Sleep Issues, We've Got Em

You may recall that I mentioned nap time wasn't going so well around these parts.
I believe the word I used was

crappy.

So, do you know what happens when little girls stay up til nearly midnight running amuck at the ball fields watching their daddy's baseball games and then don't rest during the day?

This.

That would be Emily on the left. Snoozing away without a care in the world. At seven o'clock in the evening. And Anna Grace is on the right. Wearing her

good heavens, how did I get here

look.

Because I just dragged her sleeping little booty out of the car while muttering to myself,

see! I knew you were tired! You NEED to take a nap.....blah, blah, blah.

And this one's for my mama. Proof that I exist. And that I can't get a tan, even when I live in the desert.

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Shout out to Alysa B for taking these pics with her nifty new lens.

If You're in Need of a Giggle or Five

Now let me preface this by saying the link I'm about to share with you contains mucho swearing.

Mucho.

BUT if you can get over that then this is one of the funniest blog posts I've ever read.

That or the walls of our one bedroom apartment are starting to close in on me and I'm getting slap happy.

Or I'm over-tired from staying up late to try to see my hubby after games and getting up early(ish) with the girls.

Either way, I read this last night and laughed so hard, I cried.

But really, if you're not a fan of the cussing, then just skip it.

And if you are a fan of the cussing, then bully for you.

Just do me a favor, don't tell my mom I sent you all to this.

And for the record, I cannot WAIT for our fifteenth anniversary.

www.thebloggess.com/2011/06/and-thats-why-you-should-learn-to-pick-your-battles/

I Have Only Myself to Blame

Right when we walked into our first rental back in March I thought two things:

A) Wow! Andy did a great job picking this one and

2) Good heavens, the land lady did not get the memo about three destructive small children because the tchotchkes and bric-a-brac were everywhere.

Lots of sports memorabilia and grapes.

Plastic, not real.

The grapes, I mean.

But after I moved all the fun stuff to higher ground and established some serious rules about the NON-TOUCHING of the EYE LEVEL TO A PRESCHOOLER flat screen television I felt pretty good about our situation.

But what I didn't realize was I should have been preaching to someone a little taller.

Someone who is a little clumsy, somewhat klutzy and claims to be in charge of this circus.

Me.

Yes indeedy, the very first week we were there I tossed a pillow from the bed in the dark of night, for what reason, I'm not sure and totally took out the floor lamp on my side.

It seems I'd forgotten where I was.

That happens to me quite often sometimes in the night.

I blame baseball.

And too much caffeine.

Anyhoo, the noise woke both of us and I jumped up to turn on the light only I couldn't because

it was lying on the floor. Completely severed in half.

Good news, it still worked.

Bad news, it was hanging by a thread. If pottery has threads.

Okay it was hanging by a shard.

It was in bad shape.

A few weeks later I was vacuuming our bed* while I had a grumpy Emily on my hip when I smelled something burning. Which was odd. But I continued on because someone-who-shall-remain-nameless gets a little irritated when he crawls into bed at night and finds crumbs on his side.

I don't know what his problem is.

But I was being a good wife, working to get all the crumbs out of his side while trying to comfort Em who was not enjoying the noise and the STENCH that was now coming from the vacuum.

When finally I turned to check out what the problem was I screamed because there was a foot of

smoke rising from the hoover.

A FOOT.

OF ACTUAL SMOKE.

LIKE THE KIND ASSOCIATED WITH FIRE.

I screamed, dropped fussypants onto the bed and jerked the machine back only to see

Andy's favorite shorts,

lying on the ground, with a

huge hole burned into the waistband.

His favorite, irreplaceable, lastspring-trainingwiththeMets shorts.

Son of a gun.

Did I mention that the Mr. came home right in the middle of all this?

And that our room REEKED for hours afterward?

A stinky reminder of his loss.

And my awesomeness.

Thankfully, the vacuum seemed to be okay, and we managed to muddle through the next few months without further incident.

From me.

Then three days before we were to be out (two days before we found out we weren't going to Montana) I was in the bathroom getting ready for the day when I heard Emily say

Uh-oh.

Listen, if a two-year-old says those words, you know it's bad.

And it was.

She had torn a strip of wallpaper right off the wall.

Fan-flippin-tastic.

It seemed to be a pretty clean tear, so I thought I might be able to salvage it.

With the super glue that I'd purchased to repair the lamp.

Only I didn't get a chance to use it because Andy had already told on me (punk**) and the owners weren't too upset about the lamp's demise.

So later that day I got the girls settled with a snack and their pal Dora (because one should never trust toddlers around glue of any sort).

I sat down and eyeballed the strip a few times, lining it up and measuring like I knew exactly what was going on and then I just went for it.

Squeezed that super glue out and then carefully placed the strip back onto the wall.

Eureka! Perfect! YES! MAMA RULES! Wait a minute...um, i seem to have...uh, humphff...this could be a problem....

Lainey! Hurry and get mama a washcloth!

Why?

I've glued my thumb to the wall!

Why'd you do that?

JUST GET THE WASHCLOTH!

run, run, scamper, scamper

Great job, sweets! No, no wait, mama needs it to be wet...

run, run, scamper, scamper

I can't reach the sink, mama.

Why not!?!?

Cuz, you're sitting on the stool.

And so I was.

And that's when I knew that they only way I was gonna get out of this one was to

rip another hole in the paper.

Son of a stinkin' gun.

I managed to scrape some of it off and kinda hodge-podged it back onto the wall.

To add injury to insult, my thumb was bright red for days.

