Going to see some babies

I’ll be leaving the country soon. 

Really, I’m serious. I know it’s hard to believe because I’m terrible at being serious but this time it’s real. I’m leaving the country!

I know it’s going to be hard on some of you. You’re going to miss my poop blog posts and funny convos I have with my kids... alright… you probably won’t miss me much. I know. There is humor all over blogworld and Facebook. You’re going to be just fine without me for a week.

I wanted to take a moment to tell you why I’m leaving (a lot of you already know). It’s something I am quite proud of and it involves my other personality. 

In January 2012 I delivered two babies. One boy. One girl. Both sweet. Both beautiful. Neither mine.

You see, I was a surrogate for another couple that is very incapable of getting pregnant. I would love for you to read our story HERE

Anywho… I am going to see them! They don’t live here in the USA. They live way over across the Atlantic Ocean and then some. Far away. It’s pretty much a big honkin’ deal. 

My suckish drawing of me on the plane

I haven’t seen the daddies or the babies since they left in February. Do you think the babies have grown any? I can’t tell you how exciting it will be to arrive at my destination! 

I will post a little something when I return so you can read the details of my trip, if you’re interested that is. Until then Cara will entertain you. 

You take care of yourselves and don’t get into trouble.  Cara has a whipping stick in the event anyone gets outta line. From what I’ve heard, she is not afraid to use it.

Girl poop vs boy poop

Boy1 is a curious George. He asks both funny and serious questions. Usually his serious questions come out funny.

Once he asked me "Mom, do girls fart?"

I replied "no" and he totally bought it. After a few seconds, his puzzled face said "that's not fair".

I was sure I told him I was teasing but this following convo makes me question that.

Boy1 and I went to a fast food restaurant. I'm on a diet and fast food fits right into that plan. We were there to have a quick lunch before heading to his school auction.

After we ate we made a pit stop to the restrooms. Boy1 went into the men's. I went into the ladies. When I came out he was waiting for me. Here's the convo that took place as we walked to the car:

Boy1(very casual): What did you do in there?
Me: Uh... went to the bathroom.
Boy1: Oh
Me (puzzled): What did you do?
Boy1: Nothing. I went in and came right back out.
A few seconds pass...
Boy1: It smelled like rotten poop in there.
Me: chuckles
Boy1: Girls are lucky their poop doesn't smell rotten.
Me: LMAO
Me: That's right, son. 

Baby got boobs

Don’t you just love bra shopping? 

Not me. I hate it. There was a time I enjoyed it but that was in my 20’s. 

I am a larger size. Like a 36D/38C. They’re far too big. 

Hubster likes them. Even loves them. But guys are boob obsessed. They have the “bigger is better” mind frame. 

Not me. I want small and perky. Instead I have big and saggy.

Am I sharing too much? I have four kids… nursed all of them. Common sense will tell you the “girls” have headed south. And not just for the season. I think it’ll be a permanent stay. 

On a bad day, I have two muffin tops… one in my stomach region and another coming from my left boob. That’s my larger one. 

I try on bras before I buy them and they “seem” to work out in the fitting room. Eventually I end up with muffin top boobs. Especially when that bitch Flo is about to make her grand appearance. 

Big boobas cause trouble for a lot of reasons. Some include:

1. Running: I’ve got to support the crap out of them. Wrapping them in duct tape is really the only sure support.

2. Fitted button-up shirts. The problem is it pulls away in the boob area. Leaving a gap in the middle and my boobs playing peek-a-boo with the world. Sure a larger shirt will help with that, but I’m on the shorter side. What’s better… my boobs giving a free peep show or a shirt hanging over my ass when it shouldn’t be? A tailor you say? Screw it. I’ll just wear a t-shirt. 

3. Bra selections. First of all… bra makers need to stop putting the word “sexy” on the tags. Just stop. There is nothing sexy about a bra the size of a newborn baby (cups alone). The shoulder straps are as wide as my thigh and the closure in the back is 3, sometimes 4, clasps. Sure the prints are cute on some bras. Let’s be real though. You see a cute pair of jeans in a size 2. You reach into the rack and pull out your actual size which happens to be a few (or many in my case) sizes bigger. The appeal is gone. Small = cuter. Plain and simple!

