A Merger

So, as I mentioned before, I have another blog called Amy Playing Dress Up and if you haven't checked it out yet (you jerk!) it's about clothes and junk but having two blogs is more than my small mouse brain can handle so I'm merging them into this one blog right here. That means that you will occasionally see style posts mixed with the poo talk. I hope you can handle it.

Catching Up Part Deux

So, Max is going to be 4 this spring and I almost can't believe it. The last year has flown by and I feel like an old person telling my kids they're growing like weeds but THEY REALLY ARE and he's literally less than 24" shorter than me. He is a wonderful, sweet, hilarious, gross and half deranged kid most of the time, with occasional bursts of supreme loviness and feral cat-like tantrums to keep it all fresh and interesting. Little kids are just really a whole other species, aren't they? They're just so weird and he's learning a lot right now and it's all jumbled up in that big brain with the energy of a medium sized power station so he's like a crazy little firecracker looking for a spark at all times. He is a great big brother 76% of the time and the other 24% is spent yelling at Mia to leave him aloooooooone, he's TRYING TO PLAY. He's super smart and I'm amazed on the daily at the stuff he says and does that seems years beyond him. He also acts like a rebellous teenager which is why we are currently on behavior lock down right now and much like the boys from "Talladega Nights" learned, it's time for Granny Law in this house before we get a visit from the Supernanny.

Since Mia came home, Max has had a bit of a rough go adjusting to all the changes and one of the things that kind of fell by the wayside, and by wayside I mean it fell off the face of the earth into a fiery pit along with The One Ring, was his potty training. He was never super excited about it to begin with as he's inherited my extreme laziness, but at this point we're still full on diapers only. Yes, I said diapers. Not even pull ups. Sometimes I can get that going with the promise of some M&M's but not often. We've tried it all, timed intervals, toilet targets, rewards, letting him sit in poo, etc. and at this point everyone tells us to just let it go and he'll figure it out eventually, that he knows what to do but now it's a power struggle and blah blah blah. He will go at school, of course because why would he want to make Miss Patty upset, but the minute we get home it's pee pee in the pants time and let's remember he eats a FULL DIET. He's also pants optional pretty much all the time so you will usually find him running around here in a shirt, diaper and nothing else. Did I mention he's almost 4? Just this morning I asked him if he wanted to try the potty and he said "mom, is it because my diaper isn't a personal toilet?" I have no idea where this came from but it was wise so I said yes but then he proclaimed I was wrong, his diaper was indeed a personal toilet because he was in fact peeing at that very moment. Touche', Max.

Catching Up

So, let's start with Mia. She turned 2 in December and overall she's made a lot of progress from last summer to now, amazing progress actually, when you remember how she was when she came home. She quickly went from walking to running and and spends a lot of her time trying to annoy Max in new and exciting ways. She's a happy little bugger and it may have taken almost a year, but we're finally seeing her sweet (and sometimes ornery) personality come out and I feel like we finally "know" her. On the "still working on this shit" side, she is still SUPER attached to me, although to a slightly lesser degree and while I can usually walk freely around the house without issues, leaving her with sitters, even those she knows very well, can erupt into World War III in an instant so we're in attachment therapy (we'll get to this later) to try and figure out how to unlock her sweet little claws from around my neck because we're literally together 24/7. OH GOD, BUT IT'S SO SWEET, everyone says! Yes, but only for 5 minutes! Not being able to go to Target or take a poo alone is not sweet. Mommy needs her time!

In addition, she doesn't talk. For real. No words. WE'RE ALSO WORKING ON THIS. She's in a special program and we start her therapy for that in the next week. We kept thinking she would just start talking one day but then months went by and more months went by and MORE MONTHS and then I thought, hmmm...this really isn't happening, is it? She has one glorious word (YEAH!) and she uses it for everything. Trying to figure out what Mia wants is like a never ending game of charades where the only clue you have is possibly place, because she may or may not point to what she wants to throw you a bone (usually not), hence, there is a lot of raptor like screeching in our house, along with some grunting, high pitched squeals, babbling that sometimes sounds like a word and then I flip out and we have a big celebration but then I realize it wasn't a word after all and then it's a total let down, pointing, pointing and yelling and a then more yelling. She attempts a few words like bye bye or mama but yeah, not so much overall and everything sounds like BAP-BAP. They think most of her issues have to do with her mouth so I think that's where they're starting. Considering I was never able to teach the dog a single thing, lord help this child who has to learn to talk from me. The WORST part is that since she doesn't talk, you kind of forget that she understands every damn thing you say and as we know, I've never met a swear word I didn't like so let's hope her first word is fork and not....well, you get it.

Oh yeah, she also co-sleeps. Every night. Every. Damn. Night. You may recall our sleep adventures with Max. I now laugh in their face. Mia takes sleeping issues to an entirely new level, like an extra circle of hell no one knew about until now. There's no crying it out with this one. Unless you count my crying. This is why the lord made Arbor Mist.

Grand Re-Opening! Rev up your reading eyes!

