Crunchy Husband and I will freely admit to being a tad geeky and nerdy.
We are Nerd Snobs really.

But I don’t think we have ever been nerdy enough. I don’t think we would actually be allowed into the club.

Yes we read sci fi. Yes CH reads conspiracy blogs. We love all things Sci fi and fantasy. If it is good.

We read comics. We have stacks of them AND graphic novels lying around.

We watch Dr. Who. Our kids know the OLD Transformers…the good one’s.

We have even attended comic and fantasy conventions AND CH was even on some of the panels.

Yet….we are not nerdy enough. Not as nerdy as these people. We don’t seem to have the passion about things. We have never joined fanclubs. We have never joined ’societies.’ We have never had the urge to dress up as characters.

We will happily geek out about Whedon’s X-Men or a good episode of BSG.

But that is about it.

So yet another ‘group’ or ‘demographic’ we don’t fit into. We seem to fall short of the parenting clubs out there…the attachment supporters and what not. We don’t make our own baby food. We eat junk food and let our kids watch tv…….so we are basically subversive parental rebels or something.

Meetup.com has nothing for me. I can’t get THAT fired up about …..I don’t know….what should I be fired up about?

This post caused a bit of a stir recently and really pissed off a lot of people..some people who I consider friends we quite upset about it all. I instead got what the post was about and had a chuckle. I was already in a bit of trouble for stating that I thought the last two Indy movies sucked and had NO interest in seeing the next one. I seemed to be alone in THIS opinion. Oh well.

Blogging is always fascinating. A bit of controversy or disagreement sees the wagons being circled and the torches and pitchforks coming out. There is a lot of virtual shoulder slapping and cyber hugs or pats on the back for standing up to whatever is going on.

Have you noticed these squabbles are usually over very minor things? I tend to not take them too seriously. I liken them to some of the debates I have had with CH and our friends. CH tends to not like a lot of the same books I do. We will get into HEATED debates about them. But it is all fun.

Right?

Of to go dust my Dalek.

LMAO…speaking of nerds……go read my buddy’s dream.

Despite  the panic this morning of having NO INTERNET ACCESS…all things smoothed out.

My poor Crunchy Husband went out again to help his mom and is not back yet.

But we kept the home fires burning.

No meltdowns either.

Hoping to watch Pan’s Labyrinth tonight.  In peace (gasp!)

Nana, bless her, took Adam on his preschool field trip to Grouse Mountain today.   I would have been fine going, but worried about care for Caity and so on.   The quiet allowed me to get some work done, blogging included.

Caity woke up Monday with puffy pink eyes.  We were a bit concerned as they coincided with a wack of flea bites all over her too.  Those, we figured came from my MIL’s house where their cat is suffering from them.  Poor thing.  The eyes worried me .

We took Caity to the Children’s ER at Burnaby General and they concluded that she had bites on her eyes.  I was dubious as the Children’s Benadryl had done nothing.   Yesterday I decided to get her into my doc who announced that it was some sort of infection and handed me some eye drops.  They have gone down already.  Thanks Doc!

It could have been from anything I suppose.

Caity cleaned up on Sunday at her other Nana’s house and came home with this…

A giant Barbie palace.  It is quiet pretty actually, and so are the dolls that accompanied it.   Caity is very happy.

The mom of Caity’s best buddy made this gorgeous card for her.  Isn’t it pretty?

She makes lovely cards. Notice the Dora beside it.  She now has a heard of Dora ponies and a stable and horse box. She is a happy little girl.

Oh and I got these!

Please note I will be handing these out to EVERYONE at BlogHer whether you want it or not.  I have a lot of them.

Yesterday had lots of good little things.  Those cards arrived, and then our passports (gasp) and then I got a stuffed meter for parking when we visited the doctor AND Adam had been really good and hung at the park with Nana and all his friends.  Yay.

So everything has come together for my trip to BlogHer.   Hotel booked, flights booked, passport present.  I just need a way to pay for it all and we are set!

If we didn’t have the specter of money worries and sick MIL’s, life would be good.

But we will carry on and see what else happens.

Next week I am taking care of our neighbours two boys for 4 days a week.   The oldest is enrolled at the same Kindergarten as Adam and I will be doing the ferrying to and fro of them and Caity and the younger boy in the fall.  For July and some of August it is them and me….all day long.

