plate, walking to the recliner to nurse.  All this in about a 5 minutes time span.  It's great!

Baked Cotton Balls

I've been looking for things to do with Munchkin around here now that he's a little bit older.  He's 19 months old so I figured I should try and start doing some crafty things.  Just sprinkle them in throughout the week to break up the monotony of being at home all the time.  We've got a music class lined up but that doesn't start for a couple more weeks.  We also have no backyard to play in because we are attempting for a second time to get grass growing, thus it's a dirt pit at the moment.  The front yard is pretty dangerous with the street and crazy drivers/wandering toddler/holding a 3 month old, SO, I went searching on Pinterest.  I found a craft of sorts in baked cotton balls.  Seems simple enough and I had the stuff.  YAY!

These are baked cotton balls.  Or prior to baking.  While butterball was sleeping I threw together the flour, water, and food coloring with the little boy.  Then you dip the cotton balls in the goo, put them on a tray and bake them.  Simple enough.  Munchkin didn't want to touch the soggy cotton balls.  He only wanted to touch the clean cotton balls.  Go figure.  Apparently he's got a thing about touching gooey stuff. So I ended up making all but a half of one of these.  That's the one he put in the bowl halfway and then stuck it in my face  in an attempt to keep the goo off his little pristine hands.

This is the end result.  I think I baked them too long.  Forget that...I KNOW I baked them too long.  We ended up playing in the pool in the garage (our pseudo backyard) and I sort of forgot about them, but they still ended up being crunchy anyways albeit a little dark and ugly.  So I dump them out after his nap to see if he would enjoy stepping on them and smashing them with a spatula.  No.  Not at all.  He just looked at them like they were....well, like they were over cooked cotton balls with junk on them.  I tried to show him they crunched when you stepped on them but he just got out his markers and crayons and started coloring. That was a bust.

On a positive note: I'm a genius.  GENIUS!!  I had my husband buy a canvas painters drop cloth at Lowes on his way home the other day.  I have turned it into my drop cloth for toddler messiness  It's great!!  He can color on it and the marker and crayon doesn't get on my floor.  We can do gooey things on it like play with flour and water mixtures, and it all stays on the drop cloth.  I even made some moon sand junk out of flour and baby oil and the drop cloth catches it all!!  Then at the end of the day I just shake it off outside, and the mess is GONE!!  GONE PEOPLE!  Why in the world didn't I think of this earlier?

Baked cotton balls: 1
My creativity: 1
New toddler fun: 0

I'm back!

Been a little busy since the last post.  Yes yes I know...it's been months.  But this is what I've been working on

My sweet baby butterball.  No, it's not Josh Hamiltons kid.  My husband is just a huge Hamilton fan.  She's about 3 months old now and has shook things up for the better!  I'm just now somewhat getting in to a mild routine with both the munchkins.  So maybe (BIG MAYBE HERE) I will be able to start posting regularly to this blog/time suck/outlet/whatever.  I've got lots of projects going on around the house to show you.  But little butterball is screeching right now and I"ve got to run.........

Blinds? More like junk!

These are supposedly blinds:

At least, that's what some people call them.  I like to call them junk.  They are the stupidest blinds ever invented. We had these in our old house in Oklahoma as well.  As you can see, doesn't really keep the sun out.  See that sideways blind at the top that I guess is supposed to make it look pretty or something.  Yea, that falls off.  All the time.  And it's held on by the junky plastic things, which also break.  Which you can't replace. 

This is the little handle thingy.  It's stupid too, because if you have it turned the wrong way and you try to open or close the blinds, you will yank this little thing off.  What does this do you ask?  Well, then you can't do anything with the blinds until you get it put back on.  Not an easy task either.  I'm not tall enough to put this thing back on without a stool.  And even this is a pain!  It has some awkward hook on the end that you're supposed to try and get through a circle thingy at the top.  It's stupid.

These are the blinds themselves.  Equally as stupid.  They fall off if you just look at them wrong.  The holes at the top that are supposed to hook on to those weird plastic thingys up there.  Half the time, once they have fallen off, the hole becomes a "U" shape, thus rendering the blind useless.  So on about half of these blinds I've had to use packaging tape, tape up the broken hole, and poke a new hole into it, just to get them to hang precariously until the next gentle breeze blows them off.  

Those little plastic things that supposedly turn the blinds to open and closed positions.  They break.  All the time.  So then the blind just swings around freely, doing whatever it wants.  It doesn't open.  It doesn't close.  It just hangs there like a sad sack.  Also, if the little plastic thingys aren't all in the same position, you can't slide the blinds all the way open or closed, thus ripping off the handle thingy yet again.

So all in all, these are the stupidest blinds ever invented by man.  Oh and they're ugly.

I'm not embarassed....mostly

Before you judge me, STOP.  Think about your own houses.  Where is that pile of crap that is just sitting there?  I know you have it.  It's the garage.  Or the kitchen cabinets.  Or your closet in the extra bedroom, or maybe even your car.  It's there, staring at you, mocking you, embarassing you even though you don't let people see it.

First let me start off with my excuses.  

1. I'm pregnant in my 1st trimester so I'm beyond tired.  And the doc said that this time around I will probably be more tired than I was the last time.  And boy howdy she is right!  The last time I was preggers my first trimester I wasn't working (summertime-teaching) and I had no other kids.  So I got to lay on the sofa whenever I wanted.

