Tuesday, October 27, 2009

I Know Just What I Need...

A cupcake that is 25 times the size of a normal cupcake! A normal cupcake is just so fatty and sugary that the only thing that could make it better is for it to be 25 times bigger than it already is.
I apologize for my meaningless rant. This is just what happens when you are at home sick with a sick baby doing nothing but watching tv and commercials for ridiculous inventions. Am I the only one that's seen this one? The mom gives the kids a cupcake and they look at it with dismay because it's so small. She comes back with a new cupcake the size of Maryland and there's happiness all around.
The first time I saw it I thought it was the dumbest thing that I had seen since the microwave egg thingy. Now, just like the microwave egg thingy, the colossal cupcake just seems like the best thing since sliced bread. There are just so many things that you can do with a ginormous cupcake! Like bake it and then put blue frosting on it or bake it and put red frosting on it or put sprinkles on it..
I'll have to get back to you about it's other uses after I order it. Right along side the wall toothpaste dispenser, the instyler, and "shoes under".

Monday, October 26, 2009

You Deserve a Break Today

I can't remember where this little slogan comes from, but it comes back to me in a now muted jingle that reminds me of childhood and the 80s. Somehow it evokes images of jelly shoes and leg warmers. Maybe it was a McDonalds commercial. In any case, I'm taking the advice.

Both of my babies are at home sick today. It had me really frustrated until I decided to act like both of my babies are at home sick today and to stop trying to do everything else. Mainly, realizing that doing the dishes, creating a website, sweeping leaves off of the deck, and scrubbing this random spot out of the family room carpet are all things that are unimportant. My hands are full enough with keeping the kids both kids drugged and trying to convince my one-year-old that he actually does have the flu and that him lying down would help us both out a lot more than throwing all of the dvds that were once under the television onto the floor.

I deserve a break today. No, I'm not saying that I'm going to take a break from parenting my sick kids and head to the spa (although it sounds tempting). I'm giving myself a break from trying to be everything to everyone. I'm telling Superwoman to go fly south and taking the "S" off of my chest and just being mommy to two sick kids. Excuse me while I get back to nose wiping...

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The yellow wallpaper



What is this?


a) The inside of a vampire's tomb
b) A goth style painting done by a first grader
c) The ugliest wallpaper one could ever imagine which also happened to be hanging on the wall in our master bathroom.

If you answered c, you win a prize! Yes, the previous owner of our new home actually thought it was a good idea to hang black glossy wallpaper with a scribble-scratch finish all over the bathroom wall. After all, is there any other way to perfectly complement bright yellow floor tile than with black? I don't know much about the previous owner other than the fact that he was gay. I don't mean to stereotype, but with ten out of ten male designers on television being as gay as the day is long, I wrongfully expected a little more in the style department.

So while Hubby was at work and I was home alone I decided that it was time to exercise those demons that lived on my wall by stripping off the wallpaper on my own. It was surprisingly very easy and I was so proud, until I saw this under it:


No, you didn't momentarily go on an acid trip. This is the wallpaper that was under the wallpaper in the main bathroom. Lesson learned: Be prepared for what you might find when you start peeling back those layers.


Until Next Time...


P.S. If you've never read the story The Yellow Wallpaper, it's about a woman who goes crazy staring at the yellow wallpaper in her house. I wonder if she lived in my bathroom.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Back to blogging

Helloooo out there! I'm here, I'm back and I'm still alive. With so much going on these days, blogging is just something I tend to neglect. I'm going to get better at it, for real this time.



So Logan will be one next month and he is starting to talk. I must admit that I love the period of time when babies start to talk and no one can understand them but their mom. It feels like he and I have our own secret little language. When everyone else thinks that he is just endlessly babbling da-da, mommy knows that da-da, dy-da, and dy-dy are three very distinct words (da-da, Kya, and bye-bye respectively) Today he shared a piece of bread with me and then screamed dy-doo! Manners already, I couldn't be more proud.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Logan's little mommy

I'm so tired tonight and if there is still anyone out there that ever looks at these posts I apologize that I can't begin to put together anything remotely interesting. If most of my words are spelled correctly then kudos to me. I swear four months of sleep deprivation makes mommy a dull girl.

Kya-pooh has been such a big helper these days in taking care of Logan. She wants to do everything, feed him, help give him his baths, get him dressed, hold him. I admit that she really is a help to me and sometimes its a little harder when she's not at home. She read me a page out of her diary the other day where she wrote about the "best day ever" which was the other night when she and I got to play board games, order food and watch movies.

