Why I can't make mom friends

Pathetic, but true.

The Mompetition.

Here's the first video for a little sneak peak:

Drug tests and pizza crusts

I can't catch a break this week.

Yesterday I started feeling a little sick, and this afternoon it turned into a full out fever/chills/sore throat deal. My immune system is incredibly compromised at the moment, what with the screaming baby all night long and the previous illness still ravaging my intestines (I don't know how people who are chronically-ill/have chronically-ill children handle it). Way to hit me while I'm down, virus. I know it sucks you don't have DNA, but do you really have to attack mine (is that even how it works? I don't know, I'm only in chapter 3 of my microbiology course).

I had to take a drug test today for work. Are these not the most demeaning things ever? I feel horrible for all the drug tests I had to administer at the women's shelter. But actually, some of them WERE on drugs, and I bet it didn't even phase them. Not only did I have to do a drug test though and felt all awkward, I brought my child with me (HEAVEN FORBID you ever take your child with you anywhere). My first clue as to my mistake came when I read the sign: "Please do not bring children to this office." Oops. Oh, and apparently you can't take your baby into the bathroom with you during said drug test, because you might squeeze the pee out of their diaper or something? I guess if I was really awesome and did EC then I could make him pee on demand, but I doubt this very rude, over-exercised man knows ANYTHING about EC. They told me to put him on the floor, give him something to play with, and MAKE IT QUICK. Said all in very rude tones. Of course that made me all nervous and then as soon as I shut the door I was afraid he was going to cry and all these male employees would just sit there staring at him all sad and I almost couldn't pee even though I had been drinking tons of water for my throat. Fortunately, he played happily with my wallet for the moment it took me to pee, because sometimes he is awesome like that.

But also I had to go to Target and buy baby Advil because you know, our baby is practically drinking the stuff like milk as his normal body temperature has been hovering around 102 for what seems like weeks. And he spilled a whole brand-new bottle of it this morning all over our rug. And he absolutely refuses to sit still in the shopping cart. Why are ALL the other babies sitting contently as their mothers leisurely peruse the aisles?

I decided to make pizza for dinner because it was sounding delicious. I looked up a recipe for a pizza crust, then realized I had no yeast so I found a yeastless pizza crust. Apparently it's supposed to be thin crust. Mine turned out more like... muffins? It's pretty disgusting. Tim thinks it's good though, so I'll let him finish this one off himself. I'll have some tomato soup, ye ole favorite of sick me.

Lame anniversary

Hopefully, this will always be remembered as the lamest of the lame anniversaries. No gift, no fancy restaurant, no time alone even. What's nice to know though, is that even at this moment, which I have to admit is a close to as a low point as we've had in 2 years (although there were some worse ones in Egypt probably) we are still having a great time together.

I want to make this anniversary like a new years. I have resolutions, I have new habits to establish. I want to be a better person. Any ideas?

Cait, I love you. Now I go to bed.

2 years

Once upon a time...

this day happened.









The marriage stats: Two years later, we've lived in two different countries, one state and one district, and five different apartments. And because I can, we've had sex in six states, one district, and four countries. Between the two of us, we've held ten different jobs. We've had one baby and twelve arguments.

Here's to two more years of married... life.




I almost wrote bliss, then realized bliss was more of a word to be used on a first anniversary basis.

I give up

Do you ever want to just walk away from life? Just walk out your front door and come back in, oh, 5 months, 2 weeks, and 6 days? Ok. Maybe it's just me.

This evening I'm especially feeling that.

The past few weeks have brought with them a nasty cold for Theodore, stomach viruses for the three of us, a constant fever, molars breaking through, and now herpes simplex for the guy. Have you ever seen a baby with herpes? It's got to be one of the worst and saddest things ever. He has been constantly crying, won't sleep longer than 10 minutes, and nurses when he's not crying or sleeping (which is scary, because I risk getting "very painful" lesions). We started an antiviral tonight (thank you, Medicaid lady on the phone, for handling our case for us. you were my godsend today when I feared we had no insurance to take our sick child to the pediatrician). Now, we're in survival mode until this thing passes. Meaning, no fancy anniversary dinner around these parts. We had tuna fish sandwiches on old hamburger buns. Yum.

