cat named pig

Just got back from walking Siena to school and found that the cat barf had disappeared from the laundry room floor (yes, I really left the house knowing there was a pile of cat vomit waiting to be cleaned up). This can mean one of two things: 

A) Matt cleaned it up before he left for work, or

B) Pig ate it

Based on historical precedent, my money’s on Option B. My advice to you? Don’t get a cat. 

I came home yesterday and was greeted at the door by Siena, eager to relay the following message: 

“Mama! Guess what?! Catnamedpig has Tweets now!” 

For those of you who know less about modern technology than my three-year-old (Hi, Dad!), this means Matt set up a Twitter account and put our “Tweets,” or brief messages, in the sidebar of catnamedpig.com.

As Matt put it yesterday, as he described the advantages of having this particular sidebar widget, “If Elliot falls and bangs his head, you can put a quick update on the site: Heading to hospital; baby gushing blood.”

Exactly. What any good modern parent would do: update their blog via text message in the event of a medical emergency.    

The last few days have seen a significant warming in cat-child relations around here. Recent peace talks between Pig and Siena signal an end to years of mutual distrust and hostility. Last night they celebrated their accord by cuddling together while watching Ratatouille, and today they took a nap together. They are even considering an alliance against The Younger One, whose unpredictable noises and insistence on showing affection by pulling hair/fur make him a threat to both parties. They hope to usher in a new era of peace (not growling at each other) and prosperity (extra food), and are working in tandem to wake up the household by whining for breakfast each morning.  

Here is a short list of things over which someone in our house has cried hot, angry tears today:

1. The cereal being wrong.

2. The cereal being in the wrong kind of bowl.

3. The milk being poured wrong (oh, wait, that one turned out OK, thanks to the liquid nature of the milk which caused it to fill the bowl evenly despite being poured only from one side. Whew.).

4. The cereal being all gone, and then the second, third and fourth helpings of cereal being all gone. (This was Elliot.)

5. Me leaving the room. (Also Elliot, and this would not be such a problem if he could just hang out in bathroom for one whole minute without eating used tissues out of the trash can and diving headfirst into the dry bathtub.

6. Not being allowed to eat a delicious, waxy crayon. And then having pieces of delicious wax fished out of his mouth.

7. The importance of wearing a dress, and not a skirt, to school because if one wears a skirt, one “will not be so beautifuuuulllllSOB.” (This was Matt. Just kidding — you know he doesn’t put that much thought into what he wears. Or into anything not related to his fantasy league.) 

I’m not used to feeling like the calm, rational one around here. Good thing we had kids so Matt could stop thinking I was overly-emotional.  

Some of my favorite conversations with Siena take place in the car, when there is nothing else to do but talk. (Some of my least favorite conversations also take place in the car, such as when she is tired after a day at school and makes a huge fuss about which way I turn to drive home, but that is another story.)

Here’s what we discussed Monday:

Siena: “Mama, do you have any more babies in your tummy?”

Me: “No, why?” [Does this mean I need to get serious about working out or something?]

Siena: “Because I really need a sister.”

Me: “Well, you have Avery, and you have your other girlfriends at school, and your cousin Maya. They’re like sisters for you. And Elliot is getting bigger, so he’ll be a lot more fun to play with soon.”

Siena: “But I really want a little sister. Not a brother.”

Me: “Well, we’re a two-kid family. We’re not having any more babies.”

Siena: “Can’t we just hatch another one and have it be a girl?”

Me [laughing]: “Ummm, no. It doesn’t work that way.”

Siena: “I can’t accept that.” 

How can she sound so adult and yet so little at the same time? “I can’t accept that?” But then she also thinks we can just “hatch” another baby, like the baby chicks at the zoo or something. At least Anderson is pregnant again, so we have a new arrival to look forward to in the near future. I’m guessing it will be a girl, too. 

Saturday night: cars pull up in front of my house; girlfriends of mine get out and wheel rolling suitcases full of scrapbook supplies up to the door, some also balancing armfuls of paper, photos and albums. (This is a marked contrast to Friday night, when only Sara’s car pulled up in front of my house and Sara dragged a rolling suitcase full of wine and cheese up to the door. Just kidding — there was no suitcase. Stop judging us.)

