I gave Sylvie her going-away gift the other night. I sang to her.

I am an awful singer. Awful doesn’t really to it justice. I am one of those people who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. I can’t even clap in time to music or chanting. I think I might really be a tone deaf. When Sweety and I met, 11 years ago – he got in my truck and remarked that the speaker to my radio was broken. I hadn’t realized it. I thought music had just gotten quieter so I’d been turning it up louder.

Anyhoo. Sylvie had been bugging me to sing for awhile after she’d noticed that I never sang along to the radio. (I do. Only when I’m alone in the car and the sound is cranked up loud enough so that I can’t hear myself.) It was dark in the car the other night and a song came on that I happened to know all of the words to so I let it fly.

After she had time to recover from the experience, Sylvie remarked that it “sounded like 27 cats being ran over on the freeway. But thank you, Aunt Anna for doing that for me.”

Hey! Did you guys know that it’s FREE to sign up for a Facebook account? Yeah, I thought you might. Guess who doesn’t or who has some kind of weird issue about taking advantage of said free service? The coaew. I guess she was creeping around on Facebook the other day and came across a profile that was using a photo of the boys and their little brother as its profile photo. The name on the profile was the same as her maiden name and a first name that she didn’t recognize. She sent Sweety a text freaking out over it and wanted to know if we could report it to Facebook. Uh. No. Not my photo. Not my freaking maiden name. Not my issue. She finally decided that maybe it was her estranged father. Why not make a profile and send the person a damned message if you’re concerned? Sheesh.

A sleeping Sweey tidbit…

Ow!

What’s wrong, Sweety?

I was killed in a video game but it’s ok. 500 points to my next man!

6 Comments | In: conversation, secret shame, the niece | | #

Sweet baby Hayzeus.

I think I’m drunk.

The Bean went to bed about 3 hours ago and I decided to drink some Woodchucks. I’m five in and toast. Damn.

We’ve finally gotten on a schedule with Bean and everything is running much more smoothly. Instead of getting texted photos from Sweety showing her face after she’s been crying for hours, I get photos of her happy after a nap. This keeps me from wanting to run from my desk at work after quitting my job and snatching the baby away from Sweety while telling him that he needs to get another job to support us all.

Sylvie turned 13 last weekend and we had a tiny party for her. (The next time she’s here, she’ll be turning 15. I told her she was having a party at home with a pinata. It was only our family, the neighbors and the girl she rides to school with but I thought I was going to explode trying to get everything together.) Photos here. Sweety took Bean on her first trip down a bowling lane. He sort of swung her like a meaty golf club while she kicked the bowling ball. That night, Sylvie asked if she could sleep with me since it was her birthday. I told her no but when I told Sweety that she asked, he went into BB’s room for the night so she could stay in ours. I will admit that it was great. This was taken the next morning when we were getting up.

Today, Bean napped in her crib for the first time.

I sat on Sylvie’s bed and watched her the whole time. Those bumps on her face? Bug bites or something. We don’t know where the hell they came from but they are getting better. I wince every time I look at them.

The real irony here is that she’s been in our bed the past several nights because I wanted her there and Sweety decided that he’s okay with it. The Bean? Not so much. She sleeps better in her own space and I know it’s selfish of me to put her in the bed with me just because I want to feed her while she sleeps and sniff her head. She sleeps in a Pack N Play thing in our room and tonight I took the bassinet part out of it and she’s sleeping in it in the bottom. Yeah, I may have teared up a little while putting the bassinet away.

She’s also started sitting up pretty good.

Today I washed all of her small diapers because she’s outgrown them. I had a huge twinge of sadness the first time I strapped a bigger diaper onto her. I’m pretty sure that babies grow faster than anything else on the planet.

I know I need to start brushing her hair. It’s rather unkempt looking. I’m so used to it though. I brushed it tonight after she got out of the shower. She looked like Donald Trump.

Okay. I’m gonna poke one more baby photo down your throat and then leave.

This morning. She totally loses her shit in that toy.

Wow. You wouldn’t believe how much I love that baby.

Oh, wait! One more thing! More Sweety sleep talk!

