Merry Christmas!

Sometimes Christmas makes you cranky. Lolo’s friends “Kaferine and Ewizabef” weren’t as thrilled with Santa at the mall.

Merry Christmas to everyone and may the New Year bring good health and happiness!

White on White

This was my first cup of coffee since having to give up all dairy and sugar. It was beyond delicious. I sacrificed and used fat free half-n-half (how do they do that?) rather than my beloved Fat Free French Vanilla creamer by Coffee-mate. I tried a Stevia packet to sweeten it but just couldn’t stomach it (too mealy), so I threw up my hands and added a Splenda to my brew. I now have at least four cups a day of decaf. Two in the morning, one at lunch and one after dinner. Clearly I have learned very little about moderation during this sugar experiment.

Great Grandparents

Trickle Down

I’ve never spent so much time in the bathroom save for the two times I’ve had food poisoning (frozen lasagna when I was 14 and a Subway sandwich in college).

I gave in recently and purchased little potties for Lolo so she would feel more comfortable with the whole concept. We already have the potty seats that fit over our adult-sized ones and cute step stools but she’s still a little intimidated. Clearly trying to avoid transferring her “work” from a plastic pot to a porcelain one was prolonging the entire process. (I’ve also learned that it’s hard to tell if she’s actually gone pee when she’s on the adult-sized potty. Frankly two tablespoons of liquid isn’t all that audible and doesn’t discolor a full bowl of water. With the plastic one, there is hard evidence.)

The past couple of days, when I’ve asked if she wants to sit on the potty, she’s said “ssches”. So, we sit. She’s on the plastic throne and I am on the bathroom floor reading a stack of library books so she’s fully entertained and of course, hydrated.

She won’t get off until there’s success. Because without success, she’ll miss out on the screeching, jumping, hollerin’ session. We always end with the happy dance because something eventually trickles out after 45 minutes of sipping water. Needless to say, I never ask if she needs to use the potty if we have to be anywhere within an hour.

Yesterday she used her downstairs potty and immediately had success. We jumped, we yelped and then walked her results over to the big potty. She wanted to sit some more. Again, she immediately found success and we repeated the whole cycle. This happened FIVE times in a row. She obviously let a little bit out, tensed up and held the rest in while we took care of the celebration and flush. But, I am thinking that this is the beginning of muscle control? She can seemingly hold it a bit. Maybe?

In the evening before bed, she had 7 pee sessions in a row. When I cut her off because it was actually time to skedaddle to dreamland, she emptied the rest of her bladder on the changing table. Clearly she really did need to sit some more.

Now that there is a consistent interest, I basically have to figure how much I want to sit on the bathroom floor. We’re a long way from her telling me she feels the pee-pee coming but I’m not ashamed to say that it’s a good way to waste some time when it’s frigid outside.

I’m PUBLISHED!

Excuse the ALL CAPS! I’m a little weak in the knees. My words were published. Actually published. Check out the mamapedia.com homepage and scroll down to the article about “Pondering When To Have a Second Child.”

Just make room on my name placard. “Stay-at-home mom, zucchini bread baker, former graphic designer, dog walker and  writer” (unpaid for all of course, but no less proud.)

Pass it on to EVERYONE you know. Click, click, click my link.

http://www.mamapedia.com/voices/pondering-when-to-have-a-second-child

A Lesson In Honesty

As my sweet, ever-more-verbal toddler and I worked through a typical bedtime routine this week, we talked about how she needs to brush her teeth every night to keep them clean. I told her that we want her teeth to stay healthy and white. She pointed to her teeth and said, “white” and then pointed to mine and said, “Mama’s yellow teeth.”

God, I hate when she’s right.

I told her to just wait until she’s looking back on 15 years of coffee and tea drinking.

Can You Barely Stand It?

Don’t lie. You are fully aware that it’s down to the final “two” on “The Bachellorette.” You live the drama and eat it up like ice cream with gossip sprinkles on top.

