Yup, that's right!...

...I'm never posting again! Mwah ha ha ha ha!

Yeah, I know... I suck. What can I say, I have this ikky chest cold thingy that might be allergies or it might not... whatta pain. Plus I've taken a few emotional roundhouses lately

Those wee posts are still be-bopping around the cranium, only now I have switched them to oatmeal and pear juice in an attempt to loosen them up a little. As a matter of fact, I have a favor to ask all y'all... see, I've never really had a constipated baby. This Pearl? I have had to resort to glycerin suppositories several times, but I'd rather get thing going and keep them regular by dietary means. I had a memory of a girlfriend who fed her 6 mo his rice cereal made with straight apple juice. Tried it, not drastic enough. The doc recommended the pear juice and oatmeal, and maybe things are a liiiiittle easier on the girl. She still cries though.

I am concerned about going overboard and cleaning her clock with too much, but do y'all have any tips about any non-draino methods of helping out the child's plumbing? Here are the parameters of your mission should you chose to "help a mutha out."

7 months old
no teeth
will eat darn near anything I can smoosh up

GO!

Diggin' Me Some Nobody...

It's Here!
A week or so back I won! I won this contest that Nobody You Know was running and I won some "valuable and useless prizes." When they arrived in my mailbox I laughed a good clean gut laugh, I laughed so hard that the girls started laughing too. When I stopped laughing they begged me to start laughing again so they could laugh some more. I obliged them and we got our yuks in for the next week or so.



Nobody is KING of the inside joke... and to protect Mrs. Nobody's secret identity, I will only mention that y'all screwed up in regards to the uselessness of the prizes. The three packages of stickers will end up being highly useful as opposed to the advertised valuable useless. LaLa starts the potty training soon and the stickers are gonna be her incentive.

The other inside joke you will get if you read Dadguy's blog. Nobody does, and he sent me a pinball. My very own pinball, and this still makes me grin. Makes Dadguy a little green, and truth be told I will likely lose the ball to Dadguy's stash of geek-toys at work. I have seen the damage that the Chaos girls can do to a plasma screen and a plastic Happy Meal toy. I cringe to think of a solid steel jaw breaker zinging around this house.

Happy Weekend all y'all!


*edited to add... Nobody has informed me that he is the choser and purchaser of the suh-WEET girly stickers not his wife. He has a three year old daughter, and claims it was a cinch. Heh, for some reason I had assumed that a man had to have at least three girls before he was a sticker guru. Goes to show....

Cutee Patootee's

Birdie's pre school program, she's singing "I'm a VIP in my Family."

Face of an angel... heart of a Chaos Girl.

Chow-hound and all around Messy-Bessy, she is Chaos in training.

More Chaos in the Kitchen... the blender has both brown and white sugar plus animal crackers in it. Mmmmm. Yum.
Great drawing... next time use paper. I'm not sure where the googley eyes came from.

Sisters Mine

Little baby posts have been chasing around in my brains lately...funny little pureed carrot smeared ideas that have wee little fingers shoved up their noses. Not great ideas, but at least ideas.

I have this past weekend had a strange thing happen several times. More like this whole weekend has been spent on a low-dose mushroom trip and it sounds like I'm describing a cheap early 90's Sci-Fi movie montage whenever I try to put words on it. The kind of drippy "Special FX" thingy that involves spiraling backgrounds, rattling of the camera, and trippy "Woooowoo" music. You may think brain tumor... I think it is a thinning of the veil between this world and my memories of the pre-existence.

It may help you to know that I do not believe that my children sprang to being in my womb... that a spirit was created to fill each little body that is part Dadguy and part Mama. Nope, I believe that the spirits of the Chaos Girls have been for a very loooooong time. They are the Children Of God and I am their sister, and here in mortality I am their mother, nurturer, caretaker, teacher and upon occasion... zoo keeper, and official hoser-downer. I believe that we knew each other very well in the pre-mortal life... I think we were friends, the sort of friends that love each other very much but also love to play naughty little pranks on each other and then laugh about it hysterically. This explains why they know how to get my goat to the nth degree. But I digress...

