How Can I Get Mad?

A few days ago, I heard my kids yelling at each other in the other room.

"What's going on, guys?" I hollered over them as I poked my head in the room.

"Emily hit me!" was Lucas' reply.

"Emily," I said in a disappointed voice. "Why did you hit your brother?"

"Because...I love you." she said with a radiant smile on her face.

I looked at her not knowing how to reply.

"Because I love you SO MUCH!!" she added to sweeten her case.

It worked. I didn't send her to time out as I usually would have. I just gave her a hug and told her not to hit her brother anymore. How could I punish her with such a cute albeit suck up response?

I hope that I am not helping to create a future Eddie Haskel (the phony friend of Wally's on Leave It To Beaver).

2008 Family Portrait

This year instead of using the Target studio, we had our friend from church, Anna Robertson, do our family portrait. She is one awesome photographer and captured some great shots of us (a tough feat with 2 little kids and a husband that likes to shut his eyes in photos).













To see more of the photos, keep an eye out for your Christmas card that will get to you hopefully before the end of the year;-).

Little Miss Thing

Emily just got this new pink dream sweater in the mail for Christmas. Michael's Aunt Rosary crocheted it complete with a matching hat and purse. And to make it even more cute and perfect, it has these sweet bear buttons, too.

She has never gotten more compliments in a day...two people even took her to show off how cute she was to their coworkers.

I'm glad that it is a little big. Hopefully it will still fit her next winter. Huh, maybe I can try fit into it next year, too;-)?

By the way, my ultrasound is scheduled for January 9, so we will have to wait until then to know if we are having another miss thing or another little man.

Halloween Revisited

I never got around to posting a photo from Halloween this year. So now that Thanksgiving is almost here, I will do it.

My kids dressed up as Spider Girl (it was Lucas' costume but I added a red tutu and a bow in the hair!) and a firefighter. They had a great time this year and went trick or treating twice. That means LOTS of candy for mom, I mean them;-).

The first time was at a Harvest Festival at the church that Lucas goes to school. They had a Trunk or Treat in the parking lot with 50 or so cars and about 20 bikers for Jesus giving out candy. It was a cool community event that we hope to make a family tradition.

The second candy run was on Halloween when daddy took them out for a half and hour or so around the neighborhood. They would have gone longer, but it started to rain.

But the best part of the day for the kids was giving out candy to our costumed visitors. Lucas was opening the door, grabbing the big bowl and handing out the candy himself. He did great. "See you soon," he'd say as they left. So cute!

Keep On Growing

I ran today, yet my pants didn't fit afterwards. My shirts are getting tighter and starting to creep up. And is that a rubber band looped through the button hole of my corduroys? What is going on??

I think that I've got a case of the baby flu. A 14 week case so far. Luckily, besides the waist (etc.) expansion, I feel pretty fine.

Ouch!

I zipped my expanding belly into my pants today. Does that mean that I should quit kidding myself by wearing normal clothes and pull out the maternity ones already?

I know that after I do, I will wonder why I put it off so long. They are so roomy and glorious.

I am definitely starting to look like a hooch in my regular clothes. The "she really shouldn't be wearing that" look.

On a side note...what do you think of the name Jolina for a girl? Lucas made it up and it combines my mother-in-law's name-Jo with a great friend's name-Lina. A friend just told me it sounded ethnic. Your thoughts?

P.S. Photos of the big belly to follow soon!

Sucky Times

Today, I realized that something has got to give. There are times in my day that really stink and something about them has got to change.

The most trying times, I find are meals and attempting to get my kids ready when we need to be out the door. Yep, those are really sucky times. The times where I hate the sound of my bossy voice. Where I am trying to keep control of the situation and am grossly unable. What can I do different?

Do I expect too much out of a 2 and 3 year old? I want them to eat their meals in a timely fashion and exhibit basic table manners. They just don't care about eating and are screwing around at the table much of the time. It makes me nagging and miserable.

And getting ready in a time crunch is equivalent to poking out my eyes with a fork. So painful and darn near impossible with a good attitude.

How can I be more easy going, less stressed and still get my kids to do what I want?

Name Ideas

I am in love with the name Charlotte now. Is Charlotte Lomonaco too long of a name? Is it too spider? What do you think? Mike is not as much of fan as me because of the length (9 letters). At least it is only two syllables despite all of it's letters.

I think that I am having a girl. That is what it looked like to my untrained eye at my ultrasound this week, anyway. The technician thought so, too, though it is pretty early still. We will see.

