I fantasize about a clean house.

If someone knocked on my door tomorrow and said “Two week long vacation on Tahiti, $10,000 or a tidy, well organized house?” I would be ALL OVER THE TIDY WELL ORGANIZED HOUSE.

Sure, I could make something happen with the $10K, but I’d probably just do something responsible with the money, like pay of school loans or get Cody a new car. Perhaps a fence or a deck. Or one of those college savings plans, surely those are more important than a clean and tidy house.

This photo? It was basically taken the day we moved in, before we had the time or energy to mess ANYTHING up.

Confession: organization is NOT my strong suit. Never has been, just ask my mom. It took Addie 6 hours, three crying fits and me using my bossy mom voice at least a dozen times for her to end up with what could be considered a relatively clean room on Saturday. The thing is, the kid is JUST LIKE ME. I couldn’t keep my room clean with the promises or threats of anything. Addie is the same way. Take something away? “That’s fine, I didn’t like it all that much anyway.” Ground her? “It’s cool, I’ll just sit here and read.” Take her books away? “No worries mom, I’ll just play with my carpet.” I once asked her to clean the loft, two hours later not a single misplaced toy had been put away, but 100 DVDs had been alphabetized and arranged by genre.

*slumps over*

You would think I could get things done during the day, while Addie is at school. But there’s this other little person running around undoing everything I just did. I couldn’t find my underwear today which was really strange because who loses underwear? Turns out Vivi had snuck it out of my drawer and shoved it in the dryer. It wouldn’t have been so bad had a dryer repairman not come over this afternoon had to ask “Ma’am? Could you please, uh, remove the…uh, laundry from your dryer?” I debated for a long time which was worse, being called “ma’am” by a guy my dad’s age or a guy my dad’s age getting a face full of my underpants?

I like work, I have a nice tidy little checklist right over there and as I get things done I can cross each one out feeling very accomplished. While “laundry” is currently checked off my real-life to do list, in a week laundry will be right up at the top begging my attention. So will the toilets (DUDE, what is with moldy toilets after three days in humid weather!?) and those stupid white spots on the mirror.

I’m convinced I’m missing the gene that qualifies people to be considered “put together.”

I grew up in a house where EVERYTHING (and I mean EVERYTHING) had a place, and if something dared to be out of place? So help you… My room must have caused my mother a thousand tiny deaths everyday. I have two photos of the fireplace in my old house taken nearly ten years apart, the only thing that changed? Me. Every other thing in the photo was in the EXACT same place. Every plant, every photo, every decoration. What went wrong?

Ladies and (a few) gentlemen…I am horribly disorganized. I’m a clutter-er.

There’s no squashed cats under anything, nor is there dead or rotting food anywhere in the house. Basic needs are met, clean clothes exist, beds are made half the time, bills get paid, honestly you couldn’t really point out anything absolutely disgusting. It’s just chaos, clutter, half completed projects, boxes, and the toddler doesn’t help. (Neither does the seven year old version of her mother.)

I’m tired. I need my mom. Perhaps Nate Berkus. I’m overwhelmed. I really want to eat my feelings.

But really I just wanted to put this out there lest you think I’m one of those women living a very well styled and fancy existence. I won’t apologize for my house because it is lived in and occupied by a very happy family. But I also won’t lie to you and give you the illusion that I have my $%&# completely together.

Because I totally don’t.

Thanks for listening.

Addie calls nipples ‘nibbles’ and if anyone ever corrects her I will choke you. She also calls pulp ‘plup’ please don’t correct her on this one either.

Vivi has started pushing her hair out of her face and it’s pretty much the most adorable thing she does at the moment (because it never, ever works.) She’s also picking up on more words, but only Cody and I speak her language. Our current favorite is they way she says ‘bunny’ it’s not even a word so much as a sound that a robot baby would make if it were trying to say ‘bunny.’ I keep trying to get it on video but no dice just yet.

Over at Toddler Times:

Vivi got her first salon blowout. Because that’s obviously what babies need.

She likes to sit in puddles, fully dressed, in the middle of parking lots.

Cody’s a good dad. Like, super good.

When Vivi and Addie play in the rain (which later turns to a puddle sitting obsession.)

Have you seen the Disney Toddler clothes at Target? WHOO. These are not cheesy character clothes AT ALL. (Why don’t they come in my size?)

A history of Vivi’s fairly epic baby hair.

Also, this photo:

How’s your week going? It’s pretty gloomy around these parts.

Cody and I both wrote posts about our views on Addie getting her first phone, we didn’t discuss it first, we just wrote. You can find my post here.

