1. Barack Obama is a smoker. This is appalling to me. According to a news article we read this weekend, he is trying to quit. 20 years ago, heck, even 10 years ago, I don’t think anyone would have taken issue with this. I, for one, do. How do you expect to be in the public eye; be a role-model, and even consider smoking? I don’t necessarily feel that this is a reason to *NOT* vote for him—I actually really like him as a candidate, however, the smoking weighs heavily on me.
2. I’m on a roll with this smoking thing—one of the girls who works for me did not even try to quit smoking while she was pregnant. Admittedly, she never saw the need. She had a 5-lb baby who is now 2 and has severe asthma. Now though, because she and her husband are broke, she has quit cold-turkey. Because she can’t afford it. Hooray for you. I’m glad that the money is enough reason to quit, but your own child was not. I could even see quitting while you were pregnant with full intentions of starting back up again after delivery. That was never the case here though, and it disturbs me to no end.
3. The Melting Pot is the most ridiculous restaurant I have ever been to. In my life. Do you know that I spent $45 on just me there last night? The people who had drinks?? They spent $69 each. For 9 of us the bill was $592. Stupid. This is not to mention that our reservation was for 7:00 PM and we weren’t even seated until after 7:30. I got home at 11:20—it took for-evah! I will say that the California Salad was to die for, along with the chocolate at the end, but I don’t ever see myself going back. At least I can say I’ve experienced it?? Whatever.
4. This is really wrong but I am very leery of the new teaching assistant in ED’s class—a guy. I’m sure he is just as great as all of the girl’s there. This is a reputable chain of high-quality child care centers-even their assistants have credentials. Just ask my credit card—we pay for high quality. But honestly, when I see him, my head screams PEDOPHILE!! This is stereotyping on my part—hardcore and wrong on so many levels. I’m sure he’s not. ED LOVES him. But I can’t shake it.

1. The weekend started on Friday for me since I was home with a craptastic migraine. I took the kids to daycare and slept until about 4:00. We went for a fish fry and then Hub and I watched “The Ten”.
2. Friday over Saturday CA woke up around 1:00 freaking out that there were spiders in her bed. It was obviously a nightmare, but we couldn’t get her anywhere near her bed for the rest of the night. She slept on top of me in bed until the morning.
3. Somehow I woke up Saturday morning to find both kids in bed with me and Hub on the couch.
4. Hub took CA shopping to spend some Daddy time with her. He planned on getting her some new shoes to replace those that were destroyed in the escalator. He bought her new shoes all right, $30 Nikes. Seriously. For a 2-year-old. Even though I’ve never spent more than $15 on shoes for either kid. His excuse—she said she wanted them. If I came home with $30 shoes, all hell would break loose.
5. While he was gone, I had a few bills to pay so ED and I went downstairs for a while. I threw in a load of laundry, paid the bills and set ED up on the PBS website so he could play some games. In the back of my mind it occurred to me that the washer seemed to be filling for quite a while. When I went around the corner to go fold some laundry, I was greeted by a flood. The tub in our washer apparently cracked, and water was leaking from the bottom of it all over the place. FIL and I spent over an hour with squeegees and push-brooms cleaning it all up. I’m just glad that all of my clean laundry was up off of the floor when it happened.
6. That evening, we went to Sears and purchased a new (front-loading) washing machine. F A N C Y
7. We also went to BJ’s to restock our pantry.
8. We came home and the kids stayed up until 11PM watching NASCAR with Hub.
9. ED woke up at 7 on Sunday morning.
10. Hub took all of our clothes to the laundry mat and I laid around on the couch until about 11.
11. Hub took ED to a birthday party for one of his classmates (where he bowled for 2.5 hours straight) and CA and I shared lunch, folded laundry, cleaned the kitchen and worked on dinner (I made oven-fried chicken).
12. I bathed CA and Hub showered ED and everyone but me went to bed.
13. I played Scrabble on my phone and watched The Grammys.
14. I woke up this morning to find that it was 1 degree with a wind chill of minus 20.
15. I had to fight with the children to wear hats and mittens.
16. And here we are, kids at school, Hub at the chiropractor, and I’m at work.
17. Happy Monday!

Last weekend, Hub and I did some work in the basement because, a. it needed to be done, and b. I was missing a box of winter maternity clothes. Of course, I was more concerned with the latter and we found them buried in an unlabeled box in the very back corner of where we store things. As I excitedly went through clothes a few things stood out. Some of these items were no longer wearable due to wear and tear. Others were unwearable because clearly they were out of style.

