Of Shoes and Ships and Naughty Corners

Brendan has been sent to the naughty corner three times in his short life. One time was for biting Liam, one time was for hitting me and one time was, well I'm not exactly sure what it was for because it was Liam who sent him there...and he went. Eric and I were in the front room and the kids were in the back and we heard a couple seconds of fussing and then Liam's tiny, authoritative voice direct, "go to the naughty corner." We came out in time to see Brendan marching solemnly to the naughty corner. Liam said he was pulling on his book. Whatever the reason, he listened to Liam, with no fussing. Eric and I haven't learned the secret to getting those results yet.








Here's an op ed piece about AT&T that anyone who has ever dealt with phone and utility companies could appreciate. Check it out if you have a second. http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/the-return-of-the-old-grouch/

Eric and I have been married for seven years and we have lived in seven places. In June it looks like we'll need to find a new home. :o) Someday I would like to check out Colorado and maybe the Netherlands, but I can't imagine living so far away from my family. I wonder if when we are older Eric and I will do the Peace Corps. I'm so happy I did AmeriCorps, but looking back I sort of wish I had done it for two years instead of only one. Alas.

It's 10:50pm and Liam is still talking away upstairs in his room. By the time he's asleep Brendan will probably just be waking up. Perfect...

White Christmas

I think Liam has more than just a little bit of Rachel in him. Sure, Brendan has the red hair, but Liam is just so...practical. Last night we were discussing how Santa flies from house to house. “No, I think the reindeer pull his sleigh on the ground.” “Well that would take too long. They have to go to so many millions of houses around the world. They need to fly.” “How can reindeer fly?” Liam asked me. “Well, it’s just special Christmas magic.” Liam reflects on this. “No, the reindeer must have very skinny bodies and big, huge, large wings. That’s how they can fly.” See, I would have just bought it at magic. When we were saying our prayers last week, I told Liam we needed to say a special prayer for a man at work whose grandson is sick. “Who is he?” Liam asked. I told him he was Dave and reminded him how when Liam and Brendan came to the library Dave gave them matchbox cars. “Yes, I remember him.” So, on we went with our prayers. We were midway through when Liam said, “You should tell Him that.” “I should tell who what?” I asked. “You should tell God.” “What should I tell God?” “About how Dave gave us those cars,” Liam said. So yes, I think he’s definitely related to Rae.
Well in case I don’t blog again in the next few days, Merry Christmas

Santa Claus Is Coming to Town - Oh No?

For Liam's 3rd birthday we met up with Santa Claus. It turns out that there are things he likes better. Brendan, to be fair, was just tired, but Liam genuinely did not want to sit on Santa's lap. It is actually an improvement over the Easter Bunny, however, because he wouldn't go anywhere near That Guy. Later he told me, "He was very...big." Liam is very conscious about peculiarities.


Well, I still haven't gotten my grade from class. It just ended like a week and a half ago, but I still want my grade. Patience, Danielson. Also I run out of money after my next class, and I'll still have 6 or 7 classes left, so I hope I will get some scholarships. It would help if I ever had time to apply to any. Maybe I already said this, but it's profound enough to say again. A woman I work with told me that once you have kids, the years go by so fast, but sometimes the days go by soooo slooowly. Also I notice that most days there is not enough time for everything you need to do. Hmm.

It's so incredibly amazing to me how much you love your children even though you know that of COURSE you will love them but then it's so much more than you could possibly have imagined, and then every day you love them so much more. It must be mathematically impossible to continue loving something more than before when before was infinite. You know?

