Goodbye, 2014. Hello, 2015

I know it's totally cliched to write a blog post taking stock of the old year and listing resolutions for the new. However, that's exactly what I am about to do. Deal with it.

2014 will not go down as one of my favorite years. In it we faced:

-Marian getting very sick with RSV and bronchiolitis
-My grandmother's continuing decline in health
-My dad having a massive heart attack
-Ella dealing with severe psychological constipation
-Jim traveling a bunch for work
-Getting the flu right before Ella's birthday and Christmas
-And the final middle finger of 2014, having a crabby teething baby who refused to go to sleep for hours and hours and then when we finally got her settled some asshole neighbor set off fireworks, waking up both kids.

But we also had a lot of good points:

-Traveling to Florida, Raleigh, the Ozarks, Cape Cod, Chicago, Montana, and Yellowstone
-Growing a pretty awesome garden (plus did a fairly good job with canning/freezing)
-Taking lots of fun little local trips to the zoo, children's museum, state park, etc.
-Watching both kids grow and learn and be sweet and silly

Here are my goals/resolutions for the new year:

-Be more mindful of what I eat/drink less coffee
-Get back to exercising on a fairly regular basis (and no, chasing after the kids doesn't count)
-Be better about not letting little things get to me
-Blog more/read more books/take more time for myself

That's all fairly doable, right? Feel free to hold me accountable.

The plague house, again

Here's a tally of this month's illnesses: 

1 toddler with mysterious on again, off again fever and lethargy but no other symptoms

2 kids with colds. The special, fun, never-ending toddler colds. 

1 husband with bronchitis

1 mom who has battled colds, mystery 24 hour virus, and is finally laid low by a horrible upper respiratory virus/fever/chills/shakes

Naturally this would have to occur right before Ella's birthday party. So on top of feeling like crap I am dealing with mommy guilt for having to push her party back to January. Nothing like hearing your almost 3 year old say over and over, "But Mommy TOMORROW is my birthday party. TOMORROW!" 

Ugh. Can it be spring yet? 

Holiday Gift Guide- Mommy Edition

I figured since I gave all my readers (yes, all three of you) a handy dandy gift guide for the kids, I might as well make one out for myself. You may send your gift to BFE- just write my name on the box and it will somehow find its way to me, I promise. This gift guide will also serve you well for any other mom of young children on your gift list.

1. Alcohol. Moms have to heavy job of ensuring that the next generation doesn't turn out to be little shits. Doing so means that we have to deal with a LOT of whining and tantrums and utter ridiculous sentences like, "Please stop telling the dog to sniff your butt and go get some undies on." I can give you somewhere along the lines of a gazillion other examples but you get the point.

2. Coffee. This is pretty much self-explanatory. I have not slept through the night since 2011. In fact, I'm pretty positive that I am a caffeinated zombie. I need caffeine like I need oxygen.

3. Babysitting services. You know how every single parenting magazine/website tells you to make sure to take time for yourself, go on dates with your significant other, maybe get your hair cut or fall asleep in a movie theatre? What they don't tell you is that (a) babysitters are freaking expensive and (b) finding the Holy Grail is easier than finding a good babysitter.

4. Everyone else to not have a housecleaning service. I discovered a dirty little secret here in BFE- almost everyone I know utilizes a housecleaning service on a fairly regular basis. While it would be nice to have a housekeeper of my own, I'm kind of a vindictive bitch. It would be far nicer to watch everyone else scramble to figure out how the hell to keep a house halfway decent while doing enriching things with the kids and at least 5 Pinterest-worthy projects a day and pretend that you have all your shit together. I'll smugly watch from the sidelines with my alcohol-laden coffee.

5. Hotel room. I have fantasies about hotel rooms. They all run along these lines: I check into the hotel, while singing, "All by myself! I get to be- all by myself!" (Celine Dion re-wrote the song after having kids.) I change into my super sexy yoga pants and grungy t-shirt. I order room service. I watch crappy cable TV. Maybe binge watch HGTV. After eating a meal in which no one throws food or whines about wanting something different, I go to sleep. I get to sprawl over the entire king size bed and no one wakes me up by snoring or needing to nurse or wanting Mommy to come get the scary things off the bed. I wake up the next morning after 12 amazing hours of sleep. I order room service breakfast. I eat and drink coffee- hot coffee, and not hot from being microwaved five times- while reading a book or trashy magazine. I get to shower and pee without company. If it's a hotel room in a swanky place that has a spa, I will love you forever.

