Dillierama

Best 75 cent activity EVER

I whipped up a batch of cornstarch and water for Alex to play with yesterday, what I will forever call "alien play dough" cause that is some weird ass shit!  You can crumble it up or even pick up a big piece and snap it in half like chalk, but then let it sit in your hands and it "melts" and drips right through your fingers.  I set Alex up at the counter with a toy car, a spoon and a big bowl of the alien play dough and he was occupied for HOURS.  I'm not exaggerating one bit.  He was completely fascinated with it.  I took the opportunity to clean the entire house, do some laundry, mop the floors, clean bathrooms... WIth the exception of the three foot by three foot area he was playing in, our house was spotless! 

After what had to be three and a half hours of playing with the cornstarch mixture, Alex started eating it so I figured it was time to take it away.  The designated play area was coated in white and Alex had it in his hair, between his toes, in his Pull Up, in his ears...  I've never seen the kid so throughouly covered before.  It was surprisingly easy to clean, just needed to spray Alex down in the sink and wipe up the cornstarch off the counters, cupboards and floor and done.  I will definately be making that stuff again sometime.  Who knew a 75 cent box of cornstarch could be so much fun?

There are only two options

Alex is getting back on track with the potty training, but is insisting on always having a toy with him to play with while on the toilet.  Ok fine.  John does Sudoku, I read Time magazine, Alex needs matchbox cars.  He finishes pooping, stands up to look in the toilet at what he did, then promptly throws his car into the toilet.  The car floats down to rest on a big juicy turd. 

Alex is laughing hysterically.  I am simultaneously pissed, disgusted and faced with a decision.  Do I reach in and grab the car?  Do I flush it down and hope it doesn't compromise our plumbing?  Both options are completely unacceptable to me, but I have to choose.  I grabbed the car.  John can never accuse me of not being serious about our financial goals, because I put my entire hand into a toilet filled with someone elses poop in order to save us a potentially expensive plumbing problem.  I then scrubbed my hands and arms up to my elbows until they hurt then threw the car away because it will never, EVER be clean enough again.

A trip to the zoo

• While walking from our car across the parking lot to the zoo entrance, we were followed by a family with approximately 57 children, all under the age of 10.  They were all running and/or screaming and scaring the living shit out of Alex who was running and pulling on my hand, periodically looking back at the pack of rabid children and wailing "They're chasing me!  They're chasing me!"
• Our zoo has a big stone ball water fountain that kids can play with.  Alex did not want to leave that water fountain.  EVER. 
• Made the mistake of going into the zoo's gift shop and Alex saw some toy trucks.  For the next twenty minutes he begged to go back to "the chuck store"
• Alex is afraid of monkeys.  Who knew?
• Alex and his friend Caden escaped the monkey house and ran away so fast that I couldn't catch up to them until they got to the rinos (passing the white crocodile and elephants).  This is a really long way for a pregnant woman to chase two 2.5 year olds.  Take my word for it.
• We lost my friend's four year old in the big cats area.  He was hiding, hoping to jump out at us when we walked by, but for a while, we really thought we'd lost him.
• The tiger (which Alex had been looking forward to seeing) and the leopard were both pretty active, for zoo cats anyway.  They both were walking around and showing themselves off.  We also got a demonstration of the tiger spraying his sleeping area. 
• Out of all the animals, Alex was most impressed with the crocodiles, who weren't doing anything but laying in their pond.
• Alex is also afraid of giraffes.  He had to suck it up and look at them though because I wanted to see the new baby giraffe.
• While Alex played in the playground, I sat on a bench next to a breastfeeding mother.  I could have sworn my milk was letting down, I could feel it.  I actually had to check to make sure I didn't have a wet shirt.  I didn't, but the sensation continued for about five full minutes.  Apparently the dairy is getting ready to open again.
• We actually did loose my friend's 2.5 year old at the kiddie playground.  Alex and I ended up finding him thank goodness, but it was very scary for a while there.
• I swear Alex had to pick up every single stick, pebble and discarded gummy bear he saw on the ground.  While this was very annoying, it was also nice because at least while he was doing this, he wasn't running away from me.
• As we were leaving the zoo, Alex wanted to look at the big water fountain at the entrance.  I warned him five times before we got to the fountain that he'd better not throw his car, Ramone, in the fountain because I wouldn't be able to get it back for him.  Guess what he did the second he got within throwing distance?  I drove home with Alex wailing from the backseat "MAMONE!  MAMONE!!  We left him! He in da water!  MAMONE!"