Case in point: Denim Overalls. I really want to believe that when I purchased and wore these in 2003, the first time I was pregnant, that they were a good idea. I also want to believe that I looked super-cute with them on. I remember wearing them the day we went to do our registry, soon after finding out ED was a boy, with a cute t-shirt underneath and my hair in pigtails. I would never wear the overalls (or the pigtails for that matter) now. This leads me to wonder if it is because I am older, because I have kids now and feel older, or if really, in 2008 overalls are just not an option. I further wonder if they were a bad idea in 2003 and I was just clueless.

When I came in to work today, I had a voicemail from a very upset customer. He said and I quote, “Hello, my name is MR. ‘X’. ‘Big Bank’ has STOLEN MY MONEY!! FUCK YOU!!.” Then I’m pretty sure that he threw the phone because for the next 2.5 minutes I heard muffled background noise before my voicemail cut him off. He didn’t leave any identifiable information or a phone number so I can’t call him back. Even if I could, I probably wouldn’t. Regardless of how irritated I was with a company, I would never leave such a message. I would also at least give them the opportunity to do something about my situation. I just don’t get people sometimes.

We woke ED up twice to pee in the middle of the night, and he did very well until he got up this morning. I think in that half awake stage, before he gets out of bed in the morning, he just lets it go. I’m at a loss here. He doesn’t want to wear pull-ups to bed anymore (and I don’t want to buy them) but it seems like no matter what, he’s going to pee. It has only been 2 days, so maybe a week of training will break him. He gets really upset when he wets, and I don’t want him to feel ashamed, but again, he is the one who is initiating this. I guess we just have to see how it goes.

We have decided to completely re-do our kitchen. The financing came through on Friday, and we are just going for it. It is desperately needed anyhow as our current set-up is so ass-backwards and 1945 it is ridiculous. The catch is that Hub will be doing it all himself, but I think he has it in him. And also that we will be closing up FIL’s door and relocating it to the other side of the kitchen. Hope he doesn’t mind! We’re hoping that this will help us to increase our equity enough to get the upstairs done by a pro. That project needs to be completed no later than this time next year, when the baby will be ready to move out of our room.

We had something of a busy weekend. On Saturday, Hub and my brother took ED to Toronto for the monster truck show. Apparently, he loved it. He was still wide awake when they got home at 2:00 AM. Yes, he kept my (4-year-old) baby out until 2:00 AM. While they did that, CA and I shopped clearance at Kohls, Old Navy and JC Penny. I picked up some PJ sets at Kohls, the $8.00 maternity jeans I couldn’t get online at ON and struck gold at JCP, scoring 15 shirts, 3 skirts and 2 pair of pants for CA for $1.18 each, and three 3-piece outfits for ED for $10 each. I spent $55 on all of it. I then got 4 maternity tops for under $30. It was great! CA and I also stopped at IHOP for dinner. It was nice spending time with just her.

Sunday, my cousin’s baby was christened, and they had a luncheon afterward. I was very surprised at how well ED behaved considering his lack of sleep. It’s nice that my cousins and I all have kids who are the same age. They had a great time together.

Yesterday, I took the kids to daycare, and then I came home and slept until 1:00 PM. It was amazing. Hub and I grabbed some Chinese food and spent some time at home depot looking at kitchen stuff. It wasn’t a productive day off, but it worked for me.

I only wish I was home sleeping now.

I sure do wish I had more interesting things to say. My brain doesn’t seem to be functioning normally these days. I will be 12 weeks along tomorrow, so I am hoping that all of the crap will subside soon, and maybe my creativity will get turned back on. This is starting to remind me of my fourth grade diary, in which most pages read “Today I went to school. Then I came home. It was good.” I’m tired of the daily narrative.

I actually had a dream last night where I was writing a post about which parts of my day I would pause and which parts I would fast forward if life had TiVo. When I tried to type it out this morning though, it was tres lame. The one moment sticking out though, the one that I would pause, or keep forever, occurred yesterday morning while I sat on the couch with ED, snuggled under a blanket before the rest of the house was awake. “I love snuggling with you in the morning”, I said. He snuggled deeper in, my 4-year-old boy “Me too Mommy, me too.” He makes my heart melt.