CINDERELLY

Cinderella has become the latest favorite movie in our house. Yes, even Ethan. He LOVES the mice. He watches Gus trying to pick up ALL those pieces of corn while the cat is stalking him and he laughs his ASS off. We need to record some good old Tom & Jerry for that boy because he will eat it up.

HALLOWEEN

More on the making of Jocelyn’s costume (can you tell I’m very proud of my accomplishments?). We had bought her a costume which had a white hat and a cow-spotted vest and little fringey wrist thingees. “Eh,” I thought at the time, but there you go. Later we found her a pink cowboy hat, which she’s been wearing everywhere, and so when I was in the fabric store and saw a little pamphlet on making a fringed bag with fleece, the lightbulb went on.

I bought some pink fleece, and then I got a little jean jacket for her on sale at Target and took an old pair of her pants (sized 24 months, it’s amazing they even fit her, seeing as how everything she wears is 3T at this point), and sewed on some hot pink fringe. Ethan kept trying to convince me to cut the fringe off. He was sure I just didn’t know what he was talking about, because obviously, once I understood, I would jump at the chance, so he got paper and scissors, cut some paper fringe, and then made me watch as he snipped off all the fringe to make confetti. “See mommy?! Come on! Let’s do it!”

Even though Ethan’s design point of view was thwarted, I am pretty proud of her outfit. I had to hand sew most of the fringe onto the bottom of her jeans, as the pantleg was too narrow to fit around the bottom of the machine, and my machine was on the fritz to begin with (couldn’t get the tension correct) and by the time I had to resort to hand sewing, it was waiting by the door to go get repaired. She was definitely the belle of the ball last night:

Fashion fashion fashion! (IE: new cheap shoes)

I have a new pair of shoes that I got for 20 bucks at target. I call them my tarty school marm shoes.

Because they have that klunky blocky (that is so popular this decade*) librarian school marm look paired with a 3 inch heel. This is very high for me. VERY HIGH. In fact, I wore them around my office for a day (w/out wearing them outside) because I was positive I would have to take them back because my feet would die from them being too high. I can manage a 2″ or even a 2 1/2″ heel, but these suckers are HIGH (again, high for ME). I am amazed that I can totally wear them. Even in Costco (lots of walking around). Wow! ME! Tarty! Who knew??
*and yet you’d never see one on Sex and the City and Stacey London always wants to set them on fire. Perhaps I should rethink my choices….. NAH.

So I quite like my new shoes. Which is nice, because remember when I lost my wallet at TJ Maxx? Looking at shoes? Dreaming of shoes? Spent the next month WANTING CUTE SHOES? Well, I went back (a month and a half later) because those nice shoes kept swimming around in my head and I WANTED THEM DAMMIT and they had NO cute shoes. I was heart broken. So when I found cute 20 dollar shoes, I found some solace. However, they ARE cheap.. which means…. Stinky feet. Cheap shoes means manmade plasticy materials that make my feet sweat instead of breathing, and sweat = STINK. My tarty school marm shoes are very stinky. That’s the only downside to cheap shoes. That, and they fall apart in a year. I have a pair of heeled sandals that my mother bought me at Nordstrom that I’ve had for .. oh gosh, I’m old, probably 13 years that only JUST gave up the ghost this past summer (and I’m not yet giving up that they’re not really ok, just a flesh wound, they’re going for a walk, in just a moment.. they feel HAPPEEEEEE….. ahem).

So. Stinky, tarty, school marm shoes. I like em:

Let me say for the record, that only his daughter could get him to do this. It was nothing *I* said, trust me. That girl has got her daddy wrapped around her finger. JUST AS SHE SHOULD. So of course, I dived for the camera.
SADNESS

I wasn’t going to post anything about this, but most of our friends read this (or have spouses that do), and I think people would like to hear.. James had to say goodbye to his dog last Saturday. He and his sister Sandi adopted Cydney, a sweet black lab, when they were in college at VA Tech. She was probably about 11-12 years old. I call her our time share dog, because sometimes we have her, and sometimes Sandi has her. It’s a very convenient arrangement when vacations roll around. Erm. It was. 🙁 She broke her UC ligament a few months ago and has gone downhill snce then. We hadn’t seen her since before the accident, but James went and picked her up last Wednesday. We were a little shocked to see the condition she was in. Unable to walk easily, shivering, sores all over her body from her licking and worrying away at herself. She was not a happy dog. Friday when James came home, she had thrown up a few times. He called Sandi, and Saturday morning, they all met at the vet’s office and said goodbye. It was for the best. But it was a sad day.

