My husband is a pumpkin ninja

Okay, so Big K did his annual pumpkin crazy thing that makes me wonder why he doesn't get a gig as a professional carver. Dudes, he uses power tools:


And he carved this:

Can you even believe it? Dude. That is a rad pumpkin.

Phook found the guts disturbing:

But was happy to stab at the pumpkin with an age-inappropriate implement:

In other news, my kid is now wearing a hat and mittens. Which means it is winter, or something close. Oof.


And Snuffle Pig is robust. I measured his waist the other day out of morbid curiosity. 20 inches. I measured Phook for comparison. Also 20 inches. Wee man is not even 4 months old! How large will he get? Should I start a pool for what he'll weigh at one year?


But what a smile...

And that is all for now. Happy Halloween! (I will have cute pictures of a little bee and a big pumpkin in a couple days.)

In which I enter dangerous territory

Tomorrow afternoon, we're going to a wedding. It is the nuptials of Big K's female co-worker. I like the couple and we've hung out with them socially a few times, and I'm looking forward to the adult outing. But a few minutes ago, Big K and I had an exchange that inspired this post. It went like this:

Me, from kitchen, where I was standing making hot cocoa for my darling husband: "Big K, do you want to write anything special in their card?"

Big K: "Nah."

I then wrote something nice in the card, and took it out for Big K to sign in the living room, where he was sitting on the love seat wearing a headset and playing Halo online on his Xbox, intermittently yelling things like, "Man, I blow dick at this game!" and "What kind of name is Da Colonel? This guy's an asshole!" Big K eventually pauses his gaming and signs the card.

Me: "Don't you even want to read what I wrote?"

Big K: "No, but I'm sure it's real nice."

Me, snidely: "Great."

Big K: "Heh."

This exchange got me thinking. Thinking about everything that is involved for each of us in the matter of attending tomorrow's wedding. And thinking about everything that is involved for each of us each time we leave the house. As far as I can tell, the division of labor for attending the wedding tomorrow breaks down as follows:



Me:

• RSVP to wedding - fill out response card and mail it
• Purchase wedding card in advance while shopping with two small children
• Order wedding gift online in advance (in this case a frame personalized with the couple's names)
• Decide what Big K and I are wearing, get clothing ready to go
• Ask grandparents to babysit 3 weeks in advance
• Attempt to train infant to nap decently so as to ease grandparents' burden (Verdict: Abject failure)
• Pump breastmilk in advance, at the cost of sacrificing already limited sleep
• Dig out an actual bottle for Snuffy
• Get out onesies/undershirts/sleepers for both kids for bedtime
• Get out toothbrush/toothpaste for Phook
• Get out towel, lotion, reflux meds for Snuffy for post-bath
• Get out outerwear for kids in the event the grandparents want to take them somewhere
• Get out stroller and Snuffy's carrier
  
• Get out spare clothes for kids in the event someone has a blowout
  
• Stock diaper bag for kids in the event the grandparents want to take them somewhere
• Ensure there are enough dipes/wipes for both kids out in easy-access location
• Think through the nuances of Snuffy's bedtime routine so as to be able to relay them to grandmother
• Fill Phook's humidifier
• Get out motrin and thermometer for Phook in the event she goes south
• Under typical circumstances, make food for everyone, but off the hook in this case because grandma's making a casserole
• Make sure we have a little cash on hand for incidentals at the wedding
• Get myself ready, potentially including the use of a razor, hair products, a blow dryer, and make-up
• Acquire all of the raw materials (dipes/wipes/meds/clothing/etc.) mentioned in this list in the first place
  
• Tidy up the house as per usual
• Care for children the day of the wedding, including copious amounts of breastfeeding, while making the above happen

Big K (who, for the record, just screamed, "Sonofabitch, I just got assassinated!"):

• Provide moderate quantity of childcare during the day
  
• Shower and dress self, possibly shave
• Get in car and drive to wedding

Seriously. And this basic breakdown applies each and every time we leave the house, with or without children. Wife thinks through, prepares, packs, and readies all necessary items for 4 persons. Husband showers at the last minute (and that is usually only under duress) and rolls out the door. Is this how it is in your family? Do any of you have a husband who actually thinks, "Hey, we're going to be gone during the time the kid normally has a snack. I think I'll grab some crackers and a sippy cup on my way out the door"? I'm not being snide. I'm really asking if that man exists.

Because that man does not exist in my life. Even when explicitly charged with the task of remembering things child-related, Big K can't do it. I cite the example of an occasion this past January, when Phook was about 16 months old. I was shopping with a friend in the big city, and Big K had reason to come there as well. I planned to hang out with my friend and then rendezvous with Big K, who would come down later in the day with Phook. (As an aside, he just said, "Some dude tea-bagged me. Hey, how did you go invisible on my ass?") I had packed the diaper bag with everything we'd potentially need for the day and left it on the kitchen table, and walked out the door barking reminders to him. Big K left the house not only without the diaper bag, but without putting shoes on our 16-month-old...and it was literally subzero out that day. This oversight required that I go to Target and purchase diapers, wipes, a sippy cup, a bib, and shoes for our kid so she could survive the day. I just kept saying, "How could you forget? Really, HOW COULD YOU FORGET?" I had practically shoved the bag in his nostril, and he still forgot it.

