We're confusing each other!

Oh my!
This JUST happened.

My ear was itchy.
I poked my finger into my ear to scratch the itch. There was dried blood! Yipes!
Just then, Bob walked by me.

Me: There's blood in my ear.
Bob: Oh my God! I thought you were going to say 'urine'
Me: There's urine in my ear????
Bob: No! There's blood in your urine!
Both of us: (laughing uncontrollably)
Bob: Cuz, that would be way worse.
Me: I guess!

The scene at my house last night....

Now, it's funny...last night, not so much.

So I'm rinsing dishes and putting them into the dishwasher. Bob comes up behind me and peeks into the dishwasher and shakes his head.

"What?" I said. "Are you inspecting my work?"

"No, there's just food all over those dishes," he said. "And I'm not going to fix the dishwasher again when it breaks from getting clogged up."

"I rinsed EVERYTHING in there! There's no chunks of food!" I said, totally and completely calmly.

"Uh, yeah there is," Bob said.

"Well FINE! If you're going to be checking up on my work, and criticizing the way I rinse dishes, you can DO THEM YOURSELF!" I said, and threw the dish brush into the sink and huffed away.

"Fine I will!" he said.

"Great! I hate doing dishes anyway!" I said. "It's not like I get an allowance for it and you need to be checking up on whether I did it or not! Gah!"

Then he proceeded to take out EVERY single dish, glass, cup, spoon, fork and knife and RE-rinse them and RE-load the dishwasher and run it.

Why? Why????

See, this is the dark underbelly of having the man around the house suddenly decide he likes to clean. It's all fine and good, until he starts white-gloving everything I clean. Grr.

Bob's Big Day of Fun

I woke up yesterday morning fully intending to whip the house into shape. Bob gave me a head start by fully vacuuming every room on Saturday, for which I am eternally grateful even though it already needs to be redone, very badly. The pain of living in a rural area....dirt EVERYWHERE!

After I guzzled down some coffee I opened up the dishwasher to unload, reload, rinse repeat.

Gah!

There was about two inches of nasty disgusting water pooled in the bottom of the dishwasher. Yuck.
So I emptied the whole thing out and alerted Bob that there was a problem with the MOST IMPORTANT APPLIANCE IN THE HOUSE!

He took a look and immediately suggested that I didn't properly rinse the dishes, thus causing this horrible problem.

A "discussion" ensued over whether or not I properly rinse the dishes prior to loading them into the dishwasher. For the record, I do. Bob insists that I do not....he is incorrect. This discussion was *ahem* very calm and orderly *ahem* and did not conclude with me crying over my lackluster housekeeping at all.

His wife sufficiently scarred for life, Bob got started on the repair. Various parts of the dishwasher assembly were removed and the investigation began. Ha! What do you know, no food clogging up the mix. Hmmm. VINDICATION!

We began to suspect that the culprit was a serious build-up caused by hard water. We concluded this based on the really gross limescale build-up and calcification, caused by hard water. 1+1=2

Bob took off to get some C-L-R.
I sat on the couch and waited. I mean, really, what else could I do?

When he got back I thought he was going to clean all the parts with C-L-R, reassemble the dishwasher and we'd go from there. He had other thoughts.

I forgot that he is a man.

Instead, Bob chisled out the scale from the removed parts, reassembled the whole works, FILLED the dishwasher with C-L-R and ran it.

****Warning****
Do NOT try this at home. C-L-R is NOT a good dishwasher detergent, unless that is, you also want to clean your kitchen floors.

Luckily, Bob happened to be walking by when the dishwasher started foaming up like a rabid squirrel.

"Oh SHIT! Oh SHIIIIIT!"

That's all I heard, then a mad scramble to the towel cabinet and back to the kitchen.

Being the clever girl I am, I figured out pretty quickly what was going on!

"Turn it off!!!" I yelled helpfully.

"What button do I push?" Bob yelled back though we were now standing three feet apart.

"Cancel! CANCEL!!!" I yelled.

Bob cancelled the dishwasher's operation and opened the door....bubbly!

"OK, so...that was not a good idea," he said and we both started laughing.

