Three years

I have celebrated three Halloweens with my sweet baby girl. Time flies...

My baby girl was a ladybug for her 1st Halloween.

My baby girl was a duck for her 2nd Halloween.

My baby girl was a turtle for her 3rd Halloween.

This is my bouncing baby boy's first Halloween. He was fascinated with his duck hat and refused to leave it on his little head. Pure preciousness...
I can't wait to see what next year will look like:)

I am hopeless

Earlier this week, I decided that Porgie and I were going to bake cookies for Halloween. So, we headed to Target to get some cookie dough and cookie cutters. Unfortunately, they were completely out of Halloween cookie cutters. Undeterred, we bought heart, flower, and butterfly shaped cookie cutters. And some orange and white sprinkles (to be festive).

I am not really sure where we went wrong, but the cookies didn't turn out quite right.

This cookie was supposed to be a butterfly...
This cookie was supposed to be a flower..
This cookie was supposed to be a heart...
I thought this project was idiot proof. I guess I was wrong.

Zzzzzzzz....boring post alert

Things are looking up in my stinky house. We have been spraying the carpet down every night with this...
I am fairly confident that our carpet no longer stinks, but I am very confident that my dog still stinks. She was sprayed in the face. It is incredibly hard to saturate her head, without getting the chemicals into her eyes, nose, and mouth. So, she still stinks - BAD. But things are improving.

In other news, I took Porgie to a special Halloween story time at our local library last night. Not good. The child was a demon. She ran around like a maniac during the entire story. Then, she happily rolled on the floor kicking her legs during the craft. And finally, she started pulling books off of the shelves. So, after a mere 30 minutes at the library, we had to leave. I really thought she would be well behaved this year, but I was wrong. Apparently, she only likes to listen to books at HOME. And it didn't help that all of the other kids were school-aged. The other children were so well-behaved, I felt ashamed of my wild child. However, she was extremely adorable in her little costume.

Porgie enjoying a good book at HOME...

Izzy has officially turned into a big kid. We were taking our nightly walk around our block on Sunday, and I was asking Porgie to identify sounds that Halloween creatures make (cat, ghost, monster, etc.). I asked her, "What does a Ghost say?" and before she could answer, Izzy said, "Boo!" It was extremely adorable. I guess this means my little guy is going to be talking soon. So bittersweet.

Izzy laughing hysterically...

The 5 stages of skunk

1. Denial:
   • "My house smells fine. I don't smell anything. Do you smell anything?"
     
2. Anger:
   • "Why did you let that fucking dog into our house? You are the stupidest human being I have ever met."
     
3. Bargaining:
   • "I'll do anything to make this smell go away. I am ordering new carpet tonight, and we can go shopping for new furniture this weekend. What do you mean, we don't have any money? I will sell my soul to get rid of this pungent smell."
4. Depression:
   • "My house is going to stink forever . . . What's the point of cleaning?"
5. Acceptance:
   • "Skunk doesn't smell that bad - right?"
     

Why does the world hate me?

I want to cry. My dog got sprayed by a skunk. And my husband unknowingly let her into our house. And now my house smells like skunk. I want to cry.

Help me. Please.

Annoying asshole

I rarely ever talk about my husband on my blog. I don't intentionally avoid talking about him, there just isn't much to say most days. He works, I stay at home, we argue about silly stuff, and then we go to bed. But I am going to talk about my husband today - not because I want to brag about how great he is, but because he has been annoying the crap out of me.

My husband can be very selfish when it comes to free time. I take the kids to the museum or the aquarium or an indoor activity center on a regular basis. On those days, he'll have an hour or two of free time. I don't mind him having free time, but where is my free time? Sometimes he'll take Porgie grocery shopping with him on Sundays, but Izzy always stays home with me. Seriously, I cannot remember the last time I was in this house ALONE.

Also, my husband likes to buy lots of stupid shit for himself. He is always buying DVDs he never watches, electronics he only uses a few times, and retarded eBay purchases that are a complete waste of money. I try to refrain from saying anything because he works very hard to keep our little family afloat. But I find it difficult to not get annoyed.

And don't even get me started on his stupid fucking conspiracy theories.

