Lessons in Motherhood

I made a little mistake recently. I accidentally paid my gas bill to the wrong account number, and instead of letting me know, the gas company decided to just turn off my gas. Minor problem because we will have no heat or hot water until next Wednesday. Now, before you get all panicky, trust me that I’ve already panicked enough for all of us AND I’ve already got a bunch of contingency plans.

All of that is to say that we are going to be just fine (plus, it’s 70 here so let’s stop feeling bad for us). However, it does bring up an important point which we should all remember, which is just how fortunate we are. I mean, I was able to pay my bill, I can afford to go buy space heaters, I could even stay at a hotel if it really got unbearable (which it won’t if you check the weather forecast). But there are thousands and thousands of families living here in Atlanta and across the country that don’t have any of those options. It’s times like this when you get slapped in the face with a little inconvenience that you realize how very fortunate you are.

So, I’m trying hard not to beat myself about the account number thing. I’m trying to just keep it all in perspective, be thankful for what we have, help where we can, and enjoy some bad microwave meals and cold showers for the next 7 days.

Oh, and before you think that I’m some type of zen guru, I’m about 5 hours past the point of shock and anger on this thing. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that there is nothing I can do tonight. I’m just going to try really hard to keep everything in perspective (at least for tonight).

When I’m writing my wedding toast for Hailey, just remind me of this conversation that I had with her tonight:

Hailey: Mommy, are you going to have more babies?

Me: [GASP] No. What do you think Mommy is, just a baby making machine?

Hailey: Well, when I have babies, I’m going to name them Luke and Leah.

Me: Ok, Hailey. You do that.

As of yesterday, we are tied 1-1 on the ER visits. Our little Hailey got her first stitches, and might I just mention that I’ve never had stitches. But I probably shouldn’t be bragging about it since it’s my fault that she had stitches at the ripe old age of 5!

You know, maybe I could actually come up with a way to blame Luke for this. Yeah, yeah. This all happened because he was out of town last week. Yeah, that’s why. He was out of town, and I just couldn’t help myself, I had to hang up a Christmas decoration all by myself. Handy Mommy. I was so freaking proud of myself. After I did it, I leaned a picture against the wall to cover the nail in the moulding. Double genius.

Yeah. It was genius until that well placed picture fell off the wall and clocked Hailey right in the head. In the instant before it happened, Luke and I were sitting at the table, and he turned to me to say, “is that picture stable.” I looked at him and said, “of course it is, I put a nail in it.” Not even 2 seconds later, that thing fell and hit Hailey. That’s the ultimate in bad timing.

You can’t even imagine how terrible I felt. I just kept apologizing to her. She was so sweet, and she calmed down very quickly while we put pressure and ice on it. Luke told her that she needed to be a strong Jedi knight and even pointed out that Anakin Skywalker has a scar on his head. That calmed her down so we could evaluate whether she needed stitches…easy answer – YES!

I was practically in tears on the way to the hospital. Then, I heard her little voice from the backseat say, “Mommy, you’re still the best Mommy ever.”

Damn she’s sweet. Anyway, she handled the whole thing like a champ. At the children’s hospital they bring multiple people into the room in case they have to hold the kids down. They didn’t know what they were in for with Hailey. She laid perfectly still while the doctor sewed in 3 stitches. I was so proud of her, and everyone in the room was astounded. That’s my little Jedi for you!

Today, she’s explained the stitches to everyone in the exact same way… “I got three stitches for the first time. It was Mommy’s fault.” Honestly, that’s exactly what she says. Then, when she was going to bed, she said to Luke “Mama was trying to be clever and hide the nail. I wouldn’t be hurt if you had done it.” Seriously. I will never live this down.

PS: As payback for my terrible parenting, I’m having a colonoscopy tomorrow. So, you can imagine how I’m feeling this evening.

I’m running a little behind on the blog because I haven’t downloaded some pictures that I want to share from the weekend. Usually, when I run behind, I just end up procrastinating on posting anything. Tonight, however, I’m going to throw caution to the wind, and just write about what I’m thinking. And, tonight, I’m enjoying thinking of Sophia’s hugs.

I know it’s strange because when you think of Sophia, it’s easy to think of her crying or fighting with her sister. But, man, can that girl give some hugs. She gives great big bear hugs where you think that she’s never going to let you go (and sometime she doesn’t). They are just awesome. Well, except when they come at 5am and are accompanied by cold little toes and whining for milk.

Even though Luke is out of town this week, I decided to bake cookies with the little ones tonight. Usually, when he’s out of town, I try to keep things simple so as not to exhaust myself by day two of a four day single parenting gig. Eh…it’s Christmas time, and these cookies are not going to bake themselves. Plus, I bought myself a new baking toy – a cookie press!

Do you know what a cookie press is? It’s basically a caulk gun except instead of white inedible caulk coming out, you get cookie dough squishing out into different shapes. The dough is super easy to make, and Hailey helped me with that part (while Sophia turned the washer and dryer on and off, threw clean clothes onto the dirty floor, and tried to scoop cat litter with her hands).

