Thanksgiving

Our flight to Raleigh, NC was the trip from hell. We sat on the runway in Phoenix for about an hour and a half while they fixed some problem with the instrument panel. I personally am used to ignoring red lights on my instrument panel as demonstrated by the “Brake Light” indicator that has been on for the past 2 years. (The brake lights ARE working for Pete’s sake.) But I guess they don’t like to ignore stuff like that on airplanes and then they like to do “paperwork” for a couple hours after fixing problems.

It’s bad enough to just sit in a confined area without the motion and noise from the plane to lull our kids to sleep but it’s even worse to find out your plane is landing while your connecting flight is taking off. We get off the plane in Minneapolis and are handed our new itinerary… our flight leaves at 6:50 AM the next morning and we have yet another stop over in Detroit. So here we are with two little kids and in lieu of luggage, we are handed two little boxes of toothbrushes and shaving cream. Brian pitched a huge fit but couldn’t get us out that night, couldn’t get a direct flight the next day, and couldn’t get our luggage. So we took our meal vouchers and had meal at the airport Chili’s and then boarded the van to the Day’s Inn with 8 other disgruntled passengers. Some were downright hostile about Northwest Airlines until they saw us with our two kids and then I think they felt like they really didn’t have anything to complain about.

When we were loaded in the van, Jack announced that he wanted “Jack Songs” which are toddler tunes that we play for him in the car. Toddler tunes seem to be like valium for toddlers as Jack immediate calms down when hears “Baa Baa Black Sheep”. Well, of course the van driver didn’t have Jack Songs so Brian announced that everyone on the van needed to sing “Wheels on the Bus”. Amazingly everyone joined in and we made it to the Days Inn without a meltdown from Jack or any of the other adults. I will note that if Toddler Tunes are valium for Jack, Baby Einstein videos are heroin. Whoever invented portable DVD players has kids… no doubt about that.

The night at the Days Inn was short and relatively uneventful although it sucks to have to wear the same underwear 2 days in a row. We managed to get Raleigh around noon the next day and guess what? No luggage. This really sucked because 1) we had my brother-in-law waiting by the curb to take us to Myrtle Beach (3+ hours away). 2) The airline had TONS of time to get our luggage on the right planes! The woman at the luggage service desk actually said that we should have packed more in our carry on. Brian had to restrain me from attacking the woman. We already had two car seats, two strollers, an enormous diaper bag, a big duffel bag, my purse, and Brian’s laptop. We physically couldn’t carry anything else. Brian even carried Jack’s car seat on his HEAD through the airports—he wore it like a big hat so he could push a stroller. And she thinks we should have taken more with us???

We finally agreed that my other brother-in-law, who also lives in Raleigh, would leave for Myrtle Beach the next day and we would have our luggage delivered to his house that evening. So we loaded into the van, met up with my sister and their two kids and made our way to the beach. We rented a beach house with five bedrooms and five bathrooms. This was perfect for us because we had 9 adults and 6 kids. It was right on the beach too which was awesome. Northwest said they would pay $50 for each person to get some essentials since we still didn't have our luggage. I decided that I needed an outfit that I could go out in public in as well as sleep in, in the event that we didn't get our luggage for a few more days. I decided that would be a warmup suit. So Brian and I headed to the local WalMart where I struggled to find a warm up suit in my size. I finally settled on a black one with blue velour trim. My sisters made fun of me but at least I was comfortable. I bought underwear, a sports bra, a pair of socks and Cetaphil. I was sporting a big zit on my chin from not having my normal skin care regime. I had to leave Brian at the WalMart because apparantly Jack was freaking out at home. I guess leaving him in a strange house with a bunch of crazy people after traveling for 36 hours wasn't a good idea.

The luggage didn't arrive that night. It didn't arrive in the morning. Brian spent a couple hours yelling at Northwest on Sunday morning (we left on Friday morning) since they said our luggage would be delivered last, not arriving to the house in Raleigh until that evening. After much negotiation with the airline, my brother-in-law finally showed up Sunday afternoon with the goods.

