Locals with kids may find this useful, if you can find time during a weekday to take your kid to the movies at the Meridian 16 downtown...

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(Non-locals, to see if you have free summer movies for kids in your area, start here: http://www.raising4boys.com/2008/05/28/free-summer-movies-for-kids-2008-edition/)

Ways to celebrate glorious spring weather during Holy Week:

• Watch in foreboding as toddler skips her nap
• Take girls out for walk in ride-on stroller
• Tell the hypermuffin an estimated 50 million times not to eat dirt, rocks, or woodchips
• Find self uttering the sentence, "Dirt is not for eating."
  
• Chat with neighbor-who-loves-seeing-the-girls. Realize that the closer we get to our house, the slower the toddler walks.
  
• Finally get home. Put baby down for nap. Notice potted lemon tree is about to bloom
• Make plans to finally plant some of the seeds donated by lesserseattle... as soon as both girls are asleep and it's still light, so, you know, that'll be really soon.
  
• Listen to Allegri's Miserere while feeding the hypermuffin a snack, coldheartedly denying her pleas to listen to "Henry the Octopus" by the Wiggles on YouTube for the 30th time that day
  
• Then, deny her request to go out for a second walk
• Put the screaming child in her room
• Realize screaming child is completely naked. Go in, put a diaper on her. 
• Eventually, see the child emerge from her room, naked once more, like the Easter Bunny. Only more naked. And two. And a few days early.
  
• Sweep the kitchen floor at child's command. ("It's so messy in here! Mommy want to sweep the floor!")
• Count blessings that at least baby is still aslee -- oh, wait.

Have you ever wanted to play with My Little Ponies, only you wished that they had platform high heels, accessories, and cleavage?

Well, your prayers have been answered.

Seeing this kind of story makes me have a kneejerk urge to scream "ONLY HANDMADE WOODEN EDUCATIONAL TOYS FOR US FROM NOW ON!!!" and run around bagging up all the pink, glittery, and/or plastic things for the dump. Sigh.

We were going to the Arb with Nikki and Ryan today, but then I saw a few flakes of snow and called them up and whined, "Can we come over to yoooooooour place instead??" So we did, and Ryan ran around after the hypermuffin while Nikki altered a skirt I'd bought, hooray people who can sew! Sean H. was there too, so he and Andrew chatted until I had to pack everyone up and take Andrew to work (4 - midnight shift on Sundays).

Lots of fun, but it was right during the hypermuffin's naptime. I assumed she would crash once we got home, but it's now after 6 PM and she hasn't napped at all. And the wren skipped her afternoon nap, too, in sympathy, one can only assume.

When they finally go to bed -- which I can only hope will be sooner than usual -- I am so having a beer. I have earned it.

Let's see. What else is going on in what I laughingly call my brain...

• I want Quicken so I can track money stuff. Excel spreadsheets are growing quite annoying.

• My laptop has only 3% free space. I deleted Andrew's "Dragon" magazine archive, compressed old files, and then de-fragged it today, and it did no good whatsoever. Still only 3% free space. Sigh.
  

• Link one: Ikea Hacker is a site showcasing the inventive uses people have put IKEA furniture to -- mostly crates and beds for pets, looks like.

• Link two: A tongue-twister from the cartoon show "Pinky and the Brain." I can't believe they aired this on TV. The words are innocuous, but Spoonerize them and they become un-innocuous.

• I've been singing the theme song to "Pinky and the Brain" in 3/4 time all day. Sometimes I switch it between minor and major keys. Watch out, world.
  

• Something else funny, if you have the stomach for lots and lots of bad language and if you haven't already seen it: Google "Sarah Silverman Matt Damon" and click the link -- it's very very filthy, but very very funny.

It's been a strange day for Things Being Where They Are Not Supposed To Be. Or possibly, for Things Escaping From Their Normal Constraints.

Example the First: Ivy.

We've earned several of these Mommy Merit Badges. Not all of them, but enough.

At the end of the page, where it is telling you about how you can buy the whole set for $45.00, the text reads: "Buy the whole collection and wear them on a sash, sling, jacket or bag as you saunter around giving advice and moral support to new and unseasoned parents. Actually, if you earned them all we should probably send you a tiara too!"

I already have a tiara, but their heart is in the right place!

Went out this morning, bought seven large Rubbermaid / Sterilite / whatever-brand-they-are bins. They hold 35 - 50 quarts each.

