My Valentine

Right, in the name of love and in the spirit of the season (can you really call Valentine's Day a season?) I have decided to take a break from sleepless nights and snotty noses to tell a tale of love's young dream. A story so sweet as to give you cavities and so pure and true that if you listen long enough, you just might hear an angel cry...

And so, without further adieu, I give you the true life tale of "Myself and Himself: A love Story in Three Acts..."

Act One: We meet. It was at a Thanksgiving dinner thrown by a fellow Canadian in Ireland back in 2005. I'd love to say that the second our eyes met across a crowded room we just knew that we were meant to be and so rode off into the at that point nappy free sunset, however, that would be a big fat lie. For starters, I was sort of seeing another young Irishman and he was sort of seeing the hostess of the party.

Secondly, I found him ridiculously attractive and therefore would not under any circumstances talk to him until I mistook his (male) best friend to be his boyfriend, decided he was gay and therefore "safe" and thus set about having the funnest night I'd had since arriving in Ireland five months previously. At the end of the evening we exchanged numbers but never saw each other until...

Act two: Six months later, I was headed out for the evening with one of my housemates when we passed each other on the street. After a few hours frenzied texting, we agreed to meet up. It was six weeks before my visa ran out and I was due to leave the country. We became inseperable and when I left the following month, I lasted only a week in England before I was back to visit. He quit his job, left his house and together we headed to Scotland for the summer.

Our families were horrified. His parents were afraid he was throwing away his education for some tart (me) and wouldn't return for his final year of college. His Grandmother said I'd "whispered potions in his ear," and my mom was afraid I was going to get pregnant and ruin his (yes, his) life.

Well, he returned to Ireland for school in the fall and I returned with him, totally illegally of course.

Eight months later, we were pregnant on the Snot Queen and battling with the state to grant me permission to remain in the country. As we weren't married at the time (shock! Horror!) our union was not recognized by the state and it took another year, a second pregnancy and one verrrryy expensive lawyer to convince them we were committed.

Act Three: Four and a half years after our first meeting, in front of our family, our friends and our two beautiful daughters, we said I do. And we continue to live happily ever after.

Happy Valentine's day baby. I love you. x

A letter to my husband.

Dearest Darling Husband,

You may wonder why I am writing you in the middle of the day. I thought it might be best to warn you in advance.

I'm having one of "those" days.

If you check the time, you will see that it is currently naptime. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have informed the girls of this and instead they are wandering about the house dripping food onto the (freshly mopped) floors.

I am down to my last nerve and it is about to snap.

The house is a disaster. There is STUFF everywhere! No matter how much I clean, they are right behind me tearing papers out of drawers and toys off of shelves. My current dream in life is to vacuum the stairs and scrub out the shower in our bathroom. Somehow, I do not think Mr. Luther King would be impressed.

To make matters worse, the Snot Queen is insisting on feeding her sister chunks of turkey mince (she has no teeth) from a fork (she has no aim.) This is not good for my nerves.

The small one has discovered some sort of wormhole which she randomly reaches into and pulls out a handful of cotton wool which I end up inevitably fishing out of her mouth (along with the giant chunks of turkey mince.) I have yet to discover the source.

A bowl of spaghetti just hit the floor.

I want to cry.

Or move away. Far, far away. By myself.

The washing machine is still broken and the clothes are about to walk out of the laundry hamper.

The soundtrack to my day goes something like this;

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! MOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMYYYYY!!!!!!! (music in background: "...do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself about...") "Ehhhhhhh Ehhhhhhhhhhh!" "AAAAAAAAGGHHHHH!!!!" ("...right leg in and you shake it all about...") "MOOOOOOMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYYYYY" THUNK! CRASH! "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" "NO NO NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! MOMMMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!" "GET OFF THE TABLE!!!!!" "NOW!!!!!" "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!"

The girls are covered in a disgusting mixture of snot and lunch.

Another bowl of spaghetti just hit the ground.

I cannot guarantee I will be here when you get home.

If I am though, tread carefully. Forewarned is forearmed...

Sincerely,

Your loving wife

Confessions of a One Time B List Movie Star...

