Shave and a Haircut

An inner voice started whispering something about it being time for a haircut around the time O insisted on having his hair put up for dinner. It's always been a debate: go to the gym or stay home and cut O's hair. One option makes me feel healthy, the other just makes me feel anx

ious and itchy. Finally Friday night I managed to find energy enough to do both.

Haircuts have always been a bit of a struggle-- nothing epic, which means they're also nothing a bit of youtube can't handle. We brought up O's favourite video. You got it-- MahnaMahna (I've never felt comfortable with spelling it that way but whoever posted the video clip did). O is a bit obsessed. We had to put him on MahnaMahna detox after I came home from the hospital with S. O's sitter had let him watch it for about a half hour straight and it took us two weeks to get the high out of his system.

So we set up the laptop, set up youtube, and I fired up the beard trimmer. Nothing but class around here. Things went pretty well until Andrew asked me to trim up some longer hairs that hte clippers hadn't gotten around his face. He went to get the scissors for me to use but I figured I'd give it another pass with the trimmer. Problem was I'd forgotten that I had taken off the clipper guide to trim around O's ears and neck. I started to take a pass at the longer hairs with the trimmer but the look of horror on Andrew's face accompanied by a very loud, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING????" stopped me before I got too far.

Instant flashback to when I was cutting Lauritz's hair in high school and did the same thing. Fortunately for O, he just looks like he has a bit of early onset male pattern baldness-- on one side of his head. We blended it a bit and it doesn't look nearly as disastrous as Andrew's reaction would have led me to believe. Unfortunately for Lauritz, I'd started on the side of his head and just made him look like he had mange. I'm not sure how long it took for him to forgive me, if it's ever happened.

Here's O getting ready to do the big reveal.

Sneak peek.

Should I put a matching bald spot on the other side just to even things out?

Ah-hah!

Ever since this little guy came into my life, my mind has been going absolutely crazy with all kinds of projects I want to complete. I've started having to carry a notebook to bed every night because if I don't write down all the things I want to make and do, I keep myself up trying to remember them all. I've come to think of S as my unofficial muse and couldn't figure out what it was about him that has unleashed this force in me. Well, apparently it's all just biological. Andrew found an article that explains exactly what's been going on (click on the link in the previous sentence to read the article). It's a much less romantic explanation-- my brain is growing as opposed to my baby boy being some kind of inspiring angel to me.

I think I'm going to still hold on to a bit of the more romantic explanation. O's birth seemed to unleash this amazing capacity to love and S's gift seems to be this amazing desire to create. Best part-- I actually am completing some of the projects.

Marie and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

As I went to bed last night and made the "woe is me" list in my head, this rash wasn't even on there. Just remembered it this morning and figured it at least gave me a photo to put up with this post. I know I'm allergic to nickel but apparently I'm also allergic to very cheap 1 Euro acrylic scarves with pretty little butterflies on them. Next time I'll try one without butterflies.

So my day yesterday started going bad around about 12.01am. Ok, more like 12.45am when I crawled into the bed I'd made on the couch. I was feeling sick and didn't want to keep Andrew up so I made my home there for the night. I was so excited to be in bed so early and had high hopes for the night. That lasted about as long as it took for my dream to take a really really bad turn. At 3am I woke up freaked out and wanting my bed. Felt like a little kid as I took the frightening long walk down the hall in the dark to the safety of the parents' bed except this time I'm the parent.

So crawled into bed with Andrew and drifted off again, no problem, until 4am when S woke up screaming. He's normally good about sleep during the night so I indulged him and gave him some milk. Felt much less indulgent at 4.45am when he was refusing to go back to sleep and I was falling asleep holding him. Finally got him down and drifted back to sleep again for about ten minutes before some crazy guy started yelling for Diego to come outside now-- right outside each of our bedroom windows. I have no idea who Diego is but apparently he lives in our building because the crazy guy then decided to go and ring every single apartment's buzzer at least twice until Diego gave in and talked to him. About the second time the buzzer rang I was considering putting hate mail in Diego's mailbox if he didn't take care of this. Finally heard the lift go up and down, front door to building open, and shouting stopped. Got a good four hours of sleep before we had to be up.

And that was just the night. Won't bore you with details but the day involved having to stay home with two cranky kids in order to let workmen come in and out of our flat to work on our patio. That involved lots of ringing the doorbell right after either child had fallen asleep or started crying, lots of dust everywhere, and lots of just being in the house with no way of escaping to let everyone work off their bad vibes.

