Longgggg weekend

Ugh. My stomach just started hurting. Don’t you just hate that? I am sure it will be gone shortly, but I still hate it. As soon as I became a mom, it doubled my hatred for sickness because there is no possible way for me to relax and feel better with a baby to take care of, and because that usually means that at least one other person in the house will be sick, if not all of us. But this is more of a come and go stomach ache. But I hate those too.

Ardyn has had a rough weekend, she has been running a fever since Wednesday evening, due to teething, and today is the first day that she hasn’t been running a temp or on Motrin to keep it down. No teeth yet. Of course. She has a signature teething repertoire, like most kids. Instant Diaper Rash. Loose Stools. Gnawing and sometimes Drooling. Excessive crankiness and irritability. Crying at the drop of a hat. Eats less solid food and increases her nursing sessions. Gets overly tired very easily and stumbles around like a drunk. Takes long naps that require me to convince myself that she is “still breathing in there.” Right now we are having the 354 thousandth random crying bout today. She will cry when she drops something. When she looks at something. When the vacuum moves out of her reach. When her macaroni gets too cold. When the barn door won’t un-velcro to allow her easy access to the animals inside. It must be torture for her because it’s pretty near torture for me. She doesn’t want me to hold her and doesn’t want me to put her down. She doesn’t want to cuddle but then seconds later is laying her head on my shoulder and clinging to me for dear life. Actually, it’s a lot like PMS.

Of course this past weekend was the Wyanet Festival. We watched the parade and ate too many corn dogs. But besides that we took lots of long naps in the air conditioned evenings and pretty much avoided the festival. It appears we have officially outgrown the beer gardens and Ardyn isn’t old enough to enjoy the type of rides they have here. The parade was fun. She did some waving and some clapping, sucked on a few popsicles that she got handed, and watched as the adults scampered around like her drones and picked up the candy that she can’t eat yet. She got papers for vacation bible school, and to vote for Don, and to come to the kid zone. We got sunglasses that offer us a chance to win $$ from our bank and Frisbees and fliers for the upcoming Tiskilwa Pow Wow Days.

As I am typing this she is repeatedly closing the barn door and then screaming when it won’t un-velcro for her immediately. She’s really just torturing herself. I feel badly for her but I let her struggle because tonight I am making her stick to her bedtime. All of our late and long naps and being out and about every day have got her in the habit of a midnight bedtime and a 7am wakeup. Ugh. I don’t know how she does it, because I sure can’t. So today I am trying to wear her out so that we can go back to the usual bedtime. The problem with being out and about is that she falls asleep at her regular bedtime but then wakes up an hour or so later, feeling refreshed like she just had a power nap. Not good. And since we are usually out and about, there is always something to look at besides her own room and her crib sides, so she opts to stay awake. It’s nice to have a baby so amiable and so portable, because at previous times, sticking to her “schedule” meant that mom never left the house after 8pm. Sometimes earlier. But now that she is older, I have no guilt about watching my sister play softball at a late game or going for a walk once the summer sun goes down and it cools off. I can make a late night run for ice cream or a wal-mart trip… But too much of that starts to get the little one thinking that she can stay up late every night, even if mom is exhausted. If that also meant that she was sleeping in later, that would be great. But with the ability to pull her up to standing every 3 seconds, she doesn’t want to lay down long enough to go back to sleep, and so as soon as her eyes see the light of day, it’s time to move. And now that she has decreased to one nap a day, it makes it harder for her to be herself for the 15 hours a day that she wants to be awake. So I have decided to go back to Gestapo bedtimes for a little while. Unless I want to go for a late walk. That always seems to get her relaxed and often puts her to sleep anyway.

