Conversations Normal Families Don't Have

This all started when I was in the parking lot at the outlet mall in front of the Disney Store (that store is so lame, fyi). We were getting back into the car and I suddenly smelled someone smoking weed. So I say, "Ewww, it smells like dirt weed." and my 14year old step-girl says, "I know, right?"
So, of course, I ask her how she knows what weed smells like and she gives me some lame excuse that only a 14 year old would think is believable about how her DARE officer brought in smelling samples so the kids could know what pot smelled like... Which leaves me crumpled on the ground, laughing my butt off.

Really???? Oh, kids are a hoot nowadays!

Later on, I can't wait to share this story with my love, so I tell him when he calls to say "Hi."
We all start laughing and joking about inappropriate things schools should teach their kids...

My Love: Next week in DARE, they'll bring in actual pot so you guys can smoke it and really know what it's like to get stoned. You know just as a learning tool.
Me: Right? And then in Sex Ed, they'll make you watch porn. Of course it's purely for educational purposes. We might want to think of homeschooling her now.
Step-Girl: I don't want to be homeschooled.
Me: Yeah, don't want to miss Wine Tasting 101 your senior year.
My Love: This just got really creepy.
Me: Wine Tasting is creepy? We're talking about pot and porn and drinking wine is creepy?
My Love: What? No. The phone cut out and I heard you say I have to homeschool her and watch porn with her....
Step-Girl: Omg, Dad! EEEEWWWWWWW!!!!
Me: No, Honey, leave the porn watching for the schools.
Fart Bone: What year in school do you get to watch Porn? Is that a new movie? Is it in theatres?

And that's when I realized that we have conversations normal families don't have...
Oh, yeesh, our family is very one-of-a-kind

Where Are The Kids?

Reasons why I should not be left alone with the kids for too long:

1. I locked them outside, naked, with the hose on
2. I "made" dinner by pulling out all the leftovers from our fridge... So they had chicken nuggets, tater tots, sticky rice, leftover pizza and peaches
3. Chunko's still naked, has peed on our floor twice (once near his potty!!) and has a blossoming black eye
4. Chunko spilled out everything from our lower cabinets and smeared chewed up cookies on it all.
5. Chunko sat on his bruthy's lap and ate his dinner after he claimed he was done with his
6. Chunko played in the toilet and Fart Bone let him (I think he even encouraged him)
7. I currently have baby teeth and nail marks all up and done my legs because he liked the way I screamed when he clawed me
8. Our neighbors stopped by to check on me, worried from all the screaming but they don't speak English and I don't speak Spanish so it was a lot of nodding
9. Chunko flooded our kitchen after his sink bath
10. Chunko baby texted a few of my phone contacts. If he sent you one, I'm sorry, I swear I haven't been drinking

I've only been alone with them for 2 hours... TWO HOURS!!!
I'm so scared of my kids

I'm going to go try to put pants on the baby... Anyone want to call the Marines to help me????

That's Not How It Goes

I could not wait to get on here and tell you all how well our sleep training with Chunko is going... Until it stopped going well.

We are in the final phase of the training where he stays in his bed and sleeps straight through the night. We sleep in our bed and he sleeps in his. Except Chunko is in the final phase of his parent training where he wakes up 9 times a night, screaming, and leaves his room to go play with the vacuum.

The other night, Chunko woke up about 2am and started his crying. Suddenly he went quiet and my love and I patted each other on the back, stupidly thinking that we were seeing an improvement. Until the next morning when we talked to my dad who told us he woke up in the boys room and has no idea how he got there but Chunko was holding his hand. That is so incredibly sweet but so not helpful.

I was starting to feel deflated but we talked with my (uber brilliant) Mother-In-Law last night and she suggested he might be teething.
Duh!
Smack me please?

Chunko rarely drools and chews on everything all the time so there's no real clear sign of when he's teething... Except his sleep schedule gets wonky and suddenly we're all 3 sleep deprived.
So we'll be testing this out tonight (please for the love of all holiness, let this work!!!!!!)

My love and I are sleeping in the same bed at the same time!! Now if only we could only sleep 8 straight hours in the same bed at the same time. Almost there.

Today is the 1st day of third grade for Fart Bone!
He was so excited, I'm surprised he didn't get out and push the car there!

