Beautiful Baby Girls

I'm in Denver where - thankfully - Spanish teacher is recovering nicely. We visited the girls at the NICU today where I got to hold them and make goo-goo noises at them and generally make a total fool out of myself.

It was wonderful!

They are gaining weight, starting to nurse and doing a good job keeping their body temperatures up. Hopefully they will be able to come home soon where their big brother and sister are eager to get to know them better.

Thanks for all the prayers and get well vibes, everyone is on their way to getting healthy!

Grateful

Remember Spanish Teacher? I've written about her a couple of times. She's the sister I always wanted and the kind of friend that everyone should have.

She had twin girls last week. (Yay for surprise pregnancies and YAY for surprise twins!) The girls were seven weeks early, tiny, but are healthy and thriving in the NICU.

Not so much my friend. She developed pulmonary embolisms (blood clots in her lungs) because of being on bedrest and we came way too close to losing her. She's still struggling to recover from that as well as the c-section so on Thursday afternoon I'm flying down to Denver to help her husband Computer Whiz with their older two kids and the house-laundry-cleaning-cooking crap so she can concentrate on getting well and being Mommy to four now.

Please say a little prayer, cross your fingers, send good get-well vibes - whatever - to Spanish Teacher, two very tiny little girls, an exhausted husband and worried big brother and sister in Denver. They need it.

Super Genius

I have discovered that writing a resume is an exercise in extreme self-promotion with a dash of exaggeration thrown in. Here is a list of Things. I. Have. Done.

At least according to my resume.

Served

Managed

Coordinated

Increased

Participated

Developed

Maintained

Observed

Assisted

Tutored

Guided

Adapted

Taught

Integrated

Facilitated

Supervised

Presided

Conducted

Mediated

Delegated

Marketed

Promoted

Oversaw

Created

Whew, I'm exhausted just thinking about everything I've done over the past seventeen years.

Pass the beer.

Questions I Have for the Universe

Why do I need a resume to apply for grad school? Isn't there just a form I can fill out? For God's sake it's been SEVENTEEN YEARS since I made a resume. I can't remember half of the shit I've done in seventeen years let alone make it sound fabulous!

Why would a perfectly lovely girl make herself look ridiculous by wearing daisy dukes and Uggs? It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud at the total stranger I saw wearing this getup in Costco today.

Why is it that whenever my pencil lead runs out in class, I never have the right size of refill lead in my bag? NEVER.

Why does my dog still have fur on her body when she has shed enough on the floor of our house to make another dog?

Why does someone always have to step in dog shit and track it in the house the day after the cleaners come? Would it be too hard to do it the day BEFORE instead?

Why does my whole family ask me where their stuff is when they can't find it?

Why do I always know where their stuff is? It's not MY stuff and yet its location is taking up valuable real estate in my brain - that's why I can't remember anything I've done for the past seventeen years! All those brain cells are keeping track of coats, shoes, clothes, medication and tools that don't even belong to me. Dammit. Can I erase those files?

Why am I cutting back on red wine again? I know there was a good reason but right now I can't quite think of it...

Gratuitous Cute Kid Pics

Here is Thing 2 playing with Sillyboy in the water trough...

And me with Princess A...

I miss the little rugrats!

Answering Machine Win

The Cousins Invade

We got the very best Christmas surprise ever - COUSINS! Army Cousin called me a week or so before Christmas because he was getting to bring his two beautiful kids to Washington to spend Christmas with his whole family and they were going to stay with us!!! Since daughter was off wrestling Sharks With Frickin' Lasers in Australia, we had one bedroom vacant; the Things offered to bunk together so another bedroom would be vacant and voila - instant Christmas chaos!

Princess A is six and Sillyboy is four - I had forgotten how much FUN little kids are to play with! I got to be a Tickle-monster and chase them all over the house (boy am I out of shape!), cuddle up at bedtime to read them stories and just hang out and get to know them better. I hadn't seen Princess A since she was nine months old and I had never met Sillyboy so their visit was truly a gift for all of us.

