June 2008

Well Felicity is sleeping through the night 3 out of 4 nights, YEAH!!! WOOHOO!!!! Do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight, woo! get down tonight, woo! Not only that but yesterday she said her first word, “mom” She’s been looking at me and saying it all day today. I’m like yeah! Seporah’s first word was Dada, so it’s only right that I get to be Felicity’s first word.

When Steven and I were first married there was this huge sale of mac and cheese at Albertson’s. Mac and cheese was 20¢. We bought 4 cases worth, each case had 24 in it. Then my parents bought us a case. Then my visiting teachers bought us a case. That’s 144 individual boxes of mac and cheese. It took us 6 years to eat it all (that’s approximately one every 15 days). We always had boxes and boxes of it. So we were surprised when we opened the cabinet and there was none there.

We went to the commissary and the off brand is $1.25 each. I just can’t bring myself to spend that much on mac and cheese when the last time I bought it I could have bought 6 boxes for the price of 1 now.

So Craig’s List is not working as fast as I would like. If you live near me and would like a mobile, a boppy, a baby mirror, a baby aquarium, 66 disney vcr tapes, 23 board books, a bird feeder, a swing or a child’s chair, come and get it. Call my cell phone, come and take it away. Please! 800 square feet is just too small.

Things I Normally Don’t Do:

1. Read romance novels, I mean come on, the women in them are all airheads and really you’re reading 300 pages for 10 in particular.
2. Heck just reading books in general, since I’ve had 2 small beings to take up my time, I’ve stopped reading most everything. Which is a shocker to anyone who knew me in my younger less children years, where I would read 3-5 a week.
3. Have anything to do with anything remotely scary. The Mummy (yes the one with Brendan Fraiser) use to give me nightmares. I watched The Ring 4 years ago for Steven’s 23rd birthday and I still can’t go into a dark room with a television by myself.
4. Fantasize over men, I mean I can literally count on 1 hand the men who have made me stop for a second look since I married my husband. I’ve got a good one, what’s the point.
5. Turn on the television so my children will not bug me and then ignore the dishes piling up, the laundry piling up, the trash piling up and the toys piling up while I read.
6. Stay up until 1am reading even though I know my daughters are early risers and I’ll be up by 6am.

All that’s changed thanks to Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. This would be a teenage romance (that’s means it’s plenty sensual without the sex) about vampires. Vampires, yeah don’t ask how I of all people found the book. Just realize it’s completely spellbinding. Enough so I haven’t done dishes since I started both it and it’s 2 sequels last week (the concluding book comes out August) and only minimal laundry and maintaining of the house. I’m also sleep deprived (by my own choice no less, having nothing whatsoever to do with the girls) and the girls have watched way too much TV.
Yeah, I just realized I didn’t tell you much about the book other than the fact it consumed me for a week, but yeah, go read it. Just tell everyone else around you, you’ll be out of commission until it’s done.

BTW, it’s also being made into a movie, it comes out in December.

So Felicity definitely has a rash and she’s had a fever for 2 days. It looks like chicken pox, and even though I am a pediatric nurse, I haven’t seen chicken pox since I actually had it 17 years ago, so what do I know. If it is, Seporah had the varicella vaccine, so she has a 80% chance of being immune.

Edited: Kay, no chicken pox, just a funky rash.

So I have no problem with the cry-it-out method, however the security guards do. So unfortunately that one is not an option. Felicity has slept through the night 4 times, but it’s very sporadic and believe me, each of the next mornings I have racked my brain and recreated the exact scene the night before to produce the same outcomes to no avail. So I decided to use another method.

It’s a bottle feeding method that I found online, but I figured it could work for her as well. So I put a bottle right by the sink and told Dad that when she woke up she would get a bottle of water and nothing else. The idea is 1, I would get sleep because it was now Dad’s job and 2, she would figure the water wasn’t worth waking up for and eventually stop waking up for it.

Well this idea worked even better than I thought because Felicity slept through the night without Dad even getting up for her. I’m not sure what brought more terror into Felicity’s mind: the bottle of plain water or the idea of Dad coming to visit in the middle of the night.