4. Food trap… that’s all, it’s a food trap. Food that doesn’t quite make it to my mouth either goes down into the valley of darkness between the mountains or directly on to the mountains. And bending over a dish of food… well, I’m sure you catch my drift.

It’s funny. I actually meant to write about how much bra shopping sucks for me but it turned into a boob rant. Cara and I are both very familiar with the annoyances of having big boobs. Maybe I can talk Cara into writing her point of view. Stayed tuned.

Feel free to leave your boob grips in the comments… we heart comments. 

(Big thanks to Busty Girl Comics for the awesome pictures.)

And they call it pumpkin love

I have a special relationship with pumpkin spice. I reserve it for the fall only. I won’t drink a pumpkin spice latte in the summer and I won’t eat a pumpkin spice whoopie pie in the spring. Nope, pumpkin = fall. Side note: I always say "fall" because "autumn" seems way too stuffy and proper.

Here is a short list of my absolute favs:

Pumpkin Spice Latte: Believe it or not, I had my very first Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte this fall. I usually order them from Moka but I happened to be at a Target with a SB and thought “What the heck”. That warm deliciousness was worth cheating on my normal coffeehouse.

Coffee-mate Pumpkin Spice Creamer: I work at home and can’t leave to buy scrumptious Starbucks or Moka every day so I need to find another way to satisfy the pumpkin craving beast.  This creamer works!

Trader Joe's Pumpkin Spice Pancake/Waffle Mix: First of all, isn’t Trader Joe's awesome?!? I absolutely heart this store. When I first saw this mix on an end cap while standing many, many feet away I knew it would end up in my cart. And end up in my cart it did. 

I made a small batch a few days ago. One reason, I wasn’t sure how popular it would be with the fam. Second, I figured they would be a little rich.

The consensus: Boy3 loved them, Boy1 liked the first two bites, Boy2 had none and Darling liked them. Hubster had one and said they were “okay”. I had two and fell in love. The perfect combo for me is black coffee and these cakes.

Archer Farms Pumpkin White Chunk Cookies: This is a new found love. Once again, I was at Target (I kinda like the store) looking for some tasty treats to bring a friend who just had hip surgery (yikes, a kickboxing accident). Searching the bakery, I spotted these little devils. Come to mama, little cookies. These cookies are similar to an oatmeal raisin cookie except there is no oatmeal or raisins... haha! Makes sense, right? They are soft and chewy with the perfect amount of pumpkin and spice and white chocolate chunks. Another perfect combo with black coffee or tea.

Other delightful pumpkin items:

Pumpkin Bars with cream cheese frosting. My mom and mother in law would tie for the gold medal in the Olympic pumpkin bar bake off. Watch out!

Pumpkin Spice Whoppie Pies from Trader Joes

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Pumpkin Ice Cream

Pumpkin muffins... coffeehouses or HyVee.

For inedible items:

Check out Bath and Body Works (BBW) “Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin”(SCP). I was first introduced to it about 11/12 years ago. It was love at first sniff. BBW took it away for a few years and it left people in utter misery. A bit dramatic? Okay not misery but I was very disappointed when fall came around without SCP. Finally the scent returned and the harmony in my life returned with it.

Now get out there and shush your inner pumpkin beast!

The great sleepover

Last Friday night, hubster said he was going to have a sleepover with the boys. It was held downstairs. Our bedrooms are upstairs. In my mind, I’m dancing and throwing my arms up in the air like I just don’t care. But calmly I say to hubster “oh okay, only if you really want to”. 

One thing you should know, we co-sleep with our 2 year old (boy3). We have co-slept with all of our kids. Some people hate it, some people love it. I happen to love it. Husbter doesn’t mind it either. And I’m not looking for a debate… so let’s not go there… mmm-k?

Back to the party in my head, I already had my body mapped out on the bed. I was going to stay up late and do whatever the heck I wanted. Most importantly, I was going to sleep in. 

