DECramblings

The Thursday That Wasn't

2012-02-16T08:56:00.001-08:00

What was supposed to happen:

Wednesday, Eric works in the day, I work in the night

Thursday, Eric works in the day, Brendan doesn't have school so his friend comes over to play, I work in the day, Eric takes the boys to the dentist in the afternoon and we take the boys to Grandma's and have a night out on our own, the first in quite a while.

What did happen:

Wednesday, Eric works in the day, the boys and I clean up the house for the playdate. Good day. Eric comes home, I go to work, Eric has a good night with the boys, baths, dinner, and then Brendan starts feeling sick, throws up a bunch of times, Liam starts crying that his ears hurt, I get stuck by a freight train in the rain on my walk home from work sans umbrella, we do 6.2 million loads of laundry, Aidan wakes up too early Thursday morning, I go to work, Eric misses an important meeting, we have to cancel the dentist and the babysitting with grandma.

I can't be too bitter though because FORTUNATELY Liam and Brendan got to go to their class Valentine's Day parties, which were super cute and they had a lot of fun, and I was supposed to work tomorrow night but someone switched with me at the last minute so now I have the night off. And Eric has a 5 day weekend coming up, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everyone will start getting healthier.

Casual Conversations

2012-02-15T11:47:00.000-08:00

Liam told me before lunch today that the Dalai Lama's favorite animal is monkeys. (for the record we rarely have talked about the Dalai Lama, and not at all in recent memory, so this just came straight out of the blue.) I said "Oh, did you learn this at school?" He looked at me, furrowed his brow, darted his eyes around pensively and said, "No, I think I just knew this ever since I was born." See, I TOLD you!! No one ever believes me!!!
Things here are going well, even in spite of winter (which has been scarily mild KNOCKONWOOD) Aidan is babbling up a storm and I'm starting to decipher more and more words in there. (So far this week 2 new ones - "stuck" and "roomba." And he was right!) He is so adorable, and man does he have a funny range of facial expressions. "Implausible!" "Puh-lease" "I cannot believe you are even suggesting that" "I am smiling so hard no one will ever see my eyes" and the list goes on. Brendan slid perfectly right into the preschool where Liam is in kindergarten (there were many adjustments made After Pneumonia.) Both the big boys had amazingly excellent parents teacher conferences and I am so proud of their awesomeness. And Brendan had a performance in his classroom for Valentine's Day and he sang the loudest and the most on-key. A Star Is Born! :o) Were heading off to Indy soon to catch a Butler game, and life these days is generally full of:
school (for Liam and Brendan - not me! yay!)
basketball (Liam)
Irish Dance (Liam & Brendan)
playdates (Liam & Brendan)
work (Me & Eric)
new words and demands to get toenail polish and have his shoes put on when anyone else does (Aidan) (and also Liam & Brendan actually)
a reemergence of exercise (me)
Roomba (Aidan)
Harry Potter (me, Liam, Brendan and sometimes Aidan)
finally watching some new on DVD movies (me & Eric)

Ok, I think I am going to go take a quick rest while the boys play downstairs. Any guesses how long til the yelling starts?

Growing Up

2012-01-23T08:45:00.000-08:00

(Three unrelated things first.
One, today I was reading a Cars 2 encyclopedia of characters to Brendan. Yes. Anyway, I'm reading about one car, Carla something, and Brendan got so excited and said, "What?! That car's my favorite car and she's a GIRL?! She's my favorite car and girls are my favorite persons!" He is adorable and has a huge crush on Liam's classmate Meghan, and seriously don't let him near an advertisment with scantily clad women or a swimsuit issue or something - yikes! As hard as I try I can't get the image out of my head of him wearing a shell necklace and shorts and Adidas flip flops hanging out with his rugby teammates. How many years will I have of three teenage boys? :o)
Two, Liam is consistently amazing me with his passion for science. He begs and pleads to watch movies about the Cern Center with the Large Hadron Collider. like this and this and it's just crazy. I wonder how much of this will relate to his adult life. I know that childhood tendancies don't always correlate to adult interests, but I'm am eager to watch how it progresses. I wish we could afford to send him to the science school, but at something like 17k a year it's probably not going to happen. Fortunately there's lots of other things he can do, including taking classes there in the summer. And like Eric says it's important to keep him well rounded. At the ages of six and four Liam seems to have a mind for science and Brendan is more people-oriented with a good sense of numbers and languages, and I could see him going down a business path. I'm trying to teach them that hard work is very important, no matter what the subject, which is something I didn't know as a child. An aside, at point it doesn't seem like basketball is Liam's sport, but then again he's only in kindergarten and it's suuuuper funny to watch their game. Suuuper funny.
Three, I might possibly eat Aidan, he is so soft and adorable.)

Ok, so since the boys continue to grow up with alarming speed, I'm going to try my best to accept it and look forward to the future. We had a big all-class birthday party for Liam last night, (and invited a few of Brendan's friends too because he actual birthday was pretty lousy since we had to cancel most of our plans when Liam got sick.) It was crazy, crazy, fun, and it turned out Liam thought he was now going to turn seven pretty soon, since this party was a month after he turned six. That made me happy because it shows he's still a kid, and sad because no Good Lord my baby is not turning seven any time soon! Ahh! Anyway, back to my earlier part, here are some movies I'm looking forward to watching with or recommending to, my boys when they get older:
Schindler's List
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Ghostbusters
The Godfather
The Blues Brothers
Indiana Jones
Star Wars, especially the original three
Braveheart
Life is Beautiful
Brokeback Mountain
It's a Wonderful Life
Reservoir Dogs
To Kill a Mockingbird
Miller's Crossing
Back to the Future
hmm...and what else...

New Bloggers

2012-01-13T20:13:00.000-08:00

I'm following two new blogs; check 'em out.
Ghostbusters Chute
Six Little Tigers

Weirdest Year on Record

2011-12-12T18:50:00.000-08:00

I was making the annual Christmas calendar I make for the grandparents and ourselves, and while going through the pictures I determined this has been the weirdest year ever. First, there was the snowpocalypse. Then Aidan fell out of the high chair and landed on his head and had to go to the ER. Then, we had a tornado which took out our power and did some damage to our garage and knocked two large trees on to our front and back lawns. Then we had a storm that left us without power for four days. Then Eric's train got hit by a truck hauling concrete and derailed in a fire-y mess. Then we were hit by a massive storm that wreaked havoc on our basement.
Then Liam started kindergarten and Brendan started preschool, and we started to get into a routine for really the first time ever.
Then Liam got the most awful 72 hour nonstop vomiting illness from which he could not recover, which turned into pneumonia which caused him to miss:
my art presentation to his kindergarten class,
our downtown Brendan's 4th birthday weekend extravaganza,
trick or treating at Orbitz,
the school Halloween party,
the kindergarten Halloween party and parade,
his 4th annual trick or treating at his aunt's work,
Halloween,
his last soccer game and the soccer team party,
the kindergarten field trip to the zoo (which Eric was chaperoning and which would have been his first time on a school bus),
the class dress-up-like-it's-the-1950's day,
and which culminated in a 5 day stay in the hospital for a pleural effusion and a two week post-discharge picc line in his arm.

So, it's really no wonder my nerves are rattled!

Statistics and Patting My Back

2011-11-28T18:38:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me in the shower today that the past couple weeks are the first time in over six years that I am not pregnant or nursing. Actually there was a period of a few months between weaning Brendan and getting pregnant with Aidan in there, but for all intents and purposes this is a definite departure from the last six and a half years. I was planning on weaning Aidan but my little stint in Lincoln Park with Liam was what finally did it. And now I am very close to having a new-found freedom of another sort as I wrap up my MLS. I turned in my application at midnight, March 2, 2007 and found out I was pregnant with Brendan that afternoon, which was also my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. I started the program 7 months pregnant with Brendan, on campus for two weeks at what they call boot camp. It's in insane 2 credit hour 8 week class rolled into 12 days.

This semester I took a technology class and an AV preservation class, and that one was one of the hardest I've taken throughout my coursework. My final paper was due the Monday after the the week Liam was in the hospital, and the weekend I had allotted for writing the paper was the weekend we were at Children's. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to do it bedside (haha, no way I later learned) so I wrote my prof and he was really understanding and told me not to worry and just get it in when I could and it wouldn't be counted as late. I turned it in 4 days late, and was wondering if I could pull off a B and not ruin my GPA too much (I know, no one cares about GPA, but still, for all the blood, sweat and tears I put into this non-lucrative degree, I wanted a respectable GPA.) Anyway, the other thing I thought about in my shower today was, "oh, my AVL prof said he would have grades today or tomorrow." So I went down and checked my class, and I had a message from him. He said my paper was worth waiting for, and I got an A on the paper and in the class, and he asked if he could use my paper as an example in a future class. Wow, that was so awesome. I mean it was really a hard class, not an easy A class, and I worked my butt off but definitely wasn't able to do the amount of work I wanted to, and for this super cool prof to give me that kind of praise, well that definitely shined a happy light on a very dismal month.

So Wednesday's the big day we hope to get the all clear for Liam. Keep your fingers crossed and your prayers prayed if you wouldn't mind. I cannot wait for this to be done. Liam does have a cold right now, but hooooopefully it's not much of anything. He's staying home from school just to let him rest and not overdo it, but he and I cannot wait to get him back into his normal life.

Also

2011-11-20T08:46:00.001-08:00

If Liam gets the a-ok on his appointment on the 30th he will get the picc line out, which will be so so awesome. It will also be the 32nd day of his illness. That is truly insane. We're starting the 10 day count-down. I don't even want to mention how excited I am for December, lest I jinx that. And if you don't believe in jinxing, let me tell you this story. The week before he got sick we were at a friend's house and the kids were learning to ride their bikes without training wheels. (We were at Liam's friend Meghan's house learning, because she had just learned over the weekend so Liam, Brendan and her little bro who is 4 were all learning together.) I was talking with their mom Peggy about another of Liam's classmates whose little sister had just been hospitalized for pneumonia. I told Peggy, "Knock on wood my kids have never had any weird illnesses, the worst has been a 24 hour stomach bug and an ear infection." Yep, not 5 days later Liam got the plague.

Today, I am hoping to finish my very last essay for grad school. I started it yesterday but didn't make too much progress, though starting it is often the hardest part for me. But it's in my Audiovisual Preservation class and I really have been out of my element in that class. They lost me at vinegar syndrome. My professor is super awesome. He's young and works at the Library of Congress, and his boss is...the Librarian of Congress. You pretty much can't get any cooler than that, right? Also he reminds me of my supervisor at work, and I think they both went through the cinema studies program at UIUC so it makes a lot of sense. And both of them have been so kind to me throughout the whole ordeal of the last month. I feel so lucky to have such an awesome job and awesome colleagues, not to mention the best family and friends.

One positive and unintended consequence of this whole thing is that since I didn't sleep at home for 4 (or was it 5? I'm already repressing) nights Aidan got weaned and is a much better sleeper. Always look on the bright side of life...when you're chewing on life's gristle, don't grumble give a whistle...

Did I mention Brendan and Aidan came down with colds the night before Liam came home from the hospital, and have passed it on to me?

Things I've Learned This Past Week

2011-11-18T19:16:00.000-08:00

1. Morphine withdrawal is not pretty.
2. When it rains it pours.
3. Lots of people are really, really nice.

Halloween Bloooos

2011-10-30T11:46:00.001-07:00

I'm writing this from the bed next to Liam's bed, as the world's best little sick person restlessly sleeps and moans under the blanket of fever and chills. When he first came down sick on Friday morning I thought it'd be short-lived. We had a whole Brendan's 4th birthday and Halloween weekend extravaganza planned. Friday was Brendan's birthday. After their alarm went off the boys came into our bed, like they usually do, but Liam seemed uncharacteristically fussy. Eric said he got up with him a couple hours earlier and he had a 102 degree fever. He went back to his bed and the rest of us went downstairs to see Brendan's birthday balloons and open his presents. He brought them upstairs so he could open then with Liam.

That morning I was going to Liam's kindergarten class with another mom to do a presentation about the artist Horace Pippin. I was so bummed Liam couldn't be there, but it was fun to be in his classroom and see all the little kids. It has a much warmer feel than the preschool he and Brendan go to. And his teacher is excellent. (So is their preschool teacher, but they are very, very different people, as the schools are very very different schools.) She's a 23 year old DePaul graduate and is doing a great job keeping 18 kindergartners engaged and behaved for 3 hours every morning. I have to get a picture of her and Liam. Anyway, I texted the other mom, Stephanie, to say I'd be there at 8:25. She didn't respond, and it turns out she thought the presentation was at 10:30 so she missed the whole thing. I'll give myself a pat on the back for doing what I think was a great job when the whole thing went off-script. It was fun. The next plan was that I'd get home in time for Eric to take the 9:27 train into work. Then around 2:30 I was going to rustle up the boys into the car and take them down to Orbitz for their office Halloween trick-or-treating. But since Liam wasn't going to be able to go, Eric worked from home and brought just Brendan to work later in the afternoon. Liam still had a fever but he seemed relatively ok.

I wasn't sure if Eric and Brendan would be back in time for dinner, and Liam wasn't super hungry, so we ordered Jimmy Johns (though I'm not in favor of giving him too much money after his political antics.) We had to cancel the rest of the plans (which included going to Ed Debevics for Brendan's birthday dinner and then going to the Marriott overnight.) I knew when Liam didn't eat more than two bites of his sandwich that he was pretty sick. Sure enough that was Friday night and now it's Sunday afternoon and he hasn't eaten anything in all that time. He's just barely able to drink water and the occasional sips of juice. We considered taking him to the hospital this morning as he was starting to show some signs of dehydration, but we've been able to get that under control at least for now.

Today was his last soccer game and the Halloween party at his school. Brendan and Aidan are there now with Eric, and obviously we missed the game. I know Liam doesn't have too many expectations about what we should be doing this weekend, but I'm so sad for him to miss his class Halloween party tomorrow and trick-or-treating. To top it off he's completely Ferris Bueller when he's sick. Totally sweet and pathetic and it's heartbreaking.

When Did He Grow to Be So Tall?

2011-08-23T16:36:00.000-07:00

I don't know if the first day of kindergarten makes other parents play an infinite loop of Sunrise Sunset over and over again in their heads for weeks preceeding, but it does for me. What the hell happened to time? How can Liam being starting kindergarten tomorrow, when he was just a six pound three ounce baby in my arms a couple years ago? Two years tops. Every single day of his life I have been so in love with him, so amazed by him and who he is. From the moment he was born he has been thoughtful, calm, gentle, engaging, spiritual. A poet scientist. An old soul. Eric and I have joked (sort of) that since some have said they might look for the next Dalai Lama in the U.S. they should stop by our house. I have no idea how I got so lucky to have this kid. When we brought him to the doctor for his first appointment, he was 6 days old. It was freezing, and my mom had totally freaked me out asking me why we would be bringing a tiny baby out in that weather to a doctor where there could be sick people. Eric had to call them a least a few time to make me assured that it was the right thing to do. The doctor, who was just a month out from retiring, who had presumably seen at least thousands of babies, first said, "Hmm, that can't be right" and he had the nurse re-weigh him. Liam left the hospital four days earlier weighing 5lbs 12 oz. Tiny, but fit as a fiddle, no jaundice or anything even though he was born in December. Now, 4 days later the nurse said he weighed 6lbs 10 oz. She re-weighed him without his diaper and he weighed 6 lbs 7 ounces. The doctor was impressed. I was worried. "Is that ok, is something wrong with that?" "No, not at all. It's great but usually they don't gain weight so quickly. He must be a breastfeeding pro." And then the doctor did his exam. And about a minute into it, as he looked at Liam and Liam calmly, thoughtfully looked back at him, the doctor turned to us and said, "He has a remarkable disposition. I am serious. You don't know how many parents would do anything to have a baby like this. You are very lucky." Now maybe he said that to every set of new parents, but he was 100% right. And I know everyone thinks their kid is amazing and perfect, but I also know that Liam is awesome and special and I am so lucky. And I am happy for him to be starting kindergarten because he loves learning and playing, but I am sad for me because I love being with him. And honestly ever since Aidan was born there has been so much sleep deprivation (not all because of him) but anyway I just haven't had enough energy to make the most of my time with Liam, and now I will have less of it. I knew I would be sad but I didn't know it would be the kind of sad that comes in waves and pushes my heart into my throat and makes my eyes well up with tears even while I'm at the public service desk at work. To help myself through this I either think about how I spent approximately 1.63 million hours searching in vain for a superhero backpack for him that promised not to be full of lead and razor blades, and then we looked at the 11 backpacks that did have such a claim but were all ugly, and then he agreed to get an outer-space-themed crocodile creek backpack this is made in China but says it's safe and their company has never had a recall. And now I am sewing some superhero patches on it and he is happy. Or I picture him sitting at the kindergerten snacktime, spreading brie cheese on little wheat crackers and drinking pomegranite juice, and that makes me happy. (For the record I won't be sending that snack with him to school, but it is one he likes.)
At least, for now, he is still small.

Train Crashes and Tornados and Teething - Oh My!

2011-06-25T20:33:00.000-07:00

I think Led Zeppelin says it best, "I'm having a nervous breakdown, drive me insane." Unfortunately in my case it's not a cute girl induced nervous breakdown, it's more the stress of the random and not so random weirdness that seems to come with life as you get older. Which, btw, I realized lately that I no longer really feel old, the way I did when I was 28 or 29. And that is because I've realized that back then I WAS old, for a young person. But now I am YOUNG, for a middle-aged person. And somehow that brings me comfort. Anyway, here are some pictures from the tornado. I was at work when it hit, evacuating people to the safe area, thinking it was probably not much of anything. But as soon as I pulled out of the garage to head home, I could tell something had definitely happened. Huge old trees were toppled all over the place, and I had to vary my route a few times. (And a. I love love love weather excitement and b. I hate that seriously at least half, if not more of, the old trees in my neighborhood have been lost now, do to weather or illness. bummer.) When I got home there were people outside milling around, inspecting the damage, even though it was dark and the power was out. Fortunately my power came back on the next day (thanks in part to my brother who works at ComED) but we did lose a refrigerator's worth of food and had some damage to the garage and the yard.

