Monday.

So, it's been quite the week here at Kimchi central. As I mentioned before I went AWOL, Jeff was on vacation all last week, which was REALLY REALLY nice and we're both depressed he had to go back. Thankfully after 7 years of marriage (as of yesterday,) we still prefer to spend the majority of our time together and having him home every day was delightful. I had hoped to have some really awesome stories about our exciting adventures but we ended up having regular, non-exciting adventures like grocery shopping and cleaning things. BRACE YOURSELF. It was a very low-key week but Max got to spend a lot of time out in the backyard playing "ball" and "step in the poop," the latter sadly more than the former. He got so used to Jeff taking him out to play in the morning that today he spent a good 20 minutes pointing to the back door and yelling "OWSIDE?" He forgets who his mom is. I keed, I keed, nature is glorious, etc. He's really been talking a lot, which is cute until he starts to yell which he does more than talk. He will repeat a lot of stuff we say (uh oh) and sometimes he'll just say something and we're like 'how did he learn that?? (also uh oh)" My sister Laura and I ventured out on Friday to try and cash in on all the Black Friday hoopla (not that great) and while we were in Kohl's looking at Christmas ornaments, he was trying to get her attention and suddenly yelled out "WAWA" and we were like holy shit, did he just say that but then he wouldn't say it again until we prodded him the next day. PERFORM ON COMMAND, KID!

We did get to go out sans child once over the week to meet some friends for dinner. It was so nice to be able to have a leisurely, margarita-filled dinner free of squirming toddlers, although the woman at the table next to us spoke at a decibel level that made your brain rattle in your skull so the loudness was still there. Max is at the stage where, despite the fact that we've taken him to restaurants since we brought him home and he should know the drill, he will only last for a short time before he either starts to throw stuff, yell very loudly or squirm out of his chair. He used to be pretty good and I don't know what happened. We went out to eat for Thanksgiving (yes, we went out. To a restaurant. And it was fantastic and there were no dishes to clean and no drama and no random family members camped out on my couch that I have to stick a shoehorn under to get them to leave so don't judge.) and we were able to snag a private room so that when he reached his high chair limit, which he did in record time, we had somewhere to contain him. The waiter was really nice and brought him toys and crayons but they only kept him busy for so long. Is this just MY kid or are they all like this? Seriously. I thought this would get better as he got older. Anyway, I'll give him a grade B- because we were there for a long time and he never threw a tantrum or anything, he was just busy and loud. VERY EFFING BUSY.

One thing we did want to do while Jeff was off was to take him to the Museum of Transportation. My grandpa used to take me there when I was a girl so I have fond memories. Most little girls wouldn't be into trains but he would tell me about working on the railroad so it made it come to life and I liked to pretend I was in times of yore. I wish we still had fancy trains like that, although I'd probably be bored after a couple hours so scratch that. Max seemed to like it and spent the whole time pointing and yelling "RUCK" or "DONGDONG." Anything that is a car, truck, van, etc. is a "RUCK" and a train is a "DONGDONG" and no, the all caps are not redundant because those words are said AT TOP VOLUME ALWAYS AND REPEATEDLY. In fact, while we were in the children's play area of the museum, which for $1.50/hour is a spectacular bargain for indoor kiddy fun time, Max was playing with a train set and another boy came over to use the same toy. He was older but Max knows no strangers and immediately sidled up next to him and began to yell "RUCK" in his ear over and over while showing him the toy truck in his hand. The little boy was very polite and quietly said to him "could you please stop yelling in my ear?" but Max is a wild beast and heard nothing. He continued his verbal assault so I said to the boy in my most sympathetic mom-voice, "I'm sorry but he's still a baby and doesn't understand." He was like "well I'm 4 and I already know that." Oh snap. Let's just say I didn't hush Max after that. Here's photographic evidence of the day:
Hobos.

How dang cute are they? TWINSIES!

He's driving a coal train. He was disinterested.

On another note, it's officially The Christmas Season and I plan on making some treats so I'm going to post my recipes and pics as I go.

Vacation, all I ever wanted.

