Just because ...

I needed to see her cute adorable little face. And chunky little mosquito-bitten leg!

Wednesday night after her bath and the drama of getting her diapered and dressed! And yeah, that little pink spot on her forehead ... mosquito bite ... I cannot find that little blood-sucking bastard to save my life. I have resorted to rubbing Bounce dryer sheets on her head and pajamas at night to repel the little bastard. I don't know why it works ... but it does. They hate them. I used to stick one in my pocket when I fed the horses to keep the mosquitoes and horse flies away from me.

Thursday night ... it took me ten minutes to get that diaper on! TEN MINUTES people! She had a meltdown the size of Chernobyl. Major meltdown. Major drama. My child is a pushing the limits of all patience at diaper changing time. The last picture is when she saw me pick up her sleeper. She HATES to be dressed. Hates it with the white hot passion of a gazillion trajillion stars. And don't get me started on the standing ON the walker. The camera was quickly set to the side when she decided to use the yellow crossbars to climb even higher, just because.

The look I got when I walked past her to put her bottles in the diaper bag this morning. And then the look I got when I went back to give her a kiss.

Jesus Camp?

I know, strange ass subject title coming from me ...

While I live a life that nurtures and helps others, and what many view as 'Christian like', we all know I'm not! So, what's up with the title?

It's a damn movie review link that my sister sent me that has me riled like no one's business. Did we, as a country, or even as individuals learn NOTHING from what happened on September 11, 2001? There is a camp in, get this, Devil's Lake, North Dakota for children ages 7 through 12 that teaches them an evangelical Christian program. It's called Kids on Fire.

Guess what it consists of? From what I'm gathering ... HATE! This is extremism at it's worse, in North-fucking-Dakota! You know all those drones that we sent on fly-bys over Afghanistan? Weren't they to wipe out groups that were just the older, more ready-to-die-for-our-extremist-beliefs version of this little camp?

When are people going to open their eyes and stop fucking with our future by brainwashing their children into such idiotic prejudices?

While I consider myself to be very spiritual, I do not consider myself to be 'religious'. We know I'm 'pagan' and while I have used the title 'witch' before, I don't even like titles any longer. I know I'm a good person, everyone that knows me knows I'm a good person, and whose business is it what I believe or don't believe spiritually? I don't need my aunt to save me after my death by baptising me as a Mormon! Did you know they did such a thing? After you die? Like, they don't give a shit what you believe in, so long as they have the final word?!? I don't need the three little Jehovah Witness girls that leave notes on my door on a weekly basis, to stop by and check in on me and my spirituality. I don't need Dink's mother to invite me to church EVERY FUCKING WEEK because I need Jesus in my life!

What I do need is to be surrounded by intelligent people who don't feel the need to think that their way is the only way. People who think that it's great that there are other ways of viewing things. People who don't send their children to damned Jesus Camp in Devil's Lake, North Dakota, to dress in fucking camo and war paint to be in "God's army" and to be sent on field trips to anti-abortion revivals.

Jesus Camp ... coming to a theatre near you.

Unbelievable!

Recent Conversations

The other night, I needed to keep Sage out of the kitchen while I was making dinner. I asked the kids to hang out in the living room with her while she darted to and fro in her walker. While I don't really ever try to occupy her with the television, I have seen how enamored she is of this furry overgrown thing on PBS when I pick her up in the evenings at the babysitter. He sings and such and she cranes her little head over my shoulder to watch him.

So, I decided to put in one of the movies I have purchased for her with the intent that she will get to watch them in the future. I put in Alice in Wonderland, thinking the bright colors and such would grab her attention and she wouldn't be trying to knock the chair that I strategically placed in her way, to the side.

I put the movie in and Kaylie is perched on the edge of the couch in anticipation. PJ quickly exits the room and Cody runs in.

Cody: Cool a movie ... what are we going to watch?

Me: Alice in Wonderland

Cody: (looks at me like I'm insane) Huh?

Me: Cody ... she IS a girl!

Cody: Oh yeah. (flops down on floor)

A few minutes later Dink walks by ...

