Because I immortalized Perry Trotman here, I should share that the girl also has one of the best named critters ever. She has a soft little white bear named Flop. Flop is very special. Poor Flop had a booboo today that required six ice packs, a dozen cotton balls, and a hello kitty bandaid. He seems to be on the mend now.

So today at music class, one gal says to her friend "on monday, everyone I talked to was pregnant. like a week pregnant. are you?" and the friend, is not. And she says "seriously, xx told me she was due in late october, and she's just five weeks, and she already announced it on her *facebook*." And I realize, this is how life goes. I haven't yet made any facebook announcements, but it's not far off. Although I wouldn't want the worst to happen and some vague aquaintance who works at the flower shop to be asking questions. So till now, we're just here.

Ultrasound monday morning. I.can't.wait. I don't know how much to expect to sleep this weekend.

The other day, the girl and I were laying down in her bed and I took my coat off. The zipper whipped around and wacked her near her eye. So she got a nice little bruise, which today is a smallish black eye. The best part, she keeps saying "momma wacked me" when people ask what happened. Awesome!

FYI: I am a mall hater. But, my mom bought the boy some wonderful legos for christmas, and as a bonus got a little box to fill at the lego store. So, as it is vacation week, we decided to head to the mall and lego store, fill the little box, have lunch, make an adventure of it.

It was as good and bad as I expected.

The lego store is great! You can fit TONS into that little box, and the girl wanted a little box too, so we bought a marginally larger one for $8 and she filled it with pink and lime green random parts. All cool. Got to see all the legos and it was nice. But I mentioned it's vacation week right? So there were 2309203 kids there.

Then, being 11:45, we were getting peckish. There is a rainforest cafe in this mall, and hey! we're on an adventure! We put our name in and they tell us it'll be 40 minute to sit. Not okay. So we decide to blow some time, checking out the rain and all the junk they want you to buy. Then we decide we're too hungry and head to the food court. We are all cranky. Pizza is helping, and then the girl says "momma! Look at my pink rocks!!" See, they have a big bin of polished rocks at the cafe, that you fill a bag with, and pay like $7 for. So she stole two which, while only about $.34 worth, isn't great. Meh.

Then we go to the play area, to assemble the boy's new lego helicopter, which I"d promised him we'd start on, and the girl is just the right size for the play area. Worked for about 2/3 of the time we needed to build the helicopter. I barely made it to au bon pain for some sweets and water to bribe the kids into the car, and the ride home we all whined and ate cookies. I think we all drank a gallon of water as well.

Now we're having some quality time with various screens and seats. I've earned my good mom award right? Oh, except that I just reserved the zoo pass for tomorrow. When it's supposed to be 36 and rainy. I think that will earn me the Most Excellent Mom Award.

Today we stopped at Friendly's to redeem our valentine free cones. Excellent. Oh and I also realized that kid cones, which are just a single scoop but still *plenty* for kids and adults, are only $1 even when paying. This is the best/worst news I've heard in ages, particularly because Friendly's is just about walking distance. However, I got to only eat about a tablespoon of mine and it got snatched by a certain blondie. Oh well. I probably didn't need it, right?

So I'm a bit obsessed with food lately. In order to save money (ha!), I've been trying to cook at home. And cook things that are yummy and that we all want to eat. Tomorrow, for Valentine's Day, I'll be making steaks and french onion soup and salad and my parents are coming, with some sort of dessert and it doesn't really matter since I'm not making it. I even bought the crazy expensive cheese to go with it. And I know the kids won't eat it, but I'm growing a whole other person and I can eat a couple of bowls of that stuff. But that's why I invited the folks, because even though I can eat, not quite that much.

The other day I made a turkey breast and I've been happily eating turkey sandwiches all week. Same sandwich, different day. I have no issues with leftovers after thanksgiving whatsoever.

However, coffee is on its way out. I'm trying to decide if the joy of smelling it and beginning to drink it is enough to suffer the nausea caused by actually drinking it. I think it might be. Maybe I should go back to caffeinated. At least then I'd get true joy from the two ounces I can stomach.

