I'm Flippin' Insane

At 11:00am, I loaded the three kids into the van and set out on a day of errands. My husband was out at the old house for the second day in a row, painting and getting things ready for our tenant.

Wearing our Seahawks blue for game day!

After 5.5 hours, I had escorted them through TWO Fred Meyers, one teriyki place (lunch), and one incredibly long and winding IKEA. Jacob walked (ran, trotted, zig-zagged through crowds), I carried Jon in the Baby Bjorn, and Ryan convinced me (i.e. screamed until my ears bled and I caved) to take him out of/put him into the shopping cart seat at least 15 times. Of the 5.5 hours, I only legitimately shopped for half that time. The other half was spent chasing children, breaking up fights, consoling, negotiating, and begging kids to stop screaming.

I will spare you the rest of the details. But I've decided that next time I have the notion to take the kids to IKEA that I'll just carry three feral cats around a lumber yard, leave empty handed, and buy an ice cream at the end. Same difference, but probably with less scratches.

My saving grace was that by the fifth hour of errand running, my kids were so tired from running away from me that they actually BEHAVED at the grocery store (our second trip to Fred Meyer). Jacob was even helpful! I told him the next ingredient on my shopping list and put him in charge of finding it. He was excellent! It was even kind of fun. He learned what a green onion was and the different between a yam and a russet potato.

At the check out counter, he told me to sit down (I was SO tired from carrying Jon in the Baby Bjorn that I squatted in the check out line and could not get back up) while he loaded all the groceries on the check out counter.

When he got home, I made Ryan and Jacob carry all the groceries inside the house while I put them away. Hmmmm.....fluke? Or maybe my efforts to train the kids are finally working?!

I tuned the TV to the Seahawks game, lit a fire, and started cooking dinner while the big boys ran free outside. We had fajita soup (I still can't figure out how it is any different from tortilla or taco soup, but it's yummy!) served with my very favorite buttery cornbread (scratch is the way to go!). If I wasn't so exhausted from our marathon errand trip, I would have really savored the task of cooking a nice fall meal in my new kitchen.

Now I'm going to put my feet up and NOT eat chocolate (sadface). Stupid chocolate budget. To distract myself from my chocolate cravings, I uploaded the pictures from Jacob's birthday:

But I still want some chocolate.

Lots Of F-Words

Oh, this week.

I don't even know how to describe it. Frazzled, frustrating, frugal, ferocious, funny. That's actually quite accurate.

Let's start with frazzled and frustrated. Our morning and evening routines have changed a lot since our move. We moved about 30 minutes away from our old neighborhood. My husband and I now travel in opposite directions to work. Jacob stays in town for school. Ryan is sometimes in town at his preschool and sometimes in another town with his babysitter. Jon is mostly with the babysitter. Most days, the five of us are in four different cities (yikes). Logistically and economically, it makes most sense for me to take all the children to their various locations in the morning.

I'm doing all the morning routines myself and the new routine is still...well, new. Tuesday I forgot to bring Jon's play pen to the babysitter's. On Thursday, I forgot to leave his car seat. On Wednesday, I dropped Jacob off an hour too early for school (schools: hey, let's start an hour later one day a week just to eff with all the working parent!). On Friday, I forgot to put all of Jacob's weekly homework in his homework folder. On top of all this, I had two court hearings on Friday. Each one was in a different city and they were only two hours apart. I didn't eat a single morsel of food until 2pm that day.

It's challenging to remember to pack all the kids' lunches, my lunch, my breakfast, my purse/work bag, and Jon's diaper bag. It's also challenging to dress all the children, dress myself, feed all the children, change the baby's diaper, make the baby's bottle, check backpacks for homework, and load everyone in the car. My husband used to do this half the week but now that I'm doing all the morning driving, it's automatically fallen on me (because he leaves an hour earlier). I'm clearly going to need to start training him to pitch in. Because this craziness is not working.

On to frugal. As soon as I had just about paid off both Ryan and Jon's c-section bills, Ryan had to have a LOT of dental work. (I paid HOW MUCH for teeth that will just fall out in three years?) And it was expensive. I long for the day when I do not owe any medical bills. It will honestly feel magical. Out of all the bills to have, medical bills are simply the worst. If it was a credit card bill I could at least enjoy the purchase I made. I guess I can enjoy the fact that Ryan has a perfect mouth of teeth. But that's just not as exciting as a new (or, in this case, SIX new) pairs of boots.

My student loan payment is set to increase at the same time we owe our first mortgage on the new house. And we need a couple big ticket items for the new house- like a pantry. Right now, all of our food is in boxes (how can a house just NOT have a pantry?). And a dining table (we're eating all our meals at the kitchen island). And the big boys need beds. The old bunkbed won't fit. They are currently sleeping on mattresses on the floor: CAMPING!

