new talent

"i better taste this to make sure you made it right mommy."

"i want that one right there."

51% of the time

alan is in rare form today. here is from a random conversation:

alan: i just learned that there are more girls than boys.

me: yeah, i think like 51%. where did you hear that?

alan: i just learned it from myself.

me: did it just pop into your brain or did you hear it somewhere?

alan: i heard it. why do boys want to become girls? then there are just more girls. a boy wants to be a girl and then there goes another girl. and then there goes another girl. they just want to become girls and then there are more girls.

me: um, yeah. why don't you, uh.....

alan: play on the playstation 2?

me. um, yeah.

alan: ok. so now you don't have to take care of me. i'll just take care of myself.

me: i love you.

seriously, i think i should be voted mother of the year. where is ted when i need him?

bathtism

i thought it was important to share one of our family's best moments. i had a hard time holding the camera steady and you can hear maya in the background protesting being held. but all imperfections aside, we were so proud of alan for making this decision for his life.

alan speak

i just asked alan if he had cleaned his room. his response? "if you go in there it won't look like I had a war at all."

my favoritist day

my mom was out of town on monday so i got to take the day off work and stay home with maya and be home when alan got home from school. maya and i had a pretty good time cleaning out the fridge (me cleaning and her taking the cheese and tofu out and throwing it at me over and over again.) and running errands. i finally let her take a nap in the afternoon and then i accidently woke her up and decided to just get her up again so i could play with her some more. I didn't want to miss anytime with her. then alan came home and kept telling me that i was "good" and "cool" because I had bought a wading pool, i had cucumbers and ranch dip for a snack and we were going to make oatmeal raisen cookies.

to top it off, Ted barbecued chicken and we ate corn on the cob outside on our deck. i love this time of year!

this morning when I told Alan I would be at work again and not home when he got home from school he said "dang it. I wanted to see you again." I almost felt as sappy as a kodak commercial and I was definately as happy as the little girl staying in Cinderella's castle. i love that kid.

this is the part where someone reminds me that if I did this everyday, I might not appreciate it so much. then maybe I won't feel so guilty and sad about having to work full time.

chaos, crisis and can somebody help me please!

ted had worship practice, so i was flying solo on taking alan and maya to alan's baseball game. going to baseball games with maya is not the easiest task in the world. she is at a delightful age where everything is a game and she relies on her cuteness to get her out of trouble. well, cuteness or screaming, usually the latter after the cuteness fails to charm me (a very hard task). so anyway, i'm chasing maya around the ballfield trying to make sure she doesn't spend too much time talking to weird people, trying to watch my stuff so it doesn't get stolen and trying to watch alan play baseball (why are we here again? oh yeah, to watch alan.) I grabbed maya one last time off the field and turned around and my son is standing on 2nd base with the ball in his glove and some sad sack from the other team is walking off the field from 2nd base. wooohooooo alan! apparently he made the game winning play! the coach gave him a "player of the game award" and I almost started crying i was so proud.

once we got home, i remembered that maya had a diaper rash and i thought she might need some naked time to air stuff out. so i stripped her and she proceeded to dance and sing naked around the house. something about being naked makes that girl very happy. i was trying to watch her for signs of going potty while doing other stuff one must do when they have two kids a husband and a house (don't ask me what because I'm not even sure). i had turned on some music for her to dance to and i looked over at her at one point and she was rolling around on the floor and then she was, um....pooping. right on the carpet. she kind of freaked out, and looked at me like "mommy there is nothing to catch my poooooooooop!" in my genius, quick thinking mode, i picked her up and put her on the toilet (hey, why not start right that minute?). she didn't like that very much.

so while, i'm putting her in a diaper, two of my friends show up and alan opens the door for them and says "you can't walk on the carpet." they ask why and he says "because maya pooped on it." oh. my. goodness.

luckily it was easily cleaned up and they didn't mind much.....until they stepped in pee on the way out the door.

also luckily one of my new goals is to go with the flow a little better and not be so anxious and uptight about everything. so i just told myself "no big deal" and moved on.
are you impressed? because i'm impressed with myself. poop on the floor, friends coming over, crazy children....life is good.

baby soft buns

yeah for fuzzibuns! and my friend beth who is lending me some! my goal right now is to go green. not superpsycho green, but as green as i can while still maintaining sanity. so, my next step after starting to use my recycling tubs is to try some cloth diapers. we'll see how they go and we'll see how my mom does with them during the day. wish maya a happy tushy!