My blog has been looking a little malnourished lately. I don't know why. I'm sure that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that I've had to redefine my definition of "Good Night Sleep" to include "Night's where I only have to switch beds three times or less."

It probably doesn't have anything to do either with the fact that the not so tiny one (at eight months old she is weighing in at a hefty 23 lbs) likes to scream the house down every time I try and do anything that does not involve making her the center of my world. And the Screaming? It's not crying screaming, it's "giving out screaming." She also screams when she's happy, she screams when she's getting a bum change and she screams when her sister screams (a new favourite game of theirs.) It's her default setting. We've re-christened her, "The Loud One."

Therefore, I decided that this morning, come hell or high water (or screaming children with nasty nappies) I would blog, and not only would I blog, but I would blog about ME. Not my babies (the last two paragraphs don't count) not sleep, but ME.

So here goes... Ten things you've been BURNING to know about Moi.

10. I have a "thing" about fingernails. I used to work in a jewelery store where ridiculously rich women with ridiculously big hair, came in to buy ridiculously priced jewelry. One fine summer's day, one of these charming specimen's came in and started trying on several of our gold rings. She had what could only be described as dragon nails. Long, red talons that curled at the ends and looked as though one good swipe couldeasily take out an eye. Gross, but nothing I hadn't seen before. Then she turned over her hand to check a price tag and I almost vomited on the spot. The underside of each of her blood red talons was caked with, thick, black dirt. Seriously, this woman had apparently never heard of, much less used, a nail brush, or for that matter anything to gouge the disease infested crud from under her claws.

Since that day, anything to do with fingernails has made me just a little bit queasy...

9. I hate housekeeping. Which is unfortunate on several levels; First being that I do not function well in a cluttered environment and so cannot relax until the house is tidied from top to bottom. Secondly, I have small children which means that as quick as I can fold and put away the laundry, all the books have been pulled from the shelves and somewhere in the distance is the sound of a drawer being emptied. It's a vicious cycle.

8. I am just a wee bit competitive (and a tiny bit impatient.) When the snot queen was 9 months old and still not crawling, I rigged her up in a harness and put water bottles under her belly to "encourage" her. It didn't work.

7. When I was thirteen years old, I used to steal romance novels from the public library and hide them out back, buried under the big rock and wrapped in a plastic bag for protection so I could read all the really smutty parts without being discovered. I used to dog ear any page that made reference to tingling nipples, surging members or hot, moist, places. I had friends who did the same and we'd pass books back and forth like pervy trading cards. I almost wet myself when I discovered V.C Andrews a.k.a "All of my books involve incest on some level."

6. I once starred in a b-list independent, horror flick. I was chosen not for my raw, shining talent, but my ability to fill out a red, vinyl catsuit.

5. I HATE spiders! Except hate isn't really the right word as I've no problem with spiders themselves, it's just coming across them in my house that I can't stand (or on my clothesline...) Even at that, I can handle the small ones, but tend to go into some sort of cardiac failure when presented with one of those big, black crunchy looking specimens with the thick looking legs and visible hairs (shudder)...

4. As much as I know that TV is a terrible, terrible TERRIBLE thing and that it kills off a billion brain cells a minute, I loooooooooooove trash TV. Last night was like some sort of bonus outpouring of fabulous filth for the mind as I watched a special on kiddie pageant queens all grown up on 3e followed by Canada's Next Top Model on Livingit which clashed with America's Next Top Model on Living1 (thankfully I'd already seen that one!) and the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show which I flicked over to every now and again. I'm also a huge fan of those extreme weight loss shows like the "Biggest Loser" and the Irish Equivalent "Operation Transformation."

3. I'm really flexible. I can lie on my stomach and pull my feet over my head to touch my nose.

2. I am pretty crap at bedtime routines and tend to feel extremely inferior to parents whose children are in bed at 7:30 on the nose without fail, every night. It doesn't matter how shit of a parent you are in other respects. If you can get your child to bed at a decent hour on a regular basis and enjoy a few hours of "grown up" time each night, you are obviously a better human being then I am.

