I'm Not Sure "Mama" Means What You Think It Means

Thursday morning was a treat. I haven't really been sleeping since we adopted a certain adorable puppy, so I don't even bother setting an alarm, because chances are someone is going to be needing me for something within a 2 hour window of when I would have wanted to wake up anyway. So sometime in the wee hours of Thursday I slowly awoke to this:

Mama!
Mama!
Mama!
Mama!
whine whine whine.
MAMA!
MAMA!

I decided my best course of action was to take Lucy out first before I went to check on Jack. Because he wears a diaper. So as I passed Jack's room with the puppy in my arms there was a sort of doppler affect.

Mama!
Mama!
MAMA!
MAMA!
Mama!
Mama!
Mama!

And then I was outside. Lucy did her business and I headed to Jack's room because he was still going strong. Mama, etc. (Dave was sleeping, or at least, still in bed.)

When I finally got into his room I felt more than a little guilty for putting the puppy's needs first, so I was very loving and concerned with my greeting. Exuberant even. Delirious, possibly. And what was it that my darling boy wanted?

Mama!
Yes dear? What can I do for you my darling child?
Mama!?
Yes?

I want Daddy.

Quel maledetto treno blindato

Remember how I decided not to mix the Academy Awards, wine and netflix? I have now entered three strikes and you are out territory. It turns out that I should apply that restriction to the Golden Globes because just this week I had 2 more screw ups.

Let's review my history first.

1.) I add movies to my queue that have won awards, but are terribly sad, depressing, heart wrenching, or otherwise not something I'd rather not see. IE. The Savages. Strike 1.
2.) The screen gets a little bleary and I end up with the wrong movie. IE: The Original Frost Nixon Interviews. Not Frost Nixon... But Frost and Nixon for real. And if I have no desire to see the original Frost Nixon interviews, why on God's earth would I want to see a dramatic reenactment? Strike Two.

And now on to the Golden Globes fall out.

3.) I add movies that I want to see, and I know Dave won't like, but I add them behind a bunch of movies that we will both like. But those movies all have an extremely long wait, and so I end up with my movie right away instead of timing it for when Dave is out of town. IE: Gray Gardens. Foul Ball! I watched midweek and returned in time to get a mutually agreeable movie for the weekend.
4.) See number 2 above. Tomorrow Inglorious Bastards will be arriving. Yes, the 1978 cult classic subtitled Quel maledetto treno blindato. I curse you Quentin Tarantino, and your lack of originality! Strike 3.

I'm out. I suppose Dave will now take over control of our netflix account.

A Boy and His Puppy

Jack has a bunch of stuffed animal puppies in his crib, and today he wanted just one more puppy in there with him. Poor Lucy was exhausted from our Biggest Loser workout. She was crawling all over me the entire time, and probably got a better workout than I did.

The Secret is in the Egg

I think I could do at least a whole week of cooking posts, so maybe I will. But for now I wanted to share our New Year's Day recipe. This was a yummy soup that I made to use up a bunch of collard greens that we got from our CSA this summer. With the ham (symbolizing forward motion), black eyed peas (luck), and greens (prosperity) it seemed like a perfect dish for New Year's Day.

I needed some help from one of my junior cooks, because I wasn't feeling 100% on New Years Day. It's weird, because it seems like a night that starts with a nice glass of eggnog, progresses to wine with (and by with I mean, before during and after) dinner, and ends with a to go cup of Irish cream would make for a great start to the new year. (I think I just put my finger on the holiday weight gain. Note to self: Make a belated new years resolution to steer clear of egg based drinks.)

Anyway, Jack was glad to oblige. He tore up the kale.

From 2010January

He sampled some carrots, and he stirred.

From 2010January

And when I wasn't looking, he put Luke's egg full of silly putty in the crock pot. I noticed it hours later. The silly putty was sort of melty but completely contained in the egg. So I just threw it away and didn't tell anyone. Then, to be thorough, I threw Jack's silly putty away too. The soup was delicious though! I plan to defrost some of the leftovers for dinner next week with cornbread.

Recipe - basically this. But I used dried beans instead of canned. And instead of a piece of ham I used a giant ham hock. And I did it in the crockpot instead of on the stove. Note to self - high temp next time. And I added carrots and celery. I used collard greens the first time I made it and kale the second time. It works either way. Don't forget the silly putty.

Puppy Accesorizing

I can't believe I was thinking that $14.99 was too much to spend to humiliate your dog, when I could have been making that point with a $70.00 jacket.

In unrelated news, I need that dog dish.

Obligatory puppy photo:

The Elmo Song

Jack is really into the Elmo song night now. (That's right now in Jack speak.) My favorite part is "H, I, J, KAI, ELMO, P." It seems like he randomly says, "Bird!" at the end of the video, but he is reading an alphabet book, and there is a bird in it. Note to self, tell Kai's mom about Jack's homage to him in the alphabet song.



P.S. That is Luke snorting in the background - not me.

P.P.S. Obligatory puppy photo:

MetaMegan: Now With Puppies!

I just deleted my opening paragraph because it was all about how my life now revolves around potty training a puppy and a toddler. And I started out to make it sound really tragically hilarious. And then I realized two things:

1.) I am really lucky to have a 2 year old and a puppy. Could life be better than this?
2.) No one wants to hear that much about poop. Or maybe they do, but they should just go ahead and find another blog for that, please.

