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Why I Am Completely OK With My Kids Wanting To Be A Disney Princess

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I’ve recently noticed a trend of links on facebook, etc. about the horrors of the Disney Princesses and how some people are adamant about not wanting their daughters to idolize them.  As someone who grew up with Disney and the princesses (at least the old school ones) and as a mother of a three year old who is 100% obsessed with Rapunzel, I’m going to go ahead and say that they’re not that bad.  And before I even start, I’m going to give the disclaimer that I didn’t see Brave or Frozen yet (although I heard that Frozen is fantastic and I’m super excited to see it…when it comes out on DVD…because I’m too cheap to see it in a theater), so I can not give a true opinion on those girls (I hear that they are all bad asses!).

Yes, I know that they all find their prince and fall in love, blah blah blah.  Every princess story is a love story (or at least has a component of love story in it).  But really, what’s wrong with a love story as long as it’s a strong woman who is falling in love?!  And people can be strong in different ways.  Trust me.  I grew up surrounded by strong women.  On both sides of my family and with most of our family friends, the women are in charge.  Not that the men are push overs…it’s good to have an intellectual argument…as long as you know, in the end, that I (being the woman) am going to win.  They do it in different ways.  Sometimes it’s super obvious who is making all the decisions and other times (this is my favorite kind) it’s done with a quiet sarcasm that you wouldn’t even notice unless you were paying very close attention.  Thanks to my mom and all of those other positive female influences, I grew up knowing the order of life (go to college, get a job, get married, buy a house, put furniture in that house – and then you can have a baby) and I knew that if I felt that domestic life was not for me, it was OK because “I do not need a man to validate myself as a person!”  I’m getting off track here.  Back to the princesses.  While, I admit that some of them are a little odd, each of them definitely have some kick ass skills (except for one, but I’ll get to her later).  So.  From the beginning…

Snow White – OK, so these early princesses are a little bit demur for my liking.  But if you think about it, Snow White does make it through the forest so she has to have some pretty decent survival skills.  She can talk to animals, which is always a plus.  I mean, I suppose anyone can talk to an animal.  But in her case, the animals listen and obey.  If I could get some deer and rabbits to help me clean my house, I’d be all about it.  The birds can stay out.  She lives with 7 men.  At first you may think it’s some weird reversed polygamy type of thing where the woman has multiple husbands.  But then you realize that she may be all about helping out little people, which is an awesome little philanthropic effort she has going on.  She can reach things on the top shelves so that Dopey doesn’t have to sit on Happy’s shoulders all the time.  Really, her only downfall is that she ate an apple from a stranger.   Really?!  Who does that?!

Cinderella – Again, Cinderella is not my one of my favorites.  She obviously has no toes which is why she can never keep shoes on her feet.  I’m surprised that she can make it up all of those stairs to her room.  But does she let a strange (probably genetic) deformity stop her?  No.  She pretty much runs the household because her lazy ass stepmother and stepsisters are worthless.  And organization is a good quality to have.  You can’t get all of that work done without a system and you can’t be a bad ass princess without being organized.  She also has animals that do her bidding, which seems to be a common theme in these early princess movies.  Her animals friends are mostly mice and birds, which is weird and creepy, but I guess beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to free tailoring.  She is smart enough to keep the one shoe that actually stays on her foot.  And in the end, she pretty much gets to bitch slap her stepmother and stepsisters.

Aurora – Aurora has those typical early princess qualities of being an animal whisperer and knowing which berries in the forest won’t kill you.  She has an awesome singing voice which she uses to her advantage.  (And there is nothing wrong with knowing your assets.)  I think it’s strange that she never thought it was weird that she lived in a little cottage with three middle aged women, but, I suppose if she never knew anything else, she wouldn’t know to question it.

Ariel – OK.  So I used to really like Ariel…until I started thinking about this post.  I seriously can’t think of a good, positive quality that Ariel possesses.  First of all, she’s way to young to be falling in love, running away from home and most importantly, getting married.  Aurora was 16 too, but at least she didn’t get married right away (right?).  Anyways, back to Ariel.  You could say that she’s adventurous, which is true, but it sometimes comes off as defiant.  She wants to do the right thing, even though it’s not the status quo.  And she saves a human from drowning, which I appreciate her being kind to a species that is not her own.  (There.  A good quality)  But she gives up her greatest asset (her voice) without even being prepared.  No sign language, no pen and paper, nothing.  I do like that she’s a red head and that she’s ballsy enough to rock the sea shell bra.

