and then there were four…

Tonight during their bath, Sophia picked up the plastic dinosaur that they both love to fight over and put him on his side inside of the soap dish. She looked over at me and *whispered* “Shhhh…dino-soar SEEPING.”

I almost keeled over from the cuteness.

Just now I heard over the baby monitor “Come on Sophia, wake up we can talk together and have SO MUCH FUN.”

I hated to go in there and shoo Olivia away from the edge of Sophia’s crib, but I really don’t need two awake children right now.

Even if it was so darn sweet I couldn’t stand it.

Advice to you all: Don’t take Benadryl (or the generic counterpart) for allergies during the day if you have anything to do other than falling into a deep coma. Never before has naptime seemed so short.

But I would bet anything if I took another two pills right now they would have the opposite effect and I would never sleep again. Risky gamble I’m not willing to take.

Flink for your troubles: Muppets singing Bohemian Rhapsody

• Why Sophia insists upon sticking her fingers all the way up her nose and (seemingly) into her brain cavity while uttering (over and over again) “NOSE…NOSE…NOSE…”
• Why Olivia finds it necessary to put her sister’s feet into her mouth. She claims “she wanted to smell and taste them.”  But I remain skeptical.
• Why Sophia will run around screaming  “POOOOP” while wearing a clean diaper, but  9 times out of 10 does not let us know when she actually has a “POOOOP” diaper.
• How Olivia managed to find the ONE non-washable crayon that somehow got put into her crayon bag (Damn restaurant crayons!) and managed to use it to scribble on her walls. Thank goodness for Magic Erase sponges.
• How both girls know, almost instinctively, when our bedroom or bathroom door hasn’t closed all the way.
• Why Sophia loves to grab the toilet brush and “scrub” the toilet, but it takes me forever to get her to clean up after herself.
• How they both manage to find one speck of food left on the floor from a week ago and ingest it.
• Why food somehow tastes better after it has been left on the floor for a couple of hours, and leftover cups of milk from dinner the night before (that somehow escaped the nighttime clean-up sweep) somehow seem delicious first thing in the morning.
• How and why dishes go missing when they were JUST on the table, being eaten on.

Olivia was sitting on the potty, trying to poop.

Bill: “Are you finished, Olivia?”
Olivia: “No Daddy, I just have a small poop. I need to get a big poop.”
Bill: “A big poop?”
Olivia: “Yeah, when the water splashes my butt it is a big poop.”

Yeah, I forgot to post last night.

In fairness, I’m not feeling 100%. We wound up not going to visit Bill’s family because he had really bad allergies and couldn’t fathom driving the 6-hour round-trip under his condition. I’m glad though, because I started having a really bad sore throat and felt like crap all day.

I didn’t go jean shopping, but I did go back to Old Navy and bought Olivia and Sophia their Christmas pajamas and four pairs of new socks each. I also bought Olivia 8 long-sleeved shirts because she needed new ones.

However, now I am feeling a little buyer’s remorse. Which is incredibly stupid because I got 8 shirts for under $40 with all the deals and discounts going on this weekend. But still…does she need that many new shirts? Granted, they will get double duty in our house because Sophia gets all of the hand-me-downs, so that helps cushion the financial aspect of it. I know I am overreacting, but I don’t want to her to have more clothes than she can wear. Although, having lots of shirts means I have to do laundry less often…which is a bonus.

I haven’t decided if I will keep them all, because I have to weed through all of her current shirts that may not fit her. She hates when I try to get her to try on clothes–so it will be a long and tedious weeding process.

Yes, I’m incredibly lame. I know.

I only bought the girls a pair of shoes apiece. I could have gotten them so much more, but I abstained.

For myself, I stayed practical: 2 comfy thermal shirts (thermal is apparently back?), 2 soft hoodies, 1 cute sweater, 1 thin super-soft long sleeved t-shirt. Total spent on myself: $60.

I wanted jeans. I tried on at least 20 different styles and brands of jeans.

I’m in between sizes so I refuse to buy up a size, since I currently have those sizes at home, and they sag really low off of my butt and, which prompts Bill to look at me and say “You need clothes that fit”. However, I am also not going to buy the other size if it is so tight my tummy is forming a shelf on which to sit my children. There were a few contenders, but I also refused to spend $40 on a pair of jeans that I was only lukewarm about.

