Let's talk about...laundry?

After my tribute post to my darling daughter I’ve been having a hard time coming up with something to write about. Rather than search for something profound or even remotely interesting I’m just going to write about laundry. Or more correctly, I’m going to write about my laundry problem. Perhaps I have mentioned before that I am a little obsessive compulsive when it comes to laundry. Can you be a little obsessive compulsive? No, I suppose you can’t be. Anyway, it isn’t that I require my shirts to be washed on the sanitary cycle or heck even my underwear (the sanitary cycle takes like an hour and 40 minutes and that would severely cut into my ability to finish the chore), but I do have to finish my laundry on Sunday. There is some slack in when the laundry is started. If I know Sunday will be a busy day, I will occasionally start a load of laundry on Saturday evening, but otherwise it starts and finishes on Sunday. There is something about having a laundry day that just appeals to me. Ever since I’ve lived on my own I have done laundry on a set day of the week. Going to bed Sunday night, knowing that all of my clothes are clean and ready for the week just feels good. This likely stemmed from the fact that I used to only have enough clothes to last me through one week, so that was about as long as I could put it off. Eventually it became a habit.

Now that there are two kids in our house, the weekly laundry has grown from 3-4 loads to 6-7 loads, 8 if someone barfs/poops/pees on clothing/bedding/towels (and mid-week laundry exceptions are sometimes made when the aforementioned bodily fluids make their way onto washable fabrics). I don’t claim to be a laundry genius, but I hold my own. I’m a whiz with the shout gel stick, and have an eagle eye at spotting stains that need to be slathered with it before the wash cycle. However, I’ve been a little lax lately about pre-treating stains the same day they were incurred. This means that sometimes The Girl’s ultra sloppy tendencies come back to bite me in the behind. The Boy can be sloppy too, but for some reason his clothes usually manage to emerge from the washing machine stain free. Not so for The Girl’s clothing. In the past two weeks we have suffered the untimely demise of five of her shirts. Three of her lost shirts were from Target, ranging in price from $3.99 to $4.99, so no huge loss. One was a hand-me-down shirt from a good local friend of mine…an Old Navy shirt, that I’m afraid won’t live to be handed down again, and finally there is the ultra cute shirt I actually paid a fair amount of money for at Nordstroms. It has a cute butterfly on it, and it matches a great pair of leggings. Ah well, she can still wear it I guess, it just won’t look nice anymore.

If you have any stain fighting tips I’m all ears. The 5 shirts have not yet been dried, so technically the stains aren’t “set,” but I fear that I have already exhausted my hopes. I have however washed all of them with a wide variety of pre-treaters, soaked them in a bucket full of water and Oxy Clean for several hours, sprayed them with pre-treater for “set in” stains, and rubbed powdered Oxy clean on top of the pre-treater, let them sit like that overnight, and rewashed them. All to no avail, the shirts still have big blotches of dirt/food/whatever all over them. I am considering the unthinkable of just soaking them in water and regular chlorine bleach and living with the color changes that ensue. At least if they are bleached they won’t look blotchy right? If that doesn’t work, at least she has a great stash of back up clothes for daycare (when she spills more food/dirt/whatever on herself).

I'm open to any ideas you might have.

Another year older

Two years ago today I was holding you for the very first time. You kept us all guessing as to when you would arrive, and only after a scheduled induction for the next day did you decide it was time. You might have been a week overdue, and you might have cried for most of your first 3-4 months of life, but you are worth all of it. You have changed so much over the past two years. I look at you, and you are no longer that dark haired little girl who's head I spent hours staring at (and picking away the cradle cap from) while you nursed.

This little squimy newborn who wasn't quite ready for the world after 41 weeks minus two or so in the womb. No, now you are ready for any adventure. Ready to run, climb, jump, whatever your big brother is doing you surely aren't far behind.





It is a gift to get to watch you grow and change as each day passes. Your first birthday wasn't so long ago, but yet you are completely changed from then as well. You are becoming less baby and more big girl with each new month.



Happy Birthday, my amazing girl, you seem to have enjoyed your party

and your cake

and all of your loot


I love you, more than you can ever know.

Remodel: Day 8

I know you don’t really want to read about the remodel, you want to see pictures. I will come back to add pictures to this post when I get around to downloading them from our camera. You will just have to wait.

Significant progress this week is the installation of the new steel beam to replace the old header that essentially divided our living room into two spaces. It will be a huge space, and we will use it as two spaces eventually (an area by the front window with a couple of chairs and a table between them, will become somewhat of a “sitting room”), but it is nice to have the freedom to decide furniture placement not based on some arbitrary header beam on the ceiling.

In case you've forgotten, here is the beam before:


The dreadful entry way tile has been almost completely removed to make way for the new hardwood flooring that will be installed. Electrical rough ins are almost complete, as are plumbing rough ins, and HVAC rough ins. A few more city inspections need to be completed, but then they can begin adding new drywall. Perhaps by the end of next week we will see walls and ceilings starting to take shape?

On the disturbing end of things, we now have a portable toilet in our driveway. There is some plumbing issue with our brand new basement toilet (T had lots of fun cleaning out all that backed up into our brand new shower down there), that is supposedly being taken care of today. The portable toilet was mostly a response to that event, and frankly wasn’t the most welcome sight when I drove up to our house last night. Oh well. I’ll admit I wasn’t crazy about all of the workers using our bathrooms, but much prefer it to having a Biffy in our driveway!