A case of parenting genius gone wrong

Once upon a time, there was a toddler who really wanted a cookie. She desperately wanted a cookie. She dreamed about that wonderful cookie. 

Enter in Mean Awful Mommy who said that she couldn't have a cookie unless she ate a good dinner. The toddler would try and try to eat a good dinner, but Mean Awful Mommy made such disgusting dinners that it was impossible for the toddler to eat enough to appease her mommy and earn that cookie. 

Mean Awful Mommy got tired of seeing that cookie sitting on the pantry shelf. 

Enter in the Cookie Monster. 

Mean Awful Mommy told the toddler that unless she ate a good dinner, that very night, the Cookie Monster was going to visit the house after she was asleep and eat up that cookie. Then it would be very sad because there would be no more cookies. 

(Pssst, if you're wondering, the Cookie Monster looks and sounds a lot like Mommy.)

The toddler did not want the Cookie Monster to come and eat her cookie. Doesn't that awful Cookie Monster have any sense of ownership? It was her cookie that she got at a birthday party and no Cookie Monster was going to steal it while she was asleep. 

So the toddler gobbled up her dinner and at last got to eat her cookie. 

Mean Awful Mommy congratulated herself on this stroke of parenting genius and poured herself a celebratory glass of wine. 

The End

---------------------------

See, that's where the story would end in most households. Not in mine. 

The morning after the initial success, I told Ella that the Cookie Monster had, in fact, come by the house the night before. However, I told him that she had eaten a good dinner and got to eat her cookie so there were no cookies here for him. The Cookie Monster was so proud of her that he dropped off some more cookies for her to have. (Yes, the Cookie Monster takeths, and the Cookie Monster giveths, because Mommy wanted some cookies too and there was no way to hide all those cookies in the pantry so there was some improvising.)  

This Cookie Monster bit played out well for about a week. Until my wily little toddler caught on. 

Last night we had one cookie left in the pantry. It had taken lots and lots of willpower on my part not to eat that cookie. Ella dutifully ate the first part of her dinner. I let her down to play while the rest cooked. She brings me over her play phone and tells me the Cookie Monster is on the phone. Like a good mom, I say hi and have a fake conversation with the Cookie Monster about that last cookie in the pantry. I hang up and go back to making dinner. 

Then there's another phone call. This time it's the Orange Marmalade Monster. I talk to him too. We have a nice discussion about how we are almost out of orange marmalade and will have to go buy some at the store. 

I hand the phone back to Ella. But wait, there's another call! This time it's the Vegetable Monster. She tells me he wants her vegetables. I'm pretty positive she would be okay with letting him have them. Panicking, I get on the phone with the Vegetable Monster and broker a deal between him and the Cookie Monster. They both agree that if Ella eats her vegetables she can get her cookie. 

Crisis averted. Or so I think. 

The pretend phone rings for a final time. It's the Ice Cream Monster. Ella tells me that he says if she eats all her dinner then she can have ice cream. Crap. By this point you can bet I'm regretting inventing the Cookie Monster. Hurriedly I get on the phone with the Ice Cream Monster. I explain that we don't have any ice cream in the freezer and that I would love to chat more but I have to get back to cooking dinner. 

I can see the little wheels turning in her head. I really want ice cream more than I want a cookie. But if there is no ice cream to be had, then there is nothing for the Ice Cream Monster to steal. If I'm not going to get what I want anyway, why should I eat my dinner? 

Anyone want to take bets as to whether she ate her dinner? 

Yep, despite reminders about the cookie in the pantry, within five minutes she decided she was done. Forget about the cookie. That's nowhere near as awesome as ice cream.  

Toddler 1, Mommy 0. Or maybe I get half a point for the initial success?   

At least I got to eat the cookie. 

That's MY spoon!

There's been some interesting communication going on between the two kids. I'll give you a few examples:

Scene One
Marian: Baba gaga mmmm lala mmmm (plus other baby babble noises- you get the picture)
Ella: NO! MINE!
Marian: AHHHHH!
Ella: MINE!
Marian: EEEEEHHHH!
Me: What are you two fighting about?!
Ella: Marian says she wants my spoon but I say it's MY spoon, Marian!
Me: Why don't you get your sister her own spoon then?

