Life From the Exhausted Mother

I haven't written a blog in a long time.  Reason?  Writer's block a little and a lot of exhaustion.  There just aren't enough hours in the day.  My calendar looks like this:

See?  When would I have time to do any bloggy blogging?  Today is crazy, too, but I gotta get off of my feet, so here's some random funny and some baby news.

This morning, the dudes were playing Star Wars in the basement.  I got Big Man a Luke Skywalker costume, though he informed me that it is really Obi Wan.  Whatever.  He looks awesome in it.  I got Little Man a Darth Vader costume.  It is five sizes too big.  They were used, and continue to be used, every day since I've bought them, so WIN!

Anyway, they were playing, and Little Man was using this miniature basketball for something.  Big Man took it and wouldn't give it back.  Here is Little Man's reaction:

"Nooooooooooooo!!!! GIVE IT BACK!!!!!  Fine!  I'm telling Yoda!  AND I'm not playing Jedi with you anymore!  I'm finding a NEW master, and HE will let me have a ball WHENEVER I WANT!!!"

Haaaaaaahahahhahahahha!!!  Then I decided *I* was the new master, and the dudes should put their laundry away and clean their bathrooms and scoop the cat litter.  They did so very quickly and without complaint.  I used the force.  If by "using the force," I mean Eric told them that if they did it super fast, then they could play Halo.

In baby news, there's a lot of baby news.  I'm 34-1/2 weeks and experiencing new things every day.  On the diabetes front, I suck.  I could not keep my sugars controlled with the diet the nutritionist gave me, so we switched it around a couple of days ago.  Things have been going better, although not perfect, since then.  My doctor doesn't wanna do insulin, yet, so that's good.  Needles.  *shudder*  I'm sick of poking myself four times a day.

I'm also sick of not being able to eat what I want.  Changing my diet has always been really difficult for me, though I found it easier to "stick with it" since I have to be strong for the Bot.  I'm not just trying to lose weight or something.  I'm trying to keep her healthy.  The second she's born I'm going to have to look at Eric and say, "Congratulations, Daddy!  Now get thee to Starbucks immediately for a pumpkin spice latte, and by the way, a cupcake from Le Dolce Vita and a Big Mouth sushi special from Sapporo needs to be on the way, too!"

Trying to keep her healthy means flu shot for mama, too.  I've never had one.  Needle.  Ugh.  I get the death sick every year, though, and I'm sure this year will be no exception.  The dudes are already bringing nastiness back from the germ factory that is elementary school.  Coughing, sneezing, and poison ivy all around!

Contractions.  My stomach is rock hard, and I can feel her head in my nether bits.  These are weird and odd things.  I've been having them for weeks, but now they are stronger and more frequent.  Not frequent enough to be considered preterm labor, but strong and frequent enough to be considered more than a minor annoyance.  I hope they give me abs.  That would be awesome.  It certainly FEELS like they're workin my ab muscles.  I'll be the first woman in history to leave the hospital after giving birth with 6-pack abs.  I'll find some way to make a million dollars with the "prodromal labor" technique.  There will be a video.  And an infomercial.

I panicked about a week ago and was all, "OMGOSH WE ARE NOT PREPARED!!!"  I'm not scared of going into labor or giving birth anymore.  I think I've educated myself enough on them that I'm just all OOOOHM about it.  But, I'm TERRIFIED of when she is actually here.  I went all crazy like, "We have no crib! No dresser for her clothes!  No pack and play! No car seat! Not enough diapers!"  I went on a crazy spending spree.  We have all of those things now.  I acted like she was going to be here in the next few hours, and we'd have nothing.  I'm calm now, though.  I got better.

Eric's ex-wife text me yesterday and asked how I was feeling and if there was anything else I needed.  I was all cool as a cucumber calm and just, "Nope. We are totally prepared to the max, and I feel allllll riiiiight."  So she was all, "Great!  Pack your hospital bag!"

PANIC! PANIC!!! OMGOMG HOSPITAL BAG, WTF GOES IN THERE I AM NOT PREPARED!!

