HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Tonight I will take many pictures of the boys in their costumes - as many as they will let me take before they run to the neighbors' houses and demand candy. Last night Nicholas cried because we wouldn't let him go Trick-or-Treating right away. We tried explaining that it wasn't the right time, but he seemed to think if he cried hard enough, the laws of space and time would change and suddenly people would be flinging candy out their front doors...

If I cry really hard right now, can it be time for this baby to be born?

Here is a short video of Nathan in the leaves. With the helmet. Yes, it was the same day, and all these pictures were taken within moments. I do have pictures of Nicholas, but they are not so fall-ish, so....




Also, check out Betsy's new blog for some REALLY scary photos!

All I Have To Say

The last time we spoke, which was last week sometime, Winston said to me "Why is it that every time we have Thanksgiving at your house the Red Sox win the World Series?" At the time, they hadn't won yet. But now they have. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

It has reached the point in my pregnancy where I am insane with discomfort and hormonal imbalance. Each time I sit down to post I have to stop myself from typing up a list of things I have done, or need to do. Very little of it has to do with anything remotely exciting or funny, and more of it has to do with shopping lists and cleaning and movies or TV shows I might have watched. And honestly, who cares?

So I promise to do my best and keep this blog as interesting as I can. It means the posts will probably get shorter and shorter. A couple of weeks from now I may simply be posting a word or two. Like "duh" or "Ptthhhhb" or "cheese fries."

A little more FALL

Please do not ask why Nathan is wearing the bike helmet in this picture. He wanted to, and I didn't want to fight him.

NEW YORK PEOPLE - unless you have just had a foot operation and can't get around on your own, here is something you should check out. If I weren't so completely huge with babiness, I would go to NY just to see one or two of these performances, and I am not kidding.

Explaining The Countdown

Babies are unpredictable. You never know if they'll be the kind of baby that sleeps a lot, or screams a lot, or is pretty relaxed and content, or needs to be fed every 20 minutes, or the kind that is fine when you feed it every four hours. And they usually don't let you know exactly when they are coming.

The baby countdown is just to give some idea of an estimate. Nick was 3 weeks early. Nate came a day before his due date. If the trend continues, I'll be banging on the doors of the hospital on Christmas morning begging them to get the baby out of me because it's LATE!

Anyway, since this summer I've been keeping a notebook of lists of things to do with the holidays - Thanksgiving and Christmas especially. My thinking was that I was going to be too huge and uncomfortable to do much thinking and moving around, so the more I could do ahead of time, the better. Honestly, I've thought less about the actual BABY and the actual BIRTH with this child than I have with either of my first two. Every once and awhile I remember that there is a labor process, and I will have to go through it, and also we will probably need a name for the baby and maybe we should get some diapers at some point...

So when I say "50 days left until the baby comes" here's what I really mean:

- Halloween is in three days. Try not to eat the candy for the trick or treaters. Remember to make PB&J for Nick's School Halloween Party. Find something for Nick to wear underneath that Diego costume, because apparently they found a way to make it out of sponge.

- Lillian's birthday is only a little more than a week away, so find her a present and wrap it and figure out when we're all going to celebrate.

- By the way, only 5 more doctor's visits left... assuming all goes well...

- Thanksgiving is in less than a month, so I better start moving all our junk out of the kitchen, and make sure we have enough glasses. (We do.)

- Christmas - 2 months away! - I need to finish shopping and start wrapping gifts, because the baby should get here BEFORE then, and I will be a sleepless, hormonal wreck. The day might actually slip by without my noticing. But I need to wait until the good Holiday stuff is out in the stores, which probably won't happen until after Halloween. I have always been horrified at how early they start putting stuff in stores and here I am chomping at the bit!

At least I am distracted and not just waiting for the baby to be ready to emerge.

Saturday

Scary Baby Meter says 50 more days!

Tick, tick

Before painting the pumpkins we tried drawing on them in magic marker. Magic marker was much messier.
The cooler weather has arrived, and with it the ladybugs have almost gone away... or at least the little pests have stopped showing themselves and are hiding, which is almost as good. Now I just have to find their little buggy bodies and vacuum them all up.

