Archives for August 2007

Thanks to Farm Wife & Art, we have a trip down memory lane to the world of high school slam books… and since it’s very MeMe-ish, and y’all know I love a MeMe… I’m on board.

1.What’s your name/nickname?

My name is Sarah. As for nicknames, I can’t totally get into High School mode here… In junior high, some friends called me Dimples, because I have huge dimples in my cheeks (which are now causing fantabulous WRINKLES, grrrr). But, Sare is one my close friends call me. Also, I seem to go by “Mom” quite a bit.

2. If it’s a nickname where did you get it and why?
Sare, because it’s about the only way to shorten Sarah. Mom, because well, a hundred years of being pregnant (okay, so it only felt that long), earned me the title.

3. Do you have a significant other (very important question in the lives of high school girls)?
Yupperooni. Married to a guy I dated in high school. Cute, huh?

4. Who is your best friend?
My close friends now are not altogether different than those in high school, to be honest. My friend, R, and I have been tight since I moved to Michigan in 8th Grade. My friend, M, and I became friends in 9th grade (another California girl, actually!). And my newest of my best friends, C, and I met a few years ago and it’s like she’s been in my life forever. I have great friends.

5. What’s your favorite _________? (I’ll let you fill in the blank. Typical Slam book choices were color, band, song, movie, number, food. You can fill in as many or as few as you like. OK, so maybe the questions weren’t really that deep, but we were adolescents…sue us!)
Color: Green
Band: Counting Crows
Song: “Hey There Delilah” by Plain White T’s (at least for now, though long term favorites are “Anna Begins” by Counting Crows and Don McLean’s “American Pie”)
Movie: “When Harry Met Sally”
Number: 16
Food: I love carbs. Fresh baked bread is tops on my list!

6. Do penguins have knees?
Man! I wasn’t paying enough attention during “Happy Feet”!

7. Who’s hotter: Dead Poets’ Society Ethan Hawke or Reality Bites Ethan Hawke?
Absolutely Dead Poets’ Ethan. Man, that movie was awesome. Carpe Diem, folks.

8. If you were stranded on a desert island which lead singer would you most prefer to accompany you? AdamDuritz, Eddie Vedder, or Michael Stipe . And why?
Y’all mighta guessed I have a bit of a thing for the Counting Crows, and man… I’d take Adam Duritz in a heart beat. That man can WRITE. I would love to pick his brain, and find out the stories behind some of my favorite songs… and y’know it’s fitting with the Anna Begins lyric about “send her off to a coconut island”.

9. If one train leaves Boston at 2a.m. traveling at 15mph and a bird flies south from your roof at the butt-crack of dawn which side of the bed will you get upon?
Sounds like a day to stay in bed!

10. Given a free long weekend & $1,000 you were not allowed to spend on bills, what would you do?
Oh, man. I think I would go shopping and see lots of movies. By myself. Or with a friend… because I would want someone to tell me if things looked good. And I would drink lots of Starbucks and eat lots of biscotti. (Okay – a thousand bucks wouldn’t last super long). Or maybe I’d just blow it all in Barnes & Noble and spend the weekend curled up with books and magazines. That sounds good too.

11. How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?
A wood chuck would chuck all the wood he could chuck, if a wood chuck could chuck wood.

12. Leave us with your favorite quote.
I have many, but a good one is “If you really want to be happy, no one can stop you.” Hard to remember, but important in my life.

I think we’ve now determined that if we ever run into the Pacifier Fairy, our whole household could well be lining up to kick her little fairy butt (Do fairies have butts? Well, this is our imaginary fairy, and my blog – so yes, I’m guessing this particular one DOES have a butt, and it needs kicking).

As I type this, I’m enjoying a rare daytime moment of silence since the taking of the pacifiers. Yesterday was so wretchedly bad that I was seriously nasty to just about anyone who had the misfortune of crossing my path. From the moment the first kiddo (yesterday, that was Pumpkin) woke up at 6:30, until the moment Pumpkin FINALLY fell asleep at 10 p.m., my total amount of time to myself was a whopping 30 minutes.

