Lately

So I have now been home with the kids for almost four months. And I have started to find a groove. I am really enjoying myself! So much so that I am not even looking for part time work anymore. They are both such wonderful little kids. Curran is a total fluff chick crossed with a complete maniac. On the mornings that we are home together, I'll take my shower and she'll play makeup in my bathroom. I'll hear her talking to herself, combing her hair, putting on my lip gloss, whatever.

I am so proud of Brayden - he is enjoying school so much. I see so many positive changes in him. He loves his music class at school, loves his teachers and looks forward to going to school everyday.

They are looking forward to Christmas and Brayden has already begun talking about what he wants from Santa. Here are some pictures from the past couple of months. November has been absolutely awesome!

Here's my handsome boy in his favorite school project ever:


My pretty lady:


Running around up at Catawba:



Curran's standard photo smile:

Bye Bye Binky

Well I finally pulled the rip cord and the Binky Fairy finally paid a visit to our house last Wednesday. When I picked Brayden up from school that day he said to me, "Mommy, I think it will be nice when the Binky Fairy comes and takes my binkies." I figured that this was my opportunity and I had to jump on it. Luckily I had a couple little treats in the car so I left the kids in the car and scrambled to construct some Binky Fairy prize bags. So I did and I put them in the mailbox. Then I unstrapped the kids and they went to the mailbox. They were so excited! That is until naptime.

It took Curran 20 minutes to fall asleep. She was singing and chatting to her self. This continues as I write this on Saturday. Nighttime she goes right to sleep.

Poor Brayden had a VERY HARD TIME at naptime on Wednesday. He cried and cried, screaming "BINKY!!!!". I just laid with him and shushed and held him and he finally calmed down. So I left once he calmed down and listened to him on the baby monitor. He flipped and flopped for probably 20 minutes. I thought - If the end of binkies means the ends of naps, I will be going back to the bink, fo sho. Then he finally fell asleep. Thank God! He had a hard time when he woke from his nap and cried a bit. I think he was used to having the bink transition him from sleeping to waking up. But then that was the end of it. Steve put him down that night and he never even asked for it!

So what did I learn from all this? I think its easier to take it away from a 2 year old than a three and a half year old. And, much like potty training I was pleasantly shocked at how easy this was. I think the last and final step in babyhood is potty training Curran. She is more than ready, and I have just been lazy not to do it.

The Past Month

Again, sorry for the long delay in posting, but things have been super busy in our house. Shortly after Curran's b-day, Steve dropped the bomb on me that he wanted to move to the east side. Any Clevelander who reads this understands the gravity of such a statement. NO ONE switches sides. You are one, or the other. So as things usually work in our house things go from zero to sixty very fast. We busted ass for about a week in a half to get all the unfinished projects done in the house.

So the house has been on the market for about a week. We haven't even started looking for another house, as we don't want to caught in the death trap of having 2 mortgages. But trust me, the entire process is very annoying. We moved a lot of stuff out of the house into the garage, and hell if I can find anything. Curran put almost an entire roll of toilet paper down the toilet last week and I of course couldn't find the GD plunger because I don't know where anything is in the house. I literally threw, packed everything unnecessary away. I call it the Great Purge of 2009. Although I love it here and have no desire to move, I just want this whole thing over with. I don't like living in limbo.

This weekend Steve and I were in NY for the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll HOF concert at Madison Square Garden. It was super fun and I paid for it the next day. I felt fine in the morning, slight headache, nothing major. I also felt fine on the flight home. Steve was convinced that he could find 480 from Cuyahoga County Airport and we went on a goat rodeo tour of the East side. We never found 480 and the local roads did not agree with me. I ended up barfing all over the the side of 150th. Not pretty. It was right by a church where the congregation was pulling in for a service. I think Steve was more embarrassed than I was. This has only happened once before to me, after a long night in C-bus followed by a morning ride home to C-town. Colleen will know what I am talking about.

