I made a vow very, very early on to try very hard to never say it, because as soon as it’s said, whatever I was longing for happened and then I was left mourning the passing of a stage.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t judge those of you that, “can’t wait until he crawls” or those that, “can’t wait until she sleeps through the night.” I know not everyone loves every part of having a baby. I just have my own personal guilt associated with those three little words.

Oh, and I would be lying if I said that I have *never* said it, because I have. It’s warranted in certain situations. Like potty-training, for example. I definitely said, in the middle of cleaning up poop and/or pee from my floor, “I can’t wait until she’s potty trained.” However, for most of the passing baby-stages, I work really hard at savoring it because I know that in what feels like the blink of an eye, we have gone from this:

To this:

And from this:

To this:

So for all of you “can’t waiters,” I offer that you try and wait. Just a little. Unless you’re potty training, and then I think you should “can’t wait” all you want.

- Abbi

See that smile on the toddlers’ face up there? I’ve only seen that smile that one time…until today.

I took the girls to the mall to play at the play area because it’s been pretty cold and windy here the last few days and they needed to burn some pent up energy. So they played. And played. And played. They had a fantastic time and were much less ca-razy by the time we left the play area. As we’re walking toward the exit, Peyton spots Christmas trees. And then she spots some light-up reindeer. And then she spots him. HIM. You know him. The guy in red? The one with the beard? Brings gifts to the good little girls and boys? Yeah, him. She loses it.

Peyton: “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! LOOK! It’s SANTA! Santa Mommy! It’s Santa! Can we go see Santa?! I LOOOOOOOVE him. Can we please go see him?!”

Me: “We can go see him. But we’re just going to look today.”

Peyton: “OK! Oh my Gosh! We’re going to go see Santa! I’m going to be so essited to see him!”

We head down the elevator and I’m talking to my husband on my phone. He was a bit saddened by the Santa news at first. It’s always a family thing for us to go see Santa but I assured him that we were not going to really go see Santa, we were just going to look from afar. Maybe wave and smile.

Once the elevator doors open, she bounces out. And I mean that literally – she was actually bouncing. Santa’s area is about 12 feet from the elevator and I tell her to stop and wait and she does. It becomes clear to me at this point that we are not going to just look at him. So, I tell her we’re going to get into “that line right there” and she walks over to it. As I’m trying (and failing) to coral my youngest who wants nothing to do with being picked up or touched right now because she’ll do everything HERSELF, I notice that Peyton is not at the back of the line anymore. She has somehow maneuvered up around the bend to where I cannot see her anymore. And it’s not really that it was a long line. There were two other families in front of us. One of those families was a mom with her parents and her tiny baby girl. Clearly, they were there for her very first pictures with Santa. Say it with me now, “awwwww…” Yeah, well, my daughter totally high-tailed it in front of this little family and another family who was there with their son. Seriously, she ran right in front of all of them and plopped herself right down on Santa’s lap. Meanwhile, I’m holding the thrashing 17-month old who is yelling “Na!” (No) at me as I apologize to the families who should have been in front of us in line. And I get to my darling daughter who is dawning that same “on top of the world” smile that you see in the above picture, telling Santa all about how she would like “How to Train Your Dragon” for Christmas. Santa looks up at me and asks, “is she yours?”

Yes. Yes, she is.

- Abbi

Kylie has been doing incredibly well since we moved back to Colorado.  Speaking in  4 and 5 word phrases regularly, huge for us, and showing a whole lot more interest in other adults, as well as her peers.  Kylie and I were lucky enough to spend 6 weeks of quality time with my parents while my husband tied up loose ends in San Diego – they are her new bffs – to say the least. We have been in our new home for three weeks now and every single day she asks where her Grandma and Papa are or suggests we go see them.  I’m so proud of her, this little big eyed munchkin of mine. My favorite spontaneous phrase, is one she also uses daily, “You make me mad, mama!” You would think this would hurt my heart…oh no…every time I hear it, my heart swells with pride and I have to turn my head so she doesn’t see the huge smile on my face.  It’s little things like these that remind me she is going to be OK. She is the most fab of the Autistics after all.

Not all days are full of sunshine and rainbows.  Some days I want to stick my head in the toilet and I can’t understand why money doesn’t grow on trees.  Why oh why should my baby miss out on the best of therapies because of the size of my checking account?  It doesn’t seem right. So I try to take it one day and one dilemma at a time.  Today it’s the flu shot,  Tuesday it will be grimacing over the rates provided by the ABA therapy provider who is stopping by, and next Friday it will most likely be, trying to stick a helmet on Kylie’s head for equine therapy. Wish me luck cuz I’m going to need it.

It’s been a little while, I know. Megan and I have made an art of being able to blog for the other when either one of us has life take over but then, she decided that she needed to move back to Colorado right when I decided to start a little business. That selfish wench! (Just kidding, Megan! You know I heart you and I’m so very happy you’re home!) So yeah the two of us had to take a little hiatus. But, we still love you and we still plan to do this widdle blog.

