I'm probably cursing this, but...

I think we're making progress on the early wake-ups with Jellybean. It's been 7 a.m. or right before the past four mornings.

What's the difference? It's either a big coincidence or it's the new overnight Pull-Ups I got for her. Go figure, there are Pull-Ups specifically for bedtime. Duh.

My parents are heading back home tomorrow. I don't know when we'll see them again -- probably Thanksgiving. It's a bit sad, but it might be nice to have our house back to normal. We have been to the grocery store every freakin' day they've been here! We keep planning and cooking these elaborate meals, and inevitably we forget something(s) at the store on the big trips.

I'll miss the extra playmates for the girls, and so will they. My mom told me today that Jellybean has already gotten teary twice while telling my mom that she'll miss my parents when they're gone. Poor little thing. She goes back to preschool on Wednesday, though, so that will help distract her.

I have to be conscious of how much Peanut understands now too. I need to make sure and tell her that Grandma and Grandpa are leaving tomorrow and going back home. She really comprehends most things like that now and doesn't like being blindsided.

I plan to put my new Mac to use and upload some pics in the next few days.

Hearing voices

When he tells a story about me, why is it that my husband's imitation of my voice sounds like Oscar the Grouch?

What would you do with 2 hours?

As I've mentioned in my last couple entries, my parents are visiting this week. They always like to have one-on-one time with the girls and I like to arrange that for all of their benefit.

Yesterday morning, they decided spontaneously to take the girls for a walk to play at the park until lunch time. That gave me two hours. Alone. In my house. Do you know how many mornings I've wished for such a luxury?! And it fell in my lap.

I almost didn't know what to do. I had to finish a load of laundry and unload the dishwasher, along with a few other little tasks. Then I still had an hour and a half. I sat down to read a magazine -- something I always associate with leisure. But I couldn't sit still. I read a few pages, then got up and puttered around. It was like I was lost in my own house!

It just goes to show you should be careful what you wish for. I finally get time by myself, and then I realize I have a hard time filling it up with meaningful enough things. (Obviously, if I would have known ahead of time, I would have scheduled something like a hair cut or a massage or a dentist's appointment. Or at the very least, coffee with a friend or neighbor. I'm not a total loser.)

The irony is that the best part of the morning was when they all came back. I got the best hugs and kisses from the girls. Awww, it sounds trite, but it's true!

So, what would you do if someone took your kids out of the house RIGHT NOW for 2 hours?

Early-morning zzzzz wake-ups

Ugh, I think I dozed off while typing my heading. I am so tired lately, even with my parents here, which should energize me. Seasonal allergies aren't helping, but neither are my early wake-up calls lately. No, not from Peanut, who would seem the logical one. They're from Jellybean. Aren't you supposed to be over this when you're 3?

Every morning, I wake up to Jellybean standing next to my head. Sometimes, she's just staring at me and I get that freaky sense that someone's watching me, and I jolt awake. Sometimes I hear the pitter-patter of little feet approaching my bed. And yesterday morning, I awoke to someone grabbing my toe. Yeah, at 5:30 a.m. Try not peeing your pants from fear when someone does that to you.

At any rate, I have no idea what is prompting these wake-ups. Many of them have correlated with her having overfilled her Pull-Up and her bed is soaking wet. (Stripping pee-soaked sheets in my shell-shocked fatigued state is just a little more fun than eating rocks) But that hasn't consistently been the case, so I'm puzzled.

I refuse to allow her in our bed or to lie with her in hers, because that's exactly what she wants, and we have chosen not to co-sleep, so that's not what I want! I snuggle her back into her (dry) bed and tell her not to come back to our room until it's light outside. She follows that well, but of course I can't even begin to calm back down to go back to sleep after my rude awakening.

I went out today and got a bigger size and more absorbent package of Pull-Ups, so we'll see if that helps. I referred to The Sleep Lady, and although her advice is logical as always, none of her scenarios seem to directly apply here. I'm at a loss as to what to do.