I look at Birdie and what a busy yet contained unit she is... sometimes I look at her and she looks back with a calm and measuring gaze that is still unnerving in a four year old. It was down right creepy in a four MONTH old. She doesn't give away much when she is hurting, you only know when she breaks, but the whole world knows it when she is happy or excited. She is SO FREAKING SMART. I don't mean smart in a prodigy or savant sort of a way... although she can count to a hundred and has a good head for math. I mean she can carry a tune and REMEMBER a tune, it doesn't take her long to catch it and keep it. She has loved music since... well, before the day she was born.

When Birdie was born she had some fluid in her lungs... enough to put her in mild distress. She was doing this odd grunting noise and couldn't seem to fully catch her breath. Since she was doing mostly ok otherwise the nurses let me hold her for a few minutes before they whisked her away to the NICU. I think I was crying. I sang a little bit of The Wheels On The Bus and she stopped. She didn't stop breathing, she stopped grunting and I swear she listened. This observation has been born out over and over again as she has responded to song, my voice singing. She may be a Daddy's girl, but it has always been my song. There were times in her stormy and distressing infancy when my singing was the only comfort I could give to her. I can still turn her from anger or sorrow with a song.

I am absurdly proud and excited for her Preschool Program that is the wrap-up for the school year tomorrow morning. When I have looked at her this past weekend I have seen her baby-ness overlapping with her impending schoolgirl-ness... and then I swear to you I can see her as a woman. She is a heart-stoppingly beautiful woman... she is as difficult to read then as she is now, and just as brilliant.

LaLa and her warrior's heart, her fierceness and sweetness- she does NOT love it when I sing, and she never has. One of the very first words she learned was "NO!" and that was in conjunction with me singing. She has now graduated to "NO, MAMA YOU NOT THEENEEN!" From the very start I would try to sing her a lullaby and her screaming would somehow, defying all known physics, go up three decibels. She liked her swing... alot. She also liked car rides and her carseat... alot. For a while that's how I would get some rest at night. I would strap her little body in her carseat and hop on the freeway and drive the five minutes to the next town, turn around and come home... that would often earn me the following four hours of rest. She has always been very wary of Birdie and would scream loudly all four times that Birdie asked to hold her. Luckily Birdie was much like the Dadguy, and infants didn't even hit her radar until they were mobile.

LaLa has always loved hugging and kissing, cuddling and the like. Much of what Birdie has in her repertoire of lovin' is from watching and doing what LaLa did. LaLa was and is a mama's-girl, although as soon as she realized that Dadguy was the dispenser of otter pops and M & M's she has found much more use for him. She eats... maaaaaaan that little girl can eat. She eats weird things though... salsa on her eggs, sauerkraut and pickles. She prefers adult toothpaste to the bubblegum flavored stuff, and she has all the way back to her pre-walking days when she would call it "by-shee" for "spicy."

She is a passionate warrior, a fighter for truth. She will be heard. The first day of her life, I was alone with her in my hospital room and she looked me in the eye and began to talk. What she had was a message and I pray that someday when she has even more words than now that she will somehow remember the things she tried so desperately to tell me from day one.

...and my Pearl... my sweet girl. Content to be and bink, she is a drink of cold milk- healthy and sweet. Last night she took my face in her two chubby hands and smiled on me with such kindness and understanding. Ahhh, my heart, my heart! Face to face with such a friend as this, then she gurgled and started sucking on my chin.

Pee Before Linking

It is official now, in an even more official way than before... when it was merely, erm... unofficial. I have no couth and no defense for my lack... and no defense against laughing till I weep at posts like this.

WAIT! Very important! Get up and go pee before you read it.

For Gingerstory and Grammy

Please note the Bracelet of Power on LaLa's wrist, be very afraid.

The following is not braggage, it is a yard update with Photo for my SIL who gardens vicariously.

I love my yard... we obsessed and saved and planned and then worked (Dadguy did at least) our cans off to make it happen. Today we took a sniffing tour of the front yard with one of Birdie's best friends and took big long whiffs of the following...

• Lemon Balm
• Lemon Thyme
• Apple Mint
• Lavender
• Lime mint
• Perennial Sage

and those are just the overt smell-pretties.

The final product of Birdie's snip-snip-ary of her own hairdoo.