When I finally got Pumpkin to nap yesterday afternoon, after over an hour of screaming and crying (her, not me), her nap was too short, and The Princess was still hanging out, needing things to do. It was another hot, muggy and gruesome day yesterday and The Princess stayed inside much of the day. I don’t blame her, I didn’t want to be outside either. She finally got wrapped up in watercolor painting, invited a friend over and they painted on the front porch (including literally painting ON the front porch – oy). For about an hour they were in and out of the house, getting paper, getting water to rinse brushes, getting paper towel, getting juice, getting cups, getting more juice… “Mom come look!” “Mom, can you get the door for me?” “Can you…”

Would it be snotty to say that in the midst of all this, I’m still working, here… I have a job I’m trying to do from home. Tired, sleep deprived, messy house.

It didn’t get much easier once Hubby came home, as he decided at the girls’ bedtime it would be a perfect time for him to go for a run. Then Stepson called with things he needed Hubby to bring to him. So, yes, at prime witching hour, Hubby was M.I.A. Not a wise move, on his part. I was already crabby and no one got brownie points for that.

Yesterday was not my finest day. Actually, none of us came out of yesterday smelling like roses, to be honest. It sucks. Today started out pretty ugly as well, but I tried a new tactic at naptime with Pumpkin, and for that one time, at least. It worked. She’s about 90 minutes in. The Princess is playing with a friend – AT THE FRIEND’S HOUSE (Whahooooooooooo! Can I just say how sick I am of always being the place where the other kids come? I may be grateful when the girls are teens, but for now? I feel like I’m running a daycare… only none of these moms are paying me!). I’ve almost put away all the laundry I did yesterday. My house is reasonably picked up. I have things to do, but I figure, what would help me the most is to spend a few minutes on me, curling up on the couch with a good book and a bowl of mint chip.

The Princess: Mommy, I want to say goodnight to you again.

Me: Goodnight, I love you, poodle.
(Yes, I call her that. She likes it).

The Princess: I love you too, and that’s why I haven’t moved to Alabama.

Me: You couldn’t move to Alabama, I’d miss you too much.

The Princess: I know, and that’s why I’ll only go if you’re with me.

I love my kid.

I still maintain my stance that three is NOT a good number when it comes to playdates. It’s horribly bad, as a matter of fact. Today, The Princess invited L over to play, and they had been playing quite nicely for several hours. Until they went outside. While they were outside, OG (she of the twisted ankle) came by on her bike, and what happened then is unclear to me as I was inside. All I know is that I came outside, L was crying and my beloved Princess was stomping around acting like a jerk.

Not one to send a kid home crying, I sat them down on the front steps to talk it out, figure out what was wrong, who said what, You know – all those things a meddling mother does. Turns out OG showed up uninvited (AGAIN), OG and L started playing to the exclusion of The Princess (AGAIN), they were getting ready to leave without helping pick up (AGAIN) – and my kid snapped (AGAIN).

That’s not to say I don’t think The Princess has a valid argument – I believe when you have a guest for a playdate, if both kids made the mess, they should both clean it. Leaving without picking up (and they made a HUGE mess, by the way) isn’t fair to the host. So, I get that.

Yelling at your guest that she should go home because she’s not helping and that you don’t want to play with her anymore and that you don’t even like the Other Girl – well, that’s not so fair either.

And it made me feel rotten because L was sobbing, and my girl was stony faced and just unwilling to see any side but her own. I asked The Princess, “Wasn’t there a nicer way to ask L for her help?” And The Princess then politely said, “Will you help me pick up the toys?” L agreed, they picked up (it took a minute – two, max). The Princess apologized, L wiped her tears. But still? I felt rotten. I told The Princess, “I know you’re upset with OG comes over uninvited, but you need to use better words, rather than yell at your friend.”

