I guess, in a way, I’m more like my father than I want to admit.   When I ask that something be done, I expect it to be done.  I have way more patience than he ever had, but the expectation is there.   When I reminded Bug that juice was to stay in the kitchen, she threw her cup (with a lid and a straw) with force back into the kitchen and said “NO!”    Before she could blink an eye, I grabbed her hand and made her go into the kitchen, pick up the cup and put it in the sink.   With a quick reminder that she needed to do as Mommy asks, we went about our day.  

Bedtime came and we did our usual ritual of reading and snuggling.   She had a nap at a reasonable time in the afternoon and went to bed willingly at 8:15.   She started messing around and playing on footboard and wouldn’t stop.   Then the full out screaming tantrum started.   Reasoning works pretty well with her - usually.   She screamed and cried, threw her bottle and her binkie.   (yeah, it’s not about the bottle right now, okay?)   As I was bending over trying to talk to her while looking her right in the eyes, she tried to kick me.    SNAP!   I told her to straighten up and settle down and walked out of the room.  I was done (for a while).   She kept screaming and was waking up Littlest.   Daddy went in and tried to sternly talk to her, but she cried even harder and screamed more.   I counted to 10, took a deep breath, took a drink of tea and a bite of cinnamon roll  and then went back in.   She was ready to listen.   While she calmed down and I held her, I told her that when she was angry she needed to use her words.   She should never hit or kick.   She needed to tell us that she was angry and try to explain why.   I gave her some examples and told her that while someone can be angry with you, they can still love you.    After a bit of quiet, Bug said, “Daddy angry me.”   Yes, Bug, Daddy was angry with you because you were crying and screaming and trying to kick Mommy.   He still loves you very much.   And Mommy loves you very much.   After another bit of quiet, she said, “I angry Daddy.”  I asked her why and she said, “Daddy light on me - eyes hurt” meaning that when Daddy came in to talk to her, he turned the light on and it hurt her eyes and she was mad about that.   We talked a little bit more and then she said, “I tired” and laid down to sleep.  

As hard as the evening was and frustrated I was getting, it was worth it to have the conversation we did.   Bug is the most wonderfully affectionate, but emotional little girl.  I don’t want to break her spirit, just guide it.  After watching/listening to a couple with a little girl at a bus stop argue and when the little girl started crying, the mom rudely told to  her to “shut your mouth up” and to quit whining - Daddy and I think we are doing okay so far.  Anything beats that kind of behavior.

She’s not only a miracle, she’s a genius!

(*At least I think she’s a genius.)

Daddy’s friend from out of state came to visit his family and called Daddy yesterday afternoon to get together. As far as I know, Daddy has seen his friend only once in the last ten or so years. They talk on the phone, but that’s about it. I’ve talked to the friend a time or two, but never met him. Well, they made up for lost time. Oh boy did they make up for lost time.

They stumbled home the first time about 8:30 or 9 pm.  I was already having a hard time getting the girls to sleep, but when they heard Daddy come through the door, that was it. They were excited that Daddy was home and then the friend. The girls fell in love with the friend. Bug at one point even said, “I love you!” to him.  We gotta watch out for those girls, especially if they are falling in love with tall, dark, bad boys already!  After a short time with the friend, he convinced the girls it was time to go to sleep so they could grow up tall and strong.   They went to sleep fairly easily after that.

Daddy and his friend weren’t done yet and off they went, taking taxis here and there.   I don’t know what time they finally came home, but it wasn’t last night.    I hope for Daddy’s sake that the friend doesn’t come back for another ten years because it may take Daddy that long to recover!

Needless to say, friend stayed on our couch last…er….rather this morning instead of driving home.     Daddy wasn’t in any shape to take the girls to “school” so I went to work  late.   It’s not very often I get to drop them off, so it was kind of a treat for me.  

Just another day in paradise.    Life never gets boring here.

November is Prematurity Awareness Month and today is the Fight for Preemies.    Click on the badge above to learn more.

Without the March of Dimes and their continuing efforts to fight prematurity, our Littlest wouldn’t be the wonderfully, stubborn, healthy little girl she is now.   Even the efforts to save our Sweet Baby Boy wouldn’t have been available.    They also helped us in the NICU with a bag of necessities (toothbrush, disposable camera, etc.), a book for Bug, food,  gas cards so we could keep coming to visit Littlest, as well as emotional support. 

