Parenting's ugly side

I am really struggling with Joseph right now. We've had a rough couple of days and I'm just about at my wit's end. He's been whiny, rude, sassy and disruptive. I got a note from his teacher today telling me that he's been the same way at school. He knows that if he gets a bad report from school that he won't get any computer time in the evening. I told him no computer today and he told me "Noooo! My teachers are big fat liars! I heard them say that they were going to lie to you!"

I'm having such a tough time with him and it's just so frustrating. Elle is nothing but sweetness and sunshine and she lights up when she sees me. Joseph, on the other hand, said he was going to "give me a knuckle sandwich" last night. It's sometimes hard for me to put the effort into dealing with him when he's being so difficult because it's so much easier and rewarding being with her. I know that those are the times that I have to put twice the effort in with him though. It's just so darned frustrating sometimes. It's the less than pleasant side of parenting that I never really knew about before. Even though I love my chilren the same I don't always like them the same and that's a little bit of a yucky feeling.

Sigh.

In other news Elle has learned how to grunt. She does it all the time. When she's happy, when she's sad, when she's pooping, all the time. She grunts the loudest and expressivly when she's nursing though. I think it's her version of purring. She's a funny baby.

Joseph is a funny kid too when he's not bugging the ever loving snot out of me. And there's a little boy in his class who looks like Flavor Flav. That's got to count for something right?

Hot or Not? Part 2

Here's me being mean again. It's a good way to work out frustration. Let's get to it shall we?


What in the hell is going on in this picture? The gun, the "decor", the camo gear? I think someone is bucking for the honor of being Montana Militia Monthly's centerfold.


There's nothing that unusual about this picture. It's pretty normal except for the fact that something about her eyes makes me think that she's going to climb out of her computer and eat my soul!


Ok, here's the thing. Fat girls shouldn't pose with cake. I can say that because I am a fat girl. Everyone who looks at this picture is thinking the same thing. "Maybe she wouldn't be fat if she didn't love cake so much!" It's unkind, it's untrue and it's unfair. And it's the first thing that popped into my head when I saw this picture.


This guy actually went to a store and bought these pants. Then he bought those shoes. Then he went to a photographer and had her take pictures of him with his shirt off. This man is a massive tool.


Man? Woman? Wood sprite? You decide!


I can't decide what it is that's the hottest about this guy. Is it his non-exsistant top lip? His lazy eye? His stunning hair do? His beard that looks amazingly like pubic hair? What is it that makes him so hot?

That's all folks. I'll see you on the flip side.

Kid stuff

The other day Jesse threw away an old belt of his in the bathroom trashcan. Joseph saw it and asked me what it was. I told him it was daddy's old belt and he went back to staring it at. After a minute he looked at me and said "What kind of man would throw away a perfectly good belt?"

I think Elle might turn out to be left handed. If she's sitting in her high chair with some toys on her tray she always grabs at them with her left hand. It's so cute to watch. She still hasn't mastered grabbing onto things but she tries so hard. If she manages to get her hand on something then her whole little body gets stiff and her eyes get big and she goes "Ohhhhhh ohhhhhh ohhhhh!" Almost without fail she gets so excited that she drops whatever she grabbed onto.

I'm so tired. Ben and Gwen stayed over until nearly 2 last night. We just chatted and laughed and had a good old time but now I am sleepy. I'm going to end this now because I keep making mistakes in my typing.

Hot or Not?

There's this site that I visit once in a while that has become my guilty little secret. It's called Hot or Not. Lame people looking of validation submit pictures of themselves so that random strangers can vote and decide if they are Hot or Not. You vote by ranking each picture on a scale of 1 to 10. I like to rate people a 10 if they look like the sort of people that have never been called a "10" in their lives. Most of the pictures are kind of dull. There's a lot of shirtless guys and girls in short shorts but once in a while you come across some real gems. I would like to share some of my favorites with you now.


I think it's really hot when a guy shows off the fact that he has no friends by posting a picture of himself sitting alone, in a darkened room, with only the dim glow of a computer screen to keep him company. I bet he's looking for naked pictures of Raven Symone.


There are a ton of pictures like this out there. Certain men seem to think it makes them look hotter if they pose with their big boy toys. Most of them choose cars or motorcycles to pose with though. The fact that this guy chose a big screen tv seems beyond pathetic to me.


I bet this guy liked Brokeback Mountain. My friend, I know Heath Ledger and you are no Heath Ledger.


Ok, this one cracks me up to no end. "What? You want to take a picture of me for Hor or Not? Ok, let me hold my broom off to the side. What? No, I don't think I need to put it down. I'll just hold it over here with my cigarette. Can you see my gold tooth?" The class is just oozing off of this woman.


