(not just a) MommyBlog (dot com)

The construction continued today at our little abode… the difference was that we had to stay here and experience it all.   You see, yesterday, the foreman found a whole mess of termites.   Today, Terminix spent two hours scouring our house for the little buggers, and planning their course of action.   The inspector, a sixty-ish, way too chatty salesman, wanted me to follow him around and “be in the loop.”   Yeah, that was fun with three other guys jackhammering the cement slab in the guest room, Kenny squirming to be free  in my arms and Dudley wrapped around my waist on the leash.   The doors to outside were wide open, the heat was off, and the dust was billowing.   At one point, I put Kenny in the highchair, in his winter coat and hood,  so that I could sign the necessary papers for extermination, and he looked at me with those huge, liquid eyes as if to say, “Mommy, this stinks.   Can’t we go someplace warm and quiet and safe?   Don’t you love me?”

Ah, but the day got a whole lot better at 5:30…   we actually found a babysitter for the evening, and took off to Roy’s for drinks and appetizers (and a sinfully sensual chocolate lava cake).   This is only the fourth time in the last 14 months that someone other than a relative has taken care of Kenny so that we could go out.  

Thank goodness, because it looks like another noisy day of house arrest tomorrow, as there is another “service-type guy” coming between 8 and 12 (how’s that for a window?), and we need to be here to meet him, in spite of the fact that there as 3 other construction worker-types here tearing apart our house.   I wonder when they are going to start putting it together again?   What are Kenny and Dudley and I going to do here all day?

Note to self: When this is done, No More Renovations.   Ever.

Today Kenny and Dudley and I were ousted from the house again, due to the increasingly noisy and extremely dusty construction work that has taken over the better part of our downstairs.   We piled in the car and drove out to my parent’s house where we had the place to ourselves (they were spending the day out – Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!!)… well, mostly to ourselves: Madison, the crazy, one blue eye, one brown eye Cavallier King Charles Spanial (her breed name weighs more than she does) and Rusty, the wild and often panting, yet lovable and loyal  Golden Retriever were there to greet us.

The sun was shining and the air was warm when we arrived, so we played outside for awhile before going in.   Dudley and Rusty ran laps around the house, and Madison ran laps around Kenny.   My parents have the ideal yard: lush green grass on a flat acre, with the Chesapeake Bay right across the street.   Beautiful.

After some playtime, I plopped Kenny into the stroller to walk the big dogs down to the park at the end of the neighborhood.   Kenny and I counted horseshoe crab shells washed on the shore of the Bay while Dudley and Rusty sprinted back and forth, trying to catch the geese and herons landing on the rocks.   When we got home, we puttered around the house, had gingersnaps and cheese for lunch (ok – I’m usually fanatic about feeding Kenny healthy food, but he was starting to get ornery and I couldn’t find anything else on short notice), then played “naptime” for about thrity minutes.   That was not as fun as it sounds.  So we traipsed back outside, got Kenny back into the stroller, Dudley back on my left and Rusty on my right, and did a slow loop around the block until Kenny fell asleep.   That’s when I noticed that the left tire was completely flat, and it looked like the axle was bent.   (Did I mention that I backed into the stroller with the 4-Runner last week?   Details…)     We bee-lined home, and I parked Kenny on the front porch in the sun, and with the three dogs frollicking in the yard, sat in a rocking chair with an enormous pile of my Mom’s magazines, nothing to do but wait for Kenny to wake up.

The most amazing thing happened during those two (yes, he took one of his rare two hour siestas!) hours.   I became the leader of the ad-hoc dog pack in the front yard.   I noticed it first when I got up to use the restroom… all three dogs, who by that time were worn out and napping in various spots in the sun, got up and followed me in the front door.   When I opened the bathroom door, there they all were, sitting like perfect statues, watching the door with eager anticipation.   Then they followed me in a perfect line back out the door and onto the porch.   I peeked at Kenny, and as I walked away, one by one they went up to the stroller and looked at our sleeping boy.   I sat down for only a second, then popped back up to get a soda and a cookie.   All three of them jumped up from where they had just laid down and followed me in a line to the kitchen.   They watched intently as I popped the tab on my Fresca, then drooled in unison as I reached into the gingersnap bag for a treat.   They followed me back onto the porch and laid down in their spots again.  

I thought that was all pretty fun, so I decided to play a game of it.

I stood up.   They all stood up.   I sat down.   They laid back down.   I walked back into the house.   They paraded in behind me.   I went outside.   They trotted outside.   Ok – I’ll stop there, but let’s just say that this went on for the next hour.   I was revelling in my pack leader status.   This sort of thing doesn’t come along everyday.   The physical differences in the dogs made it comical enough to see them doing the same thing in unison, as I did things.  