Once we cleared out that mess with the Shop Vac, we ran the dishwasher again and shockingly enough, the scale and build-up actually did get cleared away. Hmmm. Maybe NOT the worst idea ever.

After this, Bob got a taste for cleaning and moved on to the master bathroom where he spent about 45 minutes scrubbing the shower and grumbling about mold.

I have personally never seen mold in the shower, but perhaps I wasn't looking hard enough. I do have to admit though that the man can clean like a fiend and that shower has never been so sparkly. Nor has it ever reeked of bleach so badly. But I'll take the good (clean shower) with the bad (eye-stinging bleach fumes).

I don't exactly know what sparked off Bob's sudden desire to scrub everything in sight, but I'm really hoping that I can recreate that magic next weekend!

My husband wants to keep me fat

He seriously does.
He just made a big batch of french toast and bacon and when I told him I would not be eating any, he said "Why not?"

"I already ate my breakfast, and I'm on a diet!"

"You don't need to be on a diet. You're already sexy."

"No, I'm not. I'm fat!"

Then he grabbed my big butt and declared it sexy and not to be changed.

Oh well. He's gonna have to be sad. The butt has to be reduced!

Drive a Woman Crazy In Ten Easy Steps

Step One: Tell your wife she should make some cookies with the kids about a half hour before dinnertime. When she balks, just do it yourself, then forget you put cookies in the oven and go outside to do some manly thing involving your truck. Leave the cookies to be the problem of the wife who didn't want to make cookies in the first place.

Step Two: Every time you get undressed, scatter your clothes throughout the house. Then complain that you have no clean socks.

Step Three: Tell your wife that she washes dishes "wrong" but don't offer to wash them the "right" way.

Step Four: Every time the baby cries, shoot your wife a glare that says "YOUR baby is crying again." When your wife reminds you that he is YOUR baby too blame your laziness on a lack of lactating boobs.

Step Five: Flat out refuse to change diapers. Especially poopy ones. Because the stink of poop affects men worse than women...yeah, that's it.

Step Six: Complain that your wife is too tired to do the dirty dirty, but don't actually do anything around the house to lighten her load.

Step Seven: Eat a giant plate of burritos 20 minutes before dinner. Do NOT eat dinner at all. Then have a giant bowl of cereal at 8:30 pm.

Step Eight: Grumble and mumble whenever you have to do anything for yourself.

Step Nine: Give the kids candy and soda and snacks, then leave the house. Alternatively, wind the kids up with a game of chase and tickle, then when you're done yell at them to be quiet. Charge your wife with making sure they are quiet.

Step Ten: Open every cabinet door in the kitchen everytime you walk through the room. Never ever CLOSE a cabinet door.

Extra Credit: Begin every sentence to your wife with these words...
"I'm not trying to make you mad, but..."


These tips are totally not based on my personal experience living with my absolutly terrificly maddening husband. At all.

I could write yet ANOTHER post about how tired I am or how much I love coffee, but it has been done to death and back.

Aside from the baby keeping me awake though, there's not much else going on.
Oh, and yes, he DID torture me again last night with his crying and whining.
And yes, I realize that he isn't yet 6 months old, but I KNOW he's doing this on purpose. Some sort of baby vengeance.

This morning, after I woke up at 5 am, I thought "perhaps he's cutting a tooth..." but I rubbed my finger on his gums and didn't feel anything imminent.

Surely, there must be some reason for his sudden assiness. I wish he could just tell me what was the matter. Until then....


--- In Other News ---

My brother in law just popped over, oh how I hate the pop in!
I was wearing a bathrobe and had my hair up in a towel.
Usually anyone knocking on our door is either selling something we don't want, trying to make us Jehovah's Witnesses or attempting to collect on a debt and/or cut off our power/water/cable etc.
What I'm saying is, I pay no mind to my attire when unexpected visitors knock. Ask the UPS guy, he'll tell you what a foxy towel-headed lady I am. Ha ha. Who doesn't love grey sweatpants?

But this time, it was my brother in law. I opened the door and he just laughed.
"What? You don't like my outfit?" I said.

He just laughed.
Turns out he needed to get a washing machine hose that my husband had. Bob has one of everything, I swear. You name it, he's got one. It's really quite incredible the amount of crap the man has collected in the past five years on a very limited budget.

