john's mom works

my little super hero eating his favorite meal as i write this, i am listening to the sounds of train-table pieces banging together in john's room. i'm sure he is creating quite a fantastical disastermess for us to clean together later (again) but i hear happy vroom vroom noises and giggles so how can i argue? we'll pick up later. as i write this, my husband is back in baton rouge packing the last of our furniture into a big yellow truck so he can bring it to our new home. no, the house in baton rouge hasn't sold yet -- so if you know someone who is interested please let me know, it's a wonderful house that i can't wait to get rid of! but given that i'm 36 weeks 4 days pregnant, this was the last weekend that we felt comfortable with me being home without my husband, just in case! as i write this, i am considering how 11 days from right now will be the time that john chose to arrive when i was pregnant with him. and of course, who knows if charl...

i love a kid who, before his third birthday, recognizes that fridays are cause for dancing. this morning we put one of john's "toddler tunes" cds on and he was listening in the living room, but he got tired of it and brought me another cd - the "anxious dog music" cd we tried for buddy back at the height of his craziness. "mommy, i want to listen to DOG music!" said my gleeful little bug. so i put it in the cd player, and the twinkly "calming" piano started. and john said, "i want to dance, but i need my red tutu!" you know i am not a mom built to deny a boy his tutu. so pjs and tutu and all, we danced around the living room for a while. we did spins, and leaps, and bows. after a little while, i looked at the clock. "mama's gotta go get ready, my love," i said reluctantly. "we have to get you to school." he looked at me innocently and said, "i wear my tutu to school?" i talked him o...

i need a really large yoga mat. like roomsize. big. huge even. why? because, as i learned last night, when mom does yoga at our house, it's a family affair. my hope was that john might join in a little -- i am actually looking for a good "yoga with the kids" dvd that we can try so maybe we can do some for real family yoga. but in the case of last night, i just intended to do a little prenatal yoga and if john took part, bonus. what i did not count on: nervous buddy dog, very curious about what we were doing, who decided that a yoga mat is the perfect place to lay down. in fact, the only appropriate place in a living room full of places. i can't count the times i said, "buddy, get!" in the whopping 10 minutes that i managed to stick with my plan. very adorable john sitting next to me in an easy sitting position with his hands folded in perfect namaste. very adorable john doing downward facing dogs next to me on the mat. very jealous mo...

i think the guitars particularly offset the fuchsia of his tutu, don't you? last night, my husband was taking a yoga class (go hubby - yoga is awesome!) so john and i were home on our own. we were taking it easy, watching an episode of sesame street and snuggling on the couch. this particular episode of sesame street is entitled "dancing day." in the first bit, someone waves abby cadabby's magic wand and suddenly the whole cast of sesame street is dancing around in tutus. it's pretty entertaining, actually. john looked at me and said, "mommy, i not have a tutu on myself!" i grinned at his two-year-old phraseology. "you're right, baby," i said, "you don't have a tutu on yourself." "i want a tutu on myself!" he said enthusiastically. i wracked my mama brain. surely there was SOMETHING in the house i could jury-rig as a tutu. and then a stroke of brilliance - i, in fact, had a bright pink tutu fro...

the littlest tiger i'm not sure what it says about my mental age, but i have to say: i find john to be most excellent company.  my husband is out of town, so we've been flying solo this weekend. and today was quite a day. we woke up early and went to the store to get contractor trash bags so we could start cleaning up the front yard. came home and spent about an hour "playing in sticks" that resulted in precisely one bag of debris and a very small pile of sticks. moral of the story: yardwork is impossible with a two-year-old. every pile of leaves you rake, he will run through, kick, and "sweep" with sticks. he will help put some leaves in the bag ... but then he will be too excited and dive into the bag to throw leaves gleefully everywhere. it was absolutely not productive ... but quite a lot of fun. we high-tailed inside for baths and to dress in our purple and gold so we could head over to lsu campus to tailgate.  met up with some awesom...

