The Fish Pond

Still More Sunnyisms

BigDaddyFish and Sunny are sitting on the bed after bathtime, and BDF is trimming her nails. Apropos of nothing, Sunny says "I can do this with my tongue" and rolls her tongue back and forth in her mouth.

"I can do that, too," says BDF, doing the same thing.

Sunny looks at him wide-eyed, and says, "You can do that with my tongue?"

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We're in the car on the way to gymnastics class, and Sunny asks "Mommy, is it spring?"

"Yes, Sunny, it's spring."

"When it's summer, can I play in the sprinkler while Trout and Little Man are at the beach picking up shells for me?"

I smirked and reminded her that if Trout and Little Man are at the beach, chances are all of us would be there together, and she can pick up her own shells.

Princess complex much?

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Go over here and congratulate my friend Catherine on the birth of her second baby, Jasper.

Go over here and read the best post Amy has ever written. It's the best description of marriage and what it takes to make it work that I have ever seen. She's brilliant.

Discovery's "Deadliest Catch" Starts Tonight at 9 -- UPDATED

I've already told you what one of my guilty pleasures is - this is another. I LOVE Deadliest Catch. The action is cool, some of the fishermen are hott, and I could listen to Mike Rowe read the damn phone book for hours - yum. Plus watching it with BigDaddyFish gets me lots of brownie points, ahem. The new season starts tonight at 9, and you can bet your bippy my ass will be on my couch in front of the plasma as far in advance as my children's bedtime will let me. Think they'll go to be at 6:30?

Today we found out there is a Deadliest Catch game for Xbox 360 and PC coming out sometime this month, called Deadliest Catch Alaskan Storm. We are such geeks that we can't wait for it to come out. We might even buy an Xbox 360 just for it. Or upgrade our gamer's box.

Anyway, what inquiring minds really want to know is this:

Sig or Edgar? Which one, and why? I'll tell you my answer after you tell me yours.

MY ANSWER: Edgar. They're both sort of hot in a rugged, stinky, not sleeping, smoking, hard working kind of way. But Sig's main skills are driving a boat and finding crab. Which is great, if that's what you're trying to do. I really don't anticipate needing those particular skillz anytime soon. But Edgar? He's a deck boss; he manages people by yelling at them, so he'd be good in herding the cats children, PLUS he cooks! PLUS he makes kids eat raw things! PLUS he fixes stuff! Edgar is just plain a little more useful to have around. Sorry, Sig.

note to Sig and Edgar's wives, in the one in a million chance they end up reading this blog: this exercise was all in good fun. I have no designs on your husbands - I'm quite happy with mine, and I'm sure yours quite happy with you. Not to mention that you're both drop-dead gorgeous, and have no reason to be concerned about frumpy short housewives that your husbands will never meet. Thank you.

Sunny Says (I honestly have NO IDEA where she gets these things)

I've mentioned before that Sunny. Talks. All. The. Time. and I have to admit, I don't always listen to what she's saying, mostly because my ears are bleeding. Every so often she realizes this and attempts to engage me in her chatter. This is this morning's exchange:

As she holds rice krispies up to her mouth "You say, 'aren't you going to offer some to our guests?' Mommy."

"Aren't you going to offer some to our guests?"

She reaches out and offers the rice krispies to me.

"No thanks, Sunny, you know I'm allergic, I can't eat those."

"Then you say, 'No thanks, bubble-butt, it's all yours.'"

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This morning she was sitting on our bed as BigDaddyFish got dressed, playing with his Legos (yes, HIS Legos. I am the only family member without my own Legos). I have to brag a little about what she made.

"This is a trashcan in the kitchen."

"This is a couch with lots of stages for people to sit on."

"This is a bed for sleeping."

"This is a little man in a surgery bed, and here's his hat. He can't wear his hat in surgery."

"Nice boat, Sunny." "Thanks! It goes in the water."

Not too shabby for a just-turned-4 year old. Who am I kidding - SURGERY BED? Mind you, she's never had surgery, and the only thing she knows about surgery is my c-sections. She's never seen an actual surgery. How the heck does she know you don't wear your hat during surgery? For the record, she didn't follow a model or directions of any kind for these, they are off the top of her scary little brain.

Sometimes I wonder if she's really my kid. You know, if it wasn't for the whole looks-just-like-my-mother thing.

Why Can't Anyone Make a Decent Looking Male Doll?

Sunny got a gift card for her birthday, and since she loves all things High School Musical, mostly because her sister does, she picked out Troy and Gabriella dolls. And these things haunt me. Well, Troy does. He's scary.