Oh, one more thing I need to vent here. Why Jellybean feels the need to come to MY side of the bed and not L's is so aggravating. He sleeps right through it, sometimes even snoring the whole time as if to rub my nose in the fact that I'm not asleep anymore! It makes me want to sneak over and grab HIS toe to see what HE would do.

Visitors

My parents are here this week for a visit with the girls -- oh, and with us too (sometimes it's hard to tell that they might actually be here to see L and me too. I swear, he and I could run out the back door at 8 a.m. and they wouldn't notice until bedtime). They're from one of the square states in the middle, so they get up here a few times a year to visit, and we get back there a couple times a year as well.

The last time we saw them was May, so I had Peanut look at pictures and home movies from that last visit so she would be familiar with Grandma and Grandpa when they got here. She's in a separation anxiety phase right now, so she acts like any stranger in the house must be here to abscond with her mom and dad. She warmed up quickly, and now I love to hear her words for "meemaw" and "beepa."

Jellybean was counting the days until my parents arrived, so she is perpetually giddy the whole time they're here. It's a nice change for her, because she's been a bit more difficult the further into 3 she has gotten, with a bit more grumpiness mixed in to each day. I hope the happy, sweet girl will be back some day, but at least she's here temporarily while my parents are here.

The main thing that has struck me this week was how much I was looking forward to my parents' visit. It's not that I, as their only daughter, miss them terribly when I'm not with them (I miss them, but come on, does anyone look forward to spending a week 24/7 with their parents?!). I realized that I was anticipating their arrival because of the reciprocal joy that exists between the girls and them.

There is nothing I love more than seeing loving grandparents with their grandchildren and vice versa. Few things can match that love and happiness that grandparents and grandchildren have for one another, and I think it's one of the main rewards of being a parent. The only thing I can think of that comes close to that is seeing my husband and the girls together when they're really enjoying one another's company.

So, this week is full of going to parks and doing all the silly kid things so Grandma and Grandpa can be involved. (It's also full of my parents' quirks, but they're way secondary to the fun we're having!) It's L's first full week of teaching too, but we're too busy to notice.

Computer woes

The blue screen of death has struck my computer for the last time. R.I.P. my old Dell Computer. He's been replaced by (gasp!) a Mac.

Thankfully, I lost no files or music because we acted quickly, and thankfully a friend salvaged everything off the hard drive before it died.

The best thing to come out of the whole day-long computer drama is my redemption to my husband about the Mac. I was gunning strongly for a Mac when we bought the Dell four years ago. The Macs were much more expensive then, so we went the Dell route. As it turns out, we spent about the same amount of money for repairing the Dell over the four years as we would have spent initially on the Mac (and it probably wouldn't have needed any repair!), not to mention the stress and duress.

Hey, L: I told you so!

There, I feel better.

Who's the boss?

Peanut is just recently starting to put two words in combination. She especially likes to put any word or person's name behind "hi," "bye-bye" and "yea." (I love when she uses "yea" with something mundane like "yea car!")

Both girls were playing in the sandbox yesterday. Jellybean was constantly telling Peanut how to play and what she couldn't and couldn't do.

Finally, I said, "Jellybean, you are not the boss of her. She can play by herself in the sand."

Jellybean: "But I AM the boss, though."

Peanut: "I boss. I boss. I boss."

Jellybean and I were both at a loss for words. There is so much truth to that, and we knew it.

Olympic impressions -- good or bad?

We've been watching Olympics a lot this year -- even on our aforementioned vacation, which is a bit insane, but it only happens every four years (the Olympics, not our vacation, I hope!).

Jellybean is currently fascinated with cartwheels. She's only 3, so unless she's a trained Chinese gymnast, she has no hope of actually doing one until she's 5 or older. But, we keep encouraging her to try.

I thought she might like seeing some Olympic gymnastics on TV. We don't do much TV for the kids here, but I recorded gymnastics so I could play it back in bits and pieces. Sure enough, she loved it. Peanut got to see a few minutes of it too.

Their responses to the tumbling geniuses were fascinating to me. Jellybean kept asking, "Is she a girl? Or is she a lady?" about each gymnast she saw. I had to chuckle to myself, because if you've heard the controversy about the Chinese gymnasts' ages, she's hit the nail on the head. I am guessing that her motivation is trying to figure out how much older than her they are, because they are clearly capable of cartwheels at that point.