I invented this new charity but I'm not sure how to create it, so Eric said I should blog about it. Maybe that's just cause he wanted me to stop talking about it. Anyway, my idea is that there's a service, like AmVets or Salvation Army, and it comes to people's houses to pick up big bagfulls of toys that their kids no longer play with. For most people I am sure that they have tons of toys that are practically brand new that their kids are done with. How do I know this? Because many of those people want to give those toys to me. Except, because we like so many Americans live in the midst of so much wealth and generosity, I already have a million toys which Liam and Brendan play with. And it's a lot easier for people in the U.S. to get even small cheap toys for their kids when money is tight. But in other countries where there is extreme poverty and where there are refugee camps and orphanages there are probably plenty of kids who have no toys of their own and who would love these toys. So, this truck picks them up, takes them to a facility where they are reviewed for safety and sorted and sanitized (maybe with one of those machines I just saw that sanitizes shopping carts at the grocery store) and then they are put on ships (Eric's idea over my idea of planes) and sent to a companion facility in country X where they are processed and taken to children in need. Can this work? Does this already exist? Because organizations like AmVets make it so easy to give gently used clothes, so why not gently used toys. I know it's very complicated but...

Ok, off to bed and Loving Frank.

Last Day of Two Kids 2 and Under

Well today is the last day I will have two kids two years old and under. Also the last day I will have a 2 year old and a 1 year old. We took Liam to the doctor for his 3 year checkup today. He's 80th percentile for height and 70th for weight (though I thought he seems really skinny since we were sick.) He was extremely shy with the doctor and refused to do anything she asked. We had a Long Talk about it in the car. Liam's in a phase where he alternates between "I was feeling a little shy" and "I was being a baby, eh eh" and "I was being a flutterfly actually." Oh and also he can be very contrary, which he revels in. But knock on wood at least he was very healthy and that's awesome. He and Brendan also got their second flu shots and they took it like champs. Oh and Liam had a vision test and he got 100% except there was an old- fashioned phone where you put the receiver in the cradle on the top and he'd never seen a phone like that so he thought it was a car. It was pretty funny.
Speaking of phones we just had to order a replacement (we ordered two actually) phone for the play kitchen because we can't find the one that came with it and we figure Brendan probably recycled it. He likes to throw things out and recycle. It's hard to remember to check each time before you take the can out to see what Brendan might have been composting.
We got a tree last night - yeah! The house smells awesome even though I didn't used to like the smell of pine. It's nice and today we will decorate it.
We tried to take pictures for the Christmas cards but so far we haven't gotten any keepers. So if you haven't received a Christmas card, well it could still be a while.
I wanted to write a long post about how awful it was being sick and how you cannot be sick when you are a mom because you have to keep going even though you think you are not going to make it because you have to take care of the kids, but it was too exhausting even thinking about it. It really was the pits. Seriously.
Oh, and if anyone knows of a station that plays Christmas BESIDES the Holiday Light, or Holiday Lite or whatever, please let me know. Thanks!

