in Georgia

Sep 30

Posted by: Rachel in: blog, caleb isaiah, family, memories, ramblings

I keep telling myself, I am here for my grandmother.  I am here for my grandmother.  Because if I didn’t, we’d probably we burying my mother.  I more than likely would have taken her out by now.  She was a NIGHTMARE driving down here.  Have you seen America’s Worst Drivers on CourtTV?  Because my mother makes them look like model citizens.  She nearly killed us on the way down here.  Twice.  I never could get a install with the carseat that I was totally satisfied with.  It is in there pretty well, but it is sliding on the leather.  We got in Charlotte traffic, and she was three lanes over from the exit ramp, and realized that she was about to miss it.  She slammed on brakes on the interstate in the middle of Charlotte, jerked it across two of the three lanes, and nearly merged into a tractor trailer in the lane closest to the ramp.  She was probably only going about 30 by the time I yelled that she had missed it, just go on.  Then she nearly rear ended a car with her lead foot.  The car merged in front of us, and she just kept speeding up like she was going to run over him!  Then she screamed and jammed on the brakes again!  I drove from just north of Columbia, SC…the rest of the way.  About to fall asleep, but hell, I was still doing better than she was.  I’ll probably try to drive the whole way home.  There was a lot more stuff that she said, but more on that later.

 Words could not have prepared me for walking into my grandmother’s room.  I don’t know what I expected, but that wasn’t it.  It has been really hard seeing her like this. 

Caleb is about to have a fit…more later. 

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A public service announcement if you will. I didn’t get the carseat because some asswipe got the last one around 8pm (the review and pictures weren’t posted until 11ish). I’m still pissing and moaning about, and probably will continue to do so most of the way to Georgia tomorrow. But I think I want the blue one anyhow. It looks awesome as expected. I was feeling slightly guilty about not buying from the gentleman I have been emailing with locally. He is an extremely nice, owns a tiny shop about an hour from here, and has been selling Recaro racing seats since the 70’s. I did feel slightly obligated to purchase it from him, just because of the sheer amount of bugging emails I have sent him, so I guess it all works out for the best. I looked back through my blog and verified that I have indeed been waiting since January for this seat, so it is official, I could have had another baby while I’ve been waiting, thus justifying at least some of my whining.

We are leaving for Georgia after Caleb’s speech therapy in the morning. I am, unfortunately, going to have to reschedule the meeting we were supposed to have Monday where I was going to tell them that #1 My child talks ALL DAY LONG, so I don’t think he needs speech therapy anymore, nor did he to start with, he was just a late talker (I’ll probably leave that last part off so I don’t make the poor woman feel like her job is worthless) and #2 No way no how will he be going to public school when he turns three to continue the speech therapy that he doesn’t need, when I haven’t even decided whether I will homeschool or not. So that’s that. I should really get to bed seeing as how it is 12:40 and I need to get up in 6ish hours to be able to complete everything I have left to do. You know since I pissed away my day waiting on a carseat review which just left me wanting it more. I’m not bitter. Really. I may have internet access at my aunt’s house, we shall see!

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I think Caleb and I are going to Georgia tomorrow. I really cannot fully express how much I am looking forward to a six hour car ride with my mother. There just aren’t words. But I’m not going so that I can complain about my mother. Honestly. Even though I probably will anyway. I’m going so that my son and I can see my grandmother. I’m taking a stroller so that I can escape with Caleb. I’ve thought about going to buy some toys to give him when he’s being a pain so that he’ll have something new. I’m guessing there will be some medical equipment at my grandmother’s house which he will no doubt be fascinated with, so I need distractions.

I took him clothes shopping this morning. Clothes shopping. That was interesting. Anyone in heeere? Anyone in this dressing room? As he leans down to look below the gaping hole under the dressing room door. Which came up to KNEE height, by the way. Hello privacy! What happened to that? It was almost as bad as those dressing rooms that have curtain doors! Not to mention how many times I lunged across the three foot cubicle with 8 way mirrors to keep him from throwing the door wide open to share my birthday suit with the entire store. I was already seeing all that I wanted to see in those mirrors. I came out with a brown outfit. Hopefully in my total and complete lack of fashion sense, it is totally against the rules to wear brown to a funeral. I must have tried on everything black in the store with no luck. My mother insists that we go to Georgia ‘prepared’ and states that brown is okay because that is what she’s wearing too. Great, we’ll match. I love mother daughter matching. Almost as much as I love an impending six hour car ride together. Nevermind the dripping sarcasm today, I’m just stressed. I’m stressing over things that are completely out of my control…

Like the fact that I can order Caleb’s carseat online right now. That’s right, the Signo is in stock somewhere. The Elite Sixteen. They were sent to <insert online store name here> as a promotional deal. The rest of the newly manufactured seats are floating in the Pacific somewhere, on a boat that departed everyone’s favorite country…China. So these 16 are quite literally the only ones on US soil for sell. I’m sure Recaro has a few prototypes and extras at company headquarters, but none for sale. Here’s the stressful part, I’m waiting on a few details of the seat to be confirmed before ordering. There is only three ONE left in stock. So if everything checks out, there is only three ONE opportunity left to get this seat. I could of course wait until the shipment comes in, but I could have had another baby while waiting on this carseat. Okay not quite, but almost! I’ve been waiting since March! I’m impatient dammit. I should be getting a review by the first owner in the United States this evening, at which point, I’ll make my decision.