These friends of mine, they mean business with their scrapbook equipment. I look like a rank amateur next to them, with a storage box haphazardly filled with anything I might ever want to put in an album, along with a pair of kitchen shears for cutting paper and some random items I just don’t want Siena getting into every five minutes (water colors, birthday decorations, etc.). Fortunately, I am saved the embarrassment of having to compare my paltry supplies to their Archivers-stores-on-wheels. We end up spending the night sitting around the counter in the basement where I’ve set out all the food. Sara and I did roughly the same on Friday. This is not a bad way to spend an evening, and when Matt finishes the bar top, it will be even better. [How’s that coming, hon?] In fact, this is my preferred way to spend time now that our basement is done.

We took a short break from all the sitting and eating to run to Walgreen’s for a pregnancy test, details of which I will not reveal here, save to say that it was not mine (Hallelujah and Amen). The giddy pitch of excitement we reached during that short errand reminded me of high school, when the prospect of getting some Taco Bell or driving by the home of a guy someone liked would get us that riled up. There was also one night where a couple friends and I drove around leaving slices of bread on the doorsteps and in the mailboxes of friends and crushes.

[Note to self: do not be surprised in fourteen years when random stuff starts showing up in your yard and home; this is actually a good sign because it means your kids and their friends are being weird, but in a relatively safe and legal way. Drive-by breading is to be encouraged in lieu of other possible teenage activities.]

…..

Sunday morning: a trip to the zoo with Matt’s brother, Scott, and his wife, Maria. They are taking their three children to Disney World later this week, to which I also say: Not us, Hallelujah and Amen. But I’m sure they’ll have a blast, and since it snowed this morning, I am more than a little jealous that they’re heading to Florida for a week.

…..

The weekend ended with some more hanging out in the basement, playing DUNK! BALL! and watching Annie. (Match the activity to the kid.) It’s like we don’t even need the other two levels of our house any more. 

I decided to change the tagline on this site because I just reread my last few posts and almost fell asleep. The baby (toddler?) is cute and Siena made a mess. Just throw in a line or two about the fish tank looking brackish but I’m not in charge of cleaning it, and you’ll have this whole site condensed into a few paragraphs. Oh, and tonight I’m gonna drink some wine with Sara and talk about our kids, as per always.

[Hi, Sara. I love drinking wine and talking about our kids; I am not saying that is boring in any way. I am just saying I’m hard-up for a post topic that I haven’t already covered multiple times.] 

Other weekend plans include working on some house projects (Matt) and hosting a scrapbooking party (me). Which I’m pretty sure makes me officially a grown-up. (Even more than the two kids, two pets, two Ford Tauruses, and the mortgage payment.) Also, Matt and I might watch some Six Feet Under if the next disc arrives from Netflix. Wild. 

Five years ago? A typical Saturday night would involve getting dressed up and going out dancing with girlfriends, staying out till hours I now only associate with breastfeeding a newborn or waking up to give a sick kid some medicine. And ten years ago? Best not to even write about the Saturday nights in college. (What we remember of them.) But I don’t miss any of that. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself in a bar with a dance floor these days, and even if I went to such a place, then there’s 7:00 a.m. Sunday morning when Elliot wakes up and is not interested in hearing about what time I went to bed — he just wants something to eat. 

And how about one year ago? At this time last year, Elliot was a few weeks old, eating non-stop (OK, that hasn’t changed, but at least I’m not the only who feeds him now) and Siena was responding to all the change in the way she always responds to change: by not sleeping well. If the baby wasn’t waking us up, it was Siena crawling into our bed, all kneecaps, burrowing into whatever pillow space my head had been occupying. We were exhausted.

Elated, too; crazy in love with our new baby and our old baby and how sweet they were together and AWWWWWWWWWW, where’s the camera?

And I look at pictures (as I prepare to scrapbook) and get all misty-eyed about how sweet and exciting that time was, just like the time before that when we brought our first baby home, and I think about how there is nothing in the world like bringing home a new baby.    

However. There is also nothing in the world like going to bed each night and knowing that, more than likely, you are going to sleep for the next eight hours without interruption. THERE IS NOTHING LIKE THAT.

When Elliot was three weeks old we were so tired we couldn’t form sentences. And when Siena was three weeks old, she contracted RSV, one of the scarier diseases a newborn can have. We also found out she had a heart murmur, a minor hole in her heart which has since closed. We weren’t sleeping in those days, either, because we were giving her nebulizer treatments around the clock and then I was lying next to her, wide awake, listening to her uneven breathing. I was terrified. I held it together pretty well during the day (for the most part, and Matt’s recollection may differ here) but the nights were one endless freak-out session in my head.

