Mother Hoodwink

Hi, remember me?

I am a horrible blogger. [Note: I am such a bad blogger that this window has been opened with that first sentence for at least two hours while I procrastinated writing this post.] A lot has been happening since my last post in which I talked about meeting Jakob Dylan. For one thing, I got to meet him again. We went to the DC show this past September. Josh is an amazing man who will not only drive me four hours to see the only man in the world I would leave him for, but wait outside the venue for two hours to ensure we get a good spot during the concert. Which we did. Jakob Dylan flirted with me a bit when he signed my two CDs. I was able to keep it together and make lots of eye contact because, how could I not? The starstruckness wore off since I had met him before and I was able to say real words to him and remember the things he said to me. I even had the courage to go back and get another picture with him. I lied to him and said that the first picture didn't come out. The truth though, I just wanted to have him put his arm around me again. (Shut up!) He smelled of beer and spearmint gum. It was glorious.

Other things:

• Today marks eights years of marriage for Josh and me. We had our traditional Mexican dinner. If you don't know the story, then here's a quick recap. We were 19 and poor when we eloped. We took our wedding party, which consisted of three friends, to Taco Bell for our reception. My brother happened to bring by Taco Bell for us on our one year anniversary and so, the tradition was born. We hope to go to Mexico for our ten year anniversary.
• Gavin and Maggie are growing up faster than I would like. The saying about the days being long but the years are short is really ringing true to me.
• We'll be moving again this February. Only across town. We're getting into brand new base housing that has two car garages and hardwood floors. I'm pretty excited about this. Mostly because we'll be saving about $400 a month by moving to base housing. We won't have to pay utilities and since our rent now is $50 more than our housing allowance, it will be nice to have the extra money.
• Josh has a new love. An orange '72 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia named Gertrude. I have a love/hate relationship with her.
• I know if I thought longer about this, I could have more bullets. Instead I'm going to make a really huge effort to blog more often because I want to persevere memories for my kids and myself. But mostly to get Kerry off my back for my lazy blogging ways.

Bullets

I didn't start this post out as bullets but my mind is so scattered that it just makes sense this way:

• We are finally moving into our place today! I'm so excited. I love my mom and am so thankful for her having us stay with her, but I am so ready to have my own space again. I know Gavin misses his stuff and it just breaks our hearts every time he asks for a toy or book that is in our shipment.

• My mom has a ridiculous amount of picture frames around the house filled with all of her children and grandchildren. There is one in particular that Gavin likes to carry around and show to people. It's one of my senior portraits. When he shows it to someone he always says, "Look, So and So! It's a picture of mama." When he shows me the picture, he can't comprehended that I am the same exact person in the picture so he comes up to me and says, "Look, Tara! It's a picture of mama." It's the only time I've ever heard him say my name.

• Josh and my very dear brother have spent this last weekend painting the bedrooms of our new house. We thought we only had to paint our room and Gavin's room. Maggie's room was already purple. Before we signed the lease we had only been in the house once and we didn't really take a good look at it since just moments before we saw it, we looked at the one down the street which looked just like it. Well after we got the keys and looked at the house again, we realized the two houses weren't exactly the same. In the other house the front bedroom was bigger and in this house the front bedroom is the smaller one. We quickly realized that Gavin's furniture wouldn't fit into his room and the purple room would be better for him. We could have just let Gavin live with purple walls but we didn't notice until after we signed the lease that two of the walls are pink. So there are three rooms to paint instead of two. My brother is really good at this kind of stuff and had most of the supplies so they knocked out all the painting quicker than I thought they would. Maggie's room still needs to be painted which we hope to take care of this weekend. Until then she'll be sleeping in our room.

• My little baby will be turning one tomorrow. I can't believe I am already getting baby fever. Maggie is just such a precious little girl. She's the most content baby in the world. We often forget she's in the room. She rarely cries and is so happy. I want four more just like her. We're having her party this weekend at our new home. I'm hoping we'll have at least the first floor all unpacked and looking good.

• Last night my family and close friends all got together at a sushi restaurant for my birthday. It was the first birthday with all my family and friends in four years. I'm so happy to be back home.

Odds and Ends

• Hope your Thanksgiving was nice. Mine was. Quiet dinner with just the four of us.