2. I have a 9 month old son who I guess is teething.  He has 8 teeth right now and apparently 47 more are coming in.  That is the only thing I can think of why he's not sleeping well and is generally a crank ball all day long.  I mean whine all day and cling mercilessly describes it best.

3.  The hubs has been home a whopping 2 nights this week.  Monday and Wednesday night.  And we were out Wednesday night.  So it's been just me and the whiny Munchkin basically all week alone.  He's wearing me out.  I finally told the hubs that he wasn't allowed to go to work on Sunday or I warned I would slash his tires.  He's staying home. : )

So there you have them.  My excuses.  For what you might ask???

 This is our living room.  As you can see, the mess starts here.  The majority of it is from the Munchkin dragging everything out he possibly can and then leaving to tear something else up.  Oh and that's a pile of laundry I finally folded. 

This is our dining room.  As you can see, there is a little trail of junk leading towards Munchkins room. He's like a little tornado, blowing everything around, tearing half of it up on his way.  Now the kitchen table is full of crap because we moved a bunch of furniture around and there are a few shelves we need to put up so I can put that junk away.  

This is my living room/dining room on a typical day as of late.  I did clean all of this up that day.  I had a random bout of energy.

Lets go to today. 

 New day, new mess.  All from the pipsqueak.  Cheerios ALL OVER THE PLACE.  Because he found the box, ripped the bag open and flung them everywhere. 

Ah yes.  The newspaper.  He LOVES the newspaper.  Loves to shred it.  Dance with it. Fling it around.  Eat it.  Whatever.  He LOVES the newspaper.  As you can see.  It's like the newspaper exploded.  Ah but look.  The kitchen table is (mostly) cleaned off!!  Will I clean any of this tonight?  Not really.  Only the dirty dishes and maybe the Cheerios (maybe).

I'm not really embarassed by this.  I feel I have pretty legit excuses for it looking like this.  Those of you without kids, I'm sure you're thinking I'm a total slacker mom, who lays on the couch watching baseball games, and The Office, eating candy.  But if you have/have had kids, you understand that some days, you're children are like little monkeys.  They come in, throw everything around, and wander off to poop somewhere.  I figure, I spent most of my energy playing with him and feeding/changing diapers, that I at least did my job as a good mom today.  Maybe not the maid/house keeper.  But she'll come back someday.  And some days, it's just not worth it to pick up.

El Pregarino

Yep, I'm pregnant.  That would explain the lack of posts.  I don't have the energy to get dressed in the morning sometimes, let alone, take care of Munchkin, keep the house up, and write on this thingy.  So posts might me a little sparse until I get out of this tired stage. 

Speaking of the tired stage.  I have had people tell me, "Oh, well you're tired now but you'll feel better after the 1st trimester."  Like I haven't had a baby before.  Almost as if the 2nd trimester is this magical cure for everything that ails you.  Unfortunately, for myself,  it's not.  My tiredness and morning/afternoon/evening sickness last until about the 5th month.  Ugg....come on!  Lets get this show on the road.

We have our first doc appointment on Friday.  The first one is always exciting because our doc gives us a sonogram to check out the baby.  So we're going to get to see "Coconut" soon!  Always makes it sink in to it's fullest when you actually see the heart beating, little legs and arms moving around.  It's awesome. 

And just for good measure, to remind myself of just how big I got, and to show you all:

Can't you see the thrill on my face!

FINALLY! GEEZ!

I have finally finished Munchkins curtains.  They were old curtains from our living room in the house we used to live in in Oklahoma.  I decided he needed some curtains in his room because the sun BLARES into his room in the mornings till about noon.  It's like a flood light from 6am till 12pm.  The curtains were a little too short so I added a brown runner on the bottom.  I hung them up but they were too thin.  The sun still blasted that room.  So I took some more of the brown that I had and sewed a panel to the back of the curtains.  Not complicated really.  Not super time consuming.  Assuming you don't have a Munchkin running around and you're not so friggin tired from being pregnant (yep I'm preggers again) that you do 10 minutes of work and you need a 30 minute break.  Since I did have those two things going for me they literally took months for me to finish.  I would pin the fabric, and Munchkin would want to come over and play with the pins.  Or I'd start sewing with the sewing machine and he would mess with my foot pedal, climb on me or bang his head on something to get my attention...or just on accident.  I'm still convinced he bumps his head for the attention.  Anyways, so the stupid sewing machine has been sitting on my kitchen table for a VERY long time.  VERY LONG TIME.  I wouldn't allow myself to put it away until I finished the curtains.  So we haven't had a meal at the kitchen table for that amount of time.  And so it turned into the dumping ground for anything I didn't have the energy to put away.  But today, despite my fatigued body waking me up, and the very whiny all day Munchkin, I finished the damn things.  Yea I cussed at them.  And my husband ended up not having to work tonight so he got home just in time to hang the curtain rod!!  And finally that project is finished.  But of course now...I'm pregnant and there are 1000 things to do before "Coconut" comes into our lives...at least on the outside.  We have a guest bedroom which I will be converting to "Coconuts" room.  No more guests here!  Well I'm sure we'll have guests but we are no longer a pseudo hotel.  We are full on family now!!

Here a look at my handy work!  I'm sure I will post more projects in the future seeing as though when I'm pregnant I come up with a list a mile long of things I want to get done before baby gets here and magically they all get done.  Usually in about a week when the stars align, Munchkin is happy and I have energy.  Oh I long for the day.....week.