The pests I am having trouble with NOW are the ticks. Frank was covered in them Wednesday. And I'm sure the ones we find on the floor are dropping off Gunther, but I can't ever find any ON him. He's pretty big, and he won't sit still when I pet or brush him. Also, as soon as I try to touch any place a tick might hide - his ears, his legs, his neck - he immediately freaks out.

The thing is, we're spending a small fortune on Frontline, the Flea and Tick medication, and I have been meticulous about applying it to each of our pets on the first of every month. As far as I know, no fleas, but apparently it doesn't work as well on ticks. And I wonder, is it worth it?

Define "Quiet"

This is Nicholas playing with pumpkin guts. Yeah, it's gross, but it 's different and it keeps him busy!When I was in kindergarten I remember my father picking me up from school and taking me to work, where he had to record one quick thing before we could go home. I was told to sit in this chair and be quiet. And I was. Or so I thought. See, to me, quiet meant not talking. I didn't hear the banging of my legs on the chair legs as I swung them, or the clanking of my metal lunch box as I moved it around. These sounds, as far as I was concerned, did not exist.

In the morning, I tell the boys they need to stay in bed until the alarm goes off. The alarm is currently set for 6:30. This is because it used to be set for 6am, but I found I was actually waking them up with it, so I kept pushing it back. Unfortunately, these days they are now getting up around 5:30, which leaves an hour, a whole, pitch-black, middle-of-the-night-like hour of their being awake before I am ready.

I know I can't keep them asleep. I used to wake up early myself, and I remember wondering why, just WHY people were so intent of staying ASLEEP when they could be AWAKE and doing anything else, such as watching TV, or reading, or eating breakfast. So I told the boys they could read a book or play quietly. I also told Nick, who is just starting to sleep without a pull-up, that he could use the bathroom as long as he came right back to bed.

So now, at 5:45am, Nick runs down the hall to the bathroom wearing what sounds like combat boots on his feet, and taking along a heard of elephants. He pees, the sound effects of which can be clearly heard from our bedroom and all the open doors. He then forgets to flush and runs back to bed, taking the elephants with him. Nathan, on the other hand, rushes along to observe his brother. He then compensates for Nick's lack of flushing by flushing the toilet 17 times, and then splashes in the toilet bowl until I get up and make him return to his room.

Nicholas and Nathan are told to play quietly, which to them translates as "No toys that make music." This morning they turned over every single bin that held toys, including blocks, little people, and small books. There was banging, rattling of doors and bed rails, crying, and loud exclamations of "Brudda! Brudda!" When both boys started crying at 6:15 I stumbled in and forced them to turn off the lights again as I whimpered from under the covers of Nick's bed.

Painting Pumpkins

Painting pumpkins was the most successful craft project we've attempted. The boys loved the idea of painting on a THING instead of just paper. I got an inexpensive set of paints and brushes for the project and when it was done I wrapped everything up and threw it all away. NOT the pumpkins.

You can see here how seriously Nathan took his job as pumpkin painter.

OK, Trying Again

I tried and tried to upload this video yesterday, but it would get to a certain point and just hang, never completing the uploading process.

The thing of it is, the video isn't even all that great. So the fact that I'm having so much trouble makes me wonder if I'm really loosing it.

Getting Ready For Fun

Halloween is one of my favorites.

I am going to try to post only fall / Halloween photos and videos until Halloween. Let's call it a challenge.

Especially since stupid blogger won't let me actually link the stupid video I'm trying to link. I'll keep trying - you guys keep checking.

Not all Bad

I know that my posts have been grumpy and depressed and hormonal and angry lately, and that I might actually be alienating the few readers that I have. But I just want to assure everyone that life here is not ALL bad. There are quite a few upsides.