So how are we coping with all of the chaos in our house? We are doing okay. We are using the wet bar, that isn’t very wet, as our temporary kitchen (the plumbers are supposed to give us a quote for hooking up actual plumbing to this sink…right now it has refrigerator tubing, and the flow is about one drop per minute). We have the old pantry cabinet in the basement so most of our food is stored there, and the refrigerator was moved to the basement to make things livable for us. We have the microwave, and the toaster oven, and of course the gas grill outside. Thankfully we purchased the grill with a side burner last summer because it definitely comes in handy for boiling pasta – a staple for our kids’ limited palates. We’ve altered our dinner menu choices to reflect the absence of a range, but have found that the toaster oven does quite well with small portions of frozen fries or chicken nuggets. I get a little grumpy about having to walk any dishes over to the utility room to wash them in the utility sink, but aside from that it works (as does using mostly paper plates/bowls/cups).

There are some minor annoyances that come with the territory, things like having the basement disturbed because plumbing, HVAC, or electrical needs to be run in the basement ceiling. There is also having the plumbing main shut off during the day which means when we turn on faucets they all sputter as the air escapes, and my stupid alarm clock that is always blinking when I go to bed at night because a circuit breaker was switched off.

See how nice and open our entry way is now?


Still it isn’t all bad. Living in the basement has given me a new appreciation for just how nice our back yard is. It isn’t a big back yard, but there is plenty of space for the kids to run and play. We’ve been outside a lot more than normal. It is hard to say if that is because we simply look outside the sliding glass door and see the deck/yard, because it has been so warm lately, or because the kids are finally old enough to request er demand to go outside. I’ve also been trying to keep up with the weeding for the first time since we moved in more than two years ago, which I’m sure pleases our neighbors. Of course now I’ve begun dreaming of removing all of the old rotting railroad ties that form our landscaping, and remember that we can’t spend money on landscaping this year. Anyway, a huge benefit this year is that there is absolutely no guilt on my part for ordering The Girl’s birthday cake, and ordering all of the food for her birthday party that will take place this weekend. I have an excuse not to cook this year (not that I would have made the cake anyway, but I’m rationalizing here).

Some backyard fun:
The Boy mowing (that is a bubble mower he's not even four!) - just a glimpse but you can see how nice our neighbors lawn is, in comparison to ours

The Girl just being cute:


And some swinging on Mother's Day - not our backyard!

Seven things about me

Jennifer tagged me for this, so that is my excuse. I’m not big on memes because usually I’m just too self-absorbed to want to answer questions other people have posed to me. I’d rather just blather on about what I want to talk about and screw everyone else. Still, I guess this meme is all about me, so I’ll play along. The gist of this meme is that I’m supposed to tell you seven things about me that I want you to know. So here goes:

One
I’m obsessed with running. If I don’t run for a couple of days I start to get an itch, and I start making everyone around me miserable. T has been known to tell me “go for a run,” when I am complaining about something trivial. It usually works. I’ve been a runner since 1999, and have only taken two brief breaks from it since then (surrounding the births of my children). I was so sad when extreme calf pain forced me to stop running when I was pregnant with The Boy, and while I continued to walk it just wasn’t the same. People figured I was miserable because I was in my third trimester, but the truth was that I was miserable because I couldn’t run. I promptly started running again when he was around 2 weeks old. I think I waited 3 weeks after The Girl was born, because the logistics were such that it just wasn’t possible to run before then.

Two
I have a bachelor’s of Mechanical Engineering (yes that’s a BME not a BS), but I have zero mechanical aptitude. T once told me that a colleague of his had said “it must be cool to have a wife that is a mechanical engineer, because she can fix things.” He laughed heartily at the poor guy, because he has seen my ability to fix things. I understand math, I understand physics, and honestly that is what you need to be an engineer, fixing things has nothing to do with it! Plus the MBA has effectively cancelled out all of my engineering knowledge.

Three
I have a hard time spending money on myself. I will buy the kids new clothes, T new clothes, and things for the house before I will buy myself new clothes. When I do buy clothes I tend to buy things that are on clearance, and have the hardest time spending much more than $50 on any article of clothing. Really less than $30 is my comfort zone. I am one to agonize over a purchase for weeks before following through, or more likely before convincing myself that I don’t need it.

Four
I’m addicted to caffeine. I routinely have 3 cups of coffee a day at a minimum. Thankfully I don’t have to pay for the coffee at work, though to be fair the free coffee is the reason I’m at 3 cups a day now. I’m also addicted to diet soda, but I have managed to wean myself down to just one can per day. I really like Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper, yummy!

Five
I think my kids are the brightest, cutest, best kids in the entire world. Oh, I am capable of seeing the good in other people’s kids, but my own will always be better. No offense.

Six
I hate having my house ripped up. I need to have a sense of order in my life, and having the entire main floor of my house destroyed is not good for this desire. I put the kids’ toys away for them most of the time because I just can’t handle looking at the clutter. I even clean The Boy’s room for him almost nightly because those dumped over toy bins drive me absolutely insane. Also, the stepping on a hot wheels car or Lego in the middle of the night isn’t so fun either, so cleaning has a practical side.

Seven
You would think I had always been a neat freak based on number six above, but that isn’t the case. I was a slob until well into my twenties. I’m not sure what changed, but I do recall that T and I would leave stacks of dishes in the sink until we just had no dishes left to use. The thought of that now makes me want to vomit, but I guess at that point in my life it was okay.

Now it is time for me to tag others for this meme. This is tricky since most of my default tagees have already been tagged. I’m tagging Kate, Leslie, and Christine, have fun!

