My Life Just Got Harder (And Easier)

So, at like the exact same time The Bean decided she was all 100% confident getting out of her crib and opening her door and coming down the hall into our room or walking downstairs (if the gate wasn't locked) AND Miss Koala decided to enter the horrible period of transitioning from 2 naps to 1 or maybe 2, but it's going to be a fight to get that 2nd one mama, you'll have to drive me to Claremont and back or stroller me all over town and if you do get nap number 2 it's going to be short and I'm going to be wanting a brawl when I wake up and see just what you've done.

2011 might be the summer of car/stroller naps.

Because The Bean no longer has to stay in bed, she no longer stays in bed. The girl hasn't had a decent nap since Sunday and man she was just deliriously tired tonight. The only people who should have dark bags under their eyes like that are frat boys snorting Ritalin all night to write their term papers. I took the crib mattress out of the crib this afternoon and was all like "here's your big girl bed" but she still wouldn't nap. It probably didn't help that her sister was up and hanging out in my room. It's hard to explain to an almost 3 year old, that the baby already took one nap and since she's transitioning she might be up till 4. They did have a good 15 mins of sisterly love cracking each other up. Every time, MB would get out of her bed, she'd come running into my room, saying "what's going on guys?" and her sister would just bust a gut.

Anyway. The Bean is sleeping on the mattress sans crib now. It took some stories from papa and a few lullabies from mama, but she was out. She already woke herself up once by rolling off the mattress and onto the pad we have next to her. Who knows where she'll end up, but please could whoever is up there let the girl sleep in tomorrow. She's been up at 5ish for weeks now and it's making everyone so tired. How sad is it that 6:30 would feel late?

Even though the girls haven't been really overlapping naps for a while, occasionally I might get 20-30 mins and man, was that good. Or just having one of them is so much easier. But having both of them? From like 7:30 (when N left for work) till 5:00 (when he came home early)? It's killing me. Just thinking about makes me need a drink. I can't believe I didn't have a cocktail this evening. I'm trying to only drink on weekends and holidays...not that I drank too much, but because I'd really like to lose the last ten pounds of baby weight left over from baby #1 and also because drinking and women and breast cancer blah blah. And it makes it more special, you know.

Anyway.

So this is The Bean's first night out of a crib and N and I feel kind of sad. Kind of like we want to swaddle her in her old miracle wrap and put her back in the bassinet with a binky. But not really.

Miss K loves her morning nap still. Would probably take a nap at 8 if I let her, but we really need to push it back back back. I bet once that finally happens, her sister will probably have dropped her nap entirely. I think we might have to move the occasional milk and Sesame on the couch at 4:30 to the early afternoon. I'd really her to stay in her room quietly reading Proust from her quiet time, but the reality might involve a little more Elmo time. I don't know why I feel bad about it. She watches far less TV that all the other kids we know. She rarely watches more than 45 mins at a time. I don't know. I know everything will settle eventually....

But in wonderful, fantastic, my life got so much easier news, tomorrow is N's last day at school!! Woohooo!! 3 months of daddy-day care!

Puke: Not Just Another 4 Letter Word

Oh, man. March is the new February. On the good side of the month, our travels were a success---we sunned, swam, those 21 + drank copious amounts of pina coladas, those closer to 3 drank loads of pineapple juice and chocolate milk; there was much eating, a massage, a golf lesson, and even some childcare. Oh, and we rode in a Hummer Stretch Limo cuz that's how we roll.

The girls were troopers, great on both flights. And the sleeping wasn't as bad as I thought it might be considering we were all sharing a room.

The negative was that my brand new Verizon iPhone was lost/stolen with lots of our vacation pics on it:( And Miss Bean fell out of the bed twice! The good part was that she wasn't hurt either time .

On the bad side of the month, around 3AM on Sunday, our first night back in NH, I go into Miss Bean's room after hearing her yell for water a few times and discovered that she had puked great buckets all over her crib, wall, floor, and the 800 "lovies" she sleeps with each night.

I'm not all that squeamish about the puke thing, but this was so super gross. Her sheets had to be washed twice to get the stink out! And I kept finding puke hiding in the crevices of her crib.

She was low-energy on Sunday, but not too bad. All I wanted to do yesterday was go to the gym, you can only drink so many pinas without feeling a bit on the fat side, but N came home ashen and pukey and went straight to bed at 4:00 and then Miss Koala yaked up her entire dinner all over the high chair. I cleaned her up only to have her yak again and again..all over me, the living room rug, her rug and many articles of her clothing. I felt so bad for her...The Bean rarely pukes and never did as a baby. In fact, I think The Bean solely pukes in her crib, which while messy and gross is much more contained. Hmmm.....

