Not Me! Monday - Early Edition

Welcome to Not Me! Monday, a blog carnival started by MckMama as a way to allow us to share our imperfections.... by denying them.

Well, among other things, I certainly did not neglect my blog for two whole weeks. If I created this blog as a way for other bloggers and commenters to get to know me when they clicked on my comments, what good would it be to leave huge gaps in between my posts? And also, I would not clog up my blog with a ENORMOUSLY HUGE developmental milestones post that really ought to have been saved as Word document and printed to go in Kibwana's baby book. I would make sure that I was actually sharing information about myself or at least about current events going on in our household.

I also certainly did NOT fall for that nefarious marketing scheme, the free sample. I have a very tight budget and I would never be dumb enough to eat a fresh-baked cookie sample (while I was hungry) on my way to buy ONE THING, a loaf of bread, and then decide that I simply MUST have a bag of those cookies. And I'll tell you what, if I did spend four times as much on the bag of cookies as I spent on the loaf of bread that I went in for, I would be logical enough to share all those cookies equally between the entire family. I wouldn't even CONSIDER hiding the bag in the pantry so the kids didn't know how many there were. And if I HAD bought that bag of 2 dozen cookies on the way home from church today, there would be more than four remaining.
As a seasoned, experienced mother of 16 months, I did not get all paranoid in the middle of the night when my toddler woke up at 1am with a somewhat stuffy nose. I did not freak out about leaving the room. I did not take the baby, a pillow and a blanket and go lay on the couch with him to make sure I would hear if he had trouble breathing. This did not result in the baby being awake from 1am until about 3am, sitting up about every 2-3 minutes, and being told to LAY DOWN constantly. The little punk also did not cry loudly (waking up the entire household) when I whisper-yelled at him and pinned him down after he dug his sharp TOENAILS deep into my poor boobie while trying to sit up and peek over the edge of the couch at 3am! Then, after we, um, didn't finally fall asleep on the couch, he didn't wake up at 4 am, scaring the tar out of me and waking up the entire household again. I didn't then magically decide that my paranoia about the stuffy nose was unwarranted, dump him back in the crib, and go sleep like the dead until half an hour before we had to leave for church this morning.
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In other news, I absolutely, definitely DID try MckMama's crock pot oatmeal (well, ok, technically Col made it because he's wonderful like that) and ended up eating it for breakfast AND lunch one day, and it was so good, I had the leftovers for breakfast two other days last week. NOM NOM NOM.
We did two parts water, two parts milk, one part steel cut oats, and since our crock pot lid is missing, he just put a large stock pot on the stove on LOW all night and it worked fine and didn't burn. I like my oatmeal basically plain but with a little... (Col, reading over my shoulder, says a LOT) of brown sugar mixed in. Also, it was the best bargain ever because we found it in bulk for $.79/lb!

Not Me! Monday, Tornado Edition

Welcome to Not Me! Monday. Created by MckMama, it's a chance for all moms to stand up and proudly declare all of their "shortcomings"... by vehemently denying them. (Head on over to her blog for hundreds more Not Me! Monday posts)


Well, I, for one, certainly did NOT have an interesting week this first week that the girls were in town for the summer.

For instance, last Wednesday, I was not completely unaware of the huge, amazing, dangerous storm warnings, and my first clue was not hearing the tornado/storm sirens going off at the end of our block. When Kibibi freaked out at the term "tornado siren" and asked what it meant, my darling husband would never be so insensitive (and inaccurate) as to say that those sirens are used "to indicate a potential for rotation", giving his oldest daughter a heart attack. [fyi they are set off any time there is severe weather, not just tornadoes.]

I am certainly not paranoid or freaked out by tornados, so if he had done that, I would not have been irrationally annoyed with him for freaking her out, thus causing me to have to calm her down when I was trying not to be freaked out myself.

