We're good parents... really

As parents, I feel like we're pretty attentive to what's going on with our kids. We try and notice the little things they need, their changes in mood, the small quirks that make up their personalities. So, it's all the more depressing when something like the following happens...

Last Sunday, we headed up to a birthday party for my grandma. I didn't have time to put the babies' shoes on beforehand, so as we were getting out of the car, I hurriedly tried to shove shoes on A2's feet. He was curling up his toes and arching his feet (I hate it when kids do that) so it was a little difficult, but I got them on.

He seemed fine for most of the time we were there, content to putter around with his sister and eat the homemade pumpkin bread that my aunt made. As we were getting ready to go, A2 suddenly lost it. He started whining and crying and nothing seemed to help. "Well, that's our cue to leave," we said. We both figured he was tired or hot or something like that. Figured that as soon as we got him in the car, he'd calm down and take a nap.

Not so. He kept crying most of the 30-minute drive home, frequently elevating his crying to screaming. I even gave him a bottle of milk, the sure-fire way to get A2 to be happy. He wouldn't drink it. That's when we knew something was wrong. "He's probably sick." "Maybe it's an ear infection."

We got home. My husband immediately got A2 out of the car and sat down with him on the couch. He happened to look down at A2's shoes and thought, "I wonder if his shoes are too tight." He pulled off the shoes and socks to find two cramped and scraped-up feet. Almost instantly, A2 stopped crying and was perfectly happy from then on.

Oops. Perhaps I should have noticed something when I had to jam his feet into his shoes. Poor kid couldn't take his feet being squished like that anymore.

Nine

I can't believe my little girl is nine. She's growing up too fast. Pretty soon, I'll have a preteen. But for now, she's still content to play dress-up, Barbies, and fairies, read about Ramona Quimby and Harry Potter, and giggle to her heart's content. And, she wants to be a writer when she grows up. (Yeah!)

We started the celebration on Friday with a special dinner with her best friend and her friend's mom (who just happens to be my best friend--how handy!). Then, I brought both girls to our house for a sleepover, complete with a movie in S's bedroom and sticky buns for breakfast in the morning.

Happy birthday, S! We love you!

Who's afraid?

I'm a hotbed of phobias and fears. Illnesses. Semi-scary TV shows and movies. Accidents of any kind. Natural disasters. Roller coasters.

One of the things that I've had to work on as a parent is not letting my own phobias become my children's problems as well. During our trip to Disney World in May, I found myself sitting on a roller coaster with S, telling her that it was fun and not scary at all, when really, I wanted to throw up. I even had to fight the urge to scream during the Haunted Mansion ride with T, since he was very nervous and certainly didn't need to see his mother scared, too.

Our new city is apparently known for being windy, which does not thrill me at all. I hate wind, or actually, I hate windy nights. I worry about our new trees and bushes, my wreath flying off the front door, and debris flying through the air and breaking windows. A few weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night to a horrible windstorm. I couldn't go back to sleep, so I ended up working from 4 am to 6:30 am. Figured I might as well do something productive. :)

The other night, we had another pretty bad windstorm. Driving home in the car, leaves and twigs were flying all over the place and the kids started freaking out. The wind didn't let up as we were getting the kids in bed, and H became rather upset. He couldn't sleep and wanted to be with Mom and Dad.

We told him all sorts of comforting things. "It's just the wind—it can't hurt you." "I know it's loud, but just try and relax and fall asleep." As I was saying them, my own mind was filling with all kinds of awful scenarios, not the least of which was the wind somehow making our double-pane windows break, and glass flying everywhere.

Even though I suffer from a plethora of phobias, I'm grateful that I have children who need me to be strong and give them comfort (however weak I may feel at the time). As I say the things that I don't necessarily feel, it does end up calming me down a little. I haven't figured out how to make the phobias go away completely, but maybe someday...

Photo essay by T

T likes to take photos with the digital camera. Usually, I'll tell him he can take one picture, but somehow, I always end up with 25 pictures of his foot. Sometimes, though, they're really great. Behold, T's photo essay of his younger brother, A2.

