Mine mine mine, all mine

punk

Drew had his third-ever haircut over the weekend.

It turned out magnificent - boyish, charming...and very short. She cut it shorter than it's ever been cut.

When it's washed and combed and patted down, it looks fantastic. But when he first wakes up in the morning, he has all the appearance of a miniature Sid Vicious.  I think we should avoid wetting it down and just let him walk around like that - maybe with one of those vintage candy cigarettes dangling insouciantly from his lower lip.

I think the ear infection is abating - I haven't noticed any recurrence of fever - but that sure isn't doing anything to improve his mood, which in the past two days has ranged from cranky and sullen to downright pissed.

This morning, he was miffed that we dared to fasten him into his carseat. Clearly, he wanted to sit in my lap and clearly, we, as his loyal peasant subjects, should have demonstrated immediate obeisance.

I attempted all manner of distraction to interrupt the tantrum - from hand feeding him graham crackers to making increasingly sillier kissy faces - but nothing would suffice until, in sheer desperation, I handed him an empty Mountain Dew bottle I discovered among the detritus in the back seat floorboard.

The Mountain Dew bottle instantly became his best friend. He cooed to it, and patted it gently, hugged it and chortled at it.

"Why didn't we think of giving him trash in the first place?" Charles said.

Of course, he does see his daddy constantly fondling a Mountain Dew bottle - so I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense.

New furniture is arriving tomorrow!

Here's what my living room will look like, except add a recliner and take away the glass coffee table, as glass tables of any kind are not advisable around cranky toddlers.

Isn't it fresh and funky and hip? I'll be the coolest mom on the block! In fact, I'm the only mom on my block - and in further matter of fact, ours is the only house on my block. So it is, literally, my block.

But anyway, even if there were a zillion other houses on the block, mine would be the coolest.

So now I'm trying to decide what to do with the old blue-plaid-set of doom. Donate to Goodwill? Throw slipcovers on it and put it in the den where we can ignore it? Turn it into a white-trash lawn decoration? Burn it in the back yard?

I would donate it, but the people at Goodwill probably won't even want it. It' s just that hideous.

no solitude for you!

Two weeks ago, I decided to be mature and responsible and actually plan for a day off in advance, rather than waiting until I was so desperate for some time to myself that I called in sick and then hid under my covers all day shaking in paroxysms of guilt.

So I put in a request for a day of annual leave, for Monday, March 6.

That Monday would be, I decided, Amy's Day of Rest and Solitude. I would talk to nobody, except maybe a manicurist. I would take a bubble bath. I would plant some flowers. I would read a book. I would doze and nap and occasionally just flop about on the bed for no reason at all.

I would have between eight and ten hours all to myself, and I would by God do whatever struck my fancy.

Annual leave was granted. Monday morning broke bright and lovely. Blissful, I packed husband and child off to work and daycare, respectively. The house empty of all other human lifeforms, I returned to the still-warm bed, with the luxurious option of staying in bed until at least - at least! - 9 a.m., at which time I may or may not emerge and I may or may not eat breakfast.  Whatever. It was my day. I could do as I pleased.

8:30 a.m. - the telephone rang. Feeling dozy, I glanced at the caller ID, expecting to see the name of a telemarketer or a bill collector or somebody else that I could freely and guiltlessly ignore.

It was husband's cell phone number. Briefly, I debated not answering. He wouldn't call me on my day off unless it was an emergency. But dammit, it's my day off! He's not allowed to have emergencies on my day off.

Groaning, I answered the phone, hoping against hope that he had merely temporarily misplaced his common sense and was calling only to say he missed me.

"Drew's daycare just called me," he reported briskly.

"To say how much they just love him and how great he's doing, right?" I replied hopefully.

"He has a fever of 102.5 and they're sending him home."

"Home....?

"Wait a minute. Home is where I am! By myself! Alone! If he comes home, I won't be by myself any more."

"That is unfortunately true," husband replied. "However, I'll come home, too, so you won't be alone with him on your day off."

Which was very sweet of him, but it didn't change the fact that my Day of Rest and Solitude just became a Day of Taking Care of Sick Toddler, which definitely does not include such activities as Bubble Baths and Manicures but rather Snot Wiping and Medication Administering.

Turned out he had an ear infection. Hasn't had one for four months and picks my day off to get one. One day, in the not-so-distant future, I will remind him of this, and punish him accordingly.

