First Barbie Bites the Dust

So my daughter received her first Barbie Doll for her birthday the other day. I remember really, really wanting a Barbie car when I was a little kid -- well, my 3 year old daughter received a Barbie and a sporty purple convertible from Aunt Cindy.

I'm afraid that Barbie won't be driving the car all that much. She was the victim of a freak chewing accident. I got home from dropping the kids at school and I had (still have) a ton of work to do. I grabbed a greenie bone for my dog -- you know, so she'll have nice breath -- and then turned my attention to my billing software. I heard Ruby chewing on her bone. About 5 minutes later a I turned to give her a pat and saw a bunch of tan plastic all over the floor. Barbie's leg was in Ruby's mouth and both of her arms were already gone.
I think 3 is too young for a Barbie anyway.

Christmas and Birthdays are over and the dog is house-trained (sort of)

Quite a bit of time has passed since my last post. I've been super busy and just didn't feel like writing anything down at the end of the day.
Since I last posted, we gained a four-legged friend, my son turned 5, we celebrated Christmas and my daughter's 3rd birthday.
My daughter will officially be 3 tomorrow.

Let's start with the first thing... our four-legged friend, Ruby. Ruby is named after the character from Ruby and Max -- but she is not as much of a biotch. My brothers approve of the name because it happens to be their favorite programming language. I'll just let them believe that she is named after that:) The first week we had Ruby the Rocket, she was a dream dog. We rescued her, so we have no idea what type of dog she is or how old she is. They estimate she is between 8 months and 2 years old. She has some terrier in her. When it started raining around here, she started peeing in the house. I had just finished with potty-training my daughter about 3 months previous, so I was a bit dismayed to have to be scrubbing carpets and washing bedding all day long. I think we have things fixed up again and she only pees inside if my husband gets her too excited and then picks her up -- must have some cocker spaniel in there somewhere.

A few weeks after we got Ruby, my son turned 5 . We had a really fun party for him, but I won't bore you with those details. I just want to say that 5 is a truly magical age. And I don't mean that in any sarcastic way. It seems like the day my son turned 5, he turned into a completely different boy. Gone is the difficult son who fought with his sister at every turn. Gone is the boy who cried everytime he scraped his knee or got water in his eyes. He gets his own snacks, he buckles sis into her booster seat, he even helps me wash the windows. I loved him before and thought he was awesome, but now my mind is blown almost every day by how mature and caring he is becoming. Don't get me wrong, folks, he is still a boy. He still runs around like a monkey and if we are in a store, he can't keep his hands off anything, but he is becoming such a unique person and I love that. 5 is the best... so far.

Three year old girls, on the other hand, I can do without. Starting about a month ago, my daughter started in with the terrible twos (and she'll be three tomorrow). She is not someone you want to be around. I have to hang out with her because I'm her mom, but stay away if you aren't related. Everything is so dramatic and if you tell her no or correct her about something... even in the most loving way... the waterworks turn on. She's sharp as a tack, but a little juvenile:)

We celebrated her birthday today at Chuck E. Cheese. It was a co-birthday with her cousin who will be turning 4 shortly. She also has a cousin who turns 3 on Monday and one who turns 6 on Tuesday. It's a busy month for my family. I highly recommend the co-birthday thing from an economic standpoint:) We don't have to do the party thing again and the parents of the kids make out because we split the bill.

We survived the holidays, with a very full house. I am a freak when it comes to stuff being everywhere, but I didn't go too crazy while we had 8 people sleeping in our little house for 3 nights. I did find myself pulling out the vacuum at inappropriate moments, but that's as far as I went. I didn't go around lifting people's glasses and sliding coasters underneath.

I hope you all had a happy December and a wonderful New Year. I feel optimistic that this is going to be a great year.

Reading is fun!

