3.27.2012

alarm clock etiquette.

let me start by saying that i love my husband, i really do. hes the best.

BUT he has terrible alarm clock etiquette. and its not just him, i think its a guy thing in general. in the past i have dated other dudes that do the same thing he does every morning.

i am a very light sleeper, i always have been and i think its even worse now that my subconcious is anxious about listening for the babies.

so this is a typical morning.

4 am: littles wakes up, nurses about 20 minutes, falls back to sleep right around 4:30.

4:35: alarm goes off. after about a minute of loud beeping which seems like forever when youre just waiting for someone to turn it off, hubs turns it off. baby wakes up.

4:45: baby is asleep again.

4:50: alarm starts its yelling again. hubs gets get and hits snooze again. baby wakes up.

4:55: baby is asleep and i quickly put him in his room.

5:05: alarm again. snooze again.

and this vicious cycle continues on for however long my husband feels the need to sleep in 10 minute spurts. on occasion he has hit the snooze button so many times that the alarm just doesnt go off anymore and i have to wake him.

i know i dont really have to wake up that early... i mean i do because of the baby but im not starting my day that early. i get a couple more hours. but i am definitely not getting any sleep during the alarm dance that goes on every morning in the krade house. btw, the volume on the alarm is at the max.

and i guess i just dont get it... in my head if i have the ability to hit snooze from 4:35 until 5:30, then im just setting my alarm for 5:30. i feel like an entire extra hour of sleep attached to my night is much better than the sleep, wake, sleep, wake thing boys do. am i the only one that doesnt understand this?

love you gum shoe. but i hate your alarm. ♥

3.25.2012

i have a daughter!

there comes a time in every young womans life when shes out with her sister and a complete stranger mistakes them for being mother/daughter...

wait... that doesnt happen to everyone?

total sarcasm. i know that doesnt happen. but big surprise! happened to me.

i went out with birk late last night to have a few cocktails and spend a little sis time before she left to go back home. were sitting at a lonely secluded table being our usual obnoxious selves when an older man comes over to our area and asks if its ok if he talks on his phone near us. weird already, right? so then he randomly says 'oh, youre out with your daughter?' i am almost positive my jaw hit the table. this dude truly believed that i was old enough to have a daughter that is at least 21 years old. most depressing moment ever. worser and worser still, when he tried to somehow redeem himself he told us a story about the time he saw the most unattractive woman ever... i didnt like that that was the story he was reminded of when thinking i was much older than i am. not only am i old enough to have a daughter that can drink, i also remind him of the ugliest woman he ever saw.

and even worse still... i was complaining to my sister before we ever went out about how i always look like a mom these days, even when im trying not to. she of course denied my self proclaimation of momdom. clearly i am the winner of this argument.

the only ok part of the evening was that i made the drunk older man feel so bad that he bought us another round on him and sent over a couple shots of patron...

i guess even old moms like a good tequila.


i wonder if this ever happens to the duff sisters...

3.23.2012

dinner at the krades.

the only thing worse than spending hours in the kitchen to make dinner, is taking equally as long to clean it all up. with spending all of twenty minutes sitting down to actually eat.

after watching 'the help' last week i have totally wanted some delicious fried chicken. and of course through some fantastic pinning i found a recipe that looked pretty good. so i get my chicken and let it hang out in the fridge in its buttermilk and spices marinade for a couple hours. then i do the whole flour and spices thing and let it set for a half an hour. meanwhile i throw some potatoes and eggs in a pot to boil and im chopping up cabbage and making a vinegar based cole slaw dressing. then i throw those chickens in the pan (it took an entire can of crisco btw... kinda gross) and get started on the biscuits.

you can imgaine what my kitchen looks like at this point... a mound of dough on one counter sitting in a sea of flour. a cutting board with shards of orange and greens amongst discarded cores of cabbage, a pyrex dish with chicken waiting to be fried, a hot pan spitting grease all over my stove top and counters everytime the lid is lifted... it is not pretty.

finally i get the potato salad and cole slaw finished. the biscuits are cooling and its time to get the chicken out of the pan. but of course before i get it out i definitely managed to drop the chicken back in the pan when the breading that was so carefully prepared decided to fall off. so then im mad that the breading fell off, and all of a sudden i am completely splashed with hot grease. not even cool.

