Patches Saves The Day

On Saturday night I got a call from my mom's burglar alarm company. They called to say her alarm was going off and they couldn't get in touch with her so they'd dispatched the police. I asked if I needed to do anything, and they said no. I tried to call my mom but couldn't get her. I immediately called my friend Heather, whose Husband, Marvin was the 2012 Sheriff Deputy of the Year.  I asked Marvin, 2012 Deputy of the Year,  if he had access to the PD scanner to see if anything was going on, but he didn't. Apparently the Sheriff's Department and PD have separate scanners. Marvin, 2012 Deputy of the Year, called me right back and said he'd called the dispatch and told them to step on it. Friends in high places.

The alarm company called back and said the police were requesting a key holder come out to the house. Uh oh. She couldn't give me anymore information. The Husband and I loaded The Boy in the car and headed the 30 minutes to her house. Every opening scene of CSI that I'd ever seen went through my head. What if there was an intruder? What if my mom wasn't okay? I tried to talk myself out of panicking. The alarm company called back and said the back door was "unsecured," which was why they were requesting us to come.

Marvin, 2012 Deputy of the Year, called back and asked if we'd heard anything. I told him the back door was unsecured and we were requested to come. He said that might mean someone had gotten in, and that's why they needed us. Gasp. It was raining, and I was flying down the road to my childhood home, unsure what I would find when I got there. This road brought me home for holidays during college, and took me to the mall when I was in high school. The wipers sang out shish swish, shish swish. The Husband was in the seat beside me, asking if I wanted him to drive. I didn't. The Boy was in the back seat saying "Ha ha ha! Happy How-ween!" over and over again.  We're a little mixed up on the holidays. I told him we were going to check on his Pammie, which he pronounces "Mammie."  He sat in his seat, smiled, and said "Mammie. Mammie. Mammie. Ha ha ha. Happy How-ween."

It occurred to me that my mom might be at her sunday school Christmas party. That was a good sign, because if there was an intruder she wouldn't be hurt. I had The Husband call Heather because her mom is in the same class. "Ha ha ha. Happy how-ween." The cell connection was spotty, but she called back to say she couldn't get in touch with her mom either. I had The Husband check facebook to see if anyone had posted about going to that party. "Ha ha ha. Happy how-ween. Mammie? Mammie?" Yes, we're going to see Pammie.

I flew down my mom's road like I had so many times as a teenager, only this time the urgency was about a possible danger and not a curfew. "Happy how-ween." I saw the police car in the cul-de-sac and pulled up beside it. It was empty so I parked and headed up the driveway. I heard a voice say "you could've parked up here so you didn't have to get the baby out in the rain." Always suspicious, I said "how did you know I have a baby?!" He replied "because I just heard you say 'get the baby' when you got out of the car." Oh. Good one. My mom's car wasn't home. I could hear her dog, Patches, barking inside.

Patches is useless. He is afraid of everything. He's afraid to go outside to pee. He's afraid of bugs. He's afraid of cellphones vibrating.  He doesn't like people. He doesn't get along with other dogs. He can tolerate about 3 minutes of being petted and then he'll jet upstairs to have some alone time. If you leave him outside he'll jump the fence and run away. He gets nervous and chews on his skin, creating hot spots. Between his Prozac and Benedryl he gets 8 pills a day. He spends his days standing in my mom's shower stall. Not kidding.

The officer explained that when he arrived the back door was locked, but ajar. When he went to open it to investigate, Patches jumped up against the door and slammed it shut! The officer couldn't get back in, which is why he called us. He didn't feel like anyone was in the house but wanted to make sure. Not knowing the officer was a good guy, Patches saved the house from a potential burglar! We unlocked the door and looked around the house and didn't see any signs of any intruders. Whew! All was safe and sound. The Boy was excited to be at his Pammie's house, and he pointed to her Christmas tree and said "Mick Mick?", meaning he wanted to see the Mick Mick ornament.  Mick Mick was one of my mom's favorite first grade students in the 70s and she still has an ornament with his picture on it that she gets out every year. 

