Mostly-Mommy

Oh, dear friends, do I have something to tell you about… but it hasn’t happened yet. So instead I’m going to tell you about a trip we took to Illinois a few weeks ago for my Uncle’s birthday and spent some time visiting Grandpa Randy and Grandma Liane.

It was a very laid back trip filled with walks down country roads, picking (and eating) things from the garden, and unseasonably chilly August winds.

My dad calls them “Children of the Corn.”

We took a ride on a train at the Monticello Railroad Museum. Totally made Nick’s year.

And then there was this. Can you imagine a kid so lucky? One of the joys of a small town.

We usually visit in the fall so it was nice to see all the flowers blooming and tall, TALL fields of corn. When Mike and I went running we felt like we were on a treadmill.

I’m very tired now and the dose of Valerian I took a bit ago is wearing heavily upon my ability to type or think clearly. I had a fantastic video to put at the end here but I can’t seem to work my computer right now so I’ll get to it later, promise. Goodnight!

Last week we took a trip up to Omaha with my mom and left the Babydaddy home to install quarter round in our bedroom. Win!

We spent some time playing around downtown (and I had the sunburn to show for it, meh) went to the Durham Museum, then checked into our hotel for some swimming. It is truly amazing the beating I took from my children while in that pool. Later we went to the Upstream Brewery for dinner which is pretty friendly to the little ones I must say. Or maybe it was the “brewery” part that was plenty friendly to me!

The next morning we ate the hell out of our complementary breakfast and headed out to the Henry Doorly Zoo. While driving down the highway my mom said, “Why does Zoey keep saying there’s a boy on the roof?” I found out moments later when my mom looked back at me with terror in her eyes — “Okay, don’t freak out,” she says to me. GUESS WHAT I DID. Just take a wild guess what happened when I whipped my head around to look at my headrest and the gigantic, flying, STINGING monster perched atop it. Thankfully my mom knows not to let an explosively terrified person such as myself stare THAT in the face for too long and pulled over on the shoulder. Turns out “Boy on the roof” = “Hideous insect on your headrest.” Who knew? They should give you some sort of translation manual with your kid. Hey, at least she tried to warn me.

Anyhoo, after that the day HAD to get better right? And it did! The Omaha zoo is AMAZING. It deserves every one of those capitol letters, people. AMAZING.

The Desert Dome

Inside the Desert Dome were these creatures, I don’t remember what they were called but they reminded me of fat lapdogs. They were high up on the cliffs:

So I’m looking up there and I am SURE those things are stuffed. Completely motionless, staring at some random fixed point, looking completely apathetic. A Zookeeper came by and I asked her if they were alive. She assured me they were then repeatedly clapped her hands and yelled at them. NOTHING. I’m still not sure I believe her.

The Desert Dome was amazing up top but when you got down below, deep in the depths of the Night Kingdom… wow. There is an entire swamp down there with alligators and everything. Just wow. And don’t get me started on the aquarium with the tube you walk through. I might have to go live there. I would stay in the Cat Complex, because seriously could there be a more perfect name?

Hila Monsters are just so darn huggable!

Nick and my mom rode the train but Zoey and I hung back, mostly from the terrified screeching “NOOOOO! I scary! I scary!” She rode the carousel instead.

The next picture is probably my favorite. We were watching the Peacocks tending to their adorable little Peacock babies darting in and out of the Prairie Dog holes when I noticed a little something else going on over on the other side of the hill.

Yes, dear friends, that is a vulture eviscerating and nomming a dead rat. This zoo is very educational!

I can’t leave you with that so here is a cute picture of the four of us enjoying an old-timey chocolate malt at the museum. Awww! Aren’t we cute!

(BTW, new pics up at Karrmedia!)

I really have to stop doing this. I just can’t bring myself to spend much time blogging lately because there is so much to do outside of the computer. Swimming! Parties! A two-year-old who won’t stop yelling at me! My days are full.

Anyway here’s some pictures of stuff. That I did. Uh, recently.

I turned 31. My mom threw me a party and my little bro Karsen cooked up some VERY tasty grub. It was great! My mom decorated and blew up balloons and made me wear a “Birthday Princess” hat that Zoey was soooooooo jealous of. I find it amazing that I have lived 31 years and only now have discovered that I have the ability to do this:

I knew I should have gone to Clown College. If only they didn’t scare the holy hell out of me.

Zoey looks… smug. This look makes me very worried.

Dude is CRAZY.

Okay, this is my cousin’s boyfriend. I took this picture and when I looked at it I offered to take another one because… uh, it wasn’t like we fed him some acid and set something on fire or anything. She assured me that “This is the face he makes in every picture. That is just his face.” I love it!

Aaaaaaand this is my husband’s face. But this one is special, just for the hat.

Some sort of Australian cake-thing my mom made. Very creative, that one!

