Just Call Me Donna Reed

I cook gourmet dinners with nothing but green Jell-O and instant mashed potatoes; I vacuum in high heels and pearls; I crochet my own toilet paper out of dryer lint. I am a modern, frugal woman!

Actually, I'm more like Donna Reed's less famous, lazier little sister. We do have green Jell-O and instant mashed potatoes, but it tastes pretty gross; when I do vacuum, I'm usually wearing pajamas; and we only use dryer lint if I forget to buy TP, which is sadly frequently.* BUT, I do have some nifty products I have discovered by being the mommy of a small child. These things have made my life easier and slightly less embarrassing because at least I can say I am clever by discovering them.

1.) Chucks, also known as underpads. I love these things. They're normally used in hospitals or nursing homes to keep beds/sheets clean in case of accidents or oozy wounds. I use them as disposable changing pads. They're huge (like 2 feet by 3 feet) so little cutie never has to touch one of those nasty changing tables at Wal-Mart. Plus, if the changing table at Wal-Mart is broken, which it always is, you can just use the floor! Plus plus if cutie decides to go potty mid-diaper change, you can just throw the thing away. Plus plus plus they have a plastic backing so any mess doesn't soak through to whatever is underneath (ie: grandma's bed). Plus plus plus plus they're like $5 for 20 of them and you can get them at Wal-Mart or Target.

2.) Bag Balm. In ancient days of yore when people got their milk from the family cow instead of the grocery store, the poor cows used to get chapped udders sometimes from all that milking (ouch!) Bag Balm was invented to be used like cow chapstick to help Bossy feel better. But it's modern times, and I use it as diaper rash cream. It comes in pints or in little travel size tins and it sticks to sore red bums better than regular diaper cream. I switched when baby Katherine had a diaper rash for over a week that was so icky, it was actually oozing. Some lady at the check-out heard me lamenting to the cashier about Katherine's persistent rash and told me about it. Two days later, the diaper rash from H-E- double toothpicks was gone and Katherine had a nice, happy heinie again. This lovely product can be bought at pharmacies like Rite Aid or probably Wal-Mart/Target, but you gotta ask the pharmacist. For some weird reason, they keep it behind the counter.

3.) Zout. This is the most amazing stain remover I have ever used. It gets pretty much everything out. It has only failed me once, when Casey got dry erase marker on his shirt (your guess is as good as mine how he managed that one, seeing as how the marker was on his back). It gets yucky, orange baby poop out perfectly, although it does need a couple of washings sometimes. I have even used it to get old stains out, you know the ones that you don't notice until your shirt has gone through the dryer. I have also successfully used this to clean cat poop stains out of my carpet. I have only ever found this stuff at Target, but it's not expensive, so good news!

So, I may not be Donna Reed or Martha Stewart or even Mrs. Jones down the street who makes the best snickerdoodles and has a gorgeous lawn, but I do have a few tricks up my sleeve and I can live with that.

* I'm actually kidding about all this, except the vacuuming thing.

Baby Wants Salt

I cannot seem to get enough sodium, which is completely weird for me. I am a chocoholic, so I would say that I have a sweet/fat tooth rather than a salt tooth. Normally, I have to fight the urge to snag a candy bar at the grocery store checkout. Normally, I can walk down the deli meat/cheese/chip aisle at the grocery store and just just buy meat and cheese, but no longer. It takes all the will power I have to not load up on Ranch Doritos and Salt and Vinegar Lays (just typing that is making me drool...man, I have problems). I blame this recent phenomenon on the child currently doing the backstroke inside me.

It started shortly before Christmas when I had an overpowering craving for....wait for it.....vegetable juice. Yuck, right? But I drove to the store and bought a can of V8, and let me tell you, it was the most heavenly thing I have ever tasted. They didn't have anything but the spicy variety, but I didn't care. I just chugged it down and followed it up with a bunch of Tums. Since then, I have been buying 64 oz bottles of vegetable juice and enjoying every drop. I figured I just wasn't getting enough of some vitamin, but apparently vegetable juice is quite high in salt (20% of your daily sodium allowance in ONE glass).

Then came the other salty cravings: pickles, chips, ummm, well that's it really. Pickles and chips and V8. There was even a day when Casey bought a bag of kettle chips to see what they were like and I ate half the bag (that's like 9 million percent of my sodium for the day) in one sitting. And then there were the imported Mexican chili-flavored tortilla chips that Casey found at a Mexican market...and again I completely pigged out (Tums is making a killing off of me, I swear.)

I think I'm giving myself hypertension and that I'm destined for self-induced preeclampsia (which, for those of you who don't know is a condition in pregnancy characterized by elevated blood pressure and can be harmful to you and your unborn baby). But here I am, typing away and drinking a lovely glass of vegetable juice and contemplating a pickle to go with it. I very much hope that my salty preferences will go away once Baby Brother gets here. In the mean time, my chocolate tooth is still as active as always so I am extra-avoiding the chocolate covered pretzels because I might just die.

PS: If you're thinking of getting me something for the impending birth of my son and don't have a budget that allows for toys or clothes, you can just get me some pickles or a bag of Ruffles.

My New Favorite Song

This is the most soulful rendition I have ever heard. It changed my life!

Here Come the Littles

So there has been a bunch of stuff that has disappeared from our house lately. I am missing my one-cup dry cup measure. Katherine is missing her Cinderella doll and a hairbrush for her panda family. There are also a number of other not so important things that have vanished (hair ties and stuff) which I swear I put right there but when I go to find them, they're gone, never to be seen again.

