it's over

Yesterday the sitter tried to get Oona to take a nap and Oona told her, 'no more napping anymore.' I came home to find her running around in circles in the living room. So I'm feeling like my posts might take a hit if she won't sleep for me anymore. She will fall asleep if I drive around but she wakes up during the transition from car seat to crib so there's not much that I can do. I could buy a laptop and run the car to keep warm but that's would be pretty silly and not very nice to the environment. Oh God! It's officially over, what am I going to do?

I'll try to throw one more post up here before Christmas but if I get overwhelmed with the maniacal madness of the season, and Oona's non-napping mania, I hope anyone who reads this has a most wonderful Christmas!

in the bedroom

Okay, now obviously I am not showing these photos of my bedroom while swelling with pride. Truth be told I'm mortified at the state of our bedroom and am posting these pictures in the hope that I can overwhelm readers with the dramatic makeover (yet on a painfully slim budget) that I'd like to accomplish within a month, at least that's the timeline I'm giving myself. We're hoping to move to a new house once Toby's done with school (he has a year and a half to go) so I'd rather not repaint the walls even though the Martha Stewart for Kmart heather is a little too Grimace purple for me (apparently Grimace has been dropped as of 2007, so my Grimace purple bedroom is really dated). Well enough explaining here's the place.

We'll begin the panoramic tour of the master boudoir with Toby's side. Those are his belts on the floor and stacks of drawers. I'm sure you're wondering what a stack of blue drawers are doing on the floor. Well, I finally finished Oona's room last year and had painted that dresser for her room but I never got around to filling her dresser because the inside of the drawers were nasty. So for the last, oh, month and a half or so the drawers have been sitting there because I haven't found time to get around to cutting the fabric to line the drawers. I mean it's much easier to write on my blog and complain about not having time to really finish Oona's dresser than to actually take an hour and do it.

Moving ever so slowly you get to see the north facing wall where our dresser stands mournfully in a corner, most likely embarrassed by the crap and dust that sits on top of it for ages. There's one of our cats, Sam, who loves to sleep on our bed during the day. And on the end of the bed is my Christmas gift and an instrumental part of the bedroom makeover courtesy of Garnet Hill, whose bedding, clothes and home decor I love but I could quickly rack up ten grand worth just browsing through the catalog, or Anthropologie for that matter, so nice yet so freaking expensive!

Moving on we come to the worst part of the room, my side of the bed. All the junk piled in front of the window is old clothing or toys of the kids that I need to go through and donate or try and sell at a local consignment store, which I hate driving to and putting the time into because I'll probably get all of $20, so this procrastination is what causes the pile to sit in that corner for long stretches of time. We also have two friends expecting a babies so I want to see if either of them needs a diaper champ or changing pad before giving the stuff away. And this dresser has all Oona's clothes, so I need to transfer her clothes to the blue dresser (once I finish lining the drawers) and free up some space by getting this dresser out of the bedroom. The monarch butterfly was hanging in a corner of Owen's room until nightmares took over and the butterfly started freaking him out. Oona likes it but her room is the size of a closet so she might have to wait until the next home.

Finally we come to the southern facing wall, where the headboad and footboard that my Mom sent me a year and a half ago remain propped against the wall. To be fair this was supposed to go up in the guest bedroom on the third floor but the boxspring wouldn't fit up the stairs and then I didn't know what to do with them since they really aren't my style, I'd like a wrought iron bed, but I hate to just put it out in the trash on bulk day. So they've sat against the wall, along with a framed picture of Degas dancers that I had back in high school. Stay tuned to see how I declutter, what gets tossed, what stays and what gets a brand new look. I've got some ideas but we'll see how things gel with this room over the next month. I hope we're all pleasantly surprised.

brave new world

So, as of yesterday I've entered the last year of my thirties. Hard to believe, really. No huge blowouts for birthday #39. Saturday night we went out to dinner with Toby's brother and his wife to a restaurant with local, organic food that's byob. It was a great tasting meal but they could really invest in some hairnets and a dimmer switch. Husband of couple almost coughed up a hairball from his salad, the strand was Rapunzel like in length. One benefit of the bright lighting was that I noticed the hair resting on top of a portion of my pork tenderloin and quarantined it to the far side of my dinner plate. Toby's brother was outraged when I found a hair, at first he thought I was kidding. I mentioned it to the waiter in the least offensive manner (it's not his fault and hair loss happens to us all). He was profuse with apologies and we all got free dessert. Plus Toby brought a really nice bottle of bordeaux, my favorite type of wine. Sunday was horribly rainy here but we got a tree that the cats are busy de-needling, at least the lower branches. I am thankful though that they're not climbing up the tree like last year. We ordered take out indian food from my favorite indian restaurant in Pittsburgh and the kids and Toby sang Happy Birthday to me; well Toby did, Owen half-heartedly sang between bites of his cookie and Oona made farting sounds from her mouth. And after the kids went to bed Toby and I watched a few episodes of season 3 of The Office, part of my gift from Toby (we missed most of last year's episodes since Toby had class Thursday nights). And I still have four leftover cookies from whole foods, which I got for us in lieu of a cake. All in all a good day.

picture day

I was trying to get a new picture of myself for my blog because I'm always a bit creeped out by pictures of authors that never change on their books even though many years might have passed. I'm thinking Danielle Steel but who knows, maybe she's like Dorian Grey and isn't aging, or is receiving a lot of airbrushing. And then there's Ayn Rand's portrait drawing on the backs of her books, which softened what photography couldn't with her. This is not to say that I'm famous, an author or anywhere near the caliber of the Queen of spinner rack novels or the Queen of objectivism, just that I like to keep the pictures current. When I finally got a decent picture, I actually look prettier than I do in real life, my hair looks dark in a nice way and my eyes very big and blue, but my skin is also blue, a la Violet Beauregarde from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. So much for being current.

