week 1

Many things to do before my sister comes to visit! Things include make/eat soup, keep BiebzBear alive, ride bicycle, go to doctor, clean house, make delicion plans, and magically make the weather into warm spring. which it is today! And I am not outside, of course.

Baby Bieber has been asleep for an hour and a half, which is excellent, but at 15 months, 33 inches, and 31 pounds, he is still not putting himself to sleep. It doesn't even really work to let him cry it out in his crib, because he either hasn't figured out that he needs to lie down to go to sleep, or he has figured out that if he stands up long enough someone will come in and probably pick him up (uh... latter). So, he stands in the corner and cries until he nods off, but then because he's standing he wakes himself up and starts screaming again.

I don't quite know how to tell his parents "your child should probably be putting himself to sleep by now, especially because he is way too big to hold and rock/bounce while trying to get him to fall asleep," because no one wants to be told by a 20-something how to raise his/her child, especially when that 20-something doesn't necessarily know what she's talking about. But I am pretty sure that 15 month olds should be putting themselves to sleep. I'm also pretty sure that the extinction method, letting him cry it out, will not ever work. I think that if parents are going to do that it has to be done and finished before the baby can pull up in the crib, which is usually around 10 months or so?

It drives me crazy that he doesn't put himself to sleep. The only other baby I know that wasn't putting himself to sleep at 15 months was Captain Bananio, and he is 2 and a half and STILL doesn't put himself to sleep (however, at 2.5, CB still doesn't weigh as much as BB does right now). I hope it is not a lost cause.
Here is what Lance Armstrong has to say on the matter. What!

Useless information of the week.

This article has everything you need to know about buying a bike! From August of 1987. ten months before I was born! My bike is called an "excellent entry-level racer" and was $450, which is about $860 in 2010 dollars.

WINTER MAKES ME STIR-CRAZY

Two and half stars

I feel okay enough to write about inane stuff now.

Yesterday at Big & Tiny's house, I got a nasty sliver in my right heel. That evening I dropped my iPod on my right foot, corner down. More painful than it sounds! Then this morning, blearily stumbling up the stairs with a bowl of cereal, I missed a riser and slammed my right toes into the stairs, and dropped some cereal but not a lot.
24 hours. 3 injuries. 1 foot.

BiebzBear's family has two cats. One of them has 3 legs and she is very nice and very tolerant. The other cat is very pretty and she knows it. She is the only cat who loves herself even more than Rhett loves himself. She likes to put her face in my mouth and also to sit in the way until you pet her, and then she flips out when you pet her marvelous fabulous fur. She has extremely sharp claws and is extremely fierce and extremely angry. I tried to move her tail out of my way a few minutes ago and she clawed the crap out of my hands. This is a good story.

speaking of, I'd like to say that BabyBiebzBear is growing out of his jackass phase, but I'm not sure that is the case. He is a handful. He likes to try to beat me up. I told him that there will be a day that he will be able to beat me up, and if he really wants, he can come and find me in 15 years and try. Right now, I am still able to pin his arms down or pick him up or whatever, so I will always win the fight that he thinks is so very important. Though he is 30 pounds, at 15 months, so... I will not be able to pick him up in order to win the fight very much longer.

Rabbit rabbit rabbit

I'm thinking of joining a gym. It seems that there is a bit of good news out of Egypt to start February, insh'Allah, but towards the end there January was just too much.

Also I missed Hourly Comics Day. There are more important things today.

Dear Egypt, please stay safe

It's a cold, cold time

I'm beginning to think that Januaries will just always be the hardest. I'm impossible to get out of bed, I can't get anything done, I eat really poorly, I call out from work WAY more often than I should, not always because I'm sick but sometimes I just feel like crap. And I'm whiny and cranky and my skin is always so dry and my lips are always so chapped and I'm always so tired and I definitely wouldn't be friends with me. I am taking my vitamins (unreal amounts of them) and trying to eat fresh fruits and veggies as much as possible, but I still just want to stay in bed all day.

I also keep oversleeping my melatonin, too. It is great when I wake up feeling refreshed and well-slept, but then I look at the clock and it is only 7:30, so I tell myself that I will go back to sleep until my alarm goes off at 8:30, and then I am impossible to wake up until noon. So impossible that in my dreams I try to will myself awake, and snooze my alarm every 8 minutes, and STILL sleep until noon. Yes, I snooze my alarm in my sleep, usually I don't turn it off, though.

this is what I have to say. crank crank crank.

