For all you moms out there..

This is hilarious! And I have to send a link because I still can't figure out how to post YouTube stuff on my blog..Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

William Tell Overture for Moms

Read the fine print

Sawyer went back to preschool today after missing Monday with the Plague. He still is congested with some post-nasal drip, but the doctor who I took him to see yesterday said as long as he's fever-free for 24 hours, he could go.

Part of me felt guilty for sending him today. I had to juggle his health vs. my sanity. Because even though he'd spiked a fever at 2 a.m. a couple nights, during the day he was acting mostly normal. He was pounding on his sister. Stealing her toys. Making loud monster noises in my face while I'm on the phone. Harassing the dogs.

I needed a break. So I sent him to preschool, where he could cough on other kids but not on me. He wasn't too thrilled about going, since apparently they don't let him watch five hours of TV like Mommy does when he doesn't feel well.

All morning I half-expected a phone call telling me to come pick him up (when David dropped him off, Sawyer's teacher was leaving - she was sick with a head cold!). But he made it through and had a good time.

He wore a nametag sticker on his shirt during school to help out the substitute teacher. He took it off when he got home and put it on the arm of the couch.

We were sitting there after lunch. I was trying to convince him that a nap was a REALLY good idea. He wasn't having it. Then I picked up the sticker with his name on it and said, "What does this say?"

He glanced at it and replied: "It says 'I don't have to go to bed.'"

Thanks for the update

So I go to get the mail, which is across the street and up one house. Sawyer comes to our screen door and shouts, "Mommy! I have skidmarks in my underwear!"

Fashion (non)Sense

We went to the aquarium this morning. Walked around for an hour or so (including feeding the lorakeets, which decided to land on my head and in my bag). Then we dropped the kids off at mother-in-laws, and David and I went out to lunch. We walked along the main street, had a quick bite, then strolled back to the car. It was a perfect day, in the low 70s and clear skies at the beach. Then we drove back to MIL's house.

Why am I sharing this incredibly mundane story of my day with you, I'm sure you're asking yourself by now. Because, when we pulled up in MIL's driveway, I for some reason happened to glance down at my feet - and noticed, much to my surprise, that I HAD TWO DIFFERENT SHOES ON!!!! At least they were both Cole Haan thongs. But I had a black patent shoe on my right foot and a brown shoe with a silver ring on my left foot. I was wearing red pants and a black shirt, so the brown was particularly egregious.

But of course the worst part is I am apparently so out of it that I didn't even freakin' notice for hours. HOURS!!

It makes me frightened of what my next fashion disaster might be. Hopefully for everyone's sake I won't leave the house without my pants..

Dressing up

I finally bought the kids their Halloween costumes. I say "finally" because apparently I'm about a month late. The ladybug costume I wanted to get for Sage was, the saleswoman told me, sold out both in the stores and on-line the first week. That would've been sometime in August! Bad Mommy for not planning two months in advance.

They are now completely obsessed with them. They want to wear them every waking moment. It is making me absolutely nuts. Because, eerily, Sawyer's personality changes. He doesn't start walking around brandishing a knife or anything, but he has this seemingly insatiable desire to tackle Sage. Or lean on her. Or push her. Luckily, she's no shrinking flamingo. She shoves him right back. But I'm about to go buy myself a referee costume. They're wearing me out! And there's still over a month to go.

Sage also saw an old bumblebee costume hanging in Sawyer's closet this morning. I bought it for $3.99 on eBay for him to wear for his first Halloween. But David decided it was too girly and I had to run out last-minute and buy a manly race car driver outfit for my macho 10 month-old.

Anyway, Sage saw the bee, starting shouting, appropriately, "BEEEE! MEEEEE!" and so I got it down and she's worn it twice already today (except for when she spilled water on it during lunch and said "No bee" and started pulling it off).

Sawyer's spider costume emboldens him to attempt gravity-defying feats, like climbing up the outside of our staircase on his "web." Luckily, he's really not a climber, so he has no problem obeying the "Don't you go one step higher!" order issued by his freaked-out mom.


Last year, the kids wore their costumes for a total of about three hours. This year, they surpassed that the first day. I have to say I'm proud of myself for allowing them to not only wear them, but to roll around on my dog-hair embedded rugs, to visit the neighbors, to even eat meals in them (with a towel wrapped protectively around their puffed out striped and be-webbed bellies).

