First Time?

I just finished having lunch with a friend and we were discussing the differences between first time parents, and those with more than one child. Although I still only have one, I don't categorize myself as a first time parent and am therefore about to poke some fun of those who are.

HOW TO TELL IF YOU ARE A FIRST TIME (or just uptight) PARENT

1 - Your child is eating cheerios off the floor at church. The cheerios do not belong to you. What is your response?
A - Remove them immediately from your child's mouth, and clean the remaining ones off the floor.
B - Sweet! I totally forgot snacks today anyway.

2 - You are leaving your 1 year old child with a friend at their home for 4 hours. You:
A - Bring a sandwich, banana, juice, crackers, fruit, fruit snacks, 6 diapers, a full package of diaper wipes, 2 bottles, 2 pacifiers, a blanket, a change of clothes, and a list of contact numbers including 4 emergency contacts, and a map with directions to the nearest hospital from your friend's home.
B - Drop off your child with one wet diaper, one dry diaper, and instructions to only call in case of an EXTREME emergency. You have my cell, right? I'll try to remember to turn it on.

3 - Your toddler is learning to crawl up the stairs. You:

A - Wish her the best and go back to folding the laundry.
B - Pick her up to prevent her from falling without you there while you grab the camera, pillows to prevent injury, a sippy cup in case she gets thirsty, and a snack for yourself while you watch and marvel at the action for an hour.

4 - Your child begins licking the shopping cart handle.

A - No problem! I already sanitized it with the handy sanitizers I carry in my purse!
B - Encourage this behavior in order to promote a healthy immune system.

5 - What is wrong with this picture?

Illustration, Zohar Lazar, Bostonia Magazine
A - Ha! I get it. It's a trick question. There's nothing wrong!
B - Those parents should have had more than one kid, and should have kept their full-time jobs and not retired so early.

If you can't figure out which choice would be made by a first time/overbearing/uptight parent, you clearly are one ; )

Anytime My Love

Yesterday when I brought the LG his elaborate and carefully prepared breakfast of cereal and juice, he looked at me and sweetly said, "Mommy, you bring me somethings? That's so nice of you to bring me somethings." Ahh, if only every morning were such a delight.

He has also become quite the cook and loves to help me "make things" in the kitchen. At 2, I would say that he is pretty ahead of the curve of most children whose parents are probably much smarter than I am and refuse to let their toddler near hot stoves, ovens, etc. I lost the battle a while ago, and gained a partner who can flip pancakes, stir anything, sprinkle salt evenly over food in the frying pan, make a sandwich, knead bread and make a quesadilla. *Note to Grandmothers - he is ALWAYS closely supervised.

Puddles of Troubles

So, so far 2009 is turning out to be a blogging bust. Good thing I didn't put it on my New Year's resolutions list. Here's a list of some of the pressing issues on my mind lately:

1 - HAIRCUTS
Over Christmas, the LG took a pair of VERY large scissors to his already freshly cut hair. We call it the Quentin Tarantino do. Here is a progression, but the conundrum is what to do with it now. As you can see by the date of this post, he has survived for a month, but there are days I feel like taking the clippers to it, but so far I just can't bring myself to do it.

BEFORE


MOM HAIRCUT


2 YEAR OLD QUENTIN TARANTINO DO


2 - BANKS
In an effort to exploit the weaknesses of our financial system for our own gain (not an easy task these days), the BK opened an account with Washington Mutual (WaMu) with $1. In return for opening an account, about 6 weeks later we received a $75 gift card (this could go a long way in explaining their poor thinking and bankruptcy, but what do I know). Receiving the gift card happened to coincide with the news that they were going under so the BK told me I better start spending it as quickly as possible just in case. I think I got through $60 of it when final news of WaMu's demise hit. Unfortunately, as the BK predicted, this was the end of our $75 line of credit. Okay, so far so good, we still made $60 on a $1 investment. My irritation in getting ripped off on that extra $15 was minute until I received a TAX FORM in the mail that requires me to pay taxes on the full $75 - which means that WaMu also wrote off the full amount which I didn't receive. I'm sure my dad can find a lawsuit in there somewhere, but I am just content to whine about it for now.


