yup, she did it…

The day finally arrived, as I knew it probably would… Carmen cut her own hair.  I knew it probably would happen because number 1: I am a very forgetful/easily distracted person, with a nursing baby.  Number 2: she is a cunning little girl who has always gotten into EVERYTHING.

She has already taken my craft scissors to many other things, so I don’t know why I was surprised to find 5 inches of her hair adorning my sofa pillow.  I guess none of the other stuff she has cut up was important enough for me to not keep scissors in my knitting bag, until now.  I know, I know *forehead smack, shaking head in shame*.  I was actually hoping that it was the feathers out of my sofa pillow when I came down from putting Moseley down for a nap,  I don’t really like those pillows anyway.  But no, in fact it was all of her curls from the left side of her head.  This picture is of her after I cut the rest of her mullet off… As you can see, I couldn’t bear to go as short as she cut it, but oh well.  She will just have to rock the asymmetrical a-line bob for a while.

Trying to get her to hold still for a picture, is just about impossible these days.

Yeah, lay down… that’s helpful…

I still think it looks pretty cute… but I am  not used to it yet, and I was getting stoked on how long it was finally getting.  Oh well, it’ll grow back someday.

Her reaction was actually really cute.  When she saw me get all teary eyed about it, she said “here, I’ll give you a hug… shhhhh, it’s ok.”  Then when I asked her why she did that (the dumbest question ever, that I seem to ask her anyway… every day) she replied “hurry mom, let’s clean this up before daddy gets home so he won’t be mad.”  That seemed to be her biggest concern of the day because when I told her I had to cut the rest of it off, she started crying and saying that daddy was going to be mad at her, and at me for cutting her hair off.  He wasn’t mad obviously, but he does like long hair on girls, so he wasn’t too stoked on the new do.   He still thinks she’s cute though, and he just has to get used to it, like I do.

It could have been much worse, like my friend Jeanette put it… she could have cut “1/2 inch long dora bangs”.  So yeah, I am thanking my lucky stars about that one.

I won’t always have a nursing baby I guess, maybe then I can have nice things…  Oh wait, nope… because then he will be a toddler.  I just hope he is just not quite as extreme as her.   Maybe by then, I will have enough sleep in me to remember basic things like, if you don’t want them to get it… put it away. Durrrrr. I know I am not winning any mother of the year awards any time soon, although in my defense, there is pretty much not a single place in this house that she could not get into, if she puts her mind to it.

Parenting is such a funny thing.  I guess I just really had no idea what to expect.  This is not the way I pictured things in my mind at all.  Not that I don’t love being a mother, because I do, a lot.  I just find myself questioning… myself every day, especially the sanity/intelligence parts. (That was a total Austin powers moment: please allow myself to introduce… Myself…)   Occasionally I will be so distracted by everything, that I hear completely contradictory statements flying out of my mouth at any given moment.  Like yesterday, when Carmen was trying to get my attention by licking the back of my arm, I said to her “if you want to go to your room, you had better stop doing that.”  Does anyone else do this?  It reminds me of a scene in Emperor’s New Groove:

Ysma: “All right, I’ve had enough of this. Tell us where the talking llama is and we’ll burn your house to the ground.”

Little Boy: “Uh, don’t you mean ‘or’? “

Ysma: “*SIGH* Tell us where the talking llama is OR we’ll burn your house to the ground. “

Little Girl: “Well, which is it? That seems like a pretty crucial conjunction.”

It’s really only a matter of time until Carmen figures out that she is really smarter than me.

On the plus side, she does keep things lively, and always has something funny to say.  Like when Moseley has something on his face she says “Look mom, he has a mustache on his chin.”  Or this morning when Lee was about to leave she told him she was going to make him a “work cake”.  I guess if you need an excuse to make a cake, work is as good as any.  That kid loves to bake, and eat cake… a girl after my own heart.

I think these personality traits will pay off well for her when she gets to adult hood.  It’s just my job to keep her reigned in so she can make it there eventually.  I think I am having a similar experience to what Lee’s mother had to endure with him as a child.  While he adamantly denies he ever gave her any grief, she told me that at one point, she would have sold him to anyone who would have given her a dollar.  So funny!

At the end of the day, Carmen is awesome and spunky, and even if she shaved her head she would still be gorgeous.  I would never trade any of her qualities for any amount of dollars in the world, (I will just hope that some of them are strictly traits of toddler-hood ;)).