• You have probabaly noticed that I'm changing the design of my site a lot. Between work, school and all the other stuff Josh does, I don't have the heart to ask him to design another header for me because I'm sick of the last one he made me. I don't want to pay for one since I've decided that I want to change it every month/season. I want a photograph I've taken with my site's name on it. (Similar to the stock one that I have up now.) I guess I should learn how to use that fancy Photoshop program that is taking up so much room on my computer.

• I have recently been on a search to find matching Christmas pajamas that aren't way overpriced for the kids. I found ones that I likes at Children's Place and ordered them. They came in today and they are the softest pajamas ever and they were cheap! I got them on sale this past weekend. The prices are now raised but now that I know how nice their fleece jammies are, I would gladly pay the price. I couldn't wait to see them in their Christmas jammies so they wore them to bed last night.

• Our Christmas tree is up and we already have presents under it. I'm the type of person that starts Christmas shopping in the summer. I had a couple things and within the last two months I've kind of gone overboard. I bought a ton of clothes for the kids. I rarely pay full price for kid's clothes. No matter what I'm at the store for, I will cruise by the discounted kid's clothing section and almost always walk away with something. I bought about $100 worth of kid's clothes that were on sale at the end of the summer on Old Navy's website. If I had paid full price for everything, I would have paid close to $400. About two months ago I fell in love with this purple hoodie that had a cute little bird on it. (I'm obsessed with purple and cute birdies. I don't know why.) It was 12 bucks and I couldn't bring myself to spend that on a piece of clothing that she probably wouldn't even get that much use out of. I went to Target this past weekend and found it on clearance for 74 cents! Woot! Anyway, my point is, there are already a shitload of gifts under the tree. I still haven't wrapped their toys (most of which I also got on sale) so add those and the gifts from the grandparents and our tree is going to be kind of overstuffed. I'm glad the kids are young enough that they don't realize that clothes are not a good gift because it's going to be the bulk of their loot this year.

• Maggie will be ten months old this month and the girl still has no teeth. We just started giving her lunch and she is nursing less and less. Our nursing sessions rarely last more than five minutes. Except for her morning one since she's starving first thing in the morning. She's crawling all over the place. Her independence is making me want another baby. Must resist the urge to procreate. We want more kids, I just want to wait a couple years so my body can have a break.

• In about a month we'll have movers packing up our house. I am nowhere near ready for a move. I'm not sure how I can organize for our move when we're pulling Christmas stuff out. At first we thought we would buy a house when we got to Virginia, but the more we think about it, the worse the idea gets. Since it's our hometown that Josh will be stationed to, we know the area really well so the only places that are affordable and we want to live at, are way too far from Josh's base. So we've decided to live in the new base housing that is close to the area my family lives. Not really close to the base where Josh will be working, but Josh says that being close to family makes up for the longer drive to work. While we wait for a base house to open up for us, we'll be staying with my mom. Not going to lie, kind of scared of this. I love my mom dearly but we're both honest people who like to speak our minds. Oh and we both MUST have the last word. Especially when arguing with each other. I'm not as bad about it anymore since I've realized that if I just say "You're right, mom." and not say anything else, the argument will end. I've learned this from my oldest sister. My other sister has yet to learn this vital lesson. My brother is the golden child and my mom never argues with him. It's cool. Us girls don't mind. Our brother is pretty awesome. None of us ever argue with him.

• At first I hated Facebook and liked MySpace way better. Ever since they re-designed it, I'm sort of addicted. Ironically, I joined all the groups that were against the new design. So if you're on Facebook, hit me up. I'm a friend whore.

Bullets

It's been awhile. I always feel awkward writing the first post back from a hiatus. Bullets are fun and I don't have to try to make all the topics I want to talk about cohesive to each other.

• First of all, I'm doing away with all pseudo-names. I lasted longer than I thought I would. So Dim which originally stood for, Dude I Married, has a real name. It's Josh. There you go. Everything is out in the open. I wanted to stay anonymous so his family wouldn't find my blog. More on that in the next post.

• Josh just took his two week vacation. He takes two two week vacations every year. His job in the Navy only allows him to take it at certain times. Because of his job they can't have random people gone different times of the year. So the Navy says when we're allowed to vacation. One of the annoyances of his rate in the Navy. Anyway, he just went back today and I forgot how stressful it is to be home with two kids by yourself all day.

