Gone Fishing

I don't know if this vacation was great because it actually was, or because we needed it to be.  Either way, this week has been exactly what the four of us needed to relax and recoup from the week before, and really recover from all that's gone on this summer, between loosing dog-brother Griz, and Grandma Dillier, to almost loosing our newborn son and the unexpected loss of John's mom and the anniversary of my own father's death which always makes me extra emotional this time of year.  It's been a rough summer and we desperately needed some happy.

We started out by staying in John's dad's St George condo and visited the dinosaur tracks museum, we traveled on to Baker and got some Alien Fresh Jerky, then had dinner at the scummiest McDonald's ever in Victorville.  We got lost on our way to our hotel  and after 14 hours of driving (split over two days) all the while our three month old was cutting his first two teeth, we ended up in San Diego where Alex's eczema miraculously disappeared and we proceeded to have a wonderful vacation.

We spent the first two days celebrating Alex's third birthday at Sea World and saw everything except the Aquarium Del Mar and the Sesame Street "4D" movie. We let Alex pick out any toys he wanted at the gift shops (he bought a squeaky Shamu, a toy car, a coloring book and two smooshed pennies; one Shamu and one Elmo, both of which got lost somewhere in the van on the ride back to the hotel), we let him buy popcorn in a collectible bucket and a frozen lemonade in a souvenir Shamu sports bottle. We ate caramel apple funnel cakes and Killer Whale shaped cookies.  We spent a lot of time watching Beluga Whales.  We fed stinky fish to dolphins and sea lions.  We played in the Sesame Street play land.  We rolled our eyes at the over the top production of the Shamu show, but ooh ed and aahed anyway.  We laughed at the big fat pink walrus that crawled out of the water at the sea lion show.  We were nice to a mime.  We clapped manically for the flying dolphins.  We did not get splashed, even though we sat in the "Soak zone" for each and every show.  Mommy got sick on the spinning star fish ride and Daddy got nauseous on the Oscar the Grouch boat ride, Alex wanted to go on all the rides "AGAIN! AGAIN!"  All in all, Sea World exceeded our expectations and, for us, was worth the hefty entrance fee.

On Saturday we spent most of the day lazing around the hotel room then got bored so we went out to purchase a navigation system for no good reason other than John happened to mention it and I agreed that it would be a good idea seeing as how neither of us seem to have a very good sense of direction.  We got a Garmin and she has become our new best friend.  We all get in the car and ask her how to get where we're going.  We trust her completely, even though the first night we had her she led us on a meandering route through a less than desirable neighborhood.  She made up for it yesterday though, by suggesting and leading us to a kick ass restaurant in Old Town called Rockin' Baja Lobster.  Saturday night we went to a Padres game and our team won, meaning that they will not loose 100 games this season!  They were also having a 25% off sale at the gift shop so naturally, we came home with lots more Padres swag.

Sunday we visited seal beach at La Jolla Cove and it was beautifully foggy and cool.  It was fun to show Alex the seals relaxing on the beach after having seen them at Sea World.  Since it was overcast and cool, we went out to Ocean Beach, scored a perfect parking spot right at the entrance to the public beach and Alex and I collected sea shells and waded in the surf.

Today we went up to Fallbrook to visit my grandma (we'll be bringing her home with us to stay for a few weeks), we went to our favorite place to eat in Fallbrook, The Garden, for lunch (I had the Monte Cristo because I only get to have it once a year and it is worth every single one of the five kajillion calories) then came back to the hotel and swam in the pool.

We're leaving tomorrow, and it really feels too soon.  A week ago, I couldn't wait to take my family away from home.  Leave all of our stress and grief at our house and get away for a while.  We spent a week happily in denial-ville.  Putting aside, for a few days, everything that had happened just before we left.  Tomorrow we're going back, real life will be waiting for us on our doorstep.  I just hope that we've filled up our reserves enough to deal with it again.

Happy birthday Buddy

It's your third birthday!

 

You're wild, you're crazy, you're sweet, you're smart, you're funny, you are no longer my baby, now you're my little boy.  Three years ago today was the best day of my life.  You made me a mom, your mom, and becoming your mom changed everything.  I love you so much Buddy, and I am excited to watch you grow up and see who you become.