Here are the pics from Halloween. I am the most deadbeat mother when it comes to Halloween. This was B's 4th Halloween. His first and his fourth Halloween were costumes that my friend Dawn handed down to me. His second and third, I dressed him in the same outfit both years. I go for the easiest costumes possible. Curran's costume was a b-day present from Aunt Sue. Please Note, Brayden is on another photo strike. Enjoy!!

Curran with her friend Sydney - a lady bug and a bumblebee!






Curran is WAY into her Daddy these days. I go into her room to get her in the morning and when she realizes it's me and not Steve she says - "Go Mommy, Go" and points to the door. Nice.



Only decent group photo! Braydo was a dragon, not a dinasour.



Tongues out, for whatever reason. I was just pumped to get a pic where they were both looking.

To My Blog Readers....

I am very sorry for not updating in so long. I have a longer post coming, but in the mean time I wanted to clue you in on what I am so busy with - we've put our house on the market. It's hard to even type these words but....we're moving to the East side. Here's our MLS listing.

http://mls.neohrex.com/scripts/mgrqispi.dll?APPNAME=neohrex&PRGNAME=MLSLogin&ARGUMENT=DqisfUgjlCyll7reIpW0%2BK7JaoOZ2KlJ1KwSYIMOkeg%3D&KeyRid=1&Include_Search_Criteria=on


Longer post to come, but all is fine. Brayden is still the sweetest child ever and Curran continues to be a very cute little shit.

Baby Giganto

So I just came from Curran's 2 Year Well Check and she still remains a big girl. With a REALLY big head. She got 2 shots too, which she wasn't very happy about. Here stats are as follows:

Head: Off the charts. Which means her head is not on the growth curve. Which means she has a bigger head than 100% of babies her age.

Weight: 29 lbs, 1oz. That's the 75th percentile.

Height: 95th percentile. Cant remember the exact length, but loooooong.

Since one child being in pain at the pediatrician's office is never enough fun, I decided to double my fun and get Brayden's stitches taken out too. Nothing says a good time like 2 toddlers screaming bloody murder in front of strangers.

Her birthday clambake was lots of fun, although she was MISERABLE that day. As I have mentioned before she seems like she is eternally constipated. After she hadn't shat in 2 days I decided to start her on Miralax last week. My niece Em is on it for similar issues. Well I gave her too much. Instead of turning her pebbles into mush, I turned her pebbles into the water shits. So she had a red little tweet and butt that day. Instead of playing outside with everyone else she wanted to stay inside and watch Em's Barbie movie.

She continues to be absolutely hilarious. On Sunday I was changing her diaper and her little tweet was all red. She was crying and screaming, so I blew on her little red patch for her. She immediately stopped crying and looked like she was in a trance. When I stopped blowing and started to put on her diaper she said - "Thank you, Mommy!"

Pics from the partay below:

Having a mental breakdown when we sang her happy birthday:


My sweet boy who just cannot understand why April 7th is 6 months after Curran's birthday:



Brayden ate her "2":



Pissed as she's opening presents with Aunt Meg:

Torturing the Dog

Here's the birthday princess trying to get Tank Wank in a celebretory mood. He was having none of it.

Two Years Ago...

I was getting ready to have the worst night sleep of my life. I was due to check into the hospital the next morning at 530 am to have my scheduled c-section to deliver Curran. I honestly cannot believe that it's been 2 years since I had a baby. Curran Kathleen was delivered at 7:56am on September 22, 2007. I cannot believe how lucky I am to have a boy and a girl - it is such a wonderful gift. The things that make the 2 of them so different make me love them even more. Here are some pictures of my sweet baby girl from the past 2 years:


Probably at 2 weeks or so here with big bro in his Browns jersey:




Four months here, for her baptism pics. We haven't been to church since:







Our little lady at one year old!

