Tag: personal

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.

Retail Me Not

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Peter turned me onto a great website called RetailMeNot.com. It is a coupon type website targeted at online shoppers. It almost always has a free shipping or percentage off coupon for even the smallest sites. Next time  you’re getting ready to check out, be sure and check for a shipping or percentage off coupon at http://www.retailmenot.com!

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…

Handy Home Improving

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Any homeowner will say that the job of improving, maintaining and updating a home is never done. Even friends of ours that live in brand new houses are always doing something. Our story is the same – it’s always something.

That something (besides the dishwasher) was the master bathroom toilet. For weeks it would fill. STOP. Fiiillllll. STOP. Fiiiillll some more. STOP. And on and on until it was done filling. And because our water pipes are in the attic (yes East Coasters, they are in the attic because we don’t have to worry about them freezing) the process was heard throughout the house as the pipes banged with each pause. Not exactly what you want to hear at 3am – or worse, at 5:30am because the sound will inevitably wake up Baylie.

Now when Peter and I were both working, we would have certainly called a plumber and gladly handed over the $100+ to fix the toilet. We were both working 60+ hours a week and it made sense not to waste the precious time we had outside of the office on trying to fix something we know nothing about. But now that we only have 1 income, that’s no longer the case. And after a quick pep talk from my mom – the woman who can fix anything – Bay and I ventured out to the plumbing supply store. After a quick explanation and a new flush valve, we headed home to fix our commode.

Fixing a toilet is a challenge. Fixing a toilet with a busy, curious and eager-to-help 20 month old is an Olympic sport. Thankfully she was very content to play with the extra parts that came with the new valve (yes, there were supposed to be extra parts, I asked) and hand me rags to mop up the water. 20 minutes after we started we were calling everyone we knew to make them listen to the toilet flush without pausing. Yes, we fixed it and fixed it right in one try – $20 worth of parts, a patient salesman at the plumbing supply, some elbow grease and a blind eye to the fact that there was toilet water leaking onto the floor and we did it. The best part is that when we called Peter, A. he was stumped by what the hell I was asking him to listen too and B. was convinced I had called a plumber. When I actually showed him what I had to do to fix it, he was most impressed.

I contemplated taking pictures of my work in anticipation of a blog, but realized that pictures of the back of the toilet was pushing it. However, this goes down as my new “best” when it comes to home improvement. Next up: sprinkler repair!

Appliances With Attitude

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Almost four years ago we moved home to Arizona from Washington DC. We had decided we were going to renovate our rental house for us to live in and started the project prior to our 40 hour drive across the country. We walked in to this:

More than once we had a “Oh sh*t. What have we started??” moment. But the house came together beautifully and 9 months after we started, we ended up with this:

We had only minor snafus along the way – one of them being the dishwasher installation. Because we were total novices at remodeling a house and managing the contractor and the sub contractors, supplies (we learned the hard way to buy our own materials and hire someone to install them) and the physical work we did ourselves, we didn’t catch that we had measured the hight for the dishwasher from the sub-floor rather than the tiled floor. And when you’re using 1 inch thick and extremely inconsistent sized Saltillo tile, this is an issue. Long story short, we had to chip out the tile under the counter and in front in order to get the dishwasher in place. This resulted in a very serious condition called Appliance Attitude.

Yes, the damn thing developed a negative attitude towards work because he knew that he had job security. Often at night I would hear Dishwasher chuckling as I loaded up dirty dishes. Then in the morning when they were still dirty he would mumble under his breath “What are you going to do about it, lady? Chip out all the tile, haul me away, put in a new dishwasher, relay the tile and then seal it?? I don’t think so!! Mmmmwwwaaahhhaaaahhh!!”. Dirty bastard. And the worst part was he was right – it was way too much work to get a new dishwasher. So I called the factory service – who were no help. I changed detergents and even – gasp – washed the dishes before putting them in to be washed. Some of it helped, but not enough. So this past Christmas, we decided it was time. We were going to do the work and get something that actually cleaned our dishes instead of just making them appear clean but smell funny.

And that’s when it happened. Dishwasher decided he wasn’t going out in handcuffs, he was going out in a body bag.

Tuesday night I was settling into bed and Peter was working out on the couch when we both heard a very loud and ominous BANG. He came flying into the bedroom saying that he thought someone had thrown something at our front window. We both proceeded to investigate and Peter proceeded to ignore my snarky comments questioning why someone would choose to break the front window rather than one of the two glass doors on either side of the window to get into our house.  We settled on the dishwasher and when we opened it, we were greeted with a plume of smoke and steam. Not to mention all of the “clean” dishes were covered in a crunchy white substance. There was the telltale sign of a problem in the bottom of the dishwasher – a tube thingy was split wide open and a wire was hanging out – it reminded me of the Sad Mac face with two X’s for eyes and it’s tongue hanging out.