Yuck

Me:  "Did you notice that The Damn Cat* threw up in our room again"

John: "Yep"

Me:  "You know, what's the point of having a dog if she can't take care of those kinds of things for us?"

John:  "Why don't you show it to her"

Me:  "EEEEW!  I don't want to KNOW she ate it. Can't she just quietly clean it up just like Midnight used to do?"

John: "I suppose she's not that kind of dog"

Me: "I suppose not.  I guess that's a good thing."

John:  "Yep"

Me:  "So who's gonna clean it up?"

For the record, John did clean it up, but then found another pile of kitty hork under the baby's cradle and left it for me.  Fancy is clearly not pulling her weight in this area in my opinion.

*I have officially changed the cat's name to The Damn Cat formerly known as Maxine because a) the baby's name is Max and b) I call her The Damn Cat more often than Maxine anyway.

Proud

That's how I think Diane would have felt if she could have seen her kids today.  Proud.

John, Heidi, JP and Jen created a beautiful, loving and absolutely perfect memorial service for their mother.  They each got up and spoke at her graveside, and their words were moving and at times, heart wrenching.  At the end of the service they all stood with their arms around eachother while JP said a prayer, and it was a moment that I will remember forever.  They were always close, John and his siblings.  But this tragic event has brought them closer than ever. 

The funeral is over, but the grieving has just begun, and I am so thankful that John, his sisters and brother have eachother to lean on.  Of course Stephani, Nathan, Mike and I are here for them and offer our shoulders to cry on, but I suspect that the real healing will come from each other.

Fancy

Fancy Face Bennett Dillier

This is our new dog's name.  John insisted that we keep the name his mom gave her and just slap "Dillier" on the end.  I suggested hyphenating Bennett-Dillier, but he was vehemently against that for reasons unknown.

Something I'm not sure I wrote about here, but I certainly talked about a lot, was the fact that Diane spoiled Alex beyond all reason. I'm not kidding.  In the three years Alex has been alive PLUS the nine months he lived in my womb, we never saw Diane without her bearing armfulls (and all too often CARFULLS) of gifts for her grandson.  And yes, she brought twice as many gifts once there were two grandsons to spoil.  She took her role as the spoiling grandma very seriously, and it gave her untold amounts of joy.  Needless to say, Alex was always very excited to see Granmda Diane.  Not only did she spoil him with gifts, but she spoiled him with love.  Never once did she refer to Alex as "wild" or "unruly" or "holy terror on wheels".  To her, he was her boy.  "How's my boy!" she'd say to him when she came in the house, holding her arms wide for Alex to run into them.  She'd lift him up and swing him around in a big hug. 

I write this because I think it is all too fitting that Diane managed to spoil Alex rotten one last time.  In leaving behind a dog, a beautiful, sweet, great-with-kids chocolate lab who needed a home, Diane gave Alex a living, loving gift of a best friend, a partner in crime and a warm, furry, every day reminder of his Grandma.

 

Needed a laugh. This did the trick

Monster free

Alex was "rescuing" John this morning from an apparent monster invasion in our living room this morning.  Pushing him out of the room claiming "There's monsters in there, that's a scary room! Get out of that room!" 

Incidentally, he left his brother and me helpless in the monster infested living room without so much as a warning to evacuate. 

John was getting a little tired of not being allowed in the family room because of the scary, scary monsters, so I gave Alex a bottle of "monster repellent" - a squirt bottle filled with water - and told him he was a "Monster Buster".  He has taken on the responsibility of ridding our home of monsters with gusto.  I can tell you that our home is completely 100% monster free.  And quite soggy.

Nothing I can do

John's mother passed away yesterday.

I am not going to write about the circumstances surrounding her death.  That's private and certainly none of my business to write about.  However, since this blog is about me and my family and this event, this loss, is huge and will affect our lives.  Forever.  I feel like I need to address it somehow.

That said, I don't really know how or what to write.  John and I, and John's whole family, are still reeling from the shock of it.  I've been fumbling around just trying to find something I could do.  ANYTHING, to make this better, to make it easier, to make it not have happened at all somehow, which, of course is ridiuclous.  But my first instinct is to scream DO OVER!! I WANT A DO OVER!  Stop, rewind, and try again because yesterday went wrong.  SO very wrong and there has to be a way to do it over and do it right.

of course there's not.