Now I am not saying that Big K is a bad husband or a bad father or anything of the sort. He is a great husband and a great father and I'm lucky to have him, really and truly. But how does it happen that the inane responsibilities of making the family clock tick always, always, always fall to me? It's not like I ever said, "Hey, don't worry about anything ever, it'll just magically be in the diaper bag when you reach in there." It just came to pass that it is in the bag when he reaches in, and I put it there. Is there a family in which this is not the case? Are there dads out there who actually think, "Hey, it'll get chilly later. I'll grab my kid's sweatshirt!" Is this foresight something a man can have? In my experience, it is not. I have friends who are stay-at-home moms. I have friends who are the sole breadwinner and their husbands are stay-at-home dads. I have friends who work and whose husbands also work. And yet it really seems like mom is almost always the one who has packed the snack, has the kid's lovey within arm's reach, and points out that it is junior's nap time. Certainly stay-at-home dads must at least remember the barest of essentials - the diaper - when they leave the house during the day with their kid. Right?

What do divorced or otherwise single dads do when they have their kids? When there is no mom to pack the diaper bag? Can a man actually pack a diaper bag if he has no other choice? Can a man be the one to anticipate his children's needs before they actually rear their ugly heads, and be ready to meet them? Dude. There have been several times, such as when Big K butterfingeredly attempts to put a barrette in Phook's hair, when I have said, "Man, I gotta start doing interviews for your back-up wife. If I die, my kids are screwed. I've gotta get a good woman lined up for you." (As an aside, Big K just said, "Dude, is that a frag?" And then some guy over the interwebs currently being piped into my living room said, "Nah, I got the rocket launcher." And then Big K said, "Aw, man, that's right, you do have the rocket launcher. Awesome.") It's not that he isn't a hands-on dad. He attempts to put the barrette in the hair. He changes the diaper when a mom-like party points out that it is soiled. He gives baths. He puts kids to bed. He wipes snotty noses. He basically does everything he's asked. It's just that so often I feel like I really am the scaffolding for every single thing every single person in this house does...and there is an awful lot to hold up.

I recall the time, many moons ago, when I was still commuting to my corporate job one day per week early in Phook's infancy. Big K had stayed home to watch her that day, and had forgotten he also had a dentist appointment. So he ended up taking Phook with him to the dentist, and the various dental employees took turns holding her when she started crying while he was in the chair (which left me feeling absolutely mortified that they had to take time out of their professional lives to essentially provide childcare). When I asked Big K how things had gone, he said that it was all fine until she got hungry. Which was a problem because he'd forgotten the bottle of milk I'd pumped for her and left in the fridge. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!! How does this shit happen?

Okay, so I have a particularly absentminded husband, which he readily admits. Most dads would (I hope) at least remember that their breastfed baby requires a bottle of expressed milk on occasion when the cow is offsite. However, my basic question remains. How does it happen that the wife's to-do list for a family outing looks like the poorly translated instructions for assembling a crib and the husband's to-do list basically says, "Keep yourself alive"?

When I start to feel shitty and underappreciated and start taking verbal cheap shots at my husband, this is what I am basically upset about. It's not that I necessarily want the division of labor to change. In fact, if I said to him, "You have to get everyone ready to do X today," I've got to be honest with myself and admit that I'd probably just end up pissed that he didn't do things my way. And you can't delegate and then micro-manage without being a jerk. I just want him to step back and think about my list. And shudder in pure awe. I want him to actively think-or, gasp-even say, "Wow, I could never do what she does. She is magic." And then insist upon providing me with an hour-long foot rub.

Oh shit. Now that I've written this I'm feeling petty and unnecessarily inflammatory and sexist and stereotypical and seemingly unappreciative of all that my husband does for me and our kids. Because his list is as wide as mine is deep. Or as deep as mine is wide. Or something comparable, just gauged on some different scale. But fundamentally, I think that a man is a slug hauling his sorry ass from point A to point B, and a woman is a snail, doing the same thing...only she has her house on her back. And while I generally feel like I'm doing a pretty rad job lugging that house and I'm proud to do it, I occasionally want my husband to step back and ring the cowbell as I finish another lap. Really, I guess I'd like a little more cowbell. But I'm guessing there are times he could use a little more cowbell too. So I'll close my manifesto by saying we all need to do a better job of appreciating what our partners do, diaper bag or not.

Mayhem, etc.

