Again.

We're still here. I didn't really intend to take a blogging hiatus while my mom and sister were here but, well, I did. We had a great time and both Wyatt and I enjoyed having other conversations and other people to look at. Grandma was big time until Aunt Susan arrived and then Aunt Susan was the woman of the hour. Wyatt even chose to give up his bed for her! He saw me blowing up the air mattress prior to her arrival and told me she could have his bed so he could sleep on the air mattress. It worked out perfectly and he's transitioned back to his bed with no issues. I was just so sure the whole big boy bed thing would be difficult and he's proven me wrong at every turn.

Other highlights: with my mom's help, Wyatt's mealtime meltdowns have diminished which is a significant life improvement; he has mastered his big boy voice (as in, no whining, please!) and it comes out as more of a hilariously throaty whisper; Wyatt finally started saying, "excuse me" to interrupt an adult conversation; Mom finished a bunch of random projects for me so now I feel like I accomplished something, even though I had nothing to do with it; I got all the newborn stuff out of the attic, washed and (almost) all put away - learning in the process that we have less gender-neutral stuff than I remembered and that my June island baby had pretty much no long-sleeved stuff that my March east coast baby will need; we went shopping, kind of a lot; Aunt Susan always had to ride in the backseat with Wyatt, because that's what he demanded. That about sums it up.

There was baking, complete with chef hat made at story time.

Proof that I'm getting bigger.

One cool dude riding to the airport. He chose the upside down sunglasses look.

And since I'm now flying solo again, Wyatt has taken this opportunity to poop in the bathtub (first time since this night) and to have a completely random throw-up all over my bathroom rug. Not on the same day, of course, so that I've now fully disinfected my bathroom twice in three days. Fun. And now we're counting down to Daddy's arrival home - only four more weeks!

We're Still Here

I realize the last post was very woe is me (though garnered lots of good ideas for activities) so I figured I should let you know we're fine. Well, I am. Wyatt has gotten himself a lovely little cold and is a little under the weather. He's not miserable, but he's slowed down enough that he had zero issues with six other kids playing in his trampoline Saturday night. I'd like to tell you that he, in fact, had zero discipline issues but that would be an outright lie. There was a hitting-with-wooden-train-tracks incident that landed him in a significant time-out. At least I enjoyed the company of friends and even Millie got a playdate out of the deal since one friend brought her puppy. Success all around.

We've been staying close to home and are gearing up for Grandma's visit. If you ask Wyatt what day she's coming, he smiles and holds up two fingers. You know, because she's coming on Tuesday. He's very excited that we're going to the airport to get her because we "might be able ride escalators" and "see engines on those airplanes go zoom!" while we're there. So Mom, look for us on the escalators first and if you don't see us there, we're plastered against a window somewhere nearby.

Can You Hear That?

It's the sound of my heart starting to break. Wyatt is currently napping and he - in his sleep - just said, "I want my daddy. Peez, my daddy! Mommy, my daddy! Peez, I want my daddy!"

I'm fully aware we are not the first family to deal with separation, nor are we having to deal with it for a particularly long time (as far as military life can go) and it's certainly not the last time we'll deal with it. However, we are dealing with it and these past couple of days it just sucks. My sweet boy has been replaced with a poorly sleeping, whiny, irritable, cries-at-the-drop-of-a-hat, misbehaving, purposely-doing-naughty-things boy. Every little thing makes him cry - no, make that wail - for his daddy. He finds innocuous things offensive: the fact that cheese from the refrigerator is cold, the chiquita sticker on our bananas, me not letting him watch tv, me letting him watch tv, the sun being too bright, etc.

It's as though the longevity of Jeff's departure has started to hit home with him. He doesn't really understand it. There's no rationale that can make him really get it. We see Jeff every day via Skype - thank God - but Wyatt has developed a habit of being "too busy" to talk to Jeff. When I suggest that maybe he tell Jeff what we've been doing or show him what he's playing with, he literally says, "no, I busy doing this" and turns his back to the camera. In all fairness, he did manage to converse with Jeff this morning. In fact, when Jeff told us he needed to go to bed, Wyatt read him a couple of bedtime stories. But still.

Thankfully Grandma is coming next week and Aunt Susan will be here, too. Both will be welcome additions to our house for the duration of their visits. But February looms. I'm honestly not looking for pity because 90% of my readers deal with this exact thing in their own lives for the same reasons, and some of you deal with it far more often than I've ever had to. I just needed to get this out and also share that I am developing another whole level of respect for anyone who is a single parent or who has to be one more often than they'd choose.

I have a steep learning curve ahead of me on how to get him through this successfully and without me losing my mind. And if anyone has tried and true suggestions for helping a two-year old cope, I'd like to hear them. We haven't made the paper chain countdown thing yet because I'm worried the shear quantity of rings remaining would be daunting to us both. Suggestions?

At Least I Think it's Funny

Every military wife knows that if it's going to break, it's going to break when the husband is TDY. So last week, when our garage door opener broke two days after Jeff left, I thought, "well, of course!" No worries, though. It was the opener on Jeff's side, we only need one car out at a time and thankfully we purchased a home warranty. They were prompt in fixing (actually replacing) the bad opener. And when the guy came out on Friday he also installed the safety cables on our old-school springs and installed some reinforcement straps across the top of each door (it's a two door garage) since the doors were cracking. Ahhh, home ownership is grand.

So tonight, when Wyatt & I rolled into the driveway and I punched the button for my garage door, I was perplexed when it stopped three feet off the ground. So I punched the button again and it went back down. So I punched the button again and ..... nothing. We got out of the car and I could hear the opener grinding away. We came in through the front door, went into the garage and yep. The other side just broke. Seriously? That's pretty stellar. Not even two weeks have gone by and we're on our third home warranty issue (the washer's getting a new pump and belts on Wednesday). Hopefully the whole "bad things come in threes" thing is true! Until then, I guess we'll start driving the other car again.