its time to eat. the chicken is moist and good, but lacking about half of the breading (which i suppose my thighs were probably thankful for). and the cole slaw is ok but definitely not the delicious cole slaw that i had at a friends wedding last summer. the biscuits are good with a little honey. and the potato salad was the only thing that was what i had envisioned and thats only because ive made it numerous times. oh yeah, and the tea was good.

sidenote: the big boy would eat nothing that i had prepared which was no surprise, but meant we had to make more food in addition to everything i just spent hours making. the baby ate some chicken.

i rarely do dishes at night. i almost always wait until the next morning because we eat dinner, do a little playtime or take a walk with the kiddos then were ready to go upstairs for bathtime and the rest of the boys nighttime ritual.

so i woke up to absolute chaos in my kitchen this morning. and too add icing to the cake, i had to unload my dishwasher before i could load it. i hate that more than anything. but im happy to report that all the dishes are now clean except for the grease pit of a pan that is now soaking... that will be fun to tackle later.

moral of the story. go to kfc.

3.20.2012

tootie magooties.

my children are disgusting.

i truly didnt think they would really turn into boys until they were like 7 or 8. but i was wrong.

apparently the grossness of boys is in there from birth.

my children giggle when they toot. honestly, my ten month old son thinks that he is absolutely hilarious when hes a little gassy goosey. gross. and of course the 2.5 year old will point out and make sure you know that he has tooted if by chance you didnt hear it. 'mom, mom! i toot!' great job buddy. he also likes to point out if anyone else does it, so if youre in close proximity to my little tootie tattler you betta watch yoself!

and to continue with the potty talk, my son, while loving to point out toots, doesnt know the different between the poo poos and the pee pees. well, im sure he knows that they are two different things, but he will say that hes done one when hes done the other and sometimes he gets it right. maybe he thinks the words are interchangable... i dont know. but he does LOVE to talk about poop. he pooped, the baby pooped, the doggy pooped, doesnt matter who the pooper is, that kid is gonna talk about it.

i wonder if baby girls are gross too and i just dont know it...

3.19.2012

im not perfect.

ok, so in complete opposite fashion of my post yesterday, i definitely missed hanging out with my friends yesterday. and i felt i needed to clarify some things from my previous post. i dropped my husband off to hang out with some kids to watch the caps game, and when i did everyone was sitting outside on the deck drinkin beers and having fun. and i totally wanted to stay.

but party day saturday i really didnt mind, and enjoyed doing family day... i guess thats the difference, i like a nice chill night out with the crew. and some holidays just have too many expectations to be some huge epic event, and when they arent it is such a let down. but who gets let down hanging out on a deck with awesome people, great weather, and a delicious beer? no one, thats who.

so im not one of those 'my life is so great moms- i dont need to go out and have me time with friends.' and i didnt want anyone to think that i was. i love my children, but im not perfect.

done.

a moms st pattys day...

its days like st. patricks day that really remind you that youre a parent. not that id ever forget... a cummulative 18+ months of pregnancy, one 14 hour labor, one 6 hour (with an epidural that didnt take) labor, two thousand five hundred and forty eight diapers, and of course two sweet smiling little boys make it hard to forget.

but on holidays where the entire point of the day, to most of the population is to get absolutely beligerent, you remember that you are now a parent and cant really take part in those festivities. and most of the time it doesnt even bother me.

while most of you were out at 8 am doing the awesome kegs and eggs thing, i was making my children banana chocolate chips pancakes- they were delicious. and while you were all partying hard wearing head to toe green, i was with my fam heading out to vienna to buy new bras because my massively huge, still breastfeeding boobies finally broke my last normal bra. thats right, the last one. that poor thing was being washed and worn over and over again because it was the only one that fit. who wouldnt break under that pressure? pun intended. ha ha! and after said bra shopping excursion, while you were all taking a break from boozing with a bit of refuel action, we went to babies r us and purchased a double jogging stroller, so i can finally get outside with my lily white children and attempt to lose some of this weight accumulated during my almost back to back pregnancies. we then went home to let our littles nap. and when they woke up and you were all out for round two, we headed to target to both test out the new stroller and get soymilk and prune juice because the big boy is constipated again.

so in a nutshell, that was our day. and for the most part i dont miss being able to party hard with all my friends. but i definitely wouldnt have minded having a green beer or two...

