The Future Carrie Bradshaw

Lila loves shoes.  Anyone’s shoes.  If she finds a pair on the floor, she will pick them up and bring them over to the person they belong to and put them at their feet, all the while saying “ishes,” which is the word “shoes” in Lila-speak. 

Trying to take her shoes off is pretty much inducing a tantrum that is miraculously cured the second she sees her “ishes” going back towards her feet.   When I go into her room in the morning, she is standing in her crib saying “ishes” and pointing at her shoes that are on top of her dresser.   She would sleep in her shoes if she could, and has, just because it was simpler to leave them on her feet when putting her down than it was to add the sorrow of having to part with her beloved shoes to the indignity of having to take a nap. 

So I predict there will be a whole lot of shoe shopping in her future.  Which will be just as much fun for me, since I also love shoes.  I can picture us cruising through the malls on weekends, taking trips to New York, all in the name of shoes.  The epitome of female bonding. 

I suspect my wallet will not be as thrilled about her fascination with shoes as I am.  Her father and brother will look at us and shake their heads for getting so excited over a pair of shoes that is likely to do nothing more than give us blisters.  And Lila and I will knowingly shake our heads at them, because only women can understand the healing power that a cute pair of shoes can have, blisters and all. 

Lila’s taste in shoes will graduate from her cotton candy Crocs to the likes of Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo.  I will have watched her grow into a young woman who will have the world by the balls.   And I hope she’ll still think I’m cool enough to go shoe shopping with, because really at the end of the day, it’s not about the shoes.  The shoes are just a metaphor, a symbol of the bond we share and the friendship that we will grow to have.

Coming up for air

I know, I know.  I’ve been quiet.  Not really by choice, but it just seems like I haven’t had much time so updating my blog seemed like the least important on a never-ending to-do list. 

I love summer, I really do.  But once Labor Day comes and goes, I’m over it.  I’m over the pool, over the air conditioning, over my summer clothes, and most of all over the heat and humidity.  I certainly don’t like the dead of winter, either, but it would be nice to open the windows and have nice fresh air coming into the house, to have that crisp air coming in at night when we’re sleeping. 

This summer for the most part sort of sucked.  It seemed like I was really busy with work, and with Tom’s gastroenteritis and what turned out not to be MRSA but folliculits, we didn’t do much of anything.  We did have people over twice in August, which is mostly fun, but I always seem to not enjoy myself at our parties.  There’s just too much to do and too many people to worry about pleasing. 

And our trip to the shore was wonderful.  Seeing Ryan’s little face smile and laugh so hard that his dimples have never been so pronounced was well worth the price of admission.  Lila is still at that toddling age where it’s hard to do much of anything with her.  She wants to go do her own thing and be independent, but she’s really way too little to do those things.  And so the end result is tantrums.  Not fun.  Next year, she will be much more beach-friendly. 

And the only other notable thing is the drama in my sister’s life that then led to family drama involving my sister and my dad, and I’m not really sure how I am fitting into it, at least from my dad’s perspective.  It baffles me, but these days I just don’t have the time and/or energy to try to figure it out. 

Stay tuned…

My Poor Hubby

I feel like all I’ve done for the past month is worry about him.  I think I’ve worried about him more in this past month than I have for the entire almost 6 years of our marriage.

He got past the gastroenteritis finally, although it seemed to take awhile before he was 100%.  Then he had some minor tests done on his heart because he seems to be short of breath when he stands up after wrestling.  We finally heard back from the cardiologist that all is normal, thank goodness.  But still no explanation as to why the shortness of breath occurs.  I hope this doesn’t mean more testing is in order because I just can’t deal with any more worrying.

The latest is that he has apparently contracted a MRSA infection.  We’re not sure where it came from, because it really could be from anywhere, although the most likely culprit is a wrestling mat or one of his classmates is a carrier of it and he just happened to have an open wound and it just infected him unfortunately.

Inherently I know he will be fine and will recover without having suffered any ill effects from this, but when you Google and you see the words like “life-threatening” and “fatal,” it’s enough to make even the most calm, easy-going person feel very unsettled and anxious. 

It’s Day 3 of antibiotics and he seems slightly improved, and that goes along with what he was told about the antibiotics needing 3 to 5 days to start to work.  So my mind is telling me he’s fine.  My heart, on the other hand, the part that doesn’t know what I’d do without him, is all over the place and my nerves are just shot. 

I know he probably is getting really aggravated with my constant inquiries of how he feels, if he feels as if he is spiking a fever, if his leg feels ANY better, but it’s my way of just trying to let him know how much I care.  I’m emotional to a fault, but I think with that comes the fact that I don’t know how to ever say in words what I’m feeling. 

So until I can figure out how to do that, I’ll just keep hovering over him until he tells me to stop.

Baby Kisses

There’s nothing better than baby kisses.  You know, the big open-mouthed wet ones that leave your face(or wherever they land) soaking wet because babies don’t know how to pucker yet. 

Lila had given a handful awhile back, maybe a few months ago, but since then, she’s been very stingy with her kisses.  But this past weekend, she drenched all of us(including Ryan) with kiss after adorable wet kiss!!! 