Last night, John and I were up all night.  We talked for a while, but mostly we both just laid there, awake, quietly, both of us thinking.  At one point I rolled over and held him like he held me when my dad died.  But then the baby woke up and I had to attend to that and we ended up just laying in bed quietly, thinking until morning.

All that thinking made me realize that there are things I can do.  I can be supportive of John.  Be whatever he needs me to be, do whatever he needs me to do.  I can take care of Fancy, Diane's dog.  As John said, "She really loved that dog and I want to make sure she is taken care of".  And I can make sure that Alex and Max know about their Grandma Diane.  I can show them pictures of her, and tell them stories about her, and save the special things she made for them, so that they can appreciate them when they get older.  I can tell them that they had a grandma who loved them so very much and spoiled them beyond reason.  I can even remind Alex that he loved Grandma Diane "vewwy much" and she was at the hospital all night while I labored and when he was born she heard his first cries.  And she sat with me at Max's warmer when we weren't sure he was going to make it and when I thanked her for being there she said "nothing could keep me away. I need to be here".

I was lucky that I had a good realtionship with my mother-in-law, particularly the last couple of years, since the boys were born.  I loved Diane.  And I will miss her.  I do miss her.

Forever 29

Me:  (Examining my eyes and their accompanying wrinkles in the vanity mirror while in the car with John) "I think I need to get a better anti-aging eye cream.  The one I've been using is doing nothing for my crows feet"

John:  *grunts*

Me:  "Really Honey.  Avon has an eye cream that claims to take five years off your face"

John:  *grunts*

Me:  "I could stand to loose five years off my face.  I wonder how old I'd look.  Honey, how old do I look"

John:  (not looking at me) "You look 29"

Me:  "Really?  Do I really look 29?  Are you just saying that because you know that's what I want to hear?"

John:  "No, I'm saying you look 29 because that's how old you are"

Me:  *silence*

John:  (looks at me) "what?"

Me:  "I'm not 29"

John: "You're not?'

Me:  "no, I'm not"

John:  "Oh yea, you did turn 30 didn't you?"

Me: "Yes, while I was pregnant with Max.  I'm turning 31 next month."

John:  "Oh"

Me:  "So do I still look 29?"

John:  "um..."

Me:  "Never mind.  Yes. I'm 29."

A birthday wish

Does it make me some kind of weirdo freak if I am out of my mind excited about this (Body Worlds 3) exhibit?  John saw an ad in a magazine last week and saved it for me and I actually squealed with glee when I saw it and put it right up on our fridge.  Yes, I have a cut out flyer with a picture of a preserved dead man with no skin stuck on my refrigerator with an armadillo magnet, probably why I'm doing so well on my PHM September Challenge methinks.

John knew to save the ad when he saw it because I've been talking about it for no less than three years and had been hoping to stop in Vegas on one of our annual trips to San Diego to check it out.  Well, it never worked out to see it in Vegas, but now it's HERE! 

Guess where I'm asking John to take me for my birthday?  Now, I just need to decide if we should go to dinner before or after... or not at all.

Snack time

I know! Three posts in one day.  Don't I have a life?  Something else to do?  Well, no, not really...

Anyway, Alex, Max and I were just at the store and I was asking Alex what kind of snacks should we buy.  He was in the cart pointing and saying "I want this! I want this!"  I asked him to describe this thing he wanted so badly.  "It's like...it's like...TEENY TINY ROLLING CAKES!  WIF CHOCKIT!"  Sure enough, he was pointing to a package of those itty bitty chocolate doughnuts.

Now, he knows the word for doughnut, his favorite food is chocolate doughnuts.  I'm pretty sure he came out of the womb knowing how to say "I want a chocolate doughnut", but for some reason, today he couldn't find the words and it cracked me up that he described these little doughnuts as "teeny tiny rolling cakes" because really, there couldn't be a better description.

