Worth a thousand words

A few weeks before my little sister packed up and moved to rural Alaska to teach school, my parentals decided to get a few family pictures snapped.

You know, because the island she lives on is packed with brown bears, and, well, you never know, right?

On extremely short notice, my mom booked Linsey from EllieBean photography, and she did a fabulous job!

Bug with Nana and PopPop

The ladies. Ari is finally back from the mish in Panama, and now MJ lives in AK.
P.S. When did my litle sisters turn into supermodels?
P.P.S When did I get so short?

The boys. Aren't they handsome?
 I can't believe none of them share any actual genes. (Or jeans.)



The whole fam-damily. You're luck that you can't see the electric nail polish Maddi wore on her toes.
Basically, my corneas are still on fire from seeing her toes glow radioactively in the sunlight.



Sigh. I'd kidnap her if she wasn't already mine.

What do you think?

Also, my little sister moved to rural Alaska. Did I make that clear? I mean, what?!

Kiss Me Dirty

Remember how I still haven't blogged the details of our trip to Denver? Well, it turns out there are all kinds of things I haven't gotten around to blogging about recently. Sometimes it doesn't feel like it, but it seems there are exciting things going on in our lives besides watching the turtle episode of Handy Manny 850 million times.

Don't judge me. Double dog dare you to withstand the eager cries of "tuh-tul! tuh-tul!" from my little copper-haired orphan, especially when battling the aforementioned cold which was awful enough to make me misspell the word "throat" in my last post. I mean, really.

So anyway, one of the things I never got around to blogging about was the Dirty Dash I ran with my inlaws in June. It was sludgey, muddy, and fabulous, so I convinced the ladies on the other side of my family to run the Kiss Me Dirty 5k last weekend for a similar experience.

We dressed as nerds, which was essentially an excuse to wear the most ridiculous outfits we could find. Case in point: Brenn's neon green denim capris featured front a center. Neon. Green. Denim.

What would a nerd party be without a human pyramid? We were making some good progress:

 until we weren't anymore. Plastic rimmed glasses were everywhere.

We might have had time to try round 2, except that after spending the days before the race sending out messages to everyone participating about how to be there early and remember their picture IDs, guess who forgot theirs? Despite the Schmoops reminding me minutes before we walked out the door? And didn't remember until we were in Woods Cross, when we turned around adding, oh, 40 MINUTES to our trip? I'm pretty sure the adrenaline from the anxiety I was experiencing from our frantic dash to Ogden carried me straight through the first mile.

While the fam-damily and I had a fantastic time making our own fun, I have to admit that the race was not nearly as dirty as the Dirty Dash. It was really more of a trail run with a giant mud puddle at the end and the occasional hay bale in the middle of the trail. The 4 dollar canvas shoes I scored at RiteAid the night before (since I donated my old running shoes at the Dirty Dash) were certainly not designed for what basically amounted to a bumpier-than-usual 5k.

I was certainly the slowest in my super athletic family, but we all finished in fine fashion. I must admit, after a sort of sub-par racing track, the bubbles at the end were a super cool idea.

I wish you could see the deer and the American flag on my t-shirt, paired with the most unflattering pair of basketball shorts in the history of the world. I pity the Taylorsville High student that I presume owned these before happily shoving them in a bag bound for the DI.

We rinsed off with the hoses provided, and headed to Maddox in Brigham City to gorge ourselves on warm rolls and raspberry butter along with all the other senior citizens who were ready for lunch at 11:00 am.

I'm not kidding about that. One of the (few) patrons to beat us in line when the restaurant opened had a powered wheelchair sporting a bright orange flag on the back.

It was pretty startling to head into the bathroom and see that the electric blue eye shadow that had been caked on nerd-style in the morning had now faded to the point where your average person might have assumed I wore it on purpose. Shudder.

After lunch, we started the long trek home with a tired baby and a dirty mommy. All in all, a delightful way to spend a Saturday morning.

Making lemonade

Ever notice how many quaint little sayings there are about making lemonade or finding joy in trials? From now on, whenever the Schmoops opens Bug's door after a nap and immediately calls out for me, I am going to sneak out the back door. Since I didn't know that this time, I'm just trying to count my blessings.

I am grateful for this little peanut, for example.

Doesn't she just look so innocent? So perfectly incapable of causing havoc?

I am grateful for diapers.

I am grateful that Bug has strong, healthy legs. I am grateful she can jump and bounce and stand in her bed, the better to splatter with.

I am grateful for her nimble little fingers, skilled enough to undo onesie snaps and diaper tabs. I am grateful for her artistic sensibilities, with careful, deliberate poo placement ensuing that no crib bar was left out of Poo Party 2011.

Mostly, I am grateful for washing machines and hot showers. And oh, how grateful I am for Clorox wipes.

