NaBloPoMo - November 2012

Last year, I tried to blog every day for a month.  I think it was October or November.  I had a really hard time because Ainsley got sick at the end of the month, but it started off well.  So I'm trying it again - a blog every day in the month of November.

Click here for more info:  NaBloPoMo

I have no idea what I'm going to write about (but Melissa, who organizes this whole thing, provides prompts to help out) but I'm going to try.  Of course, suggestions are welcome.

Click the link above to join in!!

Frankenstorm Snacks

Our preschool does snacks on a rotation.  Each kid brings a snack for a week, and you end up only having to bring a snack a few times a year.  I am not picky (at all) about what my kid eats so this is fantastic for me!  Bring on the crackers and pretzels and juice!  As long as my kid isn't whiny and starving when I pick her up, I am good.

When I found out that our snack week was Halloween week I figured that I would make something Halloweeny.  (I know that sounds like weenie, but I spelled it with a Y so you would realize that I wasn't bringing a dick shaped snack to preschool.) 

I'm having so much fun making these Halloween treats!  I wanted to make these little witches filled with popcorn, but I couldn't find green plastic wrap anywhere and I didn't want to order online and pay shipping.  I AM a lady of leisure, after all. 

So I decided on Goldfish pumpkins instead.  Just draw a little jack-o-lantern face on plastic wrap, fill with crackers, and seal with green tape to make the stem.  Super easy, super cheap, and they require basically no skill at all.  Which is great because I?  Do not have skill.

I'm also going to make Chocolate Milk Mummies tomorrow.  I am sure I will post a picture, because all I do is post pictures and also, I have no other way to measure my self worth than to make my preschool snack cute for Halloween. 

Unless this whole Frankenstorm thing screws me over.  Then I will be huddled in the dark eating 10 Goldfish Pumpkins and drinking 10 Chocolate Milk Mummies and wrestling Olivia over trick-or-treat candy.

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One Year Ago: Stroke of Luck?
Two Years Ago:  The Dramz
Three Years Ago: The Day I Struck My Mother Blind With My Lady Business
Four Years Ago: The Crib Is Put Together, We Are Still Alive
Five Years Ago:  My Ovaries and Uterus Are Badass

More pictures! Woot!

I feel like I am just posting pictures way too much lately.  But we are so lucky to know people who take great photos and also?  Am attention whore.

Luckily, we got our family photos the weekend before all of the leaves fell off of the trees.  The bad part was that it was 34 degrees (according to my car) and Olivia was having none of that nonsense.  I don't think you'd ever guess that we were all freezing our lady parts off (or, you know, man parts, but since there are so many ladies in the house I figure that is most relevant).

I get to live with these guys!
Photo Credit: Janet Miller Photography

All of the credit goes to my friend Janet, who is super fun with kids.  While I was getting tense and mean with Olivia, she was singing cute songs and asking funny questions and just generally being a nicer person than me.  She and Olivia became fast friends.

Me wrangling my kids.
Pretty much what I look like all the time except usually
I am in yoga pants and my hair is greasy enough to fry eggs.
Photo Credit: Janet Miller Photography

There are so many more good ones, but I haven't decided which ones to use for Christmas cards.  And you know Christmas will be just RUINED if someone sees our card picture before card time. 

But anyway.  I can't be the only one thinking Christmas cards already, right?  I'm already scoping out all the sites and trying to pick designs and it isn't even Halloween.  It is madness but I can't stop it.

Most importantly, though - today is Mark's birthday!  Happy birthday, husband.   He is celebrating by doing yard work all day after we spent all night listening to Adelle cry for no apparent reason at all except I'm A Baby And Am Required To Occasionally Be An Asshole YAY WAH ENJOY STAYING UP ALL NIGHT SUCKERS!  Yippee!!  The fun never ends at our house.

Swing State Love

Nobody cares about Ohio until there is a presidential election.  Then everyone is all, "Hey, Ohio, your electoral votes are super sexy and your collective ass looks in those pants!"    

But we love Ohio all the time.  Because Ohio is badass.  Yay for Ohio!