I’m going to try again tomorrow when we go through the town that houses the GAP outlet on the way to visit Bill’s mom and grandparents.

A special thanks to Rachel for the Gap/OldNavy/Banana Republic coupon–I got that same email AND my good friend works at GapKids, so she hooked me up with one of those 30% coupons for the whole weekend–which means I have lots to spare. If anyone is interested, leave a comment and I’ll email the coupon to you. :o)

I have seen a few different shows about shopaholics. This week I saw the Secret Lives of Women episode that dealt with it and realized that if there is an exact OPPOSITE to a shopaholic, it would probably be me.

Don’t get me wrong, I like to shop, and I’ve written extensively how I love bargains, but I would never put my family in debt in order to buy a new pair of boots.

Obviously, these people have more problems than just overspending, underlying psychological issues that they are expressing with their overspending and shopping. I’m not attempting to belittle their issues. I’m just saying that I have a psychological problem that causes me to do the exact opposite. Or, I’m practical.

When my dad died my sister dealt with it by getting a tattoo. I was 9 months pregnant and wanted to buy everything in sight. But, I bought nothing. I had these urges to just spend money ridiculously, but I needed nothing. So I bought nothing.

Even my grieving process is practical. It’s ridiculous.

I used to have a job. In an office. Where I had to wear office clothes. So, I bought nice clothes and wore nice clothes. LOVED buying shoes. I haven’t bought a new shoe (other than flip-flops) in 3 1/2 years.

I take that back. I bought a pair of shoes to wear in my friend’s wedding.

I haven’t bought more than $150 worth of clothes in the past 3 1/2 years, aside from Maternity clothes.

This isn’t a poor, pitiful me thing, but it is sad.

I’m simple, and I feel that it is just a waste of resources to buy myself things when I really don’t need things. I’m a stay-at-home mom. I don’t need special clothes for this job. I grew up poor. I never want to go back, so it is hard for me to shop outside of the clearance rack or spend more money than I deem necessary for certain items. I’m not saying we don’t buy things, but when it comes to something totally 100% for me, I always have to think long and hard about any purchase over $20.

But, that being said, I haven’t taken care of myself as well as I should have. I always put all of my effort into having the girls looking perfect, having the best of everything, getting them ready and maybe (if I’m lucky) a brush will get thrown through my hair and my teeth will be brushed before we walk out of the door.

My thinking was that if I spent too much time on myself, that was taking away from what I could be doing for the girls.  I hate when I see the moms who are really primped wearing ridiculously expensive clothes while their kids are trailing behind them looking a hot mess. It makes me sad.

It never occurred to me that the opposite situation could make some people feel the same way. Maybe putting myself on the back burner gives ALL moms a bad name. I’m not projecting the immense happiness I feel when I see those two smiling faces or hear them learning new things, or hell, even when they drive me nutso they make me so happy because they are just everything a parent could ever want in children. Maybe I’m overthinking things, but there is something to be said about wearing something that makes you look good. You feel good. And when I feel good, I am on top of my parenting game. I like being on top of my game.

I’m not saying I need to buy thousands of dollars worth of clothes, but…maybe some jeans that aren’t two sizes too big, or shirts that don’t fall off of my shoulder.

Maybe I need to stop wearing my husband’s fucking hoodies and buy my own.

So dammit, tomorrow I’m going to try and find myself something pretty. Or, at least something functional that fits. I’m nothing if not practical.

I’m also going to buy the girls new shoes.

What? They need them!

One of my favorite things to do with Olivia and Sophia is to bake cookies. It is probably the messiest project we take on (aside from finger painting), but they get such a kick out of being able to eat their creations, that I can’t refuse a request to bake.

Every time Olivia finds out our afternoon activity is baking, she runs to her room and proclaims: “I need my chef’s hat and my apron, so I can be a chef!” Both girls have hats and aprons, and they wear them every time–it’s adorable.

This time, I decided to try my hand at Snickerdoodles. I’ve never made them before. Since I had no chocolate chips in the house, and we had JUST made sugar cookies with royal icing, I thought this would be an easy cookie to make.