Somehow giving Marian a spoon did solve their bickering. Although Marian does love spoons and simply may have been distracted from whatever she actually wanted by a shiny object.

Scene Two
Marian: Again, happily babbling away. Crawls over to the dog bed which is a big no-no in our house. 
Me: Uh-oh Marian! No dog bed!
Ella: Mama, don't say, "Ought ought ought" to Marian. She just pretending to be a dog.

Seriously, what do you even say to that kind of stuff? I went with, "Well then she can pretend to be a dog somewhere besides the dog bed." Ella told Marian to come be a dog next to her and they crawled around doing some game of their own making.

So here's my question- how much of this is my toddler making stuff up vs. the two kids having their own little mode of communication? I noticed a long while back that Marian doesn't talk as much when Ella is around. Whether that's because the poor kid can't get a word in edgewise or because she is relying on Ella to communicate for her is up for debate. Parenting experts, what say you?

NOT Sleeping through the night. Or, Why I look like a zombie

Neither child has slept through the night in years. Well, maybe a week. In any case, it feels like years when the hours of 2-5am are spent in a state of awful half-awakeness dealing with demands for milk and hugs and lullaby CDs and trying to explain to a toddler that you can't do anything about the fact that it is dark outside.

I'm tired of not only being tired, but of answering questions about why I look so tired from well-meaning friends and strangers and the super-chatty bag girl at the grocery store.

In response to my children's hatred of sleep, I decided to design this super awesome and totally attractive t-shirt, using my vast artistic skills and Microsoft Paint.

Told you I had vast artistic skills. Be very impressed. 

Obviously in real life the shirt won't be white. Instead, it will come in a wide variety of colors- probably all on the same shirt- to hide coffee stains, all the random stuff kids wipe on your shirt, and the fact that you haven't changed your shirt or showered in three days. 

Once you are wearing this shirt, you won't have to make mindless chatter with people or make excuses as to why you look like hell. Simply point to the shirt. Everyone will shut up and run to get you more coffee. It will also help you pinpoint other moms with kids that aren't sleeping through the night. As you are cruising the grocery store at 8am, coffee in hand and wild kids in tow, you can fist bump each other as you pass by and send twin death glares to that overly-coiffed mom from music class who clearly has kids that sleep otherwise she wouldn't be wearing heels and full-makeup- and very clearly has taken a shower already this week- so early in the morning. Solidarity, sister moms! (Except for you, overly-coiffed mom. Everyone else secretly hates you. Get with the program and wear yoga pants like the rest of us.) 

School days

Every Wednesday Ella goes to "school." In reality all she does is run around and play and does some sort of craft and actually eats a complete meal, but hey, it gives me a much-needed 5 hours where I only have one child to deal with.

Here's my problem with school days. Tuesday night I come up with this crazy list of everything I am going to accomplish on Wednesday. Even as I am making my list I know it is entirely unrealistic. Take, for example, this week's list:

-Clean the whole house. Like not the half-assed cleaning that I am able to accomplish with the kids running around. A real deep cleaning. Including baseboards. Oh, how I loathe cleaning baseboards. But this week is going to be the week.

Thank you, Hyperbole and a Half, for totally getting me

-Drink lots of coffee, in relative peace. Preferably while reading a book. And not any old book. Something that will make me smarter. I'm going to find one of those lists of all the books you should read before you turn 30 or die or something and delve into it.

-Do all those educational and developmental things you are supposed to do with babies that I dutifully did with Ella but poor second child Marian has not had. In fact, this week we will even make it to baby story time at the library. I won't just run into the library with Marian napping in the Tula so I can get more books for myself.

-Prep dinner for tonight. It's going to be completely awesome to be able to pop something in the oven quickly instead of trying to scramble something together during the witching hour as I gulp down wine to keep my sanity.

-Pay the bills. Not only that, after I pay them I will haul myself up to the study and file away everything that has been accumulating on the desk/guest bed for the past six months. Then as long as I'm up there, I'm going to organize everything in that room. And put the Christmas decorations back in the crawl space.

-Finally sew the curtains for the living room.

-As long as I'm doing home stuff, I'm going to go to Lowes and pick up paint to re-do the half bath. Then tonight I'll paint the bathroom and as long as I'm painting I'll make a dent in painting our bedroom too. It is going to be fantastic. Goodbye, Bartian beige. Hello, color.

I do this to myself, without fail, every single week. You want to know what I did today?