Here's the aftermath of the brush cut up:

And here is a picture of Liam with his sunflowers, that were getting pretty tall before the damn tree fell on them and smooshed them. As God is his witness, He'll plant again!! (fist shaking toward the heavens)

I Want a Do-Over (or, Everybody Must Get Stoned)

2011-06-13T20:51:00.000-07:00

The weekend started with a breakfast that included me and my four favorite boys. Then we whisked the three littlest boys to my in-laws for their first over night stay since Aidan was born. Next stop - 90 minute massages for me and Eric. Doesn't that sound amazing? Except for some reason shortly afterward, (i.e. near the start of our freedom,) I became soooo tired I could hardly muster any energy for the rest of the ENTIRE DAY/NIGHT/NEXT MORNING. Curses!

I don't know if I can blame it entirely on the massage, though I know that was a part of it, (even though they've never affected me like that in the past) but I'm sure my perpetual state of near-exhaustion contributed too. We did go out for lunch (Pick Me Up) and dinner (Ben Pao) and a movie (Midnight in Paris at the Century Center Cinema) and picked up The Tourist on the way home and watched that, and the next morning we went to that sexy, shimmery place called Home Depot to get mulch. So I can't say all was lost, but really, when you have a weekend to yourself and you feel like you've been given Phenobarbital, you get to complain a little bit, right?

However, as a consolation prize I did chip a small piece of my tooth late last week. (Not "my tooth" as in my one and only tooth, but "my tooth" as in one of my teeth, most of which I still have.) Why is that so awesome, you ask? Well a. it didn't hurt, b. it didn't require a root canal or any other horrible procedure and c. when I went to the dentist today he gave me the badass-feel-good-hookup, that only gets better the more you breathe. Plus then he reenacted the Tonys for me, and let me tell you I don't know who was higher. All my tensions and stress melted away, and everything was once again happy in Donnaland. So the lesson I learned is that next time Eric and I have a weekend to ourselves I should create a dental problem for myself and then go to the dentist. Let the games begin.

Ah, hindsight.

ps. Blonde on Blonde is the perfect album to listen to on a beautiful summer day riding home from grandma and grandpa's house in the country.

Firsts

2011-05-23T20:39:00.000-07:00

This weekend was one of firsts. We went to Saint Louis to party with my 90-something year old aunt who's been a nun for 75 years. It was Aidan's first time hanging out with a bunch of nuns, and they totally dug him. (As an aside, I can say from experience when visiting another of my aunt's who is a nun, that there are few things cooler than having a crabfest with nuns in Baltimore. I am not joking. If you ever have a chance you have to do it; it will blow your mind.) The nuns dug Liam and Brendan too, though many of them thought Brendan was a girl. He took it in stride. It was also Aidan's first time in a pool (I know!) and a shopping cart (I know!) and it was the first time Liam and Brendan swam around in the pool without holding on to me or Eric. (Let's be clear, they were wearing swim vests.) It was the first time Aidan was caught outside in an incredible downpour. We were at the Anheuser Busch brewery and the only reason we really went there was to see the Clydesdales. It turns out that you can take a free tour (plus $34 for three stuffed Clydesdales) and the first stop is the stables with the Clydesdales. En route there was an insane downpour, and while we were walking to the stables the wind was practically blowing us over. Then we got sequestered in the stables, so they brought out one of the amazing, huge horses and the dalmatians were running around and the kids totally loved it. (I was only a little worried that we might get stampeded if the booming thunder spooked the 2500 pound horses, but they were very calm.) And going back through the storm to the main building and getting soaked to the bone was "so awesome," said Liam. The trip made me realize that A. Brendan has come so so so far, since he was very good with only minor tired-related meltdowns and B. Aidan really does have a totally different life being the third child. In six days he will be one. Unlike Liam and Brendan by this point in their lives, he has never been on a plane (for God's sake Brendan flew to Ireland when he was 5 months old!) I already mentioned he had never been in a pool or a shopping cart, he's never been outside the Midwest, he's never been to a Wiggleworms class at the Old Town School of Folk music, or any series of classes for that matter. But hopefully he has as rich of a life because he has two adoring brothers who include him and watch him and dote on him. And at least now he can say he's been to St. Louis - a first for all three of them!

After the rain...

The Cutest Thing Ever, part II

2011-05-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

I walked into the laundry room yesterday, and noticed that right inside the door, on the other side of the cat door, there was a whole collection of small toys. Aidan must be putting little toys in there through the door. Like how the Brady Bunch kept losing their things and then they found out their dog was stashing things in the doghouse.

Also, Aidan's new favorite thing to do is climb up onto the first step of the stairway, stick his feet straight out in front of him, and monitor whatever happens in the front room. Then, after a while he falls off the step on purpose, then climbs back up and falls off again on purpose. Repeat.

Imitation Is the Highest Form of...?

2011-05-01T19:05:00.000-07:00

Brendan: When I grow up I want to work at two places. Number one, Orbitz. Number two, the library.

Liam: When I grow up I think we should all work somewhere where they do science.

Brendan: Actually, when I grow up I want to work at three places. Number one, Orbitz. Number two, the library. Number three, be someone who puts tattoos on. Number four, a bone treasure hunter.

??

To Kathy and Megan

2011-04-26T21:11:00.001-07:00

and anyone else who points me to articles about bookbugs; this is what my plan is:

I'll run it past my director to see if they could microwave the books before I touch them.
Me (to patron) "Sure, let me grab that off the shelf for you. I'll be back in about 18 minutes. I just have to run down to the staff kitchen."
Me (putting on latex gloves) "I'm going to take these 47 books for Mends and Binds and run them through our microwaves. Can everyone please keep your lean cuisine out of the kitchen for a while. Shoot, where is my hazmat suit?! I KNOW I put it on my cart last week."
Me (on phone with patron) "I'm sorry I won't be able to get that for you. Well yes, it is on the shelf, but someone's using the microwave right now."

The problem with my comedy is that A) it's not funny and B) I keep going way too long. I'm just hoping if I go on with it long enough it will eventually GET funny. Like the one time with that airplane joke that never ends. My best and only laugh. Oh well, and the John Ritter Water God joke. But that's just a classic. No one can screw that up. Liam actually did it once completely spontaneously. And I laughed. Boy did I laugh.

Also, Kathy, thank's for my new favorite word, jackhole. It's reminds me of how the world opened up for me when my sister broke out "jagoff" about 16 years ago.

Next post...NOVA!

10:19pm

2011-04-15T20:20:00.000-07:00

And Liam and Brendan are STILL TALKING!! WT Seriously F? Why does this happen sometimes? No, I don't want to put them in separate rooms. I like that they love each other and want to share their philosophical views on Jupiter, Venus and hot dogs. But why must it be at 10:19pm?
For cereal.

Ruminations

2011-04-11T15:25:00.000-07:00

Brendan, on the Beach Boys "Wouldn't It Be Nice,"
"Well, why does he wish every kiss is never ending? You can't keep kissing when you go to sleep."

Brendan, on Mommy,
"If you keep exercising and eating good food, some day you can have a big stomach like me!"

Aidan, on dirt,
nom nom nom

Aidan on afternoon naps,
waa waa waa

Aidan on standing,
1st time today!!! woot woot

...and a side of novocaine

2011-04-06T19:10:00.000-07:00

Don't you hate it when you wake up, eat a bowl of cereal, and an hour later you're having an unexpected root canal in Northbrook? Yeah, me too.

The Friendly Confines

2011-04-02T19:33:00.001-07:00

Today was a day of firsts. We took Liam and Brendan to the Cubs game, which was Brendan's first trip to Wrigley. He was a great fan, cheering enthusiastically, eating 2 hotdogs (with mustard AND ketchup, shhh!), pretzels, and many peanuts. At the bottom of the third he turned to me and asked seriously, "Which team are we cheering for, the ones in white or the ones in black?" Up to that point he'd been yelling "Go Cubbies" and clapping at all the right times. Too funny. It was semi good weather for an April 2 game, but since Brendan usually naps around one, and we were getting cold, we only stayed til the 7th inning stretch. After a rousing rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", we left and the Cubs were losing 3 - 0. But I'm sure it was us who brought them good luck, cause one inning later they scored 5 runs and ended up winning. It's too bad we missed that, but I was actually surprised we made it as long as we did. And of course it wouldn't have been an outing without Liam getting his requisite injury, tripping up the stairs and landing on his lip. He was a trooper though.

Afterward we bought the boys their first Cubs hats, then we picked up Aidan from Action Ridge and took all the boys for haircuts, where Aidan has his first cut by a professional barber.

waiting for haircut:

Brando's haircut

LT's haircut

AMJ's first haircut. whatchaya talking about?

And of course, Go Bulldogs!!

It's Good Protein

2011-03-29T21:11:00.000-07:00

It's clear now that Aidan believes he has been hired into the family in the position of Eater of Anything Within or Nearly Within Reach. I'm glad he's a good eater, and extremely un-picky. So far I have had good luck with that and the other kids too, but Aidan takes it one step further. If I turn my back for a second he will inevitably be chewing when I next look at him. Cat food, pine needles, dirt, hair, cat fur, food scraps, magazines, books, seasonal decorations, black stuff, green stuff - he doesn't discriminate. However he gets VERY mad if you take any of these things out of his mouth. And he gets the stuff in there with amazing speed and precision. He'd been pretty good with the cat food bowl, but then lately realized how much fun it is to splash in the water. And then while he's there anyway, he figures he may as well have a little snack. This is all new for me. Liam, well he probably did collect some random samples off the floor to examine in his laboratory, but not to taste himself. As for Brendan, obsessive putting of things in his mouth was one of the few challenges he didn't try.

This video is a little over dramatic on the no-no-noing, which is why I thought of breaking out the camera. But it's pretty representative of how Aidan shakes his head no when he knows he is doing something naughty, or yes when he tries to pretend what he's doing is okay. Sometimes he then crawls away with an air of smugness, often accompanied by stopping to clap for himself. Other times he shakes his head no while chowing down on contraband.

Also, this video is the first we took of Liam's Billboard Top Ten "Too Many Monkeys" song. We made another that's a bit smoother, but I like this in spite of and because of the rough edges. You'll hear me prompting Liam to sing, but then he takes it away. The entire song was written by him. Obviously, Bob Dylan of the 21st century.

Happy Earth Hour

2011-03-26T18:25:00.000-07:00

We've got our flashlights and candles ready for the big Earth Hour 2011. I'm no Papa (Don't Preach), but I do think it's a great way to start teaching your kids about forgoing mass consumption, starting with energy, and for beginning a dialogue about taking responsibility for your carbon footprint. In that vein I have been reading a challenging book, which I might have just blogged about recently, called The New Normal. I don't agree with everything he says, but there is much to reflect upon. I think it's clear to most people (perhaps not Sarah Palin) that we can't continue in the ways we've be trending since the start of the Industrial Age. I'd definitely recommend checking out this book, then going out for a couple margaritas.

Rubadubdub

2011-03-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

Aidan is now big enough to take his bath with the rest of the rascals. And he is VERY happy about it! You can't really tell from the pictures of the other boys but they are very happy about it to.

Mmmmm

2011-03-14T21:34:00.000-07:00

I know what I am making for St. Paddy's Day dessert, Guinness Cake!
Or maybe this recipe. Either way, why have I never heard of this?!?! And who's coming over? Of course, I will be in cataloging class, so that'll just be extra fun!

In Which

2011-03-13T19:56:00.000-07:00

Aidan has decided sleeping through the night for six months was enough, and shall no longer do it ever again;

Eric accidentally bought 86 rolls of toilet paper;

The St. Patrick's Day crowd, at least near us, didn't cheer on hizzoner Da Mayor in what was his last St. Patty's Day parade - boo;

In which Liam remarked that the St. Patrick's Day parade "was fun, but wasn't as fun as (he) thought it would be";

The St. Patrick's Day party at my parents church had a lot of bumping, grinding and head shaving, but not a lot of Irish music or Irish dancing. The boys were happy but the adults were not;

Liam wrote a kick ass song tonight containing the lyrics "too many monkeys / too many monkeys/ we're lost in the middle of MONKEYS!";

One of The Kings is missing - again!;

Brendan thinks Luke Skywalker is one of the U. S. presidents;

There weren't enough hours in my day to begin with and now one of them has been taken from me.

Are You Kidding Me?

2011-03-09T19:27:00.000-08:00

I can't Facebook this (because of my self-imposed Facebook Lent ban), but it must be noted. On the front page of the Chicago Tribune right now there is an article entitled "Newt Gingrich: Passion for Country Contributed to Infidelity." As if that was not ridiculous enough in and of itself, the article directly below this one is entitled "House Republicans Vow to Uphold Defense of Marriage." Wha? What? By the way, Newt Gingrich's "infidelity" occurred during his THIRD marriage!!! I'm not criticizing his decisions, but I'll be damned if he (who is considering a run for the Republican Presidential ticket) is going to say marriage can only be between one man and one woman. Because if he hasn't yet, I betcha he will. I just betcha.

On a funnier note, at Liam's preschool today another student told the teacher, "I don't have a cold, I just have some flu trapped in my voice mailbox." I hope that kid runs for president.

Little Birdhouses in Our Souls

2011-02-20T12:18:00.000-08:00

Random pictures from the past few weeks. I have a lot of wise, thoughtful things to say, of course, but since a cold has been circulating throughout the family for the past few weeks and now Aidan has a respiratory virus that prohibits him/me for sleeping for more than an hour at a time, this should suffice...

The Brendan show, feat. Aidan...

Snow pants are snow cool...

Liam and Aidan, aka Liam and Little Liam, aka Little Eric, Littler Eric...

Our first snowman...

Fun in the basement, aka the Former Dungeon, which used to be soooo awful and now is sooo awesome. Also, Liam doesn't have a flat head like the 3rd picture suggests...

Cutest. Thing. Ever.

2011-02-11T22:12:00.001-08:00

Liam and Brendan have a couple baskets where they keep their cars and their Cars cars. Anyway, Aidan loved to crawl (army crawl still) over to them and take the cars out. But we kept telling him no, he can't eat them, and he now understands that. So recently he has developed a new technique. He takes this little toddler spoon over there with him, throws it in the basket, madly thrashes his hand around in the basket til he finds it, and takes it out and chews on it. It is soooo cute I can't really properly convey it. I should take a movie of it. Sometimes, he accidentally grabs a car, and then he looks at it, whips it back in the basket and continues to thrash his hand around until he finds the spoon. Other times the spoon gets out of his reach and then he gets pretty pissed. I think there should be a t.v. show about this. I'd watch it. Seriously.

We're Having a Heatwave, a Tropical Heatwave

2011-01-31T20:11:00.001-08:00

The temperature's rising, it isn't surprising, she certainly can, can-can.

Anyway, it's actually supposed to be snowstorming, blizzarding, and other exciting things. I am most excited that work may close tomorrow night and then I could stay home and play in the snow with the boys!! We shall see. I have a meeting from 1 to 3, might that be cancelled too? Ok, and what is it with spell checker saying cancelled is spelled canceled? Apparently two "l"s is British? Whatevers. Who here can tell I'm just procrastinating on cataloging homework? Eric made an unbelievable stirfry tonight while I was in a different class. The stirfry had a lot of superfoods, and I feel my superpowers really revving up. Unfortunately I'm still too tired to get off the couch and go brush my teeth. But don't tell Eric, since he's slaving away getting gas for the snowblower and food and water supplies before the massive or not so massive snowstorm. I wasn't alive for the '67 one, but my family has a lot of great stories about it. And some reel to reel. My dad ended up walking to work that day since there were very few buses running, and when he finally got there around noon the only other person there was his boss, so they went to the cafeteria, made lunch and his boss drove him as far home as he could. My parents' work ethic is pretty incredible. Obviously I did not inherit all of their amazing genes (see lazy points above.) I can't watch Mad Men without thinking of their life (which entailed far less booze and adultery, but similar amounts of cool clothes and historical context.) Oops, Eric's back with the groceries. I'll have to go back, ahem, to cataloging.

And the Days Go By

2011-01-12T13:06:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's 3:06 on a Wednesday, and here I am, sipping coffee and casually catching up on my computer stuff. How can it be so? This morning Liam had his first ever Before School Playdate. This amazing luxury included his friend's mom picking him up from our house, taking him and said friend to play, then taking them back to her house for lunch, bringing them to school AND bringing Liam home after school. WOW!! I actually felt a little sick to my stomach about Liam not being here with us this morning, but mostly incredibly happy for him to be able to play with his friend all day. I was also happy Brendan handled NOT going as well as he did (which is to say perfectly!)

Then my parents came over and I was able to get a few things done around the house too. Brendan almost didn't take a nap, but finally did, and it definitely has been awesome. Next year Liam will probably be going to am kindergarten at his grade school, and then pm at the Montessori, so it will be a very long day for him (especially since it starts around 8, and he doesn't even wake up til 9!) And I already miss him and all the years I've had with him before school really started. But time marches forward. One consolation for me is that Brendan will be with Liam in the afternoon school (and I won't even begin to complain how monumentally expensive next year's tuition bills will be, which is sort of crazy considering it's preschool/kindergarten, but that's a rambling for a different day.)

The strangest part of all my sentimentality is that for the last couple weeks, we have had no daytime routine to speak of and we're totally full of cabin fever and there hasn't been a zen moment during our days much at all, and my work schedule's been a bit insane, and I don't like the mood in our house many times throughout the course of our days. Yet still, when I have a moment to myself I find my thoughts focused on wanting to spend as much time with these little guys as I can, before they're not so little anymore. This morning Liam got into his friend's car and shut the door without so much as a kiss or wave goodbye to Mom (though he did wave, probably with some prompting, as they pulled out of the driveway.) He's so ready to dive into the next chapter of his adorable little life, and I just hope I am too!

(Two Posts in Two Days!) Da-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah, nah-nah-nah

2011-01-11T07:31:00.000-08:00

Two buds...

The hawk that flew over my head in the backyard a few months ago. Liam and Brendan spotted it across the street a couple weeks ago.