Dream realized

So remember when I wrote about my dream of having two hours to myself to workout and shower?  Well today I got my wish.  I got up with the kids at quarter to six in the morning, I fed the baby (Of course, I'd been up with him twice already during the night), then got him to go back to sleep in his crib.  I then pumped my boobs and Alex started calling for me.  I got him up and put him on the potty, then got him some juice and turned on Sesame Street (Alex is going through an "All Elmo All The Time" phase right now, and oh how do I hate Elmo?  Let me count the ways...).  I got dressed and by 6:20 I was ready to go out the door.  It took another 10 minutes to get John up to keep and eye on Alex, but by 6:30 I was in the car and off to the gym.

I managed to snag the one available elliptical machine, but soon found out that it was available only because the resistance didn't work.  So, I had an easy workout this morning.  But I got to do 30 minutes (when the fitness room is full, you can only do 30 minutes at a time on any particular machine) and then I did another 15 on the recumbent bike on level 8.  I did my 100 crunches (I'm trying to work up to more, but my abs are still all floppy and worthless from the pregnancy.) and headed home.  Max was still asleep so I hopped in the shower, brushed my teeth, put clean clothes on and got a cup of coffee.  John was able to start his morning routine by 7:45 (so I got an hour and 15 minutes to myself).

IT WAS GLORIOUS!  I'm not being facetious.  I'm serious, getting my workout done early and getting to start out the day showered and clean felt so amazing.  It's the little things that make me so happy these days. 

To add the cherry on top, I got on the scale and saw that I was down another three pounds.  If you're keeping score at home, that means I'm four pounds into my September Challenge and a total of FOURTEEN pounds lost since the beginning of PHM!

Wishing for facial hair

I want John to grow his beard back.  I've always preferred John with a beard.  Personally, I like the full "Grizzly Adams" look, but a goatee would do.  But my main reason for wanting facial hair on my husband is the simple fact that if he isn't diligent about shaving every single day, I can't stand to kiss him.  He didn't shave yesterday morning and last night he damn near scratched my face off. With a beard at least I get a nice soft fluffy cushion instead of the scritchety scratchety stubble face.

Getting serious about kicking credit card debt's ass

Over the weekend we took our stack o' credit cards and rendered them useless.

First, we tried to burn them:

 

But that just made them squishy and the vice couldn't hold on to them anymore.  So John duct taped them together and tried sawing them in half.

 

Again, they kept slipping out of the grip, so we thought, hey!  We'll just tighten the vice up so much that they snap in half. 

   

hmmm, not so much snapping as bending.  No matter, let's try burning them again! (aided by a healthy squirt of lighter fluid)

 

Finally, they are now successfully ruined. 

 

You might ask, why didn't you just cut them up with scissors like normal people?  Well, that wouldn't be very much fun now would it?

Updates

As if you didn't already know, the answers to the game below is:

Picture 1: Max/Alex
Picture 2: Alex/Max
Picture 3: Max/Alex

:::

We've been without a second car for a couple of weeks now and we don't even miss it.  Two years of hemming and hawing and worrying that it would practically ruin our lives if we only had one car, and it turns out it's no big deal.  Kind of like when we turned off our cable.  It literally took us a whole year to make the decision that we didn't need to pay $100 a month for television, then once it was gone we barely noticed.

We'll get John a car eventually, but we have some financial goals we want to meet first.  One of those being purchasing John's future car with cold hard cash.  So, it'll be a while before we're a two car family again.

:::

PHM/September challenge update.

I've lost 1 pound so far this week.  This is good because I've been having a hard time getting the scale to move again.  But, I'm really going to have to step it up if I'm going to loose another 9 pounds this month! 

That said, I'm not sure why I'm not completely wasting away.  When I do the math, I should be toothpick by now.  They say breastfeeding can burn up to 500 calories per day, I'm going to the gym and according to what the elliptical tells me, I'm working off another 350.  That's 850 calories a day, not to mention the calories I burn just by existing.  I guess I need to eat even less, but I gotta tell ya, breastfeeding makes me hungry.  It did with Alex too. 

I think I'll try eating all day long.  Instead of eating meals, maybe I'll just have a healthy snack or mini-meal every couple of hours.  That way I won't feel hungry, and maybe I'll be able to lower my caloric intake even more.

Ugh.  I hate dieting.