-Swept the kitchen floor, washed the dishes, and did some laundry. That counts as the whole house, right?

-Made myself a latte and tried to get creative with the foam art like they do in coffee houses. I made a squiggle. It was fantastic.

-Paid the bills. Piled them up neatly and added them to the ever-growing mountain of stuff to file.

-Checked my phone and email about a gazillion times to see if my best buddy Kristen has had her baby yet. Come on, priorities here people.

-Nursed Marian about a gazillion times. Managed to read maybe three pages of a book while doing so. It is a Pulitzer Prize book by a Nobel Prize winning author so that has to count for something (went back and checked- apparently I have zero memory these days).

-Did stuff in the garden. Pretty sure I managed to eat a bug.

-Goofed around on the internet. Then did some serious internet stuff like browsing for shoes for Marian (hello, was this kid not just born?) and looking at stuff for vacation.

-Chased after Marian as she crawled under the butcher block, attempted to climb up the fridge, cruised around the living room, and made a bee-line for the dog toys. Also let her play uninterrupted with all of Ella's toys, which to Marian is probably the best part of school days. Sang "If you're happy and you know it" probably 50 times because she thinks it is the best song ever. Tried (unsuccessfully) to get her to clap her hands. Comforted her as she threw a shit fit because I won't let her eat paper or the gazillion threads she manages to find everywhere.

-Thought about dinner in a vague sense. Remembered Jim has a work dinner tonight so I can do a kiddie dinner before swim tonight and then do a real dinner for myself after they are in bed. Or, you know, have ice cream. Dinner of champions.

-And now have spent 20 minutes writing this blog post. And it's going on 12:30. I know pretty soon I'm going to say screw it and get another cup of coffee.

Probably I should give in and simply put "relax" and "play with the baby" as the only things on the to-do list. 

Things that make me happy

The other night Jim pointed out that I have a tendency to get too caught up in negative stuff. In an attempt to focus more on the positives in my life (and conceding that yes, he may have a valid point), here is a post all about random stuff that makes me happy.

Afternoon snack time with this little non-napping goober and realizing just how delicious those Annie's bunny crackers are.

This box that has been sitting under this couch for the past few weeks. It means that one day- maybe a year from now- I might get around to making new curtains for my living room.

Waking up to the smell of fresh bread. Thank you, programmable bread machine!

Seeing how happy this little bug is when she wakes up from her morning nap

The sight of cloth diapers drying on the line

Ripe raspberries fresh from the garden

Selective mommy memory

I am pretty positive that I have selective mommy memory. There are certain aspects of Ella's babyhood that I seemed to have conveniently forgotten- until Marian was in the midst of doing the same thing. Or I lied to myself and told myself it wasn't so bad.

Like how I somehow forgot the awful period of time when Ella was a newborn and refused to sleep or stop screaming unless she was being held and we used to have to take turns rocking her. I'd be so tired that I would have to stand up while holding her and I would wake Jim up at the point where I was literally falling asleep on my feet. We'd do that in 15 minute shifts all.night.long.

Yet until we had a newborn again I had blotted that from my mind. All I remembered was how wonderfully Ella slept until she hit about 5 months old.

Anyway, this selective mommy memory came to mind again when Marian started crawling and cruising around. Here's how I remember Ella's early mobile days:

Ahh, so proud of herself! 

Taking my clothes out of the drawers! Isn't that adorable! 

Look at that sweet little thing go! 

Oooh! She can stand! Isn't that TOTALLY AWESOME??!!!

Here are the things I erased from my mind about the whole mobile baby process: 

-They put tons of random shit in their mouths. Like little pieces of fuzz and hair and dog toys and the cheerios your toddler left on the floor. 

-They somehow manage to find every single little thing they aren't supposed to play with. My kids seem to love the dogs toys. Maybe the fact that they have been pre-slobbered makes them more attractive. 

-Cleaning your floors on a daily basis becomes an absolute necessity. Because otherwise you end up completely disgusted at how much dirt and dog hair clings to their magnetic little hands. And dirty floors gives them more stuff to stick in their mouths. 

-Babyproofing is like throwing down the gauntlet. "Oh, so you think I can't climb over the baby gate? Just watch me."

-They have this sixth sense for when your back is turned. Think you'll have time for that 30 second bathroom trip? Think again. 

Go ahead and try to pee. I'll just be chewing on some wiring. 

