So I think we all kind of thought in the back of our minds that TWO would be the “quiet” one since his older brother is very, very, talkative. And loud.

Well … TWO is shaping up to be just as loud. And talkative. It started with him making an urgent “MMMMMMMMMA!” sound when he’s upset and I assumed that to mean “Mama” but I didn’t declare it an official word until my father-in-law heard it one night when he was baby sitting and then I felt validated enough to tell people he said it.

Then he started saying “bye-bye” and waving his little hand. Now he lights up and starts clapping and saying “bat” when he sees the bathtub. He says something that sounds like “ba-ba” for bottle. And just this morning, I took him in to say good morning to his daddy and I swear to you he smiled and said “hi dada.” Husband and I gasped. Thank goodness I wasn’t by myself when it happened or I would have brushed it off as my imagination.  

It all happened very suddenly, during the moving process, so I haven’t really had time to process it. When we started packing up our house in Alabama my baby was kind of unsuccessfully army crawling and doing a lot of drooly babbling. Now I live in Louisiana with two children who yell MAMA! at me and I literally could not locate my baby the other day because he moves so fast. Hello, my name is Harmony and I lost one of my children in my own house.

I put him down for a minute, went to find out what kind of mischief ONE was into, and when I went back, TWO was gone. Gone. How do you lose a 9-month-old in his own room? I seriously freaked and Husband helped me look and we finally found him hiding in a corner behind the recliner in his bedroom.

If I thought life was a little out of hand before, it’s taken a quick turn for the crazy. I have one kid dragging popcorn out of the cabinet and opening it and asking Mommy, are these seeds? It says popcorn on the front, I see pictures of popcorn … why are there seeds in here? Can we plant them? Mommy? MOMMY? and while I deal with that, the other one vanishes. I later find him chewing on the rug in the laundry room.

How do other people do it? Maybe I’m ill-equipped for chaos, when it comes right down to it. I better get ready.

ONE likes to tell jokes. Most of them don’t make sense, but every once in awhile he’ll come up with a gem.

ONE: Mommy? 

Me: Yes?

ONE: Do you want some new BOOBIES?? 

Me:Um …

ONE: From the BOOBIE STORE??? Hahahahaha!!! Is that funny?!

Me: Actually, yes. Well … no. It’s not really funny. In fact, don’t repeat it again.

ONE: BOOBIE STORE!!!!!

Me: Stop it.
 
ONE: Why isn’t it a funny joke?

Me: Because it’s a fact. And facts aren’t funny.

I guess my kid either heard me telling Husband I want new boobies, or he’s got psychic powers. Either way, I think I’m going to have to start watching what I say around my sons or just accept that they are going to start telling “jokes” at my expense.

BOOBIE STORE!!!

Everyone in our house makes fun of themselves and each other. I think it’s how we cope. I simply don’t know how else to handle certain situations, like when the baby is painting himself with diaper cream and the other one has water running in the bathroom and refuses to answer me when I ask what he’s doing.

This is when I just have to laugh: at myself, at my kids, at LIFE. It might be a maniacal laugh, but it’s better than nothing.

This morning Husband was hugging me goodbye and with a totally straight face he said, “the time I spent at home with you and our children was the most relaxing time of my life.” 

And when I gasped with horror and called him a liar, he started laughing hysterically and left for work. Asshole. But actually, I have giggled every time I’ve thought about that since he left. 

Have I mentioned how happy I am that braids are back in style?! I mean it’s truly like a gift that someone sent to me personally. Nothing is easier than washing my hair at night, letting it air dry and then braiding it in the morning. The Hunger Games made braids cool again. No longer any need for worry that someone will mistake me for a Pentecostal. I mean, not that there is anything wrong with that. It’s just that I’m not one.

Me: Hey ONE, take a picture of my hair.

 Me: Great job!! But it’s kind of fuzzy … let’s try again and try to leave my jammies out of the picture.

  
P.S. I was planning to write a post about how much I loathe Walmart and McDonald’s and my plot to boycott both of them, but it’s silly to devote an entire post to something that can be boiled down to one small paragraph:

Every single time I go to Walmart, without fail, I leave feeling majorly irritated. And McDonald’s ALWAYS has flies. Always. Without fail. It’s pretty remarkable, actually. That every single McDonald’s in America has at least one fly buzzing around at any point in time. I’d be impressed, if I weren’t so grossed out by it.

Good day, and happy braiding!

Today is Husband’s first day at his new job.

I fed him a hearty breakfast, kissed him goodbye … and as he pulled out of the driveway, I literally leapt in the air and squealed with glee.

My son has a lookalike.

It’s Anne Burrell from Food Network.

Okay, I promise this is the last time I’ll mention the “vacation” that was actually just “really hard work in a vacation-like setting.” Here are some pictures that I took with my phone. I really need to invest in a nice camera. Hopefully you don’t read this blog for the visual content.

We went on a date. It was the first one in a really long time.

Sometimes, this little boy’s attitude works for him.

