Tag: humor

What’s in Baylie’s Bag? – 3rd Eddition

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This week Bay’s bag of choice  was my big beach tote. She could easily fit inside it if she wanted and it takes her two little baby man hands plus a lot of strength to carry it around, but she loves it.

Contents:

A hat

Her sandals

A bottle of lotion

Butt Paste diaper rash cream

A ziploc bag

Her Mini Mouse purse – she needs a bag to carry all her bags!

Play food ice cream and cookies

Rasins

A bowl of Goldfish crackers

Her Barbie cup

The box from a new bottle of Benadryl

Her “goggles” – she think because her sun glasses have a strap that they are goggles

Her business card that daddy made. It reads:

Baylor E. Wand

BaP (Big Girl at Play)

Available for Bar Mitzvahs, Weddings, Parties and Funerals

 

 

Happy Anniversary!

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Yes, that’s right. It was 1 year ago today that The Goon Room was born. I was looking through the stats from the past year and thought I would revisit some of the highest hit posts from the past year and also my personal favorites.

The highest hits in one day was “It’s A Facebook Miracle!”. Not only funny, but something that everyone who has a slight obsession with Facebook can relate to.

My favorite kiddo posts are a mix of me whining about something Bay is or isn’t doing and those that are mushy because she’s so stinking cute – Kiddo Milestones and Daddy Did My Hair are two of the best.

The Rant category always gets  lot of comments and excitement mostly because I’m a snarky, awesome complainer. The best examples are the “ungrateful for” series, specifically 7  Things I’m Ungrateful For. Also I particularly hate tourists and annoying people.

I always get nice comments on my recipes, like the delicious meatballs featured in My Meatballs are Better Than Your Meatballs and the yummy sauce that complements the meatballs so well. However, there were some losers such as Whopper Brownies.

And a few random posts like What the Mary Poppins?! and Phones On A Plane are two of my favorites, well, just because they were fun to write.

So peruse the material from the past year and enjoy – there’s more where this came from. Thank you so much for reading!

Invasion of the Stuffed Animals

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I knew this was coming. I just didn’t know it was going to be so soon and soooo dramatic.

Since giving up her pacifiers, Baylie has become increasingly obsessed with her stuffed animals. Particularly any recent acquisitions. The obsession has gotten so severe, she can’t sleep without them and needs them for at least 20 minutes after waking up. I’m sure here dentist and orthodontist will agree that these fluffy friends are much better for her teeth than a pacifier, but I think the pacifier may be better for Mommy’s sanity.

Our new bed time ritual involves getting Kat, Beanie Butt Bear, Little Bear AND blankie out of the crib. Bay attempts to carry all four of these items plus a cup of milk to the couch to snuggle before being shuttled off to bed. After prayers, we put the pillow down, then her, then blankie over top and then hand each animal to her individually while she decides their placement next to her. Last, the “aquarium” at the opposite side of the crib is turned on.

On top of all of this, Bay’s not been sleeping well – she was up we think 6 times last night. I say “think” because I’ve trained myself to go into her room, offer whatever comfort she needs and then get back to bed without having to fully wake up – it’s a skill – so I can’t be totally sure how many times I went in and repeated the same ritual. A normal suggestion would be to remove several of the thousand security items in order to allow her to sleep without rolling over on on them repeatedly, but I’m thinking that’s not an option. I’m praying that the sleeplessness is seasonal or molars coming in or allergies or something that isn’t going to last until she’s 12 because the men with the big butterfly nets will have come to get me long before she reaches puberty.

When Baylie wakes up, the reverse of the ritual is preformed. I intervened after watching her get increasingly upset when Daddy was not “doing it right”. First, Bay picks up Kat. Then she hands me her blanket – which I am to put over my shoulder. Then both bears. Then I pick her and Kat up, hand her both the bears and then attempt to carry her out of her room while she clutches all her animals while laying her head on her blanket on my shoulder. To say this process is annoying is an understatement.

But at least this way she’ll have pretty teeth, right??

What’s in Baylie’s Bag? – 2 Edition

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This is the second edition of “What’s in Baylie’s Bag?”. In case you missed the first, I am documenting  the crazy things that Ms.B likes to carry around with her in an edition posted each week.

This week, Bay chose the baby buggy that once belonged to her Aunt Ali and myself as her method of transportation of her treasure. The contents? Why Barbies, of course.

Contents:

Peter Rabbit themed Barbie

Bath Tub Barbie

Barbie brush

A bowl that once contained Goldfish crackers that were most likely stealthily eaten by Bear T. Dog – now containing a play food ice cream cone

A wiffle ball

The instructions to her Peg Play game which she opens and pretends to read by saying “read read read”. Also a few pegs and the strings from the game

The bathing suit and towel costume from her new and very much loved Build-A-Bear brand “Kat”. We can’t be normal and just build a bear, we build cats

UofA Wildcat puppet – BEARDOWN!!!

