2012, I'm Breaking Up With You

Dear 2012,

The last 366 days have been…interesting.  There were some pretty good moments, and a lot of necessary healing and growth occurred during our time together, but no offense 2012, I’m really hoping that 2013 is less dramatic and painful than you were.

 

Of course, it’s not to say that our time together was all bad.  There were certainly some wonderful moments peppered in with those less than savory days. 

Our time together saw Michael and I enter the Dirty Thirty Birthday Club.  It also saw us enter some much needed marriage counseling, which has been stellar.  Of course, the events that led us there weren’t so awesome.  Whatevs.  Water under the bridge, right?

This year also ushered in a new phase of our parenting: we have a preschooler now!  Sybilla ADORES school (I will never forget her disappointment that summer couldn’t end fast enough) and is flying through her achievements like nobody’s business.  Our fridge is covered in more art projects than we have magnets for, and we are deluged with constant requests on how to spell various words.  I won’t lie…I am excited to see what 2013 holds in this department!

Additionally, we were finally able to move out of our old ratty apartment, complete with pest infestation, mold problems, and paper thin walls into a two story duplex that meets all of our needs and then some.  Now that I can finally proudly display my grandmother’s china cabinet, I feel so grown up.  And a backyard!  I actually have to maintain it and set my garbage by the curb and everything too!

Lastly, the Mayan calendar ended, but the world did not.  Kinda glad for that, aren’t you?

Our time together wasn’t a total loss.  But events over the last few weeks have made me realize that all good things must come to an end, and it’s time for us to part ways 2012.  I’m sorry that it had to end on a sour note (really, 2012, wrecking my husband’s car three days prior to NYE is not exactly an endearing quality).  Maybe after we’ve spent some time apart and had a chance to be on our own, we’ll be able to look back more fondly and recall the good ol’ days with each other.  I know this is hard for you, especially with 2013 right here, but I think you’ll agree that it’s for the best.  I could try and tell you that it’s me, not you, but that would be a lie, and I still have some respect for you.

If it makes you feel any better, I’m not making any resolutions for 2013.  I can’t imagine making them with anyone else right now.  I think after all of them pretty much backfired with you, I’m beginning to think that maybe resolutions just aren’t for me.  I may come out at the end of my time with 2013 and think that otherwise, but only time will tell.

Sincerely,

Kelly  

"It's quiet...TOO quiet!"

This evening Michael and I were doing our own thing, me blogtrolling, him washing dishes and chatting back and forth about various random items.  

Suddenly, Michael exclaims, "Oh shit!"
"What?" I ask alarm filling my voice and all sorts of things running through my head.
He points behind me at the dining table.  I look and there is our daughter, quiet as a mouse.
Hmm, nothing wrong with that, I start to think.  Oh wait!  Yes there is...why is she so quiet?

Here's why:

You should definitely try this flavor too...it's really yummy!

Yep, we inadvertently left our dessert from last night on the table and Sybilla thought she would help herself.  Oops!  The bar was originally about the same size as the one on the left, about six squares.  Now it's reduced to two and a little bit.  Ok, now two, since I helped myself to the little bit :o)

Sweetly,
Kelly & the Gang

Declaration of War

I am now on my second cup of coffee and pissed off at the prospect of having to purchase a new iron.

Billa and I are going to her godsister's first birthday party this morning and I had decided a couple of days ago that I would wear a sweet little floral top I got from Michael's stepmom. I wore this top on my birthday and the only reason I have not worn it since is because I hate ironing and haven't found the time to iron the front placket that goes behind the buttons. So I told myself I'd finally belly up to the bar and do it.

I set the iron to steam and went to put on my makeup, giving it time to heat up. After about 10 minutes I went to start ironing. But no steam was coming out. In fact, it didn't feel hot at all. That's odd, I thought. I checked the plug. Still plugged in. I checked the water level. Still had water. I tried again and that's when I noticed the tiny little black ants crawling out of the water reservoir. What the...?

I took the iron into the bathroom where there's better light and sure enough, they are crawling like crazy out of my iron and even worse, the water has a couple of floaties which weren't visible in the bedroom light. I turn the iron upside to shake out the water and to my shock and disgust, THOUSANDS of little black ant bodies fall out in clumps from my iron. Not only am I throughly grossed out, but now my bloody iron is dead because it is chock full of colony!

