That Crazy Chicken.

The first of what I am sure will be many many stories:

The Scene: Our car. Stuck at a traffic light waiting for a train to pass.
The Characters: A 2-yr-old and her mama.

Finn: Hey! Across the street!
Mama: What's across the street?
Finn: A chicken!
Mama: Why is he across the street?
Finn: Goin' fast!
Mama: He's going fast? Why?
Finn: Chicken f'eezy colden.
Mama: He's freezing cold? Well is he wearing a jacket?
Finn: Ummm, yeah.
Mama: He's wearing a jacket and he's still cold? Well, is it zipped up?
Finn: Umm. No.
Mama: Well he better zip up that jacket. What kind of coat is it?
Finn: Geen!
Mama: A green coat? Wow. Where is he going?
Finn: Boots!
Mama: He's wearing boots? What kind?
Finn: Geen!
Mama: Green boots and a green coat? Where is he going?
Finn: An'na hat! Geen hat!
Mama: Green boots and a green coat and a green hat? Wow. What is the chicken's favorite color?
Finn: Pink.
Mama: Well, where is the chicken going?
Finn: His car.
Mama: His car, huh? Then where?
Finn: Driving so so so fast.
Mama: He's driving so fast? To where?
Finn: Across the street.

This kid is the best.

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As promised.

On Friday I got as far as titling this entry. Today I've started on the actual writing, so we are heading in the right direction.

I've got two girlies sleeping simultaneously today (huzzah!), which does not happen very often. In fact, they have been doing this back-and-forth napping thing that has kept us pretty much housebound for the past few weeks. I'm hoping all that ends soon. Today was actually a great day, sleep-timing wise. It doesn't hurt that Violet slept for SIX STRAIGHT HOURS for the past two nights in a row! Last night she only woke up TWICE between 8:30 and 8:30! Which is ohmyGAH so amazing!

I've started running again. Back at the end of December I found out that my sister has been liek stepping up the fitness thing HARDCORE and it made me feel all lazy schlumpy so I registered for a 10k and downloaded a training program to my iPhone. Bam, done, now I'm a dedicated runner too, HAH. And then I promptly did no running whatsoever for about a month. Then one nice warm (almost up to freezing!) day I allowed Nate to shove me out the door and it was so freaking amazing. Cold air in my lungs, warm sun on my face, snow crunching under my feet. I'm back, baby. Running(ish). I'm actually doing the Couch2 10k program, which eases you into running over a period of a few months by alternating running intervals with walking. So for now I'm still at half running/half walking. BUT it feels awesome. Today I was really looking forward to my run but when I woke up at 7:30 the dude on the radio said that with the windchill factor it was -30°c and that's just way too cold, even for me.

Sooo, what else is new. Babycakes is working on another tooth! This makes five, and she seems to be taking this one like a champ, only one evening of fussiness and today she is happy as can be, so hopefully we're over the worst of that one. She's still crawling around like crazy, pulls herself up to stand ALL OVER THE PLACE. And she's even getting good at sitting herself back down, which is great. OH and she can clap! With a big old grin on her face! So stinkin' cute.

Fiona is starting to really get into pretending. Right now one of her favorites is to be the doctor. She gets a notepad and a pen, writes notes on a chart, takes dolly's "temp-chur"; the other day dolly was sick and had to have lunch to get better. Doctor's orders. She also is getting very into reading stories to me (and to "sisser"), which is awesomely cute. She knows some of the pages by heart, others she makes up a story about the picture on the page. Good times, right there.

Life is going on pretty much the same as before, except we are like a jillion miles away from everyone. We do a lot of "bideochapping", as Fiona calls it. Keeping in touch via webcam. It works, but we do miss everybody from back home. Facebook helps. I don't think I would have been able to make this move in a pre-facebook world. Oh, internet. I loves ya.

My window of opportunity (haha, Colleen) is closing quickly here, and I'd love to go grab another cup of coffee before the ruffians wake up, so I'll end with a little something I was musing over the other day. I can't seem to get it into the entry seamlessly, but I wanted to share my thoughts concerning the evolution (or degeneration?) of motherhood.

When my firstborn was a baby and she pooped in the tub, we FREAKED OUT. Picked her up, wiped her down with a wet wipe, emptied and scrubbed the tub, and then re-bathed her.

