O...M...G

Tomorrow is Gavin's last day of preschool. This morning I asked him if he knew tomorrow was his last day and he told me "I'm very, very sad, mommy. I really, really love preschool."

Sigh. So cliched but it really does seem like only yesterday....

Tonight I said to him "look, you had popsicle, you're naked and shivering, and you just peed in the backyard.... it's time to go inside and have a bath."

Add that to the list of things I never dreamed I would say... outside of college.

Lactivism at its finest

"Ewwwwwww! I can't believe you're still nursing her! She's almost two... she has teeth... that's just gross!"



"Yeah, well, you're gross."

Weekend Update

Friday night downtown with the family- a Greek festival and Downtown Jazz:











Saturday- Flickr meet-up with Blu Sun, Center of the Universe, and The Butterfly Girl:










Sunday- playing outside in the water:

He told me he was wearing his hat

Just in case I failed to mention this week that living with my son is like living with a drunken midget:

OAM Record!

14 in Explore at the SAME time!









Oh, and I couldn't resist creating a self portrait to go with yesterday's song- "Sailor".




I'm editing this post because LOOK! Two full rows! Sixteen in Explore, baby!

Uh-huh

I'm sorry but if a lesbian tells you "I'm just not a sausage person", it doesn't matter if she is talking about sausage the food- it is pretty stinkin' funny.

At least I thought so.

So very sweet

The Goose and the Gavinator are Image of the Day over at Parent Dish!!!!!!

G Training

Over at 365 days I really developed a style of expressing how I felt with song lyrics and then using those song lyrics to come up with an idea for a picture:

Fighting for your relationship? I give you Soldier

Marveling over the love for your child? I give you Little Wonders

Felling a bit randy, baby? It’s Still the Night

Missing someone? Ask them to Return to Me.



And so on and so on. I have a ton of them.

I’ve grown so used to relying on songs as a means of expression that I’m finding it a bit difficult to blog. (Harnessing my inner Mary Catherine Gallagher) I guess that if I had to pick a song to sum up how I feel today it would be Sailor by Tracy Chapman.

Ummmmm. Yeah.

See? That type of expression doesn’t work so well in blog format.

So please bear with me as I try to get back into blogging and resort to talking about what I know best: boobs and poop. Actually, I’ll spare you the boob talk and just get straight to poop.

The Gavinator will be 4 in September and is still not pooping in the potty. I haven’t really forced the issue because in all honestly, I know my kid and dude is completely freaked when it comes to pooping in the potty and is not playing around at all. I’m worried if I force the issue he will begin to hold in his poop, stretch out his colon, and he’ll wind up with life long chronic constipation and ummmmm, having him fully potty trained really ain’t worth a lifetime of poop chute issues.

On the other hand, if I don’t put a diaper on him when he needs to poop he could just decide to start pooping wherever he wants to and ummmmmm, having him fully potty trained is not really worth a lifetime of living in a house that smells like poop.

I’m at a loss. I really don’t know how to handle this issue and I use the term “issue” loosely as it really isn’t something I’m worried about. I’m pretty sure I’m doing the right thing by not forcing the issue but then again, I would love to have him out of diapers- especially poopy diapers.

Grace accidentally pooped in the potty on Mother’s Day (thank you, Goose) and by accidentally I mean we were doing our usual stick her on the potty before bath routine and she pooped. It wasn’t like she came up and told us she needed to do it. We made a HUGE deal out of it and we decided to start trying to potty train Goose but as you can see from the e-mail the hubs sent me yesterday at work, day one of Goose training can best be summed up by “holy crap if we keep this up my entire house is going to smell like Goose urine forever” (witty, I know):

Just an fyi.......i've had Grace in panties for about 2 hours and it has been a failure...yes I know it's going to take time. So far she has sat on the potty about a dozen times with no results. She has gone pee pee in her panties twice now so im going to put a diaper on and try again later....she's almost out of panties. I'll get more at walmart this week. Oh and nothing from Gavin yet but he has yet to need to poop.......

Side note: Reading that e-mail from the hubs really made me miss the days when he used e-mails as foreplay

Eek! I just inadvertently admitted that we shop at Walmart! Don’t tell the debate board!!!!

Anyhoo, when I got home from work yesterday the Gavinator begged for a diaper so he could poop. I decided to ride the wave of Goose just pooping on the potty and see if we could use that as an incentive to get Gavinator to give it a try and I said no and stuck him on the potty. Since I have developed some educational tools at work regarding potty training (not be hater because I have such a cool job and get to talk about poop so much… nobody likes a hater) so I know some things that can be done to ease the pooping experience. I made sure he was comfortable and I got a little stool to support his feet and I got a couple of books for us to read. I remembered that one of the education tools suggested having the child blow out through their mouth to encourage pooping so I started blowing and encouraged Gavin to start blowing like he was trying to blow out a candle. He asked me why and I told him it would help him poop.

