Mostly an Optimist
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "beth79" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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07:20 pm
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Embarrassment and pride
I don't know what came over Alexander yesterday, but there was an "incident" at storytime. He was sitting there peacefully listening to the stories when all of a sudden he got the idea to sort of fall backwards into a laying position, and the same time flinging his one leg sideways and thus kicking the girl next to him in the face. There is about a 5% chance that the kick was accidental, but I was looking right at him when it happened (the parents sit around the edges of the room and all the kids sit in the middle around the librarian) and I'm not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Anyways, I was ***fuming*** but I basically just swooped him up as fast as I could, quietly apologized to the group, and hauled ass out of the room. Outside the room I gave him a stern talking to, and when the girl came out to get a tissue we aplogized profusely to her and her mother. Then I made Alexander leave the library. He cried, saying, "I'm ready to be nice, I'm ready to be nice!" and "I want to stay and hear all the stories!"
Anyway, if your child has ever been the perpetrator of an incident like this, then you know how it feels. If not, let me share. It feels like everyone is looking at you. Everyone is judging you and judging your child. You can feel them thinking that he is a "bad kid." You can feel them glaring at you because you are obviously a bad mother. You, in fact, know that you are a very, very bad parent for allowing your child to become the one who randomly kicks another child during storytime. It does not feel good.
So that's the embarrassment portion.
So fast forward to today. My friend Melissa is a librarian at the library as well, and was working there yesterday when this happened. So this morning when she was dropping off her daughter for me to babysit, I asked if the storytime lady (Sandra) had mentioned the incident. She said no and I told her what had happened. So later in the day I got an Email from Melissa saying that she asked Sandra about the incident (without first saying that she knew me) and that Sandra said, "I didn't see exactly what the boy did, but his mom handled it very smoothly. I was very impressed." HAHA! Hooray me! When Melissa told her then that I was her friend, Sandra asked her to pass along to me to please bring Alexander to storytime again next week, that it really wasn't a big deal and that no one even took much notice! Whoa! The difference of perspective! It felt like SUCH a big deal to me, so I am just really relieved to hear that someone thought I did a good job dealing with the situation and that it wasn't as big a deal to the people around me as it was to me.
Of course, I am sure the mother of the little girl who was kicked thought it was a big deal... but I think I've said to almost everyone that reads this that a kid (of Xander's age) can do just about anything to my kid, and as long as the parent reacts appropriately, I really won't be mad or think much of it. Kids are basically insane and are very bad at controlling their impulses. So yeah, I do freak out when Alexander acts like this, but I also know that all I can do is my best to teach him not to do it again. I know that he's not doomed to be an axe murderer, friendless, or deranged in any way. Well, I know that MOST of the time. In the heat of the moment, I have to admit I get a bit worried!
Anyway, I guess the point is that although it was still a bad incident, it wasn't as bad as I thought. I seriously was scared that if I tried to take him to storytime next week that we would be asked to leave. Hopefully he behaves himself next time!!
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10:18 pm
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Drugs, magical drugs!
I have a slight cold. It's nothing serious. But today I had the joy of taking whatever drugs I pleased! This is significant because...
I became pregnant with Alexander in May of 2004 and weaned him in June of 06. 5 months free, then in December of 06 became pregnant with Jack, who I weaned earlier this month, November 08. Are all those dates right? Close enough! SO... since I don't take any drugs unless I absolutely have to when I am pregnant or nursing, you can see my joy at the rare freedom to take whatever I please. If my math is right, in the past 54 months, there have been only 5 months where I was neither pregnant nor breastfeeding. Hell, I could go out drinking or on a crack binge if I wanted! Wahoo!
Hmmm... I wonder if the meds I took have caffeine because I feel rather... awake.
Current Mood: awake
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08:19 pm
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Torn
( cut for length and whining )
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10:12 pm
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one more name revealed
On the pregnant mammas list- TL ladies, check the boards!
(That's not an additional one; I already counted her!)
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02:50 pm
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BABIES!
Now this is a record. I now am friends with or related to NINE pregnant women. Last record was 7, but I found out recently that two more of my friends are pregnant. A baby boom! :) People who have "publicly" announced their pregnancies: Kelly, Melissa, Mara, Abbey, Andrea, Elizabeth, plus three more that have not yet publicly announced. I am so excited to meet all these wonderful new babies and am hoping for smooth pregnancies for everyone.
Current Mood:  excited
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08:31 am
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SO TICKED!
*I* am the only one to blame for this. MEMEMEMEME! DAMNIT!