Here's the thing about having 2 children 21 months apart: you have two children 21 months apart. I've been thinking more and more of Phook as a big kid lately, since she does so much to help me out and can talk so much more now. But every now and then I'm harshly reminded that I am the mother of two very small, needy children. Generally this manifests itself when two people are crying in unison, and I'm trying really hard to breathe deeply and avoid adding a third crier to the party. But occasionally all hell breaks loose and I find myself sweating and panting and scrambling and wondering how any Catholic women of yesteryear survived their fruitful childbearing years.

Let me provide an example. The other day, naps ended early, leaving a solid 3 hours between end of nap and arrival of daddy, which is too fuggin' long. We decided to hop in the stroller and go visit the kidlets' great-great aunt and uncle who live on the other side of town. We rolled over there and visited without incident, with the exception of their home being an old-person-only temperature of about 94 degrees, which resulted in my children's faces literally turning beet red over the course of a 45 minute visit. After we left, I decided to take the long way walking home as a cool down, and the long way took me past the lovely recent addition to our community that is the Dollar General store. This is not one of the dollar stores in which everything is a dollar. Quite the contrary. It's like a mini-Walmart where everything is overpriced by about 30% as a means for hosing the residents of small communities when they can't get out of town to buy a birthday card or laundry detergent in time. I don't go there. Except the other day, when I had time to kill and the pressing need for black tights for Phook. Which is to say, I was feeling delusional.

So I took the double stroller in the joint and headed to the clothing section, where I began my ultimately futile hunt for black tights. Phook started saying, "Out, out!" and I probably should have just left her locked into her stroller seat, but I was apparently feeling dangerous, so I let her out to rock it like a biped. She proceeded to do some inventory control procedures on their stock of children's undergarments, which I took as an opportunity to inform her that she shouldn't go falling in love with anything she saw in that section, because I'm too lazy to potty train her at this juncture, and as far as I'm concerned she can rock the dipes until she goes to college. At that point, Snuffy started fretting a little bit. I thought, "Meh." Phook then discovered the toy/lead-poisoning section, and I let her browse. I was checking out the dolls, and she stubbornly fixated on the monster trucks. We looked at various items for awhile, and I kind of indicated to her that maybe she could get something (she has not reached the stage where she actually asks for things much in stores), and then she made her pooping face. You know, the "I'm pooping right now" face. At that point, Snuffy escalated from fretting to howling, and I remembered that I sort of hadn't fed him in about 4 hours or so, so maybe he had a reason to speak up. At that point I ran into this awkward semi-co-worker of Big K's, and she felt like chatting. Awesome.

So, to recap. I had a poop-slathered daughter rooting through the toxic toy section. I had a son who was screaming the relentless hungry baby scream. I had awkward lady wanting to socialize despite lots of really strong clues that I need to get moving. So I was stammering, "Um, he's really hungry, gotta go, yeah he is huge, born on the 4th of July, mmm hmm, yup, where is Phook - lost her, yup, he does look a bit like his sister, gotta go, mmm hmm, bye." Phook was at that point cruising the aisles in a manner that made her fiendishly hard to corral. By the time I got her and grabbed the first matchbox car I saw for her, Snuffy was at an eleven. I put Phook in the stroller seat, and in my haste, I only hooked one of the waist straps into the middle strap that comes up between the legs, thinking nothing of it.

I eventually got us to the checkout to buy her car and a frame for a new picture of us for Big K's office. I should have just left the crap and aborted the mission, given Snuffy's decibel level. But no. I pressed on. So I was in line, attempting to pay, and Phook started saying, "Out? Out? Out!" and jacking around with the waist strap. I was paying about 12% attention to her as I was trying to pay and rock the stroller a bit in a useless attempt to calm Snuffy, and then a lady behind me started saying, "Um, ma'am, I think your daughter really wants out. She's a bit hung up there." So I turned around, and saw that Phook had essentially gotten down out of the stroller seat, but was hung up by her one leg that was still strapped in, so she was kind of suspended and leaning out of the thing backwards. I was at the point that I was already having about 19 physical anxiety symptoms, including an insta-headache, perspiration, rapid breathing, burning desire for an IV-drip of pasta, and a very barely contained urge to just break down, get down on my knees, tear at my hair, and scream the F-word. Instead I got poop girl out of her ligatures, finished my transaction with 7 assholes staring slack-jawed at my clown show, and pushed us towards the bathroom at the front of the store.