I spent 15 minutes pouring water in and out until I started seeing tiny transparent golden lumps which turned out to be larvae. Apparently I had found the Mother Ship of the little black ants. It makes me shudder right now to think about the stages of growth that have been happening inside of our iron for the past couple of months. It riles me to think that my birthday party attire now has to rethought. And it really pisses me off that I am now going to have to buy a new iron and an airtight lockbox to store it in. This means war!!!

We've tried grits and citrus oil as natural means to ward off the ants, but their activities have increased in the last few days. They've turned up in odd places, like Billa's bed and of course, the iron. I have now come to terms with the fact that I will have to stuff my hippie ideals into a drawer temporarily so as to rid my home of this plague. I'm going to have to get the apartment people to find me an exterminator ASAP because I don't know how much longer I can go wondering what other items in my home are hiding more colonies of destruction.

But in the meantime, I need to find something else to wear and get another cup of coffee to calm down.

Ciao,
Kelly

God grant me the serenity...

Sybilla has certainly been keeping us on our toes this week.

On Monday, she tore up a library book because I wasn't putting dinner on the table fast enough. I just about freaked out over the damage to the book and then really lost it when I couldn't find any tape to fix it with. After yelling at no one in particular and slamming drawers and enduring a lot of crying from both parties, Billa and I had a little chat about the importance of books and I subsequently removed them all from within her reach. God help the rest of our books should she fly into a hunger induced rage...

On Tuesday, she bonked heads with another child at daycare seconds before I walked in the door to pick her up. When the door opened, there was my child making this awful yipping noise and crying mightily. I've seen big ol' crocodile tears a lot lately, but this was genuine, honest to goodness "I'm hurt" crying. A switch flipped inside me and it was like the red alert in a submarine. All I saw was red and my brain was screaming "SEEK AND DESTROY, KILL KILL KILL!" It took every bit of strength to calm myself down and comfort Sybilla. Fortunately, everyone was alright in the end although my poor husband almost got his head torn off when he dared to cross me when I got home. That mama bear bloodlust feeling takes a while to dissipate, apparently. I never understood how some moms could get all crazy when they felt their kids were threatened, but I get it now!

On Wednesday, she decided to be Little Miss Selfish and got her just desserts for it too. Billa had developed an affinity for the sink footstool at daycare screaming at anyone who dared to get near it. Bless his little heart, one of the boys decided to cross swords with my fierce warrior and paid the price. She got so worked up that she whipped the stool out from under him as he was stepping on it, knocking him onto his rear end and popping herself in the face with the stool in the process. Daycare lady decided enough was enough and banished the aforementioned footstool to another part of the house and replaced it with a chair to prevent anymore fights. Of course, I received a phone call at work to tell me all of this, so I was incredibly embarrassed and amused in equal turns. My child now has a little goose egg above her eye where she hit herself and we had yet another chat on behaviour.

Today being Thursday, I really hope that Billa decides to behave herself because I have some cakes to bake tonight, but if not, well, I won't be surprised. I just hope I can make it through the rest of the week alive!

Counting white hairs until then,
Kelly

Thank God for Small Favors...

Michael has been considering firefighting recently and given that the Austin Fire Department is currently on a hiring freeze and cutting their costs, he decided to look into other departments and see what might be in store. So we went to Houston to attend an open house for the HFD and visit some family. The visit on Friday night with Michael’s Nana and his relatives in Baytown was a pleasant one. This rain was ahead of us the whole time on the road, so it wasn’t too bad and we were very fortunate to have left Austin at 3:45 and arrived at Baytown at 7 pm having hit very little resistance and no tolls!

Saturday however, was not so nice. Initially, our plan was that I would drop Michael off at his open house, and then drive out to Clear Lake to go visit my cousin Erin and her family for a bit and then go back and get Michael and we’d leave town. By the time we got to dropping Michael off, the rain was falling more steadily and he didn’t feel comfortable with me driving in it. I had to agree, so we decided that Billa and I would go to this open house too. I ended up sitting outside the presentation room chasing Billa so as not to disrupt everyone who had come to listen to the speakers. During this time, the rain kept coming and coming. I was in the bathroom trying to get Billa to fall asleep in my lap when another lady came in and told me that Michael was looking for me. I was surprised when she said that the event was over. Michael informed me that a nearby street was completely flooded out and that they were asking everyone to leave early so that we didn’t get trapped.