Aieeeee!

But we (I) need the money.   The card is maxed and  I gotta pay it off and I gotta help financially more around here.  You do what you gotta do.

We also need to budget waaaaay better.  Both of us.  I am bad but so is he and we need to grow up when it comes to money.  CH works really hard with saving and so on and I feel bad for him worrying about all this and juggling things.   I need to worry more and spend less!

So today is pretty quiet here.   Caity is at my feet playing with the Aquadoodle and is stuff full of noodles (hmmmm healthy)  The dog is begging me to take her out, and I will…when I am ready.  I am feeling mellow.

I can’t tell if  I am pms’ing or what.

Somedays…..I guess when the martyr is hanging around….I boggle at how much you have to DO as a stay at home mom. Hats off to the working moms..because I don’t know how you can work AND keep the home fires burning or the house burning down or whatever.

The sheer volume of STUFF that needs attended too…usually all at once. I mean, COME ON!

I mean I can’t even wake up peacefully.

Caity comes looking for me anywhere between 6 am and 7:30. She is usually adorned in a seriously soggy pull up. She is usually demanding more bubble and looking for someone to carry about 40 toys down the stairs for her.

Then the dog is up and happy and dealing with a full bladder. - Get dog out, find clean diaper, find milk, get Caity in front of treehouse and go retrieve dog.

I haven’t even put on the coffee yet. This is sad because I have one of those programmable coffee makers. I could set it the night before. Yah.

While hauling out the coffee stuff, I usually notice the cats staring intently at me. They are hungry and their litter trays are stinky. Yum.

Feed cats. Dump fresh litter over soiled stuff with note to yell at crunchy husband about it later. (hee, he was changing it yesterday and was griping about how heavy the litter box was!)

Realize I haven’t peed yet.

Adam wakes up. Demands Milk.

Retrieve paper. Put somewhere with the intention of reading it.

Run up and get laundry. Put load of laundry on.

Finally sit down for first cup of coffee.

Then the chorus of “I AM HUNGRY” begins….again. This time for the kids.

Chuck toast or waffles in toaster. Pretend to read paper.

Feed children.

Check email and blogs.

Remember that this all takes place with a steady chatter interspersed with fighting and yelling.

Remember that this all takes place with the constant reminder to either clean up toys before playing with something else.

We haven’t even gotten the kids in the bath yet! Or me.

Bathe kids.

Haul out clothing for them while they are in there

(yes I leave them unsupervised)

I sometimes take the garbage out too!

Oh yeah..the laundry. Deal with that to the background scream of ” I WANT OUT OF THE BATH!” from above.

(how does dh sleep through this stuff)

Get them dry and dressed.

Now it is lunch time.

Put food on.

Put more laundry on.

Take garbage out.

Figure out what needs to be done for the afternoon.

Today we need milk and hope to hit the library.

Exercise poor dog.

Feed poor dog.

Clean up poor dogs poop.

Seriously, the fun never ends.

I forget little things all the time…minute by minute.

Laundry gets left in the machine. Dishes don’t get done. Kids are left undressed.

I sometimes feel like this HUGE WAVE is just hanging over my head while I frantically dash for safety. It could all come crashing down.

There is a big difference between this and this.

And I am sure there are SAHM’s with their acts WAAY more together than mine is…but this is how I function…but sometimes the sheer volume just overwhelms me.

I am also wondering how I will do this four days a week with two extra kids.  I will have to learn to put somethings to the side.  Or drink.

One or the other.

Sheesh..where does the time go.   Another Makeover Monday here…

We did get Caity’s birthday sorted..just no pony rides.  But everyone had fun and Caity cleaned up with the gifts.

No ikea…we are STILL broke.

No debt consolidation….am working on dh on that.  He is glacial sometimes in his decision making.  I will be working on that.

No flowers..however, the landscapers HAVE promised to repair my backyard.

Goals this week.

-Work with dh on the loan stuff

- Come up with a proper schedule for the daycare stuff.  I need a plan.

- Work on a schedule for dh to follow when I am gone.  He doesn’t know the kids habits in the gruesome detail  I do.

- Book Hair and Pedicre

-Work with nana on booking a trip for us in August.

