Entries from September 23, 2007 - September 29, 2007
THE Mommy
Regular readers of MommyCosm know that I hate that THE Daddy has to travel so much for work. He's currently traveling Monday through Friday and will be for about 5 more weeks. Just when I think I can't hate his job more...he cashes in on a really good perk. No, not the eat-and-drink-for-free-with-any-of-your-friends-at-any-of-our-restaurants kind of perk. I am SO over that one...but a really good one. He just called and has 4 tickets...to the Red Sox game...this Sunday!
Even if you don't follow baseball, you should be able to appreciate this. The Red Sox are leading the AL East by just 2 games right now. There are only 3 games left in the regular season. Sunday's 2pm game is the last game of the regular season. It could will be an exciting one. The Red Sox haven't won the AL East since 1995. Better yet, they would be beating the NY Yankees.
THE Daddy called to see if I wanted to go...DUH! I think he was feeling guilty about being away from the kids all week and then ditching them all day Sunday to go to the game. He sounded surprised that I jumped at the chance to go. The kids will be fine, they're young and in another couple of months they'll have so much Daddy time they won't even remember he was away so much. (Note to THE Daddy, you are not allowed to use that excuse to do other non-family things on the weekends!) I'd bring Princess, but she already has plans to go to a horse show with my mom. BamBam is way too 2 to bring to Fenway Park. Hmm, I should be OK finding a sitter on a Sunday afternoon...my real problem will be finding someone to bring with us because he has 4 tickets!! Oh, I'm sure we can find some friends to drag along, kicking and screaming.
Actually, I did already call someone to go with us. HUGE Sox fan, tons of fun to hang out with. His wife planned a Jack & Jill baby shower for her best friend on Sunday...he's stuck going to it...that's if he doesn't slit his wrists between now and then!!
I'll take pictures and will post them on Monday!
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I mentioned before that I am ready to start sharing MommyCosm with the blogosphere. I was waiting to have a few weeks of posts under my belt and I was having challenges with my RSS feed. Thanks to squarespace's quick response, the RSS is up and running. SO, today I added BlogRush to my sidebar. It seems like a great idea. It displays post titles of other blogs withing my "Parenting" category. In turn, my posts will be displayed on other Parenting blogs. I just added it and it looks a little funny...seems to be cutting off the right hand side of their box. I'll try to play around a bit to see if I can fix it.
Sign up was quick, easy and complately FREE! Can't beat free advertising. If you'd like to sign up, click here.
(Disclaimer: I am not getting paid for this review. If you sign up using the link on MommyCosm, I think they give me more links the more referrals I give? I haven't read the fine print yet, oops.)
It’s been another long week with THE Daddy traveling for work. We can’t wait for him to come home tonight! I can’t believe we have another 5 weeks to go before he is done building the restaurant in Maine. This is getting old for all of us. On the bright side, his next big build will be one town over from where we live, so he’ll at least be able to sleep at home.
You would think that the older the kids get, the easier it would be for them to have him away Monday-Friday. But, in fact, they seem to take it harder. They are starting to grasp time and on Monday mornings when I tell them that Daddy will be home in 4 tomorrows, it seems like eternity to them (and me!). Unfortunately, they aren’t mature enough to place blame where it belongs and I take the brunt of their frustration. I felt so bad sending them off to school this morning, they both seemed so tired.
Enough ranting…this is supposed to be a happy post! SO, THE Daddy is coming home, we had showers last night, putting an end to evil Indian Summer. We are supposed to have a beautiful weekend…they’re saying it’ll be in the high 60’s and sunny, utopia. I got all of my work done this week while the kids were at school, so I don’t have to play catch up at all. It’s Homecoming this weekend at my high school, the one where I coach softball…so we might go watch the football game. Princess is having a sleep over at my mom’s on Saturday night and will be going to watch my little step-sister ride in a horse show at UNH. She’s very excited for that. I’m equally excited to not have to sleep with her feet in my face for a night! Lastly, the Patriots don’t play until Monday night, so we have all day Sunday to do absolutely nothing…I might even get to take a nap!