Michael went to get the SUV, I changed Billa’s diaper and then the baby and I ran out to the car to meet him. By the time I made it to the car, I was drenched and Billa wasn’t too far from wet either. We were just south of Hobby airport and apparently it is a very low lying area as we passed several cars that had already been submerged. We’d gotten halfway to 45 before we realized that the only way we knew how to get there wasn’t going to work. The road was just too flooded and so we started trying to turn around. In the process of turning around, we got trapped in the median for a moment and the SUV started making some very awful noises. We managed to pull off into a parking lot to regroup for a moment.

At this point, we were almost in tears and beginning to be very worried. We don’t know Houston at all, and we were looking at the very real prospect of spending the night stuck in a parking lot with no drinkable water, no restroom facility, no food and a toddler irate at begging strapped in the car for so long. NOT an option, so we kept trying. My friend Kellie has gone on at great length about how irritating it is that Austin is not a perfect grid like Houston and we drew on that knowledge to get to 45. It took an hour, but we managed to do it. At one point, we really thought we were going to have to call our new friends from the HFD to come rescue us as the water was lapping at the side of the door panels. That sound is very soothing when you’re in a boat on a lake, not so much when you’re in your car in the middle of a torrential downpour. We prayed and prayed like we’d never done before and thankfully we made it to 45 and got out of town lickety split.

When we got to Katy and the sun had come out, we then decided to continue with our plan of meeting my brothers in College Station for dinner. We got there about 7 and went to Layne’s for chicken fingers. It so happens that this weekend was Parents Weekend for A&M, so Michael and I treated the boys, Philip’s roommate, and David’s girlfriend to dinner. It’s really kind of funny actually, because Michael and I were much like all of the other parents in town, taking their kiddos out to dinner and making sure they were well-fed. We were all amazed because I managed to feed 6 adults and one baby on $40 total and still have leftovers! Yay Layne’s! We had fun, but since I had a baby shower cake to make the next morning, we had to head home. We then got home at 11 and went to bed.

Billa shows off her special cell phone ray protection headcover, inspired by those swan shaped foil leftover packages from fancy restaurants, courtesy of Uncle Phil!

Philip, Kelly, Billa, David & David's girlfriend, Lindsey. Finally a picture of me and my brothers!

As a result of this weekend we are thankful for many different things:
1. Family – thanks to them, we had a place to stay and good company.
2. Gunnar the SUV – I named my SUV Gunnar for the Vikings, who were the toughest warriors around. My Gunnar proved to be just as tough. Without him, we’d be sitting in a parking lot right now waiting to be rescued.
3. Mike and Trisa – for giving us Gunnar.
4. Layne’s – for the kid that gave me 5 baskets of fries and only charged me for 3, and for being so super speedy in getting the food ready. It was also very tasty!
5. Sleeping babies – enough said!
6. Starbucks – for keeping us awake as we made it home on the last leg of journey
7. Kellie’s gripes about road systems – without it, we might not have had enough confidence to get out of Houston!
8. Sunshine - as much as I love rainy days, sometimes, it's really good to have the sun!

Enjoy some of the pictures we took on this journey (sorry, we were too panicked to think to take pictures during the flooding). Our journey, while eventful, was also very informative. Michael has decided that he really does want to be a firefighter and that he definitely does not want to be one in Houston. So rest assured, dear readers, we won’t be moving to Houston any time soon!

This one is of Billa at lunch today...she's wearing a tortilla container hat!

Love to you all,
K & Co.

Week in Review

Well, it has been quite the week! On Sunday night, we were awoken by the visit of a most unwanted bedfellow. Below is a sampling of the dialogue that ensued between her and Michael that evening:

Kelly sits straight up in bed, clutching arm and belly "Ow, ow, ow!"
"What's wrong?"
"Ow, ow, OW!"
"What's wrong?!"
Kelly runs to the bathroom "OW, OW, OWWWWW!"
"What the bloody hell is WRONG!?!?!"
"It hurts! Ow, ow, OW!"
Apparently Michael is not fluent in the language of pain, so he had to resort to other means of interrogation to figure it out. While I was splashing myself with cold water trying to make sense of what the hell had just happened, Michael squished something in the hallway. I asked him what he was doing and he replied that he'd squished a bug. After the burning sensation still had not gone away after a minute, comprehension slowly dawned.
"What KIND of bug did you squish, dear?"
He looked a little sheepish. "A scorpion..."
Kelly promptly started wigging out again.
"I didn't want to tell you since I know you don't like them!"
"Is it dead!?"
"Thoroughly."
"Good, I'm going downstairs!"
I then hightailed it downstairs where I erupted into hysterics as I recounted my tale (no pun intended) and my dad gave me Benadryl. He and my mom also gave me an ice pack, which curiously enough helped quite a bit. I had a welt on my tummy about the size of a half dollar and a dime sized one on my arm. Near as we can tell, the scorpion crawled into our laundry from earlier in the day when I ran it, and when we dumped it out on the bed that evening, like a ninja, he crawled under the covers, waiting to strike. And boy howdy, did he! It felt like someone had stuck an IV in me, but the pricking sensation didn't go away and it BURNED. I really hate 8 legged critters, as anyone who knows me well can attest, but at this point, I would gladly take a spider over a scorpion any day. [shiver]