My little boy is a reader:) I never thought I would get so excited by the sentence, "Mat sat on Mac."
We bought Lucas some Bob Books a couple of months ago and at first he wasn't too interested. He's known his letters for a few years now, and has known their sounds for quite some time, too, but he didn't want to sit down and actually put letter sounds together.
About a month ago, I gave him a choice of activities for an afternoon and he chose reading the Bob Books. The first few days were a real struggle -- his first instinct was to go for the long sound of vowels but these books start with most vowels using their short sound.
But now we've moved onto our second set of books and he is reading in the hallway to himself, sounding out words, while I brush Amanda's teeth.
I admit that I'm one of those annoying parents who cheers when my kid goes down the slide, or starts swinging on the swing by himself, so of course, everytime he reads a string of new words, I give him a high five.
He brought his books to school for show and tell and both of his teachers came up to me at the end of the day to remark on how well he is reading and asked how often we practice. I beamed with pride and it almost canceled out the previous talk I had with his teachers about my boy's rambunctious behavior in the classroom.

I don't think I started reading until I was probably 6 years old. Luc is almost 5, so he's got me beat already.

License Plate Cover Seen Today

My other toy
has tits


I guess he must have paid a lot for them if he feels the need to tell the world.

Mellow Thanksgiving and Ghostriding Causes Me to Break My Butt

The members of the Crouse Haus headed down to O.C. to visit the Grandparents Crouse for a little Thanksgiving goodness. The highlight of the trip, for me, was making it down there in under an hour and fifteen minutes on Wednesday night. We have never made it down there that quickly before. It was amazing... the kids barely had time to get started complaining when we pulled up in the driveway. This is just the third time in my life that I've been away from my siblings and parents on Thanksgiving and it was very mellow. I come from a family of 7 kids, so when you add spouses and kids, the place gets wild. This year there were just six of us and it was nice. There was room for everyone at one table and there weren't a zillion different dishes that I felt obligated to try.
We hit South Coast Plaza the day after Thanksgiving just to watch the shoppers. Holy crap, I cannot believe how many people were there. It was like a movie, with people bumping into one another, strollers loaded with so much crap that the babies were being dragged along by their parents. We left just spending $2 to ride the carousel and a bit on lunch. Nice. I've done most of my shopping online and just have a few odds and ends to pick up. The hardest part for me is wrapping, because I am a shitty wrapper.

Thank God I have a laptop, because I'm typing this while lying down. I think I broke my tailbone today. My husband says it's just bruised a bit, but shit, it hurts. My kids love it when my husband straps them into the double stroller and ghostrides them. He stands in our culdesac and gives them a trememdous push and they ride all the way to the top of our driveway, where I am waiting to give them a shove back down to my husband. They freak out it is so much fun. Hubby ate a little too much spinach for lunch and he gave them too big of a push this afternoon. They came zooming at me -- only a few inches behind me was the garage door -- and I couldn't fully stop the thing. I don't know exactly what happened, except I went flying in the air and landed square on my ass. It hurt like a bitch! That's 115 pounds (well, probably 118 after the Thanksgiving feast) coming down on my little tailbone. Over the course of the afternoon, the pain has increased. I just pray I won't be sitting on a donut this week at work.

nanowrimo a little behind...

I got a late start with nanowrimo.org because I didn't find out about the thing until we were well into November. What a great idea, and just what I need to put a fire under my ass.
I'm only up to about 3,800 words so I doubt I'll "win" this year, but hey, it's good practice. My husband has taken the kids out this afternoon so I can get a bit more words down, and I needed to take a break -- take a break by writing more.

This afternoon my husband asked when I was going to finish my book and bring in a million bucks. I replied that I needed to be rich so that I could devote all time to writing instead of pushing papers at work and scrubbing toilets on the side. He said that once I made my million I could "write for a living." But there's the catch 22, right. I need money in order to keep the dream alive. I find that at the end of the day -- after putting in time with work, caring for the kiddos and keeping the house from falling part -- my brain is in a fog. The past few months have been dry. I am all too happy to pick up a book and stick my nose in it for 2 hours in the evening rather than spending that type pounding on the keyboard.