Frogducks

There was a sportsball game this week, I wore my Yell-O and green to the bar and took shots when we scored touchdowns, which was sadly/luckily only twice. Sadly because we lost the game, luckily because I had to be at work at 8:30 the next day. Fun fact, it turns out the only yellow t-shirt I have is a camp shirt with a frog on it, but the frog and name of the camp are green, so I had the colors ok. Also, it is from Oregon, so I'm pretty sure it counts, even though it wasn't a UO shirt.
LOOK even Rhett wore the right colors [on his eyeballs].

HE HAS GOTTEN SO FAT. His 2011 resolution is to lose two pounds. We are [read: he is, through my enforcement] in full force of dieting, which I hope will be much easier in the spring when he is allowed to go outside again. Too cold for kitties right now!!

I wore through the butt of another pair of jeans :( I pretty much only have 3 pairs of jeans, and two that I wear on a regular basis. One pair from Target, and they don't really fit, and then there is my pair from GAP, and they now have a hole. So, that's a thing. I go through jeans faster and faster these days, every six months or so. maybe it has something to do with me being way more active in jeans than I ever was before. Running after children, of course.

Today was my first day with the newest batch of kidlets, and I have good news and bad news about that. Good news is that they're real real cute. Bad news is that they're real real cute. The boy is 21 months and big big huge, running around, talking all the time, excellent communication. He's so good that it kind of kills my previous rant about how Stellina is the Most Great Communicator Of All Time, OF ALL TIME! Wow, I can't believe I got a Reagan reference and a Kanye reference in that same phrase. Anyway, he is big. I used to sit him once a week when he was about 5 months old, and he was huge then, too. And super super drooly. The girl is about 10 weeks, so... tiny. Very tiny and very adorable. Henceforth, their names are: Big and Tiny.

Tomorrow is my first full day with Big and Tiny, today was just hanging around, meeting the kids (again), learning the ropes. Tiny is only awake for about an hour at a time, and Big takes a 2 hour nap in the middle of the day, so it shouldn't be a terribly stressful time.

Hopefully this will be the last introduction of kidlets, other than Imminent Space Monkey, of course. I am beginning to have too much going on, which is good because money is good, but I don't want to add any more stuff or it will begin to defeat the purpose of taking time off after school to chill the eff out. I already haven't been to ballet class in about 4 months because of taking extra work and needing time off and oh, seeing Capital R all the time.
And also, I don't know how much more Sesame Street I can handle.

3x5 notecards

Somehow it seems that I am incredibly motivated to update blogzie when I am cleaning my room. This might be because I am avoiding finishing cleaning, namely, doing the suckiest part of cleaning, like sweeping and dusting and going through the Pile of Papers of Doom. The other reason it might be is that cleaning time is the only time I have downtime at home these days that is not devoted to sleeping.

I am adding another family this upcoming week for Thursdays, which I may have mentioned. This means I'll have a work babby every day of the work week, except sometimes Fridays because Bee's family goes out of town a lot for a long weekend, plus Stellina every other Saturday. I have enough free time that I take a lot of extra work without having to turn too many people down, but I think that it might start getting a little stressful. OH GOD, not 30 hours a week of mostly guaranteed employment! The horror.

Hopefully the new kids aren't cute so I don't get attached to them.

I went through a few old notebooks on my bookshelf today, intending to reorganize stuff, before realizing that it already mostly makes sense in its present order. A lot of school notes I never studied, sloppy meeting notes, and notes passed between me and one of my friends during guest speakers and presentations in class. but also some really emo stuff! A couple of letters, a couple of angsty treatises, and one poem-y sort of thing that was not entirely cringe-worthy. I put it all back on the shelf to marinate for the next few years.

In super exciting news, MY SISTER is coming to visit ME in a REALLY SHORT AMOUNT OF TIME FROM NOW.

Dried Cherries and Bad Pop Music

IT'S CHRISTMAS EVE so I am cleaning, obviously.

My employment situation, with multiple families adding up to somewhere around 2/3 full-time instead of just one family of full or part time, can be very confusing to explain and very confusing to schedule and very busy and stuff, but around the holidays it really pays off... The more families I have, the more cash presents I get! woo!

