Mult-task

I am the soon to be annouced new Queen of the Multi-Task! Tiara please! Roses please!

Things I can do at the same time:

1. Feed a baby and Feed myself

2. Burp a baby and put together a toy for my two year old

3. Work and watch tv, write my blog, and pay bills, all at the same time.

4. Drive and eat, while singing crazy children's songs to calm down my kids.

5. Drive and feed my daughter a bottle, in the back seat (I have really long arms!)

6. Wait for doctor at the office and finish reading whatever book I'm into at the time.

7. Do dishes or cook, and talk on the phone to friends and family

8. Grocery shop and entertain kids at the same time

9. Vac the floor and dance with my two year old and the same time

10. Rock a baby and relax at the same time.

Notice all these involve kids. I've determined that if you have kids, you HAVE to mult-task. You can't survive if you don't. I think once you become a parent, that part of you kicks into high gear.

So I'm waiting for my diamond encrusted tiara to arrive. It should be here soon. In the meantime, I think I have something elese to do!

Dirty little boys

I've noticed that my little boy gets dirty in every way possible. He is a little dirt magnet. If it's not dirt, then it's whatever he happens to be eating.
He refuses to wear a bib. In fact, he hasn't worn one since he's been about a year old. One day, he just started savagely tearing them off and shouting, "NO"! If you even come near him with a bib, he starts flailing his arms wildly. He is a pretty neat eater, so this usually isn't a problem. If he eats something really messy, we just take his shirt off.
His being a neat eater actually has its downsides. He hates getting his hands dirty, so he will just poke at his food. He sometimes makes nasty faces at his dirty hands and holds them out to me to clean. If I'm not fast enough, he will wipe them on his clothes.
He loves the sand box. He hopped right in, and started getting dirty right away. I wasn't getting dirty enough for him, so he grabbed my hand and plunged it into the dirt.
He loves to "help" me wash dishes. If I even think of turning the water at the sink on, he starts scooting the chair over. He gets up on the chair and plays in the water, usually dumping large glasses of water all over him and the floor. Today, I gave him a dishrag and he helped me clean up the puddles on the floor. He thought it was great fun. Then he ran into the utility room and hauled out the broom. He started sweeping the floor.
That's when I decided that this kid thing was going to work out okay. Now, if I can only get him to clean bathrooms and vacuum, then I'll have it made!

The house of pestilance

My house is a house of pestilence. The kids are sick, and the parents are sick. Which is not a good combination.

My son started it all. He got the stomach bug last week. The first day he got it, I was picking up my mom. As she got into the car, I heard a retching sound from behind me. I said, "Please tell me that he just didn't throw up." My mom promptly told me that he was covered from head to toe. When we got home (a good 25 minute drive) we stripped the little boy down in the driveway and I literally hosed him and his car seat off. Luckily, it all stayed in the car seat. All I had to do was unlatch the seat from the anchors, manhandle it out of the car, and then figure out the puzzle of how it was all attached. Then I threw everything in the wash. Since that day, I have been running the washing machine constantly. My son seemed better, but then he started throwing up in his bed every night. That's fun to clean up. Then we had a whole day where it SEEMED like he was getting better. But then the next thing I knew, I was starting at him watching poo run down both legs onto my carpet. I grabbed a handy nearby blanket, wrapped him in it like a burrito, and threw him in the bath.

Just when things were getting calmed down with him, my husband and I both caught this pestilence. For us, it was just a 2-day thing. But we were down for the count. I could barely get out of bed on Saturday, and Jeff couldn't get out of bed on Sunday.

Then the baby caught the germs. She is throwing up like crazy. She just gave me a puke bath earlier. Mind you, I had just had my evening shower, and I had to get right back in again.

So today I bleached everything. Every spot that anyone could conceivably touch. Every countertop, tabletop, light switch, and doorknob. Hopefully, that chases the bugs away.

On a good note, sometimes kids really make the rain clouds go away. I was explaining thunder and rain to my son today as a storm system moved through our area. I told him that thunder and lighting let the rain come, and the rain makes the trees and grass green. You know what he looked at me and said . . .?
"Cool"

