Update

Well, we moved from the hood to paradise, basically. Chicago style paradise, which doesn't mean hotdogs or super deep dish pizza, but we moved north in Chicago. We have a large back deck, a small yard, free heat and laundry, and we are steps (like 50 steps) from a giant, awesome, green expansive park. My commute is longer. It means I am on the bus an hour each direction every day. BUT, everything else is far far far better.


E. climbs trees now too. And he's really good at it. He was made for it! He can climb anything, this kid.


Work is not so good right now and hasn't been for over a month. I'm not sure when (or if) it will get better. I feel as if I must need to reexamine my career...but this isn't the time to do that as I need to have a job and at least it pays pretty well.

I'm getting a lot of pressure from my family about E's behavior. He is an intense kid who likes to push boundaries. We don't always know what to do about it. My mother seems to think he's going to be a bully and that we are to blame. It's very hard having him around her when she constantly is on him for every little thing he does. We have rules in our house, but they are not the same as hers. I don't know what to do about it, and every time we have to see her I worry for days about what he might do and what she might say. It makes me a very stressed parent. This week, my brother is in town, so I am extra stressed because we will be around them a lot. It doesn't help that E is 3, and that he's still adjusting to the move (we moved may 1st). Of course my mother swears that moving isn't a big deal and doesn't get why he's having a hard time. We moved a lot as kids, and she thinks it was easy for us. In my case, I know I was too afraid of her to seem like it was anything but easy. Also, our first move was when I was 8.

"Every kid is different, he's a bit more sensitive", isn't enough for her. Of course, this is the same mother who came down on me for holding him too much when he was a baby. Can you hold a baby too much?

I'm very sad and frustrated. Being a mom of a kid going through 3 is hard enough. It really is. I wish I had some support from her...but I should know that's not something I would ever get.

Here are some great pics from the weekend. Sorry to be such a downer. I just feel alone right now, and so much like I need to wrap my family up and take them far far away from her.

e and his "best friend" and cousin.

putting his hat out for candy

Read this

I love this blog in general, but today's post was fully awesome. Read it, people.

http://ginsoakedolive.blogspot.com/2011/03/come-out-come-out-wherever-you-are.html

Faster

e loves scooting! I took this action shot by snapping it before he was even on it.

this is my favorite picture of e right now. He's watching tv in this shot, the day before his 3rd birthday...but such an angelic look.

Ok....it's become obvious to me now that I suck and getting the blogs posted. Can I blame it on the job? Yes! Is it fair to say that having a 2 to 3 year old is a huge time suck? Yes. Would I change it if I could? Well, the job, yes...but not the kid. I mean who doesn't wish for a better job?

Well, little boots boy is probably happy with this job.

I work for a department at a University as an Assistant to the Head. It's a fancy sounding title, but I end up just feeling like e knob...like a pee-on, like a person who is helping someone else succeed in while at the same time not succeeding. I rarely write anymore....except for the job and that is not creative writing my friends, it is not at all. I rarely craft. I made E a doll for his birthday, but that's about it for the last year. I hardly even read blogs. I think it has everything to do with being too busy both at work and home. Obviously, blogging and reading blogs at work is a no no...though I might be doing it right now because it's spring break and no one is here, and at home, by the time E is asleep and I have cleaned the kitchen, I'm ready to watch one TV show and call it a night. That's it.

Night is a bit of a circus sometimes. It's hard for me to deal with in a rational way...I think because I'm so tired from working and then I have to just swing into high 3 year old gear and roll with the punches. And E is getting better at playing by himself, but he isn't the kind of kid you can turn your back on. He just might scale a bookshelf or find something he shouldn't have. He's gotten so tall that there is only one home surface he can't reach that I can reach. This has made said surface into a verifiable disaster area...as everything gets stuck up there that needs to get out of his reach. And if he has the idea to do it, he simply pulls a chair over and reaches the top and all the things on it easily. he knows he isn't supposed to do this, but sometimes, he does it anyway.

All of this is to say why I haven't blogged in a while. I just can't. By night's end I'm wordless...and wordless blogs are ok now and then, but it's not why I blog.

Now that I have that off my chest, I will let one other thing off and then I will update and go. I am still planning on making the give away winner her squirrel. If you still read this, please know that I think of it often.

ok....updates.
1. E was sick with stomach flu this weekend. He HATES throwing up. Even while he is doing it he says how yucky it it (yes, talks while the puke is coming out). I hate throwing up too, but I was impressed that he was able to talk while doing it. He said later that he wished it didn't have to come out of his mouth.
2. His 3yr old healthy boy visit found him 3 ft 1.5 inches tall and 31 pounds.
3. We live in a sketchy neighborhood and the other day I drove through a fight and someone tried to get into my car. I didn't mean to drive through a fight, it was just there.
4. As a result we are moving....though we were moving before that too...this just makes it even more important.
5. We just found out that E is pretty far down on every waiting list for every school we applied for him to go to...thanks Chicago Public Schools. We really needed more stress. We'll just send him to the neighborhood school where the fight was that I drove through.
6. I need to breathe and stop thinking the worst.
7. I'm tired of being run by our debt.
8. I've still only lost 20 lbs at wait w..atch.ers. I think I am going to juggle the money and just follow the program but use the money spent there to join the Gym here at school instead.
9. in the more than year since I have written: I had emergency surgery for a hernia, J's mom had a stroke, then J's mom had open heart surgery to repair a hole in her heart, my brother went to and came back safely from a non military mission in Afghanistan, e learned how to use the potty and now only wears a diaper at night, we moved and will move again, I took a new job at the university.
10. I have missed blogging but can't promise I'll keep up.