I finally gently woke Kenny up – it was getting time for us to go – and when Madison and Rusty realized that they weren’t coming with us, they started howling.   Even Dudley, a veritable snob when it comes to other dogs, whined forlornly at the door when I separated them.     Kenny thought that was funny, but started crying himself when he realized that we weren’t taking Madison with us (I think he thinks she’s a stuffed animal that just happens to move and make noise).

But a great day, all in all.   From the looks of our house at the moment, I may just have to try a repeat of it tomorrow.

No, not the Abba song, but my little Kenny.   Today he went from vaguely not feeling well to a trip to the doctor’s and a diagnosis of pink eye and an ear infection.   My poor sweetest little guy!

We were in the waiting room at the doctor’s office for more than an hour, then stuck in traffic on the way to the pharmacy for nearly forty-five minutes.   Then once at the pharmacy, in line for another twenty minutes, only to get up to the counter and find that they never filled the prescription that the doctor called in.   All through it, Kenny was the most patient, joyful little munchkin you could imagine.

Did I mention that we left our house at 8 am today because they started the demo on the bathroom and guestroom (and Kenny’s room) downstairs?   We spent the day at my mom’s and arrived home way after Kenny’s normal bedtime to find the entire contents of the bathroom in the floor of Kenny’s room, and a stripped pit where the bathroom used to be.   Not the most relaxing homecoming.   Tomorrow will be more of the same as far as noisy construction; so frustrating when what Kenny needs the most is a quiet day at home, and yet we can’t stay here and will have to pile into the car and go somewhere safer!

And did I mention that I had to take Dudley with us this morning, and not only was he a Super Trooper Dog, but he was stuck in the car through all the doctor’s office madness, traffic, pharmacy gaffes and drive home with nary a pee-break.   And not a peep, not a whine, only grateful and gleeful whizzing once we finally got home.

It took a while for Kenny to go to bed once we got him feed and  into his pjs.   Then he was up a mere  hour later for some more rocking and cuddling.   It hurts me so to see him feeling so obviously awful and yet still being his naturally joyous self.   What a lesson to learn!!   He is a much better patient than I.   He is now finally  sleeping in a tiny ball with his spider arms wrapped around his stuffed lamb, Baa.   Dudley is passed out, buried beneath the pillows on my bed, snoring and running in his sleep.

Sleep well, little guys…   tomorrow will be a better day…  

It’s hard to explain to a one-year-old where all the people that he said goodnight to for the past week have gone.   For the third night in a row,  Kenny asked several times for “Papa” and “Ra-ran” (Ryan) and it’s not too much of a stretch to hear the names of the other family members in his slurred toddler speach.   I responded to each with, “He’s home in his house going nigh-night.”   Kenny seemed to accept that all right, but asked a few extra times to be sure.

Come to think of it, explaining just about anything to a one-year-old is like signing up to teach ping pong to a penguin.   Last night, when Kenny threw a cracker at me (which was obviously not what he was asking me for when he was yelling, “CarCar!”), I started in on an  emphatic speech  about not throwing crackers, not wasting food, how was I supposed to understand what he wanted when he whined and threw things, etc.   Casey, who was standing a few feet away, said quietly, “He’s one.”

Yeah, I knew that.

So I sat Kenny down in his highchair, opened some YoBaby yogurt, and touched his little face and told him that I was sorry for getting frustrated with him.   He happily ate all his peach yogurt and cheerfully repeated “Dodurt!” understanding that “CarCar” means cracker, and not just the universal, “Food now, please, oh most wonderful Mommy!”  

He says many food-related words fairly well now: waffle, nana (banana), ap-plee (apple), carcar (cracker), peezah (pizza), pah-ta (pasta), tip (dip, meaning humus), cuk-key (cookie), and the funniest, “Dost!” (toast).     He will also say, “nack?” when he wants a snack.

It’s so hard, though, to be able to give him most anything he wants in many ways ~ snacks and books to read and games to play ~ and yet be unable to conjure up the family members he wants so sweetly to say goodnight to.   It’s one thing  to say NO when he wants to play inside the refrigerator or brush Dudley’s teeth, but quite another to deny him a night-night kiss from the people he loves.

My good friend Kimberly and her kids stayed at our house while we were in Florida over Thanksgiving week.   Today, I finally caught up with her on the phone to see how things went.

Turns out Dudley was a Rascal.

