A lesson on life and death

L learned his first lesson about pets dying this weekend and no, it isn't Sonny who seems to have turned the corner and is responding well to medicine.


L has had 2 fish since his 1st birthday. As of this past week, Lane is 2 and a half, so it has been quite a while. He loves his fish and actually does a great job of caring for them.


About 2 weeks ago, I decided that we needed a new tank. The one fish had grown quite a bit and they were starting to look a bit cramped in their old tank. Also, I had stupidly washed the tank with a rough sponge at one point and scratched the daylights out of the plexiglass. So a new tank was bought and it was BEAUTIFUL and much easier to maintain. Except it was huge and now the fish looked teeny tiny in this huge tank of theirs.


After a particularly good weekend with L, I promised him that he would get a new fish and dispensed B to go get a new fish and dog food at the local PetSmart. That was the beginning of the end.


B returned with not one fish (I was thinking a black goldfish to compliment our gold and white and red one, but I of course didn't share that with B), but 5. Four neon teeny fish and one black sucker fish to help keep the tank clean. Within a week, only the sucker fish remains. It died last night.


I guess one or more of the fish had a bacterial or parasite infection which quickly spread to the rest of the fish and caused their fins to dissolve. It wasn't a pretty death and I was devasted for both the 2 fish we have had for a year and a half and for L.


L helped flush the fish and truly seems to be uneffected by the whole loss. Of course, he keeps asking to feed the empty tank, so I don't think he has quite grasped that the fish are in fact GONE and not coming back, but we will get there.


I guess the positive side to this is that L finally slept without a light last night. Normally the tank light serves as his night light, but no fish, means no tank light and L finally is learned to sleep in the pitch black.


Now the good question is -- how do I thoroughly CLEAN the tank so we can get him some new fish in a few months?

R's rough weekend

I think L is starting to show some signs of jealousy and aggression to his brother. It is weird that it has taken this long to develop, but I guess since R is more mobile and L doesn't like to share, it is only normal that they are now getting in each others way.

R's may only weight 2lbs less then his big brother, but he seems to incur all the damage. As of right now here are his wounds:

• a swollen/bum finger -- pointer finger on the right hand where L decided to slam it in the door of the bathroom (L apparently needs privacy when he goes to the potty now, wish I could be so lucky)
• scratch across his forehead -- anyones guess where he picked that up from
• scratch/red nose -- I believe this is another potty related incident but was L trying to close the potty lid while R tried to play in the water and resulted on the scratch/bruise/whatever on the nose
• and finally a goose egg on his forehead. Yep -- another one! This one is from L's repeated bumps into R from behind. R usually wabbles or falls down and catches himself, but this time it was too close to the coffee table and R took a header into it.

I may sound like a derilict parent that all this happens while I am watching, but I am not. I know one of these days R is going to start beating L up right back and in the mean time L gets time outs for shoving. I vividly remember the time that The Saint closed my hand in the car door, where I was stuck for what seemed like 10 minutes (I honestly have no idea how long it really was, but my memory says that my mom came back out to the car to see what was taking me so long), so I know the door/hand thing is bound to happen many many more times.

Oh the joys of being a little sibling.

dating again

I gave out my phone number today and now I anxiously await the phone call.

Don't worry -- B thinks it is great.

The woman I gave me number to is Sara. She has a little girl just a bit younger than R and I kinda stalked her shortly after her daughter was born when I saw her and her mom walking down the street I live on. She was a young mom and she was carrying her daughter in a peanut shell. Needless to say, babywearing isn't popular in my area and so I lept at the chance to meet a similarly minded mom.

Then I was a bone head and didn't get a number. Shoot, I didn't even remember her name.

Out of the blue today I remembered that Fridays are story time for babies and toddlers at our library. I checked out the times and found that I was about 20 minutes from toddler story time. I have been wanting to do more one on one stuff with L, so I raced around to get him ready and out the door. Thank God I have the flexibility with The Wife being here. Well, who would sit next to me, but Sara and her little girl.

I couldn't for the life of me place her until it hit me with a ton of bricks.

She remembered my NAME!!!! I don't know why I am excited about that, but I gave her my number, told her I work from home on Wednesdays and Fridays and now I await the call.

As far as L goes, I was rewarded in my efforts with the biggest and longest hug he has ever given me as I was loading him in the car. I think we will be trying to make story time a part of our normal weekly routine.

The house of 17

There were 17 people sleeping in my house last night.

And yes, you read that correctly -- 17! 14 adult males, 2 toddle males and me.