I let Xander use my camera pretty often. It amuses him to go around taking pictures of his feet and the walls and whatever else strikes his fancy. But today... well, you can see where this is going. He was standing in the upstairs hallway talking to me through the railing (I was on the stairs) when he fumbled and dropped the camera. It bounced off the nice fluffy carpeted floor of the upstairs and fell through the railing to the hardwood floor of the main floor. CRASH, SMASH, BANG, CRUNCH. Yeah, my camera was not meant to survive that. It surely is broken. I have no idea how much it will cost to fix, but given that a man is about to show up in about a half an hour so that I can sign a contract to pay about $1800 to have my house fixed, I AM NOT AMUSED. Of course I yelled about it (though not exactly *at* Xander) and then of course I had to tell him I was sorry and that I wasn't mad at him, I was just sad that my camera was broken, so now I feel bad about the yelling, too. And I feel bad because a bunch of people chipped in two Christmases ago to buy that camera for me and then I didn't take proper care of it, so I feel bad about that. Doesn't it suck when you're so super, SUPER pissed and you have noone to blame but yourself? DAMN!
And now to go cleanup breakfast so I can sign that contract.
Current Mood:  pissed off
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10:55 pm
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A confession
I am SO ready to be done with nursing Jack. :( I feel guilty about it, but I'm just not into it! With Xander, I really had trouble letting go and I was not ready until he was 16 months, and then it was good timing because he was ready to wean, too. With Jack I've been ready to stop at least since he was 10 months old. He turned 11 months old today, and I am counting down this last month until I can put him on cow's milk. I do realize it would be stupid to put him on formula for one month and I can certainly hang in there for 30 more days- 180 more feedings. I'm glad I did it, but I'm ready to be done.
That being said, one of the reasons that I am ready to be done is because I am ready to be away from him for more than 3 hours at a time (and yes, I feel guilty about that, too). For example, my dad is trying to get his house ready to put on the market and I would really like to be able to leave the kids with Justin on a Saturday and just go there and work for an entire day with no interuptions. Of course, I was ready for him to start eating solid foods because it was exciting to me that *anyone* could feed him solid food, not just me. But... hmmm... nobody else does.
Current Mood:  tired
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07:47 am
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Um... yep.
Can't post this one on the other blog...
Alexander (to JUSTIN!): Do you have a baby in your belly?
Justin: No.
Alexander: But your belly is big.
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06:03 pm
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time suckers
WTF is "Mobsters" on MySpace and why has my husband played it for 4 hours today? Doesn't he know that *I* have important things to be doing on LJ, MySpace, blogger, Facebook, and the TL?
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07:57 am
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Summer Camp
Xander starts a week of summer camp in about an hour and a half! I am nervous!! I'm extra nervous since he didn't get to bed until about 10 last night since we were at the Keys game. He can be SO good sometimes... and so naughty others! I just can't predict, but all I want is for him to have fun and not get aggressive with anyone! He's been WAY better about that, but put him in a new situation and you never know. I seriously doubt he'd cling to me or get upset when I leave, so it's just a matter of whether he'll participate nicely or not.
Current Mood:  nervous
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10:37 pm
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Am I missing anything?
For Jack's nursery rhyme/all things Jack themed party...
Jack be nimble...
Little Jack Horner...
Jack Sprat could eat no fat...
Jack and Jill went up the hill...
This is the house that Jack built...
Jack and the beanstalk...
Jack-in-the-box
By the way, yes. My mood did just change three times in the past 10 minutes, thankyouverymuch.
Current Mood: creative
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10:34 pm
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Facebook
Am I really going to be sucked into Facebook? Another of my friends just sent me the Email saying that she signed up and I should too so that I can view her stuff. Is it worth it?
Current Mood:  curious
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10:13 pm
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Me thinks this is a wee bit incestuous...
Tim = Justin's best friend.
Tim = Justin's sister's (Shannon) ex-boyfriend/ ex-fiance
Tim = best man at our wedding
Tim = godfather to both our boys
Tim = our roommate
Tim = co-author to one of Justin's books
Tim = business partner to Justin's business that failed and put us (not him, though!)in debt
I love the guy, but if that weren't enough...
Tim NOW = Justin's coworker/ assistant! They will now be commuting to work together each day and working directly together all day. Tim will be Justin's assistant. Justin will have to train him, assign him work, etc. Then they will commute home together... to the same house. For the record, I think it's a bad idea and I seriously hope this does not end badly. We put off living with him for years after the subject first came up because we didn't want our friendship to be ruined. We came dangerously close to losing a friend whose house we shared in Kensington and we didn't want the same to happen with Tim. Turns out we live really well together and it's been beneficial for all of us. I just think that throwing working together in there will be too much. When they collaborated on other projects, Justin got rather annoyed with him rather often. And now there's no escaping him. Ay yi yi. I am HOPING that it goes much better than I am expecting, and that they will work together really well since they know each other really well. Perhaps together they will advance their careers farther than they would have alone. But... I am scared. We'll see.