Where is all this anger toward him coming from? Well, we had a huge fight the other night about our trip to Kentucky in December. I don't really want to get into all the details, but the fight basically revolved around him getting drunk with his friends in KY and me staying home to watch the kids. I guess I just assumed that we would be visiting family and friend TOGETHER. I didn't know that my husband had this whole other agenda planned. Fucking bastard.

Sorry for unloading my anger and frustration onto you.

Let's look at more of my stuff

When we last left off, we were looking at all my lamps. Since the weather is getting older, I thought I would show you my collection of winter coats today. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, because I really want to new winter coat this year.

Let's start with this little gem...
This coat is awesome. AWESOME! It is a corduroy coat from the 1950's. I purchased it for $60 from an antique store. Unfortunately, I ended up ruining this lovely piece of history. I left some skittles in the pocket, and they melted. Oops. Then I ripped the pocket. Double oops.

After ruining my awesome corduroy coat, I went to Macy's and purchased this...

I loved this coat in the store, but I hated it at home. You see, the coat is black and I have 2 dogs and 4 cats. This translates into a furry, furry coat. So frustrating. I was constantly covered in dog and cat hair.

After much complaining, John decided to buy me another winter coat for Christmas that year...

I love this coat. LOVE IT. It is beautiful. And it is made from mohair. I have a slight obsession with mohair. Isn't it fabulous? However, it is a little fancy to wear with everyday clothes. So, I decided that I needed another coat to wear with my sloppy clothes (jeans and a t-shirt). Since John did such a great job with the mohair coat, I sent him out to buy me another coat the following Christmas.

Unfortunately, he didn't do a very good job the second time around...
I hate this coat. HATE IT. Why would he buy me this ugly rag? Of course, I told him that I loved the coat (I didn't want to hurt his feelings). I even wore it a few times to make him believe that I actually liked it. However, this experience taught me a valuable lesson - do not let your husband pick out a coat with no guidelines. When he purchased the mohair coat, I specifically told him that I wanted a grey pea coat.

So, I need a new winter coat. I think I will be heading over to Macy's this afternoon. I have a gift certificate that is burning a hole in my pocket.

P is for Party

As some of you might have noticed, Izzy is going to be a year old next month. How the hell did that happen? Seriously? It literally feels like I JUST had him. I swear, I JUST brought him home from the hospital last Sunday. How is he a year old already? I just don't understand. At first, I wasn't going to do the whole birthday party thing. It just seems like a lot of work, and I am lazy. But John convinced me to throw him a little party - just a few people, some balloons, and a homemade cake. Nothing fancy.

Speaking of parties, I took the kids to a birthday party last weekend. It was held at Gymboree. Although the party was very interactive and extremely fun, I am shocked that other people invest so much money into birthday parties. I don't know how much the party cost, but I can guarantee you that the parents spent at least $500. They bought dinner for all of the guests - and there were A LOT of guests. And the goody bags were AWESOME. Obviously, I am a cheap bastard.

In other party news, I am going to throw Porgie a "Potty Party" after we get back from Kentucky. With cake and ice cream and the whole nine yards. It should be lots of fun. And then, I am going to actually potty train my child. I feel like everyone in the blogsphere has already started potty training, but we are just not ready yet. I am keeping my fingers crossed that we will be ready in January.

And I'll leave you with this fun pictures of the kiddos enjoying their laptops...

Associations

Porgie has a pair of goofy pajamas that say "Be Happy" on the front. They are covered in smiley faces and polka dots. Whenever she wears them, I like to sing that stupid "Don't Worry, Be Happy" song from the 80s. Good times, good times.

The other day we were sitting on the couch chatting, and Porgie told me she wanted some "tubby toast." And then she proceeded to nibble on her pajamas!

Here is a picture of tubby toast (from the Teletubbies, in case you are confused)...
And here is a picture of her PJs...

In summary, two year-olds are awesome!

My husband is a plumper?

One night last week, my husband came home from work with brown stains all over the front of his WHITE shirt. John is usually relatively clean when he gets home, so I was curious about the brown stains. We had the following conversation...

Christy: What is all over your shirt?
John: Oh, that's just rust.
Christy: Rust?
John: Yeah, I leaned up against a leaky, rusty pipe at work today.
Christy: What?
John: It was a rusty pipe. (At this point, he was getting irritated with my questions.)
Christy: You are not a plumper. Why would you be leaning all over rusty pipes?
John: IT IS ICE CREAM! CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM! ALRIGHT!?!