First batch of cookies were great on all fronts. Both girls helped (after a thorough hand washing). They were sort of able to work the cookie press and they were definitely able to work the colored sugar shakers. It was lots of fun.

By round two, their interest was waining because I couldn’t get the dough colored and back into the press fast enough. By round three, they were going completely rogue. Sophia was rolling dough into long snakes; Hailey was making balls and rolling them in the sprinkles she had dumped on the counter.

I just gave up at that point. What can you do? They were having fun destroying half of the pink dough (that was supposed to be red). They probably are going to grow worms from all of the raw dough that they ate. Is that an old wives tale about growing worms from raw dough? Probably that’s just something that someone tells kids so that they get a few baked cookies out of a batch.

Of course, they weren’t the only ones destroying dough. I also completely burned a batch when I forgot to take them out before bringing the girls up for bed. I honestly cannot remember the last time I burned cookies, but I definitely remembered the smell. It’s a wonder I didn’t fall down the stairs as I was running to rescue them.

I’m convinced that Sophia is going to be a lawyer because this kid can find any loop hole. Here’s just a few examples from the past few days:

Me: Sophia, don’t put your dirty hands on the window.
Sophia’s Thought: You didn’t say anything about putting my sticky mouth on the window.

Me: You cannot chew gum.
Sophia’s Thought: Ok. I won’t chew it, I’ll just swallow 5-6 pieces when you aren’t looking.

Me: Don’t hit your sister.
Sophia’s Thought: Alright, I’ll just tackle her.

Me: Don’t drink bath water. That’s nasty.
Sophia’s Thought: I’ll just put it in my mouth, and them spit it out.

Me: Sophia, do not get up in the middle of the night.
Sophia’s Thought: No problem. I’ll get up at 3am. That’s technically early morning.

My favorite part of the long weekend though was Sophia’s confusion between Grandma and Grandpa. Actually, it wasn’t so much confusion as a complete failure to acknowledge that those are two different words. So, even though we only had two grandPA’s here, she would inadvertently call them Grandma at random times.

In fact, as Grandpa Pete was getting out of the car for the last time to get on the train to the airport, she called him Grandpa from the backseat. He mumbled to me “Well, at least I’m finally Grandpa.” She then yelled, “Bye, Grandma.” At least she’s got great comedic timing!

Here is my gift to you on this Thanksgiving. It’s the joy of watching a movie with our lovely Sophia. It can also be a fun holiday drinking game. If you drink every time she says “what happened?,” you’ll be wasted by the time the one minute and thirty seconds is up. Good luck.

We had a delicious and wonderful Thanksgiving here at the Hamilton household. We had both Grandpas and our friend Angie. We cooked from about 11:00am to 5:00pm. The menu included sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, turkey, stuffing, gravy, rolls, and corn pudding. Oh, and let’s not forget the green bean casserole which I insisted on making from scratch. Yes, I friend the onion topping myself (which I’ll admit might have been going a bit overboard…damn that Food Network and their empowering videos). As if that wasn’t enough, we had two types of pie for dessert – dark chocolate and rustic apple. Plus, fresh whipped cream in adult (liquored up) and kid versions. DELICIOUS!

Anyway, enough about the food! Highlights from the day:

-4:00am – Grandpa realizes that we have not taken the turkey out of the refrigerator to put it into water to fail. Thank goodness he realized that or the Thanksgiving might have been ruined.

-Sophia threw a complete tantrum during dinner. In fact, the whole day she only ate mashed potatoes (no gravy) and whipped cream for dessert (sans pie, of course). Actually, she also ate some apps (brie, fried green tomatoes, goat cheese, and crackers)

-Alisa just about forgets the cranberry sauce, but Grandpa saves the day (again).

-During dinner, Grandpa Pete almost knocked over his wine glass filled with red wine. He was so proud of himself for catching it before it spilled that he didn’t notice that one-quarter of the glass had broken off the top. No one knew what happened to the glass shard. We searched and searched until Angie dug in the gravy, and there it was.

-Alisa finds a piece of the glass in her corn pudding. Luckily, she didn’t swallow it. No ER visit necessary.

-The night ends with Sophia and Hailey all sugared up and singing/screaming their favorite song (Baby, Baby, Oh).

I’ll try to get some pictures up tomorrow.

Does anyone else remember that Saturday Night Live skit?

Anyway, yesterday was Hailey’s last day of school before Thanksgiving. We decided that we would take her for a treat for dinner. Luke gave her a choice of places, and she decided that she wanted brinner (breakfast for dinner). Bad Idea #1 – letting Hailey pick.

So, we went for brinner and the girls decided to have pancakes (of course). Bad Idea #2 – syrup at 7pm.

After dinner, the girls started to go a little crazy from the sugar so what did we decide to do? Take them for ice cream. Bad Idea #3 – ice cream for dessert.

The girls were allowed to pick their flavors. Hailey picked some strange apple pie flavor, but Fifi picked cotton candy. Both had gummy bears in their ice cream. Bad Idea #4 – Gummy bears in ice cream after pancakes.

