Meme Luv

Suzy tagged me (technically on Facebook) for a “25 Facts about Me” meme, so here it comes.

1. I didn’t actually know that you could get tagged with a meme on Facebook.

2. I have no idea how to write a meme or tag someone on Facebook.

3. I really have nothing better to write about this week.

4. Entries 1-3 are the main reasons that you are getting this meme on my blog today. Don’t you feel lucky?

5. I think that I am cheating at this meme, but I have had a quarter of a bag of chocolate chips since I got home from work an hour ago and now I'm feeling spunky.

5. I don’t consume any caffeine other than chocolate simply because I really can’t handle it.

6. Too much chocolate (like more than a regular Hershey bar) makes me jittery.

7. The few people who have seen me after a coke think I’m much more fun that way than after a few glasses of wine, although that doesn’t keep me from the wine.

8. Once I had a Vodka and Red Bull (before anybody had heard of Red Bull) at a club in Brussels and didn’t sleep for almost 40 hours.

9. I also had some mussels that time in Brussels.

10. I love the art of Rene Magritte, who also happened to live in Brussels.

11. When I am not enjoying intellectual modern art that challenges the conventions of language and human perception, I really love the movie “Dude, Where’s My Car.”


moar funny pictures

12. I can’t even think about Big Mouth Billy Bass without laughing hysterically.

13. I am totally cracking up RIGHT NOW. [Taaaake me to the Riv-ER!]



14.You would never guess this from my blog, but I also love LOLcats.

15. My real cat’s name is Shadow.

16. In the future, I am determined to have a pair of some kind of pet and name them Oliver Boliver Butt and Zanzibar Buck Buck McFate. Hopefully soon, or it will be too late.

17. I can recite about 40% of everything Dr. Suess has written from memory.

18. I don’t have a special fondness for Dr. Suess.

19. I do tend to remember things I hear like they are recordings - especially things that rhyme.

2.I find it almost impossible to memorize maps or diagrams.

22. The worst grade I got in high school was in geography. Go figure.

23. I majored in kinesiology in college, but switched to engineering after attempting to take physiology and organic chemistry because there was no way I was going to be able to memorize all that information.

24. On the third day of undergrad physiology at my college, they give you a toolbox filled with bones from a dog skeleton that you are supposed to carry around with you and study.

25. I really don’t regret changing my major to engineering.

I’m really not the sort to “tag” anyone so here’s the deal: I tag you. Leave me a comment with a link to your post, and I promise to come read it and comment back.

*Sob* Little Boy

Isaac went in for his first haircut today.  I had put this off way too long.  At the last birthday party we went to, people kept calling him "her," even though he was wearing a green shirt with a pirate on it that says "argh."  I was having a little infatuation with his golden-blonde locks, and I was not ready to see them go, even today.

Before:

After:

Princess or President?

This is not a post about Caroline Kennedy trying to get into the Senate. I just want to save you googlers some time. You're Welcome.

This Christmas was the Year of the Princess for my 4-year old daughter. Her gifts were a Disney Princess bicycle, princess Barbie-style dolls, and a craft kit with gemstones and tulle to turn her bed into a princess bed. In her stocking, she got a Cinderella DVD and a 6-pack of princess underwear.

She is obsessed with all things princess and with looking pretty.  She is so concerned with how she looks that she often fights wearing a jacket because she wants everyone to see her clothes.

Where did this little girl come from?  I am about as far from "girly" as any girl can be.  When she tells me how she wants to be a princess when she grows up, I have to fight the urge to argue with her, "Why not a scientist, or an astronaut, or an artist, or the President?  How about a ballerina?  (I would totally take ballerina over 'princess' these days) Don't you know you can be anything?" 

I try to keep my defensive reflex responses in check, though.  While I do think it's important to teach her that "beauty" is about more than her dresses and hair, I also want her to know that she really is beautiful.  "Princess" is her ideal right now, and I don't think I can argue that out of her.  I have faith that this, too, shall pass.  As long as it does last, I have resolved that I don't want to somehow give her the idea that she is less than qualified to be a princess, whatever that means to her, so I choose my words carefully.  

And put up with enough plastic high-heels, crowns, and necklaces to provide the wardrobe for our own production of Victor! Victoria!

New Year's Resolutions

I don't do Resolutions,(OK, I just did in the last entry, but not normally) but to these I say AMEN!

A Year in Review

I’ve read that there is this blogging tradition of going back over your year at New Years’ time and linking to all the big stories of the year. Since I didn’t blog most of this year, I guess you will be saved a bunch of links to stories you probably skimmed the first time while I catch up on my need to share life.

So here it is: Mama’s 2008

January: Mama adjusted to life with a new baby and toddler. Breastfeeding did not go as well this time around and Mama turned into a one-woman dairy farm, and my firstborn got glasses.

