Solo parenting is not my jam

Ben went out of town overnight-- OVERNIGHT-- and the wheels totally fell off our bus.  I am NOT CAPABLE of managing shit without him even for one night.

Jack had the stomach flu, BTW.  THE STOMACH FLU.

And Dorothy climbed out of her crib twice-- TWICE-- and had to sleep with me and only slept from 11-6, when she usually sleeps from 7:30-6:30.  The the next day the doorbell rang at 1:30, and she had just gone down for her nap at 12:45, and IT WOKE HER UP.

I mean, I was bitching and moaning abut the 24 hours of solo parenting when I thought everything would go normally.  Had I known that Jack would open the door to his room and hurl EVERYWHERE in our direction the moment I set down the pizza box and cupcakes for our Thursday night movie party in the family room, I would have never let Ben leave.  IT WAS THE PITS.

Also while Ben was gone, Dorothy and Cooper learned to FIGHT.  Like seriously fight.  What an awesome new skill **eye roll**

 A really unladylike trip down the stairs for princess Anna

 Dorothy is now super choosey about the PATTERN of her diapers.  She will ONLY wear Honest Company pink strawberry-print diapers, Honest Company pink tiara-print training pants, and the Ariel Pull-Ups that comprise 1/3 of the Doc McStuffins/Ariel/Minnie Mouse girl-flavored package.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  If her preferred pattern is unavailable, she would prefer to go without pants or just wear her shit around until you can get the right pattern, you moron.

 She was so cute on Thursday night sleeping with me, even though she ended up sleeping on my face.

 We both fell asleep reading.

Dorothy has been a great sleeper for the past year, but the ONE NIGHT I was on my own, she was horrid.  HORRID.  It made me realize I cannot ever take a good night's sleep for granted every again because that next morning was rough.  And then I drank 2 glasses of wine last night and geared up for a House of Cards marathon, and we made it through 1.3 episodes and passed out.  We are so, so cool.

Today

Look how cute and busy they were at breakfast this morning.  I bought H and J 3 workbooks each at Barnes and Noble last month, and Ben was really annoyed because we have a million workbooks with a few pages done (but not THESE), so we decided that the kids would do a couple of pages a day in each one, and they like to knock them out at breakfast.  It's cute.

 Jack came upstairs barefoot in his camo pants and polo, and I sent him downstairs for socks and a long sleeved shirt because it was a high of 7 today.  Joke was on me, though, because he crammed a sweatshirt under his polo and then had to tattoo his face because his arms were covered up, and all 3 boys were downstairs tattooing after breakfastl

 I will no longer edit his sartorial choices.  (But, I mean, he should wear socks in the Wisconsin winter).

 Harry needed a ponytail.  And he full-on dressed from his pajama drawer today.  I don;t think the Elf on the Shelf would have brought those pants on Christmas Eve had he known they'd show up all over town.

 It was nice to see his sweet little face today.

 I think Jack knew I was slightly making fun of them with the bookshelf pics because he snapped this hilarious one of me as my littlest monkey was screaming feet and leading me to the laundry room to help her put on some random tennis shoes.

 Coop got this one during his NOT NAP time when I was working on my newest feminist cross stitch.

 Coop watched Toy Story 2, or, as he called it "the one with the bad guy."

 Dorothy is so adorable-- sometimes I pick her up and have to stop myself from actually eating her.  It's good that she's so irresistible because she is such a mess maker!  She's a tiny little hurricane all day long.

 I packed these leftovers without using the little stainless container you're supposed to use for messy stuff, so tomorrow, look for pictures of Harry's wrecked bag.  IT'S SO EXCITING HERE.

Tuesday already for real??

This is a weird week because Ben has a conference, and I only get to log two days at the actual office and the rest at home, so I feel like I am scrambling a little right out of the gate.  

So, I last blogged on Thursday, and here is what we've done since then:  

Dorothy continues to look like an Olson twin

 Beatrix thinks she can get on my bed.  SPOILER ALERT:  No fucking way, dog.

 We asked Jack to take our picture before date night, and he climbed up on a chair and practiced holding the camera with a fake camera.