Dink: Oh cool, you put a movie in for her. What is it?

Me: Alice in Wonderland

Dink: Alice in Wonderland? Why?

Me: GIRL!

Dink: Oh yeah, I forgot we have a girl now ...

Me: And KAYLIE would rank in what category?

Fifteen minutes later, Sage is having a fit and I let her come into the kitchen with me. For the record, Kaylie had already left the couch and went to her room to pursue other interests. Cody. Cody was laying on the floor entranced by Alice in Wonderland, completely ignoring the fact that his nine month old sister wanted his attention.

Fifteen more minutes pass and I tell Dink he has to take Sage and occupy her for ten minutes so I can finish fixing dinner.

Ten minutes later I walk into the living room to Dink, with Sage in his lap, SINGING the songs from Alice in Wonderland!

I'm telling you ... that Y chromosome makes NO sense to me. None.

Give the Baby Kisses ...

Dink is so offended. Sage will now give me kisses when I ask. And ... she'll give her new babydoll kisses (which he started) but she will NOT kiss him. He says "give Daddy a kiss" and she turns her face from him. I know it is because his whiskers are rough on her tender skin, but he's so offended by it. Last night you could hear "just not right, so wrong" at random times during the evening. He's really stewing on this one. HA!

Tooth #3 is taking it's sweet, painful time coming in. She's still waking constantly at night and always needs consoled. I think I spent more time in the rocker than I did the bed last night!

And the Mussolini level has risen. She absolutely will no longer take a nap in the evening and by 7pm she's fit to be tied. Forget tied. She needs to put into a pillow lined room to prevent injury from her little tantrums every time she doesn't get what she wants ... immediately. As soon as I walked into the bedroom after her bath last night, she started fussing. I laid her on the bed for our normal routine and she completely lost it. Screamed bloody murder as if she had just been bitten by a million fireants! It took me, at the very least, five minutes to manage to wrangle a diaper on her before she decided to pee all over my bed. The sleeper ... HA ... who needs a sleeper. Well, she does damn it to hell. I finally won the battle when I realized she would let me do as I wanted if she had my CELL PHONE!

Total bath time = 10 minutes.

Total dressing for bedtime = 30 minutes.

Insertion of bottle into her mouth until she fell asleep from utter exhaustion = 6 minutes!

I really, really, really hope this phase does not last long. It breaks my heart to have to wrestle her just to get a diaper on her.

Blasted Teeth ...

... oh how I hate thee. Why can't babies be born with their teeth? It's not like breast feeding would have been any more of a disaster than it already was! Sage is finally cutting tooth number three, upper left, and she wakes up every half hour through the night. By midnight, I thought it was time to get up and get ready for work, I was that sleep deprived and delirious. The tooth has cut through. I thought the majority of the discomfort was supposed to be over after that? My poor monkey. She's just not a happy camper during the night. I guess it's time to break out the infant tylenol to help her with the pain. Maybe we'll all get some sleep then? Maybe. I'm not counting on it.

Playing under her exersaucer, scaring the beejeebies out of Bacchus and Bacchus trying to not have to go past the crazy baby in the wheelie thing that he's afraid of.

Right before the hairy beastie licked her ... she didn't like that much.

The yummy goodness of freeze-dried strawberries. She loves them!

Trying to get to mommy's camera. I think I have a little photographer in the making.

Coming for the camera again ...

Her new favorite toy. A box of Kaylie's old clothes that I haven't forced myself to carry into the basement yet!

And climbing up mommy's leg. She's doing this a lot now. She finds me, climbs my leg and then reaches for me to pick her up.

New Things for Sage ...

I can't believe I forgot to mention that after weeks of trying to teach the little monkey to wave, she finally started doing it! I'm showing what a wuss I am in the telling of this, but I always make my mother go to Sage's doctors appointments with us. She has to be the one to hold her on that table because I cry too much ... and it really is hazardous to the well-being of the nurses to have me that close when they are hurting her. But anyway! My mother goes with us. And when we were dropping her off the other evening after the appointment, Sage waved bye to her. Of course, mom was all like "she waved, she waved at me, bye Sage, wave at MawMaw again, oh, she did it again ..." HA! And then she was waving at the babysitter last night. She holds her hand up and moves her fingers up and down. So cute.

