What happened in September

I have always enjoyed fall. Everything gets so crisp and clean-feeling, the bugs start to die, and it's cool enough to be outside walking around in the middle of the day instead of melting on the sidewalk. Hey, I love hot weather, but not if I have to actually do anything. I hate the prospect of winter, but this year I'm trying my hardest not to borrow trouble. If winter makes me grouchy this year (I say "if" like it might not happen), okay, but I'm not going to make it worse by dreading it.

And fall in Utah is a hundred times better than fall in Wisconsin. It's still warm enough not to have to dress like a Yeti just to take a walk. It doesn't take half an hour for the car to warm up in the morning. And the sun! Sun! All the time! Just looking out the window makes me happy.

Today we went out to the playground to meet a friend for lunch. There was another lady there with her kids, and she seemed nice. Almost two years here, and I still get giddy thinking about how awesome it is to walk out my back door to have lunch with a friend at a playground within walking distance. At how easy it is for my awkward self to strike up conversations with complete strangers. In fact, I think sometimes I scare them with friendliness. Such a difference from the person I was two years ago.

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We have had quite the month. Several weeks ago, I wiped out on the treadmill at the gym in front of everybody in the world. It hurt, but not too bad, so I kept going. The adrenaline kick got me up to 3.5 miles for the first time ever. Then I got off the treadmill, and the pain started. I'd burned off the skin in three spots on my knee. It's still healing. I will have a sweet scar.

On the 15th, Grace got some kind of stomach horror and lay on the couch moaning for two days. She was truly miserable, but I'm not very nurturing, which makes me the worst mother to have while sick. Sorry, kids. I try.

On the 22nd, we had Grace's birthday party. She shared it with her friend who was born the day after her. I've never done a birthday party for one of my kids before. Just the idea of planning and executing something like that for a bunch of toddlers and preschools made me spontaneously break into hives. But we kept it really small, and it was at my friend's house, and she did all the planning, so basically I just had to show up with a cake and some balloons.

I failed on the balloons, though, because there is a worldwide helium shortage. Seriously. I'd heard that earlier this year, but thought that the person who told me had gotten her facts confused and muddled (I do this all the time, so I just assume other people do, too). But no. It's a real thing. Helium shortage. No more helium. I know.

But here's the cake:


It's really nice to have a friend as warped as I am who also has a kid the same age as mine.
Her son specifically asked for a blue T-rex cake for his birthday, and Grace is all about princesses. But she's also all about mayhem and destruction, so this seemed like a good idea. I think the cake lady thought we were crazy. A friend asked on Facebook if any of the little girls at the party were upset. Hahahah! Preschoolers are a bloodthirsty bunch. I don't care how cute they look. You can fight it or deny, but it's way more fun to just work with it.

The party was fun, but that night I went home and got really sick, too. So that was not awesome. Oddly enough, I only threw up once (violently, though), and then had this irresistible craving or spaghetti with the cheap, cheap tomato sauce you get in jars. This continued for two days. I am not pregnant. There is no explanation other than perhaps one of the many things that have gone wrong in my brain.

The week after that (Grace's actual birthday weekend), our church had a retreat up in Provo canyon, quite possibly one of the most lovely places on Earth. I, of course, forgot my Ambien. The rooms we stayed in had these horrible heaters. There was a thermostat, but I'm pretty sure it was just for show because our choices were (a) Arctic wasteland or (b) Surface of the sun. I spent all night the first night stuck to the ceiling by my fingernails chittering at anything that moved. Ambien withdrawal is super fun.

The next day was still really fun. I'd stumble around every once in a while and groan about braaaaiiins, but mostly it was good. And the next night was much better. Sunday, the girls cried half the way home because they'd had such a fantastic time, and then--drumroll please--THEY BOTH SLEPT IN THE CAR. You have no idea. This has not happened to either of them since they were six months old. It was magical.

Grace is now telling everyone every day that it is her birthday. Packages began trickling in the week after her birthday party, then my friend made a cake for the kids on the retreat, and then she got some more packages that week. We need some birthday detox up in here. She threw a fit at school because a little boy had a birthday and she didn't. OHMYGOSH.

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Speaking of preschool--and this, more than anything else this month, is the reason I've hardly been here--, Grace is loving it.

The other night I had a nightmare that both kids were in school and had to be there by 8 in the morning, and it was, like 7:55. When I woke up, I thought, "Oh, thank goodness! There's no way I could do that!" and then realized that yes, someday I will have to get both kids dressed, fed, clean, and out the door by some unholy hour starting with a number smaller than 8.

Baby steps.

Before Grace's preschool started, I started making my gym appointments earlier and earlier in the morning, gradually moving from 10:30 all the way to 9:00.