I should test his junk-ability and ask him for some crazy thingamajig...I bet he'd have one or at the very least, know someone who could give him one.

You lurking readers can help me with this task.

Post here and now with something that makes you think "there's surely no way he'd have that", but is still plausible enough that someone COULD have it at their house. No posting "nuclear reactor" or "Osama Bin Laden" I'm 100% sure we have neither.

You post, I'll ask. Let's see how deep the junk pile goes!

Notes from a Baby Shower

The whole clan, Bob included, went to his little brother's girlfriend's baby shower this afternoon...

One of the games we played was the "identify the melted chocolate candy in the diaper" game.
First off, ew!
Melted Snickers totally looks like poo! I may never eat Snickers again!
Ok, I will. But not out of a diaper!

Secondly, diapers are SUPER chemically!! I'm really glad that we use cloth. It was really gross. I could barely tell if I was eating Milky Way or Three Muskateers because everything tasted like diaper chemicals. Yuck.

But here's the real story...

For most of the game Dylan was off running around and riding a scooter. He wasn't paying attention to us in the slightest nor did he realize that everyone was tasting candy from diapers.

When he finally came over to our table Bob showed him the Milky Way diaper and said, "Hey Dylan! Look at this!"

"(Insert sound of fake puking here)", Dylan said.
"Watch this Dylan!" Bob said, grabbing a spoon. "You want Daddy to eat the poo?"

"NO! NO NO NO!" Dylan screamed. He freaked out and started covering his face in horror.

Bob spooned up some "poo" and raised the spoon to his lips.
Dylan starting yelling, "No no no!" and had a mini-stroke.
Bob ate the "poo"!
Dylan trembled and his face screwed up in disgust and he ran away in such a horrible fright yelling...
"I can't like that! I can't like that!!"

It was so damn funny, we did it three more times.




PS: I totally tanked the chocolate poo game but won the "What flavor baby food is this?" game hands down. You can't whip a mother of three in that game. It wasn't even hard. I did half the list by sight alone. Cake-walk.

Lady parts?!?!

Last night was girl rebeautification night at our house.
After the boys went to bed, Elizabeth and I decided to paint our toenails and fingernails.
I chose navy blue toenail polish and pale pink fingernails. Elizabeth, ever the fashionista, chose a robin's egg blue for her toes and straight out of the '80s HOT pink for her fingers.
Seriously.
I saw that shade in Seventeen magazine back in 1987 aka the heyday of fluorescence.

As I'm trimming her raggedy fingernails (and she's throwing a first class hissy fit) her dad, no doubt attracted by the smell of acetone, popped his head in the doorway.

Ever the actress, Elizabeth kicked her fit up a notch.

"Owwww, ow, ow, ow! It huuuuurts!" she sobbed.
I shot her dad a look. The look said, "Draaaama!"
Dad said...
"Well...sometimes it hurts your lady parts to look good."

"Lady parts?!?" I said, laughing. "Fingernails are lady parts??"

"No. You know what I mean!" he said and hastily retreated.

"That's going in the blog!!!" I hollered after him.

Ghost of the Coyote Trail

Oh my gosh did we have fun!
Seriously! I'm not being at all sarcastic! Seriously.

The trail in totality is 16 miles in a loop. We are not crazy people and we have small children. We probably hiked up the trail a half mile and then back to the car. In between, we picnicked under a shady tree.


Yes, Elizabeth fell down and got scraped up and scratched on a tree...but she only cried a little.
And yes, Dylan lagged behind on the trail so often that we started calling him Dyl-Lag. Heh.

We hardly saw any wildlife, which is to say, besides my own children I saw none. Bob saw a jackrabbit right as we reached the trailhead, but I saw neither hide nor hair of that hare.

Ben was content in the wrap the whole time. He came out to join the picnic and just hung out. Hardly heard a peep from him.
In fact, Ben and I were the only ones who wanted to keep hiking when Bob and the biggers decided they were DONE and wanted to turn back. Quitters!

Big fun was had by all.
Here are the evidentiary pics:

Gin anyone? These are juniper berries.



Elizabeth at the picnic.

Dylan and Bob at the picnic.