our tuesday

4:55 p.m. at work on tuesday and i received a less than nice email. well, a nasty email to be exact. unfortunately, i've gotten used to them lately from this specific client and it's forcing me to learn the fine art of not taking things personally. so i read the two choice words that start with f and end in u and were so eloquently attached to my name and i smiled, shut down my computer, grabbed my stuff and walked out the door. i thought to myself that life is just too damn short to let my day be ruined by someone like her or something as nasty as that. so when i got home i told alan and ted that we were going to go out to celebrate. i didn't have an answer for what exactly we would be celebrating, but i didn't care.

ted celebrated that he has great ideas.
alan celebrated that he is doing good in school.
alan told me that i should celebrate being a good mom. we all agreed but then decided that i could decide what i celebrated.
i celebrated that i've been swimming regularly and that it has improved my life.
and we all decided to celebrate that maya was over the "disease" (decided as she shoved food into her mouth)

it was a good time. and a nice change of pace for a tuesday night.

what can you celebrate?

just keep swimming

so i've been swimming lately. i go with sarah on my lunch hour and i love it. she wrote a cool post about water and swimming on her blog http://onewholaughs.wordpress.com/ (November 20 "and it feels like flying") when she started swimming. i'm not that cool, but i will say that i smell like chlorine constantly, my hair is probably turning green as we speak, i spend half of every day with wet hair and sometimes i can't hear because there is water in my ear, but it's so worth it! woohoo!!

it is hard to get used to doing an excercise regime where I can't breathe for half the time i'm working out. sometimes i have a small panic attack when my face is in the water about not being able to breathe but then it's time to suck some air in again and the feeling goes away until i stick my face back in the water. it motivates me to swim faster so I can breathe more often, but then i breathe harder and freak out more often.

yeah. i'm hoping to get over that soon. i'm also hoping to get over my fear of naked old ladies.

i'm pretty convinced that the some people get off on the whole "locker room" experience. come on! don't you know that eve ate the apple and we are suppossed to be embarrassed and ashamed to be naked???? some people must not read the old testament part of their Bible. i just don't think it's too much to ask to change into your clothes before you brush your hair or wring out your swimsuit. am i wrong, or isn't that a little weird for everyone involved?

i know for sure these other women in the locker room read the new testament because they already know exactly what's going to happen when the world ends. i almost told them that i believe that Christians will NOT be raptured before the tribulation (gasp!) when i remembered that God is about love and not about being a smart ass.

i need to remember that way more often. (big sigh).

attack of the coxsackie virus or how the hand, foot, and mouth disease changed my view of life

ok, so some of it is chocolate milk...but that was because i made a desperate attempt to get her to drink something.

she's a trooper. a crabby trooper, but a trooper nonetheless.

and my mom is a trooper.

i am not a trooper. i am a victim of this cruel, cruel world; which causes my child to spit out orange disgusting medicine all over me while screaming in pain as i try to force it down her throat because it's good for her

oh the joy.

i can only imagine God. "um, marie. remember the times i knew what was good for you and you screamed in pain and spit it out?"

dang it! why does he always have to be right?

ted gave me the task of trying to see God on everything and seeing God in everything is unavoidable when you start looking. i think our world was designed to bring us closer to God and in doing that we learn more about him, about who he is and who he created us to be.

marriage and parenting have been the two greatest things that have helped me understand God more intimately. i think that's why he designed them and why he designed them the way he did.

once again, i was thinking that somethings were about me.

i thought being a mom would be all fluffy clouds, gushy feelings, cuddles and kisses (well, not completely. but you know, most of the time). but there is way more dirt, grime, blisters, chocolate milk and orange medicine everywhere than I expected. it is one of the hardest things i have ever had to do. the expectations are hugousmongous, the information is exorbitant and the emotions are o-ver-whelm-ing. overwhelming. but it is also the most rewarding experiences.

i'm pretty sure God feels similarly about us. we are difficult but he loves us so much and wants the best for us always. even if we are screaming and crying and trying to spit it out and he has to try and shove it down our throats. (that is not generally the picture i like to have or give of God; but i think he does everything he can to reach us and draw us closer to him).

and when my kids are hurting and they need me to hug them, comfort them and love them (despite the fact that my new shirt now has a huge orange stain and alan is almost too big to fit in my lap), you couldn't pay me to be anywhere else, doing anything else.

