Top 10 Things That Used to be MINE

Last night the Beans was being a two year old.  The nerve.

Paul Bunyan decided to read something on his Kindle Fire in order to tune out the baby death shriek and repetitive chant of "no no bed."  But the second he pulled out that electronic device a gasp rent the air, followed by approximately 2.7634 seconds of rare and precious silence.  Then came "BABY'S BIG PHONE!" and the Beans grabbed it from daddy and expertly jabbed the screen a few times until the Lorax cued up and began wailing "How Bad Can I Be?" on full volume.  Appropriate, no?

This made poor Paul Bunyan sigh and bemoan that he wondered when he would get to read on his Kindle again.  I had about 2.7634 seconds of pity when I realized that if all I was lacking was Kindle access I might be a shit-ton more sane.

 Top Ten Things That Used To Be MINE

1.  My boobs.  Bunyan likes to think of them as his, but a nursing baby wins every time.  No matter what, even when the milk bags are no longer feeding a little vampire any longer they aren't MINE anymore.  MY boobs had some life to them.  They were small, but they at least seemed to not lack filling.  Since nursing children I apparently lost like a third of my boob mass because they are still small but deflated and droopy looking.  What the eff?

They are actually *mine* ... well, they once were.

2.  My Wardrobe.  I used to get dressed because I liked an outfit.  Or I looked good in an outfit or it made me feel good.  Occasionally I dressed in something because it was comfy.  I would even go, dare I say it, shopping for clothes for myself ... and enjoy it!  Now?  I wear whatever happens to be clean, roomy enough to cover this expanding version of myself, and often provides easy access for nursing, running after children, or cleaning something.  Bonus points to clothing that can cover the ridiculous number of stains I obtain in a day without obnoxiously announcing "LOOK this is strawberry applesauce!" and "Yup, that's a booger" whenever you look my way.

3.  My Phone.  I have more than 72 apps on my phone.  I tried counting them but kept forgetting what number I was on, so there are at least that many.  I use 7 maybe 8 of them for myself regularly.  Lets make it a round ten apps for ME.  That means there are 60+ apps that are simply there because I need to put the food on the conveyor belt at the grocery store without Houdini baby trying to escape the cart.  My iPhone is so full of kid apps and pictures of kids that I actually only have room for one playlist of music.  Only reason I get that is because my children haven't realized it is possible to load any of their music on the phone yet.  They do know about my Pandora app though.

The ultimate Mom Purse

4. My purse.  Oh wait, that's funny I don't HAVE a purse anymore.  I have a backpack/diaper bag/first aid kit/snack storage/changing station/toy holder/crumb hoarder hybrid with a monkey hanging off of it that also carries my wallet and chapstick.  When I can find them.  Yes, it is actual one the one pictured above.

5.  My Jewelry.  I used to wear some.  I now wear a wedding band, and not the nice one either.  The other day whilst changing a poo diaper someone (AKA Beans) thought it would be hilarious to start bouncing his cute little baby butt all over the place.  Thus getting nasty baby crap all over my hand.  This had of course happened on the one day so far this year I wore the pretty channeled band Paul Bunyan bought me for Christmas three years ago.  If jewelry isn't an effective way to cause me pain while getting my attention (earrings and necklaces) then it means I am washing shit off diamonds.  Screw jewelry.

6. My Anything-Below-the-Neck.  Hell, who am I kidding?  I have grey hair, wrinkles, and raccoon eyes -- screw it being just the belly I don't want to claim and the varicose veins that make my legs look even worse than before.  What the hell happened to me?  Thank goodness children are cute, because the side effects that come with them are hell.

7.  My Bladder.  Perhaps if we are going for anatomical accuracy it isn't the actual bladder but the muscles of my pelvic wall or floor or whatthefrickenhellever.  I held out hope with the first pregnancy that the whole wetting yourself when you sneezed thing would go away.  Since child number two I am realizing that this is a pregnancy symptom that may never abate.

8.  My Sleep.  I used to have some, with complete cycles and everything.  I can almost remember back that far, but deprivation being what it is I may just be hallucinating.

9.  My Sanity.  I swear, I used to have more of it.

10.  My Life.  I used to have one that revolved around me.  Looking back, I am not sure that it was entirely enjoyable.  This may be exhausting, I might have lost of my sense of Self, and there are moments that straight up suck (anyone claiming otherwise lies) but this is a gift and I am grateful.

