Not a Photoblog

I promise this is not gonna turn into a photoblog... it's just that I am sick and overworked and my life looks better this way....

...everyone sharing a good joke.

Cooking experiments while I am downstairs re-booting the laundry.

LaLa going night-ops commando on Dadguys watch.

mmmm.... I don't have no stinkin' WEEDS! (heh)

What sleep deprivation? Let's Karoke!

Random Happy Crappy

The other day I was changing Pearl's di-pee-doo-bah when I happened to look up and witness LaLa hawk a two-year-old loogie into half a pastel yellow egg. She had her back to me, but by the time she had finished letting 'er drip I was leaning way over to the side watching very closely as she then carefully snapped the other half of the plastic easter egg onto the spit-in portion. This is a new skill... the putting together of easter eggs, not so much the spitting.

I was dumbfounded. I am dumbfounded often lately but this one really I could not wrap my head around. She turned and saw me practically laying on my side looking at her no doubt with a very amazed look on my face.

"Hee-ah Mama!" She says offering me her little surprise package.

"No thank you LaLa," a replied, "let's go throw this away in the garbage, honey. We don't spit in easter eggs, that's yukky- bleah!"

"Oh-tay Mama, I thawwy. Bleah!"

1)Birdie and I went for a walk yesterday. We took these pictures and I am inspired for next year... I said this last year but this time I will NOT be vastly pregnant in the fall (nor any sort of pregnant for that matter) and I really will plant the bulbs that will make this kinda springity-time lovelyness a reality!

2) I am going with my friend to see INXS in June... OH YEAH!

3)Tonite the wood shows up for the job and tomorrow let the framing begin! We are paying our neighbor to frame our basement and he assures us that he will be done by the end of the week. Dadguy is blogging the job.

Highlights

...of a flower hunt in our yard with Birdie.

Tra-LA

The past couple of days have really knocked me off my schedule. It's Spring Break in these here parts and I have two vital family members who work for the school district just north of us. They have each had themselves a round of watching my sweet Chaos, and in the past few days I have gone on a date with Dadguy, and taken myself shopping. Also I ate some Panda Express in a park and did not have to push anyone in a swing or share my eggroll. I purchased a new pair of sandals, a shirt and the fist skirt I have bought for myself since I was pregnant with Birdie... and that skirt was a maternity skirt. It's not like I have purchased any dresses either, but I'm not digging for sympathy. I have nice and reasonably fashionable clothing, which since I am the mama of three small and active cusses tells you that I fairly often and have very recently purchased clothes for myself. Anything that has been around for more than six months? is stained to one degree or another.

and AHEM. This is not even getting into the issue that my pre-Birdie clothing was three sizes ago. Three babies three sizes- I ain't liking the trend here. Wait, this is NOT where I want to go today! The first inkling I had that there were some mama's out there as fruity as myself was via a writer who keeps a weekly journal at ParentCenter.com. Her name is Catherine Newman, and the following is how I feel... (she calls her daughter Birdy, and for the purposes of this blog I call my oldest Birdie) Enjoy

"If we're not buried in snow, we can get to our pediatrician's office by walking through the woods (since they don't let you move into a basement apartment over at the ER, this seemed like the next best housing situation for a person like me), and so we set out. Spring was everywhere — in the mud and the sunshine, in the crocuses and the joyful tree song — and that little Birdy reached up and put her hand into mine. Just that: her warm little fingers in my fingers, her happy little self skipping along beside me. It's as much as I've ever hoped for in this life — that feeling of belonging together, or even (and this is a confession, because I know it's not quite right) that feeling of these kids belonging to me.

It must be what it's like to get an engagement ring from the love of your life: You flex your hand over and over to admire the sparkle. Here it is in the sunshine, here in the moonlight, here I am, wearing it while I pay for milk and eggs, the luckiest woman alive. Engagement. I am truly, deeply engaged."

more of her stuff.

Six Weird Things About Me: A Meme.