I don’t know how many times Addie has asked me while we’re at the store if we can run back to the toy section so she can look at the Monster High texting toy.  With each request my heart hardens a bit more and more to the idea of my daughter having a cellphone.

Call me a traditionalist or extremist, but I see these 10-year-old kids walking the halls of the mall with their friends while their heads are buried in their cellphones anxiously and aggressively typing out text messages and it drives me nuts.  When I was their age I used to walk 6 miles to school uphill both ways with six feet of snow covering the walkway at all times of the year.

Okay, so not one bit of that was true other than the fact that I did walk the 6 miles home from school whenever I forgot to make my bed in the morning and my mom refused to pick me up after football practice because of it.  Anyway, the point is that kids in my day didn’t have cellphones and here I am, alive with a family and career.  Cellphones?  Shmelphones.

Continue reading “he said: addie and a cell phone.”

Cody and I both wrote posts about our views on Addie getting her first phone, we didn’t discuss it first, we just wrote. You can find his post here.

My dad had a smart phone four years before I even had a smart phone. It wasn’t until January of this year that Cody and I finally decided that I was busy enough with work and the girls to justify investing in one. Cody just got his first smart phone two weeks ago.

You could say we were a little behind the times, especially considering the average age for a child’s first phone is 12.1 and of the children who do have phones, 34% of them have smart phones.

We just never saw the need, all we ever did was call or text each other. I was either at home or out with friends and Cody was either at work or at home with me. It just wasn’t an expense we could justify until recently.

Continue reading “she said: kids and cell phones”

I think I’ve mentioned before that I cry when good things happen.

When bad things happen I just get kind of quiet and internally miserable.

I spent the last few days in San Diego California with the very lovely Leah, there was supposed to be a group of us gathered together at her home for the weekend talking about our hopes, dreams, fears and favorite ice cream flavors. But life happened and one by one the other participants dropped off.

Except for me and my non refundable, non transferrable flight.

“I’m coming no matter what.” was my reply.

The two of us talked about our hopes, dreams, fears, kids, parents, and we even touched lightly on ice cream flavors (yes Leah, peanut butter DOES want to be in ice cream.) We wandered through the most abundant farmer’s market I’ve ever been to, we bought fresh eggs, ate heirloom tomatoes so flavorful I actually ate them by the mouthful (and I’ve never liked tomatoes in my life.) We tried something called lemon quark that has pretty much changed my life in whatever way a cheese can change your life.

As fate would have it, Disney had one of their cruise ships at port in San Diego and through Babble I was able to get onboard for a tour and a lovely lunch. Hello magic on the ocean, you lookin’ fine. (I cried three times on the boat, maybe once more because they made us get off.) Later that night we ate crab out of buckets while watching the sunset over the Pacific.

It was not a terrible way to spend a Friday at all.

Saturday morning we were going to poke around Old Town San Diego, eat some food and enjoy each other’s company when a line from an email I had received late the night before popped into my head.

“Be sure to let us know if you’re ever headed to Disneyland!”

The night before I brushed it off, I live in Indiana, we won’t be headed to Disneyland anytime soon. *sad trombone* You see, I had emailed the Disney employee (Hi Chris! Walk and talk! Walk and talk!) to thank him for hosting me on the ship that day. I was feeling especially grateful to be there since all the other lovely ladies on the tour were local to the area and had far more opportunity to interact with Disney than I have ever had. He wrote me back and told me about his wife’s birthday at Disneyland and how much fun he had being back onboard the ship as well, he closed with “Let us know if you’re ever headed to Disneyland!”

“Leah? Would you want to go to Disneyland today?”

“Uh. Sure?”
Through several somewhat confusing (on my part due to the excitement of OMGYAYDISNEYLAND! being a possibility) interactions, I got in contact with Chris and said “We’re headed to Disneyland! YAY!” We were going regardless of what Chris replied with, but bless his Long Island heart he replied with “There’s three park hopper passes waiting for you at Guest Relations.”

!!1!!YAYDISNEYLANDZ!!!11

Leah and her adorable husband Joe agreed that I had the excitement of a 10 year old in a 30 year old body which is probably totally true although I would argue 7 year old because have you met Addie?

There was some guilt that my husband and two small children were back home in Indiana while I was on Splash Mountain and winking at Goofy, but I told myself it was research, RESEARCH! Oh you guys, it was so much fun. The ambient noise of Disneyland is one of the most soothing noises in existence and the smell on Main Street? The one that smells like popcorn, candy, dreams and wishes? It’s easily my most favorite smell in the world. I cried, naturally, but I kept my sunglasses on to mask my joy lest I make anyone else uncomfortable with my enthusiasm.
After only 15 minutes even Leah, who I could tell was wildly skeptical about spending a day at Disneyland on a total whim, admitted to feeling things.