I just love that kid’s stinkin’ guts!

P.S. if you haven’t seen emperor’s new groove… it’s hilarious, not just for a kid show, I love it.

struggling

Since I had my girls weekend last week, Lee decided he needed a guys weekend as well, and since his cousin (that he hardly ever gets to see because he is a military doctor) invited him to Mesquite to get some good hookups for golf… he jumped at the chance. Unfortunate timing, I would say, since I am in my last month of pregnancy and this baby is already so huge… but I let him go, none the less.
He is still there, and I haven’t had any signs of labor so far… so that is good. And Lauren’s husband was out of town too, so she came to stay with me just in case I did go into labor, I wouldn’t be alone. We got baby sitters both nights and went out to dinner and movies, which was really nice because I don’t know the next time I will get to do that for a while.
On the flip side, I seem to have lost my mind yesterday because I cant seem to go two seconds without getting hurt. Last night before we left, I was chasing my dear sweet 2 year old who refused to listen to me, down the stairs and slipped, landing right on my back and falling down a few steps. Luckily I didn’t land on my belly… but I did get pretty bruised up trying to catch myself on the railing (which didn’t work). I was ok enough to still go out, especially because that would be a lot less work sitting in a movie than it would be to chase Carmen around some more.
Then I thought the drama was over until I was rummaging through my purse this morning looking for my keys while walking to the front door to lock it. Unfortunately I was so flustered from trying to get that same dear sweet 2 year old ready for church and loaded in the car, that I forgot to look for the small step leading to our front porch. I then kicked it as hard as I could with an open toed shoe, and being top heavy as it is, went right down… hard. Once again I must have angels looking out for me because I didn’t hit my belly. The brunt of it was on my hand and knee, and when I realized what had happened I was laying on my side with the contents of my purse spilled out next to me.
Lauren was not fortunate to see either of these embarrassing feats of acrobatics, lucky for me, because I’m sure they would have been a sight to behold.
Needless to say, I am not feeling so great now. I feel like I have been in a car accident, which is really just wonderful because being at my huge pregnant state, I was already having a hard time getting around with all my joints aching all the time. Now I feel like I cant even move. I probably shouldn’t, since I cant seem to stay on my feet anyway, but that doesn’t make for such easy parenting.
I took a nap after our super early church ended. Carmen woke up an hour after I fell asleep, which was definitely not long enough of a nap after all that commotion. So I just thought I would put a show on in my room, and let her watch it while I slept a little longer. Not a good idea, since I really was exhausted. When I fell back to sleep it was like I took a sedative, and I had no idea what Carmen was doing. I woke up to see her standing next to my bed with white all over her face, holding a spoon. She said “Ice cream” as she ran back out of my door, but I thought surely she had just gotten a small container of yogurt out of the fridge right?… wrong. I staggered out to open the door to my bedroom to find the entire carton of ice cream sitting on the carpet and her and tiger helping themselves to a Sunday treat. Awesome.
I need Lee back here… I am losing it. And unfortunately as soon as he gets back, he goes right back to work. I don’t know how I am going to make it through the next few weeks.
I went to the doctor on thursday, and she said she will strip my membranes this Friday to see if that will get things moving. If that doesn’t work, I am going to probably be induced the week after that.
I have been so nervous about the actual labor and delivery, I have forgotten to be nervous about having 2 kids to attend to. And after this weekend of such sweet obedience (sarcasm, if you can’t tell) from Carmen, I am in for a real treat. Although I guess the reason I haven’t been stressing about that as much is because I am the type that feels like if I have my physical strength back, I can accomplish anything. It is just making it to that point that worries me, because I literally have no physical strength left anymore, and that just does not work with Carmen. She is way too strong willed, and smart. She knows if she can make it under the table or behind the chaise lounge, I can’t get to her to do anything about her behavior… and she’s right, I can’t. And there is only so much that can be done with threats. I guess you can never really appreciate your health and strength, until it’s gone.
Anyway so yeah, that was my fun, and not so fun weekend.
Sorry about that long post… rant over.

classic carmen

I take pictures of Carmen all the time on my phone, because let’s face it… those two are always with me, but I hardly ever post them because they are grainy and not great.  However, I was looking through them and realized there are some real gems in there that I need to document.  So this will be a tribute to all the funny things I catch Carmen doing (the ones I happen to think to take a picture of anyway).

I’ll start with her taking a picture of me with her cell phone, while I take a picture of her with mine.  She is a mini-me.

