My guest and I met with a mutual friend, of sorts. Midway through the visit, I asked my guest, “Have you noticed how he must always RUN up all the stairs?”
“Hmm…”
I attempted to recreate the scene, but failed. Later we passed a StairMaster. Silently, I pointed it out, and we cried with laughter.
Flash Fiction Friday is hosted by g-man. You may also visit Flash Fiction Friday 55′s, a blog dedicated to hosting 55 Flash Fiction Friday posts.
Kurt’s mom came to visit back in March. Sophia, nearly eighteen months old at the time, was only tolerant of the visit. There were no hugs for Grandma. I think the closest they got to a sweet picture moment was when Grandma sat on the floor playing with Sophia’s mega blocks and Sophia got in the action by handing Grandma the next block slated for use. I wish I had captured the moment but that would mean leaving the room to grab the camera and risking a change in focus from Sophia. I think Grandma enjoyed seeing Sophia play and have fun around her even if she couldn’t hold her, but hopefully she’ll be more social at Christmas time.
We are fast approaching the time of year where activities are best done indoors. Until recently I worried about that because the majority of indoor social activities require either, a long drive, a lot of money, or both. I now have a long list of activities and services to keep us occupied through the winter. The only thing we could think to do back in March when Kurt’s mom was visiting was to go to the McDonalds play land. It was fun to watch Sophia, climb up and up and up, but then it became a problem because when she wanted out she would look down and know that was the way, but continued up.
Let me give the mother’s of newly mobile children a bit of assvice for a moment… You don’t want to send your kid up in the McDonalds gerbil trail unless you’re sure they know how to climb back down again because you’ll NEVER want to go back there EVER again if you have to go through those sewers to retrieve your darling. It’s really fuckin’ gross in there and we were at a rather new McDonalds.
The other free place to visit and play is the mall. Sophia loved playing with the shopping cart. We wanted to rent one but couldn’t figure out how much is cost or where to go to rent it. I later learned that it cost five dollars and they keep your credit card until you return the cart. I guess that’ll keep people from spending too much. 
In the locker room after Sophia’s swim class the other day, we did our usual routine. We went to our locker got out the soap and shampoo, then to the shower area, and washed off all the chlorine. Back at our locker, I grab our bag and claim a section of bench for us. I towel off the toddler and then go digging for her clean diaper. I keep digging. I go back to the locker and rifle through the clothes I left behind. I go back to the bag. Surely I didn’t forget the ever-important poop containment system? Shit Fuck Damn! Hoping that she’ll hold it at least until we get to the car where I keep a fully stocked diaper bag I put the darling in some pink toddler sweatpants. She peed before I could get my own undergarments on. I didn’t look like she peed though because the super fleecy sweatpants didn’t change color at all, but pee was coming out of the bottom of her pant legs. She thought it was fun and started splashing in the puddle she was creating.
Sophia has developed a habit of shoving her hands in the back of her pants, sometimes on the outside of her diaper and sometimes on the inside. Yesterday, I didn’t notice what she had been doing and she came up to hand me something. I stupidly accepted the gift on blind faith. Why, why don’t people talk about these things? Why didn’t anyone ever tell me before I got pregnant that someday my child would hand me a little brown nugget that she made herself?
Thank you dear, I’ll treasure it always. I should have taken a picture of it or better yet, dry it out and make a poop nugget necklace.
The Laura as you know from yesterday’s post is our couch. Last year my parents bought Sophia her own couch and it’s pink with Dora the Explorer all over it. We dubbed it The Dora, it’s The Laura’s illegitimate child.
We keep some of Sophia’s toys in the living room. We can mostly push them back and sort of make them blend in. The Dora is not something that blends well. It’s not that we don’t want it to look like we have a kid, we just don’t like making it look like the kid took over the entire house. Dora has lived largely in Sophia’s room. That is, until not-a-nanny (AKA Smarmoofus) came to visit this year.
Kurt and I had talked about covering The Dora so that Sophia could have her couch in the living room but we never got around to doing anything about it. Smarmy dragged me to the fabric store and I found three yards of red upholstery that somewhat matches The Laura and three yards of a mossy color upholstery that somewhat matches The Farris. All of it was on clearance and all for nine dollars.