I know you people are mocking me, but I have been pretty hard to wake in the morning for as long as I can remember, and the Ambien has only made it worse. I take half a pill around 10:30 (any earlier, and I can't go to sleep at all). It's supposed to wear off very quickly, but it makes me extremely groggy in the mornings. I have to climb out of a pool of Jello just to get myself to the point where I can handle human speech (it was only slightly better before I started taking heavy duty drugs).

If I don't take something for sleep, I'm a monster all of the time, so, you know, it's a good trade. Unisom was even worse. Half a Unisom would probably not help me sleep, but it would make me useless for the next 15 hours. It's ridiculous.

The change in routine is what has made everything explode in my brain, though. When we first moved here, it was really hard for me to keep up with housework and the care of children and having a real social life. Then I figured out routines, and it was all good. I now do an okay job of keeping the house pretty neat, and the kids are relatively happy and well-cared-for. Now preschool has happened, and I am learning all over again. You'd think it would be easier, with me getting going earlier in the morning, and having only the one child, but no. We're talking about me, which means I'll have a handle on it by December. Just in time for Christmas break. Hopefully you will hear from me again before then.

If not, please know that life is good, and we are happy and healthy. But my brain can only do so much.

Disaster

I caught Emmy climbing INTO her crib yesterday. Yes. INTO. From the floor. Not from a chair or a dresser or her sister's inert body. From the floor. She was perched on the top rail, one fat foot wedged in between two slats, and one making the final push to get over. I discovered her in this position. She was so proud. It reminded me of the Day of the Swan Dive

She may have had a slightly unfortunately landing, quite possibly by my hand.

We don't like Ideas in this house. Ideas are the seed of anarchy.

Her tiny brain has not yet made the connection between getting IN and getting OUT, but I fear it is only a matter of time.

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I had a need for Costco hot dogs on Saturday. Mmm, Costco hot dogs...

Shut up. You have a terrible food you love, too.

Anyway, as I was saying, I had a NEED. We were driving on our way to fulfill that need (I also had a shopping list to legitimize this craving-fulfillment trip), when all of a sudden there was a mattress flying through the air at our van.

Jeremy swerved, I thought we'd missed it, and then sprsssshhh! (or however you think the textual representation of exploding glass should look) from the backseat. It was like in the movies, when everything slows down. I turned around right away, but in my head it was all slow motion and distorted yells, because I was sure I would see The Child completely covered in blood, possibly missing an eye.

Well, she was screaming and covered in glass, but otherwise okay. I got her out of there and took off her shirt and shook it out just as the guy who lived in the house we'd stopped in front of poked his head out the front door and gave us a strange look like, "Utahns and their weird kid habits." Whatever. Anyway, I got her all brushed off (not even the ittiest, bittiest scratch on her) and picked the worst of the glass out of her booster and the back of the van.

With my hands wrapped in grocery bags, I still managed to get a cut and a few tiny shards embedded in my face, so I consider it a miracle that she was completely fine after glass came flying through the window at her head.

All for a stupid hot dog. But they're delicious and satisfying. I think it's probably the nitrates.

Grace thinks that the broken window is the coolest thing ever to happen in the history of her short life, and alternates between milking it for all it's worth ("It was scary Mommy, can I have a cookie?") and reenacting it for anyone who looks at her for more than four seconds ("And the window went sprsssshhh! and I was like, 'Aaaugh!' and then I cried, and Mommy got me out, but I was a trooper, and then we had a hot dog at Costco.").

It's getting super annoying. Cute to everyone else, but sometimes I miss the days when she had the memory of a goldfish. Alas.

Rar

I have been STUCK at 150 for months now. MONTHS. I always say I don't get hung up on the numbers, especially when I can see by the gaps in my pants that I'm getting leaner (I am now wearing the belt I had before I was pregnant with Grace, the belt I wore when I was 140/145). But that number, oh, it was beginning to taunt me. So I made myself a strict rule: no snacking WHATSOEVER after dinner. Sometimes we eat pretty early, so that's kind of hard for me. But I did it for four days, and what do you know? 149.

I will probably go back to light snacking after dinner because I have a tendency to get hangry. I go from me to slavering wolverine in about five minutes. It's quite the metamorphosis.

Or, thanks to the Ambien, I sometimes find myself in the dark kitchen in the middle of the night chowing down on some cheese or an apple. It's very disconcerting. Actually, I did that pre-Ambien, too (mostly in college, for whatever reason), just not as frequently.

And now all of you have this terribly attractive image of a Naomi Wolverine tearing through a refrigerator. You're welcome.

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My children have been very fragile lately. Grace especially. Everything makes her cry. It's like a preview of Life with Teenage Girls. "Whoops, I forgot my library card, guys; we'll come back later." WAAAAAH! "Oops, you got a tiny drop of water on your shirt." WAAAAAH! "Hey guys, it's time to go to the gym. Have fun!" WAAAAAH! "Hi babies, did you have fun at the gym? It's time go home!" WAAAAAH!