So, it's a new year and if there are any readers left out there that aren't my mom, you will be happy (or maybe not, your choice) to know that we're getting back to business here at Kimchi Central and I'll be posting weekly. If you are my mom, you already know this crap anyway so kill time doing something else, okay? Anyway, it's been quite an.....interesting.....6 months since we last left each other and I'll be recapping it for you this week. If you need further convincing since I'm the world's worst blogger and your expectations are probably pretty low, I have two words for you: suicidal fish.

HELLLOOOOO???

Long time no blog, eh?! I know, but I never said I was reliable. If you are interested, I've started a new blog but it's not about my crazy kids, it's about clothes and junk. If you haven't run away screaming, it's www.amyplayingdressup.blogspot.com.

Adios Amigos!

Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo

So, clearly I'm a terribly unreliable blogger and I don't expect anyone to read this as I'm sure the three of you who cared have moved on to other things in your life. However, part of the reason I don't post is because my life if pretty boring and there are already a gazillion mom blogs out there which leaves me with not much else to write about. I'm not sure how exciting it would be to read about what I do when I'm not momming, which is usually gesso-ing canvases or reading InStyle. Those are not very interesting.

However, we had some excitement here the other day so I thought I'd share. On Monday night, I fell down my basement steps and broke my tailbone. Or my ass bone as I prefer to call it. I was talking to my sister on the phone and was heading downstairs to paint. I had the phone on one hand and a brush in the other and apparently my brain was switched to off. As I took the FIRST STEP, my heel slid off the edge and down I went. And went. And went. And went. AND WENT until I crashed into the gate we put at the bottom to keep Mia from escaping. It was very Monty Python and hilarious despite my injury. This is what my sister heard:

me: blah, blah, blah....OHGODOHGODOHGODHJLFHJKLHBJHLSGVFUF...thud, thud, thud, thud...static...........CRASH!

small pause

Jeff: Um yeah, we're gonna have to call you back. Amy just fell down the stairs.

As soon as I landed, I knew it was not good. I had a stabbing pain in my rear and couldn't do more than roll around the floor moaning. The kids thought this was all really entertaining and gave me a big round of applause. I'm sure they also thought my tears were from the joy they were bringing me but I digress. Jeff helped me back upstairs and onto the bed where I had to lie as still as I could for about an hour because moving or getting up made me super nauseous and felt like someone was actively trying to stab me to death via my tush. We were going to head to the ER, but after self-diagnosing on Webmd.com (editor's note- do not do this) I learned that they don't do anything for this anyway so I decided to save the co-pay. I iced it up and took 3 ibuprofen. It's been 4 days now and it still hurts so badly I cannot drive. This is SURPRISINGLY PAINFUL. I finally broke down and called the doctor today and as the internet confirmed, there isn't anything they will do but tell you it's very painful (spoiler alert) and that it can last A LONG WHILE. Fabulous. She heard Mia blabbering on in the background and said "oh I hear a little one there! Ooh, this injury is hard with a baby." When I told her I had not one but TWO toddlers, she paused and then said she would say a little prayer for me.

That was not very reassuring but as I have learned, she was correct in her secondhand fear. My children have taken on the characteristics of two sharks who have just smelled the blood of an injured seal in the water. Guess who the seal is. They have both decided this is a PERFECT time to practice their climbing, jumping and tantrum skills. They know I can't move quickly or grab them since I can only bend about 20 degrees and they're taking full advantage. When Mia doesn't want to go where I need her to go, she now throws herself down like the cops just got here and laughs and laughs and laughs. That way I can't reach her. Crafty little thing. They're also climbing up and jumping on the furniture and I can't really stop them. TRAITORS. Max keeps asking me if my butt hurts and when I tell him yes, he then will demand several things at once, none of which I can do easily. Yesterday he wanted the sprinkler so after spending 15 minutes trying to get it set up without bending down or hurting myself further (impossible), he played for a whopping 8 minutes before he demanded to go indoors. CUT ME SOME SLACK, BRO.

Anyway, that's the excitement. A broken ass. That's what constitutes as excitement around here. That's sad.

IS THIS THING ON?

HELLO BLOG WORLD! I have no time to pee let alone post on here, but I thought I'd throw some new pictures at'cha, including some from Korea that I meant to post but didn't. Mia's doing well overall, getting bigger and taking a few steps on her own. Max has turned into a total Three Year Old child and has developed the mouthy attitude of a 15 year old which is as magical as you imagine it to be.

Mia can't believe Elton John is in her house.
America, WHAT A PLACE!

YO, Whaddup.

This face is how Max feels about having a sister.

This one with the hat again.

This picture is PURE JOY.

On to Korea......these were supposed to be up by now so it's old news but whatevs.

This is a man-made stream that was built in the middle of the city.
It's amazing and you can walk for miles looking up at the buildings.
I wish we could have seen it in spring.

That's MRS. EMPEROR to you.

Just to tell you how cold it was, that lake was frozen totally solid.

This is one of the very few, like single digit few,
pictures of Mia with us in Korea. Rough time.