We miss you, Cydney.

– amy

First off, I had a whole thing going where I was taking photos all through the creating part of jocelyn’s costume. then my sewing machine broke and that went to hell. But here’s a few:

But enough of that. Let’s get to the actual Halloween photos themselves:

And now. I’m going to bed. the sugar high has crashed and I am falling over asleep. G’nite.

– amy dreams of Almond Joy. And of having a pair of those cowgirl pants for herself.

so this past weekend has been a busy busy one. I actually dreamed Saturday morning that it was halloween night and I hadn’t made Jocelyn’s costume, and couldn’t find her boots and the people that opened the door to her were like, “Uhhh… what is she supposed to be?” James said it sounded like those dreams he has of not finishing his homework in time. Ergh. – Random tangent. Whenever I was sick and had those messed up feverish dreams in high school, I was always doing math problems. Trying to solve for X, what was X? Lines and lines of working out the 2 sides of an algebraic problem trying to find x in that weird dreaming state where everything is surreal and yet you can feel the pencil gripped tightly in your hand as you cancel out the +2 on both sides, etc. You would think this means that algebra was my worst nightmare, but the opposite was true. I love math. Tangent over.

So this weekend I made Jocelyn’s costume, broke my sewing machine (it is now “out of timing” according to the repairman) had to hand sew the last bits, made gingerbread cookies for Ethan’s class, along with other non-time-pertinent things. We all went to Costco (where miraculously, Ethan NOR Jocelyn saw the rows and rows of toys and demanded to be driven down them) to get more floor padding stuff to go under the laminate flooring in the basement, which I am finally trying to get going on again. There is a sad corner of about 6′ by 3′ that is started on. It is going to be a pain in the ass just because of how much shit we have in that room. Not really anywhere to move it to, so it’s tricky. The nice thing about laminate is as soon as part of it is laid, you can put stuff on it right away. I just need to get some done so some stuff can be moved over onto it to make room for the rest of the floor to be laid. It’s a catch 22.

Anyway, I was all nervous about remembering the items that needed to get done for Halloween and the kids’ school “Masquerade” party. This is because I guess Halloween is evil and they don’t want to celebrate it. So instead, they make masks and have a party the DAY BEFORE HALLOWEEN. That’s right. THe party was Monday. When did I think it was? Today, of course. HALLOWEEN. Ergh. So even though we HAD the cookies all made for Ethan’s party (gingerbread cookie cutouts no less, not just drop cookies) and HAD the bag of candy for Jocelyn’s party (someone else had already signed up for cupcakes, so I grabbed candy), I thought the party was on Tuesday. And so nothing went in to school. Ethan was sad that there weren’t any cookies at his class party. Jocelyn was kind of oblivious, and kept calling the bag of candy, “MY BIRTHDAY PARTY! I WANT MY BIRTHDAY PARTY!” (“You mean your MASQUERADE PARTY CANDY, honey.” “YEAH! MY PARTY CANDY! MY BIRTHDAY PARTY CANDY!” Bah.)

Anyway. Kind of bummed. After the kids were in bed, and we had watched 2 fraking episodes of Battlestar Galactica (we’re still on season 1), I sighed.

me: “I can’t beleive the parties were today. I mean, I made cookies! I bought candy! You would think the damn party would be tomorrow, ON HALLOWEEN.”

james: “Yeah. That sucks.”

me: *sigh* “I’m a bad mother.”

james: *flips a page in his magazine.*

me: *glares at him*

james: *totally oblivious. FINALLY looks up. sees me looking at him.*

me: *gives him a more obvious glare, that says, “welllllll?”*

james: *the cogs finally start to turn in his head* finally he blurts out, “You’re not a bad mother.”

me: *glancing down at my pretend watch on my wrist*

james: *blush*

me: “You are fired.”

The boy plays hard:

the girl is dainty

they’re very cute

The boy loves to build. Wooden train track layouts, GeoTrax train track layouts, or just blocks, the boy just looooves to build. Here is the latest engineering feats from the offices of Ethan P., Architect. I’m saving the lego creations for another day.

