34 Year Olds Can Have Temper Tantrums Too! At Least I Have Rock of Ages and Wine

The last couple of weeks have been full of ups and downs.

Down:

Last week I had a full-on, three-year-old-style temper tantrum. I couldn't find my keys. Now typically I put them in the same place...always...to avoid self-induced trauma. But I obviously hadn't done that.

So, instead, I looked in my purse. Now I was pretty sure I could hear them in my purse--jangling to mock me---but couldn't find them.

Meanwhile, one dog was whining, the baby was whining, I hadn't slept because of a cough, I hadn't had nearly enough coffee, and I. Was. On. The. Edge.

So what happened next wasn't really that uncalled for.

I threw down the purse...no wait...I put the baby down...THEN

I threw down the purse, cussed a blue streak, watched all the miscellaneous items explode out of the purse, and sat on the ground in a huff.

Deep breath.

Bug was sweet enough to start handing me lozenges that had been strewn on the floor, and I grabbed a tampon before it made its way into his mouth. One dog cowered, one ate stale Triscuits.

The keys were sitting on the table in front of me. Good to know that Bug will be good at throwing tantrums. He comes by it honestly.

Now the Up:

Wine tastes fabulous in mini, three-inch high plastic cups. (Ignore the blurry picture and check out the cool cups!)

My friend and I scored tickets to Rock of Ages and the pre/post/intermission party thrown by an affiliate of my company. Two hot mommas on the town with no babies and free wine.

Good stuff.

Stuff a Saturday morning hangover is MADE of!

But we had a great time, got to meet the cast and during intermission when our wine hadn't been finished, the bartender was sweet enough to fill up a little three-inch high plastic cup (complete with lid and straw) so we could take it in to the show.

Because nothing says 80's like drinking wine out of a straw, right??

If Only I Was Jennifer Aniston in Cute Undies...

This morning I felt like I was in a movie...of course if I had been I would have been played by Jennifer Aniston and would have had on a very cute matching panties and bra set...Probably in purple lace.

But alas, I am not and was not.

I was all dressed, smart and sophisticated, for work (ha, you know me better than that--I had a dress from Target on) and was feeding Bug his blueberry yogurt. Something happened and I knocked my coffee cup causing a good deal to spill onto my dress and me to yell "Fuck!"

**Side note--a great advantage to having a developmentally delayed child who doesn't talk is that I can still cuss. He isn't getting mama out, so I am confident fuck isn't coming anytime soon.**

Anyway. As with all cuss words, Bug starts giggling. He must love the tone of voice. And as I look at him, I realize in my mopping up coffee, cussing, and dress dabbing mania I had forgotten him.

And his yogurt.

That he loves to eat by scooping it with one hand and trying to place that liquid onto his spoon to then attempt to get to his mouth. It is an art he hasn't yet quite mastered.

Now I admit, he doesn't look that bad here because like every good mother I started to clean him up before deciding I needed a picture of the chaos. Originally his entire right arm from fingers to elbow was magically covered in yogurt.

At this point I realize there is no salvaging the outfit and so I strip off the dress and spray it with stain stuff while pleading with Bug to use his spoon, not his fingers.

Like he can use a spoon...








Thus commencing what would have been my Jennifer Aniston scene.

Me in only my undies, standing in the kitchen, spoon feeding a purple-faced baby his yogurt.

Wishing I had some coffee.

Take a Breath Already

Sometimes life moves at a snail's pace...and sometimes it feels like you are drinking from a fire hose. Such is life. 

The first thing I hung up
in our new home! Love Italy!

As many of you may know, life in our household has changed drastically since the last time I posted. Bug and I now live back in Colorado where we just closed on and moved into our new home. Honey is still in training and won't get to join us permanently for many months.

So with the move, the closing, the job search, the day care search, the snow, dog sitting, unpacking, figuring out which light switch belongs to which light, and being a single mom...life is moving at fire hose pace. 

As I started writing I thought to myself..."Just take a breath already and write."

Of course, right as I expanded my lungs the sleeping dog next to me farted. Such is life.

That all being said I am excited to start blogging again. I hope to be more consistent. I will do my best not to use this as a place to bitch, but no guarantees! I have a feeling the next several months will try me in ways I am not really ready to be tried so that will probably spill over here.

If nothing else I am sure many stories will come of it all and I will share them all with you!