Plus it would be an awesome way to break in my new beautiful early Christmas present from my Mother-in-Law:

Isn't it BEEEUUUTEEEFUL?

I searched for a good recipe, and came across the Perfect Snickerdoodles recipe. It had good reviews, so I decided to give it a try. Of course, I changed it up (that’s just what I do, okay?) and did half butter/half shortening and used baking powder instead of the cream of tartar and baking soda (thank you Alton Brown!) because I didn’t have any cream of tartar.

I allowed it to sit in the fridge for a few days because…well, because I was lazy (and no, I didn’t promise the girls we were making the cookies that day–I try to always follow through on promises of cookie baking). But when we finally got around to making the cookies, the dough looked like this:

MMM...cookie dough.

So I started rolling the dough into balls. No exact measurement, just good sized balls of dough.

Balls of dough. Nothing exciting.

At this point I had been handing some of the balls to the girls and they were rolling (or, in Sophia’s case, destroying) them into a tiny bowl of cinnamon sugar. This is why some of the dough balls look like they have cinnamon sugar on them–Olivia got handsy with the dough balls.

After lots of rolling in a cinnamon sugar mixture, I put them on a baking sheet and did something I won’t do again.

I squashed the balls.

DON'T try this at home.

The recipe doesn’t tell you to smoosh them down, but in my infinite wisdom, I assumed that you would need to. Olivia kept asking me “Why are you pushing them down, mama? Why do they need to be smooshed?” And I kept saying “Well, I want them to cook all the way through, sweetie.”

I should have listened to Olivia.

Yours should look like the last one...not all the other ones.

I regret that I did not take photos of the finished product. They were delicious. Had I not smooshed them down, they would have probably been much softer, but even as crispy cookies, they were yummy. A lot like a cookie version of a churro.

Mmmm churros.

A huge mess was made, but it was totally worth it to hear Olivia call them “SNEAKERDOODLES” and then have Sophia call them “snick dooles” (and later “snick-er…..doodle”).

And because I am having my first period in over 3 1/2 years (Hey, at least I’m not pregnant, right?), I am giving you a bunch of funny links. I know, I know, TMI, but after labor, giving birth, having every single hospital volunteer (mostly nuns) see your boobs and having random weird people squeezing said breasts to help “stimulate the milk flow” you no longer have much shame. Plus, you ARE reading a blog involving motherhood, that in itself is warning enough, right?

Anyway, to atone, here are your links.

Bad Parking: pretty much self-explanatory. Photos of horrible parking jobs.

Signs of Life: Funny signs are everywhere. I like funny signs. I take pictures of them. Maybe I should submit to this website. Includes some possible NSFW signs with profanity (but, since you’re reading my site perhaps that is a moot point).

That’s Punny: Because I had some weird obsession with using puns in almost every single headline when I was A&E editor of my college newspaper (It’s embarrassingly obvious), I give you this collection of puns from all over. I do have a soft spot in my heart for puns. They make me giggle.

English FAIL Blog: I have a very real fear of my own blog being lambasted as English FAIL, but I take solace in the fact that my mistakes are not on t-shirts, street signs, or the like.

Enjoy! I’m off to curl up in my bed with a heating pad, chocolate and crappy TV.

I’m a fucking walking cliche.

This Halloween season, we made cookies.

Spooky, scary...delicious.

Went to the pumpkin patch:

Why yes, this pumpkin WAS $70 and no, we didn't buy it.

Carved Jack-o-Lanterns:

Olivia designed it, I carved it.

Bill's Jack Skellington pumpkin and another Olivia designed one.

Made costumes:

They're the Mario Brothers and plumbing's their game.

And went trick-or-treating, where Olivia and Sophia, despite being coached for the past three weeks to say “Trick-or-Treat”, clammed up at every door. They did manage to say it at the last house (to their Aunt & Uncle), but that’s progress, right?

Sophia also pointed at a guy dressed up as the Big Bad Wolf at one house (to his wife’s Little Red Riding Hood) and said: “Horsey”. They also had a blast screaming “MARIO” at each other, much to our amusement.

Can’t wait until next year.