The Boy was excited about all the action. He ran in circles around Pammie's house. He looked at the officer and said "Mammie?" Obviously the officer didn't know how to respond to my child calling out a slave's name. I said "Yes, we're at Pammie's house." I emphasized the P in Pammie so that he wouldn't think we got our kid to call his grandmother Mammie. Then The Boy said to the officer "Mick Mick?" I'm not sure why the officer wouldn't know the nickname (mickname?) of my mom's first grade student from 40 years ago, or know that an ornament with his picture hangs on her tree, or understand that The Boy wanted him to take him to it. He said "Yeah" in that dismissive way we talk to kids when we don't know what they're saying, and then showed us pictures of his little boy.  We determined that the house was safe, that Patches is a good guard dog, and that we could all go home. We petted Patches and told him good job protecting the place, and we headed out. I'm sure he headed to his shower stall. 

We put pajamas on The Boy and loaded him in the car. We sighed huffs of relief and turned the car toward home, knowing he would fall asleep in a matter of minutes. On the ride home The Boy was apparently too excited to sleep. He recapped our adventure. "Mammie!" Yes we went to Pammie's house. "'Atches?" Yes, Patches saved the day. Next was "Mick Mick!" Yes, we saw Mick Mick. From time to time he'd throw in a "mama" or a "dada" for good measure. He'd been quiet for some time and we thought he'd finally gone to sleep.  Just as we were convinced he was out we heard "Ha ha ha. Happy how-ween!" Happy How-ween indeed. 

The Plague

The Boy has been coughing and snotting for a week, and it got worse over the weekend. Yesterday when he woke up his eyes were so gunky his brilliant eyelashes were stuck out in a beautiful surprise like my drag queen friend Portia (who has better legs than me, by the way). He mostly wanted to sit still and watch tv in the morning, which is a good indicator that something was up, so I took him to see our ped.

My view most of the day

The ped surmised that since he's gotten worse instead of better we should try a dose of antibiotics. She said it looked as though the infection was moving up into his sinuses and coming out of his eyes. Gross.  So I went to CVS to drop off his prescription. I was talking to the lady in the drive thru and she was verifying his birthday and whatnot, and she said it would be an hour to get it filled. As we were pulling away The Boy piqued up in the backseat and said "Bock bock?". That is what he says for chicken. I didn't see a chicken anywhere, and it occurred to me that my child thought we were at a fast food drive thru window. He thought we were ordering chicken nuggets at CVS. I would've said we try to buy a lot of organic, locally grown healthy food. But apparently also a lot of drive thru chicken nuggets.

We came home to have a sick day, and mostly laid around watching "Elbow" all day. The Boy made such a mess at dinner he had to go straight to the bath. I was cleaning up dinner while The Husband did bath time and I overheard "Ahh! Where did it go? Did you pinch it back in like a good boy or is it floating around somewhere?" Then, "Okay, bathtime's over."

Later he was hanging out in the living room/office area when I heard a huge crash. Like something or someone definitely got hurt crash. I didn't see The Boy anywhere but followed the sounds of his screaming. A bag filled with dishes for my mother in law had been on the buffet and somehow it had fallen off. Onto The Boy's head. He was tucked between the buffet and the wall, with a bag of heavy dishes on his head. He couldn't even lift them off, so he just sat there and screamed. He only weighs 21 pounds himself, and I bet the dishes weighed eight. Six dessert plates and a corningware dish fell on top of him. And then sat there. Can you imagine? That would be like a small house falling off a regular house onto your head. Obviously he was fine after the initial shock wore off, and we were lucky that nothing pierced through the bag and gouged him.

This morning The Husband woke up with itchy hives all over his body. He was miserable, and he couldn't stop scratching. While I was drying my hair apparently The Boy poured out the contents of a bottle of baby oil all over the hardwood floor and then proceeded to skate in it. The Husband was trying to clean it up while keeping The Boy out of the mess. When I came out with freshly blow dried hair The Husband was angry that I'd left the baby oil out within baby's reach. When I told him I didn't appreciate his tone, he responded "I'm sorry! I'm just so itchy!!"

When he left The Boy acted like he was itchy too but I largely ignored that in hopes that it would go away (it did). Instead I took him to a puppet show. I thought he deserved that after a wild 24 hours of being sick literally up to his eyeballs, a trip to the doctor, a drive thru with no chicken, plates falling on his head, an itchy dad and parents arguing this morning. He was more impressed with the inflatable Santa in the lobby than the whole puppet show, so we should've just gone to Home Depot. Or to CVS for some bock bock.

