You know that secret

Remember that secret I mentioned well some good news has come out of it. Cub Daddy has been promoted. He is the boss now and we are staying in Chicago for now. This promotion is a very good thing.

I don't want to mention to much of his job because of not wanting to get him in any trouble. You understand.

Look what I can do Daddy

My husband was getting the boys ready for bath and told Big Cubby to get undressed. When he turned back around Big Cubby was naked and sticking his pee pee in one of the holes of the safety gate and said “ Look a hole for my pee pee” in which my husband replied if it were only that easy.

Boys.

I guess the apple doesn't fall to far from the tree

Evidently when I was Big Cubby’s age I would get naked and sit in the window for the whole neighborhood to see.

At least Big Cubby is using his power for good.

A New Type of Superhero

I just walked into the living room and Big Cubby is sitting on the couch naked. I asked him what he was doing and he told me he was a naked superhero.

I am afraid to ask what is superhero power is.

I am sure you don't want to hear about this

I am having trouble coming up with something to write about today. Some of the blogs I have been reading are having a lot of drama that my life in comparison is boring.

So, I am sure you don’t want to hear about how yesterday in the afternoon what I call the witching hour Little Cubby became very whiny or how Big Cubby would not listen to me and kept getting in trouble making my blood pressure rise.

I know you don’t want to how many times I had to stop Big Cubby from hurting Little Cubby or how Cub Daddy had an event to attend so he was late getting home so I had to do the dinner and bath routine with two cranky kids.

The day started out lovely. The birds were singing and the sun was shining. The boys were being great then 3pm hit and all hell broke loose. Tell me you have these types of days.

When I think about I am glad that I don’t have that much drama in my life.

Have a drama free day!!!

Hot in Herre

It is way to freaking hot here. Yesterday we reached 102 and today it is supposed to be 97 with an heat index 100. When you walk outside it feels like a oven. We took the boys out yesterday to a mall to play in a kiddie area. Big Cubby complained about how hot it was. We told him he better appreciate that fact he has air conditioning in his home because when mommy was growing up she did not have air conditioning in her home until she was in high school. Our schools did not have air conditioning. This kids don't know how good they have it.

Keep cool everyone!

Where are the TUMS

My sister, her husband, their 15-month-old little girl and my mother are coming to visit the first week in August. I have been stressing about this for a month now. We don’t have any room so they are staying in a hotel downtown. They are taking their vacation here for four days and we are only going to see them one day. We plan on going to a museum with them.

Why I am stressing over this when I only have to see them one day? Here is the background on my family and why I am not looking forward to this visit.

It doesn’t have to do with my sister and her family. They are ok and if it was just them visiting it would be fun. The stress comes from my mother who invited herself along on my sister’s vacation. They are going to have to drive her up here and then my mother is meeting her boyfriend who is flying in. My mother’s boyfriend lives in a different state. It is a weird relationship.

It all started when I married my husband. I was 20 years old and my mom did not think I should get married young or I should marry the guy I was. My husband and I started dating the summer of our senior year of high school. We broke up off and on. My mom did not like him. I think the reason she did not like him was because she could not get him to flirt with her. She always tried to flirt with all the guys I dated. There was one guy I dated I think she had the hots for. She was married to my step dad at the time. My husband did not find her attractive whatsoever. We have been married for 12 ½ years and my mom is still waiting for something to go wrong in my marriage so she can say I told you so. What kills her is that my marriage is strong.

So my relationship with my mother is strained. She has always criticized me since childhood. My hair isn’t the right color, I need more makeup, I could lose a few pounds. She does this with my sister as well who until having her own child put up with it. Now she doesn’t put up with my mother’s comments. My sister can say whatever she wants to and my mother never says anything. If I say how I feel then I am the worst daughter in the world.