Smarmoofus and I finished most of it before she left and Kurt and I finally got around to putting the finishing touches on it Sunday.
We figure Sophia will be able to relate to the new Muppet Couch since she has watched all the first season Muppet shows. She’s never seen the Dora the Explorer show, and that’s not a hidden request for Dora videos.
For two years after Kurt and I moved in together we had two couches. One was his red leather couch, which our cat was slowly destroying with his back claws as he dug in for powerful lift-offs across the room, and then there was my couch. My couch was some black velvet-like 80’s couch with rainbow colored glittery pinstripes. Don’t laugh it was free! I promptly covered it. The cover for my free couch cost $50. You may laugh now.
Almost six years ago we bought our current house and soon after that sold Kurt’s couch because our living room was too small for two. We needed more seating so we purchased two Ikea chairs. About three years ago, we decided it was time to toss the free couch and buy a real couch both of us liked and that wouldn’t get destroyed by our cat’s jackrabbit impressions.
We probably went to every furniture store in the county and a few outside the county. We went everywhere! Finally, we went to La-Z-Boy. I always thought they only sold recliners and had cheap furniture. Not that I wanted something super ‘high end’, but I didn’t want anything that would fall apart after a couple years either. Turns out, I just don’t know jack about brand names and such. I absolutely fell in love with a curved couch and the huge ottoman in front of it. We looked at everything in the store, but I kept coming back to that one.
La-Z-Boy doesn’t refer to their furniture by model numbers. They use proper names, so anytime the sales lady heard me refer to *that couch* she would say, “The Laura”. “Umm yeah, that one. The curved one, with the ottoman.”
“The Tasha”
After Kurt sat on everything in the store at least twice, including the recliners that tilt forward to help old people back onto their feet, he finally agreed that was the couch for us. We picked out colors and fabrics for the couch and the pillows and then went through the process of completing the sale. One of the other sales people stuck up a conversation with us while we waited for paperwork.
Our sales woman to sales man: They’re buying The Laura
Sales man: Oh, are you buying a chair too?
Kurt: No, not yet, but once we see it with the Ikea chairs we’ll probably come back
The man looked like Kurt had just killed his favorite pet right in front of him and ate the heart.
Sales man: You’re going to put Ikea chairs next to The Laura?
Kurt: No, we’re putting The Laura next to Ikea chairs. We had them first.
If it hadn’t been for that exchange we would have never bothered to remember the names of our furniture. We did go back weeks later for a chair and bought the Farris.
This public announcement brought to you by a nearly seventeen-month-old Sophia.
This picture was taken in February. She is lifting a 1000g (2.2 pound) bar of Savon de Marseille, a French olive oil soap. I love that stuff!
I planned everything out. I did all the shopping the day before the hunger challenge began leaving very little wiggle room. I bought plenty of food. If I needed to I could get creative and still make meals for all day tomorrow with what we have left; however, there were some transgressions.
On Sunday, Kurt told me that one of his co-workers was leaving and therefore he had to take him out to lunch on Monday. Did I mention he wasn’t really into this whole challenge thing? I figure I bought enough for him for that day and he would not have staved so I was still in the game. He also bought a Coke at a convenience store, which brought my total up from $122.32 to $124.32. *grumble*
On Thursday, my daughter and I attended a class for her and a snack was served for the kids. I couldn’t turn it down nor substitute it for a snacks I had purchased for the week because one of the things my toddler needs help with is eating new things. Friday there was yet another class for her and this one was specifically to help her through some food issues, so again I couldn’t turn down the snacks.
Aside from the $2.00 Coke, none of those were really avoidable. What was avoidable was the caffeine fix I needed after my daughter’s end-of-class toddler-meltdown on Thursday. I spent $3.80, which would put me over our allotted $18 a day by $2.12.
If I hadn’t bought that mocha I could have purchased a couple boxes of Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix at forty cents a box to go with the Chili I made for Friday and today and still had eighty-eight cents left. But I didn’t have the restraint. I didn’t really want Jiffy mix anyway. I have a much better recipe.