I Do Not Like Fruit Pies

1. My favorite shoes to wear to work have no soles, so anytime I have to walk on the uncarpeted part of the floor I start to fall down. Have I gotten the soles fixed? No. Do I still wear these same shoes almost every time I work? Yes. Do I feel completely embarrassed when I almost slip in fall in front of coworkers and patrons every time I walk across the floor? Yes. Can even I figure out why I do this? No.
2. Flutterflies usually fly in water. I learned this because Liam is being a flutterfly as of late, and according to him "unfortunately he cannot eat lunch because flutterflies usually do not eat lunch." 'Unfortunately" he "cannot eat" many meals because of prior commitments he has, which include "breaking up the concrete" and other construction jobs, feeding his Baby Noah and cutting down or trimming sick trees.
3. Teething is a terrible terrible painful situation, and gets 10000% worse when you are tired. I learned this from Brendan, who now screams at the TOP of his lungs like he is being mauled by a tiger when he is tired and then proceeds to swing himself around furiously, inevitably banging his head on something, which causes him to scream louder than anyone thought possible. At other times he bites me, then cries like I bit HIM. Other times he simply walks around and plays while sucking in his cheeks and it is SO SAD.
4. My friend Kelly alluded to this point on her blog recently. When I was pregnant with Liam, but before I knew I was pregnant, I did a health evaluation thing at the gym I used to go to in Lincoln Square. I was 28 at the time, and among other things I learned that I had a body age of 21. It would have been lower, but my blood pressure was high that day. normally my blood pressure is like 90/60 or something, and when I was having each kid it dipped down to Much Too Low which made all sorts of widgets beep very loudly while I tried to sleep during labor. Anyway, three years and two babies later, I am sure my new body age would be calculated at somewhere between 62 and 67. Brendan absolutely abhors sleeping for more than 2 hours at a time. Before that I would have said my body age would have been about 43. I certainly have no time to go to the gym, nor do I even have time to walk down into the basement and use the elliptical. I have a group project and an assignment due over the next two weeks and finding time to do those WHILE my brain is capable of functioning is hard enough. Reading my book for the book club I am leading in early December is about all I can muster. When I will ever lose the 8 - 12 pounds I am up, that remains unclear. Point #4 is getting too long, though I have MUCH more to say on the subject.
5. I hope gas prices stay low because Eric and I want to take a road trip in March out to Arizona and that would be awesome if gas is cheap. I cannot believe it was this past April that we were in Dublin. I would LOVE to go to Italy even though we seriously should not spend money on that but hopefully in the next couple of years we will do that. It is nice because right now we don't have school schedules limiting our vacation times, but we also have all those projects to do on the house and the economy has seen better days. And then again you only live once, so carpe diem!
6. News no one wants to know: Brendan does not want to give up nursing, Liam does not want to give up diapers.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

This just in (ok not "just", since it was in last week, but...):
Mt. Prospect has been picked by BusinessWeek magazine as the best place in the country to raise children.
The northwest suburban community was cited today for its affordability and for the quality of its schools, where students consistently score high on reading and math tests.
The community came out on top in BusinessWeek's second annual roundup of "The Best Places in America to Raise Kids."
Village officials said they were thrilled with the honor.
Also mentioned were Phoenix; Columbus, Ohio; and Ann Arbor, Mich.
--Chicago Breaking News Center

I think that's cool, since as anyone reading this knows I miss the city terribly, so any good news about Mount Prospect makes me happy. In fact I saw a guy
going around taking pictures of houses on my street a couple months ago and I think this is what he was up to. Cool! But anyway, I've been reading different articles about this and the one I highlighted above had the following comment, which I couldn't love more:
"what will all the SUV driving, cell phone wielding, soccer moms do in naperville now - i hope my great city of of mt prospect doesn't bring all these nutjobs to our city - stay where you belong naperville nutjobs."

Somehow I literally didn't know where Mount Prospect was until we moved here (and I think I worked here at a bread company for a couple days in college, unless that was Morton Grove.)
Today Liam was crawling through this tunnel we have and it was in the living room, so when he inevitably slipped inside it he fell on his head on the hardwood and got an enormous goosegg on his forehead. I'm going to try and post a picture of it. It drives me crazy how he ALWAYS manages to hit his head. Why? He is scarily skilled with all things sports-related, can navigate pushtrucks and cars through teeny spaces, etc. etc,., but just like Eric he cannot walk without tripping over things. I mean at least he's still a toddler. But Brendan doesn't seem to have inherited this trait (thank God!)
I have one reading response left to do for class and it needs to be in tonight by
11. Let's keep our fingers crossed I can get it in. Then I just *just* have a giant group project and one other assignment and I'll be done with class. Yippee! 2 down, 8 more to go. Not a good way to think about it I now realize. This is the master's degree that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend.

Mug's Pizza & Ribs - It's Good!