So, I know it's been a while but no interesting things have happened and I don't want to bore you any more than necessary. We had a rather nice weekend because Grandpa Cliff was SO kind as to take Max for the whole night. We had 23 glorious hours of freedom. We stayed up late playing Wii and eating apple pie AND we slept until 8:30am Sunday. That is epic, people. We went to lunch at The Blue Owl in "historic Kimmswick," which was all decked out for Christmas. I felt like I was in the movie "Groundhog Day." It was really trippy. There were men in top hats driving carriages around and Christmas music everywhere. The restaurant is all granny-rific and serves stuff like meatloaf and quiche and the waitresses all wear what Mrs. Caroline Ingalls wore to cook dinner in. They also serve delicious desserts and we came home with a tiny apply pie. Well, I say tiny but it was about 7 inches tall. That's their schtick, the tall pie. I kept calling it the Mile High Apple Pie and that's how I ordered it but then I realized it's called Knee High Apple Pie and I got it confused with the Mile High Club so the waitress probably thought I was some perv. Whatever, the pie was delicious. On our way out of the little town we stopped in the Christmas HAUS (we applied a thick fake German accent to this word in the car and it makes it fun to say) and I bought a miniature silver chandelier ornament. It's so cute it's sick. SICK.

We headed back to civilization (I keed, I keed. It's a lovely place.) and ended up eating carryout on the sofa watching "Pearl Harbor," which is one of the most ridiculous movies I've ever seen. And it's long. I could have flown to Hawaii and gone to the memorial and come home in the time that thing took. I think the robots in "Transformers" has better acting training than the entire cast of this dump. We worked off our dinner playing Wii like 12 year olds (I kicked his ass) and then we passed out at 2am. 2AM! I haven't voluntarily been up at 2am in almost a year and I felt it (and 1/2 a bottle of wine) this morning. Ooph.

Jeff's on vacation all week (HOORAY!) so I'm sure I'll have something interesting to post about soon.

Cake Alert

If you like farmers and/or cake, and who doesn't, check out:

www.theatomiccakeco.blogspot.com

We'll call him Ralph now.

So, on Sunday night, after a weekend of drama that shall go unnamed, Max woke up crying. It was about an hour after we had put him down. I was doing some cake sketching and Jeff was computering when we heard him crying. He's a vocal sleeper so noise is not uncommon, but this was actual crying and it raised my eyebrow so I went in to investigate. I opened the door and he was sitting up and as I got closer, I saw a dark mass in the bed with him. He was pretty upset so I clicked on the light to see that he had barfed up his entire dinner all over himself and the bed. The last throwing up episode we had was when he was still on formula and formula puke is more like "spit-up," which is still gross and smells like hatred but it's pretty easy to deal with. However, this was Big Boy Throw Up, complete with entire pieces of pepperoni pizza. I seriously have doubts that this child actually chews and digests his food because, well it looked like it did on the plate. Poor Max was sitting there with throw up all down his PJ's, in his hair, on his feet and all over his blanket. Not to mention the huge pile on the mattress. He was obviously upset so I stripped him down and took him to the bathroom to clean him up. Jeff was left to clean up the bedding because that's how I roll. I have a severe aversion to throwing up, which was made worse several years ago after I saw a clip from a throwing up porno. It was so disgusting that I was unable to eat a Taco Bell bean burrito for about 5 years because that's what I was eating when I watched it. For the record, I wasn't actually watching the throwing up porno (not that I have a problem with porno or anything but this was SICK) but someone sent me a clip from it. I don't like throw up or seeing people throw up or hearing someone throw up or anything regarding throwing up so I wasn't too keen to clean up the bed chunks.

I got Max all cleaned up and he seemed okay, sleepy and sad looking, but okay. I figured that him going back to sleep was a one in a million chance at this point so I started cleaning off the bed in his room for myself. Jeff was holding Max and was trying to soothe him when all of a sudden he's like "HOLYCRAP" and I turned to see Max blow again. He missed Jeff's mouth by an inch (so gross). Now, instead of running to the kitchen or the bathroom to hold him over the sink or tub, he held him out so he was barfing on the carpet. Well played. I grabbed a towel and threw it down but by that point it was too late so we began cleanup, round two. I had given him water after the first round, which was a mistake, and this was the water cycle. I looked down and saw something red and yelled "HE'S THROWING UP BLOOD!!" and Jeff was like "um honey, it's just pepperoni." I'm cautious. Anyway, we got him situated and I took his temp (normal) and gathered my stuff so I could sleep with him. I use the word sleep loosely.

