Unsung Milestones

Crawling, standing, walking, talking. All well and good.

But not nearly as delightful as the first time your baby picks up your hairbrush and starts dragging it across his downy-bald head.

Bonus points if he's never actually had enough hair to merit brushing, but has simply gleaned the purpose of the weird, spikey thing by watching you futilely groom yourself. 

Or puts your phone up to his ear — or general ear-like area — and says, "abloooh?"

"Ablooh? Sorry, I can't hear you. This hairbrush gets terrible reception. Lemme switch to the comb and call you back."

Or tries to make sense of a doorknob. He KNOWS what it does. He KNOWS it is the source of his confinement. And he KNOWS to grab it and...and...well. He'll get back to you once he figures out step two.

Bonus points for...well. No. No bonus points awarded for this. HE'S JUST A BABY STOP PRESSURING HIM TO BE BRILLIANT ALREADY. 

(Step three, of course, is: PROFIT!)

(And head injuries, probably.)

My Winning Formula: Talk Ramble Talkyspeak Unrelated Baby Picture

Man. Did I really only post two times this week? Did I really have that little say about the ENDLESSLY FASCINATING SUBJECT that is myself? Damn, I am losing my narcissistic grip, or something.

It's the week before BlogHer (and even more importantly, one week before SPARKLECORN 2012 OH HELL YEAH), and I'm doing my yearly routine of running around like a newly headless chicken trying to get everything done. It's REALLY HARD to get everything done when you have no head, guys. I really don't recommend it. 

I have so much to do! So many feelings about things that I feel!

Like: My Other Job is consuming my life, but in a good way. (And I'm not trying to be all secretive about it, for the record. I mean, find me on LinkedIn and it's all right there. It's more that it would probably bore y'all to tears, unless maybe you're in the IT field and super geeked about Azure and SharePoint development and hybrid cloud scenarios. Not that there's anything wrong with being geeked about those things. Those things are awesome, frankly. Fuck yeah hybrid cloud! Somebody start me a Tumblr!) So it's weird to suddenly ditch all that for a few days, to go from being some Sooper Professhunal Blog & Social Media Person to...well. That girl who climbed on a table and took bites of a giant unicorn cake's ass last year. 

Also like: I'm pretty sure the baby will wean while I'm gone and on the one hand, okay, he's gotten really extra bite-y this week and is losing interest anyway and my crap supply is crap with a side of double crap, but on the other hand, nooooooooooo. Wah. Etc. 

Anyway. He's still delicious. 

I chew on his face a lot, yes. His whole head is like a baked potato topped with downy spun sugar.

PS. Chalkboard wall protip, coming from someone who has been a chalkboard wall professional for all of five days now: You can completely and easily erase the chalk residue with Endust sprayed on a dry towel. Works like a charm, and also quickly, which is good for when you realize you left up a vaguely obscene doodle from the night before, right as your children are coming downstairs for breakfast. 

Home Improvementish, Part Three

You know what's even harder than painting your kitchen? Photographing your newly-painted kitchen. I cannot, for the life of me, take an accurate photo of the new color scheme. The walls look too blue (they are grey) and the backsplash looks too yellow (there is no yellow in the backsplash at all, whutdahell).

(Here's the before. We opted not to replace the cabinets [cuz $$$$], save for replacing a few damaged doors. We did the backsplash and painting ourselves, so the counter ended up being the only big expense. And even that we got on sale. Thus, more money leftover for booze and fancy cheese.)

(INVEST IN WHAT MATTERS, PEOPLE.)

(The microwave and the Range What Did Catch On Fire That One Time will be replaced with stainless to match...eventually. 2015, maybe. You know how we do things around here. I don't want to sprain anything on all this forward progress.)

The counters are actually a blend of greens and blacks and browns and tie everything (including the troublesome reddish floors) together pretty nicely in person, but in photos tend to either look all black or all green. Whatever. At least the new cabinet handles look mostly like themselves?

Another photography protip: Take pictures of the cool magnetic/chalkboard accent wall (stolen from inspired by Tracey and Charlie's recent kitchen faceliftening) BEFORE setting  your children loose with the chalk.

Or at least, remember to buy a damn eraser first. Whuups.

