Who You Gonna Call?

I thought this might be the year that my kids finally exerted their own independence when it came to choosing Halloween costumes. Last year was really only the first year we did coordinated costumes (unless you count the grouchy ladybug and friendly ladybug costumes) but it was a triumph. It was going to be a tough act to follow.

Ever since some time in September Lucy has been going on and on about being a ghost this Halloween. I kept waiting for her to change her mind, but sometime last week I realized that wasn't going to happen. Sam, on the other hand, changed his mind about forty three times. A knight, an angry bird (but it had to be the bomb one, you know, the one that was sold out everywhere) some Jedi, some other random thing with a sword. As long as a weapon was involved he was in. I tried to convince them to dress as the charters of The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan and Alice In Wonderland to no avail. Lucy was going to be a ghost and Sam was going to have a weapon, PERIOD.

So I was online looking for Lulu's ghost costume, and when I typed 'ghost' into the search field, it also suggested searching for 'ghostbusters'. LIGHT BULB! After a few more clicks, our ensemble was complete!

Everybody wins! Sam gets a proton blaster, Lucy gets to be a ghost, Maggie gets to be the cutest damn marshmallow villain in history, and Fred, with the assistance of a little neon green fabric paint, gets to be Slimer. And since he is teething, he's pretty authentic.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Freddie Friday: Radiant

Will you look at those eyes? I did absolutely nothing to them post-processing. When the light is just right, they positively radiate. He radiates. Gah, I love this babe.

Let Them Be Little

All throughout my childhood I remember drinking from hoses, pumps and springs. This photo of Sam from our family reunion is one I've loved since taking it, and it takes me right back to being a kid. When I saw that the I Heart Faces folks were hosting a 'Let Them Be Little' theme, I just had to enter it!

Click on over to see all of the other submissions!

Life Occurring On A Whim

Life has been doling out big heaping doses of good stuff lately, with a small side helping of not-as-good-but-not-terrible stuff to go with. Here's a summary...

• A few months ago I started thinking about going pro as a photographer. (side note/promotion: check out my Facebook page and tell me what you think!) That ball has been rolling and bouncing quite nicely. I've had a few shoots with families, and this weekend I'm shooting a charity race. It's an exciting process because I'll be getting lots of exposure, and I even have a logo on the racers t-shirts! This all makes me feel very, very grown up and professional-like. On the flip not-as-good-but-not-terrible side, a bunch of my super-fun college friends from Philly are coming this weekend and I'm going to have to abandon them during the race time. Also, I will not be able to get rip roaring drunk on wine when they get here on Friday night, but that's probably a good thing!

• Around the same time as the photography stuff started to get serious, I also became more involved with a breastfeeding support group here in Mo-town. That's going really well, too! We had a booth at a baby fair this past weekend and we had lots of mommies and mommies-to-be stop at our area. Also, experiencing some of the WV crazies that came out for free stuff was enough entertainment for at least a month, and is worthy of a post of its own. On the not-as-good-but-not-terrible side, we were situated right outside of the (very loud) Halloween store, and since I was already but not really semi-recovering from a cold, I got crazy laryngitis. I still sound all sick and squeaky, and not at in that sexy sick way.

• Speaking of mommies-to-be, THE TWINS ARE COMING IN ONE WEEK! I had a family shoot scheduled for Sunday, but the daddy fell head, face and arms first into a pile of poison ivy, so I went and took some pics of my lovely sister-in-law instead! I cannot cannot cannot wait to meet those boys!

• Halloween looms, and just wait until you see what we've got planned for this year! We may even top last year!

• All of a sudden, Lucy is my good child again! She still screams and cries at any perceived offence, but her behaviour is much, much improved from summertime. She's digging hockey and tap class, and she recently discovered the simple joy of climbing trees.

• Fred never ceases to amaze me. Watch him pick up food and eat it as though he's been doing it forever, and not for less than a minute!