Just got done sorting all the children's clothes given to us by fellow PEPS parents Todd and Sarah into the bins. And I included some clothes that hypermuffin had outgrown, too.

I'll store the ones she's growing into in her closet, and the ones the wren will grow into upstairs in the attic.

Speaking of the attic, I have a ton more clothes up there from Peter and Jenny. Oh, and then there's the clothes in V's room.

You think we have enough baby clothes??? Seriously, I could open a consignment store here.

Not that I'm complaining. The girls dirty at least one outfit a day; the small one through what comes out of her body, and the larger one through what she chooses to put on her body.

Seven weeks postpartum, and I'm back at my pre-pregnancy weight.

Go ahead and hate me... I'm paying the price for it. The price being nigh-constantly breastfeeding my infant WHILE running around nigh-constantly after my toddler, who is so high-energy that we could power the whole neighborhood on her if we hooked her up to a giant hamster wheel.

So I'm not sure if this is a weight loss program I would recommend to everyone -- only to youngish people with masochistic tendencies and good cardiovascular systems.

The hypermuffin was a handful today, not because she was being obstreperous, but because she knows perfectly well what to do, and she chooses not to do it. 'Nuff said.

But even while I'm rolling my eyes at her behind her back, massaging the pins and needles out of my ankles from squatting on the floor next to her potty for 20 minutes, cleaning up her fourth messy diaper in one day, or saying "No, sweetheart, we're not going to do that" for the millionth time, I'm grateful for it. Because the parents of missing toddler Madeleine McCann are desperately wishing they will get their daughter back and have the chance to be peeved, bored, and frustrated by her once more.

Yes, I think these parents were negligent. They left a three-year old and two-year old twins alone, asleep, in an strange, foreign resort, while they had a long restaurant dinner with friends.

Whether the doors and windows were locked, whether the restaurant was within sight of the apartment or not, and whether they were checking on the children every half hour or every hour -- I've heard conflicting reports -- their actions were negligent. Children can wake up and fall out of bed, have a seizure, hurt themselves on something in the room, get  wedged between the bed and the wall, strangle on blind cords -- all kinds of things. It's simply not safe to leave three toddlers alone with no adult in earshot.

And this Portuguese resort -- a high-end one, apparently -- even offers a "creche" service specifically so that vacationers can leave their children with staff members while they go out to dinner. These poor parents must be crucifying themselves second by second for not using it.

The three-year old was taken, but the twins were left. Speculation is that the girl was targeted for abduction, either to be smuggled to a childless couple in exchange for vast amounts of money, or to be sold into child pornography or slavery. Who knows where she is now...

The poor child. And those poor parents.

Vivian took a very long nap yesterday, once she finally fell asleep. When she woke up, she was a bit groggy, but soon perked up. She spent 4 hours running around the house, coloring with crayons, reading books, playing with toys, eating dinner, and interacting with the 5 guests we had over that evening.

She went to bed late, but didn't cry. This morning she happily got up and went to daycare. She didn't even cry when I left her there.

See? I can blog about the good things as well as the frustrating things. Maybe that will present a more balanced picture of our daily life. It's just that the urge to share my frustration is much stronger than the urge to share normal, placid, everyday happenings.

Well, at the risk of once again looking like Worst Mom Ever, I'm going to blog -- again -- about my daughter tantruming.

I just want to let everyone out there know that this doesn't happen every day. If it happened every day, I'd be so used to it that I wouldn't blog about it.

I also want to let everyone out there know that I regularly read parenting books and parenting magazines, and I'm parenting according to not only current professional and medical advice, but also according to what Vivian needs, as far as my best judgment can tell me.

Right now, she needs a nap. I can tell this; anyone with two brain cells to rub together could tell this. The only entity on Planet Earth who cannot tell that Vivian needs a nap is Vivian herself.



I hate these parenting dilemmas. If I'd let her get up, we would have had hours of bumping into things and screaming for no reason, because she NEEDS her nap. But since I'm not letting her get up, we're having those hours of screaming now, compacted into a matter of 23 minutes.

Does this happen to everyone with an almost-2 year old?

Took Vivian to "Toys 'R' Us" this morning to buy her a miniature broom, since she wanted to "help" me clean the house by using my big broom.