I opened the adorable card from Dave Jr's family, and there was a ten dollar bill inside, which is very sweet, and then now I am cleaning, and was about to throw away the envelope and then there were two twenties inside the envelope. So, everyone, check your envelopes!

Last night Roommate and I were at the bar, and we wanted White Russians, but Bar TendOwner had NO KAHLUA. I asked if he would make me White Russians if I brought him a bottle of Kahlua and he said yes, but really at that point I should just make them for myself. Also Roommate and I watched Zoolander, and it had been too long since I had seen that classy classy film.

I just realized that the only reason I got out my computer was to use Google Voice to call my phone, because I made my bed and now I can't find my phone, and here I am a blog post later and listening to Usher on the internet radio, still having no idea where the phone is. And then I just realized I promised Roommate I'd clean the vacuum before he got home, and I still haven't done that. WELL DONE.

I Am A Protein, All Living Organisms Need Me To Function

A new thing I learned the other day! Apparently when you get a gmail address, you own all the permutations involving periods, so when you own firstlast@gmail.com you also own first.last@gmail.com and also f.irst.l.ast@gmail.com and f.i.r.s.t.l.a.s.t@gmail.com blah blah etc.

I think it is time for a general update about the kidlets.

Baby Biebzbear is almost 14 months. Walking, running, finally eating food that isn't just baby food, finally. He is quite literally inhaling bread, he makes this scary choking noise because he eats it too fast. I stand there and stare at him while he eats his bread and his goldfish. He is transitioning to one nap, finally. He is generally less of a jerk, finally, but now it is too cold to go outside so we have 16 hours a week together in one tiny apartment, which is driving me nuts. He is pretty cute though.

Stellina LOVES school. She makes lots of art and then when I come over she goes "I MADE THIS I MADE THIS" and she is so proud. She got her first haircut recently, and it is super cute. She is the best.

The Three Horsechildren of the Apocalypse are as skinny and as apocalyptic as ever. Zannah, Prince Philip, and Captain Bananio, are all totally crazy insane. Though Zannah is becoming gradually more rational, Captain Bananio is losing all sense of sanity at a rate so exponential that it totally cancels out Zannah's eight year old maturity. Prince Philip is turning into the sweetheart I always knew he was, but he acts it more consistently now that he is in school. He doesn't remember how much he loved dressing up in Zannah's princess dresses, which makes me sad. He does know how to work Instant Netflix on the Wii. I do not know how to do this. I have to have a five year old help me with the technology.

Dave Jr. is getting over a cold, and I am crashing into a cold, so I did not see him this week. He turns two on Christmas Day. He loves Elmo. He loves watching Elmo on YouTube. It's pretty cute, actually. He's talking more and more and somehow not really making any more sense.

So, I've gotten to the point with my various kids that I think I can really see the benefit of sign language. When I first started with Stellina, she was 14 months, which is Biebzbear's age now. Dave Jr. is six months younger than Stellina, Captain Bananio is the exact same age, and Bee is a few months older. There are lots of factors at play, obviously, but when looking at communication, it's pretty clear that Stellina has always been at least one step ahead of all my other kids. It's unbelievable how far ahead of Captain Bananio she is, and when she was 14 months she was lightyears ahead of where Biebzbear is now. Even compared to Bee, who is older, Stellina is much easier to understand (perhaps because there is always a pacifier in Bee's mouth).

Anyway, I could write a lot about that. It's not just because I love Stellina the best. ...but I do.

The end of New Things November.

Well, since I kind of sucked at finishing the month of New Things, here are some more new things happened recently.

I went to a Harris Teeter! I had never been to a Harris Teeter before. It is fancy. I haven't been to the brand new HT by my house, which I imagine is fancy x3. They have delicious bread there.

I decided to buy a new dress, that is great, it is a great dress, and possibly these shoes too, and I can do this because,

It looks like I am picking up a third full day of babbysits, with a babby I had about a year and a half ago for a couple of months. But now he is 20 months old, and has an 8 week old sister. So... that will be a LOT of work, but will be at least 500 extra a month, hopefully a little more, because two kids under two is going to be totally nuts.

Anyway because of that and because of the extra moneys I am making this month singing in church etc., I will be able to afford new dress, and some other stuff, and also be able to pay off my entire credit card in a month instead of the year I had budgeted, and then I will also be able to pay my loan faster! HAPPY WINTER, ME.