The worst part is I know once Marian is a bit older all the not-so-fun aspects will be a distant memory.

Randoms...

Here's a hodge-podge post of what's been going on here:

-Had an amazing weekend in Raleigh with one of my besties, Kristen from BeerCat Brewing. Almost four whole awesome days of gabbing non-stop. Being back there made me realize just how much I miss living on the East Coast and how much I wish we lived closer to one another. I have lots of friends here in BFE, but none that "get" me in the way Kristen does. I can't wait to have our next get-together.

-Came back from Raleigh and almost immediately got sick with viral pharyngitis. If you aren't familiar with it, it's like strep throat without the benefit of antibiotics. Plus the lovely addition of full body aches, chills, and hot flashes. I lost five pounds from not being able to eat anything besides ice cream for almost a week. During the worst of it I couldn't even drink water, but for whatever reason I could have ginger ale.

-Jim threw me an amazing Mother's Day weekend. Sushi? Check. Alcohol? Check. A date night so horrible that we can laugh about it for years to come? Check. (Note: my side-eyeing of events at the BFE Community Center is now completely justified.) Relaxing morning? Yep. Alcoholic beverages, ice cream, and not having to worry about a single meal? You bet. Super awesome craft "from the kiddos"? Oh yeah. Jim made me a super cute votive candle holder and then had the girls paint it. I know a lot of moms are like, "Eh, I don't want some craft from the kids, give me jewelry." I'm the opposite. I LOVE stuff that my kids make, especially when I'm not the one who has to come up with the activity, wrangle the kids into doing it, and then clean it all up.

-We had our first salad of the season made completely from stuff in our garden. Minus the cheese, of course. Because what is a salad without cheese?

Anyway, now that we are all mostly healthy again and things are semi-calm here, it'll be back to posting like normal.

One week!

This time next week I will be traveling to see my awesome buddy Kristen from over at BeerCat Brewing. If you remember, she came to visit me back in September, right before Ella was born (and if you don't see my posts here and here and her much better post here). When she came out to BFE, I was hugely pregnant with Marian. This time, she is pregnant with her second little one and is rocking the cutest bump.

I am way super excited. Kristen totally rocks and I am looking forward to spending a weekend gabbing away with her. We spent her visit talking for 72 hours straight, without having to worry about my cell phone crapping out or needing to run errands or kids waking up from naps. I'm surprised we weren't both completely hoarse by the time I dropped her off.

And although I feel like a bad mom admitting this, I'm looking forward to a weekend without my toddler. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love Ella. But I have not had a day away from her in almost 2.5 years. And I'm kind of ready. Sad and a little nervous about leaving her, but ready for a mini-break from all the not-so-fun aspects of having a two year old. Think of it as a recharge weekend. Or that she's getting a special Daddy-Ella weekend.

Of course, our girls' weekend won't be totally kid-free. The Boob Monster will be traveling with me and Kristen has her own two year old. LB will get a crash course in being a big sister.

It is going to be an awesome weekend.  

Happy Easter!

 Happy Easter from our family to yours! We had a fun weekend of dyeing eggs, hunting for eggs, binge eating candy, and hanging out with friends. 

Each year I go kind of crazy with dyeing Easter eggs. I think I might enjoy it more than my kids, although this year Ella got pretty into it. We make hard boiled eggs quite often and every Easter I think we should dye eggs throughout the year (because why not) and then I end up forgetting. 

This year's finished product. Half of them are already cracked because Ella bashed them. 

Nomming on an egg. Not the funnest of teething toys

The mad scientist hard at work

The girls' baskets were pretty minimal. I totally cheated and put the stuff my mom sent in their baskets (a bib for Marian and a book for Ella) and gave them stuff they were getting anyway, like the Annie's bunny crackers that we ought to buy in bulk. They each got an outfit that my friend Laura custom-made (she has a ton of super cute stuff if you want to check out her shop).

Not quite sure what to make of her Easter basket

Modeling their new outfits

Doing an egg hunt with a toddler was...interesting. Last year we simply scattered the eggs around the floor and called it a day. This year we got the idea to actually hide the eggs. Since she did an egg hunt at mom's day out, we presumed things would go smoothly. Yeah, I should have remembered that she is a toddler and things never go as planned. 

We hid the hard boiled eggs around the play room. I thought it would be cute to hid one in the pan on her play kitchen. She promptly found it but refused to pick it up because (a) the stove is hot (duh mom) and (b) it wasn't done cooking yet (double duh). And so on and so forth. 

