Living the Mommy Life!

I missed my weekly Sunday Thanks post because I was so darn thankful to be home I fell asleep. Long weekend perhaps? Yes. Good? Uh-huh. Bad? Unfortunately, also. Ugly? Definitely more than a little.

THE GOOD:
Darling Jess-from-the-country journeyed up to the city on Friday. In fact, when I walked through the door after work I realized that the world had ceased to revolve around the sun, and was instead crazily spinning around Planet Jess. Now ya’ll know I’m a diva in my own right and I wouldn’t normally relinquish my ‘Goddess of the Universe’ tiara to just anyone, and certainly not without a hair-pullin’ fight. But, since it was Jess and we sort of go way back, I temporarily rescinded my throne. Saturday morning was spent stretched out on our respective couches, sipping coffee and gossiping. Because BabyDaddy had to work on Halloween, Jess, the Muffin, and I went back to God’s Country for Trick-or-Treating. (I’ll skip over the trip, because you’ll hear all about that later in the “Ugly” section.) My nephew was able to join us, which was awesome. The boys had a terrific time, except for the fact that I put my son’s shoes on the wrong feet. (We discovered this after we posted the pictures on Facebook – the incident was only slightly less embarrassing than when I posted a picture of the Muffin on FB with no pants.) To be fair however, I changed him into his costume in the middle of a Wendy’s while he was attempting to tag Kelt “it” and squirm away from me. I didn’t want him to get ketchup all over his bright yellow costume, and so he wasn’t wearing it during dinner. Regardless of our little left foot-right shoe blunder, it was a grand evening. The night ended, as per my as of yet unpublished (but just-as-good-as-enforceable-law) RULES OF MOMMY, with my ‘inspection’ of the candy. Hmmm. Almond Joy? Wouldn’t want you to choke on that almond my dear, I’ll just take care of that. Nerds? Much too small for you. Into the Mommy pile. Dark chocolate Hershey’s? Definitely too rich. Might give you a tummy ache, and we wouldn’t want that now would we? Aaaahhh. The joys of a late night, and slightly unethical, sugar rush. The old cliché stealing candy from a baby? That doesn’t apply – my son is almost three and I didn’t really ‘steal’ it. I merely confiscated and relocated it. Now, the tried and true, this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you? Oh, blessed angels in heaven, it did. A stomach isn’t made for that kind of abuse, and mine told me so my scrunching itself into a tight little knot of painful sugar-hyped protest. It was that last package of Gummy Starbursts, I just know it. Score – Candy: 1 Tummy: 0. Viva la Rol-Aids!

THE BAD:
Fortunately, we had only a few mishaps with the boys. The Muffin nearly gave himself a concussion while trying to monitor a hatchling baby dinosaur. It was one of those grow creatures that you put in water, only this one was in an egg, and as he expanded in the water, he ‘hatched’. One of the Muffin’s favorite movies is Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, so this whole hatching baby dinosaurs was old hat for him. We could barely get him to leave it alone. “Come OUT baby dinosaur. I NeeeeeD you. ‘Es all-wight. You should not be s’keered.” Anyway, the egg was in its bowl of water on the kitchen counter. The Muffin, in sock feet, scales the bar stool in an attempt to check on the baby one more time before church, slips, and introduces the side of his face to the edge of the counter. He actually looked a bit like “Scarface” from The Lion King, with a perfect line bisecting the right half of his face. Also in the category of ‘Bad’, after church we noticed that my nephew was starting to cough and act lethargic, with a bit of sneezing and low-grade fever thrown in on the side. Yesterday, we got word he has the flu. Both he and the Muffin had their vaccines about the same time. And both of them were all over each other the whole weekend. My juice box is your juice box -- you know the drill with kids. So far, Kelt is on Tamiflu and seems to be doing okay, and the Muffin hasn’t shown any symptoms. Yet.

THE UGLY:
The trip back to God’s Country on Saturday started out pretty smooth. The Muffin fell asleep while watching the afore-mentioned Ice Age movie for the 3,475th time, and I was rocking out my iPod. Just cruising along, with Jess behind me in her car. Then, The Hill. One of those huge, mile-long incline type deals. The road opened up to three lanes, and I eased out to pass the all-too-common rusted out farm truck. I was somewhere in the middle of “Fantasy” by Mariah Carey, singing about talking sweet and lookin’ fine, so I didn’t hear the nasty choking sound the engine was making. Then, I realized that I was going slower. Like, a lot slower. In fact, the harder I pushed on the gas, the slower I went. Not usually a good thing. Poor Jess passed me with her hands thrown up in question. I’m frantically signing back, “What-the-crap-I-have-no-freaking-idea-what’s-going-on!” (I was moving my arms quite a bit to get all that across.) God Bless Jess. Cool, calm, and collected Jess. She called me on my cell, and she convinced me to pull over at a service station where the super-nice gentleman owner came out – I guess there’s something about me in a service station parking lot with the hood popped that screams “I know nothing about cars, come save me!” So he moseys over and informs Jess and I (the Muffin was still thankfully asleep in his car seat) after a quick peek that there is no oil in my truck. Yep. That’s what I said. NO OIL. Sort of a big deal. Especially since we took the truck to some hack about 3 weeks ago for a full tune up and oil change. Thankfully, the step-daddio was able to get a trailer and come pull the sorry heap of junk home. We have been informed that we would be better off scouring the junk yards for an engine instead of trying to repair the existing one. Great. Just freaking wonderful. BabyDaddy had to drive down to God’s Country on Sunday (in my trusty Toyota – who in goodness name EVER said a Chevy was reliable? I should have stuck to my guns…) and haul us all home.

It was a looooong weekend. But we still had a lot of fun. And a lot of candy. An awful, AWFUL lot of candy. (I have been trying to pace myself after the gorging disaster on Saturday night, so be comforted.)