Ended up buying a broom and an abacus-style spinning letter toy. I love this because she cannot possibly lose the pieces -- they are all attached firmly to a wooden abacus frame -- and there are letters and numbers, two of her current obsessions.
Also bought her a baby doll, crib, and stroller, so she can practice "taking care" of a baby before the actual live baby arrives in early June.

Some of the baby dolls they sold were extremely realistic, kind of creepily so, with molded rolls of plastic masquerading as baby fat, and freaky little eyes and noses. I got a more stylized model that is still recognizable as a baby, but somewhat less likely to haunt my nightmares. :-P

On Monday when I dropped Vivian off at daycare, the teacher brightly said "Today is her last day!" "Huh??" I replied -- last I'd heard, the center would be open until the end of March.

Nope -- because they only had 3 or 4 kids who would have been there during the month of March, some of whom were part-time, they are closing at the end of February. I.e., tomorrow.

There was a letter in my mail slot there, but I hadn't gotten it last week because it was a holiday, so...

I would have thought they would have called us, but the entire office staff had already left, and the director is also busy directing a new location over in Bellevue.

I called the daycare center that was going to take Vivian on Mondays, starting in April, and luckily for us, they could take her a month early!

We stopped by for a couple of hours this afternoon, and will do so again Friday afternoon, to help get her used to the new daycare.She did very well, I thought -- playing with the other kids and interacting socially as much as 2-year olds do (which is not much). She wasn't very good at following the teachers' directions yet, but that will come the longer she's there.

They even gave her some juice in a cup, and she drank it without spilling it all over herself.

I faded back into a corner and watched... My little girl is getting all grown up! :-)

Our friends with the brand-new baby hosted our long-standing every-other-Saturday-night roleplaying game last night. Since they're the ones with the new baby, we thought it made the most sense to hold it there, instead of at our house, where it's been ever since we had Vivian.

I packed up Vivian and all her stuff, and rendezvoused there with Andrew around 6:15. We set up a portable crib for her in an unused room, and I shadowed her as she ran around the house finding all the trouble she could get into! :-P

But mostly she went up and down the stairs. Since our stairs are behind closed doors, when Vivian finds a flight of stairs that's freely available to her, she makes the most of it! Having her is like working out on a StairMaster, only without the little digital readouts that tell me how many miles I've gone at what elevation. Instead, I get my hands grabbed to lift her down the last few stairs, and then giggles and many shouts of "hooray!"

All was well until bedtime (unless you count the disassembled drum parts that she may have injured by climbing on). Although she's slept in the portable crib setup before, last night she screamed hysterically for an hour.

Literally. An hour. As our host pointed out -- you try screaming at that intensity for even a few minutes, and you will be wiped out. How did she keep it up for an hour?

Andrew went in to tell her to go "ni-ni;" that usually works at home, since he has The Voice Of Male Authority. Nope. We waited a long time and then I went in and calmed her down and read her some stories and we said "ni-ni" to everything in the room (which had a nightlight, so it shouldn't have been scary). Nope. More hysterical screaming, screaming to the point where she was hyperventilating, and hiccuping, and sweating, and smeared with her own snot, and trembling, and just a complete and total wreck.

I think the problem is that she's used to having the run of the room, playing with toys and reading her books and puttering around for an hour or two before actually curling up in her pillow to sleep. And here she was, confined to a glorified playpen.

We even disassembled the crib and tried putting the pillow directly on some blankets on the floor, thinking that if she could wander around the room a bit, she'd calm herself down and sleep, as at home. Instead, she got into everything I hadn't managed to childproof -- most notably eating some dirt from a plant -- later, I saw it around her mouth and on the floor. Sigh.

But no, still with the hysterical screaming. (With a dirt-smeared mouth.)

So we took her home. And I'm about to compose an apology to our hosts, and another to the GM. :-(

We could have tried to ignore that sound -- although let me tell you, it's a hard one to ignore -- but we didn't. Are we softies? Maybe. But as soon as we got home, she (and I!) got to go right to bed. And I'm so tired recently that anything where I get to go to bed at 9:30 is a win in my book.

Well, more layers of this, that 'n' the other are gradually being added to our deck. Plywood, tar, moisture sealant stuff, and I really don't know what-all. I know I can't walk on it, and the whole thing, from the eaves down, is shrouded with a huge blue tarp, cutting off the view out of the dining room window...

... but I don't mind losing my view for the short term, because it means we're getting a new deck! HOORAY!