All this prodded me to scrutinize our spending a little more closely. Holy wow. I spent way too much on chocolate and groceries. I have put myself on a tight chocolate budget. You guys don't understand. Chocolate is honestly my only vice and addiction (ok fine, Diet Dr. Pepper too). I don't drink a lot of alcohol. I don't drink fancy lattes or coffee in general. I don't go on shopping sprees. I don't spend money on entertainment or music. Chocolate is my thing. I'm an addict. It's normal for me to eat a bite-sized piece of chocolate at 9am. I wake up in the morning and my first thought is....how much longer before I can eat a piece of chocolate and not feel too guilty? The answer is usually: 45 minutes. So my chocolate budget is a huge deal.

I've also imposed a cap on grocery spending. I can easily (without trying) spend $200 a week to feed our family of 4.5 (Jon is the .5). That's insane. But I like to cook. I pride myself on quality meals with fresh and quality ingredients. I don't like short cuts in the food category. I like to have all the real ingredients rather than just making-do with what we already have (which is my mom's specialty). But I decided that it will not be the end of the world if I make my family eat hot dogs and canned soup once (or twice) a week. According to the kids, this is what they serve for dinner in heaven.

Ferocious: I've suddenly settled into an amazing level of self-confidence at work. Things have just kind of clicked. I used to hate speaking up in meetings. I used to hate oral arguments in court. I used to be very hesitant about making suggestions. A flurry of court appearances and the benefit of new experiences have given me a new footing in my self esteem.

Finally, funny. My kids drive me up the wall 50% of our time together. The other 50% it's complete and utter joy. Parenting seems to come at me in the extremes. The mix of utter exhaustion and loss of sanity with immeasurable love and pride makes for unpredictable parenting weather. At the end of each day, I'm completed drained, with barely enough energy to brush my teeth with an electric toothbrush. But when I collapse into bed and think of the highlights of the day, I know there is no other place I would rather be. Someday the boys will be older and need me less. I will be very much less a part of their every day functioning and routine. I only hope I will love that phase just as much as I love being their everything right now.

Some of this week's kid highlights:

We bought Ryan a second-hand dinosaur costume for Halloween. He will NOT take it off. Want to put a smile on a stranger's face? Take a dinosaur to the grocery store. Or the bank. Or the mall. Or the park. Smiles followed us everywhere.

Ryan is the funniest person I have ever met. When Jacob tells me a story about his day, Ryan will hijack the story halfway through with his own (very similar) nonsensical made up story about HIS day.

Jacob: "At school, some kids don't get a long with Spencer. Today, Zack actually slapped Spender in the face and ...
Ryan: "Guess what. At MY school. There's a kid named Spincher. And he jumped on the table and threw his stinky socks at everyone's face!"

When we try to interrupt him, he scolds us, "you have to wait your turn!" He told me he has five kids named Matt in his class (not true). He then told me that they were all actually named "Manis." (not true). He told me that one kid punched him in the face at the playground (not true). When I told him he was tricking me he said, "He DID punch me! I saw him!" He wants to eat yogurt and "granilla" (granola) for breakfast every morning. And he refuses to eat a hot dog unless I call it a "cold dog." Because DUH he can't eat food that's hot.

Photo-collage of Ryanosaurus

It's going to be a LONG month before Halloween.

Also, I present to you, Ryan's favorite socks. Ryan recommends that any good pair of snowman socks be paired with plaid shorts and light-up Avengers shoes.

Today we celebrated Jacob's 7th birthday at Chuck-E-Cheese. He got to go into a ticket blaster- a hurricane simulator machine that shoots tons of prize tickets all around the birthday child. The joy on his face just cannot be described. He emerged from the blaster with tons of tickets in his shirt (he had strategized ahead of time making his shirt into a pouch to catch the tickets) and with two hanging from his mouth (he caught them with his teeth). All morning long, he had been begging me to let him put his face into his slice of cake. I think he saw someone on TV do it. My response was, "why not?!" So, when it was cake time, he shoved his face into his frosting, then proceeded to run around the entire Chuck E Cheese yelling, "I'm HYPER! I'm HYPER." I wasn't mad because: better at Chuck E Cheese than at home, right?

I don't have any Jon stories tonight. Other than I'm 95% sure that he is actually calling me "mama." He's said "mama" and "mamamama" for several months but this week he's been doing it when he clearly wants me to hold him. He will crawl up to me, pull himself up to my leg and say, "mamama." It seems very intentional and it melts my heart. So, let me have my fantasies.

Days Like This

I've been robbed....of half my weekend!