Cute kids AND electoral votes
like whoa.

Emails to myself.

I email myself.  A lot.  (Not alot.  Alot isn't a word.  Did you know that?  If you didn't, this cartoon on The Oatmeal might help you.)  Random reminders, things to add to my many lists (I'm a whore of listing), blog topics.  Whatever.

I always think of blog topics when I have zero time to blog, so I whip out the iPhone and email myself.  The problem is that I only email myself a phrase, and then by the time I get around to actually writing about whatever it was?  I have no idea whatever it was.  None.  Take for example these two emails:

I have really no idea what either of these things mean but I can god damn guarantee that I found them to be mind blowingly hilarious at the time.  Like, PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT STRANGLING WIRE AND VASECTOMY SCREAMING!  Or something.  It is so urgent I don't even have time to create a subject line.  Wouldn't want to lose any of the brilliance in the body of the email by taking the time to create a subject line.

I'm not sure why I find it so terribly difficult to keep up with my life lately.  If I'm being honest, I've been busier.  But here I am, feeding Adelle a bottle with one hand and emailing myself with another and then forgetting to brush my teeth.  I just bought a notebook with tabs to try to keep track of my blog ideas and various other projects.  So maybe I will stop emailing myself random ridiculousness.

(I say "various other projects" like it is important.  Let me be clear: it is not important.  At all.  It is Pinterest, mostly.  And brushing my teeth.) 

(But hey if you want to hire me so that I have something important to keep track of in my notebook then by all means, email me.)

(Until then, I will write things down, like, "why does my right armpit sweat profusely and my left hardly at all?" and "sometimes I think my big toe resembles a penis.")

(I bet everyone thinks that Mark's penis looks like a toe now.  LOL FOREVER.)

(It doesn't though.)

(It is really hard to stop with the parentheses once I start.)

(The end.)

(There.)

One Two Three Four

Get your bootie on the floor.

Coolio?  Anyone?  Gotta gotta get up to get down?

It's been four months since I was sliced open and this tiny little human that I call Adelle was taken out of me.  Did you know that when you have a c-section, they take your uterus out of your body?  Like, they take it out and they scrape all the shit out, and then they put it back in like nothing ever happened.  Think about THAT while you make your jack-o-lantern this Halloween.  You.are.welcome.

(Also?  When I had my c-section this time?  The resident had a big plastic welder-type mask over her face when she introduced herself to me.  You know, "Hello!  Nice to meet you!  I am sure you are a lovely person but I prefer to keep your innards off of my face.  Lets get to cuttin!")

(OHplusalso Mark said at one point he noticed that she had her knee on the table and was "all up in there."  In there being, my innards.  So gross.)

BUT ANYWAY!  HERE IS A CUTE BABY!

She just loves smiling.
Smiling is her favorite.

For the record, these stickers are stupid.  I don't like them and I'd not do them again.  They don't show up on some (most) clothes.  They are stiff and show cracks easily.  Unless she is laying down you can't see them very well.  Boo, hiss, etc.  But now I started and I can't stop so I'll just do them all year and be irritated about it.  Yay!

Adelle is growing up fast, like all babies do.  She is four months old and over the colic and just generally a pleasant little enjoyable hunk of smiley baby fat. 

At four months, she weighs just shy of 14 pounds.  I find this to be totally chubbalicious since Olivia weighed about 16.5 pounds age one year.  She still gets up once a night to suck down a bottle, because she is a sucky eater like all of my babies have been.  



Look at those thighs!
(Adelle's.  Not mine.)
Photo Credit: Photography by Val

She rolls all over the place, but practically burns the neighborhood down with her rage when she rolls onto her belly.  Never mind the fact that she is perfectly capable of rolling herself over. 

Adelle LOVES her sister.  Which is adorable and also, maybe a little surprising because apparently at age 3, Olivia doesn't understand that she does not need to put her face against Adelle's face for Adelle to be able to see or hear her.  

Adelle also loves her toes and I must agree.  I kiss on her toes even though they are full of toe jam and always just the slightest bit stinky. 

