Life's a Bitch...Really, She Is!

Well, Jackie has come and gone.  Geesh that went fast.  The boys had a great time having Jackie in town and going to visit her at the hotel. They got in some swimming and plenty of play time. 

Robby and I went to Wendover on Thursday night and had a nice time playing some tables, having drinks and watching the Jazz game. The dealers were awesome and we had an especially fun time hanging out at the Pai Gow poker table. Such a crazy game...so much pushing. No kidding, we sat at that table for 2 hours on something like $50.  Good times.

And of course it wouldn't be proper to have vacation time without illness. I'm almost starting to dread vacation time...how has this happened to me? Two days into our time off Robby came down with what seemed like death on Friday night and all through Saturday. On Sunday he went to instacare and it was official...strep throat. He got a shot of penicillin and a prescription for antibiotics and we were on our way to get him a milkshake when Jackie called.  Yep, the awful truth...Jackie was sick too!  Good grief.  We ushered her off to instacare right away just knowing the verdict.  The Morehead family was droppin' like flies. It pays to be a Celic!  :) Strep throat lurking in your bed puts the fear of God in you, I tell ya! I thought I would get it just from worrying I would get it. Self fulfilling prophecy and all. So far I have dogged that bullet, but I'm not holding my breath.

Sooo, yeah. We had fun while we could and the time off was by no means a total loss, just not how I planned it in my little pea-brain that thinks things will go the way I plan. I'm a bit slow to shift my outlook when things don't go as planned, but I'm learning to say 'this sucks ass and now I need to readjust my expectations.' It's definitely one of my life lessons. Readjust baby, readjust. 

Spared the Knife

For those of you who don't know, Robby broke his hand a couple of weeks ago.  Turns out the fridge door is neither flexible nor forgiving against knuckles.  You can see the yellow hue of bruising and how swollen it was and this was a week after the right hook.

 

The day it happened it was pretty scary looking and I'm kicking myself for not taking a picture then.  I initially referred to it as Elephant Man hand, but in retrospect it was more like like Hunchback of Notre Dame hand as there was a large lump leaning off to one side. That was probably his knuckle.  

Our fabulous new friends Beth and Dave (Hi!!) actually got to see the Hunchback hand the next day and can vouch for how bad it looked.  It was our first "date" with them and frankly they took the freakishness in stride and luckily we didn't scare them off...that night anyway! 

So today was the day.  The visit to the hand surgeon.  The surgeon told him he somehow dogged a bullet and did not need surgery! What, what, WHAT?  This is truly shocking and miraculous considering the laundry list of what is wrong.  Apparently Robby postponed the trip to the doctor just long enough for things to get healing on their own.  Had he gone to the hand surgeon immediately, the doctor said the injury would have been severe enough that he would have operated on it.  Obviously we are so happy.  Now all we ask is the boys never, ever get on his nerves again.  

 

In less painful news, my M.I.L. (mother-in-law) Jackie had a birthday this weekend.  We are no-good kids and forgot to call on her birthday.  So we did what any self-respecting no-good kids would do and called her the next morning at 6am (4am Salt Lake time) when we woke in the middle of the night and realized our folly and tried to make up for it.  Perhaps we scared her a bit calling that time of morning, but it was the thought that counts, right?

Happy Birthday Jackie!  We can't wait to see you!

And just because I thought these were cute do-it-yourself pics I thought I'd share.  Don't look too closely at my crazy ass eyebrows. I swear they are going to take over my face and then possibly the world!

Eli first and Charlie second...

Pony Boy

Charlie Pony Boy Morehead
When the boys' hair gets long they just love to have their hair done up. Especially Charlie. They even want to sleep with the pony and they like to check themselves out in the mirror. I think they may be more in touch with their inner girl than I am! I try not to look too hard or too closely and just hope for the best!

They've since gone to the 'haircut store' as they called it and got their mops cut off. With their new do's people say they can now tell them apart -or- now they can't tell them apart. I suggest people just wait a second or two and one of them will do something crazy and we'll yell at them. Then you'll know who's who.

Oh, and these are the jammies that Charlie picked out at Costco. He LOVES them and he keeps track of where they are in the laundry cycle so he can plan his evening.

Fodder for a Future Therapy Session

Bedtime with the boys is almost always a struggle. I gotta go potty, I need water, I need a kiss and a hug. It seems the requests are never ending some nights and I realize most are tactics to keep us in their room or to get themselves out of their room.

Last night Charlie got out of bed, ran into my room and tried to get up on my bed. I wasn’t having it. I tried to usher him back to his room, but he’s hip to me and pulled a potty request. What are you gonna do? Saying ‘no, you cannot go potty again’ doesn’t seem right.