It was heavenly!!!  I just love that sweet little girl.

Spiderman

Spiderman is a pretty important person in our house, which is pretty ironic since I can recall having a huge fear of him when I was a kid.  So I’m not really certain how it happened.  My only guess is that Ryan took a liking to him when my dad brought him back a shirt from Vegas sporting the super-hero.  Previous to that, I can’t think of any exposure he would have had to Spiderman. 

Since then, we have collected many things Spiderman, some toys, a wall border for Ryan’s room, more than a few pairs of underwear, another T-shirt, and most importantly his beloved Spiderman Crocs and Spidey swimsuit, both of which I swear he would sleep in if he could. 

Whenever one of the movies is on, or the cartoon that we discovered not so long ago, everything has to stop so Ryan can watch.  So it’s no wonder that he would start going around holding his arms out and making “PHHTT” noises as if were shooting a web at something or someone.  It’s now all a game for all of us to play and have fun with Ryan. 

So imagine my surprise yesterday as we were playing outside before dinner when my little girl began to hold her little arms out and say “PHHTT!!!!”  I think it was quite possibly the cutest and funniest thing I have ever seen.  

I thought I’d be buying her some fairy princess or some other totally girly costume for Halloween this year, but since she apparently likes to shoot webs just as much as her brother, it looks like I might be searching high and low for a Spidergirl costume.  I wonder if they even make such a thing?   I’m thinking probably not, because I can’t imagine that many little girls are into Spiderman.   

But it certainly would be really cute to have matching Spideys.  I’ll have to start shopping now…

Our First Trip to the Fair!

The local fair is in town this week.  We’ve lived here for almost six years now and this is the first year I had any desire to go.  It seems like 3 is the perfect age for such an event, and while Lila might still be a little young, I thought she’d have fun just people watching.

I brought this idea to my husband who I thought would put the kibosh on it entirely, citing this reason or that that we shouldn’t bother, but surprisingly he was into it. 

Of course, it was with a small bit of hesitation on both of our parts.  Ryan is a typical leg-clinger whenever we go just about anywhere.  It takes him usually until about a half-hour before it is time to leave a party or an event for him to warm up to the situation and start having fun.  So we really expected his usual behavior and thought it was a pretty good possibility that we’d be home within an hour. 

But to our amazement and happiness, as we were walking through, he was pointing at all the different rides and saying how he wanted to go on them.  But this is also typical.  He talks a good game, but when it comes down to it, most times he is still on one of our legs. 

We got his feet wet with the old standard, the merry-go-round.  He didn’t want to brave sitting on a horse, but rode on a bench with his daddy, and apparently that was all he needed to break the ice for him.  After that, we spent the next hour running from the race cars to the teddy bear spinning ride to the helicopters to the little rabbits to the dragon roller coaster, which I braved with him and thought he was probably terrified, because as embarrassing as this is to admit, I was sort of terrified.  I guess it’s just the mom in me realizing how unstable these rides seem to be, which is all just the worrier in me coming to the surface. 

But underneath my screaming, all I could hear was his little giggle and I knew he was having the time of his life.  I just kept thinking today how funny his little face was when he was riding all the rides.  I could see the little smile trying to come out, but it was like he didn’t want to let on he was having fun.  Tom noticed the same thing. 

He spotted a blow-up Spiderman, and apparently this booth was just a means to an end for the children, because all he had to do was hand the lady three ducks and the Spiderman was his and it only cost us $5, which I willingly handed over.  Spiderman actually made poor Lila happy as well, since she had the crappy fate of having to sit in a stoller while her brother had all the fun.  One of the girls working one of the rides even commented how she seemed bummed out that she couldn’t go on as well.

I couldn’t leave without letting her enjoy her first trip to the fair, so I took her on her first merry-go-round ride.  She had no problem sitting on the horse, grabbed right onto the pole as if she’d done this a million times.  Her little smile down at me when she started moving was priceless. 

I unfortunately didn’t capture any of these moments with a camera as we are horrible picture-takers and the camera’s batteries were basically drained, but even though I know one day I will regret not having the actual pictures to show to them, I also know that, for me, I will never forget one minute of last night even without the pictures, that every smile, every giggle is etched into my mind forever.

My Hellish Week

You’ll have to forgive me in advance if I seem all over the place with this post.  I am spent. 

The past week of my life has included a trip to the ER for my husband who was suffering from a case of gastroenteritis, a crappy holiday weekend in which we had to cancel a barbecue we had scheduled for our house on Saturday due to questionable weather and the aforementioned gastroenteritis, and a rambunctious preschooler and a temperamental toddler who were subjected to hanging around the house for most of the weekend because I couldn’t think of anything I’d be able to do with them by myself while Tom tried to get better and get some rest. 

Speaking of which, how can I forget the restless leg syndrome he suffers from?  I think as of this minute, we might be up to 4 days that he hasn’t slept more than two to three hours a night.  Poor guy. 

