Mandajuice

2001 Volkswagen Jetta GL for sale

Over the weekend, Alex visited the space museum with Dad and Uncle Johnny, went to the Jungle (an indoor play place) and saw Charlotte's Web with me, Grandma and Grandpa . Monday we went to IKEA with friends.  He is a lot better behaved when we keep him busy.  Except?  He sat on his sister AGAIN yesterday.

Dave's Jetta is just not selling.  We already have it priced below blue book and have ads in Auto Trader and on Craig's List and nothing's working.  Dave has been writing the ads all along, but this week I included all of Dave's usual facts and then added:

This was the first new car my husband ever owned and we bought it for him when he graduated from law school. He BABIED it and never even let me drive it once. Instead of breaking it in for the first 3000 miles, he drove it gingerly for the first 10,000 miles (which annoyed me since it meant he wouldn't drive over 70 miles an hour!) The rims he chose and the lowered suspension make it look like a BMW.

We've always loved the car, but we just had our second baby and we need extra room on longer car trips. I bought him an Xterra for his 40th birthday and now we really need to sell this Jetta. Please come see it and make us an offer!

We got two calls on it within 24 hours, neither of which panned out.  Want to buy a Jetta?

Dave and I keep going back and forth on the letter he needs to send to Washington firms so they will look at his pretty pretty resume and offer him buckets of money to come work for them.  Basically, this letter needs to say that he has been a CA lawyer for five years, passed the WA bar exam in 2006, has XYZ experience and that we're looking to move to XYZ City (right now in order of preference: Vancouver, Olympia, Tacoma and finally, as a last resort, Seattle) to get out of California and its ridiculous real estate market.  His draft of the letter sounds too formal and stuffy and mine is too talky and casual.  What would you say?  Help a sister out here.

Cheers!

elkit and mandajuice, originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

For the record, I thought Melissa was FABULOUS on the Today show.  She came across as smart and well-spoken and funny - exactly like the woman I've been lucky enough to meet in person.  The show was biased, but aside from anger that Melissa was obviously not given the full set of facts before she agreed to appear, I think the issue itself is a non-issue.  I can't seem to get my panties in a twist about it.  So what if the goodie-two-shoe club wants to judge me for drinking a cocktail while my kid plays with other kids?  I can't muster two shits to give about what women like that might think of me.

I have been thinking about Meredith Viera's babysitting comment though.   And, without meaning to disparage working mothers, I think I can see why she might have asked such an asinine question.  Because she's always worked full time (which is an assumption I'm making), she might very well FEEL like a babysitter herself when she's around her children.   

Hear me out here.

Back before I quit my job, when I was at work, I was Amanda The Financial Planner and when I was at home, I was Amanda The Perfect Mother.  At least that's what it felt like to me when I was a working mother: like I had to be PERFECT every second because those seconds were so short and there were so few of them.  I never drank in front of Alex after work, neither alone nor with my husband nor with other moms.  I wouldn't have thought of doing so.  I didn't feel like I needed a break.  I felt like I was constantly missing out - like I needed MORE time with my baby.  The idea of relaxing with a drink never would've crossed my mind, nor did the thought of wanting to sell my kid on ebay (my, how things have changed!) but my hunch is that's where Meredith Viera was coming from.

Not that that's any excuse for being Judgy Mc. Misleading Pants, but that's what's been rattling around in my brain.

And the child is redeemed

ME:  Singing "The Doodlebops" in the worst voice I can muster while dancing like a dork in the kitchen.

ALEX, watching me in horror:  No.  I say no, you are NOT going to Hollywood, Mom.

On getting my butt in gear

On Tuesday night after watching Oprah's two cents about the Mommy Wars*, I felt unbearably guilty about my own mothering of late.  According to her, it doesn't matter whether you stay at home or work just as long as you're present and connected to your children.  This week I've been completely the opposite: checked out and lazy.  Normally I would present several excuses for my apathy, ranging from lack of sleep to a preponderance of barf, but those are just excuses.  When I realized that I wouldn't hesitate to fire any babysitter who was as terrible as I've been lately, I immediately got my ass up off the couch and played peek-a-boo with Genoa on the floor (Alex was already in bed for the night or I would've sat him down and started teaching him algebra).   I need to seriously get my shit together and motherly guilt is a powerful motivator.

