Hey-I turned 29 for the first time yesterday

Yesterday was my birthday, and I thought I was going out with Driver for dinner while a friend babysat for Back Seat Girl. So, I was ready by 5, which was the time Driver told me it was imperative I be ready to go. My friend arrived...what should we call her? HHMmm...the gymnast? radio groupie? Anyway, I'll call her The Gymnast for the rest of this post. So, The Gymnast arrives, and she's wearing a skirt, which I think is a little weird, but whatever. I tell Back Seat Girl "the Gymnast is here to play with you" like I'd been preparing her for all day. Driver comes down in some outfit I wasn't too pleased with because he had thus far been avoiding changing his clothes. I'm sitting on the couch wondering why Driver isn't giving The Gymnast babysitting instructions (he said he'd take care of EVERYTHING), when 3 of my girlfriends jump out from the kitchen and shout "SURPRISE!"

So, I spent my night gossiping, getting a manicure and pedicure (where we met another one of our friends), and eating at a cool Japanese restaurant with my girlfriends, and I had a blast. I am so lucky to have women like them in my life. So, thanks, ladies. I had a terrific birthday. I'm so happy I have friends like you and we've all become good friends. It's nice to have a 'gang'.

The mousy took a nap after his lunch of peanut butter

As many of you know, Back Seat Girl and I are visiting my parents in beautiful Wisconsin while Driver is at training for work in Washington, D.C. We’ve been here since Sunday afternoon, and though it’s been a very nice visit, so far, it’s also been very uneventful. That is, until today.

This morning I was in the bathroom, wrapped in a towel after my shower, when I heard my mother let out a little scream from the laundry room. I opened the door and peaked my head out to make sure nothing horrible had happened to Back Seat Girl, and my mom informed me that a mouse had just run out of the laundry room and down the hallway toward the living room. A little while later, while mom and Back Seat Girl were in the living room, it reappeared in the corner. My mom did what every other clear-thinking woman would do with her precious granddaughter in the house. She picked up Back Seat Girl, set her in the rocking chair, and starting whacking at the mouse with a broom. Back Seat Girl sat in her chair and laughed out loud.

A little while later, I was in the living room, deciding that I needed to go outside and start cleaning out the wagon and re-packing it for our trip home tonight, when the mouse very boldly ran across the living room and into the kitchen. Back Seat Girl was on my mom’s lap watching Lady and the Tramp. So, now I had to pick up the broom and chase after it. Back Seat Girl was starting to get nervous. She would no longer go and play with her toys in the corner because that was the last place we had seen it. It was becoming obvious that we needed to do something about this bold mouse that refused to go back into the basement and hang out until my dad got home and could take care of it. I told my mom to try not to freak out when she saw the mouse so we wouldn’t scare Back Seat Girl. These words had not been out of my mouth for more than 30 seconds before the mouse ran out of the corner by the TV, past us, and behind the couch. I screamed like a girl.

My mom and I both put shoes and socks on, because everyone knows how vicious house mice are. Also, it would obviously help us catch the mouse. I put a sticky trap with peanut butter in the corner of the kitchen where I had seen the mouse run several times. We hoped that it would run in there and chow down and we could just throw the whole trap outside and just forget about it until dad got home. Back Seat Girl was with me when I did this, so she thought we were feeding the mouse by putting peanut butter into its house. Children are so innocent.

It soon became obvious that the mouse was not going to just run into its “house” and enjoy it’s lunch of peanut butter. Back Seat Girl had decided she wanted to sit on mommy’s lap to watch her movie, so now my mom was armed with the broom. We started to get a little whippy. I don’t know if it was the fear, or watching my mom run around the house with a broom, whacking at the floor every time the mouse appeared, but we couldn’t stop laughing. Every time Back Seat Girl saw the mouse she started hitting her leg, and neither mom nor I would sit on a piece of furniture without our feet up on something.

