Ugh.

Dudes, I don't get sick. Seriously, the last time I got sick was when I was pregnant with Nicky. Before that, I couldn't even tell you. Oh, I get the general not-feeling-well malaise every so often but it never turns into a concrete sickness.

Apparently I was a little too cocky. Cuz this has knocked me on my ass.

It started out as a flu, minus the stomach ailments. PHEW. That was good for a few days, feverish and totally out of it. Then it turned into a head cold. And the worst stuffed nose in the history of stuffed noses. One night it took me a good 5 hours to fall asleep. I kept popping pills in the hopes of just overloading my body into passing out...and I made some kind of messed up post on facebook railing at my orthodontist from high school. Wtf. What can I say, I was high.

And then today. Ya, today. Today is when the previously mentioned stomach ailments decided to pay a visit. My bathroom was a disaster zone, what with the kids having pretty much free reign in there.

And the 2 littles are sick too. From what I can tell, it's just a cold on both their parts and right now I'm listening to Nicky cough up a lung as he's trying to sleep. Poor dude. Josh has a majorly runny nose and that seems to be the extent of his sickness. They're both in pretty good spirits too, considering. I'm pretty sure Liam is going to get hit by this too, but he's at his dads right now so I don't have to worry about him for a few days.

Jeff hasn't gotten this. Yet. And it's looking like he's holding out, which is AMAZING. Seriously, he's the one that gets sick out of the two of us. But OMG I thank everything above that he's not sick because he's picked up the slack incredibly the past 5 or 6 days. He's gotten up with Josh in the middle of the night so I could sleep. He's taken over when he gets home so that I could sprawl on the couch guilt free. He's made more runs to Safeway for supplies than I can even count. Slurpees for me since my throat hurts so bad. Just overall awesomeness.

It's my hope that I'll start turning the corner soon. If for no other reason than this phlegm crap is disgusting and is going to drive me crazy. I'm already gone through one box of Kleenex just on spitting this crap out. Ya, this post is chock full of lovely, appetizing reading isn't it?

The living room needs a makeover.

It's a well known fact that I can't leave anything well enough alone. I've always got to be changing things, moving things around, planning, dreaming. I think it annoyed Jeff for about the first 5 years we were together, now he's all "sure honey, that would look awesome..."

...

So anyway, I just go with it. I'm 100% capable of moving crap around myself because I've always been like this, but I haven't always had a man around.

->tangent: years and years ago I bought myself a bed from Ikea *insert choir of angels* and being the impatient sort I am, decided to jump in and start building it all by myself. Building a double bed complete with headboard, footboard, and side rails is advisable only with TWO people. It even says so on the instructions. However, after a lot of sweat and a frustrated tantrum or 2, I got it done. I rock.

Where were we. Oh yes, I regularily move shit around in my house. But me moving things around doesn't have a whole lot to do with this post. Focus, Chantel. No, this post has more to do with the lack of anything decorative in my living room. Everything kind of looks like it's just floating around in there.

You know Jon & Kate Plus Eight, and how the living room in their old house had a grand total of 3 peices of furniture in it? That's so my living room. A sectional, a shelving system, and a coffee and end table. That's seriously it. And do you know what is on the coffee and end table? Nothing. So 2 out of my 5 peices of furniture are not even functional.

I blame it on my toddlers. Liam was not like this. He was SO MUCH MORE calm. And since I'm inherently lazy and would prefer to parent from the comfort of my butt on the couch, all ornaments and such have found alternative homes on higher surfaces or in boxes in the storage room.

I'm KIDDING about my lazy parenting. Kind of. I'd like to parent that way but my reality is FAR different.

Today my floating living room is really picking my ass. So I decided to start with something small and put a lamp and knick-knack on the end table and a couple trays and a handmade box on the coffee table and see what would happen. Those kids were all over it in a heartbeat. Banging things around, moving stuff so they could squat in the middle of the table as per usual.

With a little gentle (ha!) reprimanding from yours truly, Nicky quickly got the picture. Josh...we're still working on it. He's pretty stubborn. I'm more stubborn. I'm making it my mission to prevail over the 1 year old.