And on Saturday, she suddently lost her fear of the big hairy Bacchus beast. Until then, if he got within about three feet of her, she would cling to me, climb me like a monkey and hide her face in my neck. Now she's all big and bad in her walker and bum-rushes the poor canine like she's one of the woad painted warriors in BraveHeart charging the English after an inspiring speech by William Wallace. She does this little all over body tremble and then she's a blur as she flies across the kitchen floor with her arms stretched in the air. They do this back and forth head thing where when Sage gets closer, he retreats ... then Bacchus gets brave and she retreats. Eventually, she touches him, he licks her and she's had enough already ... get that dog and his tongue off of me now! He still scares me though. I mean, his tongue is like the size of half of her face. His paws ... small dessert plates. One swat with one of those things and he can do some damage. He's six times her weight and even when she's standing, he towers over her.

They'll work it out. In the meantime, I'm right there beside them pulling hands and noses and paws out of the way.

Lions and Tigers and Bears ...

Well, not so much the tigers and bears. And, unfortunately, no lions yet either.

But, what does it say about me, that my sister emailed me a link to a live cam in an African Game Preserve and I keep watching this damn watering hole, just waiting for some poor, unsuspecting prey to be pounced upon by a lion and ripped limb from limb? Does that make me bad? Seriously?

And right now ... it's dark there. And there is a damn jeep out there shining it's bright lights all over the place scaring any potential action away!

I think I'm going to hell.

And if you want to join me, click here:

AfriCam

And the Angels Sang ...

There were no shots at Sage's well-baby visit yesterday. No one told me that there is a reprieve for the nine month visit. It was like the clouds had parted and a beautiful golden beam of light shone down upon us when her doctor said those words. No watching my poor child being held down and poked with hordes of needles! But we did have an argumentative nurse that tried to make me feel as if I didn't know my own child. She tried to tell me that she only weighed 16 pounds 14 ounces. I repeatedly said, that's not right, but she insisted that "oh yes it is ... they sometimes lose weight at this age because they are moving much more." Get a new job bitch ... not in my pediatricians office ... you have NO freakin clue ... be gone with you! My child, for the record, weighs 20 pounds 9.6 ounces, thank you very much.

I made myself ill yesterday dreading that damn visit, all for naught! Egads. But after I read the papers they gave me last night, I was sick again. It's something like FIVE shots next visit. FIVE!

So, instead of having a cranky baby in pain last night, I had this:

Great, eh? And instead of cranky, fevered baby this morning, I got this:

and this,

Please forgive the red-eye. Mommy was tired this morning and couldn't angle the camera to save her damn life!

Nine Months ... Time Flies!

Sage, Kaylie and I spent Saturday afternoon standing outside of the local high school waiting for Cody to come riding by in the back of a truck for the brief little Pony Football Parade that they always do. Meaning, we dropped him off, went to the school, waited for an hour and I managed to get ONE shot of the truck going by with him in it! Then I had to drive up to the middle school along with about 100 other parents, to pick him up. That was my Saturday. After that, I was done and we spent the rest of the evening at home.

But yesterday ... Dink took PJ and his friend Ethan to the Family Values Tour because he's a complete Deftones and Korn fanatic and PJ's birthday is this coming Saturday. He'll be fifteen. I can't believe he made it! So, with Kaylie and Cody off to church, Sage and I went with her MawMaw and PopPop ... we went shopping. And my child tried to get a five finger discount. She snagged a teddy bear from a rack that she got a little too close to and there was no getting it back from her. Then, she proceeded to try to eat the tag so that the saleslady couldn't ring it up!