We didn’t like the thought of putting Back Seat Girl going down for a nap with the mouse still on the loose, so my mom got a bucket and went down the hall to do some mouse hunting. When she got to her room she looked in to see the mouse sitting ON HER BED. Now mom was pissed. This meant war. At this point I was getting Back Seat Girl’s lunch ready. I heard a bunch of commotion at the end of the hallway, but I decided to just ignore it, until my mom started yelling for me to come and help her. She had the mouse’s back leg caught in the bucket, but the rest of him was hanging out. Here is where my true character came out. Mom handed me the broom to finish the job, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t whack the mouse. So, I put my foot on the bucket, turned my back and plugged my ears, and my mom starting whacking the mouse with the broom. It valiantly escaped from under the bucket, and I was instructed to close the door to the laundry room, or as I like to refer to it now, “The Arena of Death”. Behind the closed door I heard multiple whacks. When they stopped, I slowly opened the door, but my mom wasn’t finished. “It won’t stop moving!”, she said breathlessly, and kept on whacking. This is where I lost it. I crumpled into a heap in the hallway and started laughing until tears streamed down my face. “I broke the broom!”, my mom called out. Gales of laughter peeled out of me. I had never seen her like this. She was like a woman possessed. When the mouse finally gave up the ghost, mom swept it down the hallway, out the back door, and underneath the deck. Back Seat Girl turned around in her chair. “Mousy?”, she asked. “The mousy went outside for a nap”, I said.

I just hope that this isn’t the beginning of the end for mom. They say serial killers start out by torturing animals. I’ll have to have dad keep an eye on her…

Happy Birthday, Back Seat Girl!

Eating cake and ice cream at "Gama & Gampa's" house

Today is Back Seat Girl’s 2nd Birthday. I can hardly believe she’s already two years old, and yet I can’t remember what life was really like before her. She brings so much joy to our lives. We love to laugh at what she says and even at her little toddler tantrums.

She’s grown up a lot this past year. She’s learned how to walk (finally!), peed in the potty all of two times, and she’s vastly increased her repertoire of words and sentences. Just recently she’s starting asking “are you” questions. As in “are you sad, mommy?” “Are you angy, gampa?” (That one happened while he was trying to fix the grill last night.) She also likes to come into the room you’re currently in, look at you, and ask “are you in the kitchen/livingroom, mommy?” She loves to tell you she wants something, and then make it sound like it was all your idea. Here’s an example:
Alison: “Alison want a cookie.”
Me: (making sure I heard her right) “You want a cookie?”
Alison: “O.K.”

She has also started to be very possessive of pretty much EVERYTHING. I know it’s a normal toddler stage, but I still don’t like it. Everything is “my” or “mine”. She does not do well with other children playing with her stuff, but she is perfectly happy playing with other kid’s toys. She has a definite preference for girls or women, the exception being her “gampa”, whom she follows around like a puppy when we’re at their house.

Back Seat Girl is about to become a big sister, and that’s going to be a big step for her. I can’t wait to see how she handles it. She tells me she will help me take care of the new baby, and she finally says that her baby brother is my mommy’s tummy, though she doesn’t say it very often, and NEVER when asked.

I love you, Back Seat Girl. Have a very Happy Birthday!! I hope you know how much you are loved by everyone around you.

Trivia, Trivia, Trivia

Recently I jumped onto a little known trivia fact regarding the most developed state in the union. Well I finely found a source for this claim. It's from a university so you know it's true. You know, all those PhD's and what not. I must admit... Despite my strong conservative values the use of state money in Iowa(R) vs Minnesota(D) and the great public transport system of the East Coast(R) cause me considerable doubt.

Back to the trivia.
As stated in one of the most addictive pod casts, Matt's Today In History, wear did Alan Shepard die?
Hint, it has to do with the Lone Cyprus.

Note to Papa Wonder: This is where you leave a comment instead of just e-mailing me.
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How about Floyd Landis! Why isn't there more press on this? Also, he's a Mennonite. Yeah, I know, that's practically Ahmish.

Happy Anniversary, Driver!!

