My boys Friday: not that I'm comparing them or anything

There are very few ways that these boys of mine are alike.

They are both 50% me and 50% their dad.

They are both cute.

They are both boys.

That's about as far as their similarities go, especially when remember what the MOnkey was like as a baby. Oh, the screaming, the screaming, the screaming.

After the Squirts 2 month check-up yesterday (a week late), it seems that these boys have at least one commonality between them.

Their size.

weight watchers -

I joined weight watchers 4 weeks ago today.

I lost 7 lbs in the first two weeks and have gained two back in the last two weeks.

It's still a loss of 5 lbs. The goal is still 30 lbs by the end of the year. I need to get my act together, but am still on the right track.

Must find time to exercise.

I get to eat 32 points worth of food a day. Most days I do pretty good and am making conscious food decisions every day. Trying to anyway.

I signed my husband up for weight watchers on the 4th of July. He weighs about 20 lbs LESS than I do, wants to lose more than I do, and gets 35 points a day.

On the 4th of july, the breakfast he ate was valued at a whopping 36 points. His entire day in one meal.

We had a conversation this morning about the ww.

Ross is 40 points IN THE HOLE this week, and his week doesn't end until Saturday.

oops.

And I weigh more.

Ug!

Music that makes you dumb

My favorite band, Guster, tweeted this weeks ago.

What kind of music do you listen to?

I've always "prided" myself on listen to music that doesn't appeal to the masses - masses largely meaning high school kids, college kids, and really old people who only listen to church music.

Some of my favorite bands and musicians?
Guster, of course
Iron and Wine
Belle and Sebastian
Jude
Death Cab for Cutie
Nickel Creek
Sting

Of course, nothing out of the ordinary, but that's what I like. Anyway, I stumbled across this website recently and it was very amusing.

musicthatmakesyoudumb

Here's the premise - SAT scores of college freshman directly correlate to the type of music they listen to. The lower the SAT score, the "less intelligent" the type of music.

Now, I didn't take the SAT (I took the ACT) and I am a poor test taker, but my musical tastes fall to the high test score side of the spectrum.

It makes me happy to know that listening to Guster is an intelligent choice, in more ways than one.

Where my thoughts have been, besides my kids

Nearly every minute I'm awake in a day doesn't belong to me anymore. The demands on my time by other people, little people, are often more than I know how to handle.

I don't read the news.

I don't watch tv.

I don't read any more gossip websites. Sorry Perez.

I don't talk to "friends" or do play dates.

I try to clean my house, and raise my kids. And fix dinner.

We go on adventures, if heading to Target can count.

By the end of the day, it often seems that I haven't done anything. And yet, I have. I've done a lot.

More than I ever imagined could be done in a day.

I sing and dance and read.

I have a helper with the laundry and the dishes.

I talk and talk and talk.

To a very bright two year old.

Often though, there is a gaping hole in my head where my brain used to be. The part of my mind that thought about current events, politics, social issues. That part that used to be a teacher and know everything.

I still know everything.

It's just a different kind of everything.

An everything that involves discussions about weeds and chalk and why we don't like grasshoppers instead of war torn nations or the implications of the national debt.

and guess what.

I'm okay with that.

When I have time by myself, I miss my kids terribly. When I see no end in sight to a long day, all i want to do is ship them away.

I think that just means I'm a mom, right?

I would love to spend a Saturday with my husband, doing nothing, like we did many years ago. But we're too busy for such a wasted day.

Even though my life no longer feels like my own, I still have one solace - one element that is mine.

I still read.

I've almost finished "possible side effects" by Augusten Burrows. It's a book of essays about his very chaotic and nutty life. I love it. It's got me thinking more in the last few weeks I've been reading, about life, than anything has in a long time.

It got me to thinking the other day - about how the books I've read have always seemed to mirror and reflect my own life in some strange way, however loosely.

As a kid, I read about the Kennedy's and "where the red fern grows". I never did series books, still don't and even though i probably invented the story, I've convinced myself that I read "to kill a mockingbird" when I was 10 or so, because my grandma wanted me to.

