And now.... a conversation with my two year old......

TH (the hurricane) : Mommy, I go 'lympics. I be nimnist. I do niministastics. I be pantassic. (fantastic)

Me : Oh, baby, of course you can, you can do anything, you're great.

TH : I not great! I TWO!

Me : you're right, you ARE two. You're a big girl

TH : I not big girl! I PINCESS! I LULU!

Me : Ok, you're a princess. Whatever.

TH : YOU NO WHATEVER ME MOMMY! I a PINCESS!

Me : What kind of princess are you?

TH : I a LULU PINCESS! I PWETTY!

Me : You are GORGEOUS!

TH : No, Mommy, I PWETTY!

Me : I give up.

TH : Why you give up? What give up? I no give up.

Me : No, you NEVER give up. You get that from me. Sorry.

TH : Dat's okay, Mommy. I love you big much.

Me : I love you big much, too, Lu. I love you seven hundred and forty five jellybeans and three thousand six hundred and eighty two teddy bears.

TH : Mommy, you silly.

A conversation with my four year old

HRH : Mommy, I told Tyler when we get big I might marry him.

(Tyler is a friend's 8 yr old son)

Me : (choking a little) Oh, really? What'd he have to say about that.

HRH : He said no, he's not marrying a girl. Especially a little one.

Me : When was this?

HRH : When we went to Incredible Pizza while you were at your meeting.

(PTA meeting, Prince Charming met a friend and they took the kids to IP as friend's wife is on the board with me)

Me : Hmmmm, what did you say to that?

HRH : I told him, "we'll see" (said with a sage nod of her head).

Methinks Tyler might ought to watch out in about 15-20 years ;)

My Sunday.....

My day started with getting a mention on Good Mom/Bad Mom's BlogShare Sunday..... Woo hoo for me!


You'd think that would be the start of a great day, wouldn't you? Yes? Well, let me fill you in, LOL! After a night of ENTIRELY too little sleep, thanks to watching Nim's Island with the lovebugs and then Treasure Island 2 with Prince Charming (side note - when did Nicolas Cage morph into someone kind of creepy looking?), then a molar-teething toddler who wakes up during the night demanding all sorts of things....
~Owie, my legs hurt
~Owie, my teef hurt
~I want to snuggle my daddy
~I want to snuggle my sister
~I'm hungry
~I'm thirsty
~I want milk
~I want water
~I need to go peepee
~I need to go peepee again
~I want my mommy
~I ready get up
~I want a breakfast bar
then her saving grace, the reason I don't toss her out in the backyard and lock the door:
~Mommy, I sowwy I not sleepy. I love you so much. I love you like this (big hugs).

Fast forward to said sleepyhead (once she fell back to sleep) wakes up at almost 9! WOO HOO! Wants a Lunchable for breakfast, but whatever. I'm not going to fight her to eat Lucky Charms.

We get a phone call inviting us to lunch at Papi and TiTi's house, NICE! I don't have to fix lunch! Prince Charming is leaving this evening for Rio de Janeiro (all together now.... awww.... poor thing), so dinner is easy too! I'm having Sam's brand Cajun trail mix and chocolate pie. HRH opted for peanut butter crackers followed by a Danimals drinkable yogurt and the Hurricane swears she just wants strawberry yogurt. Great day, no?

I take them to make a QUICK run to Hancocks (stop laughing at me, I'm SURE it's possible. Maybe not for me, but I really thought I just had to run in and grab some purple embroidery thread, as NONE of the seven shades I already have match an outfit I'm monogramming for someone). Well, they're having a MASSIVE sale! I thought we'd browse around a little, giving Prince Charming some time to take a little nap before he leaves on his red eye tonight. Five minutes in, the Hurricane starts crying pitifully because I choose to NOT buy tacky-looking Hannah Montana fabric that costs almost $10 a yard. I get her calmed down by letting her choose some patchwork woven fabric (adorable) for $2.69 a yard! SCORE! Works for about 45 seconds. Then she finds something else to be upset over. Fast forward a few minutes and she's so mad that I really expect an employee to come and ask me to leave (or call CPS). Doesn't want in the cart, doesn't want me to hold her, doesn't want to walk. I'm not quite sure what options she's leaving me at this point. She's escalated to telling me (And I'm saying "telling", while what I really MEAN is screaming at the top of her lungs to me) that "you NOT my mommy! Sister is my mommy! I no LIKE you! I go HOME!" but she doesn't want me to drive her home. At this point, I flat out tell her it's a 4 mile walk so she'd better get started if she wants to be home before dark @@. She's thirty seconds away from a full-floor tantrum, when she suddenly decides *I'M her mommy again. This is probably due to the fact that she just pooed in her panties and her NEW Mommy (HRH) has declined the option of cleaning her hiney-bo and figuring out what she's going to wear as her lame-o REAL Mommy (yours truly) forgot an extra pair of panties. The Nose of the South (HRH) loudly proclaims her displeasure at the aroma emanating from our little Hurricane's drawers. ALL the way across the store to the yucky employee bathroom. Lovely day I'm having. Really. Banner day in mommyhood here!