So for those of you that don’t know, we switched to cloth diapers about 3 months ago. I think it’s pretty cool honestly. But I’m not really going to go into a discussion about them. I really just wanted to tell anyone who wanted to know that the diapers we buy are currently being cleared out for a newer version and as such are cheaper. They’re Thirsties all-in-ones. Go to www.thirstiesbaby.com click on Shop Outlet, and there you go. Here’s an adorable picture of Felicity for inspiration.

There is so much less pressure exerted on Father’s Day than there is on Mother’s Day. I’m not sure exactly why, but I assume it’s because most Dads, like my Dad, are extremely forgetful and wouldn’t care if you forgot. Dads will go on their merry way and smile when you remember and laugh at the card you got from your 15 year old that said, “It’s said most girls marry men like their dads…if that’s true I’m on the lookout for a man who wears black socks with sandals.” It’s a total fashion disgrace.

My Mom calls my Dad The Screaming Marshmallow. As kids, when we got it trouble, it was my Dad who would warn us what he’d do when we were bad, but rarely ever did anything. His elephant memory would make him forget. So we’d get away with murder and then get ice cream afterwards (as long as mom wasn’t around).

My Dad made sure we went to church every Sunday. He has this weird I-have-to-be-twenty-minutes-early-to-everything syndrome, so we always had the best seats in the house (actually I don’t think anyone would have fought us for the front row seats truth be told).

My Dad can believe it or not can (kinda) cook. He use to always make this banana nut bread every Sunday and take it over to widows homes. He’d usually take one of us kids (probably to teach us a thing or two). Everytime we went over, these old ladies would know just who my Dad was and invite him in and they would chat for 15 minutes or so and he’d give them the bread. They’d always say “Thank your wife for the bread.” I asked my Dad why he didn’t say that he made the bread (it really was good) and he said it really didn’t matter who made the bread that he was just doing the Lord’s work.

I loved Daddy Daughter dates, those were awesome. We’d usually go out to eat. I remember we went out for my 9th birthday to this Mexican place and I got this cupcake at the end and got to wear a funny hat and was sung Happy Birthday to by all the waiters. It was pretty embarrassing, but since it was Dad, I also felt pretty special.

Now, our relationship is mostly phone based, I mean I am 3,000 miles away. My Dad is going pretty deaf (Mom said it happened when he was in Kuwait 2 years ago). Our conversations are hilarious. They’ll go something like this:
Me-I’m on my way to work.
Dad-You’re having a good day? That’s great!
Me-Yeah, it’s a good day.
Dad-What are you doing? Are you at home?
Me-I’m on my way to work.
Dad-What?
Me-I’M ON MY WAY TO WORK.
Dad-Work, oh, well I hope it’s great.

Yep that’s my dad, forgetful, black socks with sandals, I-have-to-be-twenty-minutes-early-to-everything syndrome, good servant, and going deaf. Which brings me to my next subject:

Steven. Well I really did marry a man just like my Dad. Steven’s forgetful, wears black socks with sandals, has I-have-to-be-twenty-minutes-early-to-everything syndrome, is a good servant, and is also going deaf (or maybe that’s selective hearing).

Steven is a great Dad, parenting is pretty much 50/50 at our house. He changes his share of diapers. He watches his share of girls. He has Moo, Baa, Lalala memorized (only occasionally needing some prompting from Seporah). He cooks a mean pizza. He cleans up toy, after toy, after toy. He puts the girls to bed better than I ever could. He also exclusively trims the girl’s fingernails (that’s one chore I do NOT do). He has so much more patience than their Mom does. He also takes care of their Mom and believe me, I would know, she needs it. And perhaps the most crowning achievement at the present moment: he helped Seporah use the potty for the very first time yesterday since starting potty training 6 months ago.

I probably don’t talk about Steven as much as I should. Yeah, Steven drives me crazy sometimes, but if he were ever gone, I don’t think I could do it. Because without Steven, I don’t have a clue how I would do this whole mom business. He really is the best Dad I could ever ask for for my children.

This was taken way back when Steven and I were engaged. Ahh, good times. Life was ever so much less complicated, less busy and less dirty. We had no idea.