So, here I am with another hour or two of writing time -- minus the 15 it took me to get dinner in the oven -- and I'm taking a quick break to write some nonsense here. It may be silly, but it does help clear my head. Writing down the day to day junk here gets it out of my head and leaves room for better things.

Bee Movie gets an A and where are my kids?

I took the kids + cousin Ben to see Bee Movie today. I was a little worried because it was PG and I thought it might not hold their interest, but at less than 90 minutes running time, I decided to give it a go. The kids loved it and so did I. A few folks didn't make it through the movie, but my charges sat almost quietly through the entire thing. They did eat their weight in junior mints and I had to take out a small home equity loan to pay for the movie and snacks, but it was worth it.
Now they are all happily building a fort in the living room and I have a few minutes to waste.

Speaking of the good behavior at the movies, what the hell has happened to my kids lately? A few weeks ago I was ready to tear my hair out. They were constantly fighting and never listening to a word I was saying. The past two weeks have been, well, strange. I am getting compliments on how well-behaved my kids are and now I wonder what the hell I was doing wrong for so long.

I have been plenty stressed out the past 6 months or so.... mostly about money and jobs, both mine and my husband's. Those situations haven't gotten better. Husband seems to keep getting bad news and taking out business loans, while medicare hasn't reimbursed his business since April! 80% of his patients are medicare, so that basically means no money for the business. Apparently a lot of PTs and doctors are having trouble with medicare, so we're not alone, but shit, we're talking the death of a business. Anyway, my anxiety level was at an all time high and trying to meditate or exercise my anxiety away wasn't working. After yelling at my kids for something trivial because I was stressed out, I decided to ask my doctor for a little help. 13 days into taking medication for my anxiety and I feel like a new person.

I didn't realize how much my anxiety could have been affecting my kids until I noticed how their behavior started to improve as I started to feel better. They weren't little out of control monsters, their mother was.

Invasion

The invasion has begun and I'm on a mission of destruction. The other day some ants invaded the master bathroom. I got rid of them and hoped that would be that. The next morning as Lucas was using the kids' bathroom he yelled that he was surrounded by ants... they hadn't gone, just moved. Ants in my house are one of my worst nightmares. The kids don't bring food into their rooms and I try to keep things pretty clean by dusting and vacuuming regularly -- apparently, the ants don't care. They want in.

I called my Orkin guy because we have a service every two months around the outside of the house to keep ants and spiders at a minimum. The guy came out this morning and took care of the problem in the bathroom. About an hour ago I went to put the kids down for a nap. I decided to lie down with them for a bit because I was damn tired. A few minutes into naptime, I heard son saying, "I see ants!" I looked up and sure enough, there were hundreds of critters trailing all along the baseboards. I quickly shooed the kids into my room and I tried to get a handle on the situation.
Of course, since this is the kids' room, I don't want to fill it with Raid. I filled a bottle up with vinegar and sprayed all over. They were under the mattresses, along the wall, climbing on the bookcase... everywhere. Help!
After soaking them with vinegar, I sprinkled all around with baking soda. I'm not sure what else to do that is natural. I will wait for everything to dry and then vacuum and dump the vacuum bag. If they keep coming back I'm going to abandon the house and move in with my mom:) The thought of an ant climbing on my precious child while he is sleeping is more than I can bear.

Anyone get rid of ants indoors without using chemicals? I don't mind spraying that stuff outside, but inside... I'm a little leery.

It's all relative and Halloween movie suggestions

I stopped by the local CVS store today to pick up new toothbrushes for the kids -- we had an ant invasion in the kid's bathroom (I swear it is clean) and I found a few of the critters on the toothbrushes. Yuck! Anyway, we had to stop by the Halloween section to try on scary masks. Amanda was scared of all of them until Lucas picked up a hockey mask, and said, "Look, Amanda, this one isn't scary at all." "You're right, Lucas," she said, as she picked up her own hockey mask to try on and my two little Jasons walked up and down the aisle wondering why people were running for their lives. My kids haven't seen Friday the Thirteenth, so the hockey mask thing isn't a bit scary. I really found that amusing. Guess I need to get out more.

