I am not a packrat (unlike some people……JEFF), but I do tend to hoard things. Useful things, not bags full of Simpsons figurines or computers from 1930. I have a thing….could be my fake OCD coming out, who knows. I cannot run out of something. And by cannot, I mean CANNOT! I stock up on everything. Toilet paper, paper towels, dental floss, shampoo, etc. At any given time you can find at least 10 bottles of body wash, 5 bottles of shampoo, and 5 bottles of lotion in my bathroom…..(At one time I had 25 bottles of body wash - no exaggeration). Underneath my bathroom counter looks like a shelf in a grocery store. Imagine my surprise (and not a good one) when I ran out of toothpaste and went to grab a new tube and there was no tube to grab. Ummmmmm. SHIT! How in the world did that happen.  I could steal one of the 3 under Jeff’s counter, but we don’t use the same toothpaste and I NEED my toothpaste. Drat - looks like I’ll have to make yet another trip to Target. Me and Target are fast becoming best friends!!

Well……I hate to admit it, but I think I am turning into one of those moms. You know what I’m talking about….those moms who rant and rave over how great their kids are (and never shut up). Those moms who go on and on and on and on about their kids (even if its obvious nobody else cares). Those moms whose life suddenly is consumed with diapers, bottles, and crying babies….surely doesn’t make for very entertaining conversation (but they just keep yappering away about it anyway because they have absolutely nothing else to talk about). Those moms who think that a baby rolling over is the equivelant of winning an Olympic Medal (and if they did have an Olympic Medal for rolling over Shenzie Bear would totally win). Those moms who think that they have the cutest kids ever…..oh wait! I DO have the cutest kids ever!!!!

I think I must have a lot of aggression all stored up inside. I want to hurt a lot of people….and I mean A LOT of people.

  The stupid neighbor that revs his stupid Corolla up and down the street waking the babies….I will kick you. The same stupid neighbor that speeds his motorbikes up and down the street….I will throw a rock at you. The stupid neighbor that blares his rap music so loud the walls shake….I will poke your ears out. The stupid people that can’t drive…I will run you over. And the worst….the ladies who smoke with their kids in the car…I will punch you. The ladies who smoke with their kids in the car and all of the windows rolled up….I will poke out your eye balls and feed them to the dog next door. I really, really HATE stupid people, and unfortunately this world is chalked full of them. They should all be banned to the ‘Stupid Island’ so I wouldn’t have to want to hurt them all. What a better world it would be!

Let me put a disclaimer here that in our house we DO NOT talk about poop! Ever…so what you are about to read is me not talking about poop. Capisci (or as we Americans say - Capisce)?

 So poop. Good old poop. (Oh and by the way I’m totally trying to win a prize for saying poop as many times as I can in one post). When the babies were newborns they would poop like 5-6 times a day. That is quite a bit of poop, but at least it was odorless. Back then they were getting breastmilk and it would just flow right through them.  Then we introduced them to formula and the odorless yellow poop turned into some sort of green, smelly monster poop. I swear….it was STINKY! and GREEN! I am almost ashamed (but not quite) to admit I took a picture of one of the green poop diaper blowouts. I would be totally evil and post the picture, but I’m afraid Jeff would have a heart attack and that would be bad so I won’t post it…..but I’m sure you can imagine what it looked like. =) They were drinking Soy Formula and that really didn’t agree with their little tummies so I switched them to Enfamil Gentlease. Ahhhhh, sweet relief….the green poop was gone and we are back on track. As the babies got older the frequency of poop lessend. I am happy to say that we are down to once a day and sometimes even once every two days. And then………

  Introduction of solids. Ok. Now I was warned that when they started eating solids their poop would stink. My question is this. Poop stinks. No matter how you look at it - poop is stinky. How in the world does poop go from being stinky to downright ‘I want to chop off my nose so I won’t have to smell it’ stinky?!?!!? The stink! It stinks! Who knew that my two little, tiny, charming, sweet angels could smell so bad. And don’t even get me started on the new color. Lets just say it’s not pretty. I am scared to even think about feeding them brocolli or beans. I may have to hire a ‘poop cleanerupper’ to come do the dirty work for me!

Mommy’s pooping maniacs!

Am I crazy?!?!?!?!

  First I’m worried that the babies are not sleeping enough and are sleep deprived. I read sleep books, I search online, I talk to other mothers about how I can get them to sleep more. Now they are sleeping so much that I am worried they are sleeping too much. Crazy insane or insane crazy?!?

  Sleep is great! I love sleep! We are best friends! Oh sweet, sweet sleep!!!!