I was just going to post this whole next bit as a status on facebook, but it required more characters than facebook would permit, so I thought, “I know! I’ll take it to the cribside!” So here I am. And here is my afternoon story:

I had lost my phone. Again. I lose my phone all the time. I’ve never truly lost it for good, so I guess I should say that I misplace my phone on a regular basis – like, at least once a day. At least. Today, I had misplaced it for the second time and jumped on google chat to tell my husband, who was at work at the time, that I had once again, lost my phone. He sent me a link. This link (www.icantfindmyphone.com) and I clicked on it. After checking out the page, which is nothing more than a phone with boxes within for the user to type his or her phone number. I went back to my husband, “is this real?” I queried. He said, “I think so.” So I figured, what the heck, I’ll give it a go. If it doesn’t work, I’ll just have my husband call my phone. I type in my number, get up from my chair to go listen for the nearly silent vibrate (because, of course, I left the stupid SOB on vibrate. I never lose my phone when I have the ringer all the way up. That’d be too easy). I go upstairs. I think I can hear it. I walk back to the where the bedrooms are and realize it was a fluke, I never really heard anything. As I’m heading back downstairs, I hear my lovely 3-year old say, “Mommy! I found your phone!” Woo hoo! She hands it to me and it’s still ringing. It was a number I didn’t know and I wasn’t quick enough to answer it. I’ll have to try the website again just to hear if there’s a recording on the other end. Anyway, I give her a high five and big “thank you” and ask her where she found it, which was under the couch, obviously, because where else would it be? On a table top? On the kitchen counter? Nooooo. Under the couch. Anyway, the phone has been found. Yay.

See why I needed to tell all of that? This would not have sufficed: “how sad that I just bookmarked this page www.ican’tfindmyphone.com.” But seriously, how sad that I really do have that page bookmarked now?

And with that, it’s time for me to go drink a glass of wine and pretend that I’m totally sane.

- Abbi

So far our stay has consisted of…..

Missing the daddy A LOT. But he’ll be here soon! Friday if I get my way. I’ve been trying to downplay the chill in the air. It’s hard to talk to someone at the beach about this thing you people call Fall.

Quality time with Peyton, London and Abbi! My awesome photographer of a blogmate took these cute pics.

Cheech is such a pest. Girlfriend was not letting him get anywhere near her ice cream. With good reason.

The thing I love most about Parker, Colorado is the abundance of wildlife! Right in mom and pops backyard, it’s pretty incredible and I’m sure going to miss seeing this little family every morning and evening.

Want to see a sneak peek of my new house? It’s pretty cute…

Interior pictures coming soon! You can watch me try to do home improvement projects and decorate on a budget. Should be interesting. Stay tuned…

But, I really, really want my 15-month old to start watching cartoons. Not for hours and hours, or anything, but long enough that I could maybe pee, or empty the dishwasher without having to worry about little fingers grabbing at knives…or even just to have 5 minutes to check my email (i.e. read celebitchy). I know it’s wrong. I know it. They’re not supposed to watch TV until what is it? 2? Eek. I honestly don’t know if I can wait that long. That’s another 9 months of peeing with an audience. Maybe I’m just not introducing her to the right shows because she seriously wants nothing to do with it. My oldest watches some TV. They’re all educational shows and she typically doesn’t watch them for any extended amount of time on any given day. Sometimes she watches for 30 minutes, sometimes an hour, once in a while we’ll have a movie day in which she’ll watch waaaaaay more than usual, but it’s so rare and they’re really fun days for us. And then there are many days that she doesn’t watch any TV at all. When the oldest is tuning in, I’ll try and sit London down with her to watch and she will sit for 22.6 seconds before she’s up and into something. That something is usually cat food. Or the dog’s water. Or climbing up onto the fireplace (her new favorite thing to do).

Maybe it’s time to bring out that baby straight jacket…*

Abbi

*Totally joking. Please do not call CPS on me.

OK..so, he shouldn’t have threatened the lives of middle schoolers. But..But..But. Thirteen-year-old boys are pretty tough…I think they’ll be alright.  Who picks on disabled kids anyway? Really?

“My daughter broke my heart by standing there crying,” he said.

Jones erupted last week after he said a boy threw an open condom on his daughter’s head and that another student may have spit on her, WTSP.com reports. He then reportedly decided to board the bus heading for Greenwood Lakes Middle School to confront the driver and the boys who allegedly harassed the girl.

Video surveillance from the bus shows Jones asking his daughter to point out the alleged bullies. He is then heard threatening to “kill” those students involved in the alleged incident, according to the station.

You know they did it.  Kids are cruel.  I only feel sorry for the innocent kiddos on the bus he likely traumatized as well.  Still giving pops props, you have to protect your kids.  Parents make mistakes too..and we all have our breaking points. Those nasty little cretins are lucky he didn’t put them over his knee like this teacher did.

This is a sign I snapped a picture of at Target. I thought it matched my mood nicely.