If you have something better to do at 9 pm on a Monday night, I am purely jealous.

Due to both my mother’s unhealthy obsession with this show and my love for “The Soup” on E!, I’ve been roped in and am actually biting my nails over the weekend wondering whether Jillian will choose Ed with the super short “short-shorts” or Kiptyn with a “y” and the more appropriately proportioned shorts. But, wait. Don’t count Reid out just because he walked away without a rose two weeks ago. It’s going to be the “most dramatic rose ceremony yet!”

Everything but …

“I like everything BUT the sand, Mama.” Seriously, we had to create an island for her and continue to brush off any granules that happened to adhere to her body. Only a fruit bar could make it tolerable.

We’re back from the beach and I am slowly but surely uploading photos and creating posts in my head.

It’s drained.

Come with me on a medical adventure.

I had my appointment with the podiatrist yesterday. Since he wasn’t my original doctor (who is on vacation), I had to explain the whole history of this cyst and the sippy cup debacle. I started out by saying, “I have a ganglion cyst on my foot.” He smiled and said, “Heh, I can see that,” while staring at the prominent lump. (I knew I would like him from that moment on.)

As soon as I got my story out, he explained that this is old hat. He needed to aspirate the cyst and take out the insides. My response to the aspiration would determine whether I eventually needed surgery or not.

[Side-note: You may be wondering where Lolo was in this whole scenario. Well, she was a superstar sitting in her front row seat, the stroller. When we’re in any sort of doctor’s office, she is a wiggle worm who wants to investigate everything UNTIL the doctor comes in. Once the doc is on the scene, she turns into the perfect audience. I think she senses their authority and that they are going to do things she’ll want to watch. Still, I was a little worried. I had my blood pressure taken recently, and she freaked out when she saw the big band around my arm and the nurse doing something to mama. In the end, she found it all utterly fascinating.]

[Warning: This could be a little gory depending on your tolerance for Discover Health shows. If you’re at all squeamish, skip to the sentence near the end in red.]

First, he numbed the whole side of my foot with an injection of lidocaine which I neglected to watch. Then he pumped the cyst up to twice its size with some sort of fluid. And, then for the peak of drama, he used an 18-gauge needle (which in my state of shock looked as thick as a coffee stirrer) to suck out the cyst’s innards. It turns out that you don’t really drain a cyst because the filling is thick like jelly. He even showed me what he was able to pull out, and I was surprised to see that it was less than a teaspoon. He then finished it all off with a shot of cortisone.

To be frank, it was magical. As soon as he sucked the jelly out, I felt no pressure, no pain, and the bump was reduced to half its original size. Even with the lidocaine, I could feel the release. I have a follow-up appointment next week and am supposed to keep it tightly wrapped until then. He said the success of the treatment greatly depends on the compression I administer with bandages.

All was good. I went home. I performed all the normal evening activities and then went to bed.

With a surge of pain, I awoke around midnight startled by the fire in my foot. I guess the drugs finally wore off and the effects of forcibly disrupting the cyst were setting in. I tossed and turned in distress for 4.5 hours. Motrin sort of eased the misery, but not really. I fantasized about hitting my left foot with a hammer so that the pain in my right foot wouldn’t feel so bad. Alas, morning came and the ache subsided.

I will post a picture once I can kick Matt off the big photo editing computer upstairs. In the meantime, I am off to soak my foot in epsom salts. Nothing like a good foot soak to make you feel old.

Are You Wearing a Gumball in Your Sock?

I officially feel like a mutant. A few weeks ago, my ganglion cyst came back larger than ever.

For the first couple weeks, it loomed large on my foot but didn’t hurt. Now it’s angry and sending throbs of blood pumping pain up my foot. For some reason, it’s worse at night when I am finally off my feet.