I'm on day four of some evil virus. I thought I had a residual of whatever evil virus Jake had last weekend-- a 102+ degree fever and body aches. On Thursday, I was full of hubris because I only had a little congestion and a scratchy throat. "I never get full-blown sick. It's my special mommy power." I bragged to someone at work.

Saturday morning, I felt a little crummy but not too bad. "The best way to fight a virus and boost immunity is to go for a run. It's the best medicine!" So, with the mild virus, I ran 5 mile intervals at 7:30 minute pace. I felt so bad ass. "Ha, see. I'm not really sick!"

I actually DID feel much better after my run. So much so, that I joined my husband and friend at a local brewfest. Literally, a half mile walk from our house. Sometimes, cool things do happen in Bremerton (Sir Mix A lot coined the phrase "Bremelo" to refer to large and unattractive women who live in my city...my friend and I consider ourselves to be "Bremelite," the upper echelon of the Bremelos.). I cautiously limited my beer intake to four samples.

Drinking in the streets....legally!

 

 

Today is a different story. Hear that sound? That's the sound of me eating my arrogant words! The sickness has descended upon me in full force. But, you know, a mother is not allowed to have a sick day. And for that, today very much sucked.

Jacob woke up at 12:30 am last night. I found him puking his guts out onto his bed. A bed that had fresh sheets on it for the first time in days after he peed his bed earlier this week (we've been SO busy that neither of us had time to simply do a load of laundry this week!). So, Murphy's Law. Yeah, we're well acquainted. Ryan, of course, woke up and began to scream. We moved Jacob to the couch and gave him a puke bucket and finally got the kids to bed much later.

Both kids woke up crying again at 6:30 a.m. Jacob had peed the couch despite the fact that he was wearing a pull-up (happens at least three time a week). Oh. My. God. His bed wetting is getting ridiculous.

Ryan was absolutely crabby all day, despite two long naps. He woke up from each nap even crabbier than when he went down. My patience was tested to the limit, and definitely snapped on several occasions. Jacob was also miserable. He kept demanding food because he was starving. I had to keep denying him food until I knew he could stomach some saltines. Even though I was feverish and suffering from general malaise and a horrible low back ache (couldn't even lift the wet clothes into the dryer without extreme pain!), I had so much to do. Lunches for the week. Laundry. Dinner for the week. Caring for the kids. Tidying up the shitstorm of our house. Holding a crabby, whinny Ryan while doing all the above.

I tried to rest on my bed once and both kids followed me into the room. Jacob kept tossing and turning next to me and fighting with Ryan. Ryan kept throwing things at both of our faces, falling off the bed, and bonking me in the face. I quickly gave up on a nap.

Somehow I was able to make all the lunches for the week (variations of chicken meatballs and quinoa tabbouleh/quinoa salad) and dinner (grilled chicken with lemon-oregano sauce), without sneezing on everything or collapsing from feverishness and fog-brain. I did sneeze onto one chicken breast, which I promptly rinsed and baked the heck out of. I will be sure to eat that special one.

Ryan was getting so restless in the house that I took him for a quick romp outside, even though I felt like Death's cousin. Ryan enjoyed it.. for ten minutes and then he got cranky again. He kicked. He threw. He lost his ball in the bushes.

This is the lawn that my husband has spent the past ten months on. Here is the before/after. It used to be very lumpy, uneven, and very unpleasant.

I was so happy to finally see a child running carefree across the lawn! Once we put up a fence, it will be even more inviting (and to hide our neighbor's horrific half-assed attempt at a fence, to her credit, she is a 70 year old woman who still works and likely never acquired any carpentry skills- we've offered to help with her fence...she never accepted...).

Ryan is so tiny, it makes our yard look huge.

Later, as I was doing a very pathetic attempt to tidy-up, I found Ryan like this:

 

An entire box of baking soda. All over the floor. When I found him, he was patting it happily, as if it was sand, throwing fistfuls into my running shoes, and tossing more fistfuls into the air, like white powder bombs. That was fun. To clean. And just an hour earlier, he dropped one of our favorite mason jar glasses, shattering it all over the floor.

The entire day, my husband was busy doing outside chores around the house. Thank goodness someone does them! And despite all of our hardwork (however feeble my own attempts were), we still have a dirtier house now than when we awoke this morning. There are more dishes in the sink than there were when I went to bed (even though I did two loads by HAND). There are two loads of laundry that need to be folded. And my house looks like a warzone.

How does this happen?!