However, there are a couple more things that need to happen in the living room to take it from "floating" to "what Chantel wants". We (Jeff) need to finish putting baseboards up. And I need to find a bigger area rug. The one we have now, which I love, is just TOO SMALL. I think the rug is what makes everything look like it's just floating around in there. There's no anchor. But it's not easy finding affordable area rugs that are at least 8x10 feet. Lotsa 5x8's, but that's what we have and that's what is too small.

So ya, there's really no point to this post except that this is what I've been obsessing over today. And maybe to let Jeff know that this is the direction we'll be going in henceforth? Ya know, with the baseboards and such? And that he also will have to at some point go and pick up whatever rug I find on Kijiji?

We have such awesome communication skillz.

Ch-ch-ch-changes.

And not all of them good.

I will forever remember this weekend as an idyllic break between when Josh woke up multiple times a night, and the real Hell started.

We'll start with the good first. After exactly 16 months of waking up at minimum 4 times a night we decided to implement Operation Cry It Out. It's never easy to try this strategy but I couldn't keep deluding myself that he would 'magically grow out of it'.

That kid loves his dee-dee's too much. And the snuggle time with mommy and daddy.

It went shockingly well. I say that because he's the most stubborn out of the 3 boys by a long shot so I thought this would be a battle. One I was expecting to lose. But no, he loves to keep me on my toes and only put up not much more than a token fuss. Friday was a bit of crying, Saturday was a bit of whining, and last night was...

...nothing? For real? How come I didn't do this 6 months ago?

Anyway, it's really nice and I'm probably jinx-ing myself by announcing it publicly - Jeff is knocking on wood right now. But even if he decides to regress tonight and get me up every hour on the hour, it would be only fitting. And that would be because the Terrible Two's have arrived.

Oh yes my friends. I have the bitchiest 16 month old on the planet right now. He's satisfied for a maximum of 3 minutes before he's screaming about something else.

He can't get his boot on? Horrors.

I ghetto-rigged the door to his room so he can't slam it shut? He's flat on the ground wailing.

I won't give him another cookie? Ope, overturned kitchen chair.

He wants my undivided attention and claws at my legs if I'm standing, dolphin rolls on my lap if I'm sitting, and just generally makes himself known in the most annoying.way.possible.

You'd think that this stage would have creeped up on us a bit. But no, other than the usual occasionally cranky toddler episode, this pretty much smacked us across the face with a 2x4.

Silver lining? He knows what time outs mean, and I'm not afraid to use them.

Better call Paranormal State, stat!

Hoooo boy am I going to have fun with this one, on SO many different levels.

As much as he likes to insist otherwise, Jeff thinks evil and unexplainable things lurk around every corner. When we bought this house he and a friend found some weird pentagram based candle sticks in the ceiling of our basement. After quickly stuffing them back up there and boarding it up he told me that if anything "off" happened then we were outta here.

Nothing happened.

I could go on, the examples are endless. But I would get off track and I really want to tell you what we discovered yesterday.

Nicky has an imaginary friend! Let me introduce you to Max.

As far as we can tell, Max is a "nice boy" who "runs super fast" and likes to smell stinky poo's. That's all we really know about him so far, that and the fact that the very idea of an imaginary friend has Jeff's imagination going into o-v-e-r-d-r-i-v-e.

He wants to research our house to see if there was ever a little boy called Max who lived here and died. Because a ghost is OBVIOUSLY the natural answer to our son having an overactive imagination.

Oh wait. Maybe he got that from his dad? It's a stretch, I know.

Imaginary friends are bred into his genes. I had one, his dad probably had 50, my sister had a couple. No biggie, as long as Max doesn't start flushing toys down the toilet, pouring a 4 litre jug of milk on the floor, or causing general destruction.

Seriously, my children are hurricanes enough as it is without added interference.

But. BUT. This is going to be highly entertaining just for the Jeff value alone. He's already so skeeved out by the thought that our house is haunted by a ghost that I anticipate endless hours of hilarity. I like to exploit his weaknesses and I can't leave this one alone.

Thank you Nicholas, for being such an awesome kid!

Cringe!

Right now I'm listening to one of the defining albums of my youth.

Live Through This-Hole

I wanted to be Courtney Love SO BAD when I was 16. We had a "band" in high school (in which all 4 of us played the guitar...) and I had visions of myself onstage in a ratted out baby doll with one foot perched on my speaker, screaming into the mic.