• Today marks a week that we started potty training with Gavin. He picked it up fairly quickly. Last Monday we just decided that we had enough. We put him in some underwear and told him if he needed to go, to use the potty. He hasn't had an accident yet. He's only pooped twice on the potty though. He tries to go on the potty, but he's intimated or uncomfortable or something. So he saves them for nap/bed time when he gets to wear a diaper. He's already been getting a peanut M&M for peeing on the potty and we introduced mini Reece's Cups for going poop. Ever since he got a "poo-poo treat", he's been sitting on his potty a lot more. He has peeing down completely. He goes to the bathroom, pulls off his shorts and pees without even telling us.

• Maggie has started sleeping in 12 hour stretches. Thank God! I think it may have to do with us introducing solids to her. It took her about two weeks to go from one jar of stage one to two jars of stage one to a jar of stage 2 foods. Homegirl was just hungry. That's why she didn't sleep long. The first night she slept 12 hours, I woke up in a panic thinking something was wrong with her and boulder boobs that were ready to bust.

• If you haven't already, go buy the Ped Egg. I kept hearing such great things about it and every time I saw the commercial I would comment to Josh that I wanted one. He surprised me with one a couple of weeks ago. He's so sweet. What can I say? It's easy to romance me. I know the commercial is quite off putting with all the nasty feet and then the vile dumping of like a 1/4 cup of foot into a trash can with NO BAG. But trust me. This thing is awesome!

• Oh, I got my haircut. Seventeen inches in all. I donated two 14 inch pony tails to Locks of Love. I would post pictures, but I don't have any before pictures. My hair was always up because it was so long. Now it barely touches my shoulders. It's the shortest I've ever had my hair. I wasn't prepared. I had no barrettes or headbands so I had to raid Wal-mart's hair accessory aisle at eleven at night because I couldn't take another day of my hair being in my face. It's cute when it's down but it looks like a massive barrette orgy on my head when it's up.

So those are the highlights since my last post. Hopefully, now that I'm getting better sleep, I can write more often.

It's been awhile, I know!

My lack of updates may make it seem like I am drowning in the workload of raising two children under two and running a household, but I'm not. I promise. I just haven't wanted to write. I figure this hiatus is my version of maternity leave. I have a lot to talk about so bullets it is:

• I'm tired of using pseudonyms for my family. I don't have one for Maggie so it's seems stupid to have one for one kid but not the other. So Boomba's real name is Gavin. For now I'll keep Dim's name hidden.

• During my hiatus I had a serious pregnancy scare. My second period seemed just like implantation bleeding. Thank goodness it was just one of those weird postpartum periods. We are so not in a financial position to have another child right now. Nevermind the fact that not only would two of our kids be the same age at the same time, they would have been born in the same year. After suffering through infertility, it was weird to hope for a negative test.

• I've noticed that BPA is becoming a huge topic among blogs recently. I had heard of it about a year ago but didn't really think much of it. Right after Maggie was born I started to research it. Luckily every single bottle, binky, sippy cup, bowl and utensil we have given our kids has been BPA free. But then I started to look for the recycling number on all the plastic in our house that holds food. Knowing that numbers 3, 6 and 7 were the bad plastics I became obsessed. Our cottage cheese tub is made of 6. The mini bags of chips were 6. The plastic tray that my beloved Oreos came in were 6. A bag of cereal and my granola bar wrappers are 6. I don't know why that's not discussed. Baby products are only the tip of the iceberg. I remember hearing that 95% of people tested had BPA in their urine. Is it any wonder why? Just about every food product is packaged with an unsafe plastic. What the fuck?! Our government sucks.

• Gavin's second birthday was yesterday. My precious little baby all of a sudden is some big kid who can ask for, "Snack? Presels please!" (I haven't looked yet, but I can almost guarantee that the pretzel bag is a 6.) and tell me, "I huv ooh, Mama." I love this little boy more than words but if I could go back to eight month old Gavin and keep him in my pocket forever, I would.