That's when things went to a whole new level. Okay, this was an indoor toileting facility in a retail establishment. Not a gas station on an interstate off-ramp somewhere in Kentucky. And yet, hanging outside the bathroom door was a key to the facility suspended on a chain from about 10 inches of 2x4. That would be a chunk of wood, friends. Why? Why not just have a bathroom door that locks from the inside like any normal store? I have no idea. I will never know. So now I've got the reeking Phook clamoring around outside the door, Snuffy just absolutely bleating, and I'm reaching over the giant double stroller trying to manhandle this block of wood with a key attached to it, trying to coax the stupid door to open. I finally got it open and got the stroller and the Phook inside, where I discovered there is no changing station. Dude. I whipped out my changing pad and changed poor Phook on the filthy bathroom floor, gagging and hating myself all the while. And Phook knew she had that matchbox car in the bag that was in the stroller's undercarriage, so she was rolling around trying to get into the bag while I was attempting to deal with her waste products under extreme duress. Finally, I got her changed, but not without some unsavory pood-to-hand contact. I then threw the soiled diaper right into their garbage can with extreme prejudice. I'm normally a fan of cleaning up after my own dog, but they deserved a stinky garbage can in exchange for their wood block shenanigans. At that point, Snuffy was purple-faced and had tears rolling down his cheeks, and I was on the verge of attempting to end myself by drowning via bubbler (that would be a water fountain, for those of you who don't live in Wisconsin). Alas, there was no bubbler in that cheap-ass joint, so it wasn't even an option. I dragged us out of the bathroom, getting the front stroller wheel hung up on the door frame on the way out, at which point I yelled, "Get me out of this hell hole!" in the general direction of the cashiers before crashing my way out the front door in a blaze of glory.

We got home and Snuffy got fed. I'd like to say that I then mixed myself a gin and tonic in a mop bucket, but it didn't pan out that way. No, no, no. I just calmly told Big K about the latest chapter in my parenting chronicles and asked Phook if she was up for watching an episode of her favorite show, which is of course Dancing With the Stars. I think she likes Warren Sapp. Shiz.

In other news, Phook has yet another plague. She's a lot better today, but yesterday had a fever of 103, a barking seal cough, and a sore throat as indicated by repeatedly saying "ouch," opening her mouth, and pointing to the back of her throat. I called the doctor who of course told me she didn't need to be seen unless she was leaking spinal fluid from the nose or had a fracture with bone exposed through the flesh, so we powered through it with a humidifier, a bunch of the magic that is apple juice, and daddy in the Phookbed half the night. Having a bunch of little buddies and little kiddie outings means exposure to lots and lots of extra special bugs. I'm considering putting us in forced seclusion for the remainder of the winter, but I'm guessing mental health will trump physical health. The good news is that she coughed with enough frequency yesterday that we quickly learned the skill of covering our mouths when we cough. So that's handled. But dude, please, can we catch a break here?

These semi-catatonic women who go on talk shows and talk about the benefits of polygamy and how they sincerely dig having 4 sister wives? Yeah, I get it now. A wife to tend to the sick kid. A wife to obtain tights. A wife to make dinner. And me, just sitting nursing The Pig while I watch the crack that is Brothers & Sisters and eat frosting out of the container with a spoon. Big K's a large man. I could surely share...

I heart toddlers

People, I just want to share with you the two most amusing ways Phook has managed to overturn the vegetable truck on Snuffy's morning nap. And those two most amusing ways represent the previous two days, so who knows what she has in store for tomorrow.

1) Perhaps you recall the mention in my last post of me removing all 4 cats' collars in an attempt to keep love-seeking jangly furbags from bursting in on Snuff at inopportune times. Having left said collars on the desk in the office, it didn't occur to me in my run-down state that their novelty would attract Phook. It didn't occur to me until the moment yesterday morning when she burst in to his room shaking all 4 collars (each with its own rabies tag, name tag, and bell) and saying, "Look [Snuffy's name]!" Yes, Phook, he is looking.

2) Today, she really outdid herself though. Oh yes. Phook likes to pretend to read in what is typically an amusing little Phookspeak dialect. It involves waving her arms wildly and spewing gibberish. So this morning, Snuffy was just re-drifting off for what I was hoping was the second half of a semi-decent nap, when she comes in toting a copy of James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." I shit you not. I hated that book with a flaming passion when I had to read it in pursuit of my for-debt-acquisition-purposes-only English degree. And here comes Phook, having plucked it from the bookshelf, reading it in the booming voice of a great orator. Really, people, really.

Modifying the sleep habits of your first child is an emotional trainwreck. Modifying the sleep habits of your second child is a logistical trainwreck. Snuffy does indeed have some white noise rocking in his room...it is just no match for the cacophony of Phook.

I'm pressing on, though. Today I broke the seal on some Wiggles DVD or something that someone gave me for her like 6 months ago in an attempt to keep her occupied during the morning nap. Yeah, that lasted like 19 seconds. Shiz. Why can't my child just conform to American norms and turn into a pacified zombie when I turn on the TV? Why does she insist upon constant exploration and involvement in every conceivable thing I attempt to do?