It required about million coats of the magnetic primer and a several more of chalkboard paint, but the boys are thrilled with it. Drawing on the walls? Both allowed and encourage? Are you kidding me with this nonsense? 

This is a scene from the Avatar cartoon series, according to Noah. Ezra is adding some kitty cats. 

We also painted the dining room, aka the shittiest room in the house (no windows, low ceiling), which was previously painted brown and dark red. Add in all our too-big and too-dark furniture, and ta-da! Welcome to our claustrophobic bordello. Pass the yams.

I'm thinking of swapping out the chairs (they need reupholstering anyway, and there is NO WAY I'm bothering with that until we officially No Longer Have Toddler Butts Sitting On Them & Spilling All The Things) with something more modern. Less heavy and dark. Thots? 

Next on the painting/makeover docket: Our bedroom and the living room. Though that one is going to require some serious home organization solutions, because...well...

BITCH YOU DON'T KNOW MY LIFE.

I MEAN, MAYBE YOU DO, SINCE YOU READ MY BLOG ABOUT MY LIFE. 

OH GOD STOP JUDGING MEEEEEEEE.

Home Improvementish, Part Two

So first of all, this:

KEGGER IN THE DINING ROOM, GUYS. ALSO HELP YOURSELF TO SOME TOAST.

In what is officially the slowest-moving, most-procrastinated kitchen makeover EVER, we finally got around to painting the damn walls this weekend. It tooks us several more weeks to decide on a color, and then...I don't know. The decision took a lot out of us. We had to lie down for awhile. Or a month.

And then we also painted the dining room, getting rid of the gloomy blood-red half-wall that I once declared would be "the first thing to go" when we moved in. (Six years ago.) (But who's counting?) 

In the meantime, this:

TOE VS. SHOPVAC, A BATTLE FOR THE AGES.

My toes continue to be reinforced with toothpicks and silly putty, as I managed to fucking DESTROY my middle toe right in the middle of the project by tripping over the vaccuum cleaner. I've never broken this particular toe before, though, so that's fun. Painful, painful fun. Maybe I should put some booze on it.

Anyway, as much as I would LOVE to show you photos of the finished rooms, it should come as no surprise that...uh...we're still a day or two away from putting shit back in its place and stuff.

Plus I need time to recover from the trip to Ikea that I took by myself, with Noah and Ezra, in search of cabinet handles, only to find that Smaland was over capacity and the wait was at least an hour. And whatever, I'm just here for cabinet handles and that will take 10 minutes so I'll just take the kids into Ikea with me, it'll be fine.

Two hours (plus 26 cabinet handles, one desk lamp and a medicine cabinet for the guest bathroom) later, my toe had swollen to the size of an EKTORP, I'd run out of privileges to revoke and lives to threaten and my children had loudly and officially declared me to be the meanest mommy in the entire world. 

And then I came home and accidentally threw myself against a freshly-painted doorjam in a dramatic NEVER AGAIN flourish.

All in all, a ragingly productive weekend for me, as long as you set the bar low, like at NOT DYING as the baseline criteria for success and moving up from there.

The Continuing Adventures of Gimpy McGee

Not long after the Vet Bill of Unspeakable Horrors — I believe our credit card was still hot to the touch — Ceiba starting limping. 

Limping isn't a zero to X-ray thing with her, as Min Pins tend to have trick kneecaps (luxating patellas, if you wanna be all science-y about it). Ceiba's knees haven't bothered her in years, at least not as frequently as when she was a puppy, but I still assumed that was the problem and her kneecap would pop back into place on its own, as usual. 

When it didn't, I stretched and massaged it, then puzzled a bit because her kneecap felt fine, at least to my inexpert fingers. Later I realized that all that stretching and massaging seemed to have made things worse, because her leg was now noticeably swollen and I was an asshole.

I told Jason it was probably time to go back to the vet — and while at first he protested with this wild, terrified look in his eyes, like oh god oh no not again with all of the money — he agreed and took her to the emergency vet for an examination and x-ray.

Good news: 'Tis merely a sprain. Try to get her to rest it for awhile. Here are some pain pills.

(And oh. That'll be $400.)

