Our 1 year old

My L-Dawg turned 1 year old Monday. I can't believe how time has flown and that my baby is now a toddler. I was recounting the birthing story to T-Dawg on Sunday night and I was saying stuff like, "now we're on the way to the hospital and I'm telling you to stop touching me!"..."In a few hours I'll find out there is only one anesthesiologist in the hospital and that he is busy with another patient." T-Dawg finally said, "You reminding me of all this doesn't make me want to do it again." :)

L-Dawg was worth all of it. He is such a sweetheart and it has been so fun to watch him grow and develop. He reached another milestone Monday that has me happy. As most of you know I'm always worried that my boys haven't crawled or walked on time. L-Dawg isn't making much progress with crawling, but what he did do was take his first steps alone at his birthday party. He must like an audience! We had a party with my family(we missed those living outside Utah) and with T-Dawg's parents. It is always interesting to have the two families under one roof. His parents are as reserved as my family is rambunctious and it can be a spectacle.

L-Dawg dug into his cake and was very interested in his presents. Two favorites were the mower that is very noisy and plays extremely annoying music. I love how grandparents give the most annoying toys! They do it with a twinkle in their eye that they know the kid will love it and so glad that they don't have to listen to it. Naughty, Naughty. He actually tried to take the mower to bed. He also loved the sippy cups mom and dad gave him. Stupidly, I left all the preparations until the day of the party. I mean everything including food and his presents. This huge blizzard hit in the morning and it snowed hard for a few hours. By the time I shoveled the drive-way to go out shopping it was 4pm and people were coming at 6:30pm. I shopped, wrapped presents, cleaned the house, baked the cupcakes and brownies, and decorated in two and half hours! I had barely shoved some dinner in my pie hole when my bro and his fam got here. Oh, I also finally found some shoes that fit his round little feet. He has the smallest feet, G-Dawg was wearing size 5 by now and L-Dawg is still in size 3! It has been so hard to find shoes to go over the mound of fat on top of his feet in a size 3. His small feet are my fault. I'm 5'10" and I wear a size 7 which I think makes me look like I'm going to tip over.

G-Dawg loves playing with his cousins and was very upset because his uncle gave him the impression that their oldest boy, and G-Dawg's hero, was going to sleep over. He cried some serious tears when they left. We had a great time and I'm sad that my baby isn't a baby anymore.

p.s. L-Dawg doesn't have any pants on because he got cake on his pants. And he is crying in this pic because we tried to take the mower away. Didn't want you to think we sport the onesie and shoe look in the dead of a blizzard and that we take pics of him crying to make fun of him.

Update

The blue escort was back today. This time someone was riding shotgun so they could pass the drugs while going down the street the same way. T-Dawg got this picture. I was thinking about this being a money making scheme...I mean me charging a turf fee, but Escort man can't be making too much money since he is driving this piece of crap. Maybe even drug dealers are hurt when the economy tanks? Maybe this is a cause Hillary will take up for a new government out-reach program...oh wait they are probably already on food stamps and Medicaid anyway. This makes 6 deals in a week and half.

Drugs Anyone?

If you're looking for drugs, and let's be honest who isn't, I'll tell you where you can score almost everyday between the hours of 3pm and 5pm...in front of our house! We just witnessed our third drug deal in less than a week. The first one happened late last week while I was bringing the kids inside from the car and apparently my hand on my hip and scary look did nothing because the same slime bag was back tonight. I guess I didn't look too scary with L-Dawg on my other hip. I tried getting a license plate number but the mysterious blue Ford Escort didn't have one and tonight he was sporting a temporary one in his windshield...listen buddy I'm not buying that...not that you're accustomed to people not buying things from you. The word must be out about our circle because some other slime balls were selling on Saturday. I think I might start charging a turf fee. I might as well make something off these deals. Jerks.

L-Dawg can also tell you about drugs as he sucked on a bong for 5 minutes at the doctor's office today. L-Dawg has been sick since Thursday. It came right on the heels of the FDA recalling all cough medicine for children under two. Monday he stopped eating and drinking and he hadn't peed all day so I was starting to get worried. By the end of the day he was starting to take liquids so the pediatrician said to call him in the morning. By Tuesday morning he was breathing so scary that I called the pediatrician in a panic. I could hear his breathing in the bathroom while he was in mine and T-Dawg's room. If you've never been in our house that is about as far apart as you can get in this phone booth. He was breathing so fast and his chest was falling. I knew that was a bad sign. Anyway, back to the bong. So he has RSV. Those three letters throw the fear into you. He had to have a breathing treatment, which seriously looked like a bong. Don't ask me how I know what one looks like...I've never smoked weed despite the fact that I could probably get some without leaving my property. Anyway, he is doing much better and the doc thinks he is over the worst.

