Archive | May, 2008

Ho Hum and No Bottle of Rum

29 May

Yes, I’m stil alive.  I honestly haven’t had anything exciting to report.  I feel like I have moved to Seattle, as for the last week, we have had cool, gray and rainy weather.  It was a bummer to have this weather system settle over Reno for the holiday weekend, but it meant that I didn’t have any plans (going to the beach and outdoor pool were OUT), so we lazed around and just enjoyed some quiet family time.

I have resumed trail running now that ski season is over, and I had forgotten just how much I love trail running.  There is a gorgeous trail with a mild incline 5 minutes from my house, and it is almost therapeutic for me to immerse myself in the smell of the forest, the crunch of the dirt under my shoes, and the sound of the rushing stream that is at its peak flow right now.  I have felt really strong running lately, and I think it is now time to venture to more difficult trails.  Anyway, the weather was perfect for trail running, as it was cool, and the clouds made the mountains look very much like those in Washington state. 

On Sunday, after a glorious run, I decided that Little Miss should enjoy the trail as well, so I took her and our dog Shadow up to the trail for a short hike.  She was really excited to hike, and kept following Shadow around, doing everything that he did.  When Shadow sniffed a bush, she would sniff a bush, when he’d raise a leg to pee, she would raise a leg and pretend to pee.  It was really funny.  She made it a long ways — at least a mile, which is great for a 2 year old.  I figure we’ll keep working her up on distance this summer, since she has boycotted the jog stroller and the backpack.

This week is starting to get busy for us.  Tonight is a birthday party for a 4 year old at Chuckie Cheese (woo — haven’t been there since I was in Brownies), tomorrow night is girls night out with women from work, where we’ll be going to happy hour and then to the premier of Sex and the City.  Then this weekend, it’s wine tasting, a family kick ball tournament, and a birthday party for my brother, who is having the big 4-0 celebration.  We’ll have all of my family together this weekend, and I can’t wait.  It will be chaos, but such fun chaos.

I’m starting to map out our camping plans for the summer, as we’re ready to put our new camper to use.  Anyone have suggestions of good camp sites in the Northern Nevada/California area?  On my hit list are June Lake, Gold Lake and Lake Almanor (can you tell we like to go to lakes?).  What other sites should we try?

She Had Her Cake and Ate It Too

23 May

Ah, the potty training has begun.  Up until this week, we’ve been all talk and no action.  Little Miss would sit on the potty, push it around, or even put it on her head, but nothing ever happened.

That is, until my child asked for cake on Sunday (we’ve been to a lot of birthday parties lately), and I flippantly said, “I’ll bake you a cake if you go pee on the potty.”

She lit up, and announced she wanted to go potty.  Low and behold, the kid peed.  I guess she just needed a little bribery.

I didn’t happen to have the fixings for cake, so the next day, we went to the store, I found one of those microwavable single serving cakes (Lord knows my diet doesn’t need a full cake around), and we mixed it up, popped it in the microwave for 45 seconds, and voila!  Cake!  I gave her half of the cake, saying the other half she could have when she used the potty again. 

So yet again, we talked a lot about the potty this week, but there was no action until tonight.  It was mayhem at our house tonight.  JB wasn’t yet home from work, so I was cooking dinner when she announced she wanted to pee.  I dropped everything (despite being very hungry), and stripped her down, just to see that she was screwing around on the potty.  I waited about 20 minutes, and by that time not only was I starving, but I was rather annoyed, too. 

I told her that I was going to eat my dinner, and she could stay in the potty and call me when she went pee.

Mistake #1.

So I went to the kitchen, and got no further than putting my dinner on a plate when I heard, “I pee on the floor.”

Oh, that can’t be good.

I go into the bathroom to find that the kid had taken the removable bowl out of the potty, put it in the sink of all places, then proceeded to sit on the potty and pee, which of course went all over the floor.  I admit I was getting rather cranky at this point.  It was almost 8:00 and I just wanted to eat dinner, darnit.

I went back to the kitchen to get paper towels.

Mistake #2.

I then hear a crash and crying.  I come in to find that somehow, my kid has managed to fall on her back smack in the middle of the puddle of pee. 

It was like the stars aligned to play a practical joke on me.  Of course, at this point, she’s melting down, I’m still madly hungry, and I get to take her upstairs to clean her up, change her, and then go clean up the bathroom.  JB showed up as I was cleaning the bathroom, and it wasn’t until I started recounting the story to him that I realized how funny it really was.

So the kid got to have her cake and got to eat it, too.  I figured technically she did go on the potty, despite the chaos.  I really didn’t want to bribe her for potty training, but it does appear to be a strategy that works.  

Mother’s Day Weekend Pics

14 May

Here are our pics of the last day of skiing this season at Squaw Valley USA, and Mother’s Day, spent on the beach of Lake Tahoe (Incline Beach). 