Anyhoo, if you're interested in what my left hip bone looks like, I believe it has worn through the flesh from lying next to Snuffle Pig's crib, and I could post a picture. I'm actually violating the conditions of my parole right now by blogging as he naps, wildly gambling that he isn't going to snuffle and miss the hand on his belly, blowing this whole tenuous show out of the water.

It's worth it though, right? A week or even a month of hard work now will pay dividends of years of happy napping in the future. At least that's what I'm telling myself. What I'm also telling myself is that 4 muscle relaxers and a bottle of wine would be fuggin' awesome right now. I'm not normally a substance abuser, but an inebriated coma sounds like a distressingly good idea at the moment. Ack.

Tomorrow is our 5th wedding anniversary. I hope Big K gets me a skin graft.

Hi there

Hi blog. My husband, who already knows what is going on, is starting to complain about the lack of posts, so I guess I'd better say something. I'm just gonna update you here, nothing fancy.

Big K took last Friday and this Monday off of work, and we went and visited Auntie Hode in her vacationland locale. It is lovely there in the fall. We accidentally picked 130 pounds of apples one day. Phook enjoyed it mightily, and ate an additional 5 pounds we didn't pay for. Here she is with some loot:


My sister and I split the apples, and we've been working on turning them into things like applesauce and pies. Speaking of pies, I happen to have this giant double-sized pie plate, and I made a huge double apple pie in it. Big K refers to it as the MOAP. That would be the Mother of All Pies. And it is. Here is a photo of the MOAP on the left, Phook lunching and making a weird face in the middle, and a standard pie on the right for scale (because you know I made one of those too):


While we were visiting Hode, we went to yet another animal farm. It completely and totally rocked. Phook is getting used to large animals, since I'm apparently obsessed with exposing her to them. She was wildly excited about hand-feeding corn and carrots to a wide variety of beasts of burden. When a goat or something would eat out of her hand, she'd scream, "Tickle!" and run around like a maniac. And between moments of feeding, she would execute the Phook Ultimate Joy Maneuver. This maneuver consists of bending over at the waist, extending her arms back behind her up in the air, hopping back and forth from one foot to the other or otherwise jumping around, and howling. It has a birdlike quality to it. So, yeah, she dug that scene. Here she is feeding some pot-bellied pigs:


The farm experience was followed up by a visit to a restaurant that delivers your food via a little train. That was the cat's ass. You could also purchase tootsie pops for a quarter and have them delivered via train. Given that Phook wakes up saying "sucker" about 80% of the time, this was a huge hit.

This visit went better in terms of sleeping arrangements than our last visit in August, given that Phook is now accustomed to sleeping in a real bed. And Snuffle Pig, who is a craptastic napper (more on that later), at least did okay at night in the pack 'n play. So one night while we were there, Snuffle Pig woke up to nurse around midnite. I was sitting up in the bed I was sharing with Phook feeding him, and it rustled Phook to life. She sat up in bed, basically still zonked, and saw me nursing her brother. She gently reached out, touched him on the head, and said his name. Then she leaned over, rubbed her cheek on the top of his head, gave him a kiss, and cashed back out on her pillow. I then pulled her blanket back up over her, and I heard a little "tank you" squeak out of her before she resumed snoring. It was such a pure little moment of sibling love. No one with a camera telling her to kiss her brother. No one egging her on and saying how cute it is when she does. Just what she wanted to do when she saw him there in the middle of the night. He may not have had her at hello, but he's got her now.

On that topic of Snuffle and his napping. Dear lordy. He is not a great napper. Unless he is in his baby swing. Unfortunately, the baby weighs 18 pounds and is gonna outgrow the thing shortly. When I put him down in his crib for a nap, the longest he sleeps is 40 minutes, but lately I'm lucky if he sleeps for 25. That is not a nap, friends. I've been haphazardly attempting to deal with this since, well, his birth. I won't go into the mundane details, but essentially I've been doing a combination of what is "right" (attempting to avoid giving him bad habits like nursing to sleep) and what is necessary for survival during the newborn phase with a cranky puker (letting him rock out a nap in that swing at least once per day). And now I'm feeling like we're at a point where he needs a good, solid routine with at least semi-predictable eating and sleeping patterns. Which means dealing with the nap situation. Which means that I've spent the last two days lying on the floor by his crib with my hand on his belly while he attempts to learn how to put himself to sleep and back to sleep for the length of a reasonable nap. It's especially fun in the morning with Phook bombing around with her cop car that makes lots of obscene sound effects, crashing through his bedroom door just as he's about to drift off. And it was especially fun this afternoon when all 4 jingly-collared cats crashed through his bedroom door to see if I might possibly be holding still long enough to pet them, and I ended up ripping all of their collars off, resulting in 4 jacked up cats who love to chase each other wildly when they know they are in stealth mode. And it was especially fun from 2:00 - 4:30 a.m. today when he woke up very shortly after being fed and we rocked a similar party.

