Just Go Play!
We are having some issues with the Big One. She is still attached to my hip. I know it’s my own fault, but how do I fix it? We met some friends at a kid-friendly cafe today. My friends kids all relished the new toys and great adventures that awaited this new space. My kids? Both of them clung to me like Saran Wrap.
The Big One kept peering over the little retaining wall-type thing to see what the kids were doing, but she wouldn’t go near the baby gate that separated her from my legs. Clearly she wanted to play, but her fear of abandonment held her back. I don’t know where the fear comes from. I haven’t left her in any strange places. She has never gotten lost. She has only been “left” with her grandparents or aunt and cousins. I just don’t get it. She is 3 years, plus a few months old. Shouldn’t she be done with me? Shouldn’t she want to go play? Surely the toys and kids were way more entertaining than me, but I couldn’t convince her of that.
I hope that once we get her into preschool maybe that fear will disappear, but until then I just wish she would go play!
Why Did it Have to be “Sarah?”
Naming a child is one of the first great challenges that new parents face. When we named the Little One, we struggled a bit with what name to choose. You have to consider how it sounds with your last name, family traditions, famous (or psychotic) people with the same name and of course how much you like or dislike the name.
Both of the girls have what I would consider “classic” names. They are not trendy, not too old-fashioned and not odd spellings. They are names that are just right for us, I think.
Then this darn presidential campaign got crazy heated and John McCain had to go and pick the Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin as his running mate. What’s the problem with his choice? Well the name “Sarah,” that’s the problem. You see the Little One is Sarah. It’s a beautiful name, it’s the Husband’s grandmother’s name. It fits her perfectly.
So why am I annoyed by it? Well, the media are already calling it the “Sarah Palin effect.” Optical stores are reporting floods of calls for Sarah Palin’s glasses, I assume the “librarian bun” is going to come into style and in about a year or so the name “Sarah” will top the popularity charts.
For 2007, when the Little One was born, Sarah ranked as the number 18 name. Still a bit more popular than I had anticipated when we picked it, but what’s done is done. I just want to say for the record, we picked the name before 98 percent of the world had even heard of Sarah Palin. She most certainly was NOT named after Palin and to those of you who are or will consider naming your daughters Sarah, may I recommend a few links:
Social Security Admin baby name popularity
Damn You, Dora!
The Big One is obsessed with fire trucks and Dora. So when we hit the jackpot and found a Dora episode about fire trucks we were in three-year-old heaven.
The problem with the particular episode of Dora is when Dora dons her firefighter gear along with Boots, they were yellow fire hats. Now any of you with small children know that most fire hats that you find at fairs, safety events are expos are red. Since we are fair and festival junkies, we have a plethora of red fire hats.
The Big one had never had a problem putting on the red fire hats and pretending to be a firefighter. She grabs her “doctor kit” and helps people, just like a fire fighter would. She checks her babies temperature, their eyes, their reflexes and gives them shots all while wearing her red fire hat.
Now that that damn Dora was wearing a yellow fire hat, we are toast. Somehow the red ones are no longer acceptable. “But Dora wears a yellow one…” is all I hear when she wants to play fire fighter.
Anyone know where I can find a yellow fire hat?
The Big Questions #4 ~ Cleaning the Waffle Maker
When you make waffles how do you clean your waffle maker? The reason I ask, is my mom and I were discussing this as I was struggling to make some decent waffles at her house.
No matter how much oil I put on it, the darn things stuck and crumbled into a sad waffley mess. Somehow the subject of cleaning came up. One of us scrubs the thing clean after each use so that it’s not a goopy, greasy mess. The other one does a cursory wipe down figuring that the leftover grease etc “seasons” the waffle maker much like one would with cookie sheets or stoneware.
Now I know based on my above comments, y’all are thinking my mom is the squeaky clean scrubber and I am not. After all it was my mom’s waffle maker that I was struggling with. So one would think that her waffle maker would be very clean, hence the sticky-factor. But not so much. My mom’s waffle maker is “seasoned,” yet I couldn’t make a decent waffle for the life of me. I think I ended up giving up and making pancakes instead.
My waffle maker is clean as the day I received it. I do use it often, but I clean it really well. I don’t want a greasy mess in my cupboards.
So how about you? Do you scrub yours clean or let it “season?” If you are a seasoner, how do you get your waffles to not stick?
UPDATED: Check this out! It looks like it might solve some cleaning problems. I do NOT own this yet, but hope to soon.
Can I Have A Do-Over?
UGH! DAMNIT! I don’t really know how else to sum up my morning other than to ask to start over.