A Doctor's Revenge

Hello Again! Yes it has been a while since I posted...having a baby is kinda like putting your old life on pause and slowly adding all the things you did before back into the fold. Well something so random happened this week that I knew I had to blog about it. And as anyone who is/remembers being a parent to an infant could guess...it has to do with poop.

Now I am fairly sure that my whole situation is a sick joke by the Family Practice Doctor that my son is assigned to (thank you Army). Like restaurant servers that spit in the food of the needy table 3 (she must have everything on her Cobb Salad on the side and the guy needs his root beer refilled 15 times without one thank you), I think my doctor ordered a bunch of tests that she knew would be a REAL pain in the ass.

So what happened is...
Little Bug has some wicked tummy issues. I am talking writhing-in-pain-up-all-night-screaming-high-pitched-enough-to-shatter-glass type of issues. I won't go into what his poop looks like, but let's leave it at...NOT NORMAL.

When explaining our problems to the doc she tried to push them aside, but I kept coming at her with other questions. Now I might have been just a teensie bit rude because I want my son to see a Pediatrician, not a doctor that is busy treating warts, high blood pressure, menopause, erectile dysfunction and everything else under the sun.

Finally, she sighed, and asked if I'd like her to order a fecal test.

A, as in ONE, fecal test for my son.

Yes, I said I would like that.

So she sent me to the lab where the fun began...When I arrived the lab techs looked at the order in the computer like it was showing Justin Timberlake on SNL, they outright laughed. Turns out whatever the lovely doc ordered it involved me filling 3 small viles with poop, putting more into another little cup and freezing it and finally getting some into another cup and driving it like a bat out of hell to the hospital on base within 1 HOUR of it being pooped.

Oh and by the way...don't get any urine mixed in. HAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Seriously.

No, seriously...he is 4 months old...and poops AND pees in a diaper. No urine, huh. Hmmm. The lab tech acknowledged it would be a challenge.

So three days, a broken poop spatula, and an early morning drive to the hospital before coffee/breakfast/make-up/etc--I went from being annoyed at our doctor to haaaaating our doctor.

And I am pretty sure there is some urine in there.

Nursery's Ready...Come on Baby!

The final touches have been completed on Baby Gannon's Nursery...just in time for his due date, which is today...

Too bad he's not yet here to enjoy, but it gives me time to post the pictures!

So I know you've seen the paint job and the changing table makeover but there were two other major projects that we worked on: the mobile and the airplane picture. When you see them only one will actually look major, but I assure you the other one took forever too!

First, the mobile. This may not look like much but it took me pretty much all my pregnancy to complete as I am not all that craft-able without specific directions. Here is a link to the Pinterest mobile that started this obsession, but it didn't have templates or anything for me to go directly off of so I had a lot of improvising.

Honey drew me a template of a B-something or another plane. (No matter how hard I try to keep these planes straight I am doing a miserable job). He actually drew me 2 different ones, but doing both were leaps and bounds beyond my ability so we have all six of the same plane.

Overall I am really happy with it. Each plane is made of paper and balsa wood to make it more sturdy. And the little propellers really turn. In the end it probably cost less than $15 to make...not counting the gas of about 55 trips to hobby stores...but that is a whole other issue.

The other major project was inspired from this Pottery Barn picture on wood:

We really didn't want to spend $300 on it, but after I showed it to Honey he fell in love with the idea and got his heart set on having a B-17 on the wall because that was the plane his grandfather flew in the war.

So he found a wonderful gentleman on the internet that would let us use a photo he had, which we then tried to convert to 4 or 5 canvas panels.

Unfortunately, that proved VERY difficult because the size of the photo and the usual size of canvas panels we'd need and we gave up.

So I turned to again to the wonderful world of Pinterest. We found several pins on putting pictures on canvas but then found these great directions for transferring a picture to wood.

And here is how ours turned out...

Pretty amazing! It was a pretty time consuming process since it is like 6 feet long, but totally worth it. It probably cost about $50 for all the supplies, maybe not even that.  We just love it.

So here are a few shots of the whole room:

Now we just need the little guy to get here! Of course he will end up sleeping in our bedroom for the first couple of months, but I already love sitting in here to read so I am sure we will be spending a great deal of time in his nursery. 

It turned out just as I had hoped! 

Viola! Changing Table Makeover

So if you read my post about painting the nursery, I promised you I'd show you the changing table makeover. Here is the changing table before. And you can see sitting on it the lovely product I used for this transformation...Rustolium Furniture Transformation.

