I'm still here

This is just a note to say I'm here but busy.
I'll tell ya'll why later.
There will be good stories I'm sure...

cirque de so-flea

Since the leaves have fallen, our dogs like to go out and crunch though them and leave deposits in the drifts, like little land-poo-mines.
The problem is that fleas live in the leaves, and when they trot back in the house they bring the fleas with them.
Kevin finds this infestation a challenge-- sort of a seek and destroy mission, you could say.
Inevitably, the flea portmanteaus start.
First we call the dog Mo-flea-to.
Then when Kevin thinks he has a flea in his grip only to watch it leap away, he is de-flea-ted.
Etc.
I'm a little ashamed to reveal this habit of ours, to be honest.

Tonight I cracked myself up with this:
Mojito was lying on what's left of my lap when I have a laptop on it, when I spotted a flea making its way down his back. I missed at first pinch, but the flea didn't jump away; it was rather laggard about its escape.
I got it on the second pinch and then told Kevin how slow the flea was. He said it must have been sleepy. And I said:
"You mean flea-py."

Ok, it's funnier if you say it out loud.

Baby Tuesday

Sorry this post didn't happen earlier in the day . We had to go grocery shopping, vote, make chili soy-dogs for lunch and buy a darn baby swing. That hurt worse than submitting to the carrier. Sheesh.



Great Auntie Sandi 

We still think it's the cutest thing in the world when she smiles, so we took her picture... 

again 

and again 

Count Bab-ula. I vant to suck your milk. 

eat, drive, more eating, drive again...

On Saturday night, we partook in a "progressive dinner." The in-laws graciously babysat the little bug, allowing us seven straight hours of mobile gluttony.
If you're not familiar with the concept, I'll enlighten you:
Each course of a meal is eaten at a different house, and by "course" I mean enough food to be a meal in itself. I proved to have a hollow leg, although frankly I held off a bit to allow for maxiumum chocolate fondue consumption. (Ohhh, chocolate fountain, so calori-ffic. You would have thought I was still pregnant.)
We ended the evening playing The Newlywed Game. Yes, there is an official board game of one my mom's favorite game shows. Unfortunately, Bob Eubanks doesn't fit in the box. We decided to skip questions such as "which friend would your husband say he finds most attractive?" or even worse, "If all the men in the room did a full monty dance number, whom would you tip?" Those questions will cost you weeks in marital counseling or at least a couple of nights on the couch. Kevin* suffered two pillow strikes due to his answer to the question "Your wife would never win a contest of _____." He filled in the blank with "Math."
*He would want you all to know that he regained some face by being the only husband to correctly answer "what is your mother-in-law's birthday?"



Does my head look "loafish" to you? 

I saw two gifts come sailing in

A couple of days ago I received two catalogs in the mail. Without looking, and as I do with all catalogs and magazines, I set them on top of the toity to examine on later visits. One was a Bed Bath and Beyond mailer and the other was a Christian Children's Fund gifts catalog.
Upon later inspection, I noticed this:

For the price of an espresso machine, I could buy First-Aid Equipment for One Medical Station in Ukraine.

or for something a little less expensive:

For the price of a jewelry cleaner, I could buy a One Fuel-Efficient Stove for a Family in Ethiopia.

It kinda made me feel ill.
I offered to Kevin the idea this Christmas we could buy useful things for needy people in our friends and families' names instead of buying them stuff. But he said that would be more of a guilt-trip on people.

Readers, what do you think? If someone did that to you, bought a fruit tree in your name for a family in India would you think that was a jab, or no?

Comment away!

My "It" was STP, now is "It" yours?

I was cleaning our office (a.k.a. Franklin's poopin' room) this morning and I came to my STP collection and thought "what am I going to do with all this?"
Ebay! That's the answer.
Would you like this?
Or maybe I can interest you in this?

I'm giving the $ from the sales to World Vision.
I really hope somebody is still holding on to their STP obsession, because clearly mine's been over for a while.

sigh, alright I admit it

It hurts me to say it, but I was wrong about these carrier things.
Wrong Wrong Wrong.
She loves it, and it makes it so much easier to get her in and out of the car.
It's like her little recliner that goes anywhere.
A huge thank you to Aurora for sending me one.  

how could his mouth be cleaner than mine?

This morning the dogs stared me down while I fed the baby until I got up and fed them their kibbles. I put both bowls down and left the room to gather a load of laundry when I hear an angry dog scuffle.
I return to find two guilty-looking dogs, one empty bowl (Franklin's) and one half eaten bowl.
Obviously Franklin had tried to eat Mojito's food after he finished his.
I told them both they were bad, put Mojito in the bathtub (a.k.a. Time Out) and told Franklin to lay down and "stay" in the other room. On my way back to the bedroom, I notice that there was a distinctive pattern of little poops in the office-- Franklin had left his calling card sometime in the night. "One thing at a time, I'll deal with that in a bit," I thought.
Again I'm in the other room collecting the white-load when I hear "snarfle snarfle slurp snarfle," Franklin was eating Mojito's food again! I run back through the house, scream at Franklin, put him in the office by himself, and I might have said "there, you can stay in there with your poop" or something like that. I let Mojito out of the tub, give him more kibbles for him to eat in peace.
After I had finally put the clothes in the washing machine, I decided Franklin could come out. I opened the door, Franklin trotted out, and as my eyes panned to where the stonehenge of poop had previously been laid I noticed--
It was gone.