I mean, right?

Next thing I know he has his head down between his legs blowing into the potty and when I asked him what he was doing he told me “I’m blowing out my poop!!!”

I mean, right?

People, you couldn’t make this stuff up. Me and Goose sitting on the bathroom floor, books everywhere, and Gavin up on the potty, feet supported by a stool, with his head between his legs trying to blow out his poop.

Good times.

On the bright side, as soon as Gavin was done trying to blow out his poop, I sat Goose on the potty and she pooped. Of course, Goose has never had a problem with pooping.

I really hope you already ate before you read this post.

And here I thought Goose pooping in the potty was my Mother's Day miracle

A letter I received via FlickrMail:

Amanda, I feel so strange writing this e mail, but I finally got a minute to send you this and I feel compelled by your last photo. My name is *****, I live in ******** **, but I was in MN when I discovered you. I found your blog one night while I googled "SSRI's" and "breastmilk". You had made a comment that Goose likes her breastmilk spiked with ssri's on another persons blog and, well the rest is history. I followed your blog and then over to flickr 365 because I, like you, am a mommy of two little people and feel crazy love for my kids and then just plain crazy at times. Nicholas is 3 and Elliott just turned one and it has been less than easy for me. (Obviously, check the ssri reference) I have looked to your blog and flickr photos when I felt like motherhood was going to drown me and no one would jump in to save me. I have a great partner who is a great daddy, like your hubby, and from the outside I am sure that I look like I have the perfect life, but this chaos inside that I a facing is scarier than anything I have ever done. I read your "homeostasis" entry and burst into tears.
I just wanted you to know that you are so brave. Brave for putting a piece of you out into the world. Brave for having babies and raising them the way you do. Brave for going to work everyday and helping people. I don't even know you but I have to say as another mommy, I am so proud of what you have given to other people with your photos and words.
Homeostasis can be an elusive state to achieve and with all of the chaos we deal with everyday, it's amazing that anyone ever really settles down and has time to just "be", let alone "just be happy". I trust your judgement to leave the pressure of performance that 365 must be, please know however that you touched many peoples lives, but speaking for me, you touched mine. Sometimes we forget that it is not only the large, loud, spectacles of heroism that make changes, but the small, selfless, brave acts of integrity that are heroic as well.
Your kindness, slightly self-depricating humor, unabashed love for your kids and your penchant for quoting song lyrics made my days brighter, and I wanted you to know. I have a song that makes me feel better when my chaos takes over and perhaps it would make you smile as well, if not at least to know there are other people out there who have been unsettled and overwhelmed. It's "grey" by Ani DiFranco.
I hope that you "find your paradise", thanks you for making me smile, *****
ps. Oh, and thanks for recommending the "fridge DJ", we totally rock out to Annie-Ooh on a daily basis. Leapfrog is a much better teacher then I will ever be. :)



It made me cry. The good kind of cry, though.

365 days was a crazy, crazy experience. I really hated quitting not just because I HATE quitting but also because it is so, so amazing when people like ***** see my pictures and "get" me.

It's nice to be gotten.

Since becoming a mom, I don't feel "gotten" very often.

I haven't addressed it here but I'm sure many of you know that I left 365 days on day 153 because it was causing a lot of heartache at home. It took up a good chunk of time and I was sharing more of "me" with people online that I was at home or in real life. You can only imagine the kinds of problems that can cause.

It's nice that some good came out if it.

Happy Mother's Day

Rock on.

Famous Last Words

I told Gavin he could water the flowers.

Ummmm, yeah.

To me From hubs

Happy Mother's Day to Me
Happy Mother's Day to Me
Happy Mother's Day Dear O-A-M
Happy Mother's Day to Meeeeeeeeeeeee

The Secret

This morning I went to “Muffins with Mom” at Gavin’s preschool in honor of mother’s day. Before we left the house I told him how excited I was to be going to school with him and he told me “No! You can’t go to school with me!” Sweet. Love you, too, kiddo.

On the drive to school he told me that he didn’t want to sit me and that I could sit with Ella and he was going to sit with John David. Right. Because John David squeezed your giant head out of his nether regions so of course you should want to sit with him at a mother’s day breakfast.

As it turned out, I was the fetcher of muffins and juice so he wanted to sit with me but he wouldn’t let me eat. He took the muffins off of my plate and put them on his and ate all of them. The Gavinator is not that big of an eater so I imagine the only reason he ate all four mini muffins was so I could not eat the muffins. He also knows I am entirely too vain to make a second trip to the buffet with a hundred other women looking on so he had covered all the bases of “operation starve mom at the muffins for mom breakfast”. Awesome. I can hear the sales from my mom diet book skyrocketing.

However, the craziest thing about the breakfast was not that my son did not want me to go, did not want me to sit next to him, and did not want me to eat. It was as I was trying to get my butt back to work in time for a meeting that Gavin did decide I was worthy of his love and would not let go of my leg that a woman came up to me and told me that she had been dying to meet me and she just knew I must be something special.

