Tinkerbell underpants and other thoughts

My eldest daughter started the day by conning her father into letting her play with the package of tinkerbell underwear that was being saved for when she is a big girl and potty trained (aka incentive underwear). She started the morning by putting on all her panties--one on each foot and one on her head. Hilarious! She and her father then proceeded downstairs to a hearty breakfast of stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, turkey and ham. The man is a mystery to me. I had pie, which is the right and proper thing to do the day after Thanksgiving.

I wanted to mention that you may notice that I do several posts a day, but then no posts for a few days. This is because I let my hubby hijack my laptop downstairs for his warcrack game. I didn't realize that I was giving up my computer; I thought I'd just share it a little. And not to point fingers or place blame, but now that he's using it, it seems to have developed a little bug that causes the desktop to change spontaneously. So anyway, to write a post or whatever, I have to be upstairs with my laptop.

In other news, both babies are now sleeping through the night! This is a good thing unless you ask my boobs, which are still a little miffed about the idea and wake me up several times a night. Hopefully they will get over it soon. Also, Laney is getting jazzed for Christmas. We had a discussion about Santa coming with presents and how we will leave cookies out. and she said:

"we will leave tookies for Santa and coffee"

I told her that Santa always seemed to have a soft spot for his coffee when I was a kid, so probably Santa still likes it. Are you listening Santa?

I braved the crowds briefly today to shop the Carter outlet sale. Three kids never seem like a lot until you have to buy clothes for them. I still need to buy clothes for myself. I hate buying clothes for me. In a fit of post pregnancy organization, I donated most of my clothes figuring it would give me incentive to actually purchase something. In addition, most of the stuff I kept is now too big. I've been shlumping around in jeans that are falling off me, which is driving me crazy. I really need to do something about it sooner rather than later. Stupid spandex and the popularity of low rise jeans are ruining my life. I need to squat down all day long, as well as bend over, sit on the floor and everything else moms do. It would be nice to do so without my butt crack showing.

Happy Thanksgiving

We had a good Thanksgiving and have been lazing around all day eating pie. Ricky and Erica even showed up early (a family first--normally they don't arrive until after everyone is eating). No one fought, though I did get a little snappy with Mike. What can I say? I'm still mad at him for eating a big piece of Charles birthday cake and leaving to go to the bar before we had a chance to light a candle or anything. It was a strange holiday--Ricky and Erica were there early and Don and Olive were the last to arrive. Charles was serving very stiff drinks pre-dinner and I was a little worried that family tension would bubble over, but amazingly everything worked out fine. Don had two drinks and stayed quiet most of the night and Olive had two drinks and was happy. The move has been quite tense for them to say the least.
The best part of Thanksgiving for me was watching all of the kids play together. They played and played and played. Nothing says family to me like herds of cousins running around the house. While it might normally be assumed, I will say it: I am so grateful for my children. I'm grateful for my family especially my in-laws who have made me feel like a part of the family since day one, I'm grateful for my husband who does so much in so many ways and for my friends. Happy Thanksgiving!

Baking Pie and takin' names

I have a confession. I am a slight control freak sometimes. Holidays can be one of those times. We're having the big turkey day at my house because a) I asked what the plan was and got volunteered and b) I like to do a lot of the cooking because I like to have certain things. I'm a big believer in making the pies from scratch. I don't believe in stuffing that includes meat. I think vegetables should be served including salad. So I basically make things way harder than they should be if I just let it go and asked everyone to bring more stuff.
I'm working on pie 3 right now, but took a break. We're expecting somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 people for dinner tomorrow, but that depends. Certain members of the family can be a little flaky. I won't name any names.

Wonders of Walmart/Evils of casserole

Not a very exciting day today. Went to Walmart for Thanksgiving groceries and will still have to go to the grocery store again. Walmart has some dirt cheap prices on some things, but they don't have a lot of selection. For example, they don't carry riesling wine for some reason. And their produce is always out of something. On the other hand, they had sweet potatoes for 43 cents a pound.

