way-back wednesday

I'm about 8 months old here and it looks like I'm totally stealing my mom's green beans. In a side note, isn't my mother gorgeous? I want to be just like her when I grow up. 

updates and gratuitous cuteness

This past weekend we traveled down to Phoenix so Jason could test with one of the local law enforcement agencies. It was a highly stressful couple of days punctuated by Jason passing both the written and physical tests with flying colors. He knocked them both out of the ballpark. Did I say ballpark? I meant hemisphere. I'm a little proud, can't you tell? So he passed his first two tests and will be back down there this week for the intensive interview process. Penny and I won't be going with him this time. We already had to take out a loan (kidding) just to pay for the last minute airline flights when my anxiety refused to be quieted and a panic attack (not kidding) convinced me a trip to Phoenix was the only way to get through the weekend. 


Anyway, all of my anxious worrying was for nothing, of course, but it left me with a meandering headache that refuses to be banished. I know it has to do with the stress we're under to sell the house, get a job and buy another house but identifying the stress hasn't alleviated it any. Instead I spend my evenings wandering from room to room picking up stray toys, straightening random knick-knacks, unable to relax. Each night I'm convinced that the next day will see us with a ton of home walk-throughs even though we've only had two in the weeks the house has been on the market. Then to stress myself out more I pour through Arizona real estate sites, dreaming of homes we can't possible afford and worrying that the ones we can won't be available when the time is right. 


So instead of dwelling on that stress, I'm going to leave you with some little nuggets of cuteness. 

This is Penny with her Papa, who she called for every time she wanted to get out of bed early.

Jason let her listen to his headphones for the first time today. She stood absolutely motionless for at least 30 seconds then let us know it wasn't as cool as Sesame Street.


Right after the headphones I could smell poop so I decided to ask her about it. 

Yep, she just told me she had aliens come out of her butt. I'm so going to remind her of this when she's older and wants to date before she's sixteen. 

way-back wednesday

Here's another school picture for your amusement. I believe this was freshman year and you can see that my love for cardigans was already well established. I also had just had my braces put on and was wildly against showing off a mouth full of metal so instead I did the pursing-grimace that is so popular with kids that age. Again, you're welcome. 

slippery slope

I'm upset this afternoon. Irritated really and fed up with the littlest things. "Little" meaning Penny. And she's not doing anything that she doesn't normally do but right now I have no patience for it. The most irritating thing is I was fine this morning. And now I'm biting off each word, hating the bitter aftertaste that it leaves behind. I'm irrational beyond reason. Actually, reason has little to do with how I'm feeling. I'm mad at my irrationality and cycling into that time when time has no movement; where five minutes takes an hour and nothing will ever reach a conclusion. I wonder if I'm beginning a manic episode or if it's all just crankiness from lack of sleep. Being bipolar, one night of missed sleep can be the trigger that fires me into an incident. And the last thing we need right now is me clingy and unable to care for myself or Penny. We have some big things coming up that I'm going to be on my own for. I have to keep it together. Maybe that's the stressor that's launching this or maybe I'm just being paranoid. 


Perhaps we'll see how tomorrow goes and go from there. Instead of wallowing, off I go to exercise even though it's the last thing I want to do. Here's hoping the endorphins and sweat will wash away the bad feelings or it's going to be an extremely long week.     

locked and loaded

Last night was the first night in a couple of weeks that I let Penny pick out her own pajamas. Yes I'm such a Nazi mama I never lets my child pick out any of her own clothing or wear anything inappropriate such as a sun dress when it's snowing. No, instead we've come to a stage in her development where we have a reoccurring problem - getting her to keep her diaper on. Normally this isn't a big conundrum since during the day she's either wearing pants or, in cases where she won't keep bottoms on, I'm there to make sure she's not going commando. But lately during naps and at bedtime she'll wake up and, I don't know, decide that the fate of the free world hinges on her behavior. Or maybe she becomes angry at the injustices of how toddlers are treated and decides to stage a sit-in with her stuffed animals as compatriots. Whatever it is, she must feel the only way to right these wrongs is by stripping off all her clothing followed by her diaper. 


Except it's not a used diaper. Nope, it's perfectly clean and dry. Then she must feel that urge. The urge that when she's older she'll recognize and act befittingly. Instead she's trapped in the prison of her crib and can only do one thing - pee all over the place. I am then notified of this development by a shrieking, shivering and usually damp child. And this usually occurs only after I've taken my sleep meds and am as loopy as a dodo bird trying to wrangle her into new pajamas, put new sheets on the bed and not fall over while arranging all this.


Since this began I've been a mean mama and made her sleep each night in footie pajamas for the main reason that they zip. I can then safety pin the zipper to the jammies and she can't escape them to do her business on the sheets. This has been met each night with crying and pleading, can she PLEASE wear the Santa or butterfly jammies? Why do I have to be so mean and outlaw all the cute two piece outfits? But until they figure out a way for me to lock her into these they had been off limits. Until last night when Jason had the brilliant idea of putting the packing tape to another use and taped her diaper on. And it totally worked. Even my little Houdini wasn't able to magic her way out of that stuff. So from now on she can wear whatever she wants to bed. Even if it's a sun dress in the middle of winter.