Hey, remember this?

Well, now there’s this:

Kaelin always went for the face. Koren seems to prefer the leg.

And also…

Dear God,

I think there’s been a mistake.  See, I’ve looked EVERYWHERE and I can’t seem to locate the “Mute” button on my children.  I’m sure it must have been an oversight. 

Also, I have yet to find the “Sleep Mode” button.  Please send a technician out to install both.  And if you could throw in a remote-control version, that would be helpful too.  I would be willing to pay extra for that feature.

One more thing, I seem to have misplaced the owner’s manual – although oddly, I don’t remember getting one – and so I need some troubleshooting assistance.  See, my new KJ2008 version is awesome, but seems to have this tendency toward exiting Sleep Mode at some truly blasphemous hour in the morning.  I would appreciate it if you could send some instructions for rectifying this problem. 

Or at least send some caffeine.

Thanks,
One Tired Mama

Dear Mama,

Hey look!  I turned 5 months old yesterday!  Since you completely dropped the ball on getting my newsletter out, I’m taking upon myself to get the job done.

(more…)

Never been thanked for A.D.D. before…

I am solely independence writing you so that we can working with your to remittance the money into your account as the dead next of kin has passed into eternity. It is simply a simplistic process which will take but for a short while to process outside this ever will. I urgently look forward to received your most urgent appropriate responses for activities complete commencing.

Thanks for your co-operation and attention defecit.
Best regarding,

Martin Guio.
East Africa

“Hey check it out! Look what I can do! This is THE BOMB.”

“Uh oh.”

“Houston, we have a problem.”

“Saved it! I am THE MAN.”

“Wait a minute… I might have overcompensated.”

“May Day! May Day! Abandon Ship!”

“Wait! Maybe I can save it if I could just … find … my arms …”

“#$@%^#&@#%$…”

(during bath time)
Kaelin: Hey look!  Koren has one of those things like Daddo…
Mama: What things?
Kaelin: A belly button.

Hey look, Fall finally showed up…

Last week I took the kids to a Pumpkin Patch.  Twice.  It sort of went like this…

(Ok, deep breath)

We left the house and Koren was sleepy, so rather than go to sleep in his car seat he started crying.  The crying escalated just in time to get trapped on the highway because they blocked off all the exits to the roads we needed to take so it took us an extra long time to get to the pumpkin patch, which was difficult to find because it was at a church under construction so they had no sign and about 2 pallets of pumpkins sitting on the ground with construction trucks in the background. 

It was supposed to be a play date so while we waited in the parking lot to see what the next course of action would be, Koren went into convulsing hysterics because he had also realized that in addition to sleepy, he was hungry.

Everyone else decided to go to the nearby mall but there was no way I was going to take Yelly McScreamypants into a mall and Kaelin had her heart set on going to a pumpkin patch so she started whining about the pumpkin patch and then crying because Koren was screaming so loud it was making her ears bleed. 

Koren meanwhile, would not take a bottle because I had no way to heat it and AS WE ALL KNOW, HOWLING LIKE A SHRIEKING BANSHEE IS PREFERABLE TO INGESTING LUKEWARM FOOD WHEN YOU’RE ON DEATH’S DOOR OF STARVATION.

Feeling unable to make it all the way home amidst the screeching, I pulled over to comfort him and try (unsuccessfully) to convince him that no baby has ever died from drinking a lukewarm bottle and that it might actually help him feel better.  When that failed, my Plan B was to offer his pacifier.  His response to both was something along the lines of NO THANKS, I WOULD RATHER CONTINUE CRUSHING YOUR WILL TO LIVE.

So we drove the rest of the way home with the screeching which, predictably, stopped exactly 15 seconds before we reached the driveway.  I trucked everyone and everything into the house, stopping briefly to torch my husband who happened to be standing in the way because there’s something about being screamed at for a solid hour that MAKES ME STABBY.  I hurried to heat up a bottle which I ended up putting back in the refrigerator because the babe was sound asleep and had no intention of waking up for something as inconsequential as FOOD.

Kaelin was still begging to go to a pumpkin patch, so I got on the internet to find a replacement that hopefully didn’t SUCK SO MUCH and settled on a nice little one (with pictures!) about 15 minutes away.  So when Koren woke up and had eaten, we and my MIL trekked out to the new patch and arrived to find a patch full of ROTTEN. PUMPKINS.

Evidently you have to buy Halloween costumes a month early if you want to get good pictures at a pumpkin patch.

Fortunately, Kaelin didn’t notice because she was having entirely too much fun rolling around in the dirt and hay.  And they did have a small “hay maze” which kept her occupied for at least 10 minutes.  So she got her hay and I got my pictures and Koren narrowly avoided getting shipped to Zimbabwe and somehow we all lived to tell the tale.

Pea Pod & Daisy

So Election Day came and went with no surprises, which I found a little disappointing.  As it turns out, I could have done something BESIDES spend the entire evening glued to CNN, because I wouldn’t have missed anything. 

Well, that’s not true.  I did get to see the capital building appear out of nowhere on a table, with a 3-D illustration of the senate seats being filled, and I watched an interview with Will.I.Am via holograph.  To quote my daughter, “THAT’S something you don’t see every day!”

Not sure if it’s my tendency to root for the underdog or maybe I’m just a drama whore, but I was hoping to see SOMETHING unexpected in the election results though.  Unlike Obama, I prefer the neck-and-neck victory to a blowout.

This was a difficult election for me because I found myself unable to stand fully behind either candidate.  They each had qualities and policies that would – under any other circumstance – be deal-breakers for me.  Consequently, I’m neither as forlorn as most of the McCain supporters nor as jubilant as the Obama supporters at the results.  I just feel kind of melancholy about the whole thing.  I would have felt the same had John McCain won.

In the end, I had to make a list of the issues that concern me the most and narrow it down to the single most important issue at stake, the issue that I saw having the greatest effect on the lives of Americans today, and one the new president would have direct control over.  One day maybe I’ll devote the energy to expound on that, but I’m not making any promises because now that the election is over, I’m pretty sure nobody cares.

So this country is undoubtedly headed in a new direction.  I hope it is the direction our new President Elect has led us to believe.  I hope he follows through on what he says about bringing people together.  It may be a challenge for him to set aside some of his own left-leaning ideals for the sake of centrism and moderation.  If he is REALLY able to do that, he could go down in history as one of the greatest presidents to have assumed the office.  If not…

Well I dunno.  Time will tell.

I’m boring myself.  Signing off now.