Here she is making daddy cute.  Notice fashionable hello kitty hair clip and sweet shades.  I think it suits him.

In this one she is just helping herself to a light snack.  (yes that is half a loaf of french bread, if you can’t tell)

I put Carmen down for a nap in her big girl bed the other day.  However when I went to check on her, she was nowhere to be found… recognize the crib bedding I made for the baby?  Yes she is fast asleep.

And lastly the classic belly shot.

Don’t worry about the fact that she looks like a ragamuffin in all the above pics, I do love my child, but I’m also pregnant so sue me.  I always try to make sure she looks decent in public (I know my blog is public, whatev).

cheesecake

I was craving cheesecake yesterday, so I loaded up Carmen and headed to the grocery store to buy all the ingredients. After that, she and I spent the evening making the cheesecake together.  It was really fun, and she seemed excited to help, and to eat it.  Cheesecakes are better if you let them sit in the refrigerator over night so, I stuck it in the fridge with the anticipation that we would eat it today after dinner.

Earlier this morning Carmen went to the fridge to get a snack.  She saw a large container of strawberries on the second to highest shelf that looked particularly good, so she climbed up and grabbed it off the shelf.  I could hear what she was doing but I couldn’t see, so when I heard something crash, I asked “her what just fell?”.

She said “Chicken” (which I assumed was the leftovers I had put in a tupperware the night before) . She then followed that up by slamming it in the fridge door a few times and then, to figure out why the door wouldn’t close she got down to investigate and when I heard her say to me “I think it’s squishy”, I knew I had better put down my knitting and get over there to see what it was.  When I got to the fridge, there was my darling sweet child with her foot in the middle of my cheesecake.

With the shock of seeing her stepping on my cheesecake (which was really the first big thing I’ve baked since feeling better from the morning sickness), combined with my pregnancy hormones, I just started to cry.  She looked up at me and saw that I was actually sad, she immediately started saying “I’m sorry mom… I’m sorry I stomp on your cheesecake” Then she hugged me and said “It’s ok, daddy will come home and give you a hug.”  It was really actually very sweet how sorry she was.

Luckily it landed face up and had plastic on top, so I was able to salvage most of it.  I did have to straighten out my spring form pan that got slammed in the fridge, but no harm no foul… right?  It still tasted good.

So without further ado, this is what it was supposed to look like:

And this is how it actually looked:

Adventures with Carmen

I feel like these days are flying by so fast, and the cuteness is so condensed that if I don’t constantly document, I am for sure going to forget some stuff.

Carmen is constantly cracking me up! She has become my mini-me in more ways than one. Her thing now is to pretty much mimic everything I do. She holds her baby doll right up close to her face and says “Wisten, wisten (listen)…We don’t hit!”

Whenever me and lee are talking and we start to laugh at something she has no idea about she lets out this fake forced laugh and says “ahhh… Funny.”

She comes up with her own little jokes, like at night when I ask her what song she wants to sing she says “Booty” and when I question her “What’s Booty?”, she busts up laughing like she just came up with the funniest thing ever. She has been doing it since she could talk, only before it was “Boo Boo”, and I guess it has changed to “booty” now… I don’t know how she came up with it, it’s just hilarious!

Whenever I ask her to do something like clean up her markers she starts groovin’ and says “I’m dancin”. As if that fully prevents her from doing anything else. Then for the next few minutes she runs around singing “Dancin’… Dancin’…Dancin’…. I’m a dancin’ machine”. And honestly how can you be mad at that. She is a dancin machine.

She loves her friends and the other day while I was watching Jax she would not leave him alone for a second. Even during his nap she wanted to be right there next to him.

Later in the day Jax discovered the pool table and Carmen and he teamed up to make some mischief. I came over to make sure nothing was being destroyed, I noticed that my wooden box Tami had given me for my birthday looked like it like this.

I opened it to find this…

I just thought it was funny that they managed to hide 2 of the most important balls in the whole game. I was very tempted to leave them in there and see how long it would take lee to find them, but since his pool table is the one thing he is most particular about the kids not playing with… I better not get those two in trouble.

And yesterday while Carmen was taking a bath, I was putting on my makeup. I turn around to see her emptying the entire bottle of the brand new baby wash I had just bought into a bowl she uses to play with in the tub. I managed to get half of the bottle back in but the other half had already made it into the water. So I decided to make lemonade out of the situation and make the best bubbles ever.