  The babies - BOTH of them are sleeping from 8pm until 6am ish….AND taking a 1.5-2 hour morning nap….AND taking a 1.5-2 hour afternoon nap….AND taking a 1.5 late afternoon nap. HOLY SHIT! We have hit the Golden Month!!! This is it. I can sleep!!!! Oh how I love you Golden Month!!! Oh how I love you sleeping babies!!!

p.s.

  Can you tell I love to sleep =)

p.p.s.

   And don’t try to burst my happy sleep bubble with talk of teething and crawling….I just want to enjoy the sleep a little longer.

Alternate Titles:

Wake me up and then fall asleep and I will hurt you

Oh So Close…so very, very close

I finally get sleep only to have it cruelly snatched away

Sleep - my precious, precious sleep.

You’re kidding me right?!?

I want to hurt my husband

    So I’m sure you can guess that last night’s sleep wasn’t all that and a bag of chips. It COULD have been all that and a bag of chips but nooooooooooooo…..Jeff had to get all crazy on me. Shenzie is finally sleeping through the night since BA so of course it is time for another wrench.

The night went something like this:

6:45p  Feed babies bottle

7:15p  Feed babies Oatmeal Cereal and Squash

8:00p  Tell babies bedtime story, sing babies bedtime songs and off to bed they go

8:05p  Both babies sound asleep, not a peep out of them

2:00a  Jeff comes to bed and tells me we need to talk

2:01a  I cry tears that my precious sleep is now gone and growl….what!?!!?

Him: Shenzie is sleeping on her stomach

Me:  ……………and?

  A little background here. I have been telling Jeff for weeks now that this would happen. She hates to sleep on her back and will only sleep if lying on her side with her head tilted at some crazy angle. It was only a matter of time before the side sleep turned into belly sleep since she is now a roly poly. I gave him all of the info I’ve read about babies sleeping on their bellies…basically you can turn them over 100x a night or get used to the idea that they are now belly sleepers. I removed everything from her crib last week and took the fluffy bumper down in preparation of this day so I am not worried at all. Then Heaten gets his foot stuck in the bars of the crib because I took the bumper out and cries bloody murder so Jeff says we should get one of those breathable bumpers. The kind that are BREATHABLE so they don’t pose a SIDS risk, but keep all flailing arms and legs in the crib. Ok, so I get the bumper….put it up…viola’ no more stuck legs. So you see…crib is safe, baby is safe, baby wants to sleep on belly, dad is crazy.

The conversation at 2:00am

Him: I’m worried…her face is all pressed into the bumper

Me:  Well, it’s the breathable bumper so I’m sure it’s fine

Him: I’m still worried, what if she can’t breath…her face is really pressed into it

Me:  Well, if you’re that worried you can stay up all night and stand guard at her crib to make sure she is breathing

Him:  I’ve already turned her over x amount of times, she just keeps rolling back to her belly

Me:  Well, remember when we talked about this and I told you it would happen and not to be worried

Him: What is the bumper made out of?

Me:  BREATHABLE mesh…the kind that she can breath through

Him:  Do you think we should take it out?

Me:  If it will help you sleep better lets just take it out

Him:  But then what if her arms get stuck in the bars or her head is pressed right up against the hard crib

Me:  Well, that’s one of the reasons we got the bumper in the first place…the flailing arms and head hitting the crib

Him: I’m going to check on her again

Me:  If you wake her up by moving her you can stay up with her all night long, I’m going back to sleep

  *Side note…I have a really, really, REALLY hard time going back to sleep after I’ve woken up in the middle of the night. Sometimes it takes hours for me to get back to sleep - Jeff has no such problem - his head hits the pillow and he is out.

Him:  One minute later……SNORE

Me: Thinking to myself ‘You’re kidding me right’

Him: Snorrrre, Snorrrre, Snorrre

Me: Awake until 4am when I finally fall asleep…lying in bed the entire time thinking I want to hurt my husband

5:00a Shenzie is crying because she is stuck on her belly

5:05a Shenzie wakes Heaten up with her crying

5:06a Heaten is crying

5:07a Mommy gets up to soothe babies back to sleep

5:30a Shenzie is crying because she is stuck on her belly

Etc. etc. until 6:45a when we finally declare it is morning and get up to eat

7:15a I wake Jeff up

Him:  I’m soooooo tired

Me:  Don’t even go there Mr. I wake my wife up and then fall asleep while she is awake for hours because I’m crazy!

So now we have a belly sleeper, a crazy dad, and a tired mom.