Then she moved onto the few plastic eggs we had hidden around the living room. She found the one by the couch and decided to re-hide it under a pillow. Every time we asked her to find more eggs she would go back to the couch, show us the egg, and inform us that "it's hiding." 

In any case, she had a fun time. 

Ella searching for eggs

Enjoying a cup of coffee in the midst of the chaos

Poor Marian, on the other hand, spent most of the weekend out of sorts, as she is battling yet another cold. Eventually we have to reach a point where neither kid will have a runny nose, right? Despite feeling crummy, she figured out how to pull herself to standing. Now she demands to stand all. the. time.

Oh yeah. This happened. 

 On the agenda for this week- going for lots of walks to burn off all the Cadbury eggs.

We can't catch a break

The tally of the past 24 hours:

-One crabby teething baby

-One mama with a sliced open foot, due to a knife that fell out of the drying rack

-One feverish crabby toddler, taken down by an unidentified bug

Watching George on the TV snuggled up with her BFF George

Ugh.

Happy Fat Tuesday!

I'm celebrating Fat Tuesday by being a fatass and consuming a piece of cherry pie. It's all for the greater good. Although I won't be fasting tomorrow (I'm sure God and the pope understand I have to consume 5000000 calories a day while nursing), I feel that at the very least I can give up eating sweets for a day. Plus, Jim will be fasting and I won't be inconsiderate and eat pie in front of him while he is hungry (you're welcome). I mean, someone has to eat this thing before it goes bad, right?

Tomorrow starts my favorite liturgical season: Fish Fry season.

Plague House

Here's the toll the toddler germs took on us in the past few days:

Marian: RSV and bronchiolitis
Me: Sinus infection plus some underlying virus
Jim: Unidentified crud, most likely the same virus that took me down
Ella: 103 degree fever but still running around like crazy

Basically my house imploded this weekend. Ella watched more TV in four days than she has in the rest of her life.

Today is the first day since last Wednesday that I feel semi-okay. Hopefully these antibiotics will continue to work and I can knock this thing out. In the meantime, I am embarking on Operation Die Germs Die.

Two side notes to all of this:

1. I'm super glad I'm not pregnant right now. Because I've been coughing so hard that I've almost thrown up at times, and were I pregnant, I'm sure I would have peed myself.

2. The older Disney movies are definitely not as nice as the newer ones. "Lady and the Tramp" has a dog being euthanized, in addition to the creepy rats. "101 Dalmatians" repeatedly talks about the dogs being bashed and skinned. WTF Disney. WTF.

Pertussis scare

In Marian's 4 month update, I mentioned she had to be on antibiotics. This is the first time in over two years of parenting that one of my kids has needed any antibiotics (yes, I realize some of that is due to dumb luck). The reason why she was on them is important enough that I feel it warrants its own blog post: She was exposed to pertussis, also known as whooping cough.

Here's the most likely scenario of how it happened:

My parents went out to California at the beginning of January for the Rose Bowl. Someone, either on the airplane or in California, had pertussis and didn't know it, thus exposing my parents. My mom, who had her DTaP booster, was fine. My dad, who did not get his booster, came home with a cough. He didn't think too much of it, but was feeling sick enough that he went to the doctor, who prescribed antibiotics for what he thought was bronchitis or something of the like. Shortly thereafter, he came out to BFE to visit us, thereby exposing me and my family to what he later found out was pertussis.

Thankfully, we had a few things working for us:

-Jim and I have been vaccinated, and Ella has had 4/5 doses
-Marian had had her first dose of the vaccine, actually just a few weeks prior
-Because I breastfeed, Marian had some immunity/protection through me
-My dad was already on antibiotics, albeit not the ones he needed to be on to fight pertussis, but they still probably did some good

Still, despite the fact that the likelihood of her developing pertussis was low, Marian's pediatrician recommended we start her on a course of antibiotics because it can be so incredibly deadly for babies. Per the CDC:

"About half of babies younger than 1 year who get the disease need care in the hospital. About 1 out of 4 hospitalized babies with whooping cough will get pneumonia (a serious lung infection). Whooping cough can also cause seizures (jerking or staring) and brain damage."

Obviously not anything you want to mess around with.

Every time I think about the possibility of my helpless little baby getting a serious disease, I feel angry. Why? Because pertussis is almost 100% preventable.