Get her cleaned up, then get back out and some strange virus has affected my lovebugs. They've been stricken and are unable to hear my voice! Odd! Something tells me that the Hancocks employees might not appreciate me screaming my fool head off at my little ingrates like I FEEL like doing, so I take deep cleansing breaths and calm my racing pulse and rapidly rising blood pressure. At this point, HRH is doing something (I still am not sure what) that causes her to fall, her flip flops flying across the aisle, hitting her head on the wheel of my shopping cart. REALLY?!?! SERIOUSLY?!?!? I'm a good person (generally, just don't drive slow in front of me), what the HELL is the universe trying to tell me here?!?! I stop browsing through all of the cute fabrics on sale, quickly get my two measly selections cut, check out, and go out to the car. I have to enforce the "you weren't good listeners and making good choices at the store, so you don't get the popsicle we talked about, you were WARNED!" rule, which means they're going to gang up on me and yell at me for a while. But they're tired. No naps, so it shouldn't last too long, right? Oh my GOODNESS!!!!!! My lovebugs are half German and half Mexican. Yep. I think today was a record-setting 45 minutes of crying anger to the meanest Mommy in the world. Get home and I've never seen Prince Charming pack his flight bag quite so quickly. Can't say I blame him, but he'd better bring me one HECKUVA present back from Rio, LOL!! At what point is it too early to add vodka to your iced tea? :X

So, the high point of my day was Mindy and Jenny deeming me worthy of a mention. They're so cool, I'm honored. I wonder if this will up traffic on my blog? Maybe I'll start getting lots of comments? I can dream, right? Regi says if I REALLY want a lot of traffic, I need to be controversial. Start talking about penises (penii?), my inlaws, things like that. Guess I'm doomed to mediocrity ;)

How I spent my summer........

My friend Dianne , in honor (celebration?) of four of her kids going back to school, posted a "what I did this summer" blog entry. This got me thinking..... how in the world can summer be almost over? This is only a technicality here in Southeast Texas, as we probably have at least three more months until we have to break out cool weather clothes..... but I digress..... What have *I done this summer? As busy as I've been, you'd think my list would take a few hours to read.

~ Swimming. HRH figured out swimming with no floaties and no lifejacket this summer. All by herself! We are so proud of her! She went, in about two weeks time, from not wanting to get her face wet, to standing on the side of the pool yelling "CANNONBALL!" and jumping in and swimming to the stairs all by herself. :-)

~ Cleaning carpets...... the Hurricane decided she is a BIG GIRL and will not wear panties any more. After much discussion (discussion meaning Mommy saying "let's put on a dipey so we don't peepee on the floor" and Lu yelling "NO! I BIG GIRL! I WEAR PANNIES! PRINCESS PANNIES! HANNAH-TANNA PANNIES!"), it finally clicked in her gorgeous little head and she's fairly successfully pottying like a big girl! Some day, no accidents at all! Yesterday was a banner day, as after a nice meal out for Mexican food, we were strolling around Office Depot picking up the last few things on our school supply list, and she stops and all of a sudden yells at the top her her (very impressive) lungs "MOMMY!!!!!!!! I NEED GO POOPOOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I think everyone was sufficiently proud ;) We ran to the bathroom and she made it! No poo in the panties and all the poo in the potty!! She got lots of special attention for that, even a high five from the nice lady waiting in line!

~ Beach trips. We spent a week in Gulf Shores with Mommy's family , a long weekend in Port Aransas with Daddy's family, and many an afternoon out on Lake Conroe at the little beach area by the dam. The girls call it the "dam beach" :X I actually have a tan for the first time in probably 15 years!