Yah, She's a Wacko

I love Seinfeld so much that lines from the show come to me randomly and I can't seem to help it. In one of my favorite episodes Elaine works with a germaphob, Patty, who is selectively scared of Elaine's germs. Elaine confronts Patty about it and Patty insinuates that Elaine sleeps around and that's why she thinks she has germs. In true Elaine fashion she rubs Patty's keyboard on her butt, puts her stapler in her armpit and coughs on her door knob all the while saying, "you think I've got germs lady...how do you like that!" Well the next day Patty isn't at work and at a meeting Elaine's boss tells everyone that Patty is gravely ill and that he wants them to sign a card. Elaine pipes up,

"Oh please, this is all in Patty's mind. She thinks I made her sick."
"All because I put her stapler in my armpit, coughed on her doorknob and rubbed her keyboard on my butt."

Of course everyone is looking at Elaine like she is insane and Elaine turns to the guy next to her mistaking his look and says,

"Yah, she's a wacko."

If you don't watch Seinfeld then you probably don't think this is funny nor can you hear Elaine intonation as she says this but no matter how many times I see this episode I always laugh out loud. So this brings me full circle. This is the line I used this week on my mom and sadly I looked as insane as Elaine.

My mom came over to help me with the kids while I wrote a scathing letter to my insurance co. about my tooth. I had given L-Dawg a sucker and my mom says to L-Dawg, "Tell your mom I think she is crazy for giving a child this age a sucker." Last time I checked L-Dawg can't say "Boo" let alone speak in full sentences so he can't tell me jack. So what if he was sticky from head to toe and every time he touched the carpet his hand came away with a thick layer of fuzz? That's why they invented baby wipes! A little while later G-Dawg was jumping onto the couch from the side table. My mom is looking at me and I can read her thoughts, "I can't believe a daughter of mine is letting her toddler do this. We never let our kids treat the furniture like this!"

It should be noted that the kids have been sick all week and the kid was totally stir crazy and if I didn't think I would hit my head on the ceiling I would maybe jump off the side table too just for something to do.

This look from my mom brought out my inner Elaine and so I turn to her and say, "Yah, I let my kids jump on the furniture." I guess your never too old to act like a angst ridden teenager with your mom. Just as I said this G-Dawg fell off backwards and landed in a noisy heap wedged between the couch and our picture window. I ran over expecting broken limbs and blood only to find G-Dawg hurriedly taking off his Peter Pan hat and exclaiming, "I didn't break my feather!" I know it's because the outside world at this point was a distant memory but I couldn't stop laughing and my mom loved that I looked like the ninny I am. The morale of the story here is that mom still does know best. Dang her!

I Don't Post for Awhile and Everyone Gets Dillusions of Grandeur

I usually post on Sundays and I couldn't think of anything to say until I saw Tim dressed up in his very own "Darth Vader" costume. I mean it was one thing when a 3 year old thinks he is Luke Skywalker, which by the way is confusing having two Luke's running around and Gage insists you call him Luke, but a 30 year old man? If Tim thinks I'm going to the grocery store with him looking like this he has another think a coming. It is bad enough with Gage pretending to use the "force" on every old lady we pass and running back to the cart like it is the Millennium Falcon. A few weeks ago Gage and I hid in the clothes rack at Wal-mart because the storm troopers were coming. The clothes we hid in were those slick athletic pants so when I came out we both had static afro's and I might as well have been dressed up like Princess Leia judging by the look the lady over in jewelry gave me. I go back and forth between feeling like a bad mom that I really would love to just live in reality for awhile or feeling like I'm a bad mom for encouraging this extreme creative play. I guess either way I'm a bad mom so I should just give up and go along already!! I'm drawing the line at Tim though.

Luke, the real one, is making excellent progress on his crawling and walking. We were playing with some balloons and that has proven to be the incentive he needed to start pushing himself around th floor. Yea! And last week he started walking behind his walker...he still needs help as he has taken a few head dives. But he is really tough...I guess because he is the second child. He fell and smacked his face on a lightsaber, mostly because there are no other toys around, and he cried for just a second and then was right back to walking. Gage fell once while he was learning to walk and he didn't attempt it again for months. It still amazes me that children can come from the same parents and be so different. I know the week after he starts walking and getting into everything I'll wonder why I was so excited for him to walk but I can't help myself.

