Mom Olympics

Today I took a trip to the store during a small snow storm we're having here. When I went in it was freezing rain, and when I came out it was snowing again. I had my snow boots on, so I was set there, but I was having a little trouble pushing the cart. My cart was filled with groceries, and two kids. I was pushing it slightly uphill through the snow/slush/crusty ice. I mean I was almost horizontal pushing that damn thing! By the time I reached the car I was out of breath, my already sore thighs (from working out you perverts) were shaking, and I had a dewy glow on my brow. It was crazy, and I thought to myself "this should be an Olympic sport." Then I thought to myself "there are lots of things moms do that could be made into a sport." It's true! I mean sometimes being a mother requires every ounce of strength, agility, speed, and creativity we've got. How many times have you sat there for a minute and thought about how you would execute something with your kids in the mix? Personally, I can't even count. Just go back to those posts about flying with 2 kids and you've got about 2 dozen right there.

So here are some of the other events I'd put in the mom Olympics:

1) Getting out of the house with yourself and your children fully dressed in less than 10 minutes. Honestly, it is pure insanity itself to even put that time restraint on yourself, but sometimes we've got an emergency or rare situation when you have only minutes to leave the house. Inevitably my toddler is running around laughing at me as I try to catch him to put his clothes on, and the baby pulls her socks and shoes off 5 times before we leave. I've managed to get out of the house in minutes, but it isn't pretty and I need a stiff drink afterwards.

2) Trying to get all your errands done before the baby gets tired or hungry. There is a short window and these things require planning. The minute they're up from their nap you have to shove food in their mouth and throw them in the car, so that you can get all your errands done before the meltdown happens. Very hard to avoid. You've probably seen me in Wal Mart with the screaming baby and a toddler that is about to wiggle himself out of the cart headfirst.

3) Changing diapers on a newly mobile baby or young toddler. I've had to resort to putting my foot on the baby to keep them from wiggling away before I can either a) get the poop off before the baby wiggles it all over both of us and the carpet or b) get the Velcro tabs cinched down on the new one. It's like trying to diaper a de-clawed cat!

4) Feeding the kids and yourself at the same time when you have only 5 minutes. In between shoving bites in your own mouth you have to shove them in the baby's mouth, and yell at the toddler to "please eat! for the love of god, we have to leave in 3 minutes!"

5) Install a car seat on an airplane while you have a baby strapped to your chest.

6) Pregnancy triathalon - you have to shave your legs, paint your toe nails and tie your shoes. First one done wins.

I almost hate to say it...

but....we're potty training. I mean he's actually doing it. He's getting the hang of it. He's excited. It's going much easier than I ever anticipated. It's all due to a visit to a friend's house who is potty training, and the use of suckers as a reward. I would have never guessed that would be the ticket to success, but hey...I'll take it!

That is not to say it's not still disgusting. I stand by my observations that it is still yucky. On a few occasions poop has ended up all over the bathroom, and once on his sister. Don't ask me how....daddy was babysitting. I wish I could have been there to see that go down.

He has to be naked or it doesn't work as good. If I put sweat pants or underpants on him he forgets he is potty training. Is this normal?

I mean I'm still gonna take it. I don't care if he has to be naked for a year. It's better than being the only one who hasn't potty trained their kid yet. I felt like a pariah. Now I feel like I'm the one that's getting my big girl panties. LOL

I'm a bad fur mommy...

If any of you follow my tweets (@ihatepinkmom or look in the lower right corner of my blog) you will be aware that the other day I found a suspicious looking "chocolate sprinkle" aka mouse turd in my bathroom. Anyone who's had a mouse knows that you must nip the problem in the bud IMMEDIATELY or you will never get rid of the damn things. So I promptly put out some mouse bait that we had on hand, from last year's garage mouse. I put it behind the garbage can in my bathroom, and then made sure to keep the door closed during the day. I didn't want my kids or dogs getting into it. At night I left the door open, so the mouse could feast on his last supper while the dogs were crated and the kids in bed. All went according to plan, and I found small nibble marks last night on the poison. I was feeling very triumphant!