3.16.2012

get to pinnin...

can i be dorkily honest? my current pet peeve, which shouldnt be a pet peeve at all, is pinterest. i both love and hate that site. i get so annoyed when i log on, and refresh only to find like two rows of new stuff until i start running into my own pins from the day before.

really? i am following over one hundred people. only 10 of you have looked at and/or pinned anything from 9 am the morning before. i only really get on in the morning because thats when the kids are doing brekkis and they mainly do their own little playtime... so when i log on in the morning and only get to look at my own things. mad.

i want dinner ideas for tonight. i want to see some fun new activity to do with my chilluns. i want cutesy party ideas for the upcoming first birthday of my littles. i want to see a delicious treat to make this weekend. i want to look at one million craft ideas that i try to convince myself that i will do, but in reality just want to fool myself into thinking im crafty. i want to laugh at the other silly goobs out there that also love harry potter. but mostly i wanna feel like im not the only one that checks out pinterest on a daily basis.

so come on you lazy bums. get to pinnin.

kroof pinterest


try to tell me that didnt make you giggle... just a little bit.

3.15.2012

mom jeans.

while out with some super fun friends last night i kept having a problem. i was sitting in a chair that had an open back, and even though my jeans are not exactly low rise, my crack just refused to stay concealed. im fairly positive that every five minutes i was awkwardly adjusting my shirt to stretch all the way over my huge rump just so i didnt have the whole plumbers butt thing going on.

so it got me thinking... i really hate jeans. i prefer linen pants, although i prefer them much more when im about 50 lbs less than i am right now.

not gonna lie, im definitely one of those moms that chills out in sweat pants all day long unless i have to actually leave my house. and sadly im turning my children into bum clothes loving, sweatpant wearing little relaxicats. jeans are just so uncomfortable. well, theyre uncomfortable to me anyway.

i guess there was a time when i did love a good pair of jeans, but that was pre-baby, pre-chub chub body. but i think once you become a mom, jeans are so much harder to wear. because even if you are a little chubby without baby, your weight gain is probably evenly distributed-ish, but after you have a baby, or even worse for a jean wearing body, babies, a lot of weight stays in the belly area. i currently hate my belly.

and this brings us to mom jeans. after you have a baby and you have the jiggle belly going on, the mom jeans seem a bit more appealing... maybe not the mom jeans everyone pictures when you think about 'mom jeans,' but certainly some sort of magic jeans that keep the tum tum in control. a low waist jean means your belly will most definitely jiggle and hang out everywhere. a high waist jean is just terrible in every way. terrible looking, terrible feeling. terrible. so i just wish there was a perfect jean that was made higher than low waist, but lower than high waist, with a good crotch to waistband ratio. that also has a little stretch allowance so those of us with giant rumps dont have to constantly worry about crack sightings.


i mean really, if jessica simpson cant pull off mom jeans, how can anyone else?

3.13.2012

50 shades of confusion...

ok, so admittedly i am a total nerd. my one true hobby that i dont have to force myself to do, (i am so not crafty, but i feel like in order to be a 'good mom' i should be... terrible, i know) is reading. i love to read. i love to get into a great series that will literally make me sad when its over.

naturally i go through books pretty quickly, especially now that i have my awesome kindle- totally recommend to anyone that enjoys reading btw. so i buy books through amazon when i get suggestions online, from friends, and wherever i happen to hear that theres a good book. a recent purchase was spawned from a radio show. i didnt catch the entire story because lets face it, im a mom... rarely do i get to fully pay attention to anything other than my children. all i really heard was that there was some big stir about this book called '50 shades of grey.' so i jump onto amazon real quick and have it sent to my kindle before i forget about it. i actually thought that they were talking about a book high schoolers were reading that parents were having a problem with... after starting the book, i am positive that i made all of that up in my head.

fast forward a bit, i finally finish 'the shack,' -did not enjoy. i start scrolling through my unread titles and remember the '50 shades' books. i absolutely have no idea what its about and i start reading...