Tired Jedis

Youngest Jedi

I kept wondering why Zoey loved the Gingerbread House so much, and then I remembered there were a couple peppermint kisses on it - her fav

Cousins and uncle rocking out Christmas Eve

I see a garage band in my future (good thing we have a detached garage

The two newest babies in our family

Me and my bro and our new sons

Christmas Eve

LTs bday

Our House

2011-01-10T20:53:00.000-08:00

I sent Eric a list of improvements I still want to make to the house. They are as follows:
area carpet for LR
new carpeting/flooring in the back room
activity table for the boys downstairs
Zoran paint back room (and dining room?)(which requires new trim)
new doors upstairs and the closet downstairs
redo upstairs bathroom
fence the yard
addition on or above the backroom
move

Actually, the list is quite a bit smaller than it was when we moved in. And it has been shrinking every year, sometimes dramatically. However, so has the value of our house. Our starter house. Which we did not plan on living in forever. Which was grossly overpriced when we bought it, but surely real estate prices would never decrease. Surely not. Maybe plateau for a time, which would be perfectly reasonable. And then, with the thousands of improvements we made to the place, we could sell it for a comfortable price and buy the Right House. The one we envisoned living in. The one which probably was not this house. Really, as I look around now, this house is fine. I don't even know where I would want the right house to be. When we were potentially going to move I started to love this house, and miss it. I can see the kids' school from this house. Our amazingly awesome babysitter lives across the street. Eric can walk to the train in 5 minutes, and I can walk to work in 7. We have a new, open basement for the kids to play in, a nice long backyard for the same purpose, only a few things left on the list to complete and it will be perfect. So what's the problem? Is it that the grass is always greener? I guess so. And I'm just not used to staying in one place for so long. Except for when I was growing up, because we never moved.
Speaking of houses, I never posted the gingerbread house LT, Brando and I made this year.

Or his birthday cake, which he and Brendan decorated (and picked the colors of, though I did write the "Happy Birthday" part:

Here is Brendan, when he insisted on wearing a fireman hat and a knit cap, in that order, to go outside:

INEXPLICABLE POCKET

2010-12-29T17:42:00.000-08:00

Sorry about that; my caps lock was on.

I have two semesters left of school. Obviously, that is a very good thing, but I'm already feeling nostalgic about those trips down to Champaign. (Did I already write this post before?) I submitted my application to the program at 11:59 on February 31, about 4 years ago. It was due by March 1, but I didn't know if that meant 11:59 on February 31 or March 1. I didn't want to have put myself through that entire application process to be rejected for being late. Anyway, what I should have learned from the application process was that it was going to be an extremely stressful journey. I think Eric and I almost broke up at 11:56, but I got the application in, and I couldn't have done it without Eric's help. And that was another glimmer into the future, because I couldn't have this program at all without Eric's help. Wait, this is turning into an Academy Award acceptance speech. So, would now be a good time to mention the time we were in Chamapign and Brendan didn't want to go to bed so he had a 9.0 temper tantrum and threw up on the hotel bed? Yes, maybe finishing this program will be even better than I'm thinking.

So anyway I started the program in July when I was what, 7 months pregnant with Brando. That was insane. We had one two-credit-hour class that met down at UIUC over 10 days. It was INSANE. They call it bootcamp, and I think the comparison is a tiny bit justified. But by far the hardest semester was this past one, with Aidan a newborn and the big boys not quite so big. Eric could of course one-up me, because he finished his grad program the year after Liam was born, and he interviewed at the big G in Mountainview with the whole family in tow when I was 7 months pregnant with Aidan, and with the big F the week after Aidan was born, and had to decide if we would all move to Palo Alto in about 3 days. That was quite a lot of pressure too. Now, with the end sort of finally in sight, I am starting to get giddy about having extra time to do stuff besides schoolwork. Wow, that will be so incredible!

Also, btw, I am a TOTAL Psychic! Because tonight, for the first time in a looong time, after I wrote the above post but before I posted it, Brando had a 9.0 temper tantrum. Fortunately he did not throw up, but he did expertly push my buttons, so that I at one point made the exact same yelling noise he was making, to see what he'd do, and he stopped for a second, looked at me, asked for a kleenex, and then continued right on with his The Exorcist meltdown, and it didn't phase him at all. I can't quite imagine what I would have done if my mom yelled at me, but apparently from Brando's reaction, not much of anything. I know, just leave him alone. (sorting or directing him to anything once the meltdown has begun does not work.) I'm sure with a lot of kids they'll stop in ten minutes, or an hour. BP? Not likely. It was our fault because we let him stay up til the ungodly hour of 8:30. I know, what the hell were we thinking?!? But like I say, these are much fewer and further between these days, so that's good. Instead he just teeters on the brink of meltdown, and usually is able to recover himself before going off the cliff. But if he's going to go down, by lord he's taking the lot of us down with him.

Oh yes, and finally. Why do so many of Aidan's clothes have pockets?

no pocket here...

(we call him Aidan Michael Jordan. If you can't see the resemblance above, well, you will when you see his out-of-this-world hops on the bball court.)

Noble Kings and Princes

2010-12-22T19:20:00.000-08:00

Every day, I complain about something. I'm not proud of that, but I know I do. Yet I also think I do have a real appreciation for all that I have, so much so that I'm always a little worried it's TOO good. Recently I've been realizing how I live better than almost all the past kings and queens ever did. They never had indoor plumbing, heating and air conditioning, cars, top notch medical practices, delicious food of every kind and culture at their fingertips, etc. etc. It's pretty amazing to think that you live better than a queen. I once told a friend some advice that I was told. Before you walk down the aisle at your wedding, stop for a minute and really take it all in, look at the people and the church and experience it, because it goes by so fast and most of it's a blur. She reminded me of that in the Christmas card she sent me this year, and I immediately went to the Living Room and watched my boys playing and then made them come over and give me a hug. (Ok, Aidan was in the entertainment saucer, but he was watching.) Anyway, I wish I would complain less, but I am happy that I pretty much know how lucky I am and really do appreciate it every day. But a lot of times I feel like my hamster and just want to eat my kids because I love them so much. (well, at least that's the reason I would eat my kids. In her case it might have been some other reason.) So in the midst of baking and present wrapping I'm going to stop and take it all in once and a while too.

Last day of Having a 4 Year Old & 3 Year old

2010-12-15T08:45:00.000-08:00

I don't have time to wax poetic about Liam's transition from 4 to 5. Or about how awesome it's been to have these little boys take over my house, starting just about 5 years ago. Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to do that, but until then I'm just posting some random pics of my 3 favorite boys. Most are of Liam and Brendan, because today is my last day of having a 4 yr old and a 3 yr old. Aidan will still be zero for some time. :o) I love these little guys and I feel so lucky that they love each other too.

Well That Didn't Last Long

2010-12-07T20:33:00.000-08:00

My self-imposed teetotaler status has ended. Like I said, that was one fun party on Friday night, but I think I can get back in the saddle again. Phew. This'll make me more fun on margarita night. So...when's margarita night?! Ok, after y'all have your babies. Fine. Should I bring the blender to the hospital? I'm so classy.

And no, contrary to how this post reads, not drunk. Just a little overtired since Aidan's been getting up periodically for the last couple weeks because of "teeth pains." Basically on any given night SOMEone gets up for some reason, but I'm not going to complain at all because for a week or two Aidan completely stopped going down easily into the crib (again that magical thing where he would be awake and you could PUT HIM DOWN and he would just GO TO SLEEP. Incredible! Never would I have believed it really happens if I didn't get him.) but now things are back on track there. So if I have to get up once or twice for a short time (or more accurately if Eric has to) then I can't complain cause overall it's fine. Just tiring.

I need a drink. :o)

Oh Yeah

2010-12-02T18:20:00.000-08:00

I completely forgot how MESSY feeding a baby solid foods is. Aidan just had his first solid food a few days ago (organic summer squash, in November, ah well) and tonight he had bananas. Messy but so so cute too. He seemed to like both, though Brendan thought, because he kept spitting it out, that we were torturing him, so the first meal consisted of Brendan jumping up and down excitedly on his chair shouting "No! No! Stop! He doesn't like it!" and we got it on video and it was pretty damn funny. Brendan's face kept involuntarily mimicking Aidan's, with horrified undertones. Ah, these boys are always looking out for each other.

Rockin anda Rollin?

2010-12-01T12:08:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if Alanis Morissette would write a song about it, but I'm pretty sure I'm allergic to books.

Malevolent Muddled Milieu

2010-11-23T20:21:00.000-08:00

Don't you totally hate it when you spend a ton of money buying a whole bunch of new clothes to use as a temporary wardrobe after you have your third baby in 4 1/2 years and you still have 5 pounds to lose to get back to your normal weight even though you actually weigh less than you did when you got pregnant with baby #3 but your body has changed so much that you're in fact more like 15 pounds overweight and all your regular clothes are either too big or too small (mostly too small) and then you take the tags off all the clothes and wash them and throw away the receipt and then you realize the clothes actually are hideous and make you look moronic and awful and you try to wear them anyway because you feel guilty thinking of all the other better things you could have done with that money and then you realize you just can't do that and now you still have no clothes to wear? Me too.

I also hate the new tsa policies (and most of the old ones too, like the one where I had to throw away my baby's teething toy before getting on to the plane even though it was specially listed ON THEIR OWN WEBSITE as being approved for flight) and I hate that there's a good chance those policies won't be ended because they spent $80million and counting on their stupid radiation boxes and well at least $18,000/yr on each of their gropers.

I have a lot more to complain about, but I'll stop there.

Last Day of Brendan the Two-Year-Old

2010-10-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

and a quintessential picture reflecting Brendan's morning attitude versus Liam's...

For a boy who's seemed like he was three since the age of one and a half, I'm still surprised Brendan is going to be three tomorrow. Mixed emotions for Mommy but Brendan's pretty psyched about his big day. I wonder though, with his newfound big-boy-ness, will he still say things like,

Mom, is this the right feet?

That's where we go for fwinmmin lessons

Do you want me to do (insert various assorted dangerous things here), or no?

I didn't do nothin naughty

Stupid (or fat or hate) is not nice

Don't forget my vitaminins

What?! That's incredibal!!

I'm not fussin, I'm just laughin

I gotch ya

I sleeped good, are you happy?

I'm not sayin poopoo, because poopoo is potty talk. you shouldn't say poopoo so I'm not gonna just keep sayin poopoo, poopoo, poopoo, poopoo. Well I'm just sayin, poopoo's not nice because you shouldn't say poopoo. or butt.

No, I amn't

Why Is a Raven...

2010-10-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

I really just don't get why Democrats and moderate Republicans don't run a campaign something along the lines of Sarah Palin, Mad Hatter. You know? Like The Nation did, but bring it more mainstream. Paint this Tea Party with colors from the land of tweedledum, tweedledee, not authentic American Revolutionary heroes. This seems to me like the best possible response to all the craziness, just call it what it is. Thank you. :o)

That's Me Boy!

2010-10-05T11:45:00.000-07:00

Aidan had his four month checkup today, and they confirmed what I had been thinking all along - he's a big boy! Weighing in at 17lbs 4oz and 26 1/2 inches tall, he is still on the charts but up at the top. Everyone commented on his cheerful disposition, adorable smiles, rugged good looks and obviously above-average intelligence. :o) He was a good sport about the 612 (actually 4) shots and mostly loved holding the doctor's stethoscope and drooling all over the place. As the day progresses he seems to be liking the effects of the shots less and less, but he's still a trooper.
Also today Liam and Brendan had fun going for a short visit to the park with my friend from work and two of his daughters. This was our second playdate, and the warm-up time for his girls was much shorter than last time. Liam and Brendan basically needed no warm up time and would happily have gone home with my co-worker's family.
Also, I never explained the title of my previous post (I think) and basically it was a reference to Halloween costumes. I'd explain further but Aidan needs a little comforting.

Able to Leap Tall Buildings in a Single Bound

2010-10-04T21:07:00.000-07:00

Today was yet another day in the surreal world that is my life.

Brendan was playing with Spiderman and G.I. Joe. At one point I don't know WHAT was going on, all I know is that Spiderman was spanking G.I. Joe.

Liam regressed to being a physically unstable toddler while wrestling with Eric and Brendan and smashed his face directly into the corner of the couch. He now has a GIANT bruise the entirety of his cheek. Of course school pictures are next week, but the good news is he has to go to the make-up session anyway because we will be in Champaign next week. Phew.

"Did you say the Hippodrome?" Brendan's favorite line from his new favorite movie, On the Town. Second favorite line - "Did you say the Woolworth Tower?"

I have almost run out of steam as far as school is going, so I don't know what to expect as far as grades this semester. drat.

I am really pissed at the 12 morons who voted in the primary elections who picked the dingbats we now have to choose between for the general election. I'd love to select C - None of the Above, but I think it's probably too important an election to do that. Also, why don't people vote in primary elections? In the paper you read about people literally dodging bullets to go vote in other countries, and here you can basically go at your leisure, even leave work if you want, to go vote.

I would post more funny things the kids say, because there is no shortage, but that would require accessing my memory and that part of my brain has already logged off. Along with many, many other parts.

Images from apple picking, baking and life...

Today

2010-09-22T17:00:00.001-07:00

Brendan still is trying to adjust to Eric not working from home, which means he alternates between being the cutest, sweetest little redhead ever and then turning into whatever the exact opposite of that is.

Liam had soccer after school so I had to wake Aidan and Brendan up from naps to go get him and bring him to soccer. This was not fun.

Aidan is still the best baby ever. He sleeps sometimes 10 hours a night!! I mean a lot of times. Other times he sleeps 8. You don't have to do anything to make him go to sleep. It's the craziest thing. You put him in his crib and he goes to bed. Voila! Insane! And he can talk. Trust me, Eric and my dad didn't believe it either but now they know. Liam and Brendan could actually talk in sentences around 18 months. Aidan can say 3 things since he was only a month and a half. I know it's not possible but ask the former skeptics, it's true.

Somehow after a 40 minute debacle trying to go in the backyard to play on the swings, we were all set to go when I noticed Liam's tongues of his shoes were pushed down. I said, "Liam, what's wrong with your shoes?" and he almost started crying. I said "What's the matter, it's no big deal." And then he told me how he accidentally stepped in the toilet. This was 2 hours ago and I still have no idea how this is possible. The good news is it happened when he was going to wash his hands so the toilet was clean. It was just an accident, that's all. If you understand let me know. I'd appreciate it.

I'm supposed to be in class right now.

Beep Beep Dash Beep Dash

2010-09-01T16:30:00.001-07:00

Fantastic day of stress eating, children crying, not getting anything done. Now I have two hours of class and then I have a paper due at midnight. Tomorrow I have work and then class again tomorrow night. Thank God it's Labor Day weekend. Oh yeah, I have to work this weekend. SOS somebody, anybody?!?!

The Little Joke That Couldn't

2010-08-16T19:51:00.000-07:00

I started back at work last week. The transition seemed easier than it has before, just as the transition from 2 kids to 3 seems easier to me than from 1 kid to 2. It probably helps a lot that Liam and Brendan have each other to play. And truly the conversations they have with us and each other have to be some of the funniest things that have ever been said on this planet. But alas.

On my first week back I had to give a presentation with a coworker. We had pretty much hashed it all out before I went on leave, so it went rather smoothly, save for a few technical glitches we had no control over. When we broke for lunch all the staff went to a restaurant across the street. I sat with a group of people, including my coworker. I started eating while she was away from table the getting a drink. I bit into my wrap and thought, "Hmm, I ordered the veggie and this tastes like... chicken. Well it must be chicken-like tofu." And happily I continued eating. My coworker came to the table, sat down next to me and started looking at her sandwich. She was surprised it had mushrooms, because she can't eat mushrooms and there weren't supposed to be any mushrooms on her chicken...Ah! Oops! Yes, I am eating your chicken sandwich and I am an idiot. How did I think this obviously chickenly meat was tofu? Fortunately there were plenty more sandwiches left so she could have another. Fast forward to the end of our second presentation. We're packing up our things and I grab my papers and water bottle and leave. Slowly I remember I didn't bring a water bottle, and wonder why I am carrying this one. Hmm. Oh yes, it belongs to... So I go back and give it to her and try to make a little joke of it all, even though it was completely insignificant on every level. "What is the matter with me? hahaha" I say to her and another coworker. "What am I doing? Before you know it I'll be at the airport tomorrow picking up your husband!" I am met by blank stares. "hahaha I'll be shouting, 'Over here Honey, it's me, (stop Donna, stop talking now)...your wife!" Now the stares turn from blank to confusion and mild concern. "Um, hahaha, next thing you know I'll be killing you and completely taking over your life! ahahaha. ha." I am met now with two truly alarmed gazes, but my mouth is going much faster than my completely wrecked brain waves can handle. Stop, I try to tell myself, but the train wreck persists. "You know, hahaha, like what's that movie, or is it a book, no, I think it's a movie," (the alarm in their eyes is becoming much more palpable) "where that guy murders the other guy and tries to pretend he's that person? You know, and that would be like me, like I'm the one, who is it?, the Matt Damon character I think, and I'm trying to take over your life, see because I ate your sandwich and now I took your water..."
Sometimes, going back to work 2 1/2 months postpartum, is just a bad idea.

Quick Update

2010-08-08T20:58:00.000-07:00

(Thanks for the inspiration, Megan)

Today we took the kids to church with my parents. I don't take them to church very often, being a germaphobe and a generally lazy person. The last time we went, there was a parish picnic afterwards, with bouncy houses and train rides and music and a bunch of cute girls, so now anytime the word church is mentioned Brendan's eyes light up and he says how he likes church and the big party afterward. Some outtakes from Mass this morning (good thing we sat up near the front):

- Brendan, shouting (well to me it's shouting, to Brendan it's just the normal volume of his voice) matter-of-factly midway through the priest's homily, "Mom, I'm not having any fun"

- Brendan, looking up at the larger-than-life-sized statue of Jesus hanging above the alter, "What's that womans doing up there, Mommy?" "That's not a woman Brendan, it's Jesus." "Oh. Well how's he going to get down from there?"

- Brendan and Liam singing at the top of their lungs. One, we're Catholic and nobody else sings. Two, they don't know the words to any of the songs, so they're just singing gibberish mostly out of key. Doesn't bother them at all.

- Brendan moving the carseat and my purse away from the woman sitting next to us in the pew, giving her a very stern look and telling me, "I don't want her to steal this. This is ours." Throughout the entire rest of the Mass he kept glancing over at her and squinting his eyes accusatorily.

At one point my Dad tried to have Liam come stand next to him and Liam squirmed away. Later I asked him what he was doing and why he didn't stand near Grandpa. He said he thought Grandpa was trying to make him walk up the path (aisle.)

