MoMonkey MoMonkey

A Smile A Day Melts the Bad Stuff Away!

My little girl is a year and a half old today. Where did the time go? And being the bad Mommy that I am, I forgot all about this until the hubs reminded me tonight.

I've never been good with dates and stuff. I can't even remember how old I am half the time. Luckily, the hubs and I share the same birthday, only one year apart. So when I forget, all I have to do is ask him.

Now I must play with Mo so that I can wipe my bad Mommy guilt away!!

Popular Names

Before the hubs and I ever married (over 10 years ago) we had our kid names picked out. (Note the plural on names!) Anyhoo, we always knew if we had a girl, we'd name her Madeline Elizabeth after her two grandmothers. We had another girl's name picked out and two boy's names picked out as well. (Not that we were ever planning to have 4 kids... just prepping in case we had twins or something...). Anyhoo, we prided ourselves on having really original names, but it seems that over the years our names have become really trendy and over-used, which turns us off completely. Madeline is one of those trendy names now too. Everywhere I go, I see the preppy Mom in her preppy car calling her preppy little girl Madeline or Maddie!! Eeeeew. And nearly every parenting magazine I pick up, there's an article about a little girl named Madeline (mostly featuring little Madeline's who are bad!!) Ironic, eh? Anyhoo, it just sickens me to know our girl has a trendy name. Thank goodness we have an out with the grandma thing.

What happened to originality? I have to give Gwnyth Paltrow and her hubs (whoever he is) props for naming their kid "Apple". Is it weird? Yes. But at least it's different. Well it was then. Now there's probably lots of dorky families all over the place calling their baby girls Apple, Peach, Cucumber or some other silly fruit or vegetable. People are weird.

All Hail the Emperor of our House

Mo has taken a liking to dressing in our clothing and shoes. It's the funniest thing seeing her traipse around the house in my flip flops or sneakers! In these pics, Mo took some of Daddy's gym shorts from the laundry basket. Thank goodness they were clean!

Are You Kidding Me?

I worked from home today and called into the office to get my voicemails this afternoon. One of those voicemails was from Mo's new babysitter. She said she was having a medical procedure which requires a BRIEF recovery period and wasn't going to be able to watch Mo ever again.

Huh?

I'm speechless. And also screwed.

Monkeygirl Update

1. We went to look at the cool house on Tuesday night. Loved it! It needed a lot of cosmetic work, but had great potential. Ultimately, though, the neighborhood is just too much of an issue for us to consider sacrificing our current abode. A girl can dream though, right?

2. Mo's been going to her new babysitter for 3 weeks now. I'm not sure how it's going yet. I can't wait until the day she can tell me what's going on. I've observed some strange things in picking/dropping her off. But today was the hardest of all. As soon as we stepped foot into the babysitter's house, tears welled up in her eyes and she started crying "Momma". I literally had to carry her across the room and just leave. It broke my heart. I realize she's at the perfect age to have separation anxiety, but she has never had that problem before. Why all of a sudden this morning? All day long I had pangs of guilt about leaving her there. I'm just hoping it was an isolated thing and this doesn't happen next week.

3. We finally got our TIVO today! Yippeeee!

Sippy Cup Thrills

Yep, that's Mo dumping her leaky sippy cup down her pants. Fun stuff, huh?

House for Sale

Let me preface this entry by saying we are NOT in the market to buy another house. We love our current house and we lucked out by purchasing it just before the housing market went insane. To give you an idea, we bought our house for $149k, and the house across the street from us (which is approx. the same square footage) sold for $289k a little over a year later.

That being said, I still look at the real estate ads from time to time. Last Sunday, I stumbled across this house and I can't get it out of my mind.

It has a total of 3700 square feet with 5 bedrooms, an office, a family room, leaded glass windows, built-ins, etc. It also has a carriage house behind it with 2 apartments. The house is currently listed for $275k, which is way more than I'd like to pay for a house. However, the apartments currently generate $725 in monthly income (and the realtor said that could be much higher). Plus with the profit we'd make on selling our current house and the savings we'd incur by not having to renovate our current kitchen, we'd very likely come out ahead financially.

So what's the catch? Location. It sucks. It's located on a busy street in a neighborhood that isn't so great - with a gas station to its left and a catholic school to its right.

Would you give up the perfect, quiet, tree-lined street (where we live now) for a bigger, more beautiful house in a sucky location? My answer to this has been no, but why can't I get this house out of my head?

Movies = Bad

Not that I can go with a badly behaving toddler, but still... why do all the newly released movies suck? Nothing even appeals to me anymore. And to think, I was actually going through withdrawal when Mo was first born.

Hollywood, you have no business making some of these movies. Ya'll need to get your peeps together and hit them over the head with 2x4's.

Little Mo Peep

We spent the evening at Aunt Wendy and Uncle Dave's house last night. According to Aunt Wendy, Mo has complete freedom to destroy their house!! (A freedom she does NOT have at our house!) One of her favorite things to play with are the Longaberger baskets. In these pics, she's trying on the basket liner and walking around with a cane. She could barely see at times and cracked herself up when she ran into things. Putting things on her head seems to be her new habit. See, I told ya'll I didn't stage the diaper bag pose! (Thanks Uncle Dave for the pics!)

