I'm no longer a Chuck E. Cheese virgin

At 36 years of age, I've finally done it. I've gone to Chuck E. Cheese. That beacon of insanity in the already tilt-a-whirl life of a parent.

Today, the girls and I headed to the library for the first time in almost a year. The "shush" lesson that we went over a buh-zillion times in the car, was quickly forgotten when Lauren realized the amazing echoing sound that books make when you fling them onto the floor. The bigger the book, the bigger the bang. Her pleasure was made painfully obvious by her squeals of delight that only she can make. Part dolphin, part maniacal chainsaw wielding clown. It was funny and I actually smiled until I saw the librarian looking at me down her bespectacled nose. Then I was just trying to hide my smile while shushing her. I'm such a rebel. HA!

After that we were headed to the dollar store to spend the girl's earnings from the previous weeks magnets. Lauren earned 6 dollars and K got 5.75 (one more nap and she'd have had it). They were pretty excited. I got it in my head that we should make a big deal of it and go to new dollar store. Granted, I've not been to a ton of dollar stores but the one near us absolutely REEKS of cheap perfume/air freshener/incense....They could be hiding corpses in the back and no one would ever know. The odor nauseates me and the flamboyantly gay (not that there's anything wrong with that ROFL) owner is sometimes kind of a jerk to customers so I'd rather not frequent his establishment if I don't need too. So I GPS'd (is that a word yet? If not it will be soon) it but the new dollar store wasn't where Mrs. Garmen said it would be. I asked the girls if they wanted to go somewhere to eat and McDonalds popped up first. They know I hate McDonalds so I think they just do it to bother me. That's the kind of mood I was in today anyway.

Then Katherine says "Let's go to Chuck E. Cheese". I froze and ceased scanning the road and cars around me for car jackers. "How do you know about Chuck E. Cheese Katherine?" I asked. You see, I don't recall the exact moment it happened but I've had a little bit of fear about Chuck E. Cheese since at least my high school days. It probably started as a jealously thing "why didn't they have arcades for kids when I was a kid? MAN NO FAIR!" Then it turned into a "hundreds of screaming kids in a sealed building with bad food, flashing lights, ball pits and robotronics? No thank you. Not even if there is beer". Once I had kids of my own, I pictured myself as the mother of the valedictorian and all the other mom's asking how I did it and I'd say "I saved her from Chuck E. Cheese. Never let her go. She never even knew it existed.". They'd all nod knowingly while (while admiring my superb mothering skills) silently blaming the rat for their own children's short comings and the fact that they now have no money left for the college fund because the Rat has it all. Muahahahhahaa

Ahem...that was weird. I'm tired, that's all I'm going to say about that previous paragraph.

Television. That's how she knows about Chuck E. Cheese. You can't erase the commercials from the shows even if they are on DVR. The point of letting them watch shows is so that I can get stuff done. Totally defeats the purpose if I'm sitting there fast forwarding through the commercials right? I guess CEC has ads on her new favorite show about dinosaurs. Great. Time to find a new favorite show...preferably one on PBS. No wait, they have McDonalds commercials. ARGH!

Back to CEC. It wasn't that bad. OK, yes, the food was horrid (how you can mess up fried potatoes is beyond me), the knowledge of what must be in the carpet and on all of the buttons and knobs on the games had me a little wigged out, and the place had a rat as a mascot. That was all bad but the kids were so excited over the oddest things. You mean I put these money looking things in this little slot, push a couple of buttons and tickets spit out at me? Magical! They didn't even know that they could turn in the tickets for stuff yet. Katherine was in love with the robots. She wants to get some for the house. 4 of our very own 8 foot robo-tronic creatures in our very own house. Gee, that sounds wonderful....if you are 4. If you are mom you are thinking that 4 year olds are very strange creatures indeed. Very, very strange.

So Chuck, if you are out there reading this blog. We will be back. The delight in my children's eyes will bring me back. Never ever ever ever ever on a weekend though. Ever. I mean it. When there are only your kids to drive you nuts, no biggie. When there are a hundred? I'll pass.

You Tube is kind of creepy

Some freak-o commented on our most watched video (tickle toes) that "mom has nice feet". It's just the angle buddy, they really aren't that nice. LOL

Anyway, Lauren really wants to start sleeping with Katherine but their personalities are not working well in that regard. We gave it another shot tonight and the results are on our youtube site. I'm still cracking up.

I'll give you three choices about where I went this week.
A) A spa
B) A really great party
C) The pediatrician

ding ding ding! I heard a winning answer. C is correct! Can you believe that?