~ Watching my babies grow up entirely too darn fast for my liking. This summer, HRH started swimming and actually WANTING to be away from me, like hanging with her Dad or her grandma or cousins or the neighbors. I'm still not sure how I like that. She's beyond thrilled that she's starting Pre-K in a few weeks. She can't wait to meet her new teacher and see her new friends that are going to be in her class. She's morphed into a teenager it seems some days. Evidently, we're going to have quite the little fashionista on our hands..... for our week at the beach in Gulf Shores, she packed 10 pair of shoes. On the trip, she bought 5 more with her allowance money. ACK!

The hurricane has potty-trained (more or less), moved into a big girl bed, and started looking WAY too old! She says she's excited about starting "school", she's going to go to Mother's Day Out two days a week, but I'm not suse she realizes that Mommy's not staying there WITH her, lol!

All in all, a highly successful summer, albeit one that has flown by so fast and been so busy I still feel like my head is spinning!

Now whatever am I going to do with myself when they start school?!?!?!?

Skype is the coolest thing EVER!

So our new computers came with webcams, which we were SO excited about. We've been using Skype to talk to Prince Charming when he's overseas on a trip, since we don't have worldwide cell service. Coolest invention ever, in our minds! The girls LOVE it, we set the computer down on the floor in the living room and all cram into the little camera area so he can see all of us at once. They take turns doing goofy stuff for him (all the more cool because they can see themselves in the bottom corner of the screen) while I follow them around with the computer so they stay in screen. The Hurricane, of course, feels the need to act out her latest "niministastics" feats for him, while HRH mainly just strikes pretty poses like she's "vogue-ing". Hey, whatever our God-given gifts, we have to embrace them!

In our Skype-induced euphoria, we thought it would be cool to see what other family members we could video-call. So I emailed my uber-cool and up-to-date on all things neat sister Lara to see if she had a webcam. She emails back, something to the effect of "I thought those were only for pervy things". Kind of makes me wonder what the salesman at Fry's thought when we both mentioned webcams as a must on our new computers :X

p.s.--> It's 2008.... why does spell-check not recognize the word "webcam"?

p.s. 2 --> Oh, evidently it's supposed to be spelled as two words. Whatever. I'm sticking with my way!

You can do it, you GO, GIRL!!!!!!!!

So at Christmas, Papi and TiTi gave the girls a "Get in Shape, Girl" Gymnastics set, which consisted of a pink plastic balance beam, a ribbon wand, a super cool pink and purple gymnastics leotard, and an instructional DVD. The Hurricane has become QUITE the little gymnast the last few months. We literally watch the DVD at least 2-3 times a day, even in the car. When they watch it in the car, it trips me out b/c it totally sounds like a SNL skit, Amy Poehler really could nail imitating the gymnast, Lindsey. I'd LOVE to see that!

~Hi, girls! I'm LINDSEY! I'm a GYMNAST! I can stretch, balance, and twirl! I can teach YOU to be a gymnast, too! You'll feel like a champion in NO TIME!

Anyway, the DVD goes through the workout, from the opening song "Gymnastics are FANTASTIC! Gymnastics are FANTASTIC! Balance, turn and twirl, be a gymnast, give it a whirl..... balance, turn and twirl... you can do it, you GO GIRL! You've got talent, you've got shine, just follow me and you'll do fi-i-i-ine!!" sung to future Olympians twirling around and hamming it up a bit. My favorite is the slow-mo video clip of Lindsey doing what seems to be a version of The Wiggles "do the monkey" dance while the camera goes around her in a circle. Her ponytail (which shows what I believe just might be crimped hair) bounces perfectly! Wonder how many takes that took :)

to the stretching song "stretch, stretch, REACH REACH! Come on, girls, do it with ease! Stretch, stretch, stretch it out, gymnasts are the BEST no doubt!" during which you stretch everything from your arms to your wrists ("Roll your wrists, side to side.... right to the left with gymnast pride!") to your legs ("lunge, lunge, steady now.... get a good stretch, feel it WOW!") to your ankles to your neck (this can even be done in the car, as we've discovered here)....

to the post-stretching song "Shake, shake, shake it out, we're all warmed up, there is no doubt", at which point you jump around acting like a crazy person, shaking your arms and legs and giggling maniacally. (More than a little awkward if you're doing this while the gas meter reader guy is in your backyard and catches a glimpse of you :X At this point, you have two options, drop to the floor, pretending to be having a seizure, but realize that you run the risk of him calling 911 for you, or just going with it, you can even throw in a wave and blow a kiss.... we chose this option. I think he's probably going to request a route change.)...