So there he is sitting on the pot telling me ‘I need my privacy, it’s going to be stinky in here!’ After a while I force the issue because nothing’s moving, if you know what I mean, and I want to lay down DAMN IT! This potty request is trickery and I’m not gonna take it!

In I march demanding he get off the pot. So he lays it out ‘mommy, don’t you trust me to go potty by myself and go back to bed?’ WHAT? What did you say? I made him repeat himself because I was so startled by this. I didn’t realize he knew the word trust, what it meant and how to use it in perfect context. And if he knows that and I didn’t know it, what else does this kid understand? He’s probably on to me with all sorts of things. And here I thought I was flying under his 3yr old radar.

Then I just felt bad and guilty. I realized that I didn't trust him to do that and it really bothered me. So if I was going to respond honestly based on my experience with the two crazies and their bedtime shenanigans, I’d have to say ‘no, NO I don’t trust you to do that…now SHIT or get off the pot kid!’

I Got Nothin'

I was feeling good about blogging, but now I got nothin'. I can't be bothered with toting a camera with me everywhere I go and I just want to lay down and read after bath time. So there you have it...nothin'. Maybe tomorrow I'll have somethin'.

Get Back on the Boat!

Have you ever seen someone with a mullet hair-do, driving a Camaro, wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and rocking out to Night Ranger’s Sister Christian? I just love scenes like that. A person who has found their look, attitude, tastes...their niche and got off, what I refer to as, THE BOAT. They fell in love with a time in their lives and they’re sticking with it!

I have always thought that I wouldn’t be a getting off the boat kind of person. I wouldn’t avoid trends in fashion, I wouldn’t keep the same hair-do for time and eternity, I wouldn’t be annoyed with the young folks' crazy ways, and I wouldn’t snub new music. But over the years I could see my boat sailing away. There I am in my Honda Civic, with my same straight flat hair, listening to Smashing Pumpkins, confused by Facebook and all the spanks and hugs being passed around, driving away into the sunset of my life. I can’t keep up! I'm turning in an old fogey already?

In an attempt to fight stagnation, I have tried capturing a new look by choosing clothes that had interesting detailing, patterns or colors other than black, but it turns out you can’t force the funk! I have tried getting new hair-do’s (oh GAWD!) and I had to accept I just don’t want to fuss with my hair. I admit I am totally annoyed with teenagers and realize Billy Corgan was right…youth IS wasted on the young! And music…Smashing Pumpkins is really good…why branch out now?

Talk about hair.  Lord have mercy, we look like Hair Central!

Enter Rolling Stone. I used to be a subscriber years ago, when I was solidly on the boat and thought maybe a new subscription could lend a hand in keeping me fresh on the music and youth culture scene. I started requesting CD’s I’d read about in Rolling Stone from the library. It was an easy, risk-free way of giving an artist a test run. Plus Rolling Stone compiles a handy wrap up of the year’s best albums, which Robby used as a working list to request from the library. And I’m happy to say I’ve at least made it into the dingy on the side of the boat.

I was thoroughly surprised at how much I like the new Kanye West album Graduation. He can rap about parallel parking and it works for me. Robby is completely digging Kanye too, but especially likes the new LCD Soundsystem. The boys are CRAZY for a song off Mary J. Blige’s new album Growing Pains, which I think by and large is quite good too. They ask us to put the ‘Mary’ song on for them in the car. When the song starts they turn to look at each other and smile a knowing smile. They beg to hear it over, and over, and OVER again. And the new Smashing Pumpkins album Zeitgeist rocked us pretty hard on one date night.

The injection of new music in my life has been a breath of fresh air and it’s keeping me from getting completely settled in my ways. I’ll leave Facebook and MySpace to those perky younger people, but I can still rock out with the best of ‘em.

Have you gotten off the boat? Let’s hear it.

Because I Did

This week the boys have been challenging. I'm trying to keep my cool, but my cool is wearing thin, what with Eli artfully painting mud on the car mere hours after Robby washed it and Charlie peeing on the bathroom floor at the gym (among many, MANY other things.) When asked why they choose to do these things their answer is invariably 'because I did.' It's straightforward in an almost genius kind of way. Because I did. I've taken to it as my answer to them and it's great. You should give it a try.

To add extra annoyance to the mix, when one is getting in trouble the other one enthusiastically points out that "I didn't pee on the floor Mommy, I didn't." Great, thanks for letting me know what a perfect angel you were for those 2.5 seconds of the day while your brother was taking a leak on the floor.

People will say this is typical 3yr old stuff, and surely it is, but with the two of them going at it hour after hour it's simply wearing. I often wonder how the human race has continued as long as it has. Why people, after experiencing a 3yr old, could possibly and purposefully choose to do it all over again. Probably because for a good amount of human existence peeing on the floor was just what you did and no one got time out for it.