Warning - totally random stream of consciousness.
Yeah, there IS another restaurant that delivers to us that's good - Mug's Pizza & Ribs. It reminds me of Perry's. And their grilled chicken sandwich is awesome. Phew! And it's the weekend! Well it is for me since I don't work Friday - Sunday this week.
If you eat an entire batch of cookies in three days it's ok as long as they are whole wheat and oatmeal, right? I mean and chocolate chips too, but that's a given. And Liam, Eric and Brendan probably had 2 or 3 too. Combined.
Isn't it funny how 56 degrees seems balmy and warm now? This was the main problem with southern California. Every single day it was between 76 and 79 degrees. You cannot be normal when that is the temperature every day. Thus, an entire region of the country, totally nuts.
I am looking for books written by women that are clever, funny, quirky and good. Or some combination thereof. Any suggestions?
I remember Kathy way back at Love's told me how housewives go nuts because it is psychologically taxing to keep doing something that keeps getting undone (i.e. cleaning up the house.) Oh my gosh that is soooooooo true. Especially when joined with a lack of good sleep. And especially when you have a house that NEVER gets really cleaned up because there are 65,001 improvments you need to make to it and never enough time or money to get a lot of them done at once. For instance we are just now starting to get new interior doors. How hard could that be? Well first you have to buy the doors and hardware. If you go with your existing door frames that is like $150 - $200 per door. Then you have to whittle out the places where the hinges and the doorknob go, stain the door, level it and who knows what else. So obviously too much work to kick it off in a weekend or something. We have 10 interior doors we want to swap out. So we called Eric's brother's handyman guy to see how much he'd charge to install the doors. $180 per door. So that's a minimum of $3,200 to replace the doors. And then we still have to finish replacing the rest of the windows, repaint the cabinets (until we can redo the whole kitchen) get new coutertops, repaint the stairwell and our bedroom ceiling which is literally peeling off, buy and install new trim for the living room, dining room, upstairs hallway and den, repaint the trim and the list goes on and on forever. And I didn't even mention knocking down the wall between the dining room and kitchen or finishing the basement or getting an addition. Thank goodness working, going to school and having a 2 year old and a 1 year old is easy, inexpensive and relaxing.
Why do I get random mail for my neighbors every week and what mail of my own am I not getting?

Mug's Pizza & Ribs?

Well, we've found a new restaurant that does deliver to our house and seems to have a good menu. Could they be a replacement for our old place? I'll let you know.
We are thinking of going to the Funkadesi concert at Old Town School this Sunday. The tickets are $15, which isn't bad, except that now when we have to multiply everything by 4 cheap things get pricey.

It's a New Day -- will.i.am

A New Era!

I'm so happy!

VOTE

Well today is the big day! I have to work until 9:00 (it was supposed to be 10 but my awesome supervisor is letting me leave at 9 to watch the returns.) We voted as a family at 10:00, walked right in and encountered no lines. The other precinct that votes at our polling place had a little line, but not too bad. Liam and Brendan were good (well apparently Brando was a little squirmy but he was with Eric so he seemed good to me :o) ) One of Eric's colleagues lives I think in LA or MS said he waited over 3 hours. Wow. It could not be a more beautiful day to vote, so I hope that is a good omen for our country.
On a sort of unrelated vote, what happened to gas prices? And, um, why did they go down like almost $2/gal with no fanfare. I thought the News was predicting it's be $4/gal for the foreseeable future and that's why airlines had to raise prices and charge extra if you carried pocket change on board. And why trucking companies were going out of business and yada yada yada. I know prices can and do fluctuate but a few weeks ago I filled up for $4.20 and then yesterday it was $2.40ish. Maybe I'm hallucinating but something weird is going on here.
Anyway, Happy Voting!!!!

Buy Organic (free range, fair trade, non GMO...)

I am too tired to summarize this article, but it's a good one to read
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/01/business/01organic.html?em

If you want something uplifting and life-affirming, on the other hand, The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar is not a good book to read. Very well written, thought-provoking, and sucks the happiness right out of you.

Happy Halloween!