When we told our families we were trying to get pregnant it was Christmas. My mother said that she was too young to be a grandmother. She was not joking. She was 50 years old and had a boob job, which she happily displayed.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I wanted to tell my mother how I felt about all the stuff she said about me and hoped that we could become mother and daughter again. I felt that I was having a baby that it would bring us closer together. I sent an email explaining what I wanted her to know and in return I got a 7-page handwritten letter basically telling I was a horrible daughter, that my husband had a chip on his shoulder. She told me I was selfish. This coming from a woman who only thinks of herself.

Ever since then our relationship has been strained. She has only been up here once since my first son was born. We have visited her but when we do she is either out of town or going out with her boyfriend. She has different priorities right now and her grandchildren are not it. She has only seen my second son twice. That was at Christmas. We went to visit family on Memorial Day weekend and she went out of town and I told her we were coming a month in advance.

We post pictures online for all the family to see and she never makes a comment about them unless there are no pictures of the things she has bought the boys like wearing the clothes she has bought.

I know she is not a happy person. She finds happiness in the misery of others. I wish I was being dramatic unfortunately this is true. I would love to have her be a grandmother to my children. I don’t think this is going to happen. She has told me she has sacrificed most of her life to raise us girls and now it time to have a good time with her life. She spent most of my childhood partying. There were always wild parties with my father and again with my step dad. My step dad left because he wanted her to settle down and not party anymore.

Just once I wish she would put someone before herself. My children are going to grow up not really knowing their grandmother. She is going to turn around and the boys will not care to spend time with her.

So now you see this one-day visit has me stressed out because when we get together we act like nothing has happened and it is so painful that I am physically and mentally exhausted from it.

I just needed to get all of that out.

Harry Potter Geek Stuff

I'm a Gryffindor!

I know I enjoy the books but I am not that fanatical about it. I can only remember bits and pieces of each books. I just thought this was fun to do. I guess I am bored.

No Improvement

Well there is no improvement with the sleeping situation. Little Cubby is getting up every hour until a certain time. Last night it was until 2:30am he stopped and did not get up again until 5am. I just don't know what to do. He was good naps throughout the day. One in the morning and one in the afternoon. He is tired when it is time to go to bed in the evening. Then from 10pm on he gets up.

He has really good naps throughout the day. He has one in the morning and one in the afternoon. He is tired when he goes to bed in the evening.

It is getting to the point that I have to keep active so I don’t pass out on the couch. Big Cubby doesn’t take a nap any more and it is a rare occasion when he does. He can not be trusted so I have to make myself stay awake.

I know that a lot of parents out there go through this. I just wish there was a solution. This experience with Little Cubby has helped with the decision that there won't be any more Cubbies. I can not go through this again.

On a good note, there is nothing like having a pillow fight with your almost 4 year old. The giggles are contagious.

I hope everyone has a good weekend! Please sleep for me!

It's officially an evil conspiracy

Last night Little Cubby decided that from 10:30pm until 2:00am he would wake up every thirty minutes not because he was hungry, not because he had a dirty diaper, and not because he was teething. Oh no, he wanted to play. With a big smile on his face, he wanted his mommy and daddy to play with him.

He fell asleep finally around 2:00am but got up again at 6am.

It is officially an evil conspiracy between Big and Little Cubby. They want me to be crazy and tired so they can take over the household.

So sleepy so very sleepy.

His evil plan

Why is it that every time I go to do something whether it be doing the dishes or using the phone, Big Cubby decides to get in every drawer his not suppose to be in or get on the computer and start pushing buttons?

I think his evil plan is to drive me crazy slowly.

He is succeeding.

If you need me I will be sitting in the corner rocking back and forth.

Secret

Ok this is some what a secret. Cub Daddy will probably get mad I am mentioning this but I just have to get my feelings out.

Friday morning Cub Daddy had a meeting with a couple of his bosses. They told him there might be some changes—not one idea what—and they asked him if he was still interested in St. Louis. They talked about relocating why there for him (family, in the town there is at least a population) and if he was happy in what he was doing.

They ended the meeting saying that he will play bigger role next year with more responsibility but he was no idea what that is. They asked if he wanted to travel and that there might be more in the budget for that.