Fortunately we passed a cemetery on the way home and for the first time ever Liam noticed it and asked me what it was. "So, they bury your whole body except your bones?" "No, they bury your bones too." "Oh, so everything except your skull?" "No, every single thing, including your skull. Just not your soul." "Well how could they not bury your soul?" At one point I told him how my mom's mom and dad died and their souls are in heaven but their bodies are in a cemetery. "What, Great Grandpa M is dead?!" "Yes Liam, that's why you've never met him." "Well I didn't know he was dead, I just thought he lived far away!" Every time the conversation veered toward Heaven or God, Liam would make sure we brought it back to which parts of your body will and will not get buried. After about 35 minutes of this conversation we came to a stalemate. I'm sure Liam's going to have great dreams tonight.

Break on Through

2010-07-03T14:52:00.000-07:00

Ah, it's been a long time since I've worked on the computer with a baby sleeping in my arms. I could put Aidan down, because he is the first of my kids who allows you to do that, but I don't want to right now. Eric and Liam and Brendan are at the 4th of July festival and I just want to hang out with this sweet baby.

So, three boys. I had been trying everything I could to coerce Aidan into being born. I reeaalllyy thought he would be a few weeks early. I went for my last checkup on his due date, and we decided to schedule an induction or whatever it's called for the following Tuesday. After I got home I considered calling to make it for Friday instead, but I'm glad I didn't. Saturday I thought I had pulled something in my back because of all the yard work I'd been doing. I stupidly lifted some giganto bags of mulch, and then was worried I'd hurt the baby, but alas around 5:00 it occurred to me I might be in labor, and I was. My Dad and Eic's brother came over to take the kids to the classic car show, and Eric and I got to the hospital around 7. My water didn't break this time, and if I wasn't already overdue I wouldn't have gone in as early as I did because I wasn't 100% sure I was really in labor, but I did and I was and at 11:04pm Aidan was born.

I had no idea what to expect from him. I felt him moving at 14 or 16 weeks, like the earliest time possible to feel movement, and it wasn't "fluttering", it was real moving. He never stopped moving from that point on, and after Brando I knew it really is possible to have a child who is not, shall we say, as Zen as Liam. If I die and have never had to bail Brendan out of jail, I'll consider mine a life well lived. Aidan though, Aidan is calm and pensive and actually will lie down in his crib and sleep. Or even not sleep, but lie there. It seems that Liam and Aidan will alternate between the bass and the guitar, while Brendan's on drums. Liam is, as usual, a doting and responsible big brother, and Brendan has really stepped up to the plate and shown a lot of love for his new brother. I know and appreciate how lucky I am. And I sincerely hope they will let me meet up with them that summer they backpack around Europe, that's all I have to say.

This last month has flown by. A week of it was taken over by us trying to decide if we should move to California to take a really awesome job Eric was offered, but in the end we decided not to do that. That was definitely one of, if not THE hardest decisions we had to make as adults. But I think we made the right choice. Also, though Brendan digs Aidan, the whole new baby situation kind of threw him off his schedule and so he's been having a rough time sleeping and has been melting down daily.

Aidan's doing great all around. At one month he's 12 1/2 pounds, which means he's gained about a pound a week, like his big brothers. He's smiling and starting to coo and has laughed a few times. But mostly he just looks around when he's awake and observes. He loves when Liam and Brendan talk to him.

I cannot believe it's July, but it's been a great summer. Tomorrow our neighbors have a brunch for the whole block and then we all walk down the street for the parade. And at night we'll go to the fireworks, if Brendan can make it that late.

Happy 4th of July!

New kid in town:

Like Sands through the Hourglass

2010-05-20T18:54:00.000-07:00

Eric and I bought a new car on Monday. It literally took 4 hours, even though we went in knowing the exact car on the lot we wanted to buy. I still can't figure out why it took so long. At one point while we were in the financing office declining all the 4016 extra coverages we could get, I heard the theme song from Days of Our Lives in the waiting room. I think that's what it was anyway. It's been a long time since I watched daytime television. That's a good thing, but I do have sort of fond memories of maternity leave just after Liam was born watching Perry Mason and Eight Is Enough on Me TV. That was a totally different life 1,000 years away from now. For one thing, Eric works from home now. For someone who grew up in a house with not less than 27 other people around at any one time, this is blissful for me. I am not a person who likes "alone time." At all. Also when baby 3.0 comes along I will not just be hanging out nursing in the back room watching television. Because 2 other little people will be needing me too. It's definitely a different ride and it will be interesting to see what it's like if this baby ever decides he wants to be born. At this point I'm pretty sure he's at least 25 pounds, and this is a troubling thought.

Oh, so the new car is pretty cool. It's a dark gray Chevy Traverse with 7 seats and two sun roofs. (We wanted black or blue but we are destined to always live in yellow bricks and have gray cars.) We had a Saturn Vue and we liked it a lot but it couldn't hold 3 car seats so we had to chuck it. At the dealership people kept asking "which of you will be driving this car?" Somehow it blows people's minds that we will both be driving it. We have an old Corolla that we use as a spare, but as it turns out even though we live in the burbs we can pretty much get around walking. Eric doesn't commute and I work 6 blocks away. We live a few blocks from the train and purposely picked our location based on the fact that we can walk to almost anything we want except Trader Joes. (I did suggest to the Village that we get a TJs or Whole Foods as part of the downtown shopping district but so far they have not taken up my brilliant idea.) When we go places we usually go together or one of us is home with the kids. So there you have it. Liam was a little disappointed because he wanted a Saturn Outlook, but since they don't make those anymore we couldn't get one. I have no idea why he cares except that he got his dad's genes and actually notices cars. Brendan does too for that matter. I am mostly clueless about cars and am just happy when I can find my own car in the parking lot. Oh and Liam's ok with the Traverse now and likes it, because it can't be denied that it is pretty dang cool. I'm looking forward to taking it on a road trip this summer if the new baby is good with driving. Time will tell.

Liam will be done with his first year of preschool next week. Wow. I can't really think about that or I will cry and my mind will be totally blown, but wow.

10 AM and All Is Well

2010-05-16T07:28:00.000-07:00

No baby yet. It's a weird thing because I know he's got to come SOMETIME in the Very Near Future, but still about 95% of the time it doesn't seem real and I can't actually fathom having this new person in our house. That being said we've been having a lot of fun these last few weeks and I am definitely appreciating how easy we have it right now with two pretty self sufficient kids. On Friday we went to the parade for Lee DeWyze, who's from our town, and it started late and required me to hold Brendan for longer than I'm used to, so I was pretty much expecting that to coerce the baby to come out yesterday, but no.

Oh, and I'm not trying to brag but I think this baby could be a good omen for the Cubs, because Liam was born the year the White Sox won the World Series, and Brendan was born when the Red Sox won (for the 2nd time in a couple years, but you know they hadn't won before that for like 65000 years either and I was actually watching either the game when they won or the one before when my water broke) so anyway I like our chances.

Maybe he's waiting to be born until we have a car he'll be able to fit in. We sold our Vue because it can't hold 3 car seats, and now we just have a corolla which REALLY can't hold 3 car seats. So the kid's no fool. We were car shopping yesterday and found two cars we like (Chevy Traverses) but the stupid car places are closed on Sundays and we weren't sure which one we wanted so now it's all up to fate on Monday. Someone else had the audacity to be looking at the one I liked better, so we'll see if he snags it first. I'm pretty sure you should be able to pay your mortgage for the price of a monthly payment on this car. Weren't car companies in trouble or something? You definitely cannot tell from the cost of cars. I guess we won't be installing a backyard patio this year.

I'm pretty sure I was going to write something of some interest, but I forgot. Today is my 2nd to last day of work - yay! And I am officially done with this semester. I think I screwed up my 4.0 but I'm basically too tired to care and at this point there's nothing I can do anyway.

Ok, hopefully I can squeeze in a nap here before work. So excited about there being real sunshine today. This is really cool to have a baby just before summer, versus winter. I'm happy to have had my time burrowing in with Liam and Brendan, but now that they are bigger I am SO happy to be able to go outside with them and have them be able to play instead of bouncing off the walls inside for 6 months. Oh yes, and in other good news I can officially no longer even see the scale. Ignorance is bliss.

For the Record

2010-05-03T20:24:00.000-07:00

As of yesterday, Brendan no longer calls bananas band-aids.

Liam putting Brendan's sandals on Brendan is the cutest and funniest thing ever.

Fatherhood has really changed Eric. He actually said, "I think black is too dark for a baby's room," in response to me asking him about some curtains.

I have officially made it to the time when I will be in the new maternity wing of my hospital. Eric and I took a tour tonight and it is pretty damn cool.

I have one presentation and one huge paper left for the semester. Also I start a new movie discussion at the library next Monday and run a book discussion on the 17th, but after that my calendar's free.

Zoey and Lucky are suuuuper lovey dovey these days.

I don't know if it's because it's my 3rd pregnancy or what but my weight gain this pregnancy is just crazy (though the doctors don't think so because they don't realize I came in 13 pounds above my normal weight to start with) so I'd really like the baby to decide to be born sooner rather than later just so I can stop going in for checkups and seeing ow much more weight I've gained.

Eric found Brendan in the naughty corner today while I was at the doctor, and it turned out Liam had sent him there. Brendan said it was because he threw a car but Liam said it was because Brendan licked him. Liam puts up with a lot from Brendan but I'm happy he still is in charge when all is said and done.

Eric and I have to decide if we want a swingset from the house my sister is buying. It's not the one I want (which costs $1,000 so we wouldn't be getting anyway) and it's sort of cool but also needs new paint and stuff. We also have to decide if it would take up too much space in the backyard. And I think we have to decide by tomorrow. Hmm.

I have to go to bed much earlier than I used to. Not that I actually go to bed when I have to though, and I can't explain why not. I'm not lying when I say I'm actually looking forward to going to the hospital to have this baby just so I can hopefully get some rest while I'm drugged up. This time I think I will actually send the bay to the nursery sometimes.

We got to swim lessons a little late on Sunday but I am so happy I didn't have a water birth in front of all the toddlers and I also can't believe that soon Liam will go to swim lessons on his own, and not with me or Eric holding him. As many millions of times that you've heard it said, kids really do grow up very fast. I do not like this.

Tonight when we got home from the hospital tour Liam and Brendan and their babysitter gave me my very first flower bouquet from my kids, which they had gone around the neighborhood to create. There were some tulips in it, but they came from the garden of a lady who cut them for them when she heard about their plan, so it was ok. It's actually beautiful and I'll have to post a picture of it. They also gave me the first mother's day card I ever got from my kids. Is that not the coolest thing or what?!

Things I Never Foresaw Myself Saying (Before I Became a Mom)

2010-04-26T20:12:00.000-07:00

Can you pick up this elephant?

Go tell your brother you are sorry for hitting him in the face with your light saber.

No, I've never had a penis.

No more broccoli until you eat your pizza.

Why is your alligator still in the kitchen?

Sure we can drive by and see the thumb.

Be very careful not to break Jesus.

Did you know it's not nice to ask someone why they got so fat?

Yes, Barack Obama and George Washington can use the potty.

Fantastic Fratboy Toddlers

2010-04-19T18:36:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night we were in the city (unfortunately for The Double R going away bash, which was very fun but sad at the same time.) On our way home we stopped at Starbucks, and while Eric and Liam ran in, Brendan and I waited in the car across the street.
"Look Mom, that's Starbucks," Brendan said pointing at the building outside his window.
"Oh, that's actually a bar. Starbucks is across the street."
A moment passes, then Brendan says, "Mom, I want to go to a bar sometimes."
"Ok, well you have to be older to go to bars, like 21, because that's the age when you can drink beer."
"Mom, Kelly can drink beer."
"Yes, she can because she is 21."
"But Kyle can't drink beer."
"No, he can't, Brendan, because he's not 21 yet."
A few minutes pass. "Mom?"
"Yes Brendan?"
"Mom, I want to drink beer sometimes. I like beer."
This, combined with the fact that Liam calls orange juice wine stein, should definitely make me the favorite mom among the preschool parents.

I absolutely love this awesome weather and I want every year in Chicago to go straight from winter to summer. On Friday night we went to the pool where Liam and Brendan take swim lessons on Sunday mornings, but we went to the toddler pool instead of the lap pool and in case you were wondering the water is as refreshing as the lap pool. I love it. Of course once we have 3.0 it's going to be interesting as far as swim lessons are concerned. I guess it's time for Liam to swim on his own. He's close, but not there yet.

Liam went to his first Cubs game on Sun with Eric and his brothers and his dad and I don't know what happened but Liam fell asleep on the way home a couple blocks from our house, just before 6pm, and he slept all the way until this morning at 7:30. Brendan also slept like a champ, and if I didn't have this frickin insomnia and Zoey didn't groom in my ear louder than a jet engine at 5am I could have had some mad sleep.

Lastly, tonight Brendan climbed up on Eric's work chair, got his computer and mouse, put on his "meeting" (Eric's headset), proceeded to pound his fist on the desk, make an angry face and say, "dammit! dammit!" Well, 2 years old and he's finally ready to work in the corporate world. I hear those guys love beer.

Eight Days a Week

2010-04-06T18:38:00.000-07:00

Years ago I had this great idea for one way things could be better. Sort of like my great idea that everyone should live til they turn 100, and then peacefully die in their sleep after they go to bed that night. And you wouldn't get any lingering illness or problems beforehand. Anyway, this other idea is that everyone's life is documented from the moment they're born. Not weirdly like in The Truman Show (which still creeps me out to this day) but just you have this personal film inventory and if you want to know what you were doing or what you looked like on August 1, 1986, you just pull out the footage and there you go. I think some people have this thing called a memory, which actually stores a lot of that information in their own brain, but my memory doesn't really do that so I need DVDs.

Now that I have kids and have no skill at taking or archiving movies I wish someone was doing it for me . Every day there must be at least 27,115 hysterical, brilliant things these little guys do and there will be no record of it at all. And lots of it I wouldn't record anyway because it would seem "mundane," but it shouldn't be lost. Like when I brought Liam home from school today and he started to play with his cars and I said, "You should go wash your hands first" and he looked at me and said in total sincerity, "That's a good idea, Mom." It doesn't translate into a blog post, but if you could see the video. Alas. Between him and Brendan, Eric and I are just dying of laughter and most of the time there is no one there beside us to appreciate how funny they are. Even when there are other adults you know they're just focused on their own thing and probably don't even realize how incredibly awesome these kids are. :o) Like yesterday I was in the backyard with some neighbors and one of them has a 1 year old and she and Brendan were "playing" ball and Brendan was being so sweet and gentle and rolling the ball to her and I'm talking with the moms and then I hear Brendan tell her very earnestly and a little concerned, "No baby, you don't eat the ball. That's not for eating. It's a ball. It's for playing with." And that's my little baby there, instructing the youth from his wise two year old vantage point.

The absolute best is when Liam and Brendan are playing together and talking to each other and laughing and the stuff they say blows my mind. And then sometimes it devolves into Liam saying "No Brendan" in a growly voice, with his face pressed right up into Brendan's face, and then sometimes he sends Brendan to the naughty corner, or sometimes Brendan scratches him in the face and then we send Brendan to the naughty corner. And those parts I don't like, but I guess that is some part of having a sibling close to your own age. I don't know because I never had that. Just the other day I saw Liam had a new scratch on his face and I asked him what happened and he said he scratched himself accidentally. And Brendan was next to him, wide eyed, and I said "Are you sure Brendan didn't scratch you." And Liam tried to cover for him but then he admitted Brendan did it, and I asked Brendan and at first he shook his head no but then very very solemnly he shook his head yes. And it was the first time I ever saw them try and cover. Though often they will stand up for each other. But this was a new thing. I'm going to try and post some pictures here after I get home from work. Let's see if I do, why don't we.

Snapshots

2010-04-06T14:15:00.000-07:00

Trying out their gardening gifts from the Easter Bunny on a sort of cold Easter morning...

Here's one of Brendan and my brother Danny. I think they look a lot alike...

The Magical Mystery Tour

2010-03-01T19:54:00.000-08:00

I used to love winter, then I hated it, now I'm starting to like it again. Mostly because LT and BP like it, and there are fun things to do in winter that you can't do otherwise, and I actually dress properly for the temps and we take vacations to break up the monotony. A couple weeks ago we took an unexpected trip to San Francisco for "work related reasons" which I might expound upon in another post. But anyway it was fun and we spent two nights in Sunnyvale and two in San Fran. There are no sea lions in San Fran anymore, btw. They jumped ship and no one really knows why. We did get to go to one of our favorite restaurants, The Stinking Rose which is also in LA but not nearly as good there so only go to the one in San Fran. But be warned they do NOT have the awesome sparkling lemonade of yore. Sigh. Liam slept through that delicious dinner, which is a rarity for him these days, but just being a two hour time change really threw off both the kids.

That little change ended up being the worst part of the trip, because they were both sort of off the whole time and so there were more moments of fussiness and tantrums for all of us. Still, you just can't say too many bad things about being somewhere in February that feels like spring and requires only a light jacket. We went outside a LOT, which was fantastic, and while Eric was working on Friday I took the boys about an hour south to the Monterey Bay Aquarium It was fun and on the ocean and insanely expensive, and nice to see but it also made me appreciate the Shedd a little more, because the Shedd really compares to this renown place. We also went to the Muir Woods which required a drive across the Golden Gate bridge and that's always a little trippy.

When we lived in LA we didn't get up to San Fran too often, and now I wish we had gone more. I also can kind of vaguely see what people like about nature, though I still would not venture into it if it weren't for Eric and the kids. Oh, and really most profound of all was the realization that, yet again, we do not have enough frozen yogurt establishments in this great Chicagoland area and why not??? Why not? It's not because it's too cold, because we have plenty of ice cream and yucky frozen custard places, so what is the problem? Ok, enough about that. Oh and also Eric and I went to what had been our favorite coffee chain in LA and we still order drink kits from there but it made me realize that it wasn't all that I remembered it to be and many of the things I think I would like to go back and do again I just wouldn't because they're not the same at all when you have kids. For instance we couldn't sit at our favorite Westwood restaurant for 4 hours and eat shwarma and smoke hookahs and drink turkish coffee and relax. We just couldn't do it anymore. It wouldn't be the same and if we didn't have a babysitter with us it wouldn't even be remotely possible. And the thing is I don't even care and so I guess in some strange way I've gotten older. Again.