• I have learned that I have a different love for Maggie than I do for Gavin. I love them both immensely but I have more of a connection with Maggie. I think it's just because she's also a female. Dim says he has the same connection with Gavin. I feel so alive when I look at her and knowing that she is a little me. Dim always used to say this about Gavin and I thought he was weird. I didn't get it. I do now though. Like a piece of you will live on with them.

That's all I got for the time being. I don't feel like such a slacker now.

Now, pictures for no reason:

Bullets. Yay!

I have to make bullets. I don't have the energy to make anything flow.

• It's happened. I didn't think it would, but it has. I finally had a crying fit over the fact that I am fucking huge and uncomfortable. The only place I can feel somewhat comfortable is in bed among my orgy of pillows. But the kicker is that if I stay there too long, like a whole night, I wake up with the most excruciating back pain. I can't move and don't want to. Of course once I get up and start walking around, I feel a little bit better. Since Dim leaves while Boomba and I are still sleeping, he'll call me later in the morning to check up on me. Today I couldn't hold it in and just cried and cried about how I can't do this anymore. I am carrying this baby so low so every week when she gets heavier, I can feel my spine curving more and more. I swear by the time this pregnancy is over, I will have a hunchback from carrying her.

• I just need to stick it out one more week. My mom and sister are coming in on the 15th and 16th. My mom will be staying home with Boomba while we're at the hospital and my sister will be in the delivery room. I'm really happy she'll be there because I'll need her support and calmness. But mostly I'm happy she'll be there so I'll have someone who is rubbing my head and telling me to breathe, because Dim is all about watching the birth. He feels bad because he wants to support me but being the pre-nursing student he is, he really wants to hang out at the south end and watch all the nitty gritty stuff. I don't mind. It's a good learning experience for him and I can ask him later what exactly happened down there.

• I am 38 weeks today but at my appointment yesterday, I measured in at 40 weeks. I know belly measurements can be off because the baby could be positioned weird or the nurse just didn't do it exactly right. But, I've been measuring two weeks ahead now for the last month and my last ultrasound a couple of months ago said the baby was due two weeks sooner than my original due date. I also have not gained anything in the last six weeks. I'm not sure what that means. I know the baby is gaining because for fucks sake, she's heavy. Have I been losing weight? Weird. Regardless, I know I feel ready. I don't care about measurements or weight gain, I know that this baby is not going to make it to my due date of the 22nd. Well, she better not make it that far because I think I will probably die if she does.

• I can't believe how little energy I have these days. Since this baby is so low, I can't drive anymore. Once I get comfy enough to have the steering wheel in front of me by pushing the seat back, my feet can barely reach the pedals. So needless to say I'm not going many places these days. Walking to the park? Forget it. A five minute walk turns into twenty with my slow moving self stopping every few minutes to take a break. I want to put on makeup and look pretty, but I barely have enough energy to unscrew a tube of lip gloss and haphazardly smear it on. You don't understand. I have to locate my purse and then pick which of the seventeen tubes of lip gloss (that I carry at all times) that I want to wear. Do you know how hard that is? Can you even comprehend how strenuous this is for me? I really feel that I will be more rested AFTER the baby is here then what I am now. Because this? Is not rested. This is borderline dying of lack of sleep. Why hasn't someone invented some kind of maternity bed? The pillows are just not cutting it.

• Pregnancy has once again reminded me of what a wonderful man I am married to. He does everything around the house, does the shopping and when he's home he takes full care of Boomba. Not only is he working everyday, but he goes to school three nights a week. So glad I snatched him up when we were young. I got to him before all the crap his parents set in his mind got cemented in. Because the men in his family are crazy chauvinistic. Women's work is women's work no matter how bad the women are feeling. If it weren't for Dim, the house would be a mess and the fridge would be empty. Thanks honey. I love you.

I'm too tired to make this coherent. Bullets it is.

• Writing an average of three papers a week for my Children's Lit class, making sure I'm on top of my math studies, being pregnant and taking care of a one year old who just learned how to climb and loves to show off his climbing techniques on EVERYTHING, has left me a bit, um, busy. Even though I'm in my second trimester now and got some of my energy back, I'm still pretty tired. So keeping up with this site is not so much priority at the moment. I'm trying though.