Returning from Maternity Leave

13 May

A girl on my team at work just returned from maternity leave.  The other day I was marveling at how easy of a time she seems to be having with it, and that’s when I stopped myself as I rehashed my experience…

When I returned from maternity leave, I worked Monday through Thursday, and then had to work 12 hour shifts Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Reno River Festival.  I then had to go right back to work the following Monday, so I worked 12 days in a row without a break.  One of those days was my first Mother’s Day (I’m still bitter about that, as I worked a booth at an event where mothers and their children came in droves).  I can’t tell you how hard it was to return to such a grueling schedule after spending three months of uninterrupted time with my baby.  I physically ached for her presence.

Anyway, about a week after that 12 day stint, I fell while walking with Little Miss in the Bjorn, and she ended up having to get surgery on her fractured septum.  She then had sinus infections for about a month after that, and couldn’t sleep through the night because she couldn’t breathe.

So yeah, I guess I had a hard time, and I’m now realizing that my experience wasn’t normal as I watch what it’s SUPPOSED to be like. 

That’s all.  Just had to vent.  Hopefully next time around, I’ll have one of those normal experiences returning to work.

Oh, Happy Day

12 May

I had a great Mother’s Day and weekend.  On Saturday, JB and I went skiing at Squaw for one last trist on the slopes (this time I swear it’s the last of the season!).  I applied sunscreen 4 times that day, and we had a lovely time and I didn’t burn myself silly like my last Spring skiing outing.

On Sunday, we did a picinic on the beach of Lake Tahoe with our family and JB’s parents.  There was a cool wind, but Little Miss had fun collecting rocks and chasing birds.  I have loads of good pics to post later on, but here is one to tide you over.

My present from Little Miss yesterday was a full 20 minutes of cuddling after she woke up from her nap.  It was truly priceless!

And to my Mom, sorry I didn’t get to spend Mom’s Day with you, but you were on my mind!

 

Party Pics

9 May

We went to Folsom last weekend for my nephews’ birthday parties (one on Saturday, one on Sunday).  It was fun to get together with my brothers’ families and have all the Cook cousins together. 

Saturday was the oldest nephew’s party at a laser tag place, and JB and my two brothers got to have a round of shooting at each other.  We chilled at my brother’s house Saturday night, and on Sunday, my SIL and I took the girl cousins to the zoo, park, and to ride a miniature train.  After naps, we went to the second nephew’s party at a bounce house place, and everyone had a blast.  Unfortunately, my camera’s card ran out of space, so I didn’t get nearly the pics of the parties that I had wanted!

Here you go!

Open Mouth, Insert Foot

7 May

I was standing in front of a class of 3rd graders for my volunteer duties with Junior Achievement, and can’t believe what slipped out of my mouth.

The scene:  Each student was to come up with an idea for a newspaper article and present it to the class.  A boy gets up and says something about monkey bars, but with his lisp, I heard something else.

Before I could stop my unconsious mind from clarifying, I said: “Monkey Balls?!”

It wasn’t until the word Balls was out of my mouth that I realized that was really bad.  I tried not to react, and back pedaled saying, “I thought you were talking about monkeys playing with balls,” but I soon realized it would be best to change the subject and move on, as there is really no recovering from saying Monkey Balls in front of a bunch of 10 year olds.

Mammoth Weekend Pics

6 May

OK, so it only took me a month to post these.  Here are the pics from our weekend at Mammoth back in April.  Enjoy!

Why Do We Blog?

6 May

I think many people in my circle of family and friends don’t understand why I blog, or why women would want to blog about their children.  One of my favorite bloggers, Heather from Dooce.com, said it so eloquently on her site today:

“Will you (her daughter) resent me for this website? Absolutely. And I have spent hours and days and months of my life considering this, weighing your resentment against the good that can come from being open and honest about what it’s like to be your mother, the good for you, the good for me, and the good for other women who read what I write here and walk away feeling less alone. And I have every reason to believe that one day you will look at the thousands of pages I have written about my love for you, the thousands of pages other women have written about their own children, and you’re going to be so proud that we were brave enough to do this. We are an army of educated mothers who have finally stood up and said pay attention, this is important work, this is hard, frustrating work and we’re not going to sit around on our hands waiting for permission to do so. We have declared that our voices matter.”

I couldn’t have said it better.  Not only is blogging a great and easy way to keep family and friends posted on our goings on, but it’s also an outlet for the frustrated unpublished writer in me.  I can publish myself at any time simply by clicking on the button that says, “publish”.  And this site has reunited me with so many people from my past — so many people that I would have fallen out of touch with.  Like Regan, from my high school French class, that just recently made Little Miss an adorable dress (oh, and she lives in London now), or Karen, whom I met the first day of high school and now lives on the East coast (married to another good friend from high school), but we still have a pulse on what the other is doing.  Just this week, Pennie, with whom I double dated to the Homecoming dance my senior year (with the infamous picture of my 90s hair from last week), commented on my site on how she remembered that dress.  How cool is that, people?!

I have also virtually met women that I never would have met such as Kristen from Krisalis and Kris from Web-Goddess.  I’ve followed along with their lives for years, and feel like we’ve been friends, even if all we do is read each others’ blogs.

I’m not as courageous as Heather from Dooce, meaning I won’t say anything on this site that will anger people I care about or jeapordize my employment, and hence I can’t make my living blogging as she does, but it is still quite a fun and entertaining hobby.

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