Salerno's Pizzeria - Just Say No

First I was afraid, I was petrified
Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side
Bu I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong
I grew strong; I learned how to carry on
I will survive

It's true, it's over. Me and my one true Mount Prospect Restaurant love broke up. For three years Eric and I have enjoyed the food from Salerno's Pizzeria, probably spent seriously a couple thousand dollars at the place, and had them cater almost all our parties. But every single time we've had them deliver something they either go to the wrong house or get something wrong with the order. Yes, I realize our street name is just an "Avenue" away from a major road in town, but seriously we tell them at least one or two times per order, "and that's Avenue, not Road." "Yep, we've got that right here. Your order should be there in 45 minutes." An hour twenty later, yep they're on the wrong street. Today the sent the wrong sandwich. I cannot continue to support the incompetence. But it still makes me sad.

(Don't) Fall Into the Gap

"Sale lasts through Monday, October 13." Except they forgot to mention that it ends at 11:59PM EASTERN time. So when I went to check out at 11:10PM Central time, no sale. And that is $20 I could have saved if I knew they only cared about New Englanders. I have been just missing a lot of things lately. Like I asked some of my coworkers to keep an eye out for MLS scholarships since my AmeriCorps money will be running out soon. Turns out there's an awesome scholarship for people in IL who will commit to working in public libraries for a couple years after getting the MLS. 100% paid. The only catch is you have to apply for it before you actually take any classes, but after you've been accepted. So frustrating.

So I wanted to add pictures of Spooky Liam and "We'll Win It All Next Year" Brendan, but why must they only insert at the beginning of my post? We use typepad at the library and you can put the pictures wherever you want. So anyway I'm seeing here if I can start a new paragraph and have my pictures insert there. You'll see how it turns out...

Yeah, it didn't work. Any ideas?

HVAC

One, I simply cannot stand this sensationalized news phenomenon, espcially when it reaches into the Weather Reports. Why on earth is the weather segment sponsored by Feldco? What? And then why is it that every day of nice weather we have is covered with this ominous "It might be nice today - but not for LONG! It's going be awful real soon! Sure it's a beautiful June day, but the blizzards of winter are Right Around The Corner!!! Today's headline - "Don't Expect a Weekend This Warm for a While" Gee, thanks Tom. Cause you meteorologists are so great at what you do. I kid you not, two nights ago the weatherman was saying "And on Saturday, highs in the upper 70's" while the large picture beside his head read "Saturday's high - 68." Ok, so it's network news. Then I flipped to the BBC and the reporter there said "Just 26 days to go until the U.S. presidential election." The large sign beside her head? You guessed it - "25 Days Until Election. " Sheesh people. And yes I understand you want to get your news on the web immediately, so there's bound to be some typos. But isn't anyone editing this stuff once it gets out there? I've seen the same typo in a headline article out there for hours. But I digress. Which I guess is the point of blogs really. Hmm.
So anyway, why is this article buried out there? From the LA Times, October 9, 2008 David Lazarus, "For Insensitivity, Wachovia Refuses to Be Outdone." I think this needs to be front and center every day until someone does something about the fact that these greedy little greedsters are still planning to go through with their wining and dining all-expense-paid cruises to the Greek Isles and their over-the-top luxurious conferences while tax money is being shored up to help them out of their greedy mess. Totally unacceptable.
Lastly, a coworker had this great idea. If Obama wins - Bill Clinton as US ambassador to the UN. And then I thought of these two - Hillary Clinton as Atty General and Bill Cosby as head of Urban Communities. (That's a new office I invented for him. Maybe Heather could run the Chicago office.)