Not twice the effort

I had a fabulous run yesterday, one of those runs where you feel like you could run forever, but your body still thanks you when you stop after 6.5 miles. I wasn’t running fast by any means, but I did finally venture back to the scene of the great snake sighting. Running by that creek always puts me in a good mood. I was reminded again just how lucky I am to have such a scenic trail so close to home. Mostly though I just let my mind wander. I started thinking that I should really sign up for a race because it has been many months since I last raced. Perhaps a summer half marathon is in order to spur me to run longer than a seven mile long run each week (or 6.5). I should check the race calendar to see what my options are.

As I was contemplating the idea of a half marathon, I was reminded of a conversation I had after completing one of my early half marathons. I was relating that a half marathon was a huge effort, and I didn’t see how it would be possible to run twice as long in order to complete a full marathon. A half marathon was taxing enough, I just didn’t see how I could expend even more effort to run a full. I honestly can’t remember who it was that responded that “A marathon isn’t twice the effort; it is the same effort, longer.” I remember thinking this couldn’t possibly be true, but after running a few marathons I’d wager that she was right. Of course getting to the point of being able to expend the same effort for twice as long isn’t trivial. It takes many weeks, and many long runs in order to build your endurance to that point.

I was trying to decide if the whole not twice the effort, just the same effort longer thing works for other areas of my life. Does it work for having more than one kid? No, having two kids is definitely more effort than having just one. Or is it? Yes, most definitely it is. Although, a case could be made that it is just the same effort longer. I mean yes there are two kids to get dressed in the morning, two kids to help put shoes on, two kids to get strapped into their car seats, and two kids to hug and kiss goodbye when they are dropped off at daycare. That all boils down to the same effort spread over more time though. Helping The Boy get dressed isn’t all that different from helping The Girl get dressed, one involves a diaper change and the other involves some prodding to use the toilet. Still, it isn’t all bad, there are now two kids who look at me like I am their world, two kids who say “I love you Mommy,” or in the case of The Girl “My love you Mommy.” Two kids who I get to watch transform before my eyes as they learn and grow each and every day.

I don’t plan on running any marathons in the near future, but it is clear that I will be participating in plenty of endurance sporting for the next several years. Yes, I will keep running, but the biggest test of my endurance to date seems to be this thing called parenting. There is no option of taking the DNF here either. In a marathon I can quit at any point, but with kids we have to just keep on running no matter how tired we are. Whether it is lying on the floor until The Girl goes to sleep, or handling the tough life and death questions with some sort of clarity, there is always a new challenge. I expect that while the physically challenging aspects of parenting (sleep deprivation, having to carry children around, etc.) will diminish as the kids age, the new mental challenges will be just as great. I swear, I never thought of any of this when we first decided to have kids.

Screening

The Boy has his preschool screening tomorrow morning. It is required in our school district, and needs to be completed between the ages of 3.5 and 4. I’m a little nervous about the screening, however irrational that may be. I was filling out the intake paperwork the other night and it asked me to list my child’s strengths. How can I possibly do that? Picking my child’s best qualities? It seems impossible to me since he has so many, and the space on the form is very limited. I have to make T take a look tonight because perhaps he is a bit more objective than I am.

I’m not going to link to the screening information, but here is a snippet from their website:

What is Early Childhood Screening?
Screening is a free check of your child's vision, hearing, height, weight, and development, as well as a review of her or his immunization records. Children are screened by licensed teachers from the Family Center. Your child will be assessed in three important developmental areas, motor skills, concepts, and communication skills. This not an IQ test. It does not rank children according to scores. The purpose of screening is early detection of children's development, health, and other factors that may interfere with a child's learning, growth, and
development.

Following screening, a teacher will talk with you about your child's results. You'll have the opportunity to discuss any concerns you may have about your child's development or circumstances that could affect your child's learning. The teacher may refer you and your child to another agency to be rechecked or to receive services that will help your child. The screening process takes about 45 minutes.

Please note: For the most accurate results, it is best if parents are not present in the same room as the child during screening. Parents wait in a room close by. Please explain this to your child before you come to screening.

I don’t know why, but the biggest issue I have with this is the being separated from my child during the screening. I’ve written before about The Boy’s natural tendencies, and I worry just a little that he will not speak to the screener at all. Of course he will likely do much better with no parent around than he would with me hovering. I realize this is just a blip in what will be many “tests” of my children as they grow, but it makes me face the reality that he is getting older. I hate that testing has to begin so early.

Best you've never heard of

If you read any of the big popular blogs I’m sure you have seen the varied blog awards that are floating about. Nominate what you think is the perfect post for the month, or the post that made you pee your pants because you laughed so hard, or just nominate/vote for the best *insert blogging niche here* blog around. You know what I’m talking about, and if you don’t just check out the links. I’m not all that interested in those contests, well truthfully, if I were to win something I would likely become interested, but that is neither here nor there! It is not that I think there is anything wrong with the awards; it is just that I don’t make the time to read a large number of blogs on a regular basis. I try to comment on a post if it resonates with me, but sometimes I am too pressed for time to even do that. Or sometimes I’m stealing a few minutes in the office and I need to Alt Tab away from my IE window so it doesn’t look like I’m wasting time at work. The majority of the time I put my focus back on the super fascinating spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentation I am working on and forget what I was going to say. Blogging and reading blogs is, my hobby, not the job that pays the bills (you’ve seen the house renovation posts, believe me I need the job!).

What exactly am I getting at here huh? I do have a slew of favorite blogs. I read them fairly regularly, some are big popular blogs, some are small private blogs, and others are well somewhere in the middle. Although I do have links to a few of my favorite blogs over on the right, I thought I would give some love to the special little gems I read. This is my attempt at a Mother’s Day present for them and hopefully others as well.