But at least my kids are sleeping peacefully and I am FINALLY horizontal on my bed in the fetal position, being sick and miserable in peace. As crummy as I feel, I kind of like having a fever, as long as I don't have any other symptoms. I hate all other kinds of sickness, but a fever, I can totally do. It gives me an excuse to wrap up in blankets, feel completely swaddled in internal heat (I'm always cold!), and put my feet up and watch TV/read a book. However, I'm finding that now I have kids, this is never possible. Especially on days like this. The total exhaustion and muscle soreness also reminds me of that awesome feeling I would get after a good cross country race. Where your body is so drained that you have absolutely nothing left to give. The feeling itself kind of sucks, but the familiarity and the muscle memory that feeling brings is kind of comforting, in a weird way.

And now I get to think about returning to work tomorrow to finish something with an important and impending deadline.

Brunch With Kids... Or "What's In My Water?"

This morning, in a fit of bravery (read: delusion), we decided to take the kids to brunch. It had been a while. Which was intentional. It went surprisingly well, at least the first half.

For the first half of breakfast, Jacob sat patiently and, with much concentration, practiced his letters with the free crayons and kid-friendly coloring menu. He showed us that he spell almost any letter. He can also write his name. I love that his "J"s curl the wrong direction, in perfect child fashion. Ryan was given his very own coloring crayons and, copying his big brother, began to color his very first picture. He held his crayons upside down as he tried to drag them across the paper, one in each fist. It was adorable.

As we waited for our food to arrive, our storybook outing ended abruptly. Ryan lost interest in coloring and threw all his crayons on the floor and onto the table next to us. When my husband and I finished corralling all the crayons, we noticed that, in our distraction, Jacob had eaten five packets of jelly. As much as he tried to deny it, the proof was on his face and in the empty jelly packets on the table. Then I turned my attention back to the table and saw two soggy packets of Splenda floating nonchalantly in my water. The jury is still out on that one.

Our food finally arrived. When Jacob saw that his plate only had three pancakes and not four (he is four, four is the only number that matters), he wigged out. "I'm soooo hungry! I need FOUR pancakes! Mommy, I'm going to starve!" I held back the urge to tell him about the poor starving children in Africa. I'm saving that for when he is six. "Eat what you have first and then we will see!" I snapped.

Ryan, who had been sitting so patiently and calmly for the first fifteen minutes of breakfast, immediately became antsy. He writhed back and forth dramatically in his highchair, pointing to the ceiling for no reason at all. Maybe this kid will be an actor? I put a pile of pancakes, hash brown pieces, and toast in front of him. This kept him busy for...two whole minutes.

As my husband was cutting Jacob's (three!) pancakes, I turned my attention to my own food (over-medium eggs with toast). As I went in for my first bite, I used my other hand to redirect a blue crayon out of my water glass. On the other end of the blue crayon was Ryan's chubby, white-knuckled fist. As I moved my water onto the other side of my plate, I caught Ryan's face and saw that he had somehow gotten blue crayon markings all over his forehead. I laughed. He laughed. When his lips parted into their devious smile, I saw that his teeth were also covered in blue crayon pieces. My smile instantly drooped downward.

I took the crayon from Ryan's hand, dug a cracker out of the diaper bag, and placed it on the table in front of him. SOMEHOW, I got about two more bites of breakfast in my mouth before Ryan started javelining food across the table. Before we knew it, we were in a rainstorm of hash browns and sticky pancakes. I removed a sticky pancake from my arm. Jacob laughs hysterically. My husband and I instantly roll into "Operation Baby Storm" mode and remove any and all objects from within Ryan's reach. That's when I noticed a pile of pancakes on the floor, indicating that Ryan hadn't actually eaten a single thing.

Jacob, who had complained about not getting four pancakes, finished the first one and proclaimed that he was "SO FULL!" He ducked under the table in an attempt to escape. This is when we resorted to bribery. "If you sit in your seat until we are done eating, you can have a balloon" Sadly, this doesn't work. Ryan almost wriggled out of his highchair and Jacob proceeded to crawl under the table. I let Ryan out of baby jail and tried to walk him around the restaurant. He slipped out of my arm and scooted his way to a pancake that he had thrown on the floor earlier. Which he eats. Of course he head refused to eat them when they were on his plate, but now that they are on the floor...

The old ladies next to us were smitten with Ryan and his one-legged scoot and laughed as he ate his breakfast off the floor. I let my husband take over Ryan duty and sat back down to my breakfast. When I took a sip of water, I nearly choked on the soggy cracker that Ryan had slipped into my glass. I must have put the glass back within the dangerous Ryan Zone after taking a sip.

Finally, it was time to pay and leave. We rounded up our children, tipped generously to make up for the mess we left behind ,and headed to the door. Each child was given a balloon and Ryan immediately ripped his balloon off the string. How?! How?! We procured the balloon from the ceiling and tied it back onto the string. Then, the learned parents that we are, we tied the balloons to our kids' beltloops having learned long ago that balloons slip easily off a child's hand the second you go outside no matter how fancy you ties the knot, which will result in at least 60 minutes of tears.