Belle – One of my favorites!!!  She’s a reader, she sacrifices her own well being to free her father and she is not too entirely freaked out by inanimate objects talking to her.  She totally stands up to the Beast and even yells at him from time to time.  Plus, she falls in love with him despite his scary exterior.  I want to be her.  Minus the lifetime imprisonment.

Jasmine – I’m not gonna lie, I haven’t seen Aladdin (or Pochahontas) in years.  Jasmine really stepped up the whole animal friendship thing by having a pet tiger.  I feel like that fact alone makes her a real bad-ass.  And she doesn’t even have any disfiguring tiger bite scars!  She wears pants, which is cool.  And, I’m pretty sure that even though the pants are billowy, she’s got some hips.  Just like Belle, she falls in love with someone who is not typical prince material.  Except this time, instead of ugly and rich, she goes for cute and homeless.  She seems pretty independent, so I’m assuming she made Aladdin sign a pre-nump (which obviously would give her all rights to any magic lamps, genies and flying carpets).

Pocahontas – I feel like if the princesses had a fitness competition, Pocahontas would win, hands down.  When you row that much in a canoe, you have to be building up some major upper body strength.  Pocahontas is cool because she can totally survive completely on her own.  She wants to make her own decisions about who she should marry and what she should do with her life.  I feel like if Disney were to remake the Pocahontas movie, it should be full of Beyonce songs.  And Just Around the River Bend.  You can’t take that out.

Mulan –  OK, Mulan.  Weird, awkward and doesn’t fit in.  Already I like her.  She cross-dresses and goes to war, which, I admit, the cross dressing is strange.  But she gets to carry a sword and ends up proving herself to be one of the most bad-ass princesses there is.  Bonus!  She ends up getting the guy that is much hotter than any other guy in the movie and she does so by being her true bad-ass self!

Tiana – Tiana is all about working hard to get what you want, which is awesome because even as a princess, things are not just handed to you.  Yes, she spends some time as a frog but it helps her to find a prince, so I guess it’s worth it.  Also, in addition to being a great cook, she’s a decent business woman.  No complaints.

Rapunzel – Oh Rapunzel.  Locked up in a tower for 18 years and instead of sitting on her ass, she reads, paints, plays guitar, knits, cooks, does puzzles, plays darts, bakes, does paper mache, ballet, chess, pottery, ventriloquy, makes candles, stretches, climbs, and sews dresses (can you tell I’ve seen this movie a couple thousand times?).  She’s essentially the biggest overachiever I’ve seen.  She’s super creative and I love that her weapon of choice is a frying pan.  She stands up to the bitch that kidnapped her and ends up trying to sacrifice herself for someone she loves.  It looks like Flynn is saving her, but she is most definitely saving him.  Talk about independence.  Plus, she can totally pull off both the blonde and brunette looks…very hard to do.

So, essentially, if Alexa and Kate want to be like the Disney princesses, I’m all about it!

(January 6, 2014)

Skinny Jeans

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I had a very strange experience while shopping for jeans the other day.  First of all, let me say that the last time I went shopping for…well, any kind of clothing for myself…was right after Alexa was born.  And I’m pretty sure my mom bought me the jeans I got then.  Anyway, fast forward three years.  Those post-Alexa jeans are too short (who would have thought, right?), so now it’s cold out and I don’t have any jeans that fit.  My first disappointment was walking into the store and realizing that they don’t have a section for ‘I just stopped breastfeeding and immediately gained 5-10 pounds’.  What the hell.  OK, so obviously I need to change my approach.  That’s OK, I can adapt…or so I thought.  It took me about 10 minutes to find a pair of jeans that were not labeled “skinny”.  I’m sorry, what?  I mean, I’m not completely out of it, I knew about skinny jeans. I was just unaware of the sheer quantity of them and the complete lack of anything else!  In one store I was in, they not only had skinny jeans, they had “super skinny” jeans.  Who wears those?  I’m serious.  Who is their target marketing group?  Because I’m just gonna go out on a limb and say that 98% of women are not shaped like 9 year old boys, and therefore, would look horrible in skinny (and especially super skinny) jeans.  I know, there is always that group of outliers.  That strange group of women who’s thighs don’t rub together.  And trust me, I’m kind of jealous of the lack of chaffing that you experience.  But for the large majority of us, we need real jeans that fit real women.  And I don’t mean skinny jeans that are labeled “curvy” with a “mid rise waist and roomy through the hip and thigh”.  Skinny jeans with a curvy fit is an oxymoron.  Speaking of oxymorons… skinny jeans in any size above a 4 is an oxymoron also.  I know, I know.  There are some super tall girls who wear larger sizes and yet are proportioned so that skinny jeans actually look really good on them.  Now before you start thinking ‘Oh yeah, that is totally me.  I look fantastic in my skinny jeans!’, if you are shorter than 5’9”, it’s not you.  Go ahead and absorb that fact and then go buy yourself some new pants.  This is tough love, people, tough love.  I am here for all of my fellow big-butted women, trying to save you from looking nasty.  And please don’t think that I’m calling anybody fat or saying for anyone to loose weight in order to be able to fit into those jeans.  I have a butt and I always will.  I like my ass.  It looks good.  I mean, the flab to muscle ratio is a little bit skewed in the wrong direction after having two kids, but I’m working on that.  And just because I like the butt I have, doesn’t mean that I need to be squeezing it into a pair of jeans that makes me look like _____ (I was going to write here a description of what the jeans look like on me but it’s indescribable.  There are no words).