Peanut paid the gymnasts way more attention than I thought she would. Usually she takes TV time as her opportunity to rifle through the contents of our TV cabinet, which is closed tight when the TV is not on (read: all day every day). Instead, she stood about 3 feet from the TV and raised her arms over her head touchdown style every time a gymnast struck her landing pose.

I tried to be extra aware of my comments as impressions on them, especially Jellybean. I made a point to talk about strength and practice and coaches instead of superficial beauty and leotards. Hopefully that worked. Only time will tell.

Here it comes

We were on vacation for the last week, savoring the beach in summertime. Alas, I know the summer days are numbered and winter death time is not too far away. I'm really trying not to think about it, but too many happenings are forcing me to.

My husband is lucky enough to be living his dream as a college professor. We enjoyed a ton of family time this summer between his working hard on his next publication, and he was around home most of the time. That ended yesterday when he had to go back for a very long day to be at orientation. We have definitely been spoiled for the past few months, but we all knew it had to end sometime.

At least I know this fall will be more fun than last fall when he was teaching night classes and I was at home all day and all evening by myself with a tiny baby and toddler. No night classes this year, for one, and the girls are older and consequently easier to handle as a "single parent." It's also actually fun now to spend time with the girls instead of struggling through every feeding and nap and so on. I'll leave that (self) analysis for another day.

My husband left in the morning yesterday before the girls got up, so they were both a bit confused about where he was for a good part of the day. In fact, little Peanut was absolutely convinced that my husband was behind the bathroom door. I closed the door so she wouldn't be tempted to play in the toilet -- which is a new favorite pastime -- and she kept walking up to the door and proclaiming, "Daddy!" Then she would knock and wait for a response. It was very funny, especially because I already tease L about how much time men spend in the bathroom -- now there's proof! It also was a bit sad because even when I convinced her that L wasn't in the bathroom and in fact wasn't anywhere to be found, she just started repeating, "I want Daddy." That was the first thing she said when she awoke from her afternoon nap.

I feel so overwhelmed by my to-do list now that we're back from this vacation. I now have to do all those nagging things I had blown off before we left town, plus I have a ton to get ready for the fall and the impending winter doom. Both girls are almost bursting out of their summer clothes, so I need to sort and wash fall clothes, get coats and winter gear organized, clean my house, oh and I definitely need to start catching up on all the shows stored in my DVR from last week!

I guess it's time to quit blogging and maybe get something accomplished during this naptime. I think the DVR is the way to go.

Sar-chasm

I enjoy being sarcastic at times -- sometimes it's the only thing that gets me through an ugly situation. But, with my kids, I try to be careful about it. They're way to young to understand it, and I don't think it's fair to exploit their lack of comprehension. Some people find it funny, and there's a time and a place for that, but not very often in my opinion.

We have a CD that Jellybean (and consequently Peanut) loves, called Broadway Kids. As you can imagine, it consists of professional Broadway juveniles belting out showtunes. It's great fun, but after hearing it repeatedly, the high-pitched voices can grate on my nerves ever so slightly.

My husband, on the other hand, recoils every time we play that music. He's all about kid's music, but he much prefers the new Barenaked Ladies kids album, among others.

So today, my husband says to Jellybean, "I LOVE the Broadway kids! It's my favorite music you have." *read with sarcastic intonation*

I thought that was just mean, uncharacteristic for him. Jellybean adores every song on that CD and has gone so far as to say she loves the kids/singers themselves. She didn't get the sarcasm, of course, and those comments were just left hanging in the air. Not only was he sarcastic, but it comes across as dishonesty -- it is not true that he loves that music.

I prefer to pick my battles (with husband and children), so I just told him I thought that wasn't fair and left it at that. In the meantime, I'm going to be very conscious of my own use of sarcasm to avoid the unintentional dishonesty it can convey.