I'm watching this week's SNL, Paul McCartney is the musical guest. His guitarist looks like a weird blond Steven Tyler.

I think I'm too afraid to see this movie.

RIP Orange and Blue. Thanks for the tasty noms.

A few new things about Stellina:
New Baby Brudder Space Monkey is at 27 weeks now, which means he weighs two pounds, I guess? He is due in about 12 weeks, which of course is when their dad has just been assigned a two week trial. Stellina is moving into her new big girl bed when they get back from Mekik (Mexico), and her new big girl bed has these sheets, which Stellina picked out herself, and are insanely cute. Baby girl has a sense of humor these days; when she was taking a bath the other day she kept calling the mirror the bathtub, and the bathtub a mirror, and thought she was insanely hilarious for it, which she was. She also really hates toothpaste.

I'm thinking of a 2011 blog project, because I like having projects. It would be a weekly thing, so there would be 52 of them, but I don't know what. My cousin writes about albums every week on his BookFace. I like the Dark Days project of cooking. I like the doing new things, and I like the learning new things. Suggestions?

New Things November-ish: Saturday the 34th of November

Some awesome New Things today! I went to IHOP.

AND IT WAS AWESOME.

LET ME TELL YOU.

It was extreem awesome. But there was a 45 minute wait, so first we had bloody marys and that was even more awesome!

(I have been to IHOP before, just not the brand new one in DC, so ... this is kind of a New Thing.)

Then I watched the most of a football game that I have ever watched! I watched a whole three quarters, before I had to leave for working times. It was great fun, except for the leaving. ALSO THE DUCKS WON... AGAIN. Woooo

Lastly, I let Stellina stay up WAY past her bedtime and watch an entire Sesame Street with me, because I was lonely, and I love her. We ate Honey Nut Cheerios together. We discussed her new big girl bed, which she is getting tomorrow, so that her old crib can be used for New Baby Space Monkey when he comes in March. We discussed her artwork on her brand new easel that she got for Hannukah, and we discussed how they learned about yelling in school yesterday (?!?!?), and we discussed how she had chicken for dinner, and we discussed how her haircut looks really fantastic. I've never been the cool babysitter and let kids stay up past bedtime, mostly because there is no point in letting kids under 2 stay up late, it only causes destruction and badness. Hopefully she will sleep late in the morning and give her mom and dad a break. Shhh.

Sunday is the last day of this past week, which I have lived through somehow. I don't know what happens tomorrow. Monday I have Baby Biebz from 9 to 5 and then the three horsechildren of the apocalypse (Zannah, Prince Philip, and Captain Bananio) from 6 until late???, and then the same thing again on Tuesday. So yes, I'll make bank between those two days. but I do not plan on being happy about it.

New Things November-ish: Friday the 33rd of November

Um, I ate some jalepeño chips today? I had never really done that before, and they were delicious.

A new thing I learned was how to make this: ñ!!!!!

New Things November-ish: Thursday the 32nd of November

I am in my fifth year in DC now (woah) and have never spent a significant amount of time at Gallery Place in Chinatown. I have been to the movie theater once and I have been to the bar once but I had never been to the fancy schmancy bowling alley there.

I have my thoughts about bowling, mostly that I hate doing it. I like hanging out at the bowling alley and drinking and eating and watching other people bowl, and I like saying "Fuck it, Dude, let's go bowling" all the time. I like giving other people high fives when they get strikes and spares and I like making fun of Capital R when he mixes his sports metaphors and says "I really need to strike out on this next frame." I think I don't like bowling for the same reason I don't like goldfish crackers; bowling and goldfish were both forced upon me too much as a child. I also really don't like when the idiot guys are like "oh yeah, that was a good one but next time you have to keep your angle straight and you have to pull the ball back just like this and you have to put spin blah blah I'm a douchebag who just likes women to think I know what I'm talking about." Also I am bad at bowling, and have no desire to improve.

I had a fun time, even though I had eaten too many pad thai (WAY TOO MANY) and my tummy hurt a lot. But it was because I got to watch instead of having to actually bowl, except for one frame, when one of the people we were with went away to get more drinks, but then a douchebag told me what I did wrong, and so I sat back down and resolved to never bowl again unless I change my mind, because I hate it, and I don't have to do something that I don't want to do.

Also even though it was fun, it was a bowling alley with a dress code, which I think is really stupid.

