What Up?

Events since my last post, in approximate chronological order:

– I was all achy and fluey and capped off Wednesday night by having to go to bed at 8:30 A MERE HALF AN HOUR into America’s Next Top Circus Sideshow to lie, shaking, shivering and finally sweating through a bad ass fever, too ill to even read the horrendous piece of “youkilledtreesforthis?” chick lit I got from the library last week, (and I quote, “He sent me an IM (Instant Message) on my computer.”) alls-the-while squeezing at my left breast, trying to tell if it felt lumpy, bumpy, sore or otherwise like mastitis. Eventually, after enough squeezing, it felt all of those things. Kind of like when you’re wondering if you’re pregnant so you keep poking your boobs to see if they’re tender because tender boobs means pregnant and eventually you can’t tell if you have just bruised yourself from all the poking or if they really are tender.

– With the fever, I didn’t get much sleep on Wednesday night. Fresco also woke up frequently to check on me and make sure I was OK. What a great baby.

– Thursday we went to our last toddler dance class and I realized that Trombone was sick with a cold or flu. Began to think maybe I had the beginnings of that, not mastitis. Soldiered on to Ikea with my mom and Fresco because I wanted cheap lunch. Ate a bowl of chili and garlic bread which was good, but cold. Why is the food there always cold?

– Sicker and snottier Trombone grew. I began to feel normal again, breast tenderness subsiding, crazy sleep deprivation (requirement: 4 cups of coffee) changing back to just normal tired (1.5 cups of coffee). Cooked frozen lasagna for dinner. Went to bed.

– Saturday Fresco got up at 4:55 am. Trombone got up at 6:ish. SA and I were giddy with something; he made muffins and I had energy. We went to the library and home again and then Fresco started sneezing. Which is very cute. Babies sneezing is one of the cutest things in the whole world.

– We had borrowed two kids’ movies from the library and Trombone was allowed to watch one before lunch. He decided not to nap because the sooner his nap ended, the sooner he could watch the second movie. This happens EVERY TIME we get two movies from the library. We are idiots. Toddler is king.

– SA decided to try his week-old homebrewed beer. It tasted surprisingly good. He poured a glass of it and took a picture and then knocked the glass off the coffee table onto the rug below where it shattered and splattered and rendered the rug (already several years old and quite, er, utilitarian in appeal) throw-out-able.

– We were feeling extra cocky, having kept our tempers about us all day despite little sleep and the two sick children and the no nap fiasco and the shattered glass and beer on the hardwood floor, so we decided to go to WalMart! At 3 pm on a Saturday afternoon, the week before Halloween! With a toddler who had no nap and an infant who was coming down with a cold! To buy a new rug and some heavy beer steins that will not shatter even if we beat them with sledgehammers.

– We got away with it, too. Dear Parent Club: that is negative reinforcement.

– We also bought two more potties, that we might have potties everywhere in preparation for uh, nothing. Nothing to see here. Look away.

– And chips. We bought chips.

– Sunday we stayed in and enjoyed our new rug and our chips. We wiped noses and butts and made chili.

– And now – very abruptly! – it is the last week of October and congratulations! You have at least pretended to read this entire dull post! As your reward, please to answer:

1. Does anyone have any advice about potty training? Even if you are child-free, I want to hear it.

(Ha ha I doubt it, right? It’s not one of those things people have opinions about or anything?)

(Right now my opinion is EVERY POOP IN ITS RIGHT PLACE and so. I am preparing. Battening. Purchasing Thomas the Tank Engine underpants so that they might get shat on, even if this causes a lifetime of trauma. [However I will not be documenting it here. Because that is where I draw my line.])

2. Do I have it in me to post every day in November? I sure do like looking at my archives and seeing at least one month with more than 15 posts in it. On the other hand; blood, stone, etc.

Posted in bloggity!, everything, Fresco, trombone, whiny | 12 Comments

Wednesday


Greatest Hits, Age 2 1/4 from tortured potato on Vimeo.

Posted in music, trombone | 12 Comments

Hurry Up Or You’ll Miss It: 6 Months Old

I have to hurry. Naptime is by no means a guarantee of peace and quiet. Today is Fresco’s six monurthday. He still has no teeth – no one is surprised – but he can sit up and almost crawl. He laughs when you chuck him under the chin and when you eat his cheeks. He is affectionate like a 19 year old boy who has just attended his first long island iced tea night at the campus pub. In fact, I do not want to be anywhere near Fresco the first time he gets drunk. Note to self: save enough money for university education OUTSIDE hometown.

two bucks a drink!