Gabriella, she's okay, her boobs aren't even too big:

Her main drawback is that she came with a necklace and a bunch of teeny tiny bracelets that are, of course, removable, and therefore lose-able, which Sunny does several times a day. I've even fished one out of the vacuum cleaner. Then there's the shoes, one of which was lost outside in the grass within three hours of her coming home, never to be found.

But Troy? He's hideous. Observe:

Why isn't he smiling? Why doesn't he have anything on under that jacket? Why is he wearing makeup? And, for God's sake, why the heck does he look like a woman on the mother of all Bad Hair days?

That hasn't stopped Sunny from playing with them, stripping them, of course, but it sure has given me nightmares.

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DC Metro Moms Blog is participating in a Topic Day with all its sister blogs. Hop on over and check out some great posts about education, be it public, private, or homeschool. Also, watch this space tomorrow - you never know what you might find.

Color Explosion, Indeed

What do you get when you combine a preschooler, a toddler, baby wipes, and Crayola Color Explosion paper?

This:

And of course, the requisite bath afterwards. Fortunately, the wipes created the mess, and the wipes cleaneth'd up.

So how was your weekend?

Overheard in the SickPond

"We need a bed, not a chicken breast." I have no earthly idea what the child was talking about.

"Mom, I can puke in the snow. Puking in the snow is the best." Last night we got basically a dusting of snow, enough to cover the cars and grass and cause school systems traumatized by our last ice storm to cancel evening activities last night. Sunny wanted to go outside, and after this comment I saw no reason not to let her, so I got her all bundled up and sent her outside. She spent maybe a minute and a half outside, then banged on the door to come back in because "it's just too cold for me to be out here."

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Containment, FishPond style:

That's Sunny's bed, with about 4 towels layered on it. She pukes, we take a layer off (or two, if needed), wash them, leave the next ones for the next barf.

We have probably 42 towels in varying sizes in this house, NOT including my predilection toward hoarding dish towels. Anyone want to guess how many times we've gone through all 42 in the last 72 hours?

Salad, Sunny Style

Sunny comes in the kitchen this afternoon and starts dragging out mixing bowls and asking me to open the fridge because she wants to make a salad. Now, she's my best veggie eater of the bigger kids, but I know for a fact she won't eat any salad stuff except maybe the raw carrots, and that's only on the last tuesday of months that end in R. I pull out the lettuce and she starts yelling how that's not what she wants, she wants SALAD. I explain that is what salad is. She decides that's horrible and starts pulling things out of the cabinets to make her salad.

So, here, in all its glory, is salad, Sunny style:

In case you're curious, the recipe is:

a three-year-old size handful of some weird cereal from Trader Joe's that looks like Life cereal, but doesn't contain rice

a greenish sliced banana (I did all knife wielding)

three baby carrots sliced into "dimes"

grapes

a tiny handful of ceasar salad croutons, heavy on the garlic

a tiny handful of cheerios (or their generic Trader Joe's counterparts)

four Gerber Graduates veggie wagon wheels

Don't you wanna come to my house for dinner?

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Wednesday night Sunny got out a washcloth when she was brushing her teeth, and I told her not to wipe her face because I had put a little ointment on some chapped spots.

"I won't, it's for my collection," she says. Collection?

She goes into her room, and I tell her to get in bed, and she tells me she can't. "I have to do the laundwry fiwst."

She proceeds to gather up a huge armful of probably fifteen or so washcloths, then flops herself down on the bed and dramatically throws her armload down on the bed, sighing "Laundwry, laundrwry, laundwry," and emphatically wiping her brow. She then folded every single washcloth as well as a small basket full of doll clothes.

Where she gets this stuff I will never know.

So Many Topics, So Little Time to Write

I have so many things I want to write about, so many posts floating around in the ether of my brain, but both of my littles have what we affectionately refer to as The Hacking Death and between wiping snot, cleaning up puke after the kids cry or cough so hard they puke, doing the ensuing laundry, driving people around all over, and just trying to get some sleep so I'm better able to handle said activities I haven't had the time to write anything. So, please forgive me, but I'm just going to throw some bullets out there so at least some of it can get out of my head and leave me more room to fit in all the information about mortgage qualifying:

• Tuesday afternoons Little Man has a sports class at our local community center. The class is only 45 minutes long, so the rest of us just sit in the car and Trout does her homework, we listen to music, and if she gets done quickly enough we watch a movie. I sometimes let Sunny and Nemo out of their carseats to stretch their legs, and this week Nemo slept while Sunny was free to move about the cabin. All of a sudden Trout starts shouting about how Sunny is coloring on the car - yes, my not-even-two-month-old van. Somehow Sunny found a random piece of crayon floating in the air somewhere (because I have not allowed any such items in the new van) and colored on the window, carseats, upholstery, speaker covers, whatever struck her fancy. I was livid. It appears that the crayon was a washable one, though, because a babywipe took care of most of the mess. I reminded her once again that she was ONLY TO COLOR ON PAPER!! and thought that was the end of it. Which it was until Little Man got in the car on Wednesday morning to go to school and found where I wasn't able to remove some of the crayon from his booster seat (which he will ride in until he gets his driver's license as he appears to have my genes). "Who colored on my seat???" he shouted, and I told him Sunny had and that I'd get it later and to buckle up. "AAAUUGHH! That..that.." he struggled with the words, and since he's been experimenting with colorful language lately I thought I knew what was coming. "She is SUCH. A. LITTLE... RASCAL!!" he said angrily as he stomped his foot. Yeah, she is.
• I am my own worst enemy, I swear. Tuesday morning I had to scramble around to get all four kids up and ready to go - the bigs to school, Sunny to her preschool, and Nemo comes with me to my therapy appointment. We got up early enough, got the bigs to school and went scrambling down to the preschool to drop Sunny off. I saw one of the moms who I know has younger kids with whom I sometimes share watching duty, where one of us watches the littles in the parking lot while the other runs in to get her big kid and then we switch, and I asked if she wanted me to watch her little one so she could run in. She said no, she'd be a while, and then asked me if I had a conference that day, to which I said no and looked at her quizzically. She told me there was no school that day, it was a conference day. Which I would have known if Sunny had gone to school on the previous Thursday and I had gotten the newsletter, but she didn't and I didn't. Doh. So there I was, with my therapy appointment, to which I have to take an almost-four year old. Yeah, I don't think so. I was able to scramble around and make arrangements for my SIL to watch her and was only 5 minutes late to my appointment.
• Saturday BigDaddyFish and I had a glorious day, just us. First we matched up the socks, then we went to an Indian restaurant and pigged out on the buffet. Then we went to the Air and Space Museum Annex - Udvar-Hazy Center and had a blast taking our own sweet time looking at exhibits and reading things with nobody going "Mooooom, this is booorring! Let's go!" or running around and trying to climb on the SR-71. They have added an F-14 since we were there last, probably my favorite among the fighter aircraft - awesome. They have a couple of flight simulators there, one that you can "fly" and one that you just ride along, and since we were unencumbered by small people I suggested we ride one. We chose for BDF to fly the plane and I would ride with him. We paid our money and got in line to go in, and they had a small tv screen showing us our "pre-flight" briefing. "This ride will be taking you upside down, so please leave all belongings in the locker provided." Say wha? Upside down? Nobody said anything about upside down. Have I mentioned I don't do flying, or heights for that matter, very well? Upside down? After eating a huge meal of Indian food? "You're going to pay for this," I said to BDF as we locked up our stuff. He was the pilot, I was the gunner, and the ride was 4.5 minutes long. Would you believe that we had so much fun? And I shot down 6 planes? And I only spent about 45 seconds with my eyes shut, and probably 45 seconds upside down? Then, as if the day wasn't great enough, we went to see Charlie Wilson's War, which was great, and THEN went out to dinner. We spent the entire day without the kids; we didn't fight or bicker at all. It was awesome. When you have small people depending on you it is so easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day details of living and forget why you got married in the first place - nurturing your marriage is as important as remembering to feed the kidlets. And men, if you take the time to go out and have fun with your wife, just the two of you, without complaining about how much it costs or whatever else you could be doing, it just might increase your chances of getting a little action. Dramatically.
• When we were doing the great clean out on Saturday and Sunday, we found several of what we believe are larvae for clothes moths. We have a lot of wool shirts, blankets, and socks that don't get used very often, and somewhere we have an infestation. I freak the heck out when worms or snakes are nearby - I HATE them. I'm weirded out by things without feet. So I screamed each time we came across one and squealed and got all squicked out and BDF squished them and put them in the trash. I was not aware that cedar is not necessarily a great repellent, and that stored items need to be checked at least once a year. So, now we are working on finding the source of the contamination and eliminating it, four or five vacuumings and multiple washings at a time, like we didn't have enough of that to do already. Ewwww.
• Friday night BDF and I got salads for dinner and he went upstairs to eat his while on the computer. Instead of taking it back down two floors to the kitchen when he was done, he just put it on a stool at the top of the stairs down to our kitchen, on the same floor as our bedrooms. Nemo woke up before us, and BDF put him on the floor to just let him run amok while we woke up fully. Sunny starts yelling about an awful smell, and we think it's Nemo's diaper or something and tell her to just be patient about it. Then she started complaining about a big mess and we decided we better get up to investigate. This is what we found:

Guess Nemo decided he didn't like the salad. Gem that he is, Uncle Orca (agincourtdb) cleaned it up for us when he arrived to babysit so BDF and I could go our for our date. Frankly, I was quite relieved that it had nothing to do with Nemo's diaper.

• Capital One are a bunch of scum-sucking bastards. Last month I either didn't receive a statement at all or I lost it in the jumble of papers on my table (most likely didn't receive because I still haven't found it). I realized it after the due date but before they sent me anything to hassle me about it, so I paid them something based on what I paid the previous month. We got that card because it had a 2.9% interest rate for the life of all balance transfers, so we transferred quite a large balance to it years ago and have been slowly paying it off; we cut the cards up and never used them. We've put that balance low on our list of things to pay off and put higher rate stuff as a higher priority in our quest to get out of debt. Well, they decided since we were late on our payment to jack the interest rate - to 27%. 27%. Pure insanity. I've been late on other cards years ago and if they raised the rates at all, which I don't remember them doing, it was only a point or two. I would have understood if they had raised it to something like 6-10% since that's what we had for purchases if we'd ever used the card, but this is highway robbery. We are lucky that we had the money for me to call up and pay them off this morning, and I'm closing the account immediately. They have lost us as a customer and we will be sure to warn everyone we know about them. If there is ever a chance you might be late with a payment (which would mean you are a normal person), don't be fooled by Capital One. Within two months we will have paid off all of our credit card debt, and all we'll have are our mortgage and one car payment. It feels fantastic.
• I am going through a major effort to simplify my life, cutting down on spending, paying off debt, not buying new stuff, decluttering, not watching much tv (American what?), cleaning, etc. It feels good and has helped my depression so very much, and has helped me not to feel so unsettled. I'm enjoying taking better care of my family, and in doing so, taking better care of myself.
• I'm thinking of going back to work some, ideally to pick up some freelance writing assignments, but haven't the first idea how to go about doing that. Anyone have any ideas they are willing to share, or willing to take on, I don't know, a jr. apprentice or helper or something? I'm willing to work cheap until I've proven myself. I used to be a technical writer/editor before I had kids, and I have an English degree, so I have a basis for this line of work; it's just the marketing/business side of things I'm clueless about.

So, how are you doing? Did I mention we're house hunting? In theory?

Never Going to Happen

Trout's on the phone with BigDaddyFish, who usually calls us to tell us he's on his way home, and I'm cooking dinner and feeding the baby and trying to keep Little Man focused on his homework. BDF asks Trout to ask me when I'm going to show her, Little Man, and Sunny the website for the art school where I want to enroll Trout and he wants me to enroll the other two to save me time out (each kid gets one activity each term. If they all do the same activity, that's only one trip out for me per week - I understand his motivation but I need that time out, I think. But I digress.) even though neither is as interested in art as Trout.

"So, Mommy, when are you going to show us?" she asks, looking at me over the phone, pointedly.

"Well, when your homework is done, dinner is over, and you've cleaned up the house."

She turns back to the phone, sighing, "Dad, it's NEVER going to happen."

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And to add insult to injury, I was tickling Trout last night and she kicked me right in the ol', well, you know. Fortunately it was in the opposite direction, so I think she actually straightened it out a bit. BDF says it's even more crooked than before, though, and I'm having trouble smelling things. Yes, I'll go get it checked out now. After the homework is done, dinner is over, and the house is clean.

Because Sometimes Underwear is Scarce

We're sitting in my bedroom, the girls and I, and we're looking through the mountain of clean laundry on my bed that's waiting to be folded. Trout is complaining how every pair of underwear we find gives her a wedgie, so we keep looking. Sunny keeps up a running chatter, running on about everything and nothing at the same time, something about underwear and running out of underwear, I wasn't really paying attention because who can pay attention to every word when someone talks that much? Eventually she says, "and if you run out of underweaw, you can always use one ov my pwullups, Twout."