PDX Mama is fabulous in so many ways, the least of which not being that our oldest children are just one day apart. We met on a message board that shall remain unnamed way back when we were both struggling to breastfeed our lazy little firstborn nursers, and have become closer as the years have gone by. She has a fabulous positive outlook on life, and her enthusiasm is often contagious. She is also real, and I love that about her, and her blog! It is also wonderful to read about her new running adventures, as I can see glimpses of me back in 1999 when I first started running. PDX Mama is also great about pointing me to other good blogs. If I recall correctly she was responsible for first leading me to Mom 101 (must have been the too young for Chutes and Ladders post). I’ve also picked up a few new favorites just from looking at the blogs of those who comment on PDX Mama (Lawyer Mama for one).

Another of my favorites is Jennifer at Take a Walk on the Childside. Hers was the first blog I read regularly. Reading her blog is what led me to believe I could possibly manage to have a blog of my own, or rather that my ramblings could possibly be interesting to other people. Jennifer is a strong woman, and while she has had some struggles lately, I know she will emerge through them as the powerful woman she is.

I do have other favorites, but I just don’t have time to pay them the respect they deserve right now. Mostly I want to hear about your own little favorite blog in the rough. Tell me about your favorite blog that nobody has ever heard of (in the comments here or back on your own blog – link here and I’ll find you eventually).

To all of my reader Moms, I just want to say Happy Mother’s Day a little early. Forget about what your significant other or your kids do or don’t do for you on Mother’s Day. Take some time to give yourself a pat on the back for doing a great job. This Motherhood job is often thankless, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable. If you get a moment, just sit back and look at your kids when they aren’t paying attention. You know they are the best kids around. You get the credit for that, and you deserve to celebrate it.

Of course I can’t leave this without giving a shout out to my own Mom, thanks for being such an inspiration to me. I love you Mom!

Remodel: Day two

I managed to take and upload pictures yet again, so here are some day two photos:

The carpet is now gone, apparently the previous owners had pets…ick


The half bath now has the level of privacy the kids only dream of for the rest of the bathrooms (when T or I are using them that is):

A nice view from the kitchen


The office has been demolished:


The basement stairs are next, plastic sheeting installed in preparation:


Life isn’t all bad for us though; the new basement bathroom is really nice, just missing some molding and trim:

The shower:


This will all be worth it 3 months from now. This will all be worth it 3 months from now. This will all be worth it 3 months from now…

Remodel: Day one

Yes, we have lost our minds, and our main floor. I cannot promise to update with pictures every day, but I will make an effort to post pictures periodically as the project progresses. These pictures were all taken yesterday.

The before pictures just before I left for work yesterday:





Yesterday evening:




The kids seem to enjoy chaos, The Boy keeps asking to “go see the wires” in reference to the electric lines that are hanging from the ceiling. Don’t worry, he is carefully supervised, and has been warned that they are not for touching.

Birth, death, and frogs

I worked from home with the kids in my care on Friday. Don’t even bother to ask me how much work I got done, because my monthly time is now corrected to show some PTO on Friday. Seriously, why I think working from home with my kids there is possible I will never know. Anyway, as I was trying to work on some fascinating spreadsheets, and was interrupted for the 100th time by The Girl trying to “help” me type, and The Boy whining for something I called it quits and we all headed outside. I decided that we could play in the backyard, and while the kids were playing I could attend to the much neglected 5 million planting beds we have. I wasn’t trying to do anything strenuous, just trying to clear away some of last year’s perennial growth. We don’t actually plant anything in the beds, just wait for the perennials to come up on their own, and hope for the best. On the side of the house I found egg shells (big eggs too…chicken egg sized), and feathers. Aha, now the fact that I had seen a pair of mallards in the driveway, and the female on the lawn made much more sense. We had ourselves a little nest. I rushed to show the kids. The Girl wasn’t all that interested, but The Boy immediately started asking questions. “Why are the eggs broken?” “Why are the ducks gone?” “Why did they build a nest?” “Why did they watch the eggs until they hatched?” “Why, why, why?” Eventually we made our way back to the sand box.
*I’ll come back and post a picture of the eggs if I can get my stuff together to actually take one*

I worked my way around the back yard, and in opening one of the gates on our deck came across a small gray tree frog (T tells me this is the same tree frog we saw last year, who presumably really likes the space between the posts on the deck gate, as that is where we found him on at least 2 other occasions). I jumped in horror, and gave a tiny shriek. I’m not a big fan of frogs. Still, I managed to hold it together, and gathered the kids around because I figured they would be interested in seeing the frog. The Boy was very excited. The Girl had her foot extremely close to the frog, so close that I said “don’t step on the frog honey.” Her next move was to step on the frog. I think I managed to pull her off in time, but that frog was awfully sluggish after her foot was removed. I did my best to shoo the frog off of the deck without actually touching him, and he reluctantly hopped away. I checked back there yesterday, and no frog could be found. Either he had massive internal injuries and is now dead, or he has smartened up and found a new hiding spot…perhaps with the colony of rabbits that live under our deck.