She told me what goes in there.  It's not that hard, Karen, you idiot.  Calm the eff down.

Here We Go!

I have SO MUCH to say!  School is finally over for me.  I'm walking in the commencement ceremony in six days!  Ok, so first.  There will be topics!  I have THAT much to say.

THINGS THAT ARE NOT WORDS:
Supposibly.  Supposably is also not a word.  That red line under it doesn't mean that you spelled it wrong.  You can't spell it correctly.  Supposed.  Now THAT'S a word.

Irregardless.  HAAAAAAAAAAATE! STABBY STABBY!  Regardless = word.  Irregardless = making you look like a moron.  Actually, this may be one that is used SO egregiously that it has become a word now.  Either way, it's redundant.

Conversate.  Converse will do.  Oh! Unless!  Maybe we are starting to conjugate verbs with super special endings.  Like romance languages.  English.  Ah.  So romantic.  *flutter eyelashes*

Condensate.  Much like above, not a word.  Condense.  Water...it condenses on things.

CIRCLE OF MOMS:

Y'all did it!  I made it onto the Top 25 Moms of Blended Families blogs on Circle of Moms.  You can click HERE to get to the COM Round-Up.  WHY would you want to do that, you ask?  Because as number 22 in the Top 25, I have been invited to guest blog on the Round-Up.  This means LOTS more readers!  But not here, because I can't just write a post here and then copy it to send to the Round-Up.  I have to send it to the Round-Up first, and then, if they like it and publish it, I can copy it to here.  If they hate it and don't want to publish it, then I could copy it to here, too, but, then again, I'd have already been told it sucked, so why would you awesome dudes wanna read it?  Never stopped me before, I guess.

Anyway, the point is to say THANK YOU!  Your votes have really, REALLY helped me out.  More readers means more exposure.  More exposure means a better chance of success for...

LULUNACY:

I'm getting art supplies today!  That means that LuLunacy begins now.  I'm going to draw LuLu so that I can have a picture of her in my head as I develop her.  I'm going to draw her blog design, so I can show it to Eric and say, "Hey, babity babity babe, can you make this picture a reality on the internets?  I'll make you an English muffin."  I'm going to start drawing story boards.  I need to start at the end, I think.  Where do I want LuLu to end up?  I'm not sure, yet, but I think I need the end before I write the beginning.

SCHOOL:

There's not much to say about it.  I'm finished.  I have the highest GPA of the Political Science Department.  Maybe.  Two of my grades haven't come in, yet.  I think I got a B in Geography.  That sucks.  I've never gotten a B as a final course grade before, and it happened on my last class ever and because of a GROUP project that I got a D on.  A D!!  Relying on others for my grades is lame.  I may have still gotten an A.  If I was able to pull 41 out of 50 points on my final exam, I can still get one.  I'm not too confident about it, but maybe I got it.  Grades are due this evening, and then they update them in the morning, so I'll find out then.  Pregnancy has wrought havoc on my studying the semester.  I was just so tired and unable to concentrate.  I'm shocked that my Terrorism and African Politics grades turned out the way they did.  I really thought my AP paper was crap.  Apparently my professor thought otherwise.  I do speculate, though, that I didn't really EARN that A on that paper.  I think there was some bias.  That particular professor knows a lot about my history.  He's my advisor.  He knows about my high GPA and what I do to maintain it.  He knows I had an unfair grade from another professor due to negative bias on a GOOD paper I wrote.  He knows about my autism.  His son has it, too.  I think he may have done me a solid here and maybe added a few additional points.  Not a lot.  I mean, it wasn't a FAILING paper by any means.  I did work hard on it.  I just didn't focus well.

FEELINGS.  NOTHING MORE THAN...FEELINGS:

School ending has been really tough for me.  I loved it, and more than that, I was exceptional at it.  I'm now a full-time wife, mom and homemaker.  These are things that I do not feel that I'm exceptional at.  Add pregnancy hormones to that, and it's been a rough transition.  I can't go back to work at this time.  I'll have the dudes home with me all summer and then the bot in the fall.  It's a hard pill to swallow working so hard for so many years, spending over $50K on an education, and then...making peanut butter sandwiches, doing dishes and playing Candyland all day.  Mentally stimulating it is not.  That's why I have LuLu.  Adult interaction, though, I think is going to be the rough spot for me.  I need to talk and hang out with humans often that are over the age of 8.