We all know how much fun sleeping with Max is so we set up a giant pallet on the floor so we all could share in the fun as a family. Jeff abandoned ship at about 2am but I stuck it out until 5:45. The floor here is hard and this child insists on sleeping perpendicular to whoever else is there so you either have a foot in your side or a hand slapping you in the face. I got about 7 minutes of sleep. I thought this illustration would give you a better idea.He didn't throw up again but I was all SWINE FLU ALERT and took his temp about every hour yesterday. He ate normally, pooped more than normal but never threw up again so I'm going with the theory that he ate something that didn't want to stay inside him. I began to mentally list what he had eaten over the weekend and it should be no surprise he was barfing all over. Since Friday night he ate, in addition to his regular stuff, jalapeno potato chips, fried and regular dill pickles, mini burgers with welsh rarebit and obviously, pepperoni pizza. He is a connoisseur of fine foods, DON'T JUDGE. Anyway, the moral is that he's been fine ever since and I made it through my first big barfing episode without contributing myself. That's love, people.

Boy in the Box

So, not only do we have ghosts but we have a serious case of weirdo. See exhibit A:
No, I don't know why he likes to walk around his room with a storage tub on his head.

The Ghost In You

So, I wasn't going to post about this because I was afraid talking about it would make it worse and open some ghostly portal or something but everything has been quiet since so I'm going for it. I like to live on the edge. I'm also going to drink milk that expired yesterday so LOOK OUT. On Friday night, I had another "encounter". After we put Max to bed around 8, Jeff told me he was going to run back up to work to do some kind of computer nerd stuff for about an hour. He left about 8:15 and I proceeded to work on my cakes for that weekend. I work in what used to be our dining room but is now the world headquarters for The Atomic Cake Co. (ha ha), unless we're having company in which time it returns to it's natural dining room form. Our home office opens into the dining room and has two very old and creaky French doors (see picture above). I say it's our office but it's really just a room filled with too many art supplies, computers, out of season clothes, a potty chair, etc. It used to be a bedroom and when my Meemaw was with us, it was her room. Anyway, as I was sitting there working, I heard Zoey scratching at the gate at Max's bedroom door. This isn't really unusual because she's obsessed with his room for some reason but it pisses me off because she always does it right as he's going to sleep and she won't stop until I make her.

I walked around the corner to tell her to shut up and noticed that she was acting stranger than usual. She was kind of walking around in a circle in front of his room and when she saw me, she ran up to the gate that closes off the dining room from the rest of the house because I have a strict no dog and no kid policy at my fake cake shop. She was VERY persistent at the gate and not in a "I NEED TO PEE RIGHT NOW" kind of way but more of a "MOMMY HELP ME" kind of way. I realized she wasn't going to back down so I relented and allowed her to get closer to where I was. For the record, I was NOT working on actual cake at this point, just some fondant sculpting. Anyhoo, she immediately walked right over to the French doors, sat down and stared at them. They were both closed and the light was off. Now, her food container is stored in this room as well, and she knows that, so I wasn't surprised she went there. I went and sat back down with my back to the doors to finish my work. About a minute later, she came darting under my chair. Correction, she FLEW under my chair. I stood up and was like "WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM DOG?" and as I did I turned to see that one of the French doors was now open. It was open about a foot. This was not good.