For the record, we have 3 GeoTrax sets – the Workin Town Railway, the Mt. Blast Construction Co, and the Cross Valley Junction. The wooden tracks…. Hmm. A whole crapload of the very simple Ikea tracks, which comes with 1 engine and 3 cars.. I think we have 3 of those sets total, and then a miscelaneous assortment of tracks that came with his train table from Costco, made by KidCraft.

Also for the record, I don’t recommend the KidCraft train sets from Costco. The official layout was too tricky to be put together by Ethan, at about 2 1/2. The risers for the higher level tracks had to be positioned JUST SO, right where two tracks connected, and then if it was shifted at all, one of the tracks would fall, causing chaos, and sometimes *gasp*, trains falling to their doom and little disappointed sighs and frustrated exclamations of, “IT FELL MOMMY! I NEED HELP!!” It really forces the user to be “careful” while playing lest the layout fall apart, which is asking way too much of a toddler.
A few of the key pieces (the 2nd story bus station) broke only a month into our ownership which made building the layout that it was intended for very difficult (couldn’t really build the layout without the 2nd level bus track. The track went up a hill to… nothing.) It also had a “control tower” that broke after 5-6 months. Some of the smaller pieces were falling apart all the time as well. Our set came with two wooden airplanes, and the wings and tail pieces were always falling off and had to be glued back on. It seemed there was always one small piece or two on the counter waiting to be fixed, or waiting for the glue to dry so they could go back into circulation. This was 2 years ago though, so maybe the sets are sturdier now. The tracks themselves however are doing fine and are still in heavy rotation, especially the track switcher pieces, and the crossing gate pieces (although the plastic gate pieces are barely hanging on). The set also has a huge amount of little pieces that Ethan uses sometimes, the people, the trees, the signs, the plane, the landing strip for the plane..

The table has served us very well, but the bottoms were constantly falling out of the trundle drawers, and sliding them back under the table was always problematic. They were large and heavy, with heavy caster wheels, and when you slid them under the table, they had to be perfectly straight or they’d hit the back table legs, and then you had to work it forward and try to angle it back correctly and blah. Way too hard for toddlers. I replaced them with big plastic bins that were much easier for little hands and muscles to manuver.

All that being said, I just looked at the KidKraft set Costco has for this year, and damn, it looks cool. Ethan would LOVE it 🙂 A STEAMROLLER! A CRANE! I can see I am NOT going to be able to take Ethan with me to Costco after Halloween. Still, I see that the track risers have to be EXACTLY in the right place on those high tracks. If they would just toss in a bunch of extra risers that you could use as additional support, it would do a lot for useability. The track “hills” are not the right height for a typical block, so they can’t even be reinforced that way. I could have dealt with the broken pieces and the heavy trundles if the set was actually easy to USE. It’s too bad really, the new set looks super cool. KidCraft can definitely get the imagination working though, and I did always love that they were all made of wood. Nice to get a break from the plastic stuff. (Now if only the pieces wouldn’t FALL APART…)
Wow, I got off on a tangent there. But Christmas is coming, so this little review might come in handy for parents of toddlers!

– amy

i feel like there’s so much to catch up on when I don’t post for a while. and i have to have scads and scads of time in order to post “properly”. and then i get into a huge downward cycle because I don’t really have scads of time, and if i don’t detail how i spent each of my days in blissful ignorance of the internet and this website and blah blah blah then i’m a bad blogger person and who needs that kind of pressure?

So i’m taking this few seconds of time, and posting anyway! (the moral of this story is i need to post regularly!)

1. Ethan said on the way home today, “Do you realize that I can …” I don’t remember the rest of the sentence. I was boggling that he used “realize” correctly. The boy is four. Do you realize the boy is four? The mind boggles.

2. Jocelyn says “poop” for both peeing and pooping. She was sitting at the table eating dinner last night and announced that she was going poop. I doubted it, but thought the poop must be on it’s way. I finally convinced her to try sitting on the potty when I realized that she had probably peed while sitting at the table. We obviously need to work on differentiating between #1 and #2. It’s kind of funny because we’ve had no success in peeing on the potty whatsoever, but she’s managed to poop a couple of times. This is the exact opposite of how it worked for Ethan, who was in underwear and peeing in the potty with ease, but would not poop anywhere except in his diaper, at naptime or in the morning before the nighttime diaper came off.