Every Halloween, I rent the movie Halloween and carve my pumpkin. Since the kids came along, we carve the pumpkin first and I save the scary movie for when they are tucked in bed. Then hubby and I bake our pumpkin seeds and watch the show. I know, it is a cheesy horror flick from the '70's but for some reason, that movie always leaves me anxious for the next few nights. I'll turn out the lights and that music starts playing in my head. I usually have about 3 or 4 nights of not sleeping well.
Anyway, I think I'm going to make a change this year and skip watching Halloween, even though I love it. I need my sleep these days, so a nice, old-timey thriller will do.
If anyone reads this and has any suggestions, let me know.
I'm thinking along the lines of "Sorry Wrong Number" or "Dial M for Murder".

First day of school

My daughter had her first day of school today:)
She barely had time to say goodbye to me as I dropped her off -- so much for first day jitters.
She's been going to the school for a year and half now with me to drop off my son, so she is familiar with all the teachers and many of the kids. She is a favorite of the other two Amanda's who already attend -- that makes three Amandas in a very small preschool.
After the drop-off, which I expected to take a while, but actually only took a few minutes, I headed home to dig into work. Man, did I get some work done today. It's amazing how much I can accomplish in 4 hours when I am not constantly interrupted to have a tea party or dress up like Batman. I was really lucky to have more than 2.5 years with daughter right by my side, but I was more than ready to have her start her education:)
I think we'll all be a little better off with the kids in school a few hours a week and my boss will be happy that our customers are getting some attention.

Tonight my daughter called grandma (my mom-in-law) to tell her about the first day. MIL said that I must have been staring at the walls wondering what to do with myself while the kids were away. I had to walk in the other room and count to ten... come on, woman, I have a JOB outside of laundry and cooking and I barely had time to finish up before I gobbled down a Lean Cuisine (at my desk) and ran out the door to pick the kids up in time. I know she meant well, but damn, it really made me feel like she doesn't know beans about me.

Confusion... is it really mine? Decisions....

After re-reading my last post, it seems that I am the one who is confused, not my kids.
They are asking totally logical questions but they just aren't the ones I was expecting yet. We're all ready for "why is the sky blue?" and all that, but haven't given much thought to questions about different types of people or families that are out there.
I did tell my son that, yes, some boys do marry other boys, but that most people happen to marry someone of the opposite sex. Is that all I need to say at this point? Do I need to add more, like it's OK to marry someone of the same sex but I'm hoping we don't have to cross that bridge? Doesn't that make it sound like I don't approve? I want to teach the kids to be accepting of all good humans out there and to care for other people no matter the color of their skin, the language they speak or if they choose a mate who has the same body parts as themselves. All of those things are easy for me to talk to them about at this point in time, but I'm wondering how I'm going to handle things when they demand more of an explanation.

The Crouse Haus is under a tremendous amount of stress lately. My job, which I've had for more than 12 years, is on shaky ground and I don't know if it will be there in a few months. My husband's clinic is having issues right now and we aren't bringing in the same income we were when we purchased this house with a huge mortgage. We've been in the red for about 9 months now and the savings have vanished. My husband seems to be totally out to lunch concerning these issues and being that I am the one who handles all the finances, I feel that I am shouldering all the stress right now. I've tried to approach the subject of possibly selling our house and his response was to bring in an extra $50/mo by renting out the side of our house to someone for RV or boat storage.
Of course, for my husband, moving "down" would be a totally shot at his ego. Here he is, working 50 hours a week at his own clinic and he can't even afford a decent house for his family. I don't look at it like that, but he does.
Our options are to try to cut costs at home -- cancel cable, never turn on lights, eat spaghetti every night, shop at used clothing stores, cut our own hair and cancel Christmas and vacations for the next 3 years.
Option 2 would be to sell our home and find a nice townhouse or possibly rent a place for a year or two.
Anyone out there rent with kids? I'm wondering if the kids will suffer by not living in a "neighborhood". Will other kids want to come over to play? We've owned a house since before we had the kids and I grew up living in a regular single family dwelling.