There is a part of me that wanted to shout, "BUT WAIT! THOSE ARE FOR HALLOWEEN!" I stifled it. Maybe it's the sight of Sage's flamingo tail waddling as she walks. Or Sawyer coming up with all kinds of Spider Boy adventures (he's a friendly spider, by the way, not a scary one). I have, however, made them promise they will not grow even half an inch before the Big Day: Sawyer already has the makings of a royal wedgie in his costume.

Even if the spider loses a leg or the flamingo gets milk stains on it, it will not spoil the excitement of Halloween for them. Joy is something my kids have in abundance.

Come out, come out, where ever you are...

I got this nifty little device, thanks to my friend M, which tells me all kinds of cool things. You might have noticed the icon way down at the bottom of this blog. Sitemeter. It lets me know who's visiting my site, how long you stay, what you look at, where you came from and what you're wearing. Just kidding about the last one.

It's very cool because I have found I have some loyal readers. Some of you I know (Love ya! MWAH!). Some of you I don't. And that's okay. But as my son would say, "That's not a stranger. That's a friend!"

Anyway, if you read this blog regularly and we've never "met," please feel free to post a "hello" comment! I'd love to hear from you. Really! You don't have to give me your vitals, just a little shout out would be fabulous!

Roid Rage

I wasn't going to post about this because it's rather, well, personal.

AHAHAHAHA! Like posting about the size of my kid's poop isn't. Of course, he's a defenseless child, trusting that his Mommy would never do anything that could embarrass him. SUCKAH! Kidding! I love my boy. And some day when he is my age he will find it all amusing. I hope. If he's still speaking to me.

At any rate, I have myself a little problem. It's a small issue that has taken on great importance. In fact, one might say it's become a ginormous pain in the ass.

There were a lot of things that hurt during and after my 20-miler Saturday. I was running with a new insole for my crazily deformed foot, but didn't put an insole in my left shoe, so I was probably a bit unbalanced (save the snickering, please). That in turn threw off my gait. My left calf was cramping pretty badly. I had a side-stitch for a few miles. My hip flexors were so sore that every step was painful.

I'm sure I looked like an extra from the Night of the Living Dead as I hobbled the last four miles.

I was sore all day. My feet ached. My legs were stiff. And guess what? That was like a tiny gnat when you get to the bottom of what was most excrutiating, a certain (back)side benefit.

It is this: A hemorrhoid. An itchy, painful external hemorrhoid. Something I haven't had since giving birth. Ever get knifed in the butt? Me neither, but I bet this feels worse.

And it's not like I can ask my running coaches (both men) about my latest malady.

Googling it, quite frankly, was terrifying. I searched for "hemorrhoid" and "marathon" and got to read all kinds of icky stories from people with bleeding and runners trots, where you have to poop every few miles. Of course, after reading what some of these people go through, I was feeling a tad bit better. But only emotionally. Not physically.

I seriously have a bad case of roid rage. There is nothing quite like the feeling of a hot poker up the rump to make one not quite so tolerant toward one's fellow man (or kids or dogs or the idiot in the parking lot who just cut me off).

My poor husband, having had no experience with said condition, had the kind of morbid curiousity that he usually reserves for identifying things at the back of the refridgerator or looking at the dogs' barf to see which one ate the plastic horse.

He had to look. His retinas are now permanently imprinted. But at least now he sees I really do have some extra junk in my trunk.

Phew

Today
I
ran
TWENTY
miles.

Germ magnet

Why is it that Sawyer goes to preschool for FIVE MINUTES and gets his first cold in months? Do germs that go to preschool have superpowers? Did they know that I had just been SILENTLY congratulating myself (silenty because of the fear of jinxing us by actually speaking it aloud) for my kids being healthy for basically the entire summer.

And it's only a matter of time (hours?) before Sage gets it too. Last time she caught his cold she had a runny nose for two freaking months. Poor Sawyer has been sneezing all over her for the past 20 minutes.

WOOHOO! The triumphant return of snotapalooza!

Where only Sawyer knows your na-a-ame..

Sawyer went to preschool this summer on Tuesdays and Thursdays for a couple hours in the morning for six weeks. We became concerned because when we'd ask him who he'd played with that day, he'd either say he played by himself or that he tried to play with so-and-so, but they said he wasn't their friend anymore.

This is so not like Sawyer. He is very social and makes friends easily, and always talked about the kids in his class at his old preschool.

I brought it up with his teacher, Mrs. K. When I was speaking to her, Sawyer interrupted to tell her that he'd forgotten to bring his dinosaur to class. She pretty much blew him off, just giving him the old "uh huh" and then went back to speaking with me (I mean, it's one thing if I do that to him when I am with him all day and need him to stop talking for ONE BLESSED MINUTE. But she only has him for three hours!). Needless to say, I was not impressed.