Being stung by a scorpion was not the only other thing exciting this week. On Tuesday, Kelly took the day off from work to have a doctor day. We took Sybilla to see Dr. Patil and Little S certainly impressed her. She walked in just as Sybilla was pulling herself up using my shirt. The doctor asked if she was just showing off and I replied that, no, she does it every day, all day. She's even begun to start stepping along when holding onto something, like the coffee table, or the baby corral. I was chastised for not taking babyproofing seriously enough, which we are beginning in earnest this week. The doctor also asked about talking and vocalizing, which up until this point, we hadn't even thought about. We hadn't really noticed anything out of the ordinary, and the doctor was surprised since little girls by this age are apparently VERY vocal. Our child is vocal alright; she just finds it more efficient to scream and holler than babble.

Sybilla waiting for Dr. Patil

Since Tuesday though, we've been paying more attention to what our child is saying and she actually babbles quite a bit. She has also discovered pitch and range as well, much to the chagrin of the animals in the house (and mommy). Sybilla can reach octaves that makes Mariah Carey sound like an alto! The kiddo weighed in at 18.2 pounds putting her in the 75-90th percentiles, so her weight has begun to plateau. She eats like a horse because she's moving so much, and Dr. Patil has increased solids to three times a day and we are eating anywhere from 2 to 4 ounces at a meal. We also got the go ahead to start meat! Sybilla really likes chicken. Mommy actually went ahead and made some for her this weekend and she loves it more than the storebought stuff. I am going to have to get a food processor though, because I don't know how much more the poor blender can take.

On Thursday, we celebrated Anthony Marino's 28th birthday. Happy Birthday, Uncle Anthony! Michael got him a movie and cigars, and Billa and I baked him a cheesecake with cherry butter sauce on top. We stayed out a little too late, but I think it worked out in our favor, because Sybilla SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT!!!!!!! I am not making this up. We put her to bed about 8:30, which is a little later than she normally stays up, and when Mommy and Daddy went to bed at 10:30, we didn't wake up until 5 am! Hallelujah! Of course, she didn't sleep well Friday night, but the performance on Saturday night was great. Michael has been keenly instrumental in this, because he's been going downstairs to comfort her when she wakes up in the middle of the night the past week. Michael's been waking up at 2 am for work lately, and I felt that he needed to get as much sleep as he could, so I was always the one taking care of her when she woke up. However, she'd been waking up every two hours again and would cry nonstop, sometimes for an hour, even with Mommy rocking and cuddling, etc. It was during a weekend off that we discovered it was Boobalicious Mommy that was setting Billa off in a frenzy, and only Super Daddy had the magic touch (and patience) that put her back to sleep almost instantaneously. Thank God, too, because Mommy was on the verge of committing herself to the crazy house just to get some sleep! The baby now wakes up at about 4:30 or 5 in the morning, but because my newest goal has been to go to bed by 10:30, that's giving Mommy at least 6 hours of much needed UNINTERRUPTED beauty sleep! So a big shout out to Daddy: Thank you, Michael; I couldn't imagine sharing parenthood with anyone else--I am so grateful for you!

And to round out the excitement this week, the hammock on the front porch finally got tired of swinging everybody's big butts over the years and decided it had had enough. It pulled out from the brick wall tumping Michael and I to the ground. Thankfully, no one was injured seriously, but Michael and I were very surprised (and a little bruised).

So that is the week in review! Billa starts daycare on Tuesday and hopefully we will not have any more mishaps with 8 legged critters visiting in the middle of the night. And I have a video for you to view that deals with Billa's newest obsession: anything in a glass. Please enjoy and until next time,

Kelly and the Gang