Sleep is...I don't know.  I want to say it is a challenge but I can't decide if that is overly dramatic.  She is still up one or two times a night which is fine since I am a lady of leisure.  But I do spend a great amount of my day trying to get her to nap.  Some days are easier than others and that's pretty typical so I won't complain or call her an asshole over it or anything.

The dimples (thigh and cheek) are out of control.  OUT OF CONTROL.  She will probably go to her first day of school and have to go to the principal's office because she thought it was totally acceptable to NOM on someone's face out of pure adoration. 

Makes me hungry.

My most serious complaint about Adelle is that her tolerance for flowers, bows, and head wear in general has gone to the shitter.  I am no longer able to put ridiculous things on her head and photograph her for future blackmail.   Other than that, she is a pretty fantastic addition to the Knepper crew and I think that we will keep her.

Photo Credit: Photography by Val

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One Year Ago:  When You Say Stroke
Two Years Ago:  Hospital Planning FAIL
Three Years Ago: Eight Months: And by Eight I Mean Ate
Four Years Ago: My Life as a Simpson Character
Five Years Ago:  I'm Not That Kind Of Girl

I made a Rapunzel braid for Olivia.

Mark won't stop wearing it. He really is such a pretty pretty princess.

The coolest thing happened on the way to the ER!

I had another success in my never ending quest to be the most pathetic and dramatic person in the whole entire world.  I've been trying to lose weight and workout and woe.  It has been one epic fail after another.  Knife pained knees, shin splints, sprained ankle, and the latest and most fantastically pitiful ailment?  Migraines.  Soul crushing migraines, 2 minutes into any workout or into anything really...like, walking up steps.  Or, blowing raspberries on Adelle's belly. 

It has been a gradual descent into misery.  At first it was just a little headache when running which was no big deal.  Then I had a pounding migraine after doing the 30 Day Shred almost two weeks ago and I never really got rid of that headache.  And now any time I do anything that requires effort my head starts to pound and I become worthless.  Or more worthless than usual.

And since I'm not losing weight hardly at all I paid for 8 personal training sessions last week.  Then I went to the first one Friday at 10 - and left crying like a fool at 10:08 with the worst head pain I've ever felt.  And of course my doctor is out on maternity leave until November and in Jennepper luck they can't fit me in for a bullshit reason that's too long and boring to type and so I went to urgent care after two hours of alternating ridiculous behavior: writhing and crying and clawing at my head in bed and writhing and crying and clawing at my head in front of the toilet because holy impending barf, Batman.

Three and half hour wait at urgent care, and they directed me to the emergency room so that I could get a head CT and some drugs.  

BUT!  On my way to the ER I got a test from my bestie with this picture:

MAH BLAH IN STAH MAHG!
ZOMGGGGG!

There's no way to explain how this happened without sounding like sort of..well, a name dropping douche canoe.  But the beauty director at Star used to be the beauty director at Redbook when I wrote for the Infertility Diaries and so really I have her to thank (profusely).  I'm feeling all Wayne's World, I'm Not Worthy. 

So anyway.  I waited another 2 hours in the ER to get pain meds that didn't work at all and a head CT that was perfectly normal.  This was Friday and I still have the migraine, but it isn't as hurty and also?  My blog was in Star Magazine!  Squee!!!

A close-up, because bragging is my favorite.

That's probably the closest I'll ever be to the Kardashians which is a shame because now that I have time to watch TV I watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians marathons so often that I am actually starting to become fond of Scott Disick.

(That's a lie.  I'm not starting.  I am full blown fond of Scott Disick.)

(It's admissions like these that make me feel as though I should be a working mom.)

(Mark is likely reading this and nodding profusely.)

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Also, my blog appears to be five years old this month!  Happy birthday, blog with a title and URL that don't match!

1 year ago: When You Say Stroke, Do You Mean the "Of Luck" kind?
2 years ago:  Let Me Clear A Few Things Up
3 years ago: Working vs. Staying at Home
4 years ago: 19 Weeks: I don't need you!
FIVE MOTHERFUCKING YEARS AGO: Trying to Conceive: A month-by-month guide.