Back on the Horse

I ran.  It was good.  It didn't start out as a run; just a nice long walk.  But then I turned a corner and thought, "I'll just run to the end of this block."  And then I just kept running.  For a little over a mile.  Yay!

Yesterday I tried to keep up with Jillian again.  I will tell you this.  I am BARELY coordinated enough for kickboxing.  There were multiple times she would start a new move and I just stood there with a complete "Whaaa?" face.  But I did my best to mimic and just kept kicking and boxing and sweating, so I figure I did alright.

This morning I ran.  Like for real ran.  I set out not to walk, but to run.  And I did for 2.1 miles.  There was one short block of walking in there because fuck hills.  I mean seriously, who builds a 4 block long hill?  

Let The Games Begin!

Since I can't find my workout dvd's in the disaster of an unpacked basement I have, and I am near tears every time I think about stepping on the scale or wearing anything non-stretchy, I brought a new version of this bitch into my home.

Bring it on Jillian.

Oh What A Difference A Month Makes!

It's been a month.  A month of diapers and bottles and burp cloths and smiles and tired eyes and poop.  I think Sam is huge, but people keep commenting on how tiny he is.  These two pictures make me feel a little justified in my "He's huge" stance:

Coming home from the hospital vs. one month old:

The cheeks alone are something to behold.  He may still technically fit in newborn size outfits, but I'm thinkin' it might be time to graduate to a bigger size.

Pet Love

Well, it happened.  Uno died.  And my plan to have Alex deal with the death of a pet before he has to deal with Aiden dying was an emotionally draining success.

We were in Alex's room to quickly grab a pair of shorts so he could go outside when I looked up and saw Uno laying on the bottom of his tank.  I quietly told Alex that Uno was dead and he immediately asked what I meant.  So I explained it again at which point he said we should fish him out and take him to the fish doctor because they were really good at fixing "died fish."  I said that no, they couldn't fix him.  I explained that once a pet was dead, there was nothing we could do to fix them; that it was just time to say good-bye.  He seemed to understand but said that we should still fish Uno out to see what happened.  And when I asked what he meant, he informed me that he thought Uno had eaten some of the fake grass in his tank and it got stuck in his tummy and that's why he died.  I guess he thought if he could figure out why it happened it would make more sense to him?  Whatever, we had to fish him out of the tank anyway.

So, I grabbed a bowl and got the fish out of the tank.  Looking at Uno in the empty bowl is when Alex truly realized Uno was dead.  I'm thinkin' the whole completely still fish in a container with zero water really drove the point home.  He got a little sad and said he wanted to show Dad.  So we did.  And at the top of the stairs, he looked into the container again and got really really sad.  As we sat there, him crying about the dead fish, me crying about him being so sad, he tearfully said, "It had only been a few days!!"  Ummm...what had only been a few days?  "It's only been a few days since I fed him and now he's dead...it's all my fault!!!"  Oh boy.  I explained that this was not his fault.  That he and I both took care of Uno and that Uno was a very happy and well cared for fish, but that he just got old and when pets get really old, they die.  And with that, Alex looked up at me with red eyes and tear stained cheeks and said, "Mom?...Is Aiden old?"  Ho-ly shit.

So yeah, I wanted him to process this whole pet death thing and prepare him for the fact that Aiden will someday die, but damn, I wasn't expecting that mental processing time to be immediate.  I told him that yes, Aiden was getting old and he just buried his face in my shoulder and cried.  It was terrible.

After a while, Travis asked how Alex wanted to say good-bye to Uno...did he want to bury him or flush him?  Alex decided a watery grave was most suitable, so he and I headed into the bathroom.  And since I live with two gross boys, we opened the toilet lid to find the bowl already occupied with toilet paper and pee.  Alex and I agreed that was not the way Uno should go out, so we flushed the toilet to have clean water for Uno.  I asked Alex if he wanted me to put Uno in and flush him, and he said that he wanted me to put Uno in, but that he wanted to flush him.  Closure I guess?  So, I plopped Uno in the tank and after a brief pause, Alex pushed the handle down to send Uno to his final destination.

But...I didn't think about the fact that we had just flushed the toilet and we didn't wait for the tank to refill.  So it wouldn't flush again.  So, now I sat there with my sad son just standing over the toilet, watching his dead fish, who was now floating vertically, slowly pirouetting around the toilet bowl with the gentle current of the water refilling the bowl.  It was awful.  Finally the tank was filled and I let Alex know he could flush it.  He said good-bye to Uno and flushed him.  And then he collapsed in my lap crying.  The final blow to my heart was when he started crying that it wasn't fair that Uno had to die.

We sat on the bathroom floor in a pile of hugs and tears for a while, but then gathered ourselves up to spend the rest of the evening with Travis and Sam.  If this is how he reacts to the death of a fish he forgets about for days at a time, I am in no way prepared for the passing of Aiden.  Shit, I'm not prepared to deal with my emotions on that dreadful day.  How the hell am I going to deal with myself and support Alex?

While we were grieving on the bathroom floor, between sobs Alex asked me if we could get a new fish.  In that moment, I would have promised that kid the whole ocean, so...