I just had to take a minute to cherish these moments because I know that the days where she wants nothing more than to spend time with mommy are numbered. At almost nine-and-half, I probably have another year and a half to two years max where she would even think of reading something out of her diary to me and where board games with mommy on a Friday night will be the last thing on her mind. I'm sure she doesn't realize how badly I just want to take the moments when she puts her arms around me and calls me her best friend in a bottle that I can open in four years when she is thinking about how much she hates me ( note "thinking", that screaming "I hate you" bull-ish won't be happening around these parts)

I just can't believe she's so big. I look at Logan and it seems like she was just his size. I remember always hearing old people say "where does the time go?" and now- really- where does the time go? Does the fact that I can ask that mean I'm old people too now?

Hmmm....

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Just thinking on it


My grandmother celebrated her 80th birthday last November. She was born in Baltimore in 1928. She remembers when Black people couldn't sit in the White section of the train. She has told me about not being able to try on hats in stores downtown. She was almost40 years old, a college educated teacher and mother of two when Martin Luther King was killed.

When she went to the polls last November to vote, she carried pictures of my great-grandmother, my great-uncle, and other relatives who have passed on, who never got to see the day that we would be voting for a black president. She called me, near hysterics as he won, witnessing a moment that she never dreamed that she would see in her lifetime.

In a couple weeks my son will be four months old. In a few years, when he learns the name of our President, it will be Barack Obama. I am celebrating today, not just for the sole purpose that the President is Black, but that I can share this moment with my grandmother, who was born into a world where this moment was impossible, and my son, who will never know a world where a Black President lies outside of the boundaries of possibility
.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Priceless

Disclaimer: I'm holding the baby and typing one handed so please excuse any horrible errors or misspellings

Last night, Steve and I were able to hand Logan off to his parents for a few hours so that we could go out with some friends and watch our team, the Ravens, lose miserably to the Steelers. As it always does at co-ed functions, at some point the conversation turned to issues within male-female relationships. There were four women at the table other than myself, all of whom believed in the sentiment that if a husband were making enough money and taking care of all the bills, as long as he didn't bring home any babies or diseases, he was free to sleep with whomever he wanted. Maybe I am naive, or a little idealistic, but I was disturbed by this.

Its not that I didn't realize that many women felt this way. I guess that I just associated the type of thinking with a certain type of woman, i.e., the type of woman that is working hard to score an NBA player i.e. a goldigger. I think in some way I take comfort in being "regular folks", who have chosen regular lifestyles instead of compromising themselves in so many ways to ensure an endless supply of cars and handbags. I never quite realized that the real reason why we were regular folks was because at some point we missed out on the money train and ended up with our regular hard working husbands who, because of their relative lack of financial status, must be punished to a lifetime of fidelity.

During the conversation I mostly stayed quiet, mostly because I was a little too tipsy to provide an articulate debate for my unpopular opinion. However today, as I've sobered up, the conversation has been on my mind.

Why are we as women so willing to sell ourselves short of what we deserve? When my husband and I said our wedding vows, I don't remember a financial exemption clause. Nothing that said abide by these rules, unless you make over 1 million dollars a year and then they don't matter any more. If I as your wife am giving you 100 percent of myself, and I am your wife all day everyday, then its not ok for you to in return give me 75. Furthermore, if a man can't respect me enough not to sleep with hoards of groupies, how can I expect him to respect me enough not to bring me diseases or any of the other unpleasantries of that lifestyle.

I hate to go on a tirade or get on my soap box, but I often fell that women setting the bar so low makes it impossible for it ever to be raised any higher. When I got married, I didn't do it so that I could be his "main woman", I did it so that I could be his only woman. I am not so naive as to believe that infidelity doesn't exist anyway even if you don't "allow" it, but just because it could happen, is that enough to lower your expectation so that even the standard never exists?

I guess some of it also has to do with what you find important in life. My husband works hard, 12 hour days most of the time, doing manual labor, and he is far from being a millionaire. No he can't buy me a Porsche or whisk me off to Milan. But he provides all that we need for our family. I know that at night when he lies down its next to me and I feel like I am the only woman in the world, a feeling that no amount of money can compensate for.

But I guess thats just what is important to me. Should money be an excuse for bad behavior? I'm curious as to what others think. Your comments are appreciated...