1. I'm a big believer in laughter, excercise, fresh air and good nutrition. There's not much they can't cure between them :-)

Sanity Saving Devices: Part 2

Calling all Mommas! Calling all Mommas! Has your patience been tried to the limit? Are you down to your last frayed nerve? Does the sound of your children's cat like squalling make you want to peel off your skin and run far, far away? Do you almost choke with the effort it takes not to stand in the middle of the kitchen and scream back as loud as you possibly can at them until their hair blows back with the force of your rage and frustration?

Well! Suffer no more! Because we here at Sanity Saverz have heard your (stifled) cries and now present to you "The Mommy Box." Yes folks! The makers of "Swifty Safety the Sanity Slide" have done it again! No more screaming into pillows as your little demon spawn wake you up for the 415th time that night! No more biting your tongue while the orange juice/milk/water spills from the table to the floor! No more hyperventilating as you try that "no fail" deep breathing technique you learned at parenting class while your toddler screams blue murder because... well, god only knows why! She's a toddler! SHE DOESN'T NEED A REASON!!!!!

"The Mommy Box" with it's patented "Rage Release" system, is the answer to your prayers. Made from light weight spastic titanium and roughly the size and shape of a 500ml container of milk, "The Mommy Box" is 100% soundproof so you can scream your heart out and swear a blue streak and those little innocent ears will be none the wiser!

Call now, and we'll throw in the "Calm Mommy" atomizer which fits into the base of the "Mommy box" and releases a potent narcotic every time the lid is opened! Your kids can scream the house down and you won't give a rat's arse!

The "Mommy Box" Because a happy Mommy is a Happy baby!

Just a thought...

A B C D E F Gee

2 little eyes are fighting sleep

H I J

shhhhh it's Oh K

It's time to drift off

It's been a long day

Twinkle twinkle little star

L M N O P Q Are

you sleeping yet my tiny one

who counts to trees

and thinks it fun

to reach her arms up

oh so high

like a diamond in the sky

and when she's worn

she'll turn to me

and I will sing her A B C's

Good night sleep tight

my tiny one

and sleep so sweet till morning comes.

Nominations!

Well! Here's something to brighten my day. A great big, heartfelt thank you to Looking for Blue Sky for nominating me for an Irish Blog Award! From the tips of my toenails to the ends of my hair, thank you. You may have just bought the Snot Queen a stay of execution :) If you would like to learn more about the Blog Awards, you can either click here and go directly to their site, or else you can go here (which I highly recommend you do) and check out a bit of Blue Sky on this grey old day :)

Still More Early Morning Ramblings...

It's 5:23 in the morning. It's been just over 3 hours since the Snot Queen decided that enough was enough with all this sleep malarkey and declared herself open for business.

The fact that she is still playing merrily away and completely oblivious to the twitching pile of simmering rage that is currently masquerading as her mother is a testament to my ever stretched patience.

I am within sniffing distance of a complete and utter mental breakdown.

Which brings me to my latest batch of early morning offerings. And so, without further adieu, I present to you "Things that are cute in the daytime but not so much at 2:30/3:30/anytime when common decency decrees I should be sleeping and the Snot Queen deems otherwise..."

Cute: The Snot Queen's latest talent for belting out the alphabet (minus a letter or twenty.)

Not So Cute? Any concerts which occur in the middle of the night with the small one sleeping just a few feet away.

Cute: When she screams out a stream of unintelligible gibberish and then breaks into hysterical laughter as though she's just told the funniest joke EVER!

Not so Cute? When she screams out said stream of unintelligible gibberish and hysterical laughter, right into your ear as you rock yourself back and forth and wait for sleep, death or madness to claim you. Whatever comes first.

Cute: When she points out her eyes, ears, mouth, nose, shoulders and belly to you.

Not so cute? When you return to the bedroom after a quick sanity break to find her pointing out said features on her (miraculously) still sleeping sister.


Cute: The way she considers doing what I ask her and then says no and giggles helplessly.

Not so cute? When what I'm asking her is to please just GO TO SLEEP BEFORE THE RED HAZE DESCENDS AGAIN AND YOU BECOME WELL AQUAINTD WITH THE FRONT LAWN!!!!!!!

Cute: Pretty much anything she does these days!

Not so cute? Anything she does between the hours of midnight and the alarm going off.


Night! (or should I say Morning?)