Errrrrr...... It was probably really cold when she had this picture taken.

That's all for now folks. If you liked that, let me know and I'll do more. If you didn't then just keep it to yourself because I have more pictures that I plan on mocking anyway. If you're like me and you have a brief twinge of guilt for making fun of random people who are unable to defend themselves then just do what I do and remind yourself that they submitted their pictures to a site called Hot or Not. Mocking is the least that they deserve.

For my baby boy

Happy adoption day!

I love you, my sweet boy. You have given me more joy, happines and laughter than you can ever know. I'm thankful for the day that you came into our home and I'm thankful for the day that you became part of our Forever Family.

Your sissy is so lucky to have a big brother as loving and devoted as you. Daddy and I are lucky to have a son who's so smart, funny, sweet and kind.

Thank you for teaching me patience, for making me laugh with your silly jokes, for showing me how to enjoy the little things, for telling me "I love you" every day. You are the best little boy that any one could ever hope to have.

Doctor appointment

The beast finally had her 4 month check up yesterday. She weighs 16 pounds and is 25 inches long. She's in the 90th % for weight, the 75th for height and the 90th for head circumfrince.

The doctor said I could start her on cereal if I wanted to but I think I'll hold off another month or so. Breastfed babies don't really need the extra iron that cereal gives them until 6 months so if I start her at 5 months she'll be ok. I'm just thinking that there's no reason to rush solid foods. She seems so young! (Joseph was having cereal towards the end of his 3rd month.)

Keep your fingers crossed for Mr Joe. We're trying to get him into this charter school in town. They have year round school with all day kindergarten. It's looking pretty good right now but it can't hurt to have a few extra positive thoughts put out there. We won't find anything out until early to mid March. If this doesn't work out then we'll send him to the local public school this year and register him for the charter school for first grade.

Here's picture of Elle just for the hell of it.

Best video ever!

Here is the video that I tried to show people before but no one seems to have seen it. Watch it! Watch it and love it as much as I do!

Strange

According to my stat counter I got about 20 hits from France yesterday. I checked out the refering link but I couldn't see anything that could have possibly led to my blog. Even stranger, it seemed to be some kind of sports news page. The hell?

On Monday I took Elle to her 4 month check-up. When I got there they said "We tired to call you and tell you the Elle's doctor was out today but we couldn't reach you. Sorry about that, here's a $5 gift certificate for coming in." It's the first time I have ever left a doctors office with a lovely parting gift.

Our phone is not working. When people call it rings once or twice and then cuts off. If someone gets through it often cuts off mid-coversation. Sometimes it just makes a lot of clicks and stuff when we use it. It's not our phone that's doing it, it's something about our service. We're going to have it looked into but in the meantime if you try to call me and cen't get through then try my cell phone. Chances are that my cell phone will not be charged and/or buried at the bottom of Elle's diaper bag but it's still worth a shot.

What's the strangest thing that Joseph has ever said? My vote is for when he told my mom "We only eat casserole in my family. It promotes a healthy colon!"

Here's a picture of Joseph before he had his tigerectomy done.

Letters to......

An open letter to fans of Raven Symone;
You are spelling her name wrong. I spelled it wrong when I bitched about how she was helping to ruin Disney and now you're finding my blog by spelling it wrong when you search for her. If you're one of the 5 people or so a day who comes to my blog via a search for Raven Symone then let me answer any questions you may have. No, I do not know if "Raven Symone is coming to Canada". I don't have any "Raven Symone baby pictures". If you're one of the people who came here looking for "naked Raven Symone pictures" then you are a pervert and you need to have your head examined.
Thank you

antipodean,
G'day mate! Is that how you say it? I should come to visit you, I already speak the language. Aussie Aussie Aussie, oy oy oy! I bet you never get tired of that!
Cheers!

FuriousRose,
Fear of pooping while giving birth, bringing cool people together since the beginning of time!
Rock on my friend

Tom Cruise,
Shut it dude. No one cares about your stupid theories on depression and doctors or anything else. If post-partum depression could be cured by vitamins don't you think a real doctor would have figured that out by now? And it's gross the way you tell the press that you've "tucked away" you child bride so that no one can "get at her" before she gives birth. In a darkened room. With no pain medicine. Without being allowed to make a sound. Nice life asshole. You're as bad as Sean Penn but at least he can act.