Jacob Evan is our boy choice at this point.

Other girl ideas: Allison, Angela, Caroline, Hailey (it rhymes with Emily, though), Carys (it rhymes with Lucas, though).

So tough. I used my favorite all-time names already. And you don't want to screw this decision up because it lasts a lifetime.

P.S. There is only one baby in there. SHEW! I was a little freaked out at the remote possibility of having twins. Now that would really push me over the edge.

Spewage

I haven't felt like blogging latetly. I am too tired and too down to make the time and take the brain power to write much of anything.

These are some hard times. We still have not sold a vehicle after buying the minivan this summer. We didn't anticipate that it would take so long-3 months and counting. We had both other cars on the market (the Escape and Mike's 300-ZX) up until recently. Now we are just focusing on selling the Z, as we could never fit 3 kids in the microscopic backseat. Anyway, it is a small scale version of being stuck with two houses again. Thank goodness that a car is MUCH less of a financial burden. We keep having interest in the cars and offers made, but they have been really pathetic, low-ball offers. Like 3K less than asking price (and we have priced the vehicles pretty fairly and keep lowering the price each week). It's depressing.

I have serious sleep issues. Whenever I am upset or stressed, my sleep suffers greatly. It is rare for me to have a good night's sleep these days. I am up for hours tossing and turning and mulling things over in the middle of the night almost every night. And to make matters worse, Lucas is starting to give up his naps so I am hardly getting a break during the day. I am one fried mama. We are working on having quiet rest/play time in his room, but the trick has been to get him to stay in there. It's been pretty butt-kicking.

Our finances are beyond tight. Last month almost all of our bills were paid late. I am sick of getting calls from the mortgage company and threatening letters about turning off our power. Mike is working extra hours now, too, and getting paid more for it. Yet we don't seem to have any financial freedom. We have a roommate so that we can afford to live, that in itself is full of challenges.

I am finding that I am quite a bitter, angry grumbling person these days. I am not very tolerant of others differences. I am not very compassionate when my kids get me up in the middle of the night. I am very selfish. It has been a miserable way to live and I need to change things.

I had a thought yesterday when praying to God about how to handle this problem. I think that I need to Thank God for the challenges and growth opportunities. For the refinements. Thank God instead of bitching in my head all of the time. The bitching gets me nowhere but sick.

Fears

I am finding myself more fearful in this pregnancy for some reason. I think about miscarriage more. I worry that I am carrying twins. Lucas prayed this morning that there would be two babies in mommy's belly. That's just great! I wanted to tell him to shut up.

I worry that the baby (ies) will be unhealthy or have some sort of deformity. I have been so blessed with two beautiful, healthy and wonderful children so far. How could I have another one?

Will this new baby be a terror? The first two are pretty mild mannered and behaved.

Can I even handle another? I feel on the verge of insanity at times!

God please calm these worries and give me peace. I know that you only give us what we can handle/are capable of with your strength. Help me to lean into and trust you.

Cravings

• Sleep
• That my kids would sleep in past 6 in the morning (this morning was around 6:30 and I was praising God).
• McDonald's chocolate shake and fries
• A clean house (one that would be self cleaning, preferably)
• An end to my busy schedule (planning Emily's birthday party, preparing lessons for 5 more weeks of children's program at church, etc.)
• To finish season 3 of The Office before season 5 starts this week.
• Quiet (often when I attempt to nap our neighbor is outside doing yard work with power tools and his radio blaring or the kids next door are shrieking outside)
  
• Did I mention sleep?

Positively Growing

Well folks, it's a good thing that we got that minivan over the summer because we are going to be needing it in the next 9-10 months. I am positive of that!

I peed on the test stick this morning and got a strong plus sign. That means that our family of four is growing into a family of five. We are positively insane;-).

So hip hip hooray for a new little Lomonaco on the way!

Spit and Vinegar

Is the expression really piss and vinegar? Well whatever it is, my daughter is full of it sometimes.

Emily, my second child, is full of sass. She puts up with nothing, as her older brother tries to muscle her around. One of her favorite expressions is "Go Away (sometimes followed by mama, much to my delight)." She alternates this fun phrase with "Leave me ALONE." Often she says one of these while swinging her arm to knock over whoever is invading her space. And she growls it with this mean, raspy voice that you wouldn't imagine could come out of such a cute little thing. My little spitfire is not playing and will not be pushed around.

So here is an example of how her little feisty personality came out today...

