I love him, I love him, I love him

So, Steve decided to clean our carpet yesterday. Bless him. Of course, since he's the one who decided to volunteer our house for the end-of-year staff party for all the teachers at his school, darn right he should be the one cleaning the carpet! (Yes, that's carpet, singular. The main floor is almost entirely hardwood and ceramic tile, except for the family room area. We decided to go with kid-friendly carpet until our brood all knows how to walk, and then we will be changing to hardwood. At the rate Jake is showing an interest in walking, I will be stuck with this carpet for approximately 10 more years.)

In any case, I did my duty, keeping the boys occupied outside with the water table, bringing them both in under my arms so that they couldn't make a break for the clean carpet, then bathing them, and dressing them in clean jammies before allowing them back into the family room.

I had a sneaking suspicion that he was allowing way too much water to drip into one area of the carpet, while he tried to solve the "look, when I do this with the hand tool, it sprays water, but then stops after a bit. Spray, then stop. Spray, then stop" problem. With each word "spray", he shoosted about a half litre of water into the fibres, and didn't slurp it all up. My worst fears are confirmed today. My carpet SMELLS! Which means my ROOM smells! What the heck, dearest Steve??? I would MUCH rather have the spit up and crayon stains back, then to have our home smell like old camping equipment that was packed away wet!!

I'm pretty sure this is not a Febreeze problem. I'm pretty sure this is a "wait until the kids are in bed tonight, and then Cari re-cleans the carpet" problem. Sheesh. Good thing he's cute, that's all I have to say. (Although I should note that the reconfiguration of furniture he came up with seems to be very baby-learning-how-to-walk friendly, so bonus points there.) But still!

Friday's List of Ten X

Ten reasons clothes shopping (for me) with the boys turned out much better than I expected:

10. In and out of the Jeep X 6, in and out of the stroller X 6, no tears!

9. Two words: store toys! I had stuff for both boys to keep them happy, but everyone knows that other people's stuff is way more fun than yours. And Owen was persuaded to put everything back and leave when it was time to go with the vague promise that "the toys will be here when we come again".

8. Store was almost empty, in spite of it being half-past lunchtime on a Friday. (Yeah, I had planned to be there when the store opened. Boys did NOT have a good morning.) I could take over three changerooms, and no one was inconvenienced. (1 for the stroller, 1 for the boys to play in, and 1 to actually change in.)

7. Charming, charmimg boys, a.m. antics to the contrary! Manners and conversation from Owen, invitations to the sales girls "Would you like to play cars with me?". "Hi!" with a smile and a wave for everyone from Jake, and adorable brother-interaction to boot. Jake crawling after Owen, Owen deciding Jake needed a different toy and getting it for him. Those two flirted their way through that store on teeth and charm.

6. Stand-alone stores (I went to Tall Girl, more about that in a minute) are a lot more kid-friendly than stores in the mall, or giant -Mart stores. Small stores meaning never losing sight of exploring boys when they are encouraged by staff to drive their cars out of the changeroom.

5. I actually found a great outfit to wear to Grace's baptism (they made me an offer I couldn't refuse - I'm her Godmother). I would post pics from the online catalogue, but I really hate it in the catalogue. And the one I thought I liked online looked terrible in person. Which just goes to show, I should browse and try on different things in stores more often, rather than my usual MO of running into the GAP, cornering a salesperson and saying "I need jeans, size 10, 36 inseam. With a fit I can wear to the office. Meet me in the changeroom." It's a summer suit, with short sleeves on the jacket, in light grey with a white pinstripe. And I got a turquoise sleeveless shirt to wear with. Snazzy, and office friendly! I am over the guilt of paying specialty store prices - even Stacy and Clinton would rave about the fit.

4. Tall Girl finally has a rewards program! Once you make $500 worth of purchases (um, not difficult, I'm halway there on the one outfit, ouch!) you get 25% off one item. As reward programs go, it's not yje most exciting, but considering how pricey their stuff is, any money saved is good news.

