Stumbling & Bumbling

I Wisk it would go away...

You guys know I love facebook dontcha? I have written about how it let me reconnect with one of my greatest childhood friends, and I use it everyday to speak with friends and family close to home and far overseas. I play games on it and post pictures of my little family for all to see. I use it to announce when I have imparted yet another dollop of wisdom upon the world when I post something new here. In short, I am a Facebook addict. Unfortunately for me, having so many childhood friends on Facebook means that there are lots of pictures of me out there that I would rather....burn forget. Lets look at this little beauty my beloved friend SR posted of me from waaay back in the day:

Yeah wouldn't you want this picture of you up for the internets to see? No? I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND! I mean for the love of all thing fashion related, I was wearing a denim shirt that exactly matched the denim wash of my jeans. Lets not forget what I looked like with bangs, people. BANGS. My blinding white Nike's and blood red lipstick just complete the overall crap photo.  Enter WISK'S new Facebook app: Wisk-It™. Check it out here: www.wisk-it.com/blogs. Basically you can use it to search tagged, untagged and de-tagged photos of yourself from your friends albums. You then use the app to send them a message asking to delete the picture. They have premade cute messages that nicely ask your friend to remove the pic or you can include a personalized message, something to the tune of, "I swear to Jeebus, if you don't delete that crap pic of me I will come to your house and throw molotov cocktails at it". Or something much lower key like " DO YOU HATE ME? TAKE THE PIC DOWN!"

It's a useful app, much more useful than some of the other apps out there that let you, I dunno, see what you would look like with a shaved head or some such nonsense. (Read: I would NOT look good with a shaved head) I doubt SR will take the picture down, seeing as how she was laughing with complete manic glee when she found it and posted it and tagged it for all the world to see. I will just keep sending her requests with the Wisk-It™ app until she crumbles and removes it. You hear me SR??? I WON'T STOP!

I love you.

Thanks to all the nice folks over at Wisk for this great app. Click below to go to their Facebook page and download the app!

Back

Yes I have been ignoring you. I'm sorry! I got you all spoiled with those two weeks of endless posts. I promise I will post more starting today.

So yeah, I was out of the country, so to speak - on a trip down to Puerto Rico. It was a business trip  -well SATURDAY was and a little bit of Sunday too, but mostly I got to hang out and sleep(!) and see my best friend Chris- who is stationed out in the San Juan Coast Guard base. He was a great, taking me out on Sunday to Loiza where the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen are. We ate Alcapurrias at his friends little roadside shack and drank beers to cool down.

I had planned to go out and see my grandmother but those plans went to crap when Chris got orders to be on his ship by 5PM Sunday since the hurricanes that were bearing down on Puerto Rico were gaining force and they were moving all the cutters out of the San Juan area. Boo. Hopefully I will be able to go down there again soon and go see my beloved abuelita.

I must say that I have never, ever been scared of flying, I have in fact been flying since the age of 3 months but man oh man both the flight there and the flight back had super horrible turbulence. On the flight down, about thirty minutes before we landed in San Juan, the plane shook, jittered and then just dropped. It was a good 10-12 second freefall and everybody freaked the FUCK OUTand the goddamn oxygen masks all dropped down and I thought "This is it". You know how they say that you see your life flash before your eyes? Nope. What I saw were Nicky and Seba - a super quick slideshow of their little faces and smiles. I grabbed the woman next to me and she and I just stared praying and I remember saying "Please Virgin Mary don't do this to me!" I know, I know - I don't come off as the religious type but I prayed my heart out. And here I am. The funny thing is that we hit turbulence on the return flight 30 FREAKING MINUTES AFTER TAKING OFF and this time I said "OH COME THE FUCK ON!" which I don't think can be categorized as a prayer in any way, shape or form. Still, here I am. I was sitting next to the two cutest gay guys on earth and we all screamed and shouted and cursed and then afterward, we drank waaaay too much shitty wine and laughed our asses off at the in flight movie "I Love You, Man".

What a trip. Thanks Chris, for being my personal chauffer.

Behold:

 

Klepto

The culprit:

 
Name: Nicholas
Age: 3

The means:
See that backpack he's wearing?:
 
One "Cars" backpack.