Later in the week we saw Chris Isaak at Harrah’s Voodoo Lounge. WOW that was a great show! I had no idea he would be so funny! He did a lot of joking with the audience and even went out in the crowd. I think that is what this is a picture of but honestly we couldn’t get a good picture of him, it was like trying to photograph the sun with a phone.

I think the devilishly handsome man in the Red Suit with Golden Flames up the arms and legs may have been a figment of my imagination. Or possibly a figure skater.

Then Sunday we saw Neko Case at the Uptown. She was wonderful and charming, the music was interesting, beautiful and polished. Unfortunately we couldn’t stay for the whole show because it was putting us to sleep. After Chris Isaak this show was SO MELLOW that it was kind of ruined for us. Damn you Chris Isaak and your glorious hips!

It really didn’t help that we had to sit through the whole opening act, Jason Lytle. Ugh. Their music was boring and after EVERY song they had a “self-indulgent segue” of some classical piano music the dude recorded of himself playing at his mom’s house. The piano music was fine. The constant flipping back and forth of musical genres completely ruined the pacing of the show and annoyed me. We would have enjoyed Neko’s show a LOT more if we would’ve gotten there really late and missed the whole first act!

That is all for now. Nothing else terribly noteworthy has been going on, just the regular day-to-day nonsense of a high energy preschooler and a two-year-old who is THE DEVIL. And teething, did I mention? Send me good wishes, and luck, and winning lottery tickets if you happen to have some extras.

O hai there! Been a little busy lately what with all the goings on around here including going on the South Beach Diet. More on that later but let me just say damn! I am sick of eating, shopping for, thinking about, and preparing food. Moving on!

Nick attended Zoo Preschool a couple weeks ago. He had FUN. He went every morning for a week and they did so many things — every day a craft project, riding the train/carousel/CAMEL, learning about animal habitats. SO COOL except for I had to do SO MUCH DRIVING.

Next up: The Fourth of July! We skipped our traditional BBQ fare (see: South Beach Diet) and did a simple dinner followed by some fireworks in the back yard. Really there were only a couple near-misses. No big.

Zoey was fine as long as she was held tightly. She did often put up her hands to protect herself.

Nick’s first Sparkler! Let the pyromania begin!

The carnage. That Climbing Panda one was the coolest by far. We like ‘em little.

Later on my mom and I took Nick to a carnival at a church in Overland Park followed by fireworks. Do you think he had fun?

He even liked sharing the back seat of the car with a plant my mom dug up to give me. I call this picture “The Tarragon Jungle.”

On a completely unrelated note I have to share this picture I took of the boys playing Lego Indiana Jones on the Wii. Mike plays one character and Nick does the other, controlling it with the Wiimote and the Nunchuck. He does incredible well especially considering that HE IS FOUR YEARS OLD.

That kid amazes me every day with his insatiable need to take things apart and see how they work, then fix them. He is so mechanical. It is both impressive and terrifying! I just try to keep him from electrocuting himself.

And just because Zoey has been scarce in this post I give you My Baby, holding her favorite new find, the Baby Banana:

Nick turned four last week. FOUR! Yee-haw! I can’t tell you how much we have been eagerly awaiting Four and it’s awesomely awesome awesomeness. At least compared to Three. And to commerate this special occasion I did… nothing. At least his dad wrote something nice.

A couple days after the fact we did have a lovely birthday party for him and Zoey who turns two next week. We had some BBQ and I provided the obligatory sugar high with these beauties:

Some of them turned out to be Cyclops Cookie Monsters because apparently I have some mad math skillz.

The kids had a great time eating their Blue Dye #40 and playing with bubbles out in the yard. After the party was over we headed back home for Zoey’s nap. She refused to sleep but Nick crashed out pretty hard… then woke up with a raging fever and started barfing, but who’s counting.

My cousin Rosie made the kids this totally cool book called “ABC’s of the Craft Closet.”

One of my favorite pages, Oogly-Eyes and Pipe Cleaners. Notice how Zoey’s hand just can’t keep itself out of the picture.

She has a Children’s English Literature (I think?) class in college where she got to make this book for extra credit. How cool is that? I love multitasking! Dang if that girl isn’t crafty. Hmmm… now who does she remind me of?

*****

So here we are on Tuesday. After taking Nick to Preschool this morning Zoey and I went to Target and she was SOOOOOOOOOOO well behaved! I just couldn’t believe how easy going she was. She fell asleep on the way home — let me know if you can see where this is going — and woke up with a raging fever.

She is actually is asleep in this picture. She just keeled over and passed out.

And that is why I’ve had plenty of time to sit here in the middle of the day and blog, the kid will not let me put her down. She also will not stop yelling at me but as you can see I have an amazing ability to tune that out. It’s a gift.