The week was spent playing cards, drinking, eating, playing on the beach, shopping, hanging out in a local bar. Jack was especially clingy... not sure what that was all about. Ty was really fussy to the point that Brian took him to Urgent Care to rule out an ear infection before the plane ride home. They said he was teething. But I still haven't felt any teeth. I hate the way teething is the universal excuse for fussy babies between 5 and 9 months. On Saturday we drove back to Raleigh and flew home with little excitement this time around. It sure is good to be home.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

We’re heading to Myrtle Beach to spend some time with my family. We rented a huge beach house so that we could all spend time together and the kids would have a lot to do. My sisters are actually from Raleigh and my parents from Columbia, SC so my sister asked a friend what there was to do in the area. We got word that there was a Baskin-Robbins and a Dunkin Donuts close by. Chocolate chip or mint chocolate chip ice cream from Baskin-Robbins and cake donuts from Dunkin Donuts are a couple of my biggest weaknesses. They happen to my mother’s biggest weaknesses along with blue cheese salad dressing. These also happen to my sister’s biggest weaknesses. Isn’t it funny how our favorite foods are hereditary? I just love bell peppers and know that a lot of people don’t like them. I remember seeing my grandmother eating one like an apple. I guess that’s where I got that from. And the way Jack eats berries. My father can eat blueberries all day long and I also have a borderline obsession with them. Jack is the same way. That’s when I started to think about genetic garbage. What determines what gets passed down? I understand about blue and brown eyes. That’s straightforward. But what about things like cankles? You know, those people who don’t have a defined ankle and their leg goes right into their foot like what Hillary Clinton has? I started thinking about the good, the bad and the ugly of my genes.

The Good:
- Symmetrical feet (although my right foot was ruined in 8th grade when Kim Stapleton kicked my foot when we were playing soccer)
- Skinny arms (was on my bad list 20 years ago since they looked like Grover arms)
- Big lips (was on my bad list 20 years ago because they were not in style and all the kids at school made fun of me. My father even said once, when I sunburned my lips, that I had burns on over 90% of my body)
- Fast growing fingernails
- Very logical brain

The Bad:
- Eyes (20/700 vision before LASIK) = Coke bottle glasses throughout puberty
- Scoliosis (curvature of the spine)
- Narrow feet (can’t wear Payless Shoes)
- An “apple” figure—weight gains around the belly (fine for when you’re pregnant “oh you gain weight only in your belly”. Uh huh. And it stays there.)

The Ugly:
- Thin hair
- Gray hair
- Freckles
- Zits
- Spider Veins!

Uhh, I think I could go on and on with The Bad and The Ugly list but I don’t want to scare people. What if we could pick the best thing from ourselves to pass on to our kids? I find myself praying that Jack doesn’t get my eyesight or my problem skin. Oh, well. Not worth worrying about what we can’t fix… just hope that technology can fix some of these things.

This week we have spent time getting ready for our trip but I did find time to visit with a friend who will be taking care of the cats when we are gone and then I went to Annette’s house with Jill and Tracy where we slammed two bottles of wine and yakked for a couple hours. While we did have this planned for about a week, I liked the way it was “come as you are”. I wore my comfortable nursing bra and had greasy hair. The girls didn’t seem to mind too much. I might wear my pajamas next time. Have a great Thanksgiving if I don’t get a chance to blog until my return.

Like Mother Like Son

My sister sent me some photos that I hadn't seen before. I am posting them because they look just like Jack with a black wig. I'm in the high chair next to my sister Nicki.
Here I am again with my sister, my dad and my grandmother. This is Jack with a short black wig. These are even his legs.

I think I have a funny looking head in this photo.

