A couple weeks ago we bought Lauren a potty because she is just so interested in pee and poop. She loves to sit on it diaper-less or otherwise.

Proof that our children really do learn from us. Hah!

"I know something is supposed to be happening..."

She hasn't peed in it yet, and really there's no hurry. She definately knows what pee and poo are though, as she loves to follow me into the bathroom and say "Mama pee! Poo!"

Nothing is sacred anymore. Not even my poo.

Vent about the family...

What makes people self-destruct? I just don't understand. This has been quite a weekend for my family, and everything that happened is just ridiculous.

First, my brother: Him and four friends were out on the strip Friday night drinking. Supposedly three black guys in a truck came by, yelling racial obscenities towards Jake and his friends. I don't know exactly what happened then, but I can gather that Jake and company yelled back, etc. Whatever happened, it ended in the three guys beating the crap out of Jake so bad that he was in intensive care until today. His right eardrum was crushed and the doctor says he'll never regain his hearing in that ear. He also has some blood sitting on his brain, but the doctors think it will go away on its own. Thankfully he's going to be OK - we were all worried for a while. No doubt that if he hadn't been drinking - when they did the blood test for alcohol is BAC was .29 - he would have (hopefully) had the sense to get the hell out of dodge. This is not the first time Jake has had alcohol related problems - he's already had two DUIs along with numerous underage drinking tickets (he's only 20).

Then, Lex - I've vented about Lexy before. She just doesn't get it. Now she has decided to marry some guy named Eric - today is the first I heard about him, when she told me that I had to come up in November for her wedding. WTF? I guess she's been dating him two months. Mom doesn't know about it yet, and I'm sure not going to be the one to tell her. I'm not exactly old and wise, but I do know a few things, and one of them is that relationships don't work out just because you love somebody. I've tried talking to her sooo many times. I just want to shake her and yell "DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING TO YOURSELF?"

Is the root of all this really just low self-esteem? Does Jake not care enough about himself that he just drinks himself to death, slowly? Does he not care enough about his future to not accumulate thousands of dollars of fines, not to mention a criminal record? Does Lexy really not care about herself enough that she sleeps with anything that moves? Does she not care enough about her future to not take out multiple payday loans and then not pay them back? How do you "fix" this? Can they be helped? Or are they just going to have to figure it all out for themselves someday - when it will probably be too late?

Lauren had her 18 month check-up today. She's 23.5 pounds (35th percentile) and 33 inches (86th percentile), so she's still tall and lean! She has to go back in a month for a height check, though, because she's dropped 10 percentiles. The doctor is not worried - she just wants to make sure that she's still growing okay.

I really like this clinic we are taking her to. The staff is so wonderful and they really take their time. We see a nurse practitioner instead of a doctor and I bet she spent 20 minutes in the room with us chatting and playing with Lauren.

Lexy went to her Doctor appointment today, too. I don't know what's going on with her. Supposedly the surgeon told her that the lump went away? and that she wouldn't need surgery after all? I don't know - she rescheduled her appointment so mom couldn't go with her so who knows what's really going on. I'm not going to worry about it for now - she's probably just after attention again :o(

Donald and I were doing something last night, and not paying much attention to what Lauren was up to. When we looked, she had taken every single book off of her shelf and piled them on her chair. Way to entertain yourself, kiddo!

She was so proud of herself! And then she promptly knocked the whole stack over and laughed callously as mom had to pick them up. Funny stuff.

Happy Half-Day, Lauren!

Today (well, yesterday now, I guess) is Lauren's halfday! I can't believe she's already 18 months old. She's growing up so fast.

My Rooster rarely sits still. She is go, go, go from the minute she wakes up until she finally goes to sleep. That's why I haven't posted many pictures lately because she's never still enough for me to take any! I did manage a few last night -


She really is my clever little monkey. Of course I may be partial. Hahah. She still loves to read her books, and her new favorite book is Olivia. She can recognize and name a few letters of the alphabet. She knows all of her body parts and can name most of them when asked. She just learned "elbow" the other day and loves saying it. She calls her tummy "mine". I haven't quite figured that one out yet. She will point to just about anything you ask her to in any of her books. We are working on colors but they seem to be giving her a bit of trouble. I know she knows blue and green, but the others...not so much.

We bought her a potty chair at Target the other day because she is so interested in Donald and I going to the bathroom. She loves sitting on it when we are in the bathroom and says, "Pee, pee, pee" over and over and over. She hasn't peed in the potty yet, but she has succeeded in peeing on the bathroom floor a few times! I'm really in no hurry to potty train, though - we will follow her lead and she'll let us know when she's ready.

She's also sleeping very well now. She still nurses to sleep, but she is in her own bed now (still in our room) and usually stays in her own bed and doesn't wake up at all until early morning. We need to work on the nursing to sleep thing, especially at nap time, since I will be student teaching in less than six months and she'll need to be able to get to sleep on her own by then. Speaking of nursing, she still loves it and doesn't seem to want to give it up any time soon. She's only nursing now in the morning as she wakes up, at nap time, and at bed time (and sometimes once after dinner). As she gets closer to 2, we will think more about weaning. Until then, she is happy and as long as she is happy, we are happy.