I'd like to believe he was trying to make amends and clean it up.
But no, he's just a gross poop-eating dog.

Baby Tuesday

God bless this baby-holdin' man 


It's like there are paparazzi gnomes taking this shot and she's saying "please no photos!" 

If you act goofy for long enough, right in her face, you can get a little smile. 

We were pretty excited about her smiling ability. I mean, anything that strays from the pattern of cry, eat, cry, poop, poop, cry, poop, sleep, is thrilling.  

I encourage nose picking, really anything that makes her not cry is just ducky with me.
Oh and see that throw pillow? That fell victim to babybarf at about 4:45 a.m. this morning. She was all sleepy and just as I thought, "Okay, let's put you in your bed," boom! barf all over her, the pillow, me, her blanket. Then I set her down on the changing towel to go get new clothes for her, and I come back and she's barfed on the towel too. Thank heaven after I cleaned it all up (and fed her again!) she slept for 4 hours. I'll take what I can get.  

I'm not a good seamstress, I was never formally taught how to sew, so I just wing it most of the time. I think Cricket will be permanently scarred.


Believe it or not, this was *before* the alterations. 


This meltdown was afterward. 

the Mofleato, the Chorizo, the Tiajuana Pirrana...

Franklin got his own post on Friday, so Mojito gets his own today.


Peligro! Achtung! This chihua-schund is a licking loose cannon. These men fell victim, sometimes he's licks faster than film can capture. Do not underestimate Mojito! 

Mojito decided to pull his weight (although puny) around here and make his own salsa. *Fur Free!* 

wee little recluse

Yesterday I met some moms who were discussing how their kids liked going to preschool, and comparing to what degree they were enjoying it, and then I chimed in "I didn't like preschool at all."
Screeech! [Incredulous stare.]
"You didn't?!"
"Well no...you see, I liked to just do my own thing, live in my own little world at home."
They still didn't understand. I guess they never met a reclusive preschooler before, past or present.
I later discussed it with Kevin and he said "I don't remember preschool."
(He doesn't remember much of his childhood, sometimes I think he fell down a well at some point, causing memory loss.)
I said "you don't? [insert heckling here] I remember alot!"
So this is what I remember of Childrens Creative Center:

1.It was run by an "old" couple that creeped me out. I put old in quotes because in hindsight they probably weren't that old, maybe in their 40s. But the woman had dark puffy hair and big 80's magenta-tinted glasses so you never saw her eyes, it just made her seem evil. Whenever I saw her, I got the same sensation I get when I see a cop in my rearview mirror, even if I'm not speeding. And her husband, which I thought looked like Ed McMahon (yes I knew who he was back then, I watched alot of TV), had patches on his blazer sleeves. To this day, when I see blazer-sleeve-patches, I think of that guy.
2. They asked us each to bring a box of crayons. My mom bought me the coolest crayons on the market and I was so excited. Then to my horror, they took them from me and dumped them in a community crayon tub! Occasionally later on I would find broken stubs of my once pristine crayons, and get depressed. Crayon Communists!
3. The music teacher was very ambitious. We learned how to play our own halfsize violins and even how to rosin our bows and what rosin and violin bows are made from. We sung songs from the Police's Synchonicity album and learned every gruesome verse from The Cat Came Back.
4. A hispanic lady came in occasionally and taught us Spanish. Yeah like that was gonna stick.
5. We had ballet class. Ballet class is a cruel joke for the biggest girl in the class who wears grey sweatshirts and jeans to class while the other little princesses wear leotards. We all had to wear pink tutus.
6. I played Simon for the first time and got annoyed by it and gave it to some other kid after a couple of tries.
7. Our class got in trouble one time for being too loud (which I always felt was unjust because I was a good quiet girl) and the teacher made us all hold our arms in the air for seemingly hours. In reality it was probably only a few minutes, but man, that was rough.
8. I saw my first "tantrum." It was like watching a train wreck right before my eyes. "What's wrong with that guy?!" I thought "He's got problems."
9. I had my first headache outside in the play area. I remember walking up to one of the teachers and trying to communicate that my head hurt and she didn't believe me. I was frustrated that she thought I would lie, but after all I was the little girl that cried and said "I want my mom" the entire first day. I guess I could have had other motives.
10. We had 3 computers to use/play on. I wasn't really into them-- but I've made up for that now. :)

show me love, Franklin

The American Boston Terrier Rescue (otherwise known as a Boston lovin' lady who lives outside of Gainesville, TX) is having a calendar photo contest to raise money for the bean dogs. I submitted the two below.

"hello ladies." 

Franklin, point-me-towards-the-luau, Thayer