For one thing, it's fall, and the leaves are beautiful. I've been making a point of taking the boys outside every single day, like it or not (that goes for them AND for me), and we have had a great time collecting leaves and crumbling them, kicking them, and just plain kicking around. I keep telling myself I'm going to have to start bringing my camera with me when we go places so I can get photos of pumpkins and crazy decorations. But I always forget.

Also, Nathan... the other day I gave him a sip cup and lunch and he turned to me and said "Good Job, Mommy!" I don't get enough praise like that. Mostly people just point out what's wrong. So I have to admit I felt good.

Have a great weekend, I will put up more photos and videos tomorrow.

Chaos

Steve and I are desperately trying to teach our kids manners. Specifically table manners. It's harder than you think. As soon as one habit gets settled in (say they remember a Please or Thank You), they forget another (such as swallow your food instead of spitting it out half chewed onto your plate.) Possibly the biggest thing is sitting still. The boys cannot sit still.

My feeling is that they are young, and we can only expect them to sit still for a short length of time. But I do feel that, while they are eating, they should refrain from getting out of their chairs, wobbling in their chairs, crawling under the table, running around the room, etc. Actually, at this point, I am far less concerned with what it is they eat, and much more concerned with the fact that they use a fork to eat it.

We're working on it.

Ladybug Ladybug Fly Away From My Home

A couple of days ago I noticed that, somehow, a large number of ladybugs had convened on the ceiling above Steve's side of the bed. I was a little concerned, but since that night they all seemed to have disappeared, I pushed the thought to the back of my mind and moved on to other things.

And then, yesterday, I took the boys out back to play.

And the outside of our house was covered in ladybugs. On the windows, on the drainpipes, on the siding... just ladybugs everywhere.

Now, Ladybugs are not dangerous - I mean, they aren't like bees or hornets that will sting you. They aren't like mosquitoes that leave itchy red bumps. In fact, I've always like Ladybugs. But I think that's because they usually appear one at a time. In great numbers they are kind of frightening, just because of the number of them. Crawling all over everything. And flying. And landing on your face.

I tried pretending they weren't there, and I sat down under the porch while the boys played, but they kept landing on me and flying into my face, and eventually I just got up and left because of the sheer bother of them. But still, at this point, I figured they were no big deal. I mean, they were OUTSIDE, right?

That afternoon I walked into our bedroom to see about a hundred ladybugs crawling all over the ceiling and the walls and the windows. The thing about Ladybugs is that they find ways to get in. It turned out that both Steve and I had left our windows open just a crack, at the top, the part we couldn't see because it's covered by our shades. And suddenly I realized it would be me asleep on the bed with hundreds of flying bugs swarming all over, and landing on me, and crawling on me, and I freaked.

The thing is, they have - up until now - dispersed by bedtime. I think they are attracted to that side of the house in the afternoon because it gets the best afternoon light. Still, I do not feel good about this. And they are Ladybugs. It's like watching Children Of The Corn and suddenly realizing that small children are SCARY.

Little Explosions

Hey! Look at the Scary-Baby-Meter! I'm on the NEXT to last Scary Baby! Hooray for me!



My kids are not the only ones who explode over little things. I myself have been knows to fly off the handle when things do not go my way. Mostly, when I loose my temper and scream I am yelling at my kids. Because it is something they did.

Yesterday, I went ballistic only twice. First when Nathan turned off the powerstrip (and hence the power) to my computer just as I was about to hit "POST" on my blog. Second when the boys broke the third of my four pyrex mixing bowls, the bowls I love, the bowls I have forbidden them to touch, even though they are within their reach. These bowls can take a lot of beating up, I know because I had them for years without a break or crack or chip, right up until we got tile on our kitchen floor, and now we are down to one. (Hey - want to know what I need for a birthday / early x-mas gift? Mixing bowls! Or at Thanksgiving we can mix everything in the sink.)