Shireen once said that if she has a raincloud over her head, I have a rainbow throwing out sprinkles with a unicorn leaping over it (or something to that effect) and it’s kind of completely true. Say what you want about Disney, Disneyland, Disneyworld and Disney cruises, but y’all? This world needs that kind of magic. This world needs streets that smell of cotton candy and caramel apples. This world needs princesses, giant dog costumes and happy smiling faces at every turn. This world needs fireworks every night and a place where responsible adults can walk around in ridiculous hats with ears and be considered completely normal.

Disney is where that stuff happens.

Perhaps if you’re a curmudgeon you’ve never noticed that no matter how grouchy people are after waiting in line for an hour for a four minute ride, they always come off windblown with happiness. We went on three rides Saturday, each with an hour long line. We maybe spent 15 minutes total on the actual rides but came out inexplicably happy from all three and those three hours we spent in line are just remembered as time we spent hanging out together as friends.

Thank you Leah for inviting me to your home, thank you Cody for letting me go, thank you Babble for passing my name along to Disney Cruise Lines, thank you Disney Cruise Lines for letting me tour your ship, thank you Chris for hosting us, planting the Disneyland idea and providing us with passes, thank you everyone else for canceling so I could spend the day with my friends at Disneyland, thank you Disneyland for being that place for me, and thank you to Joe for driving and taking such good care of both your lovely wife and me while I was in your home. (Also, a big thanks to Leah and Joe for just rolling with this Indiana girl’s crazy idea of “I KNOW! LET’S GO TO DISNEYLAND!”)

On Friday I told the cashier at GapKids “You know what’s going to happen here? My seven year old is going to wear this dress with these tights and declare that she matches, because EVERYTHING MATCHES!”

The cashier smiled at me and told me she used to be teacher, “I could always which days the kids dressed themselves.”

Sure enough, the first thing Addie did was pair her new dress with her new tights as well as her new-ish back to school sweater:

In case you can’t see her (with all the cat-ouflage) she’s on the left, in head to toe leopard print with purple patent leather shoes (We battled for an hour over how badly she thought she NEEDED! leopard print shoes.)

Last night we went to PetSmart and scared the everloving crap out of a chinchilla, can you just hear his little chinchilla mind freaking the freak out at the thought of a leopard staring him down?

She’s so funny, always in her own little world where everything is wonderful and apparently very matchy matchy.

I hope you all get a chance to meet her someday, she’s simply wonderful.

***********

Over at Shutterlovely:

I’ve lost 10 pounds and learned an awful lot.

When is a marriage worth fighting for?

SO! Big changes around here, I retired from Disney Baby, while it’s an absolutely beautiful site and just the kind of thing I like to be a part of, it was a giant stretch for me to try and go back into baby and pregnancy mode when I am very much in toddler and very NOT pregnant mode. If you are pregnant or have a small tiny baby, be sure to check in on all my friends over there, lovely stuff they’re creating.

BUT! Since I am living toddler day to day, I’ve now joined Babble’s Toddler Times for 5 times the toddler talking action. Here’s what I’ve laid down over yonder so far:

• Vivi wears boy pajamas, because gorillas in space suits are way cooler than all the pink stuff available for girls.
• When procuring a lovey, be sure to buy a spare, or four, like we did. Especially if it’s a hard to come by lovey.
• Ever wonder what it’s like to live with Vivi? THIS IS WHAT IT’S LIKE. Her entire existence at this moment summed up in one glorious photo.
• Shopping with a toddler, there always seems to be tears no matter how I approach the errand.
• That bruise between my eyes? That’s from a metal sippy cup that was lobbed at my noggin by Vivi. QUIT THROWING THINGS LITTLE HUMAN.
• Addie calls nipples nibbles and Vivi likes to poke my nibbles. *sigh* Motherhood.
• 10 things about Vivi in her 16th month (#4, she’ll shank you for a strawberry.)
• I introduced myself. But you probably already know who I am, since you’re here. If you’re here by accident, HI DON’T GO I LOVE YOU!

Even better? Those slideshows EVERYONE hated (me included?) THEY ARE NO LONGER! Well, I mean, there’s still slideshows, but the whole page no longer refreshes with each click! Just the photo changes! AAAHHH! It’s amazing! It’s moving forward! PROGRESS!

Hope you’re well. We’re just dandy around these parts, I found cute boots that fit around my calves! WHOO!

xoxo