While she is definitely in the terrible toddler stage, she is still a good girl. She has her bad days, but they don't happen too often. I know her very well, and I can usually tell why she is upset and what needs to change to make her feel better. I know the days that I don't give her enough attention because she lets me know! I've really been trying to work less during the day and spend most of my time with her. She's only going to be little once :o)

Our central air is not working, and it is so hot in here! It is blowing....but not cooling. And it figures - today is the first HOT day we've had in a while. I am calling maintenance as soon as I get up tomorrow and hopefully they can get it fixed pretty quickly! I'll die without air....

We have a busy weekend coming up. Saturday I'm doing an event at Wal-Mart in Pearl, giving away free White Cloud diapers. Fun times. Can't really complain, though...it pays $82 for 5 hours. Hopefully Peeler does okay with Donald all day!

Speaking of Donald, he's been working like crazy lately. Last week he had 20 hours of overtime! A few weeks ago, the girl doing all the audits quit, and they never replaced her, so Donald was stuck doing audits (which is a full-time job by itself), and now they've decided that he's good at them, so he gets to keep doing them! The overtime is not all bad though - it is helping us reach our savings goal for moving. So anyway, I think Donald's going in to work on Saturday morning before I leave and probably Sunday, too.

Learning her ABC's

I have been so tired the last few days, and I've finally figured out why. Instead of the usual Diet Coke or Diet Dr. Pepper that flows through my veins, I've been drinking Caffeine Free Diet Coke. Kroger had a sale a few weeks ago, and I had coupons, so I stocked up, and that's all we have left. I was so exhausted this morning, I had to stop at Starbucks and get a cup of coffee on the way to the playground. I was about to fall asleep! An hour and another Diet Coke later, and I was feeling fine. Must go get caffeinated soda tomorrow! Something has to supplement the measly 5 hours of sleep I get a night!

In my exhaustion this morning, Lauren had a first. She watched TV! Donald and I watch TV at night when she's around, but she's never actually watched a kid show before. Well, this morning I hooked up the DVD player and put in Disney's Alice in Wonderland, and then I planted my butt on the sofa. It lasted all of 15 minutes until she was bored with it. Figures.

After the TV didn't work, I gave in and we got dressed. We started for the playground, but on the way there it started to rain, so we went to the Micky D's with a playground indoors. There was this other little girl there, she was probably 2-3ish. Peeler LOVED her. They walked around hugging each other. It was so cute. Just when I thought it couldn't get any cuter, Peeler gave her a kiss. I wish I would have had my camera with me. Just darling.

And as if this post needed another topic, I got hired by Kaplan! I start training in two weeks. I have to attend a 4-5 hour training session every Sunday in August, with additional computer training at home (it's paid). After training, I'll be teaching my very own once-a-week class. I'm looking forward to it - I won't make much only working a few hours a week, but it'll be nice to get out and maybe meet some people. I'd pretty much given up on the job - I had my interview waaaay back in the middle of May. They said they'd contact me when they had a training session start, and I never heard anything until yesterday. I'm glad I got in, though!

The Peeler is officially driving me crazy now. Damn toddlerhood. I'd been warned that 16-22 months was horrible, but jeez....

Today she would not stop biting me. Seriously. She wasn't biting hard enough to hurt, and I think she was just trying to play, but it's still a no-no. Every time she'd bite me, I look her straight in the eyes and say, "No biting. Biting hurts mommy," and plop her on her chair. In three seconds, she'd be right back up, running over to me and putting her teeth on me again, laughing as soon as I plopped her back on her chair. Eyeyeyeye.

The child is just so uncivilized. Hahaha. I know that that's the way she's supposed to be right now, like a little caveman, but that doesn't make it any more fun to live with. We were eating popcorn tonight, and she just put her hand in the bowl and went crazy, splattering popcorn all over. She's also figured out the "limp baby" technique in where if she doesn't want to do something she just goes limp and collapses on the floor.

We may all survive this year in one piece....or we may not....

Soooo....

My sister told my mom and I a couple weeks ago that she felt a lump in her breast. Neither one of us really took it too seriously, but we both told her to make an appointment with the doctor to get it looked at. You might wonder why we didn't really think too much of it - Lexy is like the little boy who cried wolf. She's cried so many times we just stopped making a big deal out of these types of things. Lexy ended up making an appointment and went to the doctor last Friday.

The doctor did a breast exam and was concerned because Lexy says the lump hurts. She scheduled an ultrasound to determine what kind of lump it was, and she went to that yesterday. The ultrasound found that the lump is solid (so not a cyst) and that Lexy would need a biopsy and bloodwork to determine if it is cancerous, but she will need to get the lump removed surgically regardless. Her next appointment is with the surgeon July 24.