Do you know who the real genius in all this is?  The guy (or girl) who first saw skinny jeans on a runway somewhere and decided “Yes! We can sell these to everyday women”.  I feel like there was probably a down-to-earth assistant (probably with mildly wavy brown hair and glasses) who was like “Sir, everyday women won’t look good in those jeans.  They were made for the super skinny models to wear.”  And then the guy was like “I know!  That’s what makes it so perfect!  We call them ‘skinny jeans’ and everyone will think that they make them look skinny! They will sell like crazy!  Then we can sit back and watch all the young women and teenage girls in America prance around with these horrible jeans on!  It will be hilarious!!!  Muahhhahahahaha!”  (That last part was his evil laugh…I didn’t say that he was nice, just that he was a genius.)  The genius part about of this is that it actually worked!  And it obviously made this guy super rich. So, to the random rich skinny jean selling guy out there somewhere: good job.  To his assistant:  You are a failure.  Maybe you need to make a different career choice.  Perhaps something behind a desk.  In a cubicle.  To all of you ladies who need to now buy some new pants: good luck and don’t give in to the ‘skinny’ label.  And finally, to Alexa and Kate:  with the families that you come from, there is no hope of tiny butts or thighs in your future.  But that’s OK!!!  You have two of the cutest butts I have ever seen in my life!!!!  But we have to keep it classy so don’t ever expect to see any kind of skinny jeans in our house.  Ever.

(November 28, 2013)

Udderly Delicious!

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So, I was feeling sorry for myself the other night because I had to work full time.  I like my job and I would want to work sometimes, just not full time.  I was irritated because I have to leave for work at 5:45am and I don’t get home until 8 (or later) which is way after Alexa goes to bed, and sometimes after even Kate goes to bed.  I hadn’t seen Alexa in more than 3 days and my only interaction with Kate was a bath and night time feed.  Anyway, I was moping around the kitchen trying to brainstorm ideas to make money from home and wishing that I had a marketable skill when I saw a Target ad on the counter advertising for a sale on all breastfeeding supplies.  (Oh yeah! I think you know where this is going now!)  So I thought to myself, ‘That’s what makes me (semi)unique…I produce milk!  Wouldn’t it be hilarious if I sold my breast milk online.’  I walked into my bedroom still chuckling to myself and decided, just out of sheer curiosity, to try to google it.  OMG, you guys, there is a whole breast milk buying/selling world out there!  It’s like the breast milk black market.  Except it’s legal.  I think.  Legal or illegal, it’s kind of creepy.

People post ads for their milk.  It’s like the classifieds of human dairy products.  And not only are they describing (in detail) their milk, they are, in a way, selling themselves too.  And they sell it by the ounce!  Examples: “1000+ ounces of creamy fresh or frozen breast milk from healthy mother” (I want to know if the ‘fresh’ stuff is still warm), “Healthy, fatty milk for your little one”, “Human dairy queen…”, “Fit, healthy, Ivy-league educated mom selling…”, and my personal favorite: “Fresh BM. Local sales only”  And that, folks, is why acronyms are generally bad.