we were created to learn how to sacrifice. to learn how to give up ourselves completely and give it to others. selflessness goes against human nature, so God created ways that we would be forced to practice it.

he's good. a little tricky. but good.

so, the coxsackie virus sucks and maybe i'm overspiritualizing, but i guess i can see God in it somewhere.

laughter is the best medicine

the lament of alan

i've been a little blogged out lately. don't worry it's not because of anything you've done. and there is never a shortage of inspiration for things to write about, just no time and energy to do it.

maya and alan have been up to their usual tricks lately. alan was drawing one morning and said to me "why would I do anything else, if I can draw?" or something like that. but of course, today, life is going to end because he's "boooooooooored out of his mind with nothing to do." i say "i thought drawing was supremo" and he just says "mom, you make me want to scream-o."

toys

after church today i took alan and maya to rotary park. we think that park is pretty cool. they have these really crazy, space age-y toys that are unlike any other toys i've seen at a park. there were a bunch of other kids there and alan and maya were having fun romping around on all the toys (maya mostly threw bark at the toys and yelled things like "a-lan" and "yeah"). at one point i took maya over to the slide and this girl who looked about 6 years old said to me "this isn't very safe for babies." i wanted to say "um, thank you. the next time i have a parenting question, i'll know who to call." instead i just said "yes, if they don't have their mommies with them." and...."so, where is your mommy, oh wise one?" geez, i am just a little too sensitive.

our next adventure was with one of the dad's standing around. he seemed to think that while i was chasing an active toddler it was a good time for him to make conversation with me about how brilliant his son is. i'm always suspicious of older (than me) men who like to randomly make conversation (it probably has somethign to do with "perv patrol" when i was a kid...but that is a story for another post.) anyway, he kept telling me about how his son's nervous habits and learning problems are now miraculously gone after switching schools while i kept trying to keep an eye on maya and make sure none of the flying bark ended up in her mouth or up her nose. somehow i don't do a good job of giving off the "i really didn't come to this park to talk about your kid" vibe so I'll have to work on that. he kept talking and talking and then luckily i suddenly had a life or death situation with maya (she was standing around looking bored) and i had a good excuse to walk away. i began to question if his kids really were his because when he tried to talk to them they ignored him.

so about 20 minutes later and from the other side of the playground i turned around and a bunch of the kids had left including alan. i started scanning the park for him but i couldn't find him. and then i heard this girl tell her mom that she wanted to go play in the picnic shelter. i turned and looked and there were all the missing kids, including alan. they had arranged the tables so that she could run in a circle on the tops of them. go figure. brand spanking new toys unlike anything else in wenatchee and they play with the stuff you can find anywhere and that wasn't even designed to be a toy. i had to rip alan away from their fun game when it was time to go home. i told him he can come back to our house and play wtih the broken toys he fishes out of the garbage...instead of the awesome, new, state of the art toys we paid a million dollars for that he got for Christmas.

talking

we think maya is talking pretty regularly now. we don't understand her most of the time, but i still think there are words forming. i swear she said "what's that?" one day. but it sounded more like "wa-sssss?" and then she definately says grandma, mama, dada, alan, all done, kitty and yeah. whenever we say something at alan...like "alan it's time to get ready to go" she'll walk around yelling"a-lan, a-lan." and then i taught her how to say please in sign language in one day. my mom and i have been using sign language for just a few things since she was about six months old, but we have never been really consistent or thorough. so one day i wouldn't give her anything until she signed please (touching your right hand to your upper chest in a circular motion...as far as i know) and now she does it all the time. actually her process goes something like this. "uh, uh... [clap, clap, point]...uh..[pat her chest once]...[clap]....point]...uuuuuuhhhhhh." it kind of appears that she's saying "mommy, take me outside now. please." she's pretty persistant. she also knows how to throw things in the garbage. she crawls around the kitchen floor until she finds things and then walks over and puts them in the garbage can. she's brilliant.

quotes

ok, so my best friend misty has a webpage and she puts up quotes from her two daughters when they say something cute and/or hilarious. i told her that it was a brilliant idea and i'm stealing it. i have always wanted to write down the crazy things that alan says, but i never remember to. plus, i just know i'll start a notebook and then forget about it and someday when i need a peice of paper i will find it and use it for something else and wonder what to do with the one quote i've written down.

anyway, today's funny quote comes courtesy of alan:

"mike, you shouldn't lose weight because then you won't be soft and squishy like a pillow."

