The lure of the Mustang

I never really understood what the big deal was about muscle cars until I drove one up in Virginia. I had a rental car for the weekend for work and got bumped up to a Mustang convertible from the economy car because they were all rented out. Of course there were no complaints from me!! After driving it for a few days, I began to see why they're such popular cars!

So when my sister's neighbor gave her a red Power Wheels Mustang convertible for their kids, we've been more than happy to help them break it in. Usually Jack's cousin Lexi drives the car, but yesterday he got to try it for himself. Anna even got to sit in the passenger's seat, after we unplugged the battery of course!

I just hope Jack doesn't get any big ideas about his parents buying him a Mustang when he learns to drive!

THIS is why I have two children!!

Ok, so it's not the only reason I had another child, but it sure is one of them: a playmate that isn't mommy!!

Bob and I were thrilled to watch Jack entertaining Anna in the exersaucer yesterday. For about 30 minutes, she sat quite contentedly watching her brother play with all of the gadgets in front of her. We were able to put dinner together without any crying or whining, which is quite a feat these days! Plus it was just so darn cute to watch Anna watch Jack with those big eyes!

Being a mom is a lot of work, but moments like these make it totally worth it.

This confirms it: I don't get out much.

As if I needed any more reminders about just how little I get out of my house these days after 7pm...

So last Friday night Bob and I were searching for something to watch on TV. After circling through the channels about five times, you'd think we would've wised up to the fact that reading a book would've been a better entertainment option. Bob finally said, "Did you check TLC?", to which I promptly switched over and was greeted with the opening credits to the new show called "Toddlers and Tiaras" about young girls competing in beauty pageants.

Within two minutes of watching this show, as a mom I quickly found it to be the latest train-wreck-you-can't-take-your-eyes-off-of hour of television. I believe I had drool coming out of my mouth because it was gaping wide open for so long, and probably asked my husband no less than ten times, "Are these people for real?" A quick synopsis for you: mothers (and even fathers!) desperately living vicariously through their children, fake eyelashes and hair and teeth and spray tans, and creepy 50-something male judges.

The saddest part to me was when the camera showed two little boys, maybe twins, exhausted and sleeping on their dad as their sister, a 2-year-old, was waiting to find out how she did at the end of a long day. From the way the story was edited, this mom and dad were completely wrapped up in the pageant life with their girl...I just wonder how the little boys felt being dragged all over the place to those silly shows.

My favorite part, which I say very sarcastically, was at the end when the pageant director went on and on about the pageant winner and her natural beauty. Excuse me? Can someone please tell me what she's smoking that has permanently whisked her off to la-la land? There wasn't anything natural about ANY of those kids on that show.

It's a bit of a soapbox for me because I'm frustrated with the narrow image of beauty portrayed in the media and how as a teen I bought into it. Now with a daughter I worry about her sense of worth becoming tied up in whatever will be deemed beautiful by society in the next 5-10 years.

I've got lots of praying to do!!

And no, I don't plan to make "Toddlers and Tiaras" a part of my usual Friday night activities.

THE shower curtain

Ahh, some time to blog again :)

So here it is in all it's glory (I wish I could play some triumphant music in the background), my $90 Pottery Barn shower curtain! Looks an awful lot like a $10 shower curtain from Walmart or Target, huh? It was made in Israel though, so maybe that's what makes it so expensive?

My husband sarcastically threw a fit when I told him I bought plastic rings to hold it up. He said, "You spent $90 on a shower curtain and got cheap ($1!) plastic rings to hold it up?" I sarcastically told him I would be happy to drive back to Target and buy the nicer $15 hooks and he quickly backed down.