Big surprise, right?   But the truth is, aside from Alicia over at My Dog Owns Me, no one (but another owner of a weimaraner) can understand the full meaning implied by the word, “rascal.”   Dudley was up to his usual shenanigans, which I was not surprised to hear.   But poor Kimberly and her kids were quite unaccustomed to a canine who is taller than the dinner table and can easily eat all the food off all the plates in the time between setting the table and calling the kids to sit down.   He eats sticks of butter left unattended.   He eats cakes out of the oven.   He will grab a verbotten toy and trot by you with a flitatious gait while you are changing a baby’s diaper and unable to chase him.   He will rearrange the pillows on the couch and bury a bone in the crevice while you are trying to make dinner.   He will defend his food from other dogs, children and crickets with the utmost intensity.   He will sleep on your lap, on your feet or on your head if you let him.   He will bury his nose in your crotch when you have an armload of groceries and can’t defend yourself.   He will bark at the door for hours, not because he wants to go out, but because he wants you to go out with him.   He will drink out of the baby bathtub if you forget to drain it right away.   He will make himself a bacon and egg breakfast when no one is home and use the last of the eggs without writing it down on the grocery list.   Ok, that last one was made up.

In Kim’s words, “He’s as much work as a toddler.   I really feel for you.”

Ah, Dudley.   Today he was the perfect dog.   Obedient, calm, appropriately loving and gentle.   I think he’s afraid we’re going to find out what he was up to while we were away.   Little does he know that the tattle has already been told.

***  

And just for fun, here  is one of  my favorite  shots of Kenny and me from Florida…

We arrived home this afternoon from Florida, exhausted and full of fun memories.   The above picture is from yesterday morning, on Siesta Key beach.   The whole family got decked out in our beige and white and prepared for a fantastic family shot amidst the palm trees, white  sugar sand  and blue skies.   Unfortunately, the family friend who arrived to take the shot was not only not a photograhper, but he opened up the photo shoot by quipping, “I’m no photographer.   I sometimes have trouble getting all the bodies in.”   hm.

But we have some great shots of small groups of us, taken by each other after the volunteer snapshoot enthusiast left…

Other than  the family picture taking marathon, the week was full of fun, food, games and a surprising cold snap that kept us away from the beach, but still couldn’t stop the good time.     One of my favorite parts of the week was watching Kenny an his big cousin Ryan (age 7) become buddies.   Kenny was mesmerized by Ryan when we went up to visit them in Boston back in August, but this time he was actually able to “keep up” a little: running around the golf course in Gramma’s back yard, learning ping pong and t-ball, reading and playing Rummykube, and lots of hugs and sqeezes.

Tonight when we put Kenny to bed, he popped his head up as we were saying our “Nigh,  nights” and suddenly said, “Ra-ra?”   That’s what he called Ryan all week.   When we explained that he was at his house, he said his name a few more times, and then seemed to accept the fact that Ryan wasn’t able to come give him a goodnight hug.

It will take me a few days to continue to recap the rest of the  highlights from this wonderful week, so keep reading!  

Just to note that Kenny and Casey and I have ventured down to Gramma and Papa’s house in sunny Florida for the week.

I will not have the chance to write as much as I thought, so please stay tuned.   We’ll be back in full MommyBlog mode after Thanksgiving!

Count it all joy…

Kristjana and Kenny

Today my Mommy came over to help out a little with watching Kenny, while all the construction workers were here, so that I could take care of a little housekeeping.   As her assistant, she brought four and a half year-old Kaitie with her,  my sweet and  creative niece.

It was a circus to be sure.   For awhile there, we not only had the usual suspects (Kenny, Dudley and me), but Kaitie and my Mom, two electricians, a carpenter and my friend Kim, along with her one-year-old and four-year-old, to go over things in the house in preparation for her housesitting adventure here next week.   At one point, the lead electrician Donny looked at me and said, “This couldn’t get much crazier, could it?” and looked out at a sea of chaos, with Dudley leading the fray.   But things eventually quieted down mid-afternoon when the number of people in the house decreased by half and the electrcians finished up.   Kaitie and Kenny retired to his room to relax, and when I  peeked in, I saw this:

Moments later, Kenny brought his book out to my Mom to read to him, and Kaitie stayed behind to play alone in Kenny’s room.   Although, “played” is perhaps a generous term.   After everyone had left, I walked into Kenny’s room  to pick up all the toys and was overwhelmed with the aroma of coffee.   Coffee?   Turns out, I had left my half-full morning coffee cup on the bookshelf, too high for Kenny to reach, but not for Kaitie.   She had “borrowed” the feather duster at one point in the afternoon, telling me that there was some dust in Kenny’s room.   I gladly handed it over, figuring that at least some portion of the room might get dusted, never dreaming of what she would do.   She found the coffee cup, and carefully dipping the feather duster into the cafe au lait, “dusted” the walls, the bookshelf and most of the toys.   Several hours later, the sticky brown liquid was firmly congealed to everything.

