When Vacations Attack, Part 1 of Several

So, WE'RE BAAAACK! Yes, we survived Hawaiipocalypse 2012 and the island continues to stand proudly, although had you asked me that the day we left I would have told the lovely people there to flee in terror. We didn't have many toddler-based incidents on this trip, but the few we had were not fun at all and the first one came from Mia as we boarded the plane. Yes, perfect timing! She was, let's just say "fussy" ( I said a-hole but whatever, potato-potahtoe) because she had woken up with a stuffy nose and possible molars coming in and as we were about to board, I realized to my horror that someone (not me) had packed her medicine in the checked luggage and not the carry-on. I repeat, the medicine that will make her NOT SCREAM FOR THE NEXT 10 HOURS, was not accessible until we landed 4000 miles away. We frantically searched the airport for a replacement (note to airports: stock Benadryl) but got nothing and finally had to get on the plane.

She started in her seat (for about 11 seconds) but then wanted to be on my lap but we had purchased her the crazy harness thing so Jeff got it out and hooked her up, locking her in the seat. She was outraged. We hadn't even left the jetway so I went into panic mode and started giving her snacks, hoping it would distract her. This worked slightly until we got into the air, at which time she decided to begin her whine/cry, which makes me want to claw out my eardrums with a fork after about 3 minutes. This was all academy award worthy and I was bracing for more but thankfully she wore herself out within a few minutes and passed out with half a cracker in her mouth and only one shoe on. This bliss didn't last long and we spent the last hour or so playing the "please don't scream" game while showering her with gifts and snacks that she threw aside like an angry Marie Antoinette. We finally gave her an iPhone and it shut her up until we got to LA.

After a brief layover we were off again and I was much more anxious this time since we kinda blew our wad with her entertainment package already and we still had another 5 hours to go. I'm no mathematician but that doesn't sound great for our odds of success. We sat down and immediately the fussing began so we started with snacks as before and then after throwing her Hello Kitty sticker book on the floor in disgust, we moved back to the iPhone. These things seem to have special magic powers that attract small children like raccoons to rotting chicken. She was SO THRILLED to have this phone that she actually sat in her seat and played with it. She also got so excited that instead of screaming, she would occasionally shriek out in joy over a sweet Angry Birds move or a cute picture of herself. Well, this was unacceptable to some people, and by some people I mead the d-bag and his wife sitting across the aisle. Look, I get that no one likes to fly with little kids, especially their parents, but there is only so much we can do. I don't like to fly with people who smell bad or want to talk or insist on leaving their light on when everyone else is sleeping including the person next to them, but you know what, it's like a bus with wings so you just have to roll with it. Be thankful neither of them pooped.

I'll post more later...................

This was a good idea 10 months ago.

So, I know it's been like crickets around here but it's been a little busy. In between preschool, therapy and god knows what else, I've been preparing us for our first Official Kimchi Central Family Vacation and we leave tomorrow. Where am I taking two fidgety and loud toddlers, you ask? Well, Hawaii of course! Yes, I'm taking two toddlers, who can barely make it through a trip to the bank, 4,000 miles away to a volcano in the middle of the ocean. Go big or go home, right? I've been in a mild state of panic for a few days now as the reality of taking them on this trip is setting in and it doesn't help when people find out they're going and they're eyes get all wide like I just told them I sleep in a bed of angry bees, but the kennel would only take the dog so we will persevere. The nice part is that the flight is broken up so they will have time to run around LAX like little feral cats and get out a little energy before the big leg over the ocean plus we have grandparents in tow to help when shit gets real. My sister is already in Maui as I write this and will also be meeting up with us so I'm hoping that between 6 grown adults, we can manage to not completely destroy Hawaii.

Also, do you know how much crap you have to pack when you bring kids? A SHIT TON. My dreams of packing light went out the window a few days ago and now I'm just hoping I don't have to pay extra baggage fees. I also had a wonderful  fantasy where Max had his own little carry-on he could wheel through the airport like a little man but then when I bought one at Target, he immediately started swinging it around like a lawn mower blade so for the safety of everyone traveling with us, he now has an elephant backpack with a leash. Yes, leash. Ditto for Mia. These rascals are fast and I'm not taking any chances so people can put their judgement filled eyeballs back in their heads and clutch their pearls elsewhere.

I'm going to try to post some pics as we go but if not, aloha for now!

The Mega Bed

So, as many of you may know, my glorious children don't have the best track record when it comes to sleeping. They only sleep when it's absolutely necessary and for the least amount of time possible. They just don't seem to need, like or want to sleep. I, on the other hand, have very few marketable skills but sleeping is one of them. I remember the glory days when I would set my alarm on a Saturday morning just so I could turn it off, laugh in it's face and go back to sleep. Getting up early used to mean "sometime before noon" and sleeping through the night was a normal occurrence, not a special treat that we might get once a year. While Max has had his own special brand of sleeping issues over the last couple of years, Mia has really taken it to a new level because she not only hates to sleep, she won't sleep alone.

