Stupid Medical Tricks

1) On Friday night, Jason slammed the car door on Noah's fingers. When I tweeted about it later, while the two of them were off having a Great Emergency Room Adventure Involving All The M&Ms, I felt compelled to include all 12 characters of the word "accidentally." You know, just in case anyone might think he did it on purpose, or for fun. You don't get to be thousandaires on America's Funniest Home Videos without the occasional grievous bodily injury, son. Now hold still. KASLAM!

An x-ray revealed that his fingers were fine. Just bruised. He had to wear a metal splint on his pinkie for a day or two, which mildly cramped his Lego building abilities but gave us all ample opportunity to point at his hand in horror and exclaim that oh my God, Noah, you're turning into a robot!

Noah: You're just kidding, right?

Asshole Parents: No, we're totally being serious.

Noah: (deep, weary sigh) Stop. 

Asshole Parents: Oh my God, Noah, you're turning into a ro-

Noah: I'll be in my room. 

2) Yesterday Ezra woke up with a swollen face and jaw. At first we thought it was another mosquito bite but on closer inspection turned out to be...huh. Not a mosquito bite. What the hell? The lump was hot and he squealed in pain when we touched it, and within 10 seconds I was like, HE HAS THE MUMPS. GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH SAYS SO.

Of course, Ezra has been vaccinated against the mumps, but I was certainly not going to let that detail stop me, especially if you Google "mumps after MMR vaccine" and start reading about an 80% effective rate and the fact that Ezra is still a few months away from getting the booster shot and and and...

Not the mumps. A clogged/irritated salivary gland. That had all but cleared up on its own by the time we got to the pediatrician's office. They told us to give him hard lemon candy to suck on for a couple days.

Ezra: Candy?

Asshole Parents: Yes! Prescription candy!

Ezra: I LOVE GOING TO THE DOCTOR YAAAAYYYYY!

Asshole Parents: So hey, can I make his four-year visit appointment while I'm here? And please put him down for every damn shot you've got back there, mwa ha ha.

3) Later, I walked into a toddler bed that's been cluttering up our narrow upstairs hallway for...oh, I don't know, about two months now? We put it there because we intended to move it to the attic, but it won't fit unless we take it apart, and despite being from Ikea and owning approximately eleven thousand other things from Ikea, we have been completely unable to locate a hex key that fits into the screws. So we can't unassemble it and fit it into the attic. So...we've just left it in the hallway and been sort of scooting carefully around it ever since. Good plan.

Anyway, that's how I broke my pinkie toe for about the fifth or sixth time in my life. I've lost track. The first time I broke it was on a beach trip with my church youth group and I stubbed it on the back of my friend's heel while we were walking. We were both barefoot, and of course no one believed me that my toe bone had just literally cracked in half right then and there because it wasn't like I stubbed it on steel-heeled combat boots or anything. Sack up and keep walking. The church van couldn't find any free parking so we've gotta meet it on the other side of the bridge. 

Later that night, the ER doctor held up an x-ray of my foot and asked, "What was your friend wearing? Steel-heeled combat boots? Good God."

But there's not really much to be done about a broken pinkie toe, no matter how bad the break, beyond taping it to the next toe and trying to stay off of it. Because my bone really had broken all the way through (and because it was a slow night in the ER and I had good insurance), they gave me crutches and a special shoe. But then the first time someone asked me what happened and I had to answer, "I BROKE MY PINKIE TOE," I decided I really didn't want to use the crutches or the special shoe. Apparently even I had a limit to how big of a drama queen I was comfortable being.

POINT IS. My pinkie toe never healed right and basically cracks under the lightest pressure. If I stub it, I break it. It swells up and turns a variety of interesting colors and I hobble around for awhile, cursing mildly under my breath the whole time.

So I broke it again last night, no x-ray or doctor's visit required, because my toe-taping skills are quite practiced and excellent. Plus, it's a PINKIE TOE. We only care about pinkie fingers and rogue salivary glands in this house, these days. I need to up my injury game, man. 

Oh God, now everyone knows that I am a total klutz who lives with a random toddler bed in the hallway AND that I paint my nails with sparkly polish from the Kardashian Kolors Kollection and I AM SO EMBARASSED. 