I just took both kids to the dentist. Prices have gone up by like 200%, but we were getting a super sweet deal before. Anyway, kids are great, which I was worried about, because tooth brushing is pretty low on the girl's list, like below toenail clipping and hair brushing. Ugh.

But I did learn two things. Girly has two teeth that are slightly discolored - the second ones "out" on top, both of them, and I thought it was related to her brushaphobia. But they think it's just that she had a fever while those were forming, since it's so symmetrical and all. Cool to know how the body prioritizes. And since they're baby teeth, no one really cares. Also, we had no idea that the boy's big top two are loose. He's going to look so different without those guys, and especially when the huge ones grow in!

It's funny how your emotions can run the full gamut in a matter of seconds. So last spring/summer/fall, we were exploring our options for kindergarten and applied for a slot at the charter school. I wasn't 100% convinced it was the right fit, but I applied anyway. We were waitlisted at somewhere in the 22 range. Now the boy is happily halfway through his public school kindergarten experience, and that's all good, and we may move anyway, so who knows, we're just enjoying life. And I get a letter return-addressed from the charter school. What do I do? I don't want to switch him midway, but then we'll lose our slot! But if that many people dropped out since September, do I want this? My stomach was in turmoil.

Then I opened the letter. It just informed me that we've moved up to #14, and that they will keep us apprised on how that translates to next fall. Phew. I don't have any decision making to do. Good thing, because I'm bad at that.

Last night on our way into the city I wanted to stop at Kelly's roast beef. But we didn't, and we ended up having a lovely dinner in the city with cloth napkins and everything, which was fine. But I still needed roast beef. So today I went and bought tons of cold cuts and ate myself into roast beef heaven. Although I'm considering another sandwich for a late dinner/snack.

When I was pregnant with the boy, I was all about the beef. Roast beef in paricular. Rare and with salt and pepper on my sandwich. Or salted chicken salad. The salt. And the beef. Now of course, I'm reading all sorts of things into this craving.

Could just be that roast beef is delicious though.

Tonight, we're going to a reception to celebrate the opening of the Shepard Fairey exhibit at the ica boston. Very excited, for many reasons, not the least of which is the babysitting/wine factor. Here's what he's famous for, recently:


Bonus points if you remember him for this:


So then I'm reading up on his work, and the whole nature of "derivative" vs. "plaigarism", and it got me to thinking about what the art is - is it the image, or is it the sticker placed 2093023 times on mailboxes and stop signs all over New England? And that caused a discussion with my husband about this and you know what the best part was? Thinking like a grownup and discussing something that had nothing to do with children *or* work.

If you'd like to read up on the plaigarism issue, here is the first article I read, and here's a good essay with comparative images.

Want to hear a cool story? I go to to a playgroup on monday mornings, there are about 10 families, it's pretty small. At a church. Today I show up and there are two new faces. One looks remarkably like a high school classmate, but I grew up like 40 miles away. But no! It's her! And she's not one of the ones I'd rather *not* ever see again! She has a daughter my daughter's age! And lives nearby! Hurrah!

I wish I had something to tell you that's exciting. Like more exciting than an afternoon at Chuck E Cheese, which ended with one red goopy eye and a sick day today. Then my itunes settings were off, so I couldn't sync the episodes of Scooby Doo I bought for the ipod entertainment during tot music class. It's all set now.

Oh and the raging virus my computer had/has, which I can't fully get rid of and don't want to rebuild my computer and lose some of my "timeshared" software.

Old navy is having a great sale right now. I got the girly a cute thermal top in orange (she needs more non-pink in her wardrobe, stat), and two little baby holiday onepieces, all for $6. I just hope that #3 is not a giant monster child, and will run true to size.

The eagles are back! I just saw one land in a tree in my backyard.

The girl is now tattooed again on her arms and legs. And today she got her face too!!