For the first couple of months home, she slept physically on me in our bed and if you even thought about moving or getting up to pee, she would read your thoughts and totally flip her shit until you knocked that thought out of your head and accepted your fate. I eventually learned how to roll her off so we then moved her crib into our room and would put her in after she released her death grip on me. That only worked for a week or so because then she would wake up and scream at me from behind the slats like an angry macaw so we put the crib back in her room. We then spent several weeks sleeping in the twin bed in her room with her, which wasn't much better than being in our room but at least it was progress. Not long after that, we started putting her in the crib and we could get her to go to sleep if we stood there rubbing/patting/scratching her back until she fell asleep and then we would use ninja training to exit the room as quietly as possible. We kept this plan up for a while until we decided to really go for broke and instead of patting her to sleep, we tried to get her to learn to self soothe so we (I) would lie on the twin bed with her in the crib until she fell asleep. This actually went okay after the first week or so of her screaming at us until she fell asleep from fatigue.

Once she realized we weren't going to leave the room (as far as she knew anyway), she was okay with this new plan. I would put her in the crib and play mahjong or angry birds on my phone for the 20 minutes it took her to drift off and then I would creep out and enjoy the rest of my evening. However, as it went on, it took longer and longer for her to fall asleep (like a damn hour) but then she was only sleeping for about an hour or so before waking up and it was then VERY difficult to get her to go back to sleep. And by difficult, I mean impossible. We would inevitably end up with her back in our bed anyway and I realized that I was wasting all that time playing dumb games on my phone trying to get her to sleep just to have it all blow up so we decided that we would just start her in our bed and then be able to at least do something at night like watch a TV show or eat a meal. This has been the plan ever since and is usually fine (or as fine as this shit can be, amirite?). USUALLY.

Since Max has also been watching this go on, he has decided that he also wants to sleep with us so he will use any excuse necessary to get in our bed. Some are legit, like when it storms or he pees in bed (yes, double fun!), but other times it's just flat out toddler ridiculousness that I have zero energy to deal with at 8pm at night so in he comes as well. Neither of these children understand the concept of personal space and will spread their bodies out as far as humanly possible so that Jeff and I have about 6 square inches to sleep on. Total. Not only that, but they move around constantly so you are always getting kicked, punched, kneed, farted on or hit in the face with a bottle. Throw in our mental patient of a dog and you can understand why this is not ideal so last weekend Jeff had the best idea he has had since deciding to marry me. After we came into our room to go to bed only to see the dog and both kids spread eagle again, he was like "I HAVE HAD IT WITH THIS SHIT." and he went in and broke down the twin bed from Mia's room and dragged it into our bedroom. The kids were like "wha?" and soon he had constructed the greatest thing in the history of mankind, The Mega Bed.

Oh yeah, this bed is amazing. It's our old king and the twin bed pushed together so it's about 98' long (not really) and takes up 80% of our freakishly large bedroom. I remember reading years ago that Prince had a room like this at Paisley Park, although I'm 99% sure his was used for certain adult activities and was probably a lot more fun than ours but you know what, I don't care. I HAVE MY BED BACK. Yeah, they're still right there and this is all more ridiculous knowing we have a four bedroom home but I can put up The Great Wall of Pillows and pretend like they aren't. They've been really good about staying on their bed and if they try to cross the great divide, I SHUT IT DOWN and expel them immediately. Who knows how long this will last but sweet lord I can't even fathom what will come after The Mega Bed. I think at that point I will have to have them surgically implanted in my body so we will never be apart. Hopefully the mental hospital will give us a group rate.

TV is my friend.

So, earlier today I was making lunch and as I stirred the Target brand mac and cheese, found myself humming "I Was Country (When Country Wasn't Cool) by Barbara Mandrell and then I was like "SELF, WHY THE HELL ARE YOU SINGING THIS SONG, considering not only my searing hatred for country music but because we are on a near constant stream of k-pop up in here and that stuff stays in your head like an unwelcome ear worm from Kahn so how this popped up I don't know. I was trying to remember how I even knew this song and then I remembered that Barbara and her two sisters (Louise and Other Mandrell) had some ridiculous variety show on in the 80s that I used to watch with my grandma. Now, sometimes Jeff will be watching Saw Dogs, which is a show about people who carve shit out of wood with chainsaws and I'm not kidding at all, and I will say "you know, they will make a show about any goddamn thing these days. ANYTHING. Saw Dogs? What's next? Extreme Napkin Swans?" and then he will remind me that there is also a show called Hillbilly Handfishin' and then I just sigh and make a comment about the world going down the toilet and then I go on my lawn and yell at passing children to stay off.

