And Here I Thought Grama Was a Responsible Babysittier

Clearly she's confused my baby with the mountains of dirty laundry she must have found around my house the week she watched the kids.

This was a sweet surprise I just found on the computer. I must have been mid Caribbean isle the day these two best buddies - Grama Claudia and Rachel - snapped this. At the time, I would have traded places, I missed the kids so much.

But now, with Cranky Pants Muldrow Jr. waking up every 10 in other room - I'm thinking, I'll take the isle.

Well Let's Just See

I'm doing piles of work, Mike's scrambling in the other room to do our taxes on April 14th, and Rachel went to bed without a bottle tonight after fighting us on it for over an house.

What kind of sleep do YOU think we're going to get tonight?

And you can't say "A big pile of #$%!" no fair, cheating, that's too easy!

Answers may be:
a) Some
b) Sketchy amounts
c) Minimal, irritating to coworkers in the morning amounts
d) Tired, killing rampage tomorrow amounts

Stay tuned tomorrow for the answer!

p.s. Rachel, my little overachiever, c'mon - go for the "A"!

p.s.s. You can easily do good billing reports while watching American Idol. And yes, I DO love you, Kutey Pie Kris!

Because I Still Have Children - Photos from the last month or so

Rachel in her little black dress shirt from Grama Claudia.

Mike and Matthew at the first Spring Zoo visit.

The kids ready to tackle the Zoo.

Rachel sits up in her baths now like a big girl - and yep, she's almost always this happy and smiley these days except when she's sleeping or hungry (aka our lil piggy).

More to come ... unless I am lying and disappear for another 6 weeks, he.

YES IT'S REALLY ME and no I'm not ready to recap the last 6 weeks yet

Hi friends! I simply couldn't let one more minute go by without posting and catching up on my friends' blogs. So there I go to Erin's to see what I missed about her family, and see her recap of our cruise vacation together last week. But then her post about Digital Moms got me intrigued, so per Erin's suggested I surfed over to Dooce.com to see what SHE had to say about Twittering and FB'ing moms. (I was of course just waiting for the big controversial oh, moms neglect their kids or oh, moms risk their kids privacy stuff ... and was waiting to see if I had a violent reaction to it, one way or another).

And then I did NOT read that article, but instead got sucked into one of Heather's (many) side advertisements, specifically, this video from the Momversations.com website. The topic? Family dinners.

Now I'm thinking: (a) what do I care about family dinners? (b) what does Miss Heather (who talks politics and depression and "deep stuff") Armstrong care about family dinners and (c) gee the digital mommy advertising revolution really has sort of, well, Madison-avenued out the best and most sincere of us. Momversations? Please.

But then I actually really enjoyed it. I learned of several new mommy bloggers that I might start following - seemingly smart and funny women I wouldn't have known about except for this dumb "ad." (Giyen and Mindy - anyone read 'em?)

I also mostly appreciated seeing how a seemingly commercialized Heather ... agreeing to do this sponsored link (yes I sat through the full 30 second opening of a Target pitch) looked completely uncomfortable and nervous being shot on video. It was sort of reassuring that even as marketers tap bloggers and leverage them for their own purposes, and moms vie to make some money from it (hey more power to ya), real people are still real people ... yes you can use me for it but I can't complete change who I am. Anyway, that's my deep interpretation of a 3 minute web video.

It als reminded me how much I've missed the interweb these last 6? 7? 8? weeks of intense work and lack of life balance. I am enjoying a beautiful sunny Spring Saturday morning view out my back window, drinking my coffee, posting my random and inconsequential thoughts, and catching up on those from my friends - and complete strangers, of course! - from the last month and a half. And just thinking ahhhh ... I'm home.

Next up: a real update on my life.

News Flashes I Have Deprived You Of Lately

I am working a LOT.

Rachel learned to sit up last Monday night, 5 days before her 6 month birthday, and 1 day after we took photos in which sitting up would have been extremely helpful. Now here she is just one week later, moving from very wobbly to just moderately so. It's almost to the point where I could leave her sit and run out of the room without fear she's tip backward and brain herself. I could not be more damn proud.

Meanwhile, Matthew's maybe missing me a bit, either that or hitting terrible 3's early. He's on a terribly frustrating downward bedtime spiral, right at the time Rachel's fine-a-leeeee back to sleeping through the night and going to bed easily. Take 20 minutes to wrestle him in bed, and at least 45 minutes to keep him there. Last night I heard the last remants of him reciting his "Cars" book to himself in bed, well into the 10pm hour. Then we had a couple night time wake-ups involving yelling, tears and tucking back in at the 3am and 5am hours.

Send toddler drugging pills, please.

I am counting the minutes to vacation.
I am stressed.
But Mike is keeping the trains on the tracks at home, thank God.

That's all I got. Just ... wish me luck with returning to regularly scheduled posting/sleeping/breathing, soon.

New Leaf, Far Less Points

Yesterday we bit the bullet and invested in a Wii and Wii Fit. This morning, I spent half hour stretching and doing yoga and yes, sadly, feeling my pulse rate rise from that limited movement.

So apparently Mr. Snotty Pants Wii was right ... maybe I AM the "Wii Age" of a 50 year old? AWESOME.

Since I'm now trying to "move more" I thought I also might get back to the "eating less" side of things. I started this around 7 weeks into my maternity leave ... tapping once again my old BFF - but also, new nemesis - Weight Watchers.

Old BFF, because I lost nearly 50 lbs following WW alone (didn't work out) the year after I had Matthew.

New nemesis, because my post-Rachel WW kick lasted several weeks, stopped since thin ... and never once in that time rivaled the discipline I showed the first time. I didn't even have that honeymoon period where you rigorously meeting your points for a couple weeks, before cheating starts.

I was pretty much over 10 - 20 points a day (got 33 a day total). So basically I was overeating daily and just, you know, tracking that fact for posterity.

So obviously when I got too busy and had 15 minutes to track my overeating or sit down or play with a child, I just stopped tracking all together. And it's showed ... I've put on probably 5 lbs since then and it's no secret why. We're busy, we cook frozen pizza, we take out on the way home from work. Yesterday it was Chipotle for lunch and Webster Wok for dinner. What am I expecting here??

So in honor of my gigantic Wii Fit investment - and the monthly deductions for WW online that STILL come off my credit card whether I'm getting thinner or fatter - I'm starting anew.

But I'm sure wishing I had those 33 points back...retaking the quiz today, and unchecking the "nursing mom" box dropped me down to 22 points.

So guess using well over half of that for a pancake breakfast this morning was not advisable, eh?

Send celery and fat-free Italian, quick!

FDA Approves Depressant Drug for the Annoyingly Cheerful

Yes, it's true. At last, a cure all for those silly Suzy Sunshines of the world!

The ones you want to kick in the shins, spit in their lemonaid, and toss their car keys in the trash. All before you kinda, knock them over.

Harsh? No... just STOP being so CHIPPER, it's HORRENDOUS!
And now you can take your pill.

(Gee, can you tell it's been A Week?)

Just watch this video. SO worth the click through.