• I'm going to go ahead and end this post now, because there is no way I can possibly top that cuteness!

Four Kids Friday

Halloween jammies for everyone!

Chestnut Ridge Park

Vanity Sizing for Babies and the Crazy Mothers Who Love Them

As a somewhat unusual girl, I've often been a little off the beaten path when it comes to milestones in my children's lives. For example, when the kids get too big for the baby nail clippers and I have to use regular ones, I tend to get a little misty. I'm weird like that.

One thing that has always been a tear jerker for me is when my kids grow out of the swaddler sized diapers. We have always used pampers, and when Sam, Lulu and Maggie were little they only made the swaddler diapers up to size two. Once they were too big to squeeze into the size two swaddler diapers, then we had to get into the size three cruiser diapers. It's not a huge deal, but they look different, and for some reason (like I'm a little crazy) it would make me emotional.

Now Fred is growing like a robust little boy should. That is to say, he's not a teeny little thing like he once was. He's been wearing the size two swaddler diapers for a while now, and they were starting to get a little snug. Plus his tiny butt crack would sometimes stick out of the back, and that is not good at all. I was starting to mentally prepare myself for the inevitable graduation to the size three pampers cruisers, which wasn't going too well, when I discovered that they are now making pampers swaddlers in a size three!

A part of me is relieved. I can still put a soft little white diaper on his tiny bum and pretend like he was just born last week. But another part of me is conflicted. I mean, he's crawling properly now, so shouldn't I get him the cruisers out of principle? Am I being emotionally manipulated by P&G somehow? Is it because babies are being born at record sizes and companies want to get in on that market?

The thing is, all of my other kids wore cruisers at size three, and I like consistency for my nonsensical made-up emotional milestone bullshit things, so cruisers it is!

Paint and Prejudice

Back in the early part of summer we got some of our deck replaced. Because the deck had been painted in the past, we were going to have to paint the new boards to match. SOB had planned to do the painting himself, but every time he had a few days off to complete the project, it would rain like a mother. After several weekends and even an entire vacation week rained out, we called a painter. A guy and his crew came over and painted like crazy for two days, and now we have a painted deck.

While they were here, we got to thinking. A large majority of the wall space in our house is painted yellow gold. I'm sure I mentioned this before, but some previous owner of this house was a MEGA WVU fan. Most of the upstairs is WVU yellow gold and the carpet, which we had ripped up right before Fred was born, was blue. There were blue ceiling fans, even. Now the yellow gold isn't objectively horrifying, but it's not great. Also, as a photographer, it really sucks. In my kitchen, everyone looks like they have cirrhosis of the liver. Even babies:

A grey card helps, but not entirely.

We inquired about the cost of painting over all of the yellow gold and found that it wasn't nearly as expensive as we expected. But. BUT! There is always a 'but', isn't there? They wanted to do the job ASAP, so we had to pick out paint colors right quick.

Now, we had our bedroom painted not long after we moved in, and I'll just say that there are still some very raw, unsettled feelings about those colors. In summary, I don't like the colors SOB picked and SOB blames me for giving him the go-ahead on those colors, and we can't talk about this without things ending badly, so we just don't. ever. talk. about. it. Needless to say, I wasn't optimistic about our ability to select paint colors for 50% of our house without it coming to blows in the aisles of Lowe's. However, colors needed to be agreed upon. Luckily, we have a lovely and intelligent babysitter who suggested that we paint some patches of the wall to see how different colors might look. With that in mind, we set off to Lowe's with a spring in our steps.

We came home with four rather beige paint samples, which worked out perfectly. You see, in our kitchen we have four large framed portraits of the kids, all hanging on the same wall. I took down the pictures and painted four beige squares, two of my choosing and two chosen by SOB.

Mine are on the right, and SOB's are on the left. He argued that mine were too pink, and I countered that his were too grey. Things were off to a rocky beginning. However, two days later we were back at Lowe's to give it another try.