Shit ass motherfuckers flying a kite.

What wrong with kites?

I dunno.

I think you’re jealous that you don’t have one.

Who cares? I have bananas!

The really funny part? Sweety hates bananas.

12 Comments | In: bean, conversation | | #

First off, you need to know that we sometimes call Bean, “Sunnybadger”. Instead of honey badger because she has the tendency to be rather intense. When she’s happy? She’s happy. When she’s not happy, aka tired out of her little mind, she is on fire.

I get in bed the other night right after Sweety did but he had already passed out. He rolls over and starts talking.

We need to start a church.

Reeeally? Mmmhmm. Okay. What will we call it?

The Holy Worship of the Sunnybadger! Our Trinity will be Sunny, the honey badger and the cobra.

I don’t think that’s gonna go over too well.

Oh, it will! We will say, “Head, shoulders, knees, and toes” instead of The Father, Son, Holy Ghost thing.

Dude. You need to shut up and go back to sleep.

Then he said something about kites being scary and I put my earplugs in.

6 Comments | In: conversation | | #

Am I ever going to have another blog post without a photo of Bean in it? Probably not. Not for awhile anyway. So I’ll just go on and get it out of the way now.

There. That’s better. She’s next door in that one. They have a crib that they made when their oldest granddaughter was born and it’s being taken for another spin with Bean. The oldest granddaughter took that photo. She’s going to college in the fall and majoring in photography. I told her to knock herself out taking photos of Bean since I wasn’t going to be there to do it.

I had a rough Wednesday. Bean was feeling a little yuckish and I spent about 3 hours of the late afternoon just lying with her. The whole time I’m lying there, I’m worrying about all of the shit that I need to do to get things ready to take her next door the next morning and I start to panic and have some really creepy thoughts. Sweety comes home and says something about how he’s going to eat a bite and go to the boys’ baseball games and I flip out. When he asks me what my damn problem is I start to cry and tell him that I haven’t gotten anything done and he lists off the things I’ve done that day and tells me to not worry about not doing everything. Then I wail something about how I have to get things ready for the next day so I can go to work and Bean can go next door. I think he realized that I was either going to get things ready for the next day or stick my head in the oven.

He took Bean to the games with him and I stayed at home and cleaned the house and packed her bag for the next day. Mental crisis averted. I think he likes taking her places to show her off. Sweety is a people person and she is a conversation piece.

In my enthusiasm to ensure that we have enough milk for Bean – I may have gone overboard. You open the freezer and all you can see are frozen packages of breastmilk. I’m at the point now where I pump milk one day and she gets it the next and the frozen stuff is there just in case. Never in my life would I have thought that a freezer full of my own milk would help me feel less anxious about things.

To put it mildly – I can’s sing worth a damn. But I figure I should sing to Bean. I don’t know why. It just seems like the thing to do. Usually I sing things other than nursery rhymes but thought she might like a rousing rendition of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.

I was so wrong.

This was the face I got. Thinking that she just needed to get used to this new song, I tried to power through it but by the time I got to “up above the world so high” she was losing her shit and actually crying tears while that little lip quivered. I moved on to a favorite among the diapered set here – “Getting Jiggy Wit It” along with the leg kicks that she likes to do during the chorus.

I’ve also discovered that she likes to hear “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”. She’s usually just about asleep by bottle 75 and it doesn’t strain my voice into total unpleasantness.

I’ll leave you with a couple of nuggets that dropped out of Sweety’s mouth the other night while he was sleeping.

I just got back from the police department where I was fingerprinted. I was trying to get the ink off before I got home. I’m sorry.

Annnnd…..

Snow cones! I love snow cones. Maybe we could have a snow cone tomorrow? Shaved ice is awesome!

People, if he had said anything other than snow cones…if he’d have at least said something that we have around here? I’d have thought that he was awake. He was way too enthusiastic about snow cones. He was also way too sad about not getting the fingerprint ink off of his fingers. Does he really think if he gets taken to the police department and fingerprinted that his biggest issue at that time is getting his hands clean?

16 Comments | In: bean, conversation | | #