hell of a match. last night while running around the house in just a diaper (as usual), john suddenly got a wile hair. "shirt! i need shirt!" he said enthusiastically. "TIGER shirt!" he added. since he doesn't have a tiger shirt, quick-thinking daddy drummed up the next best thing - a lion pajama shirt, with matching pants for the bottom. shew, disaster averted. a few minutes later, another cry. "shoes! i need shoes!" so daddy took john back to the closet and let him pick out his own shoes. he chose the shiny faux-patent tuxedo shoes from the cruise. they set off the jungle pjs nicely, i think. back to the living room. just a few minutes later, one more cry, "i hug buddy! i hug buddy! SIT BUDDY! i hug buddy!" fortunately, buddy is every bit as obliging as daddy. even more fortunately, we caught it on camera: is it just me, or does buddy look just a tad bemused? i'll pretend it's at john's fashion faux...

these are not ACTUALLY buddy's pills - he's on the generic! dollar sensible little fellow that he is. so, our family got a new dog when we got back from alaska. ok, not really - we still just have buddy. but the buddy we have now is a completely different beast altogether.  we were baffled at first. he seeks out affection - he'll actually come find you and ask to be petted. if he's laying down and you walk past him, he might lift his head - but he doesn't jump up, afraid. heck, he even let my husband refill his water bowl while he was eating food right there.  and the capper: last night we went on a family walk, and he was darn close to loose-leash walking the whole way. oh, he needed strong corrections, but nothing like the nonstop pull-fest it typically is. we had no idea what to make of this amazing transformation. did he really miss us that much? did he think we'd left him at the kennel for good? had he been abducted by aliens who rewired his ...

demon dog ... ok not really. just a bad pic. just thought i'd offer a little update on mr. buddy. he's been on xanax for a week now, and it seems to have no negative effects. it doesn't sedate him, just makes him a little calmer. we're all for a calmer, less neurotic version of our dog. and we're still shopping for the right supercrate. for now, we've been wedging his old plastic crate in between two walls with towels and cardboard for padding so that even if he pops the door open, he can't go anywhere. and that worked great ... until yesterday morning. as john and i were trying to leave the house, i could hear buddy continually "messing" with the door. i couldn't quite figure out what he was doing - i can't exactly see him when he's wedged in there like that - but i could tell he was fussing with it. after several abortive efforts to leave the house (since he tore the alarm panel off, the only way to set the alarm is in our ...

john wouldn't leave the house today without giving buddy a hug. then he had to go back for a kiss. we've been struggling with the destructive habits of a member of our family lately - and it's not the two-year-old. i can't remember how much of buddy's story i've told on here, so i'm going to start from scratch. buddy is a roughly four-year-old lab mutt. we think he might have some newfoundland in him, and there are days when he looks a little pitbull-ish, but all we know for sure is he is 75% or more lab. he weighs about 90 lbs and is the sweetest fellow you'll ever meet. but. BUT. big ol' but. he has obviously been mistreated in his life. we have no idea what his back story is - he was found wandering down a highway with cars going in both directions around him. he is from a part of the country where dog fighting is very common, and the rescue agency we got him from surmised that he may have been in training to be a bait dog. but, i...

"dang, son. mama ran hard this afternoon. thanks for coming with me." "didn't look so hard to me, mama. i think you could have gone faster and we'd have made it home to my juice sooner." yesterday i managed to get a good run in after work, before the storms showed up. but i guess it's thunderstorm season. and this season, they seem to be coming all at night.  used to be i loved a good night-time thunderstorm. sure, it might wake me up, but i'd listen to the thunder and see the lightning play through the curtains, and i'd hear the rain on the roof, and i'd sleep peacefully. occasionally another big boom would startle me, but only for a moment. nowadays all that has changed. not because of john - he slept like the proverbial baby through the whole thing. no, this is the culprit: why yes, this IS a new thundershirt. thanks for noticing. poor wussy buddy. he did much better last night than in previous stormy nights, in part becaus...