Here is a current picture of Oona, taken today at our visit to Grandma's. I feel so bad because within the past month Oona's become scared of the people at my Grandma's assisted living home. She turns to me and says 'Carry scared!' clutching my thigh. I hoist her up and tell her not to worry, but she even acts scared of my Grandma when she first sees her. Once we're in her room she's fine but I don't know if she's just scared about the old people or if she senses that something isn't quite right about them since their memory is impaired. I don't want to bring her if she's truly freaked out about it and then I'd feel bad because my Grandma lives for seeing Oona, she's probably the reason she wakes up every morning. But she also says cats scare her, which is not true since we have two. She talks about pumpkins scaring her too and she makes a mock face of horror at the neighbors pumpkins still perched on their porch. Maybe it's just an I like to be scared phase. Could that work for a stay at home Mom? I could tell Toby laundry scared, dishes scary with a look of horror on my face but I don't think I could get away with a fraction of what Oona does, although to be fair she is a ton cuter.

ode to a nap

I am mourning the loss of Oona's nap time. Yesterday was a blissful day where I put her down without incident and she slept for close to three hours. But that was Tuesday, today is a different story. She always sleeps for the sitter, I've joked about needing the sitter 7 days a week in order to get Oona to nap, but I came home fifteen minutes early today and the sitter said she cried before going to bed, which she never does for her the babywhisperer of napping. I guess I shouldn't have gotten home early because five minutes after being back she started crying mommy, she's like a blood hound can she smell my presence?I tried to let her cry it out but that didn't work so now she's downstairs with me prancing around the living room in her pj straightjacket singing and clapping to a Little Einsteins video. I cut off the feet from a pair of her footie pyjamas in the hopes that it would prevent her from stripping every time I put her down for a nap, twice she pooped on the bed after these strippings. It worked but she has napped maybe 5 days in the past three weeks, so I think my ingenuity was too little too late. I wish I could reason with her about this whole giving up the nap thing because she clearly isn't ready for it. When I put her in the car for the five minute drive to Owen's school she falls asleep two minutes into the ride. If I drive anywhere in the afternoon this is what she does and what can you do with the time then, assist global warming by idling your car while you try to find a way to capitalize on that free time? It's rare that my kids wake up during the night though so I guess I should count my blessings, all in all they're pretty good sleepers.

scat & i'm not talking scatman crothers

TMI alert: this post if filled with scat references. Wait a couple days for the next post if poop talk leaves you ill.

Everyone poops but everyone doesn't have an easy time pooping, at least not in this family. My God! between me and my son we're going to need new pipes in our house and Oona isn't even toilet trained yet and she's the one with the worst poop problems by far. I've been diagnosed with IBS, it's much better to say that than irritable bowel syndrome, which sounds horrible to personify the colon that way. But at least that's gentler than spastic colon, which, who could say that about themselves without hanging their head in shame? It's like saying your colon is the boy who eats glue and hops up and down grabbing himself in class. A couple weeks ago I took Oona to a GI doctor and he told me what all the other GI doctors have said, keep her on miralax, it's safe, there's nothing wrong with her taking that every day for years if need be. But then he said he'd want to see her in six months in case anything changes with Oona or if they learn new information about the safety of miralax. Very reassuring. He also wants her to get some bloodwork done, more to rule certain conditions out, which based on her thriving health he doubts she has.

I had to go in for a procedure yesterday, which involved drinking a bottle of magnesium citrate and taking two enemas, sounds lovely doesn't it? I was scheduled to have this thing done at 11:30 and they didn't do me until quarter after two by which time I was completely stressed out because my sitter needed to be at work at 3:00 so I was hopping off my gurney to place calls to update her on when I might be done, while apologizing profusely for being so late, originally I told her I'd be back by 1:00 the latest, since I'd been told the procedure takes all of five minutes. If I didn't bring along my sudoku book to kill time I might have killed someone because going close to three hours past your scheduled procedure time seems a bit insane. It's like dealing with plane travel these days, except in a hospital gown. Apparently they were short an anesthetist which backed everything up (hard not to write in double entendres when it comes to the bowel). I didn't need anesthesia, unlike everyone else getting endoscopies and colonoscopies, so God knows why they couldn't move me to the head of the line and get me in and out quick. Once I finally got in there everything was quick, it's very bizarre to see your colon on TV and I was compelled to apologize since my prep for this procedure didn't work and they need to irrigate me, apparently this happens or that's what the fellow (a doctor who was a fellow, not a guy) with a probe up my ass told me. Everything looked normal and I jumped back into my clothes and ran out (as fast as I could while doubled over with cramps from getting water and air pumped into my colon) to pay my parking ticket and get home. Talk about a day well spent by myself, HA! I did like a third of the damn sudoku book, much easier without distractions although I still prefer crossword puzzles.

I am really tempted to see a naturopathic docotor or holistically oriented nutritionist. I just keep wondering if my family's (except Toby) troubles would clear up if we eliminated dairy from our diet or wheat. We all drink plum juice (much tastier than prune juice) on a regular basis but that doesn't seem to be enough. I'm always putting off visiting a naturapthic doctor because I'm scared they'll tell me I have to give up all my favorites; chocolate, caffeine, sugar and I'd probably need to be locked up in a padded cell in order to detox from those three.