Saturday we went to Reagan's first birthday party. Reagan is Missie and Andy's daughter. The party was a lot of fun and Missie's mother and sister from CT were there. Missie and I went out with her mother, Doris, once a few years ago. Her mother kept trying to drag us out to see strippers and talked about all the sex parties at home. I always wondered how Missie turned out so normal. Doris berated us for ending our evening out after three hours of solid drinking. I think she wanted to stay out all night. She seemed fairly normal at the birthday party although she seemed disappointed that there weren't a lot of happy hours going on. On Sunday I went to a Pampered Chef party. I already have just about everything from Pampered Chef because my bridal shower was all Pampered Chef. Still, I bought a few things and then went to Trader Joe's to purchase a ton of nuts, parmesan cheese and lip balm. These are all items that my family seems to think you can only buy at TJ's and not anywhere else. I will be packing all this stuff in my suitcase to take with me to South Carolina in addition to frozen uncooked tortilla's from Costco (another item you can't get in S.C.).

Jack dumped out a deck of cards on the floor and kept insisting that I pick them up. I asked him if he wanted to pick them up or go to Time Out. He said Time Out and walked over the corner. I hate it when he does that. He ended up staying there for about 20 minutes of 2 minute increments because he wouldn't pick up the cards. I was exhausted. Finally I just put him in bed because he was crying the whole time and was really tired. I thought we were going to have to go through that again when he wouldn't pick up his puzzle pieces later in the day but it only took one time out!

On Monday I got a consult about my spider veins. I thought I should get sclerotherapy so I saw the guy that does that, but he said I would be better off with one laser treatment. Brian says it's OK to spend the money so that will be the first step of my extreme makeover. I just need to schedule the appointment.

The Non Book Club

Julie from book club had a tummy tuck and breast reduction three weeks ago. She looked great at book club last night. I took an informal poll—of all the women who had babies, how many wanted some kind of plastic surgery? Of the 7 – 8 women who had kids, only one did not something done (this was not me). Tummy tucks, breast lifts/reductions/augmentations seem to top the list. Those with bigger breasts want them smaller… those with smaller breasts want them bigger. I guess we always want what we don’t have. Or want what we once had, in my case. I wonder if the book clubs of 20 years ago or even 10 or 5 years ago were so open about their desire for plastic surgery. Does this make us vain? I asked the one woman who didn’t want anything done. I think it’s more about wanting to feel good about ourselves.

We set a new record last night and talked about the book for about 30 seconds. I think this happens because there are so many things to catch up on. Kathleen proposed that we start meeting every 2 weeks because there is too much information to share if we only meet every 6 weeks. I think of Kim over there in China having to actually discuss the book. I wonder if they are talking about allegories and symbolism and all those other things we used to talk about in English classes in high school. I really don’t know why I always make sure the book is read before the meeting. I finished the book at 6:10 PM and book club started at 6:30 PM. We had a combined birthday party (for Lisa)/going away party (for Julie—going to Pittsburgh which we think is crazy… you don’t LEAVE Arizona right before the winter). Lisa is Puerto Rican and her mom made delicious Mexican food for us. We went through a lot of margarita mix. Well, not just the mix. Jill wanted to know why Kathleen wasn’t married. Kathleen lives with the father of her child in a committed relationship (this man is also about a decade her junior which we are all very impressed with). Kathleen said something like, Why don’t you ask me something less personal like how often we have sex? I thought that was funny. Jill asked why I was so quiet last night and the truth is: you really can’t get a word in edgewise with this group. But that’s OK because sometimes it’s more fun to listen. Especially to the stories that are told with this group.

My hair is falling out in clumps. I am bald around my forehead. This is a post-partum thing for me and is very sad because the only time I have really thick hair is when I am pregnant. But then 3 – 4 months later it all falls out. Brian doesn’t have much sympathy for me but I think there is a big difference between a woman losing her hair and a man losing his hair.

I appreciated all the comments regarding Brian’s vasectomy. I love comments from the blog readers. Brian appears to be good as new just 2 – 3 days later.