Today at music class, instead of just taking off my flip flops to join the circle of mamas, I reached into my purse to put on socks. I didn’t want anyone to suffer from seeing my freakishly bumpy foot. It looks like I am saving a gumball in my sock for later. Only, I’m not.

Ok, so my toes are a little odd, too. But, they won't make children run away in fear like the growth on the side of my foot will.

I’m going to the doctor tomorrow to see if he can temporarily relieve my pain. It makes me cringe to even think that he could maybe, possibly, in a way “drain” it. God, that makes me want to throw up.

Rant

Harrumph. Hand this one over to the ‘Complaint Department’. I’m cranky.

How does one live in “Jerz” without being affected by the “so called” stereotypical attributes of the Garden State (that really aren’t stereotypes after all)? They’re real. The hair, the jewelry, the nails, the leather. Bravo TV isn’t exaggerating their portrayal of the Real Housewives of New Jersey. It’s all real.

Yes, yes, there are plenty of normal people who have arrived here from other normal places (such as Brooklyn). But, they’re not the ones who own the hair salons. You can see where I’m going with this one. I just wanted a haircut. A simple one. I landed at a salon close to our house that is truly indescribable. Suffice it to say that Carmella Soprano would have had her hair done there and felt right at home amongst the vinyl “mock marble” counter tops. (In fact, the majority of the Sopranos was filmed in this area.) When the stylist found out I just wanted a trim, she told me that “I could think about that decision” while I was having my hair shampooed. When I was delivered back to her chair, she asked what I had decided. I told her I was going to keep it simple and didn’t want any more layers right now. Without a word, she started to cut my hair, which took about 5 minutes. Then she silently dried it, and I was on my merry way in less than 15 minutes. Miffed she was. Miffed that I didn’t want a Jersey “do.”

I’m overwhelmed by the shiny gold, the tanning, the makeup, the eyeliner. But, it’s seeping in slowly but surely. I’ve heard myself say out loud more than once that I may need to invest in some UV-free tanning. And, I’ve been wearing lip gloss to the playground. What’s next? Frosted highlights and snakeskin pants? It’s a slippery slope.

The 911 Tally Grows

With so many visitors from Virginia, there just hasn’t been time to post. Here’s the abbreviated breakdown of the past few weeks.

-My brother popped in for a long weekend before his fancy, earth-friendly, biological, bacteria-growin’, science internship starts.
-We found out Lolo grew 6 inches in 3 months.
-Nothing spells fun for a toddler more than wrecking your nap schedule and stomping all over the Children’s Museum of Manhattan.
-New words are “uh oh” and “buh bye”
-Now that it’s the end of May, I think it might be safe to put away the winter clothes and turn off the heat. But, you never really do know.
-“Gamma” Virginia stopped in for some hi-jinx and fun before heading back to the grind.
-And, last but certainly not least, we AGAIN had the opportunity to call 911.

Ever since moving North, I think we’ve called “911” at least five or six times in total. However, this was our first-ever suburban emergency.

Don’t get the wrong impression. We’re not reckless with our emergency dialing. Each time we do it, we really do think our lives are in peril. They have all just turned out to be false alarms, that’s all.

But, who wouldn’t call when a drunk Australian tries to pick a fight with you from street level as you’re on your patio above a subway entrance? Who wouldn’t call when it smells like the whole building you live in is filled with natural gas? (It just so happened that it wasn’t natural gas, it was sewer gas from the Dunkin Donuts below our apartment.) Who wouldn’t call when the cable guy says that there is bare wiring behind our apartment building that could start a fire at any moment?

So, what suburban madness led us to call 911 this time? Crazy teens, of course. I was laying in bed just before midnight over the Memorial Day weekend when I started to hear a loud verbal fight between a few guys. But, they were fighting like girls. They were arguing about someone not getting in the car and about how someone else was tired of always being the one to drive. There were six or seven cranky 16 year-olds standing around a car in front of our neighbor’s house. When I went upstairs to get the non-emergency police number (we do try not to blow everything out of proportion), Matt went to the window to inspect what was going on. Then they started throwing glass bottles, so he was forced to dial our favorite three digits.