One of my friends in my mom's group commented that Emily had such cute little sandals on.

And not knowing how to take the compliment my sweet 23 month old, yells (in her gruff, mean voice, of course), "NO!! EMILY'S SHOES!"

"Don't worry, Emily. I won't take your shoes." said the friend.

I am sure that Emily was saying "Go away" in her head, but I coerced her to sweetly say "Thank You" instead.

I have been trying to teach her that it is not ok to say "Go away" all of the time. And sometimes during these lessons, she whispers it to me.

What a stinker!

Future Ambitions

This week, Lucas shared some of his aspirations with me.

"When I grow up, I want to be an acrobat, a ballerina and a dentist."

Lately we play acrobats on a daily basis, rolling around on the floor, trying to stand on our heads, balancing him up in the air on my feet, etc. Ballerina??? We do have a ballerina puzzle. And dentist?? He does like to brush his teeth (and wants to do it all by himself, though I rarely let him and I always follow up with the paste myself, just to be sure).

Today he added a new one to the list after we toured a local fire station with my mom's group. As a side note: It was an amazing field trip as one of the mom's in the group got her husband, fireman Dennis, to give us the grand tour. We saw their bedroom, kitchen, big screen TV, got to ride in the truck and spray the hose, hold their various tools, the kids even got "Fire Chief" helmets. My kids, especially Lucas, were in heaven. Even Emily got a turn with the hose. So fun...

I was talking about our memorable day at dinner and Lucas then added that he wanted to be a fireman someday. Actually earlier in the day he had said that when he was bigger he was going to go into the fire station and say "Can I drive the firetruck? Yes or No?" He makes me smile.

Another thing that made me chuckle was when we asked Emily at the table what she wanted to be when she grows up and she said emphatically, "Spiderman" with a straight, serious face.

Trials (and Joys) of Motherhood

We've had a busy morning. I had to take Lucas into the Pediatrician because he had blood in his stool yesterday (the third time that I have noticed it this summer). He checked him out and decided to have a stomach X-ray done. I had to wait for hours in the office with two wiggly kids and then had to get my 3-year-old to lie still by himself on a table to get a tummy X-ray. This is very scary stuff, but Lucas surprised me by being super brave. He is really growing up!

After all of that, it turns out that my boy is constipated. The doc could see the evidence in the X-ray. Just as I suspected all along, my kid is full of #$%*;-).

After a lovely anniversary picnic with Daddy, we had to stop by the store and pick up all kinds of food assistance (prunes, apricots, pineapple). Later I have to go back and pick up a couple of prescriptions for him, too.

I also need to get one for Emily, whose diaper rash yesterday was so bad her diaper had blood in it. I had her wear underwear for most of the day and even let her walk around with a bare bottom for awhile. It was like we were potty training. And it was a long day full of accidents and messes. She even pooped on the carpeting when she was bare. It wasn't solid either which made it especially fun to clean up.

When I got home today, I called my friend, Becky, who is sitting for us tonight so that we can go out and celebrate 8 years of marriage. She had just come home from the Emergency Room with her daughter who is Emily's age to remove a Lego that she had shoved up her nose. Sheesh. "We just got back from stomach X-rays."

It is never easy to be a mom (what an idiot I was, when I thought that it would be!!). But when they hug and cuddle you and tell you that they love you, it makes it all the day's challenges and troubles melt away. And when I see their angelic, content faces sleeping serenely, there is nothing in the world that I would rather be than their mama. Nothing harder, but nothing better!

Reading Maniac

I have had an insatiable appetite for books lately. In the past month or so, I have read the following:

• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
• Into the Wild
• Tuesdays with Morrie
• World Without End
• Authentic Parenting in a Postmodern Culture (this has been read on and off for a few months)
• The Bible (though not the whole thing in a month;-)

They were all most excellent, though World Without End by Ken Follett was the hardest to put down. And by far the longest. It was over 1000 pages and I finished it in a week and a day. That meant that I spent almost all of my free time with my nose in it's pages, stayed up entirely too late every night and fought harder than usual to stay awake every day. It was an exciting epic tale of corruption in the church, gay nuns and monks, cathedrals, knights, outlaws, the plague, love and loss in 14th century England. It was also the sequal to Pillars of the Earth which I read a few years ago when Lucas was a baby. WOW!

It is time for me to take a reading sabbatical for at least a few days anyway. I need to clean the house, talk to my husband and feed the kids again. Seriously, I sat down the other day with them and read while they played in the sandbox and later watched Bambi.