Rusty Yates,
There is no punishment harsh enough for what your wife did but if I had my way you would be right there with her in jail. At least she had the excuse of being mentally ill, what's your excuse? Here's a tip: If your wife has a complete and total mental breakdown, the thing to do is get her some help, not take her for a walk on the beach. (You could have at least had Tom Cruise over to give her some vitamins!) If your wife is recovering from severe psychosis caused by PPD it is not a good idea to decide to have a 5th child. Just for future referrance.

To the general public,
If you value your health then don't come near me. I have pink eye for the second time in 2 weeks. I've had this same cold for about 3 weeks. This morning I coughed up something that looked like a piece of lung. I'm a walking health hazzard and the 100 times a day that I wash my hands does not seem to be helping. I'm a modern day Typhoid Mary only less deadly and I wear jeans.

Disney with a baby

I have my day by day run down of the trip started but it's on Jesse's laptop and I can't get to it right now so I'm just going to talk a little bit about doing DisneyWorld with a baby. Before this trip, when I would go to DW and see babies I would think "I am never taking a baby to DW!". How quickly things change.

You know what? It worked out pretty well. We had to take a few more breaks during the day so that Elle could nurse but that wasn't such a big deal. Most of the time there was a ride or shop nearby that Joseph wanted to visit so Jesse would take him to do that and Elle would have a snack.

I used all the baby care centers in each park. Magic Kingdom and EPCOT have the best baby care centers. They're large and roomy and have pretty much every baby-related thing you could think of. The nursing rooms in both of them were really nice too. They each had 4 rocking chairs arranged facing each other so that you could sit and nurse and talk with the other mothers in the room. MGM and Animal Kingdom had smaller facilities with tiny seperate rooms for mothers to nurse in. Each place only had 2 rooms! I wonder what it's like when the parks are crowded!

Each time I used the nursing rooms the same thing would happen. I would start talking to the other women in the room and the coversation always went the same. We would discuss how old our babies were and how much they weighed. Then, without fail we would start talking about how awesome it was that we were all nursing instead of formula feeding. It may sound obnoxious but in this day and age when so few women nurse their babies we all seemed to think that we deserved a little pat on the back. I bet I could have used those rooms 100 times and had the same conversations. It was nice.

My only complaint about the baby care centers is that there is only one in each park. If you're not right by it when your little one wants to eat then you're kind of out of luck. Most babies are not going to happily wait while you trudge a half mile across the park so that you can feed them.

So I quickly became an expert at public nursing. (Yes Ben and Gwen, I've become one of those women!) My senses became fine tuned. My eyes could scout out a good, private spot from miles away. My body could twist and bend into shapes that I never knew possible so that Elle could latch on comfortably. I could quickly fashion a blanket (or a burb rag or her sling or even a napkin) into a little tent so that Elle could eat in private.

I only had one negative experience with public nursing. Once, as I was waiting for Jesse and Joseph to get off a ride this fat woman and her four fat kids stood there and openly stared at me. I couldn't figure out what the big deal was. I was totally covered up! It was obvious what I was doing but it's not like I was standing on a table and spraying milk around. I was being discreet. I didn't understand what the problem was. Maybe they were just hungry.

When we were at Downtown Disney I asked a castmember if there was a place I could nurse and she suggested that I use the bathroom. Yeah, not so much but thanks. How is that a good idea at all?

But otherwise things went very smoothly with Elle. She's a fantastic little traveler. She was happy to sit in her stoller and smile at us and people watch. If you ignore the time we had to spend at the World's Worst Emergency Room Ever with her (more on that later) she was no trouble at all. She ended up being a lot easier to do Disney with than Joseph was (more on that later too!) For now, Elle is napping and I'm going to get myself some lunch. I think I'll eat it in the bathroom.

Appliance Direct!

I'm trying to finish my entry about our trip but I can't because I got ADHD from watching too many Appliance Direct commercials when we were in Florida.

"Only Appliance Direct has top quality stoves. Curved sides? Yes! Soft handles? Yes! Appliance Direct! I love appliances! Remember, no shopping on Sundays! I love appliances! Your dishwasher is a piece of junk! Only Appliance Direct has high pressure dish washers. I love appliances!"

Back home

We're back. I'll write more about the trip later but now I'm just beat. Should I be this tired after a week long vacation? I think anyone who has ever spent 5 days at Disney World with 2 sick kids would say YES.

In the meantime check out this awesome blog: http://www.chasingchina.blogspot.com/ It's by a super nice lady who's going to be adopting a baby from China. Show her some love.

Joseph just went to school, Elle is sleeping. I'm going to collapse on the couch. (Oh, and before I forget, the house is looking awesome. My parents really out-did themselves. I'll talk more about that later too. Now, sleep.)