For those of you keeping track, it’s been exaclty one year since I the kids and I moved out of that mess I called a marriage and my life as a “single mama” began.  One year already, huh?  Sheesh, how time flies when you’re having fun! 

I told someone recently, “Yeah, I may be scraping by every month and yeah, I’m living in a one bedroom apartment with 2 kids but you know what?  I’m in a better place now , physically and emotional, than I was a year ago.”

Thanks to all my friends and family who supported me through this mess.  Wouldn’t have been able to do it without you!  I’m forever in your debt….especially my sister, Christy, who worked her butt of helping me move out that hot summer weekend.

*raises coffee cup*  Here’s to one year down and many more to go…..

Just a few silly notes that popped in my head lately:

1. My kids eat anything and everything, all the time.  The going joke is “As long as it’s not nailed down or crawling away, my kids will more than likely eat it.”
2. Though I had discovered one thing they WILL NOT eat at all: mac and cheese.  Homemade or from the box, it doesn’t matter.  As my best friend says, “You have strange kids.”
3. Their current Spongebob obsession is all their Aunt Creak’s fault.    When W wakes up, the first thing she asks for is “Can we watch Spongebob?”  *sigh*  ((BTW: If you see seasons 4 and up of Spongbob Squarepants for under $20, please buy it for me.  I’ll pay you back.  I’m getting sooooo tired of watching the first 3 seasons of SBSP over and over and over…please, someone take me out of my misery!!!!))
4. Colds suck - we seem to have all caught the same low-grade head cold that’s just annoying enough to make everyone grumpy.
5. J does not wake up well from his mid-day nap.  He usually has to sit in my lap for atleast 15 minutes, for a cuddle and backrub while he sobs and whines at me.  Compared notes with their father to find that he’s doing the same thing there.  Greeeeaaaaat….
6. My counter seems to have a bad case of “never-ending-dishius”.  The next apartment must have a dishwasher.
7. Has anyone seen the carpet in my kids’ room?  I haven’t lately…there’s a thin layer of toys covering every square inch of their floor.  Every night, I kick toys aside to make a path from the door to the beds but every morning, the debris has obscured the path once again.  I’m thinking snow shovel….
8. Did I say that colds suck?  Oh yeah, I did, didn’t I?
9. After a few weeks of nice weather, we’ve having a heat wave.  Tell me again why I don’t have AC?  Oh yeah…cheap apartment.  ;-) 
10. One of these days, I’m going to sneak downstairs and dismantle the BBQ that’s located just below my kitchen windows.  We have one of 2 choices on these hot summer days: die of heat exhaustion from not having the windows open or get smoked out…ugh

I swear, my boy is trying to make me go premature gray.  I’m living with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - one moment he’s happy, and next, he’s throwing himself on the ground in an all out screaming fit.  His “Drama Prince” actis getting old fast. 

Thankfully, these have been reserved to the house, where I could easily correct the matter without public damnation.  Now, all of a sudden, he’s starting to do it when we’re out and about, which makes me dread any sort of outing, even a quick run to the grocery store. 

This last Saturday was an excellent example: we went to a local park for a farewell playdate (a friend is moving to the East Coast).  Wynter was well behaved, playing nicely with some other kids and having long conversations with some other 4 year old boy about the trees and leaves….but Julian…oy!    He threw sand, tried to eat bark, treed himself at the top of the big kids’ play equipment…and let’s not forget the monumental tantrums. 

I pulled him out of the sandbox after 2 warnings about throwing sand and made him sit with me for a few minutes…you would have thought I had beaten him by the protests he put up.   We ignored him, continuing our conversation, and finally, he calmed down.  “Are you calm down?”  “Yes.”  “Do you want to go play?”  “Yes.” 

I let him down and off he ran to the preschool playground equipment, but then suddenly veered off towards the big kids hungle gym.  Before I reached him, he had climbed up the steps to the top….and didn’t know where to go: down the really big slide or down the rope  bridge.  I guess everything looked scary because he say down and cried.  I climbed and retrieved him, and the whole time I’m carrying him down, he’s screaming and pushing at me, protesting my intervention.  I set him on the ground and he immediately threw himself into the sand, screaming.  Back to the bench he went to calm down.

Wash, rinse, repeat - yep, that was a fun outing.  We ended it with dinner at the local Burger King where he didn’t eat  but rather tried to grab everything, throw food on the floor and yelled at us.  Since we were the only ones there, we pushed his highchair a foot away from the table, so he couldn’t grab anything, and let him have his fit while we ignored him and ate.