I stood there frozen for a second because I had personally closed the doors myself a few hours earlier when I had to go in there to fill up her food bowl. Yes, that means her food is in that room so yes, the dog would want to get in there and would probably push the door open herself and has when the door is already ajar. This is all true. However, when the door is latched shut, you have to turn the knob really hard to open it because it's an old door AND it makes a rattle when you turn the knob. You don't go in this room quietly. Furthermore, had she been able to get in, she would have just gone in and snooped around for rogue kibbles, but instead she was cowering under my chair like we were in the throws of an epic thunderstorm. I went into the office, turned on the light and told the air to "GET THE EFF OUT OF MY HOUSE." I slammed the doors shut and walked back to the table to finish my work, proud that I had properly yelled at nothing. I only sat for about a minute before I was overcome with fear. Yes people, real fear. I turned around and I swear that I felt like someone or something was in that room looking at me through the door. It was so overwhelming and scary that I called Jeff and was CRYING on the phone to him (no I had not been drinking. Ok yes, I had ONE pumpkin beer but I'm not that cheap of a date and this shizz was real.) He was like "are you joking?" when I demanded he come home but I was NOT JOKING and was now standing in the corner clutching the phone crying and unable to turn my back on the room. This sounds ridiculous, I know, but I was TERRIFIED and knew that if he wasn't coming home, I was scooping up the sleeping kid and the dog and getting in the car. I could not stay there by myself any longer.

I stayed on the phone with him until he pulled up to the house 15 minutes later, asking "where are you now?" about every 6 seconds. He was so sweet and talked to me the whole time, giving me a play by play of his trip home. I cannot explain it other than I felt this huge surge of fear and I couldn't stop crying and I am not joking when I say I felt like the room was staring at me. When he walked in, I was so relieved and as quickly as I felt scared, I felt calm again. Jeff was not thrilled that I made him come back because he didn't get to do anything he left to do, but I am so glad my husband knows his wife is insane and will come home when I'm scared that the ghost that he doesn't believe in is going to get me.

Cake Alert!

There's no place like home.

www.theatomiccakeco.blogspot.com

Cake Alert - Halloween Edition

Head to www.theatomiccakeco.blogspot.com if you aren't too scared!!

Godzilla vs. Halloween

So, Saturday was Max's first REAL Halloween, considering he was only 6 months old for it last year and I don't even know if they celebrate it in Korea. I should google that. Anyway, we don't ever stay at home on Halloween because no one every trick or treats in our neighborhood because you just never know if you'll get a Snickers or a half-smoked Camel Light. Her neighborhood is suburbia ground zero and has lots of kids so I knew he'd have fun. All the grandparents, along with LM, my other sister Jessica and her boyfriend and my brother's parents all came out to see him in action. It was quite a show to see all these adults going nutso over one little kid and he sucked in every little bit. Spoiled??!! OF COURSE NOT.

We started the festivities with a pizza party so everyone could relax and chat and play with Max before the morphed into a frightening creature. Here he is showing us how bored he was with what we had on TV. He apparently was not interested in football or CSI. He was interested in showing off his mad skillz on the GEE-tar. He loves Auntie Laura's guitar and since she let's him to whatever he wants, he gets to play it. I decided to celebrate the occasion with a cake (shocking, I know) and brought along a spooky ghost.

Finally, after we had all eaten and waited until the sun started to sink, it was time. Soon, we were invaded by the ferocious lizard monster hybrid known as GODZILLA.I don't think the real Godzilla wears an Old Navy dragon costume but SUSPEND YOUR BELIEF. I also don't think Godzilla wears ratty old Airwalks on his mutant feet but I digress. We were worried that the costume wouldn't last since he didn't do so well on the dry runs at home, but surprisingly he kept it on the entire time. It was so freaking cute. Here he is sassing it up from the back:
GODZILLA IS NOT AMUSED. He was kind enough to sign some autographs for his grandpa Larry, though.

We brought the wagon with us and soon me, Jeff, Auntie Laura, LM, Jan, Cliff and Godzilla were headed out to rid the neighborhood of it's candy. It was quite a scene. Six adults walking around with one little lizard monster hybrid. Here he is attacking grandpa Cliff.
He wasn't sure what the hell was going on and when we went to the first house he tried to go inside, but after the 3rd or 4th one, he kinda figured it out and when we would leave the house, he would run squealing down the driveway clutching his glowsticks. Between houses he rode in his wagon because his costume was kinda front heavy and he would occasionally topple over face first. Overall it was a huge success and we can't wait for next year because he'll be older and I think he'll know what's going on a bit better and have even more fun. I'm also looking forward to thinking up his next costume because I probably only have one more Halloween before he has an opinion on it AND we're doing a group costume. Look out world.