But already things are improving. His afternoon nap today included the usual frequent wakings, but he was capable of remaining calm the whole time and going back to sleep on and off for the length of a reasonable nap while I laid on the floor and read about the fabulous post-baby body of Angelina Jolie in US Weekly between helping him get through his snufflings. Tonight he actually went down without crying for the first time, well, pretty much ever. He ate his hand for awhile, kicked his feet around for awhile, and went to sleep without howling. So that was huge. I came downstairs and did a wild dance of joy that amused Phook to no end. I probably should have buckled down on this routine business sooner, but there were so many factors in play and it was making my brain explode. The newborn constant eating and general unpredictability. The reflux. Phook's summer social life. We've just been muddling through. But I know we will all be better off once Snuffy is rocking something resembling a routine and can potentially soothe himself a bit. Which means we're locked down in the house for a couple days here, dipping into my stockpile of frozen meals (which I planned to eat during those first few weeks after he came home but secretly knew would probably get eaten when it came time to really teach him to sleep). So yes, fat little Snuffle gets every ounce of my energy for the time being and hopefully comes out the other side as a baby I can punt into the crib from 40 yards out for a couple naps and a bedtime every day. Wish me luck. And, to be honest, I should probably disclose that we're going to a wedding next weekend and my parents are babysitting the two kidlets for the first time, and I don't want him to give them an aneurysm or anything. Parental discomfort being pretty high on my list of things to avoid, since these people have me over for grilled food a lot, I will be spending the next few days with a carpet print on my face and hoping he's at least somewhat under control by the 25th.

Ah, it's all worth it for a chubster so chubalicious you can't even button his shirtsleeves on account of his wrist fat (pardon the decapitated husband here):


In other news, I got a job. How about that? After we got home from Hode's house on Monday, we got a phone call with a lady asking to talk to me. She runs this grant that our county received to facilitate healthier behaviors/activities/etc. in an attempt to reduce substance abuse and violence and other badness here. She was looking to hire someone for 5 ultra-flexible hours per week to work as a community liaison to try to get adult involvement in this organization. And someone recommended me. And it pays a somewhat respectable hourly rate that will add up to a little budget boost for the K Family. I basically get to tool around on my own time and promote this thing and try to convince people to do stuff on behalf of this program. Dude! So I met with the woman and I accepted the position today. I am excited to do something positive for my community. I am excited to think about something other than my shorties. I am excited to have an excuse to talk to adults and use more than 8% of my vocabulary. I am excited to potentially have to leave the house without my children to attend this or that little meeting or event, perhaps dressed in something other than sweats. I am excited to maybe, maybe, maybe, finally get those ends to meet. I'm a little nervous too, of course. I want to do well and I don't know if I will. But how random is that? Apparently someone just said they thought I'd be a good person for the gig, and they gave it to me! God provides. That's what I know.

And finally, I wanted to tell you all that my mom saved some stuff from my toddlerhood, and now Phook is wearing it, and I think that is beyond rad. Here she is in a sweater my grandma made for me and my 1981 trucker hat:


Bad to the bone, I tell ya. So there is your update, buds. What's new with you?

Hanging on...

Well, we're hanging in there. We all have colds, poor little Snuffle Pig included. I've observed that the grossness factor goes up exponentially with each added person who can't wipe their own nose when an epidemic strikes. Oh well. I thought I'd just share some recent pictures with you, since I'm too sleep-deprived to actually write anything meaningful.

First off, you may recall that Phook had a birthday. We got a fairly decent little family photo snapped that day, excepting a sleepy Snuffle Pig:

The Pig actually passed out out of doors on his grandma's lap mid-party. This is unprecedented. I think he's got an admirer though:

He eventually woke up and looked like he was plotting something:

Phook has a great aunt who is not much older than Big K who lives in Colorado, is childfree, and sends rad gifts. She sent Phook a dome tent for her birthday. You couldn't actually camp in it, because it doesn't stake down, but it's close. Nothing has ever pleased Phook more. She crawled in it when we set it up, and promptly declared it "cool." (Her description.) It is not quite 6 feet square, and it has been set up in her big girl room since arriving. One night after Snuffy went to bed, the rest of us crammed in it. And I do mean crammed. And then we took this picture of ourselves. And I know you want to see our nostrils, so here you go:

Here is a nice picture of my children. Pay no attention to the political messaging:

This past Friday, another person had a birthday. Yup, big ol' Big K hit the big ol' 32. I made him a distressingly complicated and time-consuming homemade red cake. And then I employed my professional-quality decorating skillz on it:

The next day, Snuffle Pig turned 3 months old. We honored the occasion by busting out the exersaucer, because he always seems to want to be standing up these days. This looks more like a toddler to me than a 3-month-old, but I guess you'll have that when your son is pushing 18 pounds:

Phook got into some Drano when I was working on that cake. I'm kidding. Some clown gave her a bigass blue sucker and she proudly displayed the results:

And Snuffy likes to stick out his tongue too:

And that is all.