It's been a relatively uneventful last few weeks around here at least as far as the kids are concerned. We've managed to avoid more colds somehow, which has made a huge difference in everyone's outlook! I wish I could say the same for our dachshund Haley. She's been struggling since the first of the year with some kind of back problem. We're not sure what caused it because we can't remember any obvious incident where she injured herself. Bob accidentally caught her foot with his one time, but that probably didn't cause a back injury. Anyway, she's dragging her back right leg when she walks, which is a sign that a disk is pressing on her spinal cord to some degree. We had an x-ray done, but there wasn't anything out of the place in her spine that we could see with the vet. The next step would be a specialist and possibly surgery, but it's so expensive that it's not really an option for us. It's been really hard to watch her quality of life erode over the last month, though she still acts fairly happy. She's only five and half, so we didn't expect anything like this to ever bother her until she was much older. Steroids have helped somewhat, but haven't allowed her to regain complete control of her leg. It's really been depressing :( Even though we love her a lot, I feel silly asking for prayer for a dog when there are so many people struggling with tremendous obstacles in their lives!

Anyway, nap time approaches, let's hope I can get some nap time of my own today!

My Pottern Barn Dilemma

I love Pottery Barn, I just don't love their prices. After Christmas, I found myself with three PB gift cards totaling $120 just waiting to be spent in my wallet. Seeing as how the economy could use a little help, I figured I would fulfill my civic duty this afternoon to spend someone else's money on things I don't really need that cost way more than they should (at least IMHO).

Anyway, enter Pottery Barn, the bane of my shopping experience, into the mix. As much as I love just about everything I see there and acknowledge it's good quality stuff, I usually cannot justify buying any of it unless 1) it's on sale AND discounted quite a bit, or 2) some kind soul has generously given me a gift card, which was the case today. Ok, so here's the dilemma: even though I wasn't spending any of my own money shopping with gift cards, I still felt compelled to get the most bang for my buck. The problem with Pottery Barn is that I suffer from the I-know-I-can-buy-something- like-this-at-a-better-price-somewhere-else syndrome that robs me of all joy while shopping there. So I continuously talk myself out of buying anything because a dialogue keeps playing in my head that goes something like:

"They want how much for wall art? I could make that myself. How about some shelves for Jack's room? They want how much for piddly little shelves?? Hmm, I know I could buy those cheaper at Hobby Lobby. What about the guest bathroom...I love that shower curtain, but $70? No way! Hmmm, how about some new pillows for the couch? Oh goody, I could buy a whopping two pillows. There must be something I could find cheaper at Bed Bath and Beyond...."

And on and on it went. I ended up talking myself out of everything I saw! Finally I settled on a nice shower curtain for the kids' bathroom that was on clearance and another shower curtain for the guest bathroom that wasn't on sale (that $70 one I mentioned above). But gosh, what a nice $70 shower curtain it is!

My other beef with Pottery Barn is that they calculate shipping based on the cost of your order, not weight or volume. Well, let's see, since I spent $70 on a shower curtain, it meant that lucky me qualified for a $14 shipping charge. $14....for a shower curtain....that probably weighs a few pounds....Add on the tax to that, and I spent $9o for a piece of fabric to hang up in my bathroom. Yeesh. The other $30 went towards the other shower curtain. So my $120 in gift cards went towards two shower curtains. Whohoo! But seriously, there really wasn't much else I could buy there, even with $120.

But hey, at least my bathrooms are going to look pretty darn classy now! Oh, and don't let my ranting and raving scare anyone off from further PB gift card donations to the Looney family...I'll just have to get used to buying one pillow a year!

BTW-These kind of posts are written very tongue-in-cheek...I know there are far worse things I could be debating over!

I love MDO

So it's about 11:30AM on a Monday morning, I'm actually getting to sit down to eat a meal uninterrupted, my house is clean (though in the interest of full disclosure my master bath could still use some work), laundry is put away, and I have some free time to write a blog post. How in the world is that possible with two young kids you ask? Jack is now at his first day of Mother's Day Out this morning!