It doesn't help that Alex has been acting up lately.  Over the weekend, he completely horrified us all by slapping his Grandma Carol on the cheek while they were building a Brio track.  She slapped him right back, which was fine, but was so shocking to him that he forgot that he'd even slapped her in the first place.  Then, on Tuesday, I walked into the kitchen to get myself a Diet Coke and came out to find Alex balancing all his weight on his sister's leg.  She didn't cry, but I spanked him anyway.  He could've broken her leg!

The next day, the day I was riddled with bad-mom-mojo, Alex only watched one TV show and I kept the laptop shut as long as I could physically bear it.  We took Carol to an appointment and then swung by my mom's house on the way to the park.  So imagine my horror to find him laying on top of his sister!  I spanked him again (remember our spanking litmus test: hurting others or the dog) and sat him on the front porch as a naughty spot. 

I was seriously in the middle of a nightmarish parenting quandary.  I knew I shouldn't reward him by taking him to the park, but at the same time, the whole point of the day was to go to the park - to make up for how little fun we've been having lately and to give him a chance to blow off some steam.  I called Dave who opined that I shouldn't take him to the park, but I ended up taking him anyway.  I couldn't bear another day going by without doing anything.

So that was my week: guilty if I do, guilty if I don't.

* For the record, it's occurred to me many times that my decision to quit working when Alex was 18 months old had nothing to do with what was in his best interests.  He was having tons of fun hanging out with Grandma and if that had been my choice - to continue working the entire time my children were young - it would have been perfectly swell for them, if not even better than having me around all day nagging them and dragging their butts to Target.  The decision was actually 100% selfish.  I just couldn't stand to not be there. 

I probably think this post is about me

A couple days ago, I got an e-mail from my brother:

hey Manda, Last night I got all the old lan party pictures online.  If you tag search for mandajuice on flickr you will find a few not so thin photos from the days of DoD gaming.  I can untag them if you don't want them to come up but it make for an interesting blog post.

-Tom

Ain't he sweet?  When Tom was a wee-lad, he ran a bitchin' LAN party business.  His parties were supremely popular amongst the high-school megageek set.  I helped him with his accounting and commuted from Davis for the parties. 

Oh.  And I was REALLY fat:

The rest of the photos can be found by searching Tomicles photos tagged with "Mandajuice".  And obviously, I do agree with my brother in that it makes for an interesting blog post and I would never in a million years ask him to untag the photos.  It's hard to believe that was ever me, but it was and having been that fat is part of who I am now.

I still may never understand how or why I allowed myself to explode to such monumental proportions.  I'm not entirely sure it matters any more.  But it does explain how, in a group of peers who spend seemingly every waking moment lamenting the enormity of their post-childbirth asses, I can feel so absolutely fine about my own, in spite of its, um, well, whatever that is:

All I can say is that I really don't mind having my picture taken any more.  I feel like I look good. Call me vain, but I've earned my vanity.  My body is far (FAR) from perfect, but it's also a long way from FAT, at least by my definition.  I think I have a healthy self image.  I only wish more of my friends could see their own bodies through my eyes.  Because they look FABULOUS.

Update from barf central

Sister is doing much better.  She threw up three times yesterday morning and was mildly fussy for the rest of the day.  I really thought seeing my baby vomiting was going kill me and give me horrific flashbacks for the rest of my life, but, eh, it wasn't all that bad.  She continued to nurse like a champ, so I knew she was fine.

I got a little queasy last night myself and this morning I experienced one of those horrific "is that a fart or not?" episodes.  (Unfortunately, it was not.)  Now I'm running (literally) to the bathroom every few minutes, but I think I'm getting off pretty easy.  The only thing that annoys me is that I was REALLY looking forward to getting out of the house today and now we can't.