Please meet Bingo Zingo Fast:

Observant

Yesterday marked my 145378th trip to Target since Sam was born.  And since we are 9 short days away from Alex's 5th birthday, Sam and I took a quick trip through the toy section.  I remembered there was an Imaginext fire station/police station/city thing that Alex has been eyeing for quite sometime.  I hadn't talked to Travis about what we were getting Alex for his birthday, but the fire station/police station/city thing was on sale and so was the K9 police motorcycle figure that would work as a nice accessory.  So I bought them both and figured I would just return them if Travis had some other grand plan.

When I got home, I unloaded the car and was putting things away when Sam rudely interrupted me by waking up and wanting to eat.  The nerve of some babies.  I had most of the stuff put away, but the giant fire station/police station/city thing and accompanying police motorcycle were on the kitchen table.  I didn't think much of it since neither Sam nor the dog were going to spill the beans about the present, and Alex wasn't home.

Fast forward to me getting Alex from daycare and coming back in the house from getting the mail to find him standing at the kitchen table, staring at his birthday present with a grin that just kept growing.  One of my friends was visiting, so I quickly told Alex to run downstairs and get the Lego car she had sent to him to show her that he put it together.  While he did that, I sprinted the present up to my room to hide it.

After showing off his mad Lego skills, he immediately came back into the kitchen, paused a second, and then asked me where the toy went that had been sitting on the table.  I admitted it was supposed to be for his birthday and he just grinned and said, "buuuut, I already saw it Mom."

We had a short discussion about whether or not he could possibly wait until his birthday to open the boxes and I conceded that he could have the small accessory piece right then and that we would talk about the big part when Travis got home.  I successfully distracted him from remembering it when Travis got home, but first thing this morning, he reminded me that we hadn't opened it.  I again successfully got him to focus on something else.

This is gonna be a long 9 days.

Summer pest

What's more fun than a mosquito bite in the middle of you shoulder blade that you can't reach?  Everything.  Everything is more fun than that.  Well, everything except maybe cholera.  That might be worse.

Extreme Lesson Teaching

We had some severe weather around these parts this week.  Wednesday morning was no exception.  On the way to daycare, the national weather service issued a sever thunderstorm warning over the radio, and by the time I was headed out to my car after dropping Alex off, they had upgraded it to a tornado warning and Sam, Aiden, and I were instructed to get back inside the building and sit tight in a tornado shelter room.  For Sam, this meant he stayed in his car seat and hung out in the bathroom nearest to the infant room with all the infants and toddlers that were there for the day.  Alex was in one of the other bathrooms with all of the kids from his room.  The dog initially was going to have to ride out the storm in the car.  She had on no collar and I had no leash.  Not to mention, the daycare center doesn't moonlight as a doggy daycare, so it's kinda a furry pet free zone.  But, lucky for the mutt, the director and teachers are pet lovers, so they had me bring her in and stuck us in the kitchen because it was the only room with a door and no windows that was not currently filled with small children.

During our little camp out, the electricity went out as well.  And it was not back on by the time the tornado warning expired.  So there the teachers sat with all these kids and no power.  I figured since I was just going back home, I should probably take Alex with me so they had one less kid to worry about in the dark.  He was excited to come home with us, so off we went.

We were having a great day.  Alex was in a great mood, Sam was doing all normal baby things, the dog was happy 3 out of 4 of her humans were accounted for, and I wasn't fighting to stay awake at every turn.  After a while, Alex wanted to watch a video and since he was being so good and going outside was not option, I happily complied.  The fact that the video gave me a quick 20 minutes to focus on a crossword puzzle was a nice benefit as well.  After the video, I was feeding Sam and Alex was coloring on the newspaper page that my puzzle was on.  And then out of nowhere, he crumpled the whole page into a ball, looked up at me and said, "I ruined your game Mom."  I was surprised to say the least, but I was also very upset about the look he gave me and the tone he had that was proving he did that only to see if he would piss me off.

So, I sent him to sit in a time out on the steps.  Why the steps?  Because if I send him to his room, he not only strips himself naked, but he also pulls all of the sheets and blankets off of his bed for some reason.  So then I have to get him redressed and remake his bed.  Too much work for me...to the steps with you little man.

Anywho, he was all mad and sassy about being in a time out, and was clearly not getting the fact that it was not alright for him to ruin my puzzle page.  He was making that very clear by telling me that it didn't matter to him that he was in a time out.  So, I acted on the first thought that popped into my head.  I grabbed the suction cup arrows from the plastic bow and arrow set he won at the carnival with Travis the previous Sunday, looked him square in the eyes, and I snapped the arrows in half.

The amount of "why would you that?" and "those were important to me!!" and "I loved that toy!" was fairly quickly squashed when I explained that I did it so he could understand that it sucks when someone ruins your things just because they can.  Not a leading by example moment, but I'm pretty sure I made my point.  I hope anyway.

After everything had calmed down, Alex told me a couple different ways he had thought of to fix my puzzle.  And had he immediately followed that with ways to fix his arrows, I would have been skeptical.  But he didn't.  The arrows were not brought up again.  He just seemed to genuinely want to fix my puzzle.  So either is he getting really good at tricking me, or he did actually understand.

And yes, I am currently Googling where to buy plastic bow and suction cup arrow sets...