Then, the next class, when he DID bring his dinosaur, she told me that he shouldn't bring stuff to school. Wha?? They were learning about dinosaurs, he was so excited about it that he wanted to bring his toy to school - which he kept in his cubby - and she was discouraging it.

Ugh.

I sent David to talk to the directors about moving him to a different class. He just said that we were concerned with the chemistry of the particular kids in the class, that maybe it wasn't a good fit. They said they would see what they could do.

I stopped in the office later that morning before picking Sawyer up - and it turned out Mrs. K had quit only moments after David had left the office. YIPPEE!!

Now he's back at preschool, going three days a week. And I love love love his new teacher. She's (relatively) young, and when I told her about his peanut allergy, she (unlike Mrs. K) didn't look at me like I had just sprouted a third eye, or ask questions like "but it's okay if the other kids have peanuts, right?" Uh...NO!

Wednesday, when Sawyer wanted to tell her something, she stopped what she was doing and squatted right down to his level to listen to him. Nirvana!

Sawyer seems to really like her and has already come home talking about the friends he's played with. And she told me that she always knows when Sawyer is talking to her - he's the only child who calls her by her name!

****

Here's some assorted Sawyer-isms from today...

Because of my injured foot, I decided to do another spin class this morning instead of running. Sawyer was waiting when I got home.

"Did you have a good run, Mommy?"
"Well, I didn't run today. I went to the gym."
"What did you say?"
"I said I went to the gym."
"Oh. What did you do there, brush your teeth?"

Later this morning, he had his swimming lesson with A, who has a heavily tatooed left arm.
"A, why do you have stamps on your arm?"

Freak of Nature

Today I had confirmed what anyone who has seen my overly-long toes already knew. I am, in fact, a freak of nature. Or as the podiatrist I saw today diplomatically said, "It's not completely rare, but I wouldn't say it's common." I feel so special!

The reason for the visit was because after doing some of my long runs, the ball of my right foot is incredibly painful. I can't walk on it, can't stretch it. The pain goes away after a few days of staying off it. But because I'm running a marathon in SIX WEEKS, I can't exactly stop running now. Plus, I also can't seem to stop eating leftover birthday cake, so I REALLY need those extra miles right about now.

Sage and I headed to the podiatrist this morning. I packed lots of snacks and toys for her (yes, including her talking princess mirror), which came in handy because we were kept waiting almost an hour. An hour! With a two-year old. Hellooo!?!?!

We finally got into the exam room, and Sage was fine until the doctor came in and attempted to speak to me. That's when Sage started screaming. So I had to bring out the heavy artillery: grapes. Not only does she need her entire mouth to chew, so is quiet, but the labor of pulling the grapes off the stem was all-encompassing. This is what I'm using my brain to come up with these days.

The doctor wanted x-rays. Luckily, a front desk woman put Sage on her lap and the two of them kept very busy tracing Sage's hand with pencil. Meanwhile, I got to wear a ultra-chic radiation sarong to protect my reproductive organs, should I ever require them again.

Then it was back to the exam room, to wait another 15 minutes for the doctor to get my x-rays. And there, in black and white and shades of grey, was absolute proof. So all of you who have seen - and laughed at me - about my crazy piano-playing toes did not realize you were, in fact, picking on my birth defect. Because there's a reason for my over-long tootsies.

All the big joints in the foot that connect to the toes are supposed to line up with the one for the big toe. Shockingly (NOT) mine do not! The joints for my first and second toe are like an inch higher than they're supposed to be. Seriously, if I had normal toes, I'd wear a size 9 instead of 10.

I also have something going on with the two sesmoid bones in the ball of my foot, but that's not nearly as interesting as my completely freakazoid toes.

Fortunately, the doctor said I can still run. I'm going to put in an insole and take anti-inflams. And hope that Saturday's 20-mile run will be pain-free. At least for my foot.

Incidentally, just because I can pick up and peel a banana with my toes does not mean I'm going to post a picture of them! Too many foot fetishists out there!

Dear Sage,

When people find out that you are 2, they immediately say "Ah, the Terrible Twos!" Yeah, right, as if THAT particular phase didn't start from birth.

The drama! As soon as you learned the word "me," you quickly added "mine" to your repetoire. So whenever your brother dares touch one of your toys, we get to hear "MEEEEEEEEEE! MINE!" at eardrum-piercing decibels.

You are finally starting to speak - using real words, that is, instead of your Sage-isms. You had a speech therapy session with a new teacher on your birthday, and you emerged saying "baby" for the very first time. This might not sound impressive, but I did get teary-eyed. For almost a year, you have called babies "mamas" despite my consistently telling you the correct word. For you to finally say something correctly..you were so proud!