Something I learned by accident on this trip, and I don't know why I didn't know it before, but for the Tips for Traveling with Kids - when you go somewhere and the view isn't important, get a room on the first floor. The hotel where Eric's work had put us up assigned us a gigantic room on the first floor, which meant Liam and Brendan could run around and not bother people in the room below us, and it was awesome. In San Fran we had a higher level floor, which was great because they could watch all the goings on out the windows - definitely a must for big cities. But in Sunnyvale there's nothing to see so having the first floor was primo. For some reason the Marriott in San Fran upgraded us to a suite so for the 2nd two nights we also had a giant place and it was great so that the kids could have space. We're going to Champaign this week for my semester on campus visit, and I booked a suite there for the first time thinking I was a super genius, but now I know I have to also ask for a, you guessed it, first floor suite. Speaking of my oncampus visit I need to go and do some schoolwork now. Oh, and on a seemingly unrelated point if you ever have a child who doesn't sleep, definitely take a visit to a pediatric sleep doctor. It is one of the best things we have ever done in our lives. Great timing with a newborn on the way haha but I will take my 3 months of sleep anyway.

Ah, I Can See Clearly Now

2010-02-09T07:18:00.000-08:00

Liam and Brendan know who the president and vice president are, and who the first president was. At the beginning of the State of the Union Address a week or two ago, I was finishing up class and Eric was doing something and so Liam and Brendan were the first ones to watch the tv. Then Liam started to excitedly announce, "George Washington is saying Barack Obama is there!" So I went over to see what he was talking about, and sure enough I saw an older man who was announcing the president. So I told Liam, oh that's not George Washington and went on to explain how he lived a long time ago blah blah blah. But I thought we'd already covered this before. Anyway it's sort of come up a few other times and then after a while Liam seemed to accept that GW doesn't live nowadays, but he seemed to wrestle with it. Then this morning the source of his confusion became clear to me. He said, "You know what, Mom. When George Washington got into that helicopter and flew away, I think he flew up into heaven, and that's why he's not around anymore." Wha-? Oh! Oh I get it now! You are thinking of George Bush, from the inauguration! That's a different person than George Washington, though he was also our president. Just not our first president. And you're right, he still is alive now.
It's no use explaining, parents just don't understand.

The Little Vacation That Could(n't, Did)

2010-01-16T19:00:00.000-08:00

On Friday Eric and I decided to take an impromptu trip downtown with the little guys. The Marriott had great rates and we could get 5000 bonus points while enjoying our skyline view of the city from our 38th floor windows, so why not, right? The plan was to leave right after Eric got off of work at 4:30. We made reservations at the Buca by the hotel for 5:45. But, true to form, Brendan decided to take a very short nap, after which he came downstairs and fell asleep at 4:20. Liam, who doesn't take a nap anymore, took a nap at 3:30. Eric and I tried to quickly pack up our two backpacks without forgetting any of the many things we would probably forget, and then we woke up the boys. Liam was an utter wreck. Really. I can sympathize, because I often feel like that after naps, but I think I deal with it better. By the time we got out the door it was 5:00. When we were still waiting to get through the Cumberland toll at 5:45 we changed the reservation to 6:30. When we weren't even at Irving Park Road by 6:15 we called and canceled the reservation and tried to think of somewhere we could go off the expressway. Did I mention we are trying to have the boys in bed and asleep by 8:30? Eric thought of a few places but I wanted to get further into the city. An exit or two before Nagle Brendan really wanted to get out of the car (where we'd been for an hour and a half.) We offered fruit snacks and Liam was in but Brendan said no. Brendan never says no to fruit snacks. Soon we found out why, because about 30 seconds later he starting throwing up all over. Awesome! Apparently he is unused to driving in stop and go traffic and he got car sick. Boy did he ever. The same thing happened to Liam when he was about Brendan's age and I was going into the city at about the same time of day to meet up with some AmeriCorps friends. I forgot about the traffic, but that didn't help at this point. Anyway, there was no way we could clean Brendan off and put him back in the car seat, which along with his clothes took the brunt of the disaster. So we pulled off at Nagle, took all his clothes off (fortunately he was not wearing his coat - thank you God!) and washed him off (yes, it was 30 degrees), took the clothes and the car seat to some alley trash area, and I sat in the back with Brendan on my lap while we went to the Addison Target and bought a booster seat for Liam. Crisis averted. By the time we got downtown at 7:40 we were still able to get right in to Buca, and then we went back to the hotel, explored a little, skipped the pool and went back to our room. Brendan fell asleep relatively easily because Eric and I were there and he was tired. Eric and I decided to watch tv and Liam decided to join us. Late night tv is not appropriate for 4 year olds, but Liam really loved Conan. I'm with him. Conan's way better than Jay Leno, and I'm glad Liam has such good taste. He laughed at all the right places even though he had no idea what they were talking about. I fell asleep during Craig Ferguson (who in my humble opinion is the absolute best talk show host beside Johnny Carson, hands down), which may seem like a sort of dull vacation, but for me and Eric it was blissful. We almost never get to watch tv and almost never get to fall asleep when we want to. The next morning we woke up, went to breakfast, went to the pool, picked up some delicious Thai from Lincoln Square, picked up Liam's bday party cake for his kids' birthday party tomorrow, and got home by 2:30. I'm so happy we decided to chuck the car seat and go on with the trip. It might seem wasteful but actually that car seat was almost at the end of it's life as it was, so it would have been gone soon anyway. We were most disappointed about the cool pants Brendan had on, but we had no where to keep them until we went home the next day, so c'est la vie. Oh, and Liam and Brendan were both amazing in the pool and they met a friend, Megan, who Liam wanted to invite back to our room. I don't know if it's preschool or what but he's really coming out of his shell a lot more, and Brendan has been getting all shy and clingly. So I guess these are all just stages. And so too hopefully is Brendan's dreadful dreadful sleep. Hopefully next week we'll have some better game plan for that. But for right now we just have Liam's final 4th birthday party tomorrow. Who thinks I'll remember to bring the camera?

There Were Five in the Bed

2010-01-12T06:49:00.000-08:00

On Saturday Eric and I went for the big ultrasound reveal. Liam and Brendan were at their grandparents' and we had a whole late morning and afternoon to ourselves, which is a seemingly very, very painfully rare event lately. The ultrasound went well, the baby looked good, and apparently looked like a boy. I was surprised, because I thought he was a girl, but if there's one thing I've learned about being a mom it's that kids never ever do what you expect them to. After the appointment we got massages, and then, instead of doing even one of the 6.12 million things we were planning on doing, we just drove to a random Indian restaurant on Devon and had a delicious lunch. Because we could. I still ate it about twice as fast as I needed to, being so unused to getting to sit down and eat slowly and relax and enjoy my meal, but mmmm.
For about the last two months Brendan has been sleeping so badly through the night that he now wakes up Liam, who then has a hard time getting back to sleep because of the hypothetical monsters that he knows probably don't exist but still possibly might. It's been brutal, I'm not going to lie. We have tried pretty much everything you could think of, and nothing has worked. So today, after an incredibly stressful, no good horrible awful night last night, we are going to try and enlist the help of a pediatric sleep specialist. I have about 5% hope for a positive solution, but after more than 2 years and 3 months where we've only gotten maybe, maybe 10 full nights of sleep, I'm out of ideas.
On a more positive note Brendan and Liam surprise and astound me every day with how freaking funny and smart they are, and how good they can now play with each other (well and fight too, which is a wholly new concept to me having never had a sibling anywhere near my own age, but apparently it's normal though I still hate it and constantly try and crush it out. It's not bad but I just want them to never fight, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.) Both of them are sharp as tacks and are phenomenally good talkers, so I just love to sit back and listen to their conversations. Liam had set the bar so high with his verbal skills I really didn't expect Brendan to match up to him, but there again I was so wrong. And he is actually a much clearer talker, but to my great surprise, similar to Liam, he will not perform on command, will usually not continue to do what he's doing if I get out the camera, and often quiets down when we go out in public. Not always, but a lot. So I guess some Eric genes did make it into him after all.
Last week we finally started getting our basement finished. We are very very excited about this, even though it's a pretty small basement, but having another room in the house is becoming increasingly important. I really want to leave some of the brick exposed down there, which we're not planning on doing right now, but aside from that it's the coolest thing to walk down in what had always been the dungeon and see it transforming into a cool place. After that the only other renovation we have left for the main house is the upstairs bathroom. Of course once we complete that, if we stay in this house, we will then need to think about the plans for an addition. And I say, why not sink more money into a place that depreciates a little more each day? What's there to lose? I mean, beside our house and all our money and everything but the clothes on our back, right? This is America, for God's sake!
I have recently discovered that overall I have a pretty idyllic life, which is a good thing to realize every now and then. You really can't beat having a husband/Dad who works from home, a wife/Mom who works part time 5 blocks away, two terribly-sleeping but otherwise ideal sons who make even winter a ton of fun, and a house with something changing every day. Now, if I could somehow just manage to schedule one of those prenatal massages into my week EVERY week...

Sugar Sugar, Awwww Honey, Honey

2009-11-10T19:43:00.000-08:00

Brendan's favorite foods:
sausage
hot dogs
sausage
hot dogs
bananas (which he calls band-aids, ew.)
yogurt covered raisins
dried bananas
dried cherries
fruit snacks
vitamins
cheese
sausage
maraschino cherries (which irks me to no end since it is very hard to find ones without high fructose corn syrup)

It's not exactly the well-rounded diet I'm striving for with him. He also does NOT like:
dessert (except Hershey bars)
honey (which he pretends he does like, like Tigger, and then he remembers he hates, like Tigger)
peas
tea (yes, I tried this when he had a cough)
pretty much most things not on the "favorite" list
Liam pretty much likes everything EXCEPT coconut and whipped cream (he gets that from me.) I still haven't taken good pictures of them from Halloween, but my friend's sister did so I need to get them from her. Also I am not beneath dressing them up in their costumes again to get a couple posed shots. They are adorable.
Eric and I saw the absolutely ONLY possible movie available on Friday night at it was Couples Vacation. It was not as bad as I was expecting. I was expecting very bad. But I love Vince Vaughn so right there it got a star, and then the setting was AMAZING so there's another star, and there were some funny moments, so there's a half star, so 2.5/5 stars. Also I haven't seen more than maybe 3 or 4 movies at the theatre this year so I'm pretty forgiving. I mean I purposefully try not to go to something which I know I will hate, which I never cared about before when I could and did see movies whenever I had the whim, which was often. Eric and I made the mistake of going to see The Women once, but realized our mistake literally 4 minutes into the film and relocated to Burn After Reading, which is the sort of evasive maneuver you have to do when using up the only 2 1/2 hour break you're going to have for 3 months. Anyway, I have noticed my standards slipping big time in my quest for pure unadultered escapism. But I'm ok with that. I think enough right now between kids and work and school that I'm ok taking a break from David Lynch. I wish there were a few more quality escape films, but I think I'd have to live in the 40s and 50s for that to be the case. Thank you Netflix.

Go Speedracer Go

2009-09-19T13:20:00.000-07:00

Liam wants to be a racecar driver. He wants his racecar to have a fishtank in the back too. So it seemed only natural to take him to a real race. Last weekend we went to Elkhart Lake, WI with Eric's brother Andy and his girlfriend Erin. The resort was beautiful and the cars were very cool and even the Bears Packers game at the Wisonsin dive bar was fun. Unfortunately Brendan came down with a cold our second night there (and we didn't know it yet but Liam did too.) Vacations with kids are different. I personally like to go somewhere with little expectations, no itinerary and maybe only a vague idea of what I want to do. With Liam and Brando there's about 6 extra suitcases to bring and at least some preparation is vital. Unfortunately you never think of bringing humidifiers, do you? So, bedtime. Brendan was having a hard time falling asleep with the cold so Eric was in with him and I was watching a very strange show on the History channel about, you guessed it, the antichrist. It was a Nostradamus thing that normally I wouldn't have watched, but what roped me in was this weird teaser they kept offering that seemed to imply our president might be the "3rd and final" antichrist. They even went so far as to have an actor who slightly resembled the prez who they'd show every time they proposed their ominous questions, "Could this third and final antichrist be an intelligent, popular, charismatic man who leads a nation to glory just before he destroys the world forever?" It was so strange and filled with so much overt innuendo that I just had to keep watching to see how they were going to finish it. At this point either way would be bizarre. If they said "no it's definitely not our president" then why did they keep alluding to him as if he was, and really how could they say that with any authority since it's all a bunch of mumbo jumbo anyway. The conspiracy theorists would have a field day with that. If they said it is him or could be him that would be sooooo incredible it doesn't seem possible. So how would it end? I literally sat through 45 minutes of this show and then just when they were going to get to the bottom line, Brendan wakes up inconsolable and needing me and so I didn't get to watch the end. Unbelievable. Conspiracy, right?
So around midnight Brendan woke up with this 3-packs-of-Camels-a-Day cough, the likes of which I'd never heard before. Well, had we been at home I would have put on the humidifier and if it was bad I would have brought him into the bathroom with the hot shower arunnin. No humidifier, but I ran the hotel hot shower and sure enough he stopped coughing and fell back asleep. Eric went down to the front desk to get some extra pillows for Brando (didn't want to have them bring them up and knock on the door and wake everyone) and I asked him to leave the shower running so the noise would be in the background til he came back. Sure enough less than one minute after Eric left the fire alarm in our room goes off. We had a 3 bedroom setup with a kitchen and dining room and the three bedrooms were all clustered in the back. This insane blasting alarm would not shut off, and a minute later the front desk calls to see what's going on. I explain what happened and ask how to turn it off. "Just open the patio door" was their reply. Great idea, but all it did was cause dozens of worried hotel guests to start looking out their doors and windows wondering if the building was on fire. Erin and Andy came out of their bedroom and we all tried to make it shut off. Liam and Brendan somehow slept through it, in spite of it being a foot away from each of their open doors and it literally stayed on for 10 or 15 minutes. Finally Andy pulled it out of the ceiling. A minute later Eric came back, unaware of what had happened. Then the front desk tells us we have to put the smoke detector back in or the Fire Department's going to come. It was really a joyful experience, especially when after everyone was back to sleep Liam started crying at the top of his lungs because his cold finally set in and he felt awful but was so tired the only thing he could do was cry. I think Eric and I maybe got two hours of sleep that night, and we woke up before 7, packed up our stuff and left before Erin and Andy even got up.
Then I kept Liam home from his 4th and 5th days of preschool. On Thursday he seemed much better and I thought he was ready to go back. He definitely wanted to and I didn't think he seemed contagious (bear in mind that I ABHOR when people bring their sick kids anywhere near me or my kids, so I would not want to be a hypocrite but I really felt like he was ok.) I went to work and Eric called saying he wasn't sure if Liam should go. I'm like "I think he's fine and should go, but it's up to you." So based on my prodding Eric decided to send him. On the way back from dropping him off Eric calls to tell me that yes Liam went to school but the weird thing was that the class won't be going outside and they're canceling the ice cream social because there's an escaped convict on the loose in the neighborhood so the school's on lockdown. Well didn't I feel great for convincing Eric to let him go.
Alls well that ends well. I actually feel sort of sorry for the convict because he knew he was probably going to be sent to prison for the next decade plus, so when he saw an easy opportunity to escape he did it, and in all the time he was on the lam he didn't hurt anyone. I read someone saying he hopes he "goes to jail for the rest of his life" which I think is absurd, considering murderers don't even always go to jail for the rest of their lives. I think it's just a sad commentary on our penitentiary system, when the guys ends up in jail for nonviolent crime at age 18, and he just goes back and forth between jail and freedom for the rest of his life. Really isn't there any way we could help first offenders not end up back in jail? Of course some people won't be reformed, but our overcrowded prisons are probably the worst thing you could do for people gone astray. The whole system's a mess, that's my opinion. Anyway thank God everything ended peacefully and safely. And on a happier note, Liam sent his first text message today. Eric got a new phone after a wayward load of laundry did in his old and much beloved phone. This one has a keypad which intrigues Liam, and all on his own he texted me and my niece Kelly a message. He wanted to also text our babysitter but she's only 12 and doesn't have a cell phone. What was his message? "Liam" Succinct, just like he is.

Ouch, That Stings

2009-08-27T20:25:00.000-07:00

Me: Good night, Liam, I love you.
(kiss, hug)
Liam: I love you too, Mommy.
Me: Good night, Brendan. I love you.
Brendan: Good night.
Me: Can you give Mommy a kiss, Brendan?
Brendan: No way, Elmo.

My City By the Lake

2009-08-26T10:03:00.000-07:00

This weekend we hung out downtown. Among the highlights were taking a carriage ride, hanging out in the WGN/NBC plaza with the 3 story tall statue recreation of American Gothic (couldn't help but thing about Doing Time in Park Ridge of course) and the fountains, window shopping on Michigan Avenue, swimming in the 1920s pool at the Hotel Intercontinental, which looked like it was pulled straight out of the Hearst mansion, and taking a ride on the water taxi. We forgot to check out Buckingham fountain so we'll have to go back. Liam and Brendan were both amazingly good, and really enjoyed looking out the window of our room down at the lake and lighthouse and the city 22 stories below. When we first got there Eric thought the woman who checked us in said we were on the 2nd floor, so he asked if we could get something higher and she said no. It made sense when we realized it was the 22nd floor. The best testament to how well the trip went was that we didn't even open the bag of cars I brought to play with. Truly that's unheard of. Unfortunately somewhere in the middle of the night we awoke to Brendan saying "Pwease, pwease" only to find him standing next to his bed with his eyes still closed trying to get climb back in. Apparently he had fallen out or scooted off and it was too high for him to get back in. But other than that and the crazy traffic on the way home, it was a perfect trip.

My New Eco-Friendly Water Bottle

2009-08-08T12:48:00.001-07:00

It's sleek, it's pretty, it's stainless steel and very mod. Three things I don't like about it:

1. When I opened it (while sitting at the public service desk at work today) a huge stream of water flew out of it and onto and across my pants, so now I look like I wet my pants. It also gave me flashbacks to trying to change Liam's diaper at 2am.
2. When I drink from it, it makes a super-sonic screeching noise which reverberates throughout the library. At first I thought a security alarm was going off. It's so far from right I cannot even explain. And I am not joking.
3. My water tastes like metal.

