My name is Kellie, and I am a self-torturer

There was no desperate housewives last week, thus no streaming episode online, the fug girls took the WHOLE WEEKEND off just because it was Thanksgiving, and I'm all caught up on Hulu's episodes of Bones, Kitchen Nightmares, and Battlestar. So you will excuse the fact that I read Dooce and now am wallowing in Mom Envy.

I don't usually read Dooce. Sure, she's funny. Yeah, she's figured out how to a.) write daily and b.) make a living from her writing. And I suppose that if I were to rate parenting insight and humor 1-10 with 1 being I'd rather be in that part of labor where my hipbones get wrenched apart from the inside, I'd rate her writing as a solid 15. But I'm on a self torture diet and reading Dooce is like an alcoholic sitting across from a Long Island Iced Tea sipping a glass of water. I started my diet, by the way, after attending a yogurt and kefir making class with a friend who does things like make her family's kefir and yogurt from raw milk produced by happy local organic cows. And I came away from the class believing firmly that I must make my family's yogurt and kefir if I want them to grow up healthy and happy. Until this class I had felt pretty good about getting kefir into my family on a regular basis. But now, the shame. The kefir my family drank was from the store. And sweetened. And pasteurized. I might as well just punch my baby in the face. Which is what my husband almost did when I told him about my plan.

Actually, what he did was laugh at me. Then gently reminded me that we'd just moved, had a six month old baby, and I was starting a new job. Store bought kefir was GOOD ENOUGH! Since then, I've had many opportunities to repeat that lesson to myself. I say it like a mantra whenever I start to stress myself over the little things. Dishes piled up in the sink. Moxie finding-- and eating-- Cheerios on the floor. Laundry going straight from the clean basket to my children's bodies with no stops in folded piles or dresser drawers along the way. It's GOOD ENOUGH!

So I kind of prepped myself before I opened up the dooce website. She's going to be funny and entertaining, I said to myself. I want a giggle. Even if she writes about an experience I've written about only she does it funnier and with greater insight. that's fine. What I do is good enough.

Only, dooce is pregnant in the first trimester and still writing every day in funny and witty ways. She's writing upbeat observations about pregnancy and parenting her older daughter. Tra-la-la, life is great and well-scripted. And I can't help but compare it to my own second child pregnancy. I spent week 6 through week 24 lying in the middle of my bed clutching the edges so i wouldn't fall off. It was my boat in a sea of nausea. The only sentences I put together were to tell Tallulah, when she crawled gently beside me, to stop breathing so hard, she was rocking the bed.

The other thing I did which REALLY made me fall off my self torture diet was weigh myself immediately after our second Thanksgiving dinner. Why? Why did I do that?

Sick in the head

I'm sick, my head is pounding, my nose is running, and Moxie has decided that screaming is the best form of communication while Tallulah has chosen conversationis interruptus (it sounds better in latin) which means that every two seconds I start to ask Kent if he's seen the tissues or the tylenol to which Moxie responds "AAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!" and Tallulah says, "I was TALKING!!!"

Tallulah forgets about having conversation with anyone other than her imaginary superhero friends until either kent or I begin a conversation. Then she remembers, only, instead of beginning a conversation with us or joining our conversation, she just continues her superhero imaginary friend conversation and gets furious with us for not realizing that she is now speaking to us and how do we dare interrupt her train of thought.

And Moxie has decided that sign language, which I've been trying to teach her for the past four months, is totally lame and for suckers and she never sees us using it so why the hell would she? And instead, she's using imitations of the sounds she hears us making, only at a Much Grander Volume.

The only person making me happy in my sickened state is Kent, who just finished cleaning the kitchen after lunch while on a break from his work. I keep trying to tell him how happy he makes me, only I keep getting interrupted. Or out-volumed.

I want to leave the house to replace the tissues or the tylenol that have now mysteriously disappeared (why is it that these things sit on a shelf for months during health and the minute a cold comes on, poof, they scurry away to dark corners until you're healthy again) but I can't because I would have to take my children to the store with me and I'm afraid that some well meaning little old lady or young woman with ticking biological clock will stop me to gush over how cute my kids are and I will start weeping and warning them against the dangers of biology.

Moxie and the curse of the second child

The alternative title to this post is: Damned if you do, damned if you don't

Moxie is turning one on November 28th. Can you believe it? It seems like only ten posts ago I was blogging about being pregnant. Umm, err, ahem. This might have less to do with the passage of time and more to do with my lack of blog entries. However...

Since it's her first, we haven't had to deal with the whole, birthday-near-a-major-holiday thing and I'm figuring out how to negotiate this. We celebrate Thanksgiving typically with my mom and family on the actual Thanksgiving holiday. Then, because Kent is ruthless when it comes to eating good meals as often and in as much quantity as possible, he's convinced his parents to have their Thanksgiving dinner on the weekend so we can eat with them, too. Next weekend is also Moxie's birthday so we decided to have a birthday celebration tonight, a week early.

And here's where being the second child is both a boon and a curse. On Tallulah's first birthday, we invited three babies her age, their parents, Tallulah's cousin, his parents, my parents, my sisters, Kent's parents, our neighbors, and another family. Tallulah was totally overwhelmed and in every picture she is looking dazed, confused, and on the brink of tears. For Moxie's birthday dinner, we invited grandparents. Period. And my set can't make it which means Grandma, Grandpa, Tallulah, Kent, me, and the birthday girl-- just a quiet family celebration. I think this will go over so much better with Moxie and we'll be able to really gush over her and laugh at her little fingers in the homemade carrot cake smashing it around messily. But when she is eight years old and trolling the photo albums for a final score in the game "Who does mommy and daddy love best," I believe she will hold up the first birthday pictures as proof of something unintended.