This has been my rant against bowling. ICE SKATING, LET'S DO THAT, BECAUSE I LIKE IT.

New Things November-ish: Wednesday the 1st (the 31st of November)

A lot of the new things involve new eating places, which is good, because there are so many eating places. Today Capital R and his friend (the one who says things that make me roll my eyes a LOT) and I went to a different pho place than the one that is in DC that we have been to before. It was tasty, and I lol'ed a lot at the two boys, and I also schooled them at eating all the pho.

And now I am superhero.

ALSO a new place! A new bike shop, which has the DUMBEST website for being a really awesome store. Both Capital R and his stupid/hilarious friend used to work there, so I got to meet all the people. S/H Friend introduced me as Capital R's "girl," which I don't know if that is correct or not, but that is a new thing. I have never been introduced as someone's "girl" before. I think I am no one's girl, except for maybe my momma's. In any case, all the people were really nice, and there were some INSANE bikes, really ridiculous stuff, and there is a guy working there who is apparently the God of Bikes, and he was kind of awkward, as I expect that the God of Bikes would be.

New Things November: Tuesday the 30th

Biebzbear and I found a new park today! We walked and walked in the stroller until we came to the park on the west side of Barracks Row, and we found the park, and we went to the park, and there were lots of grassy knolls that Bear ran up and then fell and then got cranky when I wouldn't let him run down the hill because he would have died. Also there was a nice male caregiver there wearing a Utilikilt, and I wanted to be friends with him, but I did not do that.

Also Bear and I walked around the entire Eastern Market/Barracks Row/Navy Yard area, and holy crap! there's some cool stuff! Awesome houses and buildings and really cool art in some alleys and stuff.

New Things November: Monday the 29th

I locked myself out of new house today! I had not locked myself out of this house Ever Before. It is important not to lock oneself out of the house when one does not have a front desk staff with spare keys, and also one has a landlord who is very difficult to contact, and one does not always know when one's roommates are going to be home.

It ended well for me, because Incredibly Adequate Roommate was home before I even left work! He is AWESOME.

Hopefully I will not lock myself out of new house again.

New Things November: Sunday the 28th

I took a new bicycle route to work today! I usually go south on either 8th or 11th, but today I went on 9th! It was very nice. I might do that again.

Also I had some New Kids today, one time kids. I had Bee, who has not yet made an appearance on the blog until now because even though I've been watching her since the beginning of the summer, she is not super regular, and she is more stress than sweet, so there aren't many cute stories to tell. But, today, I had her and the kids of her parents' friends, so that all the parents could go to dinner together. Bee is two and a half, and the boys are 4 and 6, so it was ... kind of stressful? The surround sound on the DVD player wasn't working, so when the characters on Finding Nemo were on the sides of the screen we could hear them just fine, but when they were in the center of the screen, their little aquatic mouths were moving and no sound was produced. None of the little ones seemed to care, but now I want to watch it again, so I can get all the funny parts that I missed.

Bee was mostly cuddly on the couch with me, which was super adorable, while the boys threw around a yoga ball and mostly ignored me when I yelled at them, until I took away the yoga ball and the 4 year old had a minor breakdown. My bike was only knocked over twice, so I consider the evening a complete success.

After we had found Nemo, we switched to The Wizard of Oz on one of the movie channels, and the sound was fine! Weird.

New Things November: Saturday the 27th

There are about a million bars on my street, and I have not been to quite a few of them. So last night we went to a Place Where I Had Never Been! I did not have their coffee I only had their whiskey and their live music and their dancing to their reggae(??!). There were a lot of white people there who couldn't dance so we spent a lot of time on the couch watching the white people.

Then we went to pie, and I ate pie, and it was all gone within a few steps of the pie store because I was the God of Pie, and I was unstoppable.

New-ish Things November: Friday the 26th

Today I did nothing new. I was in bed all day and I watched the new episodes of The Walking Dead, Modern Family, and Glee, in that order. Watching new episodes doesn't count, a whole new TV show might count but not new episodes. I took two showers, also not a new thing.

But this is my 200th blog post, which is a milestone, which is kind of like a new thing. In celebration I made this video which is very cute.




I am not sure what will be the new thing for tomorrow. It is my half birthday on Saturday the 27th, so maybe I will try a new bar, or maybe just a new drink at my regular bar, while wearing a pretty dress. We will see. Maybe not a dress, because it gets cold at night. Is it winter now??