Now on to the REAL gymnastics! We're reminded by Lindsey that gymnasts have to be flexible, they need to be able to stretch and bend and reach in all different ways! She also warns that it takes a lot of practice (we've definitely got that covered here!) but it's a lot of fun! She teaches us how to present ourselves, the Hurricane can do this one perfectly :) She goes through some "gymnastics for dummies" which, is nowhere NEAR as fun as the warm ups and the shake it out. boooooo-ring. gymnastics, mount the beam, turn, yada yada yada...... Lindsey is very conscientious to tell us "good job, girls!" when we do something to her satisfaction. We do a whole routine! Another great song! "You're graceful, you're poised, you have finesse, you've got what it takes to be the best!"

Then we move on to the ribbon wand..... nothing spectacular, a lot of getting whacked in the head, across the back, fighting over who gets to have the actual wand and who has to use the one Mommy made (which by all accounts sucks), etc., at our house. It totally makes me think of feature twirlers... you former band people know what I'm talking about! The Hurricane's second favorite part of the DVD is in this section (her first is the "shake shake shake it out" part), the ARABESQUE! She does this anywhere and everywhere she can find an audience. She'll say "hey hey hey HEY! Watch me do my niministastics!" and do an arabesque, and then follow it with her "superstar" pose (similar to Mary Katherine Gallagher's):

Freaking PRECIOUS, I tell you!... anyway, now we do a ribbon routine! How these songs didn't win any awards is beyond me! I wonder if it's Lindsey singing them..... I wonder where Lindsey is now. This video has to be decades old, LOL! I googled, but couldn't find anything on her. Lindsey reminds us at the end of the video that when she first started gymnastics she couldn't do everything perfectly, and to not get discouraged, and to practice practice practice!!

"Practice, practice, stretch every day! Practice Practice, reach, hey hey. Practice Practice, have some fun! Practice, practice you're number o-o-o-o-o-ne!" at which point, HRH feels it necessary to remind the Hurricane that technically SHE'S number one, and the Hurricane is number two. Insert lovely pictures of girls holding the enclosed score cards (10s, of course) and gold medals, which were NOT included, and I have to hear every freaking day three or four times "where are OUR medals, Mommy?" Thanks a bunch, GISG people @@.

Being that the Olympics are on right now, we're really enjoying watching ACTUAL gymnasts (no offense, Lindsey) do routines. Of course, the favored events are the balance beam (the girls want to know why the Olympians don't get a pink one and they feel sorry for them about that) and the floor routine. The Hurricane attempts to mimic the floor routine, which is just about the best entertainment EVER. I'm not quite sure what we're going to do when the Olympics are over. And what really sucks is that the local rec center doesn't do gymnastic classes for kids under the age of 3. Ugh.

Future Ina Gartens

Ok, ok, maybe more like Sandra Lee, lol..... we like to take shortcuts! Lara and her supersweet boyfriend Jeff walked me through how to make this as this was our first time. I'm sure you can make this with homemade pizza dough, and I probably will next time, but THIS time, we used frozen bread dough, the Mrs Rhodes brand, or maybe it's just Rhodes brand, where you get three loaves of white bread dough for like $2 or something ridiculous like that! Set it out in the morning and let it thaw and rise during the day...... it basically doubled. Then you roll it out (use lots of flour for sticking, and don't forget to cover it while thawing or spray it with Pam or something. We forgot that :X

Anyway, roll it out into a big rectangle, then cover it with preferred toppings. Prince Charming and I had pepperoni, black olives, and mozzarella cheese. HRH and the Hurricane had just the olives and cheese. Next time we're trying italian sausage, bell peppers, onions, green olives, pepperoni, etc.... the works! Then you roll it up in a big jelly-roll style roll and bake it. We baked it around 350 for like 45-50ish minutes. I also brushed the top with olive oil a little before I baked it. It was SOOOO yummy! The only problem we had is that we had a big bubble in the middle of the roll..... any suggestions for how to prevent that? Inger?

My budding cheftastic geniuses :*)







Also, in hindsight, I'd use WAAAAAAAAY more toppings..... I'd stuff that sucker full of them, lol! But overall, WAY yummy. Major thanks to Lala and Jeff for the idea :) :) :) I'm sure we'll be having this probably weekly from now on.