:::

This isn't really an update, but the baby has been making the cutest little purring sound lately.  He sounds like a Mogwai.  I think I'll rename him Gizmo and stop feeding him after midnight for fear he'll morph into a gremlin. 

Seeing Double

Here's a fun game.  Look at the below pictures and tell me which one is Max and which one is Alex at Max's age.

It's actually much more obvious than I'd hoped it would be, but I thought maybe you'd still admire my ability to recreate these Alex pictures, even down to the same burp cloth in the botton one.  Ok, maybe I was just bored, but still, it was fun to do.

Finally, John thinks I'm funny

I'm always complaining that John doesn't think I'm funny.  It's not that I think I'm a comedian or anything, but I try to be entertaining sometimes, but John never laughs.  Yea, like he's so funny.  Bah. 

When I do get him to laugh, I feel this immense sense of pride and accomplishment.  Sadly, he generally doesn't laugh at my best material, just the stupid jokes.  Case in point yesterday at the zoo.

Walking toward the monkey building at the zoo on Saturday I say to Alex:

Me:  "Hey Alex look at that monkey!  Let's go see what it is!"

We go up to the monkey cage and look at the sign.  It's a Mandrill

Me:  "Alex that monkey is called a Mandrill.  I'll bet her name is Barbara"
Alex:  "Hi Bawbaw!"

Several seconds tick by and suddenly I hear John chuckle. 

John: *laughs*  "Barbara Mandrill"  and looks at me with a smile
Me:  "You thought that was funny!"
John:  "It was amusing.  Yes."
Me:  *doing a little happy dance* "You laughed at my joke!  HOORAY!"

John walks away pretending not to know me.

 

All in a day's work on Labor Day

The day has not started off well.  I woke up to the baby crying at 2:30 to nurse as always, but today was different in that this morning I woke up soaked in breast milk.  I mean soaked.  From my shoulders to my waist, me, my shirt and my bed were covered in breastmilk.  It's like my boobs exploded in the night.  I had to feed the baby before I could get cleaned up, which I did, then decided I'd better go ahead and pump the rest out lest my boobs explode again, and I'm not sure if our flood insurance coveres breast milk damage.

Around 6:30 Alex started calling for me from his room, I went in to find him sitting in a puddle in his bed.  A puddle.  Not just a wet spot, but a soggy, urine puddle.  This is unusual because a) he's night trained, and b) he wears a pull up to bed anyway.  So I took him to the bathroom, got him cleaned up, then stripped his bed and did some fancy talk to get him to let go of his pee soaked Blue Blankie in favor of a dry Diego Blankie. 

I took Alex into our bedroom so I could attend to Max who had been crying.  John was leaning off my side of the bed trying to comfort the baby.  He moved over for me and as I walked in between the cradle and the bed I stepped in something wet and slimy.  "WHAT THE HELL?!?!"  I yelped when my foot touched the offending slime.  "Oh, that was from me"  John admitted.  "What was it?  Spit?  A booger??? WHAT WAS THAT??"  He never gave me a straight answer, so I may never know.

I sat down to nurse the baby who began grunting and pooping as he always does during his breakfast.  Of course today wouldn't have been complete if the poop didn't explode out of his diaper and soak me.  Which it did.  I changed him, scrubbed my hands and arms and went out to try to have my own breakfast. 

John and Alex were having peanut butter on toast and juice at the kitchen counter.  I took the baby and my breakfast to the dining room and began to eat when Alex says from the kitchen "Mommy, I'm pooping!"  He surely was, I got up, snatched him from his perch on the barstool and whisked him to the potty, but I was too late.  He'd had a runny poop and it was everywhere.  Making it all the harder to clean him up was the fact that he had a bad eczema breakout on his butt that he'd scratched all to hell yesterday evening, and of course the poop on his scratched up butt was burning like crazy.  He was screaming "MY BUTT IS BLEEDING!!!"  It took forever to clean him up because he was howling and wiggling and pushing my hands away.  After I got him cleaned up, I put medicine on his rear and cuddled him and reassured him that his butt wasn't bleeding and that it would feel better soon.  He perked up and asked for chocolate cake.  I went ahead gave him some Ho Ho's, because, well, it is Ho Ho's for breakfast kind of a day.