Just as he was calling, as if they knew, they sped off only to screech to a halt in front of our house. They all got out of the car and proceeded to scream and fight even louder. Two minutes after our 911 call, three cops showed up to inspect the disturbance. That’s when the “Cops” intro music started in my head, and I got all giggly about the smack down I was about to witness. I had already mentally arrested the teens for driving under the influence and hiding illegal substances in the car. The cops thought it, too. I heard phrases like, “This is your opportunity to tell us if there are any drugs in the car. It’s not worth going to jail trying to hide a dime bag.” It was awesome. But, unfortunately that’s when the drama peaked.

The cops detained the kids for about 20 minutes in the hopes that one would crack and fess up to what was really going on. In the end, the driver was issued a ticket and asked to get home safely. (And, to stop fighting like chicks when all the babies are trying to sleep.)

I couldn’t resist

It’s shameless and most likely completely boring to you. No, utterly boring. I just can’t help it. She makes me laugh and I have endless access to my camera.

To rationalize this as a post consisting of more than a toddler video. This is what’s been occupying my brain this week in order of importance.
1. Jon and Kate Rumors. I’m riveted.
2.Whole Wheat Zucchini Bread. Delicious and scarfed down by husband and child.
3. Whether I can still wear shorts as a mom and have them not look like “mom shorts”.
4. Sunless tanning. I think I want it.
5. I think I need a blackberry to keep track of my daughter’s social life. And, because I am not so secretly addicted to the Internet.
6. What about parenthood causes you to drink more than when you didn’t have to wake up at 6:30 am 7 days a week?

Prime time minutes

I can tell she's gonna require a lot of minutes.

Our Status Is Never “Quo”

Tomorrow will mark 15 months, so I thought this was a perfect time to update the world on what the bean finds delightful.
1. Walking backwards is utterly hilarious.
2. Spinning around in a circle makes her smile.
3. You definitely don’t need rain to wear a raincoat.

Her words are growing and her ability to quasi mimic our language tells me that she’ll be breaking out of babytalk soon.
1. “Nana”= Banana
2. “Shoosz”= Shoes
3. “Nigh Nigh”= Nite Nite
3. “ZeeZee”= Zoe
4. And, finally, she said “Papa.”

An Exercise In Pretending

Pretending to sleep is so much more fun.

Mom Wiki

I’m well aware that I obsess. That I research. That I never just go to the store on a whim to buy something without knowing all the alternatives and what they cost. That’s exactly why Google Shopping was invented. I embrace this and I own it. It’s who I am.

Well, I’ve started to notice that my mom friends have picked up on this trend as well. They look to me for what the best deal is on gyms in the area, what I wash my hardwood floors with that’s both natural but not wicked expensive, how well a 14 month old can walk in crocs, how much is the swingset at Costco, who can install it if you buy it …

Could  I capitalize on this? Yes, yes, I know that mom groups, social networking sites, and the mother of all message boards, the Internet, already exist. But, I am the filter with my own very specific point of view. A very valuable, OCD point of view in my estimation. I could create a cult following with monthly dues. Maybe it could build into a pyramid scheme? Something along the lines of the Mary Kay business plan?

Maybe if I made 50 cents for every piece of advice I gave, making mistakes on my own wouldn’t seem so costly. It’s like a stopped up toilet would pay for itself.

Ponytail

How Can I Like A Kanye Song?

Is it wrong that I jam out to this song on the way to baby swim class? I feel like it might be.

I can’t stand Kanye in general but had no idea this was his song until after it had infiltrated my easily influenced brain. Damn you Kanye.

Accessorize

She gazes at the reflection of this barrette in her hair just basking in the glory of all that glitters in the world of accessories.