The other night when my second born pooped in the tub, I scooped the turds out with my hand, chucked them into the toilet, and then turned around and said "Okay guys, let's get hairwashing started."

Such is my life. Scoop out the turds and move on.

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Still Alive. More Later.

We are still alive. We live in Canada now.

I have big plans to actually write a blog entry, hopefully tomorrow?

But I'll have to see what my bosses say.

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Too busy for this.

So I actually don't have time to write up a blog post right now, due to the whole moving to Canada thing... but I'm sitting here watching Violet scoot all over the room, in that "not quite crawling but more than just rolling over" way she has, and realizing that I HAVE to take the time to do at least short posts to track that sort of thing. I just went back and read through a few old posts from when Fiona was that age, and guess what? If I had no written down record of it, I WOULD HAVE NO CLUE when she did things like crawl, or cut teeth (which Violet is also doing right now, actually), or walk, or talk... I really have to be better at keeping track.

So.

Violet is just shy of 6 months old. Fiona just turned two. They had doctor visits last week, they are both TEENSY TINY little girls, Violet is actually smaller than Fiona was at that age, if you can believe that.

Fiona is getting so big, picking out her own outfits (currently she's wearing "cowboots" and jammies with my fashion scarf around her neck, and of course don't forget the "pitty" eye makeup she's got on) and drawing pictures and asking for chicken "nuckets" every day for lunch and dancing and playing (she just yesterday started doing somersaults and the "fips" (splits)) and grabbing her baby sister in a big hug and saying CHEEEEEESE every time she sees a camera, and in general "showing her personality", (which as all the parents know, is code for TANTRUMS GALORE) and she's just so terribly, wonderfully, completely TWO.

Violet is somehow nearly six months old, which is just amazing to me. She is mobile, this one. Creeping all over the room, finding the one little scrap of paper and shoving it in her mouth. Speaking of her mouth, she's got one little tooth poking through her gums (you can't see it, but trust my boob- IT'S THERE. And it's SHARP.), and unfortunately we can't use those teething tablets we used with her big sister because they've been freaking recalled like 97 thousand other things recently. But she's been really happy anyways, she is such a happy baby the majority oof the time. She nearly slept through the night one. time. A nice 7-hour stretch. But that only happened once and now we are back to that waking up about every hour and a half to two hours. Which is fairly exhausting, but at least all she wants is a quick snack and then she's back out. During the day she is smiley, and likes exploring, and talks with her big sis, and has even been behaving better in the car.

The two of them together are just too much. Fiona still holds on to baby sister's carseat when we drive anywhere. Violet cheers up when Fiona sings to her. They even share a room now, which was kind of middle of the night, spur of the moment thing that really took. I was worried that Violet would wake Fiona up and vice versa, but it's been really good for both of them. At 8:00 every night we all go upstairs and change into jammies and brush teeth and read stories and say prayers, and then Violet nurses and both girls get tucked in; we turn on the lullabies and the nightlight and then they both happily fall asleep. When Violet wakes up to eat again a few hours later, Fiona wakes up only enough to feel reassured that we are here and that she can safely stay sleeping in her bed.

Usually by the end of the night I get tired of sitting up to nurse and Violet gets pulled into bed with me, which means that by about 7am there is another little somebody standing next to my bed saying "Hi!". Nate and I are suckers, which means that we normally end up pulling her into bed with us as well. The other day we suggested that she go back to her own bed, but she just cuddled down into the covers and said "No! Suggle!" and really. Are you going to refuse that?

It's going so fast. I can't NOT take time to write things down.

Picking out pumpkins on Fiona's 2nd birthday

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This has been a long time coming.

Both girls are currently napping, so I guess now is as good a time as any to sit and type out this entry that I've been hesitant to write.

We're moving. If you facebook stalk me (and let's face it- some of you do. I'm that amazing.) you've likely heard rumblings. I may have mentioned the arctic, or the tundra, or the great white north. New Englanders, don't get excited. I'm not coming home. I'm going further north.

To Canada.

And not the part that's nice and close to New England, either. Or the part near NY.

We will be moving to Edmonton, in the province of Alberta. Which is not quite the West coast, but it's over that way. It's about 7 hours north of the Canadian border with Montana. Which uhhhh. Yeah. It's far.