[Editor's note: i tried writing this next sentence in the funny not me! style but it got so convoluted i had to change it. Anyhow... I'm still feeling major guilt that I was SO much more concerned about Kibwana's safety than any of the rest of us, that my solution for Kibibi's anxiety was to drag his playpen to the safest part of the house, give her a flashlight just in case we lost power, and set her to entertaining him. On the one hand, I wasn't taking the storm warning seriously, but my natural paranoia broke in and prompted me to put him in a safe place anyway just in case. On the other hand, I had Kati in the kitchen helping me finish dinner, and I wasn't concerned about that. sigh. stepparenting fail I guess :(...]

So yeah, I would never find myself putting my natural child's safety above that of my stepkids or my husband. Not me.

ANYhow, back to my totally imaginary story.

My idiot, I mean CHARMING, husband would not go outside in the front yard when the wind gusts visibly seemed to be reaching 60+ miles per hour. And if he did, I'm such a sweet angel, I would never shrewishly screech at him about it, right?

After the storm had completely passed, the still-freaked-out Kibibi then claimed she could have seen an electrical explosion thing that had happened during an ice storm last year, but which she had heard about and never seen when it really happened. I did NOT roll my eyes and sigh heavily and sarcastically at this (because if it was happening now, you would not question whether or not it was happening).Therefore, I was not interrupted mid-eye-roll when Col opened the garage door to prove it was her imagination, and saw that A JUNGLE HAD SPROUTED IN MY DRIVEWAY OUT BACK!

Nope, no jungles here. No 2' and 3'-diameter trees fallen on our eaves and all around our car and my FIL's van. No interrupting of Kati's birthday party while Col and his dad took hacksaws to tree branches to determine the status of the cars underneath two trees worth of branches.

If such a thing had happened, and my car survived without a single scratch, I would have been grateful every second, and I would NEVER have had a moment's worth of regret that we missed the chance to total it and get out from under the payments so that we could afford to get a van that we need so badly.

And finally, if all this had happened, and Col was outside in the rain the next day, cutting off branches with a hacksaw, I would never, EVER have taken the baby outside and let him play in the tree debris and mud in the alley, barefoot.


STICKS, MOMMY! OMG STICK HEAVEN!!!!!

STICK STICK STICK STICK STICK STICK STIIIIIIIIIIICK!

(PS for the record - no, the electrical thing was all in her imagination. yes, it probably was a tornado; the damage was extreme throughout the neighborhood and rotation -but no funnel- was seen by one of my neighbors. yes, we did go back in and finally open presents. and weirdly enough, no, we had no idea the trees had fallen down until we opened the garage door. everyone in the neighborhood remarked on how all the crazy fallen trees and limbs happened without them knowing about it, without making crazy noises. and i don't think any houses were majorly damaged, although we had some damage to our garage roof/eave and stuff like that.)

(Above: First thing next morning - for size comparison, that white flat thing at center left is my garage door (with a city trash can in front of it)

Below: after Col got some of it cleared away)

Not ME! Monday, June 1 Edition

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week (and share your own).

As for me, well...
I certainly would never forget about Not Me! Monday. Which is why I'm totally NOT at work trying to write this as quickly as possible so that I can get BACK to doing work. *ahem.*

I'm totally not so desperate to win a The HP Mini Vivienne Tam Edition clutch laptop that I would insert a blatant advertisement for Blissfully Domestic's laptop giveaway post, in order to get another entry. Because I totally did not instantly tweet about it, follow their feed, and post all the comments necessary to get the maximum number of entries. And I am completely not sabotaging my own chances of winning anything by telling you about how cute and awesome those laptops are.

I definitely did not spend all the money I made (by selling things on eBay) before I actually GOT that money. And since I am a good mother, I definitely DID NOT spend almost all of it on things that I have been dying to buy for Kibwana, even though Kati's birthday was last week and I haven't even finished getting her presents.