Nancy tagged me late last week and I have been thinking hard about this one. The biggest drawback to doing this meme on the Internets is that ... it's the Internets and y'all are some FREAKS! I used to think I was pretty weird but my quirks do pale in the face of what passes for normal around here and I am coming up with nothing particularly odd about my selfy-self. I had to go and quiz the Dadguy, and the strangest thing he could come up with was a combo me/him thing. I got's no OCDisms, and the bizare nature of the things I encounter as a mama makes my own habits seem tame and backseat. Being a mama also is a handicap in that the job tends to sand off all the knobby and gnarly bits that stick out on a person's personality, and if you breastfeed it'll even do it to yer boobs. Now if I could just get that sanding action on my hips it'd be OK... but "motherhood's" answer to that particular protuberance is just to swell everything else out so it uniformly matches. But I'm a blogger dadgummit, therefore I shall persevere in the face of dead calm and the mundane creature that I have become.

Verbal Curiosities- I have just recently hooked back up with a looongtime friend a la the power of the Google. YO J-Rat! She is the Dread Pirate Rackham for those of y'all that read my comments section, and one of the things she asked me was did I play language games with my girls.
"Huh?," sez I.
This is an aspect of myself that I take for granted, the hashing of language in game format. I make up my own swears or co-opt stuff to swear with. Great words like "fibblestacks," and "happity-crappity." The stuff that goes into my Blog? it's all stuff that is likely to come out of my mouth. I don't just save the twelve dollar words for writing with, by cracky I use those suckers in conversation alongside crudities and nonsense. It's a wonder that my girls are able to speak at all considering the gibberish they have been raised on.
example from this afternoon...
"You guys want some chicken nuggets for lunch? Nick and chuggets? Nikkin chuggahs"
"Nikkin Chugget?! Yay I'll have some chicken nuggets," replies Birdie.
"Chickity, chickity nug-nug-nugities!" I sing back to her. Then I enter the Beasty Boy zone with a "Chicky, chicky check a microphone check!" and end with the "CHK chk-ah-chk-AHHhhhh," from Yello's song "Oh Yeah."
which segues nicely into my next oddity...

I think I'm onstage... or something.- I sing stupid ditties and then break out into an accent "Au Francais." I used to try to keep it at home and under wraps, but as a mom I've gotten lax. I forget where I am or start singing my message onto someones answering machine. If I had a little more pride it might bug me more. Every grey hair, mud encrusted tub-ring and poopy diaper will come back upon the Chaos Girls in spades when they hit puberty and the "parental-shame" factor kicks in, they will die thousands of times over from the humiliation of having such a mom... Mwahhahahahahaha!

Something weird about me is that as a child and even still, after all the damage I have perpetrated on my olfactories in the form of addictive stimulants both legal and illegal, I have a scary-good sense of smell. My sniffer is just short of wondrous and is only just shy of the sensitivity of Dadguy's nose. Don't bother hiding to eat chocolate in our house, we know what you are doing and what brand you are eating. This sniffer of mine makes the next quirk even more inexplicable because....

I think there are few things funnier than farts and fart jokes. I will never be mistaken for a classy, elegant lady because, to my great shame I will laugh if someone passes gas around me. My brothers and sisters share this same weakness for flatulence humor, and especially in the case of my three sisters and myself, will laugh in the same key and cadence, which will invariably cause us to laugh harder and harder till one of us passes out or the top of our heads pop off. Family reunions are great because another thing we all share is the genetic pre-disposition for food intolerance's which cause... you guessed it- gas. Toot-toot... POP!

Food intolerance's- I am lactose intolerant and am allergic to tree nuts. This isn't so odd till you know that I married a man who is unable to eat meat. As an infant and then toddler he would not eat meat, with the curious and notable exceptions of very crispy bacon and very thin chicken broth. Later even the bacon dropped from his diet. This is not to say that he is a vegetarian as there are precious few vegetables that he can eat, and even fewer that he will eat. His diet is heavy on the dairy and cereal. Dinner time is fun. It's all gonna be over if I should happen to develop, as many of my relatives have, Celiac-sprue and can no longer eat wheat or gluten in any form. Pray for us.

Last but not least, I think that I am perfectly normal. This seems weird to me because I grew up feeling so very out of place and strange. I used to think myself ever so unique and spent alot of time emphasizing my eccentricities. HA! Who has time for all that! But maybe when my kids grow up and move out I'll join some gaggle of old biddies who wear red hats, and even then chances are that I will not be the ONLY gal to show up to meetings on a motorcycle. Maybe though... this blogging experiment has given me a false sense of normalcy, because have I told ya? Y'all are some freaky peeps!