Seriously though, as I thought about the Mandrell Variety Hour or whatever fresh hell they named it, I started thinking about all the other dumb shows I watched in the 80s. Back then I was a typical latchkey kid so I watched a lot of TV before and after school which is why I can't stand new parents who are all "my child cannot watch even 7 seconds of tv or else he will melt into a pile of goo and I will look like a terrible parent (because it's really about ME isn't it?) and he will never learn math or any other useful skill." Look, I watched a ton of TV back in the day because our parents weren't so up our asses and actually had lives and didn't worry about every little second of our childhood being filled with "learning moments" so TV wasn't the devil. Case in point, I'm a pretty smart lady with a wide range of skillz and a brain only half made of goo. In fact, the day we got cable was a momentous occasion because not only did we get MTV, but the cable people actually came to your house then and we got little metal buttons that said "MTV" on them that we could pin to our jackets as souvenirs and to show people that we had cable SO SUCK IT, non-cable havers. Anyway, these are some of the weird and wonderful shows I watched while eating my Jell-O Pudding Pops (bring them back, Jell-O. I'm serious. They were delicious and nothing compares.)

Dance Party USA - this was on USA Network (duh) and we watched it after school before Jem. It was like American Bandstand but way less classy and with more chicks dressing up like Prince and Madonna. Also it was from Philly so I thought they had foreign accents.

Small Wonder - Vicki the Robot. That is all.

Out Of This World - Evie, the half alien half human teen who could stop time with her fingers. Her mom was a mayor or something and her alien dad lived in a glowing box by her bed and would talk to her from his alien land.

Battle of the Network Stars - bizarre "sports" competition show with TV stars who played for their network team in many forms of spandex. This was serious business, we're talking the top stars of TV here, and we would watch and root for our favorites like it was the Olympics. I vividly remember Charlene Tilton in her shorty shorts and braids. Run Lucy Ewing, run!

Dance Fever/Solid Gold - I put these together because they were on together and I adored every disco filled second. Also, Madame. (Somewhere lodged in the back of my brain is a memory of a Dance Fever episode but with giant puppets instead of people. However, this may be a hallucination but I'm pretty sure it happened.)

Benny Hill/Bizarre - I put these together too because they were on waaaay late at night (like 11pm!) and might have shown boobs. We weren't really supposed to watch either of them.

You Can't Do That On Television - my first introduction to the exotic people known as Canadians and the best show on at the time. Except the old man used to gross me out.

Out Of Control - Cut. It. Out.

That's Incredible! - Yes, it was.

Anyway, feel free to add more in the comments. I could list this all day but I don't have that kind of time. I have to go watch Bizarre Foods.

UPDATE: So, as I've gotten more suggestions from facebook and my brain here is another list with the biggies added:

Love Boat
Knots Landing
Dallas
Gloria
It's A Living
Mr. Belvedere
The Facts of Life
The Golden Girls (which remains TO THIS DAY my favorite show of all time and I watch it regularly and I have seen every episode including the pilot with the gay male housekeeper.)
Empty Nest
The Sunday night Disney movies
Family Ties
321 Contact
Wrestling at the Chase
Kate & Allie
Who's The Boss?
The Cosby Show
Jem
Night Court
Falcon Crest

I'm sure I missed many, many others.

Don't read if you're eating.

I hate you people. - Zoey


So, it seems like a lot of what I talk about here has to do with pee, dongs and poo. There is a reason for that.

You know what's never good? When your adorable toddler daughter walks up and hands you a piece of poo, origin unknown. I thought she was coming in for a hug because she was smiling and holding out her arms but instead she plopped this little turd in my hand, smiled warmly and walked away. As soon as my brain registered what I was holding, my face turned to horror and disgust I'M SURE, and then Zoey and I locked eyes and she took off so I assumed, based on the fact that a few minutes prior I saw her dragging her ass on the carpet, that she was the culprit. I chased her down the hall with a piece of toilet paper, hoping to get whatever else was hanging off (once it was a hairball (she eats her own fur but we can talk about that another time) and I didn't know it and when I tried to pull it off her butt, let's just say it was like that magic trick with the scarves. You can probably figure it out from here.) but after inspection I saw she was clean as a whistle and was probably just scratching her butt. She has no hands, you know.

Anyway, after she was cleared I went back to the living room where I found Mia standing by the back door with a very strange smile on her face and her little hand down the back of her diaper. Uh oh. Oh please no. Did I mention SHE WAS CHEWING SOMETHING? I looked down and saw that the rest of the contents of her diaper had been neatly placed on the TILE floor in a little pile like cannonballs. My brain was trying NOT to put the pile and the chewing together but it couldn't help it and I was like "HOLY LORD MIA, OPEN YOUR MOUTH!" and to my utter delight, saw half chewed waffle stuck in her cheek like chewin' tobaccy. YES! I decided that worrying about where she got the waffle since they had eggs that morning would have to wait, I'm just so glad it wasn't poo, and after a Silkwood shower for the both of us and a Swiffer cleanup on aisle 10, she was clean, dry and wearing packing tape around her waist. I'm not taking any chances.