I like sweet cornbread with some texture and whole kernels of corn in it. It took me years to find the perfect recipe. I finally found it in Peter Reinhart’s, “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice”. It is nirvana! I already blew it with the mocha, so why not? I went ahead and made my cornbread muffins. I don’t even know how far over that ingredient list put me over. Some of the ingredients I had from this weeks purchases and the rest I had in the pantry or freezer. All I needed was buttermilk.
She has swimming classes twice a week. I took her to the park nearly everyday this summer to socialize with other kids. You’d think such efforts would show results. Her peers string two and three word sentences together. I’ve yet to hear ‘mama’. If I’d continued working, keeping her in daycare, would it be different?
Flash Fiction Friday is hosted by g-man. You may also visit Flash Fiction Friday 55′s, a blog dedicated to hosting 55 Flash Fiction Friday posts.
I’m not in the mood to write a post but I want to stay in the NaBloPoMo game for this month. On Tuesday, I went for Sophia’s speech evaluation and it went well. Sophia participated and showed the woman evaluating that she does understand things and can point to the appropriate picture when asked to identify which kids are hugging. She also impressed the evaluator when I corrected Sophia, “I don’t think that’s a toy,” I told her, “put it back please.” And Sophia pushed the box she was playing with back to where it was on a table and left it alone without being asked a second time.
Most of the evaluation was answering questions about Sophia. I listed most of the signs and words that Sophia does and says, I couldn’t remember them all even though there are only about twenty. The woman administering the evaluation then asked me about Sophia’s eating habits. I couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t really want to ask either. I’m worried about what the woman might be thinking. I’m afraid of the label Sophia might receive. On one hand, it’s nice to have a label in order to help understand, on the other hand it could be like a self fulfilling prophecy as we adjust her to fit in those parameters more perfectly. My answer about Sophia’s eating habits, “it would be easier to list what she will eat” lead to further questioning about her reactions to various stimuli and a request to fill out a more detailed questionnaire.
I’m so relieved to be getting help for her and at such a young age. But I’m worried because well, that’s what I do best. I’ve been near tears since the evaluation. I’m watching me grow up again, and at times it feels just as painful the second time around.
Sophia of course needs speech therapy because she only speaks at the level of a 12 to 15 month old child, and because she’ll be receiving speech therapy we get to sign up for some of their classes for free. We may also get some help with her food issues.
Today I took her to her first preschool/play group and it went really well until the end. It was snack time the facilitator went around the table of sitting toddlers and asked each one, “which do you want?” It was a choice of fish crackers or animal crackers. Sophia chose the animal crackers, but didn’t touch anything on her plate the entire time. All the other kids finished theirs and then it was time to clean up and go home. We put Sophia’s cookies in a bag to take home and she threw a fit. Huge melt down, red face, screaming, the whole nine yards. She didn’t want to be held or comforted but didn’t want her cookies either. All I could do is stand there and wait for her to calm down.
Our oatmeal breakfasts and sandwich lunches are rather mundane but our dinners do have flare. Yesterday I made pork tenderloin that I would normally cover with a plum sauce I made from plums given to me, but we can’t use foods given to us or already in stock. So the pork tenderloin I marinated in soy sauce, cooking sherry, garlic, and brown sugar was eaten without the extra topping – still very good with broccoli and rice.
Tonight the leftover will be cut in half a used in Fortune brand mushroom flavor Udon soup (7.26 ounce noodle package from the refrigerated section $1.48). I’ll add some baby bok choy, half a package of portabella mushrooms, onion, and basil.
Day three of the pork tenderloin will be mixed in with Fortune brand Yakisoba stir fry noodles (7.7 ounce package in the refrigerated section for $1.98). This will be dressed up with baby bok choy, the rest of the mushrooms, onion, carrot, broccoli and basil.
Going into this I new that in order to stay within the $18 a day budget challenge for our family I’d have to stick to things that produce tasty leftovers and buy condiments for use in multiple recipes. This week has had a bit of an Asian theme to it so far.
Pork Tenderloin Marinade:
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon dry sherry or Chinese rice wine
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 clove garlic, minced
Plum Sauce:
2 pounds ripe plums
¼ cup honey
1 tablespoon ginger
4 cloves garlic, minced
¼ to ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, red chili paste (basically add heat to your taste or none at all)
¼ cup soy sauce