We somehow managed to walk out of the store with mostly PINK. What the hell? I did everything I could last time we went shopping to make sure that we got away from the pink thing. It seems like that was practically the ONLY thing they had this time. The clothes thing is killing me. I see all of these cool clothes on babies in magazines and such. And I can't find them anywhere. Maybe it's because they are usually the children of celebrities since they are in magazines. Maybe I need to make a bi-monthly trip to LA and go clothes shopping! Yeah right. And maybe I'll win the lottery. HA! There has to be something else out there though. I'm afraid to order clothes online because I don't know if they will fit her. The only brand I am sure will always fit when I buy the size I am looking for, is Carters. Everything else is a crapshoot! If anyone has any hints about where to get nice baby clothes that don't look like cotton candy ... help a mommy out, will ya?

I had a somewhat bittersweet moment last night while we were doing our usual routine at bedtime. I always take her up and play with her in my bed before she drifts off to sleep. We play peek-a-boo and I sing to her and do everything I can to make her laugh. I started singing 'You Are My Sunshine' and actually made it almost all the way through the song before I realized what I was doing. You see, my grandmother passed away a little over twelve years ago. The very last evening I spent with her, she laid in her bed in her new home and sang that very song to my grandfather. She was out of breath and in and out of it on painkillers, so it was raspy version of the song. She had so much love in her eyes when she sang that song and she passed at around 5AM the next morning. I heard that song in my sleep just as I startled awake that morning ... at 5AM ... and sat in my bed crying, waiting for my mother to call and tell me what I already knew. I have not been able to listen to that song since. If I thought of it, I would immediately tear up. Last night, not so much. Once I realized what I was singing and all, yeah, I got upset ... but Sage made things better. After twelve years, I'm not a firm believer that time heals very much. But Sage does.

So, now that I've gone and guaranteed another "why do I read your stinking journal" email from my sister, I better show some pictures.

She sweats, BUCKETS, when she sleeps. After her nap Friday evening, I spiked her hair into a mohawk. Good thing I didn't have any of that colored spray you can put in your hair or she may have had a purple mohawk!

Saturday, in the cage, I mean pack-n-play. She was trying to get my attention and kept peering over the top and then she would duck down and look through the mesh screen.

This is why Dink isn't allowed to participate in feeding her much. He does things like this! She couldn't figure out where that snack was or how to get it off of her face for anything. He finally stuck it to her nose and she knocked if off of there with a real quick swipe of the hand. She wasn't amused.

The hat is still a little too big, but I'm sure she'll be wearing it a lot soon. Fall is in the air and I need to keep her poor little head covered since her hair isn't that thick yet. I'm hoping to get her used to having them on by playing with her every day with them. Otherwise, it could be a very long winter!

Monkeys ... Oh, the Monkeys!!!

Ever laughed so hard that you had to keep wiping the tears from your blurred vision so you could continue reading ... only to get through one more sentence and have to wipe your eyes again?

If not ... you will now! Well, at least I did.

Why I Hate Monkeys

I love monkeys. But I know they are nasty, mean little creatures sometimes. Poor, poor little girl.

Oh, and I just donated a whole $1.55 that I had hanging out in my PayPal account for months to RockstarMommy because, well, either I'm certifiable now, or she's just hilarious and I rather she have my money to buy boobs than to have PayPal just sitting on money that I won't use.

Are You Reading?

Other than a few friends I have given this journal address to, and a few family members, I don't really think much of anyone else reading what I write her. So, I was chatting with (emailing) Colleen yesterday and realized that more people than I thought are reading here. I never really gave it much thought before ... other than the occasional "oh, I have to delete that" thought, thinking that I could cause quite a bit of turmoil if certain parties read some of the things that sneak past the block from mind to fingers when I get riled up. I mean, I knew that when Coll was working over the summer doing staging, that there were big, scary looking rocker types adoring my daughter and going "ahhhh" over her, and it cracked me up. But it was a one time type of thing and I thought "cool, so and so thinks my monkey is cute."