I'm exhausted.

I need a break.

Forgive me

I have to take a minute to rant about church comments today.

1. Directed to a friend and her baby: "I just want to thank you for dressing your son like a missionary. I think it's so important to raise up children so they know the gospel." or something to that effect. Reasons this bothers me: a) it was said right after I exasperatedly left the room to go nurse Theodore, who happened to be wearing a dirty t-shirt and some unmatching knit pants. Usually, he's actually clean for church, but this morning I worked at the women's shelter and so Tim had to get himself and the guy to church and so he ended up wearing the same thing I threw on him when he woke up. Not to mention, I was wearing pants. You see, when I went to work we were expecting to be driving to Ogden when I got off to see Tim's father who was rushed to the ER this morning. And since I didn't get off until the middle of church, I didn't want to miss more than I had to by going all the way home to change. So, I just wore what I already had on. And let's not talk about how sick we've all been this week, what with the vomiting and the fevers and the teething and the utter exhaustion. So forget you lady. Especially if you were aiming that comment at me and my poorly-dressed child. Hopefully he'll still make it on that mission everyone will be shoving down his throat his entire life.

2. In a church talk on mothering: "You see, I've been doing a lot of research on homosexuality lately and if they should adopt children. I just don't think kids need/want two mothers or two fathers and it's detrimental to society. Here's some statistics about homosexuals raising children that I got from some Christian action website: 63% of delinquents come from fatherless homes, 91% of people in jail come from fatherless homes, 45% of abusers come from fatherless homes...." Uhhhh. I don't think those statistics have ANYTHING to do with homosexuality and adopting children. Brother So-and-so, your logic is terribly unsound. And discriminatory.

Soon

Soon our bank account will not look so pathetic.

Soon I will no longer be a stay-at-home mommy.

Soon Theodore will need to start sleeping on his own at night.

Soon we are going to need childcare (that has yet to be arranged, but we have next week to do so).

Soon we will have health insurance.

Soon I will work full-time with my fellow working mom Jessica.

Job hunt=officially over for now.

Our one-year-old kid

Well, Atticus turned one. His birthday has come and gone. In fact, he's one year, one week, and two days old now. How's that for an old age?

He has a few favorite things these days, which include (but are not limited to):

- playing the piano (he played the first four notes of Fur Elise the other day, no joke)
- his baseball card collection



- Lay's BBQ potato chips



- corn on the cob (like his daddy)





- his outdoor tub
- runs with dad in the jogger (how we missed thee, jogger stroller!)
- watching Baby Einstein
- playing with Eliza
- little white puppy dogs




- his abacus
- birthday cake



- ice cream





- Aunt Allison




I thought we'd end this one on a positive note. He's a great little guy we get to have. So entertaining, so spontaneous, so inquisitive.



He's come a long way since those itty-bitty baby days.

More travel blogging

Near the end of our interminable trips through the Middle East, I stopped providing a day-by-day blog. One, because we did not get great internet. That's not entirely true because our last hotel had great internet and I could have blogged then. Two, and mostly, I was sick of travel blogging. It's not very satisfying, waiting for pictures to upload and trying to remember what you did when everything is running together. So, here's a few highlights, and maybe one day I'll go back and do a day-by-day.

On Day 12, at the (fake) baptismal site, we encountered this hilarious rendition:



Here's the Amir sitting in the cart while we cross the Jordanian border (don't show this to the authorities, it's an illegal picture):



A family photo somewhere in Jordan - I vaguely remember this large barren land has something to do with Abraham:



There was also a dungeon in a Crusader castle, where we condemned Tim and Amir to fifty years isolation:



And Amir climbed some stairs:






And alas, I've discovered the real reason I failed to blog that last week: we hardly have any pictures of it! I think we must've gotten sick of lugging our DSLR around, and with the point-and-shoot broken, there is only video of some of the bigger sites like Petra. Oh well.

Farewell, travelogue.

No creepos please

This post contains the Atticus naked and no further explanation. (this is a regular occurrence, not a photo shoot)