This morning I went to take my shower while the dogs were still crated, so the door was open. My son let the dogs out of the cage when he came down while I was in the shower. I get out of the shower, dry off, and head for the bedroom to get dressed when I see the puppy eating something green. At first I thought it was a crayon. There were only tiny crumbs left scattered on the carpet. Suddenly, I had a flash of recognition, and I ran to the bathroom. NO POISON! "SHIT, OH $#@%! OH NO, OH CRAP WHAT DO I DO?" I grabbed my phone and called the vet. She told me I need to make her throw up, and to make her drink hydrogen peroxide until she does. Luckily I just bought a new bottle last week. Seriously, I had only like a 1/4" in the bottom of the old bottle a few days ago. If I hadn't this whole thing could have been worse. So I use a syringe and force the peroxide down her throat, while she tries to bite my hand off to keep that nasty stuff out of her mouth. (Puppy teeth are so sharp and I don't know how she didn't cut the skin.) She throws up the poison after about 5 syringes of it, and then I had to wait 15 min and start over. This time no poison left. Then I realize that one of the other dogs could have licked up some of the poison that I didn't vacuum up yet (thank goodness the baby was still asleep!)

I force peroxide down the male Boston (Edward) and he throws up. Nothing. Phew! Now the female. Let me just tell you that she is THE hardest dog to give anything to orally. It takes 3 vet techs to hold her down and give her a worming pill at the doctor and she only weighs 13 pounds. This was a serious battle. After the second syringe of her fighting me and pushing it out of her mouth, I just started tearing up. Thinking to myself. "OH MY GOD SHE MIGHT DIE, BECAUSE I CAN'T GET HER TO TAKE THIS." I finally mustered the strength to get a 3rd syringe full down her throat. And then I waited to see if it would work. (The peroxide foams when it contacts the hydrochloric acid in your stomach, which then fills up your stomach so much it causes vomiting.)

Finally after 5 minutes, she threw up. The first batch showed nothing, and I thought I just went through all that for nothing. The second batch....one tiny fleck of poison. I don't know if that would have been enough to kill her, but it certainly wouldn't have been good. Since the poison causes internal hemorrhage it would have been difficult to tell anything was wrong until it did a lot of damage.

Now the funny part. The whole time I was doing that I was naked. Never got to the point of getting dressed. So by the time the whole thing was over I had to take another shower. I was covered in a rash (just had my allergy shots yesterday, and am allergic to dogs), and hydrogen peroxide. I took a pic of my arm to show you, but it was literally everywhere.

This is 3 bags of barf & the paper towels it took to clean it up. Yay.

Then I had to rush out of the house, to get to Lillie's 9 month check up. I'm still having an anxiety attack 4 hrs later.

The dogs are fine. They are playing outside like nothing ever happened. Don't call the Animal Police.

Get With It GM

About a week ago I decided it was time to purchase Lillie's new car seat to replace her infant carrier. I don't take her out in that thing much anymore, and when I do I nearly give myself a hernia...so it was time. Now, being that I hate switching car seats back and forth I have a car seat for each car. So I needed to buy 2 car seats, and instead of buying 2 new ones for Lillie. I decided to buy the kids new car seats for my car, and put the old ones in my husband's pick-up. I set my sights on the Britax Marathon, because it has such good ratings for both safety and user friendly features. My sister assured me that they take only minutes to install. "How wonderful would that be?" I thought to myself.



So yesterday afternoon I set out to install those puppies in my car. All excited that this should only take a few minutes, and my children would be forever safe and secure. I put my daughters in, rear-facing on the passengers side, and moved around to the driver's side to put in my son's. Little did I know that the people that design car LATCH systems like to play "Russian Roulette" with the placement of the anchors. They put anchors in the passenger's side, and the center, but not in the driver's side. Why? Why not just put them in every seat to give people flexibility? My Toyota had them in every seat, AND it had removable headrests, another awesome feature for car seat installation.

I just sat there considering my options. I could either A) put my kids right next to each other, but I couldn't even consider that one without breaking out into maniacal laughter. I mean really? Put my kids in poking distance of each other? I'd never have a peaceful drive again! B) put my son in the 3rd row, but then I would have to climb back there to buckle him in, give him snacks on long drives, wipe his nose, etc. And finally, C) install the car seat with the lap/shoulder belt, which makes you feel like you love one kid less. Guess which one I picked?