The moment we came home, I put him to bed.  There was much screaming but really, I was done with him and his antics.  I was exhausted and laid on the couch for an hour, watching Buffy and trying to recover from that hassle.

If it hadn’t been a special outing and the last time I’d see my friend, I would have called an end to the outing at the second tantrum.  Now, I’m wary - is it worth the hassle?  AUGH!  I hate the terrible twos…..

We are now 2 weeks post surgery and Julian is doing well.  We saw the eye doctor last week and he was quite happy with his progress.  He said there was an 18-20% correction, not perfect but a major improvement over where he was before.  We’re to start patching his good eye in a week or so (What Fun! HA!) and visit the doctor again at the beginning of July to check on his progress.

Julian - 2 Weeks Post-Surgery

Yes, it’s not perfect, but it’s a major improvement from where his eye was at before:

Julian - Pre-Surgery

It looks a lot more “normal”, and as my neighbor pointed out, he does walk better (he doesn’t stagger around or weave as much) and a heck of a lot faster.  It’s like someone put booster rockets on that kid.

The doc says that his eyes may improve over the next month, thanks to the medication they injected in the weak eye muscle.  It will also improve with patching - cover the good eye for 15 minutes a day to MAKE  him use his weaker eye more.  Of course, J is NOT a fan of patching.  He hates ANYTHING on his eyes.  *sigh*  Wish me luck!

Hmmmm…..I swore I already posted these pictures, but seeing as they aren’t up on the website, let’s try again!

Anne

———————–

I’m posting a limited number of pictures for this month, mainly because….well, it’s hard to take pictures of two constantly moving objects without the pic ending up being a blur.

Here are a few pics from our time at my mom and sister’s house:

While there, I bought a couple alphabet books, which the kids instantly fell in love with:

These 2 books really helped them learn their alphabet - yes, even Julian.  Now, we’re working on the sounds….”What does A say?”.

And here’s Wynter comparing the books, letter by letter.  As I said, these books were well worth the $10 each.

Julian being silly with Gma’s hat

The legos Wynter received for her birthday are used all the time.  No really….ALL. THE. TIME.  By back can attest to this, since I seem to be the one who picks up the majority of them.  This is Wynter showing off her really tall tower.

And yes, Mama helped her finish it - I held it and placed pieces on the top while she retrieved bricks from the floor.

Also this month came the facination with Mama’s socks and shoes.  It started with Julian claiming owndership of the socks I had in my tennis shoes.  Of course, if he had mama socks, Wynter had to have some. 

I left those socks out for them to play with until laundry day. As I gathered clothes and towels, I asked Wynter to get the Mama socks off the floor.  She returned with one very bulging fat sock - she had shoved all the socks in one sock for easy carrying.  Smart kid.

Of course, mama’s shoes aren’t off limits either….

I love the concentration in this picture….LOL

Julian woke at 3 AM, sporting a swollen eye and in desperate need of IB profin, food and liquid.  I knew that was going to happen, considering he had slept from the moment I posted that last update untilthat early hour, when his first screeches woke me out of a dead sleep.  Once he ate his breakfast and drank down 3 sippies of well-watered-down-juice, his mood improved, so I let him stay up and watch a Sponge Bob DVD while I snoozed on the couch.

24 hours after surgery, the swelling has reduced to a “black eye”.  That alone makes sure we stay home - I don’t need to be answering those questions.  ;-)  Julian’s general outlook on life oscelates between “You all SUCK!” to “Happy happy joy joy”.  His sense of balance is still a little wonky.  He’ll be walking along and all of sudden go wobbly and sit down, screaming at me for help.  And let’s not even mention the fun we have administrating his eye drops.  I think I pulled a muscle wrestling him down to the ground.  That boy is STRONG.

I was elbow-deep in diapers and toys when my cell phone rang Monday morning.  I answered to find Julian’s eye doctor’s office on the other end.  “We had a spot open up on Dr. P’s surgery calendar.  Do youwant it?”  “When is it?”  “This weds.  Are you available?”  “YES!”

That began a couple crazy days of rushing around, getting pre-op done and wrapping up work (so I could take today off).  It all cummulating today, when we rolled out of bed at 6 AM to report in at Kaiser’s Eye Surgery Center at a-very-early 7 AM this morning. 