Mama reluctantly decided in favor of an IUD. Let me just say this: If taking The Pill makes you an insane, raging lunatic to the point that your husband would rather face the prospect of never having sex again than share the unstable air that surrounds your hormone-ravaged self, ignore your doctor when he tells you that the level of hormones in an IUD is so much lower that “You’ll be fine.” You won’t be fine. You will find yourself locked in your bathroom to avoid screaming at your already terrified children while you beg the nurse on the phone to GET THIS THING OUT OF MY BODY. NOW. I can has Prozac?

February: After removal of the Foreign Offender, and some chemical assistance from a very remorseful obstetrician, the clouds began to part and I finally began the process of bonding with my precious baby. I can has The Love!

March: Mama went back to work. Mama also grew giant asparagus. I can has giant bowl of hollandaise?

April: Mama began a long, slow march back into the depths of depression. I still don’t know if this is about hormones, loss, or something else, but yeah, I’m going to go ahead and use the D word. I can has no jokes about this one, people.

May: Mama started a new blog, but it turns out that I wasn’t any more consistent over there than I am here.

June-July-August: We learned that Isaac had had what the doctor later called a “neurological reaction” to the DtAP vaccine, or at least to the “P” part. Mama and family made the tough decision to discontinue the Pertussis series, and we continue to learn what that means for us and for him. Hubby had a birthday, which will be recorded in history as The Birthday in Which the Wii Changed Our Lives. Mostly, we enjoyed the Galveston beaches and the summer.

September: Hurricane Ike left both our home and my parents cabin on the beach (The West End, for locals and compulsive news-watchers) miraculously untouched. We even had our power back on in a matter of hours, most likely because we live on the same grid as a major hospital. Unfortunately, the cold front that blew in the next night proved to be the straw that broke our municipal sewer system's back, and we woke up to several inches of water in our house. I can has a new wet-vac?

October: God is just good, people. Despite having 18” of drywall cut from the bottom of every wall in our house and losing all our downstairs flooring, the whole flood thing really brought mostly blessings into our home. We got a new front door out of deal, and we realized that we can count on our friends and family more that we could have imagined.

November: Did I leave out the part where Isaac stopped sleeping at night and stopped gaining weight around six months ago? As it turns out, my 75th Percentile Preemie hit twenty pounds at six months old and didn’t gain more than a couple of ounces by his first birthday. Between not wanting to eat anything that wasn’t served a-la-boob and raging ear infections that kept him on diarrhea-inducing antibiotics for most of the second half of his life thus far, no one was totally shocked. But we were concerned all the same. We decided to get tubes put in his ears, but the we missed the first scheduled surgery because he had The Croup. I can has Amoxicillin?

December: Isaac got the tubes in. The doctor told us he was in the Top Ten of all the babies he’s ever “tubed,” meaning there was more gunk in there than anyone had realized…and within 2 weeks he has another ear infection and has actually started sleeping less. So we’ve come full-circle and here I am back at the blog. I can has naptime? PLEEEZ?

New Year’s Resolution: Sleep more, feel better, enjoy my kids – I think it has to be in that order, but I’ll take it how I can get it.

How do I say Goodbye?

I’ve loved doing this blog, and I’m not deleting it. Mama still really needs a nap, and I’m hoping that in time, I will find the balance that I need to come back to this blog and make it the thing that I want it to be.

The bottom line is that I can’t do that right now. Yes- I need to take time to write, to reflect, and to have something that is mine, but I need to take my focus a few degrees off of me. For now, you can find me here.

I love you all and I will miss you…but I’ll still be hangin’ out on your blogs, I promise!

P.S. If you have kids under 2, you need to read The Vaccine Book, by Robert Sears. When you are done, you just might know more than your doctor knows about vaccines.

~Mama

Things that I worry about

Every. Single. Day. It’s stressful being mama.

-My daughter being hit by a car. This might be an every hour item, really.

-Getting kidney stones from drinking water out of water fountains. I didn’t say these things made any sense.

-Whether I unplugged/turned off the flat iron. The sad thing about this one is that I only straighten my hair 2 or 3 days a week.

-The cat getting out of the house and being hit by a car. Yes, I have a thing about cars.

-People staring at my eyebrows because they are too thick. This is why I sometimes have gaps in my eyebrows – I pull on them unconsciously. In my saner moments, I understand that the gaps are much more conspicuous than the thickness.

-My son not developing his baby skills on time. This is universal among parents of infants, I’m sure.

-That I am working outside the home too much.

-That I am not doing enough at my outside-the-home work.

-Roaches taking over my kitchen. This is not as crazy as it sounds – the roaches really are on the offensive at my house.

- David Cook losing American Idol because in the finale, they are going to make him sing some corny song and it will sound terrible. This one is a short-term issue.

-Getting a traffic ticket. Every time I see a police car, I start having conversations in my head explaining to the officer why I did whatever I imagine he is going to ticket me for doing.


-Whether anyone will hang around to read my blog after another day with no posts / after reading the post I wrote today. Then I convince myself that it really doesn’t matter if anyone reads it anyway.