Of course the wonders of nature would not be complete without actually finding a dead animal. Saturday morning, the kids were outside playing in the sandbox, and we stumbled upon a dead bird. It had most likely flown into the side of our house. The kids weren’t very interested, until I got the shovel and removed the bird from the deck. The Boy kept asking me “why did the bird get dead Mommy?” I didn’t know what to tell him. The answer of, well the bird flew into the house and it made him sick, didn’t seem to compute. He came up with “sometimes birds just die.” I mistakenly said something to the effect of “well everything dies eventually,” and he took hold “but I don’t die Mommy.” Shoot that is not a conversation I want to have with him just now. I stumbled something like “no, you’re not dying honey.” I didn’t think I needed to explain the cycle of life to him, and frankly I know he isn’t ready to comprehend it just yet. This being the interpreter of the universe business is a very tricky aspect of parenting.
*Don’t worry, I promise I won’t post a picture of the dead bird*

Shuffling

I have been the proud owner of an MP3 player for many years, but I have been endlessly mocked by my DH for never changing the music on it. I use it only for running, and in a way it is sort of comforting to know that I'll hear the same mix each and every time. I'm not sure what that says about me. Anyway, part of it is laziness, because the MP3 player is so old we only have the software loaded on our old ancient computer. It takes like a year for that computer to boot up, and frankly I just don't have the patience for that. I really had no intention of actually updating the music on it anyway.


When I saw my brother on our most recent vacation he presented me with an Ipod Shuffle as a belated birthday present. This is the part where I feel badly, because I don't think I've acknowledged one of his birthdays in at least 5 years. Anyway, I finally got around to playing with the cute little Magenta Shuffle, and I'm in love. It is so cute, it is so quick to upload music too, and I even purchased my first song from Itunes. I guess I wasn't as happy with the same old mix as I thought I was. I fear this Itunes thing might become an expensive habit. It is so easy to just spend $.99 to get a fresh song. Dangerous.

The laughable links

I use gmail for my personal email. I like being able to read them at work, but not have them tied to my work email account for various reasons. Mostly gmail is wonderful; however, the suggested links sometimes drive me crazy.

Apparently I have been discussing something with someone on my contact list that would suggest I am interested in pursuing a nursing degree:
School of Nursing
Traditional BSN & ADN Program Openings for 2007 class
-link removed so I don’t advertise something I don’t care about

I’ve been talking about my kids:
Parenting advice
For happy children and parents Learn from experts about all ages
-Another link removed so I don’t advertise something I don’t care about

No idea here, apparently I’ve been really concerned about the privacy of my medical records:
HIPAA-Compliant Laptops
SafeBook Thin Client Notebook $799 No hard drive - protects your data
-Another link removed so I don’t advertise something I don’t care about

Not only do I talk about my kids, but I guess I’ve been considering starting a business that targets kids:
Several Kids Franchises
Choose from the Top Childrens Franchise That Fit Your Need!
-Another link removed so I don’t advertise something I don’t care about

And well, these are just disturbing. I don’t know where the animal health care topic came from, but the bariatric surgery ones are just insulting. I think I may have mentioned running in my emails, apparently if you are considering some form of exercise you should also explore surgically altering the size of your stomach.

More about...
Animal Health Care »
My state Bariatric Surgery »
Bariatric Treatment »
My state Bariatric Surgeons »

I’ve also had a slew of kitchen renovation related links, and some links inviting me to put my kids in cute kid contests. My favorite link so far is the one directing me to a book called “Why Mommy Is a Democrat.” Yes, well, I didn’t realize we needed a children’s book to explain that one. I haven’t read it, and I assume it is a fine publication eschewing the virtues of being a democrat. I’m also sure it would not be the book The Boy chooses to read every night. I doubt I would be able to read it without laughing. Honestly, I hope that more than anything else my kids are able to look at issues and come up with their own viewpoints. I have no intention of telling my children they should be democrats. Obviously I won’t tell them to be republicans either, but you get the drift.

I’ll keep typing away, adding all the more searchable keywords to my repertoire every day. Maybe one day my gmail links will be as freakishly accurate as my Amazon links are. Seriously, how do they know to recommend music CDs I already own and love (and didn’t buy on Amazon)? They have some wicked good profiling going on in there.

100th post

I’ve had quite a few days in a row of posting here, which obviously isn’t the norm for me. I’m trying to decide if it is because I’ve had something to say, or because I’ve seen that I was creeping closer to 100 posts. In any case, here it is the 100th post. Now what?

I’ve decided that I would just recap some of my favorite posts. It seems that most of the posts that I really enjoy are not the posts with comments. For one reason or another, these posts clearly communicated something in a way that felt cathartic to me. They were/are posts that I go back and read periodically because they give me a warm glow, or perhaps I thought they were funny, witty, whatever. This is the part of the sitcom where they call it a new episode, but they really just have the characters sitting on a couch (I’m clearly envisioning episodes of The Cosby Show that have been in this vein, because I’ve seen every single episode of The Cosby Show at least twice...did you know that in the first episode The Cosby’s only had 4 children, the oldest, Saundra, did not exist yet?) reminiscing so they can show scenes from past episodes. Is that called recycling? I’m not going to rank my posts, but I will offer tidbits I feel are warranted along the way. Don’t worry, you don’t really have to go back and read the old posts if you don’t want to!

My first blog post makes the list because it was my first post of course. It attempted to capture the frantic pace of life I was feeling at the time. Two little kids at home, still breastfeeding and pumping for the youngest, working full time, just trying to juggle everything while staying relatively sane. Survival Mode.

How potty training a child can turn an otherwise reasonable adult into an incompetent fool also makes the list. At the time I was just so clearly fed up with the whole potty training process. It seems so foreign to me now that he is potty trained. I can see that I was wasting my time getting so worked up about it. It was never about me, it was about him, and when he was ready it just happened. Potty Training Drop Out.