A (not so) far away land

There is a land, not so far away, that you don't need a passport to visit. You don't need air miles, or even an overnight bag to visit. Where is this exotic and foreign place?
I'll give you a tiny hint. The most prolific wild animal is the tame dust bunny. It shares its natural home with wheat bread and hamburger buns.
The land I'm referring to is the land of confiscated toys. My little piece of paradise happens to be found on the top of my Whirlpool refrigerator. Sometimes, in other places, this land can be found in drawers and closets. Remember, this magical place can be found in ANY home with children.
When I was a child, our land of confiscated toys was in my parent’s closet. Sometimes our Atari or later our Nintendo would disappear into it's depths for weeks at a time.
There are several toys in the land at the moment. They tend to fall into three categories. The first, and most important, are toys that are incredibly annoying to parental units. These toys are hidden in the hopes that the child will forget it ever existed. The second category is toy that your child has been grounded from. For example, my son likes to throw his trains across the room when he gets frustrated. Therefore, I have at times three complete trains on top of my refrigerator. Engine, freight cars, and caboose, it's all up there! It is a very colorful addition to my black appliance.
The third is possibility dangerous small toys that you child might grow into at a later date. As soon as my son opens a package, this mean mom is quickly hiding all the small accessories that come with it. Right now, I have several happy meal toys that are not quite appropriate for two years olds up there.
What's in your land of confiscated toys? Keep in mind you can also apply this theory to pets and clueless spouses!

Handy Manny

I did several things today that I'm really proud of. Just thought I would share . . .
The first thing I did was to figure out how to strip down my Kirby vacuum cleaner and attached the carpet cleaner that I have never used. I have never used it because it's pretty complicated to attach it all to the vacuum. I had to do this because my son puked all over the brand new carpet in the family room. Luckily, it came out and the solution left a pleasant scent. As I was stripping the carpet cleaner back down, cleaning out all the associated bits, and turning it back into my kick ass vacuum cleaner, my son threw up again on the carpet. That will teach me to get ahead of my self.
The second thing I did today that I am proud of is that I cleaned up all that puke without puking myself. Gross . . . But I think the ability to suppress the gag reflux is a mom thing.
The third thing I did today that I am proud of is that I stripped down my sewing machine, cleaned it all out, and oiled it using only the shoddy instructions from Singer.
Do I smell a career in small appliance repair in my future? Maybe. And I apparently don't even need to take a mail order course!

Sleep

Sleep seems to be in a short supply lately. Of course, with a new baby, you sort of expect not to get any.
Lyrics from a Barenaked Ladies song keep running through my mind, "Sleep - never gonna get it. Sleep - tell me what's that for? Sleep -- be happy with what you’re getting . . . "
My daughter has her days and night's mixed up. It started out with some wicked colic and gas. Now that we have her past that, she just doesn't want to sleep in her bed.
I've tried almost everything. Books about baby sleep line my room. I'm single-handedly contributing to the New York bestseller's list. My old standby, Ms. Gina Ford, English nanny and sleep expert hasn't even solved the problem.
The problem is that the baby just resists any type of schedule. My son is completely the opposite. He loved his schedule from the first day he came home. In fact, you attempt to deviate from it, and your going to hear about it.
My son is a champion sleeper. due in part to the above mentioned Ms. Gina Ford. Her book, "The New Contented Baby Book" is a wonderful thing. I'm just hoping that at some point, my daughter will be able to adjust to a better schedule, and Mommy will be able to get some much needed shut eye.

In other news, I'm going to be starting a new job. I will be working from home for a marketing company taking orders and handling customer service inquiries. It will be perfect for me, because I can set my own hours and dates I work. I can work just a few hours a week, and exercise my brain just a little bit. Plus, I'm going to be earning a little bit of mad mommy money. I've finished the training, and look forward to starting soon. They just have to do a background check, to make sure I'm not a credit card thief or a convicted felon. I probably won't be doing a lot of it at first (see above about sleep deprivation) but it's good to have something to do when I want to.

Joy

I have a poster that has some kitschy sayings on it. My favorite line on this poster has really reverberated in my life and has stuck with me a while.
The line is, "Don't postpone joy to clean the bathroom or scrub the kitchen sink."
For some reason, this line goes through my head a couple times a day. Even before I had children I held on to this saying.
I think the reason it means so much to me is that it is an easy way to say, "Hey, slow down, enjoy life, don't get worried about stupid sh*t."
I tend to get uptight and obsessive about things sometimes. I enjoy a clean, uncluttered home. However, the ideal picture of perfection is not always attainable.
Let's put it this way. When I was working, I could come home from work and stress about the unwashed laundry and dirty kitchen, or I could sit down and have a nice chat with my husband about his day.
On the weekend, I could spend all day scrubbing floors and toilets, or go for a nice walk and enjoy the sunshine.
Now that I have children, this is even more important. I can vacuum floors, or color with my son. I can dust cabinets, or snuggle with my newborn.
I always kid one of my good friends. It seems like she is always ironing or getting ready to iron her fresh laundry. I kid, "Ironing? What's that?" I retired my iron a long time ago. If it needs ironed on a daily basis, I don’t' buy it. My husbands work clothes go to the cleaners. It's just a few bucks a month, and the time I save by not ironing is invaluable to me. If I win the lottery, I'm having a cleaning person come four times a month, just to clean bathrooms.
It's a good thing we like to entertain friends and family. If we never had vistors, my house wouldn't get cleaned as often. In fact, I told my husband the other day to invite a co-worker to our house, just because I needed an excuse to clean.
Which is not to say that I never clean. My philosophy is just this, if you are in the moment enjoying shared time, it isn't necessary to jump up and do housework.
If I'm doing dishes, and my son brings me a book that he wants me to read, I usually put the dishrag down and cuddle in with him.
If I'm putting clothes in the laundry and my son wants my attention, we play a fun game of sock basketball.
It's all in how you spend your time. Remember not to postpone joy. We only live once. If you die tomorrow, does it really matter if the bathrooms are clean?