 

Home Improvementish

Operation DIY Backsplash: DONE. Donedone!

(Well, we still need to caulk. And put the switchplates up. And paint. And replace a couple cabinet doors. And swap out the door handles. And replace the stove and microwave. So. Not even close to being done. BUT ALLOW ME THIS MOMENT.)

I'm happy to report that nobody died and nothing got set on fire. The kids watched an obscene amount of TV, though, and I do still have some grout on the bottom of my foot. 

This project was made possible by a few dozen YouTube demos and my husband's degree in engineering. 

Also possibly magic. I went to Target on Saturday morning and came back to BAM. TILE. That is how you do home improvement, ladies. 

To be fair, I was buying very important things at Target, like ALL OF THE STEEL WOOL, which I then stuffed into every conceivable mouse-entry wall-hole I could find. 

(Personally, I think the pan of old scrambled egg residue sitting on the stove is what really ties it all together.)

A few lessons in DUH MORONS I feel compelled to pass along, in case anyone else is planning a similar project:

1) The fact that this mosaic was a RANDOM and NON-REPEATING pattern pretty much saved our sanity. We originally chose one that would have required a ton more planning and arranging and like, honors-level algebra or something. Then we came to our senses and went with a much more forgiving just-slap-that-shit-on-the-wall-all-willy-nilly style. 

2) Scrape excess thinset out of the grout lines BEFORE it dries completely and you have to spend a couple hours digging it out with a scraper fucking goddamn cocksucking popsicle tampon.

3) After you cut the power to the wall outlets prior to grouting, double check that you flipped the correct breaker before you accidentally knock the garbage disposal on while you are sponging off grout and dripping water all over exposed live electrical circuitry holy shit. 

4) Check the soles of your feet after grouting. Wash them off, idiot.

Oh, and 5).

"Let's paint the walls a nice gray" is a stupid, terrible idea because there are easily 200 shades of gray (MUST RESIST OBVIOUS JOKE RESIST RESIST) to chose from, and you will spend hours debating which gray is too blue and which gray is too beige and that's too dark but that's too light and wait, this one was my favorite last night but now this morning it looks purple, what the hell, I give up, let's just open one of those wine bottles and stare at the backsplash while pretending the rest of the kitchen doesn't exist. 

Worst. Designblog. Ever.

If I have learned anything from my hours (and hours) (zomg) of watching home improvement television shows, it's that pretty much everyone in America hates their kitchen. We're all living in the wrong kitchens, I guess, since SOMEBODY chose our cabinets and countertops and presumably liked them well enough at some point. Then we move in and are like, what were they thinking? That linoleum is an ABOMINATION TO GOD. 

(Meanwhile, I like to imagine the previous owners of our house, with their penchant for modern laminate EVERYTHING, moved on to some house with a hugely elaborate dark-wood kitchen trimmed with brick-a-brack and grape-cluster corbels and shit.) 

We'd lived in our house for all of five minutes before we, too, started hating the kitchen. The layout was okay, but mostly because the super-cheap remodel had the shelf life of a bag of chips. The cabinet doors started to peel and chip and hang off their hinges, the countertop started to shed its outer layer of laminate and pull away from the wall, the sink leaked and the appliances were crap and THEN THE OVEN CAUGHT ON FIRE. 

Point is: I got new countertops yesterday. Yaaaaaayyyyyyy.

Yes, THAT FACE EXACTLY.

Those are still the old counters, by the way. And the reason there's so much crud all over the floor is because we took a crowbar to the backsplash. And by "we" I mean the guy who came to take the final measurements on Tuesday TOTALLY LET ME HAVE A TURN YAAAYYYY TIMES INFINITY.

I ALSO HAVE NO LOVE FOR YOU, YELLOW PAINT.

The new hotness. Which is really hard to photograph. It's a black/green/brown granite. Also, HI COFFEE. I love you too.

I love how we've had new countertops for all of 12 hours and have managed to cover 75% of them up with extraneous crap already. 