We buckled the kids into the car and drove away.

Jacob: "Mommy?"
"What?"
"Your car is like a trash can on wheels."
"Thanks Jacob."
"Hey mommy, I'm going to call you a princess in Japanese."
"Ok."
"Slave driver."
"That doesn't mean 'princess.'"
"Daddy taught me that. He said you are a slave driver. But I didn't know that word and so daddy told me it means "princess" in Japanese"

Gee. Thanks daddy! Caught red-handed!

What I Learned This Weekend

When it comes to parades, my children simply cannot contain their excitement.

 

I guess I'll clap. But just this ONE time.

Even when you you show up to a public event in yoga pants and a dirty sweatshirt in my city, there will be stiff competition for the title of Worst Dressed. (People of WalMart, move over). My competition:

A one-yeard old child can entertain himself for 20 minutes by playing with a box of nursing pads.

When you hear your son yelling, "it's raining popsicles," in the next room, the chances are against you encountering something pleasant. No picture available. The image was just too traumatizing.

It is possible to win a summary judgment motion from your home while you are wearing yoga pants and when neither side showed up for the hearing because it was supposedly continued by the opposing party. (yay!!)

Running is addicting. This is something I knew but had forgotten. I've been running 5 miles every other day for the past couple weeks but now I just to run all the time.

Don't let your husband take your child to a festival without you. There will be consequences:

(There is a fish in there. Ugh. )

My one-year old son is showing great promise in the sport of "carrying random household objects in one's mouth."

It's hard to watch your baby grow up.

I'm totally ready for another baby (but someone else is very much NOT ready and is very protective of his Mommy).

The Spotted Leopard Goes To The Doctor

This weekend I had a temporary post about some not so fun things that happened at work on Friday. Because of the sensitive nature of the post, I had to eventually take it down. But it still felt good to get everything off my chest. In short Friday was absolutely horrible. At one point, I was hiding in the office supply room silently sobbing my eyes out.

Friday was one of the most horrendous work days I have ever had as an attorney. It was second only to the day a random internet stalker copied all of my Facebook status updates and photos and pasted them in an email to all seven partners of my old law firm. The email also accused me of sleeping with cleints (FALSE!) and drinking during work hours (no comment). It's kind of hard to beat that.

Anyway, Monday I was excited to turn over a new leaf. I wanted to be productive and effecient and just obliterate my to-do list. Of course, that's the day my 4-year-old had to wake up completely covered in itchy white and red spots. I named him leopard. When he wasn't itching uncontrollably, he found the resemblance slightly amusing.

My first thought was obviously...chicken pox! But my mom assured me that kids don't usually get chicken pox anymore if they have been vaccinated. My first thought was one of disbelief. Seriously? Kids don't get chicken pox anymore? What is the world coming to? When I was growing up chicken pox was a central part of one's indoctrination into the real world. Sheesh. Kids these days!

I called to make the obligatory doctor's appointment. They couldn't get us in until 4pm. So I strapped the kids into the car, drove them to the store, unloaded them from their car seats, hauled them around the store in search of Benadryl. Then we piled back into the car and headed to my mom's house so I could attempt to get some work done. I was so focused on work that I nearly missed the doctor appointment. When I saw the time, I crazily shuffled the kids back into the car and we headed out to the clinic.

It wasn't until we landed into an exam that I caught my breath and assessed the situation. In my rush to get the kids out the door this morning, I let Jacob put on the clothing and the shoes of his choice. The result: he was wearing sweatpants nearly 2 inches too short, thick snow boots (it was not even raining), and Christmas socks. Mysterious speckles of leftover lunch covered his fleece sweatshirt. Was that speckle peanut butter? Was that one cream cheese? To top it all off, he still had remnants of St. Patrick's Day face paint all over his cheeks and forehead. AND my mom had decided to use a black marker to color a cat nose and whiskers onto his face. 

My kid looked like a ferile, green cat that had run through a basket of dirty laundry....who was also covered in itchy red welts.

I was suddenly very embarrassed. My kid was in worse condition than one of the octo-kids. But it wasn't until the doctor tugged at my son's clothing to check the extent of his spots that I realized the worst part. He wasn't wearing any underwear! Apparently he had a minor accident at my mom's and had no choice but to go commando.

The doctor did not look amused at all. I am very lucky that she let me leave that place with both of my kids in tow!

Just a sampling of the spots:

Oh, and the verdict? The spots are an after-effect of his ear infection last week. No, not an allergic reaction to his amoxocillin but actually from the ear infection itself. This is the same ear infection that caused me to spend 4 unpleasant hours in Urgent Care with two antsy-whiny kids on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

A Rough Day Ends In Success: With Strozzapreti!

