Chonk!

I already wrote most of this post once today, that'll teach me for leaving the screen up in reach of the 3 year old.

It's officially the first day of summer vacation. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with both kids in the house all day every day for the next 2 and a 1/2 months. Tranquilizers maybe? Kidding, really. Seriously though, I don't remember how I used to do it before Madeline was in school. Of course, things are much different now. Now, they know how to fight with each other. I get SO tired of playing referee all the time. I'm starting to hear myself repeating my mother's refrain, "why can't you just PLAY NICE!??" I need to start doing a better job of catching them being good together, and reward them accordingly. (Positive reinforcement works, that psych degree wasn't for nothing. Yeah, keep telling yourself that.)

It was nice to not have to drag myself out of bed to take her to school this morning. I had a nice, leisurely wake up, complete with reading my book and playing under the covers with Zach. One of my most favorite kid games is building tents, and although I don't have quite the skill of Auntie Boo (aka Missuz J), or the tolerance for creative messes, I do a pretty good bed tent on occasion. It's awesome how kids can be totally enchanted by nothing more than mommy holding up the sheet with her hands and feet. Aahhhh, youth. Well, ok, the mommy was pretty enchanted too. Something about a beautiful baby boy giggling in his jammies, can't help it.

Good news, the ceiling fan guy finally showed today. Of course it was only for an estimate, but he was really cool. We've decided to circumvent the evil home improvement mega store and deal directly with the subcontractor. Don't tell anyone, I don't want to get him in trouble, but Thank God. We would have had to cross our fingers on several more faxes being sent back and forth, and possibly get scheduled for the end of June for actual installation, but the cool fan guy is going to come in on a SATURDAY, and get them up for us next week. Yay fan guy!!! See, there really are good people out there in the world, and one of them is going to help us be able to sleep in our new house without having to run the AC nonstop. My faith is restored, and home improvements are moving forward again. Excellent.

Today, I will close with a few of the more precious sayings of my darling boy. Three year olds say the darndest things. His new made-up word is "chonk". It apprears to be a fairly multipurpose word, as in "I CHONKED that cookie" (took a big bite), or "I'm gonna CHONK ya!" (as in give you a big hug). His other favorite word is "huge", but it comes out more like "heeuuuge", Lately, everything he comes in contact with, from a bite of pancake, to a balloon at Applebee's is "HEEUUUGE!" Complete with wide eyes and lifted eyebrows. You'd think he was suddenly in the land of the large, and I guess in a way he is.

p.s. Thanks for the nice comments on the previous blog. It's nice to not feel so alone in the mommy-universe. And, Albuquerque is a pretty cool town, for the most part I like it a lot. Transitions are just HARD.

Hot Hot Hot...(and kinda shitty)

We've officially plunged into summer here in Albuquerque. I'm going to blame that for slacking on my blog the last few days. My room (which is where the computer is currently located, long story), is resembling an oven more and more. It's on the second floor and has a huge south facing bay window. Lovely in the winter months, a little much for summer. Clark is assuring me that this is unseasonably warm weather and that it should chill out soon, but for the time being, it's been tough to sweat it out up here for any length of time. We're trying to get some more ceiling fans installed, but the friendly neighborhood home improvement store has screwed up our request so royally it now looks like it'll be the 2nd week of June before anyone can get out here to do it. Argh!

The kids are doing well. They both had checkups at the doctor yesterday. Madeline still has some fluid in her right ear which is compromising her hearing, but the doc just wants her to come back and get it checked in 6 weeks, again. He seems to think it'll clear up on it's own, but it's been 2 months since she failed her first hearing test at school, and I'm starting to get a little worried. Zachary had his 3 year check, and barely even noticed when he had to have his one immunization shot. Such a big boy. He's still making progress on the potty training, slowly. I need to find some patience with the process. I'm SO ready for him to be independent in this regard, but also reluctant for him to grow up and away from me. With Madeline, I wasn't so much holding on to her being a baby, because I had another baby to deal with at the time. With Zach, being my last child, it's hard to let go of the baby days. As much work as tiny babies are, I really enjoyed both of mine at that age. The challenges change so much as they get older. There's also probably part of me that realizes that it's sooner rather than later that I'll have to get back into the world a little more again myself.