The Rustolium product is pretty nifty because you don't have to sand or scrape or strip the old paint off, which was really important to me since I didn't want all the chemicals of stripping.

Don't get me wrong, I like to strip...wood that is...or maybe I should say furniture...

ANYWAY, I have refinished many pieces of furniture the old fashion way, but didn't have the time or inclination to do all that work here so this product takes out a lot of that hassle.

After the gloss

So in this handy box they give you some cleaner/primer stuff to wipe everything down with. Then you have a base coat that you have tinted at the store based on the color you want to end up with. Then you have some cool gloss to make the base coat more unique, darker, etc. And finally a top coat.

We went with espresso to match the crib and I did a pretty heavy dose of the gloss to make it as dark as possible.

I loved that the gloss almost mimicked a wood grain since I hadn't actually done the full stripping to get to the wood.

Some things to think remember if you ever use the product...

1. The base coat is VERY fragile...seriously putting a piece of paper towel down would take off the base coat.
2. So you definitely need 2 coats of it and then be very very careful.
3. Like sugar in your coffee, it is always easier to put more gloss on than to take it off after it dries.
4. Plan on doing two coats of the top coat and don't try to touch up with this, just redo the whole section if you need to.

Other than that everything went really well and this is the final product:

Overall I am very happy! I wasn't sure about keeping the knobs white but they've grown on me.

And the motivation to spray paint them brown has disappeared entirely :)

 

And at this point we have two more projects...a wood transfer of a 5 ft long plane image and a DIY plane mobile...and one month left to do them both...

I promise to post them once they are done as well as final nursery photos!!

The Nursery...Paint is Done!

So over the last...well, forever...we have been working on painting the nursery. Personally I think I have looked as forward to this as to actually having a baby. I LOVE painting, but usually live in rentals where it is not allowed. Luckily here we had the okay to paint away.

This is how the room looked before:

The yellow wasn't a becoming shade at all, so changing that was a no-brainer. You can also see a built in dresser thing that had cabinent doors on the top that I took off to make a bookshelf. The other thing about this room was the ceiling...

I don't think this picture does justice to how grey and dingy it was...but take my word for it. It was gross.

So first Honey and I came to an agreement on the exact shade of grey we wanted the room. This conversation went like this:

Me: "Honey which of these greys do you like best. I think the darkest one is too dark."

Honey: "Hmm I like this one or this one." (He pointed to the two 2nd darkest)

Me: "Well I like this one that isn't so dark but isn't the lighest one either."

...Skip to the next day...

Me: "So I think we are going with the grey I liked best. Is that okay? I really like it better than the others.

Honey: "Sure. Whatever."

I love him!



So once we (I) picked the color we got to work on repainting the ceiling and making the walls grey.






And viola! Here is the lovely grey room. And just the perfect shade of grey, I might add. Not too light and not too dark.

I also wanted to do something fun with the built in dresser thing so I started by painting the drawers and then added color on the back of the bookshelves to add a little accent color to the whole peice.

So there you go. We have it all painted! 

Now for the next project--refinishing the changing table to an espresso color to match the crib. I will keep you posted :)

Wow I'm Huge...and I Killed the Bread Monster

Wow, it has been way too long since my last post. Definitely time for some updates.

1. I killed the Bread Monster. Let's face it, we all knew it would happen and personally I am extremely impressed I kept it alive so long...and that I actually made bread from scratch...more than once, even.

2. I am getting huge! I mean, people ask me if I am having twins. Most of my body hasn't changed a bit but my stomach is huge. Huge-huge. I almost smacked the lady handing out the little registry guns at Target yesterday because she made me guess how far along she was. Now, to me she just looked a little chubby so I said 4 months. She was six. Mind you I am just about 5 months and don't just look chubby. I look like I could give birth this summer. Huge. Here are some pictures. Judge for yourself, but unless you are telling me I look fabulous or that I do not in fact look huge, keep your comments to yourself!

3. We spent Memorial Day weekend in Hilton Head. Honey's sister was nice enough to give us lots of old baby toys and goodies. Overall we had a relaxing and easy trip with a little sunburned skin but that was it. We did happen upon this lovely gentleman before actually leaving Fayetteville as we got gas.

Sure you have a restroom, but do I really have to bring my own toilet seat?