Needless to say, I did not make it to the gym. Monday was puke fest 2011.

24 hours later, things are much better. Miss Koala was on liquids for most of the day, but was hungry for her dinner of chicken soup and toast which she kept down. N pushed through and gave his artist talk this afternoon and has been eating various crackery things this evening.

I finally made it to the gym too.
I better not get sick! March has already caused enough damage!

December!

Hard to believe it, no? Our travels were successful. The Bean had 72 hours of non-stop fun and excitement chilling with her granny, grampy, unkie, the great aunties, her very cool 3 year old 2nd cousin, and loads of other relatives. She did well with the car time and spoiled us by sleeping in past 6! every morning. One morning she even slept till 6:45! I think it was because the rooms were so dark because she was back to her fairly normally 5:45 wake up here in NH by Monday morn.

I did okay giving her multiple car naps. The one "disaster" of the trip was when the restaurant in Newport forgot to put in our dinner order so we had to contend with an over-tired, very hungry Bean. It was a good lesson to always have food stowed away. It's nice that, with the exception of having kilos of Cheerios, bunny crackers, and raisins for snacks, The Bean can pretty much eat where and what we eat. I was very happy that I had a banana to supplement her dinner on Saturday night though. Without that "nana" things might have been even crazier than a naked toddler spinning in circles in the hotel room.

Personally, I feel like a cow. There's too much food at Thanksgiving. I wouldn't want to give any of it up, but it is pretty insane to have 35 sides, right? My potatoes were a success and as far as I know no one died eating them.

Now we're back in the swing of things. I made a butternut squash soup last night. It got much better when I took my honey's suggestion and added heavy cream and hot sauce, but it was no black bean deliciousness. I have conferences with my students about their research papers this week. It's hard to believe that next week is the last week of classes. I've really enjoyed teaching this past semester. I like the students and it's so nice to do something non-mama related for a few hours. I got a really good evaluation, but I most likely won't be teaching in the spring because they don't offer that many comp classes. The plan now is to have our amazing babysitter come twice a week (instead of once) so I can go off and write, write, edit, write. I'd like to have a send-out worthy version of my YA done by late spring and also write a short story. I used to only write short stories, but I haven't written one in about 2! years. Sending stuff of to mags might also be a good use of my non-mama time.

I'm currently reading Commencement by J. Courtney Smith. It's from the library and it's not that great, but also light enough and decently written enough that I'm going to finish it. Not sure I'd recommend it although I still have 100+ pages to go. I'm not sure why it got so much attention over the summer.

Next up is Lorrie Moore's The Gate at the Stairs and Dave Egger's Zeitoun. I do love books and being into a novel even if it's not life changing.

To top off this extra long postie, here's a pic of The Bean and her granny holding hands on the cliff walk in Newport!

Well, Hello.

Hey, Loves,
We're back. And we're not going anywhere except our usual NH and VT haunts for like a month! Good times were had all over the East Coast this last month, but it's nice to stay put. Yesterday we went to our local(ish) farmstand where we do a CSA and stocked up on all kinds of delish fruits and veggies because we'll actually be here to eat them.

The Bean was a rock star on vacay. She did make the other, smaller baby cry at least once a day because of her fondness for loudly screaming in his face, but other than than she was pretty sweet. She loved swimming in the bay and playing in/ eating sand. She slept really well and, as usual, waved constantly. Other than the lack of trips to the ice cream stand, it's starting to feel like summer. Today is hot and humid and we've been swimming a lot! Yay! Swimming=Summer. Not only did The Bean swim most days in the bay at Shelter Island, she has swum in the Lyme Pond, the Lebanon Municipal Pool, and of course the rec center indoor pool.

Today, I managed to go to a yoga class for the first time in months. Yay!!

Oh, that gas grill is amazing and we haven't blown ourselves up yet. So far, we've grilled corn on the cob, salmon, and chicken. Tonight I grilled two zucchinis, 1.5 tomatoes, and a bunch of garlic and added it to pasta. Grilling is my new kick along with, to N's poor meat-loving heart, tofu and lentils in the salad instead of cheese and cranberries. At least I'm not making Brussels sprouts, honey.