Oh, and if you say to a two-year old, "our garage door just crumped!" he'll think it's really, really funny.

Recent Conversations with Mr. 2.5

W: Mommy, you Papa Pig.
Me: I'm Papa Pig?
W: Yes.
Me: Then who are you?
W: I Wyatt.
Me: But I'm Papa Pig?
W: Yes.
Me: Then what's Millie?
W: a dog.

*****

Me: Wyatt, where do you think you want to work when you grow up?
W: in China.

Money Well Spent

I've given up the fight of keeping the playroom atmosphere out of the family room. Some things are just too big to hide away and besides, when the kid can request time to "get his crazies out," you know it's worth every aesthetic sacrifice. Perhaps I'll just buy throw pillows to match.

Help.

I'm the uncool kid in the lunchroom, circling the cool kids' table and feeling invited but yet uncomfortable sitting there. I cannot figure out Facebook! I keep thinking I'll write it off entirely (it's not as though I've really done anything with it) but then someone who I think it'd be fun to be in contact with joins and sends me an invitation to be friends, so I feel compelled to go back and accept them (because how rude is it not to?! even if it is months after they originally added me) and there I am again, trying to figure it out. I realize that it cannot be rocket science since it appears everyone I've ever known is on there, but I need a tutorial.

So who's going to teach me? Don't all raise your hands at once.

Dear Skype,

You rock! And your technology confuses the heck out of my dog.

Sincerely,
Stephanie

Again.

For the fourth - or fifth? - time since we've lived here, someone just attempted to serve papers for a former occupant. Seriously? Who are these people? Couple that with the stories our next door neighbor told me a few weeks ago that involved police swarming the house, occupants being physically removed from the premises, occupants disappearing in the middle of the night only to return a few weeks later and I'm just thinking wow! We might have improved the value of the property simply by moving in. Yay for us.

Because It's Worth a Mention

When I was a kid, we had outside cats and got possums (opossums?) in the garage each winter. You know, warm place to hang out, free source of food, who wouldn't love it? Dad would realize they were there, capture them in a metal garbage can, load the can into the car and drive them up the hill and drop them off in the woods. It was such a common occurrence that it never seemed odd to me.

Right before Christmas, when we had company and were doing lots of cooking and our trash pick-up was delayed, we realized we had something living in our garage. Jeff saw that a garbage bag had been ripped open, so he checked the garage, found nothing and rebagged the trash. Same thing the next day (that new chicken recipe is pretty good, I can't blame the critter for going after the remains twice) and we realized that perhaps the something was still there somewhere. Fast forward a few days to the morning I backed out of the garage only to find I'd rolled over sidewalk chalk. I wondered how it got there, between the rear tires and the garage door, until I got out to clean it up and saw some random excrement laying on the floor. Hmmmm...so I cleaned it up, came inside and reported the incident to Jeff.

He was out there later in the day and remarked about how he saw the poop, too. Uh, no you didn't because I cleaned it up already. Um, well, then there was more than one pile which means, hello! You have company in your garage. Luckily it was a really nice day here, so Jeff had both cars out of the garage to clean it out and we decided to start figuring out where this something was living. As soon as he shined his flashlight under the steps (open only from under the workbench, closed from the front and sides) he said, "there it is." I asked what it was and he said he didn't know but it was kind of big. So I, being the curious kind of girl that I am, grabbed the flashlight and caught a glimpse of fur. And you know what? My childhood came flooding back. I knew immediately that was the fur of a common possum. Well of course! It was happily observing its nocturnal behavior, cruising the garage at night and chilling out under the step all day. Somehow I was relieved that it wasn't something else but Jeff apparently didn't grow up with big possums every winter. So then the male hormones kicked in.

Jeff ordered me, Wyatt and Millie out of the garage (to my ears it sounded a little like, "take the yungins and yur pregnant body to safety, woman!") then called his dad for advice. His dad's advice was very sound - call the city, see if they'll help you out. I set to work on that from inside and discovered that yes, they'll help. I talked to a guy who said he'd have a park ranger call me back. I went to report that news to Jeff and discovered he'd alerted our neighbor who was hoping to extract the possum on his own. And he had a BB gun. Good times waiting to happen! I kept hearing thuds and thumps from the garage. The ranger called back, said he'd head our way but that it might take a little while, so I went out to report that fact and found our steps partially dismantled, the possum barricaded and another neighbor standing out there with a hose because he'd heard possums don't like water. Good idea! Let's make it really mad right before we try to get it out of there.

The second neighbor had the good sense to abandon the project as soon as he heard real help was on the way; Jeff and our other neighbor stood vigil to make sure it couldn't escape. And I was inside wanting so badly to be involved because I love this kind of stuff! Finally our good ol' boy ranger showed up and went to work. Only it turned out he didn't have a cage or trap in his truck, so he wasn't really sure what to do with it once it was captured. He figured he'd just walk it to the golf course and let it go. Only it didn't make it that far. That little possum wriggled free as we all traipsed through the easement and resettled under the catwalker's deck. Oops! We figure one of these nights there'll be a ruckus out there and we'll know the possum met the cats.
Maybe that's karma for being a kind of grumpy neighbor!

The men preparing for their work. Don't they look strong?

The ranger trying to figure out a plan of attack. With much supervision.

The ranger wielding his handy-dandy critter catcher.

One seriously ticked-off nocturnal rodent. Maybe the water didn't help after all?

Heading off into the sunset - note the possum planning his escape.