The good news is that it is pretty unlikely that it is cancer. She's only 19, and cancer doesn't run in our family. There are a million other things that it could be. Still, I'm worried about her and I know my mom is worried....

Sometimes kids just make you swear. Or at least they do me.

Case in point - Thursday I had a bunch of errands to run with Lauren. First we stopped at CVS, then ran to Target. On the way home we had to stop at Kinko's to FedEx a box to my dad. In Kinko's there's a card rack, and of course there's a card with a dog on it. Lauren loves dogs. The entire time I'm trying to get the form filled out, Lauren is practically screaming, "Woof! Woof!".

"Yes, baby, that's a dog,".

"Woof! Woof! Woof freakin' woof!"

After I finish getting the box shipped, I take her over the card rack to look more closely at the dog. Big mistake. Huge. As we start to leave, the tantrum starts.

"Wooooooofffff! Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh! Wooooooooooooooffffff, MAMAMMAMAMAMA WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOF!!!"

So I put her in the car, trying to nicely explain to an irrational toddler that the doggy lives in Kinkos and can't come home with us. Yeah, that didn't go so well. Of course, by now it's POURING outside, and I'm trying to drive home without killing us both.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! MAMAMA I FREAKING HATE YOU!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOFFFFF!!!!"

This continues for ten minutes. Of course we hit every red light between Kinkos and our house. I've finally had it, and yell - "Peeler! The doggy is DEAD! Now shut your hole!".

Yeah, not my best parenting moment.

It finally dawned on me that I do have a radio in my car and I turn it up as loud as I can without feeling too guilty that I'm damaging my kid's hearing. Her woooooofing eventually faded into a whimper and we got home in one piece.

The rest of the afternoon continued on in the same fashion, until I couldn't take it any longer. I locked us both in the bedroom, laid on the bed, and pretended I was asleep until she finally crawled up next to me and passed out.

An hour later, she woke up and was the sweetest thing ever. Go figure.

Hope you all had a nice 4th. Ours was just fine. We were planning on grilling this afternoon, but it looked like it was going to rain, so we scrapped that plan and went to CrapDonald's instead. The only good thing about McDonald's is that they have an indoor playground so Peeler can run around and be crazy without driving other people crazy. After dinner we headed over to the festival in Madison. It started to rain about ten minutes after we got there, and it didn't look like it was going to quit any time soon, so we went to WalFart for a while and just walked around. After an hour of that, we left, discovered it had quit raining, so went back to the park to watch the fireworks. They were surprisingly good! Lauren really liked them, too. It ended up taking us nearly an hour to get out of the park, so we didn't get home until after ten.

So, yeah, we had a good day. Donald and I still miss our 4th of July celebrations that we used to have in Wisconsin, though. Those were never boring. Our friend, Levi, his birthday is the 4th as well, so we always did a joint celebration that included lots of alcohol and even more fireworks. The last year we were up there (2005), I was pregnant and felt like crap, so I missed most of the fun. Donald had enough for the both of us, though. Our friend, Shawn, worked the night shift at the Hampton and kept the pool area open for our crew. Well, Donald decided it would be a good idea to empty about 20 mini-sized bottles of shampoo into the hot tub. Needless to say, there were suds EVERYWHERE. I slept through the entire event, but in the morning when we went down for breakfast, the pool area was still knee-deep in suds. It was horrible - and funny!

The year before that (2004), we were again at the Hampton. I honestly don't remember much of that year because Cortney decided it would be a good idea to play a drinking game with Blue UV. Now seriously, I've never been a big drinker. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been drunk. OMG, I ended up sooooo drunk that night. I paid for it too - I was sick!

I'm trying to remember what year Nick stayed at the Hampton with us. Must have been 2003 - maybe 2002? I can't remember. Anyway, that night ended with him streaking down the hallway nekkid - we have (or had) it on video somewhere! Yeah that was fun. Was that the year of the trip to Denny's to see if we could buy whip cream? Cort you'll have to clear that up for me - I think it was!

Ah, memories. Now we're all grown up and scattered all over the country. Sometimes I still wish we were all together up there, but it wouldn't be the same anyway. Most of us have kids, and you just can't do that sort of stuff with munchkins around. Eh, oh well. Someday the kiddos will be grown and we can be the crazy old people who act like we're 20 :o)

Anyway, Donald and I miss you Wisconsin people! Wish we could have been there :o(

I hate Pringles. You can never eat just a few of them, and by the time you realize just how many you've pounded down, half the can is gone. By then you feel so guilty for eating so many, you just finish the can so there's no evidence. Pure Evil.

Hope everyone has a great Fourth. We're going to some festival thing in Madison that I'm sure will be joyous. Anything in Madison makes my skin crawl, but I have a feeling this may be worse. We'll see.

I've actually been productive the last few days so I'm taking the day off.

Also, when I turn my head to the right, my neck hurts. I'm assuming this is bad.

Getting Ready for the Party

My little baby is turning into a little girl! *Sob*