I'm trying to be interesting, entertaining, and fun on this blog, and I must say, I don't think I have it in me today. I woke up in a mood. Add to that the return of the evil little black ants invading my kitchen, and I kinda feel like hiding out and doing nothing. My home improvement enthusiasm has evaporated, and my interest in sharing my home life seems to have gone with it. I'm lonely and sad right now. Nothing is really different from yesterday, and yet I feel so different. I hate it. I hate being like this around my kids. Every time I feel like I'm finally starting to get my feet under me and am adjusting to this move, a day like this hits me. Shitty for no good reason. If there's anybody out there, send me some good energy today, I need it.

Totally Thwarted

Sometimes I don't know why I even bother. I picked Madeline up from school today with a plan. We'll go by the fabric store, check out some patterns and fabric for the curtain project, stop by Sweet Tomatoes after for dinner since it IS Friday night, and Clark is out of town, then, home and early to bed for the little ones. Sounds perfect, right? Well, that shows me. After grabbing Madeline, we swung by the house to grab some lemonades, since she was hot and thirsty after her field trip today. Maybe that should have been a hint. Lemonade acquired, I tried to decide the best route over to the fabric store. I decided to brave the freeway, it wasn't rush hour yet (so I thought), and I've been trying to get over my freeway fears, so we went for it. Right as I'm approaching the onramp I notice that the traffic on the freeway is looking very congested and slow, so I brilliantly decide to skip the freeway at the last second and go for the frontage road. About 5 seconds later, the traffic comes to a dead stop. Huh? We proceed to sit in stop and go for about 20 minutes while the freeway is moving along to my left slowly, but much faster than we are. Brilliant move on my part. At this point, I notice that Zach has fallen asleep. I consider turning around and going home, but having gone through this much, I decide that the 20 minutes he's getting in the car will probably be ok, and Madeline had seemed really excited about the fabric store, so we continued to bravely persevere. We get off the frontage road, finally, and take a wide detour around the traffic to start heading back toward the store. At this point, I notice that Madeline has fallen asleep too. OK, now what, keep going, wake them both up when we get there, and try to shop with 2 sleepy cranky kids? Or, turn around, drive home, and hope they both (or either, actually) sleep through the transfer from the car to the house. I decided to go home. And they both woke up as soon as I turned off the car. Luckily, Zach could be persuaded to go back to sleep. Madeline is resting, having a chocolate milk, and reading a book from her new book order. Not sleeping, but close enough. Oh, well, maybe we'll try again tomorrow. Now though, that chocolate milk isn't sounding bad at all.

Decorating Diva

Recently, I've been working on decorating my daughter's room. We moved into our new house in Albuquerque in January, and after moping around and kind of hating it for a few months, I decided I needed to get off my ass and actually DO something around here. There are a couple reasons for my deep resistance to decorating. First, I was raised a military kid, and most of the time we weren't even allowed to put a nail hole in the wall of our rooms, not to even mention painting, or any other permanent, or semi-permanent alterations. Second, I am possibly the most crazy perfectionist I know. To the point where I can't actually DO anything for fear of doing it wrong. I like the idea of decorating, and making a space my own, so I plan, and I pick up paint samples, and I clip magazines, etc. etc., but never seem to create anything. So, when my darling husband volunteered to actually paint, I took a deep breath, and said yes, let's do it. I wish I had a picture to show. It's coming together really cute.

The walls are green on the bottom and blue on the top (grass and sky, Madeline's choice). Her bed has a quilt with bright pastels and flowers. On the walls currently, we seem to have a butterfly theme. A few 3D sparkly butterflies over the bed, and one cute little framed print by the window for balance. I spent most of the day today searching for the perfect curtains. (See, not kidding about the perfectionist thing.) No luck, as I have a request for rainbows. I'm starting to think I'm going to have to make them. Yikes. Which will involve not only finding the fabric, and the pattern, but purchasing a sewing machine, since my mom's is no longer available for borrowing. I'm determined to finish this room though. I really want Madeline to feel at home in this house, and like she has a special space. I want her to know that I think she is worth the work and effort. I also want to start working on the perfectionist thing. She seems to have picked it up from me, as I get fairly regular reports from school that when an activity arises that she knows she'll have to try hard on, she doesn't want to do it at all. Sound familiar?