A few thoughts

Here are some thoughts that have been in my head that don't go with anything else...

I've started working on Christmas lists. I'm presently trying to figure out how to convince my children that what they really, really want for Christmas is shirts, pants, and socks. I'm just not sure I can handle any more toys—plus the toys they want get more pricey as they get older. Thank goodness the babies will be perfectly happy with wrapping paper.

Sometimes I wish there was a way to have my family exist in the nude for a few days so I wouldn't have to do laundry. I love the feeling of being caught up, but then somehow, two days later, I've got another mountain of it to do.

A few recent comments from my hypochondriac daughter: "Mom, I'm worried about the swine flu. What if I get it? Kailee's sister said that if you get it, you could die. " (Kailee's sister is in 1st grade, so definitely a good source of info.) "Mom, what if I get alopecia and my hair falls out like that girl on the pageant show?" (We watched Toddlers and Tiaras on TLC for 10 minutes.) I almost told her that I know someone with alopecia, but then I decided against it. She's also been worried about radon for months now. And no, we don't have it in our house.

A2 has chipped a tooth. I have no idea how or when it happened. I know it will eventually fall out, but in the meantime, it looks a little weird. Do they fix something like that on toddlers?

I miss my old neighborhood. I miss having friends that I can call when I need help, or even just a cup of sugar on a Sunday morning.

And lastly, does anyone want to buy our old house? It's super cute and comes complete with aforementioned great neighborhood and friends.

My weekend

This past weekend was one of the most relaxing I've had in a long time.

It was the yearly 24 Hours of Moab bike race that my husband always attends. Usually that means I'm home alone with all of the kids, but two wonderful women changed that. First, my friend Gail offered to take S down to Moab with her family. Sure, why not? Then, my sister-in-law decided to go to the race and volunteered to take the boys with her. Seriously? Just me and the babies for the whole weekend? Yippee!

The babies helped me do errands—we got the car washed and vacuumed (neither baby enjoyed the loud sounds of the car wash), went to the grocery store, picked up a few hardware items for the house, went to the bank, and bought a bookcase for the family room. I cleaned the bathrooms, swept and mopped the tile on the main level, hung some artwork, and vacuumed the house.

My biggest accomplishment of the weekend was that I put this bookcase together all by myself. If you know me, you know that I am not a handy person. At all. The fact that I put it together by myself (after dragging the heavy box out of the van and getting it into the house) is a big accomplishment.
We also rested, played, and just generally relaxed. It was heaven.

No, A2 isn't that much taller than his sister. He's up on his knees—in a constant state of escape while in his highchair.

The only time when the quiet unnerved me was at night, when my overactive imagination tends to make me nervous.

It would be nice to say that after such a relaxing weekend, the children came home from their trip, happy and in a great mood. Well, S and H did, but the T-man came home cranky and in an awful mood. When he's tired, it's so hard to get him to listen to reason. And really, his moods have become increasingly cranky lately. I've decided it's like night terrors but he's awake. You can't get him to listen to you and he just keeps yelling and freaking out about really important things like not wanting to take his dirty shoes off. I'm trying to hug him more and if that doesn't help him snap out of it, I just walk away.

So, we're back to the grind around here, but I'm glad that everyone had a great weekend, these crazy kids included.

Sporting temp. tatoos from one of Dad's favorite bike gear online stores—Twin Six.

What's in a name?

I love nicknames. I love fun ones, ones that shorten your name, and ones that don't mean anything at all. Perhaps it's because I grew up with a father who was called "Rat" as a teenager. Or, perhaps, because my own nickname has always been Neelie.

We've given our kids fairly normal nicknames until now, just shortened versions of their real names. But for some reason right after the twins were born, my husband began calling A2 "Potato." At first I was horrified and told him to stop, but then one day, I started doing it, too. Potato Man. Potato Head. Mr. Potato. And if I'm referring to both of the babies—Little Potatoes.