Yes, we spontaneously went out Saturday and got a puppy. It seems that way, to me at least. Because I only spent a year researching dog breeds, and I only refreshed the Humane Society web page 1,000,000 times. Then I said, "Please do not let me look at this site anymore today. PUPPIEEEEZZZZ!!!!" And Dave said, "Just put one on hold." I did, and we picked up my darling girl the next day. Have you ever heard of anything so crazily spontaneous? It's really not like me.

Unfortunately, I checked my spontaneity this afternoon at the pet store and did not buy Lucy this Valentine's ensemble.

Prepare to hear more about Lucy as the days and months progress. Luke and Lucy and I start puppy training classes soon. That should be very interesting!

Here is Luke taking her for her first walk:

Details: Lucy was born 11/12/2009, so we'll always have the issue of two birthday parties so close together. She is a cocker spaniel mix and she was given to a shelter in Kansas and then shipped to Boulder. Reason for surrender: Too many. Spay and neuter your pets, people!

She weighs 5 pounds right now, but since we don't really know much about her background we don't know how big she is going to get. I think - too big for the basket on my bicycle, so I will need a side car.

Thanks

Still easing into 2010 here. I know it's probably sort of lame that I always wait until after my birthday to write thank you notes, so I just have to do it once a year. But how bad is it that I am going to have to include thanks from Jack's birthday too? Pretty bad I guess.

Did I ever write about the time Luke had a complete meltdown because he didn't write the letter "A" perfectly and it "looked like it's pants were falling down"? I don't know because the search function on this blog is not that great. I think it was at least 2 Valentine's Days ago. We had a similar incident today because he spelled Science incorrectly during FTYNWT. (Family thank you note writing time.) He started to spell it phonetically, and then I wrote it out for him. (Meltdown number 1.) And I spelled it wrong. (sciene, if you must know.) So when I corrected him, we had meltdown number 2. I told him just to scratch it out, because I don't like to end up with an uneven number of note cards and envelopes, so I wasn't giving him another card. It's one of the 1000 weird things about me. Of course, I later screwed up someone's last name on an envelope so theoretically, it would have worked out OK. He didn't want to scratch it out though, so it was straight to bath and bedtime.

I am just going to go on and on for a while about thank you notes and then all the blog readers who are expecting a thank you note will sort of remember this somewhat boring post and think they actually did get one.

Or, I could add another Jack anecdote...

Dave took care of making sure Luke got in the shower while I gave Jack a bath. Jack likes to randomly talk about things from the past that you think he would never remember. After the 100th mention of the same subject, it's less amazing though.

This week, he has been talking a lot about the airplane ride he took the weekend before Christmas.

Example:
Me: Here's a coupon for Einstein's bagels.
Jack: I ate a bagel on the airplane.

Amazing, right?

In the tub today he put a washcloth across his lap and said, "Dis my airplane blanket. 'Cept cleaner." Then he took the loofah and said, "I buckle my seat belk."

I'll stop there. But Jack is very funny these days.

Omar Little/Genghis Khan

Photo from HBO.

I was thinking about taking a meta moment of silence to commemorate the last episode of The Wire, watched here last night at Casa De MetaMegan. But I think we can all agree that there have been many, many moments of blog silence since we started watching The Wire 3 months ago. It's hard work getting through 5 seasons of a television show in just 3 months. Hard, but rewarding work. Sigh.

Back to blogging, working, getting to bed before midnight and maybe I'll even get those thank you notes in the mail soon!

In other news, I am way behind on all the precious things Jack has been saying and doing. We went to see the Genghis Khan exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science the week after Christmas. There was a 60 second (or so) movie reenactment of the life of Genghis Khan, and Jack was very interested in the crying baby at the beginning. He watched it several (20) times. Days later, we were in the car amongst the museum ephemera and Jack recognized the hat we made at the end of the exhibit. He said,

"Baby crying, grew up: Genghis Khan."
Laughter ensued.
"Baby crying, grew up Genghis Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan."
Laughter.
"Baby crying, grew up Genghis Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan."
Laughter.
"Baby crying, grew up Genghis Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan."
Sighing.
"Baby crying, grew up Genghis Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan."
Yes, he sure did Jack.
"Baby crying, grew up Jason Khaaaaaaan."
No, Genghis.
"Jason Khaaaaaan."
Genghis.
"Baby crying, grew up Genghis Faaaaaaaaaaaawwwn."
Ugh.

We got home eventually, but it was the longest conversation I've ever had with a two year old about a 13th century warrior/statesmen.

Photo from wikipedia.

Let Them Eat Cake

I cannot rely on Gramma, a.k.a. technospaz to upload the video of my darling children learning the following behavior from their beloved Grandfather. Fortunately, I have been able to record it myself. And by "Fortunately" I mean, it was really easy because this sort of thing has been happening every night after dinner since my birthday.



In related news, the capes arrived from Aunt Beth the other day. I'll have her do a guest blog post about that saga. But this picture made her respond with the following text: "My hatred now burns less brightly."

But Jack wouldn't wear the cape like a normal little boy. He put it around his neck with the cape in the front. "No. Like dis. Like a bib. Cake. Cake. Cake."

Hello 2010

New Years Resolutions...
1.) Blog more often... (stop laughing)
2.) Backup blog and change format
3.) Fill in Jack's baby book so I can delete that section on old milestones, and uh, for posterity
4.) A bunch of other stuff no one cares about like eating right and exercising and writing a book.