Some days (like today), I put off nap time a little bit longer than normal so that the girls will wake up closer to when my husband gets home. This way, I’m guaranteed to have a shorter gap between my “lone-wolf” parent time and when I’ll have a partner in this whole raising-of-the kids thing. Today is one of those I definitely need a partner* kind of days. Why, you ask? Because both of my children cried in pitch-imperfect harmony through the last half hour of our grocery trip. Fortunately, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not easily embarassed in public, but still, there’s only so much wailing one woman can take. Here’s an example of our awesome Target cry-fest:

Girls: “Cry. Cry. Cry” London, because I put her back in the cart. Peyton, because we were no longer looking at toys.

Me: “Girls, if you can tone it down a notch and relax, maybe you can have a sucker.”

Girls: Both calm down and quiet the hysterics for a few minutes. Phew. Crisis averted.

Me: “Alright, ladies! Good work. Here’s a sucker for you, London, and one for you, Peyton.”

Peyton: Looks at her sucker. Looks at London’s sucker. Looks at her sucker again. Looks at me. “But Mommy, London has a brown sucker.”

Me: “Uh huh.”

Peyton: “But brown is my favorite color. I don’t like orange (the color she had). I want Lemdon’s.” FYI: her favorite color changes 500 million times a day.

Me: “London is already eating hers.  You get to have orange today, but hey! There’s brown in the middle of it!” It was a Tootsie Pop and I was doing my best to manage what was inevitably going to become a nasty situation.

Peyton: “But, but, but…I don’t like this one. I want that one.” Annnnnnnd with that, the floodgates unleashed.

She eventually calmed down, after wailing “I want Daaaaaddddddddddyyyyyyyyyyy” for 15 minutes and something else that I couldn’t decipher through the hysterical crying and subsequent snot running down her face and mouth.

It was awesome.

We got up to the check out and it went like this:

Lovely check out lady: “Hi, how are you doing today?”

Me: “Oh great. I’m ready for a drink.”

Lovely check out lady: “hahahahaha! I only laugh because I can totally understand.”

Me: “You’re laughing, but I’m not joking. I think I will go home, put them down for naps and pour myself a glass of wine.”

Lovely check out lady: “More power to ya, honey. Have a glass for me, too.”

It was awesome.

Hopefully my girls will now sleep until my husband gets home. That would make today even more awesome.

* Single parents: I have no fricken idea how you do it. I’ll have a glass for you, too.

- Abbi

Checking my igoogle this morning, I noticed this headline: “NFL: Be respectful to women reporters.” When I first read it, I immediately thought that the networks broadcasting the games are going to turn the sound up on all of the female reporters microphones so that when they’re on the field, or wherever, the viewer will actually be able to hear them. Oh, and that they’ll also stop that whole talking-over-them thing, and perhaps even the whole cutting-them-off-before-they’ve-finished-their-report thing. But no. This was about a female reporter, Ines Sainz from the Mexican network TV Azteca, who felt uncomfortable upon entering the New York Jets locker room after their game last Saturday.

Um, so, what female wouldn’t feel uncomfortable in a room full of huge men with their bits and pieces hanging out? I mean, really. And why is it surprising that this sort of thing happens? I know that we’re all about equality and blah, blah, blah, but in this arena, I believe it is unnecessary for a female to be in the male locker room. Males are not allowed in female locker rooms…at least I’m pretty certain they are not, I couldn’t find anything definitive on google and I got bored searching…but anyway, why should the same rule not apply to females in male locker rooms. I don’t get it.

Clinton Portis had something to say about this (shocking…he already apologized to the reporter, btw). Man, I wish he was a Bronco still.

Did you watch the video? She’s gorgeous. It’s no wonder that heads turned and things were said when she walked in.  Just for the record, I’m not saying that just because she’s attractive she “had it coming to her” but I just don’t understand why they let the ladies in the locker room at all. I wouldn’t put my equally hot body in that locker room (ha!). Just sayin’.

Anyway, that’s my two cents on that whole thing.

- Abbi

1. I sleep on my stomach. This is a problem only when I’m pregnant (calm down husband of mine, I’m not).

2. I am currently obsessed with Dexter. I am on Season 4 and I love it.

3. I deal with stress by biting the hell out of the inside of my mouth.

4. My stress is related to trying to juggle EVERYTHING I’m trying to accomplish right now and I feel like I’m going to drop any one of the many balls I’m clumsily fumbling at any point.

5. I really, really, really want to move my little family to the mountains.

6. We do not own a pair of binoculars (that’s totally random, right?!)

7. My brother and I were born 14 months apart exactly. My birthday is August 19th and his is October 19th. My mom, aunt and uncle all were also born on the same day in different months – the 25th – one in August, one in May and one in September. This trend ended with my children.

8. I should be working out.

9. I like cereal but cannot eat it for breakfast. I don’t know why, I just can’t.

10. I can still do both a mean cartwheel and an OK handspring. I’m sure to injure myself doing one or the other (likely the handspring) some day soon.

- Abbi