Ceiba, being the idiot pea brain that she is, did not rest it. Despite my PERFECTLY REASONED explanations that she needed to stay on her dog bed and let a human carry her up and down stairs, she continued to behave like a spastic moneky. She chased squirrels. She wigged out over the mail. She jumped on and off the couch. She fell down the stairs. She antagonized the cat who promptly laid her ass out flat. 

By my count, she has partially healed and then re-sprained that same damn leg a half-dozen times. The vet recommended upping the pill frequency to keep her doped and still. 

You guys, I think my dog is intentionally engaging in drug-seeking behaviors.

 

Or maybe just peanut-butter seeking. Three times a day, she gets a baby spoon's worth of peanut butter with the doggie equivalent of oxycontin ("doxy," I call it, because I am stupid and think this is an hilarious pun) hidden inside. Twice a day, she loses her ever-loving mind over this amazing treat with an enthusiasm previously reserved for waffles.

SPOON SPOON OH GOD IT'S A SPOON MAH LEG HURTS REAL BAD, YO

NOM 

OH NOM NOM

OH HOW I LOVE PEANUT BUTTER WITH A MEDICINAL BURNY CENTER

SEE YOU IN EIGHT HOURS, SPOON

(Seriously though: Dog. Calm the fuck down and stop hurting your damn leg. Everybody already feels sorry enough for your goofy hamster self without the pathetic limp. GO LIE DOWN.)

The Inbox & I

(This post is sponsored by Hipiti.com.)

I get a lot of email. Like, more than that. A lot a lot a lot.

This is by no means a humblebrag about how ever so popular I am, or anything. I probably get a very small handful of ACTUAL emails from ACTUAL people who count. Opening the laptop in the morning usually reveals a crop like this:

ONE Mamapop distro thread about Sparklecorn 2012/gossip item/posting schedule that devolved rapidly into an animated .gif war at some point the night before and now contains 73 messages.

ONE email from a friend, or maybe my mom or sister.

ONE email from a nice friendly blog reader.

SEVENTEEN DOZEN assorted newsletters I did not sign up for, you rat bastards. 

SEVENTY-FIVE HUNDRED spammy PR pitches of the Wil Wheaton collating variety (i.e. Hello Blogger Mommy, I have been reading your blog AMALACH for several months now and love it! Your recent post about your dog/baby/houseplant really hit home and is what prompted me to write and offer you the chance to interview Dr. Martin Van Hornsplotch on the role that non-organic orange juice may have played in the TomKat divorce.). 

FIVE blog-related businessy emails that are relevant and need to be responded to, provided I am lucky enough to dredge them out of the endless waves of FIVE SUMMER COCKTAIL RECIPES INSPIRED BY A Z-LISTER WEARING NAIL POLISH garbage. 

Last December, I finally decided to take charge of my inbox and figure out how to delete all unread messages en masse. I herded them up (then of course frantically read a few that looked suspiciously personal after all, only to once again fall victim to crafty yet useless PR pitches) and the results were kind of shocking:

 

37,481 EMAILS ARE YOU KIDDING ME WHAT THE SPUTTERING RAGE OF WASTE

I vowed to never let things get that out of hand again. I created filters. I unsubscribed. I marked as spam. I requested to be removed from mailing lists. I refused to give my email address at cash registers, even though that borders on a terrifying level of rudeness for me, because it's not the cashier's fault, but holy lands, please just let me buy some socks for my kids without dooming myself to seven emails a week about KICKY FUN SOCK STYLES FOR SUMMER (AS SEEN ON KINGSTON ROSSDALE).

I set up Priority Inbox and diligently deleted line after line of junk in the "Everything Else" section every day. Until...you know...I got kind of lazy again.

So seven months later, here we are:

 

*GIVES UP*

(And yes, the timestamps go on like that all day. I'm basically getting another completely useless email every two or three minutes. MADNESS.)

It has been suggested to me — pointedly I might add, by friends and family members who have found their emails getting lost in the Great Unread Sea — that it's time for me to create a second email address. To abandon my beloved, first-wave-of-Gmail-invites-back-in-the-day amalah@ handle and come up with a "secret" address that I only give out to a small select group of people. To basically hand this account over to the retail wolves and the PR people and shipping confirmation emails.