So, I am going to have to reevaluate this $13 purchase. Much like I sadly mourn the loss of the $8 MORGAN embossed sippy cup that Brendan forced me to buy, which now has a big rip in the rubbery-plastic coating after Eric proceeded to wash in the dishwasher, against the advice of the large Hand Wash Only label, rendering it unusable.

LPZ

2009-07-11T18:37:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics from a trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo. Always good times. I should actually write something but I'm just too lazy today.

Here is Brendan blissfully passed out after the adventure:

And here's a set of pics when I caught Liam and Brendan practicing for Brendan's 21st birthday. Fortunately they only had play cups, but I'm gonna keep an eye on these two...

True Ramblings

2009-06-26T16:44:00.000-07:00

Well, at the expense of having any social life recently, Eric and I have been moving full steam ahead with working insane schedules and fixing up the house. I think the end is in sight, with the only big project left on the docket painting the cabinets in the kitchen and having the countertops installed. The painting part is a lot of work, and I will be SO happy when it is done. Ok, off to play chase with Brendan and Liam!

Maseratis, Aston Martins and Rick Bayless

2009-06-14T20:33:00.000-07:00

Sequentially I should post my After pictures of the yard, but I want to wait til they finish the casings on the back windows first.
Yesterday /last night was awesome. In celebration of 8 years of marriage, we dropped dos bambinos at the grandparents for lunch, then Eric and I got a bunch of stuff done including (finally!) ordering new countertops (bye bye Brady Bunch, we won't miss you!) and other miscellaneous jazz (how romantic. We ran into an Action Ridge neighbor that afternoon and she said her husband NEVER took her to Home Depot to celebrate their anniversary, poor lady.) Then we went downtown for drinks at Fado and dinner at Frontera Grill. It was seriously the best food I've ever had in my life, and the margaritas were insanely good. We forced ourselves to eat almost everything we got because we had never had such an extraordinary meal, and no one else seemed to be taking doggie bags. :o) Eric was excited because there was a bevy of upscale cars outside to oogle as well. Like a little touch of L.A. on Clark. Dinner was at 9 and we thought about going to a midnight movie afterward, but decided to come home instead and SLEEP! G&G Z were having a sleepover with the grandkids, which meant we got to sleep in today AND do my favorite lazy thing ever, which is wake up, eat breakfast and then go BACK to bed. It was truly fantastical.
Tomorrow our itty bitty 3rd bedroom will be magically transformed into a itty bitty purple and green playroom. I'll try to post before and after pics, as I know you are just DYING to see the metamorphosis.
Oh, and now I certainly CANNOT get that Eagles song Life's Been Good out of my head. "My Maserati does 185, I lost my license, now I don't drive." That's been with me since I asked Eric last night, "So a Maerati's a really expensive car?" and he laughed in my face, realized I wasn't joking and as he tried to explain it to me I sang that lyric and he said, "Yes, exctally. It's what rockstars drive."
Oh, and on our way downtown Eric was trying to make a call on the OnStar and it misheard him: Eric's response: Dammit
Onstar: Now calling - Eric.
Ok, who wants to have the next sleepover with the kids? They were apparently quite good. Lemme know.

Before

2009-06-12T15:58:00.001-07:00

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

2009-06-02T20:00:00.000-07:00

So, we got new sod and a flat backyard! I will post pictures when Eric reconnects some mythical computer wires. I have to say it looks waaaaaay better and I want to be featured on one of those Home and Garden shows. Now we just need a patio and maybe a fence and we will have a kickin' backyard. (A very strange and unexpected crop of mushrooms has started popping up in the new sod. I am not sure if they are magical, but I hope they will quickly go away. Although they are kind of cute. In a weird way only mushrooms and pigs noses can be.)

I don't like how people at my work and nearby schools are getting swine flu. Not many people are dying of it, but it's still not something I want to contract. Also it isn't yet flu season, so that'll be the real test. Sometimes working in a public place is a germy thing to do. However, I cannot express how much I LOVE having an 8 minute commute, especially since I can get there faster walking than driving. That's pretty sweet. Eric and I are very eco-friendly when it comes to commuting.

I was talking today with our extra-stellar mailman, and he was lambasting the USPS, sort of. He said they now frown upon mailmen getting to know the people on their route, and everything is about doing it faster, but not better. He's a cool dude and more postmen should be like him. And always ring twice.

This week is turning out to be a very cute baby-ful week indeed. In addition to my own very cute babies (and in Ireland Liam still qualifies as an "Infant") I got to see one very cute little 6 month old girl on Tuesday and will hopefully get to see two very cute 2 month old twins on Friday. Liam is uber-excited, and based on his success with Mason has proposed teaching 2 month old Charlie to walk tomorrow.
Tomorrow we also are lining up our weekly babysitter AND getting the last of our new windows. And we (Eric) got a new faucet but (Eric)broke something so we need to get a plumber. And we are turning the 3rd bedroom into a playroom so we have a painter coming for that on Monday. And last but not least we will hopefully be getting new countertops sometime soon, and hopefully we will have finished painting out cabinets by then too. Though for a while we might have black cabinets and orange countertops, and nothing could be more rad. And on that note we will be celebrating our anniversary with a over-night away from the little guys and a good dinner by one of our favorite channel 11 chefs. After that I will need a four month vacation to recuperate.

Our Fav Restaurant from the Old Days

2009-05-29T18:34:00.001-07:00

Somehow I happened upon the website for The Gypsy, which is the favorite restaurant Eric and I had in LA. Check out the Pictures on their site to get a feel for it. Man, set yourself at one of their outside tables for a gluttonous evening of beautiful weather, amazing hummus and shwarma, delicious flavored hookahs and people- and star- watching at the movie premiers at the Fox across the street. When we were there they still had 25 cent chocolate chip cookies and one dollar ice cream sandwiches at Diddy Reese just a couple stores down. We lived maybe 4 or 5 blocks from this oasis, which I was happy to leave but now remember wistfully. I wouldn't want to live in LA again, but there were some pretty gnarly things about it, Dude, that's for sure.

Much Ado

2009-05-29T08:10:00.000-07:00

1. I finally got my grade from Use and Users of information. 98 out of a possible 100 points, baby! Now I just have to cross my fingers that scholarship people will call me in June. If I don't hear in June, well that is a bad sign. If I do that means I got it. Ooo, I can hardly handle the tension. 3 classes down, 7 to go!
2. Liam's friend is calling from upstairs, "Liam keeps turning off the piano," to which Liam calls down, "Because my baby needs to take a nap!" Seems reasonable to me.
3. Tomorrow: Stage One of our landscapping begins. They are going to flatten out the backyard, lay new sod, pull out the bushes behind our house, plant some newer, "cuter" bushes, cut down the trees that are growing into our garage and lay new sod on our parkway grasses. We still need to get a back patio and 1.7 million other things, but this is a good start. Why is everything so expensive? Just wondering.
4. Liam got a little stuffed Irish bear from Jon and Melissa when he was born. He told me a day ago the bear was named Brian Hamber. Eric and I were impressed because it sounds like a real name. So I said, oh, that's a cool name for him. How did you know that was his name? And he said, no, it's her, not him. Brian Hamber is a girl.
5. Kathy, I know what you're saying about the bogus celebrity exhaustion, but I would reaaallly like to go to one of the chic rehab hospitals for a week or two and have my own exhaustion recovery. It would be totally legit, I promise.
I had a LOT more SUPER RIVETING stuff to blog about, but I got basically no sleep last night because Brendan + teething + cold = BAAAAADDDD!!!!! so I can't remember what it was. This does not bode well for tonight, when I will be working.

Samurai Liamson

2009-05-20T20:44:00.000-07:00

So we recently found out that not only is Liam inexplicably good at climbing trees, but his inner Zen warrior has been unleashed since he got a sword. Eric found some geeky website that said these nerf swords rock, and I must say they are quite excellent. And Liam has shown a fencing prowess that knows no fear. Eric came in tonight to share some choice quotes from the neighborhood swordfight that Liam was finally able to participate in.
"Ouch Liam, we're on the same team!"
"No Liam, Riley can only do that because he's my master." to which Liam replied, "I am your master!"

For real.

In other good news, after the big breakup with Salernos some months back, we had a brief fling with Mugs, but it turned out to only be ok. Then, after doing an entire semester about the demise of newspapers, I only now found out that my hometown does still have a newspaper, which is available online (thanks all who participated in the survey.) Anyway I found out that Moretti's has opened a ristorante here, and it delivers! I am beyond excited. Sad but true.

Tomorrow we have some landscapers coming to quote a price to get the back lawn torn up, leveled, re-sodded and maybe take out bushes and put in a patio. And in a couple weeks we will be getting our last three regular windows. Still no new countertops or upstairs bath or kitchen remodeling or basement finishing or addition, but it's something. I'm patient. Sort of. Not really. Sometimes. Not usually but, ok well, don't let your kids get teeth is my advice to you. It suuuuucks.

Ruminations on Parenthood, Part 1

2009-05-14T19:59:00.000-07:00

Ok, so someone says to you, here's the job:

Me: What are the hours?
God: Um, not sure.
Me: Like, how many hours a week?
God: Well, hmm, I can't say. Anywhere between 112 and close to 168.
Me: Wait, I have to work nights and weekends?
God: Yeah. In fact, you have to potentially work more on weekends then on weekdays.
Me: What's the salary?
God: (laughs, coughs, clears throat) No salary. It's actually going to cost you a boatload of money.
Me: Well how many sick days do I get?
God: None.
Me: None? What do I do when I'm sick?
God: Mostly likely take care of everyone else in your house because they will also be sick. And you can get puked on and sneezed on and coughed on, make meals and do laundry and take care of the pets and pay the bills and, you pickin up what I'm puttin down here?
Me: Is there a pension?
God: That depends on how smart and financially savvy and lucky your kids are, how much they like and respect you when they're adults, what kinds of ailments you have, how annoying you get, etc. Truthfully there's a good chance you'll be chin-deep in debt for the rest of your life, with at least two mortgages.
Me: When do I get to retire?
God: Never. Well, technically, when you die. Otherwise you're on call 24/7 for the rest of your life.

So, I ask you, who in their right mind would willingly take this on? And not only that, who would take it more then once?! Especially after you realize there ISN'T a nursery down the hall where you can send the kid when you're sick or exhausted or in need of a ten minute nap. Or after you realize it will literally be YEARS before you have the independence to walk out of your own house barefoot, hop in your car and go wherever you want for as long as you want. But here's the absolutely weird thing. Somehow, by some astounding, enigmatic biological widget God skillfully implanted in a hidden crevice in your brain, this whole unbelievably bizarre phenomena is AMAZING and totally, incomprehensibly AWESOME and even knowing many of the pitfalls and idiosyncrasies, I totally dig this parenthood thing. I can absolutely see how it's not for everyone, but personally I'm in. When Brendan asks, "Is this a booboo?" in the cutest, sweetest baby voice, pointing to a little scrape on his hand, a concerned, innocent look on his adorable fat face that I just want to eat, I could seriously see having 10 kids. On the other hand, it's 10:29pm and Liam's singing Weezer songs upstairs and asking Eric to come up and clip his nails, so I don't think I'll go that far. And have I mentioned how I have had MAYBE 4 full 8 hour nights of sleep in the last year and a half? That's not something I could keep up for the next decade, so...

Brendan face-planted off the neighbor's slide and the mud on his face was too funny-looking to clean off:

Dr. Brendan

2009-05-06T14:49:00.000-07:00

Would you really let this man operate on you?

Latte won Kenobi

2009-05-04T20:03:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, when the weather started getting better, we noticed that Brendan started saying, "Die, die, die, die" very excitedly. I'm not going to lie, it was disconcerting. Eric was the one who finally figured out the translation, "outside." Phew. Brendan, like most children, reallllllllllly loves to be outside. It makes me look with a whole new fondness toward our days in southern California. You literally could go out 365 days a year. Wow.
Today we got out and Liam got to play with a neighbor. Five hours later as he's taking his nap (and I'm trying to take one of my own in my bedroom down the hall) he calls out to me,
"Mom! Mommy! Have you ever heard of Starbucks?!"
"Yes," I answered.
"No, but not the Caribou Starbucks. Starbucks the movie. Have you heard of that?"
"No," I replied.
"It's where they're fighting, but it's not real. It's just pretend."
Then a lightbulb went off and I remembered the 4 year old neighbor.
"Do you mean Star Wars?" I shouted back.
"Yes, that's it," he said.
"Yes, I've heard of that. I'll tell you about it later."
"Ok."

Well, I'm off to write my last paper for Use and Users of Information. Woohoo!

8 and E vs. I

2009-04-30T15:21:00.000-07:00

So there's been chatter in the house lately about the Myers Brigs tests after Eric and I finally took the ones Heather sent us on FB. Eric was 100% I, I was 88% E. (One thing that really struck me about the recap of my own test was that it said that I really need to be around people but yet even when I am around people I can feel lonely, because I have not developed one of my other letters. F? Well anyway it was totally right on. The descriptions about me and Eric were really very accurate.) Liam has shown many signs of "I" which I learned from Heather is not a bad thing :o) but also he's three so I don't know yet what he'll be. In hopes of gaining some insight into his leanings, I presented him with the following question:
Me: Liam, when you go to a party do you like to talk to a whole bunch of people or just one person
Liam: A whole bunch of people
Me: Say you were at a party and there was a big group of people talking and then in another room there was just one person. Would you want to go in the room with the big group and talk with them and have them all talk to you or would you want to go in the room with just one person?
Liam: The room with the whole big bunch of people.
(I'm sort of surprised with the answers at this point.)
Me: And you'd want all the people to be talking to you?
Liam: Yes...(pause) but Mom? You know what I really like about parties?
Me: What?
Liam: Cake.
Me: Cake?
Liam: Yes, definitely. Cake...(Pause) and hamburgers. But not lunch. I don't like lunch at parties. Unless it's hamburgers.

So you be the judge.

8 Things I Look Forward To
1. Getting full nights of sleep on a regular basis
2. Being done with grad school
3. Going somewhere on vacation this summer
4. Brendan being done teething
5. Going to a movie and dinner and a babysitter who doesn't ask us to be home early
6. Chicago Summer Events
7. The economy rebounding and my house being worth more that $17.28
8. Rae's wedding This Weekend!

8 Things I Did Yesterday
1. Played outside with the neighbors
2. Looked for the neighbor's cat with Liam
3. Prepaid 2 credit cards so I'll never be late again due to dumbness
4. Held Brendan like a baby
5. Watched our president on tv
6. Read more of Three Cups of Tea
7. Went to bed too late
8. Stressed out about refinancing and all the millions of project we have yet to do at our house.

8 Things I Wish I Could Do
1. Sleep
2. Read leisurely
3. Eat everything I love and be skinny
4. Live somewhere else but still be with all my family and friends
5. Have a maid
6. Stop worrying so much
7. Get a massage every day
8. Capitalize on the low interest rates

8 Shows I Watch
1. Check Please
2. Brothers and Sisters
3. Ballykissangel
4. Chicago Tonight
5. Tavis Smiley/ News Hour with Jim Lehrer/Nightly Business Report
6. Rick Steves/Rudy Maxa/Burt Wolf/some other travel show with different hosts who go to strange places and one host has bad teeth but I can't remember the name
7. Mexico One Plate at a Time
8. Craig Ferguson

I tag Kelly!

These Are Days

2009-04-29T10:36:00.000-07:00

Brendan has been very unhappy about going to bed the last few days. Verrrrry unhappy about it. Liam had his own trouble with it a couple nights ago. Why do I always forget what's going on? You know what it is? Rapid development. Liam is growth spurting and Brendan is language spurting. I see it happening before my eyes but it always takes me awhile to remember what's going on. Another change Eric and I noticed is that Brendan, who oscillates between being very good and horrid has been much happier as of late. The rage has mellowed. Relatively. And it just dawned on me at work last night why. You guessed it - language. He has been frustrated for 18 months (1 1/2 years old yesterday!) with his inability to articulate his thoughts, dreams, hopes, whatever. Now there is an explosion of words and this makes him, and us, so happy! It doesn't make him much happier to sit in confined spaces like car seats and high chairs though, but beggars can't be choosers. Eric found him reading a book out loud this afternoon. Shakespeare, you know? No, really it was Let's Build but anyway it's just amazing to watch.

Yesterday Brendan Liam and I celebrated Brando's 1 1/2 year birthday with a candle in a moon pie. Brendan enjoyed us singing to him except every once in a while he'd get a concerned look and glance sideways at Liam in case we might actually be singing to him. But when it turned out we were really singing to Brendan he was very pleased. He doesn't like moon pies though.

Letting the Days Go By

2009-04-23T14:55:00.000-07:00

Liam's lunch.

Wednesday night Eric and I got a night on the town and visited a couple of the neighborhood food and spirits establishments. It wasn't as warm walking around as we thought it would be, even after drinks and appetizers and drinks and dinner. Unfortunately the youngins were still awake when we got home, so we were quickly brought back to reality at 9:15pm. (Also I discovered as I opened the back door that I left my purse back at the restaurant, so Eric ended up walking back after the kids went to bed.) Anyway, for some reason at 3am I woke up and could not get back to sleep. I believe it was 5:30 or 6 when I did. Waking up at 7:30 for work I realized how true it is that I am not a kid anymore. Not that I want to be a "kid" kid, but like they say you can never go home again, it's also hard to dabble sporadically in a life you lived in another era. Maybe we just need to get a regular babysitter and go out more.

Brendan has been doing the most adorable thing in the morning. I don't know what happened but somehow Eric and I produced an early riser. The odds were against it, but somehow it slipped through and we got Brando. He wakes up at 7/ 7:30. Liam is truly my child and could easily sleep in til 9:30. And they go to bed at the same time, but Liam just sits up there talking and singing for an hour or more til his brain winds down and he finally gives into sleep, where he dreams about Country Bugs. Don't ask, but it's not Flutterflies anymore and these things make noise. So when Liam wakes up we go into the bedroom to get him, and Brendan will take stuffed animals from his bed and bring them to Liam. It started because Liam really wanted Brando's snow tiger, but there was a bit of an altercation over it, and anyway the next morning Brendan, with no prompting from me, brought it to Liam. Now he does it every morning. He'll even bring stuffed animals from Liam's own bed that have shifted to the bottom so Liam can reach them. He loves helping. Helping unload the dishwasher, helping move furniture, helping clean up the large messes he makes. He's not really that good at helping, but it's funny, and sometimes scary, to watch him try.
In other news. Liam has gone from loving Ray Charles to loving Weezer (that's a little old news actually.) I hate ear buds and want headphones to come back in style. Liam doesn't wear diapers anymore. Brendan's teeth pains have returned - 2 year molars coming 6 months too soon. Brendan + teething = pistol. (As in, yep, he definitely is a redheaded Scorpio.) Rapid weightloss has not been a byproduct of weaning. It's been over a year now since we went to Dublin, and I really want to go back to Europe. This time I want to go to Italy. Unfortunately my bank account does not want that (I predict Eric will comment "What bank account? Why didn't you tell me we had a bank account?") This guy in my class sounds just like Anthony Hopkins and got way cuter in my on-campus day after he started talking. Mends and Binds might be the death of me. Warm weather, oh how I love ye!