Fayetteville is full of characters...most of which cause Honey to carry a gun. And here are some more lovely photos from the trip.

It was VERY windy!

4. I am doing more writing. If you are the type that like to read blogs and articles about health and education you can check me out at:

www.brainhealthcolorado.com
www.e-merging.org/blog
www.ourcoloradonews.com/education/

As you may notice most of these are things I write on the sly for other people. So yes I am actually getting paid to write. I'd make more babysitting, or working at McDonalds, or doing just about anything else, but I am using my English degree at a paying job. And let's face it...no one expects that to happen!

So there you go, you are now all updated on my life. I will do my best to not let time get away from me. Plus I have several upcoming trips that I promise to write all about.

Not to mention more pictures of my ever growing belly!

2012--New Puppy, New Car, New Job? New Baby?

So I know I have been slacking on writing lately. I have several excuses. And not any of them involve, aliens, supernovas, or Kirk Cameron.

1. My parents came to visit us for a week. I showed my parents the sights of Fayetteville and surrounding areas. Mostly surrounding areas. Fayetteville takes about 1 afternoon.

We did a lot of shopping. My dad loves shopping for cars, furniture, shirts, antiques, and just about anything else. We walked through the 3 blocks of downtown Fayetteville and hit every open shop. Dad was bound and determined to find a new shirt, even if it meant going in stores that didn't cater to his age or race. Here were two of my favorite pictures:

Needless to say, I won't be shopping in downtown Fayetteville for clothing. I tried to get Dad into the lavender suit but sadly he declined.

We also did some furniture shopping. Can't you just see me in this bed!

Wowzar! We also hit up the Special Operations Museum which was very interesting. In front is a statue of Iron Mike. I am sure I should know the story behind who he is...but anyway here's the statue.

So Mom and Dad visiting is one reason I got very behind in posting.

2. Yes I do have a new job. I now work full time (at one place instead of bouncing around between a couple). I work as an office manager at a Construction Waste and Recycling Center. Mostly I sell landscaping materials that we recycle like mulch and stone for driveways, and stuff like that. 

It is very busy and I LOVE the people I work with. I really enjoy working in a small business that is family run. After all we get paid for lunch which involves us sitting around gossiping for about 30 minutes then talking a bit about work. And the company pays for someone to come wash and vacuum my car once a month.

And they are very strict in their Family comes first mindset which will really come in handy since...

3. 

I am pregnant! And I have been freaking exhausted! So when deciding whether to sleep or blog, I have chosen sleep every time. Luckily we have just past the 1st trimester and I am starting to hope that my energy will come back and bless me with motivation again. 

We are very excited and look forward to baby coming in late October. A baby shower is getting in the works for this summer in Denver which I am already looking forward to. I can't wait to see everyone again!

So I hope you forgive me laziness. I hope to get back on a better schedule. 

2012 has been a busy year so far, just to get busier!

Best Toy Ever

There is a magical connection between a child and a camera. Cameras, like a smile, break all language barriers.

While traveling in Laos, my friend Casey and I decided that a 5 day treck/2 day kayak trip sounded like fun. The first day, after backpacking for many hours, we made it to the first little village and had time to chill out while the family prepared chicken stew (this is a whole other story that will be told at some point...)

A group of neighborhood children were poking around, checking us out but trying to pretend they weren't. I was writing in my journal and a couple of girls were very interested in watching me write. I then tried to draw pictures like trees, birds, dogs, houses, etc. They would tell me the name of the object in their native language and I would say it in English. Well, if you have ever seen me draw, I can pretty much draw a tree, a bird, a dog, and a house. That is it. And even those barely resemble the actual object.

So drawing brought in a crowd of kids but couldn't keep them so out came the camera. They LOVED it. Here are a few shots:

The kids in Loas wouldn't take the pictures themselves, but they got the greatest kick out of us taking pictures of them and then looking at the photo on the camera screen. They would giggle and giggle. We did this for hours while our chicken was getting slaughtered, plucked, and cooked--sorry, different story.

The magic of the camera appeared again this weekend while visiting Honey's sister and our neices in Hilton Head. During an extremely long wait for a table at a restaurant, we were all getting hungry and cranky. So I pulled out the camera and our 4 year old neice went crazy. She very likely could end up a famous photographer...we'll see in 20 years! 

Here are some of her photos--they have a "face between fingers" theme to them:

You gotta love things that make kids smile.