The past couple days I have started to feel that my life is controlling me versus me controlling my life. Work has really started to crank. I work on things that are ambiguous and require clarity to be driven from the ambiguity. Most people like to have something more specific to work on. I do OK with the ambiguity but it takes time to turn it into something that people can go off and do. I’ve been trying to have my Friday afternoons free so that I can spend a little extra time with my kids but yesterday I had meeting after meeting after meeting pop up on Friday afternoon. I resent that because in my mind, I thought I’d be spending time with Ty. I am also a little worried about the flight to the east coast on Friday. We did buy four seats versus having Ty as a lap child. 5 hours in a crowded plane and a baby on your lap does not make for a happy mom and dad. The reality of paying over a $1000 for airplane tickets from now on is a bit overwhelming—but well worth it to see family.

The Big Day: Mourning and Celebrating

Well, today is the big day. Brian’s “procedure”. I didn’t ask him if it was OK to publicly talk about it, so don’t mention it to him.

I am surprised how emotional I feel about it. I didn’t think I would feel anything but immense relief to know that I will never be pregnant again. But I feel sadness because we are putting to sleep the very thing that gave me two beautiful boys. That’s the emotional side. Because everyone knows that more does not necessarily mean better.

Someone said to Brian, “Why don’t you make Kelly get fixed instead?” I went berserk when I heard this. Besides the fact that a tubal ligation is more invasive than a vasectomy (a 20 minute outpatient procedure), I was the one who was pregnant for 18 months, I was the one who squeezed two babies out of me, I was the one who had to recuperate on a boppy, I was the one who breastfed for a year and am on my way to do that again. I was the one who was deprived of alcohol and coffee and anything spicy for those 18 months of puking and heartburn and back pain and feet in my ribs. And I’m not the one who is fertile 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 60 years of my life! I would be interested to know why a woman would have a tubal ligation over the husband having a vasectomy, except in the case of doing the procedure during a C-section when everything is right there anyway. I suppose I did offer to do it in the event that something happened to me, and so Brian could meet a younger woman who wanted to have kids. I mean, if for whatever reason I got remarried, there is still no way I would ever have a another child. Men can have children until they are in their 70’s. Look at Strom Thurmond and Tony Randall. But Brian said he is done and so here we are. Today marks the end of our child bearing years. Amen.

I Rove You Mama

Something is wrong. It’s a Sunday afternoon and all is quiet in the house. There is a mess all around me but yet I sit here writing my blog. If I close my eyes, does it all go away? I forgot to mention that last Sunday night I went to see “42nd Street” at the Orpheum. I have a series of tickets for Broadway shows with some other people. Brian and I don’t have tickets together because sometimes it’s hard to coordinate a babysitter and plus he doesn’t love these kinds of shows. I was worried that 42nd Street would be like “Oklahoma” because they are both older Broadway shows. Let’s face it. Sometimes the shows don’t stand the test of time. I really thought Oklahoma was torturous. And just when you think it’s over, it just goes on and on and on. Well, 42nd Street was a pleasant surprise. Lots of tap dancing too.

Friday I had lunch with Christine, Heather and her baby and Janine and her baby. Christine doesn’t have a baby and I felt bad that we talked about childbirth, breastfeeding and babies so much. Christine works for Brian so we did talk about work a little bit. After lunch I swung by Yvonne’s to check out her furniture from Costco Home because I want to finally decorate our living room. We bought one of those electric fireplaces for the living room to make it cozier. Now I want a nice overstuffed chair and ottoman. Now that I have two boys, I decided that mom needs a room all by herself that doesn’t have toys and crap everywhere. I picked up Ty after chatting with Yvonne for a few minutes and we headed to Walgreen’s to see if I could get a flu shot. I was going to get one at Costco for $18 but I called them on Thursday at 2:08 to see when they were doing their flu shots and they told me the last one ended 8 minutes ago. ARGH. So I did a search and discovered they were doing them at Walgreen’s on Friday close to my house. Cool. Then Friday morning I noticed the paper said on the front page in big letters “FLU SHOT SHORTAGE”. I envisioned a bus of old people from Sun Lakes heading to the Walgreen’s. Of course, I can’t compete with that. But what the hell—I’ll do a drive by to see how crazy it is. When I got there, there were three open parking spots so I parked and dragged Ty in with me. The line didn’t look too bad so I put Ty into a cart and we stood in line with a lot of interesting people. Like the guy who moved here from Italy 40 years ago and said he hasn’t been sick a day in his life since he’s been here. I asked his wife if that was true and she said yes. The secret? Garlic and vino. I think this is the same reason my dad almost never gets sick. I guess I need to eat more garlic. After standing in line for about 45 minutes, I got my shot, rushed home to feed Ty, and then drove to work to meet up with Brian.