it is not at all what i expected. theres a virgin fantasizing about some dude, some dirty making out in an elevator, and a lot of s & m... im a little confused because you remember i thought this was a high school recommended reading, and after doing a bit of research it is obvious that i am currently reading an erotic novel. hilarious. i have never read an erotic novel before and really the closest ive ever come to reading a romance novel would be twilight. 50 shades of grey

above is what the news has to say about this current erotic novel trend in book clubs across the us.

im going to finish the book because i hate not finishing a story unless i absolutely hate it, but i do feel a bit embarrassed reading it. especially since i do most of my reading while nursing my baby... maybe ill shelf it for awhile, or at least read something else during baby time.

long story short, for all you ladies out there that want the dirtier, more adult scenes that you didnt get in twilight, '50 shades of grey' is definitely for you.

3.12.2012

waspy ants.

i love spring and i hate spring.

PROS: warmer weather means cook outs, fun time at parks & playgrounds, hangin out with the windows open, eventually pool time, and basically any outdoor activity is welcomed.

CONS: BUGS.

now normally the regular bugs dont bother me so much... of course i hate spiders. you can refer to the previous post: my own hell. 2010. but ants, stink bugs, flies and such, i can totally deal with. although last year while hanging out at my aunts pool i did see a bug that totally creeped me out. after a little bit of research i found it that what i saw was a red velvet ant, also known as the cow killer. gross. and apparently its not an ant at all, but a ground dwelling wasp. and it doesnt really kill cows, but the anty wasps sting is supposed to be turrible!


so this morning im on the phone with my mom and straightening up the kids toys while theyre eating breakfast, (why? i have no idea- they are gonna tear up the living room again in less than 60 seconds anyway) i notice a bug on the windowsill. on closer inspection i realize that its a red velvet ant! ugh!!!! i have a red velvet ant IN. MY. HOUSE! right near the kids toys... not happy.

mine isnt quite as big as the one in the picture, it might be a bit young, but a weird waspy grossness all the same. so i caught it under a baby bottle and will attempt to move it shortly so it can await its demise away from the babies. the hubs will receive a picture of what he needs to destroy shortly. fun for him.

3.10.2012

morning lesbian.

so this is completely unrelated to my children in any way other than my husband, my sister and i are completely obsessed with a new game and my poor children may be slightly jealous of our iphones.

my husband and i went out to dinner a couple nights ago with some friends who all have iphones. being new to the club, the only things i really had on mine were some apps for the kids including a monster maker app, a diego game, and fun little way to call elmo. best mom ever, right? anyway, our friends told us about this game 'draw something,' everyone was cracking up about it so i installed right then. for those of you that have never played, its kinda like pictionary and word scramble together. someone draws a picture (you get to watch the whole process, not just the end result) and you guess what it is with the letters given to you.

i started playing it later that night once i put the kids down, and our friends were right. super fun, super hilarious. so of course i had to get my husband on the bandwagon. shortly after i got my sister to jump right on that cart with us.

i have some friends that are super good at it, for instance:



but i have definitely gotten some pictures that i had absolutely no idea what the heck they were and if i had known that my obsession would grow so great as to write a blog post about it, i wouldve taken a picture. but, on to the best part of this story.

yesterday i got a picture from my sister. it started out being a blonde woman with blue eyes. im looking at it for awhile thinking that it could be almost any woman, then slowly writing starts to appear at the top... it says, in the most ridiculous kindergarten looking writing that i have ever seen, 'morning lesbian.' i start laughing when i realize that my sister has attempted to draw 'ellen.'

so the next time youre flipping through the channels and you see that ellen is on, or you see one of the many new jc penny commercials, just remember 'morning lesbian.'