So you see it is very cryptic. You never know with this company if anything will follow through.

The reason they brought up St. Louis is in 2001 when Big Cubby was born Cub Daddy tried to get the company to start a product in the St. Louis area. Reason behind it was we wanted to be closer to our family. As it is now it is a 6 hour drive to see them. If we moved to St. Louis we would only be a 2 hour drive away. Well that idea never panned our and we got settled here in Chicago.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this. Let say they want us to move to St. Louis, this would have been great a few years ago but now I am not so sure. We really love Chicago and the surrounding area. There are pro and cons to it. We would be closer to Cub Daddy’s family which we would love but then we would be closer to my family not so great. (More on my family later. To long to describe here.) Chicago has so much to offer than St. Louis. I just don’t know how I feel about this. What is worse there maybe nothing to feel about. This can result into nothing. I just hate that not knowing.

There I got it out.

Jealousy

I am really jealous Cub Daddy went to the Cubs game today because it was a work thing. While he was there a bird shit on his head. I think that says enough ;)

Jonny Depp Quiz

Saw this on Sleeping Mommy who got it from It's Just the Coffee Talking.

You Are Ichabod Crane From "Sleepy Hollow." You're a deep thinker - most times logically. You're a bit of a neat freak and a wuss (hey, you do faint a lot!) but you do have the ability to overcome your fears and come out stronger in the end. And you never lose your head over things. (Gufaw gufaw!)

Take The Johnny Depp Quiz!

10 months old

Little Cubby you are 10 months old today. It seems that time, on one hand has flown, and on the other is drags on.

You are a bright eyed little one who is on the verge of walking, taking those tentative steps on your chubby legs without holding onto something.

You can scoot along things while standing and are a pro at crawling, but you can see in your eyes you covet being able to walk. Your biggest frustration is following someone into another room only to have that person turn around and step over you back to another room.

As for the time dragging thing, you are still breastfeeding. You look for the boob as comfort. You want to be on it all the time. You have a pacifier you will use sometimes but you prefer me instead.

You are still not sleeping through the night. You get up at least three times a night if not more. You will sleep through traffic when we go for a walk yet the slightest noise in your bedroom and you wake up instantly. You wait for Mommy to fall asleep then you cry for me to come get you.

You like to smile and giggle. You have 5 teeth now. Two on top and three on the bottom. You are a vampire. Aside from the breast suckling, you love to bite and your sharp little teeth coming in garner the response you are seeking. I am always telling you to go bit Daddy, but you prefer to nibble on me. Time to put on jeans and chaps even though it is summer.

Feeding you solid food is less of a chore than it was for Big Cubby, since you will eat anything with glee. You only frowned at stage 3 lasagna with its bits of “meat” in it. Big Cubby on the other hand, had many faces of horror for all veggies and a few other things.

You like to eat paper. You try to get your hands on anything with paper. Coloring books, notebooks and you even try to eat the labels off the water bottles.

You can say mama and dada. You are only happy if I am the one holding you. You get mad at Daddy if he comes to pick you up. You are a Mama’s boy. So is your brother by the way.

You love your big brother even if your big brother doesn’t like you touching his trains and lets you know about it often. We put up a toddler gate to block you from intruding into Big Cubby’s play sanctuary now and then. You just stand there on your tiptoes looking at Big Cubby, laughing and chewing on the wood.

Oh what a night

Oh what a night. But first let me go back and give you the information of our living accommodations. We live in a two bedroom apartment. We live in the middle apartment. The person upstairs likes to come and go at all hours and we can hear their every step they take. Most the time it sounds like stomping.

Big Cubby has is own room. When Little Cubby was born we did not want him waking up Big Cubby and I am breastfeeding so he slept in our room. Well as the months went on every time my husband or I went to bed we would wake up Little Cubby. So we started sleeping in the living room in hopes that it would help Little Cubby sleep through the night. My husband sleeps on the floor with a bunch of blankets and I sleep on the couch. We have been doing this since December. Well it helps sort of, for awhile he was getting up a lot then it slowed down to just a couple of times a night. The neighbor upstairs comes home around 10pm and it always wakes up Little Cubby. The routine would go he would wake up around 10pm then sleep till 3am and then sleep until 7 or 8 am.