3. I discovered that I am back to my pre-pregnancy size, the aforementioned 10. Maybe if I got serious about eating well and ran not just because I have an event coming up, I could get down to an 8. But at 6 feet 1 inches and a mom of two, I am quite pleased with being a 10.

2. Mall tailor took pity on me and did my hems while I waited, when others were being told they could pick up their pants tomorrow afternoon. Score one for "it never hurts to ask...really politely!" And they didn't charge me any extra. I took Owen to the potty, picked up a few more odds n ends, and voila, pants! Pants that actually got taken up (even with heels, TG pants are tres longue) rather than let out and a false hem put on, something I have been known to do to spare myself those TG prices.

1. Both boys fell asleep in the Jeep on the way home, and stayed asleep for the house-transfer. Which means that after a very pleasant afternoon out, I still got to enjoy some quiet time to get stuff done around the house. I thought for sure I was looking down the barrel of missed naps and cranky p.m. boys as well, but fate smiled on this well-dressed mama.

Me Time

You know you're looking forward to going back to work when a trip to the dentist makes you happy for the "me time". I had a dentist appointment on Monday. I don't mind the dentist - at 32 years old, I had never had a cavity, so I really have very little interaction with my dentist. I spend most of my time with the dental hygienist, who cleans my teeth every 9 months and lectures me about the importance of flossing. (Foreshadowing!)

But this time, they took some x-rays, and lo and behold, a cavity. My first one. And it's between my teeth - somewhere that could have been prevented by flossing. So I got to go back today and have it filled. You know what? The way the boys have been this week (little one having sleep issues, big one having iron ears and pushing issues), I think that I will look back on it as the highlight of my week. I got to relax in the chair, with my thoughts to myself, for 50 minutes. It was more pleasant than the scraping/cleaning, because I was numb. I felt nothing but some slight pressure, and even the whine of the drill is not all that bad. Worst part? The smell. Dental stuff smells yucky.

Having said that, I will definitely be picking up the flossing in the future. Because hey, in less than 2 months I'll be back to work, and get to have "me time" without the downside of speaking like Chretien all afternoon.

(Also, I have good dental coverage through work, so all this was free, which is why I can be so blase about it.)

Whew, Something Stinks!

...And it's not just the baby lying passed out in my lap, although said small fry could definitely use a diaper change. What with all the solids in his diet these days, phew!

What I am actually referring to is J0n & K@te + 8 - nope, don't want to add to the Google hits for the show. I had never seen this show before last night. I had no desire at all to watch any of the "family-oriented" shows on TLC (why do they always go overboard? A few years ago, all you could see on that channel was Trading Spaces, and the sob fest where hot guy Ty builds people a new house. (Forget what it's called.) Now it's all about families: the Duggar$, the Roloff$, and the Go$$elin$. And women who didn't know they were pregnant.)

Anyway, all the media hype made me curious, especially since I love my TV with a nice side of snark (see TWOP, in the sidebar over there.) Apparently, I've been missing out on some snarkTASTIC programming over at The Loot Channel! She got a tummy tuck? He got HAIR PLUGS??? Are you freaking kidding me? That's awesomely snarkworthy! I got all caught up over at this site, and couldn't wait to snark it up last night. (I'll say it again: SNARK!!)

Obviously these two are having issues. I almost cried when the one sextuplet was chatting with her dad, and told him, "I don't want you to go away anymore, Daddy". But the birthday six and their older sisters were hardly featured at all! It was all about mom! And WHAT a mom! Heh. Break out the schadenfreude, and if you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me! It must KILL her that she has second billing to her husband in the title of the show. This is one weird lady. And yeah, I love me some "unscripted" "reality" TV:

Mom to kid with silly string: Hey, shoot it at the camera!

Kid: (gets right up to camera and shoots silly string, but is so close, you don't get the "string" effect.)

Mom: No! Not like that! Let me do it! (Poses saucily in front of camera and lets fly with the string).