And we are moving quite soon. Nate starts his new job on November 29th, the Monday after Thanksgiving. We will be spending Thanksgiving up in MA with the Grimes side of the fam before we go, and so we will be leaving Virginia in just 3 and a half weeks from now. Which ZOMGHOLY CRAP. What did I just say. For real? THREE WEEKS?

(Like, seriously. I just pulled up the calendar and double checked. Yeah, it's three and a half weeks. This is getting insane.)

Sooooo basically, if any of my VA peeps want to chill before we leave. You've got until the 16th.

AHHHHHHHHH holy crap. We've also got Halloween coming up. Pretty excited about all the goings on related to that. And Fiona's birthday. Cause my baby's gonna be two years old? What?

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Things You May Actually Already Know

There have been several things I have wanted to blog about here, but let me be frank and say that I do not actually "have my shit together" as the kids say, and so I've not updated. I will save those things for another day. Today, I want to talk about dishwashers.

Most people have their own, specific way to load a dishwasher. Maybe you learned as a child, but maybe your family didn't have a dishwasher until you were out of high school and your mom thought it funny to say that she "didn't need a dishwasher! I have eight dishwashers right here!". Maybe you had a rudimentary knowledge of dishwashers but needed your wife to teach you that anything made of wood most definitely does NOT go into the dishwasher, and yes that includes wooden spoons. Maybe you are neurotic about alternating between glasses and plastic cups on the top rack. Maybe you're all about silverware eating-side up. Maybe down. Maybe you're a complete psychopath and just toss all the silverware all every-which-a-way. Which actually kind of makes me a little queasy just thinking about it.

There are a few rules I think most of us can agree upon:
1. Don't put sharp knives in there, it'll ruin the blades.
2. Always put anything plastic on the top rack.
3. Don't put anything wooden in it. (And yes, honey, my wooden cutting boards are made of wood.)
4. Rinse off enough food so that you don't end up with a rotten mushroom on bottom of the dishwasher for the past 5 days, just sitting there waiting to dissolve into mush and go down the drain because I sure as hell am not reaching in there and picking up that nastiness.
5. Uhhh. Don't have a 5th. I just really really couldn't leave it at four.

Sometimes we ignore these rules. You accidentally put a sharp knife in there and it's still nice and sharp afterward. You throw a plastic bowl on the bottom rack cause the top rack is full and you really don't feel like washing anything by hand. It cleans just fine.

Beware, however. If you get too complacent, you may just start throwing things in willy-nilly: plastic, glass, non-stick, whatever. And then one day you may empty the refrigerator of leftovers from the past 2 months. And find yourself with a crap-ton of tupperware and makeshift tupperware. And decide that you're just going to throw everything in cause WHAT THE HELL YOU LIVE BY NO MAN'S RULES.

It's possible, should you find yourself in this situation, that you will detect a slightly burnt smell a short while later. "Damn." you will think. "Burned the damn dinner again." Upon closer inspection, you realize you haven't actually started cooking dinner, and are pretty sure you didn't chop the vegetables so fast that they may have spontaneously combusted.

But is it? Could it be the dishwasher? Did I put something wooden in there?!?!?!

No. Just plastic. Melty, melty, molten plastic. Cause I put it on the bottom rack and it fell down through the thing and sat down on the bottom of the dishwasher.

Reminded me of those sporks I used to melt in middle school.

Did you know that black ring around the bottom of the dishwasher is actually a heat coil? Preliminary polls show that 2 out of 2 adults in the LaMartina household did not.

Well, it totally is. Also, don't touch it. Or the melty plastic. Both will instantly burn the shit out of your finger with their hot hot heat, and then blister up like a mo-fo.

Ok. Maybe I'm exaggerating the extent of my injury. But it does sting.

Lessons we have learned today:
1. The lids to those black plastic Chinese take-out containers are just not worth saving.
2. Don't touch molten things.
3. If you try to squeeze too many glasses into the top rack, one of them will explode. (I actually learned this one a different day, I just couldn't find a way to work it in until now.)

On the up side, I've got a cleaned out fridge AND clean dishes. Boo-yah, grandpa.

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From the land of Sweden.

We have returned. We visited Sweden. Or, IKEA. It's basically the same thing, right? Cheap furniture and way cool setups of rooms that you never really quite can accomplish at home because at home you actually, you know, live there.