3. Because Jocelyn was sitting on the potty, all of a sudden Ethan realized that HE needed to go, and I told him he’d have to go upstairs. So off he went, and after I gave up on Jocelyn, I went up to check on him (I was feeling pretty frazzled and spoke curtly to him, so I wanted to make sure he was doing all right). He was sitting on the toilet and he asked me to stay with him so I sat on the edge of the tub while he pooped.

“Sometimes the poop comes right out Mommy. Sometimes it doesn’t though. If it doesn’t come out, even after you wait a bit, then you have to poop hard. I can poop REALLY hard, mommy. I’m a great hard pooper.”

Sometimes you just hear yourself say things like, “You sure are, you are a fantastic pooper.” before you even realize it. And then you sort of float up above yourself and look down and laugh.

4. After the non-pooping on the potty last night, when we got Jocelyn up this morning, she was poopy. She had pooped in her diaper sometime during the night. ARGH.

5. I was sick over the weekend. I’m doing much better now, but Friday night I went to bed with that feeling that I was not going to be healthy the next day. And sure enough, I was not. It was just a cold, but it was a cold from hell. I spent the morning on the couch, but then moved back upstairs to bed and dozed off and on the rest of the day with about 50 lbs of blankies on me. Poor James had to entertain the kids, direct the carpet cleaners, entertain the kids some more, and get them all into bed, because I was pretty much out of it. Sunday there was much less fever, but a pounding headache still most of the day along with the sore throat and weird high stuffed up sinuses (the nose was clear, it was higher up. I know that sounds weird. I can’t explain it any better except think behind the eyeballs/cheekbones.)

5.5 Getting our carpets cleaned was the best $100 bucks we’ve ever spent. We are so doing this every 6 months. I am kicking myself for not doing it sooner. James wanted to. I held back. I have no idea why. Because I am INSANE. James, you were right. So, so right. I was so very very wrong. Hold this over me at your leisure, for years and years to come. OH JOYOUS CLEAN CARPETS!

6. The only good thing about being sick is not worrying about WW points. in fact, on saturday i was afraid from time to time i was going to lose the small bits of food i did eat. Monday’s weigh in showed a loss of 3.5 lbs, for a TOTAL loss of 10.5 lbs. While it is cool to have hit that 10 lb milestone, I know it’s because of the near fast for Saturday and Sunday.. and that means that I probably just lost muscle, which is never good. I’m not sure what this will mean for this week. Does the body try to compensate? Will it go into starvation mode and save every little thing I eat? I guess we’ll see. I will be happy if I merely maintain this week, though of course, having a loss will be nice too. So… I guess I am cautiously enthusiastic. I am out of the 260s! That is cause for celebration! I want to STAY out!

7. work is very busy. I am so behind on blog reading lately. I *think* i’m caught up on people I actually know (have actually met in real life) but the rest of my blogroll is woefully neglected. maybe tomorrow night I can read through it. I love reading blogs, so it will be nice to settle in for some reading.

8. Craftiness has turned to crocheting. I bought the sweetest little crochet dress pattern, and am crocheting it for the little lady expected in this household sometime in February. I thought when I bought it, that it would take a while, but it is going surprisingly fast. I think I’ll be done this next weekend. I would like to learn how to knit. I went to a knitting group tonight, taking my crochet project with me, and I must say, the knitting talk was fairly intimidating. I can’t wrap my head around how knitting actually WORKS. Crocheting is very easy to understand (at least in my mind) but knitting is a complete mystery. Guess we’ll see, after this crochet project. The ladies at the group were great. It’s too bad they meet on days when James is usually in class. Today he had off, I think because of Columbus day. maybe next semester he’ll have Tuesdays off and I can go regularly. I need one closer to home though. Time to look around. Maybe start my own?

9. Monday I had off, and I met James and Kurt for lunch. where I realized, that the dull throbbing headache I had ( and had the day before, and the day before ) was probably NOT a result of the illness invading my body. It was actually caffeine withdrawal. Last week I realized the diet coke situation was getting out of hand (i’m ashamed to say how much I was consuming) and cut down drastically. Monday, I sat in the restaurant looking at James and Kurt’s caffeinated beverages and it struck me like a 24 case of Diet Coke, that gee, maybe this headache was from the no caffeine! When my body is used to getting it! Daily! I mused on whether Day 3 of no caffeine would be near the end of the withdrawal symptoms, or maybe only halfway through, and maybe I should push through the withdrawal symptoms, but after deliberating on it through the rest of the meal, I decided I didn’t care because I don’t actually want to give it up, just cut it down to a normal amount. So, I got a diet coke right as we were finishing up. It had a lot of ice, and it was a normal sized glass, so probably about 8 oz of DC in there.