Any good book suggestions once my reading fast is through??

Vacation Highlights

Grody Head

So after 9 days of no real washing, my hair didn't look half bad in the end. Sure the greasy locks contributed to some enormous zits on my forehead that still haven't cleared up. But despite those and the fact that I felt grosser than usual most days, I found out that I really don't need to daily wash the hair.

A couple people suggested using baby powder to help freshen the head, so I hesitantly tried it. It left me with a gross baby butt smell, a funky texture and powdered looking, grayish hair. I do not recommend this method.

I also found that I could wash most of it if I was careful in the tub not to get the stapled part in the water. I did this several times. I also used a shower cap on the top of my head and just washed the bottom part a few times, too.

The ironic thing about the above mentioned shower cap was that we got it at a hotel the day before my accident. Michael picked it up in the hotel bathroom and said, "Does anyone actually use these things?" I reminded him about the time he had stapes in his head and how a shower cap would have been useful as I slipped it into our bag "just in case we need it sometime." Little did I know I would be using it the next night.

On another interesting (and somewhat disgusting) sidenote: I got a stomach bug the evening that I was supposed to get my staple out. As luck would have it, I ended up puking in the already filthy hair. Still feeling kind of sick, I decided that I had to go in anyway so that I could wash my freakin' hair already. I drove myself in and got the staple out and got myself home just in time to be sick again. Nice, huh.
It seems that I did attempt to partially wash or powder my hair almost every day. So I guess that is why it didn't look so very bad after 9 long days.

By the way, I am feeling better now and I have really been appreciating my showers again!!

Metal Head

I officially have metal in my head again. The last time I had this I was 14 years old waiting to get my braces off. The braces lasted 4 years (I think). This staple that I now have gracing my skull will be out in another week. Thank goodness for that because I have to keep my head dry until then. No washing the hair until it's removal, though I cheated twice, trying to keep the area hair dry and failed miserably. I even had to go back in the the morning the day after it was inserted to "get my head checked" and see if I had to have it restapled. The staple felt like it was pulling out. Probably because I got it wet the evening before. Luckily, it was ok that day. Just now, I was able to wiggle it like a loose tooth, though. Hmmm. Is that normal?

So, why do I have this staple in my head you ask?

Well, the afternoon after we returned home, I was in a frenzy of getting organized again. Dirty clothes were in sorted piles on the kitchen floor. Grocery bags were on the table waiting to be unpacked. Mike and I were talking and both started to start putting the groceries away in the kitchen cabinets. I looked down and noticed that the kid's laundry pile had their filthy white socks and decided to sort them into our load for bleaching. I didn't pay attention to the fact that the kitchen cabinets were standing open above me and bent to sort the socks. When I stood up straight, the cabinet door (which felt like it was made of petrified wood) went right into my head. I crumpled to the floor and cried. I am a tough girl, but it hurt that bad! I just knew that it was bleeding and sure enough I had an open wound.

That night, I took myself to an emergency clinic to get my head fixed. A tetnus shot and one staple later (they actually use a medical staple gun to put it in!) and I am doing better. Let's just hope my hair holds out for a week of no washing and that I don't catch the staple on the brush anymore. That really smarts.

Signed,
One Greasy Woman

P.S. I will post a photo of how bad the do looks on the last day! Stay tuned...

She'll Eat Anything (except real food)

We just returned home (Saturday night) from a road trip to Colorado for a week of camping. It was a fun time, but I am still recovering from the vacation. The car isn't fully unloaded, there are still piles of laundry to do and put away, etc.

Here is a funny story from our adventures:

Along the way, we stopped at a gas station to fuel up, get drinks and use the potty. I took both kids inside with me to potty while Mike pumped the gas. I had just sat on the bowl when I noticed Emily quickly bend down, snap something small and brown off the gas station bathroom floor and shove it into her mouth. Oh no she didn't.

"Spit that out! Yucky!!!!" I screamed. I was up in an instant, reaming out her mouth all the while gagging in my head. She began crying as I fished a brown M&M out of her pie hole. Gaaaaarossss!

I think that it was one that had fallen off of her clothes and onto the floor (we had been snacking on the treat in the car). Shew, at least it was a food substance and probably ours. Perhaps she was following the 5 second rule.

Sorry sweetheart, that rule doesn't apply in a public restroom!!

So my Emily hardly ate any real food on this trip. And we offered her some of her favorites. She just ate when it was off of a filthy, germ infested plate called the bathroom floor. Yuck.