I totally did NOT leave my 15 month old son unattended in his room, babyproofed or not, and then hear him yelling and fussing and think "he's just mad that I left the room" and let it go for about 60 seconds. Because it certainly wouldn't take me a full minute to recognize his "blocked from a goal" or "stuck" sounding cry. And if it did, I would RUN straight to his room, not mosey along assuming he couldn't fit his toy into the kleenex box or reach a ball that had rolled under the crib. Therefore, it could not possibly have been ME that would have arrived to find said 15 month old sitting on the bottom drawer of his armoire (butt on the top of the drawer face and feet INSIDE the drawer), having pulled the next drawer out, onto his lap, and getting his chubby little legs pinched. But if it had been, I would totally be GRATEFUL that he was not seriously injured and only needed 30 seconds of comforting while crying piteously. I would never be offended that he didn't want to be held any longer than that, that he would rather go play than get love from his Mommy who may or may not have needed snuggle-comfort from panic more than he did.

Also, since my husband and I certainly do NOT think that the toddler learning a bad word from Meet the Fockers is funny, Col would never have taught Kibwana to say "hole." If he did, and Kibwana caught on INSTANTLY and decided holes are cool and spent all day pointing them out to us (like a hole in the sidewalk, hole in the wall from a removed screw, etc), I would NEVER, ever have taught Kibwana that a belly button is also a hole. I definitely have a much greater sense of propriety than that, and would certainly NOT have taught Kibwana how to find my belly button. I absolutely would NOT laugh and encourage him every time he pulled up my shirt, poked my belly button, and said HOLE! Nope, NOT ME!

(But just for the record, if Col HAD done such a thing, I definitely would have scolded him for it and made sure he didn't get any funny ideas about teaching the baby the other half of a bad word. I do have my standards, you know.)

See you next week!

A Whole New Use for Pancakes

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

Col went on a road trip this past weekend. Friday went surprisingly well. Saturday went pretty well, too, and I got 3 dishwasher loads done (including all of the dishwashable toys that had drool and other unrecognizable scum on them) and four loads of laundry.

Kibwana has been learning about blowing his nose. He sneezes and I RUN for a kleenex, shouting "Mommy fix it! Leave it!" and praying I get to his runny boogers before he does. You can imagine how well that usually works out...

Anyhow, he loves to copy us (and bodily functions are amusing even at this tender age - fake sneezing is tops, followed closely by imitating [baaa] when adults burp) so at some point in the past week I had an epiphany: all I have to do is snort a few times, and he'll do it too. This has worked GREAT - his runny nose has been uncomfortable enough that he seems to be really enthused about the idea. About 50% of the time he'll give me 2-4 great blows and really clear everything out. This is great.

As a matter of fact, he found a (clean) kleenex somewhere on Friday and picked it up and held it to his face while blowing. Later that night (or early Sat morning) he found a washcloth and blew his nose in it. Remember folks, this child is 14 months old and does not yet speak - but he will blow his nose?! Awesome!!!!!!!

Ok, but then there's this: I made pancakes for lunch on Saturday. I gave Kibwana half a pancake to nom in his playpen while I scarfed my own. My eyes fixed on my plate, I suddenly heard a Bad Sound: the sound of Kibwana blowing his nose, in a playpen where he did not have any kleenex, or washcloths, or towels, or ANYthing other than a blanket and..... a pancake.

Yes people. My son, with his leet Observation Skillz, apparently figured out that pancakes are white(?) and soft, and proceeded to scrunch his half a pancake up to his face and blow his nose in it.

When this happens, which should be your first reaction: horror or amusement? I can honestly say that it was a perfect tie. My jaw fell open to laugh, and I chastened him with a horrified "Nooooooo!" mid-laugh. Apparently, he realized I was amused and proceeded to do it again. Paralyzed on the couch by my horror, mind racing as to whether I should find the camera or remove the pancake, I could only gawk as he did it a third time. Finally, I recovered long enough to dash over to the kleenex box sitting just across the room, jump to the playpen, and realize that there was no snot involved - he had been blowing in vain.

And now it's quiz time... which lovely example of motherhood let her son eat the Pancake Formerly Known As A Kleenex? Not me!

At least, that's what I'd like you to believe.