Flaming Hot Rage and an Empty Nest

Friends, friends, friends. Had I blogged yesterday, my post would have been 98% onomatopoeia approximating wailing sounds. Because yesterday was a wailer. I know it was the hardest day of parenting two children that I have experienced to date. Perhaps there was some early day with Phook that approached this in degree of difficulty, but certainly none that I remember. Yesterday was a wailer.

I don't know that I can really relate it all to you, but basically, the day started out with Phook throwing shit and generally being actively disobedient while I nursed the Pig. We then went to a playdate at a friend's house, and that was fun. Well, for me at least. In retrospect, I suspect that Phook's interaction with her little "pal" may have had something to do with the mayhem the rest of the day brought. Basically, this little girl is only a few days older than Phook, and she is perfectly nice and bright and fine, but she has a 5-year-old sister that she roughhouses with and battles with regularly. Phook gets tossed around by us in play, but she isn't used to being ridden like a horse against her will on a stranger's hardwood floor. Nor is she used to having someone take every single toy she picks up. Whatever. She wasn't particularly traumatized at the scene, but maybe it did freak her out a bit. Or not. Maybe she just felt like being a nightmare.

Anyhow, we got home, and I attempted to put people down for naps. Now, on the eve of Phook's birthday, Big K put her in her big girl bed for the first time, without my knowledge or consent. (I was wholeheartedly opposed to moving her out of absolute bone-chilling fear that it would disrupt her sleep, and then I'd have two crazies barking at the moon all night.) Well, last Friday night, Big K informed me there was a surprise for me up in Phook's big girl room. So up I plodded, flicked on the light, and there was my daughter, asleep in a twin bed. Fuck. At any rate, up until yesterday's nap, she had slept in there for nights and naps with no disturbance whatsoever. She just called for us when she woke up. Yesterday, however, after said playdate, she did not want to take a nap. We had words. She kept saying she wanted to go for a walk, and I kept saying we could go after her nap. She howled. I left.

At this point, Snuffle Pig was losing his shit as well, so I attempted to put him down in his bassinet. He was wildly overtired and was just fighting it with everything he had. And howling. The horrible, tortured-baby howl that humans are evolutionarily programmed to respond to. At this point, I'd had words with the howling Phook like 4 times. My patience with her was gone. And then she freaking walked into my room. My worst nightmare...the bed-fleeing angry toddler. I immediately chucked her in her (former) crib and told her she had to sleep in there because she was not behaving like a big girl. This didn't go over well. Keep in mind, Snuffy was still losing his mind screaming. Back to Snuffy I go. Phook escalates. I go back by Phook, and find she has thrown her blankies over the edge of the bed, and is losing it over this. And Snuffy is still losing it.

I related that with uncharacteristically relative brevity though, because in real time I had been at this for nearly 2 hours. Both children screaming or rocking out some variation thereof for nearly 2 hours. I lost my shit like I have never lost it before. I actually kicked open Phook's bedroom door, threw her blankies in her crib with extreme prejudice and screamed, "What are you doing? TAKE A NAP!!!!" Phook was scared, of course, and bawling. I then slammed the door, ran downstairs, stepped in a cat turd on the floor, and threw myself on my bathroom floor and just screamed and screamed and dripped snot everywhere. Both children, still screaming. This was my darkest hour as a parent. I can't believe I'm actually telling you about it, now that I think about it. I was just absolutely boiling with rage. And the guilt for yelling at Phook was starting to creep in. It was just so awful.

I could do no more. I called Big K and told him I was losing it. He said he'd leave work and come home. Clearly, he knew I was not kidding. When he got home 5 minutes later, I was sitting at the kitchen table, grinding my forehead into the table. Snuffy had cried himself into a fitful sleep, finally. Phook was still howling. Big K went up and had words with her, and she eventually gave in and slept in her crib. Big K came back downstairs. At that point it was 3 p.m., and I was starving, having not gotten lunch yet. Four waffles and a bowl of ice cream with chocolate syrup later, I was sitting in the recliner with eyelids puffed up the size of sausages, feeling gross from my stress-eating, and utterly like a pile of crap. Big K was disturbingly supportive, of course. I couldn't stop panting from having been thrown into an absolute animal state of being. Seriously, friends, it was so awful.

