Oh William

Will has started this lovely habit of refusing to eat the meals I cook for dinner.  He whines that he’s not hungry when he clearly is (he’s whiny, grumpy, etc when he’s hungry) and refuses to have even one bite unless its one of the meals he knows and loves.  Growing up, making any kind of rude remark or comment about a meal was a huge no-no, so this new bevahior of William’s is really starting to get under my skin.

I’ve responded by telling him if he’s not going to eat the dinner I made for him, he can leave the kitchen.  I feel a little bad doing it, but I refuse to make him something else to eat just because he doesn’t want to try the meal I made for the family.  I really don’t want to get into the habit of substituting and letting the kids think I’m some kind of short order cook.  I might let him have some bread and water, but it hasn’t come to that yet.  Usually he just goes to bed without dinner. 

Putting him to bed without dinner bothers me a little too, but I really don’t have any other kind of answer to this.  I really can’t stand him making a fuss about food, especially because the food I cook is hardly adventurous (tonight was rice & beans, scary!).  I hope this is just him testing the boundaries of acceptable behavior, testing me to see what I’ll let him get away with.

Oh Violet

Violet has a new favorite word.  It’s “no”.  But when she says it, it sounds more like “dooohhh”, very long and whiny.  

I remember Will getting to this age and developing what I consider an abnormal amount of willpower.  I guess I had hoped Violet would be a little different, but nope, she’s just as stubborn about things she doesn’t want to do as her big brother was (and is).  

It’s not just her staunch refusal to do things she doesn’t want, though.  She’s really developing her own personality.  This morning, instead of laying in her bed and yelling at me to come pick her up since she was awake, she got up, opened her door and closed it behind her, and started looking for me around the house.  I got out of bed and as I was leaving my bedroom she walked into the hall and said very clearly, “Hi Daddy”.  It just melted my heart.  She’s not shy about pushing a chair to the counter in the kitchen and helping herself to whatever she wants.  Today she walked into the living room with an unpeeled banana with a Violet-sized bite out of it, saying “Daaadddyyy, nana”.

All I know is that I’m going to be helpless for the next 17 years or so when she asks for something with those blue eyes and her smile.

I hate my vaccuum cleaner

One day I’ll have a nice vaccuum cleaner.  I’ve always had really crappy ones.  I want to throw the one we have now out the window.

One day.  A man can dream.

(also, 3 posts in one day, wtf)

BRAIN! SHUT UP!

Sometimes (lately, a lot of the time), I wish I could just turn off my stupid brain.  I have this problem of over thinking things and letting my brain get carried away when I should just be taking things at face value.  The result is usually being awake for most of the night.

Does anyone know where I can find a Brain Shut Up™ pill or something?  /yawn

Then again, maybe naps aren’t totally out of style quite yet

Perhaps I spoke too soon…

She didn’t quite make it through the afternoon before she got her blanket, snuggled up on the futon and passed right out.  Of course, this was after I tried putting her into her crib for a regular nap a few more times, and now I’ll have to wake her up shortly so she doesn’t stay up all night, but it was still awfully damn cute.

No more nap time…

So the day I’ve been dreading has finally come.  Violet can climb right out of her crib now without any trouble.  She did it last night and did it again today.  What’s that mean?  It means the bed time battles have begun.

Getting a one and a half year old to lay down when she doesn’t want to is basically impossible.  The screaming and yelling she does when I put her in her crib for bed or for a nap literally eats away at my soul.  It’s that bad.  Imagine nails on a chalkboard, with the nails being her screaming and the chalkboard being the soul.  I can’t handle it!  And now she’s big enough to just climb out of her baby cage, err, I mean crib, anyway.

So I’m left with a couple options.  One is to just let her stop napping.  The other is to be a hardcore nap enforcer and put my own sanity on the line.

There is really only one option, though.  Will stopped napping before his second birthday, and it looks like Violet is set to do the same.  It makes bed time easier because she’s REALLY tired by bed time, and I don’t have to fight her twice a day.  Like the saying goes, pick your battles.  I’ll give her this one if it means I don’t have to listen to that evil banshee wail.

Folding the laundry during the middle of the day just got a LOT harder, but I guess that’s a job that can wait til after bedtime now.

It also means its probably time to pack up the crib again, this time for good, and get the toddler bed from Grandma’s house.  It’s hard to believe that just a year ago Violet was still having two naps a day, and now she’s ready to cut them out completely.

The Power of the Haircut

So today I paid to have my hair cut for the first time in probably 10 years. It had been a solid 2 months since my last one, and I like to keep it pretty short, like under a 1/8 inch. It was getting a little shaggy and turning into too much work every day. I loathe spending time trying to get my unruly hair to cooperate.