THE DUDES!

Birthdays are coming up!  Little Man will be 6, and Big Man will be 8 in just a few short weeks.  They are getting the birthday bash of the century this year.  We wanted to do something big for them since the Bot is coming.  We're taking the dudes on a babymoon.  In 3-1/2 weeks, we'll be setting off for Manhattan to hop on board the Disney Magic for an 8-day cruise to the Bahamas, PLUS a day at Disney World!  The dudes are SO excited.  They wake up once a week and ask, "OMGosh, is it Boat Day?!? IS IT BOAT DAY!?!?" haha

Then, they get to come home, and the next weekend have a huge family party down in Kentucky at one of their favorite places where there is a pool and a trampoline and horses.  Making out like bandits this year.  Which is good.  Since they have no toys left.  Explanation to follow:

BEFORE:

This seriously happened.  Two dudes + one playroom = THIS.  And this is only half of it that would fit in the picture.  The mess extended another 200 square feet to the right.  This is a HUGE "L-shaped" room.

There were warnings.  Two weeks of warnings.  "I'm going to come down here with trash bags."  "Seriously, dudes.  You do NOT want me to clean this up.  There WILL be trash bags involved."  The dudes.  They did not listen.  Instead, they dumped out yet ANOTHER tub of toys onto the floor.  Then, one day, Little Man came upstairs sans glasses.  "Where are your glasses?"  "I dunno.  Downstairs somewhere."  *Head asplode*

So.  The next day.  I cleaned it.  For 8 hours.

Happy dudes this did NOT make.  There was much crying and gnashing of teeth and sorting through the trash to see if they could sneak some salvage back into their lives.  They couldn't.  There were WARNINGS!  Still always a shock when we follow through with discipline.  Always.  It's been 5 years of always following through.  No idle threats.  WTF?

Anyway, I did NOT throw away all of it.  I threw away about 1/3 of it.  All broken, missing parts or unused for years.  Dried Play-Doh and markers that haven't seen the light of day (or a lid) in 6 months, full coloring books, plus thousands of little bits of paper.  The dudes are obsessed with cutting paper into teeny tiny bits.  With all of the broken stuff, I still managed to fill two lawn trash bags to be sent to the curb.  The toddler toys went into two large tubs to be sorted for garage sale.  About 1/3 of it went into a separate room for them to keep.  It's the stuff they actually try to play with but, shockingly, had no space.  Seriously, who could set up a train track or a race road in that mess?

So we've gotta new system, and it seems to be working out well.  The kids check toys out of the storage room.  They've even made it fun for themselves by making a little library card to pretend to swipe when they check out toys.  When they are done with those, they clean them up and exchange them.  The best part is that they have all of this SPACE to play!  They can put on skates or build a huge train or just run in circles in here now because it's empty.  Good stuff.  Of course, after birthdays, we're gonna have to find a little more room in the storage area for the new toys.

Unfortunately, I did NOT find the glasses.  They weren't in there.  Two days later, Eric found them in his office, on top of a box of tools.  They were blending right in with the hammer.  He owes me 8 hours of back and foot rubs.  Finally...

THE BOT!

The Bot will be 18 weeks in the tummy in two days, and we find out if it's a male or female bot in about 2-1/2 weeks :)  She's tumbling around in there like CRAZY and measuring a full week bigger than she's supposed to.  I'm hitting lots of pregnancy milestones early, like feeling movement, feet swelling, etc.  I wonder if that means I'll give birth early.  I'm enjoying the pregnancy and everything that comes with it quite a lot, though the heartburn so far is the worst.  I feel like I can't breathe, and it stops me from sleeping for a while most nights.  I have to talk to my doctor about a better solution than Tums.

Ok, I HAVE to stop writing now and get to my to-do list.  I wanna attempt my first batch of cupcakes from scratch today.  Try to make my homemaker skills a little higher than mediocre.