I didn’t pick any of my other business travel rants because most of them are just very negative. Looking back I can see how unhealthy it was for me to constantly complain about travel. All it did was make me miserable. Must. Remember. That. The. Next. Time. I. Travel. For. Work. Still, this post makes the list because I still think it is incredibly funny that my colleague would chose to eat Slim Fast and Beef Jerky for dinner rather than to just go to a restaurant with me for 30 minutes! Slim Fast and Beef Jerky.

The post I wrote on The Boy’s last birthday makes the list because it just does. I felt like it captured many of the thoughts I was reflecting upon that day. We get so caught up in our kids’ accomplishments that we forget that we are learning and growing as they age as well. Every once in a while we need to pat ourselves on the back for the wonderful job we are doing just by taking care of our kids each and every day. It is no small feat, raising kids. Thank you for teaching me.

The gift bag post was selected because I feel it does a good job of challenging some of the backlash parents have towards the excesses of birthday parties today. Do I think birthday celebrations can be overblown? Yes. Do I think giving kids gift bags has to be a bad thing? No. We all need to stop looking at what everyone else is doing and just decide what is right for our own families. More importantly we need to stop judging other parents for what they do or don’t do in these contexts. What’s wrong with gift bags?

I so enjoy watching my kids play with Christmas ornaments. It isn’t that I am a Christmas freak, it isn’t that the toys are all that interesting, it just reminds me that I loved to play with the wooden ornaments when I was young. I thought it was extremely funny when The Boy proclaimed that “The snake ate the baby Jesus,” as he was playing with our ornaments last Christmas. Perhaps my story telling ability isn’t phenomenal, but in person this was hilarious! The snake ate the baby Jesus.

Turning off the television at our house in the morning, and ridding myself of my morning computer habit has made a profound impact on my life. It has been many months now, and my kids are watching far less television (A DVR’d episode of The Backyardigans some days after daycare, and an hour or so of whatever they choose each weekend morning), and the morning routine is much smoother than it ever used to be. I’m not going to say that mornings are hassle free, but there is no way we could go back to watching cartoons in the mornings now. The great no TV before daycare experiment.

As you might have picked up on from reading here I’ve been trying to be more positive since I read/watched The Secret. It really has had a profound impact on my life in more ways than one. I still find myself falling into the negative traps of my past, but I’m learning and growing. What do you want in your life?

The ode to my treadmill makes the list because my treadmill was my inspiration for my blog title. How can I not pay her homage? An Ode to my treadmill.

Finally I am going to select a very recent post. After reading the post that immediately preceded it a few times I decided that I needed to shift my attitude. The Girl is still a baby in so many ways, and I need to let her be one, stop willing her to grow up faster than she already is. On being 23 months old.

I hope this wasn’t too boring for you to read. I have most of my posts saved as Word documents so I can peruse them at my leisure fairly easily, but I hadn’t in a while. It has been a fun trip for me so far, thanks for reading!

P.S. This was more work to write than a normal blog post, so I take back my comments about recycling!

P.P.S. Tell me what you think of my new masthead. I've been meaning to customize it for ages, but finally got around to it.

Random observation of the week: kids notice stuff

Monday evening the kids and I went for a walk. The Boy insisted that we go to the playground, but as it was already after 6:30 PM I knew the playground was a bad idea. He agreed that we could walk to the duck pond (his duck pond) instead. As we got closer to the pond (It is 0.3 miles from our house – sad bit of Garmin GPS running watch trivia I happen to have memorized) he started telling me that we would see “the eyeballs.” I had no idea what he was talking about. I just did my standard response when I don’t want to hurt his feelings or pry too deeply which was to say something along the lines of “okay.” Of course he kept persisting that we would see the eyeballs on the sign, and “have you seen that sign before Mommy?” I had no idea what he was talking about, so I had to start prodding for more information. “Where are the eyeballs honey?” I asked. “They are on the sign” he insisted. “What sign?” I continued. “The sign by the duck pond,” he said now clearly annoyed with me. Okay. Thankfully we got to the duck pond, and as we approached he kept saying “that sign there mommy!” I still had no idea what he was talking about. It wasn’t until we passed the sign (we could see just the blank back as we approached) that I figured out he had been talking about a neighborhood watch sign. Yes indeed, there is an eyeball on that sign. I’ve seen the sign a million times, but never really looked at it before.



It is amazing the things in this world we take for granted. It is nice to have a child point them out to you every now and again. I’m sure that from now on I will notice that sign. In fact, just this morning I realized that we have another eyeball sign (er neighborhood watch sign) in the space between our driveway and our neighbor’s driveway…the neighbor being a neighborhood watch “block captain” and all.

On being 23 months old

This weekend The Girl passed a very important milestone in her life. It was not a milestone that anyone aside from me celebrated though. She turned 23 months old. It is significant because when her older brother turned 23 months old he got the gift of a sibling.

The Girl already has the gift of a sibling, but she did not receive a younger sibling (and there are currently no plans in place to provide her with one). I look at her now and wonder how we could have possibly thought The Boy was sufficiently old enough to be a big brother at this tender age. She is becoming more and more a little girl with each passing day, but in my eyes she is still a baby.


She isn’t a baby by the traditional sense of the word, she can speak in sentences, she feeds herself (and is quite proficient with utensils), she walks, she runs, she assists with dressing herself, can climb up into the minivan and get up into her car seat without help, etc. She does still wear diapers, and has that one last hold out bottle before bed. Of course the bottle is mostly my thing I’ll admit; it is sort of nice that she loves that last bit of cuddle time with me before sleep. I see the “babies” at daycare and think that they are all so tiny in comparison, but yet when I get The Girl home she goes right back to baby status in my eyes. I wonder if she will always seem like my baby. Her brother will always be older than her, but I suppose he won’t always be more advanced than she is.