We planned to go to Target today to get a super deal on some Pantene. No I don’t usually buy Pantene shampoo, but it’s on sale and with the coupons it was going to be a killer deal (or so I read on-line). So we load up and head out. It’s about 23 miles to Target so it’s not just a quick jaunt. But we needed a birthday present for our neighbor so we decided it was worth the trip. And as I mentioned yesterday, I needed my coffee fix.
We get about half-way when the Big One starts whining about having to go potty. Did I not ask her 10 times before we left the house? UGH! Being the good mom that I am, I tell her she’s going to have to wait until we get to Target.
We make it to Target, doing the potty dance and whining we get to the restrooms and apparently stage-fright set in or something. She sat on the pot and sat on the pot and sat on the pot. Meanwhile, the Little One is foraging through my purse for food. Yes she loves to eat in the restroom.
I threaten the Big One with two minutes to pee or we were moving on. So she finally pees. We head into the shopping adventure. Almost immediately the Little One is screeching and trying to escape from the confines of the cart (who taught that kid how to walk?). I bribe her with graham crackers to stay seated while we head to the shampoo aisle. We get there and I reach in my purse to double check the coupon and get the deal right. Where in the heck are my coupons???? FART! I forgot the freaking coupons. Good Lord is this really happening? By now I am out of graham crackers and the Little One is screaming while the Big One starts doing the potty dance again. It’s been all of 7 minutes or so, she cannot have to pee again.
I ask her 10 times do you really have to go? Yes, mommy…. Yes, mommy… Yes, mommy. … So I say fine let’s go, but tell her she had darn well better pee or she was going to be in trouble. All I wanted to do was get something for the 5-year-old across the street and get out of the store. As we go towards the restrooms, the Big One stops and says, “I don’t really haf to go.” UGH!
So we turn around again and head for the toys. I don’t know how to shop for boys. The cars all look the same to me, the Star Wars stuff looks too small (the birthday boy has a 7-month old sister), and the LEGOS look too complicated. UGH! {Just a side note, we don’t really know these neighbors all that well. I think we got the “courtesy invitation” because there will be a huge inflatable bouncee thing across the street and they didn’t want us to feel left out.}
I grabbed some paint and paint brushes. Everybody likes to paint, right? I figure I’ll get a gift receipt and they can return it if he doesn’t paint. So we get to the check-out, by way of the graham cracker aisle. Yes, I have about 10 packages of them at home, but 23 miles is a long drive home with a screaming 16-month old.
As I am trying to pay, the Little One saw the graham crackers on the belt so she is now trying to climb out of the cart onto the belt to get the box. While the Big One is asking the cashier if she can hold everything without it being in a bag. I am just trying to get my credit card out to scan and be done with it. Finally the cashier finishes ringing us up, I sign my life away and then realize I forgot to ask for a gift receipt.
In desperation, I look at Danielle the cashier and ask, is there any way to get a gift receipt now. “NOPE… too late,” she says and smirks. UGH!
Now I know we are going to Starbucks so that I can make it through the day. It’s only 10:30 a.m. caffeine and sugar are the only things that will get me through it. We get a frappuccino for me and an apple juice for the Big One (yes she is addicted already). And head home. We get home rather uneventfully and unload the Target goodies. I turn Dora on for the Big One and proceed to make lunch for the Little One.
Then it happened…I’m not sure how it happened, but really what did I expect with the way the morning went? My $4 Starbucks fix somehow slipped out of my hand, the lid flew off and frappuccino goodness went all over my kitchen. I said some not-so-nice words which of course brought both kids into the kitchen to see what happened. While the Little One immediately started trying to scoop it up and put it in her mouth, the Big One starts screaming and freaking out saying, “OH NO! That’s my drawer!! OH NO! That’s my drawer!” While I was mourning the loss of my beverage the Big One was freaking out because I defiled “her cabinet” (where the girls’ dishes, silverware, etc are stored).
Is that not the saddest sight ever???
So today, my friends, I ask you again to make the ultimate sacrifice for me. Go to Starbucks and enjoy some frappuccino goodness in honor of me and my spilled java chip fix.
Anybody Know a Remedy?
The Big One has developed this awful habit of sucking on her bottom lip. It’s gotten to the point where she has sucked it raw and now she has a rash. From the fabulous-ness of the Internet, I think it may actually have turned into a yeast infection, but I am not sure. 
We’ve tried telling her to stop when we notice her doing it, we’ve tried ignoring it hoping that it would go away on its own, we’ve tried re-directing her (telling her to touch her ear when she wants to suck her lip) we even tried threatening her with spanking when we see her doing it. Nothing has worked. She continues to suck on it. So now I am trying to figure out what to do about it.