The bad thing about belly sleeping……when they spitup and don’t move away from the spitup you get something like this:

 And our good little back sleeper

 Suicidal Binkies

  This weekend we had to enroll Shenzie in BA….Binkies Anonymous. She has an addiction that is taking over her sleep and needed intervention. She CANNOT fall alseep without her binky and wakes anywhere from 10-12 times a night needing it put back in. Last time I checked binkies were supposed to HELP babies sleep, not keep them from sleeping. So the mean mom and dad decided it was best to go cold turkey and take her precious binky away. This did not happen without a fight….but I am happy to say that in two days of binkylessness she is a new baby! Well, a new sleeping baby anyhow. She went from waking allllll night long to sleeping from 8 pm to 7am with one wakeup. ONE. The one wake up consists of her fussing for all of a minute and going right back to sleep. Halleluiah!!!!!!

  Of course things cannot be perfect and there must always be a wrench. First wrench…she found her thumb. She only sucks it when going to sleep so not too bad, and at least I don’t have to get out of bed a hundred times to find her thumb for her. Second wrench…our sound sleeping Heaten has decided that Shenzie was getting WAY too much attention with the whole sleep thing and decided he wanted in on the action as well.  Last night Shenzie went to sleep only to have Heaten wake her up numerous times with his screaming. Not just any screaming, but the screaming that makes you want to poke your eyes out. What happened to my good sleeper? Why ,oh why must they torture me so!

Dear Auntie Kristy,

   We want to wish you a HUGE baby congratulations!!! Mommy told us you are having another baby which means we get another cousin. We are SO excited!!!! We are going to have so many cousins to play with and we can’t wait!!!

   We know you are scared of having another baby, but it will be ok. Our mommy talks to us all the time and tells us what a great mommy you are to our cousins Alexee and Braiden and we know you’ll be the best mommy ever to the new baby. Daddy said he thinks you are going to have a girl too. We heard you are feeling a little under the weather and we hope it passes soon. We know we are a lot, and I mean A LOT of work, but our mommy tells us there is nothing better in the whole world than babies and we know she is always right because she tells daddy that all of the time so we have to believe her!!

  We can’t wait to meet all of our new cousins this year!!!!

   We love you Auntie,

    Love,

      Shenzie and Heaten

Last year we bought what was said to be the greatest vacuum ever! The good old Dyson. Oh how people rant and rave over this thing. Now don’t get me wrong, this is a great vacuum……..when it is not growling and making the most horrible sucking/strangling/growling noises when you vacuum over a rug. 

 I like a clean house……well, that is not quite true…. I LOVE a clean house, it is just getting it clean that has become such a challenge. While I was on bedrest and for the first three months the babies were here we had a cleaner…oh Gloria how we miss you! Now it is up to me to keep this place clean and I do try, but it is not the same as coming home to that yummy clean house smell where everything is clean all at once. I have to clean by rooms…Monday is the kitchen, Tuesday is the bathrooms etc. I try to vacuum upstairs (the only place with carpet) at least twice a week, but now that Heaten is scared of the vacuum it is making it very hard to do.

  While vacuuming the bathroom rugs the Dyson does its growling thing and Heaten promply bursts into tears. Real tears mind you. The kind that make your eyes water and drip down your face tears. I was so sad for him, sitting in his exersaucer having the time of his life…and then GRRRRROOOOWWWWWWLLLLLL life as he knew it was over! Hopefully he’ll get used to the growling vacuum and life can continue on its clean, merry way!

And for your viewing pleasure some photos of Heaten and Shenzie all dressed up in their summer outfits with no place to go.

Ten years ago my friend Denise found a grey kitty wandering around her apartment building in the sprinklers, wet and soggy. I thought she was a boy cat and named her Gallager. Later I found out she was a little girl kitten, but the name stuck. She has been with me for a really long time and I am so sad to see her go although I know it is for the best.

Back in the day Gallager used to sleep with me in my bed…she would curl up next to my pillow and purr, keeping me company. Then Jeff moved here and out of the bed she went, but she still received lots of love and attention.

Then the babies came and with that she has been pushed to the side like a wet food stamp. A stinky, throwuppy, litter traipsing food stamp. We don’t have time for her….and we don’t have the desire to make the time for her. Sad as it is we both are sick of the throwup everywhere, the litter box that soon the babies will want to play in like it was their own personal sand box, the fur on the carpet, and most importantly her sniffing around when the babies cry. She has a little quirk that used to be cute….when someone is crying she bites them. Many a times I have had her jump up next to me and bite me on the arm when I was crying. The first time she were to bite one of the babies I think Jeff might do something really bad to her so we are forced to give her away.

 I posted an ad on Craigs List and within one day have several offers of kind families that want her. We decided to give her away to a mom and her five year old daughter. She is picking Gallager up tomorrow and surprising her daughter with her. I know Gallager will be happier in a home where she will get love, attention, and affection which makes giving her away a bit easier.

Bye Gallager, I’ll miss you!