And there's Mads ... hey dude! Almost as cute as your kids? What's up with 'dat'? HA! He's "the Dane." Good luck in Toronto this weekend. He's the reason I am going to get crows feet because if I can actually find his movies, I'm going to be squinting at the screen reading subtitles the entire time since none of them are in ENGLISH! I'm working on a nickname for him. Trying not to be a smart ass and come up with something along the lines of "the Blonde Bimbo", which was someone else's nickname. And there is Mads' friend Atta apparently reads as well ... don't know you, but hi there! If I knew the least bit of Danish, I would say hi appropriately, but I don't, so I won't. Germanic languages ... hmmmm ... I'll keep it to myself. Shut up, Coll!

I should probably clarify, there may be someone reading here who thinks the Blonde Bimbo comment may be about him ... no, it's not. When you had nicknames, they were wide, varied and the most flattering was probably the "that dirty, rotten Dutch bastard."

I guess the whole point of this is ... if you are reading about my child and my sometimes crazy ramblings, leave me a comment! Lavish completely unsolicited proclamations of beauty upon my daughter. Well, I guess, not so unsolicited now. It's real easy. Look down ... see that little purple blurb that says "Leave a comment?" Click on it ... come on, it won't bite.

In all seriousness, it would be nice to know when someone is reading my ramblings. I do this for family ... mostly Colleen ... and Sage. I want her to have something in the future that lets her know a little about the things she did, and when she did them. And I suck at the scrapbooking thing even though it appeals to my artistic side. I don't have the time or the patience. Maybe one day, when I'm all grown up and become the world famous photographer that I want to be ... well, not really world famous ... just coveted ... I'll have time to do things like that because that will be a part of the services I want to offer. But until then, scrapbooking isn't me.

Speaking of photography ... I think there might be something wrong with my camera. Like I have used it too much or something. I'm starting to have a lot of problems with blurriness and I know it's not me ... I know how to focus and I don't shake. And digitals do that when they are ready to go "pbbbttttttf" at you. I need to get it looked at but am finding it hard to imagine giving up possession of it since I use it, like, every day! And it's a good excuse to get the one I want, that I can't afford, if it does go on the fritz. I should really say the one that I am settling for but can't afford. No way in hell I can afford the one I really want. It's way out of the range of my budget or saving capacity. Way out there! So, I need to figure out what to do. Go stand in a shop watching over them as they figure out what the problem might be other than over-use, and take my precious little Canon right back out the door with me ... or ignore it until I'm going psycho when my camera just stops working and I HAVE TO TAKE PICTURES NOW! I can't leave it at a shop ... I know I can't. I'll be like that crazy little Gollum in Lord of the Rings whining "precccciousth" all the damn time and rocking back and forth while squatted in a corner until I get it back.

And here's the little monkey ... I know you are only here to look at her anyway! Get ready for overload because I couldn't choose which ones to post from this week. And please ... ignore that ugly ass couch in the background. I hate that thing. I did NOT pick it out, I do know how to decorate a house! Dink (the boyfriend) likes it for some reason unknown to the rest of the world that has taste ... but I can't seem to get rid of the ugly thing. Maybe it's because I can't afford to replace it. Hmmm ... maybe. Either way, I don't like it.

Wednesday night ... she had to be the big girl. The last picture was taken right before she fell on her big girl butt and crawled to mommy crying. Like her new outfit?

Wednesday night still. After the crying episode and playing in the bath tub. The first one she was throwing her arms up in air when I said "toss them up high." The second one, she dropped her damn teddy bear. I had to scramble to get it back in her little paws before the ensuing meltdown began. So impatient. I wonder where she got that from??? Shut up.

Um ... yeah, yesterday. I've got issues. I couldn't choose which ones to put up. Coll doesn't mind. She loves her sweetpea. And one final one ... she was mad at me last night. I don't know why. I did nothing. She was playing, looked up at me and did this ...

Made me feel about as tiny as the type on this screen. Out of nowhere ... this is what I got from the sun that I revolve around.

Need I Say More?

Pictures

Because I need to cheer myself up.

Can you tell she likes to eat?

Reacting to her new fruity snacks.

Lounging after breakfast Sunday morning. She was having fun looking out the window.

I usually get two views of the little monkey now.

Trying to climb up into a chair with me. OR.

Her little hiney crawling away from me as fast as she can.