Reincarnating 3-year-olds

Jellybean announced to me, while eating her snack, that she is going to be a baby again. I thought she wanted to pretend to be a baby like she sometimes does with her sister. I said (dumbly), "Oh really?" And she responded:

"I'm going to be a baby. When I fly up into the sky, I'm going to be a baby again."

Reincarnation, in the mind of a 3-year-old.

Not something we've even remotely discussed. I guess it's better than other values or topics that could be interesting to her at this point, so I'll take it.

Happy meal or pleasant partaking?

Now I've done it. I knew the day had to come, and it has. My 3-year-old now knows about McDonald's and Happy Meals.

We are not the fast-food eating kind. Frozen meals out the wazoo, yes, but they're organic frozen meals and they don't involve anything fried or otherwise empty calories.

For whatever reason, the golden arches were calling our names today. My husband has been out of town for three days, and I just wanted a break from washing every dish, cleaning every bib and wiping up every single crumb from a meal. So, I took us to the Mickey D's around the corner, knowing full well that this might end up memorable, especially for my 3-year-old Jellybean.

I gave her the (oh-so-nutritious) choices: hamburger, cheeseburger and McNuggets. She chose the hamburger. [Side note: I cringe at the meat quality, knowing a little about cattle farms and meat-packing plants. I wish restaurant chains would start looking into improving those industries, but that's a discussion for another day.] I was dubious because she unconsciously qualifies as a vegetarian bordering on vegan some days. I ordered the apples instead of fries so there could be fruit involved and got a milk for each girl. (The 15-month-old Peanut obviously can't verbalize her own decisions yet, and she's pretty good at wolfing down whatever lands in front of her.)

Full disclosure here: I did not just spontaneously jump in the car and plan to have them receive all of their nourishment from the fast-food establishment. No, I'm the kind of mom who brings vegetables -- organic, no less -- to McDonald's. There was lovely bright green cooked spinach to accompany the Happy Meal. There was also cool cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelon to bolster the pre-fab apples. I just can't fill my kids' tummies with exclusively junk. Whether it's OCD on my part or justification, I don't really know, but I had to bring some home stuff.

The most amusing part of the whole meal is that Jellybean didn't like it. Really, not one bit. Not even the colorful Happy Meal bag and milk with a straw (well, that was the biggest hit). She took one bit of her burger and announced, "I'm done with that." She picked up each fry I had put in front of her and one by one transferred them to back to me without taking even a bite. She ate her entire portion of spinach, a couple apple slices and drank all her milk. That was her McDonald's experience. She does like the little toy, though, so that will be our sole souvenir.

As for Peanut, she ate about 1/3 of the hamburger, proclaimed "Mmm!" and chowed down about 10 fries, in addition to her milk, spinach and apples. Maybe she's the one I have to worry about. She has a lot of new words lately -- that would be a riot (tragedy?) if the word "McDonald's" were to spill forth one of these days soon.

So, I think our foray into fast-food dining may have been an isolated event. Even if we're traveling and need the Playland, it appears I am going to have to continue my trend of bringing plant sustenance into Big Mac land. But at least someone else cleaned up our crumbs and wiped our table!

Blogaphobia

That's my official diagnosis -- made by me, of course. I have been blogging in my head for years (my whole life?), and I established this blog months ago. But I have had a terrible case of blogger's block. Surely there is such a thing as blogger's block. It hasn't really been a block, though. It's much more a fear of blogging, hence Blogaphobia.
Yes, I have been trained, groomed, educated as a writer for more than 15 years, yet putting fingers to keyboard for something as "real" as a blog seemed frightening. What could I possibly have been afraid of? Look at some of my favorite blogs on the right rail, and you'll see what I mean. Many others have come before me and have done a stellar job of blogging about their exploits and deepest thoughts. A bit intimidating.
Like my great fear of popping balloons (yes, you heard it here first), the anticipation is by far the worst of the whole thing.
So, here I am actually blogging. What do I hope to accomplish? I want to share my stories, work out my thoughts and pose questions, both to myself and to my reader(s) -- hopefully there will be more than one!
Most of all, I want to give you a cyberwindow into our family and my life, a little escape from your universe, for a minute or two at a time. I'll introduce us in weeks to come.