This mish-mash of colors had some we liked and some we hated. BUT! We were making headway on coming to a consensus. It was really eye opening to see how different the colors looked in the light of our actual home. On the cards, colors that looked almost identical were wildly different in tone. After one final trip to Lowe's, here are the four colors we ended up with:

The two mid-tone colors are going to cover the bulk of the walls, and the lightest and darkest will be accent colors. All told, we went through thirteen paint samples to end up with these. And the best part? The fucking names of these thirteen nearly identical shades of beige:

Hopsack

Moose Mousse

Desert Fortress

Woodrow Wilson Putty

Mesa Tumbleweed

Holmes Cream

Balance

Oatbran

Lovely Bluff

Cream In My Coffee

Cliveden Leather

Lyndhurst Gallery Beige

Sand Storm

(A major award will be given to the person that correctly identifies the four shades we selected.)

The painters came on Friday to mask and tape, and the real painting begins first thing this morning. Keep your fingers crossed that we make it through this with our marriage intact!

Freddie Fridays

We're in phase two of the puking/pooping sickness, and this face is the only thing keeping me from running off to Mexico right now.

Freddie: Month Seven

Darling Boy Freddie -

First, let me apologize for the delay. It may have had something to do with all of the puke. Secondly, let me apologize for the lack of pictures I took of you this month! Between school starting, hockey starting and dance class starting I barely took out my camera at all this month, so don't take it personally, ok? Besides, when I did manage to get the camera out of the bag, most of the photos of you ended up looking like this:

You are a boy on the move. The army crawl/head pivoting thing you do is still in full force, but slowly you are realizing that there may be a better way to get from point A to point B. So now you get up on your hands and knees, bounce around, move one limb and then flop onto your belly. BUT! In the act of flopping you usually move several inches forward, so you repeat the process until you get what it is you want. Usually it's Maggie's hair.

Fortunately, you need to rest sometimes, so that's when mama gets clicking!

You had your first swing this month. It was no big whoop. Maggie was the same way with swinging when she was little, and now it's the first thing she asks to do when she wakes up in the morning. First thing in the morning with you is all boobs! boobs! boobs! But in addition to boobs you now eat carrots, sweet potatoes, peas, green beans, squash, mangoes, peaches, blueberries, bananas, apples, avocado and pears. Plus oatmeal. I'm going to cook you up some chicken soon, because you're still/again waking up every morning at about 5am starving. I'm thinking some protein may be what you're craving! Dear god, let it be protein!

You love your daddy. Who doesn't love your daddy, though? I know I sure do. That's why I have four crazy lovely children crawling all over me day and night.

I have to say, you are the most pleasant child in the world, it's like laser beams of happiness are shooting from your eyes. Being with you is such an amazing joy.

Can you wake up form your nap now, please?

Love, Mama

Learning to Keep My Mouth Shut

(WARNING: this post is about vomit and poop. Don't read if you have a weak stomach or are eating something. I won't be offended. Seriously.)

Yesterday morning I posted this little bon mot on facebook:

Here's a parenting milestone you won't find in any of those 'What To Expect' books: the first time your kid actually recognizes the urge to vomit, makes it to the toilet and pukes unassisted.

The reason I posted this was because Sam informed me, around 7:45am, that he had thrown up after midnight. I commended him for his ability to handle the situation on his own, and hoped it was an isolated event.

The universe, she has a sick sense of humor.

Fifteen minutes later, as he was sitting on the floor (the wood floor, thank god) eating some toast, he had a little gas that was accompanied with more than a little poo. After a clean-up and some new clothes, we discussed that perhaps if he felt like he was going to fart, he should go to the toilet just in case. Turned out to be sage advice. There were many, many more 'sharting' incidents during the morning. But during the latter part of the day he seemed fine. Which is why I didn't think twice about giving him pizza and strawberries for dinner.