But all's well that ends well because at our walk-through a few days later the owner didn't even mention it.

When I thanked her for the extra time she had generously given me to get our stuff out she said

No problem, I just had to reschedule the work-crew I have coming in.

Oh yeah, are you remodeling?

No, nothing major.

They're just stripping the wallpaper.

Son of a stinkity-stink gun.

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* I may or may not have needed to remove the crumbs because I may or may not have consumed half a bag of barbecue potato chips during rest time.

** He's not a punk. He's actually quite wonderful. Not once did he fuss at me for ruining his beloved shorts. Or for serving chicken for a record 47 nights in a row from March into April.

In Which I Make a Total (Ha)Boob of Myself

Otherwise entitled

A Text Story


So last Tuesday Andy had an off day. We had gone out to eat that evening and he was kind enough to fill up the gas tank for the mama. I give you that riveting information because I want you to realize that we had JUST been outside. A few minutes after getting settled at the apartment, a good friend from KY sent me this text :



Wanna know why I asked about the picture texts? Because I'm the ninny that put shoes on her kids and leased up the dog to check out the so-called dust storm. Then proceeded to let the four year old walk the dog. Then saw a GIANT wall of dirt in the distance. Then paused long enough to take/text a pic:



The actual photo I sent:

I'm sure you all know what happened next. The big old dust cloud was moving faster than I realized and the very minute I caught up to the girls and told them it'd probably be best if we headed back towards home

it was on us.

And by on us, I mean we couldn't see, we were crunching grit in our teeth and I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.

Lainey totally flipped and threw the dog leash in the air, while the girls just froze. Their poor little minds could not compute this craziness.

So I grabbed the leash, grabbed the babies by the wrists and instructed Lainey to

RUN!

She was so disoriented she ran directly into the street.

So I fussed again,

Follow the sidewalk and RUN! we are right behind you. GO!

And run we did.

All the way to the front yard of the Myer's house where Corey was taking their flag down and laughing at the idiots who were outside in the storm. He was kind enough to let us in their door and we watched the rest of it unfold from their living room.




Yes, I know I spelled license wrong. That still bothers me.

Yes, the girls are fine. It only took three baths to get all the grit out of their hair.

And I'm sure with a few weeks months of therapy, they won't even remember the incident.

I hope.




ha·boob (h-bb)
n.
A penetrating sandstorm or dust storm with violent winds, occurring chiefly in Arabia, North Africa, and India.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.



For more photos of this craziness, go here

I Should've Seen it Coming - Part Three

Very soon after the dumping of all our worldly possessions (at least what we needed for the season) into Jill's garage it became clear that we needed to find a more permanent place to dwell.

And by permanent I mean at least through August.

In baseball terms two and half months is a very long time.

Really.

Jill had said that we could stay as long as we needed, but she had already promised the house to some of her family for a week, not to mention she and the boys were coming home after the all-star break.

And the real clincher was the fact that it was a 45 minute (on a good day) drive for Andy to get to the field. Not really ideal at 1 a.m. when he's tired from a game.


Also not too fun when Daddy forgets his work laptop and Mommy has to drive it to him. Right after getting the girls into the pool.

Three bathing suits, three bodies slathered with sunscreen, two swim diapers, four ear plugs, four water wings and one life jacket.

Sure honey, I can load the ladies right up!

Did I say that out loud?

Moving on.

Our first apartment in baseball life was a two bedroom/two bath with an unfinished basement in South Bend, Indiana. Andy and I lived there the entire season.

Along with five other boys.

FIVE.

One of those stinky boys was Corey. We continued to be roommates with him throughout the years and throughout the Diamondbacks minor league system. I was very glad when Caitlin joined the picture because Corey was a lot less stinky with her around.

The last time we'd seen each other, Caitlin was pregnant with their first and I was about 4 minutes pregnant with Lainey.

Before the puking began.

And now, nearly five years later, we are living all together again. The Myers family (Corey, Caitlin, Cole and Christian) live much closer to the field and they have a one bedroom apartment attached to their house.

Yes, you read that correctly. One bedroom.

But you know what? It's working out really well.

I'm not joking.

For starters, it's a big bedroom. And we have a full kitchen, our own entrance and a washer/dryer. We've most definitely been in worse situations.

I would even call this one good.

Except at nap time.

Nap time sucks.

But the best part? The girls LOVE playing with the Myers boys and our apartment attaches to their house through the PLAYROOM.

They are in "new toy" heaven.

And for us grown-ups, it's just like old times.

Plus five kids.

Which means it's nothing like the old times.

It's better.

Nothing Says Independence Day Like.....

Expressing your opinions

loudly

and getting tossed from your first game.

*********************************************************************

You stink!



And your feet, they stink!



And your mama, she stinks too!!



muttering, muttering, stupid, muttering...



The girls knew nothing of it. They missed it thanks to Popsicles that were melting at the speed of light. They didn't really notice he was gone until he wasn't available for the game ending hugs.

Then they cried.

But quickly recovered when they realized they could hug Leila's dad.

Please note, that those may not have been his exact words. I was busy making sure my little friends didn't see Daddy fussing at the said stinky umpire.

Also, I may have asked my friend Alysa to take the above pictures for bribery posterity.

I am a great wife.

The boys did come back from behind to win the game for their exiled coach.

I know some of you are greatly concerned that I haven't finished the I Should Have Seen it Coming Posts. Rest assured, no one is sleeping in the mini-van, I'm just behind in blogging.

That last statement basically sums up my life these days. Behind - I'm always trying to catch up on something and

I'm always wiping them.

Happy Independence Day, Everybody!