Search Me

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In anticipation of the one year anniversary of The Goon Room, I was looking over some of the blog’s stats. Top posts, highest number of visitors, etc. One stat that I find hilarious is tags searched. So what people are using to search for The Goon Room. And they are:

goon room, the goon room blog, the goon room, terrorist drink

Now, the first three make sense. But if you haven’t been a reader of The Goon Room for long, they you’re probably unfamiliar with the last one. Be sure and catch up on “If We Don’t Drink, the Terrorist Win“.

Baylie and the Ashes

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For those non Catholics (or Catholics who forgot) today is Ash Wednesday – which is why many are walking around with what looks to be schmutz from pressing their forehead against a dirty window. It is the commencement of Lent, the time where we prepare for Easter. Or otherwise known as the time where people come up with something silly in their lives to give up and promptly bail on it four days later.

Baylie and I attended Mass this morning with Pop and Noni (Jim and Jude – my parentals) and also Uncle Mike (“Aaah My” as B says) joined us. We were a minute late and ended up sitting in front of Pop and Noni – which means Bay spent the entire hour walking or trying to climb back to them.

After getting our ashes, B was horrified. I have passed my germ-a-phobe ways on to her so she was disgusted by the fact everyone had dirt on their heads. She made a face that she usually only uses when she is telling me she needs a diaper change – a furrowed brow, a wrinkled nose and her little gapped front teeth showing. She then proceeded to point to each of our heads and say “eeewwwww”. When I pointed out that she too had the dirt, she began to rub her own head and mine to get clean. Thankfully she’s adorable so most of the parishioners around us didn’t mind her judgment.

Needless to say, the ashes didn’t make it to pancakes after church.

Rules Based on Fiction

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One of the many benefits of living in Scottsdale Arizona is spring training. That magical time of year when the boys of summer practice America’s Favorite Past Time less than a mile from our house. There are few things that I think are close to what heaven is like – but sitting in the sun, watching a game and drinking a beer is one of them.

I’ve noticed the following occurance before, but never asked why until this season. At most spring training stadiums when a beer, soda or water is purchased, the consessions employee removes the top and then hands the customer the bottle. If asked for the cap, the employee will refuse to give it to the customer.

This may not seem like a big deal, but if I buy a beer and a bottle of water, I really want the water for later and without the cap I risk knocking over the bottle and spilling the water. Which is a very likely scenario. So this makes the whole no cap business pretty annoying. And if it possibly involves possibly spilling my beer, down right scarry.

I asked a concession worker who looked to be about twelve years old why I couldn’t have the cap. He launched into a tirade about how they can’t give the caps because people fill the empty or nearly empty bottles with dirt, seal them with a cap and then launch the dirt bottles at the players. And before I could say “couldn’t they do that anyway without the cap?!” he anticipated my question by saying “and no, it wouldn’t work without the cap so that’s why we don’t give the caps”.

Peter and I promptly decided this was crap and proceeded to the next beer stand – for research of course – and got the same response. As we sipped our beers we were flooded with questions; where do you get the dirt to put in the bottle? If you made a mud mixture, you wouldn’t really need a cap, right? Even if the bottle didn’t have a cap, wouldn’t it still hurt to get hit with a partially filled bottle? Couldn’t you use something other than a cap? Like gum to seal the bottle? And on and on. We were obsessed. Who and where had this horrible atrocity occured thus ruining the containment of liquids for everyone? And was the damage so bad that the entire major leauge got together to make this a rule? Should they ban bottles of every kind? What about peanut bags filled with dirt? Or peanuts? What about hotdogs filled with dirt? The last few may have been the beer talking.

As we walked into the Cubs v Dodgers game on Sunday, we were solicited by a man selling frozen water bottles outside the stadium. His sign said that if you leave the bottle caps sealed, you can take them into the stadium and they were a third of the price than those sold in the stadium. So we bought and sure enough, the ticket takers were more interested in my bag than anything else. So we had done it. We had gotten bottles WITH CAPS into the stadium.

Now, to find some dirt.

Buh Bye….Buuuhh Byyyeee!!!!

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A few weeks ago a friend told me that her son got a small staph infection from his pacifier after having a bad cold. I made the mistake of sharing this anecdote with Peter who immediately decided it was time to throw Baylie’s “minkies” out the door.

While I know that at some point she was going to have to give up the pacifier, I just figured it was something we would do when she was, like, 10. So I held him off for about 2 weeks but lost the battle this past weekend. I had to agree that it wasn’t the worst idea to get rid of them – I was just afraid of the aftermath.