Today is also the day we're getting rid of the crib. My friend (our previous super amazing and still totally awesome sitter) is coming to get it and then the "Chunko Baby Phase" will be over.
*sniff*
I'mnotgoingtocry
*sniff*
*hiccup*
Oh and next week, my step-girl is going into high school and my nephew is going into Kindergarten, so this is my week of stuffing myself with chocolate and shuffling through baby photos. Lots of "I remember when they..." and "All the babies are growing so fast and they're going away to college soon and they're going to leave me" wailing and tears coming your way.

Do you have any idea how weird it is for me to know that I am not even 30 yet and that I am completely done with having babies? To shut that door on that chapter of my life is all too bittersweet. I am thankful for the boys I have but I am. so. done.
I've got my body back (mostly) and I am healthy.
I'll never feel the joy of growing life inside my belly again but I was not really a happy preggo so I'm okay with all that.
(I may or may not be thinking of surrogacy again, but don't tell my love, he might smack me)

Earlier this week I was a little worried about myself because I had heard that someone was pregnant and I got crazy jealous. I thought to myself "Um, really, jealous? Like you want another baby? Especially right now when you have a Godzilla baby?"
And then I had to sit and ponder my inner peacedom and I realized I was not jealous she was having a baby, I was jealous that she could have alone time with her hubby (and I am not thinking of hanky alone time, just being alone with him).

I really frickin miss my husband. I miss our whole family dog piling onto the couch to watch a movie. Or when we would just sporadically leave the house to go out to the mountains. I miss late night talks with my love about our day and weird stuff on our minds. I miss falling asleep in his arms. I miss canoodling like rabbits... I so did not just write that I promise (sorry Mom!).

We're being optimistic and thinking that since we're getting the sleep training and the switch to a big boy bed and to his own room that we won't have to go through all this later. And super bonus, we're also working on Fart Bone's deep fear of the dark. We've been asking him to be the awesome big brother that he is and sleep in the same room as his bruthy and keep an eye on him. And he has to sleep in the dark because the baby needs it. He freaked the first night but he's actually been since.
(oh frick, he come the tears again... *sniff*)

I'm going to go dry my tears and try to figure out how to lock all my babies in the basement.
And then I have to figure out to build a basement under our house without the neighbors noticing...




Ps, Fart Bone is Geeks. He asked that we change it to "Fart-Fart" or "T-Bone" so my FB family voted and it's now Fart Bone.

Pss, I just got a call from his school, apparently he wrote Fart Bone on his schoolwork. Oops...

Happy Camera Time

My crazy 8 year old took this. He stole my phone and I had almost 100 new pics on it!!!
How in the world did he take that many in less than 20 mins?????

So, anyways, I was feeling all depressed because of my flub earlier this week (ie; my screwed up camera adventures).

We reshot on Thursday but my love and I were bickering at home so the magic was so not there. I mean, they were okay and some came out nice but it just wasn't the same.

The next day we did a practice shoot at the Bellagio Gardens but the girls we shot were all pms'ing (that's 4 girls!!!) so it was only so-so. The girls are all beyond freakin beautiful (hate their genes) so of course some shots were good. But we also tested out a camera from 1968 looking for a natural vintage look and the film overheated so they all turned out blue.

Uber sad me, right?

Then today my uber amazing sister found our lost roll of film and the pictures are gorgeous!!!! Like holy wow awesome! So my photography spirit has been lifted and life behind the camera is good again!

I'm NOT Yelling!

I've been in a really poor mood lately. I haven't figured out why but I've decided that this funk needs to stop.

Earlier this week I did a shoot and it was spectacular, amazing, stupendous, awe-inspiring... to say it simply, it was Awesome. I shot in both 35mm and digital. We were on a slight time constraint but everything ran so smoothly and my subject was so cooperative that it flew by perfectly.

I was so caught up in the "amazing-ness" of my shoot that I didn't check the advancement on my Canon and so the film never moved from the 1st frame. Basically I shot 40 pictures all on the same frame. Bleh!
I'm hoping the roll is still good and I'll use it later for fun (my sister has these super old cameras and I can't wait to try them out!!!).

I was a little upset about my stupidity but I shrugged and moved on.
"At least we have the digital shots. That's why we shoot with both," is what I reminded myself.

Except we didn't have the digital. The memory card took a poop 15 minutes before we got it to the computer for download!!!!!!! We've tried re-formatting it and then using a recovery program to try to find them but it's a fail.

290 of the best shots of my life, of my career, gone!!!
I felt worthless.
I felt like a failure.
I felt impotent.
I felt like I should never pick up a camera again.

I've been really upset about it all these past couple of days.