These are the pictures of the house when we first purchased it over four horrible years ago.   What a nightmare.   We tried though. 

Notice the hideous color on the walls

Horrible tile job and peel and stick linoleum tiles on the floor, walls not painted, barely patched.

Backyard looking in the yard of the vicious pitbull (and the fence that she jumped over to attack Big Yellow Dog).

Back yard looking over the soon to be Lake of Fire.

The next picture is about a year after we bought the house.

This wasn’t our final product, but it was what I had on my computer.    More painting, new fence, the roof redone (getting rid of that stupid thing on top and fixing the multiple leaking areas), flooring, septic system.   Then started the failures - mold, electrical failure, septic system still not working well, impossible to keep clean, mice in the garage, bad neighborhood, nobody wanting to go outside.  It was a  cold and uncomfortable house. 

This is our nice, stress free home now.

The only thing I don’t like is the white rock, but you know what?   I can totally live with it!

Littlest is coming right along as well.   She says A-B-C-D (and sometimes E), but won’t go further, but loves the ABC song.   She likes the “puppy song,” which I realized was counting to 15.   When we count to 15 we go, “1…..15, 15 puppies!” from 101 Dalmatians.  Then Bug always says, “Puppies Gone!  OH NO!   Puppies back.  Cat got them.”    It’s quite dramatic, but because of the puppy part, Bug can easily count to 15 now (we are working higher).  Littlest has picked up on the OH NO part of the count, though last night she said 7, 8, 9 out of the blue.     It’s so fun to watch them learn new things.   The Magna-Doodle is a great help with shapes, letters, numbers, and even crude drawings of animals and dancing people.   Bug loves it when I draw a pig face.  Not sure why.   Last night she had me drawing every family member dancing.

The reason I was forced to draw dancing family members was because we were watching Dancing with the Stars, which Bug loves.   She loves to dance throughout the show and has learned some flourishes and dramatic dance moves.   I was laughing so hard watching her.   Littlest loves to dance too, but has an earlier bedtime, so doesn’t get to watch the show when it’s on at 8.   Last night Bug was perfecting her jitterbug.   We need a video camera (do you hear that Santa). 

Finally, last night we splurged and went to a Chinese buffet for dinner.  It was almost cheaper than all four of us going to BurgerBills.   The young lady seating us wanted to know Bug’s name because I had called her Bug-Bug.   I spelled her name and told the young lady that everybody calls Bug that.   Then she wrote it in Chinese on the receipt for us to see.   She asked how far apart the girls were and because she spoke broken English, it was quite a discussion.   All through the meal various women who were working there came by to see the girls and all their hair.   Daddy had several discussions about Littlest and the fact she was a little over one pound when she was born.   The girls loved eating there.  Bug had wanted “rice,”  not Mexican rice or teriyaki rice, just “rice rice.”   They had rice, jello, plus a variety of other things.   Finally Daddy got them each a swirl ice cream cone.  Littlest was in HEAVEN.   With her eyes half closed in pure enjoyment, she lovingly ate that ice cream cone to the very last drop (that hadn’t dripped already).   When we left, the girls were waved goodbye to and our first server gave us probably about 10 fortune cookies!   Littlest’s fortune said, “Time heals all wounds.   Chin up.”   Very appropriate.    I hope they welcome us back to that place (it was good) because, even though I tried to clean up after the girls, we left a mess (and a good tip).  

Every day is always an adventure!

I certainly didn’t win any parenting awards this weekend, not even a wife of the second award. It was just an all around cranky weekend. As always, we had a bunch of errands to run and one was Babies R’ Us to look for a child safety lock for the sliding closet doors. Of course since we were there and Toys R’ Us was attached, we did our normal play time there. It was fun for a while. Then when the two kids riding scooters were whizzing around after being told by a store employee to stop, and almost hit Bug, I lost IT! I yelled at them. I pointed and told them that they had been told before to stop it and that they had better stop it NOW. Then something about almost hitting my child. The boy just looked at me without emotion. That really ticked me off. Daddy was kind of taken aback at my outburst. We did notify another store employee and they went searching for them. Excuse me, but where were the parents? Probably watching us and laughing. We made it to the front of the store when all Hell broke loose. Both girls ran to the back of the store. I heard Daddy yelling at them (I had paid attention to the videos one minute too long). I ran to the back of the store and we frantically searched for them. We could hear them giggling.  We each picked up a child once we caught them and carried them back to the front.   Of course there was sobbing, crying, kicking, screaming, lots of loud, “no, no, NOOOOO!”   Everybody was staring.   I would stare too, but I was too busy trying not to be beat up by a 22 month old.   They both had short naps and snacks before we went in, but obviously it wasn’t enough.   We made it out of the store without security stopping us.   Whew!