Puppet meet and greet after the show, the only part he enjoyed

Picture (Im)perfect Christmas

When I get an idea in my head I want it to happen immediately. So when I decided I wanted to get some cute Christmas card pictures of The Boy I had to execute it that minute, without waiting for the right light or the right mood. A few weekends ago I put The Boy in 2 different holiday outfits (which The Husband hates, BTW) and took him out in the back yard to try to get some good shots for this year's Christmas card. I just let him play and tried to catch him in action doing something completely toddler and cute. It didn't go over too well. Here's what I ended up with:

Giant baby with regular sized wagon:

which looked kind of like....

The scarecrow:

Little baby calisthenics:

Baby cockatoo: 

I actually really liked that one but the grill was in the background and I felt like it looked a little......

I don't know why but something about this shot reminded me of Biff from Back to the Future. Maybe it's his hair:

Think, McFly, Think!

Boy eating a stick:

Jail break Christmas:

And a bunch more that I deleted before I thought to share them with you. Although I'm sure it's a fire hazard, I ended up using these three of him playing in the lights. Shutterfly was kind enough to let me share our finished product with you:

Patterned Pretty Holiday Card

Create custom new year's invitations at Shutterfly.com.

View the entire collection of cards.

Aldi In A Day's Work

We went to Aldi today to get groceries. If you've never been, their prices are great but the experience is.....not.  There are no luxuries. Food is displayed in the boxes it came in, the unlabeled aisles are crowded, you have to pay for bags if you don't bring your own, and you bag your own cart (which you have to rent for a quarter, by the way). There is no deli, bakery, or pharmacy. You don't go to Aldi looking for cardamoms, wheat germ, or organic grass fed beef.  You get your staples and you get out of there. 

So today it seemed like a good idea to take The Boy to Aldi. He was covered in a Pig Pen-esq small cloud of dirt and had a runny nose and a stained shirt, evidence of his playdate with his 3 year old cousin this afternoon:

This is unrelated to the story, but The Boy tries to mimic everything his cousin does. Even peeing outside. He has no clue what's going on here, but he wants in on the action. 

As we navigated the small and crowded store he refused to have any item sit in the front of the cart with him yet he wanted to hold each one. So I'd put some fruit snacks in the back of the cart, he'd yell "ehhhhh!" which means "I'd like to see that with my hands, please"and then he'd try to open them OR narrate the contents of the box "Appul..... appul..... appul..... appul..... appul." This would continue until he'd had enough and threw the box on the floor, or until I'd had enough and threw it in the cart. Some items snuck past this process, but each of the cold ones had to be inspected, announced "DOLD!" and then inventoried in the cart. He also loudly announced (often erroneously) the items we were passing. Turkeys were balls, anything canned was a bean, and all fruit were apples. If he wasn't sure about what something was he'd just yell out "dat" aka "that". We got lots of fresh veggies, good cheese, and salad dressing to make a nice salad for dinner. I don't do meat, and The Husband wouldn't go for just a salad for dinner, so his would feature fried chicken tenders on top.  

You can imagine how delightful this type of trip is. I turned my head to grab something off the shelf and a stranger said to me "that is SO cute!" I turned back around and The Boy was sitting in the cart with a box on his head. He stayed like that for a whole aisle, and peeked through to make sure people were impressed. They were. 

The O.J. has apparently been granted a reprieve. 

We were in the long line to check out and someone was getting very impatient and began fussing. A nice employee appeared from nowhere and opened a new lane for us. I was very appreciative. As I was putting my items on the conveyer belt a lady stood behind my cart and held on to the handlebar. Right where my kid was. TOO CLOSE. In my head I started calling her the CLOSEr. I pulled the cart forward from the back. Then, as I was still unloading my cart full of groceries, she started to put her food on the belt too. They were both racing toward the cashier when the CLOSEr picked up one of the stick dividers and THREW IT THROUGH THE AIR to land between our food on the belt. She was talking to The Boy the whole time, and he was largely ignoring her. "It's okay if you're being shy with me today," she said like they were old army buddies. Not only was I creeped out, I also had no where to put the rest of my groceries. Hers were taking up the whole conveyer belt and I wasn't finished unloading. I had to hand each of my remaining items over the register to the cashier. Meanwhile, the CLOSEr was telling The Boy that she'd purchased more than she'd really meant to. Giggle! Twi. Light. Zone. In my fight to get my food on the conveyer belt I'd forgotten to purchase bags. The cashier rang up all my food and was putting it, unbagged, in another cart. All this just for a good salad? 