Seriously. I don't know what to do with this child. Do I hug her all day to make her feel more secure? Do I walk away every time she pulls this so she knows it's not okay to wail instead of using words? Do I make her sleep on a bed of raw steak and nails to make her tougher?

This child has been verbal since, like ten months (yeah, I know the age gets shorter every time I talk about it). She has been able to express herself with ease for at least a year. So why am I shouting "USE YOUR WORDS OH MY GOSH PLEASE JUST USE WORDS I CAN'T HANDLE THAT SOUND YOU'RE MAKING WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT!" at least ten times a day?

And yes, smart alecks, I know that shouting at your kids teaches them the OPPOSITE ("CALM DOWN! WHY WILL YOU NOT CALM DOWN! STOP SHRIEKING!"), but sometimes the wolverine just busts through.

It's not always like this. Grace, out of nowhere this morning, as I'm bumbling around the kitchen in my half-alive state, trying to make us breakfast: "Mommy, I love you SO MUCH." Emmy, while yanking my hair out by the roots at bedtime: "I like your pretty red hair!"

Those moments are very sustaining, but I'm looking forward to having my children back any day now. They will come back, right? This has been a very long low phase for them, and I'm kind of sick of it.

Attitude

I love how my kids think they know better than I do. I expect this when they're teenagers, but no one ever told me that toddlers and preschoolers were just teenagers with less muscle.

We went to the playground today, which was a bit of a fight anyway. This is a newly developed area, so we don't have shade, and the sun up here in the mountains is like laser beams. The slides are always on fire, and someone always she feels the need to test my assertion that she'll burn her tender thigh skin if she goes down that slide, don't go down that slide, okay, then I will let you see for yourself. Again. Don't even expect me to comfort you.

Where was I?

Yes. Playground. The other great thing about this playground is that it's built in a depression in a low field that is next to a marsh (a marsh in Utah? why yes, it is possible, and even though it's the one thing we were most looking forward to about moving away from Jefferson, WI, we still managed to move right next to one without knowing about it until it was too late). So if it even thinks about raining, or if the sprinklers on the field are pointed the wrong way, we have playground soup.

It rained for five seconds this morning. So we got there today ("Check the slides first! No, check them! With your HAND!"), and half the playground was covered in water. Grace went running ahead as always and started picking up handfuls of dry wood chips to try to cover it over. This works sometimes, when there's a tiny puddle at the bottom of a slide. But this was more like 20 puddles merged into one huge one under the entire play structure. We probably could have gone fishing if we'd wanted.

"You won't get very far throwing wood chips in the water, Grace." She just turned to look at me like, "Oh? Watch me."

Emmy trotted up to help, and together they threw enough dry wood chips into the water to do absolutely nothing. Grace gave up a few minutes later and came over to play by me at the pavilion. Emmy soldiered on dutifully, trucking great handfuls of wood chips to the puddle.

"Don't go in the water!" I yelled. I know that my children hate nothing more than wet clothes and wet shoes, but they always forget this. It's amazing that I remember these things better than they do, even though I'm the one who loses her keys daily.

And what do you know? Fifteen seconds later, Emmy erupted in shrieks and protestations about her wet shoes and butt. She trudged over, emitting that horrible noise toddlers make when they're miserable but not actually in pain, something between a groan and a whine and a scream, like a cow in labor, or at least what I imagine a cow in labor sounds like. The whole way over, she glared at me like it was somehow my fault. She continued glaring at me as she plopped down on the ground in front of me, mumbling, "Take off da shoes. Got to take off da shoes."

Then I warned them about hitting their heads while crawling under the picnic tables. This is also a warning that must be tested. I never actually forbid them from doing these things. I'm still under the delusion that one day they will learn from experience. But I'm pretty sure Emmy is too brain-damaged from learning to crawl too young, and Grace's I'll-prove-you-wrong reflex gets stronger every day, so I really don't know what I'm thinking.

Not five seconds later, Emmy conked her head on the bottom of the picnic table, and just gave up. She rolled up onto the bench next to her and lay down, sobbing. I came over to comfort her, but it was hard not to laugh in her face. She shot some more accusatory glares at me, but let me pick her up and carry her around for a minute.

We went home after that, and now they are sleeping about as soundly as they ever do, so I guess all that physical and emotional trauma is good for wearing them out.

Mmmm.

I make myself a shake every morning for breakfast. Yogurt, protein powder, spinach, banana, cocoa powder, and berries. It's better than it sounds, and I actually stay not starving until lunch, which is a small miracle.