Brian took Ty and I headed off to the chiropractor that I love but hadn’t seen in 6 years. He walked into the room dusting off the chart. I really like this chiropractor because he gives all areas a 15 minute rub down before doing the adjustment. I like the idea of warming up the area before doing all that cracking and popping. I have to say it FELT SO GOOD to have an adjustment after 6 years. My neck felt amazing. I left feeling quite giddy. By then Brian had picked up Ty and was driving aimlessly around. I didn’t ask him what he was doing at Elliot and Priest. What did we do before cell phones?? We agreed that we would meet at Valle Luna for dinner. Jack is 100% entertained with bean dip and salsa so we had a nice dinner. I managed to take a walk after the kids were in bed even though I desperately wanted to go to sleep.

I take my walks around the neighborhood and I feel really safe. We live in a gated community which I know isn’t that secure but it feels more so than a regular neighborhood. But now I’m realizing that if hoodlums live IN your neighborhood, a gate AROUND the community doesn’t work. There is one house that appears to be a magnet for teen-age boys who wear all black and have hair in their eyes. They are always hanging around outside. Oftentimes, their friend with a black car parks on the street and they congregate around the car. I’m not afraid of them but it’s just not what I like to picture for our neighborhood. “Hoodlum” seems like a dated word but it sure seems to fit these guys.

On Saturday I ran Jack down to the Mini Cuts place for kids’ haircuts. We were in and out in about 15 minutes. Then I met Sarah, my friend I’ve known since third grade, for lunch at Mimi’s. We had a good time talking and afterwards I dragged her to Costco Home to look for a cozy chair for my living room. I had Ty with me so it was good to have someone push the stroller while I sat on the different chairs. I was also looking for a rug to potentially put in the dining room. We don’t want to cover the floor but the chairs may scrape the floor… I’m not sure. After Costco Home, we went to IKEA to look at the rugs and had a $1 frozen yogurt. Sarah mentioned that I seemed really happy. I said I really am… mostly because I feel so blessed to have kids. Home and dinner and baths for everyone… watched one TV show, started another but I just fell asleep. Sunday I made a dinner for us this week, plus dinner for Tina, a mom in my mom’s group who had a baby about a week ago. Brian was out running errands and getting his hair cut while I was cooking and Jack has decided that he likes to help us cook, so he had his chair up at the stove. He drags his chair up to the middle island or the stove and “helps”. He’s really good about understanding what is hot and what shouldn’t be touched. Ty started screaming in the middle of everything so I put him in the Snuggli while I finished the baked ziti and started the brownies. That thing just about broke my back. How does anywhere wear those things? I got through making some brownies and knew that Jack would spend the next 30 minutes licking every single molecule of brownie batter off the bowl which would give me time to feed Ty. There are moments like this that make me wonder how women stay home every day and multitask to this level. Jack also helped me cut up a watermelon and put it into individual servings for his lunches. He is such a good helper. He wanted to eat the raw pasta so I let him and he ate a bunch.

Jack got to watch Baby Einstein twice today. The first time was for getting five rings (that five pees in the potty). Then he dragged me into the bathroom this evening to show me that he pooped in the potty which is an automatic 5 rings. This makes up for peeing in his underwear 7 other times today. No time for a walk… it’s already 9:45 and we haven’t watched Grey’s Anatomy yet. Might have to save it for tomorrow. Highlight of the weekend… Jack saying “I rove you, Mama”. He’s been saying “I love you.” But I the “mama” on the end is new and it makes me giddy inside.