Pudgeless

So using any type of mix is almost always in conflict with my personal code of ethics. I make an exception for No Pudge brownie mix. Of course I cheat and add a handful of choc chips in the batter, and voila! Eating 1/2 to 3/4 of the pan probably significantly alters the no pudge point, but I feel 1/2 to 1/4 less guilty than if I had eaten regular brownies, so that's pretty good! I highly recommend No Pudge for serious chocoholics. In fact, I wonder how their stock is doing these days. That might be a safe haven for your retirement fund.
Brendan can officially walk now! He can also say many, many words. At least five! Mama, Zoey, Ball, Bat, More (that's a new one as of today), Dada, No, Uh-oh. Jeez, what can't this kid do? :o) And Liam? Seriously I can have as intelligent a conversation with that kid as I can with just about anyone. He's for Obama all the way. He also told Eric tonight he could work on a computer when he grows up so he can get a Bentley. Previously he wanted to be a prince or a teacher. He's never wanted to be a librarian. And then yesterday he said he wanted to play the flute, purely to piss me off. He's good. Fortunately he relented and decided upon the clarinet, and we watched some classic Bennie Goodman on youtube.
Yes, I am supposed to be writing that paper about "What Is Browsing?" But with this mild brownie coma I'm in no mood to write. At least not sensibly. And let's not even get started talking about trying to straighten out my AmeriCorps payment to school. It's beyond ridiculous now. And I am NOT paying a late fee, believe you me. Not when I made the payment on September 2nd. Argh. Ok, back to my paper. I hope I'll remember to actually post this one.

Words of Wisdom

Last night, just as we were about to fall asleep,
Eric "It's a lot easier to sleep without a baby in the bed."
Me "It's not easier if the baby is crying outside of the bed."
Eric "It's a lot easier to sleep without a baby."

I had written 11 points of a 13 point paper, due at 11PM Tuesday night. I got home from work at 10:15pm, plenty of time to finish my paper and submit it. Except I forgot all about the paper until 11:45pm. Curses.

Tavis Smiley

So at first I didn't really have any feeling for the show. Eh. Not my thing. Then a year or so ago I read his book What I Know For Sure: My Story of Growing up in America and it opened me up to watching his show, and slowly I have been sucked in and now I am truly a fan. The dark, dimly-lit set is almost so sleepy yo aren't sure what to make of it. But he puts on people who are just so bright and intelligent and they're often not the people you see anywhere else and he actually lets them talk and asks them questions you want to hear the answer to. His laid back approach reminds me of those great actors who are so genuine you think maybe they're not that good, maybe that's just the way they are in real life. But they really are that good. Plus his guests run the gamet from economists to politicians to authors and actors and musicians. It's like reading an old book or watching a foreign film in that you just need to let yourself adjust to how different it is before you can appreciate it. An aside: a few years back while we were living in LA NPR was doing a birthday tribute to Tavis. All these famous people were leaving messages wishing him a happy birthday. For literally 20 minutes I thought they were wishing him a happy 60th birthday. I have no idea why I thought that, but when I got home I asked Eric "Did you know Tavis Smiley is SIXTY?!?!" And Eric was like "I only have a vague idea who you are talking about. So what?" And I'm all (that's the LA way of saying "I'm like") "He is that NPR guy who looks like he is WAY YOUNGER than 60! This is incredible. He looks so amazing for sixty!" Except it turns out he was forty. Oops.

Classic Blue

We are getting our front door, railing and shutters painted today just in time for, you guessed it, nothing! But I'm still excited about it. In other exciting news Brendan can take 8 steps in a row, so real walking should be right around the corner. It doesn't, at this point, seem to be helping his sleeping, nor do teeth # 7 & 8. Too bad.
Liam told me today he wanted a toy kitchen from a catalog we got in the mail. That's great news, I thought, because we just bought Brendan a toy kitchen for his upcoming birthday. Liam pointed to the cheaper kitchen I was originally going to get and said he wanted that one. I said, "Ooo, or what about this (much-more-expensive-Eric-and-I-stayed-up-until-midnight-picking-this-one-out-it's-way-better) one? It has a real-looking microwave!" "No, that one's too expensive," Liam said. (How did he know that?) "Yeah, but don't you like it? It's really cool." "No, I like this one better." "You do? But this one has a much better refrigerator." "No, I like this one better. You can eat at the counter." "You can eat at the counter of this one too! And it looks like granite!" "Can I have my bottle now?" "Ok but isn't this other kitchen so cool?" "No, I like this one better." Curses.