1/2 bottle of baby wash + jetted tub= Epic Bubble bath

I think you may only be able to see this many bubbles on TV or something.

These bubbles were so light and fluffy she kept her “bubble hat” on almost the entire time.

It’s just a good thing it was tear free baby wash, because that many bubbles does get a little hard to manage at times.

I just love her, she makes my life so awesome!

Come on!

Now is it really smart of me to pile so many things on my plate, when I can barely keep a handle on what I’ve got going on so far? I guess we’ll see.

With the launch of my new Etsy shop, I have been feeling totally excited and also a little like a duck on the pond… Smooth sailing on the surface, but under the water I am paddling a million miles a minute. and by the way, I realize that most of the stuff I have in my Etsy shop is for cold weather, so I have listened to you guy’s suggestions and I am working on making some binky clips and barrettes to put in my shop also.

I made my first-sale-ever yesterday, which was awesome (thanks Lindsie)! While I was trying to figure out how to do the whole paypal/shipping stuff, my darling sweet child detected a weak point in the armor and ambushed.

When I went down stairs after a few too many quiet minutes, this is what I found:

Is it just a little ironic that her shirt says “a little bit of SWEETNESS”?

Yes I realize I have way too many of these kinds of moments, I swear I always watch my kid… I must have given birth to a samurai or something, this child has a sixth sense of when I get distracted for a few minutes. I couldn’t even be mad at her, it was so ridiculous, I just had to grab the camera. After stripping her of her powdered sugar clothes, I noticed she had chocolate on her face… Now where did that come from… Oh yeah… the chocolate covered macadamia nuts Eve gave me!

It’s just a good thing there were nuts in those bad boys, or she may have eaten the entire box!

Anyway, I’m sure she will grow out of this stage… And I will resume my chill state of mind someday. I think I need to add another category to my cloud: mess of the day. And to think, I want to have another one!

On another subject, I have been meaning to pass this blog along to any of my twilight loving girls that may not have seen it on Niki’s site:

Twilight series for dummies

This guy’s blog, Normal Mormon Husbands, is so hilarious! His other posts are as funny as the twilight post! I don’t read many blogs by guys but this one is so funny, I had to add it to my yahoo reader.

Coolness

I happened upon this random blog ,of a really funny girl I don’t know, and found these motivational posters, I couldn’t help but to pass them along to my ladies because it’s some of the funniest shizz I’ve seen in a while.

Coolness

You may be cool…but you’ll never be 4 popped-collars cool.

Rock Bottom

You’ll know it when you get there.

And this last one just reminds me of my sister…

Awesomeness

When you get sad, stop being sad and be awesome instead.

Oh and P.S. I don’t recommend getting distracted by writing a post like this and forgetting to check on your 2 year old for 5 minutes…

My Carmie

My little beach bunny.

Misty tagged me to do a spotlight post about my child, and since I am not so good at doing regular updates on Carmen, this seems a lot more manageable.

• She will be 2 years old on Feb. 26th.
• Carmen loves babies and anything to do with babies. Real babies, baby dolls, strollers, car seats, bottles, Binkies , blankets, anything… She is fanatical about babies.
• She is an awesome eater. She will try almost anything, although she does have to be coaxed into swallowing her vegetables. She loves milk. In the car earlier today she asked me for some milk, when I said I didn’t have any, she then asked “ambur-ger?” I guess she wanted a hamburger, and she had just eaten spaghetti for dinner.
• Her all-time-favorite thing is fruit snacks. She says “Mommy, nack, I wanna SssssssssNack”. I know that means fruit snack. Although, now that I am not buying them anymore, she is going to have to find a new favorite.
• Carmen gets into Everything. Which is not so good for me, since I am kind of absent minded about leaving stuff out that she can get into. At least once a day I have to pick up all the contents of my purse or knitting bag.
• Carmen LOVES to dance. She has got the best moves I’ve ever seen on a two year old. She and I have dance parties every day. She is also very particular about the music she dances to. If a song comes on my ipod that she doesn’t like, she picks it up, hands it to me and says “dibbent(different) song, mommy”
• With a little help she can count to ten, although most of the time yellow gets thrown in there somewhere too.
• If she’s not sure what sound an animal makes then it’s always “Moo”.
• Carmen loves to grab mine and Lee’s bum and yell “Goose!”. She came up with the bum pinching on her own, but I’m sure she got the goose part from me constantly having to run away saying “stop goosing me”.
• Carmen is such a sweet kid, she is so simple minded. If you are willing to put in a little time she is very easily entertained. I love that about her… although, I know I need to stop what I am doing and just play with her more often. A simple game of peek-a-boo is an instant comic hit in her book.
• I get more excited to buy her clothes now, than to buy them for myself. And I love doing her hair everyday.
• Carmen and I are best friends. I hardly ever want to go anywhere without her, and when I do, I miss her instantly. I don’t know how I ever got along without my little sidekick to go everywhere, and do everything with.