Yeah, Lauren started with the constipation thing again and it caused her to bleed a lot. I kind of freaked out (let's just say the Internet isn't always a good thing) and took her in. The doc gave her an enema, I'll spare you the details, and she felt much better after awhile. We have an appointment with a pediatric gastroenterologist on May 8th to find out why she keeps getting so clogged up.

I received the results of my stress test and they showed a lot of stress. Hahahahaha! No, I'm fine. The ticker is still ticking efficiently.

We are going to start a zero tolerance policy for hitting around the house. Lauren started it but now Katherine is ending it. It's not pretty. I'm torn between letting them work it out on their own and just separating them all day. I'm afraid if we don't put a halt to it soon, it may become much worse. Hitting is bad. I don't like it at all and I don't want to live around it. It disturbs my peace....what little of that I have.

Today is our version of Opposite day.

Remember in elementary school when you used to have Opposite day? Wasn't that on Wednesdays? I have no doubt that today is Wednesday.

Yesterday was wonderful. I got the house cleaned, played with the girls, no major messes or fights, we took a walk after dinner...it was all good...except for the undercooked chicken. That was pretty nasty.

Today has been a nightmare. The girls were both awake a lot last night which meant that I was awake a lot last night. I'd guess I had about 5 hours of sleep at best. The day started off with a bang when Lauren pooped. I practically threw a party for the pooper. She's not constipated. Hooray! Yeah, guess what? She's pooped about 15 more times today. That's all well and good except that a) I'm running low on pull ups and wipes and b) she can now undress herself. Once she came to me with a handful of poop and naked buns and later Katherine came in to tell me that Lauren had pulled off her pull up and pooped on the playroom floor. Oh man! Then Lauren spilled a cup of milk all over the kitchen. When I say all over the kitchen I do mean ALL OVER THE KITCHEN". She pulled it off of the counter and the plastic cup bounced around spraying milk everywhere. So, I cleaned that up after the poop. At this point I decided, I need a nap. But neither kid would go for a nap. I gave them some goldfish and turned on Cars in an attempt to catch some z's on the couch. Within minutes, Lauren tossed the entire thing of goldfish on the floor. We cleaned that up. Lauren's getting to be quite the vaccumer.

Katherine has been really good today. She ate well, she's been a good listener, she's being pretty patient with Lauren etc. I thought I'd surprise her and ask her friend to come over for a play date. Sophia came over for about an hour and a half and they played llamas (Sophia was the zookeeper), and princesses. Sophia's dad just called though. Sophia started saying she didn't feel good when he brought her home. She has strep throat. Holy moly. Unbelievable. I wonder if I can get into the Guinness book of world records for number of pediatricians appointments in a month. I think we are at 5 right now. Keep your fingers crossed for us that we don't all catch strep. I hate strep. Hate it.

Back from the pediatrician again

Katherine's throat thing has not cleared up and it's bugging her when she eats or drinks. Dr. Wilde (her regular doc) saw her today and said it's a tonsillith (aka tonsil stone) and it will loosen sooner or later. I'm not even going to go into what it is here. If you are interested, look it up on wikipedia....it's foul and grody. He wants me to teach her to gargle. That should be loads of fun. Can't wait! He also said that they are rare in kids her age and that if she is prone to them as she ages, she may want a tonsilectomy.

Lauren is officially weaned now. She's a big girl now!

For Real?

I think that being a parent teaches you to be expect almost anything. Katherine had been saying that her throat hurt for about a week but we were not only knee deep in Lauren's poopy problem, we also kind of thought it was just a cry for attention at the time since she only said it about once a day & didn't seem otherwise bothered. Finally, I looked in her throat on Wednesday and not only was her right tonsil red and inflamed, it had something big and white on it. The George Costanza in me immediately thought "Cancer! Yikes!" so I called the ped and got her right in. By the way, being such a frequent visitor of the pediatricians, we get great service now. The doc took a look and said that it's a piece of food (probably rice or corn) that's caught on her tonsil. Apparently it's been there for awhile and her body is treating it as a foreign object and rebelling against it. He prescribed antibiotics (which I haven't filled yet because I'd really rather not have her on them if it can be avoided) and said if she's still complaining in a week, to come back and he will remove it. Yeah, that sounds really fun...NOT!! Now, every night since, we spend about a half hour making weird throat sounds with K and encouraging her to chug drinks in an effort to dislodge the offending food particle. Yeah, I'm aware that we are weird.