And you keep adding words! "Cookie" is a favorite. You are finally really trying to repeat what we say (so I guess you'll be saying "shit" pretty soon..) and we feel for the first time that you might, actually, speak. You've even started to sing "itsy bitsy spider" although it is all presently gibberish. You're awesome at the hand movements, tho!

We do have conversations. A typical one goes something like this:

"Sage, can I give you a kissy?"
"No."
"A hug?"
"No."
"Tickle-tickle?"
"NOOOOO Mommy. NOOOO!"

We predict you're going to be our little jock - who'll wear pink ribbons in your hair. One of your favorite toys you got for your birthday is a talking princess mirror. You love to gaze into it, then press the buttons and hear things like "your hair looks lovely today." (Now, this is something I think all of us could use. Can you imagine, when you're feeling bloated, you have a huge pimple emerging like Vesuvius from your chin AND your hair is not only frizzy but in dire need of a dye job to hide the advancing army of grey, just picking up your mirror and having it say "You are an incredibly hot babe (push button) You can't be a day over 20 (push button) "Your breasts are amazingly perky today" and so on.)



You also slept in your sparkly pair of dress-up shoes. Diva!



Everyone is now trying to convince me to cut your hair. But I can't. You're a girl! So what if you have some sort of wispy mullet thing going on. When I blow dry it, I can stretch the two longest strands down to your shoulders!



We are still working on getting you to say the word "two." But there is no doubt you knew your birthday party was for you. How did we know? It was the "MEEE! PARTY!!!" that tipped us off. And the day after your party, the first thing you did after getting out of your crib was to run to our bedroom window and look out into the back yard to see if the Curious George bounce house was still there (it wasn't).

You knew your day was all about you. Kind of like every day. Except, on your birthday, there was cake.




Happy birthday, baby girl. We love you more than any words..

Mommy

Happy 2nd Birthday, Sage!

The sweetest thing..

Sawyer started going to Music Together classes when he was about six months old and he lasted until he was about 2 1/2, when he ended up in a shoving match with this obnoxious kid over who got to turn off and on the lights (and the kid's mother did NOTHING, even though I made Sawyer apologize. What is wrong with people??). I figured it was time to move on.

There was one song from the CDs that I started singing to him, making up my own words. Here's the gist:

Sleep, sleep, sleep sleepyhead.
Sleep, sleep, snuggle in racecar bed.
Mommy will keep you safe and warm.
So sleep, sleep, sleep sleepyhead.

Not exactly poetry, but Sawyer really liked it. He recently started asking me to sing it to him again before bed. Then he decided he wanted to start singing to Sage.

So before her nap and at night, Sawyer goes in her room. I put her in her crib, lay her blanket (known as coat) over her, turn on her fan and turn off the light. I then leave, because Sawyer wants "Privacy, Mommy!"

Then he sings her this:

Sleep, sleep, sleep sleepyhead.
Sleep, sleep, snuggle in your crib.
Sawyer will keep you safe and warm
So sleep, sleep, sleep sleepyhead.

He then follows the song by saying "Goodnight Sage, I love you" and making a kiss noise before running out of the room.

We are trying to get it on video, but it's tough because of his PRIVACY, MOMMY! request. We are working on it. A little stealth would be totally worth it.

The purity of him singing to his sister - without any prompting whatsoever on our part - is one of our greatest joys of parenting so far.

GPS update

David found it! Woohoo! It had somehow fallen down between the driver's door and seat. Now I can breathe easy again knowing I can turn on my GPS and safely navigate to the end of my very short street (yes, I was born without an internal compass).

And yes, for those baseball purists, I DO realize that pic of Vlade is from a road game, and that he's not standing in right field as he was when Sawyer was shrieking hello to him but is up at bat in some other stadium. But hey, I only wanted to spend a small amount of time on google. And of course I forgot my camera last night (DOH!). So get over yourselves!

Can you hear me now?

I took Sawyer to the Angels game last night (thanks to some free tickets). It was the first game he's gone to that he remembers. When we first arrived, I told him that when an Angels player hits a home run, they shoot off fireworks. WRONG thing to say. He wanted me to assure him that NO Angels player would hit a home run. Fireworks are apparently on the list of Things That Are Scary.

We get to our seats, and of course Sawyer has to ask if everything the vendors are selling are peanuts (I'd explained to him before we went that he'd have to be extremely careful and not to touch anything, so I had him pretty worked up, which is okay, since if he has a peanut he could die). The only positive about it is he didn't ask to buy any food, except for cotton candy. Denied!