But see, I have a hypothesis. I think that we have the Littles living in our walls and they've been swiping my stuff. For those of you who weren't born in the days of yore, "The Littles" is a Saturday morning cartoon about tiny people with tails who live in a kid's house and get chased a lot by cats and stuff. They drive a rollerskate and use other thingies from around the house to make their hole-in-the-wall home more comfortable.

So, I am making a plea to Grandpa, Dinky and the whole gang: Please please please give me back my cup measure. I'm sure it makes a nifty bathtub, but I need it! I'll even give you one of my tupperwares which will make an even better tub. And Katherine would sure love her Cinderella doll back.

Know Thyself

Last night Katherine was suffering from a case of the Nighttime Crazies. I always sort of thought that that particular condition struck mainly cats, but apparently, little kids can get it too. Anyway, she was running around at full speed, laughing like a maniac and jumping on just about everything she saw. Then she started in on the comedy routine, pulling faces and telling jokes...at least I think that's what they were. So, here's what I said:

Kirsten: Katherine, you're such a nerd.

Katherine: (looking completely scandalized). I am NOT a nerd, Mommy. I'm a geek!

Kirsten: Are you sure? You look like a nerd to me.

Katherine: I....Am.....A......Geeeeeeeeeek! (she leaned forward on "Geeeeeeek" to emphasize it)

Kirsten: Huh. OK, so does that mean I'm a nerd?

Katherine: No, you're a dork.

Kirsten: So, does that mean Daddy's a nerd?

Katherine: No, Daddy's a psycho.

Pregnancy Brain Strikes Again

Pregnancy Brain is one of my least favorite parts about being pregnant. Not only am I already overly-emotional (thanks hormones), but now I'm a flake, too. I miss appointments, forget to call people and space out on things I have to do, like yesterday when Katherine went to church having done her own hair because I just forgot. But last night I outdid myself.

I decided to make snickerdoodles. After I made the dough, I put it in the fridge for an hour, like the recipe said. But an hour and a half later, the dough was still really sticky. It was getting late so I just did my best and rolled the sticky dough blobs in the cinnamon sugar and baked them anyway.

This was the outcome

Yep, those are my snickerdoodles. They completely melted in the oven and I couldn't get them off the cookie sheet. Casey and I examined the recipe and figured out that I had added 2 sticks of butter instead of just one. Whoops! But the good news is, my ugly duckling cookies still taste ok.

I miss my brain!

Our (Kind of ) Vacation

A few weeks ago, Casey and I went to San Francisco for a math conference. The conference was four days long, so rather than leave me at home to pine for him, my sweet husband took me along and we did some fun stuff while we were there. Katherine's saintly grandparents watched her (for which we are eternally grateful!) while we were away and it sounds like she had about as much fun as we did.

I hadn't planned on posting anything about our trip because it wasn't that exciting (no Elvis sightings or anything), but interest from my family prompted me to post some of the photos. So Enjoy, you know or whatever.

Here we are, totally lost in the Magowan's Infinite Mirror Maze on Pier 39. Totally worth the $5!

Arr! I'm a scary Alcatraz criminal. I got thrown in the joint when I failed to turn in my audio tour headset after I was done. Actually they're really serious about that. They have what looks like a metal detector on the dock that you have to pass through before you get on the boat so they know you didn't steal the MP3 player thingy. And you know that cool old movie with Clint Eastwood, "Escape from Alcatraz"? You know the one where they make papier mache heads and escape through the ventilation system. Well, apparently it was based on an actual escape. I always thought it was fiction. Except in real life, they're not sure what happened to the escapees. No one ever saw them again.

Some of the last remaining sea lions at Pier 39. There used to be hundreds of them everyday, but a few weeks before we got there, they decided that they'd had enough of the area and just left. No one can figure out why. The weather's been normal this year and there's nothing wrong with their food supply either. Weird.....

At the Exploratorium. Casey said it was a little weird and gross to drink out of a toilet, but he's a good sport and did it for the camera.

At the Exploratorium again. Casey created an icosahedron out of Velcro triangles and is showing off his masterpiece. I made a something out of pentagons, I think it was a dodecahedron, but I can't remember my high school geometry.

Outside the Exploratorium. Apparently the building was built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition and then later (1969) turned into an interactive science museum that resembles a giant Mr. Wizard lab.

A submarine at Fisherman's Wharf. It wasn't very large but that thing used to hold 80-ish crew members during WWII. Sorry Dad, I don't remember what the vessel was called.

Lombard Street. Lots of swanky houses and squealing tires...and tourists.

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There were some other things we did that I failed to photograph. We ate some good food, saw a free magic show, saw Golden Gate Bridge from the beach and from Alcatraz, ate WAY too much taffy, rode a trolley, rode a circular escalator (I really should have taken pictures of that one), bought hairspray at THE CREEPIEST convenience store I have ever been in, and visited the Musee Mechanique, which is more or less a really old-fashioned arcade. We watched a carnival diorama come to life, listened to old old old music boxes, played baseball and had the kiss-o-matic tell us if it was true love (according to that reliable device, we were "cold fish" or something...sad!)

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Word of warning: I found one of those old view finder things that said "Secrets of the Unknown--For Adults Only" or something like that. I thought it was a joke and expected corny old photos of 5 legged donkeys and stuff, but that is NOT what is was. They weren't kidding about that adults only thing. Just do yourself a favor and don't go near that one. Shudder....

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was our trip to San Francisco. The end.