Completely spontaneous hijinks!

Now, not having seen any other episodes, I don't have anything to compare it to, but it seemed to me like there wasn't much focus on the kids. Has it always been like this? It seemed to be the K8 show, and it also seemed like K8 was acting a lot of the time. Like she thought, THIS is how a cool, loving mom acts at her kids' party and was doing her best to play the part. Why do I think this? Because she's not a very good actor! It was like watching bad theatre. Not to say that she doesn't love her kids, I'm sure she does, but she just seemed "on" for the cameras. Did the show always focus on the J&K part, seeing how a +8 affects a relationship? Because I don't see how that formula can work anymore given the current temperature of things on that interview couch. And if the premise of the show was to focus on the kids, well, someone missed the boat on this ep for sure!

And WTF is up with her hair??? I had heard it referred to as a "reverse mullet", but it was hard to see the full effect on the tabloid covers in the checkout lane. I was picturing it as a kind of longer-in-front bob, a la Posh Spice, but suspected there had to be more to it than that. It's as if her stylist thought, shorter-in-the-back good, number-three-clippers-in-the-back better! Holy Hannah! And the long, front portion looks almost Trumpian in its magnitude! Not that I have the most stylin' do (I tend to throw it in a pony or hide it under a bandana a lot) but I'm not putting myself out there for people to see.

I didn't really see enough of hubby to form much of an opinion. Other than thinking he seemed quite genuine in the aforementioned scene with his daughter, I was really just distracted by his bald spot whenever he was on screen. Did his TLC-funded hair plugs not take? Or, since he can't be much past 30, is it that has he lost MORE hair and needs a touch-up? Inquiring minds want to know!

The kids are all adorable. You won't catch me snarking on them, because a) they're kids, and b), they aren't the ones who signed up to be beamed into my living room. Although the girl who got up and ran away the instant the "happy family birthday photo" was snapped? Awesome! I really hope that somewhere, some lawyers are making sure that an awful lot of $$$ is being set aside for those kids. Accoeding to the Washington Post, mom and dad are getting $25,000-$75,000 per episode, in addition to all the loot.

Now that I've seen the show once, I'll probably be content to get my snark off the web. I can get all the horribleness that is J&K without the distraction of having to feel sorry for +8 (or the added distraction of K8's horrible acting. Give that girl a Razzie already!) Poor kiddos. Although if J0n goes in for a plugectomy sequel, I don't know that I could stay away.

Stop, Drop and Roll

Today we finally purchased a fire pit for the backyard. Technically, I guess it's more of a "fire table", since it sits up on the deck, but to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to. It's round and has about a 6 inch ledge all the way around - wide enough to sit a drink on, if you really wanted your beer nice and toasty warm. It's less than 3 feet across, so not too large, but perfect for roasting hotdogs and marshmallows, which is what we did. (Aside: two years ago, for Owen's second Christmas, we bought a small, potted evergreen, thinking we wouldn't have to worry about him pulling it over on himself, and then we could plant it in the yard to keep. It never made it into the ground, and it never even made it out of the backyard - it died a slow death, over in the composting corner. Fast forward two years and we have most excellent, well seasoned firewood for our first ever fire! Waste not, want not!)

It was all we could do to keep Jake from crawling over and pulling himself up using the ledge, since Mr. I-Love-To-Cruise-The-Furniture couldn't understand why this particularly interesting piece of backyard decor was off limits. But Owen was really, really good. Always gave it a wide berth when he was walking by, and never once tried to reach over and touch, etc.

I'm putting this all down to preparation. My parents have a similar wood burning apparatus in their backyard, and he's used to fires at Grandma and Grandpa's house from last summer. And I can't remember how the dicussion first came up, but one of his favourite "stories" is about fire safety. While Owen loves him a good story about Cars or Thomas, sometimes he's into non-fiction. I laughed really hard when Erica once told me that she explained potholes to Nathan one day, and from then on, he'd request "The Story of Potholes". That was before I had my own two-year-old, who requests the story of "Mommy and Owen go to the Grocery Store", "Owen and Jakey Eat Their Lunch", or "What We Do If There's A Fire".