One thing is for sure, something's got to give. For my own mental health and the mental health of my kids, I'm hoping husband will go for option 2.

My kids are confused

My daughter demands to wear her brother's Power Ranger pajamas every night and now she insists that she "must" be Robin (from Batman and Robin fame) for Halloween. She has some princess dressup stuff from grandma and her cousin will loan her a mermaid costume, but no, she has to be Robin.

Yesterday my son asked me if he could marry his cousin, Benjamin. I told him no, you can't marry your cousin. "Well," he said, "I want to marry a boy." Oh, shit, it was only 9 a.m., too early for my brain to come up with some great parental comeback.
Cut to yesterday afternoon on the way back from the library... "Mom, I really want to marry Ben." I tell my son again that he can't marry his cousin and that I'm sure he'll meet a nice lady that he'll want to marry when he is a grown-up. "Mom, do some boys marry other boys?" WTF.... "You're in preschool, son, get back to me in a couple of years and I'll formulate the correct response."

What the hell is wrong with my kids? Maybe it's all the recent talk of God wanting us to love everyone no matter how different they are. God made everyone and we should all love each other. But, I'll tell you what... as a mother of a 2.5 and almost 5 year old, I don't want to deal with how I'm going to love my transgender/gay kids just yet.

Annoyed that I was annoyed

My son goes to a small preschool which he really likes. I haven't really gotten to know any of the parents because I'm always running in and out... with work commitments, I don't have much time to stand around and chat or plan playdates. He does have one good buddy there who has come over and the mom seems friendly enough. Of course, there is also the problem of me being a total social-phobe.... being the self-absorbed person that I am, I always feel I flub with small-talk and people must think I'm an idiot. Which is why I'm so annoyed that I reacted the way that I did today....
Another mom I haven't seen before was waiting outside for her preschooler and she started calling her little toddler over to her, "Lucas, come here." I went up and said, "Lucas, that's such a nice name. That's my son's name, he's in the blah, blah blah..."
"Oh," she said, "do you spell his name with a 'c'?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Oh, we used a 'k', EVERYONE uses a 'c'." I mumbled something and then turned away annoyed with her comment. So, now I'm everyone and a moron for not being more creative with my son's name?
Anyway, right after I turned away to stare at the preschool door I felt ashamed for feeling annoyed with this totally unoffensive comment. I've said things like that before with people I don't know. You just say something without thinking and then immediately feel like such a dork. I should have turned back to her to talk some more, but I didn't and so now I'm annoyed with myself.

Oops I did it again!

No, I didn't play with your heart, but I did end up at Chuck E. Cheese today and then regretted it as soon as we walked out the door and my son burst into tears because his cheap ass "prize" broke 30 seconds after it was received.
There is a Chuck E. Cheese about a mile from my house. I have been there 5 times now in the last 3.5 years. All of these trips, except for one desperate rainy day, were made because of birthday parties or rewards for potty training. Today was a reward for potty-training for my daughter. She finally kicked the poop-in-your pants habit. We're going on 3 straight days of making it to the potty on time and for the first time in 4 years and 9 months I am diaper free! Yipee! The kids had a fine time at the restaurant and I didn't have a terrible time because the place was deserted and I had a coupon! The problem started when my tired son broke the cheap toy that he won.
He doesn't understand why they hand out crap.

Time lady is gone and why I like fall better than spring

It happened and I missed it. The time lady is no more in Southern California. I knew the end was near, but I thought I had a few more days. I tried to call last night and I was informed that the time lady had already passed on. I'm upset. I have vivid memories of being in my childhood kitchen and calling the time lady on our rotary phone. I don't know why, but sometimes we would listen to her voice for a minute or more. It was familiar, soothing, always there.... Now it's gone.