So I go through a lot of berries. Lots and lots and lots of berries. And it's friggin expensive. Fresh berries cost dollars per ounce, and even frozen berries are pretty expensive at most stores (if you go through a half a cup a day). So I found these at Costco for, like, nothing, and because I'm so excited about how cheap they are, I choose not to question their origin. Which is probably why I never really looked at the packaging:



Nature's Three Berries. Tell me, does this sound both inaccurate and a little defensive?

Aren't there more than three berries that occur in nature? Avocados are berries. So are grapes, persimmons, tomatoes, strawberries, and about a thousand other things. Or are these Nature's very favorite berries, like Nature gave birth to hundreds of different kinds of berries and these are her three special children.

I feel like "nature" should really be in quotes. Perhaps these berries are really hatched in the bowels of some alien spacecraft, aliens whose only demands are tribute in the form of unwanted Costco employees. I bet Scully is running around a Kirkland factory right now, freeing all the no-shows and pot smokers.

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I also just found this picture on my photobucket account. This is what Emmy does with her sandwiches when she feels that simply not eating them is not protest enough:



I swear I did not teach her this.

No Mojo

I am writing an entry just to make myself write. I feel like I've lost my mojo in the last couple months, and I can't get it back. Maybe I spend too much of it writing what I think are hilarious Facebook status updates, and then when I come here, there's nothing left.

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I am doing Cough to 5k (COUCH. I meant COUCH.). I'm repeating pretty much every week. My body is so unfamiliar with the impact of running that my shin bones are curling up into themselves and shrieking after every run. It's okay. I've had them checked out. They are not injured, just really, really pansified.

However! The week I started running, swimming got a hundred times easier. I was stuck at 2000 yards for a long time, and now I'm up to 2500-2700. Woo!

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Jeremy will be gone again soon. It's been a while, so I don't mind. Also, the weather is good, I'm not fighting off seasonal affective disorder (or whatever happens to me every year between November and February), and the kids are to the age where they aren't horrible at least 50% of the time. But I still need a project, or something to do. The hottest parts of the day are HOT here, and we don't have shade. I think we will be spending a lot of time in the apartment pool.

I think I'm going to pretend we're moving soon (even though we're not; thanks a lot, roosters) and empty the apartment of anything unnecessary. I have a bunch of clothes that are too big now, so that will be fun. Perhaps a bonfire is in order.

Jeremy will come home to five outfits, three computer games, and seven empty wine bottles, and he will just have to like it.

Stupid chickens

We have looked at many houses over the last week. We had a short window of time to find something. Most places are rented out within a few weeks of being posted, so not much was available before now for the end of July.

We haven't found anything--at least, not anything that would make a move worthwhile. There have been a few houses that were kind of okay but had one or two big things we didn't like.

There was one house that was perfect in layout and number of rooms. It was obviously cared-for, very clean, had a fenced-in yard and a new back deck. But it was in a seedy neighborhood. Which is still okay with me (you can't win everything on our budget). And kind of far from Jeremy's work and most of our friends. Still, it was that great of a house that we were thinking of moving anyway.

But then. THEN! We went out to look at the backyard, and the neighbors behind us have these gigantic roosters. These things could eat Emmy whole.

Apparently she saw that, too, because as soon as they started crowing (and crowing and crowing and crowing), she burst into tears and hightailed it for the house.

I have nothing against farm animals. I'm from the boonies of South Dakota, which has more farm animals than people. But in the middle of the city, you don't really expect or want aggressive roosters for backyard neighbors.

So we'll be staying here until March. If we wait too much longer to re-sign the lease, someone will rent our apartment, and then we'll most likely have to settle for something we don't especially love. In the meantime, we hope our house will sell so we can raise the budget a little bit (so many great-looking houses just $100/month or so above our absolute upper limit). Or maybe a tornado will eat it.

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I have been going to a chiropractor for a couple of months now, and boy do I wish I'd gone sooner. I no longer feel like an old woman from the hips up. He also does physical therapy, which I did not know until I asked him if he could help me with a shoulder thing. "Sure!" he says, and starts poking around my shoulder muscles like he's testing a half-cooked roast. It... hurt.

He says, "I think this blah blah blah thing will help." Where "blah blah blah" is some medical-ish sounding business that also means, "five minutes of excruciating pain while I pinch this shortened muscle." But it totally worked. I have better range of motion in that shoulder than I have in, oh, ever. I can also now lift more with that arm than I can the other. Perhaps my right shoulder will be "bothering" me next time I go in.

I hope my chiropractor doesn't turn out to be Norman Bates-y, too.

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Emmy was sick for the last week. Those crayons are what caused it, I think, because no one else had any problems. She got to the point where I said, "Okay, tomorrow I'm calling the doctor," so of course she woke up the next day completely fine.

Then yesterday she swallowed a marble.