Mommy and Benjamin at the picnic. Another *great* hair day for me! There's the sarcasm!

Benjamin at the picnic.












Dylan lags behind on the trail.

















Elizabeth's outfit, which I did NOT select, was very "Debutante on Safari" and reminded me of Jane from the Disney cartoon movie Tarzan. Anyone?
















Dylan's outfit, on the other hand, was more suited to falling down on the trail and climbing into trees...which he did.















Here they all are packing out our picnic! Porter Mountain and the mountains that make up the ski resort are in the very distant background.















Bob and Elizabeth check out the trail map at the trailhead. Oddly, we did this LAST. We had already been there and knew the trail.

Twas a bad day to be a couch

By posting this I know I set the Newman reproduction clock back by at least six months, but I cannot keep this to myself!

Yesterday was a particularly exhausting day for us. By us, I mean me, because NOTHING exhausts children!

The kids were especially rowdy and when they weren't out in the backyard fighting each other over stupid $2 sandbox toys enjoying each other's company and the lovely day, they were inside the house playing a game Elizabeth calls (appropriately) Run Around In Circles.
This game is great.
They run literally in a circle through my bedroom into the bathroom, then into the laundry room, through the kitchen, the living room and back into my bedroom. Over and over and over. Everytime they pass by me they yell "Hi Mommy!" and keep going. Sometimes Dylan runs over and will hug my leg in the middle of a lap.
I'm not sure what the goal of the game is, but it does burn off some of their ridiculous nuclear fueled energy, so I love it.

While they ran around in circles and Ben napped I worked out for about a half hour. It took me an hour to get in the half hour, but that's ok. I had to pause for diaper changes and laundry and other fun mommy stuff.
Today, incidentally, I'm going to fit in an hour of working out. Two days ago I did 45 minutes, so it will all even out in the end. Hopefully while it evens out MY end.

Har dee har.

Anyway, that was at about 10:30 in the morning.
Bob had taken a load of garbage and junk from the yard to the dump, which always takes FOREVER even though it's about 15 minutes away, go figure. I think he sneaks off the road into the cedar brush to shoot cottontails on the way home, but he'll never confess.

I made hot dogs for lunch but they burned, so I gave the kids the two good ones and ate egg salad instead. I had to use the heel of the bread! Horrible.
Then the kids stole one of my pickles. Thieves! It's just as well, I probably didn't need the sodium anyway.

After Bob got home, we sort of just all kicked it around the house a bit. Dylan is fostering a MAJOR new obsession with the live-action Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. It's a borderline serious problem at this point.
That movie is on constant repeat in his room. He'll come out and say "I want Chick-munks!" over and over until you go restart the movie for him.
I hate to say this, but I miss SpongeBob.
So, Dylan went to watch Chick-munks and Bob, bless his heart, came into the living room and told Elizabeth:
"Dylan is watching Chipmunks right now if you want to go watch it with him."

To which I said, "Yeah hurry, there's only going to be 10 more showings today!"
And we all laughed....

The baby started getting a smidge fussy during the afternoon and was wanting to nurse every HOUR. EVERY HOUR! Dude.
He'd fall asleep for 15 or 20 minutes afterward, then wake up howling. It was truly exhausting even though I was mostly just sitting there strapping a kid to my lady lumps.
I had already planned a dinner of spaghetti and sausage and in a brief moment of baby peace I went and got that started.
While I was putting away dishes, Dylan started yelling "It's poo! It's poo!!!"
Never a good sign.

I went into the living room and sure enough, there was a little poo on the couch. I said "Ok Dylan, it's poo. Get off the couch and don't touch!"
I wasn't sure WHERE the poo came from, and I didn't really care at this point. I got a paper towel from the kitchen and turned back to find that Dylan had SLID off of the couch leaving a lovely POO trail all over the couch cushion.
A ha! That's where the poo came from. He had pooed his underpants.
I didn't cry.
I called in reinforcements, aka Bob, and he took the rogue pooer into the bathroom and cleaned him up (via shower sprayer) while I unzipped the couch cushions and threw them into the washing machine. We were both gagging. Poo is sick.