Weaning Lauren is bittersweet

We've been working on night weaning for the last two weeks which has been going really well thanks to Woody's help. She just doesn't seem to give him the same grief that she gives me. She's only been asking to nurse every morning, after bath and before bed with the occasional boredom request thrown in. I was able to distract her most of the time from all but the morning, bath and bedtime nursing sessions but I even tried to distract her from those and make them shorter.

Many of you remember that I suffered from congestive heart failure after I had Lauren. One of the things they recommended at the time is that I get a cardiac stress test every two years. So I scheduled that last month and yesterday was the day. I didn't know that they were going to inject radioactive material into me. The Dr. told me that I absolutely was not to nurse for at least 3 days and to pump and dump in addition to not holding the kids for long periods of time. I figured if we are going to suffer through that, we may as well go ahead and call an end to it for good. I seriously considered checking into a hotel for a few days just to stay out of her line of sight thinking that whole "out of sight out of mind" theory may work, but Woody needs to work and I wouldn't want to just abandon him like that.

So with the decision made, we all made a big deal about Lauren being a big girl and we explained that num nums could make her sick and Dr. said no more num nums. She seems to understand. She's asked a few times but didn't throw the expected fits when I said no. We took her to the store and let her pick out some "special big girl snacks" and "her own big girl juice boxes" that she can have instead of num nums.

So, the time has come. I am finally going to stop nursing after almost 4 solid years of it. It's a bit bittersweet. I really have mixed feelings about this. Happy because I will finally get my body back and possibly be able to get some decent sleep, but a little sad too. I mean, nursing is the most intimate thing you can do with your child. It's so special and it's been such a huge part of our lives. Seeing her little starfish hand on my chest while she drifted off to sleep nursing on Wednesday is burned into my mind. It's just so sweet and natural.

I won't know the results of the test until next month but they didn't check me into the hospital so I'm assuming it's ok. Any tips about the sore boobage? I couldn't even sleep on my stomach last night because I'm so swollen. She'd been mostly nursing on the left side so I'm SUPER lopsided today too. This is not so fun at all.

Lauren is doing ok with it. She pitched a big fit at 2 so we were up until 3 with her but she finally gave up. She was begging for num nums this morning and really whiny but I managed to distract her and got some breakfast into her. I really didn't intend to do it like this. She's so pitiful with her "momma, I want num nums". I mean, you've seen the pictures of her. You know she has those big brown eyes and let me tell you, she knows how to use them to give the sad puppy dog eyes. It's quite possibly the most pitiful thing ever.

I believe Katherine may be a vegetarian soon

Today was a fun one. Rainy and cool, Woody home sick sleeping most of the day, two insane kids and a mommy who is a little busy with work and hasn't had time to really get my act together as far as indoor activities. I'd really been depending on the whole "sunshine state" hype and had not planned much more than playground trips lately. I managed to whip up some "magical raindrop" crafts (crayon shavings between two pieces of waxed paper and ironed on low glued onto a blue construction paper raindrop outline) and umbrella coloring pages. We also played whack-a-mole for the whole 5 minutes that it held the kids attention. Ran to the grocery store for a milk run, did the alphabet flash cards, read some stories, played some instruments...that only left about 7 hours to fill. Hmmmmmmm Actually, it was a pretty good day. The girls were pretty good considering.

At dinnertime tonight, Katherine held up her beef patty and said "mmmmm doggy likes this. What is it?". Woody and I exchanged looks. How far do we go? Knowing her, she may seriously turn vegan if we tell her it's from a cuddly cow. Crud! I stumble and mumble "It's a hamburger patty. Isn't it yummy puppy?". See, I'd rather let her be a puppy than risk the other but Noooooo. "Mom, is it from an animal?". Dad and I exchange looks again. I say "yes, cow" and as I do, I see Woody's eyebrows rise. I know he's thinking "oh great, she went THERE!"....it's ok hon, I'm thinking it too. Was it a mistake? We wait to see what she will do. She takes another bite and I finally breathe. She asks more and we tell the truth but only answer her questions, no more, why make it more difficult?

She finally finishes her beef patty and asks if spaghetti comes from animals. We explain that no, spaghetti noodles come from plants all the while I'm wondering "can a child survive on spaghetti alone?". "How about meatballs?" she asks. "Cows" is our answer. I really wish I could peer into that little brain sometimes because next she asks where the meatballs are on the cows. She's never seen them (like she's seen a beef patty hanging off of a cow bum all the time) are they near the bones? How do they get the bones out? blah blah blah blah. Even if she isn't a vegan soon, I may be. I really don't like overthinking my food. Just shove it in my pie hole and be done with it. Geez.