Polly Pocket Redux

Okay, so we all know how much i hate Polly Pocket, yes? The other day I was horrified to find out that this Christmas season they've come out with a new P.P. product that trumps them all! Get this: Pop 'N Swap Polly Pocket. Now you don't have to struggle putting on all those tiny little clothes and shoes and crap. Instead, you just PULL THE BODY IN TWO and swap them. Seriously mix and match torso/leg sets. That is so disturbing, I don't even know what to say.

What I do know is that my kids will NOT be getting that from Santa this year.

This is what happens when you don't strap your toddler into their booster chair...

So, that's Doodie up on the table, cleaning up the ketchup

from the girls' lunches with his fingers...

And here's him cramming it into his face...

And here's the aftermath!

Dude slept all night!!

Really!

Now, maybe you'd think that because he's 16 months old that this should be old hat by now, but you'd be wrong. Doodie is a terrible sleeper. He goes down fine, I don't have to fight with him to sleep, but he wakes up 3 - 5 times a night looking for his binkie and his blankets. So, 3 - 5 times a night I have to roll out of bed, stumble down the hallway, plug him back in and cover him back up. If he wakes up near the time that Mike is getting up for the day, I'll just have the baby come and sleep with me, but he's non-transferrable. I can not for the life of me get him off of me and on to the bed next to me without waking him up. No way, no how. And I can't lay him down next to me awake and have him go to sleep there. The girls were so easy like that, but I guess I just got lucky with the boy. ;)

And somehow Mike thinks I get more sleep than he does just because he gets up an hour earlier than me. Yeah, RIGHT!!

Doodie's New Kicks!

We got Alasdair his first "official" pair of shoes, at least ones with an actual sole, not soft leather ones. I'm big into foot health for the little ones, so I really like quality shoes for them. Pedipeds are my favs for the pre-walkers and newly walking. These were his first pair:











Love them!!

But with the weather here in Washington being so yucky during the Fall and Winter, he needed something to walk in outside that wouldn't just soak up the water on the ground. So, I got a new favorite brand for toddlers, See Kai Run. These are the new kicks we just got yesterday:













So cute! They retail for around $40, but I got them off of Amazon.com for just under $18 new, plus I had about 4 bucks left on a gift account, so I ended up paying about $16 for these bad boys. :)

Screaming Mimis

I don't know what was up with my kids yesterday, but Maeve was actually pretty good and the other two were out of control. Michaela threw a bitch of a tantrum because daddy finished cooking dinner in the middle of the Simpsons. Seriously? She shouldn't even be watching that crap anyway. And it was an all out tantrum, complete with tears and infantile screaming. Luckily at just that moment I had an urgent errand to run that required me to leave the house for an hour. :)

Then that night I put Doodie to bed at like 7:30, and at 8:10 (just after the start of an all new House), he starts screaming. Mike and I couldn't do anything to calm him and I didn't know what the problem was. His cheeks were pink, but he wasn't feverish. He didn't want a bottle, which I had previously denied him because we're trying to get rid of it. So I thought maybe he peed and it had just burned him on his nasty diaper rash (see motherhoodispoop.blogspot.com for that story), but nope. I changed him and it didn't seem to help. So I did what any desperate parent would do. I unnecessarily medicated him. :) I gave him some Motrin thinking that whatever was the issue maybe could be cured with a little ibupro. Then I thought maybe it was his teeth. He's getting 5 or 6 teeth all at one time. So i dug up the baby orajel and smeared that all over him. He calmed down long enough to suck down a bottle of half and half and pediasure (gross) and we were able to put him back down to bed easily. At this point it's now 8:45 and i've seen approximately none of the all new House. Lame. But that's the way it always goes when you're a mom. :)

ps - i just turned on Nick Jr for Maeve because Dora will be on momentarily, but the end of SpongeBob SquarePants is on. She says, "ButtaBodge?" Yes honey, ButtaBodge.

The Beast

So, Maeve is a total fireball. We haven't a clue what sets her off, or how to calm her down. She's a storm waiting to happen. When she was born, we nicknamed her "the Beast" after her Auntie Greta, who apparently was quite the screamer also (so we hear). When Maeve was born she cried and cried and cried. All the time. For no apparent reason. This was a total shock to my system considering Michaela was happy all the time. You could prop her in the corner of a room and she'd be happy all day long! After 2 months or so of constant crying and screaming from Maeve, I got close to the end of my wits. I put her down on a blanket on the floor and left the room to collect myself and BAM!

Silence.

wtf??

You mean, for 2 solid months, all we had to do was leave her alone?? I seriously couldn't believe it. That's when we learned that Maeve doesn't like to be touched unless it's on her terms. She would much rather be left alone to observe and play. She'll come to you if she wants any affection. So things were much better for us for a while. See, Michaela likes to be very hands on, and she just could NOT leave the baby alone. So from about 10 months until about 20 months old, Maeve would just screech and scream every time Michaela tried to touch her. And no matter how many times we asked Michaela to just leave her alone, she couldn't. Finally, Maeve learned how to scream NO, and subsequently learned to hit, which we let her do. The only thing that would teach Michaela to leave Maeve alone was to get a smack once in a while. It worked! :) Now, I'm not the type to just let my kids beat on each other, but Maeve deserved the chance to defend herself against the hands of her sister.

Today, Maeve is more well adjusted overall, but she has acquired this new personality quirk. She gets upset about something and will just start screaming NO, and maybe some phrase to explain her issue (yesterday it was "I stand up"?) And she'll scream for an hour, maybe more. If we try to put her in her room to calm down there literally is no end. I think she just zones out and forgets that she's supposed to be calming down and that she doesn't need to be upset anymore. If we're lucky, we can go and lie down with her or sit with her and somehow snap her out of it. Usually talking to her just makes her scream louder, but once in a while we're able to get her out of her trance and back to the real world.

How can someone this cute be so full of angst at 2 years old already?? 13 is gonna be fun in the Guthrie house. :)

The More You Know...

So, the other night I stopped at the grocery store to get Michaela a treat after swimming. She had her best class ever! She was actually listening, paying attention, and attempting to try what they wanted her to do! Anyway, I needed a treat, too. Watching all that swimming can really take it out of you! ;)

So I got some ice cream and went to go grab some Magic Shell (I was having a nostalgic moment from childhood). Right next to the regular Magic Shell was a limited edition flavor in a bright red bottle!! Cherry! I picked some up thinking that it might be good. Lemme tell you something. It's not. Don't try it. Don't buy it. Just don't! DON'T!

It's like waxy, congealed, cherry flavored cough syrup poured over your gourmet vanilla bean ice cream. Yuck. Just stick with Chocolate. Or Peanut Butter. That kind is good too. :)

My new favorite blog

I happened upon this blog from the Bloggers Choice Awards, and it is freakin' hilarious! I'm crying here at work today while i read some of her older posts. I highly recommend it!

http://mom2my6pack.blogspot.com/