Wednesday was insane. INSANE. First, as we were driving down a busy highway, Jacob swung his car door wide open. I had a mini heart attack before pulling over to reprimand him/stop my heart from jumping out of my chest. Less than two minutes later, we were back on the highway and Jacob was screaming at max capacity that he had to pee right now! No exit in sight, I pulled over to the shoulder once again. I grabbed my empty water bottle and held it out for Jacob to pee in (we've done this before...). Unfortunately, he missed.

Pee.

All.

Over.

My.

Arm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After I freaked out and nearly shriveled out of my clothing, we made a quick (ha, yeah right!) stop at the grocery store to grab something. As soon as we walked into the store, a horrible smell radiated from Ryan's butt. I went to change him and discovered that he had filled his diaper, his onesie, and his pants with brown, soupy poop. Ryan was stripped to a shirt and diaper for the rest of the trip. And the poopy pants, which I SWORE I threw onto the floor of my car, have gone missing. This means they will likely show up somewhere very unpleasant at a very inconvenient time...after marinating for a week, of course.

After that (and much more), I probably had a great excuse to pull out a frozen pizza for dinner. But, no. I'm certifiably insane. And cooking is my therapy. After the chaotic, random, and uncontrollable events of a busy kid-full day, nothing is more therapeutic than to pull together an organized and predictable list of ingredients and follow a clear set of step-by-step instructions. On top of that, cooking is such a fun, creative process. Oh yeah, and the end result is edible (duh!)!

When we got home, I was so excited to make dinner. Earlier that day I had run across what appeared to be a simple and easy homemade pasta recipe. I've made gnocchi, linguine, and ravioli from scratch and, while they were all delicious, they were so much work! This recipe for sprozzapreti, on the other hand, was super easy and only required two ingredients (for the pasta anyway, then add your own favorite sauce)! Just like my favorite recipe for homemade tortillas, this is going to be a new go-to recipe.

Strozzapreti

(seen with my new favorite dish: gruyere chicken)
(p.s. forgive the poor quality, phone-camera photo)

1 cup all-purpose flour
2 large eggs

Pour the flour into a bowl. Crack the eggs into the center. Mix thoroughly with your hand until the ingredients are combined and form a ball. Add flour if necessary so that the dough is not too sticky. However, do not add so much flour that the dough becomes stiff.

Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out onto a floured surface as thin as possible.  Cut the dough into strips about one inch wide. Take one strip at a time and roll the strips between your palms as if making play-do snakes. Roll them just enough to make the snake shape so that they have a fun texture but do not roll them so much that they become too smooth (honestly, you can roll them as much as you like, but the funkier the texture, the better the pasta can pick up your pasta sauce). Pinch the strips into small pieces (don't worry about being exact) and set aside.

Cook the strozzapreti in a large pot of boiling salted water for a couple minutes. You want the pasta to be tender and slightly chewy, but cooked through. When it's the desired amount of tenderness, drain the water. Add pasta sauce and serve!

Messy Monday

My day off started....with a gigantic Ryan poop. The second I got that diaper off, he wriggled free and smeared a long trail of poo all over his boppy pillow. The more mobile he gets, the more I am certain that a medical restraint board (and a hazmat suit) is a great investment. But the day was still fresh and I was in a good mood. I wasn't going to let a little poo ruin my day off. I cheerily sorted out a load of dirty laundry, brought it downstairs, and filled the washing machine.

When I arrived upstairs, I prepared breakfast for the kids. Jacob informed me that he wanted orange juice, but not the "hairy kind." What? Hairy orange juice? It took five minutes of inquisition to figure out that he was referring to pulp. Ha Ha!

It wasn't until after both kids were fed that I was finally able to sneak to the bathroom for my morning pee ("TMI" is my middle name). I closed the door and breathed a heavy sigh. It's amazing how much sanctuary a thin bathroom door can offer.

The kids decided to take advantage of their three minutes of freedom by dumping out an entire package of jumbo-sized cotton balls.

When I saw them giggling and throwing cotton balls at each other, I didn't have the heart to interrupt their fun with adult worries about wastfullness and messes. Jacob loved making snowballs and throwing them at Ryan's head. Ryan loved picking the balls up and showing them to me. Then he crawled over to his stacking cups and proceeded to fill each one with a mound of cotton balls. He was working with so much concentration and effort, it was pretty hilarious!

Unfortunately, the kids handled the cotton balls so much that they disintegrated into small cotton strings. As we speak, those cotton pieces are rubbed into all four corners of our living room rug.