I have such a hard time dealing with the idea that these little kids of mine will become bigger kids, and then teenagers, and finally adults. It seems almost impossible that my kids will one day grow up and not live in the same house I do. They are like extensions of my heart, walking around in the world, and someday I am supposed to let them go out in the world all on their own? I’m sure I will blink and The Girl will be on the brink of 4, and then 14, and then 22. This is why I need to stop dwelling on the nighttime routine. I know that eventually The Girl won’t want me lying on her bedroom floor, and will in fact shut the door on me when I try to do so. For this moment I need to be grateful for the baby I have, and I need to remember to stop willing her to grow up faster than she already is. Besides, it is DH’s turn to put the kids to bed tonight! *wink*

Wrapped around her finger

Please tell me this is a phase. Lie to me if you have to, but I need to hear that I won’t be sleeping on the floor of The Girl’s bedroom for much longer than a week or two. We had a nice stretch in there of being able to simply plop The Girl in her crib, turn on her beloved Fisher Price Ocean Wonders Aquarium, say I love you, say goodnight, and walk away (this after reading books to her and The Boy). I’d love to blame the vacation for this newest turn of events, but truth be told it did start before then. I like to blame myself so I’m sure it was a direct result of my most recent business trip. Perhaps she missed me, perhaps she is getting the last of her teeth, the dreaded 2 year molars, or perhaps she is just testing us to see how much she can torture us. Who knows?

DH copes by bringing his laptop with him, and just working, surfing the internet, or playing solitaire while he waits for her to fall asleep. Providing reassurance along the way that he is still in the room by answering her continued questions of “where you going Daddy?” with “I’m here, go to sleep baby,” until she finally gives up. I take the less practical and more self defeating approach of just lying on the floor and then trying to inch my way out of the room so she doesn’t notice I’ve left. Her floor is creaky though, so inevitably I am caught and have to say “shhhh” a few times before The Girl trusts that I’m not trying to sneak away. I lay there thinking that surely this will be the last medley of Aquarium tunes, and that at the end of this set, she will be fast asleep so I can make my way out of the room. Inevitably the tunes end, she reaches up and presses the button yet again so we can hear that fabulous water bubbling noise combined with the light show and the melodies that will be forever ingrained in my head. The entire time I lie there calculating if it is better to sneak out before the aquarium shuts off or after, which risks a creak in the floor waking her up. It is painful. Back when this was the norm, I did bring my laptop into the room because it was far better than the lying on the floor waiting game, but I am digging in my heels now. Surely, this will be a short-lived phase.

Oh, I know many of you are thinking that we are horrible parents, who haven’t established rigid stable routines for our kids to follow, and perhaps you are right. I mean if your kids go to sleep easily I’ll be the first to admit my jealousy. Of course, The Boy does go to sleep easily, and always has. I remember patting ourselves on the back because we did everything right with him, putting him in his crib while he was still awake from very early on. Yes, there were paci replacement trips at night, but mostly he was a good sleeper from day one. Yes, while on vacation or otherwise away from his normal routines things get messed up for him in the sleep department, but he bounces back quickly. We do have a routine, that is very stable, and we aren’t hyping the kids up right before bed. The Girl just likes to know that she isn’t alone, and until she gets back to the place where she knows when we walk out of her room we will still come back when she needs us, she isn’t going to be there.

Yes, I realize we are caving into temper tantrums. We tried to let her CIO (cry it out) last week, and after an hour of listening to her scream I caved. I got into her room, and could smell that the poor thing had pooped. I changed her, put her back in her crib after some cuddles, patted her back, and she was asleep in minutes. Others will say that we just needed to wait longer (though obviously we had to change that diaper), just suck it up for the 3 hours it takes. I guess we’ve decided that the lying in her room routine is preferable to listing to her scream though. My little girl knows what she wants, when she wants it, and from whom it should be provided. Her parents know that sometimes it is just too painful to do what is right. Why does this have to be so hard?

Thankfully the trail is not well traveled

I went out for a run this morning, and on the way to my favorite trail I was reminiscing about the beautiful things I've seen outside recently. A few weeks back I was running up the major street that is closest to my house. There is the hint of a bike path along one side of the road so I keep it in my running rotation. The street is very busy, but one side borders a wet land area. As I was running I glanced down into the swamp water immediately to my left I saw a beaver swimming. He/she quickly hightailed it away from my view, but I still got goosebumps thinking about how incredibly cool it is that I can be right next to a major road and still see wild animals going about their lives.

The beaver was a somewhat rare sighting for me. I mean I routinely see rabbits, mostly at our house since they seem to have formed a colony underneath our multi-level deck. Good thing we don't garden! I also see squirrels and chipmunks or gophers, whatever it is they actually are. Of course there are also the geese, and the ducks, the ducks who decided our driveway was a fine place to land a while back. Lest you think we live in the boonies, I'll say we are right smack in the middle of suburbia, albeit a suburb that does have a big chunk of undeveloped wetlands in the middle. Wednesday I saw a blue heron on the banks of a tiny pond as I ran past. It really has been a fabulous few weeks in the nature watching department.