I’m not gonna lie, I’m all about the nursing with Katelyn, more so than I was with Alexa.  But if I wasn’t able to nurse her for any reason, formula it would be!  She gets 2 bottles of formula a day as it is anyway.  I mean, I understand that people want what’s best for their baby.  And the people selling it are just trying to make some extra cash from their overflow (no pun intended) supplies.  Some of these women must be making thousands of dollars!  I checked, and there’s about 200 ounces of milk in my freezer right now.  I might just sell off whatever Kate doesn’t drink.  I could market my milk as “Udderly Delicious!”

(July 28, 2013)

What’s For Dinner?

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Disclaimer: Nick is a really good husband and father. Seriously. He feeds, bathes and puts Alexa to bed at least three times a week because I am at work or teaching and he’s done a fantastic job so far when he’s been at home by himself with both girls when I’m working on a weekend. He even vacuumed the house last night as I was bathing Lexi. OK, I had to put that out there first. On to my story.

I’m not a good cook. I can follow a recipe just fine but I’m definitely not one of those people who just throws stuff together to form culinary awesomeness. It’s just not something that I enjoy. Dinner never falls very high on my list of priorities and, if it were just me and Alexa eating, she’d have a peanut butter sandwich, I’d have a bowl of dry cereal and everyone would be happy. Now, Nick is different when it comes to dinner. He would love to have a four course meal every night, which obviously doesn’t happen in our house…ever. So, when I was pregnant with Katelyn, one of the things that just irked me to no end was Nick coming home from work (at 4:00…plenty of time left for group decision about what to eat) and asking what was for dinner. At that point, having spent my day entertaining Alexa, cleaning, getting ready for the baby (and usually sleeping), the ‘what’s for dinner’ question just really made me want to inflict some major pain. Or hide in a closet. (Or the more likely scenario: hiding in a closet while dreaming about inflicting pain) I imagined that Nick wanted to come home to me wearing a dress, heels and an apron, preparing this fantastic meal while Alexa was quietly sitting at the table teaching herself calculus. Reality was, obviously, just about the opposite. It was a good day when I was able to even take a shower and Alexa was usually running around like a little crazy girl, and occasionally naked (Alexa, not me. It’s really hard to keep clothes on that kid!).

Shortly before having the baby, I decided that I had had enough. I realized that he was just asking an innocent question, so I had to come up with a way to answer that question without getting anxious, frazzled and mad. My solution: monthly meal plans. For the past three months, I have made a calendar with dinner planned out for each day. At the beginning of the month, we have one big Publix shopping trip and we only go back to the store half way through the month to get milk and fruit. Not only do we always know what’s for dinner, we have saved a lot of money by staying away from the stores. Our meal calendars are posted in the laundry room and on the inside of a kitchen cabinet so everyone knows what’s for dinner all the time.
So, Nick calls me at work the other day, from home, as he is standing in front of the refrigerator and as soon as I answer the phone he says “Hey, what’s for dinner tonight?”. Are you serious? I can’t win.

(July 7, 2013)

My Tooth Story

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I’m going to try to write on my blog more, which I know is something I say all the time.  But this time I’m really going to do it.  Really.  My goal is to be a full time, self employed blogger.  So somebody better start following me and writing comments on this thing!  🙂  As part of all this, I tried to get past my horrible computer skills and update the look of my blog and try to figure out what different things I can do with it.  I found that I can have a heading.  A one sentence type of thing that describes me and my blog.  And so, after much deliberation, I decided on “South Florida girl moves to the ‘country’ where shirts, shoes and a full set of teeth are all optional.”  I thought it was pretty witty and funny.  Not gonna lie, I was proud of myself.  Until I realized that I am totally starting to fit in here…I officially do not have a full set of teeth.

When I was pregnant with Kate, my body was generally against me.  In addition to the bitchiness, I had headaches, I felt exhausted all the time, Katelyn enjoyed using my kidneys as a punching bag, I randomly got the worst UTI in history and, oh yeah, my tooth fell out.  Let’s all take a moment to reflect on that last statement.  OK, done.  And yes, you read it correctly.  My tooth actually fell out.  (Well, I suppose that’s a slight exaggeration.  A quarter of one of my molars fell out.  But still!!!  That’s a quarter of a very large tooth!)  It was like those dreams people have about loosing their teeth, except it was real.  And it sucked.  A lot.