This past weekend, I kept feeling this sense of sadness from time to time knowing that today was coming. Now why in the world would I feel bummed out that I get a break for five hours today? I guess it's just the realization that he's growing up and I'm starting to lose some control over the influences in his life. He's been in childcare for a few hours at a time each week while I attend some other groups I'm involved with, so it's not like he's never been away from Bob or I for any extended period of time. This Mother's Day Out thing just feels different though, maybe because it's more structured and that reminds me of him going to school somehow? I'm not 100% sure.

Anyway, I thought I would be sad without him here today, but I confess that it's been absolutely WONDERFUL. I don't know what I was so worried about this weekend! I've had time to play with Anna and then get the house cleaned up while she's napping. I even have time to go to the grocery store during the day now! I still haven't tackled an HEB run yet with two kids. Bob and I have just taken turns taking Jack at night to get our groceries, but now I can actually do it during daylight hours. What a concept! I do miss Jack, but boy it's nice to have some time to myself. If it wasn't for the fact that he's already in childcare two other mornings of the week as well, I'd bump him up to two days at MDO instead of one. I think we'll do that in the Fall.

My only frustration with MDO has been searching for a silly nap mat for Jack to sleep on. Those things are impossible to find in stores! JC Penney was the only store that had some in stock, but all they had was Dora the Explorer. I saw a bunch of sites online that sell them, but needed to get one for Jack by today and didn't want to wait on shipping or pay the prices I saw. Luckily a friend of mine had one to spare, so Jack is using that one. I figured with the number of moms that have their kids in daycare, preschool, or MDO that these things would be easy to find, but apparently I was wrong. Hello Target? Walmart?

The other wonderful thing that's happened over the last week is that Anna has decided to start sleeping through the night! Actually, I should say we've started to let her sleep through the night. At her two month well-baby check, her pediatrician told us that she should be able to sleep through the night now (meaning at least a six hour stretch). We had been waking her up to feed her around 11pm thinking that it would help her sleep longer, and when we stopped doing that, she's magically been sleeping longer on her own!! We've put her down around 8pm and she's slept until about 4:30am the last few nights. Now I know that little babies can be really fickle with their sleeping habits and that this may change next week, but I'm encouraged we've had a few nights in a row that she's been able to go so long. It's amazing how much better the world looks when you've had a decent nights sleep!

Happy 2009: Sneezing, coughing, and a broken microwave

Well, unfortunately we're not off to a great start to 2009. Nothing earth-shattering here, but the last few days have passed by incredibly slow.

It's not a whole lot of fun (at least for me) on New Year's Eve to sit cooped up inside the house, but that's where we found ourselves the other night. It all started when I thought my allergies were acting up about a week ago with the sudden onset of sneezing and subsequent stuffy nose. I'm now better, but unfortunately Jack then developed the sneezing a few days later, which then progressed to one of those nasty wet coughs that make you wince to listen to when other children have them...you just KNOW lots of nasty germs are getting spread around with each cough. Yeah, Jack is now that child. Never before has the phrase "Cover your mouth!" been so paramount to my sanity, and of course it doesn't work on a two-year-old...which should clue you in to my mental state at this point.

Unfortunately, it (cold, virus??) didn't stop there, and baby Anna decided she would like to join the fun a few days ago as well. She's mainly had the sneezing and congestion, but then started in with the wet cough too. Never before have I been sneezed and coughed upon so much in my life. I did comfort myself though with the thought that I would take sneezing and coughing over vomiting and the other stuff...Anyway, our night was topped off by listening to our neighbors set off an obnoxious amount of fireworks right over our backyard. Now I'm all for some fun with fireworks, but this really was bordering on ridiculous, and with two sick kids, I was not in the mood to listen to them, nor have Jack and Anna woken up by them.

Our microwave then randomly decided it wanted to stop working New Year's Day afternoon as I reheated some food. You take for granted how much you use a microwave until it doesn't work anymore! So the bad news was that our bank account took a minor hit, but at least it happened on the best day of the year for appliance sales. We ended up getting a pretty good deal on a new microwave! What a romantic gift to start the new year, don't you think?

Hope you all had a better start to the New Year!