The added bonus was getting to hang out with one of my favorite cousins who - because of his penchant for flitting around the damn globe every six months rather than staying put like a normal person - I have not got much time to hang out with since we grew up. His Mom took care of Scientist Genius Brother and I a lot when we were little and we always had such a great time playing cops n' robbers, cowboys n' indians or just running all over the yard "shooting" each other and yelling our fool heads off. He is smart, funny, loving and a *wonderful* father to his kids and I'm so glad we got this time to spend together.

Here he is with his beautiful babies...

Princess A and Thing 2 really hit it off and spent hours playing Legos together. He told me just the other day that we need to send her some Legos for her birthday because she loves them so much.

Army Cousin and I took all the kids to the Seattle Science Center one day and the Things had a great time showing the kids all the cool stuff. They are so good with little kids and were a big help to us keeping track of them! (Another thing I forgot, how fast little kids can disappear from sight!)

Princess A and Thing 2 at the GIANT table and chairs. I thought this was hilarious!

This Christmas was so much fun for all of us. I couldn't have asked for a better gift than time with my family and all the giggles, hugs and love from Princess A and Sillyboy.

I hope they come back soon!

For the Out-of-Towners

Sometimes I forget that the reason I started blogging was to share pictures like this with my family that have fled the rain of Seattle for sunnier weather.

This picture was taken a few days before the wedding of one of my cousins. (He and his beautiful bride are the ones right below the '9' in the picture.) This is not quite all of the cousins on my Mom's side of the family but most of them - including Army Cousin who flew in from Alabama where he is learning to fly helicopters. (I've got another post of pictures of him and his beautiful babies coming soon.)

We have the best family, I love you guys!

The Luckiest Moron in the World

I'm still a moron but I'm a SUPER LUCKY moron! After meeting with the advisor for the grad school program I'm planning on applying to I found out that I was looking at the E test instead of the B test and the B test - which is the one the results have to be in to the school prior to the application deadline - is not closed for registration until January 22nd. So I'm registered, the test is on Feb. 27th and the results will be in two weeks before the application deadline. WHOOHOO!

So while I'm feeling completely embarrassed for being such a dumbass, the relief at not having to postpone everything for another year pretty much makes up for it.

I should buy a lottery ticket!

In Which I Admit Defeat

I am a moron. Sometimes I manage to pull the wool over everybody's eyes but deep down inside where it really counts, I haven't got the brains God gave a woodchuck. It's not my Mom or Dads fault - I'm pretty sure it is a genetic mutation.

Eleventy-hundred years ago I went back to school. My goal is to teach high school. I'm waffling between Social Studies/English and Special Education but bottom line, I want to teach teenagers. Yes I am out of my ever-loving mind thank-you-very-much. My own teenagers drive me up the fucking wall but I absolutely love love LOVE being at the high school, helping the kids with their schoolwork and trying to make a difference in their lives. Just one adult encouraging them and taking interest in what they are doing can make a huge impact on kids and besides, they are so much fun!

Barring any unforeseen complications, I will graduate in June with my bachelor's degree. After that my plan was to go to grad school for my Masters in Education which would not only give me bragging rights (except over Scientist Genius Brother, he is an overachiever and will stay in school forever just to make me look bad) over non-graduate degree holders.

Last quarter was an absolute nightmare so even though I KNEW my application for grad school would be due on April 7, 2010, I didn't double-check all the requirements because even if I looked at it in January, I still had FIVE WHOLE MONTHS to get everything together. No problem! I can move whole mountains in less time!

Wrong.

One of the requirements for grad school is taking two tests that prove I am not a total idiot and an education would not be wasted on my puny little pea brain. These tests are administrated by the State of Washington on pre-determined dates with pre-determined deadlines for registering and abysmally long grading periods. The test grades must be in BEFORE the application deadline for the grad school.