Today, I have already broken yesterday's record for yelling. I yelled when I was trying to change the sheets on Nate's bed (his diaper leaked last night) and he wouldn't stop jumping on it, all the while in his pee-soaked PJ's, while Nicholas sat there on the floor refusing to get dressed at all. I yelled at Nick when he refused to play by himself or with Nate and insisted on coming with me to get dressed, promising to be good, only instead he kept pulling things out of my drawer and getting in my way or pulling things out of his Dad's closet. I yelled at the world when Nick spilled his orange juice all over the pants he had been wearing for exactly 17 minutes, and then spotted a huge, swollen, full tick on the floor (like a swollen raisin) and refused to leave until I had disposed of the tick, and when he finally went upstairs to change into yet another pair of pants (hello, laundry!) Nathan followed him and refused to come back down.

I mean, sometimes it's not a matter of being mad AT another person. Mostly it's just that the world is ganging up on me, and soon I will be buried in laundry that smells like old food and pee, and ticks I can't find will be lurking all over my house to suck blood and spread disease, no matter how much I spend on flea and tick repellent. Seriously - THE TICKS! YUCK!

Shoes

The thing about little boys is that they are always growing.

If I buy myself a shirt, or a pair of jeans, or a pair of shoes, I consider the item purchased "new"
for at least two years. I expect it to last that long without ripping or tearing, or without accumulating stains. I am almost always disappointed. Especially when it comes to stains.

Boys grow much faster than this. If I buy the boys an outfit, that outfit is good for one season, and that's only if I buy it a little big. And shoes are the worst.

There is nothing worse than shoes that don't fit. But I take these kids to the shoe store every two or three months, and they have ALWAYS gone up at least a full shoes size. It's like there is some twilight-zone-esque gap, and they have actually gone up a size more often than there are sizes to go up to...

And shoes can be expensive. Which is why I try to get Nathan to wear Nick's old shoes as often as I can. But this doesn't always work, as Nathan's shoe size is quite often in that no-man's-land, falling in between the sizes of shoes that Nick owned.

So then I am faced with strange choices. It is fall, but it will be winter soon. The boys are currently size 9 1/2 and size 6 1/2. We have two pairs of boots, sized 9 and 6. Do I:
A) squeeze the boys in too-small boots for the season
B) buy them both new boots now
C) squeeze them into too small boots now and buy them bigger boots later
D) Buy Nick new boots and make Nathan wear the bigger ones with newspaper rolled into the toes.

For the record, I am facing a similar decision concerning snow pants. However, I do feel better knowing all these things will be worn by a third. If this new baby were I girl, I would be forced to go out and re-purchase everything in pink and purple.

Conversation

Me: Nick, how old is Mario?

Nick: Two.

Me: So I have a question. Who is older, Mario, or You?

Nick: ...

Me: Well, who has had more birthdays, you or Nathan?

Nick: Nathan!

Me: I don't think so. You're three and you've had three birthdays, but Nathan has only had one!

Nick: Yesterday I had a cupcake! It had Elmo on it.

Me: Drink your milk.

No Pressure

Yesterday I tried to go clothes shopping for the boys. Not a HUGE shop, mind you, but just something for Nick to wear to picture day at school, and maybe I could double it up for Thanksgiving, so maybe Nathan could have a matching outfit...

Anyway, I went to the mall where I knew there was a cute little children's clothing store that has sales ALL THE TIME and sells cute clothes of good quality... and it turned out the store has turned into a Halloween Gallery, so instead of kid's clothing in the windows they had sexy outfits so that adults can dress up as a sexy Alice-in-Wonderland, or a sexy flight attendant. Or a sexy doctor. Or a sexy queen - one who forgot to wear the bottom three feet of her skirts, apparently.

Anyway, the directory directed me to a new location, which was apparently where my children's clothing store had relocated to. Except when I got there, it wasn't the same store. Oh, the NAME was the same. And the bags were the same. But... rock music was blasting loudly. The kid's clothing was cute, but not special, and priced very high. Everything was sparkles and flash and loud and funky, and I thought for a moment I had BECOME Alice and fallen down that rabbit hole because, SERIOUSLY? I'm shopping for size 4T clothing in a store blasting attitude? Priced like the GAP? I don't think so.