And when I say "12 hours," I mean that almost literally, even though the install started at 2 pm yesterday. One section was cut incorrectly, but wasn't discovered until after 6 pm, when the workshop had already closed. But our install team was like, NOT ON OUR WATCH and sent one guy back to possibly pick the locks and cut us a new piece. Which kind of took a long time. We gave up on getting our kitchen back in time for dinner, so we ordered pizza and ate it directly out of the box, upstairs, on our bed, while the boys watched Cars 2 (UGH) and dripped pizza sauce all over the comforter. 

We ordered pizza for the installers too. They seemed very grateful, since I'm not sure sanding granite edges until 10 at night was exactly on their Top 10 List Of Awesome either. 

NOTE: Yes, I made my children eat their breakfasts on placemats. I know, I know. Let me harbor my illusions.

Speaking of illusions, we're installing a tile backsplash ourselves this weekend. Because that sort of thing always works out super well for us. On Monday you can expect an "Amalah Curled Up Weeping In The Fetal Position" photo essay.

The backsplash will hopefully look nice behind our new sink and faucet and OH LOOK, remember that one summer we kept getting mice in our kitchen? (I would go back and link, except shudder.) We haven't had any problems since, which is somewhat miraculous now that we uncovered the GIANT HOLE IN THE WALL where the mice were coming in behind the old backsplash, crawling under the countertop and apparently partying on top of the dishwasher.

("Apparently" = a new nice way to talk about poop. You're welcome.)

So...patching that up right proper today. Homeownership is the best! 

Also on the DIY docket are some new cabinet doors and handles. And painting the walls. And replacing this shifty sonofabitch:

The fire-happy stove, not the cat. The cat can stay. I mean, a little heads-up that mice were apparently apparently-ing underneath our kitchen counters would have been nice, but whatever. He's awful pretty. 

Bugbite Balboa

Mornin' Ezra, why are you rubbing your eye and ear so much? Is everything oka...

...OH DEAR GOD.

(And also: ADDDDDDDRIAAAAAANNNNNN!)

Ugh! This again. The dreaded I-swear-I-am-not-making-this-up Skeeter Syndrome. Still hasn't outgrown it, though I was hopeful this would be the year. Alas, it looks like we're in for another long summer with a perpetually disfigured (and/or coked-up-on-Benadryl) child.

The worst part is that the mosquitoes just fucking LOVE Ezra so much. They swarm to him, especially his poor, sweet little face. (Though he also has about five gigantic welts on his legs, all hot and angry with oozy blistering centers.) If you send 10 kids outside to play for five minutes, Ezra will come inside with more bites than the rest of them combined. Sometimes he's the ONLY one bit, probably because he's a literal mosquito magnet. And then BOOM. Quasimodo realness. 

He's like reverse citronella: Want to drive mosquitos out of your backyard? Here's Ezra. Just toss him over the fence. Problem solved, Pied Piper style.

"Don't worry, Mommy," he told me this morning, right after my initial real-life OH MY GOD reaction to the swelling, "My mosquito bites will get better on Friday."

(Also happening on Friday, according to Ezra: cooking camp [it's over, actually], swimming lessons [no], watching Star Trek [what?], washing his hands, eating his carrots, and putting on pajamas. He's got a jam-packed schedule, all right.)  

20 Things Nobody Told Me About Little Boys

(Or Maybe They Did While I Was Only Pretending To Listen)

1) You will spend a crazy amount of time clipping their weed-like fingernails, even though your own nails don't grow worth a damn.

2) They will also probably have nicer eyelashes than you.

3) Little-boy funk-smell kicks in sometime around age three.

4) It smells like a combination of feet and maple syrup. 

5) You will totally get peed on. In the face, directly, at least once.

6) I also do not suggest painting the walls immediately around changing tables or toilets with a flat finish. Go with eggshell or satin, or else just thumbtack up some freaking towels.

7) Those little PeePee TeePee things do not work, unless you care to see just how far your son's urine can propel a tiny, soggy cone of fabric across the room.

8) All that said, a lot of times they just manage to pee right on their own heads. Memorize their shocked expression when it happens, because hiiiiiiiiiilarious.

9) Boners. 

10) Yeast infections are not just for girls. 