Note from Ill-Ville.

I am wallowing in the misery that is a summertime cold. The stuffy nose, dry throat, hacking cough, nagging, persistant headache--I'm basically a disgusting ball of my own germs. I gross myself out.

I am also a terrible mother. For the last two days, we've done basically nothing but watch episodes of Backyardigans and completely ignore the growing pile of laundry. It's all I can do to fix meals and complete the occasional diaper change.

Thanks, Schmoopsie, for passing along the love.

Getting well quickly is imperative as the sloshy filthy muddy Kiss Me 5K run is coming up in a mere 3 days, and I still haven't made it to the DI to compile a kick-a outfit.

Wish me luck.

The first post about how we went to Denver.

Let's talk about why my last post was so horridly written. No, really, it was and we both know it, what with that abrupt ending and lack of concrete examples and all. But the thing is that I have an excuse and it's a good one.

See, the Schmoops and the Bug and I were in Denver last week and the lovely hotel we were staying in did not have free wifi (what year is this, anyway? I know of McDonald's locations with free wifi, and I don't pay to stay there for days on end) (also, we didn't pay to stay in out hotel in Denver, either, so maybe I should just stop complaining) so anyway we found ourselves one night munching on frozen custard at a fast food place in the middle of a long pedestrian mall and that place did have free wifi (my point, right?) and so I snagged the iPod touch from Schmoops and threw together a blog post.

And then two things happened: Bug was struck with the sudden and intense urge to spend lots of time with her hands on the floor of that fast food place, and also she pooped. Schmoops looked at me with that frantic look on his face and because we were stroller-free that evening I volunteered to sacrifice my arm to potential poop-leakage and hefted up the Bug and off we went. Right after I published that sucky post.

So anyway, Denver. Even though 2010 was his very first full year with the agency, (remember how he marched himself right out of his old job and into this better one a mere 2 days after I pushed the Bug out? Stressful. Also, a brilliant move) the Schmoopsie-face qualified for the Leader's Conference his company holds yearly because he is very, very good at what he does and works very, very hard at it. I am proud of him all the way up to the moon. Plus, free trip to Denver.

I'm sure I'll post details and some pictures when I find my camera. I bet it's somewhere underneath the 16 loads of laundry that need to be done. Here's the quick version:

Highlight: Bug pooped through every single pair of pants, shorts, or leggings we packed.
Lowlight: No self serve laundry at the hotel.

Highlight: Bug on the way to Denver. A gem, really.
Lowlight: The 9 hour trip home. I nearly lost my marbles, and I'm not 21 months old.

Highlight: Bug's super strange fear of the free t-shirt we got at the conference. Should have seen her lose her mind when I put it on her for bedtime.
Lowlight: Putting on a damp swimsuit. You know you know what I'm talking about.

Moment to remember: Bug had honestly said "mommy mommy mommymommymommy" so many times in a row on the way home I thought maybe I would die. A response from me, any response from me, was met with a blank stare from her, and quick return to the rapid fire mommy-ing.  Schmoops and I discussed possible uses of an audio recording of this, including torture. (Oh, wait. The PC term is "interrogation techniques", right?) Pretty soon we found ourselves with two options- laugh, or leave me alone on the side of the road to celebrate the silence.

We decided to time how long it would take Bug to hit 100 mommys. In her defense, she didn't hit 100 before giving up. In my defense, she did hit 64. In one minute and 24 seconds. Thankfully, we were laughing so hard by then that I was pretty sure my brain wouldn't explode after all.


How both Bug and I felt somewhere along I-70

Between fits of laughter, the Schmoops and I talked about the funny parts of parenthood, and about how some things make me nuts ("mommymommymommymommy") and not so much him (betcha "daddydaddydaddy" would've put him over the edge) and vise versa.

"We all have our El Guapos," he said. I laughed again, and thought about how smart he is.

And I guess that's what I was trying to say in my last post, too, when I was so rudely interrupted by poo.

Parenthood is full of El Guapos. And sometimes all perspective means is remembering that at least our El Guapo isn't the actual El Guapo, a big dangerous man who wants to kill us.

Things that are great about having a 21 month old

I imagine that every mom finds different stages of kid development that seem to be a better fit for their personality than others. For example, I love the itty bitty baby stage, and I am already dreaming of when Bug can read her books out loud to me at night. The toddler stage we're in now is full of laughs and learning, but it's also a little frustrating for me. She wants so badly to communicate, but doesn't quite know how best to do it. She also has quite strong feelings about the television shows allowed to invade her viewing experience. Right now we're in an almost exclusively Backyardigans phase. Daddy can occasionally finagle a Wipeout in the evenings, but forget about Project Runway.

There are lots of great things, though, too. Retrieving, for example. I haven't had to fetch a diaper in ages! Best of all, Bug can finally say Mommy.