Parenthood used to come with a manual, but it was covered in poop. People kept complaining about it, so they just stopped handing it out.

More has probably happened in the past few days than in all of the month of May. Let's see... injury, check; house drama, check; explodey poop baby, double check. Craziness.

First, I'm going to direct you to my friend Savana's website. She took some awesome pictures of Ben and my niece and nephew last Saturday. She posted a sneak peek of our session for us. She's also one of the genuinely nicest people I know.

So let's start with the most recent. Poop. I reckon I signed up for it, but that doesn't make me feel any better about it. Today Chris and I were getting ready to go to our friends' house when I noticed that Ben had a stinky diaper. This is a very common occurrence, as I'm sure anyone with a child in diapers can tell you. When you're getting ready to go somewhere, your child will most likely poop. So I took Ben back to the bedroom to change him. Well, I pulled down his pants and a slimy trail of poop followed down each of his legs. His pants were filled with it. It also exploded up his back, so it also got all over him when I pulled off his onesie. It was unavoidable. We had to give him another bath before we could leave. It didn't bother him at all.

Gah! I want to write a longer post, but I'm so super tired. So, in short, the house has been appraised, but for $4,000 less than our offer (so stupid). We've submitted a new offer, and hopefully it will be accepted as well.

The injury involves our man cub. He likes to crawl over (on our bed) to the window and look out of it. A few days ago he was at the window, rocking back and forth, and he lunged head first into it with a loud thwack. He cried, of course, but was not visibly hurt. The wound was healed by the boob. Several hours went by before I noticed the window. It was injured in the altercation. My son broke the window with his head. It had a crack where the impact was, and long cracks all coming out from there. Luckily, it was just the storm window, so we still have a window there. I would show you a picture, but a neighborhood creature (most likely a cat) knocked it over in the driveway where I had it propped. So it's even further broken now.

I did call his doctor to see if I should bring him in to be checked for any harm to his nugget. The nurse told me all the symptoms I should look for, and none of them cropped up. He's been completely fine. I guess naming him after the Thing was pretty appropriate for the kid.

Happy Father's Day, Mom

I probably should have written this post on Father's Day, but my sis-in-law, Antje came into town the night before and she, Fontanna (they're twins), and I had some catching up to do. So we stayed awake well into the morning talking. So yesterday I mostly wanted to be asleep anytime that I actually wasn't.

Father's Day hasn't always necessarily been a difficult day for me, but it has always been a reminder of what was lacking in my childhood. I can't say that I feel the empty hole of where a father should be now; mostly I wish my kid had another grandpa. My dad's not dead. I know who he is, and he knows who I am. At least, he knows I exist and we've had somewhat of a relationship over the years. I won't recount my father's misdeeds as a husband other than to say that there were other things of this world that he loved more than family at the time of my birth. My mom told him to choose between the two, and he moved his stuff out of the house after returning from the hospital when I was born that morning.

Over the years, I remember seeing him or hearing from him only when he needed something from us. Not to say that this is exactly the way it was; it's just what I remember. I also remember feeling sad on Father's Day because I had no father who would wear my primary craft proudly. But I do remember giving those crafts to my mom. She always seemed genuinely happy to receive them. My mom ungrudgingly sacrificed everything for her children. It was more appropriate to honor her on Father's Day anyway.

Nowadays I really struggle in my relationship with my father. I feel like he expects us to treat him like our dad, but he does absolutely nothing to warrant it. I constantly make it my goal to forgive him, but every time I feel okay about him, he does something that makes me angry again. It usually involves him taking advantage of how nice my mom is (she's still friends with him because she's a saint). And if any of her children have anything to say to him about it, his general attitude is "mind your own business". It upsets me greatly. I know I'm supposed to forgive him seventy times seven (Matt. 18:22), but it's hard when he seems not to care that he keeps screwing people over. I'm going to talk to my bishop about what I need to do to be right with the Lord about this. I just haven't done it yet.

I'm so glad that in spite of our lack of a positive male role model growing up, my brothers have become good husbands and fathers and my sisters and I (through trial and error) have found good husbands and fathers for our children. I attribute much of it to my mom. She taught me that no matter what I've done, I am still loved and I deserve to be loved. It took a really long time for that to stick with me, but it's probably one of the most important things I've ever learned. Thanks, Mom.

P.S. If this feels rushed (it does to me), it's because I have a howler monkey on my lap.

I just hate practicing self restraint.

I will preface this story by saying we are currently trying to cut back on unnecessary expenditures. We're even trying to cut back on necessary expenditures. We're tightening our belts because a) we have no money and b) we really want to buy this house.

So Target had a deal this week where you bought three packs of Huggies and you'd get a $5 gift card. They had the same deal if you bought 5 pints of Ben & Jerry's (which were on sale). I had coupons for the ice cream, and I use Huggies, so I figured what the heck. Then I daydreamed about what I would get with my extra $5 (because of course, I would use the first $5 on either the diapers or the ice cream because I am a good girl). I got to the store and carted Ben all around collecting my various items. The Ben & Jerry's was a no-go because they only had 5 flavors to choose from, and none of them were kinds I particularly like. I decided to get wipes and deodorant with my gift card from buying the Huggies. Not fun, but needs. Then I decided to figure up how much I was really saving per diaper, blabbity blah blah blah. Long story short, I decided I have enough of all these items to make it to our next pay day, so I put it all back in favor of immediate frugality. Very good girl, indeed. I was so proud of myself that I had to stop by Sonic on the way home to get myself a creamslush as a reward.