Now, I've misplaced my debit card  I'm between debit cards, so I had to write a check like it's 1993 I've been using this as an opportunity to teach The Boy about checks. As I was making out my check the CLOSEr was right up on me, breathing her breath on me, and no doubt trying to steal my identity.  As I was writing the check she said "today's the 26th" even though I did not ask her the date. It's as if she wanted us to be those conjoined twins from TLC who operate one body from two heads. I did not tell her thank you. 

I finished my transaction and was assessing my situation: my kid and bag in one cart, with another cart filled with food. I was trying to push them both forward so I could consolidate when the CLOSEr edged me out. What is it with this woman? She bid The Boy farewell and told him that he was very funny. Afraid of a potential Amber Alert, I scooped my kid and my bag into my arms and held them both as I pushed the other cart outside. The Boy wanted to help, so I held him while he pushed the cart. I was doing the parental secret steer even while I juggled everything so he wouldn't steer us into a car. Then he said "beaut!....beaut!.....beaut!" I kept pushing. He turned to face me and said "beaut!!" with a sense of urgency. I looked around to see what he was telling me, and saw his boot had fallen off and had been abandoned in the parking lot. Beaut = boot. 

We went back for the boot. I loaded The Boy in the car. He wanted his ball. When I stood in the back seat to look for it I fell onto The Boy and his seat, which caused him to laugh hysterically. I nursed my wounds and went back to the cart to unload my unbagged food into my car. Somehow bread and chips ended up on the bottom with milk and juice on top. Obviously I'm not cut out for this. I found a bag of homemade chex mix in the back and tore into it. We went home to unload and start dinner. See this post for what that usually looks like at my house. 

I chopped vegetables (or as my south american college roommate would say "bedgetables") and got all the salad fixings ready. Then, as I went to pull the chicken tenders out of the freezer I couldn't find them. Hmmm. Someone must've eaten them all, and I should've checked before we went to the store. I combed the freezer for another suitable replacement. Surely there's something. This would just have to do. 

When the Husband came home:

Husband: Hey hon. How was your day? 

Husband (to the boy): Whoa! You are disgusting!

Boy: Da-da. 

Me: Good. 

Husband: What's for dinner? 

Me: This delicious salad with fresh veggies! 

Husband raises eyebrows. 

Me: Don't worry, yours also has................................dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets on top! 

How's that for delicious? And he ate every bite. 

Quadruple Thanksgiving

If you've seen the movie Four Christmases you'll appreciate our plight during the holidays. We're lucky enough to live within driving distance to most of our family, which means we're expected to make the rounds to everyone at thanksgiving. We had four meals in four towns in two days and as usual, it was great but CRAZY.

Here are some highlights:

Thanksgiving #1: Our house. 

We let The Boy sit at and eat from the big table in a statement of unity and family togetherness. Note the food smeared all over the table. Oh, and he's shirtless. 

When he kicked himself back from the table repeatedly he was relegated back to his high chair. Note he is now eating off the bottom of his plate. Martha Stewart has never seen the likes of this, not even in prison. She would, however, appreciate our fall centerpiece, which The Boy climbed onto the table to get more than once. 

As the only child present, The Boy wanted to make sure that all our guests were watching his antics. 

Thanksgiving #2. The Husband's Grandmother's House

The Husband is one of 18 first cousins (20 if you count step-cousins) so there are a ton of people at his grandmother's house and a ton of kids. The Boy wandered about, playing with his cousins and generally trying to escape from any adult supervision. There were children strewn all about and stacked 2 high. 

This night also included a night truck ride through the pasture for the kids. The cousins loaded up in the back, and when The Boy wouldn't sit down in the truck bed he went to the cab and drove with The Husband. Who apparently was asleep. 

Thanksgiving #3. Mother-in-law's house. 

My M-I-L's house features Victorian furniture and antique china in cabinets throughout the house. And also my toddler wielding a ball, a strong arm, and a crazy aim. Add in two 3 year olds, an infant, and The Boy's same age twin cousin who has the energy to match his. That combination makes for some close calls and nervous parents.

We were serenaded to the musical stylings of The Twin Cousins. Their music sounds a lot like when a cat runs across your piano. Being chased by a squirrel. Who has a hammer on his tail. 

Thanksgiving #4. My Dad's house. 

Here he was the only child again, an opportunity which he didn't let pass him by.  The Boy spent his evening kissin the family dog, River, on the lips. 

And he instituted the first annual Onion Toss event, which he won. 

After all that celebrating we were exhausted. And so blessed! 

On Sunday we recovered at home and put up the Christmas tree. 

Shirtless again, perhaps we are starting a holiday tradition.