Vivian remains utterly fixated on colors. When we're out driving around, she will point up and inform me what color the traffic light is, "Ruh" or "Ghee." She knows that her eyes are blue. She is very astute at assigning a color to anything I may chance to ask her about.

We continue to go through a vast number of crayons each week. If she had her way, she would color three or four hours a day. We are talking hours here, and I must be sitting right there participating with her the entire time; I can't walk away. So, naturally enough, I decide that we are not going to color for three or four hours a day. For one thing, I'm working from home. For another thing, coloring for that long is just boring to me, and I'm not going to do it.

When I leave the crayons out for her to use on her own, she doesn't use them, instead throwing a tantrum to get me involved again. It never works, but that doesn't prevent her from trying. :-P

And then when I've decided that letting the crayons sit out is just distressing her, and put them away -- well, that is The End of the World.  An utter screaming tantrum is sure to ensue. But this is the nature of life -- you can't always get what you want. In fact, sometimes you never get what you want.

I've started "time-outs" in her room so that she can calm herself down and come out and behave like a civilized little girl again instead of a thrashing, raging barbarian halfling. Gotta love the Terrible Twos! :-P

Once she's old enough to glare at me, scream "I hate you!", and stomp into her room to sulk, she'll be much happier. (I don't know if I will be, though.)

My dad sent us a new "Wiggles" DVD to entertain Vivian. We popped it in this morning for the first time, since Andrew is still sick (he has another dr. app't. this afternoon), and I'm trying to work from home.

Several of the songs that we know by heart, songs that we have heard literally hundreds and hundreds of times, are on this DVD -- in Spanish.

It is very surreal to see the "Mariachi Wiggles" singing these familiar songs in Spanish. Vivian just stares at the screen, trying to make sense of it all. Come to think of it, so does Andrew. Must be even more surreal if one is on pain medication. :-O

The croup is on the wane. But the Ear Infections have burst upon the scene! Well, not "burst," because using the word "burst" too close to the word "ear" just isn't a good idea. How about I rephrase that -- The Time of the Ear Infections is at Hand! Repent! Repent!

Vivian was much worse this morning, so we took her to the "first come, first served" drop-in doctor hours at Ballard Pediatric at 8. And we are glad we did, because she has two ear infections, poor little thing. The Amoxicillin should clear up the infection in a few days, and then we will have our little girl back.

I'm still horribly sick as well, but feeling so much better now that Vivian has some medicine, even though the state of my own health has not changed. Isn't that funny?

Well, the word "February" comes from the same root as "fever," and Vivian is proving why. She's been burning up half of yesterday and all of today.

The doctor said to give her children's Tylenol and monitor her temperature; it went down from a scary 104.5 to a moderate 101.6. (Children burn hotter than adults and their brains don't fry in their little skulls; still, the doctor wanted it down from the 105 range, which is rather severe.)

She stopped whimpering and lying there lethargically, and was able to get up and run around and clap her hands and laugh and interact. We colored and watched "The Wiggles" and she even had a little bit of food at dinner. I made sure she's not dehydrated.

I have a list of symptoms and instructions and timetables. I am going to restock the children's Tylenol and the Pedialyte. And I'm sure that in a day or two she will be back to normal.

Still, it's worrying while it's happening, especially since last night, I was unwise enough to consult the big list of ailments at the back of one of my parenting reference books. The list of ailments seemed to be composed almost exclusively of horrible things like encephalitis and meningitis, which start with a fever and end with death, with very few intervening symptoms. :-P 

Reading Dr. Sear's "The Baby Book" section on fevers -- when to worry and when not to worry -- was much more helpful than reading the list of all the horrible things that could end up KILLING my little girl with little or no warning. :-P  Why do I even own that book???

Vivian loves crayons. This child, who can seldom be persuaded to sit still long enough to make it all the way through a song on her "Wiggles" DVD, will stand next to the coffee table and color for over an hour at a time.

There's a procedure to coloring. Because she is so violent with the coloring book, I need to steady it with one hand. In my other hand, I keep the "unused" crayons loaded and ready for her to select from. She grabs a crayon, colors for 2 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 30 seconds -- however long -- and then puts it down on the book and selects another crayon from my hand.

I whisk away the used crayon to a side pile. When my hand is empty, I sweep the side pile back into my hand, with the "handles" of the crayons facing her. It is a seamless process, like a well-choreographed and well-rehearsed dance.