My subject offered a reshoot but I didn't know how I could go on knowing what a failure I was.
(So I was being overly dramatic... Shoot me.)

My optimism jumped in and I realized that it wasn't a "once in a lifetime" event, like a wedding and we can easily reshoot.

I realized that it was a favor for a friend and not a paying customer.
I realized that we have now learned a very valuable lesson and it didn't hurt too bad. It hurt but not as bad as it could have been.

I'm feeling much better and the reshoot is tonight so I'm sure I will be back on Cloud 9 soon...

I still don't know why I am in a funky pissy mood.
Can someone please give my love a medal for dealing with me????
He totally deserves it.

To make me a little more edgy my sister's been dealing with her (ex) step daughter and some serious bull poop. This girl is up to no good and taking everyone down with her. I worry for my sister and I worry for her (ex) step daughter's mom. But it also gets me worried about my own step girl. She's made a few very stupid choices recently and everyone keeps saying "Oh, so it's started."
I don't want it to have started, though. She's not even in high school yet (I don't care if it's in 3 weeks, dang it!)! This isn't a rite of passage, people.
We were at such a delicate bridge and things were actually going really well. Why does she have to go and ruin it??

I'm just hoping that our "talk" scared some sense into her and made her realize that she can have a life but not if there's no trust. She can't hang with her friends if we can't trust her to not sneak out in the middle of the night. She can have FB time but not if we can't trust her to do her homework first.

Being a parent of a teen girl is hard but being the stepmom is harder. I get the stress and the consequences of her actions but I am not involved in making it stop.

I'm Jeff Goldblum, with all the brilliant ideas but no one is listening to me.

I'm not going to focus on what horrible things she can do.
I'm going to go focus on my reshoot and pretend I don't have a teen.
Nope, no teens here.

Only Godzilla sized babies (and a runt sized nephew)

Hello, We're the Creepers

Remember when I told you I was obscenely gross?
I warned you...

I know I did...

My family's just as gross as I am.

So, if you don't want gross, don't look.

Ok?

 Ok...

So Friday night we pick up my step girl and she tells us that the night before her brother-in-law ran over a bunny. He's got a truck and might have been speeding so the bunny was annihilated. She started going on about checking the road and the tires but it was too dark to really see the destruction.

Fast forward to us taking her home at the end of the weekend. She got back on the subject of the runned-over bunny. She asks if we can stop by and see if it's still there. I am doped up on pain killers (that's the story I'm sticking with) and picked up the idea and we both convinced my love that it was a brilliant idea to visit the dead bunny.

My step girl bursts out with  "Geeks, name my dead bunny!"

um... thing #1 I never thought I would hear my family say...

Without hesitation, Geeks says "Dead Bones" and thus the dead rabbit was named.

So we pull up to the scene of the crime and the bunny is gone. All that is left is a discolored splat and a few tufts of bunny hair.

 Of course we have to photograph it.
And while we're trying to get the optimal shot, Geeks is running rampant in the street and I have to yell out "Geeks stop running through the bunny guts!"

um... thing #2 I never thought I would hear my family say.

We then decide that we are on a sick kick and we have to find a piece of paper and memorialize the poor dead bunny. We find a scrap paper and we write "Hear lies Dead Bones" and his date of passing. We used a big rock so people wouldn't run over his new memorial.

We left it as such.

I told you we were gross.


Pain killers are fun aren't they?

The Joys of Pain Killers

I am so glad that when you get your teeth removed they give you pain killers.

I am thoroughly enjoying them...

My family may not be as thrilled about it as I am.

As I washed my hair last night, I was reading the back of the shampoo bottle for the directions... Yes, I am the idiot they put "Lather, Rinse and Repeat" on the bottle for. I understood the general idea of what I was reading but I could not grasp the words. Only 15 minutes later did I realize I was reading the French side of the bottle. Apparently I understand French better when I am all gooey in the brain. That explains a lot. Yay me.

Which I thought was far better than when I was brushing my teeth trying to read the writing on my razor... Only to discover it's a man, not a word.

Oh yeah, I am rocking these pain killers like a hurricane, yee-haw!


Ps, watching scary movies and taking meds is not the smartest thing I could have done. I was freaking out after seeing Paranormal Activity and then having to sleep alone in our huge room. I almost asked Geeks to come save his crazy mother from her insanity but I was a big girl and just stayed up all night scaring the crud out of myself


PPs, A couple of days later I watched the second one. Not as scary, but I still had another sleepless night.


PPPS, Baby monitors are scary as all hell