If you need a laugh

If you have a few extra minutes to kill, please read this post:

http://lucytheblog.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/rate-my-rate-my-professor-ratings/#comment-5226

The author is one of Chris's friends from college who I find to be especially witty and amusing.

Four at Once

Hughie's been pretty cranky as of late and I just chalked it up to getting older, more demanding, etc. Well, he had his one year check up yesterday and he is getting FOUR NEW TEETH right now. Freaking OUCH. Poor little guy, infant motrin is our best friend. On a good note, Hughie is perfectly healthy. He's measuring it at the 50th percentile on all fronts. He also fell in love with our nurse (and her big blue eyes) until she stuck two needles in his chubby little thighs. She did manage to win him back with a cup full of animal crackers!

Hughie is Ambulatory

Fully. This past week he has gone from a lot of walking to mostly walking. And with his new mastery of skills comes the "restaurant high chair monster." I was just looking at Hugh a few weeks ago and wondering when he would start to become difficult in restaurants. We went to Outback last night with Papa and Hughie's sweet disposition was replaced with crazy baby! In his defense, it was 6:00 and a school day (he never sleeps as well at school). Normally he would have been concentrating on eating as much food as possible, but I found out this morning that he had eaten an enormous lunch (including 5 meatballs). Ultimately, we had to pull the old divide and conquer - Chris walked Hughie whilst I wolfed down my (very delicious and perfectly cooked) steak and then we switched positions. I can still remember dreading taking G-Ro to restaurants. I would have rather stayed home and banged my head against a wall, but Mimi and Papa are restaurant goers, so we had to suck it up from time to time (and I'm sure we will again).

I didn't get a lot of good Easter weekend photos (we really need to invest in a decent camera), so I'm waiting on Stephen's batch from the weekend. Evie and G-Ro were adorable in their matching pink polka dot dresses! We ate too much food and too many peanut butter eggs, as usual. G-Ro was a bit of a nightmare on Saturday at the Wild About Animals event (she didn't even care about the real, live tiger!), but came around after that. Evie is so freaking smart I can't stand it. She speaks in sentences!! My favorite was, "Amber, read please?" And she says it with this sweet voice whilst backing her booty right into my lap. Who could say no to that??????

Clones

Chris, G-Ro and Hughie all at a year old. Interesting, no?

Peter's Shiner

This is what happens to you when you stand to close to someone swinging a plastic golf club. Congrats on your first shiner, Peter. We hope you recover quickly and that your Mommy has recovered from her near heart attack rushing you to the ER.

Nevaeh (Heaven spelled backwards)

I'd like to introduce you to my newest cousin Nevaeh!! She was born yesterday, March 18th, at 7:30 p.m. (3 days overdue!) weighing in at a tiny 5.7 pounds and 20 inches long. My cousin Erica (Neveah's mommy) is doing well, I hear, and I can't wait to smooch on that little girl. Happy Birthday Neveah!! As an aside, I was due to give birth to Hughie last year on the 18th. :)

My Gym Boyfriend

So there's this guy at the gym who is my pretend gym boyfriend. Everyone knows I'm (happily) married with kids, but this guy doesn't seem to care and flirts with me anyway. He has the body of a 6'5" greek god, so who am I to complain? Anywho, he's a boxer and took over teaching my boxing class when I retired after giving birth to Hughie and blowing up like a balloon. I've been trying to get the weight off (like, really, really, really, sincerely trying) and my success has been SUPER SLOW. It seems like everyone else can skip a meal and lose ten pounds, meanwhile my fat seems absolutely desperate to cling to my thighs. I was discussing this matter with another girl in my class who has also experienced the evil depo shot. She claims that it took her THREE YEARS to get back to a normal weight. THREE. Not 6 months, not 1 year, but THREE YEARS of regular exercise and good eating. And she's an athlete/fitness instructor. This scares me. So what does my gym boyfriend say to console me? "You used to look good before baby!" (He's from the Ukraine and his English is a smidge broken, think Dr. Kovatch from E.R., but not as smart). Thanks, babe. When I told Chris later what he said the a-hole laughed.

And just so you know, I took my boyfriend through my ab workout after class (because it's bad ass) and he couldn't begin to keep up. His six pack has NOTHING on my baby flab abs.

Hughie is ready to play!

The past few days have provided a few opportunities for Hughie to play with "big" kids other than his sister. Last night Max and Kimon were in the basement with Hughie playing and Chris said that he was in absolute heaven. He wanted to be right in the thick of things and if he got knocked down, he'd pop right back up and keep playing. This is the complete opposite of my overly cautious and shy Georgia, particularly at that age. I still can't get over the fact that my children have such opposite personalities!

And a quick shout out to Peter who could not join us last night because he is recovering from a plastic golf club induced concussion. We sure live on a tough block! I may have to start sending my kids out to play in helmets.

More Photos

Hughie's party was great, the kids had a blast in the pool! Hughie was extraordinarily cooperative and very much into his cake. To be more specific, he was into EATING his cake, moreso than he was into messing with it. I think he would have eaten the whole thing if we hadn't taken it from him!

Hughie's First Birthday Photos

Georgia Quotes

Georgia was playing across the street yesterday at our neighbor's house where she and Emily were dressing up Emily's little brother, Camden (age 4), in a queen costume. Georgia told me about it when she got home and then said, "I didn't know boys could be queens!"

This weekend Georgia was going to the bathroom (while Chris was in it) and told him, "Daddy, it's probably going to start to stink in here - you might want to get out!"