11) EW. 

12) The instinct to turn random objects into guns/blasters/lasers/phasers/swords/lightsabers/arrows/cannons/etc. is something they are born with. Don't worry about it too much.

13) Buy helmets, though.

14) Remember that one mean little girl in first grade who would randomly announce that she wasn't your friend any more; she was someone ELSE'S friend now and you couldn't be friends with either of them because she said so and made you cry but then the very next day the rules were all completely different? 

15) There are mean little boys like that, too. 

16) The good news is that once you're a grown-up you realize it's perfectly okay to think that they're annoying little shits and tell their moms on them when they color on your walls with markers. 

17) Even after many mature, frank discussions about body parts and the differences between boys and girls, you will definitely be asked — loudly and publicly — about your own lack of a penis and whether or not you pee out your butt. 

18) At some point, you'll have to sack up and send them into the mens' room by themselves. This is both amazing and terrible. 

19) Wearing a dress makes you look beautiful, Mommy. A single sequin on your shirt or a sparkly necklace earns you an upgrade to princess. Your hair looks gweat. Your hugs are nice. Your cuddles are the best. I wuv you, Mommy. 

20) Ugh, they are so awesome, it hurts. 

We're Gonna Party Like It's 7:59

So part of the sponsorship dealie thing with Sauza (who I refer to in real life as simply TEQUEEEEEEEELA, because we're close) included the assignment to have an actual Ladies' Night In.

OH. IF WE MUST. How could I resist these eyes? <-- Click that and then guess which set of eyes I am talking about. GO ON GUESS.

However, because I am no fool, I invited my favorite lady AND her non-lady significant other, because I knew he would bring dessert. Specifically, cupcakes for the kids and macarons for me. (He did not let me down.)

Since Jason and I have never met a party theme we didn't enjoy beating into the ground, we decided a Sauzarita party called for a taco bar, complete with homemade guacamole and salsa. We also decided that Tracey and Charlie were about fourteen different people:

HEY YEAH WE BOUGHT ALL THE LIMES, TOMATOES AND AVOCADOS IN THE WORLD THERE ARE NONE LEFT NOW SORRY BYE.

We ate all of this. (Ezra helped.)

And this. Jason made homemade roasted tomatillo salsa (recipe here) and I encourage everyone on earth to follow suit. It will change your life and probably cure at least some of your diseases.

I mean, not to oversell it or anything. 

TACO TOWN!

We made carnitas. Fine, Jason made carnitas (a hybrid-mash-up of these two recipes). Just like Charlie made the dessert. I made...uh. I...vacuuming motions with the vacuum?

(What? We were simply upholding the spirit of the Sauza "Make It With A Fireman" campaign, which is all about getting hot men to make you things, like drinks and tacos and cookies.)

We did indeed make a batch of the Sauzaritas, as demonstrated in the commercial. I had a handy cheat sheet on my phone from my day on the set:

Other than having completely non-regulation ice cubes, it turned out pretty delicious. Except that we drank them before anyone remembered to take a picture. Oops.

Now it wouldn't be a TEQUEEEEEEEELA party without someone exhibiting some questionable judgment, which for us manifested in Tracey having the brilliant idea to create a NEW drink recipe. And Jason seizing on the opportunity to open a champagne bottle with the back of a knife. (Remember when we learned to that? Yes. Still doing that.)

(Please to note that all children were fed and tucked away in bed by this point, away from our terrible collective influence and reckless use of cutlery.)

So that's how...this was created. An unholy combination of tequila and prosecco and...Stevia? I think? I don't actually remember what all they put in it because I was too busy shrieking that I wanted no part of this abomination. NO PART.

WHAT HAS SCIENCE DONE?

This is Jason's "well it's not as bad as it could be" face.

And this is Charlie's "no, it actually totally is" face.

Yeeeeah. I recommend you stick with the recipes the Tequila Professionals come up with. But whatever, it was time to switch to coffee anyway, because we were all sinking into Tequila and Taco Comas and still wanted to watch Team America: World Police together and...

8:30 pm. NOW THAT'S A PARTY. Next time someone remind me to buy some Sharpies along with the limes.