We did have fun, but it is much too hard to keep track of three boys at a busy zoo without leashes.  Alex fell asleep in the car about 10 minutes before we got home, then refused to take a nap.  I'm exahusted.  Three hours at the zoo felt like running a damned marathon today.  I was counting on a nice long nap, but Alex is still too worked up about having so much fun to relax.  Good thing I've got the night off tonight.  Going to see a movie with some friends while Alex stays home with John.  I think I deserve it today.

Misc. updates

Potty update - stalled

Somehow, in the last week, we've gone from having Alex pretty much potty trained, to "Potty?  What's a potty?".  All week he's been wetting his Pull ups between potty trips, even when I shortened them to every 30 minutes!  He was still good about telling me he had to poop, so I didn't worry about it until yesterday afternoon, he'd had a successful potty-poo earlier, and we were watching Ratatouille and he was eating lunch and I smelled it.  He'd pooped his pants and didn't want to stop watching the movie so not only did he not tell me he had to go, he didn't even tell me he had gone (normally, if he has an accident, he'll tell me while he's pooping or after he poops).  It wasn't even runny (I give him the benefit of the doubt that runners can be hard to predict and accidents more likely), he had to work on that one, yet he didn't say a word.  He did it again this morning during Curious George.

The only change from last week to this week is the fact that I'm not doling out gummy worms for potty deposits anymore.  He'd stopped eating regular food entirely, presumably because he was all filled up with potty treats, so I weaned him off of them.  He started eating food again, but stopped using the potty regularly.  Gah!  I'm going to go back to giving him treats for deposits and just hope a child can live on gummy worms and apple juice alone.

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Preschool - put off

We've decided to hold off on putting Alex in preschool this year.  Since Alex won't be attending Kindergarten for another three years, we decided we could wait a year to enroll him in preschool, this year we'll focus that money on our debts and hopefully be in a better place to afford tuition next year.  I am looking for some fun classes to enroll him in this summer though.  I'm hoping I'll be able to figure out a way to do this with Alex after the baby is born (most classes for his age are parent participating which will be difficult to do while having his brother strapped to my chest).

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Pregnancy - the swelling

I've had to remove my wedding rings, likely for the duration of the pregnancy.  I don't remember having to do this last time, but I'm sure I did as I had a much harder time with weight gain and edema with Alex.  I can still wear the rings, but my fingers are starting to look much more sausagey than normal and I thought I'd better remove them now before I had to get them cut off (the rings, not my sausage fingers).  I'm on the lookout for a nice chain to put them on because I'm feeling a bit naked without them.

I'm looking forward to Spring, not only for better weather, but I'm very excited about wearing nothing but flip flops as my feet are looking pregnant as well.

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Famous highschool classmates - I win!

John was very excited about David Archuleta on American Idol because he goes to the same high school John graduated from.  I am neither an American Idol fan nor a David Archuleta fan.  He's not my style.  John says I don't like him simply because he's from Utah.  While this might be true, I am a raving anti-Utetite, I still feel like he's got a "Brady Bunch" feel to him.  Talented, sure, but completely unoriginal. 

So now John and I have an unofficial contest.  Who is more closely associated to a famous person.  Even counting out my own personal relationship with Henry Winkler forged during a stint as an extra in a movie featuring Rick Schroder and Freddie Prinze Junior (who is married to Sarah Michelle Gellar, aka Buffy the Vampire Slayer - you'll see the connection soon) I got him beat.  I went to highschool with Jaime Bergman.  Playboy's October 1999 centerfold.  More importantly, she's married to David Boreanaz.  Angel, from Buffy!  Anyway you look at it, that's only two or three degrees of separation between me and beautiful, beautiful David Boreanaz.

Plus the fact that I actually KNEW Jaime (though she was a cheerleader and I... well, I was not. I was in Colorguard. It's safe to say that we were not friends.  Plus, I thought she had stupid hair) and John graduated from Murray Highschool over a decade ago, I think I win, HANDS DOWN.