3.09.2012

darn it, daddy!

hes probaby too cool for darn it...
as some of you may know, my older child has recently started saying 'dannit.' and while dannit doesnt look bad, it is clearly his toddler version of damn it.

of course there have been some arguments as to who is the one to blame for our foul mouthed minor... my husband says that i say it in reference to our dog who is often standing right in front of me when i try to walk around holding the baby. i say that my husband says it in frustration to one of the many household fix ups that isnt quite cooperating with him. and anyone that knows my mom knows that 'dammit,' couldve almost been considered her catch phrase for a time. she has cleaned up her act since our little mockingbird has learned to speak, but the blame game prevails.

i must admit in my 'things my toddler shouldnt say' post that i am the culprit behind my sweet blonde haired baby saying 'crap.' i say crap like its going out of style. and while it isnt the worst thing he could say, it certainly isnt desirable, and neither are the looks from judgy parents when my child says it at the completely appropriate time of dropping his juice cup.

so, after trying to hide our giggles the first couple times that 'dannit' escaped from his lips, we have all decided to ignore his little cursings, hoping that he would forget about it once he learned a new catch phrase. this has not worked. next, i decided to tell him that it wasnt a nice thing to say. i dont think he cared much. then i told him flat out that he just wasnt allowed to say it. try telling any toddler that... not gonna happen.

so as a last resort i have decided to give him a substitute. we now say 'darn it.' and i know everyone knows what he really wants to say, but what can you do? when hes frustrated hes gotta be able to let it out somehow, and if he needs to yell out 'darn it, daddy!' then we just have to deal with it for the time being. im sure its just a phase and i will soon be deailng with some other silliness next month...

3.08.2012

2 doctors, 1 day.

our day started a little before 7 when the big boy woke up.

fast forward through the morning routine of yelling about breakfast, trying to hurry the dogs business trip outside along, begging my two year old to put on his shoes, and then the awesome balancing act of putting of long gangly toddler into a carseat while holding my plump little nugget of a baby.

it is now 9:45.

next stop: moms to grab her gps.

gps acquired we finally START the day. running a little late, i decided to for once follow the gps' advised directions instead of going my norm route thinking she (the gps) might know some secret passage that i, in my 29 years of life in the northern virginia area am not aware of... she says i will get to the doctors office at exactly the right time so what the hey.

i realize that she is making me get on the toll road; the $4 toll road. i dont know about you, but to me thats pretty steep when i can just get on a couple of other side roads and get to the same destination for free. im already spending $4 per gallon for gas, do i really need to pay $4 to drive on a road? so ive already chosen my destiny and i have no choice but to pay, but then i remember i have no cash and momentarily go through a mental freak out about running the toll and then receiving a terrible ticket costing me more than the original $4 that i didnt even want to pay in the first place. but after a quick call to the moms, all is well, they accept cards. yay.

we get to the sleep center at the exact right time. awesome. then for the next hour i listen to the doctor give me the low down on exactly what is wrong with my child. he does in fact have obstructive sleep apnea due to a million things they discovered during his overnight stay. he also has restless leg syndrome. so from the one visit i now need to make appts to have his blood drawn, to see an ent, and another follow up with the sleep center. and thats just if all goes well with the ent and bloodwork- if not, then more appts will definitely be made. fun. and i get to listen to all of this while trying to entertain my now bored children. not an easy task. we finally make it out of there, all the while my toddler is crying that he needs milk and a nap- i give him the milk and promise that we are going home for nap time. pic of the overnight stay at the sleep center. sad panda.


i lied.

when i put the baby in his carseat i realize that his face is swollen. rewind to this morning: the baby wakes up, i start to change his diaper and realize he has a rash all over his entire body. it doesnt seem to be bothering him so i assume it is just a reaction to something he ate the day before. i give him some allergy meds and we continue on with our morning routine. so now his face is swollen and the rash has not improved at all with the meds. so i call the nurse at the pediatricians office and leave a message asking if i should bring him in... btw, i dont know why i even call to ask- they ALWAYS make me bring them in.

it is now 1pm, we are in leesburg and the peds office wants me to bring the littles in at 4. so im thinking by the time we get home, calm the boys down and chilled out for naptime, ill be waking them up to go back to the dr. i ask about the other location and awesome they have a 2pm appt available. so we drive directly from leesburg to haymarket for the next appt.

he is fine. the dr agrees that it is an allergic reaction to something but since its not bothering him and the swelling has gone down were just keeping him on the allergy meds for a few days. yay!

we get back into the rover. me, one sleepy baby, and a loud, screaming, grumpy, overtired toddler. then i remember that im almost out of allergy meds and i need to stop for more...

we finally get home around 4:30. my children are exhausted. i had a salad for dinner, the baby had baby food, and the toddler had pancakes.

its been one of those days.

but theyre cute.

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