There was a time when I couldn’t distinguish between the week and the weekends. The kids were “at home” with me 24x7. I love that term…I don't know many "at home" moms who can ever be found actually at home! THE Daddy used to work more on weekends as well. He’s gotten better at saying “no” and carving out family time. This new routine we’ve settled into really makes me appreciate the switch between Friday am and pm. It’s nice. I find myself looking forward to Friday afternoons because all seems to fall back into balance with our world. It’s almost like I’m holding my breath while walking a tightrope all week and on Friday afternoon when the kids get out of school and THE Daddy comes home, I can finally breathe.
Hope you have a great weekend planned as well. Please share in comments.
BamBam is somewhat of a “late talker”. He just celebrated his 2nd birthday and has the vocabulary that Princess had when she was just one. I’m not really worried (yet) because I know that he understands everything we say to him. If you open up a picture book, he’ll point out anything, so the lights are definitely on. In his defense, Princess has done the majority of talking for him up until now. I was hoping that once he started “school”, he would be forced to open up and speak for himself. Be careful what you wish for!
BamBam has picked up on about one new word a day. Of course, being the proud mommy anxiously awaiting words instead of grunts, I get so excited and make a really big deal. Which, in turn, gives him the green light to repeat said word over and over and over AND OVER again! THE Daddy is going to be in shock when he gets home tomorrow. Since he left for work on Monday, BamBam has started saying “NO!” (with passion), “Nope”, “Yes”, and “Help”. Those might seem like baby words, but when you’ve been hearing “nuh, uh” instead of no and having to rely on sign language for help, I see these as big achievements. Try getting yourself stuck on a countertop above your head and having to rely on sign language to ask for help, not good.
I’m not sure if this happens to all kids, or just mine, but whenever they learn something new, they feel the need to obsess about it right before falling asleep. Or, in the case of BamBam, sleep-yell out a newly learned word almost hourly throughout the entire night. It was almost like he had Tourette’s…”NO”…”HELP”…”MOMMY, NOPE!”…all…night…long.
To add insult to injury, last night it was unseasonably, sweltering HOT, along with humidity that makes you sweat without even moving an inch. THE Daddy removed our air conditioners last weekend, so we had to just lie and sweat while we tried to sleep. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the dogs drank so much to keep from overheating, they had to go outside 3 times to do their business during the night. Needless to say, sleep was nowhere to be found.
Princess has Theater Tots right after school today and I’m dreading it. It’s hot, again, and the building isn’t air conditioned. We’re all going to melt from the heat and lack of sleep, there’s sure to be an emotional melt-down to be had as well. It’s quiet here right now, I’m dreading picking them up…enjoying the calm before the storm;)
Now that I have a couple of months of posts under my belt, I am ready to take MommyCosm out into the blogosphere. I plan to register with a number of blogging communities. The first of which is BlogCatalog. A registration requirement is that you have to add a link or widget on your site. I added the widget, however, my registration was declined. Not sure why, so I'm trying the link.
Any other blog directories you can recommend? Please leave a comment.
After yesterday’s post about Princess’s 7 cavities, I decided to step up efforts to make her school lunches a little more nutritious. She’s so picky and we’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t had the energy to deal with anything more than her standard pb&j. We did go with “hot lunch” for a week, but I went to school with her for lunch and was horrified with what they are feeding them. Even their pb&j 
option included a bag of “whale cheddars” that had trans fats. For real. I’ve been on the anti-trans fat wagon for years now and forgot that they even make stuff with it anymore.
I usually give her a juice box (100% juice, of course) and a water bottle with a sports top. I explained to her that the juice isn’t good for her teeth and gave her 2 water bottles instead. She wasn’t too upset watching me pack it, but we’ll see what happens when she actually sits down to eat. I haven’t been sending her in with the variety that she is used to because I didn’t want to go through 5 plastic bags per day to put in a handful of this and another of that. It seems so wasteful. I think I found a solution.