Tomorrow is our anniversary, but since we will be camping and have no access to the internet, I'll give him a little shout-out today.

I may make fun of Driver for watching Star Trek, not being able to talk to girls, and tending to be, well, a little on the geeky side. The truth is, however, those are all things I love about him. I, too, have been known to enjoy Star Trek from time to time, be kind of a geek, and while I believe my flirting skills are pretty mad, I never have to worry about Driver cheating on me. It's kind of endearing.

He's given me a pretty nice life here in the past 6 years. We've had lots of fun together and managed to change and learn from each other, too. We've also decided to take the plunge and change our lives by having children, and that's shown me even more of Driver's character. He's a GREAT father. Through him and how he treats me, Back Seat Girl has an example of what she should expect from any man she chooses to date or even have as a friend, and our little boy bean couldn't have a better example of how to grow up to be a wonderful man.

All this is a long, mushy way to say: I love you, Driver! You make me so happy, and I couldn't imagine being married to anyone else (probably because no one else would put up with me!).

No, I have never threatened to boil her.

Um, OK, there's nothing else to say here but:

What the hell is this thing?

It was on our tree in the front yard. It's got the tail of a scorpion but it also has wings. It kept looking at me and curling and recurling it's tail while I was picking up yard debris this afternoon.
Here's another view, with a nice silhouette of it's tail.
"Momma', boil you!"

(She hasn't figured out 'me' actually means her, so she almost always uses 'you' to talk about herself)
I wasn't even talking about boilling anything at the time. Hopefully social services won't be knocking at my door anytime soon. I think that when your toddler is saying "Momma' boil you" in the background over and over again they probably won't be laughing lightly along with you.
"Back Seat Girl sit in the frying pan."

(OK, she actually didn't say "Back Seat Girl, she said her name, but you all get the picture.) 

Resistance is futile… You will be assimilated.

So last night I slept in the comfort of Methodist Hospital. Nothing to be worried about; this was purely voluntary. As Shotgun said below I was taking a sleep study. Over the past years I’ve been annoying Shotgun (my bed partner as they say in the sleep study biz) with my snoring.
The environment was pretty much as described in the post below. The staff however was the real highlight of this venture. My assigned sleep technician was not the 20 year old hotty just out of tech school; rather it was a crusty tech who had been quite a few places in the hospital. He finally decided that watching people sleep through the night was a good fit for his skills/personality. It’s been my experience that people who prefer to work nights are a little off. If you read this and say to yourself, “I work nights and you’re right there are some odd folks.” Then chances are you are normal for now (get out now while you still have your sanity). On the other hand, if you read this and think “I work nights, and no one is that peculiar” you have been on nights too long. You may even say you prefer nights. Leave a comment and I will gather some friends who have experience in this situation and we will have an intervention.
So anyway, back to the study. There I sit in a cold chair shirtless with Mr. Swears-and-Smokes-A-Lot putting enough electrodes on my head to make me a member of the Collective. It wasn’t that hard to sleep. It was hard to be comfortable but I slept anyway. The guy came into the bedroom in the middle of the night and fitted me with a c-pap mask because of some apneas I was having. Nothing major, but I suppose I’ll have to do something about that.
The morning came and Mr. Bitter woke me up to remove the electrodes. We got to talking and I told him I work for 3M in the medical quality group. Well then he informed me that the 3M tape holding electodes to my chest will hurt when it comes off and that Coban (another 3M product) stinks like “dog shit” when first opened. I told him that he should file a complaint because we take that “shit” seriously. He grinned and gave me a look that said “brace yourself patches, I’m pulling off those electrodes taped to your chest.” Ow, that hurt. I came home to tell shotgun all about it over the fresh coffee she made.

On a another note. Clipless pedals are great and I’m psyched to try them out on my next ride.

I know this is a family blog and all, but...

Driver calls Lancewith2 tonight to ask a few questions about the clipless pedals for his bike that came in the mail today.