Plus, Kent decided to get Moxie a present today after he finished work, but she hadn't napped and he rocked her to sleep and inadvertently fell asleep himself. So now they are cuddled up together on the bed looking adorable and sweet. This is, of course, Moxie's preference in life right now: daddy cuddles rate way higher than toys and presents. But, again, an eight year old Moxie is really going to get some points on the scorecard since Kent's nap-share is taking up his shopping time.



This is probably a good time to even out the score: Tallulah, when you were two weeks old, I put you down on the couch and got up to make some coffee. I wasn't more than two steps away before you rolled off the couch and landed smack on the floor. I think this is proof that you should be playing the game, "why did we get stuck with these parents?"

Oh, and here--finally--is a picture of Tallulah's bangs. I took the picture that night, but the red wine made me too lazy to upload. And, no, I did not give Tallulah any of my red wine to dull the pain of her haircut. Who can spare the wine?

womanly advice

Tonight I was googling sugar addiction because I'm pretty sure I have it and I found this pretty amazing site about how to balance life as a mom and caregiver with maintaining a sense of self. I'm a total sucker for this kind of thing-- I love flipping through Oprah's O magazine even if I have to roll my eyes every other page as she leads the reader through a maze of 'reasonably priced splurges' at $200 per 'must-have' cashmere sweater or affirmations to run ten miles and get a pedicure during lunch.

Then, because I was on a roll of finding helpful womanly advice, I checked out Gwyneth Paltrow's newsletter/website. And damn, was that a mistake.

What is wrong with Gwynnie? Has she been hanging out with Oprah too much? I mean, what could her thought process be? Gee, Oprah, you haven't acted since the Color Purple. All you do is sit around and tell people how awesome they could be if they were like you. Hmm....I'm awesome. I don't want to act and be away from my rockstar husband and oddly named children. I should tell people how to be like me!

So now I'm in a ridiculously bad mood. First, I'm realizing that I should cut the sugar out of my diet which makes me very very crabby. Second, I'm pissed off at Gwyneth for telling me that I can be just like her when I obviously can't. I have no Oscar winning actress mom or hunky actor dad, my husband is not a multimillion dollar rock star, and I don't, when I choose to work, get paid three million dollars to make out with hunky actors. But according to Gwyneth, I should not "be lazy" or "be passive" about my life. Thanks, Gwyneth, I'll keep that in mind. Here's some advice right back at you: if you can't write worth a shit, don't lecture via the written word.

Sigh. I think I'll take the first step towards de-sugaring my house and finish the Ben & Jerry's in the freezer.

Tallulah's bad haircut is good for me

I gave Tallulah a haircut tonight even though we only had ten minutes in part because of wine induced urgency. I drank a glass of wine at dinner-- or two-- and was staring at Tallulah's bangs hanging down over her eyes like a sheepdog and suddenly, tipsily, couldn't stand the thought of her having bangs in her face for One. More. Minute.

So I cut them.

I think they're pretty straight, you know, relatively speaking. I mean, her forehead isn't straight, you know? And one ear is definitely higher than the other and even her nostrils don't line up completely. So I did great, considering.

I'm foreseeing a lot of these wine-induced emergencies in our future. I went to the Holistic Moms Meeting this week and the one take-away message I got was that wine is, indeed, good for you. In particular organic Australian red wine because it has the highest level of resperidal, the anti-aging nutrient grapes produce. Which is great for the times I go to the Wine Warehouse, but on my regular Publix run Cheap Red Wine (no shit-- this wine exists and is tasty) will have to do.

It's for my health.

Broccoli Blues

It's 6:20 am and I've slept approximately 20 minutes all night in part because Moxie is uncomfortable and restless and in part because I get anxiety insomnia. I lay in bed and think about how I'm not getting any sleep and I have to work in the morning and how am I going to get through the day without any rest and why can't my babies sleep at night and whatever happened about that amendment about preserving land and oh my god the last episode of Desperate Housewives, Gabriel is hilarious this season and so much more relatable and do I have anything to pack for lunch and are my library books overdue....so on and so on ALL NIGHT LONG.

And I blame this on broccoli. We gave Moxie broccoli Thursday for dinner, right before Kent and I had a date night to do karaoke-- something we've been planning a long time but never seem to manage. We've given Moxie broccoli before and vaguely remembered some stink issues, but we figured it would hit the following day and not while Moxie was being watched by grandma. Poor grandma.

By the time we got to the grandparents house there was a definite odor emenating from our dear, sweet baby. Passing her off to grandma, she wrinled her nose and said, "someone's poopy." It's against my morality to hand off a poopy child, so I whisked Moxie away and began to change her diaper only to discover no poop. Just really really stinky broccoli pee. When I went back out to the living room, I discovered that the smell had lingered. It was now covering the living room and bathroom, drifting in Moxie's wake where ever she crawled. By the time Kent and I left, we were fleeing to escape the smell. Poor poor grandma.

This is only the second time we've left Moxie with the grandparents and, although they have always insisted that our babies are angels, even through Tallulah's constant screaming, I think the broccoli pee tested grandma's angel theory. I don't think any religion describes angels bearing that smell.

Anyway, we're still dealing with broccoli fallout. The broccoli pee made Moxie's bottom sore so she can't sleep and needs to keep us informed of her broccoli status throughout the night.

I don't even like broccoli.

The Tide is High

Kent and I woke up this morning and immediately watched Obama's acceptance speech on youtube:


Then I went to one of my favorite blogs, www.americanelf.com-- I like it because it's a cartoon, the artist's kids are the same age as mine, and drawing random bits of parenting life gets a point across in a very different way than typing it into words. Like yesterday's:


Yes. Yes.