Poo crisis handled, I returned to dishes and dinner (I washed my hands don't worry!) I had dinner all cooking when we realized that our phone had no dial tone. Again.
So WHILE I nursed the cranky-again baby I called the cable company to find out what was wrong with the dang phone. Long story short, we had to power cycle our phone modem, again.
What a pain.

During that phone call, the timer for dinner went off. After I hung up on the phone guy I told Bob that dinner was ready. I was still stuck on the couch nursing.
Bob made himself up a big plate of food and came back to sit down on the couch.
He set the plate on the arm of the couch.
I said:
"You didn't get the kids anything to eat?"
He said:
"Ah, screw those kids!"
And as he was getting up to fix them some bowls of noodles, he accidentally tipped the plate off the arm of the couch and ALL OVER HIMSELF.
HOT SPAGHETTI SAUCE! Molten hot lava!

There were some bad bad words said and he went into the bathroom saying them, leaving a pile of noodles and sauce all over the couch cushion.
Ugh.
About a minute later he came back out and we cleaned up the noodle mess together. Ugh, what a mess. I unzipped ANOTHER couch cushion and threw it into the washer.
Luckily, there was enough food for everyone to eat, even after the incident.

The rest of the evening went mostly without further insanity.
The kids and Bob went out to water the garden and enjoy the sunset turning the clouds pink. Then they sat in Bob's truck listening to the kid songs on Sirius radio. Eventually, the baby gave up on Boobie Quest 2008 and fell asleep in his bassinet. Bob put the kids to bed and we went to sleep not too long after that, exhausted and lightly scented with tomato sauce.

Happy Birthday Bob!!

Today is Bob's birthday!
He is now 28. Another year older, though as he'll remind me over and over again, still younger than me.
Thanks hon.

In lieu of any gifts, he's asked for chicken fajitas for dinner and an ice cream cake. Can do.

Elizabeth told her dad this morning at my insistence "Hmmm, you look OLDER today dad!"
Ha ha! I got a good laugh out of that. What can I say, I'm simple.

I will now enjoy the next four months of being only a year older than my husband, until I turn *gasp* 30 in September.
Puke.

I want my two dollars!*

Last night I went to Safeway, without the kids, after Bob came home from work. I went *after* dinner, so I wouldn't buy Ho-Hos and eat half the box while pretending to comparison shop in the meat department.

I was going just for meat, bread, dairy and produce. I did the middle aisle shopping at the vastly cheaper Wal-Mart Supercenter earlier that day WITH the children. $140 worth of Wal-Mart snacks, juice, pastas and canned foods later...I still needed the essentials...meat, cheese, milk...you know...

Bob, gracious as he is, said I could go after dinner to Safeway for the rest. Hmrph. <= that's the sound of disdain.

I was glad to get away from the house and the kids, so I hightailed it out of here!

It was soooo nice to not have screaming children kicking me and each other the whole trip through the store.
While in the produce section, I took the time to look through their little vegetable reference book. I wanted to see just what the heck people DO with rhubarb. Turns out, not much! It is pretty though.

After about 45 minutes shopping I was done. Noone begged for soda, donuts or ANYTHING SpongeBob wheeeeeeeeeeeeze! Wheeze=Please in Dylanese.

The kid at the checkout was OBVIOUSLY very new to the store as I had purchased eight of the exact same item and instead of going 8 X into the register and scanning it once, he scanned EACH one individually.
He also had *issues* with the packages of stew meat as two would not scan and two would. So he scanned those two twice.
Ugh. It's meat dude. All different prices.

I went to the customer service desk...which they really should rename Vice Counter...it's all cigs and lottery tickets. Bad.
I told the gal of my meat package scanning dilemma. She rescanned the items and said, "actually, if I do it right, you owe me a dime."
I said "Thanks for your time" and left.
I didn't have a dime.
It was as though she never asked for the dime.
"Didn't ask for a dime."
Sorry.

Being the skeptical sort I am, I re-added up the meat packages in my car after loading the groceries up. I'll be damned, she was right. Now I feel like I need to drop a dime (hee hee) somewhere in that store, just to even it up.