Kenny thoroughly enjoyed all the excitement of the day.   He didn’t bother to nap (but that’s not news), and instead fell asleep at 4:45 in his highchair with one hand still stuffing macaroni and marinara into his mouth.   I gently cleaned him off and picked him up, at which time he woke up and  started pointing at the stairs and crying, “Nigh, Nigh!”   I literally took off his clothes as we walked to his room, and put on his PJs while holding him.   He was asleep before the clock struck five.

The wild events of the day wore my other little guy out too:

Today Kenny and I went shopping for a bathtub.   And a toilet, a shower and all of the accompanying faucets and drains.

We found ourselves in a high-end showroom, surrounded with luxuriously deep whirlpool tubs and multi-jetted spa showers.   As Kenny had been in the car for a toddler eternity (45 minutes), and due to the fact we were the only customers there, I set him down and let him run around while we waited for a salesman.   He so wanted to climb into the bathtubs!   He ran over to each one, looked up at me with a wild and euphorically hopeful grin and started cawing, “BA! BA!”   (You have to understand that baths are one of his favorite activities of the day.)   It was very hard to explain why we couldn’t jump on in.   Thank goodness he doesn’t know how to take his clothes off yet.

Our eager young salesman came over to greet me, then seeing Kenny, by now playing peek-a-boo from behind a state-of-the-art Kohler toilet that looked like an ottoman (and a three thousand dollar price tag), turned a little pale.   I got to the point, “I have to buy a bathtub, a shower, a sink, a toilet and everything that goes with it, and my dog is in the car, my little boy is hungry.   Let’s get busy!”   He was just starting to say, “Yes, M’am” when a loud and emphatic grunt broke through the quiet of the showroom.   Yes, Kenny was squatting, next to the state-of-the-art toilet and filling his Huggies to capacity.   I decided to ignore the obvious, and kept talking to the salesman, who was by now becoming woefully aware of the smell coming from this adorable little kid.   “Um, do you need to change him?” he asked.   “Do you have a changing table in here?”  I countered.   “Um.   No.”  he said, looking confused.   “Then he’s fine,” said I, and walked over to the ottoman-styled toilet and scooped up Kenny.   “Let’s get to work.”

An hour later, everything was selected and Kenny had learned how to work all of the (thankfully disconnected) bathtub faucets.   I shook our salesman’s hand, and departed to the parking lot where I actually changed Kenny in the front seat of the 4-Runner, with Dudley whining from the back, no doubt having to do some business of his own.     Once Kenny was somewhat cleaned up (I also discovered at this point that I had no wipes with us, and had to use some napkins I found in the glovebox instead) I buckled him in and took Dudley out on a leash to sniff through the pitifully tiny patch of grass in the showroom parking lot.    He looked up at me  as if  to say, “You want  me to pee here?” and hopped back into the car.

A successful trip, all in all.

Home Depot.   Again.   Kenny was such a trooper.   But we got the stuff we needed (most of it, anyway) and our little renovation project is back on schedule.   As in, the schedule that we made today, after the schedule that said we should be done already was thrown out the window.   After the window that we have been waiting three weeks for arrived today and turned out to be the wrong one.   After the flooring we thought we had enough of turns out to be a few square feet short.

I am never renovating anything again.

Tomorrow, my sweet little boy and I have to go to a plumbing supply company to buy a bathtub.   I haven’t told Kenny yet, because I’m in denial, and because  I don’t want him to start having nightmares about home improvement warehouse supply stores.

In other news, I think it’s safe to say that the weaning is nearly done.   Kenny still asked for milk a couple of times today, but today was the first day that I really had none left.   He was frustrated, but kindly suggested,  “Waffle?” and after the eggo was neatly toasted, soon forgot about the missing milk.   But my triumph is taking a depressing turn.

I need to put in a disclaimer here about what I am about to write: my apologies to any men reading this, but I gotta  be honest to the Mommies…  

I had this wild delusion that my nursing… um…  “assets” would somehow stick around a little longer.   I  have always been  on the  stick-figiure side, and I have to admit that I’ve taken for granted the C-cup glory of the last  fourteen  months.   Today, for the first time since my third trimester, I had to dig out the old “Nearly A’s” that were optomistically stuffed into the back of the drawer.   (Thank goodness I didn’t throw then away!   I guess I wasn’t that optomistic….)     That’s right.   The milk is gone and the cupboard is bare.  

sigh.