Sometimes, you can go too far with nicknames, like the other day when I was getting the babies out of their cribs after naptime and I called A2 "Potato Peeling." Yeah, that's no good.

But quite possibly, the best nickname in the history of the universe...

Bedabuff. Shortened to Beda. Shortened to Bead.

When it was made known that my friend Elizabeth grew up with a nickname of Bedabuff (because she couldn't say her own name or her brother couldn't—something like that), that sealed the deal and our group of college friends have called her that ever since. When people would call our apartment looking for "Liz," I always had to stop and remember who they were talking about. Years later, I called her Elizabeth just for fun and she asked me to stop. It was "creepy," she said.

I know that at some point, we'll have to stop calling A2 Potato, because we don't want him introducing himself in kindergarten that way (although, it would be very amusing...). But for now, he is the Potato.

It's gone

For all of my life, I've prided myself on my memory. I even wrote a blog post about it.

All the stress of moving, plumbing woes, and redoing the basement after plumbing woes seem to have affected my brain. Hopefully, it will come back.

A week or so after we moved in, I got a notice in the mail that I hadn't paid a credit card bill. I don't think that has ever happened to me. Especially this one, since it's through our bank so I can just transfer funds straight from checking.

A week later, I began to panic about our Amex bill. I hadn't received the bill in the mail yet, and I was worried it wouldn't come before the due date. I know forwarding mail can sometimes delay things, so I finally just called Amex.

"Someone already paid the bill."
"Who?"
"I'm sorry; I can't tell you that."

Flabbergasted, I asked A if he had paid it. No. Then I happened to look at my check registry. Yeah, I had paid it, right before we moved.

The memory's not gone for good, is it? Is it?

A rant

Forgive me, dear readers, while I rant for a bit.

When we moved to our new house, we realized we would have to get window blinds. And knowing that we had several rather large windows (and that neither of us are particularly skilled when it comes to tasks that involve screwdrivers) we decided to suck it up and order custom ones and have them professionally installed. I looked around a bit and settled on The Blindman. They were cheaper than other companies and I liked their products.

A rep came out to the house before we moved in (so, 25th of August) and did his bid. It was much less than I thought it would be, so I was thrilled. And he said they would do the install in 10 to 12 business days. At the time I thought, "Crap, two weeks is a long time to be here without blinds, but hey, it's a big order."

Around 8 business days later, I called the company to check on our order. I was told we were scheduled for installation the following Thursday, which would be exactly 12 business days. Ok, fine. Didn't hear anything from the company as to when they were coming, so I called again the next Wednesday. I was informed that they were waiting on materials, so it would actually be a bit longer. I called again a few days later and was told the same thing. This scenario happened every few days for the next few weeks. The company never called me to let me know what was happening with my order. No progress reports. No, "we're so sorry this is taking so long." At one point, someone told me that blind orders actually take four to six weeks. Then why did their rep say 10 to 12 business days?!

One day last week, after being told the blinds wouldn't be installed until sometime this week, I finally asked to speak to a manager about getting a discount. That started another run-around. Tuesday, a mere two hours before the install (and when I was supposed to pay the balance on the bill), I got through to a manager—or actually the receptionist did and called me back with the manager's answer. I was informed they would give me $100 off. One hundred freakin' dollars off a $4,000 order. That's right.

I was actually quite proud of myself as I went off on the receptionist (and yes, I know it's not her fault, but I wasn't able to speak with anyone else!). I experienced such a lack of customer service throughout this entire process. I recognize that mistakes happen and sometimes delays are out of the company's control, but at some point, I think you need to fork out a discount in the name of good customer service. I even told the receptionist that I would never, ever recommend their company to anyone else, and that several of my friends had told me they had bad experiences (after I started the process, of course). She felt bad, but $100 off was all she could do.

The blinds are in and they look fine. But I'm planning to write a nasty letter to their corporate offices. Such a horrible way to do business! It doesn't matter if you have nice products if your customer service is crap.