my word

Sorry, I have been very remiss in current blog posts. The past month has been a blur. I'm in full swing with my classes and trying to manage reading (usually on the elliptical at the gym), homework, seeing my grandma and all my mother/wife duties well I thought I might collapse until Oona started preschool full time. Yep, that's right Oona is in school five days a week now. And I think I might survive my fall semester and Oona will hopefully learn from the other students and her preschool teacher that blood curdling screams and saying you're stupid are not effective tools for getting your way. Oh, I've tried but I'm helpless to that scream of hers, it drains the blood out of me and I'm just compelled to stop it.

So Oona turned three on saturday and we had Toby's parents over and treated Oona to a pink party, since pink is her favorite color. This is one of the many things that Oona picked up from her babysitter - pink, a love of nailpolish and being very girly, bugs now scare her. I can't complain A- was a wonderful sitter and Oona loves her to bits. I had class on saturday but stopped at the grocery store afterwards to pick up two dozen cupcakes (half chocolate cake & half white cake) with pink frosting and pink & purple sprinkles. Giant Eagle's bakery (that's our local grocery chain) makes awesome frosting. I think I scarfed down four chocolate cupcakes throughout the day, if not more. God and Toby and I went out to dinner, since his parents were kind enough to watch the kids, and I had chocolate dessert at the restaurant we went to. I'm a chocolate junkie.

Toby's parents wisely bought Owen a present so he didn't whine incessantly watching Oona open all of her goodies. They got him this wooly mammouth fossil kit which was a great idea but... Owen kept asking me to do it for him. And it takes a long time, and a lot of work, to unearth just one of the bones. So I sped things up by soaking the whole 'site' in the sink and then those bones popped out lickety split. I'm a horrible enabler, I know. The next day we went with the kids and Toby's parents to the zoo and Oona started the trip off right by doing a face plant while running to the elevator. This is the second time in as many days that she's done this and both times when she'd start screaming I'm thinking that she must have knocked her teeth out. But, curiously, in a move the physics of which I don't understand, she hits the top of her forehead. At the zoo it started swelling and bruising immediately and it was all scraped up from the concrete too. Good thing she has bangs. I spent the rest of the zoo trip telling her to walk not run, what a killjoy I am. Wondering whether she tripped because her shoes are too small, which means I'm guilty of depriving my daughter of shoes that fit. And finally wondering how to get her to understand that she has to use her hands not her face to break her fall.


When we got home Toby's parents left Toby crashed on the couch while the kids watched Scooby Doo Zombie Island which takes the banality of Scooby Doo to a whole nother level and not a good one but there is a catchy song that winds up in my head all too frequently. And then it was Monday and our rat race started all over again. But it's all good. Everyone is happy, if a little tired. And I'll have to fill you in on my new level of Dr. Momhood tomorrow.