3 - JOB SECURITY
My family relies solely for the time being on the employer of my husband who happens to be the Bank of America. Before you worry, don't, he is still employed. However, I have a couple of beefs about what has been going on in terms of bailouts and mergers and corporate greed. First, good riddance to John Thain. For those of you who don't know who he is, click here. In a nutshell, he is the Merrill Lynch CEO who, in the middle of a merger that his company was pretty dishonest about in terms of their actual balance sheet, he remodeled his office for $1.2 million. Second, and on a related note, is my irritation with all government interference to this point in the financial sector. Bank of America would have withdrawn from the merger under normal market conditions when it learned the truth about how much trouble Merrill Lynch was actually in, but the Government (Henry Paulson and cronies) pressed Ken Lewis (Bank of America CEO) to stick with it citing the pandemonium it would create in the markets. So, now BOA is taking a lot of criticism (as evidenced by their stock prices which are at 17 year lows) for taking government bailouts which, in essence, were granted because they bailed the government out of another sticky mess. I, for one, think this whole bailout mess is a joke. So far, the money has been spent lining the pockets of people like John Thain, and driving down stock prices of banks which are already suffering. I'm ticked, but I'm also very grateful that my husband is still employed in an industry that is clearly in puddles of troubles. Best of luck to us all.

Merry Christmas, and other out of date announcements...

For those of you who didn't receive a Christmas card - sorry, but it's a tight economy and a .40 cent stamp just screams at my sense of fiscal decency. This is the picture you would have received, glued to red construction paper - so you can see you didn't miss out on much. We were snowed in here in Portland for 2 weeks. No church for 2 weeks, 1 foot of packed snow on our road for 1 1/2 weeks, a trip to the grocery store that involved toting Jack behind us in a "tote" (one of the plastic bins) that John tied some rope to (my dad would have been proud), and LOTS of time spent indoors. Apparently, it is too much to ask the city of Portland to spend some $$$ on more than one snowplow. Fine, but could they check into some emergency funds to ship one in from a state or city that plans ahead? Christmas, spent with just the LG the BK and myself was sort of anticlimactic, but the snow helped. Luckily, we were off to UT a couple days later to see the fam.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Our trip to UT started out a bit shaky as we drove 4 hours to Pendleton, OR just to find out that I-84 was closed due to inclement weather. Good times. Back to Portland. Pretty sweet 10 hour day. We got up around 4am the next morning and plowed our way on through to the promised land. We had a great time seeing all the family including brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, great-nieces/nephews, etc. There was a palpable hole felt though by the absence of my parents who we all missed. There was sledding, eating, and a lot of doing nothing. The latter of these two events explain why I don't ever contact anyone that I plan on seeing. Unrelatedly, I'm excited for 2009. Should be an interesting year for our nation and our family which brings me to announcement #3.

IT'S A GIRL!!!

The BK and I are thrilled to announce that we are expecting a girl in May. I am about halfway through this pregnancy, so am finally feeling more human. As I have already told some of you, I don't blog when I am pregnant, hence my long absences from the world'o'blog and general disinterest in my own life. And, the answer is yes, to those of you wondering if I was one of the crazy pregnant women from the last blog who just can't give up their soccer shoes for slippers.

Consider yourselves all caught up on my life. Oh yeah, the LG POOPED in the potty last week. That was the best Christmas present yet. No how, no way am I changing two sets of diapers if I can help it. There will be lots of praying and pleading with God on this one.

Tweens vs. Thirty-Somethings

Before you read on, be forewarned that this post has nothing to do with the holidays. If you are looking for cheer, check back in a couple days.

The BK and I play soccer in an adult beginner league. The team we have played on for 3 sessions now has altered significantly, mostly for the better if you are talking about our record, although I miss seeing some of the folk from the first couple sessions, but not the perpetual losses that resulted in a lot of *#&@()$ whooping. The teams are composed mostly of 25-40ish people who have nothing better to do on a Friday night but kick each other in the shins, get thrown into walls, and run around panting and out of breath. It is best to assume that this is the only physical activity most people in this league get all week. In a nutshell, it's pretty ugly.

So a couple of weeks ago, we pull up to see a "team" in matching uniforms piling out of a minivan. Certainly these kids are in the wrong place or there are here for some after hours team slumber party. As we nervously make jokes about their age we walk into the building and start warming up. Our own teamates arrive, and it is becoming more and more clear that the preteens who couldn't drive themselves to the game are, in fact, our opponents. Okay, now I am all in favor of a good matchup, but honestly, I am thinking this is definitely NOT what I signed up for or pay for. Remember, Adult Beginner League? Being on somewhat chatty terms with the manager of the place, I mope over and lodge a complaint. He assures me that they have to be at least 16 to play in the league. 16? What about 16 = Adult? Based on the width of the girls hips, weight of the boys, and acne, there isn't a chance that one of these adults (other than the coach) is a day over 15. Plus, if they were 16, they would have driven.