The Time Is Getting Late to Begin

2009-04-18T08:27:00.000-07:00

Liam was born a little old man, that we all know. The first time I held him, I couldn't get over how much he looked like a scruffy Irish dockworker, with wise eyes that had seen much, and sideburns to boot. There's a passage in one of his Winnie the Pooh books that is truly profound. It reads,

"By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew where it was going, and it said to itself, 'There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.' But all the little streams higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late."

Among many other things it reminds me of, that passage really sums up Liam and Brendan. Which is why it always catches me off guard when in the middle of a conversation Liam will say, "No, I don't quite understand," and I'll explain again and he'll look at me calmly and then say, "Blickly mlkcy gox box socks." Today that happened when he was talking on the phone to my mom. Fortunately she knows a lot about kids, otherwise that could have thrown her for a loop.

I Always Liked the Trib Better

2009-04-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

To: circulation@pioneerlocal.com
Our Mount Prospect Times newspaper was unceremoniously cancelled a couple months ago, with no prior warning. No attempt was made to increase sales or circulation. Since I still had a remaining balance on the paper I sent in a slip to have the money refunded to me. I have never received this money back. Where is it?

Dear Donna

Thank you for contacting Pioneer Press.

We are currently processing your refund request. You should receive your refund within the next 10 business days.

If you require any further assistance, please contact customer service by phone at 1 (800) 680-2068 or by e-mail at custserv@suntimes.com.

Sincerely,

Cody V

Customer Service Department

At Least No Tears, or, Don't Tell Your Kids Bunnies Bite

2009-04-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I may have done a very dumb thing. I know, it's shocking.
At Heather's wedding I had these rad earrings to go with my dress. Running late as usual I tried putting them on in the car, only to find out I could not get one in at all. Why one of my earring holes closed up but not the other I don't know, but apparently not wearing earrings for years can have this effect. So for Rae's wedding I decided to re-pierce my ears. On Wednesday I went to Claires, stood patiently in line behind a 13 year old and her mom, and finally got my chance to partake in what was coincidentally the last day of their big free* ear piercing day (*with purchase of $40 starter kit consisting of a miniature pair of earrings and bottle of antiseptic wash.) Anyway, I guess I seemed less than brave and the 18 year old ear piercer asked with concern, "Ok, are you ready for this?" Sure, I've given birth to two babies, but I'm still a giant wimp. I barely cried though. Right before she asked me to take a big breath, she asked if I wanted the holes where they had been before. To this I should have said "Yes", so that I wouldn't really have to start from scratch and more importantly so there would be no problem with me taking the earring out to put in the earrings for Rae's wedding, which was the purpose of this whole thing anyway. But the girl said my old holes were not even so should she even them up? It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I fear it was a mistake. Now in two weeks when I take the "new" earring out to put in Rae's, will there be a chance the hole won't be there? Also I'm not convinced the new holes are any better aligned than the previous ones. Oi vey. Truly.

Also, before we left I looked at Woodfield's website for the Easter Bunny info. It said the Easter Bunny would be there from some date in March until March 22, which makes no sense since Easter isn't until April 12. Weird, but I had no reason not to believe it. As we were leaving the mall, I noticed an Easter display and lo and behold who was in the thick of it but that abnormally large bunny we call The Easter Bunny. Liam was not very interested in getting a picture with the fellow. Last year he absolutely refused so we just had the picture with Brendan. This year he was a bit more open, but at the last minute he said, "Actually no, I don't want to." Why? I asked. "Well, because, remember, you said sometimes bunnies bite." For no apparent reason I decided to reveal that gem to Liam just that very morning. Brilliant! "Well no, Honey, though some bunnies bite those are just the regular small bunnies, not the Easter Bunny. The Easter Bunny never bites." So he consented to be in the picture but not to sit on The Bunny's lap or on the bench next to The Bunny. Unfortunately what this picture does not convey is that Brendan was not at all scared of The Bunny. He just kept trying to kiss The Bunny and was not interested in turning his head away from him to look at the camera. Instead, in the picture, he comes across as not happy. And my Very Brave Liam decided after the picture that he wanted to go up to the EB, with me in tow, to touch him and pet him and shake his hand and say Happy Easter and bye-bye. I was so proud of him, but again it's not the message the picture conveys. In fact at the end I think he rather liked The Bunny. "He was fun, I loved seeing that Easter Bunny," he told me. He's still a bit concerned about why the EB didn't talk though. He thinks he can talk but that he was just being shy. Liam says the Easter Bunny loves him and he loves him too. This is huge progress. Anyway it's a little better than the Christmas pic with Santa. And I really am having a hard time coming to grips with why I even have to convince Liam to engage with large weird costumed strangers. I mean, unless he's going on stage at a Flaming Lips concert.

Imagine All the People

2009-04-04T19:59:00.000-07:00

I was really disappointed when I read a week or so ago that President Obama is considering "working" with the Taliban to stabilize Afghanistan. I had to write him a letter last night because I was really feeling sick after reading about the young woman in Pakistan who was assaulted. I do realize the whole thing's a MESS and the administration has to make very difficult choices but please God do not let that group retain or regain legitimate or illegitimate power. Culturally insensitive as it might be for me to say, that organization is downright evil.. I'm literally sick about it all. Not that I have some great solution myself, but I pray that they'll find and chose another way to bring stability to Afghanistan. Probably they need to consult with Brian O. to get some good ideas. I should have mentioned that in my letter.

It seems trite now to mention how bummmmmmmed I was to get to the bridal shop to pick up my dress and find out they were closed. I went from Schaumburg, with my entourage in tow, some of whom randomly scream and cry on car rides, and it took 1 1/2 hours (with a stop at home to pick up Eric) one way. I guess it wasn't meant to be today.

Oooo, That Stings...

2009-03-31T19:26:00.000-07:00

Last month, for some reason which I cannot remember, I completely missed paying my credit card. Mind you I always pay my bills in full, on time, but lately strange things have begun to happen. It might have been because we didn't receive the bill (our mail delivery has been exceedingly bad lately) but whatever it was we (Eric, as I have now diagnosed myself with the help of Rae's wise sister as phoneaphobic) straightened it out and they reversed the late fee and the interest and all was well. Then, somehow, this month I put that particular bill aside from the regular bills for some COMPLETELY UNEXPLAINABLE REASON, and when I sat down to pay bills yesterday I came across it, felt my heart drop, opened it up and sure enough it was due four days prior. I have no idea how this happened. It's just a complete (probably $60) mind blank, as I have found myself doing at an alarming rate. I cannot even tell you how many times I've come to work, checked my mailbox and found something in there (Oh good, Mail!) that I meant to give to someone else but put in my own box instead (Oh darnit, Idiot!). Today my department head said, "Hi Donna!" and I responded, "Sure!" What??? Definitely sleep deprivation is a baaaad thing. (I'm not even going to mention how it is getting much better, since last time that jinxed it completely.)

In other news, I figured out some things about myself, now that 4 solid years of pregnancy and breastfeeding are over. One, I want to have more kids. Two, I'm not sure if I have the physical/mental stamina for more kids. Three, I have pregnancy cravings in reverse. In other words during the last 4 years I have basically eaten like a preschooler. Very simple, straightforward, mostly wholesome food (and desserts.) Now, I want the weird things I always use to want. (The following examples may not be for the easily queasy.) Cottage cheese slightly curdled by cherry peppers and their juice. Spicy V8 with sourdough, brown mustard and tomatoes. Lemon water with a ratio of one lemon to approx. 4 ounces of water. (pickle juice, pickles, of COURSE) and it just goes on from there. So strange. But mmmm, so delicious. The last four years it's almost as if I've been unable to taste flavors. So, onward and upward and backward I guess. Hopefully now I'll become, miraculously, skinny.

Well, now I have to work and try to not think about scheduling a root canal (two teeth) and my belief that the dental crown I have really is too big and shouldn't be hurting even though I went to another dentist and he said it's fine. Ouch. Oh, and now I am COLD-FREE, and LT seems to be too, but Eric and Brendan are pulling up the rear. Poor guys. Warm weather, I am soooo excited to see you soon. Ok? Ok.

Facebook, You'll Be the End of Me

2009-03-27T19:42:00.000-07:00

So, Kathy, you were right. It's an addiction. Eric says he thinks we'll never talk again. I said to write me something on FB and I'll write back. Seriously though, what a fun game. Anyway, the weaning has gone well on Brendan's end, but my end not so much. Ugh. Well live and learn I guess. I guess I didn't really have anything to say but I felt bad cheating on blogger with Facebook, so I wanted to put something down here. Oh and I think I'll stop trying to singlehandedly save the Trib by subscribing to the print format because I NEVER read it in print form and I have no idea what to do with all these papers I have and it seems a waste of trees. Also where does all our garbage go? I mean I know a landfill, but where? And what about our recycling? How can EVERY WEEK EVERY HOUSE have a big bin of garbage and a big bin of recycling? That does not seem good. Ah, this planet.

Damn Ye Parking Meter!

2009-03-23T20:54:00.000-07:00

This was such a fantastic story I read, including the comments at the end, that I had to share it. It comes from theexpiredmeter , linked off the Trib's site. You have to read the comments at the end. Who wouldn't want to do this and who doesn't love this man?

"Maybe he was broke and needed some change for the bus. Maybe he just got one too many parking tickets. Or maybe he really loathed and despised that particular parking meter."

That's what The Expired Meter has to say about a man who was arrested after attacking a parking meter with a concrete cinder block.

The incident happened March 14 on the 3300 block of N. Lincoln Ave. According to The Expired Meter, the man walked up to the meter with the cinder block and started hitting it. One by-stander asked if the meter had eaten his quarter. The man did not respond and kept assaulting the meter, soon taking off his shirt as he worked up a sweat.

Within 10 minutes, a Chicago police car arrived on the scene and the man fled into the Lakeview YMCA. Police pursued the man, removed him from the YMCA and placed him into a waiting police wagon.

Notes the Expired Meter, "The most incredible detail of the story is, despite 10 minutes of constant battering with a 30-pound rock, the parking meter did not break and continues to function normally at 15 minutes per quarter."

5 Comments
spudart | March 20, 2009 1:10 PM | Reply

what a great story of determination. both on the man and on the meter's part. Lesson learned: the meter will not bend. NEVER.
Told you so | March 20, 2009 2:19 PM | Reply

Im surprised he didnt go blind. Mama told me you would.
Rob | March 20, 2009 9:12 PM | Reply

I love it! He should have used his car! Next is those flipping red light cameras--need a ladder and a baseball bat for those!
JRPTOO | March 21, 2009 8:13 PM | Reply

A "Cool Man Luke" wannabe. He is my hero.
Redeye | March 23, 2009 8:58 AM | Reply

Not trying to give ideas, but could you use a pipe cutter on a meter and just cut it off, beating on it to your hearts content at home?

Big Brother Is Watching You(r parking spot)!

2009-03-21T21:09:00.000-07:00

First of all, congratulations to my friend Barbie, who just had twins a couple days ago! A boy and a girl - I can't wait to meet them!

The Trib ran a John Hilkevitch article January 12 detailing what's in store with the new leased-out parking meters. I literally sat here for like 25 minutes scrolling through my history looking for the article (and I never would have found it anyway because I started in February and I kept stopping my search to read old things I'd browsed before) before Eric told me I could do a search in my browser history. Damn it sucks to do dumb stuff. Anyway. Among things this article notes:

Over time, more sophisticated "smart meters" will appear citywide, replacing today's balky pay-station kiosks that require drivers to walk back to their vehicles to place a time-stamped payment stub inside the windshield.

You can of course bid a nostalgic farewell to the decades-old pole-mounted meters with coin slots and expiration flags, as a result of the almost $1.2 billion deal Mayor Richard Daley announced last month to outsource parking management in the city over the next 75 years to Chicago Parking Meters LLC.

In addition, motorists making use of electronic collection through personal ID numbers in their cell phones or other devices will not have to return to their vehicles to add time to meters. But drivers, beware: Technology is already available to close the gap on free parking and increase the odds of catching parking meter "scofflaws." The financial motivation to use it is strong.

Based on the experience elsewhere, the next generation of meters will probably be programmed to roll their clocks back to zero time left when a vehicle leaves a parking space, so the next driver cannot piggyback on a meter that was "over-fed."

Instead of pacing sidewalks checking each meter to meet their ticket-writing quotas, police and meter maids monitoring remote computers will be notified when a vehicle's time in a parking space has expired. Drivers may even get a text message on their mobile phones that they've been issued a fine. It's already happening in about 60 cities in France, where magnetic field technology at smart-meter parking spaces detects the presence of vehicles and alerts ticket-writing aides when meter time is expired.

So who knows if that's true, but if it is it sucks.

Also, today was Rae's shower. It was beautiful and what I loved most about it was that is was chic and stylish like Rae herself, but also warm and family/friend cozy, also like Rae. It definitely made me look even more forward to coming out of the cocoon of winter and spending more time with my friends.

And I would be remiss not to mention that Brendan has gone 2 full days without nursing, so I think we have turned a corner. He is KNOCK ON WOOD sleeping MUCH BETTER (please don't let that jinx it!) Part of me (the large sentimental, overly nostalgic part that probably borders on needing to be medicated) is very sad to end this chapter, but the other part of me (who enjoys multi-tasking, being able to hold a conversation, and desires my children not to be nursing when they have facial hair) is pleased about this. In fact, the last two days have marked the first time in over FOUR YEARS that I have not been pregnant or breastfeeding. Because I stopped nursing Liam when I found out I was pregnant with Brendan. Weird. Not as weird as the fact that my mom was pregnant for 100 months of her life, but still weird.

Ok, off to read The House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III...

ps. Liam quote of the day:
I said to Liam, "Hey, I went to Auntie Rachel's wedding shower today and everybody was talking about you!" And he asked, "Why?" And I said, "Because you're so cute. And funny. And wise." And he said, "Oh, but I'm not wise though." And I said, "You're not?" And he said, "No." And I said, "Well then, what are you?" He thought about it a moment, chewing his bottom lip in earnest concentration, and then said, "Precious." (but he said "pwecious" because he doesn't say the letter r very well.) I said, "Oh, precious, huh?" And he said, "Yes, but not wise."

St. Patrick's Day Lite

2009-03-19T21:12:00.000-07:00

So, I really love St. Patrick's Day. I really love it. But for some reason I seem destined to not actually be able to celebrate it. (With the notable exceptions of one year when me, Eric, and my friend Jonica went out in Wrigleyville and Rachel and Jon joined us, and that was good times. One other time we went to the parade downtown and were thisclose to then Senator-O'Bama and Dick Durbin and Daley and that was pretty cool.) Anyway last year I switched off working so we could go to the parade and then Eric got some emergency call in the middle of the night (which rarely happens)and had to be gone from midnight til 2 in the afternoon, so we didn't do anything. This year I was SURE it was going to be beautiful, which it was, but the week before the parade Eric got a call asking him to teach a class on Saturdays, so again we didn't go. And let me tell you I was not about to bring the kids down there by myself. And I don't know why we didn't go to the southside parade on Sunday but we didn't. So tonight, after a very hectic week that isn't done, we decided to go to Peggy Kinnane's and celebrate the Green and it was great. We had great drinks and food and best of all amazing amazing things, Brendan was totally awesome and didn't try to get out of his high chair even once! He ate a ton of food and so did Liam and they got a big Shamrock cookie too. And they were great on the ride home and being totally funny and great all around. (We saw a freight train, and then later Liam said, "I wonder if we'll see that forklift again?" and I said, "You mean the freight train?" and he said, "Oh yeah - freight train. Fork lift? What was I thinking? That was so silly, saying forklift instead of freight train." I said, "Liam, how did you get so funny? and he said, "I was just born that way. I could barely talk.") The only fallout was that they went to bed VERRRRRY late, but I'm just not going to care about that today. It's St. Patrick's Day Lite, so live a little!

Also, if you want to hear about the preschool experience, you'll have to read my comment to Kathy's comment from the Preschool post yesterday.

Preschool

2009-03-18T21:47:00.000-07:00

On Thursday we will be visiting a Montessori preschool for Liam. We're thinking he'll start this Fall, and whoa, how is he old enough to go to preschool? I HATE this time warping thing. But I think he's totally going to love it and I'm very excited for him. Me, I'm sad for. Anyway it's only 3 days a week for less than 3 hours, so I think I should be ok. The tuition though, wow. It makes Catholic grammar school look a lot less expensive, I'll say that much. 'Cause for less than 9 hours a week we'll be paying the same as fulltime grade school.
In other good news Liam and Brendan are really starting to play together, and it is so awesome to watch. Of course Liam is still there keeping Brando in line, but he's sending him to the naughty corner a lot less, so that's progress. I might have already mentioned this but Brendan sent himself there a couple weeks ago, and he was right to do so. Oh, and this being able to go outside thing is SO AWESOME!

There Are Places I Remember

2009-03-08T22:11:00.000-07:00

Note: depressing post.

Since Liam has been born we have lost a tremendous amount of close friends and relatives. My mom lost her only sister in August 2007, her brother in November 2007 and my Dad lost his only brother in January 2008. It's been very hard just looking at my address book because there are so many people who are in it who aren't here anymore. And all of these people, my aunt and uncles and many other friends and relatives, are some of the most honorable, saintly people I have ever known. In early February my godmother lost her husband to cancer. Now, just a month later, we learned my godmother herself has died. She died on Friday, getting ready to go to the wake of another close family friend. She, like many others we have lost, was only 70, and in seemingly good health. And her poor sons, still mourning the loss of their father, now have to deal with the loss of their mother too. I am so sad to lose all these wonderful people, especially because I want my kids to know them. They are the very type of people I want my kids to aspire to be. And I know they are in a better place, fighting the good fight, and still here with us as well, but it pains me to know that I won't have them physically here, and that my kids won't know or remember them. I was crying for a minute in the kitchen tonight, and Brendan came over and gestured to the counter. After a few seconds Eric figured out he wanted a piece of kleenex. He gave it to Brendan, and Brendan walked over and gave it to me with a big smile. He then proceeded to give me three more pieces. Life does go on.