It happened on a Saturday night.  That morning, my tooth started hurting and progressively got more annoying as the day went on.  After Alexa went to bed, I was sitting on the couch with Nick, telling him how I was probably going to make an appointment at the dentist on Monday because this crazy ache in my tooth just won’t go away.  He suggested that I do a good flossing because maybe I got a piece of food stuck or something.  That sounded like a good suggestion and it made sense that it might be a piece of food because of how suddenly it came on.  We finished watching our show and got up to go to bed.  (I’m going to add in some stuff that is slightly off topic here, but I think it really highlights the ridiculousness of the whole situation)  We both walked into the bathroom.  Nick peed while I started brushing my teeth.  (Stay with me here)  He flushed the toilet (I swear, he just peed) and it started overflowing!  Poop water started spilling over the edge of the toilet seat!  He runs to get dog towels from our bedroom, comes back in and realizes that poop water is now backing up into the bathtub.  At this point, I had finished brushing my teeth and was trying to help him.  In an effort to keep me away from the strange poop juice that was coming up and also to try to alleviate my tooth pain (and my complaining), he told me to just floss and let him clean up.  So I started flossing as he ran to another bathroom to get the plunger.  It was at that moment, surrounded by the stench of feces that I tried to floss at the site of my pain and off popped a huge chunk of my tooth.  At first I didn’t even know what it was.  I assumed it was the piece of food that was stuck.  Until I realized how big it was and there was no way something that big could have been stuck between my teeth.  I spit it out and looked in my mouth to a gaping hole where one of my molars should be.  It was horrific.  And I swear, I didn’t even floss that hard.  The only up side was that it didn’t hurt anymore.  So, of course Nick walked back into the bathroom, plunger in hand, to me standing there with my mouth open, holding my tooth, tears streaming down my face, in utter shock.  I said “my tooth fell out!” and he laughed because really, at that moment, not much else could have gone wrong.

The toilet thing ended up being a plumbing problem as opposed to a septic tank problem.  George and Carolyn happened to be up here for Antonio’s birthday party, so Nick, George, Kim and Steve spent all day Sunday fixing the plumbing.  By Sunday evening, the toilet was working and there was no more poop water in my bathtub.  My tooth, on the other hand, required a bit more intervention.  I discovered that there is no emergency dentist in Tallahassee.  (apparently there are emergency dentists, just not here)  I lived with a hole in my tooth until Monday when I was able to see someone and then discovered that I had to have a root canal.  I’m still not entirely sure what that entails.  I just know that, because I was pregnant, they had to give me a different kind of numbing medication, which obviously doesn’t work as well.  And of course I have super long tooth roots that curve which made the whole root canal process even longer.  And, again because of the pregnancy, I had to wait until after Kate was born to get the final crown (I think that’s what it’s called) made and put on.  Oh, did I mention that I despise the dentist, can not stand anyone touching my teeth and have had a (traumatic) previous experience with numbing medicine not working during a filling?  I think it’s safe to say that this whole experience made my anxiety level go up exponentially.

I have decided that I’m going to leave my blog heading the way it is, knowing that as the years go on, I am becoming less out of place up here.  (At least I get my teeth fixed when they fall out)  I don’t really feel like I belong in south Florida anymore either,  so maybe it’s a good thing.  One thing is for sure…I will NOT develop a country accent!

(August 13, 2013)

A Whole Lot of Crazy – part 2

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Since Alexa has had the bumpers off of her crib, she has been having a little problem at night keeping her pacis.  She doesn’t realize it, but when she’s sleeping she throws them on the floor.  The phrase ‘active sleeper’ just doesn’t even begin to describe her.  You have to see it to believe it.  So, on to my story:

I got up for work one morning and everything seemed to be how it should be.  After showering and getting dressed, I was in the kitchen making my oatmeal when I heard a whimpering noise.  It sounded just like Wolfie.  Wait.  I think I should first tell you that about two days before this happened I swear I saw Wolfie in my family room.  Alexa and I were playing in her room and when I looked out her door I know I saw him walk by the couches.  At first I assumed I was crazy, that it must have been one of the girls but then I realized that both girls were sitting right next to me.  This is not even the crazy that I’m going to talk about, either.  I swear that I see people all the time.  Like the ghost at Dance Explosion (that many people have seen) who I know is my grandpa Nettina.  Oh and another time, when I was vacuming, I was positive that I saw grandpa Natwick sitting on my couch.  And the obvious time when grandma Natwick stopped by on her way to heaven to tell me about her chair.  Are you telling me that it is a coincidence that I woke up at the exact time she passed and could think of nothing else but that chair?  OK, I’m getting off track.  Anyway, so it’s 5:30 in the morning and I hear a whimpering noise.  First, I dismiss it, thinking that I’m hearing something from the microwave or something outside.  Then it happens again.  And again.  And again.  Enough times that now I know I am hearing something and that it is in the house.  Oh yeah, and it sounds EXACTLY like how Wolfie used to whimper.  Do I think that I have a small child in the other room?  No, of course not.  I immediately jump to the conclusion that my dog has come down from doggie heaven to say hello.  Trying to be sane, I turned on the lights in my room to check on the girls and make sure it wasn’t them (Nick was sleeping in the guest bedroom that night – with the monitor.  But that’s a whole other story that will take up much too much time).  So anyway, I turn on the lights and Glynnis and Minnie are passed out sleeping.  I’m pretty sure Minnie was snoring, and I’m positive that neither of them were whimpering.  ‘Great’, I think, now I’m just one step closer to crazy.  So what do I do?  I go back out to the kitchen/family room and I’m sneaking around whispering Wolfie’s name.  And then I hear it again.  Now I’m sure I’m crazy.  Thoughts of schitzophrenia are running through my head.  Here’s the crazy girl who doesn’t hear voices.  Oh no, she hears her deceased dog crying for her.  I decide that I need to go wake up Nick because he needs to have me admitted somewhere, he needs to take me to the crazy house and OH MY GOD, why won’t that dog stop crying?!?!  It is at this point, when I am about five steps away from the guest room door, that I remember that I have a child.  I walk up to Alexa’s door and slowly creep inside her room to find her sitting up, kind of slumped in the corner of her crib.  She looked at me, made her little Wolfie-like whimper and I silently said a small prayer of thanks for the last bit of my sanity.  Apparently, I’m not quite as crazy as I once thought.  When I walked up to Alexa and asked if she was ok, she nodded yes.  And then in a completely big girl and whimper free voice she said “paci fall on floor”.

(September 20, 2012)

A Whole Lot of Crazy – Part 1

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Alexa has always been great going to bed (when I’m home).  She’s one of those kids who you put in the bed, she picks up her paci and bunny, turns on her music, lays down and goes to sleep.  It’s a big part of what makes her so incredibly awesome.  So, a few weeks ago (I know, I’ve been a little too distracted with other things to keep up with the blog lately) we were all doing our usual bedtime routine and for some reason Lexi wanted her paci early.  We are hopefully going to be getting rid of the paci soon, so she only gets it when she is physically in her bed.  So after lots of screaming, we finally put her in the crib, gave her the paci and said good night.  Well, she did not like that at all.  She kept on screaming that she was “all done night night” and after lots of hugs and kisses I just told her it was time to go to sleep and left her in the crib to scream by herself.  No big deal.  I assumed she would just lay down and go to sleep like she always does.  About two minutes later, as I was doing dishes, I looked up to see her door slightly open.  My first thought was ‘why did Nick go in there?  She finally quieted down and she needs to just put herself to sleep.’  Then I saw a little 2.5 foot creature in her pink footie pajamas creep around the door, grab the handle and slowly pull it closed.  She turned around to look at me with an expression of equal parts awe, excitement and pure terror.  And then she said “hi”.  Crazy girl had climbed out of her crib, somehow (thank God) landed on her feet and decided to come hang out with the grown ups.  We scooped her up and I read her some books as Nick took the bumpers off of her crib.  I know it’s something we should have done months ago but she likes her crib so much, I never thought she’d try to climb out of it.  Plus, she’s so short the side rails on the crib come up to her armpits.  Even if she used the bumpers to stand on, I thought it’d be impossible for her to actually get out.  Well apparently I have been proven wrong.  As usual.  And after laying on the floor next to her crib pretending to sleep and watching her crawl out not one but two more times that night without the help of the bumpers, I have come to the conclusion that my child has super human upper body strength.  She goes to the front right corner of her crib, grabs onto the outside of the rail and pulls herself up until she can get her right leg up onto the right side rail.  Then she uses her leg to help pull herself up so that she’s laying on top of the side rail on her belly and I assume then she swings her legs around to drop and land on her feet (I ‘woke up’ and stopped her when she got to her belly).  I guess that its a good thing that we drilled into her head to get down from the couch or our bed feet first.  At least maybe that helped her from landing on her head.  Needless to say, we went out and got another video monitor after that night (our first one had broken months ago and we’ve just been using an audio monitor).  And, so far, she hasn’t tried to climb out again.  Which I’m very happy about.  Alexa really does love her crib and, the way that she sleeps, I wouldn’t trust her to be in a toddler bed.  Plus, I like knowing that when we put her to bed at night she has to stay there until we get her in the morning.  No night time strolls around the house or midnight play time in her room.  I’m not ready for that yet.