TORRO!

apparently maya is also part bull. the girl is silly, we never know what she will do next.

maya loves to eat....

...everything but peanuts and peanut butter. it's official, our house and grandma and mike's house is peanut and nut free. we did a scratch test and she is certifiably allergic. maya is thrilled she is not allergic to bananas. that would be a sad day around here.

her dad says "it's a sad day we don't get nuts around here."

I say "we get nuts most days."

Alan says "probably we are too nutty. probably our family doesn't need any more nuts. we have mike."

the evil peanut butter episode

"some babies can eat peanut butter at 10 months and be fine, other babies can eat peanut butter at 18 months and develop an allergy." so said our pediatrician, Dr. Milnes.

after showing up at the emergency room with maya and her puffy eyes, hands and lips the nurse says "oh peanuts, you aren't suppossed to give those to kids until after they are two years old." Um, excuse me...next time I have a parenting question I will have to call you.

so, apparently maya may have a peanut allergy. and that sucks.

the whole ordeal did not do anything for my panic mom disorder. i told my mom that i didn't want to try peanut butter until i was ready to take her to the emergency room if needed. so yesterday on my lunch hour, it seemed as good a time as any. my mom gave her a piece of bread with a light spread of peanut butter. maya promptly held the bread up to her face and tried to lick off the peanut butter. (why eat the bread if you already know what it tastes like...it's much more efficient to lick the new thing). so after a couple minutes of smearing it all over her face and not getting much in her mouth (most of the time what goes in comes right back out to be inspected...she likes to view her food in all stages of digestion) i take a look at her to wipe her off and she has huge welts all around her lips. then they are on her hands. and then she starts rubbing them into her eyes. and then i am internally freaking out and externally saying things like "mom, do you think her mouth looks different?" "what is on her hands?"

you have to remember that i have been diagnosed with panic mom syndrome (or PMS)...where everything seems to be a potential tradgedy...and I mean everything. she can poke her eye out with the pig tail from the animal farm she got for Christmas, or she can choke on the socks she likes to carry around, or she may stop breathing in the middle of the night for no reason, or she may get a concussion by hitting herself in the head with her toy phone. it's neverending and it makes it really hard to tell when something is serious or silly. most of my worries are silly. so i tend to think all of them are. because i am an all or nothing thinker....but that is a whole other post for a whole other day.

so anyway, my panic mom syndrome kicks in and i immediately want to call 911, but i try to be rational (which does not blend with PMS) and i call her pediatrician first. and i am put on hold for about 13 and one half hours because "all the lines are busy." which is, again, not helpful for PMS. then finally someone puts me through to our nurse whose voice mail comes on. COME ON!! so I calmly press "0" because that is more rational than screaming into the phone and throwing it through a window. but then i start thinking things like "why didn't i do this on my cell phone so i could be halfway to the ER by now. what possessed me to use a land line phone when i never use land lines? how am i going to hold this phone to my ear while on hold and corral maya and get her coat and hat on because it is about -13 degrees outside?" so i finally get a nurse on the phone who tells me to take maya to the ER. well, duh! i wasted all my time being rational.

i love going to the ER when you have a true emergency. i've been there before when i thought i broke my toe. i waited four hours and the doctor told me that there was nothing he could do. it was a fantabulous experience. so this time, i say "PEANUT. REACTION" and I sure do get one. i get miss know-it-all-nurse to check maya's "vitals" and another lady to check us in. except everyone seems to be moving in slow motion. I tried saying it a few more times..."PEANUT. REACTION." but they don't move any faster. apparently they think it's important to talk to maya and ask her what happened and get all of her "vitals" before they will let us in the er and give us something that will make the pink, puffy, rashy-thing stop.

what are "vitals" anyways? i could have told them what her vitals were..."temp fine, breathing fine, pulse fine. the only thing NOT fine is that she ate peanut butter for the first time and now she is pink and puffy and itchy and uncomfortable....so do something to help her NOW." not to mention, everytime they come at maya with a stethescope or a pulse reader thingy she screams and squirms out of my grip. the real clincher was the butt thermometer. i felt violated right along with her. by the time we finally saw the doctor she was giving everyone the pink, puffy, evil eye.