Let's see how it went:

Body mapped out perfectly… check.

Stayed up late doing whatever the heck I wanted… check.

Sleeping in……..whoa, whoa… big uncheck!

At 7:15 I had the beautiful face of boy3 staring at me. What the….. that was definitely not part of the plan. 

So plans changed. I didn’t sleep in. I did manage to get boy3 to lay with me for a bit though and I adore that. I love his little face so much. I'll take that over sleeping in any day.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Bathroom

                                         

This week I had the pleasure of attending a Windows Access Queries class (and you thought you were jealous of Mel for no school fundraisers…hah!).  I was feeling pretty good – nicely caffeinated, had a light lunch that was on track with my diet, and was wearing comfy clothes and boots.  I was on time...ok, I was a minute late but the instructor was 3 minutes late so I still consider this a success.  Training started.  Mr. Instructor instantly annoyed me but I put my game face on and resorted myself to the fact that I would be spending the next 3 ½ hours with the man.  Our goal was to learn more about Queries – setting up different scenarios to pull information from various tables into one document.  I know…exciting.  I’m getting paid to do these classes for my new side gig so I didn’t really care. 
 

Things were going fine, each new skill wasn’t too difficult to pick up.  I am no computer whiz so this was a relief to me.  Then the instructor moved into putting in formulas for fields.  In order to not bore you and have you stop reading my post, I’ll just cut to the main point.  I was a shining star with this shiz.   He started with easy formulas then put a more complicated result on the board that he wanted to test us with.  Before he was done giving instructions, I had typed it up.  Mr. Instructor looked at me looking at him while everyone else was typing, looking at their screens.  “Do you need help?” he asked.  “No, I’m done,” I replied.  I could tell by the way he sauntered over to me, he really was excited about a teaching moment.  He looked at it.  “You got it!  Are you sure you don’t have a background in computer programming?” he asked.  “Nope.  I guess my brain just is working today.”  I shrug and mentally give myself a high five.  And if you are at the edge of your seat, wondering what this marvelous formula was, it was [City] & “,” & [State] & “ “ & [Zip]. 

He then asked the 3 people that got the formula correct to help the others.  I felt like an Access goddess.  

Fast forward an hour and it was time for our break.  We had taken in a lot of new information…I could have easily crashed for the rest of the afternoon but I was still feeling pretty studly.  A little fried but still on my game (I thought).  I headed out into the building in search of the restroom since it seemed like a prudent thing to do during our one break.  I walked in and thought, “Huh, this is a huge bathroom and there’s only two stalls?  What a waste of space!  This is a busy place, that doesn’t make sense.”  I picked a stall and then felt my face heat up and lose color as I realized, “Huh, I actually do not recall looking at the Women’s sign as I walked in.  O…M…G…am I in the Men’s room???  No, I’m sure I’m on auto-pilot and just can’t remember that detail and surely I saw it and went into the right one.”  I was the only one in the restroom and I was thanking my lucky stars for that JUST in case I did make a mistake.  I quickly left the stall and noticed the row of urinals along the wall justifying so much space before the stalls.  Ladies, urinals are a bad sign since, ya know, we DON’T USE THEM!  I made a beeline to the door, didn’t even wash my hands lest a MAN walked into the appropriate bathroom for HIM.  As I left, of course a man was walking up to the door and did a double take at the ladies room.  “Yep,” I said to him, “I went in the wrong one.”  He laughed and went into the correct bathroom.  

I darted into the ladies room and felt comforted by the long row of stalls.  I washed my hands and just looked at myself in the mirror and laughed.  The universe has a funny way of making sure you stay humble.  I may be an Access Ace but I can still flub up a simple trip to the bathroom.  My brilliant moment had passed and for the rest of the afternoon, I stayed pretty quiet.  I had reached my Access peak and I didn’t dare want to ruin my reputation with my Access homeys that I will never see again. 

Au Revoir, Windows Access, it’s been grand! And from now on, I will be much more diligent about looking for that cute A-line dress-wearing, faceless/hairless woman pictogram!