L and OG walked off, and I called L’s house to fill her parents in on what happened (since I was sending their kid home with a tear-stained face). L’s stepfather said they have had this talk with L before – that she tends to get tunnel vision, plays with only one person, even if more are there. That OG tends to invite herself over, and so on.

I was cutting OG a bit of slack, because she doesn’t live in our neighborhood – she lives with her mom on the other side of the state and is just here visiting her dad. When you dont’ really know anyone, of course she’s going to glom on to the few she knows.

BUT, I just found out – she may be moving here permanently. Lord, help me.

After a spectacularly painful (for me) two plus hours trying to get Pumpkin to bed last night, she was up several times in the middle of the night. Surprisingly, she didn’t cry about her pacifier until about 1:30 in the morning. I had held her for a few minutes and her eyes were heavy and she was half asleep saying, “Pacipier… paci….” It was like she was dreaming of it or something!

I guess the struggles are to be expected – she has fallen asleep with that plug in her mouth nearly every night for two years – she has to relearn how to fall asleep, and how to stay asleep.

An unexpected (by me) plus: her breath smells much better on waking up than it did previously. Stinky paci mouth? Who knew.

So, after a morning of hunting pacifiers, we stuck them in a box that Pumpkin had decorated and left them under the tree in the front yard for the Pacifier Fairy to take to give to the little babies (I don’t know what babies – Pumpkin didn’t ask, The Princess didn’t ask — though The Princess DID ask, “What about all the GERMS on the paci?”). In the place of the box, the Paci Fairy would leave a gift for Pumpkin.

And that’s exactly what she did.

You see, at two years old, Pumpkin has been a devoted fan of her paci for all her life. I wanted to take it away when she turned one – but that is when she started teething. It seemed cruel of me to take it then when her mouth was in such pain. Instead, I limited its use to in the crib – for bed time only. Even with the limited use, though, her teeth were starting to be affected (in my opinion), and so I figured now would be the time to do it.

At her Well Child doctor’s appointment on Monday, I asked our Dr. B, our family doctor, what on earth to do. She then told me about the Pacifier Fairy. She said to get Pumpkin VERY involved in gathering the paci’s, and put them in a box that Pumpkin had decorated, leave the box out by a tree in the yard, and the Pacifier Fairy would take the box and leave a present for Pumpkin.

Ohhhhhhh-kay. Worth a shot.

So, we found a box. We decorated it with beaucoup stickers. And then left the box empty for a few days. Last night, I went shopping and found a cute fuzzy little CareBear to leave in its place, and today I decided to bite the bullet. We found four paci’s in the house (we had more, but I cut the tips off a few of them to discourage the use of them — and we tossed those). We put them in the box, and I told her to say goodbye to the pacifiers. She wailed, “Hellloooooooooooooooo paci!” I video’d her saying her goodbyes. I let her pop one in her mouth for a few final moments of paci comfort. And then we headed to the front yard to put the box under the tree.

Minutes later, while The Princess was visiting a friend, the Pacifier Fairy must have somehow swooped in and swapped the pacifiers for the gift. The Princess noticed it when she returned home. Pumpkin loved her CareBear – it even came with a DVD of a movie, and she thought that was neat. We muddled through lunch, we watched the movie, and then…

Naptime.

I put her in the crib and she instantly was asking for her pacifier, “Mommy! Pacipier! Me want pacipier!” Then screaming. Boy, did she scream. I cuddled her for a bit, put her back in the crib. Scream scream. When I went back the next time, she told me her mouth hurt – as she’d been biting her crib rails.

Oy.

After nearly an hour of yelling, she gestured towards the toddler bed that I had put together this morning (Thinking I could just tell her, “No paci’s in the big girl bed… that’s why they are going bye bye.”). She said she wanted her bed, so I pulled the mattress from the crib and put it on the bed. She cuddled up with her CareBear – and was out within minutes.

I’m not naive enough to think we won’t struggle at bedtime and have a few rough days… but I was reassured that she DID fall asleep.

Wish us luck.

…Out hunting and trapping pacifiers.

I’ll be back soon.