It's official...

I've got the senior eff-its.  I graduate in six weeks.  SIX WEEKS!!!  Totally excited to the max.  Except I won't graduate at all if I don't finish these four papers that are due in that time as well.  Er....the first one is due Tuesday.  As in, four days from now.  Is it done?  I assure you it is not!  How close to done is it, you ask?  Still in the note-taking stage.  But, Karen, shouldn't you be doing that NOW, on your last quiet day before the dudes are home all weekend being all noisy and Skywalkeresque?  Why are you, instead, blogging and playing on Facebook and shopping for maternity swimwear?  BECAUSE I'M ALL ABOUT "EFF IT!" I'M A SENIOR!  That's why.  I better get my tush moving, though, or you'll all be reading this blog next semester thinking to yourselves, "Geeeeeez, why is she STILL whining about being a senior?"

Ah, heck, I just broke a nail grabbing a book out of my backpack.  See?  SEE?!?!?  This is what happens when I start to do the work.  Broken nails.  That's okay, though, because it's the stupid "buffed" nail of doom that is not supposed to be there.  Some total Summer's Eve in the mall at one of those stupid kiosks that sells Dead Sea salts and other beauty products grabbed me and took my nail polish off of my thumb without my permission.  WTF, T?!?  I was walking by.  He tried to hand me a free sample.  I said, "No, thanks" and kept walking.  I was on a mission!  A mission to...er...well, not do this paper and hang out in the mall instead.  Anyway, I kept walking, and he pointed to my chest and said, "Oooh, can I ask you a question?"  I assumed he wanted to know if my tattoo hurt (the answer is always, yes.  There were needles grinding into my flesh.  It effing hurt.)  So, I stopped and said, "What?"  Big mistake.  I didn't realize that when he pointed at my chest, it wasn't my tattoo he was pointing at.  It was my fingernails, as I had reached up to scratch my boob.  In public.  While talking to a stranger.  Klassy with a K.  He took that, "What?" to mean "Go ahead and grab my hand and wipe my fingernail polish off of it in 0.243 seconds."  I just stared at him and then down at my nails.  I said, "Oh.  Now I have one unpolished nail and 9 pink ones.  Gee.  I look awesome."  He looked upset.  "Why are you so upset?  This technique is wonderful.  From Israel.  Invented because a woman had such a hard time keeping polish from chipping off of her fake nails."

One, my nails are real.  A fact that he refused to believe.  That's the question I didn't hear him asking when I thought he was asking about my tattoo.  "Are your nails real?"  The answer I gave to that wasn't "yes".  It was "what?"  Apparently, in Yiddish, that means "no."  So I'm trying to pull my hand away, and he's buffing the stupid thing, telling me my nails are fake, and he can tell because there's a white tip on them, and natural nails don't get that.  Great.  I'm dealing with a brain surgeon, apparently.  I finally yank my hand away, and he's like, "You are not happy, but it is beautiful!" 

No.  It isn't.  It's shiny and DIFFERENT THAN MY OTHER NINE NAILS!  Now, when I scratch my boob in public, it will be REALLY noticable.

WTF? I should work on this paper, for real.  I have another one due next Thursday, so 13 days.  Ten pages.  What stage is that one in, you ask?  It's in the "haven't even opened a Word document for it and put a name on it" stage.  This is so unlike me.  I generally have papers done at least a month in advance.  =/

Airbilbi

What's that mean?  I don't know.  You don't know.  Google doesn't know.  It was my "word verification" so that I could post on Leti's blog, U8MyCrayons.

It's the beginning of the second week at school.  Hopefully it's better than the last one.  Well, Big Man did awesome, of course, because he feels embarrassed when he behaves poorly in public.  Heck, he feels embarrassed when he behaves poorly at home.  He's so flippin easy.  The worst we have to deal with is him telling the Little Man what to do all of the time and the monster that is "I forgot."  I promise to you that I am going to ban the word "forgot" from this house.  I can't do that.  I'm scared of what other "F" words they'll figure out to replace it with.