When I was in Junior High and High School I was drawn to tragic figures like Marilyn Monroe. Read lots of autobiographies about her. Even did my senior English project about her. When in some dumb elective in high school, while my group was doing our project on Bruce Lee, my teacher let me sit in the comfy chair in his room and read Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" because he saw i just wasn't' into the project.

In high school, I discovered Hemingway and Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac. I read "The Old Man and the Sea" as a 7th grader and one of the nicest gifts Ross ever gave me, before we were married, was a large collection of Hemingway short stories. Corny as it may be, there were many occasions where I would bring that book and make him read me stories. Maybe it was the draw to Europe, and bull fights and war that hooked me, but Hemingway has always been a comfortable read for me.

Then to Kerouac - oh how I love to get lost (literally and figuratively) in a good Kerouac novel. Another tragic hero, but who can beat reading about Dean Moriarty in "on the road" or "the subbterraneans" on a hot summer day.

I had a phase where I read about art. Always art. I owned amazingly beautiful art books, mostly about impressionism. It was such a draw for me at the time.

Early in college, I read crap. I read those "dime store" novels about love and relationships that I found on the sale racks at Barnes and noble. Always about a 20 something girl looking for love and in the end finding the great guy.

Talk about projecting.

I wanted to be that dumb girl in all those books.

As a teacher, I read history all the time. Great war books - the entire Ambrose collection and more. I knew so much then about history and the characters that created our country.

Since, I've read books about raising children and toilet training. Books about royalty and simple people. Books that made me laugh and made me cry.

Lately though, I'm drawn to neuroses. And short stories. Short stories about the neurotic. A perfect combination, don't you think?

David Sedaris and his wacky family. Augusten Burrows and his disastrous childhood with a manic parent.

Not sure what it says about me and the place I'm in, in my life right now.

Maybe reading about other people's disasters helps me to appreciate my own life.

And how good I've got it.

That's probably it.

Whatever the reason.

I know that at the end of the day - I've got a book waiting for me on my nightstand. The final few minutes of each day, I get to myself.

And I wouldn't trade that for anything.

My boys Friday: The talent show continues

As if you could ever get enough of my boys, right?

Right.

We, the parents, have recently taken to calling them "thing one" and "thing two". I need someone to make me a t-shirt or bumper sticker that reads:

If it isn't thing one, it's his brother

With "Thing One" I had the brilliant idea to try toilet training this week. Big mistake. I learned that even though a 2.5 year old says 50 times a day, "I'll go pee pee in the toilet and it will be so exciting" he doesn't mean it and when he ends up peeing on the rocking chair in the baby's room he really didn't mean it.

Anyone know how to get a kid to sit on a toilet? That apparently is the first step to toilet training that we seem to have overlooked.





"Thing Two" is still cute as ever and not concerned about toilet training. Thank goodness. Last night Thing One was at my parents - we went to the zoo then swimming and then they kept him (thank you). Ross and I ate dinner together with Thing Two and the conversation went something like this.

The scene: Ross eating. Annie holding Squirt and eating. Squirt, watching and participating in the conversation to the best of his ability.

Ross: Did we ever do this when Elliott was this age?

Annie: You mean sit down together and eat dinner? No, we didn't.

Ross: What did we do?

Annie: I fixed dinner while you took the screaming child upstairs with you. Then after I fixed dinner I ate it by myself while you sat with screaming child on the couch. After I ate, I took the screamer and you ate at the kitchen table by yourself - then you cleaned up. Usually I could get him to sleep for a few minutes break from screaming.

Ross: Oh yeah, that sucked.

Annie and Ross: Thank you baby!

Squirt: ofe4tulsn oewigufwpi (that means you're welcome)

Besides participating in adult conversation, pukes a lot. Baby puke is way over-rated. I'm pretty much over it. I wish the kid was, too. He pretty much pukes all the time, though the frequency and amount has decreased in the last week (knock on wood).

Here is some video proof of what we deal with in the talk and puke department. If nothing else, it makes life interesting. It's like a game - when and where will the puke happen next?