(September 20, 2012)

Music Class

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It’s been awhile, I know.  I finally moved to day shift (yay!) which is fantastic for my life but not so great for my blog, since I do most of my blogging from work.  Oh well, I suppose I have to find a new (maybe slightly more appropriate) time to write.  Also, the switch from night to day shift has been a little less smooth than I anticipated.  I want to sleep all the time.  Like, even on my days off, I put Alexa to bed and then get in bed myself.  I end up falling asleep around 9:00, just to wake up at 4am ready to go.  It’s only been 2 weeks so I’m still adjusting.  My first week of day shift was OK, there are a lot more people here during the day which is exactly what I don’t like.  More people to have to talk to is not my idea of fun.  And on top of all the doctors and case workers, etc. there are also tons of med students getting all up in everyone’s business.  Which brings me to my next story.

Alexa and I went to music class, as usual, last Friday.  She was having one of those kind of days where she’s just a little more crazy then usual.  She insisted on wearing her 4th of July fireworks shirt and then on the way to music class she pulled out her pig tails and lost one of the stretchies.  She ended up having this crazy pony tail with a center part that was left over from the pig tails plus wearing this ridiculous shirt that is too big on her anyways.  She looked just about as crazy as she was acting.  So we were sitting in music class and it was time for the drums.  Lexi would not stop putting her drum mallet in her mouth so I ended up taking it away from her.  I was in the process of shaking it at her and threatening to beat her with it (joking, of course…mostly) when who walks by but one of the doctors I work with accompanied by the slew of med students who had been hanging around the PICU all week.  Of course he came up to me to talk for a minute and asked how day shift was (blah, blah, blah).  Meanwhile I told Alexa to say ‘hi’ and handed the mallet back to her (in the most gentle, non-threatening way I knew how).  The whole time with 10 med students just standing there watching us.  Perfect.  So then I suppose Alexa thought that she already hit crazy, she might as well just go with it.  (After the small entourage of doctors left – thank God)  She started pulling her shirt over her head and walking around with the front of it over her face, laughing.  Then, she took off the whole shirt, put her hands on her hips and walked around the room saying “I’m naked!  I’m naked!”.  Imagine about 15 mothers, plus the teacher, sitting in a circle singing songs while their babies are either on their laps or playing in the center of the circle.  And then there’s my kid.  Half naked strutting around proclaiming and celebrating her nudity.  After two attempts to put her shirt back on (it quickly came off again), and tucking it into her pants (that didn’t work either), I picked her up and we had a little discussion in the hallway about how if she doesn’t act like a big girl, we aren’t coming back to music class again.  She nodded and said “Shexa big girl’.  The other mothers were smiling and chuckling at her but I know that they were thinking ‘Oh, thank God my kid isn’t acting like that’.  Alexa did act like a big girl for what was left of the class (about 5 minutes) and we had another talk this past Friday before leaving for our class.  Oh, and this week, she wore a onesie.

(August 11, 2012)