Halloween Week

Wow, it’s Thursday night already. Where did the time go? Let’s see… where did I leave off? Sunday… I met Missie at our usual Sunday morning spot: the Cheesecake Factory. That place is always crazy except for 10 AM on Sunday mornings. The weather was awesome so we sat outside. I see Missie probably once a month but we have one of those relationships were it doesn’t matter how much time has passed. We used to do happy hours fairly regularly until we had kids. I had Ty with me and he was a little fussy. I even breastfed him at the restaurant, knowing that my rights were protected by the city of Chandler. I had been feeling a little naughty while breastfeeding while all the city council crap was going on. We walked around the mall a little bit and then decided to go to DSW, one of the biggest discount shoe places around. It’s like shoe heaven. We each bought a pair. Missie couldn’t bring herself to buy a pair with a closed front AND back so she bought some closed toe mules. I bought a shoe with a closed toe and back but have yet to wear any closed toe shoes this year. One of the benefits of living in Phoenix I suppose… our tootsies are cramped only 2 months out of the year.

After I got home, Brian went out to get the stain for the concrete floor. This stuff was amazing. After he put it on, I couldn’t smell the cat pee on the concrete. Brian wants to get rid of the cats but I cannot do that. I’ve had them for almost 10 years now and they are my responsibility although thank God someone wrote somewhere that pregnant women shouldn’t scoop a litter box. I extrapolated that to mean breastfeeding women shouldn’t clean it either. Tee hee.


On Monday I went to Jack’s school to see the kids dress up for Halloween. The 2 year olds were all really cute. They kept asking me to take photos of them and then show them the photo on the camera. I could have stayed there for hours. They kept attacking me because I had something of interest to them: a digital camera.
After work, we got home and got Jack dressed up as Elmo and hit the streets. Brian took his place out front with his full size candy bars for the kids and beers for the adults. After growing up thinking that Halloween was satanic, this was the first time I have ever gone trick or treating. Fortunately, I had a 2 year-old with me so most people thought Jack was trick or treating.

I thought it was pretty awesome. There were gobs of kids in our neighborhood running around and Jack thought that was pretty cool. Everyone was saying, “HEY ELMO!” to Jack. I liked the way everyone was sitting in their driveways as well. I found a new potential baby-sitter and chatted with a few other people. It was all very neighborly. What an awesome holiday.

Back to the dining room floor… so the cats had peed on the baseboards as well as the floor so we were going to have to replace those to the tune of like $800. While I was sitting out front on Halloween, eating my M&M’s swiped from Jack’s candy loot and drinking a beer from Brian’s stash, I decided that the stain we used on the floor, which was white, could be used for the baseboards. This took 20 minutes to do and because we saved $800, I think I deserve to buy another Coach purse.

I worked from home on Wednesday and the flooring guys came over. I thought it was going to be a no-go because of a crack in the concrete (the floor wasn’t level) but they figured it out and now we have a beautiful wood floor.

Jack stayed up really late Monday night because it was Halloween. My theory is that now he thinks it’s super fun to stay up late every night. Tuesday night he really fought going to bed and last night he did it again. We had him in his room with a gate on the door so we decided to ignore his cries of protest and watch Alias. He comes out to the family room, matter of factly says “Hi.” And sits down on the sofa. How did he get out? Of course Brian said that I didn’t latch the gate properly because it was it was sitting by Jack’s door already latched. After putting him back in the room and gate up, Brian witnesses Jack reaching over the gate, effortlessly lifting the latch, and removing the gate. So much for that.

I’ve been having so much upper back pain from hunching over the breast pump and then this morning it was so bad that I had to make a call to a day spa close to work to see if they could give me a deep tissue massage. They got me in at 11:45 AM and she really dug into my back hard… but it hurt so good. Finally after days of horrible pain, I had a pain free afternoon. Brian worked late tonight so I had both boys by myself. Jack has taken to eating while standing on a chair at the center island in the kitchen. Brian won’t let Jack eat while standing there but I’m OK with it so I stood and ate while he ate. I managed to get both in bed without too much excitement and now here I am… Whew.