Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

Caroline’s been running around the house without a shirt on. We seem to have a hard time keeping clothes on that one. Earlier she climbed onto my lap and was hanging out watching TV. Max the kitten jumped up too and snuggled up with Caroline. I heard uneasy laughter coming from Caroline. “Mommy, Max… Max… Max, uh…”

I looked down. Max had latched on to Caroline. I firmly explained to Max that she was not his mommy and booted him out of our laps.

I took Jo to Nordstrom today. That is a dangerous place for me to go. I have a feeling I will be spending a lot of time (and money) there. Heck, it’s not even like going to the mall. I can pretend I’m in a stand-alone store like Steinmart, only bigger.

Salespeople hunt you down to greet you and ask if you need help, but are non-obtrusive and respect “No thanks, just browsing”. The shoe selection is insane. They carry the European comfy brands like Mephisto and Dansko, along with Kenneth Cole, Stuart Weitzman, and Kate Spade. Huge amount of kids shoes, and a giant aquarium in the kids area above a table with crayons and coloring books. Kid clothing, even boutique labels, is actually not that bad. The most expensive kid thing I saw off-hand was a Cach Cach Yeti coat for $68.

I checked out the Estee Lauder counter because I’d heard raves about the Advanced Night Repair cream from people on a rosacea mailing list. The salesperson was really helpful, mentioned that they had a free gift for purchases over $35 and the cream was in the kit, so I got some other stuff too. She whispered over Jo’s head to ask if Jo would like a balloon, and ran over to the kid department to get one for her.

Jo’s really a timid kid. I think we need to get her into some sort of pre-school. She’s intensely shy around strangers. Every time someone talks to her she turns bright red, mumbles, and hides behind me. She was afraid of the piano player and almost had a heart attack when I took her on the escalator – she clung onto my neck for dear life. I have a really bad feeling about Santa pictures this year.

Anyway, I think I’m going to apply for a Nordstrom card. Lord help us.

My younger daughter is spending her first night in a Big Girl Bed.

Last night it was like there was a conspiracy to keep me from sleeping. First Cuervo snuck upstairs and started delicately eating kitten food from the bag. Then Maddie decided she was Mad as Hell and Not Going to Take It Anymore from Max, and chased him around the house for a good 30 minutes, slamming into the kids’ bedroom doors along the way. After I chased off the dog and calmed down the cats, I crawled back into bed and had just started to fall back asleep when I heard a couple of moans and a plaintive “Mommmmmmmmy” from the baby monitor. I crossed my fingers that she would just go back to sleep. All was quiet for the next couple of minutes, save a little thump that might have been the Jo hitting the wall as she rolled over.

Then I hear Caroline’s doorknob rattling, and a voice just behind the door saying “Ey! Openna do! Openna do!”. She had vaulted out of her crib and was trying to escape her room. I opened the door as instructed and she declared, “I got outta bed!”. Agreeing as to how she did, I scooped her up and brought her back to sleep in our bed, where she proceeded to wiggle for an hour or so until settling down sometime around dawn.

Today I sat Jo down and had a long talk with her about the bed situation. She has a built-in window-bed-nook in her room, which we planned to use for her bed. A while back she thought she saw a bug in there, and has refused to sleep in her “tall bed” for over a year since. I somehow convinced her not only to try the bed again but to get excited about it, and we moved the other bed from her room into Caroline’s, which had been our plan all along.

And a good thing we did. The other night, one of Caroline’s stuffed animals, appropriately named Kitty, disappeared into thin air within the space of an hour. This was bad. Kitty is necessary for bedtime. We tore the house apart looking for it in all the places the kids had travelled that day, to no avail. When hub moved the bed tonight, we saw Kitty, as well as a stuffed monkey, dog, and rabbit. Apparently Max the Kitten was making a stuffed animal stash for himself.

What a stinkhead.

It’s official. I spent more time trying to get the baby to sleep (2.75 hours) than I did at the meetup (2.25 hours). Something has got to change. Has anyone ever dealt with a kid who has to be rocked to sleep? How do you get them to fall asleep in their own bed? I desperately need help with this. This is not a happy place or time for me.