It must be strange, being the second child. Always vying for attention. Getting a sense, somehow, that you are following a pretty tough act. Developing strategies very quickly to get yourself some applause too. Fresco uses shouting and adorableness as his weapons of applause-getting. He has buckets of charisma. He uses it first, but if no one notices, he turns up the volume. If you look at him and talk to him while he’s shouting, he usually stops and grins at you.

Sometimes he roars. Sometimes when he roars I remember how I roared when I birthed him and I wonder if the scientologists are right about silent birthing being best but then I remember that he is a Taurus and I would rather believe in astrology than scientology.

I was reminded this morning that he is a Taurus as I attempted to wrestle him into a booster seat so that I could see if he fit. Unfortunately, at the same time, he was trying to get the newspaper on the table. Guess who won.

tastes like poisonous ink!

We both did! House of Compromise!

Sometimes I think I ought to record milestones but on the other hand, the only time this will matter is in 30 years when he has his own kids and calls me, desperate, “Mom, when did I cut my first tooth? Because apparently age of first tooth is hereditary” and I will have to say, “Sorry, son, you were 10 months old, now leave me alone I’m watching 10 years of back-recordings of TV I was too tired to watch when you were a kid.”

This part of Fresco’s life, though it still feels faintly miraculous because he is alive and didn’t used to be, is not the most interesting to me. Maybe he knows I am thinking that. Maybe that’s why he shouts so much.

Or maybe there’s another reason. I guess I’ll just have to wait to find out.

happy fresco

Posted in Fresco | 4 Comments

If You Don’t Know Me By Now

An additional argument to be made for knowing your partner very well before you procreate with him/her is so that a minimum of words and glances need be exchanged in order to communicate that Someone needs to make chocolate chip cookies and The Other One is going to take the children out for a walk so that Someone doesn’t have to let the toddler Help. (I am not a cold, cruel individual and on a weekday this would be a toddler project but today is Sunday and I just want cookies, not a teachable hour and a half and butter all over the floor) This way no one needs to do any irritating spelling words out loud and anyway Trombone already knows the letter C and what it stands for thanks to that damn cookie monster so our game would be up pretty quick if we spelled out loud.

Did you know that Cookie Monster has no nose? If I had never had children, I feel certain I would have gone to my grave unaware that Cookie Monster has no nose.

The only challenge remaining is How Many Cookies Can I Make (and not consume) in the time it takes SA and our two lovelies to frolic in the so-called “Big Sand Park.” (Am assuming they did not go to a beach but to the baseball diamond a couple blocks away.) Have just cut down on valuable cookiemaking time by blogging. Drat.

Posted in food, the parenthood, trombone | 3 Comments

De-lated Thanksgiving

Last week on Thanksgiving we were at a wedding. My dear co-worker A married his sweet lady, Miss Mouse, and we ate scrumptious food and drank wine at a bistro downtown. Me and SA, that is. My parents and our children stayed at our house and had peanut butter sandwiches.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Having already established today as BeerMakingSaturday, and having fallen madly in love with the idea of pulled pork sandwiches thanks to a comment from mereseydotes yesterday morning, we did an impromptu family holiday today. My dad and SA spent the morning making beer. My mom and Trombone left her house and took many levels of public transit to arrive at our house at noon. I cooked 2.5 kg of pork butt at 300C for 6 hours. And took Fresco to Superstore, just the two of us.

Yesterday’s pulled pork recipe reminded me of one I’d heard about months ago. Friends of my parents (who are also parents of my friends) swore by a pulled pork recipe by Karen Barnaby, a local chef. It’s the same basic idea as Martha’s, with an extra saucing step and some slightly different ingredients. Since it was Saturday and we were staying in all day, I did it the Chef Barnaby way for this first go-round, with delicious results and lots of leftovers.

It was a very busy, very good day. Through it all I thought, oh, how sweet this life is. How I love it. I took Fresco up to bed, listening as I climbed the stairs to my family playing with Trombone’s toy train, washing dishes and chatting. During our nightly bedtime ritual, Fresco tried to scale me like a mountain, sucked vigorously on my chin, pinched my arm enough to leave a bruise and squealed his terrible squeals. I knew something had righted itself because tonight when I sat in the rocking chair and closed my eyes, I saw everywhere blessing instead of burden.

Was it the waning moon? The trip to Superstore? 10 minutes with my head above water? Magic pork? Or all things shall pass?

Yes.

Posted in food, home, two! children! | 4 Comments