All sass at about a year and a half:

A couple of things that continue to surprise me every day about her:

• She sleeps like a rock. I am not joking, she has not made a peep in the night for over a year. Sounds like I am bragging but she is absolutely comatose come bedtime.
• The amount of milk this child drinks. I am not a big milk drinker, nor is Steve or Brayden, but she wants nothing else. Today I gave her a cup of juice because she hasn't shit in 2 days and she threw it at me.
• How much she talks! Her new thing is, if I am tickling her or kissing her too much she says - "Easy mommy, easy!".
• She is fiercely independent and can be very mean. She doesn't like when you even look at her the wrong way - yikes.

We love our little Mibot girl!!

On to other more current things....we had a wonderful time at the OSU tailgate. Beautiful weather, and we took Braydo for the first time. He did pretty well at the tailgate, but once we got to the stadium the wheels came off the bus and we had to go. The kid is 3 and a half and still has a very hard time when he doesn't get a good 1.5 hour to 3 hour nap in the afternoons. So he freaked at the game and we had to leave, but no worries, a fun time was certainly had at the tailgate.

Dad and Braydo:

Me, Lissa and her sister Kate:

After the game, we drove to Catawba. We are anxious too eek out the last few nice days of summer with our boat. Well, disaster struck. Brayden was running around with a blanket over his head, fell and caught the skin right over his eye on the TV cabinet. It split wide open,and bled like crazy. I HATE going to ERs, Urgent Cares, more than anything. It's such a long wait and I want to make sure its totally necessary before we go.

My dad was up with us and summed it up quite nicely - "if you were a hillbilly you could probably just put a band-aid on it and let it go, but since he looks like Powder and would probably scar pretty badly, you should take him up to the urgent care." So off we went. The urgent care is right across the street from the Jet Express in Port Clinton. Can you imagine the madness that they must see? He ended up with three stitches and was a very tough dude. I love him so much -

Watching Your Language

So Steve and I definitely can have potty mouths. Up until now, the kids really haven't picked up on it. On Sunday, before we left for the home opener Steve ran out and got me my diet from McDonalds for the morning caffeine fix. He took Braydo with him. When Steve got home he told me what a goat rodeo the trip had been because McDs gave him regular coke rather than diet, and he didn't realize it until he was half way home. The sweet husband that he is, he ran back to McDs to get the right kind. But he was none too pleased. He gave me the brief overview, but Brayden gave me the much more entertaining version this morning in line at McDs for my morning Diet Coke. The conversation went like this:

Brayden: So yesterday Daddy took us to Dunkin Donuts!

Me: Yea, dude, I know Daddy told me all about it.

Brayden: But daddy was really mad. We had to come back to McDonalds after we went to Dunkin Donuts because McDonalds fucked up your diet cokes.

Me: Speechless, Mortified and trying as hard as I could not to laugh.

So I called Steve and asked him what the hell he said to him in the car the day before. Steve admitted that's what he said when Brayden asked why they were going back. We are just chalking this up to a lapse in parenting, given the early morning hour, excitement over the Browns opener, and a resolve to improve our language. Yikes - and of course this is just when he starts preschool. I am praying by the minute that none of this is repeated in front of others...I would die. I threatened him with a very severe puniushment if he ever says it again, so hopefully that will do the trick. Very embrassing. But not so secretly hilarious.

Browns game was yesterday and of course resulted in a loss. No worries - a great time was had by all during the tailgating festivties. We cooked like eggs in the stadium though. I am pretty sure I have a future case of basal cell carcinoma from yesterday's roast. See pics below:

Lissa, Me, the Grizzlers and Chris Bellamy:



The Wanks and the Grizzlers



Me and Uncle Chris:



Me, Matt Graves and Lissa. I need to get a BQ jersey fo sho!!



Because we're not playing with a full deck, Steve and I decided it would be a good idea to take the kids out to Outback for dinner after we got home from the game. Brayden found my camera in my purse and took this picture of Curran loving the sauce from the Bloomin' Onion. And yes I felt 10x more disgusting today after consuming that and all the rest of the nastiness from the tailgate yesterday. I am in major rotgut mode.