But I’m not doing much better in the sleep department myself.  Due to his illness, I’ve been on my own with the kids for the better part of a week and I also got slammed with two all-day depositions last week, so as far as editing, not a whole lot got done by the time I got home, got everyone fed, bathed and in bed.  Today was the cutoff for my pay period and I had to get some work done or else we might be in danger of starving so I had the pleasure of sitting down at my computer at 9pm every night of the weekend to try to get something accomplished. 

I could only sit here and listen to the booms of the fireworks I could hear going off and wish that I was watching them instead of suffering through the monotony of editing and proofreading page after page of depositions about the facts of a car accident or the aftereffects of a flood.   I know these events were significant and trying for the parties that experienced them, but to me it’s just a means to pay my bills and support my family. 

But when every other Monday rolls around, I feel a huge sense of relief that  another pay period is now a memory and I managed to get done what I needed to get done.  Despite all the roadblocks this past week, I was still able to rack up over 1,000 pages for this paycheck so I am looking forward to a night to myself without the little voice in my head telling me how much work is piling up and hopefully an early bedtime and a good night’s rest for all of us in this house.

My week wasn’t all bad, though.  I got to meet and hold my friend Liz’s week-old baby girl.  There’s something about holding such a tiny little person that makes everything else about life seem really insignificant when you think about the enormity of the fact that an actual miracle is in your hands. 

Tomorrow will bring new problems, I’m sure, but this week already has the promise of some drinks with my friends on Thursday night and a family party on Saturday, so if things start to look crappy again this week, at least I’ll know that a martini or a glass of wine is in my near future.

Not Your Ordinary Breakfast

My son eats opium for breakfast. 

Now, before you get alarmed and dash to your phone to report us to Child Services, hear me out, because this is not what you think.  

Opium is simply oatmeal.  But for whatever reason I do not know, Ryan calls it opium.  I am guessing this is the same process happening in his little mind that causes him to pronounce “table” as “bable.”   “Bable,” however, does not cause me to have a feeling of dread in my stomach when I see the huge bowl of oatmeal on the breakfast table at daycare some mornings.  Those mornings I am on the edge of my seat waiting for that phone call from his teachers demanding to know why he is calling his breakfast opium, because I am certain my explanation of “That’s just how he says the word oatmeal” would probably sound pretty feeble.  But it’s the only one I have.

At first, we thought we were hearing him incorrectly.  But we have asked him repeatedly to say ”oatmeal,” and when he says it, three syllables come out of his mouth clear as day:  O-Pee-Um.  When he is eating it, we will periodically ask him, “Ryan, what are you eating?”  The same three syllables again:  O-Pee-Um.   

My mother-in-law has said we should embrace his calling the table a “bable,”  and to never correct him even if he still says it when he is 30 years old.  I agree, which is in itself a highly unusual event.  It’s so sweet to hear his little 3-year-old voice talking and learning new words, and “bable” is just something that is a part of him, something that makes him, him. 

But “opium,” not so much.  While some(and even my husband) may get quite a chuckle out of his calling oatmeal opium, there’s something about the fact that the name of an illegal substance is coming out of his mouth that is troublesome to me, no matter how innocent it is. 

I’ve also been told from his teachers that he is the only one out of his classmates who will eat oatmeal, probably the reason that they serve it so infrequently.  But hearing that about him makes me happy.  It makes me happy when he requests it for breakfast on the weekends.  It makes me proud of myself as well to know that I am setting a good example with food because oatmeal is my breakfast choice most days.  

That’s not to say that he isn’t the typical kid.  More often than not, he will request pancakes or a blueberry muffin for breakfast.  But the requests for “opium” are still there every once in a while.  So I guess I’ll have to be happy for that and not worry about what he’s calling it, because I’m sure in time he will outgrow this as he will so many other things, and I will only have ”opium” as a memory, something to make me smile, a little anecdote to share with his friends and girlfriends, and even his own children, someday  

And in the meantime, I’ll just have to hope that the mood for “opium” doesn’t strike him when we are out to breakfast at our local diner. 

 

Where to start?

I’ve been thinking for a while of starting a blog, but I think I was intimidated by it for some reason.  But I have some very dear friends who blog and I truly enjoy reading theirs and they say it’s very enjoyable.  So here I am giving it a try.  I can’t promise that anything I have to say will be very compelling, but I’ll do my best! 

When I first thought of starting a blog, one of the first roadblocks I came to was what I should call it.  I’m not the most creative person in the world and I couldn’t turn any of my interests or hobbies into a name.  Diary of a Gym Rat and Shopaholic just didn’t seem to work. 

So that led me to my children, my beautiful, adorable, sweet children, Ryan and Lila.  The Best Things I’ve Ever Done.  And so I had the name.   While we may have had some help getting them here, it was truly my husband and I who really made them, and I can think of no better accomplishment I have made in my life apart from bringing these two amazing people into this world. 

This will more than likely be mostly about them, and I hope that everyone who reads this will enjoy getting to know them as I am still getting to know them as well.  And I hope everyone will also feel as I do, that they are The Best Things I’ve Ever Done.