*Edited to add: and speaking of the freaks out there I have a special request for the following to do this "Weirdo" meme... c'mon! Let yo freak-flag fly! If you've already done it...erm...well, don't be offended that I forgot you already did and just shoot this loser a link to where you have it posted from ohhh, say two weeks ago? Ha ha, and we'll both laugh when I re-read it and realize that I actually commented on your rendition of "6 Weird Things."
Mama D
Toronto Teacher
Soggy Cheerios
Fantastagirl
Trippin'
and Dread Pirate Rackham

Flip-Up!

I would like to direct every one's attention to the new and KILLER addition to my sidebar.... this week instead of my usual Friday Freakout (not a blogging thing... just a, y'know, me thing) I have been awarded the much coveted Friday Flip-up Award...wOOt!!!

Fine... so I had a Freakout yesterday anyways, but only because I knew nothing of my elevated blogging status till Saturday evening when I checked my email.

This is now the Award Winning Blog of Chaos In the House of the Mama... insert the dancing of the Funky Chicken here.

Please be aware that I am doing OK... I have had a few folks in RL express a little concern in regards to my equilibrium based on a certain amount of , erm, tension they had sensed via the ol' bloggity-doo-dah here. Yeah... Dadguy was putting in a crapload of overtime. For example on our Anniversary he put in around twenty hours of uphill-both-way-in-the-snow database debasement a la new customer. Pearl was being a stinker, LaLa is two and Birdie likes to wander the neighborhood in her panties. I have had two offers to watch the Chaos Girls next week so I can get some downtime, I think it was the reference to duct tape that has 'em concerned. I'm not going mama-postal, but if you think I ain't taking my sis and my MIL up on these offers you are SMOKING CRACK! As it is, I gotta hit it because it rained last night and the girls have been outside and can you say pigdog?

I know I can, WOOFOINK!

And this would be the plush pony that the Easter Bunny gave Birdie this morning. Almost made it twelve hours... almost.

"I said no pictures! Freakin' paparazzi!

100th Post, or My Internet Glamour Shot

The thing about this blog... no matter what kind of horrendous day I've had, no matter how filthy my kitchen floor, this place is always lovely and pristine. Sure blogger may get fritzy and have the occasional Smenita, but I never have to clean up after anyone outside of the occasional spammer in the old comments section. Even that is perversely satisfying because once you get rid of it?... that particular hunk of spamola? It stays gone! No one's diggin' that bad boy out of the trash or the rag-bag, aghast look upon their angelic faces...

"Mamaaaaaaa! Dat myyy! No fwoah away inna dahh-badge!"

I love it! Once I post it it stays posted. I don't have to re-post the same blasted hunk of literary crap eight times a day to keep it comfortable and /or smelling nice.

My failures even read pretty OK in bold black print on my cheerful sunflower template of joy... sometimes I like to go back and re-read the things that I have written, because with just a joke and a tweak I have downplayed the tears and made my role as a mother seem almost comprehensible. By taking my whole-being frustrations and putting them into words have forced them into sentence structure that I CONTROL.

and I gots me some spell check... don't always use it, but I've got it when I need it.

But a blog is like a photo. While it's great that you can make your life seem interesting and pretty with some good lighting and a little bit of Photoshop, without the panoramic 360 and the smell-o-vision of reality you will never really know what it is to awaken with LaLa snugged up close to you, as you breathe in her wispy, honey colored hair. Never have a true sense of her heart thump-thumping away in her Popsicle stick ribcage... a small but valiant heart which owns me through and through.

My little Birdie. I haven't even attempted to address her odd little speech quirk, or is it an impediment?... that sometime nasal thwump and sometimes almost Yiddish throat clearing sound that she makes when pronouncing her "S's." I know that some day this quirk will be gone, and though I know it cannot stay, I will mourn it's going. Sometimes I look at her and feel like I am dying... I still go in a night to watch her sleep.

and the baby, what with the intoxicating baby smell, and the not sleeping when I want her to, and the vile game of POP that she plays when nursing... yeah Pearl, I mean YOU.