Meet Diaper Bag Head!

Note: No child was harmed in the making of this picture!

She did this herself. Honest. And I only let her keep it on long enough to take the picture. :)

New Things

Mo picked up a new habit today, which I assume was learned in her new daycare situation. She has taken a liking to LICKING my face. And my arm. And other body parts. I don't think I want to know how this was learned.

Childhood Memories

On Sunday afternoon, we went to a Labor Day picnic at Mo's babysitters' house (AKA Kim and Brad). She played on the swingset and ran around as usual. Kim took her over to the neighbor's trampoline to play a bit and although I wasn't there to witness it, Daddy said she had a blast on the trampoline.

When I was a child, my best friend had a trampoline at her house and we spent COUNTLESS hours on that thing. We played, had sleepovers on there, had countless talks on there as we grew into teenagers. There's just something special about trampolines.

Anyhoo, after Daddy confirmed Mo had a great time on it, I decided we need to get one for our house. So that will be our goal in the next year or so. We need to get that and a really cool swing-set... if we can ever afford them. Anybody see the prices on those wooden swing-set, sliding board thingies? Most are over $1000!! It's crazy. We'll have to save our pennies I guess!

In other news...

Mo's vocabulary has grown by leaps and bounds over the last few days. She's now calling her monkeys "mawnies" and is able to communicate in ways she has never been able to before. For instance, she can say "Mommy, babble-babble-babble- ball" - meaning, "Mommy, can I have the ball?". When she's talking to me, I can understand her for the most part. It's awesome to hear her communicate like that! Melts me every time!

Also, she started today with her new babysitter - who is watching her on Tuesdays and Wednesdays every week. I had some anxiety about it last night thinking it was going to be all new to her and that she'd be surrounded by other kids (which she is not used to, but so desperately needs). My anxiety melted the moment I stepped foot in the babysitter's house this morning because Mo immediately ran from me and started to play with the other kids. She just jumped right in without any problem and when I showed up to pick her up, she wasn't ready to leave.

The babysitter was surprised by a few things: 1) she eats really well; 2) she's an awesome sleeper; 3) she's affectionate; and 4) she takes toys from other kids.

As for #1 - her appetite comes and goes. Sleeping? Yep, she's great at it. Mo slept for 2 hours today - much longer than the other kids. And she slept through all the noise, which had the babysitter concerned. She said she had to keep checking on her to see if she was breathing because she wasn't used to that. Affectionate? I don't know that side of Mo. She's rarely affectionate because she's too busy being independent and playing!! Once in a while she'll stop for a kiss or hug, but that's a rare occasion. Apparently today, she wanted to sit on the babysitter's lap a lot. Hmmmm...maybe her way of coping with the change. And sharing? I've never known it to be a problem until today, but I suppose it's to be expected since she's an only child and hasn't had much play-time exposure to kids her own age. So hopefully this will be something that passes. I used to play a sharing game with her when she was younger, so I guess I'll have to start that game up again! I certainly don't want my child being the bully!!

That's all for now.

What's a Girl To Do?

"Eddie Bauer Home" has officially closed. This was one of my favorite stores. This and Pottery Barn, of course, both of which are freakishly over-priced. But still....

Excuse me while I sulk.

Disgusting...

Dear Restaurants, Stores, and other public facilities:

Please, oh please, tell your employees that while cleaning the bathrooms, add the changing station to their rotation. They are filthy in nearly every place I go. I realize a good bit of your customers are inconsiderate freaks who have no problem leaving their child's poop spattered all over the station. Someone has to deal with it though. I'm really starting to get the heeby-jeeby's...

Thank you.
Monkeygirl

Allow Me To Introduce Sha-Mo-Mo

Paying Money to Get Your Money...

I get charged every time I use my ATM card, and now I get charged an $18 monthly fee when I use the ATM over 8 times in a given month. This doesn't just mean withdrawing money from an ATM machine; it also means every time I go shopping and use it as a debit instead of a VISA. So I call the bank and ask if there's anything I can do to get rid of that stupid fee because I'm charged every single month and you wanna know what her answer was? DON'T USE IT! Can you believe that? And this is a credit union that's supposed to be a better option for consumers?

I do not like big banks like Wachovia or Commerce, but honestly, they don't rake you over the coals with the stupid over 8 withdrawal fees and they have many more locations to tap ATM without being charged extra fees. (Sorry Wendy, I know how much you love credit unions!!) Wachovia, here I come!

Although, I shouldn't be complaining...this sounds very, very trivial compared to what's happening in New Orleans and Mississippi as a result of the hurricane. It breaks my heart to see what's happening there and couldn't imagine going through something like that. I watched the news last night and they have literally thousands of people lined up on the highways waiting for food and water, and shelter. Lives are lost. Homes are lost. Businesses are lost. SAD. There's nothing more I can say about it than that.