She has really been a terror today. The word No seems to be just random chatter in the background of her mind. No matter what tone of voice or volume it is spewed forth with. She has been into everything, to a whole new level today. Reaching for mixing bowls in the kitchen, undocking the roomba vacuum, pushing buttons on the DVD player, opening and closing the TV Armoire doors about 500 times more than usual, finding the ONE clump of dog hair that I missed and putting it in her mouth, pulling my neatly organized papers off the coffee table, pushing the TV remote so far under the couch that even mom’s “go-go gadget arms” can’t reach it. Oh and then there is the bazillion microscopic paper scraps and cheerio pieces that the naked eye can’t see, but she can find and get into her mouth before you can get two steps to her. It really is amazing, and annoying, and exciting. But I am sure that many of you remember those days.

What is sometimes the most frustrating to me, is that my husband fails to see the value in babyproofing. I mean, I AM a SAHM, right? So why do we need anything babyproofed? Because I do have those eyes in the back of my head, right? So even the things that we have babyproofed, like the under the sink cabinets, he doesn’t feel it necessary to secure them and leaves them open CONSTANTLY. It makes me SO FURIOUS and I am considering just making him walk in there and secure them again every time I find one, instead of just doing it myself. I mean seriously. If he doesn’t like the strap things, than he can install one of the two sets of under cabinet locks that I have been handing to him repeatedly for the past month and a half. The outlets are only covered in the living room, dining room, and Ardyn’s bedroom… even though I have the stuff to do EVERY outlet in the house. And the blind cords are only wrapped up in her Room, leaving Seven blind cords that are hazardous. This also infuriates me. And whenever I remind him, I get the “I’ll do it, don’t worry!” and weeks go by, and nothing happens. The only reason that Ardyn’s room is babyproofed is because I did it, and when I was trying to screw the blind cord wraps in, he saw me and decided that he should do it instead of me.

Ardyn loves TV. And she hasn’t watched any all day today, but I just put in a Little People DVD about animals and she is locked in to it and all frustrated screaming has been delayed….

She has finely honed a new type of scream and cry in the last two weeks, I call it the “bloody murder” or “tantrum” scream. No one believed me until she started trying it out on grandparents and in public. I have never seen people cover their ears or clear a room so quickly. She really gears up for it, with about 15 seconds of airless, soundless, open-mouthed, close-eyed, red-faced preparation. If you don’t see her getting ready, you have no reason to suspect something is wrong. You have no time to prepare yourself. I have started to say “wait for it….” And then the blood-curdling scream happens. I am sure that the whole neighborhood is sitting at home thinking “child abuse” when really all I have done was tell her that she can’t eat an electrical cord or push all the buttons on the Playstation 2. Hysteria. She even has a thing that she occasionally does… putting her head down on the floor between her legs and feet and acting as though the world is coming to a screeching halt. It’s all about the drama. And Evan picks her up. EVERY TIME. That does not help. I just walk away. And if she starts a tantrum when I am holding her, and arches her back and thrashes and throws her head back and then bashes me in the face with her forehead, I just put her down and walk away. That really gets her going, but in a few minutes, she gives up and starts something else that keeps her attention. But apparently I am the only one who feels like it’s okay to ignore a tantrum of any proportions. Everyone else says “she’s just a baby!” and I say “Sure, and now you’re her bitch.” It cracks me up that she is almost a year old, and she DOES know the meaning of no, but people don’t think she is old enough to know anything. That little stinker is a hundred thousand times smarter than anyone else gives her credit for. But she isn’t fooling mommy. No way. No how.

When she makes the same bloodcurdling scream because I walked ten feet into the kitchen to get her some cheerios, I know that it isn’t something to take seriously.

So tomorrow we are supposed to go swimming, but we have no gas in the van, the fuel light is on, and we have zero pesos until… well until we start to have money. LOL. How do you tell your mother in law that you can’t come see her because you don’t have gas? It’s kinda embarrassing but at the same time, it’s just a fact of life. If it were my own mom, I’d just tell her, and if she wanted to give me gas money, that’s be cool, but she would understand that I am not trying to get money out of her, but I just am stating a fact and telling her that I will have to stay home. But with your mother-in-law, it could sound manipulative. So I am not sure if I just stay home and keep my mouth shut and miss her get-together at the pool, or if I tell her that I don’t have gas so I will be staying home. Gas prices these days really do suck. And it would be great to walk or ride a bike, but you can’t just not drive around when it is 20 miles to anything. Seriously. That’s life in a small town.