Tater Head

As all of my family knows, I have a love of potatoes. My dad used to say that I was probably Irish in a previous life.

As a child, I used to eat them raw, with just a little salt sprinkled over them. At an early age, I perfected the perfect hashbrown. Golden fried in butter, soft and white on the inside.
Strangely, it wasn't until I was older that I discovered other types of spuds. I now love parsley buttered red potatoes, crusty rosemary roasted Yukon’s, and baked sweet potatoes heaped with brown sugar and butter.

My brother-in-law loves my Hashbrown Casserole, made with hot sausage and frozen prepared hashbrowns, baked with a sour cream and cheese base. He paid me a dear complement when he declared, "You make the best hashbrowns."
My husband is a big fan of the Hot German Potato salad. It has about a pound of bacon in it, and it tastes better if you don't drain off all of the bacon fat. Not the healthiest dish, but very good. The German heritage in my blood approves. Now all you need is a good pilsner. Hey, that's what a German Fest is for, right?

If there were a potato recipe contest, I would enter it.

In fact, I think my mother-in-law thinks I'm a little odd. Every time she asks, "What's for breakfast?" I reply, "Hash browns, of course." Sometimes we do have potato pancakes.
As much as I love potatoes, I really hate peeling them. The drudgery of it all gets to me. I could never peel potatoes for a living.

Have you ever picked a potato from a garden? Actually, they grow underground. When you dig them up, they are unpleasantly dusty and dirty.

One potato I haven't tried is the purple potato. They look interesting. I bet they would make a garish potato salad. If I ever see one in the store, I'll buy one and let you know how they taste.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I had a craving for potatoes. At one point, it was all I could eat without getting sick. I kidded around that I would name him Tater. Funny enough, mashed potatoes are his favorite dinner. With my second, I craved Salt and Vinegar Potato chips, which my husband kept taking away from me. He didn't think they were very healthy for the baby or me.

One of my son's favorite toys is Mr. & Mrs. Potato head. Now, you can buy all sorts of alternative outfits for them. I just bought the safari outfit, which comes with a monkey, an elephant, and a bird costume. It's too cute. He learned his body parts that way. I would hand him Mr. Tater heads nose, and he would put it in the correct spot. They also have a princess outfit I'm considering buying for Mrs. Potato head. Every girl deserves to be treated like a princess by her Spud in shining armor.
So what's for lunch? I'm having potato soup!