A-B-C, easy as 1-2-3

We are gonna play a little game. I received the letter D from Nobody You Know, and as you can read I have chosen ten words that begin with that letter followed by a brief explanation about why I chose it or something... erm... explanatory about the word. If you too, want to play? just say so in the comments and I'll give you a letter then... you go play.

the letter D

Dominatrix- scary... the very first word that popped into my head upon receiving my letter from Nobody. Trust me... this isn't some unburdening of my soul or "too much information" it's just the mental first fruits from the mind of a woman in the hormonal flux of weaning. What, am I the only gal around here who's husband is thrilled for the end of lactation for more than just two obvious reasons? I am? Was that too much info after all? Well. Hm. At least it segues nicely into...

Domination- as in world domination. The two older girls have these sweet little silver and red bead bracelets that Dadguy gave them for Christmas two years ago. LaLa has been wearing hers for about a month straight, and yesterday morning Birdie found hers. I pointed out to the girls that they had on matching bracelets whereupon Birdie announced they were "Bracelets of Power" and they were gonna "take over the world." LaLa shoved her scrawny wrist over to Birdies and yelled "take obah da WOOOOOOOWD!" So look out you, the Chaos is coming.

Disgusting- the gooey, and initially smelly guck that came out of my sweet Pearl's little ear when her eardrum ruptured yesterday. Mother's Day weekend was pretty rough, and we thought we had a teether on our hands till Sunday afternoon when the drool and snot disappeared but the miserable, can't-sleep baby stayed. Off to the docs first thing Monday morning... but not fast enough I guess. Poor kid.

Dadguy- the guy who did EVERYTHING else this past weekend... He is my fairytale happy ending, he is my eternity and you can't have him 'cause he's MINE ALL MINE!! I can't say any more with out weeping. La!

Dork- I am one.

Dough- Chocolate chip cookie dough... I have been craving it for about a week and a half now. I may make some in a bit, but first I need to make...

Dinner- Skillet chicken in olive oil, steamed broccoli and, erm tater tots.

Downstairs- the basement. Dadguy has the pictures of the framed version of the basement up on his blog. The electrical part has started, but that's Dadguy's milieu... as is the next part after that, the...

Ductwork - more blah stuff that has to happen on this road to a finished basement. I am ready to be done and we have barely started! It's kinda hard because now that the framework is up I can just TASTE the finished rooms... mmmmmmmm! I'm already reading the decorating books and thinking about color and carpeting... drapery, what will go where.

Dammit- fine. Are ya happy now? I'm done and I finally said it, the second word to come to mind when I learned my letter was D. Now you know my dirty little secret... I cuss like a sailor in my heart of hearts. I cuss alot, and I use much worse words than dammit too.

A Slug Named "Butterfly"

Last week my mom introduced the idea of "bugs as pets" to the pet-starved Chaos Girls in a round about way. First let me say that it has been a long and cold winter in Utah, and we haven't seen many houseflies in these parts for some time.

New Mexico has plenty, and one chubby and somewhat sluggish spring fly was caroming about my folks front room. It was freaking the girls out... especially LaLa. Last year one of the first words out of the girls mouth was actually a phrase...
"Mack lack liiiiiiiie!"
translation: Smack that fly!

It's an uneasy combination of horror and a juicy, almost joyous squeamishness that she has in regards to flying bugs. It's fun to scream and run from bugs, but the horror part was taking a front seat ride this time out. The child has a scream that removes paint and I think my mom was done with listening to the shrieking so she told the girls not to worry... it was a TAME fly. She told them it was her pet fly. I pretty sure that Birdie knew she was joking... but she also liked the idea of having a pet that I cannot realistically put the ki-bosh to. She craves a pet. She still talks with longing about the three short days we had three fish. Dead, deader and deadest.

The day after we got home the girls found a "snail" in the backyard. For some reason the distinction of an actual snail shell is no distinction at all for them. They thought he was SO CUTE! They pleaded to keep it as a pet. I figured that it was either sacrifice a Kerr jar for a couple of days or smash the wee bugger right in front of the Chaos then and there. Either way he's out of my garden, but I opted for the kinder and gentler Kerr jar with a couple of leaves and voila... a pet. A slug that they poetically named Butterfly.