Driver: "Hey, I got my pedals in today"

Driver walks in the living room, I can no longer hear him.

Driver begins walking back into the kitchen (he paces when he talks on the phone).

Driver: "...and where do you unscrew it?"

Lancewith2: inaudible, sounds sorta like the teacher in Charlie Brown.

Driver: "Do you unscrew it with that bolt by the crank shaft there?"

Driver begins walking back into the living room; more talk about screwing and unscrewing.

Sidenote: Driver was the last person to turn on the TV before I came into the living room to post. I had to turn the station from Star Trek: The Next Generation so I could watch the Twins game.

Update

Back Seat Girl appears to have a cold. She started to show symptoms of congestion today. She has a nice, rattly cough, and although her nose isn't running, you can tell she's a bit congested. I took her in to the Dr this morning, and her ears and lungs are clear. She does have a sore on the back of her throat I'm supposed to be watching. Yea, you try to get her to open up her mouth and stick her tongue out long enough to see back there with a flashlight. I caught a bit of a glimpse once tonight, that's all. Oh, and she's still running a bit of a fever. Of course, the girl is still eating. You gotta' love her. She's a fighter.

Driver is at his sleep study. He gave me a call and said so far all is OK. His room is like a dorm room, and it's got a TV and a fan in it. He brought his book along, so he's hoping to have no problems falling asleep. Of course, there's still the pesky fact that's he's gotta' wear shorts to bed.

Driver thinks I need to post a picture with every entry, but I'm just too lazy to go look for a cute picture on the internet to illustrate every point. Maybe he needs to post more. Besides, I like the picture of the burnt pancake. Can that really be outdone?

A good quote and a sick Back Seat Girl

Yesterday Driver, Back Seat Girl, and I are sitting at the kitchen table. I made some corn cake thing and we were settling down for a little afternoon snack. We all eat in silence for a while, then Driver asks Back Seat Girl "Do you like it, Back Seat Girl?" To which she answered "It not bad". Deadpan. We weren't sure we heard her correctly, so we asked her again, and she once again said "It not bad".

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If there's one thing I hate, it's having a sick kid, especially when there is no apparent reason for the illness. It's one thing if she's got a fever and a runny nose or she's throwing up or something. Then you know there is a reason for a fever. However, Back Seat Girl has had a fever now for 2 days and has no other symptoms. She's obviously sick. You can tell the moment the medicine wears off. She gets bags under her eyes, stops what she's doing, and starts to whine and asks to be picked up. When you pick her up she throws herself onto your shoulder and lays her head down. Poor girl. She hasn't been sleeping well, and she's worrying me. I just like to sit and ruminate about how many horrible things it could be. I'm taking her to the Dr. tomorrow morning, where I'm sure she'll show no symptoms and I'll just be looked at like I am freaking out for no reason and why am I bringing my perfectly healthy child in to see them (I had to wrangle an appt out of them, there wasn't any openings when I first called).

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Stay tuned: Tomorrow night Driver is going for a sleep study. It requires him to do a few things which make him uncomfortable: for one, sleep in clothing. Also, it requires him to have electrodes attached to him. We've made quite a few jokes about it tonight. Do you think they'd let him go through with it if he shows up drunk? I had to fill out a questionaire as his "bed partner". I wanted to fill it out with real manly hand writing and sign my name as Bill. We also thought if would be fun to make up copies so he could have a bunch of "bed partners" fill them out. I will make him blog about it.

At least I know she listens

Yesterday afternoon Back Seat Girl and I were in the kitchen. It was about 3:00, and she was ready for a snack. She requested "apples and pea-nut bu-tta". I started cutting up an apple, and Back Seat Girl came into the middle of the room, looked up at me, and said:

"You have to eat the appols too, Little Girl."

I turned around to look at her and she had her trademark grin on.

"Not just pea-nut bu-tta."

"That's right", I said, and handed her the bowl.

She proceeded to suck the peanut butter off of the apple slices like she always does, and I realized that I really am a broken record.