One day my best friend and I sang a song for her uncle and asked him which of our voices sounded the most like Love's voice. Way to put him on the spot huh? He told me my voice was too nice. I vowed that day to chainsmoke until I had that same rasp. Duh, alcoholic and heroin addiction? Anyway.

I had a teaser the other day about finding my diary from 15+ years ago. As embarrassing as it is, and it's TRULY EMBARRASSING, I'm feeling a tad nostalgic. So I'm going to post an excerpt. I had to dig for one that didn't make me want to hit myself in the head too hard. I was such a....teenager.

Kids today think they're emo. They gots nothing on a 16 year old from the 90's. For example:

June 11, 1995

Dear Diary,
I'm trying to be calm and cool but I'm SOOO HAPPY (even as a
teenager I wrote in all caps)!!!
Kay, Steve & Alana broke up. I guess it was a while ago, but that's
beside the point. Do you think I'm obsessed? Ya? Oh well. I can remember when I
thought I was over Steve-hah! I just like him so much. I wonder what kind of
kisser he is. I think I could make a relationship with him better than that
bitch Alana. On Friday I did 10 gravol tabs and tripped so bad. God, it was
freaky. I don't know if I'm ever gonna do that again. I hear that Steve does
prescription drugs. I don't know about that guy. Oh well, he can't influence me.
Right? I have a feeling (and it better happen) that he's gonna talk to me this
week. I'll tell you when he does.

Luv Chan

June 12, 1995

Dear Diary,
I'm in a really bitchy mood right now, and I don't know why. So I'm
trying to keep to myself as much as possible. My dear sweet old parents aren't
getting the drift that I like being in my room. "Come outside". Fuck that!
Maybe I'll write more later. FUCK

Lovely hey? Ahhhh to be 16 again. And for the record, Steve never did notice me and yes, I WAS obsessed with him all through high school. I wrote a song about how much I hated Alana. I defaced her picture in my yearbook.

Enjoy!

Motherhood is a thankless job.

I gave Liam the benefit of the doubt and let him pack his own duffel bag for a 7 day snowboarding trip:

-6 pairs of jeans.
-1 pair of sweats.
-3 pajama pants.
-4 short sleeved shirt (for the MOUNTAINS!!)
-3 pairs of underwear.
-1 pair of socks.

Oh ya, and 6 X-Box games.

....

Um. Toothbrush and toothpaste? Enough socks and underwear? Maybe a long sleeve shirt or two, and at LEAST one sweater?

Looks like some 11 year olds still need their mommies. Not that there will be even a whisper of appreciation when he gets home.

Shenanigans.

I will be the first one to admit that my younger two children are hooligans. I try to deny it and prefer to pretend that other people think they're as cute as we do. In my more lucid moments the reality up and hits me upside the head. They're quite monster-ish.

Case in point, and this illustrates my point so precisely that it makes me want to weep;

Josh was hungry, it wasn't quite lunchtime yet so I set a bowl of cottage cheese on the table for him to eat. I tried to make him sit in his chair so I could strap him in but he was being so damn whiney that I decided to let him sit (stand) on the bench to eat it.

Jeff and I were chatting about stuff. The grocery list I think. I was keeping an eye on Josh but he's a wily one and knows that if he's good then my attention wanders and he has a small window of time where he can create mayhem.

Sure enough a couple minutes pass and then Nicky comes into the kitchen. "Oh my Gawd, my sock is messy".

Jeff takes a quick look and wonders out loud how he got cottage cheese, of all things, on his sock.

SHIT. Yup Josh isn't at the table. I run for paper towels and a wet cloth to clean up whatever disaster has occurred in the living room. Jeff runs to the living room to assess the damage.

The scene: a bowlful of cottage cheese dumped in the corner of the couch with a nice pile dripping down the back of the couch into a puddle at the bottom of one of the wicker baskets that hold toys. They like to turn the baskets on their side and shove them up to the couch so they can climb up and over the couch. Ya.

Josh is happily smooshing the mess around on the floor and Nicky is yelling "bad boy Josh, oh my Gawd you're so messy", while helping smoosh the cottage cheese around.

Kids-1/parents-0.

To all the people to whom we've subjected our children, we apologize. We know they're unruly, but it's cute. Right?