Current Mood:  worried
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07:40 pm
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a new invitation poem
How about this one for Jack's invitation instead?
Little Jack Justin
Been cleanin' and dustin'
and makin' his house all sparkly.
His first year is done,
now he's turning one,
and wants you to come to his party.
Justin didn't like the Jack be nimble one, so I tried again. ;)
Current Mood: creative
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11:15 am
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I'm so crazy
I have found that I love planning my kids' birthday parties! I never go overboard with costly things, but I so enjoy making the invitations and decorations and deciding on some theme. For Jack's first birthday party I plan to have a Nursery Rhyme/ Mother Goose theme, to play on all the nursery rhymes that have the name Jack in them. I think I will have the invitation read, "Jack be nimble, Jack be a smarty, Jack is one, please come to his party." I will write the nursery rhymes on big poster papers, with big illustrations sort of on top (hard to describe what I mean but if I do it and they turn out well of course I will post pics on my other blog), with photos of just Jack's head on the head of the Jack from the poem, so it looks really silly and sort of purposely not quite aligned/ connected right, if that makes any sense. I have some food ideas (roast beef for "this little piggy," hot crossed buns, plum pie, porridge [actually white chili maybe]) or might just do non-themed food, but need some more cupcake ideas. I prefer doing cupcakes to a cake. I could easily do cupcakes with black papers, blue icing, and a black licorice handle to look like pails of water (Jack and Jill), but that seems pretty boring. I'm sure I can come up with something better.
I also though I could put out a game for the adults (not to force it on anyone, just set out supplies in case people want to do it) with some nursery rhyme themed prize. The game would be sort of like scattergories (is that the right game?). You would just have to think of as many words/phrases that have "Jack" in it, and the person with the most wins. Get it out of your systems now, people! "Jackass," "Hijack," "Jackhammer," "Jackknife," etc.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I AM SUCH A DORK! :)
(An aside- does anyone else spellcheck their entries here? I do occassionally, and I did this time. I find it REALLY ironic that "blog" was flagged.)
Current Mood: creative
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10:30 pm
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Another one for the books
I posted a while back about some really hilarious excuses that my MIL has given for not being able to come to different things we've invited her to. They've ranged from sorry to sick to just plain ridiculous, but really... I find humor in most of them. The latest: my dad is having cookout this weekend and asked me to invite my ILs. I did; my FIL had to work but said that if we picked my MIL up, she could come. I'll gloss over the fact that they're forgetting that we have two very small cars with two carseats in the back and no room for extra passengers and I will grant her immunity, if you will, for whatever excuse she had for not being able to drive her perfectly driveable car 15 miles to my dad's house. The funny here is the message we got on our answering machine today.
"Hi, guys. This is Mom. I'm calling about the cookout at David's house this weekend. I know that I said that if you picked me up, I would come, but I forgot about the blisters on my mouth. I got sunburn blisters on my mouth and I really don't want to anyone to see me, so how about we plan on getting together next weekend?...."
Yep, I'd call that one "another one for the books."
Current Mood: amused
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12:33 pm
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I can't believe I am saying this,
I miss our little one bedroom apartment! I mean, I KNOW it wouldn't work for us now, but when Alexander was Jack's age, we were in that place and I had the living room perfectly childproofed and gated. Now that Jack is super fast and curious, I am forever telling him that he can't play with the DVDs and books that he can get off the shelves. Of course it wouldn't be as annoying if I didn't ALSO have to keep him off of whatever Xander is playing with, which is ALWAYS what Jack wants to play with, too. He seriously has a knack for finding the one thing in the room, out of 100, that he CAN'T play with. Ugh. The past few days has put me back to the opinion that two kids is plenty.
We just have too much CRAP. I wish Justin would let me sell/ give away most of it. The DVDs he really needs to put in binders like I finally convinced him to do with his CDs. The books, even though many of them are "mine," I would be happy to see gone. If I want to read them again, I will check them out of the library. Or get rid of something else so we can fit the bookshelves in the office! I am about to start babysitting a 12 month old and I will spend all my time keeping the babies off the no-nos in the living room if we can't do something!
Current Mood: frustrated
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10:51 pm
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to empty my brain
So guess what I just did! I spent an hour and fifteen minutes working on my huge and complex cross-stitch project. When I went to return the extra thread to the "thread sorter," I realized that I had been using the wrong color. UGH! So I spent 20 minutes taking out all that I had done. HOW ANNOYING!