Sometimes, it does not.

This picture speaks a thousand words. The laughter, the coffee in the foreground … the shirtless man in the background with his head in his hands. He’s going to kill me when he sees this.

I love ONE.

I love TWO.

Here we are on our last day, heading home.

Now that I’m looking at the pictures it doesn’t seem like it was THAT hard to take two small kids on a beach vacation. But at the same time … I’m sure glad we spent $88 on an effective method of birth control instead of taking our chances with 144 condoms because OMG I CANNOT HANDLE ANY MORE CHILDREN FOR A LONG LONG TIME, MAYBE NEVER.

There is no good way to start this conversation … so I’ll just start it.

Husband starts his new job on Monday and we are temporarily without insurance. We could have purchased a COBRA plan but we decided to take our chances instead. That’s how we roll.

While we were in the midst of packing and moving, I realized I had packed my calendar that I use to keep track of things like when to take my birth control. At this point, I started to panic. I made an emergency phone call to the CVS to ask someone when I last picked up my birth control so I could calculate when I needed to start it again and – whew! – we were in the clear. Although, I have to admit, we would have been in the clear regardless because we weren’t doing it anyway. 

And so, Husband went to pick up my birth control. It was usually free. But without insurance, it was $88. EIGHTY-EIGHT DOLLARS. When he came home with that, I screeched, do you know how many condoms we could buy with $88?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?  

144 condoms, that’s how many. 4 boxes of 36 count condoms with enough change left over to get a snack. I know this because I spent a good portion of our drive to Gulf Shores researching condom prices online. Husband kept getting mad at me for saying the word “condom” out loud in the car in front of the kids, which cracks me up on many different levels. CONDOM.

Courtesy of the internet, what else could I buy with $88? A 3-day lift ticket at Cascade Mountain. Or an hour of private horseback riding lessons at Juro Stables. OR, two pair of men’s shorts at Armani Exchange. Instead, I bought one month’s worth of peace of mind. 

Well, actually … Husband bought it. Too bad he didn’t know about the sale on shorts at Armani Exhange.

I lied when I said my next blog would be about birth control. This one is about the “mask of pregnancy” which is a condition I developed while pregnant with TWO. It’s basically hyper-pigmentation of the face and in my case, the inner thighs … which is awesome … because nothing goes better with dimply thighs than weird brown spots.

I had hoped it would go away once TWO was born but it did not. And nearly a year later, much like the fat stores that have hung on for dear life, my “mask” is still very much intact. There was a time long ago when getting a tan meant I could wear less makeup. That time is no more. The best thing I can do, I figure, is just pretend I have a lot of freckles and press onward. It’s really a lot like how I refuse to look at my backside. 

What I can’t see, isn’t an issue. 

It works for me.

While on vacation for the past week, I learned that I have a growing dependence on blogging. Life has been so crazy lately I haven’t had time to write about pointless things like I usually do and so I was really looking forward to vacation because I thought I would have time to WRITE. I left for the beach with big plans to blog my little heart out. 

Then we got there, and the wi-fi was down.

It crushed me. I was really much more sad than necessary. My friend Carrie suggested I use it as an excuse to “unplug” from technology, which sounded like a great idea until approximately 30 minutes later when I started missing Facebook. That’s how long it took. Thirty. Minutes. Luckily the internet still worked on my phone so I could still sort of feed my addiction.

This week we learned that taking a “vacation” with two small children is not really a vacation at all. It’s just a lot of hard work in a different setting. Husband and I bickered more during our “vacation” than we did during the entire relocation process that we just completed. And to that I say to myself, WHY? I think it’s because we both really needed a vacation, and we each kept waiting to feel relaxed. But let me tell you … taking a 9-month-old to the beach does not a relaxing time make. Nor does taking two small children to a pool. Or anywhere, for that matter.

Thankfully, we managed to take a picture that makes it seem like none of the above paragraph even happened:

Since I haven’t been able to write for what feels like an eternity, I feel like my brain is overflowing with things I simply have to share. Like how there were hundreds of bats living in the attic of the lake house we were staying in and every evening Husband and I sat outside and listened to them walk above our heads and then fly out of the house one by one.

Creepy isn’t the right word for it. Which is why I had to tell you about it, because just like everything else in my life it was just so weird that in order for me to process it completely, I have to put it out there on the World Wide Web. Or maybe it isn’t weird at all. Maybe I am the weird one.

I accept that.

My next topic is going to be birth control. I know you’re all on the edge of your seats.

Today I went to Super Target to look for a new bathing suit. We leave for the beach in approximately 48 hours and none of my old ones cover my butt.

What I learned from my trip to Target: no bathing suits cover my butt. Because I have saddlebags. An extension of each butt cheek which extends outward on either side, making it virtually impossible to cover up.

After trying on all Target has to offer I reached the conclusion that I may as well wear my old one. My ass will be hanging out either way. Strangely, I don’t feel depressed about it. More like I feel inspired to lose the saddlebags before next summer.