First Half of September

Lots of fun this Labor Day - another shitshow at Put in Bay. Typical night of shots, liquor soaked cherries, and mayhem. I ran into some Steelers fans wearing jerseys all around the Bay and made it my mission of the night to throw things at them. See, when you are at PIB you run into the same people at bar after bar. By the end of the night I was throwing plastic forks and knives at them. Bastards - go find your own island.

There was a fight that night in our crew, which is always fun. No one was injured but it was sure fun to watch. I love Put in Bay - I am so happy that I get to spend so much time there.

Back home on the Ferry:



Me with the Cleveland Browns Stadium poster at Frosty's. I am pathetic but its is so much fun to have hope at the beginning of the season:



Me and Steve:



The boat is up and in working condition, we used it lots this weekend. IT IS AWESOME. I freaking love it up there.

Preschool continues to ramp up for Curran, Brayden is going 8:30-11:30 every day now. He really likes it and is such a big boy. It is a transition though, after months of staying dry through the night, he's wet the bed twice in the past week. I tried to get him to put a Pull Up on, but he wants none of it. I guess I am hoping its just a phase. Curran will be at her full schedule this coming week, going 930-1130 on Thursdays and Fridays.

Sunday marks the day of all days - Browns home opener!!!! I am so excited, I have several new pieces of Browns paraphernalia to celebrate. We will be down on Sunday at 830 am sharp. I am sure the Browns will be terrible this year, but am way excited nonetheless. Check back for pictures next week of our Sunday Tailgate!!!

Onto a more somber note, today is 9/11. I refuse to be one of those people who act like this is just another day. Of all the dates of remembrance, September 11th means the most to me. I guess it's probably because I lived through the fear of that day. I remember working on the 32nd floor of a building here in Cleveland and thinking - oh my God, how bad must it have been in those towers for all those people to choose to jump rather than stay where they were?

On the year anniversary in 2002, Colleen and I went to the memorial mass downtown, and I will tell you what, it was the most moving thing I ever was ever witness too. Fireman, cops, bagpipers - there wasn't an empty seat at St. John's Cathedral - standing room only. I've been to NYC since, and even gone on a tour given by a survivor. It's an unbelievable experience.

No shame in my game - I would have run for the hills if I was a cop or a fireman on that day. So many people gave their lives for so many and that is such an amazing sacrifice. I remember thinking I would never stop crying after that day. I think it cheats those who died that day - whether they were just going to work or going to save lives of people they would never know - for us not to acknowledge them at least every year on 9/11. So from me - I thank you and marvel and what you did that day and will always remember what you gave us.

School, Six Kids and a Baby

This past week had a lot of exciting developments. My BFF from college, Colleen, gave birth to a bouncing baby boy on August 24th. She had a plan for the birth and I am thrilled for her that it went off as planned. She went into labor naturally and delivered w/o any drugs. What a trooper. We can't wait to meet little Jack Timothy :)

Brayden started preschool. He is going to a montessori school and he really likes it. So far, he has only gone an hour each day, but starting this Wednesday he will go 3 hours a day. He tells me all about school and just sounds like such a big boy. Curran will go to the same preschool starting this week, but just 2 mornings a week. That means that on Thursday and Friday I will have 8:30-11:30 on Thursdays and Fridays ALL TO MYSELF!

This weekend's weather was miserable. On Friday, Steve's cousin Brian came up and had lots of fun playing with the kids. He gets a big kick out of them and they love him so much. Steve and I tire of Brayden's seemingly never-ending play requests but Brian is always happy to oblige! Here he is building Brayden a tower out of blocks for the 10th time in 15 minutes. He spends 5 minutes building it just so Brayden can take 2 seconds to knock it all down.




We had our two friends up - the Stobes and the Bellamys. They each have 2 kids. So we had six kids all under on roof. It actually wasn't that bad. It seemed like the kids behaved especially well. Except for Curran who insisted on stealing all of Savannah's Dora toys. Please note Savannah's Dora cup in her hand that she refused to let go of. Guess we know what to get her for her birthday.