By this time, Sophia was running in circles around the ice cream shop like a maniac, and Hailey was bouncing out of her chair. That’s when she made this stunning admission…

Me: Did you have fun with Daddy while Mommy was away?
Hailey: Yes! We wrestled, we fighted, and we farted at each other.

That had me falling off of my chair laughing. We were making quite a scene. Anyway, Luke and I realized that we could not possibly bring our kids home in this condition. So, where can you take a kid at 7:30 at night to run off some sugar? Costco!

The girls ran up and down the aisles for a while. They eventually had fun playing on some instruments (don’t get any ideas all you Santas out there). There was even a wrestling match that ended in Sophia banging her head on the concrete floor, but instead of immediately crying, she just laughed. Well, then she cried. Of course, 2 minutes later she was up running around again. Where do they get the energy? Oh wait…could it be the pancakes and ice cream??

We had such a fun weekend up in the mountains with some friends last weekend.  Lots of eating, drinking, resting, reading, talking, eating, drinking (did I say that already?)

Anyway, on Monday, I was feeling very guilty because I kept a very big secret from you.  There was another Luke cake incident!  Originally, I had planned to keep this one to myself because I figured that you probably had enough cake stories.  However, it was pretty amazing, so I’m going to summarize here through a series of emails that I wrote to my co-conspirators (i.e. the other women on the trip).  I apologize for the length, but I promise that it’s fairly entertaining. 

Thursday night (18 hours before leaving for the cabin)

Well, it’s 8:50.  Luke got home about 20 minutes ago after having stopped at Lowes (yes, there’s construction involved) and Publix (which makes our 3rd Publix trip of the day).  There is NOTHING constructed, nothing baked, nothing even started.  He is, however, all geared up to go.  I, on the other hand, am sitting at the counter with a glass of wine waiting for the fun to begin.  I’ll be sending updates throughout the evening so stay tuned.
 
Wait, now he’s taking time out of the construction to tell me that “pain is part of wearing heels.”  Oh wait, I guess that’s not accurate since he’s not actually constructing anything so he’s not taking time away from that.  He’s just generally lecturing me on wearing heels, which is a little strange.  Maybe he cross dresses on a regular basis without me knowing.
 
Oh, now he’s playing with his new phone which I can already tell is going to be a source of MASSIVE distraction.  Blah blah…he’s showing me random shit on the phone that I don’t care about.  Blah Blah.  More phone stuff.  “but the screen is really big,” he saying.  I replied, “that’s ironic because your cake isn’t.”  Time is a tickin’.

Thursday, 10:23pm

Total cakes baked = 0
Total cakes in the oven = almost

 
We are over an hour into the “baking” process now, and you can see how far we’ve come.  I’m in a particularly cranky mood now after Luke made this exact statement “I knew you had a rough day today so I almost bought you ice cream, but then I thought you’d be mad at me.”  Say wha?  Who gets mad at having ice cream when they’ve had a shitty day?  No one.  No one gets mad about that.  Whatever.  Double cake for me on Saturday.
In other news, apparently this cake “construction” requires a jigsaw.  I’m not sure what that is, but it has the word saw in it so that can’t be good. 
 

Oh, AND he bought Cocoa Rice Krispies for the Rice Krispy treats that make up part of the cake.  Cocoa Krispies?!?!?!  That is not a Cake Boss move.  Can you tell that I’m super cranky?

For the love of God, I’m yelling “put the cakes in the oven,” and do you know what is happening?  NOTHING.  There are no cakes in the oven.   More news when there are cakes in the oven which might be tomorrow at this point.  Deep sigh.

Thursday, 10:44pm

Yippee!  We are only like 15 hours from being done.  Well, I’m going to bed.  Time for Luke the Cake Man to take over.  Maybe I’ll give him a pep talk.  Oh crap.  We just realized that the dishwasher is running and neither of us actually started it.

Oh no.   I just asked him if he started the timer.  “No, I just looked at the clock.”  God help us all.

Friday, 9:01am

When I last left our cake hero, he was covered in cake batter and darted around taking cakes in and out of the oven.  I have to admit that I did have a little taste test before I went to bed.  Yum!
 
Like a dumbass, I didn’t realize that I never switched my alarm clock back to standard time.  So, instead of waking up at 6am, I woke up at 5am this morning.  Then, fumbled around in the dark looking for a watch or phone or laptop to tell me what the real time was.  Ugh.  So freaking dumb. 
 
Anyway, all of that to say that Luke heard my alarm and also got up at 5:00am.  I’m sure you’re thinking that he must have made great progress in the wee hours in the morning, but no.  I’m leaving the house with great trepidation of what I might find when I return.

Friday, 10:17am

This update wrote itself…
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Luke Hamilton <hamilton.luke@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 9:45 AM
Subject: Fun fact
To: “Alisa (gmail)” <alisa.hamilton@gmail.com>
if u were wondering a 16.5 oz box of rice krispies does not have enough contents for a double batch of treats

Note to self, measure before cooking anything

Saturday afternoon

Yes, there’s a drill and a jigsaw involved in the construction of this cake.  Wow. 

Saturday, late afternoon (post Alisa’s nap)