How to freeze your butt off

It has been freezing cold here in Indianapolis. So cold in fact, that you can leave your drink in the car and it will freeze into a solid chunk of ice. I am very glad we moved and got a garage so I can keep my car from freezing into a giant green colored ice cube.
The thermometer has been hovering around 0. Today, with the wind chill, it was in the negatives. It was the kind of cold you can't outrun on your way inside.
So, braving the cold, I headed out for my bi-weekly shopping day. I go sans kids, which makes shopping day almost a treat for me. I decided to range a little farther from home today, forgoing my usual Wal-mart run in favor of a Meier run. Meier is farther away, but they have a lot more selection and some good deals.
The place was a madhouse. It seemed like every person in Indianapolis was out buying beer and Fritos for the big Super Bowl event tomorrow. In Indiana, you have to buy your beer on Saturday, because for some idiotic reason you can't buy any kind of alcohol on Sunday. Dodging around Colts fans dressed in blue, who were buying anything that was dyed blue, I managed to completely fill my cart with assorted household products. None of which were dyed any shade of blue.
So heading out of the parking lot, I about hit about 3 old ladies (dressed in blue), 5 men toting light beer in commemorative Colts packaging, and 10 women (in Peyton Manning jerseys) carting out tons of Super Bowl party supplies. I finally got my shopping wedged into the truck of my Taurus around my huge double stroller. I even managed to find space to tuck in my free commemorative Colts flag they gave me at the door.
As I turned onto the main road, I gave my sporty sport Taurus SES a little gas and chirped the tires, dreaming that I was headed to the airport to catch the next flight to warm and sunny Miami to watch the Super Bowl. But alas, I lack the proper massive fundage to actually buy tickets. Well, maybe if I took out a second mortgage on my house and drained my savings, we could afford to go instead of just going to a Super Bowl party.
A few miles into my daydream, I head an ominous thumping sound coming from the rear of my car. I glanced at the road, wondering if it needed repaved. Alas, the sound continued. I pulled off into a fancy subdivision, put my blinkers on, and popped out of my car.
The expletive that flew out of my mouth next can only be rivaled by my drug free pontification a few weeks ago at the birth of my daughter. I had a fricken FLAT! It was only negative who knows what outside, I had a trunkful of groceries, and I had left the cell phone home with my husband.
On a good note, I do know how to change a tire. Thanks again dad, for making me learn how to change a tire before you would let me get my license. It has come in handy now on two occasions in my life.
I buttoned up my heavy coat, pulled my hat over my head, and stared at my gloveless hands. (Sigh). I knew this was going to suck BIG TIME. First, I had to haul all the groceries out of the truck and place them inside my car. Then I had to haul the big double stroller out of my car. Next, I took out the false floor of my truck and prayed that my spare was in working condition and that I had a jack.
Luckily I did. After laying on the cold pavement trying to find the correct spot to place the jack, and then wrestling with the jack to slowly slowly slowly turn its frozen handle the correct way, I managed to use every bit of strength I had to break the lug nuts free. Then I had to man handle the old tire off and put the donut on. Finally, after loosing all feeling in my hands, legs, and butt, I managed to get everything done and everything back into the truck.
And it only took me 45 minutes of intense painful cold to get this done. Of course, I took just as long to warm up.
And that my friend, is a great way to freeze your butt off.

New Baby Girl Miller

Our new baby girl arrived on Saturday, Jan 5th. She is cute as a button. She came early, just like her brother, but she was a week older at 36 weeks.
Apparently, I have a problem with getting sick and having complications when I'm pregnant. With both, I had preclampsia, which is a bad thing. Basically, you can't control your blood pressure. It gets all out of wack. In the initial stages, it causes headaches; spotty vision then can progress to seizures and strokes. It can also develop into a condition called HELP, which I had with my son, which causes your liver and kidneys to shut down.
I was really sick with my son. They really didn't catch it very early, and I was working. I was kind of clueless. Finally, when they did catch it, I had full-blown preclampsia. It's a wonder I didn't have a stroke or seizure. I had to be on all these monitors at home on bed rest. When I finally had him, he was born at 35 weeks. He ended up having to spend a week in the NICU with some problems. I was a mess. A TOTAL mess. I was so worried and sick. However, almost two years later, he is a happy and healthy boy.
So when I found out I was expecting again, I was terrified. I took my butt to visit a very good local OB/GYN who told me that it was unlikely I would get the condition again. Apparently, it is more common to get it the first time, and then never again. He said that my chances were about 20% to have it again, but then he checked my chart and said that because I had it so severely, that I would have about a 36% chance.
So he said that really, there was nothing I could do to prevent it. Just try to be healthy, and not overdue it too much. I was told to "take it easy" at about 32 weeks.
When I moved, my new (well recommended) doctor told me the same thing. She began to monitor me closely. She got worried when I started showing some early signs, and then it seemed like I was there every day.
I was really worried I would have another sick baby. I behaved myself, and was on strict bed rest. Let me tell you, strict bed rest is really hard when you have a two year old who doesn’t understand why Mommy can't play and have fun.
Luckily, I had great help from family and friends. Without them, I don't know what I would have done. Special thanks to my Mom, who spent four days with us. She took excellent care of my son. He was really happy to have grandma, and I know she made the situation easier for him.
Thanks to my good friend Claire, who helped out watching my son when I had to make sudden trips to the doctors and for being such a good listener and friend.
Thanks to all my other friends (you know I love you all) who have been so supportive and have offered all their time and love to us.
Anyway, little girl Miller arrived at 36 weeks healthy and happy. She takes after her father. She loves to eat, and seems to be a happy and contented little thing. She got to come home with us, which was awesome, and I got to have all the newborn experiences that I missed out on with my son.

On a funny, ironic note, the new double stroller I ordered arrived on the same day as the new baby. It has been on backorder for six weeks!
Now I just have to get used too juggling two kids. It's going good so far, but my husband is going to be home with us this week. I'm dreading next week, but I'm sure we will get through it fine. Thanks to all!
New pictures are posted on our web site!