This is kinda a busy week. My parents are coming up on Thursday night, Uncle Brobly arrives Friday, and N's parents arrive on Saturday because as you might know faithful readers, on Sunday, August 2, The Bean will be 1!! She's gonna cake it up this weekend and might even get a present or two. We're having the small fam BBQ on Saturday and a crazy double monkey party with The Bean's best bud Z who is a whopping 1 day older and will sadly be moving to Cali next week. All kinds of things need to happen between now and then so wish me luck.

Peace.

Rugs: A Saga or: How Much $ We've Spent On Not Getting A Rug At Pottery Barn

Pretty much from the minute N. and I moved into this place we wanted to get a rug for the living room. Our parents had generously bestowed some nice, but small Oriental rugs that worked fine when we were young and childless in Brooklyn. But childed in NH? We needed more of a carpet. So we made do with this weird 3 rug aesthetic until we got our tax return and decided to buy us some rug. We decided upon Pottery Barn since we had a gift card and PB is like the married with children version of Ikea.

First we had to get a swatch of the rug we wanted because N. in his infinite wisdom said it would be dumb ass to buy a $$ rug we hadn't felt. A swatch o' rug from PB costs $25.00, but it's "refundable" if you mail it back. So we did that. And N. in his photo-shopping genius created a whole rug from one swatch and we realized we couldn't get the color we liked on the computer, but we could get that rug in a different color. Cool, right? It cost me $7.00 to send that stupid rug sample back. And then we got all crazy and decided that we also needed a rug for under the dining room table and once again had to get a swatch and then send that back so now we've sent $14.00 JUST RETURNING things to PB.

But the rugs come and we're happy. We don't even care that we have to move EVERYTHING out of the living room to roll it down and then move everything back all while trying to prevent the Bean from chewing and pulling on 1,000 cables.

Because N. and I are no dummies, we had measured the living room and dining room a lot of times to make sure the rugs would fit. And yeah, the living room rug fit. But it completely absorbed the whole room. We actually have nice wood floors, why not show a little? We put the rug down at 8:30 in the morning and even though we decided that we would sleep on it and make our decision about the rug being too big the following morning by 10:00 AM I was on the phone with the PB people ordering two more rugs---smaller, of course and finding out how to go about returning 8 x10 and 9 X12 foot rugs.

We were too tired to move everything out and roll up the rug so I scheduled the UPS pickup for Monday, which meant we had a good three days looking and walking (and crawling) on the too-big rug. I should mention that it costs $16.00 to return a rug, which means we're up to $46.00.....

Except we noticed that the rug in the dining room was shedding. A lot. Like ten minutes after N. vacuumed, which is not good. After googling, we discovered a very long thread about PB and their shedding rugs. In a matter of minutes it was decided that I could not live with a shedding rug so I tried to cancel the order, but it had already shipped. N. and I spent a whole night looking at new rugs because now that we've tasted the wine, we need to drink it. We find, after 4 hours of searching, a nice, seemingly unsheddy rug at ABC carpet. This rug was quite different as it was bright and lively compared to the PB one, which was dark and foreboding. So we ordered it.

Monday came around and we quickly rolled up the shedding carpet while the baby napped (we got smart) and had the UPS man take it away. Only he brought the two new ones. Luckily, the one for the dining room table seems good although our table weighs 800 pounds and for the past two days N. and I have been too tired to move it so the dining room table rug is now alongside the table rather than under it.

To continue the saga a friend tells me that she owns a PB rug and yes it shed, but only for two months and we should keep the rug because it will be fine. So....now we have the smaller PB living room rug in the garage while we wait for the one from ABC Carpet because you know what kids....we're gonna compare them! And then we're gonna have to send one back and pay yet another return fee.

Oh and wouldn't you know I had to call PB with the tracking numbers from the sent away rugs so they could credit my account and it was going fine until they wanted to give me a SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLAR GIFT CARD. Because you know we paid with a gift card....I had a minor melt down because it was only a hundred dollar gift card not $700! There's some message when you first call PB about their excellent customer service and I have to say it's true. The people are really nice and very helpful even if they retardedly try to dupe you into spending $700 dollars in their store. Thank goodness for that and the fact that after a long wait Mary Jo returned to tell me a $100 gift card would be sent to me, but the rest of the money would indeed be credited to my account. Whew.

Still, we're going ended up spending over $60.00 bucks on not buying a rug. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there might even be rug saga update. As if this isn't long and boring enough....