• My pregnancy cravings are making me feel like a bad mommy. First it was all the coffee. While I still like to have my nightly cup (decaf), I've started to crave cherry Coke as well. I don't know if they even make it caffeine free. I've never seen it. What's weird is that I haven't really drank soda since before I got pregnant with Boomba. Now I remember why I stopped drinking it. It gives me this thick feeling in my throat and makes it hard for me to swallow. I'm guessing it's all the high fructose corn syrup. For awhile I was craving bologna, mustard and mayonnaise sandwiches. My big sister used to make them for me after school when I was a kid. They're surprisingly good. I'm not sure but I think bologna has nitrates which makes it an off limit food. I haven't checked because I knew I would eat it anyways. It's amazing how much less you care about all the rules during your second pregnancy. The other night for dinner I made hot dogs wrapped in cheese and croissants. Another big no-no but I HAD to have it. Oh well.

• You know all those old wives tales that tell whether you're pregnant with a girl or boy? I think they make a lot of sense. Like the girl's heartbeat being faster than a boy's. Well that one is true for us. Boomba always was around 135 and our girl is always around 160. Another old wives tale is being pregnant with a boy makes the woman's libido go WAY up and it pretty much disappears when a woman is pregnant with a girl. Well, without getting too graphic, it is way true for me. Sorry Dim.

• Pregnancy makes me a little bit more irritable than usual. Ok. A lot more irritable. I need new glasses because they have stretched out or something. The stems are all bent. Now when I look down, they just slide right off my face. This is so much fun when I'm bathing Boomba. I have had to stop myself more than once from grabbing my glasses and breaking them in two. If I had another pair lying around, I totally would. It would feel so good. I could wear my contacts but pregnancy makes my eyes dry so I usually get even more frustrated with those. I swear I'm getting Lasik. I can't take it anymore. In fact with this year's tax refund, I will. Sorry Dim, no Wii and paying off bills this year. Mama is gonna see.

• I'm pretty sure my evil in-laws have found my site... again. I went out of my way to not have them here by creating a whole new site, not telling anyone about it and hiding our real names. Once I know for sure it's them, I think I'll start writing about them. I haven't yet because I was getting over everything. But hey, since they're here, I might as well say my peace since FIL keeps his head so far up his ass to even listen to me and MIL keeps her head up FIL's ass as well since he can do no wrong in her eyes. Now they can read my thoughts in text and I will get my point across.

Bullets are still cool.

Every time we go back home, I have a list of goals that I have to get done because they can only be done in Virginia Beach. I'm lucky if I get one of them done. We just get so caught up in hanging out with friends and family. I was going to number these but my hosting site has a sucky numbering system. So, it's bullets again. Sorry. This summer's list:

• Go out with Dim, ALONE, and see a movie together. Back home we have a crapload (I just added "crapload" to my Apple spell check dictionary. I'm surprised it took this long.) of babysitters. Lots of family and friends that I trust my child with without giving them a laundry list of things to do in case one of Boomba's appendages fall off. Dim and I haven't seen a movie in a real theater since we saw some movie with Shia Labeof playing golf. That was back in October of 2005. I know. Sad and pathetic. It was the beginning of my pregnancy with Boomba. We wanted to squeeze in as many movies as we could while I was pregnant, but no movies worth watching came out in that time. We did see the the second pirates movie in July of 2006. But that was at a drive-in and I spent most of the time sitting in the car breastfeeding a two month old for most of the movie. The second we get into town, I'm handing Boomba over to my mom and Dim and I are going to see the new Harry Potter.

• Here in Memphis we get a lot of Dunkin' Donuts commercials. They keep showcasing all of their yummy iced coffee drinks. I love coffee drinks. I will be your bitch for life if you give me a coffee drink. I'm cheap like that. So I went to their website to check out all of the flavors so I would know which one I wanted to order. I then checked to see where our closest DD was. Want to know where it is? Well not within 50 miles, that's where. Whatthefuckever. So one of my goals is stopping at all the DDs on our 16 hour drive so I can get a yummy iced coffee. By the time this voyage is over, I will have tried all nine flavors at least thrice. Dude, they have raspberry, cinnamon, blueberry and coconut flavors. I MUST conquer these.