I gave him that backpack for his 3rd birthday with the intention that we could do away with the diaper bag and he could carry around his own Pull Up's, crayons and some books when we go out. Instead, my kid has used the book bag and transformed himself into a hoarder of all items big and small. It hasn't become a problem until now, unless you count the fact that he puts about 56436726752765728 small metal trains, cars, random crayons, markers, books, papers, receipts, some mail, and my serving spoons in the damned thing making it weigh about 4 tons. He wears that backpack everyday to go to the babysitters house, and wears it around our house until we finally peel it off of him before bathtime and bedtime. Still, no big deal, right? Wrong. I say that because just the other day I was surreptitiously emptying out his backpack with the hopes of lightening it so that he doesnt suffer from scoliosis in the near future when at the very bottom I discovered these:

Those are six, count 'em, SIX butter knives (before you freak our dear reader and wonder how much I pay my babysitter that she can afford to buy pearl-handeled butter knives; those arent the exact butter knives. I  just forgot to take a picture...) So, back to the knives. I wonderingly pulled them out freaking out a little bit more with each one I extracted only to find yet another treasure:

Yes, that is a tube of toothpaste and yet another generic picture stolen from the internet. Shut up.

So there I was, sitting on the floor of the kids bedroom, surrounded by many thousands of toy cars, six butter knives and a tube of Crest that belonged to our babysitter, realizing that I am raising a criminal. I called Mike and showed him the stolen goods. We both sat there and wondered why in the world the kid had chosen butter knives and Crest to steal. I mean he couldn't go for the pearls? Yeesh.

We called Nicky and he came in already looking sheepish, which of course let me know that he knew that he had done something wrong. We had a talk with him and told him that he can't take things that aren't his and then we promptly marched him over to the babysitters to add humiliation to the punishment roster.  Being raised by old-school Latino parents I know the power of humiliation. We made him apologize and he did - although I had to shoot daggers at the babysitter with my eyes because she thought it was hysterically funny and was trying to baby him. Well, my little boy apologized and promised to never take anything again through trembling lips and with huge tears rolling down his face.

Mike and I both hugged him and let him know that he is a good boy and that he made a mistake and that we still love him very much and to please, please, please go for the pearls next time.

Pictorial

 Hi! My children are weird. It just strikes me as pretty crazy that they went from little human blobs to these, well these people- these little tiny people with personalities! It's almost too much to handle.

Behold their many facets:

Here we have Sebastian, with what has become his signature look or what we lovingly refer to as his "Eff YOU!" face:

 
Grrrrrrrr

Ah Seb, you were once a cheery sort of child, but lately you are either cocky:

 

Or plain pissed off:

  
Whatchoo lookin' at?

Now don't get me wrong, I love you more than ever- even with the wild mood swings and tantrums- but I do like it best when you (sort of) smile :

Future cocky male model- hellloooo ladies!

And here we have Nick. Nick is usually even keel:

 
(poor baby had windburn)

Lately though, you have been getting a little, lets call it for what it is kid- INSANE:

 
Crazy eyes!

It might be the crazy eyes or the crazy hairstyle you now demand:

 
How you like me now?

Perhaps it is the drawn-on goatee? Maybe...

Well at least you guys are cute...easy for mommy and daddy to love:

 

 

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Forget your troubles...

Hey! Everything sucks now and everyone is depressed because of the economy. Here's a little something to make you laugh your ass off and forget all your troubles for a bit:

(Thanks to Dooce for linking to this video.)

Rain Delay

WAH. I had such a fun Saturday planned for the kids (and, ME of course!!!). I had been planning on taking the whole family and a few friends with kids to Boo At The Zoo at the Bronx Zoo. Then I saw the weather report and OF COURSE it's predicted to rain, rain, rain all day long. Boo. I really wanted to go trick or treating. I mean, I really wanted the boys to go trick or treating!

Other than that I have no other big plans for the weekend. Mike wants us to go to this place but, if you've read about my legendary cowardice here, you know that I am probably not going.