Things I do NOT (and will probably never) understand

~ How my newspaper delivery person can manage 50% of the time to make my paper land in an ant bed @@. Also on the subject of newspaper people, why they will double bag my paper almost every day EXCEPT for days that it rains. WTH is up with that? I called and asked the paper once and no one had an answer for me, lol.

~ What would possess someone to pull out in front of my car on a two lane road when there is like half a mile of NO traffic behind me.

~ How my kids survive on so little sleep. And also how *I survive on so little sleep!

~ Sleeveless turtlenecks. I mean, really.

~ Why automakers don't put one of those hot wire thingies from the rear defroster at the bottom of windshields to speed up defrosting your front windshield. Who do I have to write a letter to about that!?!?

~ How I can spend $200 a week on groceries and never have anything to eat in the house.

~ Doctors/nurses who warn you that (men can stop reading now if they're squeamish) checking your cervix might be uncomfortable (while you're in labor). Come ON. That's like saying the Biltmore is a pretty little cabin. They could at least be honest and tell you "this is going to hurt like a sonuvab*tch and you're going to hate me, but guess what? Worse things are coming!!!"

~ How I can be 99.5% certain that my children have morphed into little demons, yet they fall asleep and 5 seconds later I want to just eat them up in adoration! Bedtime SUCKS in this house right now, I know it will get better soon, and I am SO ready!

Child dice

So I've been trying to think of something interesting to blog about (other than the fact that we had our first successful diaper-free outing today, yay Hurricane!!! A movie, and we only had to make eight potty runs! Woohoo!!! I AM intuitive enough to understand, however, that this is probably not as earth-shattering to those of you who have NOT been following my precious little lovebug around with carpet cleaner repeating every 30 seconds "need to peepee?" But believe me when I tell you it's a big freaking deal here at the castle ;) )

A few weeks ago, Good Mom/Bad Mom had a post about these dice for teenagers. The sides shown read "watch a video", "play loud music" and "argue". That also led to a discussion about the singular of dice (die, if I'm not mistaken). Anyway, I digress...... they were tossing about ideas as to what the other three sides of the dice might say. Seeing as how I'm 9 years away from teenagedom (HALLELUJAH!), I had to think about what my toddler/preschooler dice would show.

1) Loud sigh, foot stomp, yell "You're not being understanding of me" and run to your room

2) Say something Mommy doesn't understand (which sounds identical to something she DOES) and then yell the same word at her over and over and over and over. "No, PANNIES!!!! NO! PANNIES! NO! PANNIES!!" (I really think they might be just messing with me for amusement at this point)

3) Demand a snack. But not any of the 15 snacks I've recommended, in decreasing nutritional value... grapes, yogurt, cheese, goldfish, gummies, etc. Finally demand fried chocolate dipped in whipped cream and if I don't give it to you, start yelling things I don't understand (and probably don't want to)

4) Argue with your sister over the pink doll. Nevermind that there are 3 IDENTICAL replacements within 5 feet of said battleground, YOU WANT THAT ONE!!! Don't give in! No one likes a quitter!

5) Ignore Mommy (blissfully!) ALL DAY until the phone rings and she has a chance for adult conversation for the first time in about ten hours. Immediately when you hear "not much, what are you up to?", run over to her and say "Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy" (while poking her in the butt with a finger) increasing your volume until she is convinced you need an ER trip. When she rushes to get off of the phone, say "watch me do something!" and jump 2 inches off of the ground, then run off.

6) Defy all odds and snuggle up to Mommy and tell her you love her and give her kisses and break her heart with your perfection, ensuring a baby #3 someday.

I DO realize that these would either be some of the largest dice in history, or maybe the tiniest writing on dice in history. I've decided I'm okay with that.

So what would YOUR lovebug's dice say?

I'm back!! And better than ever!

Thanks to my SUPER creative friend, Angela, who made me this adorable banner!! How cute is this?!?! She rocks! Thanks, Ang!

So, I've been like the world's slowest blogger lately. I think of things to blog about, then I think "Oh my word, no one wants to hear me talk about THAT" and talk myself out of it. I'm a goofball. BUT, my sweet Prince Charming bought me a laptop yesterday, so I have a feeling I'll be blogging more frequently now that I can do it from the comfort of my couch while I'm watching Suite Life with my girls!!!

On the potty news front, I'm happy to report that the Hurricane has been wearing big girl panties all weekend with minimal accidents! She finally GETS it! My baby is growing up! :*)