B works for a large company that uses Mexican workers who come for 9 months out of the year (all quite legal and they pay taxes and they spend a lot of money getting their visas, so no one jump on that issue, thank you very much). They arrived yesterday only to find the apartment they are renting was flooded as a result of the landlord turning off the heat in the winter to save money a pipe freezing and then rupturing when the heat was turned back on.

Why do I have a bad feeling this is going to end up being more of a slum lord? I mean seriously, very cold northeast winters... who in their right mind turns OFF the heat?

So B called me and used the I need somthing voice and of course I said it was fine for them to crash at our place for the night.

Our tiny 957sq foot house, mind you.

Honestly, you couldn't even tell they were there. Well, other than the stampeed through my kitchen when the food arrived. They had just spent 4 days on a bus coming from Mexico and were forever greatful to just have a place to shower and hot food to eat. Most of them were repeats from last years crew and knew Brett well and were thrilled to see him and the boys. L's favorite -- Barney -- was there too and L planted himself next to him for most of the evening and was jumping up and down next to him this morning trying to wake him up to play. Before i left for work this morning, Barney cleaned out B's car, starting my car so it would be warm (for my MILE drive to the train station -- yes, I am THAT lazy in the mornings!) and was at last seen headed to the backyard to clean up all the dog poop that has accumulated over the winter (since B won't do it until it is warm enough for the boys to go outside to play). Is it any wonder why I am willing to go out of my way to help them too?

They should be in their apartment within the hour, but it was fun to have them for the night and I am sure I will be seeing a lot more of them for our various house projects this summer.

Assvicing other moms

Turns out I am providing assvice to other moms without my knowledge.

The Wife and I were sitting on the couch on Friday morning waiting for the boys to wake up. I do the wake up routine with each of them every morning before passing them off to The Wife for breakfast. Friday morning, however, the boys were both sleeping in later then usual, so she sat down to chat. Granted we have broken conversations, seeing as she doesn't speak much English and I don't speak much Spanish, but we figure it out.

Friday's conversation was surprising to me though. Apparently, "I" am the expert mommy that she knows and she is now directing her daughter, who has a little boy 4 months older then R, to follow my lead. To say her daughter doesn't like it is an understatement.

So, as of right now I have assviced the daughter to stopping giving bottles, no more pacifiers, one nap a day, no more purees, no hard soled shoes except for outside, encouraged her to cloth diaper and had her reprimanded for not breastfeeding longer. I don't even like my own assvice.

To add to all this, the daughter is pissed off at her mom because apparently she loves my kids more than her own grandson. This is coming from The Wife's husband who works with B. Oh dear!

And to think I wondered why the Daughter stopped coming with The Wife to watch the boys (I told The Wife that the grandson could come too as I thought it would be good for all 3 boys to play together). *SIGH* I guess I have my answer.

a step backwards

For all of those who aren't mommy's, I warn you, this is a post about poop!

I was on the phone with my mom on Sunday evening. We had talked briefly in the morning so she could wish the boys a happy Easter, but for some reason I had to get off the phone with her, so she was calling back. We had only been on the phone a few minutes when I saw L pushing R out of his room and trying to close the door. It happened a few times, each time with R's fingers getting closer and closer to being pinched.

It also kept happening after I told L to stop in the "mean mommy" voice.

So I got up and headed into L's room, both to get him out of there and to move R so he didn't get hurt. I wasn't prepared for what I found -- both in sight and smell. Lets just say Easter chocolate has a whole new meaning to me. I guess the silver lining is that he was at least attempting to protect his brother and keep him out of the mess.

About 20 minutes later both the carpet, clothing and L were cleaned up and I resolved to be a little bit more persistant with making him sit on the potty at times. I knew potty training was going too well.

It is tourney time!

My favorite day of the year in the office is the day the NCAA tourney starts. Every year we do a client lunch and get out of the office for 4 hours. It is really great for group morale and we get to know our clients on a whole different level.

Last year I missed the lunch. I had been having contractions the night before and was exhausted. At about 11 I debated getting into the shower and getting ready to come into the city and by noon, I was dropping to the floor to lean over a birthing ball each time I had a contraction. By 2, I was thankful that I had decided to NOT come to the city because my pubic bone felt like it was on fire and by 4 I admitted that I really was in labor.

Granted, he wasn't born until early the next morning, and I probably could have made it to the lunch and back home ok, but laboring on the train wasn't my idea of a good time either. Although maybe he would have been born on the 15th (the day I had predicted he would be born when I found out I was pregnant) rather then the 16th had I walked the 15 blocks to and from the lunch site.

This year my school -- the Gators -- aren't even in the tourney, but it should be fun none the less.

And this year I won't be in labor for it!