Then he saw his favorite player, Vladimir Guerrero, standing in right field.




"HI VLADE!!!!" Sawyer screeched at the top of his lungs. "Mommy, do you think he heard me?"
"Yes, Sawyer, I'm sure he heard you."

"HI GARRET!!! Mommy, do you think he heard me?"
"Yes, Sawyer, I think everyone heard you."

The people sitting in front of us were totally cracking up.

"HI GARY!!! Mommy, do you think he heard me? Then why isn't he saying hi to me?"

We made it all the way through the fifth inning - in time to see Garret Anderson hit a home-run. And guess what? Sawyer didn't even mind the fireworks.

After a quick visit to the team store to purchase a red wood bat (after I talked him out of the pink one), a small red baseball and a new Angels cap, we headed back to our car (which, incidentally, someone got in and stole our GPS machine).

On the drive home, Sawyer talked about what a great time he had.

"So who are your favorite players?"
"Vlade and Garret. Because they're my friends."

Two halves do not make a whole, unfortunately...

I have now completed two half marathons this year. Now if I could just combine those two times and call it a marathon, that'd be great. Instead, I actually have to run the whole 26.2 in one shot. Oy.

Today was only slightly cooler than the surface of the sun. When I left my house at 3:45 a.m., it was already 81 degrees. Good times!

The race itself wasn't too bad, despite the heat. David absolutely hates Disneyland (the crowds, the waiting in line, the cost) so we haven't been there yet with the kids. It was fun for me to see it as I ran through it. A bunch of the characters were out along the course, and runners were stopping to get pictures taken with them. People in large costumes freak me out a bit, so I looked away and kept running.

One not-so-bright guy was running dressed as Buzz Lightyear, complete with a white vinyl-ish suit and hood. We expressed our concerned that he would basically drop dead by mile 2. He apparently was wearing nothing (eew?) under the suit so had no choice but to wear it. No report on whether his brains boiled over from the heat.

We also got to run through Angel Stadium. For my friends, this was one of the highlights of the race. I, on the other hand, was trying to calculate just how many hours I've stood in the Angels dugout, baking in the sun while the team took batting practice. Clearly a sign I've spent waaaay too much time there.

I was pretty beat by the 11th mile, but finished okay, a little slower than my last half but still under 2:30. The best part is, because I actually hydrated correctly, I had no cramping and felt fine afterward.

I'm guessing San Francisco in late October will be just a tad cooler. But at least I'll have my nice Tiffany's bling that each finisher gets to keep me warm..

It's getting closer..

So my marathon is in, like, seven weeks. SEVEN WEEKS, PEOPLE! I am running a half marathon - through Disneyland, yippee! - on Monday. Today a couple of us from TNT ran five miles while the rest of the poor fools ran 18 miles. Yep, that's right, I said EIGHTEEN. We actually ran that last weekend instead of the scheduled 16 because we knew we weren't doing a long run this weekend. It is quite amusing to me that running 13.1 miles is no longer considered long.

When I ran my first (and only other) half marathon back in February, my longest run til that day was 10 miles. Thirteen was a challenge. Especially considering I basically died at the 10-mile mark and crawled to the finish line.

Now, 13 sounds not so bad. I've done runs of 14 miles twice, and one run of 18. When I finished the 18, I thought to myself, for the first time, that I believe I can actually finish the marathon.

That might sound like a ridiculous thought for someone who has been training to do just that for over three months. But there are days when three miles is a struggle. I've figured out that it's all in the mindset. You mentally gear yourself for the longer mileage. And then you chug chug chug along.

I sure wish I were a faster runner. I seem to have slowed down a lot over the past few months. I don't think I'll better my time from my first half. But I guess the most important thing is I'm out there doing it. Especially after listening to a woman speak before training today.

She is on the walk team, I think. She got up in front of us this morning to share her story. She is a survivor. She was diagnosed with ALL (the most common form of Leukemia) when she was a sophomore in college. Her treatment included chemotherapy, drugs that made her gain 30 pounds, a bone marrow transplant, and, her doctors got around to telling her, would likely make her sterile.

Having babies was not exactly something she was thinking of at that time in her life. Until suddenly she had to. So, even though her insurance didn't cover it, she harvested and froze her eggs.

Luckily, her brother was a perfect match for a bone marrow transplant. This November, she will have been in remission a year. Someday, she can even have babies.

We applauded. Some of us, especially us moms, wiped away a few tears. And remembered why we're running.