On a side note, even though it was purchased for a sad occasion, how handsome does this little guy look in a suit? I’ve never dressed him up like this before, just nice khakis and sweaters and such.

I thought the crocs and pacifier were a nice touch too.

 

But I convinced him to remove them for a few pictures. He’s really happy about it.

 

Yep Mom’s being goofy.

 

Some days he looks so much like me it is scary, I feel like I’m looking at my own baby pictures sometimes.

 

One, two, three, aaaaawww

 

Welp, this is getting boring.

 

I think I’ll go back to sleep.

 

Or try the serious, yet playing with my toes look.

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If you listen very closely you can probably hear him yelling from any given point in the universe that you may be located.

Lies, all lies, every bit of it. I’m not loud at all. Mom makes that stuff up.

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It’s all mine. The Mother of the Year Award that is.

I lost it. I threw a temper tantrum. I blessed out my two year old. Yep. Earlier today he was having some crackers. He asked me to take the halves apart. Okay, whatever. I did it. He scraped the peanut butter off with his teeth and discarded the crackers. All twelve of them. A 6 pack of Lance crackers and all he had eaten was the peanut butter. So I told him that he was being rude, and I didn’t appreciate it. Now in my defense, he is a horse’s ass about eating. I’m getting paid back ten fold for being a picky eater. I suppose that is usually how it works. He never ate baby cereal, refused all homemade baby food other than bananas and pears. Gave up that and welcomed Gerber into my family with open arms. He refused about 60% of that. It was hit or miss on everything. One day he’d eat it, the next day he wouldn’t. He ate no cake for his second birthday, wasn’t even interested. How many birthday cakes did I bake the day before his birthday? Four? Yes I think that’s right. FOUR cakes, and the little shit wouldn’t even look at it!! Two of those cakes flopped by the way, and I needed 1.5 cakes for my creation. Don’t ask, just go here and here if you are really curious. So anyway, back to the cracker incident. I told him he was rude, and you know what? He ate the damn crackers! I could barely believe it. Not all of them, but about half. So I’m not even sure whether I feel accomplished or bad for that one.

Fast forward a few hours. As he came whizzing by me at mach five with his pushcar screaming like a banshee, I got a whiff of that nice fresh aroma. You know the one where you look at your little angels and you’re like “Alright, who shit?” Okay, well you think that to yourself. Hopefully you decline to say this outloud most of the time. Because you can rest assured when, seven months down the road, you are sitting in a church pew next to grandma within earshot of the preacher and 98% of the congregation, then and only then will your little darling decide to repeat your glorious little slip-up. But since I only have one kid, I already know who did it, I don’t have to ask. I gave a 3 minutes warning on the upcoming diaper change. Then I announced it again as I was picking him up, at which point all of the glass fell out of the windows people. I shit you not. This kid broke the windows in the nursery at the hospital. He never had that newborn cry. Oh no, he came out with the lungs of a two year old. I yelled NO overtop of his shrillness, believe it or not, at which point he smacked both hands on either side of my face. I plopped him down and yelled for him to get in time out now, and slammed the hallway door behind him to boot. We went through the hitting thing a few months back, where he tested those waters to see if they bit back. He got through it fairly quickly with quite a few time outs. But it has pretty much been a lesson learned since, he hasn’t hit unless it was by accident. However I have noticed some angry protests here lately where I can tell he wants to hit, but instead he will scream and clap his hands really hard in front of him. Which almost makes me laugh to picture, but it usually isn’t funny at the time. Emotional little creatures, they are. So I slammed most of his toys back on the shelves myself instead of going through the -ask 900 times for the toys to be picked up- ritual. I stormed around to other side of the house, and then I heard it. The tiny little voice coming from the stool in the hallway. “I sowwy Mommy, I sowwy.” Never have I felt like a bigger asshole in my life than this very single moment. Two inches tall would have been in the 90th percentile for how I felt, and still feel. I know we all have our off days, but damn. He seems to have forgotten all about it now, he’s playing happily. I suck.

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angels explained by kids

Sep 25

Posted by: Rachel in: blog, cute things kids say

I only know the names of two angels. Hark and Harold.
Gregory, 5

Everybody’s got it all wrong. Angels don’t wear halos anymore. I forget why, but scientists are working on it.
Olive, 9

It’s not easy to become an angel! First, you die.  Then you go to heaven; then there’s still the flight training to go through. And then you got to agree to wear those angel clothes.
Matthew, 9

Angels work for God and watch over kids when God has to go do something else.
Mitchell, 7

My guardian angel helps me with math, but he’s not much good for science.
Henry, 8

Angels don’t eat, but they drink milk from holy cows.
Jack, 6

Angels talk all the way while they’re flying you up to heaven. The basic message is where you went wrong before you got dead.
Daniel, 9