But. Our journey actually started on Tuesday, when I took the girls out to IKEA by myself because, you know. That's smart thinking. I knew we weren't going to buy anything, I knew it was a PURELY BROWSING TRIP, NATHAN but we had a day with no plans I kinda felt like having meatballs and lingonberry sauce for lunch, so hey. Fiona spent like... an hour? climbing around on all the different toddler/kid beds, playing in all the little room setups... it was fun. We had a good time.

But today we took the Jeep cause it was a day to buy. Took quite a bit of deliberation, cuase Nate and I kept changing our minds about which bed we wanted to go with (Nate kept trying to foist the decision off onto Fiona, who was all "Whatevs, y'all. I'll just be over in this little room tearing all the things out of this dresser. Peace.") but we finally decided on one, then waited in line for a BILLION YEARS to get lunch (Free kids meal! Score! I never even buy her one because she never eats it! But that meant more meatballs PLUS a side of veggies for me!) (Obviously really excited about that.) (The veggies were actually really really good. Steamed to perfection. Just beautiful. And free!) then navigated the downstairs portion of the store ("Oooh, Nate, remember how I said I needed a lamp for my desk in the office? Oh, and one of our black cereal bowls broke so we need to pick up another one of those. And we need picture frames for those prints I just got made up... and wouldn't it be nice to have cushions on those chairs out on the deck? And we can't forget..." I don't know what else. Even I lost track at that point.) and made it out of the store. And for under $200, at that. I was pleased beyond compare.

So after dinner tonight we set up the bed. This is actually our third day of naps/nighttime outside of the crib, I just dismantled the crib and dropped the mattress down to the floor because that whole "BAM- waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah" kind of made me nervous that the next time it happened she'd like land on her spine and be paralyzed for life and never be an Olympic gymnast or something. Contemplated getting one of those crib tents, but then decided against it because... well, no real reason actually. Other than those toddler beds at IKEA being so damn cute. Did a quick toddler-proofing of the room, took care of all the glaringly obvious safety hazards. I assume that Fiona will quickly point out to me all unsafe/unsecured items I may have missed, presumably by climbing/throwing/dumping them.

But now the bed's all set up, and I'm not gonna lie. It's been taking her considerably longer to fall asleep now that she's tasted the sweet sweet freedom that is knocking politely on the door and saying "Daddy? Daddy? Daddy?.... Mama?.... Hello! Hello! Helloooooooo?!?!"

She once she finally does fall asleep, she's been pretty good (knock on wood) about staying that way. The first night was pretty rough, and we are by no mean out of the woods yet, but it's a start. I just want her to be comfortable sleeping in her big girl bed before we move, whenever that ends up being. (Oh yeah, we're moving. Like, a BIG move. More on that once I get ANY DAMN INFORMATION WHATSOEVER.)

Poor kid. She's knocking on the door again. Crying this time. Breaking my heart. I have to keep reminding myself that she is a flipping DRAMZ KWEEN and will only cry if she thinks I am listening, and if I leave her she will quietly go back across the room and climb into bed and read a George book like the good little child she really is. And yes. I left my netbook in there and I am watching her from here in the office on google videochat.

And then there's poor little overlooked Violet. Who whimpered a bit at bedtime, but I nursed her and rocked her and set her down in the cradle in our room and now she's completely zonked out, for the next few hours at least.

I feel kinda bad. The majority of these entries continue to be about Fiona. I'll do a Violet one soon. She rolled over last week! Back to tummy! That's not too shabby for a 3-month-old, I'd say! And there is some kinda something happening beneath that girl's gums, because she CHOMPS like there is no tomorrow. Updates on these exciting developments coming soon.

I jest be chillin'. Relaxin'.

Fiona has as much a chance at understanding IKEA directions as we do. Yay for pictures!

Helping/hindering Daddy during bed construction.

All set for bed.
We ended up not buying the mattress that was actually the correct size for the bed, we decided to just use her crib mattress, which is the same width but a bit shorter in length... but then we got it all set up and realized that these little green boxes that we already had in the room fit PERFECTLY at the foot of the bed. So, I'm pretty much in love with the way that worked out.

"Monkey!!!!"

One last story with Daddy and BabyBye and Popper

Make no mistake. This child is a good two hours away from falling asleep. You can see it in her eyes.

Aaaaaaaaand we've reached the fake crying portion of the night. We're getting to the falling asleep part soon, folks. I hope...

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