Before this I didn't feel particularly strongly about vaccines. I get them for myself and my kids because they have been scientifically proven to prevent some pretty horrendous diseases. But I always felt, hey, if you don't want to vaccinate, that is your business.

Except now it has become my business. Angry mama bear mode is on because other people, with their selfishness, put my family in danger. The only people who are getting a free pass for not vaccinating are those who cannot for a legitimate medical reason. Not those who don't vaccinate because a former porn star and a discredited doctor told them vaccines cause autism. Not those who think vaccines are some crazy government conspiracy. Not those who talk about how there are :gasp: chemicals in vaccines (seriously, I just can't even talk to people about The Chemicals any more). Not those who believe Jesus doesn't like vaccines. Not those who argue "Well I didn't vaccinate my children and they have never had mumps/polio/diphtheria/etc."- to which the rest of the general population says, "You're welcome."

Here is where I am at now: If you don't want to get your vaccines, you are no longer welcome around my family. To all you anti-vaxxers: You are selfish, and I have no problem telling you so. The anti-vaxxers might be loud, but I am going to be louder.

Reason #7890 why my kids are going to hate me when they are older

I picked Ella up from mom's day out this afternoon and immediately felt like a slacker mom. Apparently I'm the only mom who didn't get the memo I was supposed to send in something cutesy for Valentine's Day, thus ensuring that my toddler is going to be ostracized for the rest of her life. She got little cards, candies, and a chocolate covered strawberry stuffed with cream cheese from some effing over-achieving mom with kids that clearly sleep through the night and don't run around the house naked taking the hinge pins off doors. This is, of course, on top of the mom from MOPS on Monday who hot-glued little plastic bugs to cards with some vomit-inducing saying like "Happy Valentine's Day from your love bug."

Here's what I have to say to Valentine's for two year olds:

Bitch please. It's not even February 14th

Even so, I'm setting a reminder on my calendar to make "sorry I forgot about a fake holiday" cookies for Ella to bring in next week. Maybe I'll make them all look like Abraham Lincoln's hat for Presidents' Day and one-up the strawberry mom.

Snow day photo dump

First snow day of the winter. Ella had a blast.

That face. You can tell she is up to no good. 

Parenting fail: when you try to get your toddler to catch a snowball and instead nail her in the face.

Jim put her to work already

Shoveling with Daddy

Warming up with some hot cocoa 

The moon incident

I have a special talent as a parent. It seems I have a knack for taking everyday items and turning them into objects of terror for my toddler. Like the moon.

The other evening, Ella started to show a lot of interest in the moon. I thought it was a great learning opportunity. I talked to her about it. We looked at pictures in an old issue of National Geographic. I let her watch some neat little video clips NASA had produced. As the grand finale to this little lesson, I took her outside to look at the moon. She went off to bed rattling off the facts she had learned. I was one proud mama.

Fast forward to 4:30am. We woke up to her screaming bloody murder. All Jim could get out of her was, "Moon up high. Moon very scary."

Yes, I somehow ruined the moon for my toddler. If anyone can explain to me how I managed to do this, I will buy you a drink.

The joys of taking a toddler into a public restroom

I try to avoid public restrooms like the plague. But between being hugely pregnant and having a potty-training toddler, sometimes they are unavoidable.

It's bad enough trying to cram yourself, your toddler, and your fifteen-ton diaper bag into a tiny stall, all the while keeping up a litany of, "Don't touch the toilet. Don't touch the floor. Don't touch the garbage. Don't flush the toilet yet. No I don't need the entire roll of toilet paper. Don't try and crawl underneath to the next stall. STOP DO NOT OPEN UP THE DOOR CLOSE THAT DOOR UP RIGHT NOW" while trying to do your business.

You know what makes it worse?

When your toddler decides to narrate what you are doing. Loudly.

In Ella's world, all bodily functions are called "poo poo." Doesn't matter what you are actually doing. And recently, she has started to grasp the difference between "big" and "little."

What does that mean for using a public restroom?

My toddler likes to loudly announce to everyone else, "Big poo poo Mama!" over and over.

On top of that, she likes to inspect my underwear and proudly tell me, "Mama undies dry!" As if I too, occasionally pee my pants. Then she looks up at me expectantly until I confirm that yes, mommy's undies are dry.

Now on top of the ick factor of using a public restroom, I get to add public embarrassment.