When an angel gets mad, he takes a deep breath and counts to ten. And when he lets out his breath, somewhere there’s a tornado.
Reagan, 10

Angels have a lot to do and they keep very busy. If you lose a tooth, an angel comes in through your window and leaves money under your pillow. Then when it gets cold, angels go north for the winter.
Sara, 6

Angels live in cloud houses made by God and his son, who’s a very good carpenter.
Jared , 8

All angels are girls because they gotta wear dresses, and boys didn’t go for it.
Antonio, 9

My angel is my grandma who died last year. She got a big head start on helping me while she was still down here on earth.
Katelynn, 9

Some of the angels are in charge of helping heal sick animals and pets. And if they don’t make the animals get better, they help the kid get over it.
Vicki, 8

What I don’t get about angels is why, when someone is in love, they shoot arrows at them.
Sarah, 7

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Luckily, the weather on the coast is impossible to predict. When we left, it was supposed to rain through Sunday! It rained most of our drive. But after we arrived, the rain passed and it was sunny and hot the rest of the weekend! We hauled all of these tools with us so that Scott could move the air vent for the couple who owned the house where we stayed. When he went to talk with the wife about it, she basically said, you aren’t cutting another hole in my hardwoods!!! Who can blame her, but that meant we brought a huge sawzall (to cut the hole with), a drill, flashlight, box of flex, and other miscellaneous crap…for nothing. Scott went to Lowe’s and bought a few cans of expanding foam to insulate the current vent and called it a day.

We went to the aquarium while we were there. That was pretty neat. They had some HUGE stingrays. I love watching them swim, just gliding through the water so gracefully. Caleb seemed to think it was pretty cool, but I think overall, he was a little over stimulated the entire weekend. Just being out of his element, in the car a lot, not sleeping that well, etc. We all fell into bed last night and knocked out until 8am. We are actually hoping to go to the mountains next month…not so sure that will work out…but I would love to see the colors changing. Good news…our grass is returning to our front yard! Scott rendered it a mud hole with his RC truck, but we must have gotten some rain while we were gone, because it has started to fill back in.

I spent a completely unnecessary amount of time worrying about where Caleb would sleep.  We brought along an air mattress, so that he could sleep in our room since we’d be in strange place.  To our surprise, one bedroom had a full bed and a twin bed right up against each other.  Great!  Did I mention a slab of rock would have slept better?  So the second night, I sent Scott outside to blow up the air mattress using a air compressor that plugs into your cigarette lighter.  I know, we’re so prepared.  FORTY minutes later (20 minutes after Caleb passed out in my arms), he returned with the mattress.  I put it in the second bedroom thinking surely this bed would sleep better than the other one.  I woke up around 5am to check on Boog.  Not only was he way off to one side using a balled up blanket as a pillow, he was also sleeping on the hardwood floor!  Obviously the air mattress that took 40 minutes to blow up had a hole in it.  I felt so bad!  I put Caleb in the bed with Scott and I slept on the loveseat the rest of the morning.  By the way, the second bed was no better.  Both rocks.  So in that aspect, I’m glad to be home to my pillowtop.  Overall, it was quite nice to get away.

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…Brought to you by blogging on a word document and posting this when I get home. Not ideal, but oh well…

We went to Pizza Hut last night for dinner. When we sat down, a child on the other side of the restaurant started SCREAMING. His mother was trying to ‘comfort’ him instead of dragging his ass out of there. Now I’ll admit, I am somewhat partial to attachment parenting. We coslept instead of letting Caleb scream it out (although he puked when left screaming, so to me it wasn’t worth it). As a general rule, I don’t leave him screaming or upset about something unless it is just silly, like Potato Head’s ass hatch falling off. You laugh. I know you know exactly what I’m talking about. Come of Playskool, no kid is going to store all those little pieces up tater’s butt, so the falling off ass hatch just makes most 18+ month olds mad. But silly or not, if we are in public, I’m not going to allow him to ruin others’ experience. If he’s screaming like this little boy was, I would have rushed out the door to deal with it outside. This kid was dragging his mom around the restaurant screeching, hitting, kicking etc. Everyone was turned around staring at them and muttering under their breath. I heard one lady saying to her table that she would drag him out of there so fast. The waiter came over and rolled his eyes. There was a lady at the table behind us with her tween (oh yeah I’m hip) daughter, and what looked to be her daughter’s boyfriend. After the screaming child left, the mother commented on how well behaved Caleb was. “I mean it, he is really well behaved, especially for his age,” she said. Meanwhile he was using a straw as a hockey stick and knocking little balled up straw papers across the table. But you know what, he was playing quietly. He was staying seated for the most part, and keeping his voice down for the most part. Honestly, it made my day. Whether she knew it or not. It is nice to hear a complete stranger comment on how well behaved your child is, especially when he is two, because we all know two year olds can be challenging at times. It makes me feel like I must be doing something right.

I think we are heading to an aquarium tomorrow. Caleb keeps talking about dolphins, so I hope we’ll get to see one. I’m not sure they would have something that big, but we’ll see. Thankfully, the sun is just peaking through the clouds. Looks like it might just be a really pretty day.

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…in three years. It is getting off to a good start, don’t you think?

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