You got it GM! I chose to love my 3 year old, first-born son, less than his baby sister. I hope you're happy with yourself. It's totally understandable. I mean those little metal loops probably cost an arm and a leg. Oh, and then you'd have to hire someone to install the extra set, so that's an annual salary of $80,000, which would raise the price of the Denali to $100,000. Ya, you're right, we don't need those loops. It's better if my son flies out of the car, because he only has a flimsy lap belt holding him in.

We cool GM! You gotz the justifikashun heer.

Send me your mess of the day

Amazingly my kids haven't been making that many devestating messes lately *knock on wood.* So I would love to see some of yours! Snap a pic of those messy messes and I will use them as part of my Mess of the Day feature. :)

Send them to my email.

Puppy love?

Someone smack me on the head. What the hell was I thinking getting a puppy? I must have lost my damn mind for a while. I mean sure puppies are cute and all, but the chewing, and the razor sharp puppy teeth. Oh and don't even get me started on the accidents in the house. I'm so tired of cleaning up pee! Just when I think she's getting the hang of it...Squish! That's me stepping in a freshly urine soaked carpet. Or god forbid I don't see it, and literally smell it later. It gets this nasty chicken soupy smell to it...gagarific.

This is supposed to be my husband's dog, but he does NOTHING to take care of her. Today I called him and said "I don't know what to do with this dog! She keeps tackling Byron and gnawing on him. Now he won't go outside to play, and I'm going crazy with him in the house!"

Do you know what he said to me? "Maybe you should go outside and play with her?" Oh. No. He. Didn't.

The guy who doesn't do anything to take care of her is criticizing the fact that I haven't walked her that day. Grrrrrrr....

So then I hung up on him, took a shower and walked her. Because I needed the walk to straighten my attitude out anyway. As I was walking with my beastly double stroller, and three dogs, a car rolled up on me very slowly and paced me for a bit. It was filled with 3 men (one with a lazy eye) who just leered at me and smiled. Totally creeped me out, and I gave them a healthy dose of stink eye. It's the curse of having this white girl ghetto booty. It draws unwanted attention, and smacks.

But then later it made me feel good to know that I'm still worthy of leering. I mean it's better they leer then bark at me out the window right?

I have a phobia OKAY!

For anyone who knows me this is a well-known fact. I am a needle phobe. Seriously. The thought of shots gets me all sweaty, and my heart starts to race. The last time I got a shot was when I was 16, and I worked myself up so much that by the time the nurse gave it to me I passed out. So, when I made the decision to get WEEKLY allergy shots it was for a couple reasons. 1) I have bad allergies to many things around me. I'm allergic to dogs, and I have 3. I'm allergic to sagebrush and tumbleweeds, and I live in the desert. More importantly I'm allergic to cows, and hay. My husband's dream is to farm and have cows. So allergy shots might help me deal with that. And...
2) I wanted to force myself to get over my fear. Or at least lessen it. Right now it's affecting my decisions for my health, such as I haven't had a tetanus shot since I was 16. I need to get up the courage to say I want it, but that is so much easier said than done. I thought a little exposure therapy might help me suck it up. '
Allergy shots use very small needles, and they only go into the subcutaneous layer of the skin, not into the muscle. Everyone was telling me this, and that they were easy. The thing is you can't tell someone with a phobia that it doesn't hurt. They won't believe you. If I go up to a person afraid of heights and say...."oh the Ferris wheel isn't scary, just try it!" They are NOT going to believe me. More than likely they will not get on that Ferris wheel, unless they really want to try to work past their fear.

I had explained these fears to my doctor & nurse. I left the kids with my mom, so that they wouldn't see me act like a Sissy LaLa Bedwetter for my shots, and I walked to the office. I needed to walk to help with my anxiety. When I walked in she was literally surprised to see me. She said "oh I thought I'd have to call your sister (who already gets shots) and have her drag you in here."
"No," I said. "I'm afraid, but I'm doing this to get past that."

She made me sit in a chair and suck on a Jolly Rancher in case I decided to pass out. Then the next thing I know she's like "okay other arm." I DID NOT EVEN FEEL THE FIRST SHOT!
The second one pinched a bit, but it wasn't bad at all. Now I feel like a total idiot for even being nervous, but like I said I have a phobia. At least I won't be afraid to get the shots every week for 3-5 years now.

Now I just have to talk myself into that tetanus shot....

Did I mention I was REALLY busy...I don't think I have time. ;)