At least once a day, I convince myself that it’s not practical to invent a self cleaning high chair tray. It may seem lazy to not want to clean a high chair tray, but when you scrub hardened macaroni, slimy asparagus, and sticky peaches three times a day, it can get to you a tiny bit. And what really bugs me is that the tray is dishwasher safe. But I don’t run my dishwasher three times a day, and even if I did, the damn tray is to TALL to fit in the dishwasher. It’s SO annoying. Can you say “design flaw?” Of course, none of it really is relevant, considering that my beloved dishwasher is totally and utterly done for, and I have to wash all my dishes by hand. I would rather wash a thousand poopy cloth diapers than 10 dirty forks, so you can already tell that I hate dishes. They pile up. And I wash them. And as soon as I get them all washed, My husband makes late night stir fry and leaves 22 pieces in the sink to be washed the next day when he is conveniently busy or gone. Kinda like how he drinks the last of the Culligan Water and leaves me an empty 5 gallon jug of water that needs to be carried from the back porch and tipped upside down and refilled. Woe is me. My mind is a constant honey-do list that I end up doing myself.

I recall being totally excited about nice weather and how much money I would save by hanging clothes on the line. I was even willing to forgo that misery that is crunchy bath towels and jeans that stand unaided. But then the logistics of it frustrated me. How DOES one carry a wiggly child and a clothes basket of laundry clear out to the back 40 to hang them on the line? It takes like 5 trips. And you can’t take the kid out there first, because then she is unattended outside on a busy road while you go grab the laundry. And you can’t leave her unattended inside while you take the clothes out because in that 1 minute that you are outside, she could severely injure herself in the house that your husband feels it is unnecessary to fully babyproof. So I don’t get NEARLY as much laundry hung out as I would like to. I kick myself for being excited for the moments when she can walk out to the clothesline with me. And then I stop myself from figuring out how I will ever get anything done with two small children. And I hope that my house is childproof by then. And bigger. And cleaner. Ha.

As long as I am writing this never-ending post, I should mention that I was able to make homemade play-doh today, in addition to cleaning. And I dyed it four different fabulous neon colors, green, purple, pink, and turquoise. It looks great. I can’t wait to use it this week. And the plan is to also play outside and fill up the baby pool and hook up the elmo sprinkler mat for Ardyn. Good things to do when you have no gas and no money.

I recently made her a new dress, and have everything finished except the button holes and the final turn under of the hem. It was a super cute and easy dress to make, and I see myself making many more. I also sewed myself a backless apron-top, with a nursing flap and nursing openings beneath. But something that I didn’t really consider when I came across the fabulous free pattern, is that a nursing mom with DD cups doesn’t fare well in a backless braless top. Really. Not good. And it’s super super cute fabric, so I am still trying to figure out how to attach a front only bra to the damn thing. LOL. Lots of work. Cute final product. Not so realistic. It really is great though because instead of just copying a pattern, you actually measure yourself and use your measurements to figure out the pattern pieces. Great in theory. Fits well. Needs a bra. It irks me a bit that I worked so hard on it, staying up till almost 1am so that I could start and finish it in one day… only to not be wearing it anywhere.

I am awaiting a few packages that I paid for back when I had money. 2 yards of organic sherpa fleece to make my own wipes, since mine aren’t the best for an older baby… and a custom order of fleece soakers from the PeaChicNest. (mmmmm can’t wait!) They should both be here anyday now! It’s so exciting I can barely stand it. I also need to sew my cloth napkins. I have the fabric. It may be a week of spending time outside and in the sewing room. I have lots of projects on my list.