Jan12

The Paint Can.

Posted on by
The Paint Can.

First of all, I realize that I sound like The Most Unobservant Mother Ever.  I probably am.

Second of all, there is no photographic record for what I am about to tell you.   You’ll just have to take my word for it.  Because WHY WOULD I MAKE THIS UP!?

A week ago, Joey brought in a paint can from the garage to warm up so he could paint the inside of a door that he was working on.  Short version: the paint was all weird from being in the garage for so long, so we were going to have to throw it out.  He stuck the drop cloth and a couple of paint cans in the corner of the kitchen, and that was the end of the project.

Fast forward to today.  I was cleaning the kitchen counters while Analie and Angus alternately stirred and tried to climb inside my largest mixing bowls.  They’ve been playing on the kitchen floor all week and haven’t even noticed the drop cloth and cans in the corner, so I’d wipewipewipe the counter, glance back to make sure they weren’t biting each other, and then wipewipewipe the counter again.

Suddenly, I had to go to the bathroom.  (I KNOW, SORRY.  But it’s what happened next.  I’m sure you have to go to the bathroom sometimes too.)  I looked at my children, happily shoving each other as they scuffled over which one of them was going to use the spatula, and I ran out of the room.

I was gone for less than a minute.  Probably more like 30 seconds.  (Because really, who washes their hands in the bathroom when you left your kids playing on the kitchen floor by themselves?  My kitchen has a sink, and I know how to use it.)  When I returned, they were not where I left them.

NO.

THEY WERE NOT.

Suddenly, one of them had spotted the paint cans and drop cloths in the corner, so they had both crawled over and started exploring.

GUYS.  I have been staring at those stupid paint cans all week and somehow I neglected to notice that one of them didn’t even have a lid on it.

You want to know how fast they realized that?  Like 0.0001 seconds after starting to crawl over there.  And you want to know what else?  Not only did that stupid paint can not have a lid on it, but there was a stir stick in it!  STICKING UP IN THE AIR LIKE THE SEARS TOWER.  (Wait, do they even call it the Sears Tower anymore?  Whatevs.)  But you surely get my point, which was that the stick was super obvious to anyone who has eyeballs.  And it’s always a pretty good indicator that there’s no lid on a paint can if there’s a stir stick in it.

So we’ve established that I’m blind.

Back to the story.

I walk into the kitchen and there’s Analie, holding the end of a gloopy, paint-soaked, stir stick, and she’s happily sweeping it in broad swaths on the wood floor.  The grin on her face is worth a million bucks, and I can see the pure amazement that WOAH!  There’s white stuff every place I move this stick!

Where’s Angus?  Oh, he’s eating the wet paint she smears on the floor, so his face and whiskers are bright white.

What did I do?  I started screaming “WHAAAAAAT?!?!” and jumped around the kitchen floor throwing random things away.  I’m not even sure what all went into the trash can (hopefully it wasn’t anything important), but I know the paint stick was the first thing to go.

The paint on the floor was thick and oozing into the cracks between the wood on the floor, so I unrolled a bunch of paper towels and alternately tried to wipe the floor, my child’s hands, and keep Angus from eating more paint.

And did I mention that somewhere in the chaos I stepped in the paint?  I wish I had realized it when it happened, because the next thing I knew there were Jenna footprints all over the kitchen floor.

I could keep going, but I think you get the drift.  All told, it took about 20 minutes and Joey’s travel toothbrush to clean up.  Angus has since stolen that toothbrush and carried it off to who knows where.

I just hope the paint on it has dried by now.

(I feel like the takeaway in all this is that I just need to stop having to go to the bathroom.  Ever.  Because LOOK WHAT HAPPENS.)

And that is the story of how I inked my place in the record books as The Most Unobservant Mother Ever.

Jan4

Girlfriend just said purple. TRUE.

Posted on by
Girlfriend just said purple. TRUE.

After lunch we were sitting on the floor in the dining room coloring Ana’s picture purple.  I bought her some chubby washable crayons, and it’s a good thing, too, because let’s just say that not all of today’s coloring was done on the paper.  And the crayon just wiped right off! (Crayola has come a long way since when The Kid was three and colored all over the wall in the hallway when Sister and The Brother locked him out of the playroom because he was being annoying.  And boy howdy, he sure gave them the What For.)

She still can’t choose purple out of a lineup of crayons, but I think that’s mostly because she just wants all of them at the same time, right now, please and thank you.

About five minutes of coloring later it was clear that Ana didn’t want to color on the paper anymore (key phrase: ON THE PAPER) so I decided to call it and switch to reading a book about colors.