Oh, man, GO, BIG MONEY!

Sorry.  I love these Flo commercials.  Hilarious.  Also, "you look like a beach angel!" haaaaaahahahahaha

Ok, so, the big problem school wise is, of course, the Little Man.  I mentioned last blog that I was concerned that I hadn't been able to modify his behavior enough and that he'd get violent at school.  I was concerned that we'd made the wrong decision about allowing him to start kindergarten, even though his preschool teacher felt he wasn't ready.  I was positive I could turn his social skills around in time.

I failed.  I failed big time.  It took a total of five days for my failure to show its face.  He had three perfect days Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  Thursday he had to move his card because he got two warnings for "talking too loudly."  This is expected, as Little Man's volume control when he gets excited is about as good as mine.  Still, it wasn't too bad.  Friday, the poop hit the things with the stuff, and he did so poorly at school that he got a call home.  Eric let me listen to the message.  It was so embarrassing.  The teacher sounded so frustrated and upset, and I completely understood her frustration.  He reverted to the same behaviors that he had with me when I first started staying home with him.  He fought with her about using the restroom.  He hit her with his lunchbox.  He was told he lost his free time because of his behavior, and his response was, "Whatever."  She told him to sit still while the other children had their free time.  He refused and told her he wasn't going to do anything she said. 

*sigh*  He's lucky he's as easy to love as his brother.  He behaves this way, and you think he's possessed.  He goes from zero to terrorist in 0.23 seconds.  Then, once he calms down, he turns on the charm big time, and it's easy to forget that you have to follow through on the consequences.  The dimples come out, the big blue eyes with the cute wire glasses, the head cocked to the side and the innocent little, "sowwy."  What is unfortunate is that he isn't really sorry.  He thinks "sorry" means no standing in the corner, or he gets his toys back, or he gets to do what he wanted before he got in trouble.  Once he says sorry and still gets a consequence, he goes off again with screaming and fit throwing.  Our consequences have been working rather well at home.  I rarely deal with fits, and he rarely, RARELY hits me, like once a month if that, where it used to be every day several times a day.  The problem is, every authority figure he has, he needs to test them.  He needs to be on his worst behavior to see if they mean business, but darn it, HOW LONG DOES HE NEED TO TEST?!?  He's been testing mom and grandma forEVER now.  WHY is it taking so long for him to see that they mean business?!  Is he going to test every new teacher he has for the entire year he has them before he realizes they have consequences?  He'll get booted out of school!  He hits someone now, and it sucks, but it doesn't really hurt.  If he's still hitting by the time he's 15, he's gonna knock someone out and go to jail.

Sometimes I watch Supernanny to remind myself that it's not THAT bad.  At least he's not cussing me out or calling me names.  Yet.

Let's talk about awesome stuff, instead.  Academically, Little Man is doing REMARKABLY well.  Now, listen to me when I tell you this.  All summer, I worked with the kids on memorizing their address and phone number.  How I did this was that I made a template with it written on it, and I had them copy it to memorize it.  Dudes.  This shit DOES NOT WORK!  All summer I had them doing this.  For months and months.  First day of school rolls around, and I'm all, "What's your phone number?"  And they're all, "What you talkin 'bout, Willis?  We have a phone?"  Well, on Tuesday, Little Man's homework was "practice your phone number."  So, I tried a new technique.  I present to you:

Giant telephone!  I taped this big telephone to the floor and had them both jump from number to number.  They knew the number within 3 tries.  It took all of 60 seconds for them to learn it.  Heck, Big Man learned it backward, too!  Months of writing?  Failure!  Giant telephone?  WIN!  Except the next morning, at 7:30 a.m., Little Man decided to pick up my phone and try to practice his phone number on it.  He couldn't find the number pad on the touch screen, so he just started pushing buttons....and he called and woke up my friend.  Sorry, again, Liz!  Note to self:  Put the telephone in a high place.

Oh, crap!  I gotta go get my brakes checked!  Ciao! Aloha! Arrividerci!  Adios!  Uh....whatever goodbye is in French!