I shit you not, my husband walked around half of the day looking like this. And he tried to sell the "leaky pipe" story to everyone who asked what was on his shirt. Classic!

I am all crafty and shit

I have been a crocheting fool lately! I think it is the election season. While watching the presidential debates or even CNN, I crochet to keep myself from SCREAMING at the television. These claims that Obama is "paling around with terrorists" really piss me off. McCain and Palin are planting these ridiculous ideas in their supporters' heads and then acting confused when people yell "Terrorist! Kill him!" at their rallies. AHHHH! Wait - what was I talking about? Oh yes, crocheting.

So, I usually crochet scarves in all one color. Like this...
But I have lots of scrap yarn laying around, so I decided to combine some colors. The scarves turned out really cute...I am working on another scarf right now - it is purple and blue. Election day needs to hurry up and get here, because I have no idea who I am going to give all these scarves too.

Oops

My mother sent Porgie this little steering wheel last Christmas...
She loves it. The controls are very basic. The green button starts the engine, the red button is the horn, and the blue & purple buttons are the blinkers. For the past year, I never noticed anything strange about this toy.

A few weeks ago, my husband noticed this...

Manufacturing mistake? Oops!

I hate Lowes

Remember when we replaced all of the shrubbery in front of our house? We purchased the plants from a local nursery. Because it was the end of the season, everything was 50% off. We got some fabulous deals, but we also had a limited selection of plants to choose from.

We ended up buying everything at the nursery except for the Emerald Green Arborvitaes. In case you are wondering, these are the Arborvitaes I am referring too...I would have purchased these trees at the nursery, but they did not have the size we were looking for. All of their arborvitaes were at least 5 feet tall. So, I declared that we should buy small arborvitaes at Lowes. And we did. And now I regret that decision.

Here is a photo of our Junpier...

Looks healthy - right?

Here is a photo of our Golden Globe brushes...

Looks healthy - right?

Here are some photos of our arborvitaes...Not so healthy. Damn stupid Lowes.

Woe is me

I said I wasn't going to talk about sleep issues on my blog anymore, but I am breaking the rules. Izzy is killing me. KILLING ME! The child has been waking up four times per night. FOUR TIMES! So frustrating.

I put Izzy to bed at 7:30 every night. He wakes up around 11 pm, 1am, 3am, and 5am. This waking schedule is enough to make me go bat shit insane, but there is even more fun happening at night. When Izzy wakes around 3am, he wants to party. He thinks it is time to get up for the day. I realize that he is just getting over an ear infection, but I am still exhausted and frustrated and EXHAUSTED.

And to top things off, we are all sick too - sore throat, runny nose, cough. It is fun times in Cakerwakerville. FUN TIMES.

And because I am a horrible mother, I let my child do this all day...The television is such a wonderful babysitter. I give it nothing but the highest recommendation.

Important dates

Our pediatrician's office is located inside of a large professional building. While walking down the hall toward the office on Tuesday morning, I noticed a large sign posted on a window. It said, "The AAP recommends that all children be seen by a dentist at one year of age." Hmmmm...Porgie is two and I haven't even considered taking her to the dentist yet.

Since I was running a few minutes early, I decided to stop in and schedule an appointment. I walked into a waiting room stuffed full of toys. Children were running around, happily playing and laughing. I felt at ease. Porgie felt at ease. She instantly asked to get down and play. I walked up to the front counter to make an appointment. The receptionist was very friendly. I told her that I would like an afternoon appointment for next week. She happily obliged, and offered a 3:30 appointment on October 15th. That date sounded very familiar. I was certain that I had something important to do on that day. But for the life of me, I couldn't remember what I had to do on that day, so I went ahead and scheduled the appointment for the 15th.

Later that night, I was blogging. Suddenly I realized why the 15th was so important. Amalah is scheduled for her repeat c-section on that day! Apparently, I am now keeping a running tab on all important dates in my bloggy friends' lives. So, if you have a wedding anniversary, birthday, or due date looming, I won't be scheduling any appointment on that day:)

Pumpkin fun

We bought a pumpkin last weekend. Porgie was very excited. She helped daddy scrape out all the pumpkin seeds. She helped daddy carve out the eyes and mouth. She even helped light the candle inside the pumpkin. When everything was finished, the kiddos enjoyed playing with our newest Halloween decoration...