We will see how it goes.

Apart from there BEING NO BLEEDIN PONIES FOR CAITY TO RIDE……

sigh..but they still had fun at the farm.

And she got great Dora loot which made her very happy.

I am knackered and CH wants some action because HE isn’t knackered….a drink and relax first.

My little one is three today…

I have to admit that I was a teeny bit thrilled to have a girl.  Not that Adam wasn’t already the love of my life.  But I had had such a close relationship with my mom that I had always imagined getting that chance with a daughter of my own.  We shall see.

She rushed into the world.  She had been working at it for a while though…I had had ‘false’ contractions for about 3 weeks leading up the great event.  But when she decided she wanted out..that was it…four hours and hello world!

She has been a force of nature ever since.   Adam was a quiet and undemanding baby.  Caity made her needs known early and loudly.  Nothing has changed.

But she can be a total angel.  She told me the other day…out of the blue..that I was her best friend.  Wow.

Caity has been a lot of fun.  She adores her big brother.  Mimmicks everything he says and does.  He loves her too and that is a blessing in its self.  She has her dad wrapped around her little fingers and charms everyone wherever she goes.   There are only highs and lows with her, nothing inbetween.  Drama is the order of the day.

Today we celebrate her third birthday.

Angels do exist.

I had put her to bed.  The boys and the dog were out playing frisbee.  I had been checking email, talking on the phone and then watching my neighbour climb his tree.

I headed upstairs to get Adam’s pajama’s and came upon this scene.

Skirt is totally addictive.  So much to read.

I was reading Lawyer Mama’s great bit about the seemingly endless battle about mom’s, non moms, working mom’s, stay at home mom’s, etc, etc.

When I got married, I got the distinct impression from my peers that I was, in a sense, letting the feminist side down due to my taking on this ‘archaic’ tradition.

Personal choice did not seem to factor in.    I really felt that I had lost brain cells in the eyes of some of my friends and colleagues.   This included men as well as women.
Don’t get me started on the furor of me taking his name.   Once again, personal choice and what was right for me did not seem to factor in…or if it did…it meant I was a lesser person.

Of course I may have just been paranoid.

But modern feminism has gotten us all confused.  We seem to be a bit conflicted about what it means to be a feminist today.

For some the ideas of marriage and staying at home don’t jive with being a feminist.    And that is fine…personal choice and all.

And there is the crux.  Personal Choice.  The ability to HAVE a choice is or should be what modern feminism is about.

Isn’t it amazing that in the Western world, we actually can choose to NOT get married or choose to NOT have kids?   Isn’t it amazing that we can choose TO get married or choose TO have kids.  (generally of course)

So therefore, the next big step in feminism should be to respect that choice.

Stereotypes and old attitudes send so many mixed signals these days.  Look at the issues surrounding breastfeeding.  We are told breast is best.  We know in our hearts that this is true…yet the stigma and titillation (pun intended) of the boob runs rampant.   We love to see boobs on the ‘girls gone wild’ but scream and point in horror at a women feeding her child in public.

Support and education in breastfeeding is not what it should be either.   People are still tight lipped about postpartum depression and other post labour issues.  Heck, people don’t even want to talk about how hard just being MARRIED can be.    Or not….being in any relationship ‘arrangement’  is hard work.  Something our society doesn’t seem comfortable in recognizing or supporting.

I think the distaste and flack that shows up around mommy blogging, is that in general, 20 odd years ago,  parenting was just something you did.  You didn’t make a bid deal about it because it was considered the norm.   It was procreating and then dealing with it.    Feminism in the 60’s and 70’s seemed to centre around the idea that women didn’t want to be like their mom’s…they didn’t want to follow the norm.     It was a backlash.

Now, it seems, we have discovered anew that parenting is amazing and rewarding and hard that we CAN be forward thinking AND parents a the same time.

I think a lot of moms blog because we do know that we still have brains and that we do have something valuable to share and are happy to have found a community where we CAN share our views and so on.

Blogging is great.  You don’t have to read someone’s blog if you don’t want to.  You don’t have to share the same views.  You have a choice.

What a concept.

They got me thinking over at Skirt…..

I went shopping…does it GET any sexier than this???

yeah babeeeeee!

The beige one’s are fantastic under my wrap dress.