Sister is completely mobile at this point, which is a bit scary.  I have to seriously baby-proof the entire apartment.  No corner is safe.  This morning after finding her standing up in the Pack 'N Play (her crib) for the first time, I sat her on the (just cleaned) bathroom floor and within two seconds, she was yanking sponges and extra rolls of toilet paper out from the cabinet under the sink.  Looks like I'll be busy today...

Oh NO!

Genoa just barfed up her breakfast!

In other news

I FINALLY cleaned Dave's shower/tub this morning.  I can't believe I'm about to admit this in writing, but I say "finally" because I had not ever cleaned it before, as in not never ever and we've lived here for 13 months. It took me over two hours and six sponges, I shit you not.  That's how thick the soap scum was.  I am obviously a horrific house keeper, but I'm beginning to think it really doesn't matter.  My house is clean enough for me not to be too embarassed to have company over and that's good enough.  (Guests never use Dave's bathroom, which explains why it was the dirtiest place in the entire apartment.)  For me, this was a huge achievement and made me feel like I had something to show for going two whole days without leaving the house.

Also?  Genoa is seriously crawling now and she's doing it identically to how her brother did at her age.  It looks like she has a lazy leg or like she is maybe a crustacean and it is completely fricking adorable.  She's also learning to mimic us (like clapping and raising her arms above her head when we do it), but she wouldn't do that on camera.  Of course.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE VIDEO AND IF YOU KNOW HOW TO GET YOUTUBE TO EMBED THE VIDEO IN A TYPEPAD BLOG PLEASE LET ME KNOW.  I am a YouTubeNoob.

The plague (Seestor, you might not want to read this one)

I should've known Alex wasn't feeling well when he spent over an hour the other night at my mom's house shelling edamame beans while we waited for the pizza to be delivered.  He wasn't eating them (they're GREEN, give me a break), but he was perfectly content to sit still and peel them instead of running around the house raising hell like he usually does.  I just thought he was tired.

He fell asleep in the car on the way home and I was looking forward to finally getting some sleep myself.  Sister seems finally be sleeping in three hour (instead of one or two hour) stretches, so I was NOT PLEASED to be awakened at 1AM by my other child,  the one who usually sleeps through the night.  Then he coughed and I smelled barf and my body jerked immediately into SUPER ACTION MOM MODE.

Barf was EVERYWHERE.  I did no less then four loads of laundry before the day was over.  Dave crawled around everywhere trying to get it off the carpet.  And poor Alex, he tried his best to make it to the toilet and was mostly successful.  We took a shower together until the hot water went out after only ten minutes and I had to dry off and dress his poor little shivering body!  That's what I get for being so quick to throw his sheets in the washing machine.  I just didn't want them touching the floor or any of the other dirty laundry.

We finally got him back to bed after about an hour and he didn't get sick again until morning and at which point he made it into the infamous "barf bucket," a term he found HILARIOUS, even in his barfy sickboy state.  And he pronounced it "berf," which I found hilarious.  He made it all the way through the next day drinking only Pedialyte (which he called "gummy worm juice") only to berf it up on the carpet right after Dave got home from work.  Let's just say the bickering I was complaining about?  Has not gotten any better.

I kept thinking about all the people we'd potentially infected:  Alex's twin friends and their mom and their five month-old baby sister, with whom we'd spent the entire afternoon at their house; my mom, who was flying to LA the next morning for her first ever employment conference; my uncle, who was on his way to take care of my sick grandmother while my mom was gone; my sister, who has a major vomit phobia and had to fly back to college in Connecticut today; Jeffrey (a family friend), with whom I shared a piece of pizza for gods sake and who had to fly back to college the next day as well.  The list went on and on.  (Fortunately, as far as I know, no one got sick.  Norovirus is really only contagious if you're around the vomit or the contaminated food itself.  There really is no such thing as "stomach flu", it's literally always food poisoning.)

He's fine today, thank god and so far none of the rest of us are sick.  My guess is he ate something bad at preschool on Tuesday. 

FIRST ANNUAL POST ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION SNOW TRIP BARF FEST

Um, Go.