• I will get a tan. (I know about cancer. Shut up. I'm part Asian and have a lot of melanin so chill.) My mom lives on a lake so I usually get a tan. But the two week stay doesn't give me a year lasting tan unless I'm out there everyday. Also, I want to swim as much as I can because I never get to around here.

• Make sure I take Boomba to the beach and get some awesome naked sandy butt pictures of him. I love the beach when it's not tourist season. During the summer, however, I freaking hate it there. I always forget about the beach on the Navy base down the street from my mom's house. I didn't grow up military and had only gone there a few times with friends. All the adults loved it there because they sell alcohol slushies. Alcohol and lots of sun always go together, I say. Hopefully the Navy beach won't be too busy so I can get some nice photos.

• Make sure that Dim goes surfing already! Our good friend back home started and has talked it up so much that Dim will not SHUT UP about it. Dim is easily swayed by this friend. Remember the skateboarding? Dim is still doing it by the way and is really good at it.

• Now that we don't talk to my in-laws anymore (dreadful people), we should have more time to spend with our lifelong friends who we seem to always neglect when we're in town. I also have a fellow Navy wife friend who I promised to visit last summer but didn't have time due to said dreadful people making our vacation a living hell.

• Make sure to visit all the stores we don't have here. One of my sisters was telling me about the new H&M and since we are basically the same person when it comes to clothes shopping, she told me I would flove it and it totally got me excited.

• This doesn't need to be on the list because it happens anyway but I'll put it on in case anyone from my family stumbles onto this site. I gotta make myself look good. I have to spend so much time with my family that I start talking like them again and repeating the inside jokes for weeks until I'm back home and reference one to someone who has no idea what I'm talking about.

Cool people make bullets.

I am seriously lacking in the blogging department. I have a bunch of thoughts running around in my head but I don't have the time to sit down and write them all out. So in lazy fashion here's a bulleted post.

• I despise the word "blog." Even more so the word "blogging." I know I just used it but that's because I don't know another word for it. When I used it just now I had this feeling of ickiness and pretentiousness. I don't know why.

• Someone stole Dim's iPod. He left it at the gym and when he realized the next day, he went back and no one had turned it in. The gym said that iPods never get recovered. Dim is especially pissed off because this is our gym on base and the fact that a shipmate of his stole his shit, really bothers him. Military people are supposed to stick together and watch out for each other. Example: Dim has a very short haircut. One that you don't volunteer to get unless you're in the military. When we were at the airport a few months ago, this Army kid came up to Dim to talk to him about nothing. Military people just seek each other out. They talked like they were old friends and then the guy left. I guess Dim's iPod getting stolen just proves that there are assholes everywhere.

• We are in the middle of The Great Cleanout of 2007. We're leaving this Saturday to go on our two week vacation back home. Now that I have my own home, I totally get why my mom cleaned the house like a madwoman before we went on vacation. Who wants to come home to a dirty house? I'm even more adamant about cleaning before we leave since Hurricane Katrina. We didn't think the hurricane would hit New Orleans. We thought we would be gone for the weekend and be back. We couldn't get back to our house for over a month. I had left dirty dishes in the dishwasher. That was disgusting.

• I am amazed that my baby is acting like a little kid more and more everyday. This morning he lied on the floor on his stomach and propped his chin up with his hands as he watched TV. Just a few months ago, he couldn't even walk.

• I hate fast food. But I haven't felt like cooking lately so we've been going out. I now have an addiction to soft tacos from Taco Bell.

• We have this furniture store commercial that airs here. The owner thought it would be cute to put his grandkids in the commercial. I would be fine with this if his stupid grandkids didn't have speech impediments. Look, I mean no offense to people who have them. I just don't like it when people think it's cute when kids have them. It's not cute. Help that child. So now when I see the commercial starting, I have to change it before I hear two really loud children say, "Come do ouwr gwandpaws stwore." Ugh!

• Boomba is cutting his molars. This kid has such an even temperament. He rarely throws tantrums and always smiles. Now it's as if a demon has jumped into his little body and taken over. He throws crazyass tantrums. Much like the one I encountered not too long ago. I thought that one was a fluke. Nope, that was the beginning. Molars fucking suck, man.

Well that's all I got for now. I need to go pack. I know we don't leave for five days but if I pack now I'll lessen the chance of me forgetting something vital. Like toothbrushes, cameras or Boomba.