This post is sponsored by Sauza and the (hilarious) "Make It With A Fireman" campaign. Please drink responsibly and avoid putting prosecco in your tequila, because ick.

Naps Are Wasted On The Young, Part Two

Meanwhile, not long after I wrote yesterday's post and tried (again) (and failed) (again) to coax Baby Ike into a nap, I realized Ezra was being AWFULLY nice and quiet downstairs. Suspiciously quiet. Like, now-is-the-time-I-realize-he's-decided-to-dump-a-bag-of-flour-down-the-toilet-for-fun quiet.

Nope. He was just really very tired.

Even Ceiba was like, uh, is you dead? 

Nah, he's fine. Just drunk, probably.

Ike also eventually, finally caved to utter exhaustion. 

Also in a slightly unorthodox location. My children do have beds, I swear. Horrible, hateful beds, apparently. Whatever, I'm not here to reason with any of you crazy people. You stay there and dent your face up all you want. 

(Awwwww. I want to stroke that fluffy head, but I won't, because SHHHHH NOBODY BREATHE WHOEVER WAKES HIM UP GETS THE HOSE, I MEAN IT.)
 

Naps Are Wasted On The Young

Do not let him fool you. Do not lend this child any money. That angelic little serious face has not napped in three days. THREE DAYS.

And I don't mean oh, he's fighting his naps, or only taken short naps, or irregular naps, I mean NO NAPS. Not even so much as a 15-minute catnap in the car. Yesterday I saw him half-close his eyes in the stroller on the way home from the playground...and then he caught himself and powered through another four solid hours of daylight.  

6 am to 8 pm, this child is a ball of non-stop terrifying awakeness. 

Is he tired? Exhausted? Collapse-on-the-floor-wailing-because-his-head-is-stuck-under-his-musical-activity-table-again-level sleep-deprived? Oh, fuck yes. All that. He's a complete wreck at this point, possibly able to see through space and time but unable to figure out that hey, I'm tired. I should close my eyes and sleep instead of freaking out everytime I blink. 

Molar number four is cutting through. Which I think (hope) (pray) (trade personal soul for) is the root of the problem. The other three fucked with his nights; this one decided to mess with his days. For kicks! To be different! Oh, that upper left molar, marching to the beat of its own drum, all unique and snowflakey and probably way emo. 

(It's also entirely possible that his teeth have nothing to do with any of it, and he's just staying awake to stare at me exactly like this all day, like I am some sort of vaguely interesting zoo animal or PBS documentary about energy prices. Hmm. Interesting, Mother. Do go on with your theories. I'll brew some espresso.)

Mamarazzi

You may have noticed (or...not, probably not, but allow me a moment to wallow in delusional self-importance) that I have not posted a single non-camera-phone photo in a very long time. I think Ike's birth was the last time we pulled out the "real" SLR camera, and even that was a last-minute scramble of BATTERY! CHARGER! MEMORY CARD! LENS CAP! 

And then it was still easier for me to grab my phone off the nightstand and snap photos. And in a way, the ease of always having a semi-decent-ish camera in my back pocket (and the forgiving hazy glow of Instragram filters) has probably saved poor Ike from the worst of the third-baby photo fatique. Sure, not every picture of him is a professionally framed shot in high resolution, BUT AT LEAST I TOOK A LOT OF PICTURES. I DESERVE PARTIAL CREDIT.

But probably the biggest reason I abandoned my trusty SLR is that it maybe kind of sort of got accidentally punted down the basement steps by my children and/or one of their friends, I don't know who, I was too busy enjoying wine with my friends to pay attention to the fact that our children were playing soccer with several hundred dollar's worth of camera on the stairs. I mean, come on. It's not like I have eyes on the front of my head, or anything.

The camera was in its protective padded bag, at least — I think someone was using it as a purse or backpack before the game turned destructive — and everything SEEMED to work afterwards, but not ever like it used to. Photos turned out blurry a lot, like the auto-focus thingamabob went semi-kablooey (IF I MAY GET TECHNICAL ON YOUR ASSES FOR A MINUTE). So even when I did make the effort to take "real" photos, the results hardly seemed worth it. 