I. Missed. The. Registration. Deadline.

My application for grad school is totally worthless now because it wouldn't even get looked at without the test results. And the school is small enough that my weirdo last name (DAMN my Persian husband and the entire Farsi language that is overly fond of vowels!) would be noticed, remembered and probably mocked for being a total moron if I tried to apply without it.

Crying on the phone with the test registration lady was unsuccessful. I think there is a civil-servant requirement for total and complete heartlessness. Or maybe they learn it on the job by dealing with morons like me.

So now I have an extra year. I'm trying to make the best of it. Next year I can pick up all the classes I need to get my English endorsement for high school plus have plenty of time to study for the two stupid tests that stupid me was stupid enough to not register for in time. I can get caught up with all the crap around the house I've let go and support the Things in their freshman year of high school and Daughter in her Junior year. Blah. Blah. Blah.

But it's hard to escape the fact that due to my own stupidity I have lost an entire year.

*facepalm*

This is for Things 1 and 2

I suspect they might want the building instructions after they watch it...

Fresh Start

I've never been a resolution-maker at the beginning of the new year but this year some things have to change. Plus the nice thing about a blog is that if I put something out there for y'all to read, I might have a sense of being held accountable to someone other than myself and actually - you know - FOLLOW THRU. So here's my list of things I WILL change this year.

Get healthy. I walked up two flights of stairs at school yesterday and was sucking wind at the top - unacceptable! I'm no spring chicken but 35 is too fucking young to be so badly out of shape. So as a first step I'm going back to being a tree-hugging, dirt-worshipping vegetarian. I saw my doctor for a check up last month, my first in three years. Un-acceptable! Regular check ups and dental visits are also a part of my get healthy campaign.

Another thing I need to change - one that might possibly kill me - is to cut back on my special "medicine". (It's red wine. I love me some red wine.) I've fallen into the habit of having two or three glasses of wine most every evening as I wind down and while I'm not the heaviest drinker in the world, I know that it is not healthy and God KNOWS I don't need the extra calories. So drinking will be reserved for special occasions like trips to Las Vegas and graduating with my bachelor's degree. (I reserve the right to add other celebratory occasions to this list in the future during which drinking will be totally acceptable.)

Lastly I just need to move. I let our membership to the YMCA lapse because we never fucking went. We were the dumb assholes who paid through the nose for a membership to a place we never set foot in. I'm not going to re-join but I am going to walk the dog around the neighborhood a few times a week, park in the hinterlands of parking lots and just generally get off my ass more often. The stairs at school are going to be my friends and I will not take the elevator any more.

I will keep y'all posted on how I'm doing - hopefully a welcome benefit will be some weight loss but I am looking at this as a healthy life change rather than just a diet. Cause diet is just DIE with a tee.

Baby Boom

Recently on Marvelous Mom's side of the family we have experienced a baby boom. I don't know if it is something in the water, genetic crops or alien interference but just to be safe I've been making Husband sleep on the couch. With my luck I'd get pregnant with quadruplets if I let him sleep in the same bed as me and then I would have to jump off a bridge. So we're playing it safe and enjoying OTHER people's babies.

This is my cousin with his first child Adorable. She is the most beautiful baby girl ever and we all fought over who got to hold her. He finally got a chance at the end of the evening. Don't feel sorry for him, the lucky dog gets to live with her.

This is my OTHER cousin's beautiful baby girl Sassy who is just a wee bit older than Adorable and so freaking cute I wanted to eat her up. Does the drool on my chin show up in the photo?

Here is (from left to right) Marvelous Mom, Aunt J and Aunt L with baby Adorable. Aunt J is Adorable's grandmother and so proud that her buttons were bursting. Adorable was making her presence known. I'm pretty sure they could hear her in the next state.

And here I am holding Adorable. It's amazing but I'd forgot how tiny new babies are! She is just a little love and I can't wait to see her again.

I've got a TON to tell y'all about so I'll try to get cracking before my schoolwork buries me again.

Happy New Year!