I read that stupid book six times.  SIX.  (Once was backwards and once was on my  head, so if those don’t count as real read throughs then only four.)  That sixth time when I turned to the purple page, Ana screamed and said “BA-BUH!!!”  And then she looked at me like she had just singlehandedly averted Climate Change and wasn’t I super proud of her?

Now that she can SAY purple, perhaps we will be able to select the purple crayon tomorrow?

 

Jan3

Early Learning Activities: Week 1 (Look At Me!)

Posted on by
Early Learning Activities: Week 1 (Look At Me!)

One of my parenting goals for the year is to be more intentional about structuring Ana’s playtime and reading more books.  I’m going to be starting an activity binder with themed activities based on seasons and ages, but I’m still thinking through how I want to lay it out. Once I get it all beautiful in my mind, I’ll go to Target and buy the tabs.  (GUYS. I just have to disclose that in my imagination this binder is tab-tastic and has at least two different sizes so I can denote sub-tabs.  I’m actually hoping for 3 sizes so I can go into sub-sub-tabs.  Is that overkill?!?!)

Anyway.  This week we’re working on colors and self-identification.

Our project was to take a big piece of paper, trace Ana, then color in her eyes, nose, mouth and hair (pausing after each to point out where it was on the picture, then on her face and mine), and clothes.  Using the main color in her outfit, I was to let color on her “clothes” and repeat the color over and over again.  Then I showed her two colors and see if she could pick that color.

Ready to make a “Look At Me!” picture with your kiddo??

Me too.

LET’S GO.

First, I assembled my supplies.  It’s all stuff you have around your house.  (Apologies in advance for these horrific photos.  Ana goes bonkers for cameras so it has to be point and shoot all the way for these kind of activities.)

I cut a Trader Joe’s sack to make a long piece of paper, and got crayons based on what I was going to dress Analie in (all purple to make it easier for her to identify the color) and a pen for tracing.

Then I realized that it’s not a good idea to trace a squirming child on carpet.  So we moved to the hardwood.

Step 1: Lay out of focus child on paper.

Step 2: Trace your child and then show the drawing (if you can call it that) to your child.

Step 3: Draw eyes, nose, mouth, hair and feet.  (I was not able to photograph this because Ana was like WHAT IS THAT AWESOME THING IN YOUR HAND MOM!?!?!?!?! and kept lunging.)

Step 4: Let your kid color their clothing. Preferably they color the clothing which is on the paper, not the clothing which is on their person.  But whatevs if they color themselves a little bit, right?  Because it will wash out.

Step 5: Allow your child to explore the crayon.  (Ana quickly determined that crayons are not tasty, but they are still fun to put in our mouths.  This use of crayons was discouraged. So was drawing on the wood floor.  Hi, Joey!)

Step 6: Admire your child’s coloring and praise them for doing a good job.  Don’t worry about coloring inside the lines, that will come later.

Step 7: Work on coloring a little bit more every day this week, emphasizing the same color (in our case, PURPLE.)  Continue to point out the facial features on the picture and on your child, encouraging them to identify their nose, mouth, eyes, etc.

Step 8: At the end of the week, allow your child to watch you cut the picture out of the bag.  Then post it on the wall in her room, or on the fridge. (Except I have OCD about things on my fridge.  I hate it.  I may make an exception for my child, though…maybe…)

YAY FOR US!  First week of intentional learning activity is in the bag.  (In this case, quite literally, it’s ON the bag…)

Jan2

True Confessions

Posted on by
True Confessions

So, it’s time for me to divulge a dirty little secret.

OHMYGOSH I love burnt popcorn.

IT IS SO GOOD.

I feel like I am seriously discriminated against because of my affinity for burnt popcorn. It’s so lame.

But for New Year’s, my rockin friend Angel (who is easily the most vocally against my burnt popcorn consumption) gave me ONE FREE PASS for a bag of popcorn.  I had previously sworn off the burned goodness, which has been so boring. SO. BORING.

Anyway, I’m eating that bag of popcorn now. It is burned to a charcoal crisp.

I

am

loving

it.

Weigh in. Does ANYBODY out there also like burnt popcorn?

Dec22

The Annual Woestman Christmas Card!

Posted on by
The Annual Woestman Christmas Card!

One of my favorite things to start thinking about at the beginning of the Christmas season every year is what we’ll do for our Christmas card.  The first few years of our marriage our cards were pretty bland (and last year’s was Analie’s birth announcement), but I’m getting more and more interested in making unique cards that express (some of) our personality.

This year, we had tons of fun with our card.

And I would have loved to be able to mail it to all of you.  But as it is, our Christmas card list has 100 names on it and postage was getting super expensive.