I have new pictures of the kids I've been taking, but I haven't downloaded them yet. I've been trying to get the "are you trying to kill me?" grimace that Kenna makes with the first bite of cereal. Hilarious. I wish that my camera used the smaller flash cards. There is a super cool gadget for cameras that uses wi-fi to automatically upload photos off your camera and onto the web or wherever you want them to go but it only works with the little cards, not the bigger compact flash my camera uses. Such a bummer. I love the automagic of wifi. In fact, I got all techie and fixed my printer so that I could use it on the wireless network in our house. I tell ya, I'm practically a genius or something. Ha.
I made a casserole tonight to test drive it prior to springing it on a mom in my group who just had a baby (congrats to Talia and little baby Anthony!). It was ok (anything that involves a brick of cream cheese and a carton of sour cream can't completely suck, let's be honest). I have to say, the appeal of the casserole eludes me. They are not easy or quick to make. You dirty up a billion pans to assemble the ingredients and then still have to cook it in the oven to have everything come together. I can saute a chicken breast, make a pan sauce and a side of rice and veggies in 25 minutes start to finish and use only three dishes. When you make casserole, in the end you have...a casserole. And I ask myself: all that work and this is what I got? On the upside, the humble casserole has a comfort food quality about it that can be nice and it is portable hence the need to make one to take to someone else. Casserole is the food of potlucks, new babies, etc.
So anyone out there with a kick ass casserole dish that is not a lasagna, chicken fettucine or enchiladas please let me know (I'm trying to take pity on these poor people. I think they are going to be getting fettucine or enchiladas every other day for two weeks). Meanwhile, back to the drawing board.

A conversation

A conversation related to me by Charles.

[Charles farts]
Laney: Daddy fart! I'll check.
[Laney reaches over, pulls his pants away from his butt and has a good peak inside]
Laney: Daddy poo poo!
Charles: No, I'm not!

A week in brief

I've been slacking on my posting this week. I wrote a post earlier but decided it was negative and bitter so it didn't get posted. It was a long week, what can I say.
Charles was gone until late Thursday night and it was a tough week. Saturday I worked on painting again and am almost finished. We've been waiting to paint until Laney goes down for a nap since toddlers and paint mix too well. I'm really liking the color. Friday night I went out for a mom's night out and we had a great time. I really like my Tuesday mom's group. They are all really nice people without being so saccharine sweet that it makes my face ache. Super sweet people make me wonder if a) they are really that nice or just pretending and b) if they aren't pretending if I'm just a total piece of crap because I'm not that nice all the time.
Anyhow, we had sushi and a lot of fun. Wednesday I went out for dinner with my sorority and took the kids. It was somewhat funny because my friend Kathy came out to help haul the kids in and the waitress asked if we wanted to add another table for when the other moms got there. Ha ha.

Regarding the tough week issue, suffice it to say that most of the time I put on a brave face and sort of "fake it til I make it" but sometimes having three children under age 2 is really hard and I just can't pretend otherwise.

Pee pee where it shouldn't be

I should change the name of my blog to something related to bodily fluids and their distribution. I know that many of my posts relate to pee or poo, but hey that is my life. Deal with it. You at least only have to read about it, I have to clean it up.
This morning Kenna's diaper leaked on my side of the bed. I got Laney up and found her in a pool of her own (stupid princess pull ups). During nap time, Laney decided that her pull up was too wet and needed to be removed. I don't know if she removed it before or after wetting her bed a second time, but I found her dancing naked after a too short nap. She soaked her pull up again right before bath time and sat on me all soggy.
It was just one of those days. Laney spent too much time watching videos, but I was tired. Griffin was grouchy today. He didn't really take an afternoon nap like he normally does and just cried on and off. By dinner everyone was unhappy and they all three sat around me and cried. It was just awesome, let me tell you. They all finally settled down, but when I went upstairs to give Laney a bath Griffin started howling again. That boy gets seriously mad. He turns red and just yells. It's a good thing that he's really cute. Everyone went to bed pretty easy though so I decided to clean my oven after the massive chicken leakage problem Friday night (can't remember if I mentioned this but I roasted a chicken in a pan with a hole in it and didn't figure out what the problem was until 3/4 of the way done. Very smokey). I haven't cleaned my oven before, but it started billowing smoke from all the grease burned in the bottom. So I called my mother. I'm still airing things out. It was eye watering to say the least. Now I'm going to go to bed in my pee peed bed.