This weekend is another kid-free weekend over at PIB. Look for pics next week. Here are some pics from the last week -

Brayden waking his sleeping dad one morning:



I love putting Curran's hair in pigtails. Doesn't she look like she's five in this pic?



Since Aunt Mol's dreamboat boyfriend went off to business school, we've seen a lot more of her. Brayden loves her. Curran loves no one. Just kidding. Here's Brayden taking Aunt Mol and Curran for a ride:

Quote of the Day

Brayden - "Mom, I like Daddy better because he has a penis and I have a penis. You don't have a penis."

He's got me there. Looks like Dad wins this one.

Boaters World

We are now boat owners. This was somewhat of a sudden purchase. We had a great weekend on the 7th. Apparently this inspired Steve to start looking for a boat. We got back from Catawba on Monday and he already had appointments set up that night to look at boats. We found the one we went with on Wednesday.







We didn't need a cabin, we wanted something that was easily "beached" or anchored. We also wanted something that could pull a water skiier or a tube. It sits 7 people, which was important since Mr. Social Director always has to have a full house. It also has all these hidden cabinets/coolers for ice and fish or ice and bevies. It will also fit in our garage. We got it for a really good price and are very happy with it!!

Sound too good to be true? Well it is. The guy who sold us the boat told us that it hadn't been used in 3 years. He also said he knew there was gas in it that was quite old. Since we know nothing about boats we thought that would not be a problem. Turned out it was. So we had the marina at Catawba siphon out the old gas and put new gas in. They tested both engines and told us they were working great and we were free to go have lots of fun on Lake Erie.

So out we go - me, Steve, Brayden, Curran, Steve's cousin Brian, and my dad. It becomes evident pretty quickly that something is wrong with the boat. One engine is working, but the other engine is having trouble. Then, right in front of the Miller Ferry Boat Dock we lose all power. All power. We are floating out there like ducks, and of course, one of the Miller Ferries is pulling into dock. I almost fainted. Brayden was screaming the whole time because the boat was too loud, now that the engine is dead he's screaming because we have a ferry the size of a Kohl's bearing down on us.



Luckily we got the engine started and made it back to shore. The boat is back at the marina in the shop. The wisdom from those in the boat know is that it just needs fine tuned, that it's nothing major. Fingers crossed. We aren't going up this weekend, so they have 2 weeks to work on it.

But I am very excited. We got a small taste of what it will be like with a boat and its very fun. There are hidden beaches just for boaters to hang out and we can take day trips over to the island which for me, is the best part.

Back From the Beach

We had the most wonderful weekend at Catawba. It was so warm and sunny, just like summer is supposed to be. We spent Sunday morning at Gem Beach and the afternon (after naptime) at "boaters beach" near East Harbor State Park. It's called boaters beach because it's really only accessible by a boat. Unless of course, you're Steve and think it's a great idea to park the car, then ride our bikes to the beach. It's a mile and a half away.

So picture this. Steve is pulling in his bike trailer the following - Braydo, lawn chairs, a cooler of beer, towels, beach toys, and other miscellaneous beach stuff. I have Curran in the baby seat behind me. I was ready to quit about half way there. I have no idea how Steve did it. It was about 90 degrees and the trail is not paved. But we made it!

Today started my new career as a stay at home mom. I am going to try as hard as I can to make the very best of it. I'm going to work on really spending quality time with the kids and doing lots of fun outings. We'll see where this takes me, maybe I'll grow to really enjoy not working. Naptime definitely rocks. See pics from our fun weekend below :)


Braydo on Gem Beach


I love when they have these little moments together




Cheese






All the kids on boaters beach


Curran towing the raft on boaters beach


Braydo and dad in the bounce house. Doen't Brayden look just like me?


Remember this post with Curran and the traffic cone? Today she was looking through it saying "I see you". Here's what I saw when I looked in the other end.