O, the girly raptures over this nasty stretch of movable slime.... Bleah!

I was washing dishes yesterday and had this conversation with LaLa.
LaLa: Mama, I lub da thnay-yo!
Me: Honey it's a slug, it doesn't have a shell so it's a slug.(this for the four thrillionth time)
LaLa: A tluggy?
Me: Mmmm-hm.
LaLa: I lub you Mith-toe Tluggy! (intoned to the denizen of Kerr jar which she has clutched to her chest) He mah pavo-wit tuh-low.
Me: Slug color?
LaLa: Uh huh, tluggy tuh-low.

Awwwww, how sweet! But you know that you just can't cage some wild animals... they kinda pine away. At least I THINK that's what happened to the dessicated smoodge of slime that Dadguy found at the bottom of the jar last night.

The Three Little Pigs

"Ya wanna hear a story?"

"Wait, I know it's in here somewhere."

"Ayuh, got it. Once upon a time..."

"... but the house made out of straw went KERFLOOEY."

"...and I'll HUFF, and I'll PUFF..."

"He blew and blew as hard as he could, but the house made of bricks didn't budge an inch."

"... and the pigs had wolf stew that night for dinner."

"The End."

Backyards and Ponys

Whew! I survived but I'll tell ya, I'm not gonna be doin' THAT again!

The Chaos girls and I went down to New Mexico to visit my parents. The drive takes around nine hours with adults... about twelve with little kiddos. This is a drive that is NOT A GOOD IDEA to do when it is just one The Mama on three Chaos Girls. We survived nicely due to the fasting and prayer that was done on our behalf... but when I think of how much fun it could have been? I get an ugly little shiver. We cut the trip a day short because of the homesickness that was rife in our little Chaotic hearts... Birdie sobbing her sad, wee guts out and me missing the Dadguy like fire.

We are back and the photo blogging keeps on keepin' on.

We are on a "My Little Pony" kick. Here are a pair in the backyard. Pipecleaners, construction paper, a pair of scissors and a crayon. Hours of fun. The End.

The drawing on top is Birdie's rendition of my take on "Wysteria," one of the "My Little Pony's." I am pretty impressed with both of us except apparently the pony is supposed to have whitish-silver mane and tail. Got the tail right by omission.

I love my Mom's backyard. She is an artist. We ate most of our meals back here.

More back yard. Three ponys are lost somewhere back here, hence the following...

Best purchases...
a brand new pony each for LaLa and Birdie for the trip home. A strap thingy to clip a binkey to Pearl so I could reach behind me and reinsert her plug into her yap as I drove... and drove and drove. A string of funky patio party lights for me just because after all of this I may want to hang myself and this way I can do it in style.

Evidence of Chaos while at my folks...
LaLa climbed into my bed and removed three sewing needles, seven straight pins and four T pins from a pin cushion. She scattered them around the bed and then fell asleep. At least I hope these numbers are accurate. So far nothing has been found the hard way.

Birdie gave herself a haircut.


Birdie's rendition of The Brave Little Toaster. Is anyone out there a child psychologist qualified to interpret drawings? This apparently is the whole movie with a dream sequence of Birdie's added for dramatic flair.

New Mexico

La!

I have been on vacation to the land of the zia... I am still here and it looks like my cold may have taken a turn for the green, but I haven't forgotten you my dear and sweet Internets... I am just too busy visiting the Rio Grande Zoo, eating copious amounts of green chili and pulling cactus spines out of my butt.

and weaning the Pearly girl. Sigh. I haven't mentioned it because it breaks my heart, she started out a champion nurser and I just knew we would reach my goal of nursing for the whole first year of her life. She is a biter. It started at two month of age and it's getting worse. If she actually had any teeth she would already have lopped off my nipples. Did I mention that it hurts?

Handily, the sudaphed I am taking in an attempt to not drown on my own snot is drying up my milk-supply and I think the baby, she don't care for the flavor of the "chili verde."

Two weeks ago we finally sweet-talked her into drinking from a bottle, and now if we can just find a way to keep her from ripping off the tops of the silicone nipples from the bottles with her gums we'll be in business. Huh, maybe she'll just be an early sippy-cupper.

We are all having a wonderful time and "wish you were here" etc....