Fine, so it was going to be like this, eh? There are red alarms, blue alarms, and yellow alarms running through my head as I sulk back to my team and deliver the news that yes, we are about to have our hineys handed to us by highs chool freshmen. I knew it would be ugly. Setting aside their physical prowess that accompanies anyone under 25, they look like children compared to us, and I knew that any physical contact would result in the referee thinking that monsters were trying to eat the village young'ns. Sure enough, the BK (who weighs about 220 and is about 6'4) was thrown out of the game in the first 5 minutes for a 2 minute penalty. Granted, the BKs feathers were already up just by looking at them, and wasn't in the mood to have his manhood delivered to him by a tween, but in fairness he did put the kid in a headlock (the kid who weighed no more than 90 lbs and was probably 6 inches shorter). In the BKs defense, he claims that the kid grabbed his manparts.

The game progressed better than it should have. The referee was all over us, but even with that handicap, and with no subs (the tweens had double the number needed on the field standing ready to sub on the sideline), we managed to keep the carnage to a tie. Considering, I am chalking that up to a win. Afterward, I hear the coach telling them that if they could play at this level, they were in really good shape. Huh???????? Did I miss something. The whole ride home all I could think of were responses to this ridiculous statement and to the nonsense of the whole game:

"Are you serious? What level is that, the level where people twice your age, twice your weight (not in a good way), pregnant (yeah 2 of our 4 females are visibly pregnant) and 10 times more out of shape are able to hold you to a tie? Yeah, good luck playing children your own age."

"Come back after you hit puberty and get some hips."

"Go try to humiliate people in an old folks home, they might be so old they think you are just cute."

These are the only ones gentle enough for me to post without my mom telling me that I should be sweeter and that I shouldn't be playing anymore anyway. So there it is, my rant that I should have posted the day after so that I could move on with my life. Feel free to post your own comments, particularly if they are snide and cover something I missed.

Thanksgiving

We had an amazing Thanksgiving here in Portland with my brother and his adorable family. We went to the Oregon Coast, did the tour of Downtown, drove up to Mt. Hood, watched movies, and ate, ate, ate. It was my first time being in charge of the food, and thanks to a lot of help from my sister-in-law, it all turned out beautifully. I highly recommend "brining" your turkey ladies (and ambitious men). I finally figured out the problem with my pictures, and wanted to do justice to my sister-in-law's mad photography skills.


Here we all are downtown. We rode the train, did some Black Friday shopping, and my brother's youngest even joined in a Black Friday protest by doing some Tai Chi.



Although the coast was a bit wet, it wasn't too cold which was nice. The kids had a great time running around, some getting soaked by the tide, and playing in the sand. No swimming this time, maybe in August. Wait, this is Oregon, who am I kidding.

Happy Birthday Baby

Clearly I have been pretty disinterested in blogging lately, and in the meantime, I have missed some pretty key family events. I will be trying to update over the next couple of days but thought I should start with the LGs 2nd birthday which was the week before Thanksgiving. In tribute, the following are some of my favorite memories of him from this year:

Election Year Fun - the LG started recognizing McCain and Obama signs long before the election and loved to shout both their names at strange moments, often to the amusement of passersby. I'm pretty sure that unlike his parents, he was pretty loyal to Obama throughout. Recently, when we were out shopping, a black clerk was restocking the shelves. When Jackson saw him, his eyes got really big and he shouted, "Barak Obama". Probably better than "John McCain" considering the color of his skin and where we live - liberalville. Clearly there aren't many black people in Portland.

Swimming Like a Fish - He finally conquered his fear of the water and learned to swim like a fish which entails him laying on his belly, splashing around and letting his little cheeks poke out of the water. This now regular occurrence makes me wish he could stay 2 forever.

Nursery - Enough said.

Throwing Out His Own Diaper - He learned to this not long after he turned 1. If only I could figure out how to get rid of the diapers all together.

Rainy Portland - I still haven't grown to LOVE the rain, but it does bring out the best in toddler boys fasion. Rain slickers, big bulky rain boots that he can put on by himself, and adorable hats.

Language - It is amazing to me how quickly he seems to learn to speak. And truly, it is a blessing to be able to communicate with him and vice versa. The things he says crack me up, make me wish I had never uttered certain words, and my heart melt when he says things like I love you.

What an amazing little boy he is, and both the BK and I are so glad he is part of our family. Speaking of, we had some family photos taken recently - which some of you may find in your Christmas card or a later post. But in celebration of the LG, here are a few of my most prized possession. LG we love you. (sorry the pics aren't bigger but I am too clueless to figure out what is going on, and too lazy to try).