Weird thing about the day was earlier when we were at Goodwil, Bug was wearing a pair of purple wings just following us around.    All of a sudden this little girl comes over and starts ripping the wings off of Bug.  Daddy yells, “Hey, that’s my kid and you better leave her alone” and starts walking to the child who was the same size as Bug.  The girl left and Bug stayed between us.   Not 10 minutes later, the same girl comes back over and starts shoving Bug and trying to rip off the wings again.   I went over and physically separated them.  Bug was so shocked she just stood there taking it.    About that time, some adult relation or friend or whatever started walking towards the girl, but didn’t say a word.   Not one reprimand, nothing.   This girl was aggressive!   Fudgesicles.     Then awhile later, Littlest was playing with some little rubber stamp things on a little table when a little boy comes over and scatters all the stamps off the table.   I sternly told him that was unacceptable and he better leave my daughter alone.   Luckily his parent picked him up and put him back in the shopping cart.    So why weren’t my kids in the shopping cart?  Because they were behaving and not running around wildly.     So you see, by the time we got to Toys R’ Us, I’d had it with unruly kids trying to hurt mine.  

I was cranky all weekend.  We had to carry crying kids out of another store on Saturday.  I was bossy, nit picky, and unbending.   It wasn’t a full moon and it wasn’t “that time of the month.”   I just wanted a bit of time to MYSELF, but it never happened.   Just five minutes even.   I love my family dearly, but I wanted a little bit of me time that never came.   I’m not bitter about it…nope, not at all.    HA!

We did manage to get Littlest and Bug to the doctor yesterday.   They put her on a super powerful antibiotic since her ear was still draining lots of pus after four days of antibiotic ear drops.  The doctor also thinks her rash is perioral dermatitis and it is hard to remedy, but the super antibiotic should help it.   The doctor was estatic that Littlest’s lungs were clear and thinks all the coughing is from the draining ear.    Bug had the ugly bump on her checked and got her  H1N1 shot.   She gave the nurse the stink eye after the shot.   Dad rewarded her by letting her pick out a bunch of stickers…say, oh about 15 or more!!!   Then Daddy got 4 for himself and Littlest got 2.   Daddy got a little lecture from Mama about having a bit of dignity  and less greed when it comes to getting stickers.   Hopefully now everybody is on their way to health again. 

Later in the evening, Bug found the stethoscope that I used when I put the NG tube in Littlest when she first came home.   Bug was being the doctor and checking everyone.   I was deemed sick while the others were fine.    It’s probably true.   When I was trying to put on Bug’s jammies, she kept telling me to be “careful Mama” because of her bandaid and her shot.   I showed Bug where I got my H1N1 shot and my Daffy Duck bandaid.   Then I told her it was all better and took off the bandaid.   She kept saying, “All better Mama?”  I’m trying to get her to understand that just because there is a bandaid, it doesn’t always mean that it still hurts.   If I put a pretty bandaid on her just for fun (because she asks for it), she treats it as if she has an owie and won’t let you touch it.  She’s my little hypochondriac.   But then again, that means lots of extra hugs and kisses.

In other breaking news, I got my H1N1 shot today.

Now for a Littlest moment. Last night Littlest found Daddy’s belt. It looks kinda like the collars the dogs have. Littlest decided that she needed to find the dogs and put their collars back on. She calls both dogs “Missy” no matter how many times we tell her the other one’s name. She started walking through the house saying, “Missy, Missy…..MISSY…..MISSY!!!” Now remember, she says this in a deep, gravely sort of a voice. She went into the living room, kitchen, bedroom, look outside the patio door, and everywhere else looking for MISSY! We were laughing so hard. She sounds like she should be a hit man for the mafia or something.