This weekend Little Cubby was cranky. Friday night I did not sleep well. Saturday night Little Cubby goes down at his bedtime 8pm. He wakes up at 9pm wants to nurse. He wakes up at 9:30pm he wants to nurse. He wakes up at 10pm he wants to nurse. OK, now I am totally pissed off and about reading to blow my top. Earlier in the day we went on an 8 mile walk and so I was exhausted. Cub Daddy says something like aren’t you going to do something about him he is crying. I then ripped Cub Daddy’s head off punched him in the stomach and told him to do something about that. OK, I did not rip his head off or punch him in the stomach but I thought about it. I instead said what the fuck do you want me to do with the little fucker, I have been in there three times giving him the boob. He falls asleep I lay him down and then in a few minutes he is up again. Cub Daddy had nothing to say. That is what I thought. So finally Little Cubby fell asleep at 11pm and stayed asleep until 3am. He then woke again at 7am.

Sunday night was the same deal with Little Cubby waking three times then finally falling asleep. Around 1am I feel someone poking me and it is Big Cubby. He has to go potty. (Side note this is a big deal because this is the first time he as come to us in the middle of the night to go potty. Until I bought him Spiderman sheets last week, he was peeing the bed every night for about a week. He doesn’t want to pee on his Spiderman sheets.) So anyway I take him to go potty then he tells me he wants to sleep on the couch with me. We cuddle together then he won’t lay still. He tosses and turns driving me crazy so I tell him lay on the floor next to Daddy. He tells me there is a bug on the floor. I look and don’t see anything. I then lead him back to his room. He points and says there is a spider on the wall. I don’t have my glasses on but I don’t see a spider. He then points to the floor and says it is there. I turn on the light to show him there were no spiders. Just then the refrigerator made a popping noise and he freaked out by saying what is that noise. I then tell him to grab is pillow and he can sleep on the floor with Daddy. He finally fell asleep and so did I until about 3am when Little Cubby woke up. I went in nursed him then laid him back down. He woke again at 7am.

I am exhausted today and coffee is not doing anything this morning. I don’t know what to do with Little Cubby. It is hard to do the crying out method to get him to sleep because we hear the neighbors I am sure they hear us and we don’t want them thinking we are abusing the baby because he is crying. Little Cubby will stand in his crib and scream and cry for hours if we let him. How do you get this kid to sleep and not rely on the boob? He uses a pacifier at night but he prefers my boob for comfort instead. I can tell that is the only reason he is using it is for comfort not eating. I call him little vampire. I did not have this trouble with Big Cubby. He nursed textbook perfect. He had weaned himself by his first birthday. Little Cubby seems like he wants to nurse until he is 18. I hate breastfeeding now. I feel like it is no longer a bonding time for us. I know I am not producing enough milk. He won’t take formula no matter what I do. I have been giving him yogurt to supplement like the doctor said. I know the breastfeeding Nazis won’t like this but I think breastfeeding sucks. I know it is good for the baby and that is the only thing that keeps me going.

I want my boobs back. I want the baby to sleep through the night. I want my bed back. OK I probably won’t get my bed back until next May. We plan on moving someplace else then.

OK I think I have bitched long enough. Good news Cubs swept the Marlins this weekend.

Not a great start

I had my first cup of coffee this morning before I realized the creamer was chunky. MMMM good. What is scary I could not tell there was a different taste.

Anger Issues

When Big Cubby was 2 he would get angry about things and we would deal with it thinking it was just a stage he was going through. Then he turned 3 he still had anger problems. Little Cubby was born right after Big Cubby's birthday so I thought it was just the new baby. Now Big Cubby will turn 4 next month and he still has anger problems only now they seem to have escalated. If he gets upset about something his whole body tenses up his fist clinch and he will yell or scream. He will hit, pinch and throw things. We have tried everything with him. Now I calmly put him in his room and tell him he needs to calm down before he comes out.