Lastly, our weekend will be chock full of more of this:

Wish us luck, potty training is hard work! Have yourselves a great weekend. What are your plans? Does anyone want to come hold my trembling sweaty hand at the haunted house if I decide to go? No? How about coming over every day next week for rousing games of Scrabble during the hours of 11P.M. to 6:30 A.M. because if I do go, I won't be sleeping much next week...... Anyone? Hello?

Deafness and Graffiti

Whats that? Oh, Hi! How are you?

Ummmm, sorry, can you repeat what you just said - I am having a bit of trouble hearing you...I am pretty sure that my eardrums have exploded. Why you ask? Whose fault is that? Well, it's my fault. Yep, I made myself deaf. It wasn't the usual way one makes herself deaf, as in being deaf to her oldest child's repeated requests for a "black cookie, can I have a black cookie, mami, MAMI I WANT A BLACK COOKIE PWEEEEESE!" No, no, I became deaf another way. I didn't go to any loud concerts and stand too close to the speakers, nor did I blast music too loudly in my ear buds while on my morning commute, nothing cool like that. Nope.

I made myself deaf because I wanted to keep my kids entertained last night so they would let me cook dinner, in peace. HA! IN PEACE!

...

So what brilliant thing did I devise to keep said children occupied? Why, I gave them cymbals. Yes thats right, my stupid, stupid self gave them the tops of my pots and pans and showed the boys that if you bang the tops together, they make a pleasing, eardrum shattering ruckus that is so. Much. Fun! Mami is so cool and fun! And so very, very idiotic.

 

Notice the look of intense concentration on both faces ans they make enough noise to wake the dead, even the dead who DIED DEAF.

 

Now to the graffiti part of our evening...notice little man to the right of the picture. See that green splotch  by the corner of his adorable little mouth? No, he's not growing a mustache and no he hasn't developed any new birthmarks. Nah. It's marker. Green marker. I am assuming that green marker tastes pretty darned good because the child cannot be around a green marker without immediately inserting it into his mouth and gnawing lustily on it. Blue markers must taste GREAT too:

 

This picture was actually taken last weekend before he got his haircut. He's our little Picasso. Now don't freak out - all the markers consumed were of the non toxic variety and all have been hidden away. Except for the green one. He seems to have ferreted that one away somewhere  so that he can still get to it and take a nip once in awhile. He's a marker fiend.

Children Gone Wild or How I almost Had A Nervous Breakdown...

Ah Sundays. I am still recovering from this past Sunday - the day when my kids went ape-shit feral in the house. It's a miracle I am here today to tell you the story and that I am not locked away in some lunatic asylum floating away in a tranquilizer-induced dream where there are no rogue children and in which baby powder doesn't exist. OK maybe they weren't THAT bad, although the pooping in tandem wasn't fun and oh, hey, Potty training? It sucks. When your oldest poops quietly while sitting on his Elmo chair and then doesn't inform anyone but just squats there in his own filth and you don't notice it because the damned fan is on and all of the sudden the smell hits you full force and you ask him if he pooped and he says nooooo mami but you know he is lying because good.GOD. The. Smell....well now you have an idea of my Sunday. There were no pictures taken of that little incident, no sir- so lets move onto what I do have photographic evidence of...

Behold my dining room floor:

Those huge footprints you see are ones that I made after accidentally trodding through this unholy pile of baby cornstarch in the middle of my dining room. Beloved reader, I had stepped away from the dining room only about 45 seconds prior. I went to pour a glass of juice for Nicky and left him and THE CULPRIT sitting in the living room playing quietly. Yes, the diaper bag was on the floor by the front door - where I had left it when we came in from our walk around the neighborhood in the morning...but it was closed. What's more, the bag was in my line of sight when I was in the kitchen (for 45 seconds!) while I poured out the juice. I never saw THE CULPRIT approach the bag, much less open it and empty most of its contents out to reach the DAMNED baby powder bottle. Nope. I further did not witness THE CULPRIT open said bottle, and commit the crime above. All the same, THE CULPRIT revealed himself seconds later:

 

Notice the powder in the hair and on the forehead. Also: the shirt. It reads:"I tried to be good but I got bored". Indeed.