Have a good day...I'm going to try to do the same.

3!

What I made him.

What we made him for cake.

home made dino pinata. Made by J. She rocks!

She made the crown too.

A constant theme...no time to post. But I will post these 3 year old pictures from E's party in case anyone still reads this. If you do read this, please comment. Thanks!

Still Alive

I promise that I will post one more time before he turns 3 on 2/20/2011.
I miss blogging but am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO impossibly busy.

Trixie

trixie before her new home, but after eating

trixie, after her first meal





I know I haven't blogged in a while, partly because it gets more daunting every day that I don't to actually do it. I feel impossibly behind and so I just avoid blogging. But something happened this week. And it's not even peanut related, really. So I will save a catch up post for next time, or never, and share with you the story of trixie...dumpster cat.

The other day I was driving down my alley minding my own business and ahead, I saw a man and a woman looking under a dumpster for cans. Now's a good time to say that our neighborhood is less than awesome. We like it, but we know that in reality its not as financially stable as where we lived before (huh, but isn't that true of us?). It's in transition (also us). So when people approach you and you are driving, it's best to just go on and pretend not to see them. I have a well practiced regretful head shake, and I can look right through people who come too close and won't back away. I can even add an eyebrow furl, puckered lips of regret for their situation. It works and keeps us safe/unbothered/isolated/etc, though suspect that I'm not fooling anyone and that as kind as I wish my expression of regret to be, I probably seem just too stuck up, too Bourgeois.

But, given my very skilled expressions, it came as a great surprise to me when the woman approached the car and stood right next to the drivers side window and lifted up her purse. Now you and I know that you do NOT open your window when a person you don't know walks up to your car and shows you something. Was she trying to show me drugs? If so, could she see I had a kid with me? Then I heard her say something I have dreams about, but have never heard before. "we found a kitten. Can you help us?"

A kitten? finger goes to let down window. "Can you help us?" me: "I can't have another animal" her, "please, we can't take care of it. It won't eat. There was another kitten too, but it died today." me: "oh no. Can you take it home?" the man now "we are homeless" me, in my head "shit." out loud: "oh, wow, sorry, can i see it?" Woman opens purse: a very small kitten meows from within. Yep that's a kitten. Not a gun or a knife or some drugs. Then the woman says, "i think its 4 weeks old. it won't eat." then they both continue to plead with me to take it, so I agree to. Looking for something to hold it in or with because it is filthy. The man says, "give her the purse. We found the purse too" the woman now, "I kinda wanted to keep the purse." Knowing I would only throw away the purse I said, "keep the purse. I can just hold it. Then she removes the thing from the purse, and the man offers a shirt he found in the trash which smells strongly of cologne and begins to hand it to me, but then pauses...."are you sure you can take care of it?" I say, "I'm a dog trainer. I will find it a home. Until then, it can stay with me." The man says, "give it to her. She has a kid." as if my mother-status would qualify me to care for a tiny little kitten. Then the woman hands it to me. And I have a kitten. I find a clean, but not 100% so (just food crumbs on it) cloth diaper in the back seat to wrap around the shirt. Then thank me and thank me and bless me and we drive away. Me, Peanut, kitty. She cries now. I thinks she must miss the woman, but this isn't even her last transition. I cannot have another cat. as much as I love kittens, I do not love cats all that much.

We bring the trembling kitty home and watch life come into it as it eats and eats a half can of wet food. It's incredible. Later that night, she is playful, not shakey, and on her way to her new home. The next day, she is named trixie. She weighs in at one pound.

The whole experience makes me glad to have a home. Glad to have a home for my animals. And glad for such a network of friends.

And although I must not update right now, I will post some peanut pics for those of you here just for those.

love this pic of peanut dancing.


boating this summer with uncle M.

feeding our chicken who lives with our friend.

saying goodbye to the beach, which is artificial and gets drained after labor day.

Knitting.

Oh, and if you're wondering, I have lost 17 lbs so far on w>eigh>t w. Almost 10% my starting weight. I feel awesome.

to blog or not to blog...

that is the question

whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer
in private the slings and errors of outrageous toddlers
or to take up blogging against a sea of diapers
and by reporting, clean them. to write, to post
no more -- and with a post we say we end
the headaches and the thousand natural shocks
our nerves are heir to -- tis a conversation
blogged as much as wished. to write to post
to post perchance to read. Ay there's the rub,
for in that post that's read what comments may come
when we have gathered all that we have said
is there some meaning? There's the respect
that makes meaning of the insanity of a day so long.
For who would bear the bites and kicks of life
the incessant repeating of elmo's song, the peed on opportunity
the pangs of despised love, the laws delay
the insolence of toddlers and the spurns
the patient cat who is unworthy takes.
When we ourselves might invite others to quiet us
with a honest blog post.