Come again?

I thought people spreading tales of my glory in bathroom stalls ended in Morgantown.

What the hell was she talking about? She thinks I’m special because my kid is totally and completely insane and I have made it three and half years without institutionalizing him? She reads my blog? Follows my 365? Thinks I’m special because for someone who is as flat chested as a 12 year old boy I manage to talk about and show off my ta-tas daily? (speaking of the ta-ta’s, they’re fine… thanks for asking)

As it turns out, it was none of the above. She was dying to meet me and assumed I was special because I’m married to a man who… GASP… SHOCK… takes care of his children!!!!!!! She told me she sees the husband drop off the Gavinator and pick him three times a week with the Goose in tow and she just doesn’t understand how with all his testosterone and scrotal tissue he manages to do it when her husband can’t even play catch with her kids and would NEVER do what my husband does. She went on to tell me that I am SO lucky and SO blessed and she is SO happy to finally be able to see the kind of woman who could get a man like that.

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I leaned in and told her that he cooks, too, and you would have thought I told her that he was making me orgasm at that very moment from one mile away.

I don’t know what is more sad: that she is married to a man that can’t even play catch with his own damn kids or that another female would think it was so earth shattering terrific and amazing that a man is doing what 62 billion other women do EVERY. STINKIN’. DAY. Not only that, women do it with NONE of the crazy accolades that this woman expressed to me. Hell, I do what he does and no one runs up to the husband wanting to meet the man who is married to me! I also hate the insinuation that I must be so flippin’ special for him to that. It was almost like she wanted me to let her in on my secret of how to make man take care of his kids.

You want to know my secret? Don’t procreate with a piece of shit who won’t even play catch with his own kids and uses a Y chromosome as an excuse.

Now granted, I am one hot piece of ass with a magical vagina but he doesn’t take care of his own children for those reasons. He takes care of his children because they are his children. That’s what parents- male and female- are supposed to do.

Don’t get me wrong. I do know I am lucky and I do know I am blessed and my husband is a pretty terrific father and while maybe he can’t always make me orgasm from a mile away, he’s got a pretty good average.

Mini Me's

I think one of the scariest things about being a parent- besides, ummmm, you know, the whole tiny life being totally and soley dependent on you thing- is when you see your children beginning to look and act like you. Really, the look thing I can handle because while it is freaky to look at the Goose and totally and completely see myself, it is quite another to have my child act like me.

While the Goose may look exactly like me, the Gavinator is all me. From his OCD to his sensory issues to inability to listen to Stevie Wonder without dancing..... the boy is me made over. Which is kind of cool when he I see him happy and smiling and waving hello to strangers and offering hugs and kisses when someone is sad and hurt but it is really, really scary when I see his short fuse and the way he freaks out when something isn't going his way or when his sister is in his way. I know that freaking out is standard preschooler behavior but it is the way in which he freaks out.... the way he sounds..... what he says.... how his eyes open wide..... it's all me.

But the markers down his pants? All daddy, I'm sure.

Back in black

Well, it's more like back in a red tank and camel cords with brown flats but whatever, I'm back to blogging.

Although technically, I never really left blogging, I just kind of sort of moved it over to Flickr's 365 days. I've missed it over here, though, and many of you have been so kind as to visit me on my photostream even though I have been insanely absent on all of your blogs. I'm sorry about that. Showing as much T&A on a daily basis over on Flickr has been seriously time consuming but I think I'm going to back off over there and put more into here.

So get on over here and give me a hug, you big 'ol lug, you.

So what's new?

I took the Gavinator for a haircut over the weekend and he didn't even shed a tear. That's HUGE considering every hair cut in his entire life can be summed up by this. This time, he chomped on a sucker while peering out from under his long bangs to watch a video screen filled with dancing, singing scissors.

I'm no child safety expert but I can't imagine showing young children images of dancing, singing scissors is ever a good thing.

He is loving preschool and I tried to break the news to him that preschool was almost out for the summer and he sort of sighed and rolled his eyes and told me "no.... no it isn't, mommy". How he puts up with me and all the crazy stories I tell him, I will never know.

The Goose is growing up entirely too fast. She is talking and singing up a storm and still nursing 1-4 times a day. I've thought about weaning a lot lately but that's a whole 'nother story. We'll see. My favorite moments with her are usually bedtime. I rock her and sing to her in the glider in her room and she sings along with me. She's not quite two and some of the words are wrong or just garbled but she sings loud and proud and I swear, it is like being in a bar and the drunk sitting next to you is singing along with the jukebox. As she starts to drift off, her voice gets softer and she begins to trail off but sometimes she'll awake and join back into the sing along loud as ever only to trail right back off again.

Between her and the naked boy running around, motherhood is turning out to be more like college than I ever could have dreamed.