When I got home, Dylan was in a poopy diaper, his room was thrashed and Bob was watching TV, oblivious.
We had a smidge of an argument about why he SHOULD in fact change a diaper now and then.
After the argument I laid in bed and had two or three hours of contractions, leading me to think that I should not yell about poo anymore, as it clearly upsets the new baby. :) And the old babies too.

Elizabeth kept running by me while I *discussed* things with Bob and saying "Smile! Smile!"
There has to be a better way to get him to change diapers. Clearly my strategy of being a raging beeyotch when he doesn't is NOT working.
Smile!

*This post has nothing to do with two dollars.

So huge!

Ugh.
I feel like a giant whale.
I think I'm having a whale baby instead of a regular human baby.

Just in the last week or so my belly has quadrupled in size. Sextupled!
I don't even look in the mirror anymore. Too depressing.
Maternity shirts make me look even more disgustingly huge, so I don't wear them.
I wear my regular shirts (and stretch out the belly!)
A week ago I bought some T-shirts from the Walmart juniors section to wear (and wear out) these last two months. Apparently juniors who shop at Walmart are all 6 feet tall and weigh 97 pounds. All the T-shirts are cut skinny and super long. Not a great look on 5'3" me USUALLY, but the extra length is great for covering up the humongo belly.
And at $6 a pop I don't care if they have to get thrown out in two months.

In other news:
Bob took a job retrofitting a power plant. He started yesterday. He has to be there at 6 am and should be getting home everyday (EVERY day) at around 8 pm. It's around an hour drive to the plant.
Today is day two. He was EXHAUSTED last night. We'll see how long he makes it working seven days a week, 12 hours a day...
It's ALMOST like being a full-time mom. Except, the mom job has no lunch break. But you do get to play bubbles and balloons. Unfortunately, you also play puke and poop and NO I WILL NOT GO TO SLEEP EVER EVER EVER EVER AGAIN EVEN IF YOU PAY ME IN SKITTLES!
That one is my favorite.

Meanwhile, The New Baby thinks it's a great idea to get all bunched up on one side of me and put a foot (or elbow or skull) into my kidney.
Is your liver on the right side? If so, then liver also.

At my checkup yesterday the "let me check your pee for whatever might be in pee" nurse even said "Wow I can see right where HE is!"
Yeah, really??!?!
I can feel him over there too. When he ISN'T bunched up around my right side organs he's flipping constantly and bouncing off my bladder.
ON CUE that baby in there just dislodged from my spleen(?) and flipped across underneath my belly button to my other kidney and kicked my bladder for good measure along the way.

Meanwhile....
Elizabeth's tonsils are healing perfectly, she's almost back to normal voice wise and her sleep apnea is TOTALLY GONE! It was totally gone starting from day one but it's still so amazing to me. Obstructive sleep apnea is the pits. I'm so glad she's not going to have to deal with this EVER EVER again!

The bad news...I peeped a look at Dylan's tonsils during Elizabeth's follow-up with the surgeon.
Oh. My. Lord.
They are giant.
So I guess we'll do round two in a year or so...

Anyway, that's my news...
I'm hugely fat. Bob is working like crazy. Elizabeth has no more tonsils and Dylan probably won't have his for long.
Also the cats haven't killed anything for awhile so, I'm on red alert for huge dead things...the longer they wait, the worse the bloodlust gets, and so on...

This is what else could happen.....

Bob peeled himself out of bed (with a LOT of help from me) and got into the shower to try to loosen up his back and eventually get to work.
He took some Extra Strength Tylenol, got dressed and left for work...

But first....
They are doing roadwork up the street and grading our road, which is ruining our driveway (all dirt).
So before Bob could get off our property, he had to fill in the giant ditch they made in front of our driveway...nice.

Then as he drove around the roadblock he waved to our one and only neighbor (the only house that we share a property line with) and the neighbor shook his head at him disapprovingly.

Bob, being the level-headed chap that he is, hit his brakes and yelled out "You got a problem man?"

"Only with you and your family!" the neighbor yelled back.

Of course, instead of just laughing at the crazy old man, Bob unleashed what he said was a tirade of profanity, peppered with insinuations that the neighbor tended to prefer lovers of the same sex and that perhaps his parents were unmarried at the time of his conception.

Yeah.
This is going to be fun.