have i used this pic before? this is how i felt last night. when i got home from work last night, buddy was out of his kennel.  back about nine months ago, he broke out of and destroyed not one but two wire kennels. so we switched to the plastic travel-style kennel, and he's been great ever since then. until now. i'm pretty sure it was the thunderstorms we've had lately that spooked him, but now that he's figured out how to get out, there's no keeping him in - even when he's not freaked. my husband was at a meeting until late last night, and between being awake since 3:30am (see yesterday's blog) and finding the dog out of his kennel and being afraid to leave the dog in the house alone while i went for a run with john, i pretty much had a meltdown. i believe my text to my husband said, "i am not ok. please call me." while i waited for him to call me back, i decided i was going for a run with buddy AND john. no, i've never successfully d...

luckily for buddy, this is NOT his strangled body after he woke us up at 3:30am due to storm anxiety. when you have an infant, you sort of expect sleep to be in short supply. we got pretty lucky with john, who slept early and well, and with the exceptions of some spotty issues here and there we've slept pretty well in our house since he was born. in fact, more sleep disruption probably happens in our house because of one culprit: buddy the dog. he's a great dog, don't get me wrong. and he's come a LOOOOOOONG way since he came to live with us around a year ago. but he is still utterly neurotic and nuts. he is afraid of his own shadow. he's afraid of loud noises. he's afraid of my husband about 25% of the time, strange men about 99% of the time (that 1% is my cousin ben, who buddy oddly loves).  he doesn't pee when he's scared anymore. which is good - i spend MUCH less time mopping up dog pee. but he does freak out at thunderstorms. and if you liv...

recently, my imaginary friend cjane kendrick wrote a blog entry that inspired me. let me back up a half-step to offer some clarity. cjane is not imaginary - she is a very real mommy, concert organizer, and blogger extraordinaire. the imaginary part is our friendship. i've never met her, and she probably doesn't even know i exist. but if i lived in utah, i like to pretend cjane and i would be besties. along with her cool blogging sister nienie . (are you listening, fabulous sisters? if you ever find yourself in baton rouge i will happily treat you to beignets and cafe au lait or whatever local delicacy tickles your fancy.) do i sound a little like a creeper? read their blogs. you'll be imaginery bffs with them too. but i digress. cjane's blog was about her son, who is a "little barometer" who informs her through her actions when he needs something - particulary her love and attention. that blog rang so true to me. and i thought how special it was that she...

this morning after i had loaded my standard 427 bags into my car and crated the doggie for the day, i made a dismaying discovery. the car seat, it seemed, was not in my vehicle. flash back lo those 12 hours, to a tired family coming home from the camp, extracting a sleeping babe from his harness and carrying him in ... leaving the carseat in situ in the wrong car. a quick phone call to my husband later, it was confirmed: he had the carseat. the good news? we have an extra one. the bad news? the cover was off of it and it was completely unconnected and unstrapped. so i dragged the car seat into the middle of the kitchen where i could work on while keeping an eye on my curiously crawling kiddo. it went something like this: (pull, tug, tuck strap.) "no, no, john, don't eat buddy's dogfood. that's for buddy." (flip the cover, hook the hook, pull the strap around the back.) "john, that's buddy's bone. please leave buddy's bone alone." (p...

pic of the day: passed out baby after a long bike ride. so today, we packed john up and headed to mandeville to bike on the st. tammany trace. it's one of the many rails-to-trails projects around the country, and in our case we road 9 miles one way to the abita brew pub, had lunch, and biked back. we rented a bike trailer for john to ride in, and he *loved* it. he cooed for a while, then just grinned like a goofball until he finally passed out and slept for much of the ride. it was such an amazingly beautiful day, and the trail is mostly shady, so it was just awesome. it's an easy ride - very flat, as you'd expect from an old railroad bed, but it's just beautiful. we got a great workout, and had an awesome time. john was great the whole day. he met a big mastiff doggy at the brew pub, and spent most of lunch laughing hysterically at the big dog. he shared my sweet potato fries, then happily got back into the trailer to ride behind daddy all the way back to mandev...