Aaaannnddd I was right.

After nap time on Saturday, Peter got a big envelope and wrote “For the Babies” on the outside. Then Bay got to add her personal touch and one by one, add the pacifiers to the envelope. She was happy to pack 7 of them away, but hesitated on the last one. After gentle encouragement from Daddy, she happily added the last one. They sealed it up and put it in the mailbox. All we had to do now was wait for the inevitable meltdown.

That night was rough getting her to sleep, but not the end of the world. She fussed a little during the night, but for the most part, it was not the end of the world. She did cry for several minutes saying “buuhh bbbyyyeeeee!!!! buh byeeee!!!” in the saddest voice I’ve ever heard. It was killing me. The solution to her pain was a mere 5 feet away in the mailbox outside the front door and I couldn’t get it for her. I was dying. But she quickly calmed down with a rock and a kiss and then slept semi well.

The big issue was nap time on Sunday. I knew it was going to be ugly, I just didn’t know how ugly it could be. I again rocked her to sleep and then put her down only to watch her pop back up a second later. We decided to let her cry it out for 10 minutes. At 4 minutes, I was concerned about the sounds that were coming out of B’s little mouth so I went into check on her. Apparently in an act of opposition, Bay had torn off her diaper and proceeded to pee all over her crib. A.MA.ZING. Peter continued to rock her in the bedroom while I stripped down her bed. An additional hour of rocking and she finally went down and stayed down. Sheesh.

Sunday night I was not up for the fight and was this close to giving in and getting the minkies out of the mailbox. Thankfully Peter’s competitiveness outweighed his exhaustion so he took over the downing process. There was the typical fussing and then silence. He exited her room and there was still silence. I was so grateful, but not amazed. Peter has had the ability to calm the kiddo since the second she was born. She was all screams when she was carried to the side of the delivery room to be weighed and measured and it wasn’t until Peter leaned down and whispered to her that she was quiet. When I asked what his secret was for getting her to calm down this time, he said that he simply made her look him in the eye while he told her that she was a big girl and that she could go to sleep without a pacifier. She responded “noooo” and so he repeated himself. She then responded “ok” and laid down in her crib. Done and done. Daddy does it again!

Nap time today was rough. The kid has some amazing lungs. A few minutes of quiet time, 10 minutes of crying followed by 10 minutes of rocking and she was out. This is a significant improvement over yesterday so I’m thinking by Friday, we should be in a good place. I’m pushing the blankie and a stuffed animal of her choice so that she gets attached to one of them. As someone who had her yellow satin blankie until she  was 11 years old and took Foofur the dog with her to college,  I think these are safer options. People might laugh if she has a pacifier. But a stuffed dog is always in style.

What’s in Baylie’s Bag?

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I’m starting a new weekly post called “What’s in Baylie’s Bag?”. Since Bay has been able to carry a grocery bag, a beach bag, a shopping bag, a bucket, a bag made for kids or a purse, she has filled it with various items from around the house. She will carry said bag around to various locations, unload some or all of the contents, reload and then move on.  At some point I end up emptying said bag to either clean up the house or if something important has gone missing – a phone, the remote or a shoe – it’s almost guaranteed to be in Baylie’s bag. The contents never fail to make me laugh – it cracks me up to see what she’s found to be important enough to carry around with her. So I laid out her treasures and took a picture. Here’s what was in this week’s REI shopping bag:

Contents:

Barbie

Barbie’s brush

2 pacifiers

Play food cookies and 2 bottles of soda

Nesting cups

A head band

Her UofA hat

Boo boo bunny

A hair tie

Star shaped sunglasses

Swim goggles

The Power of Suggestion

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As Baylie’s language skills grow, I’ve discovered a very humorous phenomenon.

We have several classes we attend each week that are great chances to not only teach interaction with other kids, but verbal skills and manners. So I’m often heard saying to Baylor “What is your name?” and “Can you please say hello to Ms.Maria?” or “Say ‘bye bye’!”, etc. The thing I find hilarious is if I don’t preface each phrase with Baylie’s name, the person I am trying to get her to talk to will usually be the one to respond, not Bay. I kind of expect it from kids because they are used to someone giving them the same prompts – but when I say “Say ‘hello'” to Baylie and an adult responds “hello!” it cracks me up! If I just randomly asked someone to say hello or tell me their name, there’s no way they would respond. But put a cute blonde toddler in front of them and they’ll say anything.

I should start saying “give them $5” or “what is your credit card number?” and see what kind of response I get. My luck the plan will backfire and Bay will dive into my purse and start rifling through my wallet for goodies to hand out…