And so the process begins. The handy man is coming today to chip out the tile – the new super fancy and tested by my mom dishwasher comes tomorrow and by Saturday night, we’ll be washing dishes like normal people. And by sometime next week we won’t have a giant, tile-less section in our floor.

I did ask the salesman if the installation people who will be hauling away our POS would let me kick it – he didn’t laugh. There’s probably now a note in the delivery instructions to beware the crazy homeowner.

Are They Twins?

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Something baffling and hilarious happened the other night. It was a rare night where Peter was home from work earlier than 10 minutes before B goes to bed. So we were sitting on our front patio, enjoying the lovely 72 degrees and a glass of wine.

A neighbor who I recognize, but haven’t met (and probably won’t based on what happened next) walked by as she normally does in the evenings. Bay was being Bay and running around climbing into the chair, back out and then up onto the bench Peter and I were sitting on and then back. As our neighbor walked by we said hello, she responded and then smiled nicely and said “Are they twins?”

Perplexed, but trying not to be jerks, Peter and I smiled as we were clearly stumped. Were who twins? Us? The bench and the chair? Our dogs? About 5 seconds later, we realized she couldn’t quite see over the small wall that surrounds the patio and had thought our freakishly fast-moving 20 month old was 2 kids instead of one. So we explained that no, she’s just fast. The neighbor laughed and headed on her way.

I’d like to think she kept moving out of embarrassment and not out of pity for having a Tasmanian devil for a daughter.

Happy Valentines Day

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What says Valentine’s more than a dog being tortured with love bug antenna? A love bug herself, that’s who! And if heart-shaped glasses at a friend’s party and a loving cousin who is willing to brave the “Mystery Machine” Jump house with a hundred ankle biters isn’t love, I don’t know what is.  Happy Valentines Day!

And So It Begins…

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I love Barbie. I’ve played with them since I could hold the tiny little Barbie sized brush in my hand. I’ve held many a Barbie wedding with my favorite Barbie in a dress I hand-made.  I started collecting them when I was ten years old – my dad gave me The Empress Bride Barbie designed by Bob Mackie. It’s still one of my favorites. My collection lives at my mom’s house in a retrofitted 7 foot tall cabinet and there are 100+ dolls lovingly displayed – which are the envy of my niece and young cousin since they can’t actually touch them.

Baylie  has two vintage inspired prints in her room and I’ve been teaching her to say “Barbie” since the day she was born. All the while worrying that she might – gasp – not love them as much as I do.

This week, I got my answer. While picking her up from Noni’s, I showed her mommy’s Barbies and she loved it. I opened the case and realized there are a few dolls I’ve never opened because they don’t have stands to keep them upright. In the mix I found one that Peter’s mom had given me – I can’t remember the occasion, but I’m sure it’s from her because it’s a Peter Rabbit theme. I pulled it out and asked Baylie if she would like it – she happily said yes, took the box and proceeded out the front door to the car so we could go home and open it. I couldn’t be happier.

Bay spent the rest of the afternoon helping Barbie drink her tea and brushing her hair. I just can’t wait to break out my amazing doll house and all the accessories. Mostly because I want B to have all the fun I used to have playing for hours…and a little because I want to play with them too.

 

The Barbie print over her changing table

 

Barbie enjoying some tea….

Trying hard to tear ourselves away from Curious George cartoons

Finding the irony in brushing Barbie’s hair when it’s Baylie who needs the brush on her head

The beginning of a beautiful friendship

Dream A Little Dream

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When I get overwhelmed, I find myself daydreaming of whatever I think would make whatever task I’m working on complete, or even just easier or more fun. In the middle of one of these daydreams while folding 3 heaping baskets of laundry, I “checked in” and realized A. how funny these thoughts are B. how totally unrealistic they are and C. how much better it makes me feel to think of how much happier I would be if I actually had them. So here’s my list:

– A person to come to my house once a week and give me a free, warp speed manicure and pedicure so that I don’t have to spend the time and or money on it and I don’t look like I have talons instead of finger nails.

– A relative who needs a guinea pig for facials and eye brow waxing.

– A floor where nothing ever sticks to your feet because it’s always clean.

– The ability to not only survive but thrive and concur the world on only three hours of sleep a night.

– Unlimited gift cards to the Container Store.

– Free overnight shipping from any website any time.

– Dishes and laundry that do themselves.

Sigh. I guess it’s all wishful thinking until I find a bottle with a genie in it. Or wine. Whatever comes first.