SO, please enjoy our Christmas card in blog version.  (Incidentally you will not find the phrase “Merry Christmas” anywhere on it, because we were getting so down to the wire that we weren’t sure it would be going out before Christmas.  Hehehe.)

We love you!  Even you blogosphere friends I have never met and/or don’t know are creeping on my blog.

Merry Christmas!

(This was a 5×7 front and back flat card in real life.  But the internet version can be whatever the heck you want it to be.  POSTMODERN!)

Dec19

ME TOO, GUYS!

Posted on by
ME TOO, GUYS!

I was laying on the floor playing with Analie who was pulling stuff out of her junk mail bag (yes, my child plays with junk mail and she loves it) when Joey leaned over and gave me a kiss.

I’M SORRY.  IT HAPPENS.  I HAD TO PUT IT IN THE STORY OR IT WOULDN’T MAKE SENSE.

Anyway, when Analie saw what was going on and she immediately leaned forward and smashed her face right in between ours. Then she giggled like she’d gotten in on something really awesome.

I haven’t been able to stop laughing since.

Dec19

Angus is on a timer.

Posted on by
Angus is on a timer.

Angus went peepee in the house three times yesterday.  HOLY COW DID WE GET THE DUMBEST DOG EVER?!?!  No.  We didn’t.  (I don’t think?)  But we did get a shih-tzu, and they are notoriously hard to housebreak, especially in the winter.  If you didn’t know, shih-tzus are actually half cat so they have that imperious I Will Do Whatever I Want thing, in addition to a super short attention span and can’t remember anything.

That’s why Angus is now on a timer.

Every hour it beeps and every hour Angus goes outside.  This is to remind me not to forget to take him outside, which is the predominant reason he keeps having accidents.

Maybe I am half cat too.

(I actually don’t want to think about that for too long. Cats make me sneeze.)

We’re going to keep with the one hour timer for 2 weeks, then I’ll back him up to two hours, if he’s doing well.

We’ll get there.  Someday.

I keep reminding myself that Henry was so easy to housebreak because a.) we lived in a 750 square foot apartment, and we could block off the back 400 square feet, so it was really easy to keep track of him, and b.) IT WAS JULY.

 

Dec17

Ana’s First Peanut Butter

Posted on by
Ana’s First Peanut Butter

The Internet told me I could feed my 1 year old peanut butter, and who am I to argue with collective ignorance?

Dec16

His name is MUD

Posted on by
His name is MUD

Tuesday, I thought for sure we had gotten an Exceptionally Smart Dog.

But by Wednesday, I was convinced he was as dumb as a box of rocks.

He had regressed in his housebreaking.

Severely.

It’s mostly our fault, though, because he had been doing SO well that we kind of forgot for a moment that he wasn’t Henry (aside from the fact that he’s black as coal – inside and out) and weren’t paying as close of attention to him as we should be.

This is how we went from a two accidents in four days house to a four accidents in three hours on Wednesday morning, with two more later in the evening as a bonus.

No, Internet, Angus is a five pound dog.  It is beyond my comprehension how he has room in his colon for that much business.

In any case, we did what we should have done in the first place.

He only gets food and water three times a day (breakfast, lunch and dinner) and then we take up his dishes.  (Unfortunately he discovered that he can drink from the Christmas tree so I have to watch him super carefully.)  And he’s now on a leash at all times when he’s not in his crate, because for some reason the leash is tons easier to spot on the floor than he is.

These measures have been effective.

Since instituting them, Angus has had only two accidents!  WIN.

But you know what really irks me?

Today at Target they were selling Black Angus for $9.50 a pound.  I feel like I got ripped off last Friday because we totally paid $75.00/lb.

Dec13

The Next CEO Of Starbucks

Posted on by
The Next CEO Of Starbucks

Analie goes totally postal when she sees us drinking coffee.  She reaches her arms out (and/or starts flapping), sets her jaw, and growls for us to GIVE! HER! THAT! MUG! NOW!  PLEASE.

The past couple of days I’ve given her my coffee mug after I finished it.  And as soon as he gets it, she’s grabbed it with both hands and held it up to her mouth just like she’s seen Mommy do.  It’s hilarious because it covers her entire face. (I totally need to get a photo of this.  I am a failure.)

She started reaching and growling for my coffee mug this morning, and it wasn’t even close to being empty.  So, I thought, I’ll just let her taste what’s in there and nip this little problem in the bud.

(Point of detail: I drink my coffee black.)

I held the mug to her face and she put her tiny hands on either side of it.  We tipped it toward her mouth and she took a little drink of straight up black coffee.

I expected her to grimace and cry.

Instead, she flapped, squealed, and lunged for the mug again.

Plan = Backfired.