(And that one person who appears to live in the L.A. area and keeps giving my address at stores and specialty boutiques, either because they can't spell, don't realize the "fake" email they're giving out is someone's "real" account, or because they hate me and hate my blog and MWA HA HA I WILL SHOW HER. I WILL SHOW HER WITH NEWSLETTERS.)

You know what? NO. No I will not. This is my email address and I like it and I am keeping it. I will fight you for it. With...more filters and more unsubscribes and the Delete Key of Doom. 

(AAAAND here's where the sponsored stuff starts. It's super-helpful though, I promise.)

I am also now using Hipiti to eliminate the retail overload problem. Because yes, there ARE stores that I shop at that I want to get offers from. I want to know when there's a flash sale or a big coupon code. I also very much want to be able to FIND that information, preferably before I'm staring at an online checkout screen wondering if I missed a promo code. Hipiti solves this problem pretty handily: Sign up, select the stores you shop at, and Hipiti monitors them for you. You can view all current offers online in a dashboard mode or get ONE email from Hipiti in place of dozens. (The email settings are fully customizable too, so you can request that you only get emailed specific kinds of offers — I want the good stuff like coupon codes, free shipping, or flash sales; I have no patience for "trend alerts" or "new arrivals.")

And then you unsubcribe from allllll those individual mailing lists and breathe a sigh of relief. 

Hipiti is still in private beta, but you are cordially invited to come try it out with the promo code AMALAH. (In honor of my poor, besieged email address! Alas and alack.)

The very cool ladies who created it — Rama and Kristen — are also sponsoring a giveaway here: leave a comment and they'll send one winner a $50 gift card to whatever store you want. 

(EDITED TO CLARIFY: Uh, duh, one winner! I'll select randomly...so sorry for the confusion!)

(Just...uh...be sure to leave your email address. HA. HA HAHAHAHAHA.)

My Baby Does Not Care About My Need To Compulsively Document His Life On Teh Interwebz

Two things I have been trying (and failing) to get on video for the past five days for you people (and also posterity and stuff):

1) Baby Ike saying "uh oh!" This is his newest trick, and he loves it and it's adorrrrrrrable and etc. He says it constantly, but most often during the 30 seconds I've decided to turn my back on him, just for the added thrill of wondering if he's using it in the correct context this time because he's...yes, he's knocked over the Lego bin/my coffee/the pets' water dish. Faaaantastic. Uh-oh, indeed.

But the minute I stick the camera in his face he goes all serious and looks away, and I can practically SEE his little brain trying to figure out how to roll his eyeballs at me. So I've mostly ended up with a lot of stinkeye footage with a LOOK AT MAH BUTT finale. 

Yesterday, in the car, he joined in a singalong of Karmin's Brokenhearted (SHUT UP JUST SHUT UP), mimicking the "UH OHHHH" lyrics perfectly. I was delighted and put the song on repeat (DON'T YOU JUDGE MEEEE) so he would do it again and again, but then questioned the wisdom of this once Noah was all, "let's get up let's get on it" and then asked that I switch to the "Cookie Monster Song" which is actually Call Me Maybe (thanks to this video) and you know what? Let's just stop talking about the contents of my iPod already, okay? Let's just...stop. 

2) Baby Ike walking. Yes.

Okay, so I know he's technically just standing in these photos, but he IS walking. He took his first steps on Saturday, and we had witnesses and everything. It happened. It was real. And exceedingly wobbly.

(BTW, the sign that someone has definitely crossed the bridge of friendship into familyhood: When YOUR baby takes his first steps and SHE bursts into tears over it.)

I have yet to capture it on video, other than the one time he started to walk towards me and the camera and promptly fell headfirst onto the floor. With a brief yet spectacular collision with the coffee table on the way down. (THAT'S ONE FOR THE BIRTHDAY MONTAGE.)

I can't yet tell if his motivations are related to wanting to join his big brothers, or more of the I-need-to-get-myself-away-from-these-people variety.

Either way, shit just got real up in here. More real. Reallier real. Time to make good on my secret dreamy-dream to live in an oversized yurt furnished with nothing but upholstered ottomans. 

PS. So is he Just Ike now? Toddler Ike? No. He is Baby Ike. BABY IKE 4-EVAH. 

PPS. *sobs*

It's No Leg Lamp, But...

Noah brought home his first Major Award on Friday from camp. 