they didn't have a room for us so they sat us on a bed in the hallway. we looked right into a room where an old lady was laying. the er is full of old people. old people and a pink puffy naked maya. they did let us keep her in a diaper and her pink booties. needless to say, we were popular with nurses and old ladies alike.

we were finally sent home after some benadryl and monitoring and then as soon as we got home, she breaks out into a huge rash all over her body...so back in the car and back to the ER. I wasn't even messing around with a phone or rational-ness anymore.

this time we waited in the lobby and they treated her out there because she decided that she would rather run around the hospital half naked than sit in a boring room. she got a steriod, and luckily it was a liquid, so we got to try and squirt it into her mouth while she writhed out of the grip of three people. it was lots of fun.

then the doctor tells us that she needs to sleep in the same room with us for the night and that we can't let her out of our sight. we need to make sure she keeps breathing. great. as if i am not already on the verge of tears and in panic mom mode, i now will lay awake all night wondering if my daughter is breathing.

these instructions proved very difficult because apparently Dr. ER hasn't lived with maya. it is really hard to tell if she is struggling to breathe in between moving the furniture, running laps around the kitchen, and making loud announcements at anyone who will listen.

i woke her up several times last night trying to check her breathing. and this morning she's fine, no more pink puffy rashy maya.

i think i will recover eventually, hopefully. maybe. but probably not.

christmas 2007

I have to say that Christmas at our house was C-R-A-Z-Y this year. However, I did have a gi-normous better time than last year considering that last year I had just given birth through a hole in my stomach to a squirmy, loud, teeny-tiny baby who occupied my space and time 24/7. SO, needless to say, Christmas this year was fantabulous. (I am really enjoying conjuctive adjectives at the moment).

As evidenced by the picture above, our family minus the mom, recieved guitars from the Christmas Clown (aka Santa Claus). After much resistance, I did inherit Ted's old guitar. Apparently it's kind of like giving up a child when you get a gargantuanlly nice, expensive, brand stinking new guitar from your loving, thoughtful, sneaky wife and you are asked to give your old, smelly, well worn, throw around guitar to said wife. So, after a little lesson in "my wife is always right" I was "given" the stinkin guitar and I got my 2nd guitar lesson. I now know two chords...E minor and another one whose name I forgot. You can say you knew me when...

So other than the guitars, there were no other major surprises. I got an i-tunes card to load music on Ted's i-pod...how nice of him. But actually, it has been fun to browse music and discover old and new loves. And now I have a good excuse to steal his I-pod!

Maya didn't enjoy ripping into wrapping paper as much as I had hoped. I think we spent too much time discouraging her from carrying around the presents under the tree so that when we shoved them at her and tried to help her rip into them, she would politely pull her hand away and look at us with a look that said "I would never touch something I wasn't suppossed to." In the next minute we would be chasing her down (that girl can run!) into the next room while she holds the digital camera in her greedy little hands, shrieking and waving it around like it was a prize earned for being so cute. She is pretty darn cute...but we still say things like "Camera's are not for babies Maya. Maya give that to mommy. Maya! Maya do not put the camera in your mouth. Maya! Maya! [clap, clap] Maya! Come to Mama. Maya. Come. To. Mama. Give me the camera. Ted get the camera from her. Ted. Ted. Get the camera. Maya. Don't take a picture of mama. Mama said no. Maya."

Ok, so that was exagerrated exponentially. But still...as you can tell, she knows her own name, I speak in the third person constantly and poor Alan is dying for a little attention thrown his way. In the middle of the whole above conversation would be Alan talking to someone, anyone who might listen "Probably she wants to take a picture. I think she's hungry. Mom, mom what if Maya took a picture and then an alien came down and sat on the camera and then a little spaceship grew out of the camera and then when she pressed the button this guy came out and said 'i am an alien.' and then he jumped off and he decided to climb up the tree and then, mom...mom...and then the alien would be in the tree and he could yell 'merry christmas' and then he would slide down the tree and jump onto all the presents and then we would give him the left over cookies and milk but he got sick and threw up on my shoes and you had to buy me some new ones. mom....wouldn't that be funny mom. Mom. are you listening to me. mom."

poor kid, he is stuck with me and my maniac-like behavior and his dad and his distracted mind and Maya and her freakishly fast little legs. He has the best imagination though and we are so thankful for that.

So, Christmas was a little crazy. But we had fun.