Last night we went out to dinner, where our server, Dorothy, put her name on a napkin. This week The Wizard of Oz is on heavy rotation here. So the girl knew exactly. And then I realized that what would complete the napkin would be to add the word Surrender before her name, with our provided crayons. She thought this was hysterical and hadn't seen that before (which was a surprise to me). She went to hang it up out back. And then told us that she "always makes it home just fine". I hope my husband tipped her well.

So a few weeks back, the husband made a snowman en route to the bus stop, his name was Snowbert. Snowbert died in a warm spell.

Recently, a new snowman was constructed, who they decided looks bunny-like, and therefore his name is Hoppy. But at one point we toyed with him being a robot named Ro-bert. Robot plus snowbert. So there's a song, that is "my name is Ro-bert, my friend was snowbert! He got tipped over(t)." and although this song is silly and ridiculous, it gets stuck in my head for days.

Oh it is so cold. Times like now, I half wish we hadn't done public school for the boy. You know, the bus was a big bonus to this plan, but waiting for the bus, especially tomorrow, isn't so fun. Especially when I have to suit up and drag out the babygirl.

Also, I'm doing the decaf transition. I really should do it in earnest, but what happens is, I do it over the course of a month, to where I have half decaf half regular in the morning, just one cup, and then when the hormones come a-crashing, I ramp back up again. It makes for a fun start to the cycle. But it's not that practical and becomes a lot of work over the next few weeks, again. So today, I have my half decaf cup in front of me with half and half in it. The least I can do is substitute a little fat for my caffeine.

I got close to no sleep last night. Let's just say it has to do with a piece of property and the internal strife of knowing it doesn't exactly work out for us right now. If it did, soon, that would be great, but you see we own a house in a bad market. That and hormones and I had the strangest dreams ever. I wish I had the option of taking a nap right now, I really do. Until then, the xl coffee will have to cut it.

Today we got an invitation to the inauguration! I would love to go. But 5 million people, outdoors, in January, in somewhere only slightly more temperate than here, isn't such a great idea. Maybe if we visit in June, we'll actually get to see the tall man. So we wrote him a letter about that, and drew a picture of an ice breaker/truck/sidewalk plow which the boy thinks will be very useful on the sidewalks of DC. Oh I love him.

Also, this morning, the girl said to me, "let's make cookies!" and you know, I was up for that. The pictures are really great. She is helpful when she knows she'll get to eat much dough. She called it cereal. I mean, yes, it's oatmeal based, but it differs rather substantially when done.

So, Deleria is writing every day. Go see her. Because I recognize that I can't write every day. My life isn't that interesting. Like today. Today is my first day without childcare on a Tuesday. So we're going to clean the guest room. Maybe go to Target as an activity. It's really great, my life. No, really, it really is.

Anyway, back to Deleria. The other thing she's giving me is a yen for latte. So I just googled how best to do this with my stovetop espresso maker (which, thanks google, isn't even espresso, it's moka) and I'm having the best latte my kitchen has ever seen.

So woohoo!

So I've decided to try the special K diet. Two meals, two snacks a day of special k products or fruit. Which isn't really that hard, I really like cereal. I went and bought varieties last night. I can do almost anything for two weeks, right?

Also, the stubborn girl is now 95% potty trained. It took a few weeks before I knew her schedule, but well over a month more before she told me that she needed to go. Now we don't even do overnight pullups anymore. The only accidents lately have been true accidents, not telling me in time. Thank heaven. I will have the better part of a year, at least, without diapers. Phew.

Oh it's been so long.

So I think that pms is particularly bad if you're trying. I really feel for those people who aren't doing it for the first time. Or maybe it's worse because I am making up for 4 years of not cycling. Who knows. So I haven't exactly been myself lately. My poor husband. Also, he's making it worse by telling his entire family that we're trying. I don't really want themn to ask every time I see them. Sigh.

Christmas, however, was wonderful. I think everyone should experience it with a 3 and six year old. Much purple feathers, much lego building, much candy, and it's all good.