Here are some pics from our UIUC trip:

Anatomy

2009-03-04T09:09:00.000-08:00

Eric is taking a nap on the couch, and I see Liam over there talking to him. I say, "Liam, shh, Daddy's taking a nap." Liam says "Ok," and then he stays over there but now he's whispering. It doesn't seem to bother Eric so I just leave him be. I peek my head in a couple minutes later and see Liam stroking the top of Eric's head. I ask, "Liam, what are you doing?" It's pretty cute. Then Liam stage whispers to me across the room, "I'm trying to feel his skull."

Today we are going to UIUC for my on-campus day of class tomorrow, which btw I am completely unprepared for. Wouldn't you know it but Brendan is besieged by the teething pains like a crazy child. So just before his morning nap I had him on the couch with me and he wanted to get down and I put him on the floor, he takes one step, trips over my foot and faces plants on the hardwood. Blood is gushing everywhere, madness ensues, and yeah, in 3 hours we leave for a four hour car ride! Wish us luck. :o) (Good news is he still went down for his nap, so that's something.)

Where is my camera?

2009-03-02T17:34:00.001-08:00

Ugh. Right now at dinner Brendan was doing this crazy funny thing where he was trying to get our attention to watch him and then he was closing his eyes and making goofy faces and Liam and me and Eric were all laughing hysterically, and could I find the camera anywhere? No! Ugh (ugh, ugh, ugh a wug.) All of these funny things I can't preserve for posterity, and then when I do have the camera, of course they immediately stop whatever it was they were doing anywy. Kids. They are like leprechauns. Has anyone ever done a study about that?

Brendan calls me, Eric and Liam AND himself Momma. Now that he knows we think this is funny he does it all the time and refuses to call us anything else.

When I asked Liam if next time we go out with my friends would he please talk he said, "Well...I might." "Good," I said. Then he said with a completely straight face, "Or I might not, actually."

Ok, now I have to go do my lit review that I was supposed to have been doing for the last month and I have to present on Thursday when we go to campus. Ugh. I should have called this post ugh, but I'm just no good at paying homage to Maine South Summer Drama. Also Eric and I were watching the Blues Brothers last night and it is SO COOL how they are driving around in Park Ridge (in an MP police car, no less. It all comes full circle, right?)

Crabby Apple, keep me posted on your kitchen and other remodeling projects because we need to:
knock down some walls and redo our kitchen (unless we somehow get an addition soon)
redo our bathroom
refinish our basement
even out and resod our backyard
get a fence
do a lot of painting
so I'm interested in referrals if you know people or companies that do good work and aren't insanely expensive. I just got the name of a painter who is good and inexpensive so I am plotting projects for him (but shhh, don't tell Ziggy.)

Louis CK and Conan

2009-02-27T14:08:00.000-08:00

To the Rescue

2009-02-22T12:28:00.000-08:00

I know, we can't expect miracles, but I do still feel this man is going to help guide our country through this very tough time.

History Is Now

2009-02-20T09:07:00.000-08:00

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each one of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

-- Robert Kennedy

Land of Lincoln (aka read more Orwell)

2009-02-18T14:47:00.000-08:00

I remember years ago my brother Tommy pointed out to me how developers often take a beautiful site, chop it down, dribble concrete over it, add a few saplings, turn it into a shopping mall or a subdivision and then name it after what Once Was There. Caribou Crossing, Deer Path, Lush Meadows, Apple Tree Orchards, Fertile Farmland, etc. In fact way back in the early 20th century when Frank Lloyd Wright was designing houses in Oak Park he coined his style "Prairie,"even though the prairie was far from Oak Park and almost completely gone already. I think George Orwell captured this phenomenon perfectly with Doublespeak and Newspeak. Who could not think of 1984 when our arch enemy seamlessly switched from Iran to Iraq, or when we ended up with The Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security (seriously, someone from the TSA threw away Liam's teething toy on a flight to Arizona, even though I had printed out the page OFF THEIR WEBSITE that specifically said the teething toy I brought was "approved." He couldn't actually come up with any explanation of why he had to throw it away, or why their website said he didn't. Let's not even get me started with them throwing away his mini bottle of Vitamin Water but not his mini bottle of Apple Juice.)

Anyway, I live in the Land of Lincoln. This doesn't refer to the U. S. President who was actually born here (Reagan) but the one who lived and worked here for many years and went on to become one of our greatest presidents. Lincoln had flaws, he definitely did. But what he did for our country was so exceptionally awesome we can try to forgive those flaws and revere him for keeping the country together and abolishing slavery. Those are pretty huge accomplishments. So I think our state motto is a fine one. But for some reason I'd always thought that while Chicago had it's sordid pay to play ways (somehow slightly romantic, in a Godfather-view-of-the-Mafia way, and I did like getting Kennedy out of it if that's indeed how it happened) somehow Illinois was above that. Boy was I wrong. What is WITH this place?!?!

This Roland Burris thing is really the last straw. I distinctly remember watching him say he would offer himself as an unscathed choice for our state, to be a voice for us in the Senate while we sorted out the whole Governor debacle. I distinctly remember him saying he would not seek a second term, and that he was done with politics but he just saw that his state needed him and so he was going to be here if we wanted him. I thought, well that's a stand-up guy, that Roland Burris. What a man, coming out of retirement like that, taking one for the team. As soon as I heard him say, after he'd been appointed, that he was considering running again in 2010 I knew something was up. The news barely even commented on it, even though they KNEW he said the exact opposite a few weeks earlier. One commentator said something like, "well he has to say that to be able to get anything done and be taken seriously," and I wanted to buy that but I couldn't. I think I'm with the Trib and the Post in wanting him to resign, which of course he won't, but I don't know what we'd do then. Have a special election we can't afford? Here's an excerpt from the Washington Post article, "Under Fire, Burris Refuses to Resign Senate Seat" by Peter Slevin, dated February 18, 2009, :
In a sworn affidavit dated Jan. 5, Burris said that before late December, "there was not any contact between myself or any of my representatives with Governor Blagojevich or any of his representatives" about the seat.

On Jan. 7, Reid said Burris seemed "candid and forthright." He noted that Burris would testify the next day to a state House impeachment committee and said the answers would be "very important."

Burris was asked under oath on Jan. 8 by state Rep. Jim Durkin (R) whether he had spoken about the Senate seat with anyone "closely related to the governor, including family members or lobbyists connected with him." Durkin named six individuals.

After conferring with his attorney, Burris said he had spoken with "some friends." Asked again, he named only Lon Monk, a former Blagojevich chief of staff.

That was the end of it until the Chicago Sun-Times revealed a new Burris affidavit on Saturday, signed and dated Feb. 4, that revealed conversations with five Blagojevich advisers, all of whom had been named in Durkin's question.

The affidavit disclosed three talks with Robert Blagojevich. Burris said he told the governor's brother that he could not contribute to a future Blagojevich campaign because it could be seen as an attempt to "curry favor."

At a Sunday news conference, Burris said for the first time that Robert Blagojevich had asked him in October to raise money for the governor. He said he replied that he could not do so "because I was raising money for other candidates, and to call me back after the election."

On Monday, however, Burris told reporters that he had "called some people about trying to see if we could put a fundraiser together . . . They said, 'We aren't giving money to the governor.' " When Robert Blagojevich called in November, Burris said, he told him of his efforts and suggested that they consider going to others.

By the time Blagojevich called a third time, Burris said, he had decided that it would be wrong to raise money or contribute money.

"I mean," Burris told reporters, "that should give some indication of my commitment right there to get out of pay-to-play."

Oh puh-lease (that's my comment.) :o)

Odds and Ends

2009-02-16T08:48:00.001-08:00

A family friend told me when I was pregnant with Brendan that having two kids is not double the work, it's triple (thanks for the timely advice - haha) Anyway the point was that you'll get the coat on one kid, go to get the coat on the other and in the meantime the first kid has taken the coat off and spilled orange juice all over himself. So True!!! Fortunately I have to admit that Liam and Brendan are so sweet and really try so hard to be good, that it pretty much couldn't be any better than it is for me (ok, well Brendan could sleep, but fortunately I know from Liam that sleeping issues do someday get resolved. The things I hear about when kids are jealous of each other or violent toward each other or just mean, that would be hard to deal with.) Anyway, two kids is a lot of work. (9 kids? Wow, I do think EVERY day "how could my mom have done that!?!? Double WoW!)

Anyway, I won't lie to you - multiple kids is hard work. But it really does get easier as they get older and play together more, etc. etc. However, getting sick is waaaaayyyyy hard. Liam picked up a cold last weekend and has a double ear infection and Brendan got the cold a couple days ago. As far as the cuteness factor of two kids with colds, that is pretty high. Somehow when they are your own kids with stuffy/runny noses, little kid sneezes and Ferris Bueller smiles there is nothing cuter in the world. (When it's another kid I sort of feel horrified and revolted :o) ) Kissing their puffy wet cloud faces is blissful, in spite of the germs. Even waking up with them in the middle of the night to comfort them makes you feel good (especially when Eric wakes up with them most of the time :o) .) But when it's a GI bug, that is a level of Hell straight out of Dante's Inferno. I am not kidding. That is the WORST of the WORST that we have experienced yet. That is when you seriously think there is NO WAY I could do this if I had even one more kid. So I am trying to stay sort of positive with this cold (which by the way when we asked the doctor if Liam's 3 colds this season PLUS the GI bug was bad, she said ACTUALLY 7 to 8 colds a season is the norm for little kids. Ahhh!!!)

Anyway it's going to be a loooong week. I work tomorrow night, I work Thursday day I have to lead my class on Thursday night, which is a ton of work but I am the first to do it so I am looking forward to having it out of the way so I can concentrate on my lit review, I work Saturday and Sunday, I lead the book club Monday night (and I still have a couple hundred pages to go on the book, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It's a great book and I wish I had more time to digest it) and then I work Tuesday night and then I'm back to my regular schedule for a while. Of course I think that's when Eric goes on call, but... I just reeeeeaaaaallllly hope I don't get this cold. That would be the kicker.

Here's Liam making a face like an ewe from his magazine:

Am I Really Getting Really Old?

2009-02-14T18:12:00.000-08:00

I was reading this article in the Trib about Stevenson's high school paper and I felt this wave of "wow this is absurd!" wash over me. I had wanted to write a post earlier about newspapers and the current state of. Hopefully I'll still write that post, but this is something I just can't wrap my brain around.

What I think is absurd is that there are parents going to the board meeting complaining that the Stevenson High School paper is now going to be reviewed before being published. I am all for a free press. In fact I think it's an absolutely integral part of our country, which is why I am extremely worried about all these presses shutting down and my local paper ceasing to exist. But I do not see why a High School paper WOULDN'T have prior review. This "Hooking Up" issue, at least to me, is NOT akin to students in the '60s wearing armbands to protest the Vietnam War. This is just so strange and I'm trying to see A.) how Maine South would have dealt with this (because I just cannot picture a hooking up issue even getting published) and more importantly B.) why parents would be outraged that now this paper is going to have prior review and C.) what the previous process for publishing a paper at this school was.

I haven't read the actual paper and I'm going to check around online and see if I can find it. Maybe there's more to it than it seems from the Trib article. I think a lot about this new generation of kids. That's partly because I am old and more so because I am a parent and I wonder what kind of world my kids will grow up in. I think constantly about how I can raise my kids not to succumb to that angst-filled "my life is so empty" crap that comes from growing up with so much and distancing your comfortable self from the plight of the literally millions and millions and billions of people in this world who really need help. People in our country and beyond. Because the enormity of what needs to be done is so expansive, that if there are ways we can help then that is what we should be doing. To me it seems that if you are spending all your time entirely wrapped up in your own life, you are doing a disservice to yourself and your community and our world. And what does this have to do with this h.s. paper issue? Well part of it's a non sequitur soapbox. But it slightly ties in to the idea that I think the students writing the paper are still young and still need guidance and still need boundaries and therefore the adults at that school and all schools should absolutely be reviewing the paper. Kids need guidance because they don't always know what else is out there, beyond their own life. (Hence the penchant to get all wrapped up in it - yeah it's a stretch.)

From the Trib article it seems there were basic violations of journalistic ethics in this issue of the paper. Violations which should have and could have been caught prior to publication. Should have and could have been caught by ADULTS. These mistakes could be a great tool for teaching. A school paper should be an introduction for curious students to get a feel for why papers are written and how papers are written, etc. etc. This should be a place where students can see the great power of the press, the great need for having a press. But students, especially in high school, are in school to learn. And they need to learn the fundamentals first before they can become e.e. cummings. This bizarre idea that, for instance, English papers should be evaluated on "content only" and not on grammar and spelling is wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. The idea that math concepts like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division can be "close enough" is wrong. It's the wrong way to teach and the wrong message to send, in my humble opinion. Also, from working at Cameron and trying to help 8th graders who cannot add, subtract or multiply to do Algebra, I have to say this is setting kids up to really hate school.
And in all of this I am not even addressing the content of the paper. I haven't read the paper and wouldn't comment on it until I read it, but I just hope that there was more than shock as the intention behind this issue, because I think it's hard enough for kids to navigate the teenage years without the endless focus on sex being hammered into them at every angle, including the school paper. The remark from the school spokesman about one part being a "how-to guide for sexual predators" is definitely disturbing. If it was an insight into what's going on at their school, ok fine. But there's a fine line that needs to be walked with this topic. Again I haven't read the issue so I don't know what was going on there. I just hope we can elevate society and get younger people excited about the power to serve others and participate in the world, rather than get so absorbed in their own day-to-day lives. I think an important step in that process is for educators to realize they play an important role in the formation of their students, and their job is to teach. Where errors exist, teachers need to address them. High school is a place of preparation. It does no one any good to mollycoddle kids so that when they get out into the real world they think their going to be a rock star because they're so kickin' at Guitar Hero.
Does that make any sense? I'm playing that lack of sleep card if not. Please don't grade this paper and send it back to me all marked up where you found the run-ons and lapses in logic. :o)

why...

2009-02-11T21:08:00.000-08:00

Are babies born with fingernails and without teeth? Why do some parents not really know if their kids are or are not teething, whereas my children apparently have chef's knives stabbed into their gums on and off for 7 or more months? Why did Liam randomly get a cold yesterday afternoon, when one second before he was fine with his clear cute little kid voice and then all of a sudden he has a cute stuffy kid voice? Why is my house always at the pit of disorder the night before my mother in law is going to come over? (No, don't answer that one. It's probably always this way but I want to keep humoring myself.) Why am I not sleeping now when I have to wake up early tomorrow?

It's 9:48 on a Saturday

2009-02-07T19:48:00.000-08:00

And I feel like it's 1:30 in the morning. Well technically it was 9:48 but that was yesterday and I did go to bed soon after and so now today is Sunday.
I don't understand what is really happening with the stimulus and what the best course will be for the country. It seems like both sides are making good points and I just had hoped it was going to be a big unanimous bipartisan effort to get us back on stable ground. The doom and glooming of this whole process is really unsettling.
In other news, a search was on last night for Liam's monster trucks. And I quote,"I just recognized that I had losted my monster trucks for a bunch of days and it was like "Hmm...where could my monster trucks have been?" Fortunately said trucks were eventually located in the car. Phew.
We are thinking about getting a dog. Maybe a boxer. I'm sure it'll add a cleanly, organized calm and financial surplus to our lives, the likes of which can hardly imagine. One dog we liked that we found on a boxer rescue site said she needs a fenced backyard. We had been thinking about getting a fence, but it wasn't high up on the list. In fact Eric wasn't sure he even wanted one. Hopefully the Senate and House, in their infinite wisdom, are allotting $200,000 to our home improvement fund. I'll have to remember to write Barack about that. I love that he hasn't forgetten about me and is still writing. :o)
Brendan is still waking up a million times a night, but Eric is getting him back to sleep. And nursing is down to just 2 - 3 times a day which is good. Of course I was at a shower yesterday and heard from one woman who has three kids, all of which slept through the night from 2 weeks on, and one woman who has a 6 month old who sleeps 12 hours a night and takes four 1 hour naps. Both said they gave cereal early, whereas I gave breastmilk only for the first 6 months. And look where that's gotten us. :o) To be fair Liam slept through at 4 months, but I wouldn't say he was a great consistent sleeper until he was 2. But by that time we had Brendan, so now we see the reason for the very tired Donna we know today.

Backfiring?

2009-02-05T20:25:00.000-08:00

I really hope it's not the case, but after a number of days of huge progress eating solid food,limiting nursing and going down for naps and bedtime really good without me or nursing, Brendan has started to cry and call out for me when he's about to go to bed. Two steps forward, one back. Argh. On the plus side he is making huge mental steps and I cannot even believe how much he knows and how hard he's trying to talk and how good he is at communicating. It's very exciting to watch.
Also I wanted to blog about some of Liam's funny malapropisms. There is one he just said yesterday that I cannot for the life of me remember, but others include:
going shopping at Old Maybe, taking the Elevator Train to Wrigley Field, and singing that famous Weezer song ""Family Hills" that's where I want to be."
Tonight we were reading an issue of his magazine Your Big Backyard and it talked about how flamingos are pink because they eat food like shrimp and water plants that have a red pigment. The corresponding picture was one of those "Can You Find Five Things Wrong with This Picture" and one of the flamingos had some blue feathers. Liam said "and that flamingo must be very special because it ate something with blue pigment and that turned some of its feathers blue."
Also the funniest thing in the world is watching Liam attempt to make the faces of the characters in his books and magazines. The first time he started doing it I was worried cause he was making this strange face and not responding when I asked him what he was doing. Then finally he told me how he was making his face look like Arthur's. He also has a Sesame Street CD and he did a similar thing where he started singing weird and then he told us he was singing like Big Bird, who has a "strange voice." He was pretty good too. A young Billy Crystal perhaps? :o)