mommy thoughts

I'm not really one to make bold statements. When I was vegetarian for those six years, I was never one to tell other people they shouldn't eat meat. (Actually, I sometimes encouraged people around me to eat meat so I could sniff it. Yeah, I wasn't a very good vegetarian.) And when I was straight edge for those, oh, 21 years of my life, I never really subscribed to the whole lifetime commitment "if you're not straight edge now you never were" thing, knowing I'd at least want a sip of champagne on my wedding day, for example. Anyway, what I'm saying is that I don't like to say things that I'll have to take back or somehow regret.
 
Even so, it hasn't stopped me from making the occasional bold statement. I would say that the majority of these were things I said about parenting or kids before I actually had a child. One such statement was, "My kid will never have snot running down her face." Okay, okay. It seems innocent enough. Why, as a parent, would I allow mucus to run down my child's face?? That is crazy talk. Wipe the damn nose, for Pete's sake.
 
So I didn't take into account a few things: Children have weak immune systems. Children in day care (and those not in day care) are surrounded by germs. Germs + weak immune system = sick kid, chronically between the months of October through April. That equals a lot of tissues and one sore little toddler nose. That and I would basically have to hold the tissue under her nose at all times.
 
Yup, my kid has a perma runny nose. I would like to make a retraction. Sometimes snot runs out of her nose without it promptly being wiped. And sometimes this even occurs *gasp* in public. There, I said it.
 
This was basically a long preface to say that Greta is dandy after her bout of croup. She has a very runny nose and a cough, but otherwise she seems fine. I also have a cold and have been using my fair share of tissues. Otherwise, things are good!
 
That is all.
 
Fran
 
 

What shall I write about? I could certainly talk about the inauguration and our new president, but that has certainly been done. Or I could talk about some recent cute and/or funny thing Greta has done, like just tonight when Pat played Metallica's "One" during bath time and she covered her eyes and said, "I can't see!" Or I could talk about how it's National Pie Day tomorrow and how we thought it was today and got a delicious piece of banana cream pie with dinner. Or I could talk about the lyrics to this one children's song that Greta loves that has super creepy lyrics (that involves these three little pigs that are told by their mom to say, "wee wee wee," but they always say, "oink, oink, oink" and as a direct result they DIE). Or how I found a house that was for sale in Brighton and in our price range that was so beautiful that the biggest issue in buying it would have been that our furniture and other possessions would have been shamed by their outstanding new surroundings...if some other lucky b@st@rds hadn't bought it first. Or how the weather, and the fact that I need to bundle up and wear boots to even take the garbage out, is slowly sucking the life out of me. Buuuuut, I'm jut not in the mood lately. It's very unlike me. As I'm sure you've noticed over the last 6 or so years, I can usually prattle on about almost nothing on a fairly regular basis: just like that. So I don't want to write, but I've also managed to lose my meal-planning motivation as well. This is also unlike me. It's by no means one of my great passions, but planning our meals and cooking are two of my main familial duties, and I've been greatly shirking them lately. I can't seem to buy all of the ingredients for a meal (tonight I literally had only half of what I needed for what I intended to make), or I do have all of the right ingredients and I make something and it's gross (like the "pizza pouches" I made that were so gross even the resident two year old said, "I don't yike pizza," even though real pizza is her favorite), or I just wander around the kitchen confused and at a loss and we end up eating applesauce and bran cereal for dinner. I should also mention that I've had work dreams almost every night for the last two weeks, and I'm no dream analysis expert, but that can't be healthy. And maybe the icing on the cake is that we've been watching approximately two episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm a night for the last, um, month or so, and that Larry David is one strange dude.
 
So how do I find my mojo? Some fun, new recipes? (Recipes always welcome in the comments section!) Visit to the acupuncturist? Take a vacation day or even an actual vacation that involves leaving Western New York? Take the family to see Hotel for Dogs?
 
Fran

I sometimes wonder if Greta's teachers, who send us home with what seems like an exorbitant amount of artwork with glitter on it, are snickering about the mess it makes in our houses and cars, getting parents back for leaving our terrible-two toddlers with them for 40 hours a week.
 
Or perhaps I'm putting way too much thought into it.
 
Fran