In other news, I found the perfect living room set. Perfect. It's beautiful. They have to deliver it, though, because even though they told me I could have the floor model, 1) we decided we didn't want a sofa that had held that many random butts and 2) they wouldn't give us a discount on it.

(I would have taken it, random butts notwithstanding, if they'd offered me a discount. I'm not fastidious. A couple tubfuls of Febreeze and it would have been good as new.)

I did ask them for a swatch of the fabric, so I could buy matching curtains, and they let me have one of the sofa pillows.

So basically, I plopped down $1,200 in cash and walked out of the store with a pillow. I am the original bargain shopper, yes indeed.

Tax Refund!

Yes, yes, I know it was my money to begin with and therefore there's no logic to me getting all excited about getting it back from the government.

But my. What a wad of cash I now hold in my sweaty little bank account.

Now. Do I do the responsible and mature thing and use my windfall to pay off some debts, leaving myself once again poverty-stricken but secure in guiltless righteousness?

Or do I buy new living room furniture?

See, here's the deal with the furniture.

Back when I was pregnant, we bought the house in which we are currently residing. By the time we paid everything we needed to pay to actually get into the house, we had very little money left for furnishings for our living room.

Our old living room furniture wasn't even in the running. I'd had it for going on 10 years and it was covered in every manner of dog fur, cat hairs, Diet Coke spills, cigarette burns and probably harboring a small family of rodents in its nether regions.

I wanted new, smoke-free, fur-free, rodent-free furniture.

So, there I was - eight months pregnant, just closed on my first home, practically broke and scared to death. Not exactly the greatest frame of mind in which to be shopping for anything more involving or exciting than, say, socks.

Which is how we ended up with the blue-plaid-sofa-from-hell, and its matching blue-plaid-loveseat-of-death and blue-plaid-chair-of-horrors.

This set has absolutely nothing going for it other than the fact that it was cheap.

It's ugly and it's uncomfortable. What a winning combination!

So, here I find myself, finally possessing enough money to be able to buy a decent set of living room furniture.

I think my - what is actually relatively small, you know, in the grand scheme of things -  amount of debt will be easier for me to handle when I have a comfortable sofa upon which to rest...don't you?

puffy

Yes, I have been horribly inconsistent with my updates lately. I have no excuse whatsoever, other than sheer, unadulterated laziness.

Today I am suffering from fever blisters all over my lips. Where they came from, I don't know. My lips are all puffy and swollen and I think I look like a deranged clown, although Charles, when confronted with my whining, commented, "Women pay good money to get lips like those. You look like Angelina Jolie."

Sure. If Angelina Jolie was a deranged clown.

Thank goodness for Anbesol.  Twenty percent benzocaine...my lips may look awful but at least I can't feel them.

Last Friday, Drew appeared in a brief but shining and memorable cameo on the evening news on WYFF News channel 4. They were doing some feature on a virus that's affecting hundreds of children in the Upstate, and they shot some footage at Drew's daycare.

The clip of him is very short - like two seconds - but still, there he is. My baby. Smiling and laughing on local TV. I always knew he would be a star. Not that I'm biased or anything.

Let's see, what else...

Oh yeah. We've started trying to use time-outs as a way to discipline Drew for some of his more recent interesting behaviors - such as throwing his food on the floor for no reason other than just to do it.

It's really tough, though, because when he's being ignored he tries all manner of cuteness to get our attention - everything from saying, "Uh-oh, uh-oh" to laughing maniacally to saying, "hey hey hey" and waving over and over.

Fortunately I only have to leave him in time-out for one minute, because I don't think I could handle it for much longer without laughing.

I don't know. I just don't think he gets it. He knows he's being ignored and I think he knows why - it just doesn't seem to bother him that much.

He's very inconsistent with his reactions. Sometimes a stern "No!" will cause him to burst into heartbroken sobs of remorse, and sometimes he'll just stare me straight in the eye and repeat whatever it was that earned the "No".

Other things of note:

He can now say "ball" - his new favorite toy, and the bigger the better.

If you ask, "Where's Drew's belly?", he'll lift up his shirt and point to his stomach.

Lately, everybody is "Momma", including Dad, Grandma and grocery store checkout clerks.

We've discovered that he sleeps much better in complete pitch blackness as opposed to with a nightlight. Hey, it only took us 18 months to figure this out.

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Speaking of time-outs....

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