 NAILED IT

 I left my phone on the table for one second and then this was my FB profile pic.  Also, we had sushi that was so bad, I will never eat at that restaurant again.  And I will never eat sushi again.

 We had to go eat pie to get the taste out of our mouths.

 I also needed wine

 And Ben needed a Moscow mule.

 We finally got out the Osmo Harry got for Christmas-- it's really cool

 I made this awesome subversive counted cross stitch from an Etsy pattern and then bought 4 more patterns, so look out world.

 We played with this awesome 6-year-old house

 Some friends turned their house into a casino, which is super fun

 They also have a chalkboard wall which is Dorothy-approved.

 SHE MADE A D

 Harry and Jack pretty much dress themselves from their pajama drawer everyday

 Dorothy turned into a teeny teenager

 Beatrix IS allowed on Ben's bedding, says me anyway.

Special Person Night + Video Dump

It is so cold today that even though I worked from home until the temperature climbed to the single-below-zero-digits and wore my heaviest sweater (which came in my first Stitch Fix and gets worn every other week which is as often as I feel like I can wear something before I wear it too much), I have turned the temperature up to 75 in my office and have not taken off my gloves.

Winter is the worst.

Not the worst?  Special person night at preschool.  Cooper LOVEs preschool, and when the invitation came home for one person to attend an hour-long mock school day with him, I was pretty sure he'd choose me.  After all, he calls me his baby cakes pie.

I was right!

He did pick me to be his special person, and because I am the room parent for his class, I had to make the snack.  His teacher refused all baked goods or homemade treats, so I dutifully assembled an army of snack bots.  That all fell the hell apart on the way to school, which was dumb.  Then the whole time his class played in the gym, I was taping dumb, dumb dum-dum arms back on and Cooper was saying "Where my mommy?  I want my mommy play me."  AWESOME and TOTALLY MOTY.

Bonefish Grill and Jason's Deli both opened near our house, and Cooper has been watching the construction for months asking me every time we drove by if we could go there.  Finally, he got his chance when we went out for dinner before Special Person Night.  I assumed he meant Jason's Deli, but oh no.  He perused the menu and told me that place was "yuck" so we went to Bonefish Grill which was a little too nice for Cooper, but luckily it was 4:45, and the place was dead.  I had a pretty delicious shrimp salad, and Ben enjoyed Cooper's popcorn shrimp, fires, and macadamia nut brownies straight from the styrofoam box we brought them home in because Cooper did not eat a fucking bite.

 I forgot to take a picture of him inside class because we were too busy making glow-in-the-dark bracelets, playing cars, making Valentines, and building with the same damn magna tiles we have at home that are only cool at school apparently.

 Cooper's gym is actually really cool. Full of all this cat furniture for kids that I would love to have in my basement since it is too cold to leave the house (seriously-- the kids have had indoor recess for days, and Ben had to walk to dog himself this morning).

 In other news, Dorothy let me put curlers in her hair.

 I was trying to take a picture of Dorothy in her Anna dress, but Coop wanted to pose, too.

 She alternated between her Elsa dress and her Anna dress all day yesterday.

 When she is Anna, all she wants to do is knock on doors and make the tick-tock noise from the song

 When she is Elsa, she wears her clattering Elsa shoes and sings Let it Go.

One huge advantage of my giant iPhone is that I take more videos of the kids because I have more space to store videos.  So, I thought I would share our life in 30-second-ish snippets, and I will hopefully be video dumping once a week.  If I have these videos on my computer, on YouTube, and on my blog, I feel like they will make it out of the kids' childhood.

Dorothy showing her mad letter skills and Cooper mocking me:


Somersaulting:


Cooper talking about V-Day


Jack crazy dancing


Dorothy singing


Dorothy jumping

Hair-mergency and a really bad Stitch Fix

I think the title of this post is pretty self-explanatory, but I need you to be ready for tons of self-indulgent pictures of my hair taken in the mirror with my ginormous iPhone, kay?

 Curlers!  She let me put exactly one curler in her cute hair, and then she crammed a few more in there herself.