I did a little research online and found this great bento box at lunchboxes.com. It’s definitely an Americanized version of the classic Japanese bento box. It has 5 little compartments to hold various foods. I am really excited to start putting together nutritious meals for her. Win, win…it’s better for the environment as well. I am also excited to buy large jars of apple sauce instead of the pre-packaged individuals. I searched everywhere and couldn’t find a metal box with metal compartments. I’d really like to reduce the amount of plastic the kids are exposed to. I guess that’s a battle for another day.
If you use a bento box for your kid’s lunch, do share your recipes and tips in the comments. Mine should arrive sometime next week.
Today I officially won the LOSER Parent of the Year Award.
Princess had her first dentist visit today and has 7 CAVITIES! She just turned 5 years old. I didn’t have a cavity until I was well into my 20’s…what gives?!? This is my first child. She’s the sheltered one. The one who didn’t even know what chocolate was until well past her second birthday. The one who had whipped cream and blueberries on her first birthday cake because I didn’t want to expose her to the evils of sugar. She hasn’t even begun losing her baby teeth and her molars are rotting away.
I know what you’re thinking…brush the kid’s teeth every once in a while, will ya?! She brushes her teeth every morning and evening (with her Princess toothbrush…the one that spins). She’s even recently gotten into flossing and swishing around a fluoride rinse. She has barely had more than a sip of soda in her entire 5 years and doesn’t really eat many sweets. I’m floored.
I kept meaning to take her to the dentist, but was dreading the drama of the ordeal and she seemed to be doing a good job with her brushing, so I kept putting it off. When we got back from my friend’s wedding a few weekends ago, I noticed a dark spot on one of her molars and decided to make an appointment. We went to a “kid’s dentist” in town and they were fabulous with her. I, however, got the polite smile and look they reserve for the loser moms who can’t be bothered to take care of their children’s teeth. They told me that I should help her more with brushing...you think?! Tell that to Miss Independent.
To make matters worse, BamBam, the second child, the one I’ve been much more lax with has been EVIL lately when trying to get him to brush his teeth. He won’t brush them himself, not with a regular baby toothbrush, not with the cool spinning car one either. This is the only topic that doesn’t interest him in “being like sissy”. She’s even tried to teach him. He won’t let me anywhere near his mouth and practically bit me yesterday when I tried to force my way in. Oh, but he’ll let THE Daddy do it. THAT does little good since he is traveling from Mon-Fri for the next 6 weeks. AGHH!
Any intelligent suggestions on how to get a stubborn 2 year old to brush? I'm pretty creative, but I've used every trick in my book so far.
Even bigger question…any advice on the use of nitrous oxide? Apparently, it’s the drug of choice for dental procedures in kids…and she’s getting all 7 cavities filled in 3-4 visits over the next few months. The dentist brushed it off like, “dude, everyone does it”…but we don’t usually take that path. Case in point: vaccinations. Luckily, initial searches on google aren’t turning up anything too scary.
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1 Reference
I mentioned before that I coach high school softball. My niece is a senior this year and was the starting 3rd baseman on our State Championship team this spring. She also plays field hockey and has been making the local paper a lot this fall. She’s become quite the athlete. I haven’t made it to one of her field hockey games this season. I’ve been busy with work and the kids…and quite honestly, I’m not really into field hockey. I “get” a lot of sports, but field hockey just doesn’t do it for me. I’m not sure if it’s the skirts they have to wear or the amount of running they do…neither interested me when I played sports.
I recently saw an article about my niece making the winning goal in overtime against our rival school…this is by far my most favorite field hockey article ever!! (In the interest of maintaining her privacy, I’m not going to link to the article, but I’m going to refer to her as “Mo” and will quote the article. Hopefully, this will give proper credit…it was in a local NH newspaper.)
“[Mo] had plenty of opportunity to work on her softball skills last spring as a third baseman on the…High School team that won the Class I championship. On Wednesday night, [Mo] used her softball skills to help her field hockey team, which she hopes accomplishes the same feat.
[Mo] used a nice softball-like swing to break a scoreless tie with 10:39 left in overtime to give [her team] a 1-0 win…”
Now that’s the type of field hockey article that a softball coach can appreciate!! Congrats, Mo!