Also been thinking about how I've been nickle and diming myself to death lately. It's so hard to restrain from making those small purchases when you know that $5 here and $10 there is not going to kill your budget. But it adds up fast and you're left saying, "Where did all my money go?" Of course, I KNOW this! Thankfully, over the past 3.5 years, Justin has gotten some good raises and it's tough, after HAVING to be SO strict with ourselves to not "let go" a bit when we're able to. It's easy not to spend money when you don't have any! When you have the choice of paying your doctor bill or buying groceries, you don't even consider buying your kid a bubble blaster just because he's been good and it looks like fun. Anyways, I've been doing a bit too much of the bubble blaster here, milkshake there, Chuck E Cheese here bit. I've always been pretty frugal, so by no means have I been on a spending frenzy or anything. But, I do need to cut back. So I've put myself on a VERY strict budget of a certain amount per week, which needs to cover gas, any activities I do with the kids, presents, etc. I know I might end up just getting Justin to buy certain things so that it doesn't have to come out of my budget, but I still think it will cause me to cut back A LOT! I keep feeling like there's no way we'll ever be able to save for retirement or help our kids go to college, but just as the money GOES quickly when you don't watch it carefully enough, hopefully it will GROW quickly when I do watch it!
Oh, and BTW, the front of our house is rotting. NICE. No, it's not as bad as it sounds. We have a "bump-out," which is just a part of the house that sticks out a bit and has the windows in it. Well, the plywood there is soft, like it stayed moist too much and the wood is rotting. Hopefully it's just a matter of pulling off the old plywood, putting up new stuff, sealing and painting it. Even that... we couldn't do ourselves and have no idea how much it will cost. There is a slight possibility that we would have to take the whole thing off, take the windows out, reframe and rebuild the whole thing, but I doubt that would be the case, because that would mean that it rotted all the way through to the frame. Please, please let this be inexpensive so that we don't have to kill our savings which is finally growing for the first time in probably 6 years.
Justin's boss promised him that he would be able to work form home one day per week when we moved to Frederick and so far it hasn't happened! But it's "in the works" now for his whole company, so SOON would be good! Nice how we moved to Frederick just in time for these crazy gas prices. I don't regret it, though. I love where we live and even with the savings in gas, we wouldn't have been able to afford a nice neighborhood like this in MC. Maybe some day we'll move back... but I doubt it! We'll just push for more work from home days! :)
By the way, does anyone else find it innapropriate that one of the "mood" choices is "high?"
Off to bed!
Current Mood: awake
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05:01 pm
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And now I'm *that* mom
I am now that mom who tells a story of something crazy that her kid did, and all the other moms are just wondering what's wrong with the MOM! As in, "Where were you while he was doing that?" and "Why did you leave that within his reach?" and "My kid would never do that."
We were playing in Alexander's room when he announced, as he always does, that he had to poop. "So, go," I said to him, as I always do. He is perfectly capable of going to the bathroom himself, putting the potty ring on the toilet and pulling the stool up for his feet. He poops and then calls for me to help clean him up. Then he puts back on his own clothes. He's pretty self-sufficient. At least that's how it normally goes. Today he went to the bathroom and when it started to take longer than it normally does, I picked up Jack and went to check on him. "What are you doing?" I asked as I walked into my room (he likes to use my bathroom). "Painting," he said. Painting? I saw something dark smeared on the toilet and think WHAT? He is "painting" with his poop?!?! No way! "With this paint," he said and finally I see what is in his hand. A bottle of purple nail polish. OMG. He was painting the toilet purple with nail polish! Can I even tell you the last time that I USED nail polish?!?! WHY did I have it sitting in a basket on top of the toilet?! Thankfully I also had a bottle of nail polish remover under the sink.
Yes, I know. This is my fault. Where WAS I when this was happening? Playing with my other son, God forbid. But really, what made me think my 3 year old, while CAPABLE of pooping by himself, is responsible/mature/smart enough to be ALLOWED to poop by himself? What made me think that the back of the toilet was a good place to keep nail polish? I really have no excuses. Go ahead and laugh! I am! HAHAHAHAHA!
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08:08 am
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MUST WHINE
Everyone is my house (including our roomate, although that has little effect on me) is sick with a horrible summer cold! It's horrrrrible!! Jack wakes up all night, I've gotten no sleep, my nose won't stop running, my throat hurts. My eyes are itchy and watery, my skin itches, my muscles ache! I'm not sure what I can take since I'm breastfeeding so I took Sudafed and it's not touching it.
I think there was more that I wanted to whine about... but that's my big complaint. Sick and tired with sick and tired kids to boot. Waaaaaah!
Current Mood: cranky
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