Speaking of the mighty curtain hunt today, my sidekick Zachary was along for the ride, as usual. I was a little worried about hauling him around town with no training potty in sight, but I decided to put him in the disposable training pants (not too terribly different from diapers as far as absorbency goes), and go for it. Bless his little heart, he was totally doing the pee pee dance in the middle of the food court, and try as I might, I couldn't even get him to sit on the big potty, so he just held it all the way home so he could go in his own potty. So, now we have to work on not being scared of falling in the toilet. Not an unusual fear for a tiny bottomed little boy, but one that we really do need to address. I cannot be chained to the mini toilet forever.

Introductions

OK, I guess I officially have a blog now. I've been debating starting one up for the last few weeks, since my sister (The Amazing Missuz J) started hers. I recently moved away from smalltown Utah to Albuquerque, NM, leaving behind my parents and my sisters (my bro having already moved away to Dallas), and I've really been loving reading about all that's going on with her and her sweet Sophie Gene. Reading her blog led to lurking around on a few others, particularly Dooce, which everyone seems to have read, so that makes me nothing special there. I've also been encouraged by various friends and therapists to do some journaling, and this seemed like a cool way to do it. However, after reading many of the exploits of ms. dooce, I began to revise my blogging plan (ok, wait a sec, my mother could conceivably read this, hmmm, could be an issue). I've always been a little, shall we say, private? I typically don't share much about myself with people I'm not close to, and sometimes not too much with those I am close to, so, this is a bit of a reach, putting myself out there. And, mom, if you ever do end up reading this, you are required to inform me of your presence in the blogosphere.

Following in the example of my brilliant sis, this blog will be focused on the goings on of my immediate family here in Albuquerque, namely, The Krause House. I am a Stay At Home Mom with two kids, Madeline, age 5, and Zachary, age 3. I wish I could post current pics of them, but since I am brand new to this blogging thing, and don't have a digital camera, that might be tough. I have some old ones, and will try to figure out at some point how to post them.

Madeline is a beautiful, brilliant little girl (I know, this is her mother talking, but really, other people can corroborate on this one). She's just finishing kindergarten, and is doing fantastically well, considering the major upheaval she went through this year. In Utah, kindergarten was 2&1/2 hours long, and she was in a class of 29 students with 2 adults. In my experience with elementary students, from teaching computers in an elementary school for 2 years before I had my kids, this mainly means kindergarten wasn't much more than herding little bodies and trying to make sure no one got hurt. She was doing great, and exceeding expectations left and right. In Albuquerque, however, kindergarten is over 6&1/2 hours, and it was a HUGE adjustment, especially for a little girl who was none too excited to leave her original kindergarten class in the first place. The good news is, her new class has 19 kids with 3 adults. For those of you familiar with student teacher ratios, you will know this is a major improvement. They expect a lot more out of kindergarteners here, and she was definitely resistant at first. I don't know who that was harder on, me or her, but it seems we got through it, and I think she even likes her new school now. Just in time for summer vacation.

Zachary just turned 3 last month, and mommy decided it was time to potty train. I HATE potty training. I felt like he was showing signs of readiness (i.e. telling me when he needed to be changed, showing interest in the toilet, etc.), and decided this was as good a time as any to take the plunge. I've found that a good clean break from the diapers seems to be the best plan of attack. This lets them know that you're serious, but also opens the door for days, maybe even weeks, of cleaning up accidents. Then, it becomes who can stand the messes longer. Sooner or later, the child will decide he doesn't really like soggy training pants, and leaving puddles all over the house, and will choose to use the potty, hopefully before the mother has gone crazy from the constant stream (ha ha, very punny) of said soggy pants and puddles. We're making progress, but it does sometimes feel like living in a fire drill, every time he mentions pee pee, I get to drop everything, and run, don't walk, to the bathroom, with the child most likely tucked under my arm or tossed over my shoulder. Good times.

The Krause House family is rounded out by myself, age 31, and my lovely spouse, Clark, age 43. As I previously mentioned, I am a SAHM, and have been since the birth of my first child, almost 6 years ago. Sometimes it's hard, the staying home thing, especially since moving to a new town where I don't know anyone, but the joy of being able to be home with my children far outweighs the loneliness (well, most days anyways). Clark is currently a Vice President over recruitment at Albuquerque Economic Development. Which doesn't tell you anything more than you knew 2 sentences ago. He basically works hard at recruiting businesses and industry to Albuquerque. He's a good man and a great dad and we all love him tons.

I think that about wraps it up for introductions. In future posts, I will try to include more day to day information about us, and the adventures of raising kids. Ta ta.