Almost 6 hours later, I exited with a sleeping babe in my arms.  He came through surgery without any problems or incidents, though he really didn’t want to wake up after the surgery.  I finally had to pull a trick I learned while breastfeeding - strip and tickle - to wake him up.  I pulled his shirt up and his shoes and socks off and then spent 10 minutes kissing his belly and talking to him.  He woke very pissy and immediately started ripping montoring equipment off of him. 

Thankfully, the nurse appeared with juice before he started on his IV.  Only after he chugged down a full 8 oz juice did they let us go (they wanted to make sure he could hold down liquids after general anastethia).  The moment he was stipped of the IV and the last of the monitoring equiment, he leapt into my arms, snuggled into my chest and fell back asleep.  He slept all the way down to the car, all the way to his dad’s (had to pick up W) and then all the way home. 

After 3 sippies and a plate of watermelon and McDonalds fries, he laid down on the couch and hasn’t moved since….

My poor baby!

Yes….he hasn’t moved.  Just lays there, picking at his banana slices and watches cartoons on PBS.  That says a lot, considering Mr. J is usually “the boy who NEVER hold still”.  The geneal anathesia really took him for a spin this time.

Edited to add: Right after hitting “submit” on this entry, I looked over to find him fast asleep……my poor baby!!!

Funny conversation with J:

J: *walks up with a small wolf figurine*  “What’s that?”

Me: “That’s a wolf.”

J: “WOOF WOOF WOOF!”

Me: “His name is wolf.  It howls.  OOOOooooOOOoooOOOOoooOOOOooooo

J: *shoves animal in my face* WOLF!  WOOF WOOF WOOF!”

Me: “Ooookkkkaaaaayyyyy……”

I’m learning that sometimes it’s best just to shut up….

I was smart today and tossed the digital camera in the diaper bag.  Glad I did - I got some great pictures of the kids!!!

The SF Zoo is one of those basic zoos, nothing exotic…not even an elephant!  (They may have one, but I couldn’t find it!)  Lots of girraffes though.  We were standing along a quiet path and almost had a one-on-one encounter with one…he clame pretty close to us before veering off - that’s when I snapped this picture:

Just around the corner are the gorillas, which my two kept calling monkeys.  A bit too young to realize the difference, I think:

Then came the lions.  They looked like they had just had breakfast and were happy to lay around and let us take pictures:

The highlight of our trip was the California Grizzly Bears.  We arrived right at the end of their morning feeding.  The keeprs toss whole fish into the pond and the bears leap in to snag them.  One of the observation areas is pretty much IN that pond, which gives you a truely “face-to-face” encounter with the bears:

One came right up to the glass.  As most of the other kids went running behind their parents (that’s who J’s looking at), my two stood right at the glass and stared in wonder.  Wynter’s comment: “That’s a BIG bear!”  (Mental Note: if we ever go the Yellowstone Park, keep an eagle eye on the kids….they may try to make friends with Yogi and all his friends):

The kids loved this wood statue:

We stopped for lunch around 12 noon.  I knew it was time for a food break when Julian threw himself to the ground and screamed at the suggestion of leaving the bear area.  Thankfully, the zoo doesn’t mind you bringing in outside food - we had a nice picnic:

There were many statues in zoo, all kid-accessible, but the turtle in the Children’s Zoo was the first one that J went runing up to and clammered onto:

Right around 1:30, Julian started that “tired baby stagger” and kept getting distracted by everything - I knew it was time to go home.  I can understand why he was tired - the kids walked through most of the zoo.  They both fell asleep in the car and J was so tired, he slept straight through me tranferring him from the car to his bed.

All in all, a great day at the zoo.  And with our family annual pass, we have many opportunities for a repeat.

Late but worth the wait!

AK

——————

Wynter

Wynter’s Devious Smile  LOL

We had an opportunity one afternoon to take out the crayons and color.  I whipped out the camera to document the fun:

The Great Sorter - She’d rather sort than actually color with the crayons.  Yeah, I don’t get it either….

Julian

“What’s that?”

(And to answer the question: it’s one of the kids’ plastic animals (aka foot bombs)….a dog, I believe.

BUBBLES!!!!!

Julian gets the whole “coloring” thing, though he still likes to snack on an occasional crayon (hense why we don’t color that often! LOL)

Both Kids:

Post-Book Apocolypse

My sister bought the kids a set of magnetic animals, which I bring out for them to play with when the kitchen is “kid safe”.  They love this set though most times, playtime ends in a fight and the animals have to be put away.