We found out at 1:15am what a terrible mistake that was. He said he felt like he had to burp, but then he puked. Only this time, he didn't make it to the toilet. And when he started down the stairs to inform us of the puke all over his bed and floor, he started puking some more, all over the rug, stairs, wall and hand rail. And himself, naturally.

We got him and his room cleaned up, but about three hours later he had another 'sharting' incident. After another change of clothes, I fell into bed for three or four minutes before Fred woke up for a random boob snack request. WTF, little guy?

Since I knew Sam wasn't going to school today I let him sleep while I got the girls breakfast. As soon as I got them situated at the table, I heard the cat retching in the living room. Needless to say, I was PISSED. So as I was sopping a huge puddle of cat vomit out of my living room rug, Maggie started to cry. I couldn't see her from where I was, so I had no idea that she had just upchucked all over herself, the kitchen table and the floor. It was at that point that I began weeping.

Lucy, somehow, seemed unaffected, so I took her to school. As soon as we got home Maggie filled her diaper with some sort of rotting toxic sludge. And when Freddie woke up from his nap he was covered in regurgitated blueberry applesauce. I've locked the cat outside for the time being, and I'm just waiting for the phone to ring with the call to pick up Lucy. SOB and I are fine at the moment, but I'm not very optimisit about our outlook.

On the bright side, this might help jump start that weight loss plan I've been working on.

Kids Say the Most God D@mned Mother F*cking Things

On Wednesday we took the kids out to eat at a local restaurant. Since Maggie doesn't drink anything but water, and she had a sippy cup with her, we didn't order her a drink. But when she saw that her brother and sissy got special kids cups with smiley faces on them, she insisted on her own. She stood up at the table and loudly demanded that we get her 'Maggie's cup! Maggie's BEER!' over and over.

--

Lucy has been telling me all about her friend at school. Thursday she said to me, 'I love C,E and M. They are my best friends!' So I asked her what she liked about them. Her response? 'They are the smallest ones so they always do what I want!'

--

Last night Sam and I sat down to watch the Flyers game. I knew there would be some pre-game stuff, so we tuned in a little later than the scheduled broadcast time, but since the Bruins won the Stanley Cup last year, there was an extended pre-game show. After watching all of the retied Bruins come out to raise the banner, there was some sort of presentation of a jacket. I dunno, I stopped paying attention at some point. Sam was sitting on the step eating some crackers, and was losing patience. Under his breath he muttered, 'Just start the fucking game already!'

Puzzle Solvers

He's 86 and can't hear worth a damn. She's four and never stops talking. They are the perfect puzzle partners.

School's Out For The...Fall?

My kids have had a few days off of school, so we've been busy doing lots of nothing. Making cookies, putting up Halloween decorations, scouring the internets for Angry Birds costumes, canning the last of the salsa, shampooing rugs, watching movies, etc. One of the best thing I did? Well, let me start at the the beginning.

If you've never had a kid in diapers then this might be news to you, but the concept is probably familiar. On every package of pampers, there is a code composed of fifteen letters and numbers. If you enter this code on their website, you accrue points that you can redeem for books, coupons, photos, magazines, toys, you name it. Since Sam's birth I've been intermittently entering these codes and usually getting free photo prints in exchange.

Since Freddie has been born, however, I've let my code entering lag. I haven't had as much time, go effing figure. But since I've used the program with some success before, I can't let myself throw away the bags. I just keep stuffing the empty bags together and stashing them in the pantry. About two weeks ago I actually sat down to enter them into the site, but something else caught my attention and I ended up stuffing them into my camera bag when the baby got a hold of them.

Since I have two kids in diapers currently, the amount of empty diaper bags in my possession was about to score me a starring role in my very own hoarders episode, so today I sat down for half an hour and entered code after code after code into the pampers website. When it was all said and done, I totalled over 1,500 points, enough for 200 photo prints and a free photobook, the two main items I usually select. I know I'm not actually getting something for nothing, but it makes me feel a little bit better about all of the butt wiping I've done over the last six months!