The other day Dadguy said to me, "you might want to watch it. Sometimes on your blog when you refer to the girls as the "Chaos Girls" it's like you aren't joking anymore."

I said, "how very astute of you."

I can feel all righteous and penitent by mentioning that I have been a bit of a crusty bee-hatch, and most all of y'all will obligingly assume the best... um, except for Dadguy who knows for a fact what flavor of bee-hatch I have been! But you never can tell with bee's, and it's hard to think the worst of someone you either are related to (hey there ya CRAZIES!) or that you only know cyberly. Only now Amber has met me in RL and I can only hope I didn't come off as too much of a drip. Which by the way Amber? I promise, next time I will be waaay more interesting or clean the house or something! Ha ha, or something. Can I offer you some Cheerios?

Toddler Jihad and a Pink Shirt

Out-witted, out-gunned, out-numbered and out of my freakin' mind. But at least I'm in the pink!

I am done to death by the incessant demands that have been made, and I am through with trying to put a happy face on it. It is entirely beyond my ken how any woman does it and I am sick to death of feeling like a failure. Being a SAHM is the everything job, and I can't be great at everything... can't even seem be passingly competent at huge swaths of everything. I keep trying though, and here's the shocker...

I.
Keep.
Failing.
Miserably.

Ha ha! No really, I suck at it! The everything part anyways! Don't listen to those people over there who are saying..."but of course you can't be great at everything! Nobody expects you to!" because those folks are the same people who will give you that "disappointed look" when you screw the pooch on their little patch of everything.

Ya wanna know what really bites? The things I'm pretty ok at are the intangeables and the unmeasurable. Like the unmeasurable talent of refraining from allowing my head to pop off of my neck and go spinning around like a fizzing-whizzer when LaLa turns around to wipe her green-slug mustache of snot off on my bath towel hanging cozily on it's towel bar, instead of using the tissue IN HER HAND like I had just asked. The intangible talent of... well I have to have at least two mama talents... so it must just be sooo crapping intangible that I don't even have any idea what the hooty-patootie it is.

Last night Dadguy was trying to console my weeping self by coming up with things that I AM doing right. Like how happy the girls are. Only, does that mean that any clinically depressed kids out there just have mama's who are suck-butt at raising them to be happy? I think that there is every possibility that the Chaos Girls just came pre-mixed to be happy while engaging in domestic-terrorist activity.

Hmmm... here's a talent- I woulda made a pretty good Marine. You know, with all that sleep deprivation boot-camp crap. Constant barrage by the enemy under hostile conditions, lousy food that you only get three seconds to eat, and that with someone screaming at you from over your shoulder. Double-timing it to storytime with a huge pack on yer back, carseat with twenty plus pounds of all-American baby in the crook of an elbow and two kids singing off-color military marching songs, their faces painted with Crayola washable watercolors in camo patterns.

I don't know but I been told,
Mama ain't a slave cuz she cain't be sold!
Thound off! One, two!
Thound off ! Four, sebbin!

Hmmm let's take this just a step further... I think I'd make a wonderful great big old Marine boot camp Sargent screaming orders and instructions to her hapless little grunts.... only they don't obey because who can respect a drill Sargent that looks like a fat and sloppy housewife who's roots are showing?

So today I bring out the big guns. When all militaristic metaphor leaves me as FUBAR as I started, I put it on, my super-hero-chick-shirt. The mystic pink t-shirt of strength and mesmerising. The one that emphasises my big guns!

I put the shirt on and Pearl instantly stops her anguished wails of "You never let me do anything funnn!" and I swear that her eyes get those funny spiraling swirls in them as her iris's contact and swell.

"Piiiiiiiiink... there are black squiggles on the piiink." she says... only she's actually five months old so it sounds more like "bbbbththhbthhhbehhh."

Two year olds fall limply into blissful naptime slumber at the first sight of the shirt, and four year old girls?... well their cute little girlfriends call up and ask them to play over. I wear the shirt and the dishes wash they ownselves, baby! You can call it pimping, whatever... I highly recommend the shirt.