The Giant Red X On My Forehead

The red x on my forehead is for sucker. Because I am one. If you have never seen this X on my forehead that is because you are not a so called "medical professional." Only they can see it. I furthermore think that only extremely crappy "medical professionals" can see this X and mess with me because of it. I know good doctors exist. The boy's pediatrician is a total hippie but a great doctor. My cousin and a friend in my ward are going to medical school and I think they will be great doctors so I'm sure they have never seen my X either. My sister is nearly a pharmacist and she can't see the x either...probably because she gets A's in school. My list of grievances is long when it comes to those who call themselves doctors. There are doctors like the people mentioned above (good doctors) and then there are the doctors that I, the x girl, see. These doctors went to school in Tijuana and still got D+ averages and my x apparently draws me to them. When I first realized that I had this X was when I was preggers with G-Dawg and the OB-GYN I was seeing "forgot" to tell me that I was RH negative until I was about 28 weeks along which is 8 weeks after you are supposed to receive your first shot so that your immune system doesn't kill your baby. Where were you on that one doc? Switched doctors after that to a great OB-GYN (so I know they exist) but he retired by the time I had L-Dawg. My X got brighter. The OB-GYN who saw me with L-Dawg didn't return any of his pages, as in plural, while I was in labor which meant I didn't get any pain meds until I was about 7 cm dialated and the hospital doctor basically came and caught L-Dawg for me. His excuse when he saw me the next day was, "I guess I slept through my pager?" You guess? I'm thinking that a pager is pretty important when you are a doctor but I'm sure he slept through that course at Tijuana University. By now I'm pretty sure the X can be seen from space when I saw my dentist in August. I've been in pain since the moment his non-gloved man hands touched #4 bicuspid. Not only did he not use gloves but he dropped an instrument on the floor and proceeded to use it. You didn't read that wrong he really did. I recently found out that he didn't remove all the packing cotton in my root canal before he cemented a ill-fitting piece of porcelain that he calls a crown. And to boot he placed it so close to my jaw bone that my gums are damaged and I may have bone loss. The best part about all this is that now I'm in a battle of epic proportions with some suite in California to get my insurance company to pay for this all to be fixed. I'm moving to Canada. If I have a permanent grimace next time you see me you'll know it is because the cotton stuck in my jaw has migrated to my brain.

Better Late Than Never

I know Christmas was two weeks ago and nobody cares what the Pudges did but I thought I would chronicle it anyhoo. Christmas 2007 was one of the most idyllic for us yet. A big snow storm hit Christmas eve and so we had the ever impressive white Christmas. My family, the ones who live here, came over to our house Christmas eve. The food was great and the company even better. I whipped out an old Burt tradition of my Dad reading, Twas the Night Before Christmas, from this ancient book that I slipped in my moving boxes unawares to my parents when I married T-Dawg and left my parents house. My bro and sis were amazed that book was still holding together, Roper and Pooky you know they one. Anyway my dad read the story and the kids, and yes even me, were mesmerized. I was disappointed though that when he got to the part about throwing up the sash dad didn't say, "oh, I bet that hurt." I guess he is slipping in his old age. T-Dawg read the Christmas story from the book of Luke and the Burt tradition was complete.


The Pudges have the tradition of getting PJ's for Christmas and opening them on the Christmas Eve. I did something I thought I would never do and I bought the boys matching PJ's. They glow in the dark...ooooh. It was pretty dang cute and maybe I'll do matching church outfits next. I don't think I"ll go that far. G-Dawg was stoked for St. Nick and was constantly asking if I thought he was on the "nice" list. L-Dawg caught on real quick to opening presents and his favorite was the $3 cell phone that Santa brought. Don't ask me how I know how much it cost. StarWars continues to be a big seller here but Santa helped Peter Pan make a valiant return with a Capitan Hook pirate ship. That made mama Pudge happy because I was really tired of lightsaber duels.
He also enjoyed the Return to Neverland DVD from T-Dawg I think mostly because he thinks the girl, Jane, "is pretty cute!" His words not mine and the fact that he thinks a girls is cute is really freakin me out.

L-Dawg's skin has looked really yellow lately as pointed out by his uncle and the bughunter. Seriously for awhile he looked like he belonged as the fourth child on the Simpsons. I called the doctor and they will be checking it out at his 1 year check-up but in the meantime I have to discontinue all orange and yellow veggies as these can make your skin yellow. I've been really bad at feeding L-Dawg table foods...just because the baby food is so convenient. I never imagined that putting it off so long could not only make him yellow but make it hard to get him to eat regular food. He is the most persistent child I've ever met. G-Dawg would eat anything you put in front of his mouth. Not so with L-Dawg and if he isn't throwing it off his tray he is shaking his head "no" when you try to give him something. It is proving to be a new challenge for me but I just have to have a stronger will than him and show him who's boss. I'll let you know how that goes.