This is not a nudist camp. Usually.

So, I forgot to tell this story here. I told it on Facebook so if you read it on there, spoiler alert.

Max had a little party at preschool for Valentine's Day. I helped out with the other stay at home moms and after an hour of crafts gone wrong, icing overload, games no one would pay attention to and several doily mishaps, I went home to wait out the next 90 minutes until pick up. Since it was party day, everyone got out at the same time so when I went back, the lot was full and the hallway was clogged. There are a group of moms that have kids in the same class a year ahead of Max and they're kind of bitchy to those of us not in their little clique AND they like to stand in the middle of the hallway having their overly loud conversations so they were causing much of the traffic jam I walked into.

As I looked through the moms and above the sea of kids, I saw Max's teacher standing in the doorway of his class looking, um I guess distressed is the right word and suddenly she locked eyes with me and I knew that her distress probably had something to do with me. Before I could react, I heard Max yelling through the crowd.

"HEY MOMMY, I HAVE AN ISSUE."

Oh sweet baby jesus. This is not good.

As I looked down, I saw him busting right through the crowd heading right for me and as he walked closer, I saw that his pants were falling down with every step. Then I noticed that he wasn't wearing a diaper. My son was in the hallway of his preschool, surrounded by his peers, their parents and the staff and he had gone FULL DONG. Once he got to me, all I could do was shake my head and reply, "yes Max, you do."

He yelled again (why do little kids yell every goddamn thing? Seriously. He hears just fine but everything must be told through a bullhorn.) "I DON'T HAVE ANY PANTS ON" as though this was our little secret. At this point, his teacher had made her way through the crowd with a pull up and an apology for why my son was running around commando. Apparently he had decided just as class let out to chuck his diaper in favor of the sweet taste of ass freedom and before she could lock it down he saw me and made his (in)famous walk. So there I was in the crowded hallway, diapering my almost 4 year old non-potty trained son, who is completely comfortable being nude (he is right now, in fact) so he will have a full conversation with anyone walking by as though nothing was awry which he did, while his teacher and the preschool director watched in amused horror. As the bitchy moms passed by, I got a mix of HAHAHA IDIOT MOTHER eye rolls to condescending faux smiles saying "I've been there (but not really, my child keeps his clothes on in public you neanderthals. Why don't you take this hippie fest somewhere else.") so we made a hasty retreat to the van as soon as that sucker was on.

When we finally pulled away Max said, "hey mom, I wasn't wearing pants. Did you see that? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA." Sigh. Oh yes honey, we all saw that. And I do mean all but bless his little naked heart anyway.

Amy Playing Dress Up: Vacation

So, as I mentioned before, I have (had) another blog called Amy Playing Dress Up where I would would play dress up via online virtual shopping but both blogs were giving me the vapors so now it's just this one. Anyway, this is my first style post here. If you hate it, read something else. The internet is a big place.

We're mere weeks away from our first official family vacation. WEEKS. It's the whole family including my mom, stepdad, sister and brother in law and it's going to be quite epic as we're going to the place I hope to call home some day, the glorious island of Hawaii. Why am I taking two toddlers on an 8 hour flight to Hawaii, you might ask, because quite frankly that sounds like a TERRIBLE idea for everyone involved? One, I am a glutton for punishment and clearly have no sense but just think of the glorious tales I will have to tell. Two, momma needs a break. FOR REAL. I need a goddamn break involving my toes in some sand and someone else cleaning up my mess for once. I can't explain in human words how excited I am about this trip and you know what else makes me excited, shopping so here are some exciting (not really) things I have on my vacation wish list.

This dress reminds me of zipping along the Italian riviera on a Vespa with a scarf barely holding on my head. That has nothing to do with tropical Hawaii vacations but that means nothing to me. It's adorable and with some coral jewelry it will be even cuter and islandier. (from Ruche)


This is everything I love in a shoe and the wedge means I might actually be able to get my gnarly old man feet to walk in them.

This scarf will be a nice accessory for sightseeing with khaki shorts and a white tank. (from Target)

I love a maxi dress and this one should be called The Dress Amy Is Taking To Hawaii because once The Gap throws me a sale (do it, Gap), this baby is mine.


Also SO CUTE and I j'adore the draping in the front so I can eat massive amounts of kailua pig and no one will be the wiser.

This is very oceany and I think an orange or red belt would polish it up. OOH, or maybe neon yellow. That would be wicked.