Jason was adamant, however, that we sack up and replace the camera eventually. So I started saving up my Amazon affiliate gift cards (thanks, Ultimate Master Lists! I should do you more often. I should turn this blog into nothing but lists! SEO synergy coupon extreme-Amazoning buzzword Skrillex!) until I had enough to cover a new Canon Rebel camera body and one of those fancy Eye-Fi memory cards that all the Kids Today are using, filling the wifi networks around our skulls with a digital smog of photos and videos and probably giving us all brain cancer or something. Hooray! 

The first thing I did was harrass my children with my new toy. And I realized that — like the concept of life without DVRs and touchscreens — they have absolutely no idea what to do when confronted with flash photography:

WHAT THE WHAT WAS THAT.

NOT SO VERY MUCH SURE ABOUT THAT NO THANK YOU.

STOPIT. SRSLY.

Baby Ike was not alone in his disdain for my sudden paparazzing.

IT BURRRNS SO ANNNNNNOYINGLYYYYYYY.

Eventually, Ike seemed to warm up to the camera, or at least accept the fact that I wasn't putting it away until I'd messed with every single setting possible:

He's a bit of a hammy clown, yes. Also part shark, apparently.

His first birthday is in just over two weeks. 16 days! I need to take at least seven hundred million more pictures before then. Sorry, eyeballs. 

 

In Which Ikea Ruins Young Lives & Mother's Day In One Fell HOLY SHIT GAAAHHHH

Happy Mother's Day! I got you the gift of HOLY SHITBALLS IKEATASTROPHE:

A few weeks ago, we impulse-bought a wall cabinet at Ikea, brought it home, and promptly procrastinated the hell out of actually assembling it. 

The box sat propped in a corner until yesterday, when Jason decided to finally tackle the project, because he knows how much I love moving Things from One Thing into Another Thing. In this case, sorting and moving all our serving platters and entertaining-type dishes from the sideboard in the dining room into this new, awesome cabinet, AND THEN moving the sideboard into the living room as new-and-improved toy storage, AND THEN moving the bookshelves out and OH MY GOD, POINT IS, SO MUCH DEPENDED ON THIS CABINET. 

I spent a few happy hours sorting dishes and vases and whatnot into keep-donate-maybe piles, then began stacking them neatly into the new cabinet while Jason reorganized some other cabinets. No longer would I need to climb up on a stepstool to get a baking dish from that annoying cabinet over the fridge! No more digging for oversized bowls from the depths of the sideboard! Everything we actually use and need will now live in this great big new cabinet, although the door isn't really opening as easily as it did at the store and you kinda have to pull on it a little harder than I remembered OH DEAR GOD OH SHIT GAAAHHHHHHHH.

I was standing right in front of it when it started to come down, and LUCKILY figured out that my instinct to "CATCH IT! STOP IT!" was not going to help anything, so I backed away helplessly while it fell with several tremendous, graduated crashes, shattering just about everything inside. 

Including all of my grandmother's depression glass. 

(Don't look, Mom! That photo is a lie and everything is fine! Ponies! Rainbows!)

Luckily Ezra and Ike were trapped playing in the baby jail conversation pit when it happened, and Noah was in the kitchen but seated far away. He promptly burst into tears because his whole house was falling apart and is now officially terrified of cabinets, at a volcano-like level. They are now ALL horrific death traps, ready to burst free from their inadequate anchors and kill you. THANKS IKEA. 

After we cleaned up I had to break even more bad news to Ezra: The cabinet had fallen on his beloved play kitchen and broken that, too. Smashed top, cracked doors, broken-off legs, you get the idea. He was understandably devastated and I have nothing funny to say about it except THANKS IKEA. 

We promised him we'd get him a new kitchen as soon as possible, mentally adding THAT nice little expense on top of the cabinet's price and the cost of repairing and repainting the wall and gee, it's a good thing we snapped that cabinet right up once we saw it was $20 off, amirite? $20 off! It's a bargain! Deal of a lifetime! You're not gonna get this kind of nonstop death and destruction at Home Depot, I'll tell you that right now. 

(THANKS IKEA.)