Lsat night we were watching that Cinderella movie (with Drew Barrymore in it) and when Georgia saw the Prince kiss Cinderella, she said, "Mommy, I"m going to kiss you and pretend your a boy because I DO NOT want to kiss any boys!" That's fine with me, babe!

The Cuteness that is Hughie

I can't believe my baby is celebrating his first birthday tomorrow!

Georgia has been showing a bit more jealousy of my attention to Hughie lately. This morning I wrapped Hughie in my robe and snuggled him. Georgia immediately wanted the same! So I put Hughie down for his nap, grabbed Georgia, wrapped her in my robe and snuggled her on her bed. She asked me, "how will you wrap me in your robe and snuggle me when I get really big?" I'll just keep buying bigger robes, baby!! I hope you'll always let me snuggle you.

The "offending" photo . . .

I truly cannot believe this. I didn't even think of this photo when I first received that e-mail from msn. Can you tell me whether that is a girl or boy baby (Hugh or G-Ro)? I think not. I guess it wasn't Hughie's little man-boobies, it was an umbilical cord!!!!!!!!!!!

Act of God

We've had some crazy weather this past week and on Saturday, Chris got a call that two huge pine trees had fallen over at our rental property and one had smashed a car (on the adjoining property). We got the insurance guy out there and some tree guys to remove the trees. Of course, our insurance covers nothing. Because the tree was perfectly healthy and we were not negligent in maintaining the tree, the entire thing was deemed an "act of God." What that means for the poor guy whose car was smashed is that our insurance won't cover his car. Nor will we pay our of pocket (remember, it was God's fault). Unfortunately this guy doens't have collision on his car and so he's screwed. Poor guy is a rural mail carrier, parks his car at the post office when he's not working and BAM a tree falls out of the sky and he's carless. I'm trying to see if I can get the post office property owner on the hook for the car. There's got to be insurance coverage somewhere!! So today's lesson is that it's stupid to not have collision coverage on your auto insurance policy, especially if you haven't been paying your tithing.

So today when I call Chris about my intense burning hatred for msn, he says, "I'm more worried about the rental property (i.e. getting some reimbursement for the tree removal) right now." "You're more worried about $500 than four years of our family's memories?" I reply (read SCREAM). "I guess we just have different priorities," He retorts. You think??

Wow, now I really hate msn!!

So I write an e-mail to msn customer service this week asking why I can't access my space, and here is my response:


Hello Amber,

Thank you for writing to Windows Live Spaces Customer Support.

We have found your Space, mommylandadventures, to be in violation of the Windows Live Code of Conduct for containing images exposing child's/children's genitalia . We have given you ample time to remove the inappropriate materials but this was not met within the duration given.

Since the violation is serious, we were forced to close down your space. Also, please note that there is no Adult rating for Windows Live Spaces. Posting of illegal materials (ex. profane messages; pornographic, sexually suggestive, or provocative images) is not allowed in our service, even if your Space settings is set to Private or Messenger.

We encourage you to review the Code of Conduct by visiting this link:

http://spaces.live.com/coc.aspx

Windows Live Spaces has comprehensive online help available to you. For more information, click the "Help" button at the top of any Spaces page.

We appreciate your continued support as we strive to provide you with the highest quality service available. Thank you for using Windows Live Spaces.

Sincerely,

LaniWindows Live Spaces Customer Support



Are you freaking kidding me? I would rather cut off my left arm and beat myself to death with it rather than expose any child's (particularly MY OWN) genitalia on a public website. The only picture I had on the space that could even be remotely categorized as "nudity" is a picure of G-Ro and Hughie in the tub and only Hughie's little man-boobs are visible. A ten month old boy's boobies are nudity? I understand the need to protect children from predators, especially on the internet, but this is absurd. I sent a strongly worded letter to customer service and I sincerely hope that they let me access my blog again. If not, I'm not sure what I would do. I never backed up my blog entries (STUPID, STUPID AMBER!!!!), so if they're gone, they're gone. One thing is for sure - if I can access the precious memories of the past four years I will back them up and maybe even transfer them over here. But from now on, msn is dead to me. DEAD! All the effing trash on the net, all of the porn, abuse and nastiness, and I'm paying the price of precious memories for 10 month old baby boy boobies. Holy crapoli, I need a drink.

Please pray for me and my blog.

I hate msn

I'm sure that my regular blog readers (all three of you) have noticed that you can't access my msn blog recently. I am still investigating why I can't access it, so in the mean time I'm creating a new blog. If I ever "find" my blog, I promise to back up the entire thing. As of now, if it's gone, it's gone forever - I have no back up. It's really tragic, actually. But the show must go on . . .

Poor Hughie. He and Chris were so sick this weekend. Hughie wasn't really miserable, just a bit lethargic. He was feeling a bit better this morning. We were watching a Barbie Fairytopia movie as I was styling Georgia's hair. I leaned over to slap some mousse in Hughie's hair and Chris pulled him away. He said, "the poor kid has vaginal cream on his butt (for a yeast infection), he's watching Barbie Fairytopia and now you want to add volume ot his hair?" I still managed to wrangle Hughie away from his Daddy and mousse up his hair a la George Clooney.

Georgia wants a baby sister. Last week as we were passing the Women and Babies hopspital where Georgia and Hughie were born, Georgia pointed and exclaimed,"Mommy look, there is where we get babies. Can we go get a baby sister?" I immediately flashed back to those couple of weeks after Georgia's delivery that I walked with a cane and thought, two is a GREAT number. Then I saw a helicopter landing at the hospital, presumably to transport a very sick baby to Hopkins or Hershey and I said a quick prayer of thanks for my healthy babies.