I was so tired, so cranky, and still recovering from being sick and just didn't have the resources to deal with things. We had to take S up to the pediatrician and couldn't leave until after 7pm. That meant we didn't get out of there until about 8.30pm and had to find food. Managed to just barely miss any bus that would be helpful, finally got some food and found the last open bakery of the night for some bread but by the time we got home, got boys to bed, and cleaned up enough to eat, S was awake again and it was 11.30pm. I gave up one eating and decided to just pump some milk for S and head to bed but was too stressed to get more than a drop. Which made me feel more stressed and made even less milk come out. Gave up and went to bed thinking about all the things that had made the day so absolutely rotten (did I mention I read an article about a woman miscarrying just to make sure to make myself cry).

My one consolation for the day was that I got into bed before 2am-- a major accomplishment lately-- but then I stayed awake reliving and working through everything in my mind. And here's the thing (I hate that I say that but somehow can't stop myself), as I lay there I realized that the boys and I have this symbiotic relationship in which all of that frustration and self pity I carried around all day just got sucked up and magnified in their tiny little bodies that are still trying to figure out this world. They don't know how or why they're feeling so awful and so they don't know how to communicate it and solve it. I can lay in bed and list everything that went wrong so that I can blog about it and ask anyone who reads it to feel sorry for me or to sympathise with me so that I can feel better. But poor O just feels unhappy and can't decide if he wants to drink his milk out of his sippy cup or out of his bottle because neither one takes away that icky feeling he's had all day. Poor S just can't sleep because no matter how much he cries or suckles, he can't seem to get the comfort he needs because he doesn't know that his mama just couldn't find it to give to him. At the end of the day as I lay there thinking about all the things that went wrong, I couldn't help but think about all my boys that need me to get over myself and make it right for them. Sorry for such a long post. Needed to work through it all. Thanks for listening.

See that fine looking piece of technology? Who wants one of those? I did. Who got one of those? I did. Who is absolutely terrified to take it out of the box and actually use it? I am. Most expensive piece of desk decoration we'll own. Right next to the most expensive bookend we'll ever own, formerly known as our iPod (it's spirit is gone but it's body remains to hold various notebooks upright and in their place on our desk).

A wonderful man at Andrew's work decided to work a bit of his Catalan charm with the mobile phone shopgirl that he thinks has a thing for him. Apparently she does because he managed to wrangle up free iPhone 4's for himself, me, and Andrew when his name is called on the list we were on. Mine came Friday. I was a bit too sick and stressed to be very excited but eventually after the wee ones were in bed, I opened it and touched it. Beautiful. I loved it. And then the warnings came. As I caressed it and thought of our possibilities together, Andrew started to tell me about every review he'd read and every horror story he'd found about people who dropped it from ankle height and had the glass shatter. And how even some cases were no good because a speck of dirt could get in between the case and the phone and start working scratches into the glass that will eventually shatter it. And so I figured maybe touching it wasn't the best idea.

So here it sits. On the desk, in the box. I came home today and the box lid was off and it made me quite nervous all afternoon. I kind of jokingly told Andrew he'd made me a bit paranoid and afraid to use it. Instead of reassuring me, he quickly came back with a very sincere, "You should be." When I tell my friends this, they laugh. But then I realized that none of my friends have two little kids under 2 years, with one that has an incessant need to see rhinos on his father's smartphone.

The apple website was no comfort. They have a little video about the iPhone that shows the glass being put through its stress tests. At one point they bend the glass to an angle that would be about the angle my grandmother could make when trying to bend to put on her shoes. Not an impressive angle for a piece of paper, but for glass it's good. The only problem is that it was being bent at about the speed my grandmother could go when trying to put on her shoes, not the speed with which a toddler who wants to see rhinos would grab it and drop it.

At about 4.30am this morning I got a text message on my old phone saying my iPhone was all activated and ready to go and my stress level for the day went seriously up as I contemplated parting with my old phone and riding off into the future with my beautiful, sleek, and oh-so-fragile iPhone 4.

Living in the Past

So yes, I have been terrible about posting photos and so everything I have to post is now terribly outdated. But I'm a bit obsessive compulsive and so before I post current photos I feel the need to catch up on past ones. You are under no obligation to look at or comment on the photos, although I always do appreciate it when you do.