Look, my husband compared me to a planet!

He did, honestly. Down there where I post about my due date. Yea, in the comments section. And not just any planet, mind you, Jupiter, THE LARGEST PLANET IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM. And he thought telling me I could be Pluto instead would make everything all better. You know, Pluto is a very small planet. A block of ice, really. Who wouldn't want to be a block of ice (that is so large it is called a planet)?

Now I remember why I have a husband

Driver is away tonight, and since he's not going to be gone long I was actually looking forward to being home by myself for a little bit. I could watch the All-Star game without him making comments about how stupid it was, and I could read blogs and write emails without feeling guilty about wasting our time together after Back Seat Girl goes to bed or answering the question "What are you reading?" when I really don't think he actually cares. Oh, and I get the WHOLE BED to myself.

So, this afternoon went like any other when I work. I picked up Back Seat Girl, brought her home, gave her a snack, played with her a bit, made her supper, took her out for ice cream (totally her idea, I swear), gave her a bath, and put her to bed. I came out of her room and looked around. No one had taken her bath toys out of the tub and emptied the water out. No one had even touched the supper dishes, and no one had emptied the dishwasher. My work bag was still sitting on the kitchen floor exactly where I left it. No one had turned the sprinkler off in the back yard. No one had picked up the living room or made coffee for the next day. "Oh, yea, that's right", I remember to myself. "I have to do everything when he's gone".

And that, my friends, is why I have a husband. I'm lazy.

MMMM, Yummy!

Do you ever make pancakes and then sit down to eat one and forget you were still making them? Yea, that's never happened to me, either. 

And my Official Due Date is...

November 9th. 10 days after my original due date. The first ultrasound I had at my very first appt and what was supposed to be my 20 week ultrasound agreed exactly. So, probably no Halloween baby. Just me, waddling around with Alison, trick or treating. I guess this year would be the perfect year for me to go as a pumpkin. I'll just have to dress in orange and wear a green hat.

Men, beware: I use the words ovaries and ovulation in the next paragraph.
So, my Dr (who is 29 weeks pregnant) and I were talking about my due date, and she asked me what I thought was a very strange question. She asked me if I thought I just ovulated later that month. Um, I guess you'd have to ask my ovaries that question. They didn't tell me. I'm not one of those women who can "tell". And besides, shouldn't she be the one with the explanation? I guess it's pretty obvious that must have been what happened, or I would be due Oct. 31st. Of course, it's hard to carry on a conversation with Back Seat Girl in the room. She was talking so much it prompted my Dr to start looking back in my chart and ask me how old she was. She also commented on her [chubby arm] rolls. I think that's funny, because everyone who knew Back Seat Girl when she was a wee baby knows her rolls now have absolutely no comparison to her rolls back then, when it was an actual chore to wash inbetween all of them.

Funny aside: The nurse was taking my blood pressure and all of that and when she was leaving told Back Seat Girl she was going to go and get her some stickers. Time passed, and the next person into the room was my Dr. Back Seat Girl just started saying quietly "stickers". Of course the Dr had no idea stickers were promised, but she assured her that there would be stickers when we were all done. After my appt was all finished, the Dr leaves the room. Once again Back Seat Girl looks at me and starts saying quietly "stickers". At this point I'm starting to get nervous that there really won't be any stickers and I'm going to have to explain it to her. Mercifully, the nurse came back with a whole basket of stickers for Back Seat Girl to choose from. Crisis averted.

Because I know you are all dying to find out

Last night's pee-pee in the potty was Back Seat Girl's first and last. This morning when she woke up with her 15 lb diaper loaded in pee, she was all about sitting on the potty. And after breakfast before she got dressed she was all about it. But since then her desire has waned quite a bit. She even denied having poop in her diaper when there was so obviously poop in there. I don't know what it is, and I'm not going to push it, but I think it has something to do with the fact that she hasn't gotten a sticker in a while, so it's getting old. That, and she apparently does not care in the least about walking around with pee in her diaper. Even poop is OK for a while. So, we're just going to leave the potty in there, and ask her once in a while if she needs to use it, and see what happens. She's still pretty young to be potty trained, as was cemented in my mind when I went to Target and realized that training pants do not come in a small enough size for her.