On the way home, I saw an item in front of a nearby trailer (remember that I live in a trailer park- it's classy, yall) being given away for free. Let me show you it:



Fontanna speculated that it is perhaps a shower chair. I like to think that it is a comfy camping toilet. Add one bucket and there you go! Fontanna added that there is also a nice padded seat for your friend to wait in line. I told her I was thinking that I should title the picture: "Hey, I found a place for you to poop, and it's free!" To which she gave me a hilarious mental image of her sitting and pooping on the contraption in front of the trailer with a look that says, "Hey, don't blame me, it was free".

Do you still want to be my friend after knowing I had this conversation? Hahaha, I just read the title of this post in relation to the padded toilet chair. I think I'll leave it.

Do you remember my post about zombies? My friend ucmama also dislikes zombies, a fact that I had totally forgotten when I wrote about them. Anyway, she posted a link to this great article about zombie neurology. Scientific proof that fast zombies cannot exist!

We had the house inspection today, and it went pretty well. The inspector called it the Taj Mahal in comparison to the first house he inspected for us. Now I really hope we can get the house because I wouldn't mind living in a palace. It was nice that we were able to get another look at the house, though. We haven't seen it in a couple of months. There is a slight snag, however. The furnace doesn't really work very well. Our realtor is going to try and negotiate with the seller's bank to get the replaced or at least fixed. If the furnace doesn't work, it's not likely a bank is going to give a loan for it. And then there's also the appraiser who has to go out and look at it and decide if it conforms to a VA loan, as well. There are a lot of repairs that we'll have to do, but they can be done over the next several years. None of them are particularly pressing. Well, none of them except for the furnace. We kind of need one of those.

Did I mention that Ben popped out a tooth? Well he did, and he bit me really hard tonight. I yelled really loud, and it scared him and made him cry. I felt really bad.

Quote from Chris today

"There's not just 13 year olds on the internet, honey. I'm on the internet."

If you see us moving into your neighborhood in the middle of the night, I swear we're not winos.

So, hey, uh, long time no see, huh? Sorry about that. I have a wriggling mobile creature to keep up with now. Ben has figured out he can move forward now, and he refuses to be a lap baby any longer. You should see us trying to hold onto him while trying to do stuff on the internet. The problem is we don't have much floor space that isn't dog infested in our trailer. So he learned the crawling basics on the bed. And then he crawled 3 or 4 feet for the first time on the floor in the play area at the Pocatello mall while we were there visiting my sister in law and her new baby (holy crap, that kid is cute). This was about a week ago. He gets frustrated because he's still working out the kinks, but he can get around. So we can't really corral him on the bed anymore. He's started to lunge over obstacles like the pillows we put around him to keep him in one place while we wash our hands after a diaper change. I knew our house would feel even smaller once Ben became mobile, and it does.

The very very good news is that our offer was accepted on the house we want. Yay! I've been making plans and decorating it in my head for weeks. We have our home inspection set for Monday. I hope I hope I hope it goes well. We really really like this house, and I can definitely see us being there for the next ten years or so. There's enough space for all of our hobbies and for Ben and any other kids we have. I'm really excited about it. Can you tell? Our realtor told us that if everything goes without a hitch, we could possibly close by the end of the month. That would be pretty incredible.

So, to prepare for our impending move, we decided to procure some boxes. I don't like buying boxes because I'm cheap, and there are plenty of used boxes that need good homes. I called the local liquor store, and they told us to come on over as they had plenty of boxes to impart to us. So whoever sees us moving in to our house will probably think we're total lushes. You'd have to be drinking a LOT of liquor to come up with all those boxes on your own. And, well, we'll probably be moving in the middle of the night because that's just how we roll, you know? We're definitely night people.

I'm really not looking forward to the packing and the unpacking, though. Every other time we've moved, it's started out organized, but by the end of it, we would just start throwing crap into boxes all willy nilly. Then we end up having boxes full of random stuff, and we don't know where to put any of it. So we end up having unpacked boxes sitting around for the next year or two. It's happened once or twice. True story. We'll get through it, though. We always do.

On the ppd front, I'm hoping this move helps. I think it will give me some motivation to make things better instead of wallowing in my own despair. My meds seem to be working less and less. I don't particularly want to increase the dose, though. I would rather pursue other methods of treatment. So when I go to my doc for my lady appt next week (oh, joy), I'll probably ask her for a referral to a therapist.

One last thing, and it's a happy thing- I'm twelve pounds lighter than I was when I got pregnant last year. Yay! That's a total of 64 lbs that I've lost since the peak of my pregnant weight gain. And yes, I believe my butt does look good in these jeans I'm wearing.