March 2010

April 2010

May 2010

June 2010

July 2010

This is how our day is going...

How about yours? I was going to take a crasser route and mention how my life the past two days seems to revolve around s*** in the title to this post. Instead I took the much classier route of leaving it out of the title and just diving right into it in the actual post. Gastroenteritis has struck our home again. It started yesterday (I think) and has continued today with no mercy. Last night O had the biggest blowout I've ever seen and my tummy started feeling not so well. This morning when I thought things were easing up for both of us, S had his fun. Then O again. Then O burnt his finger. Then he screamed for an hour over our efforts to get him to wear a plaster. Add to this the fact that Andrew had one of those days at work when coming home to screaming and pooping O was preferable to sitting in his office. I just feel like it's s*** s*** s*** everywhere at the moment. Hopefully naps all around will fix it.

Don't want to end on a bad note, though, so here's a cute shot of the only one in the house not having a bad day despite the s*** his day had (S only poops once a week or so and getting that stuff out always puts him in a pretty good mood).

Andrew's Dreams Fulfilled

Andrew always said he wanted kids so they could do things lik

e walk on his back whenever he wanted or get things for him when he was too lazy to get up to get them himself. Kind of like the modern day equivalent of having kids to help run the farm. Today Oliver filled the measure of his creation. Didn't seem terribly satisfying for Andrew. And please excuse the bad photo-- O wasn't exactly stable up there.

Three posts in two days, with some comments to boot-- does this mean the blog has been revived? We'll see.

Hermanitos

So this afternoon I started uploading these photos and had to leave to go run a few errands before they were done and I had a chance to write a bit about them. I was just going to write about how O is such a good brother to S-- how O brings S his dummy when he cries, how he helped me do S's massage and lotions after his bath last night, how he brings him toys and books to read when S is sitting in his bouncy chair with nothing to do. But then I went out and had a very typically Spanish encounter.

As I stepped into the lift in a sports shop, an older woman asked me to hold the door and joined me and the two boys who were in their stroller. The woman noticed S in his little cave below O and of course had to comment on how I had two babies and she hadn't seen S. This is normal. I get checked out more with our double stroller than I ever do walking around when I'm all dressed up and looking very blonde (the guys in our neighborhood can't resist catcalling anyone with blonde hair).

So this woman is commenting on the two babies and she starts to tell O that she likes him better. I'm thinking she's just being funny and just prefers toddlers to infants and I kind of laugh with her a bit. She exits, I pick out my stuff, and then we somehow end up in the lift together again. This time she is much more insistent that she likes O more than S. She tells him over and over how handsome he is with his blonde hair and how much she prefers him to S. How he's more handsome and beautiful than S and then she turns to me and asks if O gets jealous of S.

Maybe she felt it her to duty to alleviate any jealousy of the new baby by telling O how much better he is. Maybe she had the best intentions-- I'll give her that. But the whole thing was just so typical of here. As soon as people notice there are two babies in the stroller, I am asked one thing without fail: "Is he jealous?" They're obsessed with jealousy here. They ask it more than they ask how old either baby is or what their names are. And I always get to respond with "No!"

Andrew was at the park once with O. S was nowhere around but O was playing with another little boy. The boy's mother was talking with Andrew and started telling Andrew how her son was jealous of O because of his handsome shock of blonde hair. He wasn't even two and had plenty of blonde hair of his own.

I guess the upside of this national obsession with jealousy is that it makes for more interesting soap operas and gossip magazine articles. But in our little home I'm very proud to proclaim that O has shown nothing but love towards his little brother and little brother just sits and stares and smiles back. Love my boys. All of my boys.

Just going to have fun with this

A friend of mine said that my blog inspired her to create her own blog and now her blog has inspired me to be better about my blog. I kind of felt like nobody was reading it and so I didn't need to post on it but now I realize that if nobody's reading it, I can post anything I want. I can blog about how I'm trying to grow out my eyebrows and it's really disgusting to see all those little hairs growing in every morning but rewarding to overcome the temptation to overpluck.

I can also post photos of silly things we do on Sunday afternoons. Just pop that SD card in, click a few things to post a few photos, and then write a rambling little post explaining what was going on. Worry about spelling mistakes? Not me. Worry about being witty or writing intelligently? Not here. So here are photos of Sunday afternoon. Andrew did this to O at O's bidding. Fun times around here-- no wit or intelligence required.