As I tried to pick cotton ball strands out of the rug, Jacob asked me if he could have something to drink. I shoed him to the kitchen to get his own drink. One minute later, I heard the microwave turn on. This sound was followed by the sound of aggressive sparks and a smokey-burny smell. I walked into the kitchen to find Jacob staring at a soda can that had seen better days. Four years of parenting have calloused me to little calamaties like these. I think I've seen everything. Unless someone's limb is hanging on my a mere membrane, I am incapable of freaking out.

I calmly walked Jacob out of the kitchen. In doing so, I passed by a bundle of fabric on the floor. What the heck?! It was the boppy pillow cover smeared with Ryan's poo. You know... the very same boppy pillow cover that I had JUST done a whole load of laundry for. The one that was supposed to be in the washing machine right that minute! ARRRRG!!!

Despite a rough morning, I decided to brave a trip to the pool in the afternoon. It was just the kids and me. It was also the first time I had taken both kids at the same time. It was a bit of a challenge (ok a large challenge) to wrangle two kids to the pool, in the pool, and from the pool, but it was very worth it to see the excitement and happiness on their faces as they played. (Also, as I changed Ryan into his swimsuit, three cotton balls fell out of his onesie...that's what big brothers are for, right?).

Jacob is my fearless waterbunny. He loves to dunk his head under and will bravely march into the deep end after the big kids with nothing but a skinny pool noodle to keep him afloat. Scares the crap out of me. I desperately need to get that kid into swimming lessons.

Ryan loves the pool just as much as Jacob. He kept trying to leap out of my arms and into the water. He splashed and giggled and splashed some more. Our pool has a zero-depth entry so I set Ryan down in the shallow end to let him splash. He quickly darted straight towards the deep end. Luckily, I caught him just as his face hit the water.

I am so in trouble! What am I going to do with these fearless boys?

Although Jacob has a new, coveted pair of Spiderman swim trunks, he insisted on wearing his old shark trunks so that he could match Ryan. Ryan's red shark trunks are hand me downs from his big brother. I remember so vividly when Jacob used to toddle around on the sand in them. I teared up just the slightest as I slipped them over Ryan's chubby legs. Sigh...

My (freezing) sharks

We ended our eventful day with a trip to the grocery store where I JUST barely clung to the remainder of my wits and my thinly-stretched patience. Jacob insisted on wearing his sunglasses. And Ryan, refusing to let me help in any way, kept trying to put on his hat.

 

We rushed home and I whipped up a new dessert that had caught my eye in a cooking magazine. It's a key-lime cheesecake with oreo crust (YUM!). It's setting in the refrigerator right now and I keep opening the fridge door to take little peeks. It's supposed to chill for four hours and I, with good faith, predict that I will be sneaking out of my bed at 1 a.m. for a taste test!

That Was Quick

Who can I talk to about getting my weekend back? Seriously. I need a refund.

A while back I agreed to join my boss for a meeting with a potential medical expert for one of our plaintiff cases. Little did I know that that meeting would take place on a Saturday. Right smack in the middle of the day. And an hour an a half car ride from my house. I anticipated it would be only a short meeting. But that short meeting dragged on for 2.5 hours. So that time plus the 3 hour round trip pretty much shot my Saturday plans.

But, it was an important meeting and I learned a lot about the medical area which is the subject of our lawsuit. The doctor was really pleasant. My brain only hurt a little bit from all the medical jargon spouting out of his mouth (and I thought lawyers were bad!). I only fidgeted in my seat a little bit when he started to give unsolicited advice about tampons, a topic entirely unrelated to our case. And I only checked the clock one time to think wistfully about the 1.5 hour spin class that I was missing.

My husband drove me to the meeting and he and the kids played at a McDonald's playplace while they waited for me. I couldn't really complain about the meeting anymore after my poor husband bravely withstood 2.5 hours in McDonald land hell. Then on the way to pick me up, Jacob pooped in his pants...in the car. This resulted in an emergency run to Target for new underwear. I could use some new panties too. Unfortunately I am on a "brief" (ha ha ha, get it!?) clothing spending ban...maybe I should poop MY pants too?

On the way home we decided to stop by IKEA for a nice, family outing (yeah. right). Jacob ran away from us three times, the baby was crabby, husband's temper was short, and I dropped Jacob's ice cream cone a mere record-breaking 40 second after we bought it. I think I cried twice as loudly as he did.

Because my Saturday was mostly business, I had high hopes for Sunday. I was going to get up early, get to mass, go for a spin class, run some errands, make dinners for the entire week, and do all the laundry in the house (not just shove it into clean and dirty piles, but WASH it and FOLD it, and put it AWAY!). Then came the night of hell during which Ryan woke up at 10:30pm and screamed until 1:00am. Jacob woke us up at 3:00 having peed all over his bed (he was even wearing a pullup!). He also managed to wake up the Ryan Beast who, this time, screamed his head off until 4:30 and woke up every half hour to head butt us and scream some more. NOT HAPPY.