So with that in mind yesterday was a horrible day. Big Cubby was in his anger mood all day. He would get into everything he wasn't supposed to. Little Cubby was very needy so that pissed off Big Cubby because he wanted my attention. So my day ended in calling my husband at work in tears and questioning my mothering skills. I felt like a failure as a mother. I hate to admit it but for one minute yesterday I wished I wasn't a mother. Don't get me wr0ng, I love my children very much and would die for them. But that moment I broke down.

I don't know how to handle Big Cubby. He is a great kid and he is smart and funny. Has anyone had this problem and is it just a phase or is there really something wrong?

This is one of the fountains Big Cubby is afraid of.

Little Cubby playing at the Fisher Price area

Big Cubby playing in the Fisher Price area

Stuffing my face

Karate experts Big Cubby loved

Cubs

Cubs have lost 6 games in a row. I am so sad. Now Derrek Lee has inflammation in his shoulder. Great. Can it get anymore depressing?

Weekend

On Saturday we went downtown and braved the Taste of Chicago. Understand I am not really into crowds and this event attracts HUGE crowds. I also can not stand people who stop in front of you as if they are the only people in the world. Also trying to get downtown with two small children is no small feat.

With that we rode the El train down which is Big Cubby’s favorite thing to do. He loves the train. As soon as we got off he asked to ride the train again. To his disappointment we told him we would ride the train later that we were going to a big party. He did not want to go to any party. After we dragged him up out of the tunnel, we made it over to Millennium Park, the new downtown park in Chicago.

One of the features are these tall two rectangle blocks that are fountains across from each other. Between them kids splash in no-depth water. On the blocks are these huge pictures of people smiling, winking, whatever. Every so often the blocks spew out water. Check out the photo.

Big Cubby talks and talks about how cool the fountains are. But he is afraid of the fountains. He doesn’t like the water coming out from the mouths if he’s standing there, but 100 yards away, he talks a good game.

So we leave there and head over to Grant Park for the Taste. As soon as we are in a safe distance Big Cubby asks to go back to the fountains. Ha!

We walk through the entrance of the Taste and buy tickets to purchase food. For those who don’t know, the Taste is a big street fair downtown where restaurants set up booths and sell food.

Luckily the weather was beautiful because I would not have been able to handle all the people if it was hot like it has been. Walking through the area is like cutting through a mosh pit sometimes with the occasional group of idiots who stop suddenly.

A nice feature this year (well, nice since we have kids) is the Fisher Price area. For your information Fisher Price is celebrating its 75 Anniversary with a traveling exhibit (read big ad campaign). They had a set up with all their toys for the kids to play with. Big Cubby played with some trains. Did I mention he LOVES TRAINS and Little Cubby played with a few baby toys.

We had to drag a crying Big Cubby away when we decided to get something to eat. I mean that is what we were there for. The next obstacle was to figure out what food we wanted to eat. We had cheezborgers from the Billy Goat (made famous by Saturday Night Live), barbeque pork sandwich from Sweet Baby Rays, pizza slice from Connie’s Pizza and chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick from JR’s Cheesecake. Once stuffed, we watched the diving show which had a pirate theme that Big Cubby liked. He liked them diving into the water “looking” for the mermaid. We watched a group of karate experts from the gym I rarely go to jumping, kicking and breaking boards and such.

We left full and tired. Sunday we went for a long walk. I am talking about 6 miles. We left our neighborhood and walked along the lake. We stopped at a beach to rest and have a snack then headed back.

Monday we chilled out at home. Little Cubby’s schedule was off so he had a lot of nighttime waking. It probably did not help that the neighbors outside were having their own fireworks show. So we didn’t go see the fireworks because it was just too late for the boys and with the weekend we had we were just pooped out.

That was our weekend. I hope everyone had a great weekend. I will post pictures later.