Anyway, I went to the barber shop feeling pretty crappy. Family, most of you know why at this point. Friends, all I’m going to say here is that things at home have not been well for the last couple months. I felt pretty low earlier, and I needed some time to think and have some quiet. I left the kid’s with Kate’s mom and decided to get a hair cut.

I supposed I should back up, because this is a big deal to me. Normally, just deciding to go get a haircut would be totally out of the question. I haven’t had a personal checking or savings account for a few years now, and rarely have money of my own. Today, though, with help from Sheree, I opened a checking account again. I can’t explain how empowering it felt to just decide that I’m getting a haircut and going to do it.

Normally, I cut my own hair and have Kate help me clean it up. It works for us, its cheap and it looks fine. But this, this is totally different. It’s completely even, looks sharp and I honestly feel better about myself than I have in a very long time. She spent a lot more time and effort on it than I ever did, and it shows. I don’t remember the last time I felt this good.

Basically, I’ve come to realize over the last week that I need to get out of my comfort zone and establish my own identity, separate from my duties as a stay at home parent. Empowering myself by getting my own bank account is the first step, buying new tabs for my truck is the next. I’m done being ‘stuck’ at home. It’s extremely unfortunate that it took these circumstances to wake me up to that.

Tangentially, none of this would have been possible for me without the network of family that has been there all along to offer support and wisdom, and I offer you all my heartfelt thanks and appreciation. I don’t know how I would’ve made it through some of this stuff without all of you.

New pictures

We got a new camera for Christmas this year (Thanks Mom, Thanks Gary!), and I’ve finally sorted through the mass amounts of pictures we took and uploaded some of the good ones.

The two new galleries are here and here.  

Favorite Child Status Attained

Pictures of me on my mom’s fridge? Five.

Pictures of my sister on mom’s fridge? Three.

Favorite Child? CHECK.

Damn cat and other news

So you know from my previous posting that Little Mexico has returned to our humble home.  Unfortunately, he and I are having a pretty serious disagreement about his status as an Outside Cat.  He seems to think he fits that description, and I feel that him being found over 5 miles away from home disqualifies him for the position automatically.  

I let my position on the matter be known by not letting him outside.  He lets his be known by peeing on the carpet.

Every day.

In the same spot.

I’m not ready to give in yet, and I’ve got my cat pee removal technique down (I’m a professional at this point) but god damn do I hate cat pee.  Anyway, more news at this confrontation develops.

In case any of you were wondering (I know you weren’t) here is my secret to success:

• 1 part water, 1 part vinegar in a spray bottle
• paper towels to absorb cat pee spot (don’t scrub, just blot)
• spray the area with the vinegar and water, let it sink in to the carpet and pad
• let it dry, you can blot here if you’d like
• mix 1 part water, 1 part hydrogen peroxide into another spray bottle, add in a little dish soap too
• sprinkle some baking soda onto the spot
• spray the hydrogen peroxide and water onto that
• use a stiff bristle brush to work the baking soda in
• let it dry and then vacuum it up

Anyway, this has worked really well for me.  I hate hate hate cat pee smell and this takes care of it and its really cheap and fairly easy.

So moving right along to other topics, I missed another concert this month.  This time it was Metallica, another band I’ve never seen that I’d really like to.  Clearly, I fail at concerts.

I’m re-reading The Dark Tower series, against my better judgment.  I won’t give away any spoilers, but the ending of the series and the final book really disappointed me the first time so I’m not sure why I picked it up again.  The series is pretty good up until that point, so I’ve enjoyed reading what I have so far.  One book left and I’m dragging my feet.

Also, holidays.  Not a huge fan.  I had a lot more written here, but deleted it.  I don’t really want to get into all this now, but lets just say I don’t want my childhood experiences to color what my kids see.  I’m pretty sure I’m neurotic or something about this.  More reflection later?

Wrapping this all up, let me say that Group Health really sucks.  It beats having nothing at all, but only barely.  We took Violet to Urgent Care with a broken finger today (had a door closed on it, ouch) and had to wait nearly two hours to see anyone.  So we sat there while her finger was still bleeding, albeit slowly, until we saw the triage nurse who said “wow, they should have got her in here much sooner!”.  WOW REALLY?  Anyway, the tip of her finger is broken, had a laceration that required two stitches and we’re hoping her fingernail will grow back.  She did pretty well during the ordeal, but definitely wasn’t a fan of it.  

So, I’ll try to update more frequently so I can avoid these large ‘shotgun’ updates where I just throw everything at the post and see if it sticks.