I love fall and we are having a bit of autumnal weather around So. Cal this week. It is quite early for such weather, but I'll take it even if it only lasts a couple of days. Although there is a chill in the air, fall carries with it some of the warmth left over from summer. I can't describe it except to say that my bones must have socked away some of the summer heat and they slowly release it when an autumn breeze blows.
Spring, on the other hand, carries with it the cold of winter. My bones haven't completely thawed out by the time spring rolls around and those cool spring breezes always leave me chilled. The temperature could be the same in spring and fall, but I would always feel warmer at my core when the leaves are changing (wishful thinking where I live) and the pumpkins are being carved.

Poop training just won't end, church carnivals and poker face

So my daughter simply refuses to poop on the potty. She has pee down pat... she makes it to the potty on time all the time for that. For poop, though, she just won't do it. Give her a favorite pair of underpants and she'll soil them in an instant. Promise her a puppy, trip to McDonald's, any toy in the toy store... on and on and she still won't do it. She knows what she's doing; it's not like she is having "accidents". She'll suddenly disappear and if I hear her door close, I know it's too late. She's quick... I can be in her room 1 second after she shuts the door and she'll say, "Change Me!" Yet if we stick at home for two days, not allowing her to wear pants of any sort, she'll hold it in (sorry, but there's no other way to put it). Then, as soon as we put her to bed with pants or a pullup on, she'll come out of her room 5 minutes later demanding to be changed.
The girl is almost 2.9 years old, for God's sake! My son was potty-trained in 7 days at age 2.5. She's supposed to start preschool in 1 month, but she has to be toilet-trained. If she doesn't go to preschool, I can't work and if I can't work, we can't pay our mortgage (yes, things are getting very tough around the Crouse Haus) and we'll have to move. If we do end up having to sell our house and move to an apartment, should I let her know it is all her fault because she can't sit her butt down on the potty and do what every other normal person does? She speaks in multiple sentences, she can kick my butt at Candyland and Go Fish. What is wrong???

After changing my daughter this afternoon, we went to a carnival held at a local Catholic Church/School. It was the church I grew up attending and I went to their carnival every year. It's been about 15 years since I've attended their carnival and not much has changed. Even the kids look the same. There's the same Cake Walk, rides, baked goods sale, carnival games and, of course, the Knights of Columbus sponsored beer booth:) About the only thing that has changed is the price of tickets for rides. We dropped about $40 just for the kids to go on about 5 rides each. Damn. My parents had 7 kids, so I know they couldn't have afforded that back in the day. The kids had a really fun time, though, and so did I. Amanda ate her weight in cotton candy and Lucas has stains all over his brand new robot shirt from his delicious snow cone. We put $10 in for the raffle of various gift baskets and maybe we'll win something when they do the drawing tomorrow. The experience even made me wonder if myself and the kids aren't missing out on something by not belonging to a church. Sure, I don't agree with many of the teachings, but who can argue with making friends in a community of folks who follow Jesus' teachings.? If only church leaders were a bit more like Jesus, I would readily sign up. If you believe everything you read in the Bible, we should all try to be more like him... if we were, then all the shit going on in the world, wouldn't be going on.

Now we come to the poker face. Apparently I don't have one. We have really taken to playing Go Fish around the Crouse Haus. Everyone in the household can play it, but I, according to Lucas, don't play well. As soon as I draw a card from the pile, he immediately knows whether I got the card I was looking for or not. He says my face gives it all away. Damn, he's only 4.5 and already he kicks my butt at cards!

Morning at the beach

I packed three kids into the car early this morning in an attempt to escape the heat. It is probably about 100 now in the Conejo Valley. The weather in Malibu was absolutely perfect. Not a cloud in the sky and a slight breeze helped keep us all cool. The kids were freakin wild and as I stood on the beach watching the three of them tempt fate in the waves I thought, "what the hell was I thinking about bringing three young children to the beach!" I almost had a heart attack a few times when a big wave would come crashing and the three barely made it back to the beach. But I held back, as much as I wanted to run and scoop them all up.