Despite my exhaustion all day today, I managed to get out of the house sometime after noon. I went grocery shopping and then took the kids to the park. Ryan was a huge fan of the swing:

He also loved to watch his brother play

He's my Mr. Eyelashes:

 

And he's my Mr. Dimples

 



I can't believe Ryan turned 10 months old yesterday.

I make it my mission to never make comments like "my baby is the cutest baby ever" on social media (despite my super biased opinion) because those type of comments annoy the SH*T out of me when they come from other people. Obviously, every mother thinks her baby is cute. But not all babies are cute (I'm cruel, I know, but it's the cold, hard truth). So...you do the math.

But, even if he's not the cutest baby in the world, I could take picture of him all day long.  When I work from home, I come up out of my basement office during breaks and lay on the ground to watch him play. I didn't think I could love a baby more than I loved my first baby. Ryan is showing me just how much love one person can have. The memories of Jacob's babyhood are already slipping away. I'm so glad I have Ryan to relive those feelings all over again. It makes me sad to think they will fade away forever when he gets older. (If I could only convince my husband, I'd be planning for baby number three right now.)

Watching my kids at the playground made me start to feel all mushy inside. Ryan was kind of a grump today, but each time Jacob ran near him or gave him any attention, his little eyebrows raised happily and he cracked a huge grin. I love how much my boys love each other. Watching them play, I tried to imagine what Ryan might say to Jacob if only he had a little more wisdom and language skills:

Dear Big Brother,

I'm not able to tell you this but I want to be just like you. I watch from my knees as you run and skip and jump. Against every ounce of my will I can't keep up. At least not yet. I can't play your favorite games like cards or catch or legos. Sometimes it makes me scream. But when you see me trailing behind, you stop and wait. And when I can't reach, you bring the world to me. Someday I will give you a run for your money. But for now, I love to sit and watch you. And, when you let me, I love to take your hand. You are my first friend and I love you. 

 

And then I cried like a big, fat baby.

This Is Friday

PSA for my childless friends:  This is what a Friday night looks like when you have kids.

You pick up the kids from childcare/their aunt's house. With kids in tow, you embark on a wild date with your spouse to Sears. To go refrigerator hunting. You know, because your refrigerator broke down first thing Christmas morning and you have been virtually fridgeless for ten WHOLE DAYS! 

As your four year old runs reckless up and down the refrigerator aisles, you have to scold him on at least three different occassions not to lick the display refrigerators. Regardless of your scolding, he does it a fourth time. For lack of time-out corners at Sears (come on Sears, get with it!), you plop both children in front of the electonics section.

Kid heaven

The luxury wear off after exactly 38 seconds. Before you know it, you are back to chasing your four-year old around the appliances. At least, I caught him before he decided to play hide-and-seek.

Then, because your life lacks amusement and because you cannot be enjoying a candlelit dinner at a four star restaurant, you decide to have some fun with the baby:

After a thrilling hour of looking at refrigerators, that aside from their price tag all look the same, you and your spouse round-up the kids for part two of your wild Friday night adventure........the FOOD COURT! You turn the kids loose in the indoor mall park. Then you sit down and watch the other parents (poor saps love company) mindlessly staring at their cellphones.

This is fun!

Oh wait, you want me to do DOWN?

 

Finally, you get to engage in some delightful conversation with another mother-of-two. She is holding a very tiny two-month old baby on her knee. Yay! You can make a friend and have a real conversation! At that precise moment, your four-year old rushes up on the unsuspecting mother, sticks out his tongue, and licks the entire right-side of her two-month old's face...from chin to forehead!

You gasp in horror. The mother's eyes widened. Your kid runs off like everything is business as usual. You try to hard to call out to your child so that you can impose the proper discipline. Execpt you are laughing too hysterically. Everytime you shout for your child, you erupt into maniacal laughter. So, instead, you stick with profuse apologies to the mother while tears of laughter fall down your cheek. There goes your future friendship.

Embarassed still, you and your spouse round up your children and head straight for the car. On the way home you pick up take-out teriyaki from a hole-in-the-wall restaurant near your house. That meal is the culinary highlight of your week (remember, no fridge).

The kids go straight to bed. And you and your husband settle down on the dirty, spit-up covered couch to watch a much-anticipated thriller. Half a Bourne movie and a screaming baby later, you and yoru husband throw in the towel on movie night and head straight for bed. You fall exhausted into your down comforter, fully aware but not giving a sh*t that you never even took off your bra.

Happy Friday!