__________

I think Izzy is feeling a little better today. There was a noticeable decrease in screaming. I am keeping my fingers crossed that he sleeps tonight. Wish me luck!

Running on no sleep

I haven't been able to blog in days, but this morning I finally got around to reading about half of my blogroll. And I just realized that I was logged in under my family blog. I am sorry about the confusion. This is the 1,843rd time I have done this - Sorry! Please do not comment on the family blog.

In my defense, I haven't gotten a decent night's sleep since last Friday. All of a sudden, Izzy refused to nap. He was also resisting bedtime. Then he started waking every hour or two at night. And by Monday, he was staying awake for HOURS in the middle of the night. I knew something was wrong, so I took him to the doctor yesterday. As I expected, he has an ear infection.

Izzy was given a prescription for amoxicillin, which I took to Target. 15 minutes later, we were on our way home. When I opened the bottle, I noticed that it had a citrus smell. I looked at the labeling and realized that it had been flavored with Orange. Izzy is very sensitive to citrus fruits. I knew that I shouldn't have given him the medicine, but I was tired and he was fussy, so I did. And I lived to regret that decision. Izzy cried and screamed and spit-up for HOURS. He couldn't keep anything down. So, I had to call target and have them refill the prescription with a cherry flavor instead. So frustrating. I am kind of pissed that they just added citrus flavoring without even asking me. Tons of people have allergies to citrus fruits. It seems like they would have consulted me.

Anyways, things kind of suck ass right now. I know I haven't been commenting as frequently as usually, but I still love you bloggy bloggers.

My poor babe

We have had some bad lucky in our house lately. Last week, Porgie fell down our front steps. It happened so quickly - she was babbling on and on about her snacks, and she walked right off the first step without realizing it. She tumbled down the three steps and landed flat on her back. She scraped an elbow and a knee, but came away relatively unscathed. She only whimpered and whined for a few moments. Today we didn't get off quite as a easy.

Shortly after John got home from work, he went outside to talk to one of our neighbors. Izzy was happily scooting around the livingroom. He was lingering near the door, looking for daddy. When John began walking up the front steps, Izzy scooted toward the front door to meet him. As John opened the door, Izzy lunged forward. He did a face plant on the front stoop. I heard the sickening thud as his face slammed the concrete. And then I heard the screams. The blood curdling screams. My baby boy was frantic. It was so sad. I felt horrible for letting my little guy fall into harm's way.

After some rocking and hugging and kissing, Izzy calmed down. He has a bump on his forehead, a scrape on his temple, and a possible black eye. But despite his injuries, he was all smiles tonight...

Perfect

Isn't this the cutest thing you have ever seen...



It is an apron that holds crayons! Without a doubt, it is the PERFECT accessory for Porgie. I bought it at a craft fair this morning. Other people are so crafty and smart.

How to Sit on the Elmo Couch: A Photo Essay by Izzy Whizzy Woo

Step 1 - With all of your might, hoist yourself up on to the couch. Look around and smile, because you are awesome.
Step 2 - After several minutes of hemming and hawing while trying to sit upright, roll off of the couch. Regroup by shedding a few tears and looking desperately at mama.

Step 3 - Hoist yourself onto the couch again, but this time don't look around grinning. PUSH! PUSH! PUSH!

Step 4 - Say fuck it and just act like you are sitting up on the couch.

Things that piss me off, annoy me, are disgusting, and are adorable

This pisses me off...
This is my FAVORITE photo of Izzy. He looks like a little angel. But it is ruined. Liquid has been spilled on the photo and it is now stuck to the glass in the picture frame. If you look closely, you can see the damage. I wanted to cry when I realized that the photo was ruined.

This annoys me...
Izzy has decided to chew on his crib. Yes, those are teeth marks. But I am trying to look on the bright side - now the side rail matches the front rail that my cats have already ruined...

This is disgusting...Porgie decided that my husband's nasty work shoes would be a great place to store her milk cup. Yuck!

And this is adorable...
Porgie likes to hide behind the kitty scratching tower. She spends at least 2 hours per day playing back there. The best toy EVER.