The Tooth Demon

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This past weekend we met a new side of Alexa.  The crazy side.  I’m not kidding.  And I’m pretty sure it came in the form of a tooth.  On Friday night she started getting a little fussy, had a fever and was chewing on stuff.  No problem, she got some Tylenol and for the most part felt better.  We went to bed Friday night thinking that everything was fine, not realizing that crazy girl was about to come out.  Sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning, some demon or something got a hold of my sweet little baby.  What?  Are you going to say that I’m exaggerating and it couldn’t have been that bad?  Well, you’re wrong.  I seriously considered calling my local priest to inquire about the cost of an excercism.  Seriously.  If she would have started projectile vomiting green pea soup, with her head rotating and the words ‘help me’ appearing on her abdomen (Katie, that word was just for you), I would not have been surprised at all.  (OK, maybe mildly surprised)  If she wasn’t screaming, she was pissed.  If she wasn’t pissed, she was following us around crying “up please?  up please?”.  I swear she made it her life goal on Saturday for her feet to not touch the ground.  She probably woke up Saturday morning and thought to herself:  ‘Self, I believe I will try to stay at least three feet above the floor all day long.’  Well, good job Lexi, because you pretty much met your goal.  We tried to do everything for our screaming, drooling child.  She got Motrin around the clock, she chewed on teething rings, we played, we read books, we watched Abby Cadaby on TV.  All of her favorite things and she continued to be pissed.  I can not even count the number of times she got put in time out.  I’m sorry, but hurting or not, there is no hitting or throwing toys.  At the end of the day I ended up sitting in time out with her and muttering “Let’s just take a break, Lex, let’s just take a break”.  She was pathetic.  She went to bed Saturday night, woke up and fussed a couple of times (we ended up sleeping in our sick bed) and woke up Sunday morning a new person.

So, I now have a theory about all of this.  Everyone knows about the tooth fairy.  I feel that we need to raise awareness about the tooth demon.  Who is obviously the tooth fairy’s estranged relative…perhaps an uncle?…who finds glee in causing children (and sometimes adults who refuse to have their wisdom teeth out  for fear of the dentist.  What?  I don’t like people touching my teeth.) horrible pain, drooling and temporary psychosis.  Hopefully, you will only be visited by the tooth demon when you have teeth coming in, although, he does enjoy the occasional cavity.  It’s incentive to brush your teeth.  Oh my God.  I could write a children’s book!  Plus, added bonus for you for reading this far down the page…there is actually a moral to this story!  Brush your teeth or the tooth demon will come and get you!  Raise the awareness, people!  Raise the awareness!

(June 27, 2012)

Ballerina Roach

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You know how I hate roaches? No? Well, I do. They’re horrible and are on my list of the top three things which should become extinct (along with alligators and toads). For my whole life they have been out to get me. I am not kidding. I have distinct memories of playing in the living room at my parents house right after we moved in (I was 5) and pulling a dead roach out of the shag carpeting. (I realize that one was dead and could not possibly be out to get me, but still) They have crawled across my arm when I was working at my dad’s shop in Miami. They have tried to attack me in my house. I have even witnessed a flying roach fly down my mom’s shirt (which, I’m not gonna lie, was half terrifying and half hilarious). Usually, when I see them, I run for cover and scream at someone else to go kill it. Once, I was laying in my bed, saw a roach on the opposite wall, and instead of killing it, I pulled the blanket over my head and called Nick (who was in the other room) on my phone to come and get rid of it. I think I have made my point.

So, a couple of weeks ago (it has actually taken that long for me to talk about this) I was at work giving report to the oncoming nurse. Now, let’s remember that it was 7am, I had been at work for 12 hours and I was pretty much delirious with no filter. OK, so we were standing outside the patient’s room when the day shift nurse, let’s call her Betsy, casually said to me “oh, look at that little roach running”. What?! How can you even speak that sentence no nonchalantly?! And, little roach? Oh no, that thing was a freaking monster! And you bet your ass it was running…right toward me! Plus, it was running and barely touching the floor! It’s like the thing was running on pointe. It was freaking ballerina roach in attack mode coming to get me!!! What do I do? Of course I jump around screaming “kill it, Betsy, kill it!!!!” (Which is what every PICU patient and family want to hear at 7am, I’m sure.) I tried to move laterally and what does the roach do? Turn toward me. It can sense my fear. Finally, after 3 stomps (3 stomps!!!) Betsy killed the roach and then kicked it under the counter thing of the nurses station (where, I’m sure it was regenerating and planning it’s next move). Meanwhile, all the other night and day shift nurses are at the nurses station either looking at me like I’m crazy or hysterically laughing at me. I, of course, announce that I’m having palpitations and that I needed to finish giving report on the other side of the unit because I really feel that the roach is going to come back from the dead and attack me again. Seriously.

I know that I live in Florida and that means that there are roaches everywhere. I also realize (in the rational part of my brain) that the roach really can’t hurt me and that my fear would be better placed on even something like a bee or a wasp where there is a small but real potential for harm. But I don’t care. Bees and wasps don’t freak me out. I have no problem killing spiders or any other kind of bug that gets into the house, and I’ll pick up lizards and put them back outside without even squirming. But for some reason, I can’t handle a roach. I think we should kill them all.

(May 25, 2012)