Why yes, that IS a repurposed Sprite bottle painted neon yellow and held together with duct tape Hogwarts House Cup. (Exclamation Point!) Noah won it at Harry Potter Camp, which is an actual thing our YMCA actually offers every summer. 

"A thing" is as detailed of a description as I can offer, because I have no idea what actually went on at Harry Potter Camp. There was a sorting ceremony, though from what I gather only about four children consented to being in any house but Gryffindor and the sorting hat was maaaaaaybe kind of a pussy about it and gave in. They played quidditch and Noah also came home with a "textbook" that contains two recipes: One for "DRAUGHT OF DEATH" and one for a love potion.

I don't know. It's the YMCA. Seems legit, right? 

Anyway, Noah was very upset during the last couple days at camp because Gryffindor was losing the House Cup contest to Ravenclaw. (Teams gained points by completing advanced wizardry moves like "put on you listening ears" and "don't hit people, you guys.") (So obviously those four little teacher-pleasing Ravenclaw brown-nosers did great, AM I RIGHT?)

But in the end, Gryffindor pulled ahead and claimed the House Cup on the very last day, and for reasons that I am not 100% clear on, Noah was permitted to take the actual cup home with him. He claims to have simply been the best behaved that day and singled out for his general awesomeness, a boast that I'm ashamed to have maaaaaybe doubted a little and countered with some leading questioning of the 1) are you sure they didn't just give one to everybody type, followed by the 2) omg, did my kid steal the Hogwarts House Cup variety.

I think what actually happened was a very, very kindly camp counselor who decided to bestow the cup on the kid she sensed it meant the very most to. 

Who knew there were real-life wizards and witches staffing Y summer camps these days? 

Ezra & His Brothers

(AN ONLY SLIGHTLY CONNECTED SERIES OF RANDOM PHOTOS)

Awwww.

Whuuut?

Awwww!

Seriously whuuuut?

Awwww, some more.

AwwwwhaaaaahaaaaaaaaHA HA HA HAHAHA. Whuuuuuthahaha, etc. 

(BONUS: THE REASON I MOSTLY ONLY HAVE PHOTOS OF TWO OF THEM AT A TIME)

Not the Baby

I posted a (filtered-up-to-hell) version of this picture on Instagram a couple days ago, and the response was almost unanimous: When did that three year old eat your baby, Amy?

I wish I could tell you it was a fluke-y trick of the light or angle, but no. Baby Ike is not really looking super babyish these days. He's a tall, solid, smirky little thing who looks like I put two parts Noah and one part Ezra in a cocktail shaker and bam: straight-up toddler.

Well, pre-toddler, technically, since he's only taken a small handful of tentative half-steps so far. He's very good at standing unassisted and clapping for himself, but for actual forward propulsion he still prefers dropping back to his knees and speed-crawling all over the place. 

I kind of don't blame him. He's crazy fast that way, plus there's less of a chance of falling and getting his teeth lodged in the outside part of his face.

The mouthful of teeth aren't helping in the 13-months-going-on-36 looks department either. His canines cut through last weekend — all four of them, bringing his total tooth-count up to 16. SIXTEEN TEETH. At this rate his "two-year molars" will show up in September, and we should plan on getting his wisdom teeth pulled by kindergarten.

He enjoys watermelon, strawberries, pasta, cheese, chicken, grilled summer vegetables and steak. Not a big sweets fan, other than fruit, but he'll gamely give anything you're eating a try, by which I mean he'll get a crazy look in his eyes and wave his arms around while shrieking EAT? EAT? EAT! until you share. 

His big brothers adore him, and show a lot more patience with him than they do for each other, even as Ike gets bigger, taller and Lego-grabbier. 

I look at him now and the reality of THREE BOYS is hitting me more and more (and harder and harder) each day — it's not one boy, one toddler and one little baby. It's three children, all hurtling forward towards full-on boyhood at lightning speed. Wrestling, wrastling, shrieking, fighting, destroying, laughing. All the time. Constantly. And then some more.

That's not a bad thing — in many ways I'm a little relieved to see the end of the baby days in sight, and plan to enjoy the hell out of the next stage before we hit (oh God) teenagerhood — but oh, Baby Ike. I'll miss you most of all.

Thanks for slowing down every once in awhile, though.