Tagged…again

I got tagged by Lauren. I have already been tagged before and I have done a list of 100 things about me, so…lets see if there is anything left to tell.

1. I am really really shy. If I didn’t force myself to be social, I would stay at my house all the time(which I do a lot). I love to be at home, it is definitely where I feel the most comfortable. I love it when people invite me to go places though because I get too scared to call people and invite them places most of the time.
2. I pick at my face and nails all the time. It is my worst addiction. It gets much worse when I am pregnant. I know if I would just stop I would have a nice complexion and beautiful toe nails… But I just cant stop myself sometimes. Knitting helped a lot, but now that I am too tired to be creative, it’s all just one big mess.
3. I think Carmen is the cutest, funniest kid on earth. I know every mom probably thinks that about their own kid… but I just love her. She makes me laugh every single day, and she brightens up my life so much. Like right now, she is rubbing lotion on my foot and earlier today she walked up to me wearing my swimsuit top and bottoms and my shorts around her waist, and carrying a swim diaper… I guess she wanted to go swimming. But come on, does it get any cuter than this?



4. I think my next baby will be adorable too, because if they can take all of the good stuff out of me for 9 months then they had better be pretty adorable. I mean seriously, how can people love to be pregnant…I just can’t comprehend.
5. I really miss cooking. I am so looking forward to cooking Thanksgiving dinner. It is my favorite holiday. I love turkey and stuffing, cranberry sauce, homemade apple pie. It is the best holiday ever. I love making food from scratch…It is so much better.
6. I used to be a major dare devil in high school and college. We used to go bridge jumping and cliff diving. I used to bomb hills on my sector 9 long board. I have a scar on my hip and the board in my garage to prove it (actually the scar is pretty hard to see now because of the stretch marks). I have changed a lot. The skateboard never gets used and you couldn’t pay me to do anything crazy now. I am a mom, that is the most thrilling thing I need in my life anymore.
7. I never “pass gas” in front of anyone if I can help it. Not even my husband. In fact he still thinks I have never in my life gone number 2. It’s not because I think that kind of stuff is intolerable, I just find it easy not to do in front people for the most part… and it keeps the mystery alive.

Ok so that last one was pushing it… but it is really hard to think of that many new things I haven’t already talked about. I am sure your day is better now having read that. You’re welcome.

I am tagging anyone who hasn’t already been tagged, you know who you are.

*Oh and if you didn’t know tagging means you have to do a post on your blog- 7 things about you that most people don’t already know.

Moms…we are such worriers

For only having one child, I pride myself on not being a huge worrier. I have loosened up at ton about a lot of stuff that happens when you live with a toddler. However, my mind does still get away from me occasionally.

Like for instance today Carmen fell asleep with her shoes on before I could take them off and get her ready for her nap. She is an extremely light sleeper so I thought I wouldn’t risk it and just put her in her bed with them on. They were crocs anyway so they are super comfortable. Yet, the other day my husband told me they are recalling the small size (which I bought for Carmen), because kids have been biting off the tiny disks with picture of the croc on them… the ones attached to the straps.

So, that would pose a choking hazard right? Well, I spent the rest of her nap worrying about her doing that…Of course she was fine. But will I ever put her down for a nap with those on again? No.

Then a few minutes ago I heard Carmen downstairs say “uh-oh” So I ran over to see what it was and thought to myself “Oh no, she got into my pin cushion!” and started inspecting Carmen for pokes. Well, once I got a little closer I realized it wasn’t my pin cushion. It was this…

She had gone outside to the garden and picked a tomato, then squashed it at the bottom of the stairs. Buy you cant really blame me because this is what my pin cushion looks like…

So you can see why I could get confused. (just to assure you I do keep my pin cushion out of her reach, my mind just plays tricks on me and I panic)

She did get tomato juice all over her new shirt though, so the only thing I really should have been worried about is stains.