Sure, it's not the most interesting thing in the world for me, but there is a certain charm to watching her ultra-serious face as she colors. And every so often she has to stop and yell "RAINBOW!!!!" in excitement at the color she is creating on the page.

Her love of crayons is wonderful. But I was tired of sitting there micro-managing her crayon usage. So on Tuesday, I left the crayons next to her and walked away for a minute or two.

It seemed to go well. Vivian continued to color in the coloring book.

So then I got cocky. I went outside to get the mail.

Bad idea. When I came back, the white front door was nicely decorated with blue scribbles.

"No!" I said in a very stern voice, while taking away the crayons. The blue one had to be forcibly wrenched from her hand. "We only color on the paper. We don't color on the door."

She cried, and repeated "no, no, no," indicating that she did understand. She watched me scrub it off (bristle brush, spray gun of heavy-duty soap / bleach stuff). I decided we were done with coloring for the day.

Today Andrew colored with her and put away the crayons -- only, a few were missing. Can you guess where this is going?

Sometime during the rest of the day, her bookshelf, the wall next to it, the corner bookshelf in the living room, and the wall next to that, were all festooned with colorful scribbles.

When I got home, Vivian proudly pointed to the wall and said "RAINBOW!!!!" She wanted to show off her accomplishment.

"No, Vivian," I said sternly. "We don't color on the wall. We only color on the paper."

She cried, thrashed around on the floor, and repeated "no, no!"

I really think she does understand this rule. But when you're not even two yet, there's a huge difference between understanding the rule and being able to follow it. Something in her urges her to color wherever she can, and she doesn't have the ability to control herself yet.

So, last night there was a "school fair" at the St. Alphonsus' school gymnasium. Representatives from dozens of schools were going to be there. Although Vivian isn't even 2 yet, we thought we might as well show up, look around, get brochures from everyone and a rough idea of what was out there, so that in 2 or 3 years we would have some idea what we were doing. Anyway, I've always heard that you have to start looking early if you want a spot in certain schools, because they have wait lists.

If nothing else, it would let us get out of the house and let Vivian run around for an hour or so. And it was free.

So we packed up all our stuff and schlepped on down to Ballard. The gym was lined with banquet tables, each one housing a display from a different school. The weather was dicey, so the school representatives seemed to outnumber the parents. Kids of various ages ran around the gym having a grand old time.

Vivian immediately took off running and didn't stop. Andrew chased her around as I gathered brochures and talked with various people.

I was about halfway around the room, and just pointing Vivian out to someone ("She's the little girl in the pink jacket, the one running around right over there"), when it happened. Vivian spewed forth a great steam of food on the gymnasium floor. Then as I watched, she did it again. I rushed over just as Andrew was in the midst of picking her up, whereupon she promptly vomited on him three more times.

Honestly, I had no idea her little stomach could hold that much food. She must have cleaned herself right out, poor thing. I thought that she had just eaten too much at dinner and been exerting herself too much; I didn't think she was actually sick, just over-excited.

I handed Andrew a wad of cloth from the diaper bag and a plastic bag so he could start cleaning up, but even as he started trying to mop it all up, the custodians appeared. I was in the midst of whisking Vivian off to the bathroom.

All the adults were very nice about it, saying things like "these things happen." The people who looked at her with barely veiled disdain were the 7 and 8-year olds. You could almost see them thinking "I would never throw up in front of a room full of strangers. What a baby."

Once in the bathroom with the door safely closed behind us, I stripped Vivian down and changed her into fresh clothes from the diaper bag. Vivian was in a wonderful mood, obviously feeling great and in no hurry to leave. She wanted to continue running around, but Andrew and I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and we'd better be on our way.

I detained Vivian in the lobby while Andrew went around the second half of the room collecting brochures from every table. He told me later that he'd fallen into several conversations -- apparently having the toddler who just ralphed on the gym floor makes a great conversation-starter.

The woman running the event was very nice about the whole thing, and asked if we would consider St. Alphonsus School in a few years. I told her, "Well, Vivian has already baptized the gym floor."

After we got home, Vivian threw up a total of five more times. I ended up sleeping on the couch so I could go in every 20 minutes to clean it up and comfort her. Today I was off at work and she threw up once more in the morning, but that's been it. So I think she's getting over it.

This evening she seemed almost back to her usual self, although perceptibly slower and more mellow. Instead of charging through the house at supersonic speeds, she just trotted sedately through the house. It was almost like having a child with normal energy levels.