Alive, Only Just

When every brain cell has surrendered to the inevitable slosh of a "working weekend", and that is a slosh without any chemical assist THANK YOU VERY MUCH! In cases such as these, I just go ahead and post pictures of some cute kids.
and here they are... the cute kids. That's all you get. Apparently that's about all I'm getting too. Except for maybe I'm getting a little loonier (yes, I AM counting Dadguy as one of the cute kids).
Back when I was pregs with my first, I had been complaining about how exausted I was and how I couldn't seem to accomplish anything. My friend to whom I was whining said that whenever she got discouraged or worse even, when her husband would come home and look around the house then look at her and ask...

"...sooooo, what did you do today?"

She would answer, "oh, I made a human nose and continued work on the miracle of a human respiratory system. What did YOU do today? Honey."


Well, I ain't pregs right now (thank the heavens ABOVE!), but I know my answer to such a question today would be...

"I've refrained from killing them honey. They may yell a little when you remove the duct tape, but I did let them live, I did let them live."

Six Years

Happy Anniversary Dadguy! Teller of "dad jokes," scratcher of my back, bringer of the bacon and player of Candyland extraordinaire. Six awesome years together, we really ought to do something to commemorate.

Sigh...

y'know, we have a great marriage, but we are pretty boring. I guess there's not a whole lot of rock 'n rollin' a pair of marrieds can do on a tight budget with two kids and an infant... and his work isn't being cooperative. I guess we'll celebrate next week.

Anyone out there have any killer idea's for anniversary celebrating? Otherwise we are probably gonna go to the Brick Oven, have dinner and go home, hopefully sans kids but even that is not a given.

Sigh... it's raining again.

Viral Fun

I have a case of the The Indie Virus as started by Chris Pearson of Pearsonified. That Crazy MamaD, she gave it to me... durn her hide anyway!

The experiment, henceforth referred to as The Indie Virus has two goals:

• To bring exposure to lesser known blogs (especially those outside of Technorati's top 100)
• To explore the metrics behind a viral linking campaign launched by the "little guys" (less popular blogs).

Well, fiddle dee dee! I ain't little and I ain't a guy but I'm pretty sure that my blog is a "little guy" so it works for me! In the spirit of the experiment I shall infect every "guy" blogger that I link to... little or not!

Dadguy... Ba-dah-BING! Hey, it's not a meme- it's an experiment! The Indie Virus
Nobody You Know... Whuh-POW! The Indie Virus
Saving Sanity...Sha-ZAM! The Indie Virus

Yo "J"

The following is for my homegirl "J" y'all know who you are.

I have a friend who is less than enchanted with her pregnancy experience... it's her first glow-in-the-dark, technicolor experience with the whole "Motherhood" thing, and for some crazy reason she is not thrilled with the puking and edema. Not ebullient with the roundness of her self, and people around her are giving her crap for her "bad attitude." I remember my first pregnancy. The only things that it had going for it is that I had wanted it real bad and it was novel. The following two pregnancies? Not so novel. The fact that we plan on having one more? Purely inexplicable.

I love my kids, but what freak of nature out there really enjoys pregnancy? Fine. Yeah, I know there are a few, but let's get this straight for the purposes of my rant y'all are freaks.

I just say this because this is the jumping off point. If people are giving her crap for her less than enthusiastic gestating, an activity that I equate with a moderate to severe car accident, they will probably be giving her blank looks when she announces that she is running away when the kid turns two and demonizes. Well, I say BAH! and have a nice day.

Oh, and check out what this esteemed blogger has to say re:Mommydom.

Slovenly

I am way behind on my housekeeping and upkeep of EVERYTHING. I have been very lackadaisical in my linky-dinky-doo's. Not like there are a bunch of new blogs that I read because I can barely keep up there as well.

There are a few choice bloggity-deedle-dees that I have been frequenting and I want to give them their props...
for quiet contemplation on my relationship with Deity...Animal Crackers and Cocoa.
for a beautiful spot and a great read?.. The Bees Knees.
for a short walk down Mama memerory lane is the Toronto Teacher Mom Blog.
an awesome friend a la Internets and all around superhero... Fantastagirl.
a Sistah Mama and RM, and she is danged funny to boot... Tripping Over Cobblestone.