At that point, we decided to tackle the minor topic of the Snuffle Pig's sleeping. Basically, he does fairly well at night, but rarely naps more than 40 minutes during the day, which makes it tough (okay, impossible) to get him on anything resembling a good routine for eating/sleeping/etc. and thus makes it harder for the little guy to get through his day than it needs to be. Also, we had maybe 6 weeks of relative good luck getting him to sleep by swaddling him and then staying with him and patting him while he wound down (read: cried) for a few minutes before going to sleep in his bassinet. During this period of time, we escalated through all commercially available swaddle blankets, plus using receiving blankets as straight jackets under the swaddle blankets, etc. The child has learned to break out of every single contraption we could dream up, and it was becoming clearer that the swaddling era needed to end, because it has started to take longer and longer for him to wind down in the evening as he focuses so much on getting himself unswaddled instead of settling into sleep. Which of course presents its own problems in terms of flailing uncontrolled limbs impeding sleep. To make a long story short, we ended up deciding to stop swaddling him and move him to the crib and stop nursing him right before bedtime...all in one night. Because that's what rational people do on the Black Tuesday of their parenting career.

So last night, Big K put Snuffy to bed in the crib. (For the record, we had stern words with Phook, and her bedtime in the big girl bed once again occurred without incident.) After getting Phook tucked in, I decided to peek in on Snuffy. And there he was. Lying in the crib in a blanket sleeper, peacefully slumbering away. Upon seeing this, I nearly puked. If I were normal, I would have rejoiced that this big ass transition for him had just occurred essentially without incident. Instead, I lost my mind because we had just casually decided to move him in there, and it hadn't occurred to me to think of the emotional aspect of the move. (And with me, there is always going to be an emotional aspect to any development or indication of growth/aging on the part of my children. You know this.)

I then flew past Big K, who was in the office on the computer, and threw myself onto our bed like a flailing toddler. Giant, heaving, ugly sobs ensued. We had just gone and moved Snuffy into his own room. Which meant he was no longer in ours, sleeping 12 inches from my face in his bassinet. It meant that those mornings when I'd just tuck him into bed with us after the buttcrack of dawn feeding were over. We had had a snuggly morning just that day. And I hadn't known it would be the last one. Which means I hadn't taken the time to cherish it enough. And I was suddenly furious with myself and just pathetically mournful that we'd ever had him in the bassinet at all. (To recap, Phook slept in bed with us for 5 months, and I loved it. Up until the point that she could not sleep at all without my boob actually in her mouth. At which point we embarked on this Baby Whisperer campaign that kicked our asses for a solid week, but ultimately worked like a charm.) Big K and I have worked so, so hard to teach Snuffy to sleep in his own space and without the benefit of sucking to sleep in the hopes of avoiding getting to a painful breaking point like we did with Phook. And, as evidenced by his wee stint of sleep from 7 p.m. to 4 a.m. last night, it is obviously working. But oh do I love snuggling and sharing sleep with my babies. And as I writhed around in bed last night, snotting on my sheets with the force of someone who has already spent the better portion of the day in extreme emotional turmoil, all I could do was just shriek to Big K that we'd made a terrible mistake by not sleeping with Snuffy. And now he was gone. Forever. Our room felt so empty. How could he be big enough to sleep all alone in that giant crib down the hall? Woe, woe, woe. Etc. I was beyond trainwreck.

Right now, both of my children are sleeping peacefully in their own lovely rooms. They have both made a major sleep transition in the past few days. (I probably shouldn't jinx myself with the past tense there, but oh well.) Really, I should be skipping around with glee, going up to my room and luxuriating in the freedom to turn on the light and read a magazine there before I go to sleep myself. And while I guess there is some of that creeping up on me, I'm more horrified that baby #1 is in a big girl bed, with sheets and a pillow and other non-baby items all over the place, and baby #2 is in a crib, which is 8 million miles from my bed. I really might be the sappiest parent in the history of parenting. I do rejoice in my children's developments, I really do, but I mourn them so hard too. It all just feels like a bigass march out the door. Ugh.

So yesterday was just a mess. A mess of everything. Of wanting nothing other than to escape my children and wanting nothing other than to keep them glued to my body in my bed until the end of time. Chew on that for a second. Both sides of that coin are awful. And I spent the day flipping it. This job is so hard. Really, really, gut-wrenchingly hard. I'm sure there are people reading this who think I should have done this or that differently at various points throughout the tale I just related to you, and that's okay. I'm sure there are. Some people may also think I'm an emotional disaster. That's okay too. Yesterday I was an emotional disaster. Today I've leveled off. We had a good day. We took a hike around a lake with another mom and her daughter, with Phook hoofing it 2.4 miles all on her own, cramming acorns and leaves into the pocket of her hoodie all the way. Everyone napped well this afternoon in their new digs. Phook and I baked some cranberry bread tonite after Snuffy went down. We have a fun trip planned for tomorrow to see one of my best friends from high school and her kids. The wheel keeps on turning. But yesterday was so hard, I still feel a little hollow and actually physically achy from burning through so many emotions. I feel ashamed of myself for losing it so intensely with Phook. I feel like Snuffy might as well be going off to college and leaving me here with nothing but gray hairs and recipes that suddenly need to be halved. Whoever "they" are...well, they're right. This is the hardest job on earth.