And then, with both babies, there was the heartbreak of going back to work, and the crazy juggling and feeling-split-in-two thing. There was changing jobs after Siena was born and quitting my job after Elliot, and all the obsessing that went into those decisions. More recently, there was the “twelve-week” basement remodel that lasted six months and caused major disruption to our house and routines.

I know there’s always something, and I also know I’ll probably be the one to drum up the next big project or change in our lives, but for now, the predictability is kind of nice. I guess all of this is just my way of saying that I like a life where my greatest source of stress is planning a child’s birthday party. Boring is not so bad.

I guess I knew what I was in for when I handed Elliot six playing cards to keep him entertained in his highchair while I left the room briefly. I mean, Siena saw me open the drawer and take the cards out. So it was hardly a surprise when I came back and found two full decks scattered across the floor. That’s what I get for trying to brush my teeth alone, without anyone knocking over the trash can and rifling through its contents or emptying my makeup case in search of eyeliner to draw cat whiskers. 

Of course, she blamed Elliot, as I’m sure she will do in similar situations for years to come. But she really should’ve thought it through a little better. It’s not like he climbed out of the highchair, walked over to the buffet and opened the drawer, then climbed back up and buckled himself back in after throwing the cards around. (He will probably do all that next week, though, as he continues his sprint from babyhood to Toddler Who Gets Into Everything.)

I pointed this logic out to Siena, and she modified her story: “Well, Elliot and I did it together.” Which is probably true — he loves testing the effect of gravity on anything dropped from his highchair. 

So I did what any parent would do whose kids have been alternately coughing and bouncing off the walls for the last five days: I left it all on the floor and walked Siena to school. Then I came home and let Elliot pick up cards and fling them for a good half-hour. Why waste a good mess when you can maximize its fun potential? Especially fun (for Elliot) was the part where I had to lie flat on the floor to reach under the couch for escaped playing cards. He liked that so much he started imitating me. 

But he is. So very cute. If you lived with a person who did some of these things, you’d spend most of your time droning on and on about it too. I can’t help it — it’s been a slow news week at catnamedpig headquarters. I’d rather write about Elliot’s never-ending cuteness than describe minute differences between the various types of coughs I’ve been listening to lately. Which is really the only other post I have in me today. And I did warn you with the title that you might want to skip this one if you’re not into cute babies.

Most recent cute activity:

1. Right before naptime, as I feed him a bottle in the rocking chair, I usually pull off his socks and shoes because I know he likes to sleep barefoot. And his whole face lights up Clark Griswold’s house in Christmas Vacation (anyone else’s husband obsessed with that movie?). He pulls the bottle out of his mouth to grin at me, all but saying “YESSSSSS — my feet are free.”

2. The wobbly baby steps. One, two, maybe three . . . and then a dramatic losing-of-the-balance. And then if you say KABOOM! he flings his arms up and bangs them on the floor (he’s been doing this trick for a while, but it makes a great follow-up to the walking attempts).

3. He crawls over to the baby gate by our front door, stands up and turns around to casually wave bye-bye, like he’s just on his way out for a few hours, see ya later, oh, and could someone just get this gate out of the way? 

I’ll stop there, for now, but there’s a good chance the next time I talk to you I’ll tell you five stories about Elliot. And you’ll have to listen politely and try not to roll your eyes. Because you get it, he’s cute, but enough already. 

Siena’s cute too — I’ll write a post about her next. Or maybe something interesting will happen, and I’ll write about that instead. You never know.

I got my hair all chopped off over the weekend and was feeling pretty good about it. Then Siena and I watched Ratatouille for the millionth time last night.

We have a great routine going where she makes us some omelets in her kitchen (recent ingredients have included peanut butter, “spice,” and ketchup) and sit we down with our plates to watch the movie about the rat who cooks. I’d say we’ve done this five out of the last seven nights, usually right after Elliot goes to bed. With any luck, we’ll continue this routine every night until she’s old enough to make us real omelets, at which time I will officially consider myself a success as a parent. 

But when we watched the movie last night, I noticed something. My new haircut? Looks exactly like this:  

I need to get a life.