I also met a lovely woman and her son. The reason I mention it is because this woman, Lisa, has the personality I dream of having. The woman must have spoken with at least a dozen people as we watched our kids and then headed across the street to have lunch (with the richies) at a little place in the Malibu Country Mart. She came up to me and said something like, "I hope you don't mind if we hang out because I think our kids might have fun together." Then she invited me to join her and another friend for lunch. She calmly reprimanded my son for throwing sand, she asked another woman if she would mind if we sat at her table and she picked up another conversation with a woman sitting alone on a bench. That is more talking with strangers than I usually do in a whole month. She seems like one of those women who can easily strike up a conversation with someone standing in line at the supermarket. I love that. I wish I could be like that. I know that unless I decided to become heavily medicated I'll never be that way, but it is refreshing to meet friendly people like that. It's too bad she lives about 30 minutes from us.... actually, lucky for her or else I might just try to hang out with her more often:)

We're now back in the oven. I broke down and turned on the air because my daughter is napping. The boys are tearing about the playroom, so I better go investigate. Only about 5 more hours before it will be cool enough to run around outside.... help!

Black Hole

I was crunching some of our household numbers today and the song "Black Hole Sun" game into my head. My budget doesn't have anything to do with that song, but whenever I am thinking of black holes that song just immediately begins to play.

There is a black hole in our household. It is eating up money and we can't quite figure out where it is all going. When the kids start preschool in the fall -- daughter's first year of school and my son's last year of preschool -- I'll be able to put in a few more hours at work. Of course, all that extra money will quickly disappear to pay for the crazy preschool costs. After I pay taxes on my salary, I'm left with enough for each hour of work to buy some sort of Venti concoction at Starbucks.
Ah, well, they really need school and my work needs more attention than I can give it when I'm trying to put tape over my kids' mouths as I make an important phone call (kidding...)

In any case, the Crouse Haus is going on a serious budget diet. The kids are going to be moaning about going without fancy stickers and disgusting junk food. I'm going to go back to home coloring for my hair -- looks like I'll be back to brown, since I'm not allowed to attempt blond at home after the strawberry blond incident. As for my husband... he already does with so little and he works like a dog -- I think he can continue to get his fancy-pants beers.

That's just gross!

My kids are about average on the gross factor. They do things all the time that give me the heebie-jeebies. My son once licked the floor of an ice-cream store... I guess he wanted to see what it flavor it was. In public restrooms, my daughter likes to put her hands in the bubbles that are left behind after she has washed her hands -- doesn't she know how many dirty people have washed their hands in those sinks?!

This evening my daughter did something, that I'm sure seemed perfectly natural to her, but it totally grossed me out. We have two step-stools in the bathroom for the one sink. The kids stand side by side to brush their teeth. First I brush my son's teeth and my daughter does her own, then we switch. Tonight I was brushing my son's teeth and he spit in the sink -- so far, so good. My daughter immediately dipped her toothbrush in the foam her brother just spat out and before I could stop it, the toothbrush was back in her mouth. Ew! Double ew! We either need to think about remodeling the kids' bath to include two sinks or we have to move.

Demogirl has left the building

Demogirl, who happens to be my baby sister, moved out of the Crouse Haus on Saturday. We are all sad to see her go and the kids keep looking at the room where she was sleeping and they sadly ask, "where's Aunt Molly?" It was so nice having her with us the past 3 months but I'm sure she'll be much happier not having to share a bathroom with two preschoolers.
Demogirl is headed up to S.F. to put down some roots and make some business contacts.
If you see her walking around the streets of San Francisco, be sure to say "hi".

We wish you luck, Balz, and we hope you get a really big apartment so the members of the Crouse Haus can come up for a visit soon. Heehaw!