Again, I may be hallucinating here though.

oil pan magnet board

My love-hate relationship with Pintercrack marches on.  Some days I want to kick the whole website in the nuts, some days I am not sure how I'd survive without it.

Today is a good day ... for now.

Have you seen this one?

While I don't see me posting my kid on the internet in nothing more than a diaper, I do dig the idea.  You can nab one of those oil pan thingies at Walmart for like $12.

So I did.  Then I had to figure out how to get the stupid thing home in a Corolla with two kids and a driver.

It wasn't pretty.

But then I brought it in the house and freaked Paul Bunyan out by saying I was just going to Gorilla Glue the crap out of it.

Eventually, he is going to realize how easy he is to manipulate, right?

Anyway, he took over the hanging of the thing (which involved pre-drilling holes and using bits I wouldn't have known existed so it was for the best I didn't want to do that anyway) and just wanted me to tell him where.

And taaaa daaaa...

Apparently there is something weird in our wall and the bottom left hand corner of the pan didn't hit a stud, so he had to do it over just a bit to the right, which left a ridiculously sharp metal hole in the darn thing.  The cure?

Slap a cute pirate sticker on it and BAM, all better.

Beans loves playing with his "numbers" ... they are letters, but hey, he is two and we are working on it!

this ain't our first rodeo

So I more than chronicled my failures and successes with Meatball's last birthday (here, here, and here).  It only seems fair I mention what went right and wrong with the Beans' second birthday, right?

Truth be told, I don't think it was anywhere near the same level of mess up.  In fact, it more or less worked out fine, but I also had my sights set substantially lower.  I only had a few things I really wanted to do and I focused on making those couple of this successful.  I wanted him to have a cute shirt that I made, like I did for his Uno themed first birthday, and I also wanted him to be able to actually EAT one of his birthday treats.  Around one Beans was completely incapable of consuming solids or anything like them, so it was a bit of a a bummer for me as I really had envisioned the whole smash cake deal.  But motherhood is all about rolling with the punches, and roll I shall, dammit.

So first off I needed a shirt.  To do that I need a theme.  I already had that, since Beans refuses to wear anything other than his favorite pair of camo cowboy boots (yes, Paul Bunyan bought them and I had little to do with it), there had to be some kind of boots/cowboy theme going on.  Then someone used a phrase I had heard a billion times before and BAM, it hit me ...

I made the shirt in Word, but some asshole at Microsoft decided to screw up Word Art and I couldn't reverse the image unless I reverted back to a compatible older version, which screwed up my cute fonts and colors.  So I had to redo it in Pagemaker, which I had to simultaneously learn while still swearing about the asshole at Microsoft.  After I got it all done I realized that I could have probably gone into my printer properties and just reversed it, but I didn't want to check.  By that point I was several hours in and totally felt that ignorance would be bliss unless I needed to do this again.  Just make the iron on, and move on I told myself.

I also made a back, because I thought it was stinking cute.

So the shirt was done.  Now for cake.  I could have spent a fortune on a top 8 allergy free cake, but at the time we were still consuming gluten (this has since changed and it is a post in itself) so I remembered my pumpkin muffins I had no real trouble making.  Duncan Hines' Classic Yellow Cake mix is free of the Bean's major allergens (dairy, egg and nuts) a fact I was both thrilled and a little alarmed by.

So I made a batch, but I needed to have a "topping" so they were less muffin and more cupcake.

I experimented, and very nearly lost teeth in the process.

I very nearly lost teeth with this sample bite

The spoon was stuck to the bowl.
You wanna eat that?

Not wanting to waste anymore cupcakes, I used the heel of
sandwich bread and found my mixtures were too watery (left)
or dangerously sticky still (right)

Sometimes simple really is better.  A combo of regular sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon mixed together worked much better.

Then just dunk them in and press gently so the topping sticks.  

I nabbed the boot and hat toppers at Hobby Lobby for like $3.99 with a 40% off coupon.  They also had the bandanna cupcake holders, which I also grabbed because they were freaking adorable!!!  I had already baked the cupcakes, so I just stuck them in as decorations 

Final product was delicious, everyone loved them.  Most importantly, the Beans ate almost a whole one himself!  Seriously, I cried.