pic of the day "... and then my mommy strapped me in my carseat and disappeared for 20 minutes while i screamed for her." we had a great weekend with buddy. he is definitely a fearful dog - he did a fair amount of barking at my husband, as it seems that men particularly scare him. but he's made some progress, and we're ready to be patient so we can persuade him that he has, in fact, found his forever home. never underestimate, however, the chaos associated with adding another member to your family. at 7:30 this morning, i was very proud of myself: john was dressed and ready for school, i was dressed and ready for work, buddy had had a walk first thing, my schlew of bags was packed and ready to load into the car so we could get this monday started. and then. (isn't there always an and then?) as i put on my shoes, john was crawling around our bedroom and knocked over a canoe paddle propped against the wall. big boom, etc. poor buddy peed all over th...

pic of the day: the first family walk with buddy our family got a little bit bigger today! buddy joined us today about 2:30 pm when he arrived from the long drive from nacodoches, tx. ann and another volunteer from st. francis anmal rescue over there were kind enough to take the time to bring buddy to his new home. buddy was a little nervous at first - it is clear that he has been mistreated at some point in his life, and he is particularly wary of men's hands. but in the less than seven hours he's been here the change is already phenomenal. he follows my husband every where he goes. he's happy to lean against us and almost get in our laps. he wags his tail and is happy to see us when we walk in from the other room. in short, i don't think it will be too long before he's 100% settled in and loving his new life. we went for our first family walk this evening. buddy definitely spooks when there are strange noises behind him, but he did well overall. he did pull...

no cute boo picture today. john's mom is feeling a little overwhelmed. it's probably because we travelled this weekend and didn't get home until late. or because i'm fighting some sort of cold/allergy thingy that makes my left ear sound like a tunnel and makes me have no voice (like, NO voice). or because i was out of work for two days to travel and i came back and re-wrote my to-do list and feel like i'll never get it all to-done. or because by the time i work out tonight, it'll be 7:15pm before i get home today, and pretty much the same deal for one reason or another every day this week. or because i haven't gotten enough sleep. or because sometimes when we feel yukky is when my husband and i are the least good at taking care of each other. or because i'm a whiny wuss, that too - 'cause really, couldn't just about everyone, mom or not, working or not, probably claim at least an item or two off this list? so who am i to complain, when these ar...

pic of the day: day 25 it took 29 attempts to get a picture of john while he was sitting still during our travels yesterday, john was SO good: he was stuck in his seat for a total of 10-11 hours, and he was such a good sport. yeah, he fussed from time to time - but so did i. he did so good just hanging out with us, i was so impressed and so proud of him. (as an aside: i don't think we'll be doing much more traveling like this again. john was great, but it is just exhausting. aside from the normal traveling wear and tear there's the constant efforts to entertain a busy kiddo, and both daddy and i were bushed.) when we got to nacogdoches, we were greeted by john and ann at st francis animal rescue. they are amazing, passionate people who love every single doggie they encounter. they have a beautiful home and a beautiful rescue facility on 15 wooded acres tucked right in town in nacogdoches. they didn't think it was at all strange that we were willing to drive 10 h...

pic of the day: day 24 baby godzilla wreaks havoc on the changing table   it is truly phenomenal how much a 16+ lb baby boy can get into in a brief period of time ... especially considering his little scooty-booty version of crawling doesn't allow him to move very fast. but in the two hours he was awake before we left the house this morning, he found and tried to eat or drum with the following: daddy's running shoes (drumming) daddy's shoe insoles (eating then drumming) the diaper wipes, diapers, pacifier, and nose bulb on his changing table (alternately eating and drumming) (see above) a gossip magazine (tearing to shreds) another gossip magazine (tearing to shreds and eating) (fyi: for some mysterious reason i have a subscription to "ok" magazine that i'm pretty sure i never paid for. i've had it for almost a year now. i wouldn't pay for it ... but if it comes to my mailbox free i can guiltily indulge. so if you sent it to me, thanks. and if ...