Pregnancy doesn't suck: Reason #3

No dieting!

As a person who has been dieting for at least two decades, it is a refreshing change to have dieting be expressly forbidden for nine months. 

I took the no dieting challenge very seriously last time, and quite successfully gained 60 pounds.  What can I say, I'm an overachiever.  This time, my goals are not so lofty.  I'm aiming to gain less than or equal to the recommended 25-30 pounds.  At my weigh in this week, I'm up 13 pounds, so I'm right on track.

The best part of not dieting is allowing myself to indulge, guilt free, in some pregnancy cravings.  Be it cream cheese frosting spread on graham crackers, Junior Mints or telling my husband "If you don't take me out for a steak right now I might have to eat you."

Admittedly, I have been slacking

John:  "Wow, the trash is full, it needs to be taken out"

Me:  "Yea, I wish someone would do that"

John:  "Well, if someone were still taking care of the domestic duties..."

Me:  "Domestic duties?  Domestic duties?!  Excuse me, but I've got a 24/7 domestic duty right here (pointing to belly).  I also have to push this domestic duty out of my vagina and feed it with my boobs, so don't you be talking to me about domestic duties!"

Pregnancy doesn't suck: Reason #2

Dreaming

A lot of pregnant women say that their dreams get really weird.  Usually centering around pregnancy and the new baby.  My dreams are much more vivid and interesting than ever when I'm pregnant, but only rarely have anything at all to do with the baby.  My pregnant dreams are like an action/adventure movie.  One night I'm a spy sent to track down an American shirtmaker hiding out in Yemen.  I am an expert in knife fighting and participate in high speed car chases.  The next night I'm caught up in a murder mystery where I befriend someone who has kidnapped three elderly people from an RV trade show.  I attempt to stop her from murdering them by helping her hide the people in her basement. I discover one of the hostages is her father and I try to set him free, when he turns on me and takes me captive then...Alex wakes me up because he has to use the potty.  Damn. 

These dreams feel so real, and unlike my non-pregnant dreams, I remember almost every detail long after I've woken up.  I look forward to going to bed because it's highly entertaining these days.

Preschool...continued

I've spent the last few weeks basically obsessing about Alex's future school career. Where and when to start him in preschool and worrying whether or not I should even be worrying about the stupid public school age cutoff.  I think I've got some things figured out.

I'm not going to worry about the age cutoff.  After talking to several other mothers (one of them being a Kindergarten teacher in a public school who also has a teen aged son who missed the cutoff by two months), I've come to the conclusion that giving him an extra year to mature and grow will only benefit him in the end.

My next worry was whether or not to start him in preschool this year and if so, where should he go?  After this morning, I've found the answer to both of those questions, the problem is, I need to get John on board.

As it turns out, I've chosen the Christian school as Alex's preschool.  There are several factors that brought me to this conclusion, not the least of which is the fact that it is affordable when compared to the other programs I'd investigated.  Once I started calling around to some recommended preschools, I found that the tuition (for schools in our area anyway) ranges from $300 to $600 per month.  PER MONTH!  FOR PRESCHOOL!  I mean, this isn't graduate school here.  What will they be doing for $600 per month?  Coloring with crayons made of gold?  I'd better be getting gallery quality art projects sent home every day for that price.  He'd better be speaking three languages and know how to perform brain surgery by the end of the year.  Forget preschool, if we had an extra $600 per month sitting around, let's buy a Maserati (well, we could probably insure the Maserati for $600 anyway). The Christian school is $120 per month with a $60 yearly "supply fee".  To keep costs down, they also require parents to volunteer a minimum of six hours per year.  That's more like it.

I took Alex to the preschool for a tour this morning and discovered that not only is the price right, I love the program.  The classes are small (1:8 child to teacher ratio), and they're focused on learning through play and experience.  In contrast to the other schools which are highly structured and focus on teaching through doing worksheets and such, this one lets kids be kids.  If he doesn't want to do the art project, well, he doesn't have to.  He doesn't sit and memorize his ABC's, he learns letters by seeing the labeled objects in the room.  He learns to count by counting out napkins for snack time or counting his friends.  This seems to fit right in with my own "hippie" parenting style.