All of the recent animal sightings had me in a glow of wonder and amazement. I decided to run down to my favorite creekside trail so I could enjoy the creek rather than staring at houses. The trail is a nice little treat. I started running because of this trail. We used to live much closer to the trail, so it was my daily running path, but now I only get over there a few times per month. I'd run a little over a mile on the trail when it happened. I saw a dead snake on the trail. I briefly freaked out, but since it didn't move at all I just gave it some space and kept on my way. Perhaps 40 feet later I saw another snake, and this one wasn't dead. I screamed. I stopped in my tracks, and I waited for the little baby garter snake to get out of my way. Shit. I hate snakes. All of my thoughts about how much I enjoy nature just vanished as I could feel my heart racing faster than the running pace I was keeping could cause. I'm sure I sounded like an idiot, but thankfully the trail is not well traveled. I doubt anybody heard my little girly scream. Stupid snake, now I'll have to avoid the trail for a few months before I feel like it is safe again.

What have we gotten ourselves into?

I've mentioned our great remdeling plans before, but I haven't offered too many details. We have now ordered cabinets for the new kitchen, picked out plumbing fixtures, and will be choosing granite soon. It seems as though we have reached the point of no return, so I thought it was fair to show you some pictures of what we are planning. I'm sure I will complain much over the next few months as our house undergoes the chaos that is remodeling. Please bear with me.

Kitchen now (roughly, this photo was from the MLS listing, we have a new refrigerator since then, and a new dishwasher):


The newly designed kitchen from the eating area not visible in the previous photo:


The dining room now (again with the MLS listing, that is not our table):


The soon to be non-existant dining room:


And another view for good measure:


What have we gotten ourselves into?

Village Idiots

I apologize for being scarce around here. We got back from our wonderful vacation on Sunday, but it has been a flurry of activity since then. Work has been crazy, and our big house remodel project has been kicked into high gear (we haven’t started yet, but we did order the kitchen cabinets today). Forget about the mundane day-to-day stuff though, in this post I am going to let you in on my vacation learnings:

1. I blogged about the great ash in the hot tub incident already, so I don’t need to go there
2. Crayola Color Wonder markers are fabulous, except when used to draw on stained wood closet doors. No, no, they don’t leave any colored marks on the doors, but they do leave a streak that can’t be easily removed (at least not without sanding and re-staining the doors). Even the fabulous Mr. Clean Magic Eraser is of no use.
3. A nearly 2 year old can be lightning quick when she thinks it is funny to run out into the street
4. Blond girl children need to wear hats or have sunscreen applied to their hair part lines in order to avoid sunburned heads
5. Non-blond Treadmillista’s also need to wear hats or put sunscreen in their hair part lines in order to avoid sunburned heads – OUCH!
6. The Boy really enjoys talking about toots, his, hers, made up toots, it doesn’t really matter, all are extraordinarily funny
7. It is difficult to get the kids to sleep at night while on vacation – understatement
8. Dirt is fun to play with – pouring it on Mommy’s head is absolutely thrilling
9. My laptop battery can’t even last through one viewing of Toy Story 2 anymore
10. The Girl needs her own seat on an airplane
11. When you check your car seats they don’t always arrive on the same flight you did
12. Having your child refer to a grandparent by the name of the state she lives in becomes confusing when you arrive in that state – are we going to name of state now?

I’m sure there are more. Perhaps the most profound learning for me was that when you have an extra set or two of adults around “watching” your children you all become a little less guarded than normal. I’m convinced that items 1 through 3 above would not have occurred had it been just DH and I on duty. This makes me question the whole “it takes a village” approach to raising kids. I mean, we all felt like someone else was watching the children, so none of us were watching them as closely as we should have been. Or perhaps it just shows that DH and I become the village idiots when we have back-ups around. In any case, my deepest apologies for any damage we may have done to your house Mom. We had a great time!

You got ash in my hot tub - or vacation at Mom's

When those of us from the frozen tundra venture to warmer climates for spring vacations we have this subtle need to have it be wicked cold back home while we are gone. It isn't that we don't want spring to come to our home town, it is just that if we are escaping for a while it better not be warmer at home while we are gone! Thankfully the weather gods have come through this year. The treadmilling around family is visiting my Mom in her warmer climate home, while they are getting snow back home. Yipee!!! Sorry, I can't help that it makes me happy.

Things you can do outside in the spring when you live outside of the frozen tundra:
1. Run outside in shorts and a tank top and get too hot
2. Get a sunburn on your arms
3. Relax in a lawn chair outside in shorts and a t-shirt while reading a trashy book
4. Let your kids play outside all day long while wearing shorts, t-shirts, and sandals
5. Not wear a coat
6. Not wear mittens or hats
7. Have I mentioned shorts and t-shirts?
8. Feel too warm in the hot tub outside (before your oldest child decided that dumping a can of cigarette butts into the hot tub was a good idea)
9. Help try to clean out the hot tub with sieves
10. Help drain, clean, and refill the hot tub because you just can't get all of that nasty ash out of the water any other way

I'm sure I'll be scarce for the rest of the week, and hopefully the hot tub is back in commission in a couple of days. In case you were wondering, The Boy and The Girl were standing over the edge of the hot tub, using it as their own private water table, while DH and I watched from inside the house (kids clearly visible at all times). We had given them buckets, plastic ducks, and various other toys, and we just didn't realize that the old coffee can filled with cigarette butts would be so appealing to them. I saw him with the can and had an oh shit moment, and it was already too late. Secretly I think The Boy planned this, as the hot tub is normally far too hot for him to set foot in...now it will be cold for a few days and I'm sure he will get to try it out. Or maybe I'm giving him more credit than he deserves, he's used to drainable sinks and bathtubs afterall.