Of course I ended up buying stuff there anyway because I'm crazy, but I refuse to go back. I was very disturbed and upset - childhood is so short these days, it's only a matter of time before kids launch themselves into technology and the ways of the world... Why would I willingly bring them to a place that insists six year olds are actually little teenagers? Forget it. My favorite children's store is a 40 mile drive to the nearest outlet, but they also have cute clothing and frequent sales. I'm thinking that it might actually be worth it.

Strange Days

I just erased an entire post about the boys getting dressed. I wrote it, but afterwards I hated reading it. It seemed as though it were written by someone else.

Because I am tired and depressed. I am not happy and chirpy, and more often than not the places I should be finding humor are just places where I want to scream and yell. I am a big huge grumpy lump who has to bend over in a funny way to wash the dishes in the sink, because when I stand straight up I can't reach them. My belly is in the way.

My belly is ALWAYS in the way. It is huge. It just sticks OUT. I can't tie my shoes. I can't pick things up off the floor. Walking up the stairs has me gasping for breath and needing a rest.

Also, it has rained all week, and I am very much dreading the long winter of very little sun. I hate the winter. I hate the dark. Especially if I can't sleep through it.

Until the sun shines, even just a little, the posts will probably sound a bit on the down side.

Curtains!

Steve and I purchased curtains for our living room.

This was not recently, mind you. This was years ago, when I was actually pregnant with Nicholas. And it was then that I first realized that buying and putting up curtains, while on the surface a simple task, is actually quite complicated and more like performing dental surgery on one's own self with an ice skate.

The curtains we ended up with were dark purple, which was great, but this summer I bought new sheers to put behind them. Since the dark curtains were also very matted with cat hair, I sent them off to the dry cleaners, and we spent all summer with simple sheer curtains hanging in our windows, set off by the dark tie-backs and the valences up top... it was actually a nice look.

But since the days are getting shorter and colder, I thought it would be time to put the other curtains up again. And while I was at it, I could give the actual windows a swipe with windex, just to get the dog snot off of the panes. Again, sounds easy, right? Yeah, until someone handed me an ice skate and told me to open wide.

I don't know what it is about tasks like this that causes everything to go wrong. First of all, it turned out the new sheers were about 6 inches longer than the purple curtains, so after hanging the first window I had to take everything down and quickly hem all eight sheer panels. They are still too long, but not horribly so. Then I had to re-hang, which again sounds easy, but the thing is I couldn't always get the curtains rods on the anchor thingies... and then the curtains just wouldn't hang right - they looked funny. Then I had to find ways to attach the tie-backs that had been ripped out of the wall. And then, hanging my last window curtain, I realized that one window panel was about 3 feet shorter than the others, and it was then that I remembered purchasing the curtains 4 years ago, going to 3 different SEARS stores, and still not finding eight panels in the right length, so buying one much shorter than the others and putting it behind the TV, which was of course the FIRST place I had hung curtains, so I had to go back and undo that one and then re-do it and then re-do the last one again.

All in all, what I pictured taking me an hour ended up taking me five.

Vacation Plans

I thought I had a photo for today, but when I got a closer look at it, the picture was all blurry, and Nicholas looked like a zombie child with his eyes rolled up in his head. So instead, no photo. Not today.

I've given a lot of thought to it, and I've decided to give myself an "internet holiday." I don't work at a computer anymore, so I'm not clicking over every ten minutes to see if I received another email. I'm not surfing while I'm on the phone or waiting for documents to print out. All the time I spend here is MINE. Which is good, but it can also be irritating. I end up sitting here a few times a day, and usually just to look up some bit of information or check to see if anyone has left a comment or an email...

My point is, I think it has become a bit of a waste of time, for me. So tomorrow I am going to take the day off and turn OFF my computer. That's right, I'm going to turn it off and leave it off and I will not turn it back on. I will not post. (It's just one day!) I will not check email. I will not check the other blogs I usually read. I'll just catch up on it all on Thursday. And you know what? I think I'll survive.