We’ve put Aquaphor on it. We’ve put Carmex on it. They both seem to help, but of course as long as she keeps doing it, it will never clear up all the way.
Anyone ever experience this? Or have any tips for stopping the behavior?
Get Outta Your &*$! Car
Get Outta Your &*$! Car
So this is my 100th post and it’s supposed to be some huge monumental earth-shattering, a-ha moment for you my faithful readers. Well it’s time for you to get over that fantasy real quick because this isn’t even going to be an original idea. Here’s the
original concept.
So my message today is for all you lazy arse, single, able-bodied individuals who were clogging up the freaking drive thru at McDonald’s at 9:45 this morning. Get out of your freaking car so that mommies like me with two little kids and a raging headache can get their iced vanilla coffee and hit the road to the commissary.
You see we live in a community of about 15,000 people. There is one McDonald’s and not a Starbucks in sight. So when I need a coffee fix, I am really limited in my choices. Today this was especially true. If we were going “to town” we would have been fine because there is a Starbucks about 11 miles south of our house. But today we were going on base, so we were going about 20 miles east of our house. There was no way to justify hopping on the freeway for 11 miles only to backtrack up to our house and head out to the base. So I was screwed basically by the lazy, inconsiderate boobs that were too lame to get out of their cars.
For the entire 20-ish miles to base, the Big One kept asking about why we turned around and left McDonald’s without my coffee. I tried to explain to her three-year-old brain that I was not waiting behind six cars for my coffee (and blocking traffic in the parking lot). And that mommy would just have a headache the rest of the day because of it. Of course this just brought about more questions: What is lazy? Why do you have a headache? Why didn’t you get coffee? Why don’t we go to Starbucks? Starbucks has apple juice for me! Did you want coffee, mommy? And on and on and on, like only a three-year-old can do.
I figured if we suffered through the commissary I would stop on the way back home and get one. Then when we left the commissary I notice a picture beckoning to me. The Burger King on base had a big picture of the “BK Joe Mocha” on the widow. I thought well lookie there, a sign. I guess I better try it.
Just so you know it’s not worth it. I am not a Burger King fan to begin with and now this “mocha” has solidified my distaste for the BK. It seriously tasted like chocolate milk. Now I like chocolate milk alright, but I was expecting that lovely bitter coffee aftertaste and was sorely disappointed with my choice.
So not only am I not ticked off at the people in my community, I am cursing the Air Force for contracting with Burger King. {The Navy contracts with McDonald’s so every Navy or Marine base will have the goodness that is McD’s, while us AF people are stuck with the nastiness that is Burger King}.
For those of you with many a McDonald’s to choose from, thank your lucky stars today and have an iced vanilla coffee for me to celebrate my 100th post.
The Big One is Full of Them
We call them “Allie-isms” and the Big One is full of them. Someday I’ll publish a whole gaggle of them but here this morning’s for a tease.
BIG ONE: I got up all by myself and I went pee-pee and poopy on the potty, mommy.
FIXITMOMMY: Yes you did.
BIG ONE: And now you GET to wipe my butt. Look at the poop in ‘dere. It’s a giant poop and now you get to clean it up. I was just going poopy and pee-pee and then I was just getting some water to dwink.
FIXITMOMMY: Oh is that why the floor is all wet? ( I of course thought it was pee, based on her history).
BIG ONE: No it’s not wet, I was just using a cup, spilly mommy.
Cause to Celebrate?
I sort of get the feeling that the Husband and I should have been high-five-ing and dancing in the hallway last night, but it was past 11 and we were tired from the drive back from San Diego.
What should we have been celebrating? Well, it turns out the Big One is growing up *sniff, sniff*. Yes she is getting all grown up evidenced by the fact that last night when she puked, she made it to the bathroom and 98% of said puke made it in the toilet.
Yes, my friends we were up cleaning puke last night, but let me tell you it is a bazillion times easier when the kiddo makes it to the bathroom instead of puking in her bed. This was a first for us. The several times now that the Big One has gotten sick it has always occurred in her bed and on the way to the bathroom.
This time there was not a trace of throw up in her bed, on the wall next to her bed, on the carpet, on the bedroom door, on the path leading to the bathroom, on the bathroom door, etc. Yes we have had some stomach explosions that resembled crime scenes, but not last night. It was contained in the toilet and just a tad on her hair, jammies and floor.
While I am excited about the fact that it was only 40 minutes from when the episode started until the FixItMommy was back in bed. That is huge, however it is also a tad bit sad that my Big One is growing up.
fixitmommy.com 