So, now you can all sleep soundly knowing about my child's potty habits.

Bloggers Block

I wanted to post a very nice story about vacation, but I just kept coming back to this picture of a fat guy holding a big fish.



Thanks to St. Pauly Girl and shoe box greeting

Beware, I may say pee-pee and poo-poo a lot

I was originally going to post about our weekend, but let's face it, there isn't much to write. We put 1000 miles on the wagon driving to and from my parent's house and then to and from Milwaukee from there. Then we drove to and from Mille Lacs after I worked on Monday. Driver and I went to the DMB concert where we found out two things: 1)We are not huge Dave fans, because the people we hung out with were freaks. 2)We may not have been the oldest people there, but having a mortgage and kids makes you feel old. And I guess we were close to being the oldest people there. OK, except for one lady, maybe we were. (Also, Driver complaining about his aching feet all the way back to his sister's apt may makeone feel old, too.)

The big news around here is the new potty we bought Back Seat Girl. We took her along to pick one out. She was so excited about it. She kept telling us about how she was going to go pee pee in her potty. Driver like to remind her that she could go poopy in there, too. Anyway, we brought home the potty and immediately took it out of the box and put it in the bathroom. Back Seat Baby immediately wanted to sit on it. So, off with her diaper and shorts and on to the potty she went. She got up a few times, all the while saying something about pee-peeing in the potty. Then, one time when she got up, there it was. The child had actually peed in the potty! We hadn't even had the thing home for 10 minutes. I didn't even know if she really knew what it felt like to have to pee. As soon as I saw that liquid in the bottom of her new, very own potty, I started making a huge deal. Driver came over with his chin in the floor, and got her a sticker to put on her potty. Well, that sticker pretty much cemented in her head that peeing or pooping in her potty was her only goal. So, she sat there, and sat there, and sat there some more. She would sit down and then immediately stand up and say "I pee-peed in the potty. I get a sticker." I tried to explain that she actually had to pee or poop in there to get one. She was so determined to do it again that she cried through her whole bath because she couldn't sit on her potty. While Driver was drying her off, she said "I have to go poopy" and then she farted. Driver immediately carried her to the potty, where there was more sitting, but no more producing. She ran out in the living room to get her "fishy" (small plastic dolphin but you try to explain it's actually a mammal), and told me he had to go poopy. Then, she put him in the potty, told me he had gone poopy and said "I get a sticker for the fishy". Wow, now she was trying to manipulate me using the fishy to get a sticker. I explained that stickers were only for Back Seat Girl. That seemed to pacify her.

So, here is our dilemma. We figured we'd bring it home so she could get used to the idea for a little while, before we started training in ernest. Let's face it, we're not prepared. She is still sleeping in a crib, which isn't good for middle of the night potty needs, and I don't have any training pants or big girl underwear. Plus, I have no clue what I'm doing. I feel like up to this point, she's pretty much been raising herself. I let her figure out her own schedule, and up until now parenting has just been us saying "don't put that in your mouth" or "you have to eat your vegetables before you can have a cookie" or teaching her baby signs or words or numbers or colors or whatever. Now I actually have to be a parent. And I have never potty trained anyone before. Well, I did train Driver to put the seat down, but I think this may be different. She just seems so little to be getting potty trained. I can't imagine her wearing big girl underwear. And what am I going to do at the park when she has to pee? Frankly, it almost makes me a little sad. Of course, peeing in the potty tonight could just be a big fluke, in which case I will be posting soon about how frustrated I am and how hard potty training is. I guess we'll see. The one thing I know about Back Seat Girl is that once she gets something in her head, there's no getting it out. She remembers EVERYTHING, and she'll remember she got a sticker for peeing in that potty.