And by the time I got home, my headache was gone.

10. I’m totally swimming around in the gloriousness of NewsRadio on DVD from Netflix. The cast was so good. the writers were so good. the show was SO FUNNY! I love every character on that show. It’s so rare to find an actual FUNNY ensemble cast. usually it’s got a few stars, and then supporting cast members. I keep thinking of WKRP, which my mother loved when I was little, and as a result, I’ve seen every episode (multiple times!) – that was another great ensemble cast. Another one – Coupling on the BBC. Definitely check that one out. I still hold that it is the funniest thing that is/has been on TV. EVER!! but yeah, love me some NewsRadio. And the commentaries are pretty insightful as well.

OK. I’m done. That was much longer than a few seconds. And I think I even got out all that has been on my mind. It feels so good to just have a good mind vomit!

-amy just lets the wookie win.

THE WEEKEND

was wonderful. The lovely Linda came down for the weekend and much was discussed. I held her hostage, forced her to cut halloween decorations and trace dollie patterns, working her like a slave with only gruel & water butternut squash risotto and beer in exchange. And then I FORCED her to sit out in the sun on our deck and read the paper. The news of our executive branch of government alone could have killed her. I AM BRUTAL!

THE KIDS

are cute as punch. I can’t think of any stories now, except perhaps when Ethan asked Daddy to color something in on the kid’s menu at Bertucci’s. When Daddy declined, Ethan heaved a sigh as if to say, “Oh bother, why can’t ANYONE DO WHAT I ASK THEM?!!! OH THE HORROR!” ok so i did think of a cute story.

THE WEIGH IN

was a success with another 1.5 lbs gone. I am scared. I know I thought that it was hard getting back into this, but if you’ve been reading this blog, or the archives at all, you will have seen a trend. A trend of me being ALL GUNG HO! I CAN DO IT! YAY ME! and then petering out around, hmm… when was it?? OH RIGHT, RIGHT ABOUT THIS POINT IN THE JOURNEY. I don’t wnat that to happen. I AM NOT GOING TO LET THAT HAPPEN. I *think* that I’ve had a couple hard weeks in the last month, but I know I’m heading striaght into the place in my head where I am really going to want to just toss in the towel. I need to keep my game face on. I HAVE to keep my head in the game. NO COMPLACENCY. Just because I made it this far (gee, a whole 7 lbs) doesn’t mean that I can relax, because apparently, whenever I relax, I lose my willpower.

I have not yet begun to fight!! BRING IT ON!

Um….

But not too much. K?

THE WORK STUFF

I am coming up on my 1 year anniversary at work, and was idly wondering about the usual evaluation/review stuff that goes on. So I looked it up on the HR site and found out I was supposed to have one halfway into my 6 month probation period (never happened). And that they don’t do them on the employee’s anniversary date, but in jan or july, depending on that anniversary date. Soooooo… to make a long story short, I was supposed to be reviewed in July, and so I’ll probably be reviewed sometime this month to make up for it, and if I get a raise it will be retroactive to July.

I’ve already spent it in my head on booze and hos.

THE TV STUFF (no spoilers, just for you Hilly! Even though you’re probably caught up by now)

I JUST NOW watched last week’s project runway. I was DYING with anticipation. OMG I love that show. I can’t wait to see the reunion show this week. We also watched the 2 new episodes of The Office. Excellent. Love love love that show. Still need to watch Gilmore Girls, which I just can’t bring myself to watch because I know it will make me so sad – I may build up a few shows so that I can watch them all in a row and hopefully end on a happy note. Also need to watch Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Love Aaron Sorkin. Own the Sports Night (GO PUT IT ON YOUR NETFLIX LIST!) DVDs. West Wing was awesome until Sorkin left. this is probably our most anticipated show this season.

And that’s really it as far as our/my tv watching goes.

Um. this was supposed to be quick and short. I’m off to bed.

-amy tosses salt over her shoulder.