I bought these ginormous retro velcro rollers like I used to use in the 90s the other day because I was suddenly overcome with deep and abiding hatred for my straggly Duggar hair.

 At least it's sort of young Duggar hair and not totally Michelle's hair.

 Dorothy, though, is having GREAT HAIR

I got some volumizing hair spray and was really impressed with my Duggar hair's ability to look the same as it did in the morning by baby bath time, which is 7-12 really, really long hours later.

And then I did the exact same thing the next day, rollers and all.

Also the same thing with Dorothy's hair because if it ain't broke, you know.  Also, she looks totally huge in this picture and exactly like an Olson twin.

Yesterday, I dusted off an oldie but goodie, the braid crown.  Admittedly, this style works better in the summer, and it makes me look a little bit like Cloris Leachman in Young Frankenstein, and it is a total waste of clean hair.  It was this last one that pissed me off the most because I washed my hair yesterday and then ran out of time to DO anything with it because I had to go get Cooper.

Side note rant for a second:  My Monday mornings totally SUCK.  Ben goes to work at 6:30 (so clearly his mornings suck more because at 6:30, Dorothy has just joined me under the covers, and she is nursing, and I am sniffing her sweet head and Cooper is in Ben's bed watching PBS kids and the big boys are just waking up downstairs and Harry is turning on ESPN because that's all he watches and Jack is playing some strange game in his room with the whole Magic Treehouse series lined up in straight rows, but my digression has digressed), and I get everyone breakfast and tidy everything up and dress Cooper and Dorothy and swap my PJ pants for yoga pants.  At 8:15, the big boys go to school; I switch the laundry and clean up the boys' bedroom and bathroom.  At 8:30, Dorothy and I take Cooper to school.  We come home, have a snack, switch the laundry, and she plays blocks or watches Super Why while I work out.  By 10:15 we go upstairs so I can do more laundry and take a shower and get dressed for work while she trashes my bedroom and bathroom and closet.  I throw lunch together for the babies at around 11:15, and we are out the door to get Cooper by 11:25.  We come home from pick up, and the babies eat while I run around and put away all the laundry.  ben is home at 12:30, and I head out the door to work after doing the nap routine.  THERE IS NO ROOM FOR ERROR.  And an hour is not enough time for me to shower, wash my hair, style it effectively, put my makeup on, switch my huge purse from a diaper bag to a work bag, find clothes, clean up after Dorothy, make lunches, and be ready to go get Coop.  Usually primp time suffers and I end up with something like a clean hair braid crown.

I sent back my entire Stitch Fix this month which drive me crazy because now I have to pay the $20 stylist fee, and usually this fee is subtracted from my total purchase.

But it really sucked.
I loved the color of this sweater, but i was super lumpy and unflattering.  Also, as I have explained 3 times now in my feedback, open cardigans are no good for me because I have a gross flabby tummy pooch and don't really wear fitted t-shirts.  But I look fat and dumpy with a cardi over a not-fitted t, tank, or tunic,

TERRIBLE.  UGLY.  FRUMPY.

This is a wrap dress, which I normally like, but this one needed a cami under it which I think is a really frumpy look.  And the colors were very Sears.  AND it was $110 and I think I can do better at Banana or Anne Taylor if this is the look I want, and I am not sure that it is.

I liked these jeans, and they looked really great on me.  BUT I am not sure I like black jeans.  And also they were $158, and I usually spend about $75 at Gap, so I wanted to make sure I really liked them.

I also got a horrible looking cheap silver-colored necklace.  I am not a costume jewelry kind of girl, so back it went.

I almost kept the dress and the jeans, but then I was flipping through Instagram, and I saw this dress in an Anthro post and realized I should just go buy it and a cuter necklace and call it a day.

And!  Bonus!  I am rocking a super crimped ponytail thanks to yesterday's braid crown.

But seriously, I hate my freaking hair.  I almost gave into a fit of impatience and PMS and cut it into a mom lob the other day.  But!  I am waiting until I lose this baby weight or turn totally gray to make a major change.  Dorothy is 2 next month.  I have to lose weight RIGHT NOW or I am going to have to call it toddler weight.  And then preschool weight.  And then I'll be in menopause anyway.