My daughter Jo has taken a real shine to Attack of the Clones. She calls it “The Flying Car Movie” and asks every day if it’s on. The baby calls it “A-Nah-Nah”, and here’s why. Jo gets the love theme stuck in her head and sings it constantly – na NA na, nanana NA na, nanana NA na… and so on. She sings it all day long until everyone in the house is humming it.

Last night we couldn’t get the kids to sleep until after 1:00. Then I stayed up for a couple of hours more because I was working on getting the linux box set up to host 2 domain names, and what I don’t know about linux can fill about 84,000 books. So I fall into bed exhausted in the wee small hours before dawn. 30 minutes later Jo wanders in, saying she wanted to go downstairs and play with her puzzles. We tried for hours to get her to sleep to no avail. Finally hub took her downstairs around 7:00. 3 hours later Caroline woke up. I brought her into bed with me and tried to sleep for a couple more hours while she groomed me like a gorilla, interspersing her grooming with occasional bops on the nose. Needless to say I didn’t sleep well.

So now I just got Caroline to sleep, and Jo is still awake. She’s a maniac. Neither one of the kids will go to sleep in bed alone. Caroline requires that Mommy holds her until she is sound asleep, then tries to slip her into the crib. Jo requires that Daddy sit at the foot of her bed and read, like a good Daddy should.

Speaking of a good Daddy, while Caroline falls asleep she likes to talk to me about her day. Since she’s not even 2 yet, the conversations are usually a bit garbled. Last night she was talking about how Daddy said he was going to spank her hiney for writing on the walls with a crayon. (The orange blends in with the tan walls so well.) I agreed, and said I would spank her hiney too because it was very naughty. She said “No! No naughty. Daddy naughty. Mommy naughty. Spank my hiney. Humph.” I expected to see a headbob and a fingersnap.

She also had encountered a cat dingleberry in the hall, which I missed, and she ran into her room to babble excitedly and unintelligably at me, and I nodded and uh-huh’ed at her until she grew frustrated that I wasn’t paying attention and put her hands on her little hips and said, “Well, did you see it??”

Of course I had to go look then.

Sorry this is KidBlog lately. Not much else going on. Lack of sleep really kinda consumes lives; anything else that happens is just remotely relevant. Like the hurricane. We had nice windy weather and ominous looking skies all day, but no storms. The ranch got hammered, though.

Last night Jo and I went grocery shopping.

“Mommy, which area is this?”
“This is the health food area.”
“Oh. So where’s the Oreo area?”

What a precocious little twerp.

I bought a Crenshaw melon, never having tried one before. It’s insanely tender and juicy. The knife slid through it like butter. Rivulets of sweet juice poured out while I cut it and dribbled off the counter onto the floor. Jo scolded me for letting all the juice out. I chopped half of the melon into bite-sized pieces and the kids followed me out of the kitchen like I was the Pied Piper. They each took two bites and split, and are now playing and refuse to come back to eat.

Those of you without children may wish to skip this next part, but I find it important to point out that Jo, who is three-and-a-half, pooped on the potty voluntarily for the very first time ever yesterday. Perhaps she will be potty trained before kindergarten, after all.

Still trying out Kung Log. I like the spell checker. I like being able to save drafts without connecting to the internet. That would come in handy when I’m away from home and without an always-on connection.

I ran across the “Imponderables” site a few days ago. I enjoyed the books, but haven’t had time to read through the site. I did notice a question – “Why do women tend to drop hints rather than ask questions or for favors directly?”.

Well, tell you what. My daugher is three years old and she does this already. “Boy, I sure like jellybeans.” “Noggin is a good TV channel, you know? I sure do like to watch Noggin.” “I loooooooove going to Grandma’s house.” “Bubbles are fun to play with.” “I wonder if there are any bugs outside.”

All are pretty easy to translate except maybe for the last – we have had a horrible mosquito problem and told her she can’t play outside because there are too many bugs.

I’m sure hub and I do plenty of hinting around to get what we want. Who doesn’t, really? Otherwise it would seem that you’re too demanding. By casting subtle hints, it puts another person in the position of “freely” offering something. But kids aren’t worried about being demanding. Obviously. I think it boils down to aping parents’ behavior.