Owen knows if your clothes catch on fire, you are supposed to Stop, Drop, and Roll. This is a favourite game at Casa del Howard. It sometimes gets a little out of hand, like when Owen shoves Jake down and rolls the poor baby over and over. "But Mommy!" he yells indignantly, as I carry him off to his room for timeout, "Jake was on FIRE!!" He knows the phone number you call to get the firefighters to come to our house is nine-one-one. And he knows that the firefighters will come spray water on the house, and that we'll have to go stand outside. He even knows that we'll all go over to Anthony's house (Owen's favourite neighbour) to wait safely until the firefighters say it's okay. Technically, he also knows that if he hears the smoke detector go off, that means that there's a fire and Mommy or Daddy will come get him to leave the house, but since our detector (right outside the boys rooms) HAS gone off in the middle of the night, and NEITHER boy woke up (it was the "low battery" warning, so it wasn't continuous, but it still went off with a long, loud, shrill BEEEEP every 5 minutes starting at 2 am one night until we managed to pry a 9 volt out of one of Owen's toys....) it's just academic.

So, we're looking forward to many more fun evenings around the fire. And if you happen to come by and see us rolling around in the family room, don't worry. We're just practicing for the inevitable playing.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies!

When I first heard about this, I thought it was just somebody's fantastic idea. A friend had posted the quotation: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains" to their status on Facebook, with a credit to "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies", which I just thought was them being funny, and laughed out loud. Imagine my surprise when I see in the bookstore yesterday that it IS a book! I snapped it up.

I'm only about a quarter of the way through, but I'm loving it. Pride and Prejudice is one of my favourite stories, and the campy addition of the zombies is just great fun. I'm enjoying Elizabeth as a master of the killing arts, and I particularly loved the "Pentagram of Death" as performed by all 5 Bennet girls. And who would have thought that quiet, book-larnin' Mary would be the one to jump up on the table and attempt to stab Mr. Collins in offence to one of his comments? (Happily she is restrained by Lydia, enabling the sappy Mr. Collins to live another day, and eventually, as I'm gleaning from sneaking ahead peeks at the awesome illustrations, marry a zombified Charlotte Lucas!!) Not to mention that the talent of vomiting politely into one's hands puts me in mind of my sister's ability to vomit daintily into a wineglass. Can't wait to finish it out and see how it all ends, but also couldn't wait to share my delight.

Don't know how much fun it would be if you weren't familiar with the original P&P. My husband enjoyed the Bolly-riffic "Bride and Prejudice" without any foreknowledge of the original, but I believe that to truly appreciate P&P&Z, you might want to know the original. (So, those of you who have finished with The Grapes of Wrath and Season 4 of Buffy, now you know what to do with your free time!)

Seth Grahame-Smith, I take my hat off to you - I'm sure I'm not the only English major who wishes she thought of this idea first! Now, my next request, please add vampires to Little Women! (And not the sparkly, twee Twilight kind, but the real kind, okay??)

Brotherly Love

Summer has arrived. :)

When You Wish Upon a Star...

The other night, we were sitting in the family room. When the curtains are open and the lights are on, you can see the reflections of the potlights in the window - Jake likes to point them out to us. (Very big into pointing at things these days, is Jake.)

Owen looked at the lights, and then noticed he could see something else. "Mommy! There's a STAR!"

Sure enough, we could see one tiny spark in the sky, so it was time to make a wish.

"Star light, star bright, first star we see tonight, wish we may, wish we might, have the wish we wish tonight..."

Owen: "I wish for a BABY in my BELLY! Like Mickle Pickle!"

Mommy: "Really?"

Owen: "YES! And then it will turn into a blue dinosaur with PINK POLKA DOTS!"

I love that kid. Him and his weirdly specific wishes. Can't wait to hear what he wishes for on his birthday! :)