The only downside to our tour was the fact that my sweet son morphed into an evil little troll the minute we walked in the doors.  He wouldn't talk to the program director.  He refused to play with the dinosaurs she gave him and instead tried to wreck her office.  He wanted desperately to play with the other kids, but that obviously wasn't possible, so he cried and said he wanted to go home.  Then, when we did finally leave, he cried "no bye bye!".  He pulled out every bad behavior in his repertoire.  After that display, I'm surprised she even bothered to give me a registration form.  I mean, why would they want to let this kid into their happy school?  It reinforced my feeling that going to preschool this year is exactly what he needs.

Sadly, the preschool is already full for this fall.  We can, however, get on the waiting list and she was confident that he'd be able to get into a class by September (apparently, there's a high number of kids pulled out due to not being potty trained before school starts.  Since Alex is well on his way to being potty trained already, this shouldn't be an issue for him).  Getting a spot in the school this year would also ensure he has a spot reserved for him for every year he attends the school (they only go to second grade).

John isn't thrilled about the idea of Alex going to a Christian school, but seems to have warmed up to the idea since I've assured him that he won't be hearing sermons or reading the Bible every day.  His major concern is the cost.  We're trying so hard to get our finances under control after our wild and crazy year last year.  $120 a month would go a long way to helping us pay off some of our debt.  But he hasn't dismissed it completely and is willing to mull it over and give me a definitive answer by Monday so I can get Alex a good spot on the waiting list should John decide we can in fact afford it this year.

Pregnancy doesn't suck: Reason #1

I was inspired by Maggie's "Pregnancy doesn't suck" entries when she was pregnant with Hank, and I thought it might be good for me to record some of the nicer aspects of being with child for a change.

This pregnancy has been different from my last, in that it's been significantly harder on me physically and emotionally.  Where I loved nearly each and every minute of my pregnancy with Alex, this whole second pregnancy has an air of "Get this over with already so I can get on with my life" to it.  It could be the "been there, done that" factor, or simply just the demands of raising a toddler make having a bulbous midsection, sore hips and off and on nausea just that much harder to handle. 

This being most likely the last time I experience the miracle of creating life, I'd like to have something to look back on positively.  So here it goes. 

Reason #1:  Boobs

In my opinion, no boobs are better than pregnant boobs.  If you've got small boobs, they get bigger.  If you have large boobs, they get larger, but in a nice "firm" sort of a way.  I've always had ample boobage myself, but they haven't been perky since I was a teenager.  My pregnant boobs are the closest to perky I'm ever likely to be without surgical intervention.

I loved my pregnant boobs the first time, then I got nursing boobs and they were downright frightening.  We're talking bigger than Dolly here, and were liable to spray you in the eye if you got close enough.  Luckily, they went back to their normal shape once Alex was weaned.  I felt lucky in that I didn't have to scoop them off the floor and roll them up into my bra.  But I sorely missed my pregnant boobs. 

Well, here I am, rocking the pregnancy boobs once again, and if I do say so myself, they are spectacular. John, a bonafide "boob man" wholeheartedly agrees. Sure, they're sore, but I'm focusing on the postives here!

Photographic evidence

Fist up, the first time I've ever seen John cook (re-heating soup in the microwave or making a bowl of Cheerios doesn't count).  A few weeks ago I had a craving for fried plantains, so I went out and bought a nice looking plantain.  John told me I needed to wait for it to turn black so the plantain would be nice and sweet.  So I waited, and waited, and waited...  By the time it was black, it had been sitting on my windowsill for three weeks and I was scared to even touch it, let alone fry it up and eat it.  John was not so squeamish and did the cooking for me: 

He wouldn't let me take a picture of him actually cooking these, as he was doing it in his underwear.  I made him taste the first one.  After waiting a few minutes and he didn't drop dead or turn green, I tasted one.  Even though they were a little burned, they were still awesome!  Next time I think we'll add a little garlic.  Yummy.

Last, after a temporary lapse in judgment, I let Alex watch an episode of Barney.  He's really been into dinosaurs lately, I thought he'd get a kick out of watching the big purple dinosaur.  Sadly, I was right:

It won't happen again.